Mount Analogue (Réné Daumal, 1952)

When I realized this book had the same take on metaphorical mountain climbing as the one i’d encountered in Sloterdijk, I knew I wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately Daumal never managed to finish the manuscript, but what was there was published anyway shortly after his passing. This is something of a classic in a certain niche of religious writing, and the style is quite funny too. It makes some connections between mysticism and mountain climbing, and brings up religious traditional views on mountains like pic Meru in the Hindu tradition and and the Greek-orthodox Mount Athos. Is it a coincidence that Aleister Crowley, Peter Wessel Zappfe and Arne Naess were mountaineers? My father was a mountain climber too, by the way. Daumal introduces the concept peradam, something that can’t be found unless one is looking for it. I’m not at all up to speed about Daumal or his writing (in fact, I had at first gotten him mixed up with René Guenon, who upon closer inspection seems to be quite another kind of René). A key passage in the text is this one:

Alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action. You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again…

So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully.

I thought this would contain more insights than it actually did, but hey – maybe I wasn’t looking deep enough?

The Fox and the Hedgehog (Isaiah Berlin, 1953)

I have approached the prospect of taking on Tolstoy’s major works, and was fascinated when I learned more of his philosophical intention with War and Peace. It surprises me that I hadn’t heard about it earlier as it is quite extraordinary. My fascination led me to read Berlin’s extended essay on Tolstoy’s philosophy of history. This book is well-known in learned circles for taking an ancient roman proverb (attributed to Archilochus) and expanding it to an argument to classifying intellectual figures into two categories – hedgehogs and foxes. The first category is said to know one thing well, the second a little of everything. It is basically the same argument that is rehashed every now and then about specialization in the academy and liberal arts education and “intellectuals” who go outside their “area of expertise”. I have a long history of following debates of this kind, and for that reason should have already read this by now. Anyway.

Shakespeare, for instance, is said to be a fox. Dostoevsky however is a hedgehog. Berlin proposes the theory that Tolstoy is a hedgehog who poses as a fox. Or holds the fox as an ideal. I don’t know really how seriously to take this game, and I’m more interested in the main argument, the one about Tolstoy’s view of history. It is informed by the views of Arthur Schopenhauer, and takes in the notion of zeitgeist in a novel way. Tolstoy finds sociology to be a laughable endeavour, because history is not governed by laws in that sense. Why is that never mentioned in sociology classes? New names to me are those of Kareev, Görres, Danilevsky, Wackenroder – all 19th century thinkers that are unknown today.

The House of the Dead (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, 1860)

Dostoevsky was changed by his four years in labor camp prison in Omsk. It splits his work into two halves, the early and late Dostoevsky. The later period includes all his best known work including his four “masterpieces” Crime and Punishment, the Brothers Karamazov, the Idiot and the Possessed. This is the first novel he wrote upon his release from prison, and it is a book very much based on his experiences there.

It is told as if edited by a schoolteacher who found an older man’s notes. The notes tell stories of the prison life and speaks a lot about class differences. Nothing really happens, and it is more a declaration of events, including encounters with animals, the changing seasons, different inmates. I have long wanted to read this book as i have an interest in historical accounts of prison life. I have also read prison accounts by Sergei Dovlatov and Ted Conover, in addition to having perused Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Varlam Shalamov and Silvio Pellico. A good auxiliary resource on the Tsar’s labor camps in the 19th century is historian Daniel Beer’s book that takes its name from this volume by Dostoevsky.

Mourning Diary (Roland Barthes, 1978/2009)

Barthes was a real mama’s boy. Therefore, he took the passing of his mother very hard. In fact, he was to expire himself soon after he wrote this text. The “mourning diary” was never intended for publication, at least not in its present form, but the Barthes estate decided it unfair not deprive the world of Barthes fans this manuscript of personal notes on the grief felt during the period after his mother’s death.

I have gravitated to this kind of book, because I too have lost a parent – but this is the first time I read of a mother lost. Some forays into the genre have been Philip Roth‘s Patrimony, Leon Wieseltier‘s Kaddish and more recently, parts of a book by Tom Malmquist. But next to those books, Barthes thin collection seems like a rough draft. It’s more of a collection of notes – aphorisms is a word one could use if one feels generous.

It seems Barthes used Marcel Proust‘s notes on his mother as a model for grieving (Proust being a fellow writer with close relations to his mother). Some times after the event, Barthes goes to Morocco, but he can’t enjoy himself – the grief is overpowering. Sometimes he jots down a movie he saw – most often described as “very bad”. He goes back to village where he spent his childhood, to take tare of maman‘s things, and one senses he has a heartfelt connection to the place. In fact, Barthes never writes her name, or even maman – he always refers to her as “mam.” which is a bit touching. Does he think that the pain subsides more quickly if he avoids spelling out the full word? Or maybe it is only a question of writerly economy – these are just notes, after all.

I’ve only dipped into Barthes’ catalog intermittently, and only engaged with one of his works more thoroughly (Mythologies), so I can’t tell whether this prose is similar to his more theoretical writings, like S / Z, le Plaisir du texte or A Lover’s Discourse (which, incidentally, also is written in fragments).

Reviewers off this book often mention it being a helpful book for anyone in mourning, but I couldn’t really relate. It did made me think of my mother (who is very much alive), but I wasn’t transported to my own personal history. Finally, compared to Simone de Beauvoir’s similar book about her mother’s death (Une morte très douce, 1964), which is lavish in its details of her mother and their family circumstances, Barthes remains surprisingly silent about everything but his own sorrow. He mentions almost nothing of his mother’s life, only his own grief. After all, maybe that is fitting for a journal de deuil.