Albert Camus's The Rebel

In The Rebel, Albert Camus, the master of existentialism, analyzed the spirit of rebellion from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution. The Jacobans, rebelled against King and God and by making their principles divine, introduced the Reign of Terror.
Nihilism went further and eliminated absolute principles and its rise during the second half of the nineteenth century created terrorists who renounced virtue and principles and who rebelled against reality and history by destroying them. From the killing of gods to the killing of kings, rebellions had ushered in the terrors of Hitler and then of Stalin. The Soviets, in the name of the classless society in the future, a new heaven and a new earth where the lamb and the lion coexist, justified violence to guide the path of civilization, to force the end of history, the Marxist utopia.

Albert Camus

Camus stated that absolute freedom leads to injustice and absolute justice stifles freedom and demonstrated it with examples from the French Revolution to the Russian Revolution. And he believed that only through moderation, by limiting freedom with justice and vice versa, could a possible solution emerge.

Events in the past several decades have shown that his statement remains relevant in our time. From Timothy McVeigh to Anders Behring Breivik, we have seen terrorists kill in the name of their freedom, their absolute freedom, and of justice, their notion of absolute justice.

The Brothers Karamozov: Dostoevsky's Epic Philosophical Novel

The crime: someone murdered Fyodor Karamozov, the wanton, irritable, and sadistic patriarch.

The punishments: Smerdyakov, the illegitimate son, committed suicide after killing his father. Dmitri, the eldest son, passionate and immoderate like his father, whom the court found guilty of the murder, was condemned to Siberia. Ivan, the second son, who was "enlightened" and rational, struggled with the guilt of convincing his half-brother Smerdyakov that since God didn’t exist, everything, including patricide, was permitted.

Optina Monastery (Photo by Иерей Максим Массалитин)

But as the dying monk Zosima had revealed and Dmitri soon realized, everyone was complicit in and thus implicated for the crime, since, for Dostoevsky, the web of sin entangled young and old to the extend that even children suffered from their peers’ sadism.

Through his dream of the hungry and suffering children, Dmitri realized his guilt in the desire, that mustard seed in his mind, to kill his father and therefore willingly took upon the punishment for the crime he didn’t commit. In doing so, he assumed a Christ-figure, accepting punishment for another’s crime.

The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor revealed Ivan’s enlightened rationalism for a humanistic dystopia, the socialist utopia that Dostoevsky condemned. Only when, in a hallucination, the "devil"--Ivan’s dark side-- revealed the parable of the learned atheist and thus rationalism’s arid futility did Ivan realized his guilt in rationalizing patricide and prodding Smerdyakov to commit it.

Fyodor Doetoevsky

And Smerdyakov, who mirrored Ivan’s unconsciousness and who carried the latter’s reasoning to the logical conclusion, like Judas, would not have the chance to repent or atone for his crime. In the end, Dmitri assumed his punishment.

Through the tormented consciousness of Dmitri, Ivan, Smerdyakov and other characters, Dostoevsky grabbled with morality in an enlightened but Godless world, a world that he could not accept.

War and Peace Book Review

Beyond the panoramic Battles of Austerlitz and Borodino, the muffled burning of Moscow and Napoleon’s dilapidated retreat, Tolstoy in War and Peace painted the Napoleonic War’s dislodging the cast of characters from their apparel concerns, gossipy sorties, troubled marriages and career ambitions and through their social clumsiness, oppressive ideals, spiritual dullness and determined naivete, extorted their unavoidable responses to these tidal waves.

While Napoleon sought to drive history’s course through his lashing will and reining determination by marching onto Moscow, Kutuzov by sensing and attuning to the historical current tactically retreated beyond Moscow and after the Napoleonic army’s natural dissipation trailed its chaotic retreat. Tolstoy, who believed historical crosswinds to be too complicated for any Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan to align, favored Kutuzov’s naturalistic craftsmanship and through Pierre, applied it to personal destiny.

French Retreat from Russia by Illarion Mikhailovich Pryanishnikov

After his wife had left him, Pierre’s clumsy and sometimes-comic search for meaning led him to freemasonry, whose esoteric philosophy failed to pave a new path beyond the thorns and thistles. Although he accepted life storms serenely, his what for and so what would continue to harass him until he met Karataev, who showed him the life unified to the land, the sea and the air and harmonious with their rhythms¾a mystical naturalism favored by Tolstoy. However, at the novel’s conclusion, our hero’s life as a conscientious nobleman, a contributing intelligentsia and an accommodating family man, perhaps a sign that age would squander aspirations and the years would sap physical and emotional energy, smelled of defeat to his previous pilgrimage.

The Battle of Austerlitz by François Gérard 

On the other hand, Andrei’s escaping from marriage, career and the mundane drudgery, and impulsively grasping after the wintry Polaris led to the battlefield where he almost died. Although Natasha’s love provided respite, her unfaithfulness confirmed his suspicion of an earthly Eden. In the end, even though he had forgiven her, he gave up that love for the ultimate rainbow, death, wherein he finally could rest. If he had not died, he probably would have been disillusioned by his love for Natasha.

Leo Tolstoy

It is sad that Andrei had given up youth, love and the possibilities of life, but it is equally sad that Pierre had decayed into a Nikolai Rostov after his courageous journey through what for and so what. Must we like the samurai commit seppuku to immortalize youth, vitality, creativity and aspiration so as not to decay into a grumpy and lecherous old man or a jealous and nagging old woman? Tolstoy’s determinism would dictate that Pierre would ultimately return to the natural cycle of birth, growth, education, career, marriage, procreation, contribution, decay and death. But whether we agree with Tolstoy or not, War and Peace would continue to tower above the greatest novels.

We Will Miss Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Nobel Laureate and author of One Hundred Years of Solitude, has passed away on Thursday, April 17. We will miss him but his legacy will endure.

MEDITATION ON SPACE-TIME Quote

“I am an imperfect man living in an imperfect world, trying to weave through the chaotic interactions of semi-causal events with linear logic, contradictory emotions, dialectic wisdom, and mortal integrity.”

Meditation on Space-Time, Leonard Seet

Quote from Meditation on Space-Time

“I would enter the desert alone, to leave in the sand endless footprints only to be obliterated by the wind, to walk the same path each day expecting the same path tomorrow, and perhaps to cease wondering at the bloom and wither of lilies only to linger for death. But no, even in the desert, I would seek a new sanctuary, to contemplate a grain of sand in a sea of dryness...”

Meditation on Space-Time, Leonard Seet

David Lentz's Praise for Leonard Seet's Meditation on Space-Time

"Father Lawrence is a complex protagonist: an intellectual man of the cloth with an unwavering faith in God along with a daunting grasp of physics, logic and philosophy. In graceful exposition here is how the modest monk views himself: "I am an imperfect man living in an imperfect world, trying to weave through the chaotic interactions of semi-causal events with linear logic, contradictory emotions, dialectic wisdom, and mortal integrity. On a dark night, I would search Polaris to guide me, but on life’s journey only the internal North Star could lead to that instant when eternity freezes time." The priest's professional work draws him into a complex series of crimes committed by a preacher named Jim Whitfield who is the antagonist representing penultimate evil -- a devil who cannot be killed as he brings waves of misery through the epic deceit upon which he immensely profits. The battle beyond good and evil between the priest and the preacher reminded me of the battle between Crucifer and the teacher in Alexander Theroux's brilliant novel, "Darconville's Cat." In becoming invested in his drive to overcome this satanic force, Father Lawrence understands that his own inherent goodness and worth may become diminished and in the process he risks becoming more like the evil that he seeks to overcome.

The priest yearns through a shift in the logic of space and time to discover an oasis in a grain of sand and so he finds himself dealing with life's grand existential questions on the shore of Thoreau's Walden Pond in Concord: “I had gone to meditate at Walden Pond. That morning, under the rising sun, the water sang and danced to the rhythm of the morning breeze, and the ripples crisscrossed to weave a lattice of light. The clouds drifted in the stream of air. No one else to taint the birches or to corrupt the morning or to smear the lark’s melody. I chanted Veni Creator Spiritus. Peace. Yet, a squall-laden peace. I wanted to search for peace, for kindness, for love in hypocrisy’s rubbles but the desert had opened its arms. I would enter, not hesitating, and choke on the dry air and collapse under the sandstorm. And yet, among the sand dunes rippling into the horizon would sprout an oasis if I could endure and embrace the desert as it had me. These hands and feet of flesh and bone, this heart of fear and hunger, under the sun and in the sand, to seize the fleeting peace at Walden Pond.”

Leonard Seet’s novel is about polar opposites and the dynamics of their conflicts and how these dynamics drive the laws of physics of a compelling, indeed riveting, story line. Leonard Seet has left no literary devices on the table to narrate his tale: people simply aren't who they appear to be, nothing is as it seems, what's done isn't always really done. As much as I enjoyed this story line of Leonard Seet, I was enthralled by the pure beauty of the writing among all the plot points. The scintillating writing is elegant, pure, grownup, originally cast, heartfelt, intelligent: there are dozens of examples of this beauty and here a just a few of the dozen passages that I read and re-read because they were so artfully crafted. Check out this poetic rhapsody from the priest: “Woe and joy to mortals who have tasted heaven, who have seen the dark night, who have encountered THOU. No eyes could gaze the midday sun; no ears could listen to the Siren’s songs; no hands could touch the stove flame. But the brilliance, the sweetness, the warmth.” And this brilliant bit of poetic science: “Bright night surfing upon the crest of a probability wave by a Fourier transform reached Hilbert space the wilderness beyond existence the phantom space of mathematics the mirror world where a kick there would cause a jerk here through sinusoidal ripples in the uncertainty between yes and no space-time emerged from nothing to exist for a million years before returning to the void for another eternity. In the horizon of the next galaxy a positron and an electron mated and gave birth in annihilation to twin photons streaking at the speed of light toward opposite infinities to re-encounter at the other pole of the space-time hydrosphere birth life decay death the cosmic cycle beyond space-time beyond matter-energy beyond I-thou beyond Alpha and Omega.”

The writing is simply breathtaking: Seet gives you credit for being a thinking person, a serious reader, a person of substance and high intelligence. As a Bostonian I reveled in the finely wrought stagecraft of the settings there. This literary novel is layered so that it can be enjoyed by those who simply want a good story and yet it satisfies those who want a book written poetically with substance and a style that is grown-up and intellectually complex enough to open new intellectual avenues. If you prefer intelligently crafted novels, then do yourself a favor and by all means read this unforgettable novel by Leonard Seet: the writing is to die for."

-David Lentz, author, Bloomsday, the Bostoniad

The review is on Amazon under the name Wordsworth and on Goodreads.