Value for Thursday of Week 34 in the season of Interlude

Persevering – Being Tenacious

Because we do not always succeed, persevering is an important value; it can be the only path to success.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. [Thomas A. Edison]
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. [Franklin D. Roosevelt]
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. [Samuel Beckett]
You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space. [attributed to Johnny Cash]

“Perseverance refers to our ability to pursue a goal or passion over time, and stick with it if we encounter obstacles or setbacks. . . . It is closely related to a range of other concepts including resilience, motivation, drive, determination, grit, passion, and conscientiousness.”

Perseverance yields several mental health benefits.

“. . . perseverance shapes our brains, influences our behavior, and contributes to our long-term success.”
“. . . perseverance fosters a sense of purposefulness that results in sharper reductions in frequency of disorders.”
“Perseverance of effort is related to lower depressive symptoms via authentic pride and perceived power”.
In a study of people with mobility impairment, “physical disability or lack of it moderated by perseverance and determination influences both life satisfaction and self-efficacy in a statistically significant way.”

“. . . boosting patients’ optimism and resilience via perseverance in goalstriving despite obstacles will inevitably generate positive mood states and a sense of purpose. Doing so curtails the negative selfperpetuating effect of worry, panic, and depression symptoms.”

Real

True Narratives

I had a battle royal with Helen this morning. Although I try very hard not to force issues, I find it very difficult to avoid them. Helen's table manners are appalling. She puts her hands in our plates and helps herself, and when the dishes are passed, she grabs them and takes out whatever she wants. This morning I would not let her put her hand in my plate. She persisted, and a contest of wills followed. Naturally the family was much disturbed, and left the room. I locked the dining-room door, and proceeded to eat my breakfast, though the food almost choked me. Helen was lying on the floor, kicking and screaming and trying to pull my chair from under me. She kept this up for half an hour, then she got up to see what I was doing. I let her see that I was eating, but did not let her put her hand in the plate. She pinched me, and I slapped her every time she did it. Then she went all round the table to see who was there, and finding no one but me, she seemed bewildered. After a few minutes she came back to her place and began to eat her breakfast with her fingers. I gave her a spoon, which she threw on the floor. I forced her out of the chair and made her pick it up. Finally I succeeded in getting her back in her chair again, and held the spoon in her hand, compelling her to take up the food with it and put it in her mouth. In a few minutes she yielded and finished her breakfast peaceably. Then we had another tussle over folding her napkin. When she had finished, she threw it on the floor and ran toward the door. Finding it locked, she began to kick and scream all over again. It was another hour before I succeeded in getting her napkin folded. Then I let her out in the warm sunshine and went up to my room and threw myself on the bed exhausted. I had a good cry and felt better. I suppose I shall have many such battles with the little woman before she learns the only two essential things I can teach her, obedience and love. [Annie Sullivan, Letters, March 6, 1887.]

Abraham Lincoln struggled with depression, and lost most of his political races. He also struggled mightily with attitudes toward race, including perhaps his own. Today, historians recognize him as perhaps our greatest president.

Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008): this massive biography has become the definitive work on Lincoln’s life.
Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (W.W. Norton & Company, 2010): Lincoln is no paragon in Foner's searching portrait, but something more essential--a politician with an open mind and a restless conscience.
Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years (1926).
Ronald C. White, Jr., A. Lincoln: A Biography (Random House, 2009).
Sidney Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume I, 1809-1849 (Simon & Schuster, 2016).
Sidney Blumenthal, Wrestling With His Angel: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume II, 1849-1856 (Simon & Schuster, 2017). “How the Lincoln-Douglas rivalry defined a nation.”

Readers with the perseverance to explore Lincoln biographies in depth may wish to consult Michael Burkhimer, 100 Essential Lincoln Books (Cumberland House, 2003).

You can also read his entire known writings.

Another exceptionally tenacious public figure was Mohandas Gandhi. Ramachandra Guha portrays this is his two-volume biography:

Gandhi Before India (Knopf, 2014): “In South Africa, Ghandhi forged the philosophy and strategies that would steer India to independence.”
Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948 (Knopf, 2018): “ . . . a portrait of a complex man whose tenacity remained constant, even when his beliefs changed.”

Other true narratives in which perseverance is a main theme:

Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite: A Biography (HarperCollins Publishers, 2012): “Perseverance was the hallmark of Cronkite’s surprisingly choppy career.”
Qian Julie Wang, Beautiful Country: A Memoir (Doubleday, 2021): “. . . a child’s-eye view of what it’s like to find your way in a strange land.”
Jennifer Croft, Homesick: A Memoir (Unnamed Press, 2019): “ . . . the story of a singular consciousness, a strikingly personal account of a deeply troubled young girl’s efforts to absorb disaster — and to persevere — buoyed by her passion for language, its infinite permutations and enigmas.”
Brian Moynahan, Leningrad: Siege and Symphony: The Story of the Great City Terrorized by Stalin, Starved by Hitler, Immortalized by Shostakovich (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2014): “Like a movie camera, he zooms in and out on the besieged civilians, the bitterly cold troops on the city’s edge and the simultaneous efforts of Shostakovich to set these experiences to music . . .”
Tove Ditlevsen, The Copenhagen Trilogy: Childhood; Youth; Dependency (1967-1971): “Ditlevsen’s refusal to present her failings as steps on the path to some mythical plane of self-awareness reminds me of how potent the form can be when stripped of that pretense.”
Bernadine Evaristo, Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (Grove Press, 2022): “Her unconventional path is laid out here in breezy prose, as she proselytizes on the stamina, discipline and P.M.A. (positive mental attitude) that counterbalance her 'wild, disobedient and daring' nature.”
David Waldstreicher, The Odyssey of Phyllis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2023), is about a remarkable girl who was brought to North America on a slave ship. “. . . the little girl . . . became, within 12 years of her arrival in Boston, the most significant African American poet of the 18th century.”
Christine Barker, Third Girl from the Left: A Memoir (Delphinium, 2023), “infuses a graceful personal narrative with cultural history, choreographed on the stage of 1970s-80s New York City as AIDS took hold.”
Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland: A Novel (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2024): “Adina is cast not as Emily, like Patchett’s heroine, but as the narrator, which feels deeply significant. Being an alien here might just be a metaphor for the difficult blessing of feeling enough apart from the thrum of life on Earth to report on its goings-on: to tell a story.”

Technical and Analytical Readings

Photographs

Documentary and Educational Films

Anvil! The Story of Anvil follows two members of a heavy metal band, which almost “made it,” as they remain together for thirty years trying to capture fame

Imaginary

Fictional Narratives

Novels:

J.M. Coetzee, Life and Times of Michael K.: A Novel (Penguin, 1983): “Michael K . . . is ‘dull,’ his mind is ‘not quick.'’ He was born fatherless and with a disfigurement . . .”
C. Pam Zhang, How Much of These Hills Is Gold: A Novel (Riverhead, 2020): “Set during the Gold Rush with elements of magical realism, it focuses on two orphaned siblings who are fending for themselves in an American West where tigers roam. . . . the siblings, Lucy and Sam, go into survival mode after their father dies and they are left penniless in a hostile town.”
A.B. Yehoshua, The Tunnel: A Novel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020): “Zvi has a small atrophy on his frontal lobe, a harbinger of dementia. He has been forgetful lately. First names are often beyond his grasp.”
Akwaeke Emezi, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty: A Novel (Atria Books, 2022): “. . . a young widow stumbles into new life and romance while grieving for her past love.”
Kathryn Ma, The Chinese Groove: A Novel (Counterpoint, 2023): “Zheng Xue Li, or Shelley as he becomes known in the United States, has no plan, no cash and no place to stay after his two weeks at his cousin’s are up. But you’ve got to give him this: He believes in his own American dream, that anyone can get lucky if they just work hard enough.”

Poetry

That even as we grieved, we grew.

That even as we hurt, we hoped.

That even as we tired, we tried.

[from Amanda Gorman, “The Hill We Climb”]

Well, son, I'll tell you: / Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it, / And splinters, / And boards torn up, / And places with no carpet on the floor— / Bare.
But all the time / I'se been a-climbin' on, / And reachin' landin's, / And turnin' corners, / And sometimes goin' in the dark / Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back. / Don't you set down on the steps. / 'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now— / For I'se still goin', honey, / I'se still climbin', / And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

[Langston Hughes, “Mother to Son”]

Other poems:

Theodore Roethke, “Big Wind”

Music: Composers, artists, and major works

Though Edward Elgar expressed a disdain for “programme music,” he wrote this of his Symphony No. 1 in A flat major, Op. 55 (1908) (approx. 47-54’) (list of recorded performances): “There is no program beyond a wide experience of human life with a great charity (love) and a massive hope in the future.” In his notes for recordings of the work, Michael Kennedy writes: “All this is expressed by the purely musical metamorphoses of this tune.” This active metamorphosis does not seem likely in the first three movements but is achieved through perseverance. “. . . Elgar came from a large family of modest means. As a piano tuner and organist, Elgar’s father could provide his son with basic exposure to music, but there was no money for formal training. Recognition came slowly for Elgar, and the sustained effort it took to write a full-fledged, uncommissioned symphony was not possible for a composer piecing together a living through freelancing and teaching.” “(He) would not complete his First Symphony until he was 51, after first attempting this most prestigious of musical genres ten years earlier.” Elgar in 1930, Boult in 1949, Barbirolli in 1956, Barbirolli in 1963, Boult in 1976, Colin Davis in 2002 (the movements are linked individually in the discussion section, below), Hickox in 2007, Andrew Davis in 2010, Vasily Petrenko in 2014, Barenboim in 2015, and Gardner in 2016, conducted top recorded performances.

1. Andante. Nobilmente e semplice - Allegro. “. . . the long opening theme (an unusually daring way to open a symphony!) is a ‘motto’ for the whole work, with the distinct feeling of a procession that passes by, is glimpsed now and then from afar, and eventually returns.” The business of life emerges as a symbolic theme, with alternating bursts of energy and calm. The strings wrap in the opening theme amid daily business. Both points of view contend with each other throughout the first movement.
2. Allegro molto. The movement begins bombastically in the brass section. The strings scurry about but then the flutes usher in a little serenity. Again, the main struggle is between calmness and agitation.
3. Adagio. A statement of assurance opens the movement but soon turns gray. The struggle of the first two movements appears through a new theme. Occasionally, the symphony’s inspiring opening theme sounds, briefly. The movement ends quietly but is this peace or resignation?
4. Lento - Allegro. The final movement opens quietly but unsettled, but than a clarinet sounds a hopeful note. Is this about hope and aspirations? Struggles continue but then the opening theme emerges, surrounded by swirling strings. By persevering, we have survived, and held to our ideals and vision for a better future.