One hundred and ninety in roman numerals is written as CXC. Isn't that beautiful? I mean I'm no number fanatic myself but I guess the simplicity and the symmetry of that has just the right amount of elegance, of élan. In a way it also hints at the syntax of Latin (of Latium, the province of the city of Rome), which works, basically, in a subject-object-adjective way, so that the sentence has to be grasped front to end before the complete meaning becomes clear. But I guess this simply devolves from the inherent limitations of the Roman numeral system, i.e. in comparison with the decimal Hindu-Arabic system. But consider "CXC": in a way the beauty of it is essentially human, although numbers perhaps have in some sense a priori existence, or even self-evidence; to be beautiful in spite of and also on account of its limitations.
I thought recently about the three written works I would most like to take along with me to a desert island (assuming that all other conditions are reasonable). There is no particular order of merit, but if pressed I would like most to take these in order.
1. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's collected works.
2. Jorge Luis Borges' collected works.
3. Friedrich Nietzsche's collected works.
If these may seem perhaps too ungainly to clutch desperately to one's bosom when threatened with desert island maroonment, the following are the specific works I shall prefer:
1. Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.
2. Borges' Collected Fictions (only 576 pages, after all).
3. Plato's The Republic (alas, my dear Friedrich, alas.)
This is the extent of my great love for these works: that I do not consider my adult life to have begun until after having read these. And perhaps an item on this list may yet have to make way for one or another of Rowan Williams' works.
A few words on these writers might be given here, although one might hope to be forgiven for fumbling about in trying to quite describe what is wonderful about these works. In a way this feels a little like those horrible little quotes that are published quite crudely on the back of some immodest books.
Marquez is for me the master of exploring and portraying the singular romantic, heroic, pseudo-epic visions, fixations or delusions a person might have, and his writing embraces the thesis, the leitmotif that every person must in the end admit and relinquish himself to the particular, solitary and necessarily individualistic core of the eccentricity, and hence meaning, of his own existence. And this is not a comedic obsession, it is a deadly serious Quixotic enterprise.
Borges is perhaps more fantastic: his stories are of men as effigies, infinite libraries, an imprisoned beast visited by God. There is a touch more of the mystical, of the unending search for meaning in the enigmatic and the abstruse, of the riddle of existence. And in his stories the characters transcend that dissonance between reality and the veiled, the unfathomable; they seem to have come from that other side, speak that other language, they search for the return to that other life. There is hidden in his stories a kernel of that understanding, of reality as an illusion, a dream, a projection.
Plato, and his master Socrates, are perhaps the founding figures in philosophy, in the search for meaning through reason, logical analogy, and an unrelenting dedication to the application of the mind. We must through these works remember that everything that we see, that we use and that we believe must not be closed to probing, to questioning, and if need be, to refutation. And we must in that search not forget as well to be generous, for we, as the masters before us, must seek to search, learn and be brought together to wisdom. What is more, we must, as these masters, learn to live frugally, and well, to be virtuous, moderate and respectable.
I am exceedingly glad to more recently have found my way into the works of Williams. I think his foremost quality is in his sensitivity. His intellect is perhaps unquestioned, but I think his organisation and the phrasing of his thoughts to be so delicate as to be quite enthralling. It is also said in some quarters that his eyebrows are thought to be the finest by some measure, a comment I find both preposterous and strangely quite endearing for the man. What a wonderful man! To quote from John Wesley on fellowship, Wittgenstein on language, Marilynne Robinson on prodigality in literature, Augustine on ... heaven knows what, goodness, I think Williams' work is finally God's answer to me.
I seem to have left out Nietzsche. But my courage has deserted me: I cannot bear to describe him. I am certain that I will never understand the greater part of his writing, Never. He is too deep. His language is certainly marvelous as well; I have quoted in a previous post a passage of his in which he laments that his thoughts, whereas at conception seem to be quite wonderful, when written, have lost much of their vivacity, like a bird trapped in one's hand. But I cannot quite say, with conviction, if at all, that I will ever read Zarathustra with any firm notion of what Nietzsche was driving at. Beyond Good and Evil was slightly more comprehensible. But I have listed Nietzsche's works as something I think I would profitably spend the rest of my days mulling over in solitude, and I quite stand by that.
