Edmund the Bastard
One of the great roles in literature is Shakespeare’s Edmund, a poor bastard who makes King Lear interesting for those who find the doddering into madness of an old man insufferable. The author focuses like a laser upon Edmund’s anger at being denied equal rights simply because he be a shameful bastard son as a way to introduce imagery which delineates the divergence between shame and guilt:
“For shame is the specific discomfort produced by the sense of being looked at, the avoidance of the sight of others is the reflex it produces. Guilt is different; there the reflex is to avoid discovery. As long as no one knows what you have done, you are safe; or your conscience will press you to confess it and accept punishment. Under shame, what must be covered up is not your deed, but yourself. It is a more primitive emotion than guilt, as inescapable as the possession of a body, the first object of shame.”
Debussy-esque
What imagery does the word Debussy conjure up for you? Unless you are seeking a career having to do with classic music, probably not much more than Cezanne or rotary dialing. For those with an interest in classical music, however, the name of one of its most majestic composers apparently is capable of conjuring up a variety of imagery:
"A generation or so ago [keeping in mind that the author wrote this in the late 1950’s], "Debussy" referred to music of a certain ethereal mood, satisfying a taste for refined sweetness or poignance; today it refers to solutions for avoiding tonality: I find I waver between thinking of that as a word altering its meaning and thinking of it as referring to an altered object.”
Witttgenstein
It is a truly a testament to the author’s talent that he manages to find within the most abstruse and almost impenetrable text of Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the renowned philosopher’s most unusually explicit, direct and accessible quotes regarding the concept of understanding one another. If ever given the chance, pick up a book by Wittgenstein and spend a few hours trying to randomly open a page to such concise imagery as this:
“`One human being can be a complete enigma to another. We learn this when we come into a strange country with entirely strange traditions; and, what is more, even given a mastery of the country's language. We do not understand the people. (And not because of not knowing what they are saying to themselves.) We cannot find our feet with them’ (II, p. 223).
In German the last sentence employs an idiom which literally says: `We cannot find ourselves in them.’"
“Why can’t one still write like Mozart?”
The author raises this question even though he certainly did not have to. He could have just avoided it entirely and spared himself the trouble of having to answer it. But this author doesn’t roll like that. He raises the question—whether a genuinely valid one to ask or not—and then proceeds to engage an answer full of imagery signifying something, but maybe not actually and authentically satisfying:
“One answer might be: Lots of people have written like Mozart, people whose names only libraries know; and Mozart wasn't one of them. Another answer might be: Beethoven wrote like Mozart, until he became Beethoven. Another: If Mozart were alive, he wouldn't either. Or even: the best composers do write as Mozart did (and as Bach and Beethoven and Brahms did), though not perhaps with his special fluency or lucidity. But by now that question is losing its grip, one is no longer sure what it is one was asking, nor whether these answers mean anything”
