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FAR OFF THE BELLS RANG THROUGH THE MORNING Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set the A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. WOUNDS, SACRED PLACE OF MUTUAL COMPASSION The real gain we get from touching Christ’s wounds, however, is that, in doing so, we touch our own. Wounds become “the sacred place/ of mutual compassion,/ and the springboard to an intimate song/ of communion and possibility,” the poet tells us. The passage reminds me of a Hemingway passage that I wrote about recently and thatJoe Biden
WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. DONALD TRUMP AS WILLIE STARK Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. Political experts trying to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump have been scouring American history for precedents. Some have pointed to Huey Long, the populist demagogue who all but ruled Louisiana as a dictator in the 1930’s. I can’t answer to this particular parallel, but I knowthat Robert
MARY’S DANGEROUS REQUEST AT CANA Spiritual Sunday. Rainer Maria Rilke has written a wonderful poem about the wedding at Cana (today’s Gospel reading), which is where Jesus performed his first miracle. As the poet sees it, Mary was a proud mother who inadvertently pushed her son on the road that led to his great sacrifice when she asked him to salvage an embarrassingsituation.
SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in WHICH JANE AUSTEN CHARACTER ARE YOU? To give you a taste of what awaits you, here are my two profiles: You are Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice. You are talkative and outgoing. You like to please people but sometimes you try too hard. You are impressed with authority, uphold traditional values, COVID COSTS US LOVED ONES’ FINAL WORDS A recent Atlantic article on Covid patients dying alone turns to literature to capture one of the ensuing tragedies: they fail to impart their final words. “What the dying have to say must be heard,” Zeynep Tufekci observes: The paramount importance of dying words has long been recognized across cultures. “When a bird isabout to die, his
FAR OFF THE BELLS RANG THROUGH THE MORNING Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set the A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. WOUNDS, SACRED PLACE OF MUTUAL COMPASSION The real gain we get from touching Christ’s wounds, however, is that, in doing so, we touch our own. Wounds become “the sacred place/ of mutual compassion,/ and the springboard to an intimate song/ of communion and possibility,” the poet tells us. The passage reminds me of a Hemingway passage that I wrote about recently and thatJoe Biden
WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. DONALD TRUMP AS WILLIE STARK Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. Political experts trying to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump have been scouring American history for precedents. Some have pointed to Huey Long, the populist demagogue who all but ruled Louisiana as a dictator in the 1930’s. I can’t answer to this particular parallel, but I knowthat Robert
MARY’S DANGEROUS REQUEST AT CANA Spiritual Sunday. Rainer Maria Rilke has written a wonderful poem about the wedding at Cana (today’s Gospel reading), which is where Jesus performed his first miracle. As the poet sees it, Mary was a proud mother who inadvertently pushed her son on the road that led to his great sacrifice when she asked him to salvage an embarrassingsituation.
SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in WHICH JANE AUSTEN CHARACTER ARE YOU? To give you a taste of what awaits you, here are my two profiles: You are Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice. You are talkative and outgoing. You like to please people but sometimes you try too hard. You are impressed with authority, uphold traditional values,DEVOURED BY KISSES
Tuesday. Released from Covid restrictions, Julia and I have been traveling and have finally, for the first time in over 18 months, physically hugged grandchildren Esmé, Etta, Eden and Ocean (in Buford, Georgia) and Alban (in Washington, D.C). PUSHING 70 BUT ACTING LIKE A LITTLE BOY Friday. The internet is a wondrous place when it can surface a poem that hits as close to home as this Lu Yu lyric. It captures the joys of being about to turn 70 at a time when I am on the eve of turning 70(tomorrow).
HAIL 48 YEARS OF WEDDED LOVE Thursday. We’re currently traveling so I missed writing about Julia’s and my 48 th wedding anniversary, which was Tuesday. I turn to Milton’s celebration of “wedded love” in Book IV because it captures well my own view of marriage. THE DELICACY OF DEALING WITH IN-LAWS Wednesday. I am deeply grateful to be on good terms with my two daughters-in-law, whom I saw again recently for the first time since pre-Covid. Not everyone is so lucky. EMILY DICKINSON & GOING TO HEAVEN Today is the church service where we remember our dead, so here’s a poem by Emily Dickinson that grapples with the concept of heaven. Writing about it gives me a chance to reflect upon what I think has happened to my eldest son, who died 16 years ago. Dickinson is both “astonished” at the idea of going to heaven and struck by how“dim
DONALD TRUMP AS WILLIE STARK Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. Political experts trying to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump have been scouring American history for precedents. Some have pointed to Huey Long, the populist demagogue who all but ruled Louisiana as a dictator in the 1930’s. I can’t answer to this particular parallel, but I knowthat Robert
BORN WITH A KNIFE IN THE HEART Haim Gouri uses the story to reflect upon the legacy of violence. Gouri witnessed violence himself. Born in Israel in 1923, he fought against the British prior to Israel’s independence as a member of an elite fighting force. His experience, however, made him aware that those who suffer persecution “are born with a knife in theirhearts.”.
WOUNDS, SACRED PLACE OF MUTUAL COMPASSION The real gain we get from touching Christ’s wounds, however, is that, in doing so, we touch our own. Wounds become “the sacred place/ of mutual compassion,/ and the springboard to an intimate song/ of communion and possibility,” the poet tells us. The passage reminds me of a Hemingway passage that I wrote about recently and thatJoe Biden
THE READER’S ROLE IN LITERATURE We will probably begin by exploring the role of the reader in literary interpretation. The issue interests students because they’ve all had the experience, occasionally if not frequently, of failing to understand why a teacher was taking a certain approach to a work. Many have encountered instances where their own ideas were dismissed. WHICH JANE AUSTEN CHARACTER ARE YOU? To give you a taste of what awaits you, here are my two profiles: You are Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice. You are talkative and outgoing. You like to please people but sometimes you try too hard. You are impressed with authority, uphold traditional values, BETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULFBETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULFHOW BEOWULF CAN SAVE AMERICABOOK DISCUSSION GROUPSABOUT Smell only of sea-salt and the sun. But, through recurring seasons, every one. Shall speak to us with lips the darkness closes, Shall look at us with eyes that missed the roses, Clutch us with hands whose work was just begun, Laid idle now beneath the earth we tread—. And always we shall walk with the young dead.—. COVID COSTS US LOVED ONES’ FINAL WORDS A recent Atlantic article on Covid patients dying alone turns to literature to capture one of the ensuing tragedies: they fail to impart their final words. “What the dying have to say must be heard,” Zeynep Tufekci observes: The paramount importance of dying words has long been recognized across cultures. “When a bird isabout to die, his
OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set the A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. AUSTEN’S MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT GOTHICS Austen appears to agree with Johnson and makes Tom Jones the favorite novel of Isabella’s doltish brother, who undoubtedly enjoys Tom’s drinking and womanizing. Grandison, by contrast, is a sensitive and noble man who saves the abducted heroine and then refuses a duel challenge from her captor because of his moral objections to dueling. WOUNDS, SACRED PLACE OF MUTUAL COMPASSION The real gain we get from touching Christ’s wounds, however, is that, in doing so, we touch our own. Wounds become “the sacred place/ of mutual compassion,/ and the springboard to an intimate song/ of communion and possibility,” the poet tells us. The passage reminds me of a Hemingway passage that I wrote about recently and thatJoe Biden
WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. DONALD TRUMP AS WILLIE STARK Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. Political experts trying to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump have been scouring American history for precedents. Some have pointed to Huey Long, the populist demagogue who all but ruled Louisiana as a dictator in the 1930’s. I can’t answer to this particular parallel, but I knowthat Robert
A SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF WATERFALLS Spiritual Sunday. I still haven’t gotten over the waterfalls at Yosemite—does one ever?—and so am sharing a spiritual interpretation of a waterfall by the 17 th century mystical Anglican poet Henry Vaughan. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I have mixed feelings about Vaughan (especially by how he sees the natural world cordoned off from the spiritual, a view which, as I have SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in BETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULFBETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULFHOW BEOWULF CAN SAVE AMERICABOOK DISCUSSION GROUPSABOUT Smell only of sea-salt and the sun. But, through recurring seasons, every one. Shall speak to us with lips the darkness closes, Shall look at us with eyes that missed the roses, Clutch us with hands whose work was just begun, Laid idle now beneath the earth we tread—. And always we shall walk with the young dead.—. COVID COSTS US LOVED ONES’ FINAL WORDS A recent Atlantic article on Covid patients dying alone turns to literature to capture one of the ensuing tragedies: they fail to impart their final words. “What the dying have to say must be heard,” Zeynep Tufekci observes: The paramount importance of dying words has long been recognized across cultures. “When a bird isabout to die, his
OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set the A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. AUSTEN’S MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT GOTHICS Austen appears to agree with Johnson and makes Tom Jones the favorite novel of Isabella’s doltish brother, who undoubtedly enjoys Tom’s drinking and womanizing. Grandison, by contrast, is a sensitive and noble man who saves the abducted heroine and then refuses a duel challenge from her captor because of his moral objections to dueling. WOUNDS, SACRED PLACE OF MUTUAL COMPASSION The real gain we get from touching Christ’s wounds, however, is that, in doing so, we touch our own. Wounds become “the sacred place/ of mutual compassion,/ and the springboard to an intimate song/ of communion and possibility,” the poet tells us. The passage reminds me of a Hemingway passage that I wrote about recently and thatJoe Biden
WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. DONALD TRUMP AS WILLIE STARK Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. Political experts trying to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump have been scouring American history for precedents. Some have pointed to Huey Long, the populist demagogue who all but ruled Louisiana as a dictator in the 1930’s. I can’t answer to this particular parallel, but I knowthat Robert
A SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF WATERFALLS Spiritual Sunday. I still haven’t gotten over the waterfalls at Yosemite—does one ever?—and so am sharing a spiritual interpretation of a waterfall by the 17 th century mystical Anglican poet Henry Vaughan. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I have mixed feelings about Vaughan (especially by how he sees the natural world cordoned off from the spiritual, a view which, as I have SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in BETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULF Smell only of sea-salt and the sun. But, through recurring seasons, every one. Shall speak to us with lips the darkness closes, Shall look at us with eyes that missed the roses, Clutch us with hands whose work was just begun, Laid idle now beneath the earth we tread—. And always we shall walk with the young dead.—. PUSHING 70 BUT ACTING LIKE A LITTLE BOY Friday. The internet is a wondrous place when it can surface a poem that hits as close to home as this Lu Yu lyric. It captures the joys of being about to turn 70 at a time when I am on the eve of turning 70(tomorrow).
HAIL 48 YEARS OF WEDDED LOVE Thursday. We’re currently traveling so I missed writing about Julia’s and my 48 th wedding anniversary, which was Tuesday. I turn to Milton’s celebration of “wedded love” in Book IV because it captures well my own view of marriage. THE DELICACY OF DEALING WITH IN-LAWS Wednesday. I am deeply grateful to be on good terms with my two daughters-in-law, whom I saw again recently for the first time since pre-Covid. Not everyone is so lucky. JUNETEENTH & FREEDOM’S CHALLENGES Arthello Beck, Juneteenth Picnic Friday – Juneteenth. I came across this poem by poet Sojourner Kincaid Rolle commemorating Juneteenth, the moment (June 19, 1865) when union troops under General Gordon Granger made Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a reality in Texas.Juneteenth received new attention when Donald Trump announced plans to launch his 2020 presidential POEMS IN PRAISE OF STRONG WOMEN Sojourner Truth. Tuesday. To celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the amendment giving women the right to vote, I’ve been looking through Ain’t I a Woman: A Book of Women’s Poetry from Around the World (Wings Books, 1993). The title is taken from a speech delivered by former slave, abolitionist and suffragist Sojourner Truth, which Erelene Stetson has versified. MADOFF & A PYRAMID SCHEME POEM Friday. I see that Berne Madoff, the financier who bilked his clients of $64.8 billion with an elaborate Ponzi scheme, has died. The occasion gives me an excuse to share this entertaining poem, appearing in Poetry magazine in 2018.“Pyramid Scheme” begins by reflecting on the nature of such schemes but ends up going in a very differentdirection.
BLESSING THE BOATS AT ST. MARY’S The title refers to the Blessing of the Fleet that occurs every October at St. Clement’s Island. It commemorates the blessing of the boats in England that were carrying the first English settlers to Maryland in 1633. They landed at St. Clement’s five months later. At St. Mary’s College of Maryland, however, we take the poem to referto us.
A SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF WATERFALLS Spiritual Sunday. I still haven’t gotten over the waterfalls at Yosemite—does one ever?—and so am sharing a spiritual interpretation of a waterfall by the 17 th century mystical Anglican poet Henry Vaughan. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I have mixed feelings about Vaughan (especially by how he sees the natural world cordoned off from the spiritual, a view which, as I have WHICH JANE AUSTEN CHARACTER ARE YOU? To give you a taste of what awaits you, here are my two profiles: You are Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice. You are talkative and outgoing. You like to please people but sometimes you try too hard. You are impressed with authority, uphold traditional values, BETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULFBETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULFHOW BEOWULF CAN SAVE AMERICABOOK DISCUSSION GROUPSABOUT Thursday. I share today the latest draft of a chapter from my current book project Better Living through Literature: A 2500-Year-Old Debate. I’m still collecting feedback on how it can be improved. Once Matthew Arnold advocated teaching literature in school on the grounds that it will usher in a new epoch marked by “a national glow of life and thought,” teachers enter into our picture. OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set the A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. WOUNDS, SACRED PLACE OF MUTUAL COMPASSION The real gain we get from touching Christ’s wounds, however, is that, in doing so, we touch our own. Wounds become “the sacred place/ of mutual compassion,/ and the springboard to an intimate song/ of communion and possibility,” the poet tells us. The passage reminds me of a Hemingway passage that I wrote about recently and thatJoe Biden
AUSTEN’S MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT GOTHICS Austen appears to agree with Johnson and makes Tom Jones the favorite novel of Isabella’s doltish brother, who undoubtedly enjoys Tom’s drinking and womanizing. Grandison, by contrast, is a sensitive and noble man who saves the abducted heroine and then refuses a duel challenge from her captor because of his moral objections to dueling. WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. DONALD TRUMP AS WILLIE STARK Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. Political experts trying to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump have been scouring American history for precedents. Some have pointed to Huey Long, the populist demagogue who all but ruled Louisiana as a dictator in the 1930’s. I can’t answer to this particular parallel, but I knowthat Robert
A SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF WATERFALLS Spiritual Sunday. I still haven’t gotten over the waterfalls at Yosemite—does one ever?—and so am sharing a spiritual interpretation of a waterfall by the 17 th century mystical Anglican poet Henry Vaughan. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I have mixed feelings about Vaughan (especially by how he sees the natural world cordoned off from the spiritual, a view which, as I have ELLISON’S INVISIBLE MAN, ALWAYS RELEVANT A couple of weeks ago I alluded to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (60 years old last week) in an attempt to understand Obama-derangement.I see that David Denby in this week’s New Yorker also appreciates the novel’s continuing relevance, not only to current race relations but to the figure of Ellison himself. Ellison’s dramatic account of how people project different images onto black SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in BETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULFBETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULFHOW BEOWULF CAN SAVE AMERICABOOK DISCUSSION GROUPSABOUT Thursday. I share today the latest draft of a chapter from my current book project Better Living through Literature: A 2500-Year-Old Debate. I’m still collecting feedback on how it can be improved. Once Matthew Arnold advocated teaching literature in school on the grounds that it will usher in a new epoch marked by “a national glow of life and thought,” teachers enter into our picture. OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set the A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. WOUNDS, SACRED PLACE OF MUTUAL COMPASSION The real gain we get from touching Christ’s wounds, however, is that, in doing so, we touch our own. Wounds become “the sacred place/ of mutual compassion,/ and the springboard to an intimate song/ of communion and possibility,” the poet tells us. The passage reminds me of a Hemingway passage that I wrote about recently and thatJoe Biden
AUSTEN’S MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT GOTHICS Austen appears to agree with Johnson and makes Tom Jones the favorite novel of Isabella’s doltish brother, who undoubtedly enjoys Tom’s drinking and womanizing. Grandison, by contrast, is a sensitive and noble man who saves the abducted heroine and then refuses a duel challenge from her captor because of his moral objections to dueling. WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. DONALD TRUMP AS WILLIE STARK Broderick Crawford as Willie Stark. Political experts trying to understand the phenomenon that is Donald Trump have been scouring American history for precedents. Some have pointed to Huey Long, the populist demagogue who all but ruled Louisiana as a dictator in the 1930’s. I can’t answer to this particular parallel, but I knowthat Robert
A SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF WATERFALLS Spiritual Sunday. I still haven’t gotten over the waterfalls at Yosemite—does one ever?—and so am sharing a spiritual interpretation of a waterfall by the 17 th century mystical Anglican poet Henry Vaughan. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that I have mixed feelings about Vaughan (especially by how he sees the natural world cordoned off from the spiritual, a view which, as I have ELLISON’S INVISIBLE MAN, ALWAYS RELEVANT A couple of weeks ago I alluded to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (60 years old last week) in an attempt to understand Obama-derangement.I see that David Denby in this week’s New Yorker also appreciates the novel’s continuing relevance, not only to current race relations but to the figure of Ellison himself. Ellison’s dramatic account of how people project different images onto black SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in BETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULF Thursday. I share today the latest draft of a chapter from my current book project Better Living through Literature: A 2500-Year-Old Debate. I’m still collecting feedback on how it can be improved. Once Matthew Arnold advocated teaching literature in school on the grounds that it will usher in a new epoch marked by “a national glow of life and thought,” teachers enter into our picture.DEVOURED BY KISSES
Tuesday. Released from Covid restrictions, Julia and I have been traveling and have finally, for the first time in over 18 months, physically hugged grandchildren Esmé, Etta, Eden and Ocean (in Buford, Georgia) and Alban (in Washington, D.C). HAIL 48 YEARS OF WEDDED LOVE Thursday. We’re currently traveling so I missed writing about Julia’s and my 48 th wedding anniversary, which was Tuesday. I turn to Milton’s celebration of “wedded love” in Book IV because it captures well my own view of marriage. THE DELICACY OF DEALING WITH IN-LAWS Wednesday. I am deeply grateful to be on good terms with my two daughters-in-law, whom I saw again recently for the first time since pre-Covid. Not everyone is so lucky. COVID COSTS US LOVED ONES’ FINAL WORDS A recent Atlantic article on Covid patients dying alone turns to literature to capture one of the ensuing tragedies: they fail to impart their final words. “What the dying have to say must be heard,” Zeynep Tufekci observes: The paramount importance of dying words has long been recognized across cultures. “When a bird isabout to die, his
JUNETEENTH & FREEDOM’S CHALLENGES Arthello Beck, Juneteenth Picnic Friday – Juneteenth. I came across this poem by poet Sojourner Kincaid Rolle commemorating Juneteenth, the moment (June 19, 1865) when union troops under General Gordon Granger made Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a reality in Texas.Juneteenth received new attention when Donald Trump announced plans to launch his 2020 presidential JAVERT WOULD NOT SURVIVE IN TODAY’S GOP Tuesday. In last Thursday’s post I wondered whether Trump supporters would experience Fantine’s cognitive dysfunction (in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables) when Joe Biden’s helpful programs collide with their image of him as a tyrannical socialist.Fantine is not Hugo’s only character to be confronted with such a dilemma. POEMS IN PRAISE OF STRONG WOMEN Sojourner Truth. Tuesday. To celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the amendment giving women the right to vote, I’ve been looking through Ain’t I a Woman: A Book of Women’s Poetry from Around the World (Wings Books, 1993). The title is taken from a speech delivered by former slave, abolitionist and suffragist Sojourner Truth, which Erelene Stetson has versified. BLESSING THE BOATS AT ST. MARY’S The title refers to the Blessing of the Fleet that occurs every October at St. Clement’s Island. It commemorates the blessing of the boats in England that were carrying the first English settlers to Maryland in 1633. They landed at St. Clement’s five months later. At St. Mary’s College of Maryland, however, we take the poem to referto us.
THE ORIGINS OF CRAZY U.S. WORK ETHIC This journaling evolved into novel writing, where the lives of commoners like Crusoe, Pamela, Tom Jones and Roderick Random suddenly proved of interest. Pilgrim’s Progress functioned as a bridge from journal to novel. Puritan Crusoe doesn’t colonize his island simply because he desires material possessions. Rather, he is wracked withguilt
COVID COSTS US LOVED ONES’ FINAL WORDS A recent Atlantic article on Covid patients dying alone turns to literature to capture one of the ensuing tragedies: they fail to impart their final words. “What the dying have to say must be heard,” Zeynep Tufekci observes: The paramount importance of dying words has long been recognized across cultures. “When a bird isabout to die, his
OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set theCOME, HOLY SPIRIT
Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow. covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I TO HEAR AN ORIOLE SING Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. THE ORIGINS OF CRAZY U.S. WORK ETHIC This journaling evolved into novel writing, where the lives of commoners like Crusoe, Pamela, Tom Jones and Roderick Random suddenly proved of interest. Pilgrim’s Progress functioned as a bridge from journal to novel. Puritan Crusoe doesn’t colonize his island simply because he desires material possessions. Rather, he is wracked withguilt
OUR SECOND SELF, THE WOMAN AT THE WELL Spiritual Sunday. “Healing water” is the focus of today’s liturgical readings, which include Moses finding water in the desert and Jesus encountering “the woman at the well.”. Poet Carolyne Wright’s moving poem transforms the Samaritan woman into a composite figure of all women who are searching for the divine within ourprofane world.
POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY By Audre Lorde, excerpts from “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in COVID COSTS US LOVED ONES’ FINAL WORDS A recent Atlantic article on Covid patients dying alone turns to literature to capture one of the ensuing tragedies: they fail to impart their final words. “What the dying have to say must be heard,” Zeynep Tufekci observes: The paramount importance of dying words has long been recognized across cultures. “When a bird isabout to die, his
OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set theCOME, HOLY SPIRIT
Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow. covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I TO HEAR AN ORIOLE SING Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. THE ORIGINS OF CRAZY U.S. WORK ETHIC This journaling evolved into novel writing, where the lives of commoners like Crusoe, Pamela, Tom Jones and Roderick Random suddenly proved of interest. Pilgrim’s Progress functioned as a bridge from journal to novel. Puritan Crusoe doesn’t colonize his island simply because he desires material possessions. Rather, he is wracked withguilt
OUR SECOND SELF, THE WOMAN AT THE WELL Spiritual Sunday. “Healing water” is the focus of today’s liturgical readings, which include Moses finding water in the desert and Jesus encountering “the woman at the well.”. Poet Carolyne Wright’s moving poem transforms the Samaritan woman into a composite figure of all women who are searching for the divine within ourprofane world.
POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY By Audre Lorde, excerpts from “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in BETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULF Thursday. I share today the latest draft of a chapter from my current book project Better Living through Literature: A 2500-Year-Old Debate. I’m still collecting feedback on how it can be improved. Once Matthew Arnold advocated teaching literature in school on the grounds that it will usher in a new epoch marked by “a national glow of life and thought,” teachers enter into our picture. JUNETEENTH & FREEDOM’S CHALLENGES Arthello Beck, Juneteenth Picnic Friday – Juneteenth. I came across this poem by poet Sojourner Kincaid Rolle commemorating Juneteenth, the moment (June 19, 1865) when union troops under General Gordon Granger made Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a reality in Texas.Juneteenth received new attention when Donald Trump announced plans to launch his 2020 presidential JAVERT WOULD NOT SURVIVE IN TODAY’S GOP Tuesday. In last Thursday’s post I wondered whether Trump supporters would experience Fantine’s cognitive dysfunction (in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables) when Joe Biden’s helpful programs collide with their image of him as a tyrannical socialist.Fantine is not Hugo’s only character to be confronted with such a dilemma.DEVOURED BY KISSES
Tuesday. Released from Covid restrictions, Julia and I have been traveling and have finally, for the first time in over 18 months, physically hugged grandchildren Esmé, Etta, Eden and Ocean (in Buford, Georgia) and Alban (in Washington, D.C).COME, HOLY SPIRIT
Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow. covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I POEMS IN PRAISE OF STRONG WOMEN Sojourner Truth. Tuesday. To celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the amendment giving women the right to vote, I’ve been looking through Ain’t I a Woman: A Book of Women’s Poetry from Around the World (Wings Books, 1993). The title is taken from a speech delivered by former slave, abolitionist and suffragist Sojourner Truth, which Erelene Stetson has versified. SCOTT ATLAS’S MIRACLE COVID CURE Wednesday. The Trump administration has descended into ever deeper levels of tragic farce by elevating Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist (specialty: MRI machines) to primary health consultant for dealing with Covid-19. Doctors and medical expert around the nation gape in horror as Atlas recommends a herd immunity approach that could well lead to another million Americans dying and may not work EMILY DICKINSON & GOING TO HEAVEN Today is the church service where we remember our dead, so here’s a poem by Emily Dickinson that grapples with the concept of heaven. Writing about it gives me a chance to reflect upon what I think has happened to my eldest son, who died 16 years ago. Dickinson is both “astonished” at the idea of going to heaven and struck by how“dim
GOP HAS PERFECTED INVISIBILITY Wednesday. I’ve shared this post about H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man a couple of times because it is continues to be so timely. Whenever we have a system that refuses to hold people accountable, the novel isrelevant.
THE WORK OF THE WORLD IS COMMON AS MUD Marge Piercy's poem "To Be of Use" essentially shows why Barack Obama's legacy is likely to survive GOP repeal efforts. The difference is work that comes from a deep place as opposed to COVID COSTS US LOVED ONES’ FINAL WORDS A recent Atlantic article on Covid patients dying alone turns to literature to capture one of the ensuing tragedies: they fail to impart their final words. “What the dying have to say must be heard,” Zeynep Tufekci observes: The paramount importance of dying words has long been recognized across cultures. “When a bird isabout to die, his
OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set theCOME, HOLY SPIRIT
Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow. covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I TO HEAR AN ORIOLE SING Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. THE ORIGINS OF CRAZY U.S. WORK ETHIC This journaling evolved into novel writing, where the lives of commoners like Crusoe, Pamela, Tom Jones and Roderick Random suddenly proved of interest. Pilgrim’s Progress functioned as a bridge from journal to novel. Puritan Crusoe doesn’t colonize his island simply because he desires material possessions. Rather, he is wracked withguilt
OUR SECOND SELF, THE WOMAN AT THE WELL Spiritual Sunday. “Healing water” is the focus of today’s liturgical readings, which include Moses finding water in the desert and Jesus encountering “the woman at the well.”. Poet Carolyne Wright’s moving poem transforms the Samaritan woman into a composite figure of all women who are searching for the divine within ourprofane world.
POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY By Audre Lorde, excerpts from “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in COVID COSTS US LOVED ONES’ FINAL WORDS A recent Atlantic article on Covid patients dying alone turns to literature to capture one of the ensuing tragedies: they fail to impart their final words. “What the dying have to say must be heard,” Zeynep Tufekci observes: The paramount importance of dying words has long been recognized across cultures. “When a bird isabout to die, his
OLIVER\'S CHRISTIAN IMAGERY Once one starts looking for Christian imagery in Oliver, one finds it everywhere. Consider, for instance, “The Fawn”: Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal. The church bells rang, but I went. To the woods instead. While there, she encounters a fawn, which she says is like engaging with a joyful text. The church bells that set theCOME, HOLY SPIRIT
Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow. covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I TO HEAR AN ORIOLE SING Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. A WEARY PILGRIM, NOW AT REST Spiritual Sunday. I recently wrote about the death of close friend William Boyd, who lived with us when he was a student at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and helped bring up our three sons, who regarded him as a brother. We recently watched his funeral service in a Baltimore church, and the combination of sadness and hope reminded me of an Anne Bradstreet poem. WHY LITERARY SUFFERING MADE PLATO NERVOUS Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous. My faculty reading group is currently discussing philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s very interesting Fruits of Sorrow: Framing Our Attention to Suffering (Beacon Press, 1997). Spelman explores how we respond to suffering and examines Plato’s and Aristotle’s handling of Greek tragedy. THE ORIGINS OF CRAZY U.S. WORK ETHIC This journaling evolved into novel writing, where the lives of commoners like Crusoe, Pamela, Tom Jones and Roderick Random suddenly proved of interest. Pilgrim’s Progress functioned as a bridge from journal to novel. Puritan Crusoe doesn’t colonize his island simply because he desires material possessions. Rather, he is wracked withguilt
OUR SECOND SELF, THE WOMAN AT THE WELL Spiritual Sunday. “Healing water” is the focus of today’s liturgical readings, which include Moses finding water in the desert and Jesus encountering “the woman at the well.”. Poet Carolyne Wright’s moving poem transforms the Samaritan woman into a composite figure of all women who are searching for the divine within ourprofane world.
POETRY IS NOT A LUXURY By Audre Lorde, excerpts from “Poetry Is Not a Luxury”. For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into SCHLAFLY, MODEL FOR ATWOOD’S SERENA JOY Wednesday. Phyllis Schlafly, the individual most responsible for preventing the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, died Monday at 92. I disagreed with Schlafly in almost every respect but I will laud her for one thing: she served as the model for Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian classic The Handmaid’s Tale.. Serena Joy is the woman who helps establish a repressive society in BETTER LIVING THROUGH BEOWULF Thursday. I share today the latest draft of a chapter from my current book project Better Living through Literature: A 2500-Year-Old Debate. I’m still collecting feedback on how it can be improved. Once Matthew Arnold advocated teaching literature in school on the grounds that it will usher in a new epoch marked by “a national glow of life and thought,” teachers enter into our picture. JUNETEENTH & FREEDOM’S CHALLENGES Arthello Beck, Juneteenth Picnic Friday – Juneteenth. I came across this poem by poet Sojourner Kincaid Rolle commemorating Juneteenth, the moment (June 19, 1865) when union troops under General Gordon Granger made Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a reality in Texas.Juneteenth received new attention when Donald Trump announced plans to launch his 2020 presidential JAVERT WOULD NOT SURVIVE IN TODAY’S GOP Tuesday. In last Thursday’s post I wondered whether Trump supporters would experience Fantine’s cognitive dysfunction (in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables) when Joe Biden’s helpful programs collide with their image of him as a tyrannical socialist.Fantine is not Hugo’s only character to be confronted with such a dilemma.DEVOURED BY KISSES
Tuesday. Released from Covid restrictions, Julia and I have been traveling and have finally, for the first time in over 18 months, physically hugged grandchildren Esmé, Etta, Eden and Ocean (in Buford, Georgia) and Alban (in Washington, D.C).COME, HOLY SPIRIT
Come, Holy Spirit, bending or not bending the grasses, appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame, at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow. covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada. I am only a man: I need visible signs. I POEMS IN PRAISE OF STRONG WOMEN Sojourner Truth. Tuesday. To celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the amendment giving women the right to vote, I’ve been looking through Ain’t I a Woman: A Book of Women’s Poetry from Around the World (Wings Books, 1993). The title is taken from a speech delivered by former slave, abolitionist and suffragist Sojourner Truth, which Erelene Stetson has versified. SCOTT ATLAS’S MIRACLE COVID CURE Wednesday. The Trump administration has descended into ever deeper levels of tragic farce by elevating Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist (specialty: MRI machines) to primary health consultant for dealing with Covid-19. Doctors and medical expert around the nation gape in horror as Atlas recommends a herd immunity approach that could well lead to another million Americans dying and may not work EMILY DICKINSON & GOING TO HEAVEN Today is the church service where we remember our dead, so here’s a poem by Emily Dickinson that grapples with the concept of heaven. Writing about it gives me a chance to reflect upon what I think has happened to my eldest son, who died 16 years ago. Dickinson is both “astonished” at the idea of going to heaven and struck by how“dim
GOP HAS PERFECTED INVISIBILITY Wednesday. I’ve shared this post about H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man a couple of times because it is continues to be so timely. Whenever we have a system that refuses to hold people accountable, the novel isrelevant.
THE WORK OF THE WORLD IS COMMON AS MUD Marge Piercy's poem "To Be of Use" essentially shows why Barack Obama's legacy is likely to survive GOP repeal efforts. The difference is work that comes from a deep place as opposed to Better Living through Beowulf HOW GREAT LITERATURE CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFESkip to content
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HAWTHORNE EXPLAINS THE ETERNAL SINBy Robin Bates
| Published: June 5, 2021Robert
Duvall as Roger ChillingworthSPIRITUAL SUNDAY
Today’s Gospel reading includes Jesus pronouncement about “the eternal sin,” which some people call “the unpardonable sin” or the “unforgivable sin” (Mark 3:30). It’s a concept that fascinated Nathaniel Hawthorne.The passage reads,
> Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and > whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the > Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal> sin.
Jesus says something comparable in Matthew 12:31-32: > And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, > but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who > speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone > who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in > this age or in the age to come. As I understand it, if God enters out hearts in the form of the Holy Spirit, then we essentially kill God if we harden our hearts and do not let God enter. Under normal circumstances, our sins are forgivable because our hearts can soften and we can repent. But the process must start with the heart, without which nothing else is possible. That is why, in a poem like “The Altar,” George Herbert compares his heart to a stone and prays to God to soften it:> A HEART alone
> Is such a stone,> As nothing but
> Thy pow’r doth cut. Christophere Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, by contrast, revels in the fact that “yy heart’s so harden’d, I cannot repent.” When one is proud that one has killed the god within, one had cut oneself offfrom divinity.
One sees this pride in Hawthorne’s Ethan Brand, who goes out in search of “the unpardonable sin” and returns years later to give his account of having found it: > It is a sin that grew within my own breast,” replied Ethan Brand, > standing erect with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of > his stamp. “A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect > that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence > for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! The > only sin that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were > it to do again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the> retribution!”
Brand notes the intellectual component to the eternal sin. In an act of pride, the mind overrides any of those precious feelings we associate with being human, such as compassion, empathy, and “the sense of botherhood with man.” When we take pride in overriding what is best about being human, we—well—override what is best aboutbeing human.
Chillingworth in _The Scarlet Letter _also appears to sin against the Holy Spirit. In this he differ from Dimmesdale and Hester, who only sin against God. The almost dispassionate way that Chillingworth toys with Dimmesdale’s guilt makes him an utter monster. Hawthorne’s Richard Digby, meanwhile, is a “Man of Adamant” whose sense of righteous superiority over all other humans prompts him to retreat into the woods, where he prays incessantly. When a young woman whom he once converted, Mary Golfe, comes out to plead with him to return to humanity, he spurns her: > “Perverse woman!” answered Richard Digby, laughing aloud,—for > he was moved to bitter mirth by her foolish vehemence,—“I tell > thee that the path to heaven leadeth straight through this narrow > portal where I sit. And, moreover, the destruction thou speakest of > is ordained, not for this blessed cave, but for all other > habitations of mankind, throughout the earth. Get thee hence > speedily, that thou mayst have thy share!” Later they have this interchange: > “Richard,” she said, with passionate fervor, yet a gentleness in > all her passion, “I pray thee, by thy hope of heaven, and as thou > wouldst not dwell in this tomb forever, drink of this hallowed > water, be it but a single drop! Then, make room for me by thy side, > and let us read together one page of that blessed volume; and, > lastly, kneel down with me and pray! Do this, and thy stony heart > shall become softer than a babe’s, and all be well.”>
> But Richard Digby, in utter abhorrence of the proposal, cast the > Bible at his feet, and eyed her with such a fixed and evil frown, > that he looked less like a living man than a marble statue, wrought > by some dark-imagined sculptor to express the most repulsive mood > that human features could assume. And, as his look grew even > devilish, so, with an equal change did Mary Goffe become more sad, > more mild, more pitiful, more like a sorrowing angel. But, the more > heavenly she was, the more hateful did she seem to Richard Digby, > who at length raised his hand, and smote down the cup of hallowed > water upon the threshold of the cave, thus rejecting the only > medicine that could have cured his stony heart. A sweet perfume > lingered in the air for a moment, and then was gone.>
> “Tempt me no more, accursed woman,” exclaimed he, still with his > marble frown, “lest I smite thee down also! What hast thou to do > with my Bible?—what with my prayers?—what with my heaven?” At that point Digby’s heart ceases to beat and Hawtorne tells usthat
> the form of Mary Goffe melted into the last sunbeams, and returned > from the sepulchral cave to heaven. For Mary Golfe had been buried > in an English churchyard, months before; and either it was her ghost > that haunted the wild forest, or else a dream-like spirit, typifying> pure Religion.
Those who glory in their triumph over the heart have blotted out their souls. While technically they _could _repent—God, after all, cannot be killed—their sin is unforgivable because they won’t allow it tobe forgiven.
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GOP HAS PERFECTED INVISIBILITYBy Robin Bates
| Published: June 3, 2021FRIDAY
I’ve shared this post about H.G. Wells’s _Invisible Man_ a couple of times because it is continues to be so timely. Whenever we have a system that refuses to hold people accountable, the novel is relevant. It increasingly appears that the GOP wants no one to be held responsible for the January 6 insurrection. I first ran this post in December, 2017 when the GOP was planning massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which blew up the deficit while providing peanuts for everyone else. As I noted, they appeared to have learned a version of Trump’s Access Hollywood pronouncement, “And when you’re a star, they let you . You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Same with the GOP: when you control all levels of government and have dispensed with normal checks and balances, you can do anything. On June 9, 2020 I ran it again on the issues of immunity for cops. When misconduct of racist cops is routinely buried so that they can shove, beat and even kill people with impunity, they will inevitably do so. There’s little sign that Republicans are willing to hold suchcops accountable.
Few maxims are truer than “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s no accident that, upon learning the secret of invisibility, Wells’s protagonist immediately starts violating social norms. It’s an aspect of human nature that Plato explores in the Gyges ring parable that inspired Wells’s story. The parable appears in Book 2 of _The Republic._ Arguing with Socrates that people behave justly only because they fear the consequences of not doing so, Glaucon recounts how the shepherd Gyges, after finding a ring that renders him invisible, proceeds to seduce the queen, murder the king, and become king himself. While people might publicly applaud a good man that didn’t take advantage of such a ring, Glaucon states that they would in actuality regard him asa fool.
Rather than such freedom making Gyges happy, Socrates counters that he will always be slave to his appetites. While I believe this to be true, this is of scant consolation to Gyges’s victims, just as George Floyd finds scant consolation in the fact that his killers may never find deep peace. Wells, however, has a different focus, showing how delicious it is to act on dark impulses. Griffin describes a “feeling of extraordinary elation” when he realizes that people can’t see him. Confiding his history to his college friend Kemp, he says he immediately burned down the house so that others wouldn’t discover his secrets: > “You fired the house!” exclaimed Kemp.>
> Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trail—and no > doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly > and went out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just > beginning to realize the extraordinary advantage my invisibility > gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and > wonderful things I had now impunity to do. He uses the word “impunity” again further on: > Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, > everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I > did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had > merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold> me.
Griffin proceeds to engage in the same range of behavior that we are seeing from cops, from shoving to outright killing. At the beginning, his social infractions are minor: > My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might > do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. > I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men > on the back, fling people’s hats astray, and generally revel in my > extraordinary advantage. When Kent asks about “the common conventions of humanity,” Griffin replies that they are “all very well for common people.” As Griffin’s madness grows, so do his dark ambitions. Thinking he has successfully enlisted Kemp, he plots ways to wield total power: > “And it is killing we must do, Kemp.”>
> “It is killing we must do,” repeated Kemp. “I’m listening to > your plan, Griffin, but I’m not agreeing, mind. Why killing?”>
> “Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is, they > know there is an Invisible Man—as well as we know there is an > Invisible Man. And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a > Reign of Terror. Yes; no doubt it’s startling. But I mean it. A > Reign of Terror. He must take some town like your Burdock and > terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in > a thousand ways—scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice. > And all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would> defend them.”
Note that he uses one of Trump’s favorite words here: “dominate.” He’s prepared to use violence if necessary. A sadistic thrill comes with asserting your dominance over others. It’s not as fulfilling as serving humankind, as Socrates preaches and enlightened police know, but Griffin, racist cops, and authoritarians like Trump don’t care. They prefer the rush of actingwith impunity.
The Invisible Man is transparent. The GOP and America’s police forces, not so much. Posted in Wells (H. G.)| Tagged
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TEACHERS AS LITERATURE’S MISSIONARIESBy Robin Bates
| Published: June 2, 2021THURSDAY
_I share today the latest draft of a chapter from my current book project_ Better Living through Literature: A 2500-Year-Old Debate. I’m still collecting feedback on how it can be improved. Once Matthew Arnold advocated teaching literature in school on the grounds that it will usher in a new epoch marked by “a national glow of life and thought,” teachers enter into our picture. In this vision they were to be the new missionaries, replacing religious figures in inculcating foundational social values. Teachers were to introduce students to poetry, the new sacred texts, and make sure they took away the proper lessons. In his influential _Literary Theory: An Introduction_, Terry Eagleton does a historical survey of “the rise of English,” noting why people have wanted students to read and interpret literature. I’ve already cited Eagleton in my Marx-Engels chapter but turn to him here because his survey offers one of the best accounts of what people over the past 150 years have thought the study of literature should accomplish. While Eagleton’s Marxism shapes his account—he believes historical forces have been at work in literature’s evolution as a discipline—his summation is useful to non-Marxists aswell.
That’s in part because Eagleton (b. 1943) isn’t doctrinaire in his beliefs. Born into a working-class Irish Catholic family with Irish Republican sympathies, he served as an altar boy at a local Carmelite convent as a boy and at one point considered becoming a priest. He studied literature at Cambridge under the noted Marxist scholar Raymond Williams and also edited a Catholic leftist periodical called _Slant. _Although a socialist, Eagleton, like his American counterpart Frederic Jameson, is suspicious of leftists who judge literary works by their class politics, calling such people “vulgar Marxists.” As we have seen, he has not hesitated to defend conservative artists such as Joseph Conrad, T.S. Eliot, and D.H. Lawrence. His same dislike of doctrinaire positions has led him, in later years, to go after atheists like Christopher Hitchens and evolutionary biology Richard Dawkins, accusing them of being just as narrow as the Christian fundamentalists they attack. Eagleton is a daunting opponent, in part because of his razor-sharp wit. While English teachers haven’t traditionally seen themselves as political when they teach literature, Eagleton points out that 19th century school authorities, revealing the influence of Arnold, began stressing the importance of a literary education at precisely the point when working class men and women gained admittance into schools and universities. In other words, literary instruction had a political agenda from the beginning, which was to maintain the existing class and gender relations. About worker education Eagleton writes, It is significant…that “English” as an academic subject was first institutionalized not in the Universities, but in the Mechanics’ Institutes, working men’s college and extension lecturing circuits. English was literally the poor man’s Classics—a way of providing a cheapish “liberal” education for those beyond the charmed circles of public school and Oxbridge. From the outset, in the work of “English” pioneers like F.D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley, the emphasis was on solidarity between the social classes, the cultivation of “larger sympathies,” the installation of national pride and the transmission of “moral”values.
Women followed workers as people for whom a literary education was deemed suitable, Eagleton notes: > English literature, reflected a Royal Commission witness in 1877, > might be considered a suitable subject for “women…and the > second- and third-rate men who…become schoolmasters.” The > “softening” and “humanizing” effects of English, terms > recurrently used by its early proponents, are within the existing > ideological stereotypes of gender clearly feminine. The rise of > English in England ran parallel to the gradual, grudging admission > of women to the institutions of higher education; and since English > was an untaxing sort of affair, concerned with the finer feelings > rather than with the more virile topics of _bona fide _academic > “disciplines,” it seemed a convenient sort of non-subject to > palm off on the ladies, who were in any case excluded from science > and the professions. World War I changed all this. If before the war the English ruling class saw literature as a way to soften up striving women and rough working-class men, after the war sweetness and light seemed like a good idea for everyone, a way to make England whole again. Eagleton remarks that “it is a chastening thought that we owe the University study of English, in part at least, to a meaningless massacre.” Chief among literature’s advocates was Professor of English Literature at Oxford George Stuart Gordon, who in 1922 wrote, England is sick, and … English literature must save it. The Churches (as I understand) having failed, and social remedies being slow, English literature has now a triple function: still, I suppose, to delight and instruct us, but also, and above all, to save our soulsand heal the State.
The view of literature as salvation for a diseased West motivated the influential critic and scholar F. R. Leavis, whose focus on the literary canon and on close reading helped shape how literature is still studied today. In the 1920s, before Leavis, people saw literature as a pleasurable pastime. After Leavis, by the 1930s, they saw it as “the supremely civilizing pursuit, the spiritual essence of the social formation.” As we have seen, Leavis was not the first literature enthusiast to make broad claims—remember Percy Shelley’s description of poets as “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”—but Eagleton will have none of it. Although passionately committed to literature, as a Marxist he believes that literature must be allied with political action for it to have real effect. Whatever one thinks of this stance, his response to Leavis is scathing: > Was it really true that literature could roll back the deadening > effects of industrial labor and the philistinism of the media? It > was doubtless comforting to feel that by reading Henry James one > belonged to the moral vanguard of civilization itself; but what of > all those people who did not read Henry James, who had never even > heard of James, and would no doubt go to their graves complacently > ignorant that he had been and gone? These people certainly composed > the overwhelming social majority; were they morally callous, humanly > banal and imaginatively bankrupt? One was speaking perhaps of > one’s own parents and friends here, and so needed to be a little > circumspect. Many of these people seemed morally serious and > sensitive enough: they showed no particular tendency to go around > murdering, looting and plundering, and even if they did it seemed > implausible to attribute this to the fact that they had not read> Henry James.
Leavisites, Eagleton declares, were “inescapably elitist,” betraying “a profound ignorance and distrust of the capacities of those not fortunate enough to have read English at Downing College.” Eagleton then adds another twist. Just as there are people who don’t appear to have been harmed from _not_ reading literature, there are others who _have _been harmed, or at least, not improved, _from_reading it:
> For if not all of those who could not recognize an enjambement were > nasty and brutish, not all of those who could were morally pure. > Many people were indeed deep in high culture, but it would transpire > a decade or so after the birth of > Scrutiny that this had not prevented some of them from engaging in > such activities as superintending the murder of Jews in central > Europe. The strength of Leavisian criticism was that it was able to > provide an answer…to the question, why read Literature? The > answer, in a nutshell, was that it made you a better person. Few > reasons could have been more persuasive than that. When the Allied > troops moved into the concentration camps some years after the > founding of Scrutiny, to arrest commandants who had wiled away > their leisure hours with a volume of Goethe, it appeared that > someone had some explaining to do. Eagleton’s cautions are useful for those who expect literature to accomplish miracles. Skepticism is always called for when assessing literary impact. I find it necessary to push back here, however, just as Horace, Shelley, and Arnold push back against those who pooh-pooh literature. Sure, it’s always easy to cite instances where literature has proved ineffective, at least in the short run. One thinks of tyrants who encountered literature when young and still grew up to become tyrants. You haven’t proved much when you have saidthat, however.
Let’s look at Eagleton’s Goethe example since he uses it as a direct challenge to claims that literature makes us better people. We’ve cited previous theorists who, while lauding literature’s salutary effects, offer qualifications. Sir Philip Sidney, for instance, acknowledges that poetry—like physic, swords, and the Bible—can be used for ill as well as for good, depending on who is wielding it. It’s also true that some Nazis attempted to fashion Goethe into a pro-fascist writer. For instance, in at least one instance Faustus was depicted as “the archetypal German hero, whose efforts to win land from the sea in the final act of _Faust, Part Two _prefigured the Nazis’ own drive for more _Lebensraum_in the East.”
That Nazis would fixate on Faust, as they did on Neitzsche’s _Übermensch or Super Man, makes sense, and it’s true that Faust, like Hitler, claims as his higher purpose to_ reclaim new land for his emperor, dominating the sea in order to do so. When his ambitions are opposed by a rival emperor, Faustus unleashes Mephistopheles and three thugs to carry out the dirty work. Then having built himself a seaside castle, he becomes obsessed with a neighboring plot of land and orders Mephistopheles to seize that as well. What’s there for a fascist notto like?
The play then turns in a different direction, however. The land that Faust covets is owned by the kindly Baucis and Philemon, the quintessential good hosts from classical mythology who share the little they have with gods disguised as wandering beggars. Furthermore, Mephistopheles and his henchmen exceed Faust’s orders and kill the couple, along with a guest, in a mini-Holocaust of their own. Faust is so appalled at the consequences of his ambitions that he renounces his magical powers, gives over his imperial ambitions, and devotes himself to being of service to others. As a result, Faust, unlike Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus, gets his soul back and the play ends with celebrations of nature and divine love. One can only wish that German fascists had followed suit. If concentration commandants had employed Leavis’s close reading strategies, they could not have seen Goethe as a kindred soul. I’m of course joking when I say that. It could well be, however, that they were just reading selected excerpts of Goethe. Or, what I suspect is most likely, they didn’t so much engage with Goethe as genuflect before him, seeing him (as some Brits see Shakespeare) as a cultural marker or fetish of national greatness. They read him to signal their national superiority. I suspect German teachers were expected to teach very narrow versions of him in school. Which returns us to the classroom. When Matthew Arnold, who had been a school inspector, looks to schools to emphasize class harmony and placate the masses, I suspect he wouldn’t want teachers teaching, say, Percy Shelley’s “Men of England” (“Men of England, wherefore plough/ For the lords who lay ye low?”) or William Blake’s “The Grey Monk” (“’I die, I die!’ the Mother said,/ ‘My children die for lack of bread.’”) He would want teachers teaching _his _favorite works with _his _intended message. When we explore Leavis’s claims that literature makes us better people, to some extent we must take into account who is teaching and what they consider as better. I suggest we divide those teachers believing in literature’s life-changing powers into three categories, determined by political leaning: conservative Arnoldians, liberal Arnoldians, and radical Shelleyites. Conservative Arnoldians use literature to affirm traditional values, liberal Arnoldians use it to instill humanist values, and radical Shelleyites use it to fight for economic and social justice. All committed teachers may see it as their mission to use literature to produce good citizens and good people, but their criteria for “good” will vary. Of course, there can be a gap between what teachers want students to learn and what students actually learn. If literature has the explosive power that Plato and others have attributed to it, then even the most careful attempts to circumscribe and manage it may not succeed. No matter how teachers deliver literature to their students, certain students will do with it what students do.Posted in Goethe
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THE GOP’S TROJAN HORSE: A COUP ATTEMPT?By Robin Bates
| Published: June 1, 2021Giovanni
Domenico Tiepolo, _Procession of the Trojan Horse_WEDNESDAY
It’s unsettling to reread _The Aeneid _in the months following Donald Trump’s January 6 attempted coup. In Book II we see the Trojans celebrating victory after a ten-year war (the 2020 election campaign felt like it was ten years). After twelve or so hours of euphoria, however, their walls are breached and their city and themselves destroyed. We who thought democracy had been saved by Joe Biden’s victory have been greeted with a rude shock—first by the January 6 insurrection, then by the 147 Republican Congress members who voted to overturn the election, then by the incessant calls for vote recounts (leading to shady business in Arizona), then by a wave of voter suppression laws, then by the refusal of Republican Congress members to investigate the Capitol attack. In the latest developments, we have Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn calling for a Myanmar-type coup and Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz gesturing towards armed insurrection (this latter at a fascist “America First” rally). While Flynn and Gaetz—one out of jail only because he was pardoned by Trump and one possibly facing indictment—may seem fringe figures, time and again we have seen the fringe move to the center in today’s Republican Party. Who could have foreseen, for instance, that Congress members who experience the Capitol attack first hand would now be describing it as “a largely peaceful protest” (Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson) and “a normal tourist visit” (Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde). No mention of all those killed and injured and all the propertydamage.
Recounting the fall of Troy to Dido, Aeneas talks about the amazing moment when Trojans discover that the Greeks have (apparently) left: > We thought they’d gone, > Sailing home to Mycenae before the wind, > So Teucer’s town is freed of her long anguish, > Gates thrown wide! And out we go in joy > To see the Dorian campsites, all deserted, > The beach they left behind. > (trans. Robert Fitzgerald) They also see an immense wooden horse, and debates break out about what to do with it. Some see no danger. Thymoetes, for instance, “shouts/ It should be hauled inside the walls and moored/High on the citadel.” Think of him as West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who apparently believes that the Senate Republicans can be reasoned with. For instance, he sees no reason to abolish the filibuster, even though doing so would allow Democrats to pass legislation protectingfuture elections.
Others warn that the GOP has become a de facto authoritarian party, prepared to trash democracy and establish minority rule. Might these be Virgil’s “wiser heads” who want to do away with the horse? > “Into the sea with it,” they said, “or burn it,” > Build up a bonfire under it, > This trick of the Greeks, a gift no one can trust, > Or cut it open, search the hollow belly!” One of these, the priest Laocoon, cries out, > Men of Troy, what madness has come over you? > Can you believe the enemy truly gone? > A gift from the Danaans, and no ruse? > Is that Ulysses’ way, as you have known him? > …Some crookedness > Is in this thing. Have no faith in the horse! > Whatever it is, even when Greeks bring gifts > I fear them, gifts and all. Had we only listened to him, Aeneas says, “Troy would stand today—O citadel of Priam, towering still!” The Trojan optimists breach the city walls so the horse can be dragged in, and they ignore the sound of weapons clanging inside the horse’s belly. They also ignore Cassandra, the seer who is cursed never to have her accurate prophecies believed: > There on the very threshold of the breach > It jarred to a halt four times, four times the arms > In the belly thrown together made a sound— > Yet on we strove unmindful, deaf and blind, > To place the monster on our blessed height. > Then, even then, Cassandra’s lips unsealed > The doom to come: lips by a god’s command > Neer believed or heeded by the Trojans. Adding credence to the deception is a liar so skillful that he would put Donald Trump to shame. Sinon, who pretends to have escaped his fellow Greeks after they intended to sacrifice him, vouches that the horse is not a trick. Think of him as those Republicans who assure us that they are not actually suppressing the vote but rather working to insure its integrity. Here’s a taste of what happens next. I choose the scene where Achilles’s son Pyrrhus storms Priam’s palace because it reminds me of the attack on our Capitol. Unlike the Trump insurrectionists, however, Pyrrhus actually “hang Mike Pence”: > Pyrrhus shouldering forward with an axe > Broke down the stony threshold, forced apart > Hinges and brazen door-jambs, and chopped through > One panel of the door, splitting the oak, > To make a window, a great breach. And there > Before their eyes the inner halls lay open, > The courts of Priam and the ancient kings, > With men-at-arms ranked in the vestibule. > From the interior came sounds of weeping, > Pitiful commotion, wails of women > High-pitched, rising in the formal chambers > To ring against the silent golden stars; > And, through the palace, mothers wild with fright > Ran to and fro or clung to doors and kissed them. > Pyrrhus with his father’s brawn stormed on, > No bolts or bars or men availed to stop him: > Under his battering the double doors > Were torn out of their sockets and fell inward. > Sheer force cleared the way: the Greeks broke through > Into the vestibule, cut down the guards, > And made the wide hall seethe with men-at-arms— Virgil then turns to an epic simile to capture the power of the moment. It brings to the mind Trump supporters swarming up the Capitol walls and pouring into the halls: > A tumult greater than when dykes are burst > And a foaming river, swirling out in flood, > Whelms every parapet and races on > Through fields and over all the lowland plains, > Bearing off pens and cattle. Our Cassandras are telling us that January 6 is just a dress rehearsal for what is to come.Posted in Virgil
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JAVERT WOULD NOT SURVIVE IN TODAY’S GOPBy Robin Bates
| Published: May 31, 2021Jackman
and Crowe as Jean Valjean and Inspector JavertTUESDAY
In last Thursday’s post I wondered whether Trump supporters would experience Fantine’s cognitive dysfunction (in Victor Hugo’s _Les Misérables_) when Joe Biden’s helpful programs collide with their image of him as a tyrannical socialist. Fantine is not Hugo’s only character to be confronted with such a dilemma. Javert, the law-and-order inspector, suffers an even more severe case when he discover the convict Jean Valjean to be a virtual saint. By the end of the novel, Javert must confront the fact that this galley-slave saved his life when he could have taken it. Javert, when he finally captures the former convict, responds by allowing mercy to supersede justice—even though his entire identity rests upon upholding the law—and lets him go. His resulting inner torments areintense:
> In what could one trust! That which had been agreed upon was giving > way! What! the defect in society’s armor could be discovered by a > magnanimous wretch! What! an honest servitor of the law could > suddenly find himself caught between two crimes—the crime of > allowing a man to escape and the crime of arresting him! everything > was not settled in the orders given by the State to the functionary! > There might be blind alleys in duty! Throwing Javert off his stride is Valjean’s saintliness. The inspector recalls witnessing Valjean, then the benevolent mayor Monsieur Madeleine, giving up his own freedom to save an innocent manfrom the galleys.
> Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him > as points of support all his life long, had crumbled away in the > presence of this man. Jean Valjean’s generosity towards him, > Javert, crushed him. Other facts which he now recalled, and which he > had formerly treated as lies and folly, now recurred to him as > realities. M. Madeleine reappeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two > figures were superposed in such fashion that they now formed but > one, which was venerable. Javert felt that something terrible was > penetrating his soul—admiration for a convict. Respect for a > galley-slave—is that a possible thing? He shuddered at it, yet > could not escape from it. In vain did he struggle, he was reduced to > confess, in his inmost heart, the sublimity of that wretch. This was> odious.
>
> A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a > convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, > preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than > to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the > heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. > Javert was constrained to admit to himself that this monster> existed.
>
> Things could not go on in this manner. I am far from calling Joe Biden an angel, but he is in fact willing to help all Americans, not just those who voted for him. He is certainly not the monster that is depicted in the fever dreams of the extreme right. He is not the monster that, for the longest time, Valjeanappears to Javert.
So does this mean that enough of the GOP will rise above ideology, as Javert rises above his training, and declare a truce? A recent twitter thread by one Will Stancil makes me pessimistic. As Stancil sees it, we cannot expect the kind of principled wrestling that we witness in Javert. because Trump cultists are not driven by principle. They are driven by laziness and prejudice: > Voters aren’t drawn to Trump’s politics because of a specific > policy view or really even an ideology. They’re drawn to them > because those politics say: “Please, think whatever is easiest. > Indulge in your laziest ideas and basest prejudices. There are no > rules. Save one.>
> “You must support the leader. You cannot abandon the leader. > Support for the leader absolves you of the burden of rationality and > the sin of inconsistency. Indeed, faith in the leader can be proven > by embracing irrationality and rejecting consistency. Prove your> faith.”
>
> That’s why Trumpism and fascism reliably attract the worst and the > weakest, the dumb, the selfish, and the cowardly. It’s an > endlessly flexible vessel for their worst vices, willing to forgive > anything and let them do anything in exchange for loyalty to the> strongman.
Javert is not weak, dumb, selfish, or cowardly. He has principles, and when he find these principles in conflict with something higher—when he finds the human law by which he defines himself in conflict with the human heart—he agonizes: > To be granite and to doubt! to be the statue of Chastisement cast in > one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to become aware of > the fact that one cherishes beneath one’s breast of bronze > something absurd and disobedient which almost resembles a heart! To > come to the pass of returning good for good, although one has said > to oneself up to that day that that good is evil! Later, Hugo describes the conflict as a locomotive of the law experiencing St. Paul’s road-to-Damascus epiphany: > That which was passing in Javert was…the derailment of a soul, the > crushing of a probity which had been irresistibly launched in a > straight line and was breaking against God. It certainly was > singular that the stoker of order, that the engineer of authority, > mounted on the blind iron horse with its rigid road, could be > unseated by a flash of light! that the immovable, the direct, the > correct, the geometrical, the passive, the perfect, could bend! that > there should exist for the locomotive a road to Damascus! Javert’s path of least resistance would be to turn Jean Valjean over to the law and walk away, higher laws be damned. Instead, unable to tolerate the contradictions, he jumps into the Seine. While there are a few principled Republicans who have been wrestling with their souls, most members of Congress are allowing expedience and Trump voters to dictate their moves. They would turn the galley-slave in, wash their hands, and then pretend that the whole thing never happened. For the GOP, things could very well go on in this manner. Posted in Hugo (Victor)|
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ALWAYS WE SHALL WALK WITH THE YOUNG DEADBy Robin Bates
| Published: May 30, 2021 MONDAY – MEMORIAL DAY Edith Wharton supplies today’s Memorial Day poem. It appears that the World War I graveyard she mentions is near the coast, which leads the poet to reflect upon the contrast between natural beauty and the young dead. Because of these senseless deaths, she will no longer be able to simply enjoy the roses and “the jonquil-twinkling meadow.” It is not only the poet who has lost this enjoyment: she imagines those who have died “strain through the sod to see these perfect skies.” There is a hint of regeneration at the end—new wheat springing over the graves—but every recurring season will remind us that that the dead cannot enjoy the beauty that we do. It is a way of capturing the heartbreak of loss. > The Young Dead > By Edith Wharton>
> Ah, how I pity the young dead who gave > All that they were, and might become, that we > With tired eyes should watch this perfect sea > Re-weave its patterning of silver wave > Round scented cliffs of arbutus and bay.>
> No more shall any rose along the way, > The myrtled way that wanders to the shore, > Nor jonquil-twinkling meadow any more, > Nor the warm lavender that takes the spray, > Smell only of sea-salt and the sun.>
> But, through recurring seasons, every one > Shall speak to us with lips the darkness closes, > Shall look at us with eyes that missed the roses, > Clutch us with hands whose work was just begun, > Laid idle now beneath the earth we tread—>
> And always we shall walk with the young dead.— > Ah, how I pity the young dead, whose eyes > Strain through the sod to see these perfect skies, > Who feel the new wheat springing in their stead, > And the lark singing for them overhead! Posted in Wharton (Edith)|
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DIVERSE STONES DANCING IN A SPRINGBy Robin Bates
| Published: May 29, 2021Theodore
Clement, _The Brook in the Woods_SPIRITUAL SUNDAY
Henry Vaughan, the mystical 17th century Welsh Anglican poet, was an early forerunner of Romanticism, a poet who was a major influence on William Wordsworth. Today I have a spring poem in which Vaughan riffs off of a beautiful passage from _Song of Solomon: _“Awake, north wind, and come, south wind! Blow on my garden, that its fragrance may spread everywhere. Let my beloved come into his garden and taste itschoice fruits.”
The poem, as the title indicates, is about a man seeking spiritual “regeneration.” Although his spring walk is “primrose and hung with shade,” the poet is feeling shackled by sin so that he feels it to be “frost within”:> urly winds
> Blasted my infant buds, and sin > Like clouds eclipsed my mind. Spring, no matter how beautiful, is not going to pull him out of his funk. Therefore, he turns to prayer, which reveals to him an eternal spring. (“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,” Shakespeare writes to his lover in Sonnet 18.) This new spring features a burbling fountain within which varicolored stones dance “quick as light.” This heavenly spring seems to well up within the poet as well (an internal spring) and all seems well. He’s not home free yet, however. In the fountain he also hears “the music of her tears” and the heaviest stone, which is “nailed to the center,” recalls the crucifixion. Yet this spring has much more promise than his first spring, for the image then shifts to a bank of flowers, suggesting the resurrection. This is turn is followed by a rushing wind, which points towards Pentecost and the descent of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:2: “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the _rushing_ of a mighty _wind_, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.) This breath of God blows where God pleases. Vaughan, who has been feeling blasted, asks to feel God’s breath as the disciples felt it. After that, he doesn’t care what happens to him: “‘Lord,’ then said I, ‘on me one breath,/ And let me die before my death!’”> Regeneration
>
> By Henry Vaughan>
> A ward, and still in bonds, one day > I stole abroad; > It was high spring, and all the way > Primrosed and hung with shade; > Yet was it frost within, > And surly winds > Blasted my infant buds, and sin > Like clouds eclipsed my mind.>
> Stormed thus, I straight perceived my spring > Mere stage and show, > My walk a monstrous, mountained thing, > Roughcast with rocks and snow; > And as a pilgrim’s eye, > Far from relief, > Measures the melancholy sky, > Then drops and rains for grief,>
> So sighed I upwards still; at last > ’Twixt steps and falls > I reached the pinnacle, where placed > I found a pair of scales; > I took them up and laid > In th’ one, late pains; > The other smoke and pleasures weighed, > But proved the heavier grains.>
> With that some cried, “Away!” Straight I > Obeyed, and led > Full east, a fair, fresh field could spy; > Some called it Jacob’s bed, > A virgin soil which no > Rude feet ere trod, > Where, since he stepped there, only go > Prophets and friends of God.>
> Here I reposed; but scarce well set, > A grove descried > Of stately height, whose branches met > And mixed on every side; > I entered, and once in, > Amazed to see ’t, > Found all was changed, and a new spring > Did all my senses greet.>
> The unthrift sun shot vital gold, > A thousand pieces, > And heaven its azure did unfold, > Checkered with snowy fleeces; > The air was all in spice,> And every bush
> A garland wore; thus fed my eyes, > But all the ear lay hush.>
> Only a little fountain lent > Some use for ears, > And on the dumb shades language spent > The music of her tears; > I drew her near, and found > The cistern full > Of divers stones, some bright and round, > Others ill-shaped and dull.>
> The first, pray mark, as quick as light > Danced through the flood, > But the last, more heavy than the night, > Nailed to the center stood; > I wondered much, but tired > At last with thought, > My restless eye that still desired > As strange an object brought.>
> It was a bank of flowers, where I descried > Though ’twas midday, > Some fast asleep, others broad-eyed > And taking in the ray; > Here, musing long, I heard> A rushing wind
> Which still increased, but whence it stirred > No where I could not find.>
> I turned me round, and to each shade > Dispatched an eye > To see if any leaf had made > Least motion or reply, > But while I listening sought > My mind to ease > By knowing where ’twas, or where not, > It whispered, “Where I please.”>
> “Lord,” then said I, “on me one breath, > And let me die before my death!” Think of the Holy Spirit entering like a gentle spring breeze. Posted in Vaughan (Henry)|
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ON SOOTHING RIOTOUS MOBSBy Robin Bates
| Published: May 27, 2021Rubens,
Neptune Calms the TempestFRIDAY
My faculty discussion group, having finished Dante’s_ Divine Comedy, _has moved on to another monumental work, this one by the man who guides the character Dante through Inferno and Purgatory. In other words, we’re tackling Virgil’s _Aeneid._ We don’t normally talk politics in our group, but our minds couldn’t help but turn to the January 6 insurrection when we got to the scene where the goddess Juno stirs up the winds to harass Aeneas’s fleet. At this point Neptune, angry at how another god has invaded his domain, does what Donald Trump chose not to do. He intervenes to end the chaos: > Neptune himself raises them with his trident, > parts the vast quicksand, tempers the flood, > and glides on weightless wheels, over the tops of the waves. > As often, when rebellion breaks out in a great nation, > and the common rabble rage with passion, and soon stones > and fiery torches fly (frenzy supplying weapons), > if they then see a man of great virtue, and weighty service, > they are silent, and stand there listening attentively: > he sways their passions with his words and soothes their hearts: > so all the uproar of the ocean died, as soon as their father, > gazing over the water, carried through the clear sky, wheeled > his horses, and gave them their head, flying behind in his chariot. Virgil himself is being political in his epic simile since his reference is undoubtedly to his patron, Augustus Caesar. Trump, on the other hand, has never been described as “a man of great virtue and weighty service.” There’s not much soothing of hearts in his repertoire. On his watch and at his instigation, stones and fiery torches flew.Posted in Virgil
| Tagged
Aeneid , August
Caesar ,
Donald Trump
, January 6
insurrection
,
mob rioting ,
Virgil | Leave a
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CAN TRUMPISTS SEE THE REAL BIDEN?By Robin Bates
| Published: May 26, 2021Jean
Valjean (West) saves Fantine (Collins)THURSDAY
According to polls, over half of all Republicans think that Joe Biden stole the 2020 election and that Donald Trump should actually be in the White House. As a number of commentators have pointed out, this is chiefly due to a steady stream of lies by the rightwing media—not only about this election but about fraudulent voter fraud charges going back years. Many of those who believe the “big lie” are good people so it’s painful to watch their delusion. I am reminded of the much-abused Fantine in Victor Hugo’s _Les Misérables. _The mother of Cosette has undergone one abuse after another, including being bled dry by the execrable Thenardiers, who mistreat her daughter while claiming to care for her. Fantine has found work at the factory of the benevolent mayor of Montfermeil, who claims to be Monsieur Madeleine but is actually Jean Valjean, a wanted man. When words gets out about Fantine’s illegitimate daughter, she is fired but without Jean Valjean’s knowledge. Nevertheless, she holds him responsible for her downward spiral. Here’s where I’m going with this. It’s possible to regard, as a monster, someone who actually wants to make your life better. If you live with a misunderstanding—or in the case of Trump supporters, with a lie—you may find yourself spitting on a man who is concerned about your well-being. That’s what happens when Fantine meets themayor.
Everything has come to a head after Fantine, having struck a callous gentleman for playing an ugly prank on her, finds herself facing prison time. Madeleine, however, hears about her case and comes to her rescue. This doesn’t match up with the reality Fantine knows, however, and she commits another infraction: > At the instant when the soldiers laid their hands upon the > unfortunate woman, who would not rise, he emerged from the shadow,> and said:—
>
> “One moment, if you please.”>
> Javert raised his eyes and recognized M. Madeleine. He removed his > hat, and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness:—>
> “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor—”>
> The words “Mr. Mayor” produced a curious effect upon Fantine. > She rose to her feet with one bound, like a spectre springing from > the earth, thrust aside the soldiers with both arms, walked straight > up to M. Madeleine before any one could prevent her, and gazing > intently at him, with a bewildered air, she cried:—>
> “Ah! so it is you who are M. le Maire!”>
> Then she burst into a laugh, and spit in his face. The saintly Jean Valjean, understanding her desperation, astounds herwith his reaction:
> M. Madeleine wiped his face, and said:—>
> “Inspector Javert, set this woman at liberty.” Javert’s job, as he sees it, is to maintain hierarchy and keep the lower classes in their place. Nevertheless, Fantine can’t process what she has heard and strives for another explanation for the freedom she has just been granted: > “At liberty! I am to be allowed to go! I am not to go to prison > for six months! Who said that? It is not possible that anyone could > have said that. I did not hear aright. It cannot have been that > monster of a mayor! Was it you, my good Monsieur Javert, who said > that I was to be set free? Oh, see here! I will tell you about it, > and you will let me go. That monster of a mayor, that old blackguard > of a mayor, is the cause of all. Just imagine, Monsieur Javert, he > turned me out! all because of a pack of rascally women, who gossip > in the workroom. If that is not a horror, what is? To dismiss a poor > girl who is doing her work honestly! And then, further on: > O Monsieur Javert! it was you who gave orders that I am to be set > free, was it not? When Madeleine, having now heard her story, steps forward with the intention of helping her with her rent. Fantine still can’t recognize the situation for what it is: > He said to Fantine, “How much did you say that you owed?”>
> Fantine, who was looking at Javert only, turned towards him:—>
> “Was I speaking to you?”>
> Then, addressing the soldiers:—>
> “Say, you fellows, did you see how I spit in his face? Ah! you old > wretch of a mayor, you came here to frighten me, but I’m not > afraid of you. I am afraid of Monsieur Javert.” Javert isn’t about to let her go but is overruled by Jean Valjean. Fantine, not surprisingly, experiences a moment of cognitivedissonance:
> She had just seen herself a subject of dispute between two opposing > powers. She had seen two men who held in their hands her liberty, > her life, her soul, her child, in combat before her very eyes; one > of these men was drawing her towards darkness, the other was leading > her back towards the light. In this conflict, viewed through the > exaggerations of terror, these two men had appeared to her like two > giants; the one spoke like her demon, the other like her good angel. > The angel had conquered the demon, and, strange to say, that which > made her shudder from head to foot was the fact that this angel, > this liberator, was the very man whom she abhorred, that mayor whom > she had so long regarded as the author of all her woes, that > Madeleine! And at the very moment when she had insulted him in so > hideous a fashion, he had saved her! Had she, then, been mistaken? > Must she change her whole soul? She did not know; she trembled. She > listened in bewilderment, she looked on in affright, and at every > word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the frightful shades of hatred > crumble and melt within her, and something warm and ineffable, > indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and love, dawn in her> heart.
So here’s the question facing America. Will Trump supporters, after all they’ve heard, continue to regard Joe Biden as a demon leading them into socialist darkness? Will they still think this after he gets America vaccinated and back to work? Will they still think this if he manages to sign an infrastructure bill that aids red states no less than blue states? Will they still think this is he’s able to deliver on his promise of subsidized child care and college education? Or will the frightful shades of hatred crumble and melt within them, replaced by something warm and ineffable? Biden has told America what he would like to accomplish. Here’s Madeleine’s promise: > I have heard you. I knew nothing about what you have mentioned. I > believe that it is true, and I feel that it is true. I was even > ignorant of the fact that you had left my shop. Why did you not > apply to me? But here; I will pay your debts, I will send for your > child, or you shall go to her. You shall live here, in Paris, or > where you please. I undertake the care of your child and yourself. > You shall not work any longer if you do not like. I will give all > the money you require. You shall be honest and happy once more. And > listen! I declare to you that if all is as you say,—and I do not > doubt it,—you have never ceased to be virtuous and holy in the > sight of God. Oh! poor woman. The GOP hopes to ride the big lie to electoral victory. Biden hopes to break through to Trump supporters by helping them. How the story endsis up in the air.
Posted in Hugo (Victor)|
Tagged Election 2020, GOP
, Joe Biden
, Miserables
, Trump
supporters
, Victor
Hugo | Leave
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