10 A Latvian Latvia for Latvians? Mimesis or Alterity?

There are actually two names for the name of “clone”. The other is “clown”, one and the same name, but differently pronounced and, an inflection of derision aimed at “clone” by "clown".

One story how the name of “clown” originated concerns the king’s court, the king vs the “clown”. The absolute ruler, the one who takes absolute responsibility for his acts, seeing through his act (as all too human and fallible), therefore puts himself in the way of one full of derision for the office by inviting into the court a “clown”.

Though the clown is portrayed, in the West, mostly as a male, whose head on occasion rolls,the clown may also be a female. A female clown is but the mime of the king’s desire. However, when and if the king is caught copulating with the clown, it is he who becomes the clown, moreover, the one who betrays all his many clone predecessors and with them the supra authority connotation that goes with the name and office of king.

Today the office of king is widely derided in the name of human liberty and/or rights. This is one of the reasons why “monarchy” is no longer seriously considered as an alternative to democracy as a culture buble, now nthed and called "Pop", capital P.

There surely are many reasons why the office of “king” has caved to before the snouts of swine to be sniffed and rejected with an “urk, urk!”

The Windsor affair in England as per the following link (below) to “Her Royal Affair" shows that the roles are interchangeable, between a male and a female, between king and queen. Who is the clone and who is the clown are roles almost too painful to contemplate. If traditionally the role of the clown is played by a male, the “human rights libertarian”, who by implication (unless he recuses himself) is a supporter of liberal neo-capitalist economy, is often a she http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4xEjkz-44w&feature=related. The Windsor affair in England shows that the roles are interchangeable in a number of ways, between a male and a female, between king and queen; and who is the clone and who is the clown is difficult to tell.

Nevertheless, the king's pain is when king begins to becomes a clown, he betrays then not only himself, but thousands of years of political history and elevates to the office of the Sun, the object of his incestuous desire, ra Sun, who turned into a bone (nicely fleshed out), pulls up her skirt http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQZDx2gYnbE&NR=1&feature=endscreen  for him.

 1. When the valet of King Edward (see clip of “Her Royal Affair”) tells his master: “…but you are not a man, sir… you are a king”—and the king’s apparent incomprehension of what it is that his valet is telling him—sums up the tragedy of our times in a few words for many. Here is a short list of the tragedies:

2. If addressing AB and Emilija (about whom the preceding blogs), the same valet could be saying: “…but you are not a stud, sir… you are a father of four”;

To the Latvian people, the vallet would say: “…but you are not a mere people called Latvians, sirs and madams, but you are a community dying;”

Of course, there are a million excuses for Latvians--illiteracy with regard to politics and history, among the foremost of them.

Then there is ‘face saving’, claimed to be a human right of the ego, more important than the ‘charisma’ of self-sacrifice unto death that is a proven  bond of a community.

There is, of course, the angst that Russia, a once Holy Land populated by the same Children of Johns, who were also proto-Latvians, now infected with the “wealth virus” or oligarchism, will awaken to its ancestry, and all the romanized Ivans will arise so many resurrections, but with invalid passports, denied them for being Latvians supporting Latvia's romanization, re westernization.

There is the oligarchy of the European Union, whose laws are more important than Latvian sovereignty, and to whose banks the Latvian President, Prime Minister, Finance Minister, and State Bank President are beholden above being beholden to Latvia.

Then there is “the law” issued by the secular government in Brussels dictating “religion”. Not to mention the matter of centralization of power in Bruessels (Vatican II) presuming itself to be infallible in matters both  secular and of religion.

Herewith ends my autobiographical essay regarding the affair of AB and Emilija. These clones of oligarchal viruses, alterities and clones of other oligarchs. This disease prompted them both to reject mimesis and present themselves as alterities of their former selves. The price for doing the trick was formidable with regard to the future of those who followed them.

Unpleasant as this digression has been to their descendants (Emilija was my godmother, thus religious tradition wise, I have her to descent from), the reawakening of their memory through a photograph of a moment at their wedding ninety years ago, prompted me to say what remained unsaid. Photography, incidentally, is the technical side of mimicry.

The copy mashine is the theatre of our day, because that is how the day is and happens.
In the next blog, I will turn to the history of Istanbul, once called Byzantium. Someone at this portal (LOL) asked me what I thought about Istanbul when I visited it.

I will tell next why I did not go to Istanbul “to see it” or look at it, but to be able to say “I have been there”. There may be a few pareidolias’ on the theme among the upcoming blogs.

9 A Latvian Latvia for Latvians? Mimesis or Alterity?

Each actor, when asked to play a role, will play it his or her way. Thus, each Latvian actor, if asked to play The Bear Destroyer (Lachplesis), will do it differently. The same goes for the reenactment of any role, say, in an opera. This role playing is what is called miming, mimesis of an original presented by the creator of a story or the “Creator”.

However, when an actor becomes something entirely different than the character presented by a writer/creator, if the actor becomes a turn-coat vis a vis the character, then this is known as alterity. Thus, Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde or Mr. Hyde becomes Dr. Jekyll. Such a switch also describes a split personality. The story about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was originally written (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson. Lewis Carroll, who wrote “Alice in Wonderland”, a story famous for  the invention of many curious characters, one being the Cheshihre Cat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire_Cat , sees the cat mimicing himself by leaving behind himself a grin even as he himself disappears.

The terms “mimesis” and “alterity”, I take from Professor Michael Taussing’s work by that name. I was especially taken by the chapters in the book on the Cuno (also Guno, Kuno) Indians of Panama http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guna_people , who according to Professor Taussig in spite of many and frequent exposures to cultures other than their own managed to stay the same, did not change in their fundamental character, and did not become turn-coats vis a vis their ancestry.

In the Cuno culture, it is the men who mimic their western occupants, soon learning to dress as their occupants, while the women remained the guardians of the ancestral values, especially through their skill at making appliqués, the famous mola blouses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guna_people .  The Cuna men to our day remain protective of their women. However, the key to maintaining the Cuna community is (to quote from Wikipedia) “a Saila (pronounced "sai-lah"). The Saila is traditionally both the political and spiritual leader of the community; he memorizes songs which relate the sacred history of the people, and in turn transmits them to the people.”

Now the Saila for the Slavic and Baltic/Latvian people was traditionally know as Ivan and/or Janis/John. Unfortunately, unlike among the Cunos, where their Saila retained the power of life and death in the community, among Latvians, their John or Johns were savaged, killed and humiliated, by the religion of the oligarchs. Left with no place to run and hide—the forests being largely destroyed by the middle of the 19^th century—the Latvians were left with little choice but to “westernize” or lie themselves into an alternate existence. This “lying into” another make-believe creature is fanatically defended (a characteristic of the convert) as “real” (rather than virtual). This is a widely shared Latvian characteristic. Any subliminal guilt associated with the denial of the culture of their forebears is hastily covered by prejudice, re: once anti-Semitism and now anti-Russianism or anti-Slavism, a feature quickly exploited by the real occupants of Latvia: the romanizers, which includes everything and all characteristics that are described by the word “West”.

If the reader has followed my blogs, he-she can see how the “westernization” affected and manifested itself through this writer’s family and his experience and eyes. The brightest playing cards in this “game of transformation” belong to AB and Emilija.

First, there were my grandfathers, ‘westernized’ men, who came (about 1740) to “westernize” demoralized Latvians through bringing them into their Herrnhuter community. Second, there are the women: a) my paternal grandmother, also famous for her work with yarn and needle, but eventually brought low by their “westernized” counterparts. The road traveled by the “westernized” or romanized counterpart is clearly seen by the process of alterization experienced and performed by my godmother Emilija Simsone Benjamins, who changed from a woman with soft features into a harsh, stern, steely, managerial looking magna-tes.

Much could be written about the metamorphosis of the mimetic faculty into an alternate and alternizing character. The excuse for the submission of tradition to something entirely different is summed up in the statement so common in urban liberal democracy, re: change: http://www.iliketoquote.com/change-is-the-essence-of-life-be-willing-to-surrender-what-you-are-for-what-you-could-become/ .

Having gained his “million”, AB buried himself ever more in work, became extremely “fat” (went on cures to Germany to heal his ‘heart embraced by fat’), and wished that he could divorce Emilija. He did not do the latter on the advice of his lawyers, one of who was my godfather, a “senator” of Latvia’s Supreme Court, because then he would lose his amassed ‘million’ in the hands of his 2^nd wife, Emilija. Whether AB had originally been willing to so “alter” himself, I will never know, but he had no doubt taken the chance that he may die of the effort. The ‘heart embraced by fat’, perhaps a psychological consequence of losing his sovereignty over his person, was a consequence of his succumbing to the “wealth virus”.

8 A Latvian Latvia for Latvians? Mimesis or Alterity?

Because his earlier bankruptcies in the hardware business had made AB, my grandfather, unable to sign on as a publisher of the newspaper, and, therefore, the million of his dreams let him get but a whiff of it—with the substance of the money going into the personal account of Emilija—AB’s first wife and mother of his four children was, so to say, “not happy”.

At the time when AB first came to Made Jurjane and pleaded with her for her signature that would permit him to divorce her and marry Emilija, my grandmother was, one “angry” Latvian countryside woman.

Among other things, the documents that AB and Emilija had exchanged between themselves with regard to who owned what and who would get what if one of them were to die, was one known in the family at large as the “Testament” or “Will”. According to the Will, in the event of Emilija’s death, all the material substance, proceeds, and monies of “Jaunākās Ziņas” (The Latest of Latest News) would go to her heirs, these heirs being her mother, two sisters and their descendants.

On her lawyers' advice, Made Jurjane did not agree to release AB from his obligation to her and the family that he had left in her care as he, first, went bankrupt as a shopkeeper; and, second, was willing to sell out the principles of egalitarianism of the Herrnhuters in a Faustian deal to make “a million” by sacrificing his own.

If the link to Emilija http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Em%C4%ABlija_Benjami%C5%86a  is correct, that AB and Emilija started living together in 1911, Made Jurjane let them both feel that they were not to get away with their under handed deal to do in Blankenstein, owner of Rigaer Tagesblat, and her and her children for their benefit alone. On the advice of her lawyer (one Liepins), my grandmother held her will against that of Emilija for over a decade, thus allowing all of Riga know that AB, her husband, and Emilija were “living in sin”—as such live-together arrangements were known in those days.

To this writer’s surprise and delight, a friend sent him a photograph, taken in 1922 at the wedding of AB and Emilija. The photograph had been hidden among family possessions for near ninety years. According to the sender, the family was doing house cleaning and burning old stuff found in the attick, and had come across the picture. The reason it was not consigned to the fire was because one family member remembered that their late mother had said that the photograph ought to be saved, because it was of certain well known people and apparently had some social significance.

There are a number of interesting features about the photograph. The most significant is that of Emilija—her appearance, her looks—in 1922; and her appearance in subsequent years (see link above). The appearance of Emilija today is known through a hastily written and sensation seeking book (probably the only way a book can be sold in Latvia with some profit these days) , “Mīla”, written by the Maija Muktupavele  It is interesting for me to see AB all these years ago. While AB (62 at the time; his 150^th birday anniversary was celebrated with a display at the Missinu library last year, 2010) is immediately identifiable by his nearly bald head, Emija (41) looks a completely different woman from the one being presented to the public today.




Photo Copyright Eso Anton Benjamins.

First Row (from L to R): George Aicher (Juris Benjamins), son of Annija Aichere (immediately behind), Ede Usiņa (Peter’s grandmother and Emilija’s mother), AB, Emilija, and Theatre director Eduards Smilģis.

Second Row (from L to R): Annija Aichere, Mina Usina (stage name Tusnelda), Rudolph Aicher, unidentified young woman.
Both Emilija and AB display their wedding rings.

 



























What is striking about the photo is how different Emilija Benjamins looks in 1922 from the way she looked in later years.

The photo shows at least five theatre professionals (AB, the sixth, became associated with the theatre as a result of his efforts to become a playwrigfht in years before his association with Emilija (He won an award for his play, called “Fog” (Migla)—something of a do-it-yourself moralizing and educational play about why stay sober to make it in the world. In restrospect the number of actors present 9 (in retrospect) in the photo includes almost all shown. However, as ‘reality-theatre actress’, Emilija topped all.

Let us now compare the faces as projected in the following two photographs:


Emilija Benjamin, photo said to be taken in the 1920s, possibly around 1928, 29.
It is certainly post-1922.

In this first picture is Emilija as we are used to seeing her presented today in books or media.

Copyright Eso Anton Benjamins. Emilija on her wedding (2nd) day in 1922.

Here  is Emilija’s face in the photo on the day of her wedding in 1922.

I have no other photographic evidence of AB’s and Emilijas wedding day.

The other side of the family (AB’s children)  was also present, but is out of the picture. My father, John (Janis) Benjamins, who under less stressful family circumstances would have been in Rudolf Aicher’s place as his father’s, AB’s, “best man” is not in the photo. It is interesting to see Eduard Smilģis, a theatre director, act the role of Emilija’s father, the one who gives the bride away. Perhaps, in a symbolic sense, he was her father: that is, we may guess that he introduced Emilija to AB ten or more years (1904 or a little later) before.

Incidentally, the design of the photograph is that of two hands, cupped, fingers spread, both hands facing the viewer http://linesandgems.com/the%20hand.jpg . If we attempt to re-enact the positions in the photograph with our hands, the R hand overlays the L. This may not have any significance, but perhaps it does. Emilija enacts the role of the index finger, while Smilģis is the R hand’s thumb, and AB the middle finger, Ede Usiņa the ‘ring finger’, and Juris Aircher-Benjamin (4) is the ‘pinky’.

The photograph also reveals some other things. But suffice unto the day.

4 A Latvian Latvia? By Way of Mime or Alterity?

Many readers of my blogs have, no doubt, been sometimes as frustrated as puzzled and have wondered why my blogs tend to be so contrary to what they have been tought or have learned as having to do with being “Latvian” or of Latvia. When I first began writing my blogs, I wrote almost exclusively about the origin of John, pronounced in Latvian, “”Yahnis”.

I knew John to have been an important figure in Latvian folklore and ritual, the latter, expecially by way of the midsummer festival known as Johns Eve.

I was amazed that the origin of the Johns Festival, said by many to be Latvia’s most important annual event (over and above Christmas) was—in spite of the many songs that it came with—actually so mute. No one knew to tell anything about its origins. It sufficed that men and women decked their heads with wreaths of oak leaves and flowers intertwined by grasses and danced around a wooden barrel stuffed with wood and pitch of pine, raised high on a pole nine meters tall.

The burning wood barrel stuck on top of a pole (rather than a bonfire) appeared to be a purely Latvian invention. Such food as was traditional to the festival, was home made beer and home made cheese with lots of caraway seeds.

As I was gradually discovering John/Yahnis, I came to the conclusion that he had some distant but certain relationship to John the Annointer (I dislike the term ‘Baptist’). Since in my youth, I had considered studying “religion” and had briefly imagined myself a priest, I soon came to the conclusion that John was not only a precursor of Jesus (as the NT claims), but that he actually was what Jesus had been before John, poor man, was “neutered” through priestly insistence that he be demoted, after which humiliation, he was sent to a  “heaven” somewhere in the skies.

In my younger days, led by one or another inspiration, I must have read the Bible and the New Testament from one end to the other (I guestimate) up to five times. By comparison, I read Dante’s Divine Comedy and Cervante’s Don Quixote 2x. I was rather familiar with the Orthodox Christian imagery through my fascination with the interior of the Riga Russian Orthodox Cathedral, where at about the age of six, I had first come face to face with a life-size crucifix in a floor to ceiling niche. My mother, distraught over the disappearance of her father upon the entrance of the Soviets into Latvia, had taken me with her to where I had never been taken before.

Karlis Ozols, Latvia’s ambassador to Moscow http://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%81rlis_Ozols many years before, had mistakenly believed that his wife’s friendship with Mrs. Tsurupa, whose husband was the Soviet Union’s Finance Minister, would somehow protect him. This in spite that many years before, he had been told in Moscow that if he wished himself and his family to be safe, he better return to America, where he had spent the years of the First World War.

Unfortunately, grandfather was taken with having once been an ambassador and having become owner of a notable estate in Priekule (the one near Liepaja). To make enough money off the estate was not easy. In its early history, the estate had made its wealth off its mill, which used to make wool yarn for Latvians as well as Lithuanians. The practice of agriculture brought a lot of headaches (even though his son Aleksandrs had studied and become an agronomist) with unhappy labor showing its unhappiness by occasionally burning down a hay barn. I remember one occasion when, after I was awakened by anxious voices in the hallway, I looked at the walls and ceiling of my room and saw or imagined seeing on the bare and graying walls reflections of distant flames. The year was 1937 or 1938.

In any case, to return to the theme of mimesis, alterity, and acculturation that informs this series of blogs, I am of the opinion today that Ambassador Ozols was done in by his desire to act (and therefore be) an important man. The obsession brought him to the Lubyanka Prison http://www.marginalsoftware.com/MTrip/lubyanka.htm  cellars in Moscow. Alas, miming wealth is a notorious virus that infects the human brain from about, at least, the middle of the 19^th century.

It is the attempt to play the role of a wealthy person that has by 2011 infected the minds of almost every Latvian. There are almost no Latvians, who escape the wealth virus. The virus, shaped like a mind meme, travels throughout the land and kills any potential for alterity.

I should know. I will reserve the story of my other grandfather, Antons Benjamins, the Latvian newspaper tycoon and his second wife Emiliya, for the next blog. The wealth virus cost them both their lives, and ruined many more.