weekend

I'm going to visit friends in Oxford this weekend and, while I'm hoping to blog as normal on Saturday and Sunday, there's some possibility that I won't have enough time online to do so. If I can I will. If not, I'll be back on Monday...

the margin of luck

Something that surfaces here now and again is the relationship between, on the one hand, skill, effort, or preparation, and, on the other, chance, grace, and luck - between what one can do for oneself and what comes from elsewhere, eluding human control. For simplicity, I'll talk about these as internal and external factors. Skill, effort, and preparation aren't identical concepts but they are all internal to the agent and, to some extent, susceptible to control. Likewise, chance, grace, and luck aren't all the same but can all be seen as external to the agent, operating in spite of the efforts made to influence them.

The book I bought when I went to see my parents includes an essay by Tim Goode called 'Catching Big Fish' and the essay tells an interesting story about the history of this specialist area of angling:

Before World War II, the capture of a big fish was regarded as a matter of good fortune. The possibility of narrowing the margin of luck was hardly considered and, if it was, disregarded. The concept of a man directing his angling towards the capture of 'glass-case-sized' fish would have been greeted with laughter.

Goode goes on to explain that attitudes changed in the years immediately after the war, when a small group of anglers began developing techniques to improve their chances of landing really enormous specimens of carp. (The idea of searching for astonishing individuals from different species of fish gave rise to the name of this branch of angling - 'specimen fishing'.)

I'm interested in this story - the reconceptualisation of something originally seen as a question of luck into a matter of skill. This, I think, feels like the narrative of technology more broadly: 'This is not a matter of chance or fortune - we can prevent the illness, build the flood defences, predict when the earthquake will come.' But, in spite of our technological advances, a sense of the external still haunts us. In fact, the very distinction between the internal and external becomes more complex all the time. As science has more to tell us about the life of the individual - the factors that produce our characters, capabilities, weaknesses, and proclivities, we (collectively) have more control but we (individually) may have less, and the very opposition between inside and outside becomes a less familiar terrain and one that feels a little frightening to walk through.

Writing is variously described as a craft (internal) or something gifted to the writer (external). There are now many guides for writers which characterise the process as similar to the story of the king and the fisherboy - the wonderful catch is, to some extent, a matter of chance or of providence, but it will never happen if you don't turn up regularly and cast your line into the sea. Similarly, you can never be sure that what you write will be good. You can only make it possible for grace or chance or luck to intervene by sitting down regularly and writing.

There is nothing very profound in what I've said here but the relationship between internal and external is figured powerfully in the imagery of fishing and perhaps nowhere more than in the competition between the angler and the fish on the line - a direct struggle between the skill, preparation, and effort mustered by the self and that other will, pitted against your own, fighting with all its might to elude your control.

Stuffed fish in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. [By Herry Lawford [CC-BY-2.(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.]

angling for fake philosophers

Lucian of Samosata was a satirist who wrote in Greek in the second century AD, a period known to literary scholars as the Second Sophistic. His dialogue, The Dead Come to Life or The Fisherman, constitutes a reply to the criticism that had greeted an earlier work, Philosophies for Sale, in which he had been seen as satirising the ancient philosophers whose ideas formed the basis of the schools of thought current in his own period. 

In the later work, Lucian's alter ego, Parresiades (or 'Frankness') is put on trial in Athens for his slanders and the ancient philosophers themselves come back from the dead to accuse him. 'Pelt him,' shouts Socrates leading the attack:

Pelt the scoundrel with plenty of stones! Heap him with clods! Pile him up with broken dishes too! Beat the blackguard with your sticks! Look out he doesn't get away! Throw, Plato, you too, Chrysippus.

Parresiades claims that his scorn is not directed at the ancient philosophers themselves but at their descendants in the contemporary period who have not been willing to appear in their own defence. Some are lured up to the Acropolis with promises of money, but, as soon as they realise that they are to to be judged, they scarper again. 'What is this?' says Philosophy (who is presiding over the proceedings), 'Are you running away? By Heaven they are, most of them jumping over the cliffs! The Acropolis is empty.'

In the end, Parresiades borrows a hook, a line, and a rod that have been dedicated in the temple by the fishermen of Piraeus, baits the hook with a strange combination of figs and gold, and then casts the line down into the town below and goes fishing for fake philosophers. They begin to bite immediately and, as they are pulled up, the authentic ancients comment on them, much as anglers might, in reality, comment on specimens pulled from the water.

Here is the scene as Parresiades lands a dogfish and shows him to the philosopher, Diogenes. (The joke is that Diogenes was one of the founders of Cynic philosophy, the name of which comes from the Greek term kynikos (κυνικός) or dog-like, in part - it appears - because of the Cynics' refusal of conventional modes of life and their insistence on eating and sleeping in the streets.)

He is up! Come, let me see what you are, my good fish. A dogfish! Heracles, what teeth! How about it, my fine fellow? Caught, were you, gormandizing about the rocks, where you hoped to skip under cover and keep out of sight? But now you will be in public view, hung up by the gills! Let us take out the hook and the bait. No, by Zeus, he has swallowed it! Here is your hook, all bare; the fig and the gold are secure in his insides.

The useless fish are thrown back into the town and the dialogue ends with Philosophy sending Parresiades out into the streets to brand the impostors with a fox- or ape-shaped mark.

Fishing for philosophical charlatans - I must watch out for the hooks! Wouldn't want to end up suspended by the gills from the top of Park Hill. (Or branded with a fox-shaped mark for that matter...)

Dogfish.

proverbial 3

From John Collins' Dictionary of Spanish Proverbs, published in 1834 and 'compiled from the best authorities in the Spanish language':

jörmungandr

Jörmungandr - the Midgard Serpent - is the sea monster of Norse mythology and bears some resemblance to Leviathan. The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturlason tells of a battle between the serpent and the god, Thor, who - throughout the story is disguised as a young man.

Thor set out, wearing his disguise and persuaded the giant, Hymir, to take him fishing. The giant refused to share his bait with his visitor, so Thor lopped the head from Hymir's biggest ox and took it with him in the boat. He rowed far out to sea and Hymir protested that this was the territory of the fearsome Midgard Serpent. But - unabashed - the god baited a hook with the ox-head and cast his line into the sea. Caught by the hook, the serpent struggled and Thor's efforts to land him were so ferocious that his feet went straight through the bottom of the boat and dug into into the bed of the sea itself. Finally, Thor succeeded in pulling the serpent into the boat but Hymir was so afraid that he seized his knife and cut the line so that the creature sank back into the deep and is living there still, far out at sea. In his fury, 'Thor clenched his fist and gave Hymir a box on the ear so that he fell overboard head first'. Then the god himself 'waded ashore', presumably looking a lot less like a 'scrap' of a boy by this point!

Two things occur to me about this story. One arises from Johan's point about the wisdom of the young. I think it's important that the god comes to Hymir disguised as a 'youth'. I'm not sure why this is necessary - would it be such a problem if the giant knew the truth of Thor's identity? In a way, the point seems to be that Hymir underestimates the young man, whom we know to have the power of a god at his disposal but who, for the giant, is just a 'scrap of a young fellow. You might object that the youth who approaches Hymir is not 'really' a young man. But perhaps this is one of those stories of recognition.(Treat the stranger kindly for a stranger may be a god in disguise.) It is always possible that a youthful body may hide a powerful moral purpose and a great deal more strength than one imagines.

The other thing to mention is that the image of Thor's struggle with Jörmungandr is appropriated to a Christian purpose on a stone cross from the Anglo-Saxon period to be found in the churchyard of St Mary's at Gosforth in Cumbria, a point made by Robert Eisler in Orpheus The Fisher (published in 1921 - and, yes, there's lots more in that book that I should blog about!). '[T]he German myth of the god Thor, angling for the Midgard-snake from a boat, is,' he says, 'a distant mirage' of the same 'primeval Oriental myth' that is preserved in the story of Leviathan. And on the Gosforth cross, the two tales are reunited when the story of Thor is used 'as a simile for Christ's victory over the ancient dragon'.

The simile is not, I'd have thought, perfect. Thor does not - in fact - succeed in killing the serpent, at least not during his fishing trip with Hymir. Another confrontation will come at the time of Ragnarök, the cataclysm in which the whole world, including the sphere of the gods, will be reordered fundamentally and entirely. At this point the serpent will be defeated, although so - it seems - will Thor himself, who will not live on into the future that comes after the destruction of the world in water.

Whatever the nature of the comparison, though, the story clearly remained important in Christian times and there is another stone fragment in the church at Gosforth which also depicts a figure, possibly Thor, out fishing in a boat. To the left is a drawing of that image, originally published in 1913 in Finnur Jónsson's Goðafræði Norðmanna og Íslendinga eftir heimildum and usefully available via wikimedia commons. The hook and line are huge and thick. But perhaps they need to be - after all, the fish themselves are dauntingly large.

gone fishin'

Nuff said.

leviathan

I wrote here about St Cyprian's image of God overcoming death with a hook concealed in the body of Christ. The extraordinary drawing below derives from the Hortus Deliciarum - an illuminated work by the 12th-century abbess of the Hohenburg Abbey, Herrad von Landsburg - and it realises very much the same figure in graphic form. The creature at the bottom is Leviathan - the sea-monster of the Hebrew Bible and the text that I've placed beside the picture - it doesn't appear in the Hortus - is the speech by which God reminds Job of the extent of his power in the book of Job 41: 1-10:

Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? Or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?
Canst thou put an hook into his nose? Or bore his jaw through with a thorn?

Will he make many supplications unto thee? Will he speak soft words unto thee?
Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?
Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? O wilt thou bind him for thy maidens?

Shall the companions make a banquet of him? Shall they part him among the merchants?
Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? Or his head with fish spears?

Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more.
Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him?
None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?

At the top of the drawing, God demonstrates exactly this power to 'draw out leviathan with a hook', and, as in Cyprian's image, the bait is Christ.  But along the line here are the heads of the patriarchs and this is appropriate for a drawing that stands between the Old and New Testament pictures, a sign of continuity and connection bridging the progressive stages of the covenant.