Friday, September 13, 2013

My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman

René Descartes

My hero: René Descartes by James Kelman

James Kelman celebrates Descartes, whose work is still feared and hated by those who seek to impose tyranny

James Kelman
The Guardian, Friday 13 September 2013
René Descartes
René Descartes, king of the first-person narrative. Photograph: Leonard de Selva/Corbis
The shadow of René Descartes lurks behind almost every literary tradition. Throughout Europe the response to his philosophy was seminal. Thinkers sought to escape from scepticism and the separation between mind and body. How they underwent this in Scotland is the root of the "Scottish Enlightenment".
The literary tradition of my country is distinctive. We find not simply echoes of a particular post-Cartesian philosophy, but the development of a literary model. James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner, published in 1824, provides a bridge between the subjective perception and external reality. So‑called "stream of consciousness" would have left us stuck in the subjective mire, unable to escape from relativism.
Within this context, the transcription of language from its oral forms is integral to Scottish literature. It is not imposed by external authority, whether English, Scots or Gàidhlig; it is a language used by live human beings, given voice by poets from Robert Fergusson through Tom Leonard. It is no accident that Hogg's masterpiece was "rediscovered" not by an English or American critic, but by the French writer André Gide.
I would offer Descartes's First Meditation to all students of literary art. His use of the first-person narrative brings into play notions of time and space, creating drama.
His use of the first person introduces that other most vital, always radical idea: the primacy of the individual perception. A sceptical voice, the child questioning the adult, the artist challenging convention, the individual challenging authority; casting doubt on infallibility and the imposition of authoritarian control. Descartes the hero. Five hundred years later, his work is still feared and hated by those who seek to impose tyranny.





2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016




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