Octavio Paz: "Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature" Part 002

In all written word, there appears to be some sort of level that I can only equate to prophesy. This is the case with Octavio Paz' essay on "The Verbal Contract" and how it affects societies. Mind you here is an Octavio Paz writing in the late 1970s, rabid with theories about how technology influences language. I am a true believer in the after-life, and, if it is as Borges once stated (I have always imagined that Paradise is a kind of library), there has got to be a very confused Octavio Paz trying to reconcile his theories to the "conflict" that our new technology has affected on language. The technology Paz writes about in the essay is essentially television. Television came around in the late 40s and early 50s, but it really took nearly 25 or 30 years for scholars to take a good and critical look at it. Even in the early 1980s, Neil Postman was perhaps the only one looking at it from an academic perspective. In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, Postman problematizes the epidemic of "educational" television shows and the effect on children who are brought up to believe learning has to be fun, and, even worse than that, educators that embraced (and continue to embrace) the idea that it is imperative to present lessons that are "entertaining and engaging." In this sense, Paz and Postman could have agreed. There's a basic level of rudimentary learning that is not fun, or entertaining, and it is a fundamental part of learning during our earliest years. Many researchers now see the parallel of the argument for "fun" in the classroom with the decline of subjects such as science and mathematics. At any rate, the technology that I wish Octavio Paz had had access to in his time, of course, is the Internet. He states that: "Media, as their name indicates, are not languages. With great brilliance but faulty logic, Marshall McLuhan once tried to demonstrate that the relationship between messages and media was similar in type to that between sound and meaning within language: each medium has a corresponding type of discourse, just as each morpheme and each word emit a meaning or set of meanings.... To a certain degree, the communications media are neutral; no convention predetermines that certain signs will be transmitted and other not. So to speak of the languages of television or films is to use a metaphor: television transmit language, but in and of itself it is not language. It is possible, of course, to say--once again, as figure of speech or metaphor--that there is a grammar, a morphology, and a syntax of television, but not a semantics. Television does not broadcast meanings; it broadcasts signs that convey meaning." I have not reason to disagree, and I strongly believe that his theory becomes even stronger when applied to the Internet, or wireless communications in general. The idea that there are "no semantics" to technology transmitting meaning takes on a life of its own when applied exclusively to text messaging. There, I believe Octavio Paz might have come straight to a dead end; that is to say, text messaging, over the course of just a few short years, has, in fact, developed its own semantics. In this case, symbols do convey the meaning behind the message without having to separate the meaning from the symbol. Various reports about the usage of text messaging by young people conclude that most prefer text messaging to e-mail, and even consider e-mail a thing of the past. I remember the first time--I think it was late 1980s--when I encountered the lexicon of the new technology. I was minding my own business in a chat room (having connected to a local free access Net at the blazing speed of 1200 bauds) when someone made a comment after something I typed. I meant my statement to be humorous, and one of the other people in the chat room typed in "LOL." Well, my interpretation of that was "Loser Online," and you can imagine how I responded. Of course, I was put in my place and realized, even back then, that the technology in this case was molding meaning and that the semiotic convention was evolving too fast to date. Text messaging has its own set of abbreviation meanings that (in my opinion) do convey specific content of semiotic information. Perhaps this is extending the argument, but I am incline to believe that some of the text messaging abbreviated language even crosses cultural boundaries, and, if it is as Octavio Paz states that "Culture is... in the totality of things, institutions, ideas and images that a given society uses, because it has either invented them or inherited them or borrowed them from other cultures. A culture is above all a totality of things..." then there's much to say about the transmission of language and meaning today. Octavio Paz is correct in arguing this premise, and, to his credit, arguing it even beyond his times: if language dictates the development of a culture, and it cannot be transmitted by media in a world dependent almost entirely of media, how then, do we continue to expand knowledge, language, meanings? Perhaps William Gibson's assertion in "Neuromancer," where he coined the term cyberspace, explaining in a rather illogical way that "there's no there there," could have put Octavio Paz in his place. If there's no there, then there's no language or meaning, and whatever is flying around in that space that is not space is not transmittable or meaningful.

I am reminded of the anti-trust case against Microsoft back in the late 1990s. One of the Senators bringing down the heat on Bill Gates asked the present audience to raise their hands if they primarily a Mac based system; only a few hands went up. When he asked to see how many used a Windows based computer, 90% or more of the audience raised their hands. "You see, Mr. Gates," the Senator blared confidently, "that is a monopoly." I sort of disagree with this method of conclusion/logic, but I do have to think of the importance of the Operating System language. If Windows, in all of its mutated versions, is used broadly throughout the world, say, in Kenya, Thailand, Vietnam, England, Belarus, Romania, and South Korea, the design and interface of the system has, by virtue of its plurality, become a language of sorts, meanings, and even semiotics. While the usage of Macs is on the increase, Windows as a media transmitting meaning through its interface language still dominates. Imagine that, Bill Gates turns over Octavio Paz' theories... techno geek against Nobel Prize winner... who to believe?

Octavio Paz' "Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature" part 001

The shame of having hold on to a book for this long without reading it finally took a toll on my emotions this week. Just like Zbigniew Herbert's "Still Life with a Bridle," which took me about 10 years to get to it (and I devoured this little book, a delicious combination of essays and apocryphas), Octavio Paz' book "Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature" gathered dust on top of my book shelve for nearly 15 years. I've had a series of false starts with it, never going through the first essay as a whole, and putting it down in favor of something more "digestible." Well, sometimes that's all it takes because, as T.S. Eliot indicated early on, "time is an enzyme," and now I am fully enjoying this book.

Paz' ideas of translation strike me as ironic (all of these essays are originally in Spanish... the praised translation comes from Helen Lane). He problematizes translation in literature as paradoxical at best, and, through a series of historical and self-interpretations he devices a theory that begins in Babel and ends within the enclosure of a New Guinea pygmy community listening to a Edith Piaf song on a record player. First, Octavio Paz takes on the diversity of language and its origins. He doesn't just cite the Biblical principle of Babel as an example--he always had a way of commencing with metaphysics and somehow still be able to explain the concrete. But he uses Babel to expose the idea of unity and diversity. The unity of all humanity under one language led to an extravagant God-like and arrogant pursuit. As a result, Paz holds, the Spirit scattered the language into a million traditions. This diversity of language is "an attack on the unity of the mind," and in the same token a challenge to the idea of God as supreme--if humans fail to comprehend unity in language, how then, Paz asserts, would they be able to conceive of a supreme, unified idea of God? All of this, however, is based on an examination of language; this is where Octavio Paz perhaps develop the rank of ideas that led to a Nobel Prize in Literature. "Plurality is universally taken to be a curse and a condemnation: it is the consequence of a transgression against the Spirit," a statement that, for all intent and purposes, has a blend of the metaphysical and modern interpretation of a multiplicity of languages. Being bilingual or even trilingual begins the to reverse this process, for, as Paz states, "To speak a foreign tongue, understand it, and translate it into one's own is to restore the unity of the beginning." No, Paz is not playing with the circular reasoning of the Russian Deconstructionists, but rather taking on translation as a tool of understanding. He does play a back and forth game, but as confusing as it seemingly is, Paz eventually wraps it all up in a way we can understand: some translations work and some others do not. Pushing the argument to the very limit, he uses a word most of those do not know, or perhaps have never encountered before, but we all know what it is once he explains it.

Speaking in tongues, Paz is quick to introduce, "was not exclusive to early Christian communities. It antedates them and appears in a great many Oriental and Mediterranean cults going back to earliest antiquity." It is important to mention that Paz recognizes the paradox: this "speaking in tongues" has been recognized as holy and evil at the same time; the more conventional the Medieval Church became, the more ostracized speakers of this unknown ejaculations became. Their refuge, as an act of subversion and submission at the same time, became the Protestant Reformation. Even to this day, the Catholic Church discourages this kind of practice, while churches of other denominations embrace it as it takes place spontaneously without regard to rank or title (perhaps this is why the Catholics "dislike" this practice--they have been obsessed with rank and file since the very start). But, if the practice has been present since very early on, why the push and pull controversy of it? It is unifying, Paz states, rather than divisive: "The universality of the phenomenon, and its persistence among historical changes and the extreme diversity of cultures, languages, and societies, incline me to think that we are once more in the presence of a human constant." The official term for this manifestation/behavior is "glossolalia."

Glossolalia is not exclusive to religion. As a matter of fact, poets of the Modernist movement (especially in Latin America) played with similar "artistic" tools. Early in the 20th century, there was a movement of "creationist" poetry--Huidobro being the most extensive practitioner of this method--which used "real" language words and mixed them with spontaneous prefixes and suffixes that made them border on glossolalia. For example, (and even though these are in Spanish, I'll include the translation after each word), "unipacio" (one space), "monlutrella" (a combination of the Spanish words mountain, moon and star). Paz includes--to the delight of those who want to keep the argument on this side of the Modern--James Joyce's 101 letter word from Finnegans Wake, (a word I am not going to include here, not because it is not important, but rather because I am of a divided mind when it comes to Joyce). At any rate, the word can be considered glossolalia because it bespeaks of Adam's and Eve's fall from grace, a Spirit manifestation if there was ever one. Unfortunately, this 101 letter word has to be taken with a grain of sand when it comes to meaningfulness. Joyce came out clean and stated in a little known quotation, that, for the sake of disclosure, I have included here: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it [Ulysses] will keep the professors busy for centuries over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality." There's much in "Ulysses" that can be considered glossolalia, but a quote such as the one here makes on think about the purposes or legitimacy of literary tricks and games. Could glossolalia then be some sort of physical manifestation, a sort of "you-ate-too-much-chocolate-therefore-you-are-hyper" type of thing? But such an idea would be a social convention, wouldn't it? Octavio Paz, perhaps already predicting such an argument, clarifies this type of interpretation, "If the relationship between the signifier and the signified depends on a convention, how could such convention come home without the consent of the speakers? Who is the author of this convention--language itself? In that case, what was there before language and where did it come from? In a word, if the origin of the so-called linguistic pact does not lie in human will, how does one explain the dual relation between language and society?" This quote, of course, sounds like one of those graduate school discussion one tends to try and forget. However, there is something significant (no pun intended) about this argument. Let me put it in context. If I am to speak to a room full of people--about one third of the audience speaks a variety of languages that are not Romantic or even close to a Western-type language--and they are all standing, would I be able to convey the meaning of chair (signified) by using gesticulations, etc.? Here I am trying to educate them about the functions and benefits of a chair, yet every person in the room is standing. Must I have a chair with me in order to get my point across? In a nation-wide tour of my lectures on the benefits of chairs, must I carry one with me from lecture hall to lecture hall? The object is the signified (chair), the word chair is the signifier. In my lecture, I have replaced the word (signifier) with gesticulations and body movements in order to get the point across to that part of the audience that does not speak English, am I breaking the covenant of subject and object? am I, in some sense, by means of my movements to carry meaning across engaged in some different type of glossolalia? There may never be an answer to this, but it's worthwhile to analyze and see the argument for what it is: the space between object and subject--the hidden kingdom, as Paz puts it, that awaits on the other side of things.

Well, this is a bit too complicated, and I think I might have done a terrible job at explaining it. I am, however, enjoying the book very much. Whatever was there at the start 15 years ago that forced me to put this book down is now officially scratched from my list of excuses. The second part of this posting will deal with the relation of taste and sex/eroticism, craftsmanship vs. art, analogies between political preferences and cultural culinary conventions. Don't ask me, really, if you must ask, ask Octavio Paz himself (he's dead, so you may have to buy the book and read it).

Truth and Mirrors: Umberto Eco's Last Stand on Cognition

I took some time off from the Internet, and during that time I was able to (finally) finish Umberto Eco's "Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition." The second part of the book dealt with more than just Cognitive Types, as Eco embarked on a semiotic examination of abstractions that could perhaps only be defined by way of pragmatism. Eco details "The True Story of the Sarkiapone" which becomes more convoluted, funny and entertaining with every turn. The Sarkiapone does not exist; it's an imaginary animal that a passenger in a train pretends to have in his luggage. Another person in the same compartment of the train expresses the idea that he knows everything there is to know about the Sarkiapone (one of those know-it-all people we hate so much). At any rate, as the first passenger continues to change the story of the Sarkiapone and its characteristics (physical and behavioral), the second passenger continues to adjust his "expertise" to match the conversation. In the end, the first passenger reveals that the Sarkiapone does not exist. The second passenger quickly states that he knew it all along, and that he was playing along with the "creation" of the strange animal. Umberto Eco uses this story to illustrate how people construct meaning from definition; that is to say, the Sarkiapone did not exist, but as the first passenger "mutates" the characteristics of the animal, and the second passenger adapts to those mutations, meaning is created out of nothing. It's an interesting trick of cognition and reference of "contract."


Visual cognition as reference of contract is a bit more complicated. What do we see in a mirror? How does the reversal of the image signifies a different type? Eco explains everything from the reversal of the image and the fact that what is returned from standing in front of the mirror is not fully a representation of what stands in front. Why? A reflection is composed of light/color spectrum and the eye perception of the same. Other perception examples include the classic "Mexican riding a bike" image. Why, I wonder, after 500 pages of some of the most insightful meanderings on epistemology, semiotics, etc. did Eco finish this tour de force with this funny trick of perception? Who knows, really. I did enjoy the reading tremendously. I realize now how much I marked this book. Normally, I do a lot of underlining (no highlighters allowed), marginalia, etc., but I think I over did it with this one. I still have two more Umberto Eco volumes to go this year, but before I get to them, I have to play catch up with some others and with my writing. And summer is almost over!

Umberto Eco's Cognitive Types and Bach's Suites for Cello Solo

Johann Sebastian Bach's Suites for Cello Solo have been a part of my life since I was 11 years old. These are essential pieces for every cellist. As a cellist, I have played them and enjoyed them over 2/3s of my life. They are never old or boring; I always find some thing new in them when I play them, and also when I listen to the numerous recordings I have by different cellists. So, imagine the surprise I received when upon turning a page in Umberto Eco's "Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition," I discovered that our good Italian semiotist included a chapter on Bach's Suite No. 2 as an example of cognitive types and nuclear content. The issue at stake here is as follows. The simplistic premise of the book itself is "when we say 'cat' how do we know that a 'cat' is a 'cat'." Basically, how does language transfers the meaning (or fails to do so) of 'cat' if we don't have a sample of a cat at hand? When applied to music, Eco makes a wonderful problematization of performance of a piece vs. the written work, and the potential variations within. In his example, Eco writes about a recording of the Suite No. 2 for Cello Solo performed on a recorder flute. The question related to the "difference between the physical phenomenon and its transcription on the stave, on the one hand, and between it and the 'musical idea' on the other. Transcription to the stave certainly represents a (highly conventional) way of rendering the musical idea public. That the procedure is conventional (highly codified) does not eliminate the fact that the sequence of the written notes is motivated by the sequence of the sounds imagined or tried out on an instrument by the composer." Add to this the idea of whether or not a piece that is not executed on an instrument, sang by a singer, etc. or even played in a record exists. That is to say, since the piece is transferred and made public by being printed (much as we print works of literature) it remain static and "dead" until someone picks it up and plays it. But imagine an orchestra conductor picking up an orchestral piece and seeing the entire piece (all instruments) in front of him, as he begins to read the score (much as you are reading this page... with the same facility) does that not constitute bringing the piece to "life?" I suppose that perhaps humming counts, no? At any rate, Eco then takes the argument to another level where he believes that "[i]t is clear that, if the relationship between the sound waves and the grooves of the disc is a case of primary iconism--and if the relation between [the performer's] execution and the notes of the score is already substantiated by multiple interpretative inferences, choices, and accentuations of pertinency--we have then arrived, with the physiognomic type, at an extremely complex process that seems very difficult to take account of." Looking at it from another angle, if a recording of the Bach Suites for Cello Solo performed by say, Mischa Maisky differs from that of Pablo Casals in the way each of them interprets them, then what we have is a version of the piece in execution that is much different from what the composer intended, if it was in fact that he intended anything at all but the phraseology and "message" behind it (which I admit is interpretable as well). I remember having a similar argument with a philosophy professor of mine when I was an undergraduate. I resorted back to my music training (which might have been unfair) and asked whether or not it was the same piece of hundreds of people played the same notes but with a different interpretation (his contention was that there was no variance). I can't remember how we resolved the matter, but he was a gracious old scholar and a lover of classical music. I do remember we ended up meeting at his house where his wife prepared elaborate dinners for three, and afterwards retiring to the salon to listen to his old LP recordings collection. The man had every one from Leonid Kogan to Gaspar Cassado, and numerous difficult to find recordings. Those were happy days, but I digress.

Eco posts another excellent problem. If the Bach Suite for Cello Solo No. 2 is an artistic endeavour that appears differently to everyone, could the Mona Lisa be appreciated similarly? Where do Da Vinci's brushstrokes end, and our appreciation begin? I'd be hard press to think that even a contemporary professional painter would stand in front of the Mona Lisa and say, "oh, sure... but I would have changed the light hits the side of her cheek here..."

I do, however, enjoy reading Eco very much. This is the kind of thing my students tell me to stop thinking about, just to "let it go," or the proverbial "you think too much." How little do they know of the pleasures of the life of the mind.

Umberto Eco and Kitaro Nishida "On Being"

The interesting aspect of the first 100 pages of Umberto Eco's book "Kant and the Platypus: Essays on Language and Cognition" is the fact that it connects to Japan's only rational philosophy (at least historically) on the topic of "Pure Experience" and on "Being." Eco conventionally cites much Heidegger simply because one cannot write about Being without considering the great German. Having said that, Kitaro Nishida appears ignorant of Heidegger on theory and method, perhaps because he was writing before Heidegger became known, or even developed his ideas. This relates to that most obscure topic of serendipity, etc. I studied Nishida in 1994 while I lived and studied in Hikone, Japan. I came across his book "An Inquiry into the Good" by chance at the Michigan State University Center for Japan Studies right there in Hikone. Right away I knew I had to read this book. The introduction by Masao Abe alone is worth the price of admission. This introduction is brilliantly written; clear enough for a lay reader of philosophy like myself to be able to follow it and understand it on the first reading. Nishida, however, is a bit more complex and it took me several readings to understand at least half of what I read. While for the most part I am citing Umberto Eco's work, I am actually PDFing my notes on Nishida on this LINK. These are my original, handwritten notes from 1994.

Eco's first section of the book, entitled "On Being," covers for the most part the basic definitions of self-recognition and being that most people associate with Heidegger. However, Eco presents a clear and expertly shorten chronology on the ideas of self/being and recognition from Aristotle and Aquinas, to Descartes and Kant, and, as the expert semiotologist that he is, he refers to the process of how we recognize self/being and how symbols help us do so. Here's an example: "The problem with Aristotelian being lay not in the pollachos but in the leghetai [these are terms Aristotle uses to define the self/being from a substantial or transcendental or spiritual self/being]. Whether it is said in one or many ways, being is something that is said. It may well be the horizon of every other evidence, but it becomes a philosophical problem only when we begin to talk about it, and it is precisely our talking about it that makes it ambiguous and polyvocal." This is precisely what Kitaro Nishida problematizes when he creates the polemic of "Pure Experience" and "Reality" where he explores the phenomena of consciousness as the sole basis of reality. Because Eco is dedicated to the way we symbolize or recognize being (ourselves and others) he seems as disparate from Nishida, but a closer look reveals a distinct connection: both philosophers see language as a symbol used to recognized our own being. For that reason, symbols are primary as they appear in language and secondarily as material being. Eco continues "Being is that which enables all subsequent definitions to be made. But all definitions are the effect of the logical and therefore semiosical organization of the world.... if being is the horizon of departure, saying that something 'is' adds nothing to what was already self-evident by the very fact of naming that something as the object of our discourse." And here's a major clash with defining being/self as it appears to the cognition, especially as it refers to Heidegger. Heidegger's Dasein, and the problematic question he posted as "What is 'is?'" Eco explores that idea that since Heidegger begins and ends with language, he continues to be enslaved to language for a definition. To post it in an easier way... Could we recognize (cognition) the self and being without the intrusion of language? Do we need language in order to define our self/being? If language had never developed, would we be reasonable/logic-driven humans who recognize we exist and are substantially a being?

I am also reading a book on fiction writing theory where the author asks the reader/writer to create an emotional map of his/her history and try to sketch it in a way that is not biographically inspired. I find this exercise fascinating and very difficult to do, which is the reason why I am so engaged with it. I'll possibly be writing about this next here in the blog before continuing with Eco/Nishida.