“Poets are often held in high repute in Russia and often feared by government not because of the power of poetry to move and shape souls, but because, in Russia only great poets dare speak the truth.”
Eric Hoffer

I know that many musicians and other creative spirits feel as if they have little significance or impact in our society. The prevailing metrics of success—money, power, whatever—relegate their work to the fringes and sub-fringes.

As I’ve suggested elsewhere, they don’t even get the respect given, in an earlier era, to a counterculture.

In the past, you might not get rich as a member of the counterculture—but at least you had a voice that was heard by the mainstream, and occasionally received some tokens of appreciation. Mainstream elites were not so isolated and antagonistic as today, and felt they needed a reality check from outside—but not anymore.

Conformity is the safest path now. Sometimes it feels like the only path.

Why is this the case?

There are many reasons, but I would focus especially on the technocratic tone in today’s culture in which prominence and relevance is determined by metrics imposed by huge corporations.

Sometimes they won’t even tell you their metrics—who knows how Netflix evaluates its shows? Who knows how things go viral on Instagram?

But when we do learn what moves the wheels of digital media, it’s usually clicks, links, dollars, profits, and other extrinsic hierarchies.

If you look at art that way, you will avoid anything that deviates from mainstream entertainment. Or even just mindless distraction.

That’s why it’s useful to remind ourselves of other times and places when the free creative impulse of artists, even those of genius, genuinely seemed on the verge of eradication.

Yes, there were situations far more dire than our own.

So let me share a story that gives me comfort. It’s almost a parable of the creative life and its hidden power. This particular tale testifies to my belief that artists of vision and courage can even rise above the most brutal dictator.

Alas, this victory of art over tyranny only happens over the long run. But it does happen.

And when it finally occurs, the turnaround takes place so dramatically and resoundingly that we need to reconsider our conventional definitions of power and influence.

I’m referring to the case of Anna Akhmatova.

15-year-old Anna Akhmatova in 1904

Akhmatova, was a promising poet in the days before the Soviet Revolution, but her physical presence was just as compelling as her writing. Modigliani made at least twenty paintings of Akhmatova, and she had an affair with the famous poet Osip Mandelstam. Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak proposed marriage to her on multiple occasions.

Even far away at Oxford, philosopher and intellectual historian Isaiah Berlin—whom I considered the most brilliant person in the entire University when I was a student there—allegedly pined away with romantic longings based on his brief encounter with Akhmatova 35 years before.

I don’t think it’s going too far to claim that she could have been a movie actress, given her beauty and allure.

Nathan Altman’s Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, 1915

But Akhmatova was crushed under Soviet rule.

Not only was her poetry sharply criticized and censored, but the secret police bugged her apartment, and kept her under surveillance.

She was silenced so completely, that many people simply assumed she was dead.

One by one, the people closest to her were arrested, prosecuted, and often executed. Her ex-husband Nikolay Gumilev, falsely accused of participating in a monarchist conspiracy, was shot. Her common-law husband Nikolai Punin, an art scholar, got arrested and sent to the Gulag, where he died. (His offense was allegedly mentioning that the proliferation of portraits of Lenin throughout the country was in poor taste.)

But the most painful loss was her son, Lev Gumliev. After the execution of his father, when their child was just nine, Lev got sent to a Soviet labor camps. When he was finally released from captivity, authorities insisted that he fight in the Red Army. Then he was sent off to the prison camps again in 1949.

Akhmatova was desperate to save the life of her son. But what can a poet—even a poet of genius—do in such situations?

“I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad,” she later recalled. She traveled to Kresty Prison every day to hold a futile vigil. She tried constantly to get some word about her son’s status.

Or give him a parcel. Or find someone to beg for his release.

But to no avail.

Here each day she waited with so many other women, often in bitter cold weather—bundled in heavy clothes in front of the closed gates. One day someone in the crowd recognized the poet, who had once been so esteemed and beautiful. She asked Akhmatova whether her poetic gifts were capable of describing this scene of tragedy.

What could be more futile than a poem in the face of Stalinist purges and executions? But Akhmatova told her inquirer: “I can.” And in that horrible and desolate place, “something like a smile” appeared on the other woman’s face.

Akhmatova began working on what would be her greatest work, the long poem called Requiem. But this was a dangerous endeavor.

Publishing a poem of this sort, even overseas, was out of the question. Just putting the words down on paper could lead to her execution—the secret police might search her apartment at any time.

So she burnt the pages she used for rough drafts. The polished version was retained in her memory.

For seventeen months I’ve called you
To come home, I’ve pleaded
—Oh my son, my terror!—groveled
At the hangman’s feet.
So much I can’t say who’s
Man, who’s beast any more, nor even
How long till execution.
(From the translation of Requiem by D.M. Thomas)

This is one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century. But the lines that inspire me the most come on the final page, where Anna Akhmatova makes that extraordinary prediction of the destiny for her and this forbidden work.

And if ever in this country they should want
To build me a monument
I consent to that honor,
But only on condition that they
Erect it not on the sea-shore where I was born:
My last links there were broken long ago,
Nor by the stump in the Royal Gardens,
Where an inconsolable young shade is seeking me,
But here, where I stood for three hundred hours
And where they never, never opened the doors for me.

She is literally taunting Stalin and the Soviet secret police here, but with an authority of her own—one only the creative artist possesses. Yet, in some miracle, she triumphed over the dictatorship.

No, Akhmatova herself didn’t live long enough to see it happen. But she did survive Stalin, and her son was released from incarceration. He eventually witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Akhmatova got shortlisted for the Nobel Prize, and finally—the year before her death in 1966—was allowed to travel to Oxford to receive an honorary degree. Her global renown as a voice of courage and integrity was so powerful that even the Soviet authorities were now afraid of the consequences of cracking down on her.

So they did nothing when Requiem was finally published in Germany in 1963. And the long poem even got issued in the USSR in 1987, at a time when the regime was now the pathetic vulnerable party.

But the most remarkable moment of vindication came when they erected a statue of Anna Akhmatova in her native land.

It happened on the 40th anniversary of her death in 2006. By then, even the name of the city had changed—it was no longer Leningrad, but St. Petersburg once more. And Akhmatova was now returning to the scene of her greatest suffering and tragedy, but in towering bronze form atop a granite pillar.

Anna Akhmatova, larger than life, stares down Kresty Prison

Meeting her poetic demands, they placed her statue facing Kresty Holding Prison, where she had once waited before the closed gates, day after day.

Her visage is strong and defiant, and the inscription reads:

That’s why I pray not for myself
But for all of you who stood there with me
Through fiercest cold and scorching July heat
Under a towering, completely blind red wall.

This is more than the triumph of one woman.

Art is more powerful than pundits or politicians, or even the most brutal dictator. It survives the longest. It has an authority that comes from a higher source.

We do well to remember that—especially in times when the creative impulse seems so weak and ineffective.

That weakness is an illusion. Art triumphs in the end. The very hollowness of its opponents ensures that eventual victory. It’s really just a matter of time.

Song of a neighborhood nightingale transcribed in 1868 by German naturalist Johann Matthäus Bechstein:

Tioû, tioû, tioû, tioû.
Spe, tiou, squa.
Tiô, tiô, tiô, tiô, tio, tio, tio, tix.
Coutio, coutio, coutio, coutio.
Squô, squô, squô, squô.
Tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzu, tzi.
Corror, tiou, squa pipiqui.
Zozozozozozozozozozozozo, zirrhading!
Tsissisi, tsissisisisisisisis.
Dzorre, dzorre, dzorre, dzorre, hi.
Tzatu, tzatu, tzatu, tzatu, tzatu, tzatu, tzatu, dzi.
Dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo, dlo.
Quio, tr rrrrrrrr itz.
Lu, lu, lu, lu, ly, ly, ly, liê, liê, liê, liê.
Quio, didl, li lulylie.
Hagurr, gurr quipio!
Coui, coui, coui, coui, qui, qui, qui, qui, gai, gui, gui, gui.
Goll goll goll goll guia hadadoi.
Couigui, horr, he diadia dill si!
Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze couar ho dze hoi.
Quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, quia, ti.
Ki, ki, ki, ïo, ïo, ïo, ioioioio ki.
Lu ly li le lai la leu lo, didl ïo quia.
Kigaigaigaigaigaigaigai guiagaigaigai couior dzio dzio pi.

In his 1795 Natural History of Cage Birds, he notes that some captive birds “never sing unless confined within narrow limits, being obliged, as it would appear, to solace themselves, for the want of liberty, with their song,” and so should never be given freedom within a room.

See Bird Talk, Bird Songs, and Who’s Who.

February 3, 2025February 2, 2025 | Science & Math

In 1955, the editor of a Michigan high school newspaper wrote to E.E. Cummings, asking his advice for students who wanted to follow in his footsteps. He sent this reply:

A Poet’s Advice to Students

A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feeling through words.

This may sound easy. It isn’t.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn’t a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time — and whenever we do it, we’re not poets.

If, at the end of your first ten or fifteen years of fighting and working and feeling, you find you’ve written one line of one poem, you’ll be very lucky indeed.

And so my advice to all young people who wish to become poets is: do something easy, like learning how to blow up the world — unless you’re not only willing, but glad, to feel and work and fight till you die.

Does this sound dismal? It isn’t.

It’s the most wonderful life on earth.

Or so I feel.

(From the Ottawa Hills Spectator, Oct. 26, 1955.)

February 4, 2025February 3, 2025 | Literature · Society

In ancient times, people would spend their summer vacations reading books. It is a little quaint nowadays, but you can still do that. Above, you can see two novels I have been reading recently: “War and Peace” (1868) by Lev Tolstoy, and “The Philosophy of the Apple Pie,” by Serena Bedini (2016). Strangely, these two widely different entities have something in common beyond being both definable with the same term, “novels.” Sometimes, differences are the key to understanding what some things have in common with each other. In this case, common element is evil. More exactly, love.

A few months ago, I found a copy of “War and Peace” on my shelves, realizing that I had never read it from start to finish. So, I set myself to engage in the task. My gosh, that was a task.

This novel is more than 1300 pages in its English translation. It starts by doing all those things that manuals about novel writing tell you a writer should never do. It is a slap in the face to the basic suggestion “don’t tell, show.” Tolstoy tells all the time and rarely shows. He tells in the “omniscient” viewpoint that has the writer playing God and telling readers about the details of how characters feel and think. And it starts by throwing in a true crowd of characters. Evidently, when the novel was written more than one and a half centuries ago, people were able to manage such a feat of reading it and enjoying it. At the time, it was what we would call today a “bestseller.”

For a modern reader, it is a feat comparable to climbing Mount Everest wearing tennis shoes — we are just not equipped for that kind of task. Anyway, I managed to do that, but I frequently lost track of what was going on. There are no less than five separate plots ongoing, and I often had to backtrack to understand who was doing exactly what and why. Let me tell you, some books on quantum mechanics I read in the past were easier. But I can tell you it was worth doing — oh, yes. Worth a lot.

It is a story that, if Tolstoy were alive today, could be lifted almost intact from its settings in the early 19th century to our times. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, with all its ramifications in European politics, looks so much like what is happening today that it is both bewildering and mesmerizing to read how Tolstoy chronicles the story. Tolstoy is considered to be a genius as a novelist. He was a genius, full stop.

Before I tell you more about “War and Peace,” let me tell you something about another book I have been reading these days. It is “La Filosofia della Torta di Mele” (The Philosophy of the Apple Pie), a 2016 novel by the Italian writer Serena Bedini. In literar terms, it is the complete opposite to Tolstoy’s war and peace. It is light, like a pâte feuilletée, written from the personal viewpoint of a character whose main problem is a persistent cough. She engages in a search for a special recipe for an apple pie in the Tuscan countryside; not the same kind of drama you find when Napoleon’s armies invade Russia. An easy novel for the blasé 21st-century reader that you can complete in one hour or even less. It leaves you with the sensation of a session of wine tasting that didn’t make you drunk, just relaxed and happy.

Comparing the “philosophy of the apple pie” to “war and peace” looks like comparing a bicycle to a space shuttle. Yet, the universe is fractal, and the two novels do have one fundamental thing in common (besides the fact of being, well, “novels”). Before I tell you what is this thing in common, allow me to digress a little.

You know that one of the masterpieces of Jorge Luis Borges is “Historia del Guerrero y de la Cautiva” (history of the warrior and the prisoner). It is above and beyond the “masterpiece” term — it is on another celestial plane. And what makes it such a master-masterpiece is the audacity of the author, who puts together two stories so different that the very idea of trying makes your head buzz: what does a Germanic Warrior of the early Middle Ages have in common with an English woman captured by an Argentinean Indio tribe and wed to their chieftain? There is something, yes, a very fundamental thing: the acceptance of the “other”, that some of us call “love” which, if you think about that, means exactly “accepting the other even though different.” It is too easy to love something that’s exactly like you; that’s called “narcissism.”

Only a master-master writer such as Borges could take up the challenge of writing such a story. Picking up enormous challenges and meeting them in full is the hallmark of true genius. Now, of course, I don’t dare compare myself to Borges. I just like to point out how the two stories have exactly one point in common: they are acts of love. Read “War and Peace” from start to finish, and you’ll note something that you might have missed at first, but then it appears to you like a flash of light from heaven.

There is no evil in the whole novel.

There is drama, there are emotions, bewilderment, rage, folly, madness, the whole spectrum of human emotions is there in “War and Peace” — but you won’t find in it a character hating another character. Not that it is a light novel about apple pies and curing one’s cough. Tolstoy is a master writer who masters every facet of the events he describes. Even when he tells us of characters that he finds unpleasant, such as Napoleon himself, he describes them as bumbling idiots, which probably they were, but still human beings with all their feelings, their emotions, their desires. In the novel, French and Russian soldiers fight each other, but do not hate each other. When the French or the Russians take prisoners, they treat them as humanely as it is reasonably possible given the circumstances. Nowhere is there talk of exterminating inferior races nor of herrenvolk who should rule them. There is only one event in the novel that you could be said to be evil. It is a real historical event: the lynching of a Russian student named Vereshchagin guilty (perhaps) of having diffused pro-French pamphlets. But even Count Rostopchin, the person who acts in cold blood to direct a crowd to attack Vereshchagin, is described as having human feelings and conscious of his mistake.

You see the same in “The Philosophy of the Apple Pie,” where, of course, you won’t find battles or lynchings, but that has a light touch that makes everything glow with a certain inner light. A firefly in a hot summer night.

Now, think for a moment about the sad spectacle of our times, where hate for everything different has become the exchange coin of all discourse on the media or anywhere else. How is it that nothing can be done anymore without hating someone or something? What madness is overtaking us? We drink evil, eat evil, breathe evil, continuously see evil, think evil, speak evil.

Tolstoy, philosopher, and historian, couldn’t explain what madness had taken millions of Christians in 1812 to march on to massacre and slaughter other Christians without any conceivable reasons for doing that. He would be even more baffled by our age when millions of human beings can be so easily convinced to hate other human beings without any conceivable reason — they are not required to massacre them with their own hands but, at least, to acquiesce to their slaughter by hunger, artillery, and drones.

We know that love is mostly in the foolish things of the world that God chose to shame the wise and the weak things of the world that God chose to shame the strong. Maybe an apple pie is one of these foolish and weak things that are nevertheless God’s choice to send us a message.

Sometimes it takes our bodies to return us to our souls. And our little pains to remind us of the indescribable pain of the savage killing and dismemberment of innocent children and adults in Gaza and many other places by U.S. weapons produced in clean factories by people just doing their jobs and collecting their pay at “defense” contractors Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Pfizer, etc. Abstraction is the name of the game as human bodies are torn to pieces “over there” and the obscene profits are transferred at the computer terminals day and night.

Living in a technological world of the internet divorces us from real life as it passes into inert, abstract, and dead screen existence. It should not be surprising that people grow sick and tired of the steady streams of “news” that fills their days and nights. So much of the news is grotesque; propaganda abounds. Stories twisted right and left to tie minds into knots. After a while, as Macbeth tells us, life seems like “a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets its hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Being sick and out of it for a while allows one a different perspective on the world. This is especially true for those of us who often write about politics and propaganda. A recent illness has forced me to step away from my usual routine of following political events closely. Fleeting headlines have been all I’ve noted for the past two weeks. While lying around waiting for the illness to leave, I would drift in and out of reveries and memories that would float to semi-consciousness. Feeling miserable prevented any focus or logical thinking, but not, I emphasize, thinking in a deeper, physical sense. But it also gave me a reprieve from noting the repetitive and atomizing nature of internet postings, as if one needs to be hammered over the head again and again to understand the world whose realities are much simpler than the endless scribblers and politicians are willing to admit.

Jonathan Crary, in a scathing critique of the digital world in Scorched Earth, puts it thus:

For the elites, the priority remains: keep people enclosed within the augmented unrealities of the internet complex, where experience is fragmented into a kaleidoscope of fleeting claims of importance, of never-ending admonitions on how to conduct our lives, manage our bodies, what to buy and who to admire or to fear.

I agree with Crary. During my sickness, I did manage to read a few brief pieces, an essay, a short story, and a poem. Serendipitously, each confirmed the trend of my thinking over recent years as well as what my bodily discomfit was teaching me.

The first was an essay by the art critic John Berger about the abstract expressionist, avant-garde painter Jackson Pollock, titled “A Kind of Sharing.” It struck me as very true. Pollock came to prominence in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He was described as an “action” painter who poured paint on large canvases to create abstract designs that were lauded by the New York art world. Some have sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. The description of Pollock as an untalented pourer, Berger says, is false, for Pollock was a very precise master of his art who was aware of how he was putting paint to canvas and of the effects of his abstractions. His work made no references to the outside world since such painting at that time was considered illustrative. Berger says that Pollock’s paintings were violent in that “The body, the flesh, had been rejected and they were the consequence of this rejection.” He argues that Pollock, who died in a drunken car crash in Easthampton, Long Island on August 11, 1956, was committing art suicide with his abstract paintings because he had rejected the ancient assumption of painting that the visible contained hidden secrets, that behind appearances there were presences. For Pollock, there was nothing beyond the surfaces of his canvases. This was because he was painting the nothingness he felt and wished to convey. A nihilism that was both personal and abroad in the society.

Pollock’s story is a sad one, for he was praised and used by forces far more powerful than he. Nelson Rockefeller, who was president of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) that his mother had cofounded, called Pollock’s work “free enterprise paintings,” and the CIA, through its Congress for Cultural Freedom, secretly promoted it as a Cold War weapon against the Soviet Union’s socialist realism art, even as right-wing congressmen ripped Pollock as a perverse artist. So in the name of openness, the CIA secretly promoted Pollock’s avant-gardism as real America art in a campaign of propaganda, while the right-wing bashed him as a perverted leftist. This sick double game became a template for future mind-control operations that are widespread today.

As was his habit, Berger brilliantly places Pollock’s work within social and political history, a description of a time very similar to today when the word “freedom” was bandied about. Then it was the freedom of the Voice of America extolling the Cold War tale of freedom of the “Free World”; freedom for artists to be free of rhetoric, history, the past, and to jettison the tyranny of the object; freedom of the market amidst a strident yet incoherent sense of loss. He writes:

At this moment, what was happening in the outside world? For a cultural climate is never separate from events. The United States had emerged from the war as the most powerful nation in the world. The first atom bomb had been dropped. The apocalypse of the Cold War had been placed on the agenda. McCarthy was inventing his traitors. The mood in the country that had suffered least from the war was defiant, violent, haunted. The play most apt to the period would have been Macbeth, and the ghosts were from Hiroshima.

Today’s ghosts are still from Hiroshima and Macbeth is still apposite, and the ghosts of all the many millions killed since then haunt us now if we can see them. Although their bodies have disappeared out the back door of the years – and continue to do so daily – true art is to realize their presence, to hear their cries and conjure up their images. While the word freedom is still bandied about in this new Cold War era where the sense of social lostness is even more intense than in Pollock’s time, it often comes from a nihilistic despondency similar to Pollock’s and those who used atomic weapons, a belief that appearances and surfaces are all and behind them there is nothing. Nada, nada, nada. A society that Roberto Calasso calls “an agnostic theocracy based on nihilism.” Berger concludes:

Jackson Pollock was driven by a despair which was partly his and partly that of the times that nourished him, to refuse this act of faith [that painting reveals a presence behind an appearance]: to insist, with all his brilliance as a painter, that there was nothing behind, that there was only that which was done to the canvas on the side facing us. This simple, terrible reversal, born of an individualism that was frenetic, constituted the suicide.

This short essay by Berger about Pollock’s denial of the human body struck me as my own body was temporarily failing me. It seemed to contain lessons for the augmented realities of the internet and the new Cold War being waged for the control of our minds and hearts today. Inducements to get lost in abstractions.

Then one day I picked up another book from the shelf to try to distract myself from my physical misery. It was a collection of stories by John Fowles. I read the opening novella – “The Ebony Tower” – haltingly over days. It was brilliant and eerily led me to a place similar to that of Berger’s thoughts about Pollock. Fowles explores art and the body against a dreamy background of a manor house in the French countryside. As I read it lying on a couch, I fell in and out of oneiric reveries and sleep, induced by my body’s revolt against my mind. Trying to distract myself from my aches and pains, I again found myself ambushed by writing about corporality. Both Berger and Fowles sensed the same thing: that modernity was conspiring to deny the body’s reality in favor of visual abstractions. That in doing so our essential humanity was being lost and the slaughters of innocent people were becoming abstractions. Then the Internet came along to at first offer hope only to become an illusion of freedom increasingly controlled by media in the service of deep-state forces. Soon the only way to write and distribute the truth will be retro – on paper and exchanged hand to hand. This no doubt sounds outlandish to those who have swallowed the digital mind games, but they will be surprised once they fully wake up.

Fowles’s story is about David, an art historian who goes to visit a famous, cranky old painter named Henry Breasely. The younger man is writing about the older and thinks it would be interesting to meet him, even though he thinks it isn’t necessary to write the article he has already composed in his mind. The art historian, like many of his ilk, lives in his mind, in academic abstractions. He is in a sense “pure mind,” in many ways a replica of T.S. Eliot’s neurotic J. Alfred Prufrock. The old painter lives in the physical world, where sex and the body and nature enclose his world, where paint is used to illuminate the physical reality of life, its sensuousness, not abstractions, where physical life and death infuse his work, including political realities. Obviously not new to William Butler Yeats’ discovery as expressed in the conclusion to his poem “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”:

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

The old man fiercely defends the “foul rag and bone shop of the heart” against all abstractions and academic bullshit, which are the young man’s métier. He accuses the young critic of being afraid of the human body. When the critic responds, “Perhaps more interested in the mind than the genitals,” the caustic and funny painter says, “God help your bloody wife then.” He accuses the younger man of being in the game of destruction and castration, of supporting abstractions at the expense of flesh and blood life. “There are worse destroyers around than nonrepresentational art,” the critic says in his defense. To which the painter roars, “You’d better tell that to Hiroshima. Or to someone who’s been napalmed.”

Back and forth they go, as a nubile art student, who is there to help the elderly artist, acts as a sort of interlocutor. Her presence adds a sexual frisson throughout the story, a temptation to the milk-toast critic’s life of sad complacency. The wild old man’s rants – he calls Jackson Pollock Jackson Bollock – are continually paraphrased by the girl. She says, “Art is a form of speech. Speech must be based on human needs, not abstract theories of grammar. Or anything but the spoken word. The real word. . . . Ideas are inherently dangerous because they deny human facts. The only answer to fascism is the human fact.”

The old painter’s uncensored tongue brought tears of laughter to my eyes and a bit of relief to my aches and pains. I was primarily taken aback by the weirdness of haphazardly reading a second piece that coincided with my deepest thoughts that had been intensified by my body’s revolt. The narrator’s words struck me as especially true to our current situation:

What the old man still had was an umbilical chord to the past; a step back, he stood by Pisanello’s side. In spirit, anyway. While David was encapsulated in book knowledge, art as social institution, science, subject, matter for grants and committee discussion. That was the real kernel of his wildness. David and his generation, and all those to come, could only look back, through bars, like caged animals, born in captivity, at the old green freedom. That described exactly the experience of those last two days: the laboratory monkey allowed a glimpse of his lost true self.

The Internet life has made caged monkeys of us all. We seem to think we are seeing the real world through its connectivity bars, but these cells that enclose us are controlled by our zoo keepers and they are not our friends. Their control of our cages keeps increasing; we just fail to see the multiplying bars. They have created a world of illusions and abstractions serving the interests of global capitalism. Insurgent voices still come through, but less and less as the elites expand their control. As internet access has expanded, the world’s suffering has increased and economic inequality heightened. That is an unacknowledged fact, and facts count.

Toward the end of my two-week stay in the land of sickness, I read this poem by the Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer, who was killed in Gaza by an IDF airstrike on December 6, 2023 along with his brother, nephew, sister, and three of her children. My sickness turned to rage.

An incisive depiction of the state of the world now.

Botticelli made this painting on the description of a painting by Apelles, a Greek painter of the Hellenistic period. Apelles' works have not survived, but Lucian recorded details of one in his On Calumny: “On the right of it sits Midas with very large ears, extending his hand to Slander while she is still at some distance from him. Near him, on one side, stand two women—Ignorance and Suspicion. On the other side, Slander is coming up, a woman beautiful beyond measure, but full of malignant passion and excitement, evincing as she does fury and wrath by carrying in her left hand a blazing torch and with the other dragging by the hair a young man who stretches out his hands to heaven and calls the gods to witness his innocence. She is conducted by a pale ugly man who has piercing eye and looks as if he had wasted away in long illness; he represents envy. There are two women in attendance to Slander, one is Fraud and the other Conspiracy. They are followed by a woman dressed in deep mourning, with black clothes all in tatters—she is Repentance. At all events, she is turning back with tears in her eyes and casting a stealthy glance, full of shame, at Truth, who is slowly approaching.”

A documentary of pianist Glenn Gould's 1957 tour of Soviet Russia. Several sections are muted, apparently because of copyright issues. Just perservere - the sound will resume.

I found myself responding to this with a lot of emotion. Gould seems to resonate with the Russian spirit. Something comes across that can't be expressed with words.

Life

Konenko was born in the town of Orsk in the Orenburg region of Russia. His family later relocated to Kazakhstan. Konenko received a degree in technical architecture from The Omsk College of Civil Engineering. In 1982 he graduated from Omsk State Pedagogical University with a degree in graphic design. He has worked as a designer of eye-surgery instruments.[1]

Microminiatures

Grasshopper playing the violin.

Konenko began to create miniature works in 1981. Konenko's works often reference Russian fables and fairy tales; some of his most famous creations include "The Savvy Flea", "The Grasshopper Violinist" and "A Caravan of Camels in the Eye of the Needle".[2] Since 2007, his son has worked with him.

Konenko works in a variety of media, using human hair, poppy seeds, and rice as surfaces.[3] Some of his works include living animals. In 2011, he created a miniature aquarium to house a living tiny fish, complete with a net. It contained just two teaspoons of water, two fish, and some algae.[4] He can shoe a flea.[5]

Miniature books

Konenko has published more than 200 miniature books. His edition of Chekhov's Chameleon, issued in 1996 in Omsk, is printed on paper and includes 30 pages, 3 color illustrations, and a portrait of Chekhov, and measures 0,9 x 0,9 mm. It was published in an edition of 100 and is bound in gold, silver, and leather.[6] Anatoly Konenko has been listed in Guinness Book of Records for creating the book.[7] In 2010 Konenko issued a collection of miniature book volumes of Pushkin, Koltsov, Evtushenko.

• 

  Supermicrobook. Size 0,8 x 0,8 mm.

External links

Media related to Anatoly Konenko at Wikimedia Commons

• Official website
• Prague Museum of Miniatures, which houses some of Konenko's works.

Painting by Carmen Costello Calligraphy by Ari Honarvar

Rumi’s Desert

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other” doesn’t make any sense.

Translated by Coleman Barks

This is one of the most popular Rumi quotes in the west. This translation finds itself recited at wedding ceremonies, when intellectuals have a particularly contentious debate, and in therapists’ offices and meditation halls all over. When I speak of my love of Rumi, a common response is to inquire whether I know this poem.

And to be frank, until recently I hadn’t come across this poem in Farsi. I eventually did some research and found these verses:

از کفر و ز اسلام برون صحرائی است
ما را به میان آن فضا سودائی است
عارف چو بدان رسید سر را بنهد
نه کفر و نه اسلام و نه آنجا جائی است

When I translate these verses, I arrive at a very different place. Not the attractive field where we drop all of our ideas and disagreements into the grass in which we lay and become filled with oneness, but a stark desolate land of disillusionment:

Out beyond wrongdoing and right doing, there is a desert
The desert beckons us as if it were the oasis
We long to hold one another in its lush grass
and drink from the clear spring
The moon whispers in my ear:

I have one foot in that desert
But don’t ask me to meet you there
For in that desert of disillusionment,
just as with right and wrong,
you and I and even oneness
cease to exist.

This poem has brilliantly tapped into both the dissatisfaction and the illusion-conjuring power of the mind. It is as if the poet has gone through different stages of seeking and has found each stage a mirage and unsatisfactory at its core. First, seeking the love of others, becoming dissatisfied, and turning to fame and wealth as salvation. And when that failed too, the seeker turns to spirituality, but that can become a mirage too. In the end, it is the great illusionist of the mind that takes on the challenging feat: To make an illusion of disillusionment.

The desert beckons us as if it were the oasis…

In this verse, Molana Rumi hints at the desperation and longing of a man who has gone through all the stages of seeking and has arrived at the final one. But before entering, non-duality is seen as a state in which one can comfortably take a neutral stance at every happening since, after all in this land, no wrongdoing or right doing exists. This illusion, like all illusions, is a deeply personal one in which we seek and ask God, the universe, and the saints to grant us the winning lottery ticket, making us the chosen one, so through our wealth, insight and in this case enlightenment, we can truly help others. In essence, this illusion is trickle-down economics at its finest, in its most grand and exulted conclusion. In this luxurious land, no hardship of life can touch us and this can only be good because others can only benefit from being in our presence.

The moon whispers in my ear…

Here, Molana Rumi talks of the realized one. In my translations, I use the metaphor of the moon as the witness, the realized one. She knows that in a non-dual state, there is only emptiness. There is no grass, no clear spring and no lovers to be united. It is the greatest disillusionment, naked, unadorned, and devoid of everything, including love.

So if we dare to venture into the barren land of Nothingness as Attar, Rumi’s teacher, wrote about it in the “Seven Valleys of Love”, yes, we must forego the ideas of wrongdoing and right doing. But unlike a personal illusion, this land is the embodiment of the impersonal. There is no family, no friends, no personal comfort, and no You or I. We must abandon everything and everyone we know and love. Still eager for your jaunt into that grassy field?

Here’s a recording of the poem in Farsi

Ari Honarvar

Speaker, performer, refugee advocate | @guardian @washingtonpost and more| The author of Rumi’s Gift and upcoming novel, A Girl Called Rumi rumiwithaview.com

A fascinating optical illusion.

There are two versions of the Sphinx: male and female, most commonly found in ancient Egypt and Greece. The male (Egyptian) sphinx is stately and solemn, not very sexy. The female (Greek) one, instead, has a sex appeal that you can't ignore. Which other half-human creature in mythology is so often associated with naked breasts? Mermaids, harpies, medusas, chimeras, sirens-- they are all females and, occasionally, they are shown sporting human breasts (and, in the case of Hollywood mermaids, bras as well). But the image that we normally have in mind of the Sphinx is clear and consistent: she has these prominent female breasts and, almost always, no bra.

Where does this busty image of the Sphinx come from? For an answer, we must examine the origins of a myth that has been with us for a long time; millennia. Ancient images of winged lions are common all over the Mediterranean and, sometimes, the lion is associated with a Goddess riding it. When the lion’s head is human, we call the creature a sphinx. Sometimes we can recognize the creature as a male sphinx, and sometimes as a female one. But, even in the latter case, we don’t normally see human breasts in these very ancient images.

From Minoan times, back to the 2nd Millennium BC, all the way to classical Greece, we have plenty of paintings or sculptures of sphinxes of all shapes and sizes. Breasts, however, just aren’t there. As an example, on the right we see a Greek sphinx from the Delphi museum (6th Century BC). The same we can say for ancient text sources; we have several mentions of the Sphinx, from Hesiod, (probably 9th Century BC) to Sophocles (5th Century BC) and onwards. It is often said that the creature is female but breasts are never mentioned.

Apparently, however, the image of the Sphinx evolved in time. During the classical Greek, and later Roman, period, breasts started to appear, associated with sphinxes. In some images, we see rows of breasts under the belly, as proper for a lioness, as we see in the image on the left - found on the web (unfortunately without a source attribution), is an example. It is a curious image, almost a comic book one. As befits a Sphinx, this one is literate, she is reading something. She has several breasts a row, but they go all the way to the front of the chest, in a position where no four-legged creature has breasts. And these breasts are plump and nearly spherical, not like animal breasts; more like human female breasts.

In time, it seems that the Classical image of the sphinx evolved in a form that showed just a couple of human-sized breasts. Here, we see a Sphinx (ca. 400 BC) said to have belonged to the private collection of Sigmund Freud himself.

With the decline of the classical world, the Sphinx theme declined from the visual arts, although it never disappeared. Medieval artists loved fantastic beasts, but they didn't seem to be especially interested in sphinxes. However, with the late Renaissance, the classical world burst out again on the art scene and, with it, breasted sphinxes came back with a vengeance. This image on the left, by the Italian mannerist painter Perino del Vaga (ca. 1500-1547) gives us some idea of how things had changed. This sphinx is almost aerodynamic; it almost looks like one of those Detroit cars of the 1960s, (maybe those prominent car bumpers of the time had a sexual meaning!) And, considering the frontal weight, one wonders whether this creature would be able to walk without falling on her… er… face.

With the late Renaissance and early post-Renaissance, there also came a wave of erotic interest in female breasts that had been unknown before. In the 17th Century, women started wearing corsets, to sport deep décolletages, and to flaunt their cleavages to men. Nobody seem to know for sure what caused this change in fashion and in attitudes, but sphinxes seem to have been affected by this evolution, too. From then on, no artist would think to draw or paint a breastless Sphinx.

During the “Neoclassical period”, from late 17th Century onward, female sphinxes became a commonplace decorative element in gardens all over Europe and were referred to as the “French Sphinx”. Sometimes, these creatures don’t look very sensual, at least to our modern eyes. Their body is heavy, more like that of a cow than that of a beast of prey. Their posture is solemn, and their hairdo often a funny mix of what may have been the fashion of the time and what the artist thought it should have been in ancient Greece or in Egypt. But their breasts carry a message: no more the virginal breasts of later Greek art, but full breasts of a mature woman.

Garden Sphinxes. From left: Tivoli Gardens, Roma. Belvedere Gardens, Vienna, Chickwick gardens, London.

The eroticism of the Sphinx in art went up of a couple of notches with the 1800's. The first to start pushing things in this direction was the French painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780-1867). Ingres painted three images of Oedipus and the Sphinx, the last one in 1864. The one on the left was painted in 1825. In all these images, the Sphinx is half-hidden in shadows, but her human breasts are in full light. Note Oedipus’s posture, the height of his face, the position of his hand and finger. All these elements emphasize the Sphinx’s breasts as the central theme of the whole painting.

In the 19th century, the Sphinx, became a favorite theme of the Symbolist school. The Symbolists tended to eroticize everything classical, and the sensual side of the Sphinx – her breasts – was something that they didn’t miss. Their attitude may have had something to do with the moral attitudes of the time. Many Symbolists were English and they lived in Victorian England. So, they tended to react as they could to the official prudery of their times: they couldn't paint naked women, but they could explore the anatomical features of a non-human creature and eroticize them at will. Gustave Moreau (1826-1898) was one of the Symbolists who explored the Sphinx theme in detail. His sphinxes are always shown as human-breasted and strongly sensual.

Some of Moreau’s Sphinxes

In time, the sensuality of the Sphinx literally exploded on the canvas of the artists. On the right, you an see an interpretation by the Belgian symbolist Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921) in a 1896 painting that he entitled “Caresses”. Here, we see how sensual a Sphinx can be, even without prominent human breasts. She is a leopardess, tenderly embracing an ephebic Oedipus. Their expression, their posture, are all details that convey the impression of a seductress, happy with her conquest.

But it was Franz Von Stuck (1863-1928) who best captured the Sphinx's sensuality with this 1895 painting. No trace of lions or leopards, here, no wings and no serpent’s tail. Yet, Von Stuck had no need to write “Sphinx” on the top of his painting to tell us what he was showing. It is perfectly clear that we are looking at the Sphinx, divine seductress. She has gone full cycle, from lioness to woman. She has large eyes, a sensual mouth, well rounded buttocks and, of course, well formed breasts. She is relaxed, dominant, self-assured, and in full flower. Under the Sphinx, we see the parable of human life. In this composition, the Sphinx takes on her proper role of Goddess, dominating the creatures of the Earth.

The fascination of the symbolists with the Sphinx’s myth lasted for about a century and gave us many splendid images. In time, the theme was explored and re-interpreted over and over. In our times, the number of images of the Sphinx is prodigious and the number of variations is beyond all possible attempts of classification. One thing that didn't change, however, was the idea of the “lioness with human breasts.” Sometimes breasts are shown in full, sometimes just hinted at, but they are always there. Here are some examples.

From left: Mark Ellis, Salvador Dali, Selina Fenech, Darren Davy.

At this point, we may ask ourselves what is the whole idea about. Why is the Sphinx always endowed with these prominent frontal objects? Surely, they are not to be intended as overdeveloped flying muscles (as Roy D. Pounds suggested). Several generations of artists couldn’t just have been involved with a mere decorative element, a detail of no significance. These breasts must mean something and the artists who have shown them so often seem to have been able to catch an aspect of the myth that may difficult or impossible to express in words.

From the early studies of Desmond Morris (“the naked ape”, 1967), anthropologists have noted that the shape of human breasts is much different from that of four-legged animals. The idea that has been proposed is that human breasts carry a visual meaning immediate for creatures like us, who interact with each other by standing in front of one another. It may be that prominent breasts signify the health of a woman, her sexual status, her ability of raising children, or something else. In any case, they may be a sexual message aimed at males.

This attitude has genetic origins, but it is surely mediated by cultural factors. We know that the modern Western erotic interest in female breasts is not necessarily shared by other cultures, ancient of contemporary. But our attitude is not unique in human history. For instance, in the sophisticated and complex Minoan art of the second millennium BC, women are shown with exposed, pear-shaped breasts. These Minoan ladies wouldn’t be out of place on the pages of the modern “Playboy” magazine. (Image on the right, from J. Campbell’s “The Masks of God”).

However, the attitude of the Classical world toward female breasts was completely different. In Greek, and in later Roman art, naked female breasts are not uncommon, but they don’t seem to carry a strong sexual message. Breasts appear mainly when there was a logical reason for a woman to be shown naked. That was the case of amazons and athletes, for instance. In other cases, a woman could be caught fully undressed while bathing, but these images were not centered on breasts as an erotic element. Or, an exposed breast could be a sign of distress. This seems to be the case of the piece of statuary known as the “Barberini Suppliant,” that may represent the rape of Cassandra after the fall of Troy. There are other examples of this kind.

A literary glimpse of ancient attitudes towards breasts comes from Pseudo-Lucian’s “Amores” (probably 2nd Century AD). Here, two friends discuss the relative merits of straight and gay love as they pause to admire the statue of Venus in Cnidos. Many facets of human sexuality are explored in considerable detail in this ancient text, but women’s breasts are never mentioned as an object of erotic interest. Even the one of the two characters who expounds straight sex doesn’t seem to find the naked breasts of the goddess particularly exciting. When breasts are mentioned, the sense is much different. So, we are told (41) that women would wear,

“.. thin veils that pass for clothes so as to excuse their apparent nakedness. But everything inside these can be distinguished more clearly than their faces except for their hideously prominent breasts, which they always carry about bound like prisoners.”

Yet, we can say that the ancient Greeks were not indifferent to female breasts, they just saw them differently. We may find a hint of what was their attitude in one of the few surviving fragments of the “Little Iliad” (written a couple of centuries after Homer’s Iliad). Here we read that, after the fall of Troy, Menelaus was ready to kill his wife, Helen, out of revenge. But he cast away his sword when he caught "a glimpse of her breasts, unclad". In our modern view, we would see a woman unveiling herself as passing a sexual message. But we saw that breasts didn’t have a strong erotic meaning for ancient Greeks. So, in showing to Menelaus her breasts, Helen was sending him a quite different message; a message of intimacy. In Euripides (5th Century BC), we hear Helen, captive in Egypt, fondly remembering Menelaus “caressing her breasts”. Breasts that a Greek woman would normally keep “bound like prisoners, ” but that she couldn’t keep hiding while in bed with her husband. So, what Helen was saying to Menelaus with her gesture was, “know who I am: I am your wife.”

In the Iliad, Menelaus was arriving in front of Helen with his sword still dirty of the blood of Deiphobos, Helen’s second Trojan husband. In the myth of the Sphinx, Oedipus was arriving in front of the Sphinx with his sword still dirty of the blood of his father, Laius. These two scenes are eerily similar and, by showing her breasts, the Sphinx was passing to Oedipus the same message that Helen was passing to Menelaus, “know who I am”. When a woman unveils her breasts, she is revealing an intimate part of herself; she is showing herself for what she is.

The Sphinx was opening herself to Oedipus, showing him her intimate essence. What this essence was, can be understood from the riddle she asked him, “what is it that walks on four legs in the morning, on two legs during the day, and on three legs in the evening?” We all know that the standard answer is “man”. But this is a silly answer to a riddle which is not a silly one. Think of a different answer: why not “woman”?

This is not just a question of political correctness: think how the life of a woman is naturally divided into three periods: virgin, mother, and crone. It is a much sharper subdivision than anything that we can relate to a man. And this simple reversal of roles opens up a whole universe. If the riddle hints at the ages of a woman, what the Sphinx was showing to Oedipus was a vision of the triple essence of the Moon Goddess. The moon can be waxing, full, and waning. The Sphinx herself, being of divine nature, had a triple shape: woman, bird, and lioness. These three shapes are the three elements of the female essence: the lion (the strength of a virgin), breasts (motherhood of a mature woman) and wings (the link with the sky: the wisdom of an old woman). (Image on the right, front cover of R. Graves’s “The White Goddess”)

So, Oedipus was presented with a vision of the Female Deity. The Sphinx was offering him nothing less than a sacred initiation to the Goddess’s mystery. As a characteristic of initiations, he would be symbolically “devoured” by the Sphinx, and he would experience death and rebirth. But Oedipus couldn’t understand what was being offered to him. He gave a silly answer, refusing the Sphinx’s offer. Later in the story, Oedipus’s curse was to become blind, but he had started out blind. Blind to the beauty and the power of the triple goddess. Some say that Oedipus actually killed the Sphinx, some that he didn’t touch her, she killed herself. It doesn’t matter; Oedipus’s blindness gave him the power of destroying everything and everyone he came in contact with. When meeting the Sphinx, he had already killed his father and, later on, he would cause the death of Jocasta, his mother and bride. Later still, the death of his daughter Antigone and of his sons was, again indirectly, caused by Oedipus’s actions.

Men are cursed with the power of giving death. Women, instead, have the power of giving life. This is the ultimate meaning of the Sphinx’s breasts. It doesn’t matter if breasts are seen as erotic objects (as they are to us) or as tokens of intimacy between husband and wife (as they were for ancients Greeks). Breasts remain the source of life’s nourishment, the awesome power of the Goddess: Inanna the moon goddess, Tiamat the dragoness, Eurynome, who created the whole universe with her dance.

In our times, the myth of the Sphinx is emerging from the depth of the past millennia to confront us again with Oedipus’s dilemma. The Sphinx is bringing to us a message that goes to the heart of what means to be human, to our relation with everything which is alive around us on this planet. As a Goddess, she is carrying with herself the power of creation and of destruction at the same time. Creation and destruction are the laws of the universe, which will eventually devour us all, no matter what silly answers, in our blindness, we think we can give to its riddles.

Raminder Mulla

In the Hindu tradition, there are four stages to life.

One of learning how to be a citizen, one of householding, where one works and contributes to their community. Then comes retired life in which one starts to withdraw from the world. There then comes a state of renunciation, where one abandons all worldly possessions and spends all their time in spiritual practice.

These stages seem a reasonable way to conduct a life, and honour the flow of nature.

Time and energy are invested in our young, that they may grow into people capable of nourishing and sustaining the world around them as socialised adults. Over time, their power to give reduces, until there is only the self left to give. Even this, will wither in time. This is true of all living things.

Over time, my desire to give, as a householder, has waned. Now I desire retirement and renunciation. My ability to give is leaving me.

Dear Society,

It’s time for us to part. We’ve both changed and I don’t think we can be together anymore. When we first met, you were huge, radiant, so full of promise. I still remember the words you said to me; It didn’t matter that you said them to so many others.

’If you work hard, be kind, and look after others, then life will be good. I will look after you.’

For quite a while, you did and everything was good. I worked hard in our younger days in the hope that all that I learned could be used to for you. So much of it was for you. I even tried to bring some new knowledge into the world, since I thought you’d rather like that. It sounded like you did, but actions speak louder than words, and I could always feel your gaze drifting to that one in the corner with the sharp suit and a tongue to match, who often told you he’d like to chop you up and sell bits of you back to yourself.

I suppose that should have been a red flag.

Why stick around when that’s what you want?

I suppose, I thought I could change you.

I used to think lovers who thought they could change their partner were insane. Perhaps I’m insane myself. I tried to put everything into you once again. Played by your rules and respected your boundaries. You didn’t do the same. This, I can’t forgive. You decided that what I wanted simply didn’t matter, despite our promises.

It’s become all about you. Not about us.

You told me who I could and could not see. I went along with it, after all, your friends told me you were under a lot of stress. That it would only be a few weeks and would really help you. Fine, I suppose we all need to compromise once in a while. Then it started getting really strange. You started talking about amputating bits of yourself and casting them aside. It looked like you already tried, with the many self-inflicted cuts and grazes I saw you with one night.

You said to me: ’My limbs would grow back,’ and that ’they weren’t essential.’ Remember that? Maybe I should have left then, or at least tried to get you some help. Plenty of people make it through such dark thoughts.

Your friends told me that all of this talk of breaking yourself apart was necessary, that you weren’t safe without doing this and would build back better. Ultimately, you hadn’t fallen in on yourself yet. In sickness and in health, after all. I could ignore it for a while. I have my friends too, and while they didn’t all agree on how to deal with you, many of them told me to be patient. Others told me I was being hysterical.

Can never really know what to do, can you? One of the tragedies of our shared life is that the people we both know don’t really want to tell the truth. It’s too much responsibility.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.”
1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Summer came and things calmed down. We could think about a future together, years, decades ahead. You told me you learned from your mistakes. When I asked someone wise about that, he wasn’t so sure.

Winter followed and then you obsessed over yourself again. You muttered the same phrases over and over. Kept asking me where I was going, and what I was doing. You asked me to treat our children as vermin. To stab and suffocate them for you – for your own protection, you said.

Why?

Why, did you keep picking at your scars and scabs, over and over and over again?

Your friends told me that this time, it was my fault. They pointed at me, and called me selfish. Evil. That I ought to get over myself. If I did as I was told, you’d be back to who you once were. How could I be to blame? All I ever did was love you.

Finally came the needles. How often did we lament those we lost along the way to addiction, putting things they had no idea about into themselves in the hope they might escape reality for a few moments? How tragic it was that they resorted to the syringe, the bottle, the pills, the pipe, just to be OK? Why did you think you would escape their fate? Why so many needles into yourself and into your friends too? Why our children?

After all we talked about, why try to drag me into it? Misery needing company?

You told me, if I loved you, I’d take the needle. For a moment there, you had me. I needed you that much. Now, you’ve decided you don’t want anything to do with those who don’t shoot up, I suppose we’re done. We never were a two-way street, were we?

I see you now in the cold light of day, and I don’t know you anymore. You were once strong and kept your promises. You helped me and I helped you. You listened to those who had hard truths to tell and learned from them.

Now, you are withered, starved and addicted. So many pieces of you that once shone are missing. Lost forever. The light has gone from your eyes. You look only for control over others, and use your friends in your games. You hate those who aren’t obsessed by the things you are, the needle, the fear, the self-destruction. You do not know love anymore.

You move towards those who wish you ill more than those who love you. I will not watch you decline a moment longer.

I cannot be here.

Goodbye.

Raminder Mulla is a scientist by trade and training. He is also interested in philosophy and creative expression. More of his work can be found on his website.

Somewhere over the Rainbow, something went terribly wrong... That is the title of my embroidery which you can see at the top of this page. Being a visual artist, I don't often explain my ideas and concepts in detail, leaving interpretations mostly up to the viewer. I found it necessary however to accompany my art with words on this occasion.

I’ve started and finished this post many times. Had friends read over and edit it, took a break to digest, then scrapped half of it. I have tried to replace anger with compassion and, finally, this is the version I feel ready to share with everybody who’d like to read it.

My hope is that this will help you, the reader, the viewer, to understand my conclusions about this subject. And I will tell you them candidly so no mistake can be made in misunderstanding or misrepresenting me.

--

I stumbled across the subject of gender identity ideology somewhat out of the blue about seven months ago and, after some initial research into it, I became really rather alarmed by the rise of accusations of bigotry and hatred aimed towards people who don’t buy into it.

‘It’ being the idea of a gender spectrum and sex as a social construct, rather than a biological reality. An Idea that seems to have gained a rather fanatical following and high visibility via social media over the past few years.

I had also been blissfully unaware of last year’s consultations by the English and Scottish Governments regarding the GRA (Gender Recognition Act) reform in respect of ‘self-ID’ (self identification) and the potential legal and human rights ramifications for women and girls. The implication being that if one can simply self-ID into womanhood, the single-sex protections of the 2010 equality act become completely null and void.

And so the issue has collided with my understanding of feminism and simply by being a feminist or part of certain circles, incorrect assumptions about my political beliefs are being made. With this post I seek to articulate my personal beliefs, so that I can defend and advocate for them.

I feel no animosity towards people who hold different beliefs to me, be they religious, gender identity ideology or any other kind of faith, and I hope you can extend the same courtesy to me.

Terminology

Definitions matter. Respecting people, matters. Criticising bad ideas also matters.

To express my convictions as clearly as possible, I have made a list of key words and their definitions as I understand them to be correct and have used in this essay.

A woman, is an adult human female. (Not an identity or feeling.)

Female is the sex of an organism that produces non-mobile ova (egg cells).

The word female comes from the Latin femella, the diminutive form of femina, meaning "woman". Barring rare medical conditions (DSD or Intersex), female humans have two X chromosomes.

Intersex is not transgender or non-binary. It is a rare medical condition. (Not an identity or a feeling.) In some current arguments Intersex conditions are being used to legitimise the idea of ‘being born in the wrong body’. However, most Intersex individuals do not wish to be included under the ‘trans-umbrella’. The aim of Intersex supporting charities is to demedicalise the condition, whereas Transgender support groups seek to gain easier and ever earlier access to medications and surgeries.

Cis [-gender] is a term invented to describe a person not struggling with their gender identity. Personally, I reject this prefix. Firstly, because I don’t have a ‘gender identity’ (as I do not believe in such a concept), and, secondly, describing me simply as a woman or female will suffice.

Sex is either of the two categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.

It is not ‘assigned’, but rather observed at birth or often already in utero, based on external sex characteristics. Sex (not gender identity) is a protected characteristic under the law.

Humans can not change sex. If we ignore sex, we ignore sexism. This is important, particularly for women, living in sexist societies.

Femininity & masculinity refer to traits or characteristics typically associated with being female or male, respectively. Individuals usually possess both what are considered feminine and masculine attributes to various degrees, regardless of their sex.

Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, femininity and masculinity.

Gender dysphoria (or ‘GD’) is a distressed mental state arising from a conflict between a person's perceived gender identity and the biological sex of the person.

Transwomen are biological males that choose to live as a woman, or believe they actually are women. There are similar examples in other cultures such as the fa'afafine in samoa - literally meaning ‘in the manner of’ (fa’a) ‘woman’ (fafine) - or the Hijra in south asia, as well as ‘Two Spirit’ for Indigenous North Americans, though these are seen as a third gender, rather than as literally the same as the female sex.

Transmen are biological females that choose to live as a man, or believe they actually are men. There are far fewer, in fact barely any examples at all of transmen in other cultures the world over. (Although there has been an enormous, inexplicable steep increase of young women being referred to gender clinics in the western world over the past decade.)

Non-binary is a term used by people who believe that gender is a spectrum rather than a binary, and states that they fall anywhere on this spectrum, or even ‘outside’ of the male-female dichotomy (I am still curious to know what ‘outside’ means).

Though I know some wonderful people who have come to embrace and re-define themselves by these terms and this ideology, I struggle with it for many reasons.

I struggle with this need to further categorise people into boxes: non-binary, a-gender, pan-gender, genderqueer, genderfluid, demiboy, demigirl etc. Instead of freeing us from the constrictions of socially imposed stereotypes this new system of categorising people actually imposes yet more new ones.

You are a butch girl? Must be non-binary. Feminine boy? Non-binary, or maybe trans. There appears to be no room for masculinity in women and femininity in men, and I don't find that very progressive.

How are any of these new labels any different to terms used to describe ‘character’, ‘personality’ and ‘expression’?

The proposition that people who don’t call themselves non-binary are any less on a spectrum between feminine and masculine traits seems entirely strange to me. I don’t know anybody who is a hundred percent male or female in their expression. I don’t even think its possible.

Furthermore, the idea that to be described as cis is to be treated as being privileged seems completely misplaced. Especially when talking about biological females who cannot simply identify out of oppression precisely because they are female (which is not an identity or feeling).

To hold these definitions and beliefs now often gets pejoratively called “biological essentialism”, as well as mean and hurtful.

None of the previous is intended as, or even just 'is', unkind or judgemental towards anybody, let alone mean.

The immutable biological qualities of females and males should not and do not determine or dictate whether or not you can create and design your own life as you wish. Feminists have argued this for a very long time.

But I really struggle with the increasing demands of having to validate somebody's idea of themselves, which is solely based on subjective feelings rather than objective realities.

It strikes me as a bad idea to demand others to bend or discard the facts of biological science, in favour of unjustified imposed mantras such as “transwomen are women”.

I have no issue with somebody who feels more comfortable expressing themselves as if they are the other sex (or in whatever way they please for that matter). However, I can not accept people’s unsubstantiated assertions that they are in fact the opposite sex to when they were born and deserve to be extended the same rights as if they were born as such. And I do not believe that these beliefs should override existing protections that are in place as a result of the biological realities of women, since their purpose is to relieve oppression based on women’s physicalities and reproductive functions (not identity or feelings).

Feelings don’t have human rights. Humans do.

I am also completely at a loss over Stonewall’s (the LGBTQ lobby group) updated description of transgender, seeing that, by their logic, almost anybody would fall under this category, including those that don’t identify as trans.

screenshot of Stonewall website

How is it acceptable for one group to self-identify (such as trans, non-binary, queer etc.) while also denying that right to others, when people (such as myself) do not accept the label cis?

“That includes people who do not self-identify as transgender, but who are perceived as such by others…”

How is it okay for an organisation in Stonewall’s position to categorise somebody as transgender, even if that person doesn’t do so themselves?

The Doctrine

The whole concept of gender identity shifts the onus onto everybody else, rather than being the responsibility of the self.

One is now kindly asked to play along with the Ideology of Gender Identity in the form of an ever growing list of new pronouns, identities and the validation of nebulous ‘facts’, or else be seen and labelled as hateful and bigotted.

It is an ideology because it is rooted in faith. A faith that I do not share. Let me explain.

The Ideology of Gender Identity doctrine (as I understand it and gathered from social media and personal conversations with proponents) is as follows:

• Transwomen literally are women, transmen literally are men. (They have simply been assigned the wrong sex at birth. So a transwoman’s penis is therefore a female sexual organ, and vice versa for transmen and their vaginas)

• Non-binary people exist and are ‘valid’ (this is an often repeated mantra)

• The dictionary definition of ‘woman’ (“an adult human female”) is ‘problematic’ and transphobic

• Biology is transphobic and exclusionary

• Men can get pregnant and give birth

• Women can ejaculate sperm and fertilise eggs

• There are no physical advantages for transwomen over cis-women in sport

• Allowing people to self-ID will have no impact on women’s rights in any way. The loopholes that would be created for predatory men to take advantage of are a figment of hateful and bigoted women’s imaginations. (Men never go to great lengths to access vulnerable women and being a member of a marginalised group automatically precludes anyone in it from wanting to do harm to others)

• Gender Identity is an inherent immutable quality that everybody has and only oneself can determine (unless Stonewall dictates otherwise). If one doesn’t have it, one gets assigned the label cis

• Gender Identity can be fluid, meaning one day you can feel like a woman, another day like a man, and another day like neither. (None of this will create any issues for accurate data collection to tackle gender inequalities)

• ‘Woman’ is an identity or feeling rather than biological observable reality. ‘Man’ is an identity or feeling rather than biological observable reality. Therefore anybody should freely be able to access the services, changing rooms, toilets, sports teams, grants and shortlists, shelters and prison services that best correspond with their chosen gender, not sex. This won’t create any issues, because transpeople are literally the sex they say they are, and non-binary people can choose what suits them best

• Sex is a social construct that is arbitrarily assigned at birth

• Sex and gender are a spectrum

• Same sex attraction is trans-exclusionary

• Sexual attraction is based on socially constructed biases. Humans are attracted to genders, not to sex (alternatively, you are a vagina or penis fetishist and therefore transphobic)

• Transwomen who fancy women are lesbians

• Transmen who fancy men are gay

• Lesbians that don’t consider transwomen with a penis as a partner, are problematic and transphobic

• Misgendering is actual, literal violence

• Dead-naming (using a previous name of a person who has since changed their gender and name) is actual, literal violence

• Cis people have cis-privilege

• Transwomen are the most marginalised of all women

• Anybody who disagrees with any of these points, is a TERF - Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist

• TERF’s are fascists and deserve to be hurt

• TERF’s are part of (or are funded by) the alt right

• TERF’s are not feminists

• Women who have concerns about sharing spaces and services designed for biological females, are actually, literally transphobic, exclusionary and elitist about the label women and are only hiding behind ‘concerns’ so that people can’t see how biggoted they really are. They don’t want transwomen to be part of their exclusive club

• Anybody who disagrees with any of these points is a transphobe who actually literally hates transpeople, and denies their existence

• To question any of these points is actual, literal violence, as questioning would erase somebody's existence

• No Debate!

I believe that is most of it but please correct me if I forgot something or misrepresented the doctrine in any way. This is my genuine attempt to rationalise and understand the code of belief.

The crux

I disagree with pretty much every single point of this doctrine. The conclusion of which for followers of the doctrine would be that I hate trans- and non-binary people. (I do not.)

That I am a narrow minded bigot. (I am not.)

That I am a facist; as bad as a Nazi; Tansphobic cis-scum; and deserve what’s coming my way if I don’t change my beliefs. (If twitter and other social media sites and their users are to be believed.)

Please, make your own conclusions.

But none of this will lead me to forgo and forget my human rights to assert my own personal boundaries and beliefs, without being ‘othered’ or name-called for doing so.

None of it stops me from worrying about what this entire reconstruction of words and meanings does for girls’ and women’s rights in particular.

None of it makes me worry less about the future of women's sports, because transwomen have an undeniable, proven physical advantage even after transitioning and hormone therapy. (There are obvious reasons for sex seggregation in sports, namely male physical advantage, which doesn’t go away with hormone treatment!)

None of it will stop me from worrying about the impact that normalising and validating the idea of being “born in the wrong body” has on young children and adolescents, who are being put on life-long medical paths and often rendered infertile due to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery due to this ideology.

And none of it will stop me from speaking out about this publicly, even though it may be detrimental to my opportunities as an artist, as well as some personal relationships.

It is not my intention to upset or limit the freedoms of friends, acquaintances or even strangers, nor do I wish to be ostracised, but I can not and will not compromise my artistic and personal integrity, in service of an oppressive and, increasingly, actually violent, dogmatic ideology.

When Ideas escalate

It’s clear that emotions run high and tribalism runs deep. And I find myself unable to go along with what now seems to be the only accepted narrative in ‘my circles’.

I find it quite concerning and, frankly, manipulative to read with increasing regularity of ‘gentle reminders’, or the insistence on ‘inclusive’ (or as I like to call it ‘reductive and dehumanising’) language.

The word women is replaced by ‘uterus-carriers’, ‘menstruators’, ‘vulva- havers’, ‘chest feeders’ and the absolute top-of-the-pops on my No Fucking Way list: ’NON-MEN’ (I wish that was a joke.)

It is uncannily reminiscent of black women’s history, when female slaves were dehumanised as ‘breeders’, or today’s billion dollar surrogate industry in India, where vulnerable women are literally used as incubators and called ‘carriers’.

I virtually never see anybody advocating for men, and transwomen by extension, to now be called ‘penis owner’, ‘people with penises’ or ‘prostate carrier’ and ‘ejaculator’ in the name of inclusion.

And here’s the rub: this entire issue is overwhelmingly asymmetric against one sex class.

A vocal British trans-rights advocate, born male, proclaimed that ‘centring’ reproductive systems (i.e. pussy hats, Big Swinging Ovaries accessories etc) at a women’s march is reductive and exclusionary (because transwomen do not have pussies or ovaries).

I disagree.

Women ‘centering’ and celebrating our reproductive organs is not only our right but, speaking as a woman myself, it is a way of reclaiming agency over body parts that are being legislated and shamed virtually everywhere in the world (for recent examples, see international abortion laws and Period shaming, though there are plenty more).

Meanwhile, T-shirts are being worn that say “Fuck TERFS”, “I punch TERFS” and even “KILL THE TERF”. Baseball bats and hammers adorned with the trans flag colours and signs saying “Fuck your pussy power” and “ DIE CIS SCUM” are being proudly waved around by proponents of the doctrine at those same women’s marches and pride parades.

These are predominantly groups of biological males threatening actual violence against women, with weapons.

There was even an exhibition of these paraphernalia at the San Francisco Public Library (you can check that out here).

It is unsettling to me that this has not only become acceptable but quite commonplace under the protective banner of the rainbow flag. What has gone wrong?

Lesbians are being told that - by new definitions - not considering a transwoman (who may still have a penis) as a potential partner is transphobic and exclusionary. Workshops are being run by organisations, such as Planned Parenthood, on “how to overcome the cotton ceiling”, a play on women breaking the glass ceiling, referring to the cotton of a lesbian woman’s underwear...

The “Degenerettes” have supplied me with ample inspiration for my embroidery, and their ‘activism’ seems by no means unusual anymore.

I find it disturbing and disturbed.

Transitioning children

This is another issue I am incredibly alarmed by.

I grew up with many gay and lesbian friends, and they all had one thing in common: adolescence was a bitch.

Now, that is a statement true for most of us, particularly those that behave and present in unconventional ways but for kids that grow up to be homosexual it’s particularly tough in a world that is still quite homophobic. Most only came to terms with and started to feel more comfortable within themselves around their mid to late 20’s. Some struggled for much longer still.

Gender Identity Ideology, suggests that kids who say they are the other gender or express themselves in stereotypical ways normally ascribed to the opposite sex are probably trans. There is no acknowledgement that adolescence is an awkward and very confusing time for all, and to question who you are and where you fit in society is part and parcel of it.

But the speed with which we as a society have embraced the ‘born in the wrong body’ narrative really scares me.

I believe it is the responsibility of adults to support children through the challenges of puberty, with love, understanding, acceptance and an approach of watchful waiting.

Instead some adults are now being pressured to unquestioningly accept the idea that a gender questioning child may have been ‘born in the wrong body’. Other parents are actively facilitating the wishes of a minor, who has no way of understanding the long term implications of things like puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery.

A child who isn’t yet fully sexually developed, may very well wonder about who they are. Particularly if presented with ideas that conflict with common knoweledge, such as: it is actually possible to change sex through medical and surgical intervention, and; there is actually no need to change sex because you are the gender, and by extension, the sex that you feel you are. Sex is but an illusion and all that matters is your identity.

According to peer reviewed studies, in 80% of children who meet the criteria for GDC (gender dysphoria in childhood) the GD recedes with puberty. Rather, many of these adolescents will later identify as non-heterosexual.

There will be those for whom GD persists after puberty and it is paramount to help these individuals to gain easier access to psychological assistance.

But to downplay the long term effects of those medications and surgeries on young children, as many trans activists and proponents of the doctrine are, doesn’t seem kind to me at all. Physical changes during childhood can be irreversible as it is a crucial phase of development, especially in regard of the development of sex characteristics during adolescence.

Nowadays, many kids, particularly those that feel they don’t fit in with larger society, find refuge in online forums like Tumblr, reddit and other such online communities.

The social incentive for some to adopt new identities seems understandably enticing, but can also add to the feelings of discontent as well as dysphoria, according to many accounts of young people who had been part of these online groups and eventually fell out of them.

Benjamin A Boyce has a youtube channel that is a mix of investigative journalism, cultural criticism, and interviews. He has an ongoing series of interviews in which he speaks to transpeople (young and old), de-transitioners, psychologists and sexologists about many of the above mentioned concerns. Those interviews are very respectful, inquisitive and enlightening, and I absolutely recommend them to anybody who is interested. Here is the link.

Furthermore, a fantastic summary of current evidence in the treatment of gender dysphoric children and young people can be found here .

Misplaced compassion

I can see how the origins of this postmodern line of thinking arose from compassion towards people suffering from gender dysphoria who are struggling to come to terms with themselves in an environment that imposes traditional social gender roles on us from birth.

Trans and gender non-comforming individuals often face discrimination, stigmatisation and violence, and also have to deal with a myriad of other mental and physical health issues.

I genuinely feel deeply compassionate towards anybody who experiences any kind of internal struggle, and I believe that better access to, in particular, mental healthcare for people suffering from GD is paramount.

However, none of those reasons convince me to embrace the total denial of epistemological, objective scientific facts, which is a base requirement of this doctrine and a dangerous precedent.

For someone suffering severe depression who has suicidal ideation the compassionate and responsible medical response is not to facilitate their suicide. To promote such a response would be outrageous and illegal.

The same is true for other types of dysphoria such as apotemnophilia or body integrity dysphoria; a rare, infrequently studied condition in which there is a mismatch between the mental body image and the physical body (sound familiar?) characterised by an intense desire for amputation of one or more limbs, or to become blind or deaf. This fixation also often starts in early childhood or adolescence.

As a society, we try to help our fellow individuals. If their body causes them distress or they feel that they would be ‘complete’ if they were arm- or legless, we would not do that by cutting off healthy limbs or making them blind but by trying to find ways to alleviate the reasons for the dysphoria.

Similarly, for someone suffering GD who has the ideation that they must transition to resolve their anguish, I struggle to see how the compassionate and responsible response is the facilitation of the surgical removal of their healthy penis, breasts or ovaries and the ingestion of hormones (which will bring with them numerous future health problems). All without the guarantee of curing their dysphoria.

This should illicit equally as much concern as the others and yet we as a society seem to have embraced the ‘born in the wrong body’ tale fully.

Please watch this documentary and/or read this essay about body integrity dysphoria and explain to me if you can what the difference to gender dysphoria is, because I can not see it. Aside from one being fitted with a narrative and normalised in society, while the other remains ethically difficult and controversial.

A little perspective...

For those that don’t know me personally here’s a little introduction, which perhaps will help you understand why I couldn’t help but write this piece and stitch this embroidery.

While I have lived in London now for 15 years, I originally grew up in East Berlin, as it was until the wall came down in ’89 and Germany was reunified. This opened doors to six-year-little-old-me I never could have imagined, simply because I was unaware of the prison-like restrictions this wall and the communist state had inflicted on my life and that of everybody around me until that point.

The pre-school art folder I still possess is filled with red communist flags, peace doves and DDR (German Democratic Republic) flags crafted from paper cutouts, penciled illustrations and paint. Next to them, a childish drawing of three little girls holding hands: one white, one brown, one yellow; because under communism ‘everybody is equal’.

On face value, some aspects of East Germany seemed almost progressive, for women’s emancipation in particular. Retrospectively, it makes sense that neither of my grandmothers (both endured the Second World War and are still alive) nor my mother or aunties, all of whom spent their formative years trapped the east side of the Berlin Wall, would consider themselves a feminist, and yet I very much do.

I am from the weird in-between generation. I can still remember having to be cautious about what we would say and to whom. Even your closest friends, or so we were told, could turn out to be working for the Stasi, the East German State Security Service, which has been described as one of the most effective and repressive intelligence and secret police agencies ever to have existed.

Everyone may have been ‘equal’ but we certainly weren’t free to think and do what we wanted.

Certain TV programs from ‘The West’ were off limits, as was anything not in the ‘communist spirit’. If you were found to be guilty of ‘wrong think’, the consequences could be grave, including prison sentences or worse.

(If you know little of East Germany, I highly recommend watching “The Lives of Others” and “Goodbye Lenin”, both incredible films that will give you a good taste of what life was like then.)

The idea of ’wrong think’ is something that has, worryingly, returned to many aspects of the political spectrum and public discourse. And its increasing prevalence scares the shit out of me, frankly.

Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

Another important piece to my story is my father, who I have always been very close to. He is what can only be described as gender non-conforming, as you can see in the pictures below (which he has allowed me to use for the purpose of this essay). I want to talk about him to give context to my words and how close to home this feels to me.

My dad’s un-inhibited expression has always been a source of pride but also worry for me. I am all too aware that we live in a narrow-minded world that often fervently attempts to ostracise the ‘other’. Some individuals feel it’s acceptable to physically or verbally assault people who do not conform to their idea of ‘normal’. It should go without saying: this is wrong.

I abhor it and will speak out against such prejudices on behalf of everybody that wishes to express themselves outside of our social norms.

I have defended my father and every gender-non conforming person’s right to express themselves freely without fear of violence or discrimination, and have stood up against prejudiced individuals’ ideas of how people should dress and express themselves ‘appropriately’, and I continue to do so.

WIth everything said, I am genuinely deeply worried.

I worry that we have increasingly become a society where valid concerns regarding women’s rights, children's safeguarding and freedom of speech, are being classed as hate speech to stop any debate from happening.

I worry because this notion of ‘wrong think’ and wrong speak’ feels eerily reminiscent of my east german childhood, and that’s actually quite terrifying.

I worry because we should be having nuanced and respectful discussions about how to progress and make life more equal and fair for everybody: how to create more single sex as well as mixed sex facilities and shelters; how to create new trans shortlists in addition to women’s shortlists in political parties, scholarships and the like; how to create a level playing field in sports allowing individuals of all abilities and backgrounds to compete.

How can we support gender questioning children, without neglecting our safeguarding duties and condemning them to an often irreversible medical pathway for life?

Instead, this ideology, which is predominantly rooted in Queer theory and wishful thinking, surrounded by a potent dose of misogyny, homophobia and often also ageism, leaves no room for any debate at all.

Women and transpeople are both marginalised groups within society, and we need to find solutions for both of those groups, without overriding existing rights of women.

I worry because I fear that in the current political climate, and with the rise of populism internationally, women and transpeople will both lose out big time if we continue on this path.

Which begs the question: who really benefits from an imploding liberal and feminist movement?

It isn’t us.

Translated by Steven J. Willett

This is a black-figure terracotta pinax (plaque) from the 2nd half of the 6th-century BC. It has holes for hanging in a temple and depicts a prothesis scene, the lying-in-state of the deceased surrounded by the mourning families. Some of them are tearing their hair while others are gesticulating wildly in despair.

Infinite was, o man, the time before, until to light
you came, and infinite again to Hades.
What share of life is left remaining, either great as
a spot or even tinier than a spot?
A small harshly-straitened life is yours; for it never
is sweet, but sullen more than hated death.
Men carefully wrought from such a collection of bones
enframed, why fly to highest air and clouds?
O man, see how useless, when at the peak of thread
a worm is sitting on unwoven vesture:
it plucked so much, stripped so bare a skeleton leaf,
more hateful than a spider’s withered web.
From every dawn seek, O man, your breadth of strength,
and learn to slouch quite low in frugal life.
Always remember deep in thought so long as you dwell
among the living, you are framed from stubble.

Written by Albert Einstein at the invitation of a German magazine, 1921:

What Artistic and Scientific Experience Have in Common

Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking, and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science. If what is seen and experienced is portrayed in the language of logic, we are engaged in science. If it is communicated through forms whose connections are not accessible to the conscious mind but are recognized intuitively as meaningful, then we are engaged in art. Common to both is the loving devotion to that which transcends personal concerns and volition.

(From Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, eds., Albert Einstein, the Human Side: New Glimpses From His Archives, 1979.)

In a stone den was a poet Mr Shi, who loved eating lions and determined to eat ten. He often went to the market to watch lions. One day at ten o'clock, ten lions just arrived at the market. At that time, Mr Shi just arrived at the market too. Seeing those ten lions, he killed them with arrows. He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den. The stone den was damp. He had his servant wiping it. The stone den being wiped, only then did he try to eat those ten lions. While eating, he just realised that those ten lions were in fact ten stone-lion corpses. Try to explain this.

People go to art through pain, what made you write? Where did so much power come from? What has shaken you in your life?

“It’s probably more about adults after all. For me, creativity is about sharing joy, or at least hope. Of course, the stories themselves can be sad in their own way, but that’s exactly what I want to give people – hope for the best. I’ve never really thought about my powers, to be honest. I think there are a lot of things that help you keep going, even if you are ready to give up and stop.”

What do you want to say with your creativity and to those it reaches?

“You are probably right, people really go to art through pain, but I was pushed to this by someone else’s pain. I love it when people smile, and now smiles on the faces of passers-by are rare. Everyone goes about their own business, everyone is in a hurry somewhere, worried about something and forget about the moments. Since childhood, my mother, brother, and I tried to watch the sunset every evening. It is clear that there is not always the time, desire, suitable weather, and many more things – some important and some not so much. But each such sunset is unique, it will not happen again and it is worthy of a smile. This, I think, and my stories are a reminder that it is easy to frown or be upset, but do not forget that this is not the most important thing in life and there are many other things that are bright and inspiring. And even if everything falls out of hand, you can try to find the strength to fix everything. That’s why I can’t say that I write only for children or only for adults.”

How does war change people, and why? What does it reveal in people?

“It’s a complex issue. All people are different, so they probably change in different ways. In 2018, the Gorky library hosted an exhibition of works by student artists dedicated to the war in Donbass. I was at this exhibition with my brother and mother. What I remember most of all that day is not even the paintings themselves, but the moment when my mother, standing at one of the works, burst into tears. For the first time in years. And I just stood there and didn’t know what to say or do. I still don’t know. I think that war reveals in people not some feeling or quality, but the soul. In ordinary life, it is somewhere inside and is safe, but here, in war, it’s another life and another world, even if it is a little bit like the usual one for everyone. Here the soul is not hidden, here it is outside and protects the person, but becomes defenceless itself. I think that’s why people in war are capable of both strong actions and at the same time are so fragile.”

What do you think about people on the other side [living on Ukrainian-controlled territory – ed]? What are they?

“People are the same everywhere, aren’t they? They are not changed by imaginary boundaries, but by beliefs. And after that, the imaginary division becomes real, bringing misunderstanding and hostility. I don’t hate them. I just want adults to understand what their decisions lead to and learn to take responsibility for it. It doesn’t seem fair. At 11 years old, I am taught that I can do whatever I want, but I am also responsible for my own actions, and I do not run to my parents with accusations and screaming for help every time I mess up. And some adults can’t even admit their mistakes, let alone correct them.”

You have very good stories and work. Where do you find kindness?

“In a special store☺ I try to see it in the world around me, in the way I like it. But I realised that any creativity is not only what you create, but also what others see in it. So it’s a little strange: sometimes people almost completely change the meaning of what they read, adjusting everything to themselves, finding something completely new. In fact, it is very interesting and allows you to understand what kind of person you are looking at. It turns out that my fairy tales are not so much my thoughts and moods as they are the thoughts and moods of the reader. Unless, perhaps, for some reason they are hidden from others and almost forgotten.”

Which people do you like and which do you not like? Do you feel good and false people?

“I love my loved ones, and I’m just trying to be nice to the rest of them. Towards all. It is clear that so far I am often mistaken about people. To understand and feel who is in front of you, you can only communicate with a person. I have a friend who always keeps his promises and has not deceived me once, even in small things. But there are not many people who are responsible for their words. I also don’t like being flattered. This is not only unfair, but also does not allow you to see and correct your mistakes in time, if there are any.”

If you had one wish, what would it be?

“Well, it’s not fair, even the golden one fulfilled three wishes☺ Of course, so that the war would end faster. Sergey Galanin, whom I recently met on Facebook, has a song called ‘Paradise’ and there’s a line: ‘Once again, paradise is full of children – they are responsible for adults.’ I would like it so that every time adults make decisions, they remember these lines.”

Do you think art can reconcile people and end the war?

“I said earlier that art is what people want to see. I’m afraid no art of reconciliation can help. Creativity can change and make peace only if people themselves want to change and come to peace with someone. It can become something that will give you the strength and confidence to take the first step on this path, I consider it a magic kick to give yourself acceleration. But if a person does not want to go, then art will not change anything.”

Do you want to come to Kiev and walk around the city?

“Yeah, sure, I like to travel. I have read a lot about Kiev and would like to see it in-person, because it is a completely different feeling to read about something and really see it in real life, and not in your own imagination. But I’m afraid it won’t be for a long time. Because of my participation in the festival ‘Stars over Donbass’ I am not sure that I can come to Kiev without problems. At least, adult participants of the festival were definitely included in the list of ‘Mirotvorets‘, I don’t know about myself.”

Do you think that people who want war or are indifferent to it are capable of good art?

“To be honest, I don’t know what is good or bad art and who decides. Art is about personal experiences and thoughts, right? Therefore, everyone determines for themselves what is good and what is bad, and it turns out that it is not just a matter of political beliefs. If the word ‘good’ meant ‘fine’, then it is unlikely. If a person wants someone to die, and war is death, then it is unlikely that this person can be called good and what they do will show their hatred for others or hypocrisy in some cases. Although, I think there are many who will not see anything wrong with this.”

Where would you most like to visit and with whom?

_“I like to travel, so I would like to go everywhere. I would like to go to the Russian city of Rybinsk, where my friend, the wonderful musician Mitya Kuznetsov, lives. Yes, many places. A friend of my mother, whom we have not seen for a long time, because she can not come to us, and we to her, lives in Berdyansk. The world itself is so huge and everywhere you can find something interesting. Even your hometown, which you seem to know like the back of your hand, can sometimes be a great surprise if you go to the local history museum. Of course, traveling is best with those you love. For me, it’s family.”_

You have so many adult friends, but do you have friends of your own age?

“Yes, I’m an ordinary person. I have classmates, some of whom I am friends with. Friends in training, with whom you hug after every fight on the taekwondo mat, because you can not mix a confrontation in sports and real life. We are rivals only in battle, but not enemies in life. On the Internet, I often communicate with my peers/friends from other cities.”

What do you want to say to the Ukrainians who are on the other side of the demarcation line?

“I do not like to divide people into ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘those’ and ‘these’. Perhaps I would like to wish for peace rather than say so much. For all of us. And happiness.”

If you were speaking at the UN, what would you say to the world?

“I don’t think they’ll let me in there. But if this suddenly happened, I would not blame anyone, but would ask them to end this whole nightmare in Donbass.”

What is the most important thing in this life? What do you think?

“Oh, I’ve never even been asked about that, except in social studies. For me, this is family, the ability to be yourself, the ability to hear others. Everyone decides what is important to them. That’s right! The most important thing is to be able to decide for yourself what is important to you and what is not.”

LPR Resident Faina Savenkova: As Long as the Story Is Told, the World Lives in Hope

“Alive”: War in Donbass as Told by an 11-Year-Old Girl

Interview conducted by Denis Zharkikh

Restoration of the automatons of Pierre and Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, the Writer, the Draughtsman and the Musician, by Thierry and Grégory Amstutz, Auvernier, Switzerland

In honor of Thanksgiving Day, I present the following poetastrical pamperistrophe, composed several years ago by its own author, myself namely.

Why You Shouldn’t Eat an Elephant

You shouldn’t eat an elephant
Because they’re so intelligent.
You might think that’s irrelevant,
But I would disagree.

Besides, it’s hard to sell events
Involving eating elephants,
And you would need a swell of friends,
To help you eat an elephant,
And (anyone can tell) offense
Would spread to other elephants,
Who then would come and fell the fence
Encompassing the tenements
Wherein their brother elephants,
Are being topped with condiments
And entering the alimentary
canals
Of denizens of elephantophagial settlements!
Oh, gee!

Now you might say, “Oh, hell! If ants
And flies can eat an elephant
That naturally fell (events
Conspiring to return him to his elements)
Why shouldn’t we?

But please don’t eat an elephant.
It will be just as well; it’s anti-
Elephantic sentiment
To persecute the elephant,
And manifests the contra-pachydermal temperament,
That’s prevalant
Among the cruel consumers of the elephant.
You see?

I hope I’ve spoken well. If any
Body else can tell if any
Better words could quell events
Malignant to the elephants,
Please contact me.