May Book: Guide to Thomas Aquinas

The book selection for May '09 is Josef Pieper's Guide to Thomas Aquinas.

Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Thomas-Aquinas-Josef-Pieper/dp/0898703190/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1240854413&sr=8-1

Paradise Lost: Discussion 4/25/09

Some of the topics discussed at the meeting on April 25 (participants may wish to expand and correct the following):

Does Milton display heresy in PL?

What's up with Chaos?

Chaos, his companions, and his throne are outside heaven, hell, and earth. (Satan discovers them en route from Hell to earth.) Were they created? How do they relate to God, demons, man?


Was Milton "of the Devil's Party"?

Yes: Milton was seduced by Satan. He draws Satan so well, having him drive the action, giving him the best lines ("better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," "evil be though my good"), that he's the most dramatically appealing character.

No: Milton was not seduced by Satan. We see through the speeches (e.g., Abdiel and God) and through the events described (Satan loses in the end: though he sabotages mankind by instigating the fall, God's grace overcomes in the end), it's clear that Milton knows that Satan's arguments are self-delusions and Satan's power is ineffective. Milton was giving Satan every benefit dramatically, but still shows that he's a failure. It would be Adam, Christ, and/or God who would be the heroes in Milton's view.

Lewis, Preface to PL: Quotes Ch. 16-19

Chapter 16: Adam and eve

No useful criticism of the Miltonic Adam is possible until the last trace of the naif, simple, childlike Adam has been removed from our imaginations. - p. 118

Chapter 19: Conclusion

But Paradise Lost records a real, irreversible, unrepeatable process in the history of the universe; and even for those who do not believe this, it embodies (in what for them is mythical form) the great change in every indivdiual soul from happy dependence to miserable self-assertion and thence either, as in Satan, to final isolation, or, as in Adam, to reconcilement and a different happiness. - p. 133

Lewis, Preface to PL: Quotes, Ch. 13-14

Chapter 13: Satan

For it is a very old critical discovery that the imitation in art of unpleasing objects may be a pleasing imitation. - p. 94

What the Satanic predicament consists in is made clear...by Satan himself. On his own showing he is suffering from a "sense of injur'd merit" (I, 98). This is a well known state of mind which we can all study in domestic animals, children, film-stars, politicians, or minor poets; and perhaps nearer home. Many critics have a curious partiality for it in literature, but I do not know that any one admires it in life. When it appears, unable to hurt, in a jealous dog or a spoiled child, it is usually laughed at. When it appears armed with the force of millions on the political stage, it escapes ridicule only by being more mischievous. - pp. 95-96

In the midst of a world of light and love, of song and feast and dance, [Satan] could find nothing to think of more interesting than his own prestige. - p. 96

What we seen in Satan is the horrible co-existence of a subtle and incessant intellectual activity with an incapacity to understand anything. This doom he has brought upon himself; in order to avoid seeing one thing he has, almost voluntarily, incapacitated himself from seeing at all. And thus, throughout the poem, all his torments come, in a sense, at his own bidding, and the divine judgement might have been expressed in the words "thy will be done." he says "Evil be though my good" (which includes "Nonsense be thou my sense") and his prayer is granted. - p. 99

From hero to general, from general to politician, from politician to secret service agent, and thence to a thing that peers in at bedroom or bathroom windows, and thence to a toad, and finally to a snake -- such is the progress of Satan. - p. 99

To make a character worse than oneself it is only necessary to release imaginatively from control some of the bad passions which, in real life, are always straining at the leash; the Satan, the Iago, the Becky Sharp, within each of us, is always there and only too ready, the moment the leash is slipped, to come out and have in our books the holiday we try to deny them in our lives. - p.100

But if you try to draw a character better than yourself, all you can do is to take the best moments you have had and to imagine them prolonged and more consistently embodied in action. But the real high virtues which we do not possess at all, we cannot depict, except in a purely external fashion. We do not really know what it feels like to be am an much better than ourselves. His whole inner landscape is one we have never seen, and when we guess it we blunder. It is in their "good" characters that novelists make, unawares, the most shocking self-revelations. Heaven understands Hell and hell does not understand heaven.... - pp. 100-101

Adam, though locally confined to a small park on a small planet, has interests that embrace "all the choir of heaven and all the furniture of earth". Satan has been in the Heaven of Heavens and in the abyss of Hell, and surveyed all that lies between them, and in that whole immensity has found only one thing that interests Satan.... The hell he carries with him is, in one sense, a Hell of infinite boredom. Satan, like Miss Bates, is interesting to read about; but Milton makes plain the blank uninterestingness of being Satan. - p. 102



Chapter 14: Satan's Followers

"Mammon... proposes an ordered state of sin with such majesty of pride that we are almost led astray. Perhaps Milton has touched here so essentially the nature of sin that if it were not for the suspicious live to ourselves (II, 254) we should not recognize it as such, so natural is it to man." - p. 104 (quoting Muriel Bentley)

For human beings there is often an escape from this Hell, but there is never more than one -- the way of humiliation, repentance and (where possible) restitution. For Milton's devils this way is closed. The poet very wisely never really allows the question "What if they did repent?" to become actual.... They know that they will not repent. That door out of Hell is firmly locked, by the devils themselves, on the inside.... - pp. 104-5

Anger (Moloch): He cannot bring himself to regard the present misery as unavoidable. There must be a way out of these intolerable sensations; and the way out that occurs to him is rage.... But is fury safe? That does not matter. Nothing can be worse than the present.... Moloch is the simplest of the fiends: a mere rat in a trap. - p. 105

Insensate (Belial): These moments were agony because in them he felt "Heav'n ruining from Heav'n" -- he was still a native of heaven himself, and the traces of honour and love were still in him. It is that state to which, at all costs, he does not want to return. The fires must not be re-awakened: to grow numb, voluntarily to decline on to a lower plane of being, never agin to admit any aspiration, any thought, any emotion which might "dispell the comfortable glooms of Hell", to avoid great literature and noble music and the society of uncorrupted men as an invalid avoids draughts -- this is his cue. Of course, there is no question of happiness, but perhaps the time will pass somehow. - p. 106

Ignorant (Mammon): This is why Mammon is called "the least erected spirit that fell from Heav'n" (I, 679). He has never understood the difference between Hell and Heaven at all. The tragedy has been no tragedy to him: he can do very well without Heaven. The human analogues are here the most obvious and the most terrible of all -- the men who seem to have passed from Heaven to Hell and can't see the difference. - pp. 106-7

Vengeful (Beelzebub): And the reality to which he recalls them is this, that they cannot at all escape from hell nor in any way injure their enemy, but that there is a chance of injuring someone else.... This is sense, this is practical politics, this is the realism of Hell. - p. 107

What else is there for impentient and defeated evil to do but to rage and stamp? But such is Milton's invention that each new speaker uncovers further recesses of misery and evil, new subterfunge and new folly, and gives us fuller understanding of the Satanic predicament. - p. 107

Lewis, Preface to PL: Quotes, Ch. 8-12

Chapter 8: Defence of this Style

Very roughly, we might almost say that in Rhetoric imagination is present for the sake of passion (and, therefore, in the long run, for the sake of action), while in poetry passion is present for the sake of imagination, and therefore, in the long run, for the sake of wisdom or spiritual health --- the rightness and richness of a man's total response to the world. - p. 54

Sensitive critics are so tired of seeing good Stock responses aped by bad writers that when at last they meet the reality they mistake it for one more instance of posturing. The are rather like a man I knew who had seen so many bad pictures of moonlight on water that he criticized a real weir under a real moon as "conventional". - pp. 55-56

For though the human heart is not unchanging (nay, changes almost out of recognition in the twinkling of an eye) the laws of causation are. When poisons become fashionable they do not cease to kill. - p. 57

The whole art consists not in evoking the unexpected, but in evoking with a perfection and accuracy beyond expectation the very image that has haunted us all our lives. The marvel about Milton's Paradise or Milton's Hell is simply that they are there -- that the thing has at last been done -- that our dream stands before us and does not melt. Not many poets can thus draw out leviathan with a hook. - p. 58

The grandeur with the poet assumes in his poetic capacity should not arouse hostile reactions. It is for our benefit. he makes his epic a rite so that we may share it; the more ritual it becomes, the more we are elevated to the rank of participants. - p. 60

Chapter 9: The Doctrine of the Unchanging Human Heart

Men do mightily wrong themselves when they refuse
to be present in all ages
and neglect to see the beauty of all kingdoms.
Traherne

But in reality you understand enginehood or humanity or any other universal precisely by studying all the different things it can become -- by following the branches of the tree, not by cutting them off. - p. 65

Chapter 10: Milton and St. Augustine

What we call bad things are good things perverted.... This perversion arises when a conscious creature becomes more interested in itself than in God. - p. 66

As the angels point out, whoever tries to rebel against god produces the result opposite of his intention (vii, 613). At the end of the poem Adam is astonished at the power "that all this good of evil shall produce" (xii, 470). This is the exact reverse of the programme Satan had envisaged in Book I, when he hoped, if God attempted any good through him, to "pervert that end" (162); instead he is allowed to do all the evil he wants and finds that he has produced good. Those who will not be God's sons become his tools. - pp. 67-68

Chapter 11: Hierarchy

Every being is a conductor of superior love or agape to the being below it, and of inferior love or eros to the being above. Such is the loving inequality between the intelligence who guides a sphere and the sphere which is guided. - p. 75

... those who cannot face such startling should not read old books. - p. 76

For this is perhaps the central paradox of his vision. Discipline, while the world is yet unfallen, exists for the sake of what seems its very opposite -- for freedom, almost for extravagance. The pattern deep hidden in the dance, hidden so deep that shallow spectators cannot see it, alone gives beauty to the wild, free gestures that fill it, just as the decasyllabic norm gives beauty to all the licenses and variations of the poet's verse. The happy soul is, like a planet, a wandering star; yet in that very wandering (as astronomy teaches) invariable; she is eccentric beyond all predicting, yet equable in her eccentricity. The heavenly frolic arises from an orchestra which is in tune; the rules of courtesy make perfect ease and freedom possible between those who obey them. - p. 81

Chapter 12: The Theology of Paradise Lost

[Prof. Saurat] tells us that "Milton's god is far from the God of popular belief or even orthodox theology. He is no creator external to His creation, but total and perfect Being, which includes in Himself the whole of space and the whole of time." - p. 82

Lewis, Preface to PL: Quotes, Ch. 4-7

Chapter 4 The Technique of Primary Epic

It is a prime necessity of oral poetry that the hearers should not be surprised too often, or too much.... A line which gives the listener pause is a disaster in oral poetry because it makes him lose the next line. And even if he does not lose the next, the rare and ebullient line is not worth making. In the sweep of recitation no individual line is going to count for very much.... You cannot ponder over single lines and let them dissolve on the mind like lozenges.... To look for single "good lines" is like looking for single "good" stones in a cathedral. - p. 21

The epic diction, as Goethe said, is "a language which does your thinking and your poetizing for you." ... The conscious artistry of the poet is thus set free to devote itself wholly to the large-scale problems -- construction, character drawing, invention; his verbal poetics have become a habit, like grammar or articulation. - p. 25

Chapter 6: Virgil and the Subject of Secondary Epic

Yet, on the other hand, so true an artist as Virgil could not be content with the clumsiness and monotony of a mere chronicle. His solution of the problem -- one of the most important revolutions in the history of poetry -- was to take one single national legend and treat it in such a way that we feel the vaster theme to be somehow implicit in it. He has to tell a comparatively short story and give us the illusion of having lived through a great space of time. He has to deal with a limited number of personages and make us feel as if national, or almost cosmic, issues are involved.... After Virgil and Milton, this procedure seems obvious enough. But it is obvious only because a great poet, faced with an all but insoluble problem, discovered this answer and with it discovered new possibilities for poetry itself. - p. 34

No man who has once read [Aeneid] with full perception remains an adolescent. - p. 37

That is the Virgillian note. But in Homer there was nothing, in the long run, to be unshaken about. You were unhappy, or you were happy, and that was all. Aeneas lives in a different world; he is compelled to see something more important than happiness. - p. 38

It is the nature of a vocation to appear to men in the double character of a duty and a desire.... - p. 38

This is the very portrait of a vocation: a thing that calls or beckons, that calls inexorably, yet you must strain your ears to catch the voice, that insist on being sought, yet refuses to be found. - p. 38

The result is that agonized parting in which the will remains suspended between two equal intolerables.

'Twixt miserable longing for the present land
And the far realms that call them by the fates' command (v, 656)

It will be seen that in these two lines Virgil, with no intention of allegory, has described once and for all the very quality of most human life as it is experienced by any one who has not yet risen to holiness or sunk to animality. - p. 39

But one thing is certain. If we are to have another epic it must go on from Virgil. Any return to the merely heroic, any lay, however good, that tells merely of brave men fighting to save their lives or to get home or to avenge their kinsmen, will now be an anachronism. You cannot be young twice. The explicitly religious subject for any future epic has been dictated by Virgil; it is the only further development left. - p. 39

Chapter 7: The Style of the Secondary Epic

The style of Virgil and Milton arises as the solution of a very definite problem. The Secondary epic aims at an even higher solemnity than the Primary; but it has lost all those external aids to solemnity which the Primary enjoyed.... The Virgilian and Miltonic style is there to compensate for -- to counteract -- the privacy and informality of silent reading in a man's own study. - p. 40

What I chiefly want to point out is something else -- the poet's unremitting manipulation of his readers -- how he sweeps us along as though we were attending an actual recitation and nowhere allows us to settle down and luxuriate on any one line or paragraph. It is common to speak of Milton's style as organ music. It might be more helpful to regard the reader as the organ and Milton as the organist. It is on us he plays, if we will let him. - p. 41

But look again and you will see that the ostensible and logical connexion between these images is not exactly the same as the emotional connexion which I have been tracing. The point is important.... But unlike the moderns he always provides a facade of logical connexions as well. The virtue of this is that it pulls our logical faculty to sleep and enables us to accept what we are given without question. - p. 42

The Miltonian simile does not always serve to illustrate what it pretends to be illustrating. The likeness between the two things compared is often trivial, and is, indeed, required only to save the face of the logical censor. - p. 42

Nearly every sentence in Milton has that power which physicists sometimes think we shall have to attribute to matter -- the power of action at a distance. - p. 43

When we have understood this it will perhaps be possible to approach that feature of Milton's style which has been most severely criticized -- the Latinism of his constructions. Continuity is an essential of the epic style. If the mere printed page is to affect us like the voice of a bard chanting in a hall then the chant must go on.... We must not be allowed to settle down at the end of each sentence.... we must not wholly wake from the enchantment nor quite put off our festal clothes. A boat will not answer to the rudder unless it is in motion; the poet can work upon us only as long as we are kept on the move. - p. 45

The sequence drowsed -- untroubled -- my former state -- insensible -- dissolve is exactly right; the very crumbling of consciousness is before us and the fringe of syntactical mystery helps rather than hinders the effect. - p. 47

While seeming to describe his own imagination he must actually arouse ours... We are his organ: when he appears to be describing Paradise he is in fact drawing out the Paradisal Stop in us. - p. 49

Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost: Quotes, Ch. 1-3

A perfect judge will read each work of wit
With the same spirit that its author writ.
Pope

Chapter 1: Epic Poetry

By "experience" he doubtless means such unhappy experiences as that of his father who wrote Amadis in strict conformity to the rules of Aristotle, but found that the recitation of it emptied the auditorium, from which "he concluded that the unity of action was a thing affording little pleasure." - p. 6

Chapter 2: Is Criticism Possible?

... each has unawares crowned and mitred himself Pope and King of Pointland. - p. 10

We may therefore allow poets to tell us ... whether it is easy or difficult to write like Milton, but not whether the reading of Milton is a valuable experience. For who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed? - p. 11 (responding to Eliot's view that only good poets can judge criticism of poetry)

Chapter 3: Primary Epic

The older critics divided Epic into Primitive and Artificial, which is unsatisfactory, because no surviving ancient poetry is really primitice and all poetry is in some sense artificial. - p. 13

All poetry is oral.... And all poetry is musical. - p. 14

The serious court poetry is another matter.... its three characteristics are that it is about men, it is historically true, and it is tragic. - p. 14

... he asks for "the voice of the reader in the house rather than the laughter of the mob in the streets" - p. 15

Professor Tolkein has suggested to me that this is an account of the complete range of court poetry, in which three kinds of poem can be distinguished -- [1] the lament for mutability... [2] the tale of strange adventures, and [3] the 'true and magic' lay.... - pp. 15, 16

the modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual. - p. 17

Paradise Lost: Q&A

An interesting list of questions and answers about Paradise Lost can be found at:

http://www.paradiselost.org/7-archive.html

I found many of the answers enlightening, and some of the questions even more interesting than the answers.

How to read Milton

Check this out.

Paradise Lost: The Nature of God

Another Bookie emails:

Let me just throw another question out.... Is Milton's idea of God's nature significantly different than Dante's? (and therefore Thomas Aquinas's)? Does Milton, under the influence of William of Occam and Duns Scotus see God not so much as Being itself, as Aquinas would, but as the most powerful entity in the cosmos--yet one entity among others?

I ask this, because it seems to me to relate directly to Lucifer's rebellion. To rebel against God the cosmic dictator seems possible--Christopher Hitchens says if he could bring himself to believe in such a god, he'd have to rebel against it; but to rebel against Being itself seems like a mistake in logic.

Fr. Robert Barron's account of how reformation theology differs from Catholic theology focuses on this divide in medieval philosophery; he claims that Luther and Calvin were greatly influenced by Occam and Scotus. I have no independent idea on that. Still, Dante's vision of Satan as deprived of being, frozen in the lake at the bottom of hell, is at least different in degree from Milton's conception of a still very lively Lucifer.

I don't know enough about the theology to comment on the Occam vs. Aquinas distinction. That would be Peter's department.

However, the questions posed in the email brought to mind Abdiel's speech (Book V, lines 823-849) in opposition to Satan's plan to fight God.

Abdiel restates Satan's argument: "Flatly unjust, to bind with laws the free, and equal over equals to let reign." (Book V, lines 819-820.) Clearly, Satan (in Abdiel's summary) views God as one among other beings, perhaps just one among equals.

Abdiel retorts, "Shalt thou give law to god, shalt thou dispute with him the points of liberty, who made thee what thou art...?" (Book V, lines 823-824) and "Our happy state under one head more near united." (Book V, lines 830-831) Abdiel's response to Satan seems to reflect the view more like God as Being. At least, God is not just another entity, but the creator of all entities.

THEN, because he's Milton and he can, the author throws in a line that I find incomprehensible, which seems to scramble the nice dichotomy described above (Book V, lines 843-844):

... since he the head
One of our number thus reduced becomes,

At present, I don't even have a theory as to what Milton was saying there, except perhaps, "stick that up your smoke and pipe it!"

Anyone care to help out here?

Paradise Lost: Quotes from Book V

... and beheld
Beauty which, whether waking or asleep,
Shot forth peculiar graces
Line 13


Heaven’s last, best gift, my ever-new delight!
Line 19


Yet evile whence?
In thee can harbour none,
Created pure.
Line 99



Which Reason, joining or disjoining, frames
All what we affirm or what deny, and call
Our knowledge or opinion; then retires
Into her private cell when Nature rests.
Oft, in her absence, mimic Fancy wakes
To imitate her; but, misjoining shapes,
Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams,
Ill matching words and deeds long past or late.
Line 107


Raphael, the sociable Spirit, that deigned
To travel with Tobias, and secured
His marriage with the seven-times-wedded maid.
Line 221


... and such discourse bring on
As may advise him of his happy state—
Happiness in his power left free to will,
Left to his own free will, his will though free
Yet mutable. Whence warn him to beware
He swerve not, too secure:
Line 233



If by fire
Of sooty coal th' empiric alchymist
Can turn, or holds it possible to turn, Metals of drossiest ore to perfect gold.
Line 439

Paradise Lost: Whence Free Will?

One of the Bookies* emailed:

Yes, we have a pretty raunchy bunch of malevolent spirits in Paradise Lost, though they dress well, seem to enjoy a lot of leisure time and have no property or income taxes to pay.

nonetheless, here are some lazy man's and / or poor reader's questions :

What is the source of Satan, Beelzebub, and the other's evil?

Yes, it is their egos; their attitude of "non serviam", ( I will not serve) -

But...?

How did they get 'free will' in the first place?

Is any of this clear?

Good question. Milton expressly describes God's giving free will to Adam and Eve, but I do not recall any discussion of how the fallen angels got their free will. Presumably, Milton's theology would be that God must have given that also.

But that raises a separate, and rather curious, issue: if God already gave the angels free will, why did he see the need to create man (with free will)? Isn't this just duplication? The angels could choose to worship and obey God (or not), just as man could. Is this just an example of belt and suspenders creation, like the multiplicity of the starry host, which Milton does note?

While I haven't searched the text for an answer, my gut says that Milton would say that there was more significance to the creation of man. If both angels and man have free will, and if there were rebellion -- as there was with both the angels and man -- why could not God show his grace toward the fallen (angels or man)? Yet Milton clearly states that God will not show grace toward the fallen angels, though he anticipated Adam's sin and intended from the beginning to show grace to man. Why the double standard: if God gave the free will to both, why not show grace to both?

Again lacking textual support, my gut says that Milton would say that there is something qualitatively different in God's relationship with angels and man such that, although both may have free will, God's reaction to the exercise of that will is justly different in the two cases. Anyone care to elucidate what that difference in relationship might be?


* Who may identify himself, if he desires.

Witness

My daughters and I had the honor of seeing Jim and Debbie Druley received into the Catholic Church at the 9:30 Mass at St. Joachim in Madera.

I heard them publicly announce that they "accepted, professed and confessed" ALL teachings of the Catholic Church.

Wow!

Talk about your blank checks.

We cradle Catholics seem to take a fairly cavalier attitude to that kind of thing. On Catholic Match, for example, there are "seven faith questions" ranging from contraception to premarital sex to women priests to the infallibility of the pope that get a wide range of answers. (Actually, it's kind of useful to sort out potential dates based on the answer to question #2.) So, for anyone to show the public level of commitment that Jim and Debbie have shown - to pretty much anything, actually, in this day and age - is a wake-up call for those of us who have never had to witness to our faith in the public way they have.

It's also a reason that the so much of the vitality and hope of the Catholic church comes from its converts and reverts.

So, from a "lifer," welcome home.

Paradise Lost: Quotes from Book IV

And on the Tree of Life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant.
Line 194.


The hell within him.
Line 20.


Now conscience wakes despair
That slumber’d,—wakes the bitter memory
Of what he was, what is, and what must be
Line 23.


A grateful mind
By owing owes not, but still pays, at once
Indebted and discharg’d.
Line 55.


Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide,
To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
Line 73.


So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost.
Evil, be thou my good.
Line 108.

Paradise Lost: Quotes from Book III

Embryos and idiots, eremites and friars,
White, black, and gray, with all their trumpery.
Line 474.


Since call’d
The Paradise of Fools, to few unknown.
Line 495.


And oft, though wisdom wake, suspicion sleeps
At wisdom’s gate, and to simplicity
Resigns her charge, while goodness thinks no ill
Where no ill seems.
Line 686.

Paradise Lost: Quotes from Book II

The strongest and the fiercest spirit
That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair.
Line 44.


Rather than be less,
Car’d not to be at all.
Line 47.


Which, if not victory, is yet revenge.
Line 105.


Our torments also may in length of time
Become our elements.
Line 274.


Long is the way
And hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
Line 432.


Vain wisdom all and false philosophy.
Line 565.

Re: Making Sense of Sarah

I am going to drop this response to Russ's excellent post here so that it doesn't get lost in the comments.

I think that Russ is right that Sarah is a kind of generic "woman" upon whom Greene is basing his apologia for his own adulterous behavior. Russ caught something I had missed, namely that Sarah is never given her own "form", but, rather is deliberately left a blank form upon which the reader can fill in whatever he finds most attractive in a woman.

I may have missed that point, but I certainly had the sense of Sarah being very vaguely sketched as an individual.

One of the feminist literary types can speak to this better than I, but I understand that feminists complain about the cultural trope that describes women as either "madonna" or "whore", i.e., sinner or saint. In Sarah we see the Madonna/Whore complex in spades. She is a slut of the first order, but then she works miracles, and when she works miracles, she is totally chaste. So, Greene seems to be saying that it's one or the other - either women are chaste "teases" or wanton sluts.

*Jeez*!

*Shudder*

Who says that kind of thing?

In my experience, immature, self-centered, narcissistic men say that kind of thing because that is how they see - or how they want to see - the world.

Knowing the history of Greene as we do, does "immature, self-centered, and narcissistic" seem like an apt description of a flagrant adulterer like Greene? Yup, could be.

There is also the treatment of Sarah as being, in my view, farely immature. To me, she seemed more like a breathy teenager than a mature woman.

Sarah in The End of the Affair reminded me of another purportedly self-creating female character - Catherine Barkley in Farewell to Arms. I found Catherine to be unreal, at times talking baby-talk to Captain Henry but always being sexually accessible to him and - dream of dreams - conveniently removing herself without complaint by dying in childbirth so that he could go on to his experience. This Wiki article describes Catherine:

Feminist thinkers will see in Catherine, Hemingway's perfect woman: wise and cynical in many ways, her wisdom cannot contain her desire. As Henry gives his health and youth to the war effort, Catherine's chief heroism is to ignore the dangers of unprotected sex and to accept the pain and death of childbirth stoically.

I mean, come-on now, if you were a self-centered, macho narcissist, how cool would it be to have a woman like that!

John Kasian told me that in light of the semi-autobiographical nature of "Farewell" it is fair to say that Catherine represented the kind of woman that Hemingway dreamed about when he was a teenager in Italy. From that perspective - the perspective of a teenager - Catherine seems more realistic than from the perspective of a middle-age burnout.

Similarly, given the autobiographical nature of The End of the Affair, I think it may be fair to say that Sarah represents an ideal for Greene, and that that says more about Greene than about "Sarah." I think it may be fair to say that Greene is looking to apologize for his adultery, and he may be saying that if only he had a lover who became a saint, then he might have been a better person.

Paradise Lost: Quotes from Book I

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe.
Line 1


What in me is dark
Illumine, what is low raise and support,
That to the height of this great argument
I may assert eternal Providence,
And justify the ways of God to men.
Line 22


What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; th’ unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield.
Line 105


To be weak is miserable,
Doing or suffering.
Line 157


The mind is its own place and in itself
can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n."
Satan to Beelzebub, Line 254


Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Line 261


Awake, arise, or be forever fallen!
Line 330


Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
Line 648

If God Were Vegan

Eve, if God were vegan?

"Book" suggestion: The Lives of Others

The suggested work is not a book, but a movie, The Lives of Others, the story of a Stasi captain given a political eavesdropping assignment in East Berlin.

A meditation on the dehumanizing effects of a totalitarian regime, it's both thought-provoking and one of the most emotionally powerful movies I've ever seen.

I have the DVD, which I can circulate if people are interested. (German, with English subtitles.)

NPR review available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7299396

The End of the Affair: Making Sense of Sarah

Our discussion last Saturday of Greene’s The End of the Affair (TEOTA) made clear that, for some of us, the character of Sarah does not ring true. This problem is at least accentuated by Greene’s use of Sarah’s diary and the miracles. Being great teachers, comments by Craig and Paul have prompted me to continue pondering on the question of why Greene would choose to present Sarah in that way.

INTENTIONAL

Given Greene’s demonstrated ability at writing more believable characters, the inescapable likelihood is that he must have intended to present the character of Sarah as a type, not a realistic person. She’s a caricature of extreme conversion: that of the sinner to saint.

Greene hints that he’s not going to give Sarah a realistic depiction. Although he’s rich in details about other characters (Henry’s near-sightedness, Savage’s tie, Smythe’s face), Bendrix claims to be unable to describe Sarah (p. 18):

I do not want any other woman substituted for Sarah, I want the reader to see the one broad forehead and bold moth, the conformation of the skull, but all I can convey is the indeterminate figure….

Other than telling us that she’s beautiful (p. 25), Greene’s physical description of Sarah is about as sketchy as anything this side of Beckett’s description of Godot.

So what was Greene up to?

One thing that I’m convinced he was not attempting in TEOTA was a defense of Christianity or, more specifically, Catholicism. If that were his purpose, he’d have used an approach closer to the tragically flawed but heroic whiskey priest in The Power and the Glory. Or even, perhaps, his Monsignor Quixote. (According to Wikipedia, MQ was made into a TV movie, starring Alec Guiness and Leo McKern. If you can think of a better pair of actors for Father Quixote and the communist mayor, Sancho, I’d love to hear of it.) An even more effective defense of the faith appears in A. J. Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom. (Greene could have done it better, but then it might not be so lovable a book.)

APOLOGIA

Rather than a defense of Christianity, I read TEOTA as Greene’s apologia for his behavior in the affair.

He has Bendrix describe his negatives at so many places throughout the book as to make a listing superfluous. The picture Greene paints of Bendrix is an insecure, self-centered bully. He bullies (teases, picks on, etc.) every major character: Sarah, Henry, Parkis – he even tries with God. (“I hate You, God. I hate You as though You existed.” P. 191), and bullies Sarah post mortem, persuading Henry to deny her the funeral she’d wanted. Mea culpa!

But the book is more than just Greene’s confession: it’s a personal apology and admission to his former lover that he was in the wrong, but that he’s grown through the experience. After all, Greene dedicated the book to “c”: that’s got to be his real-life Sarah, Lady Catherine Walston.

TWO-DIMENSIONAL TREATMENT

Given that the book is a personal apology, did Greene need to portray Sarah in such a limited, two-dimensional way? I think, largely, he did.

To paint Sarah in realistic terms, to really flesh her out as a person, Greene would have had to describe at least some warts. (By the early 20^th century, “realism” had come to be synonymous with gritty, dirty.) But, for a couple of reasons, that would not do for Greene’s purpose in a personal apology. First, it’s chiaroscuro, allowing Greene to highlight the contrast between the light of Sarah’s love and the darkness of Bendrix’s selfishness. Second, and more importantly, Greene simply could not make his apology in a form that appeared to be continuing an argument, which is how any negative description of the Sarah character would tend to appear. Accordingly (so far as I can recall), the only negatives about Sarah in the book are recounting of her lies and promiscuity, issues that could hardly be avoided in a book about her ending the affair.

DAMN DIARY AND SLIPSHOD SAINTHOOD

Buy why stoop to the diary, and did he have to go as far as to include the miracles to suggest sainthood?

As to the diary, we discussed the need for some device to communicate to Bendrix his misperception of Sarah’s feelings and motives. An intercepted letter, an overheard conversation, confession to a friend who repeated the statement to Bendrix all would have served as possible alternatives to the diary.

I suppose that the diary was about as good a way as any to introduce the facts of Sarah’s love, and her internal struggle with God. But why present it in such an annoyingly vapid and long-winded way? Again, I’m inclined to think that Greene had a purpose. Painting Sarah, through her diary, as emotionally simple (almost a teenager --one probably would find more emotional and intellectual depth in Miss Piggy’s diary!) introduces a vulnerability in Sarah. (“… is there nobody who will love a bitch and a fake?” p. 95).

Sarah’s vulnerability contrasts nicely with Bendrix’s sophistication (he may be immature, and in some ways emotionally stunted, but he’s sophisticated). This emphasizes again his responsibility for the sad end of the affair.

But the miracles and the sainthood? This I find the most difficult choice to explain. I think he went too far in contrasting Sarah with himself (and with each of the main characters).

On the other hand, Greene clearly wanted to make a point about sainthood, which is emphasized when he has Bendrix say, “… if even you – with your lusts and your adulteries and the timid lies you used to tell – can change like this, we could all be saints by leaping as you leapt … if you are a saint, it’s not so difficult to be a saint.”

Perhaps the whole miracles/sainthood shtick was another stroke in Greene’s long-running love-hate relationship with the Catholic church. Sarah was not a very good Catholic, if she was one at all ( I’m not convinced that she’d accepted any recognizable church). Greene’s point here may have been that she could become a saint by accepting God, without fully adopting a church.

Admittedly, one might say to all this, “If the lawyer thinks that, the lawyer is a ass – a idiot!”

However, it helps reconcile me to the book, which I’d liked up until the diary.

That, anyway, is my explanation of Greene’s treatment of Sarah. I’d be interested in other views.

End of the Affair: Quotes

"It was as if quite suddenly after all the promiscuous years I had grown up. My passion for Sarah had killed simple lust forever. Never again would I be able to enjoy a woman without love." (46)

"...the moment of absolute trust and absolute pleasure, the moment when it was impossible to quarrel because it was impossible to think." (55)

"I have never understood why people who can swallow the enormous improbability of a personal God boggle at a personal devil." (59)

"It's a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love." (70)

"I'm tired and I don't want any more pain...I want ordinary corrupt human love." (99)

"...she had fallen asleep against my shoulder...the slowly growing pain in my upper arm where her weight lay was the greatest pleasure I had ever known." (105)

"It was as though by 'dying' she had robbed me of part of myself. I was losing my individuality, the memories dropping off like gangrened limbs." (113)

"For a month or two this year a ghost had pained me with hope...I would die a little more every day, but how I longed to retain it. As long as one suffers one lives." (113)

"I imagined I could smell her scent. I wanted things I should never have again – there was no substitute." (114)

"Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too" (129)

End of the Affair: English Places

If Sarah had been Protestant, she and Bendrix might have met here.

During Saturday's discussion of The End of the Affair, some of the Bookies evinced rather impressive familiarity with London geography.

Let's see if any bells are struck by the list of British place names noted in a New York Times article from January (link below):

In the scale of embarrassing place names, Crapstone ranks pretty high. But Britain is full of them. Some are mostly amusing, like Ugley, Essex; East Breast, in western Scotland; North Piddle, in Worchestershire; and Spanker Lane, in Derbyshire.

Others evoke images that may conflict with the efforts of residents to appear dignified when, for example, opening bank accounts.

These include Crotch Crescent, Oxford; Titty Ho, Northamptonshire; Slutshole Lane, Norfolk; and Thong, Kent. And, in a country that delights in lavatorial humor, particularly if the word “bottom” is involved, there is Pratts Bottom, in Kent, doubly cursed because “prat” is slang for buffoon.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/world/europe/23crapstone.html?scp=1&sq=crapstone&st=cse

Julian Baggini Condemns the "New Atheists"

Baggini wrote "Atheism - A very short introduction."

Here's the essay.

Baggini makes some reasonable points. For example:

However, there is much more to religion to the metaphysics. To give a non-exhaustive list, religion is also about trying to live sub specie aeternitatis; orienting oneself to the transcendent rather than the immanent; living in a moral community of shared practice or as part of a valuable tradition; cultivating certain attitudes, such as gratitude and humility; and so on. To say, as Sam Harris does, that “religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time” misses all this. The practices of religion may be more important then the narratives, even if people believe those narratives to be true.

The new atheism has also, I think, created an unhelpful climate for atheism to flourish. When people think of atheists now, they think about men who look only to science for answers, are dismissive of religion and over-confident in their own rightness. Richard Dawkins, for example, presented a television programme on religion called The Root of all Evil and has as his website slogan “A clear thinking oasis”. Where is the balance and modesty in such rhetoric?

For me, atheism’s roots are in a sober and modest assessment of where reason and evidence lead us. That means the real enemy is not religion as such, but any kind of system of belief that does not respect these limits on our thinking. For that reason, I want to engage with thoughtful, intelligent believers, and isolate extremists. But if we demonise all religion, such coalitions of the reasonable are not possible. Instead, we are likely to see moderate religious believers join ranks with fundamentalists, the enemies of their enemy, to resist what they see as an attempt to wipe out all forms of religious belief.

As with Mr. Smythe, the hardcore atheist character in The End of the Affair - and isn't it interesting how dated the "New" Atheists really are? - whose merciless atheistic arguments persuade Sarah to believe that there must be something in religion if it is hated so much, sometimes the unforgiving arguments of the New Atheists convert people the wrong way. I know that listening to Dawkins' attack on anyone who challenges Darwinism makes me want to say "Thou almost makes me a Creationist" just because being on the same side as a a pompous ass like him seems aesthetically unpalatable.

Vox Day, who outplays the New Atheists at their own game, discusses the "error theory" conundrum of the New Atheists, i.e., how can smart people believe things that New Atheists say that only dumb people could possibly believe?

Penguin Kindle Edition

99 cents, baby.

And delivered wirelessly in the comfort of my home.

Don't hate me because I'm an early adopter.

I also received my copy of Lewis' commentary on - *sniff, sniff* - dead tree ("ODT") from Amazon.

Quelle barbarisme!

Milton

By the way, if you have an Ipod, this link will take you to an Itunes free podcast of some English class reading Milton.

I haven't listened to it yet, but it's free!

I'm also listening to Professor Seth Lerer's Teaching Company lectures on "The Writings of Milton." I got them several years ago when I decided my next great project would be to read Paradise Lost. I grounded out at 5 minutes into the 4th lecture (of 12) and the first one Paradise Lost, so I had to start from the beginning and have just got back to Lecture 4.

Now I remember why I grounded out where I did. Either Lerer has the ability to suck the interest from the subject or I am not equipped to appreciate the cascading similes of Milton.

I think I'm beginning to side with Samual Johnson, who said of Paradise Lost, "none wished it longer." I almost feel the same way about Milton's life at Lecture 4.

Something I will be watching for that Lerer points out: apparently, Satan speaks in similes and God doesn't.

Also, Lerer doesn't point this out, but I notice from simultaneously reading Gillespie's "The Theological Origins of Modernity", which has a chapter on Thomas Hobbes, that Hobbes and Milton were contemporaries (along with Rene Descartes (1596 - 1650).)

Hobbes was born in 1588 and lived to sometime in the 1680s - so much for life being "nasty, brutal and short" - and Milton was born in 1609. They were on opposite sides of the Royalist-Parlamentary struggle since Milton was Cromwell's "Secretary of Foreign Languages" and Hobbes' was a Royalist sympathizer who had to hightail it to the Continent at various times when Cromwell was in power. Both Hobbes and Milton were Calvinists, and Hobbes was very much into Calvinist predestinationism, which was a basis for his science and philosophy.

Given the divine voluntarism and nominalism that forms the basis of Calvinism, I think it would be interesting to see how much of that view is incorporated into Paradise Lost.

At least, that's one of the things I will be looking for.

Great Moments in Literature

Calvinist Romance



Of course, after that it gets totally depraved.

I liked Russ's comment - "But it's eternally secure."

There's also - "You want irresistible? Just wait until you meet my Anglo-Catholic pipefitting brother and he'll show you irresistible."

And - "What no tulips?"

Imagine that, Calvinist jokes.

Quote of the Day

"If people don't have Aquinas, they will follow any ass who comes along."

I'm going to have a T-shirt made with that slogan.

Suggestion / Chesterton's Aquinas: the Dumb Ox

This is the only book on Aquinas that I've read, so there may be better ones. However, Chesteron is absolutely great in this book, both as a perceptive critic and (as always with GKC) as a stylist.

Given his enjoyment of Aquinas, this might be a good selection for whichever month holds Peter Bradley's birthday.

April 25 at Holy Child

Milton's Paradise Lost.

Suggested:

Norton or Penguin Classics edition.

C. S. Lewis' A Preface to Paradise Lost