Tag: cheerfulness

Spinoza of Market Street – “Forgive Me, I Have Become a Fool”

A week or so ago, I was googling a Spinoza citation (regular readers know I’m a big Spinoza fan), and Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story “The Spinoza of Market Street” popped up in my search results.  Now, I vaguely remember reading that story sometime in my distant past, but had no real recollection of it.   So, I pulled it up and was glad I did.

A digression here.  I am constantly amazed at how little I remember of things I read decades ago.  Unless I have reread or thoroughly studied the texts, I might be able to recall some themes, whether I liked the piece or not, a few memorable scenes or tidbits, who wrote it, but that’s about it.  It is a mixed blessing, as I can enjoy some really fine works as if for the first time.  I can even reread classic mystery writers like Agatha Christie or Ngaio Marsh.  But really – where did it all go?  What else has been lost over the years besides the knowledge of “who done it”?

Needless to say, the Singer story was “new” to me, and it made an overwhelming impression this time.  Truthfully, besides the memory problem, when I read it for the first time, I was not old and surely did not appreciate old age (or Spinoza) as I do now.  The story is about an elderly and impoverished man, Dr. Fischelson, who has spent his whole life studying Spinoza.  He has written notes and stupendous amounts of commentary, but – at the end of his life – he cloisters himself in a small attic room in Warsaw trying to make ends meet.  He has dedicated his life to trying to live the kind of life Spinoza recommended, to be the “free man” that Spinoza describes in his Ethics.  He has forgone marriage, children, regular employment for this ideal. 

Spinoza does not protect the aging scholar from the vagaries of life, however.  Dr. Fischelson gets deathly ill in his attic room, and would have succumbed had not his neighbor, an old crone called “Black Dobe,” suddenly needed someone to translate a letter she got from a relative in America.  Black Dobe is an aging spinster, described as “tall and lean, and black as a baker’s shovel.  She had a broken nose and there was a mustache on her upper lip.  She spoke with the hoarse voice of a man and she wore men’s shoes.”  And yet, this old crone nurses the Spinoza scholar back to health.  They talk to each other about their lives – for the first time in many years somebody is interested in what they have to say. Black Dobe knows nothing about Spinoza, but she cares about Fischelson’s childhood, about his thoughts.  And he reciprocates.  Eventually, they visit the Rabbi and say that they want to get married.  The people on Market Street are amazed and pack into the Rabbi’s chamber for the wedding.  The wedding night is better than expected.   “What happened that night could be called a miracle.  If Dr. Fischelson hadn’t been convinced that every occurrence is in accordance with the laws of nature, he would have thought that Black Dobe had bewitched him.”  Good for them.

But here’s the thing.  Dr. Fischelson thinks he has broken faith with Spinoza.  He has failed to lead the kind of “life based on reason” that Spinoza has recommended.  As the sun rises on the morning after his wedding night, the old, old man looks up at the sky and pleads, “Divine Spinoza, forgive me.  I have become a fool.” Is rationality really the answer or do the fools really have the answer in the end?  Does one preclude the other?  One thinks of the Death of Ivan Ilych and the happiness of the servant Gerasim as opposed to the severe angst of his dying master.  Is being in love with (or at least comforted by) an old ugly spinster a sin against Spinoza?  Surely not.

While Spinoza himself led a solitary life, it does not seem to have been lonely.   Spinoza boarded with a family, he had friends, he had a large correspondence with other philosophers.   And one point that Dr. Fischelson seems to have missed in modeling his life after Spinoza’s precepts, is that – above all – Spinoza believed in cheerfulness.  Other emotions could be tolerated as long as they were not in excess, but “of cheerfulness, there could be no excess.”

Fundamentalists, zealots of all kinds, tend to squeeze the joy out of life. There is no room for frivolous emotions in a single-issue mind. Dr. Fischelson was a zealot of Spinoza, but led a cheerless life.  He thinks he has failed in the end, but perhaps – for the first time – he has gotten it right.  Marrying Black Dobe was both a rational and joyful act.  One does not preclude the other.

And here’s the thing that got me.  When Black Dobe asks Fischelson why he doesn’t go to temple, he tells her that “God is everywhere.  In the synagogue, in this very room.  We ourselves are part of God.”  This completely frightens the old lady.  “Don’t say such things,” she tells him.  The odd thing is that he says them but does not act as if they are true, and Black Dobe is frightened by the very thought and yet treats even a dirty old man as if he were sacred.  Amen.

T. S. Eliot said it well in “East Coker”: “Do not let me hear /Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly.”  Ah, yes.  And let us find reasons to be cheerful in our old age.

For a humorous look at love in old age, you might look at my stories, “Livability” or “The Case of the Missing Husband.”  For more of Spinoza, you could try an earlier blog, “Smile for Spinoza.” Be of good cheer.

Smile for Spinoza

When  thirty-two year old Jonathan Swift wrote the resolutions after which this blog is entitled (“When I Come to be Old”), he included the determination “not to be peevish or morose, or suspicious” on his list. At the end of his list he confessed he feared that, although he set up rules for his senescence, he “would observe none.” And so it was. Jonathan Swift was not a happy old man.

I got to thinking about positivity and cheerfulness as I read the cover article on this week’s NY Times Book Review, entitled “Put on a Happy Face,” which reviewed books that took an optimistic view of the world (a difficult task in present times, but apparently not impossible). In particular, it made me muse about the value of cheerfulness in old age, and it reminded me of something Spinoza said.

Spinoza led a hard life; he grew up Portuguese Jewish community in Holland, but was ex-communicated by his own people for his philosophical work. In his Ethics (1677), he strives to outline a rational basis for life, in the course of which he demonstrates the value of …cheerfulness. “Cheerfulness cannot be excessive, but is always good; melancholy, on the other hand, is always evil.” This makes sense to me. In the previous section, Spinoza had elaborated on how he came to his conclusion: “Joy is an affect [emotion] by which the body’s power of acting is increased or aided. Sadness, of the other hand, is an affect by which the body’s power of acting is diminished or restrained.” In other words, it makes sense to be happy, cheerful, positive. Cheerful people have more energy, more “power.” Sadness weighs us down, “restrains” us.

I remember an older man I worked with who was somewhat inept and clumsy, and not too awfully bright. But he was a ray of sunshine each and every day. Everything was going to be terrific, he thought you looked great today, and wasn’t it a beautiful day? Jim’s concrete contributions to the team were minimal, but no one ever suggested getting rid of him. His emotional support was priceless. The tag I use on my e-mail is from Thoreau and sometimes reminds me of Jim: “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”

Old people do not have a reputation for being particularly cheerful. Old men are often characterized as grumpy and old women as crabby – not universally or accurately labeled, yet the stereotype is there. A question worth exploring might be: How does one maintain an attitude of optimism and cheerfulness as one ages, when (perhaps) the joints hurt, the teeth ache, the mirror mocks, and the pension is not keeping up with inflation?   I don’t think it can be done if we are fighting what is happening to us; warriors are not cheerful. But (perhaps) if we can accept the ride down, we might consider some words of Rilke:

And we, who always think
of happiness as rising feel the emotion
that almost overwhelms us
whenever a happy thing falls..

There can be, I think, happiness in the fall if one does not insist that one is not going to fall (while all the time headed down the rabbit hole).

Spinoza infers cheerfulness is its own reward. It increases “the power of acting.” And the people around us like it. But it is not always easy. “Smile though your heart is aching” advises the words of the song by that sad little tramp, Charlie Chaplin. Cheerfulness can’t just be a façade, nor can it be a blind optimism. You need to believe that there is some happiness in the fall, and you have to believe in the efficacy of a smile. And if your smile is not initially wholly sincere, an habitual cheerfulness might actually lead to a happier life. And that would certainly be something to smile about.

None of this is meant to minimize the effect of clinical depression or deep and justified sadness. But our attitude toward life is worth examining once in a while. This week’s story (“Snickerdoodles”) is about an older person who sees a vision of a more positive life (with Chaucer’s help) in the midst of change and loss. Her revelation comes while baking cookies; we will have to find our own catalyst.