In the mid-decade, researchers have been researching large scale scientific studies on major archival documents. Certain things could be said about the emergence of trends that produce books of historical and religious personnel in the format of published archival files, which first appear when introduced: the opening of an archive, the preservation of the regime of inaccessible funds that allow scientists to access primary sources. In connection with this topic, this study is relevant and relevant.

The relevance of the topic is primarily due to the fact that in recent years the Protestant churches of Ukraine have increasingly been directing activities towards raising the educational level of their pastors and believers. The proportion of Protestants among university students who receive state diplomas in various specialties is noticeably increasing. Obviously, the emergence of such a tendency is not coincidental and is connected with the desire of Protestant organizations to increase their influence in order to achieve a more (...) successful policy of proselytism. (shrink)

Previous studies have shown that the perception of neutral emotion stimuli can be negative rather than absolutely neutral. In the current study, we examined the negative bias of both neutral faces...

Este estudio emprende, desde el marco del Metalenguaje Semántico Natural desarrollado por Wierzbicka y algunos colegas, un detallado análisis semántico contrastivo y comparativo de dos conceptos de emoción: bei y ai , que son considerados como emociones básicas en los textos filosóficos chinos tradicionales. En él se demuestra que: a) de ninguna manera son intercambiables, ni equivalentes a la idea occidental de tristeza, b) son artefactos de la cultura china, conformados por las experiencias morales y sociales del pueblo chino y (...) su visión de la vida y del universo. En esencia, bei comporta una visión fatalista y ai es una emoción moral. Esto lleva a la autora a poner en duda el postulado de universalidad basado en la visión arraigada en la lengua inglesa, y llama a los investigadores a prestar atención al marco analítico empleado en la búsqueda de aspectos universales de las emociones humanas. (shrink)

This paper examines the different ways in which the body is linguistically codified in the Chinese language of emotions. The three general modes of emotion description under examination are via (a) externally observable (involuntary) bodily changes, (b) sensation, and (c) figurative bodily images. While an attempt is made to introduce a typology of sub-categories within each mode of emotion description, the paper focuses on the meaning of different iconic descriptions through the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM). On one hand, the linguistic (...) evidence, from a Chinese perspective, attests to the emotional universals proposed by Wierzbicka (1999). On the other, it points to cultural diversity in bodily conceptualisation and interpretation in emotional experiences, which are crystallised in linguistic conventions of Chinese emotion talk, including certain syntactic constructions. This paper also demonstrates the importance of examining the language of emotions in emotion studies, and concludes that a full account of emotions must include the examination of the language of emotions. (shrink)

This paper proposes the modified generalization of the HSS to solve a large and sparse continuous Sylvester equation, improving the efficiency and robustness. The analysis shows that the MGHSS converges to the unique solution of AX + XB = C unconditionally. We also propose an inexact variant of the MGHSS and prove its convergence under certain conditions. Numerical experiments verify the efficiency of the proposed methods.

The dissertation studies the mathematical strength of strict constructivism, a finitistic fragment of Bishop's constructivism, and explores its implications in the philosophy of mathematics. ;It consists of two chapters and four appendixes. Chapter 1 presents strict constructivism, shows that it is within the spirit of finitism, and explains how to represent sets, functions and elementary calculus in strict constructivism. Appendix A proves that the essentials of Bishop and Bridges' book Constructive Analysis can be developed within strict constructivism. Appendix B further (...) develops, within strict constructivism, the essentials of the functional analysis applied in quantum mechanics, including the spectral theorem, Stone's theorem, and the self-adjointness of some common quantum mechanical operators. Some comparisons with other related work, in particular, a comparison with S. Simpson's partial realization of Hilbert's program, and a discussion of the relevance of M. B. Pour-El and J. I. Richards' negative results in recursive analysis are given in Appendix C. ;Chapter 2 explores the possible philosophical implications of these technical results. It first suggests a fictionalistic account for the ontology of pure mathematics. This leaves a puzzle about how truths about fictional mathematical entities are applicable to science. The chapter then explains that for those applications of mathematics that can be reduced to applications of strict constructivism, fictional entities can be eliminated in the applications and the puzzle of applicability can be resolved. Therefore, if strict constructivism were essentially sufficient for all scientific applications, the applicability of mathematics of mathematics in science would be accountable. The chapter then argues that the reduction of mathematics to strict constructivism also reduces the epistemological question about mathematics to that about elementary arithmetic. The dissertation ends with a suggestion that a proper epistemological basis for arithmetic is perhaps a mixture of Mill's empiricism and the Kantian views. (shrink)

If we appeal to God when our technology (including medicine) fails, we assume a “ God of the gaps.” It is religiously preferable to appreciate technological competence. Our successes challenge, however, religious convictions. Modifying words and images is not enough, as technology affects theology more deeply. This is illustrated by the history of chemistry. Chemistry has been perceived as wanting to transform and purify reality rather than to understand the created order. Thus, unlike biology and physics, chemistry did not provide (...) a fertile basis for natural theologies. It is argued that an active, transformative role of humans is appropriate in biblically inspired religions and called for in the light of imperfections and evil in the world. When the expression “playing God” is used dismissively, as if we trespass upon God–given territory, a theologically problematical association of God and the given order is assumed. A different view of the human calling can be articulated by drawing upon the Christian heritage and by developing an antinatural religious naturalism. (shrink)

Constructive (productive) thinking in the critical philosophy of Hermann Cohen differs significantly from the seemingly similar speculative thinking in J. G. Fichte’s Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) (1794/95). The fundamental characteristics of scientific thinking in Cohen’s teaching include: purity, focus on the “fact of science”, the origin (Ursprung), the infinitesimal method, continuity, movement, production, correlation, intensive magnitude, interrelation of thinking and being. According to Cohen, scientific thinking can only be pure and generated by the origin. The origin is continuous action (movement) (...) of thinking to separate the united and bind the divided content. In this process, thinking and being are correlative. Infinitely small reality contains thinking and being simultaneously as a union and in a divided form. The infinitesimal method is thinking that continuously carries out a) the operations of opposing itself as pure thinking to the results of its own production; b) the coincidence of itself with the products of its own generation. Infinitesimal thinking seeks to eliminate the difference between self and being. Nevertheless, being constantly retains autonomy. Being does not merge with thinking and is not absorbed by it. In Fichte’s Science of Knowledge pure thinking moves in a logical circle, having no access into real being. In an effort to break out of this circle and find its causality, thinking turns not to the being of the world of phenomena, but to the Absolute I. Such a speculative approach to consciousness, thinking and being has little in common with Cohen’s critical position. (shrink)

People who expect to be successful in regulating their emotions tend to experience less frequent negative emotions and are less likely to suffer from depression. It is not clear, however, whether beliefs about the likelihood of success in emotion regulation can shape actual emotion regulation success. To test this possibility, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the likelihood of success in emotion regulation and assessed their subsequent ability to regulate their emotions during a negative emotion induction. We found that participants who (...) were led to expect emotion regulation to be more successful were subsequently more successful in regulating their emotional responses, compared to participants in the control condition. Our findings demonstrate that expected success can contribute to actual success in emotion regulation. (shrink)

In this paper, a personalized online education platform based on a collaborative filtering algorithm is designed by applying the recommendation algorithm in the recommendation system to the online education platform using a cross-platform compatible HTML5 and high-performance framework hybrid programming approach. The server-side development adopts a mature B/S architecture and the popular development model, while the mobile terminal uses HTML5 and framework to implement the function of recommending personalized courses for users using collaborative filtering and recommendation algorithms. By improving the (...) traditional recommendation algorithm based on collaborative filtering, the course recommendation results are more in line with users' interests, which greatly improves the accuracy and efficiency of the recommendation. On this basis, online teaching on this platform is divided into two modes: one mode is the original teacher uploads recorded teaching videos and students can learn by purchasing online or offline download; the other mode is interactive online live teaching. Each course is a separate online classroom; the teacher will publish online class information in advance, and students can purchase to get classroom number and password information online. (shrink)

After the completion of I. Kant’s “Copernican” turn in metaphysics, all subsequent European philosophy to one degree or another was under his influence. The purpose of the article is to consider the reception and transformation of the Kantian theoretical philosophy by the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. It is necessary to analyze the reasons for H. Cohen's and P. Natorp’s interpretation of Kant's criticism. To do this, one should consider (i) internalist and (ii) externalist factors in the formation of the Marburg (...) School. Neo-Kantianism, on the one hand, emerged as a response to materialism, naturalism, and post-Kantian German idealism. In addition, the Marburg School was strongly influenced by the change in the scientific paradigm in mathematical natural science at the end of the 19th century. The justification by the Marburgers of Kant’s a priori doctrine presupposed thematization, first of all, of: a) purity of thought; b) systematic unity of thought and experience; c) the orientation of philosophy to the “fact of science”; d) transcendental method. As a result, the Marburg School interpreted the Kantian concept of the unity of consciousness; abandoned the principle of synthetic (real) unity of consciousness in favor of systematic (logical) unity; substantiated the purity of scientific thinking; put forward the requirement of orientation of philosophy to the “fact of science”; developed the concept of the origin of thinking (Ursprung); abandoned the idea of “givenness” of the subject of knowledge and proved its “assignment”; changed the understanding of the essence and functions of the transcendental method; put forward the concept of thinking as “generation” (“production”); formulated a new understanding a priori. The changes that took place in the 19th century in philosophy, mathematical natural science and mathematical sciences led to a sharp activation of constructivism. It can be concluded that Kant’s epistemological paradigm was realistic constructivism. Pure constructivism became the paradigm of the Marburg School. (shrink)

We presuppose a position of scientific realism to the effect (i) that the world exists and (ii) that through the working out of ever more sophisticated theories our scientific picture of reality will approximate ever more closely to the world as it really is. Against this background consider, now, the following question: 1. Do the empirical theories with the help of which we seek to approximate a good or true picture of reality rest on any non-empirical presuppositions? One can answer (...) this question with either a 'yes' or a 'no'. 'No' is the preferred answer of most contemporary methodologists -- Murray Rothbard is one distinguished counterexample to this trend -- who maintain that empirical theories are completely free of non-empirical ('a priori') admixtures and who see science as a matter of the gathering of pure 'data' obtained through simple observation. From such data scientific propositions are then supposed to be somehow capable of being established. (shrink)

‘Apologetics’ is hardly a word to be used without apology in the present dispensation. And to speak of anything like a neglected avenue or opportunity in religious apologetics might almost seem as if one were speaking of an opportunity in just such an enterprise as no self-respecting philosopher would nowadays wish even to be associated with. For all of their avoidance of the term, however, the thing designated by the term is something with which not a few philosophers of recent (...) years have been not above dabbling in, albeit usually under other names and other labels. After all, religious language has now come to be recognized as not just a legitimate, but even a fashionable object of philosophic attention. And a concern with religious language has often brought with it a concern with religious attitudes, religious behaviour, religious argumentation — yes, even to the point of occasionally becoming a concern with the very religious realities themselves that religious language, religious attitudes, religious behaviour, and religious argument are presumably all about. True, religious realities in this sense are to today's garden of philosophy pretty much what the tree of knowledge once was to the garden of Eden. In fact, one even suspects that there could be a serpent about somewhere, for cases have been reported of an occasional philosopher Adam or philosopher Eve having yielded to temptation: a consideration of God-talk has been known to lead to cautious admissions that such talk might be cognitively meaningful; a consideration of God-experiences to the admission that such experiences under certain circumstances could be veridical; or, even more rarely, a consideration of proofs for God's existence to the gingerly admission that at least some of these proofs might just possibly be valid. Needless to say, though, such a yielding to temptation on the part of some few contemporary philosophers, while it may not have led to any manifest sewing together of fig-leaves, has certainly brought with it the danger, if not always the reality, of a supercilious expulsion from the glorious Eden of contemporary professional philosophy. (shrink)

Recent discussion has focused on whether or not to teach moral theories, and, if yes, to what extent. In this piece the author argues that the criticisms of teaching moral theories raised by Rob Lawlor should lead us to reconsider not whether but how to teach moral theories. It seems that most of the problems Lawlor identifies derive from an uncritical, theory-led approach to teaching. It is suggested that we might instead start by discussing practical cases or the desiderata of (...) a successful moral theory, and then build up to comparing theories such as consequentialism, deontology, and so on. In this way, theories are taught but students do not take them to be the alpha and omega of moral thinking. (shrink)

The total ideology of the revolutionary-political themes of Ukrainian consciousness of the twentieth century, the poetization of the absurdly inverted hierarchy of values, was opposed by the new generation of artists with their philosophical and ethical orientation of their creativity. As I.Franko notes, they "... sought a completely modern European way to portray the peculiarity of the life of the Ukrainian people," revealing the unique collisionality of human existence, the diversity of psychological types, ideological orientations, and the human experience of (...) its existence on the background of this difficult time. However, Ukrainian writersphilosophers who talently laid the foundations of national culture, but are now returning to the generations of the Shattered Renaissance, filling black and bloody spots of troubled history of Ukraine. Among them are V. Pidmogylny, B. Antonovenko-Davidovich, G. Kosinka, D. Falkivsky, M.Ivchenko, T.Osmachka, E.Pluzhnik. This is a non-exhaustive list of the leading figures of the post-revolutionary period who were removed from the creative field, whose works are the golden fund of Ukrainian culture. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Review Essay:Aquinas, Modern Theology, and the TrinityGuy Mansini O.S.B.As one would expect from his Incarnate Lord, Thomas Joseph White's Trinity is no exercise in historical theology, although of course it calls on history, but aims to give us St. Thomas's theology as an enduring and so contemporary theology that both respects the creedal commitments of the Catholic Church and offers a more satisfying understanding of the Trinity than anything (...) proposed by the great theologians, Catholic and Protestant, of the past hundred years.1 The Trinity, however, gives a more complete and satisfying view of its subject than does The Incarnate Lord.Can St. Thomas really be fruitfully located within the dialectic of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Trinitarian speculation? Yes, and it is one of White's principal contributions to show how St. Thomas's medieval contemporaries, the early Franciscans on the one hand and William of Ockham on the other, remotely but really adumbrate nineteenth- and twentieth-century theological positions, once due attention is paid to the key issues of the analogical naming of God and his knowability. The reader is thus assured that Aquinas's original project was composed with some awareness of temptations and alternatives repeated (though not exactly, of course) in modern thought. It should be added that St. Thomas is by no means treated as the only systematic theological authority for Trinitarian theology, but White recognizes his paradigmatic place in the Catholic theological tradition. [End Page 1415]The most important issue for assessing the enduring value of Thomas's Trinitarian theology, then, whether in the thirteenth century or twentieth century, turns out to be the applicability and centrality of the psychological analogy for an understanding of the immanent intelligibility of the Trinity, an analogy suggested by Scripture, and developed by the Cappadocians, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and other medieval writers, not to mention John Henry Newman and Matthias J. Scheeben.What is the status of this analogy? Olivier-Thomas Venard laconically describes it as "revealed"—too hot. Michael Maria Waldstein has recently argued vigorously and at length that it is not revealed at all—too cold. White does not discuss this in detail but is satisfied with saying that it is "derived" from Scripture—just right. However one thinks this question is to be resolved, White robustly defends the psychological analogy as a proper analogy and as the only systematic theological instrument ever offered by the theological tradition that succeeds in providing real understanding of the immanent life of the Trinity, one that preserves the transcendence of God and honors the dogmatic tradition of the Church bearing on the nature of God and the Trinity of persons—Nicaea, Lateran IV, and Vatican I, especially. This is how he does it in chapter 22.1. We know the mystery of interior Trinitarian life based on God's manifestation of it to us in the economy of salvation via the missions of Word and Spirit, which disclose to us distinct personal processions.2. Such processions are either immanent or transitive.3. But transitive processions terminate in some substance distinct from whence they emanate.4. God, however, is one in nature (essence, substance) both specifically and numerically.5. Therefore, the processions are immanent to the godhead.6. However, there are only two immanent immaterial activities known to us, that of knowing and that of loving.7. Therefore, we cannot have some understanding of the mystery of interior Trinitarian life except by analogy with these two [End Page 1416] activities. That is to say, we know the mystery of the Trinitarian life according to the "psychological model" or not at all.This argument can be re-phrased with more pointed reference to modern theologies of the Trinity.1. If we wish to understand the mystery of the immanent Trinitarian life of distinct persons, but not by way of immanent activities and processions, then we must appeal to transitive activity to account for the distinction of persons.2. Transitive divine activity can be conceived of (1) as creative, (2) as within creation relative to its history (the continental way), or (3) as taking place between three already constituted divine individuals, relating transitively to one... (shrink)

The question of whether or not children may be used as subjects in non-therapeutic research projects has generated a great deal of debate and received answers varying from 'no, never' to 'yes, if societal interests are served'. It has been claimed that a Kantian, deontological ethics would necessarily rule out such research, since valid consent would be impossible. The present paper gives a deontological argument for allowing children to be subjects in certain types of research.

In this paper, I examine various popular notions concerning the ethics of investing. I first consider and reject the absolutist view that it is always wrong to invest in evil companies and the view that what makes investments in evil companies morally objectionable is the fact that by making such investments, investors are taking steps to benefit from the wrongdoing of others. I then defend the view that what makes certain investments morally objectionable is the fact that by making such (...) investments, investors enable others to do wrong. According to this view, when weighing the purchase of a certain company's stock, investors should ask themselves the following question: Would this sort of investment, if made by many people, enable others to do wrong? If the answer to this question is yes, and if an investor nevertheless makes the investment in question, he can justifiably be accused of moral wrongdoing. (shrink)

John Wesley did not directly address the question, but he could have answered "Yes'" to "Was Jesus Ever Happy?" given his understanding of "happiness." His eudaimonistic understanding of happiness was that it consists in renewing and actualizing the image of God within us, especially the image of love. More particularly, it consists in actually living a life of moral virtue, love included, of spiritual fulfillment, of joy or pleasure taken in loving God, others, and self, and in minimizing unnecessary pain (...) and suffering, which we are morally obligated to do for others and even for ourselves. Jesus had it all most of the time, though not always, obviously not at the painful end of his life when he felt God-forsaken. -/- . (shrink)

Is The Prelude a philosophical poem? It is, of course, many things besides: it is an autobiography; it contains profound reflections on psychology, education and politics; and there are passages of an almost purely lyrical character. Does it also contain philosophical poetry? On this question, the critics of Wordsworth are divided. Coleridge and Raleigh answer Yes; Arnold, Bradley, Dr. Leaves, from their different points of view, agree in answering No. I believe that the first answer is right, although it has (...) usually been supported by the wrong reasons. I believe the second answer to be wrong, although many of the arguments that are supposed to lead to it are in themselves sound enough. Those who say that The Prelude is not a philosophical poem, usually mean that it does not offer a coherent system of philosophy—that it expresses an original outlook and a personal wisdom, but that the only systematic philosophy in it comes at second-hand from Hartley or Coleridge and contributes not at all to the poem. And this is largely true. But the mistake is, to identify philosophy with system, philosophizing with “a philosophy.” This is a mistake that has been repudiated again and again by many of the greatest philosophers, from Socrates and Plato to Locke and Kant and others. I shall argue that The Prelude achieves philosophical poetry, because in it Wordsworth grapples with philosophical problems—problems which arise out of the story of his own early life—which are actually forced upon him by the poem itself; and because he tries to answer these problems in a way which would be possible only in poetry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading Paradise Regained EthicallyRobert B. PierceMuch modern criticism follows a long tradition by attending to the presumed effect of literature on our personal and political lives. Feminists, cultural materialists, new historicists, and postcolonialists frequently remind us that texts are "not innocent," and such analysts seek to make explicit the values and judgments that literary texts encourage in their readers. Whether in the vein of unmasking or of celebrating, we (...) critics often attribute great ethical and political significance to the works we study, but we are inclined to be vague about the mechanisms by which these effects occur. Given that I share this presumption that the texts we love to study matter to our lives, I would like to look more closely at how the process occurs, taking Milton's Paradise Regained as a test case.Does our reading of literary texts affect us ethically, and should it?1 An ancient and powerful critical tradition has taken for granted that the answer to both questions is yes. At the very least, good literature read properly is seen as one among the shaping forces of our education. But, beginning in the late eighteenth century, the theoretical movement to separate esthetics from ethics rendered this assumption problematic. Perhaps the beautiful is a value quite separate from the good. Later the literary school of estheticism brashly proclaimed the triumph of beauty over goodness under the banner of art for art's sake, [End Page 208] and Auden more modestly noted in "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" that "poetry makes nothing happen,"2 presumably including in the denial the moral betterment of its readers. The idea that literature is good for us has been almost embarrassing for the past century or so. On the other hand, many feminists and cultural critics have recently argued in effect that literature is often bad for us, that it is implicated in the ethical and political life of the time when it is produced and also in the time when it is received or consumed, so that it may tend to reinforce the ideology of one period or the other. In their assumption that literature is ethically significant they agree with most ordinary people and with the cultural right, especially in concern about its influence.What does this recent set of contentions entail? The term "implicated" that is characteristically used in such analysis claims at a minimum that the literary text in question has been shaped in production, consumption, or both by larger cultural forces, shaped in such a way as to incorporate certain values. Most such analyses go further to assert or suggest that the text under study helps to reinforce those values in the original audience or in later consumers (sometimes by attacking opposed values).3 The characteristic rhetorical stance in such readings is an implied warning to the reader against the insidious effect of the text lest it instill some fallacious, unethical, or politically harmful attitude or idea. Often the reader is rhetorically invited to share a position of intellectual superiority along with the critic, both of them above the corruption that afflicts an unspecified gullible audience. Thus many modern critics identify a romanticizing of war and the military hero in Shakespeare's Henry V, though they differ among themselves in that some locate both poison and cure in the text itself (suggesting, for example, that Shakespeare subverts the official ideology that he portrays), while some offer a "reading against the text," a cure administered by the critic against the wholly poisonous work.Such critics frequently manifest a reasonable caution about their own ethical and political stance. In an age of widespread pluralism and cultural relativism, we have learned to suspect self-confident proclamations of the ethical and political truth by critics as well as by literary authors, and in particular we are suspicious of official codes of conduct, including our own. Also we are (often at least) less confident than our forebears in purporting to state the meaning of a text. We have learned to heed the ambiguities and self-undermining elements in texts that complicate the capacity of any simple critical statement to reflect adequately what the text means. We no... (shrink)

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra?. The famous incipit—‘And what are you reading, Master Buddenbrook? Ah, Cicero! A difficult text, the work of a great Roman orator. Quousque tandem, Catilina. Huh-uh-hmm, yes, I've not entirely forgotten my Latin, either’— already impressed contemporaries, including some ordinarily not so readily impressed. It rings through Sallust's version of Catiline's shadowy address to his followers, when he asks regarding the injustices they suffer : quae quousque tandem patiemini, o fortissumi uiri?. More playfully, and (...) less well-known, Sallust employed the expression again in a speech by Philippus : uos autem, patres conscripti, quo usque cunctando rem publicam intutam patiemini et uerbis arma temptabitis?. Soon afterwards it served Cicero's son, who, as governor of Asia, put down Hybreas fils for having dared to quote from his father's work in his presence : ‘age’, inquit [sc. Marcus Tullius], ‘non putas me didicisse patris mei: “quousque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra”?’. Just about the same time, Livy recalled it in order to colour Manlius’ exhortation of his followers : quousque tandem ignorabitis uires uestras, quas natura ne beluas quidem ignorare uoluit? … audendum est aliquid uniuersis aut omnia singulis patienda. quousque me circumspectabitis?. Thereafter Quintilian would refer to it twice, when discussing apostrophe and rhetorical questions, just a couple of years before Tacitus has the maladroit Q. Haterius encourage Tiberius to seize the reins—quo usque patieris, Caesar, non adesse caput rei publicae? ; a few decades later still, Apuleius puts it into the mouth of the slave who chastises his master, now in asinine form : ‘quo usque tandem’, inquit, ‘cantherium patiemur istum paulo ante cibariis iumentorum, nunc etiam simulacris deorum infestum?’. He trusted, no doubt, that the famous question would alert his readers more than anything to the many ‘similarities between Catiline and Lucius’, in order to have them appreciate this ‘ludicrous copy of Cicero's arch-enemy’. Some time after, and in a different corner of the Empire altogether, a teacher's bronze statue would carry the inscription:VERBACICRO | NISQVOVSQ | TANDEMABVTE | RECATELINAPA | TIENTIANOS | TRA. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reading Paradise Regained EthicallyRobert B. PierceMuch modern criticism follows a long tradition by attending to the presumed effect of literature on our personal and political lives. Feminists, cultural materialists, new historicists, and postcolonialists frequently remind us that texts are "not innocent," and such analysts seek to make explicit the values and judgments that literary texts encourage in their readers. Whether in the vein of unmasking or of celebrating, we (...) critics often attribute great ethical and political significance to the works we study, but we are inclined to be vague about the mechanisms by which these effects occur. Given that I share this presumption that the texts we love to study matter to our lives, I would like to look more closely at how the process occurs, taking Milton's Paradise Regained as a test case.Does our reading of literary texts affect us ethically, and should it?1 An ancient and powerful critical tradition has taken for granted that the answer to both questions is yes. At the very least, good literature read properly is seen as one among the shaping forces of our education. But, beginning in the late eighteenth century, the theoretical movement to separate esthetics from ethics rendered this assumption problematic. Perhaps the beautiful is a value quite separate from the good. Later the literary school of estheticism brashly proclaimed the triumph of beauty over goodness under the banner of art for art's sake, [End Page 208] and Auden more modestly noted in "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" that "poetry makes nothing happen,"2 presumably including in the denial the moral betterment of its readers. The idea that literature is good for us has been almost embarrassing for the past century or so. On the other hand, many feminists and cultural critics have recently argued in effect that literature is often bad for us, that it is implicated in the ethical and political life of the time when it is produced and also in the time when it is received or consumed, so that it may tend to reinforce the ideology of one period or the other. In their assumption that literature is ethically significant they agree with most ordinary people and with the cultural right, especially in concern about its influence.What does this recent set of contentions entail? The term "implicated" that is characteristically used in such analysis claims at a minimum that the literary text in question has been shaped in production, consumption, or both by larger cultural forces, shaped in such a way as to incorporate certain values. Most such analyses go further to assert or suggest that the text under study helps to reinforce those values in the original audience or in later consumers (sometimes by attacking opposed values).3 The characteristic rhetorical stance in such readings is an implied warning to the reader against the insidious effect of the text lest it instill some fallacious, unethical, or politically harmful attitude or idea. Often the reader is rhetorically invited to share a position of intellectual superiority along with the critic, both of them above the corruption that afflicts an unspecified gullible audience. Thus many modern critics identify a romanticizing of war and the military hero in Shakespeare's Henry V, though they differ among themselves in that some locate both poison and cure in the text itself (suggesting, for example, that Shakespeare subverts the official ideology that he portrays), while some offer a "reading against the text," a cure administered by the critic against the wholly poisonous work.Such critics frequently manifest a reasonable caution about their own ethical and political stance. In an age of widespread pluralism and cultural relativism, we have learned to suspect self-confident proclamations of the ethical and political truth by critics as well as by literary authors, and in particular we are suspicious of official codes of conduct, including our own. Also we are (often at least) less confident than our forebears in purporting to state the meaning of a text. We have learned to heed the ambiguities and self-undermining elements in texts that complicate the capacity of any simple critical statement to reflect adequately what the text means. We no... (shrink)

Transhumanists and their fellow travelers urge humanity to prioritize the development of biotechnologies that would eliminate aging, delivering ‘an endless summer of literally perpetual youth.’ Aspiring not to age instantiates what philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls the yearning for ‘external transcendence,’ or the fundamental surpassing of human bounds due to confidence that life without them would be better. Based on Immanuel Kant’s account of the parameters of human understanding, I argue that engineering agelessness could not be a rational priority for humanity (...) on the level of public policy. This stance is complemented by an argument focused on individual decision-making in liberal-democratic milieus, where no governing conception of the good is presumed and the first-personal level matters greatly. Here, drawing on philosopher and cognitive scientist Laurie Ann Paul’s concept of ‘transformative experience,’ I maintain that individuals could not ‘rationally,’ meaning, here, ‘prudentially,’ say ‘yes’ to agelessness. Absorbing the irrationality of human zeal to eliminate aging, based on assurance that an ageless existence would be better, should spur a redoubled dedication to human flourishing. (shrink)

Ellen Gleditsch (1879–1968) became Norway’s first authority on radioactivity and the country’s second female full professor. From her many years abroad—in Marie Curie’s laboratory in Paris and at Yale University in New Haven with Bertram Boltram—she became internationally acknowledged and developed an extensive personal and scientific network. In the Norwegian scientific community she was, however, less appreciated, and her appointment as a professor in 1929 caused controversy. Despite the recommendation of the expert committee, her predecessor and his allies spread the (...) view that Gleditsch was a diligent but outdated researcher with little scientific promise—a view that apparently persists in the Norwegian chemical community today. In addition to her scientific work, Gleditsch acquired political influence by joining the International Federation of University Women in 1920; she later became the president of both the Norwegian section and the worldwide organization. She worked in particular to establish scholarships enabling women to go abroad. I once worked with a learned man who was reputed to hate women. On one occasion he stated that the new collaborator was a rare exception. When he was asked why he said, “She does not scream.” I heard this several months later and have kept it as a great compliment; yes—the biggest in my scientific career. —Ellen Gleditsch. (shrink)

Since people have a right even to kill a culpable aggressor if, in the circumstances, this is a proportionate and necessary means of self–defense against an imminent or ongoing attack, and since most forms of torture are not as bad as killing, people must also have a right to torture a culpable aggressor if this, too, in the circumstances, is a proportionate and necessary means of self–defense against an imminent or ongoing attack.But can torture really ever be a form of (...) self–defense? Yes, it can. For instance, a child kidnapper, by holding the child hostage in a wooden box, thereby depriving it of its freedom and torturing it,is an aggressor, whether in custody or not. He is, after all, torturing the child right now while he is in custody. Thus, torturing him to save the child would be a case of self-defensive torture. (shrink)

2500 years ago, Socrates wrestled with the question: Can virtue be taught? And I’m still at it. I recall my experience as an Ethical Culture Leader, the head of the Ethical Culture Fieldston Schools, and Board Chair of the Ethical Community Charter School in Jersey City. Once more, I reflect on a life-long vocation: the problem of knowing, judging, deciding, and acting ethically. Can virtue be taught? Socrates answered “yes” and “no.” Figuring out what that means remains a continuing puzzle, (...) which inspired this article. (shrink)

Is The Prelude a philosophical poem? It is, of course, many things besides: it is an autobiography; it contains profound reflections on psychology, education and politics; and there are passages of an almost purely lyrical character. Does it also contain philosophical poetry? On this question, the critics of Wordsworth are divided. Coleridge and Raleigh answer Yes; Arnold, Bradley, Dr. Leaves, from their different points of view, agree in answering No. I believe that the first answer is right, although it has (...) usually been supported by the wrong reasons. I believe the second answer to be wrong, although many of the arguments that are supposed to lead to it are in themselves sound enough. Those who say that The Prelude is not a philosophical poem, usually mean that it does not offer a coherent system of philosophy—that it expresses an original outlook and a personal wisdom, but that the only systematic philosophy in it comes at second-hand from Hartley or Coleridge and contributes not at all to the poem. And this is largely true. But the mistake is, to identify philosophy with system, philosophizing with “a philosophy.” This is a mistake that has been repudiated again and again by many of the greatest philosophers, from Socrates and Plato to Locke and Kant and others. I shall argue that The Prelude achieves philosophical poetry, because in it Wordsworth grapples with philosophical problems—problems which arise out of the story of his own early life—which are actually forced upon him by the poem itself; and because he tries to answer these problems in a way which would be possible only in poetry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Is Oedipus Smart?Charles B. DanielsWhat does it amount to, to ask whether Oedipus is smart, intelligent, clever? I take this to mean that he is quicker than most to gain understanding about difficult matters. Now, does Sophocles in Oedipus Rex portray Oedipus to be an intelligent, clever man?The Yes AnswerA "yes" answer to the title question may rest upon three grounds:Y1. Everyone in the play, including Oedipus himself and (...) the citizens of Thebes who have been his subjects for some 15 to 20 years, everyone, that is, save Teiresias, thinks that Oedipus is intelligent.Y2. In both legend and Sophocles' play, the only person smart enough to solve the Sphinx's riddle is Oedipus. Everyone in the play, as well as in the play's audiences, knows that Oedipus has solved the Sphinx's riddle. This is a major reason why everyone in the play, again excepting Teiresias, believes Oedipus to have a first-class mind. Oedipus is renown for this deed and thought by his subjects to be very clever in doing of it.Y3. John P. Carroll, in his interesting study of the extraordinary number of questions posed by Oedipus in Oedipus Rex (one in each nine lines of text uttered by him), concludes, "King Oedipus was endowed at birth with the heritage of the 'riddler's mind,' which by constant use throughout the course of his life he sharpened and brought to greater [End Page 562] perfection than it ever had had in his parents." 1 Oedipus is clever because he has a "riddler's mind": he asks lots of questions.Y1, Y2, and Y3, I believe, constitute the sole evidential textual base for the "yes" response to the title question. 2The No AnswerThe "no" answer, the view that Oedipus is not clever, rests upon four grounds:N1. The first consists of events from Oedipus' past that took place prior to the opening scene of the play and hence do not occur on stage. These are disclosed as the play progresses and its characters relate in dialogue what they believe to have taken place. We discover that Oedipus has lived his entire adult life with unresolved doubts about who his parents are. Worse yet, at the very beginning of his adult life, his inquiry at the Delphic Oracle met with terrible, enigmatic pronouncements that raised the ante on these doubts and made the tenor of his whole subsequent life up to the present worrisome to say the least. We learn of six questions of high moment to Oedipus—questions that touch him as profoundly as did the Sphinx's riddle, "What walks on two, three, and four legs?"—questions which he continues to be aware of and yet has not resolved, or in some cases even probed. A truly clever person, one with a "riddler's mind," would have done so. But the mature Oedipus we meet at the beginning of the play has yet to puzzle out correct answers to the questions:1. Where did the scars on my feet come from?2. Who are my real parents, Polybus and Merope, or some other couple?3. How can I best avoid doing the terrible things the Oracle foretells I shall do—killing my father and marrying my mother—given I am not sure who my father and mother really are?4. Is this old man who has just forced me off the road and arrogantly swatted me from his passing carriage my father?5. Who killed the king whose throne I have just been given?6. Is this widow I am about to marry my mother?The Oedipus we see at the beginning of the play is a man who has solved the riddle of the Sphinx, but has not solved a single one of these six questions from his own past life, which, it turns out, are easily of comparable importance to him. [End Page 563]N2. Another source of evidence in support of a "no" answer consists of failures on Oedipus' part to evince a quick wit concerning two puzzles that arise in the dramatic present among the events we see unfold on stage:7. The riddles... (shrink)

I give a critique of the argument against the Identity of Indiscernibles found in Max Black's dialogue "The Identity of Indiscernibles". I begin by postulating and giving existence and individuation conditions for actually existent thought experiment characters on analogy with fictional characters as postulated in Peter van Inwagen's "Creatures of Fiction". I then show that Black's two-spheres thought experiment raises not one but two discernibility questions: 1) Is it true in the two-spheres thought experiment that there exist two indiscernible spheres? (...) NO. 2) Is it true in the actual world that there are two indiscernible sphere-characters? YES. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NABER on Embryo SplittingMichael B. BurkeMadam:In its interesting Report on Human Cloning through Embryo Splitting: An Amber Light (KIEJ, September 1994), NABER (the National Advisory Board on Ethics in Reproduction) discusses ten potential clinical uses of embryo splitting. With one member dissenting, NABER finds two of the uses to be acceptable in principle: (1) “to improve the chances of initiating pregnancy in those individuals undergoing IVF who produce only (...) a limited number of embryos for transfer and implantation” (p. 267) and (2) “to minimize the number of egg retrieval procedures for those undergoing IVF by providing embryos for cryopreservation and future transfer” (p. 268).However, some members of NABER limit their support for these uses to cases in which none of the embryos into which the originals are split are intentionally destroyed (see pp. 266–68). I find their position puzzling. They consider it “ethically unacceptable to discard cryopreserved embryos” (p. 268). In general, they object to intentional destruction of embryos resulting from embryo splitting. Yet they accept intentional destruction of the original embryos.Does the splitting of an embryo truly destroy it? Yes, it does, at least if the embryo is split into two equal parts—or into more than two parts, none of which contains a majority of the cells contained by the original. Suppose, for instance, that a two-cell embryo has been split into two one-cell embryos. Then the original embryo, although it may not have “died” and although its cells have both survived, has nonetheless ceased to exist. Even though the resulting one-cell embryos are identical genetically to the original embryo, neither of them is that embryo. (There is nothing to confer this honor on one of them rather than the other.) The original embryo has undergone what I will call “destructive splitting.”Now it is possible, even likely, that some splittings are not destructive splittings. Suppose that a four-cell embryo is spilt into a three-cell embryo and a one-cell embryo. At least from my perspective as an identity theorist, there is nothing to stop us from identifying the three-cell embryo with the four-cell original: we could say that the original embryo, although diminished, still exists. In any case, there is no indication that any members of NABER intended to limit their acceptance of embryo splitting to cases in which the original embryo survives.How are we to understand the apparent indifference of conservative members of NABER to the embryo that is split, given their concern for the embryos that result from the split? Perhaps the explanation is found in the following passage:NABER members represent a broad spectrum of views on the moral status of the embryo, and yet virtually all of them find embryo splitting per se ethically permissible if the resulting embryos are not damaged or destroyed in the process. These members maintain that there is nothing inherently wrong with creating several embryos [End Page 210] from a single embryo, providing all the embryos involved [except the original!] remain intact at the conclusion of the procedure. Embryo splitting parallels the spontaneous production of identical twins or triplets at this stage of embryo development, an occurrence that is accepted in our society with equanimity. The fact that embryo splitting is deliberately used to produce multiple embryos does not make it inherently wrong to employ the procedure.(Report, pp. 266–67)This argument appears to rely on the following principle: if something is properly viewed with equanimity when it happens spontaneously, then it is not inherently wrong to bring it about deliberately. At least in its full generality, this is a principle generally and rightly viewed with suspicion (by moral conservatives above all). Although it is proper to view with equanimity, even with relief, the natural deaths of terminally ill patients in great pain, many hold that active euthanasia is inherently wrong.When NABER has occasion to revisit the issue of embryo splitting, those members who object to destruction of embryos resulting from embryo splitting should make clear whether they accept the destructive splitting of embryos. If they do, they should clarify their reasons for accepting it.Michael B. BurkeDepartment of Philosophy Indiana... (shrink)

Considering the vast amount that has been written about "explanation" and "human action," one wonders what remains to be said. But this book is distinguished by the radicalness of the author's point of view. An alternative title might have been, Is Social Science Based On a Mistake? The answer here is an insistent yes. Surveying the social sciences, including psychology, sociology, political science, economics, etc., Louch argues that these disciplines are involved in radical conceptual confusions. The chief difficulty stems from (...) the misguided attempt to impose a univocal theory of generalized explanation on human action. Adapting techniques of Ryle, Austin, and Wittgenstein, Louch argues that "explanation" is a family of cases where there are many types of irreducibly different puzzles and paradigms. Furthermore, in his polemical dismissal of the social sciences, Louch argues that the view of human nature that they foster has pernicious social and moral consequences. The primary reason why human action eludes the distortions of social scientists is because description and explanation of action is possible only by means of moral categories. The concept of human action is itself a moral category where "assessment" terms are essential for its description. While the book is rich in suggestions, too often polemic obscures the need for careful statement and analysis.—-R. J. B. (shrink)

We develop a novel argument scheme tailored to debates surrounding public votes on a state action. It can be used to propose reasons for voting “yes” or “no” and allows for natural reconstructions of such debates. These reconstructions are of particular use to voters trying to weigh the pros and cons of the proposed state action. The scheme for proposing reasons helps answering two questions: What changes will the proposed state action bring with it? And are these changes good or (...) not? Using the scheme, we derive a three-layered structure of public debates surrounding votes that aides in constructing systematic and comprehensive overviews. The scheme for proposing reasons also lends itself to concise summaries for voter information and can be incorporated into more general deliberation dialogues. (shrink)

The intent of this work is to examine the relationship between the divine "Yes" and "No" as they appear in Barth's thought. Berkouwer maintains that Barth sees in God's "No" to the nature of sinful man only a powerful re-affirmation of what is most important to Barth--the inexorable triumph of divine grace. The implications of this thesis are thoughtfully and critically set forth. --J. E. B.

A two-systems model of moral judgment proposed by Joshua Greene holds that deontological moral judgments (those based on simple rules concerning action) are often primary and intuitive, and these intuitive judgments must be overridden by reflection in order to yield utilitarian (consequence-based) responses. For example, one dilemma asks whether it is right to push a man onto a track in order to stop a trolley that is heading for five others. Those who favor pushing, the utilitarian response, usually take longer (...) to respond than those who oppose pushing. Greene's model assumes an asymmetry between the processes leading to different responses. We consider an alternative model based on the assumption of symmetric conflict between two response tendencies. By this model, moral dilemmas differ in the "difficulty" of giving a utilitarian response and subjects differ in the "ability" (tendency) to give such responses. (We could just as easily define ability in terms of deontological responses, as the model treats the responses symmetrically.) We thus make an analogy between moral dilemmas and tests of cognitive ability, and we apply the Rasch model, developed for the latter, to estimate the ability-difficulty difference for each dilemma for each subject. We apply this approach to five data sets collected for other purposes by three of the co-authors. Response time (RT), including yes and no responses, is longest when difficulty and ability match, because the subject is indifferent between the two responses, which also have the same RT at this point. When we consider yes/no responses, RT is longest when the model predicts that the response is improbable. Subjects with low ability take longer on the "easier" dilemmas, and vice versa. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Republicanism, Religion, and Machiavelli’s Savonarolan MomentMarcia L. ColishMachiavelli’s readers often take at face value his claim that Christianity has weakened Italy’s civic spirit and martial valor, leaving it open to priestcraft and foreign invasion. Some scholars see this critique of Christianity as an expression of the irreligious, immoral, neopagan, or scientific Machiavelli, making it the chief index of his modernity. 1 One subset within this group treats Machiavelli’s [End (...) Page 597] anthropology as a secularized version of Augustine on original sin, absent an Eden behind it and a redemption before it. 2 Another view of Machiavelli on religion sees him as treating religion, whatever its teachings, functionally, as an instrument promoting desirable political behavior. 3 This is why they regard [End Page 598] Machiavelli as original and modern; although Maury D. Feld notes rightly that Machiavelli is here simply imitating the ancient Roman historians, who all treat religion in just this way. 4 For some proponents of the functionalist interpretation, it does not preclude Christian belief on Machiavelli’s part. For them his brief is not against Christianity itself but against clericalism, the papacy, and Christianity as it is currently interpreted. 5 Still others recognize Machiavelli’s acceptance of signs and portents, saintly behavior and miracles, and other indices of God’s existence and action in human history. They also note Machiavelli’s praise of biblical leaders seen as divinely inspired and his inclusion of them among the founders of religions and states who head his list of heroes. 6 Going farther, some scholars argue that Machiavelli was a conventional, if not an ardent or impeccable, Christian, who joined a religious confraternity before which he preached his Exhortation to Penitence, and the apparent recipient of the last rites of his church after a deathbed confession. 7 [End Page 599]Can these conflicting assessments of Machiavelli and religion be integrated? To some extent, yes. Once, that is, we consider a number of issues not always brought to bear on this question. Machiavelli recognizes that the foreigners who have overrun Italy and deprived Florence of the republic he had served are as Christian as the Italians. At home and abroad, their Christianity has not undermined their military strength or the civic virtue Machiavelli associates with republics. Within contemporary Florence there were three kinds of republicanism on offer, for those unhappy with the Medici restoration of 1512. One group sought to restore the pre-Medici governo stretto constitution dominated by the ottimati. Their opponents defended governo largo republicanism. Machiavelli advocated this type of polity, informed by his reading of ancient history and his assessment of human nature. But another, competing version of governo largo was put forth by Girolamo Savonarola during the Dominican friar’s stormy career as de facto head of the Florentine state from 1494 to 1498. Savonarola’s republican theory combined a number of ideas that Machiavelli loathed: the appeal to the Venetian Great Council as a model, the wish to purge Florence of her sins so that she could serve as the New Jerusalem in the coming apocalypse, and the notion that governo largo was a means to these religious ends, since the more broad-based the government, the more readily could it legislate and enforce moral reform. And, far from self-destructing after the friar’s ashes had been strewn on the Arno, Savonarolan republicanism continued to draw support from a diverse and substantial group of Florentines. Equally alarming, the agents [End Page 600] of this protracted Savonarolan moment seemed to have preempted Machiavelli’s own anticlerical, antipapal, antioligarchic, and antiMedicean positions, as well as a theory of governo largo. If we foreground Machiavelli’s desire to defend his own version of republicanism by undermining the Savonarolan alternative and if we recall that he treats Christianity positively in other contexts, it becomes possible to read those passages where he criticizes Christianity as practiced in Italy as texts with an antiSavonarolan subtext. Read this way, they are not incompatible with his acceptance of Christianity as true or as politically constructive elsewhere. In approaching this topic, we should also remember the longstanding associations that bound Christianity to politics and warfare.Addressing this last point... (shrink)

B. H. Slater has argued that there cannot be any truly paraconsistent logics, because it's always more plausible to suppose whatever "negation" symbol is used in the language is not a real negation, than to accept the paraconsistent reading. In this paper I neither endorse nor dispute Slater's argument concerning negation; instead, my aim is to show that as an argument against paraconsistency, it misses (some of) the target. A important class of paraconsistent logics - the preservationist logics - are (...) not subject to this objection. In addition I show that if we identify logics by means of consequence relations, at least one dialetheic logic can be reinterpreted in preservationist (non-dialetheic) terms. Thus the interest of paraconsistent consequence relations - even those that emerge from dialetheic approaches - does not depend on the tenability of dialetheism. Of course, if dialetheism is defensible, then paraconsistent logic will be required to cope with it. But the existence (and interest) of paraconsistent logics does not depend on a defense of dialetheism. (shrink)

Hz. Peygamber’in Medine’ye hicretinden sonra henüz bir yıl geçmeden Mescid-i Nebevî inşa edilmiş ve bu esnada Bakī’ Mezarlığı da teessüs etmiştir. Bakīu’l-Garkad, Cennetü’l-Bakī’ gibi adlarla da anılan Bakī’ Mezarlığı’na ilk defnedilen kişinin kim olduğu mevzuunda birbirinden farklı rivayetler bulunmaktadır. Bu hususta, ilk defnedilen sahâbînin Ensar’dan Es’ad b. Zürâre veya Muhacirlerden Osman b. Maz’ûn olduğu şeklindeki rivayetler ön plâna çıkmaktadır. Bu makalede, Osman b. Maz’ûn’un vefat tarihi ile ilgili rivayetler bağlamında onun Bakī’ Mezarlığı’na ilk defnedilen kişi olup olmadığı konusu ele alınmaktadır. (...) Bu makalede ele alınacak rivayetler çerçevesinde ortaya konulacak bilgiler, Bakī’ Mezarlığı’nın teşekkül tarihine ışık tutmuş olacaktır. Bakī’ Mezarlığı’nın teessüsü ve ilk defnedilenlerle ilgili rivayetlerin müstakil olarak analiz edilmemiş olması bakımından konu önem arz etmektedir. Makalede geniş bir literatür taraması yapılmak suretiyle elde edilen malzeme analiz edilmiş ve rivayetlerle ilgili sorunlara işaret edilmiştir. Ayrıca rivayetlerde karşılaşılan farklılıkların, nesî usulüne göre düzenlenmiş veya düzenlenmemiş takvimlerden kaynaklanmış olup olamayacağı ortaya konulmaya çalışıl-mıştır. (shrink)

Ubûdî, who is known to had lived in Egypt at the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century, is one of the Gulsheni dervish poets. What is known about the life of this secluded poet, whose name is not mentioned in the tazkiras and biographical sources, is due to his work called Menâkıb-ı Ev-liyâ-yı Mısr (Legends of Egyptian Saints). He has another 359 couplet mathnawi on the virtue of knowledge and action, and the ugliness of (...) ignorance and laziness. This masnavi, which will be introduced by presen-ting its text here, has been brought into being with quotations and translations from verses and hadiths. In the masnavi, which has the integrity of the subject, it is mentioned about the virtues of studying science and acting by avoiding ignorance and laziness as a religious obligation. In this article, after briefly menti-oning the life, works and poems of Ubûdî-i Gülşenî, his mathnawi about wisdom and the virtue of action is introduced and evaluations are made about its language, form and content features. In this mathnawi, which was written in a religious-didactic style, the wisdom and virtues of learning are mentioned and advice is given from time to time. In the last part of the article, the text of Ubûdî's masnavi on the virtue of knowledge and action and the ugliness of ignorance and laziness is given, and the translations and sour-ces of the quotations made from the verses and hadiths in the text are presented and the poet's references and references are revealed. (shrink)

Don't tell terrible stories—everyone here has enough of their own. Everyone here has a whole bloody sack of terrible stories, and at the bottom of the sack is a hammer the narrator uses to pound you on the skull the instant you dare not believe your ears. Or to pound you when you do believe. Not long ago I saw a tomboyish girl on Khreshchatyk Street demand money of an elderly woman, threatening to bite her and infect her with syphilis. (...) Don't stroll through Volodymyr Hill Park, don't stroll around the botanical garden, and especially don't stroll on Kontraktova Square. Don't stroll anywhere. Don't go to the pavilion with the Golgotha panorama near St. Alexander's Church. Not even the twelve-meter-tall crucified Christ will save you. Don't go outside when it's dark and people turn into shadows a shade darker than dark. Also don't go where you can be seen from far away. Not to imply that people used to be like a bunch of lilies, but now they stink like a cellar of cabbage.The city, which earlier might have had some fun, is now going crazy. It's like a fish in warm water: it doesn't react to anything, swims slowly like it doesn't care if it swallows a hook or not. The excitement and exaltation pass into oppression, just as our necks have sunk into our shoulders, our shoulders into our lumbars, our lumbars into our nether regions. The holiday turns into a funeral, the parades into explosions, depression into mania. Winter passes into summer, people turn into beasts, the hours into ages, and the ages into hours. It's worth simply walking around the city to see a soldier from an unknown army taking a piss near the opera. Farther on is a row of identical old widows selling ball gowns and candelabra. Then there are the aristocrats and manufacturers who throw so much at the prostitutes that they'll soon be richer than their wives.I returned late through the Kyryliv Wood, not heeding all the warnings that I myself have given here. It really is dangerous—the place is famous for it. There's a madhouse nearby, caves where criminals and the sick can hide out. Also, once upon a time, as they say in fairy tales, the great dragon Zmei Gorynich lived here beside the Puchai River. The stench in these places drives away the most committed misanthropes and even one type of philanthrope—that is, perverts. It sounds dumb, but the stench is cleansing. I don't know where it comes from. After the operating theaters and the rooms with amputees, the stench no longer repelled or attracted me; it just was. And this was a great place to think. As I walked, I considered an incident with our patient.The patient, a respectable individual whose name carries too much weight for me to state it directly, one day began to assault people. He nearly strangled a merchant who he believed asked too much for a beaver coat. He likewise wanted to kill his business partner when he didn't say hello loudly enough. But the worst was, he lost all shame of his own nakedness. At first it was the police who took care of it. When our future patient slipped off his pants and undergarments, he was taken to Kyrylivska, which has had means for dealing with such cases dating back to the day when unhinged Cossacks and composers from Kyiv Mohyla Academy were taken there.During the examination we determined that the patient was experiencing a severe breakdown. His wife added that lately, more than once, he had allowed himself strong words in front of the children and often suffered from ennui. Furthermore, she said, the patient had been undergoing treatment for “the French disease” for some years—which was, obviously, where we needed to start.“Syphilis!” Skorsky spat out the matchstick he was chewing on. He was a specialist on the psychological aspects of diseases related to the venereal. “Tertiary syphilis! When poorly treated, over time ‘the French disease’ can destroy the central nervous system. Hence the patient's chicanery. Such theater!”Skorsky and I had not spoken since the incident at Bilinsky's. Meanwhile, something significant had happened to him. The most boring person on earth, Skorsky had simply caught fire. He said hello and kibitzed. I even heard the doctor got drunk alone in his office, then wandered through the forest. Could he be using narcotic substances?“Cocaine!” was the doctor's second proclamation. It was his favorite treatment for the psychological complications of syphilis. Skorsky himself never took what he called “the universal drug”—good for alcoholism and toothaches, neuroses and morphine dependency—though he had read in an article by a respectable Viennese physician, who used cocaine as a panacea, that it was not addictive. That doctor subsequently recanted, but Skorsky paid no attention. He believed the retraction was made under pressure from pharmacologists who had no incentive to cease production of the medications that cocaine might supplant. Their representatives either paid or threatened the Viennese to repent.As the patient was escorted to his room, he assaulted the orderly, Alevtyna. They tried pulling him off her, but, though he released his fingers from her neck, he buried his teeth in her leg. The poor orderly, who had not until then been attacked by a psychotic, nearly died of fear. Later, panic set in over Skorsky's diagnosis. He told her about the consequences of syphilis: grotesque patterns on one's face due to infection of the skin, mucous membranes, cartilage, and bones. He went on about the devastation to the central nervous system, which they had just observed in real life: “The face starts to look like lace some mangy dogs fought over before rolling in the mud.”Alevtyna, who had not yet regained her faculty of speech, straightened up. Ignoring the slavering male orderlies, she bared her leg to get a better look at the wound. She then ran down the hall and out into the garden, where she fell on the ground to rip up grass and small bunches of daisies. Alevtyna ate them along with the soil in their roots.“Minor hysteria. She needs fifteen milligrams of cocaine.”Skorsky took a snuff box out of his pocket and scooped up some white powder with a toothpick made from a goose feather. He gave the order to close Alevtyna's mouth and one of her nostrils, forcing her to snort the medication.We fretted over her so long that evening fell. I decided to walk down, along the ravine, behind the church.It was unlikely there were any large beasts there, but something was rustling. The pits and mounds, ravines, paths, graves of witches whose living sisters flew in the treetops from time to time, the whispers of the forest spirits, the spirits of the nutcases who died in the hospital, the spirits of the monks from the St. Cyril Monastery, Zmei Gorynich and the bogatyrs who wanted to defeat him. The city would be calmer without this forest. I saw the gaps between the trees and went off in the direction of the tram tracks.As I was coming out of the forest, there was a patch of Amanita muscaria that had been trampled into porridge. A bit farther on, the body of Professor Bilinsky lay killed in the blackberry bushes. The way he was lying it looked as though he had not struggled before death. I quickly examined his body but saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were no wounds, no dirt under the fingernails. Animals had not yet smelled the carrion, but swarms of various insects covered him. Oh, why did I have to find the putrid body?The best thing would be to take the tram to his house to inform his relatives. The doors closed, and I noticed my own calm. This death had not evoked any emotions in me other than a feeling of responsibility, the need to tell the family. But also—some alarm at the thought of who the murderer could be. I knew that it was murder.“Your nose is bleeding.” A woman as round as an onion, carrying two baskets full of strawberries, offered me an ironed and starched handkerchief.“Have I dirtied my shirt?”“No, it's as neat as a pin. It's just your nose that's dirty. Wipe it now before you spray blood on my strawberries.”“No one will see the red on red.”“Ah, but it's salty!”“You know why it's not sweet? We'd drink it like syrup.”“Those with Christ in their heart do not talk that way.”“Are your strawberries expensive?”“Why? What?”“I'm checking to see if you have God in your heart.”“Child, if you knew how I have to work for this berry! I have to weed it a hundred times. In a week, the quitch grass grows as high as a horse. And I water it with water I carry from the stream, it kills my arms... ”“How much are the berries?”“They're not for sale. Anyway, soon money won't mean a thing. Soon all money, all these papers made from the skins of sinners on their satanic presses will be annulled. What matters is how we treat each other.”“So if I try your strawberries for free, my ‘thank you’ will be enough?”“Hands off!” she said and thwacked my fingers.I heard loud laughter behind me—same laughter as from the café near the Continental. There was no one sitting near Alina. (This is what fate looks like, remember.) Without asking, I sat next to her, away from the old lady.“Excuse me, but the night before last didn't you, yes, didn't you intrude on my privacy?” She started right away.“I saw it a little differently. Who was that young man with the mustache who paid me for you?”“Are you checking to see if you can flirt?”The tram stopped. People got on and off.“Are you coming back from the hospital?” she asked. “Don't be shocked. My uncle works there. He's told me all about you.”“An uncle by the name of Skorsky?”(Remember: this is what fate looks like.)“Yes. Skorsky's been strange recently—says things that make me wonder if he hasn't lost his mind. Have you noticed anything?”“I don't know.”“You know perfectly well.”“Where are you going?” I tried to change the subject.“I have to send something to my theater friends in Odesa. By the way, they'll be putting on Oedipus Rex soon in Kyiv—in Ukrainian.”“Greek tragedy in Ukrainian! That's a first.”“Exactly. The troupe is rehearsing now in Odesa. The theater where they will perform this fall is being remodeled.”“Wait. Now I remember where I've seen you before—it was at a performance! Vynnychenko's Black Panther and White Bear, at the Bergonier on Fundukleivska.“The same director is doing the Oedipus. He's my friend.”“He's your friend in what sense?”“Again with that tired subject. By the way, I've been thinking about you.”“And I about you.”“That's good. I was thinking not about you, to be precise, but about that elevator you invited me on.”“Who was that man with you?”“Like a broken record! Even if he had been my fiancé, I'm not bought or inherited. I'm not a brooch or a hundred acres of land, and I'm not a house in Kaniv!... Who was with you when you saw Black Panther?“Ah, so.”“Answer!”“That was my mother. She looks very young. She is coming to Kyiv the day after tomorrow. I can introduce you.”“Oh, this is my stop.”I looked out the window and realized that I had long since passed the stop for Bilinsky's.“Can we see each other again?”“We can. But you have only one chance.”Alina the anarchist wrote something on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.Morning, not morning but a thick porridge (I hate porridge). Dew, thick spit, crushed fruits, urine, all on the sparkling cobblestones. The sun, just barely having made its appearance, is already scorching. The human masses scurry and grumble like poorly digested food inside a stomach.I walked diagonally across St. Sofia's Square, then along the perimeter, then one edge, then again diagonally across. I went underground. The basement café of the Continental Hotel was practically empty. I again asked the server to bring the cloth with the embroidered portrait, but I couldn't remember the musician's last name, only that it ended with -sky. The server said that -sky was currently in the southern cities of Yalta and Odesa. I added that Kurbas, the director, Alina's friend, was also in Odesa, rehearsing Oedipus Rex, and that he'd previously put on Black Panther.I was bored, so I walked along Khreshchatyk and then headed down, calling to mind all the Kyiv churches of Podil: there's Birth of Christ, St. Nicholas on the Shore, Intercession, Pyrohoshcha, Holy Presentation, St. Dymytrii Rostovsky, St. Illia's. And also the Epiphany Brotherhood Monastery, Ascension Convent, and St. Katherine's, all these whipped-cream churches on the waffles of our streets. A few of them reminded me of themselves by appearing suddenly out of nowhere.The smells on Kontraktova Plaza where commerce buzzed were like multicolored light bulbs turning on one after another. Here you could catch the aroma of Balabukha jam, which blended with the next smell, English shoe polish at the Raiskys’ shop. Then the crunchy-smelling cabbage from old women standing in a row like herons and spitting out the shells of sunflower seeds. Farther on, the stench of a good-sized rat that crawled under Mrs. Shevchuk's shop where she sells broadcloth. Oh, she can't scream: no, she'll quietly dig that rat out herself so as to not scare off her clients.I bought a paper and two pairs of underwear. I asked two laughing young chambermaids who were secretly puffing in a grape-filled yard for a smoke. I wandered around Podil until evening when I came across a sawmill near the Dnipro that surprisingly smelled pleasantly of mazut fuel oil. The weather was dry, yet in the middle of the road was an enormous puddle, a deep dark black. A forty-year-old woman in a pale pink dress stood near it. The theatricality of it all provoked me to pose her a question,“Ma'am, what should I do?”But she paid me no attention. I shouted,“What should I do?”“What to do, what to do?” she said in Polish. “Jump in the water and swim so far away that you cannot return.”I quickly crossed a section of the forest. The wind brought a mixture of unpleasant air, like a stinky handkerchief held under one's nose. Passing the trees, I saw light in the spaces between them and exited at the hospital.Outside the windows, two orderlies lay in chairs with their heads thrown back. Two others—fools—ran around the yard in different directions, peering out at... something. The lights on the first floor of the hospital were on, and the staff milled about.“You're just in time!” said Ivan, a tall, young orderly.“For what?”“Your patient ran away! We went into his room and he wasn't there.”“What patient?”“The one who bit Alevtyna,” said Danylo, the other orderly, short and middle-aged.“That's Skorsky's patient, not mine.”I had no intention of helping them. This was all history—like my family, Kyiv, and my previous life. I had no intention of thinking about it. I wanted to go to my office, pack up my field surgery kit, and get out. So what? Their psychotic syphilitic ran away—it happened.Of course, that patient could have something to do with Bilinsky's murder. But that was no longer my problem.“What a strange coincidence!” the doctor on duty said. “Comrade doctor, the other one responsible for this patient was just here.”“And where is he now?”“He took off toward the church to look for the patient.”“Didn't the patient escape earlier?”“Don't know.”“How do you not know? You had better call the police, moron, before he kills someone. And get those sleeping orderlies to look for him.”“They can't... ”“Why not? Should I go wake them?”“They're on morphine.”“And you, I can see, have lost your mind. Go, catch your psycho! If it turns out that he killed Bilinsky—and on your watch—you can't imagine what's in store for you.”I adjusted my homburg and set off in the direction of St. Cyril's, that unwelcoming monolithic cube. I glanced around—what if our escaped syphilitic were to jump out of the bushes and bite or strangle me. I looked around because I wasn't sure of my actions, wasn't sure of my choices. Tripping over a clump of clover, I reached the open doors of the church. I couldn't stop myself from going in.The walls and ceiling were covered with frescoes. There was what used to be an angel rolling up the sky on the southern column of the narthex. But also graffiti: people scratched their names on it so as not to be forgotten—their idea of eternity. Prince Volodymyr the Great compared this activity to the desecration of graves. The vandals paid a fine and were beaten with canes. During the raids of Batu Khan, the church was deserted and cracks appeared all over it. Wild martens and feral dogs sought shelter here; insects swarmed under the ceiling with its red mosaics. Birches grew in its midst. Water seeped in the cracks, the water became ice, the ice widened the cracks, more water seeped in the cracks, becoming more ice that further widened the cracks, the wall split and nearly fell over, and then the wall fell over. Yet the angel is still rolling up the sky... When I reached the exit, I heard a rustling behind me. I turned after I stepped outside: in the depths of the church, like a stick in a pot of tar, stood a man with a large bag thrown over his shoulder and a revolver pointed right at me.“Is that you, Doctor?“Don't move!”“What's... Skorsky, what's with you?”“Don't move, I say!”“What are you doing here?”And finally I understood... Skorsky was himself the psycho! (Really, I had known for a while.)“You are the murderer! I knew it! But—why?”“Shut up.”“It was you. You! The stolen cigarettes, the strange behavior, Bilinsky. If I shout, everybody will come running. They've already called the police!”There was heavy breathing behind me. And then a gun rang out.The city is overgrown with new buildings. They encircle everything that was once on the periphery. Kyiv has become an old lady that can no longer restrain herself in the face of pastries. The city climbs farther. It steps over the swamps, turns the old rivers into a series of lakes; the other bodies of water it drives into canals. The grain that falls from the wild wheat is black. When the sun heats it, the grain melts and trickles into the earth. St. Cyril's stands indestructible. No one spackles the small cracks in its walls with either expensive putty or glues, nor with cheap cement and whitewash. One day a small fox appears in the doorway. It runs inside and along the floor of simple gray tiles. The gods watch from the walls, watch and fall into ruin. The fox runs to the iconostasis. Before it is a time-darkened Virgin Mother and Child in oil on sheets of zinc. The fox runs the metal steps that wind up to the second floor. The fox runs past all the vaults, naves, all the frescoes. A buckthorn seed flies in through a broken window. It will be the first. Soon the buckthorn will grow everywhere. A dumb hare will make its nest in the buckthorn bushes and nightingales will settle in the upper branches to sing until the end of the world. The fox runs between the thick rays that penetrate the windows. It catches one of the rays, squints its eyes, and warms itself in the sun.The shot rang out, but I did not fall. I looked around—and on the church threshold was our syphilis patient bearing a rod. His head lay on the rocks by the doorway.“If only he'd been at the stage of nose deformity! Just imagine: a hole instead of a nose plus a hole from the bullet—like an extra pair of eyes!” Skorsky laughed at the corpse.“We need to call the orderlies.”“They heard the shot. They'll run here on their own. You see, Professor Bilinsky believed it would take two or three years to wrap up this patient's case,” Skorsky told me. “But I took care of it much faster!”“Excuse me, but I'm going crazy in this city. I thought that you were Bilinsky's murderer.”“Just so. Why not? I am Bilinsky's murderer.”“Don't tease. You've changed a lot recently, so... ”“Yes, I've started killing people. You might term such a change significant.”“You have the right to irony.”“I am not being ironic.”“Let's call it sarcasm.”“It's the honest-to-God truth.”“And yes, you have the right to mock me.”“Well then, let's be done. To the horses!”“What horses?”“Alina's waiting!”Alina, her uncle Skorsky, a few others I didn't know, and I rode like the wind that ripped off my homburg and carried it back to Kyiv.“There's a fresco in the choir loft at St. Cyril's where Vrubel painted himself and patients from the hospital as the apostles. When I came across it by accident, I really believed they were saints,” Alina said.“I've never been up there. I've only seen the church from below.”“Remember the way back so you can see it sometime.”“The Puchai River used to flow here. You shouldn't trust the landscape,” Skorsky said, reaching for something, perhaps his bag, just when we left the darkness of the trees and saw the endless steppe ahead of us.We rode all night without stopping. Though no one was chasing us. Though we had nowhere to be. We rode like beasts released from a cage. The promises of the horizon turned what we'd left behind into a cage fit for those from whom freedom had been severed, like an anomaly, at birth.The pre-morning sky looked at first like a sack of turnips—filled with something heavy. But with each verst, the sky became lighter. When it was finally light enough to see clearly, we arrived at a knoll at the foot of a stone wall that from a distance had appeared to be a gigantic piece of halva. The exterior ruins of the castle gave no hint of how it was when all was fine here, when people defended themselves successfully from the nomads’ raids. From far off, the wreckage looked like a natural agglomeration of stones—a rocky elevation, no more: a cluster of cliffs. It would rain a few hundred more times, a few hundred more winds from a few hundred directions would blow on this heap, and it would collapse as though nothing had ever been here.A few stalks of wheat grew from one of the rocks. Someone had probably cast a handful of grain here for some birds that forgot to eat it.“Who could this castle belong to?” I asked Skorsky.“I reckon the Swan Princess,” the doctor rejoined, hoping to sound knowledgeable.From behind one of the piles of gray sandstone emerged a young man in a black reptilian coat and a white papakha as lush, bright, and out of place as a dahlia. His name was Artem. The heat was melting our brains, but he was dressed like that, in rooster fashion, which was popular among the otamans. Artem helped Alina dismount her horse and tried to kiss her on the lips, but she offered him a cheek instead.Had she been racing to see this clown?We entered the yard—the ruins had fashioned an internal space that was more or less protected, at least from strangers’ eyes. It turned out that there were even places where it was possible to hide from the rain, and from there the ruins didn't look half bad.In the center of the court was a table, and on it a wooden bucket with pink gladiolas. How romantic! It all looked like it came from outer space. Where on earth, in the middle of the steppe, far from any village or town, did this table, this simple table, come from? And the gladiolas? The steppe hadn't been plowed in so long that any cultivars would have gone wild, degenerated, dried up completely.A campfire crackled nearby—a little preview of what we would soon do to the houses, villages, and cities. Artem the otaman brought over a cezve from the fire and poured the first portion into a small, copper cup for Alina. He also got out a porcelain cup with images of rosy cherubim—but how...?“Who else would like coffee?”Only Skorsky and I responded. The question excited me, even distracted me from the thought of the kiss I had recently witnessed and the Kyiv I had recently left.“It's obvious who the professors here are; cultured people drink coffee. Are you both doctors?”“Uh-huh.”“For wolves of the steppe, like us, doctors are gold, even more precious than gold. Actually, a Hippocrates like you should eat more, because those in your profession will soon be worth your weight in gold. Work on your figures, both of you.”“Who will take pity on the horses that have to carry us?”“We'll find the horses. And very large doctors can be transported on machine-gun carts. We'll need to seat the otamans near you. Only a fool would shoot at a doctor.”“I think we'll find quite enough fools here.”“With your beard, Doctor, you look like Tsar Nicholas II. But even so you won't be shot. You might even be canonized!”“We've only just arrived and you're going on about executions,” Skorsky grumbled and checked to make sure that he still had his bag.“Apologies, apologies, pardonnez-moi. But you are not merely a doctor. A venereologist! Skorsky, you're a specialist! A venereologist is the most important person in wartime. The most valuable! You are the botanists of war. You can't imagine what varieties of flowers grow here, and these beds have long awaited a proper gardener. Or even just a man with a scythe!”“Bite your tongue,” Alina said. “I don't need to listen to this.”“Yes, yes, of course. Excuse me, my r—. ” He almost said “rose.”We rested all day. We went down to a surprisingly close river overgrown with lilies. We rowed the boats left by fishermen. I talked to Skorsky. He took his bag everywhere, refusing even to swim so he wouldn't have to part with it. I asked him what he had in it, but he said it wasn't my damned business.Alina rowed with the otaman to the middle of the river. They were having a loud discussion. She was waving her hands. The current carried their boat downstream slowly and smoothly. What a nuisance, that current!I tried to meet with Alina one-on-one, but she was avoiding me. In the morning I was confused, by lunch I was sad, and after lunch I got angry.In the evening, I lay on the hot grass and drank another cup (I have no idea where they got such good coffee), which had no effect at all on my sleep. I watched the Perseids. Every year, the Earth passes through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle. People can see the meteor shower and make a wish. I wished. I counted forty-seven falling stars. All forty-seven of my wishes were for the same thing.Around the campfire, they were sitting, talking. I saw how he tickled her face with a piece of grass and she brushed him off in annoyance. Then they were screaming at each other. Later they again spoke kindly, after which they again quarreled. My joy grew after each tiny mistake that Artem made. I wanted him to show the worst he was capable of.They were screaming at each other, but all I could hear was beautiful opera singing. The stars fell to the sound of their screaming. The stars blessed my joy.Then this happened: Alina kicked the fire, scattered burnt kindling, and burned some of the grass. Artem grabbed her by the arm, but she broke away from him and ran off to the horses.“Go then! I guarantee you'll get to Katerynoslav and return with your tail between your legs.”“I'm going to Huliai-Pole! To Father Makhno!”I jumped up and ran after her.“Where do you think you're going?” Artem shouted.Really—where was I going? I was going after her: to Huliai-Pole, to Katerynoslav, to Rome, to Washington, to Istanbul, to Montevideo... “Go to sleep,” he said. “Come morning, this coquette will be here, right as rain. We've already been through this show. Tomorrow she'll be right here next to my boot!”... No, she won't.In some sort of shape we entered some town. There were some buildings that were some colors, some trees, some streets, some roads, and some signs. Posts, flustered birds’ nests, echoes, colors, shapes—each of some kind. A wedding procession was coming toward us. If you want to make orange, you need to add yellow to red, and then bam—it's black. If you want to salt the soup, shake in a little, and then bam—two handfuls. You want to say a kind word, and then bam—a punch in the face. I was rocked around like a watermelon on a boat and threw up my breakfast straight into the horse's fluffy mane. Sanko found this hilarious, but I said I'd pulverize him. So Sanko sped ahead.No one knew anything about Alina. The daytime sky was like a poorly washed bowl. The sun was a squashed, rotten apricot. The night sky looked like the sole of a boot to me. The moon was a dirty cheap copper coin that had gotten stuck to the sole. Everything seemed spoiled to me, irrelevant, unnecessary. Without her, this journey was a waste of time.“You'd better stay away from everyone,” Artem said. “You'll infect us with your pining, and pining is worse than the clap.”The wedding procession was before us. The young couple, still utter children, walked so calmly it was as if they didn't see us. As if we were made of a light breeze—our bodies, clothes, our horses and their iron shoes—of the lightest gasses. As if we were visible only to ourselves and the coal-black dog that barked, panting and gasping.The wedding was headed straight for us. We were in the middle of the road, and so were they. We approached each other slowly, a wave going toward a wave. Some ten meters before their indifferent faces, I noticed the color of the bride's eyes. And the coral-colored tulips that fell on the road before her. Round goose eggs on meaty stems, the flowers were falling and falling before her. The bride's eyes were almond shaped.“Hey there,” Artem shouted at me. “Wake up!”I came to and saw the whole village, everyone there, not realizing my group had turned left onto a side street away from the procession. The tulips disappeared—where'd they get tulips in the fall? I was sitting alone on my horse in the middle of the road, and the entire wedding procession came to a stop. I moved to the side, and the throng marched on, cutting off our escape route. We rode a few more meters and came across the synagogue.“You know what, you're right,” said the otaman.“Who is?”“Oleksii is the only one here who's right.”“About what?”Artem turned his horse and raced back. Everyone stood still while he ran his horse into the crowd and began firing his revolver. People scattered in all directions. Artem trotted, cackling like an imbecile. The horse kicked an old guy in the mouth. The man fell, spitting out his gold teeth. We rode up to the commotion and formed ranks, but none of us wanted to join the otaman.The bride stopped in the middle of the street. On both sides were buildings and trees, as well as dust, sky, and sun. She stood still, beautiful, as if nothing had happened. Then she adjusted her garland and walked calmly on.“Well, should we get some sugar now?” Artem laughed, looking at the bride, and off he went toward the sugar factory.It was then I noticed that all of the houses had shutters—fuchsia, blue, ocher—and that all the shutters were closed.We flew toward the dirty building, whistling and shouting. If there had been aesthetes among the otamans, they would certainly have razed the abomination in this field after seizing it. They would have spread soil on top and sown buckwheat. Long live buckwheat!, that wonderful crop. Like hunting dogs hot on the trail, we raced to our defenseless victim, with the baying of hundreds of hounds behind us. The field shook beneath us. We became an artist's canvas, evolving from Realism to Romanticism, Romanticism to Expressionism, Expressionism to Suprematism. If we had been painted in black and white, we would have been splotches (until the ink ran, annihilating all remaining patches of white).Two men stood near the gate—unarmed and undressed, in nothing but their undershirts and boots. Our fervor, our kinship with the elements, our entirety, were all for naught.“Jesus Christ! What bores!” Artem exclaimed. “How boring you are!”“Maybe boring for us, but fireworks for them,” Sanko said, dismounting his horse.“The fear of death engenders creativity,” our otaman—a distinguished philosopher of the early twentieth century, that demonic breed—prophesied.He went on, “Excuse me, but with all due respect, we are not going to search you. Just show us right away where the money is. Why are there so few of you? Don't say there's not much money. I want piles and piles of money! If you don't show it to us, we'll print our own on your skin. Believe me, we will.”We entered the factory grounds. There were no workers, only an enormous mountain of sugar beets that looked like a pile of coal from a distance and a pile of dead rats from up close.“So, did you have a good year?” Artem asked a man in an undershirt.“Not really—too dry.”“Nah, that's fine. You wouldn't have been able to gather most of the harvest this year anyway. There's a fire burning across all of Ukraine, all of Russia. The whole world!”While Artem tossed thoughts like well-chewed sunflower seeds into the crowd, the two men quietly stepped aside and then ran fast ahead to the factory's main hall. The gigantic door slammed shut. The gate was locked behind us! The windows were smashed! The factory roared from inside like a cumbersome machine starting up. Bullets whirred through every window.“Bastards! It's a trap! Quick, after me!”Still on horseback, Artem bounded over to a vast window, low to the ground, and smashed it mercilessly. He broke the frame and jumped inside on his horse. I and a few others followed. We broke into their lair, threw open the doors, and let the other warriors inside.Iron vats of hot sugar were steaming, pipes were clattering; machinery groaned.“Parasites!” Artem gritted his teeth. “I'll get you. I'll get you red sons of bitches. Painted whores!”At the word “painted,” his horse fell to the ground. Lying prone, Artem continued fighting, but the red soldiers wouldn't let him stand. Fighting nearby, I rode over to assist but did not know where to aim. Artem got up, ran forward, and brought his sword down on the head of the closest soldier, all the way to the middle of his skull, to the bridge of his nose. It was like butchering a pig. Artem thrust the sword into the buttock of another who was fleeing and cut off his leg at the bend in the knee.“I'll cut off every last one of your asses! Cut off your asses!” Artem bellowed.A half hour later, the dead were lying, the captured sitting, and the victors doing anything they pleased.“Skorsky, are there a lot of casualties?” I asked the doctor, whose hour it was. I hoped not, because I was too tired to help him.“Just a few. The dead are already dead, and the wounded are not ours.”Though Skorsky rarely asked my help, and though I'd become an ordinary soldier, the doctor in me was still present in the most unpleasant attribute—knowledge. Others saw an eviscerated man, pieces of dusty flesh smeared with clay, soil, sand, and straw. I saw a perfectly formed kidney hanging perfectly from the rest of its body like a child's mitten from its coat. You could try this death on for size. Wear it like a sanbenito of the Inquisition.Artem counted the money and then lay on the floor alongside the gigantic sugar mountain in the middle of the room. From time to time, the crystals rustled as they fell.“I didn't think you'd be such a fighter!” the otaman said without turning toward me. “I thought you'd be healing us. You'd keep to the rear and we'd hide you like a girl. But here you are, in the vanguard, like a lion!”“I got excited,” I told him, choosing not to react to the “girl” part.“’Cause Alina said there was no sense counting on you to fight.”“Really?”“Does that sting?”“Why would it? I'm a doctor—not everyone is. It requires a brain. Unlike waving a sword.”“Yeah, yeah. I gave her gladiolas. We were lying in the boat near that castle, doing all manner of things, and she told me all about you. How you met.”“You were lying in that boat talking about me?”“It was the day before you left Kyiv. You agreed to go with the anarchists so quickly!”“Were you surprised? Doctors make fast decisions.”“But you probably had great prospects. Your parents are rich, right?”“And who are your parents?”“Probably all your relatives fled abroad—bourgeois. Why did you stay?”“What the hell's your point?”“Alina, by the way, died a while ago. Probably.”“Don't jinx her.”“Listen here,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “And listen good. If you have designs on her—dead or alive—it's best you castrate yourself now.”“After you.”“If I want to kill somebody, you know, I just do it.”At last he looked at me. I was lying on the floor nearby and looking in his direction, sweaty and relaxed, my appearance complemented by my disdain for his opinion, his authority, his stupid hat. His everything.Artem raised his arm above his head, stuck a finger in the sugar mountain, and licked it. We both got up. Had I anticipated this turn of events, I would have readied a gift for him. Artem held his revolver. Under my hand I found a knife the workers used for gathering beets: it was a deliberately sharpened arc they sank into the swollen brassicas. I jumped up and quickly stepped around the sugar mountain.Artem's bullet hit a pane and broke the glass.“Not man enough for hand-to-hand?”The otaman shot again.“You should've challenged me to a duel, you romantic!”Encrusted with white crystals, I charged Artem from the sugar mountain. We fell in, and the sugar stuck in our hair, mustaches, nostrils, armpits.The gang ran in to get us apart, then backed off because it had nothing to do with them. By now the sugar mountain had burst its banks. Of the once perfect pyramid, a deformed mound remained.Wounded, Artem fell on the sugar mound, turning the white red.I stood before the gang sugar-coated and holding a bloody hook. The old otaman was drawing his last breath. Blood trickled from the corner of Artem's mouth and streamed from the left side of his breast.“What's the commotion?” Old Roman had just come in.“Be quiet,” the boys told him. And a good thing they did.“You killed him? You killed the otaman!”“Shut your mouth,” the boys told him.“You... ”I slugged Roman's stinky herring mouth. How did that son of a bitch find pickled herring in a sugar factory? My fist was now bigger and stronger than ever before, a steel anvil that could split nails and shatter memorial plaques. The unfortunate man's jaw twisted like an upper millstone that had gone off track from the lower.“Let's get out of here and go to Makhno's camp,” I gave my first order.We galloped so fast the grass burned beneath us. The birds and bugs had no time to fly out of the way; hooves trampled the burrows of rodents who didn't dare crawl out of their holes for a long time after. We raced like no one had ever raced before.The steppe, that sly fox, pretended to be an innocent fool. The steppe said, “I'm like Adam: I don't even know my own name.” But its grass harbored the tracks of thousands of armies and the heels of Herodotus, the crunch of Trypillia vessels, and the smell of Scythian hemp, Roman coins, clay figures of wolf people, the chevrons of Denikin's army, glass from the Chekists’ ruby stars, traces of uranium from flying saucers. I threatened it: “Steppe, show me your layers, or I will burn you, plow you under, flood you.” But it just replied: “I'm like Adam: I don't yet know my name.”I lost geography as if it were a silver coin. It fell out of my pocket and rolled through the feather grass that blanketed the steppe in white foam. The open space ahead was so endless that the whole world might as well have been steppe. If people ended up here from somewhere else, they would conclude they were on another planet. The coin fell and became an argentum, became one with the ring on the hand of the princess who had one green eye and one blue, with the twisted candlestick at the monastery on the other side of the steppe, with melted ingots. It broke down into simpler elements, simpler and simpler yet. The horse carried me spreading the seeds of northern plants to the south, just as southern riders had once brought flowers and weeds to the north. And then I turned back. Just as I had no geography, I had no time. Every night I fell asleep with the thought that the next day I would again race. Through all spacelessness, all timelessness. I exchanged one horse for another, got on a train, on a boat, traversed forty versts on foot—in rain that brought the river up to the road, in heat that overturned cattle. The earth I walked on became mine. Mine was the water in the lakes and springs, clean water, dirty water, enlightened water, contaminated with oil, stinking of algae, of fish that died in wells, stinking of the memory of atrocities, water as clean as broken bread. The water did not become Alina.I was doing this for her: I got the basturma out from under my saddle, sodden with the horse's sweat, sliced the throat of a rich man whose daughter I had danced with at a ball, climbed into a vat of beet juice and took a sugar bath, carried out the expropriation of the savings banks, wiped the sweat from my face with my shirt—and the cloth turned red; I didn't know from what. If it was someone else's blood, I didn't care; if it was my own, even less.We mostly came across Reds. We scraped them up like old red paint on a door in order to repaint the boards black. Black looked better. Red is tasteless, but black has style. Healthy men died before us of myocardial rupture like bunnies found in the nest. The ones whose hearts were sewn of steel wire envied the deceased. Seizing estates, banks, distilleries, and prisons reminded us of gathering in the harvest. If you're too lazy to pick an apple, you can shake the tree; some of the fruit gets bruised when it falls. We seized buildings like we were shaking apple trees. No one picked the fruits, we just shook: shook under the beds, under the tables, behind the curtains. No, there was no picking. We just shook until the red juice spurted from the apples.Near the Khorol River with Father Makhno and me in charge, we captured sixteen machine guns and four cannons, as well as five hundred prisoners who immediately came over to our side. The villagers voluntarily gave us bread and cheese, chickens and kvas. People joined us. The front of the machine-gun cart said “You can't run,” and “You won't catch us” at the back. We took factory after factory. Millions of karbovantsi, thousands of poods of sugar, weapons. We smashed the telephone exchanges and captured the telegraphs. We made alliances with some and then with others. Lenin, Wrangel, Frunze, the Germans, Chinese, Australians, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Cleopatra, Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina. We ran the steppe. There were a hundred thousand of us. There were three hundred thousand of them. There were three hundred thousand of us. There were a million of them. There were two million of them. We were all of humanity. We were so many that we were none.The nobles’ estates were long ago forsaken. In the people's deepest trunks lay silks and guipure laces that were once perhaps used only to cover a table. Five steps from the barn in the direction of the pear tree, some silver candlesticks are buried; there's a plaster figure of an angel in the chicken coop, covered with shit and feathers.I was reluctant to be going to my home, but I didn't see any way out. Fate intended me to be a different being from the one I was before.Here my grandfathers and great-grandfathers were born. Here the ones who caused my grandfathers and great-grandfathers to flee had stopped. When we were still far off I noticed that someone was in the house. It was our men—Skorsky had brought them here, about twenty in all. I asked Sanko, whom I had walked with side by side more than once, where the doctor was now. All the men answered that he was around somewhere, but I didn't see him that evening.In 1918, the spirit of my great-grandfather Stepan, along with my mother and uncle, had gotten into a britzka and scrambled off to Paris, to Napoleon, against whom my great-grandfather had fought with the Cossacks, to whom the Russians promised to return self-rule. Following him in the cart went the soul of Grandpa Oleh, who lost a finger when he cut down the old linden near the house; his second finger was blown off by a cannonball near Balaklava, and later his entire hand was cut off by some Turk. Next went the spirit of my father, also Stepan, who did not take part in any war but died of measles at the age of forty. They all got the hell out of here. First, they went to Kyiv, led by my mother, Tamara Makarivna, in order to collect Uncle's family and me, their son. And their son, it turns out, has now come back to rob his own home (I didn't drive my war buddies away, did I?). It's a shame that I didn't know where the bathtub was, or whatever they bathed me in when I was small. It would have been good to walk through the ranks of anarchists with that basin and tell them all to spit into it.Remembering every room, I carried Alina upstairs to my mother's bedchamber. There was no longer furniture or pictures, only bare walls. The bed and mattress remained, but that was enough. Mother hated noise, so she set up her room far away from the running in the halls and the creaks on the stairs. I adjusted the mattress; in a gap, looking like a stalk of wheat, there lay a gold bracelet that she lost in the haste and that the thieves could not find in the mayhem. I tucked it into my pocket.The place could still be saved. It was strong, built under the leadership of my grandfather, who knew how to do it right. He built a sawmill, a gristmill, a dress factory (today it's probably been ransacked, maybe even by our own men).Alina had a complete, displaced break in her right fibula. We needed water first. I went downstairs—the guys were dragging out the piano like an old cow to the slaughter.“What are you doing with that?”“Taking it out.”“Why?”“What's it to you? We want to have fun.”“Can you play?”“We're not your bourgeois lily-handed bitches.”They couldn't play, but they were famous at destruction. “Noise is the music of the new time,” one of the smarter among them might have said. “But noise is the opposite of music. Just as a rose is the opposite of your ugly mugs,” I'd have responded if there was anyone to say it to. I could also have said that this was a Bosendorfer grand piano, that it was very valuable—but do the guys not deserve such a luxury?“Why are you so boring? We're relaxing.”“Then let me play a little first.”“Go ahead, but fast. One-two.”So I played. As before. My fingers ran up and down the black and white keys, which weren't simply keys of these, the simplest, colors. These were the keys that remembered my fingers specifically—achieved by that slovenly German Katerina, our governess. She knew a bundle of languages, could play the piano, and was interested in the latest scientific discoveries. But she had not an ounce of sympathy for anyone who couldn't master anything on the first try. More than once she hit my pinkie against the black key that remembered every one of its four thousand touches. She would pound it on the key and shout, “Si bémol! Si bémol,” and later bang my fingers and translate, “B flach! B flach!”I played. I could not expose myself, so the only thing I could do was believe in miracles. What if these coarse men saw value in this bit of furniture so unintelligible to them? And what if they didn't destroy it, this emblem of my childhood, my land, my air, which I could protect in no other way? My air. My water.“Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,” one of them who recognized the tune began to sing along.“Look at you.” They did not expect music from me, who had until recently been drinking blood like water.They said, “Again, again!”A group of curious men gathered around me. They were ordinary farmers, thieves, and recidivists, peasants and workers, everyone except for Skorsky. They needed this music as they needed baths. The music cleansed them from the inside, perhaps. They had not heard anything besides the whistle of a bullet, the neighing of a horse, or the knocking of a chisel and the whirring of a saw, amputating limbs, for a long time.But it could not go on long. I did not close the piano lid, just stood and went to fetch water for Alina, leaving the unfinished song for later. The well was to the north—that is, at the “Head.” My father once promised to give me a compass if I could learn to identify the ends of the earth by means of the sun. And to make it easier to remember, I gave each one of them a name: the east where the day begins was “Right” (my right hand), the west “Left,” the north “Head,” and the south “Feet.” Back when I could still do whatever I wanted all day long, I would wake in the morning and say: I'm going to the Feet. The mound was at the Feet, Left had the river, Right had the forest. It was only to the Head that I rarely went, because a village was located there. When the villagers saw me, they would speak in whispers and avoid the master's son.... I wiped her brow and her burning, sunken cheeks. I lay down next to her to feel the heat of her skin.When the fire in Alina calmed slightly, I went out into our orchard. My father had once been given a gift from Japan—a tulip tree that blossomed with yellow-green flowers. It had to have grown in the time that I was away. It would have been fatal had it been cut down. I again took the stairs down into the drawing room and came across nobody—they had all disappeared in search of food or were hidden away in their burrows. In the middle of the hall, like an opened rib cage, was the piano, irreparably shattered.B Flach! B Flach!Translation © Ali Kinsella 2022. (shrink)