Radio Greats: A Tooth for Paul Revere (Escape)

"Tired of the everyday grind? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? Want to get away from it all? We offer you... Escape!"

Escape is probably second only to Suspense as the great anthology show of the Golden Age of Radio. It lasted seven years and had 230 episodes, generally of excellent quality, often adapting the great short stories of the early and mid-twentieth century.

"A Tooth for Paul Revere" adapts a tale by Stephen Vincent Benet. It's a Fourth of July episode, having aired on 4 July 1948. But it takes a charmingly indirect route. It's troubled times in the American colonies and there is revolution in the air, but Lige Butterwick, a Massachusetts farmer, is not particularly concerned about that because he has a very bad toothache. It will need to be pulled, but will leave a nasty gap. He hears tell of a silversmith who is a bit of a wizard when it comes to making artificial teeth: Paul Revere. With the resolve of a stubborn country boy determined not to let the city folk stand in his way, he sets out to find Paul Revere. In so doing he ends up opening a whole box of trouble he would never have imagined before....

You can listen to "A Tooth for Paul Revere" online at Escape and Suspense!.

You can also read the Stephen Vincent Benet story on which it is based, at Internet Archive.

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Introduction

Opening Passage:

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was beginning with God, and the duty of every faithful monk would be to repeat every day with chanting humility the one never-changing event whose incontrovertible truth can be asserted. But we see now through a glass darkly, and the truth, before it is revealed to all, face to face, we ee in fragments (alas, how illegible) in the error of the world, so we must spell out its faithful signals even when they seem obscure to us and as if amalgamated with a will, wholly bent on evil. (p. 3)

Summary: It is 1327. Tensions are high between the Pope in Avignon, John XXII, and Louis of Bavaria; tensions are high between the Spiritual Franciscans and the Conventual Franciscans; tensions are high between nations. Adso of Melk, an Austrian Benedictine novice, is in Italy with his parents, who are accompanying the Emperor; to keep him out of trouble, and at the advice of Marsilius of Padua, his parents hand him over to assist the Franciscan friar, William of Baskerville, who is entrusted with a mission for the Emperor. Legations from the Emperor and the Pope are meeting at an abbey in Northern Italy to negotiate various matters of mutual importance.

When William and Adso get to the abbey, however, they begin to discover a string of mysteries. Adelmo of Otranto, one of the young monks, has been found dead under suspicious circumstances, and the abbot of the monastery, Abo, asks Brother William to look into it, so that it will not interfere with the delicate political matters with which the abbey currently must deal. But one death leads to another death, and the meeting of legations becomes a heresy hunt. At the center of it all is the library, a vault of secrets and conspiracies, and in the library there is a book to which all the deaths are connected....

There is so much to the work that one must pick and choose what to talk about. As one might expect, there is a tendency to the allegorical in this work, as there is in all of Eco's writing. The abbey with its outsized library is in a sense the medieval world itself. The monastery is radically multinational: it represents all medieval Europe from Italy to Sweden. It is the locus of all the major political debates of the day, both ecclesiastical and secular. The library even literally represents the world.

The strength of the novel, however, is in the characterization. Even the secondary characters all stand out as distinctive, and the interaction between William and Adso as they attempt to unravel the mystery is excellent -- they are such very different people. Either would likely become tiresome if they had to carry the tale on their own, but they bring out each other's strengths and compensate for each other's weaknesses. Without Adso, William would come across as ruthless and manipulative, because in a sense he is -- almost every conversation he has with anyone other than Adso involves him leading the discussion in a direction he wants, to get what he wants, if he can. Adso, on the other hand is too thoroughly medieval for the mystery genre.

It is also a brilliant move that the narrating character is not a mediating character. We are all closer to William of Baskerville than we are to Adso, very nearly by definition. Adso is not an Everyman; he does not represent the modern reader but the medieval people about whom we are reading. If you think about the way medieval tales usually work, this is quite rare, and while no doubt difficult to do properly it avoids the great danger of modernizing the medieval into oblivion.

Eco's most common weakness is that his philosophical interests tend to overwhelm the story. He is quite ingenious in working around this, but it is often noticeable in other works. The Name of the Rose, however, is arguably Eco's greatest work precisely because his philosophical interests never manage to overwhelm the story. Eco pulls the whole tale in an agnostic direction -- but the medieval worldview inherent in much of the tale is powerful enough to fight back, and the tale itself, as a mystery, gives it room to do so, since the mystery genre is itself not particularly friendly to agnosticism (people do not generally read mysteries in order to discover that there may be no solution, but to see a disorder turn out to be order after all). Since Eco is indeed very agnostic but he is also informed enough about medieval thought not to slip into mere caricature (which is not to say that he does not ever caricature), this gives the story an extraordinary richness.

In many ways the novel is a way to tell of a clash between the medieval worldview of the fourteenth century and a modern worldview that did not actually exist yet but whose foundations were being laid, a fact occasionally indicated by a little authorial cheating (e.g., Adso's prophetic dreaming, or William's quoting Wittgenstein toward the end). Technically, the medieval worldview loses the fight. Historically it must. But it is represented with such power that a reader might well be left wondering if its loss was due more to technicality than the greater strength of the modern worldview. We may be left with Adso gathering fragments of a lost past, left with nothing but words, but the appeal of the story itself is all in the medieval mystery.

William Weaver's translation, of course, is a tour-de-force. It takes a special kind of erudition to translate Eco, but the English works in its own right.

Favorite Passage:

"But is the unicorn a falsehood? It's the sweetest of animals and a noble symbol. It stands for Christ, and for chastity; it can be captured only by setting a virgin in the forest, so that the animal, catching her most chaste odor, will go and lay its head in her lap, offering itself as prey to the hunters' snares."

"So it is said, Adso. But many tend to believe that it's a fable, an invention of the pagans."

"What a disappointment," I said. "I would have liked to encounter one, crossing a wood. Otherwise what's the pleasure of crossing a wood?" (pp. 379-380)

Recommendation: Highly Recommended.

----

Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, Warner (New York: 1984).

Three New Poem Drafts and Three Poem Re-Drafts

Last

Who would be the first must first be last;
who grasps for first will soon be last.
By pride you fall; you will not last.
God pounds you on His maker's last.

Smudge

The fairest of all things
is the bloom-burst of the rose,
or so the clever poets say
(with justice, I suppose),
but fairer still, I will insist,
is the smudge upon your nose.

Wherein I Sing Your Praises

You are imperfect, love.
I suppose you had to be.
Were you a little better,
you would be too good for me.
The felix culpa of your failing,
the wonder of your flaw,
fills my heart with gladness,
fills my mind with awe.
A sinner you were fashioned;
you fail upward to holy God.
The same is true of me,
so your faults I firmly laud.

Shaded Isles

Alas, no more the morning light
will catch the eye and spark to sight
the verdant earth, the azure blue,
and every other rainbow hue
that vests the world to make it bright;

alas, no more the morning light
will understanding's power fire
with vision and with heart's desire,
with waking thought and morning grace
as sunlight gladdens loving face;

instead the darkness, old and deep,
shall turn your eye and heart to sleep
and dreams no more shall haunt your brain,
nor tragic hopes, nor sorrow's pain,
but somewhere, lost in shaded isles,
your thought will stop to rest a while.

Cloudscape

The cloud was an elephant chasing a whale
with a sun-gloried body and a vaporous tail
and a turtle went swimming in deep azure sea
as I walked by the road with my heart careless-free.
Before and behind in long, slinking style
swam two whisps and puffs of dread crocodiles
as the sun turned the whale into loving-cup lambs
who kissed and who played in the gaze of their dam;
then a boar and a reindeer did battle with horns
ere the angels went sweeping and twilight was born.
Take time from your day, and the wonders you'll see
if you walk by the road with your heart careless-free!

A Subdued and Pure Crimson

My reason said to me,
I am overarched!
This subtle arrow
that leaves no mark
has wounded me
with logical worship, blessed
to adore her name,
her deity confess,
to sacrifice
with the love of ardent mind,
on altar place the best in me
that thought can find.

My spirit said to me,
Heaven is to have the eyes
to see her
framed by morning sky
and by seeing
to find beatitude in the vision,
a new happiness,
a wisdom in passion,
to be charged with fire
that lifts on high
in sight's exaltation
where eye meets eye.

My instinct said to me,
I am undone!
I will ever be troubled
by this troubling one
who turns me over;
and in my reins
I am cast into ache
of love's violent pains,
so pleasant yet harsh,
such truth and such lie
that beats through my veins
and leaps in my sigh.

Rome, Naples et Florence: Preface; September 1816, Part I

If I'm ever going to do this, I suppose I must start it: Stendhal's Rome, Naples et Florence, Tome Premier. (Daniel Muller's notes to Tome I are in Tome II.) The reading's not going to be high or deep. This is tourism, not study: don't worry about catching it all, don't worry about misunderstanding, just read a bit in the guidebook, look at a map, read up a bit about the history, take a snapshot, make a comment, pass on to something else. (Putting it that way makes one realize that with social media we are all now just tourists in our own lives.)

[Preface]

But that perhaps fits the book itself, since in the Preface (to the third edition), Stendhal tells us that it's not a book, but a brochure! That can mean what it does in English, but since the brochure is several hundred pages long, unless he's being ironic I'm fairly sure Stendhal's not calling it a pamphlet. Rather, I think we are closer to the original meaning of the word: various pages sewn together.

[Berlin, 2 septembre 1816]

* The notes for this opening paragraph mention that it was examined closely in the review of the first edition in the Edinburgh Review, November 1817, so I looked it up. The first two paragraphs of the review are worth quoting in full:

The plan of this book is by no means a bad one. The author proposed to himself to set down, without any other arrangement than the order of time, what he saw from day to day with such remarks as occurred to him ; and to select for publication his notes respecting the three great cities of Italy beyond the Appennines. It is evident, however, that the value of a work constructed upon this plan, must depend wholly upon the talents and accomplishments of the author ; and that the cursory observations of a superficial, flippant, ignorant person, must form one of the most insignificant books in the world. It will be as empty as his conversation, without any of the liveliness, by means of which a great deal of silly talk is often made bearable in society ; and it will contain none of the materials by which a dull author frequently contrives to make a tolerable book out of other men's sayings or writings.

The writer of this volume is announced, in the newspaper advertisements, though not in the title-page, as a Baron Stendahl. He tells us, at the beginning of his journal, that he is thirty years of age ; is attached to the embassy at Berlin ; and was thrown into transports approaching to delirium, on receiving the leave of absence which enabled him to see Italy. 'Mais' (adds he) 'je me cache soigneusement du Ministre ;' — and the reason is a whimsical one — 'les eunuques sont en colere permanente contre les libertins.' From the envy, then, of his unfortunate superior, (for jealousy of course is out of the question), he anticipates a cold reception for at least two months after his return ; but he consoles himself with the reflexion, that he shall enjoy himself in the mean while ; and 'who knows,' he asks, 'if the world will last three weeks ?' The first paragraph of the work which we have analyzed, may give the reader a guess of the flippant character he has to deal with, in the person of the Baron de Stendahl.

That is such a splendidly ruthless take-down that I will keep the Edinburgh Review by my side for as long as I continue through RN&F. Even if Stendhal gets wearing, we can trade snide comments about his flippant character. Stendhal seems to have been a bit stung by the review; Muller notes that when he was putting together the second edition, he commented to a friend that the additions were «plus solide, plus sérieux, méritent moins l'accusation de flippancy».


* «Transports de joie, battements de coeur», though, seems a fit response to being able to go on a four month vacation to «belle Italie»...

[Ulm, 12 septembre]

...and a Mediterranean climate to contrast with the north wind in Germany, apparently. We just blow through Ulm, without even a glance at Ulm Minster; the book rushes us to Italy.

[Munich, 15 septembre]

But we do get the first taste of Italy before we even get there, as Stendhal meets the operatic singer, Angelica Catalani (1780-1849), a soprano who is said to have had a range of nearly three octaves. At this point, though, as far as I can tell from her biography, she hasn't been focusing on singing for a few years, but running her own opera company in Paris. According to Wikipedia: "In May 1816, Catalani left her opera in the hands of managers, and went to Munich to give some concerts and representations. Thence she proceeded to Italy, and only returned to Paris in August 1817." I find it amusing, from everything I can find online about her, that she was almost universally considered to have extraordinary musical talent and bad musical taste. But Stendhal seems to have had a lower opinion of German musical taste than of madame Catalani's.


And that suffices for now, with the preliminaries. On 24 septembre, Stendhal arrives in Milan and gushes, and gushes, and gushes about the Scala theater. Transports de joie, battements de coeur! I'll continue next Friday. (Although this won't be a weekly thing; but we aren't even to belle Italie yet.)

Irrecoverable Mind

On a Volume of Scholastic Philosophy
by George Santayana

What chilly cloister or what lattice dim
Cast painted light upon this careful page?
What thought compulsive held the patient sage
Till sound of matin bell or evening hymn?
Did visions of the Heavenly Lover swim
Before his eyes in youth, or did stern rage
Against rash heresy keep green his age?
Had he seen God, to write so much of Him?
Gone is that irrecoverable mind
With all its phantoms, senseless to mankind
As a dream's trouble or the speech of birds.
The breath that stirred his lips he soon resigned
To windy chaos, and we only find
The garnered husks of his disused words.

Maronite Year LVII

Memorial of the Twelve Apostles
Romans 10:12-21; Matthew 9:36-38

Twelve disciples You called to Yourself;
You gave them power against evil.
Simon Peter was first, then Andrew,
and then came James and his brother John,
Philip, Bartholomew, and Thomas,
Matthew and James, son of Alphaeus,
Thaddeus, Simon, last Matthias.
From everywhere they drew disciples,
spreading light to the ends of the world.

O apostles, disciples of Christ,
we entrust ourselves to you with joy.
You are a great light to all the world;
you are the eyes of the holy Church;
you are the sowers of the good seed;
you are the builders of God's temple;
you fill the silos of joy with grain.
Intercede for us and pray with us!
We celebrate your names with gladness.

O Lord Christ, Sea of mercy and grace,
the twelve apostles stream out from You.
They are poured over our dying world,
bringing joyful life to the desert.
Their words flow to the end of the world.
We call on Your name because of them;
through their preaching we know Your mercy.
Their waters heal, flowing through Your Church,
and thus we sing hymns to Your great love.

Students and Change as Being in the Mind

Every term for Intro I have a class or two on Aristotle, looking at change and causation. One of the things I do is not to jump into Aristotle -- if you just jump into Aristotle, students don't have any sense of how much thought is going into each of Aristotle's moves -- but instead simply ask students to tell me what change is. I'll do some guiding here and there -- pointing out when they are falling back into mere synonyms, asking them how something different can also be the same when it comes up (as it always does), asking them what they mean by 'time' when they argue that change is difference through time (as they always do at some point) -- and particularly note and direct the discussion toward things that are relevant to understanding Aristotle, without telling them that I am doing so. At some point I start transitioning to actually talking about Aristotle's account. They don't actually like the discussion. But they do get a better sense of the actual difficulties Aristotle is facing.

As I've already noted there are things that always, always, always come up if the discussion goes on long enough -- time, or difference of the same. One of the things I've found, though, is that students are actually pretty open to the idea that change might just be in the mind. 'Perception', 'thought', and 'perspective' regularly come up as parts of definitions students propose -- for instance, they might propose, as someone did today, that change is different insights or perceptions of the same thing, or they might say that it is a perception of difference in something thought to be the same, or what is perceived by the senses, or a measurement of difference, all of which came up today.

At one point, I noted that several of the suggestions seemed to require that change be purely mental, and asked how many people thought that was true. About half the class said they did, with the other half saying that such an idea was absurd. One can't take that too seriously! There is always a portion of the class that is responding not with their own views but the view that they think at the moment I am looking for, or, indeed, responding in an attempt to find something, anything, that will make me stop asking them what change is. But it comes up every term. And every term there are at least a few students who argue for it quite intensely. And having lots of experience with it coming up, I think it actually arises in a given conversation from more than one cause. It comes up so often because several things allow for an easy transition to it, so if any of these things come up, the idea that change is all in the mind is likely to come up.

(1) The questions, "What is change?" and "How do we know what change is?", are difficult for people to distinguish, particularly in a group conversation. But, of course, knowing things is mental.

(2) Trying to explain change in terms of time makes it very difficult not to treat change as a mental phenomenon of some kind. We do not directly sense time, but only know it by measurement (in a broad sense of the word), and there are at least some reasons to think of time as perspective-dependent. But, of course, in English we naturally tend to talk about change in terms of time, and they have all heard discussions of particular changes that treat time as the fundamental thing, so any tendency to think of time in mental terms carries over to change.

(3) Perception is an obvious way you can have differences of the same without contradiction.

(4) One kind of change is mental change. Once that comes into view, it is surprisingly easy to assimilate physical change to mental change -- mental change is, in a sense, the change we know best.

(5) The Parmenidean notion, that what is and is known is not changing, has more traction than one might expect, in part, I think, because change is clearly not a thing, and they often take what is not a thing to be a mental construct rather than something known to exist.

(6) Pop Buddhist ideas encourage it.

(5) and (6) don't come up all the time, but they tend to be the causes that lead most consistently to students arguing for the position at length rather than (as they do with most of the other suggestions they make) jumping to something else at the first hint of a problem.