Significant Moments: Part 9

Both the man and his wife . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . spoke about the spirit of Europe and the signs of the times. Everywhere, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
. . . the man said, . . .
Jack London, The One Thousand Dozen.
. . . we could observe the reign of the herd instinct, nowhere freedom and love. All this false communion—from the fraternities to the choral societies and the nations themselves—was an inevitable development, was a community born of fear and dread, out of embarrassment, but inwardly rotten, outworn, close to collapsing.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
The sun was setting, we could see the whole city below us, and it was one of those quiet moments when petty concerns seem to melt away.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
From this day on I went in and out of the house like a son or brother—but also as someone in love. As soon as I opened the gate, as soon as I caught sight of the tall trees in the garden, I felt happy and rich. Outside was reality: streets and houses, people and institutions, libraries and lecture halls— here inside was love; here lived the legend and the dream. And yet we lived in no way cut off from the outside world; in our thoughts and conversations we often lived in the midst of it, only on an entirely different plane.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
Not all the sufferings and miseries of this earth can affect that happiness which lies concealed deep within the heart like a pearl in an oyster, and even in my heaviest hours I have known this blissful pearl in my soul.
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Tuesday, January 5, 1869).
Hermann Hesse’s . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, My Father’s Guru.
. . . Demian is not actually a physical being, since he is never separated from Sinclair, the character who narrates the book. In fact, Demian is Sinclair himself, his deepest self, a kind of archetypal hero who exists in the depths of all of us. In a word, Demian is the essential Self which remains unchanging and untouched, and through him the book attempts to give instruction concerning the magical essence of existence. Demian provides the young boy Sinclair with a redeeming awareness of the millennial being which exists within him so that he can overcome chaos and danger, especially during the years of adolescence.
Miguel Serrano, Jung & Hesse: A Record of Two Friendships.
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How strange his life had been, he thought. He had wandered along strange paths. As a boy I was occupied with the gods and sacrifices, as a youth with asceticism, with thinking, and meditation. I was in search of Brahman and revered the eternal Atman. As a young man I was attracted to expiation. I lived in the woods, suffered heat and cold. I learned to fast, I learned to conquer my body. I then discovered with wonder the teachings of the great Buddha. I felt knowledge and the unity of the world circulate in me like my own blood, but I also felt compelled to leave the Buddha and the great knowledge. I went and learned the pleasures of love from Kamala and business from Kamaswami. I hoarded money, I squandered money, I acquired a taste for rich food, I learned to stimulate my senses.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
I was also having trouble with the so-called parietal rules at Harvard which said that a woman must leave a student's room by 10 P.M. Every second that I was not studying, I spent at Wellesley, meeting women. This was a paradox that was becoming more and more pronounced in my character. While I still considered myself a spiritual person, I was becoming increasingly obsessed—an even stronger word would not be out of place—with sex. I saw it everywhere. I wanted it. I thought about it all the time. No woman seemed safe from my predations. I look back at it with horror. I had absolutely no understanding of what I was doing.
J. Moussaieff Masson, My Father's Guru.
—I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
One evening I was invited to meet an older (perhaps forty-five) professor of Indian philosophy who was visiting from India. She had something of a following in India and was even considered a kind of guru. Somehow the discussion turned to spiritual matters. This woman said she had never felt sexual desire in her life because her mind was filled with spiritual thoughts. There was simply no room. As the guests were leaving her apartment, she asked me to stay a little bit, as there was something she wanted to tell me. When we were alone she said: "You looked as though you did not believe what I was saying. Is that true?"
"Well, actually I don't, no," I replied.
"You don't believe I am free of sexual desire?"
"No."
"I will prove it to you. Touch my breasts."
I did as I was told.
"See, I feel nothing. Now touch my thighs."
I did as I was told.
"Again, nothing. Even if you enter me with your penis, I will feel nothing. Do you believe me?"
"No."
"Try."
I did.
"See, I feel nothing. The whole time this is going on I am thinking only about the higher self, the atman."
J. Moussaieff Masson, My Father's Guru.
To whom else should one offer sacrifices, to whom else should one pay honor, but to Him, Atman, the Only One? And where was Atman to be found, where did He dwell, where did His eternal heart beat, if not within the Self, in the innermost, in the eternal which each person carried within him? But where was this Self, this innermost?
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
Where was it? Where was it?
Robert Ludlum, The Parsifal Mosaic.
It is not surprising that the very word for asceticism, tapas, is . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
. . . insidiously related, tied to, and involved with . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
. . . a word commonly associated with . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
. . . seemingly opposite things—
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
. . . with virility, with sexual prowess, especially with increased potency (evidence for this is found not only in the Sanskrit texts, but in the observations of many travelers in India). The myths of Siva show such connections in detail. It is not surprising that the concern with incontinence would lead to fantasies about the powers inherent in semen; we can see this attested to in the ancient stories containing oral pregnancy fantasies (a ubiquitous theme in the Mahabharata: e.g., Kasyapa, Rsyasrnga's father, lost his semen at the sight of Urvasi, and it was swallowed by a female antelope who subsequently gave birth to Rsyasrnga—hence his name "Antelope-Horned").

These sexual fantasies of immense prowess are of course only the other side of the coin from constant fears of sexual depletion. Such concerns, universal and timeless, are particularly well documented in the case of the Indian villager.
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
‘The Victors’
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book — 1865-1882.
Have you heard about it?
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
The sketch of . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . ‘The Victors’ . . .
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book — 1865-1882.
. . . Wagner's projected music drama on a Buddhist theme . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (editors' note).
. . . pictures Ananda, a disciple of Buddha, hospitably given water by a . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . maiden Prakriti.
Richard Wagner, Sketch of ‘The Victors’.
The Buddha warns Ananda not to speak with women; if he must speak to one to keep his eyes on the ground; and if he must look, "Then beware Ananda, beware."
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
Prakriti . . .
Richard Wagner, Sketch of ‘The Victors’.
. . . falls deeply in love and seeks out . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . Gotama, The Buddha, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . beneath a tree at the city gate to ask permission for union with Ananda. The Buddha reveals her identity in a former incarnation as an overproud girl who scorned the love of an unfortunate, an arrogant act she must now expiate by experiencing the torture of unsatisfied passion. Only by sharing Ananda's vow of chastity may she stay at his side. Grasping his condition of salvation, she joyfully agrees, and Ananda receives as his sister one who has risen to his own level of self-denial.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
So what is it that . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
. . . Gotama, The Buddha, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . says? He says:
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
One must find the source within one’s own Self, one must possess it.
Everything else was seeking—a detour, error.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
In the figure of the maiden, who was one day to become Kundry in Parsifal, Wagner sought finally to resolve his concern with . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . the realm of unbridled sexual fantasy.
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
These were . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . Wagner’s . . .
Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay—Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus.
. . . thoughts; this was his thirst, his sorrow.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
Wagner saw resignation as the only solution to his infatuation for . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . Mathilde Wesendonk . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . the object of his ill-starred adoration.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
I have no inclination any more, no will!—
Would there were an end to it, an end!—
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book — 1865-1882.
He wished passionately for oblivion, to be at rest, to be dead.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
"The Victors" was a product of this frame of mind.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
When the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desire were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self—the great secret.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
The ascetic . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
. . .theme of "The Victors" sustained Wagner and Mathilde in a state of exaltation after . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . Wagner’s first wife Minna . . .
Joseph Horowitz, Program Notes for the Ring Festival.
. . . had put an end to what was evidently the less abstemious phase of their affair.
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
Wagner . . .
Anthony Storr, Feet of Clay—Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurus.
. . . wrote that at this particular epoch of his life he had . . .
Robert W. Gutman, Richard Wagner: The Man, His Mind, and His Music.
. . . one single goal—to become empty, to become empty of thirst, desire, dreams, pleasure and sorrow—to let the Self die. No longer to be Self, to experience the peace of an emptied heart, to experience pure thought—that was his goal.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
It had been more than a little characteristic of the conflict between asceticism and world-devouring hunger that made up the drama of his nature.
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus.
I believe that the concern voiced ubiquitously by the ascetic in Indian literature—
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
‘seeing the world and the human self in one great all including vision, . . . ’
Jon Westlesen, Body Awareness as a Gateway to Eternity: A Note on the Mysticism of Spinoza and Its Affinity to Buddhist Meditation.
. . . in sum, . . .
Thomas Hardy, The Woodlanders.
. . . the search for mystical experiences; as if only the ecstatic stillness of trance-states could fill the void of a happiness never experienced . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson and Terri C. Masson, Buried Memories on the Acropolis: Freud’s Response to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism.
—is an oblique reference to . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
. . . a sad past. The apparent reliving of a lost past in terms of grasping at the illusion of ecstasy can only represent a falsification of memory for the purpose of defence. And the dry, brittle memories of an emotionally arid childhood are as fearsome as those of more openly violent abuse.
J. Moussaieff Masson and Terri C. Masson, Buried Memories on the Acropolis: Freud’s Response to Mysticism and Anti-Semitism.
Gradually it has become clear to me . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
. . . that all ascetics must have suffered from harsh and unloving parents in their childhood . . . . I should add, however, that most analysts would disagree, and would qualify this by saying that often the harsh treatment was only imagined—often as retaliation for imagined evil in the little child himself, for his own destructive fantasies vis-a-vis his parents and siblings.
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
It seems to me that . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
. . . all ascetics suffered massive traumas in their childhood in one of three ways: they were sexually seduced, or they were the object of overt or covert aggression, or they lost those closest to them early in their lives. Their lives were pervaded with sadness; their rituals, their obsessive gestures of every kind, are an attempt to recapture the lost childhood they never had. It is not surprising to find that all addicts have suffered such loss.
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
At a later date I would gradually be persuaded that devastating loss in childhood figured as a probable genesis of my own disorder . . .
William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.
Psychoanalytic studies of addiction have enabled us to see "addictive" features in many areas seemingly unrelated to pure drug or alcohol addiction. Compulsive sexuality can serve as an addiction, as can the practices of asceticism.
J. Moussaieff Masson, The Psychology of the Ascetic.
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What does paramita mean? It is rendered into Chinese by "reaching the other shore." Reaching the other shore means detachment from birth and death. Just because people of the world lack stability of nature, they find appearances of birth and death in all things, flow in the waves of various courses of existence, and have not arrived at the ground of reality as is: all of this is "this shore." It is necessary to have great insightful wisdom, complete in respect to all things, detached from appearances of birth and death—this is "reaching the other shore."
It is also said that when the mind is confused, it is "this shore." When the mind is enlightened, it is "the other shore." When the mind is distorted, it is "this shore." When the mind is sound, it is "the other shore." If you speak of it and carry it out mentally, then your own reality body is imbued with paramita. If you speak of it but do not carry it out mentally, then there is no paramita.
Commentary on the Diamond Sutra.
“ . . . I have had many thoughts, but it would be difficult for me to tell you about them. But this is one thought that has impressed me, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . my friend.
William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.”
“Are you jesting?”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . his friend asked.
Henry James, The Lesson of the Master.
“No, I am telling you what I have discovered. Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it. . . . ”
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
He sank into a reverie and became lost within himself.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
He hesitated, and then . . .
Neville Shute, On The Beach.
. . . he continued, assuming the role of a mentor.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
King Janaka, the legendary ruler of the Kingdom of Mithila in India, was once conversing on top of a hill overlooking his city with a wise Buddhist monk. The monk said, "King, look down and across the valley. Do you see those flames? Your city burns." Janaka was not perturbed. He watched quietly for a few minutes, then turned to the monk and said these words, which have been handed down for centuries in India as the quintessence of wisdom: "Mithilayam pradiptayam, na me dahyte kincana (In the conflagration of Mithila, nothing of mine is burned)." The story is told to demonstrate detachment, and the transcendence of any sense of ownership. What was truly Janaka's (love, for example) could not be burned.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Where is now my wisdom in this confusion?
Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung.
—In truth, . . .
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book — 1865-1882.
I feel a little bit like Janaka without the wisdom.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
As I look back over my development and survey what I have achieved so far, . . .
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
. . . both in the university and in the professional world of psychoanalysis, I see flames, and the consumption of my life's work. My bridges are truly burned. But while I feel any kind of sadness and a nostalgia for what might have been, I cannot truly say that I am sorry for the loss.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
He paused.
Bram Stoker, The Man.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
T.S. Eliot, Excerpt from Burnt Norton.
He begins to read, then lets it slip from his fingers, leans back, picks reflectively at . . .
Simon Grey, Butley.
. . . particles of sand . . .
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle.
. . . On the Beach.
Neville Shute, On the Beach.
There was another place . . .
Richard Wilbur, Excerpt from Someone Talking to Himself.
. . . I have forgotten
And remember.
Simon Grey, Butley (quoting T.S. Eliot, Marina).
He paused again, dreaming, lost in a reverie, then just above a whisper, murmured:
Frank Norris, The Octopus.
some other place—
George Eliot, The Lifted Veil.
fuck . . . Where?
Simon Grey, Butley.
By the hallowed . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene).
. . . inner sanctum, . . .
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World.
. . . at the portal . . .
O. Henry, The Headhunter.
. . . to that . . .
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Guardian Angel.
. . . last of meeting places . . .
Neville Shute, On the Beach (quoting T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men).
. . . in a world of time beyond me;
T.S. Eliot, Excerpt from Marina.
By the mystic arm immortal
Warning me to go my way;
By my forty years’ . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene).
. . . material existence . . .
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Devil in Manuscript.
. . . in this strange and savage world, . . .
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan the Terrible.
May I be excused for saying that I was forty years old?
Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
In the waste and desert land,
By the words of . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene).
. . . my banishment, . . .
E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Great Impersonation.
. . . the sentence,
Traced in parting, on the sand—
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust (Part II) (Final Scene).
(after a pause).
Simon Gray, Butley.
So long ago!
Frances Hodgson Burnett, T. Tembarom.
There is a silence.
Simon Grey, Butley.
Since you . . .
Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Golden Road.
. . . miscall’d the Morning Star,
Nor man nor fiend hath fallen so far.
George Gordon, Lord Byron, Excerpt from Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte.
“You might say that . . . ”
Agatha Christie, The Secret Adversary.
You played . . .
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes.
. . . an intellectual game for high stakes, . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Times.
. . . And you lost
Bret Harte, The Three Partners.
That my friend, . . .
Jeffrey Farnol, The Broad Highway.
. . . was your fate, and that your daring.—
Richard Wagner, Epitaph for Karl Tausig—For the Marble Tablet.
‘I—suppose so.’
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes.
I was an experiment on the part of Nature, a gamble within the unknown, perhaps for a new purpose, perhaps for nothing, and my only task was to allow this game on the part of primeval depths to take its course, to feel its will within me and make it wholly mine.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn’t want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn’t want them back.
Samuel Beckett, Krapp’s Last Tape.
As I look back now, it seems to me I must have had at least an inkling that I had to find a way out or die, but that my way out could not be reached through flight.
Franz Kafka, A Report to an Academy.
I could see he was talking about things he had brooded on for a long time and felt very strongly about.
Alexander Gladkov, Meetings with Pasternak: A Memoir.
He paused for a moment, then continued:
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says: "Go over," he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder, something unknown to us, something too that he cannot designate more precisely, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables really set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day: that is a different matter.

Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares.
Another said: I bet that is also a parable.
The first said: You have won.
The second said: But unfortunately only in parable.
The first said: No, in reality: in parable you have lost.
Franz Kafka, On Parables.
When he finished talking, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . his companion, . . .
Rudyard Kipling, Kim.
. . . an imaginary companion . . .
Virginia Woolf, Night and Day.
. . . to be sure, . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
. . .both ideal self and . . .
Lancaster University, Seamus Heaney and the ‘Othering’ of Britishness.
. . . fantasized “Other” . . .
Nihan Yelutas, Otherness Doubled: Being a Migrant and “Oriental” at the Same Time.
. . . but no less . . .
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes.
. . . his intimate and beloved companion . . .
Dorothy T. Burlingham, The Fantasy of Having a Twin.
. . . directed his somewhat weakened glance at him.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
It was very quiet then.
David Evanier, The Man Who Refused to Watch the Academy Awards.
A volley of the sun . . .
Richard Wilber, Excerpt from Someone Talking to Himself.
. . . shone down on them out of a cloudless sky, warm and comforting;
Neville Shute, On The Beach.
. . . Siddhartha sat absorbed, his . . .
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
. . . clouded mind in a flash of illumination became an open mind: vast like the ocean and the sky. Yes, the eyes . . .
Siegfried Hessing, Prologue with Spinozana—Parallels via East and West.
. . . his eyes far away yet gleaming like stars, . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Tuesday, October 31, 1882).
. . . staring as if directed at a distant goal, the tip of his tongue showing a little between his teeth. He did not seem to be breathing. He sat thus, lost in meditation, thinking Om, his soul as arrow directed at Brahman.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
Then, quite unheralded, came the following cry from the heart:
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
"Why is it that you have not done great things in this world? With the power that is yours you might have risen to any height. Unpossessed of conscience or moral instinct, you might have mastered the world, broken it to your hand. And yet here you are, at the top of your life, where diminishing and dying begin, living an obscure and sordid existence, . . . reveling in a piggishness, to use your own words, which is anything and everything except splendid. Why, with all that wonderful strength, have you not done something? There was nothing to stop you, nothing that could stop you. What was wrong? Did you lack ambition? Did you fall under temptation? What was the matter? What was the matter?"
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
He found it difficult to think; he really had no desire to, but he forced himself.
Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha.
He lifted his eyes to me at the commencement of my outburst, and followed me complacently until I had done and stood before him breathless and dismayed. He waited a moment as though seeking where to begin, and then said, "[Friend], do you know the parable of the sower who went forth to sow? If you will remember, some of the seed fell upon stony places, where there was not much earth, and forthwith they sprung up because they had no deepness of earth. And when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns sprung up and choked them."
"Well?" I said.
"Well?" he queried, half petulantly. "It was not well. I was one of those seeds."
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
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"Victimology, that newly founded brand of criminology that analyzes the personality of potential victims of crimes" has proven that the personality of the victim is one of the causes of his becoming a victim, and this is also true of persons who are "persistently victims of bad luck or failure"
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Such people . . .
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.
. . . suffer from the so-called Abel syndrome. "This is the case of the man whose superiority . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . or perhaps simply his. . .
Pierre-Paul Walraet, Inspiring Principles for Community Life in the Rule of Augustine of Hippo.
. . . desire to be different . . .
Harold Bloom, The Book of J.
. . . is likely to attract envy, but who is not able or willing to defend himself."
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
“What does that mean?”
Don DeLillo, White Noise.
Justice it means but it’s . . .
James Joyce, Ulysses.
. . . justice according to . . .
Jonathan Wittenberg, The Commanding Nearness of God.
. . . the primordial law of things:
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Eat or be eaten.
Clifford Odets, Silent Partner.
. . . it’s everybody eating everyone else. That’s what life is after all.
James Joyce, Ulysses.
It’s not the nature of life to be otherwise.
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
Abel was murdered, . . .
Benzion Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain.
. . . the object of his brother's jealousy . . .
Sue Chance, Chance Thoughts: Jealousy.
. . . and following that crime, mankind has proceeded along the same disastrous course.
Benzion Netanyahu, The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth Century Spain.
And what about the Jews?
Murry Frymer, Why Doesn’t Adolf Like the Jews?
How are the universality, depth, and permanence of anti-semitism to be explained? Why such hatred and fear of people who never constituted more than a small minority among those who most hated and feared them? Why, nearly always and nearly everywhere, the Jews?
Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, Why the Jews?
The answer is simple:
Charles Krauthammer, Demystifying Judaism: Joseph Lieberman’s Rise May Change How America Thinks of Jewish Practice.
In a word, the Jew by introducing monotheism . . .
Bela Grunberger, The Anti-Semite and the Oedipal Conflict.
. . . 'a perpetuum mobile for generating anti-Semitism' . . .
David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind quoting Arthur Koestler, Promise and Fulfillment.
. . . has not only banished man from his intimacy with the mother (even with the Christian, the mother has remained the inaccessible virgin) and from his narcissistic universe, but has installed within him a judge to persecute and punish him for his oedipal desires.
Bela Grunberger, The Anti-Semite and the Oedipal Conflict.
The Jews have suffered from their own invention ever since; but they have never given it up, for it is, after all, what makes the Jews Jewish.
Ernest van den Haag, The Jewish Mystique.
By preserving Jewish differences and setting them apart, . . .
David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind.
. . . the singularity, the brain-hammering strangeness, of the monotheistic idea . . .
George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle.
. . . laid the basis for antipathies towards Jews.
David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind.
No doubt, the taboo of a mother-representative goddess figure has several determining causes but the slow process of alienation was certainly due to the chief cause to which other factors later contributed. This primary cause was the relation to the soil, the land, and that early bitter disappointment produced by its aridity resulting in famine. . . .

The relation of a people to the soil is pattern forming in the same way that an individual is related to the mother. It is the mother who feeds the infant. . . . The Hebrews daydreamed of Canaan, promised to them as a Lady Bountiful, as a country overflowing with milk and honey. Here was the picture of a freely giving foster-Mother, of the "good earth" in contrast to the original land that had become parsimonious and mean. . . .

[T]he bitter experience of that earliest period, the drying up of the soil of their original homeland, did not prevent those tribes from forming and worshipping the figure of a mother-goddess, but the repercussions of that primal experience led to an ambivalent attitude toward her, to an inherited vacillation between attraction and repulsion. This conflict of opposite forces resulted finally in the removal and the taboo of a mother-goddess.
Theodor Reik, Curiosities of the Self.
The Jew has therefore done exactly the same as the father. He has imposed the rule of the father, which explains why he particularly has been chosen by the anti-Semite for the abreaction of his Oedipus conflict. The Jew represents the father, and from that perspective we can understand the various aspects of the anti-Semite's behaviour. . . .

It would seem that the relation between certain brotherhoods and the Jew reproduces that which existed between the prehistoric brotherhoods . . . and the father. Brotherhoods banded together to fight the father's power. As such the brotherhoods fight against the Jew as they have always fought, and still fight, against the father. One might use this hypothesis in trying to understand better the youthful 'gangs' that give so many headaches to parents, police, and teachers. It would seem that what excites so much rebellion against the father is consciousness of the fact that their very union is charged with oedipal aggression, which therefore increases their guilt. The anti-Semite projects that guilt on to the Jew. . . .

During the Middle Ages the secret brotherhoods (the corporations or early trade unions) excluded the Jews from nearly all trades, and if the Jews were sometimes protected it was always by certain isolated but powerful personalities, in a sense paternal figures, never by the brotherhoods themselves.
Bela Grunberger, The Anti-Semite and the Oedipal Conflict.
[W]e must return for a moment to the scientific myth of the father of the primal horde. He was later on exalted into the creator of the world, and with justice, for he produced all the sons who composed the first group. He was the ideal of each one of them, at once feared and honoured, a fact which led later to the idea of taboo. These many individuals banded themselves together, killed him and cut him in pieces. None of the group of victors could take his place, or, if one of them did, the battles began afresh, until they understood that they must all renounce their father's heritage. They then formed the totemistic community of brothers, all with equal rights and united by the totem prohibitions which were to preserve and to expiate the memory of the murder. . . .

It was then, perhaps, that some individual, in the exigency of his longing, may have been moved to free himself from the group and take over the father's part. He who did this was the first epic poet; and the advance was achieved in his imagination. This poet . . .
Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
. . . the poet of the savage Darwinian struggle . . .
Maxwell Geismar, Jack London: The Short Cut.
. . . disguised the truth with lies in accordance with his longing. He invented the heroic myth. The hero was a man who by himself had slain the father—the father who still appeared in the myth as a totemistic monster. Just as the father had been the boy's first ideal, so in the hero who aspires to the father's place the poet now created the first ego ideal. The transition to the hero was probably afforded by the youngest son, the mother's favorite, whom she had protected from paternal jealousy, and who, in the era of the primal horde, had been the father's successor. In the lying poetic fancies of prehistoric times, the woman, who had been the prize of battle and the allurement to murder, was probably turned into the seducer and instigator to the crime.
Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
Tradition is not only a handing-down or process of benign transmission; it is also a conflict between past genius and present aspiration, in which the prize is literary survival or canonical inclusion. . . . Poems, stories, novels, plays come into being as a response to prior poems, stories, novels, and plays, and that response depends upon acts of reading and interpretation by the later writers, acts that are identical with the new works.

These readings of precursor writings are necessarily defensive in part; if they were appreciative only, fresh creation would be stifled, and not for psychological reasons alone. The issue is not Oedipal rivalry but the very nature of strong, original literary imaginings: figurative language and its vicissitudes. Fresh metaphor, or inventive troping, always involves a departure from previous metaphor, and that departure depends upon at least partial turning away from or rejection of prior figuration.
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.
Friedrich Nietzsche once said that “every act of writing is an act of impudence.”
David Gress, From Plato to Nato.
How could it be otherwise?
Irvin D. Yalom, Love’s Executioner.
Literature is not merely language; it is also the will to figuration, the motive for metaphor that Nietzsche once defined as the will to be different.
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.
Difference engendre haine: the baseness of some people suddenly spurts up like dirty water when some holy vessel, some precious thing from a locked shrine, some book with the marks of a great destiny, is carried past[;] . . . such books of profundity and ultimate significance require some external tyranny of authority for their protection in order to gain those millenia of persistence which are necessary to exhaust them and figure them out.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Strong writers do not choose their prime precursors; they are chosen by them, but they have the wit to transform the forerunners into composite and therefore partly imaginary beings.
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.
It must seem odd, in commenting upon an author who wrote nearly three thousand years ago, to discover an aesthetic motive in the psychology of . . .
Harold Bloom, The Book of J.
. . . the human instruments God had chosen—Abraham, . . .
Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation.
. . . and Isaac his son; and . . .
Genesis 22:3.
. . . Jacob and Joseph, father and true son—
Harold Bloom, The Book of J.
. . . but that . . .
Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father.
. . . divine choice . . .
Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative.
. . . and its vicissitudes . . .
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.
. . . as well as the need . . .
Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography.
. . . of the chosen . . .
Rich Cohen, Lake Effect.
. . . to create a greater father, or a clearer vision of a greater father . . .
Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation.
. . . does seem to me primarily aesthetic.
Harold Bloom, The Book of J.
Deep in the night, wrestling with my fantasies, disillusionments, and failures, I recognize . . .
Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation.
. . . my own struggles . . .
Arlene Zawadzki, A Moment of Shared Intimacy: There was more than just music between them.
. . . in these flawed characters, wrestling with God . . .
Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation.
. . . protagonists . . .
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
. . . whose very literary identity and vision . . .
Mark Anderson, Introduction to Franz Kafka, The Sons.
. . . depend on their . . .
Bill Hart, Father-Son Bonding Leads to State Championship Season.
. . . condition as a son.
Mark Anderson, Introduction to Franz Kafka, The Sons.
Sometimes deep in the night, . . .
William O. Johnson, The Best at Everything.
. . . I dissolve in dreams . . .
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.
. . . dreams of . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
. . . Isaac who believes so intensely in Abraham that he could not believe his father would sacrifice him . . .
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
. . . and dreams of Joseph . . .
Xia´qpz, Zorasta.
. . . the great romancer . . .
Steve Lopez, Meet Forbes, the great romancer.
. . . himself dreaming that he is sleeping under the stars
Acorn Naturalists, Review of Mazer and Johnson, The Salamander Room.
__________________________________________________________________

Now Jacob loved Joseph more than all his other sons, because he was a child of his old age, and he made him a . . .
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
. . . brilliant vermilion silk sash
William O. Johnson, The Best at Everything.
And when Joseph's brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his other sons, they hated him, and they would not even greet him.
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
One night . . .
Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father.
. . . Joseph, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
—the only one of the entire clan since his maternal grandfather to show any literary or intellectual tendencies—
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
. . . had a dream, and in the morning he said to his brothers, "Listen to the dream I had! We were out in the field binding sheaves; and suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves formed a ring around mine and bowed down to it!"

And his brothers said, "So you are supposed to rule over us and be our king—is that what your dream means?" And they hated him even more.
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
Their skepticism is human, all too human perhaps, since they do not share Jacob's adulation of Joseph.
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
Then he had another dream, and in the morning he said to his brothers, "Listen, I had another dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me!"
And when his . . .
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
. . . father, Jakob, . . .
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
. . . heard about it, he scolded him and said, . . .
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
“What is this I am hearing, Joseph?”
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
"What is the meaning of this dream of yours? Do you really think that I and your mother and your brothers will come and bow down before you?"

And his brothers were furious at him; but his father kept thinking about this for a long time afterward.

One day, when his brothers were tending the flocks near Shechem, Jacob said to Joseph, "Your brothers are at Shechem; will you go to them for me?"

And Joseph said, "Yes, Father."

And he said, "See how they and the flocks are doing, and bring me a report."
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
Jacob . . .
Harold Bloom, The Book of J.
. . . was not entirely innocent of Joseph's betrayal by his brothers, for he had preferred Joseph to the others and then abandoned him to their hatred.
Marianne Krull, Freud and His Father.
And Joseph traveled to Shechem. And his brothers saw him a long way off, . . .
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
. . . for he was draped from right shoulder to left hip . . .
William O. Johnson, The Best at Everything.
. . . with the garment . . .
Israelcraft, Talmudic Sources Concerning Prayer Shawls and Threads.
. . . his father had made for him and . . .
Wolfgang Schneider, Joseph.
. . . as he approached, they plotted to kill him. And they said to one another, "Look, here comes the dreamer. Now is our chance: let's kill him and throw him into one of these pits and say that a wild beast ate him. Then we will see what good his dreams are."
Genesis. A New Translation of the Classic Biblical Stories by Stephen Mitchell.
Joseph had to dream his dreams so that his brothers would hate him more; Jacob had to send Joseph after his brothers so that they could sell him to the Midianites . . .
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
. . . barter his freedom.
Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws.
An artist figure whose situation is already compromised by his association with people who understand no art, a man himself cut off, alienated from home and family, forsaking his past, now apparently rootless, . . .
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
. . . Joseph became the slave of the idolatrous priest Potiphar, . . .
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
. . . a post the precise nature of which he does not foresee.
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
Potiphar . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . his master . . .
Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
. . . had secured possession of the handsome youth for a lewd purpose, but the angel Gabriel mutilated him in such manner that he could not accomplish it.
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
And so it happened that . . .
Franz Kafka, The Stoker.
. . . Joseph was sold as a slave but became . . .
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia.
. . . either by persuasion or by guile . . .
Max Brod, Postscript to the First Edition of Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . Potiphar’s . . .
Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers.
. . . chief official until . . .
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia.
. . . the stripling . . .
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
. . . Joseph, . . .
Genesis.
. . . a youth of complete innocence, . . .
Otto Friedrich, The Grave of Alice B. Toklas: and Other Reports from the Past.
. . . [was] imprisoned on a false charge of attempted seduction . . .
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia.
—an accusation that . . .
Jailan Halawi, Waiting on the Facts.
. . . finally and fundamentally,
Robert M. Young, What is Psychoanalytic Studies?
. . . must remain inexplicable.
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
To be sure, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
Potiphar's wife had to tempt Joseph so that he would resist and . . .
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
. . . without having done anything wrong, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . be imprisoned; the servants of Pharaoh had to be placed in prison with Joseph, so that he could interpret their dreams and rise to prominence as Pharaoh's interpreter.
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
And so it went.
William O. Johnson, The Best at Everything.
Dreams and the recognition of their disguised meanings are critically linked to power and future possibilities.
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
_____________________________________________________________

Of course . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . even though he is arrogant to his brothers, . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Joseph
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . is an obedient son, since he resists temptation by a seductive mother. He is free of Oedipal guilt.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
One afternoon—
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
Joseph
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . distracted by vain thoughts, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . found himself in Potiphar's garden, where the finest sycamore trees, date-palms and doum-palms, fig, pomegranate and persea trees stood in rows on the greensward. Paths of red gravel ran across the grass.
Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers.
Then Zuleika . . .
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
—Potiphar's wife, . . .
Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers.
. . . stood before him suddenly . . .
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
. . . between the palms . . .
Alex Comfort, The New Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking for the Nineties.
. . . in all her beauty of person and magnificence of raiment, and repeated the desire of her heart. It was the first and last time that Joseph's steadfastness deserted him, but only for an instant. When he was on the point of complying with the wish of his mistress, the image of his mother Rachel appeared before him, and that of his aunt Leah, and the image of his father Jacob. The last addressed him thus:
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
“Joseph, my dear Joseph, think of yourself, think of your relatives, think of our good name. You have been a credit to us until now, you can’t become a family disgrace. . . . ”
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
"In time to come the names of thy brethren will be graven upon the breastplate of the high priest. Dost thou desire to have thy name appear with theirs? Or wilt thou forfeit this honor through sinful conduct? For know, he that keepeth company with harlots wasteth his substance."
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
His voice is resonant and his diction is cultured, like a garden.
Linton Weeks, A Writer Who Takes the Prize: The Way Nobel Winner V.S. Naipaul Tells It, His Life Needs No Sequel.
This vision of the dead, and especially the image of his father, brought Joseph to his senses, and his illicit passion departed from him. Astonished at the swift change in his countenance, Zuleika . . .
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
. . . incoherently enquired . . .
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.
. . . using a quaint vocabulary:
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
"My friend and truelove, why art thou so affrighted that thou art near to swooning?"
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
Joseph listened with a perplexed, bewildered expression on his face;
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
He made no answer for a moment, then he said explosively:
Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence.
"I see my father!"
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
My passions seemed to startle her, but they obviously also intrigued her.
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
Zuleika: "Where is he? Why, there is none in the house."
Joseph: "Thou belongest to a people that is like unto the ass, it perceiveth nothing. But I belong to those who can see things."
Joseph fled forth, away from the house of his mistress . . .
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
. . . out of breath, all flushed and a little embarrassed.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
But hardly was he outside when the sinful passion again overwhelmed him, and he returned to Zuleika's chamber. Then the Lord appeared unto him, holding the Eben Shetiyah in His hand, and said to him: "If thou touchest her, I will cast away this stone upon which the earth is founded, and the world will fall to ruin."
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
Suddenly Joseph recognizes God’s presence in his life. And where? When he’s alone, in exile!
Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation.
A strange fellow, this Joseph; . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
In any event, . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
. . . some time later, . . .
Thomas Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes.
. . . [Zuleika's friends] advised her to accuse him of immorality before her husband, and then he would be thrown into prison.
Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews.
Poor woman, that was pathetic.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
The Biblical story of . . .
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment.
. . . Joseph and Madame Potiphar . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . which is placed in an Egyptian setting, probably goes back to . . .
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment.
. . . an ancient Egyptian tale.
Lise Manniche, The Prince Who Knew His Fate: An Ancient Egyptian Tale.
With its towering pharaohs, its cool linen and its expressive typography, ancient Egypt has a special, favored place in the modern Western imagination.
Polly Shulman, An Open Book Full of Secrets.
Pursuing eternity, the powerful pharaohs placed tombs within great pyramids or secret rock-cut caverns as bulwarks against oblivion. Aristocratic families also built elaborate sepulchers. Into these inner sanctums went the best furniture, jewelry, and tools.
Alice J. Hall, Egypt: Dazzling Legacy of an Ancient Quest.
Strangely inscrutable, strangely accessible, strangely vulnerable, Egypt holds sway as a sort of fascinating uncle with an attic full of treasure . . .
Polly Shulman, An Open Book Full of Secrets.
. . . statues, gilded masks, painted scrolls—
Doug Stewart, Eternal Egypt (editor’s note).
. . . antiquities that . . .
John Forrester, Dispatches from the Freud Wars: Psychoanalysis and Its Passions.
. . . speak of distant times and countries.
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.
In the Egyptian tale [a] younger and unmarried brother rejects the efforts of his brother's wife to seduce him. Fearing that he might tell on her, she vilifies him, pretending to her husband that his brother tried to seduce her. In his jealous anger, the married brother tries to kill his younger sibling. Only through the intervention of the gods is the younger brother's reputation saved and the truth made known, but by then the younger brother has sought safety in flight. He dies, a fact that becomes known to his older brother when his drinks turn bad; he goes to the rescue of his younger brother and manages to revive him.

This ancient Egyptian tale contains the element of a person accused of what the accuser himself wants to do: the wife accuses the younger brother, who she tried to seduce, of seducing her. Thus, the plot describes the projection of an unacceptable tendency in oneself onto another person. . . .

In the story the married brother is master of an extended household in which his younger brother lives. The master's wife is, in a sense, "mother" to all the young people in this family, including the younger brother. So we can interpret the story as telling either about a mother figure who gives in to her oedipal desires for a young man who stands in the role of a son, or of a son accusing a mother figure of his own oedipal desires for her. . . .

In over three thousand years [this tale] has taken on many forms.
Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment.