H C WALLACE
This Month: Combray by Marcel Proust
From: Remembrance of Things Past (Volume One)
Cambray
Published 1913. Combray is a fictitious setting in a town in northern France where the author stages his family members, close friends and neighbors. In his honor in later years the French changed the name of this town to Cambray. The story traces his life from childhood to early adulthood. Marcel is ill with asthma and the illness brings him closer to his Aunt, his Mother and the house servant Francoise.
Combray is a memoirist composition which is semi-autobiographical. The author has experienced involuntary memory without conscious effort which reveals significant or endearing events from his late childhood. Any significant event, person or place can trigger an involuntary memory. These events evolve into an acute awareness in the present tense. The involuntary memories are an extreme 'in the moment' realization of past events. To be in and experience mentally in the moment is a rare function. Marcel also reminiscences in voluntary mode on his past.
In the first paragraph of the story he relates an involuntary un-conscious event. 'I feel to be able to cross the Rue Saint Hilaire again, to engage a room in he Rue del'Oiseau, in the old hostelry of the Oiseau Flesche' from whose basement windows used to rise a smell of cooking which rises still in my mind, now and then, in the same warm and intermittent gusts, would be secure a contact with the Beyond more marvelously supernatural than it would be to make Golo's acquaintance and to chat with Genevieval 'de Brabant.' In that paragraph he set a stage to place his characters. Another event, illustrated in the Overture and possibly the more famous of his involuntary events, the madeleines. 'Petetlites madeleines (small cakes)....and soon I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. As detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And of once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innoctous, its brevity illusory.....having had on me the effect which love has of filling me.....Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it?
Marcel is given to richly composed descriptions of his room and the articles in his home. For example: 'The dying of the stems had twisted them into a fantastic trellis, in the inter-lacings of which the pale flowers had opened, as though a painter had arranged them there grouping them in the most decorative poses. The leaves having lost or altered their original appearance resembled the most disparate things, the transparent wing of a fly, the blank side of a label, the pedal of a rose, which had all been piled together, rounded or interwoven like the materials of a nest'. The story is full of these descriptions of every day articles and incidentally various characters, The reader is not faulted if they feel that they are rowing a boat through molasses as they struggle through these verbose currents. The reader may not be faulted if they take this style as self indulgent prose. Other readers may be delighted, engrossed, with these intense descriptions. Though this prose is the work of a person who has a keen eye for detail. He is exploring every facet of the articles in his surroundings and it is as though he is storing these images in his mind much akin to snapping photographs. He is fully aware and in the moment with every character or object that he comes in contact with. He is close and studious of any character that crosses his path and sensitive to their foibles, likes and dislikes. He is able to push every trivial thought aside and get to the core of another person. A family friend, M. Legrandin, has noticed this talent in Marcel. 'Always try to keep a patch of open sky above your life, little boy. You have a soul in you of rare quality, an artist's nature; never let it starve for lack of what it needs.' No, Marcel would never let it starve for his palette was not for the canvas or the brush, but the canvas was his mind and the brush was the written word; his descriptions of the people and objects in his life. Marcel was determined to render honesty with acute observations in his daily life.
'I still regard the Meseglise and Guermantes ways(ways as in general traveling directions through Combray). It is because I believed in things and in people while I walked along those paths that the things and the people they made known to me are the only ones that I will take seriously and that still bring me joy. Whether it is because reality takes shape in the memory alone, the flowers that people show me now for the first time never seem to me to be true flowers. The Mesegline way with its lilacs, its hawthorns, its cornflowers, its poppies.....etc.....the Guermantes way with its river fall full of tadpoles, its water lilies and its buttercups, constituted for me for all time the image of the landscape in which I should like to live, in which my principal requirements are that I may go fishing, boating, see the ruins, on old church...rustic...golden.' With these few words lies the essence of how "Remembrance of Things Past' takes a firm hold on us. The only true, lasting experiences are of the past and what happened then cannot be purely repeated. You remember the first time you made love...to become lost totally in this exhilarated coupling of souls cannot recur in present tense. Or your first sip of beer with that rich foam exploding in the pallet....never will it be the same. As a child with the first home run....that intense thrill will not be fully repeated. The first and perhaps scary story read to you by your parent....and later stories fail to impress so. The rabbit you held in your hands, the wonder of life quivering with such wild innocence. Some of these events may be appreciated, truncated as so limited, but never to be reclaimed in full experience or truth. So by 'truth' Marcel means that these are not lies but he means that the ever recurring events that come to us later have become less crystallized, in some manner the past image became interrupted by some minor static or the focus has been abbreviated by time. Such as it is, only the past can be true.
notes: Proust was not the first to recognize involuntary memory. A couple of ancient philosophers long past mentioned the subject, but their comments were lost to the ages and the subject unknown to the public. Much later, after Proust's story, the subject of involuntary memory was analyzed and explained in scientific terms by psychologists. Would Proust have been impressed by this science? Absolutely not since he was an artist. To be reviewed is Proust's novel 'Swan in Love' in the February edition of Commentary.
PREVIOUS ISSUES
Going Nuclear
Kairos Power Co. has secured a construction permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its Hermes1 demonstration reactor in Tennessee. This is the first time in a half century that the U.S. has granted permission for a novel reactor.
The current technology that we are accustomed to uses nuclear fission to split atoms to release energy in a reactor using water to cool and to moderate neutrons. This revised system uses molten fluoride salt as a coolant. These salts have exceptional chemical stability and exceptional heat transfer capabilities at very high temperatures. This ensures reliability and a prolonged service life enhancing commercial viability. This system maintains its structural integrity even under extremely high temperatures. This has an advantage over the typical reactor vessel that can become brittle under extreme temperatures. The new system eliminates the nuclear meltdown scenario present in water cooled reactors since the fuel mixture is kept in a molten state. The system also eliminates the possibility of a hydrogen explosion that occurred in the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear plants.
Kairos plans to start construction on a $100 million initiative in 2024 and anticipates a completion date in 2026. The objective is to showcase the viability of its design and the molten salt technology which offers safety advantages over water cooled systems. The system will not generate electricity since it is considered to be a precursor to the Hermes 2 project. The next phase would involve two similar reactors capable of producing 28 megawatts of electricity. As a comparison the typical nuclear reactor produces about 100 megawatts. In the future the company expects to produce two similar units exceeding 100 megawatts.
The Kairos reactor is one example of transitioning from public-led and public funded nuclear plants to private funded small nuclear reactors. World wide there are ten small nuclear reactors in the permit or planning stage using various applications of molten salt technology. There are several advantages with these molten salt technologies which are improved safety design, longer service life, lower overall cost of construction and maintenance and avoidance of plant shutdowns in the refueling process. This is another technology that can abate the increasing impact on climate change and combined with other established technologies currently in use will have a significant positive impact. However, can advanced technologies such as this new reactor be placed on line fast enough to win the race against this self-inflicted damage to the environment?
Mad Men
Mad Men as in Madison Avenue. America's gift to the world is marketing. Marketing is the oil in the machinery of consumer consumption. We need to keep that machine chugging along. One critical element of marketing is advertising which is the science of psychology. Advertising and promotion are the engines that drive interest in a product or service. What is it that captures the consumer's attention: what do they need or want, is the product a status symbol, what makes consumers feel good about themselves, or does the product accentuate desirous feminist or masculine identities, more important there is a new product or service out there that you did not previously know that you needed. The Madison Avenue style of advertising in politics got a toehold in the 1960's. Before that time election advertising was boring to the point of laughable. Do you remember that jingle 'I like Ike'? Many do not recall but take the word of oldsters that those ads were dull and did not promote a significant message.
Let's examine the advertising messaging of the Democratic Party for the upcoming 2024 election featuring VP Kamala Harris. It is a short film done in the fashion of a Hollywood production. Don't we all appreciate the flickers? It is a spirited atmosphere with participants smiling, dancing and singing. The viewer is captivated by the sheer energy of this political party that is on the move. There is nothing stale about this party. The hard driving force of the music carries the enthusiasm throughout the film. A fluttering American flag is displayed in at least six frames in the spectacle and that translates to patriotism. Now the viewer has connected energy with patriotism. We are patriots moving vigorously toward a bright future. A critical narrative is freedom and that word is repeated four times. Freedom is sung six times in the music score. Don't we all want freedom? The viewer has their own interpretation of freedom and they have a mental checklist of 'freedom to' and 'freedom from'. To distinguish what freedom means in this context is unnecessary. The viewer only needs to know that this party is concerned about their freedom.
There are specifics in the production such as choosing something different which is 'a future of 'no poverty for children'. The viewer may differentiate this party from the other party since the other party can be seen as less concerned with children. When we fight we win. We choose freedom and something different which is to get ahead economically. The type of country we want to live in is without chaos, fear and hate. The viewer will want to avoid this trilogy of disaster. To summarize, the messaging of this product centers around happiness and positive thinking.
Candidates Trump and J D Vance have yet to launch a lengthy promotion on the order of the Democrat's film production. We have to pick through the short blurbs on news interviews with either Trump or Vance and through some of the televised rallies. And with that we need to sift through some of the AI generated fake narratives that are becoming popular.
J.D. Vance had a unique observation on the powerful elite in government. He said childless democrat women rule from an isolated position and do not understand what they propose. We are controlled by women who do not understand women. The prospective voter would certainly not want an elitist government since it is contrary to a democracy. The description of people in power who do not understand their purpose is particularly disturbing. At a minimum we want our agents to understand their purpose.
The border problem is a constant issue for Trump. He has claimed that thousands of our citizens have been murdered by illegal aliens due to the inaction of the current administration. This claim raises the fear factor and shades the other party as incompetent. The other party cannot keep our country safe. Also, consider this statement from a Trump promotion that can instill fear. "We are going to have a country greater than before or we aren't going to have a country at all." Also quoted, "If I lose we will have an economic bloodbath." Will we all become destitute? Kamala Harris was accused of being a DEI which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. The claim was made that Kamala Harris was chosen as a VP due to her race and gender as opposed to her qualifications. We want a candidate who achieved success by merit. In Trump's latest rally he accused Harris of being a 'low IQ person' and so incompetent that we would have WWIII if she gets into office. No voter wants a witless person to lead us nor do they want WWIII.
The advertising method used by the Trump/Vance camp can be referred to as negative advertising. This means that you will advertise against a competitor's product. This is seldom used blatantly but sometimes it is used subtly. Even at that it can be self-defeating. The consumer may believe that the one using this method is unsure of their own product or service. It can be a message that they have exhausted all avenues to increase sales, improve their product, or expand their product line. It is a tactic of desperation that can have disastrous consequences for the promoter. The message does effectively promote fear which is a compelling emotion. Avoid the other product (Kamala Harris).
The psychology of advertising phrases that appeal to the voter may not be the sole reason for the voter's choice of a candidate. If it is used consistently throughout the campaign there is a possibility it may have some further influence to reinforce the political perspective that the voter has embraced.
There is a reason that political parties spend millions of dollars on promotion as does Ford Motor and FritoLay spend millions to promote their products.
note: equal time for the women. several women in the televised series Mad Men rose to positions of responsibility due to their abilities.
Writing About Him
I just don't like writing about him, although I did get some pleasure watching about three episodes of his appearance in the courtroom facing thirty-four felony counts. He remained tight lipped
during the proceedings. Usually he is a force of nature. When he regurgitates one of those convoluted monologues it is like you are being slammed by a Cat 5 hurricane and a hail storm. So it was a relief to watch him sit there with his mouth shut while the lawyers spoke uninterrupted with an occasional 'objection your honor'. It must have been pure agony for the the guy - just imagine all of that energy bottled up with a lid on it. He did manage to let loose with a hailstorm after the proceedings. As of this writing there is no certainty that the guilty verdict will stand against all appeals. This current conviction of lower level felonies is relatively minor considering all of his misdeeds of the past (what a low bar has been set for this guy).
We can view crimes in two categories: crimes of commission and crimes of omission. The first is obvious with his felony conviction. His major crime of omission was his inaction and/or misdirection in the COVID19 pandemic. He continually denied the existence or severity of the COVID19 virus. Jan 2020: 'we have it under control, it's going to be just fine', Mar 2020: 'just stay calm it will go away', May 2020 'one day it's like a miracle, it will disappear', July 2020: 'it will go away, things go away, absolutely'. (ref the Guardian.org) During this period the virus outbreak nationwide had risen from 25,000 cases to 5,000,000 cases.
It became clear, for some citizens, that his comments of denial of the virus or its severity were prompted by the fear that the stock market would crash if we were to recognize the severity of the COVID19 virus. His famous declaration in the presidential campaign was that the was going to make us all rich and the stock market would be our key to wealth.
After the 12-2020 introduction of COVID19 vaccines a partisan gap in death rates developed indicating the effects of vaccine skepticism. As of March 2024 more than 30% of republicans had not received the vaccine compared with 10% of democrats. A line chart revealed cumulative death rates for counties categorized based on Trump's share of votes received in the 2020 election. The COVID19 death rates were double in those counties with a 70% majority of Trump voters as opposed to those counties with under 30% of Trump voters. (ref CDC, Edison research, chart by NY Times and the Guardian.org.). The analysis is not pure since many people had the COVID19 but died of unrelated causes, some were misdiagnosed entirely, some were asymptomatic and never detected, others were not anti-vaccine but declined the vaccine as they would the flu vaccine each year and some have always been anti-vaxers. However the percentages are so large that it is an indication that his campaign of denial had serious influence.
The public did not play a part nor have influence in the felony conviction of his crime of commission. It is quite different in the COVID19 misdirection which was a crime of omission since he did not reveal the facts of the virus. One could say that we have a personal responsibility to recognize a flagrant lie and follow our better course of action and trust the medical community. No, that is not the place to go with this problem. What existed at the time. and probably remains, is a type of cultish behavior by some voters ignited by an aspirational dictator. We can throw any reasoning out the window such as: Did you have any vaccines in your youth that resulted in a compromise to your health? Did anyone in the medical community tell you not to get the vaccine or did they advice that you get the vaccine? Normal reasoning did not have an advantage in this crime of omission. The atmosphere was rife with reverence to the Great One. This is as dangerous as any crime of commission. He has done this before and he will continue to do so in the future. The sheep always obey the sheepdog.
Mouse Trap
John Steinbeck was the pre-immanent American novelist of his time. He received a Nobel Prize for literature for two novels; the Grapes of Wrath and The Winter of Our Discontent. He was the pre-immanent American novelist since many of his novels captured the culture and social fabric of America.
One novella of interest, not necessarily of American culture, but of universal and timeless appeal is Of Mice and Men. The title of the novel comes from the poem by Robert Burns: The best laid plans ' mice and men/gang aft agley(often go awry). That was true of several characters in the novel whose plans went awry.
To review, two immigrants, George and the mentally deficient Lennie rom the countryside in search of work in the time of the great depression. George has taken Lennie under his wing after Lennie committed a minor indiscretion with a woman. He was falsely accused of a more serious crime. George thought it best that they leave the town. So begins a symbiotic relationship between Lennie, feeble of mind, and George. Lennie could not survive the confusion of the world without the supervision of George. The muscular brute Lennie would be an attraction for anyone in need of a strong man and George would tag along to find employment and so benefit from Lennie's appeal as a man of strength and endurance.
They find employment on a farm and the superintendent of the farm immediately recognizes Lennie as a simpleton and tells George to make sure he controls Lennie. The farm is a theatrical stage for characters with ambitions of success and independence; aspirational plans for a better life. An elderly hired hand plans of owning a farm. He has a little money saved and that attracts others to the plan as possible contributors. Lennie has a dream of having a plot of land where he can raise rabbits and George is agreeable to the investment since he desires independence. The wife of the farm boss, Curly, has dreams of of becoming an actress.
Plans collapse in rapid succession as Curly, a mean and envious man, picks on Lennie and Lennie crushes his hand. The plan of owning a farm becomes unlikely in the ensuing turmoil. Lennie discovers Curley's wife alone in the barn. She has just entered the barn after threatening to lynch a black farm hand. Lennie's fetish for soft furry objects manifests itself in his assault of the woman. She invites Lennie to stroke her hair and he does so but too roughly, she screams, he panics and breaks her neck. The plans of George and Lennie have gone awry. Lennie goes to a pre-arranged meeting in the forest to meet George. A posse has been formed and the police have been notified. George knows they are coming for Lennie. George sits behind Lennie and tells him to look into the distance and visualize his rabbit farm. George spins an idealistic scene about a wonderful future on the farm and shoots and kills Lennie.
George's reasoning:
The killing of Lennie was an act of compassion. It was best that Lennie be put to rest with his dream. The execution was much preferred to the hateful revenge that would be enjoyed by a lynch mob or the insults and shame that would befall a simpleton in a courtroom. A public spectacle should be avoided. George was acutely aware of the consequences of this arrangement. If it were not for him and Lennie there would not have been a disaster on the farm. If a person became a caregiver for an incompetent person they are responsible for what they assumed. It was of little importance if George's motive was self-serving. He understood the responsibility that accompanies the relationship. George knew what his duty was. He was the one who set Lennie loose upon the world and since he did so it was his duty to take him out of the world.
The best laid plans that often go awry are made by men since all humans are flawed.
Pass The Fire Hose
A physicist, Sabine Hossenfelder, science author, contributor on X and You Tube made a presentation on You Tube a couple of weeks ago on the subject of climate change. It was not her first presentation on the subject. She had produced others explaining the cause and effect of climate change. The latest one was quite different. She was angry and frustrated with the interpretation of some climate data to such an extent that she dropped the F bomb during her presentation.
Most of her presentations concern classical physics and quantum physics. On a couple of occasions she has weighed in on climate change. She admits that her most disliked videos are about climate change. It seems like we dislike anything about the topic and she understands that. We are thinking.....all right already, what are we going to do about it? Ho hum. She tagged that correctly. Perhaps many listeners became bored with the subject and instead fell into the black hole of Tic Tok. She is perturbed about one single number that climate scientists are talking about and that is Climate Sensitivity. To start, she points out average temperatures reached an all time high, artic sea ice has decreased drastically and heat waves covered a large portion of the earth. The overall trend indicates that it will be steeply up and will deteriorate rapidly. This has to do with the quantity of climate sensitivity and that is the property of climate models that one finds when one doubles the carbon dioxide over the level of pre-industrial times. The climate sensitivity predicts how quickly temperatures are going to rise in the future. Several graphs were displayed to support the presentation and we can assume that she has reviewed that R^2 regression analysis, time series, seasonal adjustment exercises that any serious scientist would.
She stressed the importance of cloud activity as an important element of climate analysis. We must conclude that the data that we have now on clouds must include the data on clouds that we had in the past. However, that data is not available from millions of years ago. We do have observations now. Climate models are not good at weather forecasts (different parameters) but one weather model she referred to can be incorporated into a climate analysis and that forecast was incorporated into an old model that previously did not have the changes in the cloud physics. She found that the new model gave a different forecast from the previous one. That model had a climate sensitivity of more than 5.8 deg,C and the previous model of 2019 indicated 2 to 4.5 deg. C. that indicates how quickly our planet will become uninhabitable if we don't amend our behavior, if the new analysis is correct. She does not profess that the new analysis is correct but there is reason to believe that it could be correct. We are in serious trouble if it is. If this cloud data is correct then it means that we could be facing an economic collapse in as few as twenty years. The frustration is understood as she comments further that it is so stupid that the lives of all people on this planet depend on the obscure properties of water droplets from clouds.
A good point. If we had been serious about the issue of climate change twenty years ago we would not be facing this 'obscure' issue of water droplets in clouds. That point may be of some scientific interest but it would have been a moot issue if we could have resolved the problem of human generated heat increase.
She concludes with the familiar tale of 'future world' which is a planet with mass migration, starvation, financial disaster, new viruses and general chaos. A few proposals are advanced: put a price on carbon emissions, we need more nuclear power and expand renewals. It would be foolish to ignore these proposals. The best advance that we can make is to use more nuclear power. We need hundreds of small nuclear plants as opposed to those large multi-billion dollar boondoggles that get eternally hamstrung with changing regulations. Bill Gates has funded the design and construction of an effective smaller sodium nuclear plant that is currently under construction..... and yes he will make a profit. These recommendations could eventually turn the tide. Many of us are diligently recycling plastic and paper, turning down the thermostat in the winter and some have turned their driving choice to vehicles that get thirty-plus mpg. However, it does not amount to any significance what we do as individuals. It takes a government to turn the corner on climate change. It will require the populace to demand that our government impose strict regulations to abate the heat wave. But that will not have full effect unless all major governments enact strict regulations. Will China, Russia and India enact effective regulations? Granted, it would be an enormous effort to get any government to move quickly on climate change.
I will turn seventy-seven in a few more months (possibly) and in some way I feel that I have tripped and fallen onto another planet. Those of my age have lived happily through the best of times while devouring the resources of our planet. It was manifest destiny that we would consume every morsel in our reach since we are the voracious species. I think of my grandchildren and it seems that they will live a short, compromised life while I knew the best of times all of my life. I have run up
a sizable tab and unfortunately they will be paying my bill.
Christmas by Vladimir Nabokov
One of my projects this year was to take on the Russians.....meaning the Russian authors. I had read Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn as most fellow readers of my youth so consequently one could say this year was a continuation of a project. This year I have chosen the anthologies of short stories by Nabokov, Chekov, Pushkin and Gogol. Of what I have read at this point I was most impressed with a short story by Vladimir Nabokov and not that the other authors were lacking in any major respect. It was only with this short tale that this story stood above the others in style and substance. (albeit the art form has evolved greatly between the time of the other authors and Nabokov's time so it is not entirely a fair comparison)
Sleptsov is the protagonist of this short story. He has returned from the village to his manor and he is reeling from grief since he has attended a funeral. Any room, even the coziest and the most absurdly small, in the little used wing of a great manor house has an unlived-in corner. It was such a corner in which he sat. That evening he fell asleep with nonsensical, fragmented dreams.
In the morning he opened the outside door from that room and walked outside to be met by a sharp frost and snow. He walked down a straight path that had been cleared of snow. He noticed that a dog had left a series of saffron marks on a slope of a snow drift. (clever to characterize dog urine as the color of saffron). He continued and walked along a small bridge and remembered how this bridge looked in the summer. There was his son walking along the slippery planks and deftly plucking off with his net a butterfly that had settled on the railing. Just recently in Petersburg after babbling in his delusion about school, about his bicycle, about some great Oriental moth, he died, and yesterday Sleptsov had taken the coffin--weighted down , it seemed with an entire life time - to the country into the family vault near the village.
After lunch Sleptsov took a sleigh to the cemetery. When he arrived he sat for an hour or so by the grave. He came home with a slight sense of disappointment, as if there, in the burial vault, he had been further removed from his son than here, where the countless summer tracks of his rapid sandals were preserved beneath the snow.
That evening he had the main house unlocked. He went to the room that had been his son's study in the summer. He opened the desk drawer and found note books, a spreading board (to mount butterflies), books, pens and a tin that contained a large exotic cocoon. His son probably reasoned that the chrysalis inside was dead. Sleptsov describes in detail how his son prepared and pinned the moths or butterflies to the spreading board. He mentions a couple of varieties: Aspen Hawk and Swallowtails.
His valet Ivan had placed a small fir tree in a clay pot on the table in the annex and attached a candle to its cruciform tip. Sleptsov returns from the main house carrying a wooden case under his arm. He spies the Christmas tree.
"What's that?"
Ivan answers in low voice: "There's a holiday coming up tomorrow."
"No, take it away," said Sleptsov with a frown, while thinking, Can this be Christmas Eve? How could I have forgotten?
"it's nice and green. Let it stand for awhile." Ivan insisted.
He opened the case that belonged to his son and rummaged through the contents and found a journal. He began to read the entries. "Marvelous hot day, rode my bike in the evening. A midge got in my eye. Deliberately rode by her dacha twice, but didn't see her...." Sleptsov raised his head, swallowed something hot and huge. Of whom was his son writing? He continued to read.
"Rode my bike as usual.....our eyes nearly met. My darling, my love...."
"This is unthinkable," whispered Sleptsov. "'I'll never know. He never said anything to me.'"
"Rain in the evening. She has probably left and we didn't even get acquainted. Farewell my darling. I feel terribly sad..."
Sleptsov tried to remember, rubbing his forehead with his palm. He got up. He shook his head, restraining yet another onrush of hideous sobs.
"I can't bear it any longer," he drawled between groans, repeating even more slowly. "I can't bear---it--any---longer...It's Christmas tomorrow and I'm going to die. Of course. It's so simple. This very night." He pressed his eyes shut and had a fleeting sensation that earthly life lay before him, totally bared and comprehensible and ghastly in its sadness, humiliatingly pointless, sterile, devoid of miracles.
At that instant there was a sudden snap--a thin sound like that of an overstretched rubber band breaking. Sleptsov opened his eyes. The cocoon in the tin had burst at its tip and a black wrinkled creature the size of a mouse was crawling up the wall above the table, It stopped, holding on to the surface with six black furry feet, and started palpating strangely. It had emerged from the chrysalis because a man overcame with grief had transferred a tin box to his warm room, and the warmth had penetrated its taunt leaf-and-silk envelope, it had waited this moment so long, had collected its strength so intensely and now, having broken out, it was slowly and miraculously expanding.....and now they were developed to the limit set for them by God and there on the wall instead of a little lump of life, instead of a dark mouse, was a great Attacus moth like those that fly, birdlike, around lamps in the Indian dusk.
And then those thick black wings, with a glazy eyespot on each and a purplish bloom dusting their hooked fore tips, took a full breath under the impulse of tender, ravishing, almost human happiness.
Comments: The main character expressed himself primarily in speech and thought in the stream of consciousness method. The method serves the rush of emotions throughout the story. The first paragraph set a somber mood followed by suspense. Whose funeral had he attended? Of note is Steptsov's comment that he had settled into an 'unlived- in' corner of the house, an apt place to mourn the deceased and symbolic of an emptiness of his loss. Sleptsov vividly recalled his son's activities on the pathway. He went to the cemetery to visit the grave and he was disappointed that he felt further from his son. He found more comfort with the visualization of his belongings and the tactile experience of touching his effects: a common truism.
When Ivan announced that Christmas was coming we witnessed the change in Sleptsov....his sorrow has turned to anger from his loss. Ivan expressed concern for his master with subtle encouragement about the tree...."let it stand for awhile." As he read his son's journal about his affections for a young girl he became upset since his son had not shared this with him. Why not? Because it was the puppy love of a young boy not to be shared with others. Sleptsov is remorseful that this was kept from him. He was desperate to know everything about his son, every scintilla of his life
To read Nabokov is to stroll through a lush garden of descriptive prose. The composition, while at times slightly florid, sets the mood of the story. The language in the first paragraph is somber and defined the bleak atmosphere. The language in the final sentence of the story is rich with colorful descriptions of the moth that made a human-like breath and took flight. The unexpected and fortunate awakening flight of the moth was serendipitous. It was fortune that the chrysalis was brought from the cold into the warmth. The earlier opinion of Sleptsov of a sterile, pointless, sad, devoid of miracles existence has been changed by the vision of the arisen moth. It was a release from the morose feeling that had consumed him. Although he lost his son he knew that through the miracle of the matured moth there was, in the circle of life, beauty to appreciate.
Within this portrayal of immeasurable loss Nabokov weaved a tale of a magical event; Christmas is magical.
Nabokov referenced and identified several butterflies and moths in his story. The numerous references, subtly or directly, to the insect is understandable since he had a lifelong appreciation of butterflies. Is it possible that he believed that butterflies were a metaphor for freedom or beauty? There wasn't freedom, nothing beautiful, in the Bolshevik Russia that Nabokov had escaped.
Lineage and Civilization
Many years ago Margret Mead, cultural anthropologist, was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. Many people would think she would reference fish hooks or spears or the sling. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur that had been broken and then healed. She explained that in the animal kingdom if an animal breaks a leg they will die. They cannot run from danger and they are meat for beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. The femur that has been healed is evidence that a member of the group has taken the time and effort to attend to the injured member. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts Mead claimed. One can imagine our crusty, hairy Flintstone ancestors dancing around a fire and chanting incantations for the injured while applying some slimy concoction on their wound. They did the best they could with what little knowledge they may have had and they did it with care. They would not want to strike out on a bear hunt absent one member since it is difficult enough with everyone on board. That may have been another reason beyond caring and affection for the wounded.....it was simply practical reasoning. Those who were out of commission had valuable experiences and skills that added to the whole of the tribe. It was best to get them back to health for the benefit of the group. We can have more than one reason to an objective going through our brains. It would be difficult to argue against Mead's proposition since attendance to a wounded member of a group of hunter gatherers exhibits ethical behavior. Although Mead did not use the term ethical, ethical behavior is often referred to as a key element of a civilization.
Is this behavior exhibited only in the human and not in the lower mammals? The chimpanzee attends to a wounded member of their troupe and will lick its wound to aid in healing and a lion will do the same to a wounded member of the pride. A chimp will continue to hold a baby chimp that has been dead for several days. I witnessed evidence of this behavior last year when I watched a wildlife program with a segment featuring the life of a leopard and her cubs. The mother left the cubs hidden in a grassy, rocky knoll while she hunted. Upon her return she immediately noticed that a cub was missing. She sniffed the surrounding area and found a boa constrictor curled under a rock. The snake was swollen since it had swallowed the cub. The mother scratched roughly at the snake's head and the snake regurgitated the dead cub immediately. Snakes will do so in order to escape quickly. The mother licked the cub clean of residue, sniffed it and cuddled the cub in her paws for several minutes. Then she scratched at the soil, laid the cub in a shallow hole, and lay over the grave for the remainder of the day. Was the leopard mourning the loss of her cub? The burial was significant. Perhaps she did not want the cub to be violated by other animals. Several mammals exhibit distress and loneliness (by isolating) which are signs of mourning upon the death of a relation or member of the group. These responses are indicators that these mammals are sentient, although not sapient. It would appear that these characteristics of caring for one another have been passed through evolution to the human.
In conclusion, Margret Mead was not wrong in her assessment of caring for a fellow tribal member as the first evidence of civilization but this behavior appears to have begun millions of years earlier in some lower mammals and through evolution was passed on to humans. Everything before us of the reptiles, birds, fish and mammals have made a major or minor contribution in some manner to the development of the human.
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