A gifted research student should be able to deliver
a seminar paper, to a small group of interested and understanding colleagues;
or so you would think. You would be wrong! It is hard, so hard
that even naming the paper is a major ordeal.
Now that is where the Cambridge colon is so liberating. This
little device enables you to have two goes at your title. You bang
down a flashy image, or a catchy phrase or portentous claim; then after
the colon, by means of the colon, you refine it. You tame the bold
gesture: you have it both ways. But anyhow, you know where to start:
with the colon.
All so far summarizes the mental doodling of our very gifted
-- but alas, procrastinating -- hero, Jason Munby Jones, PhD student
of St Paul's College, Cambridge. His task was to give a paper
to the Interdepartmental Modern Literature Seminar, on his doctoral
topic. He had a short topic -- 'Angst'. Angst was his experience,
too, as he pondered his unwritten thesis, and his unwritten paper and
its incomplete (because uncolonated) title.
Yet things did change. We shall follow the change, from appropriate
points of view: Jason's own thoughts, naturally, but also the standpoint
of his supervisor, family, colleagues and so on, through the seven
days of the final week before he must deliver the paper.
Chapter One: Day One
The imminent crisis deepens, because of a person not mentioned so
far: the departmental secretary, who needs Jason's exact topic for
the notices and other publicity. She, Griselda, has a gleam
in her eye as she walks towards the cubbyhole where Jason and three
others take turns to see undergraduates (about the essays which they
haven't done yet . . .) She, Griselda, has small respect for
any of them: they could no more meet a deadline than fly.
Knock knock.
'Who's there?'
'Griselda. I want --'
'You can't have it. I'm busy. Seeing a student,
about an extension.'
'I must have the full exact title of your seminar paper NOW.
For the notice of meeting. (And as an afterthought) Please.'
'Go away. Please.'
'When will you tell me? Just make up something, anything.
Vague as you like, but Something.'
'Oh --' Jason was embarrassed, as he had just been playing
God to the undergraduate and her request for mercy. 'O.K.
'Angst', full stop. No! Better, 'Angst, colon, The Problems
of Definition'. Yeah yeah!'
First-rate, don't you agree? 'Definition' sounds definite,
and 'problems' plural gives bags of elbow-room.
Griselda went away satisfied; so did our hero.
Chapter Two: Day Two of the Seven
Strong in the wake of that glorious response to pressure, Jason finished
his marking. He awarded fourteen B-pluses, and sixteen extensions.
And now to give his whole mind to that seminar paper, 'Angst
(colon) The Problems of Definition'.
Hmmm. Should I have said 'problem', since it is all my
problem? Aha, we have a meta-problem here. And that shall
be my first paragraph!
See the power of the trained mind.
Chapter Three: Jason Responds to the Example
of Immanuel Kant
He thought: 'All this exertion: I need the loo'.
During a major enthronement Jason remembered the story about
Kant. That great Idealist philosopher had dreamt he was excreting
diamonds. End of story.
Here, surely, was proof that pain, or labour, could be positive;
that Angst-as-idea (Begriff) could generate not only more Angst (nachfolgende
Angst) but a more liberating, subsumptive idea-of-itself (Selbstbegriff,
or Ueberangst). There is a dialectic here, he mused; a self-consciousness
of and through Angst which raises it to a new order. A
Hegelian dialectic unrolled before him; and behold, he now had Paragraph
Two of his paper.
Chapter Four: The Supervisor Supervenes
He went for a coffee, and wrote his two paragraphs on a paper
napkin -- tired out, but happy.
Not for long: enter to Jason, from stage left, his supervisor.
At a fast trot, talking volubly:
'How goes it Jason, I've been looking for you everywhere, now
about your seminar paper I just saw your title. Yes, it's catchy,
and yes, it's punchy, and I especially liked your colon, its placement
very fine yes, but isn't it -- the paper not the colon, haha -- somewhat
broad, and perhaps overconceptualized? What I thought was, and it's
more precise altogether, which is what is wanted I do think,
Angst Is Self-Image in the First Paragraph of Thomas Mann's
Magic Mountain
more cutting edge, d' you see . . .'
. . . and without waiting for a reply, exit stage right upon sighting
another non-producing protégé.
Jason was now wide-awake once more, and anxious once more with
the anguish of choice. Should he do the boring thing which the boring
idiot supervisor had just told him to do? Or should he do a philosophical
survey, playing for a draw by mentioning what every German philosopher
had said about Angst, from Schleiermacher to Schopenhauer to Knopflmacher?
That was the question. It had its attendant Angst, needless to
say. But Jason had a method by now. He used it.
He wrote down the supervisorial re-wording on another paper napkin.
And laid it carefully down beside the first.
Chapter Five: The Thing Itself Speaks (Twice)
The two napkins began to speak to each other, about the problem as
they saw it -- fair enough, too, wouldn't you say?
Said Jason's first napkin (let us call it, imaginatively, 'Napkin
A'): 'I prefer being written on to being used to wipe off lipstick'.
'Or Vegemite', said Napkin B.
'Don't interrupt', said his colleague. 'But when it comes
to being written on, must it be this Idealist rubbish? I'm an
empiricist myself'.
'I know what you mean', replied B, 'But take my own situation
if you know what I mean, I've got this boring pedant's stop-gap all-purpose
garbage written over me, and that's going to define my existence for
a very long time to come, or rather my Sartrean Essence if you know
what I mean'.
'Your style is becoming repetitive, if you know what I mean',
said A: 'Stop whining'.
'Well that's it in a nutshell: this balderdash is my life-sentence,
if you know what I mean, heh heh'.
'We'll never be free now. Lipstick or Vegemite might have
been better after all, but oh! the agony of not knowing for sure .
. .'
They both sighed.
'No!' shouted Jason. 'Not so!! I have heard you,
I have heard the Thing speak back!!! Essence and existence have
changed places, the pour-soi has become the en-soi. When even
Things feel Angst, then Persons can have the authenticity that things
enjoy. I am free! Give me a clean napkin, somebody'.
He blew his nose on it.
'And another! I feel rich today. Give me four, give
me Five'.
And behold, he wrote down everything which he had heard the
napkins say, and behold he had a dozen and more paragraphs.
And it was still not mid-morning on Day Two of his seven.
Chapter Six: Complacency, Chastisement, Inertia
I am sorry to record that Jason grew complacent. He went
off home to read a book. Junk reading. Then he had a little
nap. And before you could say philosophische Quellenforschungen the
day was gone.
What will he do when he wakes to Day Three? He inputs his previous
day's output, and prints out, but the outcome offputs him. The
Things have said it all. He pauses. A silence falls, until
. .
'What's this lot then?' says his younger brother (an applied
scientist). 'Been busy, have you Jayce?'
He reads it over Jason's shoulder, braced for what will
follow:
'Oh my God! You waste the taxpayers' money doing this?
Get real, man. Let's play Space Invaders'.
Which they do. The morning passes.
They go shopping, for beer.
Evening; the day is over; Jason sleeps.
Chapter Seven: Jason's Dream
He dreamt, not of Kant or diamonds but of his annoying little
brother. Bro appeared at the wheel of a Rolls-Royce to him.
Grinning and jeering. And said, pompously, 'I am the key of Things.
We scientists have the future in our bones'. And went on, 'You artsy-fartsies
are done for. Go to the rubbish tip and stay there'.
Jason woke up sweating. This dream meant something, for
that damn seminar paper. But what? what what what what what?
Those who control things by penetrating Things feel no Angst about anything.
Science, in all senses, was The Thing.
He wrote the precious recognition down. (Another paragraph
gained.) Was Angst a pseudo-problem, or at any rate a quasi-problem,
after all? 'In the destructive element immerse', said the oracular
Stein in Lord Jim. Sounded good, if not exactly relevant, so
put it down anyway, another paragraph won.
And soon he had a whole anti-thesis to set against Paragraphs
1-14. He felt so happy! Well, twenty-eight paragraphs
are something!
And he felt strong, so strong that he even tackled his supervisor's
sentence.
Chapter Eight: The Great Leap Forward, Parts
One and Two
'My Supervisor's Typical Stupid Boring Suggested Title',
he wrote, his tongue forming each letter in sympathy. 'What It Tells
Us about Life, the University and Everything'.
'Ah yes: 'Colon' after 'Title''.
And then, brilliantly, 'Is art a colon? Is life a colon?
The meaning of all life is a colon. Or, in the words of Plato, 'Eureka!''
He paused, and wondered out loud, 'Or was that Nietzsche'?
'Did you sneeze, dear?' said his mother. 'Here's a nice
cup of cocoa for you. It'll make you feel better. I do know'.
Equipped with cocoa, two sections, and some sibylline prolegomena,
Jason advanced boldly on the supervisorial pronouncement. And wrote
thus: --
'Even if there were any clear mention of Angst in that opening
sentence of Mann's, it could not be a self-image because while reading
any opening sentence the reader cannot know the self being imaged.
Self, and Angst indeed too, are contextual (umgangliche) and therefore
general (partikularitätslos)'.
Jason sat back, and read it aloud. 'That's good. Let him
stick that up . . . his narrow mind'.
Chapter Nine: The Great Leap Forward Completed
And then, oh then, Jason had his great idea for the seminar
paper (Blitzstrahlwunderbegriff).
'Divide and rule! Make sure the other departments come
along, then make sure they fight each other! To the death, preferably.
And my paper will be remembered for ever!'
And you can't ask for more than that, dear reader, if the psychologists
are correct that the usual memory-span of people attending an academic
seminar is about ten minutes.
Chapter Ten: In Which the Story Reveals its Myth
It is time to own up: this is a narrative of very heavy-duty
proportions, because it has a mythic substrate. My hero is a Jason.
The Greek Jason, the Argonaut, was not a very nice guy -- just dynamic
or at any rate crafty. He let Medea do most of the hard things and
the dirty work. But he did fulfil his wooing task, to plough a field
with magic oxen, then sow it with serpent's teeth. And when armed
men sprang from the ground, he provoked them to fight and kill one another.
And similarly with our Jason's cunning plan . . .
Point One: his German would annoy his supervisor, who could speak
only English and literary theory.
Point Two: his bad German would annoy the German Department.
Point Three: his lack of emphasis on French philosophy would
annoy the French Department.
Point Four: his use of continental philosophy would annoy the
Philosophy Department, empiricists and logic-choppers to a man . . .
You get the idea.
His haphazard method and dearth of conclusions would annoy everybody.
But even this was not all. The other part of his plan was to export
his close friendships with the beauteous executives and secretaries
in the administration office to get the bosses along. Let them
just drop a hint of the imminence of a major interdisciplinary happening
on the premises -- namely an interdepartmental donnybrook -- and that
would inveigle the paymasters.
Chapter Eleven: The End is a Colon
It worked. The seminar ended in a fist-fight. One
short-term appointee from each of the departments involved was fired.
And Jason was made Foundation Head of a new multidisciplinary research
unit, dedicated to Anguish Studies. How salary amounts to the total
savings from firing the hirelings.
Strangely enough, he has not gone on with his PhD; but, as he
wisely remarks (with a shrug, and a puff of his cigar), 'You can't win
'em all'.
His large office has an emblem beside the door: a two-foot-high
golden colon.
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