Gleeful Shenanigans

The Fox show Glee is now ripping off independent artists; they've stolen Jonathan Coulton's cover of "Baby Got Back":

Well, they aired it, seemingly unchanged. And it’s now for sale in the US iTunes store. They also got in touch with my peeps to basically say that they’re within their legal rights to do this, and that I should be happy for the exposure (even though they do not credit me, and have not even publicly acknowledged that it’s my version – so you know, it’s kind of SECRET exposure). While they appear not to be legally obligated to do any of these things, they did not apologize, offer to credit me, or offer to pay me, and indicated that this was their general policy in regards to covers of covers.

Admittedly it's not an original song, just an arrangement, and because of this Fox may indeed not owe actual money to Coulton; but it was his arrangement, and using it without even crediting the originator (which wouldn't have been difficult and wouldn't have put them out anything) is pretty sleazy.

Of course, Coulton responded by doing a cover of Glee's cover of his cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot's original; that is, he did his original cover again under the same license and is donating the proceeds to charity.

Lent XII

And Christ again says, "Go and sell that you have, and give to the poor...and come and follow Me." Do you see that the commandment was given that he might be induced to follow Him? For as riches are an impediment, therefore he commands them to be given to the poor, instructing the soul to be pitiful and merciful, to despise wealth, and to flee from covetousness. For he who has learned to give to him that needs, will in time learn not to receive from those who have to give. This makes men like God. Yet virginity, and fasting, and lying on the ground, are more difficult than this, but nothing is so strong and powerful to extinguish the fire of our sins as almsgiving. It is greater than all other virtues. It places the lovers of it by the side of the King Himself, and justly. For the effect of virginity, of fasting, of lying on the ground, is confined to those who practice them, and no other is saved thereby. But almsgiving extends to all, and embraces the members of Christ, and actions that extend their effects to many are far greater than those which are confined to one.

For almsgiving is the mother of love, of that love, which is the characteristic of Christianity, which is greater than all miracles, by which the disciples of Christ are manifested. It is the medicine of our sins, the cleansing of the filth of our souls, the ladder fixed to heaven; it binds together the body of Christ.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 6 on Titus

Skill and Magic

There are recurring patterns in how magic is handled in fantastic tales; magic (assuming it is handled consistently) can only enter into a tale if it is emblematic of, or correlative to, something else. Depending on whether the magic in question is something out of human hands or under human control, magic will serve as emblem or correlate either of a numinal/religious order, a providence, so to speak, or of specialized skill. However it is conceived as to details, magic has to be either something in the order of things or something people are capable of doing. The latter is perhaps the more common. Magic as usually conceived in a story or narrative is a subjective causation of marvelous objective effects; and the subjective causation of objective effects that is best known in our natural, ordinary, everyday experience is technical skill. Some specialized skills, in fact, seem at their best to border on this, anyway. Lots of the different 'flavors' of fantasy arise from the particular kind of skill that is used as the correlate. Thus Tolkien's Elves and Dwarves do magic; their magic is in general an idealized artistry. (Tolkien is quite explicit about this, but it could have been inferred anyway from the kind of things they can do.) This is very different from the kind of magic represented in, say, The Dresden Files, which is correlative not to art but to skills related to forensic investigation. In principle, any technical skill that already seems, at its height, to border on the marvelous or amazing can easily serve as a model for a kind of magic, and any context for such a skill can easily be 'fantasticized'. Metalwork, dancing, singing, hunting, reading and writing, computer programming, have all at some point or other been treated in this way.

The reverse is true, as well, though; it's not just a matter of human storytelling. Just as we build tales of magic or fantastic deeds on the model of real skills and crafts, so, too, we talk about real skills and crafts in magical terms. This has always been the case and will certainly always be the case.

This latter point can complicate our understanding of history. People's assumptions about the way alchemy or astrology was practiced, for instance, are a mish-mash of different elements. Some of the things people assume were obviously true about medieval or Renaissance alchemy were outright inventions, mere literary tropes that arose because they sounded good in a particular context, and that continued to be used because they made for striking effects in stories. Others have a connection to real alchemical practice, but may be filtered through various literary and artistic symbolisms. Yet others may have their first origin in outright fabrication and counterfeit, as if advertisements and frauds about 'fractal water' or 'health through quantum effects' were, three hundred years from now, taken as obviously the sort of thing twentieth century physicists were normally trying to do. You can imagine people half a millenium from now just taking it as obvious that forensic investigation in our day had such-and-such features that were in fact pieces variously derived from police reports, news outlets including the tabloids, Basil Rathbone movies, CSI, Nero Wolfe, and The Dresden Files. It would obviously have a connection of some sort to real criminal investigation, but it will have been filtered through any number of other outlets. This is pretty much what most people's view of alchemy is: a mish-mash thrown together from various fragments of genuine alchemical practice, literary use of alchemy as a symbol, and confidence games involving alchemical terminology, treated as if it were an accurate rendering of what alchemists did or attempted to do.

When this happens on a major scale, historical investigation becomes very difficult; it requires a very careful regard for which kind of alchemy, which image of alchemy, and which use of alchemical ideas and terminology are relevant at a given time. The actual skills and crafts used by most alchemists may have no natural connection with later images of them, and when they do, it may not be straightforward. The lives of alchemists in general were less involved in attempting 'magical' things than we often assume. This doesn't mean that it wasn't there, but it does mean that we should be careful about how we treat the question, because, again, people talk of ordinary skills in magical terms for any number of reasons. If you take an extensive survey of how people talk about the sciences today, you would find exactly the same kind of talk; sometimes as figures of speech for talking about excellence or ideals in the field, sometimes as rhetoric to play up frauds or to win arguments, sometimes as symbolism for something else, sometimes as striking effects in science-fiction stories. Think about how mixed a group that is, and how strange the science of our day will look several centuries from now when people (other than historians of science) are no longer making a clear distinction among these different discourses. How benighted and foolish we will look!

A People Groaning from Ambiguities

Cardinal Zen has some sharp words (for him) about Rome's handling of matters concerned with the Church in China:

I have said and I repeat: his work was wasted by others close to him, who did not follow his line. I'm not here to judge consciences: it is likely that these his advisers thought that maybe he did not know enough about the situation, he was unable to pursue the right strategy. In any case, these people have not implemented what Benedict XVI has established as the guidelines for the Church in China.

Saying "others" I mean people in the Vatican, but also those outside who, without the help of the Holy See, would not have done so much damage.

Lent XI

An act is virtuous through being directed by reason to some virtuous [honestum] [Cf. 145, 1] good. Now this is consistent with fasting, because fasting is practiced for a threefold purpose.

First, in order to bridle the lusts of the flesh, wherefore the Apostle says (2 Corinthians 6:5-6): "In fasting, in chastity," since fasting is the guardian of chastity. For, according to Jerome [Contra Jov. ii.] "Venus is cold when Ceres and Bacchus are not there," that is to say, lust is cooled by abstinence in meat and drink.

Secondly, we have recourse to fasting in order that the mind may arise more freely to the contemplation of heavenly things: hence it is related (Daniel 10) of Daniel that he received a revelation from God after fasting for three weeks.

Thirdly, in order to satisfy for sins: wherefore it is written (Joel 2:12): "Be converted to Me with all your heart, in fasting and in weeping and in mourning." The same is declared by Augustine in a sermon (De orat. et Jejun. [Serm. lxxii (ccxxx, de Tempore)]): "Fasting cleanses the soul, raises the mind, subjects one's flesh to the spirit, renders the heart contrite and humble, scatters the clouds of concupiscence, quenches the fire of lust, kindles the true light of chastity."

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2-2.147.1

Fortnightly Book, February 24

So having done modernist business-like, we now move to Romantic art and philosophy. The next fortnightly book is one I've been meaning to read for a while, but which I never managed to get around to: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, the second novel of the inimitable Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. What can be said of Goethe? Nothing that does justice to the man, who made Renaissance men look like underachievers. He had a father who, unable to achieves his life's dream, poured everything he could into his children's educations so that they might have more options than he had. Thus the young Goethe studied six languages (not counting German, of course), learned fencing, riding, and drawing. He went into law and hated it, beginning instead to take an interest in poetry, which began to take fire not long after he became friends with Herder. At twenty-five he wrote his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, which was an instant success and made him famous. He had an interest in just about everything, and never stopped studying. His two great interests were science and theatre.

The love of theatre is especially relevant to Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, the story of a young man he tries to succeed in the theatrical life; over the course of time he changes from being a youthful dreamer to an integrated man, someone with his life in balance. The book, however, is like Goethe: it contains too much for any summary to do justice to it. And it does seem to elude serious summary; at least, even bold critics balk at giving one. So we'll just have to take it as it comes.

I will be using the Heritage Press edition, so the translation is that of Thomas Carlyle. Carlyle, of course, is a Scottish philosopher who also had broad interests that defy easy summary. He was perhaps the most important conduit for Romantic thought moving from Germany to Britain, and his translation of this work is certainly part of this.

This edition of the work has illustrations, both lithograph and line drawing, by William Sharp. Sharp is interesting in his own right. He was actually born Leon Schleifer in an area of Austria that is now part of either the Ukraine or Poland (I have found conflicting answers here); he studied at the University of Berlin but fled Germany at the rise of the Nazis because he was Jewish. He was a sort of jack-of-all-trades artist, having started out in the design of stained glass windows and expanded from there into engraving and other kinds of illustration; in the day he was probably most famous for his courtroom drawings and his political cartoons.

A Poem Draft

Melancholia

The garden hidden off the way
was glistening in the dewy day
as sun, new-wakened, rose to play
in blue, unburdened sky.
A threefold wall laid thick with vine
was raised around it, ivy twined
upon the gate in tendrilled vine
through which the breezes sighed.

Within, in centermost estate,
a fountain rose in joy elate;
it rose and did not dissipate,
but lived with laughing smile.
Beside its pool, where lilies slept
a mournful maiden softly wept;
she hid her face but tears surrept
fell gently down the while.

A song she sang of sorrow's dreams,
of griefs revived where sadness teemed:
how sad it sounded in the gleams
that morning cast on dew!
I saw her eyes once; softest green,
not emerald but ocean-sheen
before the gray grows sharp and keen,
leaped out with wisdom true.

Long grief indeed will make one wise.
I saw that wisdom in her eyes,
the memory that never dies
but gives the heart a weight.
They saw, but did not see, my face,
attention by her grief erased;
tear on tear with hurry raced,
on pool-glass to abate.

She turned away, and yet my thought
has by her been enchanted, caught;
I found her, though I had not sought.
She haunts my inner mind.
And like an illness sorrow spread
to tinge her image in my head;
at times I stare as were I dead
and weep with eyes turned blind.