This is for everyone, but especially for anyone who has been told by persons untrained in literature and unaware of the labyrinth which is autobiography, that it is “dishonest” to have a writing persona which does not correspond to a “true” self.
“To the Strand, to my bookseller’s, and there bought an idle, rogueish French book, L’escholle des Filles, which I have bought in plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound, because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them, if it should be found.” Even in our day, when responsibility is so much more clearly apprehended, the man who wrote the letter would be notable; but what about the man, I do not say who bought a roguish book, but who was ashamed of doing so, yet did it, and recorded both the doing and the shame in the pages of his daily journal?
We all, whether we write or speak, must somewhat drape ourselves when we address our fellows; at a given moment we apprehend our character and acts by some particular side; we are merry with one, grave with another, as befits the nature and demands of the relation. Pepys’ letter to Evelyn would have little in common with that other one to Mrs. Knipp which he signed by the pseudonym of Dapper Dicky; yet each would be suitable to the character of his correspondent. There is no untruth in this, for man, being a Protean animal, swiftly shares and changes with his company and surroundings; and these changes are the better part of his education in the world. To strike a posture once for all, and to march through life like a drum-major, is to be highly disagreeable to others and a fool for oneself into the bargain. To Evelyn and to Knipp we understand the double facing; but to whom was he posing in the Diary, and what, in the name of astonishment, was the nature of the pose? . . .
That was R. L. Stevenson on Samuel Pepys. And Pepys, the diarist, is of course blogging. And on the “true self,” Borges said in an essay from the early 1920s: “no hay tal yo de conjunto.”
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Perhaps some of us are simply more protean in our natures than others are? This is another aspect of things that I have lately come to consider. I had thought the life and the environment one enters changes people. While this is true, perhaps people are generally less changed by factors such as these than I had thought. My own training in the humanities gives me a philosophy — a paradigm if you will — of human plasticity. But what of those brought up to feel that they have only one “soul” and that this soul is immutable?
I have been in touch with old school friends, whom I would have thought had experiences the bumps of life that bring about changes, like I have endured.
Yet where I expected change and the characterological complexity that comes from dealing with hard situations, I have not found a different philosophical attitude to have been wrought in the minds of my friends. They are more similar to their old selves, at least on appearance, than they are different.
For me, everything has changed. I used to be very nervous about a lot of things, and this quality of timorousness lasted with me up until my mid-twenties, when I found myself cornered in a ring, not even fully realising yet that I was in a fight, but with a switch flicking in my head saying, “fight back or die emotionally while thinking about it.”
So, I’ve changed. And while these days I sometimes still feel a flicker of the timorous quality which used to be me, when I move to act it’s almost like a different spirit has inhabited my brain and limbs. I feel the apprehensiveness that precedes doing something, but this flow of thought does not pass into my movements or actions, which have become slow, full of will and certainty, deliberate.
Yet, speaking to my old school friends who had expected the old me to appear — tender, passive and reactive — I sometimes wonder whether it is a betrayal that I can’t make her appear at all. I don’t know where this other person has gone. Am I faking being my present self? My limbs and mind just won’t react in quick anxiety-ridden fashion as they had once been used to.
I think they haven’t evolved. But even so they are multiple. Yes, I also think I am more Protean than the median. But still I think everyone is multiple.
Now I want to read Wallace Stevens’ “Esthétique du Mal” in a complete version, but I cannot find one.
They are multiple, perhaps, and in some ways almost certainly, but maybe the question ought not to be viewed so much as a lack of evolution but as a lack of the intellectual catalyst (exposure to ideas) that would enable one to conceptualise change within oneself as an inevitability. Of course bourgeois ideologies mitigate against such a recognition, because it is necessary to see individuals as remaining the same if they are to remain calculable within the socio-political sphere.
Is this then why it is said that change is so difficult? I have never been daunted by it but it seems one is expected to find it a terrible thing.
I don’t think I’ve been daunted by it quite, either, although I don’t quite appreciate all changes. Here is a passage from Nietzsche that I have always found puzzling:
“But it is this very pride that now makes it almost impossible for us to feel with those vast spans of time characterized by the “morality of mores” which antedate “world history” as the real and decisive main history that determined the character of humanity—when suffering was a virtue, cruelty a virtue, dissimulation a virtue, revenge a virtue, the slander of reason a virtue, while well-being was a danger, the craving for knowledge a danger, peace a danger, pity a danger, being pitied ignominy, work ignominy, madness divine, change immoral and pregnant with disaster.— You think that all this has changed, and that humanity must thus have changed its character? O you who think you know men, learn to know yourselves better!”
Is he not just saying we are primitive underneath our sophisticated modern veneer? (An old thesis.) Perhaps I read too simply. Anyway it caused me to search for his music, which is very interesting.
Yeah, I think he is saying so. But what I don’t get is why the primitives thought change was bad. I mean, how can madness be divine and change be bad in the same sentence?
I think divine instead of just a clinical problem … everything was magical and/or a physical challenge … things were dangerous and there was no time for pity … divine madness and horror of change aren’t intrinsically connected … but change would always be dangerous because the world was dangerous and had no safety nets … mammoths you know, and onslaughts of winter and ice … 😉
Ah! Perhaps it should say, “divinity was perceived in madness” rather than “madness was divine”. Because otherwise it reads as a kind of suggestion of glorifying unpredictability — which is a form of change.
-— which is glorifying a form of change.
–ah. it’s hot here. Too hot.
“divinity was perceived in madness”
Yes. Here, it’s cold! 40 degrees F and damp! And on the weekend it will thunder and rain!
I wish that here it would thunder and rain. I long for a real sense of a society sensitive to the cycles and transformations of nature.
What I believe is that no one cares especially about what anyone else is like, beyond a few close relationships. I don’t mind that. I’m perfectly content to have lots of contingent and instrumental relationships.
Bush, now, likes to look into people’s souls, but he always washes his hands after he’s been around them.
H – I do care though about the general question of whether there is such a thing as a fixed identity, how that works and what it would mean.
J – Even if it thunders and rains here, we are still not attuned to nature!
Half a day at the polling booth, and a half a day to go.
OMG it is today! How exciting – good luck – and there are so many parties there, it is so *refreshing* !!!
54 candidates state wide.
Mike may have obviously spoilt his ballot by numbering all boxes but only getting to 52.