Dear Enough

Time's Fool
by Ruth Pitter

Time's fool, but not heaven's: yet hope not for any return.
The rabbit-eaten dry branch and the halfpenny candle
Are lost with the other treasure: the sooty kettle
Thrown away, become redbreast's home in the hedge, where the nettle
Shoots up, and bad bindweed wreathes rust-fretted handle.
Under that broken thing no more shall the dry branch burn.

Poor comfort all comfort: once what the mouse had spared
Was enough, was delight, there where the heart was at home:
The hard cankered apple holed by the wasp and the bird,
The damp bed, with the beetle's tap in the headboard heard,
The dim bit of mirror, three inches of comb:
Dear enough, when with youth and with fancy shared.

I knew that the roots were creeping under the floor,
That the toad was safe in his hole, the poor cat by the fire,
The starling snug in the roof, each slept in his place:
The lily in splendour, the vine in her grace,
The fox in the forest, all had their desire,
As then I had mine, in the place that was happy and poor.

Kick at the Rock, Sam Johnson

Epistemology
by Richard Wilbur

I.
Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

II.
We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, 'You are not true.'

On Hendel on Pascal

Ronald Hendel's opening to his recent article explaining why he is leaving the SBL:

“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.” This famous line from Pascal’s Pensées draws a wise distinction between religious faith and intellectual inquiry. The two have different motivations and pertain to different domains of experience. They are like oil and water, things that do not mix and should not be confused. Pascal was a brilliant mathematician, and he did not allow his Catholic beliefs to interfere with his scholarly investigations. He regarded the authority of the church to be meaningless in such matters. He argued that “all the powers in the world can by their authority no more persuade people of a point of fact than they can change it.” That is to say, facts are facts, and faith has no business dealing in the world of facts. Faith resides in the heart and in one’s way of living in the world.

Which would be a lovely opening if that were at all Pascal's view. In Pascal's view faith does reside in the heart, but Pascal, in drawing the line between the heart and the reason, is not drawing a line "between faith and intellectual inquiry"; that would make half his comments on the subject incomprehensible, because Pascal puts mathematics partly on the heart side of the division. The heart is that whereby we have the intuitive understanding essential for (among other things) actual life; all intellectual inquiry on Pascal's view has to be shot through with it, because all intellectual inquiry presupposes principles recognized by the heart. His quotation of Pascal on authority is even worse. Hendel hasn't bothered to go back to the original; his footnote here is from a secondhand source. It's from the Provincial Letters (letter 18). And it's in a defense of Jansenius. Now, if you know anything about the history of Jansenism, you'll know that the Pope had at the instigation of the Jesuits condemned several propositions of Jansenius. The Jansenists, wanting to be good Catholics but not willing to concede defeat, argued that the propositions were indeed wrong in the sense the Pope had condemned them, but that they were not as a matter of fact to be found in the text of Jansenius in that sense. When Pascal makes his claim about authority failing to persuade of fact, he is arguing that the only thing that can actually persuade someone of a fact is the senses -- unlike faith and reason. And it's clear from elsewhere (the preface to the fragmentary Treatise on the Vacuum, for instance) that Pascal would place almost Hendel's entire discipline outside the realm of sensible experience. History of any kind, on Pascal's view, doesn't deal with facts; it deals with authorities of various kinds. The only fields that properly deal with facts are those in which you can see, here and now, what you are talking about; history may draw on some of these, but once you make a historical conclusion you are in the realm of human authority, not fact. Where the testimony of the senses is uniform, we must interpret our authorities, even Scripture, accordingly; but, as Scripture is divine authority, we should accept it as exceeding any human authority. The Pascalian point really doesn't cut in quite the same direction as Hendel is suggesting.

This is why, incidentally, philosophers like myself have difficulty taking so-called "biblical scholars" entirely seriously. The whole point of the article is repudiation of the SBL for the sole reason that the SBL has given up critical investigation of the texts, but even in the article himself Hendel can't even be bothered to make use of the basic principles of critical investigation, merely appealing to authority rather than actually seeing what the text says. Instead of taking the trouble to understand Pascal critically, which isn't that difficult given that Pascal has been translated many jillion times and is easily accessible (especially in this internet age), he maneuvers him clumsily on a rhetorical chessboard to a pre-ordained conclusion. It's difficult not to wash one's hands of Hendel and his ilk, who make a great fuss over critical inquiry and reason but repeatedly seem to show that this is just all a rhetorical facade; who place themselves on the side of reason and critical investigation in the very same breath by which they blatantly violate both. It's not that Hendel's opponents are particularly better; it's just one sign, one of many, that the whole field is shot through with what looks like the grossest rational incompetence. Now some of this may just be appearance; perhaps Hendel is just having a bad day in which he can't think straight, and perhaps there are lots and lots of people in Biblical Studies who do a competent job quietly enough that they just don't ever come to notice. One expects kooks in every field, so one ignores them; it is people like Hendel, however, who make it difficult not to write off the entire area as just intellectually bankrupt. And, yes, it is not wholly fair to write off a field so thoroughly, so I try not to do so. People in the field don't give those of us outside the field that much to work with, though.

Ipse Fabulator Maximus

Of the Platonic Idea as Understood by Aristotle
by John Milton

Tell, presiding goddesses of the sacred groves,
and Memory, blessed mother of Ninefold deity,
and Eternity, reclining in immeasurable and distant cave,
keeping records and unalterable laws of Jove,
recording heavenly feasts and quotidian acts of gods:
Who is that first, that eternal, incorruptible,
coeval with the heavens, one and universal
exemplar for God, after whose image
Nature has formed the human race?
Surely he does not, twin of virgin Pallas,
live unborn in Jove's mind?
But, remarkably, however common to all is his nature,
he stands apart as singular, locally bound;
possibly, as companion of sempiternal stars,
he wanders through heaven's ten spheres,
or inhabits the moon, planet closest to earth.
Possibly he sits by Lethe's oblivion-giving waters,
drowsily, among souls waiting placement in bodies;
or perhaps in some remote region of earth
this archetype of man walks, a great giant,
lifting his head high to frighten gods,
more huge even than star-bearing Atlas.
Nor did the Dircean augur, given deeper light
in blindness, see him in vision's depths.
Nor did Pleione's grandchild reveal him,
in night-quiet, to his wise tribe of prophets.
Nor did the Assyrian priest, though able to tell
ancient Ninus' ancestral tree, speak of old Belus
and of renowned Osiris, know anything of this.
Nor did even he of threefold glorious name,
Thrice-great Hermes, though knowing mysteries,
hand down such a marvel to Isis' devotees.
But you, perennial adornment of the Academy
(if you were first to bring to schools such monsters)
surely you will the poets exiled from the City
recall, for you are the greatest fabler --
or the founder himself must depart.

You can see theactual Latin here. C. S. Lewis also worked up a slightly paraphrastic version, which can be seen online (scroll down slightly). I'm not sure why Lewis blunts the Hermes Trismegistus reference; surely he recognized it. The poem, of course, is ironic; it is the Aristotelian, with his crude materialism, who is being made fun of, not Plato. For an English translation a little closer to the Latin in some ways, see here. Fabulator Maximus, by the way, is an excellent title.

Dawn Treader Trailer

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was, after The Magician's Nephew, in some ways the one I enjoyed most in the series (and Eustace was always my second favorite character, after Digory); but it seems to me that it is also the one that is least easily adaptable to the screen. It's an odyssey, not a unitary adventure. Just judging from the trailer, it looks like it will probably have the weaknesses one would expect -- the 'all Narnia depends on you' part is not promising, and a sign that they are struggling to give the story a more compact organization centered on some easily conveyed problem and culminating in a Spectacle that resolves that problem. And that runs contrary to one of the suggestions of the book, which is that new adventures and problems keep coming until you paddle off into the Light. I'm a bit puzzled as to how Peter and Susan on the screen -- although in practical terms I can see the value of keeping the actors on screen, at least as minor parts, until they need to be brought back for The Horse and His Boy and The Last Battle. (It makes perfect sense, though, for Lucy to be face to face with the picture of Susan in the Magician's book.)

In some ways, though, the story probably can survive tinkering better than Prince Caspian did.

Three Poem Re-Drafts

How Strange Is That?

I felt I fell in love with you today; how strange is that?
Waiting for the bus we stopped and stayed to chat,
when suddenly and subito my head was overturned,
unbalancing my body, making blood to burn.
I'm not even sure I really caught your name!
Some mischievous cupid plays a little game;
uncanny things, ungrounded, maddening, swift,
then throw the world off kilter, make the earth to shift!
Meeting you but once, but for a little while,
I am haunted by your eyes, the flashing of your smile;
though I hardly know you, nonetheless my brain
spins out imaginations as though your heart were gained.
But swiftly comes its death as swiftly came its birth,
and if it pass away, what is such feeling worth?
The merest little fizzle, a frenzy in the brain,
and after sudden torrent nothing will remain
but cynic's self-suspicion, memories that fade,
and a wry and quiet gravestone where madness has been laid.

How Strange that You Think I Love You

How strange that you think I love you
when only time will tell:
when I've conquered death and heartache
and braved the gates of hell,
when, world within my fingers,
I let it slip on through
for wonder of your whisper,
for glory that is you.

How strange that you think I love you
when in this world of lie
scarce any deed is done
the next does not deny;
no proof is in my promise
nor certainty is saved
until what binds me to you
outlasts the silent grave.

Stone

Farther shores I know than this,
visions vivid like the morrow;
holy heaven, everlightened,
sends such mercy, masters sorrow.
I wish anew on falling stars;
those leaping lights in dance display
a drove of powers pouring down
like righteous ruin of the day.
Rue no more the pastward lesson,
harbor here in love alone;
this castle-keep and quiet eyrie
founds itself on saving stone.

Sex and the Conventions of Youth

I don't necessarily recommend you read this post; there's a verbal picture or two from which some of you might run screaming.

What human beings find sexual or sexy is in general closely associated with youth, where that is understood as something like 'nubile youth'. But because what we associate with youth is heavily influenced by culture, the curious feature of this is that what we consider sexual or sexy is constantly changing, and almost necessarily so.

Take, for instance, the waltz. When young people first began dancing the waltz, it was a considerable scandal throughout Europe. And it certainly was young people; only they would have been risque. For prior to the waltz, dances involving men and women typically would either involve no touching at all or touching only at the hands; also, there was clearly demarcated personal space among the dancers. The waltz broke both of these rules of propriety. In a waltz the dancers are face to face and chest to chest. And, what is worse, the man's hand is squarely on the woman's waist. Close in, with the man's hand on the woman, moving to a beat -- ONE, two, three; ONE, two, three; ONE, two, three; sway, rise, fall; sway, rise, fall. It was virtually sex on the dancefloor. And if you think about it, the old guard who thought this were quite right; the waltz is very sexy in these ways. And in some ways it is more like sex than most of the more vulgar dances one can see in nightclubs these days. Better tempo, for one thing, and you can look right into the eyes of the person you feel right up against you.

But, of course, the young men and women who danced the waltz when young continued to dance the waltz as they grew older. Dancing instructors tamed the waltz by establishing a clear frame and rules of propriety for those who were squeamish. And eventually the young were no longer young, and still dancing the waltz, and if you went to a dance you could see your grandparents dancing the waltz. And just try to think simultaneously of the waltz as sex on the dancefloor and of your grandparents dancing the waltz, I dare you. If your grandparents dance the waltz in public, you are going to have a little bit of a problem thinking of it as sexy, aren't you?

One wonders at the limits of this. Mercifully, I think that when I am in my eighties I will be spared the sight of my fellow senior citizens dancing the grind, for the safety of their hips, if nothing else; but, of course, it could be that by the time I am in my eighties dancing instructors will have begun teaching tamed versions of the grind for those who don't like that much touching, and everyone will regard the grind as the sort of thing old people do at weddings. Nobody will think of it as risqué.

Or it might break off as a sort of subculture. Polka did that. It's common to think of polka as very silly and old-fashioned music for very silly and old-fashioned dancing; but obviously nobody thought Polka was old-fashioned when it first came out, and nobody thought it silly, either. Polka is dance music, and like all new dance music it was associated with sex-obsessed young people -- young men showing off for young women, to get them interested enough to go farther than dancing. That's why polka has so much beat to it; and why the bare beat, if you consider it alone, starts sounding a lot like the dance music that is played in nightclubs today. We think it's silly because of the tubas; but the thing about tubas is that they are good for conveying a LOUD BASS BEAT if you don't have amplifiers. You don't just hear a tuba, you feel it, just as you feel the drum track blasted in nightclubs. It's dance music, differing only in the preferred instruments. Perhaps the sort of thing that is done in nightclubs today is the sort of thing that will eventually be seen the way we see polka. Perhaps it will be a thing we associate with odd European festivals, in which all the men wear jeans-and-boxer combos rather than lederhosen. It won't seem sexy; it will just seem weird (or quirkily fun, if you like that sort of thing). Oompa-oompa-oompa. Or, rather, uhntiss-uhntiss-uhntiss.

Or perhaps we really will be subject to the sight of grandparents and fathers and daughters grinding, God help us. What we can be sure of is that what people think of as sexy will have changed radically. The young will find new things to push the bounds of propriety because what their elders saw as pushing the bounds of propriety is something the young think of as associated with their elders. For my own part, I root for the least probable of all the scenarios, in which the young again dance the waltz on that line between what you can and can't do in public. If nothing else, the music showed more genius then.