Morning Read: Virtue
¶ The Réflexions Morales of François de la Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac (1613-1680), begins by striking what I expect will be the characteristic deflationary note:
Ce que nous prenons pour des vertus n’est souvent qu’un assemblage de diverses actions et de diverses intérêts, que la fortune ou notre industrie savent arranger; et ce n’est pas toujours par valeur et par chasteté que les hommes sont vaillants, et que les femmes sont chastes.
What we take to be virtue is often nothing more than an mass of diverse acts and interests arranged by fortune or our shrewdness; and it is not always by valor and chastity that men are valiant and women are chaste.
This has a cynical, post-modern ring. If bravery and modesty are in fact accidental appearances, ought anybody to try to be brave or modest?
¶ A bit of Chesterfield’s wit: Since no one who had the misfortune to know the King of Prussia could believe that his character was fore-ordained by Providence, his son (the future Frederick the Great) need not swear never to believe in Predestination. I like this, but it does not roll off the tongue, so to speak. Chesterfield wastes no wit on the French Ambassador Fénélon, but simply calls him “the silliest Minister in Europe.” The following letter, to Jonathan Swift, smoothly declines to grant a favor to a mutual friend.
I confess, his prospect is more remote than I could have wished it; but as it is so remote, he will not have the uneasiness of a disappointment, if he gets nothing; and if he gets something we shall both be pleased.
¶ In Moby-Dick, Ishmael and Queequeg attract a lot of attention (which they pretend to ignore) simply by forming a companionate couple. The fraternization of a European with “a whitewashed negro” seems to disturb everybody. On the packet-boat to Nantucket, Queequeg assaults a man who has been making fun of him, but then saves the man from drowning when he is knocked overboard by the boom.
From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive.
Foretelling!
¶ In Don Quixote, our hero explains his calling to a doubtful traveler, Don Vivaldo, who keeps feeding him questions because Don Quixote is so “entertaining.”
All the others had been listening with great attention to their conversation, and even the goatherds and shepherds realized that Don Quixote was not in his right mind. Only Sancho Panza, knowing who he was and having known him since he was born, thought that everything his master said was true, but he did have some doubts concerning the beauteous Dulcinea of Toboso, because he had never heard of that name or that princess, even though he lived so close to Toboso.
¶ Today’s bit of Squillions takes us through the entirety of 1927, “not destined to be an annus mirabilis for Noël.” Having resolved to take life at a more leisurely pace, Coward rushes back to England after a month on Oahu, and in no time is visiting Vienna, Budapest, Annecy, the Côte d’Azur, and the West End — where he realizes that he really must put more work into (take more time with) his plays.
¶ A N Wilson’s chapter on the Peace is dense but rewarding. “The tragic flaw in the dream was the failure to distinguish between nations and ethnicity.” Indeed. By 1919, the diverse citizens of France had been pounded into the semblance of ethnic unity; it was a sham, but everyone was committed to believing in it. The was hardly true throughout Central Europe, where Teutonophones were the leading people in almost every city. Also by 1919, the Turks had kicked off the Twentieth Century’s infatuation with ethnic cleansing by exterminating the Armenians. The chapter ends with the bleak if beautiful hopelessness of Eliot’s Prufrock.