Auden and Benda on Intellectual Betrayal?

The Treason of the Clerks?

Google Images

I was reading W.H. Auden's 1941 poem "At the Grave of Henry James" early this morning and was struck by its final line, so I'm posting the last stanza here:

All will be judged. Master of nuance and scruple,
Pray for me and for all writers, living or dead;
Because there are many whose works
Are in better taste than their lives, because there is no end
To the vanity of our calling, make intercession
For the treason of all clerks.

Auden was Anglo-Catholic Anglican, close to Roman Catholicism in his beliefs, including belief in the saints' intercession between sinners and God, which clarifies his request that the long-deceased Henry James -- "Master of nuance and scruple" and thus a literary 'saint' -- pray for him since everyone is going to be judged for their lives, even those who have written well, for "there are many whose works / Are in better taste than their lives," concerning which Auden sums up in the final line, namely, that intercession be made "For the treason of all clerks."

On reading that last line, I was struck by the singular phrase, "the treason of all clerks," for it is actually not quite so unique, recalling the 1927 title of Julien Benda's La Trahison des Clercs. I wondered if Auden was alluding to Benda's book. Auden's point, though is somewhat at variance with Benda's, for Auden contrasts the excellence of a writer's writing with the flaws of the writer's life, whereas Benda criticizes writers for betrayal of their calling as writers by aligning themselves with any of various pseudo-intellectual fashions and serving those fashions rather than serving as those fashions' critics.

I soon found that I'm not even close to being the first to notice the allusion. The literary critic Lucy McDiarmid has written extensively on Auden's reference to Benda. I've not had time to read the long piece at that link, but I include it for readers who might have an interest.

Our time is also not without intellectual betrayal . . .

Uncle Cran's Ozark Pet: "Macavity - The Mystery Cat"

Mystery Cat?
Lower Left Quarter of Photo
(Click twice for better viewing.)

My Uncle Cran recently managed to obtain a game-camera photo of a mystery cat on his Ozark farm in northern Arkansas. You can see it in the lower left quarter of the picture if you look carefully. Here are a series of emails between Uncle Cran and his son Mark, beginning with Uncle Cran's:

Here is a new picture of our new house cat. If I could just figure out a way to put a collar on him . . .

He is either a large bobcat, lynx, or small bob-tailed cougar.

This is taken by the cave spring pond.

Cran

Mark responded:

Dad

I think that is a bobcat I've been doing a little research the spots on the body and white patches behind the ears are the markings of the North American bobcat. That's just my opinion.

Mark

Uncle Cran replied:

We were pretty sure it was a bobcat. A lynx is longer legged, with a less dense body. Most lynxes are found farther north of the Ozarks.

Part of what I said was a kind of joke, since who ever heard of a bob-tailed cougar?

Dad

Mark replied to that:

Actually, pops, there is a species of bobtail cougar. I found photos of them on the Internet, but they are a solid golden tan or reddish brown.

Mark

Uncle Cran then remarked:

Isn't the internet wonderful? Now, I find that some of my ex cathedra statements are false. I am learning something every day. But I still believe that photo was a bobcat.

Thanks, Mark.

Dad

At this point, I broke into their conversation, requesting a copy of the photo:

Dear Uncle Cran,

Could you send me the photo?

Jeffery

Uncle Cran complied, sending the photo and saying:

Jeffery:

Here is a photo of a bobcat taken by our game camera recently. For the past year or so mountain lions (cougars) have been recorded on film, trapped in a cage, and at least one or two shot and killed in the areas of southern Missouri and northern Arkansas. Bobcats have always been in this area, and rare sightings of mountain lions have been reported for years. Black bear sightings are reported often, also. I have seen tracks possibly made by bears and mountain lions a few times. Until recently the Game and Fish Commission of both states have denied and even ridiculed such reports, until forced to acknowledge their presence.

So far we haven't seen one on our game cameras.

I'll bet En-Uk would find this interesting.

Cran

I'd always thought that a bobcat (so-called due to its short tail) had a squat, short-legged body, but I've looked on the internet and see that I was mistaken. For purposes of comparison, a bobcat is usually about twice the size of a domestic cat, or so says Wikipedia, but that bobcat in the photo above looks larger than this to me. Maybe Uncle Cran can confirm this? The remaining question is what sort of bobcat this is. The Wikipedia entry offers two likely possibilities:

1. Lynx rufus rufus (Schreber) – eastern and midwestern United States

2. Lynx rufus floridanus (Rafinesque) – southeastern United States and inland to the Mississippi valley, up to southwestern Missouri and southern Illinois

Number two seems most likely, but until we know for sure and have solved this remaining mystery, I'm calling this bobcat "Macavity, the Mystery Cat". Compare with this, too.

Readers' opinions?

Word of the Weak: "Weepers"

Erin McKean

Wikipedia

Erin McKean, who writes a column on language for the Boston Globe, has a recent article, "New words from noncelebrity neologizers" (January 22, 2012), in which she introduces a new term that beer lovers can use:

You may not have reason to refer to pint-size liquor bottles that often, but if you do you'll appreciate knowing that Jemaleddin Cole calls them weepers: "the sad, drinking-alone counterpart of a growler of beer." (A growler is an older word for a pail or pitcher of beer, now used for a half-gallon jug.)

I said "beer lovers" due to the 'etymology,' but liquor lovers of all kinds can use the term. Cole thinks that this word "weepers" meets the conditions set by Allan Metcalf's acronymically named FUDGE scale:

Neologism expert Allan Metcalf, the executive secretary of the American Dialect Society, gives five factors by which to judge the success of a new word: what he calls the FUDGE scale. FUDGE stands for "frequency of use" (more use means a higher chance of success), "unobtrusiveness" (is it too jokey?), "diversity of users and situations" (is it used by a lot of different people?), "generation of other forms and meanings" (can you verb it?), and "endurance of the concept."

McKean might be right, but I wonder if "weepers" is just a mite too jokey in its acute cuteness.

Readers' opinions?

Williamsburg Circle of International Arts and Letters: Public Relations Release

Williamsburg Circle Logo

Yesterday, I received from the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center its official public relations release on the Williamsburg Circle of International Arts and Letters, whose logo you see above, and since I'm a member of this circle, I feel that I should pass along the release:

THE WILLIAMSBURG CIRCLE OF INTERNATIONAL ARTS AND LETTERS

For Immediate Release

February 1, 2012

In January 2012 the WAH Center created a new program called the Williamsburg Circle of International Arts and Letters. It is composed of twelve outstanding scholars, publishers, collectors, artists and innovators (see complete member list).

We believe that a strong education in the classical humanities is a fundamental prerequisite for good citizenship in every country in the world today. What is Classical Humanities? It is nothing less than the spiritual, ethical and intellectual foundation for Western culture. Classics is a vibrant, interdisciplinary field that lies at the heart of the liberal arts. It is the lack of a common heritage and common values that gives rise to basic conflicts among peoples. A broad education in the classical humanities can bring about a common understanding and a common set of values.

As many of you know, the WAH Center's motto is "Peace, Harmony and Unity," as Yuko Nii, the Founder, has written in the Bridge Concept upon which she founded the institution.

INVITATION: We also welcome you to the very first of Our Events on April 14th, 2012 where you can meet our chairman Dr. Robert J. Wickenheiser, 19th President of St. Bonaventure University, and learn more about our goals and projects.

If you would like to contribute to our worthy goals, we would very much appreciate your support at our inception. If you are a scholar or artist and contribute $50 yearly as a supporting member, we will list your name with your discipline and contact information (and web-site, if you have one) on a special supporting member page. Click here for benefits:

Supporting Professional Scholars, Writers and Artists

We would very much like to get your feedback on our project! Terrance Lindall and Yuko Nii

Williamsburg Art and Historical Center, Brooklyn, New York

Those who are interested in being supporting members can click on the link provided (or here), and those who simply wish to know more can click here.

I should perhaps note a couple of points. First, I won't be able to make a New York trip for the Our Events program scheduled for April 14th, which I'm sure is very disappointing to all my readers, but work and finances constrain me. Second, I'd like to note that while our international circle of members are primarily in the Western tradition, as is the fundamental focus on the Classical Humanities (Classics in Humanities?), our interests encompass more than that (cf Yuko Nii's Bridge Concept). Personally, I sense that a world civilization is emerging, one powerfully influenced by the West but drawing from various civilizations. This process will take a while, however, and not everyone is pleased by these developments, as we know from many of my blog posts.

Mutual understanding based on a common system of values drawn from a common heritage will therefore take some time to develop, but perhaps the Williamsburg Circle of International Arts and Letters can play a small part in that very large, long-term process.

Sheikh Abdallah Kamal: Defending the Indefensible?

Sheikh Abdallah Kamal
"None so blind as he who will not see."

Memri Special Dispatch Nr. 4465

Sheikh Abdallah Kamal, an Egpytian cleric who is probably a Salafi but perhaps a member of the Muslim Brotherhood (is there truly any difference), and at any rate an Islamist, seems to raise questions that even trouble him about the hadith attributed to Imam Al-Bukhari concerning the Muslim prophet Muhammad's relationship to Aisha.

Noting that "the Prophet Muhammad married Aisha when she was six years old, and had sexual intercourse with her when she was nine years old," he admits that some "might raise an eyebrow and ask how such a thing could be," which implies that his own eyebrow was raised, as well as the eyebrows of his Muslim audience, for he was speaking on a Muslim religious program presented by Safa TV on January 9, 2012. In his further remarks, he admits that this "hadith has been taken, by . . . even some Muslims[,] . . . [as] a falsehood . . . [passed along by] Imam Al-Bukhari." Such Muslims "denied that the Prophet Muhammad married Aisha . . . at such a young age." Kamal then acknowledges that some individuals have "accused the Prophet Muhammad of being a child rapist." His defense? "This [union] was decreed by Allah, and therefore, the Prophet Muhammad only married Aisha because of a decree by Allah." Implicitly, Kamal recognizes the outrage that would normally be roused by a report of sexual relations between a man in his fifties and a nine-year-old girl, else he wouldn't need to justify the act by referring to Allah's decree. But even so, Kamal still isn't satisfied with his own appeal to Allah's will, so he asserts that the "marriage of Aisha . . . was not her first marriage"! But he then weakens his own assertion in explaining that Aisha "was betrothed . . . to Jubayr ibn Mut'im," for he knows that a betrothal is not a marriage. Kamal's point, nevertheless, depends upon leading his Muslim audience to entertain the suspicion that Ibn Mut'im had sexual relations with Aisha even earlier than Muhammad! Otherwise, the point about Aisha being previously married is irrelevant. Kamal then goes further in his attempt to make the outrageous seem normal by claiming that the "environment differs from one place to another . . . [such that] a girl reaches puberty at the age of 8 or 9" in some places with hot climates. He may realize the unlikelihood of this 'fact' alone as persuasive and thus appeals to "religious scholars [who] have written . . . that a girl may menstruate and even give birth at the age of 9 years." By making this all seem so ordinary, Kamal's listeners might begin to wonder why anyone's eyebrow was ever raised at the report or why Allah felt the need to make a special decree for Muhammad's sexual relations with a child. But those points are now forgotten, for by turning an outrage into something normal, Kamal has reassured his Muslim audience that charges of "cruelty and barbarism" on Muhammad's part, or suspicions that "Muhammad only cared about his desire and his lust," are entirely wrong, for such things as a man's sexual relations with a nine-year-old child are entirely normal.

As a recently initiated member of the New Milton Critics group, I now see how useful the deconstruction of an argument can sometimes be in bringing us to perceive the ambiguities and incertitudes of problematic religious discourse, wherein the devout speaker inadvertently lets slip the suspicions that he himself holds and the doubts that he himself entertains.

On the frontlines "of this great Argument" -- finding myself among the New Milton Critics!

New Milton Criticism Booksite

There may be some interesting consequences stemming from my recent publication in the Milton Quarterly, for I suspect that I'll be perceived as having placed myself squarely in the camp of the New Milton Critics. Who are they? Three days ago, I couldn't have told you, but here's what they have to say for themselves:

The New Milton Criticism seeks to emphasize ambivalence and discontinuity in Milton's work and interrogate the assumptions and certainties in previous Milton scholarship. Contributors to the volume move Milton's open-ended poetics to the centre of Milton studies by showing how analysing irresolvable questions -- religious, philosophical and literary critical -- transforms interpretation and enriches appreciation of his work. The New Milton Criticism encourages scholars to embrace uncertainties in his writings rather than attempt to explain them away. Twelve critics from a range of countries, approaches and methodologies explore these questions in these new readings of Paradise Lost and other works. Sure to become a focus of debate and controversy in the field, this volume is a truly original contribution to early modern studies.

Among the New Milton Critics are Peter C. Herman, Elizabeth Sauer, Richard Strier, John Rogers, Judith Scherer Herz, Michael Bryson, Christopher D'Addario, Shannon Miller, Thomas Festa, Jeffrey Shoulson, William Kolbrener, and Joseph Wittreich, for these scholars contributed to the volume pictured above. I know several of them from the Milton List and also recognize the names of others from my acquaintance with Milton scholarship. I simply didn't realize that these trees made up a forest. I suppose I'm now perceived as a sapling on the perimeter. From the passage quoted above, I can see that I have some things in common. Like these scholars, I read Milton with a focus on "uncertainties in his writings," but unlike these same scholars, my approach to the uncertainties is to "attempt to explain them away," if possible. I don't embrace the uncertainties. I'm certainly no deconstructionist. I see the uncertainties -- or better, the contradictions -- as problems for Milton's great argument, and I think that he was aiming for logical coherence without entirely achieving it. But I know that I'll now be forever misunderstood as a New Milton Critic. Why? Here in the concluding sentence of my Milton Quarterly article -- immediately following my half-ironic remarks on Satan's necessary role in resolving an antinomy in Paradise Lost -- is why:

Milton has told us that his "great Argument" (1.24) does indeed "justifie the wayes of God to men" (1.26), but surely Milton did not intend a felix culpa, even if one might entertain destabilizing doubt at such contradictory complications . . . though merely sketching out the uncertain ramifications of such as these would go far beyond this brief essay and into realms of incertitude and ambiguity explored by Peter Herman, among others (cf. Sauer 15n1).

The citation is of Elizabeth Sauer in her "Introduction: The Art of Criticism," from Milton and the Climates of Reading: Essays by Balachandra Rajan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), which Sauer also edited. Concluding in this manner would seem to put my stamp of approval on the New Milton Critics -- among whom Sauer belongs (see list of scholars above) -- though I was in fact implicitly thanking Peter Herman for reading my article as I reworked it and offering his useful advice about seeking out primary sources from the 16th and 17th centuries to make my point about such terms as "cropt" and "uncropt." No one other than Peter would recognize this implicit thank-you note, of course, but there's more. Peter Herman also has an article published in the same issue of the Milton Quarterly, and it immediately follows my own -- mine thus appearing to introduce his -- and launches into a spirited defense of the New Milton Criticism through a strong offensive attack on an apparently polemical opponent:

I am not going to tax the reader's patience by repeating John Milton's mistake in Eikonoklastes and giving a tedious, point-by-point rebuttal of every single statement David Urban makes in his recent diatribe against the New Milton Criticism.

I finished reading Peter's counter-critique and then sent him an email:

I just yesterday received my copy of December's Milton Quarterly, and I learned of the heated debate between David Urban and the New Milton Critics. Wow! I've only read your article but will get to those of Wittreich and Strier soon.

There is some unintended irony in the concluding sentence of my article, which immediately precedes your own, in that my positive reference to your work on doubt, contradiction, incertitude, and ambiguity would appear to have been intended as an introduction to your article -- and the two that follow. I wonder if I will face consequences . . .

Peter quickly replied:

I was also very pleased by the happy circumstance of the last line of your article leading into mine. That [plus other things] . . . makes this the NMC issue of MQ, I think.

I strongly suspect that Peter's right. This issue of the Milton Quarterly will be seen as the New Milton Critics' issue, and scholars will infer that I've placed myself squarely within that camp.

Oh, well, all publicity is good publicity . . .

Paul Berman on Václav Havel's "screwy ideas"

Václav Havel

The New Republic

The New Republic has an article on one of the political figures I most respect by one of the journalists I most respect, Paul Berman's "Democracy and the Human Heart: Václav Havel, 1936-2011" (January 26, 2012). Both are practical men who take -- or, in Havel's case, took -- ideas seriously. Oddly enough, Havel's seriously meant remarks about God could sound rather loopy, as in his musings to Berman during a 1997 interview:

A new god, he told me, would most likely be abstract and multicultural -- a god who brought together Allah, Buddha, Christ, and so on.

Berman himself refers to Havel's "screwy ideas" on a multicultural god, and even though Berman cites one of Havel's advisors as having used this expression to describe the concept, he doesn't appear to reject the label. Multicultural deities aside, why was Havel interested in such theistic views at all? Berman offers an intriguing explanation:

Now that he has died, I think I see the pertinence of this last and fuzziest of ideas a little more clearly. Havel was frightened by atheism. In his eyes, communism was atheism's apotheosis. Communism led everyone to focus on material circumstances and to dream of improving the circumstances, and to dream of nothing else. For why should anyone dream of anything more than material improvements? More does not exist. Such was atheism's message. To pine for a new automobile made sense, but there was no point in contemplating the state of your soul.

Communist despotism in the "post-totalitarian" period depended on people drawing this kind of distinction -- between the reality of material things and the non-reality of things having to do with the soul or with Being. So long as everyone adhered to materialist principles, the Central Committee could get along without firing squads. The regime stayed in power merely by manipulating the distribution of products and privileges. You wanted a Skoda? You mumbled the communist slogans, and you avoided mumbling anything else, and after a few years of reliable obedience your own name would ascend to the top of the waiting list, and -- oh greatest of all conceivable joys! -- a Skoda would be yours.

To counter this materialist atheism, Havel sought a useful language:

The whole point of his multiculti god was to look for a spiritual language that was not going to be tied to any particular religion, and therefore could address everyone. Then again, he did not want to leave everything in the hands of the multiculti god, either . . .

Even if he didn't say so, Havel may, like me, have found theism nearly as frightening as atheism, for even prior to 2001, in an address to the US Congress in 1990, Havel said:

"For this reason, the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human humbleness, and in human responsibility."

Or, as glossed by Berman:

You have got to think for yourself, in short.

Berman then offers a fitting tribute to Havel that shows how the man's 'screwy metaphysical ideas' led him to greatness, and there's an interesting irony Berman notes:

Religious ideas are usually said to be an argument against what is called "relativism," or the idea that nothing in particular should be regarded as absolutely important. In one respect, though, the ideas that Havel liked to entertain did promote a kind of relativism, and this was in regard to his own life. If you think there is something more, a Being or transcendental something-or-other that goes beyond your own material existence, your own life is bound to end up seeming, by way of comparison, humbler, therefore easier to put at risk. Havel seems to have understood pretty clearly that his own life was not the greatest of all possible values. In 1983, when they carried him off in handcuffs to the prison hospital because he had refused to request a pardon -- at that particular moment his lungs had trouble breathing but his brain seems to have had no trouble recognizing that his own continued place on earth was not his highest goal. If he had come to a different recognition, would the rest of his life have spoken to us as eloquently as it does? He was one of the greatest and most heroic figures of modern times, or maybe of all time, but he was a great and heroic figure because his own thinking gave him the courage to risk not being anything at all.

This reminds me of a lengthy conversation that I recently had with a friend over coffee. We were discussing the big issues. God. Values. Mortality. Civilizations. Not in any particular order. He noted that he would fight for his values. I asked why. "Because they are mine." The conversation took a twist at that point, so I didn't get an opportunity to pursue that a bit further, but the next question, clearly, is this: "Would you fight for them to the death?" There has to be a sense in which my values are worth defending beyond the fact that they are mine. If that is all, mere possession, then why not trade those values in for other values if one's life is at stake? Surely my life is more important to me than my possessions, for without life, I possess nothing. The fact that one would be willing to die in defense of one's values implies that one places the values above one's own life, which means that one holds these values to be transcendent, and that they therefore give life meaning even after one is gone.

Havel seems to have thought so, anyway, and his screwy ideas made his life of lasting value.

Paradise Lost: "Fruit Uncropt and Fruit Cropt"

Milton Quarterly Logo

Wiley-Blackwell Website

Yesterday, I was pleased to see that the Saturday mail service here in Seoul (actual delivery on Saturdays?) had brought my copy of the Milton Quarterly. I don't really have a subscription, but I was expecting to receive a copy because I've had an article published in it, "Fruit Uncropt and Fruit Cropt: Unnoticed Wordplay in Paradise Lost?" (Milton Quarterly, Volume 45, Number Four, December 2011, pages 252-257). Here's the opening paragraph:

In Paradise Lost 4.724-35, Adam and Eve together praise the creator for their happy love and his abundant blessings, which include the gift of trees bearing fruit that "uncropt falls to the ground" (4.731), and the innocent pair request offspring to share that fruitful abundance. Ostensibly in tension with this are the words of Eve in Book 9, for she there remarks on the many trees with "Fruit untoucht, / Still hanging incorruptible" (621-22), awaiting the hands of offspring yet unborn. The apparent contradiction between the words implying that unplucked fruit falls to the ground from the trees of paradise and that unplucked fruit hangs potentially forever on the boughs of those same trees also serves to bring into focus another apparent contradiction. In the prelapsarian garden, into which death has not yet entered, why should any fruit fall to the ground? Would that not imply death and decay? And what of the plucked fruit's uneaten portions? Are these tossed onto some prelapsarian 'compost' heap? Let us investigate this complex issue. (page 252)

If that interests you -- and it probably does not -- then rush over to the Wiley-Blackwell Website and order a copy! Some folks will be interested, I reckon, since the scholar Gordon Campbell, who edits Renaissance Studies, says, "If you want to publish to be READ, write for the Milton Quarterly." At the very least, I suppose Professor Campbell will read my article.

But even if not, I'm enjoying the rare pleasure of publishing an article in what is arguably the top Milton journal in the world.

Ozark Spring House: Mild, Rainy Winter Day

Ozark Spring House

Cloudland Journal of Tim Ernst

January 27, 2012

Whenever I need my Ozark fix -- which is every morning -- I click over to the website maintained by Ozark photographer Tim Ernst and spend some time contemplating his latest photographs. This morning in Seoul is January 28th, but since Arkansas lies on the back side of the International Dateline, Mr. Ernst must have posted this update of January 27th only some hours ago, though the picture was taken a couple of days earlier. The Ozarks had gotten a bit of rain, apparently, so the Buffalo River Valley had hundreds of waterfalls pouring off its bluffs. Mr. Ernst had gone out to take pictures and also took one of this small spring house directly beside a tiny waterfall:

It rained all day Wednesday, but I was able to sneak out for a couple hours in the afternoon with camera and tripod to visit a couple of nearby waterfalls. I have been unable to get enough [photographs] of the [small waterfall alongside this] little spring house in Boxley, and it only runs well during flooded times for a few hours, so I stopped there first and spent some time with this old friend. There were a few raindrops coming down but nothing too bad. I just love the look and texture of the smooth stones they used for this little building, also the lush moss-covered little bluffline right next to it, and of course the splashing waterfall in between.

Boxley is a small Arkansas village on the upper Buffalo River, and I'm guessing that this is an old spring house from which the locals used to get their water, back in former days. The spring itself -- seen emerging from the pipe in the lower part of the above photo -- surely runs year round. Only the miniature waterfall requires rainy weather to run. Below is a close-up of the falls.

I find these two images so peaceful to gaze at, especially the upper one, with the full stone structure in view. In my younger days, I believed that I'd make my way back to the Ozarks after my worldly adventures, but in my case, Thomas Wolfe seems to have been right, for I likely won't be going home again, not to live, anyway. I guess Seoul is my home now, and I'm getting to know this great city of Asia, but I do need my Ozarks, if only in snapshots, so I'm glad that a man like Tim Ernst is around, daily taking photographs in the Ozark Mountains of Northern Arkansas.

I encourage others to visit his website and look around . . .

The Polyglot Alexander Arguelles: Living on "unemployment checks and Korean translation work"

Alexander Arguelles

Wikipedia

In a book review by Peter Constantine for the NYT, "The Art of Mastering Many Tongues" (January 20, 2012), we learn of Michael Erard's search for true language virtuosos, genuine polyglots who have mastered multiple languages, a quest that Erard writes about in Babel No More and that led him to Berkeley, as Constantine informs us:

One polyglot . . . [whom Erard] meets, Alexander Arguelles, who lives in Berkeley "on unemployment checks and Korean translation work," shows that anyone who hopes to achieve fluency in more than six languages must dedicate himself to the task rigorously -- in fact almost exclusively. Arguelles keeps his languages in shape by subjecting himself to an unforgiving schedule, keeping spreadsheets that record the hours and minutes he spends on each one. Arguelles "tracks his linguistic progress through the hours as saints once cataloged their physical self-sacrifices," Erard writes. Of 4,454 hours of language study Arguelles did over a period of 456 days, he spent 456 hours on his native language, English, and also 456 on Arabic, and then a descending number of hours on the remaining 50 languages on his spreadsheet. Though his learning techniques may seem strange, they also appear to be effective. In one, called "shadowing," students listen to language recordings on a portable player while briskly walking in a public place, gesticulating energetically as they shout out the foreign words and phrases they are listening to. Though one is bound to make a spectacle of oneself, this technique seems to help the beginner shed some of the self-consciousness connected with speaking a foreign language.

That's the very man in the photo above. Our globe-trekking paths have crossed, apparently, both of us having spent time in Berkeley. Arguelles is probably joking about the unemployment checks, for Wikipedia shows him more gainfully employed than that. He may have good advice for language learning, but I don't intend to take him up on shadowing. If I tried that technique here in Seoul to work on Korean -- "walking in a public place, gesticulating energetically . . . [and] shout[ing] out . . . [Korean] words and phrases" -- I'd be committed to an asylum . . . by my wife! Not that such a fate would necessarily be much different than the mad life I already lead, confined here in the bedlam called Seoul.

I wonder if Arguelles used his shadowing technique here in Korea. Wikipedia refers to his "his years of residence in South Korea," during which he studied "a wide range of languages." A citation is supplied that leads to a biographical entry by Dr. Arguelles in which Wikipedia's information is confirmed:

In order to live . . . [in Korea], I obtained a faculty position at Handong University on the eastern coast of the country. This university had only been founded the year before, and they needed somebody to develop and lead a foreign language program, so my initial duties were to teach French, Spanish, and German . . . . [To] get down to serious language study . . . . Handong . . . was exactly what I needed . . . , for the campus was on an isolated hill amidst pine and bamboo forests and rice fields with a view of the Pacific Ocean from my back porch. Furthermore, it soon became clear that, while the university was recruiting foreign faculty to give it international stature, we were viewed as outsiders and thus completely shut out of the administrative decision making process. Other people found this intolerable and soon left, but I turned the situation on its head by reasoning that as my sole duty was to teach languages, I could devote myself entirely to their study on my own . . . . Initially, of course, I focused on Korean and, after I got grounded, on Classical Chinese and Japanese in a comparative context. However, I also ranged very widely through the world of languages . . . . This period came to a close when I belatedly sat down with a calculator and did some serious time management projections. Developing structural knowledge and conversational ability in a language and refining and maintaining that ability can be achieved with just 15 or 20 minutes a day, each and every day, over a period of years. However, developing deeper knowledge and above all enjoying reading the literature of a language requires more like an hour a day, and there are all too few of these . . . . I . . . began to allow myself to simply enjoy reading in my more familiar ones. I also began to "get a life" by getting married, siring a son, and paying more attention to my career by writing and publishing more . . . . [I know many languages, but] in a class all by itself, there is Korean. I lived in its land for nine years, and when I left I took it with me personified in my wife. I have published numerous reference works about it and produced scholarly translations of it, and I have proven time and again that I can handle any situation life throws at me in it, and yet -- there is still so much I do not know.

Our paths truly have crossed! He seems to have been more successful, however, particularly in learning Korean. If he used his shadowing technique in Korea, I suppose Handong's isolation made that practice more comfortable.

But I'm almost motivated to again attempt learning Korean since Arguelles insists that mastering the tongue is mainly just a matter of hard work.

Almost . . .