(O)UTOPIA

With all the scourges that are plaguing our planet, I sometimes wonder if there is any utopia at all. However, once I read Utopia (1516) by Thomas More (1478-1535), I realized even if there were a utopia in a Morian sense, it wouldn't really change matters on earth, since it couldn't be any better than many other places. In fact, the pun in the title of More's masterpiece is very meaningful in that it can be defined as "no-place" or "good-place" and both would be equally applicable.

The framing of Utopia represents an idyllic scene, wherein More has a conversation with the Raphael Hythlodaeus, the homo peregrinans, who has been to Utopia, amongst other places. Raphael like his angelic namesake is a messenger of a yonder world, yet despite his vast learning, does not wish to get engaged in politics (very wise of him, I would say). The greenery of Book I contrasts with the gray atmosphere of Book II in which the specifics of Utopia are described:

There are 54 cities, a federation guided by a senate of 162 members which meets annually in the capital city, Amaurot. All cities are identical in language, customs, institutions and laws. Agriculture is the primary occupation; however, everyone learns a trade or handicraft. Everyone works for 6 hrs a day. Some magistrates are entitled not to work, but they do not take advantage of the privilege, preferring to set a good example. The households generally consist of blood relations and extended families. Urban households have no fewer than 10 and no more than 16 adult members. Each year 20 persons from each rural household move back into the city after completing a two-year stint in the countryside. In their place, 20 substitutes are dispatched from the town, to learn agriculture from those who are better skilled at it. The oldest member of each household is the ruler. The society is exclusively patriarchal. Wives act as servants to their husbands, children to their parents, and the younger to their elders. Woman are treated ‘equally’, but in reality are subordinated to their husbands (as is the case with even most of the advanced societies of our time).

Thomas More, en avant de son temps, paints a society similar and yet different from our version of socialism, for not only is property held in common, but also money and private wealth have been abolished. Paradoxically, gold and silver are held to be inferior to the multi-purpose iron. Diamonds and pearls are used as toys for children!

Should one read Utopia, one will realize that the society that lends itself to the title is far from what most of us had been expecting and that More's De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia ("On the State of a Republic and on the New Island of Utopia") has been an intentional misnomer. The Utopians' might have a much less tainted life-style than our own, but their lives are in no way enviable. What we ought to learn from the Utopians though, is their disgust for blood sports and hunting on grounds that they lead to mutilation and murder.

Once again, I reach the conclusion that Arcadia is nowhere but in the mind; i.e., if we happen to be lucky enough to have a fertile mind that will foster such a serene space.

White-ness

The certain symbolisms attributed to different colors used to hold a fascination for me: Green indicates fertility and freshness; red, violence and horror; blue, calmness, serenity and sorrow; pink, innocence... It was only later that I realized how arbitrary these symbols could be:

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,
Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes... (Voyelles, Rimbaud)

Many critics have attempted to decipher the mysteries that lie latent in the sonnet "Voyelles" by Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891). Some have even come up with very interesting reasons as to why "A" should be associated with black and then "E" with white, namely that birth takes place in darkness and then gives way to light and whiteness. As to why "O" comes after "U", critics claim that it is because OMEGA is the ultimate letter of the Greek alphabet and is also associated with purple which accounts for the last color of the spectrum. As interesting as these interpretations are, they might not all be totally what the teenage genius had in mind when he penned these enigmatic verses.

Despite the arbitrariness of color-symbolism, I have always been interested in the diverse connotations which "white"evokes. Literature abounds in examples: The whitness of the whale in Hermann Melville's Moby Dick and the White Div in Abolqassem Ferdowsi's The Shahnameh, are only two of many instances in the world of literature. Blankness/whiteness is being used more and more in the world of cinema to express an intensity beyond words, an example of which comes to the fore in Requiem for a Dream (2000) upon a quick succession of scenes which conveys the hopeless state of the characters of the movie. Another effective example of this white/blankness appears in Mexican director Alejandro Inarritu's 9/11 episode in which he asks his audience: "Does God's light guide us or blind us?" Too much light, after all, can be as blinding as the pervading darkness of Mazandaran (a reference to The Shahnameh).

Perhaps no one has expressed the polysemous nature of "white" as brilliantly as Hermann Melville: "Whiteness is not so much color as the absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all color"; also: "this divineness had that in it which, though commanding worship, at the same time, enforced a certain nameless terror". The white whale not only evokes terror but also our sense of awe for the ineffable.

But, what can I say of all the whiteness that has held the streets of Toronto in its thrall for a whole week now? Terrifyingly beautiful?

Das Leben der Anderen

For the most part of the movie, tears were coarsing down my cheeks not only in memory of experiences that I had long buried in the dark recesses of my mind, but also because of the events that led to the transformation of the stern officer of the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit) in East Germany, Gerd Wiesler. Wiesler who has been entrusted with the task of spying on the playwright Georg Dreyman, is at first, portrayed as a stiff sponsor of the Stasi values, intent on weeding out any suspicious elements from the system. As time goes by and he becomes privy to the inner workings of Dreyman's life, he begins to fall for the playwright's charm: His knowledge of music, his musical touch, his thoughtful remarks... so much so that he sneaks into the artist's apartment to steal a volume of Bertolt Brecht's poetry:

..."Und über uns im schönen Sommerhimmel/ War eine Wolke, die ich lange sah/ Sie war sehr weiß und ungeheuer oben/ Und als ich aufsah, war sie nimmer da" ("And above us in the beautiful summer sky, was a cloud/ which I looked at for long/It was very white and way above/ and when I looked up, it was no more")... Just picturing the configuration of a fluffy white cloud in the summer-time, at a time, when everything around you is dreary and you are so lonesome that you have to hire a prostitute to keep you company and even she is with you but for a short moment between two interludes of meaningless nakedness...

By and by, Wiesler turns into one of those whom Dreyman had earlier referred to as "those who really listen to Beethoven's music and can thus never be bad" and becomes intent on rescuing Dreyman from the clutches of the destructive Stasi. He well knows that his attempts are tantamount to risking his own carreer, but "Kunst" is above such mundane considerations. How could he let Dreyman fall into nothingness when so many other artists had already been condemned to silence in the face of the suffocation imposed by the regime? Wiesler goes on to change the transcripts on his espionage activities in a way that would portray Dreyman as propelling the Staat's ideals.

On comparing Wiesler to similar characters in the early days of the Iranian revolution, I could not help but be pained by the fact that in those days of mass arrests, hardly any of the officers in my country had any appreciation for art which would allow for that inner-transformation to occur and hence hardly any artist was saved. It is true that had Wiesler been facing the layman and not the artist, he would have remained sterner than ever, but there is no question that his transformation in the name of a value that transcends most, if not, all others, i.e, ART is still noble. After all, art bespeaks the language of, in Brechtian terms, an "ungeheuer oben" and any traces of that realm are bound to move "those who understand."