Happy in a different way

At the end of Chapter 5 of the first part of The Idiot, the Prince says in response to being quizzed as to whether he had in Switzerland been in love: "я... был счастлив иначе" ... "I ... was happy in a different way".

Prince Myshkin embodies certain spiritual values, and the divide that Dostoevsky explored with his juxtaposition of the Prince with the hectic and dysfunctional world of St Petersburg society is a divide with which we still are confronted. Friedrich Torberg, talking of the decline suffered by European culture through the course of two world wars, states at the outset of the first Tante Jolesch book: "Ich denke vielmehr an ein Untergangssymptom, welches sich darin äußert, daß in unsrer technokratischen Welt, in unsrer materialistischen Kommerz- und Konsumgesellschaft die Käuze und Originale aussterben müssen." ... Kauz is a wonderful word, it refers to a certain awkward and reclusive species of owl - it is this bird that is an omen of death, whereas the more elegant Eule is an emblem of wisdom; here Käuze means eccentrics or oddballs: "I concentrate rather on one symptom of decline, namely that in our technocratic world, in our materialistic consumer society, eccentrics and originals are bound for extinction."

In The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks describes two twins who had been diagnosed as autistic and retarted but communicated with each other sharing very large prime numbers which they appeared to savour for their beauty and delight, primes in fact so large that at the time Dr Sacks was unable to verify that the longest of them were indeed primes. Sacks goes on to describe how the twins were separated "for their own good" but questions the outcome: "Deprived of their numberical 'communion' with each other, and of time and opportunity for any 'contemplation' or 'communion' at all - they are always being hurried and jostled from one job to another - they seem to have lost their strange numerical power, and with this the chief joy and sense of their lives."

Sacks goes on to mention an autistic girl with a phenomenal gift for drawing, who was "subjected to a therapeutic regime 'to find ways in which her potentialities in other directions could be maximized'. The net effect was that she started talking - and stopped drawing." Sacks quotes Nigel Dennis: "We are left with a genius who has had her genius removed, leaving nothing behind but a general defectiveness. What are we supposed to think about such a curious cure?".

I underline books

Joseph Campbell in the 'Dialogues' section at the end of the lecture material collected in Pathways to Bliss, says "Alan Watts once asked me what spiritual practice I followed, I told him, 'I underline books.'"

Tante Jolesch

"Die Tante Jolesch ober Der Untergang des Abendlandes in Anekdoten" ... what a superb title! ... "Tante Jolesch or The Decline of the West in Anecdotes" Tante Jolesch, Torberg assures us, did in fact exist, but "war, um mit Christian Morgenstern zu sprechen, keine 'Person im konventionellen Eigen-Sinn'" - "was not, to quote Christian Morgenstern, 'a person per se, in the conventional sense'".

Envying all the world

Charles Bovary's father had no grasp of the financial realities that constrain success: "[il] buvait son cidre en bouteilles au lieu de le vendre en barriques" ... "he drunk his cider by the bottle instead of selling it by the barrel".

And then sequestered himself from the world ... "chagrin, rongé de regrets, accusant le ciel, jaloux contre tout le monde, il s’enferma dès l’âge de quarante-cinq ans, dégoûté des hommes, disait-il, et décidé à vivre en paix." (variously translated "morose, gnawed by regrets, railing at heaven, envying all the world, he shut himself away at the age of forty-five, disgusted with men, he said, and determined to live in peace." (Davis) & "chagrined, remorseful, cursing his fate, jealous of everybody, he shut himself away at the age of forty-five, disgusted with the world, he said, and determined to live in peace" (Wall)

168 hours

Ron Graham - a U.S. mathematician who put himself through college working as a circus acrobat and is famous for a very big number - past president of the International Jugglers' Association, an accomplished trampolinist and tenpin bowler, speaks Chinese and plays the piano, is quoted in Paul Hoffman's book on Erdős: "It's easy ... there are 168 hours in every week".

Self deception

A nice observation by Robert Trivers from the latest New Scientist: "If you ask high school students are they in the top half of their class for leadership ability, 80 per cent will say yes; 70 per cent say they're in the top half for good looks. It ain't possible! And you cannot beat academics for self-deception. If you ask professors whether they're in the top half of their profession, 94 per cent say they are."

Just try going to the ballet

Rogozhin, when he is informed that he would be able to see Nastasya Filippovna at the ballet, conveys clearly the despotic environment of his home life with his father: "У нас, у родителя, попробуй-ка в балет сходить, - одна расправа, убьет!" ... "With our parent, just try going to the ballet - it'll end only one way - he'll kill you!"