An Essential Word

Reflections on the Challenge

When your direction is diverted by the spell of a voice that assumes it is right, splay your fingers, and remember your purpose.

• Experiences

  One morning, T had been drawn off course from her morning routine by an interview with Ernest Gellner, who was critiquing linguistic philosophy. Absorbed for hours, she eventually resumed her routine in the afternoon, remembered her purpose, and splayed her fingers.

  While on holiday in a forest resort, L had been urged to join a full day of group activities starting early the next morning. It was already late, and he hadn’t yet composed - a daily commitment. He splayed his fingers, remembered his purpose, and left the gathering to compose. Throughout the trip, emails also tried to pull his attention away, but he continued to use the gesture to refocus on his work.

• Responses

  T reflected on L’s story, observing how he had stayed in the same place and time as the group but chosen not to follow their momentum. She saw this as a quiet act of remaining with his purpose, even while others were calling the tune — a stance that many artists would recognise.

Beelzebub’s Tales, Chapter 33

• Passage

  ... among the three-brained beings breeding on this part of the surface of this planet of yours there was developed at that period more strongly than usual two forms of their most pernicious what are called ‘organic habits,’ which also had become proper to be acquired in the presences of the beings of that ill-fated planet.

  “One of these pernicious organic habits was what is called there the ‘smoking of opium,’ and the other was the ‘chewing of anasha,’ or, as it is otherwise named, ‘hashish.’

• Discussion

  L remarked on the word "breeding", noting how it referred to humans as one might describe animals. N added that ants, or insects, might thus be described.

• Passage

  From the use of the said vodka, not only does the psyche of the ill-fated three-brained beings there become, just as from ‘opium’ and ‘anasha’ also, utterly ‘nonsensical’ but in addition certain important parts of their planetary body also gradually completely degenerate.

  ... Well then, while I existed as a physician there among the beings breeding in the towns of Turkestan, I had to work so hard, especially towards the end, that certain functions of my planetary body began to get out of order, and I began to consider therefore how to manage to have the possibility at least for a certain time of doing nothing but only rest..

  “I could of course return to my home on the planet Mars for this purpose, but then there arose before me my personal-individual ‘being-Dimtzoneero,’ that is, my being-duty towards what is called the ‘essence-word’ I had given to myself.



• Discussion

  T said that as a physician, Beelzebub would have witnessed firsthand the damaging effects of vodka, such as cirrhosis of the liver. N said that working with addiction in any form is demanding, especially when people relapse, and that most people struggle with some kind of craving or dependence.

  T said that addiction diverted people from a direct experience of themselves and the world, offering instead a distorted or substituted reality.

  T said that although Beelzebub had previously adapted his hypnotic methods to be less exhausting, his continued work with degraded beings had left him physically depleted.

  L said that Beelzebub had been tempted to return to Mars for rest, but resisted this diversion out of a sense of duty to the self-given essence-word, showing how he remained faithful to his inner aim despite exhaustion.

  

  דבר (Davar): Hebrew for 'word', also meaning 'essence' or 'thing'