Letters, p.28
Letters, page 28
D. H. Lawrence (who is almost the only person I can read at this time)—at his best—comes across with incredible warmth and vividness and aliveness and realness because of the movement of impressions, the continual animal-like immediacy and mobility and the eschewing of the static, the monumental, the systematic. I don’t want to write a Treatise, I just want sketches, impressions, “Pansies,” Pensées.[*51]
Not an edifice. Something more like a garden planted with living flowers, ideas germinating and budding, flowering and fruiting, each a different expression or conception of the whole, each a way in which the whole reveals itself—an epiphany, each a door or window opening upon the whole. In this sense, it scarcely matters which flowers (which phenomena) one looks at first: one can wander round the garden any way one wishes, for everything one sees will express or exemplify or present or represent, in its own way, the whole. A book of examples—like the world itself. (The greatest such book I know, and one which for a year or more, has been my only “research” book, is the great OED, which I ramble in every day. The OED is not a list of definitions—unlike smaller dictionaries, which lack quotations—but a garden of the imagination, an immense word-and-meaning game, a Palomar for gazing into intellectual space. The arbitrary alphabetical order doesn’t affect this quality in the least. Indeed, I have wondered about dealing with the phenomena of Parkinsonism etc. in alphabetical order. […] When one is dealing with worlds (as opposed to systems)—as in the OED, in language, in natural phenomena—there is no “beginning…middle…end,” no logical path, only a progressive differentiation of ideas (and ideata) already infinite (or infinitesimal) at their inception. […]
I had best finish a letter which threatens to become interminable, and will tax the patience of the best-disposed man.
I hope that these peculiar effusions can be prolegomena to the book proper.
To the Editor, The Listener[*52]
April 22, 1973
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY
Sir:
Donald Broadbent’s article on “Alternative States of Mind” not only presented experimental evidence of the first importance, but was deeply fascinating and suggestive with regard to the epistemological, educational, social and political implications of the work he discussed.
That we have, among so many other divisions, a cognitive division in our nature, the possibilities of two fundamentally different states-of-mind or modes-of-thought, is an ancient insight, which is continually renewed and renamed in different generations and disciplines. […] Pascal called these modes-of-thought the analytic and the intuitive […] and devotes the fundamental first section of the Pensées to delineating these two modes of perceiving reality, their powers, their limitations, and the relationship between them. He notes that “the one quality can exist without the other: the intellect can be strong and narrow, and can also be comprehensive and weak.”
That one can exist without the other, or far more strongly than the other, has become very clear to me from working with children in kindergarten or pre-school age. Thus when asked to draw an object (I usually suggest an animal, sometimes a hippopotamus), some children at once, and, as it were, instinctively, make an outline of the entire animal in a single, swift and continuous stroke; but other children construct the animal serially, feature by feature. And this is perfectly reasonable, for an object (hippopotamus) can either be pictured as a continuous, closed, and convoluted grey surface, or as an assemblage or association of individual “features.” One can also observe a categorical difference in children’s approach to numbers: some tend instinctively to cardination and cardinal concepts, and others to ordination and ordinal concepts. But one also sees children—and this has nothing to do with intellectual calibre—who seem to employ either approach with equal facility.
It is essential, I think, to recognize that there exist strong inborn propensities to this mode or that: Holism vs. Serialism, Gestalt vs. Mosaic, Intuition vs. Analysis […], and to respect these, and not deny or violate them in the process of education or subsequently. But it seems to me dangerous to suppose (as Broadbent seems to suggest) that such propensities are based on structural differences in the brain, differences which because they are structural would seem to be relatively fixed and unmodifiable, and to foredoom each person to a particular way of thinking. […] One feels that education should be equally hospitable to both approaches—as Goethe suggests in his allegory of the “Pedagogic Province.”[*53] There is no doubt that the present Gradgrindian sort of education which usually obtains is hard upon, if not fatal to, the intuitive child. […]
The alternative states of mind, which Broadbent speaks of, are truly and totally alternative; they can neither include nor exclude one another. It is essential, however, that neither is allowed to occlude the other, for they are not opposites, not in opposition, but complementary, and they come together to picture the world. Nothing whatever—not even a single electron—can be adequately pictured in either way alone; as we need both eyes, we need both states of mind, to give us the depth and reality of the world. […]
Passing from individuals to cultures, we see that a perfectly-balanced doubleness of vision has been achieved only twice, and then all too briefly: first, by the Greeks, in whom (as Auden has emphasized) “these two kinds of activity are inextricably mixed”; and secondly, as Broadbent points out, in the seventeenth century—“the century of genius”—and especially in that middle third of the century which saw the foregathering and foundation of the Royal Society.[*54] Since this time, one feels, our very progress has been a decline, a dissociation of consciousness or sensibility, a torturing split between two states-of-mind, two modes-of-being, which have continually and increasingly lost touch with each other. Donald Broadbent’s article is a plea for synthesis, for a (re-)unified picture and view of the world. If we can achieve this, we may perhaps expect another century of genius, the third and greatest advance in human culture; if we fail to…one remembers the closing lines of the “Dunciad.”[*55]
Oliver Sacks
To Brian Southam
Editorial Director, Routledge & Kegan Paul[*56]
May 2, 1973
Beth Abraham Hospital, Bronx, NY
Dear Mr. Southam,
I’m sorry—it has been most rude of me not to have replied earlier to your letter of February 21. […] I am afraid I cannot direct you to any particular studies on the subject as such, though doubtless they exist: but I have never done any reading on the subject—nor do I feel tempted to. I think, perhaps, that one of the reasons for my delay in answering is that your question(s) struck a sensitive point. […]
I myself am descended from a long line, indeed several long lines, of Rabbis on both sides of the family. My parents had a deep sense of Jewishness (Yiddishkeit)—partly of a noble and generous and real kind, and partly of a mean and hostile and suspicious kind. My (late) mother, I think, never “forgave” my eldest brother for marrying out of the Faith; she wished to, without doubt; all that was motherly and human and individual in her yearned for reconciliation, but something abstract and categorical, imprinted and inexorable, prevented her, in her heart of hearts, from even a partial “acceptance” of my brother’s choice. […] My father, as far back as I can remember, has always had a sort of compulsion (the compulsiveness sheathed by a sort of facetiousness or jocularity) to ask of anyone who had signally failed, or signally achieved: “That so-and-so—do you suppose he’s a Yiddishe boy?” It may be that my parents suffered a good deal from anti-Semitism in their younger days (certainly their parents did, and like so many of their generation were hounded out of Eastern Europe; and many aunts, uncles, etc. were done to death and lost even the possibility of exile). Thus my mother was not only the first Jewish woman (and almost the first woman) to be elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, but (I am speaking now of more than fifty years ago) one of the very few Jewish consultants in the whole of England.
You will appreciate, therefore, that my own bringing-up was largely overshadowed by the sense of Jewishness-as-a-special-state (and its subjective and objective corollary, i.e. anti-Semitism as the expected/feared/and unconsciously-desired reaction of THEM—the others—to one’s Jewishness, one’s claim to special status). Consciously I scarcely ever thought about the matter, and thought, indeed, that it was all very exaggerated. It seemed to me that I scarcely ever encountered anti-Semitism as such. Looking back, I am sure that this imperception of mine, in part healthy, was in part a neurotic denial—the exact reverse (and thus the same thing) as my parents’ exaggerations. They thought (at least sometimes) that Jewishness and anti-Semitism were the poles of the world; and I pretended that neither existed.
With this sort of background, you see what I mean when I say your letter struck a sensitive point; indeed, it is perhaps only in the last few years that I have been able to transcend some of these neurotic attitudes, and to replace the categorical-abstract sense of US vs THEM, of Pro and Con etc. by a sense of myself, and of others, as individuals, unique and uncategorizable.
(A special point relates to the eminence attained by my first cousin Abba Eban. Abba—or Aubrey as we/I know him—is, in fact, the best sort of Jew, with a deep and real sense of Jewish history and culture, and an equally deep sense of its relation to all other history and culture—he has a spaciousness, an openness, a hospitality of mind, which makes him an object of suspicion to the fanatics in Israel, both the fanatics who preach isolation/alienation, and those who preach complete “assimilation” and de-individuation.)
* * *
—
Let me depart now from these personal and autobiographical considerations, which are neither edifying nor pleasant, but which any adequate reply to your letter forces me to review and relate.
I think there are perhaps three “factors” which tend to give Jews an uncommon intellectual and cultural force. All of these, to my mind, are acquired and environmentally-determined (I am no believer in “superior” or “inferior” races, in terms of native endowments or propensities). In order of increasing significance, then:
FIRST—the conditions of ghetto-life, of the Cheder, etc. (which are still recapitulated three or four generations since our escape from the ghettoes) were calculated to produce a sort of intellectual precocity, and a passion for minute and pedantic intellection. This sort of “cleverness” may lead to school-prizes, Firsts, and acclaim and rewards of various sorts—but it seems to me essentially banal and petty; and, more importantly, unrelated to human life and feeling. It is what Goethe called “cleverness in abstracto,” i.e., a knack for gaining knowledge which has no inherent relation to one’s feeling and being. This is the odious sort of Jewish cleverness, which (like all such parodies of intelligence, in Jews or others) both astonishes and repels, and is doubtless a potent cause of anti-Semitism.
SECOND—Much more important, and rarer, than the disposition/capacity for assimilation and quibbling is the encouragement of a passion for reflection and meditation. One sees in Judaism (as in the Bible) two quite different styles: one dogmatic and legalistic in tone, the other deeply-questioning, allegorical-dramatic, and profoundly conscious of the mystery of things. A beautiful example of this […] is the lovely dialogue or dialectic associated with the Passover dinner, with its great richness of allegory, symbol, ritual, etc. An essential part of the Seder night (and one which moves me almost to tears as I think of it, in my own childhood, when my parents were still young and vigorous) is the part-ritual part-extemporare question-and-answer, exploration together of the meaning and significance of the Seder and its symbols, which goes on between parents and children, between all the participants. I have no doubt that my own curiosity and love-of-reflection was reinforced by the special meditative quality of the Seder nights, and (in their lesser way) of the ceremonials of Friday nights. […] The dogmatic-doctrinal, legal-scholastic aspects of Judaism always disgusted me, and were a potent factor in driving me from Judaism; but the deep, peaceful, contemplative, hospitable mood of the Seder nights, and of Judaism in its lyrical and meditative aspects—this drew me to Judaism. If the first inculcated feelings of alienation, the second gave a deep sense of the at-homeness, of a thinking and knowledge essentially connected with one’s entire feelings and being.
THIRD—The perennial “specialness” of Jews lies partly in the doubleness of their identities and loyalties. (I remember, even when I was five or six, wondering, “What am I—a Jew or an Englishman?” Am I primarily a Jewish Englishman, or an English Jew? etc.) The Jew is always, to some extent, “a stranger in a strange land.” […] He is forced to confront, from a very early age, the nature of strangeness. This, if very intensely felt, can (I think) make him or break him as a person. Experienced pathologically, the sense of strangeness becomes a sense of estrangement—the feeling that one is above non-Jews, or below them, but hopelessly and unbridgeably different from them. Experienced honestly and courageously, the sense of strangeness can give Jews (or anyone) a sense and a feeling which is the opposite of estrangement—i.e., an acute awareness of the beauty of contiguity, of an “otherwise” which is fundamentally different from, yet fundamentally related to, one’s nature. A sense […] of hospitality and xeniality (xenia, that lovely word, if I am not mistaken, related especially to the mutual appreciation of strangers to strangers, a relation which is that of host and guest): open, friendly, trusting xeniality, as opposed to morbid, lustful-hateful xeno-philia/phobia. Being different—whether one is Jewish, Black, Homosexual, Deformed, exceptionally gifted, or Retarded, or whatever—being different can be a disaster or a blessing: it is a disaster if it makes one defensive-hostile-phobic-manic, etc., but a blessing if one can transcend all this and achieve the almost-divine magnanimity of perfect open-mindedness, a mind always tuned to awe and appreciation, and to a true love of what is strange, of being, of all being. […]
In short, I think it can be either a curse or a blessing to be born, as Jews are, into a double identity, into paradox, into strangeness. But, paradoxically, if they can transcend their sense of estrangement, and reach sublimity—like Spinoza, Freud or Einstein—then, in a sense, they are no longer Jews, as they are no longer simply Dutchmen, Viennese or Swiss-German. They have become—simply human, as deeply human as a man can become. In this way, it seems to me, that Jewishness (like all distinguishing, and potentially stigmatizing and alienating states) may lead to that so-rare spaciousness and sympathy of mind which is the universal hallmark of greatness in all ages and peoples.
OK, I have said my say, or more than my say. I will be coming to London in late June, for the […] publication of Awakenings, and hope to see you then. In the meantime, I would, as always, be delighted to correspond with you,
To Seymour L.
Postencephalitic Patient
June 11, 1973
Beth Abraham Hospital, Bronx, NY[*57]
My dear old friend Seymour (and it is almost seven years since we first met!),
Thank you very much for your letter which I got today, and for the longer one which came last week. It is always a pleasure, and a compliment, to receive letters from you (and even to be a voice amid your “voices,” when you hear voices). I have always had the greatest esteem and affection for you—as has everyone who knows you at Beth Abraham. Your goodness of spirit, your fineness of mind, has never been compromised by disease; perhaps, indeed, it has been forged by it. Indeed, in a sort of way, you have always represented (at least, in my eyes) the conscience of Beth Abraham, the epitome of that unconquerable human spirit which disease, drugs, and the isolation and imprisonment of institutionalization, can never oust or conquer; and it is for this reason that I took the liberty of using your picture—a faceless silhouette, it is true, but a silhouette of profound eloquence, to use in my book, to represent the human spirit: Man—bowed, confined, lamenting, but unbroken. I did not however include your “story” among the twenty histories in my new book. I am not sure why I omitted it—for it would have been of the greatest interest. I have learned so much from you—you are among the half-dozen patients who have taught me more about illness, suffering, and the human condition, than all the rest of my patients combined. I should, perhaps, have told your story, but for some reason I didn’t. I will (I think) do so, as well as the story of some other patients, should my book run into a second edition.[*58]
This has been a most difficult book to write, and especially to publish. I wrote the original nine histories almost four years ago (that is, in the summer of 1969), and then put them away, feeling that it would be wrong of me to disclose, in such detail, the lives of my patients—of patients who had confided in me, who had trusted me, and who were so dear to me. These scruples and hesitations have been overcome—very slowly, very gradually, and—perhaps even now—only partially. To turn a patient, a friend, into a “character” in a book, seems monstrous in a way; and I would not do so were I not convinced, over-and-above all personal considerations, that your lives and stories (I speak of all of you—victims of the sleeping-sickness—whom I have known since 1966 or 1967) are of the deepest interest, and deeply moving, and that they could cast a unique light not only upon the peculiar illness from which you have suffered so long, but upon the nature of human nature, the human spirit, in general.
But, you will understand, I (still) fear to show my book to my patients and “characters,” let alone to the staff at Beth Abraham: I do not know whether I will be able to enter the hospital again, once my book has been seen. And this is a very difficult and tense period, awaiting its publication, which (in England) will be in 2–3 weeks. (The American publication will be in the fall.) My feeling is that I should not show the book to you—to anyone—before it is published, before it is public.
