tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2440600803114850372024-03-13T05:21:15.713-05:00A Catholic ReaderA blog about literature, reading, and their value in the modern world.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger112125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-9008214920555128722021-02-06T15:45:00.018-06:002021-03-31T10:41:11.068-05:00The Story God is Telling at the Present Time<p><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vpmTe3mh1nc/YBQ1GDxmv9I/AAAAAAAAFhY/Lbqu_LK6uPQ6OOPK8jOprCieeqPVc__JACNcBGAsYHQ/s500/Secreto%2Bde%2BFatima.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /></a></p><p><span style="color: #134f5c;"><b>AFTER A YEAR OR TWO</b> </span>of particularly alarming and distressing events in the world and the Church, many of us have begun to think of the present day as something like the End of the World (at least, "the world as we know it") and to wonder if things will ever get better instead of continuing to get steadily, and ever more rapidly, worse. Some even claim that we are in the End Times and look forward eagerly to the Second Coming of Christ, so that we can all be put out of our misery and admitted into the paradise of Eternity. </p><p>Plenty of other people pooh-pooh this apocalyptic fervor and point out that there have been many previous periods of Very Bad Things Happening, and yet the world did not end but continued to totter on -- why should our own age be any different? In between these two views stands the great mass of humanity alive today, bewildered, distressed, but trying to get on with their lives as best they can, much as they have always done.</p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EoXUQHZkfvA/YBrihzg7E6I/AAAAAAAAFiA/Xpp9jfLFWPAbYNkV5u4a0ywLVm7o7wQTQCNcBGAsYHQ/s522/Dame%2BFortuna%2BWheel.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="522" data-original-width="469" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EoXUQHZkfvA/YBrihzg7E6I/AAAAAAAAFiA/Xpp9jfLFWPAbYNkV5u4a0ywLVm7o7wQTQCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/Dame%2BFortuna%2BWheel.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">In the pagan worldview, <br />even the gods do not control history.<br />Here, blind Fortuna spins her wheel.</span></i></td></tr></tbody></table>I'm not going to try to tell anyone which of these three stances I think they should adopt -- the truth is, I am sympathetic to all of them -- but I do want to mention a book that I'm currently reading, which has reminded me of an important fact: Christians hold (or should hold) a particular view of history, and that view should shape the way we live in our own, present day. <p></p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">The Divine Historian</span></h2><p>Several years ago, in <a href="https://www.acatholicreader.com/2010/05/dynamics-of-world-history-christopher.html">a post about the Catholic historian Christopher Dawson</a>, I referred to the Christian view of history and the way it differs from both the ancient pagan view that history, like all of nature, is caught up in an inexorable cycle of endless repetition, and the modern view that history tells a tale of continual human progress, which will culminate in a manmade Utopia.</p><p>The Christian view, in sharp counter-distinction to either of those I just mentioned, is that we already know the overall outline of all human history, and it is bound and controlled not by human effort or ingenuity but by its Author, the Divine <i>Logos</i>. It is the story told in the Bible, with a beginning, a middle, and an end, all conceived and written by God Himself from the beginning of Time.</p><p>The point we need to grasp today is that <b>the birth of the Christian Church at Pentecost marks the beginning of the end of the story. </b>Christ's Crucifixion and the salvation of souls effected by it was the climax of the Story, and everything after that is denouement or resolution. We are reluctant to recognize this, because it means that our lives play out in the last chapter. In other words,<b> in a very real sense you and I and every Christian who ever lived or ever shall live are in the End Times. </b>As minor characters in the final chapter of a Story that is already complete in the mind of God, our role as followers of Christ entrusted with the mission of spreading the Gospel is not to "sing a new Church into being" (as one particularly heretical modern hymn enjoins) but to tell the Story and prepare the world for the very End of the Age. We should be eager to do so, because those of us who play our parts well will appear in the sequel, the Neverending Story of the life of the world to come.</p><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Are You a "Functional Pagan"?</span></h4>And yet many of us, although we may truly believe that all times are in God's hand and that the end of the story we are living out has already been written, tend not to behave or think as if that is quite literally true. When we look to the past, we often do so with nostalgia, yearning for some lost time when it was easy to live a decent Christian life -- whether that past time was the 1950s, the 1300s, or the first age of the Church; and when we think of the future, we look forward to a time when things will have "returned to normal." We do not accept the idea that things will continue to get worse until the end and our duty is simply to carry on, here in this difficult present moment.<p></p><p>Unfortunately, this all-too-common way of thinking about the present day -- as a bad patch in between two better times -- more closely resembles the pagan way of viewing history than the Christian: that is, we act as if history is a never-ending cycle of good and bad times that come and go as Dame Fortuna spins her wheel and, if we just hang on, the turning wheel eventually will raise to the heights those who are now in the pits -- until the wheel spins a little further and brings us back down again. </p><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Our Times Are in God's Hand -- and They Are Growing Shorter All the Time</span></h4><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vpmTe3mh1nc/YBQ1GDxmv9I/AAAAAAAAFhY/Lbqu_LK6uPQ6OOPK8jOprCieeqPVc__JACNcBGAsYHQ/s500/Secreto%2Bde%2BFatima.jpg" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="329" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vpmTe3mh1nc/YBQ1GDxmv9I/AAAAAAAAFhY/Lbqu_LK6uPQ6OOPK8jOprCieeqPVc__JACNcBGAsYHQ/s320/Secreto%2Bde%2BFatima.jpg" /></a><p></p><p>What if we face the (entirely Christian) idea that our present day, as well as the immediate future, truly are part of God's Story, and that we are nearer the end than the beginning of that Story? </p><p>I recently began reading a book that has helped me face this possibility. It's José María Zavala's book, <a href="https://smile.amazon.com/secreto-mejor-guardado-F%C3%A1tima-investigaci%C3%B3n-ebook/dp/B01MYC19X4/" target="_blank"><i><b>El Secreto Mejor Guardado de Fátima: Una Investigación 100 A</b></i><b><i>ños Después</i></b></a>. (Not available in English; the translation of the title is <b>"The Best-Kept Secret of Fatima: An Investigation 100 Years Later."</b>) I became aware of the book while reading an article about <a href="https://onepeterfive.com/amidst-conflicting-fatima-secrets-a-clear-message-shines/" target="_blank">a blog post on the 1Peter5 blog</a>, which referred to this book in positive terms. The context in which the reference was made was a discussion attempting to make sense of the insanity of our world at this present time, so I suppose that is what first attracted my attention. The article talked about a version of the "second part of the Third Secret" that supposedly has been hushed up by successive Pontiffs.</p><p></p><p></p><p>As I began to read Zavala's book, I soon realized that it has a lot more in it than simply a discussion of a part of the Fatima account that is not generally known, nor is it merely some sensationalistic exposé (although it does exposes quite a few things of interest and connects them in ways that I find very illuminating).</p><p>What really caught and held my attention is the way Zavala puts the events of Fatima (and those of our current day) into a historical perspective, along with other approved apparitions as well as historical, secular events stretching back as far as the seventeenth century. In Zavala's view (and I find it a persuasive one), these events have been pointing toward and leading up to the End that is coming. In fact, Zavala seems convinced that we are <i>already </i>in the End Times (however long they may take to play out) and have been for some time -- at least since the miraculous events at Fatima, but probably since long before that. His references to the Marian apparition at La Salette in the mid-nineteenth century and the revelations to Margaret Mary Alacoque two centuries earlier indicate that God has been trying to get our attention for some time, to remind us to turn back to Him and be saved before it's too late, while the modern world hurtles toward its destruction. </p><p>In chapter 4 of his book, Zavala discusses various historic periods which have manifested just how monstrous man can be when he throws off religion, culture, tradition, and human respect in favor of Godless ideology. He points to events throughout the modern period when frenzies of violence have occurred so terrible as to be clearly demonic. These include:</p><p></p><ul><li>the French Revolution </li><li>the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia</li><li>the Spanish Civil War</li><li>the two World Wars</li></ul><p>All of these show a world essentially at war with itself -- wars not to gain or regain territory, as most wars in the past had been, but wars fought to impose a new ideology, a brutal and godless one. As the forces moving the modern world have become more openly atheistic, the unimaginable brutality inflicted by ideological atheism in all its forms has become more frequent and more prolonged, until today it seems that hardly a day goes by without some new and terrible development. The modern juggernaut is fast approaching the lip of the abyss, while only now, too late perhaps to slow its pace or divert its course, more and more ordinary people are waking up to the hair-raising reality of the disastrous course of our world.</p><p>The point that Zavala makes repeatedly in his book is that the Church (and, through it, the world) has been warned time and again, but because the evil of the World was already at work within the Church, these warnings have not been clearly and energetically proclaimed, and therefore the Church Herself (i.e., Her members, including those of highest responsibility) must share in the blame for the state of the world.</p><p>One of the things that Zavala emphasizes is the way these extraordinary warnings (apparitions, etc.) not only have become progressively more urgent and more dire but point with ever greater emphasis to the rottenness within the leadership of the Church, from ordinary priests and religious right up to those at the top of the Church's hierarchy. In fact, according to Zavala, this is precisely the reason that the second part of the "Third Secret of Fatima," which the visionary Lucia was instructed by Our Lady not to reveal before 1960, has apparently never been truly disclosed to the public. Why? Because it warns of a Pope who serves not God but Satan.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">A Paradigm Shift </span></h2><p>I haven't yet finished the book, so I don't want to say any more about Zavala's ideas regarding the Third Secret of Fatima or the state of the Church. My primary reason for mentioning it today is that it has helped me complete a paradigm shift in the way I view history, a change of perspective that has been transpiring in my mind slowly for decades: to see history as a Story already written, by the best Storyteller there could ever be. </p><p>There is real comfort in viewing history this way, because it alleviates the cognitive dissonance that arises from the the conflict between the myth of progress that we all grew up with and the continuing and increasing horrors of the modern world. Those who insist on clinging to the lie that "every day in every way we are getting better and better" must blind themselves to much of what is going on in the world and dismiss warnings as "whack-a-doodle conspiracy theory." For them, "Progress" is an abstract and inexorable force that must not be opposed, one that operates without their conscious participation, although they are often eager to signal their endorsement of this mythical progress with bumper stickers and Tweets that endorse "progressive" causes. </p><p>On the other hand, those of us who recognize that we are minor characters in a Story as old as time can content ourselves with fulfilling our assigned roles well. As minor characters, we can't control the plot, but when we act out the parts assigned to us by the Divine Author, we contribute to the perfection of the story.</p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Apocalypse Now?</span></h4><p>I was born into a generation that expected the apocalypse at any moment -- a nuclear apocalypse of man's own making, not one presided over by God and his angels. In my adolescence, as the world continued on the brink of self-destruction, I obsessively read books about a world destroyed by nuclear weapons, books such as <i>Alas, Babylon</i> and <i>On the Beach.</i> This fear of mankind's self-annihilation jostled uneasily with the "George Jetson" view of the future, which imagines technology making all our lives a breeze (although without noticeably improving upon human nature). </p><p>When the threat of nuclear war finally receded in the 1980s and early '90s, particularly after the Soviet Union dissolved back into its component parts, I began to realize that, although there had been many technological advances in my lifetime, none of them seemed to be making the world a better place. In fact, a lot of new technology seemed to open the way for new horrors. Books such as <i>Brave New World</i> and Ira Levin's <i>This Perfect Day</i> underscored my sense that advanced technology and our growing reliance on it would prove to be more of a curse than a blessing. When I heard others proclaim that "life today is better than it has ever been," I realized that they viewed the world from a very different perspective than my own, one grounded in materialistic assumptions that measure life in economic, not moral, terms. Such people seemed enthralled by the modern myth of progress, which I could not help but view as a hollow lie. Every day in every way, we were <i>not </i>getting "better and better." In fact, from a moral perspective, things seemed to be getting much worse.</p><p>Not until I began graduate studies at the University of Dallas did I begin to discern an alternative way of thinking about where the world was headed. The graduate program I was in had us reading great works of literature, philosophy, and theology from the long tradition of Western culture, providing me with a coherent framework in which to view the past and (implicitly) the future. Amongst all the many "great books" I studied, I can point to two that particularly helped me make this shift in the way I view history, and my own place in it. </p><p>The first is <a href="https://www.acatholicreader.com/2010/05/dynamics-of-world-history-christopher.html" target="_blank">something I've mentioned before</a>, <b>Hannah Arendt's essay, <a href="https://grattoncourses.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/hannah-arendt-the-concept-of-history-ancient-and-modern.pdf" target="_blank">"The Concept of History, Ancient and Modern,"</a> </b>which compares pagan, Christian, and modern (secular) views of history. Until I read that, I don't think I had ever thought of history as anything more than "one damned thing after another." As a Catholic Christian, I understood that God had intervened in history time and again, but I still had the sense that He was pretty much leaving us up to our own devices until He finally decided it was time to wrap things up and call it quits.</p><p>The second work that changed my way of thinking was <b>John Milton's epic poem, <i>Paradise Lost</i>,</b> particularly Bks. XI and XII. At the end of the poem, after Adam and Eve have sinned and and are about to be ejected from Paradise, God instructs the archangel Michael to give Adam some encouragement by letting him see that, although Adam and Eve have condemned themselves and all their progeny in perpetuity to an existence full of sorrow and toil, God would use their disobedience to bring an even greater good out of it all, by sending his Divine Son to redeem all mankind. That act would not put an instantaneous end to either the human story or human suffering, but mankind's suffering need no longer be meaningless. Christians would be able to serve God's good plan by suffering for and with Christ. Adam, consoled and encouraged by this revelation, responds by vowing to spend the rest of his life obedient to God so that, in some small way, he too can bring some good out of the evil that he has done. </p><p>I can't say how close our times are to the end of human history, although there are plenty of signs that support the view that "the End is nigh," but I do know that we would all do well to adopt the view of Milton's Adam. If we trust the Divine Author of the human story, we should focus on playing our part to the best of our ability, doing God's will here and now so that, amongst the many inevitable evils of the world, we can do some good and set a good example for others, trusting that God will bring the story to a fitting close at the time and in the way that best accord with both His justice and His mercy. </p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-32967785893200545692020-07-13T14:46:00.006-05:002021-02-07T14:21:57.329-06:00Books Can Save Our Dying Culture<h2 style="text-align: left;">On Renewing “A Catholic Reader”</h2><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w2og4Xdoce0/Xwy5k-T7hgI/AAAAAAAAEVQ/64Dq_m9cQUUU3RVxEHIBFoqUTh1cG80IgCNcBGAsYHQ/s1200/my-secret-plan-to-save-the-world-book-ALT.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="659" data-original-width="1200" height="344" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w2og4Xdoce0/Xwy5k-T7hgI/AAAAAAAAEVQ/64Dq_m9cQUUU3RVxEHIBFoqUTh1cG80IgCNcBGAsYHQ/w625-h344/my-secret-plan-to-save-the-world-book-ALT.jpg" width="625" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><b><span style="color: #134f5c;">I’VE BEEN WANTING</span></b> to get back to writing on this blog for some time now, after several years of neglect. When I started it, ten years ago, I was recovering from a severe case of burnout, so I wrote mostly to give my frazzled brain something to do. I had spent the past ten years or so teaching in college classrooms, so a bit of that showed up in my blog posts, but mostly I was trying to express what interested me about the books I read and just putting that out there to see if it interested anyone else.</div><div><br /></div><div>I originally called this blog “A Catholic Reader” because that describes my reading tastes—“catholic” with a small “c”—and because it also describes my perspective as a reader, “Catholic” with a capital “c”, a worldview that permeates my understanding of, well, everything. Now that I want to get back to blogging about books and reading, a part of me still wants to teach others, about how to read and why to read and how to get the greatest pleasure and benefit out of what we read. But I also want to “show” more than “tell”—something I’ve learned from becoming a writer and editor of stories, as well as a reader.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I think what I’m going to do is, rather than creating an explicit agenda for myself, is write about the books I’m reading now, as I read (or re-read) and digest them. These won’t be book reports or reviews, just personal reflections that include things I’ve learned from a lifetime of reading as well as many years dedicated to studying and teaching literature and writing. These accounts of my reading are intended to be more descriptive than prescriptive—I don’t expect my readers to share my tastes, but I hope what I have to say about my own reading will encourage readers to broaden and deepen their own tastes and reading practice.</div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Creating a Literary Counter-Culture</span></h2><div><b>One of the reasons I think it’s time to return to this blog is that the world is going mad and things are falling apart. </b>Our culture is falling apart, partly because we no longer know how to read with appreciation and understanding. I firmly believe that those best equipped to rebuild our culture are will be those who are still deeply rooted in what has been handed down to us, what has borne the test of time and taught us things that can help us build the future. And much of that is preserved in books, even when it has faded from human memory.</div><div><br /></div><div>So, many of the books I discuss (but by no means all) will be old ones. Unfortunately, anything old seems to be out of favor these days, whereas old books used to be the chief focus of literary attention. In my lifetime, the teaching of literature has undergone a disastrous revolution, as Marxist ideology has permeated first graduate schools, then undergraduate education, and finally ordinary schooling. “Woke” culture wants to impose this ideological orientation on the world, to tell us what to think and to deny us the tools to actually learn to think for ourselves. Everything has been politicized and virtually every part of the past is being erased, after being thoroughly picked to pieces. </div><div><br /></div><div>Well, I’m not going to do that. I believe that literature—especially literature that endures, that continues to attract readers over many decades or even centuries or millennia—conveys something that is innately human, something that can speak to readers far separated in time, space, and culture from its writers. It can be, as I’ve discussed in earlier posts, “philosophical” in the best sense of that word—but it does so by being “poetical,” i.e., by creating an analogy between its fictional characters and its present readers. (See <a href="https://www.acatholicreader.com/2012/10/reading-and-moral-imagination-plato-and.html">this blog post from 2012</a> about how literature engages the imagination to help us grasp universal truths.)</div><div><br /></div><div>This is something that identity politics, “woke culture,” and narrow ideologies deny and fear. They don’t want us to see ourselves in literary heroes of the past or to feel any sympathy for historical figures who have traditionally been held up as examples. We are meant to think of ourselves as victims or oppressors, to think of the past as hopelessly ignorant and ourselves as wonderfully progressive and superior. One of the first things this strategy of cultural destruction attacked was the teaching of literature. Why? Because reading the literature of the past requires adopting a kind of openness to difference that the ideologues only pretend to value; it requires a humility that allows us to recognize that, when it comes to personal struggles and temptations, we are really no better than our forebears.</div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Delightful Truths from Great Stories</span></h2><div><b>So I hope what I do here will, in some small way, serve to rebuild a culture of reading. </b>I’ll be discussing fiction chiefly, stories that “instruct” by “delighting,” as the Roman poet Horace once described the function of narrative poetry (dead white guy—no apologies). Believe it or not, even modern novels do (or can do) this, but they succeed only when the “instruction” is well-hidden in the delight that they provide the reader. Every good story shows us something that is true even if fictitious—truths that no fact-checker can affirm or deny. My task here will be to reflect on the truths that I find in these stories and perhaps also to muse on the way delightful and artful way those truths are conveyed.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you’d like to follow along, be sure to subscribe to this blog. <b>And please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, and encouragement!</b></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-15519820271529229072019-11-03T10:37:00.004-06:002021-04-25T16:05:15.621-05:00Peacocks, Vanity, and the Possibility of Redemption<div>
<p style="text-align: left;"><b></b></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0mlPl_Bg8Oc/Xbx4bmA3vAI/AAAAAAAACrA/K0aEH_DH9gEuPo9lFnIVhvysMJaD2gqZgCPcBGAYYCw/s1800/Flannery%2Bpeacock%2Bblue%2Bglow%2Bunderpaint.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="953" data-original-width="1800" height="339" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0mlPl_Bg8Oc/Xbx4bmA3vAI/AAAAAAAACrA/K0aEH_DH9gEuPo9lFnIVhvysMJaD2gqZgCPcBGAYYCw/w640-h339/Flannery%2Bpeacock%2Bblue%2Bglow%2Bunderpaint.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Flannery O'Connor and her peacocks<br /><br /></span></i></td></tr></tbody></table><b><span style="color: #134f5c; font-size: large;">“Vain as a peacock,”</span><span style="color: #073763; font-size: large;"> </span></b>we used to say, back when vanity was a vice rare enough to be remarked on. If you've never lived with a peacock, you may not realize just how vain they can be. I had a chance to become acquainted with these creatures when I was in college in northern Illinois and occasionally stayed on the farm of my Aunt June who, like Flannery O’Connor (probably their only similarity), loved all sorts of barnyard fowl, including peafowl. June lived on the family farm she had inherited with her brother, Reynolds. He looked after the hog farming while June stayed busy breeding, raising, and selling all sorts of birds and bird eggs: chickens, ducks, and geese, as well as more exotic kinds of birds, such as peacock and rheas (a South American cousin of the better-known ostrich). I soon noticed that each of these bird species has its own native personality; you couldn't act around a goose the same way you could with a duck, for instance. Geese are bossy and territorial and, if you stray into a part of the farmyard where the goose doesn't think you should go, it will bite you on the backside (yes, it will “goose” you).<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">The rheas, tall stately birds with a kind of innate <i>dignitas</i>, were my aunt's favorite -- they had a special enclosure with a high chain-link fence, intended to keep them safe from predators. Rheas mate for life, which turned out to be unfortunate, because one day the male of the breeding pair got out of the pen and was savaged by a dog (or coyote?) and died of its wounds. The female pined away and eventually died of her own wound -- a broken heart.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The peacocks, more beautiful than the rhea but less known for their fidelity, were not only the loveliest but also the most laughable of my aunt’s farmyard fowl. They would strut around like emperors, no matter how scraggly and bedraggled their tail feathers might be. Even when they were well-preened, their illusion of grandeur was wrecked as soon as they opened their mouths to utter their characteristic screech.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The peacocks had their own house -- the cocks, not the drab hens, who had few bragging rights. The house was lined with metal mirrors to reflect the birds’ splendor and tickle their vanity. They would go in, singly, to fan their tails and bask in their glory, which in the mirrored housed was reflected on every vertical surface. Their preening lasted only for a moment, though, before they noticed that other peacock, the one in the mirror taunting them with the grandeur of his tail. At this sight, they invariably would rush to the mirror to peck the eyes out of their hated rival. Every mirrored wall in the peacock house bore innumerable dents from birds who had tried to massacre their own reflections. Their jealousy was so fierce that, once they began their attack, it was a fight to the death -- figuratively in most instances, although literally in at least one case that recall. Usually, the idiot birds would exhaust themselves and limp back out of the house to recover, bruised and battered but determined to live and fight another day.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #134f5c;">Flannery O<span style="font-size: 27px;">’</span>Connors “Royal Turkeys”</span></h2></div>
<div><p>What reminded me of the peacock house (and my aunt, dead now many years) was Jonathan Rogers’ biography of Flannery O’Connor, <b><i>The Terrible Speed of Mercy: A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O'Connor</i></b>, in which he highlights the way that details of O’Connor’s own life often provided the seed of a story. He recounts her decision to add peafowl to her menagerie of more ordinary barnyard birds, against the advice of her mother, Regina, who complained that peacocks would eat up her (Regina's) flower garden. After the glorified turkeys took over the grounds, Flannery admitted (in her 1961 essay, “The King of the Birds”):<br /></p><blockquote>Peacocks not only eat flowers, they eat them systematically, beginning at the head of a row and going down it. If they are not hungry, they will pick the flower anyway, if it is attractive, and let it drop.</blockquote><div><p>Given her fascination with these birds and their ostentatious vanity, which cannot bear even so humble a rival as an attractive blossom, I’m astonished that (to my recollection) O’Connor never featured a peacock in her stories. The closest thing I can recall is a turkey (an ordinary, wild turkey, not a “royal turkey,” as the peacock is called in some languages), which becomes an occasion of vanity for a miserable young boy when it falls dead into his grasp in <b>“An Afternoon in the Woods.”</b></p>
<h2>
<span style="color: #134f5c;">Temptation in the Woods</span></h2><p style="text-align: left;">
It might have been an ordinary turkey, but it piqued the vanity of the lad into whose clutches it fell. Young Manley, to hear his family tell it, has never done anything right and yet somehow, when he least expects it, this treasure, a fine, fat turkey wounded under one wing by an unseen hunter, stumbles into his grasp and dies, an unearned prize.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">
Unearned but not to be unvaunted. A moment before, Manley had been practicing curses and, when he discovers the newly-dead bird, he assumes it is a trap prepared for him by God, whom he has just been blaspheming. But then he recalls the parable of the prodigal son and other stories of repentant sinners rewarded, and decides it may be that sort of thing, a divine bribe to keep him from going bad. It’s a bribe he decides to take. As he heaves the dead turkey over one shoulder and trudges into town to show off, he imagines the works of philanthropy he will perform in response to this opportunity for redemption. He prays for a beggar to cross his path so that he can demonstrate the sincerity of his resolve and, when the town’s old beggar woman actually does pass him by, he gives her a dime -- but not his fat turkey.</p>
<p>The boy's vanity, however, gets the best of him when he shows the bird off to some bullies who are stalking him -- and who snatch the turkey from him and wander off, laughing. The boy, humiliated and frightened by their behavior, seems to realize that he has just been tested and has failed, a failure that pursues him like “Something Awful [that] was tearing behind him with its arms rigid and its fingers ready to clutch.”</p><p>I think we've all had moments like that, when some chance event, just as we were preening ourselves on our virtue, suddenly puts us to a test that we fail miserably. I can think of one or two that still make me cringe in shame, even after years or even decades. Flannery O'Connor's stories are like that, too -- there's nary a one that won't prick you in some secret, tender place.</p><p>By the way, I recommend <i>The Terrible Speed of Mercy</i>. Jonathan Rogers seems to understand and appreciate Flannery O’Connor and her work better than many of her biographers. You can get a taste of his approach <a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B0078FAC8A&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_9KUVDbRHKY7W6" target="_blank">here </a>or in the preview embedded here below.</p>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="550" src="https://read.amazon.com/kp/card?asin=B0078FAC8A&preview=inline&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_9KUVDbRHKY7W6" style="max-width: 100%;" type="text/html" width="336"></iframe></div></div><p></p></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-70964855120168992352019-10-17T15:07:00.001-05:002021-02-07T14:54:32.861-06:00The Secret to Reading Flannery O'Connor<div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8mPIKUVU-kU/Xai1-ItZ2bI/AAAAAAAACoU/A5K8Y5VhHqsOJv0MrQ7gxgYdBR03OxPFQCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Brad%2BDourif%2BWise%2BBlood%2Badj.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes in John Huston's Wild Blood. Photographer unknown." border="0" data-original-height="463" data-original-width="851" height="347" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8mPIKUVU-kU/Xai1-ItZ2bI/AAAAAAAACoU/A5K8Y5VhHqsOJv0MrQ7gxgYdBR03OxPFQCNcBGAsYHQ/s640/Brad%2BDourif%2BWise%2BBlood%2Badj.png" title="" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>A very young Brad Dourif played Hazel Motes </i><i>in John Huston's incomparable film adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's </i>Wise Blood.</span></td></tr>
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<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #134f5c;">
Veiled Mystery</span></h2>
<div>
<span lang="EN-GB">About forty years ago, I read the work of
Flannery O’Connor for the first time, at the suggestion of my college English
professor, John Glass. I was immediately hooked, although at the time I had no
idea what her stories were about. Mr. Glass, who liked to set us reading
challenges, had assigned one of O’Connor’s short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard
to Find,” for class. I read it and was suitably shocked by it but also
intrigued. For reasons I won’t go into here, I felt I knew the family in the
story — in fact, it could have been my own family, except that none of us had
ever been gunned down by escaped felons while on a family road trip. (Not yet,
anyway.) If I could make sense of that senseless slaughter, maybe I could make
sense of my own life.</span></div>
<p>After that, I read her two novels, <i>Wise Blood </i>and <i>The Violent Bear It Away</i> (I even wrote a paper about that one, but I have no idea what I could have said that would have made sense), as well as some more of her stories, thinking that, if I just read enough of her work, eventually the penny would drop and I would “get it.” Her stories might be strange — in-your-face strange — and uncomfortable, but I sensed that their grotesque, out-of-proportion weirdness veiled a great truth, and I wanted to know what it was.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Another Book of Mystery: the Bible</span></h2>
<p>In an odd and unexpected way, my reading of Flannery O’Connor paralleled my reading of the Bible, which I took up about the same time. I heard Bible readings every Sunday at Mass, of course, but in many ways the Bible remained a closed book to me, a library of strange tales that didn’t yet make sense to me when put together. Even some of the parables Jesus told — simple stories though they are — seemed peculiar and impenetrable. I got a toe-hold on the Bible, though, when I discovered the Psalms, many of which spoke to the prolonged case of adolescent angst that I was experiencing in those days — a sense that God was out there somewhere but he seemed to be ignoring my cries for help. Yet I kept calling out to him, like the psalmist who asks, “How long, O Lord, must I keep waiting?”</p><p>
Anyone who has ever seriously undertaken to understand the Bible — as a whole, a unified book of many different chapters rather than a jumbled collection of disparate books — will know that it takes a while (and probably some good preaching and/or well-directed Bible study) before the pieces of the mosaic suddenly form a coherent picture of God’s love for humankind. For me, the penny dropped when a priest said in a homily, offhandedly, as if this was something that we already knew, that “the whole Bible is about Jesus Christ.” I was stunned — I sensed it was true, but I didn’t yet see <i>how </i>it was true. But from that moment on, as soon as the unifying principle had been pointed out to me, everything else I had ever learned about the Bible — typology, prophecy, poetry, history, etc. — began to come into focus. And once I saw the picture as a whole, I have never been able to unsee it.</p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #134f5c;">
What's the Point?</span></h2>
<p>Something similar happened to me with Flannery O'Connor's stories. About eight or ten years after I first read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” I woke up in the middle of the night with a clear thought in my head: I knew exactly what the Misfit meant when he said of the grandmother he had just shot to death:</p>
<blockquote><span style="color: #666666;">She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life. <br /></span></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;">I couldn’t yet articulate it, but I sensed its meaning — a truth that hit me like a bullet to the heart. When I went back and re-read O’Connor’s strange, difficult stories, gradually the scales fell from my eyes and I saw clearly what she was on about and also (perhaps more importantly) <i>why </i>she had to write such bizarre stories to make her point.</p>
<p>If you’ve read this far, you’re probably hoping I will now reveal the secret, say the magic word, turn off the smoke machine so that you can see the trick clearly. Well, I <i>could </i>. . . but someday when I meet Flannery in eternity, she would probably chew me out for doing so. She hated it when readers demanded the hermeneutic key that would allow them to “figure her out” and “get the point.”</p>
<p>I could tell you to read <i>The Habit of Being</i> (a collection of O'Connor's correspondence) or maybe one of the collections of her essays on writing, such as <i>Mystery and Manners</i>. There is plenty there to shed light on the matter.</p>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QO0lEre7APU/XajIMkxBjOI/AAAAAAAACog/I4c_VmCC3sQEca5nTU-lsqk3BeoYCV-6wCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/alt%2B3%2Bby%2BFlannery%2Bcover.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="3 by Flannery O'Connor book cover" border="0" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="499" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QO0lEre7APU/XajIMkxBjOI/AAAAAAAACog/I4c_VmCC3sQEca5nTU-lsqk3BeoYCV-6wCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/alt%2B3%2Bby%2BFlannery%2Bcover.jpg" title="" width="188" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">A burr under my saddle <br />
for years</span></i></td></tr>
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<p>But the best way to make sense of O'Connor's stories is just to keep reading (and maybe re-reading) them. Exercise the virtue of perseverance. Let her weird, uncomfortable stories be the burr under your saddle, the pebble in your shoe, the grit in your oyster, but <i>just keep going</i>. Remember, the longer that grit remains in the oyster, the bigger the pearl it will produce. And, if it takes a very long time, it eventually becomes a pearl of great price.<br />
</p>
<p>Maybe you've already tried that and you are still baffled. Fed up, even. So, being a big-hearted person, I'll give you a clue: the unifying principle of Flannery O'Connor's stories can be summed up in <b>a single word</b>, and that word is <a href="https://www.acatholicreader.com/2012/12/grace-and-purification-in-flannery.html"><b>revealed in this blog post </b>that I wrote back in 2012</a>, when I responded to a reader who really <i>did not get </i>what O'Connor is all about.</p>
<p><b>Want to let me know what you think? Leave a comment below.</b></p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-5160344643550007522019-10-11T12:10:00.002-05:002021-02-07T18:11:30.833-06:00Authors I Call Friends: Andrew Seddon<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mMyG_6Ru_S4/XaCgoXXWGDI/AAAAAAAAClU/yKYlC26WyX01yIG1PdWrWGNkGLNo7C9wQCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/FB%2Bcover%2BBONDS.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="564" data-original-width="1001" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mMyG_6Ru_S4/XaCgoXXWGDI/AAAAAAAAClU/yKYlC26WyX01yIG1PdWrWGNkGLNo7C9wQCNcBGAsYHQ/s640/FB%2Bcover%2BBONDS.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Some books I've edited, translated, and/or designed in the last few years.</span></i></td></tr>
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<br /><p style="text-align: left;">
I've been away from blogging for a while, and this blog has moved to an independent WordPress site and back to Google's Blogger platform since I last wrote here regularly. Despite my neglect of <i>A Catholic Reader</i> over the past few years, I owe a lot to this blog because it helped launch me into all the other activities that have been keeping me busy: writing, editing, and translating, as well as publishing and book design.</p><p style="text-align: left;">As a way of easing back into talking about things I read, I thought I would introduce you to some of the authors I've gotten to know as friends and acquaintances (through reading, editing, or translating their stuff) through this blog. These are writers whose work I can heartily recommend to other readers.</p><p style="text-align: left;">First, I must mention <b><a href="https://www.acatholicreader.com/search/label/Andrew%20M.%20Seddon" target="_blank">Andrew Seddon</a></b>, with whom I first got acquainted after he found me (I think) through the (now defunct) Catholic Blogging Network and offered to send me <a href="https://www.acatholicreader.com/2013/07/review-andrew-seddons-saints-alive.html" target="_blank">his first <i>Saints Alive!</i> collection to review</a>. So I did, and it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship as well as a professional relationship that has allowed me to edit (and design) several of his short story collections. (The <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Affection-Stories-Memories-Shepherds/dp/1089719981/" target="_blank">most recent one is here</a>.) Andrew has written a few novels, but his real forte is short stories (even some of his novels read like collections of related stories). In an Andrew Seddon work, you are likely to find any one or more of the following: <a href="https://www.acatholicreader.com/2014/06/fact-legend-and-perils-of-modern.html" target="_blank">saints</a>, ghosts, dogs, alien species, time travelers, and marathon runners. His novels includes<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1074831233/" target="_blank"> space opera</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ring-Time-Time-Traveling-Historian-Empire-ebook/dp/B00P7C7C0W/" target="_blank">time travel</a>. He has contributed to many short story anthologies, as well as publishing collections of his own work. You can find all of his stuff on Amazon, with most of it listed on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B001KJ10K4?_encoding=UTF8&node=283155&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=date-desc-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader" target="_blank">his Amazon author page</a>.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The thing I like about Andrew's writing, besides its variety, is what unifies that variety: a very humane approach to life, even when he is writing about things strange or frightening. Without ever sounding sappy or preachy, he manages to convey both a sense of the goodness of life (of all kinds) and the perils of turning away from that goodness. To me, that's the hallmark of someone who really deserves the designation, "Catholic writer."</p><p style="text-align: left;">Seddon is English by birth and upbringing, although he came to the US with his family (with a short stint in Canada) as a teenager and later married a Swiss expatriate he met here. By profession he is a physician (his wife is a veterinarian) and by avocation a marathon runner, but for decades he has been a writer, and quite a prolific one, too. Raised as a Baptist (the English sort), he has long been a Catholic. Currently, he splits his time between Montana and Florida, and recently took his elderly parents back to England for a visit (while he and wife Olivia ran marathons all over the south of England and the channel isles). All of these bits of background inform his writing, which may explain its variety.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If you'd like to sample some of Andrew Seddon's work, I recommend his new short story collection, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bonds-Affection-Stories-Memories-Shepherds/dp/1089719981/" target="_blank"><b><i>Bonds of Affection</i></b></a>, which, although all the stories are about German Shepherd dogs, includes every one of those things I mentioned above: saints, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0751YQTFH/" target="_blank">ghosts</a>, dogs, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0145Q9ZDC/" target="_blank">alien species</a>, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Ring-Time-Time-Traveling-Historian-Empire-ebook/dp/B00P7C7C0W/" target="_blank">time travelers</a>, and marathon runners. And all the profits from sale of the book will be donated to organizations that rescue German Shepherds or support K-9 dog training, so you'll also be supporting some of the author's favorite causes.</p><p style="text-align: left;">If you've read any of Seddon's writing, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!</p>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-79438922907943404572016-07-12T18:09:00.001-05:002021-02-07T18:23:46.144-06:00The Great Flood in Literature: Wrestling with Proteus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Walter Crane illustration of <br />
Hercules wrestling Proteus</span></i></td></tr>
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There is a figure in Greek mythology called Proteus (sometimes called the Old Man of the Sea), a minor sea god with two remarkable powers: shape-shifting and oracular utterance. To get the truth out of him, however, one must first catch him. When anyone attempts to grasp him, he rapidly changes from one form into another in an attempt to evade his captor’s clutches. But if a person is tenacious enough to hold on until Proteus tires and resolves into his true form, the god will render up the truth his captor seeks.<br />
<br />
Orally transmitted stories share with this mythical sea god a “protean” character. Handed on by word of mouth, each time a story is told the teller gives it a slightly different form and a different shade of meaning, so that over time many different versions of the same story emerge. <b>The literary author who works from an oral tradition is like the hero who captures Proteus: </b>first he must wrestle with the many versions of the story, but when he finally confers upon it a fixed form, he is able to make it serve him to convey a particular truth.<br />
<br />
Taken out of context, different literary stories of a great flood that nearly destroyed all living things bear <b>a striking, but superficial,</b> similarity to one another. But in this blog series, I’ve taken pains to put each story in its proper context, in order to discern the meaning that each writer found in it. I hope that, having looked at the meaning in the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh </i>and in Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i>, we will now be able to see more clearly what makes the Biblical story of the Great Flood stand out from the others. First, though, it might be good to recap what we have learned about the significance of the Flood as it is presented in the other two poems.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d2sAxq3rsQk/V4V1f_AGuGI/AAAAAAAAT2s/SuGi1E4E0iIF3Tw66S0SkRk0XuhM5oERACLcB/s1600/tumblr_inline_nv5nkhZe4Y1sz7hwj_540%255B1%255D.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Gilgamesh, having defeated Humbaba, aspires to godlike immortality" border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-d2sAxq3rsQk/V4V1f_AGuGI/AAAAAAAAT2s/SuGi1E4E0iIF3Tw66S0SkRk0XuhM5oERACLcB/s1600/tumblr_inline_nv5nkhZe4Y1sz7hwj_540%255B1%255D.jpg" title="" /></a></div>
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
Gilgamesh grasps at immortality, but seizes on wisdom</span></h4>
We saw that the flood story in the Epic of Gilgamesh is presented by Utnapishtim as an object lesson for Gilgamesh, to dissuade him from his mad pursuit of immortality. Gilgamesh, a great king who is “two-thirds divine, and one-third man,” becomes obsessed with immortality after the death of his great friend, Enkidu. Enkidu, struck down by the gods, shares death-bed visions of what awaits him after this mortal life: a great nothingness of rotting bodies and oblivion, something the immortal gods will never suffer. In his determination to escape this dismal fate, Gilgamesh abandons his city to seek out the only man who has ever escaped death, Utnapishtim. A god bestowed immortality on him after he and his wife survived the gods’ destructive flood, but what was intended as a blessing turns out to be a kind of curse. Forced to live far from mortal men, an outcast from the restored human race, Utnapishtim lives an unnatural life of never-ending loneliness. Although he intends to story to dissuade the king from seeking a similar fate, Gilgamesh is not immediately convinced. Eventually, though, he becomes reconciled to the <b>inescapable brevity of human life. </b>This knowledge is the only lasting trophy that he takes with him as he returns to the great city over which he reigns. From now on, he will seek immortality only through the lasting nature of his kingly achievements.<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
The enduring human spirit</span></h4>
In contrast to the crude but powerful Gilgamesh epic, Ovid’s lengthy poem, <i>Metamorphoses</i>, written nearly two thousand years later, is both more finely wrought and apparently less philosophical. A careless modern reader might easily dismiss Ovid’s poem as an artful mishmash of Graeco-Roman mythology, with an emphasis on erotic love. By focusing on one small section of the rambling poem, however, we saw that there is a more serious, philosophical theme pervading the poem just below its artful surface. Ovid’s account of the Great Flood suggests both the cruelty and capriciousness of the gods — a theme amply illustrated throughout the poem — and the human virtue that allows mere mortals to endure the vicissitudes of life.<br />
<br />
In order to emphasize this meaning of the flood story, <b>Ovid leaves out an important detail </b>that most earlier versions of the myth included: he does not say that Deucalion and Pyrrha owe their survival to the forewarning of Deucalion’s immortal father, Prometheus, nor that Prometheus instructed them to build a great chest and fill it with provisions to sustain them after every other source of food has been destroyed by the flood. Instead, Ovid makes it seem as if nothing more than a divine whim ends the flood before they too, last of all mortals, perish in the waters that have destroyed every other living thing.<br />
<br />
While the poet, on the one hand, suppresses this important detail, on the other hand he emphasizes another, namely the way the elderly couple replenishes the world’s human population. So that the reader does not miss the point, the poet explicitly interprets the significance of their producing offspring from stones: “[Thus]<i> the toughness of our race, our ability to endure hard labour, and the proof we give of the source from which we are sprung.</i>” In this way, Ovid harmonizes the meaning of the Flood story with the overall theme of the poem: <b>life consists of constant change,</b> but we mortals, whose life is short and at the mercy of the gods’ fickle affections, are <b>tough enough to endure it all.</b><br />
<br />
We can see that both of these poems, so different from one another, share <b>a preoccupation with human mortality. </b>In fact, in the understanding of the ancient world, mortality was the one characteristic that distinguished men from gods. Both poems suggest that the way to get the most out of life is to accept our human limitations and learn to rejoice in them. We are not gods, nor should we seek to be — how much better to be the best kind of humans!<h4 style="text-align: center;">
</h4>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>©2016 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/p/the-great-flood-in-ancient-literature.html">Click here to find links to all the posts in this series.</a></h4>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-19565430866763243092016-03-17T10:36:00.001-05:002016-07-12T15:28:41.895-05:00Put on the Armor of Light, on St. Patrick's Day and every day<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mJ1RXeornuA/VurUfMH4ksI/AAAAAAAATxk/jKu7dQt5GXcNtjAioQRgqeI-R0gm7ZUXQ/s1600/77000_77447_powell_stpatrick.jpg.CROP.original-original%255B1%255D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mJ1RXeornuA/VurUfMH4ksI/AAAAAAAATxk/jKu7dQt5GXcNtjAioQRgqeI-R0gm7ZUXQ/s1600/77000_77447_powell_stpatrick.jpg.CROP.original-original%255B1%255D.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Illustration from Slate.com</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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As <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assessment/2000/03/st_patrick.html" target="_blank">this article from Slate</a> acknowledges, very few concrete facts about Ireland's patron saint have survived. Much that we think we know is merely legend. Keeping that in mind, did you ever wonder why Saint Patrick is credited with expelling snakes (not wolves, not badgers, not even demons) from the Emerald Isle?<br />
<br />
I'm not going to dispute whether holy Padraic literally chased serpentine creatures from Ireland, but you have to admit that on a symbolic level the story is apt. Serpents have a long history in Christian iconography, representing the deceptions of the devil. As an early missionary to the island, the fifth-century monk we know as St Patrick was successful in converting many from their pagan superstitions, and for more than a millennium Ireland was known as one of the most thoroughly Catholic lands upon Earth. Since pagan gods have long been regarded as being inspired by fallen angels, who presented themselves as deities, there could be no more appropriate legend about the Christian monk who persuaded the Irish people to abandon their old beliefs and turn to the One True God, than to have him expel the snakes from Ireland.<br />
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Ireland, alas, seems determined to put its Catholic heritage behind it. <a href="http://www.rte.ie/tv/scope/SCOPE4_show03_snakes.html" target="_blank">This article </a>on the site of the Irish broadcasting company, RTE, for instance, seems bent on debunking the idea that there ever were snakes in Ireland for Patrick to expel. It doesn't really matter, though, whether there were any serpentine species native to the island of Ireland, since the legend's power is in the spiritual truth it seeks to convey, rather than literal fact.<br />
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St Patrick stood for truth, shedding abroad in the ignorance of pagan hearts the Light of Christ. And today, despite the coming of a new spring, sometimes lately it seems that the world is getting a bit darker every day. When that happens, it's time to put on the armor of light! For Saint Patrick's Day, take a look at this old post, wherein you will find the wonderful prayer known as Saint Patrick's Breastplate:<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/happy-saint-patricks-day-now-arm.html"> Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Now Arm Yourselves!</a><br />
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If you're already familiar with the hymn based on that prayer, you might like this very different musical rendition of the ancient prayer by that name:</div>
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©2016 Lisa A. Nicholas<br />
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Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</h4>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-14793558913794151692016-03-08T13:23:00.001-06:002021-02-07T18:36:24.842-06:00Ovid's Metamorphoses: Change is the only constant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nWbZsstpY4c/Vt8NXb9FTkI/AAAAAAAATws/wXDq9V8Xh8s/s1600/Ovid%2Bflux.png" style="margin-left: 0em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="In ample seas I sail, and depths untry’d before, /This let me further add, that Nature knows /No stedfast station, but, or ebbs, or flows: /Ever in motion; she destroys her old, /And casts new figures in another mold." border="0" height="438" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nWbZsstpY4c/Vt8NXb9FTkI/AAAAAAAATws/wXDq9V8Xh8s/s640/Ovid%2Bflux.png" title="Quotation from Metamorphoses XV, trans. Dryden et al." width="640" /></a></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Third installment on the Great Flood in Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses </i></span></h3><p style="text-align: left;">
I left <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/05/zooming-in-on-ovids-flood.html" target="_blank">the discussion of Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses </i></a>by saying (as I often do) that, in literature, context is everything. We can’t really grasp the significance of Ovid’s version of the Great Flood unless we consider it in the context of the poem as a whole. So what is this poem really about? How does the early episode that recounts the Great Flood contribute to the overall meaning, and how does the overall meaning color the significance of the Flood account?</p>
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<span style="color: #134f5c;">The Constancy of Change</span></h2>
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The title hints at the poem’s meaning. <i>Metamorphoses</i> covers all of history (and prehistory), starting with the creation of the world and ending in Ovid's present day. What might seem, upon a first reading, a rather aimless stitching together of innumerable ancient myths is actually a very careful selection which is tied together by a single commonality: the metamorphoses themselves, one thing being changed into another. Most of these metamorphoses show the gods turning human beings into various non-human things – dolphins, trees, stars, you name it. And why do they do this? In large part, because gods are selfish, possessive – and immortal. When a god desires permanent possession of a mortal person, he (or she) can achieve that permanence only through change – by turning the unfortunate mortal object of his desire into something that can never die. In other words, the key to permanence is change itself. </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">In case we have missed this point, in the final segment of the poem, King Numa, the successor of Romulus, the founder of Rome, listens to a long lecture by Pythagoras on the idea that flux (change) is the principle on which the whole cosmos is founded: things change into other things. Living things turn into dead things, the dead things decay (more change), the seasons change, everything changes. (The gods may be immortal, but they change their minds constantly.) Change is the one constant in the universe. Numa absorbs this lesson and returns to Rome, changed by the experience, a wiser man for having listened to Pythagoras. Then one king is changed for another, and so on through history, until Julius Caesar himself is murdered in the Senate and gets changed into a god (also a shooting star).</p>
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<span style="color: #134f5c;"> Putting Kingship into Perspective</span></h2><p style="text-align: left;">
This brings us to another theme emphasized in the final two books of the poem, the question of kingship (which, coincidentally, also preoccupied the writer of the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>). Book XIV ends with the death and apotheosis of Rome’s founder, Romulus, while XV ends with the death and divinization of his eventual successor (700 years later), Julius Caesar. Julius, of course, was the adoptive father of the man who came to be known as Caesar Augustus, ruler of Rome in Ovid’s day. There was every expectation that Augustus might also claim divinity, perhaps even before his death. (I said a bit more about this <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/05/tradition-truth-and-literary-epic.html" target="_blank">in this post.</a>)</p>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MXfoUQnJMcI/Vt8U573cXrI/AAAAAAAATxA/QD90QxuU58c/s1600/Apotheosis_of_Romulus.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="266" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MXfoUQnJMcI/Vt8U573cXrI/AAAAAAAATxA/QD90QxuU58c/s320/Apotheosis_of_Romulus.jpg" title="The Apotheosis of Romulus - Deification of Romulus. Matheus, Jean, fl. ca. 1619-1620 -- Engraver Faulte, Michel, fl. mid-17th century -- Artist. Photo Credit: © NYPL Digital Gallery" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Romulus assumed into the pantheon of heaven</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>But would this be a good thing, for Rome or for Augustus? Perhaps not. Becoming a god means no longer being a man – which creates a vacancy in the ruler’s seat. Both Romulus and Julius Caesar disappeared at the moment they were assumed into the pantheon of the gods, thereby creating political and social instability – the last thing Ovid’s contemporaries wanted, after thirty years of bloody civil war. The poem ends with what seems to be praise of Augustus but is actually a rather ominous warning. The poet says, in effect, “And now Augustus is ruler! The gods only know how long it will be until he, too, leaves earth to assume his place in the heavens. Let’s hope that he has a long reign before that happens.”
<p style="text-align: left;">So the poem leaves us thinking about both the constancy of change and the ephemeral nature of kingship. In the ancient <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>, you should recall, Utnapishtim warned King Gilgamesh against desiring to be made immortal like the gods. Gilgamesh had to be content with “immortalizing” himself by creating works that would long outlive him, giving him undying fame. Ovid’s warning, although less direct than Utnapishtim’s, seems more foreboding: “You want to be a god and lord it over Rome, Augustus? Just remember that the price of godhood is to surrender your manhood; the gateway into the pantheon of the immortals is death.”</p>
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<span style="color: #134f5c;">The Metamorphosis of the Human Race</span></h2><p style="text-align: left;">
So this is what the poem says: the cosmos is ruled by gods who, if they take a shine to you, are likely to turn you into something you don’t want to be just so they can hang onto you. And the world is ruled by kings who like to think they are gods. The good thing about kings is that they come – and they go. Things change – if things seem bad now, they might be better in a bit (and vice versa).</p>
<p style="text-align: left;">This view, which pervades the poem, provides the context for Ovid’s account of the Great Flood, which shows how incredibly fickle the immortal gods can be: one minute they are basking in the worship of mortal man, the next minute they are destroying every living thing because one man behaved badly. To this extent, the Graeco-Roman gods are not very different from those in the<i> Epic of Gilgamesh</i>.</p>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VocvhG99f8Q/Vt8XX9hvvxI/AAAAAAAATxM/r37WmWEmoUw/s1600/deucalion_pyrrha%2BColombine%2BMazelle.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VocvhG99f8Q/Vt8XX9hvvxI/AAAAAAAATxM/r37WmWEmoUw/s320/deucalion_pyrrha%2BColombine%2BMazelle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">The sole survivors of the Great Flood beget tough offspring.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><p style="text-align: left;">But the significance of the flood story lies in what makes it distinctive, not in the ways it resembles the earlier account The most distinctive feature of Ovid’s flood story, it seems to me, is the way in which the human race is renewed afterward. The only two survivors, Deucalion and Pyrrha, are too old to procreate, but they despair at the thought of being the last people on Earth. So with divine help they create sons and daughters by flinging “the bones of their Mother [Earth]” over their shoulders. These are stones, which then undergo a metamorphosis from stone into flesh and bone. Lest we overlook the significance of this, Ovid points it out: “So the toughness of our race, our ability to endure hard labour, and the proof we give of the source from which we are sprung.” </p><p style="text-align: left;">This toughness and durability allows mankind to endure all the inevitable chances and changes of life. The rest of the poem illustrates just how constant these changes are. If Ovid seems to end the poem with a warning to Caesar Augustus, the King-Who-Would-Be-God, his message to the rest of us mere mortals is more encouraging: “We are tough, we can endure whatever life throws at us. Be strong, endure. In the eternal flux of the cosmos, this is what makes us who we are.”</p></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">This ultimately is what Ovid has to say, not only in his account of the Great Flood, but also in the Metamorphoses as a whole: anyone who wishes to survive the vicissitudes of the gods must be prepared to endure. Let everything else change, because that is the nature of the world, but stand strong or you will be swept away and lost."<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">If you would like to read the entire series so far on the Great Flood in Literature, you’ll find <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20Great%20Flood%20in%20literature">all the installments so far here</a>.</h4><div style="text-align: left;">
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<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/05/zooming-in-on-ovids-flood.html">Previous Post in Series</a></h4>
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<i>©2016 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-83763639186054680032015-10-30T20:42:00.000-05:002016-03-07T15:52:23.620-06:00Rerum Novarum, §1-11: A natural law defense of private ownership <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bnwq4iV-FH0/VjQWfLY3g0I/AAAAAAAATqE/FNdW4_7FXuk/s1600/rerum%2Bquote%2B1.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em;"><img alt="“Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the substance of his body.” " border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Bnwq4iV-FH0/VjQWfLY3g0I/AAAAAAAATqE/FNdW4_7FXuk/s1600/rerum%2Bquote%2B1.png" title="Rerum Novarum quotation" /></a></div>
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As I start looking at <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, Pope Leo XIII's famous 1891 encyclical, I'll first summarize/paraphrase what the encyclical says, paragraph by paragraph, then analyze the way Pope Leo presents his argument, and finally offer my own commentary on it. The first two focus on what is being said, and the last is my own personal response to it. This is a method I recommend to anyone who wants to give an important work a fair reading -- in fact, it's something that I have always tried to teach my students: <b>understand first, and withhold judgment until you are sure you really do understand.</b><br />
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This is the whole idea behind the <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2012/11/read-any-work-with-greater-understanding.html" target="_blank">4-step method of reading with understanding</a> that I’ve propounded elsewhere on this blog. Why start with summary? Because it forces me to boil down the argument to its essential parts — but I don’t want to oversimplify it, so sometimes my “summary” is really more of a paraphrase. I don’t want to skip over any really essential ideas. If you try this yourself, you'll find that putting something (accurately) into your own words is a great exercise, one that forces you to think about what has really been said and also helps you to remember it in detail afterward, as well as come to grips with the claims being made, and their importance. In other words, it helps you to <b>“read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest”</b> the material (as an old Anglican collect says we should do with Scripture). So don't rely on my summaries -- they are no substitute for reading the document, but you may find that they help you understand it.<br />
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My analysis is intended to help you<b> see how the logic of Leo’s argument fits together</b> — we need to understand not only what he is saying, but also why he is saying it that way, and not some other. Doing this allows us to see how the argument unfolds and avoid skipping over points that may seem insignificant at the time, so that by the time we reach the end we can see how the whole thing hangs together.<br />
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The commentary I offer is meant to stir up your own minds, to <b>get you thinking about the implications of what Leo is saying</b>. I think you’ll find that, as we go along, there are lots of ways <i>Rerum Novarum</i> sheds new light on the problems and challenges of our own day, even though the world of 2015 is quite different than that of the 1890s. Much has changed, but human nature remains the same. We still have a lot to learn from this encyclical.<br />
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<a name='more'></a>By the way, although I had originally intended simply to republish here the work I had already published on the other blog, in fact I’m doing completely fresh summary, analysis, and commentary. You might find it interesting to compare the new version with the original — I expect somethings will look a bit different to me, three years after I first took a serious look at this encyclical.<br />
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As we go along, I’ll use for reference the paragraph numbers that appear in <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html" target="_blank">the English translation that appears on the Vatican website</a>. Not all translations use these numbers (<a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/la/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html" target="_blank">the Latin original</a> does not, and <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_le13rn.htm" target="_blank">the English version on the New Advent site</a> numbers them differently), but hopefully these numbers will allow you to follow along using whichever version you prefer. Any subheadings in the summary are my own invention, to show how the argument is structured.<br />
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Summary, §1-11</h4>
Today we’re looking at the first eleven paragraphs (1-17 in the New Advent translation), which begin to lay the foundation upon which Leo will build.<br />
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A problem that cannot be ignored</h3>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Before he even gets to the <br />
"rights and duties of capital and labor,"<br />
Leo lays a foundation for his argument.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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1. The passion for revolution, both political and economic, has resulted in a host of new evils, widening the gap between the rich and the working poor, and even causing a general decline in morals. Things have gotten so bad that these problems are preying on everyone's minds, especially those in a position to regulate them. <br />
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2. Since I [i.e., Leo] have already written encyclicals on similar topics touching on the political sphere, I thought it would be appropriate now to write something concerning the condition of workers, in order to refute false teaching and clarify the principles that should guide any actions in this matter, so that just reason should prevail over political rhetoric. Because it is such a tricky question, many rabble-rousers have been confusing ordinary workers in order to lead them astray for their own dastardly purposes. <br />
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3. One thing we all should agree on is the fact that something needs to be done about working conditions. In the 18th century, the medieval trade guilds were finally abandoned, and the world itself seems to have abandoned any Christian social principles, leaving workers unprotected. The wealthy few, ruled by greed, now own everything, including the usurious institutions that now have turned workers, who own nothing, into wage slaves.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The claims of socialism</h3>
4. The socialists say that the way to fix this is to do away altogether with private property, and let the State hold everything in trust for everyone, so that everyone can have an equal share. There are two things wrong with this "solution," though: first, if no one can own anything, the workers will be even more wretched than they already are; second, to do away with private property robbing from those who currently are property owners, itself an immoral and unjust act, and cause social and political chaos.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Refutation of socialist claims: The right to private property </h3>
5. The reason people work for pay is to provide for themselves and their families -- whether they use that pay for their immediate needs or, through thrift, manage to save some of it to buy property and other durable goods. Therefore, property is something a man has earned through his own efforts, the fruit of his toil, and truly his own possession by right. The socialists, in doing away with private property, thus harm the worker by robbing him of the just fruit of his toil and denying him the right to dispose of it as he sees fit. This is completely unjust, it violates the natural right to own property. <br />
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6. Man shares other animals’ instincts for self-preservation and the propagation of his species, both of which can be achieved using resources immediately at hand. But the very thing that distinguishes Man, his faculty of Reason, gives Man the right, peculiar to his race alone, to own things not just for the moment but over the long term. <br />
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7. This becomes even clearer if we take a closer look at human nature. Because Man's faculty of reason allows to understand many things, including the implications for the future of actions taken in the present, Man rules himself (under the providence of God) by the rational choices he makes, both with respect to his present needs and to those that will recur in the future. And since man's needs recur, Nature provides a resource to supply those needs -- the earth itself, with the abundance it provides. And since Man provided for his own needs long before there was any State, there really is no need for the State to provide for him. <br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
A possible objection forestalled </h3>
8. Acknowledging that God gave the earth for the use of all mankind is not to say that He intended us to possess it collectively; it simply means that He did not designate particular men to own it. He leaves this to human enterprise to work out. Even when the earth is parceled out to particular private owners, it still serves the needs of all, since those who are not landowners nevertheless procure the fruits of the earth with the wages earned as remuneration for their labor. Thus private ownership of property does not interfere with anyone’s opportunity to enjoy the fruits of that property.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Concluding the first point: Private ownership is strongly warranted </h3>
9. Thus it is clear that private ownership of the land follows the law of nature. Land is most fruitful when man cultivates it by means of his own ingenuity and toil; when he does so, he truly makes the land his own, and it is only just that he should, in fact, own it.<br />
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10. Amazingly there are those who deny the logic of this, so obvious as to be virtually self-evident, and instead attempt to revive outmoded theories, allowing that men may use the earth and its fruits but not possess it. They can't see that in asserting this they rob a man of the just fruits of his labor, namely all the improvements he has made to the land. Where is the justice in allowing him to toil and then giving the fruits of his toil to others?<br />
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11. So it makes sense that by and large, contrary to what these dissenters claim, humankind everywhere, throughout history, has acknowledged what natural law argues: that private property is in accord with human nature and provides for a peaceful common life. All just civil law agrees. And divine law concurs, for it severely forbids coveting what belongs to another.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Analysis</h4>
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Finding common ground </h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TVUoSm-v-d4/VjQL-kfLxPI/AAAAAAAATp0/cKKtU_WBMrY/s1600/Lincoln%2Bon%2Bwork.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="quote from Abraham Lincoln sounds remarkably like Pope Leo's Rerum Novarum" border="0" height="400" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TVUoSm-v-d4/VjQL-kfLxPI/AAAAAAAATp0/cKKtU_WBMrY/s400/Lincoln%2Bon%2Bwork.jpg" title="" width="308" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lincoln died 30 years before Rerum Novarum,<br />
but his view sounds remarkably like Pope Leo's.<br />
It was just common sense.</td></tr>
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[1-2] Leo begins by justifying why the Roman pontiff is meddling in what might seem to be secular affairs. Ostensibly this letter, like all papal encyclicals, is addressed to the bishops of the Church, but in fact it seems to be more of an open letter addressed to the world at large, something really unprecedented. <b>He will not simply be “preaching to the choir.”</b><br />
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The problems, not only of the wretched condition of workers, but also those created by the socialist “solution,” were widespread, preying on everyone’s minds, including that of the Vicar of Christ. The aim of Marxist socialism was, and remains, first to destroy all existing society, and later to rebuild it according to socialist principles. The Pope suggests that those who purport to want to represent the workers are being disingenuous; their true purpose is not to improve their lot in the short term, but to bring about complete chaos. He wants to clarify the matter, so that their lies will become more apparent.<br />
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[3] So he begins with <b>something that everyone can agree on: conditions for most workers in the industrialized world are terrible. </b>The greedy, wealthy few have reduced their workers to being virtually wage-slaves. At the same time, usurious lending practices, long and universally condemned as immoral, have now become quite common, accepted. It’s a perfect storm of badness. [4] But how do you survive the perfect storm? Well, Leo is going to show that it’s not by throwing everyone into the maelstrom, as the socialists would have it. At first glance, socialism’s claim to level the playing field may be attractive — the communists will make an unfair world fair. But, as Leo points out, It wouldn't be “fair” at all, it would cause more injustice. It would, in fact, violate the basic moral law that<b> one may not use evil means to achieve a good outcome.</b><br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Natural justice </h3>
[5] But it’s not just the means (robbing property owners of their property) that is evil, it’s the end itself — creating a world in which no one owns anything. This is Leo’s biggest point, which he is going to spend some time on. [6-7] And he will make his point by arguing from natural law. This is important, because one does not have to be a religious believer of any kind to recognize the soundness of his argument. And that argument is that it is human nature to make provision for the future — animals don’t do this, only humans do — and the principle means that man uses to provide for his future (and that of his posterity) is to possess the very land he uses to provide for his present needs. This is the very thing that makes a man something more than an animal, in fact it is what makes him human. To deny him the ability to own property is essentially to dehumanize him. (I covered this understanding of human nature in an earlier post on <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/07/freedom-we-love-it-but-what-is-it.html" target="_blank">the true nature of human freedom</a>). Then he makes, in passing, a point that actually is quite important: a man’s right to provide for himself takes priority — both literally and figuratively — over any right of the State to regulate the disposition of nature’s goods. Literally, man was around, fending for himself, long before there was any “State” to protect him. Morally, also, the individual’s right comes before that of the State. <br />
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[8] Next, Leo takes a moment to <b>head off a potential objection:</b> “But God gave the earth to all mankind as a whole, not to any particular man.” He points out that even if some people own land and others do not, ultimately, we all live off the land. Some earn their bread directly through their agricultural toil (farmers) and others indirectly, by using their wages (also the fruit of their toil) to purchase the food they need, but the same earth provides for both. So private land ownership doesn’t really deprive anyone.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
What it means to “own” something </h3>
[9] His next point is one that I found very striking when I first read it: when a man works a piece of land to produce something — a crop, a house, whatever — he places his stamp on it, makes it something more than it was, <b>makes the land his own</b>. This is what is meant by “ownership.” It’s not a legal concept at all — it’s a moral concept. And moral law, being immutable, always trumps positive (civil) law.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Socialism is at odds with all morality </h3>
[10] By this point, Leo has made a very convincing argument that it would simply be wrong to deny a man the opportunity to make the land his own (private property), and I would certainly agree, as most readers will, that it’s amazing anyone would deny this. [11] But to lend additional moral authority to his argument, Leo points out that <b>private ownership of property is amply warranted</b>: 1) by natural law, 2) by all (just) civil law, and 3) by Divine Law, citing the commandment against coveting a neighbor’s possessions. God does not forbid private property — quite the contrary, He forbids us to be jealous of those who have private property. By now it should be clear that <b>the socialists with their “outmoded theories” are railing against all dictates of reason, custom, and religion.</b><br />
<br />
Because, of course, <b>the socialists preach the exact opposite of Divine Law — they stir up the Have-Nots to make them jealous of the Have</b>s, trying to whip them into rage in which they will rob everyone of any private property. <br />
<br />
He is not yet done laying the foundation of his argument, based on natural law. In the following section, §12-18 in the Vatican English version, he will go on to discuss<b> the role of the family in society</b>, a topic closely tied to his argument about the individual’s rights. Only after he has done this will he move on to speak specifically about labor relations.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Next time: §12-18 Summary and analysis</h4>
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I’ll leave my commentary until after his discussion of the family, so in my next post on <i>Rerum Novarum </i>I’ll summarize and analyze §12-18.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/10/rerum-novarum-in-context.html">Previous post in this series</a></h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
</h4>
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<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-71549069791586687252015-10-27T17:28:00.000-05:002015-11-01T16:47:15.451-06:00Homer's Tardis: Literature is the best kind of time machine<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HYtoMD9f4a0/Vi_sKUdFQKI/AAAAAAAATpE/-AEE00g35KE/s1600/CI%2BConn%2BYankee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HYtoMD9f4a0/Vi_sKUdFQKI/AAAAAAAATpE/-AEE00g35KE/s320/CI%2BConn%2BYankee.jpg" width="219" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This guy looks more like a Texas cowboy<br />
than a Connecticut Yankee, if you ask me, <br />
but he got me hooked on time travel.</td></tr>
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<b>One of my favorite kinds of speculative fiction is the time travel tale,</b> not the H. G. Wells sort of thing that takes you into a distant, purely speculative future, but the kind that takes a modern person and sends him (or her) into the past. The earliest piece of time travel literature that I can recall reading was an Classics Illustrated version of Mark Twain’s <i>A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court</i>, which I read probably at age ten or eleven. (I had already been introduced to King Arthur several years earlier, through a Golden Book storybook based on Disney’s <i>The Sword in the Stone</i>.)<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Imagining past lives</h4>
<b>Time travel stories allow us to visit the past in our imagination, but we are always conscious that we are visitors, outsiders — and therein lies the limitation of the genre.</b> It is always more interested in commenting on (or even passing judgment on) the past, rather than showing it to us as it had been lived. When I was reading A Connecticut Yankee, I was more interested in the world Twain was ridiculing than I was in the show-off shenanigans of his Yankee. Twain had a beef with the romanticization of the past, which he believed had helped cause the American Civil War, so he wasn't too kind to King Arthur. I found this irritating rather than illuminating.<br />
<br />
In my teens, I also read a number of historical novels, mostly about medieval English royalty. I enjoyed the details of historical setting and circumstance, but there again I was aware of the irritating anachronism inherent in the enterprise. I didn’t particularly enjoy the way modern authors seemed to think that twelfth century England was interesting chiefly because of the dynastic struggles of the Plantagenets — I’m sure people living in those days were concerned about such things only insofar as they had a real effect on their daily lives. <br />
<br />
Later, I got a very different view of medieval life and concerns, by reading stories actually written in the twelfth century. Now that was (time) tripping! These stories, at first seemed strange to me. I guess I was experiencing first hand the truth of that saying: <b>“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” </b>To understand such a story, I had to get inside the mind of a twelfth century reader (or writer) and try to understand not only their day-to-day concerns but also the furniture of their imaginations. To the extent that I succeeded, the literature really did transport me to a world lost in time.<br />
<br />
Homer’s epics take me to an even stranger, more primitive world, different from our own in so many ways, and yet his over-sized heroic figures seem to embody universal human traits in a marvelous way. That, I believe, is why they are, in a peculiar way, timeless. As foreign as ancient Mycenaean Greece is to us today, Homer's stories somehow manage both to embody that age perfectly and yet transcend the limitations of history and the particularities of culture. That is a mark of Homer's genius — not every ancient epic manages that kind of transcendence. I can understand the motives of Homer’s Achilles or Odysseus — or, for that matter Sophocles’ Oedipus — in a way that I can’t really sympathize with Gilgamesh or some other ancient heroes, who seem to lack a truly human dimension.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Touching the past</h4>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YFSygyqS_yg/Vi_lAvpAwfI/AAAAAAAATow/JkF2K94NBCo/s1600/Griffin%2Bwarrior%2Bsword.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="detail of New York Times photo from archaeological trove in Pylos, Greece" border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YFSygyqS_yg/Vi_lAvpAwfI/AAAAAAAATow/JkF2K94NBCo/s320/Griffin%2Bwarrior%2Bsword.jpg" title="" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The bronze blade has crumbled, but<br />
the gold hilt remains as bright <br />
as when it was last grasped by<br />
some Mycenaean hero 3,500 years ago.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Coincidentally (or perhaps not), I’ve also long been fascinated with archaeology, particularly of the ancient Mediterranean world. I first discovered this fascinating field as a seven-year-old, after a traveling encyclopedia salesman gave us the A volume of the World Book Encyclopedia as a sample. (I promptly read it cover to cover, and fell in love with archaeology and, to a lesser extent, anthropology.) I've since had a number of opportunities to actually walk the streets of the ancient past, in Spain and Italy. Thanks to the painstaking work of archaeologists, I've walked the streets of Pompeii -- lost to the world for nearly two thousand years, and then brought back to light, stunningly preserved -- and descended into the ancient cemetery that lies beneath St Peter's Basilica, imagining the families that picnicked there long ago with the relics of departed loved ones. I love to read about archaeological discoveries that shed new light on the ancient world.<br />
<br />
One such recent discovery, described in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/science/a-warriors-grave-at-pylos-greece-could-be-a-gateway-to-civilizations.html" target="_blank">this recent news story</a>, reminded me that Homer’s epics, wreathed though they were in myth and legend even in his day, nevertheless take place in a world that was still familiar to the poet who described them (although he lived several centuries after the events he described).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Archaeologists digging at Pylos, an ancient city on the southwest coast of Greece, have discovered the rich grave of a warrior who was buried at the dawn of European civilization. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
He lies with a yardlong bronze sword and a remarkable collection of gold rings, precious jewels and beautifully carved seals. Archaeologists expressed astonishment at the richness of the find and its potential for shedding light on the emergence of the Mycenaean civilization, the lost world of Agamemnon, Nestor, Odysseus and other heroes described in the epics of Homer.</blockquote>
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<b>Agamemnon, Nestor, Odysseus — those guys are all buddies of mine, whose homes I’ve visited</b>, not by touring archaeological sites, but by way of the time machine created by Homer. I’ve lived through their travails with them, grieved with them and for them. No travel agent can provide that kind of experience. And even though archaeology can allow us, literally, to touch the past, it cannot allow us to live it. Ancient literature, however, when read well, can do just that.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Timeless truth </h4>
This may be one reason Homer's epics were so highly regarded, even in his own day. The ancient Greeks believed that the best was already behind them, and they sought to learn from the past, where greater wisdom lay than anywhere in their contemporary world. <b>Homer’s heroic poems capture the past so masterfully that Greeks in following centuries actually regarded them as a kind of encyclopedia </b>or textbook that they used to educate their children. This is why, in Plato’s <i>Republic</i>, Socrates objects to “the lies of the poets” — every son of a prominent family was steeped in Homeric literature from a young age, a practice that Socrates (both the historical Socrates, and Plato’s literary character) believed filled their heads with dangerous ideas, not just of bravado and heroism but warped ideas about the gods. (Curiously, this puts Mark Twain and Plato on the same side.) One of the most important things Plato is doing in <i>The Republic</i> is proposing a better way of educating young men destined to be leaders. He objected not so much to fiction as to false ideals, which is why he has Socrates invent truer fictions.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YludQxEZoPs/Vi_1nOO4AxI/AAAAAAAATpQ/PqBfsXcS2JA/s1600/blue%2Bhomer.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Blue cover of Homer Iliad Odyssey" border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YludQxEZoPs/Vi_1nOO4AxI/AAAAAAAATpQ/PqBfsXcS2JA/s320/blue%2Bhomer.png" title="" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Keep your Tardis, this is my <br />
time travel device of choice.</td></tr>
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Today, I don’t think we need to worry that Homer will warp the minds of our young — quite the opposite. Today, in fact, we may have the opposite struggle — to get young people (and older ones, as well) to see how much truth is conveyed by these ancient tales of legendary figures. <b>Few people in the modern world appreciate the real value of imaginative literature. </b>Time travel stories, though, remain popular, and one of TV’s most popular characters is the time-traveling Doctor Who, so there may yet be hope.<br />
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I’ll be returning to my series on ancient epic, by the way, so get the Tardis warmed up for a return to Augustan Rome and Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i>. I’m also planning a post on some of my favorite time travel fiction, including Jack Finney’s <i>Time and Again</i>, and Andrew M. Seddon’s <i>Ring of Time</i>.<br />
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<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-39784028940406328192015-10-24T11:30:00.000-05:002016-07-04T14:34:15.297-05:00Rerum Novarum in context<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jHQsTYz4yD4/UJx1X1w5TvI/AAAAAAAAAwo/u6Qzjqm0GHY/s1600/workers4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="political cartoon of workers uniting to form a giant fist" border="0" height="163" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jHQsTYz4yD4/UJx1X1w5TvI/AAAAAAAAAwo/u6Qzjqm0GHY/s1600/workers4.jpg" title="" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Res novae</i></td></tr>
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Pope Leo XIII wrote his encyclical <i>Rerum Novarum</i> at the end of the nineteenth century. The previous hundred years had seen a huge upheaval in the way people in the Western world lived and thought. Some changes happened so fast that, even after a hundred years, the world hadn’t yet figured out how to deal adequately with situations that were already a fact of life. One proposed “solution” to the problems of the Western world was set forth in <i>The Communist Manifesto</i>, written by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, but <b>as Pope Leo saw clearly, not only didn’t the Marxist solution fix anything, it only made things worse. </b>That’s the main reason the Holy Father wrote <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, which is perhaps the first papal encyclical that found widespread resonance outside the Catholic Church.<br />
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<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Linguistic context: The title</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
</h4>
Before we look more closely at the social, political, and religious context in which this encyclical letter was written, I’d like to say something about its title. The tradition in naming papal encyclicals is to use the first phrase in the text of the Latin original as the title, and then that title gets translated into various modern languages, along with the rest of the text. That works well enough in most cases — <i>Evangelium vitae</i> becomes <i>The Gospel of Life</i>, <i>Veritatis splendor </i>becomes <i>The Splendor of Truth</i>. But this practice doesn’t work very well in the case of this particular encyclical, because <b>the opening phrase is an idiomatic expression</b> that is pure nonsense (and, in this case, very misleading nonsense) when translated literally.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FUnCAv53Mxw/VisF_G8wSJI/AAAAAAAATog/_epCpMVzoVA/s1600/rerum%2Bnovarum%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FUnCAv53Mxw/VisF_G8wSJI/AAAAAAAATog/_epCpMVzoVA/s320/rerum%2Bnovarum%2Bcover.jpg" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The encyclical's subtitle is<br />
more descriptive than the title.</td></tr>
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I first encountered this encyclical in an anthology that I used in my humanities classes at a state university. Although I had never read <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, I was generally familiar with its contents, and was delighted to have an excuse to familiarize myself with it and teach it to my students. But I was shocked to see that the English title given to it in this anthology was “Concerning New Things.” Now, I can imagine someone entirely ignorant of Latin plugging those two words, “rerum novarum,” into something like Babblefish or Google Translate and getting “of new things” as the resulting translation, but I was shocked that such an otherwise well-edited anthology would propose such a woefully bad title for this important document.<br />
<br />
<b>Let me explain the idiom</b>, and you’ll see why I was so dismayed. The Romans (those ancient people who invented the Latin tongue) were a very traditional, conservative people. Quite unlike the Greeks, they resisted change and innovation as long as they could, and had little affection for novelty of any kind. New things, in their estimation, were almost never as good as the old things that they had been doing since time immemorial. In fact, new things could cause a lot of trouble, particularly in the political sphere. For this reason, the Roman term for something that would completely upset and overturn the existing order was <i>res novae</i>, literally “new things” (always plural -- apparently the Romans could tolerate a single “new thing,” but became alarmed if it multiplied).<br />
<br />
As it happens, Latin itself (<i>Deo gratias!</i>) has also resisted changing much since the days of Cicero and Cato the Younger, so that in “modern” Church Latin <i>res novae</i> means exactly what it has always meant, namely revolution — a most dangerous and destructive force. So in English (and, for that matter, French, Italian, Spanish, German, or Portuguese), you and I may talk about “revolution,” but in Latin it is still <i>res novae</i>. <i>Rerum novarum</i> is simply <i>res novae </i>in the genitive case — a direct translation of that phrase into English would be <b>“of revolution,”</b> not “of new things.” <br />
<br />
So you may search in vain for “new things” in <i>Rerum Novarum</i>. Instead, <b>it argues against “a passion for revolutionary change”</b> which, having wrought no end of havoc a century earlier in the political sphere (in France and America), had since spilled over into the economic sphere, where it threatened to do even more harm. Pope Leo XIII wrote his encyclical in an attempt to stem the destructive tide of revolution, which he saw threatening to destroy society altogether. (If you think he was overreacting, you haven’t read <i>The Communist Manifesto</i> lately.)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ssHtG5c_LAk/UIIxwBFOMRI/AAAAAAAAAjo/VkyooOqjwf8/s1600/vatican+coin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="159" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ssHtG5c_LAk/UIIxwBFOMRI/AAAAAAAAAjo/VkyooOqjwf8/s1600/vatican+coin.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Silver coin struck by Vatican to commemorate 75th anniversary of <i>Rerum Novarum</i>.</td></tr>
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As long as we’re on the subject of Latin and its translation, let me make one more point — something is always lost in translation. Having practiced the art of translation myself, I can tell you that it is very difficult to strike a balance between getting the exact meaning of the original and making it <i>sound</i> right — usually some compromise is necessary. The <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html" target="_blank">English version of this encyclical available on the Vatican website</a> obviously strives to hew very closely to the Latin original, but in doing so it often tortures the English, and certainly makes for turgid reading. The <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_le13rn.htm" target="_blank">version on the New Advent website</a>, on the other hand, is much more readable, because the translator (whose name is unknown — even to the New Advent site owner) gave himself a much freer hand in making the meaning come through clearly. What I recommend, in this case and any other time you are reading a translation from a language unfamiliar to you, is to <b>read more than one translation</b>, or at least, read one translation with another one in hand for comparison. If you know some Latin, you can try also comparing to <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/la/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html" target="_blank">the Latin original</a>.<br />
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Okay, before we start reading the document, <b>let’s put it in context. </b>Keep in mind that what follows is intended as a thumbnail sketch rather than a penetrating analysis. I’m just trying to paint a cultural background — we’ll have more detail when we get to the foreground, where our interest will be focused.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Social context: <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Industrial-Revolution" target="_blank">Industrial Revolution</a></h4>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Pe1S2h6COoU/UI3eo5orfNI/AAAAAAAAAng/weB7Fx62EVo/s1600/textile+mill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Pe1S2h6COoU/UI3eo5orfNI/AAAAAAAAAng/weB7Fx62EVo/s1600/textile+mill.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Women and children working<br />
in an early textile mill.</td></tr>
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<i>Rerum Novarum</i> was promulgated in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, a little more than a century after the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. During that period new technological developments, such as factories where cloth could be woven on huge mechanized looms, began to radically alter the way most people in Europe and North America lived. Not only did they make goods much cheaper to produce, but they put out of business many craftsmen and cottage industries. <b>A lot of people got richer, and a lot more got poorer. </b>While the middle class, i.e., those who were neither peasants nor aristocrats, invested in these new technologies and, as a result, grew in wealth and political prominence, while the old aristocracy began to lose its preeminence and power.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
No longer rural </h3>
Within a few decades rural people, the descendants of medieval serfs, could no longer support themselves with cottage industries (family owned and operated), so they left the countryside to seek work wherever it could be found. More often than not, this meant either working in mines (e.g., digging coal which was used to power the new industries) or in factories, making textiles and, eventually, a wide array of products that formerly had been fabricated in small workshops by skilled craftsmen. <b>Virtually overnight, entire societies went from being largely agrarian to highly industrialized. </b>The new factories demanded long hours of labor, provided brutal working conditions, and paid extremely poor wages. People accepted these low wages because they were desperate.<br />
<br />
In many places, entire new cities sprang up where these new factories were built, ugly and functional with little accommodation for a humane way of life. Housing for industrial workers was hastily constructed, cramped, often unsafe and unsanitary (no indoor plumbing or running water), and very expensive. Disease became a huge problem, while “modern medicine” was still a thing of the future.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Destruction of family life </h3>
For the poor, family life had been effectively destroyed. <b>Children who once had helped their parents herd sheep, raise vegetables, or spin wool were now toiling beside them in factories 14 hours a day</b> for pennies (public schools were as yet unheard of at the beginning of this period). Factory and mine owners grew immensely rich at the expense of the workers, who could barely afford to live and often died as a result of their living and working conditions. Banking for the first time became big business, now having a much larger clientele than ever before. <br />
<br />
This was a far cry from the agrarian culture of a generation or two earlier, where aristocratic landowners still honored the feudal bond, a moral code that acknowledged the reciprocal duties and obligations that lords and their underlings owed each other. Virtually overnight, the world had become a much more brutal and impersonal place; for many it was a kind of nightmare from which there was no waking. (For a fuller picture, <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/786" target="_blank">read Charles Dickens's <i>Hard Times</i>.</a>) </div>
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<br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Political context: <a href="http://ciml.250x.com/archive/marx_engels/me_languages.html" target="_blank"><i>The Communist Manifesto</i></a></h4>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oB1O3LOtzNA/UI3sfawSaxI/AAAAAAAAAn4/bO2MGeUWY0Q/s1600/communist+revolution.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oB1O3LOtzNA/UI3sfawSaxI/AAAAAAAAAn4/bO2MGeUWY0Q/s1600/communist+revolution.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The last line of the <i>Communist Manifesto</i><br />
calls all workers everywhere<br />
to unite in revolution.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I’m going to skip over a lot here to get to Marx & Engels, but we should to bear in mind that these two were the product of the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement which produced a lot of armchair theorists who thought they knew how to make the world a better place. The problem was that these <b>theories were based on mere abstractions, not lived realities</b>. Whenever whenever someone tried to put those theories into effect, all manner of grief ensued.<br />
<br />
Probably the most famous and influential of those theories was that propounded in <i>The Communist Manifesto</i>, by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx (both of whom, by the way, were members of the same bourgeoisie that their tract vilifies). Adapting philosopher G. F. Hegel's theory of historical dialectic, the writers radically transformed it into a view of human history in which, in every age, there is a small, wealthy, and powerful over-class that owns all the land and lords it over a vast, wretched, and powerless underclass who own nothing and have no power over the conditions of their own lives. Eventually some segment of the downtrodden underclass slowly gains power and eventually overthrows their former masters, to become the new overlord class. This process, Marx and Engels said, inevitably repeats itself, time and again, throughout history. They identified the power class of their own day as the <i>bourgeoisie</i>, the middle class that rose out of the peasantry in the Middle Ages and now owned the factories and other “means of production.”</div>
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The Final Solution: Total destruction </h3>
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The <i>Manifesto </i>asserts that<b> the only way to make the world better </b>is to break this inexorable cycle once and for all. How? <b>By destroying all social classes and building a new, classless society. </b>The document incites workers to recognize their collective power, to rise up and overthrow the middle class by violent means, not only destroying the “bourgeoisie” or “capitalists” (yes, murdering them in their beds, if necessary) but also obliterating every aspect of the entire culture in which they have flourished. This destruction, they insisted, must not only be total but also universal — the revolution must be taken to every corner of the world, reducing to dust and ashes all existing culture, in order to create a “blank slate” on which a new, classless culture could be created. The projected end result would be a global classless society in which all means of production would be owned in common (administered through the State), thus avoiding divisive class structure.</div>
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Total control </h3>
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Marx and Engels, even in the fairyland of their theoretical universe, must have realized that this utopia would be difficult to achieve, because even if you managed to destroy everything, what was to stop people from rebuilding it all again? People love to dream about the good old days, after all. Therefore, the architects of the new society would need to make sure that everyone was on the same page: that is, <b>they would need to control all ideas and dissemination of ideas. </b>And where do ideas come from? Religion, education, art and literature — these would have to be in the iron control of the all-knowing State. The State would also control all means of publication and communication, which are used to spread ideas. And, perhaps most importantly, the family itself would have to be destroyed as the basic unit of society — <b>the State would take over parental duties, and become the object of filial affection. </b><br />
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So you see what I meant about <b>the revolution being global and total</b> — allowing any competing ideologies would could be disastrous. Only one ideology, one truth, one culture could be allowed to exist, the one proposed by the Communist State. <i>The Communist Manifesto</i> insists that reform of existing conditions, which was propounded by competing socialist theories of the time, would not suffice; only total, violent revolution would secure the conditions for building the new society.<br />
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The call to arms presented in the <i>Manifesto </i>instigated a variety of violent revolts around Europe, appealing as it did to the unrest and frustration of workers in many places. And, of course, several years after Pope Leo promulgated <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, it would give rise to successful, organized, and highly destructive revolutions in Russia and, later still, in China.</div>
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Religious context: <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14368b.htm" target="_blank">The Church's denunciation of Modernism</a></h4>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blessed Pope Pius IX, <br />
author of the <i>Syllabus of Errors</i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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It may be useful to <b>compare the encyclical <i>Rerum Novarum </i>to an earlier papal document, the Syllabus of Errors</b> of Pope Pius IX (1864). Both documents respond to ideas gaining force in the modern world, but the way they address them, it seems to me, is quite different. The Syllabus is a response to certain intellectual ideas gaining prominence and respectability, which the Church determined not only to be erroneous but also damaging to the role of the Church in society. Many have characterized it as a reactionary document, as if the Church were fighting a last-ditch effort against the inevitable tide of the modern world. That’s not really the case, but it is the idea that lives in the popular mind. <br />
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The <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14368b.htm" target="_blank">Catholic Encyclopedia </a>sums up the significance of the Syllabus in this way (emphasis added):</div>
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The importance of the Syllabus lies in its opposition to the high tide of that intellectual movement of the nineteenth century which strove to sweep away the foundations of all human and Divine order. The Syllabus is not only the defence of the inalienable rights of God, of the Church, and of truth against the abuse of the words freedom and culture on the part of unbridled Liberalism, but it is also a protest, earnest and energetic, against the attempt to eliminate the influence of the Catholic Church on the life of nations and of individuals, on the family and the school. In its nature, it is true, the Syllabus is negative and condemnatory; but <b>it received its complement in the decisions of the [first] Vatican Council and in the Encyclicals of Leo XIII.</b> It is precisely its fearless character that perhaps accounts for its influence on the life of the Church towards the end of the nineteenth century; for it threw a sharp, clear light upon reef and rock in the intellectual currents of the time.</blockquote>
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(If you want to know more about the <i>Syllabus of Errors</i>, a good discussion of it may be found <a href="http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/the-syllabus-the-controversy-and-the-context" target="_blank">on the website of <i>Catholic Answers</i> magazine</a>.)</div>
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One of the encyclicals that served as “complement” to this document is <b>Pope Leo's <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, which is pro-active rather than reactive, practical rather than theoretical.</b> (This may be one reason my hackles go up when I see it referred to as “Concerning New Things,” which suggests the kind of defensive posture that is sometimes attributed to the <i>Syllabus</i>.)<br />
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A response, not a reaction </h3>
This encyclical is more interested in arguing for <b>a fresh and constructive way of dealing with problems,</b> than it is condemning errors. It wants to argue for the continuing value of religion to modern society and to propose constructive, rather than destructive, ways to deal with the very real problems created by the conditions of modern industrial society. In this document Leo is being persuasive, rather than relying on his papal authority; he wishes to convince his readers of the social benefits of the Church rather than to assert any political force the Church may have. Much as <i>The Communist Manifesto</i> urged a practical application of Marx's political theory, <b>Pope Leo's encyclical offered a practical application of Christian charity to the problems of the modern world.</b> Perhaps because of this, it was well received and exerted a widespread and lasting beneficial influence on society in the Western world.<br />
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The fact is, by the end of the nineteenth century, the intellectuals of the world had already decided that <b>religion, and particularly the Catholic Church, was useless </b>baggage left over from a less enlightened age. One of the things Pope Leo wanted to show the world was the error of that idea: the Christian Church was<b> the only institution that truly cares for the well-being of all mankind</b>, and the principles of Christian charity were the only ones that had a hope of creating a just world.<br />
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It’s not surprising that the Pope would hold such a view — but it is surprising that he was able to win so much sympathy from those outside the Catholic Church. When you read <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, I hope you will see, as I have, how much indisputable wisdom is in this document, including much that does not even rely on Christian faith as its warrant. This is a document that <b>aims to appeal to all people of goodwill, believers and non-believers alike.</b></div>
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Coming up: Natural law as the groundwork for Leo’s argument</h4>
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In my next post I’ll begin summarizing and commenting on <i>Rerum Novarum</i>. I’ll start with the first fifteen paragraphs in the New Advent translation (if you are using the Vatican website’s translation, that’s through paragraph 9). Please read along with me, and <b>leave your own comments </b>as we go along.</div>
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<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i><br />
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<i><a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/10/want-better-world-read-rerum-novarum.html">Previous post in this series</a> </i> | <i><a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/10/rerum-novarum-1-11-summary-and-analysis.html">Next post in this series</a></i></h4>
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<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-59928198095906125042015-10-19T20:18:00.002-05:002015-10-31T14:46:41.322-05:00Want a better world? Read Rerum Novarum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Who would have guessed that<br />
a papal encyclical with an <br />
untranslatable Latin title would change <br />
not just the Church but the world?</td></tr>
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Remember the Year of Faith decreed by Pope Benedict XVI? It began in October 2012, coinciding with the height of the political season here in the United States, as we prepared for national elections. I’ll admit I was, then as now, rather jaded about our national politics — we seem usually to have a choice between “bad” and “even worse.” At the time, I entertained a little pipe dream about a political party that would be founded on the principles of Catholic social teaching, emphasizing subsidiarity, solidarity, and the inherent dignity of the human person.</div>
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I still think it would be a capital idea. In fact, I think a lot of people, in addition to Catholics, could get behind a party that promoted these key principles:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Subsidiarity </b>— the principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or most local competent authority, beginning with the family itself, the nucleus of society. Political decisions should be taken at a local level if possible, rather than by a central authority.</li>
<li><b>Solidarity </b>means that we stand together for the common good. The poor, the weak, and the oppressed are not “other” than us, but our brothers and sisters. One person or group must not prosper at the expense of others. </li>
<li>The principle of <b>human dignity</b> acknowledges that each human life, from the moment it springs into existence until natural death, is endowed with inestimable value which must be acknowledged and respected. There are no “worthless” people who may be discarded or denied opportunities because others find them useless or unprofitable.</li>
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Now, I don’t want to get into political polemics on this blog — that sort of thing generally produces more heat than light — but I would like to discuss a document that first brought those three principles, the core of Catholic Social Teaching, to the attention of the world at large. So I’m going to re-publish here on this blog a series of posts that first appeared <a href="http://catholicreadingproject.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">on a different blog</a> that I created back in the Year of Faith, in which I read, analyze, and comment on <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, an encyclical of Pope Leo XIII which has come to be known as the foundational document of Catholic Social Teaching.<br />
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Making the modern world a better place</h4>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leo reminded us that violence and destruction<br />
are not the way to build a better world.</td></tr>
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<i>Rerum Novarum</i> (1891) was the first of a long string of papal encyclicals that set out the principles of a Christian response to the problems of the modern world. It addressed problems that were experienced by many people throughout the world, irrespective of creed or country, and thus had a much broader audience than papal writings generally do. Pope Leo XIII, in writing <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, offered a direct response to the Marxist call for revolution, which was firing the imaginations of many who sought to “free workers from their chains” of industrial servitude. In the <i>Communist Manifesto</i>, published almost fifty years earlier, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had insisted that the only solution to the world’s problems was the violent destruction of existing culture, beginning with the warfare of workers against the owners of industry. Their <i>Manifesto </i>struck a deep chord, and many thought it presented the answer to the wretched working conditions under which many people labored in the newly-industrialized world. <br />
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Pope Leo wanted to remind the people — Catholics and others — that the destruction called for by the socialists was not the way to build a better world. He proposes a better way for workers and employers to enjoy mutual prosperity, based on mutual respect and a sense of decency. Many ideas P. Leo enunciates in this encyclical have, in fact, had enormous influence in the century or so since it was written — the world is a better place than it would have been without <i>Rerum Novarum</i>. <br />
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You don't have to be Catholic to appreciate Catholic social teaching</h4>
From the promulgation of <i>Rerum Novarum</i> up to the present day, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) has never been just for Catholics, any more than the concepts of charity and the common good are restricted to Catholics. Shortly before our last round of national elections, in <a href="http://www.acton.org/pub/commentary/2012/10/11/protestants-praise-catholic-social-teaching" target="_blank">an article on the website of the Acton Institute</a>, two Protestants, one Baptist and one Reformed, praise Catholic Social Teaching and its articulation by American bishops in this political season. Hunter Baker and Jordan Ballor wrote:<br />
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For people of faith, and even for people of no particular faith whatsoever, CST represents a praiseworthy model for responsible civil engagement in a diverse and plural culture. The tradition of social encyclicals was inaugurated just over 120 years ago with the promulgation of <i>Rerum Novarum</i> (Of the New Things)<b>*</b> by Pope Leo XIII, which focused on the problem of poverty and social upheaval in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. This encyclical ushered in an era of sustained and substantive reflection on the social implications of the Catholic faith in the modern world, continued by a long line of noteworthy publications, papers, books, conferences, and debates. The most recent social encyclical appeared from the current bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI, in 2009 under the title <i>Caritas in Veritate</i> (Charity in Truth), which deals with (among other things) the challenges and opportunities of globalization and economic and political instability.</blockquote>
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<i><b>*</b>I'll have something to say about the title of this encyclical
— and the wretchedly inappropriate way it is usually translated — in a
later post.</i></blockquote>
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They go on to cite several tenets of Catholic Social Teaching as being of especial importance in the current political campaigns: subsidiarity, solidarity, and religious liberty. In conclusion they say:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To the extent that the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church reflect truth about the human person and society, they represent a boon to our broader social life as well as a challenge for other traditions to think as deeply and responsibly about the social implications of our respective faiths. The American political scene is better off for having Catholic Social Teaching, and faithful Catholics, involved in the public square. </blockquote>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
<i>Rerum Novarum </i>and the current political season</h4>
As we approach another round of national elections, we all should be thinking about what is best for our country. I think reading and reflecting on <i>Rerum Novarum</i> is one good way to get us all thinking about the principles that should be guiding our political choices, and, more generally, our lives in modern society.<br />
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If you would like to read <i>Rerum Novarum</i> along with me, there are two different English translations freely available on the Internet. One (which I think is the more readable of the two) may be found <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/library/docs_le13rn.htm" target="_blank">on the New Advent web site</a>; the second is more widely available (although slightly less readable, in my opinion) and can be found in many places on the internet, including <a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum_en.html" target="_blank">the Vatican web site</a>. If you would like a free version that can be read on a mobile device or ereader, you can download in Epub or Mobi (Kindle) format <a href="http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/index.htm" target="_blank">from Papal Encyclicals Online</a>.<br />
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In my next post on this subject, I’ll provide some background to set this work in context, so that we’ll have a better idea of what prompted Pope Leo to write <i>Rerum Novarum</i>. In later posts, I will summarize and comment on the document section by section. I must point out that I am by no means an expert on Catholic social teaching or papal encyclicals — I am simply an educated Catholic who wishes to gain a deeper knowledge and understanding of the Church’s treasury of wisdom, so that I can live a more effective witness in the world. I welcome comments, corrections, and other insight from anyone who cares to comment on <i>Rerum Novarum</i>, particularly those who have a more thorough knowledge and understanding than I.<br />
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If you'd like to know more about subsidiarity, a key principle in Catholic social teaching, check out this great video from <a href="http://catholicvote.org./" target="_blank">CatholicVote.org.</a><br />
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<i><a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/10/rerum-novarum-in-context.html">Next post in this series</a></i></h4>
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<i> </i></h4>
<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-32190869372934777442015-07-04T21:11:00.000-05:002015-12-09T17:59:33.037-06:00Freedom: We love it, but what is it?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Liberty has long been the emblem of our country,<br />
but do we even understand what true freedom is?</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Today is July 4, when we commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and all the things that we enjoy by virtue of being Americans — the chief of these being freedom. What do we mean by freedom, though? Lately, it seems that one man's freedom is another man's oppression.<br />
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As soon as this question occurred to me, I was reminded of <a href="http://amzn.to/1HE3iSb" target="_blank">The One Minute Philosopher: Quick Answers to Help you Banish Confusion, Resolve Controversies, and Explain Yourself Better to Others</a> by Montague Brown (published by Sophia Institute Press). In this book, on facing pages, Brown defines a common term and another term that is often confused with it (such as “patriotism” and “nationalism”), with the intention of showing not only what each term means precisely but also of distinguishing between them. Even though the discussion of each term is fairly brief (a single page), Brown manages to bring to light many interesting shades of meaning that illuminate how truly distinct (sometimes even opposite) the two apparently synonymous terms really are.<br />
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Sadly, I no longer own this book (I inadvertently got rid of it when I sold off several hundred books I had in storage), but the very memory of it got me to thinking about what we mean when we talk about freedom and its synonyms, liberty and independence. It seems to me that as we engage in the on-going national debate about this idea, freedom, which is so integral to our national identity, we need to know what we are really talking about.<br />
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The American ideal of freedom </h4>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ai8s9Da5oNo/VZh9Zn8QUnI/AAAAAAAATfM/9txUNVdProQ/s1600/Freedom_of_Speech_5_6_meta.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The right to speak freely in the public forum is especially vital to avoid tyranny." border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ai8s9Da5oNo/VZh9Zn8QUnI/AAAAAAAATfM/9txUNVdProQ/s320/Freedom_of_Speech_5_6_meta.jpg" title="Norman Rockwell, Freedom of Speech" width="250" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The right to speak freely in the public forum<br />
is a vital safeguard against tyranny.</td></tr>
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Of late, the idea of American freedom has become blurred. It seems the American flag, symbolizing the unity of the nation, has been displaced by other emblems -- the rainbow banner, the Stars and Bars, and other contentious emblems. Is there no banner under which Americans can still unite? <b>Can we still claim to hold a shared understanding of the freedom we all claim to cherish? </b><br />
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<b> </b>When I think of “freedom” in the context of being an American, some of the images that spring to my mind are Norman Rockwell’s famous illustrations of “The Four Freedoms.” The idea of these “four essential freedoms” had its origin in a State of the Union address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. Nearly a year before Pearl Harbor was attacked, Roosevelt was trying to convince the American people that the United States should help to defend Europe against the spread of the totalitarian regimes of Hitler and Mussolini, and he held up these “four essential freedoms” to stir up enthusiasm for this effort. A couple of years later, after the U.S. had, in fact, become embroiled in the European war (as well as war against Japan), the iconic illustrations of illustrator Norman Rockwell revived the idea that these four “freedoms” are essential to the American way of life. <br />
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Today when I look at these “four essential freedoms” defined by Roosevelt and movingly illustrated by Rockwell, I see that they are not all cut from the same cloth; there seem to be two different ideas about freedom at work here. First there are the freedom of religion and freedom of speech — these I'll call the <b>“freedom to”</b> — freedom to speak, freedom to worship (or not) as we choose. These are essential rights that were not only endorsed by the signers of the Declaration of Independence but also enshrined in the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution as essential to a free society, safeguards against the kind of tyranny which first caused the American colonies to declare independence from the British monarchy.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p26kkayP2aA/VZh9YALm49I/AAAAAAAATe8/YtOb0r5vQds/s1600/Rockwell_FreedomFromFear.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="To be free from fear is a universal human aspiration but it cannot properly be asserted as a right." border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-p26kkayP2aA/VZh9YALm49I/AAAAAAAATe8/YtOb0r5vQds/s320/Rockwell_FreedomFromFear.jpg" title="Norman Rockwell, freedom from fear" width="245" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">To be free from fear is a universal human aspiration<br />
but it cannot properly be asserted as a right.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
These “freedoms to” (speak and worship) are regarded as basic civil rights. But can we also claim a <b>“freedom from”</b> as a right? “Rights,” properly speaking, are things we can exercise for ourselves, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Roosevelt might have defined the final two of his four freedoms as “freedom to prosper” and “freedom to defend oneself from aggression.” But he didn't do that. By saying, instead, that people have a “right” to be “free from” want and fear, he is referring to something that not everyone can do for himself.<br />
<br />
When he first included these two, President Roosevelt was trying to build a case for the American government, and military, to act on behalf of others (the British, French, etc.). When Rockwell illustrated them, he also was depicting not something we do for ourselves, but something provided through a greater agency than we are capable of individually. In other words, “freedom from” is not something for which we ourselves are responsible, but something that may have to be provided by an agency greater than ourselves.<br />
<br />
We need to be careful when we talk about “rights.” Peter Singer, a very sloppy modern philosopher, has caused no end of trouble by claiming that animals have “rights,” but he would probably be the last person to assert that animals have any “responsibilities.” Yet <b>every right, properly speaking, has a corresponding duty.</b> And duty is governed not by animal instinct but by the moral sense, which animals lack. By virtue of our free will, we are free to
choose how to act, but we have a duty to choose well. If we exercise our civic
right to free speech, for instance, we have a responsibility to speak as
truly as we are able. When we choose to speak falsely — to lie and
mislead others — we abuse that right. If we forget the close correlation between rights and responsibilities, we run the risk of misconstruing altogether what a “right” is. How can we assert our right to freedom, for example, if we misunderstand what the term means? <br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
The Christian understanding of freedom</h4>
The notion of freedom is absolutely fundamental to the Christian understanding of Man. At the very beginning of human history, as depicted in the second chapter of Genesis, we see that <b>we humans were created to be free:</b> the first man and woman were given the whole Earth, without constraint, except for a single prohibition: not to taste the fruit of “the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” We should note that here, as in many other places in the Bible, to “know” something does not refer simply to intellectual, but to experiential, knowledge. Now, all of Creation was good, so Adam and Eve already experienced (knew) the good. Therefore, the prohibition “not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” really meant “not to know (experience) Evil,” since they already knew Good. This was the only thing forbidden to them — yet it was perfectly in their power to disobey this prohibition. They had free will — they could avoid that fruit, or they could defy God, take a bite, and experience the consequences of their actions, which turned out to be all kinds of evil.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OxEGO4YeRHg/VZh9aZ8eASI/AAAAAAAATfQ/k_tUdkWwJ7c/s1600/freedom-worship.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="No society is truly free which suppresses authentic religion." border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OxEGO4YeRHg/VZh9aZ8eASI/AAAAAAAATfQ/k_tUdkWwJ7c/s320/freedom-worship.jpg" title="Norman Rockwell, Freedom of Religion" width="243" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">“</span>The <i>right to the exercise of freedom</i>,
<br />
especially in moral and religious matters, <br />
is an inalienable requirement
of the dignity <br />
of the human person.” CCC 1738</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I don’t want to dip any further into theodicy than to point out that our First Parents did not make themselves free by throwing off God’s authority; rather, they abused the freedom they already possessed when they chose to rebel. God created them to be free, but they chose to be something other than as He had made them — they chose to know (experience) evil. This suggests that <b>“freedom,” at least in a Christian understanding, does not mean simply “license.”</b> License indicates absence of all constraints, even the God-given sort. When Adam and Eve defied the Divine prohibition, they acted licentiously. And as soon as they did that, they were no longer truly free. <br />
<br />
Nor were they truly independent. From the moment of our First Parents’ disobedience, the human race has had to toil for the bread we eat, yet it is still God who provides the soil, the seed, and the rain to make it grow. Our pioneer ancestors were certainly mindful of this truth, but as our lives have become more comfortable, we have lost sight of our own radical dependency upon Divine Providence. Little wonder then, that Franklin Roosevelt could assert that we have a fundamental “right” to be “free from” unpleasant conditions such as want and fear. Philosophically speaking, however, something can only be called a “right” if the bearer of that right has the power to fulfill or to be that which the right asserts. So if we claim a “right” to be free from want, we are asserting that we can provide for our own needs — that is, we are denying our dependence upon Divine Providence. This is different from being “free to” — free to provide for our own needs, to the best of our ability, or free to defend ourselves against an aggressor. Since our abilities and our strength are limited, we might fail, so there can be no guarantee of a right to be “free from” any adverse condition.*<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JS6MiFgUzfM/VZh9ZGYGuJI/AAAAAAAATfI/JkD9l-O8jgA/s1600/Norman-Rockwell-Freedom-from-Want.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Church is an instrument of Divine Providence when she provides for the needy." border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JS6MiFgUzfM/VZh9ZGYGuJI/AAAAAAAATfI/JkD9l-O8jgA/s320/Norman-Rockwell-Freedom-from-Want.jpg" title="Norman Rockwell, Freedom from Want" width="250" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">“Christian morality, when adequately <br />
and completely practiced, leads of itself <br />
to temporal prosperity, for it merits <br />
the blessing of that God who is the source <br />
of all blessings.” <i>Rerum Novarum</i> 28</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I’m sure Adam and Eve, and all their progeny down through countless generations, would have loved to be “free from” — free from want and fear, disease and worry and death. But on our own, we cannot be free in that way, at least not since that Original Disobedience. We might say that everything that happened between the Expulsion from the Garden until the Incarnation was an opportunity for humankind to learn just how inadequate our own efforts are, and how greatly we depend on the Almighty for any good that comes our way. <b>To acknowledge our human limitations can be a liberating, if humbling, experience.</b> If you don’t believe me, look at the example of Mary, the New Eve, who, when given a choice by God, chose humility and submission to the Divine Will rather than exerting her own will. Her humble “<i>fiat mihi</i>” completely overturned the act of her original predecessor, who was enticed by the promise that “you shall be like gods” when she reached for the forbidden fruit.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
The truth about human freedom</h4>
Some will ask, what is freedom then? Is it merely submission to a Divine Overlord? If that’s the case, then what is the point of free will? There are various gnostic sorts of heresy — Mormonism is one — which claim that when Eve succumbed to the Serpent’s temptation and bit that fruit, she did the human race a favor by making a “grown up” choice. In this way of looking at things, getting thrown out of the Garden was a good thing — it showed that humankind was now ready to “go it alone” and pull itself up by its bootstraps. Thus, according to this view, the disobedience of our First Parents was a kind of emancipation proclamation, making Satan the Promethean figure who made it possible for men to become godlike in their power over their lives. <br />
<br />
It is easy to fall into this kind of heresy if we don't have an adequate understanding of the true nature of human free will and its purpose. These questions are dealt with in the section of the <i>Catechism of the Catholic Church</i> that deals with <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a3.htm" target="_blank">Man’s freedom.</a> Paragraphs 1731-38 elaborate the relationship between freedom and responsibility. Because we have the gift of reason, we have the ability to choose our actions. This distinguishes us from animals — they act by instinct or necessity, we by reason and choice. In this way, we bear the image of God, who is all-knowing and all-good. <b>To the extent that we use our free will to choose the Good, we become more like God. </b>Conversely, to the extent that we neglect or refuse to use our God-given reason to make good choices, we demean the divine image in us by acting no better than animals. This is why the Catechism says that<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Freedom characterizes properly human acts. It makes the human being responsible for acts of which he is the voluntary agent. His deliberate acts properly belong to him.</blockquote>
To the extent that we act willingly (voluntarily, freely), we are responsible for our acts, accountable for the choices we make. (Ignorance and duress can mitigate our responsibility for our actions, of course.) Now, Scripture has it that <b>“the Truth shall make you free,”</b> so the more we act in conformity with Truth — i.e., the more we choose the Good — the freer we become. Mary, in voluntarily submitting to the will of God, in giving her <i>fiat</i>, chose the ultimate Good and therefore exercised human freedom most perfectly of all mortals. That is why she is called Full of Grace.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xMqefNtHn5U/VZiF5AGinrI/AAAAAAAATfg/WX8Tfr5kXhs/s1600/Mary%2Bas%2Bnew%2Beve.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Mary's fiat restores what was lost by Eve's disobedience" border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xMqefNtHn5U/VZiF5AGinrI/AAAAAAAATfg/WX8Tfr5kXhs/s400/Mary%2Bas%2Bnew%2Beve.png" title="illumination of Mary and Eve" width="377" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mary’s willing <i>fiat </i>restores what was lost through Eve’s willful disobedience.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span id="goog_499862435"></span> Grace, as the catechism points out, is what makes true freedom possible: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[T]he more docile we are to the promptings of grace, the more we grow in inner freedom and confidence during trials, such as those we face in the pressures and constraints of the outer world. By the working of grace the Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world. (CCC 1742)</blockquote>
<br />
The Catechism, in fact, recognizes just one fundamental human right: “<b>Every human person, created in the image of God, has the natural right to be recognized as a free and responsible being. </b>All owe to each other this duty of respect.” (CCC 1738) Notice the duty that accompanies the right — respect for each other’s freedom, because of our natural human dignity. The paragraph goes on to say: “The <i>right to the exercise of freedom</i>, especially in moral and religious matters, is an inalienable requirement of the dignity of the human person. This right must be recognized and protected by civil authority within the limits of the common good and public order.” (Italics in the original)<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The impostors and the truth</h3>
A Christian anthropology clarifies the differences between true freedom and its impostors. It is not license — in fact, it is the opposite of license, for it recognizes God’s just authority. Nor is it mere independence — <b>a willful independence can cut us off from the source of grace that makes true freedom possible.</b> What about liberty, then? Are liberty and freedom identical?<br />
<br />
Even liberty is an impostor when it masquerades as freedom. <b>Liberty is a legal concept, while freedom is a moral concept. </b>Liberty can be conferred or denied by a legal authority. Naval personnel are said to be “given liberty” when they are permitted to leave their ships in port; slaves are “given their liberty” when their legal owners emancipate them. Saint Paul was put in chains by the Roman authority, and he submitted to that authority, yet he never surrendered the freedom that he had in Christ Jesus.<br />
<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0PBzJ-FavLs/VZqi-Q_9BII/AAAAAAAATgM/ruxWnwZRwLI/s1600/1%2Bminute%2Bphilosopher.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The One-Minute Philosopher, Montague Brown" border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0PBzJ-FavLs/VZqi-Q_9BII/AAAAAAAATgM/ruxWnwZRwLI/s320/1%2Bminute%2Bphilosopher.jpg" title="The One-Minute Philosopher: Quick Answers to Help you Banish Confusion, Resolve Controversies, and Explain Yourself Better to Others" width="215" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Using terminology unequivocally assures<br />
that both our agreements and our disagreements<br />
are honest ones.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Catholic Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas recently caused a minor uproar when he said, “Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved.” He might just as truly have said that they did not lose their freedom just because they were denied their liberty. <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/246759-george-takei-justice-thomas-a-clown-in-blackface%5D" target="_blank">George Takei’s intemperate response</a> to Thomas’s statement was born of a misunderstanding, for Takei apparently assumed that Thomas was denying or overlooking the lack of liberty imposed upon the enslaved and the interned (Takei has since apologized for over-reacting, and for failing to understand what Thomas intended). In fact, Thomas was speaking out of a Catholic understanding, which recognizes that <b>even slaves possess an innate human dignity</b> that allows them to make reasoned, voluntary choices (to be free), even while living under constraint. <br />
<br />
This kind of misunderstanding only feeds division and sows hatred. If we truly care about the common good, it behooves us to avoid equivocation and make sure that what we mean by what we say is understood by those we hope to convince. We can do this if we keep clearly in mind the Christian understanding of the true
nature of freedom, and the ways it differs from its counterfeits, liberty, independence, and license. One is an absolute good, which must always be valued and preserved, while the others are limited and contingent goods that can serve true freedom or hinder it.<br />
<br />
So while we celebrate our American freedom, let us remember that, while we must respect the freedom of others, we are truly free only when we act in conformity with the Truth, which is found in its fullness in Christ Jesus. To act otherwise is not to be free, but “is an abuse of freedom and leads to ‘the slavery of sin’” (CCC 1733). <br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<i>“For freedom Christ has set us free.” (Galatians 5:1)</i></h3>
—————<br />
<br />
*There is a beautiful Anglican collect (now added to the treasury of Catholic prayers through the Personal Ordinariates for former Anglicans) which is a wonderful reminder of the limits of our human freedom, and our dependency on God for freedom from adversity. I include it here for the benefit of those who may not know it.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Almighty God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help
ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our
souls; that we may be defended against all adversities which may happen
to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the
soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</i> </blockquote>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-86170202039621145292015-05-30T16:22:00.001-05:002021-04-03T11:08:24.131-05:00Don't Shoot the Elephant or You'll Kill Education<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GUBvwHZfINE/VWokPHHlOEI/AAAAAAAADHY/-XdKamC7EKU/s1600/blind%2Bmen%2Belephant.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="blind men and elephant public sculpture India" border="0" height="277" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GUBvwHZfINE/VWokPHHlOEI/AAAAAAAADHY/-XdKamC7EKU/s320/blind%2Bmen%2Belephant.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>The Asian parable of the blind men and the elephant<br />
is as potent as Plato's myth of the cave.</i></span></td></tr>
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I don’t usually touch on hot button issues on this blog, preferring instead to focus on perennial wisdom that can benefit us all. To my mind, too much bloggery deals with narrow, sectarian rants (of the right and the left), radiating heat but very little light. I prefer to try to preserve a space in which we can put cant aside and try to contemplate truth, as it can be seen refracted and reflected in literature, history, philosophy, art, and the other liberal arts. </p><p style="text-align: left;">You see, I have this funny idea that if we all look toward the light, from whatever direction our perspective may take, we can all be illuminated and, in that way, united, even if we disagree about the things we see. Perhaps we will even recognize the limitations of our own personal perceptions, like the proverbial blind men who each grasped a different part of the elephant. Individually they had their own (equally limited and erroneous) ideas about what they were touching, but when they combined their perceptions, they realized that what they collectively beheld was much greater, more magnificent and wondrous, than what anyone of them individually suspected. (If you aren’t familiar with this parable, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant" target="_blank">read it here</a>. It is every bit as potent as Plato’s myth of the cave.)</p>
<a name='more'></a><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">Education draws us out of our own, limited understanding of truth</span></h4><p style="text-align: left;">
Really, folks, this is precisely what education, in the true sense of the term, is supposed to do. It is not supposed to tell you that whatever you already perceive — whether it’s a leg like a pillar or a trunk like tree branch — is the absolute and only truth, it is supposed to put you in touch with people and cultures and points of view that differ from your own, so that you open your mind and learn to weigh opinion and experience, and in this way become more capable of discerning not only particular but larger, more enduring truths. It draws you out of your own blinkered, myopic reality and sets you in a larger context that spans time (history and posterity) and space (the whole world). That’s what the word “educate” (Latin <i>e(x)</i> + <i>ducere </i>= to lead or draw one out) means.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0yb0Q-AslTs/VWol6o4oEaI/AAAAAAAADHk/jjoLCUZ29rU/s1600/magnificent%2Belephant.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="stock image of magnificent elephant" border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0yb0Q-AslTs/VWol6o4oEaI/AAAAAAAADHk/jjoLCUZ29rU/s320/magnificent%2Belephant.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Truth is a beautiful thing, but a false multiculturalism<br />
can blind students and make true education impossible.</i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
If the administrators of Columbia University or any institution of so-called “higher education” should capitulate to the demands of students that their own puerile perceptions not be challenged — if they agree to attach “trigger warnings” to any course that might offend a student’s cultural identity — they will be doing the opposite of educating. Instead of the academic community sharing insights and enlarging their appreciation of the majestic beast, they will kill the very thing that has brought them together. They will be putting an elephant gun in the hands of their blind young charges, and, when the trigger is pulled, they’ll all be left grasping some gruesome butchery of the truth. </p>
<p style="text-align: left;">If “multiculturalism” and “diversity training” actually tried to expose students to a diverse range of cultures and to consider how cultures different than their own view the world, they would be valuable adjuncts to more traditional educational approaches. Instead, these duplicitous terms are a façade, masking a process that has systematically taught and reinforced prejudice — i.e., it has taught young people to hate and fear anything that they do not already experience or understand or believe or enjoy. <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419025/columbia-students-triggered-old-books-are-ones-who-need-them-most-ian-tuttle" target="_blank">This recent article in the <i>National Review</i></a><i> </i>illustrates how true this is. (Read the article yourself to see what the kerfuffle is about; it has to do with students who feel offended by Ovid’s lack of modern cultural sensitivity, or some such).</p>
<h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #134f5c;">
We need to consider truth from different angles </span></h4>
I’d like to focus on the salient point that the article’s author, Ian Tuttle, makes — which, in fact, he takes from C. S. Lewis — and that is that education, far from insulating students from viewpoints that differ from their own, should be programmatically exposing them to a variety of political, cultural, historical, and philosophical viewpoints, so that they may enlarge their understanding and test their own preconceptions.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In an introductory essay to St. Athanasius’s <i>De Incarnatione</i> (another very old book), C. S. Lewis made just this argument. “Every age has its own outlook,” wrote Lewis. “It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.” Lewis is not suggesting (at least not here) that old books got things more right than new ones — Dante was not omniscient — but simply that they got things right (and wrong) differently: “Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction.”</blockquote>
The only problem with such an argument, of course, is that it assumes there are truths to be grasped, truths that transcend cultural and historical contexts — and here lies the rub. These days, if you want to get an academic’s dander up, just try suggesting that there is any such thing as transcendent, universal, or immutable truth. And if you really want to cause trouble, try suggesting that education’s purpose is to teach students how to perceive that truth. If my own experience in “higher education” is anything to go by (and, sadly, I’m convinced it is), you will be attacked — verbally, if not physically — and swiftly be given the gate.<br />
<br />
That’s part of the reason I’m writing this blog rather than standing at the front of a classroom today. Not because I’ve given up on the ideal of true education, but because I’ve found it almost impossible to pursue such an enterprise in today’s halls of “higher learning.” If you value true education of the old-fashioned liberal arts variety, keep reading this space.<br />
<br />
Just one more point. I’m as eager to further my own on-going education as I am to help you further yours. I started this blog hoping to generate some conversation through the ether, but too often I find myself alone in my echo chamber. I don’t mind a bit conversing with such folk as C. S. Lewis, Flannery O’Connor, Ovid, Livy, Vergil, <i>et al.</i>, but I would love to have some of you readers chime in from time to time. Let me see some other quadrant of the elephant. If you find value in anything you read here, please leave a comment and let me know why. Join the conversation and add your insights — or your illuminating questions. That’s how we can all, together, arrive at a clearer perception of the truth.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #45818e;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-27852390685764477732015-05-22T00:45:00.000-05:002015-10-20T12:58:06.269-05:00Tradition, Truth and the Literary Epic<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wKRb1v55VlQ/VV69x4MndZI/AAAAAAAADGU/K_s8azpBplQ/s1600/homer_by_jw_jeong-d675g7z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Homer by JW-Jeong on DeviantArt.com" border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wKRb1v55VlQ/VV69x4MndZI/AAAAAAAADGU/K_s8azpBplQ/s320/homer_by_jw_jeong-d675g7z.jpg" title="" width="219" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Were Homer's epics inspired<br />
by ancient tales of Gilgamesh?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yesterday, by a piece of serendipity, I discovered that there's a revised edition of Charles Rowan Beye’s <a href="http://amzn.to/1FxSxj6" target="_blank"><i>Ancient Epic Poetry: Homer, Apollonius, Virgil</i></a>, which now contains a chapter on Gilgamesh. I want it! I read the earlier edition years ago when I was in graduate school at the University of Dallas, and it made an indelible impression on me, as well as my teaching. The key idea I took away from it was an understanding of what it means to be “literary.” I mention this now because it has a bearing on my reading of the flood accounts I’ve been discussing, particularly the ones in the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> and the <i>Metamorphoses</i>.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
What does it mean to be “literary”?</h4>
As the original edition of Beye’s book points out, Homer’s epics are regarded as marking the beginning of the Western literary tradition because they were the first great stories in fixed, written form to survive and influence later poets. Scholars agree that Homer was drawing on a long oral tradition of myths and legend. Because they had no literary predecessors, neither of Homer’s great epics is “literary” in the sense of making allusion to a previous written tradition. Or at least, that’s what I would have said before I read the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>. Now it seems pretty clear to me that Homer must have been familiar with some version of that earlier, Mesopotamian epic. And Greek scholar Charles Rowan Beye <a href="http://charlesrowanbeye.com/" target="_blank">seems to agree</a>. In commenting on the second edition of his book on ancient epic, he says:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The important addition in this 2006 book is the chapter on the Gilgamesh poems. I spent a considerable time gathering the results of the latest research in order to present a full account of these Sumerian-Akkadian texts. There is no doubt in my mind although it cannot be proven other than by inference that they had real influence on the <i>Iliad </i>and <i>Odyssey </i>texts. This connection means that students and teachers of so-called western literature have to enlarge the canon certainly to include these narratives. Literature can no longer be said to begin with Homer. </blockquote>
However, we can never know to what extent Homer expected his readers to be familiar with Gilgamesh, or to recognize the way in which he (apparently) appropriated some of its themes and tropes for his own poems, so perhaps Homer’s epics really are not “literary” in the narrow, specialized sense in which I am using that term. I believe it’s likely that Homer would have expected his readers to be familiar, not with Gilgamesh, but with the many Greek heroes who appear in his poems — their character, their milieux, their deeds — as depicted in myriad stories passed down from (even more) ancient times in the oral tradition.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
There is a reason I make a sharp distinction between the oral and the literary traditions. This is because stories passed down orally change with each retelling, thus there were many (often conflicting) versions of many Greek myths. And because of this fluidity, there was no canonical, set, “correct” version of any of them. By writing down his own stories of Achilles during the Trojan War, and of Odysseus in the years following the conclusion of that war, Homer set the stories in a fixed form. Because his versions were so beautifully crafted and deeply meaningful, they are the versions that people wanted to hear and read, time and again. The oral versions faded and died, but Homer’s epics lived on. Later poets studied and imitated the masterful examples that Homer presented. Thus was born a “literary” tradition, that grew out of a previous, oral tradition. <br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Tradition’s bad rap</h4>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
</h4>
The term tradition, however, is another which is often misunderstood. “Tradition” simply refers to whatever gets handed on from one generation to another, whether that be stories, beliefs, customs, or something else. The iconoclastic modern world, from Francis Bacon on, has often treated “tradition” as an idol that must be smashed — and it must be admitted that there is a danger in worshiping the past unreflexively. However, this handing-on that we call tradition is an essential element of culture — no tradition, no culture. <br />
<br />
Without getting into a whole critique of modern culture, let’s just acknowledge that in most cultures, throughout history and throughout the world, anything or anyone that achieves great age is revered as possessing wisdom and value. Such cultures are called “traditional.” (This is not particularly true of our modern culture, which glorifies youth and novelty.) Thus Homer’s epics, because they were so greatly prized, got handed down through the centuries and eventually their great age lent them a patina of authority. The Greeks came to view Homer almost as the ancient Jews regarded Moses, educating their children out of his epics, as if <i>The Iliad</i> and <i>The Odyssey</i> were great encyclopedias of Greek history and culture — <i>almost </i>as if they were sacred texts filled with divine truth and wisdom, like the Bible. <br />
<br />
In fact, one of the reasons the people of Athens condemned and executed Socrates was that he apparently held that Homer’s stories about how the gods behaved were unworthy of belief. Socrates was interested in Truth with a capital T, but to him Homer’s epics were simply imaginative renderings of human truth (with a lower case t), and therefore unworthy of dogmatic belief. Later, in his great philosophical dialogue on the nature of justice, which we call <i>The Republic</i>, Socrates’ great pupil, Plato, had his (fictionalized version of) Socrates declare that poets such as Homer should not be allowed into the perfectly just city, because their stories of the gods would warp the impressionable souls of the young, making them unfit to govern the city. Such an idea was deeply shocking to traditional Athenians, which is one reason why they convicted Socrates of atheism and put him to death — to reject Homer’s depictions of the gods was tantamount to not believing in the gods at all.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Literature can be another way of learning the truth</h4>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-26AHtKeC70M/VV67mMl4P3I/AAAAAAAADF8/TQ-tx-Ydpg8/s1600/beye%2Bepic%2Bcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Ancient Epic Poetry, 2nd edition, by Charles Rowan Beye" border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-26AHtKeC70M/VV67mMl4P3I/AAAAAAAADF8/TQ-tx-Ydpg8/s200/beye%2Bepic%2Bcover.jpg" title="" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first edition of this book<br />
changed my understanding of epic.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2012/10/reading-and-moral-imagination-plato-and.html" target="_blank">As I’ve argued elsewher</a>e, however, this does not mean that Plato was against all made-up stories, just those that misrepresent Truth. Later still, Plato’s own disciple, Aristotle, wrote in his Poetics that that poetry (i.e., fiction) can be philosophical, meaning that it can help us contemplate immutable truths. In this way, I suppose, Aristotle goes a long way toward rescuing Homer from Socrates’ condemnation of him and other “lying poets.” As many modern readers can attest, the stories of Achilles and Odysseus certainly capture some enduring truths about human nature, which is why we still read them with such enjoyment and appreciation — although I’d wager few people (if any) would feel moved to piety by Homer’s depictions of the gods.</div>
<br />
At any rate, as Beye points out in his book, by the time of the reign of Caesar Augustus — when Virgil wrote his <i>Aeneid </i>(and Ovid wrote his <i>Metamorphoses</i>) — there had accumulated a long, literary tradition of heroic epic. This means that there was a huge fund of received practice, including not only characters and stories, but also poetic technique and tropes, upon which poets drew to compose their own poems. They expected their readers to be well-read enough to recognize the clever, artful, and meaningful ways in which they made use of these traditional elements. And we too should recognize these deliberate literary allusions, if we wish to understand properly the works of such poets.<br />
<br />
Oh, how I wish my high school English teachers had understood this! I remember one class when, after we had studied some excerpts from The Odyssey (a bad practice in itself — always read the whole work, not excerpts taken out of context!), someone asked the teacher why we weren’t going to study Virgil’s <i>Aeneid</i>. The teacher replied that there was no point, since the Aeneid was just a slavish (and inferior) imitation of Homer’s epics. It makes me grind my teeth now to remember this, because this pronouncement colored my views on ancient epic, and on Virgil, for decades thereafter. <br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Tradition does not stunt creativity</h4>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W9jtEtMXc5U/VV68NIlB3TI/AAAAAAAADGE/VWONQYHCp2I/s1600/Augustus%2Bcrowned.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Caesar Augustus wearing the corona civica" border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-W9jtEtMXc5U/VV68NIlB3TI/AAAAAAAADGE/VWONQYHCp2I/s320/Augustus%2Bcrowned.jpg" title="" width="203" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ovid, and others, may have feared <br />
Augustus as a god-king.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The reason my teacher’s dismissal of Virgil grates on me so is that I now understand (thanks in part to Charles Rowan Beye’s book) that Virgil’s constant allusion to, and imitation of, both <i>The Iliad</i> and <i>The Odyssey</i> was not “slavish” at all, but a creative, deliberate, and sophisticated manipulation of his highly literate audience’s imaginations, in order to bring out the meaning of his story that he wanted them to perceive. His epic about Aeneas was a Roman story, written for a Roman audience, containing a distinctly Roman meaning. It was intended, in part, to address very present concerns of his contemporary audience. But these were things the poet did not wish to discuss directly, discursively, openly. Instead, he explored them indirectly, poetically, allusively, creating an analogy not only between Trojan Aeneas and the Greek heroes Achilles and Odysseus, but also between ancient Aeneas, the legendary “father of Rome,” and Caesar Augustus, the recent savior of the country whose own adoptive father, the dictator Julius Caesar, had been declared <i>pater patriae</i>, “father of the nation.” <br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Focus on Caesar Augustus</h3>
All of Rome waited with bated breath to see what kind of “father” Augustus himself would prove to be. He held enormous power, and Romans were deeply distrustful of allowing any one man supreme power over the nation. Augustus was careful not to allow himself to be styled a king (that, after all, was one of the things that got Julius assassinated), but he was, in fact, essentially a monarch, over the most expansive and powerful realm the world had ever seen. And, of course, too much power can make a man go a bit mad (as later inheritors of the title Caesar made plain). So there were many who wished (but hardly dared) to admonish and advise the great Augustus, as well as to warn and reassure the Roman people. Some of them, poets, found that the safest, and perhaps the most effective, way was to convey these ideas indirectly — that is, poetically.<br />
<br />
This is, to a great extent, what Virgil was doing in <i>The Aeneid</i>. <b>I believe it is also, to a somewhat lesser extent, what Ovid was doing in the <i>Metamorphoses</i>.</b> Both relied heavily on their readers’ familiarity with the long Graeco-Roman mythopoetic literary tradition to do so. In a coming post, I’ll try to explain a bit of how I believe Ovid made use of the literary tradition in his <i>Metamorphoses </i>in order to convey meaning to his contemporary audience, and how this can help us today, at least those of us who are well-read enough to be able to recognize the early works to which Ovid alludes. I wish Charles Beye had written a chapter on the <i>Metamorphoses</i>, <a href="http://charlesrowanbeye.com/" target="_blank">but he admits</a> that this would have been beyond the scope of his expertise:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What the book truly lacked, however, is a chapter on Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses </i>since it is abundantly clear that Ovid is probably self-consciously playing Apollonius [author of the <i>Argonautica</i>] to Virgil’s Homer. It would have been a great chapter but, since I am a Hellenist, and even working up the <i>Aeneid </i>taxed my faculties for appreciating Latin poetry, I had to let well enough alone.</blockquote>
So perhaps, at least, I shall have to go back and re-read his chapter on the <i>Argonautica</i>, as a way of understanding better what Ovid was up to in the <i>Metamorphoses</i>. Ah, well, there are worse fates. <br />
<br />
I will leave you with this very modern take on some quite ancient material — a Japanese anime rendering of the exploits of Alexander the Great. It just goes to show that traditional material continues to inspire modern storytellers.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8mDChdpnrEw" width="560"></iframe><br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">This Japanese anime is a mish-mash of science fiction and fantasy, purportedly about <br />the exploits of Alexander the Great — although perhaps in an alternate universe!</span></div>
<br />
<br />
Until next time — read well, and prosper!<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-1991827570518463952015-05-06T17:50:00.000-05:002016-05-20T18:39:46.497-05:00Zooming in on Ovid's acount of the Great Flood<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Second installment on the Great Flood in Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i></h3>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SUbWXprh1-8/VUAOishNL0I/AAAAAAAADCg/Lcukwmlhb74/s1600/ovid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Fresco of poet Ovid" border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SUbWXprh1-8/VUAOishNL0I/AAAAAAAADCg/Lcukwmlhb74/s320/ovid.jpg" title="" width="265" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ovid artfully wove telling details into his poem. <br />
It is up to us to notice them, if we would <br />
understand the poem.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
(If you haven't read the <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/metamorphoses-putting-ovids-flood-in.html" target="_blank">first installment, find it here.</a>) <br />
<br />
Reading, like so much of life, is all about seeing what is to be seen — not only what is visible in a cursory glance, but also patterns that lie beneath the surface to give meaning to the words, not to mention all sorts of little hints and clues “hidden in plain sight,” which provide an extra level of enjoyment and meaning to the attentive reader. So now that we've looked at Ovid's general poetic purpose in writing <i>Metamorphoses</i>, it’s time to take a close look at the episode in which he describes a great flood that destroyed all living things in the ancient world, to see if we can discern the details that can tell us the meaning of this episode within the poem as a whole.<br />
<br /></div>
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I frequently walk along the shore of the lake shore near my home. I enjoy both the panorama of the vast lake and its farther shore, as well as the fine details of the wildflowers that surround me as I stroll. With the passing of the year, the view is constantly changing, so there is always something new to notice. Usually I carry a camera with me, to take pictures of anything that looks new, unusual, or just interesting. Often, when I upload my photos to my computer and look at them on the monitor, I am startled to see that my camera has captured things that I never noticed with my naked eye, thanks to the 24X zoom lens. <br />
<br />
When I looked at Utnapishtim’s account of the great flood in the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>, I began with a panoramic view of the poem and then “zoomed in” to see how Utnapishtim’s story fitted into the larger story of Gilgamesh. Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses </i>requires a different technique, I believe. The poem is what Aristotle would call an episodic story, a string of discrete event with no real temporal or causal connection. There is neither a clear plot nor an identifiable protagonist. The story of the great flood that destroys (almost) all mankind is merely one tale of transformation amongst many others. Therefore, I propose first to zoom in to look at the flood episode, and then slowly to widen the focus to see what meaningful connections can be found between this episode and the rest of the poem.<br />
<br /></div>
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The flood account appears in the first of fifteen books (i.e., chapters or sections) in the poem. Book I starts with the creation of the world and its creatures by an unnamed god, and ends with the introduction of Phaethon, a young demigod. The story of the Great Flood occupies the middle of the book, ll. 177-437, describing an event that occurred back near the dawn of time. There is no no surviving witness like Utnapishtim to tell the tale or interpret it for us, so we will have to pay close attention to how the poet invests that event with meaning.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Jupiter’s wrath and destruction, a new race of Man</h4>
The story begins with Jupiter’s anger. Jupiter (Zeus) calls the other Olympian gods together in council to tell them that he is worried that humans should not have been allowed to rule the earth. He is especially outraged that one man, Lycaon, behaved barbarously toward him when Jupiter visited him in human guise. Although he has already punished Lycaon by turning him into a wild wolf, Jupiter says that the entire human race must be destroyed. The other gods are equally outraged at Lycaon’s behavior, but many of them doubt the wisdom of destroying the entire race of Man, since this would leave the gods without worshipers, and would allow wild beasts (such as the one Lycaon has become) to roam the world freely. Jupiter placates them by assuring them that all will be put right.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f06gL9mNNk4/VUqSnL2HZNI/AAAAAAAADDM/klNfvnGMZ4o/s1600/Deluge_Comerre%2Bcropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Le déluge, by Léon Comerre (alt.)" border="0" height="290" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f06gL9mNNk4/VUqSnL2HZNI/AAAAAAAADDM/klNfvnGMZ4o/s320/Deluge_Comerre%2Bcropped.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ovid's description of the flood inspires pity and horror.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Jupiter’s first idea is to rain down his trademark thunderbolts, but then he recalls that the world is destined to end in fire — he doesn’t want to bring about the end of the world, just to cleanse it of man's stain. So he decides that water will be a safer means of destruction, and therefore orders the various gods of wind and water to create a great deluge that will drown all humankind. Rain pours down from heaven, but the seas and rivers also rise up and overflow the earth. Soon it is as if there were no earth, just a boundless ocean. <br />
<br />
Ovid provides a pitiful description of the ravages of the flood. Men and beasts alike desperately, but fruitlessly, try to escape the rising waters. Houses, ships, crops are destroyed by the relentless deluge. Not only Man but all his works are destroyed, and the world is cast into confusion. Even the most powerful of beasts are helpless, and those people who manage to cling to trees and mountains above the floods die a slow death of starvation. When Jupiter sees that only two mortals survive — and these are decent, pious folk — he orders the waters to recede. Thus aged Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, in a small boat, find themselves lodged in the heights of Mount Parnassus. (Technically, these two are demi-gods, half-divine offspring of immortal Titans.) But when they realize that they alone of all humankind have survived — and that apparently by chance — Deucalion becomes despondent. They are old and all alone in the world and, unlike their immortal sires who could fashion creatures from the clay of the earth, they have no means of producing offspring.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uW0Vv8sU7vU/VUqU0wfszmI/AAAAAAAADDY/eAlurGG_JbM/s1600/Andrea_di_Mariotto_del_Minga_Deucali%C3%B3n_y_Pirra_Studiolo%2Bcropped.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uW0Vv8sU7vU/VUqU0wfszmI/AAAAAAAADDY/eAlurGG_JbM/s320/Andrea_di_Mariotto_del_Minga_Deucali%C3%B3n_y_Pirra_Studiolo%2Bcropped.png" width="206" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By mysterious means, Deucalion and Pyrrha<br />
bring forth a new race of man.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As they wander the mountaintop on which fate has cast them, the two chance across the abandoned shrine of a local deity, Themis. They promptly prostrate themselves, crying out to the goddess to help the devastated world by telling them how they can produce progeny to restore humankind. She responds with an oracular utterance which, like all oracles, is disturbingly ambiguous: they must leave the sacred precinct with heads veiled and robes ungirt, casting behind them as they go the bones of their great mother. This gives them pause — it would be sacrilege to disturb their mother’s grave, even if they could find it. That being so, they reason, it must not be what the oracle meant, for no god would ever instruct them to commit sacrilege. Deucalion guesses that by “your great mother” Themis must have meant Mother Earth. Her bones, then, would be stones. <br />
<br />
With this as their working theory, they decide it won’t hurt to try. So they leave the temple, loosen their clothes, cover their heads, and toss some stones behind them as they go. The stones that Deucalion tosses — <i>mirabile dictu</i>! — turn into men, and those of Pyrrha are transformed into women. Ovid describes in detail how the miraculous transformation occurs, the stones gradually changing shape and then softening into human flesh, and he even ends the description with a little moral: the new race, thus created, is tough and durable like the stones from which they are formed.<br />
<br />
Once the new race of man has been generated, the Earth herself spontaneously generates other kinds of creatures. The description of these other new living things, however, is not so magical. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Earth spontaneously created other diverse forms of animal life. After the remaining moisture had warmed in the sun’s fire, the wet mud of the marshlands swelled with heat, and the fertile seeds of things, nourished by life-giving soil as if in a mother’s womb, grew, and in time acquired a nature. So, when the seven-mouthed Nile retreats from the drowned fields and returns to its former bed, and the fresh mud boils in the sun, farmers find many creatures as they turn the lumps of earth. Amongst them they see some just spawned, on the edge of life, some with incomplete bodies and number of limbs, and often in the same matter one part is alive and the other is raw earth. In fact when heat and moisture are mixed they conceive, and from these two things the whole of life originates. And though fire and water fight each other, heat and moisture create everything, and this discordant union is suitable for growth. So when the earth muddied from the recent flood glowed again heated by the deep heaven-sent light of the sun she produced innumerable species, partly remaking previous forms, partly creating new monsters. (<a href="http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Metamorph.htm#488381105" target="_blank">I:416-37, A. S. Kline translation</a>)</blockquote>
This description is based on the natural philosophy of Ovid’s day, and is therefore intended as a “scientific” explanation of how the earth was repopulated with all sorts of living creatures — including monsters such as Python, an snake so enormous that it covered a mountaintop, so poisonous that Apollo himself has to kill it with his arrows. Thus the flood account gives way to the next episode of transformation.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Details worth noticing</h4>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YsGO_WQhEf0/VUqMqgtVYlI/AAAAAAAADDA/rc0QhXzqBpU/s1600/blue-eyed%2Bgrass%2Band%2Bgrasshopper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YsGO_WQhEf0/VUqMqgtVYlI/AAAAAAAADDA/rc0QhXzqBpU/s320/blue-eyed%2Bgrass%2Band%2Bgrasshopper.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poetry, like Nature, rewards the careful observer.<br />
(Can you see the tiny grasshopper? Neither could I,<br />
until I zoomed in.)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
As we begin to think about what Ovid is trying say with this tale, we can start by noticing how this story of the Great Flood differs from the more ancient one in the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>.<br />
<br />
The first significant difference is that Ovid, unlike the Gilgamesh poet, provides a motive for the destruction of mankind. The Gilgamesh poem doesn't attempt to conjecture what brought on divine wrath, <a href="http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab11.htm" target="_blank">saying simply, </a>“The hearts of the Great Gods moved them to inflict the Flood.” In the <i>Metamorphoses</i>, on the other hand, a single god, the greatest of them all, Jupiter, is moved to destroy humankind, and he easily persuades the other gods to help in this endeavor, despite the misgivings of some of the others.<br />
<br />
Utnapishtim said that some of the gods, after the fact, saw the problems stemming from the destruction of the human race, but only was because humans were, for the Mesopotamian gods, a kind of slave race that catered to their needs. In Ovid’s account the Olympians do not “need” mortal man, although they do enjoy the fragrant sacrifices that humans offer them. Yet some of the gods upset by Jupiter’s plan of destruction recognize that the world needs humankind even if the gods do not. Why? To govern the earth. Even Jupiter himself seems to acknowledges the beneficial role played by mankind, for he reassures his fellow deities with a promise that the destroyed race will be replaced.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The need for the human race</h3>
If we have read the poem from its beginning, we will understand why mankind was deemed, in some way, “necessary.” The early lines of the poem describe how, in the beginning, some unnamed god created the ordered Cosmos not <i>ex nihilo </i>(as Christians believe) but by creating order out of chaos (chaos, in this sense, is unformed primal matter). Chaos, before the divine touch, was not really “something,” it simply had the potential to become something.<br />
<br />
This chaotic, unformed matter was a seething mass, in which various potentialities strove against one another. The creative act of the god was to give that chaotic matter form, allowing it to fulfill its potential, and order, ending strife. Thus the creator transforms primal matter into light and dark, earth and sky, seas and dry land. The winds are separated and sent to their corners, and the stars twinkle in the heavens as the gods take their places. Then the Earth is filled with creatures of the sky and sea and land. Finally, the creator takes the clay of the earth and fashions the first man:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
But one more perfect and more sanctified,<br />
a being capable of lofty thought,<br />
intelligent to rule, was wanting still<br />
man was created! Did the Unknown God<br />
designing then a better world make man<br />
of seed divine? or did Prometheus<br />
take the new soil of earth (that still contained<br />
some godly element of Heaven's Life)<br />
and use it to create the race of man;<br />
first mingling it with water of new streams;<br />
so that his new creation, upright man,<br />
was made in image of commanding Gods?<br />
On earth the brute creation bends its gaze,<br />
but man was given a lofty countenance<br />
and was commanded to behold the skies;<br />
and with an upright face may view the stars:<br />
and so it was that shapeless clay put on<br />
the form of man till then unknown to earth. (<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D1%3Acard%3D5" target="_blank">I:76-88, Brooks More, trans.</a>) </blockquote>
So man was made “in image of commanding Gods”; this is why men stand upright with “lofty countenance” to “behold the skies” and “view the stars,” while four-legged “brute creation bends its gaze” toward the earth, in search not of transcendent truths but merely its next meal. In other words, men were given rational powers so that they might govern the Earth just as gods govern the Cosmos.<br />
<br />
This is a distinctly Roman idea, one not found in Greek mythology. The Roman historian Sallust, for instance, in the preface to his <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Sal.%20Cat.%201.4" target="_blank">history of the Catiline War</a>, alludes to the connection between man’s upright stance and his rational powers, while Cicero in <i>De Re Publica</i> — specifically, in the surviving portion known as the <i><a href="http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cicero_dream_of_scipio_02_trans.htm" target="_blank">Dream of Scipio</a> </i>— amplifies the idea that man’s god-given task is to govern the earth. <br />
<br />
So it was to fulfill this noble purpose that man was first created. But the first race of man was fashioned from clay, and ultimately proved unworthy of the task of governing the world, since many men, like Lycaon, were hardly able to govern themselves. We might imagine, then, that this is why Man 2.0 is made from stone rather than clay. This is not, however, the explanation that Ovid gives; instead, he says, “[S]o are we hardy to endure / and prove by toil and deeds from what we sprung.” (I:414-15).<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
A fate larger than god</h3>
For the moment, let’s put aside the question of why the poet imposes this interpretation. We’ll come back to it in a later post. Right now I’d like to look at one other striking way in which this account differs from that provided by the Gilgamesh poet. Utnapishtim survived the flood because he had been forewarned by the god Ea, who instructed him in the means of survival. Deucalion and Pyrrha, however, get no such divine help. This is especially remarkable when we consider that each of the elderly survivors could boast of a divine parent, but either Prometheus (father of Deucalion) nor Epimetheus (sire of Pyrrha) helps them to survive, nor does any other god. The couple seems to have survived by chance, ill-prepared as anyone, alone in their little boat without provision.<br />
<br />
But, one might object, Jupiter saved them, didn’t he? When he first announced his plan of destruction, he declared:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Beneath my sway are demi-gods and fauns,<br />
nymphs, rustic deities, sylvans of the hills,<br />
satyrs;—all these, unworthy Heaven's abodes,<br />
we should at least permit to dwell on earth<br />
which we to them bequeathed.” (<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D1%3Acard%3D163" target="_blank">I:192-5</a>)</blockquote>
He seems to be acting in accord with these words when he recalls the flood as soon as he notices that only Deucalion and Pyrrha remain, demigods both. Jupiter also reassured the other deities when he “promised them a people different from the first, of a marvellous creation” — and this is exactly what happens. Does this not prove that Deucalion and Pyrrha survive with Jupiter’s help, and for his purpose?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hdr7hPZhv58/VUqZ0U0RF0I/AAAAAAAADDo/RhvHcMzLL0o/s1600/gods%2Babove%2Bthe%2Bflood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Hdr7hPZhv58/VUqZ0U0RF0I/AAAAAAAADDo/RhvHcMzLL0o/s320/gods%2Babove%2Bthe%2Bflood.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Perhaps his ability to see the big picture allows Jupiter<br />
to remain ummoved by the destruction he has rained down.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Well, no, not exactly. Foreknowledge is not causation — Jupiter knew what would happen, but he did not cause it to happen. Although the greatest of the gods, whom none of the others dares cross, he is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. More powerful than any other deity, he is not all-powerful — after all, he needs the cooperation of the other gods to create the worldwide deluge. And though he can foresee the outcome, his knowledge is not the same as control — he is aware of fate, but he does not cause it. Recall that Jupiter’s first idea was to destroy humankind with thunderbolts — but then he remembered that the world was fated to end in fire, and he feared being the one who would bring it about. Similarly, it would appear that he predicted the miraculous creation of a new kind of mortal not because he intended to make it happen but simply because he foresaw that it <i>would </i>happen. Jupiter is instrumental in allowing Deucalion and Pyrrha to survive the flood, but that is not to say that their preservation is part of any plan of his. Neither does he himself create the new human race — no more than he created the first one. <br />
<br />
So who does turn those rocks into men and women — Themis? Again, I think not. Themis merely tells them what to do, but does not necessarily make it happen. Perhaps it is the unnamed demiurge, the anonymous god who first ordered the world out of chaos. We can’t know for sure, neither does the poet claim to know. It happens like magic, no explanation needed nor offered. A mystery, pure and simple. The world needed humans, so humans there were. <br />
<br />
Notice, though, that while other species were spontaneously generated from the earth, the miraculous reinvention of mankind requires the cooperation of the two flood survivors. This is another significant way in which this story diverges from Utnapishtim’s tale. Utnapishtim and his wife were given immortality and then banished to the ends of the earth, while elderly Deucalion and Pyrrha remain mortal and are instrumental in the creation of a new mankind.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Meaningless without context</h4>
Ovid’s account of the Great Flood, taken on its own, seems to make even less sense than the story told by Utnapishtim. Utnapishtim had a clear message he intended to convey with his story — “don’t grasp at immortality, because it will not provide happiness.” He learned this the hard way, and wanted to spare Gilgamesh his own troubles. Ovid’s version is not so easy to interpret. Should we just accept it as merely one of many instances of transformation? If that were the case, then we would have to accept that the poem as a whole — which is, after all, one long string of transformation stories — is itself equally meaningless. Meaningless? Ovid would roll over in his grave if he thought we were going to dismiss his artful poem so cavalierly!<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Next time: The poem as a whole -- how does the flood story fit in? </h4>
It looks, then, as if we are going to have to get some idea of the poem as a whole, and then figure out how the Flood story fits into that larger schema. That’s a pretty big task, which we’ll tackle in the next installment of our Adventures in Comparative Mythology. So let me reiterate <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/metamorphoses-putting-ovids-flood-in.html" target="_blank">the advice I offered last time: </a>read at least all of Book I and all of Book XV, with a liberal sampling of the stories in between. You can find at least two good translations online, <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.02.0028" target="_blank">this poetic one</a> and <a href="http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Ovhome.htm" target="_blank">this one in prose</a>. Read well and prosper!<br />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/metamorphoses-putting-ovids-flood-in.html">Previous Post in Series</a> | <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2016/03/ovids-metamorphoses-change-is-only.html">Next Post in Series</a> </h4>
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<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-51452868810144706112015-04-28T17:58:00.000-05:002016-05-20T17:28:37.132-05:00Metamorphoses: Putting Ovid's flood in context<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hdzTMzvqpzs/VTgcmSOjV-I/AAAAAAAADAo/AtK3ZmPvwMg/s1600/you%2Bare%2Bhere.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="blank billboard w/ "you are here" in center" border="0" height="234" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hdzTMzvqpzs/VTgcmSOjV-I/AAAAAAAADAo/AtK3ZmPvwMg/s1600/you%2Bare%2Bhere.png" title="Without context, we don't know where we are" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Without context, we can't tell where we are,<br />
or what we're looking at.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Recently, we took a close look at the account of the Great Flood that appears in the ancient <b>Epic of Gilgamesh</b> and found that, although it superficially resembles a similar account found in the Bible, its meaning was shaped by its context in the story. Context is always crucial for understanding anything — if you see a circle drawn on a page, without seeing it in relation to something else, you can’t tell if it’s mean to represent a ping pong ball, the Earth, or a freckle. The same is true when we are reading — you can’t understand what a story is intended to mean if you don’t know something about who is telling it, to whom he’s telling it, and in what circumstances or for what purpose. So as we now consider the Great Flood account in Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i>, once again context will be crucial if we want to see what Ovid was getting at.<br />
<br />
Before we look at the context of the Flood account within the larger poem, then, we need to consider the rhetorical context, that is, who wrote it, when, and for whom, as well as the kind of thing it is. <br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
A poem without peer</h4>
Let’s start with the last first: what kind of writing is <i>The Metamorphoses</i>? It’s a long poem that knits together many stories from Graeco-Roman mythology, and sets them in order, roughly, from the creation of the world up to the poet’s present day. All of the myths woven into this larger whole were selected because they are stories of literal transformation (metamorphosis) — people being changed into things, and (less frequently) things into people, at the whim of some god or other.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1S6ZTQUDKeA/VUAG9Ay2YcI/AAAAAAAADBs/TB5B8AG_lY0/s1600/Gerome_pygmalion-galatee%2Bdetail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="detail from Pygmalion et Galatée, by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824-1904), Wikimedia Commons" border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1S6ZTQUDKeA/VUAG9Ay2YcI/AAAAAAAADBs/TB5B8AG_lY0/s1600/Gerome_pygmalion-galatee%2Bdetail.jpg" title="Is the "hero" of Ovid's Metamorphoses Love itself?" width="241" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If the <i>Metamorphoses </i>has a hero, <br />
it must be Love itself.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Scholars, who like to classify literary works into specific genres, disagree about whether this poem can be called an epic, because it seems to lack an identifiable hero. Some say that Eros (Roman Cupid) is the hero, although heroes, strictly speaking, are never gods. Heroes are always mortals, probably because gods cannot change and change (transformation) is essential to any good story. At any rate, the god Eros/Cupid himself does not actually appear in most of these stories, although erotic passion (<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/words-worth-pondering-passion-of-christ.html" target="_blank">in the sense that I discussed that term here in an earlier post</a>) is a theme that connects the stories. <br />
<br />
The fact is, <i>The Metamorphoses </i>is <i>sui generis</i>, i.e., in a category all its own, which I believe is exactly what the poet wanted. It is unlike any other poem before or since. By the time this poem was written, epic was already a well-tested genre (it was written nearly two thousand years after the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>, for instance). Composing an epic was usually the capstone of a poet’s career, attempted only when his skills had acquired their highest polish. Vergil’s great epic of Roman beginnings, <i>The Aeneid</i>, completed about ten years before <i>The Metamorphoses</i>, was the first (only) great Roman exemplar of the form, and Ovid no doubt felt it unwise to compete directly with such a masterpiece. At any rate, we should note that by this time epic is definitely a literary genre with a long pedigree. By “literary,” I mean not only that is was written (not passed on orally, as more ancient poems had been), but that it makes deliberate, albeit often oblique, reference to earlier written poems. The poet could expect his readers to be familiar with these earlier stories and recognize the references.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Written for an educated and sophisticated audience</h4>
So let us consider who his intended audience was. These would primarily have been educated people above the middle social rank in Rome, sophisticates and would-be sophisticates alike, including those who had enjoyed and admired Ovid’s earlier works. Of his various poetic works, the two that are best-known today are his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amores_(Ovid)" target="_blank"><i>Amores </i></a>(“The Loves,” poems chronicling a love affair) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_Amatoria" target="_blank"><i>Ars Amatoria</i> </a>(“The Art of Love,” or how to seduce and keep a woman), as well as his <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid#Remedia_Amoris_.28.22The_Cure_for_Love.22.29" target="_blank">Remedia Amoris</a> </i>(“The Cure for Love,” how to get over a past love affair). These earlier poems develop some of the ideas embedded in <i>The Metamorphoses</i>, for instance, that love is fickle and, while it can be sweet, it can also be a kind of affliction. By making love a pervasive theme in<i> The Metamorphoses</i>, the poet is able to make oblique reference to his own past poetic triumphs, as well as to other literary predecessors.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
By a poet who wants to make a name for himself</h4>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SUbWXprh1-8/VUAOishNL0I/AAAAAAAADCc/tQ-C9y88f4E/s1600/ovid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="fresco of P. Ovidius Naso, detail" border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SUbWXprh1-8/VUAOishNL0I/AAAAAAAADCc/tQ-C9y88f4E/s1600/ovid.jpg" title="Ovid immortalized himself through his poetry" width="267" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A provincial lad made good, Ovid<br />
immortalized himself through his poetry,<br />
yet died in ignominious exile.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
That brings us to the question of who the author was. He is known to modern readers as Ovid, but his full name was Publius Ovidius Naso. He was a Roman citizen, although not a native of the city itself but from the provincial town of Sulmo. He went to Rome for his education and stayed to make a name for himself, much as young writers and artists today gravitate to New York or Los Angeles. To put that career in historical perspective, we should note that the year before Ovid was born in 43 B.C. Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, was assassinated in the Senate by his friends and associates because they suspected that he was going to let himself be declared King of Rome. This event precipitated a long, bloody civil war which culminated in Julius’s adopted heir, Octavian, becoming Rome’s first Emperor. Octavian, under the name Caesar Augustus, was still reigning when Ovid finished the Metamorphoses around A.D. 8, the year Augustus exiled Ovid to the far ends of the empire (Pontus, on the Black Sea), and banned his books from Rome. Ovid, like Icarus, had been a high flier, but he suffered a mighty fall: Pontus was regarded — probably rightly so — as the arse-end of the mighty Roman empire, a most ignominious place to wind up. Ovid died there in A.D. 17 or 18, just a year or so before Augustus himself. <br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
As a response to perilous times</h4>
Thus the poet’s entire life was bracketed by the rule of the man we know today as Caesar Augustus, a fact that I believe is highly significant if we are to understand <i>The Metamorphoses </i>and Ovid’s version of the Great Flood story. Ovid — like his contemporaries Livy, the famous historian of Rome, and Vergil, the poet who composed the <i>Aeneid</i>, an epic glorifying the great Trojan progenitor of Rome — wrote, to one degree or another, in response to the civic upheavals through which they lived. In Ovid’s case, his response was largely to turn away from bombastic nationalism and devote his poetic talents to the apparently more trivial topic of love. <br />
<br />
Why love? First, perhaps, because love is notoriously fickle, always changing, so it fits with the theme of transformation. For another reason, because lighter fare goes down more easily in troubled times. Also, love was a subject in which Ovid was already well-versed. But finally, I believe, because this “apparently trivial” topic provides an attractive screen for a more serious underlying purpose, one that the poet did not wish to address more nakedly. I will have more to say anon about what I believe that graver purpose was.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XERDNuwZRAA/VUAIIiPLcLI/AAAAAAAADB4/kaiqsqdQyX4/s1600/Pieter_Bruegel_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_Icarus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XERDNuwZRAA/VUAIIiPLcLI/AAAAAAAADB4/kaiqsqdQyX4/s1600/Pieter_Bruegel_de_Oude_-_De_val_van_Icarus.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Fall of Icarus</i>, attr. Pieter Brueghel the Elder<br />
As with the <i>Metamorphoses </i>which inspired it, there is more going on here<br />
than is immediately apparent.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
At any rate, despite the obvious differences, I think Ovid’s purpose was similar to that of Livy in his <i>Ab urbe condita, </i>his history of Rome, and Vergil in the <i>Aeneid</i>: to reassure his readers, living through shocking and demoralizing times, of certain enduring truths while also reminding them of the lessons of the past lest they be repeated in the present. The truth that seems to drive <i>The Metamorphoses </i>is not, as Vergil’s epic affirms, that Rome has an undying, god-given destiny to rule world, nor, as Livy’s history shows, that good governance requires both prudence and adaptability, but rather that “the only thing that doesn’t change is change itself.” Hence Ovid’s subject, transformation (metamorphosis), the whole history of the world presented as a series of one thing changing into another.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Next time: Ovid's story of the Great Flood</h4>
There is plenty more that could be said about the rhetorical and literary context of this poem, but that’s enough to be getting on with. In the next installment, I’ll look more closely at the poem as a whole and the way the Flood story fits into it.<br />
<br />
If you have not read <i>The Metamorphoses</i>, there are some good English translations online, such as <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.02.0028" target="_blank">this one at the Perseus Project Online</a> or <a href="http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Ovhome.htm" target="_blank">this one by A. S. Kline</a>. For our purposes, I recommend reading <b>at least all of Book I and all of Book XV, with some liberal sampling of what goes on in between</b> (it doesn’t much matter which middle bits, since there is not much “plot” to tie them together). Until next time, read well and prosper!<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/gilgamesh-still-speaks-to-us.html">Previous Post in Series</a> | <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/05/zooming-in-on-ovids-flood.html">Next Post in Series</a> </h4>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-78426709265350063232015-04-17T17:30:00.000-05:002016-05-20T16:48:24.947-05:00Can the Epic of Gilgamesh still speak to us?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
The real test of literature is whether it continues to speak to us, after generations or even millennia. We’ve almost finished our examination of the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> and its account of the Great Flood. All that’s left is to ask what enduring truths, if any, we find in this poem. Is this poem simply an archaeological curiosity, or does it still have something to offer modern readers?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-n1Y1zUKvL50/VTF_MEKPaBI/AAAAAAAAC_U/IgwJ6--ITDY/s1600/disney%2Bcryogenic.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-n1Y1zUKvL50/VTF_MEKPaBI/AAAAAAAAC_U/IgwJ6--ITDY/s1600/disney%2Bcryogenic.png" width="181" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Disney's dream of having <br />
himself cryonically preserved<br />
was overruled by his survivors --<br />
his remains were cremated.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
At first glance, it might seem not. The world that gave rise to this poem is very remote from us, not only in time but in culture. Its human figures seem barbaric and its callous and capricious gods are inscrutable — even Utnapishtim does not try to explain their actions. But when we consider enduring truths, we have to move past cultural differences, which can be distracting. As a whole, it seems to me, the poem is about learning to accept our human limitations, something that can be especially difficult for a man like Gilgamesh, who excels ordinary mortals in so many ways. He has power, wealth, wisdom, beauty, strength in abundance, making him believe that he can (and should be able to) grasp at immortality as well.<br />
<br />
Our modern world may not have the kind of super-powerful kings that dominated the ancient Near East, but that is not to say that we don’t have plenty of rich, powerful people who try to exercise godlike power over us “mere mortals.” Are those who use their wealth to limit population in parts of the world that they deem over-populated (Africa, Asia, Latin America) so very different from the Mesopotamian gods who decided that humankind had become too populous and needed to be destroyed by a flood? The daily news seems to be full of stories of the rich and famous who feel free to seduce innocents and crush the weak, much as Gilgamesh before Enkidu humanized him. So it would seem that the problems posed in the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> are still with us.<br />
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<a name='more'></a></h4>
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The quest for immortality</h4>
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During his friendship with Enkidu, Gilgamesh’s excesses were not so much restrained as they were redirected to more constructive ends (killing monsters that had been terrorizing the countryside). In his last days, though, Enkidu infected Gilgamesh with despair by sharing his visions of the afterlife in the House of Dust:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
… the house where those who enter do not come out,<br />
along the road of no return,<br />
to the house where those who dwell, do without light,<br />
where dirt is their drink, their food is of clay,<br />
where, like a bird, they wear garments of feathers,<br />
and light cannot be seen, they dwell in the dark,<br />
and upon the door and bolt, there lies dust.<br />
On entering the House of Dust,<br />
everywhere I looked there were royal crowns gathered in heaps,<br />
everywhere I listened, it was the bearers of crowns,<br />
who, in the past, had ruled the land …<br />
(<a href="http://king-of-heroes.co.uk/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/maureen-gallery-kovacs-translation/tablet-vii/" target="_blank">Tablet VII, Kovacs translation</a>)</blockquote>
This vision is what drives Gilgamesh to seek immortality — he does not intend to be like all those kings who now dwell impotently in unending darkness. Today’s rich and powerful may not believe in a dreary afterlife, but their materialist assumptions nevertheless drive them to use their wealth to pursue a physical immortality, which medical technology promises is just around the corner.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ESe6f94nXNU/VTGE2NMYAaI/AAAAAAAAC_0/KYH8zSGlmtM/s1600/science_worship.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ESe6f94nXNU/VTGE2NMYAaI/AAAAAAAAC_0/KYH8zSGlmtM/s1600/science_worship.png" width="198" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Science is the modern god that<br />
promises us immortality.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Probably the first attempt to literally escape mortality came over the horizon in the late 1960s and early 1970s: cryonic preservation, an attempt to preserve the body at the moment of death by storing it at very low temperatures, until such time as medicine comes up with a cure for whatever had brought the person to death’s door. The fad may have passed, but there are still companies today that promise this kind of “immortality,” and these companies store thousands of bodies waiting for the resurrection that their original inhabitants believed science could offer.<br />
<br />
Then, there are those, such as the <a href="http://2045.com/ideology/" target="_blank">2045 Strategic Social Initiative</a>, who propose “to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality.” Even if one trusts in the promises of such measures, however, most of us would find these alternatives as repellent as the House of Dust envisioned by Enkidu.<br />
<br />
When Gilgamesh learned that immortality was out of his reach, he settled for “second best,” a plant that could provide continual physical rejuvenation. Modern medical technology seems to offer us a similar alternative, promising that, any day now, we will be able <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/road-to-150/FutureHuman-print.pdf" target="_blank">to rejuvenate our joints, organs, bones, blood, and even DNA</a> so that we will be able to attain fabulous ages without the physical debility associated with old age. In the mean time, many rely on cosmetic surgery, bizarre diets, and relentless exercise to keep their bodies “young.”<br />
<br />
How many, though, stop to think what benefit they are getting from the extra months or years of life they may attain by these methods? Are they using them to create anything of lasting value? Perhaps they, like Gilgamesh, fail to consider what the real purpose of life is — and, like Utnapishtim, they may realize the foolishness of this oversight only when it is too late.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7vx6hao86b0/VTF_Z0fIy6I/AAAAAAAAC_g/UB_WOKFhP-Y/s1600/gilgamesh%2Bavatar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7vx6hao86b0/VTF_Z0fIy6I/AAAAAAAAC_g/UB_WOKFhP-Y/s1600/gilgamesh%2Bavatar.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Having your mind uploaded to a holgraphic avatar? I don't think even Gilgamesh would have gone for that.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It seems to me the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh </i>is not so much about the unattainability of literal immortality as it is about the wisdom of accepting and appreciating the limitations of our mortal life. Utnapishtim clearly intends his story about the Great Flood as a warning against the mad pursuit of immortality — and he speaks as one who knows. Even if Science, the modern, materialist god we have created for ourselves, should be able to confer literal immortality upon us, should we welcome such a gift? Utnapishtim would say No.<br />
<br />
What do we stand to lose if we insist on making ourselves into immortal, godlike creatures? Will such godlike immortality come only at the price of our humanity? These are questions that need not be relegated to science fiction for, as we have seen, such questions were raised by heroic epic, as long as four thousand years ago. It has been said that those who remain ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it. We might say something similar about ancient poetry. If we fail to read it and to heed its wisdom, we will continue to make the same mistakes, age after age. The modern-day Gilgameshes of the world should take heed.<br />
<br />
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Next: The flood in Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i></h4>
We’ll continue our “adventures in comparative mythology” when we take up the account of the Great Flood in Ovid’s <i>Metamorphoses</i>. If you haven’t read the poem, you can find it online in both <a href="http://classics.mit.edu/Ovid/metam.html" target="_blank">a poetic English translation</a> and <a href="http://ovid.lib.virginia.edu/trans/Ovhome.htm" target="_blank">a modern prose translation</a>. The account of the Great Flood is found in Book I. To put the story in context, I strongly suggest reading at least Book I in its entirety (it’s less than 800 lines).<br />
<br />
As you read, you’ll undoubtedly be thinking about what Ovid’s flood tale has in common with its Mesopotamian original. But, more importantly, you should consider what its distinctive features are and what they seem to suggest. How do they respond to the theme of the poem announced in the opening lines? What view of gods and man are set out in this early part of this lengthy poem?<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/adventures-in-comparative-mythology_27.html">Previous Post in Series</a> | <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/metamorphoses-putting-ovids-flood-in.html">Next Post in Series</a> </h4>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-62735307336934504842015-04-06T16:29:00.000-05:002015-05-26T21:36:18.746-05:00Movie makers need to read great literature, too<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've talked quite a bit on this blog about <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/search/label/benefits%20of%20reading" target="_blank">the importance of good stories</a>, and how sad it is that our culture no longer seems interested in stories that enlarge us, that take us out of our petty interests and connect us to the larger human condition. Part of the problem, I believe, is that, by and large, people don't read
any more, and when they do read they read the literary equivalent of
Twinkies and Red Bull. <br />
<br />
Of course, reading is not the only way to be exposed to great stories. Film can also tell engrossing, thought-provoking stories. The problem is that most American filmmakers are more interested in spectacle than story, as Barbara Nicolosi and her collaborator Vicki Peterson discuss in this video interview:<br />
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<br />
<a name='more'></a>I applaud people like Nicolosi and Peterson who are trying to educate screenwriters in the importance of storytelling. In an increasingly illiterate culture, visual media such as movies and graphic novels are the only way to engage the imaginations of many people these days. Still, I wonder how much headway they can make if those they are trying to teach never read and ponder significant works of literature. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EUsc3H0ZrxA/VSLwNYCGMNI/AAAAAAAAC-Y/QJFjNxd5tJM/s1600/18dxs425f7mfajpg%5B1%5D.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EUsc3H0ZrxA/VSLwNYCGMNI/AAAAAAAAC-Y/QJFjNxd5tJM/s1600/18dxs425f7mfajpg%5B1%5D.jpg" height="320" title="" width="202" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ray Bradbury foresaw the way <br />
technology's exaltation of the visual <br />
and superficial leads to the exclusion<br />
of the written world.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
There is a tendency these days to act as if the age of reading is passed — as if, before entertainment technology was developed, people read for entertainment because they couldn't do any better, but once movies and TV came along, the world "progressed" beyond mere words on a page to images on a screen. (If you believe that, you should read Ray Bradbury's <i>Fahrenheit 451</i>.) But the fact is that, as moving, resonant, and thought-provoking as visual stories can be, movies simply can't engage us as completely as literature. Films make us merely spectators, rather than participants, while reading is an immersive experience, in which we inhabit the lives and experiences of the characters. <a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/i-know-how-youre-feeling-i-read-chekhov/?_r=1" target="_blank">This recent New York Times article</a> discusses a scientific study that demonstrates the ways reading literature engaged our imaginations on a deep level, in a way that lighter fictional fare cannot. Literature can also affect our <a href="http://oedb.org/ilibrarian/your-brain-on-books-10-things-that-happen-to-our-minds-when-we-read/" target="_blank">capacity for empathy and even change the structure of our brain</a>.<br />
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I don't want to pit literature against movies, however. There is room for both in our lives. But I agree with Barbara Nicolosi and Vicki Peterson that the world needs movies that do more than titillate or provide the cheap thrills of a carnival ride. And I think there's a better chance of that happening if movie makers spend more time reading great literature.<br />
<br />
Learn more about Barbara Nicolosi and Vicki Peterson and their screenwriting enterprise, <a href="http://storycatharsis.com/" target="_blank">Catharsis, here</a>.<br />
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<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-75957769564910093742015-04-04T13:41:00.000-05:002015-05-26T21:36:33.040-05:00Holy Saturday, the still center of all Creation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I think in many ways Holy Saturday is my favorite day of the Sacred Triduum, chiefly because of this ancient homily, which is traditionally read on the morning of this day. Try reading this aloud in a church that has been stripped of its
sacred appointments, and devoid of the Sacred Presence of the Lord in
the Blessed Sacrament — it will send ripples of awe down your spine. <br />
<br />
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Homily on The Lord's descent into hell, by St John Chrysostom </h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>S</b></span></span>omething strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear. </blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lE5bgnwTaW0/VSApTWP2WAI/AAAAAAAAC9U/UMtT-zHU5mI/s1600/holysaturday-harrowingofhell-english-c1240.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="13th century illumination: Christ harrowing Hell" border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lE5bgnwTaW0/VSApTWP2WAI/AAAAAAAAC9U/UMtT-zHU5mI/s1600/holysaturday-harrowingofhell-english-c1240.jpg" height="253" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The first to fall from God's Grace, Adam and Eve<br />
are the first to be redeemed.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. </blockquote>
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</blockquote>
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At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.” </blockquote>
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</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. <br />
<a name='more'></a></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.”</blockquote>
<br />
While the apostles and other disciples, Mary and the other women, and you and I mourn the loss of Jesus, he is not lying idle in the grave. He is busy with the work of salvation, fulfilling the hope of those who looked forward to His coming and those who hardly dared to hope, even our first Parents.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0jBEYorGJws/VSApXFTeDqI/AAAAAAAAC9c/tnpmZUQRJkk/s1600/Christ%2Bcreating%2Bicon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0jBEYorGJws/VSApXFTeDqI/AAAAAAAAC9c/tnpmZUQRJkk/s1600/Christ%2Bcreating%2Bicon.jpg" height="320" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Word, living and true, has been active <br />
from the beginning of Creation.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
He is always busy — I AM is Being Itself, but He is also eternal activity, creating, sustaining, saving. Today is a good day to remember that we must not lose hope, even for those who have departed this life. In God’s eternity, we may hope that even now our prayers can help them.<br />
<br />
The mystery of Holy Saturday is revealed in the celebration of the Easter Vigil, when the Light of the World is restored in the Easter fire and the whole of Salvation history is rehearsed in the many Scripture readings and psalms — to remind us that what happened on Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter morning not only sets the past to rights but also points to the future culmination of all things. And Holy Saturday is the still center of that cosmic Event. Enjoy the stillness, and then attend the Easter Vigil. The whole meaning of life is to be found therein.<br />
<br />
Learn more about the implications of this ancient homily for us all in <a href="http://www.thecatholicthing.org/2015/04/04/good-holy-saturday/" target="_blank">“Good Holy Saturday,” by Matthew Hanley</a> on <i>The Catholic Thing</i>. <br />
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</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-1406850492396464132015-04-03T15:35:00.000-05:002020-04-08T12:55:30.611-05:00Words Worth Pondering: The Passion of Christ<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xpJBwqnCTeU/VR729MVwRqI/AAAAAAAAC8k/4IBsQizOFns/s1600/flagellation%2Bcropped.jpg" style="display: none;" />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This week, in deference to Holy Week, I’m taking a break from ancient epic to consider the Passion of Christ. I'll start by asking two leading questions, the first of which is<b> a kind of riddle:</b> How is the Passion of Christ like a deponent verb? That one's rather obscure, so I'll answer it last. Let's begin with a somewhat easier question: Has it ever occurred to you that when we speak of the “passion of Christ,” we are using the word <b>passion </b>in a way that we rarely (if ever) do in any other context?</div>
<br />
When we speak of “passion” in ordinary conversation, usually we mean something like “an overriding desire or interest,” as in “riding dirt bikes is my passion.” I’ve had many students tell me that they wanted to choose a major that they were “passionate” about, meaning simply something they are really interested in.<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Two kinds of “passion”?</h2>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6rot-zKGaGk/XPv8MQ86ysI/AAAAAAAACJ4/OAfInsHEb0cN_Jf9syiq1av7MgaBLwYUACLcBGAs/s1600/Kirk%2Brage%2Bcropped.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Captain Kirk enraged" border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="1219" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6rot-zKGaGk/XPv8MQ86ysI/AAAAAAAACJ4/OAfInsHEb0cN_Jf9syiq1av7MgaBLwYUACLcBGAs/s320/Kirk%2Brage%2Bcropped.jpg" title="Kirk enraged" width="253" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Captain Kirk, in an alternate universe, <br />was ruled by his passions.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This idea that “passion” indicates intense interest is a watered-down version of an older meaning of the term: passion as an emotion that is so powerful that it overwhelms us, takes control of us and make us do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. Anger, lust, fear are "passions" in this sense. We used to hear references to “crimes of passion,” meaning crimes committed in the heat of the moment, when a person acts under the impulse of overwhelming emotion that temporarily shorts out rational control — a kind of “temporary insanity” that diminishes moral culpability. This notion seems to have lost its force in the legal sphere, although it remains important in the moral sphere, for instance in considering whether a grave sin is fully intentional (mortal), or whether the sinner's guilt is mitigated by factors beyond the control of the will (see <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_P6C.HTM" target="_blank">CCC 1857 ff</a>). <br />
<br />
If you look for the term “passion” in the Bible, you’ll find that only once is this word used to refer to Christ (perhaps not even once, depending on which translation you use).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To them he presented himself alive after his passion by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days, and speaking of the kingdom of God. (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts+1%3A3&version=RSVCE" target="_blank">Acts 1:3</a>, RSV-CE) </blockquote>
Every other reference to passion uses the term in the sense of overriding impulses or desires (almost always to be resisted), as in Proverbs 14:30, which counsels against rash anger (“A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot.”) or Romans 6:12, which refers to the passions as ruling our fleshly nature (“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.”).<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<b>The passions</b> (all kinds of strong emotion or desire) have been of concern to anyone interested in moral living since ancient times. Greek and Roman philosophy advised that our rational faculties should govern our actions, rather than letting the passions get the upper hand. In fact, this ability to be governed by reason rather than the passions was considered the principle way that humans differ from, and are superior to, mere animals. The Christian view, which recognizes free will as another distinguishing factor, agrees with this philosophical idea. <a href="http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P5V.HTM" target="_blank">Paragraph 1761 of the <i>Catechism of the Catholic Church</i></a> says this about the passions :<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
In themselves passions are neither good nor evil. They are morally qualified only to the extent that they effectively engage reason and will. Passions are said to be voluntary, “either because they are commanded by the will or because the will does not place obstacles in their way.” It belongs to the perfection of the moral or human good that the passions be governed by reason.</blockquote>
In the Catholic understanding, then, we cannot <i>passively </i>give in to our <i>passions</i>. We have to exert our self-control to keep them in check.<br />
<br />
This idea of <i>passion </i>still seems to have little to do with Christ's <i>Passion</i>. If we picture Christ in the final hours of his life, we won’t see a man behaving “<i>passionately</i>.” In fact, what is remarkable is how <i>meekly</i> he accepts being betrayed, arrested, subjected to a series of monkey trials, beaten, insulted, spat upon, made a public spectacle, and finally tortured to death. Anyone else surely would have put up some kind of a fight or at least denounced his accusers “<i>passionately</i>.” Yet Jesus did not. “As a sheep before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth.” <br />
<br />
So what’s going on with this word, <i>passion</i>? Maybe these two uses of the word are false cognates — they look like the same word, but are unrelated etymologically? Actually, no. Rather the opposite is true — they are the same word, with the same essential meaning, but because of the way attitudes toward “the passions” (emotions) have changed over time, the connection between the two has gotten lost. <br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Digging around the roots</h2>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xpJBwqnCTeU/VR729MVwRqI/AAAAAAAAC8k/4IBsQizOFns/s1600/flagellation%2Bcropped.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="the flagellation of Christ" border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xpJBwqnCTeU/VR729MVwRqI/AAAAAAAAC8k/4IBsQizOFns/s1600/flagellation%2Bcropped.jpg" title="" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Traditionally, art depicts Christ<br />
enduring patiently, impassively.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
To see the connection, we need to get back to the etymological root from which this term sprang. But since doing so involves some discussion of Latin grammar that will probably make your eyes glaze over, I’m going to spend a little time digging around the roots to aerate the soil a little first. <br />
<br />
It may help if first we think about some words that are closely related to “passion,” starting with <b>“passive.”</b> Someone who is <i>passive </i>lets things happen to him, but doesn’t do anything to affect what’s happening (he doesn't give into his <i>passions</i>). We often think of passivity as a negative trait — if someone is too passive, don’t you sometimes want to provoke them, just to see if you can get a reaction? <br />
<br />
You may remember from your school days (if you were lucky enough to have been taught grammar) that there are <i>passive </i>verbs and <i>active </i>verbs. With an active verb, the grammatical subject is also the person or thing causing the action expressed by the verb: <b>Bob reads</b> (<i>Bob </i>is the grammatical subject and also the agent or doer of the action the verb expresses). With a passive verb, the grammatical subject is not the <i>doer</i>, but is the person or thing being <i>done to</i>: <b>The book was read by Bob. </b>Here, “the book” is the grammatical subject, but it is <i>not doing</i> the reading; rather reading is <i>being done to</i> it (by Bob). So we can see that <b>passivity in a grammatical sense is similar to passivity in a literal sense.<br /></b>
<br />
Here’s another word that is closely related to passion, although the connection is not readily apparent: <b><i>patience</i></b>. Again, our perception of what this word means has degraded over time. Most people probably connect the word patience with waiting: when a child pesters his mother for something, she replies, “In a minute! Just be patient.” But <b>patience doesn’t really mean waiting</b> at all, but <b>being willing to put up with something t</b>hat irritates you (such as a child having to wait for something he wants). This is why “patience is a virtue.” (I’m pretty sure no one ever said “waiting is a virtue.”) And if we're really <i>patient</i>, we may also be <i>impassive </i>(unmoved by what we have to endure).<br />
<br />
Now we’re getting closer to the root meaning that <i>patience </i>and <i>passion </i>share. But before we get to that (another little reprieve from Latin grammar), I’d like to remind you of another word that has been degraded to such an extent that its original meaning has almost been lost: to <b><i>suffer</i></b>. When we hear reference to suffering, we probably think immediately of pain. Pain, of course, is something that we want to avoid at all cost, isn’t it? But the meaning of this word does not indicate primarily (or originally) anything to do with pain. Let me hint at its real meaning by reminding you of a rather old-fashioned use of the verb, to suffer, found in the English version of the prayer called the <i>Anima Christi</i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq"><i>
Suffer </i>me not to be separated from Thee.</blockquote>
It’s pretty clear in this context that “suffer” means to allow or to permit: Don’t let me be separated from you.<br />
<br />In other words, “to suffer” can mean <i>to allow to happen</i> something that we’d prefer didn’t happen. This meaning is still preserved in the derivative term, <b>sufferance</b>. We might say, “His pig-headedness is beyond sufferance,” meaning we just can’t stand it. Or we might say, “The property owner reminded the sunbathers that they were at the private beach on sufferance and could be kicked out at any time,” which implies that the owner is <i>allowing </i>something that normally he would <i>prohibit</i>. Now we can see how the idea of suffering, in the sense of <i>putting up with something that we’d rather not endure</i>, gradually came to mean, specifically, <i>undergoing pain</i>, which nobody wants. But what we need to remember is that <b>suffering simply means putting up with anything that we might prefer not to happen</b>. <br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Sneaking up on the Latin grammar</h2>
Notice, if we <i>suffer </i>something in this sense, we are being <i>patient</i>. And if you’ll be patient just a bit longer, I’ll tie all this together. First, though, I’d like to go back to the Latin original of “Suffer me not to be separated from Thee”: <i>Ne permittas me separari a te</i>. <i>Separari </i>is the passive form of the infinitive <i>separare</i>, “to separate.” We’ve already talked about passive verbs, so it won’t surprise you to realize that <i>separari </i>means “to be separated.” <br />
<br />
I mention this because the term we’re interested in, <i>passion </i>(as well as <i>patience</i>) is derived from a special kind of Latin verb known as a deponent. The present infinitive is <i>pati</i>; the present participle is <i>patiens </i>(whence cometh <i>patience</i>) and the past participle is <i>passus</i>. “Passion” is an Anglicized form of the Latin noun <i>passio</i>, which you can see is related to <i>passus </i>(so is “passive”).<br />
<br />
Now, before I tie all this up in a nice bow, let me just mention how I got interested in this verb, <i>pati</i>. I came to the study of Latin somewhat late in life, after many years of studying modern romance languages. I knew that Latin would be more complicated than French or Spanish, but I was happy to find that much of what I had learned about the grammar of these modern languages was reflected in Latin grammar. The tenses of verbs (present, future, perfect and imperfect, etc.), the moods (indicative, subjunctive, etc.), the voices (active or passive) were familiar enough. But then I ran into something called a deponent verb, which messed with my mind. Why? Because a deponent verb is <b>“passive in form but active in meaning.” </b>Reading Latin is hard enough without running across a verb that looks like a passive but makes no sense if you try to translate it that way. Even more irritating, there are quite a few of these deponents, which means there are lots of opportunities for being confused. <br />
<br />
But then I discovered the deponent, <i>pati</i>, and it all started to make sense. Why? Because <i>pati </i>is the perfect exemplar of deponents — what the grammar <i>does </i>is what the word <i>means</i>. What does the word mean, then? It means to undergo without resistance something that you’d rather not. It means to be patient, to be passive. In other words, it means <b>to suffer</b>, in the sense of undergoing something involuntarily. <br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
How the Passion of Christ is like a deponent verb</h2>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qiplDeQYwaw/VR729sh13mI/AAAAAAAAC80/PoJbMdl1IXw/s1600/Caravaggio_-_Taking_of_Christ%2Bcropped.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Taking of Christ, detail, Caravaggio" border="0" height="307" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qiplDeQYwaw/VR729sh13mI/AAAAAAAAC80/PoJbMdl1IXw/s1600/Caravaggio_-_Taking_of_Christ%2Bcropped.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">While his disciples resist passionately, Jesus submits willingly.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Are you wondering why I took such a circuitous route to get to the meaning of the word “passion” as it relates to Christ? Perhaps even now you are thinking with disgust, “What's the big deal? I could have told you to begin with that Christ’s passion means his suffering.” But perhaps by "suffering" you would have meant only that he underwent pain and humiliation. There's more to suffering than that — it's not merely something that happens to you willy-nilly. In Christ's case, at least, <b>it is something he <i>does</i>, </b>even though it looks like he is doing nothing. <b>Passive in form, active in meaning.</b></div><div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
Jesus suffered as a man, but he was almighty God. That means that, unlike you or me, he knew exactly what was in store for him — think of how many times he tried to warn his disciples, “but this saying was hid from them, and they did not grasp what was said.” Think of the hours he spent on the Mount of Olives contemplating what was about to happen, agonizing, sweating blood — all because he knew what was coming <i>and chose not to avoid it.</i> “Let this cup pass from me … yet not my will but Thine be done.” <br />
<br />
His human weakness was crying out for it not to happen, but his Divine will permitted it. The betrayal, the mockery, the confusion, the spitting, the humiliation, the cruelty, the torture, the death. Because, despite appearances, this was what would turn everything right. This, ultimately, was the point of it all. He was the man born to die. His purpose was fulfilled by <i><b>willingly submitting</b></i> to all the cruelty and indignity that the world could heap on him. He <i>suffered </i>himself to be betrayed by Judas, he <i>suffered </i>himself to be doubted and denied by his closest associates, he <i>suffered </i>himself to be stripped and bloodied and executed among thieves and murderers. He continues to suffer Himself to be misunderstood by believers and reviled by unbelievers.<br />
<br />
So, yes, his Passion is his suffering. But we must understand what it meant for Christ to suffer. And we must <b>think about the strength of will required for that suffering. </b>If we do so, we will better appreciate the <i>Anima Christi</i> when we pray:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.<br />
Suffer me not to be separated from Thee.</blockquote>
And now you know how the Passion of Christ is like a deponent verb: <b>Passive in form, active in meaning. </b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #ad1300;"><font color="#4285f4">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</font></span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-76668708810150476572015-03-27T17:12:00.000-05:002016-05-20T16:41:21.988-05:00The Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh: What does it all mean?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the past couple of posts in this series, we’ve been looking at the Great Flood narrative found in the Epic of Gilgamesh, trying to put the flood story into context, both within the larger story of Gilgamesh’s quest for godlike immortality and within the overall rhetorical context of the poem. Having done so, we’ve now reached the point where we can sort out what it all means. Here again, though, the question is more complex than it might seem at first glance. There’s the “meaning” of the poem from the poet’s point of view (what meaning did he apparently intend his readers to derive from the story), and the enduring significance of the story over time. <br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Answer the dramatic questions to find the meaning</h4>
The simplest way to get at the meaning of any story is to see what <b>dramatic question </b>the story poses and how that question gets answered. This refers to a question, raised at the beginning of the story, which holds the reader’s attention and drives the action of the story. Since Utnapishtim’s account of the Great Flood is a story-within-a-story, we’ll need to consider two dramatic questions — the one that governs the epic as a whole, and the one that governs the Flood narrative specifically — and to think about how the two bear upon one another.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The Larger Question: Can Gilgamesh be reined in?</h3>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NFDJmEfJzoI/VRXRvCRcMWI/AAAAAAAAC7g/yvcfejE8SeQ/s1600/enkidu%2Band%2Bgilgamesh%2Bdalrymple.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="175" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NFDJmEfJzoI/VRXRvCRcMWI/AAAAAAAAC7g/yvcfejE8SeQ/s1600/enkidu%2Band%2Bgilgamesh%2Bdalrymple.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">His friendship with Enkidu restrained Gilgamesh<br />
... for a time.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The story of Gilgamesh begins with the people of Uruk crying out to the gods for relief from the despotism of their king. In response to this plea, the gods create a wild man, Enkidu, “equal to Gilgamesh’s stormy heart … so that Uruk may find peace.” This raises the question in the reader’s mind, “Will this do the trick? Will Enkidu somehow secure peace for the people of Uruk?” <br />
<br />
In the first part of the poem, it would seem that the coming of Enkidu does indeed solve the Gilgamesh problem (but perhaps not in the way that the gods intended). Enkidu learns that Gilgamesh is about to ravish a bride before her wedding night, and becomes enraged at this inhuman behavior. Even someone like himself, as much a beast as a man, recognizes the barbarity of such an act. So Enkidu defends the endangered bride against the king and the two men battle fiercely throughout the city. Eventually Gilgamesh manages to overpower Enkidu, but rather than killing his opponent, whom he has come to admire for his fierce strength, Gilgamesh instead makes a friend of him. In this way, although Gilgamesh has vanquished Enkidu, it is the king who is tamed through the friendship born of their strife.<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
Once they have sworn friendship, the two heroes no longer exercise their power against those weaker than themselves, but against fierce monsters that plague the countryside. However, when they slay one of these monsters, they rile the anger of the gods, who punish them. It might seem that they punish only Enkidu, since he is the only one of the two who dies, but in fact Gilgamesh suffers terribly when he loses his only friend. It’s as if the gods knew that this loss would be a more bitter punishment for Gilgamesh than death itself. When Enkidu sickens and dies, Gilgamesh goes mad with grief and despair. Having lost the only person with whom he had a genuine, human connection, he now turns away from humanity more resolutely than ever, seeking the immortality that will make him the equal of a god. This quest leads him to Utnapishtim the Faraway, a man who was once a mortal king but now is immortal, an equal to the gods.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EfqeEZXSiUU/VRXSePAPPVI/AAAAAAAAC7w/Q-c995YT-aU/s1600/gilgamesh.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EfqeEZXSiUU/VRXSePAPPVI/AAAAAAAAC7w/Q-c995YT-aU/s1600/gilgamesh.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The only immortality Gilgamesh achieved was<br />
his undying fame.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When the two first meet, however, Utnapishtim tries to discourage Gilgamesh from his quest to become immortal, telling him that he should not struggle against fate. But Gilgamesh will not be dissuaded. He insists that Utnapishtim tell him how he achieved immortality, and the deathless man does as he asks, only to reveal that it was not achieved through effort of his own, but was the unwarranted gift of a god. Gilgamesh, though, still insists that immortality is the only thing that can make his life worth living. For a third time, Utnapishtim tries to convince him by demonstrating that Gilgamesh cannot resist even the “little death” of sleep. Finally, Gilgamesh is convinced that he is powerless to resist death, and once again despairs. At his wife’s urging, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh of a marvelous plant that can restore a man’s youth — it’s not quite the same as being immortal, but it is close enough to suit Gilgamesh, who immediately heads off to seize the revitalizing herb. Although he is able to pluck the plant from the bottom of the sea, it is stolen from him by a snake before he can return with it to his city. After all his questing, Gilgamesh must return to his city empty-handed. The last lines of the poem show him admiring the greatness of the city he has built, as if he realizes that he must content himself with his human achievements.<br />
<br />
And so Gilgamesh, “two thirds god and one third man,” gives up his struggle to become “three thirds” a god. He accepts his human limitations, and takes comfort in his great achievements, the towering city that will outlast him. Whereas Utnapistim, when given the choice, chose life over wealth and possessions, Gilgamesh, recognizing that he has no choice, contents himself with what he is able to achieve as a mortal man. Thus, the dramatic question of the epic — will Gilgamesh be subdued? — is answered. The man at the end of the poem is no longer the ravisher of virgins and slayer of young men, yet he remains a mighty king who has achieved true greatness.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The inner question: What is the value of immortality?</h3>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qz4fh_b2fC8/VRXSHHPIdDI/AAAAAAAAC7o/WYnvVUVhSuo/s1600/gilgamesh%2Btablet.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qz4fh_b2fC8/VRXSHHPIdDI/AAAAAAAAC7o/WYnvVUVhSuo/s1600/gilgamesh%2Btablet.png" width="294" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh contains<br />
Utnapishtim's account of the Great Flood.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Now let’s turn our attention to the inner story, Utnapishtim’s account of the Great Flood. Recall that Utnapishtim was trying to dissuade Gilgamesh from seeking immortality, and this story was just one part of that effort. This fact raises a number of questions that we’ll need to answer if we want to understand this inner story properly. First, why would Utnapishtim want to dissuade him? And then, if he did, which details of his account support that purpose? And, thinking of the poet’s artistic purpose, we should also ask how this flood account serves the meaning of the poem as a whole.<br />
<br />
Let’s start first with the poet’s purpose. Scholars agree that the story of the Great Flood is considerably more ancient than the tales of the heroism of Gilgamesh. The Flood story originally was part of the mythology of the creation of all things, which told that the gods had created humankind to serve them, but later became unhappy with the results of their efforts and wanted to start over and try again. The Flood was the means they intended to use to wipe the slate clean. <br />
<br />
This myth is part of the “raw material” that the poet worked from to create the story he wanted to tell. But in lifting the Flood narrative out of its original context and dropping it into his story of Gilgamesh, the poet “re-purposes” it. He is not interested in explaining why the gods decided to destroy mankind — in fact, in his account Utnapishtim doesn’t even mention a reason — but he is interested in demonstrating that literal immortality is not a good thing for human beings.<br />
<br />
So the poet puts into the mouth of his character, Utnapishtim, a version of the Flood narrative that emphasizes the speaker’s own attempt to cheat death. <a href="http://king-of-heroes.co.uk/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/maureen-gallery-kovacs-translation/tablet-xi/" target="_blank">When the wily god Ea whispers through the wall to Utnapishtim</a> to warn him of the coming flood, he tells him that he must make a choice: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Tear down the house and build a boat!<br />
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!<br />
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!<br />
Make all living beings go up into the boat.</blockquote>
He can cling to life, or cling to his possessions, but he cannot hang onto both. Utnapishtim chooses life, but he isn’t entirely willing to give up his possessions. We know this because he mentions that when he was stocking the boat with “the seed of all living things,” he also managed to sneak aboard his silver and gold. He was a king, after all, accustomed to splendor. He obeyed the god insofar as doing so saved his life, and disobeyed insofar as doing so preserved his wealth. In doing both, he deceived and betrayed his people, telling them that if they helped him prepare the boat and leave the city the gods would rain down abundance upon them — while knowing, in fact, that they would rain down destruction.<br />
<br />
So he preserved his life, along with his silver and his gold, but what is a king with no one to bow to his might, with no one to admire his opulence? When Gilgamesh meets him, Utnapishtim is living with his wife (who shares his immortality), but they have no servants, and no royal subjects. They live at the ends of the earth, in utter solitude. The king’s wife herself must bake their daily bread.<br />
<br />
Notice, too, the way Utnapishtim became immortal — not as a favor from Ea, the god who saved him, but as decree of Enlil, the god who had wanted to destroy every human being, who was angry when the fumes of Utnapishtim’s sacrifice announced his survival. There is a kind of bitter irony in Enlil’s words: “Now let Utanapishtim and his wife become like us, the gods!” before he banishes him to the ends of the earth. Thus, it seems clear that Enlil did not intend the immortality he confers on Utnapishtim to be a kindness, but a punishment. It’s as if Enlil says, “So you want to cling to your life? Okay, here’s unending life. Let’s see how you like that!” And, of course, Utnapishtim doesn’t like it. He does everything he can to convince Gilgamesh not to seek the same fate.<br />
<br />
As a result of his meeting with “Utnapishtim the Faraway,” Gilgamesh returns empty-handed, but not without having gained something: whether he wished to or not, he has learned not to make the mistake that Utnapishtim did in clinging to life by giving up everything that makes life worth living. He will die someday, but his legacy will live on. Utnapishtim the immortal could not claim as much.<br />
<br />
Finally, we should notice the way the stories of these two kings parallel each other, and the ways in which they diverge. If we do so, we can see that the poem suggests something important about the proper exercise of kingship, namely that any king who uses his people for his own
personal pleasure or gain has overreached himself, and must taught a lesson by the
gods. Utnapishtim was taught that the cost of immortality was too high —
he has lost both his legitimate achievements and all the people who had
honored him. Learning from Utnapishtim's example, Gilgamesh regains
both his people and the magnificent city he has built. Thus, we may
conclude that the wise king will find a way to demonstrate his greatness
without offending either his people or the gods.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Enduring significance</h4>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mlGg4TuNZU4/VRXTprv_3UI/AAAAAAAAC78/qO0h8aA5umA/s1600/uruk%2Bziggurat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="203" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mlGg4TuNZU4/VRXTprv_3UI/AAAAAAAAC78/qO0h8aA5umA/s1600/uruk%2Bziggurat.jpg" title="Remains of a ziggurat of ancient Uruk" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crumbled ziggurat of ancient Uruk,<br />
the city of Gilgamesh.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The meaning of the Flood account, then, as well as the poem as a whole, is this: Immortality is not something for man to grasp at; even if the gods should confer it, it will not make him happy. A human being is not a god, and should not try to grasp at divinity. He must be content with the figurative kind of immortality that is proper to human beings: to produce great works that will endure, achievements that will bear lasting witness to the greatness of the one who made them.<br />
<br />
This is a theme that gets taken up time and and again in later epics, such as those of Homer and Vergil, who will develop the theme with much greater subtlety than the Gilgamesh poet does. This poet contents himself with implying that immortality would be unbearable for anyone not born to it, even if he had any way of grasping it. This knowledge alone should make a great man like Gilgamesh content to produce works of lasting grandeur.<br />
<br />
While we are thinking about achieving immortality through our great achievements, we should consider this: The nameless poet who composed the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> created a masterpiece that has had an enduring legacy. Although all copies of the poem were <a href="http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/789473" target="_blank">literally lost beneath the sands of time for millennia</a>, this poem set the pattern for the stories of heroes for many centuries. The themes of this poem are echoed and embroidered in the great Greek and Roman epics that followed it — Homer, writing more than a thousand years later, and Vergil, seven centuries later still, both portrayed heroes who struggled with their mortality, who strove to leave a worthy legacy that would continue to attest to their greatness after their inevitable deaths. All of these poets have demonstrated that epic poetry can serve to immortalize not only the deeds of great heroes but also the talents of the poets who made them.<br />
<br />
This idea has motivated poets for thousands of years. William Shakespeare clearly had it in mind when he wrote Sonnet 55:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments<br />
Of princes shall outlive this powerful rhyme;<br />
But you shall shine more bright in these contents<br />
Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.<br />
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,<br />
And broils root out the work of masonry,<br />
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn<br />
The living record of your memory.<br />
’Gainst death and all oblivious enmity<br />
Shall you pace forth: your praise shall still find room<br />
Even in the eyes of all posterity<br />
That wear this world out to the ending doom.<br />
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,<br />
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.</blockquote>
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/gilgamesh-still-speaks-to-us.html">Next time</a>, we’ll finish our consideration of the account of the Great Flood in the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>, and prepare to move on to look at another ancient, non-Biblical story of a primeval flood sent by the gods to destroy humankind. Until then, enjoy this modern re-creation of the way an ancient audience might once have heard the story of Gilgamesh.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QUcTsFe1PVs?list=RDQUcTsFe1PVs" width="560"></iframe><br />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/adventures-in-comparative-mythology_20.html" target="">Previous Post in This Series</a> | <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/04/gilgamesh-still-speaks-to-us.html">Next Post in This Series</a></h4>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br />
<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-76666862622858336392015-03-21T17:05:00.000-05:002015-05-26T21:49:07.323-05:00Something for you Trekkies: Saints, heroes, and Klingons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Okay, I know I got all the Trekkies hooked when I put up that post about Captain Picard and the Tamarian (you all subscribed to this blog, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?)<br />
<br />
Well, <a href="http://www.catholicviral.com/st-joseph-patron-saint-klingon-empire/" target="_blank">read this</a> to find out why my pal Dennis McGeehan, says Saint Joseph would make the perfect patron saint of the Klingons.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="giphy-embed" frameborder="0" height="346" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//giphy.com/embed/uutzEuJGoqSmA" style="max-width: 100%;" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="480"></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Death of Enkidu, if he and Gilgamesh had been Klingons</h3>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Question: What would Worf think about Gilgamesh? </h4>
Would he dig him, or would he bury him? More importantly, what would he think of Gilgamesh's quest for immortality?<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Answer:</h4>
<b>(My answer, anyway):</b> I think Worf would admire Gilgamesh's heroic exploits and his desire for greatness, but I think he would abhor his response to the death of Enkidu. Or maybe not, if he believed that Gilgamesh, as a mere human, would not have access to Sto-Vo-Kor (the Klingon Valhalla). But he might also sympathize with Gilgamesh's depression at the thought that all his deeds would die with him, and respect his recovery after failing to grasp immortality.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-30165077556480196402015-03-20T15:20:00.000-05:002016-05-20T16:33:45.640-05:00The Story of the Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today we come to the <b>second part of our examination </b>of the story of the Great Flood found in the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> —<b> </b>wherein we will look at<b> the story itself</b>. I'm actually going to break this into two separate posts, a summary of the story and the interpretation of it, which I'll combine with an examination of the story's significance. Before I do that, however, let's recap <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/adventures-in-comparative-mythology.html" target="_blank">what we've already covered in Part 1</a>.<br />
<br />
Last time, in the first step, the rhetorical analysis, we noted that the Flood account is really a story-within-a-story, which means we need to consider it along with the larger story that contains it. This narrative technique is sometimes called a “<b>frame tale</b>,” a term that is very appropriate in this case because the story of Gilgamesh provides the frame (context) for the part we're most interested in, and the Flood story is what gets framed (the focus of our attention). Still, although we are most interested in the Flood account, the relationship between the two stories suggests that to understand either, we have to understand both. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Id4QazXTFs8/VQx7auiVM2I/AAAAAAAAC6w/BMstWgIgEXA/s1600/gilgamesh%2Btyrant.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="272" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Id4QazXTFs8/VQx7auiVM2I/AAAAAAAAC6w/BMstWgIgEXA/s1600/gilgamesh%2Btyrant.png" title="ceramic tile by Neil Dalrymple: Gilgamesh the tyrant" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bored with his achievements, Gilgamesh became a tyrant.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
So our method of proceeding will be first to look at the frame within which the story of the Great Flood is set, and then at the Flood narrative in particular. I mentioned in my last post that Gilgamesh was a legendary king of the Mesopotamian city of Uruk and that there were many tales that got handed down about his great achievements. So the poet who wrote the poem we call the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> had a great quantity of source material from which to knit the tale he wanted to
tell. We don’t need to be familiar with all that material to understand this poem, but we should be aware that the poet made conscious and deliberate choices, not only about how to tell his story, but also about which story to tell. Those choices shape our understanding of the story means. I also pointed out last time that there are at least a couple of important themes woven into the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i>.<br />
<br />
Now, if I were to sum up this story of Gilgamesh as briefly as
possible, I would probably want to indicate not only the events (plot)
but also their meaning (theme). For instance, if I wanted to allude to
the major theme of human <b>mortality</b>, I could say that this is the
story of how a great hero comes to grips with the fact that the one foe
he cannot conquer is Death itself. Another way to describe the story in a
nutshell, emphasizing the theme of <b>kingship</b>, would be to say
that it is a story of how a king goes from being a ruthless despot who abuses his subjects to being a man truly worthy of
admiration and imitation. Both of those summaries, of course, are far
too brief to do the poem justice, but they each capture something true
about the poem. And, notice that they both indicate the kind of change
that the protagonist undergoes. <b>Every story, after all, is about change.</b><br />
<br />
But I think we need a more detailed summary, one that includes actual characters and events. Here goes:<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
The outer story: Gilgamesh</h4>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Prologue</h3>
The poem’s prologue states that Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, “two-thirds divine and one-third human,” has many outstanding qualities — he enjoys physical perfection, immense strength, and surpassing wisdom and knowledge — yet he behaves abominably toward his people, using them as slave labor to build magnificent ziggurats and other monuments to his own greatness, slaying young men to prove his own strength, raping any woman who takes his fancy. So the story begins with a bad situation that needs to be dealt with.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
The story proper</h3>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5O5ATv8-YTY/VQx17a8ya_I/AAAAAAAAC6Q/7Tm4kbafaEw/s1600/Enkidu%2Band%2BGilgamesh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="http://www.schoyencollection.com/literature-collection/assyrian-literature-collection/gilgamesh-cylinder-seal-ms-1989" border="0" height="157" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5O5ATv8-YTY/VQx17a8ya_I/AAAAAAAAC6Q/7Tm4kbafaEw/s1600/Enkidu%2Band%2BGilgamesh.jpg" title="Impression from cylindrical seal, Schoyen Collection" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Together, Enkidu and Gilgamesh <br />
slay the Bull of Heaven</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The story itself begins when the oppressed people of Uruk cry out to the gods for relief. So the gods send a wild man, Enkidu, to oppose Gilgamesh. A battle ensues between the two men, but they manage to resolve it without killing one another. No longer opponents, they become great friends and together the two heroes have a number of adventures. Eventually, though, they anger the gods, who decide that at least one of them must die, and they decide Enkidu is the one. He sickens, but before he dies he has dream-visions of the underworld. He recounts these to Gilgamesh, explaining how they have angered the gods, foreseeing his own death, describing the abode of the dead as a “house of dust,” a place of darkness, from which no one returns. Then he dies.<br />
<br />
Stricken by the death of his friend and haunted by the vision of what awaits all men after death, Gilgamesh for a time goes mad with grief. He begins to question the very meaning of life: what worth is there in being a mortal man when, for all his power and wealth, the greatest hero will succumb to death? (By the way, this is <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/02/by-jove-i-think-ive-got-it-or-sokath.html" target="_blank">the part of the story recounted by Captain Picard in that Star Trek episode I mentioned</a> in an earlier post.) Gilgamesh decides he must avoid death at all costs and recalls that there once was a man, Utnapishtim, a king like himself, who was not subject to death. (Utnapishtim means “He Who Saw Life.”) Gilgamesh becomes determined to find this man and learn from him the secret of immortality.<br />
<br />
The man Gilgamesh seeks, Utnapishtim, lives far away, beyond the Waters of Death, but Gilgamesh manages to track him down, and demands to know how he achieved his immortality. This is the story Utnapishtim tells him in reply:<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
The inner story: Utnapishtim and the Great Flood</h4>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The gods had grown to regret having created the human race. They decided to erase the human slate and start over, and a flood seemed like a good way to do that. They plan afterward to create a new, improved human race. One god, however, betrays their secret — Ea, the cleverest of them, went to the palace of Utnapishtim and whispered through the flimsy woven-reed wall not only the destruction the gods have planned, but also a way that the king could save himself and his family.<br />
<br />
Ea told the king that he has a choice between clinging to his possessions and saving his life. Since Utnapishtim, of course, wanted to live, the god told him how to build a huge boat that would survive the flood, big enough to contain animals and seeds to replenish the Earth after all other life has been destroyed. Ea also instructed him how to get his subjects to help him build the boat without their asking pesky questions about it, such as, “Why do you need a boat so big that it won’t actually fit in the river?” He must say that the god Enlil had grown to hate him, so for the good of the city he must leave.<br />
<br />
So the people of the city all pitched in to get the boat finished ASAP, and then they celebrated a great festival to send off the king and his household. (Utnapishtim, having been instructed in deception by the god Ea, disobeyed the god in one matter: in addition to storing the seed of all living things in the boat, he also managed to sneak aboard all his gold and silver.) After the people got good and drunk on their feasting, everyone pulled together to push this gigantic boat into the Euphrates. Then the king and his family climbed aboard and a craftsman sealed them in. And then came the great deluge.<br />
<br />
Seven days of terrible storms ensued — so dark and fierce that it frightened the gods themselves. Utnapishtim and his household were safely sealed inside their boat. A good thing, too, because every living thing except those on the boat perished in the ensuing flood. After seven days, the storm abated and Utnapishtim sent out a dove to see if it could find a place to alight. But the waters had not yet receded far enough to expose the land, so the bird returned. Later, he tried again with a swallow, but got the same result. Finally, he sent out a raven, which did not return — the water was going down and bare land had reappeared.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0ykk86gQBOk/VQx2AFovaFI/AAAAAAAAC6c/ZrI3HkpmHCY/s1600/man%2Band%2Bwife%2BIraq%2Bmuseum.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="http://www.scalarchives.com/web/dettaglio_immagine.asp?idImmagine=0045009&posizione=7&numImmagini=243&SC_Luogo=Iraq+Museum%2C+Baghdad%2C+Iraq&prmset=on&SC_PROV=RA&SC_Lang=eng&Sort=9&luce=" border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0ykk86gQBOk/VQx2AFovaFI/AAAAAAAAC6c/ZrI3HkpmHCY/s1600/man%2Band%2Bwife%2BIraq%2Bmuseum.png" title="statue of man and wife embracing, Iraq Museum, Baghdad" width="231" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Utnapishtim and his wife were made deathless.<br />
But was that such a good thing?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After his boat lodged at the top of a tall mountain and the flood waters went down, Utnapishtim let his animals loose and sacrificed a sheep in thanksgiving for his survival. The fragrance of his sacrifice attracted the attention of the gods, who had grown hungry since they killed off all the worshipers who used to sacrifice to them as well as all the animals needed for burnt offerings. The gods were glad that someone survived to offer them sacrifice — all except Enlil, who grew very angry, realizing that if someone had survived the flood it could only be because Ea had warned him.<br />
<br />
Ea deflected attention from himself by accusing Enlil of using overkill to deal with the human problem — why did he have to destroy everyone? Why couldn’t he be satisfied with sending plagues and famines, or ravenous wolves and lions, to keep mortals in check?<br />
<br />
Enlil responded to this remonstration by relenting in his anger and conferring immortality on the flood’s survivors, Utnapishtim and his wife. Then he sent them to a remote spot to live, which is where Gilgamesh finds them, centuries later.</blockquote>
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Return to the outer story: <br />The effect of Utnapishtim’s account on Gilgamesh</h4>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UpRH0jfgF5k/VQx2BU_jICI/AAAAAAAAC6k/sk2fmJjn90U/s1600/uruk05.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Walls of ancient Uruk, excavated" border="0" height="213" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UpRH0jfgF5k/VQx2BU_jICI/AAAAAAAAC6k/sk2fmJjn90U/s1600/uruk05.png" title="After many centuries, the walls of ancient Uruk have been unearthed." width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Uruk, a lasting testament to King Gilgamesh.<br />
"Look at its wall which gleams like <i>copper</i>,<br />
inspect its inner wall, the likes of which no one can equal!<br />
Take hold of the threshold stone–it dates from ancient times!"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It would appear that Gilgamesh has sought Utnapishtim to no purpose, since his immortality was a gift from the god Enlil, not anything he achieved through his own efforts. But when Gilgamesh seems on the point of despair, Utnapishtim tells him about a magical plant that will restore his youth. The hero plucks it from the bottom of the sea, planning to take it back to his city and try it out on an old man to see if it works. On his way home, though, he stops to bathe and a snake steals the plant. The snake, revitalized by the magic herb, sloughs off its skin. So Gilgamesh sees that the plant did, indeed, restore youth, but he is left frustrated, undone by a lowly serpent. He is empty-handed after all his questing, and returns to his well-built city, taking consolation from the fact that, although he is mortal, he has built magnificent things that will outlive him.<br />
<br />
That’s the story, briefly told. If you would like something a bit more detailed (and animated!), take a look at this animated summary. (It runs about 10 minutes in length.)<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qOrfrHys8g8" width="560"></iframe><br /></div>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/adventures-in-comparative-mythology.html" target="">Previous Post in This Series</a> | <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/adventures-in-comparative-mythology_27.html">Next Post in This Series</a></h4>
<br />
<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/adventures-in-comparative-mythology_27.html">In my next post</a>, I’ll discuss what meaning a careful reader can draw from the story (and why). I’ll also discuss the way this story has affected posterity, touching on the way it influenced the later development of both epic poetry and religious mythology. <b>Meanwhile, why don’t you think about what meaning you find in the story? </b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i></div>
</blockquote>
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<h3>
<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-244060080311485037.post-57772597190742794592015-03-19T18:43:00.000-05:002016-05-20T16:27:00.976-05:00Epic of Gilgamesh: putting the Flood story in context<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K70_PiY16X0/VQtL1dmoWpI/AAAAAAAAC5Q/lGKSzlzRwj0/s1600/books%2Btake%2Byou%2Bplaces.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="199" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K70_PiY16X0/VQtL1dmoWpI/AAAAAAAAC5Q/lGKSzlzRwj0/s1600/books%2Btake%2Byou%2Bplaces.jpg" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Want to visit far-off times and places? Read a book.<br />
It's the cheapest, easiest form of travel.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Sometimes we have to learn to see treasured, but overly-familiar truths
with the eyes of a stranger in order to appreciate them better. That’s
what I hope will come of <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/what-can-darren-aronofskys-noah-teach.html" target="_blank">the exercise I proposed last week</a>, comparing several ancient accounts of the Great Flood. So as we begin our look at three different literary accounts of the Great Flood, I think it best to start with the one that is probably least familiar to most of us. Why? Because the Biblical account is so familiar that we may miss its distinctive features, the features that help us draw out the intended meaning of the account. By looking first at unfamiliar versions of the story, we may be able to de-familiarize ourselves from the story of Noah and be better able to read it afresh.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
Reading with understanding</h4>
As we look at each of these three Flood stories in turn, I’ll be using a slightly-modified version of the <a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2012/11/read-any-work-with-greater-understanding.html" target="_blank">four-point analysis</a> I introduced in a post a couple of years ago, partly because I want to make sure I don’t skip over anything worthwhile, and partly to demonstrate the way to approach an unfamiliar text and accept it on its own terms before reaching any kind of judgment about it. (Opinion should always be based on knowledge and understanding, otherwise it’s not opinion but prejudice.)<br />
<br />
We begin with the most ancient version of a flood myth that has survived in written form, the one found in the <a href="http://king-of-heroes.co.uk/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/maureen-gallery-kovacs-translation/" target="_blank"><i>Epic of Gilgamesh </i>(read it here</a>. Go to <a href="http://king-of-heroes.co.uk/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/maureen-gallery-kovacs-translation/tablet-xi/" target="_blank">Tablet XI for the flood story</a>).
This poem dates from as early as 2100 B.C., making it not only the
earliest epic in existence, but also the oldest recorded account of the
Great Flood, predating the writing of the version found in Genesis by
several centuries. <br />
<br />
Now, what I thought would be a pretty simple, side-by-side comparison has actually grown like Topsy as I delved into the most ancient account of the Great Flood, found in the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh. </i>The more I look at it, the more interesting it gets (the test of great literature!). But this means that my analysis has turned out to be more complex and lengthy than I first estimated, so I’m going to break it into sections and publish them in turn. I’ll stick in links so that anyone who wants to put all the parts together into a single essay can do so. Okay, let’s move on to the first point of our 4-step analysis, the rhetorical context.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<h4 style="text-align: left;">
What kind of work is it? </h4>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-57tDvdanzWQ/VQtVNqEsSrI/AAAAAAAAC5g/Uiaq5XiWUgo/s1600/Gilgamesh_louvre.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-57tDvdanzWQ/VQtVNqEsSrI/AAAAAAAAC5g/Uiaq5XiWUgo/s1600/Gilgamesh_louvre.png" width="136" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gilgamesh is the hero of<br />
the epic, but the hearer<br />
of the flood story.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Rhetorical analysis refers to figuring out what sort of thing you’re reading, which in turn determines why the author wrote it the way he did. This is where we ask: What sort of thing is this work? What themes does the author develop? For what audience was this written? What was the intended purpose of this work? Failure to answer these questions carefully runs the risk of misunderstanding the work altogether.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
A story within a story</h3>
In looking at this ancient Mesopotamian flood story, we should first notice that it is embedded in a larger tale. That larger story is not about the flood <i>per se</i>, but about a hero named Gilgamesh. The flood narrative occurs late in the poem, and is introduced as a personal account told to the hero by another character. So, to understand the rhetorical purpose of the flood narrative, we have to consider both why that character (Utnapishtim) told the story to Gilgamesh and why the poet who wrote the story of Gilgamesh wanted to include the flood narrative as one key part of the whole story. <br />
<br />
So let’s look at what sort of thing the whole is. First, is it factual or fictional? Well, a bit of both, perhaps. It is a tale of a hero, <a href="http://www.ancient.eu/gilgamesh/" target="_blank">Gilgamesh, a man who actually lived once upon a time</a> (he was king of a Mesopotamian city called Uruk), who, after his death, became the subject of many stories about his greatness, of which the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh</i> is the greatest. We call the poem an epic because the protagonist is a heroic figure (a demi-god, larger than life) and the story itself explores the hero’s achievements and their significance for posterity.<br />
<br />
The poet presupposes that his audience will be familiar with many things that are, in fact, unfamiliar to modern readers, chiefly details from his culture's creation mythology. For instance, the poet does not make direct reference to the creation of human beings by the gods, or the reason the gods became dissatisfied with them, but assumes his audience will be familiar with these things. So I will have to fill in a little of that as we go along, just so that it will be clearer to see what the poet intended.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Important themes</h3>
The central theme of this epic (and, indeed, of many subsequent epics) is the hero’s quest to understand<b> the value of human life</b>. In this poem, the quest is literal as well as figurative. After the death of his great friend, Enkidu, Gilgamesh begins to question the meaning of all his personal achievements — he has conquered monsters and built great ziggurats, but in the face of the crushing inevitability of death these things seem worthless. But Gilgamesh has heard of another great king who became immortal, the one achievement that he himself lacks. So he goes off to find that man and learn how he came to escape death.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OoW3-7EtyXU/VQtXnI9TcdI/AAAAAAAAC5s/HucDeG7uIuM/s1600/gilgamesh%2Bmeets%2Butnapishtim.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="http://www.neildalrymple.com/ceramic-stoneware-sculptures/gilgamesh/" border="0" height="203" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OoW3-7EtyXU/VQtXnI9TcdI/AAAAAAAAC5s/HucDeG7uIuM/s1600/gilgamesh%2Bmeets%2Butnapishtim.png" title="" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gilgamesh meets the ferryman who will take him <br />
to Utnapishtim (Neil Dalrymple, sculptor)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
That man is Utnapishtim, who tells Gilgamesh that he did not “achieve” immortality, but it was given to him by a god, after he of all men survived a great flood intended to put an end to humankind. So we see that the flood story is intended, both by Utnapishtim and by the poet, to put the whole question of human mortality into proper perspective. As it turns out, Utnapishtim's story is the thing that ultimately helps Gilgamesh come to grips with the brevity and fragility of human life.<br />
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I’d like to point out a secondary theme, which is dealt with less explicitly than the question of mortality: this is the question of <b>what it means to be a king</b>. In the ancient world in which this poem was composed, every city or civilization was ruled by a king, and kings generally were considered to be about as close to being gods as was humanly possible. So the question of kingship is closely related to the question of the purpose of human life, because kings were thought to enjoy life at its fullest.<br />
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Poetic method</h3>
We should also note that these serious themes are dealt with poetically, not in a straight-forward, discursive way. If you recall<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/search/label/poetic%20imagination" target="_blank"> the point I’ve made in the past about the nature of poetry </a>(AKA fiction), you'll understand that to deal with something “poetically” does not mean to use a bunch of fancy flourishes, but to approach a subject <i>metaphorically</i> or analogically. As Aristotle noted, nearly two thousand years after Gilgamesh lived, poetry (fiction) allows the reader to enter imaginatively into the experiences of the protagonist. If we do this willingly and thoroughly, we learn from his experiences even as he does (or even if he does not). It’s worth keeping this in mind, because it means that the poet hopes his readers will learn the very things that his protagonist, Gilgamesh, is (or should be) learning.<br />
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That’s enough for today. Next time, we’ll move on to the second stage of our analysis, in which we look at the story itself — what story does Utnapishtim, a king who became immortal, tell Gilgamesh, a king who wishes to become immortal? Does his story help Gilgamesh overcome the existential angst he has suffered since losing his friend? Tune in next time! If you haven’t read the <i>Epic of Gilgamesh </i>yet, <a href="http://king-of-heroes.co.uk/the-epic-of-gilgamesh/maureen-gallery-kovacs-translation/" target="_blank">you can do so here</a>. If you just want to read the story of the Flood, you'll find it on Tablet XI.<br />
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<a href="http://acatholicreader.blogspot.com/2015/03/adventures-in-comparative-mythology_20.html" target="_blank">Next: the story itself </a></h4>
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<i>©2015 Lisa A. Nicholas</i>
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<span style="color: #ad1300;">Please leave your thoughts or comments below!</span></h3>
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