Commonplace 158 George & The Genius of the Crowd PART TWO
With the weird and fab paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) click
George, if he had been alive in the late twentieth century and if he had done some serious introspective thinking precipitated by mind altering substances and 'ardent' beverages, would perhaps have been intrigued by the work of Charles Bukowski. He would certainly have found an affinity there. Apart from both being rampant misogynists who paraded as the opposite, they both dabbled in painting (hopefully, George's works were better than CB's truly dreadful daubs click); they both hated proper work (as in the sort that makes you break a sweat), and then there is their shared disdain for all things 'Demos' - or, as Bukowski described it, the 'Crowd'. How they both needed to prove they were above the everyday person - a sure sign of some inner battle with feelings of inferiority. How they both raged against their mediocrity!
From Bukowski's wikipedia page:
His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work.
George's work is generally about the social, cultural and economic ambience of London; his early writing concerns the lives of the poor working class and then the poor middle class - as George Orwell summed it up, our man always wrote about 'not enough money'. He was preoccupied with the technical business of writing (and when he wasn't doing books he was scribbling letters and diaries), and each book seems to have been dragged out of him (that's how stagnant his creative flow could become), but it was all insignificant when compared to the amount of reading he did. He lived to read, and that solitary vice kept him from achieving his full potential. Reading is essentially a passive act, and is always a good excuse to be alone and not be forced to socialise. George read in order to study his contemporaries and learn his craft from these experts, but his own 'voice' was never easy or natural. Though he was a massively uptight cove, so perhaps it was!
Then we have George's relationships with women - always problematic and unsatisfactory on every level. Indeed, much of his anger was directed against the sex in general because he perennially felt we had let him down - typical of a man who seeks to make women objects of veneration and cannot accept us as equal human beings. And he held women accountable for forcing men to fritter away their talents in providing for dependents - New Grub Street's Amy Reardon is seen as some sort of a harpy because she requires food and a decent roof over her head - all is put in jeopardy by her husband's all-round impotence. In a world where she was unable to work for a living (for want of jobs for women of her class) - but could no doubt have turned her hand to anything if she had to - she was forced, by traditional gender roles, to rely on her man - the father of her child - for support. That dependency was part of the marriage set-up, and, to be fair to her, what had been promised in the marriage contract. Edwin's anger at what he sees as her unreasonableness is just his spite - he has reneged on his responsibilities as husband, father and writer, and yet it is somehow all Amy's fault! At the bottom of it, his fear of expressing his jealousy towards the child is what keeps him trapped in a cycle of bad faith, all the while blaming her demands for support of al kinds for his inertia. The death of the child liberates him - just as sending Walter off to live with his family in Wakefield (much to his wife's horror and dismay) allowed some of the rage to leak out of him like pus from a zit.
Alas also for George, marriage was the contract he signed up for. He never took his vows seriously. One has only to think of the silly fake ceremony he went through with Gabrielle to understand how little time he had for promises he had no intention of keeping. (I bet he stood next to her with his fingers crossed behind his back haha.) And he famously said that no-one should be expected to sacrifice themselves for someone else - which is, surely, his misunderstanding of a loving relationship such as husband and fatherhood? Well, he reneged on all his commitments in order to fulfil his own 'genius'. If only he and his talent had been worthy of the ordeals they had to suffer.
And then there is the ludicrous stance of preferring to starve rather than lower himself to take up a proper job. Bukowski was a postal worker for many years and hated it; George was a teacher who hated teaching. How tragic to be born without an independent income! What exactly did George have against work? Well, it got in the way of reading, but it also brought him that thing he so dreaded - a boss. He hated to think anyone was better than he was at anything, and voiced the opinion he loathed being told what to do. And then there was the company you are usually forced to keep when you work, over which you have no control. Is it any wonder folk sometimes 'go postal'? click
One of Charles Bukowski's most celebrated poems in this one: and click to hear the man reciting it, and below is the text.
The Genius of the Crowd
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
those who preach god, need god
beware the preachers
but there is genius in their hatred
like a shining diamond
their finest art
Is the term 'genius' to be taken as the older definition - the one George used? To the ancient Romans:
the genius (plural in Latin genii) was the guiding spirit or tutelary deity of a person, family (gens), or place (genius loci).[2] The noun is related to the Latin verb genui, genitus, "to bring into being, create, produce". Because the achievements of exceptional individuals seemed to indicate the presence of a particularly powerful genius, by the time of Augustus the word began to acquire its secondary meaning of "inspiration, talent".[3] The term genius acquired its modern sense in the eighteenth century, and is a conflation of two Latin terms: genius, as above, and ingenium, a related noun referring to our innate dispositions, talents and inborn nature.[4] Beginning to blend the concepts of the divine and the talented, the Encyclopédie article on genius (génie) describes such a person as "he whose soul is more expansive and struck by the feelings of all others; interested by all that is in nature never to receive an idea unless it evokes a feeling; everything excites him and on which nothing is lost." [5]
Thank you wikipedia.
On the surface, this genius Bukowski invokes is a malodorous, malign influence for harm, being skewed towards the darker side of the human mind. George was of the
opinion the world and its humans were hypocritical and vicious, though where he
found such misanthropic views - as with Bukowski - is hard to explain. Neither
had lived a life of hardship that hadn't been self-inflicted; both hid their
inadequacies behind a veneer of cod philosophical distance, but both were really
angry children moaning about not having had enough love, or attention - personified as food and drink?
A mob may be ruled with treachery hatred violence absurdity. George's fear of Demos was based on his belief that the average human being is capable of all three as default and is only kept in bay by the endeavours of their superiors - ie the likes of his own class (whereas poverty and want, ignorance and fear are better at controlling the masses, and have usually been the weapons of choice in the class war). And George was of the opinion the whole world is absurd, so he was in agreement there.
Bukowski wrote:
I see men assassinated around me every day. I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead; men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas... How can I be concerned with the murder of one man when almost all men, plus females, are taken from cribs as babies and almost immediately thrown into the masher?
George would have agreed. His bleak view was that children were a curse and a burden, destined as they were for lives of misery whatever their class, and he would not have had any if Edith (his second wife) hadn't needed them to get her through being married to him. He never really stepped up to the plate of fatherhood, and found it difficult to love either of his boys - with Walter being a disappointment to him and Alfred being virtually a stranger. Bukowski had a daughter, Marina, and said he loved her. Here is a poem he wrote for her:
What were these two men so afraid of? Being average, and the awful realisation they weren't special enough for greatness to come easy to them?
'nuff said.
With the weird and fab paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) click
 |
| Autumn 1573 |
From Bukowski's wikipedia page:
His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addresses the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work.
 |
| Vertumnus click c 1590 |
Then we have George's relationships with women - always problematic and unsatisfactory on every level. Indeed, much of his anger was directed against the sex in general because he perennially felt we had let him down - typical of a man who seeks to make women objects of veneration and cannot accept us as equal human beings. And he held women accountable for forcing men to fritter away their talents in providing for dependents - New Grub Street's Amy Reardon is seen as some sort of a harpy because she requires food and a decent roof over her head - all is put in jeopardy by her husband's all-round impotence. In a world where she was unable to work for a living (for want of jobs for women of her class) - but could no doubt have turned her hand to anything if she had to - she was forced, by traditional gender roles, to rely on her man - the father of her child - for support. That dependency was part of the marriage set-up, and, to be fair to her, what had been promised in the marriage contract. Edwin's anger at what he sees as her unreasonableness is just his spite - he has reneged on his responsibilities as husband, father and writer, and yet it is somehow all Amy's fault! At the bottom of it, his fear of expressing his jealousy towards the child is what keeps him trapped in a cycle of bad faith, all the while blaming her demands for support of al kinds for his inertia. The death of the child liberates him - just as sending Walter off to live with his family in Wakefield (much to his wife's horror and dismay) allowed some of the rage to leak out of him like pus from a zit.
Alas also for George, marriage was the contract he signed up for. He never took his vows seriously. One has only to think of the silly fake ceremony he went through with Gabrielle to understand how little time he had for promises he had no intention of keeping. (I bet he stood next to her with his fingers crossed behind his back haha.) And he famously said that no-one should be expected to sacrifice themselves for someone else - which is, surely, his misunderstanding of a loving relationship such as husband and fatherhood? Well, he reneged on all his commitments in order to fulfil his own 'genius'. If only he and his talent had been worthy of the ordeals they had to suffer.
And then there is the ludicrous stance of preferring to starve rather than lower himself to take up a proper job. Bukowski was a postal worker for many years and hated it; George was a teacher who hated teaching. How tragic to be born without an independent income! What exactly did George have against work? Well, it got in the way of reading, but it also brought him that thing he so dreaded - a boss. He hated to think anyone was better than he was at anything, and voiced the opinion he loathed being told what to do. And then there was the company you are usually forced to keep when you work, over which you have no control. Is it any wonder folk sometimes 'go postal'? click
One of Charles Bukowski's most celebrated poems in this one: and click to hear the man reciting it, and below is the text.
The Genius of the Crowd
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any
given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are
those who preach love
and the best at war finally
are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do
not have peace
those who preach peace do
not have love
beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always
reading books
beware those who either
detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in
return
beware those who are quick
to censor
they are afraid of what they
do not know
beware those who seek
constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the
average woman
beware their love, their
love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in
their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy
anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their
failure as creators
only as a failure of the
world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love
incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be
perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock
their finest art
Is the term 'genius' to be taken as the older definition - the one George used? To the ancient Romans:
the genius (plural in Latin genii) was the guiding spirit or tutelary deity of a person, family (gens), or place (genius loci).[2] The noun is related to the Latin verb genui, genitus, "to bring into being, create, produce". Because the achievements of exceptional individuals seemed to indicate the presence of a particularly powerful genius, by the time of Augustus the word began to acquire its secondary meaning of "inspiration, talent".[3] The term genius acquired its modern sense in the eighteenth century, and is a conflation of two Latin terms: genius, as above, and ingenium, a related noun referring to our innate dispositions, talents and inborn nature.[4] Beginning to blend the concepts of the divine and the talented, the Encyclopédie article on genius (génie) describes such a person as "he whose soul is more expansive and struck by the feelings of all others; interested by all that is in nature never to receive an idea unless it evokes a feeling; everything excites him and on which nothing is lost." [5]
Thank you wikipedia.
 |
| Whimsical Portrait |
A mob may be ruled with treachery hatred violence absurdity. George's fear of Demos was based on his belief that the average human being is capable of all three as default and is only kept in bay by the endeavours of their superiors - ie the likes of his own class (whereas poverty and want, ignorance and fear are better at controlling the masses, and have usually been the weapons of choice in the class war). And George was of the opinion the whole world is absurd, so he was in agreement there.
Bukowski wrote:
George would have agreed. His bleak view was that children were a curse and a burden, destined as they were for lives of misery whatever their class, and he would not have had any if Edith (his second wife) hadn't needed them to get her through being married to him. He never really stepped up to the plate of fatherhood, and found it difficult to love either of his boys - with Walter being a disappointment to him and Alfred being virtually a stranger. Bukowski had a daughter, Marina, and said he loved her. Here is a poem he wrote for her:
What were these two men so afraid of? Being average, and the awful realisation they weren't special enough for greatness to come easy to them?
From Bukowski's The Strongest of the Strange.
you won’t see them often
for wherever the crowd is
they
are not.
for wherever the crowd is
they
are not.
those odd ones, not
many
but from them
come
the few
good paintings
the few
good symphonies
the few
good books
and other
works.
many
but from them
come
the few
good paintings
the few
good symphonies
the few
good books
and other
works.
and from the
best of the
strange ones
perhaps
nothing.
best of the
strange ones
perhaps
nothing.
they are
their own
paintings
their own
books
their own
music
their own
work.
their own
paintings
their own
books
their own
music
their own
work.
'nuff said.
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