Range Voting - why not?

Since Australia is soon heading towards a federal election there has been the usual round of discussions online about voting systems. There is widespread dissatisfaction with the Australian electoral system, even though it is widely regarded as one of the best and fairest in the world. It does, however, sometimes turn up skewed results. Since it is a preferential system a candidate with fewer primary votes may be elected after the distribution of preferences. Voters mark their preferences and if their first preferred candidate is not in the running after the first votes are counted, then their second and third and subsequent preferences are counted. In theory, the candidate that is MOST PREFERRED is elected. This often leaves people disgruntled. A candidate might receive 49% of first votes and yet the candidate with only 30% of first votes will be elected because more people voted for him as their second, third or subsequent choice. The discrepancies can be wildly anomalous in the upper house (Senate) which uses preferential proportional representation. There is currently a senator from Queensland, who shall remain nameless, who was elected on less than 300 primary votes (in an electorate of several million votes!) simply because a wide range of minor parties directed their second preferences to him. Parties cannot really direct preferences, of course, but they publish ‘How to Vote’ guides and, like sheep, most people follow them. Once the election is over everyone bitch-nags about how unfair the system is. Every election time we hear the gnashing of teeth by those simple souls who think the world will be a much better place if only we had ‘First-past-the-post’ voting like Mother England. People complain that the preference system extorts votes for parties a voter does not support.

Debates about voting systems are as tedious as hell. The same arguments are presented over and over. Every system has short-coming, statistical and otherwise, and every system will introduce a bias for one political bloc or another. The Leftists, for example, nearly always champion a laissez faire voting registration with first-past-the-post. This suits a collectivist ideology. Habitual conspiracy theorists, they will tell you that preferential voting is a device used to oppress the “Masses” – or they used to, these days the “Masses” are out of fashion and it is the “minorities” who are supposedly being disenfranchised. The Left goes into mad canniptions if anyone proposes that voters should present ID to prevent double-voting and other modes of cheating. This would disenchranchise minorities, they say, (since many minorities, apparently, don’t have legal ID.) Similarly, I’ve known Leftists who object vociferously to even the idea of written voting papers – this discriminates against the illiterate. It’s a flat earth ideology. One man (or woman or transgender) one vote. It’s all dressed up as “fairness” but it is all just calculated to maximize the Left’s electoral chances. Hardcore Leftists believe in two parties, one-man-one-vote, and first-past-the post.

The problems with first-past-the-post are legendary and rather obvious. Governance in the UK is hardly a good advertisement for it. In any given electorate a vote might go like this:

Therese May – 25%
Boris Johnston – 26%
Jeremy Corbyn – 20%
Nigel Farage – 29%

In this case Nigel Farage is elected, even though 71% of voters did not vote for him. We are surely left wondering, ‘Who was the second preference of those 71% of voters?’

The other problem with first-past-the-past is that it favours enclaves of voters. Minor parties really only have a chance if they can get all their supporters to move into one region. This, again, favours the Left historically, because that benighted entity ‘The Working Class’ has tended to congregate in certain areas of cities whereas the well-to-do are more finely distributed because, being well-to-do, they are more mobile. But it also favours sectional interests, local agitators and – yes – ethnic enclaves. If you can get enough supporters to live in a certain area you will win.


For this and many other reasons thinking people everywhere tend to favour some sort of preference system. But, as I say, every preference system carries its own shortcomings. In recent Australian history, for example, we have seen the preference system promote a proliferation of minor parties (mostly Right-of-Centre) that cross-preference each other in order to game the system. The government keeps fiddling with the system in order to thwart this, but grievous anomalies like the good senator from Queensland (“unrepresentative swill” to use a former Prime Minister’s description) keep occurring. Moreover, governments keep being elected on 49% or less of the total vote, and parties with 51% or more of the two-party-preferred vote keep losing. It is not a perfect system. It is better than most. It is far better than the bizarre and baroque American system (or systems) and is possibly only bettered by the system in New Zealand (or Iceland) for accurate and justifiable results. But therein is another problem: truly preferential systems allow the election of candidates from a multiplicity of parties and you end up with a system of unstable and ever-shifting government like Italy. 

I have long been an advocate – inasmuch as I care one way or another – of so-called ‘Range’ voting or ‘Score’ voting. It is demonstrably the fairest and simplest system possible. It is just made for schoolteachers: the system consists of giving each candidate on the ballot paper a score out of ten. We use this system for many things – talent contests, for instance. And in those contexts we all widely agree that it is fair and accurate. There are several acts in a talent contest and a panel of judges. The judges give each act a mark out of ten. The act with the highest score wins. Indeed, we use exactly this system in sporting events and other contests. And yet not in voting for government. One wonders why not? We all know the system, all agree on its fairness, have often used it in other contexts, and yet do not apply it to elections.

It works like this:

Given the candidates listed above, Therese May, Boris Johnston, Jeremy Corbyn, Nigel Farage, voters are directed to give each of them from zero to ten points according to their preference. Thus a voter may vote:

Therese May – 2 points
Boris Johnston – 8 points
Jeremy Corbyn – 4 points
Nigel Farage – 10 points

This voter gives Nigel Farage the maximum support but thinks Jeremy Corbyn only deserves four points out of ten. The voter also fancies Boris Johnston over Therese May who only scores two points. Another voter may vote thus:

Therese May – 0 points
Boris Johnston – 0 points
Jeremy Corbyn – 10 points
Nigel Farage – 0 points

This voter has given Jeremy Corbyn the strongest possible endorsement. This is like a first-past-the-post vote.

Indeed, Range voting is very like first-past-the-post but the voter is allowed to weight the votes according to their preferences. Thus is has the best of both first-past-the-post and preferential systems. Range voting is first-past-the-post with gradations. Statistical, mathematical, ethical and demographic studies have all shown that Range voting produces the most accurate results and gives voters the most discernment and power while being very simple. As I say, we use Range voting all the time, but not, for some reason, in politics. It can even be adapted for those illiterates (enumerates?) championed by the Left: you can give your preferred candidate ten points by putting an X beside their name (resorting to Roman numbers!) Thus, this would be a valid vote:

Therese May - 0
Boris Johnston - 0
Jeremy Corbyn – X
Nigel Farage – 0

Jeremy Corbyn here scores ten points and the other candidates none.

It also allows creative ways to cast a donkey vote:

Therese May – 8 points
Boris Johnston – 8 points
Jeremy Corbyn – 8 points
Nigel Farage – 8 points

Which is as good as saying ‘None of the above’. This voter is like the teacher than gives everybody an A. The question for voters when confronted by a candidate for public office becomes: what would I give then out of ten? Six? Five? Nine? Two? How do I feel about them on a scale of ten? Political parties would encourage their supporters to give their candidates 10/10 and no points to the other candidates, but voters are free to see shades of grey if they wish instead of the black-or-white savagery of first-past-the-post or the extortion that is preferential voting. Someone – a Tory - might vote thus:

Therese May – 10
Boris Johnston – 8
Jeremy Corbyn – zero
Nigel Farage – zero

A Brexiteer might vote thus:

Therese May – 2 points
Boris Johnston – 10 points
Jeremy Corbyn – zero
Nigel Farage – 10 points

Voters are free to weight their votes on the scale of one to ten anyway they like. A disenchanted voter might well vote:

Therese May – zero
Boris Johnston – zero
Jeremy Corbyn – zero
Nigel Farage – 1 point

In an electoral division of, say, 100,000 people the maximum number of available points for any candidate is one million – that is, where every voter gives that candidate ten points. In any case, the candidate with the most number of points win, as per first-past-the-post. There are no ‘preferences’ to be distributed, least of all according to arcane systems of quotas and distribution formulae. It is simple: the candidate with the most points manifestly has the most support of the voters. It doesn’t matter if all the points for the other candidates add up to more than the winning candidate: that failing of first-past-the-post is remedied because this system combines first-past-the-post with preferential, the candidate with the most points is clearly the most preferred. Think about it in other contexts: a diving contest at the Olympics, say. Let’s say there were six competitors and the panel of judges voted a grade out of ten for each and the results were:

Diver A – 29 points
Diver B – 22 points
Diver C – 17 points
Diver D – 32 points
Diver E – 22 points
Diver F – 24 points

Diver D is the winner. The judges, marking each competitor out of ten for each dive, have determined that Diver D is the best. I don’t think anyone would complain with that result (unless they disagree with the judges) – the voting system is fair and (provided the judges know their game) will determine the best competitor. Again, we use exactly this system in many contexts in our society, but not in elections. Why not? 

Frankly, I'm not big on democracy. It is self-evident that many countries are well-governed and populations well-represented by systems other than liberal democracy. It is also evident to me from all my travels that many people in the world are much more interested in good government than they are in free and fair elections (which, in many places, only produce political upheaval and unstable government.) And it is also obvious that the post-War shine has gone off liberal democracies and more and more people are dissatisfied with the government it produces. I actually think the decay of the Australian system is much more advanced than it seems: it is disguised because of that most peculiar Australian imposition, compulsory voting. Yes, the government fines you for not voting in Australia. This is the only thing holding the current two party system together. Already, the current system effectively disenfranchises about one third of voters who are now outside the two-party duopoly. I suspect it is only a matter of time before we have an election result that exposes just how riven the Australian polity has become. 

Harper

Peranakans & Identity

The Peranakans are the Straits Chinese. I have now lived over a year of my days among the Peranakans, first in George Town on Prince of Wales Island and then in Old Town further down the coast. The Chinese have been in this part of the world – the Dutch Maritime – for many hundreds of years. Mostly they were from the provinces of southern China and came here for trade and for tin mining. They brought with them a rich cultural blend of Taoist, Boodhist, and Confucian traditions which have in time been modified and further enriched by local customs and the social adjustments necessary to survive and thrive in a new land. Old Town, indeed, is a late medieval Chinese colony in South East Asia, an entreport and advance outpost for Chinese maritime trade. It was brought into the Chinese orbit by the great eunuch Cheng Ho, who remains a hero of the Peranakans. In many ways the Peranakans are more authentically Chinese than the Chinese. Chinese culture in mainland China was devastated by the Maoist revolution. The traditions, the clans, the lineages, the food: these are better preserved among the Peranakans than they are in mainland China. I saw this for myself. The cultural poverty of post-revolution China is striking. This is why I am so fond of the Peranakans: they’re genuine and haven’t (yet) been worked over by the communists. (The Party is working on it, just as they are infiltrating and bullying communities throughout the Chinese diaspora.)

On a personal note, my mentor – that great defender of the Western Tradition - the late Dr Roger Sworder, married a Chinese woman, and thus married into the Chinese world, and I spent the 25+ years of our acquaintance hearing of his love of Chinese culture and family life and being chided for not knowing Chinese culture myself first hand, an inadequacy in his opinion. So I do like to think he would approve of my decision to dally in these Chinese-majority cities along the Malacca Straits and to live among the Peranakans.

They are also known - loosely synonymous - as the Baba Nyonya. It’s a funny name. Baba means father and Nyonya means mother. So Baba Nyonya means something like “the mums and dads”. Hardworking, astute, valuing education, the Baba Nyonya became very prosperous and built a beautiful high culture of distinctive architecture, attire, elaborate manners and cuisine. As readers will see from previous posts to this blog, I am especially fond of the architecture, the so-called Sino-Portuguese. The wealthy Baba Nyonya took diverse architectural influences – especially from the Portuguese, since they live side-by-side with descendants of the Portuguese colonialists, the so-called Kristangs – and built beautiful homes. Many are well-preserved in the Straits cities and towns, all the way up into Siam, while many more are in various states of decay or renovation. Below, some pictures of Baba Nyonya buildings:

And Baba Nyonya in traditional attire:

But there is another feature of the Peranakans, pertinent to this blog, that appeals very much to me (and a point on which Roger Sworder - that British-hating Englishman – would surely disagree.) Namely that the Peranakans, the Straits Chinese, the Baba Nyonya, did business with the British, supported the British, and what’s more, liked the British, and are an advertisement for the benign manifestations of the much-maligned British Empire. They regarded the British – of all the peoples that came and went in this busy part of the world – as civilized like themselves. They felt a kinship to British manners, and customs, and etiquette and formality. Their bond with the British was much deeper than merely economic opportunity. Much more than the Malays and other ethnic groups in British Malaya the Chinese engaged with and absorbed the culture of the British Empire and were more deeply Anglocized. They acquired the English language and took British customs.

It is my observation that Chinamen make good Englishmen. In fact, I’m often of the opinion that they make better Englishmen than the English. This might be true of Indians as well, but it is certainly true of the Peranakans. My predicament, rehearsed in these pages in many posts, is that I live in a sort of neo-orientalist quandary, because rather than volarizing the post-colonial identitarian authenticity that is all the rage today, I love these East-West hybrids, noble children of a benign British imperialism. To exaggerate: I don’t much care for the English English, or for the Chinese Chinese, but in those places where those cultures have cross-fertilized the result has been greater than its component parts. This flies in the face of the post-colonial angst we are all supposed to feel. The Peranakans, in fact, are not poor victims of colonialist oppression: they sided with the British against Malay nationalists and resisted Malay independence. They were very happy with the British Empire and to this day have a positive view of the British as colonialists (let’s not compare them to the far less benign Dutch and Portuguese!) When you put aside your post-colonial orthodoxy, it is never very hard to find people on the ground, in Asia and in India too, who speak well of the British period. In India it was the Sihks who sided with the British, amongst others – and I believe Sihk culture is richer for those British affinities. In the Dutch maritime, the Straits Chinese found affinity with the British and think of the British period as one of peace, progress and prosperity. The post-colonialists – not least the Maoists from Peking – have shouted these perspectives down. 

There is no avoiding the fact that the Peranakans are past their prime, though. They backed the wrong side in post-war history. They made good investments, and once their wealth was prodigious, but increasingly they get by on the tourist trade. Malays go to Old Town to see the quaint Baba Nyonya traditions in the quaint Baba Nyonya museums. Museums, of course, are always a bad sign. They are places where you preserve dead things. In post-Independence Malaya the Peranakans increasingly occupy a museum culture. On the other hand, bus loads of middle class mainland Chinese travel to these old Chinese maritime outposts these days, many of them on a thoroughly healthy quest for the cultural roots destroyed by the Party in the Chinese homeland. In particular, the clan houses here preserve family trees that have been otherwise lost (vandalized) during the Cultural Revolution. Chinese Chinese come here in their identitarian search for authentic roots. The same is true of the Temples, which are living institutions with unbroken traditions. Religious Chinese come here on pilgrimages to venerable shrines and to observe the festivals in the traditional (or at least more traditional) way.

One of the joys of living among the Peranakans, therefore, is that I am not obliged to indulge in post-colonial intellectual masochism. I’II have to be a neo-orientalist and take the moral blackmail that prevails in Western intellectual discourse in my stride. I happen to like many of the products of colonialism, and I am drawn to the cases of hybrid vigour where East and West have met and flourished in synthesis. I love places of historic East-West engagement. The Peranakans themselves, let us recall, were colonialists and established their outposts on the land of Mahometan Sultanates, and they have lived – not always easily – side by side with Muselmen all these centuries. So there is also a fascinating Chinese/Islam tension abroad in such cities. In Goldsmith Street in Old Town the mosque is virtually side-by-side with the main Chinese temple. And a Hindoo Temple, as well. Actually, to give them credit, this was the idea of the Dutch. One of the early Dutch administrations made land grants on Goldsmith Street to the Hindoos, Peranakans and Mahometans, for places of worship and made them all live side-by-side. This flies in the face of the standard mad-Calvinist-fanatics narrative, but the Dutch here seem to have been generally tolerant of the non-Christian religions and gave active support to non-Christian religious communities. The whole thing is much more complex and nuanced than the post-colonial whine-fest allows.

Did I mention the furniture? There is the exquisite Baba Nyonya furniture featuring mother-of-pearl, but the antique stores are full of Chinese-British antiques, Chinese domestic furnishings crafted in British styles. The truly great thing about the Peranakans – it is true of the diaspora Chinese everywhere – is their extraordinary talent for integration while assiduously maintaining their own traditions and their Chinese identity. They are very, very good at it. The chain of transmission is the family. The Maoist’s one-child policy was designed to smash exactly that in the mainland. Contemporary identity politics is retarded. It consists of all sorts of people saying that they cannot possibly live among anybody except their own kind because to do so would destroy their traditions. Boo hoo. History is jam-packed with people who move somewhere other than the soil from which they were born. Indigeny is nothing if it is not portable. The trick is to be like the Chinese.. They make good citizens wherever though go, but they keep the vital aspects of their culture intact, and very often it thrives in new ways in new soil. They welcome compatible influences. That is what living traditions do. The alt-Right identitarians seem to be admitting that their beloved homeland traditions are like delicate orchids that can only survive in climate-controlled greenhouses. It’s a museum mentality writ large.

It’s not only the alt-Right, though. When I was in Australia recently I was talking to a homosexual man – an activist assuredly Left-wing in his politics. He was in an identitarian flap. He said he wanted to live among “his people” in “his culture” and this was simply impossible in the pervading homophobia of the West. He had some plan to join an exclusively gay utopian community somewhere. I was skeptical. I said, “Really? You cannot find a way to be a happy, well-adjusted and fulfilled gay man in contemporary Australian society?” Of course he could, but to say so is to belittle his carefully cultivated victimhood. The race, it seems to me, goes to those who don’t indulge in this sort of disabling self-pity. The race goes to cultures who can say, our culture is strong enough to live side-by-side and co-operatively with others without being essentially compromised. Identitarianism is just: “Everybody back to their bunkers!” The challenge, rather, is to have robust traditions that can remain intact while prospering in changing conditions. The Peranakans are a model of dogged tradition and free market pragmatism under all the various modes of colonial administration. Except the Japanese. The Straits Chinese fared badly under the Japanese occupation. There’s another post-colonial irony not lost on the Peranakans: their fellow Asians treated them much, much worse than the European white devils ever did.

These days a person of my interests and persuasions can only live comfortably – in exile – in places such as these where the intellectual environment is not comprehensively poisoned with post-colonial Marxist perspectives. So I am, in fact, as bad as any other identiatarian, including my homosexual friend mentioned above. The identitarian premise that birds of a feather flock together is not mistaken. The Chinese form enclaves. Old Town is a Chinese enclave. Human beings like to live among those with whom they share an identity. Granted. But a Chinese enclave is not a fortress hostile to the land it occupies. It is a hub for the conduct of commerce and engagement with the surrounding culture. I am interested in how it works. Masters of successful cultural negotiation. It is a great opportunity for me to live among the Straits Chinese for an extended period. (There are other rich cultures here too, notably the Tamils and Chetti.)

Of course, they are now negotiating with modernity. Like everybody. That is the main game. Probably, tourism is the greatest threat Peranakan culture has ever faced, all the more so because it is increasingly their main source of income. Already, parts of Old Town and thereabouts are taking on the atmosphere of a theme park. But there is still reason to be confident in their powers of adaptation, the Straits Chinese. They are inventive and resilient and smart and hardworking, and these virtues are fostered from generation to generation in the Chinese way. For my part I want to live in an intellectual and social environment that isn’t a cesspool seething with confected guilt and resentment. Which is to say nowhere near an Australian university. My crime is wanting to study East/West interaction through some lens other than the prevailing post-colonial critique. Try publishing that in an academic journal. There really are people in the world today who would bulldoze the pyramids of Gaza because they were built by slaves.  I take it personally. There are some people who want to make my love of Dim Sum breakfast and Chinese tea politically problematic. To hell with them. The Dim Sum place near here, in fact, has been serving breakfast every morning since 1948, and so their connection to the British period is unbroken. White Anglo-Saxon imperialist running dogs like me are always welcome. You know the Chinese. They watch you carefully. Your Western manners, your Western clothes, your Western ways. They’ll take what they like and make good use of it and not be a single bit less Chinese for doing so.



Haper McAlpine Black

Two Lost Schemes of Roger Sworder

They say that when a scholar dies it is like a library burning down. The late Roger Sworder was perhaps the best read person I have ever met, and so there is some truth in it. But, alas, he also took with him the details of several intellectual projects that he worked on over the years but which have not emerged in his extant papers. I remember two in particular. Living just around the corner, I would often drop in and find Roger ensconced in some new intellectual adventure. He did have recreations: detective novels and, surprisingly, TV court room dramas. But otherwise he devoted his hours to nutting out esoteric problems arising from his research. The two I remember were important sidelines to his studies of Greek stellar mythology and the symbolism of Homer’s Odyssey.

  The first was his own unique approach to astrology. A remnant of this survives in his essays as an account of the zodiac signs applied to the human body. Except, readers should note, his scheme runs exactly counter to that of the mainstream astrological tradition. Usually, the symbolism begins with Aries corresponding to the human head. Roger has it reversed. He was adamant about this. I would say, “But it’s back to front!” and he would argue it out showing that his symbolism worked perfectly well. And it does. Usually, for instance, Scorpio corresponds to the genitalia. But in Roger’s scheme we see the Scorpion in the arch of the lower back, the sacrum, on the opposite side of the body. His astrological musings were always contrary. His way was to start with the symbols and think them through and never mind if someone says he’s got it upside down. He makes a very convincing case for his arrangement. So I said, “Alright, the symbolism works both ways. That’s interesting.” But no. He insisted that it worked better his way and that what is interesting is that a counter symbolism (not nearly as revealing) has prevailed in the Hermetic and broader Western tradition. He was convinced that he was uncovering a lost order of symbolism, not inventing something new. But he’d work it out from first principles and look for the historical evidence later.

  His astrological scheme concerned planetary latitudes. He was completely uninterested in zodiacal longitudes. This came from his years of watching the stars – and especially the cycles of Venus. He would say, “Yes, Jupiter is in Libra, 185 deg. longitude. But where is it in relation to the equator? North or south?” That’s what makes a visible difference. If it is south of the equator it will be big and bright in the sky. If north, dimmer and lower. 



Roger had no knowledge of modern astrology. He would ask me about it. “What do modern astrologers do with the north and south movement of the planets?” The answer was: not much. I explained that sometimes they might note an obscure “aspect” called the Parallel (when two planets are at the same latitude, north or south) but otherwise it is entirely based on planetary longitude. “Fiddlesticks!” he would say. It was obvious to him that latitude was much more important. The planets move in seasons, just like the sun, he said. He described the north/south axis as “vertical” and developed a disdain for mainstream (longitudinal astrology) which he dismissed as “flat”. I suggested that perhaps both axes were important. That was the sort of comment he completely ignored.

  Accordingly, one wintertime he plotted out the movements of the planets on the latitudinal axis over some set period. He used the data from his American Ephemeris and had some unfortunate student prepare it on computer spread sheets that he pasted together into a scroll about fifteen foot long. The equator was ruled down the middle and the cycles of the planets were mapped against it, up to each tropic, north and south. He would roll it out on his desk and explain various patterns that he saw emerging. I can’t recall what period of time he took as his sample. Probably not important. But he collated all of the information and developed a quite comprehensive astrology of planetary latitudes. Like a good Platonist he explained to me that he didn’t really need the diagram. Once he had worked out the first principles he could dispense with the diagram. And he did. As far as I know, the fifteen foot scroll of planetary movements was not among his papers. And unfortunately he does not seem to have written down other details of his system. It was elaborate. I don’t remember enough of it to reconstruct it. This was probably around the years 2004-5.

The second lost scheme was from about ten years later. I had a hand in it. Roger was forever constructing symbolic scaffolding to support his reading of Homer’s Odyssey. His academic work, found in several of his books, concerned the symbolic meanings of the various locations Odysseus visits on his archetypal journey. Others have done it before, but no one like Roger. He took Thomas Taylor as his mentor. At this late stage of his research, he wanted to pull it all together into a comprehensive 19 year scheme. He was intensely interested in the chronology and time signals in the Odyssey. It’s chironic, not a straight narrative with clear time signals like the Iliad. He had noted some strange parallels and was grappling with a way to organise them. It was all about 19s. I told him about the Islamic symbolism of the number – but that didn’t help. 19 x 19 = 361. He was puzzling over that maths in relation to the Odyssey.


Then I suggested Go.

“Go where?” he said.


I meant the Japanese game. It’s played on a board of 19 x 19 squares.


The next day he bought a Go board, and it was just what he wanted. A matrix for his symbolism. He mused that the whole of Homer’s epic was constructed on a magic square of the order 19. Then he started plotting the text onto the Go board in detail. I told him he was on a winner. The Odyssey of Homer through the lens of a Japanese board game. A bestseller. More money in it than his mining book, anyway.



I believe that he was still working on this up to his death. Certainly, the Go board was still sitting on his desk, along with his various texts and translations of Homer. But as far as I know, he didn’t write it down. This is one of the infuriating things about Platonists. They valorize the spoken word and are tardy about writing things down. He had a lot of it worked out. He would point to a square on the Go board and say, “Land of the Lotus Eaters” and the point in time in the 19 year Metonic cycle. Excitedly, he would show how the geometry of the board, the matrix, would match parallel episodes up beautifully. Then he’d point at another square and say, “The summer solstice.” It was a system, and after a while I decided it had legs. Everybody suspects there’s some inner structure to the Odyssey, and that the nineteen year journey is a key, and that Penelope weaves and unweaves like the Moon, and so on. Roger devoted probably 30 years of deep engagement with that text. Unfortunately, his grand synthesis on the Go board hasn’t survived.


Harper McAlpine Black

Barzaga - Windows for Closed Doors

Some time ago a friend of the author related the story of how she had chanced upon a notable garage artist in Florida. Strolling the streets and frequenting yard sales, she spotted an oil painting that was to her taste. She found it to be unusually powerful and accomplished – far better than the type of amateur paintings one usually finds amongst the knick-knacks and detritus of backyard jumble sales. This was much more than a crude and derivative landscape made in an Adult Education course. Making further inquiries, she found that the painting had indeed been done by a local artist, the Cuban-American Yeilem Barzaga Garcia Zuniga, who – quite authentically – painted in the family home’s garage, an unknown, untrained ‘hobby’ painter, painting for ‘fun’ and only selling work here and there for a few dollars.

Yet it was immediately apparent that this painter was particularly talented and may not be aware of it herself. It so happens, of course, that very talented people may labour away quietly in their homes unnoticed and unappreciated for decades or more, before they are ‘discovered’ and their talent recognized. This is not usually a theme pursued in these pages, but in this case the work in question is so arresting and the artist so thoroughly unknown that it is worth making an exception. In addition, Barzaga's work is in a modernist vein not usually explored here, but again there is every reason to make an exception. The paintings of Yeilem Barzaga Garcia Zuniga are outstanding. There is a dynamism and emotional clarity that is rare. It gives the present author great pleasure to be able to feature them here...

Letting the paintings speak for themselves, the point of interest here is the artist's compelling sense of vocation: it shows in the work but is reaffirmed in conversation with the artist. She relates that painting is like 'breathing' to her. It is inconceivable that she not paint. She feels an inner compulsion that in itself is difficult to define and describe. The impulse, in any case, is to paint, not explain. Worthy art always stands without explanation. Barzaga does not need to explain her motivation or the degree to which she is driven by it. The paintings themselves speak of it, and so too do the photographs of her studio and the evidence of just how prolific she is. Some garage painters are just dabblers - the present author among them - but some are appointed artists who have no choice but to paint: it is their mode, the thing in which they find meaning. It is this sense of vocation - an inner and existential sense - that is most notable, and it is so because it is so completely at odds with the great economic mechanisms of modernity. Vocation, let us recall, is exactly what had to be broken before modern industrial capitalism could become fully established. Workers must be reduced to mutable 'units' that might be moved from task to task as production required. The idea that a person is born to a particular task, that they have a calling to it, is anathema in the modern workplace and (excuse the expression) "job market". 

This is finally the great divide between modernity and tradition. A traditional order is essentially vocational. The great moving force in such a society is what we might call 'karma yoga' - salvation through work. It was fully understood that a man might be justified to God and Heaven just by being a blacksmith or a scribe or a doctor or a soldier. Work was thus a spiritual path. Vocation is the very cornerstone of Plato's Republic. There is a type of work to which we are born, and in which we find deep fulfillment. All of this understanding had to be deconstructed because it is essentially at odds with the industrial mode of production. It survives in our surnames - "Mister Smith", "Mr Cooper" - but otherwise it has been displaced such that people work dreary and pointless jobs and pursue their 'vocation', their real work, after hours in the garage. Our true work has been turned into a mere 'hobby'. The present author once met an elderly gentleman who wove the most exquisite weavings - superb. 'How long have you been weaving?" he was asked. He said five years. Then he related that he had always wanted to weave, ever since he was young, but he had driven buses all his working life. Only when he retired did he have the leisure to apply himself to his true work. This is the great cruelty of the industrial order and its greatest failing. On this point alone it is to be condemned as an abomination. It is only in the abundance of late industrialism that some people - a few - find "careers" for which they have real "aptitude" (although, even then, this is never deep enough to constitute a spiritual path in itself.) For every thousand young men who only feel life is a-right when they are playing guitar, only one or two will get to make a living doing it. The industrial order is essentially inhuman.

But there is art. This is why much of modern art takes the form it does. It is in the face of an inhuman industrial order that one is force, along with Oscar Wilde, to say "All art is utterly useless!" Only thus can the artist slip free of the industrial paradigm. Art, at least, remains a sphere in which it is possible to express a true vocation. We still find painters who are driven to paint, just as, once, blacksmiths were driven to hammer and forge. Distinctions between art and craft are irrelevant here. The issue is the inner urge to create through skill. It is the demiurgic urge, properly considered (while in the industrial order we see the diabolic Demiurge, the demon of mad replication.) Among artists we find people who are painters by vocation - long after oil painting had any meaningful place in the culture and large, and long, long after there was money to be made in it. The artist-by-vocation will paint anyway. It is their very oxygen. It is an intriguing psychology, in any case. The classical account of it is found in Plato, with the "idiot" Socrates practising his peculiar calling among the craftsmen of Athens. More commonly today, sensitive souls take shelter in their vocation and find a quiet corner of the world - say, a garage converted into a studio - where they can spend their spare hours. This is the age of the amateur, taking that word in its proper sense - an amateur = one who does what they do out of love (amor), one who loves, one who works for love. 

Entitled 'Loneliness Companion' this seems an especially significant work in a series called 'Windows for Closed Doors': this closed door and its three primary colours. 

On her webpages Barazaga offers almost as many photographs of her studio working space as she does completed paintings. In many respects, these in situ photographs are artistic statements in themselves. In many respects, they are as interesting as - or even more interesting than - the finished paintings, as images. We can see the world of the artist: its vivid colours and its mysterious (ancient) faces. This is the world into which the artist disappears every chance she has. This is where she breathes. She has entitled a collection of her paintings "Windows for Closed Doors" signalling the intention to provide a purview into a private and inner world. But there is no element of voyeurism in this. These paintings are not part of the modern world's obsessive need to expose all mysteries to the light of day. The paintings are indeed mysterious. The mysteries are revealed and then left to be mysterious, not dispelled. In the best cases, the vehicle of mystery is colour. It would be wrong to say the colours are 'bold'. They are not trying to be. These are (usually) strong figures, but not 'bold'. The colour illuminates a necessarily inner world, and often makes no reference at all to external conventions.

Interestingly, though, many of the photographs she offers of her studio have been rendered into monochrome, stripped of colour. Colour is the soul of her paintings, yet the artist wants us to see her studio in black and white. Amongst other things this has the effect of making the space seem more industrial, much more a place of labour. 

Yours, Harper McAlpine Black

Mary Fairburn and the Visual Tolkien

By a strange turn of events the present writer finds himself ideally situated to complete a half-written and long-intended post to these pages on the matter of making visual depictions of the hobbit tales of J.R.R. Tolkien. The impetus for the post first arose out of a sense of overwhelming disgust at the appalling misrepresentations offered by that feeble film-maker Peter Jackson. The wide popularity of the movies speaks for itself: it was only a matter of time before Hollywood debased Tolkien into a form the post-literate plebian masses could digest. The Tolkien epics are approachable and modern in themselves, but they are replete with values and sensibilities now long gone from popular culture. They already belong to a former age. Jackson remedied this and dumbed them down for twenty-first century audiences. 

This is not the place, though, for a full critique of Jackson's degeneracy. Suffice to say that he stripped the epics of any real sense of history, epic grandeur and mystical philology (which is the very fabric of the books), he took absurd and artless liberties with the motivations of the characters and the flow of the narrative, he filled the overblown cinema extravaganza with crude egotistic 'Oscar' baiting moments, and most obvious of all he depicted the hobbit hero Frodo as a dreary, snivelling sook. Indeed, it was as if there were only two settings in the movies: (1) Frodo and Sam are blubbering together and (2) Sam blubbers while Frodo is dying. Oh dear. This cheap melodrama went on and on and on. One critic caught the tone of such sentimentality with the astute observation: Jackson, he said, had turned Frodo and Sam into the guys from Brokeback Mountain. Indeed. 

Frodo, grizzling yet again. The director clearly does not understand that copious displays of sooking is no substitute for the proper mythopoeic depiction of a conflicted heroic character. 

And, as a disgruntled movie-goer asked: Has the entire Elven race suffered from a bout of mumps? And what about the immortal dialogue: "Looks like meat is back on the menu, boys!"  Then there were the truly abysmal, cliched, ill-crafted slow-motion scenes - dozens of them. Pure Hollywood cheese. And this is to say nothing of the use of pseudo-folk music by Enya - yes, Enya! - whilst entirely ignoring the great musical treasury of song Tolkien himself had written. The movies were simply dreadful. There can be no doubt whatsoever that poor Professor Tolkien is turning in his grave.

To put this billion dollar travesty into context though, we must admit that, more generally, visual depictions of the Tolkien ouevre have a most ignoble history. There have been some very bad attempts to render these literary masterpieces into visual media. Tolkien himself resisted any such enterprise, and with good reason. He understood the very nature of 'fairy tale' and accordingly had a deep mistrust of the visual image. This is revealed in a famous (but overlooked) lecture in 1939:

In human art fantasy is best left to words, to true literature. In painting, for instance, the visual presentation of the fantastic image is technically too easy; the hand tends to outrun the mind, even to overthrow it... 

We might take this as a general criticism of the entire genre of fantasy art. He also applied it to the question of illustration. He said very plainly:

However good in themselves, illustrations do little good to fairy-stories... 

Why? He gave the following reason:

The radical distinction between all art (including drama) that offers a visible presentation and true literature is that it imposes one visible form. Literature works from mind to mind and is thus more progenitive. It is at once more universal and more poignantly particular. 

And further, a point of which a second-rate Oscar-baiting hack like Peter Jackson has no comprehension:

Drama is naturally hostile to fantasy. ... Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited. 

Moreover, Tolkien made no exception for his own work, and was emphatic about the question of  whether or not his own tales required visual supports and illustrations. In a letter to his publishers in 1967 he wrote:

I myself am not at all anxious for The Lord of the Rings to be illustrated by anybody whether a genius or not.

We can be sure, therefore, that he would have been horrified by the movies and their imposition of "one visual form." Who now can read The Fellowship of the Ring without Jackson's snivelling tear-jerking depiction of Frodo Baggins intruding upon the mind's eye? Once you have seen the movies there is a very real sense in which the books are ruined. To a lesser degree all illustrations present the same danger. It is a danger writers understand very well, artists understand hardly at all, and film-makers to no degree whatsoever.

* * * 

The publishing history of the Tolkien hobbit works is littered with travesties, despite Professor Tolkien's best efforts to prevent it. We are reminded that writers are often at the mercy of half-witted publishers and their stable of talentless drawers. Suffice to consider a few examples of the cover art that has blighted The Hobbit over the years: 

We could extend this gallery of bad covers much further, but this is enough for readers to see the dimensions of the problem. On some occasions publishers even went to great expense and employed renowned artists to supply cover art and some illustrations of the text, but very rarely with happy results. The letters of Professor Tolkien himself provide a record of his disdain for such efforts. The fantasy genre is, of course, a prosperous one in modern art and the works of Tolkien offer a compelling enticement for fantasy artists. Tolkien was inundated with letters from artists of various ilk hoping to provide illustrations for his texts. He was underwhelmed even by the best of them. Instead, he sometimes produced illustrations of his own, and wise publishers have appreciated their merits. Indeed, as we can see below, J.R.R. Tolkien was - quite apart from a great writer - a considerable artist in his own right, with a beautiful hand and a sure sense of line. In particular, his great sensitivity to language extended to a sensitivity for the calligraphic arts, and this has been featured somewhat in the more tasteful editions of his works. To this day the best editions of Tolkien feature his own drawings and experiments in runic scripts. 

Here are two little-known samples of Tolkien's visual skills that underline his great ability: 

A design Tolkien doodled on the back of an agenda notice 

for a staff meeting at Merton College Oxford, 1957. 

It features Elvish script.

A Japanese bamboo design by Tolkien showing 

his great facility with ink pen drawing. 

The few illustrations he made of scenes and places in the Middle Earth world are better known and have been published in calendars, posters and other forms, including book covers and feature pages in various editions of the hobbit tale books. There is no need to present them all here. A few will suffice to once again demonstrate his skill. His pictures have sometimes met with detractors amongst more formal artists who criticise them in various terms as "unpolished" or "untrained" or "a bit rough" or the like. These are the voices of those who have been clambering to have their own work illustrating his books - a very lucrative commission it would be. The present writer is firm in his view that, in fact, Tolkien's somewhat quaint drawings, pencil designs and watercolours capture the spirit of the text exactly. 

* * *

THE CASE OF MARY FAIRBURN

There was only one artist who almost persuaded Tolkien to provide illustrations for his books. As it happens, the present writer was recently enjoying her hospitality whilst residing temporarily in her house in Castlemaine, Victoria. She is an English-born Australian artist named Mary Fairburn, now a spritely eighty-five years old. She sent some of her drawings to Professor Tolkien in 1967.  Ordinarily, when he received such submissions he was polite but dismissive.  In the case of Mary Fairburn's work he was unusually enthusiastic. His letters to her have survived. Here is the first of them, typewritten:

As readers will note, he describes her work as "splendid" and says "They are better pictures in themselves and also show far more attention to the text than any that have yet been submitted to me.” More importantly, her pictures, he says, were of such force that they might persuade him to change his views regarding an illustrated edition of his books. “After seeing your specimens," he says, "I am beginning to... think that an illustrated edition might be a good thing.” He draws her attention to his lecture on fairy tales (mentioned above) but, significantly, suggests that he might make an exception in her case. 

This, however, did not come to pass. Professor Tolkien died and events at his publishers, Allen & Unwin, were ill-fated for Miss Fairburn. Subsequently, her work has never adorned any editions of the book, though some of her pictures have found their way into Tolkien calendars, such as the following:

And here below are a few of the illustrations that Professor Tolkien thought so worthy:

Mary Fairburn's sketch of Minas Tirith

Readers will surely note a certain common spirit between her illustrations and Professor Tolkien's own drawings. Clearly, Miss Fairburn was able to enter into the author's imagination and capture its essence. Tolkien's enthusiasm was not misplaced. Over the years some have suggested that Tolkien was merely being polite and compassionate to the young artist - at the time Miss Fairburn was homeless and penniless and in some of his letters Tolkien expresses sympathy for her plight - but the quality of the Fairburn illustrations speaks against this. Tolkien's judgment was correct. Had she been given the chance, Mary Fairburn - more than any other artist then or since - would have been able to provide appropriate and apposite visual collaboration to the Tolkien texts. 

Here is a copy of a further extant letter in Tolkien's unmistakable hand:

Outside of these letters it is now difficult to establish exactly what transpired in this case, and why Miss Fairburn met such firm rejection by Tolkien's publishers after his death. And worst, some of the illustrations Tolkien saw are now lost. The hapless Miss Fairburn set out on twenty or more years of wanderings, eventually settling in southern Australia, and was never able to keep a proper account of the work she left behind as she traveled. These days her encounters with Professor Tolkien are only a dim memory, and most of the surviving works that she made for him are in the hands of others on the far side of the world. Her career and her life would no doubt have been markedly different if matters had turned out otherwise, and so too would have been the history of visual representations of the Tolkien classics. One can only wish that the two of them - Tolkien and Fairburn - had found the opportunity for a full and fruitful collaboration. 

Yours, Harper McAlpine Black