Prufrock: Arthur Conan Doyle’s Fairies, the Nazi’s “World Ice Theory,” and the Slow Leak of the Higher Ed Bubble

* *

The Third Reich and “World Ice Theory”: “Throughout this period Hitler and Himmler sponsored a fanciful doctrine known as ‘World Ice Theory,’ which posited that history, science, and religion could be explained by moons of ice hitting the earth in prehistoric times. Even in 1945, as the Third Reich was collapsing, the Nazis cobbled together a guerrilla band of Nazi ‘Werewolves’ to combat Communist partisans, who were in turn accused of vampirism by ethnic Germans fleeing the Russians. No mass political movement drew as consciously or consistently as the Nazis on what I call the ‘supernatural imaginary’—occultism and ‘border science’ (Grenzwissenschaft); pagan, New Age, and Eastern religions; folklore, mythology, and many other supernatural doctrines—in order to attract a generation of German men and women seeking new forms of spirituality and novel explanations of the world that stood somewhere between scientific verifiability and the shopworn truths of traditional religion.”

* *

A “marvelous” new translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: “For those interested chiefly in the exoticism of the poem’s world and style, Simon Armitage (in 2007) and others have provided translations of its obscure, brute, snarling, and monosyllabic dialect into modern English. For those who wish to get a sense of the poem as standing in continuity with our intellectual and linguistic world, however, John Ridland’s new translation will become the standard. I have never before seen the journeyman work of close translation pay such great artistic dividends.”

* *

New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani steps down. Parul Sehgal to take her place.

* *

Should we be reading the flamboyant, forgotten novelist John Lodwick?

* *

Igor Kholin on Russian poets and poetry: “Kholin, Igor Sergeyevich. 47 years old. Tall, gaunt, stomach problems. A cultured man, lowborn. An autodidact (finished 2nd grade). The most brilliant incarnation of ‘black literature’—barracks poetry. I have a positive opinion of him, although people say all sorts of things about him: that he served in the NKVD, beat a prisoner half to death, and did time for it. If any of this is true, it’s not his fault, it’s the times. Positive qualities: a singular, severe worldview that manifests in both poetry and everyday life. For example: I went on for ages proving that Mayakovsky is ‘a great bad poet,’ while he summed it up in a single epigram: ‘Mayakovsky is a great Chinese poet.’ And he’s like that with everything. Negative qualities—intellectually limited. It’s that provincial narrow-mindedness that results from insufficient education. He’s a bit like Tarsis: for him, communists and fascists were one and the same, and for Kholin, many things in life are ‘tarred with the same brush’—he doesn’t distinguish shades and nuances. Although, I repeat, in essence, he often turns out to be right because he sees the most drastic aspects of phenomena. Positive quality—he’s a moralist (in the lofty sense of the word); honorable in everyday situations.
 Negative—he’s bilious. For him ‘the whole world’s a brothel and all the people are whores.’ His personal needs are limited. Undemanding, practically ascetic.

He has bad luck with women. He and his wife split up a long time ago, the best he can do now is mademoiselles like Eva Umanskaya.”

* *

The higher education bubble won’t burst. It will leak.

* *

Senator Flake’s new book: “Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, faces political challenges from both sides in seeking re-election next year: On the left, emboldened Democrats are aggressively recruiting candidates to run against him. On the right, allies of President Trump are devising ways to punish Mr. Flake for his outspoken rejection of Mr. Trump last year. Yet Mr. Flake, seemingly undaunted, has secretly planned an unconventional campaign kickoff that risks intensifying both threats: Working privately, and largely without the knowledge of political advisers, he has written a book that amounts to an ideological manifesto for his own version of conservatism, according to three people briefed on the manuscript who discussed it on the condition of anonymity.”

* *

Essay of the Day:

What shocked the British public most in the early 20th century? Was it Picasso’s paintings? Stravinsky’s ballets? George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion? Or was it their beloved Arthur Conan Doyle writing about fairies in the December 1920 issue of Strand?

“During the preceding 27 years, The Strand Magazine’s readers had often enjoyed a privileged first glimpse of each successive Sherlock Holmes story as it was serialized before going into hardback print. They had grown used to the absorbing puzzle-plots involving the icily logical detective and his everyman sidekick Dr. Watson in their pursuit of purloined oriental treasure or top-secret government papers. At intervals between August 1901 and March 1902, customers had even lined up outside the magazine’s offices, waiting to get each new monthly installment of Holmes’s adventure The Hound of the Baskervilles as it came off the presses. So it was with an emotion ‘midway between indignation and bewilderment,’ in Doyle’s own measured phrase, that those same readers now examined the bold-print headline confronting them over the masthead of the traditionally action-packed Christmas issue. ‘FAIRIES PHOTOGRAPHED,’ it read. ‘AN EPOCH-MAKING EVENT DESCRIBED BY A. CONAN DOYLE.’

“It would be hard to overstate the shock and mounting ridicule that met both this public testimonial and the events that followed. The London Globe expressed a widely held view when, in January 1921, it wrote, ‘It is truly sad when, in his old age [Conan Doyle was then 61], a great man does such foolish things.’ Even that was mild compared with some of the popular jokes that made the rounds, including the one where Doyle was said to have appeared at the climax of his friend J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in order to lead the audience in a chorus of ‘I Do Believe in Fairies!’ Other wisecracks were less elevated. It was a credit to Doyle’s tenacity, or perhaps his stubbornness, that he stuck to his guns even when much of the psychic world he had come first to endorse and then actively to promote following his heavy family losses in the Great War took issue with him. In March 1922, he published his full-length book The Coming of the Fairies, which again attested to his powerful belief in this ‘subhuman’ and ‘miraculous’ life form. It remains Doyle’s most notorious literary act, not excluding his killing of Sherlock Holmes.

“Quite how Conan Doyle came to be so predisposed in the first place to this belief in the possibility of miniature life is unclear. But clues survive.”

Read the rest.

* *

Photos: Whale sharks

* *

Poem: Sally Cook, “The Cusp of Summer”

Get Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe here