There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. --Melville

I've been reading Melville, and I've been reading Dostoevsky, and I've been stretching my mind on its tiptoes trying to grasp some fragments of their wisdom. The exercise is exhausting, but in a good way. It is humbling, but in a vital way. It is thinking that does not come, like every novel must, to a finis. It's more like Infinites--a journey limited only by my intellectual scope and mental endurance. Please understand: I like this kind of thing the way some people claim to like running marathons.

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.

An Appeal to Grammar Snipers

Call me English Teacher.* Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me after graduation, I thought I would teach first year composition a little and see the educational world from the other side of the desk. Since making that first voyage, I have never ceased to teach writing in addition to whatever else I am doing. Year upon year I have devoted myself to improving other people's writing skills, to helping them express themselves better or achieve greater success in the classroom and in the workforce. From the front of the room, I declare that people will judge others by the quality of their writing. Oft have I repeated that to reluctant ears. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation.

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before a grammar handbook, and ringing up the errors on every paper I read or write; and especially whenever my compulsive editing gets such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the hallway, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to re-think my priorities.

People do judge you, as a person, by the quality of your writing, but should they? Whenever I catch someone putting random vowels or double letters in the middle of "sep_rate" or writing "being that" instead of "because," or misusing homonyms such that "peace of mind" becomes "piece of mine," am I justified in discounting that person's intelligence, work ethic, and vital principles of being? Well, sure I am. But does it follow that I am not obliged to consider what (if anything) that person is trying to say? May I ignore ideas when they appear in clashing plaid, or when they wear socks with sandals or baggy jeans sliding down their backside? I pause in the act of knocking off yet another hat and say to myself, you may not! If you, KKT, are to live up to your lofty ideal of respecting persons because they are people and not because they are people educated to write and think and dress like you, you must pay attention to what they say as well as how they say it. That is my view.

Dear reader-of-my-blog, you need not remind me that quality of expression is closely tied to quality of thought, or that unclear writing usually muffles foggy thinking. I know this as well as any English teacher of uncertain years does. But when we read we strive to understand. That's what reading is. If we are committed to open and honest dialogue, we should pay attention to badly written ideas as well as to fluently expressed ones. Bad writers may have voices we should listen to. Go ahead and score off writers on account of their grammar, usage, and mechanics--I know I will not be able to resist--but when you're done with that, note what it was they were trying to say before you decide how and whether to respond.

Sail only a little ways into the restless Internet sea of blogs, discussions, comments, and viewpoints and you will discover that behind every wave floats a grim grammar patrol, taking aim at hapless souls who dare to offer their ideas, rants, dreams, or despair in leaky boats. This sniping often substitutes for the pistol and ball of honest argument. Attacking someone through the gaps in their writing defenses becomes a gleeful game. Almost anyone, regardless of their own level of skill with language, can sometimes identify the errors of others, and whack away at the knuckles of the unwary. Indeed, there is an error in this blog entry, which I leave in place to see who will pick it out and harpoon it.

With a philosophical flourish Ahab throws himself after his spear; I quietly take to blogging. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men and women in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the unexplored ocean of their own minds.


*This post is written in honor of Herman Melville, a writer of stunning talent and originality who, through his fiction writing, gave voice to many less literate than he.