It has been said that school is a place where they give you answers to questions you never asked and fail to answer those that you do ask. How do you guide a pupil to find the right answer without imposing fashionable notions?
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Myth, as I understand, is neither a romantic invention of poets, nor an archetypal construct to fulfill a psychic need, nor an artifice to teach piety, but a sensory vernacular and guide to experiencing the numinous. Myth can be articulated as allegory, symbol or metaphor but not as a didactic profession of faith. But how do you reconcile myth with historical fact?
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Im Jahr 1952 veröffentlichte Felix Somary sein politisches Testament — “Krise und Zukunft der Demokratie”, das im Buchhandel erhältlich ist. Ein paar Jahre später sagte der Vater zu mir: “Der Kommunismus ist eine Episode; Du wirst seinen Untergang erleben. Aber fünf Minute danach kommt auch der Untergang des Kapitalismus”. Als Banquier und renomierter Ökonom der Wiener Schule, hatten seine Vorhersagen Gewicht. Sie ist nun eingetreten, denn die Grössenordnung der Schulden lässt den Konkurs nicht zu, und ohne die unausweichliche Reinigung durch Konkurs ist der Kapitalismus am Ende. Somit folgt die Rettung durch Abstriche in der Demokratie. Als aufmerksamer Leser von Homers’ Illias und Odyssee, interessierte er sich für die Macht des Schicksals. Im Versuch, die Schrift des Schicksals zu ergründen, um somit den Zeitgeist zu verstehen, verfasste ich mittels eines analogischen Symbolismus den folgenden Kommentar.
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Characteristic of our bubble-blowing activity is the illusion that all risks can be insured. But who is to insure the insurer? And how great is the sum of all insured risks? Knowing the answer would spoil the game. We also assume there is no limit to the size of a bubble we can blow. But there may be an optimal bubble size for each one of us at any given time of life.
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A dialogue can be the most pleasant and least expensive way to learn something new and to knit good friendship in the process. But it can also be the quickest and stupidest way to make enemies. It all depends on the willingness to share in knowledge and wisdom or on the urge to impose ones views.
This essay is dedicated to those who work at the craft of verbal expression and also for those who read poetry for sheer enjoyment and hope to derive more pleasure from their reading. The author’s concern is craftsmanship, not ideology; and the examples I have selected come from diverse sources of writing, both contemporary and traditional. They exclude experimental or unstructured poetry, for which I prefer to let others speak. In order to give this essay more spice, I have quoted controversial remarks from some great critics, which may pleasantly guide or deliciously confuse the reader.
Minos, the strict Inquisitor, appears
And Lives and Crimes with his Assessor hears,
Round in his Urn, the blended balls he rowls;
Absolves the Just and Dooms the Guilty Souls.
Virgil’s Aeneas VI, 582/5, transl. Dryden)
The word Justice numbs me because this virtue shines when practiced in secret and rusts when preached in public. Politically, it has become a call for redistribution and even of retribution, rather than for acting righteously and wisely. It is also a rhetorical call for social and economic activism, coming at times from a speaker who ignores the nature of his audience or the motives of his listeners. A call for gratutitous sharing of opportunities and of resources is an appeal for charituous beauty, which ought not be confused with justice. The human condition is not equitable but a human may choose to act christophorically. Such terms could find entry in our language to denote what needs to be said. Continue reading…
Someone complained to me that we have lost our faith and that everything has become relative. No, I replied: we have shed our devotional habits with their corset of apologetics, fear of eternal hellfire and hope of paradise, search for identity, maintenance of barriers, historization of myth, submission as price for salvation, demonization of lust, toleration of cruelty, and a dualistic worldview instead of an acceptance of polarity. Continue reading…
There is a focal point in a painting in the National Gallery of London, which in recent years has compelled the independent attentions of my next of kin and myself. It is the light the emanates from the eyes of Christ as he washes Peter’s feet. Here is Man of God anointing the feet of the fisherman that once cried out: “Depart from me, master, for I am a sinner!” In Romance languages, sinner and fisherman are expressed by similar words. In addition, the sign of the zodiac for Fishes corresponds in astro-medicine to the feet, the sign for Pisces showing two angled fishes pulling in opposite directions, which demonstrates the ambivalence (or walking apace) of the human condition. Continue reading…
Ives Klein Blue (IKB), patented and thumbprinted by the artist, is somewhat different from God’s unpatented delphinium, gentian or sapphire blues, to name but a few. A canvas that’s covered with certified IKBlue once sold at Sotheby’s for $6,800,000 and if I wanted to understand Why, I would have to ask that woman who sat in cross-legged meditation before a similar one of his works as I walked through the halls of Tate Modern, trying rather unsuccessfully to comprehend the spirit of the times. The cross-legged woman interested me more than Klein’s painting, just as two portly Senegalese ladies who rocked with laughter interested me more than the surrealistic painting that was their source of merriment and just as that enamored students-of-art couple that spread study sheets all over the floor of the nudes room, while studying paintings of bodies inferior to theirs, meant more to me than the paintings. Those viewers were all part of the picture and my memory became indented with the viewers’ living reactions to what they saw. Continue reading…
Wolfgang Somary is a retired private investment banker, an economist, poet, musician and astrologer. Born in 1932 of Austrian parents in Zurich, Switzerland, he graduated from Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. and from Trinity College Dublin University, trained for banking at Warburg’s in London and New York and had a career as investment banker at Blankart & Cie. Inhaber Somary & Cie., Zurich, at Bank Sarasin & Cie., Basel and Zurich, and at Salmann Investment Mangament Ltd., Vaduz and Zurich. He founded the Intercultural Cooperation Trust in New Delhi, India, was key-‐note speaker at the annual symposia on economics in the Churburg Castle, Southern Tirol, published in German numerous articles on the quality of time for the Novalis Journal of Philosophy, a book on the Cosmology of Money and another book called Dealing with Events (Mit Ereignissen Umgehen), being an history of investment 1900-‐2010. His latest book of English and German poetry was published in August 2011 with the title “Windstill”. He has received poetry awards in England. From his late wife Gabriele Somary-‐Hennig he is father of four children and now lives in union with Louise van Wassenaer-‐Wiarda. He makes his home in Meilen, Switzerland.