I've been wondering. How do we fit Charles Dickens into Barzun's over-arching theory about the 19th century in European cultural history? My continued readings in and musings about Barzun's book, DARWIN, MARX, WAGNER, combined with the release of yet another Hollywood version of A CHRISTMAS CAROL, have together brought me to this curiosity.
Dickens' career straddles the great divide between the romanticism of the early part of the century and the materialistic turn of the latter part. Barzun, remember, assigns great importance to the year 1859 in connection with that turn. So where do Dickens' works stand, on either side of that line.
Here are some of the most influential of his works, and their date of publication, with italics for the one of his great works that came out within the fateful year itself.
THE PICKWICK PAPERS (1837)
THE ADVENTURES OF OLIVER TWIST (1839)
A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843)
DAVID COPPERFIELD (1850)
BLEAK HOUSE (1853)
A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1859)
GREAT EXPECTATIONS (1861)
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND (1865).
Dickens was a world-famous author long before 1859, and his habits of mind were settled before what Barzun saw as the turn toward mechanism. I expect that if I asked him, Barzun would likely include Dickens with the High Romantic movement. I'd rather not bother a 101 year old man with a question on such a point, though.
I've looked into his magnum opus, FROM DAWN TO DECADENCE (2000) for Dickens mentions. I have found only one -- a brief discussion of a couple of the female characters, in connection with the Victorian notion of an idealized wife as "the angel in the house." Nothing there seems to shed any light on Dickens himself.
08 November 2009
07 November 2009
New Jersey's pension situation
Orin Kramer and William G. Clark are between them responsible for managing the state pension funds in New Jersey.
Kramer is the Chair of the State Investment Council, and Clark is Director of the Division of Investment.
Daniel Strachman, in a guest opinion column published Friday by The Alternative Press, urges the state (which, due to Tuesday's election, has a new Governor) should fire them both.
So what is the pension situation in New Jersey, that would incite such a call? Here is a primer, more than a month old but serviceable.
Paragraphs 8 and 9 of that story are key:
The latest available figures from the state, released in spring, showed state pension funds were worth $77.7 billion as of June 30, 2008, about $34.4 billion short of obligations. Similarly, the state is obligated for $50.6 billion in future post-retirement medical benefits that it annually funds out of the budget.
Following last year's economic turmoil, the latest available figures from the state Division of Investments show the state's pension funds were worth $66.7 billion Aug. 31, 2009.
Corzine' administration made some changes aimed at slowing the expenditure of pension funds, such as an increase in retirement age. But the problems have been developing through at least a couple of turns of the boom/bust cycle. In July 1997, New Jersey sold $2.75 billion of pension bonds in July 1997. Then-Governor
Christine Todd Whitman said at the time that it would be crazy "not to do this." She said the bonds, which paid a fixed interest rate of 7.64%, would keep the system fully funded and save the taxpayers money.
The fund has earned 4.8% annualized return since the bond sale. So it paid 7.64% to acquire the capital with which it has been earning 4.8%? Does that sound like a bad plan to you? Me, too.
Kramer is the Chair of the State Investment Council, and Clark is Director of the Division of Investment.
Daniel Strachman, in a guest opinion column published Friday by The Alternative Press, urges the state (which, due to Tuesday's election, has a new Governor) should fire them both.
So what is the pension situation in New Jersey, that would incite such a call? Here is a primer, more than a month old but serviceable.
Paragraphs 8 and 9 of that story are key:
The latest available figures from the state, released in spring, showed state pension funds were worth $77.7 billion as of June 30, 2008, about $34.4 billion short of obligations. Similarly, the state is obligated for $50.6 billion in future post-retirement medical benefits that it annually funds out of the budget.
Following last year's economic turmoil, the latest available figures from the state Division of Investments show the state's pension funds were worth $66.7 billion Aug. 31, 2009.
Corzine' administration made some changes aimed at slowing the expenditure of pension funds, such as an increase in retirement age. But the problems have been developing through at least a couple of turns of the boom/bust cycle. In July 1997, New Jersey sold $2.75 billion of pension bonds in July 1997. Then-Governor
Christine Todd Whitman said at the time that it would be crazy "not to do this." She said the bonds, which paid a fixed interest rate of 7.64%, would keep the system fully funded and save the taxpayers money.
The fund has earned 4.8% annualized return since the bond sale. So it paid 7.64% to acquire the capital with which it has been earning 4.8%? Does that sound like a bad plan to you? Me, too.
06 November 2009
More on Roman Polanski
The emerging Swiss/US relationship is intriguing.
Somebody has apparently decided, for example, that an isolated spot in the Alps might be ideal for some of the prisoners now kept at Gitmo. Thus we get news stories like this.
There's also the taxation issue. Perhaps Switzerland wants to earn back the prerogative of being a tax-evasion haven by making clear that it is not a sex-crimes haven. There surely is more to the timing of Polanski's arrest than some Javert-like perseverance on the part of Californian investigators.
Switzerland's reputation as a tax haven has taken some hits lately. Or (to put the point positively) its repute as a member of the family of nations willing to co-operate with other nations in going after tax cheats has improved.
Indeed, it was only Friday, September 25, that the OECD promoted Switzerland from the gray to the "white list" of mutually co-operative countries. See here.
Intriguingly, it was only one day later that Roman Polanski tried to enter the country of Switzerland to accept an award and found himself under arrest on sex crime charges dating back to the 1970s.
Is there a connection between the two events other than geography? Consider, whilst pondering this, that the government of the US has a good reason to want to be friends with Switzerland, quite aside from tax revenue. Those Guantanamo prisoners have to go somewhere.
In a related development, the largest Swiss bank, UBS, especially wants to get back into the good graces of the United States after a run-in with the IRS: here.
Could UBS have been part of a back channel deal for Polanski?
None of this makes Polanski any less of a criminal sleazebag than he would be anyway. But it does add another dimension to the proceedings.
Somebody has apparently decided, for example, that an isolated spot in the Alps might be ideal for some of the prisoners now kept at Gitmo. Thus we get news stories like this.
There's also the taxation issue. Perhaps Switzerland wants to earn back the prerogative of being a tax-evasion haven by making clear that it is not a sex-crimes haven. There surely is more to the timing of Polanski's arrest than some Javert-like perseverance on the part of Californian investigators.
Switzerland's reputation as a tax haven has taken some hits lately. Or (to put the point positively) its repute as a member of the family of nations willing to co-operate with other nations in going after tax cheats has improved.
Indeed, it was only Friday, September 25, that the OECD promoted Switzerland from the gray to the "white list" of mutually co-operative countries. See here.
Intriguingly, it was only one day later that Roman Polanski tried to enter the country of Switzerland to accept an award and found himself under arrest on sex crime charges dating back to the 1970s.
Is there a connection between the two events other than geography? Consider, whilst pondering this, that the government of the US has a good reason to want to be friends with Switzerland, quite aside from tax revenue. Those Guantanamo prisoners have to go somewhere.
In a related development, the largest Swiss bank, UBS, especially wants to get back into the good graces of the United States after a run-in with the IRS: here.
Could UBS have been part of a back channel deal for Polanski?
None of this makes Polanski any less of a criminal sleazebag than he would be anyway. But it does add another dimension to the proceedings.
05 November 2009
Roman Polanski
I'm rather late to the fair on the Roman Polanski story. Let me, though, say this: Polanski should do some time. Behind the reluctance to agree with that in some quarters is an abominable quasi Nietzschean bunch of crap about how great artists are Ubermensch so they don't have to obey the rules of the rest of society, and that needs a rebuke.
Look at it another way. Polanski could have lived out his whole life in France, dying some day of natural causes free from any US/Californian prosecution. Is France itself a prison cell??? Hardly! It has lots of room, it has Paris, plus skier friendly mountains, some of the world's most beautiful beaches, and should he get tired of all of that ... its own Disneyland even! Not much like where he is going to be living.
So why did he not stay in France? Because he doesn't really think of himself as a fugutive, so he sees no reason why he shouldn't travel freely to accept prizes. In that sense, he is being punished not only for a long-ago horrid crime but for a very recent instance of reality-denial.
The only thing sad here is that his arrest wasn't captured on video by Dateline. This would be a great episode of Chris Hanson's "To Catch a Predator."
"Can I come in, Swiss Miss?"
[Female voice from inside] ; "Oh yes, pour yourself a lemonade, I'll be out in a minute."
Look at it another way. Polanski could have lived out his whole life in France, dying some day of natural causes free from any US/Californian prosecution. Is France itself a prison cell??? Hardly! It has lots of room, it has Paris, plus skier friendly mountains, some of the world's most beautiful beaches, and should he get tired of all of that ... its own Disneyland even! Not much like where he is going to be living.
So why did he not stay in France? Because he doesn't really think of himself as a fugutive, so he sees no reason why he shouldn't travel freely to accept prizes. In that sense, he is being punished not only for a long-ago horrid crime but for a very recent instance of reality-denial.
The only thing sad here is that his arrest wasn't captured on video by Dateline. This would be a great episode of Chris Hanson's "To Catch a Predator."
"Can I come in, Swiss Miss?"
[Female voice from inside] ; "Oh yes, pour yourself a lemonade, I'll be out in a minute."
01 November 2009
Wagner? A Materialist?
Continuing the line of thought I was following last Sunday, let us speak some more about Richard Wagner.
Some of my readers might have been surprised at Barzun's thesis, since it involves the inclusion of Richard Wagner, whose music dramas have a mystical, otherworldly cast to them, as part of a troika whose work led to the ubiquity of mechanistic materialism. How does Wagner belong on that short list?
As I understand Barzun's position here, there are three key points. The first involves the method of composition. The so-called "unending melody" of a Wagnerian opera is mechanically created, through an array of leitmotif, each expressing a definite character, idea, or object, so that when that character or object is on stage, or the libretto makes allusion to that idea, the musical development re-introduces the demanded motif, as an aural identification tag. It all strikes Barzun as materialistic, as if aural atoms are bumping into one another and randomly forming musical molecules.
The second key point involves the role of music itself within the larger theatrical context. His music, Barzun tells us, has no inherent appeal. Nobody would listen to the music itself for pleasure, in isolation from the story for which it provides accompaniment. The music is materialistic in that it does not stand on itself, as music of earlier eras had, but is a "program visibly objectified on the stage ... and the full dramatic program embodied in the philosophical commentary, and not simply in the libretto."
And, thirdly, that philosophical commentary to which would-be appreciators of Wagner's music are eventually directed is itself materialistic. Wagner resurrects the Norse gods in order to kill them all off, all in service of the Feuerbachian point that no God or gods created man -- men, as artists and as audiences, both create gods and dispose of them.
In his understanding of Wagner, Barzun has been seconded of late by Bryan Magee, author of The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy (2000).
Some of my readers might have been surprised at Barzun's thesis, since it involves the inclusion of Richard Wagner, whose music dramas have a mystical, otherworldly cast to them, as part of a troika whose work led to the ubiquity of mechanistic materialism. How does Wagner belong on that short list?
As I understand Barzun's position here, there are three key points. The first involves the method of composition. The so-called "unending melody" of a Wagnerian opera is mechanically created, through an array of leitmotif, each expressing a definite character, idea, or object, so that when that character or object is on stage, or the libretto makes allusion to that idea, the musical development re-introduces the demanded motif, as an aural identification tag. It all strikes Barzun as materialistic, as if aural atoms are bumping into one another and randomly forming musical molecules.
The second key point involves the role of music itself within the larger theatrical context. His music, Barzun tells us, has no inherent appeal. Nobody would listen to the music itself for pleasure, in isolation from the story for which it provides accompaniment. The music is materialistic in that it does not stand on itself, as music of earlier eras had, but is a "program visibly objectified on the stage ... and the full dramatic program embodied in the philosophical commentary, and not simply in the libretto."
And, thirdly, that philosophical commentary to which would-be appreciators of Wagner's music are eventually directed is itself materialistic. Wagner resurrects the Norse gods in order to kill them all off, all in service of the Feuerbachian point that no God or gods created man -- men, as artists and as audiences, both create gods and dispose of them.
In his understanding of Wagner, Barzun has been seconded of late by Bryan Magee, author of The Tristan Chord: Wagner and Philosophy (2000).
31 October 2009
"I do believe in spooks"
The headline of this entry is of course the affirmation of the Cowardly Lion, as Dorothy and her three allegorical companions walk through the scary forest surrounding the witch's castle. An affirmation appropriate to today's holiday, surely.
The 19th century German logician, Christoph von Sigwart (1830 - 1894), didn't believe in the Lion's affirmation. Well ... presumably he had never walked through that particular forest. Still, let us record that he wrote: "No amount of failure in the attempt to subject the world of sensible experience to a thorough-going system of conceptions, and to bring all happenings back to cases of immutably valid law, is able to shake our faith in the rightness of our principles. We hold fast to our demand that even the greatest apparent confusion must sooner or later solve itself in transparent formulas."
The "we" in the second of those sentences is the western post-Renaissance scientific spirit, inclined to put facts into tables and draw conclusions, then impute those conclusions to God or (what is the same) the nature of things.
As Dostoyevsky knew, as his "underground man" expressed with eloquence at about the time that Sigwart was writing those words, there is also that within "us" that rebels against the "transparent formulas" in which "we" have such faith. So let the thorough-going system of conceptions have the other 364 days of the year. This one is given over to defiance, to sensible experiences that aren't so sensible, and aren't interested in "solving themselves." To flights on broomsticks and knocks on the door though nobody is there.
To the unenlightened belief in spooks. Cheers!
The 19th century German logician, Christoph von Sigwart (1830 - 1894), didn't believe in the Lion's affirmation. Well ... presumably he had never walked through that particular forest. Still, let us record that he wrote: "No amount of failure in the attempt to subject the world of sensible experience to a thorough-going system of conceptions, and to bring all happenings back to cases of immutably valid law, is able to shake our faith in the rightness of our principles. We hold fast to our demand that even the greatest apparent confusion must sooner or later solve itself in transparent formulas."
The "we" in the second of those sentences is the western post-Renaissance scientific spirit, inclined to put facts into tables and draw conclusions, then impute those conclusions to God or (what is the same) the nature of things.
As Dostoyevsky knew, as his "underground man" expressed with eloquence at about the time that Sigwart was writing those words, there is also that within "us" that rebels against the "transparent formulas" in which "we" have such faith. So let the thorough-going system of conceptions have the other 364 days of the year. This one is given over to defiance, to sensible experiences that aren't so sensible, and aren't interested in "solving themselves." To flights on broomsticks and knocks on the door though nobody is there.
To the unenlightened belief in spooks. Cheers!
30 October 2009
Random bit of history
This is the first anniversary of a memorable on-camera zone-out incident involving Charles Gasparino, an editor at the business-oriented cable channel CNBC.
On their regular late-afternoon program, "Closing Bell," anchor Dylan Ratigan introduced CG, obviously under the impression that CG was in possession of some new important information about Merrill Lynch.
The camera then framed Charles with the words "Management turmoil continues at Merrill Lynch" bannered beneath his face, because the producers (and anchor Dylan Ratigan) were obviously under the impression that Gasparino was in possession of some important information abotu that subject.
If he was, he never did get around to telling the world about it. Apparently, he took offense at the way he was introduced, the open-ended phrase "what do ya got?" -- what followed was an extremely odd colloquy over the Zen-like nature of that expression.
The reason this is worth noting is that Gasparino has a new book out, specifically about those frantic days of last autumn in the US capitalist system. Maybe he'll explain to us whatever it was that his zone-out kept him from saying that day on camera.
On their regular late-afternoon program, "Closing Bell," anchor Dylan Ratigan introduced CG, obviously under the impression that CG was in possession of some new important information about Merrill Lynch.
The camera then framed Charles with the words "Management turmoil continues at Merrill Lynch" bannered beneath his face, because the producers (and anchor Dylan Ratigan) were obviously under the impression that Gasparino was in possession of some important information abotu that subject.
If he was, he never did get around to telling the world about it. Apparently, he took offense at the way he was introduced, the open-ended phrase "what do ya got?" -- what followed was an extremely odd colloquy over the Zen-like nature of that expression.
The reason this is worth noting is that Gasparino has a new book out, specifically about those frantic days of last autumn in the US capitalist system. Maybe he'll explain to us whatever it was that his zone-out kept him from saying that day on camera.
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