L'imprévisible

Le songe d'un paradis immortel est le rêve d'un fou. Comment le paradis, même spirituel, peut-il être stérile? Comment la beauté paradisiaque peut-elle ne pas être mortelle, imparfaite et fabuleusement diverse? Comment la vie ne peut-elle pas y être constamment régénérée afin d'évoluer naturellement? Comment les imperfections ou les intentions de la nature peuvent elles en être exclues ?

Car une partie de la beauté de la vie est qu'elle est imprévisible. Le futur correspond rarement à nos attentes. Ceci particulièrement concernant nos enfants.
Il est naturel de s'identifier à eux, certainement au début, mais il est bientôt évident qu'ils sont déjà des individus, même si dans eux on reconnaît certains traits de son propre caractère.

Leur développement est fascinant. Observant leur évolution, les encourageant à s'envoler, à se soulever encore vers le haut après être rudement descendus par leur premier goût de la dure réalité.

A cet égard nous étions fortunés. Nous n'étions jamais restreints. Et nos parents n'ont jamais essayé de trop nous influencer. Généreusement ils nous ont laissé partir trouver nos propres voies, et peut-être aussi pour cette raison, nous sommes tous différents. Nos chemins, bien qu'ils se croisent de temps en temps, nous ont faits comme nous sommes. Pourtant ensemble, nous sommes toujours comme nous étions pendant notre jeunesse. Ce nœud précieux de famille, les doux souvenirs que nous partageons, qui nous font sourire et rire ensemble tout au cours des années de notre vie, souvenirs épargnés par le temps.

Aujourd'hui de tels privilèges semblent être de plus en plus rares. Les traumas provoqués par les familles divisées sont souvent difficile à réparer, et on est involontairement préoccupé par une volonté de combler une perte fondamentale. Au lieu d'un mari ou d'une femme, inconsciemment on cherche à substituer la mère ou le père manquant ou négligent. Et le moule est ainsi établi pour la prochaine génération, car une telle histoire de famille a une tendance à se répéter, au moins jusqu'à ce que la chaîne en est finalement, résolument cassée.

Ainsi l'histoire est déterminée. Maximilien Robespierre, par exemple, fut conçu hors du mariage. Son père arrangea un mariage précipité au quel son propre père refusa d'assister. Sa mère mourra en accouchant en 1764 quand Maximilien n'avait que six ans. Laissant ses quatre enfants au soin de leurs tantes et de leur grand-père maternel, son père quitta sa ville natale d'Arras, et termina sa vie à Munich, Bavière où il mourra en 1777.

  Alors Robespierre ne put pas avoir tiré un grand bénéfice de ses années de jeunesse, et ce n'est pas déraisonné de croire que ceci eût une influence profonde sur sa vie. Peut-être dans son esprit la Révolution représentait lui-même, et une expression de refus du passé. Peut-être dans une certaine mesure il voyait la République, fondée en 1792, comme substitution parentale pour tous les citoyens français. On a recommencé l'histoire avec le calendrier républicain. Les ancêtres, les parents, auraient appartenu donc à 'la préhistoire'.
Pour lui 'Nous' était le peuple français, et surtout lui-même.

Il est donc raisonnable de croire qu'il y a une liaison entre les inclinations politiques et la vie d'enfance. La substitution de la responsabilité parentale par 'l'Etat' semble être la plus classique. Ceux qui auraient pu avoir manqué d'amour et de sécurité parentale, seraient plus inclinés à adopter l'idée de la protection étatique.

Relativement récemment une politicienne française a assumé le rôle parental en fournissant des moyens contraceptifs aux mineures des écoles dans sa région de Poitou-Charentes, sans prendre la peine d'obtenir l'autorisation parentale.
Comme à l'âge de 19 ans elle a poursuivi son père pour avoir refusé de divorcer de sa mère et de payer ainsi la pension alimentaire et le support des huit enfants; et comme elle (après avoir obtenu gain du cause) avec cinq de ses sœurs refusaient de voir leur père qui était alors en train de mourir du cancer, son enfance n'a pas pu être ni particulièrement sûre ni heureuse.
Pour elle aussi, 'Nous' est le peuple français, et surtout elle-même.

Il y a sûrement beaucoup d'autres exemples pour soutenir une telle théorie. Peut-être même le Président des Etats Unis pourrait en être inclus.

Malheureusement l'idée utopique d'être trop pris en main par l'Etat peut créer un cercle vicieux en encourageant ou en conditionnant les parents, qui devraient savoir mieux, de ne pas assumer pleinement leurs responsabilités parentales.

Quoiqu'il en soit, les parents établissent la 'norme' pour leurs enfants, et c'est évidemment une responsabilité primordiale.
Dans le meilleur des cas donc, la 'norme' devrait être aussi normale que possible, mais une partie de la beauté de la vie est qu'elle est imprévisible. Le futur correspond rarement à nos attentes.  Forcément ceci doit inclure ce qui est anormal, aussi bien que ce qui est normal. Et ainsi continue à tourner le beau monde.

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Text and heading photo © Mirino (PW) March, 2010 (World image thanks to NASA)

A tale without an end

Once upon a time there were three sisters. When they were small, they would leave the busy town with their parents, to spend each weekend in a big house with a pleasant garden surrounded by fields in the calm of the country side.

The father of the three sisters loved his big house and spent all his free time in trying to make it more beautiful.

The two eldest sisters grew less fond of spending their weekends in the big house. As time passed by they preferred to stay in the town where they thought they could amuse themselves more during the weekends. But the youngest, most comely sister loved the big house almost as much as her father.

The father preferred his youngest daughter, not only because of this, but also because he thought that she was like him in character. When he grew too old to look after his big house, it was almost natural for him to give it to her. The other two sisters would have to be eventually satisfied with inheriting what was left over.

Although this seemed right for the ageing parents, the eldest sisters didn't think it was fair at all. When their parents died, they refused to accept the inheritance and they continued to contest the gift of the big house, and this caused a serious conflict between them and their younger sister.

Perhaps it wasn't so much the difference between the values of the left over inheritance and the big house that the two elder sisters found so unacceptable. It may simply be that they knew how much their father had loved his house in the country, and how much he had preferred their younger sister to them. Rightly or wrongly they felt that they had been deprived of affection, and for them the gift of the big house to their younger sister was a cruel and constant reminder of this deprival.

As always in such tales, there are lots of other extras, circumstances and details, which would involve children, grandchildren, and various animals such as dogs, cats, doves, parrots, fish, as well as all sorts of health concerns. But if they were included, it would only make the story longer and more complicated, without otherwise having any real consequence regarding the essence of the story.

And ideally such a classic tale should have a happy ending, whereby the youngest daughter, realising the futility, waste, anguish and folly caused by such an interminable conflict, would eventually suggest that everything including the big house should be equally shared between all three sisters. But happy endings belong more to fairy tales, whereas reality, which has to include the flaws of human nature, often seems to insure that history endlessly repeats itself.

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Text and images (for T) © Mirino (PW) March, 2010
 

Aphra Behn

'All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds', wrote Virginia Wolf. Yet Aphra Behn lived in the 17th century, during the self same period as Samuel Pepys.

She made no reference to her own date of birth (circa 1640) or to her family name (although 'Johnson' has been suggested) and  nothing is known of her husband, Behn. Yet this outspoken playwright and novelist from East Kent, seems to have been one of the first of English women to prepare the way not only for women's rights, but for the right of freedom in general.

She was probably brought up as a Catholic and educated in a convent in France, for she was fluent in French and made many translations from French into English. She hated hypocrisy and was very much against the bondage of arranged marriages for wealth and status, which her first play 'The Forced Marriage' fully exposes.
During the trade war (1665) with the Dutch, she was sent to Holland to spy for King Charles II, but as it seems she was never requited for her services, she produced her first plays in 1670, "forced to write for bread, and not ashamed to own it", she declared.

She boldly countered her many critics for she was often targeted for her liberal and royalist opinions. At one time she was even arrested for 'abusive reflections' regarding the king's illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth (who was a Whig thus also subject to satire which would include her own).
She courageously expressed her opinions openly on religion, science and philosophy, as a women, and expounded her views on the natural force of love, in contrast to the meaningless, conventional rules of society of the XVII century. She even expressed the sexual feelings of women and their need for, and right to, true love. Her male critics denounced this as 'coarse and impure'.

She was also totally against slavery, and this long before the slave trade had ever reached it's peak, yet her novel 'Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave' was destined to outlive her and continue to greatly influence public opinion against slavery in general.

'Oroonoko' was an African prince hero. He was very handsome, courageous and cultivated, speaking several languages, yet he was treacherously enslaved himself, with the woman he loved, and was to die a horrible death through torture.
Aphra Behn wrote 'Oroonoko' as if she were an observer to what was taking place. Perhaps it is based on fact. In any case it's probable that she spent some time in Suriname where much of the story took place, before the country was taken over by the Dutch.
It's a story of loathsome treachery, showing up the hateful hypocrisy of the kind of Europeans who were (and perhaps still are) convinced that their education, religion, and what they consider to be their 'advanced civilised status', gives them vast superiority and unlimited rights over African natives.

Here's a short, but revealing excerpt:

'(...) They are extreme modest and bashful, very shy and nice of being touched. And though they are all thus naked, if one lives forever among 'em there is not to be seen an indecent action or glance; and being continually used to see one another so unadorned, so like our first parents before the Fall, it seems as if they had no wishes; there being nothing to heighten curiosity, but all you can see you see at once, and every moment see, and where there is no novelty there can be no curiosity. Not but I have seen a handsome young Indian dying for love of a very beautiful young Indian maid; but all his courtship was to fold his arms, pursue her with his eyes, and sighs were all his language; while she, as if no such lover were present, or rather, as if she desired none such, carefully guarded her eyes from beholding him, and never approached him but she looked down with all the blushing modesty I have seen in the most severe and cautious of our world. And these people represented to me an absolute ideal of the first state of innocence, before man knew how to sin. And 'tis most evident and plain that simple Nature is the most harmless, inoffensive, and virtuous mistress. 'Tis she alone, if she were permitted, that better instructs the world than all the inventions of man. Religion would here but destroy that tranquillity they possess by ignorance, and laws would but teach 'em to know offence, of which now they have no notion. (...)
They have a native justice which knows no fraud, and they understand no vice or cunning, but when they are taught by the white men. (...)'

Aphra Behn may be less known than other writers of her time, such as John Dryden, but as a 'female pen' she is certainly to England's credit. And it's also to England's credit that when she died in 1689, she was buried in Westminster Abbey.

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  Text © Mirino (PW). Source- (with thanks) The Norton Anthology English Literature. March, 2010

Pepys

Surely there has never been such an observant, first hand record of a particular period in English history, as that written by Samuel Pepys in his diaries.
Not only a historical record, but personal day to day observations and accounts written spontaneously in short-hand and covering some of the most important events of the period. His recorded observations are so fresh that we can almost feel the horror and danger of the Plague of 1665, the terrible heat of the Great Fire of London the following year- that destroyed a great deal of central London including much of St Paul's Cathedral-, (and when, for save keeping he buried his wines and 'parmezan' cheeses in the garden). We feel the strong wind of the 'Great storme' of the 24th January, 1666,  
'so strong a wind, that in the fields we many times could not carry our bodies against it, but was driven backward. It was dangerous to walk in the streets, the bricks and tiles falling from the houses, that the whole streets were covered with them- and whole chimneys, nay, whole houses in two or three places, blown down...'

Through his writings we see King Charles II playing tennis, we hear the snoring of the old Lord Chancellor during the Privy Council meetings. On the 7th June, 1665 we experience with Pepys the hottest day he ever felt in his life. With him we behold the awesome death of his brother. Through his diaries we share his life, and through him we have not only an excellent, eye-witness account of that period, but an open, very vital and virile portrait of the diarist himself.

Although he wrote for himself, he was so honest and meticulous that he often seemed naively unaware of how much he was also revealing his personal weaknesses. The thoughtless way in which he treated his wife, Elizabeth, his many affairs, (referred to under a veil of an amusing and curious mixture of English, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish) his parsimony and selfishness. But as he was a great lover of life, and as his gift to posterity is so immense, naturally he is far more endeared to and admired historically, than ever ostracised.

Samuel Pepys was a civil servant, rising to become Secretary to the Admiralty and member of Parliament in 1673. He was in command of the organisation of the Navy during the Dutch War of 1672-74.
As from 31st May, 1669, at 34 years of age, he had considerable responsibility, but due to what he imagined was a serious eye-sight problem, he abandoned his more personal diary writing and thereafter only made such notes for official use. But had he never kept personal diaries at all, he would still have been recorded in history for his valuable naval work.

Toward the end of his life he built up an impressive library of books collected from all over Europe. These as well as the six volumes of his leather bound diaries were bequeathed to Magdalene College, Cambridge, on condition that they would remain entirely intact and unchanged. This seems to suggest that he must already have been aware of how important they were for posterity. They are still preserved in the same bookcases he had specially made by dockyard carpenters, and they will always serve to bring back to life this man in his environment of the mid XVII century.

More extracts respecting his way of writing and any incidental errors.

20 June, 1665. 
Thanksgiving day for Victory over the Dutch. 'Up, and to the office, where very busy alone all the morning till church time; and there heard a mean sorry sermon of Mr. Mills. Then to the Dolphin Taverne, where all we officers of the Navy met with the Comissioners of the Ordnance by agreement- where good musique, at my direction. Our club came to 34s a man - nine of us. Thence after dinner I to Whitehall with Sir W. Berkely in his coach. And so I walked to Herberts and there spent a little time avec la mosa, sin hazer algo con ella que kiss and tocar ses mamelles, que me haza hazer la cosa a mi mismo con gran plasir. Thence by water to Foxhall, and there walked an hour alone, observing the several humours of citizens that were there this holiday, pulling of cherries and God knows what.

1st February, 1667. 
Up, and to the office, where I was all the morning doing business. At noon home to dinner; and after dinner down by the water, though it was thick misty and raining day, and walked to Deptford from Redriffe and there to Bagwells by appointment- where the moher erat within expecting mi venida. And did sensa alguna difficulty monter los degres and lie, comme jo desired it upon lo lectum; and there I did la cosa con much voluptas. By and by su marido came in, and there, without any notice taken by him, we discoursed of our business of getting him the new ship building by Mr Deane, which I shall do for him.

Extracts from his notes on the Great Fire of London: 2nd September, 1666:

'...And among other things, the poor pigeons I perceive were both loath to leave their houses, but hovered about the windows and balconies till they were some of them burned, their wings, and fell down..'

'.... So near the fire as we could for smoke; and all over the Thames, with one's face in the wind you were almost burned with a shower of firedrops- this is very true- so as houses were burned by these drops and flakes of fire, three or four, nay five or six houses, one from another...'

5 September.
'.... Thence homeward, having passed through Cheapside and Newgate Market, all burned. And I took up (which I keep by me) a piece of glass of Mercer's Chapel in the street, where much more was, so melted and buckled with the heat of the fire, like parchment. I also did see a poor catt taken out of a hole in the chimney joyning to the wall of the Exchange, with the hair all burned off the body and yet alive...'

And a final discovery of 'misconduct'..

25 October, 1668. Lord's Day
'At night W. Batelier comes and sups with us; and after supper, to have my head combed by Deb, which occasioned the greatest sorrow to me that ever I knew in this world; for my wife, coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed, I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it, and the girl also; and I endeavoured to put it off, but my wife was struck mute and grew angry, and as her voice came to her, grew quite out of order; and I do say little, but to bed; and my wife said little also, but could not sleep all night; but about 2 in the morning waked me and cried, and fell to tell me as a great secret that she was a Roman Catholic and had received the Holy Sacrament; which troubled me but I took no notice of it, but she went on from one thing to the other, till at last it appeared plainly her trouble was at what she saw; but yet I did not know how much she saw and therefore said nothing to her. But after her much crying and reproaching me with inconstancy and preferring a sorry girl before her, I did give her no provocations but did promise all fair usage of her, and love, and foreswore any hurt that I did with her- till at last she seemed to be at ease again.'

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Pepys, 1660

Text (source- The Illustrated Pepys, with thanks) transposed images-

(portrait of SP,  painting of Great Fire of London) © Mirino (PW) March, 2010