Inconsistent information

The logic exam in Bari didn't go too badly after all... which made me think that logic in itself is a bit like walking: not so natural for our species, but doable and doable rather well, if the right circumstances arise.

Even the best of us seem to be prone to lapses. Take Yourcenar's famous Oeuvre au Noir (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). Within thirty pages or so one of the characters, Dolet, dies twice, and of different deaths, if I'm not mistaken.
On p. 151 we read (apologies for the missing accents): "Dolet ... mon libraire ... il n'ent pas l'occasion d'essayer de ma dragee, s'etant fait depecher a Venise dans une ruelle obscure par le meme spadassin qui l'avait manque en France. "
But on p. 185: "Depuis qu' Etienne Dolet, san premier libraire, avait ete etrangle et gete au feu pour opinions subversives, Zenon n'avait plus publie en France."

Tzt... tzt... tzt... it looks like Mdme Yourcenar will not pass the logic test either.
Yes, the test in Bari did not go so badly at all.

Buzzati: Waiting for some news

To some, paradise, should there be one, is the ultimate library (recall the library scenes from Wim Wenders's Der Himmel ueber Berlin?). Perennially at the end of a never-ending afternoon, when honey light, warm and thick, percolates through its windows, the lamps already on but still almost unnecessary, the scent of books, leather and wood, a fireplace, angelic librarians silently walking among the shelves...

In this library, there are millions of texts, and each of them is worth reading. There is no hurry, no shortage of copies, no lack of comfortable space, no noise nor vandalism. We read and re-read them, we sail across this sea with favorable, gentle winds, following footnotes and curious associations, exploring islands, joining paths unsuspected, diving in corners unexplored. And then, meeting occasionally but purposefully, drinking and eating and listening, we converse (not talk, not chat), lightly but not frivolously, about them with other readers, enthralled by semantics.

One of these books is Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe (1940) which I've been re-reading recently, with the excuse of the centenary of his author's birthday.

I won't tell you the plot, but just two brief comments.

One slightly personal. I had alreadyy heard from my father that you know you are no longer young when you start walking upstairs one step at a time. It's not just the muscles, I would add, but the spiritual spring that has changed. I know people in their twenties who would not dream of skipping a step. Not being there yet, when I read the two-steps at a time test in the book I was not impressed. What surprised me, however, was my natural re-identification, no longer with the young officer, Giovanni Drogo, but with the older captain Ortiz, whom Drogo meets on his way up to the fortress. Ortiz is coming down. When a student, it was easy to have my gaze towards the mountain while reading the book. I discovered it seems now more natural to look at the valley. Touche. And by my own sword.

The other comment has got to do with the topic of this blog.

At the Fortress Bastiani, officers are constantly waiting for some news, indeed any news, of the enemy, who fails to materialise. They lead an empty and meaningless present life, hoping that the future will bring battles and glory. It is a great metaphor, half way between Waiting for Godot and The Castle.

In this suspended state of expectation, Drogo is incapable of understanding that no information is information. And in his stubborn inability to "inhabit" his present, to enjoy life "now" instead of mentally projecting his life into a future that is not coming, he commits a typical gambler's fallacy. He redoubles the post at stake at every bad run, to win and win back al that has been lost before. He bets his life hoping that some future information will pay him back, retrospectively and with plenty of interests, for all his then-no-longer-wasted years in the fortress.

The risky strategyy might work if life were an endless resource. Sooner or later ("endless" being quite a long stretch of time) the investment would become reasonable. Drogo and his fellow officers would be rewarded for their patience and endurance. In reality, we regularly run out of time.

So the lesson is simple: it is the present that should give meaning to the future, not viceversa. Past information should have priority on future expectations. It is a lesson most difficult to learn. We are hopeful animals. Yet running upstairs two-steps at a time is possible only if your feet safely push you up propelled by solid past memories, not pulled by doubtful dreams.

Cocteau and his missed bit of information

I just realised it has been many weeks since I last wrote an entry... too much traveling since I came back from Chicago (UK - Italy - Sweden - Italy - Spain - Spain again - Italy - UK - Italy), too much work. The usual life of a godless monk.

I recently read in Cocteau's The difficulty of Being (La difficulte d'etre) that he most admired two heroines: Antigone and Joan of Arc. I can only sympathize, but Cocteau does not expand on this, so one is left wondering why such an interesting choice. These are two extraordinary embodiments of the Normative. Antigone and Joan of Arc are, in different contexts, but to the same degree, the implementation of the ultimate pereat mundus. It is as if Cocteau were saying that he was fascinated by the goddess of Duty. And yet... , and yet...

When Cocteau revisited Greek mythology with his surrealist taste, he opted for Orpheus (The Orphic Trilogy is a collection of three films in Jean Cocteau's œuvre: Blood of a Poet, Orphee, and Testament of Orpheus). Orpheus (Orphee, 1949) looses Eurydice because he cannot resist the temptation of getting that extra bit of information. He has to look back. It seems that he admired Duty, but felt more at home with Curiosity, by which he was more deeply attracted.

How often have we felt screaming at him... After all he had done... Idiot... Damn idiot... You were almost out. You had tricked Death. Why trying to get now what you could have enjoyed for the rest of your life? Why could you not wait just a little longer? Orpheus needs to see Eurydice then (their indexical nunc) because only then he and she are there (Orpheus' indexical hinc), on the very threshold between life and death; she is his and yet still among the dead, while he is not. The opportunity is unique, the potential experience too tempting, the risk appears negligible. It is a bit of information nobody else could provide, that could be obtained at no other time, in no other place. Then or never. Time (look now) vs. space (look there, look back): surely time is stronger and must prevail?

Orpheus miscalculates, bad player in a strange prisoner's dilemma a trois. For that bit of information he is ready to risk and indeed loose all, so unreasonably, so selfishly.

Antigone and Joan of Arc would have abided. They would have won the game with Death, this round. But Orpheus and Cocteau cannot play by the rule. They cannot do what must be done to the very last step. Orpheus has been warned and yet he looks. Like Adam, who bytes, Cocteau's Orpheus glances at Eurydice in the rear-view mirror of a car and Death claims her back. The price is the ultimate loss of that which one already had but did not know to have. Some information can be very expensive indeed.

I closed the book with the impression that Cocteau admired his heroines of Duty, but that he also betrayed them with his life and work; not unlike Orpheus, who betrays Eurydice's trust, despite his great love for her, Cocteau wanted to see.