Happy New Year [by Jennifer Michael Hecht]

 Dear Bleaders, It’s the end of a tricky frikkin’ year, my friends, and a heck of a decade. If I were in charge I’d make an annual Cower in the Corner Day, where everyone just brings a blanky to the corner of a room and hunkers down for a nice twitch. How did Schopenhauer put it? "Many millions, united into nations strive for the common good, each individual for his own sake; but many thousands fall sacrifice to it. Now senseless delusion, now intriguing politics, incite them to wars with one another; then the sweat and blood of the great multitudes must flow[...]. In peace industry and trade are active, inventions work miracles, seas are navigated, delicacies are collected from all the ends of the earth, the waves engulf thousands. All push and drive, some plotting and planning, others acting; the tumult is indescribable. But what is the ultimate aim of it all? To sustain ephemeral and harassed individuals through a short span of time, in the most fortunate case with endurable want and comparative painlessness (though boredom is on the lookout for this), and then the propagation of this race and of its activities. With this evident want of proportion between the effort and the reward, the will-to-live, taken objectively, appears to us from this point of view as a folly, or taken subjectively, as a delusion. Seized by this, every living thing works with the utmost exertion of its strength for something that has no value." (WWR II, 357) Oh and: "The futility and fruitlessness of the struggle of the whole phenomenon are more readily grasped in the…life of animals. The variety and multiplicity of their structural organization, the ingenuity of the means by which each is adapted to its element and to its prey, here contrasts clearly with the absence of any lasting final aim. Instead of this we see only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle, bellum omnium, everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on in saecula saeculorum, or until once again the crust of the planet breaks." (WWR II, 354) Why do I love these so much? Well, I love the rhythem, how excited they get about the staggering pointless misery of it all. Where German often hacks out sentences in sheetrock, the Schope is skipping stones. Love this: “delicacies are collected from all the ends of the earth, the waves engulf thousands.” A hundred years ago ships still went down regularly and you would read long lists of names lost in the evening papers; surely it is to this that the Schope refers, but we who watched a real freaking Tsunami on television several late-Decembers ago have our own reasons to shudder at the phrase. Could I love the parenthetical remark on boredom any more than I do? No, I could not. And then after all those galloping horse feet the delightfully airy words float in for the finish: folly, delusion, no value. The answer to these delicious, noisy attacks is to follow them scrupulously in a similar list of what I call in my book Doubt: A History, “the equal cacophony of birth, joy, and satisfaction.” A translation to optimism. Though it only now occurs to me to fashion a version: So let's see, he’s saying that you’d think such a complicated fancy thing like human and animal life would have some meaning, and then breaks it to us (I hear requote the above): 

“Instead of [meaning] we see only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle, bellum omnium, everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on in saecula saeculorum, or until once again the crust of the planet breaks.” Now, translated to reasonable joy:

Instead of [meaning] we see at least momentary gratification, and thanks to our almost constant needs we are graced with moments of pleasure and satisfaction, we live and continue onward through much and long suffering, which we all suffer together, though separately, and the cold usually find a warm place to go inside; the lonely sometimes notice that they are not lonely; fueled by anxiety we have flashes of the bliss of creating; also, we hold each other. Sometimes we join in the shrieking and howling, sometimes we wait it out; it goes on and on and on and on though someday it will stop, and it is ours right now and everyone’s always, always, always. Alright my doves, you know I loves you. Last night I heard my three year old singing in the bathtub, “All the single ladies, all the single ladies.” Be safe on New Years and I’ll see you on the other side of 2010. Here goes the twenty-teens. Love, Jennifer

PS Above picture is from an exhibit at the Jewish Museum -- they've asked some writers, including me and to name one other Francine Prose, to comment on some art all of which inspired by Genesis, you know, In the beginning. Kind of a tough assignment. xoxo

 

Go Stand in That Patch of Light.

Comments

[DL]

Like you I love Schopenhauer & am strangely elated by his dark views, whioh are usually considered pessimistic. Wonderful post! Genesis is my favorite book; you'll have a blast with that assignment, I feel sure. Are you in town?

[Stacey]

And love to you Jennifer, for this and lots more. Happy New Year to you and yours.
Stacey