Sunday, June 11, 2006

"Acts of war"

They are smart. They are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, either ours or their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us.
US Rear Admiral Harry Harris
, Guantanamo Bay Camp commander, on the suicide of three inmates.

Reading Rilke brought about an important transformation in my understanding of myself and the work I wanted to do. I left my ego behind me, and I focussed on a task that was far greater than filling in the thinly-drawn outlines of my self. At that point, [...] I fell in love with the reason why we still read and think about literature, and it seemed imperative I should continue to do so, for as long as anyone would let me, because there was nothing more sensible I could do with my life.
Litlove

7 comments:

  1. Ummm, I'm a bit puzzled by the analogy. The point I was making, in case it was unclear, was that I felt jobs are done better when egos aren't involved. I read Rilke because it interested me passionately, not because I wanted a good mark for an essay. I don't quite understand what that has to do with the suicide of war prisoners?

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  2. "For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror which we are barely able to endure"?

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  3. You realize, of course, you're rendering a mere US diplomat into a literary ally of French Heideggerians, or Germans here (assuming that's Rilke)...it's almost an act of war! (in the Groucho Marx sense).

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  4. OK, what I meant to suggest was that a genuine passion is invariably mistaken as an absenting of oneself from common, acceptable discourse. But there's a paradox I guess - what is a passionate letting-go of the ego?

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  5. I understand the concept - the dedication of the self to a noble, abstract ideal. Courtly love would be another example - whereby the knight runs dangerous missions in the name of his idealised lady. But is it possible to think a distinction between possibly excessive engagement of the self's resources, and a reckless form of self-annihilation? You might say it's a question of degree, but I think the degree is significant.

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  6. Ah, well for me it's all or nothing. Usually nothing.

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  7. Anonymous5:59 pm

    "Rhetoric, or perfected terror, as Jean Paulhan says."

    -MB, "How is Literature Possible"

    I suppose it was a strained joke; sorry.

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