An Essay on Matters from Ants to Zaire

The temperature in Berlin was expected to reach 31 degrees today, though it was intermittently cloudy and a wind has been blowing in from the northeast, so I wore a dress and sandals (with socks). As it turns out, the weather was not as sweltering as on dog days in August of years past, the U-Bahn was airy enough, shade from trees was everywhere once I was out in Dahlem, and the interiors of buildings are still as cool as the middle of a stone rain cistern. But while standing still is comfortably warm, the moment one begins to walk more than five meters the sweat (or, to use a politer term, 'glow') begins.

Having missed the last History and Society of the Near East lecture, and the first five to ten minutes of this one, I was mildly surprised to find ourselves plunked into the middle of the Napoleonic occupation of Egypt already. It was briefly touched upon, though, before we skipped ahead to Muhammad Ali. I was kind of excited when the name was first mentioned; instead of an esoteric tangent about the boxer, however, the professor was speaking of the Egyptian khedive.

This khedive was completely unfamiliar to me until I realized that he is the same person as Mehmet Ali Pasha. (Not that I had any idea who he was, but I'd come across his name.) Since Mehmet Ali was an independent and ambiguous reforming figure in his own right, and unfortunately sensationally brutal at times (for example, gathering a bunch of elites into a citadel for a 'feast' and killing them all, with results so nice he did it twice — at any rate this stratagem was later repeated in Istanbul), his tale was interesting too. So I resolved to embark on an intensive round of reading with the professor's recommended reading list as a starting point look it up in Wikipedia later.

When he was not reforming agriculture through policy resembling in its wisdom and well-guided humility the Great Leap Forward, conscripting the peasantry instead of recruiting foreign mercenaries and coercing prisoners into the army as had been the custom, expelling the Turkish-originating Mameluke upper class, driving the house of Saud away from Mecca and Medina (I mentally cheered at this, since I don't like Wahhabism nor the present Saudi rulers' mode of governance as far as I've heard about it), taking over Greater Syria with a menacing ambition towards Anatolia and then Istanbul, and being a wheel in the cogs of the Ottoman Empire which was eager to roll off and construct its own mechanism, etc., he was looking to transform the education system which was still dominated for instance by madrassas. By these means and others he endeared himself to the religious scholars of the state — I really mean did the opposite of 'endeared himself.' (Later these ulama would partly align themselves with peasants' revolts.) I may be mixing up Mehmet Ali's achievements with his son grandson and indirect successor Ismail Pasha's later ones, however.

The khedive sent a sheik, Tahtawi, to Paris, with a gaggle of students in order to observe specifically the educational system of France. As the professor mentioned this and suggested in an aside that Tahtawi was also supposed to keep the young people from going off the rails, I pictured the Egyptian in my mind's eye, steering serious-minded students clad in robes away from the Moulin Rouge, like overenergetic schoolchildren on a field trip to the Musée d'Orsay but worse. (Neither the Moulin nor the Musée already existed in 1826, but anyway.)

Whether the students used their time wisely or not, their Argus wrote a book about it later.  A biography of Tahtawi himself is here (from the website of Durham University; and if you read the text at length, you will only see orange afterwards by virtue of the colourful background), but I haven't found an online text. So I'm still curious if he took scholarly revenge on the Lettres persanes, the Entführung aus dem Serails, the Rondos alla turca, the portrait of Byron in a turban, and all the other European, er, insights into the being of the Ottoman Empire and its predecessor states.

It's arguable, but my professor said right at the beginning of the lecture that in the Islamic world the revolutions have all been a renewal of tradition rather than complete innovation as in Europe. Which is an interesting insight even if I find it a little hard to believe. Certainly there was much about the French Revolution which seemed to graft completely new and abstract ideas onto whatever was left of the Ancien Régime, but it also derived part of its authority, I think, from modern interpretations of Roman political systems in theory and practice, and from references to England as it constituted itself after the Glorious Revolution of 1668. As far as I know their ideas of Rome and England were all veiled and rose-tinted and soft-focused so that the Romans and constitutional monarchic English might be excused for not recognizing their polity in a revolutionary's representation thereof; but I imagine that Christ might also be agog at the interesting things he has been accused within the past millennium or so of thinking ca. 30 Anno Ipsius (eius? — pardon my neologized Latin), so even religious tradition does not quite live up to the promise of its name.

After the lecture there was a two hour interval where I could have gone home, but decided to read books outdoors. There are lots of books I could and should be reading. Yesterday I realized that I should begin preparing for my Islamic Studies seminar's essay if I wanted to write it properly. I still have an inkling that it won't be my finest work, but I don't want to have a bad conscience about the preparation process on top of everything else. So for now I am reading about 20th-century black history in America. We have The Autobiography of Malcolm X at home too, but I've decided to begin with Black Rage. After reading a really interesting cluster of Wikipedia articles about the senator who wrote the foreword and his wife, his rivals, etc., I began to read up on the Watts Riots, mentioned in the book alongside Newark and Detroit riots which I haven't even begun to research. The report of the commission which investigated the riots is quite good reading — one of the commission members is Warren Christopher, who I seem to remember also spearheaded an investigation into police brutality around the time of the Rodney King riots — though I am not sure how much of it to believe. It's still horrifying to realize that people die in these riots, instead of spraypainting vulgarities or torching parked cars whose owners are presumably long gone or being dragged away by police or throwing things against armoured officers with pusillanimous black masks over their faces as people do in the riots that we see on the news once or twice a year now.

I've just realized that the deaths of people during the looting in New Orleans have also barely been reported, compared for instance to Kanye West's 'Bush doesn't care about black people' commentary (which I still think is hilarious and probably true) — which is part and parcel of the strange tendency of the American press to bypass any news, however sensational, if it is really important and symptomatic of America's underlying realities. It is also, I think, racist.

I am also still reading through Thomas Pynchon's essay on Watts, but put aside a French opinion article whose author implied that the death of a police officer was quite peachy and who gloried in the destruction which was as far as I can tell pretty cannibalistic since it probably hurt African-Americans more than it did others. There was an article from the Los Angeles Times (probably) where the police officer who arrested a drunk driver and thereby sparked the Watts Riots said, 'I was just doin' ma job' and that he 'doesn't think about the riots much' — which irritated me greatly. While it is true that he evidently carried out this arrest in the most indisputably ordinary and reasonable manner, firstly, people who are interviewed in newspapers who trot out the tired phrase "I was just doing my job" are generally trying to avoid being embarrassed by fulsome praise for a heroic deed, which your garden variety DUI arrest is not. Secondly, not thinking about violence where dozens of people died and you know some of the actors is either a necessary defense mechanism, or highly egocentric and frankly a bit dumb.

Then I read an article about Thurgood Marshall (I had forgotten that he was replaced by Clarence Thomas, so a loud but silent internal cry of 'noooooo!' arose once that was mentioned) and even waded through the Supreme Court ruling, Reitman v. Mulkey, against the discriminatory housing policy which had been enshrined in California's state law by a voter proposition just before the riots.

But I was not sitting at a computer and I hadn't brought Black Rage along, so I read more of Der ewige Krieg, which was not so cheerful to begin with and is becoming more and more depressing, cynical, and full of futility, still expressed in the somewhat timeworn New York Times style. But I read far more of the introductions in our copy of Zaïre, the play by Voltaire from the 1730s, and though it is a tragedy reading about it is quite cheerful. The editors have limned the historical context, echoed the plaudits and critiques of the play's original audience, and in delineating its literary and other influences have dispatched questions like 'is the play an egregious imitation of Othello?' (— one can see why one would ask, but the answer is no) with polite emphasis.

Now I am slogging through Voltaire's dedications (which are as ever tremendously boring to read, since they can be properly interesting — to borrow a phrase from Jane Austen — only to the principal parties) to his English friend.The footnotes are unexpectedly cheeky; I like the comment about the absurd tradition in dedications 'd'écrire des lettres d'esclave à des gens qui sont digne de l'être' (that was probably misquoted; the sense: 'to write letters in a slavish manner to persons who deserve to be one'). The playwright goes on and on, explaining the nature of England to an Englishman; so that one does feel inclined to throttle him lightly and tell him to get with the programme and talk to the poor man about something he doesn't already know. English dramas are coarse, English freedom of expression and social mobility (that's a larf, but French society must have been even worse) and so on good, and Englishmen cheeky little monkeys for unfairly being mean to actors. We get it. — Lessing evidently felt the same, since he is quoted in the footnotes being critical in his Hamburgische Dramaturgie. I've found the whole thing as an online text at Gutenberg, so here is an amusing excerpt:

First, he recapitulates Voltaire's argument that English plays were unnatural for having a rhymed couplet at the end of each act, out of sheer habit, and that this couplet invariably contains some trite analogy (Cato comparing himself to a rock, for instance). Aaron Hill, the translator who rendered Voltaire into the English has, according to Voltaire, broken with this tradition to bow to the natural instinct and shed this artificial practice:

Er sagt z.E. zu seinem englischen Freunde: "Eure Dichter hatten eine Gewohnheit, der sich selbst Addison unterworfen; denn Gewohnheit ist so maechtig als Vernunft und Gesetz. Diese gar nicht vernuenftige Gewohnheit bestand darin, dass jeder Akt mit Versen beschlossen werden musste, die in einem ganz andern Geschmacke waren, als das Uebrige des Stuecks; und notwendig mussten diese Verse eine Vergleichung enthalten.

Phaedra, indem sie abgeht, vergleicht sich sehr poetisch mit einem Rehe, Cato mit einem Felsen, und Kleopatra mit Kindern, die so lange weinen, bis sie einschlafen.

Der Uebersetzer der "Zaire" ist der erste, der es gewagt hat, die Rechte der Natur gegen einen von ihr so entfernten Geschmack zu behaupten. Er hat diesen Gebrauch abgeschafft; er hat es empfunden, dass die Leidenschaft ihre wahre Sprache fuehren und der Poet sich ueberall verbergen muesse, um uns nur den Helden erkennen zu lassen."

Lessing replies to this notion, "Es sind nicht mehr als nur drei Unwahrheiten in dieser Stelle;" — 'There are not more than three solitary untruths here"

und das ist fuer den Hrn. von Voltaire eben nicht viel. Wahr ist es, dass die Englaender, vom Shakespeare an, und vielleicht auch von noch laenger her, die Gewohnheit gehabt, ihre Aufzuege in ungereimten Versen mit ein paar gereimten Zeilen zu enden. Aber dass diese gereimten Zeilen nichts als Vergleichungen enthielten, dass sie notwendig Vergleichungen enthalten muessen, das ist grundfalsch; und ich begreife gar nicht, wie der Herr von Voltaire einem Englaender, von dem er doch glauben konnte, dass er die tragischen Dichter seines Volkes auch gelesen habe, so etwas unter die Nase sagen koennen. Zweitens ist es nicht an dem, dass Hill in seiner Uebersetzung der "Zaire" von dieser Gewohnheit abgegangen. Es ist zwar beinahe nicht glaublich, dass der Hr. von Voltaire die Uebersetzung seines Stuecks nicht genauer sollte angesehen haben, als ich oder ein anderer. Gleichwohl muss es so sein. Denn so gewiss sie in reimfreien Versen ist, so gewiss schliesst sich auch jeder Akt mit zwei oder vier gereimten Zellen. Vergleichungen enthalten sie freilich nicht; aber, wie gesagt, unter allen dergleichen gereimten Zeilen, mit welchen Shakespeare und Jonson und Dryden und Lee und Otway und Rowe, und wie sie alle heissen, ihre Aufzuege schliessen, sind sicherlich hundert gegen fuenfe, die gleichfalls keine enthalten. Was hatte denn Hill also Besonders? Haette er aber auch wirklich das Besondere gehabt, das ihm Voltaire leihet: so waere doch drittens das nicht wahr, dass sein Beispiel von dem Einflusse gewesen, von dem es Voltaire sein laesst. Noch bis diese Stunde erscheinen in England ebensoviel, wo nicht noch mehr Trauerspiele, deren Akte sich mit gereimten Zellen enden, als die es nicht tun. Hill selbst hat in keinem einzigen Stuecke, deren er doch verschiedene, noch nach der Uebersetzung der "Zaire", gemacht, sich der alten Mode gaenzlich entaeussert. Und was ist es denn nun, ob wir zuletzt Reime hoeren oder keine? Wenn sie da sind, koennen sie vielleicht dem Orchester noch nutzen; als Zeichen naemlich, nach den Instrumenten zu greifen, welches Zeichen auf diese Art weit schicklicher aus dem Stuecke selbst abgenommen wuerde, als dass es die Pfeife oder der Schluessel gibt. 

 (and that is in sooth not much for Master Voltaire. True it may be, that the English have been in the habit since Shakespeare and perhaps earlier, to end their acts in unrhymed verse with a few rhymed lines. But that these rhymed lines contained nothing but comparisons — that they must needs contain comparisons — that is utterly wrong; and I do not comprehend how Master Voltaire could say such stuff to the very face of an Englishman — whom he could, after all, believe to have read the tragic bard of his countrymen. Secondly, there are no grounds for the statement that Hill has departed from this tradition in his translation of Zaire. It may be near incredible that Master Voltaire has not inspected the translation of his piece more closely than I or any other. It must be so all the same.


For as surely as it is composed in rhymeless verse, so surely does every act close with two or four rhymed verses. They may not contain comparisons; but, as stated, among all rhymed lines of that order with which Shakespeare and Jonson and Dryden and Lee and Otway and Rowe, and whatever all their names are, finish their acts, there are surely five which also contain none. What was particular about Hill, then?


If he had really possessed that unique quality which Voltaire lent him, it would thirdly still not be true that his example bore the influence which Voltaire ascribes to it. To this hour there appear in England quite as many if not more tragedies whose acts close with rhymed lines, as those who do not. Hill himself has not, in a single play — of which he has after all undertaken several, still after the translation of Zaire —, removed himself entirely from the old fashion.


And what does it matter, whether we hear rhymes last or none? When they are there, they can perhaps still benefit the orchestra, in particular as a signal to take up the instruments, which signal would in this manner be more neatly by far be derived from the drama, than the pipe or the key provides.)

I moved locations while reading several times, but sitting on the steps of a building was out after two ants crawled into my dress. Though I miss the feeling of having random insects walking over, resting on, and otherwise visiting me since we left the Canadian countryside, and feel kind of happy whenever I see a spider even if it isn't nearly as huge as past acquaintances, this went too far. After that, obviously, I started seeing ants everywhere, along the sidewalks and so on.

 Then it was time for the History and Society of the Near East seminar. Today the topic was whether there is a catty hierarchy within the American Muslim community which relegates African-American Muslims to lower positions. Firstly it wasn't clear if this is really an issue which people worry about in real life or rather something which academics worry about for them; secondly the question was whether racism is Islamic and we barely touched on the theological aspect. We discussed slavery in the seminar last semester, and I think that the Prophet was uneasy with it but not strictly opposed, and that his successors chose to pretend that owning non-Muslim slaves was, er, halal; but a central tenet of Islam is equality. I also don't know if there was ever the sense that God made black people inferior — only unlucky if they were caught or handed over, which was a fate possible for any neighbour of the Abbasid, Ottoman, etc. empires.

A classmate also rightly asked whether new converts to Islam (which pretty much any African-American is, since immigration from Africa and specifically Muslim African nations was I think impossible until the laws changed in the 1960s) were not always rather looked down upon. The teacher said that converts from unlikely demographic sources, e.g. pretty blonde Americans, are heartily welcome, but from the example that she gave it seemed rather that such a convert can be paraded as a rara avis rather than shuttled up into the hierarchy. She also mentioned that there are squabbles about which self-declared Muslims can actually read the Koran in the original Arabic, etc.

What was also mentioned is that the racial hierarchy is omnipresent; and that immigrants tend to assimilate into it as easily as into anything else. A cheerful thought.

Finally, I went to my Latin class. We are still translating Cornelius Nepos's biography of Hannibal. Last time there was a passage which intrigued us all, about Hannibal's soldiers twining brushwood (sarmentum) into the horns of steers at nighttime, lighting the twigs on fire, and then sending the animals loose into the field toward the Roman lines. The Romans were apparently so disconcerted that they didn't dare to set foot outside their fortifications. Written in spare language, this detail left open all sorts of questions. First and foremost, weren't the poor creatures burned? Secondly, were the burning twigs supposed to look like torches held by roaming soldiers, in which case mightn't the Romans have shot at the animals? Thirdly, or were the roaming steers supposed to look like ghosts? Fourth, mightn't they have looked like will o' the wisps? Fifth, are there will o' the wisps in Italian marshes, or would the Romans have been frightened even more since nothing they had ever encountered would explain the roving lights?

Either way, I was feeling tired but not as badly as yesterday (fourish hours of sleep are a bad idea); the heat wilted us all a little, however. Even the awkward silences before someone answered a question were extremely mellow; I thought the class went swimmingly. But the professor thought otherwise. She was especially, though mildly, bewildered that we couldn't state that absens is in the nominative case (she told us that the word was absens, absentis, and then it still took someone a while to raise a hand); 'The weather is hot, but not that hot!'

Anyway, it is now nearly 6 a.m., so off to bed for me. When I wake up I'll probably look like a vampire again, unwholesome and with a sunken reddish look underneath fixed beady eyes, thanks to sleep deprivation. By 12:15 I must be at my Greek speech lab, by 2:15 voluntarily at T.'s tutorial, then two hours of twiddlingmy thumbs, and then another two hours of Latin, followed by a trip to the U-Bahn, ascent up the street to our apartment, climb of the stairs, and finally summary collapse across the threshold. The drama will be intense. On Thursday I have three and a half hours of Greek; on Friday nothing, and since Pentecost is a holiday, there will be a day off on Monday. So this is survivable.

P.S.: I am sorry for the inaccuracies or slips due to being kind of woozy and lazy which are doubtless rife in this post.