Rosemary's Baby

To ask the passer-by of typical street interviews what he thinks of the Devil is to engender a discussion colored either by fear or indifference, but a discussion nonetheless.  What evil means to our world, how it sidles up and whispers explanations for our suffering that imply there is no escape, will never be grasped by those who believe in nothing except carnal survival because evil cannot exist without good.  There is no vacuum in which malevolence could thrive because it will always seek harmony and prosperity to thwart.  As we walk against the sun and soak in the beneficence of its rays it will lurk as our cold and neglected shadow; as we love one another and live in clover it will bide its time and await our disputes; and as we grow wizened and grey it will attempt to demonstrate that aging is the clearest indication that our world is damned.  All these thoughts shuffle across the radars of intelligent and open-minded people, if only because you can rarely understand someone or something without having considered its potential opposite.  A gentle introduction to the wickedness prevalent in this famous film. 

The story is a familiar one, as it has since been flattered by unending imitation.  Rosemary Woodhouse, a beautiful young housewife (Mia Farrow), and her actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) seek a new home amidst the chic flats of 1960s New York City.  The Woodhouses' urge to move is never fully addressed; nor is, for that matter, how a budding actor of limited ability (snatches of Guy's leaden monologues provide some comical interludes) would be able to afford the palatial spread they ultimately select in the building known as the Bramford.  The conspiratorial airs that waft and swoop around Rosemary's Baby are evident from the opening angles chosen by the director: the strange look of the lift operator, for example, or Guy's insistence on at least a moment of eye contact with each member of the building staff, as if he were inflecting a code.  Our conclusion at this early stage points to a wholly manufactured scenario, although we never receive evidence of when an agreement among parties is struck.  The alternative is the argument put forth by the couple's good friend and current landlord, Hutch (Maurice Evans).  In the last hundred years the Bramford has become more affordable by virtue of having housed a gaggle of hideous tenants, such as a pair of Victorian ladies who happened to have a special fondness for young children, another resident's notorious parties, as well as an abomination whose legal name was Adrian Marcato.  Hutch's tone already betrays Marcato's primacy among these alleged criminals, and prudence forbids me from mentioning anything more.  Suffice it to say that the Woodhouses move in and soon encounter their neighbors, most prominently the rather officious couple of Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer). 

Why anyone would trust the Castevets will depend on how that person feels about eccentric, nosey old people who ingratiate themselves in the guise of self-effacing hospitality.  To her credit, Rosemary immediately sees through this charade; indeed, the film would have been horrifyingly dull had Rosemary been a twit or a bimbo.  As it were, she is consumed in her dreams by reflections of her Catholic upbringing, of the concomitant guilt and emotion – all of which is portrayed at times as the ingenuous beliefs of a child.  Having a family within wedlock is about as sensual as she would ever permit herself to become (the couple's undressing scene in their empty apartment seems like the preparation for some kind of surgical procedure).  But Rosemary is also lonely and underappreciated by Guy, who seems preoccupied by his middling career as a no-name actor in big-name television commercials.  It is no coincidence that Guy has such a plain moniker, or that the surname Woodhouse, while having some relevancy to the world of theology and legend, recalls a rustic cabin quite detached from the fast-paced urban world.  It is also not a coincidence that both Minnie and the former tenant in the Woodhouses' apartment have herb gardens, and that our heroine is also a herb.  So when baby-happy Rosemary does get pregnant, she is advised to see a Castevet-approved obstetrician who eschews popular vitamins for the odd concoctions from Minnie's kitchen.  Rosemary also develops a liking for raw meat and an unwell, chalky complexion, all the while suffering from extreme abdominal pain that her doctor assures her will pass "in a couple of days."  Yet it is another malodorous herb, the so-called "tannis root," that Rosemary wears in a metal sphere vaguely reminiscent of a mezuzah necklace which will identify someone who might be complicit in the swirling mysteries around her pregnancy – and we can safely end our plot summary right about here. 

Those of us curious about factual detail may be disappointed to learn that tannis root does not really exist, or if it does, it is classified under an entirely different name (the books that come into Rosemary's possession also appear to be a compost of the writings of occult scholars although this author's contributions are detectable).  What is omitted from this review is a scene of graphic importance that may or may not be an event in the human sense of the world.  It is dismissed by some characters as the labor of a guilt-flayed mind, but Rosemary herself feels that what happens to her one cloudy evening is as real as Guy's skyrocketing career.  This perception of reality leads her and, by extension, us to wonder about many details absent in less subtle scripts.  Why are Roman's ears pierced?  Why does Guy come home one day in full makeup as if he were summoned from work for some urgent business?  How does Guy know who plays the recorder in the strange chanting sessions hosted by the Castevets?  Why does Guy's main competitor for a role suddenly wake up blind?  Why were two of Hutch's grandchildren delivered by the same obfuscating doctor seeing to Rosemary?  The film's poorly-kept secret notwithstanding, one can relish the slow and methodical tension because it never devolves into hysteria or bloodletting.  We know what kind of game is afoot, so our only questions will involve what fate precisely will befall Rosemary and her unborn child ("Andy or Jenny," she says, speaking to it often).  A hint in that direction takes place when Rosemary palms her mouth gobsmacked at a shop window nativity scene and we hear a long and plaintive "no" – only to see, appropriately enough, its ventriloquizing source, Minnie, approaching her pregnant neighbor.  That would explain Roman's conspicuous New Year's Eve toast.  That would also explain what comes with the Fall.          

Wagner, "Über die Benennung 'Musikdrama'"

An essay ("About the name 'music drama'") by this German composer, on the occasion of his 200th birthday.  You can read the original here. 

We often read nowadays about something called a "music drama" – whereby we may also learn that, for example, this or that music drama is gaining favor thanks to a society in Berlin – without quite being able to imagine what is meant by such terminology.  As it were, I have reason to assume that this designation is in honor of my recent dramatic works; yet the less I have felt myself inclined to claim this term as my own, the more I have detected a predisposition to define with the name "music drama" a new genre of art that – very likely without my own doing, as something simply in accordance with the mood and demands of the epoch and its tendencies – needed to come into being, and which now, akin in some respect to a comfortable nest to hatch one's musical eggs, is available to everyone. 

I cannot yield, however, to the flattering aspect of such a pleasant situation, all the more so because I do not know what is meant by the term "music drama."  When we with sense and reason, and in accordance with the spirit of our language, join two words into a compound noun, we designate each time with the first component the aim of the second.  For example, "future music," although a term invented in my derision, nonetheless means "music for the future," and makes sense.  Explained in this same fashion, "music drama" would then mean drama with the aim of music, which would make no sense at all unless one were indirectly alluding to a good old opera libretto, which in any case would actually imply a drama designed for the music.  But this is surely not what is meant: it is only through constant reading of the elaborations of our newspaper scribes and other such aesthetic literati that our awareness of correct language usage comes undone.  So undone, in fact, that we feel we may attribute any meaning we choose to their senseless verbal bricolage, just as with "music drama" we may designate precisely the opposite of the word's implied meaning.               

Examining the case even more closely, we see that the adulteration of the language in this case involves the transformation of a predicate adjective into an affixed noun: the initial name was "musical drama."  Perhaps it was not as baleful a linguistic turn of mind as hitherto mentioned which undertook the abbreviation of musical drama into "music drama," but merely the very dim thought that a drama could not possibly be as "musical" as, say, an instrument, or even (which occurs rarely enough) a singer may be "musical."  Strictly speaking, a "musical drama" would be a drama that either itself creates music, that is suitable for music making, or that has no notion of music, not unlike our "musical" reviewers.  Since this was not the intention, its unclear meaning was better hidden behind some completely senseless word, because the term "music drama" said something that no person had ever heard before.  One seemed assured against any misinterpretation through the assumption that a word so solemnly produced would never lead anyone to think of an analogy with "music boxes" or things of that sort. 

What is seriously meant by this designation is quite the opposite: a real drama set to music.  We would mentally place the tonal stress on "drama," with the intention of reminding ourselves of its distinction from the hitherto well-known opera libretto.  The difference lies namely in the fact that the dramatic plot does not solely exist for the needs of traditional opera music; on the contrary, the musical construction should be determined by the needs characteristic of a real drama.  Now if the "drama" component were the main thing here, it should have been placed before the word "music," and the former would be determined by the latter, in the vein of "dance music" or "table music" [Tafelmusik], and we would have to say "drama music."  One would think that this might absolve us of the same lapse into nonsense because, however one might twist or turn the matter, the "music" component of the name will always seem disruptive.  Nevertheless, one would again have the dim feeling that, despite all appearance, music was the main thing.  All the more so if, within its drama, the music is accorded the very richest development and demonstration of its potential.      

Thus the awkward thing about establishing a name for the work in question would surely be the necessity of indicating two disparate elements, music and drama, and the assumption that we would perceive in their fusion the creation of something brand new.  The hardest part of this is surely bringing "music" into its proper relation to "drama," since music, as we mentioned before, cannot be combined in even measure, and for us must count either much more or much less than drama.  The reason for this must be that when we mention music, we mean thereby a certain art – originally even, I would say, the very embodiment of all art; while by drama, we actually mean a specific act of art.  When we combine and assemble words, our ease of understanding the newly constructed word will be clearly shown in whether we would still correctly understand the individual parts were they still separate, or whether we would employ them only according to some conventional assumption.  Drama in its Greek origin means deed or plot; as such, when performed on stage, it initially composed a part of a tragedy, that is, the choir's song offerings, whose entire breadth drama would come to encompass, and, eventually, become the main thing.  With this name one has now eternalized a plot, whereby the most important feature is that this performance may be shown to an audience.  For this reason is the room in which the audience is assembled, the θέᾱτρον, is called the "show-place" [Schauraum].  Our Schauspiel ("play," literally "show play") is hence a very understandable name for what the Greeks more naively designated as "drama," for the characteristic form of an initial part of the ultimate and main object is more definitively expressed.  In such a "show play" music occupies but a deficient position, if indeed it is to be thought of as part of the whole; as such a part, it is thoroughly superfluous and disruptive, which is why in more disciplined theater pieces it would finally be removed in its entirety.  That said, it is indeed "the part where everything began," and its value as the womb of drama should be taken into consideration since it seems destined to such a fate.  In its value music should place itself neither before nor after drama: it is not drama's rival, but its mother.  Music tinges; and what it tinges you may witness on the stage; this is why you gather.  For what it is you may only suspect; and for that reason do you open your gaze, by means of the stage allegory, like a mother introduces her children to the mysteries of religion through the narration of legend.

Athenians did not call the formidable works of their Aeschylus dramas, but bestowed upon them the holy names of their origin: "tragedies," song offerings to celebrate their inspirational God.  How lucky they were not to have to devise any name!  They had the most unprecedented work of art and – left it nameless.  But then came the great critics, the powerful reviewers; now terms and concepts were found; and when these were finally exhausted, it was the turn of absolute words.  In Hamlet, Polonius provides us with a handsome list of these words for our edification.  The Italians devised dramma per musica, which roughly expresses our notion of "music drama," if with a more understandable word combination.  The expression was apparently deemed unsatisfactory, and so this wondrous thing, which thrived under the care of virtuoso singers, was forced to assume the most inexpressive of names, as if it were the very genre itself.  "Opera," plural of "opus," was the name of this new form of work, which Italians made female and the French male, and through which the new form seemed to emerge in both genders.  I believe we will find no more pertinent criticism of opera than if the origin of this name were assigned the same legitimacy as the name of tragedy was once assigned: reason prevailed in neither case; instead came a deep instinct, which would designate here something namelessly meaningless, and there something unnameably profound.

Now I advise my professional competitors to retain, after careful deliberation, the name "opera" for their musical works dedicated to the stage of today's theater.  Opera leaves these works where they are, grants them no false respect or dignity, and excuses them from any competition with poets and poetic texts.  And if they should have any good ideas for an aria, a duet, or even a drinking-choir, then they will be able to supply work worthy of recognition and acclaim, without worrying about overtaxing themselves and spoiling those same lovely whims.  In every era there have been pantomimes, cither players, flutists, and cantors, all of whom also sang.  If now and then they were summoned to do anything outside their natural abilities and customs, such exceptions took place in individual, solitary units to whose incomparable rarity the finger of history has pointed through centuries and millennia.  But never hence has a genre emerged in which, once properly named, the extraordinary lay ready for the common use of every bumbler.  In the case just mentioned, I for the life of me do not know what name to give the child who smiles in some astonishment from my works at a good part of my contemporaries.  At my operas Mr. W.H. Riehl, as he assured us somewhere, loses both sight and hearing, whereby he only hears at some of them, and only sees at others.  What should one call such an inaudible and invisible thing?  I would almost have tended to emphasize merely the visible and abide by the term "show-play," since I would have gladly designated my dramas as visualized acts of music.  But that would have been an art philosopher's title, something fit to grace the catalogues of future Poloniuses amidst our more aesthetically-minded courts, from which we may assume that, after the successes of their soldiers, these courts will now let the theater progress in a specific German way.  Yet despite all the “show plays” I may offer – "show plays" which many claim broach the monstrous – there would still be far too little to see in the end.   Such as, for example, when I was reproached in the second act of Tristan und Isolde for missing an opportunity to include a dazzling rout, during which time the star-crossed lovers could have opportunistically gotten lost in a grove, where then their discovery would have caused an appropriate scandal with all its concomitant details.  Instead, almost nothing happens now in this act except music, which unfortunately again seems so very much to be music, that people in Mr. W.H. Riehl's organization lose their hearing, an all the more unfortunate occurrence since there I offer almost nothing at all to see. 

So I begrudgingly resigned myself to hand over my poor works to the theaters without any name for their genre, since they were not allowed, primarily owing to their great dissimilarity to Don Juan, to pass for "operas."  I mean to remain thus for just as long as I am involved with our theaters, which rightly recognize nothing other than "opera," and if one were to give them a still quite correct "music drama," let them make out of it an "opera."  To emerge from the ensuing confusion powerfully for a change, I struck upon, as is known, the idea of a Bühnenfestspiel, which I hope to bring about at Bayreuth with the help of my friends.  The character of my enterprise suggested the name, literally a "stage-festival-play," since I knew of singing festivals, gymnastics festivals, and so forth, and could well imagine a theater festival in which the stage and its happenings, which we quite sensibly collect under the term "play," would become the main and most visible event.  Anyone who will have visited this Bühnenfestspiel, however, will perhaps also preserve a memento of this performance, and will also come up with a name for what I intend to propose to my friends as a nameless artistic act.

The Residence at Whitminster

As an avowed admirer of this writer of genius, I must puzzle only at his occasional choice of story titles.  Despite finely yclept tales of Scandinavian curses, a Scandinavian devil-worshipper, a British tale of seaside treasure, and something even less wholesome on the British seaside, we find curious captions that generally draw upon old houses – of worship or extremely ill repute, such are our two extremes.  Why do decrepit abodes make for interesting ghosts?  Because all earthbound bodies need a box, and all beasts among men a cage.  I could go on and on in this vein, of course: many are the metaphors of unrestful captivity.  But we had best keep such dread thoughts to ourselves and turn to this unusual and magnificent work.

We begin in "the year 1730, the month December" in mid-afternoon at the house of Doctor Thomas Ashton, Doctor of Divinity.  A "man of some fifty-five years, of a sanguine complexion, an angry eye, and a long upper lip," Dr. Ashton will die peacefully after an extended life of learning and privilege (we should all be so lucky).  But before he passes to dust or dimension, he will harbor two young boys in his sprawling quarters.  The first, Frank Sydall, is the son of his wife's deceased sister; the second, is the Viscount Saul, heir to the Earl of Kildonan who had studied with Dr. Ashton at university.  Why Saul is sent to Ashton of all people – the official explanation is quickly mentioned, but seems unsatisfactory and arbitrary in retrospect – should not concern us overmuch.  Where our attention should be directed, however, is to the heir himself:

So he came, one night in September.  When he got out of the chaise that brought him, he went first and spoke to the postboy and gave him some money, and patted the neck of his horse.  Whether he made some movement that scared it or not, there was very nearly a nasty accident, for the beast started violently, and the postilion being unready was thrown and lost his fee, as he found afterwards, and the chaise lost some paint on the gateposts, and the wheel went over the man's foot who was taking out the baggage.  When Lord Saul came up the steps into the light of the lamp in the porch to be greeted by Dr. Ashton, he was seen to be a thin youth of, say, sixteen years old, with straight black hair, and the pale colouring that is common to such a figure. He took the accident and commotion calmly enough, and expressed a proper anxiety for the people who had been, or might have been, hurt: his voice was smooth and pleasant, and without any trace, curiously, of an Irish brogue.

Since Frank is four or five years Saul's junior, we are hardly surprised to learn how quickly he falls under the older boy's spell.  What does come as a shock is the weird activity in which the boys, at Saul's behest, engage.  After a black rooster with nary a white feather is found in its the barest remains, some hint of ritual surfaces in Ashton's broad mind.  Then there is the incident with a glass – a looking-glass that looks at something we dare not mention – and, sad to say, Frank's sudden illness which no febrifuge could stave off.  His death, unfortunately, is just the beginning of the matter.  These otherwise inexplicable events will conclude – if that is really the right word – a few generations past the lifetime of the genteel and broad-minded Dr. Ashton, whose mind will be pushed to the limits of its expansive breadth.  

We race ahead in time almost a hundred years to "1823 or 1824," when the family Oldys becomes the residents of Whitminster.  And it is the niece of the proprietor, Dr. Henry Oldys, who develops in her mind and on some fine letterhead the very odd notion of sawflies after also coming across a looking glass.  On this topic one missive to a female coeval will suffice:

What I saw, seated in my bedroom, in the broad daylight of summer, and looking into the crystal depth of that small round tablet, was this.  First, a prospect, strange to me, of an enclosure of rough and hillocky grass, with a grey stone ruin in the midst, and a wall of rough stones about it.  In this stood an old, and very ugly, woman in a red cloak and ragged skirt, talking to a boy dressed in the fashion of maybe a hundred years ago.  She put something which glittered into his hand, and he something into hers, which I saw to be money, for a single coin fell from her trembling hand into the grass .... Next, I was looking upon two boys; one the figure of the former vision, the other younger.  They were in a plot of garden, walled round, and this garden, in spite of the difference in arrangement, and the small size of the trees, I could clearly recognize as being that upon which I now look from my window.  The boys were engaged in some curious play, it seemed.  Something was smouldering on the ground.  The elder placed his hands upon it, and then raised them in what I took to be an attitude of prayer: and I saw, and started at seeing, that on them were deep stains of blood.  The sky above was overcast .... I then saw blood upon the grass, a little pile of bricks, and what I thought were black feathers scattered about.  That scene closed, and the next was so dark that perhaps the full meaning of it escaped me.  But what I seemed to see was a form, at first crouching low among trees or bushes that were being threshed by a violent wind, then running very swiftly, and constantly turning a pale face to look behind him, as if he feared a pursuer: and, indeed, pursuers were following hard after him.  Their shapes were but dimly seen, their number – three or four, perhaps, only guessed.  I suppose they were on the whole more like dogs than anything else, but dogs such as we have seen they assuredly were not.

Those ellipses omit some details that absolutely need not be revealed on these pages – or, perhaps, on any pages – but such discretions devolve to the reader.  One wonders what a young boy would be doing with an "old" and "very ugly" woman garbed in red, especially one who seems to have a few too many familiars at her disposal.  And what of Saul, who apparently succumbs shortly after Frank?  While the younger boy has some brave words before he goes ungently into that good night, Saul seems to wither and fade like some bloodless beet.  Which would not explain the final letter written to Lord Kildonan about his heir, having to do with the great ring of a church door, one that was never quite opened in time.  And maybe Lord Kildonan will remember another Saul and another old and ugly woman and rip that letter into the tiniest shreds. 

Discours d'ouverture du Congrès littéraire international

A speech ("On the occasion of the opening of the International Literary Congress"), delivered on June 7, 1878, by this man of letters.  You can read the original here.

Gentlemen, what imbues our memorable year with such lofty greatness, above all rumor and clamor, in a majestic interruption of all surprised hostilities, is how it allows civilization to speak.  We may call it a year heeded.  It is doing what it wants to do.  It is replacing the old agenda, war, with the agenda of a new day, progress.  It has triumphed over its doubters.  Threats persist, but the union of peoples smiles upon them.  The work of the year 1878 is complete and indestructible.  Nothing is pending.  In everything we do, we sense a certain something, something definitive.  With the Expo in Paris, this glorious year proclaims the alliance of industries; with Voltaire’s centenary, the alliance of philosophers; with the congress assembled here, the alliance of literatures; a vast federation of works in every possible form; an august edifice to human brotherhood, whose base is composed of farmers and workers and whose crowning achievement, our minds.

Industry seeks the useful; philosophy, the true; literature, the beautiful.  The useful, the true, and the beautiful – here are the three ends of all human efforts.  And the triumph of this sublime effort, gentlemen, is civilization between peoples and peace between men.

It is to observe this triumph that you have come from all points on our civilized globe and assembled here.  You are the brilliant minds which nations love and venerate; you are the celebrated talents, the generous, well-received voices, the souls whose work is in progress.  You are the peaceful combatants.  You have brought here the most radiant reputations.  You are the ambassadors of the human spirit in this great Paris of ours.  Welcome, writers, orators, poets, philosophers, thinkers, fights – France salutes you!

You and we, we are fellow citizens in a universal city.  Hand in hand, all of us affirm our unity and our alliance.  Let us all go now into this great and serene homeland, into the absolute, which is justice, into the ideal, which is truth.

It is not out of personal interest or restraint that you are gathered here.  It is out of universal interest.  What is literature?  The setting into motion of the human spirit.  What is civilization?  The perpetual discovery made at every step by that same human spirit.  Hence comes the word progress.  One may say that literature and civilization are identical.

A people is measured by its literature.  An army of two million men passes through and an Iliad remains.  Xerxes has an army, but he lacks an epic.  Xerxes vanishes.  Greece is small according to its territory and large according to Aeschylus.  Rome is merely a city; but according to Tacitus, Lucretius, Vergil, Horace, and Juvenal, this city fills the world.  If you refer to Spain, Cervantes emerges; if you speak of Italy, Dante appears; if you say England, then Shakespeare is there.   At certain times France has been summarized in a genius, and the splendor of Paris has been confused with the clarity of Voltaire.

Gentlemen, your mission is a steep one.  You are a kind of constituent assembly of literature.  You have the function, if not of voting for laws, then at least of dictating them.  Say just and fair things, promulgate true ideas, and if, by the impossible, you are not heard, well then, you may fault the legislation.

You are going to make a foundation – literary property.  It is already in our legislation and you will introduce it into our codes.  For, as I have stated, it will be composed of your solutions and advice.

You will enlighten those legislators who would like to reduce literature to nothing more than a local phenomenon, that literature is a universal phenomenon.  Literature is the government of the human race by the human spirit.

Literary property is of general utility.  All the old monarchic legislations have denied and continue to deny literary property.  To what end?  To the end of enslavement.  The writer who is an owner is the writer who is free.  To deprive him of property is to deprive him of independence.  We would hope at least.  Hence comes that singular sophism, which would be puerile if it were not so perfidious: thought belongs to everyone, so it cannot be property, and thus literary property does not exist.  Strange confusion, first of all, of the faculty of thinking, which is general, with thought, which is individual.  I am thought.  Thus a confusion of thought, an abstract thing, with a book, something material.  The thought of a writer, as thought, escapes every hand wishing to catch it, it flies from soul to soul; it possesses this gift and this force (virum volitare per ora).  But a book is distinct from thought; as a book, it is catchable, so cat-chable in fact that it is sometimes impounded.  A book, product of a printing press, belongs to that industry and determines in all its forms a vast commercial movement.  It is bought and sold.  It is a property, one of created and not acquired value, a wealth added by the writer to the national wealth, and certainly, from all points of view, the most incontestable of properties.  This inviolable property is violated by despotic government: they confiscate a book with the hope of thus confiscating a writer.  Hence comes the system of royal pensions.  Take everything and give back a little.  Despoliation and subjection of the writer.  He is sold and then he is bought.  A useless effort, in any case.  The writer escapes.  They make him poor, and he remains free.  Who could purchase the superb consciences of Rabelais, of Moliere, of Pascal?  But attempts are nevertheless made, and the result is depressing.  The monarchy is a terrible suction on the vital forces of a nation.  Historiographers bestow upon kings the titles of “fathers of the nation,” and “fathers of literature.”  All of this is contained in the gloomy monarchic ensemble.  Dangeau, that toady, declares this on the one hand; Vauban, that severe critic, declares this on the other.  And for what we call “The Great Century,” for example the way in which kings are fathers of the nation and of literature, abuts against these two sinister facts: people without food to eat, and Corneille without shoes.

What somber elimination of a great kingdom!

Hither is where leads the confiscation of property born from work, be this confiscation a burden on the people or on the writer.

Gentlemen, let us return to our principle: respect for property.  Let us announce literary property but, at the same time, let us create the public domain.  Let us go even further.  Let us make it larger.  May the law give all publishers the right to publish all books following the death of an author, with the only condition being that they pay his direct heirs some meager compensation, something not to exceed five to ten percent of net profit.  This extremely simple system, which reconciles the writer’s incontestable property with the no less incontestable right of the public domain, has already been indicated in the commission of 1836 by the person speaking to you right now.  You may find this solution, with all its details and discussions, in the minutes of the commission, published at that time by the Ministry of the Interior.

Let us not forget, however, that this is a double principle.  The book as a book belongs to the author, but as thought it belongs – the word is not too vast – to the human race.  All minds have a right to it.  If one of these two laws, the right of the author and the right of the human mind, were to be sacrificed, it would most certainly be the right of the author, because the public interest is our sole preoccupation and everyone, I tell you, everyone must come before us.

But, as I have just said, such a sacrifice is not necessary.

O, light, light always, light everywhere!  Everything needs light.  A book contains light.  Open a book wide.  Let it radiate, let it do this.  Whoever wishes to cultivate, vivify, edify, soften, mollify, put books everywhere; teach, show, demonstrate; multiply the number of schools; schools are the luminous points of civilization.          

You are concerned about your cities.  You would like to be secure in your homes.  You are preoccupied with such perils.  You abandon a darkened road.  You think even more about such perils, and you allow the human spirit likewise to become darkened.  Minds are open roads; they are comings and goings; they have visitors, well or badly intentioned; they may have some gloomy passers-by.  A bad thought is identical to a robber in the night; a bad soul identical to a band of criminals.  Make it day everywhere.  Do not leave a human mind in these dark corners where it may fall prey to superstition, where error may lurk, where it may be ambushed by lies.  Ignorance is a twilight; evil is roaming about.  Dream of the lighting of paths, for sure; but also dream, dream most of all of the lighting of minds.

For this, doubtless, we will need a prodigious amount of light.  It is this amount of light that France has been using for the past three centuries.  Gentlemen, permit me a filial word, which in any case is in your hearts just as it is in mine.  Over France nothing will prevail.  France is of public interest.  France rises upon the horizon of all peoples.  Ah, they say, it is daylight, France is there!

We are surprised that there are those who might have objections to France; nevertheless, there are such people: France has enemies.  They are the same enemies of civilization, the enemies of books, the enemies of free thought, the enemies of emancipation, of examination, of deliverance.  Those who see in their dogma an eternal master and in the human race an eternal minor.  But they waste their efforts, the past is past, nations will not return to their vomiting, the blindness has an end, the dimensions of ignorance and of error are limited.

Take your part, men of the past, we do not fear you!  Go, do what you do as we look at you with curiosity!  Try your efforts, insult 1789, dethrone Paris, speak anathemas to the freedom of conscience, to the freedom of the press, to the freedom of opinion, an anathema to progress!  Do not relent!  Dream up, while you are still there, a syllabus big enough for France and a candle extinguisher large enough for the sun!

I do not wish to conclude on a bitter note.  Let us climb and rest upon the unmovable serenity of thought.  We have begun the affirmation of concord and peace; let us continue this haughty and tranquil affirmation. 

I have said it elsewhere, and I repeat: all human wisdom is contained in two words, conciliation and reconciliation.  The conciliation of ideas, and the reconciliation of men.

Gentlemen, we are among philosophers here, so let us take advantage of such an occasion.  Let us not bother ourselves, let us speak the truth.  And so here is one, terrible truth: the human race has a sickness – hatred.  Hatred is the mother of war; the mother may be despicable, but the daughter is horrific.

Let us return the blows!  Hate against hate!  War against war!

Do you what these words of Christ, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” really are?  They are universal disarmament.  They are the cure for the human race.  They are true redemption.  Love one another.  We disarm our enemy far better by offering him our hand than by showing him our fist.  This advice from Jesus is an order from God.  It is good.  We accept it.  We are with Christ, the rest of us!  The writer is with the apostle: those who think are with those who love.

Ah, we scream for civilization!  No, no, no, we do not want warring barbarians or murderous assassins!  We do not want war of people against people, or of man against man.  All murder is not only ferocious and savage, it is also senseless.  The sword is absurd and the dagger is imbecile.  We are the combatants of the spirit, and our task is to prevent material combat.  Our function is always to throw ourselves between the two armies.  The right to life is inviolable.  We do not see crowns, and if there are any, we only see heads.  Showing mercy is what makes peace.  When the gloomy hours sound, we ask kings to spare the lives of peoples, and we ask republics to spare the lives of emperors.    

It is a fine day for the outcast when he begs a nation for a prince and when he tries to use, in the favor of an emperor, this right to mercy which is the right of an exile.

Yes, conciliation and reconciliation.  Such is our mission, the mission for us philosophers.  O, my brothers of science, of poetry, and of art, let us declare the civilizing omnipotence of thought.  For every step that the human race takes towards peace, let us feel the profound joy of truth increase within us.  Let us proudly consent to useful work.  Truth is one and has no divergent rays.  It only has a synonym: justice.  There are no two lights, there is only one: reason.  There are no two ways of being honest, sensible, and true.  The ray that is in the Iliad is identical to the clarity found in the Dictionnaire philosophique.  This incorruptible ray traverses centuries with the straightness of an arrow and the purity of dawn.  This ray will triumph over night, that is to say, over antagonism and hatred.  Here we find the great literary wonder.  There is nothing more beautiful.  Disconcerted and stupefied force before the law, the stopping of war by the mind, this is, O, Voltaire, violence tamed by wisdom!  This is, O, Homer, Achilles taken by the hair by Minerva!

And now as I am going to end, allow me a promise, a promise addressed at the heart of everyone and at no one in particular.

Gentlemen, there is a Roman who is celebrated because of an obsession: Let us destroy Carthage!  I, too, have a thought that obsesses me, and here it is: Let us destroy hate.  If humanities have an aim, it is that: humaniores litterae.  Gentlemen, the best destruction of hatred is done by forgiving.  O, may this great year not end without sustainable peace!  May it end in wisdom and in cordiality, and after it has put out the foreign war, may it have the same effect on our civil conflict.  This is the profound desire of our souls!  France is now showing the world its hospitality; but may it also demonstrate its clemency.  Clemency!  Let us place this crown upon France’s head!  Every celebration is fraternal; a celebration which does not pardon someone is not a celebration.  The logic of public joy is amnesty.  May here be the closure of this admirable solemnity, the universal Expo!  Reconciliation!  Reconciliation!  Certainly, this gathering of all common efforts for the human race, this meeting of marvels of industry and work, this salutation to the masterpieces among them, seeing them and comparing is an august spectacle.  But an even more august spectacle is the exile standing against the horizon and his homeland opening its arms!      

Rilke, "Fortgehn"

A work ("Going out") by this Austrian poet. You can read the original here.

And suddenly to brave grey air's alee,  
With melted eyes, now hot and soft, 
To gaze upon what is aloft:

Oh no, all this is merely simile.  

You are the water's flow, are why it is. 
At your appearance this town woke;   
In pleasing grace the bridges cloak   
The measure of their steady services. 

Because these thoughts' invention merely means: 
You, it is you, is like the earth;  
The gardens stand in darkling mirth;  
Momentous shapes now haunt these distant scenes.  

Yet nonetheless, now nonetheless anew 
It comes: the pain, first moment's pain.   
It was still there, ebbed once or flew  
Away, or was like songs we knew
Of fates unspeakable, of lives in vain.   

What if (Is it my place then to inquire?)  
You saw, those eyes, the clothes' smooth hem,     
A face, a gleam, a diadem,  
As if those eyes would – well, what then:
The Canal Grande, fair and free,
In its great time, before the fire;
And suddenly this Venice ceased to be.