marginalia

In response to the many two requests for a photograph of me somewhere on the site:

Marginalia will not be updated until I return to a broadband connection in the second week of January. All best wishes for the new year.

The Kerala Model of Development
Kerala.cc image gallery
Paradox in Paradise
Kerala History
Kerala.gov.in

Image: © Josefa Vivancos Hernandez, 2000.

Kenneth Rexroth
22 December 1905 ~ 6 June 1982

I regret not finding time today properly to note Rexroth’s interest in and poems of Japan. The interest brought Japan to a generation of readers and many of those readers to Japan, and the poems are among the most beautiful that have been written of the country in English. I refer among others to the poems of The Heart’s Garden / The Garden’s Heart (Pym-Randall, 1967), On Flower Wreath Hill (Blackfish, 1976), The Silver Swan (Copper Canyon, 1976), The Love Poems of Marichiko (Christopher’s Books, 1978), and The Morning Star (New Directions, 1979, which includes Flower Wreath Hill, Silver Swan, and Marichiko). For now, this, set in Higashiyama, Kyoto, November 1974, from Flower Wreath Hill:

III
The full moon rises over
Blue Mount Hiei as the orange
Twilight gives way to dusk.
Kamo River is full with
The first rains of Autumn, the
Water crowded with colored
Leaves, red maple, yellow gingko,
On dark water, like Chinese
Old brocade. The autumn haze
Deepens until only the
Lights of the city remain.

IV
No leaf stirs. I am alone
In the midst of a hundred
Empty mountains. Cicadas,
Locusts, katydids, crickets,
Have fallen still, one after
Another. Even the wind
Bells hang motionless. In the
Blue dusk, widely spaced snowflakes
Fall in perfect verticals.
Yet, under my cabin porch,
The thin, clear Autumn water
Rustles softly like fine silk.

V
This world of ours, before we
Can know its fleeting sorrows,
We enter it through tears.
Do the reverberations
Of the evening bell of
The mountain temple ever
Totally die away?
Memory echoes and reechoes
Always reinforcing itself.
No wave motion ever dies.
The white waves of the wake of
The boat that rows away into
The dawn, spread and lap on the
Sands of the shores of all the world.

VI
Clustered in the forest around
The royal tumulus are
Tumbled and shattered gravestones
Of people no one left in
The world remembers. For the
New Year the newer ones have all been cleaned
And straightened and each has
Flowers or at least a spray
Of bamboo and pine.
It’s a great pleasure to
Walk through fallen leaves, but
Remember, you are alive,
As they were two months ago.

Image: Photograph by Gerard Malanga, American Poetry Review Records, 1971-1998.

Shirin Neshat, Speechless, 1996

Shirin Neshat, Time Europe Photo Essays, 2000
Shirin Neshat, Carnegie International
Interview: Identity, Culture, and Media, by Nader Vossoughian, agglutinations.com, 21 October 2003

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Heinrich Böll
21 December 1917 ~ 16 July 1985

Let’s stop joking, that joke was worn out in any case, after Verdun. They were the last knights—killed in battle, too many knights, too many lovers, all at once—too many well-brought-up young people. Have you ever thought of how much pedagogical sweat was wasted in the space of a few months? All in vain. How was it none of you ever had the idea of setting up a machine gun at the entrance of the trade schools and colleges, right after the exams, and shoot dead all those radiant successful graduates? You think that’s exaggerated? Well, let me say that the truth is pure exaggeration. I danced with the graduates of 1905, 1906, and 1907. They wore their caps, they drank their beer and I drank with them at their student parties—but more than half the students of those three years fell at Verdun.

Billard um halb zehn / Billiards at Half-Past Nine, English translation by Patrick Bowles (1959; Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961).

Heinrich Böll Foundation
An Essay on the Reason of Poetry, Nobel Lecture, 2 May 1973

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Empire and Resistance
An Interview with Tariq Ali
by Rafael Hernandez
CounterPunch, 20-21 December

The most startling aspect of the 21st century—something that is genuinely new—is that we have, for the first time in human history, the existence of a single Empire. This is not the abstract utopian “empire” of Hardt-Negri, but something very concrete and real. The dominant position of the United States has no precedent in history. The figures speak for themselves: there are 189 member states of the United Nations, there is a US military presence in 121 countries. (more)

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The Cultural Imperative for Japan in a Globalized World
Chuang Peck Ming, Business Times, Singapore, 21 December 2003

Sticking to old ideas and not opening up to new ideas from outside is shackling Japan. (more)

Japan Postures to Play Catch-up with China
Brad Glosserman, Asia Times, 20 December 2003
Reprinted from Pacific Forum CSIS

It’s hard to get excited about last week’s Japan-ASEAN summit. The decision to foster a new “special relationship” between the two could be historic, but the economic free-trade areas that will provide its foundation look like long shots. Japanese efforts are likely to be frustrated by the same political forces that have blocked previous initiatives. That is a pity, not only for Japan, but for the Southeast Asian governments that seek a rejuvenated relationship with Tokyo. (more)

Trent Lott, US Senate Majority Leader,
until 20 December 2002

Strom Thurmond,1948:

I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theatres, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches. [Applause]

listen (mp3 / 164k), stromwatch.com, thanks

Trent Lott
5 December 2002

I want to say this about my state: When Strom Thurmond ran for president [in 1948], we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either. [Applause]

listen (mp3 / 105k), stromwatch.com

Talking Point Memo
Josh Marshall, 6 December 2002

Thurmond ran as the presidential candidate on the “States-Rights Democrat” or “Dixiecrat” ticket—a candidacy that was based exclusively and explicitly upon the preservation of legalized segregation and opposition to voting rights and civil rights for blacks.

There’s a sort of agreement in Washington these days—with Thurmond’s retirement and hundredth birthday—to sort of forget about all that unpleasantness.

But look at what Trent Lott said about that candidacy yesterday . . .

Lott Steps Down as Majority Leader
CNN.com, 20 December 2002

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Bloggers Catch What Washington Post Missed
Oliver Burkeman, Guardian, 21 December 2002

Blogs Make the Headlines
Noah Shachtman, Wired News, 23 December 2002

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The Radiator of Rhetoric Trent Lott, 25 September 2003

The President has asked for $87 billion to help complete our mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. After much analysis and some frank, probing questions to the Administration, I’m supporting it. . . .

[We cannot] expect nations like France to provide real leadership. They will not, and cannot, fight terrorists effectively. Nations from around the world should contribute to stabilizing Iraq, Afghanistan and any other locale now fertile ground for democracy—places where we can deny terrorism a base camp. However, America must lead. I watched a television interview recently with a lady from England, and reporters asked her why Europeans do not feel good about Americans right now. She replied, “It’s because you are leaders. The world expects you to do the job, and they are jealous of you when you do that job.” (more)

The Bravest State
Trent Lott, 23 October 2003

[The] part-time personnel of our [Mississippi] Guard and Reserve and those of our full-time armed forces are the reason I voted in favor of President Bush’s request for $87 billion for America’s mission in Afghanistan and Iraq. . . .

I don’t want to see our troops stay in Iraq or Afghanistan as long as they’ve been in the Balkans, and neither does President Bush. However, most Americans understand that fighting terrorists and establishing democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan is America’s most important task right now . . . . (more)

lott.senate.gov
Lott on the Issues
If you can possibly imagine what to say, contact Senator Lott

Ah, la Piaf est morte, je peux mourir aussi.

Jean Cocteau (5 July 1889 ~ 11 October 1963), 11 October 1963

Edith Piaf @ radio france internationale
Edith Piaf’s Paris, by J. M. Smethurst
EdithPiaf.com
Musée Edith Piaf

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Japan, Kindly Stay Out of Iraq
Mahdi Elmandjra, Japan Today, 16 December 2003

The moment that all lovers of Japan throughout the world were fearing has arrived. Japan has decided to send troops to Iraq. Whatever semantic expressions may be used it is a military intervention without legal international backing. The meaning of the initiative is clear. (more)

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Hiroshima?
George W. Bush
18 February, 2002, Tokyo

My trip to Asia begins here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times. From that alliance has come an era of peace in the Pacific.

The 2004 Presidential (Mis)Speak Calendar is available for purchase.

Oriental Feast
Paul Klee, 18 December 1879 ~ 29 June 1940

Klee @ WebMuseum, Paris
Klee @ archive.com

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Girls of Visa-less Parents Cling to Their Home in Japan
May Masangkay, Japan Today, 18 December 2003

Japan’s entrenched closed-door immigration and refugee policy . . . raises doubts about its commitment to the 1951 U.N. Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, which it ratified in 1981. (more)

•Welcome to Japan?, Amnesty International online documentation archive, 17 May 2002
•Amnesty International Japan

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Although we seem to sleep, there is an inner vigilant voice that steers the dream, that finally will awake us to the truth about who we are.

Rumi, 1207-1273, as quoted by Ole Danbolt Mjøs, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, on awarding the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize to Shirin Ebadi, 10 December 2003, Oslo

Shirin Ebadi, Excerpts, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture
10 December 2003, Oslo

In the name of the God of Creation and Wisdom

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Honourable Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I feel extremely honoured that today my voice is reaching the people of the world from this distinguished venue. This great honour has been bestowed upon me by the Norwegian Nobel Committee. I salute the spirit of Alfred Nobel and hail all true followers of his path.

This year, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to a woman from Iran, a Muslim country in the Middle East.

Undoubtedly, my selection will be an inspiration to the masses of women who are striving to realize their rights, not only in Iran but throughout the region—rights taken away from them through the passage of history. This selection will make women in Iran, and much further afield, believe in themselves. Women constitute half of the population of every country. To disregard women and bar them from active participation in political, social, economic and cultural life would in fact be tantamount to depriving the entire population of every society of half its capability. The patriarchal culture and the discrimination against women, particularly in the Islamic countries, cannot continue for ever. . . .

Today coincides with the 55th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; a declaration which begins with the recognition of the inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family, as the guarantor of freedom, justice and peace. And it promises a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of expression and opinion, and be safeguarded and protected against fear and poverty. . . .

[I]n the past two years, [however,] some states have violated the universal principles and laws of human rights by using the events of 11 September and the war on international terrorism as a pretext. The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 57/219, of 18 December 2002, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1456, of 20 January 2003, and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights Resolution 2003/68, of 25 April 2003, set out and underline that all states must ensure that any measures taken to combat terrorism must comply with all their obligations under international law, in particular international human rights and humanitarian law. However, regulations restricting human rights and basic freedoms, special bodies and extraordinary courts, which make fair adjudication difficult and at times impossible, have been justified and given legitimacy under the cloak of the war on terrorism.

The concerns of human rights’ advocates increase when they observe that international human rights laws are breached not only by their recognized opponents under the pretext of cultural relativity, but that these principles are also violated in Western democracies, in other words countries which were themselves among the initial codifiers of the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is in this framework that, for months, hundreds of individuals who were arrested in the course of military conflicts have been imprisoned in Guantanamo, without the benefit of the rights stipulated under the international Geneva conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Moreover, a question which millions of citizens in the international civil society have been asking themselves for the past few years, particularly in recent months, and continue to ask, is this: why is it that some decisions and resolutions of the UN Security Council are binding, while some other resolutions of the council have no binding force? Why is it that in the past 35 years, dozens of UN resolutions concerning the occupation of the Palestinian territories by the state of Israel have not been implemented promptly, yet, in the past 12 years, the state and people of Iraq, once on the recommendation of the Security Council, and the second time, in spite of UN Security Council opposition, were subjected to attack, military assault, economic sanctions, and, ultimately, military occupation? (more)

From the English translation of the lecture given in Farsi © The Nobel Foundation, 2003

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Core Dispatch Set for February
135-strong GSDF unit to be advance team to Samawah
Japan Times, 18 December 2003

The first main Ground Self-Defense Force contingent will head to Iraq in February to engage in reconstruction assistance after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi gives the final go-ahead, according to Defense Agency documents. (more)

Japanese Embassy in Baghdad Issues Alert
Junko Takahashi, Japan Times, 18 December 2003

Japanese Embassy in Iraq Under Threat
Asahi Shimbun, 18 December 2003

Terror Threat Spurs Ministry Panic
Kanako Takahara, Japan Times, 18 December 2003

63% Fear Terrorists Will Attack Japan
Japan Today, 18 December 2003

Thirteen Modernists

Ford Madox Ford
17 December 1873 ~ 26 June 1939
is the one talking.
With James Joyce, Ezra Pound, John Quinn, and Diana,
Pound’s studio and courtyard,
70 Rue Notre Dame des Champs, Paris, October 1923

There passed from us this June a very gallant combatant for those things of the mind and of letters which have been in our time too little prized. . . . For ten years before I got to England there would seem to have been no one but Ford who held that French clarity and simplicity in the writing of English verse and prose were of immense importance as in contrast to the use of a stilted traditional dialect, a “language of verse” unused in the actual talk of the people. . . .

In 1908 London was full of gargoyles, of poets, that is, with high reputation, most of whose work has gone since into the discard. At that time, and in the few years preceding, there appeared without notice various fasciculae which one can still, surprisingly, read, and they were not designed for mouthing, for the “rolling out” of “ohs.” . . .

I did not in those days care about prose. If prose meant anything to me, it meant Tacitus . . . a dangerous model for a young man. . . . Start with Tacitus and be cured by Flaubert via Ford, or start with Ford or Maupassant and be girt up with Tacitus.

Ezra Pound, 1939, Pound / Ford: The Story of a Literary Friendship, edited by Brita Lindberg-Seyersted (New Directions, 1982), 171, 173.

Images:
• A Serious Character: The Life of Ezra Pound, by Humphry Carpenter (Delta, 1988), from the collection of Mary de Rachewiltz.
• Ezra Pound: The Solitary Voclano, by John Tytell (Anchor, 1987), from the Photography Collection, Henry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.
• The Selected Letters of Ezra Pound to John Quinn, 1915-1924, edited by Timothy Materer (Duke UP, 1991), from the John Quinn Memorial Collection, New York Public Library.

Ford Madox Ford, The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2001, Bartleby
Ford Madox Ford pages maintained by Max Saunders, King’s College London
Ford @ Books and Writers
Ford @ Wikipedia
Ford @ firstworldwar.com

In these latter times, with the prodigious growth of material life in elaboration and of mental life in diffusions there has supervened upon this old dualism a new faith in man’s absolute power, a kind of return to the inexperience and self-assurance of youth. This new inspiration has made many minds indifferent to the two traditional disciplines; neither is seriously accepted by them, for the reason, excellent from their own point of view, that no discipline whatever is needed. The memory of ancient disillusions has faded with time. Ignorance of the past has bred contempt for the lessons which the past might teach. Men prefer to repeat the old experiment without knowing that they repeat it.(more)

The Poetry of Barbarism, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 1900

George Santayana, The Columbia Encyclopedia, 2001, Bartleby
The Santayana Edition
Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society

Image: The Books of Ruth Lilly Special Collections and Archive: The George Santayana Collection

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PowerPoint Makes You Dumb
Clive Thompson, New York Times, 14 December 2003

PowerPoint is the world’s most popular tool for presenting information. There are 400 million copies in circulation, and almost no corporate decision takes place without it. But what if PowerPoint is actually making us stupider?

This year, Edward Tufte—the famous theorist of information presentation—made precisely that argument in a blistering screed called “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint.” In his slim 28-page pamphlet, Tufte claimed that Microsoft’s ubiquitous software forces people to mutilate data beyond comprehension. For example, the low resolution of a PowerPoint slide means that it usually contains only about 40 words, or barely eight seconds of reading. PowerPoint also encourages users to rely on bulleted lists, a “faux analytical” technique, Tufte wrote, that dodges the speaker’s responsibility to tie his information together. And perhaps worst of all is how PowerPoint renders charts. Charts in newspapers like the Wall Street Journal contain up to 120 elements on average, allowing readers to compare large groupings of data. But, as Tufte found, PowerPoint users typically produce charts with only 12 elements. Ultimately, Tufte concluded, PowerPoint is infused with “an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.” (more)

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Dateline Tokyo: Encounters with Otherness

Women will start getting on the train in their pajamas next.

Yoshitomo Mitsui, 60, on his feelings about women applying cosmetics on trains, Japan Today pop vox, 16 December 2003

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Cases Citing Arabs Rise
International Herald Tribune, 22-23 November 2003.

Prosecutions of Arab and Muslim Americans in Dearborn, a Detroit suburb with a large concentration of Arab citizens, have shot up since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, the Detroit News reported. The number of people with Arab or Muslim names charged with legal violations, from assault to failure to cut weeds, has jumped 9.3 percent since the attacks, the paper said Thursday. Its analysis of 100,000 district court records also found that charges against those without such names had dropped by 6.7 percent.