Significant Moments: Part 1

Those with an intimate acquaintance of Hebrew texts will recognize immediately that this one is written entirely in melitzah, a mosaic of fragments and phrases from the Hebrew Bible as well as from rabbinic literature or the liturgy, fitted together to form a new statement of what the author intends to express at the moment. Melitzah, in effect, recalls Walter Benjamin's desire to someday write a work composed entirely of quotations. At any rate, it was a literary device employed widely in medieval Hebrew poetry and prose, then through . . .
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
. . .the movement known as Haskalah, Hebrew for “enlightenment,”. . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . and even among nineteenth-century writers both modern and traditional.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
What is so special about this particular . . .
Adam Baer, The Music Language.
. . . literary device?
Ken Ham, Where are you, metaphor?
In melitzah the sentences compounded out of quotations mean what they say; but below and beyond the surface they reverberate with associations to the original texts, and this is what makes them psychologically so interesting and valuable. In the transposition of a quotation from the original (in this case canonical) text to a new one, the meaning of the original context may be retained, altered, or subverted. In any case the original context trails along as an invisible interlinear presence, and the readers, like the writer, must be aware of these associations if they are to savor the new text to the full. A partial analogy may be found in Eliot's use of quotations in The Waste Land.
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud's Moses.
If he is successful in . . .
Donald P. Spence, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis.
. . . his use of melitzah, . . .
Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Freud’s Moses.
. . . the Author . . .
Bill Moyers, Genesis: A Living Conversation.
. . . will arouse in the reader a particular set of images and associations which will add a certain texture and tone to what is being described—the chordal accompaniment, so to speak, to the melodic line.
Donald P. Spence, Narrative Truth and Historical Truth: Meaning and Interpretation in Psychoanalysis.
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I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself. Simply myself.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions.
If I have written much of it in the third person, well, that is because such an obsessive account of . . .
Richard Selzer, Raising the Dead.
. . . my intrusion into this valley of suffering . . .
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
. . . forces one, like Dorian Gray, to confront his own "devilish, furtive, ingrown" self-portrait. The pronoun he gives a blessed bit of distance between myself and a too fresh ordeal in which the use of I would be rather like picking off a scab only to find that the wound had not completely healed.
Richard Selzer, Raising the Dead.
In the career of the most unliterary of writers, in the sense that literary ambition had never entered the world of his imagination, the coming into existence of the first book is quite an inexplicable event. In my own case I cannot trace it back to any mental or psychological cause which one could point out and hold to. The greatest of my gifts being a consummate capacity for doing nothing, I cannot even point to boredom as a rational stimulus for taking up a pen.
Joseph Conrad, A Personal Record.
What kind of person am I? What is so special about me?
Richard Wagner, Letter to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
I am an assimilated Jew, content to be assimilated, relieved to be religiously unobservant. I don't know any Hebrew, or have forgotten the little I once learned.
Wayne Koestenbaum, Listening to Schwarzkopf: The Reich and the Soprano.
Speaking personally, I find that the American experience of being an assimilated grandchild of Orthodox immigrants has tended to make me an ill-informed, nonbelieving, non-observant Orthodox Jew, haunted by nostalgia for the peculiar music of the shul, for the Judaism I do not practice. And this adds still another puzzling iridescence to my Jewishness and to the tantalizing opportunities of my writer's divided self.
Daniel J. Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected.
. . . since these pages, if they survive me, may be the last testament of my brief and insignificant passage through the world, let me scrawl out the main facts.
Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance.
"I come from an unbroken line of infidel Jews. My father was a Voltairian. My mother was pious, but one day my father took me out for a walk . . .
Sigmund Freud, Conversation with Thornton Wilder.
. . . a walk in a little neighboring wood . . .
Voltaire, Candide.
. . . I can remember it perfectly, and explained to me that there was no way we could know that there is a God; that it didn't do any good to trouble one's head about such; but to live and do one's duty among one's fellow men"
Sigmund Freud, Conversation with Thornton Wilder.
I know my own heart and understand my fellow man. But I am made unlike any one I have ever met; I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but at least I am different. Whether Nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she formed me, is a question which can only be resolved after reading my book.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions.
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We writers live in the limbo between expression and communication. And we do not need theology or metaphysics to remind us that as writers we cannot avoid the effort, or the temptation, to serve two masters—ourselves, what is within us, and our reader, our conjectural clients outside.
Daniel J. Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected.
I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to whom it fits.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
By an ironic twist in the history of western literature, in this very age of unprecedented temptations to literary populism, an age of the sovereign and increasingly demanding public, there developed a fertile new sense of Personal Conscience. The private consciousness took on a new life and became a wondrous new literary resource. In modern transformation, conscience, an ancient laboratory of theological hairsplitting and a modern arena of ephemeral public taste, became inward, experimental, and biographical.
Daniel J. Boorstin, Cleopatra’s Nose: Essays on the Unexpected.
But more. But infinitely more.—
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
As prophet and pundit . . .
Daniel J. Boorstin, The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination.
. . . as devilish, dangerous, a rebel, and yet also a martyr and sacrifice . . .
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
. . . the writer has become . . .
Ramakant Rath, Has Literature a Future?
. . . the bad conscience of our whole era, . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Monday, December 13, 1869).
. . . and in so doing indeed . . .
Henry James, Confidence.
. . . he has come perilously close to defining the modern . . .
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
. . . antihero who rejects received tenets of behaviour and stays true to his individuality . . .
Youssef Rakha, Review of A Sun Which Leaves No Shadows.
. . . in an always alien society.
Frederick Karl, Franz Kafka: Representative Man.
To think of the writer as conscience of the world is only to recognize that the writer, . . .
Daniel J. Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected.
. . . as we shall see, . . .
Edward R. Tannenbaum, 1900: The Generation Before the Great War.
. . . is inevitably a divided self, condemned at the same time to express and to communicate, to speak for the writer and speak to others.
Daniel J. Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected.
The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden.
Western literature offers us countless different ways in which authors have dealt with this divided self. I will provide only a sample from some of my favorite writers that may suggest the perils that beset writers who pretend to be the world's arbiters.
Daniel J. Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected.
Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, . . .
Richard M. Ashbrook and Michael W. Torello, Preserving Community in a Technological Age: Toward the Constructive Incorporation of Technology in Higher Education.
. . . Hermann Hesse . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
—one of my favorites—
Christina Olson Spiesel, The One Who Loved My Work: A Meditation on Art Criticism.
. . . embodied those divisions of his age which have left their mark on our culture. . . . In a manner unique among writers, he wove his immediate experiences into his books to portray many of the dilemmas and historic crises of his time. . . . It was this finely tuned interaction between his psychological conflict and historical events that was to make him a poet of crisis. . . .

Hesse's stories—like the dreams he collected in special notebooks—are told from both conscious and unconscious experience and therefore reveal and conceal events, encounters, and feelings from himself, his friends, his public. The way Hesse lived and wrote about his life, constantly aware of his conflicting impulses as part of the tension of his art, made this revelation and concealment permeate all his writings. . . .

He made himself into an example for his readers, just as Rousseau, by no means a stranger to the art of disclosure and concealment, had presented himself in his Confessions. With its "pole" and "counterpole," Hesse's work became an ongoing act of instruction even as it took the shape of a continuous novel.
Ralph Freedman, Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis.
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The popular literary form . . .
Daniel J. Boorstin, Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected.
—as opposed to the sequestered academic one—is always straining at the inbuilt inertia of a society that always wants to deny change and the pain it necessarily involves. But it is in this effort that the musculature of important work is developed.
Arthur Miller, Timebends.
Hesse's literary career was closely interwoven with his personal fortunes as well as with his philosophical interests. His works before his disillusionment in World War I reflect the German literary traditions of romanticism and regionalism.
Encyclopedia Americana.
In this tradition, we are dealing with a line of thought that frames . . .
Ghent Urban Studies Team, The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis.
. . . clear-cut distinctions between good and evil, prudence and folly, reality and fantasy.
Edward R. Tannenbaum, 1900: The Generation before the Great War.
At any rate, in . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . accord with his original artistic nature, . . .
Paul Roazen, Erik H. Erikson: The Power and Limits of a Vision.
. . . and at a time when . . .
Michael Nightingale, Smallpox: Why All The Fuss?
. . . in his youth . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . he has not yet seen any of his illusions dissipated, . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . Hesse’s . . .
Ralph Freedman, Hermann Hesse: Pilgrim of Crisis.
. . . generally lower-middle-class heroes work hard, though rarely successfully, at adjusting to. . .
Encyclopedia Americana.
. . . the technological and social change . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . of urban industrial society.
Edward R. Tannenbaum, 1900: The Generation Before the Great War.
By the time . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . the Great War ended, however, . . .
W. Thomas White, Working Life: The Big Strike.
. . . the world had undergone a complete transformation . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . and the consequences for . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . Hesse . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . himself were far greater than he could ever have foreseen.
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
Somehow events in his life were coming to a head, but he felt that he was being lived by them, rather than living them.
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
He became uncertain whether good and bad, right and wrong, had any absolute existence at all. Perhaps the voice of one’s own conscience was ultimately the only valid judge, and if that were so, then . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
Each man had only one genuine vocation—to find the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal—that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny—not an arbitrary one—and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one’s own inwardness.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
What more need I say?
Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian Home Rule.
Beginning with Demian (1919), . . .
Encyclopedia Americana.
—if we may be permitted to anticipate our story . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . his heroes no longer try to conform but . . .
Encyclopedia Americana.
. . . force themselves almost against their own wills to insist, at the price of isolation, on finding an original way of . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . participating in . . .
H.G. Wells, The World Set Free.
. . . a new age of human involvement and commitment.
Encyclopedia Americana.
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The basic functions of living organisms are apparently survival and propagation, and their chances for survival are greatly enhanced by improved adjustment. But the genius does not adjust to reality: he is dissatisfied with it, like the rest of mankind and perhaps even more so; and he creates his own, a new reality, instead of adjusting to the one that already exists. (A biological precursor of this performance may be found in the adaptation of organisms through active choice of the most suitable environment . . .).
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
And, among the wide range of possibilities, it seems . . .
David S. Werman, Effects of Family Constellation and Dynamics on the Form of the Oedipus Complex.
. . . there are those organisms . . .
Manfred Davidman, Creating, Patenting and Marketing of New Forms of Life.
—namely, viruses—
Phil Jamieson, Products and Practices Thwart Computer Data Loss.
. . . whose adaptation enables . . .
PBS, Palau, Paradise of the Pacific: Fast Food, the Fish Way.
. . . them to stand by . . .
Arthur B. Reeve, The Silent Bullet.
. . . ready to invade cells and impose their own will upon them over and above the supervision of the cell's own genes.
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
—alas, always decidedly at the expense of "the host"!
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
A virus particle is a tiny nugget of protein (sometimes with a membrane) that surrounds a core of genetic material, which consists of strands of DNA and RNA, the ribbonlike molecules that carry the master software code that directs the activities of life. A typical virus particle is a thousand times smaller than a cell. If a virus particle were an object about an inch across, a human hair would be a thousand feet across. Viruses use their software code to take over a cell and direct the cell’s own machinery to make more virus particles. A virus keeps a cell alive until the cell is full of copies of virus particles, and then the cell explodes and releases hundreds or even thousands of copies of the virus.
Richard Preston, The Cobra Event: A Novel.
A variation on this theme . . .
Isaac Asimov, The Wellsprings of Life.
. . . is presented by . . .
Eliot Gregory, The Ways of Men.
Retroviruses. Today they may be the most well known viral family; certainly they're the most extensively studied. As a group they encompass a huge variety of viruses and a wide range of consequences, from cancerous tumors, to leukemia, to various immune-deficiency diseases, to no apparent effects at all. And, of course, the most notorious retrovirus of all, human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, . . .
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
A most scurvy monster!
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . is the cause of the most notorious disease of our day, AIDS.
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
After battling viruses for a century, . . .
Yvonne Baskin, The Gene Doctors: Medical Genetics at the Frontier.
. . . and meeting with . . .
G.A. Henty, With Lee in Virginia.
. . . disappointments, failures, and . . .
Phyllis Grosskurth, The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis.
. . . a few . . .
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.
. . . successes . . .
Phyllis Grosskurth, The Secret Ring: Freud's Inner Circle and the Politics of Psychoanalysis.
. . . along the way,
Jack London, Burning Daylight.
. . . some scientists are taking a new tack. Armed with the tools of genetic engineering, they have set out to tame some and put them to work shuttling genes into specific target cells. If the modified beasts prove docile and tractable enough, ironically they may be put to work paying for their previous mischief by helping to treat human genetic diseases.
Yvonne Baskin, The Gene Doctors: Medical Genetics at the Frontier.
In a bold but potentially frightening effort to turn one of the world's most virulent killers into a cure, scientists and biotechnology companies are trying to tame the AIDS virus and harness it to treat disease. The scientists say they have stripped the human immunodeficiency virus of its ability to cause disease, while leaving intact its ability to infect human cells. Such a crippled virus, they say, could be used to deliver genes into human cells for gene therapy.
Several university scientists and biotechnology companies hope to begin clinical trials using the modified H.I.V. viruses to carry genes that they hope can be used to treat diseases such as cancer and hemophilia. At least one attempt will even be made to use the modified H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, . . .
Andrew Pollack, Scientists Enlist H.I.V. To Fight Other Ills.
. . . at once a deadly peril and a possible miracle . . .
Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram.
. . . to treat AIDS itself.
"It would be ironic to cure AIDS with the AIDS virus," . . .
Andrew Pollack, Scientists Enlist H.I.V. To Fight Other Ills.
. . . said one of the . . .
H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau.
. . . teachers of this science . . .
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
. . . who has pioneered the effort to harness H.I.V. for gene therapy. But he added, "There is a saying that diamond cuts diamond."
Andrew Pollack, Scientists Enlist H.I.V. To Fight Other Ills.
Such were the professor's words—
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
I tried to look at the thing in a scientific spirit.
H.G. Wells, The Time Machine.
. . . and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception . . .
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein.
"Uniting of godly and devilish elements" resounded within me. Here was something for my thoughts to cling to. This idea was familiar to me from conversations with Demian. During the last period of our friendship he had said that we had been given a god to worship who represented only one arbitrarily separated half of the world (it was the official, sanctioned, luminous world), but that we ought to be able to worship the whole world; this meant that we would either have to have a god who was also a devil or institute a cult of the devil alongside the cult of god. And now Abraxas was the god who was both god and devil.
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
[Animal viruses] are usually content to remain aloof within the nucleus they invade, using the host cell's machinery to replicate themselves, but seldom mingling with the local DNA.
Retroviruses work backward. They have no DNA. Their genetic instructions are coded in RNA. Like all viruses, they carry none of the other requirements for life—such as manufacturing, processing, or reproductive equipment—just a genetic blueprint sealed in a protective capsule. For the rest they must depend on the cell they infect. But a cell is not set up to process genetic instructions in RNA. The first thing a retrovirus does when it gets inside a cell and takes off its protective coat is make a copy of itself in DNA.
Yvonne Baskin, The Gene Doctors: Medical Genetics at the Frontier.
Retroviruses are so-called because they possess a unique cellular enzyme, reverse transcriptase, which uses the viral RNA as a template to make a DNA copy.
Frank Ryan, Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues — Out of the Present and into the Future.
The DNA copy of the virus then slices open a host chromosome, inserts itself, . . .
Yvonne Baskin, The Gene Doctors: Medical Genetics at the Frontier.
. . . and in . . .
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.
. . . a kind of inner colonialization, . . .
In Search of Common Ground: Conversations with Erik H. Erikson and Huey P. Newton.
. . . becomes for all intents and purposes one of the cell's own genes. When the cell begins transcribing this viral DNA sequence into RNA—as it must to get a working copy of any gene for use in protein production—the result is more copies of the RNA virus and the orders for materials needed to make the virus capsules.
Yvonne Baskin, The Gene Doctors: Medical Genetics at the Frontier.
To paraphrase Shakespeare, retroviruses are such stuff as nightmares are made of. But they are also the stuff of wonder.
Frank Ryan, Virus X: Tracking the New Killer Plagues — Out of the Present and into the Future.
That's most certain.
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
Now part of the cell's chromosome, the virus—that is, all that's left of it, its genes—is in the catbird seat.
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
To take an analogy from history: invading conquerors . . .
Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis.
. . . let us use . . .
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.
. . . the French colonialists in Indochina . . .
David Straus, Vietnam Veterans and American Conceptions.
. . . as an example, . . .
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
. . . set out to govern . . .
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote.
. . . a conquered country, not according to the judicial system which they find in force there, but according to their own.
Sigmund Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis.
Like any good DNA, . . .
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
. . . the viral genes . . .
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.
. . . may transcribe messenger RNA, which travels back into the cytoplasm, some of it directing the cells' ribosomes to manufacture new viral proteins, some of it becoming enveloped by the emerging viruses to form their new cores of RNA. Or the integrated viral DNA may exert its influence upon the cellular genome and cause the cell to reproduce aberrantly, erratically, uncontrollably, thereby transforming it into a . . .
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
. . . malignant . . .
William Shakespeare, The Tempest.
. . . cell. Or the viral genes may do nothing at all, may simply lie low—for years, perhaps—safe and undetected within the heart of the cell, until prompted once again to become active and produce more viruses, or a transformed cell, or both. What causes the activation isn't always entirely clear. There are many retroviral mysteries to be unraveled.
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
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He saw all this, the picture of his life, which was horrible, and of his own soul, hideous in its ugliness. Yet a new day had dawned for that life and soul; and he seemed to see Satan bathed in the light of Paradise.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
When I think back on it today, and what . . .
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
. . . impression he made on me . . .
Henry James, The Figure in the Carpet.
. . . at that time, I can only say that . . .
Hermann Hesse, Demian.
I felt a certain measure of respect for him:
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . his life had long been . . .
Sigmund Freud, Letter to Wilhelm Fliess.
. . . penurious and precarious, but it was life; . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . somehow he . . .
Edward Field, Excerpt from Three Frankenstein Poems.
. . . managed to exist and endure and, . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . in the end, . . .
Philip Kennicott, A Fresh Start in Santa Fe.
. . . to escape, . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . ready to start life all over again.
Albert Camus, The Stranger.
He was a stranger to the district . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . an outsider.
Richard Wright, The Outsider.
Nothing was known of his origins and little about how he started in life. He was said to have arrived in the town with very little money, a few hundred francs; and with this scanty capital, applied to the service of an ingenious idea and fostered with order and shrewdness, he had made a fortune for himself and for the community.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
But he achieved this only after a protracted identity crisis . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
There is no doubt that, if arrested, he would have been sentenced to . . . a decade or more in jail.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
For he had . . .
Jack London, War.
. . . broken parole. To climb a wall and steal apples can be a mere escapade if it's a boy, or a minor offence in a grown man; but in the case of a convict on parole it's a crime—breaking and entering and all the rest of it, not just for the magistrates but for trial at the Assizes. And the penalty is not just a few days in gaol, but . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . a decade or more in jail.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
Owing to his having escaped the clutches of the law by his flight . . . no formal legal indictment. . . was drawn up against . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . him at the time.
Joseph Conrad, The Rescue.
It is consequently only fair to him for us to bear in mind that he had no opportunity to correct, at the time, whatever errors there may have been in the statements of the witnesses of 1849, or even of knowing in detail what they were. Some of the alleged evidence against him would probably not have survived a searching cross-examination.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
He knew . . .
Joseph Conrad, The Rescue.
. . .that what he had done had brought him well within the scope of the law, and his one immediate concern was to get to some safe spot as quickly as possible.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
His name, taken from his father . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . was Jean Valjean or Vlajean, the latter being probably a nickname, a contraction of ‘voila Jean’.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
Few people who passed him during the five days he walked on that dusty road . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . from his native town . . .
Thomas Hardy, A Group of Noble Dames.
. . . to Montreuil-sur-mer . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . could have regarded him as a figure of much account, yet . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
He became, in his day, a model of notoriety whose name was on everyone’s lips and whose reputation extended far beyond the frontiers . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . of France.
Hazel Rowley, Richard Wright: The Life and Times.
All too often, someone is not who he appears to be or is taken for.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
He went by . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Mis¾rables.
. . . a pseudonym . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . the name Pere Madeleine . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . and was careful . . .
Edmund Engelman, Berggasse 19: Sigmund Freud’s Home and Offices, Vienna, 1938.
. . . not to reveal . . .
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
. . . not even to hint at . . .
Edmund Engelman, Berggasse 19: Sigmund Freud’s Home and Offices, Vienna, 1938.
. . . his former identity.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
He was a man of about fifty, reserved in manner but good-hearted, and this was all that could be said about him.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
Somehow he must have hoped to escape into a life of obedience to God which would eventually come to count also as . . .
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther.
. . . penitence and repentance . . .
Richard Wagner, Tannhauser.
. . . for his past transgressions
U.S. Supreme Court, Alexander v. United States (dissenting opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy).
As did most people in the centuries prior to adequate artificial illumination, . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . Pere Madeleine . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . rose daily at or before dawn. He recited his morning prayers and then had an hour or so to himself—
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
He always took his . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . breakfast . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Saturday, April 6, 1878).
. . . alone, with a book at his elbow.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
At 8 in the morning . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Friday, September 15, 1882).
. . . he was in his office, meeting customers (“tiresome people!” he once explained in a letter to [a friend]), balancing accounts, supervising the workers, inspecting merchandise. Frequently he would slip a book of poetry into his pocket, to read in case he had an idle moment.
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
Not that he knew it, . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . the decree of fate . . .
The Diary of Richard Wagner 1865-1882: The Brown Book.
—that’s to say, . . .
Franz Kafka, The Trial.
. . . the former Jean-Valjean’s struggles of heart and mind before he denounces himself . . .
The Diary of Richard Wagner 1865-1882: The Brown Book.
. . . that final decree . . .
U.S. Supreme Court, Heckman v. United States.
. . . was already sealed.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
He had only to let things take their course.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
It is just as well that . . .
Edward Field, Excerpt from Three Frankenstein Poems.
. . . Jean Valjean the felon . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . is unaware—being simple enough to believe only in the present—that . . .
Edward Field, Excerpt from Three Frankenstein Poems.
. . . police authorities at work behind the scenes . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . will find . . .
Edward Field, Excerpt from Three Frankenstein Poems.
. . . him some day . . .
Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent.
. . . and pursue him for the rest of his short unnatural life, until trapped . . .
Edward Field, Excerpt from Three Frankenstein Poems.
. . . abandoned and betrayed . . .
The Diary of Richard Wagner 1865-1882: The Brown Book.
. . . he will confess everything, . . .
Fergus Hume, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.
. . . in a kind of Dostoyevskian fervor of self-cleansing.
Stephen Greenblatt, Miracles.
If, as . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
. . . Valjean . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Mis¾rables.
. . . at the last . . .
George Steiner, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.
. . . came to believe, it was indeed his fate to . . .
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
. . . be apprehended and . . .
Scott Williams, The Fugitive Slave Act and the Underground Railroad.
. . . hauled before a judge . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . that would be years later.
Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time.
But at the present moment . . .
The Diary of Richard Wagner 1865-1882: The Brown Book.
. . . it seemed that he . . .
Joseph Conrad, A Confession.
. . . had won a small but decisive battle against the darkness, the emptiness, and the hostile years that lay ahead.
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
—but, please, allow me to begin anew:
Thomas Mann, Dr. Faustus.
Thanks to the rapid growth of the industry which he so admirably reorganized, Montreuil-sur-mer became a place of some consequence.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
The population seemed to grow by the thousands from one day to the next.
Arthur Rubinstein, My Young Years.
Large orders came from Spain, which absorbs a great quantity of jet. Sales reached a scale almost rivaling those of London and Berlin, and Pere Madeleine's profits were so great that in the second year he was able to build a new factory consisting of two large workshops, one for men and the other for women.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
And what a tremendous, marvelous place it was! It had huge iron gates leading into it, and a high wall surrounding it, and smoke belching from its chimneys, and strange-whizzing sounds coming from deep inside it.
Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
The needy had only to apply, and they could be sure of finding employment and a living wage.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
He did much to raise the standard of living among his thousands of employees.
Joel Glenn Brenner, The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars.
In general his coming had been providential for the whole region, once so stagnant, which now pulsed with the vigor of healthy industry.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
But whatever may prompt this unorthodox behavior . . .
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
. . . which is based on . . .
Mystery Guide, The Secret Agent—Joseph Conrad.
. . . the capacity to change the environment . . .
Albert Rothenberg, Janusian Thinking and Creativity.
. . . almost everyone agrees that it's a masterful strategy. "It's a particularly bright way of existing . . .
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
. . . not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus . . .
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
. . . because the virus doesn't continually have to find new hosts in which to grow."

This necessity for viruses quickly to find new bodies to infect explains the fact that the most devastating disease epidemics are often short-lived. Influenza is a prime example. Once a new influenza virus arrives on the scene, it methodically makes its way through the susceptible population, and then, with no one left to infect, abruptly fades away. And were it not for the virus's virtuoso ability to mutate into newly infectious forms, that would be the end of that.
Retroviruses, on the other hand, are simply in no rush. They come on in, make themselves at home, and hang around for a while. In fact they become so much a part of the household that while the infected cell may alert the body that there's a virus around, the immune system's virus fighters simply don't do enough about it. And the virus—that is, the viral genes—taking advantage of such generous laissez-faire, becomes a semipermanent guest. It's a particularly ingenious and efficient way to conduct an infection.
Peter Radetsky, The Invisible Invaders: The Story of the Emerging Age of Viruses.
It is our belief that if the soul were visible to the eye every member of the human species would be seen to correspond to some species of the animal world and a truth scarcely perceived by thinkers would be readily confirmed, namely, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the swine to the tiger, all animals are to be found in men and each of them exists in some man, sometimes several at a time.

Animals are nothing but the portrayal of our virtues and vices made manifest to our eyes, the visible reflections of our souls. God displays them to us to give food for thought. But since they are no more than shadows, He has not made them educable in the full sense of the word — Why should He do so? Our souls, on the other hand, being realities with a purpose proper to themselves, have been endowed with intelligence, that is to say, the power to learn. Well-managed social education can extract from any human spirit, no matter of what kind, such usefulness as it contains.

This, of course, is to confine the matter within the limits of our visible earthly life, without prejudging the deeper question of the anterior and ulterior nature of creatures which are not men. The visible personality affords us no grounds for denying the existence of a latent personality. Having made this reservation, we may proceed. . . .

The traditional local industry of Montreuil-sur-mer was the manufacture of imitation English jet beads and the 'black glass' of Germany. Because of the cost of raw materials the industry had never been prosperous and its workers had been underpaid, but this situation had recently been transformed. Towards the end of 1815 a newcomer to the town had had the idea of substituting shellac for resin, and had also devised a simpler and less expensive form of clasp for such things as bracelets. These trifling changes amounted to a revolution. They greatly reduced costs, which in the first place enabled the trade to pay higher wages, and thus benefited the district. And they made it possible to reduce prices while increasing the manufacturer's profit. Three beneficial results; and in less than three years the innovator had grown rich, which is good, and had spread the prosperity around him, which is better.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
He did not belong to that species of persons who do things in order to talk about them (like me); he did not like high-sounding words, indeed words. It appeared that in speaking, as in . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . social conduct . . .
Joseph Wortis, Fragments of an Analysis with Freud.
. . . he had never received lessons; he spoke as no one speaks, saying only the core of things.
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
He was a friendly but sad figure. People said of him: ‘A rich man who is not proud. A fortunate man who does not look happy.’ He was a man of mystery.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
Night after night, he sat by an oil lamp, reading, studying, remembering. He had . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . not conformed, he was trying to settle his accounts with the past . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . and fundamentally, . . .
Robert M. Young, What is Psychoanalytic Studies?
—above all, . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . he had a conscience, and he struggled . . .
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
. . . to his dying day, . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . to soothe it.
Primo Levi, The Periodic Table.
His clothes, his general appearance and his speech, when he . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . arrived in . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . Montreuil-sur-mer, had been those of a laborer. But it seems that on the December evening when he unobtrusively entered the town, . . .
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
. . . carrying his belongings in a small pack on his back . . .
Herbert Kupferberg, The Mendelssohns: Three Generations of Genius.
. . . a serious fire had broken out in the Town Hall. Plunging into the flames he had, at the risk of his life, rescued two children whose father, as it turned out, was the Captain of Gendarmerie. So no one had asked to see his identity papers.
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables.
___________________________________________________________

Annie Reich has written on the function of rescue fantasies in psychoanalytic work, and has dealt with the conditions under which they are helpful or cause damage. The rescue fantasy is a highly important psychic structure, on which the socially valuable behavior of many people depends. Yet the fantasy is the outgrowth of ambivalence . . .; it makes social behavior dependent on the object's being in a critical condition. A person has to be in dire distress before the appropriate social action is initiated, and the positive object relationship is usually discontinued soon after the object's full restoration. The man who is preoccupied by an excessive rescue fantasy seems to say: "If you want me to love you and to win my affection, you must first jump into . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . the water, . . .
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
. . . the dark moving water . . .
Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett and Frank Capra, It’s a Wonderful Life.
. . . of the . . .
Jack London, The Sea Wolf.
. . . lake." It is noteworthy to observe how often subjects in whose lives rescue fantasies occupy a prominent place, are deficient in affectionate behavior toward members of their immediate environment.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
Talent and Genius, published in 1971, is itself a work of extreme eccentricity. It was written in response to another book, published two years earlier, entitled Brother Animal: The Story of Freud and Tausk, by Paul Roazen, which implicated Freud in the suicide, at the age of forty, of one of his early disciples, Victor Tausk. Roazen's book is trivial and slight. Its scholarship, like that of many other works of pop history, does not hold up under any sort of close scrutiny. But, unlike most pop historians, whose sins against the spirit of fact go undetected because nobody takes the trouble to check up on them, Roazen had the misfortune to attract the notice of someone who was willing to go to any lengths to catch him out. In Talent and Genius, Eissler administers one of the most severe trouncings of one scholar by another in the annals of scholarly quarreling. Like Superman rushing to the aid of a victim of injustice, Eissler hastened to defend Freud against what he believed "may properly be called the most brutal attack ever directed at him"—Roazen's insinuation that Freud was to blame for Tausk's death because, motivated by sexual and professional jealousy, he turned away from him at a crucial moment.
Janet Malcolm, In the Freud Archives.
The exhibitionistic, narcissistic background of the rescue fantasy is evident: accomplishment in the service of the object leads to a narcissistic elevation of the self. In Tausk's instance it is striking that rescue actions were more often than not combined with a considerable aggression against authority. It is hardly possible to estimate what might have been the stronger motive in Tausk's case: the rescue of a person in danger, or the showing up of abusive authority.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
During World War I, Tausk served on the Austrian front as an army psychiatrist. He acted with genuine heroism in protecting deserters from the Imperial Austrian Army which enlisted peasants who had never understood what conscription meant.
Paul Roazen, Tausk's Contribution to Psychoanalysis.
Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.
Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.
Helpless and confused young men found themselves in danger of being shot for their simple primitive desire to creep back to the shelter of their homes. Unlike psychiatrists who behaved sadistically toward all 'malingerers', Tausk went out of his way to save people, using psychiatric diagnoses for humane ends. He intervened, for example, in behalf of a young boy who was to be court-martialed for failure to help shoot a whole group of enemy prisoners . . .
Paul Roazen, Tausk's Contribution to Psychoanalysis.
. . . American and British prisoners of war, who were . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
. . . probably akin to him in spirit, in education, in moral discipline and values.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
Tausk saved his life by testifying that such a boy, reared in the highest standards of civilized life, could not be expected to assist in such an execution.
Paul Roazen, Tausk's Contribution to Psychoanalysis.
With some, of course, who had been the recipients of his not infrequent rescue actions, he had a reputation for goodness. But it would be a gross mistake in psychological judgment if one were to equate acts of rescue with the presence of goodness.
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
_____________________________________________________________

But was it not exactly the right thing to do what he did? Here was a man getting into a conflict with society because his concept of right was of a higher order than that held by society.
K.R. Eissler, Crusaders.
I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do any time what I think right.
Henry David Thoreau, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.
In our culture, it is customary to speak of the absolute value of the individual. We are very much concerned with "being true to ourselves," and if unfortunate circumstances should prevent an individual from achieving "true potential," we regard this as a tragedy and a waste. Thus we consider the discovery and achievement of one's "true" self to be a fundamental project of existence. "You must become who you are!" "You must try to be yourself!" This does not mean that the individual must simply follow an appropriate path in life, but that the individual must live a life that testifies to the unique and unrepeatable character of his or her own existence. Negatively, it is sometimes said that our culture is informed by an extreme individualism, such that any duties that we do have to the community are regarded as necessary evils that ultimately protect our own selfish goals. More positively, however, this means that there is at least a "discourse" of human rights and some concern for individual liberty as the necessary condition for any individual fulfillment.

It is important to remember, though, that not every culture has valued the individual in this way or even distinguished the individual as such from the role or place in life that the individual happens to occupy. Perhaps we are encouraged to think of the value of the individual as if it were an absolute; but it would be more correct to say that concern for the individual has a definite history and appears at a particular period of time. In most "primitive" societies, which are bound by ritual and the recurrent rhythms of nature, an individual's place is effectively marked out in advance . . .
Richard J. White, Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty.
. . . and the ending of the journey cannot be averted.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago (Excerpt from “Hamlet”).
To stand in opposition, or outside of the social order, is literally unthinkable.
Richard J. White, Nietzsche and the Problem of Sovereignty.
Most people, despite occasional protestations to the contrary, feel happier in a humdrum sort of existence, one that has relatively small oscillations of excitement; it helps them to fulfill their societal functions with a minimum of upset, and it also provides at least half-way protection against traumatic injury.
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
To the questions:
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace.
Who is it, that at the beginning of his maturity, feels drawn toward the great adventure (which always contains the possibility of shattering defeat), toward that insatiable search for the truth that may in the end result in involuntary isolation from the community? Who, one may ask in a general way, wants to make full use of his liberty?
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
Listen:
Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace.
Who is willing to become aware of the hypocrisy that is rampant within himself and also at the very basis of society in which he lives, in the Church to which he belongs no less than in his profession?
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
_____________________________________________________________

What strange, wicked, questionable questions! That is a long story even now—and yet it seems as if it had scarcely begun. Is it any wonder that we should finally become suspicious, lose patience, and turn away impatiently? that we should finally learn from this Sphinx to ask questions, too? Who is it really that puts questions to us here? What in us really wants "truth"?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
Take a closer look!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols.
The problem of the value of truth came before us—or was it we who came before the problem? Who of us is Oedipus here? Who the Sphinx? It is a rendezvous, it seems, of questions and question marks.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.
______________________________________________________________

The curtain is still down as I walk to the center of the proscenium and say this.
Abraham Pais, A Tale of Two Continents: A Physicist's Life in a Turbulent World.
There is no society in which reality and appearance coincide . . . . If Hamlet is obsessed by this discrepancy, this is not due to any psychopathology on his part; it is to be explained by the fact that he is in the unhappy state of knowing the truth, of having unveiled that secret on which the authority of the highest representative of the state basically rests.
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
What is important is that chance has allotted Hamlet the role of judge of his own time and servant of the future.
Boris Pasternak, I Remember.
External events have forced him to do what everyone of us has to do if the potential of man's minds is to be used to its fullest: he has discovered the difference between appearance and reality—and the conflict between them. . . .

The problem in question is the necessity of keeping secret the foundation on which the state rests. Who has the courage to face this truth?
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
Now the curtain rises.
Abraham Pais, A Tale of Two Continents: A Physicist's Life in a Turbulent World.
I walk out on the stage.
Leaning against a door jamb,
I try to catch in a distant echo . . .
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago (Excerpt from “Hamlet”).
. . . the story of that man . . .
Homer, The Odyssey.
. . . who, like . . .
Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalytic Notes Upon An Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia.
. . . Hamlet once looked truly into the essence of things, . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
. . . the very essence of the unknown;
Jack London, White Fang.
. . . gained knowledge, and . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
. . . prepared for all the consequences . . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . dared to shatter . . .
Mark Frauenfelder, Cars for Arts Sake.
. . . the veils of illusion:
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
Who is the man who has wrought the deed ordained only for the strongest?
Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung.
See him now!
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.
. . . and see the breakers of misfortune swallow him!
Sophocles, Oedipus the King.
The following sketch, . . .
Kate Millett, Sexual Politics.
. . . drawn so clearly and in so much detail . . .
Boris Pasternak, I Remember.
. . . for the exclusive use of the highest authorities . . .
Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi: The Glass Bead Game.
. . . is based primarily on background material and current impressions derived from press reports, including newspaper and magazine articles and television interviews. In addition, selected State Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation memoranda have been reviewed. As the data base is fragmentary and there has been no direct clinical evaluation of the subject, this indirect assessment should be considered . . .
C.I.A. Psychological Study.
. . . far from watertight . . .
Dr. Otto Eiser, Letter to Richard Wagner.
There is nothing to suggest in the material reviewed that subject suffers from a serious mental disorder in the sense of being psychotic and out of touch with reality. There are suggestions, however, that some of his long-standing personality needs were intensified by psychological pressures of the mid-life period and that this may have contributed significantly to his recent action.

An extremely intelligent and talented individual, subject apparently early made his brilliance evident. It seems likely that there were substantial pressures to succeed and that subject early had instilled in him expectations of success, that he absorbed the impression that he was special and destined for greatness. And indeed he did attain considerable academic success and seemed slated for a brilliant career. There has been a notable zealous intensity about the subject throughout his career. Apparently finding it difficult to tolerate ambiguity and ambivalence, he was either strongly for something or strongly against it. There were suggestions of problems in achieving full success, for although his ideas glittered, he had trouble committing himself in writing.

He had a knack for drawing attention to himself and at early ages had obtained positions of considerable distinction, usually attaching himself as a "bright young man" to an older and experienced man of considerable stature who was attracted by his brilliance and flair.
C.I.A. Psychological Study.
I have long been reminded of identical or very similar experiences with young men of great intellectual ability.
Richard Wagner, Letter to Dr. Otto Eiser.
But one can only sustain the role of "bright young man" so long. Most men between the ages of 35 and 45 go through a period of re-evaluation. Realizing that youth is at an end, that many of their golden dreams cannot be achieved, many men transiently drift into despair at this time.

In an attempt to escape from these feelings of despair and to regain a sense of competence and mastery, there is an increased thrust towards new activity at this time. Thus this is a time of career changes, of extramarital affairs and divorce.

It is a time when many men come to doubt their early commitments and are impelled to strike out in new directions.

For the individual who is particularly driven towards the heights of success and prominence, this mid-life period may be a particularly difficult time. The evidence reviewed suggests that this was so for Ellsberg, a man whose career had taken off like a rocket, but who found himself at mid-life not nearly having achieved the prominence and success he expected and desired.
Thus it may well have been an intensified need to achieve significance that impelled him to release the Pentagon Papers.
C.I.A. Psychological Study.
A brilliant and articulate member of the "military-intellectual complex" that was responsible for American military policy in Southeast Asia, Dr. Daniel Ellsberg underwent a conversion from cold-blooded hawk to committed dove and released to the . . .
Current Biography 1973.
. . . New York Times . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . portions of a top secret Pentagon study [the Pentagon Papers] tracing the history of American involvement in the Vietnam war.
Current Biography 1973.
Daniel Ellsberg, in whatever incarnation and in any job, was no ordinary man, he was an obsessive man; that which he saw, others must see, that which he believed, others must believe. Thus as he became increasingly disillusioned he also became a force. No one entered an argument with him lightly or left it exactly the same. As he became dovish, he was no ordinary dove; he was extraordinarily well informed, and his dovishness was that of formidable intelligence, of a mind that never stopped. As he reached each increment of doubt, he had to push on to one further level of knowledge and insight.
David Halberstam, The Powers That Be.
“I’ve always believed I could see things other people couldn’t. . . .”
Don Delillo, The Names.
. . . Ellsberg would muse . . .
Tom Wells, Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg.
“ . . . Elements falling into place. A design. A shape in the chaos of things. I suppose I find these moments precious and reassuring because they take place outside me, outside the silent grid, because they suggest an outer space that works somewhat the way my mind does but without the relentlessness, the predeterminative quality. I feel I’m safe from myself as long as there’s an accidental pattern to observe in the physical world.”
Don Delillo, The Names.
But whereas others might have been content with having come to the core of the rational explanation for the war (to the extent there was a rational explanation for something so irrational) he pressed on. He was a man who saw political events in terms of moral absolutes.
David Halberstam, The Powers That Be.
There is no suggestion that subject thought anything treasonous in his act. Rather, he seemed to be responding to what he deemed a higher order of patriotism. Many of subject's own words would confirm the impression that he saw himself as having a special mission, and indeed as bearing a special responsibility . . .
C.I.A. Psychological Study.
—that is to say, . . .
Sigmund Freud, Psychoanalytic Notes Upon An Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia
. . . to show exactly how the minds of . . .
U.S. District Court (Southern District of New York), U.S. v. One Book Called “Ulysses.”
. . . those in authority . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . had become dehumanized by political conceit.
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
The articles in the New York Times made . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . a lot of officials look inept, foolish or worse.
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
Let there be no mistake however:
Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets: American Playwright.
None of . . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . those passages of which the Government particularly complains . . .
U.S. District Court (Southern District of New York), U.S. v. One Book Called “Ulysses.”
. . . compromised American . . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . military operations
Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago.
On several occasions he castigated himself for not releasing the papers earlier, observing that since he first brought them to the attention of . . .
C.I.A. Psychological Study.
. . . Members of Congress . . .
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
. . . there had been "two invasions," more than 9,000 American lives lost, and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese deaths.
C.I.A. Psychological Study.
"Moreover"—he was not finished—
J. Moussaieff Masson, Final Analysis.
I will even go so far as to say, . . .
Emile Zola, The Debacle.
. . . if a nation . . .
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
—if, that is, . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Ego and The Id.
. . . one’s country . . .
Emile Zola, The Debacle.
. . . is compelled to inflict such terrible destruction for the sake of establishing liberty, then this is indeed an unprecedented national disaster.
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
He said, "I felt as an American citizen, a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this . . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . cesspool of lies . . .
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.
. . . from the American people. I took this action on my own initiative, and I am prepared for all the consequences."
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
This myth of official infallibility must be destroyed.
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.
What makes that description so significant is that it suggests a man who . . . believes sincerely in the values of his time and his society and is ready as well as able to live up to them. This is someone who has formed his ideals and developed his superego in conformity with the standards of his cultural setting. . . . Yet the harmony of his personality has rested on the assumption that the society whose ideals he has integrated has its foundations in an ethical base. K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
As it was, the Crusader felt . . .
Walter Scott, The Talisman.
. . . as if he were . . .
Walter Scott, Ivanhoe.
. . . here in the situation of the truly religious person who has been leading a spotless life in conformity with the demands of the Sacred Texts. If it were now to be proved that these Sacred Texts are fraudulent or forged or otherwise invalid, such a faithful person would be thrown into a crisis . . .
K.R. Eissler, Discourse on Hamlet and HAMLET.
In any case, . . .
Ernest Newman, Wagner as Man and Artist.
. . . Dr. E. . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Saturday, May 18, 1878).
. . . true to the role of a sleuth . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
. . . had learned too much, . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . while the . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
. . . President of the United States . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (editors' notes).
. . . lost face and then tried to save it, either . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . by dissembling . . .
William Shakespeare, King Richard III.
. . . or by ascribing the disastrous outcome . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . of that dissembling . . .
Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol.
. . . to the machinations of . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . the meaner Press—
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . which was ready . . .
Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers.
. . . and eager, as always and everywhere, to pull down anything or anyone elevated by nature above it.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
Without . . .
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.
. . . the ability of a government to keep secrets . . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . said the President . . .
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
. . . I should not be able to guide and direct public affairs in the way I consider best serves the common weal.
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.
But in the end, the . . .
Felicity Barringer, Journalism’s Greatest Hits: Two Lists of a Century’s Top Stories.
. . . CIA psychiatrists . . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . as it turned out—
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . .seemed to admire Ellsberg.
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
Some had praise for his courage, . . .
K.R. Eissler, Crusaders.
. . . although no one . . .
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis.
. . . dared to join him publicly or to give him official support.
K.R. Eissler, Crusaders.
This reaction made . . .
E. James Lieberman, Acts of Will.
. . . the President . . .
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
. . . furious.
E. James Lieberman, Acts of Will.
I can see him now, and hear his . . .
H.G. Wells, Experiment in Autobiography.
. . . convoluted rhetoric and almost surrealistic thoughts, . . .
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
. . . like . . .
Gore Vidal, 1876: A Novel.
. . . Joyce’s Ulysses—strains of presidential consciousness.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
Something had to be done at once.
Joseph Conrad, The Rescue.
But what could . . .
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
. . . The President’s Men . . .
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All The President’s Men.
. . . do? Was not the press outside of the government’s control? The . . .
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
. . . Administration . . .
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
. . . sought to navigate between the imperatives of its foreign policy and those of its domestic policy. What could it do . . .
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
. . . to appease . . .
Emile Gaboriau, The Honor of the Name.
. . . those screaming treason?
Jean-Denis Bredin, The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus.
The simple facts of an . . .
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
. . . intermezzo of the most shameful and insidious kind . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . are now known to be as follows.
Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner.
Several members . . .
Henry Adams, Democracy: An American Novel.
. . . of the President’s . . .
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams.
. . . staff hit . . .
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote.
. . . on the idea of . . .
Henry Adams, Democracy: An American Novel.
. . . sending a message to . . .
Wilkie Collins, A Rogue’s Life.
. . . Mr. Nixon, . . .
Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage.
. . . representing the profile . . .
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.
. . . as "very superficial" and underscoring their belief that the CIA could do a better job. They wrote: "We will meet tomorrow with the head psychiatrist . . . to impress upon him the detail and depth we expect."
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
Thereafter they . . .
Jack London, Created He Them.
. . . arranged a meeting . . .
Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister.
. . . with the President.
Jack London, The Unparalleled Invasion.
How the . . .
L. Frank Baum, The Emerald City.
. . . attorney for . . .
Elden LaMar, The Clothing Workers In Philadelphia: History of Their Struggles for Union and Security.
. . . the President . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . would have liked to have a full record of that meeting!
Elden LaMar, The Clothing Workers In Philadelphia: History of Their Struggles for Union and Security.
In preparing this
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Translator’s Introduction).
. . . account of the meeting . . .
Ralph Connor, The Doctor.
. . . the editors . . .
Mark Twain, Roughing It.
. . . had to contend with a number of . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Translator’s Introduction).
. . . transcript pages . . .
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
. . . which have been blocked out in . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Translator’s Introduction).
. . . the original manuscript . . .
The Diary of Richard Wagner: The Brown Book — 1865-1882 (editor’s introduction).
. . . to prevent disclosure of the truth;
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
. . . presumably.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness.
The quality of the ink used in these . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Translator’s Introduction).
. . . censorship . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams.
. . . operations leaves no doubt that they were performed at some later date, but by whom is an unsolved question.
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Translator’s Introduction).
Mr. Nixon thoroughly disapproved . . .
Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage.
. . . of proceeding with . . .
Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son.
. . . any action, . . .
Edgar B.P. Darlington, The Circus Boys in Dixie Land.
. . . but his staff . . .
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Ambitious Guest.
. . . urged him to . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
. . . carry it out.
Edgar B.P. Darlington, The Circus Boys on the Mississippi.
They then crossed the line into contemplation of criminal activity. "In this connection," they continued, "we would recommend that a covert operation be undertaken . . . ”
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . in stealthy haste . . .
Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung.
. . . to examine all the medical files still held by Ellsberg's psychiatrist . . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
—and discover, as far as opportunity allows, whether there is . . .
William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Modern English Version).
. . . something in those files, something that . . .
Kristine Williams, When The Stars Walk Backwards.
. . . would serve as a . . .
Richard Wagner, My Life.
. . . weapon that . . .
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.
. . . might be . . .
H.G. Wells, A Moonlight Fable.
. . . good enough to attack him with.
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.
The President . . .
Robert Ludlum, The Parsifal Mosaic.
. . . cut off the discussion. “No, no, no,” he said, his voice rising.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
It’s insanity!
Robert Ludlum, The Prometheus Deception.
In the foregoing . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Friday, February 9, 1883) (editors’ emendation).
. . . the offensive word . . .
Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister.
. . . sanitized . . .
The Oxford English Dictionary.
. . . has been . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Friday, February 9, 1883) (editors’ emendation).
. . . inked over . . .
Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection.
. . . with the word . . .
Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage.
. . . insanity.
Jack London, The People of the Abyss.
With the help of various chemical processes . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Translator’s Introduction).
. . . the editors . . .
Mark Twain, Roughing It.
. . . succeeded in bringing most of the obliterated passages . . .
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Translator’s Introduction).
. . . in the . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Evil Genius.
. . . tapes, transcripts, and notes of . . .
Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Professions.
. . . Nixon’s . . .
Mark Twain, Christian Science.
. . . six-year . . .
Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Professions.
. . . Presidency . . .
International Psychoanalytic Association Newsletter.
. . . back to light, and they are now included in the text with an identification.
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Translator’s Introduction).
Have you lost your . . .
Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung.
[left blank]
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Sunday, February 11,1883) (editors’ emendation).
. . . senses?
Richard Wagner, Gotterdammerung.
Let us be silent, let us be silent . . .
Richard Wagner, Letter to Judith Gautier.
. . . said the President, . . .
Robert Ludlum, The Parsifal Mosaic.
. . . nothing, not a single word of this disastrous business must be made public.
Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People.
Leave it unrevealed!—
Richard Wagner, Parsifal.
Added at the bottom of the page:
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries (Sunday, February 4, 1883) (editors’ emendation).
. . . the reader might be overwhelmed by the tone and ignore the substantive support for the President’s version.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
From what I can gather, . . .
Robert Ludlum, The Parsifal Mosaic.
. . . Ellsberg had been psychoanalyzed . . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . for several years;
Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Mucker.
. . . a couple of Government . . .
Zane Grey, The Young Forester.
. . . agents had attempted to grill. . .
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
. . . Mr. Fielding, . . .
Horatio Alger, Cast Upon the Breakers.
. . . the psychiatrist, but he had demurred, invoking the sanctity of the doctor-patient relationship.
William Manchester, The Glory and the Dream.
And there it stood.
John Le Carre, The Night Manager.
Let us remember that . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Case of Wagner.
A physician has . . . to possess . . . the subtlety of an agent of police or an advocate in comprehending the secrets of the soul without betraying them —
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human.
How much did . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . the President . . .
Robert Ludlum, The Parsifal Mosaic.
. . . suspect or know?
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
“To be honest, I have no idea. I believe the . . .
Robert Ludlum, The Prometheus Deception.
. . . full extent of the . . .
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.
. . . operation was . . .
Henry James, Confidence.
. . . concealed from him
Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers.
Partly to protect the president from knowing too much about wet work and other sordid business, to provide him with plausible deniability . . .
Robert Ludlum, The Prometheus Deception.
. . . in the face of . . .
Henry James, In the Cage.
. . . the powers and limitations . . .
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Guardian Angel.
. . . inherent in the constitution . . .
Karen Horney, New Ways in Psychoanalysis.
. . . that is, . . .
Henry James, In the Cage.
. . . the restrictions . . .
Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage.
. . . inherent in the office.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days.
That’s standard operating procedure in intelligence outfits worldwide. And partly, I’m sure, because the president is considered by the permanent intelligence community to be a mere tenant of the White House. A renter. He moves in for four years, maybe eight if he’s lucky, buys new china, redecorates, hires and fires, gives a bunch of speeches, . . .
Robert Ludlum, The Prometheus Deception.
. . . and large dinner-parties, . . .
Jane Austen, Emma.
. . . and then he’s gone. Whereas the spies remain. They’re the permanent Washington, the true inheritors.”
Robert Ludlum, The Prometheus Deception.
It . . .
Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id.
. . . is very difficult for Americans—who are, on the whole, accustomed to open and direct dealing—to give full weight to this . . .
Raymond A. Bauer, Alex Inkeles, & Clyde Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System Works.
. . . principle of preservation . . .
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species.
. . . as I call it.
Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset.
Perhaps only those who have had fairly intimate and sustained contact with . . .
Raymond A. Bauer, Alex Inkeles, & Clyde Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System Works.
. . . the underground ways . . .
Richard Wagner, ‘The Capitulation’ (sketch for a planned farce).
. . . of secret intelligence . . .
Edith Wharton, The Reef.
. . . have a picture that approaches imaginative reality. The deviousness of behavior, the disposition to “read between the lines” and to interpret the acts of others at several different levels, the whole system of wheels within wheels—all of this is so foreign to American experience and psychology that it is all too easy to laugh it off as “E. Phillips Oppenheim stuff.”
Raymond A. Bauer, Alex Inkeles, & Clyde Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System Works.
As for the evidence . . .
Wilkie Collins, The Law and the Lady.
Well, I say, . . .
Jack London, At the End of the Rainbow.
. . . it’s not . . .
John Galsworthy, Beyond.
. . . like the overture of an opera in which all the themes are announced.
Janet Malcolm, Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession.
Explaining the origin of . . .
David Berlinski, Has Darwin Met His Match?
. . . covert operations . . .
Robert Ludlum, The Parsifal Mosaic.
. . . by an appeal to . . .
David Berlinski, Has Darwin Met His Match?
. . . tangible evidence . . .
Jack London, Burning Daylight.