Logismoi

'A School for the Lord's Service': St Benedict's Rule & Classical Education

2012-01-15T18:47:00.009-06:00

This was an article I wrote for our school newsletter, Remarkable Providences. I have corrected a passage which got seriously distorted in the print edition thanks to my own hasty perusal of the proofs, and also added notes and links.

In his profound critique of modern ethics, After Virtue, University of Notre Dame philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously wrote, ‘We are waiting, not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict.’ [1] The reason for these words is that St Benedict, traditionally known as the ‘Father of Western monasticism’, was responsible for the formation of small communities committed to the cultivation and teaching of virtue even as the world around them lost all cohesion. They are communities to which we would do well to look for inspiration today.

Indeed, civilisation as a whole owes a very great debt to these monks. Benedictine monasticism, that is, monasteries which were organised and lived according to St Benedict’s Rule, were the ark in which all of the classical culture of the Latin world was preserved from the flood of barbarism and seedbed in which germinated much of the great monuments of mediæval culture. In the words of Dom Jean Leclercq, ‘education’ in the sense of instruction in grammar, of reading and writing, ‘is not separated from spiritual effort’ in the Benedictine vision. [2] The mediæval Western theologian par excellence, Thomas Aquinas, was raised and educated in St Benedict's own monastery of Monte Cassino, [3] and in his Divine Comedy, the greatest poet of the Middle Ages, Dante Alighieri, has an important exchange with St Benedict in the heavenly sphere of the contemplatives. [4] But to produce Aquinas and Dante, Latin-speaking Christendom had to begin from the ruins of Roman civilisation. John Henry Newman emphasises the gradual nature of the great Abbot’s achievement:

St Benedict found the world, physical and social, in ruins, and his mission was to restore it in the way not of science, but of nature, not as if setting about to do it, not professing to do it by any set time, or by any rare specific, or by any series of strokes, but so quietly, patiently, gradually, that often till the work was done, it was not known to be doing. It was a restoration rather than a visitation, correction or conversion. The new work which he helped to create was a growth rather than a structure. Silent men were observed about the country, or discovered in the forest, digging, clearing and building; and other silent men, not seen, were sitting in the cold cloister, tiring their eyes and keeping their attention on the stretch, while they painfully copied and recopied the manuscripts which they had saved. There was no one who contended or cried out, or drew attention to what was going on, but by degrees the woody swamp became a hermitage, a religious house, a farm, an abbey, a village, a seminary, a school of learning and city. [5]

St Benedict’s Rule was a powerful agent in the civilisation of Europe, a project which, for the Rule’s author as well as its followers through the centuries, was explicitly educational. In his Prologue to the Rule, St Benedict quotes extensively from the Scriptures on the importance of holy living and concludes, ‘Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord's service [dominici schola servitii].’ [6] This reference to the monastery as a ‘school’ should not of course surprise us, however, since already in the opening words of the Rule, St Benedict has addressed his readers, ‘Listen, my son, to the lessons [praecepta] of the teacher [magistri].’ [7] Indeed, the Rule assumes throughout that the monks are discipuli, or ‘students’, and that the abbot is their magister, or ‘teacher’. In the words of the late Dom Adalbert de Vogüé, ‘the task of the monastic school is to educate us in the life of perfection according to the Gospel.’ [8]

But to this end, the monastic ‘school’ has need of a handbook, curriculum, and curriculum objectives, which are contained primarily in the Holy Scriptures, but also in the Rule itself and in the various writings of the Church Fathers which it recommends ‘for anyone hastening on to the perfection of the monastic life’. [9] In the Rule St Benedict lays out in painstaking detail how the ‘school’ is to be organised, even down to the exact daily schedule and arrangement of the services to be carried out and Psalms to be chanted in the church. The times for prayer, work, and individual study of Scripture, all summarised in the famous motto Ora et labora (‘Pray & work’), [9] are delineated. There are exact prescriptions of punishment for various offenses. The way in which meals are to be taken is described at length, with allowance for the different fasts of the Christian year.

This strict organisation of life as a ‘school for the Lord's service’ suggests obvious parallels to the efforts of those of us involved in classical Christian education today. In the opening lines of the Prologue, we find a beautiful distillation of what classical Christian education must assume at the outset. The late John Senior, one of the founders of the renowned [and sadly long defunct] Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, has taken each of the four imperative verbs of these opening sentences in the Latin text and shown clearly how relevant and challenging they are for both students and faculty.

The very first word, ausculta, means ‘listen’. Senior points out that this reminds us that education begins with quietly listening, for—

it is only to the just, gazing in rapt silence like a lover on his beloved at the art or thing, it is only to the patient, silent receptive listener, that the meaning of the poem, or the mystery of the number, star, chemical, plant—whatever subject the science sits at the feet of—is revealed... [10]

The next imperative is inclina—‘attend with' or ‘incline the ear of your heart’. Perhaps the most foreign concept to modern education, according to Senior:

This means students must love their teachers and teachers must be worthy of such love. Learning is a motion of the heart and not a mercenary contract in the ‘marketplace of ideas’ where the natural desires of youth to reach the stars are distracted from their aim by catalogues, orientation sessions and academic advising impelling them to marketable skills and government grants. [11]

The third imperative is excipe, that is, ‘accept’ or ‘welcome the admonition of a loving father freely’. In other words, the student must freely accept—

not just the precepts and the counsels but accept the correction and rebuke of the teacher who stands in loco parentis as the strong, gentle, pious father. Humility is a necessary condition of learning. The relationship of student to teacher is not one of equality, nor even of quantitative inequality as between those advanced and less advanced on the same plane; it is the relationship of disciple to master in which docility is an analogue of the love of man and God, from Whom all paternity in Heaven and on earth derives. [12]

Finally, the last of the four imperatives is efficaciter comple—‘faithfully put it into practice’. According to Senior, ‘The student must not only receive the knowledge, counsel and correction of the teacher, he must fulfill them . . .’ [13] To do this, the student must ultimately move beyond merely parroting or complying to truly understand what he is taught, ‘and by learning, become assimilated to the spiritual, intellectual and moral model of the teacher. . . . [Faculty and students] according to this rule should be better than the rest of the community, not only in intelligence but in manners, morals and taste as well.’ [14]

We at Providence Hall would do well to heed the teaching of St Benedict's Rule if we too wish to be ‘a school for the Lord's service’.

[1] Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame, 1984), p. 263. I have written a post on MacIntyre's reference to St Benedict called ‘Waiting for St Benedict: MacIntyre, Monasticism, & the New Dark Ages’.

[2] Dom Jean Leclercq, OSB, The Love of Learning & the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, tr. Catharine Misrahi (NY: Fordham, 1961), p. 24.

[3] This was first called to my attention by James Taylor in Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education (Albany, NY: SUNY, 1998), pp. 39-40: ‘It was, then, into a society, a culture, built on centuries of slow Benedictine influence so eloquently described by Newman [see above], that Aquinas was born in the thirteenth century. . . . Certainly to be considered is the fact that Thomas was placed with the Benedictines of Monte Cassino at an early age.’ But I later discovered that Taylor's teacher, John Senior, emphasises the point much more strongly: ‘St Benedict, Patron of Europe, founded Monte Cassino in 529. St Thomas as a little boy of five entered there to go to school around 1229—seven hundred years in the womb of Benedictine work and prayer and then you have St Thomas! The seedbed of theology is the Benedictine life, without which no one has the prerequisites’ (The Restoration of Christian Culture [Norfolk, VA: IHS, 2008], p. 87).

[4] Paradiso XXII. Dante’s choice of words in l. 98 to describe St Benedict rejoining the other contemplatives—Cosi mi disse, e indi si raccolse / al suo collegio, e ’l collegio si strinse (‘Thus he concluded and the voice was stilled. / Collegiate to collegium withdrew’)—seems to highlight in a fortuitous way the connection between St Benedict and education. The Italian I’ve taken from Dante, Paradise, tr. & ed. Anthony Esolen, illust. Gustave Dore (NY: Modern Library, 2007), p. 240; the translation is Dorothy L. Sayers & Barbara Reynolds, The Divine Comedy 3: Paradise (London: Penguin, 1962), p. 252.

[5] John Henry Newman, ‘The Mission of St Benedict’, {410}.

[6] Here I quote RB1980, but throughout the article I have in some cases given my own translation to emphasise the point I want to make, or I have offered alternatives from various translators. For the Latin text, I have used Abbot Justin McCann, OSB, tr. & ed., The Rule of Saint Benedict in English & Latin (Fort Collins, CO: Roman Catholic Books, n.d.).

[7] My own translation.

[8] Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB, Reading St Benedict: Reflections on the Rule, tr. Colette Friedlander, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994), p. 34.

[9] I have written on this motto in the post, ‘Ora et Labora?’

[10] Senior, p. 93.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., p. 94.

[13] Ibid., p. 95.

[14] Ibid.

St Cyril, Leisure, & the Teaching Vocation

2012-01-14T14:23:00.010-06:00

In thinking about what I can start posting here, I realised that one order of business might be to get a few more homilies up. I intend to try posting them in chronological order, in which case I shall begin with a little talk I gave on St Cyril the Apostle-to-the-Slavs at our faculty in-service training over the summer.

I'd like to talk today about our vocation as teachers, but focusing on an often neglected dimension of that vocation.

In the mid-9th c., a young man from Thessalonica named Constantine completed his university studies in the capitol of the East Roman (or Byzantine) Empire--Constantinople. He had been a student of the empire's best teachers, including St Photius the Great, who was directly responsible for the preservation of much of the ancient Greek literature now extant. [1] Constantine received a thorough classical education. Having mastered grammar:

He studied Homer and geometry with Leo [the Mathematician], and with Photius dialectic and all the branches of philosophy, and together with these rhetoric, arithmetic, astronomy, music; and all the other ancient Greek sciences. . . . Speed went hand in hand with diligence, for it is thus that knowledge and science are perfected. [2]

In a viva voce examination by Theoctistus, the imperial Logothete (i.e., 'Secretary of State'), Constantine was addressed:

'Philosopher, I should like to know what philosophy is.' To this, Constantine replied without hesitation: 'Knowledge of things human and divine, insofar as Man is able to approach God, for it teaches Man by his actions to become the image and likeness of his Creator.' [3]

Much could be said about this answer--in fact, there is a whole scholarly article about it that our future school librarian, Chris Rosser, was kind enough to obtain for me [4]--but here I shall make just a few comments (I've made others here).

First, Constantine's answer does not imply a so-called 'works-righteousness', since the 'actions' to which he refers consist first and foremost in turning to the Lord in repentance and calling on His grace. Second, the language of the response itself, is the epitome of the classical Christian tradition. Constantine is not making this up, but reciting something he has memorised. Third, the response shows the linking of knowledge and action, and, although the teacher is not mentioned, the connection of both with teaching and learning.

We shall come back to this last point later; for now, let's focus on Constantine himself. We know that the Logothete Theoctistus intended the young man for a brilliant political career--but this he flatly refused, insisting that he was interested in wisdom and knowledge alone. At this point, I should point out for all of you that Constantine went on to become famous for something very practical indeed: today he is known all over the world as St Cyril, the Apostle-to-the-Slavs. He produced the first translations of the Scriptures and Church services into the Slavonic language, bringing not only the Gospel to the Slavic peoples, Bulgarians, Serbs, Russians, etc.), but literacy itself by inventing the Glagolitic alphabet and the Old Church Slavonic literary language. For this, St Cyril has been called 'a linguistic genius' who ranks 'among the greatest philologists Europe has ever produced', [5] though his well-trained students eventually replaced the esoteric and hermetic characters of Glagolitic with an adaptation of the Greek alphabet named after their teacher.

But my point is this: St Cyril didn't set out from college to become a missionary and 'CHANGE THE WORLD!', as George Grant would say in one of his ACCS talks. Right out of college, the first thing St Cyril did was to go to a monastery for six months. He did briefly accept a position teaching philosophy, and served as a kind of missionary attaché to a diplomatic mission to the Arabs (whom he dazzled with his learning), but then he went to a second monastery where he and his brother, St Methodius, spent several years.

The real point of this talk about St Cyril is precisely these monastic interludes. Why did he do this? More importantly, what can we learn from him as educators?

In his magisterial study, The Christian Philosophy of S Thomas Aquinas, the great French historian of mediaeval philosophy, Étienne Gilson, writes:

Man can choose only between two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative. What confers special dignity on the functions of the Doctor [teacher] is that they imply both of these two kinds of life, properly subordinated the one to the other. The true function of the Doctor is to teach. Teaching (doctrina) consists in communicating to others a truth meditated beforehand. It demands of necessity both the reflection of the contemplative in order to discover the truth, and the activity of the professor in order to communicate his findings to others. But the most remarkable thing about this complex activity is that there is an exact correspondence between the higher and the lower, between contemplation and actions. . . .

In the first place, it is clear that the activity of the Doctor is not superimposed artificially upon his contemplative life. Rather, it finds its source in his contemplation and is, so to speak, its outward manifestation. [6]

I read these words while sitting on my front porch on a peaceful summer's day shortly after school ended (and before the real heat wave began!), and I've been thinking about them all summer. When Mr Carr asked me to speak at In-service on a topic of my choosing, I thought about these words, then I thought about St Cyril. St Cyril went to monasteries to engage in contemplation--which he drew upon in his active teaching among students in the capitol, among Arabs, Khazars, his close disciples and missionary companions, the Slavs, and others.

This distinction between 'action' and 'contemplation' goes back to ancient Greek philosophy. It was taken up by the Church Fathers, who saw it embodied in the story of Ss Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42. But the Fathers by and large seem to have used these words in a different sense to the Thomistic tradition as represented by Gilson. For the Fathers, and therefore for St Cyril who deeply imbibed them, 'action' is not merely the 'hustle and bustle' of life, but a struggle for virtue and purification from the passions. It is therefore a preparation for contemplation. According to Bl Theophylact of Ochrid, St Martha of Bethany represents 'active virtue', but so do Christ's feet at which St Mary sits, so by sitting St Mary has already attained active virtue. Furthermore, 'contemplation' is not merely 'thinking' (and I realise it is not merely this for Aquinas either), but praying and ultimately encountering God Himself, especially in 'vision'. In St Luke's Gospel, St Mary 'contemplates' Christ--she gazes at Him, listening to His words. [7]

In the Patristic sense, St Cyril is engaging in both action and contemplation at the monastery--and as Christian teachers, it is important for us as well to do both. We must struggle to acquire the virtues ourselves on the one hand, and we must pray and encounter God on the other, hoping eventually to see Him 'face to face'. Deep participation in the divine life is the goal we aim for as well as the font from which we draw in incarnating Christ in the lives of our students, in teaching the Bible, in leading prayer, in loving others, etc.

But Gilson points the way to a more prosaic interpretation of these terms, as well as of St Cyril himself, and therefore of the teaching profession. It is not fortuitous that I did this reading and thinking during the summer. The summer is a time of 'leisure' for teachers, and leisure, even a little bit, is necessary for contemplation. Another Thomist philosopher, Josef Pieper, connects the two when he points out that the 'Christian concept of the "contemplative life" was built on the Aristotelian concept of leisure'. [8] The purpose of leisure, in fact, is contemplation: ultimately, 'gazing' at God, prayer and worship (doxology, celebration of feasts), but also the more prosaic 'thinking' on truth, study, etc. We often think that the purpose of leisure is to 'unwind', 'veg out', or 'relax' after work in order to be refreshed to go back. But Pieper argues that this idea is the product of the modern materialistic culture and our slavery to work:

Now leisure is not there for the sake of work, no matter how much new strength the one who resumes working may gain from it; leisure in our sense is not justified by providing bodily renewal or even mental refreshment to lend new vigor to further work--although it does indeed bring such things!

As contemplation, so leisure is of a higher rank than the vita activa. [9]

In other words, leisure and contemplation are goods per se, they are the highest activity of man. They are good for us as human beings, making us more fully human, and not beasts of burden. But of course, they are also good for our work, and especially for teaching. Indeed, leisure and contemplation--even in the less spiritual and more intellectual or philosophical sense of just reading and thinking--are crucial to our vocation as teachers. Reading, quiet time on porches, conversation with each other, and academic conferences (especially the CiRCE Institute conference, where there were no 'workshops' on bulletin boards, just steady reflection on the theme 'What is Man?'!) need no justification. They are not work, but we draw upon them in our work.

As an illustration, and apropos of my reference to the CiRCE conference, in a session on 'Mimetic Teaching and the Cultivation of Virtue' Andrew Kern described a Christian interpretation of 'mimetic teaching':

First: Truth is the aim.
Second: the soul must be like, i.e. be conformed to, compatible with, the Truth.
Third: to be perceived the Truth must be embodied.
Fourth: this embodiment is then imitated.
Fifth: in this way Truth is known per se (the embodiment becomes transparent). [10]

The teacher's knowledge of Truth must be gained through some kind of contemplation (requiring leisure). The teacher embodies the Truth, the student imitates, the student knows the Truth. It is a pattern that can be applied to all kinds of objects and methods of contemplation, from St Paul's 'Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ' (I Cor 11:1), to using Lucy Pevensie to illustrate childlike faith, to letting Kindergarteners do arithmetic with beans.

To return at last to St Cyril, the monastery in Asia Minor was the shady porch where he spent his summer reading deep, thought-provoking books; his Glagolitic alphabet and the translations of the Gospels and liturgy he produced were the lesson plans (or in-service talk notes) born out of that deep reflection; the barbarian lands of Eastern Europe were his classroom and the barbaric Slavs themselves his students (hard to see the analogy, I know!). And what students they turned out to be! While Christians in the West have by and large remained woefully ignorant of the 1200-year Christian Tradition among the Slavs, suffice to say it has produced countless giants of the life in Christ as well as of Christian culture, art, and literature. St Cyril and his brother, St Methodius, really did 'change the world', but not by setting out to do so. They spent less time 'strategising' and more time reflecting on what man is. Theirs was an activity born out of profound contemplation.

[1] L.D. Wilson & N.G. Reynolds, Scribes & Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek & Latin Literature, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), p. 57.

[2] Qtd. in Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Cyril & Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2001), p. 25.

[3] Tachiaos, p. 27.

[4] Ihor Ševčenko ‘The Definition of Philosophy in the Life of Saint Constantine [Cyril]’, For Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of His Sixtieth Birthday, 11 October, 1956, comp. Morris Halle, Horace G. Lunt, Hugh McLean, and Cornelis H. Van Schooneveld (The Hague, 1956), pp. 449-57.

[5] Sir Dimitri Obolensky, Byzantium & the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1994), p. 207.

[6] Étienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, tr. L.K. Shook, CSB (London: Victor Gollancz, 1957), pp. 3-4.

[7] Bl Theophylact of Ohrid, The Explanation by Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Ochrid and Bulgaria of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, Vol. III of Bl. Theophylact’s Explanation of the New Testament, tr. Fr Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), pp. 121-2.

[8] Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, tr. Gerald Malsbary (South Bend, IN: St Augustine's Press, 1998), p. 5.

[9] Pieper, p. 34.

[10] This is based on my notes from Kern's talk.

'a lost child travelling in the snow'

2012-01-12T23:01:00.003-06:00

All the way back in 2009 I posted one of my favourite Christmas poems, Chesterton's 'Child of the Snows' (here). Well, last year I bought a copy of Michael Patrick Hearn's Annotated Christmas Carol, and as I was reading it with my students around Christmas time, I noticed the following passage in the description of the Cratchits' Christmas celebration:

All this time the chesnuts and the jug went round and round; and bye and bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim; who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed. [1]

For the first time, while reading this passage I thought of GKC's poem, and then I noticed Hearn's annotation:

Apparently Dickens had no specific carol in mind; no such song has been found in any old collection of Christmas carols. G.K. Chesterton realized this omission, and included in his Poems (1926) 'A Child of the Snows', which might stand for Tiny Tim's carol until another might be found. [2]

I chose the image above as a good, classic, Logismoic piece, but the image here is more of a real illustration of the poem.

[1] Charles Dickens, The Annotated Christmas Carol: A Christmas Carol in Prose, ed. Michael Patrick Hearn, illust. John Leech (NY: Norton, 2004), p. 108.

[2] Dickens, p. 108, n. 63.

Ad blogges!

2012-01-09T18:43:00.007-06:00

A number of factors have combined recently to convince me that I should return to the practice of crafting the occasional post for this blog. Not the least of these was this stirring post at Reading the Maps, discovered via the very medium the author denigrates and in which so many of us guiltily indulge: Facebook. How can I continue to neglect Logismoi after reading the following?

Blogging may have been superseded by new and inferior innovations, but the medium need not die. Indeed, bloggers should treat the rise of alternative forms of online communication as a liberation, rather than a disaster. Freed from the curse of coolness, blogging can now develop as a literary and artistic genre, or set of genres. Blogging may have lost some of its old practitioners, but it should be able to attract writers, artists, and political thinkers dissatisfied with the short attention span of twitter and the ritualised onanism of facebook. Blogging may become an act of resistance against the dumbing down of culture and political discourse in the twenty-first century.

I am not so certain, however, that this first new post since last summer can aspire to the lofty heights called for here. Instead, I intend to ease back into the practice beginning with a simple and, for me at least, enjoyable genre: the newly acquired books overview. In my household, we exchanged gifts for the Nativity according to the Church's calendar four nights ago, and I had already previously come by a few other titles, either received as gifts or purchased with gift cards and/or money. Having forgotten the order in which I acquired them, I'll settle for the alphabetical order of the authors' last names.

1) Ibrahim S. Amin, The Monster Hunter's Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Saving Mankind from Vampires, Zombies, Hellhounds, & Other Mythical Beasts (NY: Bloomsbury, 2007). An unexpected gift from our good friend, Anne Risch, this one is a sheer delight. For a small taste, consider the author's response to the question, 'Why would anyone want to hunt monsters?'

...A hunter kills to test himself against what nature has to offer, to see if his humble human mind and body can overcome the power, quickness, and savage cunning of the beasts. Thus a true hunter will wish to pit himself against the most challenging prey--creatures that will push him to the limit. Any fool with a gun can shoot a deer, but only the greatest of sportsmen will be able to overcome a Hydra.

However, even among the most dedicated sportsmen in the field there is also a second, and perhaps far more noble concern--no less lofty a goal than the protection and preservation of the human race.

The entry on each creature even includes a citation of early, often classical, sources. My only complaint is that, despite the appropriately arcane, antique-looking cover design, the illustrations are brightly coloured, modern-looking things. They just don't do justice to the subject matter.

2) G.K. Chesterton, Collected Works, Vol. 1: Heretics, Orthodoxy, The Blatchford Controversies, ed. David Dooley (SF: Ignatius, 1986). I was excited finally to come across an inexpensive used copy of a volume of GKC's Collected Works, a set of handsomely designed, but rather pricey volumes from Ignatius Press. I hope to see more some day.

3) Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol: The Original 1843 Manuscript (Delray Beach, FL: Levenger, 2011). A gift from my always thoughtful mother-in-law, this is the first-ever full-cover facsimile of Dickens's original manuscript of A Christmas Carol. It features a facing-page transcription, a beautiful red cloth Smythe-sewn binding gold-stamped with a design from the 1st edition, a silk ribbon marker, and, it seems, 'Archival paper selected to match the color of Dickens’s manuscript paper'. It also has an introduction by the curator of Literary & Historical Manuscripts at the Dickens MS owner: The Morgan Library & Museum. See the photo above. Now I can, just barely, read my favourite lines in Dickens's own handwriting:

'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive Ocean of my business!' (p. 14)

4) David L. Edwards, OBE, Poets & God: Chaucer, Shakespeare, Herbert, Milton, WOrdsworth, Coleridge, Blake (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005). I was off to Half Price Books to kill some time, hoping to find a copy of Gerald Basil Edwards's Book of Ebenezer Le Page. But while I saw no sign of the latter, I did discover this book by another Edwards, apparently a former Dean of King's College, Cambridge. The blurb on the back says this:

These great English poets are at the centre of a cultural heritage which goes along with the world-wide appeal of the English language, yet they have often become the object of study rather than of pleasure.

Scholarly, entertaining and often provocative, David Edwards's new book reveals their relevance to the current quest for an authentic spirituality in a mostly church-less society. Poets & God will excite the reader to rediscover and enjoy their work.

5) Thomas C. Oden, Early Libyan Christianity: Uncovering a North African Tradition (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2011). Although Tom Oden's niece, Amy Oden, was my Church history professor in college, and I myself briefly met the old fellow at a lecture about the Green Collection of Biblical artifacts here in OKC a few months ago, I've managed never to read any of his work. My father gave me this one with the explanation that he never knows what I have, and it was new enough that he could be pretty certain I didn't have it. I fully intend to read it through. I already glanced at the conclusion and found it profoundly moving. Oden is explaining how and why he is passionate about the subject, and apologising in advance for the tentative nature of his conclusions:

Why, then, have I continued to pursue this difficult task to the very end, when I had other urgent projects sitting on the shelf awaiting my attention at a late date in my life? Because so few know about this obscure area; because its role in early Christianity was so significant; because it has been so neglected as a subject of historical inquiry by Western academic colleages. These motives have been the engines of desire.

Now that I am at last ready to offer its results for scholarly and public examination, I am all the more aware that many of its conclusions may seem at first hard to defend and easy targets for academics who are working out of very different premises about reliable knowledge. I hope that someday someone will do more justice to this subject than I. But my time to do anything in this world is limited and growing more so. Hence I offer it for the reader's consideration, hoping for clemency.

6) Rob Pope, How to Study Chaucer, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 2001). I do of course enjoy reading Chaucer, but my primary motive in buying this one was that I am going to be teaching Chaucer to my 8th-grade students this Spring. As I do not know him nearly as well as most of the other books we have been reading, I need all the help I can get.

7) David Simay, Swordfishtrombones: 33 1/3 (NY: Continuum, 2008). Some of you may recall that I posted briefly about Tom Waits a few years ago (here), but if you're not aware, I am an enormous fan. My sister gave me this little book (apparently the 33 1/3 series of books about albums is all the same size), a 'study' of sorts of Waits's groundbreaking album, 1983's Swordfishtrombones. Again, the back blurb says it best:

At the end of the seventies, Tom Waits felt trapped in a stalled career: his musical persona an artistic straightjacket. At a dark, desperate time in his life he got the phone call that offered a way out and met the woman who would change his life. What followed was Swordfishtrombones, one of the most daring transformations in pop music history.

Tom Waits is an elusive subject, sly and evasive. Through extensive research and a close, playful reading of his work, David Smay unwraps the vinegar pleasures of Swordfishtrombones and creates a freewheeling portrait of an American genius. This is the album where Tom Waits beats the blues with a hammer, drags his piano into the rain and burrows deep underground. This is the story of a man who reinvented himself and changed the musical landscape forever, a love story built on exotic percussion and phantom landscapes. This is a story about crows and mules.

8) J.R.R. Tolkien, Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham (NY: Del Rey, 1986). I bought this with a HP Books gift card after I had the disconcerting realisation that I didn't own a single copy of 'Smith of Wootton Major' (I had 'Farmer Giles' in the Tolkien Reader). It's such a beautiful story, and the descriptions of Smith's journeys oddly reminded me a little bit of Lovecraft's dream stories (another Tolkien/Lovecraft connection).

9) Leo Tolstoy, The Bear Hunt & Other Stories (NY: Little Leather Library Co., n.d.). I received this curious little volume only just tonight from an old family friend. I'd never seen or heard anything of this series, but according to this description the 'Little Leather Libary' books were a series of small classics bound in what was once brownish green imitation leather (mine is decidedly brown) in the early 1920's, apparently inspired by the Arts & Crafts-related Roycroft Press. The Tolstoy volume (Box 2 Volume 91 of the series) contains the stories 'The Bear Hunt', 'What Men Live By', and 'A Fairy Tale'.

Romans 12:1-3 & Paideia

2011-06-07T17:47:00.004-05:00

This is a text I have written up based on the notes for a speech I gave at the graduation of my 6th-grade students, who are moving on from the Grammar stage of the classical trivium to the Dialectic stage (in fact, I am moving up to 8th grade next year, and so will be making the same transition myself as a teacher!). The Biblical passage with which it begins was read by one of the students just prior to my taking the podium. I dedicate this post to Kaye Wilson, who was quite vocal and insistent that I produce a written copy of the speech for her to peruse at leisure.

Romans 12:1-3: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewal of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.’

When I was probably twelve or thirteen years old, my dad wrote the first part of verse 2 of this passage from Romans on a hand-written note to me: just ‘And be not conformed to this world: but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.’ Now, although I don’t recall him ever explaining it, I think I know why he did this. When I was that age, I was a bit of a rebel, a nonconformist—and I think dad thought that Romans 12:2a could show me how a rebellious spirit could be ‘baptised’ and made subject to Christ.

I must admit I still have a certain fondness for such a use of the verse, but having come to know me a little bit over the past year, you might well expect me to offer a more complicated exegesis. That’s just what I’m going to do. Like C.S. Lewis, but to a much lesser degree, I am a bit of a dinosaur. In talking about this passage, I will, of course, use some Greek and talk about the Church Fathers a whole lot. You have Mr Carr to blame for this speech taking such a turn. He suggested the idea of having a student read a bit of Scripture, and I immediately thought of this passage, and then this whole speech just kind of snowballed from there. The only comfort I have to offer is that this is the last time you’ll have to listen to me waxing on about Scripture in this way all summer.

So, to begin just taking the passage one thing at a time:

When St Paul calls our bodies ‘a living sacrifice’, among other things we might say that he is emphasising the importance of taming our unruly passions, a particular problem for youths.

The phrase ‘reasonable service’ in the King James is a perfectly passable rendering of something which is to me much more interesting in the Greek—logiken latreian—which we might also translate ‘rational or logical worship’. In other words, by disciplining our bodies, we our enabling our minds to participate in the glorification of God.

When St Paul speaks of not being conformed to ‘this world’, the word he uses is not the usual biblical word for ‘world’, kosmos, but aion (‘aeon’), which might also be translated ‘age’. Elsewhere, in Galatians 1:2, St Paul uses the same word when he speaks of ‘this present evil age’.

The ‘mind’ that is to be renewed is a word with a very interesting history: nous. In the Scriptural context, it can usually be pretty well translated as ‘mind’ in something like our modern sense, but in the Fathers the nous is much more. It is the ‘eye of the soul’, in other words the human faculty for perceiving God and ultimate truth.

When St Paul speaks of proving [dokimazein] ‘what is that…will of God’, the word he uses specifically means ‘to put to the test, examine, or prove by testing’. And when he exhorts us ‘not to think more highly, but soberly’, he is of course indicating the importance of exercising the mind in humility and temperance.

Now, I would like to suggest that Romans 12:1-3 be read tonight as an illuminating description of the effect of initiation into what we might call culture, or education, or that paideia which St Clement of Rome says ‘is in Christ’ (I Clement 21:8), calling it the ‘oracles of the paideia of God’ (I Clement 62:3).

By the taming of the passions, reason is incorporated into the glorifying of God (which as we have all heard many times is ‘man’s chief end’!).

Our aion (age) is completely opposed to this, ergo we turn away from ‘this present evil age’.

We are moulded by our mind being made new in a prosaic sense, but even more by the cleansing and renewal of our faculty for knowing God and Truth.

With such a mind, we examine and prove through testing what is the truth and how to act.

But even at the pinnacle of learning, we must preserve our humility (the sine qua non of learning) and the cardinal virtue of temperance or self-control.

Now, I hope you see the application of all of this to your Christian classical education.

In all three stages of the trivium, many ‘subjects’ are of course studied, but the first of these is Holy Scripture, which is why I maintained the practice in the 6th-grade class of daily reading directly from Scripture. So I will use this ‘subject’, the subject par excellence of Christian pedagogy, to illustrate what I’m talking about.

In his De doctrina Christiana 2.9.14, St Augustine beautifully describes the move from the Grammar to the Logic or Dialectic stage in the reading of Scripture: ‘The first rule in the laborious task [of studying Scripture] is…to know these books; not necessarily to understand them but to read them so as to commit them to memory or at least make them not totally unfamiliar.’ [1]

This is the Grammar stage—represented by the Veritas Press cards, worksheets, and tests, but most importantly, reading and memorising the text itself. St Athanasius the Great, under whose banner Joel sits now, says of the young St Anthony, ‘For he paid such close attention to what was read that nothing from Scripture did he fail to take in—rather he grasped everything, and in him the memory took the place of books.’ [2] So the recitations and memory work we do has clear patristic precedent.

Next, St Augustine says, ‘Then the matters which are clearly stated in them, whether ethical precepts or articles of belief, should be examined carefully and intelligently. The greater a person’s intellectual capacity, the more of these he finds.’ [3] Here we see the transition from Grammar to Dialectic—still familiarising, but also ‘examining’ (dokimasein) ‘intelligently’ (with reason—logiken latreian—and nous). I’ve tried to do this more and more over the last year: hence the sometimes mystifying essay questions I’ve given!

To complete the progression, St Augustine goes on to write:

Then, after gaining a familiarity with the language of the divine scriptures, one should proceed to explore and analyse the obscure passages, by taking examples from the more obvious parts to illuminate obscure expressions and by using the evidence of indisputable passages to remove the uncertain of ambiguous ones. [4]

Here we have much more pure Dialectic. I have tried to do this above all with our recent study of Revelation, where I was greatly assisted by the many notoriously obscure passages in that book! We did not of course entirely do away with the Grammar approach, but we had little choice but to begin moving into a more dialectical mode of reading.

But pay attention to the next line: ‘Here memory is extremely valuable; and it cannot be supplied by these instructions if it is lacking.’ [5] Did you see when we were reading Revelation how much easier it was to follow when you recalled the Old Testament references, the connections to other parts of the New Testament, or just earlier parts from Revelation itself? Grammar, which relies on memory, is the foundation, while Dialectic builds the structure of true knowledge on top of it.

Joel, you have a powerful imagination, when you’re not forgetting your work.

Ethan, you ask some penetrating questions, when you’re not distracted by Read.

Read, I thought for a long time about what I was going to say about you! You have a quick mind, which is a great help for picking up on exactly what you need to know and accessing it immediately, but this is only truly an asset when you’re not abusing it with corny jokes.

All of these things can serve well at the Dialectic stage, but for them to do so you must:

First, tame your passions.

Second, glorify God with your reason, not from emotion or habit only.

Third, resist the lures of ‘this present evil age’ (Gal 1:2), something we’ve learned a lot about in history, literature, and most recently, in Revelation.

Fourth, ask God’s grace to renew your mind and clease the ‘eye of your soul’ to perceive Truth.

Fifth, pose questions, think things through, and examine the facts before you to know what is true and how to act.

But above all, sixth, no matter how much you think you may know, no matter how keen your intellects become, acquire a spirit of humility and self-control.

St Gregory the Theologian, speaking at the funeral of his 'bff' (my apologies for the slang!), St Basil, said:

Who had such power in Rhetoric, which breathes with the might of fire . . . ? Who in Grammar, which perfects our tongues in Greek and compiles history, and presides over metres and legislates for poems? Who in Philosophy, that really lofty and high reaching science, whether practical and speculative, or in that part of it whose oppositions and struggles are concerned with logical demonstrations, which is called Dialectic . . . ? [6]

But he adds that his friend had become ‘excessively puffed up by his abilities’. [7] Interestingly, it took a woman—his sister, St Macrina—to cure St Basil of that, but cure him she did, so that he himself wrote: ‘I wept many tears over my miserable life, and I prayed that guidance might be vouchsafed me to the doctrines of true religion.’ [8]

I pray that the Lord grant all three of you such guidance as you embark on this new stage in your education.

[1] St Augustine, On Christian Teaching, tr. R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford, 1999), p. 37.

[2] St Athanasius, The Life of Antony & the Letter to Marcellinus, tr. Robert C. Gregg (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1980), p. 32.

[3] St Augustine, p. 37.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Oration 43.23 (here).

[7] The Lives of the Three Great Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, & John Chrysostom, compiled & tr. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: Holy Apostles, 1998), p. 8.

[8] Ibid., p. 9.

‘Even So Send I You’—A Homily for the 1st Sunday after Pascha

2011-06-06T11:06:00.003-05:00

This was my last homily of the school year, preached on the Monday after the first Sunday after Pascha, using the BCP readings for that Sunday. Orthodox readers will note a larger number of quotations from non-Patristic sources, including Jim Elliot, Corrie ten Boom, and John Keble. I don’t apologise for this, since these are sources that I thought my audience might be able easily to relate to and which expressed ideas that I do not find at all opposed to the Patristic tradition. I do ask that sensitive readers please excuse my paraphrase of the first quote from St Isaac the Syrian. I was afraid a great deal of my audience might find it difficult to follow Dana Miller’s rendering of the passage, and so attempted to simplify without—I hope—distorting the meaning.

I John 5:4-12
St John 20:19-23

‘As My Father sent me, even so send I you.’

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Christ is risen!

When preaching on a text from Scripture, I’m nearly always tempted to explain the passage as whole—looking for a structure, drawing out a dense complex of ideas. But today I want to focus closely, and draw out my homily from one fairly simple idea.

In today’s Gospel, Christ shows His disciples the wounds in His hands and side—glorious scars of His suffering and death. It is then that He speaks the words I have quoted: ‘As My Father sent me, even so send I you.’ What I want to point out today is that these two things—the action and the words—are not unrelated.

Commenting on this passage, St Gregory the Great writes:

As the Son is loved by the Father and yet is sent forth to suffer, so also the disciples are loved by the Lord, Who nevertheless sends them into the world to suffer; that is, ‘I am loving you with the love with which the Father loved Me, Whom He sent into the world to undergo sufferings.’ [1]

Today’s message is that just as Christ was sent to suffer, so He sends His disciples to suffer too.

The showing of His wounds confirms the Resurrection, it builds that faith by which the world is overcome, according to the first verse of today’s Epistle reading. But this overcoming of world, though it is by faith, is nevertheless a struggle which requires suffering. In other words, God’s grace enables us to overcome world, but only through much suffering: physical, emotional, and spiritual. And what I am struck most by is the implication that this is the normal life for Christ’s disciples. Thus a line has long stuck with me from the journal of the famous Protestant missionary, Jim Elliot:

‘We are the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.’ And what are sheep doing going into a gate? What is their purpose inside those courts? To bleat melodies and enjoy the company of the flock? No. Those sheep were destined for the altar. [2]

In other words, they are destined to be slaughtered as a sacrifice.

Similarly, the great spiritual teacher of 20th-c. Serbia, Elder Thaddeus, says ‘there is no life other than that of serving others and patiently bearing sorrow and pain’. [3]

I’m afraid that more than at any other time or place, we Americans in the 21st c. fall into the trap of thinking that a life of ease and comfort, material prosperity and the respect of society, doing fun and pleasing ourselves, is somehow compatible with Christianity.

Make no mistake: Christian life is a cross!
Christian life is sacrifice!
Christian life is difficult!

St Paul writes, ‘That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto’ (I Thess. 3:3).

The great contemplative of the eastern desert, St Isaac of Nineveh, writes:

The person that wants to fulfill the Lord’s word is like someone prepared to be crucified who can think of nothing but dying, and no longer cares at all about the life of this present age. That’s what it means to ‘take up one’s cross and follow Him’ (Matt 16:24). The cross is a choice to be ready to suffer all the time. . . . Therefore by yourself prepare your soul to forget completely about this life. . . . When you struggle for Christ with this preparation, then everything that seems painful and bad will seem like no big deal at all. When your mind is prepared like this, it has no struggle or affliction when it faces death. If you don’t forget about life in this world because you want the blessed life to come, you’ll never be able to get through all the tribulations and pains that are gonna happen to you. [4]

The memory of the Church records that Christ’s words were certainly fulfilled by His immediate hearers—of the twelve Apostles, St Peter was crucified upside-down; St James, son of Zebedee, was beheaded; St John, son of Zebedee, died in exile; St Andrew was crucified on an x-shaped cross; St Philip was crucified; St Bartholomew was flayed (skinned) alive and beheaded; St Matthew was killed by an axe; St Thomas was killed by a spear; St James, son of Alphaeus, was crucified, stoned, and beaten to death by a club; St Jude was crucified; St Simon the Zealot was crucified; and St Matthias was stoned and beheaded.

Now, in context Christ’s words, ‘even so send I you’, obviously apply first of all to ‘clergy’. Our Lord is speaking to the Apostles—to whom He gives the power to ‘bind and loose’ (cf. St John 20:23). According to the English Puritan, Matthew Henry: this power ‘puts immense honour upon the ministry, and should put immense courage into ministers’. [5] Unfortunately, even the clergy often forget that it is their calling precisely to suffer.

But our Lord’s words also apply to all believers. All Christians are ‘sent out’ into the world. It is true that the laity don’t have the special task of ‘binding and loosing’—but we too can spread Christ’s forgiveness, if not sacramentally. The 6th-grade class just finished reading The Hiding Place, about a woman named Corrie Ten Boom who was imprisoned by the Nazis for helping Jews. After her release from the Ravensbruck prison camp, Corrie meets one of her former guards—who does not recognise her—when speaking at a German church. We read:

His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.

Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help to forgive him.

I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.

As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.

And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself. [6]

As I mentioned early on, by faith through grace we ‘overcome the world’. But what do we mean by ‘the world’? Is this the same as that world into which we’re sent?

In a homily on today’s Epistle delivered over 150 years ago, the great Anglican preacher, John Keble, said: ‘The world is the visible and outward course of things, amidst which we live and move. It is something different to each one of us but each one finds it the same in this respect, that by things in sight it tempts and draws him away from things out of sight.’ [7]

Thus the ‘world’ is not just outside, but, sadly, within us in the form of the passions which St Paul says ‘they that are Christ’s have crucified’ (Gal 5:24). Indeed, as St Isaac has famously written:

World is a collective noun which is applied to the so-called passions. . . . When we wish to give a collect name to the passions, we call them world. And when we wish to designate them specifically according to their names, we call them passions. . . . These are the passions: love of wealth; gathering objects of any kind; bodily pleasure . . . ; love of esteem, from which springs envy; the wielding of power; pride in the trappings of authority; stateliness and pomposity; human glory, which is the cause of resentment; fear for the body. [8]

All of this can be overcome by faith in Christ, through which His grace transforms us. The mediaeval English monk, the Venerable Bede, says that:

The commandments of God are not burdensome. If we keep them with true devotion, even though the world is difficult, we’ll pass by its temptations without being troubled, and we’ll even look forward to death, because it’s the gateway to the heavenly country. Of course we can’t achieve all this by our own efforts, so St John adds that our victory is a result of our faith, not our works. [9]

Finally, as Keble observes:

To overcome this world is really to turn away from the things which seem desirable in it and to give them up for the sake of better things out of sight, and when our faith has this effect on us—when it actually causes us to forego earthly things in order to secure the things eternal to please God and show duty to Jesus Christ—then it is a faith which overcomes the world. [10]

May we all learn to acquire and practice this kind of faith so that we can repeat in our own lives the great sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for us.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

[1] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 1: The Holy Gospels, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 552, n. 365.

[2] Elisabeth Elliot, Shadow of the Almighty: The Life & Testament of Jim Elliot (NY: Harper, 1958), p. 89.

[3] Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life & Teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, compiled by the St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, tr. Ana Smiljanic (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2009), p. 15.

[4] Paraphrased from Homily 37, in The Ascetical Homilies of St Isaac the Syrian, tr. Dana Miller (Boston: HTM, 1984), p. 168.

[5] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible: New One Volume Edition, ed. Leslie F. Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1966), p. 1628.

[6] Corrie ten Boom, with John & Elizabeth Sherrill, The Hiding Place (Washington Depot, CT: Chosen, 1971), p. 215.

[7] John Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year, ed. Maria Poggi Johnson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), p. 127.

[8] Ascetical Homilies, pp. 14-5.

[9] Gerald Bray, ed., James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude, Vol. XI in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2000), p. 222.

[10] Keble, p. 127.

'He That Is of God Heareth God's Words'--A Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent

2011-06-04T23:50:00.003-05:00

I really didn’t mean to let two full months go by without posting a thing. To make up for it, here, much belatedly, is one of two homilies that I plan to post this week. This is my homily for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, preached, as usual, at chapel on the Monday morning following. I had received an indirect request through my principal to make it easier for the other teachers to take something away to discuss with their students—hence the repetitions of certain carefully enumerated points. The age and generally Protestant orientation of most of the audience accounts for the tone and some details of my retelling of the Life of St Mary of Egypt. I apologise that it is hardly a model of hagiographical narration.

Hebrews 9:11-15
St John 8:46-59

‘He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.’

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

In the second verse of today’s Gospel, these words that I have just quoted are spoken by Christ to the Jews. By ‘God’s words’, we can be sure that Our Lord means the Scriptures, of course, but the Scriptures are not only words already written but the words He is speaking at that moment.

From this ‘living Scripture’ we learn, first, that it is important that we ‘hear’ His words, not only read them silently. In the ancient world reading was always done out loud, and as often as we can we too must read the Scriptures aloud, listen to others read them, recite them, etc.

Second, we learn that merely hearing His words physically with our ears is not enough, since the Lord says to his physical audience ‘ye therefore hear them not’. It is also necessary to pay careful attention to what He says. Commenting on this text, the English Puritan, Matthew Henry, writes:

He that is of God . . . is willing and ready to hear His words, is sincerely desirous to know what the mind of God is, and cheerfully embraces whatever he knows to be so. He apprehends and discerns them, he so hears them as to perceive the voice of God in them, as they of the family know the master’s tread, and the master’s knock, as the sheep know the voice of their shepherd from that of a stranger.’

Third, and finally, we learn from these words of Christ that even paying attention is not enough—in v. 51, the Lord says that those who would never see death must ‘keep my saying’. In other words, truly hearing entails also doing.

In his commentary on this Gospel passage, St Gregory the Great emphasises all three of these points:

Let each one of you then consider within himself if this voice of God prevails in the ears of his heart. Then he will recognize whether he is now of God. There are some who do not choose to hear God’s commands even with their bodily ears. There are others who do this but do not embrace them with their heart’s desire. There are still others who receive God’s words readily, yes, and are touched, even to tears. But afterwards they go back to their sins again and therefore cannot be said to hear the word of God, because they neglect to practice it. [2]

Hearing the Word means listening, paying attention, but most importantly, doing the Word.

In the Anonymous Collection of Desert Fathers sayings, we read that:

A woman came to [St] Antony [the Great] and declared that she had endured great fasting and had learned the entire Bible by heart. [Amazing, huh?] She wanted to know from Antony what more she should do. Antony was less sanguine about her accomplishments than she was and put a series of questions to her. He asked her, ‘Is contempt the same as honor to you?’ She answered, ‘No.’ He then asked her, ‘Is loss gain, strangers as your parents, poverty as abundance?’ Again she answered ‘No.’ Antony said to her, ‘Thus you have neither fasted nor learned the Old and New Testament, but you have deceived yourself.’ [3]

By contrast, consider the story of the monk who—

came to St Basil [the Great] and said, ‘Speak a word, Father’; and Basil replied, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart’; and the monk went away at once. Twenty years later he came back, and said, ‘Father, I have struggled to keep your word; now speak another word to me’; and he said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’; and the monk returned in obedience to his cell to keep that also. [4]

Hearing God’s Word means listening, paying attention, but most importantly, doing God’s Word.

Indeed, I have already mentioned that in v. 51 Christ says, ‘If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.’ Does He mean we won’t die, but be taken to heaven like Enoch and Elijah? Clearly not. According to St Augustine: ‘It means nothing less than He saw another death from which He came to free us—the second death, eternal death, the death of hell, the death of the damned, which is shared with the devil and his angels! This is real death; the other kind of death is only a passage.’ [5] So Christ promises that if we keep His saying, we shall be delivered from this eternal death. But there is a more subtle, positive promise as well: If we hear (that is, do) the Word, its mysteries will be revealed to us.

Recall that the Jews respond to Christ’s promise: ‘Abraham is dead, and did he not keep God’s Word?’ What the Lord says in reply is rather strange. In v. 56, He tells them, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.’ Happily, the author of Hebrews, traditionally believed to be St Paul, helps us to understand this.

First, in a passage not found in today’s Epistle, but in chapter 11, v. 13, St Paul, having spoken of Abraham, writes: ‘These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them.’ In other words, yes, Abraham died the lesser death, and he died before Christ brought deliverence from eternal death, but he foresaw the deliverance, and he obtained this through faith—through hearing (that is, doing) the Word of God. St Irenaeus of Lyons says, ‘Righteously therefore, having left his earthly family, Abraham followed the Word of God walking as a pilgrim with the Word so that he might afterwards make his home with the Word.’ [6]

Now, the Fathers say many things about what Abraham saw—the mysteries revealed to him for his faith, like the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. But most Fathers specifically connect what Christ calls ‘my day’ with His crucifixion and death. St Irenaeus writes, ‘Abraham was a prophet and saw in the Spirit the day of the Lord’s coming and the dispensation of His suffering’; [7] St Chrysostom says Abraham ‘was gladdened at the cross’; [8] and St Gregory Palamas says the ‘mystery of the Cross was working in Abraham’. [9]

How was this so? The Fathers say it is especially true in the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac (found in Gen. 22:1-14). St Cyril says Abraham ‘saw the day of the Lord’s slaughter . . . when, as a type of Christ, he was enjoined to offer up for a sacrifice his only begotten and firstborn, Isaac . . . making clear the exact force of the Mystery in a type in what happened.’ [10] St Ephraim the Syrian writes, ‘“He saw and rejoiced,” for he recognized the redemption of all the nations through the symbol of the lamb. “He said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’” For He existed, but in hidden fashion, when Isaac was being redeemed and revealed His sign through a lamb.’ [11]

Christ is of course the true Agnus Dei, the true Lamb of God—that is the Word of God that Abraham saw, and it is this ‘Word of God’ which we ‘hear’ in today’s Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15. In verses 13-14, St Paul writes:

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

This is the Mystery revealed to Abraham. Christ is the perfect sacrifice, who delivers us from death and frees us from the dead works of the Law—sacrificing animals, etc.—so we can follow ‘the Word of God’. To paraphrase St John Cassian (Conference 21.4.3), we no longer offer sacrifices of animals or mere ‘tithes of our possessions’, but ‘disdaining property, we offer ourselves and our own souls to God’. [12] We hear and do God’s Word by imitating Christ’s sacrifice. We participate in the Mystery of the Cross by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. For as we listen to today’s Gospel, we ourselves must be hearing the Word of God, and if we do this, we like Abraham will learn its Mystery. The Jews to whom Our Lord spoke heard but did not hear—we have the opportunity to hear what they did not.

In St John 8:58, Christ says: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.’ Commenting on this passage, St Gregory the Great writes:

Our Redeemer graciously turns their gaze away from His body and draws it to contemplation of His divinity. . . . ‘Before’ indicates past time, ‘I am’ present time. Because divinity does not have past and future time but always is, He did not say, ‘I was before Abraham’ but ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ And so it was said to Moses [at the burning bush], ‘I am who I am’, and ‘You will say to the children of Israel, “He who is has sent me to you”’ (Ex 3:14). [13]

In other words, Christ existed both before and after Abraham. It was Christ Who appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre, and the sign of the Precious Cross was stamped on his life. But this should not surprise us. As one modern theologian puts it:

Theologically speaking, creation and its history begins with the Passion of Christ [His suffering on the Cross] and from this ‘once for all’ work looks backwards and forwards to see everything in this light, making everything new. Christian cosmology, elaborated as it must be from the persective of the Cross, sees the Cross as impregnated in the very structure of creation: stat crux dum volvitur orbis—the Cross stands, while the earth revolves. The power of God revealed in and through the Cross brought creation into being and sustains it in existence. [14]

He then quotes St Isaac of Syria:

We do not speak of a power in the Cross that is any different from that through which the worlds came into being, [a power] which is eternal and without beginning and which guides creation all the time without any break, in a divine way and beyond the understanding of all, in accordance with the will of His divinity. [15]

If all this theology is a bit too much for you though, I’ll tell a little story that might make it easier.

Starting about 600 years ago, the Church that I belong to began a tradition of reading the Life of a Saint named St Mary of Egypt every year on the 5th Sunday of Lent. In the West, not many know about St Mary, so I’ll tell her story briefly.

The Life as we have it was written down in the 7th c. by St Sophronius of Jerusalem. It tells of a St Zosimas who lived in the Holy Land and was a good monk who ‘never ceased to study the Divine Scriptures. Whether resting, standing, working or eating food (if the scraps he nibbled could be called food), he incessantly and constantly had a single aim: always to sing of God, and to practice the teaching of the Divine Scriptures.’ According to the custom of his monastery, St Zosimas set off to the desert across the River Jordan to spend Lent alone with Christ (so, following the Word of God).

After 20 days, St Zosimas saw a human being whose body was ‘blackened, burnt by the heat of the sun’ [16]—an image of self-denial, of suffering, of the Mystery of the Cross—and discovers that it is a woman who already knows his name through Spirit. She is too humble to speak of herself, but St Zosimas begs her to tell him her story and finally cajoles her into it.

She says her name is ‘Mary’ and that she is from Alexandria, Egypt. Before she came to the desert, she was a very sinful woman—she liked to party, she wore lots of makeup and fancy clothes, and committed adultery many times. One day she went to Jerusalem and heard it was Feast of Precious Cross (at that time the Jerusalem Church still had all of the actual Cross that Christ was crucified on). Mary tried to go into the church with the crowd, but a mysterious force held her back. She realised that God was preventing her to enter because of her sins, and she promised to go to the desert and live in repentance. At that moment, she was able to enter the church and kiss Christ’s Precious Cross, upon which she immediately left and crossed the Jordan. At the time that she meets St Zosimas, St Mary believes that it has been 47 years since she left the Holy City to follow the Word of God.

When St Mary quotes Scripture to St Zosimas, he asks if she has read the Bible. Interestingly, she says: ‘I never learned from books. I have never even heard anyone who sang and read from them. But the word of God which is alive and active, by itself teaches a man knowledge.’ So Christ revealed to her His mysteries—she has heard His living voice, of which Scripture is only a record, and has been freed by grace to ‘serve the living God’. St Zosimas says, ‘Blessed is God Who has shown me how He rewards those who fear Him. Truly, O Lord, Thou dost not forsake those who seek Thee!’

The end of the story is that St Mary tells St Zosimas (who is a priest) to bring her Holy Communion. When he goes back to the Jordan he sees her on the other side, but she crosses by walking across the water to receive the Mysteries and says, ‘Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, O Lord, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.’ When St Zosimas goes back at her request after a year, St Mary has fallen asleep in the Lord.

Because St Mary has heard (and done) the Word of God, He has made known the Mystery of His Cross to her.

Because St Zosimas has heard (and done) the Word of God, He has made known mystery of St Mary’s cross to him.

Obviously, not all are called to live in the desert of the Holy Land, but as we get ready to celebrate His death and resurrection in a couple of weeks let’s try to remember that—

Whenever we are asked to do something we don’t like, we have an opportunity to share in Christ’s Cross just a little bit.

Whenever someone insults us or hurts us, and we are tempted to get angry and get back at them, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever we feel like fidgeting during Matins, or ignoring our teacher, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever we have to wait for something we want, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever our tie is too tight, the day is too hot, our chair is too hard, our class is too long, or the book we have to read is too boring, we share in Christ’s Cross.

If we do this, if we take advantage of these opportunities and even seek new ones, we will truly hear God’s Word.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

[1] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible: New One Volume Edition, ed. Leslie F. Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1966), p. 1555.

[2] Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1-10, NT Vol. IVa of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), p. 309.

[3] Douglas Burton-Christ, The Word in the Desert: Scripture & the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (NY: Oxford, 1993), p. 161.

[4] Benedicta Ward, Foreword, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984), p. xxii.

[5] Elowsky, p. 313.

[6] Ibid., p. 316.

[7] Ibid., p. 316.

[8] Ibid., p. 316.

[9] St Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin with the Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009), p. 79.

[10] Elowsky, p. 316.

[11] Ibid., p. 317.

[12] St John Cassian, The Conferences, tr. Boniface Ramsey (NY: Newman, 1997), p. 721.

[13] Elowsky, p. 317.

[14] Fr John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2006), p. 90.

[15] Qtd. in ibid., p. 90.

[16] All quotations from the Life of St Mary of Egypt are taken from here.

'Let Us Cry Out to Christ Like the Canaanite Woman' - A Homily

2011-03-29T19:29:00.005-05:00

At last, I have a new homily to post. This was based on the BCP readings for the second Sunday in Lent: I Thessalonians 4:1-8 and St Matthew 15:21-28. I was a little worried about frightening some of the kids with the talk about child sacrifice, but I think it was the best received so far.

‘Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.’

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s Epistle, St Paul writes, ‘[E]very one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour’ (I Thess. 4:4). This is something that the people of Tyre and Sidon, the country of the ‘Canaanite woman’ in today’s Gospel historically failed to do. Indeed, the pagan worship of the Phoenician cities is still well known for its ‘licentiousness’. [1]

But it is worse than that. Actually, it surprises me little that the ‘woman of Canaan’ would complain of a daughter ‘grievously vexed with a devil’ (St Matt. 15:23). Ps. 96:5 says ‘all the gods of the nations’—or Gentiles, like the Phoenicians—‘are mere idols’: but according to both the Greek and Latin translations of the Old Testament, ‘all the gods of the nations are demons’ (Ps. 96:5 LXX). Next week’s Gospel mentions ‘Beelzebub’, or ‘Lord of Flies’, the demonic god of the Philistine city of Ekron, who is referred to there as ‘the chief of devils’ (St Luke 11:14-28).

The latter passage reminds us that Ps. 96:5 is true par excellence of the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon, whose deities are variously known as Baal or Moloch, and who were known to sacrifice their children in the fiery mouths of their great bronze idols. Such sacrifices are mentioned in Lev. 18:21, and there are terrifying, vivid descriptions of them in a scholium to Plato’s Republic as well as in Plutarch.

Thus, it seems a fitting punishment for people known in the Mediterranean world for sacrificing children to demons for their children to be ‘badly demonized’, according to a literal translation of the woman’s words. Surely the burners of human beings to demonic gods fall under St Paul’s condemnation when he writes in today’s Epistle, ‘He therefore that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God’ (I Thess. 4:8). Confronted with the same Moloch-worshipping Phoenicians in their colony of Carthage, G.K. Chesterton tells us the Romans saw ‘faces of sneering men; and hated the hateful soul of Carthage’. [2]

But, as St Augustine happily observes in The City of God, ‘[M]en, though erring, incredulous, and averse from the worship and service of the gods, are nevertheless beyond doubt better than the demons whom they themselves have evoked’ (De civ. Dei 8.24). [3] This is wonderfully demonstrated by the woman in today’s Gospel. She recognised her error, repented, and came to Christ in humble supplication, and this humility is the dominant note of today’s lesson. It begins with a simple plea for mercy, like the prayer of the Publican, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner’ (Lk 18:13). Then, we see the recognition that the Messiah of the Hebrews is the true ‘Baal’, or ‘Lord’, when the woman says ‘O Lord’.

St Gregory Palamas, the Archbishop of Thessalonica in the 14th c., preached a beautiful homily on today’s Gospel in the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Thessalonica (not the big famous Hagia Sophia, but a smaller one). [4] I will be quoting frequently from St Gregory through the rest of this homily. Commenting on the Canaanite woman’s address to Christ, St Gregory points out that ‘no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost’ (I Cor. 12:3). Thus, in his words, ‘In fact the Canaanite woman did not merely come out from those heathen coasts, but sprang up from the valleys like a sacred lily, exhaling with her words the fragrance of the divine Spirit from her mouth.’ [5]

So, we have already a model of enormous self-abasement, but our Lord ‘wanted her faith and virtue to be demonstrated even more clearly’. First, He ‘answered her not a word’ (15:23), then, when the disciples pleaded with Him to send her away, He said, ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel’ (15:24).

Now, we might think that the humble response to such a rebuff would be to accept it and withdraw—but this would be pride, not humility. When she needs help, the humble woman begs for it. Thus, woman of Canaan worships Christ, that is, she falls down before Him in prostration, and supplicates Him in even simpler words: ‘Lord, help me’ (15:25).

How does Christ respond to this self-abasement? We are astonished to find that He responds with an insult: ‘It is not meet to take the children’s bread [that is, the salvation belonging to Israel], and to cast it to dogs [the Phoenician Baal-worshippers]’ (15:26). But while we may be shocked by Christ calling a woman a ‘dog’, however fitting a moral description of her people it may be, He who knows all things knew her heart, saw her humility, and wanted to test her to reveal her amazing virtue before all for centuries to come.

For how does she respond? She is not insulted. According to St Gregory, ‘[W]hen she was treated with contempt and heard herself called not just an irrational animal, but a dirty and fierce one, whose voice was a dog’s bark rather than human speech worth listening to, she agreed and joined in ridiculing herself, but did not cease to entreat Christ.’ [6]

The Fathers teach us that when we are insulted, we absolutely must NOT respond with insults, but, they say, it is even better not to become angry, and best of all to admit the truth in the insult. One Father of the Egyptian desert, Abba Isaiah, says insults are good for us because they teach us humility, and that one who ‘bears insults is like a tree that is watered every day’ (Isaiah 1). [7] Another Desert Father, Abba Xanthius, points out a dog is better than we, ‘for he has love & he does not judge’ (Xanthius 3). [8]

So the Canaanite woman follows this highest path: ‘Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table’ (15:27). St Gregory writes:

Let us learn from this teacher with how much patience, humility and contrition we must persevere in our prayers. Even if we are unworthy, and even if we are sent away because we are soiled with sins, let us learn not to turn back, but to keep humbly asking from our soul. We shall receive our requests from God. [9]

The exhortation ‘not to turn back, but to keep humbly asking from our soul’ reminds us of the Parable of the Unjust Judge in Luke 18:1-8, which, incidentally, is the proper Second Lesson for Evening Prayer to follow this morning’s readings. In this parable, a widow comes to a judge ‘which feared not God, neither regarded man’ (18:2), pleading for justice against her adversary (and in interpreting this it is helpful to recall that in I Peter 5:8 the ‘adversary’ is the devil). The judge complains to himself, ‘Because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me’ (18:5), to which the Lord says, ‘Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? I tell you that he will avenge them speedily?’ (18:6-8)

(By the way, in this parable, Christ is drawing from an old Hebrew schoolbook called ‘The Book of Ben Sirach’, where we find the lovely line: ‘The prayer of the humble pierceth the clouds: and till it come nigh, he will not be comforted; and will not depart, till the most High shall behold to judge righteously, and execute judgment’ (Ecclesiasticus 35:17).)

Like the widow, the Canaanite woman pleads to be avenged against her adversary—who in this case is quite clearly the devil—and is rewarded for her perseverance in prayer. So we too must persevere in prayer, but while St Gregory says that in this way ‘We will receive our requests from God’, I’m afraid we often spend too much time requesting frivolities, things that we want to get from God, rather than requesting deliverance from the devil who keeps us captive through our sinful thoughts and habits.

As we see, the Canaanite woman’s words are, as St Gregory says, ‘truly wise’, but they are also beautiful imagery, they are eloquent, poetic. Indeed, St Ephraim the Syrian (4th c.), whom one scholar calls ‘the greatest poet of the patristic age and perhaps the only theologian-poet to rank beside Dante’, [10] loves the Canaanite woman’s image of dogs eating crumbs from the master’s table. In his humility, St Ephraim often speaks of himself eating ‘crumbs’ from heaven:

And if none who is defiled can enter that place, then allow me to live by its enclosure, residing in its shade. Since Paradise resembles that table, let me, through Your grace, eat of the ‘crumbs’ of its fruit which fall outside, so that I too may join those dogs who had their fill from the crumbs of their masters’ tables. (Hymns on Paradise 7.26) [11]

Humility, however, is not merely nice but absolutely necessary for our salvation. Christ says that unless we humble ourselves we ‘shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven’ (Matt. 18:3). Another Desert Father, Abba Longinus, said:

I reckon that just as pride is the greatest of the passions, since it was able to cast various beings down from Heaven, so also is humility the greatest of all the virtues. For it has the power to raise a man up from those dark abysses, even if he is a sinner like the Devil. This is why the Lord called the poor in spirit, that is, the humble, blessed above all others (Matt. 5:3). [12]

This is wonderfully illustrated in a beautiful passage of Crime & Punishment, by the great Russian novelist, Fyodor Dostoevsky. Semyon Zakharovich Marmeladov is a despicable man, an alcoholic who lets his family starve while he spends their money on booze, but he weeps over his own sins even while committing them. In one of my favourite passages of one of my favourite books, when the protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov, goes to find him in a St Petersburg bar, Marmeladov describes the Last Judgement:

And when He has finished with everyone, then He will say unto us, too, ‘You, too, come forth!’ He will say. ‘Come forth, my drunk ones, my weak ones, my shameless ones!’ And we will all come forth, without being ashamed, and stand there. And He will say, ‘Swine you are! Of the image of the beast and of his seal’ but come, you, too!’ And the wise and the reasonable will say unto Him, ‘Lord, why do you receive such as these?’ And He will say, ‘I receive them, my wise and reasonable ones, forasmuch as not one of them considered himself worthy of this thing . . .’ And He will stretch out His arms to us, and we will fall at His feet . . . and weep . . . and understand everything! Then we will understand everything! . . . and everyone will understand . . . […] Lord, Thy kingdom come! [13]

I shall conclude with St Gregory Palamas’s words:

Let us humble ourselves of our own free will, brethren, that we may demonstrate our faith in Christ and also be exalted by Him. Or rather, may we acknowledge our innate lowliness, and the fact that the misleading thoughts which sometimes arise within us are from the demons. Then let us cry out to Christ like the Canaanite woman, fall down before Him and persevere in humble prayer, and we shall obtain the grace which is given to the humbleminded, and speedily ascend to divine heights. [14]

[1] See ‘Baal’, Peloubet’s Bible Dictionary, ed. F.N. Peloubet, asstd. by Alice D. Adams (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1974), p. 64.

[2] G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (SF: Ignatius, 2008), p. 150.

[3] St Augustine, The City of God, tr. Marcus Dods (NY: Modern Library, 1950), p. 275.

[4] Homily 43; in St Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin with the Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009), pp. 339-45.

[5] St Gregory, p. 340.

[6] Ibid., p. 341.

[7] Benedicta Ward, tr., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984), p. 69.

[8] Ibid., p. 159.

[9] St Gregory, p. 341.

[10] Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers on Prayer and the Spiritual Life (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1987), p. 30, citing Robert Murray, Catholic Dictionary of Theology, Vol. 2, ed. J.H. Crehan (London, 1967), p. 222.

[11] St Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns On Paradise, tr. Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1990), p. 128.

[12] Archbishop Chrysostomos & Hieromonk Patapios, ed. & tr., The Evergetinos: A Complete Text—Book I (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008), p. 384.

[13] Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime & Punishment, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky (NY: Everyman, ), p. 23.

[14] St Gregory, p. 342.

Fr Alexis's Book & Logismoic Podcasts

2011-03-28T22:08:00.003-05:00

I have been working on getting another homily ready to put up, but in the meantime I was asked by a friend to post a few links. I know I have mentioned before my friendship, dating back to my first visit to Greece in 2001, with Hieromonk Alexis (Trader) of Karakallou Monastery on the Holy Mountain (who is now residing off of the Mountain for health reasons). Well, as many readers may already know, Fr Alexis has recently published a dissertation—completed under the supervision of my own advisor, Anestis Keselopoulos—on the Neptic Fathers and the psychology of Aaron Beck, entitled Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds.

Unfortunately, it’s a European academic press, so the volume is quite expensive and is not receiving a great deal of publicity within the Orthodox market. So a mutual friend convinced Fr Alexis to do a series of four guest blog posts introducing this project. I myself would have been happy to host one of the guest posts, but I was afraid that with my infrequent and irregular posting over the last seven months it might not reach much of an audience here at Logismoi. So, here are the first three posts of the series (the third is to be posted on Kevin Edgecomb’s biblicalia this Thursday):

#1 at Mystagogy
#2 at Second Terrace
#3 at The Voice of Stefan

Also, excerpts from the book itself can be read here and here at the Orthodox Christian Information Center. I highly recommend that everybody take a look, and if you are at all able to do so, to support this project by purchasing a copy of the book. We are hoping that there will be enough interest to warrant the publication of a paperback edition.

In other news, my talk from the Climacus Conference (mentioned here), ‘“In Thy Law Will He Meditate Day & Night”: The Study of Scripture & Classical Education’, has been up at Ancient Faith Radio for some time. Those who have not yet heard it can find it here. I had a very good time hanging out with Bishop Savas of Troas, my koumbaros Symeon Branson, my baptisthidi Christopher Daugherity, Maximus Greeson, Andrew Kern, the various members of the Maddex/Sabourin clan, and the Wright family. Also, it was good as usual to see Joshua of Eighth Day Books manning the book table.

'If Thine Enemy Thirst, Give Him Drink'—A Homily for 24 January

2011-02-07T18:25:00.003-06:00

Here’s my latest homily, delivered on 24 January, New Style. I’ll be doing them more frequently this semester—every three weeks instead of every four—and I’ll try to continue posting them here unless there are strenuous objections.

Third Sunday after Epiphany

Romans 12:16-20
St John ii.1.

Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Epistle is a long list of exhortations—of St Paul telling us ‘Behave this way’, ‘Here’s how to follow Christ’—all of which have particular relevance to the kind of life we need to live as a school community.

In verse 16, he writes, ‘Be not wise in your own conceits.’ This is central to what we do as a school, for, according to the mediaeval manual of learning, Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon, humility is the basis of learning. [1] That is, we must recognise our ignorance in order to gain knowledge.

In verse 17, St Paul writes, ‘Recompense no man evil for evil.’ If another student is unkind to us, should we be unkind in return? No. And this applies to teachers too – if a parent doesn’t like something I do & slanders me, should I go around talking about them? Should I tell everyone, ‘They’re liars, or crazy, or a jerk, etc.?’ No.

In verse 18, St Paul writes, ‘Live peaceably with all men.’ This means we need to help and share with one another. We need to say kind things to build one another up.

In verse 19, St Paul writes, ‘Avenge not yourselves.’ This is very similar to verse 17, but here we get into something trickier because the Apostle goes on to quote Deuteronomy 32:35, ‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ The Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, has used this as the epigraph for his novel, Anna Karenina.

It’s good because it tells us not to seek vengeance—not to try to ‘get someone back’. But it’s tempting to be excited because God says He will ‘repay’ – we want to see our enemy ‘zapped’ by God, don’t we? Many readers of Anna Karenina enjoy seeing Anna succumb to madness and suicide as a punishment for her adultery.

Because of this zeal for vengeance, even if it is vengeance dealt out by God, it is easy to read the next exhortation as a promise that our enemies will be ‘zapped’. In verse 20, St Paul writes, ‘Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’ It’s easy to hear this and think, ‘I’m gonna be extra nice to this jerk to show him I’m better, or I’m gonna be nice so God will really get him!’

But is that what St Paul is telling? Is this what God wants?

I don’t think so – as St Augustine says, ‘For how can it be love to feed and nourish someone just in order to heap coals of fire on his head, assuming that “coals of fire” means some serious punishment?’ [2]

There’s a clue about this in today’s Gospel which, in my opinion, ought to change completely our perception of all of St Paul’s exhortations. Every time I preach, I try to find some sort of connection between the Epistle and Gospel readings. It was a little tricky this time. It took me a minute, but finally I came up with the line, ‘If he thirst, give him drink.’

Christ in the Gospel makes wine from water for thirsty wedding guests. Now, this story demonstrates a couple of things at the surface level. Our Lord’s presence at Cana shows that He blesses marriage. The provision of wine for the wedding party shows that He blesses fun and the enjoyment of earth’s gifts.

But more importantly, the Miracle at Cana prefigures the wine of the Eucharist, the ‘Blood of Christ’. In his long hymn ‘On the Marriage at Cana’, St Romanus the Melodist, a 6th-c. hymnographer from Syria, writes:

When Christ, as a sign of His power, clearly changed the water into wine, all the crowd rejoiced, for they considered the taste marvellous. Now we all at the banquet in the Church partake of Christ with holy joy from the wine changed into His blood, praising the great Bridegroom. [3]

But the recollection of Christ’s gift of His own divine Blood to quench our thirst reminds us of the context of St Paul’s exhortation: ‘if thine enemy…thirst’. This changes our reading of the exhortations in Romans 12.

We are Christ’s enemies, because our sins necessitated His sacrifice.

Every time we become ‘wise in our own conceits’ we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we pay back evil for evil we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we fail to live peaceably we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we try to avenge ourselves we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

But now back to the rest of verse 20: ‘for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head’. As we’ve already noted, this doesn’t sound very loving, does it? St Augustine explains it thusly:

We must understand that ‘coals of fire’ means that we should provoke whoever does us harm to repentance by doing him a good turn. For the coals of fire serve to burn, i.e., to bring anguish to his spirit, which is like the head of the soul, in which all malice is burnt out when one is changed for the better through repentance. [4]

Similarly, the 5th-c. commentator Constantius writes:

In this passage Paul teahes that we ought to imitate God, who causes his sun to rise on the good and the evil, for by feeding our enemy and giving him something to drink we provoke him to peace or even to reconciliation. [5]

In the first place, Christ’s sacrifice heaps ‘coals of fire’ in the sense that we have repented and turned to Him in faith. But of course, we continue to sin (or at least I do!), and therefore we must have continual repentance, we must rekindle that proper ‘anguish of spirit’ that St Paul in 2 Cor. 7:10 calls the ‘godly sorrow’ that ‘worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of’.

This we attempt to do at Matins every day – we confess ourselves to be ‘miserable offenders’: as C.S. Lewis says, this means ‘that if we could see things from a sufficient height above we should all realize that we are in fact proper objects of pity’. [6]

But, in the second place, remember that by accepting food and drink in the Eucharist, in the Lord’s Supper, we risk heaping ‘coals of fire’ on ourselves in a more obvious sense. St Paul writes in I Cor. 11:29: ‘For he that eatheth and drinketh unworthily, eateth & drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.’

These are strong words, and we would do well to recall them before we approach to receive communion.

In James Joyce’s semi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, even Stephen Dedalus, who has lost his faith, cannot forget St Paul’s words, and will not succumb to the social pressure to take communion because he ‘feels and fears’ the ‘body and blood of the son of God’. [7] As believing Christians, how much more discerning must we be of ‘the Lord’s body’!

Commenting on the passage in I Corinthians, St Chrysostom writes:

Since if even that kind of banquet which the senses take cognizance of cannot be partaken of by us when feverish and full of bad humors, without risk of perishing [in other words…]: much more is it unlawful for us to touch this Table with profane lusts, which are more grievous than fevers. Now when I say profane lusts, I mean both those of the body, and of money, and of anger, and of malice, and, in a word, all that are profane. And it becomes him that approacheth, first to empty himself of all these things and so to touch that pure sacrifice. [8]

He goes on to say:

What sayest thou, tell me? Is this Table which is the cause of so many blessings and teeming with life, become judgment? Not from its own nature, saith he, but from the will of him that approaches. For as His presence, which conveyed to us those great and unutterable blessings, condemned the more them that received it not: so also the Mysteries become provisions of greater punishment to such as partake unworthily.

But why doth he eat judgment to himself? ‘Not discerning the Lord’s body’: i.e., not searching, not bearing in mind, as he ought, the greatness of the things set before him; not estimating the weight of the gift. For if thou shouldest come to know accurately Who it is that lies before thee, and Who He is that gives Himself, and to whom, thou wilt need no other argument, but this is enough for thee to use all vigilance; unless thou shouldest be altogether fallen. [9]

We can see a beautiful example of what it means to ‘know accurately Who it is that lies before’ us, in the lovely poem, ‘The Holy Communion’, by the 17th-c. English priest, George Herbert. I would like to read a few stanzas of this lyric:

NOT in rich furniture, or fine array,
Nor in a wedge of gold,
Thou, who for me wast sold,
To me dost now thy self convey;
For so thou should’st without me still have been,
Leaving within me sinne:

But by the way of nourishment and strength
Thou creep’st into my breast;
Making thy way my rest,
And thy small quantities my length;
Which spread their forces into every part,
Meeting sinnes force and art.

Yet can these not get over to my soul,
Leaping the wall that parts
Our souls and fleshy hearts;
But as th’ outworks, they may controll
My rebel-flesh, and carrying thy name,
Affright both sinne and shame.

Onely thy grace, which with these elements comes,
Knoweth the ready way,
And hath the privie key,
Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms:
While those to spirits refin’d, at doore attend
Dispatches from their friend. [10]

May we too know that ‘grace, which with these elements comes, / . . . / Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms’.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon (Chicago: U of Chicago, 1996), p. 15.

[2] Gerald Bray, ed., Romans, Vol. VI of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1998), p. 322.

[3] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 1: The Holy Gospels, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 485, n. 63.

[4] Bray, p. 322.

[5] Ibid., p. 322.

[6] C.S. Lewis, ‘“Miserable Offenders”: An Interpretation of Prayer Book Language’, God in the Dock, in The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis (NY: Inspirational, 1996), p. 381.

[7] James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (NY: Bantam, 1992), p. 237.

[8] St John Chrysostom, ‘Homily XXVIII on 1st Corinthians’, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf112.iv.xxix.html

[9] Ibid.

[10] George Herbert, The Works of George Herbert in Prose & Verse, ed. Robert Aris Willmott (NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1857), pp. 45-6.

Climacus Conference, 2011

2011-01-24T14:21:00.004-06:00

One reader expressed some interest in my reference in the last post to this year's Climacus Conference in Louisville, KY. I am pleased to announce that the homepage for the conference is up and running (here), and that the roster of speakers and subjects looks very interesting indeed. The two heavyweights in my book are Vigen Guroian, whose talk is entitled, 'On the Real Meaning of Mentor: Readings in Great Literature', and David Bradshaw, whose talk is entitled, 'What is Faith? Plato, Nietzsche, & Christ'. Yours truly will also be giving a talk, with the title, 'In Thy Law Will He Meditate Day & Night: The Study of Scripture & Classical Education'. I have included a two-sentence summary on the homepage which reads as follows:

This talk will draw on scholarly studies of enduring 'oral' qualities in Western literary habits to show how such qualities have traditionally marked Christian 'study' of the Bible, particularly in the monastic milieu. The contemporary relevance of these oral qualities will be emphasized, especially insofar as they dovetail with the methods and aims of Christian classical education.

My friend, Bishop Savas of Troas, tells me he intends to go, and I know that not only Eighth Day Books, merchants attendant at last year's conference, but also the fathers of Holy Cross Hermitage in West Virginia will be setting up tables with their wares this year. I hope to see at least a few Logismoi readers there!

At Last, a Short Book Update

2011-01-07T23:04:00.003-06:00

While some of my recent book acquisitions have inspired me to write a good old-fashioned ‘book update’, it has been so long since the last ‘update’, that I scarcely know where to begin and am certainly unable to cover everything. I shall confine myself therefore to a few of the most recent and most significant acquisitions.

Today, for example, a trip to Half Price Books yielded the first volume (containing Books I-VIII) of the Loeb Classical edition of St Augustine’s Confessions, tr. William Watts [1] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 1999)—a steal at $5.38. A look inside the mailbox revealed William A. Graham’s Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 1993). [2]

On another HPB trip a few weeks ago, I discovered William Griffin’s [3] fascinatingly colloquial translations of St Augustine—Sermons to the People: Advent, Christmas, New Year’s, Epiphany, tr. & ed. William Griffin (NY: Image, 2002). On the first day of the new year, I used a 50%-off coupon from Borders to purchase The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, & Salvatore Settis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 2010), a fascinating reference work on the continuity of the classical tradition in Western civilisation. At some point, I also received via post a copy of St Gregory Palamas’s Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin with the Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009). The latter is a review copy sent to me by one of the editors of Orthodox Life, the former blogger known as ‘Felix Culpa’. Look for my review to be published, potentially, in the March-April issue.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, I’ve received a few books from a fellow by the name of Dennis Lackner. It’s a long story, but in this post back in 2009 I quoted from a fascinating paper of his on the Camaldolese that I had found in a limited preview on Google Books. He came across the post and we swapped a few e-mails, in one of which he sent me a pdf of the full paper. Fast-forward to Friday, 31 December 2010, and while randomly looking through old e-mails for unprinted pdfs, I discovered his and started rereading it, thinking that I might contact him with some thoughts I had about a few points. That very night, I received a mass New Year’s Eve greeting from the man himself—an interesting coincidence, I thought.

Well, the very next day, I received a personal e-mail from Dennis, asking whether I would be willing to read his entire doctoral dissertation on the Camaldolese, which he is hoping to publish, and to make editorial comments and suggestions on it. It turns out he has been keeping up with Logismoi, and had recently purchased Fr Nicholas Loudovikos’s Eucharistic Ontology at my behest. He therefore offered in return for my help to send me a copy of this book. Needless to say, I readily agreed, and was eagerly anticipating its arrival. I did not anticipate, however, the concomitant arrival of Charles Williams’s The Place of the Lion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972) and Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, tr. Brian Daley, SJ (SF: Ignatius, 2003). Rest assured, there was much rejoicing. Thank you sincerely, Den! С Рождеством Христовым!

[1] I’m not sure whether there is any relation to Victor Watts, translator of Boethius.

[2] I ordered this book myself to help prepare for a talk I plan to give at the Climacus Conference in Louisville, KY, next month, entitled ‘In Thy Law He Will Meditate Day & Night: The Study of Scripture & Classical Education’.

[3] Thus bringing the total of Williams to three in as many paragraphs.

Homily on Advent & St Nicholas

2010-12-27T12:17:00.003-06:00

At last, here is my lone Advent homily, preached on Monday, 6 December. I’ve been lacking in much enthusiasm to post it because that week was a bad one in many ways, and I received a quite discouraging response to the homily from one parent. But here it is anyway, and readers can judge for themselves whether I have, as was alleged, claimed that ‘Santa Claus’ doesn’t exist.

Second Sunday in Advent

Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
Gospel: St Luke 21:25-33

Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope (ἵνα διὰ τῆς ὑπομονῆς καὶ διὰ τῆς παρακλήσεως).

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

It is particularly fitting at this time of year that in today’s Epistle we are reminded of things ‘written aforetime’, for it is of course the season of Advent – a period when we frequently think back to the ancient prophecies of Christ’s coming. Likewise, it is meet and right that we ask ourselves what is the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ of which St Paul speaks, and what is the ‘hope’ we have through them.

The answer to the first question is suggested by the very next verse – where St Paul refers to the ‘God of patience and consolation’ (θεὸς τῆς ὑπομονῆς καὶ τῆς παρακλήσεως). ‘Consolation’ here is the KJV translation of ‘paraclesis’: the same word that is used in verse 4 and there translated ‘comfort’. Elsewhere, Christ refers to the Holy Spirit as ‘the Paraclete’, ‘the Comforter’ – in other words, God Himself is the comfort of the Scriptures. The ‘God of patience and comfort’ is also the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’.

This is further confirmed when we note the patristic teaching that before the Incarnation, Christ became ‘incarnate’ in Scripture. The 7th-c. Byzantine theologian, St Maximus the Confessor, for example, writes:

The Logos [or Word] of God is called flesh not only inasmuch as He became incarnate, but in another sense as well. . . . [W]hen he draws near to men who cannot with the naked mind come into contact with noetic realities in their naked state, He selects things which are familiar to them, combining together various stories, symbols, parables and dark sayings; and in this way He becomes flesh. Thus at the first encounter our mind comes into contact not with the naked Logos but with the incarnate Logos, that is, with [the] various sayings and stories [of Scripture]. [1]

So the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ gave to the righteous men of the Old Testament the hope that the Word of God incarnate in those Scriptures would one day become incarnate as a Man. This was the Advent which they so eagerly anticipated, as when the Psalmist says, ‘O God of hosts, return again; and look down from heaven and behold, and visit this vineyard, and perfect that which Thy right hand hath planted’ (79:15-16 LXX). Thus, it is appropriate that during the season of Advent we recall their longing.

But – having ‘received the promise’ – we are now able to receive the Second Advent: the coming of Christ into our hearts and souls. A mediaeval French Cistercian, Guerric D’Igny, writes:

Assuredly He comes to us [in our hearts] now to ensure that His first coming will not have been in vain, and to avoid having to meet us at the last [coming] in wrath. In this middle advent He is intent on reforming our spirit of pride and patterning us anew on the humility He showed forth at His first coming . . . This personal visitation, which imparts to us the grace of the first advent and holds promise of the glory of the last, should be the object of our heart’s desire, the goal of all our striving. [2]

Thus, it is through the ‘patience and comfort’ of Christ dwelling in our hearts and of our continual prayer before Him there, that the great hope of His Third Advent is kindled within us. For Guerric’s words also serve as an excellent reminder of today’s Gospel. In this passage of Luke 21, Christ speaks of His third and final Advent, that is, His return to judge the quick and the dead. Incarnate in Scripture, Christ’s voice is humble and quiet – we must read attentively if we are to recognise Him there. Similarly, incarnate as a Babe in the manger, as the Man of Many Sorrows, Christ is again humble and quiet – we must have Faith to recognise who He is and to understand God’s revelation in His Son. But commenting on Christ’s words, ‘[T]hen shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’, Bl Theophylact writes:

All shall see Him, both those who believe and those who do not believe. . . . [A]nd both He and His Cross will shine more brightly than the sun and will be recognized by all. [3]

Thus, of those who did not attend to the two Incarnations – in Scripture and in the flesh – St Gregory the Great writes, ‘They are going to see in power and majesty Him Whom they chose not to hear in a state of humility.’ And, as if thinking himself of the reference in today’s Epistle to ‘the patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ and ‘the God of patience and comfort’, St Gregory writes, ‘To the extent that they do not now submit their hearts to His patience, they will then experience His power more exactingly.’ [4]

That this be not so with us, as Guerric of Igny says, let us welcome Him into our hearts today, and attend with eagerness to His words and example for us as we prepare to celebrate His wondrous Nativity according to the flesh. For, in Guerric’s words, ‘just as, at His Second Coming, we shall run towards Him with physical energy and joy, so do we hasten to Bethlehem with jubilant heart and spirit.’ [5]

We are helped by the Church to do this on this day in particular, which on the Gregorian calendar is dedicated to the memory of St Nicholas the Wonderworker, Bishop of Myra, later known as ‘Santa Claus’. Of St Nicholas, one modern Benedictine writer has noted:

At the outset of Advent, a season that speaks to us deeply of hope because ‘the Lord is near’, as the Liturgy announces, we celebrate the feast of St Nicholas. His feast is an important pause on our Advent journey, for his life is an example of Gospel living for Christians of all times and places. [6]

Perhaps the most famous illustration of this is the very first story ever told about St Nicholas giving gifts in secret at night. A once wealthy man had lost his fortune and was soon going to have to sell his three daughters as slaves so that they would be taken care of. Hearing of this, St Nicholas went through the dark streets of Myra, and secretly left a bag of gold inside the man’s house. He did this two more times, and on the third occasion, the man waited up and found the compassionate Bishop hurrying away so he would not be seen. But this is only one instance among many of St Nicholas’s devotion to Christ’s words and example. As St Demetrius of Rostov says in his Menology:

For the character of the saint was as a child-loving father, and his countenance shone with Divine grace like an angel of God. From his face, as from the face of Moses, emanated a bright ray, and to him who only looked at him there was great benefit. For him who was burdened with some kind of passion or affliction of soul, it was enough to fix his gaze on the saint in order to receive consolation in his sorrow; and he who conversed with him already improved in good. [7]

Of course, in our day St Nicholas has been largely transformed into a cartoonish figure with little connection to the historical Bishop of Myra, much less to the Christian faith. But as Christians we must not forget that the great Wonderworker, as great a figure as he is, only desires to point us toward Christ, whose Incarnation he proclaims. May we prepare for the Feast with sobriety and celebrate it with joy.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] St Maximus the Confessor, ‘Second Century on Theology’ [§60], The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 2, ed. St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain & St Macarius of Corinth, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1990), p. 151.

[2] Guerric of Igny, ‘The Second Sermon for Advent’, The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the 12th Century, tr. & ed. Pauline Matarasso (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 131.

[3] Bl Theophylact, The Explanation by Bl Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, tr. Fr Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), p. 274.

[4] I got these comments from the notes appended to this passage in Vol. 2 of The Orthodox New Testament published by Holy Apostles Convent. I shall add the exact reference when I return to school and have my copy of this book in front of me.

[5] Guerric, p. 130.

[6] Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, OSB, A Monastic Year: Reflections from a Monastery (Dallas: Taylor, 1996), p. 12.

[7] Service, Akathist, Life & Miracles of St Nicholas the Wonderworker (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1996), p. 83.

Eucharistic Ontology: An Addendum on Fr Nicholas Loudovikos in English

2010-11-24T12:09:00.003-06:00

In this post from the Spring of 2009, I strongly recommended the theology of Protopresbyter Nicholas Loudovikos of the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki. At that time, I wrote that ‘none of Fr Loudovikos’s work has, to my knowledge, yet been published in English’, but added, ‘If I remember correctly, an English translation of another book, Η Ευχαριστιακή Οντολογία (Athens: Domos, 1992), is in the works...’ I’m afraid I must admit that around the time that I wrote the original post, at least one of Fr Nicholas’s articles—a fine critique of some of the theological positions of his former teacher, the renowned Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon—was already being published in English under the title, ‘Person Instead of Grace & Dictated Otherness: John Zizioulas’ Final Theological Position’, The Heythrop Journal XLVIII (2009), pp. 1-16. I should have noted this and at least written an addendum to the original post some time ago.

Well, as many of you may know already, the second statement has proved to be correct, and the said translation having been completed, the first statement is now doubly if not triply untrue. Holy Cross Press has published this book, which when I talked with him in 2007 Fr Nicholas spoke of often as one of his more important, under the title, A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross, 2010). Here is Fr Andrew Louth’s blurb about the book as posted on Amazon:

In this remarkable book, Fr Nikolaos Loudovikos brings his profound knowledge of the greatest of Byzantine theologians, St Maximus the Confessor, into dialogue with the recent currents of philosophy and theology in the West. This in itself is rare enough, but his central claim—that who we really are is disclosed in our final destiny in God—is one that he shows is rooted in our participation in the Eucharist. This is an intellectually demanding work, but in it Fr Loudovikos never loses sight of the fact that what he has to say bears directly on how we understand what it is to live as a Christian in the twenty-first century.

I myself have not yet read the book in Greek, much less English (though if there remain any generous readers out there willing to help a brother out, I would be delighted to find a copy in the mail!), but I have little doubt that it will prove to be very much worthwhile. The title may sound a bit unwieldy and pretentious, though it doesn’t strike me as nearly so bad in Greek, but Fr Loudovikos is a theologian who really must become better known in the English-speaking world. Order this book now!

A Homily on the 'Inheritance of the Saints in Light'

2010-11-16T20:06:00.006-06:00

Here’s the latest homily, which I gave yesterday, 15 November. The readings were Colossians 1:3-12, and St Matthew 9:18-26. Again, I’ll try to remember to add the—in this case, few—references later.

12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The verse I quoted is the twelfth verse of the first chapter of Colossians—the last verse of today’s Epistle reading. I’d like to talk about what St Paul means when he refers to being made ‘partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light’.

First of all, the use of the word ‘partakers’ by the King James translators is reminiscent of 2 Peter 1:4, where St Peter refers to our becoming ‘partakers of the divine nature’. Partaking of the divine nature, via the uncreated light or energies of God, has marvellous effects in our lives, and we can get a glimpse of these effects in the various miracles of Christ’s earthly ministry.

Two examples can be seen in today’s Gospel, from St Matthew 9:18-26: first, the healing of the woman with an issue of blood—the miracle story within the miracle story; and second, the raising of the ruler’s daughter from the dead—the pièce de résistance.

Of the woman with an issue of blood, the Greek text literally says, ‘I shall be saved’, ‘thy faith hath saved thee’, and ‘the woman was saved’. The translators of the King James Version, however, chose the expression ‘made whole’, which is of course a beautiful and rich expression in its own right. Now, what’s so suggestive about these descriptions of a healing from a physical malady is that physical illness can be seen as a metaphor for sin—the sin and the sinful passions that afflict us are in fact illnesses of the soul. The ‘issue of blood’, in fact, is a particularly apt metaphor for sin. I am reminded of one of the famous stories of the Desert Fathers, wherein St Moses the Black used a leaky jug to illustrate the way our sins ‘run out’ behind us and we do not see them.

But in the raising of the ruler’s daughter we see perhaps the most dramatic effect of partaking of the divine nature, that is the inheritance of the Saints in light—deliverance from death. St Paul writes in I Corinthians 15:26, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’ And later on in that chapter, inspired by the power of Christ’s Resurrection, St Paul actually taunts death when he writes, ‘O Death, where is thy sting’ (I Cor 15:55)?

The various raisings from the dead in the Gospels—such as that in today’s reading, or that of Lazarus—are a foretaste of this final destruction, of which Shakespeare wrotes, ‘And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then’ (Sonnet 146). This destruction of death has been effectively accomplished in Christ, ‘who gleams like lightning in the unapproachable light of the Resurrection’, and this is the inheritance of the Saints, of which St Paul says we partake. Until Christ’s return, ‘there’s no more dying’ in sin if we repent and follow Him. Bl Theophylact, commenting on the last verse of today’s Gospel reading, Mat 9:26, writes, ‘And you, O reader, who are dead in sins, He will also resurrect when He puts outside the crowd and its tumult and takes you by the hand so that you might act.’ But when Christ returns, ‘there’s no more dying’ in the body, since we are transformed.

Although it’s not part of today’s Epistle reading, in verse 13 of Colossians 1 St Paul contrasts the light imagery of verse 12 with what he calls ‘the power of darkness’:

13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

The two healings in today’s Gospel illustrate vividly this deliverance from the power of darkness. St Gregory of Nyssa identifies the ‘garments of skin’ with which the Lord clothes Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:21 with the physical and spiritual effects of the Fall, in other words, the power that darkness has over us. But Christ ‘hath clothed mortality with incorruption’, and St Gregory, speaking of the future condition of the Church in the final Resurrection, says, ‘If we will not be wearing that skin, how shall we preserve the conditions which come from it?’

Now, in our own day, those conditions may seem formidable, even insurmountable. It may seem impossible that we should ever overcome sickness and death, particularly in the last one hundred years when it has finally become physically possible to wipe out all human life on this earth. This state of things can be worrisome and disturbing. Indeed, one of the great but lesser-known spiritual figures of the twentieth century, the Russian theologian Fr Sophrony of Essex, was deeply troubled by this as a young man. Fr Sophrony prayed with anguish of soul for God to deliver him from despair, and in reply he was vouchsafed to be a partaker ‘of the inheritance of the saints in light’. He writes, in We Shall See Him as He Is, tr. Rosemary Edmonds (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2006):

And lo, on Easter Saturday, . . . the Light visited me after I had taken communion, and I felt it like the touch of Divine Eternity on my spirit. Gentle, full of peace and love, the Light remained with me for three days. It drove away the darkness of non-existence that had engulfed me. I was resurrected, and in me and with me the whole world was resurrected. The words of St John Chrysostom at the end of the Easter Liturgy struck me with overwhelming force: ‘Christ is risen and there are no dead in the grave’. Tormented hitherto by the spectre of universal death, I now felt that my soul, too, was resurrected and there were no more dead . . . If this is God, then quickly let me abandon everything and seek only union with Him [ellipsis in the original]. (p. 178)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Homily for St Luke the Evangelist

2010-10-21T18:58:00.007-05:00

I recently preached again at school, this time for the Western feast of St Luke the Evangelist. Here once more is a readable text fashioned, and ever so slightly embellished, from my speaking notes. The readings were 2 Timothy 4:5-14 and St Luke 10:1-7. Unfortunately, I am a bit less pleased with this one than with the St Matthew homily. I hope to improve next time!

Today we celebrate the memory of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke, who was sanctified by his labours for Christ’s sake and attained everlasting glory as the author of the third Gospel as well as the history of the Acts of the Apostles.

St Luke was not Jewish by birth, but may have converted to Judaism before later coming to Christ. He was a native of Antioch, which according to the Synaxarion, was ‘renowned [at that time] for the flourishing state of the arts and sciences . . . [There] Luke had developed his intellect with various scholarly studies. . . . He indubitably received an excellent education in general, for the quality of the Greek language of his writings is far more pure and correct than that of the other NT writers.’[1]

According to Bl Theophylact, St Luke ‘had a great knowledge of natural philosophy’, meaning the science of his day, ‘but . . . was also much practiced in Hebrew learning’. In Colossians 4:14, St Paul calls him ‘the beloved physician’, so we know that he was a doctor. He was a great writer who ‘knows and uses conventions’ of Greek and Roman history and novels, [2] but the prologue of his Gospel ‘rings with the poetry of prophets and psalms’. [3] Thus, he was a first-rate theologian and historian, but according to Church tradition St Luke was also a skilled artist who painted some of the first Christian iconography. He was a Renaissance man.

Some believe St Luke was also one of the two disciples who met the Lord on the road to Emmaus, but he is certainly identified as one of the Seventy Apostles sent out by Christ. It is for this reason that the passage from his Gospel in which Christ exhorts the Seventy forms the second lesson today.

After his conversion to Christ, St Luke travelled with St Paul to Greece to preach the Gospel, and there he worked diligently to establish the Church at Philippi. Next he went to Corinth to collect alms for the Palestinian Christians, who were undergoing persecution (II Cor 8:18-19). Upon his return to Palestine, St Paul was imprisoned for Christ, but, the holy Evangelist Luke remained by his teacher’s side. Indeed, he accompanied the great Apostle on the difficult voyage to Rome for his trial.

It was during St Paul’s imprisonment in Rome that St Luke, at urging of the Holy Spirit and St Paul himself, wrote his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. Thus, according to Eusebius (in Ecclesiastical History 3.4.6), who alludes to St Luke’s profession as a doctor:

So he has left us examples of the art of healing souls which he learnt from [St Paul and the other apostles] in two divinely inspired books, the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. The former, he declares, he wrote in accordance with the information he received from those who from the first had been eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, information which, he adds, he had followed in its entirety from the first. The latter he composed not this time from hearsay but from the evidence of his own eyes. [4]

St Luke’s Gospel includes many of the most beloved stories of the New Testament—the story of Christ’s birth, which we read every year at Nativity, the parable of Prodigal Son, a beautiful story of repentance, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and story of the Road to Emmaus, which as I have mentioned may have told from an eyewitness perspective. The Gospel of St Luke has a special emphasis on the Gentiles becoming part of God’s people. St Ambrose of Milan says of it, ‘But, truly, St Luke kept, as it were, a certain historical order, and revealed to us more miracles of the Lord’s deeds, yet so that the historiry of his Gospel embraced the virtue of all wisdom.’ [5]

At this point, it seems fitting to consider in some detail today’s Gospel reading, from St Luke 10. This lesson was not only written by St Luke, but presumably tells us something about him as well, thus prompting the decision to use it as the Gospel for his feast. Christ’s instructions to the Seventy, as interpreted by the Holy Fathers, suggest virtues which characterise St Luke himself, and I am sadly conscious as well that they should characterise all who would preach or teach in the Church.

First, in St Luke 10:4, we read, ‘Carry neither purse, nor scrip.’ St Ambrose of Milan points out that Christ ‘explained clearly elsewhere why no purse is to be carried, for Matthew wrote that the Lord said to the Disciples, “Do not possess gold, or silver” (St Matthew 10:9).’ [6] Thus, we see that the minister of the Gospel is to practice non-acquisitiveness.

As for the injunction to wear no shoes or sandals, the Fathers observe that since leather is the skin of a dead animal, apart from the literal meaning shoes can be seen as a symbol of mortal cares. According to St Gregory the Great: ‘It is not fitting that he who undertakes the task of preaching should burden himself with worldly affairs, lest, engrossed in such matters, he forget the business of eternal life.’ [7] St Luke was unhampered by the concerns of this world, and so should we be.

When Christ says ‘salute no man by the way’, Bl Theophylact tells us, ‘He adds this command to them, Salute no man along the way, so that they do not become preoccupied with greetings and civilities, and thus be hindered from preaching.’ [8] St Cyril of Alexandria adds the comment—‘let that which is well pleasing to God be preferred by you to all other things; and so practising an irresistible and unhampered diligence, hold fast to your apostolic cares.’ [9] And finally, St Ambrose notes, ‘. . . [W]hen divine commands are given, human obligations are surrendered for a while. . . . Therefore, even honorable acts are prohibited, lest the grace of ceremony deceive and hinder the ministry of the task, delay in which is sinful.’ [10] Thus, St Luke was single-minded in his devotion to God’s work and was not distracted even by natural pleasures.

Bl Theophylact explains St Luke 10:5, ‘And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house’, in the following way: ‘The Lord forbids them to salute anyone along the way, but it is different when they enter a house. . . . He shows that the words, Peace be to this house, are not only a greeting, but a blessing.’ [11] Thus we learn that the minister of the Gospel is called to bless those with whom he comes into contact.

Finally, when in St Luke 10:7, our Lord says, ‘And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire’, Bl Theophylact comments: ‘As wages you will have your food and keep; do not expect to be fed and then, in addition, to receive a wage, but consider your food to be your wage.’ [12] We can be sure that St Luke was content with what God provided for him.

In short, all of these virtues—non-aquisitiveness, freedom from earthly care, single-minded devotion to God’s work, blessing others, and contentment with what God provides—are enjoined by the Gospel to all of us, but especially to the clergy, and as we can see from the testimony of his life, they are certainly characteristic of St Luke himself.

To return now to that testimony, St Paul was eventually released for a time, but at last under the emperor Nero he was imprisoned again. At last, facing certain death, the great Apostle writes to St Timothy in today’s Epistle: ‘Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: for Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me’ (2 Tim 4:9-11). Concerning this striking testimony, the great Chrysostom observes, ‘Luke adhered to Paul inseparably. . . . He was a lover of labors and learning, and a man of endurance and perseverance. Of him Paul writes that his “praise is in the Gospel throughout all of the churches” (2 Cor 8:18).’ [13]

After St Paul’s martyrdom by beheading at Rome, St Luke went on to spread the Gospel in Italy, Dalmatia, Gaul, Egypt, and especially Greece, where he spent the bulk of his remaining years planting churches. At last, the ‘beloved physician’ himself was martyred in Greece at the age of 84 by being crucified on an olive tree. He was buried in Thebes, the setting of some of Greece’s greatest tragic plays, but his precious remains were later transferred to Constantinople with great honour.

Some of St Luke’s most interesting ‘posthumous fame’, however, is in the artistic and literary use of the angelic creature with which his Gospel has been traditionally identified. The four creatures of Ezekiel 1:4-14 and Revelation 4:6-8—one like a man, one like a lion, one like an ox, and one like an eagle—have long been identified with and used as symbols of the four Evangelists. St Luke’s emblem is the one with ‘the face of an ox’—which St Irenaeus of Lyons tells us is because his Gospel ‘is of priestly character, [since it] begins with the priest Zechariah sacrificing incense to God (St Luke 1:9), for the fatted calf was already prepared, to be sacrificed for the recovery of the younger son (St Luke 15:23, 30)’ in the Prodigal Son parable. [14]

It is in this from that Dante in the Purgatorio (29.91-3) describes seeing St Luke’s Gospel: ‘with green foliage crowned’ and following the 24 elders ‘As star succeeds to star within the round / Of heaven’. [15] Furthermore, the angelic ox is followed shortly thereafter by the Book of Acts in the form of an aged man who ‘seemed a member of the craft possessed / By the great Hippocrates [the famous physician of antiquity], whom Nature made / To help those creatures whom she loves the best’ (Purg. 29.136). [16] Thus, we see that St Luke, renowned for his literary craftsmanship, found a special place in one of the greatest works of literature in Christian history.

I shall conclude with a Byzantine hymn, known as a ‘kontakion’, written in honour of St Luke:

Let us praise the divine Luke, the herald of true piety, the orator of ineffable mysteries, the star of the Church; for the Word, Who alone knoweth the secrets of man’s heart, hath chosen him with the wise Paul to be a teacher of the nations. [17]

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] The Lives of the Holy Apostles, tr. Isaac E. Lambertsen & Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 2001), p. 259.

[2] Wayne Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale U, 1993), p. 203.

[3] John Drury, ‘Luke’, The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter & Frank Kermode (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 1987), p. 419.

[4] Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, tr. G.A. Williamson (NY: Barnes & Noble, 1995), pp. 109-10.

[5] St Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Holy Gospel According to Saint Luke with Fragments on the Prophecy of Isaias, tr. Theodosia Tomkinson (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998), p. 2.

[6] St Ambrose, p. 255.

[7] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 1: The Holy Gospels, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 329, n. 205.

[8] Bl Theophylact, The Explanation by Bl Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, tr. Fr Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), p. 109.

[9] ONT 1, p. 330, n. 206.

[10] St Ambrose, p. 259.

[11] Bl Theophylact, p. 110.

[12] Bl Theophylact, p. 110.

[13] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 2: Acts, Epistles, & Revelation, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 374, n. 23.

[14] Against Heresies 3.11.8; Robert M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 132.

[15] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy 2: Purgatory, tr. Dorothy L. Sayers (London: Penguin, 1955), p. 300.

[16] Dante, p. 302.

[17] Lives, p. 267.

A Homily for the Apostle Matthew the Evangelist

2010-09-20T10:15:00.014-05:00

Over the summer, the principal at the classical school where I am teaching asked if I would be willing to deliver a homily in chapel once every three or four weeks. With the blessing of my spiritual father, I agreed, and a couple of weeks ago I preached for the first time in my life. As it was the day before the Feast of the Apostle Matthew on the Western calendar, the lectionary selection (from the Book of Common Prayer) on which I spoke was Matthew 9:9-13. Here are my notes for the homily, worked up into a readable text:

Feast of St Matthew homily

2 Cor. 4:1-6
Matt. 9:9-13

In verse 9 of today’s Gospel we read, ‘he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.’ Now, when this takes place, St Matthew is ‘at the tax office’, i.e. he’s at work, yet he rises immediately. Why? What would make a man abandon his job to follow someone he doesn’t know?

Well, when I have questions like this while reading the Scriptures, I turn to the Fathers of the Church. They spent years studying the Scriptures and they come up with some pretty inspired answers to such things.

First, I'd look to like at a commentary by Blessed Theophylact, a learned Byzantine who was archbishop of the Bulgarians in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and produced a commentary summarising the exegetical wisdom of the Fathers. Bl Theophylact writes, ‘That Matthew is converted by word alone is the work of God.’ In other words, it was God’s grace that inspired him to leave his job and follow Christ. But there’s more: ‘The words, “I am not come to call the righteous” He spoke ironically. That is, “I have not come to call you who consider yourselves to be righteous, but I have come to call sinners. I do this, not so that they remain sinners, but in order for them to repent.”’ [1] In other words, St Matthew was a humble man, he was not one of those who considered themselves to be righteous, and his humility has prepared him for Christ’s call.

Next, I’d like to consider some comments by the Venerable Bede, whom some of you may have learned about in history. He lived in the eighth century, and was a learned Englishman, a monk of Northumbria, and a renowned historian. He is famous for his history of the English Church, but he also wrote many homilies on the Gospels. St Bede writes:

We should not marvel that a publican, upon first [hearing] the Lord’s voice ordering him, left the earthly gains that he cared about. Disregarding his property, he attached himself to the band of followers of one whom he perceived to have no riches. For the Lord himself, who outwardly called him by a word, taught him inwardly with an invisible impulse so that he followed [him]. He poured into his mind the light of spiritual grace, by which he could understand that the one who was calling him from temporal things on earth was capable of giving him incorruptible treasures in heaven. [2]

In connection with St Matthew’s call, St Bede even quotes that peculiar saying of St Paul in Ephesians (5:14): ‘Arise, you who are asleep, and rise from among the dead, and Christ will enlighten you.’ [3] This reference to Christ ‘enlightening’ us is reminiscent of verse four of today’s Epistle: ‘[T]he god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the likeness of God.’ And verse six tells us that God ‘has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.’

This reference to ‘the face of Christ’ is important. We may be inclined to read it in a metaphorical sense, as St Paul simply using a figure of speech. But in the Gospel reading which this Epistle accompanies, St Matthew really did see Christ’s face physically, with his own two eyes.

The grace that enlightens, however, that calls people to abandon the things of this world and follow Christ, can be seen at work in very similar ways throughout sacred history:

In Hebrews we read of the Patriarch Abraham, ‘By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was to go’ (Heb. 11:8).

In the Life of St Anthony the Great, written by St Athanasius the Great (for whom our ‘Athanasius House’ is named), we read of St Anthony that when he was in Church and heard the Gospel passage, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go and sell everything you possess and give it to the poor and come, follow me and you will have treasure in heaven’ (Matt 19:21-2), ‘He immediately went home and sold the possessions he owned.’ [4] The rich young man did not follow, but over 200 years later, St Anthony did.

St Augustine of Hippo (for whom ‘Augustine House’ is named) gives us two examples in his Confessions—one of which he learns from his friend Ponticianus, and one from his own personal experience. First, in a conversation with St Augustine, Ponticianus quotes another friend who abandoned a political career after reading St Anthony’s Life: ‘Now have I broken loose from those our hopes, and am resolved to serve God; and this, from this hour, in this place, I begin upon. If thou likest not to imitate me, oppose not.’ [5]

Later on, St Augustine writes of his own conversion own conversion: ‘For I had heard of Antony, that coming in during the reading of the Gospel, he received the admonitions, as if what was being read was spoken to him: . . . and by such oracle he was forthwith converted unto Thee.’ Then, when St Augustine has his own encounter with the Scriptures, he writes, ‘No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away [italics mine].’ [6]

Notice the reference to ‘a light’ being ‘infused’ into the Saint’s heart. Again, this may sound like only a metaphor, but St Augustine reminds us of the illumination mentioned by St Paul and the Venerable Bede as a component of conversion. It is the grace of illumination. This grace inspires and enables what the Fathers call xeniteia, i.e. ‘being a stranger’, or ‘exile’. St John Climacus, who lived at Mt Sinai in the seventh century, wrote about this ‘exile’:

Exile means that we leave forever everything in our own country that prevents us from reaching the goal of piety. Exile means modest manners, wisdom which remains unknown, prudence not recognized as such by most, a hidden life, an invisible intention, unseen meditation, desire for humiliation, longing for hardship, constant determination to love God, abundance of love, renunciation of vainglory, depth of silence. [7]

This brings us back to St Matthew, for he too lived out this exile. The Scriptures don’t tell us how he ended his life, but the story passed down in the early Church relates that when the Apostles set out to preach the Gospel, St Matthew went eventually to Ethiopia to preach to the African people. There the local ruler sent soldiers to arrest him, but they were blinded by a light shining from his face, just like the Prophet Moses after he descended from Mt Sinai. St Matthew was finally tortured and killed, but we can see from the end of his life that he had carried with him for all those years the light that shone in his heart that day when he first followed Christ. It had continued to shine there, and had become so bright that in the end Christ’s light shone from his face as well. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] Bl Theophylact, The Explanation by Bl Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St Matthew, tr. Fr Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1994), pp. 77, 78.

[2] St Bede the Venerable, Homilies on the Gospels, Book 1: Advent to Lent, tr. Lawrence T. Martin & David Hurst, OSB (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991), pp. 207-8.

[3] St Bede, p. 208.

[4] Carolinne White, tr. & ed., Early Christian Lives (London: Penguin, 1998), p. 9.

[5] St Augustine, Confessions, tr. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford U, 1992), p. 152.

[6] St Augustine, pp. 161-2.

[7] St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, rev. ed., tr. Archim. Lazarus (Moore), rev. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston: HTM, 1991), p. 14.

Kidnapped & Classical Education

2010-09-05T15:13:00.005-05:00

Well, dear readers, I’m afraid I must apologise for the rather long hiatus since my last post. I have of course been busy with beginning full-time teaching, [1] but I must admit I was also a bit discouraged by some comments I received last time, as a result of which I have now set Logismoi comments to be moderated. [2] I truly hope that particular reader has moved on, as he is certainly no longer welcome to comment here. I also hope that I may be inclined and have sufficient time to begin posting at least semi-regularly again, though likely not every day. To mark my return, I would like to post a little piece I have written for my school newsletter, which deals with the first book I have assigned my sixth-grade literature class: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.

The 6th-grade literature class is beginning a wonderful new year with Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic adventure story, Kidnapped. In some ways, an exciting tale like Kidnapped may seem to fit ill into a classical Christian reading list, and Stevenson himself may contribute to this perception in his dedication of the first edition when he writes:

‘This is no furniture for the scholar’s library, but a book for the winter evening schoolroom when the tasks are over and the hour for bed draws near; and honest Alan, who was a grim old fire-eater in his day, has in this new avatar no more desperate purpose than to steal some young gentleman’s attention from his Ovid, carry him awhile into the Highlands and the last century [the 18th], and pack him to bed with some engaging images to mingle with his dreams.’ [3]

At first glance, this statement of purpose confirms our suspicions that Kidnapped is exactly opposite to the sort of book we want in a classical Christian school. Stealing attention from Ovid! We can’t have that, can we?

Or can we? We might recall that C.S. Lewis has called Ovid ‘that cheery old reprobate’ (in The Four Loves), and sure enough, in his preface to the Modern Library edition, Barry Menikoff has noted the irony of Stevenson’s testimony. He observes that Ovid—a prolific writer of erotic poetry, whose Ars amatoria is a satirical treatise on the art of seduction—‘represents a racy and even titillating writing, . . . and the thought of drawing the boy’s attention away from libidinous delights and directing it toward a realistic exploration of Scottish history can hardly be viewed as a treat, and certainly not as a favor.’ [4] Menikoff concludes:

‘In brief, Stevenson is doing precisely the opposite of what he claims: rather than turning his reader away from study and enticing him into the world of pleasure, he is closing the classical pages of pleasure and opening a book with a potentially powerful instructional value.’ [5]

We will discover the specific virtues of Kidnapped over the next few weeks, but this should serve as a reminder that an ancient publication date may usually, but doesn’t always ensure a work of greater morality or educational potential!

[1] I am teaching 3rd- and 4th-grade Latin, and 6th-grade Bible, history, grammar, and literature at a Christian classical school.

[2] I must also apologise to those whose comments have been awaiting moderation for some time. I didn't realise I had to log into Blogger to see the comments, and I hadn't bothered logging in since I changed the setting!

[3] Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped, ed. Barry Menikoff (NY: Modern Library, 2001), pp. 5-6.

[4] Barry Menikoff, ‘Editor’s Preface’, Stevenson, p. xxxiii.

[5] Ibid., p. xxxiii.

The Perfect Imitatio: C.S. Lewis, Hagiography, & Literature

2010-08-08T22:50:00.006-05:00

A couple of months ago, I mentioned a promising book by Thomas J. Heffernan entitled, Sacred Biography: Saints & Their Biographers in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, I still have not read it through, but I continue to find good things throughout the first chapter, ‘From Logos to Canon: The Making of a Saint’s Life’. Here is one of Heffernan’s many insightful comments on the hagiographic tradition:

The author must also construe a life which will illustrate the exemplary behavior of the subject—what we should call the ethical dimension—to a community which has definite expectations concerning the outcome of this biographical record. . . . Thus, the new sacred model reclaims past models and in turn is authenticated by them as these past lives are reintroduced in the present. By virtue of this constitutive or ethical imperative, the individual sacred biography continually renews for the faithful a tradition of great antiquity. . . . In this pattern of figural repetitions the singular character of sacred biography—what makes it different from, say, the way Dante uses Vergil—lies in the medieval understanding that the saint’s life is the perfect imitatio Christi. Hence these repetitive mimetic patterns have as one of their primary objects the reconstitution of the divine in new historical dress. [1]

The Saint’s life as ‘the perfect imitatio Christi’, of course, reminded me of St Justin of Chelje’s ‘Introduction to the Lives of the Saints’: ‘Therefore, the Lives of the Saints are nothing else but the life of the Lord Christ, repeated in every saint to a greater or lesser degree in this or that form.’ [2] But the literary dimension of Heffernan’s comments in this passage reminded me of an underappreciated [3] essay of C.S. Lewis entitled, ‘Christianity & Literature’. Observing that in the New Testament—including St Paul’s teaching in I Thess. 1:6 that Christians are ‘to imitate St Paul and the Lord’ and in I Cor. 11:1 that they are ‘to imitate St Paul as he in turn imitates Christ’—‘the art of life itself is an art of imitation’, Lewis asks, ‘can we, believing this, believe that literature, which must derive from real life, is to aim at being “creative,” “original,” and “spontaneous”’? [4] He then goes on, courageously, to observe:

Applying this principle to literature, in its greatest generality, we should get as the basis of all critical theory the maxim that an author should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom. Our criticism would therefore from the beginning group itself with some existing theories of poetry against others. It would have affinities with the primitive or Homeric theory in which the poet is the mere pensioner of the Muse. It would have affinities with the Platonic doctrine of a transcendent Form party imitable on earth; and remoter affinities with the Aristotelian doctrine of μίμησις and the Augustan doctrine about the imitation of Nature and the Ancients. It would be opposed to the theory of genius as, perhaps, generally understood; and above all it would be opposed to the idea that literature is self-expression. [5]

[1] Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints & Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (NY: Oxford U, 1992), p. 20.

[2] St Justin (Popovich), ‘Introduction to the Lives of the Saints’, tr. M.J., Orthodox Faith & Life in Christ, tr. & ed. Fr Asterios Gerostergios, et al. (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 1994), p. 36.

[3] At least by Leland Ryken: he calls it ‘an inferior essay’ with no explanation (Triumphs of the Imagination: Literature in Christian Perspective [Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1979], p. 225).

[3] C.S. Lewis, ‘Christianity & Literature’, The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis (NY: Inspirational, 1996), p. 176.

[4] Ibid., p. 177.

Sympathy for Orthodoxies

2010-08-06T20:35:00.003-05:00

I mentioned in this post that I managed to score a few free copies of some of ISI’s ‘A Student’s Guide’ series at the ACCS conference a while back. One that I grabbed—just because it was there—was Wilfred M. McClay’s US History, but at the time I had little interest in the subject and was not in a hurry to read it. I have since been asked to teach US history, among other things, thus bringing my employment up to full time (and unfortunately, much more severely limiting available time for blogging). Thus, I opened McClay’s book in a state of panic, and found this gem:

Avoid using the term ‘political correctness’ to describe an argument or positions that seems to you contrived or ideologically motivated. First, because it is a kind of argumentum ad hominem, which fails to engage the issue at hand on rational terms, preferring instead to cast doubt on the motives of the one who offers it. This kind of argument can rebound on those who use it, and eventually render discussion impossible. Second, because the use of such a term relies upon the lamentable assumption that all orthodoxies are ipso facto coercive and illegitimate. And that is false. It is a particularly strange development when campus conservatives, who are generally thought to look with sympathy upon orthodoxy, end up branding their opponents’ views as attempts to impose an orthodoxy. This is a lazy and uncivil way of arguing, even when it is accurate (as, alas, it usually is). The emphasis should not be on the inherent wrongness of any orthodoxy per se, but the wrong of the particular ideas that a particular orthodoxy is advocating. These days, defending the possibility of a reasoned orthodoxy may be the most radical position of all. [1]

[1] Wilfred M. McClay, A Student's Guide to US History (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2009), p. 87.

Auctoritas in Hugh's Didascalicon

2010-07-28T08:41:00.005-05:00

Per Joseph Patterson’s recommendation, I bought (for less than $6!) and am now reading Ivan Illich’s fascinating In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon. Though I am already nearly finished, I couldn’t resist the urge to go back to the very first chapter for a brief post. There, Illich discusses the first sentence of the Didascalicon of Hugh of St Victor: Omnium expetendorum prima est sapientia, in qua perfecti boni forma consisti. In Jerome Taylor’s translation, which Illich calls ‘a masterpiece’, this is rendered, ‘Of all things to be sought, the first is that Wisdom in which the Form of the Perfect Good stands fixed.’ [1]

First, Illich points out, ‘By connecting wisdom with “the form of the perfect good”, [Hugh] signifies that he accepts the meaning of Varro’s definition [of the good], but as it was received and changed and handed on by Augustine.’ [2] But of course, the statement itself comes most immediately from Boethius, ‘who subtly but significantly modified Augustine’. [3] So in De consolatione philosophiæ III.10 we read, Omnium igitur expetendorum summa atque causa bonum est, [4] which Illich quotes as, ‘Of all things to be sought the first and the reason why all others [sic] things are pursued is the Good . . .’ [5]

But the most interesting bit to me was at the end of this section on the opening sentence, where Illich introduces the mediæval idea of auctoritas. He writes:

For the contemporary reader the incipit was immediately recognized as an auctoritas, a sentence worthy of repetition. When Cerimon the Lord of Ephesus in Shakespeare’s Pericles ‘by turning o’er authorities’ has ‘built such strong renown as time shall ne’er decay’ (Pericles, act 3, sc. 2, lines 33, 48), he does not say that he had subverted established power, nor that he had consulted weighty authors, but that reflecting on a number of authoritative sentences he had established his reputation of mighty wisdom. Authorities, in this now obsolete sense, are sentences which created precedents and defined reality. When Hugh picks this auctoritas as his keynote, he does not appeal to Boethius for his prestige. The sentence states an obvious truth precisely because it had been disembedded from the discourse of this or that particular author; it had become a free-floating statement. As such a verbal institution, the auctoritas quoted by Hugh became an exemplary testimony to untouchable tradition. [6]

It may not be that they disagree entirely, but I find Illich’s focus on the notion of auctoritas a significant difference from C.S. Lewis’s references to the notion of the auctour in The Discarded Image. Lewis speaks of ‘the overwhelmingly bookish or clerkly character of medieval culture’, calling the Middle Ages ‘the age of authorities’, and noting, ‘Every writer, if he possibly can, bases himself on an earlier writer, follows an auctour: preferably a Latin one.’ [7] Lewis in this passage certainly seems to be speaking of ‘weighty authors’ and not ‘authoritative sentences’, and certainly, as an illustration of the ‘bookish or clerkly character of medieval culture’, it is far from Illich indeed. A significant part of the latter’s thesis is that what he calls ‘the new clerical culture’ was a rather late development (mid-1100’s) and it seems that the shift of focus from words to their authors could be part of that development. [8] Perhaps when Lewis speaks of ‘medieval culture’ he really means, or is speaking more truly of, late mediæval culture.

But at any rate, I find the idea of ‘authoritative sentences’ serving as ‘exemplary testimony to untouchable tradition’ a fascinating one which seems to demonstrate the continuity of the earlier part of the Western Middle Ages with the culture of the Desert Fathers (as described, for instance, in Douglas Burton-Christie’s The Word in the Desert).

[1] Jerome Taylor, tr., The Didascalicon of Hugh of St Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts (NY: Columbia, 1991), p. 46.

[2] Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon (Chicago: U of Chicago, 1996), p. 9.

[3] Illich, p. 12.

[4] Boethius, Tractates, The Consolation of Philosophy, tr. H.F. Stewart, E.K. Rand, & S.J. Tester (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 2003), p. 282.

[5] Illich, p. 12.

[6] Ibid., p. 13.

[7] C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval & Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 2002), p. 5.

[8] Illich, p. 84.

Newman on the Saints

2010-07-25T08:29:00.003-05:00

Logismoi has long been a particularly hagiocentric blog, and the figure of the Saint in the Tradition of the Church, in scholarship, and in literature at the centre of my concerns. Thus, I offer a brief selection on the Saints from the great John Henry Newman as a short little Sunday post:

The Saints are the glad and complete specimens of the new creation which our Lord brought into the moral world, and as ‘the heavens declare the glory of God’ as Creator, [1] so are the Saints the proper and true evidence of the God of Christianity, and tell out into all lands the power and grace of Him who made them. [2] What the existence of the Church itself is to the learned and philosophical, such are the Saints to the multitude. They are the popular evidence of Christianity, and the most complete and logical evidence while the most popular. It requires time and learning, the powers of attention and logical consecutiveness, and comprehensiveness, to survey the Church of all ages and places as one, and to recognize it, as to the intellect, it is, and must be distinctly recognized, as the work of God alone; to most of us it is the separate portions and in one sense incomplete of this great phenomenon which turn our minds to Catholicism; but in the life of a Saint, we have a microcosm, or whole work of God, a perfect work from beginning to end, yet one which may be bound between two boards, and mastered by the most unlearned. The exhibition of a person, his thoughts, his words, his acts, his trials, his fortunes, his beginnings, his growth, his end, have a charm to every one, and when he is a Saint they have a Divine influence and persuasion, a power of exercising and eliciting the latent elements of Divine grace in individual readers, as no other reading can claim. [3]

I’m not entirely certain of the implications of Newman’s observation, ‘What the existence of the Church itself is to the learned and philosophical, such are the Saints to the multitude’, though he seems to be trying to explain it in the next couple of sentences. But I thought this a good description of the power of the Saints’ Lives. It is not for nothing that Newman was considered ‘the most eminent religious thinker in the British Isles’ of his time. [4]

[1] Psalm 18:1 (LXX).

[2] It is interesting to note that verse 5 of Psalm 18 (LXX), to which Newman alludes in the last part of this sentence, is used as a Prokeimenon text on the feasts of certain Saints in the Orthodox Church.

[3] Vincent Ferrer Blehl, ed., The Essential Newman (NY: New American Library, 1963), pp. 334-5.

[4] Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity & Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen, 1992-1993) (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1993), p. 5.

'The Largest & Most Lightsome Jewel'—St Benedict of Nursia

2010-07-23T22:48:00.005-05:00

Today, 11 July on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of St Benedict of Nursia (480-547), Father of Western Monasticism. (See the opening paragraph of this post for an explanation of the date.) In the words of Frederick Artz, ‘Benedict is by no means the founder of monasticism, but he is its great legislator and is easily the most important figure in the monasticism of the West.’ [1] Alban Butler writes:

Being chosen by God, like another Moses, to conduct faithful souls into the true promised land, the kingdom of heaven, he was enriched with eminent supernatural gifts, even those of miracles and prophecy. He seemed like another Eliseus, endued by God with an extraordinary power, commanding all nature, and, like the ancient prophets, foreseeing future events. [2]

Finally, according to Basil Hume, OSB, ‘St Benedict, like all great saints of every age and culture, can still speak to us today, for his life and teaching are an illustration and an expression of the principles and doctrines of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.’ [3]

I have posted extensively on St Benedict before (see the ‘St Benedict’ label at the bottom of this post or on the sidebar), including a two-part post based on St Gregory the Great’s famous Vita last year (here and here). Consequently, some of my best material has already been used. But I will go ahead and post one or two things here owing to the importance of this feastday for me and my parish. First, here is the account of St Benedict’s life in the Prologue:

Born in Nursia in Italy in 480, of rich and eminent parents, he did not persevere long with his schooling, for he realised himself that he could, through book-learning, lose ‘the great understanding of my soul’. And he left school ‘an untaught sage and an understanding ignoramus’. He fled to a monastery where a monk, Romanus, gave him the habit, after which he withdrew to a craggy mountain, where he lived for more than three years in a cave in great struggles with his soul. Romanus brought him bread and dropped it over the wall of the crag on a rope to the mouth of the cave. When he became known in the neighbourhood, he, to flee the praise of men, moved away from that cave. He was very brutal with himself. Once, when an impure rage of fleshly lust fell on him, he stripped bare and rolled among nettles and thorns until he had driven out of himself every thought of a woman. God endowed him with many spiritual gifts: insight, healing and the driving out of evil spirits, the raising of the dead and the ability to appear to others from a distance in a dream or vision. He once discerned that he had been given a glass of poisoned wine. He made the sign of the Cross over the glass and it broke into pieces. He founded twelve monasteries, each having twelve monks at first. He later compiled the specifically ‘Benedictine’ rule, which is today followed in the Roman Church. On the sixth day before his death he commanded that his grave, already prepared as the saint had foreseen that his end was near, should be opened. He gathered all the monks together, gave them counsel and gave his soul to the Lord whom he had faithfully served in poverty and purity. His sister, Scholastica, lived in a women’s monastery, where, guided by her brother and herself practising great asceticism, she came to great spiritual perfection. When St Benedict set his soul free, two monks, one on the road and one at prayer in a distant cell, had at the same moment the same vision: a path from earth to heaven, curtained with precious cloth and illuminated at the sides by ranks of people. At the top of that path stood a man of indescribable beauty and light, who told them that the
path was prepared for Benedict, the beloved of God. After that vision, the two brethren discovered that their beloved abbot had gone from this world. He died peacefully in about 550 and went to the eternal Kingdom of Christ the King. [4]

Of course, much of St Benedict’s enduring importance is tied up with the Rule he bequeathed to the Church. In the words of St Gregory the Great, Dialogues II.36, ‘However I would not wish it to be unknown to you that the man of God who became famous in the world by so many miracles was also very well-known for his words of doctrine. For he wrote a rule for monks, remarkable for its discretion [5] and elegant in its language.’ [6] Charles Williams has aptly summarised the wisdom of St Benedict’s Rule in his unique ecclesiastical history, The Descent of the Dove:

He modified the extreme austerities [of Eastern monasticism]; he reconciled even the monk to a life in time; he discouraged fantasies; he taught peace. He pledged his brethren to remain in the abbey of their situations, and he pledged the half-saveage emulation of individual eccentricity to the decent obedience of holy order. He too taught the rule of co-inherence after a particular manner; the brethren were to know none but Christ in each other and in all. The Rule spread; it met and overcame the harsher Rule of Columban, and the most dedicated of lives rooted themselves in localities and quiet. It was the frontier of Christendom which held most stable through all the terrible centuries. [7]

Similarly, Christopher Dawson writes, ‘Thus, in an age of insecurity and disorder and barbarism, the Benedictine Rule embodied an ideal of spiritual order and disciplined moral activity which made the monastery an oasis of peace in the world of war.’ [8] It is for this reason that philosopher Alisdair MacIntyre has famously observed of our own day, ‘We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another—doubtless very different—St Benedict’ (see my thoughts on this comment in this post). [9]

Finally, it is interesting to note that St Benedict has had the good fortune to appear in one of the greatest works of imaginative literature of all time—Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante describes him as ‘the largest and most lightsome jewel’ of the sphere of Saturn, and the Saint begins addressing the Pilgrim as follows:

. . . ‘If you could see the flame
of charity we burn in, as I do,
you’d have expressed your thoughts and felt no shame.

I would not have your pilgrimage be slow:
that waiting may not hold you from the goal,
I’ll reply to the thought you’ve guarded so.

That mountain with Cassino on its spur
was thronged with worshipers in pagan time,
people disposed to evil and deceived

By cheating gods. I am he, first to climb
that peak to bring His name who brought the earth
the truth that raises us to the sublime;

With radiant grace so far above my worth,
I drew each of the villages around
from the impious cult that had seduced

The whole world. All these other flames were bound
in contemplation, kindled by the heat
engendering the flowers and holy fruit:

Romualdus and Macarius are here,
and my good brothers who, within the close,
held their hearts steadfast where they held their feet.’ [10]

[1] Frederick B. Artz, The Mind of the Middle Ages: An Historical Survey, AD 200-1500, 3rd rev. ed. (Chicago: U of Chicago, 1980), p. 185.

[2] Qtd. in Henry Wadsworth Longellow, tr., The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: Paradiso (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, n.d.), p. 302, n. 40.

[3] Cardinal Basil Hume, OSB, In Praise of Benedict: 480-1980 AD (Petersham, MA: St Bede’s, 1981), p. 78. Hume adds, ‘There are, as we know, ancient spiritual values of fundamental importance which are always new and always contemporary in any age.’

[4] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, tr. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1985), pp. 283-4.

[5] It is interesting to note that concerning the word discretio, rendered here by its English derivative, the infallible Adalbert de Vogüé has suggested that ‘discernment’ might be a better translation. Based on St Gregory’s reference to RB 58 in his Commentary on Kings, de Vogüé believes that this famous recommendation of the Rule in Dialogues II ‘is less concerned with the moderation of the Rule—as it is usually understood—than with its rigor’ (St Gregory the Great, The Life of St Benedict, tr. Hilary Costello & Eoin de Bhaldraithe, commentary by Adalbert de Vogüé (Petersham, MA: St Bede’s, 1993), p. 177).

[6] St Gregory, p. 174.

[7] Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (Vancouver: Regent College, 2002), p. 91.

[8] Christopher Dawson, Religion & the Rise of Western Culture (Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh, 1948-1949) (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958), p. 48.

[9] Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame, 1984), p. 263.

[10] Dante Alighieri, Paradise, tr. & ed. Anthony Esolen, illust. Gustave Doré (NY: Modern Library, 2007), p. 237.

Review of a St Elisabeth Biography

2010-07-17T23:58:00.006-05:00

Today, 5 July on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the New Martyr Elisabeth of Russia. In honour of St Elisabeth, patron of my daughter as well as my mother (and likely, many, many other convert women as well!), I thought I would post a little review—written years ago in a reader’s journal I used to keep—of a secular biography of the New Martyr: Hugo Mager’s Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia (NY: Carroll & Graf, 1999). I have made one or two minor editorial changes, and added page references where I could still find them.

The first problem I have is the author’s utter ignorance of Orthodoxy. After repeated remarks about the ‘rottenness’ of the relics of St Seraphim of ‘Sarovo’ [sic], Mager concludes that this ‘should have barred him from sainthood’; [1] but a brief look into the glorification of saints in the Orthodox Church would have shown that incorrupt remains are not required by any means. He claims that all startsy (which he translates imprecisely as ‘holy men’) are ‘semiliterate, eternal wanderer[s]’; some of them ‘fastened chains to their legs as a sign of asceticism’, or ‘claimed to possess powers of healing’. [2] He gives a dramatic description of some schema-monks without apparently realising what they are. He consistently uses imprecise, western language to describe Orthodox things: ‘High Mass’, ‘Te Deum’, ‘Monsignor’. He repeatedly refers to the Roman Catholic ‘saint’ Elisabeth of Hungary, an ancestor of the New Martyr, as ‘St Elizabeth’ without noting that she was not Orthodox (a legitimate ‘bar to sainthood’ in the Orthodox Church). [3] He mentions ‘the monastery at Mount Athos’, apparently unaware that there are twenty. [4]

More importantly, the ignorance of Orthodoxy in particular seems to be aligned to a deeper ignorance of and lack of interest in what it means to be a believer, period. The spiritual life seems to him to consist mostly of consolations, feelings and sentiments, except where it’s expressed in charitable works—which, to his credit, he covers admirably. But the account of St Elisabeth’s life in the Ss Martha and Mary Convent is given short schrift in favour of a sensationalistic and historically questionable account of the fall of the autocracy. Even clothes, jewelry, and balls are given more attention than spiritual things.

But even from a secular perspective the book leaves something to be desired. First of all, there are quite a few typographical and grammatical mistakes (he spells podvig ‘nodvig’!). Then, there’s the historiography. Although it doesn’t give any credentials, the jacket refers to the author as ‘historian Hugo Mager’, and indeed, the appendix (‘Documentary Evidence of the Last Journey & Death of Grand Duchess Elizabeth & the Removal of Her Remains to Beijing’) shows him to be pretty good at doing historical scholarship when he wants to be. [5] But the rest of the book makes matter of fact assertions about the nature and motivations of various people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions about which—having read other accounts—I sometimes felt rather dubious. At the very least, how can Mager claim to know some of the things he does? He does not provide extensive reasoning or documentation behind much of it, probably because he intended the book as a popular biography and not a work of scholarly historiography. But some of the more extraordinary claims (like the allegation of Grand Duke Sergei Nikolaievich’s homosexuality, or perhaps more importantly, the ‘cool’ sexual relations which provide the basis for the allegation) could have done with a good deal more well-documented evidence (although sexuality might have been left entirely unmentioned in any case). In numerous cases, it is clear to someone a little bit acquainted with the subject that much of what is presented is founded on more or less unreliable testimony, including, in at least one or two places, that of witnesses whom Mager himself has discredited. Furthermore, serious scholars of the Revolution would disagree with the central rôle he assigns to Rasputin in the story. The latter certainly didn’t help matters, but didn’t Vladimir Lenin have at least something to do with it, not to mention well nigh irresistable historical forces?

Another problem is the author’s obvious biases: for Britain and liberal politics, against Pobedonostsev, Grand Duke Sergei Nikolaievich, the Russian peasants, the Tsaritsa-Martyr Alexandra, and certainly Rasputin (who, despite the testimony of multiple witnesses, is made to seem closer to the Tsaritsa-Martyr than anyone else she knows). One friend of the Tsaritsa-Martyr’s who was an admirer of Rasputin is consistently referred to as ‘plain and unintelligent’, and even ‘fat’, whenever she figures into the narrative. [6] The author’s opinions on politics are constantly interjected. Whenever someone becomes drunk, it is said to be in ‘typical Russian fashion’. He always describes the Tsar-Martyr—in typical biographer fashion—as ‘weak’ and ‘indecisive’.

But most annoying, I think, is Mager’s apparent determination to play up a dramatic contrast between the New Martyr Elisabeth and her sister, the Tsaritsa-Martyr Alexandra. St Elisabeth is presented as the warm, saintly, reasonable sister who does everything she can to save Russia, St Alexandra as the cold, self-centered, hysterical sister who does everything she can to ruin it. The author seems quite satisfied—often basing himself on the testimony of witnesses he himself elsewhere calls unreliable—to pronounce their relationship as being at distressing odds and ending in complete coldness.

There are good things to be said about the book. The author certainly reveres St Elisabeth. He also appears to respect Christianity, monarchy and, to some extent, Ss Nicholas and Alexandra. Passages like the note contrasting the ‘repression’ of Tsar Alexander III’s reign with that of communism—concluding, ‘Compared with its Soviet successor, Alexander III’s empire was a remarkably free country’—are really nice. [7] But Mager’s politics, his preoccupation with Grand Duke Sergei’s sexuality (about which he himself acknowledges that there is ‘no firm evidence’), [8] his ignorance of Orthodoxy and superficial notions of spirituality, and his exaggerrated antinomy between the two saintly sisters are all very annoying, and detract greatly from an interesting story. More importantly, Mager clearly lacks the experience and insight to do any kind of justice to the spiritual life of a great Saint. His Victorian psychologising is a poor substitute, not compensated for, in the end, by his attention to detail in presenting an in-depth story.

Those who want to read about St Elisabeth should stick with the Life by Lubov Millar, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia: New Martyr of the Communist Yoke (Richfield Springs, NY: Nikodemos, 1991), only venturing toward Mager’s book for superficial and extraneous details about things like the Hessian grand duchy or Queen Victoria. Those interested in St Alexandra should never open Mager’s book, but stick with A Gathered Radiance: The Life of Alexandra Romanov, Russia’s Last Empress (Chico, CA: Valaam Society of America, 1992), by Mother Nectaria (McLees).

Addendum: Mary Mansur has just informed me that Nikodemos has recently published a new, expanded edition of Millar's biography of St Elisabeth, featuring all new materials. It can be ordered for $26.95 + $4 s&h. Just send a check to Nikodemos Orthodox Publication Society, PO Box 383, Richfield Springs, NY 13439-0383.

[1] Hugo Mager, Elizabeth: Grand Duchess of Russia (NY: Carroll & Graf, 1999), p. 200.

[2] Ibid., p. 226. True startsy, or ‘elders’, of course, may well be educated, are rarely wanderers, would never display an external ‘sign of asceticism’, and would never claim to ‘possess powers of healing’.

[3] Ibid., pp. 19-20, 240.

[4] Ibid., p. 227.

[5] Ibid., pp. 343-9.

[6] Ibid., pp. 235, 255, 277.

[7] Ibid., p. 80. The final paragraph of this lengthy note deserves to be quoted in full:

However, these enormous powers [of the tsarist political police] were used with remarkable leniency. During Alexander [III]’s repressive reign only four thousand persons, out of a population of nearly a hundred million, were detained or interrogated in connection with political offenses; only forty-four, all assassins or potential assassins, were executed for political crimes. The right to travel abroad and property rights, even those of expatriate revolutionaries, were scrupulously respected. The vast majority of criminals were tried fairly, by jury. Censorship was little more than a nuisance: between 1867 and 1894 only 158 books, not including Marx’s Capital, were forbidden to circulate in Russia. Compared with its Soviet successor, Alexander III’s empire was a remarkably free country.

[8] Ibid., p. 74.

Disenchantment with Modernity: Tolkien, Lovecraft, & G.H. Dorr, Ph.D.

2010-07-14T16:00:00.003-05:00

At the Mythopoeic Society conference I attended last weekend, the Inklings—and it seemed Tolkien especially—were naturally first and foremost in the attendees’ thoughts, writings, and conversation. But at least once or twice, perhaps largely at my instigation, the name of H.P. Lovecraft was also mentioned. In a paper I heard on the to me previously unknown works of our Author Guest of Honour, Tim Powers, a plot description at one point reminded me slightly of Lovecraft’s masterpiece, ‘The Call of Cthulhu’. When I ventured later to ask the author himself about this, receiving confirmation of the accuracy of my ‘Lovecraft antennae’, I also asked his opinion whether Powers thought that Charles Williams might have been able to convert the notorious atheist Lovecraft to Christianity. An affirmative reply led to more discussion later in the evening.

At any rate, all of this is merely to preface an extraordinary discovery I made just today. Amy Sturgis, whose name I thought I recalled coming across at MythCon and who edited the book Past Watchful Dragons: Fantasy & Faith in the World of C.S. Lewis, published by The Mythopoeic Press, has a fascinating article on her website entitled, ‘The New Shoggoth Chic: Why H.P. Lovecraft Now?’. [1] Although it does not mention him in the title, Tolkien is also a major subject of the article, which is essentially a comparison and contrasting of the two authors.

To get to the point, the most interesting point of comparison to me was the basically anti-modern posture they shared. Sturgis writes:

Modernity, that nebulous and abstract force of the dawning 20th century, meant various things to Lovecraft and Tolkien at different times in their lives. One thing remained constant: both were against it. To Lovecraft, modernity primarily meant entropy, the gradual decay of time-honored habits, traditions, and even people into confusion and decrepitude. . . . His racial and nationalistic assumptions fueled his disgust with the way in which industrialization and urbanization threw unlike people together in the most squalid conditions, ensuring (to his mind at least) that their most negative traits would come to the fore. He found an example of his worst fears realized when he lived, for a short time only, in New York City.

On this subject, Sturgis then quotes the semi-autobiographical story ‘He’:

But success and happiness were not to be. Garish daylight showed only squalor and alienage and the noxious elephantiasis of climbing, spreading stone where the moon had hinted of loveliness and elder magic; and the throngs of people that seethed through the flumelike streets were squat, swarthy strangers with hardened faces and narrow eyes, shrewd strangers without dreams and without kinship to the scenes around them, who could never mean aught to a blue-eyed man of the old folk, with the love of fair green lanes and white New England village steeples in his heart. [2]

Sturgis then comments:

Though charged with what we today would call racism and xenophobia, Lovecraft’s description implies more than simple fear or dislike of the Other: these others are overcrowded, literally ‘teeming’, unattached to their setting or community, isolated and atomistic, uncommunicative and ‘hardened’. Lovecraft contrasted such scenes with his native Providence, Rhode Island, where generations remained in the same place and were known by their family name and traits, and where the community as a whole tended to share what Augustine called ‘loved things held in common’. [3] Lovecraft feared a humanity cut adrift from such grounding tradition and identity, left vulnerable to outside forces of superior power and unwholesome design.

For Tolkien, modernity primarily meant technology—‘The Machine’, as he called it—and its triumph at the expense of nature. Where Lovecraft idealized his hometown of Providence, Tolkien revered the English countryside, and believed the growth of cities and factories to be a direct threat to its survival. By creating the fictional Shire and the Hobbits who populate it, Tolkien praised the rural values of decentralization, artisanship, stability, and familiarity over the urban qualities of centralization, mass production, disposability, and anonymity.

Sturgis then quotes ‘On Fairy-Stories’, calling it ‘as anti-modern’ as Lovecraft:

Not long ago—incredible though it may seem—I heard a clerk at Oxenford declare that he ‘welcomed’ the proximity of mass-production robot factories, and the roar of self-obstructive mechanical traffic, because it brought his university into ‘contact with real life.’ He may have meant that the way men were living in the twentieth century was increasing in barbarity at an alarming rate, and that the loud demonstration of this in the streets of Oxford might serve as a warning that it is not possible to preserve for long an oasis of sanity in a desert of unreason by mere fences, without actual offensive action (practical and intellectual). I fear he did not. [4]

Sturgis continues:

Both authors’ anti-modernism, as well as other intellectual ideas and personal traits, led them to feel out of place in a world of tremendous change and upheaval, economic depression and world war. For his part, H.P. Lovecraft felt himself to be an old man in a young man’s body, and, to use his words from ‘The Outsider’, ‘a stranger in this century’. Tolkien’s similar certainty that he was not at home came as much from his religious perspective as his disgust with all things ‘progressive’. . . .

. . .

It would be a mistake to assume that the two men were similar only in their dislikes and disappointments. Although they looked to the future with no little trepidation, they looked to the past with real fascination and affection. Lovecraft and Tolkien shared a fervent kind of antiquarianism. Lovecraft’s self-confessed ‘love of the ancient and permanent’ can best be seen in his absorption with and knowledge of early American architecture, which he used to great effect in his precise and evocative descriptions. . . . Tolkien nurtured his own love of ancient texts and national epics from Beowulf and the Kalevala to the Icelandic Eddas and family sagas. He studied the original languages of the stories and incorporated ingredients of the tales into his own work. . . .

In short, both Lovecraft and Tolkien were on a quest for something permanent, meaningful, and binding in a changing modern world, fueled by a desire for identity and community in a time in which they felt displaced and marginalized, and a thirst for structure and civilization in the face of what they saw as entropy and barbarism. Paradoxically, these concerns, while isolating each author to a certain degree, also made Lovecraft and Tolkien exemplars of their age, men of remarkable insight and sensitivity who articulated the concerns of an entire era with unusual eloquence and urgency.

Reading these comments today, I am also curiously reminded of Tom Hanks’s charactre in the Coen Brothers remake of The Ladykillers: the Southern dandy, Goldthwaite Higginson Dorr, Ph.D. One evening, Dorr’s black landlady, Mrs Munson, says to him, ‘You are a readin’ fool, aren’t you, Mr Dorr?’ Dorr responds:

Yes, I must confess I often find myself more at home in these ancient volumes than I do in the hustle-bustle of the modern world. To me, paradoxically, the literature of the so-called ‘dead tongues’ holds more currency than this morning’s newspaper. In these books, in these volumes, there is the accumulated wisdom of mankind which succours me when the day is hard and the night lonely and long.

Things take a closer turn toward the Lovecraftian when Mrs Munson remarks, ‘Wisdom of mankind, huh? What about the wisdom of the Lord?’, and Dorr replies:

Oh yes, the ‘Good Book’, hm? I have found reward in its pages. But to me there are other ‘good books’ as well: heavy volumes of antiquity, freighted with the insights of man’s glorious age. And then, of course, I just love love love the works of Mr Edgard Allan Poe.

Mrs Munson says, ‘Oh, I know who he was—kinda spooky!’ But Dorr laughs and ‘corrects’ her, in words reminiscent of Lovecraft’s ‘Randolph Carter’ stories: ‘No, my, no, no! Not of this world, it is true. He lived in a dream, an ancient dream.’ Dorr then quotes the first two stanzas of ‘To Helen’:

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome. [5]

Somewhat alarmed at Dorr’s enraptured delivery of these lines, Mrs Munson asks, ‘Who was Helen? Some kind of whore of Babylon?’ To which, slightly angered, Dorr replies, ‘One does not know who Helen was! But I picture her as very very . . . extremely . . . pale.’

[1] Originally published in Apex Science Fiction & Horror Digest, 1.4 (December 2005).

[2] H.P. Lovecraft, ‘He’, The Tomb & Other Tales (NY: Del Rey, 1987), pp. 58-9. I was astonished how much this last line reminded me of Tolkien!

[3] St Augustine, de civ. Dei XIX, 24; cf. The City of God, tr. Marcus Dods (NY: Modern Library, 1950), p. 706: ‘But if we discard this definition of a people, and, assuming another, say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then, in order to discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love.’

[4] J.R.R. Tolkien, ‘On Fairy-Stories’, The Tolkien Reader (NY: Ballantine, 1966), pp. 80-1.

[5] Edgar Allan Poe, ‘To Helen’, The Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (NY: Modern Library, 1965), p. 1017.

Why Read Njegoš?

2010-07-12T21:45:00.004-05:00

I have mentioned Petar II Petrović-Njegoš a number of times at Logismoi already, primarily in connection with the paper I was preparing to present at the Mythopoeic Society conference in Dallas on Saturday (a presentation which was poorly attended but nevertheless received positive comments from those who did attend). As Michael Petrovitch has observed, at first glance Njegoš seems ‘suited to one of those dull dissertations about obscure figures whom some apprentice scholar is always grateful to dig up for the price of a doctorate’, but he was an ‘extraordinary ruler and poet of an extraordinary country’. [1] Just to dispel any lingering suspicions among fellow Orthodox, however, that Njegoš’s work is merely an obscure academic subject, I thought I would post a few comments on him from Serbian theologians. It was they, after all, who convinced me actually to read his work in the first place. First, here in full is the brief foreword to Clarence Manning’s translation of The Rays of Microcosm by St Nicholas (Velimirović):

The Prince Bishop of Montenegro Petar II Petrovich Negosh (1813-1851) is the greatest Serbian poet. His drama ‘The Mountain Wreath’ has been translated into many European languages. There are three German translations. The best English translation is by Dr James Wiles. Negosh’s deepest and most spiritual creation ‘The Rays of Microcosm’ (Lucha Mikrokosma), however, appears now for the first time in English thanks to Professor Dr Clarence Manning of Columbia University in New York.

The theme of this poem is the same as that of Dante’s ‘Divina Comedia’, Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, and Klopstock’s ‘Messias’. All these three great poets are Westerners, whereas Negosh with a similar work stands alone for the Eastern Europe [sic]. We do not think that all his thoughts in this poem are dogmatically in harmony with the doctrine of the Orthodox Church, as for instance the pre-existence of Adam as the one [sic] of the great and leading angels, but poetry is poetry. The privilege of a poet consists in the freedom to add to the common reasoning his imagination which gives more life and color to the accepted facts. Negosh’s vision of the enormity of the created Universe in height, depth, width, and length; of many suns and galaxies of stars, ruled by various angelic hosts, is very striking. It reminds the reader of the Mount Palomar’s giant telescope, and the quite modern astronomic discoveries. There is no telescope which can beat the spirit and imagination of a great poet.

The spiritual value of this work, as the reader will see for himself, is beyond doubt great and unusual. It is all spirit, religion, and dramatic victory of God over Satan.

The language of Negosh is lapidary and charged with ideas and arcanas. Yet, Professor Manning succeeded to translate it well; not in each case literally though, but on the whole clear and well done in a choice English. [2] We hope that ‘The Rays of Microcosm’ will help the English speaking people toward a deeper insight into the soul and heart of the Serbian people, always suffering for Christ and never feeling defeated. [3]

Second, and following in the spirit of St Nicholas’s comments, Fr Daniel Rogich has included Njegoš alongside St Nicholas himself under the category of ‘soul-profiting reading’, that is, ‘works that do not directly deal with the spiritual life but that “enlarge” the heart and refine the soul”’. [4]

Finally, in a lecture in which he treats at length Milton’s Paradise Lost, Bishop Athanasius (Jevtić) writes:

Our Serbian poet, Bishop Njegosh, in his poem Rays of the Microcosm, which is to some extent similar to John Milton’s poem mentioned earlier, partially succumbed to the influence of Milton and other philosophers and poets who similarly viewed and interpreted the fate of man and mankind predominantly in a theological-cosmological manner. However, in the last part of Rays of the Microcosm, Njegosh, an Orthodox bishop and a man with Church experience through which he observed both the Bible and its pronouncements about man, made a radical turn toward the eschatological Messiah, Christ Incarnate and Resurrected, Who in terms of Milton’s logic regarding justice, unexpectedly enters into human history and saves man personally through Himself, thus changing man’s established fate, which until then was harsh and inescapable because of sin. [5]

[1] Michael B. Petrovitch, ‘Introduction’, Njegoš: Poet, Prince, Bishop, by Milovan Djilas, tr. Michael B. Petrovitch (NY: Harcourt, 1966), p. xiii.

[2] Although St Nicholas commends Manning’s translation, a double review by Ante Kadić convinced me to read the Savić-Rebac translation of The Ray instead. See Ante Kadić, rev. of The Rays of Microcosm, tr. Clarence A. Manning, & The Ray of the Microcosm, tr. Anica Savić-Rebac, American Slavic & East European Review 18.1 (Feb. 1959), pp. 129-33.

[3] St Nicholas (Velimirović), ‘Foreword’, The Rays of the Microcosm, by Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, tr. Clarence A. Manning (Munich 1953), pp. 7-8.

[4] Fr Daniel Rogich, ‘Introduction’, Serbian Patericon: Saints of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Vol. 1, illust. Lillian Tintor (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1994), p. 23. This is a widely varied category. It is worth noting that Fr Rogich also includes—

ecclesiastical writers such as St Ignatius Brianchaninov, St Theophan the Recluse, St John of Kronstadt, the epistology of the Optina Elders, Theophan of Poltava, and writers of Mt Athos such as the Russian Seraphim the Hagiorite (his letters), or secular writers of world literature who contributed to the formation of the Orthodox way of life as opposed to the anti-Christian growth of secular values of the modern man of the post-French Revolution: Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Dostoevsky, Leskov and Gogol. (p. 23)

[5] Bishop Athanasius (Yevtich), ‘The Holy Fathers & the Holy Scriptures’, tr. Sr Michaela, Christ: The Alpha & Omega, ed. St Herman of Alaska Monastery (Alhambra, CA: Western American Diocese, 2007), pp. 28-9.

Some Confusion about Njegoš's Angelology

2010-07-08T20:27:00.003-05:00

Although there is much in it that is insightful, in an interesting article entitled ‘The Dark Side in Milton & Njegoš’, Roland Clark makes some odd comments. First of all, he writes, ‘As is typical of Orthodox angelology, [Petar II Petrović] Njegoš [in his poem, The Ray of the Microcosm] relies completely upon Michael and Gabriel, who were equal in rank to Satan before his fall, to act as the opposites of Satan, rather than placing Christ himself in this rôle.’ So, he seems to be suggesting that this aspect of Njegoš’s angelology is Orthodox, right?

But then in the very next sentence, Clark writes, ‘This is a defining feature of Bogomilism, one of the many traditions that appear to have influenced Njegoš.’ [1] Really? So the very angelology that he has just told us is Orthodox, is also ‘a defining feature’ of a dualistic heresy? How can that be?

I’m also a bit annoyed because right after the word ‘fall’ in the first sentence, he has a footnote citing Njegoš and then suggesting, ‘For more on this convention in Orthodox angelology see Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (London, 1980), p. 154.’ [2] So, naturally, I pull out my copy of Mango to see if he does indeed support the apparent meaning of the first sentence that the angelology Clark has described is Orthodox. But the only passage I find on p. 154 of that book that is at all relevant reads:

As for the archangels, only two, namely Michael and Gabriel, had a firm place in popular devotion; the others, including Raphiel and Uriel, appear mostly in prayers and incantations of an occult character. St Michael was the commander-in-chief, the archistrategos, of the celestial host, and had several cult centres in Asia Minor, the most famous being at Chonai (Colossai) in Phrygia, where he was believed to have split a rock and diverted the course of a torrent. [3]

I found this disappointingly impertinent. Perhaps the article we are led to by the footnote to the sentence suggesting Bogomilism in Njegoš’s angelology [4] would be more helpful, but unfortunately, I do not have a copy. It is by Zdenko Zlatar, is entitled ‘Archangel Michael & the Dragon: Slavic Apocrypha, Bogomilism, & Dualist Cosmology in the Medieval Balkans’, and is found in Encyclopedia moderna 2 (38), 1992, p. 267.

Although I don’t really need answers to these questions beforehand, tomorrow I leave for Dallas to present my little paper on cosmological conflict in Njegoš at the Mythopoeic Society conference, MythCon 41. On the off-chance that there will be any blog readers at MythCon, please try to find me. I also plan to attend Divine Liturgy at St Nicholas ROCOR parish in McKinney, TX, on Sunday.

[1] Roland Clark, ‘The Dark Side in Milton & Njegoš’, Sydney Studies in Religion 6.1 (2004), p. 107. It can be found online here.

[2] Ibid., p. 107, n. 4.

[3] Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome (London: Phoenix Giant, 1994), p. 154.

[4] Clark, p. 107, n. 5.

The Nihilism of Victor Shklovsky: Bakhtin & Defamiliarisation

2010-07-02T20:47:00.004-05:00

A few weeks ago the grad student I’m tutoring for her thesis on Tolstoy came across a 2004 issue of Philosophy & Literature which contained an article that greatly interested me—‘Verbal Medium & Narrative Art in Homer & the Bible’, by Robert S. Kawashima of NYU. Already on the second page, Kawashima makes a reference that has become very familiar to me while reading critical work on Tolstoy when he mentions ‘Victor Shklovsky’s definition of art as “defamiliarization”’. [1] Matthew Reed has written about this concept in his posts on War & Peace (here, here, and here), even linking to a pdf of Shklovsky in the second post, and Shklovsky’s ‘defamiliarisation’ is an oft-utilised tool in critical analysis of Tolstoy. Most critics, however, seem to treat it merely as one device among many and to speak as though this is how Shklovsky treated it as well. Liza Knapp, for instance, in her contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy, makes a remark about ‘the Formalist Shklovsky, who viewed ostranenie [defamiliarisation] merely as a device’. [2]

I first heard of Russian Formalism back in college when I started studying Bakhtin, but I never really gave it much attention, either in its own right or as a foil for some of Bakhtin’s ideas. Thus, having grown accustomed to passing references to Shklovsky and defamiliarization in the context of Tolstoy criticism, I at first thought nothing of Knapp’s comment about defamiliarisation being ‘merely’ a ‘device’ for Shklovsky. But Kawashima presents quite a bit more of the context for this idea. The latter writes:

Shklovsky, in his programmatic essay, ‘Art as Technique’, proposes a definition of art based, not on any given specific ‘device’, but on an underlying technique he calls ‘defamiliarization’: ‘The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar’, to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.’ In fact, art not only defamiliarizes concrete objects of perception, but artistic form itself: ‘By violating the form, [Sterne] forces us to attend to it; and, for him, this awareness of the form through its violation constitutes the content of the novel.’ He thus defines literature self-referentially as the manipulation of literary form, so that form itself becomes the object of renewed aesthetic perception. Over against Shklovsky’s theory of art stands [Walter] Benjamin’s account of the storyteller’s craft. This craft is based not on innovation, but on the conservation of tradition. The greatness of a story lies not in its originality, but in its seamless derivation ‘from the speech of the many nameless storytellers’, from ‘that slow piling one on top of the other of thin, transparent layers which constitutes the most appropriate picture of the way in which the perfect narrative is revealed through the layers of a variety of retellings.’ [3]

A bit further on, Kawashima continues his account of Shklovsky’s thought:

Shklovsky’s understanding of genuine experience is premised on a certain peculiarly modern ideal, namely, a life full of the promise of unending change. In his view, habit, and we might add, tradition, is non-experience, analogous indeed to oblivion—‘such [habitual] lives are as if they had never been.’ [4]

I won’t go into the details of Shklovsky’s rôle in Kawashima’s article, except to say that the latter makes the odd argument that the Bible lines up more with Shklovsky and Homer with Benjamin. For me the important thing was that this overturned any complacency I had about the use of Shklovsky in Tolstoy criticism—clearly, while defamiliarisation might be a handy analytical device, it was far, far more than that for the Formalists themselves. It was something very close in spirit to Harold Bloom’s ‘anxiety of influence’, and indeed, in the chapter on Tolstoy in Bloom’s The Western Canon, the Yale critic writes:

I have argued throughout this book that originality, in the sense of strangeness, is a quality that, more than any other, makes a work canonical. Tolstoy’s strangeness is itself strange, because it so paradoxically seems not strange at all at first. You always hear Tolstoy’s voice acting as the narrator, and that voice is direct, rational, confident, and benign. Victor Shklovsky, a major modern Russian critic, noted that ‘the most common strategy in Tolstoy is one of refusing to recognize an object, of describing it as if it were seen for the first time.’ [5]

Now troubled by what I was learning of the Formalist position, I recalled that Bakhtin and his circle had been their outspoken critics, and I turned next to discover what those critics had had to say. I began with Clark’s and Holquist’s biography, Mikhail Bakhtin, Chapter 8, ‘The Formalists’. Clark & Holquist find the most important Bakhtinian responses to Formalism in a 1924 article by Bakhtin entitled ‘The Problem of Content, Material & Form in Verbal Artistic Creation’ and a 1928 book published by Pavel Medvedev entitled The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, while Voloshinov/Bakhtin’s [6] Marxism & the Philosophy of Language and Bakhtin’s book on Dostoevsky ‘would lay out the linguistic basis for a historical poetics to counter that of the formalists’. [7] In the interests of keeping this post manageable and of focusing on the now ‘familiar’ idea of ‘defamiliarisation’, I will try to limit my exposition of Clark & Holquist and the works they mention to passages that relate directly to defamiliarisation.

First, concerning the ‘Problem of Content’ article, Clark & Holquist note that Bakhtin shared the criticism from the right ‘that the Formalists’ ingenious interpretations of particular works [such as Tolstoy’s] lacked a theoretical base in a full-blown aesthetics’, as well as that from the left ‘that the Formalists ignored social and political factors in their work’. [8] Clark & Holquist write:

Bakhtin here introduces an important concept, the aesthetic object, which according to him is the real subject of criticism. The aesthetic object is not completely coincidental with the external, material form but is nevertheless inseparable from it. . . . The aesthetic object is present as a totality of the values conveyed by the material form when combined with the other values, such as political or religious, that come into play in any specific act of perceiving the object. [9]

Thus, I find two—extremely difficult—passages in ‘Problem’ that touch on defamiliarisation. The first does not name the idea, but shows how an example of it is explained in terms of the ‘aesthetic object’, in this case, Pushkin’s use of the Church Slavonic form grad instead of gorod (‘city’) in his poem, ‘Remembrance’: [10]

The artist (and the contemplator) has to do, moreover, precisely with ‘the city’ as expressed by the Church Slavonic form of the word (grad): the connotation of the Church Slavonic form relates to the ethical-aesthetic value of the city, giving great significance to that value, and it becomes the characterization of a concrete value and as such enters into the aesthetic object, i.e., it is not the linguistic form that enters into the aesthetic object but its axiological significance (psychological aesthetics would say ‘the emotional-volitional moment corresponding to that form’). [11]

The second, more difficult, passage eventually names the concept of defamiliarisation. Bakhtin is explaining his understanding of ‘the primary function of form in relation to content—that of isolation or detachment’ for artistic embodiment of some particular aspect of something or of some moment in time. [12] Then he writes:

The so-called defamiliarization [ostranenie] of the Formalists is fundamentally the function of isolation that is not very clearly expressed methodologically and is incorrectly referred in most cases to the material [i.e., the diction]: what is defamiliarized is the word by way of destroying its habitual place in a semantic series. Sometimes, however, defamiliarization is related to the object as well, but is understood in a crudely psychologistic way—as the removal of the object, the value, and the event from the necessary cognitive and ethical series. [13]

I must admit, although I believe I’ve understood it, this passage was a struggle. Imagine, then, my relief when I turned to the selections from Medvedev/Bakhtin’s Formal Method and found the much less abstract ‘The Nihilistic Slant of Formalism’. Here are the highlights:

The formalists do not so much find something new in the word as expose and do away with the old.

The basic formalist concepts of this period—transrational language [zaum], ‘making it strange’ [ostranenie], device, material—are completely infused with this tendency.

. . .

The negative aspect of ‘making it strange’ [ostranenie] is just as strong as that of transrational language. Its original definition, far from emphasizing the enrichment of the word with new and positive constructive meaning, simply emphasizes the negation of the old meaning. The novelty and strangeness of the word and the object it designates originates here, in the loss of its previous meaning . . . .

In early formalism the concept of ‘deautomatization of the word’ was closely connected with ‘making it strange’. [14]

The negative tone is also dominant in this concept: deautomatization is primarily understood as abstraction from semantic context.

. . .

Thus the formalists attained their ‘discoveries’ in a rather unique way: by subtracting various essential aspects from the word and other elements of the artistic work. The new constructive meaning appears as the result of these purely negative acts of subtraction and elimination.

It goes without saying that the word without meaning looks new, looks different than the meaningful word. Certainly the idea with no pretentions to truth looks different than the normal idea which strives toward cognition.

But, of course, such subtraction cannot gain anything positive, new, or profitable.

This negative, nihilistic slant of formalism shows the tendency common to all nihilism to add nothing to reality, but, on the contrary, to diminish, impoverish, and emasculate it, and by doing so attain a new and original impression of reality. [15]

In their discussion of Formal Method, Clark & Holquist focus on Medvedev/Bakhtin’s objections to the Formalist distinction between ‘poetic’ and ‘practical language’, the latter being marked by transparency and the former by strangeness. They point out that Formal Method ‘is highly critical of the unspoken assumptions behind the separation of language into poetic and practical divisions, especially as defined by the Formalists’, and is especially concerned with the illogic of using defamiliarisation not only ‘as a means for getting at the essence of literature’ but ‘as the engine of literary evolution as well’. [16] Among other arguments, Formal Method ‘charges that the Formalists failed to evolve a convincing account of literary dynamics because there was no place in their scheme for anything new in poetry itself’, since poetry had to wait on practical language to develop something new so that the poets could defamiliarise it. At this point, Clark & Holquist quote a line from Shklovsky that Formal Method cites at much greater length: [17] ‘[Poetic speech] is purposely created to deautomatize perception . . . thus, we arrive at the definition of poetry as speech that is braked (zatormozennyj, distorted.’ Thus, in their words, ‘poetry depends for its effects on nonpoetic language, much as a parasite depends on its host. . . . Surely there is more to the complexity of poetic language than sheer “difference from”.’ [18]

Clark & Holquist relate this critique to Bakhtin’s larger theory of language when they write:

Bakhtin sees literary language as part of and as subject to the same conditions as other divisions of natural language, unlike the Formalists, who saw poetic speech as different in its fundamentals from other forms of language. Since Bakhtin perceives literature as part of the normal processes of language, he sees literary evolution as occurring very slowly, for the history of linguistic changes is always very conservative and drawn out. . . . The Formalist idea that the old generation’s forms soon become habitual and need to be deformed in order that art may once again be perceived in the next generation is seen by Bakhtin as betraying a desire to negate the past. History becomes reduced to a constant present or a permanent contemporaneity. [19]

Finally, Clark & Holquist situate Bakhtin’s critique of Formalist defamiliarisation to the very dialogic nature of Bakhtin’s thought:

[Bakhtin] always sought for connections between different people, texts, ideologies, and languages, not for cut-offs between their differences. This dialogic understanding of how different idea systems relate to each other underlies Bakhtin’s critique of the Formalist theory of deautomatization. That theory was based on the principle of either/or, mutual exclusion rather than communication between different texts. [20]

After mulling all of this over, I am now surprised that so many critics—especially, as I say, Tolstoy critics—are able to cite Shklovsky so cavalierly. I myself am resolved never to mention Shklovsky, Formalism, or defamiliarisation without at once adding a vigourous caveat.

[1] Robert S. Kawashima, ‘Verbal Medium & Narrative Art in Homer & the Bible’, Philosophy & Literature 28.1 (April 2004), p. 104.

[2] Liza Knapp, ‘The Development of Style and Theme in Tolstoy’, The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy, ed. Donna Tussing Orwin (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 2002), p. 164.

[3] Kawashima, pp. 104-5.

[4] Ibid., p. 106.

[5] Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books & School of the Ages (NY: Riverhead, 1995), p. 313.

[6] A brief note on this naming convention is in order. In the 1970s a close follower stated that Bakhtin was the real author of a number of works of the 1920s which had been published under the names of his friends Voloshinov and Medvedev. I won’t go into all of the details, but suffice to say that there is reason to believe there may be some truth to this, but the matter is very complex and likely cannot be resolved conclusively. When citing these works, Tzetan Todorov proposed a convention to express the openness of the question: using the name under which they were published followed by a slash and Bakhtin’s name. I like this a great deal, and intend to use it myself. Clark and Holquist, however, consistently refer to Bakhtin alone as the author of these works.

I find the convention especially important in the case of Medvedev, who was arrested in 1938 and shot by the Soviet authorities for not being sufficiently Communist in his writings. As Todorov writes, ‘In such a context I would be most loath to deny him the even partial authorship of works for which he died’ (Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, tr. Wlad Godzich [Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1994], p. 10).

[7] Katerina Clark & Michael Holquist, Mikhail Bakhtin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 1984), p. 194.

[8] Ibid., pp. 188, 189.

[9] Ibid., p. 189.

[10] See Sir Dimitri Obolensky, ed. & tr., The Heritage of Russian Verse (Bloomington, IN: Indiana U, 1976), p. 98.

[11] Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Supplement: The Problem of Content, Material, & Form in Verbal Art’, tr. Kenneth Bostrom, Art & Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays, ed. Michael Holquist & Vadim Liapunov (Austin, TX: U of Texas, 1995), p. 299.

[12] Ibid., p. 306.

[13] Ibid., p. 307.

[14] Despite the acknowledgement of a connection, I’m a bit puzzled by the distinction here. Clark & Holquist actually translate ostranenie as ‘deautomatization’, claiming that it is ‘sometimes translated as “making it strange”’ (p. 191).

[15] From Mikhail Bakhtin & Pavel Medvedev, The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship, tr. A.J. Wehrle (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1978); in Pam Morris, ed., The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov (London: Arnold, 1994), pp. 138-9.

[16] Clark & Holquist, p. 191.

[17] Bakhtin/Medvedev, p. 147.

[18] Clark & Holquist, p. 193.

[19] Ibid., p. 194.

[20] Ibid., p. 196. This last point is particularly dear to my heart. Although I myself am all for acknowledging important differences between ‘different idea systems’—see my controversial post on St Justin’s critique of ecumenism here, or, on the literary side, this one on Tolstoy and Homer—I like Bakhtin am more commonly preoccupied with looking for connections between things.

The First Law of Teaching

2010-06-27T20:28:00.004-05:00

As some of you will know, I am busily working through Robert Henle’s First Year Latin [1] in order to brush up at least sufficiently to teach a bunch of grammar-school students, and I am already feeling more confident. But I have been somewhat discouraged by two things I have recently read.

The very first of John Milton Gregory’s ‘Seven Laws of Teaching’ is, ‘A teacher must be one who knows the lesson or truth to be taught.’ [2] He devotes an entire chapter to elabourating upon this idea, almost rubbing it in the face of those who would presume to teach without being absolute masters of their subject. Here is part of the final paragraph of the chapter:

Thus a majority, perhaps, of teachers go to their work either wholly without the requisite knowledge, or only partly prepared for their task. They go like messengers without a message, and all wanting in that power and enthusiasm which fresh truth alone can give; and so the grand fruits we look for from this great army of workers seem long in coming, if not beyond hope. [3]

As if this was not enough, I came across the following lines the other day in Pindar, thus adding insult to injury:

In truth, teaching comes more easily to the man who already knows,
and not to be prepared beforehand is stupidity,
for the minds of the unpractised are insubstantial things.
(Olympian 8, 59-61) [4]

I am encouraged by two comments in Gregory, however. First, the very next line after the longer passage I have quoted reads, ‘Let this first great fundamental law of teaching be thoroughly obeyed, or even as fully as the circumstances of our teachers will permit, and there will come to our schools an attractive charm which would at once increase their numbers and their usefulness [italics mine].’ [5] This nod to the circumstances seems to allow for some less than fully accomplished practitioners to do their best. But also, in an earlier passage in the chapter Gregory admits:

And yet it must be confessed that the ability to inspire pupils with a love of study is sometimes lacking even where great knowledge is possessed; and this lack is fatal to all successful teaching, especially among young pupils. Better a teacher with limited knowledge but with this power to stimulate his pupils than a very Agassiz [6] without it. The cooped hen may by her encouraging cluck send forth her chickens to the fields she cannot herself explore; but sad the fate of the brood if they remain in the coop while she goes abroad to feed. [7]

I hope that I may at least succeed in this endeavour to inspire, since I myself am so excited by the study of ancient languages and literature. [8] Pray for me, dear readers!

[1] Robert J. Henle, SJ, First Year Latin (Chicago: Loyola, 1958). I frequently enjoy the irony that the students of a school which officially adheres to the Westminster Confession are studying Latin from a Jesuit textbook which includes such gems as, ‘As the light of the sun moves westward it falls upon chapels and cathedrals, hospitals and camps, where in endless repetition the Sacrifice of the Mass is being offered to God’ (p. 13).

[2] John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, unabridged (Veritas, 2004), p. 23.

[3] Ibid., p. 46.

[4] Pindar, The Complete Odes, tr. Anthony Verity (Oxford: Oxford U, 2007), p. 25.

[5] Gregory, p. 46.

[6] ‘Agassiz, (Jean) Louis Rodolphe (1807-1873), Swiss-American naturalist, born in Motiers, Switzerland. He was able to bring a great amount of public interest to natural science in his day’ (Gregory, p. 38, n. 7).

[7] Gregory, p. 41.

[8] To aid in my own inspiration, I have also been reading the chapter on Grammar—‘an old woman indeed but of great charm’—in Martianus Capella’s Marriage of Philology & Mercury (William Harris Stahl & Richard Johnson with E.L. Burge, Martianus Capella & the Seven Liberal Arts, Vol. 2: The Marriage of Philology & Mercury, Number LXXXIV of the Records of Civilization: Sources & Studies (NY: Columbia, 1977), pp. 64-105). I am sympathetic to, but do not share, the boredom that comes upon Jove and the coelestial senate as she speaks.

Genre & the Theme of Forbidden Love

2010-06-23T22:46:00.006-05:00

In my last post, I mentioned attending Nathan Wilson’s talk ‘Story Wars’ at the ACCS conference last week. As the moral merits of Shakespeare, or lack thereof, formed the topic of a heated discussion on this blog a couple of months ago (here), I thought it might be interesting to consider briefly a comment of Wilson’s that comes very close to our concerns in that discussion. In the synopsis of his talk, Wilson writes: ‘Teach a girl to love “The Highwayman” (or Romeo & Juliet) and you’re just prepping her for the lies of Twilight.’ Now clearly, all three works he mentions share the theme of the forbidden love of a girl for a young man who is alien to, and even in opposition to her society, and most importantly, her father. As a father myself, I certainly balk at the prospect of teaching my daughter directly or indirectly to disregard me and my counsels in order to pursue an unstable romantic love. But I have somewhat different feelings about the three examples chosen, and I think these feelings are not unconnected with the fact that all three represent different genres.

First of all, as I’m sure all can predict, I have little regard for Twilight. The series offends me at a moral level, a literary one, and even as an afficianado of vampires, who in my view ought not to sparkle in the sunshine or play baseball. There is little likelihood that I will allow my daughter to read it until such time as she is sufficiently innoculated against it on moral and literary grounds. But part of the reason for this is that, quite apart from its merits, the books are novels, and in my opinion are thus most easily situated to ‘carry away’ their reader into the thoughts and feelings of the charactres. Working in everyday prose, with all the pathetic tools of the genre at one’s disposal, a writer needs very little real talent to turn the reader in whatever way he or she wishes them to go. Witness the example of Dan Brown.

Second, as I hope I made clear in the Shakespeare post, I am far from convinced of the moral merits of the Bard’s work. Indeed, I typically find such merits quite wanting. I do find it difficult however to ignore or contradict the opinion of what seems to be the majority of Anglophone critics that—despite the bleak morality of what looks like the glorification of ‘love at first sight’—even this play has some literary merit. Mark Van Doren applies to it Tolstoy’s back-handed compliment to Shakespeare’s work generally:

However unnatural the positions may be in which he places his characters, however improper to them the language which he makes them speak, however featureless they are, the very play of emotion, its increase, and alteration, and the combination of many contrary feelings, as expressed correctly and powerfully in some of Shakespeare’s scenes, and in the play of good actors, evokes even, if only for a time, sympathy with the persons represented. [1]

In other words, I think there is something that we can teach young people to love here, if it is properly tempered with a healthy dose of moral discernment. Juliet is of course no exemplar, however fair her speech may seem.

But it seems to me that however difficult such discernment may be in the context of the cathartic alchemy of a dramatic performance, it is greatly helped by the stylised, formal nature of Shakespeare’s poetry when read as text. With a book in hand, we do not forget that we are reading words on a page, words which are very different to the way any persons then or now speak and many of which we do not even know without the help of notes. A story told in this manner is much more difficult to experience uncritically—indeed, I daresay that for most young people in our day, it is impossible. If the theme of forbidden love is our primary concern, we are not of course helped by the habits of our culture’s heart, but from a Christian perspective I would say that the form gives us very nearly just the right kind of distance.

Third, I think we have even less to fear from Alfred Noyes’s famous ballad. Though ‘The Highwayman’ lacks Romeo & Juliet’s formality and obscure language, it strikes me that the genre makes up for this in other ways. We are not meant to identify with the subjects of a ballad as we are with the tragedian’s dramatis personae. It is not a cathartic journey in which we are supposed to participate. It is a story, plain and simple, in which we learn of something that has always happened to someone else—usually to some legendary figure(s). Its morals almost never purport to rise above the level of entertainment. ‘Bess, the landlord’s daughter’ loves the highwayman and dies, not that she might provide an example of what love is—though the poem no doubt depends upon the fact that people do sometimes behave this way—but because it is exciting. The homespun nature of the genre almost serves to remind the reader that we ourselves are good, simple folk, and are not to behave this way, however much fun it may be as a story.

Your thoughts are of course welcome.

[1] Qtd. in Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1953), p. 60.

Summertime Peregrinations

2010-06-21T09:26:00.005-05:00

Well, dear readers, at last I have returned from my hectic June travels. Unfortunately, I have somewhat less Orthodox activity to report on than I had hoped I would. In Memphis, my friend Christopher and I were the guests of Macarius (‘Mickey’) Hodges, a gifted translator of ancient Greek who did some work for the OSB (the end result of which did not please him). We were delighted to have breakfast and coffee with Mr Hodges and my good friend, Owen White, the Ochlophobist, before heading on our way. Although we had planned to stop next in Wayne, WV, where we were to stay with Logismoi reader Fr Deacon Jeremiah Davis, at the last minute we realised that we would be arriving too late and leaving too early to see the monastery (or Fr Jeremiah for that matter), and that we would be better off simply to continue through the night on to our next destination—Long Island. There, we were hampered by time, distance, and available transportation, and so were not able to visit the other Holy Cross Monastery, there, under Fr Maximos.

As it turned out, our first Orthodox encounter occurred last Sunday, at St Irene Chrysovalantou Monastery in Astoria, where the abbot, Archbishop Paisios, was celebrating his nameday. We arrived quite late, owing to inexperience with the NY public transportation systems, but were able to hear two homilies (in Greek, of course), participate in the final portion of liturgy, receive antidoron, and partake of a wonderful fish feast with the Greek community of Astoria. As a final NY treat, I was able to spend most of Monday with my good friend, Herman Middleton, author of Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: Lives & Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece. Then, Monday evening, Christopher, Herman, and I met up for drinks and dinner with the Baldwin-esque Christopher Orr of Orrologion fame, and St Vladimir’s seminarian and Texan, David Bryan Wooten of Oh Taste & See.

Essentially the rest of my week was spent at the Association of Christian & Classical Schools conference, ‘Repairing the Ruins’, in North Carolina. I attended talks by such Protestant luminaries as Os Guinness and Douglas Wilson, had a wonderful time criticising them with the other faculty of my school, drank and sang Irish songs with the staff of Veritas Press, and returned heavy laden with complimentary books, most of them courtesy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and their poor, harassed employee, Michelle Huntley (I miss you already, Michelle). I shall wrap up this post with a brief overview of my winnings, concluding with two found in NY.

1) John Milton Gregory, The Seven Laws of Teaching, unabridged (Veritas, 2004). John Milton Gregory (1822-1898) was a Baptist clergyman and president of Kalamazoo College and the University of Illinois. Veritas advertises their edition as ‘unabridged’ owing to the wide familiarity throughout the twentieth century with an edition from which nearly all religious references had been expunged.

Although I’m sure I’d heard of this book before, I didn’t really start paying attention until I sat in on a workshop entitled ‘The Art of Rhetoric-Level Testing’ by Stephen Rippon of Tall Oaks Classical School in Delaware. Rippon used the book heavily in his talk and listed it in a handy bibliography he passed out. Later in the conference, Joan Middleton of Cary Christian School included the following quote in one of her handouts: ‘The very language with which knowledge must be expressed takes all its meanings from old knowledge.’ Finally, Denise Hollidge, in ‘Chanting & Singing: A Call to Teach the Grammar of Learning’, cited the book repeatedly without even naming the author, as though we should all know what she was talking about. Gregory’s was the only book I actually purchased at the conference. I certainly plan to read it before August.

2) John H. Haaren & A.B. Poland, Famous Men of the Middle Ages (Louisville, KY: Memoria, 2006). Part of a series of collections of brief illustrated accounts of historic persons, this was one of many books given out at a talk emphasising the integration of subjects called ‘Planning for a Creative Classroom’, by Veritas co-owner Laurie Detweiler.

3) Paul Heyne, A Student’s Guide to Economics, ed. Joseph A. Weglarz (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2007). This one is part of a series from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute designed as ‘reader-friendly introductions to the most important fields of knowledge in the liberal arts’. Visitors to the ISI table were initially allowed to choose one free of charge, but by the end of the conference Ms Huntley was eager to lighten her load as much as possible and I snapped up this along with anything else I saw.

4) Harvey C. Mansfield, A Student’s Guide to Political Philosophy (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2008). Another score from the closing moments of the ISI table.

5) James V. Schall, SJ, A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2000). This one was actually my first choice of the Student’s Guides, and I read it straight through Friday night. Writing for the student who feels his deepest questions—those which concern the meaning of life itself—are not being answered in his university education, Schall provides a delightful, highly informal sympathetic guide. Here is a welcome passage on the ‘Great Books’ approach to things:

[In his famous essay, ‘What Is Liberal Education?’, Leo] Strauss also mentioned, however—which is [Frederick D.] Wilhelmsen’s point [in an essay entitled ‘Great Books: Enemies of Wisdom’]—that careful study of the great thinkers reveals eventually that they contradict each other. And contradictories cannot both be right; but they can stimulate our curiosity. The study of ‘great books’ can lead students to a kind of implicit relativism or to a choice of a great mind that leads them far afield. Or they will think that if the great thinkers do not agree, ‘whom am I to dispute them?’ ‘Why bother?’ The whole point of this present essay, while in no way doubting Strauss’s point about the great minds contradicting each other, is to suggest that this controversy among the great minds can lead to a false sort of humility, something that misunderstands what the mind is about. In the modern world, Chesterton said, humility is misplaced; it is thought to be located in the intellect where it does not belong, whereas it is a virtue of the will, an awareness of our own tendencies to pride. We should not doubt our minds but our motives. The condition of not knowing should not lead us to a further skepticism but to a more intense search for truth. We should see in what sense a great mind might reveal something of the truth even in its error. [1]

One of the most charming things about this book is the little lists Schall scatters throughout, such as ‘Three of the More Than One-hundred P.G. Wodehouse Novels’, ‘Five Books on Thomas Aquinas’, ‘Five Classic Texts on Philosophy, Good Men, & Death’, and ‘Four Books Once Found in Used Book Stores’, culminating in ‘Schall’s Unlikely List of Books to Keep Sane By’. As a sample, here is Schall’s ‘Six Classic Texts Never to Be Left Unread’:

1. Plato, Gorgias
2. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
3. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
4. Augustine, Confessions
5. Pascal, Pensées
6. Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France [2]

6) James V. Schall, SJ, The Life of the Mind: On the Joys & Travails of Thinking (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2008). Having so thoroughly enjoyed Schall’s contribution to the Student’s Guides series, when Ms Huntley was packing up Saturday and I saw this one was still left, I knew I had to grab it. In the introduction, Schall writes:

Does this book have a ‘practical’ purpose? Will it help you get into graduate school, or get a better job, or run for office? Not really. It is largely addressed to what is impractical about ut, to what has to do with knowing, not doing, even granting their intimate relationship. The ‘doing’ that I envision is not merely the desire to find a book and to read it. It is to feel our soul moved by what is not ourselves, by the truth, by what is. [3]

7) Hugh Mercer Curtler, Recalling Education (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2001). Another book unjustly left sitting on the ISI table at the end of the conference, I had to rescue it. From the dust-jacket synopsis:

In this searching and accessible critique, Hugh Mercer Curtler [Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Honors Program at Southwest State University in Marshall, MN] argues that the purpose of education—enabling studnets to achieve intellectual autonomy, and thus true freedom—has been forgotten. Furthermore, he argues that any renewal of American civil society depends on the renewal of American education, for only when our students learn to become truly autonomous can they act as free and responsible citizens.

8) William F. Lynch, SJ, Christ & Apollo: The Dimensions of Literary Imagination (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2004). I first discovered this book while doing research for my Master’s thesis. Unfortunately, a perusal suggested it was a bit too tangential to my main argument and if there was anything directly relevant, it would take too long to find. I certainly intended to come back to it, an intention firmly bolstered by Fr Jonathan Tobias’s apparently permanent inclusion of the book in the ‘Open Books’ sidebar of his blog. Here is the final paragraph of Glenn Arbery’s introduction:

But Lynch’s great point, the one the powerfully abides in the wake of this book, the one that gives the book a continuing energy, si that for the ‘Christic imagination’ limitation is charged with God’s own nature—in other words, that even common circumstances and appearances, such as those routinely recounted in the Gospels, bear enough meaning to sustain two thousand years of continuous meditation and commentary. In developing his view of the Christian imagination, he does not feel the need to apologize for God’s failure to write as a philosopher or mathematician. Any situation—Flannery O’Connor’s ordinary famrs and doctor’s offices and family trips—can yield enormous meaning for the imagination sufficiently open to it. What the Lynch of Christ & Apollo clearly loves in literature is this access it affords to reality. He makes clearer than almost anyone else what an ontological poetics might truly be. His book liberates the imagination to face what is really in front of it—the image, with its reservoirs of profound hope, and the action that in it analogical unfolding leads one deeper and deeper into the mystery of the common thing—including, it turns out, the real life one already leads. [4]

9) Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Dostoevsky: His Life & Art, 2nd ed. (NY: Grove, 1960). Although I possess a lovely slipcased and illustrated edition of Yarmolinsky’s translation of The Brothers Karamazov, and wrote a fairly thoroughly researched senior paper on Dostoevsky as an undergrad, I didn’t recall ever having heard of this book when I saw it last week on a table full of books on a Manhattan sidewalk. The bookseller wanted five dollars for it, but as I only had four, he agreed. Here is the final paragraph:

Whatever course history may take, a large part of Dostoevsky’s work, so warm with compassion, so crowded with people inwardly seen, powerfully projected, so big with questionings, will trouble the blood, kindle the imagination, move the mind toward a concern with ultimate things. His major novels should continue to provide the reader with the sense of having glimpsed the human drama at its most intense, of having shared in the enterprise to which Dostoevsky at an early age promised to devote his life: the unravelling of the mystery of man. [5]

10) Elizabeth Schmidt, ed., Poems of New York (NY: Knopf, 2002). A contribution to the Everman’s Library Pocket Poets series, this was my little souvenir from the New York Public Library, where I also—to my great delight—acquired a library card. Though I could wish that Schmidt might have found a few selections earlier than Walt Whitman, I thought this very nearly a perfect souvenir. Here, in conclusion, is early twentieth-century Jamaican poet Claude McKay’s ‘The City’s Love’:

For one brief moment rare like wine,
The gracious city swept across the line;
Oblivious of the color of my skin,
Forgetting that I was an alien guest,
She bent to me, my hostile heart to win,
Caught me in passion to her pillowy breast.
The great, proud city, seized with a strange love,
Bowed down for one flame hour my pride to prove. [6]

[1] James V. Schall, SJ, A Student’s Guide to Liberal Learning (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2000), p. 24. Incidentally, this is a point I found echoed in one of Os Guiness’s talks, as well as N.D. Wilson’s workshop, ‘Story Wars’, on the importance of imparting discernment when we teach stories.

[2] Ibid., p. 15.

[3] James V. Schall, SJ, The Life of the Mind: On the Joys & Travails of Thinking (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2008), p. xvi.

[4] Glenn C. Arbery, ‘Introduction’, Christ & Apollo: The Dimensions of Literary Imagination, by William F. Lynch, SJ (Wilmington, DE: ISI, 2004), pp. xxxvii-xxxviii.

[5] Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Dostoevsky: His Life & Art, 2nd ed. (NY: Grove, 1960), p. 411.

[6] Claude McKay, ‘The City’s Love’, Poems of New York, ed. Elizabeth Schmidt (NY: Knopf, 2002), p. 45.

Met. Anthony on Tolstoy, Logismoi News

2010-06-10T07:52:00.005-05:00

Thanks to a kind reader, last night I received a pdf of the article I referred to in the last post—‘The Elder at Iasnaia Poliana: Lev Tolstoi & the Orthodox Starets Tradition’ by Pål Kolstø. Although I haven’t yet had time to read it (I am, however, currently reading Kolstø’s similar article on Tolstoy’s relationship to the strannik tradition in Russian spirituality), I did note the following interesting footnote right there on page 2:

After Tolstoi’s death in November 1910, the highly respected Russian theologian and church dignitary [Metropolitan] Antonii Khrapovitskii [of Kiev, later First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad] gave a talk on the topic ‘How Influence from Orthodoxy Is Reflected in Count L.N. Tolstoi’s Later Works’. The spiritual relationship between Orthodoxy and Tolstoi’s thinking went deep, Antonii asserted—much deeper, in fact, than Tolstoi himself had realized. Antonii (Khrapovitskii), ‘V chem prodolzhalo otrazhat’sia vliianie pravoslaviia na posledniia proizvedeniia gr. L.N. Tolstogo’, in Zhizneopisanie i tvoreniia blazhenneishego Antoniia, mitropolita Kievskogo i Galitskogo, 17 vols. (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1978), 14:247-68. Antonii had known Tolstoi personally and wrote no less than seven articles and small booklets about various aspects of Tolstoianism. For further details, see Pål Kolstø, ‘The Demonized Double: The Image of Lev Tolstoi in Russian Orthodox Polemics’, Slavic Review 65, 2 (2006): 304-24. [1]

This last is of course another article I’d like to see, readers! [Addendum: the article has just arrived, courtesy of Samn! of Notes on Arab Orthodoxy fame.]

In other news, I’m afraid I must announce that this post will likely be my last for the next week and a half. My best friend and fellow parishioner, Christopher, and I leave this morning for Memphis, TN, followed tomorrow by Wayne, WV, and Saturday by Long Island, NY. I will be spending two nights—Sunday and Monday—in Manhattan, and returning to Oklahoma City for only one day before departing for Durham, NC, for the annual Association of Christian Classical Schools conference for the rest of the week. I know of at least two or three readers/fellow bloggers I will be seeing during my travels, but I’d still love to hear from any others who might like to get together somewhere along the way. Feel free to e-mail me—probably the sooner, the better. In the meantime, I would ask all to pray for our safe journey.

[1]Pål Kolstø, ‘The Elder at Iasnaia Poliana: Lev Tolstoi & the Orthodox Starets Tradition’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian & Eurasian History, Vol. 9, #3, Summer 2008 (New Series), p. 534, n. 6.

Tolstoy, Lewis, Fr Alexander, & St Augustine on Cœlestial Hierarchy

2010-06-07T11:12:00.005-05:00

I was recently looking back at Tolstoy’s famous diatribe, What is Art?, and came across the following passage, typical not only of Tolstoy but of a whole strain of post-Reformation thinking about the ‘hierarchies’ of mediaeval Christianity:

And this ecclesiastic Christianity which is quite distinct from the other, began, on the basis of its doctrine, to change the apprication of men’s sentiments and the productions of the arts which conveyed them. This ecclesiastic Christianity not only did not recognize the fundamental and essential propositions of true Christianity,—the immediate relation of each man to the Father, and the brotherhood and equality of all men, resulting from it, and the substitution of humility and love for all kinds of violence,—but, on the contrary, by establishing a celestial hierarchy, similar to the pagan mythology, and a worship of this hierarchy, of Christ, the Holy Virgin, the angels, apostles, saints, martyrs, and not only of these divinities, but also of their representations, established as the essence of its teaching blind faith in the church and its decrees. [1]

The use of the word ‘hierarchy’ of course, and particularly with the modifier ‘celestial’, reminds us quite naturally of the inventor of the word himself, St Dionysius the Areopagite. Thus, while it is disappointing, it is not surprising to find C.S. Lewis describing Dionysian teaching in terms less stringent but hardly more approving than Tolstoy:

. . . [P]seudo-Dionysius is as certain as Plato or Apuleius that God encounters Man only through a ‘mean’, and reads his own philosophy into scripture as freely as Chalcidius had read his into the Timaeus. He cannot deny that Theophanies, direct appearances of God Himself to patriarchs and prophets, seem to occur in the Old Testament. But he is quite sure that this never really happens. These visions were in reality mediated through celestial, but created, beings ‘as though the order of the divine law laid it down that creatures of a lower order should be moved God-ward by those of a higher’ (iv). That the order of the divine law does so enjoin is one of his key-conceptions. His God does nothing directly that can be done through an intermediary; perhaps prefers the longest possible chain of intermediaries; devolution or delegation, a finely graded descent of power and goodness, is the universle principle. The Divine splendour (illustratio) comes to us filtered, as it were, through the Hierarchies. [2]

While I can’t say I was ever seriously troubled by the Dionysian hierarchies, it’s true that at one point they appeared to me to differ from what I took to be St Gregory Palamas’s emphasis on the direct experience of God’s uncreated energies. Any questions I had on that score, though, were more than answered by a brilliant article from the pen of Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin)—‘Dionysius Areopagites in the Works of St Gregory Palamas: On the Question of a “Christological Corrective” and Related Matters’ (available here). I urge all to read the article in full, but the turning point for me was the following statement:

As Romanides pointed out some years ago, neither Palamas nor Dionysius believed that the great theophanies of either the past (to the saints of Israel), or of the present (to the saints of the New Covenant) took or take place through angelic mediation, but rather that the angels served both then and now to explain and interpret the visio dei luminis.

The point was made even more vivid and convincing to me, however, when Fr Alexander went on to compare the angelic mediators to monastic elders:

More specifically, however, as the vocabulary which Dionysius deploys for the angels’ mediatory function should suggest to us—mystagogues, teachers, guides and directors (hêgoumenoi—in short, abbots!)—his own presumption is clearly of a monastic setting. We are reminded in fact, and not accidentally, of the spiritual fathers and elders who appear so prominently in our earliest monastic texts, as in, for example, the Vitae of Anthony and Pachomius, the Gerontikon, the Historia monachorum in Aegypto, the works of Evagrius Ponticus, and others. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere [here, that is], the geron or spiritual father is to a striking degree assimilated to the figure and role of the angelus interpres of the ancient apocalypses in both this earliest monastic literature, and thereafter to the present day.

But when I finally started reading St Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana for the first time the other day, I was surprised to find a response to a similar problem. In the Preface, the Bishop of Hippo is dealing with those who object to his producing a book on techniques for exegesis on the grounds that God Himself illuminates the exegete. They are particularly troubled at the notion of being instructed by a human being, and St Augustine seems to assume that they would not be as troubled as Lewis at the mediation of angels. Nevertheless, his arguments are very much relevant to the issues raised by Tolstoy. Responding to these objectors, St Augustine writes:

Let us beware of such arrogant and dangerous temptations, and rather reflect that the apostle Paul, no less, though cast to the ground and then enlightened by a divine voice from heaven, was sent to a human being to receive the sacrament of baptism and be joined to the church (Acts 9:3-8). And Cornelius the centurion, although an angel announced to him that his prayers had been heard and his acts of charity remembered, was nevertheless put under the tuition of Peter not only to receive the sacrament but also to learn what should be the objects of his faith, hope, and love. All this could certainly have been done through an angel [or through God Himself, I would add], but the human condition would be wretched indeed if God appeared unwilling to minister his word to human beings through human agency. It has been said, ‘For God’s temple is holy, and that temple you are’ (I Cor. 3:17): how could that be true if God did not make divine utterances from his human temple but broadcast direct from heaven or through angels the learning that he wished to be passed on to mankind? Moreover, there would be no way for love, which ties people together in the bonds of unity, to make souls overflow and as it were intermingle with each other, if human beings learned nothing from other humans. [3]

Already this last statement, which almost seems to anticipate Charles Williams, ought to overturn the Russian novelist's whole take on things. But the final clincher for Tolstoy comes a bit further down. Recall that he essentially made himself the guru of a new religion, accepting disciples and so on. Furthermore, the 2008-2009 Annotated Bibliography in the Tolstoy Studies Journal, Vol. XXI (2009), lists an article by one Pål Kolstø I’d very much like to obtain called ‘The Elder at Iasnaia Poliana: Lev Tolstoi & the Orthodox Starets Tradition’. [4] Consider the synopsis of Kolstø’s argument in light of Fr Alexander’s thesis:

Tolstoy was familiar with and fascinated by the institution of starchestvo, a peculiar Orthodox form of piety. He trasnferred the principles into his own practice of spiritual guidance while at the same time changing the foundation to serve his own purposes. Tolstoy acted as a heterodox starets, the rôle into whichc he was at first forced by his adherents and which he considered a natural burden. The article gives an account of starchestvo in Orthodox theology and practice, discussing Tolstoy’s attitude toward this institution as reflected in his life and works. [5]

Thus, St Augustine’s words very much apply to the ‘elder at Iasnaia Poliana’: ‘But if he reads and understands without any human expositor, why does he then aspire to expound it to others and not simply refer them to God so that they too may understand it by God’s inner teaching rather than through a human intermediary?’ [6] The answer was aptly given by St Ambrose of Optina after his 1890 visit with the writer: ‘He is very proud’. [7]

[1] Count Lev N. Tolstoy, Resurrection, Vols. I-II, What is Art?, The Christian Teaching, tr. Leo Wiener (Boston: Dana Estes & Co., 1904), pp. 188-9.

[2] C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval & Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 2002), pp. 72-3.

[3] St Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Teaching, tr. R.P.H. Green (Oxford: Oxford U, 1999), pp. 5-6.

[4] Pål Kolstø, ‘The Elder at Iasnaia Poliana: Lev Tolstoi & the Orthodox Starets Tradition’, Kritika: Explorations in Russian & Eurasian History 9:3 (2008), pp. 533-554.

[5] Joseph Schlegel, Olha Tytarenko, & Irina Sizova, ‘Annotated Bibliography for 2008-2009’, Tolstoy Studies Journal, Vol. XXI (2009), p. 76.

[6] St Augustine, p. 6.

[7] Qtd. in Leonard Stanton, The Optina Pustyn Monastery in the Russian Literary Imagination: Iconic Vision in Works by Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, & Others (NY: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 206.

The Grammar of Sanctity—The Title of St Gregory's Vita Patrum

2010-06-03T11:25:00.004-05:00

When I first came across the translation by Fr Seraphim (Rose) of the Vita Patrum of St Gregory of Tours, I recall noting the following comment in a little preface with the names of Fr Herman and Fr Damascene appended to it: ‘One book especially dedicated to his native ascetic strugglers whom he even knew personally, he called Vita Patrum, or The Life of the Fathers, as if these many men led one life before God—the ultimate Christian virtue of oneness of soul.’ [1] It struck me—and thus stuck with me—as a point fundamental to Orthodox ecclesiology, which I had seen expressed as well by St Justin (Popovich):

Christians are those through whom the holy Divine-human life of Christ is continued from generation to generation until the end of the world and of time, and they all make up one body, the Body of Christ—the Church: they are sharers of the Body of Christ and members of one another (I Cor. 12:27, 12-14, 10:17; Rom. 12:5; Eph. 3:6). The stream of immortal divine life began to flow and still
flows unceasingly from the Lord Christ, and through him Christians flow into eternal life. [2]

But for some strange reason, I all but forgot about St Gregory’s own statement about his in the Prologue to the Vita Patrum. He writes:

There are those who ask whether we should speak of the life of the saints or of their lives. Agellius and several other philosophers wished to speak of the lives. But the author Pliny, in the third book of his Art of Grammar, expresses himself thus: ‘The ancients spoke of the lives of each of us; but the grammarians do not believe that the word life has a plural.’ Therefore, it is manifestly better to say the Life of the Fathers rather than the Lives of the Fathers, because although there is a diversity of merits and virtues among them, nevertheless one life of the body sustains them all in this world. [3]

I was happily reminded of this wonderful passage by an interesting book I recently picked up at Half Price Books called Sacred Biography: Saints & Their Biographers in the Middle Ages, by Thomas J. Heffernan. Heffernan quotes the final sentence and then makes a series of comments:

Gregory’s conclusion is most important as it reveals his understanding of the relationship between theological truth and language. Notice that his argument moves beyond purely grammatical concerns into the realm of theology. The precedents of Gellius, Pliny, and the grammarians notwithstanding, the essential reason for his choice of the singular when composing a book of more than one life is based on the developing Christian idea that the saints share collectively in the luminous life of the incarnate Christ. In sum, sanctity is derived from the sacred, which is radically singular (see Eph. 5:8-14 and Rom. 12:3-10). [4]

Gregory subordinates grammaticality, and with it language’s ability to represent reality, to the exigencies of religious truth. Language, it appears can be employed in discourse to depict contexts which violate both the normative view of things (e.g., Gregory’s use of the singular rather than the plural) and its own syntactic structures so that it may be a handmaiden to theology. . . . [5]

Gregory of Tours presented his explanation of his choice of title with little rhetorical embellishment, and we can infer that he believed the meaning of his remarks to be obvious. Of course, it is anything but obvious to a modern reader. Such an understanding of the dimensions of the self (what Gregory would have expressed with the reflexive pronoun seipsum) and language’s capacity to reflect such concerns is alien. Gregory’s point here is of seminal importance in the genre of medieval saints’ lives. It reflects an understanding of sanctity, and of language’s responsibility in representing the essence of the holy, that is crucial to sacred biography and the mentality of these writers. In Gregory’s view narrative can reflect both actual circumstances and metaphysical truth. [6]

Heffernan’s is a very promising book. In a brief preface, he tells us his interest in the subject was first aroused by ‘the sheer number of lives of the saints which survived in manuscript. Surely, I thought, such numbers were an indication of importance; I promised myself to look into this.’ [7] But he laments:

Of all the genres that survive from the Middle Ages, only the lives of the saints, arguably the richest in terms of extant records, are still treated by literary historians as documents for source studies (Quellenkritik) and little else. The genre has until recently fallen through the net of scholarly research, avoided by the historians because it lacks ‘documentary’ evidential status and by the literary historians because saints’ lives are rarely works of art. [8]

[1] Herman Podmoshensky & Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), ‘Preface’, Vita Patrum: The Life of the Fathers, by St Gregory of Tours, tr. Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1988), p. 10.

[2] St Justin (Popovich), ‘Introduction to the Lives of the Saints’, Orthodox Faith & Life in Christ, tr. Fr Asterios Gerostergios, et al. (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 1994), p. 42.

[3] St Gregory, p. 163.

[4] Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints & Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (NY: Oxford U, 1992), p. 7.

[5] Ibid., p. 8.

[6] Ibid., p. 11.

[7] Ibid., p. vii.

[8] Ibid., p. 17.

Points of Interest in Kermode & Lewis

2010-05-31T14:57:00.004-05:00

Although there is no connection between them that I can think of, I’d like to post about some brief comments in two different books I’ve been reading the past couple of days. The first was a rather disappointing error. At the Half Price Books 20%-off Memorial Day sale, I picked up a copy of The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue, the published edition of the 1965 Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn Mawr College given by Frank Kermode. Having always enjoyed Kermode’s work, I felt let down when I noticed the words ‘Greek Orthodoxy’ while skimming through and stopped to read the following: ‘The Book of Revelation made its way only slowly into the canon—it is still unacceptable to Greek Orthodoxy—perhaps because of learned mistrust of over-literal interpretation of the figures.’ [1] I guess I thought it was a matter of common knowledge that, first, Revelation can be seen as part of the Eastern canon as early as St Athanasius’s 39th Festal Letter in 367, and, second, the only reason one might think otherwise is that it was never included in the Eastern lectionary.

The other thing I came across was of a happier sort. In a piece written as an introductory chapter to a book that was never completed, ‘De Audiendis Poetis’, C.S. Lewis is arguing against the view that the power of the wondrous tales—which he calls ‘ferlies’—found in Mediæval literature is always derived from primitive myths and rituals in which the tales had their origin. In response to this view, Lewis writes:

The myth or rite does not always (it may sometimes) seem to me superior or equal in interest to the romancer’s ferly. The cauldron of the Celtic underworld seems to me a good deal less interesting than the Grail. The tests and ordeals—often nasty enough—through which savages, like schoolboys, put their juniors interest me less than the testing of Gawain in Gawain & the Green Knight. In tracing the ferly’s imaginative potency to such origins you are therefore asking me to believe that something which moves me much is enabled to do so by the help of something which moves me little or not at all. If after swallowing a quadruple whiskey I said ‘I’m afraid I’m rather drunk’, and you replied, ‘That’s because, while you weren’t looking, someone put half a teaspoonful of Lager beer into it’, I do not think your theory would be at all plausible. [2]

I thought Lewis’s analogy with the quadruple whiskey simply wonderful.

[1] Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue (Oxford: Oxford U, 2000), p. 7.

[2] C.S. Lewis, Studies in Medieval & Renaissance Literature, collected by Walter Hooper (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 2008), pp. 14-5.

Sr Macrina Has Returned!

2010-05-29T14:07:00.002-05:00

For those not yet aware, one of my two favourite former Cistercians, Sr Macrina Walker of A vow of conversation, is back at the blogging wheel. She is still in the process of a possible journey to the Orthodox Church and is asking for prayers. In the meantime, however, she is already blogging about Fr Andrew Louth again, now from a tent somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the Netherlands!

'I Liked Him for His Goodness'—G.K. Chesterton

2010-05-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

Today, 29 May, is the birthday of the great English journalist, apologist, novelist, poet, controversialist, convert to Roman Catholicism, critic, biographer, and wit, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936). I have already posted a sort of personal introduction to GKC, a reworking of something originally written for those entirely unfamiliar with him, here. Naturally, I assume that the average Logismoi reader will know GKC fairly well, but there it is. Here is the entry for Chesterton in Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia:

English journalist, essayist, novelist, and poet; author of biography, history, literary criticism, and polemical works. Like his friend Hilaire Belloc, Chesterton was a propagandist of his Catholicism and his conservative political views (the two were referred to as Chesterbelloc). Chesterton became a Catholic in 1922, but he had always been a traditionalist, admiring the Victorians, romanticizing the Middle Ages, and attacking H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw. He is best remembered for his essays, such as ‘On Running after One’s Hat’ (1908), which are merry and witty, and for such poems as ‘Lepanto’ (1911), which are full of gusto. Sometimes he conveyed his serious ideas in fantastic novels, as in The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904), The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), and a series of detective novels, beginning with The Innocence of Father Brown (1911), in which the priest Father Brown is sleuth. Chesterton wrote the fine study The Victorian Age in Literature (1913). Among his polemical works are Heretics (1905), Orthodoxy (1908), What’s Wrong with the World? (1910), and The Everlasting Man (1925), an outline of history. [1]

I have to admit, this astonishingly brief article leaves something to be desired. I know little about Chesterton’s distributist views, but it doesn’t take a close acquaintance to see that calling them ‘conservative’ is a gross oversimplification, if not an outright falsehood. I recently saw here that Maximus Daniel Greeson had posted the following from a 19 April 1924 article of Chesterton’s in The Illustrated London News:

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. [2]

Also, I’m not sure that Chesterton really is ‘best remembered for his essays’, but likely more for those works which the article calls ‘polemical’ but which actually wear their polemicism so lightly and good-naturedly, and which go so far beyond the narrow confines of the specific beef with this or that sparring partner, that the term can be misleading. I for one first encountered GKC through Orthodoxy, and found that as a work of what I would call apologetics I liked it in many ways better than I had liked Mere Christianity when I first read that as a teenager.

At any rate, as a description of Chesterton’s work without any reference to his life, I certainly prefer what Terry Glaspey has to say in his handy little volume, Book Lover’s Guide to Great Reading: A Guided Tour of Classic & Contemporary Literature:

‘The Shakespeare of the aphorism’ is the title that someone has given to Gilbert Keith Chesterton. He had the ability to pack more paradox and more truth into a single sentence than possibly any writer in history. This characteristic makes his books a joy to read for their penetrating insight and their infectious cleverness. Put this together with a swashbuckling faith, a warm and joyous sense of humor, and a dependence on plain common sense, and you have a fine definition of Chesterton’s highly individual gift. It is a tough call to say which is better: his highly original nonfiction (for example, Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man) or his always-entertaining fiction (for example, the Father Brown stories and The Man Who Was Thursday). Read both for a model of a man who enjoyed his faith. [3]

I also cannot resist quoting a passage from C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy where he speaks of the early appeal of Chesterton, even for a young atheist:

I did not need to accept what Chesterton said in order to enjoy it. His humour was of the kind which I liked best—not ‘jokes’ imbedded in the page like currants in a cake, still less (what I cannot endure), a general tone of flippancy and jocularity, but the humour which is not in any way separable from the argument but is rather (as Aristotle would say) the ‘bloom’ on dialectic itself. The sword glitters not because the swordsman set out to make it glitter but because he is fighting for his liffe and therefore moving it very quickly. For the critics who think Chesterton frivolous or ‘paradoxical’ I have to work hard to feel even pity; sympathy is out of the question. Moreover, strange as it may seem, I liked him for his goodness. I can attribute this taste to myself freely (even at that age) because it was a liking for goodness which had nothing to do with any attempt to be good myself. I have never felt the dislike of goodness which seems to me to be quite common in better men than me.[4]

I have offered a goodly number of quotes and excerpts from GKC’s work, not only in the post to which I have already linked, but in several others on this blog. I will here give only two more, but these, I believe, new ones for this blog. First, from Orthodoxy:

I had often called myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist’s pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home. [5]

And now, naturally, for a poem—this one taken from The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse:

‘The Holy of Holies’

‘Elder father, though thine eyes
Shine with hoary mysteries,
Canst thou tell what in the heart
Of a cowslip blossom lies?

‘Smaller than all lives that be,
Secret as the deepest sea,
Stands a little house of seeds,
Like an elfin’s granary.

‘Speller of the stones and weeds,
Skilled in Nature’s crafts and creeds,
Tell me what is in the heart
Of the smallest of the seeds.’

‘God Almighty, and with Him
Cherubim and Seraphim,
Filling all eternity—
Adonai Elohim.’ [6]

[1] Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., ed. Katherine Baker Siepmann (NY: HarperCollins, 1987), p. 181.

[2] G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Works, Vol. XXXIII: The Illustrated London News, 1923-1925, ed. Lawrence J. Clipper & George J. Marlin (SF: Ignatius, 1990), p. 312.

[3] Terry W. Glaspey, Book Lover’s Guide to Great Reading: A Guided Tour of Classic & Contemporary Literature (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2001), pp. 48-9.

[4] C.S. Lewis, ‘Surprised by Joy’, The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis (NY: Inspirational, 1994), p. 105. I often feel that I must apologise for my rather lame edition of Surprised by Joy. The ‘inspirational writings’ of C.S. Lewis? Doesn’t that put him in the same section of the bookstore as Joel Osteen and The Prayer of Jabez? But this was a high school graduation gift from my parents, and they inscribed it with these words:

We know that Lewis has been a strong influence in your spiritual life, and we trust that this volume will bring you much pleasure and inspiration.

Plus, as the cover tells me, it has ‘Four Bestselling Works Complete in One Volume’—Surprised by Joy, Reflections on the Psalms, The Four Loves, and The Business of Heaven—all of which are superior to Osteen and Jabez.

[5] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (SF: Ignatius, 1995), pp. 85-6.

[6] D.H.S. Nicholson & A.H.E. Lee, eds., The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse (Lakewood, CO: Acropolis, 1997), pp. 519-20.

'Come Ye, Christian People of Norway!'—St Hallvard of Husaby

2010-05-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Today, 15 May on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy Passion-bearer Hallvard Vebjørnsson of Husaby (1020-1043), Defender of Oslo. [1] St Hallvard is the patron Saint of Oslo (and indeed, is depicted on the seal of the city, as one can see below), as well as of my sponsor when I was first received into the Orthodox Church fourteen years ago. As with many martyred Saints, very little is known about St Hallvard apart from the story of his death. Here is the entry for him in the Oxford Dictionary of Saints:

Hallvard (d. 1043), martyr and patron of Oslo. The son of a noble landholder of Husaby (Norway), he spent his youth in Viking activities.

One day, crossing the Drammenfiord by boat, he was accosted by a woman who appealed to him to take her with him, as she was falsely accused of stealing and was in danger of death. Her pursuers then arrived and called on him peremptorily to give her up. He refused as he believed her to be innocent; whereupon they were both shot dead with a bow. Hallvard’s body was thrown in the sea with a stone attached, but it floated: he was revered as a martyr for defending an innocent person. His body was enshrined in a stone church in Oslo, whose patron he became and still remains. [2]

I will add only that according to the Wikipedia article (here), St Hallvard was the son of one Vebjørn of Husaby and his wife Torny, a relative of St Olaf of Norway.

Although I still have not read the acclaimed novel Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, I noticed that volume 2 of my edition is entitled The Mistress of Husaby. Three hundred years after the time of St Hallvard, Kristin’s husband is a knight of Husaby, and the volume opens with their return there. We read:

They had come up into Skaun, and were riding high on a hillside. Below them in the valley bottom the woods stood white and shaggy with rime; everywhere the sunlight glittered, and a small lake in the midst flashed blue. Then all at once the troop passed out from a little pinewood, and Erlend pointed ahead:

‘There lies Husaby, Kristin. God grant you many happy days there, my own wife!’ he said, with a thrill in his voice.

Before them stretched broad plough-lands, white with rime. The manor stood, as it were, on a broad shelf midway on the hillside—nearest them lay a small church of light-coloured stone, and just south of it were the clustered houses; they were many and great; the smoke whirled up from their smoke-vents. Bells began ringing from the church, and many folk came streaming from the courtyard to meet them, with shouts of greeting. The young men in the bridal trains clashed their weapons one on another—and with a great clattering and the thunder of hoofs and joyous uproar the troop swept forward towards the new-married man’s abode. [3]

Reader Isaac Lambertson has written a beautiful Akolouthia for St Hallvard, available online here at the Orthodox England site. In conclusion, I offer the Idiomelon in Tone 2 and the Kontakion in Tone 8 of the Passion-bearer:

Idiomelon in Tone 2

Come, all ye Orthodox peoples! Come ye, Christian people of Norway! Come, ye citizens of Oslo! Let us extol Hallvard the wondrous youth. who, nurtured from infancy on the precepts of Christ, and reared in piety and reverence, bravely sheltered the defenseless woman, whose life and that of her unborn babe were sought by savage malefactors; for he was mindful of the words of Jesus, that no-one hath greater love, than that he lay down his life for his fellow man. Wherefore, let us imitate Hallvard as he imitated his Lord, that we also may be vouchsafed a place in paradise with Him.

Kontakion in Tone 8

Like a merchant man seeking fine pearls, the young Hallvard plied the seas of life; and having freighted the ship of his soul with compassion and all the Christian virtues, he found a most precious treasure on the waters of Dremmenfjord, and sold all he had, purchasing it with the very blood of his life, for he bravely shielded the defenceless woman for the sake of Christ his God. Wherefore, marvelling at his innocence and valour, let us cry aloud: Wondrous is God Who is glorious in His saints!

[1] Today, of course, is also the feastday of the more well-known St Pachomius the Great, and I put a great deal of work into a post for him (here) last year.

[2] David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 242.

[3] Sigrid Undset, Kristin Lavrandatter, Vol. II: The Mistress of Husaby, tr. Charles Archer (NY: Knopf, 1946), p. 277.

War & Peace 2: Tolstoy & Homer

2010-05-27T00:00:00.003-05:00

In a post earlier this month announcing his intention to reread War & Peace in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation, Matthew Reed quotes from and links to a post he had written a few years ago on a previous blog comparing Tolstoy’s novel with Homer’s Iliad. I’m glad to see this, because this is the very subject I had chosen for this post. Indeed, Matthew notes ‘I believe someone famous compared the two books before me so this is nothing new’, and in fact the comparisons seem to have begun with Tolstoy himself. Harold Bloom insists, ‘When Tolstoy compares himself to Homer we are persuaded, as no other post-Homeric writer could persuade us. Whether as prophet or as moralist, Tolstoy remains both an epic figure and a creator of epic.’ [1] Such comparisons continue, according to Richard Pevear, with a book I’d very much like to get my hands on—Rachel Bespaloff’s On the Iliad, a ‘comparison of Homer and Tolstoy’. Pevear quotes Bespaloff’s words, ‘Tolstoy’s universe, like Homer’s, is what our own is from moment to moment. We don’t step into it; we are there.’ [2]

But while I believe there certainly is something to the points of commonality that Matthew notes in his old post, it seems to me that the fact that we are dealing with two lengthy and unflinching looks at the horror of war can mask what I believe are some important differences. They are differences which do not seem so important to many modern readers, but which are necessitated by the distance between circa 9th-c. BC Greece and 19th-c. AD Russia. I’d like to consider these difference in two closely related areas: first, in terms of distinctly generic characteristics, and second, in terms of the specific portrayal of the common epic theme of war, which links the two together whilst simultaneously highlighting their distance from each other. I should point out, however, that these observations are based solely on my reading of the first volume, as well as my reading of a few critics on the subject of Tolstoy. Some of them are general enough to be safely stated at the outset, while others are not. We shall see whether they are borne out as the novel progresses.

Bloom refers to Tolstoy as ‘both an epic figure and a creator of epic’, and most of us feel we know and accept what he means by this. But our familiarity with this use of the term ‘epic’ can cause us to forget that it is a very broad and, I believe, recent one. Consider, by contrast, the seminal definition of ‘epic’ in Aristotle’s Poetics:

But as for the imitative art that is narrative [in manner] and employs metrical language [as its medium], it is evident that, just as in tragedies, its plots should be dramatic in structure—that is, should involve a single action, whole and complete in itself, having a beginning, a middle, and an end, so that like one whole living creature it may produce its appropriate pleasure—and that its structure should not resemble histories, which necessarily present not a single action but a single period of time with all that happened therein to one or more persons, no matter how little relation one event may have had with another. [3]

Of the features named here, I find that the Iliad and War & Peace have only the narrative manner in common. Tolstoy certainly doesn’t use metrical language. Indeed, Prince Mirsky has observed, ‘His style is deliberately prosaic—purged to chemical purity of all “poetry” and rhetoric—sternly puritanical prose.’ [4] As for singleness of action, Richard Freeborn observes in his contribution to The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, ‘The greatness of War & Peace lies in the very multiplicity of its many locales, characters and viewpoints’, [5] and Prince Mirsky notes the ‘vast proportions, the numerous personages, [and] the frequent changes of scene’. [6]

It is also worth noting that the epic metre—the heroic hexametre—is entirely discrete. Aristotle writes, ‘Indeed, it would seem out of keeping if anyone were to compose a narrative imitation in some other meter or in a combination of meters, since in comparison with the other verse forms the heroic [hexametre] is the most deliberate and weighty.’ [7] Now, this might seem to be a moot point, since, as I’ve emphasised, Tolstoy doesn’t use metre at all, and doesn’t even quote poetry the way Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov frequently does, for instance. [8] But the equivalent in Tolstoy of the mixing of the ancient genres, so foreign to epic, is the mixing of ‘genres’ in its more modern sense. War & Peace is hardly a straightforward narrative. As Prince Mirsky notes, Tolstoy ‘carried further than anyone (except Aksakov) the deliberate neglect of narrative interest and the deliberate avoidance of artificial construction.’ [9] Pevear refers to ‘the sudden leaps from fiction to history, from narration to philosophizing’, [10] but even this does not quite go far enough. For the ‘realism’ of prose leaves all of the various examples of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls ‘primary speech genres’ on the level of their own style, rather than sublimating them in the monologism of a novelistic equivalent of the heroic hexametre. [11] Though all is controlled by Tolstoy (and indeed, Bakhtin insists that he is more monologic than Dostoevsky), to a great degree we still find that the charactres have their own voices, expressed in dialogue, letters, commands, ejaculations, etc., and even the narrator shifts from simply telling us or describing to us the action of the narrative to expounding a philosophy of history. Though we do not find different metres, the variety of prose ‘genres’ is perhaps even more striking.

Of course, there are other characteristics of the epic of which Aristotle is not quite consciously aware, because he takes them for granted. In the brief paper I posted here, I summarised some of Bakhtin’s comparisons of the epic with the novel: the epic is monoglot (that is, scarcely even aware of other languages or voices than its own, much less reflecting or incorporating them), its subject matter is of an elevated and uniformly serious type, its meaning is straight-forward and non-ironic. Tolstoy’s novel is permeated with French and sometimes German, even when the prose itself is actually written in Russian, he is prone to deal with earthy and comic situations, and his work is replete with irony, ambivalence, and implication.

In fact, while I am initially tempted to say that War & Peace, like the epic poetry of old, is an example of ‘the literature of ruling social groups’, [12] it certainly does not belong to the ‘ruling social group’ of its day in the same way as the epics. What Prince Mirsky calls Tolstoy’s ‘satirical representation of society and of diplomacy’ [13] could have no place in The Iliad. In Bakhtin’s view, satire is an example of a ‘parodic-travestying literature’, which ‘introduces the permanent corrective of laughter, of a critique on the one-sided seriousness of the lofty direct word, the corrective of reality that is always richer, more fundamental amd most importantly too contradictory and heteroglot to be fit into a high and straightforward genre.’ [14] Indeed, such forms are linked with the very pre-history of the novel itself—

These parodic-travestying forms . . . destroyed the homogenizing power of myth over language; they freed consciousness from the power of the direct word, destroyed the thick walls that had imprisoned consciousness within its own discourse, within its own language. A distance arose between language and reality that was to prove an indispensable condition for authentically realistic forms of discourse. [15]

But these generic differences may perhaps seem too obvious. Of course Tolstoy’s novel is not an epic poem, one may say! Tolstoy himself denies that it fits any genre at all: ‘It is not a novel, still less an epic poem, still less a historical chronicle. War & Peace is what the author wanted and was able to express, in the form in which it is expressed.’ [16] But let’s consider at least one point of definite contact with epic as it is usually conceived—its preoccupation with war. Superficially, this is one of the novel’s most characteristically ‘epic’ features. The Iliad is the consummate poem of war, and the Aeneid begins with the famous words Arma virumque cano, which Robert Fitzgerald has gone so far as to render, ‘I sing of warfare and a man at war.’ [17]

But while war in the Iliad is inevitably terrible, there is never any surprise that this should be so. It is worth quoting C.S. Lewis at length:

It is all the more terrible because the poet takes it all for granted, makes no complaint. It comes out casually, in similes.

As when the smoke ascends to the sky from a city afar
Set in an isle, which foes have compassed round in war,
And all day long they struggle as hateful Ares bids.
(Il. XVIII, 207.)

Or again,

As when a woman upon the body falls
Of her husband, killed in battle before the city walls. . . .
She sees him down and listens how he gasps his life away,
And clings to the body, crying, amid the foes; but they
Beating her back and shoulders with butts of spears amain
Pull her away to slavery to learn of toil and pain.
(Od. VIII, 523.)

. . . This is a mere simile—the sort of thing that happens every day. . . . For Homer it is all in the day’s work. . . .

. . . In Homer, [epic] greatness lies in the human and personal tragedy built up against this background of meaningless flux. It is all the more tragic because there hangs over the heroic world a certain futility. ‘And here I sit in Troy,’ says Achilles to Priam, ‘afflicting you and your children.’ Not ‘protecting Greece’, not even ‘winning glory’, not called by any vocation to afflict Priam, but just doing it because that is the way things come about. . . . Here there is just the suffering. Perhaps this was in Goethe’s mind when he said, ‘The lesson of the Iliad is that on this earth we must enact Hell.’ Only the style—the unwearying, unmoved, angelic speech of Homer—makes it endurable. Without that the Iliad would be a poem beside which the grimmest modern realism is child’s play. [18]

Thus, we can see that War & Peace is not even among ‘the grimmest modern realism’. As Prince Mirsky notes, ‘The philosophy of the novel is . . . profoundly optimistic . . . The optimistic nature of the philosophy is reflected in the idyllic tone of the narrative. In spite of the horror—by no means veiled—of war, . . . the general message of War & Peace is one of beauty and satisfaction that the world should be so beautiful.’ [19] It is for this reason that Tolstoy’s charactres are so surprised by the horror of war—it fits ill with the beauty of the world, which must exist in ‘spite’ of it. Think of Part 2 of Volume I of War when, superficially wounded, Nikolai Rostov thinks to himself of the approaching French, ‘Who are they? Why are they running? Can it be they’re running to me? Can it be? And why? To kill me? Me, whom everybody loves so?’ [20] Then, recall by contrast the resignation of young Patroclus in Il. XVI, ll. 988-97, struggling for breath when Hector has speared him through the bowels:

‘. . .
A gift of the son of Cronus, Zeus—Apollo too—
they brought me down with all their deathless ease,
they are the ones who tore the armor off my back.
Even if twenty Hectors had charged against me—
they’d all have died here, laid low by my spear.
No, deadly fate in league with Apollo killed me.
From the ranks of men, Euphorbus. You came third,
and all you could do was finish off my life . . .
One more thing—take it to heart, I urge you—
you too, you won’t live long yourself, I swear.
. . .’ [21]

Another difference lies in Tolstoy’s use of war as what Freeborn calls a ‘catalyst’ for the moral transformation of his charactres. [22] While Freeborn finds that in Tolstoy’s depiction of war ‘no guiding hand, let alone any providence, seems capable of bringing order out of chaos’, in the same paragraph he observes that ‘on those of his characters who experience it intimately’ the effect of war ‘is morally transforming’. We see when Nikolai Rostov is wounded and, in Freeborn’s words, ‘suddenly realizes . . . that he is no longer a little boy protected by the love and loyalty of his family.’ [23] In fact, according to Bakhtin, the whole notion of a hero changing is profoundly alien to epic, and was already identified in the 18th c. as one of the unique characteristics of the novelistic hero: ‘the hero should not be portrayed as an already completed and unchanging person but as one who is evolving and developing, a person who learns from life’. [24] It is ironic that it is precisely the ‘epic’ preoccupation with war that constitutes a catalyst for the charactres’ moral transformation.

There are, of course, other possible avenues for exploration when we place these two great works side by side. Just as Homer’s epic taught the ancient Greeks the nature of and means of acquiring arete, Freeborn sees Tolstoy as teaching a kind of—perhaps uniquely modern—heroism, ‘the “active virtue” animating the best men in Russian society’. [25] There is also the question of similarity or dissimilarity between what Bakhtin calls the ‘epic past’ in Homer, and the evocation of ‘the historical scene’ in Tolstoy. [26] But this is already a long post, and my family is anxiously awaiting use of the computer. I’d love to hear any comments on these points, as well as the various points I have discussed.

Finally, Andrea Elizabeth has notified me that she already has a few War & Peace posts as well. They can be found here.

[1] Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books & School of the Ages (NY: Riverhead, 1995), p. 312.

[2] Qtd. in Richard Pevear, ‘Introduction’, War & Peace, by Leo Tolstoy, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky (NY: Vintage, 2008), p. xiv.

[3] Aristotle, Poetics, tr. James Hutton (NY: Norton, 1982), pp. 71-2.

[4] Prince Dmitri Svyatopolk Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature: From its Beginnings to 1900, ed. Francis J. Whitfield (NY: Vintage, 1958), p. 264.

[5] Richard Freeborn, ‘The nineteenth century: the age of realism, 1855-80’, The Cambridge History of Russian Literature, rev. ed., ed. Charles A. Moser (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 1995), p. 303.

[6] Mirsky, p. 272.

[7] Aristotle, p. 73.

[8] In fact, this insistence on rarely mixing poetry with his prose might actually be considered a feature that brings Tolstoy’s work closer to the spirit of the ancient genre and makes it less novelistic in the sense we shall be discussing.

[9] Mirsky, p. 264.

[10] Pevear, p. x.

[11] This is not to say that Tolstoy’s work does not contain a deeper monologism. As Bakhtin writes, in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. & tr. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1994):

Such characters as Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov, Levin, and Nekhlyudov have their own well-developed fields of vision, sometimes almost coinciding with the author’s (that is, the author sometimes sees the world as if through their eyes), their voices sometimes almost merge with the author’s voice. But not a single one ends up on the same plane with the author’s word and the author’s truth, and with none of them does the author enter into dialogic relations. All of them, with their fields of vision, with their quests and their controversies, are inscribed into the monolithically monologic whole of the novel that finalizes them all and that is never, in Tolsto, the kind of ‘great dialogue’ that we find in Dostoevsky. All the clamps and finalizing moments of this monologic whole lie in the zone of authorial ‘surplus’, a zone that is fundamentally inaccessible to the consciousnesses of the characters. (p. 72)

[12] Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, tr. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist (Austin: U of Texas, 1998), p. 4.

[13] Mirsky, p. 271.

[14] Bakhtin, Dialogic, p. 55.

[15] Ibid., p. 60.

[16] Qtd. in Pevear, p. xi. In fact, Tolstoy’s denial that his work is a novel presumes the 18th-c. (and earlier) model of the novel. ‘But,’ Bakhtin insists, ‘it is characteristic of the novel that it never enters into this whole [of literature conceived as a totality of genres], it does not participate in any harmony of the genres. In these eras [the Greek classical period, the Golden Age of Roman literature, the neoclassical period] the novel has an unofficial existence, outside “high” literature’ (Dialogic, p. 4). In other words, its lack of well-defined generic qualities is precisely what places War & Peace within the novelistic ‘genre’ as Bakhtin conceives it.

[17] Virgil, The Aeneid, tr. Robert Fitzgerald (NY: Random House, 1983), p. 3.

[18] C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (NY: Oxford U, 1965), pp. 30-1.

[19] Mirsky, pp. 272-3.

[20] Tolstoy, p. 189. The scene is an interesting parallel to Maxim Gorky’s words about Tolstoy himself:

All his life he feared and hated death, all his life there throbbed in his soul the ‘Arsamasian terror’—must he die? The whole world, all the earth looks towards him [Me, whom everybody loves so?]; from China, India, America, from everywhere living throbbing threads stretch out to him; his souls is for all and forever. Why should not nature make an exception to her law, give to one man physical immortality? (qtd. in Bloom, p. 311)

[21] Homer, The Iliad, tr. Robert Fagles (NY: Penguin, 1998), p. 440.

[22] Freeborn, p. 302.

[23] Ibid., p. 301.

[24] Bakhtin, Dialogic, p. 10.

[25] Freeborn, p. 299.

[26] Ibid., p. 299.

War & a Fur Piece

2010-05-26T12:36:00.003-05:00

I look forward to another comment or two on my first post on Tolstoy’s War & Peace, and as mentioned another has been planned. But I also wanted to point out that Matthew Reed of a fur piece has written a very interesting post of his own (and has promised more) on the expression which Pevear & Volokhonsky have rendered ‘clerical persons’ in V. I, Part 1.xx. I urge all, especially those with a good knowledge of Russian, to read it and comment here.

War & Peace 1: Princess Marya Bolkonsky on Spiritual Reading

2010-05-26T00:00:00.003-05:00

Our target date for the completion of Volume 1 of Tolstoy’s War & Peace has now come and gone (see this post), and I hope that other readers besides myself are also making some headway in this weighty tome. Although I have a matter of greater pertinence to the central themes of Tolstoy’s magnum opus to post on later, I wanted to go ahead and excerpt a brief passage that struck me early on. Princess Marya Nikolaevna Bolkonsky has received a copy of Karl von Eckartshausen’s ‘occult treatise’ (in the translators’ words), A Key to the Mysteries of Nature, from her friend Julie Karagin, with the recommendation, ‘Read the mystical book I am sending you and that is causing a furor here [in St Petersburg society]. Though there are things in this book that are hard to grasp with weak human understanding, it is an admirable book, the reading of which calms and elevates the soul.’ [1] The more sensible Princess Marya replies:

A thousand thanks, dear friend, for the work you have sent me, and which is causing such a furor there. However, since you tell me that amidst several good things there are others that weak human understanding cannot grasp, it would seem to me rather useless to occupy myself with unintelligible reading matter; which by that very fact cannot be of any fruit. I have never been able to understand the passion certain persons have for muddling their wits by fastening upon mystical books, which only awaken doubts in their minds, excite their imagination, and give them an exaggerated character totally contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us read the Apostles and Gospel. Let us not seek to penetrate what they contain of the mysterious, for how should we dare aspire, miserable sinners that we are, to initiate ourselves into the terrible and sacred secrets of Providence, so long as we wear this fleshly husk, which raises an impenetrable veil between us and the eternal? Let us limit ourselves, then, to studying the sublim principles that our divine Savior has left us for our conduct here below; let us seek to conform ourselves to them and to follow them, let us persuade ourselves that the less flight we give to our weak human spirit, the more pleasing it is to God, who rejects all science that does not come from him; that the less we seek to delve into what he has been pleased to conceal from our knowledge, the sooner he will grant us the discovery of it through his divine spirit. [2]

The excitement over the book in St Petersburg society reminds me of the whole unfortunate Masonic spirit of that time as described by Fr Georges Florovsky in Ways of Russian Theology—that is, truly Masonic, rather than ‘Masonic’ by association or otherwise tenuous connection.

For its part, Princess Marya’s wise response calls to mind two things. First of all, St Barsanuphius of Gaza wrote to a brother who had asked (in Letter 547) whether it is okay for him to read works of dogmatic theology: ‘I would not like you to meditate on these because they raise the intellect upward; I would prefer you to meditate on the words of the Old Men because these humble the intellect downward.’ [3] Second, in his ‘Prologue’ to the Evergetinos, St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain wrote:

The whole of the moral philosophy of the Gospels summons all men to itself. There are those who concern themselves in this or that way with certain other types of philosophy; and of these persons, some spend all of their days studying, say, mathematics or physics, while others concentrate on metaphysics and more general subjects. Yet they entirely neglect moral philosophy, even though it is both the paramount and most necessary of all types of philosophy. These men study the harmony and order of the heavens, and earth, and all other matters. But because they do not know, as they ought, that the investigation of ourselves is distinctly superior to that of alien matters and, moreover, because they do not know tha tknowledge on its own—that is, being bereft of practical application—has no substance and does not differ from fantasy, as the holy Maximos notes, precious few of these men address the question of how to bring themselves into harmony with the beauty of moral life, or how to learn true virtues through experience. Now, I ask you: What is the good of materialistic philosophy, when the soul has a philosophy of its own, yet is crudely beset by passions? I, for one, see no good. Surely we must apply ourselves to moral philosophy, or risk being found wanting in relation to our higher aspect.

Such as these former things much concern the majority of people. The God-fearing Fathers, however, determined that their most holy system was superior, sensing with the more percipient eyes of the mind how truly beneficial is this moral type of philosophy and how readily they might advance to the other kinds of philosophy if they should first become facile in the system in question. [4]

Of course these Saints are speaking of books and areas of study which are not necessarily false or harmful per se, and yet they still warn the faithful about preoccupation with them. Although I am not familiar with the work of this Karl von Eckartshausen, I am rather dubious of its consistency with Orthodox Christianity!

I look forward to seeing posts from other bloggers who may have joined in the War effort. I am not following blogs as closely these days as I once did, and would enjoy receiving an e-mail or a comment notifying me in case of any new posts. I will gladly link to them in order to facilitate further discussion.

[1] Leo Tolstoy, War & Peace, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky (NY: Vintage, 2008), p. 93.

[2] Ibid., pp. 94-5.

[3] Ss Barsanuphius & John, Letters, Vol. 2, tr. Fr John Chryssavgis, Vol. 114 of The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation (Washington, DC: The Catholic U of America, 2007), p. 132.

[4] St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, ‘Prologue’, The Evergetinos: A Complete Text, Book I, ed. & tr. Archbishop Chrysostomos, Hieromonk Patapios, et al. (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2008), pp. xxxii-xxxiii.

St Cyril Among the Saracens

2010-05-25T11:32:00.004-05:00

I thought this was an interesting story from the ‘For Consideration’ section of yesterday’s Prologue reading. St Cyril, Equal to the Apostles, addresses the question of a Christian pacifism:

They asked St Cyril in the Saracen camp: ‘As a Christian, is it possible to wage war and also to fulfil Christ’s command to pray to God for your enemies?’ To this St Cyril replied: ‘If, in one law, there are two commandments written and given to men to fulfil, which man would the better fulfil the law—he who fulfils one commandment or he who fulfils both?’ To this the Saracens replied: ‘Undoubtedly, he who fulfils both.’ St Cyril continued: ‘Christ our God commands us to pray to God for all those who persecute us, and to do good to them, but He has also said to us: “Greater love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends” [John 15:13]. And we therefore submit to the insults that our enemies cast at us individually, and pray to God for them, but as a group we defend one another and lay down our lives for one another, so that you wouldn’t, by enslaving our brothers, take away their souls along with their bodies and kill them off completely.’ [1]

According to Anthony-Emil Tachiaos, St Cyril went among the Saracens mainly as a political diplomat, but true to the tradition we considered yesterday (here), was also caught up in extensive theological conversations. In Tachiaos’s words:

It is apparent from this [passage in St Cyril’s biography] that the discussions took place in the course of lengthy symposia, around a table laden with provender. At first the talk was theological, but it soon encompassed other subjects. The Arabs cross-examined Cyril and were stunned by the extent of his knowledge; and having tried unsuccessfully to impress him with their own knowledge, they were quick to ask him: ‘How do you know all this?’ Cyril replied first with a parable, which brought him to the proud maxim that expressed all the self-assurance of Byzantine thinking: ‘All the sciences started with us’. [2]

[1] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 2, tr. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 167.

[2] Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Cyril & Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2001), p. 32.

'Our Sacred Pair of Enlighteners'—Ss Cyril & Methodius

2010-05-24T11:22:00.004-05:00

Today, 11 May on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy Apostles to the Slavs, Cyril & Methodius of Thessaloniki (9th c.). I posted on these great Saints on their feastday last year, and have mentioned them and their mission numerous other times (see these posts), so this will likely be brief post. Sir Dimitri Obolensky calls Ss Cyril & Methodius ‘the greatest of all missionaries who worked among the Slavs’, and singles out St Cyril as ‘a linguistic genius’ who ranks ‘among the greatest philologists Europe has ever produced’. [1] Though widely renowned as the inventor of an alphabet, generally agreed to be the ‘Glagolitic’, R. Auty credits the Saints with the ‘establishment’ of the Old Church Slavonic literary language itself. [2] Here is the account of the lives of these two holy brothers in the Prologue:

They were brothers from Salonica, of eminent and wealthy parents, Leo and Maria. The elder brother, Methodius, spent ten years as an officer among the Slavs in Macedonia, and thus learned the Slavic language. [3] After that, Methodius went off to Olympus and gave himself to monastic asceticism, and Cyril (Constantine) later joined him there. When the Khazarite king, Kagan, sought preachers of the Christian faith from the Emperor Michael, the Emperor commanded that these two brothers be found and sent to the Khazars. They converted Kagan to the Christian faith and baptised him, together with a great number of his nobles and an even greater number of the people. After some time, they returned to Constantinople, where they compiled a Slavic alphabet of 38 letters and began to translate the service books from Greek to Slavonic. At the invitation of Prince Rastislav, they went to Moravia, where, with great devotion, they spread and confirmed the Faith, made more copies of the books, brought them priests and taught the young. They went to Rome at the invitation of the Pope, and Cyril fell ill and died there, on February 14th, 869. Then Methodius returned to Moravia and laboured at the confirming of the Faith among the Slavs until his death. After his death—he entered into rest in the Lord on April 6th, 885—his disciples, the Five Followers, with St Clement as bishop at the beginning, crossed the Danube [4] and moved towards the south, to Macedonia, where, from Ochrid, they continued the work among the Slavs that Cyril and Methodius had begun in the north. [5]

In another essay from the same book I have already quoted, Obolensky considers Ss Cyril and Methodius in their distinct rôle as Byzantine missionaries, or more properly, missionaries of the East Roman empire. Thus, they were missionaries and diplomats, a ‘double rôle’ which ‘resulted from the close relationship . . . between the evangelical ideal of the Byzantine Church and the foreign policy of the empire.’ The (Greek-speaking) Romans of this period directly identified ‘the Pax Romana and the Pax Christiana’, believing that they had been uniquely ‘consecrated to the service of Christ by the emperor Constantine, and were therefore the new chosen people who had the duty to bring the Gospel to the barbarians of the whole world.’ Obolensky goes on to write:

To such an ambassador was naturally attached something of the pomp and majesty of his political sovereign. Missionaries and diplomats of Byzantium, Cyril and Methodius were also Byzantines of their time, typical representatives, no matter how eminent, of the cultural elite of their period. The revival of monastic spirituality and of humanistic scholarship in the ninth century, which some historians have termed the ‘Byzantine renaissance’, remained imprinted on their thought and their careers. Methodius the monk and Cyril the scholar, professor at the University of Constantinople and pupil of [Saint] Photius [the Great], the greatest humanist of the age, admirably personified these two aspects of Byzantine civilization of the ninth century. This was a period in which the intellectuals and statesmen of Byzantium believed more than ever in their empire’s world-wide mission. [6]

I thought this an interesting dimension to a portrait of the Saints. It is rightly noted that they were so enlightened as to bring Christianity to the Slavs in the Slavs’ own language. As St Cyril wrote in his ‘Prologue’ to the Slavonic translation of the Gospels (which I have posted in full here):

. . .
Lest having an unenlightened mind,
And listening to the Word in foreign tongue,
You hear it like the voice of a copper bell.
For Saint Paul, in teaching, said this:
‘In offering my prayer up to God
I would rather speak five words
That all my brethren understand,
Than a multitude of incomprehensible words.’ [7]

But while it is thus undoubtedly correct in a certain sense to speak of the ‘baptism’ of Slavic culture, we mustn’t forget the extent to which the emerging Slavic Christianity was a Byzantine one speaking in the Slavonic language. Drawing on the renowned Russian literary historian and Slavicist, Dmitri S. Likhachev, [8] Anthony-Emil Tachiaos writes:

When they accepted Orthodoxy from Byzantium, the Slavic people simultaneously accepted a multitude of cultural and educational elements as well, the main vehicle of which was the Byzantine texts circulating amongst them in Slavic translation. And whereas the Slavs had only their popular oral tradition of folktales and songs, the Byzantines gave them an entire written tradition all at once. So the acquisition of the written word—as well as the other elements of which it was the bearer—cannot be described as ‘influence’, but rather as a wholesale transplantation of Byzantine culture into the Slavic world. [9]

Finally, I will just mention that the Apostles to the Slavs make a happy appearance in Elizabeth Kostova’s excellent vampire novel, The Historian (about which I have already posted here, here, here, and here), when the Bulgarian scholar Anton Stoichev welcomes students to his house to celebrate the feastday of the Saints:

You know, this is my favorite holiday. We have many saints’ days in the church calendar, but this one is dear to all those who teach and learn, because it is when we honor the Slavonic heritage of alphabet and literature, and the teaching and learning of many centuries that have grown from Kiril and Methodii and their great invention. [10]

In conclusion, here are the Troparion and Kontakion of the Saints, from the Great Horologion:

Dimissal Hymn of Saints Cyril & Methodius. Fourth Tone

Since ye were equal in character to the Apostles, and teachers of the Slavic lands, O divinely-wise Cyril and Methodius, pray to the Lord of all to strengthen all nations in Orthodoxy and unity of thought, to convert and reconcile the world to God, and to save our souls.

Kontakion of Saints Cyril & Methodius. Third Tone

Let us honour our sacred pair of enlighteners, who, by translating the divine writings, have poured forth for us a well-spring of divine knowledge from which we draw abundantly even unto this day: We call you blessed, O Cyril and Methodius, ye that stand before the throne of the Most High and intercede fervently for our souls. [11]

[1] Sir Dimitri Obolensky, Byzantium & the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1994), p. 207.

[2] R. Auty, ‘Introduction’, Handbook of Old Church Slavonic, Part II: Texts & Glossary (London: U of London, 1968), p. 1.

[3] Obolensky actually states that he was ‘a governor of a Slavonic province of the Empire (op. cit., p. 206).

[4] For some reason, St Nicholas does not mention that the Five Followers were actually imprisoned and sold into slavery by the Frankish clergy in Moravia. See Obolensky, p. 210.

[5] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 2, tr. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 166.

[6] Obolensky, p. 244.

[7] Qtd. in Thomas Butler, ‘Introduction’, Monumenta Bulgarica: A Bilingual Anthology of Bulgarian Texts from the 9th to the 19th Centuries (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic, 2004), p. xxii.

[8] On whom see this fascinating interview at the website of the ROCOR cathedral in Washington, DC, as well as this article in The New Yorker.

[9] Anthony-Emil N. Tachiaos, Cyril & Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2001), p. 130.

[10] Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian (NY: Back Bay, 2006), p. 491.

[11] The Great Horologion, tr. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston: HTM, 1997), pp. 480-1.

'The Red, Red Passionate Rose'—Eco & Masefield on Rose Symbolism

2010-05-20T20:33:00.003-05:00

In his fascinating Postscript to The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco writes that he chose the title of his bestselling debut novel in large part because ‘the rose is a symbolic figure so rich in meanings that by now it hardly has any meaning left: Dante’s mystic rose, and go lovely rose, the Wars of the Roses, rose thou art sick, too many rings around Rosie, a rose by any other name, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose, the Rosicrucians.’ [1] I was reminded of this afresh today when I acquired a new addition to my John Masefield collection—The Poems and Plays of John Masefield, Vol. 1: Poems—and read again in ‘The Ballad of Sir Bors’ a striking use of rose symbolism for one particular thing: Christ’s precious blood contained in the Holy Grail.

Would I could win some quiet and rest, and a little ease,
In the cool grey hush of the dusk, in the dim green place of the trees,
Where the birds are singing, singing, singing, crying aloud
The song of the red, red rose that blossoms beyond the seas.

Would I could see it, the rose, when the light begins to fail,
And a lone white star in the West is glimmering on the mail;
The red, red passionate rose of the sacred blood of the Christ,
In the shining chalice of God, the cup of the Holy Grail.

The dusk comes gathering grey, and the darkness dims the West,
The oxen low to the byre, and all bells ring to rest;
But I ride over the moors, for the dusk still bides and waits,
That brims my soul with the glow of the rose that ends the Quest.

My horse is spavined and ribbed, and his bones come through his hide,
My sword is rotten with rust, but I shake the reins and ride,
For the bright white birds of God that nest in the rose have called,
And never a township now is a town where I can bide.

It will happen at last, at dusk, as my horse limps down the fell,
A star will glow like a note God strikes on a silver bell,
And the bright white birds of God will carry my soul to Christ,
And the sight of the Rose, the Rose, will pay for the years of hell. [2]

Eco himself has elsewhere described at length the dangers of overinterpretation, noting the ‘indisputable fact . . . that from a certain point of view everything bears relationships of analogy, contiguity and similarity to everything else.’ He then goes on to write, ‘But the difference between the sane interpretation and paranoiac interpretation lies in recognizing that this relationship is minimal, and not, on the contrary, deducing from this minimal relationship the maximum possible.’ [3] While Eco is consciously exploiting the dangers of such overinterpretation in the title of The Name of the Rose—and indeed, it seems to be a recurring theme in his fiction and nonfiction alike—Masefield has made things quite simple for us. His rose is the ‘red, red passionate rose of the sacred blood of the Christ, / In the shining chalice of God, the cup of the Holy Grail.’ I cannot help but think that here we have reached the uppermost possibility of symbolic or analogical deferral.

[1] Umberto Eco, Postscript to The Name of the Rose, tr. William Weaver (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984), p. 3.

[2] John Masefield, The Poems & Plays of John Masefield, Vol. 1: Poems (NY: Macmillan, 1919), pp. 79-80.

[3] Umberto Eco, Interpretation & overinterpretation, with Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler, & Christine Brooke-Rose, ed. Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 1994), p. 48.

'Stars of the Spiritual Firmament'—A Hymn for the Fathers of Nicæa

2010-05-15T23:54:00.004-05:00

At the Vigil this evening I was struck by the Doxasticon at Lauds, by George of Nicomedia (I quote Archimandrite Ephrem’s translation):

The choir of holy Fathers, hurrying together from the ends of the inhabited world, taught the one essence and nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and clearly handed down to the Church the mystery of theology. As we praise them with faith, let us call them blessed as we say: O godly camp, inspired soldiers [note the Greek actually says ‘hoplites’!] of the Lord’s array; stars with many lights of the spiritual firmament; the indestructible towers of the mystical Sion; the sweet-scented flowers of Paradise; the all-golden mouths of the Word; Nicæa’s boast; adornment of the inhabited world, intercede unceasingly for our souls.

Τῶν ἁγίων Πατέρων ὁ χορός, ἐκ τῶν τῆς οἰκουμένης περάτων συνδραμών, Πατρός, καὶ Υἱοῦ, καὶ Πνεύματος ἁγίου, μίαν οὐσίαν ἐδογμάτισε καὶ φύσιν, καὶ τὸ μυστήριον τῆς θεολογίας, τρανῶς παρέδωκε τῇ Ἐκκλησίᾳ· οὓς εὐφημοῦντες ἐν πίστει, μακαρίσωμεν λέγοντες· Ὦ θεία παρεμβολή, θεηγόροι ὁπλῖται, παρατάξεως Κυρίου, ἀστέρες πολύφωτοι, τοῦ νοητοῦ στερεώματος, τῆς μυστικῆς Σιὼν οἱ ἀκαθαίρετοι πύργοι, τὰ μυρίπνοα ἄνθη τοῦ Παραδείσου, τὰ πάγχρυσα στόματα τοῦ Λόγου, Νικαίας τὸ καύχημα, οἰκουμένης ἀγλάϊσμα, ἐκτενῶς πρεσβεύσατε, ὑπὲρ τῶν ψυχῶν ἡμῶν.

The imagery of the Church’s poetry is incomparably beautiful. In Orthodox Tradition, the Fathers are not doctrinal police, as the modern mindset seems to think, but ‘soldiers’, ‘stars’, ‘towers’, ‘flowers’ and ‘all-golden mouths’.

'The Mournfulness of Ancient Life'—Dante Gabriel Rossetti

2010-05-11T23:52:00.008-05:00

So, thank you to all who said prayers for me. Thanks to God, I am doing much, much better already. I have been taking into account the advice I received in the comments on the last post, and I intend to slow down significantly my rate of posting on Logismoi. I’m not sure yet if I will set a new goal—I’ve been posting every day for quite some time—but for the time being I’ll just see how it goes and post as the mood strikes me. I may also try to keep the posts a bit simpler, so as not to overdo it.

Today, 12 May, is the birthday of the English Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), named for but not to be confused with the Florentine poet and author of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). [1] While W.H. Auden has included Rossetti in his anthology of British minor poets, in the introduction to Rossetti in Lionel Trilling’s and Harold Bloom’s Victorian Prose & Poetry, it is argued that the Pre-Raphaelite, ‘though out of favor in our time, seems to this editor the best poet of the Victorian period, after Browning and Tennyson, surpassing Arnold and even Hopkins and Swinburne (greatly undervalued as Swinburne now is).’ [2] According to Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Rossetti’s ‘lyric poems are distinguished by richness and vividness of detail, mysticism and fantasy, and the frequent use of modified ballad form.’ [3]

Concerning Rossetti’s origin, Joseph Knight tells us that his family came from the city of ‘Vasto d’Ammone, the ancient Histonium’. His father, Gabriele Rossetti, was ‘distinguished as a patriot and a man of letters’, but was persecuted by Ferdinand, the King of the Two Sicilies, and forced to flee to England. [4] Once in England, Rossetti’s father married Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori, whose father was Gaetano Polidori, a translator of Milton into Italian, and whose brother was Dr John William Polidori, physician to Lord Byron, participant in the famous ghost-story game which spawned Frankenstein, and author, as a result, of the first vampire story in English, The Vampyre. A few years after Rossetti’s birth, his father took up the post of Professor of Italian Literature at King’s College, a post he held until 1845. Gabriele and Frances Rossetti had four children, who were ‘all honourably known in connection with literature’: [5] Maria Francesca, author of A Shadow of Dante, Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and Christina, the latter three of whom were all associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. According to George Creeger’s account of the eldest son’s work:

Rossetti possessed the talents of painter and poet alike: at the age of six he was already writing verses, and when he was fifteen there appeared a privately printed volume entitled Hugh the Heron. But he devoted much of his energy to mastering the craft of painting; and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood founded in 1848 by him (together with [William Holman] Hunt, [John Everett] Millais, and [Thomas] Woolner) was at first only incidentally concerned with literary principles. But even as Rossetti’s fame as a painter grew, he wrote a good deal of poetry, much of which was printed in The Germ, a periodical started by the Brotherhood in 1850. Many of his later MSS. he buried, however, in the coffin of his wife and beautiful model, Elizabeth (née Siddal), who, already ill with tuberculosis, died of an overdose of laudanum in 1862. Seven years later the MSS. were recovered [6] and formed the basis of the volume of poems published in 1869. Rossetti’s last years were marked by increasing morbidity, quasi-paranoia, and addiction to drugs; but in 1881 he published a second volume of poetry, Ballads & Sonnets, in which the signs of his genius were still clear. [7]

James Merritt has quoted Rossetti’s brother, William Michael, as saying of one of his own poems that ‘the informing idea of the poem was to apply to verse-writing the same principles . . . which the Pre-Raphaelites upheld in their pictures’. [8] Similarly, Dante Gabriel actually has lyrics which are meant to accompany his paintings. His subject matter and symbolism are of course frequently Christian, as are those of his paintings, though we mustn’t conclude too much from this. While Rossetti was raised in his mother’s Anglican faith, unlike his sister Christina he seems not to have been a traditional believer. George Landow quotes William Holman Hunt as saying that Rossetti spoke ‘in a very patronising way about the “poor man” Jesus, and . . . ridiculed the promises about coming again’. [9] John Ruskin writes, ‘To Rossetti, the Old and New Testaments were only the greatest poems he knew; and he painted scenes from them with no more actual belief in their relation to the present life and business of men than he gave also to the “Morte d’Arthur” and the “Vita Nuova”.’ [10]

But Landow also points out in some detail Rossetti’s use of Christian typology in his poetry, particularly in one sonnet he composed to accompany a painting entitled ‘Passover in the Holy Family’:

Here meet together the prefiguring day
And day prefigured. ‘Eating, thou shalt stand,
Feet shod, loins girt, thy road-staff in thine hand,
With blood-stained door and lintel,’ – did God say
By Moses’ mouth in ages passed away.
And now, where this poor household doth comprise
At Paschal-Feast two kindred families,
Lo! the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay.
The pyre is piled. What agony’s crown attained,
What shadow of Death the Boy’s fair brow subdues
Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained
By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes
He deemed himself not worthy to unloose;
And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.

In Landow’s words, Rossetti ‘was intrigued by the fact that prefigurative symbolism provides a means of redeeming human time, of perceiving an order and causality in human events.’ He goes on to observe, ‘It is precisely this aspect of typological symbolism with which Rossetti concerns himself in his sonnet, which . . . proceeds by setting forth the series of details—the types—which prefigure Christ’s ultimate self-sacrifice.’ Interestingly, this actually suggests a very good reason for the direct linking of painting and poetry for Rossetti. As Landow writes:

Ever since Lessing had reiterated the ancient truth that paintings were limited to a single moment in time, artists had increasingly concerned themselves with dramatically climactic moments. But this new form of symbolism offered a means of inserting the scene in several different times, as it were, and thus enriching the picture’s effect. Paradoxically, this potential also emphasizes the limited nature of the visual image, because it makes it depend heavily for its effect upon linguistic, extra-visual sources for meaning and drama.

Rossetti’s fascination with typological symbolism also appears in the poems he composed about other artists’ works, for in these he is adding the typological dimension on his own authority. [11]

In conclusion, I suggest all have a look at some of Rossetti’s other work, here for instance, as well as this stirring post on the Pre-Raphaelites by Kevin Edgecomb of biblicalia. There is also another interesting take on Rossetti’s religious symbolism here. I leave you with ‘The Sea-Limits’ (1849-50), anthologised by Auden as well as Trilling and Bloom:

Consider the sea’s listless chime:
Time’s self it is, made audible,—
The murmur of the earth’s own shell.
Secret continuance sublime
Is the sea’s end: our sight may pass
No furlong further. Since time was,
This sound hath told the lapse of time.

No quiet, which is death’s,—it hath
The mournfulness of ancient life,
Enduring always at dull strife.
As the world’s heart of rest and wrath,
Its painful pulse is in the sands.
Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
Grey and not known, along its path.

Listen alone beside the sea,
Listen alone among the woods;
Those voices of twin solitudes
Shall have one sound alike to thee:
Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
Surge and sink back and surge again,—
Still the one voice of wave and tree.

Gather a shell from the strown beach
And listen at its lips: they sigh
The same desire and mystery,
The echo of the whole sea’s speech.
And all mankind is thus at heart
Not anything but what thou art:
And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each. [12]

[1] It is worth pointing out, however, that in their note on Rossetti’s ‘Sestina (after Dante)’, Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom write, ‘No more successful version of anything by Dante exists in English . . .’ (Victorian Prose & Poetry (NY: Oxford U, 1973), p. 624).

[2] Ibid., p. 616.

[3] Katherine Baker Siepmann, ed., Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, 3rd ed. (NY: HarperCollins, 1987), p. 846.

[4] Joseph Knight, Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London: Walter Scott, 1887), p. 11.

[5] Ibid., p. 13.

[6] On the subject of the ‘recovery’ of the manuscript, which as is noted occurred seven years after the woman’s burial, Knight insists that the idea was suggested by various friends, culminating in an offer on the part of one Mr Charles Augustus Howell to actually ‘take charge of the execution of the task’, to which Rossetti ‘was still averse’. Finally, ‘All was found as it was left, but the book, though not in any way destroyed, was soaked through and through, and had to undergo a long process of ablution in the hand of the medical man who assisted Mr Howell. By his care also the whole was dried leaf by leaf’ (Knight, p. 106).

[7] George R. Creeger, ‘Notes’, 19th-Century British Minor Poets, ed. W.H. Auden (NY: Delacorte, 1966), p. 368.

[8] James D. Merritt, ed., The Pre-Raphaelite Poem (NY: E.P. Dutton & Co., 1966), p. 20.

[9] Qtd. in George P. Landow, Replete with Meaning: William Holman Hunt & Typological Symbolism, here.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Trilling & Bloom, pp. 625-6.

Logismoi News, Good & Bad

2010-05-08T10:35:00.004-05:00

I’ve recently had two pieces of good news. The first, and rather less important, is that a proposal I wrote for a paper was accepted for the 41st annual conference of the Mythopoeic Society, Mythcon 41, to be held at Southern Methodist University (at which I fondly recall seeing a lecture by William Abraham years ago) in Dallas this July. The paper is tentatively entitled ‘“Mirrored in his soul with all its awe”: Cosmological Conflict in Njegoš’s Ray of the Microcosm’.

The second piece of news is that I’ve been offered a job next year teaching elementary Latin at my daughter’s classical school. (For those who are curious, yes, I’ll probably be relearning some of the declensions myself as I teach them to the kids!) Although I’d originally hoped to be doing something with the secondary school, my wife and I are very happy, and we see this as a good way to get a foot in the door. Besides, it goes without saying that I’ll be taking my duties quite seriously either way. (Sorry for the accompanying photo, Kevin!)

In other news, it looks quite likely that I’ll be in the Big Apple for a day or two around the 12th to 14th of June, and in Durham, NC later that same week. While in those places, I’d love to try to meet any bloggers or readers nearby, so please let me know. I’ve already been in touch with Bishop Savas of Troas and Christopher Orr about hanging out in NY.

Finally, readers, for the bad news. I have lately been experiencing some symptoms of what I believe to be tremendous stress, symptoms which directly interfere with my blogging activity. After discussing the matter with my spiritual father, my wife, my dad, and several close friends, I’ve decided among other things to take a little break from blogging for several days. My plan at the moment is to resume on 12 May, when I hope to write a post about the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In the meantime, I intend to spend more time with my family and outdoors, and less time with books and staring at a computer screen. I do not intend to give up on my long-term reading projects (mentioned here), but only my habit of reading snippets or quickly consulting individual passages of books and, worse, online material.

For the time being, I shall leave you with this stanza from Matthew Arnold, the final one of his ‘Bacchanalia; or, the New Age’ (The Works of Matthew Arnold (Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 1995), p. 421):

The world but feels the present’s spell,
The poet feels the past as well;
Whatever men have done, might do,
Whatever thought, might think it too.