Okay, so. It goes something like this. I read a passage that catches me by the collar and insists I read it again, and then a few more agains, because I know there's something there that I want. For example, consider Ishmael's contemplations in final 3-4 paragraphs of chapter 96 of Moby-Dick, "The Try-Works." (I'll mix it up while I write about it, so go check Melville for the original.)
There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.Wisdom is too hard to come by for it to be popular. And if Melville's Ishmael is right that wisdom dwells with woe, albeit not to the extreme, that's an even more serious blow against it. And if it is also true that wisdom comes with age and experience, then there's no market for it at all in large segments of the population. Most of us do not want to work hard, let alone suffer, for something so nebulous as wisdom, nor do we want to reflect too much upon the sorrows in our world, nor do we want to either (a) learn patiently as wisdom unfolds for us, or (b) even acknowledge we are aging at all. I fuss over signs of age much more than I contemplate what I have learned of life, and as I write this I discover that I almost never anticipate what stores of wisdom may be in my future. Let me put aside the wrinkle cream and contemplate more of Melville:
Look not too long in the face of the fire, . . . believe not the artificial fire, when its redness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun, the skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking flames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the glorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp - all others but liars!Here we find some cheerfulness in the form of conventional wisdom: ghastliness is illusory, almost an hallucination brought on by staring into hell, and when the "true lamp" (as opposed to the "artificial fire") brings light, things won't look so bad after all. Silver linings! Light at the end of tunnels! Calm after storms! Very good. Except that conventional wisdom is incomplete. Ishmael won't rest on the comforting thought:
Nevertheless the sun hides not the millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true - not true, or undeveloped.Setting aside fantastical fears and horrors, and considering the world from a well-lighted place, the truth is that sorrow outweighs joy. If I don't accept and understand that, I am either deluding myself or simply haven't grown up enough. To take Melville's math literally, we still have one part joy to two parts sorrow. "There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness." To see nothing but the woe, that way madness lies. But read again: "Millions of miles of deserts and of griefs beneath the moon." A beautiful sentence. Beauty itself wherever we find it, simply because it is, balances some of the pain. At least for me it does.
I see here two paths of error, and I have tested out the sunny one quite thoroughly, and the shady one just a bit. One is to walk always on the bright side of the street, shielding myself from painful realities with some one of the fixes readily available in the marketplace of easy ideas. I could be, in Ishmael's words, "he who dodges hospitals and jails, and walks fast crossing grave-yards, and would rather talk of operas than hell." But then, I think, it is almost as easy to veer off into the dark alleyways, convinced that pain is the beginning, middle, and end of life, that joy is the illusion, suffering the reality, cynicism the opiate. There, instead of being falsely optimistic, you can be falsely pessimistic. Cornel West has said that Optimism and Pessimism are two sides of the same coin, and that the whole coin should be rejected, and replaced with Hope. I frowned when I first read that, being mostly inclined to optimism, but then the wisdom of it struck me.
Ishmael says, as with people, so with books: "The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. 'All is vanity'. ALL." A book with more joy than sorrow is not a true book, or so Ishmael says. And yet, it follows from his argument, a book that is all sorrow is not a true book either.
Now I wonder. Is all this wrestling with ideas about woe and joy a luxury for the privileged? For people like me, with a good education, a minimum of suffering, a good job, leisure to read, think, and write? What if, instead, you're trapped in the darkness of intense woe and physical suffering? What happens then to the life of the mind?
And at this point in my questions I find Dostoevsky, living in a grim reality between imminent execution and years of exile. At the last moment, his death sentence was commuted to "four years of hard labor, and after that to serve as a private." The same day, he wrote a letter to his brother that conveys his sorrow at being separated from family and friends, his affirmation of life, and his grief and fear of being deprived of the means to write: "Can it indeed be that I shall never take a pen into my hands? If I am not allowed to write, I shall perish. Better fifteen years of prison with a pen in my hands!" But here is someone with "a Catskill eagle" in his soul, one who can "alike dive down into the blackest gorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny spaces." Even at his "lowest swoop," a soul like his is still "higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar." There is a person who is fitted, Ishmael would say, "to sit down on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably wondrous Solomon."
"Do remember," Dostoevsky urges his brother, "that hope has not deserted me":
I have not become downhearted or low-spirited. Life is everywhere life, life in ourselves, not in what is outside us. . . . Not to be downhearted or to fall in whatever misfortunes may befall me--this is life; this is the task of life. . . . The head which was creating, living with the highest life of art, which had realized and grown used to the highest needs of the spirit, that head has already been cut off from my shoulders. . . . But there remains in me my heart, and the same flesh and blood which can also love, and suffer, and desire, and remember, and this, after all, is life.I could learn all sorts of things about wisdom by reading, and by thinking, and by writing things down, because looking at my own words always helps me understand myself and my ideas better. But unless that awareness moves from intellectual appreciation to lived experience, I am no wiser than I began. Ishmael's meditation on wisdom and woe was triggered by his alarm at discovering he was looking backwards and in imminent danger of steering the ship into disaster. Best not look backwards too much.
Okay. So it goes something like that. I've left out lots, like thoughts about the etymologies of "wisdom" and of "woe." Like a web browsing session to discover whether the concept of "wisdom" even appears in the daily news. (I found no politicians running a wisdom platform, and the closest reference was to "pearls of wisdom" dispensed by Barbara Billingsley in the character of June Cleaver.) Like a re-reading of "the fine hammered steel of woe [Ecclesiastes]." Like a Google search for "Wisdom for Dummies" (which turned up a good article from the Utne Reader that said much of what I started to say myself but ended up leaving out altogether.) After my brain has gotten some rest, off I go again. The word "hope," echoing here and there, has grabbed me by the collar and demands further attention.
That is my view from where I now stand, at end of the blog and the threshold of whatever comes next.
