Robert Alter on the Psalms
April 30, 2008
My small dose of pure enjoyment for the term has come from a reading of the new translation of the Psalms by Robert Alter. Following his translation of The Five Books of Moses and The David Story, Alter turned his attention to the poetry of the Psalms, providing a commentary to accompany the text.
There is something salutary about taking a book out of the Bible and presenting it on its own. Being wrapped in the same cover as all those other biblical books leads the mind to an easy conclusion: these books must be saying the same thing. Alter's translation of the Psalms is a testimony to how well one book can stand on its own and be understood according to its own values and assumptions. Can we finally say goodbye to that Reformation principle of letting scripture comment on scripture?
Alter's most impressive achievement may well be his ability to effortlessly dismiss deadbeat biblical scholarship. In numerous places he shows himself a skeptic when it comes to hard and fast conclusions about the setting or genre of a Psalm:
What should be resisted is the inclination of many scholars, beginning in the early twentieth century, to turn as many psalms as possible into the liturgy of conjectured temple rites—to recover what in biblical studies is called the "life-setting" of the psalms. [xvi]
Alter continues in a similar vein two pages later:
The case of [Psalm 137] should alert us to the limits of one of the most common scholarly modes of analysis of Psalms, the form-criticism that identifies distinct genres of Psalms (supplication, thanksgiving, Wisdom psalm, royal psalm, historical psalm, Zion psalm, psalm of praise. [xviii]
These are two examples from the introduction; similar notes are scattered throughout the commentary.
For the most part I find this skepticism directed at scholarly categories valuable. The imagination does not run down such narrow and prescribed lanes. Scholarship often has trouble imagining the fluidity of creation, from a subjective standpoint, and loses for that reason a sense of how literary types and physical applications can metamorphose into something different.
On the other hand there are places, such as the Psalms of Ascent, where a reasonable confidence that this is a mini- book of psalms used on pilgrimage could be quite enlightening. But Alter is quick to raise objections: "Most scholars assume that 'ascents' refers to pilgrimages to Jerusalem.... But among other meanings that have been proposed..." (435). Alter actively resists the non-bookish, ritual qualities of these works.
Alter is at his strongest when the Psalms conforms most closely to a book of poetry. A beautiful example of what I mean is in Alter's commentary on the heading for Psalm 56, which reads "For the lead player, on jonath elem rehokim, a David michtam, when the Philistines seized him in Gath," With respect to those odd Hebrew words Alter writes:
This is one of the most mysterious of the musical terms in Psalms. The literal sense of the three Hebrew words is haunting: the mute dove of distant places. The great medieval poet Judah Halevi responded to the evocativeness of the phrase in his poetry by turning it into a concrete image of Israel's exile. [195]
Reading through the commentary there are numerous traces of this community of sensitive Psalm readers.. and it is as a member of this invisible and partially forgotten group that Alter would clearly love to be remembered. A goal that we at Old Roads applaud.
Reflection on -izations
April 28, 2008
All -izations are a result of the secret ministry of cultures. Set a group of people down someplace and they will begin to conform everything to their own patterns. If the French take up residence, we see a process of Frenchification. If Muslims take up residence we see Islamization. If on the other hand these groups have minority status in a new country, we witness the reverse: a process of Americanization or some other -ization. This all happens quite unconsciously.
The book Making Algeria French: Colonialism in Bône, 1870-1920 by David Prochaska sketches the process whereby a single Algerian town went through this -ization process. This often involves details that appear unimportant when seen from a grand historical perspective: statues, street names, postcards, and architectural styles. These details work to guide perceptions and create a city that not only houses, but represents an identity. And every identity will elide other identities.. or at least make them seem not to exist. If we ask who is in charge of all these details like the naming of streets, we will not get much of an answer. People just go about their lives and individuals make choices about naming a street after a personal hero or constructing a building that conforms to their architectural taste.. and the end result is a "French" city in Algeria.
A book I read over the past couple of weeks covers another version of -ization.. Islamization. Muhammad's Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society by Leor Halevi follows the changes in burial rituals that came about as Islam became dominant in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Burial rituals are a convenient way to measure -ization because every culture has to do something with the corpse and at the same time religious leaders will feel compelled to have some say about the manner in which it will be treated. So these rituals at death, while not pretty reading, are an exceedingly useful window on the process of Islamization.
One ritual involved the placement of a tombstone to mark the site of a burial. Burial markers inscribed with verses from the Quran became a popular way to memorialize a deceased person, yet the pious-minded were firmly in opposition to this practice and looked back to the unmarked graves of Medina as an ideal. Halevi uses this to point out the early (8th century) divergence of the traditionist and popular versions of Islam (41). And that is a good point, but I think more interesting is the way this ends up complicating the way we think about the process of -ization.
For example, one might imagine that Islamization would take place as leading thinkers reflected on their new religion and formulated Islamic rituals and patterns connected to death for the rest of the group to follow. An alternative picture might be that as Muslims came into contact with other cultures they mostly adapted to the practices that were around them, wrapping them in superficially Islamic terms. But the reality seems to have been messier. No one had control of the reins of -ization. Islamic thinkers did formulate rules.. but the crowd didn't listen; they liked their gravestones with verses from the Quran! Muslims adapted some practices from the cultures around them, but mostly they found their way to specifically Islamic rituals and practices. And again, the strange thing is that this is all an unconscious process, the end result being a constellation of ritual practices that reflect the new commitment to Islam.
About a Son: Kurt Cobain
in His Own Words
April 26, 2008
Emily presses me about how I can admire Kurt Cobain.. a guy who seemed to radiate negativity. I was asking myself that question as I watched Kurt Cobain: About a Son.. and I have no great answer. I can't say that the interviews, recorded on audio tape between December 1992 and March 1993, do a lot to get Cobain into focus. The topics stay close to the basic outline of Cobain's life.. and while Cobain gets plenty of time to rant about reporters or stupid people, we never really encounter a surprising illumination. At the end of the documentary we read that these interviews were done mostly late at night "between midnight and dawn".. implying perhaps that these were full of late night, guard-down insights. But I generally had the feeling that these were topics Cobain had been over many times. The evasions with respect to his drug use could be maddening and I knew from the Cobain biography by Charles Cross that many of his stories were questionable (such as the one about living under the bridge).
The filmmakers thus had an odd cultural artifact on their hands. They had the eerie voice of Kurt Cobain describing his life, but at times with suspect truthfulness and at all times with a certain flatness. They made the interesting choice of allowing the words to float in our ears, accompanied by beautiful images taken from the various places Cobain lived, principally Aberdeen, Olympia, and Seattle. The words themselves were broken up by snatches of music that meant something to Cobain, from Queen to punk to Leadbelly. The documentary thus adds rich specificity and detail to an audio interview that sorely lacks that. The bareness of Cobain's responses to the world contrast oddly with the images of diverse people going about their lives. If we were meant to think that Cobain's voice can give insight into all this stuff, and that this world would somehow look small in comparison with the truthfulness of Cobain's barbs and pain.. they were wrong. It is Cobain's barbs and pain.. even the mysterious stomach ailment.. that start to seem small in comparison to the ordinary life of this world.
The Wisdom Tradition
April 25, 2008
The perennial philosophy tends to get brought up in relation to mystical philosophies.. pushing people to understand that underneath the externals religious thinkers share a similar view of God and humanity. Our antipathy to this leveling of religious traditions goes way back here at Old Roads (see here). But today as I was getting ready for a lecture on wisdom literature it occurred to me that we seriously underestimate the ancient consensus about wisdom.
The wisdom tradition can in part be followed by looking for collections that are addressed from a father to son. The biblical book of Proverbs conforms to this pattern: "My child, if you accept my words..." (2.1). Likewise the under-read Wisdom of Ben Sirach urges: "My child, when you come to serve the Lord..." (2.1). When we turn to other ancient traditions we find this same pattern. The best later example of this may be the Mesopotamian Story of Ahiqar:
And he returned, and implored the Most High God, and believed, beseeching Him with a burning in his heart, saying, 'O Most High God, O Creator of the Heavens and of the earth, O Creator of all created things!
I beseech Thee to give me a boy, that I may be consoled by him, that he may be present at my death, that
he may close my eyes, and that he may bury me.'
Then there came to him a voice saying, 'Inasmuch as thou hast relied first of all on graven images, and hast
offered sacrifices to them, for this reason thou Shalt remain childless thy life long.
But take Nadan thy sister's son, and make him thy child and teach him thy learning and thy good breeding, and at thy death he shall bury thee.'
There follows a number of proverbs prefixed with "O my son." Here we see the same pattern, this time with an elaborately framed setup. The father finds a young child to instruct and teach.
These central wisdom texts can be thought of as elaborations on themes worked out a millennium previous in Egypt. The Maxims of Ptahhotep being the stately and complete model for these works, although we know this literary type goes back into the Old Kingdom. This pin-points the importance of ancient Egyptian literature. It is not a tradition with a Gilgamesh or an Odysseus, but one that gives us the earliest examples of wisdom texts. And these wisdom texts will be the basis for an international wisdom culture that dominated learned discourse for centuries.
The goal of these wisdom texts was not to adjudicate theology or national conflicts, but to propose rules for life in the most artful manner possible. It would not be hard to locate a small constellation of values and problems that these texts share.. among them a sense of deference to the social order and a confidence in the possibility of success. In essence, these wisdom texts can be understood as an early kind of perennial philosophy.. not a mysticism or even a religious position, really, but a widespread and interlocked faith in rational order.
This steady horse is now riderless.. as Yeats would say. It is a literary tradition that was displaced in the West by the high-profile genres of epic and drama and lyric. The current examples of wisdom literature, from etiquette books to the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, are sub-literary. One place this tradition survived for a long time is in the Arabic and Persian traditions. The Arabic notion of adab or correct behavior is a successor to these wisdom texts.. as are the multiple works that contain advice for princes.
It is difficult to stir up excitement for these jewels in the Arabic and Persian literary traditions.. and the reason for that is clear enough: these texts look back to an older system of genres, and therefore fall outside our modern taste for excitement and sublimity. To enjoy wisdom texts one must have an eye for detail and an ear for subtle modulation. Repetitions cannot be a source of boredom, but a cause for curiosity. Didacticism is not a banned word, but a natural result of life's inherent seriousness.
Ritual Spots in Time
April 23, 2008
Reading through the Psalms in Robert Alter's recent translation I am reminded how much I love this biblical material. I was particularly taken by Psalm 73, which begins with a complaint about the wickeds' well-being:
"For they are free of the fetters of death,
and their body is healthy.
Of the torment of man they have no part,
and they know not human afflictions."
Thus haughtiness is their necklace,
outrage, their garment, bedecks them.
Fat bulges round their eyes,
imaginings spill from their heart. [vs. 4-7]
In a book which begins with assurance that God watches over the way of the righteous and that the way of the wicked will perish, it is a problem to see an evil person prospering.
Thinking too much about a prospering evil person could give one a crisis of some sort.. and that seems to be where this singer is heading until we reach the turning point of the Psalm:
Till I came to the sanctuaries of God,
understood what would be their end. [vs. 17]
That verse encapsulates some kind of experience.. and it is hard not to ask: what happened to the singer in the sanctuaries of God? In the absence of specificity we should probably fill in all the ordinary things that took place: sacrifices, hymns, the priests going about their business, men and women supplicating God. In that mix something caught up our singer and made the world outside seem small and forgotten.
The singer then snaps back to the theme, but now he is able to see clearly what will happen to the wicked who are prospering:
How they come to ruin in a moment,
swept away, taken in terrors! [vs. 19]
In this new vision the world is set right.. even if "out there" this is not actually true yet, and the wicked continue piling up wealth.
It occurred to me that this Psalm presents a wonderful picture of what human beings get out of any cultural text. Here we need to switch over to what Clifford Geertz wrote about cockfights in Bali:
Like any art form—for that, finally, is what we are dealing with—the cockfight renders ordinary, everyday experience comprehensible by presenting it in terms of acts and objects which have had their practical consequences removed and been reduced... to the level of sheer appearances, where their meaning can be more powerfully articulated and more exactly perceived. [pg. 443]
It may seem strange to characterize cockfights as an art form, but Geertz explicitly compares them to the experience of King Lear or Crime and Punishment. That is to say, these are each cultural texts that bring about a higher level of comprehension in the one who experiences it. With a great text we feel within ourselves more than enjoyment.. rather something more akin to a deep understanding. In symbolic form the lines and distinctions of our lives rise up before our eyes.. and we feel a sense of peace as these essential values are represented. (I wonder if this is what Aristotle was getting with katharsis?)
The singer of Psalm 73 alludes to the experience of a cultural form: worship in the temple. We don't get an exact description of what was experienced, but we see the result. The singer has had his vision of life renewed along the lines of the ethical ideal. The righteous will be rewarded while the wicked will be punished. This renewal comes with a certain feeling as well..
In this Psalm's ethical crisis, renewal, and reaffirmation of the ethical ideal we see mapped out the human response to cultural texts. We may look to other sources to get the specifics of temple worship, but we could have no better insight into the way ritual forms reaffirmed the ethical ideal of ancient worshippers.
I Would Know How Fleeting I Am
April 21, 2008
It is comforting to think about the Psalms:
Let me know, O Lord, my end
and what is the measure of my days.
I would know how fleeting I am.
Look, mere handspans You made my days,
and my lot is as nothing before You.
Mere breath is each man standing.
In but shadow a man goes about.
Mere breath he murmurs—he stores
and knows not who will gather. [39.5-7]
These verses stand out more when you realize there is no afterlife lurking behind them. When the Psalmist speaks of life as a mere breath, there is no hidden parenthesis understood to add (then you wake up in heaven with eternal life). There is no next life. This is abundantly clear in a later Psalm:
Recall how fleeting I am,
how futile you made all humankind.
What man alive will never see death,
will save his life from the grip of Sheol? [89.48-9]
Life is fleeting and lifeless Sheol is the destination for all.. the place where there can be no praising of God.
One of life's great lessons is the folly of all hope for immortality.. of any kind. We search here and there for some way to keep our name and memory alive. In modern America children are raised watching celebrities and ball players and paying homage to great talent.. and it is hard not to let all that rub off on you. There is a lot that has to be broken down inside us if we are to judge life rightly. It is obscene to think in these categories of fame and accomplishment when in our lifetimes the world will come to hold nine billion people.
Our current political campaigns are interesting not least because the candidates must go through the process of attaching constituencies to themselves. The goal of a campaign is to make the candidate a channel for the largest possible block of people.. which means an equal measure of deferment and persuasion. For every step into the public current a candidate loses a bit of his or her individual self. The most successful politician will not be the one who maximizes individuality, but who bends that individuality to meet the broad concerns of the time.
Why this comment? It points to the way in which success is a dream.. and when it does come it is not the private self that is responsible.. but the willingness to align that self with a broader current. That is a dynamic that is true not only in politics, but in many areas of endeavor. Those are all ultimately traps.. all those paths to achievement.
These lines from the Psalms, with their reminder of life's brevity, are hardly impious or radical. As with everything in the Psalms, they are consonant with what we might call a religious life. But that is a religious life that is quite different than what we commonly imagine: aimed as we are from birth at various sorts of immortalities.
What would it look like to recognize how fleeting are our days? It would turn us away from standards of achievement and cause us to focus on doing what we love for its own sake. Writing, for example, would not be for any kind of greatness, but for personal enjoyment. What we love to do should not be about accomplishing, but about experiencing.. because soon we are gone.. and whether it be in ten years or ten thousand years, before long nothing about us will matter to anyone.
Musty Old Books on Egypt
April 18, 2008
One peculiar joy of working on ancient Egypt is the chance to dive into the large and generally musty books that hold the reproductions made during long past excavations. Beginning with the Description de l'Egypte compiled by the French expedition around 1800, the call has been to record what remains of Egypt by reproducing it in expensive books. These books can be weirdly persnickety when it comes to recording every detail of a structure. There seems to be an unspoken philosophy of history at work: the only thing that is truly lasting is a book.. so, somehow, all knowledge must be settled into that format. These ancient tombs resist, but if one tries hard enough—i.e. makes the book big enough—these walls and structures can be textualized.
These old books take a fair amount of time to read well. They represent space but they do so through a strange combination of prose description, maps, and pictorial plates. By taking the time with these books it is possible to begin to imagine how a tomb looked.. but this process of reading and imagining is counterintuitive for many people. Our contemporary options for representing space are so much wider.. and don't always involve turning a place into a book.
Note the following map of the burial of Ptahhetep:
The writing on the map is my own, left there as I figured out how the low-relief cut images were aligned on the walls of the burial chapel of Ptahhetep. Once I get the alignment I can go back and look at the reproductions of the images and imagine them in their mortuary chapel context.
This textual game of imagine-the-tomb should be much easier with the internet. All one has to do is make each wall on the map clickable.. and zoom the viewer to an image of the wall at each point. Wandering back and forth between map, text, and image could be eliminated as each of these elements would be combined in this version. The internet has a much greater ability (hardly tapped yet) than a book when it comes to allowing for intuitive exploration of space.
Many of these old books are out of copyright.. and it is fun to start imagining how easily all this information could be settled on the internet. But it has to be done right. Google Books has a copy of the tomb of Ptahhetep (link here). This is fine, but Google has a one-size-fits-all approach to books, and instead of making sure the images are top quality it is fed through the same Googlization process.
Last night I ran into a fascinating site that makes use of the line drawings from the same book.. although the quality of the reproductions is not great. This site is augmented by modern pictures of the same site.. and an updated version of the site map I reproduce above. This is a step in the right direction: the point should be to interweave text and photos and link to them from a map.
The challenge for scholarship on the internet is that it needs to be conceptualized as an instance of adaptation.. not simply as space for a data dump from which some scholar can print an article. Once this all clicks for people then we will begin to see beautiful virtual spaces to explore and savor. Egyptology, with its many examples of scholarly re-imagination in three dimmensional space, is a field that should be an inspiration to web design.
Logic of Ouroboros
April 16, 2008
Re-reading Erik Hornung's Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt I was reminded of how smart Egyptology can be. It is a pleasure to read when it is not narrowly focused on archeological data. Ancient Egyptian religion, as a well-attested and long-lived tradition predating Greek philosophy, is a uniquely effective springboard for talking about human responses to the world.
The picture above is of "the sun god as a child within the Ouroboros." Hornung uses this as an illustration of the way Egyptian gods are subject to the same forces of dissolution as human beings; they are in no wise outside time and matter:
They begin with time, are born and created, are subject to continuous change, age, die, and at the end of time sink back into the chaotic primal state of the world. [165]
That position for the gods is a long way from traditions like Christianity or Islam in which God sits outside and above time and whatever else.
This has implications for logic as well. Hornung points out that comprehending the Egyptian way of viewing the world is difficult because its theological beliefs are hard to reconcile with each other. This theology could be thought of as illogical.. an example of poor thinking.. but Hornung tries to set these contradictions within the frame of a more open system of logic. The one and the many in his schema are complementary: "god is a unity in worship and revelation, and multiple in nature and manifestation" (242).
Some view like this seems natural given the non-existence of any standpoint outside and above the Ouroboros that represents chaos and the primeval world. Without any such standpoint it would seem that the polytheistic frame of the Egyptians would yield something very much like post-structuralist thought.. which develops a way of thinking about philosophy within a world in which there are no transcendent points of view.
Hornung sounds like he is in dialogue with these same ideas as he writes in his conclusion:
All the evidence suggests that human society of the near future will be pluralistic and undogmatic—or it will not exist at all. In spheres of life it will have to allow for the multiplicity of possibilities, without excluding the one as an extreme case. [254]
This is from 1971.. and that "have to" might be modified today.. valiant attempts being made to beat back pluralism. Hornung's formulation has the advantage of allowing for the subjective dedication to "one" but the coexistence of many as a reality.
I count this polytheistic view of the world as being akin to the Old Roads philosophy since it "places in doubt 'eternal values' to which we aspire and wrenches our thinking away from its all too familiar paths" (255). That "wrenching" is exactly the benefit of studying an ancient religious system like that of Egypt. We get trapped into frames that are quite difficult to break out of.. and I just find it less helpful to read modern philosophy than to move backward and attempt to understand the complexities of a distant culture.
At the conclusion of Jan Assman's Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt he writes something similar about the value of studying a distant culture:
We cannot recross this threshold in the history of consciousness, but we can at least make ourselves aware of what we have left behind, if only not to fall into the error of thinking that our view of the world is in any way natural, self-evident, or even universal. It is not; quite the contrary, it is extreme, and it results from a series of distinctions and exclusions that began with the Exodus from Egypt. [407-8]
Just to see that there are other paths.. missed paths.. and that we did not have to wind up here. It is not deconstruction.. more an opening of the eyes to possibility.
The Pyramids as Environmental Art
April 14, 2008
This past week I have been thinking about the pyramids.. and their fundamental irony finally struck me. As the grave for the deceased king, the pyramids are symbols of participation in the regenerative cycle of the sun. One line of thought on the pyramid is that it represents the emergence of order after the chaos of the inundation.. and it was thus an image of new life for the dead king. As a solar emblem (shape taken from sacred ben-ben stone in temple of Re) it also advertised its place in the cycle of rebirth.
Meanwhile the form of the pyramid is all about permanence in the landscape. The medieval Arabic poet al-Mutannabi wrote a catchy couplet about how the pyramids will outlast time itself. Right there is the irony: these are structures that were meant to last an eternity.. even as they represent a philosophy of regenerative impermanence.
But now that I am thinking more about it, maybe it is the impermanence of regeneration that requires the "house" of regeneration to be as long-lasting as possible. A philosophy that saw resurrection as a one time and permanent event would have an easier time constructing an impermanent home for the body. The rate of rebirth and the durability of the structure would thus be inversely related.. and a philosophy that one might think would lead to respect for impermanence actually brings about the great examples of architectural permanence.
The pyramid deserve some credit as environmental art since it relied on natural imagery and an acceptance of daily cycles of renewal. If we stripped away the need to preserve the corpse forever, then the expression of these ancient Egyptian ideas would likely look more like environmental art. Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson has a lot in common with the pyramids, at least in philosophy. A website connected to Smithson has the following to say about his philosophy of art:
Entropy, was a theme that consistently ran throughout Smithson's art and writings. He explored his ideas involving decay and renewal, chaos and order with what came to be known as his Nonsites and Earthworks.
That could also serve as a summary of ancient Egyptian conceptions of order and chaos. I wonder if ancient Egyptian art could ever be claimed by environmental artists?
A 36-Hour Trip to Someplace or Other
April 13, 2008
On Sundays I pass my eyes over the featured travel destination in the New York Times. I have gone from being slightly jealous of people who have the opportunity to just whisk off for a 36 hour trip to some distant city to being alarmed at the very idea of these trips.
First, my principle: this quick international tourism is a bad idea for the environment. We are likely heading toward a time in which it will become increasingly difficult, and clearly irresponsible, to jet around the world.. especially for a weekend. There will not be energy resources to allow for this kind of pleasure travel on a wide scale, and so the cost will be prohibitive for everyone but the extremely wealthy.
Second, the sad reality: these 36 hour trips described in the New York Times travel section are wastes of time. The only real value of travel is the startle of experiencing another way of thinking and perceiving. The closer I read the itineraries on these jaunts, the better I understand that there is no such exchange going on. This struck me a few weeks back when the 36 hour trip was to Pasadena and I could not see the city I once knew in the recommended sites. Today's visit to Chiang Mai, Thailand is another example.
Listen to some of the recommendations:
Age-old curries are now paired with Australian red wines and croissants. The area around Nimanhaemin Road now looks like South Beach, packed with BMWs and Art Deco homes, alongside contemporary art galleries run by young Thais with purple hair and nose rings. But traditional Chiang Mai is still there. Walk away from Nimanhaemin into the old city and you’ll see shaved monks meditating and backpackers chowing down on banana pancakes.
In this prose Chiang Mai becomes an image of the global city. Local products (curries) are paired with global products (wine and croissants); local people (monks meditating) are paired with global people (backpackers). This appears to be precisely what travelers want: themselves with a few extra spices thrown in. Emerson's line that no matter where we go we find ourselves appears to be truer than ever.
The first item to be experienced in Chiang Mai is the Old Kingdom:
Start a long walk at Wat Chiang Man, the city’s oldest temple, built in the late 13th century, and then wander southwest, to Wat Chedi Luang, which houses a giant, partly damaged traditional Lanna-style stupa. Get your exercise by continuing on for about a mile, southeast, just past the old city walls, where you can stop for a break at a branch of Wawee Coffee, a local chain serving northern Thai joe.
This is a fantastic example of how the foreign is translated into our own generic experience range. We like to start off our day with a nice invigorating walk, so why not transfer that wonderful start to your day to the Old Kingdom in Chiang Mai? There is no experience of the old city on its own terms, but solely as a backdrop for what we like to do normally. And waiting for us at the end of the walk is a coffee shop.
Finally, where should one stay in Chiang Mai? The article begins with this recommendation:
The Mandarin Oriental Dhara Dhevi (51/4 Chiang Mai-Sankampaeng Road; 66-53-888-888, www.mandarinoriental.com/chiangmai) is a striking resort on 60 acres with villas that resemble ancient Thai villages. Rooms start at 10,899 baht and go up to 280,000 baht for the Royal Residence, which has three private pools and six bedrooms.
This places the economic level of those who are able to afford this kind of 36 hour luxury change-of-scene-for-what-I-do-everyday trip. Note how the resort has villas "that resemble ancient Thai villages"? This packaging of what is foreign into hotels and villas that "resemble" something local comes up quite a bit in travel guides. Something of the spirit of Las Vegas infuses wealthy hangouts everywhere.
Teaching the City
April 11, 2008
My posts have been non-existent over the past few days because I have been stressing and preparing for the Teaching the City faculty workshop, funded by ACM (Associated Colleges of the Midwest). Tonight was the opening dinner and we heard from our keynote speaker Darren Kelly, a cultural geographer from Dublin, Ireland and now the Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Beloit College. The leading idea for this workshop is to bring together faculty from various disciplines who are interested in teaching the city.. and to let them talk to each other about what works and what doesn't. Speaking for myself I know I am curious what other people have tried and what they find helpful. Since people who would teach on the topic of the city are often found tucked away in their own disciplines, there is not always a chance to discuss the questions about how to teach the city. Tonight listening to Darren and then to the questions that came afterwards I was again struck by how much in common we all have.. even though the cities that interest us may be far apart culturally.
Let's Get It On, Marvin Gaye
April 7, 2008
Marvin Gaye was an artist with a knack for putting his material together in ways that contributed to a larger structure. This is especially evident in his concept albums What's Going On and Let's Get It On.. but Live at the London Palladium (1977) is a similarly interesting album with its introduction of his popular 60s songs in medley form so that they acquire the seamless transitions of his early 70s work. Archetypal singles such as "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" or "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" get re-conceptualized into a fluidly moving whole.
On Live at the London Palladium the song "Let's Get It On" gets lengthened and made into a kind of sexy stage drama. Toward the end Gaye slows down and turns the volume down and acts as if he is getting ready to sweet talk some woman into bed. The crowd goes wild.. but it is an act.. and finally he snaps out of it and yells: "That's all!" You can hear him use almost exactly the same lines and act in the YouTube clip below, taken from a concert about four years later.. so this is obviously a well-honed stage act.
There is nothing surprising about deriving sex from "Let's Get It On".. which proclaims:
There's nothing wrong with me
Loving you, now
Giving yourself to me
Can never be wrong
If (your) love is true
The song is about cutting to the chase and telling some woman how he feels. In lines like these we notice a subtle polemic being employed: sex is good in and of itself if love is involved. The target of this submerged argument would seem to be religious constructions of relationships and sex that rely on rules (remember his conservative upbringing).
The version of the song on Live at the London Palladium adds more religious overtones. Gaye adds some phrases that go so far as to equate sex with spirituality. He sings: "If the spirit moves ya, let me groove ya".. and then "I've been sanctified." These phrases go beyond a defensive approach to sex, but represent a positive view that equates "sanctification" (the work of the Holy Spirit after conversion according to many) with sex.
Gaye repeats again his contention "nothing wrong with love!".. but in this live version the added phrases and the theatrical come-on at the end have transformed the song into not just a song about pursuit of a woman, but a theological statement about the positive value of sexual experience.
Sailing in the Sea of Ma'at
April 4, 2008
The "Tale of the Eloquent Peasant" consists of a series of complaints on the part of a peasant to the Chief Steward Rensi concerning the robbery of his goods by an official. The peasant is allowed to expand on the theme of Ma'at.. which can be translated as "wisdom" or "the right way of doing things." As I was reading these poetic complaints I began to wonder if Ma'at was not a great concept for ordering my own life.
Ma'at speaks of measure and moderation. There should be nothing extreme about the actions of a person following Ma'at:
Do not be ponderous, but do not be frivolous;
Do not be tardy, but do not hurry;
Do not be partial, and do not give in to a whim;
Do not cover your face against one whom you know;
Do not blind your sight against one whom you have seen... [43]
This sense of living "in the middle" calls to mind Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics, with its endorsement of the golden mean. Moderation also plays a key role in Proverbs and biblical wisdom literature, so this aspect of Ma'at connects to a long-lasting wisdom tradition that is eminently livable. There are no ethical acrobatics of leaving behind everything to follow a lord.
Many of the complaints of the eloquent peasant center on injustice:
If law is subverted and integrity destroyed,
There is no poor man who will be able to live,
For he will be cheated, and Ma'at will not support him. [40]
Ma'at cannot be interpreted as some private good. The peasant is dependent upon the Ma'at of those who are in power. If those above him fail at Ma'at then his own virtue will count for little. I find this public face of Egyptian wisdom literature off-putting. I prefer a form of virtue such as that of the Stoics which allows for happiness to be maintained no matter what everyone else does. But Ma'at does not go there. Virtue only works, it would seem, in a virtuous system.. which may be a more realistic way of looking at the issue.
My favorite description of Ma'at is the following extended boat metaphor:
If you descend to the Lake of Ma'at,
You will sail thereon in the breeze.
The fabric of your sail will not be torn,
Nor will your boat be driven ashore.
There will be no damage to your mast,
Nor will your yards be broken.
You will not founder when you come to land,
Nor will the waves bear you away. [29]
I find it strangely calming to think about descending into the Lake of Ma'at. It is a calm Lake that allows for smoothed experience and ease of landing.. no breakage to the mast or yards. This is not exactly the fiery vision of a prophet, but it is a prescription for inner peace and a way of life that is actually possible for a human being.
The Panic of Sinuhe
April 2, 2008
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge turns on an oddly unmotivated act. The mariner relates how "...With my cross-bow/ I shot the albatross." There is no psychologizing of the action or attempt to make sense of it. It is a simple act narrated simply.. and because of that it becomes a mysterious and unfathomable.
The ancient Egyptian "Tale of Sinuhe" (ca. 1900 BC) has a similar moment when Sinuhe narrates his panic at the report of the death of the king:
My senses were disturbed, my arms spread out, and trembling came over every part (of me). I took myself off by bounds (?) to find for myself a place of concealment. I placed myself between two shrubs... I went south. [56]
This panicked flight sets up the story.. which includes a description of his time in "Upper Retenu" (some part of the Levant) and his subsequent return to Egypt. But for an event that has such importance, the flight is poorly explained. When Sinuhe is given a chance within the narrative to explain his actions he says: "I do not know what brought me to this land. It was like the plan of a God." At several points in the tale he uses constructions like this that make him an innocent led on by a force beyond his comprehension.
There are a couple of possible reasons to explain this mystery of the flight. The simplest answer would be a reticence to talk about a terrible event—the death of a king and the possibility of suspicion toward Sinuhe. But if the author was trying to avoid this topic, he does a poor job of it since Sinuhe has to explain over and over how he fled for unknown reasons. A more complicated answer would be that there is some level of discomfort with Sinuhe operating as a fully volitional person. The gods and the king are full actors, but Sinuhe is a person who is acted upon.. someone with a passive will.
This passivity is manifest in a more positive light when Sinuhe returns to Egypt and has an audience with the king:
I lost consciousness in his presence. This God addressed me in a friendly way, and I was like a man caught by nightfall. My soul fled and my body shook. My heart was not in my body: I could not tell life from death. [64]
Evidently this is how one was supposed to feel when brought into the presence of the king (who was a God). It is an event that brings about a loss of rationality.. although in this case it only leaves him prostrated helplessly before the king and he does not flee Egypt.
I am curious if these details about the inner life of Sinuhe can be generalized out to arrive at a folk psychology of ancient Egypt. A culture that imagines the makeup of human beings so differently, dividing human beings into body, heart, shadow, ba, the ka, and the name, must be experience the world in a vastly different way.
