Near the beginning of Charles Williams's War in Heaven, I've just read a scene emblematic of the theme of all his novels. It begins, "Adrian Rackstraw opened the oven, put the chicken carefully inside, and shut the door." Adrian then realizes he has forgotten to buy potatoes and goes to the vegetable shop frequented by Mrs. Rackstraw. But after buying the potatoes, he becomes distracted by the sight of a railway station, and rides away to Brighton on a train. Then comes the key sentence: "But, before it [the train] reached its destination, his mother, entering the room with her usual swiftness, caught the station with her foot and sent it flying across the kitchen floor."
Now, the scene was already weird before that sentence. I knew Williams was up to his tricks. Why would Adrian leave a chicken in the oven? Why would he buy potatoes and then board the Brighton train? So I was ready for a uncanny surprise. But I had to read that last sentence three times before I realized that the surprise was not supernatural but mundane. Adrian is a child, and the whole scene -- oven, potato monger, railway station and all -- played out in his child's mind, assisted of course by various toys strewn around his mother's kitchen.
Charles Williams wants to tell us that our worlds are like Adrian's. Each of us constructs a habit of interpreting the earthly toys around us, a routine that continually presses things and their meanings out of consciousness as the routine becomes ever more automatic. And yet the curtain that we draw around our private fantasy is a thin veil, ready in an instant to be torn in two from top to bottom. Every commonplace object we interact with exudes the aroma of its Maker, and He will intrude upon our playworld like a blinding flash of lightning if we do not stop and smell the humdrum.
In Many Dimensions, two ordinary people who haven't thought about God enough to decide what they think about Him find his power in a small amber stone. In The Greater Trumps, characters watch as chess pieces rise into the air and begin to dance. And in another Williams novel (I won't spoil anything), a character spends quite a while trying to understand the dullness of the world she walks in before she realizes she has died and must find a spiritual grounding for her new form of life. Of course she must find it in this dull world, but it's ready to be seen in every stone and lamppost and shop window everywhere she turns, and if she only gains the right understanding, its holy colors will become brilliantly apparent to her. For Williams and his protagonists, every object is both a lump of matter destined for dust and a beacon ready to shine the light of a more fundamental spiritual reality for those with eyes to see.
What could be more material, more secular than the steel and glass doors of a London business office in the 1930s? Yet in a Charles Williams novel, even doors such as these can serve as mystical portals to a spiritual world. Williams first describes such doors in War in Heaven as being so arranged as to reflect each other in infinite regression, and tells the reader that the kaleidoscopic effect regularly disoriented visitors so that they didn't know which door led where. And perhaps it's just as well; those who find the offices of Persimmons Publishing enter a realm of robbery, murder, and devil worship.
Devil worship? Yes, conflicts of many types occur in these novels. Each book finds some character viewing one particular lump of matter as especially endowed with spiritual power -- some character who sees the spirituality of the thing only as a means to personal power or knowledge, and missing its significance as a bearer of the Craftsman's hallmark. The talisman he uses in his quest for self-realization could be a rock, a painting, a ladder, some skin cream, the Holy Grail, or another human being, but some character always tries to overcome the world through his own strength, to pull back the veil himself and find the barely hiding spirit. The problem is, Williams points out, people who love only themselves and use things and other people as mere tools always end up looking for the wrong spirit behind the curtain.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The Best of Enemies
Someone -- I think it was Napoleon -- once said that the fiercest enemies have much in common and must agree about the most important matters. Two generals at war with each other, for instance, might agree that some piece of land is valuable and worth spending human lives on. The Democrat and the Republican in Congress, denouncing each other in the most vitriolic terms, agree that talking and voting make for the best way to settle an issue and come to a decision.
Amid its talking trees and flying horses and magic fountains, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso also presents a lot of fighting. Rinaldo and Sacripante fight to see who wins Angelica; both men agree Angelica is a worthy prize. (Angelica, unwilling to take either of them, simply runs away before they finish their fight.) Bradamante fights the sorcerer Atlante in order to free the knights held captive in his magic castle; both parties agree that knights are valuable. And Lurcanio and Ariodante fight to determine Ginevra's guilt or innocence; both sides agree on the vital importance of a woman's chastity and on the necessity of fighting for truth.
This last match-up stands as an example of the medieval practice of Trial by Combat, a curious custom I've been thinking about off and on for the last few years, ever since the last time I read Richard II and noticed its importance in that play. Two combatants fight for opposing viewpoints, but both trust God to grant victory to the one in the right. I suppose it's basically a pious duel.
As it happens, the topic came up in my reading earlier this year, as well. Bonhoeffer, praising medieval Christendom, speaks with admiration in his Ethics about what he sees as its attitude to war: fight fairly and accept the result as God's judgment. By contrast, says Bonhoeffer, the nation engaging in modern warfare takes survival of the homeland for the absolute, admits no possibility of the enemy's being right, and stops at nothing in order to achieve victory. Perhaps he would have difficulty finding anything that modern enemies agree on. But in his ideal view of European war in the Middle Ages, both parties agree in their Christian faith and in their reliance on God's ability to reveal his will. Medieval warriors come to battle as enemies and walk away as brothers. If war between Christians can be justified at all, after all, it must be founded on Jesus' instruction to love our enemies.
Ariosto got my attention by adding a new element to this picture of mutually respectful enemies. Writing around 1500, while Muslim nations attacked Europe, Ariosto's epic tells about a similar situation seven hundred years earlier, when the Mohammedans of Spain poured across the Pyrenees to attack Charlemagne's Christian empire. These two forces don't share a religion, and each intends to force the other off the land of "France" by killing as many enemy soldiers as possible. They agree that the land is worth fighting for. But do they know they agree, and can they honor each other for fighting over that land in the name of God (in their respective understandings of Him)?
Ariosto thought so. In Book I, he recounts the story of two knights, one from each army, wounded and exhausted from battle, separated from their comrades, and lost in the woods. Rinaldo and Ferraù (for such are their names) find each other and one horse. From what we know of recent war and from war movies, we in the twenty-first century would not be surprised to find them fighting ruthlessly for the horse. We might even expect one of them to ambush the other for the sake of that horse. But Rinaldo and Ferraù live in, as ObiWan would say, a more civilized age. They shake hands and share the horse. Ariosto writes this:
But Ariosto reminds us that the West once recognized a fourth way. Openly acknowledging one's differences with another person, far from being a sign of intolerance, actually shows respect. It implies that the topics of disagreement are important, that truth matters, and that the other person's beliefs represent honest, human attempts at finding that truth, attempts worth examining and addressing. If I am tempted to think that no Christian and Muslim can be hospitable to each other, debate their differences respectfully, and dine together in the enjoyment of all they agree on, I only have to reread the story of Patriarch Timothy and Caliph Mahdi. And if I forget that this could be true even of warriors who would gladly kill each other another day in the context of a battle, I need only review the encounter of Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin.
Amid its talking trees and flying horses and magic fountains, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso also presents a lot of fighting. Rinaldo and Sacripante fight to see who wins Angelica; both men agree Angelica is a worthy prize. (Angelica, unwilling to take either of them, simply runs away before they finish their fight.) Bradamante fights the sorcerer Atlante in order to free the knights held captive in his magic castle; both parties agree that knights are valuable. And Lurcanio and Ariodante fight to determine Ginevra's guilt or innocence; both sides agree on the vital importance of a woman's chastity and on the necessity of fighting for truth.
This last match-up stands as an example of the medieval practice of Trial by Combat, a curious custom I've been thinking about off and on for the last few years, ever since the last time I read Richard II and noticed its importance in that play. Two combatants fight for opposing viewpoints, but both trust God to grant victory to the one in the right. I suppose it's basically a pious duel.
As it happens, the topic came up in my reading earlier this year, as well. Bonhoeffer, praising medieval Christendom, speaks with admiration in his Ethics about what he sees as its attitude to war: fight fairly and accept the result as God's judgment. By contrast, says Bonhoeffer, the nation engaging in modern warfare takes survival of the homeland for the absolute, admits no possibility of the enemy's being right, and stops at nothing in order to achieve victory. Perhaps he would have difficulty finding anything that modern enemies agree on. But in his ideal view of European war in the Middle Ages, both parties agree in their Christian faith and in their reliance on God's ability to reveal his will. Medieval warriors come to battle as enemies and walk away as brothers. If war between Christians can be justified at all, after all, it must be founded on Jesus' instruction to love our enemies.
Ariosto got my attention by adding a new element to this picture of mutually respectful enemies. Writing around 1500, while Muslim nations attacked Europe, Ariosto's epic tells about a similar situation seven hundred years earlier, when the Mohammedans of Spain poured across the Pyrenees to attack Charlemagne's Christian empire. These two forces don't share a religion, and each intends to force the other off the land of "France" by killing as many enemy soldiers as possible. They agree that the land is worth fighting for. But do they know they agree, and can they honor each other for fighting over that land in the name of God (in their respective understandings of Him)?
Ariosto thought so. In Book I, he recounts the story of two knights, one from each army, wounded and exhausted from battle, separated from their comrades, and lost in the woods. Rinaldo and Ferraù (for such are their names) find each other and one horse. From what we know of recent war and from war movies, we in the twenty-first century would not be surprised to find them fighting ruthlessly for the horse. We might even expect one of them to ambush the other for the sake of that horse. But Rinaldo and Ferraù live in, as ObiWan would say, a more civilized age. They shake hands and share the horse. Ariosto writes this:
O noble chivalry of knights of yore!Living in an era of Muslim assaults on the West, Ariosto wrote of an earlier age of Muslim assaults on the West. Coincidentally, I'm reading the book at yet another time of Muslim assaults and threats of assault on the West, and of the twenty-first century's version of the counterattacking Crusades. The parallels are striking; yet the West is now decidedly less Christian than it was in the day of either Charlemagne or Ariosto. The West's current postmodern culture has difficulty agreeing to disagree. Doing so requires saying that someone is wrong, and that action depends on a belief in Truth, the denial of which forms one of the fundamental truths of the postmodern creed. If we can't openly celebrate another person's culture and character and preferences today, we tend to acknowledge only two other options: (1) maintaining a polite silence about differences or (2) denouncing the other party as something less than human. I would have to search a long time among non-Muslims in this country today to find anything other than one of these three attitudes toward the adherents of Islam.
Here were two rivals, of opposed belief,
Who from the blows exchanged were bruised and sore,
Aching from head to foot without relief,
Yet to each other no resentment bore.
Through the dark wood and winding paths, as if
Two friends, they go. Against the charger's sides
Four spurs are thrust until the road divides.
But Ariosto reminds us that the West once recognized a fourth way. Openly acknowledging one's differences with another person, far from being a sign of intolerance, actually shows respect. It implies that the topics of disagreement are important, that truth matters, and that the other person's beliefs represent honest, human attempts at finding that truth, attempts worth examining and addressing. If I am tempted to think that no Christian and Muslim can be hospitable to each other, debate their differences respectfully, and dine together in the enjoyment of all they agree on, I only have to reread the story of Patriarch Timothy and Caliph Mahdi. And if I forget that this could be true even of warriors who would gladly kill each other another day in the context of a battle, I need only review the encounter of Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Full Circle
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso holds a very important place in the history of this reading project. I was reading something or other by C. S. Lewis about twenty years ago, and he mentioned OF -- tossed it off casually as an example of some point, as if he expected everyone to have read it. I felt my chest turn soft and implode. I wasn't sure I had even heard of this work that Lewis considered a must-read classic. I spent a few moments frustrated with my high-school and university education, and a couple more moments regretful that I hadn't read more real classics when I was younger.
I had had similar thoughts many times before, but this time the foolishness of my complaints struck me. I was finished with school, had a job and some time, and I told myself, "If you want to be able to say you've read these classics, just start reading." (When you have conversations with yourself, do you say "you" or do you say "I"? Or am I only embarrassing myself by revealing that I have conversations with myself?) So I started looking for books, bought the Britannica set, followed their ten-year plan, and had so much fun that I put together my own, second ten-year reading plan, the plan I'm working on now. But I got the second schedule almost finished before I realized: I hadn't included Orlando Furioso! So I found a place for it beginning in year 5, and just two days ago, after twenty years, I began the work that started me reading the classics.
From the editor's notes in The Faerie Queene, I knew that Orlando would be very similar. And, sure enough, I've been reading complex, intertwined stories of knights and ladies who spend a lot of time wandering through the woods, looking for adventure, splitting from their companions, meeting characters from other threads of the tapestry, and telling each other stories of other knights and ladies who wander through the woods looking for adventure.
Unlike Spenser, though, Ariosto gives his epic a much more realistic tone. The tale takes place in a time from our history: the reign of Charlemagne. He mentions familiar places like India and France, and he includes names of many historical figures among those of the characters of his story. And the characters he created mostly seem like humans, with human strengths and foibles, not the types and allegories that populate The Faerie Queene.
On the other hand, after only about fifty pages, I've encountered a flying horse, a castle made of steel, a pool filled with natural love potion, a book that spirits jump out of, a ring that negates other magic, and a shield emitting an intense red light that stuns everyone it strikes. It's an interesting world, and the verse of Barbara Reynolds's translation is lovely. So now I can say it: Orlando Furioso is worth the wait, and the last twenty years of reading make sense.
I had had similar thoughts many times before, but this time the foolishness of my complaints struck me. I was finished with school, had a job and some time, and I told myself, "If you want to be able to say you've read these classics, just start reading." (When you have conversations with yourself, do you say "you" or do you say "I"? Or am I only embarrassing myself by revealing that I have conversations with myself?) So I started looking for books, bought the Britannica set, followed their ten-year plan, and had so much fun that I put together my own, second ten-year reading plan, the plan I'm working on now. But I got the second schedule almost finished before I realized: I hadn't included Orlando Furioso! So I found a place for it beginning in year 5, and just two days ago, after twenty years, I began the work that started me reading the classics.
From the editor's notes in The Faerie Queene, I knew that Orlando would be very similar. And, sure enough, I've been reading complex, intertwined stories of knights and ladies who spend a lot of time wandering through the woods, looking for adventure, splitting from their companions, meeting characters from other threads of the tapestry, and telling each other stories of other knights and ladies who wander through the woods looking for adventure.
Unlike Spenser, though, Ariosto gives his epic a much more realistic tone. The tale takes place in a time from our history: the reign of Charlemagne. He mentions familiar places like India and France, and he includes names of many historical figures among those of the characters of his story. And the characters he created mostly seem like humans, with human strengths and foibles, not the types and allegories that populate The Faerie Queene.
On the other hand, after only about fifty pages, I've encountered a flying horse, a castle made of steel, a pool filled with natural love potion, a book that spirits jump out of, a ring that negates other magic, and a shield emitting an intense red light that stuns everyone it strikes. It's an interesting world, and the verse of Barbara Reynolds's translation is lovely. So now I can say it: Orlando Furioso is worth the wait, and the last twenty years of reading make sense.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
An Organized Summary
No, that title doesn't refer to my post for today but rather to St. Thomas Aquinas's 6200-page summary of Christian theology, the Summa Theologica. Sixty-two hundred pages. If you read one page a day, you would finish reading the Summa in seventeen years. If you read one page each minute (good luck!) without sleeping or any other breaks, it would take you over four days to read the book. It's five times as long as War and Peace, and yet Thomas calls it a summary and says in the preface that it's suitable for beginners.
It's going to take me about thirteen years to finish the whole thing, and I certainly couldn't understand anything in it at first. But Thomas's characterization of the work is defensible: any student of his era who was ready to tackle it would have studied the philosophy and theology necessary to make it accessible, and a person like me making his way through it over the course of many years never gets lost because of its tight organization.
The whole work is divided into four (slightly awkwardly numbered) parts and each part into a few large treatises: the Treatise on God, the Treatise on the Trinity, the Treatise on Man, the Treatise on Grace, and so on. Each treatise is divided into "questions," each of which covers one subtopic. The Treatise on God, for instance, includes questions on the perfection of God, the goodness of God, the eternity of God, the will of God, the justice and and mercy of God, etc. Then each of these questions is divided into several (usually four to six) "articles." Each article asks a question, gives reasons for answering it one way (which will prove to be the wrong way), then cites a short reason for the opposite answer, followed by the heart of the article outlining what Thomas hopes is a sufficient justification for the second answer, and finishes with short rebuttals to the first, incorrect attempts to answer the question.
Today's reading included an article asking if habits sometimes come directly from God. At first, Thomas says, it seems the answer is no. God gave humans natural means of developing good habits; why should He bypass the system He created? Thomas counters this preliminary answer first with a passage from Ecclesiasticus saying that God filled someone with wisdom and understanding, showing that God sometimes doesn't wait for his children to learn things on their own. What follows is a brief, clear description of two situations in which it makes sense for God to bypass nature and simply implant a habit. The first regards human disposition in favor of God and ultimate happiness; such disposition lies beyond man's natural powers and must come by direct divine infusion, he points out. Second, God sometimes wishes to display his power miraculously, and so He might, for instance, heal someone without the help of a physician or give the Apostles knowledge of various languages without studying them. The article ends with pointed responses to the first arguments. Two days ago I learned what Thomas means by habit. Yesterday, I learned where in our bodies or souls various habits reside. Today I learned and have become convinced that habits come sometimes from nature, sometimes from human actions based in nature, and sometimes by direct divine intervention.
Bit by bit in this way, Thomas builds up his story. The message of the entire work goes something like this. God is perfect and self-sufficient. From his essence of love, though, He created a world that displays in its wondrous diversity countless aspects of his glory and wisdom. Everything other than God that exists came from God and must be directed back to God in order to fulfill its purpose. Man and some angels, however, engaged the will that sets them apart from the rest of creation and sought fulfillment elsewhere than in their Source. Man was created to know God and find perfect happiness in the vision of God's Blessed Face, but such knowledge is beyond man's intellectual capabilities, and redirecting his will to God is beyond the power of man's will. So God provides grace (partly explained in the article I read this morning) for restoration. The Blessed, who come to know God in this grace, live lives of faith, hope, and love, and in the end of time God resurrects their bodies, reconstitutes their uniquely human beings, and rewards them with eternal enjoyment of presence before his Face.
The organization of the book follows the history Thomas outlines. Just as a man starts from God, departs from God, and returns to God, so Thomas's theological summary first describes God ("describes" is not the right word, but with God, Whose essence is beyond our complete comprehension, it is impossible to find the right word), then man, and then the reunion of man with God. What plan could be simpler?
In the hands of a lesser intellect (which would mean almost anyone else you can imagine), a detailed philosophical examination of this theology would become hopelessly knotted somewhere around page 1100. But Thomas keeps every thread straight and in its place. When I read yesterday that habits are more than powers, I checked my notes from previous years and found in Part I, Question 87, Article 2 that I had written, "The human intellect does not know itself by habits (which are between powers and act)." I think Thomas must have had the whole picture clear in his head the entire time he wrote, just as the grown oak is encoded in the acorn, and then watched the organism grow and branch and blossom as he set it to paper.
I climb up this stately oak annually, each year reaching higher branches, and the view is almost overwhelmingly beautiful. Each yearly ascent gives me courage and inspiration to press on in life, praising God both for the blessings of creation and for his grace, and yearning for ever better views until I reach the ultimate vision: the reward of the vision of his Face and knowing Him as I am known.
It's going to take me about thirteen years to finish the whole thing, and I certainly couldn't understand anything in it at first. But Thomas's characterization of the work is defensible: any student of his era who was ready to tackle it would have studied the philosophy and theology necessary to make it accessible, and a person like me making his way through it over the course of many years never gets lost because of its tight organization.
The whole work is divided into four (slightly awkwardly numbered) parts and each part into a few large treatises: the Treatise on God, the Treatise on the Trinity, the Treatise on Man, the Treatise on Grace, and so on. Each treatise is divided into "questions," each of which covers one subtopic. The Treatise on God, for instance, includes questions on the perfection of God, the goodness of God, the eternity of God, the will of God, the justice and and mercy of God, etc. Then each of these questions is divided into several (usually four to six) "articles." Each article asks a question, gives reasons for answering it one way (which will prove to be the wrong way), then cites a short reason for the opposite answer, followed by the heart of the article outlining what Thomas hopes is a sufficient justification for the second answer, and finishes with short rebuttals to the first, incorrect attempts to answer the question.
Today's reading included an article asking if habits sometimes come directly from God. At first, Thomas says, it seems the answer is no. God gave humans natural means of developing good habits; why should He bypass the system He created? Thomas counters this preliminary answer first with a passage from Ecclesiasticus saying that God filled someone with wisdom and understanding, showing that God sometimes doesn't wait for his children to learn things on their own. What follows is a brief, clear description of two situations in which it makes sense for God to bypass nature and simply implant a habit. The first regards human disposition in favor of God and ultimate happiness; such disposition lies beyond man's natural powers and must come by direct divine infusion, he points out. Second, God sometimes wishes to display his power miraculously, and so He might, for instance, heal someone without the help of a physician or give the Apostles knowledge of various languages without studying them. The article ends with pointed responses to the first arguments. Two days ago I learned what Thomas means by habit. Yesterday, I learned where in our bodies or souls various habits reside. Today I learned and have become convinced that habits come sometimes from nature, sometimes from human actions based in nature, and sometimes by direct divine intervention.
Bit by bit in this way, Thomas builds up his story. The message of the entire work goes something like this. God is perfect and self-sufficient. From his essence of love, though, He created a world that displays in its wondrous diversity countless aspects of his glory and wisdom. Everything other than God that exists came from God and must be directed back to God in order to fulfill its purpose. Man and some angels, however, engaged the will that sets them apart from the rest of creation and sought fulfillment elsewhere than in their Source. Man was created to know God and find perfect happiness in the vision of God's Blessed Face, but such knowledge is beyond man's intellectual capabilities, and redirecting his will to God is beyond the power of man's will. So God provides grace (partly explained in the article I read this morning) for restoration. The Blessed, who come to know God in this grace, live lives of faith, hope, and love, and in the end of time God resurrects their bodies, reconstitutes their uniquely human beings, and rewards them with eternal enjoyment of presence before his Face.
The organization of the book follows the history Thomas outlines. Just as a man starts from God, departs from God, and returns to God, so Thomas's theological summary first describes God ("describes" is not the right word, but with God, Whose essence is beyond our complete comprehension, it is impossible to find the right word), then man, and then the reunion of man with God. What plan could be simpler?
In the hands of a lesser intellect (which would mean almost anyone else you can imagine), a detailed philosophical examination of this theology would become hopelessly knotted somewhere around page 1100. But Thomas keeps every thread straight and in its place. When I read yesterday that habits are more than powers, I checked my notes from previous years and found in Part I, Question 87, Article 2 that I had written, "The human intellect does not know itself by habits (which are between powers and act)." I think Thomas must have had the whole picture clear in his head the entire time he wrote, just as the grown oak is encoded in the acorn, and then watched the organism grow and branch and blossom as he set it to paper.
I climb up this stately oak annually, each year reaching higher branches, and the view is almost overwhelmingly beautiful. Each yearly ascent gives me courage and inspiration to press on in life, praising God both for the blessings of creation and for his grace, and yearning for ever better views until I reach the ultimate vision: the reward of the vision of his Face and knowing Him as I am known.
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Barbara Reynolds
In 2002, I attended the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute in Oxford and Cambridge, a two-week conference honoring arguably the most successful Oxbridge don and professor of the twentieth century with lectures by philosophers, physicists, and cultural critics, academic papers by professors from around the world, and artistic presentations of the highest caliber. My OU colleague Michael Scaperlanda went as well that year, so we spent a lot of time together over the two weeks. Sometime in the first few days in Oxford, we casually met a friendly, elderly lady named Barbara and kept up a superficial acquaintance with her that involved smiling and saying "hello" whenever we saw her in passing.
One day after the conference had moved to Cambridge, Barbara came around a corner, walked quickly up to the two of us, laid her fingers lightly on my chest, and asked, "Have you two thought what your legacy will be?" I see her now (as David Copperfield would say), looking around in an unfocused way as if made blind to the material reality around her by the sudden importance of her question. Her very short body is topped by gently waving white hair, and she is dressed tastefully although perhaps a bit absent-mindedly. Michael and I look at each other, struck dumb but amused by the adventure. Before either of us can get even something like "What do you mean?" to our lips, Barbara places the same fingers on her own chest, sighs, and says, "I think the only legacy worth leaving is love, don't you?" She suddenly returns to the material world and fixes us each in turn with her penetrating gaze. Michael and I quickly agree with her. How could we not?
I will admit that I thought at that moment that Barbara was probably a kindly Christian widow, a little dim and perhaps a bit daft (I admit it to my shame), who went to the conference because she had the money and didn't know what else to do with it. She probably didn't understand the lectures if she went to them and smiled at the art without engaging it.
The truth out-Boyled Susan Boyle. Intrigued by her question and her unexpected need to mull it over briefly with us, Michael and I started asking around about her. We first learned her full name: Barbara Reynolds. We heard that she had done a little acting. One of the conference organizers told us she had been Dorothy Sayers's secretary. Following the Dorothy Sayers lead with an online search, I discovered that Barbara Reynolds completed Sayers's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. I found one critic who said her completion improved on her mentor's work. So much for smiling blandly at poetry without understanding it.
As it turns out, Barbara Reynolds is a world-class scholar. She was a lecturer in Italian at Cambridge, wrote a biography of Dante as well as two books about Dorothy Sayers, and edited a five-volume collection of Sayers's letters. She also translated Dante's Vita Nuova and -- the reason I'm writing about her today -- Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.
In her introduction to Orlando, which I've been reading the last couple of days, Reynolds previews highlights of the poem, explains special challenges the translator of this particular work faces, tells about Ariosto's life, points out political meanings behind certain themes in the epic, traces Ariosto's influence through several of the most prominent English poets from Shakespeare to Byron, and gives a brief history of previous English translations of OF. And of course she does it all in impeccable prose that regularly grounds itself in deep, rich scholarship. I love reading these long translators' and editors' introductions to classic masterpieces. I know I won't remember all the details and that I will mostly enjoy the story, the language, and (in this case) the references to history and Christian doctrine that I catch on my own, without help. But I will catch a few allusions more because of the introduction, and the whole reading experience will be imbued by the historical context I now have a beginner's understanding of.
Barbara is still alive as far as I know. She was born in 1914, so she is almost one hundred years old. In that long life, she has taught hundreds at one of the world's greatest universities, and entertained and informed thousands -- perhaps hundreds of thousands -- with her biographies and translations of some of the greatest poetry ever written. Very few people could boast of such accomplishments, and yet she told me one afternoon in Robinson College, Cambridge, that she wanted her legacy to be love. I have no doubt she's been working on that legacy for many years and has turned countless strangers into friends, as she did Michael Scaperlanda and me, with a pleasant smile and candid friendliness.
One day after the conference had moved to Cambridge, Barbara came around a corner, walked quickly up to the two of us, laid her fingers lightly on my chest, and asked, "Have you two thought what your legacy will be?" I see her now (as David Copperfield would say), looking around in an unfocused way as if made blind to the material reality around her by the sudden importance of her question. Her very short body is topped by gently waving white hair, and she is dressed tastefully although perhaps a bit absent-mindedly. Michael and I look at each other, struck dumb but amused by the adventure. Before either of us can get even something like "What do you mean?" to our lips, Barbara places the same fingers on her own chest, sighs, and says, "I think the only legacy worth leaving is love, don't you?" She suddenly returns to the material world and fixes us each in turn with her penetrating gaze. Michael and I quickly agree with her. How could we not?
I will admit that I thought at that moment that Barbara was probably a kindly Christian widow, a little dim and perhaps a bit daft (I admit it to my shame), who went to the conference because she had the money and didn't know what else to do with it. She probably didn't understand the lectures if she went to them and smiled at the art without engaging it.
The truth out-Boyled Susan Boyle. Intrigued by her question and her unexpected need to mull it over briefly with us, Michael and I started asking around about her. We first learned her full name: Barbara Reynolds. We heard that she had done a little acting. One of the conference organizers told us she had been Dorothy Sayers's secretary. Following the Dorothy Sayers lead with an online search, I discovered that Barbara Reynolds completed Sayers's translation of Dante's Divine Comedy. I found one critic who said her completion improved on her mentor's work. So much for smiling blandly at poetry without understanding it.
As it turns out, Barbara Reynolds is a world-class scholar. She was a lecturer in Italian at Cambridge, wrote a biography of Dante as well as two books about Dorothy Sayers, and edited a five-volume collection of Sayers's letters. She also translated Dante's Vita Nuova and -- the reason I'm writing about her today -- Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.
In her introduction to Orlando, which I've been reading the last couple of days, Reynolds previews highlights of the poem, explains special challenges the translator of this particular work faces, tells about Ariosto's life, points out political meanings behind certain themes in the epic, traces Ariosto's influence through several of the most prominent English poets from Shakespeare to Byron, and gives a brief history of previous English translations of OF. And of course she does it all in impeccable prose that regularly grounds itself in deep, rich scholarship. I love reading these long translators' and editors' introductions to classic masterpieces. I know I won't remember all the details and that I will mostly enjoy the story, the language, and (in this case) the references to history and Christian doctrine that I catch on my own, without help. But I will catch a few allusions more because of the introduction, and the whole reading experience will be imbued by the historical context I now have a beginner's understanding of.
Barbara is still alive as far as I know. She was born in 1914, so she is almost one hundred years old. In that long life, she has taught hundreds at one of the world's greatest universities, and entertained and informed thousands -- perhaps hundreds of thousands -- with her biographies and translations of some of the greatest poetry ever written. Very few people could boast of such accomplishments, and yet she told me one afternoon in Robinson College, Cambridge, that she wanted her legacy to be love. I have no doubt she's been working on that legacy for many years and has turned countless strangers into friends, as she did Michael Scaperlanda and me, with a pleasant smile and candid friendliness.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Coming Up for Air
My recent reading adventures have reminded me of an experience in swimming lessons long, long ago. We were in the deep diving pool, and the instructor kept tossing a hard rubber block into the water and telling one of us to dive down and retrieve it. I watched other boys bring up the block, so I could see it was a doable task. But when my turn came, I encountered some problems. I had probably never gone six feet under before, and I found out that becomes harder at about that depth to keep going father down. But I expelled some air as I had been taught, and I went farther. I certainly had never gone down ten feet before, and the painful pressure on my ears surprised me. But a little facial stretch and a quick second to build some courage brought new resolve, and I kept going. Then the last two feet almost stopped me. I reached for the block only to find it was farther away than it looked. Darned refraction! I also started wondering whether I had the air to make it back up from eleven feet, let alone twelve. And my ears hurt, very badly. But the other boys had done it, so I pushed out more air and gave one more kick and grabbed the rubber block.
No one told me how heavy it was! I relaxed and pointed my body upwards, but I went nowhere. I gave a kick and moved a bit, and then tried using my hands -- aggh, my one free hand -- and moved a bit faster. The pain moved from my ears to my lungs as I rose, and I began to have serious doubts that I would make it to the top. At some point, all thoughts and doubts disappeared, and my body just started doing what it had to do to survive. I could see the wavy surface above me but had no idea how far away it was. It looked like I had three more feet to go, then five, then two, then ten.
Then suddenly things were different. I heard the world again and quit going up. Without waiting for my mind to think it through, my mouth opened up and sucked in air as fast as possible. Instantly I knew what to do again, how to move, how to reach the side of the pool. I had the use of both hands again. Where was the rubber block? Did I drop it? Did the instructor take it? Was it just suddenly much lighter than it seemed twelve feet of water pressure ago? I don't know. I only know that I didn't have to go down again.
I struggled more with Hegel over the last two weeks than I thought I would, and the experience felt very much like that dive. It became harder and harder, and my mind started thinking that I might not be able to make it through another twenty pages without collapsing into idiocy. But at the beginning of the year, knowing I would probably have some difficulties with this dense philosophy, even if I didn't know their extent, I scheduled Aquinas after Hegel, because reading Aquinas often feels like breathing sweet, precious oxygen into burning lungs. He's just so orderly and sensible and so very much in love with God.
I remember distinctly a sensation of utter mystification the first time I tried reading a page of the Summa Theologica. I was in my twenties, and I hadn't read any Aristotle. Fifteen years later, with a grounding in "The Philosopher's" system, Aquinas's great work is not just easy to read but encouraging and inspiring. "Inspiration" by its roots refers to the intake of breath (whether one's own or God's), so the memory of the swimming lesson comes naturally. Last week I wasn't sure I could see the surface, but today the weight is gone and forgotten, and I'm breathing with joy.
No one told me how heavy it was! I relaxed and pointed my body upwards, but I went nowhere. I gave a kick and moved a bit, and then tried using my hands -- aggh, my one free hand -- and moved a bit faster. The pain moved from my ears to my lungs as I rose, and I began to have serious doubts that I would make it to the top. At some point, all thoughts and doubts disappeared, and my body just started doing what it had to do to survive. I could see the wavy surface above me but had no idea how far away it was. It looked like I had three more feet to go, then five, then two, then ten.
Then suddenly things were different. I heard the world again and quit going up. Without waiting for my mind to think it through, my mouth opened up and sucked in air as fast as possible. Instantly I knew what to do again, how to move, how to reach the side of the pool. I had the use of both hands again. Where was the rubber block? Did I drop it? Did the instructor take it? Was it just suddenly much lighter than it seemed twelve feet of water pressure ago? I don't know. I only know that I didn't have to go down again.
I struggled more with Hegel over the last two weeks than I thought I would, and the experience felt very much like that dive. It became harder and harder, and my mind started thinking that I might not be able to make it through another twenty pages without collapsing into idiocy. But at the beginning of the year, knowing I would probably have some difficulties with this dense philosophy, even if I didn't know their extent, I scheduled Aquinas after Hegel, because reading Aquinas often feels like breathing sweet, precious oxygen into burning lungs. He's just so orderly and sensible and so very much in love with God.
I remember distinctly a sensation of utter mystification the first time I tried reading a page of the Summa Theologica. I was in my twenties, and I hadn't read any Aristotle. Fifteen years later, with a grounding in "The Philosopher's" system, Aquinas's great work is not just easy to read but encouraging and inspiring. "Inspiration" by its roots refers to the intake of breath (whether one's own or God's), so the memory of the swimming lesson comes naturally. Last week I wasn't sure I could see the surface, but today the weight is gone and forgotten, and I'm breathing with joy.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
A Dialectical Bog
The Hegel readings got very tough this week. I tried to take notes and follow along, but many long passages made no sense at all to me. Most of the problem lies with me: I just don't have the background, the philosophical skills, or the time to read it until I understand it. Of course, some of the problem may be Hegel's: it could be that he doesn't ultimately make sense. My first impression of many sections is that I'm reading the work of a madman dancing incessantly in circles around the same dense tangle of words that have meaning (or seem to have meaning) only to him -- and that impression could be partly true. But many people understand Hegel better than I, so I know I've simply set myself a frustrating task beyond my capabilities.
But I find a few consolations here in my Hegelian Slough of Despond. First, learning nothing is learning something. That sentence actually sounds dangerously like Hegel, who posed that Being and Nothing are not contradictory but rather inseparably entwined: the one implies the other and in fact is the other. (If you can think of Nothing, then Nothing is the content of your thought, and since your mind is operating, the content of its thought must be something, or some Thing. Thus Nothing is a Thing: it has and is Being.) But I don't have a Hegelian meaning in mind. I mean that if I learn nothing of the content of Hegel's writing on a given day, I have at least learned that I can't understand him, in addition to learning what his writing style is like and what terms were important to him. I didn't know just how difficult this would be until a couple of weeks ago, so that's progress.
Second, suspecting that I might not enjoy every day of my experience with Hegel, I scheduled the book in two big sessions, with a few weeks in between. So I read (or tried to read) every day this last week knowing that on Friday I would get a break. Sometime in late May or early June I'll come back to the anthology refreshed and ready for some hard work again. And who knows? The next section of the reader might be easier; I understood a lot of what I read the first few days, after all.
Third, my trouble understanding Hegel drives me humbly to seek help. The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provided a lot of clarification, as usual. (I highly recommend it!) Even this reliable reference, though, lost me in its section on Hegel's logic (the part of the Hegel anthology that has caused me all the trouble). But I also consulted Peter Singer's A Very Short Introduction to Hegel and found an explanation there that I could follow. In fact, he mostly touched on points that I had written in my notes, making me think that I had at least found the key phrases, even if I didn't understand them at first.
Fourth, I know that Hegel is not really waiting to be understood. Singer says that virtually no reputable philosopher in the world thinks Hegel succeeded in establishing a coherent, helpful, accurate system of the Way Things Are. The point in studying him is that many other influential people did think so: Marx and, indirectly, Hitler, for instance. So merely getting the key phrases will at least help me understand a bit better when I see Hegel's name invoked as I read about other figures in history.
But why not just read Singer's book about Hegel and be done with it? Partly because I want the chance to experience these things for myself; reading about the Grand Canyon is not the same as seeing it first-hand. I also want to read Hegel because ideas stick in my mind better when I read them in their original sources; that's been true for me with Aristotle, Euclid, Freud, Dostoevsky, and many other writers. But mostly I want to come back to Hegel and give him another try in a few weeks because that's what this whole project is about. I take this journey through literature ready to discover whatever I discover, even if my discovery involves only my own limitations.
But I find a few consolations here in my Hegelian Slough of Despond. First, learning nothing is learning something. That sentence actually sounds dangerously like Hegel, who posed that Being and Nothing are not contradictory but rather inseparably entwined: the one implies the other and in fact is the other. (If you can think of Nothing, then Nothing is the content of your thought, and since your mind is operating, the content of its thought must be something, or some Thing. Thus Nothing is a Thing: it has and is Being.) But I don't have a Hegelian meaning in mind. I mean that if I learn nothing of the content of Hegel's writing on a given day, I have at least learned that I can't understand him, in addition to learning what his writing style is like and what terms were important to him. I didn't know just how difficult this would be until a couple of weeks ago, so that's progress.
Second, suspecting that I might not enjoy every day of my experience with Hegel, I scheduled the book in two big sessions, with a few weeks in between. So I read (or tried to read) every day this last week knowing that on Friday I would get a break. Sometime in late May or early June I'll come back to the anthology refreshed and ready for some hard work again. And who knows? The next section of the reader might be easier; I understood a lot of what I read the first few days, after all.
Third, my trouble understanding Hegel drives me humbly to seek help. The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provided a lot of clarification, as usual. (I highly recommend it!) Even this reliable reference, though, lost me in its section on Hegel's logic (the part of the Hegel anthology that has caused me all the trouble). But I also consulted Peter Singer's A Very Short Introduction to Hegel and found an explanation there that I could follow. In fact, he mostly touched on points that I had written in my notes, making me think that I had at least found the key phrases, even if I didn't understand them at first.
Fourth, I know that Hegel is not really waiting to be understood. Singer says that virtually no reputable philosopher in the world thinks Hegel succeeded in establishing a coherent, helpful, accurate system of the Way Things Are. The point in studying him is that many other influential people did think so: Marx and, indirectly, Hitler, for instance. So merely getting the key phrases will at least help me understand a bit better when I see Hegel's name invoked as I read about other figures in history.
But why not just read Singer's book about Hegel and be done with it? Partly because I want the chance to experience these things for myself; reading about the Grand Canyon is not the same as seeing it first-hand. I also want to read Hegel because ideas stick in my mind better when I read them in their original sources; that's been true for me with Aristotle, Euclid, Freud, Dostoevsky, and many other writers. But mostly I want to come back to Hegel and give him another try in a few weeks because that's what this whole project is about. I take this journey through literature ready to discover whatever I discover, even if my discovery involves only my own limitations.
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