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If history is a night from which Stephen Dedalus is trying to awake, writing could be said to be a dream into which James Joyce awakened, his pen a machine to turn bad dreams into good…[1].

From the illustration copy of Ulysses drawn by Italian artist Mimmo Paladino.

From the illustrated copy of Ulysses drawn by Italian artist Mimmo Paladino.

In Ulysses, James Joyce plays with language and non-linear narration, disrupting our sense of time while also using the text as a demonstration of him becoming an artist. It is thus written in light of the inevitable event – the creation of Ulysses as a text, and the fulfillment of history as Joyce perceives it [2]. Ulysses relies on history and its direction to make its central argument; it transforms the past to work towards this end by using mythology, national history, and even syntax. If it is as Stephen famously said, “history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake,” then Ulysses is Joyce’s nightmare made into a dream.

Ulysses is able to play with categories – history, fiction, mythology, etc. – to create a narrative that is a radical break from prior forms. Its end goal is one of salvation: just as Odysseus in the ancient Greek classic Odyssey comes back to reclaim Ithaca and bring it peace, Ulysses is a prescription for the Irish nation, for the next artistic epoch, and for the modern age more generally. This essay seeks to historicize the text by tracing Joyce’s views on history and its direction, while also using Ulysses as a means with which to understand history conceptually.

I. Joyce’s Theory of History

Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico in The New Science and his other works theorized on a concept he called “corsi e ricorsi” or a cyclical theory of history. He posited that “man [creates the human world, [and] creates it by transforming himself into the facts of society” [3]. Thus, the individual is a creation of the world or, to put it alternatively, “society is a book in which to read the soul” [4]. History, according to Vico, runs in three stages – theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic or the divine, the heroic, and the human [5]. Eventually, there is a break (ricorso) and then a return to the divine, after which the cycle repeats itself indefinitely. Joyce was so moved by these theories that he himself remarked that they “forced themselves upon him through the circumstances of his own life” [6]. He also possibly saw the stages Vico described manifest in his own progression – starting from his early fear of God, to his then newfound love of his family, to his final dispossessed, ordinary state [7]. It is also likely Joyce saw in Vico’s search for a scientific form of history an analogy to his own struggle for new art or literature [8]. Both Vico and Joyce can be said to be pushing back against the authoritative traditions that have kept narratives and histories tightly sealed, and both are interested in mapping “counter-histories.” Altogether, Joyce and Vico find their answer in mythology, transforming fiction and using it to make history anew [9]. Although these might seem to be contradictory — history and fiction — they form a special relationship in Ulysses and every telling of history more generally.

In the second chapter of Ulysses, Stephen has ironic contempt for history as an authoritative subject [10]. For the students he is teaching, and also for himself, “history was a tale like any other too often heard” [11]. His students do not want to hear positivist interpretations of history as fact, irrelevant to the lived experiences of its people – his pupils simply want “a ghoststory” [12]. They turn instead to poetry and fiction by reading Lycidas by John Milton. Later in the chapter, Stephen denounces Mr. Deasy’s claims on history and his argument that its direction is “towards one great goal, the manifestation of God” [13]. Stephen so strongly disputes this because he sees it as history being destructively taken away from humanity; it obscures history as the real force it is, placing it outside of the human realm from which it was created. We see this “reclaiming” of history in another crucial passage in the text, from Scylla and Charybdis, where speaking of Shakespeare, Joyce writes: “He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible” [14]. For Joyce, Shakespeare was great because he embraced in his artistic vision the “all in all in all of us” [15]. The details of everyday life were part of his subjects. And what made him a great artist was his relationship to this World, and that he was “able to go beyond the limitations of his own ego in order to achieve the impersonality and objectivity that is necessary for dramatic art” [16]. As Vico theorized that man creates history, then is it within the artist’s power to do more than reproduce the known World; he can create it himself, and from cultural and personal fragments he can create it anew. To harken back to Mr. Deasy’s claim – it is therefore not history that tends to God towards the manifestation of His will. Instead, “it is the artist that creates the world, rather than God” [17]. And history being circular rather than linear, the artist therefore “goes forth, but returns to the same place” [18]. It is then through this intersection between history and art, as Joyce derives from Vico, that we can read the soul like a book. History is thus art’s necessary impetus. “In apprehending his soul, Stephen sees what is possible for him” [19] and, in doing so, also sees what is possible for history – be it Irish or otherwise – because the world cannot be divorced from the soul. If anything, according to Joyce, it must be viewed through it. It is through our imagination that our past becomes incorporated into our present.

II. Meta-history and Mythology

Even though Stephen teaches history in Nestor, it makes little sense to him. Watching the schoolchildren play, he laments:

I am among them, among their battling bodies in the medley, the joust of life… Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a shout of spearspikes baited with men’s bloodied guts [20].

This is undoubtedly the nightmare of history; it is chaotic, bloody, and harsh. It is senseless, a “meaningless progression of names, dates, and places.” History is like a specter haunting the living [21]. A string of brutality, it reminds Stephen of Rome, asking Bloom in Eumaues to “oblige me by taking that knife away. I can’t look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history” [22]. In Eumaues, for example, the cabman’s shelter is filled with historical insight, oftentimes nonsensical. The Phoenix Park murders, the Irish nation, Roman history, Judaism and Christ, the Evening Telegraph – “all are points on an indiscernible compass” [23]. History’s presence is totalizing, almost as a thing outside of ourselves, as Haines remarks in the beginning of the novel: “we feel in England that we have treated you [the Irish] unfairly. It seems history is to blame” [24]. And too, for the Irish, “history was like a tale too often heard, their land a pawnshop” [25]. Stephen is thus trapped in its spell and Joyce, also, is under its boot for he, too, is forced to confront it to create his Irish epic.

Unlike Stephen, Bloom is able to humanize history. For it is true, “persecution… all the history of the world is full of it. Perpetuating national hatred among nations,” [26] but Bloom retorts this remark brilliantly: “Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life” [27]. That which is really life, to Bloom, is “love” [28]. While history is a nightmare to some, it is altogether “rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incursion of time” [29]. Therefore, history gives life depth – it exists in sorrow, but it also brings love and community based on shared precedent. History is also familiar, and unlike Stephen, Bloom is able to act with it. And it is familiar because it is cyclical for “history repeats itself… so it returns. Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way around is the shortest way home” [30]. Bloom thus unifies two ways of looking at experience to produce a meta-history incorporating fiction to “produce a kind of reality that… is more clearly enunciated and immediate than anything which might have occurred in documented history” [31].

It is through literature and art that Joyce is able to make the nightmare into a dream. Although history is cyclical, it is “repeating itself with a difference” [32]. This gap or difference allows for the dream. If it was a “matter of strict history,” it would not be explanatory of anything besides fact. Thus, art and history intersect on some level if we consider that narratives repeat themselves with difference, as does art and life [33]. It is all a matter of perspective. We are exposed to history in Ulysses through varying perspectives: Stephen’s, Molly’s, and Bloom’s, all of whom are no less valid in some sense than the other, along with other minor perspectives. They cycle through each other and what better way to demonstrate history as being precisely that, the cycling of perspectives. This constant shift was commented on by those who spoke to Joyce himself. After Joyce asked his friend Frank Budgen about if “[Cyclops] strikes [him] as futuristic,” Budgen responds in a fashion that (appropriately) might as well had been Joyce:

Rather cubist than futurist, I said. Every event is a many sided object. You first state one view of it and then you draw it from another angle on another scale, and both aspects lie side by side in the same picture [34].

Mythology and fiction then, on some level, are necessary to account for the gap, the difference, in history. And Ulysses is a textual embodiment of this necessity, and how myth – the mystical, fictitious, etc. – is required to make sense of history in some relevant way. A bare example would be the format of Ulysses as a text. Being based on the Odyssey, the entire novel is dotted with references to the Homeric epic poem. This mythology frames the novel beyond what could have just been a mundane, boring day. In one such instance, in Cyclops, the entire framing of Bloom and the Citizen as analogous to the battle between Odysseus and the Cyclops is a mythologized rendering of a relatively common, non-event in Irish public life. Yet, this myth gives it life for it is through fiction that we understand what is actually at play.

Mythologies are found throughout the text – from the relationship between the Holy Trinity and Bloom and Stephen [35], to even comparisons between Ulysses and Hamlet or Ulysses and Divine Comedy. These tie the connection between facticity and fiction, history and art, making both intelligible. In harkening back to previous great literature to create his own Irish epic, Joyce demonstrates what made Shakespeare so great: he was able to “actualize the real world” because he “[drew] the political reality of history out of his own ‘long pocket’ because he and the history of his nation inhere within one another” [36]. Bloom represents this actualization because for him, although history is brutal, nightmarish even, it can be redeemed. Bloom tries to convince Stephen of this ultimately and holds the key to his nightmare. He hints at this in Ithaca where Bloom discloses his meditations to “his companion” (i.e. Stephen), first talking about the vast expanse of the universe to place it all in perspective and then remarking:

… of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity [37].

Given that Ithaca relies on Divine Comedy for some degree of inspiration, the closing line of Dante Alighieri’s text is alluded to in just the few lines before Bloom’s remark to his companion. I think it is appropriate since it illustrates what the “key” to Stephen’s nightmare would bring, quite beautifully said:

[Virgil] and I entered by that hidden road to return into the bright world; and without caring for any rest, we mounted up, he first and I second, so far that I distinguished through a round opening the beauteous things which Heaven bears; and then we issued out, again to see the Stars [38].

Bloom is responsible for Stephen’s self-actualization, not just in his view of history, but in art, and in life. History is far from being alien, nightmarish, or a material force outside of us; it is rooted, if anything, in the opposite of all of this, just as Bloom exclaimed: it is rooted in “love,” the particulars that become overshadowed by history’s ghastly scope, and the interminable camaraderie that must exist for history to press onward despite the “waters of sorrow” passing over it.

III. Conclusion

As Ulysses demonstrates, history is a spectral force. It possesses an overbearing weight, one that is felt on all levels of the human psyche. Yet, it is not rooted in anything beyond that which is human – and it is not tailored towards an end beyond us alone. Because it is rooted firmly in our own doing, it must be humanized or else it is haunting. In Irish history, or even just Dublin, Joyce hoped to find something greater than just historical particulars. Just as the Odyssey, Hamlet, the Bible, and others defined their respective epoch(s) by transcending them, Joyce hoped to do the same. Through particulars, he hoped to find the universal — that which binds all history together, and one that would represent his respective epoch.

For Joyce, history returns and comes in cycles; it is a recurring movement and a melody of ever-changing ebbs and flows. However, with each returning wave, history comes back with difference. And Joyce brought this difference to light. History alone can not do this because calculated fact-based narratives place us underneath it. Instead, Ulysses hoped to bring history closer to us. It demonstrates how a telling of history cannot distance itself from humanism. For the nightmare of history to be overcome, we must be put squarely in its reigns, to make it anew once again into the dream that it is meant to drive. We should take Ulysses to be this metamorphosis, of a nightmare to a dream.

***

[1] Christine Froula, “History’s Nightmare, Fiction’s Dream: Joyce and the Psychohistory of “Ulysses,” James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 4, Papers from the Joyce and History Conference at Yale, October 1990 (Summer, 1991), 857.
[2] This fulfillment is the creation of a new text for the era to fulfill the cyclical history that other great texts have done for their time.
[3] Richard Ellman, Ulysses on the Liffey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 141.
[4] Ibid., 142.
[5] Ibid., 52.
[6] Donald Phillip Verere, Vico and Joyce (New York: State University of New York Press, 1^st Edition, 1987), 32.
[7] Richard Ellman, Ulysses on the Liffey, 52.
[8] Donald Phillip Verere, Vico and Joyce, 32.
[9] Ibid., 33.
[10] Stephen’s irony is appropriate given that Vico characterized the “human” or “democratic” epoch as one of irony.
[11] James Joyce, Ulysses: The Gabler Edition (New York: Random House, Inc., 1986), 21 (II, 46–47).
[12] Ibid., 21 (II, 55).
[13] Ibid., 28 (II, 381).
[14] Ibid., 175 (IX, 1041–1042).
[15] Ibid., 175 (IX, 1049–1050).
[16] Daniel R. Schwarz, Reading the Modern British and Irish Novel 1890-1930 (Wiley-Blackwell, 1^st Edition, 2004), 17.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Alistair Cormack, Yeats and Joyce: Cyclical History and Reprobate Tradition (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2008), 102.
[19] Frederick Lang, Ulysses and the Irish God, (Bucknell Univ Press, 1^st edition, 1993), 84.
[20] James Joyce, Ulysses: The Gabler Edition, 27 (II, 314–318).
[21] Robert D. Newman, Weldon Thornton, Joyce’s Ulysses: The Larger Perspective (Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 239.
[22] James Joyce, Ulysses: The Gabler Edition, 519 (XVI, 815–816).
[23] Robert D. Newman, Joyce’s Ulysses: The Larger Perspective, 239.
[24] James Joyce, Ulysses: The Gabler Edition, 17 (I, 648–649).
[25] Ibid., 21 (II, 46–47).
[26] Ibid., 271 (XII, 1417–1418).
[27] Ibid., 273 (XII, 1481–1483).
[28] As Joyce writes, “love loves to love love” (XII, 1493).
[29] James Joyce, Ulysses: The Gabler Edition, 272 (XII, 1462–1465).
[30] Ibid., 308–309 (XIII, 1093–1111).
[31] Robert D. Newman, Joyce’s Ulysses: The Larger Perspective, 242.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid., 243.
[34] Corinna del Greco Lobner, “James Joyce and Italian Futurism,” Irish University Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Spring, 1985), 73.
[35] Frederick Lang, Ulysses and the Irish God, 84.
[36] Alistair Cormack, Yeats and Joyce: Cyclical History and Reprobate Tradition, 102.
[37] James Joyce, Ulysses: The Gabler Edition, 573 (XVII, 1051–1056).
[38] Don Gifford, Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (USA: University of California Press, 2008), 581.

The Romantic Philosophy of Novalis

December 20, 2013

Literary Analysis, Philosophy

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Novalis (1799) by Franz Gareis

I. Introduction

The Latinized “de Novali,” the pen name of romantic poet and author Georg Phillip Friedrich Hardenberg, means “the one who clears new ground.” He adopted it in 1798, only three years before his death at age 28, and it was a fitting one. It was a statement of the times; the American colonies had declared their independence just a few decades prior, the French revolution descended into chaotic violence, the Haitian slaves were fighting to liberate themselves from colonial rule – much of the world was, indeed, “clearing new ground.”

Novalis was born in 1772 to a low German noble family in modern-day Arnstein, Germany. He spent much of his childhood on the family estate and was particularly fascinated with nature. He began his education through private tutors and then attended a Lutheran grammar school in Eiseleben where he became educated in standard rhetoric and the classical Western canon. He went on to pursue law at multiple locations, passing his exams with honors, and befriending many poets and philosophers who later influence German Romanticism. It was after these studies that he fell in love with Sophie von Kuhn in November of 1794, who was twelve years old at the time. Although their “relationship” was elevated to mythical heights by later German Romantics, it was largely uneventful and short. They became engaged when she was thirteen, a few months after which she became deathly ill. She passed away in 1797 at only 15 years old. This tragedy had a huge impact on Novalis and further radicalized his conceptions of beauty, freedom, and religion. To him, Sophie represented a romanticized ideal. This ideal, mixed with grief, would become the basis of his poetic work Hymns to the Night, published in 1800.

II. The Realm of the “Infinite”

Novalis’s work vividly intersects with individualism through his romantic imagery. Part of his “revolutionary” ethic was his adoption of a new identity to represent his romanticist prose. Dennis F. Mahoney writes in his book review of Novalis: Signs of Revolution by William Arctander O’Brien, “Novalis and his unique blending of literature, philosophy, politics, religion, and science are ‘Signs of Revolution’ in that they simultaneously hearken back to the past while announcing a new beginning” (Dennis, 313). The creation of the “new beginning” is what separates the character of “Novalis” from the man, Georg Phillip Friedrich Hardenberg. And moreover, the cause of his shift is explained through his love for Sophie, who fuels his work more so after her death as a myth.

Much of Novalis’ philosophy can be explained through the distinction of “infinite” and “finite,” a radicalization of his Christian Protestant upbringing. He writes in Pollen (Blüthenstaub), “we seek everywhere the unconditioned and we always find only things” (Versulius). Leonard P. Wessell, Jr. argues in Novalis’ Revolutionary Religion of Death that the quote fully encapsulates “the whole of [his] religious thinking” in that it captures Novalis’ repeated desire for “the infinite” but being held down by the “limited and transitory things.” (Wessell, 425). For Novalis, the problem of finiteness brings about grief, pain, and suffering. And it through his interactions with “things” that he discovers its ultimate destruction – the death of Sophie. Wessell, Jr. writes:

Novalis had sought to transcend to solitude of his own finiteness (i.e. his own ‘thing-ness’) by reaching out and touching, in an act of love, the finite solitude of Sophie and then had lost her. Sophie’s death – the destruction of a “thing” – threatened to cast Novalis into a vortex of despair (Wessell, 426).

Thereby, Sophie’s death represents the ultimate end of meaning in the “finite” for Novalis. He writes in Hymns to the Night:

I shed bitter tears… dissolved in pain, my hope dissipated and I stood alone by the [grave of Sophie], which hid the form of life in a narrow dark room – alone as ever a person was alone, drive by unspeakable fear – powerless, only a thought of misery (Wessell, 426).

More broadly, the “finite” is symbolic of everything beyond Novalis’ self. It is here that Novalis’ romanticism finds solace in 20th century existentialism. To Novalis and everyone else, Sophie is an object; she is finite. Although he wishes to fully understand her, the only reality he knows is his own. The irony for Novalis is that it is only through the Other (i.e. Sophie) that he is able to actually achieve his conception of being “infinite.” He is dependent on Sophie to reach the ideal, but will tragically never comprehend her completely.

It is through Sophie’s passing that Novalis views death as a “specter haunting man’s entire history, his highest cultural achievements.” For Novalis, death is the ultimate apocalypse (i.e. the end of our “finiteness”). It is the end of the only reality which we know. Therefore, while under the shadow of death, man is left frustrated and meaningless. Novalis furthers this idea by connecting time and displeasure as complicit in life’s end.

Time originates with displeasure. Thus, all displeasures [are] so long and all joy so short… displeasures are finite like time. Everything finite originates out of displeasure (Wessell, 427).

It is through this lens that Novalis places the death of Sophie in perspective; the absolute joy he experienced while with her negated the despair which time brings upon anybody. For Novalis, this is the cure for existential crisis – the reflective ability to escape one’s finiteness by achieving “absolute joy” that is profoundly “eternal – outside all time.” He saw the existentialist solution as one of turning “displeasure into joy, and with it time into eternity.”

III. Defining the “Self”

The struggle, then, is realizing how to live within the finite and with the specter of death constantly looming.

Novalis makes it a point in his writing to define individualism. His definition of the “self” has its influences from the work of philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte. The concept of “self” can be divided into two parts. On the one hand, there is just mere consciousness. This is what Novalis calls the “pure I” in that it is universal, regardless of the conditions that surround us. The other, more crucial, aspect of the self is that which we are not. Novais calls this the “empirical I.” He writes, “for the ‘I’ to be able to establish itself, there must be a ‘non-I’” (Gasparov, 13). Therefore, one’s sense of self is a reflection of all the things one is not. Each individual is dependent on social forces to develop as an “I.” For Novalis, the simple Cartesian equation of “I am I” is a tautology since we are all creations of society. Therefore, the statement does not reveal the essence of identity; it only rhetorically proves our mind exists.

The two aspects of the “self” – the pure “I” and the empirical “I.” Both are equally crucial, but second category is of particular interest to the young poet. Since identity is a construction of conditions around oneself, is not language also a similar creation? Novalis viewed language, to put it most simply, as “a multitude of fragments involved in never-ceasing commotion” (Gasparov, 13). Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin had the same idea over 100 years later. Called “dialogics,” Bakhtin also viewed language as an endless process of re-describing the world, building off others, and a constant flurry of change. Novalis was keen to recognize this fact in the late 18th century and was able to go beyond constant dialectics to a more understanding, democratic method of engaging others through dialogical discourse.

By universalizing this mode of analysis, Novalis establishes the precursor to Hegelian dialectics. Wessell, Jr. writes of his ideas:

Dialectical thinking… denies that any determinate category can exist in isolation, rather it [requires] its opposite. For instance, small is only meaningful placed in the context of large. Affirmation is only possible because of negation. Indeed, the very mean of any A entails the meaning of non-A as part of its essence (Wessell, 430).

Furthermore, each of these descriptors is found in a greater totality. To give one example, “small” and “large” are both located in the context of “size,” which unites these two contrary terms.

Thus, any conception of “freedom” must be viewed as being either a totality in and of itself, or as an opposite to another category. Making the distinction, Novalis writes, “the opposite of all determinateness is freedom” (Wessell, 430). Thus, the concept of freedom cannot be conceived without its opposite, one’s life being determined for them (i.e. oppression). Both of these concepts, freedom and oppression, exist in a greater totality – in contemporary society, this totality is our socio-economic reality: capitalism. However, the point that can be derived from Novalis is that this contradiction is not constant and unchanging. Rather, it is held together the socio-economic reality. The point is, therefore, to break this contradiction – the point is to reach an existence where these words lose their meaning, where freedom is not described, it simply is. In order for true freedom to exist, it must be a totality all by itself.

Novalis’ descriptions of the “infinite” are poetic interpretations of absolute freedom. All of his philosophy – discussions on self, dialectics, language, death – is merely reflections of his desire to transcend the bounds of the physical world. Novalis worked to universalize meaning; he wished to find the means to create individual essence while living life in the specter of death. Thus, he could be called one of the first existentialists, although a romantic poet at heart. He writes:

To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite (Rorty, 294).

Novalis romanticized his environment and found solace by doing so. Just with the imagery alone, he is able to capture authentic individualism in poetic form. He describes it as something “infinite” and “extraordinary,” which fully encapsulates the beauty of liberty in every sense of the word. Perhaps, more importantly are the implications of Novalis’ idealism and how it should induce us to act.

***

– Mahoney, F. Dennis. “Novalis: Signs of a Revolution Review.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 96, No. 2. 1997.

– Versulius, Arthus. Novalis. “Pollen and Fragments.” Phanes Press. 1989.

– Wessell Jr., Leonard P. “Novalis’ Revolutionary Religion of Death.” Studies in Romanticism, Vol. 14, No. 4. 1975. pp. 425.

– Higgins, Dick. Novalis. “Hymns to the Night.” McPherson. 3rd Edition. 1988

– Gasparov, Boris. “Speech, Memory, and Meaning.” De Gruyter Mouton, 2010 pp. 13

– Rorty, Amelie. Novalis. “Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives.” Routledge. 1998

The Three Questions of Leo Tolstoy

March 22, 2013

Philosophy

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Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910)

The Three Questions is a short story by Leo Tolstoy that was published in 1885. It contains a few moral sayings to live by, which we oftentimes just take as a given, but Tolstoy managed to keep you guessing for these answers until the big reveal at the very end.

A king poses three questions to his dear kingdom and is willing to grant a large sum of money for those that can answer them. The questions were simple.

What is the right time for every action?
Who are the most necessary people?
What is the most important thing to do?

For each question, however, he received all different kinds of answers.

In reply to the first question, some said that to know the right
time for every action, one must draw up in advance, a table of days,
months and years, and must live strictly according to it. Only
thus, said they, could everything be done at its proper time.
Others declared that it was impossible to decide beforehand the
right time for every action; but that, not letting oneself be
absorbed in idle pastimes, one should always attend to all that was
going on, and then do what was most needful. Others, again, said
that however attentive the King might be to what was going on, it
was impossible for one man to decide correctly the right time for
every action, but that he should have a Council of wise men, who
would help him to fix the proper time for everything.

The answers to the second question were a bit less lettered, but still unconvincing.

Equally various were the answers to the second question. Some said,
the people the King most needed were his councilors; others, the
priests; others, the doctors; while some said the warriors were the the most necessary.

And finally, the last question also received many different answers.

To the third question, as to what was the most important occupation:
some replied that the most important thing in the world was science.
Others said it was skill in warfare; and others, again, that it was
religious worship.

The king was not satisfied with these responses. He decided to consult a hermit who lived in the woods beyond the outskirts of town. The king put on simple clothing and wandered up to the hermit’s house by himself without his usual guards to discover the answers to his three quandaries.

When the King approached, the hermit was digging the ground in front
of his hut. Seeing the King, he greeted him and went on digging.
The hermit was frail and weak, and each time he stuck his spade into
the ground and turned a little earth, he breathed heavily.

The king posed the three questions to the wise hermit, but he received no response other than a recommendation to dig. The king offered his support to the hermit, since he was weak and tired. The hermit thanked him and the king dug. After digging two beds, the hermit suggested the king rest. The king insisted he dig until he was finished and he did so until sunset. After finishing, he posed his same three questions again. The hermit responded with an observation, “here comes someone running, let us see who it is.”

The King turned round, and saw a bearded man come running out of the
wood. The man held his hands pressed against his stomach, and blood
was flowing from under them. When he reached the King, he fell
fainting on the ground moaning feebly. The King and the hermit
unfastened the man’s clothing. There was a large wound in his
stomach. The King washed it as best he could, and bandaged it with
his handkerchief and with a towel the hermit had. But the blood
would not stop flowing, and the King again and again removed the
bandage soaked with warm blood, and washed and re-bandaged the wound.
When at last the blood ceased flowing, the man revived and asked for
something to drink. The King brought fresh water and gave it to
him. Meanwhile the sun had set, and it had become cool. So the
King, with the hermit’s help, carried the wounded man into the hut
and laid him on the bed. Lying on the bed the man closed his eyes
and was quiet; but the King was so tired with his walk and with the
work he had done, that he crouched down on the threshold, and also
fell asleep–so soundly that he slept all through the short summer
night. When he awoke in the morning, it was long before he could
remember where he was, or who was the strange bearded man lying on
the bed and gazing intently at him with shining eyes.

After resting, the man said faintly to the king, “forgive me!” Confused, the king responds, “I do not know you, and I have nothing to forgive you for.” The man explains:

“You do not know me, but I know you. I am that enemy of yours who
swore to revenge himself on you, because you executed his brother
and seized his property. I knew you had gone alone to see the
hermit, and I resolved to kill you on your way back. But the day
passed and you did not return. So I came out from my ambush to find
you, and I came upon your bodyguard, and they recognized me, and
wounded me. I escaped from them, but should have bled to death had
you not dressed my wound. I wished to kill you, and you have saved
my life. Now, if I live, and if you wish it, I will serve you as your
most faithful slave, and will bid my sons do the same. Forgive me!”

The king was thrilled to have made peace with an enemy so easily. In an act of kindness, he then grants the man some servants, his own physician, and promised would restore the property that was formerly taken from him.

After leaving the man, the king walked alongside the porch to find the hermit. Again, he posed the three questions to him longing for an answer — the hermit responds, “you have already been answered!”

“Do you not see,” replied the hermit. “If you had not pitied my
weakness yesterday, and had not dug those beds for me, but had gone
your way, that man would have attacked you, and you would have
repented of not having stayed with me. So the most important time
was when you were digging the beds; and I was the most important
man; and to do me good was your most important business. Afterwards
when that man ran to us, the most important time was when you were
attending to him, for if you had not bound up his wounds he would
have died without having made peace with you. So he was the most
important man, and what you did for him was your most important
business.

It was then the king’s questions were finally answered. The most important time is now, the one which concerns you immediately. The most important person is whoever you are with. And, finally, the most important thing is to do good with who you are with.

And, only then, did the king finally receive three true and honest answers for his questions.

***

The Three Questions by Leo Tolstoy