On the occasion of Christmas and New Year, and as a farewell to the students of ‘Architecture and Activism’, philosopher Lieven De Cauter has a peculiar message on hope and despair.
‘Point n’est besoin d’espérer pour entreprendre, ni de réussir pour persévérer’ – William of Orange’s famous coat of arms, his motto. Every time I have to drag the contorted, torsioned, twisted formula out of my brain with the greatest difficulty, and then google it for a moment to finally conclude with genuine satisfaction that I had it right after all. But every time, I’m completely blown away. The formula is of abyssal beauty: ‘It is unnecessary to hope to undertake, nor to succeed to persevere.’
Of a stoic, almost Spartan rigor. Deeply tragic, too. Quasi contradictory even. Or at least paradoxical: defeatist voluntarism or voluntarist defeatism. But still a yes, an affirmation. A version of Benjamin’s almost equally famous one-liner: ‘Only for those who despair is hope given to us.’ Also a knot of a paradox and at the same time an obvious one. Hope is always also a bit of the ‘courage of despair’, or at least its engine. He wrote it at the end of his essay on Goethe’s Walhverwantschaften. It was a secret love letter in fact. He despaired over a lover (Jula Cohn if I remember correctly), to whom the entire essay is dedicated. Hence, therefore, the aphorism, which in the text itself sounds a bit out of context. That is also why the formula has taken on a life of its own. It stands on its own. Like any good aphorism.
But perhaps the two phrases do not coincide so much after all. In fact, William of Orange’s motto of arms is closer to my own, very own life motto: ‘Pessimism in theory, optimism in practice’. Detractors claim the formula stems from Gramsci, who somewhere in his prison writings made the turn: ‘I am a pessimist of the mind, but an optimist of the will’, in a footnote. To all the people who have thrown this at my feet, I have always remarked that while theory and intellect, and will and practice correspond in a rather archaic anthropologico-philosophical perspective, one is subjective and the other objective: I don’t know what mind or will are, except metaphors, or something like that, but theory can be grasped (in books for example), theory is material, belongs to the world of objects, so too with practice, all practices are material, tangible. And my formula is also twice as short. And I invented it without reading Gramsci. Now anyway, the expression (in the long version “Gramsci version”) is said to be by Romain Roland, according to my Internet sources. So you see. Maybe it goes back even further. Nothing new under the sun. Motto’s must have something anonymous, something of an anonymous eternal value. Who a saying belongs to, doesn’t matter. Wisdom is always deeply universal and therefore nameless.
To be sure, I google the aphorism of William of Orange anyway. It is (according to the unsurpassed Wikipedia, the self-organizing free encyclopedia of and for all mankind)… “an aphorism often attributed to William of Orange, sometimes also to stadholder William II or stadholder-king William III, but in written texts of these persons the saying is nowhere to be found. Historians Robert Fruin and P.J. Blok, among others, have searched in vain for its origin.” That’s the entire article. I was hoping for Latin classics or something, but no. Conclusion: an adage has no origin and many of the best phrases are anonymous. It gets worse when I note that there is no French or English or whatever wikipedia article in any other language on this aphorism. It is local. Although formulated in French, it is apparently known only in the Low Countries. The world is missing an incredible wisdom. A hell of a wisdom. It is not necessary to hope to undertake, nor to succeed to persevere.
But, below the short Wikipedia article is a reference. To Gramsci’s maxim: Pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will. Can you believe it? So, I am not the first to connect those two aphorisms. I would also like to quote that article at length. But suffice it to say that Gramsci knew it was by Roman Rolland, but that the latter had apparently only used it orally, … and that it was actually a pupil of Nietzsche, who had it from Burkhardt, who used the formula to describe the essence of Greek civilization: ‘Pessimismus der Weltanschauung und Optimismus des Temperaments. Pessimism of Worldvision and optimism of temperament. Aha. And it’s absolutely right. That is the tragic lucidity of the ancient Greeks. Bravo for Burkhardt. Yet it does not coincide with my formula. On the contrary, my formula is not tragic, but … convenient, useful, a stoic voluntarism combined with an epicurean wistfulness.
I honestly don’t have much with that Nietzschean amor fati, that embrace of fate. I hate the inevitable. Avoid the inevitable is one of my many slogans, I have it from a good friend, but it stems from Breton apparently. In any case, I make every effort to thwart the inevitable. That is precisely the essence of my maxim. ‘Pessimism in theory, optimism in practice’ is for me a thoroughly activist wisdom, and with that, of course, I find a great distant friend in Gramsci.
The Kaaitheater director at the time made it possible to hang the motto in large white letters on the long, white, slightly concave wall of the foyer:
PESSIMISM IN THEORY OPTIMISM IN PRACTICE
Even if at first the intention was to put the motto in Neon on the side wall – now that would have been something. It would have really transformed the motto into a message Urbi et Orbi: on an approach road to Brussels, by the canal, a beautiful spot, for all to see. But it turned out to be too expensive, even white letters on the side façade turned out to be unaffordable, because it required a height worker and for about a whole working day. Still, I was delighted with the white letters on the white hollow interior wall. I even built an entire installation around it and also gave a lecture cum talk with eco-feminist cult philosopher Isabelle Stengers. The adage hung there for more than a year… But as it goes in culture houses, the letters disappeared irrevocably to the basement.
No reason for regret. The maxim stands for me like a house, like a rock in the violent waves of my stormy emotional life. Pessimism is the best guide in the realm of Truth, and optimism is the best guide in the realm of the Good. Wishful thinking has no place in epistemology or theory. But in practice, wishful thinking is performative: faith, as we know, moves mountains.
Once you have appreciated Kant’s second first parts or the scholastic tripartite division of the true, the good and the beautiful in the maxim, the maxim cries out for a third part. The beautiful wants something, too. I searched for years for that third maxim. I had several. I found one of the best: aesthetics in-between. But I was still not completely satisfied with it. Even the director of the Kaaitheater was not entirely convinced. It was too obvious for a cultural house, he said.
One day a good friend, a famous architect, asks if I won’t participate in his summer project in the dépendance of the art hotel Furkablick on the Swiss mountain pass of the same name (in the frame of his chair at ETHZ, an elite school of architecture). I say no, because of no money, no time and no project. A little later, the former director of the Kaaitheater calls me, saying they are renovating the building and whether he should throw those letters away or I will come pick them up. Immediately I contact my friend the architect: ‘I have a project!’
When we went to the Alps together with the letters of that formula to play with them with the gang present and to film that, everybody could make words with the letters or phrases. I looked for all kinds of play possibilities, and also, of course, for my third formula. I had to use those letters, and only those letters, to form a third ‘spell’. It became:
POETRY IN ACTION
I was very satisfied with that, because it perfectly fills in that aesthetic excluded third. The video focused on that transformation of the slogan into the third word group. It was the first five-minute episode, of what was to become a trilogy, “Wordgame at the Foot of a Melting Glacier,” but remained a diptych. As a letter game, the videos embody a form of “poetry in action,” largely thanks to a hell of an editor. But that formula is also a call to bring poetry to our political actions. Of course.
The motto of William of Orange (which is thus not his) remains unsurpassed, however, because it can serve as a motto, as a driving force for a whole life, as a baseline, as a bass tone under everything. Point n’est besoin d’espérer pour entreprendre, ni de réussir pour persévérer.’ How can you undertake something if you don’t hope it will succeed, and even worse, how can you persevere if you see it going wrong? Or that you are getting nowhere. Not easy. And yet, and yet. Impressive it is: a motto as the drive for a power of will that towers above everything. Even above its own paradox.
‘Motto’ has always struck me as a very ugly word. It did and does remind me of “motos,” of heavy mopeds. This is no coincidence, of course: motto’s and motorcycles have much in common, for both derive from the Latin movere, to move. Elementary, Watson. Motto’s are motives. Reasons to move, to get moving. To keep moving if necessary against one’s better judgment. Motions are what is behind that movement, the drive. Hence, a motto is so inherent, so corporeal, so physical. The drive – almost against my better judgment – of our anonymous adage, I admire. Undertaking without hope and persevering without success, that is a great wisdom for activists. Truly a weapon is this aphorism in the fight for a better world (or at least a less bad one).
