Hy Breasail
Valiant-timbered reason
through the river-veins
of vine-rich jungle-lands
vales of mist discovers;
there visions softly rain,
swiftly flood the rivers,
with vital, vivid dreams.
In Luthany the Shadows Fall
In Luthany the shadows fall
on ruins of deserted halls
that, great of beam, still rise on high,
that, strong of stone, yet stand and wait;
for earth may fade and sun may die
but Luthany will stand and wait.
In Luthany the birds yet trill
and there are lark and whippoorwill,
where nightingales remember days
and mockingbirds recall the years
when merchants traversed well-trod ways;
but only birds recall those years.
Yet someday soon will woods awake
and gods undie and hearts unbreak;
and then the dreaming souls will rise,
and then the sleeping land will dance,
when lives again the thing that dies,
when you and I once more will dance.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Monday, January 09, 2012
With Looks Aghast and Sad
Now had the great Proclaimer with a voice
More awful then the sound of Trumpet, cried
Repentance, and Heavens Kingdom nigh at hand
To all Baptiz'd: to his great Baptism flock'd
With aw the Regions round, and with them came
From Nazareth the Son of Joseph deem'd
To the flood Jordan, came as then obscure,
Unmarkt, unknown; but him the Baptist soon
Descri'd, divinely warn'd, and witness bore
As to his worthier, and would have resign'd
To him his Heavenly Office, nor was long
His witness unconfirm'd; on him baptiz'd
Heaven open'd, and in likeness of a Dove
The Spirit descended, while the Fathers voice
From Heav'n pronounc'd him his beloved Son
That heard the Adversary, who roving still
About the world, at that assembly fam'd
Would not be last, and with the voice divine
Nigh Thunder-struck, th' exalted man, to whom
Such high attest was giv'n, a while survey'd
With wonder, then with envy fraught and rage
Flies to his place, nor rests, but in mid air
To Councel summons all his mighty Peers,
Within thick Clouds and dark ten-fold involv'd,
A gloomy Consistory; and them amidst
With looks aghast and sad he thus bespake.
From John Milton, Paradise Regain'd, Book I.
Sunday, January 08, 2012
Tabulae Novae
Who in the world, indeed, that has the feelings of a man, can endure that they should have a superfluity of riches, to squander in building over seas and leveling mountains, and that means should be wanting to us even for the necessaries of life; that they should join together two houses or more, and that we should not have a hearth to call our own? They, tho they purchase pictures, statues, and embossed plate; tho they pull down new buildings and erect others, and lavish and abuse their wealth in every possible method, yet cannot, with the utmost efforts of caprice, exhaust it. But for us there is poverty at home, debts abroad, our present circumstances are bad, our prospects much worse; and what, in a word, have we left, but a miserable existence?
Will you not, then, awake to action? Behold that liberty, that liberty for which you have so often wished, with wealth, honor, and glory, are set before your eyes. All these prizes fortune offers to the victorious. Let the enterprise itself, then, let the opportunity, let your poverty, your dangers, and the glorious spoils of war, animate you far more than my words. Use me either as your leader or your fellow soldier; neither my heart nor my hand shall be wanting to you. These objects I hope to effect, in concert with you, in the character of consul—unless, indeed, my expectation deceives me, and you prefer to be slaves rather than masters.
Lucius Sergius Catilina, An Exhortation to Conspiracy (as presented by Sallust). This, of course, is the Catiline denounced by Cicero who attempted to overthrow the Roman Republic. People go back and forth on Catiline, depending largely on whether they judge him sincere in his advocacy for the poor or simply a rabble-rouser using them for his personal ends. But it's a little unsettling to think how well the Catilinian line would play today.
Saturday, January 07, 2012
Three Gifts They Bring, Three Gifts They Bear Away
The Epiphanye
by Robert Southwell
To blase the rising of this glorious sunne,
A glittringe starre appeareth in the Easte,
Whose sight to pilgrimm-toyles three sages wunne
To seeke the light they long had in requeste;
And by this starre to nobler starr they pase,
Whose armes did their desired sunne embrace.
Stall was the skye wherein these planettes shynde,
And want the cloude that did eclipse their rayes;
Yet through this cloude their light did passage finde,
And percd these sages' harts by secrett waies,
Which made them knowe the Ruler of the skyes,
By infant tongue and lookes of babish eyes.
Heaven at her light, Earth blusheth at her pride,
And of their pompe these peeres ashamed be;
Their crownes, their robes, their trayne they sett aside,
When God's poore cotage, clowtes, and crewe, they see;
All glorious thinges their glory nowe dispise,
Sith God contempt, doth more then glory-prize.
Three giftes they bringe, three giftes they beare awaye;
For incense, myrrhe and gould, faith, hope and love;
And with their giftes the givers' hartes do staye,
Their mynde from Christ no parting can remove;
His humble state, his stall, his poore retynewe,
They phansie more then all theire ritch revenewe.
I just realized that St. Robert was pretty much my age when he was hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn. A little sobering, that. This Southwell poem doesn't seem to be one of the more quoted poems, but I think it works very well. Southwell is usually considered the first of the Metaphysicals, and works of metaphysical poetry can be a bit gymnastic (as it gets sometimes with John Donne), but here all the metaphysical conceits are relatively mild and the paradoxes delineated with some subtlety, and the wit never obscures the point, and Southwell displays here his usual knack for not letting the didactic overwhelm the lyric.
Even with the original spelling, it's very readable if you read it aloud ('clowtes' is 'clothes'), and, really, you should always read Southwell aloud.
Two Poem Drafts
Shulammite
Blackly lovely Shulammite
Bringing peace and perfumed night,
Lily nested deep in thorns,
Purity your heart adorns!
Can I measure all our love?
Worlds you are, my grace, my dove,
Plains of glory, mountains high,
Flawless color, sculpted thigh,
Majesty with woman's face:
Let us paths to vineyards race,
Never any moment wasting,
Ever choicest passion tasting.
Despair
War among the gods, they say, anciently shook the world.
Mountain thrust back sea, sea swallowed islands whole,
wind uprooted mighty stone, monsters fought in boundless deep.
Can any imagine, can any dream, the mighty convulsions of gods at war?
But even divine wars fall to quiet, even gods know harsh defeat.
Battles ended. The darkest god, who brings the darkness dark night fears,
a starless lightlessness that burns, to his knees fell. His crown broken,
his mighty form chain-encircled, he was driven across the wastes,
and brought to judgment by the gods. Cany any imagine, can any know,
the rite and law of that ancient court? But once I traced an errant strand
of darkest darkness in my dreams, a cord of lightless thread.
At its end spread out like glass a silent sea that knew no wind
was sorrowing at the world's end. Within its quiet depths were stars.
Across that sea the darkness rolled in blanket fog, wisps of cloud,
from which my lightless clue had come. Upon the lapping shore a boat
with mighty prow had been moored. In it I crossed that glassy sea,
for, windless, nonetheless it moved, into the center far from shore.
There upon a mighty stone, where it rained and water dripped,
a form of darkness sat in bonds, a mountain up it, towaring, rose,
and from it darkness poured, a darkness blind of light.
There in brooding the darkest god in links of iron sits engloomed.
I quailed and fled; but I had seen and know too well the end.
In all this world the darkest dark is but a night that knows the stars,
or else that darkness in the earth that fire knew, and light of sun.
Only here and there in impure strands we find a darker darkness.
But on that island made of stone sits the darkest god. The rain
will slowly rust his iron chains until they weaken, twist, and break,
until the end of sentence comes, and on the earth, with mighty form,
the darkness walks again.
Blackly lovely Shulammite
Bringing peace and perfumed night,
Lily nested deep in thorns,
Purity your heart adorns!
Can I measure all our love?
Worlds you are, my grace, my dove,
Plains of glory, mountains high,
Flawless color, sculpted thigh,
Majesty with woman's face:
Let us paths to vineyards race,
Never any moment wasting,
Ever choicest passion tasting.
Despair
War among the gods, they say, anciently shook the world.
Mountain thrust back sea, sea swallowed islands whole,
wind uprooted mighty stone, monsters fought in boundless deep.
Can any imagine, can any dream, the mighty convulsions of gods at war?
But even divine wars fall to quiet, even gods know harsh defeat.
Battles ended. The darkest god, who brings the darkness dark night fears,
a starless lightlessness that burns, to his knees fell. His crown broken,
his mighty form chain-encircled, he was driven across the wastes,
and brought to judgment by the gods. Cany any imagine, can any know,
the rite and law of that ancient court? But once I traced an errant strand
of darkest darkness in my dreams, a cord of lightless thread.
At its end spread out like glass a silent sea that knew no wind
was sorrowing at the world's end. Within its quiet depths were stars.
Across that sea the darkness rolled in blanket fog, wisps of cloud,
from which my lightless clue had come. Upon the lapping shore a boat
with mighty prow had been moored. In it I crossed that glassy sea,
for, windless, nonetheless it moved, into the center far from shore.
There upon a mighty stone, where it rained and water dripped,
a form of darkness sat in bonds, a mountain up it, towaring, rose,
and from it darkness poured, a darkness blind of light.
There in brooding the darkest god in links of iron sits engloomed.
I quailed and fled; but I had seen and know too well the end.
In all this world the darkest dark is but a night that knows the stars,
or else that darkness in the earth that fire knew, and light of sun.
Only here and there in impure strands we find a darker darkness.
But on that island made of stone sits the darkest god. The rain
will slowly rust his iron chains until they weaken, twist, and break,
until the end of sentence comes, and on the earth, with mighty form,
the darkness walks again.
Friday, January 06, 2012
Six Hundred Years of Joan of Arc
This year is the sexcentennial anniversary of the birth of Jehanne, la Pucelle. We're fairly sure that she was born in 1412, although it's entirely possible she was born slightly earlier or slightly later -- since she was a peasant in a time when peasant births weren't really recorded and lived in a culture that was not as obsessive about birthdays as ours, she herself could only estimate her own age, although it was probably a pretty accurate estimate. We do not know the exact date of her birth, and Jehanne almost certainly didn't either. There is one contemporary source, Boulainvilliers, who claims that she was born on January 6, the Feast of Epiphany. This is certainly not impossible; but it's also possible that Epiphany was just a notable feast near her birthday, and it's equally possible that this idea grew up as a pious association. Nonetheless, it's the only date we have. And while her true birthday for liturgical purposes is the date of her martyrdom, it's as good a day as any to say something about her in this six hundredth year of Johanna Puella.
Contrary to common English usage, the "d'Arc" or "D'Arc" should probably not be translated as "of Arc" since it was just her father's name (Jacques d'Arc), but it's a bit late to do anything about it now. Likewise, I doubt she would have often used the name herself, if at all; surnames were a very inconsistent thing in this period. Joan d'Arc was born in the little village of Domrémy to two peasants, Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle de Vouthon, who, however, were doing fairly well as peasants. Jacques d'Arc had about fifty acres of decent land and held the important local post of doyen, in charge of collecting taxes and organizing local defense. Joan was one of five children; we know very little about the rest. We know, on the other hand, an extraordinary amount about Joan, perhaps more than about any other person in the fifteenth century, because so much information was recorded about her by contemporaries, at her heresy trial, and at the nullification trial at which she was vindicated.
All of this began when the Maid was 13; she began having visions of the Archangel Michael, of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and of Saint Margaret of Antioch. Both Catherine and Margaret were virgin martyrs; it is perhaps also significant that St. Margaret was, like St. Michael, a dragonslayer, but the connection with Margaret seems to be more immediate, since she was represented in the chapel at Domrémy. For the next four years she continued to have visions, and then in October of 1428 everything changed through an event that seemed to have nothing to do with a little peasant girl: the English, allied to the Duke of Burgundy, laid siege to Orleans. And from then on we have history: Joan the Maid went to the court of the Dauphin and told him that she had been sent by God to free Orleans. Which she did, even to the point of returning to the field after an arrow wound in the neck in order to urge her men on. Then she captured Jargeau, again continuing to urge her men on after being hit on the head with a rock and falling off a siege ladder. Then victory after victory after that, in a matter of three months completely turning around what had seemed an almost hopeless situation.
She was captured by the Burgundians in 1430, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was nineteen years old. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Her story had become legend, and she had begun to be regarded as a saint, well before then. Mark Twain wrote a book, which he claimed was his favorite and considered his best, called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, his last finished novel. It has not been very widely accepted by others as his best work, because it's not a very Twain-like book (and, indeed, he originally published under a different pseudonym). What humor is in it is largely subtle, and book overall is rather serious in tone; instead of being put together largely on the fly, he spent about a decade researching it. Despite critical reluctance to accept such an un-Twain-like book, it is actually quite a good read, and I would not be surprised if time were eventually to bear out Twain's own assessment. Everybody knows that Twain can write teenage boys; but he gets Joan's teenage-girl-ness almost exactly right (it is said that he modeled her partly after his own daughter in her teenage years, and one can believe it). Twain also wrote an essay, sometimes appended to the Personal Recollections, called "Saint Joan of Arc" -- it is well worth reading, and summarizes the feeling of a great many people when it comes to the Maid of Orleans.
George Bernard Shaw, also wrote a well-known play about her, Saint Joan; it's notable for trying to do justice to the English and Burgundians as well as Joan and the French. Shaw's Joan tells us more about Shaw than about Joan, but it's a good piece, a tragedy in which everyone is sincere and well-meaning.
For those who have the French, Christine de Pizan's Ditie de Jehanne d'Arc is exquisitely good -- it was the very first literary work with Joan of Arc as a subject, written while she was still alive, by one of France's great writers in the period.
Contrary to common English usage, the "d'Arc" or "D'Arc" should probably not be translated as "of Arc" since it was just her father's name (Jacques d'Arc), but it's a bit late to do anything about it now. Likewise, I doubt she would have often used the name herself, if at all; surnames were a very inconsistent thing in this period. Joan d'Arc was born in the little village of Domrémy to two peasants, Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle de Vouthon, who, however, were doing fairly well as peasants. Jacques d'Arc had about fifty acres of decent land and held the important local post of doyen, in charge of collecting taxes and organizing local defense. Joan was one of five children; we know very little about the rest. We know, on the other hand, an extraordinary amount about Joan, perhaps more than about any other person in the fifteenth century, because so much information was recorded about her by contemporaries, at her heresy trial, and at the nullification trial at which she was vindicated.
All of this began when the Maid was 13; she began having visions of the Archangel Michael, of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and of Saint Margaret of Antioch. Both Catherine and Margaret were virgin martyrs; it is perhaps also significant that St. Margaret was, like St. Michael, a dragonslayer, but the connection with Margaret seems to be more immediate, since she was represented in the chapel at Domrémy. For the next four years she continued to have visions, and then in October of 1428 everything changed through an event that seemed to have nothing to do with a little peasant girl: the English, allied to the Duke of Burgundy, laid siege to Orleans. And from then on we have history: Joan the Maid went to the court of the Dauphin and told him that she had been sent by God to free Orleans. Which she did, even to the point of returning to the field after an arrow wound in the neck in order to urge her men on. Then she captured Jargeau, again continuing to urge her men on after being hit on the head with a rock and falling off a siege ladder. Then victory after victory after that, in a matter of three months completely turning around what had seemed an almost hopeless situation.
She was captured by the Burgundians in 1430, tried for heresy, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was nineteen years old. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Her story had become legend, and she had begun to be regarded as a saint, well before then. Mark Twain wrote a book, which he claimed was his favorite and considered his best, called Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, his last finished novel. It has not been very widely accepted by others as his best work, because it's not a very Twain-like book (and, indeed, he originally published under a different pseudonym). What humor is in it is largely subtle, and book overall is rather serious in tone; instead of being put together largely on the fly, he spent about a decade researching it. Despite critical reluctance to accept such an un-Twain-like book, it is actually quite a good read, and I would not be surprised if time were eventually to bear out Twain's own assessment. Everybody knows that Twain can write teenage boys; but he gets Joan's teenage-girl-ness almost exactly right (it is said that he modeled her partly after his own daughter in her teenage years, and one can believe it). Twain also wrote an essay, sometimes appended to the Personal Recollections, called "Saint Joan of Arc" -- it is well worth reading, and summarizes the feeling of a great many people when it comes to the Maid of Orleans.
George Bernard Shaw, also wrote a well-known play about her, Saint Joan; it's notable for trying to do justice to the English and Burgundians as well as Joan and the French. Shaw's Joan tells us more about Shaw than about Joan, but it's a good piece, a tragedy in which everyone is sincere and well-meaning.
For those who have the French, Christine de Pizan's Ditie de Jehanne d'Arc is exquisitely good -- it was the very first literary work with Joan of Arc as a subject, written while she was still alive, by one of France's great writers in the period.
Discernment and Dithering
Michael Hannon has an excellent post on the current Catholic fad of "discerning one's personal vocation." For those of you who are not Catholic, "discerning your personal vocation" is Catholic-speak for "dithering about what you should do with your life." I find this bit of faddish Catholic-speak largely exasperating, because in fact almost everything that goes into what's known as the 'discernment process' really is just trying to make people dither. The point of true discernment, as opposed to this fakery, is to come to a clear decision on the basis of the kind of information that's needed for a good decision. For some people this will take some time, yes, but for others it won't. What people don't need are stupid exercises and long drawn out excuses; they need good, clear information in the form in which they can best understand it. That's it.
The fact of the matter is that every Christian already knows how to discern their vocation; every Christian has the vocation of their baptism, which is to be Christ in the world, to love God and neighbor, and to stand for the faith and all else that is good, true, and beautiful. (The three properly understood come to the same thing.) All other vocations are merely secondary extensions of this. As Hannon says,
Here's a checklist on how to decide if your vocation is marriage:
1. There's no fundamental impediment to getting married.
2. You've met someone really great.
3. You think you'd like to be married to them.
4. They think you're really great.
5. They think they'd like to be married to you.
6. You could meet your responsibilities as a married person and they could meet theirs.
7. It wouldn't be an act of stupidity in general or a harm for yourself or the other person for you to marry them.
Here's another checklist on how to decide if your vocation is priesthood:
1. There's no fundamental impediment to ordination.
2. You are interested in being a priest.
3. You could fulfill the responsibilities of a priest without scandal.
4. You are willing to commit to putting other people's good above your own, and especially God above yourself.
5. It wouldn't be an act of stupidity in general or a harm for yourself and others for you to become a priest.
Of course, these aren't even universal; there have been arranged marriages and there have been times and places where congregations forced promising young men to be priests. But, again, it's really not that difficult to make decisions.
ADDED LATER:
Given this discussion, I should probably clarify:
(1) The checklists are not really intended to be rigorously reductive, since they are really intended to be checklists for finding out what one needs to know in order to make a decision and not algorithms for making the decision itself (I don't think any possible checklists would suffice for that). Taken this way I think that at a very general level they cover all that's usually necessary, barring special interventions by God, rare circumstances, and deliberate human perversity. I am afraid I was being somewhat sarcastic, though, in making the point that discernment of vocation is perfectly ordinary practical reasoning, albeit about a very important thing; and this no doubt obscured the intention.
(2) Strictly speaking it is possible to be Catholic and have both a vocation to marriage and a vocation to priesthood; it happens fairly commonly among Eastern Catholics (they only have the celibacy requirement for bishops), who are, of course, Catholics in good standing. And the discernment of both could overlap; I know at least one person for whom I think this was the case. It is, of course, not possible for Roman Catholics (and Eastern Catholics, to avoid confusion, avoid it in areas dominated by Roman Catholics), because of Roman canon law, except under unusual dispensations arising from conversion (usually from Orthodoxy or Anglicanism), which wouldn't be relevant to Catholic discernment. So the incompatibility is not a general one, but depends on the Catholic tradition to which one belongs and the canon law governing it. It is certainly true that if the checklist is not taken to cover this already under its weasel clause of "act of stupidity or harm" then it would have to be amended to include it as something you would need to find out if you didn't already know. This is a good example, actually, of how 'discernment of vocation' is concerned with practicalities. What one 'feels God is calling them to' may well be such a practicality, as one's own interest certainly is; but most of real discernment deals with things like whether it's legal or whether it would cause confusion, matters that require clear information and objective analysis.
The fact of the matter is that every Christian already knows how to discern their vocation; every Christian has the vocation of their baptism, which is to be Christ in the world, to love God and neighbor, and to stand for the faith and all else that is good, true, and beautiful. (The three properly understood come to the same thing.) All other vocations are merely secondary extensions of this. As Hannon says,
The Christian ought to make major life decisions as he ought to make all decisions: by evaluating how he can serve God, by choosing a course of action accordingly, and by having the courage to follow through and do it.
Here's a checklist on how to decide if your vocation is marriage:
1. There's no fundamental impediment to getting married.
2. You've met someone really great.
3. You think you'd like to be married to them.
4. They think you're really great.
5. They think they'd like to be married to you.
6. You could meet your responsibilities as a married person and they could meet theirs.
7. It wouldn't be an act of stupidity in general or a harm for yourself or the other person for you to marry them.
Here's another checklist on how to decide if your vocation is priesthood:
1. There's no fundamental impediment to ordination.
2. You are interested in being a priest.
3. You could fulfill the responsibilities of a priest without scandal.
4. You are willing to commit to putting other people's good above your own, and especially God above yourself.
5. It wouldn't be an act of stupidity in general or a harm for yourself and others for you to become a priest.
Of course, these aren't even universal; there have been arranged marriages and there have been times and places where congregations forced promising young men to be priests. But, again, it's really not that difficult to make decisions.
ADDED LATER:
Given this discussion, I should probably clarify:
(1) The checklists are not really intended to be rigorously reductive, since they are really intended to be checklists for finding out what one needs to know in order to make a decision and not algorithms for making the decision itself (I don't think any possible checklists would suffice for that). Taken this way I think that at a very general level they cover all that's usually necessary, barring special interventions by God, rare circumstances, and deliberate human perversity. I am afraid I was being somewhat sarcastic, though, in making the point that discernment of vocation is perfectly ordinary practical reasoning, albeit about a very important thing; and this no doubt obscured the intention.
(2) Strictly speaking it is possible to be Catholic and have both a vocation to marriage and a vocation to priesthood; it happens fairly commonly among Eastern Catholics (they only have the celibacy requirement for bishops), who are, of course, Catholics in good standing. And the discernment of both could overlap; I know at least one person for whom I think this was the case. It is, of course, not possible for Roman Catholics (and Eastern Catholics, to avoid confusion, avoid it in areas dominated by Roman Catholics), because of Roman canon law, except under unusual dispensations arising from conversion (usually from Orthodoxy or Anglicanism), which wouldn't be relevant to Catholic discernment. So the incompatibility is not a general one, but depends on the Catholic tradition to which one belongs and the canon law governing it. It is certainly true that if the checklist is not taken to cover this already under its weasel clause of "act of stupidity or harm" then it would have to be amended to include it as something you would need to find out if you didn't already know. This is a good example, actually, of how 'discernment of vocation' is concerned with practicalities. What one 'feels God is calling them to' may well be such a practicality, as one's own interest certainly is; but most of real discernment deals with things like whether it's legal or whether it would cause confusion, matters that require clear information and objective analysis.
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