TENTATIVE ORDER:
1. Michigan football
2. Red Wings in the Stanley Cup Finals
3. Michigan basketball
4. Yankees in the playoffs
5. Any college football
6. Duke Basketball
7. Any college basketball
8. Football (European)
9. Golf (you have to know what to look for, but when you do, it's quite interesting)
10. NASCAR/horse racing (there's a lot of theory in NASCAR: most people don't realize that)
11. NBA playoffs
12. Super Bowl
13. NFL
"Thou shalt not extinguish thine anger, but shall master it,
that thy conscience may not be blunted by adjustment
to wrong causes."
-The Dutch Ten Commandments to Foil the Nazis
30.5.09
LINK: The NYT review of Shop Class as Soulcraft is very well written. The end was intriguing:
If there's a general complaint I have about conservatism, it's the tendency to bury its own premises as obvious. No word is more abused in conservative commentary, and to worse ends, than "rightly," which often is nothing more than a way to assert, rather than argue (or reason).
As it happens, I took shop one semester in junior high. The kids who did well at it (rightly) had a reputation as sadists. I think it's possible to appreciate the good things about craftsmanship without fetishizing or romanticizing it. Apparently it's more difficult to actually do that than it seems.
What began as an expansive, mind-clearing argument begins to feel smaller, more pinched. Mr. Crawford fixates on “what is sometimes called ‘the 1968 generation.’ ” It isn’t exactly clear what an attack on the “easy moral prestige of multiculturalism” has to do with his argument, nor his soggy caricature of the “sushi-eating, Brazilian-girlfriend-having cosmopolitan.” One can’t eat raw fish or date South American women and still like to fix things?
He pleads for a matey kind of “yeoman aristocracy” in which men are free to tell dirty jokes because “the order of things isn’t quite so fragile.” Well, O.K.. I like dirty jokes too. But they are complicated things — less complicated if, as in Mr. Crawford’s book, there are virtually no women to be found.
“Shop Class as Soulcraft” begins to read like a long, self-satisfied defense of the life choices Mr. Crawford has made — quitting the dreary think tank where the girly men are, and working on bikes. The book suddenly has a small but detectable chip on its shoulder. “My point, finally,” he writes, “isn’t to recommend motorcycling in particular, nor to idealize the life of a mechanic.” But that’s what he’s done. The civics lesson about shop class and self-reliance fades as the motoring life revs up.
Sentences like this one begin to pop up like dorsal fins: “People who ride motorcycles have gotten something right, and I want to put myself in the service of it, this thing that we do, this kingly sport that is like war made beautiful.”
About this passage I have (at least) three thoughts. One, “this thing that we do”? What is this, “Goodfellas”? Two, this type of gonzo romanticism does not fit the reality of the lives of most of the workers he purports to champion — dishwasher repairmen, plumbers, locksmiths. Three, hasn’t a vibrant and all-too-visible subset of the people who ride motorcycles — the noise freaks who omit their mufflers, the high-speed weavers through close traffic — definitely gotten something wrong?
The bulk of Mr. Crawford’s book is timely and provocative, even moving in its urging that we should “extend our moral imagination to people who are conventionally beneath serious regard” and recognize “the intellectual accomplishments of people who do work that is dirty.” But it’s also full of awkward, barely sublimated crosscurrents.
Most of the time I wish books were rowdier and weirder than they are. I wish “Shop Class as Soulcraft” was more at peace with itself. A more fitting title might have been: “Quien es Mas Macho?”
If there's a general complaint I have about conservatism, it's the tendency to bury its own premises as obvious. No word is more abused in conservative commentary, and to worse ends, than "rightly," which often is nothing more than a way to assert, rather than argue (or reason).
As it happens, I took shop one semester in junior high. The kids who did well at it (rightly) had a reputation as sadists. I think it's possible to appreciate the good things about craftsmanship without fetishizing or romanticizing it. Apparently it's more difficult to actually do that than it seems.
23.5.09
21.5.09
AUDEN AND ELIOT:
Whether Dante or Eliot came first, I can never quite remember. I found Eliot when I borrowed my sister's copy of his Selected Poems; the first distinct memory of him I have is reading the book during one of the dead periods in exam week, 10th grade. At the beginning, I liked "Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady" and, a little later, the first part of "Ash-Wednesday" (the rest never meant much to me, except "under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining"). Not long after this, I discovered his literary criticism, especially The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, which for a very long time was the frame for every aesthetic experience I had. He was the master of the essay, the person I would read before writing on my own in order to have the proper cadence in my ear.
(Dante was either the beginning of 10th or 11th grade; I can never quite remember)
He had mis-steps, to be sure. The first moment was his essay on Machiavelli, in which he interprets that figure as a Christian-Italian patriot, which is almost certainly wrong. (My thesis, which I offer free to anyone who wishes to borrow it, is that all Machiavelli knows about Christianity he learned from Dante). Some of his I found too boring and topical; but these were occasional essays and lectures--the standards should be lower. The next doubt came several months ago from his essay on Pascal, which was faintly ridiculous. One should never expect to march lock-step with any of one's heroes, but this was not just a point of difference: it was a fundamental disagreement about what counted as right and good. The final nail in the coffin was Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. Back in my leftist days, we would have called Eliot's politics there "reactionary" in the least complimentary sense: the mid-20th century was a confusing time, politically, and one should be merciful in one's judgments, but Eliot's politics are close to nonsense, a very explicit attempt to do the thing in politics he thought unforgivable in art: to establish the behavior of the previous generation as normative (he might not have considered it in those terms).
Auden I came to earlier this year, from a review of his prose essays in Books and Culture written by Alan Jacobs. I've read the essays, many of which are quite good, Forewords and Afterwords, The Enchafed Flood, and many of his poems. As he progresses, Auden sets himself more and more against Eliot, though always with love and affection.
At this point I see two big differences, one of subject and one of sensibility. Eliot, as I've come to understand him, is all intellect and no body (and little emotion, too, unless turned into something higher and more sublime). The passage I quoted below, from "East Coker," is typical: when the body appears at all, it appears in a medical metaphor. The body, in the end, is a thing: to be plied apart, turned hot or cold, certainly refined into something else. The glorious exception is "The Journey of the Magi," though even that is more sensuousness than physicality. The same lack is there in his plays, as well: all conversations--the action takes place elsewhere.
(Parenthetically, I enjoyed this story about Faber & Faber for what it reveals about him: taking his wife-to-be to hotel rooms every night, eloping without anyone knowing--it's just a shame this didn't translate into his work)
There's nothing, though, to compare with this:
All worlds and lives and bodies and, in this sense, very real.
On tradition, too, he has sensible things to say. From "Horae Canonicae: Sext:"
People who like tradition have a way of imagining that we can strip out all the nasty things about the modern world and return to a purified, simpler time where folk were decent and everyone had a place where they stayed. Auden points to the flip-side of that desire. Calvin has a section of the Institutes where he points out that patron saints are really just an extension of the idea of local gods. Auden, earlier in the poem, actually says the same thing:
It's hard not to picture his tongue ever-so-slightly in cheek. This is the great difference of sensibility. After many years (more astute readers will catch my mistake, if I've made one) I can't think of any moment where Eliot makes a joke, or anything more than allusive to humor. How much of what it means to be human he ends up missing! (A comparison of Eliot's tone in the Notes and Auden in his review of it ("Port and Nuts with the Eliots") makes the point emphatically).
And this, I think, is where I must part ways with Eliot and continue on with Auden.
I read this a number of times trying to figure out what the myth was (I knew the poet was Eliot). There are three things: the statues are "made for pleasure," as Auden says later--the pleasure we take in our own body and the bodies of others is natural, and not against nature. The statues are beautiful, not just a thing to be pried apart, defeated, brought into subjection--and their beauty is objective. And the body is the site of comedy: so many of the things it does are ridiculous: it defeats any attempt to create a myth about itself. In the end, it's my body, it's me; I can only think about myself and the world around me in those terms.
Auden ends "In Praise of Limestone:"
It may be a failing, but it's the only way I can make sense of things.
On the other hand, poetry as certainly has something to do with morals, and with religion, and even with politics perhaps, though we cannot say what. If I ask myself (to take a comparison on a higher plane) why I prefer the poetry of Dante to that of Shakespeare, I should have to say, because it seems to me to illustrate a saner attitude towards the mystery of life. -T.S. Eliot, 1928 Introduction to The Sacred Wood
Whether Dante or Eliot came first, I can never quite remember. I found Eliot when I borrowed my sister's copy of his Selected Poems; the first distinct memory of him I have is reading the book during one of the dead periods in exam week, 10th grade. At the beginning, I liked "Prufrock" and "Portrait of a Lady" and, a little later, the first part of "Ash-Wednesday" (the rest never meant much to me, except "under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining"). Not long after this, I discovered his literary criticism, especially The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, which for a very long time was the frame for every aesthetic experience I had. He was the master of the essay, the person I would read before writing on my own in order to have the proper cadence in my ear.
(Dante was either the beginning of 10th or 11th grade; I can never quite remember)
He had mis-steps, to be sure. The first moment was his essay on Machiavelli, in which he interprets that figure as a Christian-Italian patriot, which is almost certainly wrong. (My thesis, which I offer free to anyone who wishes to borrow it, is that all Machiavelli knows about Christianity he learned from Dante). Some of his I found too boring and topical; but these were occasional essays and lectures--the standards should be lower. The next doubt came several months ago from his essay on Pascal, which was faintly ridiculous. One should never expect to march lock-step with any of one's heroes, but this was not just a point of difference: it was a fundamental disagreement about what counted as right and good. The final nail in the coffin was Notes Towards the Definition of Culture. Back in my leftist days, we would have called Eliot's politics there "reactionary" in the least complimentary sense: the mid-20th century was a confusing time, politically, and one should be merciful in one's judgments, but Eliot's politics are close to nonsense, a very explicit attempt to do the thing in politics he thought unforgivable in art: to establish the behavior of the previous generation as normative (he might not have considered it in those terms).
Auden I came to earlier this year, from a review of his prose essays in Books and Culture written by Alan Jacobs. I've read the essays, many of which are quite good, Forewords and Afterwords, The Enchafed Flood, and many of his poems. As he progresses, Auden sets himself more and more against Eliot, though always with love and affection.
At this point I see two big differences, one of subject and one of sensibility. Eliot, as I've come to understand him, is all intellect and no body (and little emotion, too, unless turned into something higher and more sublime). The passage I quoted below, from "East Coker," is typical: when the body appears at all, it appears in a medical metaphor. The body, in the end, is a thing: to be plied apart, turned hot or cold, certainly refined into something else. The glorious exception is "The Journey of the Magi," though even that is more sensuousness than physicality. The same lack is there in his plays, as well: all conversations--the action takes place elsewhere.
(Parenthetically, I enjoyed this story about Faber & Faber for what it reveals about him: taking his wife-to-be to hotel rooms every night, eloping without anyone knowing--it's just a shame this didn't translate into his work)
There's nothing, though, to compare with this:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
All worlds and lives and bodies and, in this sense, very real.
On tradition, too, he has sensible things to say. From "Horae Canonicae: Sext:"
without these judicial mouths
(which belong for the most part
to very great scoundrels)
how squalid existence would be,
tethered for life to some hut village,
afraid of the local snake
or the local ford demon
speaking the local patois
of some three hundred words
(think of the family squabbles and the
poison-pens, think of the inbreeding)
People who like tradition have a way of imagining that we can strip out all the nasty things about the modern world and return to a purified, simpler time where folk were decent and everyone had a place where they stayed. Auden points to the flip-side of that desire. Calvin has a section of the Institutes where he points out that patron saints are really just an extension of the idea of local gods. Auden, earlier in the poem, actually says the same thing:
To ignore the appetitive goddesses,
to desert the formidable shrines
of Rhea, Aphrodite, Demeter, Diana,
to pray instead to St. Phocas,
St Barbara, San Saturnino,
or whoever one's patron is,
that one may be worthy of their mystery,
what a prodigious step to have taken.
It's hard not to picture his tongue ever-so-slightly in cheek. This is the great difference of sensibility. After many years (more astute readers will catch my mistake, if I've made one) I can't think of any moment where Eliot makes a joke, or anything more than allusive to humor. How much of what it means to be human he ends up missing! (A comparison of Eliot's tone in the Notes and Auden in his review of it ("Port and Nuts with the Eliots") makes the point emphatically).
And this, I think, is where I must part ways with Eliot and continue on with Auden.
The poet,
Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth
I read this a number of times trying to figure out what the myth was (I knew the poet was Eliot). There are three things: the statues are "made for pleasure," as Auden says later--the pleasure we take in our own body and the bodies of others is natural, and not against nature. The statues are beautiful, not just a thing to be pried apart, defeated, brought into subjection--and their beauty is objective. And the body is the site of comedy: so many of the things it does are ridiculous: it defeats any attempt to create a myth about itself. In the end, it's my body, it's me; I can only think about myself and the world around me in those terms.
Auden ends "In Praise of Limestone:"
Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.
It may be a failing, but it's the only way I can make sense of things.
20.5.09
Two poems, same topic, radically different approaches and conclusions:
i. T.S. Eliot, "East Coker"
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
ii. W.H. Auden, "In Praise of Limestone"
They were right, my dear, all those voices were right
And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,
Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward
And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:
It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself
It does not neglect, but calls into question
All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,
Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth; and these gamins,
Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade
With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature's
Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.
[in case it's not clear, "the poet" is Eliot]
i. T.S. Eliot, "East Coker"
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer's art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
Our only health is the disease
If we obey the dying nurse
Whose constant care is not to please
But to remind of our, and Adam's curse,
And that, to be restored, our sickness must grow worse.
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
The chill ascends from feet to knees,
The fever sings in mental wires.
If to be warmed, then I must freeze
And quake in frigid purgatorial fires
Of which the flame is roses, and the smoke is briars.
The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.
ii. W.H. Auden, "In Praise of Limestone"
They were right, my dear, all those voices were right
And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,
Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward
And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:
It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself
It does not neglect, but calls into question
All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,
Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth; and these gamins,
Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade
With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature's
Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.
[in case it's not clear, "the poet" is Eliot]
12.5.09
Letter 1:
In Which Our Blogger Hits on Some Familiar Themes:
Awaiting the Storm
Saturday afternoon
Dear Readers,
I make no particular claim to be old. However, I am quite sure the first sign of age (when it comes) is a telescoping of time, so that things which appear to be not so long ago in fact are. When I was finishing The Brothers Karamazov this past weekend, I was aware that it was the second time I had read it. Even without the re-reading, the book was fresh in my memory, and I thought of it often. It took a moment, but I did remember that I last read it nine years ago. I'm not old, but the effects of age are beginning to be felt--I have a history.
The particular occasion for re-reading was to test out a thesis, or, more accurately, to disprove a thesis I heard quite frequently in the interim period. I had taken it as more-or-less obvious that Alexei was the center of the novel; the general opinion I encountered said Ivan was meant as the center. I thought this an understandable reaction given the proclivities of our age: Ivan doubts, quite profoundly and at length, and so do we. Hence he appears to be the most interesting figure, but only because we can see no other way (this is not unlike Stanley Fish's theory about Milton, that the devil is interesting and God is boring because we, as sinful men, are meant to perceive them as Adam did).
On re-reading, I still believe Alexei to be the important figure of the novel, though my reasons have changed. Ivan is the anti-hero, like Pechorin in A Hero for Our Time, but completely brought to ruin. His key thesis, that other-worldly reconciliation is impossible (or undesirable)--how could a murderer and his victim ever be reconciled--is disproven through Alexei's reconciliation of the children. This-worldly redemption points to the other-worldly. Before, I did not see exactly how much it is Alexei changes in the final section of the book: he goes from weak and tentative when he first leaves the monastery to confident and in charge; his faith and his intellect allow him to assess each situation as it is, and act in the proper manner. No one else can manage it: in the end, he is directing everything. Elder Zosima was right to send him out into the world, the real world.
This, I am now convinced, is the theme of the novel: the real world. None of the characters, except Alexei, quite live in it. How does one apprehend what is real? Dostoevsky pushes far on this point. Consider a section from the speech of the defense attorney:
The most consistent note the novel strikes is anti-mysticism; it consistently holds up "the real world" and "real life" as its opposites. The prosecutor's speech deplores it. Ivan identifies "mystery, miracle and authority" as the totems used by the church to take the freedom Christ intended to give. There is even a slight parallel between Zosima, who, after death, does not smell (which is taken as a sign of his holiness) and the same thing happening to the little boy who dies (with no one making the same assumption). I'll have to re-read those early scenes, but I am convinced there is more to this emphasis on the real world.
When playing Rock Band with some friends this past weekend, something unusual happened: "Carry On Wayward Son" (one of my least favorite songs ever) was followed by "Teen Age Riot" (a very good Sonic Youth song from their best period). What has the world come to when those songs can be played together indifferently? I would rate Sonic Youth better than Kansas, and better in such a way as to not be on the same scale; I know lamentably many people who would do the opposite. Both of these, at least, are coherent options. To put it a slightly different way: good taste and bad taste can both be dealt with: it's no taste that's really a problem. Everything I've read on aesthetic theory emphasizes the need for unity of taste: what one likes ought to be pointing to something; ideally to the best things, but at least somewhere (Eliot discusses these stages in his introductory essay to On the Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism). Liking things means not liking others; valuing some things means excluding other values.
When I started listening to Blur, I could recognize it as a violation of at least some of the things I believed in. Perhaps that's a funny example, but at least there's a line and I know when I've crossed it. I will never especially care for musicals, or Pink Floyd, or Shakespeare (though I have taken in all of them); my preference is for the real, which means Rembrandt and not Rubens, Bill Evans and not early-70s Miles Davis, Dostoevsky and not Tolstoy. Thus it was not surprising to me that Veronica Mars season 2 fits while 30 Rock no longer does; that I got more out of Camus' The Stranger than I might out of books written by authors more sympathetic to my philosophical views. Our age is one where the aesthetic is valued above all, and particularly the subjective feeling the aesthetic gives: developing taste is hard, difficult work.
I have decided to consider myself a Calvinist. I'm not really a Calvinist--I still have my doubts about predestination, though I do believe in the perseverance of the saints. It comes more from two things: first, an impulse to stand with the despised. Grotius, the subject of my dissertation, is frequently assumed to be a spokesperson for whatever a modern interlocutor doesn't like (sovereignty, intervention, human rights, natural law, no human rights, no natural law): the only thing these criticisms have in common is very little familiarity with Grotius' work. The same thing is true, in spades, with Calvin: the people who like him least have read him least.
The second came from sitting down to read Calvin. He is, first of all, a humanist--which is to say he's read widely, knows his Greek and Latin and Hebrew, and can pull from an impressive array of sources. (Perhaps not enough emphasis can be laid on the scholastic/humanist divide; it's why I find Erasmus tolerable even at his most rah-rah Rome). He proceeds carefully an meticulously, always documenting his sources (and, for good measure, pulling a trick Grotius himself would later use: citing a Greek Father and a Latin Father for the more controversial claims he makes). I once said of N.T. Wright, who I think stands in this tradition, that he writes as though his authority is an open question every time he sets pen to paper: one misstep and it goes away. And Calvin, for better or worse, understands not just his own mind, but those of his opponents: I've had theological conversations in which my interlocutor has made exactly the objections Calvin predicts in the order he expects them. He may be wrong, but he's earned the right to be heard.
Some years ago, when I was first starting to get into poetry, and was looking for a short poem of Ezra Pound's to include for a school project, she directed me to this one, which seems appropriate:
I've been reading Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline with some friends. From Barth:
The rejection of images and icons was the glory of the western church until it, too, backslid. Now hardly anyone sees a problem with them; so much the worse for now. Barth echoes Kierkegaard, and Hegel's long explanation of the problems with religious art. (But didn't Gregory say that images were the Bibles of the illiterate? 1. No: you should read the art history literature on this topic. 2. Teach people to read, and the problem goes away.)
The other very interesting point Barth raised was a rejection of natural theology. There's much to say on this topic, but one of my friends raised the point that once the language of nature is employed, it can be used to justify most any cultural preference. Hugo Schwyzer provides a good example of this weakness, and his commenters elucidate it quite well. Both the die-hard traditionalists and the radical feminists look only to the point they find some pretext for the belief they had anyway, and then use it to hammer the opposition.
Both, however, repeat the mistake Hugo mentions in his original post: "the TOB embraces the idea that yes, biology is not only destiny, but divinely ordained reproductive destiny." There's a crudeness to it: either pleasure is a sign something bad is going on (or something that needs to be controlled), with all the Platonic nonsense that follows; or pleasure is something good to be pursued without reservation. My biology is not my destiny; pleasure is one of many ends (there are more than two).
Of course, this is much worse for women than it is for men: if TOB is right, the fundamental purpose for which women were put on the earth is done when pregnancy starts being a great biological risk for the child (35? 40?). The dangers of this mentality are (or should be) obvious: combine it with the pressure to have lots of children, and one ends up with the result that being unmarried at 23 (or 25, etc) is considered a warning sign of spinsterhood: the best procreating years are being wasted.
It's difficult to attempt to be both a conservative Christian and a feminist, but it's a combination I think worth trying. My church, a year or so ago, reaffirmed that we believe it's quite okay for women to preach from the pulpit, and last Sunday was the first example of it. The sermon, on John 4, was quite good--possibly the best I've heard all year. (I will not say "good for a woman," or "she brought an interesting feminine perspective to the passage:" she has a gift for teaching, full stop). In the last year, I've heard a lot of mediocre preaching--the kind of which the best thing that can be said is that it's over quickly--and it never ceases to amaze me what people will accept. I think it's possible to do so little with a lectionary reading as to not make it worth having bothered in the first place--and that's a real dishonor to the word, which should be central (where your effort is, there your heart will be also). I am, at any rate, glad to belong to the church I do, where this sort of thing happens.
There is still more to say (there always is): on how I've lost my trust in Charles Taylor, Dante and T.S. Eliot, how Hegel has recommended himself to me, and the long-promised set of reflections on intellectual patrimony. These must all wait.
There is much left unsaid (there always is): the memory of a long, slow, happy evening, which will be in heart and mind for a very long time. Life has its consolations
In Which Our Blogger Hits on Some Familiar Themes:
Awaiting the Storm
Saturday afternoon
Dear Readers,
I make no particular claim to be old. However, I am quite sure the first sign of age (when it comes) is a telescoping of time, so that things which appear to be not so long ago in fact are. When I was finishing The Brothers Karamazov this past weekend, I was aware that it was the second time I had read it. Even without the re-reading, the book was fresh in my memory, and I thought of it often. It took a moment, but I did remember that I last read it nine years ago. I'm not old, but the effects of age are beginning to be felt--I have a history.
The particular occasion for re-reading was to test out a thesis, or, more accurately, to disprove a thesis I heard quite frequently in the interim period. I had taken it as more-or-less obvious that Alexei was the center of the novel; the general opinion I encountered said Ivan was meant as the center. I thought this an understandable reaction given the proclivities of our age: Ivan doubts, quite profoundly and at length, and so do we. Hence he appears to be the most interesting figure, but only because we can see no other way (this is not unlike Stanley Fish's theory about Milton, that the devil is interesting and God is boring because we, as sinful men, are meant to perceive them as Adam did).
On re-reading, I still believe Alexei to be the important figure of the novel, though my reasons have changed. Ivan is the anti-hero, like Pechorin in A Hero for Our Time, but completely brought to ruin. His key thesis, that other-worldly reconciliation is impossible (or undesirable)--how could a murderer and his victim ever be reconciled--is disproven through Alexei's reconciliation of the children. This-worldly redemption points to the other-worldly. Before, I did not see exactly how much it is Alexei changes in the final section of the book: he goes from weak and tentative when he first leaves the monastery to confident and in charge; his faith and his intellect allow him to assess each situation as it is, and act in the proper manner. No one else can manage it: in the end, he is directing everything. Elder Zosima was right to send him out into the world, the real world.
This, I am now convinced, is the theme of the novel: the real world. None of the characters, except Alexei, quite live in it. How does one apprehend what is real? Dostoevsky pushes far on this point. Consider a section from the speech of the defense attorney:
While within the sphere of real life, which not only has its rights, but itself imposes great obligations--within this sphere, if we wish to be humane, to be Christians finally, it is our duty and obligation to foster only those convictions which are justified by reason and experience, that have passed through the crucible of analysis, in a word, to act sensibly and not senselessly as in dreams or delirium, so as not to bring harm to a man, so as not to torment and ruin a man. Then, then it will be a real Christian deed, not only a mystical one, but a sensible and truly philanthropic deed...
The most consistent note the novel strikes is anti-mysticism; it consistently holds up "the real world" and "real life" as its opposites. The prosecutor's speech deplores it. Ivan identifies "mystery, miracle and authority" as the totems used by the church to take the freedom Christ intended to give. There is even a slight parallel between Zosima, who, after death, does not smell (which is taken as a sign of his holiness) and the same thing happening to the little boy who dies (with no one making the same assumption). I'll have to re-read those early scenes, but I am convinced there is more to this emphasis on the real world.
When playing Rock Band with some friends this past weekend, something unusual happened: "Carry On Wayward Son" (one of my least favorite songs ever) was followed by "Teen Age Riot" (a very good Sonic Youth song from their best period). What has the world come to when those songs can be played together indifferently? I would rate Sonic Youth better than Kansas, and better in such a way as to not be on the same scale; I know lamentably many people who would do the opposite. Both of these, at least, are coherent options. To put it a slightly different way: good taste and bad taste can both be dealt with: it's no taste that's really a problem. Everything I've read on aesthetic theory emphasizes the need for unity of taste: what one likes ought to be pointing to something; ideally to the best things, but at least somewhere (Eliot discusses these stages in his introductory essay to On the Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism). Liking things means not liking others; valuing some things means excluding other values.
When I started listening to Blur, I could recognize it as a violation of at least some of the things I believed in. Perhaps that's a funny example, but at least there's a line and I know when I've crossed it. I will never especially care for musicals, or Pink Floyd, or Shakespeare (though I have taken in all of them); my preference is for the real, which means Rembrandt and not Rubens, Bill Evans and not early-70s Miles Davis, Dostoevsky and not Tolstoy. Thus it was not surprising to me that Veronica Mars season 2 fits while 30 Rock no longer does; that I got more out of Camus' The Stranger than I might out of books written by authors more sympathetic to my philosophical views. Our age is one where the aesthetic is valued above all, and particularly the subjective feeling the aesthetic gives: developing taste is hard, difficult work.
I have decided to consider myself a Calvinist. I'm not really a Calvinist--I still have my doubts about predestination, though I do believe in the perseverance of the saints. It comes more from two things: first, an impulse to stand with the despised. Grotius, the subject of my dissertation, is frequently assumed to be a spokesperson for whatever a modern interlocutor doesn't like (sovereignty, intervention, human rights, natural law, no human rights, no natural law): the only thing these criticisms have in common is very little familiarity with Grotius' work. The same thing is true, in spades, with Calvin: the people who like him least have read him least.
The second came from sitting down to read Calvin. He is, first of all, a humanist--which is to say he's read widely, knows his Greek and Latin and Hebrew, and can pull from an impressive array of sources. (Perhaps not enough emphasis can be laid on the scholastic/humanist divide; it's why I find Erasmus tolerable even at his most rah-rah Rome). He proceeds carefully an meticulously, always documenting his sources (and, for good measure, pulling a trick Grotius himself would later use: citing a Greek Father and a Latin Father for the more controversial claims he makes). I once said of N.T. Wright, who I think stands in this tradition, that he writes as though his authority is an open question every time he sets pen to paper: one misstep and it goes away. And Calvin, for better or worse, understands not just his own mind, but those of his opponents: I've had theological conversations in which my interlocutor has made exactly the objections Calvin predicts in the order he expects them. He may be wrong, but he's earned the right to be heard.
Some years ago, when I was first starting to get into poetry, and was looking for a short poem of Ezra Pound's to include for a school project, she directed me to this one, which seems appropriate:
I make a pact with you, Walt Whitman--
I have detested you long enough.
I come to you as a grown child
who has had a pig-headed father;
I am old enough now to make friends.
It was you that broke the new wood,
Now is a time for carving
We have one sap and one root--
Let there be commerce between us
I've been reading Karl Barth's Dogmatics in Outline with some friends. From Barth:
A well-intentioned business, this entire 'spectacle' of Christian art, well-intentioned but impotent, since God Himself has made His own image. Once a man has understood 'God in the highest', it becomes impossible for him to want any imagery in thought, or any other kind of imagery.
The rejection of images and icons was the glory of the western church until it, too, backslid. Now hardly anyone sees a problem with them; so much the worse for now. Barth echoes Kierkegaard, and Hegel's long explanation of the problems with religious art. (But didn't Gregory say that images were the Bibles of the illiterate? 1. No: you should read the art history literature on this topic. 2. Teach people to read, and the problem goes away.)
The other very interesting point Barth raised was a rejection of natural theology. There's much to say on this topic, but one of my friends raised the point that once the language of nature is employed, it can be used to justify most any cultural preference. Hugo Schwyzer provides a good example of this weakness, and his commenters elucidate it quite well. Both the die-hard traditionalists and the radical feminists look only to the point they find some pretext for the belief they had anyway, and then use it to hammer the opposition.
Both, however, repeat the mistake Hugo mentions in his original post: "the TOB embraces the idea that yes, biology is not only destiny, but divinely ordained reproductive destiny." There's a crudeness to it: either pleasure is a sign something bad is going on (or something that needs to be controlled), with all the Platonic nonsense that follows; or pleasure is something good to be pursued without reservation. My biology is not my destiny; pleasure is one of many ends (there are more than two).
Of course, this is much worse for women than it is for men: if TOB is right, the fundamental purpose for which women were put on the earth is done when pregnancy starts being a great biological risk for the child (35? 40?). The dangers of this mentality are (or should be) obvious: combine it with the pressure to have lots of children, and one ends up with the result that being unmarried at 23 (or 25, etc) is considered a warning sign of spinsterhood: the best procreating years are being wasted.
It's difficult to attempt to be both a conservative Christian and a feminist, but it's a combination I think worth trying. My church, a year or so ago, reaffirmed that we believe it's quite okay for women to preach from the pulpit, and last Sunday was the first example of it. The sermon, on John 4, was quite good--possibly the best I've heard all year. (I will not say "good for a woman," or "she brought an interesting feminine perspective to the passage:" she has a gift for teaching, full stop). In the last year, I've heard a lot of mediocre preaching--the kind of which the best thing that can be said is that it's over quickly--and it never ceases to amaze me what people will accept. I think it's possible to do so little with a lectionary reading as to not make it worth having bothered in the first place--and that's a real dishonor to the word, which should be central (where your effort is, there your heart will be also). I am, at any rate, glad to belong to the church I do, where this sort of thing happens.
There is still more to say (there always is): on how I've lost my trust in Charles Taylor, Dante and T.S. Eliot, how Hegel has recommended himself to me, and the long-promised set of reflections on intellectual patrimony. These must all wait.
There is much left unsaid (there always is): the memory of a long, slow, happy evening, which will be in heart and mind for a very long time. Life has its consolations
8.5.09
ON INTERPRETATION: On Deuteronomy 30:
Connection borrowed from everyone's favorite eighteenth-century Scotsman.
And, on the limits of interpretation:
For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, Who will ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down) or Who will descend into the abyss? (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.
Connection borrowed from everyone's favorite eighteenth-century Scotsman.
And, on the limits of interpretation:
54 He also said to the crowds, When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, A shower is coming. And so it happens. 55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, There will be scorching heat, and it happens. 56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
7.5.09
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: Hello, kindred spirit: Marilynne Robinson, from "Marguerite de Navarre:"
The essay as a whole is beautifully written and just completely devastating, a perfect critique of those who would be conservative and speak of history and tradition without knowing anything about either.
UPDATE: Oh, goodness, and she absolutely sledgehammers Lord Acton for intentionally misquoting Calvin in order to disparage Protestantism. Love it!
Yet, lacking curiosity and the habit of study and any general grasp of history, we have entered a period of nostalgia and reaction. We want the past back, though we have no idea what it was. Things do not go so well for us as they once did. We feel we have lost our way. Most of us know that religion was once very important to our national life, and believe, whether we ourselves are religious or not, tat we were much better for its influence. Many of us know that Calvinism was a very important tradition among us. Yet all we know about John Calvin was that he was an eighteenth-century Scotsman, a prude and obscuritanist with a buckle on his hat, possibly a burner of witches, certainly the very spirit of capitalism. Our ignorant parody of history affirms our ignorant parody of religious or "traditional" values. This matters, because history is precedent and permission, and in this important instance, as in many others, we have lost plain accuracy, not to speak of complexity, substance, and human inflection. We want to return to the past, and we have made our past a demonology and not a human narrative.
The essay as a whole is beautifully written and just completely devastating, a perfect critique of those who would be conservative and speak of history and tradition without knowing anything about either.
UPDATE: Oh, goodness, and she absolutely sledgehammers Lord Acton for intentionally misquoting Calvin in order to disparage Protestantism. Love it!
6.5.09
My paper which, two weeks ago, was on Grotius and slavery, is now a paper on humanitarian intervention and customary international law. With no Grotius or slavery. This is an academic Ship-of-Achilles: at what point did it stop being the original paper?
I will, however, eventually write the Grotius-on-slavery paper, which I think has significant implications for his idea of human relationships and the role of natural law (not that big!).
I will, however, eventually write the Grotius-on-slavery paper, which I think has significant implications for his idea of human relationships and the role of natural law (not that big!).
5.5.09
VAGUELY INCONGRUOUS THINGS, AN ONGOING SERIES: From The A.V. Club's interview with George Wendt (of Cheers fame):
AVC: I have a hazy memory of seeing you on Friday Night Videos back in the mid-’80s, co-hosting with John Ratzenberger, and you each got to pick one video during the show. And if I’m not mistaken you picked “King Of The Hill” by the Minutemen.
GW: I may have. I was a big fan of the Minutemen. Unfortunately their career only lasted about a minute. D. Boon had that tragic auto wreck. But I still listen to various Mike Watt projects.
NEPHOS MARTURON:
As part of my ongoing study of Acts, I've been thinking about the titles Luke uses with reference to the disciples: office (episkopen), ministry (diakonia), apostle, obviously, and witness (martur). The last is interesting to me in light of Peter's insistence, in Acts 1:22, that one of the assembled post-ascension pre-pentecostal group must also become a witness. Two questions: why does Peter insist on someone else becoming a witness to what the 120 were all witnesses to (or is he just combining witness with apostolic office)? Second, witnesses to what, exactly? Presumably all the things in his great sermon in Acts 2.
I was thinking about the word martur and how it takes on a very different meaning in English, one that changes the underlying concept, I think: martyrdom is taken to be the act of witness--if it weren't true (or believed true), why die for it?
The passage I cited in Hebrews, which also makes reference back to martur in this sense, is usually taken to refer back to the collection of saints who are observing all our actions (do a google search of the Greek title of this post and you'll see what I mean). The second question above is relevant: witnesses to what? The usual conception, I think, is witnesses to us, the communion of saints that watches over and cares for (/prays for) those who are left on earth. But I don't think they're witnesses in that sense.
Consider two other passages from Hebrews 11:
and also:
They are witnesses, then, to Christ, insomuch as it was given to them at any point in time. They are commended for their faith even though they weren't given the object of that faith. All these people have run the race well, with less than what we have now. If the writer to the Hebrews really is writing to the Hebrews, then he is saying: look at how well our people have always witnessed God, in all their limits and imperfections. We, who have more, ought to do as they did. 12:2 closes the thought:
That is, the witnesses are witnesses to Christ; we should imitate them where they were good, but realize their orientation (Christ alone) and seek to model that, too. Thus the Second Helvetic Confession:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us...
As part of my ongoing study of Acts, I've been thinking about the titles Luke uses with reference to the disciples: office (episkopen), ministry (diakonia), apostle, obviously, and witness (martur). The last is interesting to me in light of Peter's insistence, in Acts 1:22, that one of the assembled post-ascension pre-pentecostal group must also become a witness. Two questions: why does Peter insist on someone else becoming a witness to what the 120 were all witnesses to (or is he just combining witness with apostolic office)? Second, witnesses to what, exactly? Presumably all the things in his great sermon in Acts 2.
I was thinking about the word martur and how it takes on a very different meaning in English, one that changes the underlying concept, I think: martyrdom is taken to be the act of witness--if it weren't true (or believed true), why die for it?
The passage I cited in Hebrews, which also makes reference back to martur in this sense, is usually taken to refer back to the collection of saints who are observing all our actions (do a google search of the Greek title of this post and you'll see what I mean). The second question above is relevant: witnesses to what? The usual conception, I think, is witnesses to us, the communion of saints that watches over and cares for (/prays for) those who are left on earth. But I don't think they're witnesses in that sense.
Consider two other passages from Hebrews 11:
13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. 14 For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
and also:
39 And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, 40 since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.
They are witnesses, then, to Christ, insomuch as it was given to them at any point in time. They are commended for their faith even though they weren't given the object of that faith. All these people have run the race well, with less than what we have now. If the writer to the Hebrews really is writing to the Hebrews, then he is saying: look at how well our people have always witnessed God, in all their limits and imperfections. We, who have more, ought to do as they did. 12:2 closes the thought:
...looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
That is, the witnesses are witnesses to Christ; we should imitate them where they were good, but realize their orientation (Christ alone) and seek to model that, too. Thus the Second Helvetic Confession:
At the same time we do not despise the saints or think basely of them. For we acknowledge them to be living members of Christ and friends of God who have gloriously overcome the flesh and the world. Hence we love them as brothers, and also honor them; yet not with any kind of worship but by an honorable opinion of them and just praises of them. We also imitate them. For with ardent longings and supplications we earnestly desire to be imitators of their faith and virtues, to share eternal salvation with them, to dwell eternally with them in the presence of God, and to rejoice with them in Christ. And in this respect we approve of the opinion of St. Augustine in De Vera Religione: "Let not our religion be the cult of men who have died. For if they have lived holy lives, they are not to be thought of as seeking such honors; on the contrary, they want us to worship him by whose illumination they rejoice that we are fellow-servants of his merits. They are therefore to be honored by the way of imitation, but not to be adored in a religious manner," etc.
4.5.09
LINK: Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come is available on Amazon for 99 cents, and I can't quite bring myself to buy it.
GIVE MY INNER LIBERTARIAN A MOMENT, WILL YOU?
Jim Manzi highlights one aspect of the Obama Administration's negotiations over Chrysler that has worried me: the desire to set aside the usual rules and procedures for how things are done in order to produce a "better" political result. I'm from Michigan, and have a lot of sympathy for how bad things are there right now (I'm not from an auto-supplier part of the state, be we knew people: everyone did). However, it's also worse in the long run to have a company forever on the edge of viability than one restructured, sold off, or whatever, which is able to eventually compete. None of this can happen when it's not allowed to happen naturally--that is, as the law governing bankruptcy says it should.
The connection which I haven't seen made yet is to the rise of a certain approach to state Attorney General-ing which gained popularity in the 90s: raise criminal charges (or threaten to raise allegations) in order to stop companies from doing things that were disliked: Eliot Spitzer is the obvious example, but Granholm in Michigan did it, too, and there are others. The Obama Administration is doing the same thing on a much larger scale.
Jim Manzi highlights one aspect of the Obama Administration's negotiations over Chrysler that has worried me: the desire to set aside the usual rules and procedures for how things are done in order to produce a "better" political result. I'm from Michigan, and have a lot of sympathy for how bad things are there right now (I'm not from an auto-supplier part of the state, be we knew people: everyone did). However, it's also worse in the long run to have a company forever on the edge of viability than one restructured, sold off, or whatever, which is able to eventually compete. None of this can happen when it's not allowed to happen naturally--that is, as the law governing bankruptcy says it should.
The connection which I haven't seen made yet is to the rise of a certain approach to state Attorney General-ing which gained popularity in the 90s: raise criminal charges (or threaten to raise allegations) in order to stop companies from doing things that were disliked: Eliot Spitzer is the obvious example, but Granholm in Michigan did it, too, and there are others. The Obama Administration is doing the same thing on a much larger scale.
3.5.09
QUOTE FOR THE DAY II: From the forthcoming study of Acts, Karl Barth, on ascendit ad coelos:
It is one of my general contentions in interpretation that every metaphor breaks down somewhere, and nowhere is this more true than metaphors about man's relation to God. The place where I discovered this is the beginning of Jeremiah, where Israel is compared to, variously, a wife, a child, and many other things besides. Each picks up a particular aspect of what it means to relate to God, but none of them expresses it fully--and terrible misinterpretations happen when one metaphor is privileged, or extended too far. Barth here, by reading the metaphor of head and body, shows the definite limits of another metaphor--bride and groom. The church is, in some sense, the bride; marriage is a picture of at least one aspect of the relationship between Christ and the church (certainly one that speaks of love; perhaps, though not certainly, other things as well). On another level, though, the metaphor is wrong, because marriage is a relation between two equals (or, for the complementarians out there, separate-but-equals), which the relationship between Christ and the church never can be. The church is made of men, who fail, and only after very much trouble throughout their lives can approach even a portion of what God has (or can only do so through God's grace--but no one would say this about a husband's relationship to his wife); Christ, especially the ascended, glorified Christ, does not have any of these weaknesses or failings. And, indeed, the church is one of the things that will pass away--the church only becomes possible after the ascension, and will be rendered meaningless after the return (they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, after all). We are, in this sense, and as Kierkegaard said, living in the parentheses. Placing the ascension, along with the incarnation and the sepultus, as the key moments in the Creed and the Bible permit a full, proper conception of the relationship between God and man.
It reminds the Church founded by the resurrection that as such it stands under the Cross, which means, in the concealment of God which He Himself alone breaks through when it pleases Him. It reminds it that the relationship of head and body is not reversible, that the healing omnipotence is the power of the Lord: it is over us and for us without ever becoming our power.
It is one of my general contentions in interpretation that every metaphor breaks down somewhere, and nowhere is this more true than metaphors about man's relation to God. The place where I discovered this is the beginning of Jeremiah, where Israel is compared to, variously, a wife, a child, and many other things besides. Each picks up a particular aspect of what it means to relate to God, but none of them expresses it fully--and terrible misinterpretations happen when one metaphor is privileged, or extended too far. Barth here, by reading the metaphor of head and body, shows the definite limits of another metaphor--bride and groom. The church is, in some sense, the bride; marriage is a picture of at least one aspect of the relationship between Christ and the church (certainly one that speaks of love; perhaps, though not certainly, other things as well). On another level, though, the metaphor is wrong, because marriage is a relation between two equals (or, for the complementarians out there, separate-but-equals), which the relationship between Christ and the church never can be. The church is made of men, who fail, and only after very much trouble throughout their lives can approach even a portion of what God has (or can only do so through God's grace--but no one would say this about a husband's relationship to his wife); Christ, especially the ascended, glorified Christ, does not have any of these weaknesses or failings. And, indeed, the church is one of the things that will pass away--the church only becomes possible after the ascension, and will be rendered meaningless after the return (they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, after all). We are, in this sense, and as Kierkegaard said, living in the parentheses. Placing the ascension, along with the incarnation and the sepultus, as the key moments in the Creed and the Bible permit a full, proper conception of the relationship between God and man.
QUOTE FOR THE DAY: Matthew 20:
9 And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. 10 Now when those hired first came, they thought they would receive more, but each of them also received a denarius. 11 And on receiving it they grumbled at the master of the house, 12 saying, These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. 13 But he replied to one of them, Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? 14 Take what belongs to you and go. I choose to give to this last worker as I give to you. 15 Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity? 16 So the last will be first, and the first last.
GLAD GIRLS/GAME OF PRICKS/UM...
I wrote about this one right at the beginning of September 2007, but this is the actual video:
...sort of hideous, isn't it? Still, a great song. Over time, I shifted a little, and I was pretty convinced this was their best song:
since, unlike most Guided By Voices songs, this one has some coherence in its lyrics.
I am now quite certain, however, that their best song is yet another--especially the album version, which is just lovely. Too bad it has such a bad title.
I wrote about this one right at the beginning of September 2007, but this is the actual video:
...sort of hideous, isn't it? Still, a great song. Over time, I shifted a little, and I was pretty convinced this was their best song:
since, unlike most Guided By Voices songs, this one has some coherence in its lyrics.
I am now quite certain, however, that their best song is yet another--especially the album version, which is just lovely. Too bad it has such a bad title.
2.5.09
GILEAD:
Much recommended, and just a little disappointing. The style--epistolary narrative, stream-of-consciousness reminiscence--does little for me under most circumstances; the only exception I can think to either is Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which succeeds in spite of, rather than because of, its technique (Stephen doesn't become an interesting character until he's a teenager; all the moo-cow stuff is silly, at best). The tone is uneven: the main character is well-read and midwestern, but comes off Faulkneresque (I've never been to Iowa, maybe that's how they talk) with digressions of too much technical lucidity.
It is, however, a love-letter to my beloved Reformed tradition, which I appreciated. When I think back on my youth, I mostly remember titanic intelligences who read widely. John Ames is no exception: Calvin and Barth figure prominently. Also Feuerbach and, in passing reference, Sartre; Herbert and Donne. We are literate people, value books, and are not afraid of them, even the ones which are supposedly bad for us--not reading Feuerbach (or anyone else) gives them outsize influence: better to read, understand, and critique. But there is also not idol-worship of any of those figures: we read them for who they are, men who were wise and insightful but still erred.
Of particular interest, in this context, is the discussion Young Boughton starts on the doctrine of predestination. John Ames' response, which is to try to steer around the topic, is the correct one. Most people who bring it up, in my experience, are not interested in having a conversation on theology, no matter how the it is framed: they want to beat up on "Calvinists." The wise Reformed believer avoids the conversation entirely.
The primary theme of the novel is the relationship between parents and children, and I think here it is most radical, and appropriately so. T.S. Eliot's theory of the history of poetry (at one point, anyway) is that each generation reacts to the last in producing its own unique form. So I think it is with the John Ameses. The narrator's father reacts against the radicalism of his father; the narrator reacts against the stern ethical code of his father. Each generation, though, has its own blindness; the grandfather neither saw nor cared about the effect of his radicalism; the father held to his ethics even when it produced a split in the family.
The problem of Young Boughton raises this most particularly: the narrator is so caught up in his story, his way of seeing the world, that he is unable to appreciate Young Boughton for who he is, and see what it is he wants (until it is far too late to help at all). When Young Boughton makes a small request that might make it possible for his life to work out by returning home, all the narrator sees is the impossibility of it. Each generation sees the mistakes of its parents and thinks it has corrected or can correct them. That's all pride.
Much recommended, and just a little disappointing. The style--epistolary narrative, stream-of-consciousness reminiscence--does little for me under most circumstances; the only exception I can think to either is Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, which succeeds in spite of, rather than because of, its technique (Stephen doesn't become an interesting character until he's a teenager; all the moo-cow stuff is silly, at best). The tone is uneven: the main character is well-read and midwestern, but comes off Faulkneresque (I've never been to Iowa, maybe that's how they talk) with digressions of too much technical lucidity.
It is, however, a love-letter to my beloved Reformed tradition, which I appreciated. When I think back on my youth, I mostly remember titanic intelligences who read widely. John Ames is no exception: Calvin and Barth figure prominently. Also Feuerbach and, in passing reference, Sartre; Herbert and Donne. We are literate people, value books, and are not afraid of them, even the ones which are supposedly bad for us--not reading Feuerbach (or anyone else) gives them outsize influence: better to read, understand, and critique. But there is also not idol-worship of any of those figures: we read them for who they are, men who were wise and insightful but still erred.
Of particular interest, in this context, is the discussion Young Boughton starts on the doctrine of predestination. John Ames' response, which is to try to steer around the topic, is the correct one. Most people who bring it up, in my experience, are not interested in having a conversation on theology, no matter how the it is framed: they want to beat up on "Calvinists." The wise Reformed believer avoids the conversation entirely.
The primary theme of the novel is the relationship between parents and children, and I think here it is most radical, and appropriately so. T.S. Eliot's theory of the history of poetry (at one point, anyway) is that each generation reacts to the last in producing its own unique form. So I think it is with the John Ameses. The narrator's father reacts against the radicalism of his father; the narrator reacts against the stern ethical code of his father. Each generation, though, has its own blindness; the grandfather neither saw nor cared about the effect of his radicalism; the father held to his ethics even when it produced a split in the family.
The problem of Young Boughton raises this most particularly: the narrator is so caught up in his story, his way of seeing the world, that he is unable to appreciate Young Boughton for who he is, and see what it is he wants (until it is far too late to help at all). When Young Boughton makes a small request that might make it possible for his life to work out by returning home, all the narrator sees is the impossibility of it. Each generation sees the mistakes of its parents and thinks it has corrected or can correct them. That's all pride.
1.5.09
I CAN'T BE THE FIRST TO HAVE MADE THIS ANALOGY, right?
"It Was a Good Day": Ice Cube :: "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" : Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"It Was a Good Day": Ice Cube :: "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" : Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
TALES FROM GRADING:
This year's favorite malaprop will almost certainly be "principle action problem" (instead of "principal-agent problem"). Tentative definition: "the theory which points out how difficult it can be to act on one's principles."
Also, we have had several people (in a class on American Foreign Policy) say that Allison and Zelikow's Essence of Decision proves the superiority of the Rational Actor Model, which is just... wrong. Completely.
This year's favorite malaprop will almost certainly be "principle action problem" (instead of "principal-agent problem"). Tentative definition: "the theory which points out how difficult it can be to act on one's principles."
Also, we have had several people (in a class on American Foreign Policy) say that Allison and Zelikow's Essence of Decision proves the superiority of the Rational Actor Model, which is just... wrong. Completely.
QUOTE FOR THE EVENING: Probably my favorite Eliot:
...towards the end I hear an echo of Yeats' "After Long Silence", but that might just be me.
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.
...towards the end I hear an echo of Yeats' "After Long Silence", but that might just be me.
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