Can a Ghost Laugh?

By Peter Frankopan, 2015

Finished

This was my first "history of the world" type book, and my memory was heavily tested. I think books like this are super helpful to get an overview of the general timeline of history, but should probably be read every 4-5 years, with most historical reading focused on either specific places or people (Ex: Eternal City for Rome or a Ben Franklin biography). If I just read sweeping "history of the world" type books it would be difficult to retain much more than a vague notion of any one period or historical event. I like the distinct perspective that following one person or place gives to the story of the world.

That's not to say books like The Silk Roads are not helpful. The retention rate may be low because there is so much stuffed in there and so many place names and rulers and wars that it is impossible to keep it all straight, but it gets you a step closer to seeing clearly the whole picture of world history. If a biography on Ben Franklin is holding a magnifying glass to a tiny section of a huge painting and seeing the brushstrokes, then a book like The Silk Roads is like seeing the ceiling of the sistine chapel out the window of a car going 60 on the highway. Does that make any sense? It's blurry, sure, but at least you see the whole thing for a second.

I saw a review of this book which has stuck with me that went something like this: We are told all the time that we study history so that we can avoid the mistakes of the past, but really, after looking at the history of the world as a whole, we read history to see what is inevitably going to happen. People in power will cling tightly to that power. Short term resolutions will triumph over long term solutions. People and governments will talk out of both sides of their mouth, saying whatever needs to be said to get ahead, regardless of what’s actually going on. Revolutions against the powerful often have to resort to extremism to get enough anger and enough momentum to actually turn the tables on the powerful quickly, but as a result risk slipping into tyranny themselves, leaving the average person no better off, or at least worse off than a more measured approach would have yielded, but it’s hard to create a rallying cry around patience and even-handedness.

By Charles Lamb, 1821

Finished, essay

This is my first time reading anything from Charles Lamb, a witty and observant writer from the late 1700s and early 1800s. In New Year’s Eve, he talks about his fear of the passing years. On this monumental day, in which “all date their time, and count upon what is left,” he cannot manage to match the merriness of those around home who cheer as the bells toll, signalling the death of one year and the birth of the next.

Why is this? For one thing, the past is easier to reckon with than the present. He is more readily able to withstand past disappointments than present ones. He is more able to forgive past slights than present ones. He is more able to pine over past loves than search for a present one. But beyond just the ease of narrativizing and romanticizing the past, he has “less respect for his present identity.” He describes his present self as, “light, and vain… a stammering buffoon,” but for his past, childhood self, that “other me,” he has endless praise. He prefers the young self to the “stupid changeling of five-and-forty.”

After putting himself down, he finally gets around to what is really bothering him about the changing of the new year. He says:

“The young man till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December.”

This is the true discomfort: he doesn’t want to die, and the turning of the year makes the scarcity of life too obvious, too unavoidable.

“I care not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly bears human life to eternity; and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth.”

He fears death, yes, but he also loves life. He would not trade one for the other, no matter the promises of joy that wait on the other side. What could the afterlife offer that makes giving up the fruits of life worth it?

“Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields…” Lamb goes on and on about the joys of life and wonders, “do these things go out with life?” If so, he cannot fathom those who “hail the end of their existence as a port of refuge.” To put it plainly: “Can a ghost laugh?”

The thing he fears to lose that resonates with me the most is, of course, reading:

“Must I part with the intense delight of having you [books] in my embrace? Must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of reading?”

No books in the afterlife? Count me out.

In my favorite line of the essay, when he has finished venting his fears about death, he lets out a bit of biting humour directed at those who have died:

“Every dead man must take it upon himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that ‘such as he now is, I must shortly be.’ Not so shortly, friend, perhaps, as thou imaginist. In the meantime I am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. Know thy betters!”

Lamb finishes his essay by trying to cheer himself up by reading some poetry. He picks out one, The New Year, by Charles Cotton (1630-1687), which describes the coming of the new year, but in far cheerier terms. Here’s my favorite line:

Cotton ends our essay with a heavy dose of positivity to even out Lamb’s fretting, and luckily, the poetry works to soothe his worried mind.

“Where be those puling fears of death, just now expressed?… passed like a cloud – absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry.”

I have gotten the first six lines of Walt Whitman’s poem O Me! O Life! shakily memorized. Progress! It’s not very hard in the moment to commit several lines to memory, the trick is to be able to recall them a few hours or a day later. But those first six are getting pretty set in my head now.

It has, not suprisingly, increased my appreciation for the poem quite a bit, and proven to me that memorization is not only doable, but useful for close reading of poetry. Here it is in full:

I love how “O me! O life!” is the perfect eight letter summary of the biggest questions humans have been asking since the very beginning. I love what seems to be a comparison of two types of people, both falling short. Those that “vainly crave the light,” and those that spend “empty and useless years.” Whitman puts himself in that second group – “the rest.” I am still confused by the line “of the objects mean.” Is that literally asking what the objects mean – as in trying to place purpose on things that maybe don’t have it. Or is it objects as in objectives, and we have mean, or poor, objectives?

The memorization continues this week.

Until next time.