Why I still buy Paper Books: It is the Same Strategy that Women use with Men

I know that e-books are less expensive and take much less space than paper books. Nevertheless, I seem to be stuck with paper books and I am the first to ask myself why.

I think I found an answer with the book above, that I actually read as an e-book. I was not looking for a seduction manual for men, I was searching for "swarm intelligence" which is in the title of this book but, alas, is never discussed in the text! (this is an advantage of e-books, they are searchable).

I got this book for free as part of my subscription with Amazon and I even read some of it. I didn't find it very interesting: not a bad book, but overlong and saying things that I mostly I already knew. But I got a few ideas from this brief experience and I have to say that I found that the author frames very well the problem he tackles with the example of a restaurant.

Think about this: how do you select your dish from the menu of a restaurant? Florian Willet examines two possible strategies depending on whether the restaurant is expensive or cheap. If it is expensive, you'll be probably very careful in choosing the dishes that seem to be the best and, positively, you won't order more than you can eat, that would be a big waste of money. Conversely, if the restaurant is cheap, let's say it is a buffet, then you have no such worry, you can nibble a little of this and a little of that, try all items and when you are full, you don't care if you left some good food untouched in your plate.

Willet's idea is that these two strategies define how -- respectively -- women choose men and men choose women. For a man, sex is not an expensive choice and the ideal strategy would be to try as many women as possible, one after the other. That depends on how expensive women are and this explains why some men tend to aim at lower social status women -- less expensive in terms of the effort needed. Male doctors, for instance, tend to have affairs with female nurses rather than with female doctors. For women, instead, sex is an expensive choice if related to procreation. So, men are expensive not so much in themselves but for the consequences of the decision. According to Willet, a woman tends to choose a man with the same care that you would expend in choosing the best dish on the menu of a fancy restaurant (if she can).

All that is not especially new, as I said, but the curious thing is that I found myself applying Willet's theory to Willet's book. I would never have chosen it if it hadn't been free, I was just nibbling at it just as if I was standing in front of a buffet. It was the equivalent of a one-night stand with a woman in a faraway town where you just happen to be passing by.

And then something flashed in my mind: I love reading books, but like a woman who can't have too many partners together, I can read only a limited number of books. So I tend to choose books as if I were choosing a dish at a fancy restaurant or as a woman tries to choose a partner for life, or at least for an extended relationship. And that's why I buy paper books: they are more expensive. So, I carefully select what I think is best for me, then I pay for what I buy, and I am committed to reading the book I bought.

I think I'll keep staying with paper books -- economic science tells me that! Too bad it has nothing to do with swarm intelligence

Coronavirus: Liliana is not Afraid

My mother-in-law, Liliana, in a photo taken a few days ago. She is 99 years old, a few months to 100. She tends to forget things, a little, but her mind still works reasonably well. She stays in her living room, she knits, she watches TV, she plays with her great-granddaughter. 

Liliana knows about the coronavirus, I am not sure if she exactly understands what's going on, but she doesn't seem to be worried at all. Would you be, in her place? She saw a world war, many smaller wars, her city bombed, her boyfriend wounded in war, the great flood of Florence in 1966, and much more. She had three children, four grandchildren, and now she has two great-granddaughters.

Virus or not, life goes on and there are things we can do nothing about. And so, we go on living.

A Letter to Ludwig Van Beethoven

 

Guest post by Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Dear Ludwig,

You titan and creator among men. We, the citizens of the free republics, have irrevocably cast you as the top of all monuments in our concert halls and on countless recordings. Kneeling before your music, we repeat it like a mantra. Oh you lighthouse that blinds everyone!

You were feared, but in the meantime, you have almost been played to death, wreathed with laurel, and safely placed in the cemetery of our glorious past.

Prometheus was the hope of your time, symbol of invention and of emancipation from the tyranny of church and kings, symbol of the rule of reason and human rights. He was your hero.

We, the creatures of Prometheus made out of clay, who were so stupid and numb at first, from Muses and Apollo we learned music and dance, reason and insight. And Melpomene, the muse of tragedy, taught us how death ends people's days.

Do you want to know what has happened to us creatures of Prometheus? We were hardworking and fruitful and have procreated innumerably. We have used the reason taught to us to use fire for warmth, force, comfort, and abundance of modern times. Nothing is enough. Nature is strangled. Nor is our reason sufficient to follow the insight that fire continues to give birth to fire, from California, Australia, Siberia, up into the Arctic until fire ends hopes and days of mankind.

And we finally have to realize that Prometheus and we, his creatures who thought that we did not have to respect Zeus, we were not gods. And was the bringer of fire really the titan Prometheus or was it not rather a creature from hell - Lucifer?

Greetings into the afterlife!

Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Manzoni: The Rythm and the Meaning of the Adelchi

In a post on "Cassandra's Legacy" I interpreted the reaction of Italians to the coronavirus epidemics in terms of the description that Alessandro Manzoni wrote of the bubonic plague that hit Milano in 1629-1631. The same dismay, the same folly, the same hatred, the same desperate attempt to find a culprit for something that goes beyond human understanding.

In that post, I praised Manzoni as a genius who had understood the basics of the field we call "memetics" nearly two centuries before Richard Dawkins proposed it for the first time, in 1976. But Manzoni was more than that, he was a fine poet, a deep thinker, a man who could explore the human soul and give us stories that are at the same time epic and human.

Everyone knows Manzoni for the novel "The Betrothed," but let me report here an excerpt from his tragedy, "Adelchi," the story of an unfortunate Longobard prince who fought for his honor and who only was defeated by betrayal. A powerful story that includes true jewels in the form of the poems told by the chorus.

Here is the chorus of the 3rd act. It tells of how the derelict Italians watch their masters, the Lombards, beaten by the Frankish warriors and running away in terror. The Italians hope in their salvation, but they will only have new masters. The translation is by Hampsicore, reasonably good, but it can't maintain the rhythm of the Italian version. If you can, do read the poem in Italian (below), it is truly a masterpiece of poetry. And even if you can't understand Italian, you may enjoy the pure sound of the Italian words,

Adelchi - Chorus of the Third Act

Alessandro Manzoni


From the mossy halls, from the crumbling fora,
From woods, from strident scorching smithies,
From furrows wet with servile sweat,
A dispersed crowd suddenly awakes,
Stretches out his ear, rises his head,
Hit by a new, increasing noise.

Through doubtful gazes, through fearful faces,
Like a sunbeam through thick clouds,
The proud virtue of the fathers faintly shines;
In the gazes, in the faces, confused and unsure,
The scorn suffered mingles and contrasts
With the poor pride of a time that’s gone.

It1 gathers wishful, it scatters trembling
Through twisted paths, with errant pace,
Between fear and desire it advances and stops;
And peeps and gazes, disheartened and confused,
The scattered drove of the cruel lords,
That flees from the swords, that has no rest.

It sees them, panting like restless beasts,
With their tawny manes ruffled for fear,
Seeking the familiar refuge of their den;
And yonder, laid down the usual threat,
The haughty women, with pale faces,
Staring pensive at their pensive sons.

And on the fugitives, with greedy swords,
Like unleashed dogs, running, rummaging,
Warriors coming from left, from right:
It sees them and, enraptured by an unknown joy,
With the agile hope it prefigures the event
And dreams of the end of the hard servitude.

Listen! Those strong men who hold the field,
Who to your tyrants preclude any escape,
Have come from afar through rough paths:
They interrupted the delight of festive lunches,
They got up quickly from their bland rests,
Abruptly called by a martial bugle.

They left, in the rooms of their native roof,
The afflicted women, repeating their farewell,
Prayers and advices, truncated by tears.
Their heads are loaded with dented crests,
They put saddles on their brown destriers,
They flew on the bridge that gloomily resounded.

In hosts they passed from land to land,
Singing merry war songs,
But thinking of the sweet castles in their hearts;
Through stony valleys, through steep cliffs,
They watched with weapons on icy nights,
Recalling the faithful love talks.

They endured obscure dangers in unpleasant places,
Laboured runs on slopes without human tracks,
Severe commands, hunger;
They saw the spears lowered on their chests,
Next to their shields, close to their helmets,
They heard the arrows fly hissing.

And the hoped prize, promised to those strong men,
Would be – oh, deluded! – to overturn the destiny,
To put an end to the pain of a stranger crowd?
Go back to your superb ruins,
To the peaceable works of your scorching workshops,
To the furrows wet with servile sweat.

The strong enemy mingles with the defeated one,
The new lord remains with the old one;
Both peoples weigh on your neck.
They divide serves, divide herds,
They rest together on the bloody fields
Of a dispersed crowd which has no name.

Coro dell’atto terzo dell’Adelchi

Alessandro Manzoni


Dagli atrii muscosi, dai fori cadenti,
dai boschi, dall’arse fucine stridenti,
dai solchi bagnati di servo sudor,
un volgo disperso repente si desta;
intende l’orecchio, solleva la testa
percosso da novo crescente romor.

Dai guardi dubbiosi, dai pavidi volti,
qual raggio di sole da nuvoli folti,
traluce de’ padri la fiera virtù;
ne’ guardi, ne’ volti, confuso ed incerto
si mesce e discorda lo spregio sofferto
col misero orgoglio d’un tempo che fu.

S’aduna voglioso, si sperde tremante;
per torti sentieri, con passo vagante,
fra tema e desire, s’avanza e ristà;
e adocchia e rimira scorata e confusa
dei crudi signori la turba diffusa,
che fugge dai brandi, che sosta non ha.

Ansanti li vede, quai trepide fere,
irsuti per tema le fulve criniere,
le note latebre del covo cercar;
e quivi, deposta l’usata minaccia,
le donne superbe, con pallida faccia,
i figli pensosi pensose guatar.

E sopra i fuggenti, con avido brando,
quai cani disciolti, correndo, frugando,
da ritta da manca, guerrieri venir:
li vede, e rapito d’ignoto contento,
con l’agile speme precorre l’evento,
e sogna la fine del duro servir.

Udite! Quei forti che tengono il campo,
che ai vostri tiranni precludon lo scampo,
son giunti da lunge, per aspri sentier:
sospeser le gioje dei prandî festosi,
assursero in fretta dai blandi riposi,
chiamati repente da squillo guerrier.

Lasciâr nelle sale del tetto natío
le donne accorate, tornanti all’addio,
a preghi e consigli che il pianto troncò.
Han carca la fronte dei pesti cimieri,
han poste le selle sui bruni corsieri,
volaron sul ponte che cupo sonò.

A torme, di terra passarono in terra,
cantando giulive canzoni di guerra,
ma i dolci castelli pensando nel cor;
per valli petrose, per balzi dirotti,
vegliaron nell’arme le gelide notti,
membrando i fidati colloquî d’amor.

Gli oscuri perigli di stanze incresciose,
per greppi senz’orma le corse affannose,
il rigido impero, le fami durar;
si vider le lance calate sui petti,
a canto agli scudi, rasente gli elmetti,
udiron le frecce fischiando volar.

E il premio sperato, promesso a quei forti
sarebbe, o delusi, rivolger le sorti,
d’un volgo straniero por fine al dolor?
Tornate alle vostre superbe ruine,
all’opere imbelli dell’arse officine,
ai solchi bagnati di servo sudor.

Il forte si mesce col vinto nemico;
col novo signore rimane l’antico;
l’un popolo e l’altro sul collo vi sta.
Dividono i servi, dividon gli armenti;
si posano insieme sui campi cruenti
d’un volgo disperso che nome non ha.

Rewriting the Story of Gilgamesh: The Cosmic Twins by Stefano Ceccarelli

Novelspace is a parallel universe, fascinating for many reasons, one is of being so easily accessible in addition to being so rich of surprises. So, I have been exploring parallel spaces in the form of Plutonian explorers, diligent waitresses, goats with golden feet, Byzantine-American warriors, and way more. Some of these universes are fascinating, some just bizarre, and some weird in the ugly sense of the term. 

This note is about a recent novel by the Italian author Stefano Ceccarelli, titled "The Cosmic Twins" (in Italian, "I Gemelli del Cosmo"). First of all, let me say that this is deep stuff of the fascinating kind. It was Jorge Luis Borges who said that all individual books are just pages of a great book that humankind is writing. I would add that not all the books written nowadays deserve to be added to that great book, but some certainly do and this is one of them.

Let me start from the beginning and, since if we are discussing a single, gigantic book, we may as well take a look at the initial pages in order to understand what's written somewhere near the end. So, we might start with the Epics of Gilgamesh, possibly the first novel ever written. How does the story of Gilgamesh relate to the story written by Ceccarelli? All good stories are about searching for something -- it was a science fiction writer, Samuel Delany, who wrote that he couldn't think of writing anything but a new version of the search for the Holy Grail. So, that's the point to start with.

But what is exactly the Holy Grail? What are novel characters searching for? And why when they finally find it, the novel ends, or maybe they discover it is a disappointment? Maybe there is something deep here. All this searching is not about something in particular but rather has to do with the way the universe functions. The universe is not a uniform blob: it was created from the beginning by separating the light from the darkness and God herself saw that it was a good thing to do so. If you think about that, light wouldn't be what it is if there didn't exist darkness. Maybe light actively searches for darkness and maybe darkness is eagerly waiting for light to merge with it and become light, too, while maybe light itself lounges to become darkness after having spent itself to spread around. It is the eternal principle of the Yin and the Yang, always turning around each other, always seeking for each other, and never completely merging with each other.

So, what does Gilgamesh search for in his saga? Eternal life, we read. But that's not the real reason. The reason why Gilgamesh travels, fights, struggles, suffers, and keeps going is something that not even Gilgamesh himself understands. Perhaps we can find it in some detail of the saga. Gilgamesh has a friend in the story, Enkidu, but they are both Yang characters. They are both searching for a counterpart, Yin characters and we can find them in the two women of the story. They are not as well known as the two main male characters, but they have their names spelled out in clear: Shamhat, the holy prostitute and Siduri, the alewife. They are supposed to be minor characters but, make no mistake, they are among the very first female characters whose name we know in the history of literature -- that is, female characters who are not goddesses. Actually, these two ladies partake something of the higher sphere of things, but everything in the universe does.

So, perhaps we can read the Gilgamesh saga as a search of the main male character, Gilgamesh himself, for his female counterpart. He just has a glimpse of her when he meets Siduri at a tavern, then he moves on in his unsuccessful research, without even suspecting that what he had been looking for had been so close to him for a while. The same is true for Enkidu, who briefly meets Shamhat in the forest, is seduced by her, but then never meets her again. But so is the mythical search in all his literary manifestations. The object of the search is never fully grasped and, if it is, it is destroyed in the process.

Let's go now to Ceccarelli's Cosmic Twins. The story is about a couple of twin planets, one is our Earth, the other ts twin, called "Serra" that in Italian differs from the term for Earth ("Terra") for just one character. Actually, calling them "twins" is a misnomer. They are different and, for a quirk of creation, Serra doesn't have in its crust mineable amounts of the element we call "gold." But that's not the real point. Terra and Serra are two different planets, with Serra being definitely female as opposed to the more aggressive, male, Terra. Among the several characteristics of Serra, one is that of having had a female Messiah, Yesua Krista, the Yin counterpart of the Yang Terran Messiah, Jesus Christ. A male planet and a female planet, two halves looking for each other, with Krista not dying on the cross on the gentler Serra, while the availability of gold has corrupted men's hearts on Terra.

So, the novel goes on by describing how the inhabitants of Serra engage in a search for Terra. Eventually, a couple of Serrans, Yosh and Laylah, manage to travel to Terra by exploiting a strange space vortex. They arrive there to find a dead planet, destroyed by global warming and pollution. And eventually, they go back home empty-handed, just like Gilgamesh did, unable to complete his search.

That's the story: one problem is that the end of the novel is disappointing with the narration slowing down as it goes on, like an old clockwork toy. But never mind that: like all good novels, this one has defects, it is unavoidable. But, like all good novels, it is a metaphor that you can't really understand in rational terms. You have to feel it. And if you do, this is deep stuff. Extremely deep. It tells us how we are desperately looking for something that we cannot describe, but we know that it is there. It is our Yin counterpart that we lack to become a truly harmonious civilization. The Serrans fail in finding it. Gilgamesh failed in finding it. Maybe we will fail too, but who knows? Perhaps the path is the destination.

Sicut Cervus and the Angst of the West. Music as a Gift to Humankind

Sicut Cervus, by Pierluigi da Palestrina, published in 1604. It sings Psalm 42 of the Vulgata Bible.

With the waning of the Middle Ages, Europe was coming out of a terrible period. The crusades had ended with a series of crushing defeats and the tremendous war effort had backfired generating the famines and the black death pandemics that killed more than 100 million Europeans. It is estimated that around 45–50% of the population perished, in some areas probably closer to 75–80%.

Yet, Europe rebounded from the disaster -- perhaps because of it. As I described in a previous post, with the 15th century the European population restarted growing, faster than before, probably because it could find intact natural resources that the previous collapse had left free to regrow: forests and arable land.

The rebound of the 15th century was the time of the Renaissance, an age that was the start of the incredible expansion that led Western Europe to dominate most of the world after a few centuries of conquests. But the tumultuous expansion was not without internal struggle: every European state wanted a slice of the overseas bounty. Eventually, the competition would generate the great struggles of the 17th century, with Europe turning against itself with the 30-years war, the witch-burning age, and other disasters. Much before that happened, the older European cultural unity had been lost: Latin, the old universal language that had bound Medieval Europe together, was rapidly losing ground: it wasn't needed anymore.

But, before disappearing, Latin had a last moment of glory that lasted a couple of centuries. It was the age of polyphonic music in Western Europe, a kind of delicate, sophisticated, intricate, incredibly beautiful kind of music never seen before in the world. Not that polyphony didn't exist before, it was possibly the most ancient kind of music in human history. But the Western European version was something different. Earlier on, the Gregorian music -- monophonic -- had been mostly an embellishment of the sacred Latin words of the Bible. With polyphony, music asserted itself in an age when Latin was not understood anymore.

To be sure, polyphonic music was still sung in Latin and it often had religious subjects, but it was a completely different story. It was an expression of the European willingness to expand into new realms. Just in the same way as the European galleons were exploring new lands, European polyphonic music was exploring new harmonies and new ways of communications: lacking a shared language, music had to come to the rescue. For some two centuries, a new harmony, never heard before, resonated in Europe. Then, as the political struggle became harsher and wider, polyphony gave way to symphonic music, another European form of music, well suited to the tragic and violent age that started with the great carnage of the 30-years war and expanded all the way to the disasters of the two world wars of the 20th century. Then, English came to the rescue, becoming the new universal language. With English, music could become again linked to the human voice and to words that could be understood. A modern genre such as the rap is, after all, a return to the Gregorian approach to music as an embellishment of human language.

Today, polyphonic music is still alive and well as a religious form of music in Eastern Europe, but it is a relic of a bygone time in Western Europe and in all the regions that recognize themselves under the wide label of "The West." English has taken the place of Latin as a universal language and there is no need and no interest anymore in the delicate harmony of the old polyphonic music. Yet, we can still appreciate the technical mastery of the composers of that time, one of them was Pierluigi da Palestrina, who composed Sicut Cervus, from Psalm 45 of the Bible.

Actually, the Sicut Cervus is not just a beautiful harmony, it is something more. Its theme is a thirsty deer looking for water. It says, “Sicut Cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus.” Which you can translate as: “As the deer long for the springs of water, so my soul longs for you, oh God.” And that, I think, can express the burning desire of the West, the angst for something that Westerners themselves don't understand, but have been seeking for centuries with such a reckless enthusiasm that they set half of the world on fire. And, whatever it was that they were seeking, it seems clear that they didn't find it.

Today, the parable of the Western world domination seems to be mostly concluded, even though it still flares here and there. But there remains to us something distilled from so much ardor, the music of a couple of centuries of a remote age when our ancestors had managed to create something eerie and beautiful that we can still admire, today: polyphonic music. I noted in a previous post how all human cultures of this world have treasures that they cherish and revere -- these treasures are not the property of anyone but gifts for everyone. So, maybe the treasure of Western polyphonic can be seen as a gift to all humankind.

The Eyes, The Eyes! The Return of Inanna, the Warrior Goddess

Alita: the eyes of a beast of prey. 


The new film by James Cameron, "Alita, Battle Angel," is clunky, at best. Some creative scenery, some fascinating visual details but, the rest, well, it makes little sense. A classic failure of science fiction movies: cartoonish characters, a plot that doesn't go anywhere, clumsy motivations, silly bad guys, all that.


But Alita, well, she keeps the whole movie together. She is not cartoonish, she is perfect in her role. We recognize her. We know who she is from the scene in which she takes a battle posture facing the giant mechanical crab. It is her, she can only be her. Five thousand years after that the Sumerian Priestess Enheduanna told her story, she is back: Inanna, the warrior goddess fighting the giant dragon called Ebih.


Lady of blazing dominion
Clad in dread
Riding on fire-red power

Inanna
Holding a pure lance
Terror folds in her robes

Flood storm-hurricane adorned
She olts out in battle
Plants a standing shield on the ground

Great Lady Inanna
Battle planner
Foe smasher




(translation by Betty De Shong Meador)