A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.


Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I stuck a copy of this oft-quoted gem up here. Has anyone done a count of the number of other works that have been entitled from these lines (or from allusions to them)? At least two administration-authored reports on Iraq have taken their titles from this poem. (And just over a year ago there was a NYT op-ed piece pointing out the irony.) But no matter how you read it, its images and language stick.

“Do You Love Me?”

(I think that this duet from Fiddler on the Roof is my favorite love song. I’m posting it in honor of the day and because our 25th anniversary is looming. I hope that the color-coding will be obvious; it’s not quite blue and pink, but you’ll get the idea.)

Tevye: Golde, I have decided to give Perchik permission to become engaged to our daughter, Hodel.

Golde: What‽ He’s poor! He has nothing, absolutely nothing!

Tevye: He's a good man, Golde. I like him. And what's more important, Hodel likes him. Hodel loves him. So what can we do? It’s a new world... A new world.

Love.

Golde...

[Song starts.]

Do you love me?

Golde: Do I what?

Tevye: Do you love me?

Golde: Do I love you?
With our daughters getting married
And this trouble in the town
You’re upset, you’re worn out;
Go inside, go lie down!
Maybe it's indigestion.
Golde, I’m asking you a question:

Do you love me?

You're a fool.

I know.

But do you love me?

Do I love you?
For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes,
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house,
Given you children, milked the cow;
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?

Golde, the first time I met you

Was on our wedding day.
I was scared. I was shy.
I was nervous. So was I.

But my father and my mother
Said we’d learn to love each other
And now I’m asking, Golde,
Do you love me?

I’m your wife.

I know.
But do you love me?

Do I love him?
For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him,
Fought him, starved with him.
Twenty-five years my bed is his.
If that’s not love, what is?

Then you love me?

I suppose I do.

And I suppose I love you, too.

Both:
It doesn't change a thing,
But even so
After twenty-five years
It’s nice to know.

Glaring Across the Chasm of Flames

The Frick Collection is in the converted Manhattan town house of Henry Clay Frick. Much of the permanent collection is still arranged in living spaces, as if the family were going to move back in tomorrow. There are quiet spots for sitting and contemplating, tucked serenely between the walls of a house set down amidst the constant drone of New York’s Upper East Side. I was slowly sauntering from room to room when I entered the Living Hall and saw what is still my favorite group of paintings. The wit of the arrangement stopped me dead in my tracks and made me cackle so loudly that I was almost tossed out of the museum.

Inset into one wall is one of those large walk-in fireplaces. The mantle is just about head hight. To the left of the fireplace is the famous Holbein portrait of St. Thomas More, the Man for All Seasons; he looks to his left, across the great expanse of the fireplace. On the other side of the fireplace, looking to his right across the chasm, is a portrait of Thomas Cromwell also by Holbein the Younger.

Now, Cromwell was Henry VIII’s chief minister; it was he who was instrumental in organizing More’s martyrdom, questioning the Saint endlessly and trying fruitlessly to find or force a political justification for More’s execution. He was unsuccessful, but More was beheaded anyway, and now the pair of them, transported from their own island to this room in Manhattan, stare at one another across the flames, inviting us to guess which of the Thomases is on which side of the great chasm.

But that’s not all, for above the mantle, looking out at us from a height, is the famous El Greco of St. Jerome. He is elongated, dressed in red cape, and has his thumb plonked down into Scripture. His stern presence has been set as a judge between the two Tommys, but by his gaze and gesture he commands us to make our own judgement, and to base it on Holy Writ. Only the angle of his body within this grouping betrays his own choice, or (at any rate) the choice made by the person who had these three paintings hung together in this place.


The large fireplace, which would dominate most rooms, is subsumed by a fantastic and deliberate arrangement of portraits; the grouping uses it and gives it new meaning. It becomes a gateway to hell in an arrangement that reminds us of a notorious moment in history and tells us what the arranger thinks of the characters in the story.

And I suspect that there are similar stories to be read throughout the house, if only I had the wit and intelligence to discern them.

Get thee to the Frick.

Why, my beloved....

I was reminded this evening that even in the very early days of our marriage, way back when the earth was cooling and dinosaurs were just starting to check out the new digs, I was a fan and practitioner of the postmodern sensibility. (Cf. this old post and search down the page for postmodernism & the first long quotation.)

What SWMBO reminded me of was the stock answer I used to give anytime her insecure self asked me whether some aspect of her physical person was in order or not. You know the questions: “Does this (article of clothing / haircut / shade of makeup / live badger) make (me / my (body part(s)) / my artificial kidney) look (too big / too small / too hideous / indictable)?”

These questions are always minefields, and, having already lost a limb or two in such places, I refused to crawl in for another go. Instead, I would put on my best dim-witted-son face (and since I was raised in Texas by West Virginians, you know I come by such expressions naturally) and proclaim in a slow, deliberate monotone:

“Why, my beloved, I am so blinded by your feminine pulchritude that I am completely unable to perceive any minor flaws which you may feel that you possess.”

It has worked for me; feel free to try it for your own self.

Constitutional Commas

Yet another developing story about the importance of correct (and correctly understood) punctuation. This one an editorial by Adam Freedman in the Sunday, 16 December 2007 New York Times. N.b. that it also touches on matters particularly dear to the Latin teacher’s heart (**cough** ablative absolute **cough**).

Myself, I want to know about my right to keep and arm bears.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

December 16, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Clause and Effect

By ADAM FREEDMAN

LAST month, the Supreme Court agreed to consider District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down Washington’s strict gun ordinance as a violation of the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms.”

This will be the first time in nearly 70 years that the court has considered the Second Amendment. The outcome of the case is difficult to handicap, mainly because so little is known about the justices’ views on the lethal device at the center of the controversy: the comma. That’s right, the “small crooked point,” as Richard Mulcaster described this punctuation upstart in 1582. The official version of the Second Amendment has three of the little blighters:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The decision invalidating the district’s gun ban, written by Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, cites the second comma (the one after “state”) as proof that the Second Amendment does not merely protect the “collective” right of states to maintain their militias, but endows each citizen with an “individual” right to carry a gun, regardless of membership in the local militia.

How does a mere comma do that? According to the court, the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one “prefatory” and the other “operative.” On this reading, the bit about a well-regulated militia is just preliminary throat clearing; the framers don’t really get down to business until they start talking about “the right of the people ... shall not be infringed.”

The circuit court’s opinion is only the latest volley in a long-simmering comma war. In a 2001 Fifth Circuit case, a group of anti-gun academics submitted an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief arguing that the “unusual” commas of the Second Amendment support the collective rights interpretation. According to these amici, the founders’ use of commas reveals that what they really meant to say was “a well-regulated militia ... shall not be infringed.”

Now that the issue is heading to the Supreme Court, the pro-gun American Civil Rights Union is firing back with its own punctuation-packing brief. Nelson Lund, a professor of law at George Mason University, argues that everything before the second comma is an “absolute phrase” and, therefore, does not modify anything in the main clause. Professor Lund states that the Second Amendment “has exactly the same meaning that it would have if the preamble had been omitted.”

Refreshing though it is to see punctuation at the center of a national debate, there could scarcely be a worse place to search for the framers’ original intent than their use of commas. In the 18th century, punctuation marks were as common as medicinal leeches and just about as scientific. Commas and other marks evolved from a variety of symbols meant to denote pauses in speaking. For centuries, punctuation was as chaotic as individual speech patterns.

The situation was even worse in the law, where a long English tradition held that punctuation marks were not actually part of statutes (and, therefore, courts could not consider punctuation when interpreting them). Not surprisingly, lawmakers took a devil-may-care approach to punctuation. Often, the whole business of punctuation was left to the discretion of scriveners, who liked to show their chops by inserting as many varied marks as possible.

Another problem with trying to find meaning in the Second Amendment’s commas is that nobody is certain how many commas it is supposed to have. The version that ended up in the National Archives has three, but that may be a fluke. Legal historians note that some states ratified a two-comma version. At least one recent law journal article refers to a four-comma version.

The best way to make sense of the Second Amendment is to take away all the commas (which, I know, means that only outlaws will have commas). Without the distracting commas, one can focus on the grammar of the sentence. Professor Lund is correct that the clause about a well-regulated militia is “absolute,” but only in the sense that it is grammatically independent of the main clause, not that it is logically unrelated. To the contrary, absolute clauses typically provide a causal or temporal context for the main clause.

The founders — most of whom were classically educated — would have recognized this rhetorical device as the “ablative absolute” of Latin prose. To take an example from Horace likely to have been familiar to them: “Caesar, being in command of the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence” (ego nec tumultum nec mori per vim metuam, tenente Caesare terras). The main clause flows logically from the absolute clause: “Because Caesar commands the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence.”

Likewise, when the justices finish diagramming the Second Amendment, they should end up with something that expresses a causal link, like: “Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” In other words, the amendment is really about protecting militias, notwithstanding the originalist arguments to the contrary.

Advocates of both gun rights and gun control are making a tactical mistake by focusing on the commas of the Second Amendment. After all, couldn’t one just as easily obsess about the founders’ odd use of capitalization? Perhaps the next amicus brief will find the true intent of the amendment by pointing out that “militia” and “state” are capitalized in the original, whereas “people” is not.

Adam Freedman, the author of “The Party of the First Part: The Curious World of Legalese,” writes the Legal Lingo column for New York Law Journal Magazine.

BTW, if you haven’t already signed up for free access to the NYTimes online, you really should do so. It’s free, and very informative. And for a nominal fee, you can do the Times crossword online. Beats the heck out of all that time you’re wasting playing solitaire.

It’s all in the Synopsis, pt. 2

This from SWMBO, who heard it on the radio:

On December 2, 1859, Mr. John Brown died during an important civic event being held in his honor, when the platform upon which he was standing gave way suddenly.

Now that’s spin.

Pasta e Fagioli

Fall is here, good soup weather, and only a month late.

Some students are coming over this weekend, and I’m thinking that it’s time for some pasta e fagioli.

A recipe that I’ve used before is one from the Food Network’s Everyday Italian. This is the one that looked most like what Vincent Bruno used to make, although he added ceci (chickpeas) and tended to use rotini or fusilli. He also used a LOT more garlic. So I tried it out, to good effect, and then thought I’d see what the show was like.

I like the recipe. I really do. But I have real trouble watching the show. She is just so wide-eyed, so effusive, so isn’t-this-marvelous. I can’t take it. But the recipes (yes, I’ve tried a couple of other things from the show’s archive) are pretty good.

And here’s the soup:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pasta e Fagioli

Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis
Show: Everyday Italian
Episode: Italian Ladies

• 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• 1 large sprig fresh rosemary
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 3 ounces pancetta, chopped
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 5 3/4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 (14.5-ounce) cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 3/4 cup elbow macaroni
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Pinch red pepper flakes, optional
• 1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Wrap the thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf in a piece of cheesecloth and secure closed with kitchen twine. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and butter in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, pancetta, and garlic and sauté until the onion is tender, about 3 minutes. Add the broth, beans, and sachet of herbs. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat to medium and simmer until the vegetables are very tender, about 10 minutes. Discard the sachet. Puree 1 cup of the bean mixture in a blender until smooth*. Before putting the puree back into the soup, add the macaroni and boil with the lid on until it is tender but still firm to the bite, about 8 minutes. Return the puree to the remaining soup in the saucepan and stir well. Season the soup with ground black pepper and red pepper flakes.

Ladle the soup into bowls. Sprinkle with some Parmesan and drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil just before serving.

*When blending hot liquids: Remove liquid from the heat and allow to cool for at least 5 minutes. Transfer liquid to a blender or food processor and fill it no more than halfway. If using a blender, release one corner of the lid. This prevents the vacuum effect that creates heat explosions. Place a towel over the top of the machine, pulse a few times then process on high speed until smooth.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I made this for a lunch at work, I pre-cooked the pasta about 3/4 of the way to al dente and put it in a big ziplock. The soup I put in a big crock pot at work, and about 20 minutes before serving time, I put the pasta into the crock pot. It warmed up, finished cooking, and was the right texture without me having to do any of the cooking at the office.

“The Dead”

A while back a friend was headed on a trip with an older relative. I encouraged my friend to ask questions, probe family history, and steal some stories. The inevitable reply, and my response to it, are here:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“How do you steal a story?”

By taking it from its owner and making it your own. Whether it lay in a dusty old box, forgotten until some quirk of fate and time cause them to stumble across it, lift the lid, and remember; or whether it be worn down from innumerable gentle handlings over the years; their stories will have a meaning for them, will have a use for them. And often, when that story finds receptive ears, its meaning changes and the story finds a new owner.


I think here, especially, of Gabriel stealing Gretta’s story, the story of Michael Furey’s mortal love for her, at the end of Joyce’s “The Dead” (last story in Dubiners). “He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.” And now that story of hers becomes for him, perhaps too late, the story that opens his heart, unlocks his own capacity for love at the very moment he becomes acutely aware of mortality — the mortality of the universe, the mortality of his country, the mortality of himself.

“The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

“Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”


The best form of fabulous theft is like that. The stolen story becomes a sort of grace in the life of the thief. There are other, more mundane, sorts of theft -- a grandmother’s story that becomes grist for cocktail chatter -- but even then, which stories we choose to lift will tell us something about ourselves. And, as we claim them, they claim us and change us. The stolen story becomes ours to tell, to shape, and to change, but to a degree, we also become the story’s, to be changed by it.


Pax,
Izzy


P.S. “The Dead” was lovingly crafted into a movie by a dying John Huston, and stars his daughter Angelica. We have a nearly worn-out VHS of the thing, and I eagerly await a Region 1 DVD (so far, there has only been a release in Spain -- region 2).


P.P.S.S. A Region 1 DVD finally hit the market in November of 2009. I snapped it up (at less that $10) and am delighted to find it a wide-screen edition. No scan & pan here.

For comparison sake, here is the final voice-over from the film:

One by one, we’re all becoming shades. Better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. How long you locked away in your heart the image of your lover’s eyes when he told you that he did not wish to live. I’ve never felt that way myself towards any woman, but I know that such a feeling must be love. Think of all those who ever were, back to the start of time. And me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world. Like everything around me, this solid world itself which they reared and lived in, is dwindling and dissolving. Snow is falling. Falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lies buried. Falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living, and the dead.

Graham Greene & The Heart of the Matter

Three conversations (one in person and two via e-mail) in the last month have convinced me to search the old hard drive and some thoughts from days gone by. I’m here repurposing something sent to a discussion list back before the millenial shift. Actually, it was originally two somethings and has here been slapped together as if it were originally a single thing. I hope it’s still useful.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...with regard to Greene’s faith. I know he was a Catholic (obviously), but not having read a great deal of his work (only P&G and ”Heart of the Matter”), his seems a rather dark, bleak outlook. Any comments?
Jim B

and the B doesn’t stand for Beam....

P&G was, according to Greene, the only one of his novels written to a thesis; he set out to demonstrate that the sacrament is valid despite the state of the one administering that sacrament. My own take was that it was much more a demonstration of just how worthy one could be despite all one’s flaws and self-doubt; the overwhelming impression the novel left me was just how heroic this degraded little whiskey priest really was when it came down to it. Beyond doubt one of Greene’s best. And as a polemic, it covers the same ground as the Donatist controversy. Which makes Greene seem rather more orthodox than I think he actually was.

For instance, the other book you mention is my personal favorite (primarily because I recognize Scobie’s besetting sin as a variant of my own and I read the thing just after I had given up on suicide (because I could think of no way to do it that would be fairly considerate and wouldn’t just seem ridiculous to the uninvolved observer)). I have a couple of times posted to this list sections from the dialog between Scobie’s priest and his widow at the end of the book (I’ll quote it again at the end of this post). In this dialog, Greene’s take on God’s mercy, while attractive, is clearly heterodox.

And in some of the interviews collected in Conversations with Graham Greene, Greene speaks quite frankly about his continued and illegal use of opium. E.g., this from V.S. Naipaul, originally The Daily Telegraph Magazine, 8 March 1968, 28-32:

….I [Naipaul] said I enjoyed tobacco less and less but didn’t know what to replace it with. Mr. Greene said, “I think you are ready for opium.” He added: “The fuss about opium and marijuana is absurd. The Battle of Britain was won on benzedrine.” He goes on to talk about how restful an opium nap is and to recommend that opium be made “available to everyone over fifty; there need be no bureaucratic complications; there can be properly supervised fumeries.”

You’re more or less right about Greene’s bleak outlook. I think it comes from doing so much political work in the times and places he did. On the other hand, he developed a fine sense of the absurd, on display in his comic novels like Travels With My Aunt and Our Man in Havana (Once while in a motel I saw the end of a movie version of the latter; B&W with Alec Guinness; I easily recognized the plot within two minutes and enjoyed watching it while we packed up).

His pessimism is usually directed at bureaucracies and the overly innocent (check out The Quiet American for a prophetic look at how American can-do optimism would go seriously awry Vietnam). The Comedians is as good a look into the black heart of Haiti as ever you’ll want to see, and was on my mind a few years back as I watched news footage of people normally shown happily beaming in friendly fashion butcher each other in the same carefree, offhand manner. If you want to see just how far his pessimism would go on an individual level, in the very short novel Brighton Rock, Greene tried to create a character absolutely beyond the reach of redemption. The denouement of this novel also includes an interview with a priest. It is interesting to note that his pessimism is not quite complete.

And while I’m at it, The End of the Affair is told from the point of view of a man whose lover has left him. He never really understands what she tells him plainly, that she has broken off their relationship because it was sinful and she has found God. It’s an interesting study in religion, superstition, and what might count as real faith.


Well, I don’t think I’ve answered your questions, but I’ve enjoyed rambling on here. Greene is one of my favorites, and I intend to read HotM again before too much more time goes by. Here are some quotations to show you why. I’ve tried to cull from my marked passages only the ones that will make a bit of sense without their larger contexts. If it doesn’t give a fair representation of the thought of the book, it will probably reveal more than I would like about my own reactions to the book.

Pax,
Izzy

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Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of good will carries always within his heart this capacity for damnation.

---------------------------------------
“We’d forgive most things if we knew the facts.... A policeman should be the most forgiving person in the world if he gets his facts right.”
--Asst. Police Commissioner Scobie

---------------------------------------
...for the first time he realized the pain inevitable in any human relationship--pain suffered and pain inflicted. How foolish one was to be afraid of loneliness.

---------------------------------------
...in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him--that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness.

---------------------------------------
He said the Our father, the Hail Mary, and then, as sleep began to clog his lids, he added an act of contrition. It was a formality, not because he felt himself free from serious sin but because it had never occurred to him that his life was important enough one way or another. He didn’t drink, he didn’t fornicate, he didn’t even lie, but he never regarded this absence of sin as virtue.

---------------------------------------
What an absurd it was thing to expect happiness in a world so full of misery. ... Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, evil--or else an absolute ignorance.
Outside the rest-house he stopped again. The lights inside would have given an extraordinary impression of peace if one hadn’t known [of the shipwreck victims who lay dying inside], just as the stars on this clear night gave also an impression of remoteness, security, freedom. If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter?
--the musings of Major Scobie

---------------------------------------
It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with rain falling, without love or pity.

---------------------------------------
[The young widow] thought that she wanted to be alone, but what she was afraid of was the awful responsibility of receiving sympathy.

---------------------------------------
“I’ve always envied people who were happy [at school].... To start off happy,” Harris said, “It must make an awful difference afterwards. Why, it might become a habit, mightn’t it?”

---------------------------------------
It seemed to him for a moment that God was too accessible. There was no difficulty in approaching Him. Like a popular demagogue He was open to the least of His followers at any hour. Looking up at the cross he thought, He even suffers in public.
--Scobie, musing after confession

---------------------------------------
The word “pity” is used as loosely as the word “love”: the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience.

---------------------------------------
...it wasn’t madness: he had long since become incapable of anything so honest as madness: he was one of those condemned in childhood to complexity.
--a description of Wilson

---------------------------------------
He thought: I’ll go back and go to bed. In the morning I’ll write to Louise and in the evening go to confession: the day after that God will return to me in a priest’s hands: life will be simple again. Virtue, the good life, tempted him in the dark like a sin. The rain blurred his eyes, the ground sucked at his feet as they trod reluctantly towards the Nissen hut.
--Scobie, on his way to see his mistress

---------------------------------------
Leaning back against the dressing-table, he tried to pray. The Lord’s Prayer lay as dead on his tongue as a legal document: it wasn’t his daily bread that he wanted but so much more. He wanted happiness for others and solitude and peace for himself. “I don’t want to plan anymore,” he said suddenly aloud. “They wouldn’t need me if I were dead. The dead can be forgotten. Oh God, give me death before I give them unhappiness.” But the words sounded melodramatically in his own ears. He told himself he mustn’t get hysterical: there was far too much planning to do for an hysterical man, and going downstairs again he thought three aspirins or perhaps four were what he required in this situation--this banal situation. He took a bottle of filtered water out of the ice-box and dissolved the aspirin. He wondered how it would feel to drain death as simply as these aspirins which now stuck sourly in his throat. The priests told one it was the unforgivable sin, the final expression of an unrepentant despair, and of course one accepted the Church’s teaching. But they also taught that God had sometimes broken his own laws, and was it less possible for him to put out hand of forgiveness into the suicidal darkness than to have woken himself in the tomb, behind the stone? Christ had not been murdered--you couldn’t murder God. Christ had killed himself: he had hung himself on the cross as surely as Pemberton from the picture-rail.

---------------------------------------
“Why do we go on like this--being unhappy?”
“It’s a mistake to mix up the ideas of happiness and love,” Scobie said with desperate pedantry....
--Scobie and his mistress making chitchat

---------------------------------------
Wilson felt sick; he wanted to sit down. Why, he wondered, does one ever begin this humiliating process: why does one imagine that one is in love? He had read somewhere that love had been invented in the eleventh century by the troubadours. Why had they not left us with lust?

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“...you must have a real purpose of amendment. We are told to forgive our brother seventy times seven and we needn’t fear that God will be any less forgiving than we are, but nobody can begin to forgive the uncontrite. It’s better to sin seventy times and repent each time than sin once and never repent.”
--Father Rank

---------------------------------------
She said drearily, “Father, haven’t you any comfort to give me?”
Oh, the conversations, he thought, that go on in a house after a death, the turnings over, the discussions, the questions, the demands--so much noise round the edge of silence.
“You’ve been given an awful lot of comfort in your life, Mrs. Scobie. If what Wilson thinks is true, it’s he who needs our comfort.”
“Do you know all that I know about him?”
“Of course I don’t, Mrs. Scobie. You’ve been his wife, haven’t you, for fifteen years. A priest only knows the unimportant things.”
“Unimportant?”
“Oh, I mean the sins,” he said impatiently. “A man doesn’t come to us and confess his virtues.”
“I expect you know about [his affair with] Mrs. Rolt. Most people did.”
“Poor woman.”
“I don’t see why.”
“I’m sorry for anyone happy and ignorant who gets mixed up in that way with one of us.”
“He was a bad Catholic.”
“That’s the silliest phrase in common use,” Father Rank said.
“And at the end this--horror. He must have known he was damning himself.”
“Yes, he knew that alright. He never had any trust in mercy--except for other people.”
“It’s no good even praying...”
Father Rank clapped the cover of the diary to and said furiously, “For goodness’ sake, Mrs. Scobie, don’t imagine you--or I--know a thing about God’s mercy.”
“The Church says...”
“I know what the Church says. The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn’t know what goes on in a single human heart.”
“You think there’s some hope then?” she asked wearily.
“Are you so bitter against him?”
“I haven’t any bitterness left.”
“And do you think God’s likely to be more bitter than a woman?” he asked with harsh insistence, but she winced away from the arguments of hope.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mercy is not consistent; it’s like the wind; it blows where it will.
Mercy is comic, and it’s the only thing worth taking seriously.
T-Bone Burnett, “The Wild Truth”

Benedictio Cerevisae

MN: Beer Blessing in Latin
By Michael Novak
Tuesday, August 1, 2006, 3:46 PM
Beer Blessing
From the Rituale Romanum (no 58)
Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi: et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti, ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corporis, et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen
Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
(Translation by Fr. Ephraem Chifley, O.P.)
(Access contributors’ biographies by clicking here.)
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added 28 January 2012, full entry
V. Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
R. Qui fecit caelum et terram.
V. Dominus vobiscum.
R. Et cum spiritu tuo.

Oremus.

Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi, et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti; ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corpus et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.


Translation from XI.9.5 of Weller’s edition:

P: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
All: Who made heaven and earth.
P: The Lord be with you.
All: May He also be with you.

Let us pray.

Lord, bless + this creature, beer, which by your kindness and power has been produced from kernels of grain, and let it be a healthful drink for mankind. Grant that whoever drinks it with thanksgiving to your holy name may find it a help in body and in soul; through Christ our Lord. All: Amen.

It is sprinkled with holy water.
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Cf. also this BBC article.

Footnotes

I used to have the following as a sig:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* “If the reader does not understand this word, it is too bad.”

Best Footnote Ever, from p. 59 of Rats, Lice and History
(and brought to my attention by SWMBO)
http://steliz.blogspot.com/2005/12/rats-lice-and-history.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I suppose I should qualify that epithet to “Best Academic Footnote Ever,” since the footnote to which I most often refer people is not only in a different book altogether, it is in a different sort of book altogether.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is the funniest novel about the coming of the Antichrist that you will ever read. The premise is that the Spawn of Satan was, through bureaucratically designed accident, switched with a normal child. The effect is that those responsible for seeing to the Dark Child’s preparation and training are wasting their efforts with a thoroughly unsuited pupil, while the child with Hell’s powers is being reared in a bland British suburban setting. The book is populated with comic characters both mortal and immortal and peppered with a most entertaining set of footnotes. My favorite of those is informative and dry with just the right amount of snark; it comes upon the revelation that a particular member of the Witchfinder Army, name of Newt, is paid one old shilling per annum (p. 178 in my edition):

NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:

Two farthings = One Ha’penny. Two ha’pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

So there it is. I think Chesterton would happily accept the book’s dedication to himself. Read the reviews & descriptions at Amazon (linked in the title of this post) and then waste a few hours wiping tears from your eyes. It beats doing actual work.

New Appliance for the Heat

Long abouts Derby Day, we tend to make some mint juleps and have a little Derby Pie (Lizzy less of the pie in these diabetic days). The time-consuming part of making a decent julep has been the powdered ice. Using the mallet tired the arm and ruins a tea towel. So I've had half an eye out for a decent ice shaver. Most of the machines make crushed ice, and the smallest chips seem to be what you'd find in a snow cone. But then, while poking around at Amazon, I found a complaint that read in part:

I have tried shaving just plain ice first and then adding liquids, but because this machine generates snow, the snow tends to melt before you get a chance to enjoy it.

"...generates snow..." That sounded like my machine, and at $20, what's to lose?

So we've had it for a little while now and I have to say that this looks to be our julep machine. I'll have to hand-pack the shavings a little harder next time, because they really do want to melt away when a beverage is poured on top. They are that light and fluffy.

We've also played around with freezing other things to shave. Best so far: coffee. It comes out much softer than granita, and goes a treat with Bailey's. Shave some coffee, add some Irish cream. Yum!

Although it will have limited use, it could turn out to be our best kitchen appliance since the convection toaster oven, which is even now about to be loaded with some cookies.

~~~~~

BTW: click the title of this blog to arrive at the Amazon page. It's the Hamilton Beach Snowman Ice Shaver.

Tagged

Gashwin tagged me. If anything comes of it, it will be at livejournal.

Pronoun / Antecedent

One morning a fifth-grader saw me hand an empty egg carton over to another student. He asked why, and I told him that the other student’s family was going to fill the carton with a dozen freshly laid brown eggs.

His reply was, “we get brown eggs from our neighbors. They raise chickens. They’re rednecks.”

“Nicholas,” I said, “you do realize that that’s a derogatory term, don’t you? That it’s not a nice thing to call someone?”

In a completely guileless voice he said, “I don’t think they mind.”

“But you should mind, ” I told him. “They’re your friends. They give you eggs.”

He looked at me, his favorite teacher, as if I were an idiot and said, “they’re just chickens.”

I paused, tiny little cogitative wheels spinning furiously.

“Do you mean Rhode Island Reds?”

“Yeah!” he said brightly, “That’s it! Rhode Island Reds!”

“Ah... Well... I’ll see you in class, then.”

It’s all in the synopsis

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.

Rick Polito, summarizing The Wizard of Oz
for the Marin (CA) Independent-Journal’s television highlights column.

Unintentional? Papal Snark

This on p. 52 of the first American edition (Doubleday 2007), in a quick review of just what "the Kingdom of Heaven / God" has meant and what it should mean:

Here, obviously, theory predominated over listening to the text.

cf. Lodge’s MLA scene.

Jesus of Nazareth

I'm reading the Pope's newest book, and am very much enjoying it. I've mentioned to a few people already that the forward should be published separately as a tract on how to do Biblical hermeneutics now that we've reached the limits of and seen the problems with the historical/critical method.

After I've finished it, I'm going to have to let it sit for a month or so and then go through it again. But for now I'll say: after so many years of fighting over the "historical Jesus," it's refreshing to read such a competent (and learned) search for the Lord Jesus in the gospels.

But for now, just one quotation, appearing above this post.

Unfortunate Collocation

Out on the web tonight, I catch out of the corner of my eye a line of icons for social networks. They were, in order, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Unfortunately, the icons all ran together into something I think I may have shouted at TV sets that were going dead in past decades.

I've clipped a screenshot. See for yourself.

Cicero on Blogging

...mandare quemquam litteris cogitationes suas, qui eas nec disponere nec inlustrare possit nec delectatione aliqua allicere lectorem, hominis est intemperanter abutentis et otio et litteris.

...for someone to entrust their thoughts to writing, someone who can neither order nor clarify their thoughts nor win over a reader with some kind of pleasure, this is the mark of a person who flagrantly abuses both leisure and writing.

Tusculanae Disputationes 1 III 6

Classics and Anthropology

The journal Arion might better be entitled Phoenix. It has risen from the ashes twice. But the name Phoenix is already taken by a different journal of classics. So now Arion carries on more than a decade into its third incarnation under the name of a poet who miraculously evaded death, rather than under a name of resurrection. So be it.

Arion’s first piece of Advice to Prospective Contributors includes the lines, “If you propose submitting a paper that has been rejected by one of the professional journals, we urge you to rewrite it. The fact that it wasn’t quite dull enough to be accepted there doesn’t mean that it is lively enough for Arion.” If you’re interested in Classical Antiquities and prefer a livelier read, Arion might be the journal for you.

Back when it had arisen the second time and just started the Third Series, there was a very nice article by James Redfield. No, not the therapist-turned-novelist James Redfield, but the Professor James M. Redfield who does ancient Greek studies at Chicago. Redfield’s article is a brief of what anthropologists and classicists can and should learn from each other. It also includes a good bit of compare/contrast of the disciplines, including their initiation rituals. It’s a delightful read to nearly anyone who has spent time with the linguists and archaeologists, the literary theorists and the crypto-psychiatrists who inhabit the world of Ancient Studies.

Here, I give you only the second paragraph of the article. Feel free to go dig up the rest. It’s well worth it.

Redfield, James, “Classics and Anthropology,” Arion, Third Series, vol. 1, no. 2, Spring / May 1991, pp. 5-6.

I have spent most of my academic career hanging about the edges of departments, particularly (at Chicago) the departments of Anthropology and of Classics. It often seems to me that these two are structural opposites. Take, for example, the question of the consumption of alcohol. Both professions include heavy drinkers—indeed the profession of Classics seems to me to have more than its share of helpless drunks (not at Chicago, needless to say). But Classicists tend to be solitary drinkers; when they meet together socially it tends to be in the afternoon, over tea. The anthropologists, on the other hand, gather at midnight, and drink grain alcohol and grapefruit juice out of plastic waste baskets. To this difference correspond others—for example, on the rhetorical level. Anthropologists like to conduct their controversies in open meetings, where they ride and make flamboyant, unforgivable speeches. Classicists are almost always polite—with the result that it is frequently impossible to find out what they think. Anthropologists seem to enjoy conflict, whereas classicists prefer to pretend that it does not exist. Anthropologists tend toward exuberance, classicists toward irony. To give them the most gross kind of physical characterization: the classicist is typically dusty, the anthropologist, sweaty.