BEN MAZER AND THE NEW ROMANTICISM A NEW BOOK BY THOMAS GRAVES, SCARRIET EDITOR

June 26, 2021 at 5:11 pm (Ben Mazer, Ben Mazer and the New Romanticism, Emily Dickinson, Socrates, T.S.Eliot, The Doors, Thomas Graves, Thomas Mann)

It is true. I have published a book and I hope you purchase Ben Mazer and the New Romanticism (available at Amazon, etc.) because whether you agree with all of its contents—or half or 10%—you will be a better person afterwards, and a better poet. This is my intention—not agreement, which makes me think of a dictatorship. I’ve always been drawn to Criticism because of my free and rebellious nature.

This book is not about Ben Mazer, with all due respect to this illustrious author; it is about me (and how I think).

As a young poet, upon the wide boulevards of New Haven, Connecticut, at the friendly and serviceable state college there, I fell under the spell of Socrates, for the simple reason that conversational rigor appealed to me—I wanted to get to the bottom of things through talking. “The End” by the Doors, Freudian and Gestalt Psychology, Shakespeare and the theater also appealed to me.

My professor in “Literary Criticism from Plato to Eliot” impressed me with her Plato (emphasis on the creator) Aristotle (emphasis on the created) dichotomy.

Her class (she was my intellectual mother) is where Plato’s muse Socrates first spoke to me.

My love of poetry was mugged by philosophy.

This made my love of poetry stronger—in so much as I distrusted it. I surrendered to the idea that Socrates was my friend, was pushing me onward, was not dragging me down; that Criticism and skepticism were good for poetry, and poetry was good for Criticism—a rapport between them developed in my mind (and it forced me to come to terms with what made poetry truly good apart from philosophy) and this saved me from a number of things: misanthropy, despair, authoritarianism, anarchism, self-pity, fanaticism.

It was my fate to be broadly optimistic, as well as critical and caustic, in my approach to literature.

I also had a popular and outgoing German professor at Southern (an American, of Austrian descent) who would joke that he had a “different personality when he spoke German,” and I could see this was both true and not true. We studied Thomas Mann’s Tonio Kroger, the story of a young poet who yearns (somewhat successfully) to belong to normal society—my professor said it was Mann’s belief “the artist was sick.” I accepted this: normalcy was good, but the outsider poet was good, too. The two poles were equally good.

I think the important lesson I learned at the beginning of my intellectual life (largely unconsciously I suppose) was that no one else could make me choose sides; all my intellectual decisions and choices were mine—down to the very bedrock of conceptual thinking itself, from mathematical abstractions to societal nuances—and in none of these would I ever have to rest. I didn’t need to defend poetry, defend normalcy or defend anything—I only had to defend my own arguments, and these could be whatever I wanted them to be. This made me happy—exhilarated, in a manner I understood intensely, without ever having to explain it, or think about it.

And when I say I was happy, I mean happy as a person—not as a writer, or a poet, or an intellectual. This is important.

How boring for a poet to write poetry or talk about poetry. It is more interesting to me when a person talks about these things. What do you, as a poet, think about poetry? How boring. What do you as a person, think about poetry? OK, now we’re getting somewhere.

There must be a strangeness, a separateness between things, before there can be understanding.

No one wants to critique poems. We would rather read them with pleasure. All poems do not give us the same pleasure—this asymmetry, however, still does not demand critique; let us merely find the good poems and read those.

Criticism has nothing to do with the poems. Criticism belongs to pleasure in argumentation itself.

Poetry never advances.

Only the fame of poetry can advance—poems, poetry, and poets can be more or less famous tomorrow than they are today; and we can perceive this.

Poetry itself, as such, and the pleasure poetry provides as poetry—or as poetry with other things attached, which also might provide pleasure—cannot, in general, be measured.

Criticism, therefore, can only belong to itself. A criticism of a poem is completely separate from the poem.

But the criticism has this advantage: there is far less criticism than poetry. There is so little criticism of poetry (and the point has already been made that the poetry lives separately from any criticism of it) that we can measure criticism’s impact.

Reviewing—quoting copiously from the poems under review—is not Criticism.

Close reading is not criticism. It is enough that the Critic reads poetry—no need to map his eyeball.

A biography of a poet is not criticism, either.

Nor should a misguided treatment of any text be properly called Criticism.

Making an argument which is valuable in itself while speaking on poetry is Criticism—and this is very rare, and belongs to the highest aspirations of literature, and we could make a small list of who these critical authors are (there are not many).

Therefore we can say:

Criticism does advance.

Argument is the defining word here.

There are many critical observations. But they don’t count as Criticism, as wonderful as they are, since they lack the joy of argument.

One thinks of Robert Frost’s remark that free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Or Emily Dickinson’s famous poem, “I Never Saw a Moor”

I never saw the Moor —
I never saw the sea —
Yet know I how the heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven —
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Checks were given —

It should not harm poetry—nor criticism—to say Dickinson’s poem makes philosophical and critical gestures but remains a poem.

Ben Mazer’s poetry came into my Criticism. My Criticism did not wander into Mazer’s poetry.

His poetry exists in two places now. This is how poetry breeds—by Criticism.

This is the principle of Eliot’s Tradition, in which the present changes the past.

Here is what poetry always seeks in the first place—for a qualified measure to replace a quantified one.

Criticism is one more dimensional leap for the leaping poet fortunate enough to be taken up by the Critical spaceship.



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HEARSAY

November 21, 2018 at 4:55 pm (da Vinci, Plato, Socrates)

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“Someone is speaking but she doesn’t know he’s there.” —Here, There, and Everywhere, The Beatles

The great Renaissance genius Leonardo da Vinci said truth is what we see with our own two eyes.

The Renaissance (aprox. 1400—1600) was a great and remarkable time because it threw off the fake, hearsay wisdom of Aristotle, and trusted simple looking.

But why did it take so long to chuck Aristotle? His authority lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Because hearsay is how highly complex groups communicate, think and live.

Yes, reader. Hearsay is how you think. You have no choice. What else do you have? Do you think you know everything?

Love happens in the eyes.

Seduction and false love happens with words.

Words are hearsay. Professors and journalists and authors may not want to hear this, but all words, not just some, all words, all combinations of words, are hearsay.

Because we read something in the New York Times, or we hear our professor say it, we believe it to be true.

It is not that “it” does not have a very good chance for a certain amount of time to seem true; what matters is that it is an “it,” a thing of words, and what is not included in “its” carefully chosen arrangement contradicts “it,” (if the words don’t contradict themselves, which they often do).

What the “wise” words do not mention is real, but unknown.

All we get is the “it,” the words, what may possibly be believed and what easily can be believed, and this “it” is hearsay—not partially, but entirely. The writer or speaker is not necessarily lying. And if we don’t find an evidence of an outright lie, this may lull us into a false belief that it is not hearsay. But it is. Because it is made of words.  Whether it offends or not, it is hearsay.

Da Vinci was right.

And when we see the hearsay repeated—if  what we read in the New York Times, is seen again in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Economist, the Nation, the Times of India, ABC News and Fox News, we think this is somehow proof that it cannot be hearsay. 

We think the repeating makes the hearsay legitimate.

But hearsay does not escape being hearsay if it repeats.

The very opposite is true. As they say, lies travel with lighter wings.

The “fixed stars” of Aristotle was a “truth” for hundreds and hundreds of years.

But hearsay didn’t die out with Aristotle.

Today—dear reader, what do you know about the stars?

Hearsay is not necessarily a lie; it’s merely an incomplete assertion—and often it is not innocently incomplete.

True knowledge is impossible.

Ambition is not.

Hearsay is not avoided by the ambitious.  It is embraced.

Since the world is vast and complex—so much so that it cannot be grasped—-it is easy for an educated but bad person to believe that all ideas must be incomplete, since knowledge is limited—and so bad behavior is excused by the knowledge that there is finally no knowledge.

We should listen to da Vinci.  We should look.

Our lives depend on it.

The president condemns violent protest. The paper which reviles him says the president opposes all protest. Those who oppose the president read and believe the president opposes all protest. Hearsay exists when anyone, on any topic, speaks and is heard. The speaker and listener—wherever speech is present—live in hearsay.

Because all speech is hearsay, all public dialogue finds both sides are always wrong, and always right—depending on feelings.

“But the president condemned violent protest!” say the president’s defenders.

“No. We know what the president really meant: to oppose enthusiastic protest against himself and his friends!”

And on it goes.

“Enthusiastic” protest is justified, everything enthusiastic is justified, because hearsay needs to be enthusiastic to sell, to have wings, to make us feel emotional and alive.

Emotion is real. And hearsay, which is not real, becomes real, simply by wearing emotion.

Emotion, needing to be fed, begins to actively seek out greater and greater hearsay. Lies are believed—just so we can feel. Feeling, in the absence of true knowledge, is all we’ve got.

Hearsay is not merely empty talk; it does great harm—as poetry.  Yes, poetry. This is why Plato is famous for faulting it.

Emotion persuades through hearsay; emotion and hearsay make a potent mixture.

Emotion is the frightening noise of the animal—but emotional hearsay is elegantly and insidiously human.

Fear needs an object, and hearsay provides it: fear makes hearsay more effective because the blindness of fear feeds the blindness of hearsay.

Socrates, in his case against Homer in Plato’s Republic, quotes beautiful passages by the great poet Homer—which depict the Homeric gods as sorrowful and weak. Socrates complains this is a bad example for children—on a very simple level, Socrates objects to low morale; with the wisdom of the child, Socrates condemns reproduced unhappiness, or to put it more simply, unhappiness.

Plato objects to Homer and most poetry, not because it is hearsay (though it certainly is) but because it is unhappy.

We know very little. But we should know, at the least, even in the face of hearsay, that to be unhappy is bad.

Poetry is bad for very simple reasons. Socrates makes an exception to his banning of poetry in the Republic—he permits, (in his imaginary, poetic Republic) the kind of poetry which praises and depicts heroic behavior.

Hearsay with a good result is good.

It finally comes down to bravery and morale.

Aristotle claimed literary tragedy is purgative—fear stirred up by fiction somehow causes less fear. Plato felt Aristotle’s scientific justification of unhappy poetry was—hearsay.

Plato and Aristotle rarely agree.  A diligent comparison of these two is the beginning of wisdom.

The criminal, looking to advance criminality, will rejoice in poetry of fear and low morale. Producers of drama which terrify and demoralize inject criminality into art; this was Plato’s moral view.

Shakespeare’s tragedies are not good because they are filled with horror; they are good because the poetry and the plot defeat the horror. Shakespeare’s plays are like Platonic Dialogues. Good poetry defeats bad poetry. It’s why Shakespeare and Plato are so good.

Hearsay also belongs to libel and slander, the real-life, legal counterpart to the kind of poetry Socrates wants to ban.

What is slander, but a fictional condemnation?   What is libel, but bad poetry?

Bad poetry and hearsay are also present in mere folly.  But hearsay and bad poetry are also present in the worst kinds of crime, and the worst sorts of sentiments which lead to crime.

Poetry is serious business.

This brings us back to da Vinci and actual proof—great art looks—it uses perspective to escape the blindness of hearsay and fearful emotion.

Love, beauty, and the heroic are seen in ways just enough to be loving, beautiful, and heroic—they do not live in hearsay—which Plato and Shakespeare (slander is condemned often in Shakespeare’s Sonnets) both believed was the greatest threat to human happiness.

Socrates invokes the simple wisdom of the child against sophistical reasoning. The worth of Homer’s poetry (for poetry does have worth) emerges with greater interest and understanding in the hyper-critical testing of Homer by Socrates—who certainly understood that banning increases interest in something. Banned, poetry will be loved all the more, and the higher critical lens developed by Plato is worthy in itself, increasing the value of poetry, and the value of seeing poetry—which is seen for what it is. Criticism and poetry both need each other.

Just as the visual arts belong to the geometrical science of the world as a whole, (painting, according to da Vinci, belongs to astronomy) poetry is best judged in the same way—by how it sees (which in poetry is not very much!) and by how it dispels hearsay in a manner which constantly keeps hearsay in view. This is why the best poets secretly write against poetry.

Hearsay is hasty in its conclusions.

Science, graceful and slow, even where things are quick, is not.

Hasty is unkind.

Haste is not efficiency.  Efficiency is a thousand times faster than rude and ignorant haste.

Science is slow, like love.

If you don’t have the patience for the philosopher Plato, hearsay will likely be your god.

You will weep.  Because you don’t hear Socrates.  But do not weep.

Happy Thanksgiving!  —Scarriet Editors November 21st 2018

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POETRY IS LOVE

June 18, 2015 at 1:07 pm (Socrates)

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Poetry is love. This is literally true. As poets, we do not speak partial truths. We do not say things just to say them. We do not experiment. We do not hide behind show-off language, learning, or obscurity.

The truth of a beautiful song is a beautiful truth.

But here is an even more important truth: poetry is love.

Poetry is the evidence of love, which, in terms of what we need, is a pretty big deal, since fake love is all around. We love candy. Or, our taste buds do. Our health does not love candy. The love for candy, just like the love for a lot of things, is fake; candy does not love us; no thing loves us, and therefore it is not really love to love things, to love what does not love us, for love involves sweet reciprocation; and imagine the falsity in the soul when we love that which does not love us— this is not love!

Love is that which loves and is loved in return.

The desire for candy is as close to love as some people get, and, people whose ‘greatest love’ is simply a desire for what does not love them are people who are naturally offended and embarrassed by reciprocal love, by actual love, this paradise beyond their reach, since they are too foul or stupid or selfish or hungry to have actual love.

Love has millions and millions of enemies, and the hatred of love manifests itself in all sorts of ways: the cackling laughter of the foul-mouthed humorist; the noisy rudeness of the practical-minded poetry-hater; the gruesome, cynical philosophy of the “wise,” who are barred from every delight; the Pollyanna painters of crude colors, whose frozen smiles keep love away.

Here we must say something about reciprocity. We said it is ridiculous to speak of “loving” candy since  candy appeals only to a part of ourselves and is not good for us—our health. But can we then truly love a vegetable serving, or a piece of beef, since these foods are good for our health? There is a scale. Flesh loves us more than candy, but it would still be ridiculous to say a piece of dead flesh loves us. But there is a scale that we should note and consider if we strive for wisdom, and we should ponder what it means that flesh loves us more than candy.

On the other hand, we do talk of “sweet” love, and if the sweet is good, in as much as it gives us pleasure, in this way we say that candy is at least good because it provides “evidence” of the sweet—good because it is truly a delight.

We see there are two kinds of delight then, in this present example of sweetness: the sweet which is false, because it hurts our health if too often indulged, and the sweet which is true, in that it is evidence of that which is delightful. The candy maker is both good and bad, then, producing what is potentially bad (if desired) and good (as evidence).

The poem, as we said, works like candy and sweetness—the poem is “evidence” of love, not love itself.  This is nevertheless not a minor consideration, since love is of infinite importance, and is denied to so many.

The poem imitates, just like the painter, and it is the vanity of both the painter and the poet to think they create, when the best they can do is present evidence of love.

The painter pontificates for hours on his art and then the mere surface of a lake in one reflected instant puts the painter to shame.

The world—which the poet and painter strives to imitate—is already an artist; the poet is not the first to arrive in the wilderness; there has been a poet there already: the self-reflecting world is a poem, a painting already. The poet and painter are hardly needed, except that [painters and poets] serving a different purpose are busily wrecking the wilderness for the comfort and pleasure of flesh and candy eaters. And so painter and poet are called upon to restore the wilderness that has been broken, even as the audience they serve has already been corrupted and sophisticated by the pieces of wilderness imbibed.

So there is already a poem in the wilderness that is not the wilderness—and further, the wilderness has been changed by the non-poets. There is a sweetness in the candy, there is a green in the leaf that is not the candy and not the leaf. And the sweetness and the green is, for the poet, mere evidence of something inscrutable, untouchable, ideal, and gone, but which nonetheless is being consumed by their audience on a grand scale. Poetry is utterly useless and impossible, then. Nuanced speech already belongs to the non-poets as they take apart the wilderness, non-poets cramming themselves full of the material the poet (or painter) would otherwise delicately use.

Now let us return to love; the actual poet secretly gives up “poetry” to all the non-poets speaking their wilderness-breaking, sophisticated sentence and song, and uses instead: love. The poem is an act of love: a speech that loves what it is speaking, and in order to love what it is speaking, ‘that which it is speaking’ can never be in the least obscure or difficult to understand; for to love is to reflect like the natural lake, to present intact and precisely what is loved, in order to be known better, and all the better loved.

We know writers who can take something very simple and make it very complex; writers who do this are neither lovers nor poets; they tend to be scholars, or plainly those haters who are barred from love. They tell long stories, demanding you pay attention to the chain, and when you fall asleep they give a literary cry of triumph, for you, the lover, failed the test, and all the literary scholars applaud, and in the din you hear the buzz-saws that cut the wilderness, or the building in every country which occurs only to build, so that everyone can have “a job,” and so the “economy” can thrive, killing every poet and every lover in the process. We hear the men sitting around bragging, with the women bored to tears; or the women gabbing, and the men bored to tears; where are the sweet tears of love, like a lovely waterfall in the wilderness?  The radiant kisses of a man focused on a woman and a woman focused on a man?

But wilderness and kisses are metaphors; as poets, we prefer you don’t take our language too seriously; it is only hinting at what poetry truly is: at best the faintest evidence of divine love.

The ancient dilemma was understood by Socrates, the pre-Christ, who allowed poets one task in the Republic: to praise. Praise is the simplest form of love, the evidence of love we find in speech, the only kind—for otherwise it is rhetoric, not fashioned for love, rhetoric which is valuable, but not the same as song. The qualifications we find in rhetoric are those qualifications which check pure praise and love; the heart of rhetoric is this qualifying quality that demands a reason as it unfolds like prose; it does not reflect like poetry.

Poetry praises what it says—this is how it loves. This is why poetry is the very opposite of the obscure, and if it is not understood immediately, based on precisely what it says, it is not poetry.

We spoke of a precise saying that is then said by poetry in such a manner to hyper-clarify what is said, in a manner that makes the most difficult thought clear to the mind of a child.

Of course, if that which is made abundantly clear is not worth pondering in the first place, the poem has no point. Poets who have nothing to say will hide what they say in obscure speech, thinking smoky appearances will be applauded for the very thing which is not poetic: obscurity.

The poem’s evidence of love is two-fold: first, a beautiful picture, idea, or insight, perfectly worth loving and admiring in itself, and second, the presentation of it so the reader sees it with as much ease and joy as humanly possible. There is a twofold praise: praise presented in a praiseworthy manner is, if we might say it as briefly as possible, a poem.

 

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THE MENTOR/TEACHER CULT

February 24, 2015 at 2:26 pm (Art instructor, Art student, Plato, Poetry teacher, Socrates)

We can think of nothing worse for poetry than the notion that obedience to a flawed personality can make, or inspire, a poet. The insidious nature of the Mentor/Teacher cult escapes detection for two obvious reasons:

Poets, artists and scholars need to teach, obviously, since this is pretty much the only way these types of creatures can make a living.

Second, poets and artists are invested in mentoring others in ways they themselves understand/write poetry/produce art/think about things, if only to create new audiences for their own work.

So when you are a student, remember: you are the hunted. You are prey.

You will, of course, have teachers who are incompetent, bored, have no philosophy, and couldn’t care less about you.

These may actually teach you something.

But the mentor? Beware.

The mentor, armed with their particular art-philosophy, and intent on the education of your soul? They will un-learn you. They will damage you and set you back, unless of course you wish to be a mere clone of them, teaching others similarly, in turn.

Most students know to avoid the teacher who is hostile to them (the student) because they have more talent than the teacher; and many students simply refuse to be mentored by an instructor’s personal bias. After all, the student usually has more than one teacher to choose from, and may already have some idea about what they want.

But this does not change the fact that mentor-relationships are common, and corrupt.

There is nothing wrong with the mentor or enthusiastic teacher, per se.

Mentors are a danger in poetry and the arts today because there is no verifiable excellence in the arts anymore. Crackpot-ism reigns and laziness has become the rule. Poets and artists are distracted by teaching and administrative duties, as well as the million trends of the whole trendy industry itself. The mentor is invariably a lazy crackpot with narrow, trendy views.

To understand the issue a little better, think of the student in a sport. As one gains competence through training in this area, anyone can witness the excellence gained in terms of verifiable quickness, speed, coordination, and so forth. Every coach can be a jerk. This does not change the fact that an aspiring player can either hit a 90 mile per hour fastball—or not.

In sport, excellence is publicly verifiable.

In the arts, today, it is not.

Does this fact make art more sophisticated and nuanced?

We should not assume so. Yet this assumption is nearly universal in the arts.

A moment’s thought will make it clear to anyone the dangerous ramifications of such an assumption.

Especially when we consider the wisdom of the Ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, who named art as that which is concerned with measurement. We err when we think of measurement as a straitjacket, for no piece of music in the world is possible without it, no great painting, or poem, either.

But we can leave Greek philosophy and the idea that measurement is necessary for true art aside for the time being, and simply contemplate what it means to have lazy, crackpot mentor-ism (brainwashing) driving arts and arts education.

To stand out as a ‘mentor,’ one has to be narrow in one’s views, since without any verifiable excellence, excellence can only be perceived in terms of narrow trendiness—which opposes universally verifiable excellence as a matter of course.

Insane mixtures and inane combinations are the rule: the sensibility of the collage, in which whatever strikes one’s fancy, is thrown into the mixing pot, is the number one method, and the more clumsy and jarring the superimposition the better, in the art world today, since the more self-conscious the mixing is, the better, since a unity which seeks excellence as a unity is the ‘old way’ and the enemy.

A picture, which excels by uniting elements, demands excellence in three ways: 1. the parts, 2. the way the parts fit together, and 3. the final result. If the parts ‘stick out’ in a way that ruins the unified effect, this ruins the excellence; as does any one part not being excellent; as does any lack of excellence in the final result, even when every part is excellent. The collage, by its very nature, is an intentional violation of this formula. It is a formula itself, and is a formula itself as much as it subverts the higher order formula which we have just outlined.

Excellence and universality are intentionally subverted in the arts today, since virtually every critically praised painting or sculpture produced today falls under the category of collage.

Simple photography escapes, within the unified choice-frame of its eye, the collage, and therefore we have the largely unspoken irony that photography/video is now the chief art form in the art world, in the same way song lyrics today are carrying the old load which poetry once carried, and comic books, old pictorial art.

Clumsy parts clumsily fitted together—the collage—is the default method which is destroying art and poetry.

A public immediately recognizes excellence—and does so when it is a public, and when it is a public, in rare times in history, excellence flourishes in what are called “renaissance” periods.

But unfortunately a public can be split and fractured into various museum-going and academic and book-buying and politically indoctrinated pieces, trained to respect the fiat of decision-makers at the top of various mercantile, and faux-art credentialing, food chains.

The true mentor—the Socrates—comes along once every thousand years. The student is urged to reject both the mentor and the trend,  and to study history, ancient and modern—and to learn the difference between a trend and a truth.

There is much important work to be done, and the beautiful soul, guided by a kind of fanatical honesty which resists trends, should find a good library, and do that work alone.

 

 

 

 

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HEY LAO TZU, WHAT THE HELL IS PHILOSOPHY?

October 27, 2014 at 12:50 pm (Lao Tzu, Socrates, Tao Te Ching, Taoism)
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We want to talk about philosophy from a practical standpoint, as a useful way of living, which people personally adopt without being able to talk about it.

When it comes to wisdom, there are three approaches:

First, there is the academic approach, where you have to write a paper and support your argument and defend your thesis with approved and authorized arguments which have been approved and authorized by someone else. The teacher, or professor, exists merely to make sure that authorization gets its due; the process is finally one in which the argument defended is not the student’s argument, but someone else’s argument, an argument which has already been approved. The game is: approving what has already been approved; and the result is: very little thinking takes place at all.

The academic approach is nearly always unsatisfying; it exists for teachers, not students, and the rigor involved only serves to frustrate those looking for a philosophy which is lived, and not just talked about. Paper-writing in school almost always chases people away to search for other avenues of wisdom.

The philosophy involved here may not be called religion, but this is what practical philosophy, even philosophy which explicitly rejects authoritarian religion, is. Philosophy exists, and it exists for 99 people out of a 100, as religion, as a way to behave for maximum advantage. Academics, naturally feeling themselves scientifically superior to anything merely practical (or, God forbid, “religious!”) in a common sort of way, demand a certain authority and rigor which kills the whole spirit of philosophy (and all its religious guises), ruining the process from the very start.

The second approach is the highly practical, or hedonist approach, the “religion” mostly taken up by the young, unattached male, which is no-philosophy or no-religion, a highly efficient approach that allows them to temporarily “believe” in whatever religion or ancient Chinese philosophy may be deeply or superficially held by the current female they are trying to seduce. This second approach has no authority or rigor at all, but more than makes up for this lack by being infinitely more practical than the first (academic) approach. Having been to college, or currently in college, academic “wisdom” may be quoted here and there to impress, but this is all simply part of the hedonistic goal of the second approach, which merely uses whatever is available to get what it wants from the female, who most likely has rejected the first ( academic) approach, as well, as being much too impractical. (And even the female who received an ‘A’ in philosophy did so only to please the professor.)

And this leads us to the third approach, mostly chosen by the earnest young female, searching for a “good philosophy” which shows them, hopefully with just a few quotes from Lao Tzu, to behave for maximum advantage in a world full of persistent, no-philosophy, male seducers, odious authoritarian religions, and corporate, Nature-destroying, cynicism.

The first approach, academic philosophy, has no practical use for anyone (except for those earning a living in academia) and can be fairly said not to exist at all. The second approach, the no-philosophy approach, has, by its very description, no real philosophical or religious existence, either—though its impact on the real world is significant and profound, and helps create the necessity of the third approach.

The third approach, then, is where philosophy, by default, really exists and is really practiced. This philosophy exists under the radar; it is not taken seriously, perhaps, because it is believed and lived most strenuously by women in an almost secretive and informal manner, manifested most intensely to lovers and potential partners. The third approach has been around long enough—since about the time when Christianity began to lose its pervasive hold on American morals—so that its philosophy has informed the last few generations: children learn it from their mothers, and, increasingly, from their fathers, and we can see it in Disney movies most visibly, films which feature talking animals and children who love animals, films which heroically attack Nature-destroying corporate cynicism, love of animals being a chief attribute of this pervasive, third-approach philosophy.

Whether it is Ayn Rand or Lao Tzu, every young woman who is not an empty-headed flirt and thinks for herself just a little bit, arms herself with a practical, anti-authoritarian philosophy, to fend off mean parents, mainstream religion, and no-philosophy, ravenous guys, and also to give herself a certain intellectual dignity in the face of the ravenous guy who affects a certain intelligence about philosophical matters.

This is a good thing; a young woman (or a young man, too; there are exceptions) should have a practical philosophy to navigate the perils of a cynical world.

But the good thing is almost a bad thing if the third approach philosophy is merely pragmatic. Fake wisdom is often worse than no wisdom at all, for nothing deceives quite like fake wisdom.

Here is the problem with the pragmatic: we have already seen how pragmatic the second approach is; the most pragmatic philosophy is the no-philosophy of the second approach, which can be any philosophy it wants, depending on its victim. The pragmatic philosophy of the third approach will always lose out, in terms of pragmatism, to the second approach. This will inevitably cause a great deal of emotional and mental and spiritual distress in the follower of the third approach; their “wisdom” only works for them up to a certain point, and they will find themselves constantly betraying their principles to a point where they begin to doubt they have a philosophy or set of beliefs at all, even as they tenaciously cling to their philosophy in a vague, self-doubting sort of manner.

We will look specifically at the most common principles of the third approach, a philosophy, which we have already pointed out, exists as an antidote to the super-cynical second approach in order to protect the person and the dignity and the sanity of the young woman making her way in the world. It will quickly be seen, however, that no “practical wisdom” can defend itself against the super-cynical Second Approach of “no-wisdom,” for the “no-wisdom”of the seducing guy is the ultimate pragmatism. And the young woman who chooses the Third Approach is vaguely aware of this, but finally succumbs to cynicism herself.

The Socratic philosophy is the only true antidote to the second approach, for Socrates recommends argument, not a set of wise quotations, as defense: the only true philosophy reacts to world-seductions by making the seductions themselves the true content of its philosophy as it carefully analyzes these seductions and gives them their due, and ascertains what they ultimately entail, without embracing or rejecting them at first. In this sense, the Socratic philosophy is like the second approach, keeping itself free to adapt in real time to whatever comes its way, and not trapping itself in a set of “wise sayings,” which can always be turned inside out and upside down by anyone who is moderately clever.

Here, for instance, is the “wisdom” of Lao Tzu, which millions learn in the form of “wise sayings” and which millions of women religiously use to keep themselves safe from the ravenous horrors of the cynical and selfish world:

Silence is a source of Great Strength.

Stop thinking and end your problems.

Care about what other people think and you will always be their prisoner.

Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others.

Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need approval.

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.

There is a common thread to all these quotes, and their “wisdom” is such that one can see why those who desperately need to resist the seductive no-philosophy of the Second Approach would find this attractive. As we can see, it is precisely this kind of philosophy which we mentioned above: a way to behave for maximum advantage, a philosophy which is closer to a practical religion: but recall what we said about a philosophy that is practical—it will always be defeated pragmatically by the Second Approach, which is free to be as practical as it needs to be, which holds all the free-ranging, pragmatic cards, since it invests in no preconceived, fixed wisdom at all.

What we notice about the “wisdom” of Lao Tzu is that it encourages its followers to be silent, to invest in no argument at all; that is, this philosophy argues for a kind of no-philosophy (just like the seductive Second Approach!) Lao Tzu, in speaking to the woman who needs to protect herself against the take-no-prisoners, say-anything-to-win, super-pragmatic Second Approach, counsels that one should just shut up, keep silent, don’t argue, don’t think, don’t try to convince, don’t seek approval—in other words, it resembles the myth of the maiden who flees Apollo and turns into a tree. Protect yourself from the false seducer by becoming a rock.

But is this bit of pragmatism possible? Can one really survive in this world by not caring what others think? By not seeking anyone’s approval? By not thinking? Is this good advice? It is perhaps good advice when facing down an enemy with sugared words, but even here, will shutting one’s ears and closing off one’s thoughts really work?

Lao Tzu is counseling the woman (or the man) to avoid argument altogether. Lao Tzu is saying: use ignorance as your fortress. Make people think you are smart by never uttering a word. Roll yourself up into a ball and shut out the world. This may work at times, but always? Is this “wisdom,” then? No, it is fake wisdom. It is foolishness, really, and it only appeals because it partially mimics the no-philosophy of the second approach seducer. Lao Tzu’s “wisdom” fails, for only the courageously free Socratic argument can determine the good from the bad, when it comes to speech and its entire nexus of motivations. Non-verbal judgment and ‘thinking without thinking’ are valid approaches, but with Lao Tzu and the wisdom of the Tao, we see a complete withdrawal from social activity and argument recommended—and this cannot possibly help anyone as a philosophical lifestyle. The wu wei of Lao Tzu is a counter-intuitive, anti-philosophical attempt to mimic second approach wisdom—which will always be the ultimate rebellion against the (academic) first approach.

Here is more “wisdom” from Lao Tzu lest we be accused of being unfair:

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes— don’t resist them. Let things flow naturally forward.”

So all change should be accepted? Even bad changes? What does this mean exactly: “Let things flow…?” If this “flow” is natural in the sense that it is fundamental to the universe and inevitable, then one couldn’t stop it even if one wanted to, and if the “flow” can be stopped for some reason, wouldn’t one want to stop a “flow” that does harm? And if it does no harm, who would want to stop it, anyway? Is Lao Tzu saying that we should not act to change our environment at all? Is this practical? And if he is not saying this, what is he saying?

“Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.”

Again, this is basically saying the same thing: accept everything. Be “simple” is fine advice, but it is much easier to say “be simple” than to actually “return to the source of being,” which may or may not be “simple” for us, depending on how we experience “being” when we are with our kids at the shopping mall. “Be patient,” says the wise philosopher, with your “enemies,” even, we presume, as they are killing your friends. “Compassion” towards oneself is a good thing, we assume, and the same as being compassionate towards others, except those who are not compassionate towards us—our enemies, to whom, just like our friends, we show “patience,” and not “compassion.” It all gets very confusing after a while, when trying to piece together the nice qualities of wisdom.

Is it good to be reminded to be nice to oneself? No doubt it is. Or, to be told to show your enemies a certain amount of patience?  Or to be reminded to keep things simple? Of course it is. But aren’t these truisms, platitudes which grow on trees? And do they apply at all times? Can one really use ‘sayings’ such as these to figure out practical problems? I’m going to be “compassionate” towards myself and have this piece of cake. Wait. Or should I be “compassionate” towards myself by not having this piece of cake. Which is it? Wisdom that can mean anything is, in fact, nothing.

Lao Tzu is no-wisdom. It is the second approach. We may as well admit it. It is nothing but a Trojan Horse, a “philosophy” of the fox for use by the chickens.

There. We’ve said it. The horrible truth is revealed.

34 Comments

THE PROBLEM WITH RHETORIC

May 1, 2014 at 1:27 pm (Plato, Socrates)
Tags:

The problem with any argument, whether it be by politician, philosopher, priest, or poet, is this: any argument will always be prejudiced by its conclusion.

A good argument, we think, leads to its conclusion without any pre-knowledge of its conclusion; otherwise we find ourselves rejecting the argument as being made in bad faith: a mere adornment of a foregone conclusion.

Socrates is often faulted for winning his arguments too easily against fictionalized opponents— the inevitability of the conclusion results not in Socrates’ favor, but as an indictment of Plato ‘stacking the deck.’ So runs the case against Socrates, in many critics’ minds.

The seducer has one goal: carnal conquest; the unwilling victim must be persuaded by an argument guided by a conclusion which already exists. A politician’s speech, an essay, or a piece of fiction may all fall into this same unpleasant category: the conclusion comes first; the argument, no matter how elaborate, no matter how convincing, no matter how seemingly inevitable, was fashioned second, to fit the end—arrived at, for some hidden, sordid gain, in the beginning.

The bad faith argument only seems to be: ‘if these things are true, must not this be true?’ The bad faith argument is really: ‘I desire this, and to get it, I have laid out a masterpiece of an argument before you.’

Here is the great rhetorical dilemma: what sort of argument is it, if it is not prejudiced by its conclusion? It is no argument at all. An argument without a conclusion is not an argument. Yet an argument enslaved by a foregone conclusion is not an argument, either.

How does one rationally argue towards a conclusion which is unknown?

If conclusions are wants, goals, and desires, and all good arguments depend on every goal being unknown, then what in the world are good arguments for, and how can we even say what a good argument is? What sort of argument is it, which is separated from all that human beings want?

We are always reading books and recommending books to others. Do we really believe that in the great rhetorical climate of social and political communication in which all of us swim, there exists only the purest thoughts and actions, absent of all desire and ambition?

Of course we don’t believe this. Truly, conclusions exist. Desires exist. Arguments—ideal arguments, good arguments—do not exist. They can’t.

When someone says they don’t buy your argument, they are lying. Your conclusion, your desire, happens to clash with theirs.

When there is one desire, “good” arguments abound.

Where there are two conflicting desires, wonders! no “good” argument will ever be found.

If good arguments do not exist, and desire makes everything occur, then reason does not exist, or, if reason exists, it truly exists as feeling.

Reason, we think, takes time to unfold; this is what we call a ‘reasonable argument;’ but this is what we have just proved does not exist.

Last weekend my kids and I had to decide what we wanted to do for the day, and there were limits: distance to travel, cost of the event, interest in the event by the various parties, etc.  The conclusion (what we ended up doing) was already contained in the restrictions.

Today I noticed blossoms beginning to fall off the dogwood.

What is the conclusion of the dogwood?

The blossoms?

Or their death?

Reason, perhaps, if it is the same thing as emotion, manifests itself instantaneously, as feelings do.  There is debate on which is faster, light or gravity?  Perhaps the same argument could be made for swiftness of reason versus the swiftness of emotion?

I know what I want immediately.

My argument?

That is hardly relevant at all.

9 Comments

SOCRATES WALKS AWAY FROM RAPALLO, REJECTS POUND’S OFFER

May 6, 2010 at 4:15 pm (Ezra Pound, Harriet Monroe, Socrates, Uncategorized)

The Rapallo Pound don’t have a great team.  They are 12-14 in the AL with 103 runs scored and 118 allowed.  

What can you say about a pitching staff with Hugh Kenner as the ace?   On Sunday the Pound beat the Stevens 2-1 and Kenner (3-3) not only won the game on the mound, he got the winning hit. 

Olga Rudge is 3-1, James Laughlin is playing surprisingly well at third, Richard Wagner (1-0) has just joined the club, and talks are underway with Basil Bunting. 

James Joyce (lf) and William Butler Yeats (ss) lead a potent attack, but defensively Joyce often seems asleep out in left and Yeats isn’t exactly patient with grounders.

Harriet Monroe (1-4) isn’t happy with Pound, and though Zukovsky (2-2) logs a lot of innings, he doesn’t seem capable of winning consistently.

But the biggest blow to the Rapallo Pound this season has to be the inability to sign Socrates.   After weeks of secret discussons at Brunnenburg Castle in Merano, Italy, Socrates has left the table.  The philosopher would have joined the Pound as their ace.

Socrates’ agent, Plato, announced that talks were finished.  “My client feels Mr. Pound is no philosopher.  He’s a wheeler-dealer.”

4 Comments

PEDANTS OF POETRY: THE TOP TEN

December 11, 2009 at 1:56 pm ("Make it new", Alexander Pope, Allen Tate, Aristotle, Byron, Charles Bernstein, Cleanth Brooks, Dante, Derrida, Ezra Pound, Guildenstern, Harold Bloom, Helen Vendler, Horace, Jonathan Swift, Paul Valery, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Plato, Polonius, Robert Burns, Rozencrantz, Shakespeare, Socrates, T.S.Eliot, Uncategorized, William Butler Yeats, Yvor Winters)

~
~

Paul Valery (top), Polonius & T.S. Eliot

The last 100 years have seen more pedantry in poetry than in any other age.

Remember when poetry as a topic brought out the best in thinkers?

Socrates may be a villain to many poets, but Platonic arguments are grand, necessary, and…poetic.

Horace and Aristotle laid groundwork so vital we can overlook their pedantic natures.

Dante’s Vita Nuova is without the pretence of pedantry.

Shakespeare, another enemy of pedantry, made it a popular trope: Rozencrantz, Guildenstern, and Polonius in one play alone.

Pope and Swift fought pedantry as a natural impulse.

Burns, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Poe were against it in their souls.

Yeats, at his best, displayed a hatred of pedantry: “Old, learned respectable bald heads edit and annotate lines…”

These artists are practically defined by their opposition to pedantry.

Something went wrong in the 20th century, however, as Manifesto-ism became a way to get attention in a field of diminishing returns

Here’s Scarriet’s Top Ten Pedant List:

1. Yvor Winters

Claimed the formal is moral, while convincing himself that Allen Tate’s poetry was better than Shelley’s.

2.  Harold Bloom

A pedant’s pedant’s pedant.   Shakespeare’s great—OK, we get it.

3. Jacques Derrida

One part Nietszche, one part William James, one part Analytic Philosophy, one part New Criticism, one part absinthe.

4. Ezra Pound

“Make it new” is a very old pedantry.

5. Cleanth Brooks

Ransom and Warren kept him around to feel like geniuses by comparison.

6. T.S. Eliot

Hated Hamlet.   Afflicted with Dissociation of Verse Libre.

7. Allen Tate

Modernism’s Red-neck traveling salesman.

8. Helen Vendler

A drab sitting room with a Wallace Stevens poster.

9. Charles Bernstein

“Official Verse Culture” was in his own mind.

10. Paul Valery

Always too correct.  Proves the rule that Poe sounds better in French than modern French poetry sounds in English.

BONUS—11. Charles Olson

Take a deep breath.  And blow.

–T. Brady

8 Comments

GALILEO’S SECRET: Where Do We Look When We Look At The Truth?

December 5, 2009 at 4:32 pm (Aimée Nezhukumatathil, christopher woodman, Dante, Expatriate Poet, Foetry, Galileo Galilei, John Donne, Modern Poetry, Monday Love, Newton, Plato, Shakespeare, Simone Weil, Socrates, Stonehenge, Uncategorized)

John Donne….….
..Look around?.………………..Look in?……………………………..Look out?

A lightly edited version of a real time discussion that took place right at the end of the original ‘watchdog’ website, Foetry.com. ‘Expatriate Poet’ is Christopher Woodman, the 70 year old poet who lives in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and is active on Scarriet. Although ‘Monday Love’ posing as Scarriet’s ‘Thomas Brady‘ has given permission to reprint his contribution to this dialogue, he prefers to remain (sort of…) anonymous.

Scarriet takes full reponsibility for the obscenity in this article, and understands that there will be many readers who won’t know where to look. We apologize for any offense given.

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Dear Monday Love,
A few days ago you wrote, “If I want to convey to you right now some truth, I will do everything I can to put the argument before you as nakedly and clearly as I can possibly present it.”

There’s a poem I’ve been working on for some time—or rather, I should say the poem’s been working on me, so much so that when I read what you just wrote I immediately thought of the poem and wanted it to work on you too! Like this:

THE MEANING AND VALUE OF REPRESSION

………..Who’s this naked giant then
………………….peering in at your window

………..with the huge brown phallus
………………….pressed up against the pane,

………..the half-tumescent glans
………………….like some rude Cyclops’s tongue

………..or thick-set paleolithic fruit
………………….in puris naturabilis displayed

………..and mounted on the slippery
………………….slide the shocked members

………..gape at as their meals
………………….get laid upon the table?

………..He has no shame, this sly
………………….weighted thing towering

………..above the high tree tops—
………………….the great trunk of his gnarled

………..sex and trumpet foreskin
………………….making all the cultivated

………..thoughts that dine in private
………………….so much fast-food small-talk.

………..But oh, how the air out there
………………….shines attendant with delight,

………..hiking up those warm kirtled
………………….skirts to reveal Galileo’s secret

………..so profound only such obscene
………………….dimensions ever fathom it!

Posted by EXPATRIATE POET: Sat Feb 24, 2007 12:23 pm
_________________
(…yet still it moves!)

~

“Huge brown phallus pressed up against the pane”

Best image in poetry ever!

Posted by MONDAY LOVE: Sun Feb 25, 2007 9:16 am
_________________
Whisper and eye contact don’t work here.

~

But that’s not even the best image in the poem, so how could it be the best image in poetry ever?

I know I’m a fool, and I always rise to your bait, but now I’m thinking about what you said yesterday about Aimée Nezhukumatathil’s new book, Miracle Fruit.

Aimee N. definitely has it going on. Hot chick w/ erotic poems. Naughty, yet sensitive; sexy, yet learned; chatty, yet profound; worldly, yet academic; with her third-world traditionalist family hitting on her American singleness, freedom and sass. . . You go, girl!

But I predict she’ll get bored with the kind of chatty lyric she’s writing now. She’ll beat a hasty retreat towards more serious forms. The little dog will give way to twelve or thirteen kids, metaphorically speaking.

Dear Monday Love–you do such good work on this site, and we’re all so fortunate to have the chance to read so much of you–which goodness knows is certainly never dull! But much too often it’s your private Big Boy that gets dropped on our threads, and the ashes keep piling and piling up. Well, I’m an old man and I have no reputation at all, and partly for that reason you should listen to me. You can’t step on my toes because I don’t have any, it’s as simple as that, nor can you open my closet living as I do in a place that has none. But I’m serious about poetry all the same, and I can talk to you if you’ll listen.

And I say you not only have an issue with poetry but with girls!

That’s why I posted the poem for you, and not surprisingly you ignored the WOMAN in it altogether and chose rather to celebrate the PHALLUS–just like you poked fun at the girl!

I felt the woman in the poem was so overwhelmingly attractive and uncomplicated that she would have to illuminate you and quicken your being, that she would speak to who you were and where you were going. Now I begin to think you never let poets speak to you at all–even the dwindling handful you regard as o.k.

Because what I’ve never seen you do is listen to what a poem actually says that might be of value to you personally. You read with such disdain and critical detachment, almost as if you were judging a small town dog show that neglected to shovel up its poop. But even a common poem can talk to you, you know–it mustn’t be asked just to stand up on its hind legs and rhumba, or jump through a hoop to please you.

That’s what the little poem might have been trying to tell you, in fact–that like the average scientist you restrict yourself to the empirical evidence before you, as if the universe could tango without the human value that gives meaning to it.

Christopher

Posted by EXPATRIATE POET: Mon Feb 26, 2007 10:41 am
_________________
(…yet still it moves!)

~

Christopher,
I have no toes to step on either.

Do I have an “issue” with “girls?” Perhaps, I do. “Girls” is a big topic.

I loved Aimée’s poem. I summed up her schtick in a few words, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t dig it.

Also empirical evidence is all we have. The rest is speculation.

But I must say, I’m not good at riddles. What specific ‘evidence’ am I missing?

Monday
Posted by MONDAY LOVE: Mon Feb 26, 2007 8:48 pm
_________________
Whisper and eye contact don’t work here.

CLICK HERE to continue reading this article.

14 Comments

BREAK, BLOW, FIZZLE

November 3, 2009 at 12:06 pm (Amelia Earhart, Barren Virgin, Bleeding Mother, Camille Paglia, Edgar Allan Poe, Foetry, Harold Bloom, Horror, John Keats, Monday Love, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Scarriet, Socrates, Thomas Brady, Uncategorized)

WHAT HAPPENED TO CAMILLE PAGLIA?

ALL communication is a warning.

The more articulate a person, the more they are experiencing what they are warning us about.

All information presupposes danger.  The menu cries out against the horror of starvation–the diet warns of the menu.  The chef who starves cooks best.

Priests are unable to warn directly, since the more articulate the priest, the more that priest personally knows the very sin against which their sermon is a warning.

The dilemma of the articulate priest is at the heart of all moral philosophy and its intellectual, political, cultural, and pedagogical conflicts.

Loyalty is the quality which attempts to stave off this conflict.  Loyalty to group or tribe warns against the dilemma of the articulate priest.  The truly articulate priest disrupts loyalty and its certainties; this is why prophets are hated in their own land.

Camille Paglia is an articulate priest who smashes loyalites.  She offends all groups.  All have reason to despise her: Democrats, Republicans, independents, feminists, conservatives, gays, Catholics, and scholars.

Paglia is the Barren Mother and the Breeding Virgin of intellectual culture.

She is a lustful Socrates, whose questing, intellectual advocacy is centered on ecstatic pleasures and sexual beauty–hers is a warning against what she, personally, has secretly suffered: chastity.

Obviously it’s nobody’s business how much someone gets laid, but my thesis is based on a guess that during Paglia’s development as a young person, she didn’t get laid.  This was both her strength and her weakness.

Paglia fell in love at a very early age with Amelia Earhart’s lone flights—the poem “Alone” by Edgar Poe probably best sums up her soul.  Paglia was a virgin during the 60s and adopted the brazen lesbian role as a graduate student to hide the shame of her uncool virginity.

Paglia, the scholar of sex, shone, as the scholar, herself, remained virginal, or, if not virginal, deeply ashamed of losing out to more successful schmoozers in sex and career.

The virgin is alone more profoundly when surrounded, and not barred from, sexual activity.  For whatever reason, actual sex wasn’t a fit, so Paglia became an artistic fan of pornography—but not out of a feeling of deficiency, for she was an Amelia Earhart in her soul, flying above the boorish crowd.

We warn of what we know—the awed, hurting mind produces what the sensual, happy mind cannot.

Sexual Personae marked the start of a brilliant career.  Her gadfly presence in magazines and the lecture circuit, in the wake of the success of her historical treatise, was truly exciting.  But the promised second volume of Sexual Personae never arrived.  Then she began to write on politics, speaking of presidents and secretaries of state as if she were making snarky judgments at a high school dance.  It never quite rang true.

Paglia also boxed herself in as a hater of ‘French Theory;’ it was always obvious to me this prejudice of hers was linked to her mentor, Harold Bloom, who, like many academics, is explicitly pro-Emerson/anti-Poe, and this Anglophone school can never forgive the French for loving Poe.

Then she took five years to write Break, Blow, Burn, her book on poetry, a tepid close-reading exercise of some of her favorite poems.

How in the world did the author of Sexual Personae morph into Cleanth Brooks?

And five years…think of it.   That’s the writing career of Keats, the recording career of the Beatles (almost), the entire career of the Doors, to take a few dozen short poems, many loved and adored since childhood, and riff on them…this took five years?

Couldn’t most of us do this in a week?

Paglia still blogs on Salon and most readers hate her; the consensus of Salon readers seems to be, I HATE THIS B***, FIRE HER!!!

Which is great.   We at Scarriet understand.  But what happened to you, Camille?

Really?

4 Comments