The closing line

This is what my natural intelligence writes:

The closing line would seem the same
In the paramnesia of I have seen it all

As my memory plays ducks and drakes
With good sense ,for beauty of diction

As girls playing softly in the moonlight
As if they were parijat flowers dropped

To the fragrant earth in the night’s dew
Their faces down, their feet up in prayer.

And this is what the Chap GPT’s artificial intelligence writes upon the same poem:

The final verse would echo the past
In a delusion of déjà vu
As memory tricks the mind
With eloquence, for the sake of art
As girls dancing gently in the moonlight
Like fallen parijat flowers on the scented soil
Their heads bowed, their legs raised in worship

Artificial indeed!

Slurp

There is also the mysterious social etiquette surrounding the teapot (why is it considered vulgar to drink out of your saucer, for instance?) and much might be written about the subsidiary uses of tealeaves, such as telling fortunes, predicting the arrival of visitors, feeding rabbits, healing burns and sweeping the carpet.

This was the Orwell of “1984” who had some Indian connections. Drinking tea out of the saucer is a typically Indian habit that still prevails in many parts of the country. Linked with this habit is to share tea with somebody in a saucer . The man who shares drinks out of the cup . The man who gets the saucer enjoys the tea with a noisy slurp.

Heavenly periods

Edgeworth was particularly taken with a “a beautiful sentence, as well as a sublime idea” from Somerville’s section on the propagation of sound waves:

At a very small height above the surface of the earth, the noise of the tempest ceases and the thunder is heard no more in those boundless regions, where the heavenly bodies accomplish their periods in eternal and sublime silence.

www.themarginalian.org/2020/10/20/mary-somerville/?mc_cid=d0c8846d45&mc_eid=74742fe34a

Maria Edgeworth was taken with Mary Somerville’s this beautiful sentence. What is more striking to me is the use of the phrase heavenly bodies “accomplishing their periods” in eternal and sublime silence. Was she referring to the periods in the sense of leading upto birth like in human bodies ? Eternal and sublime silence rules the regions where the tempest ceases and the thunder is heard no more.

She was working on the propagation of the sound waves.

AI cannot follow human emotion

“Only two hours later, after talking to the churchwarden and looking over the church, he seized a moment when Shapkin was in conversation with the priest and hastened away to weep. . . . He stole up to the grave secretly, furtively, looking round him every minute. The little white slab looked at him pensively, mournfully, and innocently as though a little girl lay under it instead of a dissolute, divorced wife.

“To weep, to weep!” thought Uzelkov.

But the moment for tears had been missed; though the old man blinked his eyes, though he worked up his feelings, the tears did not flow nor the lump come in his throat. After standing for ten minutes, with a gesture of despair, Uzelkov went to look for Shapkin

From Chekov’s short story “Old Age”

One wonders why the man would want to weep and why it was as if a little girl lay under the stone, instead of a dissolute ,divorced wife. When asked why Uzelkov had to work up his tears for a wife he had long forgotten , the AI said the story was not explicit on this matter.

No wonder AI cannot understand the human emotion but only a human logic based upon human language.

The heat gets them

“THE earth was like an oven. The afternoon sun blazed with such energy that even the thermometer hanging in the excise officer’s room lost its head: it ran up to 112.5 and stopped there, irresolute. The inhabitants streamed with perspiration like overdriven horses, and were too lazy to mop their faces.“

“Minds in ferment “- a short story by Anton Chekov

Does the heat presage the fermentation of the minds to follow?

“It is possible that the heat in the selected text is a symbol of the fermenting minds of the characters, who are restless, curious, and easily influenced by external stimuli. According to one analysis, Chekhov may be using the heat to show how “the townspeople are unable to think for themselves and are easily swayed by others.” The heat may also suggest a contrast between the oppressive and stagnant atmosphere of the town and the potential for change and independence that some characters desire1. Chekhov often used weather and nature as symbols in his stories to reflect the mood and themes of his characters”

So says the AI in Bing.

Bingo!

World is a chameleon

Otchumyyelov changes his stand about the dog that bit Hryukin’s finger like the chameleon changes its colours . Whom the dog belongs to changes his colours . If it is the general it belongs to , Hryukin is at fault and if it is a stray it is the dog’s fault and he needs to be strangled to death.

Chekov’s story is only predicting the changing colors of the justice system we now see every where.

There is the chameleon everywhere. Here in the Tamil movie Thalaikuthal the chameleon appears in the home every now and then. It retains its colours in keeping with the window sill .

Granddad is a dreaming chameleon in his comatose eyes. The village is enjoying a grand feast to celebrate his opening eyes. The world is a chameleon.