6/5/2023 0 Comments Meaning of carpe diemThe writer GK Chesterton claimed that the Rubáiyát was the Bible of the ‘ carpe diem religion’, while Oscar Wilde described it as a “masterpiece of art”, placing it alongside Shakespeare’s sonnets as one of his greatest literary loves. The Rubáiyát even appeared to be rejecting religion itself, suggesting there was no afterlife, its message one that “since human existence is transient and death will come much faster than we imagine, it’s best to savour its exquisite moments”. The poem celebrated hedonism and was, according to Krznaric, an “outcry against the unofficial Victorian ideologies of moderation, primness and self-control”, in their place offering “sensuous embraces in jasmine-filled gardens on balmy Arabian nights, accompanied by cups of cool, intoxicating wine”. Omár Khayyám dining clubs sprang up, and you could even buy Omar tooth powder and playing cards.” According to Krznaric, “From there began a cult of Omár Khayyám that lasted at least until World War One.” The poem “was memorised, quoted and worshipped by a whole generation. After a copy of the Rubáiyát was passed to the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who shared it with his Pre-Raphaelite circle, John Ruskin declared, “I never did – till this day – read anything so glorious”. One of the key texts of that moment was Edward FitzGerald’s loose translation of verses by the 11th-Century Persian poet and mathematician Omár Khayyám – which took the form of a long poem called the Rubáiyát of Omár Khayyám. For 2,000 years there has been a long war against pleasure.” One way to do this, Krznaric suggests, is to “appreciate that hedonism has long been central to human culture, personal expression and passionate living, and it is essential that we find a place for it in modern life.” But the pursuit of pleasure can be viewed with suspicion, he says, “due to the legacy of Greco-Roman moral ideals and hair-shirt Christian teachings that have slowly infiltrated our minds. “We’ve got quite a struggle ahead of us to reclaim that aspect of carpe diem.” “We’ve still got the language that developed as part of the Industrial Revolution, where we’ve got to be productive with our days and get on with our to-do lists,” he says. Then came the Industrial Revolution with its great weapon, the factory clock,” says Krznaric. But the idea that wasting time is a sin has become deeply ingrained, “due to the Reformation, which descended like a frost on Europe – where the church started banning carnival and summer fairs, and there were new laws banning public dancing and games. People had more spontaneous lives in the Middle Ages – “partly of course because death was so much closer,” he says. In terms of cultural history, most people are unaware that their spontaneity has been stolen from them over the past half a millennium.” “‘Just do it’ becomes ‘just plan it’ – people are filling up their electronic calendars weeks in advance with no free weekends. Instead of seizing the day, we’re really seizing the credit card.”Ĭarpe diem has also been hijacked by our culture of hyper-scheduled living, argues Krznaric. “That idea that instead of just doing it, we just buy it instead: shopping is the second most popular leisure activity in the Western world, beaten only by television. “Consumer culture has captured seizing the day,” he tells BBC Culture. “The hijack of carpe diem is the existential crime of the century – and one that we have barely noticed,” he writes. Krznaric argues that this has helped strip the concept of its true meaning. “It’s vital to try and recover this carpe diem instinct which is in all of us.”ĭespite – or perhaps because of – its prevalence in culture, carpe diem has been sabotaged by the language of the advertising slogan and the hashtag: ‘Just do it’ or ‘Yolo’ (you only live once). “Human beings have always had mediated experiences, ever since the invention of reading – but now things like TV have so removed us from direct experience of life that we’ve almost forgotten what it’s like,” he tells BBC Culture. That was nearly 50 years ago. The pace of life has been accelerating since – and what Mander described is increasingly widespread, according to the social philosopher Roman Krznaric. Through mere lack of exposure and practice, I’d lost the ability to feel it, tune into it, or care about it. “Nature had become irrelevant to me, absent from my life. Mander recalled “childhood moments when the mere sight of the sky or grass would send waves of physical pleasure through me” – on the deck, though, “I felt dead,” he wrote. “It struck me that there was a film between me and all of that,” he wrote in his 1977 book Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television. Leaning on the rail of a yacht in 1968, looking at the “rocky cliffs, rolling seas, dazzling sky” of the Dalmatian Straits, the writer and adman Jerry Mander had an epiphany.
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