Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"

Wed Jul 31 10:07:49 CDT 2013

Emerson was one of the few Nietzsche kept reading ...for these reasons, I guess. Perhaps saw him as Zaratustra-akin? 

In Perry Miller's Raven & The Whale, 1956 ( and probably dated, overturned, as intellectual history) , he has some fascinating stuff on how the aesthetic tastemakers of America in the 19th Century enshrined Romance as the American genre, so to speak, and/but used Emerson ( on Nature, in " Nature" and elsewhere) to try to define Romance as like a proper overarching view of 
Life, human nature in life.....?
This was a very difficult Zarathustran tightrope to try to walk....perhaps ultimately self -contradictory..

THEN, later in the Century and early the next, came the return of the repressed. Realism, gritty realism, naturalism. 

Sent from my iPad

On Jul 31, 2013, at 7:35 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:

> "Emerson. --- Much more enlightened, adventurous, multifarious, 
> refined than Carlyle; above all, happier.... Such a man instinctively 
> feeds on pure ambrosia and leaves alone the indigestible in things. 
> Compared with Carlyle a man of taste. --- Carlyle, who had great 
> affection for him, nevertheless said of him: 'He does not give /us/ 
> enough to bite on': which maybe truly said but not to the detriment of 
> Emerson. --- Emerson possesses that good-natured and quick-witted 
> cheerfulness that discourages all earnestness; he has absolutely no idea 
> how old he is or how young he will be --- he could say of himself, in 
> the words of Lope de Vega: '/yo me sucedo a mi mismo/'. [*]. His spirit 
> is always finding reasons for being contented and even grateful; and now 
> and then he verges on the cheerful transcendence of that worthy 
> gentleman who, returning from an amorous rendezvous /tamquam re bene 
> gesta/, said gratefully: '/Ut desint vires, tamen est laudanda 
> voluptas/'. [**]"
> 
> ([*]: I am my own successor; [**] ... that worthy gentleman who, 
> returning from an amorous rendezvous as if things had gone well, said 
> gratefully: 'Though the power be lacking, the lust is praiseworthy'. 
> 'Voluptas' replaces the usual 'voluntas' = will.)
> 
> TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS
> (chapter: Expeditions of an Untimely Man, # 13, translation: R.J. 
> Hollingdale)
> 
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=1112&msg=160855&sort=date
> 
> On 31.07.2013 12:30, alice wellintown wrote:
>> “American Nietzsche” is a sober work of intellectual history, but as
>> Nietzsche insisted, all scholarship reflects the temperament of its
>> creator, and it’s clear that Ratner-Rosenhagen finds neither the
>> poststructuralist nor the conservative Nietzsche at all satisfying. At
>> the end of her consistently insightful book, she turns to Harold Bloom
>> and the philosopher Stanley Cavell, who emphasized Nietzsche’s
>> affinities with the man he himself regarded as “the most fertile
>> author” of his century — Ralph Waldo Emerson. Indeed, one can show
>> that Emerson anticipated many of Nietzsche’s most famous utterances.
>> There is a direct line from Emerson’s “oversoul” to the “overman.”
>> Several decades before Nietzsche wrote, “What does not kill me makes
>> me stronger,” Emerson wrote, “In general, every evil to which we do
>> not succumb, is a benefactor.” More profoundly, Emerson foreshadowed
>> Nietzsche’s concern with the ubiquity of flux and power, and the value
>> of overcoming the past. “Life only avails,” Emerson once wrote, “not
>> the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in
>> the moment of transitions from a past to a new state.”
>> 
>> 
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/books/review/american-nietzsche-by-jennifer-ratner-rosenhagen-book-review.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 7/31/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> The Tragic Sense of Life? Like, when did life get a tragic sense? Did
>>> the Greeks have this sense? Did Shakespeare? Is it a product of
>>> reason, the enlightenment? Or Romance? Or is it Modern? When did we
>>> get this Heart of Darkness? Did we construct it with Modern Life? Do
>>> all peoples suffer from it now? Do the Indians know Tragesy as we in
>>> the West know Tragedy? And what is a tragic sense?
>>> 
>>> So, a good book that I know was on P's reading list is _The Tragic
>>> Sense of Life_, and a couple-few others are discussed in this easy to
>>> read paper
>>> 
>>> PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE TRAGIC SENSE OF LIFE,
>>> Richard L. Rubens, Ph.D.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> http://www.columbia.edu/~rr322/Tragedy.html
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 7/30/13, Rev'd Seventy-Six <revd.76 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> That's Kool and the gang. All I am saying is:  there is a nigh unto
>>>> bottomless resevoir of negative experience in the arts & sciences. I
>>>> would appreciate that balanced a tad, esp. in this tilted age. The
>>>> Inferno wasn't a challenge to Dante: Paradise, however, exceeded his
>>>> reach. I would prefer not to equate birth with a plummet into a sphere
>>>> of profane dread & agony. In the arts we have come to confuse realism
>>>> with suffering when it ain't the lion's share, experience-wise. Maybe
>>>> I'm naive...
>>>> 
>>>> On 7/30/13, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>>> I don't.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Sent from my iPad
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Jul 30, 2013, at 6:24 PM, malignd at aol.com wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> I'm not sure how to read this group anymore.  Does anyone think Becket
>>>>>> was
>>>>>> serious?
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>> From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net>
>>>>>> To: 'David Morris' <fqmorris at gmail.com>; 'Ian Livingston'
>>>>>> <igrlivingston at gmail.com>
>>>>>> Cc: 'Keith Davis' <kbob42 at gmail.com>; 'P-list' <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>>>>>> Sent: Tue, Jul 30, 2013 6:05 am
>>>>>> Subject: RE: Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Oh, it’s downhill well before that. Samuel Beckett in a 1970 interview:
>>>>>> “Even before the foetus can draw breath it is in a state of barrenness
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> of pain. I have a clear memory of my own foetal existence. It was an
>>>>>> existence where no voice, no possible movement could free me from the
>>>>>> agony and darkness I was subjected to.”
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> And in _Murphy_, Neary curses the day he was born “and then, in a bold
>>>>>> flashback, the night he was conceived.”
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
>>>>>> Behalf Of David Morris
>>>>>> Sent: Monday, July 29, 2013 11:51 AM
>>>>>> To: Ian Livingston
>>>>>> Cc: Keith Davis; P-list
>>>>>> Subject: Re: Thich Nhat Hagn's "Fear"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Yes. That is a clear way of explaining the root experience and its
>>>>>> later
>>>>>> recognition/identification.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Monday, July 29, 2013, Ian Livingston wrote:
>>>>>> Maybe the way to reconcile your perspectives, which both seem valid, is
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> remove the labels. Birth is the first appearance the emotional
>>>>>> sensation
>>>>>> that is later associated with fear, coupled with the sensation of
>>>>>> emotional resistance to that proto-fear that is later identified as
>>>>>> desire.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 7:39 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> Sure.  But birth is a stark initial lesson in separateness, even if the
>>>>>> "self" hasn't yet formed. And I think initial experiencing the
>>>>>> sensation
>>>>>> of fear and desire is TNH's focus, something that precedes a self.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Monday, July 29, 2013, Keith Davis wrote:
>>>>>> The only clarification might be that there is no consciousness of the
>>>>>> fear
>>>>>> and desire until we reach the point where we become aware of a"self" as
>>>>>> separate from other "selves", where we develop an "individual
>>>>>> consciousness".
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 1:13 AM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It starts with a description of each of us pre-birth in the "The Palace
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> the Child." Everything we needed was done for us there.  Food, air,
>>>>>> warmth, in a big water cushioned bed, with great sound insulation.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Then we get pushed out into the loud cold world, having to cough out
>>>>>> liquid in order to take our own first breath.  Every aspect of this
>>>>>> birth
>>>>>> is traumatic, and TNH says it is called the "Original Fear."  At about
>>>>>> this same moment we realize we want to keep living.  TNH calls this
>>>>>> "Original Desire."
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I think this was all pre Freud.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> David Morris
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> www.innergroovemusic.com
>>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> http://posthistoricpress.blogspot.com/
> 
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