A Day of Sloth

First of all, I should say that this wasn't entirely a day of sloth; I did shower, make my bed, and go grocery-shopping. It was a cloudy day, but mild (I've heard many remarks about the unseasonal warmth here in Berlin throughout the winter), so there was no real reason to stay inside much, but I did. Today I played Mozart and Beethoven and Chopin and Mendelssohn better than average, and Bach about average. Of the first two I played piano sonatas; of the third assorted waltzes, mazurkas, the beginning of a Polonaise, and three nocturnes; and last of all I played Mendelssohn's "Spring Song." I only played one prelude by Bach.

Then I read articles on the Guardian and New York Times websites. The Guardian has a good, detailed article about William Hogarth, whose Rake's Progress we looked at in my History 120 course. Then there was an article about Iraq's civil war that I found most illuminating, as well as a rather too uncritical one about Angela Merkel. Finally, there is also a discussion about writing by Zadie Smith, of which the following sentences particularly caught my attention:

Bad writing does nothing, changes nothing, educates no emotions, rewires no inner circuitry - we close its covers with the same metaphysical confidence in the universality of our own interface as we did when we opened it. But great writing - great writing forces you to submit to its vision. You spend the morning reading Chekhov and in the afternoon, walking through your neighbourhood, the world has turned Chekhovian; the waitress in the cafe offers a non- sequitur, a dog dances in the street.

In the Times I was surprised to read that a Charles Stimson, the US's deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, had suggested in a radio interview that corporations boycott prominent law firms whose members work on behalf of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. I was amused until I read that this person is a lawyer himself, though a military one. I've read, probably in the New York Review of Books, a witticism to the effect that military justice has roughly the same relationship to justice that military music has to music. Perhaps the statement is not so unfair. But what really shocked me is Mr. Stimson's following comment: “I think, quite honestly, when corporate C.E.O.’s see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms (. . .)." Does he really not understand that those terrorists who were directly responsible for September 11th are already dead? Even if he does understand that, it is highly worrisome given his position that he cannot grasp the fact that many of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are innocent, and that there is a reason why the US government has only filed charges (and that, I think, only in a military court) against ten of the over six hundred inmates.

As for the question of representing people who, one can be reasonably sure, are responsible for terrible acts, I'm sure I wouldn't want to do so. But, if I were a lawyer, I think I would see it as my duty, to the defendant and to the truth. One cannot come to a true understanding of a crime and the identity of its perpetrator if there is only a prosecutor; to give an analogy, two spotlights trained on an object from different directions provide a much better view of the whole than only one spotlight would. Anyway, the leading editorial of the Times was a stinging reply to Stimson's comments, and it was a pleasure to read. But the last paragraph, while I admire it from a rhetorical standpoint, went too far as it pounced on Stimson's involuntary implication that the corporate financial losses of September 11 were more serious than the human death toll.

Anyway, the other major reading I did today was St. Elmo. I find it isn't nearly as annoying as At the Mercy of Tiberius (though both heroines unfortunately have an alliterative name). It is nearly as thrilling: there is one duel and the mention of another, the heroine's grandparents die, the hero out-Byronics Mr. Rochester, the villain of the piece is a blonde-haired femme fatale resembling Dumas's Milady, and the heroine has a close encounter with an unfriendly dog who has just devoured a sheep, two fainting-fits because she suffers from hypertrophy, and three marriage proposals (thus far). The heroine is also very learned, and can, for example, quote Mill at will and disparage him with great ease. She delivers an amusing anti-suffragist outburst, denouncing the ranks of suffragettes as ugly, disappointed New England spinsters, horrible she-males, fanatics on the brink of insanity, etc. Here, in contrast, is her description of the ideal wife, quoted from a certain Rogers:

"His house she enters, there to be a light
Shining within when all without is night;
A guardian angel o'er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures and his cares dividing;
Winning him back, when mingling in the throng
From a vain world we love, alas! too long,
To fireside happiness and hours of ease,
Blest with that charm, the certainty to please.
How oft her eyes read his! her gentle mind
To all his wishes, all his thoughts inclined;
Still subject -- ever on the watch to borrow
Mirth of his mirth, and sorrow of his sorrow."

I wonder whether reading novels does have a pernicious effect on the mind. On the one hand, I'm frittering away time I could otherwise spend continuing the Leviathan, reattempting Kant, reading about the French Revolution, diminishing my ignorance of the sciences, sketching, and getting properly launched on Waverley. On the other hand, I find that a satisfactory novel keeps me in a good mood as nothing else can. The pious ones also help me to fine-tune my moral ideals. And I think that I do read novels bearing firmly in mind that they have little or no relation to the real world, so I don't indulge sentimental daydreams or anything like that -- but one can never really tell, can one?