An Itinerant Mind

The Mirror Shattered

Some time ago I blogged my intention of writing a poem called 'A Love Song To Whoever'. "Love song for whoever"  The idea behind it is that somewhere in the world's ten billion odd people there is one that is the best possible match for you and vice versa, (i.e. you are their best match). Of course it could be that they are your childhood sweetheart from the same small town, and lucky you if that is the case. It is perhaps much more likely that the two of you will never meet.

In a small burst of synchronicity, which I am well used to, there was a post in the WDC Newsfeed a couple of days later asking about perfect partners. I posted something to the effect that I thought they were out there, but that most people made do with who they got, and that loving someone dearly who wasn't your perfect partner was the common state of things. This wasn't phrased or meant as a negative, love doesn't require perfection, indeed love exists in spite of their, AND YOUR faults, and making allowances for each other is one of the manifestations of love.

Recently I finished reading Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. I thoroughly enjoyed it, so much so that, when I'd done I reading, invested in the 1974 film based on the book. The film I think was one that you couldn't possibly understand or enjoy unless you had read the book, and perhaps not even then. It had some elements I liked.

One of the key points of the novel is that the eponymous Steppenwolf thinks of himself as a hybrid of man, who likes literature, classical music and fine art, and a wolf, who despises the bourgeois life and all it's trappings. As the book progresses, he learns that he isn't just two conflicting personas, but in fact a multiplicity of souls, thousands of them, in various states of neglect or development. He learns that he can disintegrate the personality and rebuild it re-arranging the mix. He is immortal.

The book reminded me of another, The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart, (the pen name of George Cockcroft). In it Luke, a psychologist realises that the idea of us being one is a nonsense, and that we suppress all sorts of facets of our potential personality. His solution is to start playing a 'game' where he assigns different actions or expressions of potential a number and using a dice to decide which actions he takes. Naturally his family, friends and colleagues are horrified. The Dice Game plays out with most of them gradually becoming converted to his ideas.

Do not however imagine that in writing about this I am suggesting we should all start destroying our personalities, this is decidedly NOT for everyone. However if your inclination is to alchemy you will already know the significance of the idea.

One of my favourite authors/poets is Raymond Queneau, (1903-1976). A French encyclopedist, who worked as Director of the French Encyclopedias l'Encyclopédie de la Pléiade. He was a co-founder of the Oulipo group, which explores the structures and patterns of literature and poetry, and explores new ways to utilise them, producing some very interesting works. For example La Vie mode d'emploi, (Life A User's Manual), by Georges Perec is based around an apartment building and the lives of those who live and lived there. The chapters are not random, but based on a chess knight's tour as it moves around the building. The book as a whole does have a plot, but some single rooms could have easily been expanded into another separate novel.

I digress. One of the ideas that Oulipo uses is that of restriction, or if you prefer structure. As a man who had a wide and indeed literally encyclopedic mind, with many interests, Queneau knew that exploring all of them was impossible in one lifetime. The secret to getting anything worthwhile was structure. The limitations might be arbitrary, but they enabled him, and the other members of Oulipo to create some quite fascinating works.