Balzac's "Unknown Masterpiece"

(Credit: couscouschocolat)

Our selection this month is "The Unknown Masterpiece," by Honoré de Balzac. Seen at right is Auguste Rodin's sculpture of Rodin, of which British art historian Kenneth Clark had this to say: "His Balzac is to my mind, the greatest piece of sculpture since Michaelangelo. Balzac's body has the timelessness of a druidical stone and his head has the voracity of an owl.  The real reason why he made people so angry is their feeling that he could gobble them up and he doesn't care a damn for their opinions." (quoted in "Gates of Hell, Rodin's passion in Stone," by Arline Boucher Tehan).

Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King"

1891 portrait of Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) by John Collier (1850-1934)

Rudyard Kipling's story, "The Man Who Would Be King," discussed at our meeting last Monday, the 22nd, has more than first meets the eye.  It tells of a journey of two ex-patriot Englishmen in British India, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan, to Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. Once there, Dravot and Carnehan are bent on making themselves kings.

They accomplish their goal through "luck and pluck."  Dravot picks up native tongues readily.  He breaks the neck of a man who attempts to rob them.  They organize the locals into militias, encourage the building of bridges to knit diverse clans together, and engage in political machinations Machiavelli would have admired.

When they discover elements of freemasonry in the beliefs and rituals of the locals, they exploit it to consolidate their power.  Dravot concedes that luck also plays a part, when a symbol on Dravot's apron turns out to be identical to the one on the underside of the square stone he had selected as his "Master's chair."  After that ceremony they are considered semi-divine.

Later in the story, Dravot's decision to take a wife becomes the pair's undoing.  Carnehan says,

I wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine secrets of a Master-Mason at the first go-off; but I said nothing. All that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple half-way down the hill, and I heard a girl crying fit to die. One of the priests told us that she was being prepared to marry the King.

In the wedding ceremony, Dravot attempts to kiss his bride and gets bitten instead.  When blood is drawn, the Kafiristan people in attendance know the Englishmen are mortal.  Their cover is blown.  That's why Carnehan says later that in hindsight he wishes they had "explained about the loss of the genuine secrets" at the first "go-off."

Before the wedding, Carnehan also says "I saw the priests talking together in whispers, and the Chiefs talking together too, and they looked at me out of the corners of their eyes."  By using the terms "whispers" and "corners of their eyes," Kipling gives the reader the clear implication that Dravot and Carnehan are being set up.

Tolstoy's Second Epilogue to War and Peace

"Portrait of Tolstoy," by Nikolai Ge (1831-1894)

On last Monday evening, twenty-seven of us met to discuss the Second Epilogue to Tolstoy's War and Peace.  Several pointed out that Tolstoy employs metaphors to get across his points about the (a) role of power in history, and (b) age-old philosophical debate on free will vs. "necessity."

I was grateful to members who noticed Tolstoy's artistry, and went back to the text to compile some examples:

"Amid a long series of un-executed orders of Napoleon's, one series, for the campaign of 1812, was carried out -- not because those orders differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because they coincided with the course of events that led the French army into Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes out not because the color was laid on from this side or in that way, but because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in the stencil." I add the emphasis.  In other words, a whole series of forces and events led to the French invasion.

"Men are hauling a log.  Each of them expresses his opinion as to how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens that this is done as one of them said.  He ordered it.  There we have command and power in their primary form.  The man who worked most with his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, or reflect on or command what would result from the common activity; while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with his hands on account of his greater verbal ability."  In other words, a leader is someone too busy talking to do the work.

"These justifications [i.e., of killing in the name of national glory or some other ideal] release those who produce the events from moral responsibility.  These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they clear men's moral responsibilities from their path." In other words, Napoleon was able to cite lofty goals to rationalize the invasion of Russia.

Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale

"Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims," by William Blake (1810)

"Pardoners sell forgiveness, which is best.  Yet the tale tricks every reader into the momentary sin of failing to pardon...."
--Donald R. Howard (The Canterbury Tales: A Selection, Signet Books, 1969)

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Portrait of Shelley by Amelia Curran (1819)

Our author this month was a lyric poet known for works such as "Ode to the West Wind," "Ozymandias," and "Prometheus Unbound."  The featured selection is a work of prose entitled "A Defence of Poetry."  A response to fellow poet Thomas Love Peacock's "The Four Ages of Poetry," "A Defence of Poetry" was originally planned to have three parts but was never completed. Shelley's tragic and untimely death occurred when a violent storm picked up in the Gulf of Spezia and capsized the boat he was sailing in with a friend. 

"Funeral of Shelley" by Louis Edouard Fournier

Tonight's Meeting Cancelled

Tonight's Discussion on Chaucer's "Pardoner's Tale" has been cancelled because of the snowstorm.  Because the library's publicity is done on a two-month cycle that coincides with the newsletter, I am not able to re-schedule the Chaucer discussion until springtime.  Our next meeting will be on Monday, February 23rd and the reading will be David Hume's "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" from Great Conversations 3.

At that meeting we will have our 10th Anniversary Celebration originally scheduled for this evening.

Stay comfy, cozy, warm, and safe at home.  May I suggest you take a break from 24-7 weather updates and give your soul the sustenance great literature and philosophy affords!

Gordimer's "Which New Era Would That Be" (1956)

Nadine Gordimer (1923-2014)

Our last meeting of 2014 took place on November 24th.  The short story under consideration was "Which New Era Would That Be," by South African writer and 1991 Nobel literature laureate Nadine Gordimer.  "Which New Era Would That Be" is a vignette of a visit made under the apartheid regime by two white liberals, Alister Halford and Jennifer Tetzel, to the Johannesburg printing shop of Jake Alexander, who is of a mixed-race background. 

In the story, Maxie Ndube, a black trade unionist, relates two stories of his personal experience with the color barrier. The first is a visit with a white labor lawyer to an employer of workers he represents. Maxie describes being offered lunch at the man's home. As they are about to sit down in the dining room, Maxie is told that his lunch has been placed on a table on a veranda outdoors and he must eat separately.

The other story is of Maxie's dealings with a certain firm. He has several phone conversations with a white secretary there named Peggy that become increasingly flirtatious.  When he arrives at the offices and Peggy sees that Maxie is a black man, she tries not to look surprised but seems “terrified” that someone from the inner office might see her shaking hands with a black man.  Jennifer's response to the story is "Poor little girl, she probably liked you awfully, Maxie, and was really disappointed. You mustn't be too harsh on her.  It's hard to be punished for not being black."  It seems that Gordimer here implies that Jennifer is making a play for Maxie's affections or at least demonstrating to a roomful of men how "liberated" she is both sexually and politically.

Shortly afterwards, Alister and Jennifer make an exit from the shop, and Jennifer says to Maxie, "I feel I must tell you, about that other story -- your first one, about the lunch, I don't believe it. I'm sorry, but honestly I don't. It's too illogical to hold water."

Gordimer writes, "It was her final self-immolation by honest understanding. There was absolutely no limit to which that understanding would not go. Even if she could not believe Maxie, she must keep her determined good faith with him by confessing her disbelief. She would go to the length of calling him a liar to show by frankness how much she respected him -- to insinuate, perhaps, that she was with him, even in the need to invent something about a white man that she, because she herself was white, could not believe. It was her last bid for Maxie".

In other words, Jennifer must state that Maxie's story seems to be fabricated for a political agenda, but that she feels Maxie's pain to the extent that she even understands his need to embellish the truth. It is an acknowledgement on Jennifer's part that although there exists a deep racial divide in their country, she is in solidarity with the cause of political advancement for nonwhites.  She wants to bond personally with Maxie by calling him out on the story, yet by doing so commits “self-immolation.” (By the way, we the readers have no way of knowing whether Maxie’s story is true or not.)

Gordimer ends her description of their exchange by writing, "The small perfectly made man crossed his arms and smiled, watching her go. Maxie had no price." 

He will not allow Jennifer to heroize him in this fashion, and the two will, at best, be separate but equal political partners.