In his essay “Nature,” Emerson concludes a set of teachings with the phrase, “Thus my Orphic poet sang.” This phrase probably inspired Nietzsche’s phrase “Thus spoke Zarathustra.” As Walter Kaufman wrote, “Long steeped in Emerson, [Nietzsche] reread him and annotated him again during the period of The Gay Science and just before he wrote Zarathustra.” The English term for Zarathustra, Zoroaster, occurs in Emerson’s essays, and was doubtless translated as Zarathustra in Nietzsche’s German version. Nietzsche’s title Gay Science may also owe a debt to Emerson, who called himself “a professor of the Joyous Science.”
A section of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra may have been influenced by the Bible. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lists eight kinds of people who are blessed:
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Etc.
Since the Latin word for “blessed” is “beatus,” these sayings are called the beatitudes.
In Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, we find a similar list, replacing “blessed” with “I love.”
I love him whose soul is overfull, so that he forgets himself and all things are in him: thus all things become his downfall.
I love him whose soul is deep even in its ability to be wounded, and whom even a little thing can destroy: thus he is glad to go over the bridge.
I love the great despisers, because they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other bank.
I love him who justifies the men of the future and redeems the men of the past: for he wants to perish by the men of the present.
Etc.
Since the Latin for “to love” is “amare,” these sayings have been called Nietzsche’s “amatitudes.” They were influenced not only by the Bible, but also by Goethe’s Faust. In Faust, the sybil Manto is introduced to Faust and says, “I love the man who craves the impossible” [Den lieb’ ich, der Unmögliches begehrt].1 So Faust contains an “amatitude.”
The Faustian striving for the impossible and the infinite has been called the hallmark of Western civilization.
I was recently exploring the website of The New Criterion, and I found a 1990 essay by my old friend Elie Kedourie — a review of William McNeill’s biography of Toynbee.2 It was natural for Kedourie to be tapped to write this book review, since he had a longstanding interest in (or rather, a longstanding animosity toward) Toynbee. And it was natural for McNeill to be tapped (by Toynbee’s son) to write a biography of Toynbee, since McNeill specialized in global history, much as Toynbee did. One might say that Toynbee and McNeill were tillers of the same field, the same vast field. And I suppose it’s natural that I’ve been tapped (by myself) to write this review of Kedourie’s review, since I have a longstanding interest in both Toynbee and Kedourie, and in the clash between them. I hope you aren’t in the mood for an original work because what follows is commentary: my commentary on Kedourie’s commentary on McNeill’s commentary on Toynbee. In short it’s commentary to the third power, commentary cubed.
The clash between Toynbee and Kedourie is a clash between liberal and conservative: Toynbee was a liberal who put his faith in the United Nations, and criticized the United States, while Kedourie was a conservative who took a dim view of modern ideologies and grand plans, whether nationalist, fascist, or communist. The clash between Toynbee and Kedourie is also a clash between Gentile and Jew: Toynbee was a champion of Arab nationalism who sided with the Arabs in their wars with Israel, while Kedourie was an Iraqi Jew who despised Arab nationalism.
Both Toynbee and Kedourie have the high honor to be given their own sections in my Realms of Gold. I’m a fan of both, just as, in the quarrel between Freud and Jung, I side with both, I champion both.
Toynbee’s weakness is that his books cover too much ground; a comparison between the early Romans and the early Incas tells us little about either. Kedourie’s weakness is that his books cover too little ground; a book about the correspondence between an English official and a Saudi prince is of little interest to the general reader. Toynbee’s weakness is sweeping generalization and vapid moralizing, while Kedourie’s weakness is bitter sarcasm. Toynbee is too grand to be witty; Kedourie is often witty but never grand.
But while both Toynbee and Kedourie have their weaknesses, they’re both deep thinkers, they both write fine prose, they both have vast knowledge, they were both leaders in their field. One of my favorite Toynbee books is strikingly similar to one of Kedourie’s books: Toynbee edited a book called Half the World: The History and Culture of China and Japan, which resembles a book about Jewish history that Kedourie edited (The Jewish World: History and Culture of the Jewish People).
Nietzsche said that, while a philosopher prides himself on his big ideas, his grand theories, his best work is often his casual asides — his byways rather than his highways. If we apply this to Toynbee, we can say that Toynbee’s best work was his lesser-known work, his less ambitious work, and his weakness is his sprawling, ambitious Study of History. Kedourie had high praise for one of Toynbee’s early works, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey: A Study in the Contact of Civilizations (1922).3 This book draws on Toynbee’s travels in the region, and it deals with the Greco-Turkish war that took place around 1920. Two of my favorite Toynbee books are Hellenism: The History of a Civilization, and Civilization On Trial.
Did Kedourie and Toynbee ever meet? Did they correspond? These are questions I can’t answer, but Kedourie tells us that his book Chatham House Version “agitated Toynbee and made him extremely angry, as may be seen from his private papers, and from a review of the book [by Toynbee] in the periodical The Round Table, which appeared in [April] 1970.”3B Kedourie responded to Toynbee’s review, so the two men certainly clashed in print.
Kedourie has high praise for McNeill’s biography of Toynbee, calling it “a solid and felicitously written, indeed outstanding work.” McNeill is now 96, and has been on the faculty of the University of Chicago since 1947; he earned both a Bachelors degree and a Masters degree from Chicago. He wrote a book about the University of Chicago called Hutchins’ University: A Memoir of the University of Chicago: 1929-1950. McNeill is best known for his 1963 book The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. McNeill’s son, J. R. McNeill, is an environmental historian. Father and son collaborated on The Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History (2003). One might describe both McNeills as writers of “big history.” (In an earlier issue, I discussed a Chinese writer of big history, Ray Huang.)
Though Toynbee is now sinking into oblivion, he had a big reputation in his day. He was a celebrity, he was on the cover of Time magazine. Perhaps only Oswald Spengler had a reputation like Toynbee’s. Certainly Kedourie had none of the celebrity that Toynbee had. As for McNeill, he was more widely known, and widely read, than Kedourie, though he wasn’t a celebrity like Toynbee. Toynbee reminds me of Leo Strauss insofar as both writers rose to fame in the wake of World War II, both writers tried to explain the catastrophe, both writers offered a glimmer of hope to a public that was shocked and confused. But while Strauss’s reputation never extended beyond the walls of academia, Toynbee seemed more popular outside academia than inside.
According to an ancient maxim, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum dicendum est (nothing should be spoken of the dead except good). Writing in 1990, fifteen years after Toynbee’s death, Kedourie has nothing good to say about him; Kedourie’s maxim seems to be, De mortuis nihil nisi malum dicendum est. The last paragraph of Kedourie’s piece is a good example of his wit; Kedourie speaks of,
| a distinction which, long ago, I heard Isaiah Berlin attribute to Chaim Weizmann. Weizmann was apparently in the habit of distinguishing between the summer and the winter fool. A summer fool was immediately recognizable. A winter fool, on the other hand, was so wrapped up in layer after layer of flannel that it took much laborious effort to undo these layers and see him for what he was. What is beyond doubt is that Toynbee was not a summer fool. |
Kedourie does indeed make a strong case for Toynbee’s folly, and quotes McNeill in support of his case. Can one be a genius and a fool at the same time? Perhaps Toynbee was such a combination. Perhaps there’s an element of folly in every genius; human nature is nothing if not contradictory. Indeed, one could quote Kedourie himself in support of the claim that Toynbee wasn’t a summer fool or a winter fool, but rather a first-rate historian; referring to Toynbee’s Western Question in Greece and Turkey, Kedourie said,
| The book admirably shows Toynbee’s virtues as a historian: the breadth of his learning, the fecundity of his imagination, his ability to connect the political, the economic, the social and the spiritual, and his topographical eye.4 |
So when Kedourie calls Toynbee a winter fool, he’s making a sally of wit, not a considered judgment. That Toynbee’s works are deeply flawed, I don’t deny. But as I’ve said before, all writers are flawed. If we judge Toynbee by his best works, not his worst, we would say he was no fool.
Toynbee had vast ambitions, and thus he exposes himself to sallies of wit, and Kedourie is a master of such sallies. Thus, Kedourie is a perfect foil for Toynbee. “Readers of [Toynbee’s] A Study of History,” Kedourie tells us, “know that it is a history not only of the past, but also of the future.”5
Toynbee had considerable sympathy with the political Left, and even with communism. When World War II was ending, Toynbee said that the U.S. might go to war with the Soviet Union, and that the Soviet Union would win, partly because “they have a more serious purpose in life.”
| [Toynbee’s] belief in the attractions of Soviet Communism endured [Kedourie writes]. The readers of Playboy magazine were privileged to learn from an interview with him in 1967 that the United States was “the leader of a worldwide counter-revolutionary movement in defense of vested interests,” that “Madison Avenue is more of a danger to the West than Communism,” and that Communism had more to offer Latin America than anything the United States could provide. |
As the American Left often criticized the U.S. and its “imperialism,” so Toynbee and other English liberals often criticized the British Empire, apologized for it, and felt guilty about it. Kedourie says that in Toynbee’s work we find “the shrill and clamant voice of English radicalism [saying] we have conquered, we have dominated, we have exploited. Nowhere is this feeling of guilt more pronounced than in respect of the Arabs and of Britain’s dealings with them.”6
In some respects, however, Toynbee was conservative. He bemoaned the fact that the expansion of Western civilization brought with it an influx of non-Western ethnic groups; he spoke of “the blight of promiscuity.”7 In this respect, Toynbee reminds us of scholars like Kennan and Lukacs, who grew up in a mostly white world, and were uneasy about racial mixing.
Kedourie disapproves of Toynbee’s tendency to mix preaching with history. This tendency is especially evident in the later volumes of Toynbee’s Study of History, where Toynbee dons the mantle of prophet, and says that history is “a revelation of God and a hope of communion with him.” Toynbee’s fondness for Christianity is matched by his aversion for Judaism. According to Kedourie, “The epithet Judaic has thus served, throughout A Study of History, to denote all that was most evil in the modern world.”8
Kedourie’s prose is polished, forceful, and witty — a pleasure to read. The prevailing tone, however, is bitter and sarcastic; Kedourie rarely achieves simplicity, and never achieves sublimity. Occasionally his sentences are convoluted, as when he says, “Toynbee’s career posed another puzzle which concerns not so much himself as the society in which he came to occupy a central position as an opinion-maker with an influence both deep and tentacular.” Sometimes Kedourie uses words that are even stranger than “tentacular”; for example, he says that Toynbee spoke in “piacular” tones, and suffered from “presbyopia.”
Kedourie makes a strong case against Toynbee, but one is tempted to ask Kedourie, “Why spend so much ink on a winter fool? Isn’t silence the most appropriate response to such a fool? Don’t tell us what you despise, tell us what you admire.”
The local GreatBooks group, which has often inspired me to try new authors, recently inspired me to try the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.9 Marquez was born in 1927, won the Nobel Prize in 1982, and is still alive today. Marquez is a friend of Castro, and Marquez’s harsh criticism of the U.S. resulted in him being banned from the U.S. (the ban was finally lifted during Clinton’s tenure; Clinton said that Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude was his favorite novel). Marquez and Castro knew each other as students in Bogota in the late 1940s. Marquez said of Castro, “Ours is an intellectual friendship. It may not be widely known that Fidel is a very cultured man. When we’re together, we talk a great deal about literature.”
Marquez is known for a literary genre called “magic realism.” This approach may have been inspired by his grandmother, who often spoke of occult things in a matter-of-fact way. Or it may have been inspired by Kafka, who mixed wild fantasy with precise realism. In 1950, Marquez wrote a piece called “Caricature of Kafka.”
| This piece contains several elements easily recognizable by the reader of Kafka: the characters are identified by letters rather than names; the protagonist has just completed a trip throughout the night; the environs are of cold steel and ugly modernity; the protagonist’s effort in crossing a bridge is thwarted by an official who is a part of a vast hierarchy; the protagonist suffers from an initial indecision and ultimate failure.10 |
Perhaps my own writings should be called “magic realism” since I have a keen interest in the magical/occult, and an equal interest in concrete realism. At any rate, I was immediately attracted to Marquez. The GreatBooks group discussed a Marquez story called “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.” I would describe the story as short, readable, and poetic; I recommend it without qualification.
In Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” the protagonist turns into an insect. This kind of wild fantasy can’t be found in Marquez’s story. Marquez describes things that you can almost believe — if you’re receptive to the occult. But Marquez goes slightly beyond the occult into the fantastic.
For example, the drowned man seems to influence the weather, there seems to be some correspondence between nature and the human sphere. This is a classic example of the occult; we’ve discussed this in connection with Macbeth, etc. If you’re receptive to the occult, then you probably believe that nature and the human sphere may indeed be connected — you may well believe that everything is connected.
However, Marquez takes this ancient theme a little further than is believable; he goes beyond the “believable occult” into “fantasy occult.” In the last sentence of the story, Marquez says that the drowned man has had a permanent effect on the weather in the village. This is hard for anyone to believe — even someone who’s receptive to the occult. I’m not suggesting that the “fantasy occult” is better or worse than the “believable occult,” I’m only trying to describe Marquez.
The story deals with another ancient occult theme: the significance of names. The villagers think that the drowned man must be named Esteban: “Most of them had only to take another look at him to see that he could not have any other name.” In 1952, Marquez wrote an article called “One Must Be Like the Name.” Marquez says that he once heard the remark, “He had the face of someone named Roberto, but his name was José.”11
A critic named Paul Hedeen has given us a good summary of the story. He says that the drowned man represents the “introduction of a new god.”
| Here redemption for a town comes in the form of death, the drowned man, and his appearance completely reorders the town, giving it purpose and saving it from its narrow existence and its solitude. The people even bury the body in the sea without an anchor “so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he wished.” The drowned man becomes a fertility symbol when in his memory the people of the town completely decorate with flowers a promontory that can be seen from far out to sea.12 |
The GreatBooks group also read Epictetus’ “Enchiridion,” a 10-page distillation of his philosophy that was put together by his student, Arrian, from lecture notes. Arrian also put together Epictetus’ chief work, Discourses, which is 300 pages long in the Penguin Classics edition. The Discourses consisted of eight “books,” only four of which have survived. Clearly, Arrian was a tireless note-taker; his fingers must have flown over the keyboard — unless he used voice-recognition software. Arrian is best known for a book on the campaigns of Alexander the Great.
Epictetus lived around 100 AD. He spent his early years as a slave in Rome, where his owner let him study philosophy. Somehow he obtained his freedom, and became a philosophy teacher. In 93 AD, the emperor Domitian banished philosophers from Rome, so Epictetus went to northwest Greece, and started a philosophical school. He became a renowned teacher, and even the emperor Hadrian conversed with him. Like many philosophers, Epictetus never married.
Marcus Aurelius, who lived about 160 AD, often quotes Epictetus. Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus are perhaps the leading exponents of Stoicism — at least among those whose writings have survived. Epictetus’ philosophy is still used as a guide for living; James Stockdale drew on it during his seven years in a North Vietnamese prison, and psychologist Albert Ellis drew on Epictetus in creating his system of psycho-therapy. Epictetus often finds his way into popular culture.
“Enchiridion” means handbook. The Enchiridion of Epictetus is a good introduction to Stoicism and even to philosophy in general. If there’s a better short essay by an ancient philosopher, I’m not aware of it. It wakes you up like a slap in the face or a cold shower. It urges you to “get your shit together,” conquer your bad habits, take charge of your life. Epictetus says, don’t concern yourself with things that you can’t control, things outside you; try to control your own thoughts, desires, fears — your own mind. He says that every desire degrades us, and renders us slaves of what we desire. We should strive for peace of mind (ataraxia) and control of emotion (apatheia).
The Enchiridion not only introduces you to Stoicism, it also gives you a glimpse of life in ancient times.
| Begin therefore from little things [Epictetus writes]. Is a little oil spilt? A little wine stolen? Say to yourself, “This is the price paid for apathy, for tranquillity, and nothing is to be had for nothing.” When you call your servant, it is possible that he may not come; or, if he does, he may not do what you want. But he is by no means of such importance that it should be in his power to give you any disturbance. |
Notice the practical, down-to-earth nature of Epictetus’ advice. Don’t let people annoy you, he counsels us; stay calm and composed.
| Is a brother unjust? Well, keep your own situation towards him. Consider not what he does, but what you are to do to keep your own faculty of choice in a state conformable to nature. For another will not hurt you unless you please. You will then be hurt when you think you are hurt. |
Epictetus counsels humility. Even a famous philosophy teacher, he seems to say, should be humble: “Don’t wish to be thought to know anything; and even if you appear to be somebody important to others, distrust yourself.” The practical nature of his teaching, and his humility, reminds me of Zen. Epictetus’ Stoicism often intersects with Zen, but it seems somewhat heavy, even childish, compared to Zen. Here, for example, is Epictetus’ silly advice about coping with the death of a wife or child:
| With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed if either of them dies. |
Epictetus takes a practical approach, and says we shouldn’t get entangled in intellectual arguments. If you become involved in interpreting a philosopher, he says, then you’re like a grammarian who interprets Homer. A real philosopher focuses on matching his actions to philosophical teachings. What matters is living, not interpreting.13
The most important part of philosophy is moral teachings such as, We ought not to lie. The next topic is, What is the origin of our obligation not to lie? The third topic is epistemology: What is a demonstration? What is a contradiction? What is truth? etc. We let ourselves get entangled in the third topic, in debates about the nature of truth: “We spend all our time on the third topic, and employ all our diligence about that, and entirely neglect the first. Therefore, at the same time that we lie, we are immediately prepared to show how it is demonstrated that lying is not right.”
Epictetus seems to believe in divination, but says that we shouldn’t let bad omens trouble us:
| When a raven happens to croak unluckily, don’t allow the appearance to hurry you away with it, but immediately make the distinction to yourself, and say, “None of these things are foretold to me; but either to my paltry body, or property, or reputation, or children, or wife. But to me all omens are lucky, if I will. For whichever of these things happens, it is in my control to derive advantage from it.” |
Belief in divination is related to a belief in fate. Stoic philosophers argued that, “It would not be possible for diviners to predict the future if the future itself was accidental.”
As Epictetus accepts divination, so he accepts sacrifice:
| It is incumbent on everyone to offer libations and sacrifices and first fruits, conformably to the customs of his country, with purity, and not in a slovenly manner, nor negligently, nor sparingly, nor beyond his ability. |
Epictetus urges us to be heroes in our daily lives, by curbing desires and emotions. He often invokes the memory of philosopher-heroes:
| When you are going to confer with anyone, and particularly someone in a superior station, represent to yourself how Socrates or Zeno would behave in such a case, and you will not be at a loss to make a proper use of whatever may occur. |
The first three leaders of the Stoic school were Zeno, Cleanthes, and Chrysippus; these three lived from about 350 BC to 200 BC — in other words, about 400 years before Epictetus. Epictetus is part of the Stoic tradition, so it’s not surprising that the Enchiridion refers to all three of these philosophers. Zeno taught in a colonnade or porch (stoa in Greek), hence the term “Stoic.” Before he began teaching, Zeno was a student of the Cynic school of philosophy; the Stoic school grew out of the Cynic school.
The Stoic school emphasized fate, hence Epictetus advises us to submit to whatever happens, submit to fate. “To Epictetus, all external events are determined by fate, and are thus beyond our control; we should accept whatever happens calmly and dispassionately.”14 The Enchiridion ends with a quote from Cleanthes about submitting to fate: “Conduct me, Jove, and you, O Destiny, wherever your decrees have fixed my station.”
The Stoic school also believed that everything is connected. “Chrysippus insisted on the organic unity of the universe and the correlation and mutual interdependence of all its parts.”15 Since good and evil are connected, we shouldn’t desire the elimination of evil: “Evil is good under disguise, and is ultimately conducive to the best.”16 God is good, and he has made the best world he could: “The essence of God is goodness; we have all good that could be given to us.”17 As Leibniz put it, this is the best of all possible worlds. Leibniz was doubtless influenced by Stoicism.18
The Stoics respected reason: “Reason alone is good, and the irrational is evil.... The good person should labor chiefly on their own reason; to perfect this is in our power.”19 In this respect, Stoicism is at odds with Zen, which preaches spontaneity, not obedience to reason. Stoicism is also at odds with the “natural morality” of Montaigne and others, which preaches following your natural tendencies rather than reason.
Epictetus urges us to live like a philosopher now, not tomorrow:
| You are no longer a boy, but a grown man. If, therefore, you will be negligent and slothful, and always add procrastination to procrastination, purpose to purpose, and fix day after day in which you will attend to yourself, you will insensibly continue without proficiency, and, living and dying, persevere in being one of the vulgar. This instant, then, think yourself worthy of living as a man grown up, and a proficient. Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law. And if any instance of pain or pleasure, or glory or disgrace, is set before you, remember that now is the combat, now the Olympiad comes on, nor can it be put off. By once being defeated and giving way, proficiency is lost, or by the contrary preserved. Thus Socrates became perfect, improving himself by everything, attending to nothing but reason. And though you are not yet a Socrates, you ought, however, to live as one desirous of becoming a Socrates. |
You know what you should do, Epictetus says. Now follow your resolutions: “Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself, abide by them as if they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety by violating any of them.”
The hero curbs desire and keeps his own mind steady, but he doesn’t criticize those who fail to do so:
| The condition and characteristic of a vulgar person, is, that he never expects either benefit or hurt from himself, but from externals. The condition and characteristic of a philosopher is, that he expects all hurt and benefit from himself. The marks of a proficient are, that he censures no one, praises no one, blames no one, accuses no one, says nothing concerning himself as being anybody, or knowing anything: when he is, in any instance, hindered or restrained, he accuses himself; and, if he is praised, he secretly laughs at the person who praises him; and, if he is censured, he makes no defense. |
Edward Tufte, Yale professor: “The world is much more interesting than any one discipline.”20 Is this a justification for an inter-disciplinary e-zine like Phlit?
Intrigued by this quote, I turned to Wikipedia for more information about Tufte. I learned that he’s a specialist at presenting data, at the visual presentation of data; one of his books is called Beautiful Evidence. Tufte teaches a one-day class called “Presenting Data and Information.” He’s also a sculptor, and he has his own gallery in Chelsea; on Saturdays, he gives tours of his gallery.
Tufte has criticized the way PowerPoint is typically used. He says that it’s used “to guide and reassure a presenter, rather than to enlighten the audience.” He says that PowerPoint forces the audience into a “lockstep linear progression,” while a handout would allow the audience to browse at leisure.
| Tufte argues that the most effective way of presenting information in a technical setting... is by distributing a brief written report that can be read by all participants in the first 5 to 10 minutes of the meeting... and then the rest of the meeting is devoted to discussion and debate. |
I was reminded of my Hotchkiss talk, and the total failure of my PowerPoint presentation.
In response to my recent essay on synchronicity, I received an e-mail from a Phlit subscriber:
| Just writing to say that in terms of synchronicity... all manner of strange things have happened to me in the past year. I don’t even know how to explain it aside from the fact that I believe I’ve found my calling — or at least my temporary purpose in life... and once I did, all kinds of crazy events and coincidences began to occur to help me pursue my passion.... I don’t know what to think aside from the feeling that the universe wants me to do this as much as I want to do this, and I’m going down a path not of my own choosing.... There’s also been a jaw-dropping coincidence or two that makes me think this is really out of my hands... and I’m just being utilized for this project, and not the other way around. |
© L. James Hammond 2013
feedback
visit Phlit home page
make a donation via PayPal
| Footnotes | |
| 1. | Faust, Part II, Act 2, line 922 back |
| 2. | “Arnold Toynbee and His ‘Nonsense Book’”, March, 1990, volume 8, p. 18 back |
| 3. | The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies, Ch. 12, “The Chatham House Version,” section 2 back |
| 3B. | The Round Table is now called The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs. Toynbee’s review of Kedourie’s book is in Volume 60, 1970 - Issue 238, pp. 219-228, or online at doi.org/10.1080/ 00358537008452875. Kedourie’s response is in Volume 60, 1970 - Issue 239, pp. 355-358, or online at doi.org/10.1080/00358537008452893. back |
| 4. | The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies, Ch. 12, “The Chatham House Version,” section 2 back |
| 5. | The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies, Ch. 12, “The Chatham House Version,” section 2 back |
| 6. | The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies, Ch. 12, “The Chatham House Version,” section 3 back |
| 7. | The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies, Ch. 12, “The Chatham House Version,” section 2 back |
| 8. | The Chatham House Version and Other Middle Eastern Studies, Ch. 12, “The Chatham House Version,” section 2 back |
| 9. | The group is based at Weaver Library in East Providence, Rhode Island, organized by librarian Joyce May, and led by Dr. Geoff Berg. back |
| 10. | “An Introduction to the Early Journalism of Garcia Marquez: 1948-1958,” by Raymond L. Williams, Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 13, No. 25, Jan. - June 1985, pp. 117-132; web address: jstor.org/stable/20119391 back |
| 11. | In his autobiographical novel Post Office, Charles Bukowski wrote, “I was [working] next to G.G. early one morning. That’s what they called him: G.G. His actual name was George Greene. But for years he was simply called G.G. and after a while he looked like G.G.”
Goethe was receptive to the occult, and inclined to believe in the occult significance of names. He said, “I shall always be Goethe.... When I say my name, I say everything that I am.” Wikipedia says, “Nominative determinism is the theory that a person’s name can have a significant role in determining job, profession or even character. It was a commonly held notion in the ancient world.” According to the ancients, nomen est omen. One might compare one’s name with the time of one’s birth, which is significant in astrology. For more on names, consider The Language of Names, by Justin Kaplan and Anne Bernays; consider also Alastair Fowler’s Literary Names. back |
| 12. | Paul M. Hedeen, “Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Dialectic of Solitude” (originally published in Southwest Review, Autumn, 1983, #68), included in Bloom’s Modern Critical Interpretations: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom back |
| 13. | See section 49 back |
| 14. | Wikipedia back |
| 15. | Wikipedia back |
| 16. | Wikipedia back |
| 17. | Wikipedia back |
| 18. | The idea of mutual interdependence, the harmony of the parts of the universe, also reminds us of Leibniz. back |
| 19. | Wikipedia back |
| 20. | New York Times, quoted by David Brooks back |