South with Herodotus - #3

I didn't hear from a single Trump supporter during my entire trip to the United States, though Trump will most likely win in South Carolina and has a good chance of winning in North Carolina. That only means that I didn't talk to a lot of strangers beyond asking directions or ordering a meal in a restaurant.
For a reader of Herodotus, Trump is nothing new. The Histories are full of ambitious and cynical men, motivated mainly by self-interest and greed. Indeed, the cruel violence and amorality of the world  he describes are appalling. Here, in a passage chosen essentially at random, is the way the Scythians purportedly put false soothsayers to death:

The mode of their execution is the following: a waggon is loaded with brushwood, and oxen are harnessed to it; the soothsayers, with their feet tied together, their hands bound behind their backs, and their mouths gagged, are thrust into the midst of the brushwood; finally the wood is set alight, and the oxen, being startled, are made to rush off with the waggon. It often happens that the oxen and the soothsayers are both consumed together, but sometimes the pole of the waggon is burnt through, and the oxen escape with a scorching.

Clearly Herodotus delights in describing the ritual cruelty of the Scythians, but cruelty in war is the order of the day:

The Carthaginians and Tyrrhenians, who had got into their hands many more than the Phocaeans from among the crews of the forty vessels that were destroyed, landed their captives upon the coast after the fight, and stoned them all to death.

Warefare is constant in the world Herodotus describes, often for the personal ambition of kings, and equally because of remembered slights, insults, and dirty tricks. Women are seldom more than chattels, taken whenever a man in power pleases. There seems to be very little of what we call morality, though occasionally people give wise speeches:

Amasis to Polycrates thus sayeth: It is a pleasure to hear of a friend and ally prospering, but thy exceeding prosperity does not cause me joy, forasmuch as I know that the gods are envious. My wish for myself and for those whom I love is to be now successful, and now to meet with a check; thus passing through life amid alternate good and ill, rather than with perpetual good fortune. For never yet did I hear tell of any one succeeding in all his undertakings, who did not meet with calamity at last, and come to utter ruin.

Herodotus seldom expresses approval or disapproval of  the people he describes and their actions. He is clearly a Greek patriot, proud of the Greek victory over the Persians, but he doesn't make the Persians out to be such awful people.

He is not a writer with illusions about human nature.

South with Herodotus #2

The Bible is quite interested in genealogy:
Now these are the generations of Ishmael, Abraham's son, whom Hagar the Egyptian, Sarah's handmaid, bare unto Abraham: And these are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations: the firstborn of Ishmael, Nebajoth; and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, And Mishma, and Dumah, and Massa, Hadar, and Tema, Jetur, Naphish, and Kedemah: These are the sons of Ishmael, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles; twelve princes according to their nations. (Gen. 25:12-16)
Herodotus shares that interest:

There was a certain king of Sardis, Candaules by name, whom the Greeks called Myrsilus. He was a descendant of Alcaeus, son of Hercules. The first king of this dynasty was Agron, son of Ninus, grandson of Belus, and great-grandson of Alcaeus; Candaules, son of Myrsus, was the last. The kings who reigned before Agron sprang from Lydus, son of Atys, from whom the people of the land, called
previously Meonians, received the name of Lydians. The Heraclides, descended from Hercules and the slave-girl of Jardanus, having been entrusted by these princes with the management of affairs, obtained the kingdom by an oracle. Their rule endured for two and twenty generations of men, a space of five hundred and five years; during the whole of which period, from Agron to Candaules, the crown descended in the direct line from father to son. (Herodotus, Book 1)

The modern reader wonders why the Bible bothers telling us the names and lineage of people who are at best tangential to the story, just as she wonders why Herodotus keeps telling us who was descended from whom and what contest they won at the games. These details seem pointless to us - which is just the point. Ancient literature came into being in a society radically different from ours. Read correctly, it takes us there.

But what is the correct way of reading ancient literature? Does it really take us into antiquity?

I suggest reading these books like a time traveler. 

If you could land a time capsule in fifth century BCE Greece, you wouldn't be quite sure of what you were seeing when you stepped out. You would have to observe cautiously and avoid jumping to conclusions. You would need a reliable informant to explain things. But how could you find one? And how could you know if he was reliable? It would be a little like a reporter asking his taxi driver to explain things to him while on the way to a new foreign assignment.

Reading Herodotus I had to be doubly cautious, because I was reading him in translation, and I depended on the translator's ability to decipher the text and render his understanding. Is de Selincourt a reliable informant? 

What exactly did the passage I just quoted, about Candaules, Hercules, and the rest mean to Herodotus' audience? Why were they interested? 

What it was for them cannot be what it is for us. Our interest in Herodotus as a key to understanding ancient Greek culture is obviously foreign to the interest of Herodotus' contemporaries - since they probably assumed they understood their own culture perfectly well.

I was set down in South Carolina, not a place as foreign to me as ancient Greece, but I couldn't always understand what I was seeing. I spent a summer in Charleston in the summer of 1968, teaching African-American high school students in an Upward Bound program, but I remembered very little of the city, and things have changed significantly since then.

Fortunately, I did have a reliable informant, my second cousin Beth Keyserling, who put me up at her house, introduced me to her daughters, and briefed me extensively.

Going South with Herodotus - #1

I was looking for a book to bring with me on my rather long trip to America and settled on the first Greek historian, Herodotus, whom I had never read. We had an old Penguin Classics paperback edition in our library, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt. The book itself was more than fifty years old. My wife bought it in Athens when she was there on a Fulbright in 1968-69, and the translation probably dates to the 1930s.
I'm not quite sure why I chose to read Herodotus after all these years of ignorance, but it was the right choice: a long, slow, irrelevant, and fascinating read. In a rambling way, he tells the story of the Greeks' repulsion of the Persian invasion, led by Xerxes, in 480 BCE, with fascinating and lurid descriptions of the customs and beliefs of many of the peoples of the Ancient Near East.
I went to America primarily to receive a prize for translating Aharon Appelfeld's book for younger readers, published by 7 Stories Press under the title, "Adam and Thomas." As I have told people innumerable times by now, the main reason I decided to attend the American Jewish Libraries conference was its location: Charleston, where I have cousins. Indeed, as I have frequently boasted, my second cousin Billy Keyserling, is the mayor of Beaufort, a town on the coast south of Charleston.
Since the prize money covered half of my air-fare, and the publisher promised to cover the other half, I decided to go. I planned to start my trip with a visit to my son and his family in Washington, DC and then I would go down to Charleston, visit Billy and his brother and sister, and then return home. Then, serendipitously, when looking for more information about thmme New Century Saxophone Quartet, a fine ensemble, I discovered that, just a few days after the convention in Charleston, there would be a week-long "saxophone retreat" at Wildacres, in the improbably (to my ears, at any rate) named town of Little Switzerland, North Carolina, which didn't sound impossibly distant from Charleston. The retreat, an annual event, was to be led by a stellar tenor saxophone player, Jim Houlik. So I decided to extend my stay in the US by a week, which certainly ought to have given me time to finish Herodotus. But in fact I only finished yesterday evening, a week after my return to Israel.
If I had read Herodotus as a student, like most people who have read him, I would not have read him with the historical books of the Bible in the back of my mind.  I also would not have read him with fifty years of intervening life experience. The stories of Saul, David, Solomon, and the various kings of Judah and Israel mainly concern sinning against God, being punished, obeying God, and being rewarded. The stories Herodotus tells have a lot to do with following the cryptic instructions of oracles, but almost nothing to do with right action in obedience to divine law. 
Herotodus is curious about everybody in the world who comes to his attention (interestingly, we descendants of the ancient Israelites, who think we were so important, do not even rate a mention in his narrative). The Bible is narrowly focused on the Twelve Tribes descended from Jacob, and troubles to mention only their enemies. Herotodus displays a great deal of geographical knowledge (some of it quite fanciful). The Bible is barely interested in any place other than the Land of Israel. The Biblical narrator is anonymous and impersonal. Herotodus' personality comes out in his writing. In Book One, for example, he writes: "The customs which I know the Persians to observe are the following: they have no images of the gods, no temples nor altars, and consider the use of them a sign of folly. This comes, I think, from their not believing the gods to have the same nature with men, as the Greeks imagine." The Biblical narrator would never speak for himself that way, and he would never think to compare his religion with another, except to condemn idol worship.

Heredotus is mainly famous, or notorious, for his sensational accounts of the customs of various foreign peoples. Here is a typical example: "The Magi are a very peculiar race, different entirely from the Egyptian priests, and indeed from all other men whatsoever. The Egyptian priests make it a point of religion not to kill any live animals except those which they offer in sacrifice. The Magi, on the contrary, kill animals of all kinds with their own hands, excepting dogs and men. They even seem to take a delight in the employment, and kill, as readily as they do other animals, ants and snakes, and such like flying or creeping things. However, since this has always been their custom, let them keep to it. I return to my former narrative."

Perhaps, in imitation of Herodotus, I should describe the ways of the American South, the drawl, the friendliness, the slow pace, and the deeply contested history. In a way, the South begins in Washington, but it wasn't until I reached Charleston that I was truly immersed in the region. The immersion was slow, since I spent my first two days there in a Marriott hotel, which might have been almost anywhere, the way an airport is a neutral space.

I did, however, venture out of the Marriott for a couple of meals, since the American Jewish Libraries, an impecunious organization, were only treating me to one dinner: I had some flounder in a the Marina Variety Store, a fish restaurant, which proved to be farther from the hotel than I had been led to believe, and grits for lunch at the Hominy Grill the following day (the waitresses sported tee-shirts proclaiming, "Grits are Good for You"). Usually I feel odd eating alone in restaurants, but I rather enjoyed the experience this time.

This trip was taking me pretty far away from Israel and Judaism, but I decided to avoid meat and seafood, to keep an approximation of kashrut.

Does the Right Hand Know what it's Doing?

The fingers of my right hand stiffen with tension when I play the flute, and this is, to say the least, deleterious to my playing. When I first began playing the flute, my left hand bothered me because of the unaccustomed hand position. I was getting cramps in my left hand, but after a few months they went away. Now it's my right hand, partly because you use your right pinkie to steady the flute, and partly because the fingering is slightly different from that of the saxophone, which I'm used to, and I have to concentrate. And there are deeper psychological reasons, which, possibly makes the problem of  interest to people who don't play the flute.
I discovered something that is interesting even to people who don't try to play fast sixteenth notes on a wind instrument by making an effort to relax my right hand all the time, both to improve my flute playing and because I'm also feeling some pain in my hand and forearm when I use the computer and manipulate the mouse, and pain is something one tries to get rid of.
Making an effort to relax is rather paradoxical, and my main method has been, first of all, to notice the tension in my hand rather than ignore it. Just noticing that I'm pressing the keys on the flute as well as on the computer keyboard too hard is a start toward not pressing them too hard. I have found that dealing with that tension in my hand has also improved my tone on the flute, and my playing sounds more musical (the clicking of my keyboard remains as unmusical as ever, but I type better when I relax my fingers).
I believe that tension in one's dominant hand has to do with the desire of the dominant hemisphere of brain to keep everything under control. Write something with a pen or pencil, or draw a picture, and check on whether you are pressing the writing instrument harder on the paper than you need to in order to leave a mark. Try to write or draw using as little pressure as possible. I bet your writing, both the handwriting itself and the content of your writing, as well as your drawing, will be freer and more imaginative if you lighten up the pressure of the pen.
I believe the pressure in my right hand when I play the flute is connected with anxiety. I'm still not sure that the flute will, in the words of my teacher, Raanan Eylon, cooperate with me, so I try too hard to force it to cooperate. I blow too hard and grip the instrument too hard, and the flute resists rather than cooperating. If one is confident, one doesn't have to make too much of an effort to do what one wants to do, and one's confidence is rewarded by success.

Getting Published

A short story of mine was published on the Jewish Fiction web site, so I'm spreading the news so that more than a handful of people will know about it and possibly read it.
A long time ago I thought I ought to be a writer of fiction, although that isn't really where my skills as a writer lie, which is probably why I never committed myself to that kind of literary career. But I have published a couple of stories that I don't want to disown.
It doesn't particularly matter to me when I see that only a dozen or more people look at this blog. I guess I lack the conviction that what I write is IMPORTANT. It means something to me when I write it, and that's enough.
The story is about my ambivalence with respect to Jewish observance.
I often think that it's something like playing a role as an actor. You have to believe in it while you're doing it, but when you step off stage, you have to remember it's only a role.
The truly religiously observant never step off stage. The truly atheistic won't even try to learn their lines.
Anyway, I reread the story a few hours ago, and it's not bad, and the other stories on the web site are also interesting. So I hope you read and enjoy them.

Art and Morality - A Huge Topic

About two weeks ago the literary editor of Haaretz stupidly wrote a column justifying the predatory sexual activity of a popular Israeli singer, saying that artists must have freedom to indulge their desires, even if some women are hurt by it, in order to create. The columnist was roundly, nay savagely criticized for his remarks, and the following week he wrote a contrite column, announcing that he would no longer be writing any columns - thus putting an end to what had turned out to be a rather provocative career, even before he said that artists had a right to indulge their instincts, a right denied to ordinary mortals.
Obviously, he said the wrong thing in the wrong way.
In our society, we do not agree that anyone's status entitles them to act criminally - not artists, athletes, religious leaders, wealthy people, or politicians. We also don't condone immoral (but not criminal) behavior on the part of prominent people: telling lies, betraying friendship, exploiting influence, excessive egotism, and the like. We also tend not to accept the excuses of people who abuse drugs and alcohol and claim that it sustains their art.
But what about the case the columnist was writing about? Apparently a certain popular singer was exploiting the sex appeal of his popularity to have sex with as many female fans as he could - not minors. He isn't accused of raping the women or abusing them, though he is accused of hurting their feelings, leaving them with the feeling of having been used (I gather).
A lot of male performers with strong sexual appetites - athletes, actors, musicians, preachers - apparently find it easy to persuade women to gratify those appetites. Assuming that they are not betraying a spouse's trust, assuming that the women who have sex with them are consenting adults, and assuming that the women are not dependent on the performer in some way (like an aspiring actress sleeping with a director in hopes of getting a part in his movie), do these men have a moral obligation to abstain?
We may not admire that kind of behavior, and we may think the less, for example, of Jean-Paul Sartre because of his alleged sexual predations (but less, of course, than we condemn Heidegger's Nazism), but our judgment of that behavior ought to be no different than our judgment of similar behavior on the part of a person of no intellectual or artistic attainment.
But what about art that is or could be thought of as immoral? An artist whose personal behavior is otherwise exemplary might produce work that encourages violence, crime, or racism, for example. "I'm not advocating rape," he might say, "but my creative freedom requires me to write about rape as if I were a rapist."
In a sense, artistic expression is also behavior, and behavior is subject to moral judgment, but we do allow (and even expect) artists to stretch the limits of conventional morality in their art. So, are we forced to agree that we permit artists to behave immorally?

Is this Something One Should Eat?

The hostel where we were staying in Tokyo, which we highly recommend, was not far from the food market, a long, narrow alley packed with neat, clean, attractive stores, some of which sold things to eat, presumably, which we could not identify. In general we found the food in Japan delicious. Even very simple restaurants served well-cooked dishes. However, very few of them had English menus, and, since we avoid certain foods, just pointing at a picture on the menu wasn't so helpful. But the food market gave us a better idea of what people actually bring home and eat.
Here's one of those unhelpful (for us) menus:

Some of the stuff was easy to identify, like snacks:

And dozens of kinds of pickles:

Though it wasn't easy for us to tell just what had been pickled.
Everywhere we went we saw stores displaying sweets that sometimes seemed to be intended more as gifts than as something to be eaten:

There was plenty of street food at the market, like these deep-fried dumplings (which we sampled):

And some mysterious things:

There was plenty of seafood:

And they love tiny fish:

As for noodles, there was an infinite choice:

A fine take-out delicatessen:

And even ordinary fruits and vegetables were displayed like crown jewels:

So, if you get to Kyoto, don't miss the market!