To be confronted with things is a liberation of the mind. (on obstacles)

Remember — for Wednesday we're reading
Rachel Edidin, her "I See Your Value Now : Asperger's and the Art of Allegory" at
medium
and
passages from Ivan Illich his Tools for Conviviality (1973), pages 19-21, and xxiv where Illich explains  why he uses the term "conviviality."
Copies are on the seminar room table.
Both of these readings pertain most specifically to Deborah's project, but ripple out into everything else (of course!).

Yesterday arrived my copy of Novalis (1772-1801 *), Philosophical Writings (1997), from which I extract this passage —

The more confused a person is — confused people are called blockheads — the more he can make of himself by diligent study of the self. On the other hand, orderly minds must strive to become true scholars — thorough encyclopedists. At first the confused ones must struggle with massive obstacles — they gain insight only slowly. They learn to work laboriously — but then they are lords and masters forever. The orderly person swiftly gains insight — but also loses it swiftly. He soon reaches the second stage — but usually he stops there. The last steps are laborious for him, and he can rarely succeed in placing himself in the position of a beginner again once he has attained a certain degree of mastery.
Confusion points to excess of strength and capacity — but deficient equilibrium — precision points to good equilibrium, but meager capacity and strength.
That is why the confused person is so progressive — so perfectible — and why on the other hand the orderly one comes to a halt so early as a Philistine.
To be orderly and precise alone is not to be clear. Through working on himself the confused person arrives at that heavenly transparency — at that self-illumination — which the orderly person so seldom attains.
True genius combines these extremes. It shares swiftness with the last and fullness with the first.

ex Miscellaneous Observations 53, in translation by Margaret Mahoney Stoljar, here.

It relates to our discussion of the lines from Paul Valéry (and Simone Weil, and Leopardi), that we concluded yesterday with.