Book: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

This BookNeedle comes in the penultimate chapter of the novel, chapter 19 and is spoken by the character Lord Henry Wotton, who is talking with the main character Dorian. Dorian confesses that he is changing his life in order to be good. Henry does not want Dorian to change. During their conversation, Henry quotes a street-preacher he heard while walking through a park: “what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose . . . His own soul?” Dorian wonders why Henry asked him that only to find out that Henry thought Dorian would know the answer. The “street-preacher” is the same person Henry then ponders whether to tell “the prophet that Art had a soul, but that man had not.”

Soul, Art, and Man

Distancing the soul from man and into art as told to a prophet proposes first, that this is a statement of truth that should be recognized by a prophet as coming from a god, second, that there is a soul, third, that art reflects in man what man is without, and fourth, that with knowledge, the essence of a soul can be discovered. A definition of the “soul,” however, immediately connects it with man - “the essence of the individual.” (Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, Oxford Classical Dictionary). So, to distance man from the soul yet having that same “man” be able to identify the essence of a soul in god-like fashion, inevitably gives art the window into self-reflection, where the frame is defined by perspective and at the same time includes your own reflection. The soul, like art, itself is thus separate from the body:

“So that this I, that is to say the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body, is even easier to know than the body, and furthermore would not stop being what it is, even if the body did not exist.”

(Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy)

The painter Basil Hallward and the aristocrat Lord Henry Wotton observe the picture of Dorian Gray.

Soul as Intermediary

This BookNeedle proposes that the soul is the intermediary between art and the reflection of the soul in man, discoverable through the utility of man, the bodily senses. “The simple truth is that your senses are the chief part of you: you think with them.” (Ronald Fraser, Flower Phantoms). In this context, the sentient sense comes from the eye. Aristotle proclaimed that “[t]he soul never thinks without a mental image” (Aristotle, On the Soul) and Leonardo da Vinci submitted that “[t]he eye, which is said to be the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the brain’s sensory receptor may fully and magnificently contemplate the infinite works of nature.” (Leonardo da Vinci, Codex Ashburnham).

Leonardo’s illustration of the medieval view of the scalp, brain, and eyeball, Anatomical Studies, folio 32r

Why Art?

Art can express the soul because within the capacity to experience, there is “a ‘gap’ between self and the world, between stimulus and response,” and it is within that space that art resides. (Rollo May, ‘Freedom and Responsibility Re-Examined’). Art is there to “awaken in us the emotion corresponding to the theme they [artists] have discovered, of showing us what richness, what variety lies hidden, unknown to us, in that vast, unfathomed and forbidding night of our soul which we take to be an impenetrable void.” (Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time). It is not logic, but that something else that art gives, for “[r]eason’s wings are short.” (Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy).

The trick of art in disclosing the soul is in establishing a world recognizably beyond reason in order to show that which is beyond reason.

Art itself is a visual error, one depicting a truth that is not actually true. Consider the story of Zeuxis and Parrhasius as recorded by the Roman philosopher Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder. Zeux and Parrhasius were rival painters who decided to challenge one another to determine who had the better skills. In the agreed to competition, each artist was to execute a wall painting and judge for themselves. When finished, Zeuxis revealed his painting of a bunch of grapes that were depicted with such lifelike qualities that birds attempted to eat the fruit. Feeling confident in his victory, Zeuxis asked Parrhasius to unveil his painting. Parrhasius refused, explaining that the veil itself was in fact his painting. Zeuxis acknowledged his defeat, stating “Whereas he had deceived birds Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist.” (Pliny, Natural History).

Zeuxis and Parrhasius

What the story of Zeuxis and Parrhasius suggests is that art, itself unreal in the sense of depicting something other than the arrangement of paint, is a corridor for the mind to the soul. As the birds believed in the reality of the fruit, the audience believed in the reality of the curtain. But there is something more that the audience sees when they realize the illusion, that truth can be found beyond reality and beyond the senses. For experience of the senses is not real, but a memory of the past. “By the time you think the moment occurs, it’s already long gone. To synchronize the incoming information from the senses, the cost is that our conscious awareness lags behind the physical world.” (Annaka Harris, Conscious). Memory is the adaptive force of the soul.

Art is Soul

While the human senses may take in the essence of art, the fact that the soul, like art, is timeless and undefined, makes understanding it entirely through the human senses impossible. It is unrelentingly present, confronting you with its existence, instigating you to understand, a heroic endeavor thrust upon the mind “to prove my soul.” (Robert Browning, ‘Paracelsus’). This heroism originates in ambiguity in the same way that “[a]rt enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” (Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island). In other words, art is the basis for reflection, a reflection that changes upon changing perspectives. “[A]rt is a perpetual representation, the fact represented must be viewed by the painter through a medium, which is nothing less than his own soul, which is his highest conception, the mainspring of his intellectual existence.” (Ernest Chesneau, English Painting).

The purpose is to discover, “where the miraculous finds its last refuge in the soul of the human being represented in the work of art.” (Ken Wilder, Beholding). This representation is a reflection, which is brought to the art: “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” (Oscar Wilde, ‘Letter to Editor of the Scots Observer,’ July 23, 1890). As explained by Wilde: “Each man sees his own sin in Dorian Gray. What Dorian Gray’s sins are no one knows. He who finds them has brought them.” (Oscar Wilde, ‘To the Editor of the Scots Observer,’ July 9, 1890). Thus peering into the soul can be a dangerous endeavor: “when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil). Similarly, the character Kurtz in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness expresses his sins in the reader. These sins are never fully discussed in the novel, but they are there when you read it. “That is why Marlow can tell his story as he does in Conrad's novel. He has no need to count up the crimes Kurtz committed. He has no need to describe them. He has no need to produce evidence. For no one doubted it.” (Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate All the Brutes). Art provides us with this abyss for which we can discover our soul.

The Picture of Dorian Gray. Directed by Albert Lewin, MGM, 1945.

The mind converses with art both consciously and unconsciously, reaching the depths of memory and experience. An abyss that allows all comers into self-received transcendence in and out of thought. An “understand[ing] in a different way,” as Carson Mcather writes in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, describing what it is like for the characters to converse with a deaf mute is instructive:

“All was quiet. It was like they waited to tell each other things that had never been told before. What she had to say was terrible and afraid. But what he would tell her was so true that it would make everything all right. Maybe it was a thing that could not be spoken with words or writing. Maybe he would have to let her understand this in a different way. That was the feeling she had with him.”

This conversation with the deaf mute is like confronting art, you don’t know why, but there is understanding, it tells you things in “a different way,” one that you get every so often: “a man’s work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.” (Albert Camus, “The Wrong Side and the Right Side,” Lyrical and Critical Essays). Art expresses a universe that is open to discovery. “It was as though he had become aware of the soul of the universe and were compelled to express it. Though these pictures confused and puzzled me, I could not be unmoved by the emotion that was patent in them.” (W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence).

Without reason or purpose, we look upon art as an unknown until it becomes our personal known. For “[t]he clay of the human soul is entirely unworked, unsculptured, its feelings still crude and boorish, unable to divine anything with clarity or certainty.” (Nikos Kazantzakis, Zobra the Greek). That personal known is the soul divined through art.

Books Mentioned

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Trans. James Innes Minchin. Forgotten Books, 2018.

Aristotle. Aristotle: On the Soul. Parva Naturalia. On Breath. Trans. W.S. Hett. Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000.

Browning, Robert. Paracelsus. New York, Clean Bright Classics, 2017.

Camus, Albert. Lyrical and Critical Essays. New York, Vintage Books, 1968.

Chesneau, Ernest. English Painting. New York, Parkstone Press International, 2015.

Da Vinci, Leonardo. Codex Ashburnham. 2:19r-v., l’Institut de France, Paris, 1530.

Descartes, Rene. Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Trans. Ian Johnston. Broadview Press, Ontario, 2020.

Fraser, Ronald. Flower Phantoms. Kansas City, Valancourt Books, 2013.

Harris, Annaka. Conscious. New York, HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2019.

Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth. The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3d ed. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996.

Kazantzakis, Nikos. Zorba the Greek. New York, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1952.

Lindqvist, Sven. Exterminate All the Brutes. New York, The New York Press, 1996.

Lloyd-Jones, Esther and Esther M. Westervelt. Behavioral Science and Guidance: Proposals and Perspectives. ‘Freedom and Responsibility Re-Examined’ by Rollo May, New York, Bureau of Publications, 1963.

Maugham, W. Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence. New York, Penguin Group, 2005.

McCullers, Carson. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Boston, First Mariner Books, 2000.

Merton, Thomas. No Man is an Island. San Diego, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1955.

Neitzsche, Friedrich and R. J. Hollingdale. Beyond Good and Evil. London, Penguin Books, 2003.

Pliny the Elder. Natural History. London, Penguin Books, 2004.

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. New York, Modern Library, 1981.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York, Random House: Modern Library, 2004.

Wilde, Oscar, Merlin Holland, and Rupert Hart-Davis. The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde. “Letter to the Editor of the St. Jame’s Gazette, June 26, 1890.” London: Fourth Estate, 2000.

Wilder, Ken. Beholding. London, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020.

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Book: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

“Go where the pain is!” An idea that would seem counterintuitive to most but for athletes in combative sports, it is a violent and aggressive path to confound the predatory mindset of defenders. Typically, an offensive mindset is to avoid defenders in order to achieve access to the goal whereas those on defense try to punish any attempt to thwart offensive success. To go where the pain is is a strategic move to become the bringer of pain, attacking the defender directly without avoiding contact. There will be pain but with the pain, success, if not initially but mentally to put the defender on notice that the offense will be direct and punishing. Is this what Joseph Conrad was getting at in referring to the the “destructive element” in the Bookneedle?

Destructive Element?

In Lord Jim, the character Stein, a wealthy and respected merchant who is also an entomologist—collecting beetles and butterflies—utters the Bookneedle: “In the destructive element immerse.” It is ambiguous what this “destructive element” is, but there are several interpretations. One critic states that the “destructive element” is “the malevolent Universe or Fate” that is necessarily part of life: “To climb successfully out of the element would be to climb out of life.” (Kenneth B. Newell, Conrad’s Destructive Element). Another, describes the “destructive element” as that which is contained in one’s life’s dream of glory: “the dream is ‘the destructive element’ because it blinds us to a reality that is full of dark powers.” (Bernard J. Paris, Conrad’s Charlie Marlow). A third can simply view it as an allusion based upon an earlier usage by Stein:

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns—nicht wahr? [trans.: Isn’t that so?] . . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up.

It alludes to one swimming, where if you fight with the water and grasp for air, you will sink. Likewise, if you do nothing you will also sink. The key is to swim, to use the water as a means of propelling forward and as a result staying afloat. So, the “destructive element” could be the sea. But there is one additional consideration and that is the story Stein tells before making reference to the “destructive element.”

Stein’s Story

Amidst a traders’ war, Stein is summoned by his friend for a meeting away from his “fortified house.” He leaves his wife with “a brown leather belt over her left shoulder with a revolver in it” and sets off on his horse “for four or five miles” when “[s]uddenly somebody fires a volley—twenty shots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets sing in my ear, and my hat jumps to the back of my head.” Realizing he walked into an “ambush,” he formulates a plan (”This wants a little management.”) and so fell “slowly forward with my head on his mane,” acting dead. “I get hold of my revolver with my right hand—quiet—quiet. After all, there were only seven of these rascals.” Those rascals emerged to get Stein’s horse, thinking he is dead “and then bang, bang, bang . . . and there are the bodies of three men lying on the ground.” Remaining calm and still, he observes the ruin and notices “something like a faint shadow pass over his forehead.” It is a butterfly—”a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen,” one he has sought after for many years. He then lost sight of it. He dismounts and slowly searches, “leading my horse and holding my revolver with one hand.” “At last I saw him” and “let go my horse, keep[ing] my revolver in one hand.” Using his “felt hat . . . Flop! I got him!” “[M]y head went round and my legs became so weak with emotion that I had to sit on the ground. . . . Here suddenly I had him in my fingers—for myself!”

Shadows and Light

In Stein’s story, he images a dichotomy between a shadowy depth of reason (run away and be safe and stay still to avoid detection) and a blinding light of passion (get the butterfly regardless of danger), while carefully treading the middle path, holding his revolver in one hand and his felt hat in the other, which parallels the swimming allusion, each dip or grasp teetering on ruin.

For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet)

The light and dark images further reveal the extent of this immersive destruction. Shadows need light to exist so their presence indicates a source of light. “[A]s lights and shadows in pairs that cling.” (Kahil Gibran, The Prophet). Something emerges: “beauty is found in the existence of tension; light and shadow; sound and silence; simplicity and detail; sublime and ordinary; presence and absence; freedom and restraint; wabi and sabi.” (Beth Kempton, Wabi Sabi). There is this potential emergence of positive wonderment out of destructive shadows:

If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man / it will be spring in the world, / it will be spring in the world of the living; / wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets,stirring of new seasons. / Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation! / Worse, let me not deceive myself. (D.H. Lawrence, Look! We Have Come Through!)

It is with this that the butterfly emerges.

The Butterfly

Stein proclaims that the butterfly is a “masterpiece of Nature—the great artist.” Like nature, butterflies epitomize this masterpiece through destruction and immersion. Within a chrysalis, the humble caterpillar liquefies into a yellow goo, a cellular soup, that reconstitutes itself into a butterfly. Does that inform what the “destructive element” Conrad is getting at, to go where you lose yourself for the opportunity to change into something completely different? The juxtaposition between light and dark, pain and pleasure are within the butterfly.

'Look,' said Arkady suddenly, 'a dry maple leaf has come off and is falling to the earth; its movement is exactly like a butterfly's flight. Isn't it strange? Gloom and decay—like brightness and life.' (Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons)

It is the butterfly that is a reminder that even amongst the shadows there is light. One example comes from the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a story of a man succumbed to locked-in syndrome (paralyzed but fully intact mentally), struggling to redefine his life and the power of thought. From the movie script there is a passage comparing the character’s medical situation with the steel encasement of a diving bell used to submerge into the depths of water (like the swimming analogy), and that within that depth there can be a butterfly:

JEAN-DO’S VOICE

My diving bell has dragged you down to the bottom of the sea with me.

CUT BACK TO:

EXT. ABOARD A SMALL FISHING BOAT - DAY

CLAUDE

Jean-Do, there is no place I have ever been, that is more beautiful than your thoughts. And if sometimes I am at the bottom of the sea with you, you are also my butterfly.

The scene in the movie leaves out the idea of beauty in thought, but is still impactful:

Another example comes from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, who placed a butterfly in his depiction of hell.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

But if this destructive element is to lead to ruin and the delusion of a dream as the critics point out, why than did Conrad not kill off Stein as he did with Jim? An answer can be found in Stein quoting Goethe in reflecting on his acquisition of the butterfly:

So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen, Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein. (Trans.: ‘So I finally hold it in my hands, And call it mine in a sense'.) (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso)

“Mine” signifies that the beauty in the world can be yours “in a sense” just as the patron of a literary work in Torquato is able to hold an author’s “masterpiece” as a personal wonderment. There is a certain amount of illusion in obtaining a dream - where the butterfly once captured must die to be preserved and the masterpiece can only live if read. This contingency is either accepted (Stein) or refused, becoming the death knell of the “romantic” (Jim). Jim, unlike Stein, will never catch the butterfly because for him, he refuses to let the real poison the ideal.

What About that Pain?

“Go where the pain is!” is immersing yourself in the “destructive element,” where the pain is that force that impedes your personal journey and that force, whether it be physical or mental is yours to overcome in order to reach that which you desire. This does not mean that the amount of pain experienced translates into success or is some kind of measure of effort, rather the pain highlights the accomplishment, making—those final steps in a marathon—the last answer you give to an exam—hitting the submit button on something you write—scoring that goal—realizing the beauty of life after an illness, or capturing that butterfly—the timber, concrete, or steel that forms the pillars of stability in the “destructive element,” which is always there, from the tiger to the mouse:

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled,the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted! (“A Parable” Writings from the Zen Masters).

Do not let the pain become the shadow that shades the dream . . .

Now he felt a certain bitterness, a dark shadow, such as come when moments of destiny pass us by without touching us and the noise of their passing dies away in the distance while we remain alone amid a swirl of dead leaves lamenting the great – and terrible – opportunity we have lost. (Dino Buzzati, Tartar Steppe)

. . . or blind your vision. . .

What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun? They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws. And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows? (Kahil Gibran, The Prophet)

. . . instead, go forth, “to the destructive element submit yourself” and find your butterfly.

Books Mentioned

“A Parable” Writings from the Zen Masters. Compiled by Paul Reps. London, Penguin Books, 2009.

Buzzati, Dino. Tartar Steppe. Edinburgh, Conongate Books, 2018.

Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. New York, Bantam Books, 1981.

Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land and Other Writings. New York, Modern Library, 2002.

Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1978.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. “Torquato Tasso” Collected Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Hastings, Delphi Classics, 2013.

Harwood, Ronald. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Adapted Screenplay. Harper Perennial, 2007.

Kempton, Beth. Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life. Harper Design, 2018.

Lawrence, D.H. “Look! We Have Come Through!” The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence. edited by Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts, New York, The Viking Press, 1971.

Newell, Kenneth B. Conrad's Destructive Element: The Metaphysical World-view Unifying Lord Jim. Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.

Paris, Bernard J. Conrad’s Charlie Marlow: A New Approach to “Heart of Darkness” and Lord Jim. Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Sons. Translated by Constance Garnett, Los Angeles, Enhanced Media, 2016.

Book: Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis

So it says, muted by words, only action is left to be gripped and thoughts echoed in an internal abyss, with the protagonist left facing a life with no one to talk to. Meaning, of the relational kind, is thus monopolized by force; does that erase one’s ability of expression and even existence? Does the masked muted figure become a ghost, once remembered then despised as defaulted by a compelled exit?

Yet still, there is an action, a journey into exile-the unknown—and thought in silence-asceticism. Hermes, the guide of the dead to Hades, messenger of the gods, god of travelers, speaks of the very essence of removal from the known to the unknown. A journey of action rather than words. And with silence comes unrestrained reflection.

The question remains, is being/existing necessarily tied to communication or limited to phonic signifiers? Does the universe become nonexistent because it cannot be understood? Does the athlete who breaks an Olympic record in secret meaningless? Are pandemic-induced virtual footraces still races? Does the unwitnessed tree still fall in the forest?

I am still here. Stubbing my toe still hurts. Reading a book still makes me think. Philosopher Martin Buber in I and Thou argues that

“A good book or essay or poem is not primarily an object to be put to use, or an object of experience: it is the voice of You speaking to me, requiring a response.”

Communication is there waiting to be had, but there may be a more important slippage as expressed by the character Sean in the movie Good Will Hunting, pointing out what one misses if life is limited to the written word:

“. . . You couldn’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You’ve never stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling.”

And yet there must be more than simple experience, again Buber:

“Those who experience do not participate in the world. For the experience is ‘in them’ and not between them and the world.”

Likewise, Tutor Zena Hitz expresses in her book Lost in Thought, that

“To be dominated by the senses is to be helpless in the face of whatever they present, to be drawn haplessly from one thing to another.”

Words and experiences are singularly lacking. Hitz continues:

“Human beings long for, need beyond words, something that exceeds the merely material or the merely social.”

So what is the exiled to do?

“Read on.” As expressed in Jose Saramago’s The Cave,

“What does reading do, You can learn almost everything from reading, But I read too, So you must know something, Now I’m not so sure, You’ll have to read differently then, How, The same method doesn’t work for everyone, each person has to invent his or her own, whichever suits them best, some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don’t understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they’re there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it’s the other side that matters, Unless, Unless what, Unless those rivers don’t have just two shores but many, unless each reader is his or her own shore, and that shore is the only shore worth reaching.”

To me, it’s about knowledge, and the type of knowledge that lets you take that step to “the farther shore” in order to see your own shore. So, in this era of exile, we can still be “understood” through the knowledge of existence in the things we do and the eternal battle of thoughts we bring in the books we read, for reading is “like the template for meaning itself” (Richard Powers, The Overstory). “Read on.”

Art

Image Source

This is a watercolor painting by the director of the movie Good Will Hunting, Gus Van Sant, which was also used in the film:

Looking at the painting, it presents a dire situation, huge waves, small boat, it’s raining, there is no land or anything in sight, and the boat is small—powered only by the strength the rower puts into the oars—in stark contrast to the oceanic appearance of the water. Yet, the rower has the necessary protection with the rain coat and hat, the boat is not sinking, the oars are being moved, there is color, and darkness has not yet descended. And we do not see the face of the rower. The situation compels the perception that the rower is sad, struggling against the elements, but consider the opposite. See the rower as content, engaged in an activity, tacking the hardships of the world and the exile of being on the ocean alone. Perhaps the rower is pondering a philosophical question, questioning the ideas in a classic novel, building up excitment on his way to see the Sistine Chapel, working out a math problem, or putting together the elements of a story that will one day be written. From this perspective, the rower is loving the challenge of life and using his intellect as his template to find understanding—”the intellect reaches past whatever is given in immediate experience” (Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought). “Read on.”

Books Mentioned

Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, New York, Touchstone, 1971.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “To William Wordsworth.” Selected Poems, edited by Richard Holmes, Penguin Books, London, 1994.

Hitz, Zena. Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 2020.

Powers, Richard. The Overstory. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.

Saramago, José. The Cave. Translated by Margaret Jull Costa, Orlando, Harcourt, Inc., 2002.

Book: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

What makes this story unique and the BookNeedle all the more powerful is the fact that Edward is a doll and all the action occurs upon him, not by him; but the funny thing is is that you start thinking that it is all Edward’s doing—his actions—even though you are repeatedly reminded by Edward himself that he cannot move, which hints that this is going to be a journey of the mind.

“I’m the deed which thy thoughts engender.” - Heinrich Heine, Germany. A Winter’s Tale

“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.” - Mahatma Gandhi

These thoughts, like those of a dream, are what create the action but with a distinct separation from reality like any movie, piece of art, or book. While Edward cannot move, he can see. Just like Edward, we are the observers of what takes place and it is our thoughts that define the significance.

“Could it be that thinking arises as a response to seeing? Without eyes, would minds exist at all?” - Simon Ings, A Natural History of Seeing

Edward can also hear (and well, given his ears—he is a rabbit) and the words by a character known as grandmother Pellegrina, which in Italian translates to pilgrim, haunt him. Those words come in the beginning of the book after a story Pellegrina tells about a princess who had loved no one and in the end turned into a warthog that was killed and eaten. And so, “[s]he [Pellegrina] leaned close to him [Edward]. She whispered, ‘You disappoint me.’” This is a critique of Edward, who is more concerned at this stage of the story about the inconveniences of his placement than anything to do with love, which somehow this pilgrim could perceive. Like morality, those words weigh on him so much that he begins to blame them for his physical situation of being thrown overboard into the ocean by a couple of boys, resulting in the separation from his first owner, Abilene:

“And then the rabbit thought about Pellegrina. He felt, in some way that he could not explain to himself, that she was responsible for what had happened to him. It was almost as if it was she, and not the boys who had thrown Edward overboard.”

This ocean becomes his mirror of forced self-reflection on the pangs of his unconscious, waiting to be realized once he can see properly.

“When we talk about self-worth, are we not talking, really, about how we are reflected in the mirrors of other people’s minds?” - Anthony de Mello, Awareness

It is only after he is thrown overboard that he begins to understand the difference between seeing things for what they are and recognizing them for what they mean. In the beginning, Abilene expressed to Edward, “I love you. I don’t care how old I get, I will always love you.” Agitated, “Yes, yes, thought Edward,” annoyed to accept the love simply for being. Abilene, her love, is unimportant to Edward because he only sees himself, then he goes overboard and begins to separate himself from what he sees.

“We learn to think about everything,” he said, “and then we train our eyes to look as we think about the things we look at. We look at ourselves already thinking that we are important. And therefore we’ve got to feel important! But then when a man learns to see, he realizes that he can no longer think about the things he looks at, and if he cannot think about what he looks at everything becomes unimportant.” - Carlos Castaneda, A Separate Reality

What Edward experiences once he goes overboard are others and for the first time “sees” their love for him, their love as signaled by the new names they give him. He is no longer simply Edward, he is the reflection of love that gives him an existence.

“Alone, we have no name and no face, no one to call out to us and no reflection in which to recognize our features. It is only after Enkidu has died that Gilgamesh realizes the extent to which his friend is part of his own identity. ‘O Enkidu,’ Gilgamesh weeps, ‘you were the axe at my side / in which my arm trusted, the knife in my sheath, / the shield I carried, my glorious robe, / the wide belt around my loins, and now / a harsh fate has torn you from me, forever.’ If the Epic of Gilgamesh carries a teaching, it is that the other makes our existence possible.” - Alberto Manguel, The City of Words

With this, he has the ammunition to fight Pelligrina:

“During the night, while Bull and Lucy slept, Edward, with his ever-open eyes, stared up at the constellations. He said their names, and then he said the names of the people who loved him. He started with Abilene and then went to Nellie and Lawrence and from there to Bull and Lucy, and then he ended again with Abilene: Abilene, Nellie, Lawrence, Bull, Lucy, Abilene.

See? Edward told Pellegrina. I am not like the princess. I know about love.”

Edward does not change because of his conditions but rather the love that people give to him.

“You do not change if you merely change your exterior world.” - Anthony de Mello, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality

With that recognition, we come to the BookNeedle, roughly in the middle of the story, where Edward, sitting around a campfire with his latest owner, Bull, who named Edward Malone, is no longer “alone”: “And Edward felt a warm rush of pleasure at being recognized, at being known.” It is one of those “perfect moments,” one you can appreciate as an observer and think upon, but to “live in it,” that “perfect moment,” is the strength of thought:

“Then I close my eyes and try to imagine that I’m still living inside it.” - Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

Edward is no longer the casualty of his circumstance, but the product of love:

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.” Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

In the end of the story, where Abilene, as a mother with a daughter, recognizes Edward and Edward recognizes her, a conclusion that brings that “warm rush of pleasure” in the actualization of what Abilene expressed long ago.

Book Review from a Seven Year Old

“I give it a medium. What I didn’t like about it is the ending, it was missing that down part of the slide.”

Art

Image Source

This drawing is called The Emerald Journey by Margaret Fisher. To me it epitomizes the journey of anyone and the changes that can occur. Here, there appears to be some type of bird that is radically transformed with the image of another who is perhaps making itself known through some type of wind instrument and whose eyes are the opposite of the bird’s, black pupils rather than white. Each figure is uniquely and extravagantly designed with a common bond between the two. These two figures are melded together to form one complete image, resting on what seems to be water. The water ripples, indicating movement either by the creature or upon the creature. Isn’t this true of us all?

“In loves and tears of brothers, sisters, sons, fathers, and friends / Which if Man ceases to behold, he ceases to exist” - William Blake, Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion

Books Mentioned

• Blake, William. “Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion.” Blake: The Complete Poems, edited by W.H. Stevenson, 3rd ed., Routledge, 2007.

• Castaneda, Carlos, A Separate Reality. New York, WSP, 1991.

• De Mello, Anthony, Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality. Center for Spiritual Exchange, 1990.

• Heine, Heinrich, The Poems of Heine. Translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring, C.B., London, 1908.

• Ings, Simon, A Natural History of Seeing. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2007.

• Manguel, Alberto, The City of Words. Toronto, House of Anansi Press Inc., 2007.

• Robbins,Tom, Jitterbug Perfume. New York, Bantam Dell, 1984.

• Sartre, Jean-Paul, Nausea. Translated by Lloyd Alexander, New Directions, 2013.

So it begins. I hope you like my first post. See you soon.

I’m on Twitter: @BookNeedles

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