The Essential Sincerity of Falsehood

TRUE ~ FALSE
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

As heaven and earth are not afraid,
and never suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid. . . .

As truth and falsehood have no fear,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

~ paintings by Leonard Orr ~
~ poetry from the Atharva Veda * ~


"For there is no lie that contains no part of truth."
Tennessee Williams 1911 – 1983
from "The Summer Belvedere" **

Over the past few years, I have attempted to define modernism (In A Handful of Dust) to sketch a profile of the Heroine of Sensibility, and to trace the concept of human emotion as a constant quantity, perpetually Advancing & Receding -- all by analyzing the primary texts of modern literature. In this post I apply the same strategy to a related theme: the endless tension between truth and falsehood, virtue and vice. Does one advance as the other recedes, or do they always co-exist, two sides of the same moon or the same medal? The following passages -- from fiction, poetry, and prose -- reveal the views of several modern authors:

“I was made to look at the convention that lurks in all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to all sides at once — to the side turned perpetually to the light of day, and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon, exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light falling at times on the edge.”Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924)
from Lord Jim (emphasis added)

"No themes are so human as those that reflect for us, out of the confusion of life, the close connection of bliss and bale, of the things that help with the things that hurt, so dangling before us forever that bright hard medal, of so strange an alloy, one face of which is somebody's right and ease and the other somebody's pain and wrong."Henry James (1843 – 1916)
from the "Preface" to What Maisie Knew

"The speaking subject is not, however, identical with the subjectivity of the author as an actual historical person; it corresponds, rather, to a very limited and special aspect of the author's total subjectivity; it is, so to speak, that 'part' of the author which specifies or determines verbal meaning. This distinction is quite apparent in the case of a lie. When I wish to deceive, my secret awareness that I am lying is irrelevant to the verbal meaning of my utterance. The only correct construction of my lie is, paradoxically, to view it as being a true statement, since this is the only correct construction of my 'verbal intention.' Indeed, it is only when my listener has understood my meaning (presented as true) that he can judge it to be a lie. Since I adopted a truth - telling stance, the verbal meaning of my utterance would be precisely the same, whether I was deliberately lying or suffering from the erroneous conviction that my statement was true."E. D. Hirsh, Jr. (b 1928)
from his essay "Objective Interpretation" (1114 - 1115)

"Nothing is simple.
Every wrong done has a certain justice in it,
and every good deed has dregs of evil."
H. G. Wells (1866 – 1946)
from Tono - Bungay, 226


"There is so much truth in all different sides of things."
Ivy Compton - Burnett (1884 – 1969)
from Manservant and Maidservant (133)


"To Sir Edgar it confirmed his view that in the Divine Order
every vice - even Clun's arrogance - had its virtuous purpose."
Angus Wilson (1913 – 1991)
from Anglo - Saxon Attitudes (324)


"The negative trait that you might dislike in a loved one is
quite probably the flip - side of a positive trait that you admire."
Summarized from the work of Harriet Lerner (b 1944)
see Dance of Anger & Dance of Intimacy

The Essential Stupidity of Courage?

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As truth and falsehood have no fear

*A Charm Against Fear

As heaven and earth are not afraid,
and never suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

As day and night are not afraid,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

As sun and moon are not afraid,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so my spirit, be not afraid.

As truth and falsehood have no fear,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

As what has been and what shall be fear not,
nor ever suffer loss or harm,
Even so, my spirit, be not afraid.

Book 2, Hymn XV, from the Atharva Veda
composed 1200 BC ~ 1000 BC

For there is no lie that contains no part of truth.

**The Summer Belvedere
I
Such icy wounds the city people bear
beneath brown coats enveloping withered members!
I don't want to know of mutilations

nor witness the long-drawn evening debarkation
of warm and liquid cargoes in torn wrappings
the ships of mercy carry back from war.

We live on cliffs above such moaning waters!

Our eyeballs are starred by the vision of burning cities,
our eardrums shattered by cannon.
A blast of the dying,
a thunder of people who cannot catch their breath

is caught in the mortar and molded into the walls.

And I, obsessed with a dread of things corroded,
of rasping faucets, of channels that labor to flow
have no desire to know of morbid tissues,
of cells that begin prodigiously to flower.

There is an hour in which disease will be known
as more than occasion for some dim relative's sorrow.
But still the watcher within my soundless country
assures the pendulum duties of the heart
and asks no reason but keeps a faithful watch

as I keep mine from the height of the belvedere!

And though no eyrie is sacred to wind entirely,
a wall of twigs can build a kind of summer.

II
I asked my kindest friend to guard my sleep.

I said to him, Give me the motionless thicket of summer,
the velvety cul-de-sac, and quiet the drummer.

I said to him, Brush my forehead with a feather,
not with an eagle's feather, nor with a sparrow's,
but with the shadowy feather of an owl.

I said to him, Come to me dressed in a cloak and a cowl,
and bearing a candle whose flame is very still.

Our belvedere looks over a bramble hill.

I said to him, Give me the cool white kernel of summer,
the windless terminal of it, and calm the drummer!

I said to him, Tell the drummer
the rebels have crossed the river and no one is here
but John with the broken drumstick and half-wit Peg
who shot spitballs at the moon from the belvedere.

Tell the feverish drummer no man is here.
But what if he doesn't believe me?
Give him proof!
For there is no lie that contains no part of truth.

And then, with the sort of courage that comes with fever,
the body becoming sticks that blossom with flame,
the flame for a while obscuring what it consumes,
I twisted and craned to peer in the loftier room--

I saw the visitor there, and him I knew
as my waiting ghost.

The belvedere was blue.

III
I said to my kindest friend, The time has come
to hold what is agitated and make it still.

I said to him, Fold your hands upon the drum.

Permit no kind of sudden or sharp disturbance
but move about you constantly, keeping the guard
with fingers whose touch is narcotic, brushing the walls
to quiet the shuddering in them,
drawing your sleeves across the hostile mirrors
and cupping your palms to breathe upon the glass.

After a while anxiety will pass.

The time has come, I said, for purification.

Rub out the lewd inscriptions on the walls,
remove the prisoners' names and maledictions,
for lack of faith has left impurities here,

and whisper faith to the summer belvedere.

Draw back the kites of hysteria from the sky,
those struggling fish draw back from their breathless pool,
and whisper assurances cool
to the watchful corners, and whisper sleep and sleep
along the treads of the stairs, and up the stairwell,

clear to the belvedere, yes, clear up there, where giggling John
stood up in his onionskin of adolescence
to shoot spitballs at the moon from the captain's walk.

And then, at the last, he said, What shall I do?
The sweetest of treasons, I told him. Lean toward my listening ear
and whisper the long word to me,
the longest of all words to me,
the word that divides the sky from the belvedere.

by Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983)
American Playwright
Twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Twice awarded the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award