2 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/fb1619d05d132149a04bceeb06b916f4.mp3 df1623640cfcdc901c80b6cb6aa53875 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp3 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:57:20 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Vacuum Tube Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on April 15, 2026 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "A puzzling phenomenon observed by Edison in one of his early light bulbs seemed to disclose a kind of electric current that did not fit the received ideas, for it was not confined to a conductor, and it would flow in one direction but not in the reverse direction. From this 'Edison effect' arose the modern vacuum tube, which enabled, first, the detection of electromagnetic waves by a process readily understood (rectification), and second, a means for effectively multiplying the strength of an electric current (amplification). Both of these capabilities brought dramatic improvements in wireless telegraphy, and they also introduced the prospect of radio transmission of voice and sound. This is the second of three talks on early radio technology." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-04-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Vacuum-tube circuits Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/8165">Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FisherH_The_Vacuum_Tube_audio_2026-04-15 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a1c5f0ffcdc4279e8be3c202431eedcf.pdf 0495d614641a49be958fc447b3e122c9 PDF Text Text The Vacuum Tube 1 Howard J.Fisher Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming to this second of three lectures on early radio technology. Our topic is the vacuum tube—I chose the two examples on display here for their large size, which allows us to see their construction. The vacuum tube made possible the age of radio—that is, wireless transmission and broadcast of sound—as opposed to radiotelegraphy, which was limited to sending wireless messages in the dots and dashes of Morse code. What did the vacuum tube do, that made it such a consequential device? And what are the principles of its operation? The vacuum tube finds its beginnings in Edison’s light bulb. Here is one of Edison’s later designs. The hair-like filament is heated to incandescence by a strong electric current, producing a very creditable glow, as you see here. But at temperatures high enough to achieve incandescence, almost any filament material would soon burn up in the presence of air; the glass bulb therefore had to be evacuated. Edison’s light bulb was by no means the first. Earlier researchers had crafted similar incandescent devices; but the limited capability of early vacuum pumps achieved only mediocre vacuums, in which the glowing elements would burn up quickly. Edison benefited from the development of highly effective pumps such as Sprengel’s and Geissler’s, which could achieve pressures as low as a tenth of a millimeter of mercury. 2 The ability to obtain such low pressures enabled Edison to develop by 1880 a carbonized bamboo filament capable of lasting hundreds of hours; but very soon another difficulty emerged. Early versions of this filament tended to throw off some of their carbon, which would then be deposited on the interior of the glass, gradually blackening it, which, of course, defeated the very purpose of a lighting device. This lecture was given 15 April 2026 at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. It is the second of a series of three talks on early radio technology. 1 2 Andrade, E. N. da C. (1953). "The history of the vacuum pump." Vacuum 9 (1): 41–47. �2 Interestingly, though, the pattern of carbon deposit was not uniform. Edison noted a peculiar “reverse shadow” of the filament—a line of less darkening, as you can see in the photograph on the left. 3 Curiously, this lighter line appeared only on the side of the bulb adjacent to the positive arm of the filament—the line labeled bb in the diagram on the right. For, indeed, there was a definite positive and a definite negative arm of the filament, as the diagram indicates. That is because Edison powered his lamp with direct current, for which the positive extremity of the source remains positive, and the negative remains negative, throughout the current’s duration. In contrast, the common household current of today is alternating current, in which the positive and negative polarities exchange places 60 times each second. Evidently, in Edison’s bulb, many of the carbon particles traveling in the direction from negative to positive were being blocked before reaching the glass, but particles traveling in the opposite direction were not so impeded. What could cause this asymmetry? Well, if the carbon particles escaping from the filament carried a negative charge, then at least some of the particles originating from the negative arm of the filament would be attracted by the positive arm and might be captured by it before reaching the glass, while those escaping from the positive arm would be repelled from the negative arm; they would be less susceptible to capture and would continue beyond it, and would at last deposit themselves on the glass. But did these roving carbon particles carry an electric charge? Edison investigated that question by mounting a metal plate between the filament arms, as shown in this photograph. On their way from the negative arm to the positive, some particles, at least, would presumably strike the plate and give up their charge to it. Then, if that plate were connected back to the filament, the circulating charge would constitute a 3 Left: from Tyne, Gerald F. J., Saga of the Vacuum Tube, Howard W. Sams & Co. (1977). Right: adapted from Fleming, J. A., The Thermionic Valve and its Developments in Radiotelegraphy and Telephony. London, The Wireless Press (1919). �3 current and should be detected by a galvanometer. Edison began a series of experiments with this special bulb in 1882. When he connected the plate to the positive end of the filament, a current did indeed pass; but no current passed when it was connected to the negative end. Let us see if we can understand this. Figure (1) is a diagram of Edison’s original light bulb. The righthand filament arm, AB, is connected to the positive terminal of the battery; the lefthand arm, BC, is connected to the negative terminal. Thus there is a potential difference between the two extremities of the filament; and since the filament is a conductor, a current will flow through it. But the same potential difference exists in the space between the two arms, since the filament is bent in a horseshoe shape. Thus there is an electric field between AB and BC, represented by the curved red arrows. If, then, electrically-charged particles are emitted from the filament, they will be urged in the direction of the arrows if they are positive, and in the opposite direction if they are negative. Now consider Figure (2). With the addition of plate D connected (through the meter) to the positive battery terminal, plate D and arm AB are effectively connected together. They are therefore at the same electric potential and no electric field exists between them. But the full battery voltage now obtains between plate D and arm BC, connected to the negative terminal. An electric field therefore exists between them, having direction from D to BC, as indicated by the little red arrows. If, then, as Edison suspected, negatively-charged particles of carbon were being emitted from the filament, they would be urged in the direction opposite to the electric field, that is, in the direction from BC to D; particles emitted from BC would thus carry negative electricity from filament to plate, producing the current that Edison witnessed. What about negative particles emitted from the other arm of the filament, AB? They are exposed to no field at all and therefore are not urged toward the plate; they would not reach it and so would play no part in the measured current. �4 But now consider Figure (3), where the plate is connected to the negative terminal of the battery. Here plate D and arm BC are effectively joined together; they must therefore have the same electric potential, and there will no longer be any electric field between them. Instead, a field exists between arm AB and plate D, in the direction from AB to D. Negative particles emitted from the filament now have nowhere to go! Particles emitted from BC are exposed to no field at all and so are not drawn to the plate, as I mentioned before. Particles emitted from AB are exposed to a field; but if they are negatively charged, they are urged in the opposite direction, that is, away from the plate. Negative particles thus cannot form a current no matter what part of the filament they originate from, which explains why Edison observed no current when the plate was connected to the negative battery terminal. This asymmetric current—a current that flows to one end of the filament but not to the other, came to be known as the “Edison Effect.” 4 Edison’s experiments thus confirmed that the carbon particles thrown off from his light bulb filaments were negatively-charged. But that knowledge proved of little value for preventing the original problem—the progressive blackening of his bulbs with use. 5 In fact that blackening could not be averted so long as carbon was the filament material; eventually carbon gave way to thoriated tungsten wire, which today is the material used almost universally for incandescent lamp filaments. 6 We can witness the Edison Effect for ourselves. 7 An automotive taillight bulb, such as the number 1157 bulb shown here, has two filaments: one for the taillight, and a brighter Preece, W. H., “On a Peculiar Behaviour of Glow Lamps when Raised to High Incandescence,” Proc. Roy. Soc. (1885) 38: 219–230. 4 5 Edison did, however, envision a different application for his specially-equipped bulb, its use as a kind of sensitive voltmeter. He took out a patent on the device in 1884. 6 Even bulbs with tungsten filaments exhibit a long-term blackening, though at far slower rates than do those with carbon filaments. The problem is a serious one only in lamps of very high wattage, such lamps control this by filling the bulb with a gas such as nitrogen, argon, krypton, or xenon, which do not readily react with tungsten, at a pressure great enough to reduce filament evaporation. This clever procedure is described in an article by ZhiQi Lin, Wei Zhang, and HuiJie Li: “Using car taillights as an experimental device to demonstrate the Edison effect” in The Physics Teacher, 56, pp. 410–411 (2018). 7 �one for the brake light. They have a terminal in common, as the diagram indicates; so they are not isolated from one another the way Edison’s plate was isolated from his filament. But if we deliberately burn out one filament, as this slide shows, one fragment of the 5 destroyed filament will be isolated from the filament that is still intact, and so should play the role of Edison’s plate. Let us try. The intact filament is being heated with 11 volts, and I connect the isolated element, through the milliammeter, to the positive end of the filament. The meter shows an Edison current of 0.5 microamperes. But when I connect it to the negative end, we find no current, just as Edison had observed. Now since currents require a closed circuit, whatever current I measure in the wire outside the bulb must also be flowing in the space within the bulb. What, then, is the nature of this internal current? It obviously does not consist of carbon particles, as did Edison’s; for our filament is tungsten. But neither is it likely to consist of charged tungsten particles, since the very advantages that make tungsten a superior filament material—lack of “blackening” and long lifetime—indicate that the filament is not losing tungsten at a sufficient rate to be carrying the Edison current. 8 Perhaps, then, the current within the bulb does not consist of charged material particles at all—perhaps it is a flow of electricity itself! But what does that even mean? We are accustomed to thinking that electricity requires a conductor in order to “flow”; and vacuum is not a conductor! The engineer Edwin Houston expressed this puzzlement in a paper he presented at the International Electrical Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1884. 9 Speaking of the Edison Effect, he wrote: The question is, what is the origin of this current? How is it produced? Since we have within the globe a nearly perfect vacuum, we cannot conceive the current as flowing across the vacuous space, as this is not in accordance with our preconceived ideas connected with high vacua. Houston went on to muse further: This inference was conclusively demonstrated by O. W. Richardson; see “The Emission of Electrons from Tungsten at High Temperatures,” Science 38, 967 (1913). 8 Houston, E. J.: “Notes on phenomena in incandescent lamps,” Transactions of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, I, 1 (1884). 9 �6 It may be electricity flowing through empty space, which I don’t think probable. Even if we set aside the perplexity as to how electricity can possibly move through empty space, we are confronted anew with Edison’s question: whether the current is positive or negative. But we cannot answer it as definitively as he did. For in the absence of occurrences like “blackening” we no longer have physical evidence that something is traveling from filament to plate; and therefore we can no longer know whether we have a current of negative electricity passing from the filament to the plate or a current of positive electricity from the plate to the filament. One piece of evidence, at least, does certainly implicate the filament as the source; watch what happens when I start with a cold filament and gradually raise its temperature by increasing the heating voltage. As before, the meter will measure the Edison current. I started with no filament voltage at all, and of course no plate current either; but we’re still seeing no current, even as I continue to raise the voltage enough to make the filament glow... Ah! We’re getting tenth of a microampere with about 8.6 volts on the filament... As I continue to raise the filament voltage, the plate current rises... and we reach a full microampere when the voltage is a little over eleven volts. Now why would the current depend on the temperature of the filament? If the current is “electricity flowing through empty space”—the case Edwin Houston thought “not probable”—it is hard to see why there should be such a connection, since no theory of electricity implies any inherent relation between it and heat. But that dependency would make sense if the electricity traveled in the form of material particles, inasmuch as the temperature of a body indicates the kinetic energy of the particles which compose it; and the more agitated those particles are, the greater the number that may escape the forces which bind them to their host—just as a liquid will evaporate more quickly when it is hot than when it is cold. But wait! Did we not conclude earlier that the current could not consist of charged particles of tungsten—the material of the filament? If the charged particles are not tungsten, what possible material could they be? That is the very question seniors take up in the first semester lab when they study cathode rays, and the answer is startling: it appears that current in the evacuated tube is carried by charged particles whose material belongs to no known species of matter! 10 10 Thomson, J. J., "Cathode Rays," Philosophical Magazine. 5. 44 (269): 293 (7 August 1897); “On Bodies Smaller Than Atoms,” Popular Science Monthly (August 1901) �Shall we then affirm that the heated filament is the source of charged particles of some as-yet-unknown material, and that these constitute the Edison current? Unfortunately, the mere association of current strength with filament temperature overlooks a subtle but crucial factor. The problem is that our power supply does two things at once: it both heats the filament and establishes the electric field between the plate and the filament. This diagram shows the interior of our taillight bulb. The isolated fragment of the burned-out 7 filament is our “plate,” as I mentioned before. And, as before, both the “plate” and one end of the surviving filament are connected to the positive terminal of the power supply; the other end of the filament is connected to the negative terminal. The full potential difference of the supply therefore exists between the plate and the negative end of the filament. I have drawn Faradayan lines of force—they are the curved red arrows—to represent the electric field associated with this potential difference. But this field is what furnishes the very force that would propel charged particles along their paths—from plate to filament if they are positive, from filament to plate if they are negative. These charged particles, whatever their source, will be subject to a greater electric force if the voltage is raised; they will be accelerated more quickly and will attain a higher velocity. More charge, whether negative or positive, will be transferred in a shorter time; and this will result in a greater Edison current, wholly apart from any increase in filament temperature. You see, then, the weakness in our former reasoning. In raising the voltage of our power supply we both raise the filament temperature and increase the electric field; and a stronger electric field would tend to increase the rate of particle transfer, whether they are negative particles emitted from the filament or positive particles emitted from the plate. It is clear, then, that we cannot definitively identify the filament as the source of charged particles so long as we rely on a single electrical source. But if we were to use separate supplies for the plate and the filament, we could control their voltages independently, and so distinguish the influence of filament temperature from that of electrostatic attraction. That is what the British engineer John Ambrose Fleming 11 did in 1896. Using samples of Edison’s special bulbs that had been made specifically for him, Fleming connected separate batteries to the filament and the plate. A variable resistance, or rheostat, controlled the voltage at the filament, and hence the filament’s temperature. With a fixed voltage between the plate and filament, Fleming obtained a current through the plate that rose rapidly with 11 In addition to the researches to be described here, Fleming is known for having originated one of the many “right-hand rules” used in physics, and for designing the transmitter that sent the first transatlantic radiotelegraphy message. He studied under Maxwell at Cambridge in 1878 and 1879, and was by his own account one of only two or three students who attended Maxwell’s final lectures. See Fleming, Ambrose, “Some Memories of Professor James Clerk Maxwell” in James Clerk Maxwell, A Commemoration Volume 1831–1931, Cambridge University Press (1931). �8 increasing filament voltage. That rise is depicted in Fleming’s graph, on the right. 12 And since he kept the plate voltage constant while varying the filament voltage, the plate current’s dependence on the filament voltage means that we can now point confidently to the heated filament as the source of electrified particles. 13 The current must therefore consist of negatively-charged particles that were liberated from the filament by heat in the manner we described a moment ago. Once freed from the filament they will be accelerated towards the plate by the electric field between plate and filament, thereby constituting the Edison current. In 1904 Fleming constructed the device shown on the left; it was essentially Edison’s bulb, with a flat plate like his. The one on the right was a later design employing a cylindrical plate to surround the filament completely. Fleming’s “valve,” as he called it—we will soon see why that name is appropriate—launched decades of commercially manufactured devices having essentially the same design. One of them is this elegant creation, an Eimac model 250R, introduced in the late 1940s; you can see how like it is to 12 Fleming, J. A., The Thermionic Valve and its Developments in Radiotelegraphy and Telephony. London, The Wireless Press (1919). The graph records measurements he had made in 1896. 13 This conclusion is valid provided the filament voltage is small compared to the potential difference between plate and filament. That was true for Fleming’s devices and will be true in our adaptations of his experiments. �9 Fleming’s. And if you wonder what possible commercial application could have supported such a product as this one, 40 years after Fleming patented his apparatus, I invite you to take one of these handouts 14 after the talk; they deal with the topic of current rectification. We, however, will employ the Eimac tube to continue our own investigation of the role of the heated filament. In his initial work with the special Edison bulb, Fleming kept the plate voltage constant while varying the filament voltage. Later he examined the complementary case: varying the plate voltage while keeping the filament voltage constant. 15 We can replicate these experiments, using variable power supplies in place of Fleming’s batteries. Here is our setup. I am applying 2 volts to the filament. The plate voltage is zero; and as you see, the plate current is also zero. But keep your eye on the plate current as I apply more and more voltage to the plate. . . . You see how the plate current increased to one milliampere right away, but its growth seems to have stopped . . . No, it has grown to 2 milliamperes, but it is not increasing any further, even as I continue to raise the plate voltage . . . The plate current appears to have reached a maximum—at least for this degree of heating the filament. Let’s do the same thing using a higher filament voltage, and therefore a higher filament temperature. The filament voltage is now 2.3. As before, I am gradually applying voltage to the plate, and the plate current has risen to 2 milliamperes . . . and now 3 milliamperes . . . Now it has risen to 4 milliamperes . . . But it is definitely holding there . . . It is still 4 milliamperes, even at the maximum voltage of 118.7 volts. 14 15 The handout for this lecture begins on page 21 below. Fleming, J. A., Principles of Electric Wave Telegraphy and Telephony (1916), page 533. �10 Here is a graph of the measurements we just made. Just as in our first trial, when we raise the plate voltage, the plate current increases rapidly at first; but it once again levels off to a plateau. But notice that the plateau attained with 2.3 volts on the filament is higher than when the filament was being heated with only 2.0 volts. The plateau is now 4 milliamperes, while before it was only 2 milliamperes. I made several other sets of measurements using higher and higher filament voltages. Let us append those results to our initial graph and produce a composite presentation of all the trials: The interpretation of these curves is clear: once charged particles are emitted from the filament, they become subject to acceleration towards the plate by the electric field that exists between the filament and the plate. At low plate voltages, for which the electric field is weak, particles are emitted in greater numbers than they can be swept away. But as the plate voltage rises, more and more of the emitted particles are drawn to the plate. Finally the plate voltage reaches a value at which particles are being removed at the same rate as they are emitted; the measured current cannot then undergo any further increase, no matter how much more the plate voltage is raised. The value of this current maximum, or “plateau,” is therefore a measure of the rate at which particles are being emitted from the filament; and since the plateau rises when the filament voltage rises—and hence when the filament temperature rises—it should now be clear that the rate at which negative particles are emitted depends essentially on the filament temperature. Because these charged particles, or ions, 16 are released by the action of heat, Owen Richardson of Cambridge 16 Ion, from ιέναι, go, since charged particles undergo motion when placed in an electric field. Like so many other electrochemical terms, it was introduced by Faraday at the suggestion of William Whewell. �University called them “thermions,” and their travel to the plate he called the “thermionic current.” 17 11 With the aid of a vacuum tube essentially identical to Fleming’s we have finally, I think, been able to appreciate the role of the heated filament. But that was not the question which had excited Fleming’s interest. His chief concern was the asymmetric character of the conduction—the same asymmetry we noted in the Edison Effect. Here the power supply is connected so as to make the plate positive; and we are obtaining a generous 37 milliamperes of plate current. It is much higher than what we obtained a moment ago, because I am heating the filament with a much higher voltage—4.0 volts. But if I reverse the connections to make the plate negative... there is no current, even though I am applying a very strong voltage to the plate. To Fleming this meant that current could flow through the tube in only one direction—a feature that, he realized, would have immediate application to wireless telegraphy. To help us see why, let me revisit a topic I raised in February’s talk. At the time of Fleming’s researches, the standard device for detecting an incoming radiotelegraphy signal—that is, an electromagnetic wave—was still the enigmatic coherer, which we discussed last time; but as I noted then, that apparatus’s principle of operation was poorly understood; and it had many deficiencies, concerning which I quoted some choice words from several disgruntled engineers. Why not, then, simply send the current from the receiving antenna to one of the more ordinary current indicators: a galvanometer, a telephone receiver, or some other electromechanical device? The reason is that the current induced by an incoming 17 “Here we have two currents: the current used to heat the wire and the thermionic current away from the surface of the latter.” O. W. Richardson in London, Edinburgh & Dublin Philosophical Magazine 6th Series vol. 17, 814 (1909) �12 electromagnetic wave is oscillatory, or alternating. A graph of that current with respect to time would look like this: The current swings regularly between positive and negative; and the number of complete swings per second is the frequency of the current. But in wireless telegraphy the frequencies are so high that no ordinary mechanical responder—neither the needle of a galvanometer, nor the diaphragm of a telephone receiver—could possibly vibrate at those rates; the alternating pulses would simply end up nullifying one another and would produce no response at all. Now it had been known since the 1870s that certain crystals, when brought into electrical contact with a metal probe, could somehow make these radio-frequency alternating currents compatible with indicators like the telephone receiver. 18 In February’s talk I singled out the work of G. W. Pickard in this connection; his contact devices would soon become practical “crystal detectors” for radiotelegraphy and would remain in use well into the broadcast radio era. But at the time of Fleming’s work, these contrivances were temperamental and delicate; and because their operation was poorly understood, improvements in their design could be pursued only by trial and error, not by systematic analysis. In contrast, Fleming’s vacuum tube excelled in all these areas. It was mechanically sturdy, its electrical characteristics were stable and reliable; and, most importantly, its principle of operation—"one-way” conduction—was understood. 19 By conducting electric current in one direction only, Fleming’s vacuum tube could prevent the mutual nullification of positive and negative wave phases by blocking the negative phases. It would then send onward a pulsating current whose graph would look like this: To be sure, those pulses would still be arriving at a rate too high for either a galvanometer needle or a telephone receiver to reproduce; but they would be in the same direction! They would not nullify one another, as a train of alternating pulses must do. On the contrary, if sent to a galvanometer, they would reinforce one another to displace the needle by a clearly visible amount. If sent to a telephone receiver, they would produce a definite click. 18 Carl Ferdinand Braun studied the properties of such junctions in 1874 and Jagadish Chandra Bose employed crystals as microwave radio detectors in 1894. 19 The crystal detector, too, exhibited “one-way” conduction, though this was not recognized at first. Even after that behavior was established, the physical principles underlying it were not understood until the 1930s and 1940s; the researches of that period would provide the basis for modern solid-state electronics. �Fleming proposed a circuit like this one for the detection of electromagnetic wave 13 signals. I have reduced his circuit 20 to its essentials for clarity. When an electromagnetic wave is intercepted by the antenna, it induces an oscillating current. If the red portion of the circuit were absent, that current would simply flow between the antenna A and the earth, E. But in Fleming’s circuit, it must first pass through the vacuum tube O, then through the telephone receiver T, and finally to earth. And so long as the incoming wave makes the antenna positive with respect to the earth, the plate of the tube will likewise be positive, and current will flow. But in the next phase of oscillation, the antenna will be negative; the plate too will therefore be negative; and we saw that current cannot flow through the tube under those conditions. Only positive current pulses will pass through to the telephone; and together these will produce the “click” that announces the commencement of a “dot” or “dash,” followed by a slightly different “click” when it releases at the end of the train of pulses. You can see, then, why Fleming called his device a “valve”—a term which British usage retains to this day. By permitting flow in one direction only, it functions like the “check valve” used in plumbing and other applications. In the mechanism depicted here, a hinged flap opens to permit liquid flow from left to right, but any flow from right to left bears on the flap to close it and halt the flow. Fleming’s explicit adoption of the terminology of plumbing suggests that he had in mind the “fluid flow” image of electric current. Indeed, to the extent that we seem to have demonstrated the existence of a stream of charged material particles in the vacuum tube, flowing from filament to plate, it may appear that we have confirmed the fluid image quite literally. Yet I hesitate to say that, for there are some vital differences. What, exactly, constitutes a “fluid”? For Archimedes, a fluid is a continuous whole, capable of sustaining pressure; and when it moves, it is driven by a difference of pressure between one region and another. Recall his definition at the opening of On Floating Bodies: Fleming, J. A., Principles of Electric Wave Telegraphy and Telephony, 3rd ed. (1916), p. 531. The diagram in my slide is highly idealized; an actual receiver circuit would incorporate additional coils and capacitors to utilize the incoming current more efficiently. 20 �14 Let it be assumed that a fluid is of such a nature that if its parts lie evenly and are continuous, that part which is pressed the less is thrust out by that which is pressed the more... 21 But in the vacuum tube we have a multiplicity of individual charged particles; they do not seem to form a “whole” in any obvious sense; and their motion is by no means the result of anything like Archimedean pressure, for we envisioned each of the particles as being accelerated independently by the electric field. In an Archimedean fluid, every portion moves in virtue of being part of a moving whole; but in the vacuum tube, each particle enjoys its own private treaty 22 with the field. So it is not at all clear that we ought to call this stream of particles a “fluid.” Furthermore, what kind of relation do these particles have to the electricity which distinguishes them? Is electricity itself an immaterial substance, which just happens to be embellishing each of these particles like a coat of paint? Or is electricity these very particles—not a fluid at all, even though they seem to resemble a fluid when they are confined to a “conductor”? No doubt Fleming meant his “check valve” allusion to convey only what the vacuum tube does, not to explain how it does it. Despite any resemblance between a stream of charged particles and the flow of a fluid, we will not expect to find a mechanical “flap” anywhere in the vacuum tube. How, then, shall we understand the halting of current when it is applied in the forbidden direction? We may find some guidance in another example of “one-way” flow, one that does not rely on mechanical contrivance; that is the waterfall. Water (or any material) can fall down, but it does not fall up. If you tried to swim up the falls you would be “blocked,” so to speak—not by a hinged flap, but by the gravitational field. Nevertheless, a field can be overcome with a sufficiently great store of kinetic energy—as salmon do when they ascend waterfalls in order to reach their ancestral breeding grounds: When we try to direct a reverse current through the vacuum tube, we have the equivalent of a salmon run; for instead of the kinetic energy of the fish being converted to gravitational potential energy, we have the kinetic energy of the emitted particles—Richardson’s thermions—being expended through conversion to electrical potential energy due to the reversed electric field. But whereas most salmon have enough kinetic energy to overcome the potential-barrier, in a well-functioning vacuum tube the ions do not. We have seen how Fleming’s vacuum tube blocked half of each cycle of the alternating current induced in the antenna; thus the remaining half-cycles, having a common direction, could exert a cumulative effect upon a telephone receiver or a galvanometer. A disadvantage, of course, is that since the incoming wave current is very weak, only a weak current was available to energize the telephone or galvanometer. 21 Archimedes, On Floating Bodies, Book I. “Private treaty” was the bon mot used by Clinton J. Davisson in his paper, “Are Electrons Waves?” Franklin Institute Journal, 205 (1928). 22 �15 But not long after Fleming introduced his vacuum valve, the American inventor Lee De Forest dramatically altered the technical possibilities by adding a third electrode. Fleming, offended by what he saw as a trespass upon his specialty, regarded the new electrode as a merely gratuitous embellishment of his own invention; and there ensued a 37-year succession of court battles over patent rights—a real-life Jarndyce v. Jarndyce, that celebrated legal saga immortalized in Dickens’ Bleak House. 23 Do we know why De Forest added the third element? That is not clear from his initial efforts, since he originally positioned the additional electrode outside the tube, first in the form of parallel foil sheets, shown on the left, and later as a wire coil wound around the glass tube, in the middle sketch; in both drawings the third element is highlighted in red. 24 Eventually, however, he located the added structure within the tube, between the filament and the plate, as drawn on the right. De Forest named these devices Audions; 25 but since his definitive version included three electrodes within the glass, it quickly acquired the informal name “triode,” distinguishing it from Fleming’s two-element tube, which (despite Fleming’s objections) won the name “diode.” 26 Let us see what De Forest’s third element accomplished; for I think we will find that the triode, even more than the diode, implicitly draws upon the imagery of a stream of particles rather than a flowing fluid. In this diagram of one of De Forest’s triodes, taken from an early patent application, F represents the filament and b the plate, just as in the Fleming diode—although De Forest preferred the term “wing” rather than “plate.” Between them is the third electrode—not an impenetrable plate, but a wire bent into the serpentine shape drawn here. It was thought to resemble a cooking grate or griddle; and on that basis the third electrode acquired the name “grid.” As I mentioned before, it isn’t clear whether De Forest adopted this configuration with any specific expectation in mind. About its operation, he is reported to have said, “I don’t “The Radio Tube Goes to Court,” The New York Times, 23 November 1930. The ongoing cases described in the article would finally be resolved in 1943. 23 24 Adapted from Gerald F. J. Tyne, Saga of the Vacuum Tube (1977), p. 59. Considering the wide range of designs upon which De Forest bestowed the name “Audion,” it would seem that he regarded that title as a the name of a brand more than as the name of a device. 25 26 Fleming insisted that the name of a device ought to convey its essential function, as his epithet “valve” did. “Diode,” which expressed only the number of elements in the tube, would fail to meet that criterion. �16 know how it works, it just does!” That is rather hard to believe, since I think that even we can anticipate some of the effects of mounting any element whatsoever within the tube itself. Nevertheless, the grid does exhibit some behavior that is bound to seem odd at first sight. Let us study that initial puzzle in a triode of our own, before going on to the “working” that De Forest would have had chiefly in mind if he really did say, “it just works.” This lovely objet d’art is an Eimac 250TH triode, first introduced in 1938. It is practically the twin of the diode we have been experimenting with, except for the added grid; you can see the grid connection at the side of the glass envelope. I am applying 3.9 volts to the filament, which heats it to glowing; and I am making no connection to the plate. Now when I connect a meter between the grid and the positive end of the filament, we measure a negative current; it is 1.29 milliamperes. No doubt this is our old friend the Edison current; and if so, we should expect zero current between the grid and the negative end of the filament. Let us try . . . Yes, we are reading zero milliamperes. But I am not using the most sensitive range of my meter; let’s see what happens when we switch to the microampere range . . . �17 Well, it is not zero! Instead, we have a negative current of 1.7 microamperes. True, this is a very small value—only about one thousandth of what we measured for the Edison current—but the account we gave earlier implied that there should be no current whatsoever to the negative end of the filament; because if the Edison current really consists of a stream of negative ions, they should be repelled by the negative end of the filament, and therefore repelled by the grid which is connected to it through the meter; they should not be flowing to the grid! What on earth can be causing this “maverick” current? Our earlier explanation of the Edison Effect appealed solely to the electric field that exists between the positive and negative ends of the filament. We did not consider any source for the ions’ motion other than their acceleration by that field. But remember that the charged particles were emitted from a heated filament. They will therefore have acquired kinetic energy by heat, wholly apart from experiencing any electrical attraction. So it is not at all far-fetched to suppose that some of them might have enough energy to strike the grid and adhere to it, making the grid slightly negative. Thus when we connect the ammeter, negative electricity will migrate from the grid to the rest of the circuit, constituting the current that seemed at first so surprising. 27 We can test this conjecture. If this “maverick” current to the negative end of the filament is indeed powered by thermal energy, it should diminish when I reduce the filament heating. Let us do that . . . Yes; you see I am lowering the filament voltage, and the current has already dropped by about half. With a further reduction it drops to 4/10ths of a 27 This well-known phenomenon is called “grid leak” in radio circles. �18 microampere. So this constitutes additional confirmation, if we still needed any, that the current within the vacuum tube is constituted by a stream of material particles— Richardson’s thermions. The thermionic current, then, makes itself evident at De Forest’s third electrode. But that could scarcely have been any part of De Forest’s thinking when he introduced the grid. For the chief function of the diode was to conduct or block current through the plate. Surely when De Forest added a third electrode, he would have been looking for some result bearing on the plate current. Let us try to envision what such an effect might be. Imagine, then, a current of negative ions departing from the heated filament and streaming towards the positive plate under the influence of the electric field between the filament and the plate. If the grid is electrically neutral, it should have no effect on the stream of ions. But what will happen if the grid is made negative? It will then repel negative ions; and some of the less energetic among them will be brought to rest, or even turned back toward the filament, with a consequent reduction in plate current. This resembles the operation of two devices that I mentioned in February’s talk: the relay and the coherer. In both of those contrivances a weak current controlled a second, much stronger current. That is exactly what happens in the triode: a negative current supplied to the grid controls a completely separate current to the plate, whose strength can be far greater, since it is powered by its own battery. No wonder De Forest was convinced that his alleged trespass against the integrity of the diode was in fact a spectacular advance! Let us see for ourselves this remarkable capability in action. I am applying 120 volts to this light bulb—not directly, but through the triode, so that the current has to pass through the tube in order to light the bulb. The grid supply is off, so the grid is neutral; and as you see, the tube is passing enough current to light the bulb fully. But watch the light bulb when I turn on the grid supply to place a negative voltage on the grid. The current is blocked, and the bulb is extinguished. When I remove that negative voltage, current flows again and the bulb lights once more. You see how a mere two or three volts applied to the grid is able to control a 120-volt lamp. We can carry out a more quantitative study of the triode’s action by measuring both the plate and the grid currents. �19 Here I am applying positive 120 volts to the triode’s plate, but zero volts to the grid. As you see, the plate is carrying a current of 1.658 milliamperes; and the grid current is (negative) 0.3 microamperes. I begin increasing the grid voltage (that is, making it more and more negative), and the plate current decreases, just as we expected. But so does the grid current. That might have seemed surprising earlier, but now we know what is going on: the grid power supply is sending negative current to the grid, thus opposing the thermionic current that was coming from the grid; that’s why the grid current decreases when the grid voltage rises. Finally, when the grid current has been brought to zero, the plate current has diminished to .362 milliamperes. When we graph these measurements, the results show plainly how the plate current depends on the grid current. The graph is a straight line; thus changes in the plate current are proportional to changes in the grid current. Do you see what this means? If I send to the grid of the triode a signal which causes the current to vary between 0 and .3 microamperes according to any pattern whatsoever, the plate current will reproduce that very same pattern—but at a larger scale: a .3 microampere variation of grid current will produce a plate current variation of 1.293 milliamperes, that is, a signal more than 4300 times greater! This has implications of great consequence for electromagnetic wave detection. It means that even if the received signal current is merely a microampere, it will be able to initiate a current greater than 4.3 milliamperes—enough to operate a telephone receiver, a meter, or some other indicator. De Forest boasted that this, in effect, amplifies the tiny incoming signal—since even though the triode does not actually make a small current larger, the result is the same as if it did. I will have much more to say about amplification in the next lecture. For one thing, we can combine the detection function of the diode and the amplification function of the triode to make a far more sensitive wireless telegraphy receiver. But the triode’s capability for �20 amplification will do much more; it will also become the basis for a new method of electromagnetic wave generation, far superior to the spark transmitter. This in turn opens up the first truly practical prospects for transmission and reception of sound—the heart of what we now call “radio.” That will be the topic of my next talk, the final lecture in this series. I hope many of you will be able to join me then. �21 “Rectification” Handout to accompany the lecture “The Vacuum Tube” As the distinctive capabilities of the diode became more perfectly understood, one technical term came into particularly prominent use. “Rectify,” to put right or correct, but literally to make straight, became the standard term for the conversion of alternating current to direct current. If the diode really had been capable of converting a current from the profile (A) to profile (B)—making “the crooked straight, the rough places plain,” 28 the term would indeed have been well-chosen; but as I noted in the lecture, the vacuum diode does not produce current having the rectilinear profile (B) but the pulsing profile (C). It is “direct current” only in the sense of having a single direction, not in the original sense of being constant or straight; it ought really to be called “pulsating” current. Nevertheless the term “rectify” quickly acquired the meaning “to make unidirectional”— with no regard whatsoever to straightness or constancy. Alternating current had been the standard power source in the United States since 1892; and alternating current was very well suited to applications such as incandescent electric lighting and many kinds of electric machinery. But tasks like arc lighting and electric welding still for the most part required direct current; and this either had to be generated by dynamos or obtained from the standard power system by rectification. Long after incandescent bulbs became the dominant light source, electric arcs remained standard in high-intensity instruments such as searchlights, theatrical follow-spots, and cinema film projectors. As late as 1959, my high school’s movie projectors employed 28 Handel’s adaptation, in The Messiah, of Isaiah 40:4. �22 electric arc units like the AmproArc model shown here. The arc housing is the large grey cylindrical structure. The rectifier is on the floor at the right. Storage batteries were another source of demand for direct current. Unlike the batteries of Faraday’s time, which were recharged literally 29 by discarding the used acid solution and replacing it with new, storage batteries are recharged by passing direct current through them in reverse. Such batteries became standard automotive equipment with the advent of electric starting; and rectifying battery chargers like the Tungar model pictured here were found in nearly every service garage and even some households. The large glass bulb on the right is the rectifying diode. (The bulb on the left is an ordinary light bulb, used to regulate the current.) A third area demanding direct current was that of vacuum-tube electronics, especially for radio receivers and transmitters. I will be discussing this technology further in the next lecture, and we shall see why these devices required direct-current power sources. The diode I experimented with for this lecture, the Eimac 250-R, was designed to supply direct current for high-powered radio transmitters. H. Fisher 5 December 2025 29 The root meaning of “charge” is to load or fill. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Vacuum Tube Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on April 15, 2026 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "A puzzling phenomenon observed by Edison in one of his early light bulbs seemed to disclose a kind of electric current that did not fit the received ideas, for it was not confined to a conductor, and it would flow in one direction but not in the reverse direction. From this 'Edison effect' arose the modern vacuum tube, which enabled, first, the detection of electromagnetic waves by a process readily understood (rectification), and second, a means for effectively multiplying the strength of an electric current (amplification). Both of these capabilities brought dramatic improvements in wireless telegraphy, and they also introduced the prospect of radio transmission of voice and sound. This is the second of three talks on early radio technology." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-04-15 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Vacuum-tube circuits Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/8163" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FisherH_The_Vacuum_Tube_2026-04-15 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/76e7c305efb438d8dc1376d2da766723.mp3 824e14eeefac493fed8363612195ed47 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 01:17:38 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Visual Arts Panel Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a tutor panel given by tutors Alison Chapman, Krishnan Venkatesh, and David Carl on April 3, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “What is a portrait? The English word comes from the Latin word protrahere, ‘to draw forth,’ ‘to drag forward,’ ‘to bring to light,’ ‘to produce for inspection,’ while the main component trahere comes from an Indo-European root -tragh—that is cognate with our words tract, traction, trawl, drag, track, trace. What does a portrait draw or drag forth?—a human being, a self?—and what are those? In books, we can see how writers like Chaucer or Montaigne ‘portray’ individual people with words that can capture a distinctive interiority—but how can paint or a photographic image do that? Does a portrait have to have eyes, or even a face?—indeed, are there any portraits without human figures? In this panel discussion, three tutors (Alison Chapman, David Carl, and Krishnan Venkatesh) will attempt to approach these questions by talking us through a small selection of pictures.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Chapman, Alison Venkatesh, Krishnan Carl, David Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-04-03 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Portraits Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606-1669 -- self-portraits. Velazquez, Diego, 1599-1660. Las Meninas, or The Family of King Philip IV. Modigliani, Amedeo, 1884-1920. Portrait of a Polish Woman. Ogden, Perry, 1961- , Francis Bacon's 7 Reece Mews Studio photograph. Bacon, Francis, 1909-1992. Painting after Velazquez's portrait of Pope Innocent X. Bacon, Francis, 1909-1992. Portraits of Isabel Rawsthorne. Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973. Portrait of Gertrude Stein. Picasso, Pablo, 1881-1973. Weeping Woman, or La Femme qui Pleure. Warhol, Andy, 1928-1987. Marilyn Diptych (1962). Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_ChapmanA_et_al_Visual_Arts_Panel_2026-04-03 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/d712b37dfac55cce94c8e32955fddfd1.pdf c88b578d37b3b2c9310cec81d519b84b PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM The War and the College ............. . by Scott Buchanan We Are Not Alone ............ an undergraduate statement Two Poems from Baudelaire NOVEMBER, 1940 Twenty-.ftve cents �CONTE NTS The War and the College. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 History, Geography and a Temporal Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 The Letter Setteth Free ... . . . .. . .. .. .. . .. . . . .... .. .......... . 13 We Are Not Alone . . . ... ............ . . . . . . . . ..... . . . ... ... .. 15 Athletics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 In Praise of Im propaganda. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Second Fiddle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l Trivia . . .. . . . . .... . . . .... .. ....... .. ... . ......... . .... .. . .. 20 Books ....... .. ... . ...... . . ... . . .. .... .... . .......... . ..... 21 9 Cinema .. . .. . . .. .. . .. . ... . .... . ...... . .. . . .. . . ........... .. 24 The Play . ... . ... . ..... . ..... . ........... . . . ....... . .... . .. 25 Contributors .. . .. . ... .. . .. . . . . . . .. . . . ....... . ...... .. . .. ... 25 Two Poems from Charles Baudelaire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Editors: FRANCIS S. MASON, <freasurer: A. Circulation: ScoTT ABBOTT, WILLIAM T. JR., '43 AND JOHN Louis HEDEMAN, '43. '43. HART, '43. Departments Etc.: ROBERT HUNTER, '43; STERN, '43; JAMES s. MARTIN. MARTIN ANDREWS, '43; ADRIAN MAYER, '43; HERBERT TR IVI UM VoL. 1 NOVEMBER, 1940 No. 1 Editorials Prospectus. The St. John's Trivium is a monthly magazine to be published on the 25th of each month. It will sell for $.25 a copy, by subscription $2.00 for eight issues. It will appear beginning the 25th of October, 1940, through May, 1941. This same schedule, if found practicable, will be followed in succeeding years. It is published and edited by students of St. John's College in Annapolis. Trivium is not supported by the College, and was founded primarily as a good magazine for St. John's, one that would incidentally provide the College with a new student activity. By supporting itself, the editors feel that 'l'rivium will be a much better publication, since it will have to fight for its own life-blood, and in view of the diabolic fate of other College-supported organizations. It will be a magazine of, by, and for liberal artists. Although its name is 'l'rivium, signifying the three liberal arts most applicable to a magazine of this sort, it does not intend to ignore the remaining four. Originated by students, 'l'rivium is itself an undergraduate of St. John's, and is not an official spokesman of the College. It will provide a means of expression and publication of the typical and best of undergraduate thought at perhaps the leading liberal arts college in America, toward the end that outside persons may acquire a knowledge of what is happening to St. John's, to the students of St. John's, and the effects upon them. The official College Catalogue is the counterpart of Trivium for the Administration , and it is to be expected that the two will both complement and contradict one another. Trivium will be a critic of the College, and an active one. Criticism, despite the popular belief that it has a negative and destructive sense, will mean to 'l'rivium what it truly denotes. 'I'rivium' s midwives feel that a medium of exchange should exist between the College and its friends. Passing through officialdom, the information that the friends of St. John's obtain concerning the students is, at best, second-hand and pre-digested. As in geometry, so here, contact with the source is essential for true understanding. 'I'rivium will be no classical journal, but always aware and immediately contemporary. The mistaken impression among students that college publications are for the few and particular should be heeded and corrected here. Students who have never written think themselves unable to write. The editors of 'l'rivium will welcome, above its off-campus contributions, suggestions and submitted material from their fellow-students. 'l'rivium will contain no advertising, as it is the opinion of its editors that advertising in college publications is, 3 �4 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM in the main, a gesture of condescension on the part of those who give so profusely with their funds. Instead of depending upon this largesse, the price of 'I'rivium has been set so as to insure its economic independence. Our business managers will therefore concentrate on the circulation of the magazine for its subsistence; a minimum of five hundred subscriptions is our goal. 'I'rivium asks for no blind subscribers. Complimentary copies of the first issue will be distributed to those requesting them, previous to any solicitation of payment. A person receiving one of these copies is not obligated in any way. 'I'rivium will not be copyrighted. This is done to give to the magazine the air of freedom so necessary for its survival. We, unlike some other college publications, do not assume that 'I'rivium' s contents will be felt worthy of reprinting by many others, but wish in any case to place no restrictions in their way; as our precedent, we note that the trivium has never been copyrighted. Trivium will, however, attend to the details of copyrighting a single article, if requested to do so by the author. 'I'rivium seeks to make no profits for its own sake, and will use any additional funds for the welfare of the College, preferably as student aid. Contributors: 'I'rivium looks toward the student body with anticipation. From it must come the stable portion of the magazine: the editors, the departments, and the many minor details which are so necessary in its make-up. 'I'rivium also eyes the College Faculty with hopeful expectancy. Besides requesting the St. John's tutors to write upon subjects of personal interest to them, 'I'rivium also hopes for repetition and supplementary comment upon their individual work in the College. Off the campus, 'I'rivium seeks articles from visiting lecturers, members of the Board of Visitors and Governors, and any other person who, in the opinion of the editors, would write in a manner and upon a subject suitable for the character of the magazine. In this category fall undergraduate students on other campuses. Contributions to 'I'rivium are voluntary and without payment. Contents: In content, 'I'rivium' s first few pages will be devoted to comment by its editorial board. This part of the magazine is not departmentaliz ed, but will include paragraphs of opinion on subjects immediately relevant to the College and its community, as well as commentaries upon modern American and foreign life. Since 'I'rivium is a product of an educational program unique in American colleges today, its primary concern will be with matters educational, although this will definitely not restrict its subject matter. Its editors aim to escape from the traditional negative policy of college publications, and will not be subservient, and only deliberately revolutionary. Departments: Its departments will be conducted by the members of the editorial staff, devoting themselves to the following subjects: Books, the Theatre and Cinema, Contributors, Letters to the Editor, Department of Impropaganda, and Trivia. 'I'rivium's book reviews will be both ancient and modern. By ancient we do not mean only those books studied at St. John's; 'I'rivium's literary critics will be at pains to point out that the Great Books List is not an index of exclusion: that it is a list which forms the foundation for the immense structure of progress in the liberal arts, ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM and should be studied like the Preamble to the Constitution. Guest reviewers may have articles here. Complementary to the columns on books will be a subsidiary department, concerning itself with pertinent comment on new and old editions and translations of the Great Books, the books mentioned in each issue, notes on their authors, and modern publications. Believing that the theatre provides both entertainment and incentive for enjoyable living, 'I'rivium will devote space each month to dramatic criticism. We will try to review as many plays as possible, prior to their performances in cities near Annapolis. The motion picture department is interested not only in the latest films, but in the history of the motion picture as evidenced by the collection and supplementary material found in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The remaining departments-T rivia, Department of Impropaganda, Letters to the Editor,-speak for themselves. 'I'rivium' s off-campus contributions and articles by those not on the staff will be signed; staff articles, outside of editorial comment, will be initialed. A Return to First Principles. Here at St. John's the students are for all practical purposes indoctrinated with the idea that they are in a college where the true liberal education is the rule. St. John's is the return to first principles-the first principles upon which every educated man must found his life, and is the rock which serves as the foundation for his philosophy, as well as being the path to its discovery. As a natural result of this, there is much criticism, in the popular sense of destructive, of the rest of the modern American colleges and universities; crit- 5 icism that is leveled at them because they are, by and large, obtaining money under false pretences, and are not giving to their students that which they have so fervidly promised to them. There is some basis for this contention, indeed more than is usually found for the mud-slinging engaged in by rival candidates for the same office. Yet, there is one point which seems to have eluded us thus far, and occurred to us long after we were supposed to have had our "intellectual awakening," if that nebulous event has yet taken place. The criticism of all, or almost all, other colleges is the equivalent of the remarks which might be directed at a restaurant: one of its customers could say, "That's a terrible place-they have no caviar listed on the menu." A perfectly valid fault, indeed, provided anyone would want caviar in sufficient quantities to warrant the maintenance of it in stock. That is the error which we make here at St. John's: we assume that young people, starting out in the game of education, want a liberal arts course, i.e., to be educated. Until that is verified, then the harsh words tossed at them are harmless, except for their nuisance value. After all, the average youth of today could want nothing more of the future than security and health and a modicum of happiness, and all he can therefore desire of his college is that it take some steps to make his future earning capacity reasonably secure. Health and happiness are his own concern, and to his mind the money is probably the first consideration. As Henry Adams, in his Education of Henry Adams, said, " ... in sum, education without capital could always be taken by the throat and forced to disgorge its gains, �6 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM nor was it helped by the knowledge that no one intended it, but that all alike suffered .... The failure of the scientific scheme, without money to back it, was flagrant." This means to those entering college that it is better to think of the sheckels than the intellectual shackles which bind them. Once they are financially secure, then it is time enough to be educated. The only trouble is, this doctrine is false, for rather too obvious and lamentable examples point out its failure. Gramps, in You Can't Take It With You, had the right idea. In short then, the fault lies largely with those who pick out their colleges: they are a little too spineless to revolt and demand that society give them their birthright, or a free mind. If man is a rational animal, then it is his heritage to be rational: having only the potential capacity to reason is not enough. Society too is at fault; though its sin is one of omission rather than commission. And we at St. John's are not at fault, strictly, but only because the other colleges still insist that they are educating their students. Once they would come right out and say, "We offer you a secure future, for we will teach you one profession, and make you a decent mechanic, or economic specialist, or whatever you, in your sublime ignorance, choose," then we wouldn't have a leg to stand on. Then both of us, both the other colleges and St. John's, would be much happier. A note on Trivium's cover ... Difficulties are inevitable when the founders of a magazine feel that the cover needs an appropriate design. The temptation to include all possible symbolism in a representation of the Liberal Arts is irresistible, and the complications resulting therefrom are immense. Through the kindness of Mr. Graham Carey, who has long been interested in the program at St. John's, the present design has been arranged. The aim was to give easily recognizable symbols for the Trivium and to somehow include the other four arts. The New Program seal, which Mr. Carey himself designed, made an ideal model for such an arrangement. The seal consists of seven opened books, denoting the seven arts. These are placed in circular form around a primitive balance. The seal is also endowed with a Latin motto meaning "I make free men out of children by means of books and balances." Since T rivium was not to be an official publication, we could not duplicate the seal in detail. It was also necessary to exaggerate the three books representing grammar, rhetoric and logic, for which the magazine was named. The first step in this direction was to make these three books face outward from the balance. Then the symbols presented themselves. It was first suggested that the first three letters and the last three letters of the Roman alphabet be used for grammar. These were to be situated on the separate pages of the opened book. Mr. Carey, however, rightly feared the algebraic connotations of these significant letters, upon which the present design was adopted. As the cover is now, grammar 1s represented by the first and last letters of the three leading alphabets of our Western tradition- Hebrew, Greek and Roman. Rhetoric, which was to be represen ted in the center book, made the most difficult problem. Two hearts ( Con ad con Loquitur) seemed to explain communication , but the suggestion ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM of a double valentine greeting on the cover of a magazine whose name has enough variations seemed to invite more comment. Again coming to our aid, Mr. Carey mentioned that in modern symbolism the circle, square, six-pointed star and triangle have been used for the Final, Material, Efficient and Formal causes respectively. Being a communicative art, rhetoric involves two persons- the sender or artist and the receiver or patron. Artists are concerned mainly with Formal causes, patrons with Final causes. Using the Material cause to connect these two 7 and effect the copula the three symbols signify the necessary features of the transmission of an idea, such as the art of rhetoric. The syllogism seemed the application of one of the first principles of logic and the most immediately recognizable identification of that art. The help given us by Mr. Carey cannot be exaggerated. His patience with our frequent criticisms was great. The cover design he has made for Trivium warrants thanks we are not unable to give, but which we can never complete. The War and the College FOR the last year we have been doing our lessons, reading our books, and trying to listen to peaceful, reasonable discourse about human affairs, while special newspapers have been let loose outside the window telling us of the latest crack and ruin in the affairs which human reason should control. That the College has recently dedicated itself again to the ancient purpose, that it is three years along on the new road to recover the lost arts of reason, that there are signs of success, all this is reassuring. But there are also signs that the greater human project of which this is only a part is at least temporarily failing, that it is failing perhaps because one of the proudest products of human reason, the machine, has taken charge of affairs, and that we shall have to harness ourselves to it, to save ourselves and our reason from total ruin. In a recent pamphlet Archibald MacLeish, the new Librarian of Congress, has accused people like us, the liberal artists in this and other countries, of being irresponsible, of not seeing the practical effects and implications of the literary and intellectual arts. He thinks that we have imitated the laboratory scientist who has shut himself up in the laboratory and the artist who has shut himself up in his studio and forgotten their responsibilities as citizens and as men of authority. There have been students and teachers in this College who have agreed with Mr. MacLeish in the last year. One of the older students who came here last fill said then that he did not know how long he would be able to stay; he sailed for Europe in May for ambulance service. He is now somewhere in France. His departure made a deep impression on us all. We are not sure, as the rest of the country is not sure, what we should be doing. We are not sure that we have settled the matter when we have comforted each other by saying that we are saving, for ourselves and for the world, the most precious and important part �8 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM of the civilization for which it has worked from the beginning. That may turn out to be irresponsible talk tomorrow or next month. In the last war the colleges turned themselves over to the R.O.T.C. and the S.A.T.C. instead of athletics, and their classrooms to gunnery and navigation along with courses in War Aims. Some of us remember that we were unable to carry what we got with us. The military training didn't work or we never used it, and the war aims turned out to be sour propaganda in our mouths. We couldn't use either one after the war, and we turned out to be a lost generation drifting towards another war. It would be good this time if we could concentrate on something that we could take with us-into the war and beyond the war. It may be well to recall that some of the work and thought that went into the present St. John's Program came out of an early recognition that the world was drifting and that something must be done, something fundamental and perhaps drastic, to discover our position and direction. The list of books that we are reading now at St. John's was begun immediately after the Armistice by the American Expeditionary University at Beaune, France. It has been taught, revised, and added to ever since by people who had direct and vivid experience of the last war, the Peace that followed, and these last years of bewilderment. It has always been the aim of these collaborators against demoralization to rediscover and to make available again the things that human beings, young men, and old men, can take with them wherever they go and whatever happens to them. Those of you who have seen the play 'Journey's End know how Alice in Won- derland went to the trenches; you have heard how Alexander always slept with Homer's Iliad under his pillow, how General Smuts became a philosopher general by reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason during the Boer War. The books have gone many places with human beings, have made them see, and know, and do many things. Wherever you "have to take it," you can take these books- especially if they have become a part of you. But one of the troubles with war is that you have to go through it and come out the other side. You have to go on, when nobody knows where to go. War destroys roads and landmarks as well as cities and dwellings. It destroys familiar and reassuring things inside you. Again these books have seen many wars and have gone on afterwards with those who • were left to go on. It is often said that the great books have stood the test of time. They have done more than that; they have gone on through the fire and destruction of many wars and told men what to do afterwards. It is somewhat comforting to know that the St. John's books have this deep, practical use in the present crisis. Still this is not enough. We are members of the American community and the College has deep roots as an American institution. We must know what its full function will be in the immediate future. There seems to be wide agreement that we Americans should have universal military training and that therefore boys of college age will be asked to train themselves for the manifold specialties of modern organized defense. This time we should not have the mad scramble for preferred positions and special competing services. It would seem likely therefore that ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM some general basic training in the manual arts would be desirable. Again the plans in the minds of the collaborators in the St. John's Program have been better than we knew at the start. It used to be said that a young man who worked his way through college was getting a double education; he was studying books and in addition he was learning the value of money. In the old American college it was not the value of money that was being learned, but the dignity of work. We at St. John's have long thought it necessary to add the manual arts to our curriculum, because hands are as important as eyes in the training of the intellect. Laboratories these days have become streamlined and demand too little of the manual skills that went into the training of the older scientists. We have wanted to have the students build their own apparatus so that they would know just what has gone into the experiment and the observation. We have done some of this already, but we have had plans for carpentry and metal working shops. Modern industry has need of men trained in this way, and now we have had it demonstrated to us that modern warfare is also scientific in this sense. But just as we have not wanted to professionalize our scientific training, so we would like to give our students a general viable training for what they will probably face when they are called for national defense service, a training that will make them intelligent, versatile agents of the American spirit defending itself, not merely mechanical parts of the military machine. The books will make them adult human beings; what will make them effective agents in action? 9 We have done considerable inquiring and considerable guessing about this matter at the College recently, and we have a suggestion to make, a suggestion that comes from the inner structure of the Program, and a suggestion that might be followed by other colleges. We should focus all of our training in the natural sciences on the gas engine and the electric generator. As the steam engine and coal were the living parts of the industrial system for the last hundred years, so the internal combustion engine and the electric generator are the vital center of the industrial revolution of this generation. Their immediate utility in national defense has become painfully obvious during the last two months. To those who have grasped the constructive, aggressive program that we have projected for ourselves in the natural sciences this apparent reversion to immediate utility may be shocking. But we have discovered in our attempts to liberalize and intellectualize the experimental techniques of modern science that the major strategy must be the focusing of our training on a concrete problem that will bring the theoretical and speculative issues out and force them on our attention. The application of the natural sciences to human beings in medicine has been our aim so far. The mathematician, the physicist, the chemist, and the biologist, as well as the medical man and the philosopher will bear witness that this is not a simple, easy task that we have undertaken. It will take a long time to carry out. On the way to the solution are the sciences and the arts of heat and electricity, represented on our list and in our laboratory by Fourier and Clerk Maxwell. The immediate practical problem soon to be forced on us by �IO ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM our national emergency and the suggested solution in terms of the gas engine and the electric generator point out the nearer focusing points for our curricular problems in science. Shops for the mechanical arts connected with them would extend our liberal arts and sciences as well as provide the elementary training for those who may have to play important parts in the immediate historical occasion. Napoleon once said that an army moves on its stomach; it might well be said now that an army lives and moves in its internal combustion motors. The educated soldier of a democracy should know more than the British or French soldier know about their prime movers. The colleges should see that their students know about the prime movers of industrial cultures, not only for purposes of war but also for purposes of any hopeful peace that may follow. Archibald MacLeish's article suggests that the liberal and the intellectual should use their pens as weapons. I hope [but I am not sure] that he does not mean that they should turn their intellects to the dark purposes of propaganda and their literary skill to the arts of recrimination. I am persuaded that he should mean that the literary, artistic, intellectual man should not be snooty about technology. Technical education has long been known as an integral part of culture by the anthropologists; one learns as much about primitive peoples by studying their tools as one learns by studying their language. One of the disturbing things in modern culture all over the world is the false sophistication of the liberal intellectual who ignores mathematics, machinery, chemistry, and biology. On the other side is the engineer who can not read poetry and has childish ideas about morals and politics. This rift is as shocking to those who have discovered it as the rift between the military intelligence of the Allies and the technological intelligence of the Germans. The present apparent victory of one is as horrible as the defeat of the other, and they both symbolize the great issues in our bewildering culture. It has been from the start the major concern of the St. John's Program to lay the foundations for the mending of this rift. In the modern world there are two great traditions which are represented best by religion, ethics, and politics on the one hand, and by science and industry on the other. The former is usually understood to be conservative and established; the latter is radical and progressive in the popular mind. Technically considered, religion, ethics, and politics move in a medium of literature, talk, words; science and industry use a mathematical medium. The task of any civilization is to assimilate the new to the old, and the failure of a culture results in a revolution of the new against the old. We at St. John's have tried to put the new and the old together in a way that will force the assimilation. We have been criticized for having too much religion, ethics, and politics, too much literature and philosophy of the old-fashioned variety. On the other hand, we have been criticized for having too much mathematics and laboratory science. The criticisms balance pretty well, and we hope they accurately reflect the balance in the curriculum itself. Actually the balance is a dynamic one, and has a direction. Arming ourselves with the traditional disciplines in language and literature which include poetry, religion, and politics as subject matters, we hope to move ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM into the baffling problems in mathematical physics and medical science. This is our way of facing the modern world and of preparing ourselves to solve some of its problems. There are grave dangers in the project, dangers which some of our wisest critics have pointed out. There is the danger of simple failure, there is the danger of too easy a solution with consequent disillusion and despair, there is the danger of a further reduction of the humanities to the natural sciences and a consequent slip of science into magic and black arts. But these are dangers of the modern world whatever we try to do in it. If you are ill you are forced to choose between a priest and a psychiatrist, between a psychiatrist and a medical man, between a medical man and a quack. How and why do you choose; why should you have to choose when you are a man, a human being with all these dimensions and potentialities? Is there an escape from the choice for the individual? No, we must II face the dangers in life, and therefore all the more we must face them in a liberal education. But they can not be faced without an integral attack from many sides. St. John's has books written by men who had faith and courage in the prospect of solution. We have laboratories where the problems can be posed in detail and in easy stages. It may be that the war emergency will hasten our determination to face the problems in the machine shop with our hands as well as our intellects and our eyes. We shall wait to see what the national government proposes, hoping that the deliberations now in process will give something to the colleges to do that will be effective for the immediate practical purposes which we all share, and that, whatever the government gives the colleges to do, it will be something that they can take with them through the war to the other side where we shall want to be able to do our part in finding a way into the future.-ScoTT BucHANAN. History, Geography and a Temporal Sequence THE only reason that men care to study the past, other than that of pure intellectual curiosity, is that history apparently is repetitive, and a knowledge of it makes the present and the future potentially understandable. Perhaps it may even have the effect of making man aware of his mistakes and failures, his successes and strokes of genius, in the events of ages long dead, and thereby he may learn someday to profit by this vicarious experience himself. Through understanding of the past, in other terms, may come control of the future. The implications of this are of importance beyond the power of words to express. The statement that history does repeat itself is nearly prehistoric, proposed by Plato in the Fifth Century B.C., and lately by Spengler. The cyclical theory is old and seemingly true, as far as our observations go. Working on this basic assumption, men have attempted, with some notable successes, but many more remarkable failures, �1'2 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM to fathom and predict the future. They can do this if the things which they observe are natural to men and are not merely incidental causes acting upon them. That is, the language of a people is a product of their environment, civilization and culture in the first instance, and later on, through its richness, color and implied meanings, may serve to keep that culture alive, or even to revive it, long after the original impetus is dead. So long, then, as men will adhere to observations based upon natural causes, and not incidental ones, their attempts to read what is written in the book of Fate has some logical justification. In this article, I will deal with a phenomenon which I have observed, but one which can lead, sadly enough, if I am to stick to my above statements, to no logically founded results. I therefore shall try to draw no conclusions from it; if I should be so rash, you may be certain that I apologize. This observation, which came to my attention one evening when I was gazing at a Mercator projection of the world, would apparently make the progress of civilization's centers in a directed curve, which is not, so far as this aspect goes, as yet repetitive. From the small amount of history which is at my command, the theory seems accurate in its facts. Fortunately, those upon which I find it necessary to draw do not have to be correct to the last detail: an error of a century or two makes no basic difference to me. This is fortunate, for the knowledge we have of the past is generally still the subject of learned debates. The geography which I demand, and you must possess to understand this theory, is also unhampered by even considerable errors. In short, only a superficial knowledge of the generalities of both is essential at all. The historical aspect of the theory requires only a list of the successive centers of civilization, arranged chronologically. These are, I think, as follows: China, India, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, Spain and/or France, and England. If you feel that I have erred here, the order in which I have placed these nations is my own personal opinion on the matter, and your agreement is now necessary. However, I do not make the claim that each of these countries added something to the general sum of civilization. All I ask is the admission that this is the order in which the countries named seized or had supremacy or dominance in the world. This is not taken to mean in the sense of economic or military leadership, although some surely possessed this, but in the sense that the culture which each country had at some time was the best to be found; this, of course, also implies that we have the same viewpoint on culture, but that is not important. Having granted this order, we now pass to the geographical field. Here, I wish that you would look at, or imagine, a map of the world. That is all. Having obtained the ingredients, we will now essay a mixture, hoping that the elements will fuse in some way. The first nation on our historical list is China; let us then direct our attention to China on the map. Then to the second on the list, India; to reach it on the map, we move to the west of China. Then Babylon; we move now west of India. To Egypt, west from Babylon; then again west to Greece; now we sail into the setting sun and reach Rome; ever moving westward, we sweep into Spain and France; the ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM trail seems to move westward across the Channel, and hesitates in England as though unsure of its future movements. We have now made a regularly westward progression from China to England. The direction of our travel has not changed or suffered reversal. There could be, if we were on the watch for conclusions, only one drawn: the progress of civilization is from east to west. Where can it go now? Only west again, and the logical country west of Britain is the United States. But there, I have drawn a conclusion, and I apologize. There are a multitude of objections to this theory, if such it be, and no one is more conscious of them than I. But it is an observation, and one which may prove of value in reassuring the sophisticated Americans that they are not perishing from the earth, but are, on the contrary, just beginning to rise from the ashes. The first objection to this is that there apparently is no reason for the geographical progression: that is, geography is only incidental. Probably this objection is valid; I cannot dispose of it, except to repeat the statement made about geography affecting culture 13 through language. The Frenchman speaks six times as rapidly as the South Sea Islander, and the ratio of their cultures is even greater; could not the climates be the cause of this? In the absence of greater research work than has been done to the present time, this will be purely a matter of personal opm1on. Another objection would be that there now is a water gap between the old and possible new centers of civilization. But cannot the water gap between Egypt and Greece be likened unto it, when the two means of transportation are taken into consideration, as in a proportion to the distances? Then they are, I think, comparable. There may be, and probably are, many other more serious objections. But they are all objections to the attempt to predict; not to the observation itself. It is made, and can be taken for whatever value you wish to assign to it. I am not capable of a valiant defense on its behalf, but I hope that there is something of truth both in the observation and the almost totally embryonic conclusions which I have drawn from it; apologetically, of course.-J. L. H. The Letter Setteth Free spirit killeth; the letter setT HE teth free." Thus did T. S. Eliot once paraphrase an old and venerated epigram, the memory of which led President Stringfellow Barr to deliver one of the most stimulating lectures we can remember hearing at St. John's. As is customary, Mr. Barr gave the first Formal Lecture of the scholastic year to the students and members of the Faculty, on the topic, Grammar. The lecturer, speaking of grammar, gave an excellent exhibition of rhetoric. His talk was smooth, yet animated, and he somehow managed to space it with anecdotes which did not distract the students' attention from the theme. Mr. Barr has that happy faculty of making the complex seem simple, while still giving credit to the listener for understanding the complex. Not that one may ever boast of understanding �14 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM a lecture here, except in part; the lecturers force the students to raise themselves to the speaker's level, or fall by the wayside. Though we do not pretend to have understood it, the most exciting thing Mr. Barr said pertained to the Renaissance, and indirectly to the "intellectual awakening" which every student should undergo at some stage of his career here. The Renaissance, he said, consisted of men using words, and using them often, without realizing their meanings, and then suddenly discovering just what those words did stand for. Words are the parts of grammar, they are the marks we make on paper, or the sounds we utter, or the tools we use to convey ideas. Words, here, as a term, is also symbolic, since it stands for any tools which may be used for the communication of intelligent meanings. The mechanic, the soldier, the sailor, the farmer, the sculptor- each has his proper grammar. The reduction of the Renaissance to these terms made it something vital and comprehensible to the students. For many, it will also serve as a clue to distinguish the "intellectual awakening" from another case of understanding of one term. Mr. Barr, in his similar lecture last year, called grammar "frozen logic." He has since realized that this would make it static, and its dynamic quality, which he brought so forcibly to our attention, belies this definition. The President also referred to a statement he made in the College Convocation, concerning the courage it required to embark on a liberal education in times like these. Instead, he said, it requires faith. Certain it seems, to us, that to a student who as yet does not know the real meaning of the term he is using, it takes more of the latter to continue using it than it does of courage. Faith in the men who insist that the word has a meaning; faith in the men who use the word; and above all, faith that some day he himself will discover that meaning, and have the use of grammar for his own ends. Having only the spirit will kill; "the letter setteth free."-THE CIRCLE. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM We Are Not Alone SINCE a year ago September, some of us have surveyed the generation which we may call our own by birth, and have found little to make us proud of thi·s allegiance. A short while ago, we were appalled to read in the pages of the August and September issues of the Atlantic Monthly, a gentlemanly and distressed query by Professor Arnold Whitridge of Yale University, and its attempted answer by two undergraduates of American colleges: Kingman Brewster, Jr., also of Yale, and Spencer Klaw of Harvard. We were appalled because Mr. Whitridge's honest and interested open letter to those who would fight in the war he foresees, received a reply just as mugwumpian as the young men who had so mystified him. Believing that he did not wish to have his unenviable position magnified but clarified, we feel obligated to answer him further. And this is not only because we seem to be misunderstood ourselves, but also for the reason that we think we represent a sizable bloc of other students in American colleges. Like the gentlemen from Harvard and Yale, we do not presuppose that our views are shared by all, or even a majority, of the rest of us, but we are happy in knowing that we are representative. Succinctness was not one of the virtues of the gentlemen from Harvard and Yale. We shall try to make it ours through natural sympathy and respect for Mr. Whitridge's propitious question. His open letter was more inquiring than challenging, and we propose to treat it as such. Mr. Whitridge's first pertinent remarks dealt with the traditionally impulsive, generous, and idealistic qualities of youth as witnessed in the college press. Not unreasonably, he had gone directly to student publications for his answer. What he discovered there was justly horrifying to him. The Daily Dartmouth was afraid of swinging its emotions to that side which might have less than all the right, and dove headlong for shelter from British and French propaganda; the Harvard Crimson (Mr. Klaw's journal) Munichally demanded peace-at-any-price, and branded expression of belief in the Allied cause as war-mongering; three-hundred students from the same college informed the President that they would never follow in the footsteps of the 1917 alumni; the Yale News (whose chairman is Mr. Brewster) placidly discovered that neither the Allies nor the Nazis had a decided stand as either friend or foe of morality and religion. Regretfully, Mr. Whi tridge extended the list. To counter this evidence, we ourselves have had some experience with collegiate editorializing, and unless the journalists of larger campuses are better for their offices than we were, the great bulk of their printed matter was written in a frenzy with but superficial thought, and taken post-haste to the printers. Authors have been more than once amazed to find what they have written, and since there are not many lexicographers among us, too few have analyzed their own words with the keen incisive investigations that have been made into the words of others. This may serve as a reminder that Mr. Whitridge's sources of information are not infallible. It is an extremely simple matter to make a profession of faith; this is the a priori cause of Mr. Whitridge's inquiry. Precisely because it is not difficult to pay lip-service to strange �16 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM gods, youth has often left its heart out of its mouth, and kept its traditional impulses, generosities, and ideals obscured, to the understandable bewilderment of Mr. •Whitridge and his kith. We realize that thus far we have made an apology; a conclusion on our part which the gentlemen from Harvard and Yale evidently failed to comprehend in their own reply. We cease to fight the duel; there is little need for one. We believe that never before m the world's memory has there been an issue as clear-cut as the one being settled now by the Battle of Britain. As proof, it may be seen that from the conflagration in England, there leads a highly incendiary fuse to numerous small but powerful powder kegs dotting the entire surface of the globe. Upon the worst fate of Britain hangs the worst fate of South America, the Empire, the British navy, which has so long and with so eminent a success guarded, and still guards, our Atlantic coast; the Dutch East Indies, Indo-China, and thereby the sole supply route to Chiang Kai Shek's armies battling the Japanese invader; thus the fate of China herself; Japan's policy will be shaped by the outcome, and this, it is agreed, will profoundly effect America's Far-Eastern policy, and subsequently our naval plans for national defense. Further may we cite the fact that the Nazi philosophy of life is based upon the assumption that man is by nature an indolent, weak, and indecisive animal, not social, but seeking to be left in his own small world, and desiring to have his decisions made by men whose word he has not the right to question. Opposed to this is the British democracy, which may be classed by some as a poor example of what the democratic state should be, but yet firmly believes that man is by nature a rational, social, idealistic, strong animal, each individual having a certain fundamental dignity, which requires that the first duty of the governing power shall be to have the consent of those who are to be governed. This is as clean a philosophical break as could be imagined in any abstract argument. But this is by no means abstract; it is living, forceful, yet profound. The very physical means which the combatants choose to wage their war may be the same. But the manners by which these instruments are used to achieve the ends sought are just as vitally incongruous as the philosophical assumption that led to their construction. Religiously, one side has found the Church its greatest stumbling block; the other has found God a source of comfort. Morally, there is no military compunction on the part of the one, but when the enemy has chosen his weapons, none but a fool would use those inferior to his, regardless of the moral indignation at being forced to use them. Some suppose that Britain's ideals are not our ideals, but they are ours if only because those of Germany are not and could never be American. We have said that the choice of weapons is not England's own; likewise if, though God grant it not, we should ever be compelled to fight, it will not be ours to make a choice. Conscription has been condemned as a dictatorial method of raising physical strength, but we must fight fire with fire in the absence of something stronger than flames. It has been said that democracy cannot combat total war without itself becoming a dictatorship, and that also once the fundamental liberties contained in the Bill of Rights have been usurped for a period, then we have ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM forever sold our birthright for a pot of porridge. This is profoundly and historically untrue. It has been the experience of every democracy that, in time of crisis, freedom disappears, but certainly not forever. And may we present as evidence the authority of Woodrow Wilson in 1917 and 1918, and inquire as to whether the freedom of the American individual failed to re-appear. The word propaganda today has the same connotations that the word witch had in old Salem. Applied to any article, to any written or spoken word, it labels it as untrue, malicious, and inciting emotional epilepsy. The gentlemen from Harvard and Yale seem to have forgotten that it was propaganda that made our Founding Fathers libertyconscious in 1776; that it was propaganda that aroused the nation to fight infantile paralysis, and is now forcing it to fight syphilis; that it is propaganda that elects the President of the United States. Yet we feel that they would be the first to condone its use here. Propaganda, then, is another term for high-pressure salesmanship, and must be judged not absolutely but relative to the product it attempts to place in popular favor. Bearing this in mind, the name of propaganda need frighten no one who retains his intellectual freedom and reserves the right to make his individual judgments. Mr. Whitridge's attempt to excuse our generation by placing the blame on his own is an appreciated gesture, but no more actual than the dogma that the Versailles Treaty is the fountainhead from whence flow all our troubles today. The preservation of democracy is an intricate task. It calls for more blood and tears, sweat and toil than any other with which wemayconfrontourselves. If the past has taught us at all, it has taught us that America is capable of heroic exertions. We believe that the victory of sweetness and light over the forces of evil and darkness can be attained. And if only because it can be, we shall see it done. Here we take our stand, in the name of our impulses, our occasional generosities and, above all, our ideals.- F. S. M., JR. AND J. L. H. ATHLETIC ACTIVITIES AN annual visitor to St. John's, were he observant, would notice the distinct improvement in the equipment of the athletic corner of the College. A new diamond shines in the setting sun, and the coaches and referees now caper energetically in smart, though ill-fitting, blue tights. Inside the red-brick gymnasium new rowing machines have been installed, new wrestling mats laid down, and an extra squash court built. The reason for all this development is not that there has been an athletic endowment, but rather that the size of the College has been doubled by incoming freshmen, and accommodation has had to be made for their desire to blow off steam. Another result of the increase in numbers has been the redivision of the teams. Instead of banding together in respective houses, players are now vaunting the current prowess of their seminars, although the highly technical method of numbering seminars is rather cumbersome for the supporter, who roots loudly for his beloved "seminar 2ab." Perhaps the names of the seminar leaders might make the teams less impersonal, and more worth risking one's neck for. However the main result of the redistribution has been to create more teams, and thus make competition greater, and possibly healthier. �18 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM The only two veterans of the palmy days of intercollegiate athletics are sailing and fencing, and they are continuing in this vein throughout the year. Apart from these two sports the program is an entirely intramural one, having been established with the object of fuller participation by more scholars, and a shift of the emotional energy expended on intercollegiate teams to other presumably more worthy fields. There are, however, rewards offered for individual and team achievements, in the forms of golden charms, college blazers, and a choice of athletic equipment for the winner of the "outstanding athlete" race, competed for on a points basis. And now the season is beginning, the seminars, stimulated by dialectic, are ready to throw themselves into the feast of sports that awaits them. Touch football, softball, sailing and soccer are already here. Fencing and basketball are on their way. Harder studying makes for more free time, it has been said, so let everyone wallow in an orgy of mental calisthenics, and then participate in the sports program, making it fulfil its purpose of greater enrollment and greater enjoyment for all.-W. T. H. IN PRAISE OF IMPROPAGANDA PROPAGANDA is addressed to passion and prejudice. But you seldom find any in the dead letter office. This means that we should cultivate sweet reason-within the walls of the dead letter office. Subversive elements are always injecting propaganda into our national life. For instance, now comes the rumor that someone wants to do away with the Army Regulations that require in every soldier ten pairs of teeth, upper and lower, capable of meeting between decks. This appears a monstrous pro- posal, and the rumor is probably propaganda. The army has always required ten pairs of teeth. But impropaganda immediately suggests that perhaps it wouldn't be so bad to modify the rule anyway. After all, such a regulation is undoubtedly a survival of earlier days and not justified by the conditions of modern warfare. In a cave man army, ten pairs of teeth, capable of meeting each other, were also capable of meeting the enemy. And even as late as the Civil War, when teeth were used for opening cartridges, a toothless infantryman looked dangerous to the enemy-until he smiled. But we think this antiquated rule has now become subversive. Why should our army continue to insist upon naturally grown teeth when science has demonstrated the acceptability of the mechanized units on sale by reputable dealers everywhere? Of course, only genuine replacement parts, bearing the Seal of Approval of the American Dental Association and installed by an authorized dealer, should be recognized. This is our guarantee of satisfactory workmanship and the maintenance of prices in keeping with our national defense requirements. But with these safeguards the army could well relax the rule and thereby make available for national defense untold thousands of our citizens in this emergency. In fact, the whole set of physical requirements should be streamlined and brought up to date. The conditions of total war require that every possible resource be devoted to the service of the state. This is no time for rejecting any reasonable proposition. Science and industry, if left unhampered, could undoubtedly throw into the field countless secret weapons of proven quality ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM and recognized effectiveness. We might even see the day when the flower of our army would be a mighty pansy division of 100,000 mechanized eunuchs, all bearing a Seal of Approval of Good Housekeeping Institute.-ERASMUS. Second Fiddle ALTHOUGH we had not heard any orchestral music for three months before Leopold Stokowski's performance in Baltimore some weeks ago, we were almost sure our untrained ears were not deceiving us when they told us that the All-American Youth Orchestra was considerably better than it was before it left on its South American tour of glory. The coordination of the different sections of the orchestra, particularly of the strings, was less seamy, and far above that in the recording of Dvorak's "New World Symphony." Mr. Stokowski has certainly done things in weeks to this orchestra that he spent years doing in Philadelphia. Can it be that the musical youth of America is more docile? The playing was the Youth Orchestra, the program was Stokowski. The Bach was entirely composed of his "arrangements" of that notable composer. It was better than the newest renditions of Tschaikowsky in dance bands, but it was far from being Bach, although no mention of Stokowski's free transcriptions was made in the program. No orchestra alive could hope to reproduce the shades and interweavings of tone and parts that Bach intended for a small orchestra, and although the Youth Orchestra attempted the impossible rather heroically, they lost too much of Bach to make it a great performance from the composer's point of view, or for that matter from the Bach lover's standpoint. But it was a gratifying display of technique and orchestral experience. Shostakovich is a Soviet composer, and despite the efforts of the orchestra to straight-jacket the music into some order, he remained a composer for the Soviets. The drums were very finely played, and well used musically, and the marimbaphone did much more than merely excite the audience's curiosity, but the stimulus given by this music was not the one we associate with concert halls, but rather with ballroomsexciting and vigorous, nevertheless. In all the Bach was well arranged, but only 50 per cent Bach, and Shostakovich was novel and stimulating. The orchestra was fine, and played like veterans, and Stokowski is undoubtedly the best "Arranger," besides having those unforgettable hands.- N ERO. Decca has issued an album of New Orleans jazz, played by some twenty musicians who are from that city or thereabout. There have been attempts to vulgarize New Orleans jazz in order to popularize it, as in the case of Bob Crosby's orchestra, but this album is an earnest effort to represent this early jazz in its original and best form, and by its most reputed artists. In trying to reach the apex in this type of jazz, Stephen Smith and Charles Edward Smith, who directed these "sessions" for Decca, succeeded in recording together, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet for the first time since the days of the Red Onion Jazz Babies and the Clarence Williams Blue Five. The fact that these two musicians are considered the greatest jazzmen to have blown into a horn shows �20 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM the degree of importance of having recorded them together once more. However, in this album, Decca achieved something greater than recording "King" Louis and "Pops" Bechet: it waxed some discs by Johnny Dodds, the greatest clarinet player in the realm of jazz, the man whose name is synonymous with the hot clarinet, but most of all, the musician who played righteous music until his dying day; a day when his sincerity could bring him nothing more than a bare living, if not poverty. New Orleans at the turn of the century was the center of gambling, drinking and prostitution. At that time, it was also rocking the cradle of jazz, a music that arose from and had become a combination of the work songs and the blues of the slaves, of the festive New Orleans marches and of the French quadrilles. Naturally, New Orleans holds a very sentimental place in the hearts of the followers of hot music. A New Orleans type of band usually consists of a trumpet, a trombone, a clarinet and a rhythm section. In the ensembles, the trumpet plays the melody or the lead, while the clarinet plays above the trumpet and complements it. The trombone plays between the harmony and the rhythm and "pushes" the trumpet from below. Of course, in its ideal form, New Orleans jazz should be played without a written score, that is, it should be totally improvised. In many cases in this album, the music lives up to the New Orleans tradition. Unfortunately, in other cases, the Fiftysecond Street influence has been too great to overcome and the old spirit seems to be lost. This is especially apparent on the Red Allen sides. The classical collective improvisation works at its best on the Johnny Dodds and the Jimmy Noone sides, which were made in Chicago. The musicians here seem nearer to the real thing than the other groups which recorded in New York. At the Chicago session, Preston Jackson plays a trombone which establishes him as one of the greatest. He is greatly instrumental in making those records what they are. As the listeners will notice, most of the sides are blues. I found Johnny Dodds' "Gravier Street Blues" to be the best in that it is the most nostalgic blues and that it keeps its intensity of sadness from beginning to end. It is played in the old tradition from Lonnie Johnson's guitar to Natty Dominique's trumpet. The "219 Blues," played by Louis and Bechet, is one of the earliest blues known. "Jelly Roll" Morton, the living legend of jazz, says that it is "the first blues I have no doubt heard." It is about two trains, the 219 that goes west and the 217 that returns to New Orleans. Sidney Bechet, the most lyrical of jazz musicians, plays a beautiful obligato to Louis' vocal on this blues. He is also excellent on "Perdido Street Blues," although he doesn't equal Johnny Dodds on the earlier recording of the same tune by the New Orleans Wanderers. This album is the logical beginning for the uninitiated. For those familiar with this thing called jazz, there are more than enough kicks to make up for the disappoin tmen ts.-AHMED ERTEGUN, '44. TRIVIA HERE at the college, we welcome a new Director of Music; and note that the old one is safely over the border. Dorothy Dunbar Bromley told us last month in Harper's that "Wendell L. Wilkie's self-assurance is great." We wonder why she bothered? 21 Mr. Barr passed a persistent Indian Summer with Mr. Strohmeyer of the Annapolis Housing Authority. The War and the College- One of the Freshmen has the largest collection of tin soldiers in the world. Someone asked the other night, "Why do we need Eliot, we have wars." Somebody had it that under a long range upward and onward movement, the administration has its eye on Bancroft Hall. On the whole, the innovations at Convocation the other afternoon had us rather tipsy-especially Mr. Barr. With Jolson back on Broadway, who could possibly object to one more Barrymore divorce? One of the townsfolk asked us on the street the other day if "that Dr. Martin" had had any trouble with the Federal Investigation of un-American Activities which took place in Annapolis this summer. Last week we got involved in a stuffy political argument. The Republican gesture definitely had the majority. For our part, we're still in doubt. What do you think, Willkie or won't he? Those who know the St. John's seal will recognize the cover's mother. Some may wonder about the spots on the top three books, and some may recognize them as symbols for the three Liberal Arts: grammar, rhetoric, and logic. What we like about the whole thing, however, is that little business in the middle book, the sign of rhetoric. The triangle represents the formal cause; the square, the material; and the circle, the final. After scratching our heads over this for a while, we decided that it must be that the triangle was chosen because it was so sharp, or so hot as Plato says, the square was obviously earthy, and together they made the circle which, being the result of the hot and earthy, was perfect.-R. H. Books Out of Time and Mind. Mr. L. H. Myers is a novelist who is forever surprising us. Each of his four novels is a thing apart, having few similarities. The Orissers, his first work of fiction, was written fifteen years ago, but the book seems to have come from a more distant past. Peopled with indeterminate and brutal characters, the family of Orisser was a strange mixture of vengeance, supplication and discontent in an early nineteenth-century atmosphere. The prevailing catastrophic mood of the book has placed it in the gallery of the grotesque, where it has not perished. For his second novel Mr. Myers took us on a yachting party down the Amazon with modern English sophisticates. The Clio was a light book compared with The Orissers, and we should not have known Mr. Myers capable of so charming a comedy of manners but for the signature. Strange Glory, published only a few years before The Root and the Flower, convinced us of the author's versatility, but reminded us �22 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM that that quality is more often indicative of progressive talent. Mr. Myers' new novel, The Pool of Vishnu, is a sequel to this last, and although it can be accepted out of sequence, recollections of the first book can do little harm, and will perhaps do much toward an understanding of the other. To detach himself and his readers from the problems of our time for the purposes of fictionizing problems of all times, Mr. Myers has made India in the reign of Elizabeth his scene. The temptation to write a purely historical novel has been resisted, and only a few of the characters are drawn with particular attention to fact. The Emporer Akbar, his difficult sons, Salim and Daniyal, and the ruler's personal adviser, Shaik Mobarek, did actually exist, and provide the novelist with the screen on which to present his own creations. The two heirs in their ruthless battle for their father's favor supply intrigue and melodrama enough to please Mr. Louis Bromfield, whose more minor personages find lesser troubles in a similar setting. Involved in the royal indecisions are Rajah Amar and his family, who are Mr. Myers' main concern. Prince J ali, son of Amar and his wife, Sita, is the principal in '!'he Root and the Flower. He is twelve years old at the beginning of the book, and although he remains obscure in the first chapters, the second part is titled with his name. It is here that J ali is most closely studied. An adolescent introvert, J ali is eager for spiritual and worldly happiness. His hesitations, his sudden leap toward the latter, and the remorse that follows afford Mr. Myers the opportunity to show Jali to us. And what Mr. Myers shows us is the premature bitterness in a young prince, his realization of anticipated pain, and the wisdom gained from unfortunate but revealing experience. Prince J ali of Vidyapur is comparable to Doctor Aziz in Mr. E. M. Forster's Passage to India, for these two with their remarkable insight, their grudging delight in human relations are closely akin. The analogy, however, cannot be stressed, for the lessons derived from their separate experiences are not even distantly like. Mr. Forster's novel ends in a failure, Mr. Myers' m a fulfillment. Prince J ali is not as prominent in '!'he Pool of Vishnu, but we leave him in a completely happy and resolved state. He has been helped toward this solution by the Guru, who is the habitual philosopher of Mr. Myers' long novel. Poet, priest, and doctor of spirits, the Guru makes all other characters subservient in the sequel. It is through his quiet conversations that the spiritual and romantic complications and bewilderments are solved. The inclination to call the books philosophical novels because of the great quantity of speculation is treacherous. In the prefatory note to '!'he Root and '!'he Flower Mr. Myers disproves personified abstractions, and in his novel he has made fast his belief. Mr. Myers has a great passion for detail, but it is scarcely a laborious one, and requires no labor to enjoy. He is a good novelist; that is to say he presents his characters in detail not by conveying their every quality immediately, but in revealing them gradually in the characters' relations to other characters. Seemingly a basic aspect of the novel, it is seldom performed with more facility. The attraction India holds for the ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM British novelist is one that has increased that country's place in fiction. The difficulty before has been in combining East with West. Rudyard Kipling believed the two could meet "When two strong men stand face to face." E. M. Forster does not care for the strong and indicates that the union is impossible. L. H. Myers has departed from the Anglo-Indian conflict and given us India alone. But his individuality in so giving it resembles Mr. Forster's problem of "Only connect" in the fact that there are no novelists quite like them. We liken Mr. Myers to Mr. Forster, but hope he will not be so silent. Virginia Woolf has forsaken experimentation and written a pleasing biography of Roger Fry, the English art cr1t1c. If we judge from the brief prefatory note, the book may be called the 'official biography', but Mrs. Woolf has by no means succumbed to Victorian tradition in that field. Like the biographers of the late nineteenth century, she has made use of letters, Fry's autobiographical notes, and recollections by his friends, but she has not connected these with superfluities. Virginia Woolf knew Roger Fry intimately, which fact enlarges her scope considerably, but not once are we aware of their friendship. Indeed, the author is often unreasonably impersonal. She is putting her theory of biography into practise. Mrs. Woolf has had a great deal to say about biography, and before his death, Roger Fry remarked that she might write his own life. She has done so, but there is nothing exceptional in her methods. The conceptions she might have had have already been demonstrated. Orlando, a novel in the 23 biographic style, is not admittedly fiction, and if Orlando did not actually exist she/he certainly should have. Mrs. Woolf here created a character about whom she could write a biography. This is a method others have resorted to with persons who have lived. Knowing that that is the wrong way to go about it, the author was wise to invent a personality she could know thoroughly. In Flush, a life" of Elizabeth Barrett's spaniel, Mrs. Woolf observed the Brownings in canine adjectives; words that smelled and saw, words that did not hear, but words that understood. The book is delightful, and an interesting experiment, but unfortunately we can't generalize about Flush's mind. Mrs. Woolf has come back to regulations in Roger Fry. She has shown us the Quaker home of the artist, Cambridge, Bloomsbury, the War, and their effects on a sensitive mind. She has also given us Fry's own record of experiences with Pierpont Morgan. This makes the most amusing part of the book. Morgan, who bought pictures as he did stocks, was the power behind the Metropolitan Museum, of which Fry was curator for several years. He was dismissed because he had bought for the Museum a picture Morgan wanted for his own gallery. In Roger Fry's own words, Morgan's "crude historical imagination was the only fault in an otherwise perfect insensibility." Mrs. Woolf has concentrated on recording things that happened. She has not mixed fact and fiction. For herself, she does not have much to say, but her way of saying things about Roger Fry convinces us of his talents and ofherown.-F. M. �ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM CINEMA Holland, the moments m the tower of WHEN Vincent Sheean wrote his auto- Westminster, the sinking Clipper, the biography more than a dozen years ago, final air raid-all are pleasantly joined. there followed promptly a series of The whole film is one big chase. The memoirs by other journalists who had American reporter is after the assassin witnessed extraordinary occurrences of one of Europe's most distinguished He chases right through abroad. The personal historians brought peacemaker. to the end, when he discovers that his together their old articles, connected potential father-in-law is the British themwith impersonal beliefs, were briefly agent for a foreign government. We praised, and went back to the relative aren't told which foreign government, obscurity of the newspaper columns. In the past few years there has been a for Hitchcock was well aware that we all revival of reportorial recollections. This knew about that before the film started. The spy is played with customary has produced books by Pierre van suavity by Herbert Marshall, whom it Paasen, Lillian Mowrer and othersis nice to see out of martyrdom. Joel books superior to Sheean's. And now McCrea is admirable as the correspondHollywood has adopted the fashion. ent. The chase becomes his talents. Judging from their first product, Alfred Laraine Day joins the hunt attractively. Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, the George Sanders, Albert Basserman, and adoption is not to be deplored. Robert Benchley combine to make the Concerning themselves with Europe, cast well proportioned. motion picture producers have given us Foreign Correspondent is the best a varied assortment of attitudes since example we know illustrating the powers September a year ago. From the charmof the movie director. The story and ing satire that was Ninotchka they have players are not particularly notable, but arrived at the ostensibly revealing but the camera asides, the gestures of the eminently saturating type of production. extraseach of these means something When such novels as '!'he Mortal Storm to Alfred Hitchcock, and he develops are turned into movies, any subtleties their possibilities. The overhead view the books might have possessed are conof the umbrellas at the assassination , siderably diminished. the pantomine of the man trying to Mr. Walter Wanger's original plan cross the street as the pursuing cars for Foreign Correspondent was to dramarush by, the brief glimpse of the broken tize Sheean's Personal History, but all adaptations were unsuccessful. Recall- letters in the neon Hotel Europe sign. ing that book, we understand the diffi- These are moments that we remember culties scenarists must have had with the above the climaxes. Hitchcock directs movies as Miss Leslie Ford writes deRayna Prome episode- the one memotective stories- with concentration on rable part of the memoir. But Director atmosphere. He is the one director in Hitchcock, "master of suspense," saw Hollywood who manages to create as an opportunity to dispense with all his well as duplicate the script. Immediately directorial inhibitions, and somehow classed as melodrama, Foreign Corresponcreated a story to accompany them. dent does not depart from the category. Surprisingly, a conglomerative mass of But when good melodrama comes from melodrama does not result. The assas- California, we are reassured of the sination, the scenes in the windmill in cinema's forte.- S. VASHTAR. THE PLAY LATE last spring, Flora Robson deserted the Warner Brothers and came to New York to appear in Gilbert Miller's production of Ladies in Retirement. It was good to see her out of Elizabethan costume, especially in so fine a play. There are seldom successful attempts to write murder-mysteries for the stage. Playwrights either create the absurdly grotesque or try to turn popular detective stories into balanced dramas. Both ventures are invariably disastrous. But Ladies in Retirement is as pretty a piece of murder as we've seen in a long while. Not since Emlyn Williams' Night Must Fall has there been such accomplished artistry in the portrayal of crime. Reginald Denham and Edward Percy, who wrote the play, are adept in creating inhibited ladies. In this case, the lady protectorate over her pleasantly insane sisters, kills her employer, the lady with a past. Her motives are admirable, and after the deed is done at the end of the first act, we heartily sympathize with the character in her naive methods of concealing the crime. The murder is done, by the way, with the victim sitting at the piano playing "Tit-Willow." Never again will we hear that tune without remembering Miss Robson creeping up with the sash to the dressing gown. The Theatre Guild has apparently bought the play from Mr. Miller, and intends to send it on the road. Ladies in Retirement is a play the Guild itself would have done well to produce. There is something in the suggestion that they purchase all their plays from Mr. Miller. Flora Robson's performance as the murderess is flawless. She is an actress of splendid stature and distinguished talent. Her job in Ladies in Retirement is bloody, but it reminds us of the English school boy who was asked for Mary Tudor's common epithet. "She was known as Bloody Mary," he said, "but she wasn't half as bloody as you might think." The Theatre Guild has gone back to the classics again, and Mr. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night will be acted again after many years of undeserving silence. Helen Hayes will appear in her second Shakespearian drama, Maurice Evans will add Malvolio to an already overflowing repertoire, and June Walker will speak blank verse for the first time as Maria. Remembering Miss Walker's past performances as a comedienne, she and Sir Toby will undoubtedly steal the show. The production is directed by Margaret Webster, whose experience with Shakespeare is by now complete. We are pleased that the Guild has revived William Saroyan's 'I'ime of Your Life for its out-of-town subscription audiences. This will serve as an auspicious reminder of the days before the daring young man fell off the flying trapeze. We needn't tell you that this play is a masterpiece. Mr. Saroyan has previously done so.-SocRATOTLE. CONTRIBUTORS ScoTT BucHANAN (The War and the College) has been the Dean of St. John's College since the summer of 1937. He had been a member of the Committee on the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago with President Stringfellow Barr and several others of the present faculty during the previous year. Before this Mr. Buchanan had taught philosophy at the University of Virginia, the College of the City of New York and Harvard. He had also been associated with Everett Dean Martin as Assistant Director of the People's Institute in New York. �ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM Mr. Buchanan studied at Amherst, where he later taught Greek; Balliol College, Oxford, and Harvard. He is the author of two books: Possibility and Poetry and Mathematics. A. GRAHAM CAREY, who designed Trivium' s cover, is a partner in the firm of John Stevens in Newport, Rhode Island, which has practised designing and carving of lettering and ornament since 1705. Mr. Carey has also been an architect and silversmith. With John Howard Benson, he is the author of '!'he Elements of Lettering, a discussion of the theoretical, practical and historical elements of that craft. Mr. Carey lectured at St. John's during the first year of the program on medieval craftsmanship. CHARLES GLENN WALLIS ('Two Poems from Charles Baudelaire) is the Editor of St. John's College. He was graduated from the University of Virginia in 1936, and was the youngest member of the Committee on the Liberal Arts at the University of Chicago during 1936-37. Coming to Annapolis with other members of this Committee in 1937, Mr. Wallis immediately set about translating some of the books that were to be used in the St. John's Program. With other members of the faculty, he has translated those great books which are either out of print, or those which had not been previously published in English. Mr. Wallis has also made new translations of works which had been done before in our language. His translation of Plato's Meno, the dialogue that is most intensely studied in the Greek tutorials in the freshman year at St. John's, was published by the College last spring. The first four books of Aristotle's Nature and '!'he Fifth Ennead of Plotinus have also been newly translated by Mr. Wallis. Among the books he has translated for the first time into English are St. Bonaventure's Reduction of Arts to 'l'heology; On Light by Robert Grosseteste; On the Revolutions of the Spheres of Copernicus; and Kepler's Epitome of Astronomy. Each of these books has been made available in mimeographed form for students at St. John's College, although copies may be bought by persons not in the College. Mr. Wallis' translations of Copernicus and Kepler are soon to be published by Random House. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM Two Poems from Charles Baudelaire UN VOYAGE A CYTHERE Like a bird my heart rose up in joyful flight and soared in liberty above the shrouds. The boat rolled on 'neath skies unmarred by clouds like an angel drunken on the radiant sunlight. What is that sad dark island?-Cythe ra's strand: how well our songs and legends tell its joys: banal eldorado for aged playboys: observe it: all in all, rather poor land. -Isle of the heart: holidays, billets-doux, the ghost of Venus in her arrogant bloom floats o'er your waters like an old perfume, charging our minds with love,-and langor too. Sweet island of green myrtles and brown flowers, always in honor held by every nation, where sighs of hearts in loving adoration roll like the fragrance from roseladen bowers or like a dovecote cooing eternally: -Cythera had become but desert land, where only shrill cries troubled the stones and sand. And yet a singular object caught my eye: no sculptured temple shaded by tall trees where the young priestess, cherishing her flowers, walked on, her body burnt by secret powers, half-opening her dress to the cool breeze: In following the shoreline rather closely (our white sails caused the seabirds mild alarms) we saw a gallows stretching out three arms like a cypress, blackly separate from the sky. Ferocious carrion birds perched on their prey destroyed with rage a corpse now over-ripe. . . Each thrust his foul beak, like a monstrous dram pipe, into each bleeding morsel of this decay. �'.2.8 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM There were holes for eyes. And from the overflowing belly, the heavy bowels spilt on the thighs. His executioners, gorged on their hideous prize, had absolutely gelded him with their pecking. The stalls and booths of years back shape the scene: I see what broken columns in my mind, brown bushes, slabs by rain and slop turned green, the paving too with glittering rubbish lined. A pack of brutes, with muzzles lifted for his feet, competed ravenously for the feast. Amid them raged one even huger beast like an executive among his corps. There used to be a zoo here, long ago. I saw one morning when beneath the fair chill skies Labor awakes, and when the flow of traffic darkens through the silent air, Cythera's dweller, son of a sky so blue, how silently you suffered those insults in expiation for your infamous cults and sins that have denied the grave to you. a swan that had escaped from his ribbed cage scratching the pavingstones, sickly and weak, on the hard ground trailing his white plumage. Near a dried stream the bird opened his beak, Corpse-clown, your sorrows are my own: I felt -at sight of your limbs dangling wretchedlylike a long vomit, rise up from my belly the gall and sorrows my past years had dealt. bathed nervously his wings in the fine dust, and said (his heart could native waters feel), -Rain, will you pour? Ah! thunder, will you peal? I see this bird, (the myth is hard and just) With you, poor devil of too dear memory, I suffered every beak and grinding jaw of stabbing ravens, panthers with sharp claw that loved to lacerate my flesh and me. like man in Ovid, sometimes toward the sky, a sky ironical and cruelly blue, on quivering neck thrust his head avidly, as though to God he spoke reproaches too. The sky was lovely, and how calm the sea! But all I saw was blood and blackness there. Alas! For as in a shroud heavy and bare, my heart lay buried in this allegory. Nothing found upright in your island, Venus, but an ideal gallows where my image sways .... Give me the strength and courage, Lord, to gaze on my body and my heart without disgust. LE CYGNE I Andromache, I think of you!-This stream, a weak and tarnished mirror where once shone majestic sorrow in your widow's dream -false Simois that with your tears has grown, has fertilized my memory like begged storm. O'er the new Carrousel I walked apart; old Paris is no more (a city's form changes more quickly than a mortal heart): II Paris changes, yet in my melancholy nothing has budged, scaffolds and towers and blocks, old suburbs, all become an allegory, and my dear memories are hard as rocks. Before the Louvre a shape troubles me too: I think of my great swan, his crazy style, ridiculous and noble like an exile, gnawed by desire forever. Then at you, Andromache, fall'n with your husband's doom, dumb cow beneath the hand of proud Pyrrhus, kneeling in ecstasy by empty tomb, Hector's widow, and wife to Helenus. -And of the thin, consumptive negress too, tramping through mud, seeking with haggard eye for absent palms of superb Africa that despite wall of the deep fog shine through; �30 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM -of those who've lost what's never found again, of those whose tears fall in unceasing showers, who suckle Grief (their cradle shewolf's den); of puny orphans withering like flowers! TRIVIUM-ON THE STAGE Now that you have read Trivium' s first issue, you can judge its faults and merits. If you like it-if you would like to see more of it-you may subscribe for this year by sending a check or money order to "Trivium," St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., with your name and address. Your criticisms of the magazine will be accepted gratefully. 7frivium is meant to be a good magazine, of interest to the reading public, but especially of interest to those who are following the new program at St. John's. If you belong to either class, or if you wish to read what undergraduates write in both their lighter and more serious moments, it is hoped that you are pleased with this, its initial appearance, and will witness its soughtfor improvement and growth in the issues to come. In the forest where my spirit's in exile Reechoes an old memory like blown horn: I think of sailors lost on desert isle, of captives, vanquished, ... and of many more! -C. G. WALLIS. r---------------------------- 7 II TRIVIUM l (FILL OUT WITH PENCIL, PLEASE) I _ ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE ANNAPOLIS, MD. J I Gentlemen: I I I I I am enclosing my check for two dollars, for which please send me Trivium for the year November 1940 to June 1941. I I I I l I I I NAME---------------------- l ADDRESS I l I ____________ ----------------- I I I I I I L----------------------------~ �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>St. John's Trivium</em> Description An account of the resource A short-lived magazine edited and published by St. John's College students in 1940. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright.</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Trivium Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 17 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's Trivium, November 1940 Description An account of the resource St. John's Trivium, volume 1, issue 1 (November 1940) issue. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mason, Francis S., Jr. (Editor) Hedeman, John L. (Editor) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright.</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Trivium_1940November Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f108bc6f2ece5f74234f82ed7d57c2f1.pdf ffbdafa07ce669d1f983f972bb702ff2 PDF Text Text ST. JOHN'S T R IV IU M Of Doom and Hope . ... . .. . . . .. . . . .by Richard Kuehn emund (College Bites Housin g Autho rity) ... . . ... . . ... .an editorial "The Dictat or" Reviewed DEC EMB ER, 1940 Twenty-Jive cents �CONTENTS TRIVI UM Edi to rials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Of Doom and Hope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 A Letter Home . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 4 Second Fiddle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 7 The Blues. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I 8 The Awakening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Impropaganda ...................... ................... . .... 25 Books .. .... ...................... ...................... ... 26 Book Notes .. 30 Idiotica. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Cinema ...................... ...................... ........ 32 Trivia ...................... ....... •. •. • • • • •. • • • • • • • • •. • • • • 35 The Play . ..... ...................... ...................... 36 Contributors ...................... ...................... ... 39 Editors: FRANCIS S. MASON, Treasurer: JR., '43 A. ScoTT ABBOTT, Circulation: WILLIAM Departments Etc.: STERN, '43; T. AND JOHN Louis HEDEMAN, '43. '43, HART, '43; RoBERT HUNTER, JAMES S. MARTIN, WILLIAM BRUBECK, '44 '43; MARTIN ANDREWS, '43; ADRIAN MAYER, '43; HERBERT VoL. 1 DECEMBER, 1940 No. 2 Editorials Reason and Authority in the Modem World. It all started last November. The Director of the Annapolis Housing Authority asked That Man Barr whether the College would like to get rid of the now famous five and one third acres of the back campus. The College replied that he did not want to get rid of them because the rest of the College had athletic and other plans for the land. The thing went under ground. The College on the hill passed through the winter in blissful ignorance that intrigues, machinations, conferences, objections were being committed, plotted, had, and made. "They" finally decided the College would be glad to get rid of the land. The-long-winter-evenings' occupation of deciding this point was not marred by anyone's asking anyone outright whether anything was true or not. All seminar participants can readily understand this. But came the spring. On May I 5th the College got a letter saying the Housing Authority had ordered Mr. Stromeyer, its Chairman, to get the land from the College. The College asked the Board and the Board told him no. Quickly replied the Authority that he hoped the College would cooperate with him in getting the land turned over because if the College did not cooperate, the Authority would take it anyhow. This shows the similarity between the cooperative state and the corporative state and explains the Berlin-Moscow treaty. The College decided to be liberal and hold on to the land unless Authority could show reason. Followed several conferences. The Authority and his four cooperative members met with the College, the Dean, the Secretary of the Board of Visitors, the Admiral, the Mayor, and the County Health Director. The Authority reasoned. Seminar Leaders Nos. I and 2, used to simple matters like Plotinos, Apollonius, Ptolemy, Newton, Einstein, Timaeus, were unable to get their teeth into it. Neither was anyone else, although teeth were clearly shown. June IO the Board of Visitors met, examined maps, read correspondence, discussed, and decided not to hand over the booty. Thinking perhaps one Authority could understand another, the Chairman of the Board of Visitors asked the Administrator of the USHA how to understand it. He was told the idea was unintelligible. The Annapolis Authority tried to unscrew the matter by making the following proposition: The College owned about eight or nine acres of unimproved land. The Authority would take about five of these and in return would improve the remaining two or three and create another somehow in College Creek and thereby make an even swap with the College acre for acre. The College, having read St. Thomas and Calvin, knew that only one Being could create and, 3 �4 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM that He was inscrutable. This unscrewed everything. On August 1st a little man walked in and presented the College with a paper full of legal language, which the Evening Capital reported had been filed "reluctantly" by the Authority in the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County. The same newspaper contained a story, "Rotary Club Opposes College Housing Site." That Man Barr declined to make any press comment. Instead, Barr and Pooh-Bah went to Washington to see the USHA. Said Barr, the roof is coming off in Annapolis. It is bad for houses when the roof comes off. The College believes in houses and would like to see more in Annapolis. Said the USHA, everyone feels sad when he's having his land snatched. We do it all the time. It doesn't hurt if you get used to the idea. Come in next week and talk to our Public Relations man. He will make you feel better. Next week Barr and Pooh-Bah went to see Mr. Prins, who spelled it different from Machiavelli. Said Prins, if you fight, housing will suffer badly; but so will the College for opposing housing. Said the chorus from the College, oh, woeful woe, but you are not right. If you think a fight is not good and call off the dogs, I will not answer the misstatements which have appeared in the press; but unless better reasons are brought forward, I will have to open fire before the College answers the suit so the public will not misunderstand the College. August 19th the ultimatum expired. Barr shot off a ten ton bomb to clear the air. The August 20th Evening Sun said, "Stromeyer Assails Barr in Housing Row." Picking up pieces of the ten ton bomb and combing the plaster out of his hair, the Authority said: "I'm sick and tired of fooling around with an outfit like that. We've filed condemnation suits and it is in the hands of the courts. We're going to continue regardless of who likes it or who doesn't .... "Why, just a few minutes ago I got a telegram from Washington asking me to 'let up.' Just that-to 'let up.' . "They're afraid this will get to Congress, and 1t may hurt chances of getting an appropriation. Well, we don't care whether it gets to Congress or not. We're just a little country town with a housing problem which we are trying to solve. We're not trying to handicap anybody. We have the interests of the city of Annapolis at heart, and if we hurt an institution that brings revenue into the city, then we'd be injuring the city. We are certainly not trying to do that." The Authority picked up the following bomb fragment and made of it a scream bomb to be released on the 22nd. The fragment: Barr: "I inquired in Washington whether there was any precedent anywhere in the United States for a municipal housing authority seizing part of a college campus, but I could not discover that such a precedent existed. I can well believe it." Screamed the Authority's bomb: "This man [Barr] won't give the two sides of the story. And I don't like it. He's never told the true story about it. He never told his board. He never told it in Washington. "We of the Housing Authority are unanimous. We have the law on our side and when you have the law, there is no argument .... "Then Mr. Barr talks about precedent. There is a precedent. When we took land from the Indians, we had no precedent. This is something new. Housing is something new in this country." That Man Barr went to New York on business but stopped off to see the editors of. Time. The editors were pleased. Said one, "Do you think it would be possible to get a picture of the Chairman?" Thus Cockney Barr released a scream bomb which whistled the "all clear" signal as it fell. Arriving at the Annapolis Chamber of Commerce dinner at which he was to speak on St. John': ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM plans for the use of its land, That Man was approached by a newspaper man who said, I understand Time Magazine is going to run something on this fight. Said Barr, Really? Tell me some more. "Yes, I saw Bill Stromeyer walking to the Post Office yesterday with a package under his arm. I said, 'What's that you've got there, Bill?' He said, 'It's my picture. Time wants it.' And he hurried on toward the Post Office." It was Donald's Lucky Day. He was pedaling off to 1313 Thirteenth Street on Friday the 13th to deliver a package, and didn't know the package under his arm was a Time Bomb, although you could hear it ticking for blocks. Time came out, picture and all, with "Rape of a Campus," on September 2nd. Time also mentioned the seven little Injuns who, according to the Sun of August 27th, had hit the war path for old St. John's College. It seems that Barr, accompanied by Pooh-Bah carrying a huge blueprint of the College campus, had appeared at the afore-mentioned Chamber of Commerce dinner. The blueprint was adorned with the figures of seven little red Indians. Some were standing and healthy. The ones on the five and a third acres were laid out cold. Barr apologized for the appearance of the blueprint. An assistant in the College Architect's office had wished to make the map historically accurate and Barr had not the heart to reprove him. The Chamber of Commerce liked the Indians. Screamed Mr. Stromeyer, "We went to St. John's because it is tax-free property." The Sun reported: "Then Mr. Stromeyer aimed at the purses of the business men. The campus, he said, was taxfree property. If the authority had to build elsewhere, taxable property would be used. "That would raise taxes for them, he said, and already forty-seven per cent of the city's property was tax free. Then he made a suggestion: 5 "'If you can get the county to do what the city is doing (i40,ooo) for the Housing Authority, then we'll forget about St. John's. You're all representative citizens of Annapolis and there is a proposition. I'm shooting it right down your teeth.'" Said the Chamber, What a word has passed your teeth! The Chamber instructed its counsel to intervene in the condemnation proceedings as a Friend of the Court with a brief opposing the condemnation. The same evening a mass meeting of citizens opposed the grab by a resolution. Barr's phone rang. early one morning. Said Mr. Prins, "How do you feel?" Said Barr, "I feel fine. How do you feel?" Said Prins, "I'm all right. I want to congratulate you on your public relations technique. When the College folds up, as Mr. Stromeyer assures me it is going to do any day now, I would like to offer you a good job as a public relations man.'' Said Barr, "I like my present job. I think I shall run for a third term.'' Said Mr. Prins, There are too many citizens writing letters to us and to Congress and to the President under the impression we can do anything about it. Why not call them off? Said That Man Barr, I cannot control the opinions of my fellow-citizens. They think you could stop it. Press release September 6th: "The United States Housing Authority will not intervene in a dispute between the Annapolis Housing Authority and St. John's College. "Nathan Straus, administrator of the USHA, said, '... There is nothing in the United States Housing Act which authorizes the USHA to dictate to a local housing authority either that a particular site should be used or that a particular site should not be used for a housing project.' " Barr liked USHA's candor. USHA did not have power to intervene in the dispute. Barr wrote to the Comptroller General. If USHA could not intervene, �6 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM why was it lending money to AHA to enable AHA to prosecute its suit? Replied the Comptroller General, USHA did lend AHA six thousand dollars as an advance on its new project, but the Comptroller General did not have to give opinions to outsiders on what was lawful. On September 1st Mr. Felix Morley fashioned a shrapnel bomb out of fragments of Mr. Stromeyer. Echoed the papers from coast to coast: "TYRANNY IN ANNAPOLIS" "ST. JOHNS-MARYLAND CONTROVERSY MAY RIVAL FAMOUS DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE" "TAX-FREE LAND UNDER HEAVY FIRE OF HOUSING LEADERS" "THREAT TO ALL EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS SEEN" September 14th Mr. Stromeyer offered to buy one and one third acres of the back campus. Queried That Man Barr, Does this mean the condemnation suit is being withdrawn? September 19th Mr. Stromeyer said, No, but it would be nice to make this a "friendly" condemnation suit. Then the Authority would just take one and one third acres instead of five and a third and everybody would be happy. The Authority would defend the nation by putting petty officers' quarters for the Naval Academy on the one and one third acres. Said the Sun, It is nice to know the Authority did not need the five and a third acres for a low cost housing project and could really put it elsewhere, because everybody had had the impression that the Authority needed the land. That Man invited the Authority and his counsel to appear at the Board meeting on October 14th. The Board wanted to hear this new plan to defend the nation in all detail. The Authority and his Reason appeared, reasoned, authorized, shoved down teeth, an- nounced, denounced, cajoled, confuted, imputed, and trotted down the hill. After having well and exactly seen, surveyed and considered the matter, the Board said no. Said the evening papers to the Board as the Board left the meeting: "COLLEGE AND HOUSING GROUP NOW IN ACCORD "St. John's Sells r• Acres for National Defense Project, but Housing Project will be Moved, Stromeyer says "William F. Stromeyer, local housing authority chairman, said today the Authority had reached an agreement with St. John's College officials on the purchase price for I• acres of College land. "Originally, the Authority sought 5• acres of College land for a regular low rent housing project, filing a condemnation suit when the College refused to sell the land. "In an attempt to end the dispute with the College, the Authority abandoned its plans for a regular housing project on College land and asked the College to sell r• acres for a national defense project for the Naval Academy's warrant officers. "Stromeyer said Stringfellow Barr, College President, had agreed on the purchase price for the r• acres. Barr is making a full report today on the compromise proposal to the College's Board of Visitors and Governors. "Representatives of the College and of the Housing Authority will hold a conference at 3 p.m. today to reach a final settlement." Said That Man Barr, "None of these proposals was accepted, in whole or in part, either by me or by any other agent of the College." The Board was "amazed." At last reports Mr. Stromeyer was leaving the prosecution of the Authority's suit to his Reason, and had accepted a post on the Local Draft Board where he will see to it that everyone else does his bit to Defend the Nation. The Authority likes the Nation. The College likes the Republic better than the Nation or the New Republic. The Republic knows the difference between cooperation and corporation.-PooH-BAH. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM 7 Of Doom and Hope REGARDLESS of how profound the inner unrest and upheavals of an era may be, we shall never be able to detach the present completely from the past. Nowhere in history has there ever been an absolute breach. Thus, in order to evaluate the present we shall have to turn to the past, whether we deal with the story of individual lives or with the history of entire nations and civilizations. But is there actually a national character or soul? Or are those terms romantic generalizations, not more than mental pictures of certain group characteristics in which a spectator's vague impressions are reflected? We speak of the psychic serenity of ancient Greece; of the soldierly spirit of Rome; of the keen, artistic genius of France; of the mystic Russian, and the tragic Nordic, soul; and, it seems, by right. For in every homogeneous group dwells the dormant "consensus omnium" ready to assert itself, to transform the individual irresistibly into a supra-individual part of the "soul" of the group. Such potential submergence in the soul of the congregation, in the spirit of the assembly or of the national "awakening" and rising, bears witness to it. Part of this group-soul, in abeyance at ordinary times, remains however constantly active and self-conscious in the thinkers and spiritual leaders of the age, in whom the trends and tendencies of present and past converge, and to whom we must turn in order to see the "spirit of the age" most clearly reflected. As guides to the enigmatic German soul, we may take to-day such figures as Oswald Spengler and Thomas Mann, Count Keyserling an:d Stefan George, with men like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as leaders to the more recent mental past; for they reflect for us, as in a symbol, the struggle of the truly tragic German soul with its perpetual vision of a greater tomorrow and its ever-present apprehensions of stagnation, of decline and doom. The history of Germany, more than that of any other people, has indeed been one of trying tribulations, full of sharp contrasts, of rapid rises and precipitous declines. For centuries her soil has been the physical and spiritual battleground for many decisive issues. The traces of the Reformation and of its gruesome aftermath, the Thirty Years' War, as well as those of the rise against Napoleon and the spirit of Western revolutions, are indelibly engraved upon her mental physiognomy. For her, as a nation, more than for any other, the problem of Decline in all its implications has always touched upon her very being, that is, upon the tragic irony of life. No wonder that her thinkers have taken the issue to heart; that in the hours of danger they have searched their souls and raised their voices with stern reproofs and pleas. Moreover, all great German art and thought are essentially auto-psychological in nature. From Luther, through Goethe, to Nietzsche and Spengler, their favorite theme has always been: what is German, and who am I? But Nietzsche's vexatious self-search finds its counterpart in the clarity of Spengler's dazzling precepts, from which all Nietzschean doubts seem banished as by magic. Thus Spengler arrives where Nietzsche might have wished to end had not his dream of Greece and the vision of the Superman stood in his way. For, out of the abyss of Nietzsche's Gotzendammerung-gloom, out of his total rejection �8 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM of German culture in the Abendrote-mood, there still rings Nietzsche's tragic lament of frustrated hope: "There is something about the Germans that could be Hellenic," i.e., humanly perfect. By way of a final and stupendous effort, since Greece appeared to him irretrievably lost to the stamina and temper of modern man he then makes his pre-Socratic Hellenism of Dionysian hue the basis of his vision of the superman, an attempt unique in magnitude, full of an heroic courage in the face of Fate which only Spengler's fortitude of heart could equal. Both Nietzsche and Spengler are fighters to the core, though for different ends. For, Spengler preaches fortitude in the face of the fulfilment of our final destiny which, to him, spells decline and doom; whereas Nietzsche strives to build anew over the shattered remnants of our decadent civilization into a most distant beyond. But Amor Fati in the face of hopelessness and doom keeps Nietzsche and Spengler on a common ethical plane. "Man is something that has to be surpassed," preaches Nietzsche, the prophet and idealist. Man has to fulfill his destiny courageously as a soldier makes his last stand for a hopeless cause, knowingly embracing his doom; that is the triumph of true inner greatness, teaches Spengler, the intuitive determinist and realist. He knows that the past is past and can not be reborn; for all living organisms, and individual cultures as such, have their inherent law oflife, unalterable and unchangeable in course. For such is the irreversible oneness of Fate. Attempting to escape it, be it by flight into fancies or by ignoring its dread realities, is as cowardly as it is futile in Spengler's eyes. Fate fulfills itself, whether we wish it or not. We can accept it willingly and thus free ourselves inwardly of it, or be crushed in its course; there is no other choice. We, the last stragglers of a belated culture, have the unique and terrible advantage of knowing our fate, of being able to go down with open eyes. Thus Spengler's concept of decline is closely linked with his relativity of history as well as with his concept of Fate, because decline, historical completion, means an end, the final fulfilment of Fate. In his essay on Pessimism Spengler undertakes to refute the common attack upon his philosophy of history as being one-sided, pessimistic and deterministic. Pessimism, he replies, means to have lost and forsaken all tasks and aims. But there are innumerable tasks yet before us, much as they may differ from those of our preceding generations. Art- yes, but in concrete and steel; poetry- yes, but by men of iron nerves and unfailing will and realism, avows the lover of the Gothic, of Goethe, Beethoven, Bach, and Brahms. Times without productive philosophy and art can yet be great. Better no new philosophy and art than shabby substitutes and pseudo-arts, Spengler exclaims. He sees but one type of decline that is truly suicidal: the decline of the will; of the will to action and the will to triumph against the forces of an adverse fate. That is certainly not of the tenor of Schopenhauer's "Futile and In Vain"; it is of the Faus tic spirit of Nietzsche's" And Yet!" Spengler's interpretation of history as a sequence (or simultaneity) of independent cultural organisms which rise, mature and decline, by force of their individual inherent life-law, leaves indeed little choice as to the course of our future fate. With Schopenhauer he denies that the "history of mankind" has any inherent logic at all; that it has either meaning or aim. The over-optimistic trust in mankind's unending progress is shal- ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM low, absurd, and utterly without historical foundation. Only the lifecycles of those organic entities called "cultures" have tangible historic aims, direction, meaning and fate. By way of comparison with previous cultures, Spengler then proceeds to prognosticate at length the inevitable course of Western civilization whose tempo alone might vary from that of its forerunners in history. He claims for himself the inestimable merit of having opened our eyes for the first time to the proper perspective, and to the irrepeatability, of the facts of history, to .their inner logical inevitableness. His ominous Orphic "Urworte" spell: time, direction, tactics, physiognomic tact, life, compulsion, and fate. The cogent oneness of all being and occurring is the form in which Fate reveals itself to human eyes. From such view all chance is banished, Anagke, (inmost necessity) prevails in his world. And why do individual cultures alone possess such fateful significance in history? Because, as living organisms, they possess an inner unity of purpose, aim and understanding, by virtue of their common vitality, initiative, and will. For the interpretation of Spengler's concept of decline in all its implications such as we face them to-day we have to consider his theories of society and state. We do not live in a crisis, Spengler asserted twenty years ago, but in the midst of a catastrophe of stupendous proportions. We have just entered the era of World Wars which will reshape the form of the world and are moving towards the Imperium Mundi, the last phase of white race world-domination. Amor Fati, henceforth, means not to shrink from reality, to embrace the tragic view of life. Optimism will be cowardice, and scepticism is our last attitude. Life 9 will be once more a struggle on a tremendous scale in which "peace is a wish and war is a fact." In this gigantic gamble between races and nations, with everything at stake, we have to learn again that true statesmanship, great politics, means the complete mastery of the "art of the possible." Germany is the borderland between East and West, Asia and Europe. As such she has always held a peculiar cultural and political mission. Yet-and here we seem to hear Nietzsche once more-Germany's political thinking has been small so far, lacking in realism, full of ideologies and fear of reality. But in history sound instincts and the will of the strong decide. The Nordic political instinct is based on the will to property, to power through possession. Only ideologists dream of justice, eternal peace, and happiness of the greatest number. Political romanticism is a sign of weakness: Liberalism, Communism, and Pacifism, are alike sentimental. We have to abandon the theories of one hundred and fifty years if we wish to survive, for they have failed. For a century and a half society and state have been systematically undermined. Thus we have forgotten that both are based on a natural order; that they are the vital organs of the cultural organism and not mechanical contrivances, set up at random and kept going at will. Decline of state authority is a symptom of the loss of the natural social instinct and moral stamina of Western man. This results with compelling necessity in social chaos and economic collapse, as all revolutions stem from it. The state-the "being-in-form" of a people, means strength, unity and leadership. The state- that is, "the inner order for an outer end"; and this end is �10 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM power. Its contrary spells formlessness, decline in every direction. Human society, on the other hand, is based on the natural instinct for the inequality of men; for the natural order of inner rank and value, once freely acknowledged by all. Hence, social decline means the trend towards the destruction of the natural order of men. Nineteenth Century Liberalism already displays all the trends toward Nihilism. From the Bastille to Soviet Moscow is one straight way, whether we admit it or not, holds Spengler. The final goal was always anarchy, economic chaos and communism which, in turn, tend towards a one-man dictatorship as their only solution. For one hundred and fifty years political rationalism has been striving for liberation from the state with the aim of leveling down the old, natural order. Political democracy and parliamentarism mean the bankruptcy of strong state's authority and efficiency, disguised under the slogan of "the rule of the people." In reality, true statesmanship is lacking, political opportunism, dilettantism and economic selfishness prevail. Yet, without strong politics there is no sound economy. Thus parliamentarism promotes the decline of the state which once the army preserved. Even wars are being waged now for economic advantage, and the "peace treaties" continue this warfare with different means. To this Spengler adds the "Revolution of Labor" of the last one hundred years. A political Boheme has arisen preaching class-hatred and equality with the view of reducing the natural order according to achievement and distinction to the level of the mob, with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" as its ultimate goal. A wage-bolshevism has been instituted with strikes as its weapon and with the economic ruin of private initiative and property plainly in view. That is the sinister "Revolution from Below." Unemployment and inflation follow in its wake. The literary form of this long-drawn process towards bolshevization is called "Naturalism," a movement whose "heroes" are the sick, the physically, mentally, and socially misfit; and the poor, exploited, and enslaved wage-earner; in short, the proletarian as the one and only truly human being. Such types have been made the new saints, pets and idols of a "fourth class" literature. Along with it, the old ethos of work has been undermined, for work is no longer valued as man's best pride and chief purpose in life. On the contrary, it is being branded a curse to be shunned and has been degraded to the level of a political barter commodity. Adding to this the ominous signs of the "Colored Revolution" just looming over the horizon from Asia to Africa, we have the symptoms and dangers of the "Decline of the West" such as Spengler beholds them. Is there any way out? The one and only hope for the rise of a new spirit, able to cope with the last phase of our approaching doom, Spengler sees in the triumph and spread of what he terms "Prussian Socialism." It is a spirit not nationally bound and can manifest itself on the Thames as on the Spree or on the Ohio River. In fact, England has known it quite well in the course of her agitated history. Moreover, it is a spirit ethical to the core, inherent in the genius of our race, and has nothing in common with ephemeral political aims and aspirations. Spengler, the Bavarian by choice, calls it "Prussian" in order to emphasize the region of its most striking manifestation. Basically, it is an ethos of the will and has ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM been alive in the best of our race throughout the course of Western history. As such, it has become an inalienable part of the German soul, Spengler asserts, and has manifested itself again and again at great historic moments. Its workings in the individual, Spengler attempts to define by quoting the soldier, Count Schlieffen: "To talk little; to achieve much; to be more than one appears to be." That, Spengler holds, is "Haltung": not an empty pose and gesture, but self-discipline; a sense of duty, of truly Christian humility, of honor and self-sacrifice; an inner freedom gained from willing devotion to a supra-personal cause. Such spirit, he avows, will be able to conquer the sinister forces of the present World Revolution. It embraces, in a way, the ideals of ancient Rome as well as Nietzsche's will-to-power, ethically bound. Yet, in spite of their kinship in "soldierly" spirit, the difference between Nietzsche and Spengler in political creed is most pronounced. Nietzsche's strongly individualistic "every man first for himself" is strongly contrasted with the Prussian "Each for all, and all for one," to which Spengler adheres. For Nietzsche, the early advocate of a "United States of Europe," nationalism and imperialism are and remain grave dangers engendering narrowness of view and heart, hampering sound cultural advancement and intercourse. The state is, to him, a danger to the individual as much as a benefit. To Spengler, however, it means the social disciplining of the individual under guarantee of free initiative of property and person. To him, the state is the natural organ of ordered society, the one and only safeguard of cultural and material advancement. Nietzsche feels Greek, and Spengler feels R oman in political view. They 11 differ fundamentally as to the purpose, function, and goal of human society: Nietzsche strives, first of all, to promote the great individual at the expense of the mass. Spengler strives to further the concerns of the group through the medium of those naturally endowed for leadership. Thus Nietzsche, the "good cosmopolitan," hates everything about the Prussian spirit and state but its soldierliness. To Spengler, the "socialist," Prussianism is a spiritual source, a sound instinct and view of life; a last guarantee for the honorable future-and exit-of our race; the last promise of the final defeat of political and mental particularism. Kant's categorical imperative, Nietzsche's scorn for individual happiness, and Hegel's sound political realism, he sees blended in it. "Socialism," Spengler knows, "means something different in every land: the Prussian worker is the only born socialist, therefore he has been the fool of all others." With such views at heart, Spengler envisages the ethico-socialistic state of the future along the lines of the Prussian tradition, with the will to conquer, to dominate, and-to die. Such a state, he holds, is Germany's last mission; her last and only inner possibility in a world fraught with all the dangers of decline and impending doom. But why, one is tempted to ask, this ever-lasting quest for "Form?" Why this constant self-search of the German soul, unless it is perpetually aware of an inherent formlessness, of the dangers of chaos deep within itself? And further, why is this concept of Decline of such particular appeal among the Germans? Even Luther spoke of the "ever-impending danger of relapse into chaos and barbarism" on the part of the German soul. Nietzsche speaks of this soul as having its ../'caves and hind-caves"; and �12 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM the subtles t auto-psychologist, knew all he remarks, as if by way of self-castigathe tragic lures and snares of Dionysian tion: "The German is always of yesterecstacy and self-abandonment. Thus he day and of the day after tomorrow; he longed, more desperately than any other has, as yet, no today. " Both Spengler Germa n, for Apollonian "sophr osyne, " and Nietzsche view the German soul as self-re straint and perfection. The sound an eternally restless, romantic worldsynthe sis of both was the vision of rover and spiritu al particu larist; a perGoethe 's sublime human ity, an aim so petual "prote stant" and conscientious hard to achieve among Germans. And objector in the face of the rest of the yet, it is the one and only, though truly world. Only the faith in its own mission, super-h uman, self-redemption of this the undyin g vision of a new way of life, enigma tic Germa n soul. can save this soul from chaos and utter Betwee n the Ninete enth Centur y self-destruction. Faust is of such nature. thinker s and the mental crisis of today We find this trust in the German calling stands also the lonely, venerable, and in Spengler's Prussia n Socialism as much tragic figure of Spengler's great antagas in Nietzsche's Zarath ustra-v ision, the Thoma s Mann. To him, as their onist, acme of an eternal metabolism. This tor in aesthetic form and taste, the precep eternal becoming and self-transforming post-W ar generations of Germa n and prehas made the Germa n soul the mental youth perhap s owe a profounder feeling sphinx of Europe , just as Russia has of indebte dness and gratitu de than to been, and is to-day, the Asiatic sphinx. any other recent German thinker . Mann This inner unrest and threat of "formhas ponder ed deeply upon the Germa n lessness" has always engendered the soul, upon the meaning and values of dangers of self-destruction. How often human culture , and upon the problems in their lives did Freder ick the Great, the and sympto ms of decline. For almost Goethe of Werthe r and Faust, Kleist, half a century , his heart has been a Nietzsche, and the countless lesser spiritu al battleg round, and he knows "roman ticists, " think of suicide? Only that the fight is not over. Thus he has a few great Germa ns have ever been men become the last great Germa n "Prote sof definite "Form ." Goethe searched for tant" at the end of an era in the face of it all his life. This search for, and process crises and catastr ophe: a restless searche r of "formi ng" is the very core of his conand wander er between the times, a cept of "Bildu ng." We touch at this Nietzsc hean supra-G erman of unfalte ring point at the tragic duality and inner conscience and courage; a Schope nhauer discord of the Faustic soul. It is, once Wagne rite with a nostalgia for Mozar t's more, the romant ic Germa n genius in its delicate simplicity of soul. Thus he is eternal quest for genuine "cultur e," for to-day not only one of the most highly "the land of Greece" as Nietzsche saw it culture d Germans, but the protag onist in his dearest dreams . But there also par excellence of the very best that ever is in it the insurm ountab le fear of finality; dwelt within the German soul. Knowing as "form" means completion, fulfilment its "caves and hind-caves," its inner For beyond completion and-d eath. discords, deep within himself, he has hope, there is only future no is there pleade d and warned and presaged more decline. Nietzsc he who perhap s has and more empha tically at the thresho ld been the most subtile interpr eter of the of decline and collapse. The milestone Germa n soul since Goethe, because he was ST, JOHN'S TRIVIUM 13 forseen and of this inner strife and struggle, his Keyserling. All three have c collapse psychi ar post-W the ed ," witness tischen "Betra chtung en eines Unpoli ptcy bankru the it in ized recogn have and history has become a landma rk in the very ing someth of as a stamin moral an of e of the Germa n mind·, of the struggl . had soul n Germa the : indeed l, spiritua empha tic and desper ate protest against was alone this and itself, of vision its lost and the danger s threate ning from within What te. comple own breakd make to able withou t. Throug h the subtile and artisspirit, had tic medium of Mann' s aesthetic irony, once was inner "Form " and pose, empty an into ed harden since Schope nhauer 's sceptic pessimism has long The . scheme and e pretens mere triump hed once more. Slowly but con- mto Great the ick Freder Kant, of stantlr , the scope of Mann's perspe ctive spirit ' . A force, was widened, from the psychic perplexi- Fichte and Hegel, had waned. sublime, had turned into a farce ' ties of the individual outside r, over the once . the old degene ration of whole families and social mto dead conven tionalit y. Thus as one, new a and lost was type groups, to the decline of national culture Germa n trithe lity, instabi Inner . and of an entire civilization. To be sure, yet, unborn witness the "being -so-and -not-ot herwis e" of a umph of mere formlessness, bore charac ter, this fateful and perplexing to that. No wonder that the Germa n soul, as aggregation of heterogeneous mental , tely psychic, and social components that has always been its way, alterna ing wander went and makes for individ uality, has always turned recluse The itself. r recove to deman ded his first though t. But with abroad in order ways are his scope, his conscience, his sense of representatives of those two ling. Keyser and duty and responsibility, have grown for us Stefan George vision the create to Have they been able tremen dously . preof a new Germa n type? That the examgreat the Mann, s Thoma Yet, to server, interpr eter and advocate, of ple of one single individ ual is able been has task a everyth ing genuine and best in culture is, accomplish so gigantic work in a sense, not a "re-for mer." To be borne out in the past by the life and sure, Hans Castor p's generation, as of Goethe. Yet, it seems clear to-day that neither others before him, atone for the inner whole a of ce formative vision of Spengler, nor that decaden the and disorderliness a dying and war for or Keyserling, has sufficed to ering George of era by volunte but out, way a is That fulfill this deman d, no matter how heroic soldier's death. or man of type new a it does not create their individual efforts have been: they to left was It oflife. way envisage a new only represe nt sympto ms of a tempor ary and seek to er Spengl two others besides situatio n and of a new striving for form. to preach a new Germa n type in the hour In each of them the inner restlessness of of crisis and collapse: the world-rover, the age is clearly reflected. Thus, each Count Keyserling, and the poet-pr ophet, of them marks a new steppin gstone in the Stefan George. progress towards a new Germa n vision, Of the thinker s discussed, only Spengler none its fulfilment. (with the exception of Thoma s Mann) The new Germa n type, considering its reaches directl y into the porten tous psychological backgr ound in history , cerevents of Germa ny's recent past. That is unthin kable as a mere Spenglerconnects him with Stefan George and tainly �14 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ian fatalistic realist; nor merely as a perpetually restless rover between the ages and zones of this globe in the sense of Count Keyserling; nor as the overindividualistic, mystic recluse of the priest-like Stefan George who dedicates his soul to Eros and Kairos, beauty and solemnity. Spengler belittled man for the sake of dread historic facts. Keyserling's individualistic superiority expands and enhances man at the expense of historic reality. George's type, however, remains for ever a personal, and nothing but a personal, task to itself. Yet, he represents a mystic innerness and solemn contemplativeness which we never would miss in the German type of the future because it is of the best and most sacred tradition of the German soul. To be sure, Spengler, George, and Keyserling, represent three different, though equally essential, German sides and trends. The vision of each alone would never suffice. But the sum-total of their influence upon the German future seems of the utmost importance. For all three are searchers, pathfinders, and leaders on a weary way: on the return of this German soul to its own true self.RICHARD KuEHNEMUND. A Letter Home Chesapeake Bay and above all, St. Here's a letter that I have been John's, make Annapolis what it is, a planning to write to you since I arrived little colonial seaport town with a taste at St. John's, a letter which I think will of classicism and a vintage of modern tell you in some vague fashion what I times thrown in. But the great thing about our college am doing, what the college is essentially seems to be the ideas, ideas such as like, and how it differs from anything never known back home. At home we I have ever come up against before. do some thinking, mostly, as you reFrom a physical standpoint the college member, in the kitchen, where we could is very beautiful, with buildings of look next door and see Mrs. Archibald colonial types, some of them dating back looking at us. If our thinking was about to the Revolution. We have a freshimportant things it was only a poor apman dormitory which had its calling proximation to that type of thinking and presumably prior to the Civil War, but the ideas we use here. And the ideas are many of us have wondered if it didn't deep, so much so, that we find it difficult see the light of day somewhere around the Norman Conquest, and if the con- sometimes to extricate ourselves from quest isn't still going on. The campus them; yet if we are able, we explore those with its quaint structures is in Annapolis, depths to test and retest the validity of but one might also say it is out of it, for causes, natures and insights. I have Annapolis is so rambling that it is dif- learned more since I have been here than ficult to say when one is in it and when I ever thought would be the case. I one is not. Little byways, passes, find, however, that many of our kitchen government buildings with colonial ap- variety notions are subjected to great proximations and cupolas, the Navy, assault and attack by men who appa- DEAR Family, ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM rently have a different variety of notions. Of course an intellectual fight ensues, and only adds to the delight, and somehow makes the manipulation of the mind and the thrust and parry of the ideas a pleasurable pastime. And yet I sometimes feel that many of my friends use ideas just for that purpose, namely to engage in a sort of pleasurable pastime. Some of them have all the ideas at their command, and are able to use them quite well in a sort of artistic way. With them they jibe, with them they taunt, and with them they play, but the result seems to be, at times, an intellectual rope climbing. They get nowhere but up the rope or down. You might call them intellectual jitterbugs, mindful of their steps, and cognizant of their dance, hurling their partner to the left, and then to the right, up and down, and in all ways at once. Yet they are limited by the dance itself, and the ideas fail to lead them to anything else except another step or another dance. And so you might conclude that these intellectual jitterbugs fail to conform to the object of the curriculum, which seems to be to make the student an intelligent person. And being an intelligent person seems to include the idea of morality, and a moral person is one who doesn't restrict himself to leaping, gliding or tripping in a rhythmic fashion. Perhaps, as some of us have heard, we are a graceless people, and no matter what we try to do in a right way we shall always be doomed to failure, and morals will remain something to be discussed and played with, and not something to be practiced. Seminar is considered the hinge of the curriculum. It is there that we get the opportunity to put the liberal arts into practice, in a discursive way of course. We again discuss morality, politics, God and all other things imagin- 15 able. Possibly the only thing we haven't discussed is the seminar itself. Some have defined a seminar as a place where no one knows what he is talking about. But I know that this is not correct, because it is apparent that some do know what they are talking about since they state so in such an emphatic manner. They call those, who do know what they are talking about and who can show the others what they are talking about, dialecticians. The others of course just make a noise like a dialectician. One time in seminar some of us had the floor, two or three at once, and we were discussing nothing. Somebody said you couldn't talk about nothing if it were nothing, and hence had to refer to nothing as almost nothing. And I think it makes some sense to talk about nothing as almost nothing, for who can talk about nothing unless it be Mrs. Archibald next door. Besides we get into conflicting philosophies, and some hold that there is only one philosophy and anyone who doesn't agree is wrong or crazy. These people are commonly referred to as Aristotelians. I'm not quite sure what an Aristotelian is, but someone mentioned that he is a person who is right at the top of his voice. And that may be true for there are a few in our seminar who are always shouting and if you ask them if they could be wrong they think you are asking an absurd question. Then there are Platonists. A Platonist is a person who can be just as definite if he isn't. He answers everything with a shrug of his shoulders and mumbles under his breath something which sounds like "can't afford to be dogmatic." And you see right there, there is difference of opinion. Yet you remember that we decided, in the kitchen, that a difference of opinion in important matters was �16 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM likely to lead to serious consequences; for if everyone is entitled to his own opinion, and his own opinion is all that can be stated concerning something, then it seems that the only way to settle such a difference of opinion is to resort to force. And you remember we decided that force was a bad thing. But here, apparently, those who hold various opinions don't think much about it, and they don't use force, so all that remains is the difference of opinion. But the toughest people to handle are the eclectics. They take a little bit here and a little bit there, pulling down an argument from this source, reverting to a contradictory statement from that source, and generally confusing themselves and their listeners so that no one knows which way to turn next. On Friday they are Pragmatists, Saturday, Epicureans, Sunday, they are Thomists, and on Monday they have to be Stoics. My roommate and I are now living in Gov. Oogle's house pronounced Ogle; Gov. Oogle pronounced Ogle was one of the first governors of Maryland. I sleep in the governor's four poster bed. It's so large that if three people were in it none would be aware of the others' presence. . . . So you see what an mterestmg time I am having here at St. John's and what a few ideas can do to one. Sometimes however, I get too much, and at nights, I am told by my roommate, I sit up in ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM bed screaming: "Nothing, which is not nothing, but almost nothing, Platonists and Democrats, God, soul, Oogle, pronounced Ogle, Ogle, Oogle, Oogle, Ogle!! I can only attribute these unusual occurrences to my recent and sudden entrance into the world of ideas. The only thing I have forgotten to mention is the Navy. Everyday seems to be Navy Day here, and I have developed such an affinity for the noble lads that row, row, row your boat has ceased to be a slogan. But when I find my interests tending towards the nautical, I return to the world of ideas, not nothing but almost nothing, or Gov. Ogle pronounced Oogle. And from out of such a maelstrom of ideas I can conclude either that this is the stuff worth living for, or that they insure one a certain and well directed demise. But be that as it may I can't deny that those things we were inclined to think important are now inconsequential, and that people like Mrs. Archibald next door only air their prejudices and that intelligence as well as morality comes at a premium. I must go now because I am late to sculpture class. We did a head of a lady last week. This was my first venture. The rest will come later. Love, Sidney. -WILBUR JERGER, '44 17 Second Fiddle MUSIC at St. John's is in a singularly embarrassing position. It is neither flesh nor fowl, not enough of a liberal art to be completely sponsored by the College, nor yet wholly enough a fine art to be quite dependent as an extra collegiate activity. Thus it is periodically advertised by the Administration, and the rest of the time is left to fend for itself as best it can. This same situation last year, that of an ambitious program being carried on with the scantest of support, led to the virtual "death" of music, and its reestablishment as a fine art subject for a small nucleus of students who were concerned enough to go farther than the mere stage of "passive" music. This year with a new music director and a large freshman class, great things were expected of the music program. A very good concert series was arranged with such artists as Ralph Kirkpatrick and the Budapest String Quartet, Glee clubs were organised, and Bach cantatas anticipated, and a thoroughly musical campus was expected. At the end of October the subscriptions for the concert series were so discouraging, although they were above the execrable total of the year before, that the College felt compelled to urge the Student Body to attend the series, which was costing the College one thousand dollars a year. The Glee club had a remarkably small, although enthusiastic membership, and the whole musical situation appeared to be one well warranting an explanation by the College. We are not morbid prophets of disaster. We are not belittling the efforts of the College. We are wholly for a good musical program here at St. Johns. But as an essentially undergraduate medium of opinion, we are forced to criticise the tactics of the College. The problem that the latter is facing is one which every liberal arts college worthy of the name must confront, and the more aid we can offer towards its solution, or the more advice we can solicit from our readers, the better we feel this problem will be solved. At present we feel that music here cannot be properly included as a semiliberal, semi-fine art. It is true that music was originally one of the Quadrivium, and as such has an essential place in the curriculum here. But its essential place in the curriculum is not being given it. It is still definitely outside the New Program, save for a few books on music read in seminars. Even concerts here are in danger of having a greater proportion of subscribers from the Navy and the town of Annapolis than from the College. If the fact were realised that it is only the people who regard music as a fine art who subscribe to the concerts, then the situation might be less painful than it is at present, in which everybody is not only expected to see music's connection as a liberal art, but is asked to act on that connection. In the future, perhaps, when the Program is so arranged as to have a full-fledged music course, with the twenty-five Great Works as its backbone, the College's dream might be realised. But it is no use trying to create a music course the wrong, way around. Far better to admit that the concerts are for the benefit of the community comprising Annapolis and the Academy, and that the Glee club is only for those who are really interested before they join, than to try to stimulate a labored responsibility among the Student Body that they should attend the �18 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM concerts, and should first join the Glee club, later learning to appreciate singing. Until a music course integrated with the New Program is worked out and set in motion, the solution would appear to us to be an admission that music at St. John's is yet a fine art, and that it should be upheld by a nucleus of keen mus1c1ans, a nucleus always open to expansion, but never in such a weak position as to have to boost themselves, and force the rest of the Student Body to feel both guilt and condescension when they participate in the program.-NERO. The Blues DESPITE harrow arguments to the contrary, the slavery in the South was as cruel a form of subjugation as any other instance of this sort in history. A "good nigger" was one who was resigned to his fate, a "buck nigger," one who either thought for himself or tried to escape from the perpetual stick held above his head. Field hands, to ease their pains and sorrows and relieve the monotony of their task, sang songs. They also used songs as a way of speaking with one another without having the overseer understand their implications. The overseers, in turn, felt assured when the slaves sang, for a singing slave was almost always considered a "good nigger." It was out of such an oppression that the work songs of the slaves were born. And it was from these work songs that the blues grew-the blues, a music that was sad and hopeful-hopeful because things were so bad they could get no worse. The long hard road just had to finish somewhere. As Bessie Smith sang: "See that long lonesome road, Lawd, you know it's got ta en'." The optimistic element in the blues is also well characterized in these old traditional lines: 19 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM "Lawd, the sun's gonna shine In my back doh' someday." Blues very often expressed a craving for drink or women, but in their true, early form blues were not obscene and had no sexual implications. It is only in later years that the blues, some people call "risque" came into popularity. As a matter of fact, this aspect has overshadowed the blues to such an extent that, today, many people believe that they are merely a legitimate way of expressing a dirty ditty. But in this type of music, the timbre of the singer's voice and the way the lyrics are built, are as important as the actual meaning of the words. There are a few singers whose version of almost any song would have a blues quality. Blues, as did all other forms of jazz, reached its height in New Orleans. Such men as Tony Jackson and "Jelly-Roll" Morton carried them through the honkytonks and "houses" of Storyville, the low high-life center of the Crescent City. And outside, on the sidewalks of the delta town, there was sung another type, a more real blues than that of the tonks, the blues sung by beggars on the street. Among these street singers were "Blind Lemon" Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson. "Blind Lemon," who has become a legendary figure, made many records which today are rare items. He experimented with blues structure and also used a great variety of new subjects for his records, one of them being "Wartime Blues" recorded at the time the United States entered the World War. As for Blind Willie Johnson, from a point of view of folk music as well as that of jazz, his blues are unsurpassed. His very basic guitar and his primitive moans are only stirring at first, but upon "listening" closely, many previously unseen qualities may be discovered in his songs. There was still another distinct type of blues, a type destined to gain greater public favor than any other. These blues were the ones sung by women. They had a greater general appeal and were not confined to a certain locality. Ma Rainey and Mamie Smith were the first known singers in this category. Both were famed among the Southern Negroes. They often travelled from village to village and were always exuberantly welcomed. Ma Rainey, who was probably the greatest blues singer of her time, frequently had her audience in tears. Tears that came because Ma and her listeners knew something-something that hurt and something that was exciting. Ma Rainey greatly influenced Bessie Smith, who became the most popular of such singers. Bessie had a low, throaty voice and sang her blues mean and lowdown. Because of these qualities and her extreme sincerity, many connoisseurs consider her greater than Ma Rainey. Anyone who likes blues is emotionally affected by Bessie Smith. We have known some who, after listening to her records, cry; some who feel they must go out and get drunk; and others who can't believe that anything can be so sincere. Her records have sold over five million copies and she has been surnamed, "Empress of the Blues." In 1936, Bessie was driving to Memphis to appear in a vaudeville show. Her automobile was in an accident and she was seriously hurt. Quick medical attention might have saved her, but the nearest hospital would not allow Negro patients. She died, and her death showed that there was still a very good reason to sing the blues-the original reason. Today, singers are introducing a new interpretation of this style of music. A modern swing rhythm replaces the old blues feeling. However, the spirit is not altogether gone. Because of renewed interest in true blues, some old timers like Ida Cox are making records again. Very interesting is Billie Holidays' record, "Strange Fruit," which was a revolt against injustice. "Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees." RECOMMENDED Jesse James-Southern Casey ]ones-(Decca) Blind Willie Johnson-Dark Was the Night(Vocalion) Jelly-Roll Morton-New Orleans Memories-(general album) Winin' Boy Blues-(Bluebird) Bessie Smith-Two Albums-(Columbia) Ida Cox-Deep Sea Blues-(Columbia) Billie Holliday-Bi/lie' s B/ues-(Vocalion) Many good blues made recently by race artists are available at most music stores. Rare items may be ordered from the H. R. S. Music Shop in New York City.-AHMED ERTEGUN, '44. �20 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM The A wakening FATHER died when I was ten. I can't remember much of my childhood except for one or two incidents, but, father's death, or rather, his funeral, stands out vividly in my mind. It seems to me now, that this thing, this-I do not know how to describe it except by calling it an impression. Anyway, this impression was the start, the impetus, you might say, that made me alive. That sounds odd; making a child of ten alive, sensitive, impressionistic; but, it isn't. It is tragic to see an apathetic child; it stirs me more, makes me feel more despondent than seeing a grown hulk of a man, a human derelict, with dead eyes and decay oozing from him; for apathy is decay. For the child has yet to grow and is dead in the embryo; while the man has grown. Enough of this, though. I can say that this is what woke me, for I have lived a good many years and can look back on them with a sense of perspective, from an objective plane almost. I cannot say from a purely objective plane; I've lived long enough to realize that men do not look at things entirely in the light of objectivity. They cannot. So what I say will in some ways be influenced by the life I have lived, the experiences and impressions that I have gone through, and which I have garnered up to now. However, there are certain sensations and images which I can recall from the time of the funeral, that are untouched, as far as I can discern, by the years and what they have held. As I said before, my childhood, up till my tenth birthday, can offer me now no memories. It is an unavoidable gap; but, for some reason, mine was that way. And it does not include any palpable memory of Father of any length. That is another odd fact. I have no picture, that is, no full length portrait, so to speak, of Father. I can recall certain incidents; but they have no continuity. The picture is incomplete and will always be so. The several strokes of the brush that make up the image are spasmodic. And so, when I am presented with a picture of Father, an old daguerreotype, or an early photograph, I feel as if I had met such a person, had known such a person; but, no matter how hard I try, I cannot link the two together. I cannot imbue that photographic reproduction with any sense of life. Perhaps I might have had some definite picture of Father if I had seen him sometime before the end. He was sick for a month before he died. That is, he was in a hospital that month. I don't know how long he was ill before that. (I have heard about him from friends and relatives, though, in the course of time. He was always jolly; had laughing eyes and a mobile mouth with that upward twitch at the ends which designates many good natured people. He was always thinking of some new deviltry, and thought nothing of making himself perfectly ridiculous in order to provoke a laugh. Everyone loved him.) I was taken to see him in the hospital, but, for some reason they would not allow me to visit him. I was left outside his door while Mother went into his room. I remember that door. Not that it was any different from any other patient's door along the corridor. It was just a plain, white door with a common brass knob and with a number on it. It opened noiselessly and closed the same l way. All the doors opened and closed the same way. All the people entered through those doors and exited from them-noiselessly. Everything was quiet; was mute. It was deadening. But the doors fascinated me and I watched them, a scared, wondering, little fellow with big eyes. Then, the door of father's room opened and Mother came out. And I caught a glimpse of a figure lying in bed. A second time the same thing happened. I did not see him. Only this was under different circumstances. Father had been taken to his sister's home. Mother knew about this and she brought me there. But, his sister had already sent him to the hospital. I remember there were angry words between Mother and father's sister. I thought that I was the focal point of the argument, but, I see now that I was merely a minor issue. Mother was angry, as I see it now, because they had taken Father from the hospital and then shipped him back, as if he were a curiosity. Mother was quite right in being mad; for Father was in a critical condition. It was a Sunday when this incident occurred; and the following Wednesday, Father died. So, you see, when the day of the funeral came and all were gathered, friends and kin, I neither considered myself one or the other but felt like an outsider, a stranger-or, to phrase it more aptly, an alien. One, who had no realization of who had actually died and what was actually happening, but, who simply saw the stark physical properties of the scene. And even these were somehow a bit askew, being unfamiliar. And as such, I felt no emotion. That is, I did not feel like crying; nor, did I have that greater grief in which weeping 21 has no part. (How can a child feel the latter emotion, you are perhaps wondering? All that I can say is this: you would be amazed at the emotion of a child, as to deepness, in comparison with that of an adult, if the farmer's could be fully expressed. As it is, it is inarticulate.) On the other hand, I was not happy; nor was I indifferent. I was permeated with a vague curiosity, a curiosity bordering on the metaphysical, which ran around in my head something like this: Dead? Father's dead. . . . I will not see Father anymore? They say so .... Who was my Father? . . . The man who every night came home just before supper. Who used to pick me up and against whose cheek, with its day's stubble, I would love to rub my own.... He is gone. They say so. . . . Then I will never again smell the faint aroma of cigars which tickled my nose? ... You must realize that I am giving expression to these thoughts; that, perhaps, they were not as defined as I have made them; that, perhaps, they were not even in my mind and that, now, I am creating them. I will not argue with you on any of these points. Let it suffice that at ten they were there in an inarticulate state. The ceremony took place in a long, narrow room. My seat was in the first row and I had to walk the length of the room in order to get to it. The coffin was at the head of the aisle and as I walked toward my chair, with my eyes on the coffin, I was struck with a vague similarity. The room seemed to me a second coffin, only on a larger scale. It was a large, plain box filled with little chairs and with moving dolls. And the cynosure was the raised toy box at the head of the larger box. It was funny. �22 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM I took my seat and found myself between Mother's sister, Aunt Esther, and my six year old brother, Lennie. Mother I did not see. I looked at Aunt Esther. She was crying quietly; her eyes were red, and her fat face was streaked with the lines of her tears which were running unconcernedly off her face and onto her broad bosom. Her buttocks, bulging over her chair, pressed against my thigh, and, I moved away from her to the end of my spasmodically sobbed chair. She throughout the entire ceremony. I tried to sit quietly on the end of my chair. I could not. I grew fidgety. Aunt Esther noticed my uneasiness and sought to soothe me. She drew me towards her. I resisted. Something caught her attention for a moment and she let me go. In that instant I nudged Lennie and whispered fiercely in his ear. "Change seats with me." He shook his head; so I grabbed one of his fingers and pulled it backwards. He was going to yelp; but, I glared at him and muttered, "Sh!" Aunt Esther noticed the struggle. She pulled me toward her and asked me what was wrong. I told her that I wanted Lennie's chair. She must have felt my antagonism for her and realized that Lennie would be more docile in her hands, for she leaned over, nearly smothering me with her bust, and whispered to Lennie. Then, she pulled Lennie out of his chair; and I wriggled out of her embrace and slid over to the vacant chair. I took a deep breath. Of the ceremony itself, there is only one incident which stands out vividly in my mind. It was the unveiling of Father's face. I mean, of course, that anyone was now allowed to have one last, fleeting glance of his face before the lid was battened down, so to speak, and no further mortal eye could gaze upon him. I was intently watching those persons who were filing around the coffin when suddenly I heard Lennie's petulant voice crying, "I want to see Daddy. I want to see Daddy." I had not realized it, but, the thought had never entered my head to go up to the coffin and look at Father. Why had I not thought of it? I became afraid. An abject terror seized me and I cringed in my chair. Of what was I afraid? Of what is a child afraid when he awakes in the dark? He does not know. Nor did I. We can explain, perhaps, of what the child is afraid. But the child cannot. And I was a child of ten then. In my fear I gripped Lennie's arm; and my fingernails must have bit into it, for he cried out. I awoke then. In a quavering voice I whispered to Lennie, "You mustn't go up there; you mustn't. There is nothing to see. Nothing to see, you hear, nothing to see. Daddy isn't there." He looked at me with wondering eyes. "Daddy isn't there?" "No." "You sure Daddy isn't there?" "Yes." "But Mamma is up there." And he pointed to the coffin where Mother was now standing. "Don't point." That was the only thing I could think of, at the moment, in answer to what he had just said. "Mamma is there. Let me go-" "Mamma has to be there. She doesn't want you." He subsided, then, but I still held his arm. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM Mother was standing beside the coffin. I did not entirely believe Lennie, until I looked now and saw that he was right. She was there, and, as I looked at her, I knew that I had lied to Lennie. Mother did want us. I saw that in her eyes as she caught my glance. She made a slight gesture with her arms, imploring me to come to her. I looked away quickly as if I had not seen her, and riveted my eyes on the blank wall ahead of me. I was still afraid. And as I sat gazing at the wall, I became aware of what I was in fear of. I was afraid of Aunt Esther and Mother and all the people in the room; Uncle Charlie, Uncle Harry and Uncle Sam; Aunt Mary, Aunt Sarah and Aunt Martha; even Lennie. Lennie seemed to me the epitome of them all. He was curious. He wanted to see something; it did not matter what. He saw the adults parading around the coffin and his curiosity was piqued. Only his curiosity was ingenuous. The adults seemed to me to be hypocritical. They knew what was there. They saw something; and they were feigning pity for it, and sympathy for Lennie and me. They were shamming, I said, for they do not know me. They have never met me, nor seen me except for today. Uncle Charlie and Aunt Esther only know me. And I have met Uncle Charlie only twice; and I have stayed at Aunt Esther's house for one week when I was eight. Yet they were looking at us with sympathy. They were crying. They were spilling their tears on Father's face. TheyFor the first time that afternoon something stirred inside of me; a feeling for Father, one that was wrought only for him and that was free of all other as- 23 soc1at10ns. Of course, it was engendered by the past impressions; but the effect is still the effect even though brought about by the cause, and can stand by itself for such as it is. I wanted to be alone, away from all these people with their prying, sympathetic eyes. I wanted peace and time to mull over in my child's mind this eternal question of death. I wanted solace, a personal kind, not the impersonal and seemingly diffident sort that was now being shown on all sides of me. And I wanted faith. Not faith in God; for that is too intangible for a child. But a faith, or should I say, a mooring, that I could cling to amid this bewilderment that was choking me. And these very emotions I associated with Father. I felt that they were his feelings and that he was only waiting for the ritual to be gone through before his will would execute them. As I think of that moment, now, of many years ago, I am amazed at the depth of these first stirrings. It seems fantastic that I, at the age of ten, when my little mind was, as yet, only in the stage of a foetus, should try, unconsciously to force open the womb prematurely and assume a bastardly growth. The more I think about it, the more I wonder at it. But my wonder assumes catastrophic proportions when I recall what followed. For gradually gaining momentum, my emotion finally engulfed me. Tears were in my eyes, and, I felt as if I were choking, for my throat was tightening. And dimly I heard the closing words of the service 'Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.' and an hysterical sob from Aunt Esther. I was outside finally, and, as I breathed heavily of the late, afternoon, autumn �24 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM air, my head cleared. Everyone was bustling about trying to find a suitable carriage. Aunt Esther called me, but I pretended not to hear and wandered among the crowd. At the last minute, someone found me and put me in the first carriage. I replied sullenly to the few questions asked me, and sat huddled in the corner oblivious of everything. We stopped once for a bottle of spirits of ammonia, but, otherwise, the long ride to the cemetery was passed with hardly a word spoken. I dozed fitfully all the way. The clop-clop of the horses' hooves was soothing. It was evening when we reached the cemetery. The wind was biting; and the people had gathered in small groups to keep warm. I was cold. I was shivering. I walked briskly along the path among the tombstones. A small pebble lodged in my shoe and I stopped to take it out. Ahead of me was a mound of loose dirt. I hopped over to it and sat down; untied my shoelaces, pulled off my shoe, and took the pebble out and threw it at a stone angel a few paces away. I missed. I tried again with one of the pebbles lying at my feet. This time I hit squarely on the face. "What are you doing, sonny?" I turned around; and, I saw a man in a worn, leather jacket, in baggy trousers, and with clay stained shoes leaning on a shovel. "Oh, nothing. Just taking a pebble out of my shoe." I quickly slipped my shoe on and bent over it to tie the laces. "Maybe you were, son, maybe you were. But I wouldn't throw pebbles at the tombstones if I were you. That's blasphemy." I did not know what "blasphemy" meant, but, the intonation given the word, hushed, awe filling and tinged with a nameless fear, made me feel guilty of some great offense, and brought me back to the moment from which I had momentarily escaped. "I didn't mean anything. Really, I didn't." "I know you didn't, son. You don't know what these stones mean. They are the mute signs of the living to the dead that death has not wholly separated them. Now, if your father died- " He stopped; looked at me oddly and then at something behind me. "I'm sorry, son." He picked up his shovel and walked away. I got up and clambered up the mound of dirt to see what he had looked at. There, below me, was the pit. It seemed very deep from the top of the mound. I kicked some dirt and watched it dribble down the side of the mound and bound off into space; all the while trying to think what that old man was sorry about. The others were now close by. I jumped off the mound. The pall bearers with the coffin were coming up the pathway. They were at the grave. They laid the coffin on slings stretched across the pit and slowly lowered the black box until it came to rest at the bottom. I found my way to Mother's side. I slipped my hand into hers. It was warm and my cold fingers began to throb with the warmth. Lennie was beside her, snuggling against her thigh. Mother did not move a muscle during this last ceremony. Except for one quick movement near the end, I thought she was one of the carved stone figures that were all about us. As the first spade full of dirt landed with a thud on the coffin, her hand tightened over mine. Then, we were home. I refused to eat any supper, but went to my room, undressed, got into my pyjamas and climbed into bed. I cried. For no accountable reason, I burst into tears. I was ashamed and buried my head in the pillow. I heard someone coming into the room. I stifled my sobs and pretended to be asleep. "Are you a wake ?" It was Mother. I did not answer but breathed deeply. "He's asleep." That was Aunt Esther. "Thank God for that," I heard Mother say. "It has been a trying day. I am thankful it is over. The children behaved splendidly. But they need rest. I, too. My nerves are frayed to their last shreds. I still cannot forget his face. I did not realize that the disease, what a horrible thing it is! had ravaged him so. His face was so guant; his eyes were sunk into his very sockets. But that look on his face, in his eyes, that look of agony, of heart rendering pain, my God! I could hardly control myself. He must have died in the middle of his worst attack."-H. W. S. IMPROPAGANDA PRESIDENT Lincoln was a great man. The people made the Republican Party so he could get elected. President Willkie is a great man. He made the Republican Party so he could get elected. In Lincoln's day the people went to the Polls and voted in Booths. Modern science and invention now bring the Polls to the people. Caeser had his Brutus, Lincoln had his Booth, and George III did not profit by their example. If that be reason, make the most of it. Now the word of God came unto 25 Jonah saying, ARISE, GO TO NINEVEH AND CRY AGAINST IT; FOR THEY DEPART FROM THE AMERICAN WAY. But Jonah rose up to flee from God and took ship into the Tennessee Valley. But God sent out a great wind upon the Tennessee Valley and there was a mighty tempest so that Jonah's ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid and they cast forth the wares that were in the ship to lighten it unto them. But Jonah was gone down into the innermost parts of the ship and he lay fast asleep. So the mariners cast lots that they might know for whose cause the wind swept the valley, and the lot fell upon Jonah, and they saw that Jonah was their Jonah. So they took him up and cast him into the water. And Jonah was like to have drowned. But God prepared a great Fish to pick up Jonah. And Jonah spent some days with Fish. Then God spake unto Fish and he vomited Jonah out upon the land. So Jonah arose and went unto Nineveh and preached unto it of the American Way and said, Yet forty days to save Nineveh; yet forty days and Nineveh shall perish. And the people of Nineveh believed God and they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil which he said he would do unto them and he did it not. But it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry, that God did not any evil unto Nineveh. And Jonah went out of the city and sat on the East Side and there made him a booth and sat under it till he might see what would become of the city. And God prepared a network to grow up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head. And Jonah was exceeding �26 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM glad because of the network covering his booth. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day and it smote the network that it withered. And the sun beat upon the head of Jonah that he fainted and requested that he might die and said, I do well to be angry. And God said, Thou hast had regard for the network for which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night and perished in a night. That is the American Way. Then the people of Nineveh cast lots upon Jonah; and the Republican Party went the American way. And Jonah Willkie prospered according to the manner of his people; and the people erected a monument unto Jonah and his booth and called it Jonah Willkie's Booth.ERASMUS. Books TO CARTHAGE THEN I CAME Love in the Western World. By Denis de Rougemont. Translated by Montgomery Belgian. Harcourt, Brace and Co. $3.00. If the history of the West during the past nine hundred years may be seen as a tragic sequence having its embodiments on various planes of action, then, just as the present war is proving to be a catastrophe or turning-point, where the literal, allegorical, and moral planes of action intersect, so the conception of Love in the Western World marks a major, even if not yet widespread, recognition on the allegorical and moral plane. De Rougemont is primarily a moralist and a theologian writing in the guise of an historian: the subject of his history is the birth, growth, consummation, and degradation of the myth of passionate love; he is a theologian because he views the myth as the secularization of a heresy about the relation between the world and man's love of God; and, because he is a theologian, he must become a moralist, admonishing us to discover a casuistry of act, virtue, and thought in order to encircle, regulate, and lift up that which has become a second nature in most of us. Or to shift to the image in the Phaedrus, that of the charioteer trying to guide a chariot drawn by two headstrong horses, black and white; whereas the Socrates in that dialogue placed his rhetorical emphasis on the dangers of letting the black horse get out of control, De Rougemont is concerned to show what happens when the white horse takes the lead in running away with the chariot, and how both the irrational and the supra-rational brute are swayed by something which is essentially the same, and that the movement of both must be curbed by the rational charioteer. It is a truism to ask, in comparing the modern West with any other civilization, why is it that passionate love plays a much more important role in our conception of human living than in that of a Greek, Indian, or Chinese. The Greeks, for example, looked upon passionate love as a kind of temporary madness, and usually more of a calamity than a blessing: the tragedies of Aeschylus and S9phocles and the comedies of Aristophanes ignore romantic love, and even Euripides, who comes the nearest of any to being like a modern dramatist, ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM 27 associates it with an inhuman plan of forever. But as regards the second alrevenge in the Medea and with incest in leged 'appearance,' if the reader will look the Hippolytus. Even Plato, who is scrupulously into his own mind, he will supposedly the real teacher of the doc- probably find that his thoughts of love trine of love to the West, talks of love as are bound up with thoughts of death or a frenzy and, if to be desired, still a gift surrogates for death. And if we turn from the gods rather than an ordinary to the mythopoetic arts, we find that human passion. Yet today what pub- from the Tristram romances, through lishing house would be doing business Antony and Cleopatra, Le Cid, and Phedre, if there were no novels about romantic down to Le Rouge et le Noir, Madame fornication; and we need hardly remind Bovary, Wuthering Heights, Anna Kareourselves what the chief stock-in-trade nina, Rosmersholm, or even Garbo's of the movies is. Most of us feel that Camille, love is not only linked to death romantic love is the normal and desirable, but somehow achieves its consummation or at least the vulgar but necessary, con- in death alone. And we have all read summation of human experience,- in the newspapers of the boy and girl women are perhaps more frank about this who committed suicide after going to see than men, yet the men usually have a Mayerling. D. H. Lawrence remarked sneaking feeling that the women are upon the necessity of the mutual inright. This everyday demand for pas- volvement of romantic love and death sionate love, like bread and circuses, is as a sign of a sickness inherent in the the general phenomenon, whose causes nature of romantic love, but he did not Love in the Western World is investigat- prolong discursively his flash of insight. For De Rougemont the Tristram and mg. But perhaps more leading and sug- Iseult story is the eminent case of the gestive, for any causal inquiry, than the myth of romantic love. He finds the two mere widespreadness of the belief that phenomena noted above present in a falling in love is the one event which disguised form: the emphasis upon the manages to compensate for the rest of the intensity rather than the humanity of dull round of human destiny are two love may be detected in the episode of other 'appearances,' namely, the unim- the love-potion, Tristram's marriage with portance, or even irrelevance, of the the second Iseult, and even in the person loved in comparison with the singleness of Tristram's passion, if inexperience of passionate love itself. The tensity of feeling is increased by the first phenomenon, namely, that intensity oneness of the object; and the preoccupaof experience rather than a duly ordered tion with death, apart from the ending relation to another human being is the of the story, in the various obstructions important thing, will probably be more which Tristram and Iseult willfully and readily admitted than the second; indeed, deliberately set between themselves and for example, in the Heart's Intermittences the consummation of their love. Now, sections of Remembrance of Things Past, granted those two phenomena, by what Proust hardly does more than to argue, hypotheses can they be saved? De Rougemont argues that the though with great subtlety and skill, that it would not matter with whom Tristram story is essentially a myth you fell in love or what you did about it, about the kind of love the Troubadours if only Time would let you stay in love were writing songs about in Provence of �28 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM 29 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM the twelfth century, and furthermore that troubadour love-poetry bears the same relationship to the Catharist (Albigensian) heresy as does surrealism today to Freudian psychoanalysis. The Catharist heresy was the way in which a Manichaean doctrine of mystical love corrupted Christian love during the twelfth century. According to the Catharist heresy, the world was not made by God but by an evil daemon; as the world was wholly evil God would never suffer Himself to become incarnate in it, that is to say, Christ was not "very God of very God" and the second Person of the Trinity was much inferior to the First; and as man was a part of the world, he could only be saved through the cultivation of a mystical desire for God whereby he would escape completely from the world through death and lose his own substantiality, his very being, in oneness of essence with God. Yet as man is still within the world and God is infinitely distant, the spiritual preparation for this mystical desire would be a love which does not accept the beloved person as he or she is but employs him only as a pretext for intensity of passion, a love which is hopeless rather than happy and which looks forward to being transfigured by death. Thus the most perfect secular image of the Carharist desire for God is an adulterous love which obeys the code of chivalry and purifies itself in death. In opposition to this doctrine, the Catholic Church taught that the world was made by God, Who became incarnate in it, that man could, by the gift of grace, attain to a spiritual communion with God, and that as a part of the world wherein God had been incarnate, man should express his love of God through the "love of his neighbor." Thus the secular image of communion with God is found in the sacrament of marriage. De Rougemont names the Catharist love eros and identifies it with the love defined by Socrates in the Symposium, which climbs from beautiful bodies to beautiful souls and to beautiful institutions and occupations, and thence to the contemplation of beauty itself. This Platonic love, says De Rougemont, dies to the world on the ground that the world is wholly evil, and, without charity, leaves its neighbor to shift for himself. Yet if we are to be exact historically, it is the Plotinic rather than the Platonic conception of love which turns you away from the love of your neighbor; in the Republic, it is surely as much through love as by legal compulsion that the philosopher goes back down into the cave in order to serve the state. . Thus the doctrine of romantic love , a disguised passion for a mystical death is the great heresy to which the West succumbed in spite of its true virtue, which lies in the exercise of Christian charity. De Rougemont surveys the past five hundred years in the West as manifesting the gradual breakdown of the. Tristram myth, which, although ansmg from the Catharist heresy, served to set up limits to pure passion and to hold it in check. "Romantic love," as prevalent today, is an unconscious longing for death, at a stage of arrested development. Love in the Western World may be divid_e d into four parts: the first part, which comprises The Tristram Myth, 'I'he Religious Origins, and Passion and Mysticism is analytical and theological rather than historical in its emphasis and is the most carefully and fully thought out section in the book; it comprises, so to speak, the exposition of elements and causes. The second part, The Myth in Literature, is an historical survey of the gradual popularization and degradation of the Tristram myth in poetry and the novel. Unfortunately it is somewhat hit or miss in its scope: De Rougemont discusses Romeo and Juliet but not Othello or Antony and Cleopatra, Corneille's La Place Royale but not Le Cid, and his glance at the fate of the myth in the nineteenth century is very cursory indeed. There are however some brilliant passages, such as his analysis of Phedre as a chastisement inflicted by Racine upon the myth, in making the romantic heroine incestuous; or that of Don Juan as the inverse, or Satanic counterpart, of Tristram; or finally, his analysis of 'I'ristan und Isolde as the artistic consummation of the myth. The fourth part is Love and War, where he draws an extremely interesting series of parallels between the styles of making love and waging war in different ages: the elaborate rules of the Courts of Love in the twelfth century are matched by the equally elaborate code of knightly honor in warfare; in the fifteenth century, wars in Italy were carried on by mercenaries, and at the same time the courtesan occupied a respectable position in society; in the eighteenth century the military tacticians made the art of war as "scientific" as a game of chess or an experiment in Newtonian mechanics, and the art of seduction attained the dignity of an applied science, as may be seen in Les Liaisons Dangereuses; early nineteenth century romanticism reintroduced passion into love at the same time that Napoleon reintroduced passion into warfare and won his battles by breaking the classical rules; during the nineteenth century proper, most wars were fought for economic reasons or in a flurry of senti- mentality, like the Franco-Prussian War, and similarly marriages were arranged upon an economic or sometimes sentimental basis; and finally, in the Fascist state, passion is transferred from the individual to the state: love is depersonalized by eugenics, and warfare, by complete mechanization; and then, curiously enough, just as romantic lovers are transfigured in death, so the Fascist state can attain its consummation only in war. The reader wishes, however, in going over both Love and War and the Myth in Literature, that De Rougemont had tried to develop an analogical dialectic showing how successive manifestations of the myth were brought about by the preceding ones. The last part of the book comprises The Myth v. Marriage, and Active Love, or Keeping Faith, where De Rougemont writes as a moralist, viewing a world where the Tristram myth, which once governed men's lives, has broken down completely and pulled down marriage with it. At times, in this last section, he appears to be uncertain whether there is a Manichaean and irreconcilable opposition between passion and charity, or whether romantic love can be made to submit to the rule of reason and charity. Now though we condemn as wrong our proneness to romantic passion, we must not forget that while we can always discipline or temporarily trick or coerce a part of our nature, we cannot expunge it from us, even though St. Paul says, "there be some who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." De Rougemont's own Kierkegaardian solution to the "break-down of marriage" lies in keeping faith "by virtue of the absurd, by virtue of an old promise, of human unreason, of a reason of faith, of a pledge given to God and underwritten by God."-C. G. WALLIS. �30 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM BOOK NOTES We are pleased to see that Franz Kafka's novels and stories are being published in America. Alfred Knopf plans to print a new edition of The Castle, which he issued some years ago, this time with an introduction by Thomas Mann. In early December the Twice A Year Press will publish A Franz Kajka Miscellany which will include shorter works that have never before appeared in book form in this country. Max Brod, Kafka's literary executor, and Edwin Muir are translating and preparing the book. Amerika, Kafka's first novel, has recently been brought out by New Directions. The Trial, Kafka's other novel, has been previously published by Knopf, but is now out of print. If Knopf would reissue this with The Castle, all of Kafka's novels would be available in America .... Members of the St. John's faculty have been at work during the summer on books for use in the program. Mr. John Kieffer is preparing a new Greek grammar for the first year language tutorials, and Mr. George Bingley is translating Cantor's On Trans.finite Numbers for the fourth year students. The books will be published by the St. John's Bookstore during the year. Mr. Charles Wallis, who has done more translating than any other member of the College community, adds another first translation into English to the St. John's books. This is Pico della Mirandola's essay On the Dignity of Man . ... Freshmen at St. John's have always read Aristotle in the Oxford translations, with the exception of the Physics which first year students read last year in Mr. Wallis' version. This year they will read Richard McKeon's revised edition of the Oxford translations. Random House plans to publish this in January. Mr. McKeon, who is Dean Of Humanities at the University of Chicago, has lectured at St. John's. His publishers have arranged his work in one large volume. This will contain the Ethics, Politics, On Generation and Corruption, Physics and Metaphysics, De Anima, Organon, Poetics all in complete form. Besides these there will be selections from Aristotle's other writings. Random House is publishing other Great Books. In fourteen months they plan to issue an extraordinary mathematical work. This is the combined magna opera of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Kepler. Two years ago Mr. R. Catesby Taliaferro, a tutor at St. John's, translated into English for the first time Ptolemy's Almagest. Mr. Wallis' "first" translations of The Revolutions of the Spheres by Copernicus and Kepler's Epitome of Astronomy (Books IV and V) will make the accompanying volume in the Random House edition. These books have been studied at St. John's in mimeographed format. Their appearance in print in English has been delayed so many hundreds of years that the event of their publication will be both important and exciting .... In their first year at St. John's, students spend almost eight months studying the thirteen books of Euclid's Elements in their mathematics tutorial. They use the translation of Sir Thomas L. Heath, which is in three volumes (Cambridge University Press and Macmillan). This edition is so expensive that few freshmen are able to buy it and they have used copies from the College library. Within two years, Random House will have published a one-volume edition of Euclid, newly translated by John Neustadt of St. John's. This will enable every member of the College to own Euclid, which they find difficult to do without. ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM Helen Hill Miller, a lecturer and member of the St. John's faculty last year has written Beyond German Victory in collaboration with Herbert Aegar, which Reynal and Hitchcock have recently published. Forsaking popular instruction, Mortimer J. Adler's new book is Problems for Thomists (Sheed and Ward). Mr. Adler will begin his series of lectures in Annapolis in early December. Jacques Maritain, who visited and lectured at St. John's late last spring, also has a new book; Scholasticism and Politics (Macmillan) .... A great many of the books read at St. John's have been out of print a long while. Publishers do not think it profitable to reissue these, so the college has had facsimile reprints made of some works. Books I and III of Kerr's translation of Lavoisier's Elements of Chemistry has been reprinted for third year students; Mottelak's translation of On the Loadstone by Gilbert has been made available for sophomores, and Dalton's New System of Chemical Philosophy (Part I) for juniors. For the fourth year, Freeman's translation of chapters I-III of Fourier's Analytical Theory of Heat and Virchow's Cellular Pathology (Chance Translation) have been reprinted. Macmillan has reprinted for St. John's a special edition of Thompson's translation of Huygen's On Light. These add considerably to the College's remarkable list of reprints and new translations. All of these books, including the mimeographed publications may be purchased by mail at the St. John's Bookstore in Annapolis. A complete price list of the Great Books may be had on request. Knowing that there are a large number of people outside the College who are occupied in reading or rereading the books of the St. John's program, the Bookstore has provided a pamphlet 31 listing the books studied at the College, noting all the available_ cheap editions. This pamphlet also includes the reading schedule followed by students during the first three years of study .... To take leave of the ancients, we'd like to note a number of good books in cheap editions that have appeared in the last several months. Delmore Schwartz's translation of Rimbaud's A Season in Hell has been published by the New Directions at $1.00. The Exiles' Press of New York has also issued some of the rest of Rimbaud's work in a new translation, Lionel Abel's Some Poems of Rimbaud ($.50). Among other new translations are Gilbert Neiman's- Blood Wedding, a tragedy by F. Garcia Lorca (New Directions, $.50)-and R. Ellis Roberts' Peer Gynt by Ibsen (Oxford University Press, $.80). Some will remember Mr. Roberts' informal lecture at St. John's last year on Yeats .... New Directions has reprinted William Carlos Williams' In the American Grain ($1.00). The Modern Library has supplemented their modern selections with Catherine Anne Porter's Flowering Judas ($.95) and Joyce's Ulysses ($1.2.5). The edition of Joyce contains Judge Woolsey's famous decision on Ulysses that is in the original Random House imprint .... For readers of excellent detective fiction, we must not forget the books of Georges Simenon, which Harcourt, Brace has put out. Simenon's sleuth is Maigret, who never makes a deduction, and whose patience is inexhaustible. Each of the three books so far issued contain two novels. The books are The Patience of Maigret, lvfaigret Travels South, and Maigret Abroad, all at $2.00. Simenon is a Frenchman who has written hundreds of mystery stories under dozens of pseudonyms. His Maigret books are the first to be printed in America, and they scarcely accord with �32 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM the modern devices of detective fiction. We have been delighted with the change. Mercury Books (1,.25) have also published Simenon. His Maigret in The Death of Monsieur Gallet is a little more conventional, but still the best contemporary detective we know of.... Contrasting the quiet Maigret is Elliot Paul's cosmopolite Homer Evans, who inevitably makes major riots and minor deductions. Paul's first Evans orgy, The Mysterious Mickey Finn (Modern Age, 1,.50) is the one amusing effort. The hugger-mugger and mayhem he has made for his man since are a little too much like the old two-reelers. In the new Homer Evans story, Fracas in the Foothills, the locale is Montana. We expect Homer will be taking shortcuts and heading them off. -BILGUS. IDIOTICA It would be impossible, in a contest before a committee of competent judges, to show that temporalities are, in respect of number, more than matched by eternalities, and that, in respect of relative importance, changes are as dancing wavelets on an infinite and everlasting sea.-CAssrus J. KEYSER, PH.D., LL.D., D.Sc.: The Human Worth of Rigorous Cf'hinking. Five brilliant men got together for a dinner party 2,000 years ago. What they said about love is being re-discovered to-day. Read Plato's Symposium. Then listen to Huntington Cairns, Mark Van Doren, and Allen Tate discuss the one emotion in the world that makes a mouse out of a man, and vice versa. Get your copy of the Five Dialogues of Plato now. Spend Sunday afternoon listening in on a college reading course that will help you to catalogue your ideas about love! Tmes, ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM GIMBEL'S advertisement in The October 19, 1940. When human intelligence, the quality hidden away in the central heart of the lowest germ life, and arrived at after infinite unfoldings and long ages of development-when human intelligence arrives, the survival of the fittest proceeds along new lines.-FRED HENDERSON: The Case for Socialism. CINEMA To OUR generation, Charlie Chaplin is more of a myth than an actual personality. We have heard his name ever since we can remember. Our elders have always spoken of him with awe and profound respect. At some point we were sure that he must be an ex-President capitalizing on the ill effects of a present administration. Chaplin has been much more than president, of course. He has made the world laugh, and there is no nation that has not known and loved him. Charlie to us, he is also Carlos, Carlitos and Charlot. He was the one person in the new motion-picture industry who convinced the public that they couldn't do without the movies so long as the small man with the derby, the baggy pants, the cane and the fake mustache kept on appearing. It was in the Keystone comedies before the war that Chaplin first adapted this costume. It was there that he began to create one of the few universal clowns. And when he had perfected his character he knew that he should never change it. He was aware of his own capacities, and he knew that he could accomplish everything he wanted as the little clown. Actors today avoid portraying similar characters for a second time. They call call it 'getting the rut', and their god is Glamour. It is strange that they do not know that the character performers are the only players endeared by the public for any length of time. Audiences are delighted when they know what to expect from a particular actor. Chaplin has always known this; it has been his special problem to know what people anticipate in the little clown, and he has not disappointed them. Once they were accustomed to him as a comedian with an astounding sense of the pathetic and a determination not to imitate the unnaturally distorted, Chaplin knew that his audiences would never permit a reversal in his characterization. But he foresaw that there should be surprises. Since he did not speak his part, he improvised a kind of pantomimic ad lib, thereby giving the impression that the little clown was liable to make extraordinary gestures and decisions seemingly apart from character but immediately recognizable as distinctively his. After Chaplin had completely captivated his international audiences, the critics, who had appreciated him, thought something was wrong. To them, popularity was indicative of mediocrity, and not wishing to retract their admiration for Chaplin, they raised him from a comedian to an artist and gave his talent phases and periods-like Picasso. (It had not previously occurred to them that he had been an artist all along the lme.) So they took his films and analyzed them, dissecting the little clown's movements and gesticulations to such an extent that they weren't funny any more . They came to regard him as a tragedian as well as a comic. There were suggestions that he act in Liliom and Peer Gynt. Despite this last the critics were continually mistaken. When they diligently observed Chaplin's scenes they 33 discovered that there was no single motion or insinuation that the comedian had not analyzed before them. They saw that all possible effects had been thoroughly investigated and that interpretive alternatives would lead towards the desired end. Neither were they far wrong in supposing that Chaplin could do tragedy. In Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, two characters agree on "Oh, Give them Irony and Give them Pity." This might well be Chaplin's motto, but for its despair. With considerable subtlety Chaplin has always mixed irony with pity, taking care never to make use of the one without the other. Chaplin has also consistently taken us away to another planet. Deliberately, he has made this change as quickly as film footage will permit. In Modern Times the substitution was difficult; too much of the imaginative world depended on our own. The Great Dictator introduces a new device. Here there are two worlds, one of Hinkel, leader of the Double Cross, and the other of the little Jewish barber of the Ghetto. When the film begins the little barber is on the battlefield of I 9 I 8 operating cannons and anti-aircraft guns. Everything he could do correctly he appropriately mismanages for Tomania. And even though he rescues one of his country's generals, the war is lost. There is one superb scene in the airplane when the ship is flying upside down. Chaplin and the general do not know this, and it is only when the little barber slips out of his seat that they are a ware of their predicament. Not to be flurried, the general offers his companion a cigarette while he hangs down from the plane. The motor stops, the general reminisces �34 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM pleasantly, and they glide down to spoken dialogue, his screen play is accrash on the trees. complished and expert. Here is an The little barber loses his memory example from the barber shop scene: after the war and is sent to an asylum. HINKEL: I'm going to re-model the When he comes back to his shop in the barber shop and put glass windows on the Ghetto twenty years later he is sur- sides and the ceiling. N APALONI: prised to find that there is a dictator. What's outside? HINKEL: A magHe ignores the storm troopers, and with nificent view of the bay and the mounthe help of the little laundress next door, tains. NAPALONI: What's overhead? escapes their torment. Every time he HINKEL: The ballroom. is attacked, the laundress hits the But it is as the little barber that Chaptroopers on the head from her window. lin does his best work. When he shaves On one occasion she accidentally hits the a man to Brahms' Fifth Hungarian barber, and he dances on the curb in a Rhapsody he is certain of his effects, and daze. This is the notable instance when the supper scene at which one member of we are assured of the old Chaplin. The the party is to find a coin in his pudding world of the little barber is that of the is so perfectly done that we find little to little clown. Hinkel's is a world of approach it elsewhere. And when we satire. have become accustomed to this incomChristopher Morley, writing a brief parable personality his character is history of the autumn of 1938, remarked changed and the film promptly collapses. that Charlie Chaplin should sue Hitler Here Chaplin has made his one error in for plagiarism. In The Great Dictator not knowing what his audience expects he has done so with satirical vengeance. from him. At the end of the movie, His characterization of Hinkel is bril- when the little barber is mistaken for the liantly written and performed. The great dictator, he is called upon to make several times the dictator speaks to his a speech as conqueror of the world. people are classic examples of imitation. He is introduced by Hinkel's assistant, Chaplin has taken Hitler's screeching Herr Garbitsch, as the man who will crescendos and turned them into pig- someday rule all peoples on the earth. German and pigeon-English. The por- The little barber, just free from a contrayal of an ignorant and emotional centration camp, is not surprisingly ruler has been well done. There are nonplussed. His expression is one of scenes in which Hinkel appears that rival exquisite suffering. He turns to his the traditional actions of the little barber: companion, who motions him forward. Chaplin's dance with the balloon, the But he still cannot be sure of the situaincident when he and Napaloni, his fel- tion. He simply cannot walk up to those low-dictator from Bacteria, are burnt microphones and speak to those thouwith English mustard; the dance with sands of people. With one last look of Madame Napaloni; Herring's attempt to futility, he hesitantly rises and slowly use psychology on Napaloni, and the climbs the steps to the platform. There brief interlude in the barber shop. For Garbitsch awaits him at rigid attention. an actor who has stepped out of character The little barber does not understand his for the first time, Chaplin's impersona- respect, and when he is saluted he can tion of Hitler is prodigious. And for a only bow meekly, turning his cap in his scenarist who has not previously written hands. But of a sudden he is inspired 35 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM and steps forth to speak. The speech that he gives is one any other person in Tomania might have given but the little barber. The man who addresses the expectant crowd is unfaltering and determined; he has thought it all out before. He screams denunciation of dictators, demands that all races be treated decently, bemoans the state of the world and gives commands and hopes in the name of democracy. Had he omitted this last speech and the few actual scenes Chaplin would have made one of his greatest triumphs. But he has punctuated the two worlds he has made for us with stark reality. It is a reality we do not doubt, but one we refuse to accept beside the others. Chaplin has joined it with the life of the barber in order that it will not be ignored, in order that we might see truth and hear a message. The truth he shows us is the persecution of the Jews, and his message is to combat persecution and dictators. He has, in a word, said that this is no time for comedy. We are unable to forget that Chaplin's means of arriving at his message is comedy. It is a means others have used for similar ends. Aristophanes inevitably placed a message in his comedies, but they were all cleverly obscured in brilliant satire. Chaplin's satire of Hitler resembles the Aristophanic method. It is unfortunate that he did not realize how much more forceful his argument is when it is exemplified in Hinkel. The Great Dictator ends in a Millet setting with Miss Paulette Goddard as the little laundress gazing despondently at the ground. We observe her for several minutes of portraiture photography. During this time she hears the little barber as the great dictator. She raises her eyes to the sky and smiles. Looking at Miss Goddard's face for so long a while reminds us of her singular talent. The other members of the cast-Jack Oakie, Reginald Gardiner, Henry Daniell and Billy Gilbert-do much with the opportunities their director affords them. But for the one exception, Chaplin has had excellent support in The Great Dictator. The music Meredith Willson arranged from Chaplin's themes is never inappropriate and always an addition to the perfection of particular scenes. "The egregious merit of Chaplin," T. S. Eliot has said, "is that he has escaped in his own way from the realism of the cinema and invented a rhythm. Of course the unexplored opportunities of the cinema for eluding realism must be very great." This was written in the days of an earlier motion-picture, but to Chaplin it is still applicable. He has re-created realism in his own right with a spontaneity and tempo that demands a place with the great. Offering a pathetically chaotic universe with sublime characters has been his business. He has created in the little clown a modern Petrouchka whose world is both joyous and absurd, gentle and true. But unlike the boyish puppet, there is no need for the little clown to thumb his nose at the charlatan who does not believe he is real.-SREDNI VASHTAR. TRIVIA SOMETHING should be said for the woman who walked into the Book Store and demanded "that book on Platonic Love." "It's called The Republic, isn't it?," she said. "You know, the one where an apple is cut in half and if one half finds the other, everything is all right." At the earliest opportunity we're going to make a special trip to the Big City �36 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM to see what The New Yorker's Wolcott Gibbs means when he says the chorus girls in the Ed Wynn show, Boys and Girls Together, have a "rather literary look about them!" Mr. orgies return Books Willkie, having been spared the of the presidency, is now free to to his reading-204 Big Little a year. Mr. Mark Van Doren, in a recent lecture here at the College, told us that John Stuart Mill lived, during one period of his career, in a state of living death. This coma was charged to improper education. Gives one a sense of security, doesn't it? Assistant Dean Raymond Wilburn, in a recent sophomore Seminar, while jumping too hastily from the specific to the general, confused the issue by introducing the term "intellectual tuition." The error might have been pardoned had Treasurer Wright made it. We suppose that something should be said about the fact that Housing Facility Stromeyer's name was misspelled in this column last month. On second thought, however, it doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference as this illustrious political figure is called by other names here at the College. Anyhow, a rose by any other name .... This season Broadway is presenting two comedies about film land. At least, Hollywood is still laughable. A Cockney suggests to the British Government that it use a "screaming bomb" which, instead of screaming, whistles the "all clear" signal as it falls. Last Monday morning someone remarked to us that it's a great life if you don't weekend.-R. H. The Play THE charming Grace George has returned after five years to do a revival of what is probably the finest of her many famous roles. It's a joy to see a character portrayed with such skill as Miss George lends to the part of Mary Berries in Kind Lady. Peak suspense coupled with genuine sympathy makes it difficult to imagine anyone as unfortunate as Mary Berries: for this again Miss George is responsible. Felix J acovy, the Director, fulfills admirably the job of weaving a fast-moving story of horror and intrigue. Mr. Jacovy' s presence is defi- nitely felt, although certain minor details are, as yet, unsatisfactory. The mood of suspense and terror sustained throughout nowhere resolves itself into that burlesque, physical, Perils of Pauline sort of melodrama typified by last seasons's unhappy Goodbye in the Night. The show is far more subtle than Emlyn Williams' classic psychological play, Night Must Fall. The well planned settings by Watson Barrat are in perfect harmony with the action and atmosphere of the play. They have been ingeniously designed to ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM provide an easily adaptable, never static background which intensifies the effects of the action and keeps pace with the changing moods of the plot. Kind Lady was adapted by Edward Chodorov from a story by Hugh Walpole. It was first produced in 1935. The present run opened at the Playhouse Theatre, New York in early September and was one of the first offerings of the present season. The principle criticism of the original presentation seemed to be the weak script. Although certain faults in the book-such as a rather slow opening and indefinite delineation of minor characters-still exist, the structure of the play on the whole has been improved considerably. Mr. Brady, Kind Lady's producer, has seen his opportunity in the current trend toward revivals; indeed in a sense he is the father of the trend, for it was encouraged, if not started, by his excellent presentation last season of Laurette Taylor in Outward Bound. To mention but a few other revivals of this season and last, there are in addition to the above mentioned: Blind Alley (another melodrama); Charley's Aunt; The Show Off, (in prospect); and, of course, Helen Hayes and Maurice Evans in the Theatre Guild's production of Twelfth Night.ROBERT MYERSON, '44· When we first saw Robert Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night, we were convinced that the contemporary theatre had reached its apex and henceforth would go into decline. Sherwood was the world's greatest playwright and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the world's most superb acting combination. We held our breath until the play was published, so that we might 37 read again the letter which Dr. Valkonen sent to his wife, a testament to all that was honorable and loving and brave in a world filled with the crash of battle. The play has been published, and we have read it. Strangely, it awakened in us not one of the emotions which we felt when the Lunts were doing the interpretation for the audience. Perhaps it had to be seen to be appreciated; we journeyed to New York, and watched them go through the motions. It was sadly evident that the actors had long since spoken their lines with any inspiration, and the highlights of the play passed by as though a fuse had blown somewhere. In his introduction to There Shall Be No Light, Mr. Sherwood has traced his mental maneuvers in his past plays, and from them extracted a growth of his character and beliefs. Perhaps he has reached maturity at last; perhaps he has said in this play the things which deep down in his heart he believes; but for some reason his manner of saying them does not bear repetition. He has a belief in the fundamental dignity of man, and he tells us that anything worth living for is worth dying for, no matter how futile or horrible the death may be. He tells us these things through the story of a Finnish-American family, caught in Helsinki during the Russian rape of Finland. Dr. Valkonen (Alfred Lunt) is a Finn, the winner of the Nobel Prize for researches in the human mind; his wife Miranda (Lynn Fontanne) is an American product of Cape Cod and New Orleans. Together they have settled in Helsinki and raised a son Erik (Montgomery Clift), who is seventeen, solid, serious and healthy. In their house also is portly Uncle Waldemar (Sydney Greenstreet), who plays a Finnish philosopher �38 ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM in the Sibelius style. It is to these four people that things happen. In the first scene (the best in the play), the audience is shown how happy the Finns are, how democratic and peaceful and idealistic. Dr. Valkonen has just been awarded the Nobel Prize, and speaks over the air to America; all is jollity and peace. The audience loves this family and its friends, despite the undercurrent of impending tragedy which is dimly felt. In the next scenes, tragedy is the motif; we hear of the invasion of Finland, followed by the call to bear arms sent to every Finn capable of carrying a rifle. Erik, who has done work on the Mannerheim line, goes with the skitroops in the North, and his father, who has not looked at a mump for twenty-five years, serves in the Medical Corps in the South. Erik is killed; but before he dies, he is married to Kaatri Alquist (Elizabeth Fraser), by whom he is to have a child. Kaatri is sent to America, through the assistance of Dave Corween (Richard Wharf), the American radio man who covers Europe for the news-mad Yankees. Dr. Valkonen, caught in a school-house in the path of the Russians, together with several assorted citizens of various countries, is told by one of them of the death of his son, of which fact he had hitherto been ignorant. He is then inspired to make a speech, an extremely optimistic speech, in which he testifies to the nearing of the time when men shall know the light, and find within their own foreheads the place where there shall be no night. He also writes a letter of comfort to Miranda, and goes forth to die gloriously on the ice for Finland and the world. Miranda discloses the letter's contents to us when she reads it aloud to Dave Corween and Uncle Waldemar; she is sending it to America for Kaatri's child; Miranda feels that the child, as yet unborn, is her link with the future. In accordance with an old Finnish custom, she and Uncle Waldemar have prepared to raze the house, and die in defense of the city; her soft hands are unused to the touch of a rifle, but willing nevertheless. Uncle Waldemar plays a lovely Finnish folk-song, as Miranda sits on the couch, alone, where once her husband and her son sat with her; and as the curtain falls, the audience sees, as Mr. Sherwood intends them to see, that "there is a kind of peace in this FinnishAmerican house." Throughout all this action, Mr. Sherwood has his actors say what he wrote when he was inspired; but it has the desired effect only upon those who share his feeling. He therefore has failed in his purpose; for if he desires that the rest of us should feel as he does, then we should be raised to his heights, and not merely kept there. We think the fault lies in his place of action; Finland today is a dead issue: events move too swiftly, and tragedy overshadows tragedy. No longer is it easy to make audiences feel the fate of Finland as something alive and vital and supremely cruel. This is a shame, for a man of Mr. Sherwood's talents should be made immortal when he has a theme such as the author so obviously felt. He read Mein Kampf in 1930, and has been fighting for democracy ever since: would that he could make many more people feel the same way. The whole play was written for three main speeches, which testify to Mr. Sherwood's beliefs: a confession by the Nazi ambassador to Finland of the goal of his country; the lecture which Dr. Valkonen gives in the little school-house; and the letter which he wrote to his wife. The first of these is brutal, shock- ST. JOHN'S TRIVIUM ing, fantastic: and for that reason, believable. The second is a vision of the future, seen through the eyes of a man who takes the Bible as scientific truth; and the third is a beautiful symbol of one man's faith in his own mind and love for a woman, coupled with understanding of both. Mr. Sherwood, to make the tragedy forceful, has one example of it after another, and it is almost too much for an emotional animal to take; but that is the way war is, and that is the way he has shown it. He has tried to awaken a nation, and sadly enough, succeeded only temporarily. Both Mr. Sherwood and Finland deserve a better fate.J. L. H. CONTRIBUTORS DR. RICHARD KuEHNEMUND (Of Doom and Hope) is the second oldest member 39 of the St. John's faculty in years of service, having taught here since 1924. A classical scholar of the old German school, he obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Gottingen in 1922, while acting as assistant in the Philological Seminar there. Before the advent of the New Program at St. John's, he taught modern languages, but now adds Greek and Latin classes to his continued tutorials in French and German, thereby being an instructor in every language studied here. He writes numerous articles for newspapers and classical journals, usually analyzing the present in terms of the work of some ancient or modern scholar. This habit he carries into his tutorials, adding much of ,interest to them. Of Doom and Hope is a condensed version of a much longer treatise which he intends to bring out elsewhere in the near future. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <em>St. John's Trivium</em> Description An account of the resource A short-lived magazine edited and published by St. John's College students in 1940. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource St. John's College Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright.</a> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Trivium Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 21 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's Trivium, December 1940 Description An account of the resource St. John's Trivium, volume 1, issue 2 (December 1940) issue. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Mason, Francis S., Jr. (Editor) Hedeman, John L. (Editor) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1940-12 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright.</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.) Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Trivium_1940December Student publication https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/05c1254f18e6899b97dac8ddf8545261.mp3 def7d3f5dbe808d5863a47028fa146a0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:53:49 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On the Mortality of Minds Description An account of the resource Audio recording o f a lecture given by John Peters on March 6, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “As far as we know the most complex thing the universe has brought forth, besides itself, is the human mind. Among many other things, minds know things. But what should we make of the fundamental fact that knowledge is housed in such fragile, forgetful, and short-lived vessels as human beings? Why do minds die—or do they? Since the origin of writing, and likely long before that, humans found ways to externalize mind. In complex societies, the library is the key symbol of mind embedded in matter. At least since Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus, thinkers have been anxious about this externalization. Was he right to criticize writing? And how might we think about the would-be total library of the internet, and of its administration by AI-intoxicated tech Caesars whose ambition often seems to be to by-pass death altogether? This lecture pursues very basic questions, drawing on (at least) the Phaedrus and works by Jorge Luis Borges.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Peters, John Durham Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-03-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Philosophy of mind. Plato. Phaedrus. Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-1986. Artificial intelligence. Libraries. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_PetersJ_On_The_Morality_of_Minds_2026-03-06 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/0c863ac1d05e0a80aa1bd091096d4483.mp3 154a092cdab8882ffc1d2487cd6b5597 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:04:00 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Λόγος and Ανθρωπος: a Genealogy Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Ken Wolfe on February 6, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “In the Origin of Species, Darwin points to analogies between biological and linguistic evolution and classification. How strong are those analogies? Why do they exist? What do they tell us about human evolution? The first part of the lecture will discuss Darwin’s Origin of Species, focusing in particular on his diagram of the ‘tree of life,’ the definition of species, and the relation between species, varieties, and individuals. We shall consider some issues raised in the Descent of Man in order to see how Darwin thought about human nature. It will also include some considerations of more recent discoveries in genetics and how they bear on these questions. The second part of the lecture will focus on linguistic evolution, on both what we know and don’t know about the development and beginnings of language(s). It will discuss in particular the Indo-European family of languages, spoken by nearly half of the world’s population. Are all the world’s languages related? Do they have a single origin? This lecture will end by returning to Aristotle and considering whether his definition of man as the animal with λόγος can still be defended." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wolfe, Kenneth Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882. On the origin of species. Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882. Descent of man. Linguistics. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_WolfeK_Logos_and_Anthropos_A_Genealogy_2026-02-06 Friday night lecture Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Hyperlink A link, or reference, to another resource on the Internet. URL <a href="https://youtu.be/eT4j_8FXcj4?si=4DwXN0Nrt9SVyDcj">https://youtu.be/eT4j_8FXcj4?si=4DwXN0Nrt9SVyDcj</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <a href="https://youtu.be/eT4j_8FXcj4?si=D4BQ6JDGpchAE7Z9" target="_blank" title="The Nature and Power of Numbers" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Nature and Power of Numbers</a><a href="https://youtu.be/e17Q-D6ZQp8?si=-oE0QAVsHfhgsBOQ"></a> Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on February 13, 2026, by Annapolis tutor Brendon Lasell, as the 2026-26 NEH lecture.<br /><br />Mr. Lasell offers the following description of his lecture: "Diophantus begins his <i>Arithmetica </i>by saying that he has 'tried to establish the nature and power of numbers.' After a short general introduction, he goes on to pose and solve hundreds of difficult problems about numbers. We will explore whether numbers have a nature and how it can be established, looking at examples of the kind of work Diophantus does with numbers." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lasell, Brendon Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-13 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource YouTube video Subject The topic of the resource Diophantus, of Alexandria. Arithmetica Algebra Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Lasell_Brendon_2026-02-13 Friday night lecture NEH lecture Tutors Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>.  <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&amp;sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Hyperlink A link, or reference, to another resource on the Internet. URL <a href="https://youtu.be/r7vBlmfIAkQ?si=dhzCT8j3Gia6BcBs">https://youtu.be/r7vBlmfIAkQ?si=dhzCT8j3Gia6BcBs</a> Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource <a href="https://youtu.be/r7vBlmfIAkQ?si=dhzCT8j3Gia6BcBs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><span class="s-lg-book-title">Montesquieu’s Persian Letters: Cartesian Rationalism, Rebellious Souls</span></a><a href="https://youtu.be/e17Q-D6ZQp8?si=-oE0QAVsHfhgsBOQ"></a> Description An account of the resource Video recording of a lecture delivered on February 6, 2026, by Annapolis tutor Janet Dougherty, as part of the Formal Lecture Series.<br /><br />Ms. Dougherty offers the following description of her lecture: "<span>Usbek, the most prolific writer in Montesquieu’s epistolary novel <em>The Persian Letters</em>, is in voluntary exile from his homeland and his harem. During his sojourn in Europe his perspective as a stranger provides the freedom he needs to develop an understanding of good government completely different from Persian despotic rule. His ideas cohere into a sort of Cartesian political science. But while these ideas diverge continually from an endorsement of despotism, he feels more and more compelled to impose his will on his wives and their guards. Usbek’s hope to be loved by the women he oppresses endures alongside his enlightened views of law and government. Eventually his wives openly rebel; the collapse of the seraglio leads to Usbek’s collapse. I will argue that Usbek’s blindness to his despotic authority derives from his Cartesian method of inquiry. His enlightenment is linked by ‘a secret chain’ to his deepest prejudice. Montesquieu is pointing to a more thorough science of human, i.e. erotic, beings."</span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dougherty, Janet Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-06 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource moving image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource YouTube video Subject The topic of the resource Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de, 1689-1755. Lettres persanes. Descartes, René, 1596-1650 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Doughterty_Janet_2026-02-06 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/486ad13a5acac436722101e7d008db2b.pdf b8f35161f2fc7e50a24f54aebf827fc7 PDF Text Text The Essence of Catholicism |1 This lecture has a thesis, and that thesis is that the essence of Catholicism is sacramentality. What do I mean by that? I’ll need about an hour to explain it. Sacramentality is not a word of my own, but I will be making my own use of it, so A.I. won’t have anything on it. You might as well turn off your cell phone. I like to begin lectures with apologies and disclaimers. Sometimes they’re rhetorical, sometimes wry, usually amusing, but today’s is dead serious, and it has a target audience: my own students. The disclaimer is this: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME: ACCIDENTS MAY BE FATAL. I want you, my students, to take me for a hypocrite, and to do as I say, not as I do. When you write an essay for me, I want you to engage the book on its own terms, to explicate its claims textually, and to offer an engaged response to your author dialectically. Do not use the text as a soapbox on which to declare your opinions on the subject-matter of the text, because even if the deceased author be not there to interrupt, your readership of one is standing with his pen poised high to gainsay you, not paragraph by paragraph, nay, but sentence by sentence. If you want to declaim without interruption, write a lecture. Speaking of which … this lecture is a reprise of years of wondering about a sentence from the first question of Aquinas’ Summa. That sentence is the springboard of this declamatory lecture upon it. The sentence comes from the last article of the first question. The first question of the Summa concerns the nature of Sacred Doctrine, but the last article of it is given to Sacred Scripture. Aquinas enumerates and organizes Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |2 traditional terms for different ways of interpreting Scripture figuratively. The question he poses is whether in Sacred Scripture a word may have several senses. The answer is Yes— which shows, yet again, how uninteresting a right answer is without a reason why. Aquinas introduces his account of why with a quotation from St. Gregory: Holy Writ by the manner of its speech excels all knowledge, because in one and the same sentence, while it describes a fact, it reveals a mystery. This is a striking quotation. To state the obvious, Holy Writ is written. One might have thought it would use words to reveal mysteries. Are we to understand that it is not the words of Holy Writ, but rather the wordless facts they describe, that reveal God’s mysteries? How do facts reveal mysteries? Aquinas straightaway offers a reason for this in the first sentence of his reply: The author of Holy Writ is God, in whose power it is to signify His meaning, not by words only— as man also can do—but also by things themselves. So, whereas in all other knowledge things are signified by words, this knowledge has the special property that the things signified by the words themselves also have a signification. Now, Aquinas seems to say that only God can do this. So, I figure it must be as the Creator of Nature or the Lord of History that God can make use of natural things, or historical events, or chosen persons, to serve as signifiers of his actions, his intentions, his mysteries. This is an interesting reversal for Sacred Theology. Aquinas had earlier said that in the natural theology of philosophers, knowledge of God is sought by reasoning from creatures as his effects to God as their primary cause, however, in sacred scripture Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |3 God reveals himself as he is known to himself alone, and by reasoning from this selfrevelation as from postulated first principles, sacred theology seeks knowledge of other truths about God. But now it turns out that God often reveals himself by means of creatures rather than words, so theology is back to reasoning about creatures. Now, it seems to me that God won’t be very impressive if he uses creatures to signify his meaning symbolically. Using a lion to signify courage, or a heart to signify love, or an eagle an empire, is the stuff of rhetoric and poetry. In this case, the relation between signifier and signified is associational, often within the context of a linguistic or artistic tradition. It seems to me that if God’s way of signifying his meaning by facts is unique to him, then it must be that he makes signs out of the intrinsic meaning of things. The natural meaning of these divine signs must matter to their divine meaning. Furthermore, a sign is a sign for someone, and in order to be significant, a sign needs to be adapted to the dative of signification. Therefore, it is not just the natural meaning of things in themselves, but rather their meaning for us human beings, that will make them significant signs for us. For example: a virgin both conceiving and giving birth virginally. Now, for us, that’s extraordinary. The question becomes, What did God mean by that? For an analogue from human affairs of this contrast between a sign that contains what it signifies naturally and a sign that points beyond itself by an association, I propose Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |4 to you the difference between a marriage vow and a marriage ring. In our legal system, the speaking of the marriage vow before a witness legally effects the martial bond. Although there are witnesses and documentation of the vow, it is the verbal act to which these witness that creates the legal bond. In contrast, the wedding ring is but a symbolic memento, associated with the vow by custom. It signifies the vow and its import socially by an extrinsic association, not as a principle of it. Similarly, smoke can signify the presence of fire as an effect of it, but the sound of a fire alarm does so by convention. In the case of his revelation, however, God is able to do something even more significant. He can make use of a thing’s own natural meaning to express his divine meaning. Take, for example, the water of Christian baptism. Baptism is the first of seven sacraments in the Church. The Church confesses these sacraments to be divine signs that contain divine power to effect what they signify. They are physical signs given by God to human beings to signify his spiritual action on them. The name sacrament is from the Latin adjective sacer, meaning sacred, and a sacramentum was a sacred pledge—in this case, a divine pledge. It was used in Christian Latin to translate the Greek work musterion, which meant a secret. In particular, it meant secret knowledge revealed only to initiates, as in ancient Greek mystery cults. The noun is from the verb to close, as initiates were to keep their mouths closed about the mystery before the uninitiated. Allow me to underscore that a religious mystery, both in pagan and Christian senses, means divinely revealed knowledge: privileged knowledge about divine things. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |5 Belief is knowledge, and unbelief is ignorance; belief is enlightened, and unbelief is blind. Such religious belief chooses to remain mute before unbelievers, because their ears are deaf to it. But the minds of believers are enlightened by it, and their hearts understand what they hear, and they judge it unfitting to dispute with the spiritually blind about divine light or with the spiritually deaf about God’s word. The Christian sacrament of baptism is an initiation into knowledge of the mystery of Christ. A ritual act of cleansing the body with water signifies a divine act of cleansing by the Spirit of God. Now, this ritual act of bodily bathing that God has adopted to signify his own act of spiritual cleansing is in fact an act of human contrivance. The New Testament testifies that John baptized repentant sinners in the Jordan River for a ritual demonstration of their repentance, and historians assure us that this was not an uncommon practice among Jews of the 1st century. Consistent with this is a long religious tradition, attested to throughout the Old Testament, of ideating sinning as staining, soiling, polluting; and accordingly of asking God for forgiveness by way of cleansing, purifying, or blotting out. This poetic symbolism recurs throughout Sacred Scripture. There is of course a natural basis for such religious symbolism. Such a natural basis is well described by Ludwig Feuerbach in his anthropological deconstruction of it. The title of my lecture is a little less presumptuous if you catch its allusion to the title of Feuerbach’s book, the Essence of Christianity. To reduce the thesis the book to a sentence, he writes, The secret of theology is anthropology. Feuerbach argues that religious Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |6 consciousness of God is nothing but the unconscious projection by a primitive human consciousness of its own essence, and that in reality the only essence there is for human consciousness to love and adore is the essence itself of human nature. In his critical effort to retrieve what is true from Christian consciousness, Feuerbach offers for an example the following deconstruction of Christian baptism: We give a true significance to Baptism, only by regarding it as a symbol of the value of water itself. Baptism should represent to us the wonderful but natural effect of water on man. Water has in fact not merely physical effects, but also, and as a result of these, moral and intellectual effects on man. Water not only cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales fall from his eyes: he sees, he thinks, more clearly; he feels himself freer; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. … In the stream of water the fever of selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. The man rising from the water is a new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that morality can do nothing without grace, has a valid meaning if, in place of imaginary, supernatural means of grace, we substitute natural means. Moral feeling can effect nothing without Nature: it must ally itself with the simplest natural means. The profoundest secrets lie in common every-day things, such as supernaturalistic religion and speculation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries to imaginary and illusory ones ; as in Baptism, for example, the real power of water is sacrificed to an imaginary one. … But baptism is a rational, a venerable institution, if it is understood to typify and celebrate curative virtues of water, both moral and physical. I’m persuaded by some of this description of the anthropological significance of water, but I’m not convinced of the power of my hot salt-bath to allay my selfishness, Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |7 beloved though it be after the salutary castigations of a deep tissue massage. I have no doubt that water does not have the power to cleanse my conscience of my consciousness of sin; to wash away my self-condemnation, my self-contempt, my painful self-awareness that the good I will to do, I do not do, and the evil I will not to do, that I do, wretched man that I am. I have no doubt that water does not have the power to wash away the harm my sin has done to my thinking, my feeling, my desiring; to my memory, my imagination, my will; to my perceptions, my affections, my habits; to my family, to my friends, my fellows. I’m sure that water cannot heal all those maladies of my soul, with all due disrespect to Feuerbach. The religious penitent does not look to water for healing. Such an expectation would be true superstition in the eyes of faith. Rather, the penitent adopts a ritual bath to signify his desire to be freed from his sins. He knows his sin and his need to be cleansed of its effects, and he adopts water as an expressive symbol of his desire, by way of a poetic transference from bodily needs. Implied in the religious symbolism is an analogy between what the body needs for its life and what the spirit needs for its life. This is the extent of John’s baptism: he calls it a baptism of repentance. He ministers this sign of the penitent’s acts of repenting of his sins and of asking forgiveness for them. This religious sign is an empty sign to the extent that it is a sign, not of what is present, but of what is wanted: of what is needed; of what is desired. It has no power to effect what it expresses. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |8 Now, for a Christian to reduce the significance of Christian baptism to such symbolic self-expression would suit Feuerbach’s thesis just as well as his own naturalist deconstruction. Feuerbach aimed to do for Christianity what Lucretius aimed to do for Roman religion, namely demythologize its belief in supernatural agency. Of course, Lucretius’ deconstruction of supernatural agency is a scientific deconstruction to natural causes, whereas Feuerbach’s, being anthropological, is historical in bent, offering a coming-of-age story for human consciousness. Now, Feuerbach was a student of Hegel's, who disapproved of Feuerbach's thesis. I suspect Hegel rejected it as too historically minded. For his part, Hegel concludes his Phenomenology of Spirit with a chapter about Christian theology, which we do not read in the Program. In that afterword, he purposes to demythologize Christian theology symbolically, rather than historically. In particular, he shows how the theological doctrine of the Trinity is an expression in symbolic thinking of the emergence of absolute consciousness in the world. I think that for Hegel the stages of this emergence are not historical, except incidentally. The stages are modes of consciousness rather than historical epochs of it, and their order of emergence from one another is genetic rather than historical. The fact that Hegel achieved absolute consciousness in his age doesn't mean that anybody else did. Both of these demythologizations of Christianity have been highly influential in Christian Biblical Studies, and they have trickled down to Christian preaching—or rather flooded it, I’d say. Feuerbach’s anthropological hermeneutic takes the form of historical Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �The Essence of Catholicism |9 contextualization of the Bible, and Hegel's takes the form of formal analysis. These 20th century trends in biblical hermeneutics seem to me understandable when you consider that both Theology and Biblical Studies are academic disciplines. When Physics became Queen of the sciences, History became Prince of the humanities, because history can mimic the experimental method. To qualify as scientific, humane studies need complete enumeration of measurable data, categorized according to normative definitions and analyzed according to stipulated measures. The data of the humanities are historical artifacts, archaeological or documentary. Humane sciences had to take the form either of historical or formal analysis of such measurable data to continue to count as scientific. Philosophy, for example, became History of Philosophy or Analytic Philosophy. In academic Christianity, biblical texts became historical documents to be explicated historically, or else mythopoeic narratives to be explicated symbolically. For over a century now, much of Christianity has been in search of the historical Jesus, and the hermeneutical keys of the kingdom of heaven are held by biblical historians who reveal the significance of sacred scripture in historical retellings. When Jesus told Pilate that he came to bear witness to the truth, Pilate replied, What is that? Many today would answer: the facts. Well, the scriptures cannot be trusted to testify to the historical facts, because their intention is rather to testify to the truth. Thus enter the hermeneuts, who explain to us that the biblical mode of discourse must be understood as more rhetorical Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 10 or poetical than historical. One must explicate accordingly in terms of the literary forms of the texts and the rhetorical intentions of the authors. Now, none of that is not true. It's just not the whole truth, nor the heart of the truth, so that it is only reducing the whole truth to that, that makes it untrue. I think that all these historical considerations pertain only to the historical matter of the divine signs, and not to their divine significance. Now, the natural matter of the divine sign does indeed matter. It is of the essence of Catholicism that, as Aquinas puts it, grace builds on nature and revelation on reason. Aquinas says that grace completes nature, and that nature is the natural potency of grace, so that the two are interrelated essentially as perfectible and perfection. It is of the essence of Catholicism to believe this about nature. The revelations of God are much complicated—or perhaps I should say enriched— by the fact that they are conveyed in the language of the sons of men. On a Catholic view, divine revelation is not divine dictation, but divinely inspired interpretation. Accordingly, the scriptural descriptions of the divine signs are anthropological through and through. All the human powers of the sacred writer are in play when he authors his narrative of the historical facts and his interpretation of their divine significance. His intention is to testify that these historical facts are divine signs of divine mysteries, and to explicate their mystical meaning. All the resources of human logic, rhetoric, poetry, history, science, philosophy, are at his disposal, and like any other writer, he speaks from Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 11 his own person and time to his contemporaries. But at the same time he intends to speak of eternal mysteries that transcend his own time, place, and subjectivity. God’s grace thus builds on human nature and God’s revelation on human reason. We know from sad self-experience, however, that human nature and reason are far from perfect. In fact, it is of the essence of Catholicism to testify that they are fallen from their original state of grace. Sin’s a big complication. (How’s that for understatement?) But it is of the essence of Catholicism to say that this corrupted perfectible called human nature is predestined by God to be reclaimed for supernatural sublation. Sinful nature is understood to be wounded, or ill, or sullied, yes; and it needs to be healed, purified, and restored, yes; but precisely in order to be elevated, glorified, even divinized. Every natural good is therefore to be reclaimed by the Church for the glory of God. For this reason is the Catholic Church, on its best days, a patron of all arts and sciences. For this same reason, besides its sacraments, the Church has innumerable sacramentals. Any human symbol of anthropological significance can be adopted by Catholics as a sign of their devotion. For one example, as the wedding ring is a memento of the wedding vow, so is holy water a memento of the water of baptism. For another, all the paraphernalia of Mosaic Temple sacrifice, which perished from Judaism with the Temple, has been adopted by the Catholic Church for the sacramental sacrifice of the risen Christ’s body and blood. Every new proselytized culture adds its devotional sacramentals to the treasury of Catholic tradition. The Church’s mandate is that everything naturally good, Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 12 true, or beautiful should be claimed for Christ. This burgeoning of sacramentals in the Church expresses the fecundity of the Incarnation. When the Word became flesh to dwell among us, he rendered the whole material creation fit to be a sign of his indwelling in it. Returning to John’s baptism, God has adopted this human sign, resonant with all its anthropological and religious significance, to serve as his sign of his fulfilling the need and desire that it signifies. As a human sign of a human desire, it was an empty sign. God adopted it to fulfill it. He fills the human sign with his divine power, so that it becomes a divine sign that effects what it signifies. John himself testifies to this, saying I indeed baptize you in water for repentance, but he that shall come after me, he shall baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire. John also testifies that this power of Christ’s baptism was divinely revealed to him: The one who sent me to baptize with water said to me: ‘He upon whom you shall see the Spirit descending and remaining, he it is that baptizes with the Holy Spirit. John offers the figure of fire to signify the purgative action of Christ’s Holy Spirit. He expands upon this figure of fire as follows: His fan is in his hand and he will purge his floor, and he will gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. The water of Christ’s baptism is thus revealed to be a divine sign of a divine fire/ Okay, physical water signifies spiritual fire. That’s complicated. Worse yet, Christ himself never baptizes anyone with water. He will command his chosen Apostles to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit after he leaves the world, but while in the world, neither they nor he baptize with water. On the other Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 13 hand, he does submit to John’s baptism, over John’s objection, overruling it by saying that he must fulfill all justice. Much later, he calls his sufferings to come a baptism, saying: I have a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how I am in anguish until it be accomplished. This association by Jesus of his passion with baptism resonates with John’s calling Jesus at his baptism the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This declaration identifies Jesus with the paschal lamb of the Mosaic Passover. John the Evangelist likewise testifies to this identification of Jesus with the Pasch in his gospel narrative of the crucifixion, when he relates that the Roman soldiers did not break Jesus’ bones, but rather pierced him with a lance. It was a sign yet more significant, testifies John, that there then flowed from Jesus’ pierced heart not only blood but also water. In one of his subsequent letters, the evangelist explicates this sign thus: And there are three that give testimony: the Spirit and the water and the blood. And these three are one. They are one? How are they one, John? Do you see how a sacred semiotics is what is needed to understand the signs to which the sacred scriptures testify? Neither an anthropology nor a symbology can get to the heart of the matter. The essence of sacred theology is, rather, divine semiotics. Divinely inspired scripture reveals the water of Christian baptism to be an effective sign of the purgative power both of Christ’s Spirit and of his blood. These signs, prophetically interpreted, reveal to faith both the action of God and the eternal intentions of God that are the first and final cause of his divine signs. These divine intentions are the hermeneutical key to the signs’ mystical meaning. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 14 The temporal signs are evident, but their mystical significance is not. Jesus’ signs are rather like Jesus’ parables, intended at once to conceal and to reveal. He tells his disciples that he speaks to the crowds in parables, “so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.” Here Jesus is echoing more than one prophet. Among them is Jeremiah, who says, Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear. Then there is Isaiah, who is commanded by God thus: Make the hearts of this people calloused; deafen their ears and close their eyes, lest they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed. Augustine refers to his own failure to understand the figurative meaning of scripture by saying: God resists the proud. God’s signs are performed for all the world to see, yet their divine intention resists the proud, the foolish, the hardened heart. These signs are not magical. Their effective power is for the faithful: so much so, that Jesus says to them, According to your faith, so may it be done to you;” and then, “Your faith has healed you. Perhaps the sign of all signs is Christ crucified himself. When he is presented in the Temple as a firstborn, the priest Simeon prophesies to Mary: Behold, this son of yours is set to be a sign that shall be contradicted; and a sword will pierce your own soul too, that the thoughts of many may be laid bare. His Christ rejected is a sign of God’s to men—a sign of their own human making and his divine appropriation. Paul writes, Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 15 Christ crucified is for believers the ultimate sign of God’s power and wisdom at work in the world redeeming humankind from its sin. The crucifixion is a historical fact witnessed by both believers and unbelievers, but for the one, the manner of his death signifies divine wisdom and power, and for the other, human frailty and absurdity. In Matthew’s gospel account of Jesus’ crucifixion, Jesus says from his cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus is quoting the well-known first line of a psalm—and Matthew well knows that his audience of Jewish Christians will know that. It is clear that Matthew thinks the psalm is prophetic of the manner of Jesus’ death. It describes a just man delivered into the hands of his enemies and tormented by them unto death, although ending with a hope of rescue by God. How shall we understand such psalm as prophecy? The historicist may well posit some contemporary historical figure who suffered; or else explain the psalm as a figurative expression of the historical sufferings of Israel; or else a prediction of the sufferings of a suffering servant to come. Now the symbolist might want to rescue us from the hermeneutical ingenuousness of such historicism by interpreting the psalm’s application to Jesus poetically: Matthew sees in the psalm’s description of the just man delivered over to his enemies a figure of Christ’s suffering, and makes use of it as a paradigmatic prefigurement of what has its culminating expression in Jesus’ crucifixion. Indeed, the evangelist may well have fictionalized details to suit his application of the psalm to the event. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 16 For an alternative to such historicist and symbolist hermeneutics, listen to how Melito of Sardis identifies Christ as the paschal lamb, in this Easter homily from the Church’s Liturgy of the Hours on Holy Thursday: There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Pasch: that mystery is Christ. For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth and clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin’s womb. And he was born a man. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself, .... It is he who endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain; in Isaac he was bound; in Jacob, exiled; in Joseph, sold; in Moses, exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb; persecuted in David; dishonored in the prophets. On this account, God the Son takes human nature to himself in order to take to himself the history of its suffering from its sin. He suffers all manner of human sin as a just man despised, scorned, reviled, tried with torments, and unjustly condemned to death with criminals. In such sufferings, God the Son identifies himself existentially, not merely symbolically, with the sufferings of Abel at the hand of his brother; and of Jacob at the hand of his brother; and of Joseph at the hand of his brothers. As Moses was persecuted by the unjust Pharaoh; and David by the unjust Saul; and the prophets by the unjust kings of Israel; so was Christ by the rulers of Empire and Temple. In his own sufferings God the Son personally appropriated to himself the history of human suffering, learning a human obedience by what he suffered, and he adopted as his own the perennial cry of the just man in the hands of sinners: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 17 adopted this human cry in order to convert it into a sign of his divine power to answer it with resurrection from the dead to an eternal life freed of all suffering from sin. Such intentions of God are not temporal. For us, human history unfolds, but it is present as a whole to God eternally. What he wills and does, he wills and does eternally, even if what he wills and does eternally unfolds for us temporally. Unlike ours, God’s thoughts bring about what he thinks. In human temporal terms, we say that God foresees all that he sees and predestines all that he intends, but God’s adoption of the psalmist’s cry for his own sign is not either retrospective or prospective. The psalmist’s cry is known to him and willed by him eternally, as is his adoption of it for a sign of his eternal intention to redeem us from such sufferings in time. Prophetic interpretation of God’s historical signs are enriched with symbolism because man is not only the rational or political animal, but also the artistic animal, the poetic animal, the figurative animal. Maimonides says that God speaks to the sons of men in the language of the sons of men. For Maimonides, because God transcends his creation absolutely, because his otherness to it is absolute, all scripture can’t but be metaphorical, a poetic stand-in and substitute for the ineffable. Revelation can reveal the truth about God to the metaphysically-minded believer only indirectly, in progressive negations of created perfections. Aquinas’ Catholic reply to Maimonides is that, on the contrary, it is metaphysically necessary that every effect resemble its cause, however remotely, including the first and primary cause, the Creator of all being. Thus, although it is Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 18 certainly true that the sacred scriptures are often metaphorical, revelation can also by analogy with created being reveal to us in part truths about the Creator. Such selfrevelations of God’s are called mysteries in the sense of divine knowledge revealed, spiritual enlightenment beyond human ken. The Law was given by Moses, writes St. John, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side, he has made him known. It is of the essence of Catholicism to believe that you can know the truth about God, and that truth can set you free from your sin. Now, no talk on the essence of Catholicism may conclude without adulation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Allow me to propose an understanding of that Catholic adulation in terms of Catholic sacramentality. In a word, Mary is the sacrament of the Church. To this woman, the Mother of Jesus, God vouchsafed the fullness of grace which he wills ultimately for the whole Church and for each member of the Church. By a sacramental metonymy, its preeminent member personifies the Church. She is the first member of the Church to whom the mystery of Christ is revealed, and the first to assent to it with faith. Every other member of the Church assents in faith to what God has done in her; she alone assented to his doing it. Why did God want this prior human assent given to his will? Meditation on this mystery continues in the Church to this day. It is not only by his choice that this woman mothered God, it was also by his grace. She had been prepared for her momentous assent by a fullness of God’s provident grace. In the Gosepl of Luke, the angel Gabriel greets Mary, not by her name, but by an Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 19 extraordinary new name, signifying an extraordinary vocation—a vocation far exceeding Abraham’s, for his was for a chosen people and hers is for all the world. God calls her, O fully graced! In Greek, this is the participle of the verb to grace, used substantively in the vocative voice, and in the perfect tense, which always connotes a superlative degree. Because the Latin participle does not carry this superlative connotation, the name was translated first into Latin, and then into English, by the adjectival phrase “Full of grace.” Hail, most fully graced, says the angel sent by God, the Lord is with you! The Church testifies that this extraordinary fullness of grace given Mary for her extraordinary collaboration in salvation history included sinlessness from the first moment of her conception. And her sinlessness is a sign given the Church of the sinlessness which God has promised to every member of the Church. Christ intends to render his Church holy, and immaculate, and blameless before him, testifies Scripture, and he begins with Mary for a sign. It is upon Mary, the Mother of Jesus, that the Holy Spirit of God descended, and whom the power of God overshadowed—as it did the tabernacle in which God spoke with Moses face to face—so that she might conceive in the tabernacle of her womb the Son of God, and bring him forth for the salvation of the world. In the fullness of time, writes Paul, God sent his Son, made from a woman, that we might receive the adoption of sons. Her virginal conception of Christ is a sacramental sign of the spiritual begetting by God’s Holy Spirit of every believer in Christ, as John testifies in the prologue of his Gospel: Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 20 To all who receive him, to those who believe in his name, are given the power to become children of God—children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but of God. It is at the sound of Mary’s voice that Christ’s herald, John the Baptist, is filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb. Scripture shows Mary’s voice performing the priestly function of mediating the presence of Christ, for Elizabeth testifies that as soon as Mary’s greeting sounded in her ears, the infant in her womb leapt with joy. They both fill with the Holy Spirit, and she cries out to Mary, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! After praising Mary for believing that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled, she goes on to ask, “But who am I that the Mother of my Lord should come to me? When Elizabeth thus gives Mary the Davidic title of the Queen Mother in Israel, Mary is revealed to be not only progenitor of the long-awaited Son of David, but also Queen Mother of his kingdom to come. When Mary presents Jesus in the Temple to offer up the Mosaic sacrifice for the firstborn of Israel, the prophet Simeon reveals the unique participation in Christ’s passion that her motherhood entails: This son of your is set to be a sign that shall be contradicted; and a sword will pierce your own soul too, that the secret thoughts of many may be laid bare. And when his hour does come, she is at the foot of the Cross, filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, as Paul says every Christian must. And when from his cross Jesus gives her to John as a mother, the Church identifies itself with the beloved disciple and accepts Jesus’ command: Behold your mother, as it trusts that she accepts hers, Behold your son. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 �T h e E s s e n c e o f C a t h o l i c i s m | 21 All the Church’s Marian liturgies apply to her the promises made to the Church universal; and contrariwise, apply to the Church universal the graces vouchsafed to her personally. Isaac of Stella enunciates the following hermeneutical rule of scriptural interpretation: Whatever scriptures are used of the Church in a universal sense, apply to Mary in a special sense, and to the individual Christian in a particular sense; likewise, whatever scripture says of Mary in a special sense, applies to the Church in a universal sense, and to every Christian in a particular sense. This rule of semiotic interpretation holds because Mary’s person is given by God to the Church as a living sign of that fullness of grace which he promises to all Christ’s members. She is what she signifies. The temple of God in heaven was opened…. And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. John reports this divinely given vision in his Book of Revelation. The woman gives birth to a son who will rule the nations with an iron rod. But who is this woman? Is she the old Israel, which gave birth to Christ historically? Is she the New Israel, the Church, which bears Christ to the world spiritually? Is she Mary, who gave birth to him bodily, in a manger in Bethlehem, in the reign of Tiberius, in the fullness of time? The woman is all three at once, I answer. The symbol of John’s vision resonates like a triadic chord. But what is the root note, I wonder? Well, Israel and the Church give birth to Christ figuratively, but Mary did so factually, and that makes her, not just a symbol of John’s vision, but a sacramental sign of God’s. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e , M a y 2 0 2 5 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Description An account of the resource Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speechespresentationsotherlectures Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 21 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Essence of Catholicism Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on May 4, 2025, by Annapolis tutor John Tomarchio. Mr. Tomarchio describes his lecture: “This lecture is inspired by the Letter to the Hebrews as a theological tour de force. Hebrews transfigures the brutal Roman execution of Jesus into the perfect Mosaic sacrifice. The Author brings Mosaic sacrificial ritual to bear in detail on the crucifixion of Jesus, to reveal it as the quintessential offering to God that accomplishes once and for all the human intentions of all ritual sacrifice. The lecture looks at sacrifice in Genesis and in the Law of Moses to elucidate its use in the Letter to the Hebrews to sacralize the crucifixion of Jesus. This account of that death as a sacrifice has inspired much of the ritual of Christian celebration of it, which has sacramentalized Mosaic sacrifice ritual. The ulterior intention of the lecture is to elucidate these sacramental forms of Christ’s sacrifice.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tomarchio, John Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2025-05-04 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Sacraments--Catholic Chursh Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Tomarchio_2025-05-04 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/694fc0c8d68adb451d2ef8161987e6d5.pdf e35a2bc81b0bfded99307ee92176c85b PDF Text Text On Christ’s Sacrifice |1 This lecture is inspired by the Letter to the Hebrews. The Letter to the Hebrews is a theological tour de force. It transfigures the brutal Roman execution of Jesus into the perfect Mosaic sacrifice. Sacralizing that crucifixion is quite a rhetorical feat. The Author of the Letter brings Mosaic sacrifice ritual to bear in detail on the crucifixion of Jesus, to reveal it as the quintessential offering to God that accomplishes once and for all the human intentions of all ritual sacrifice. It is this account of that death as a sacrificial one that has inspired so much of the ritual of the Christian celebration of it. In particular, the apostolic churches of Catholicism and Orthodoxy have adopted and perpetuated much of the paraphernalia of Mosaic ritual, which passed out of Judaism with the destruction of the second Temple at the advent of Christianity. The Mosaic religion of the Tabernacle and the Temple that had been centered on sacrifice reinvented itself in the Common Era as the Rabbinical religion of the synagogue and the shule; and of the hearth and the heart. Catholic Christianity, for its part, sublated Mosaic ritual, recasting it as sacramental forms with supernatural meanings. The ulterior intention of this lecture is to explicate the religious meaning of those sacramental forms. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |2 Let me begin with the familiar biblical narrative of Cain and Abel. I interpret one intention of this narrative to be prefigurement in the literary sense of Mosaic sacrifice. In the first place, Cain and Abel bring offerings to God, unbidden. There is of course no Law, but neither is there any command. And the narrator does not tell the reader why Cain and Abel do so. The meaning of sacrificial offering seems to be taken for granted. I think that to interpret its meaning we are meant to triangulate with both Natural Law and Mosaic Law. Aquinas claims that ritual sacrifice is as natural to the human being as speech, and he counts it a virtue of natural religion. Echoing Aristotle, he says that because human knowledge originates from bodily things, it is natural for human beings to express their thinking with bodily things. Gestures and postures are signs of our thoughts, affections, intentions, as much as words. Just as human beings nod the head, bow the body, bend the knee, to show to other human beings reverence, submission, or affection, so also to God. Gifts are likewise given by human beings as tokens of the heart. Thus do Cain and Abel bring gifts to God: Cain, a tiller of the soul, brings some of his fruits, while Abel, a keeper of sheep, brings God the best firstlings of his Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |3 flock (GEN 4:4). Now, the Law of Moses will require the choicest firstfruits of oil, wine, and wheat be offered to the Lord, for them I have given to you, says the Lord. Likewise, the firstborn of every ox, sheep, or goat are holy to the Lord: every male that opens the womb is to be offered to the Lord. Thus Abel’s best firstlings satisfy the demand of the Law freely, without a command. He does what is right from the heart. Cain , in contrast, falls short of it, and we are told that God looked unfavorably on Cain’s offering. Now, if the essence of the sacrifice is the intention of the heart, then it is Cain’s heart that God looks upon unfavorably. This disfavor points to an important disanalogy in Aquinas’ analogy with human signing. God has no need of the gifts. On the contrary, he is the giver of the gifts being offered him. In Deuteronomy God admonishes the Israelites while still in the desert about the gifts of the promised land. as follows: For the Lord you God is bringing you into a good land … a land where you will eat food without scarcity, where you will lack nothing …. When you eat and are satisfied, you are to bless the Lod your God for the good land that He has given you…. You might say in your heart, The power and strength of my hands have made this wealth for me. But remember that it is the Lord your God who gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers even to this day. (Deuteronomy 8:7ff) Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |4 Thus not only the offering but the power to produce it comes from God, so that the only offering possible is an offering of thanksgiving to God for the gift, the giving, and the power to give. Fittingly, in the Law such freewill offerings of thanksgiving are followed by a communion feast before the Lord. The Lord leaves the sacrificial gifts to the givers to enjoy, favorably regarding, rather, the intention of the heart they express. That is the heart of the sacrifice. The function of the offering as signifier points to another disanalogy with human signing. One human being signifies their thoughts to another who has no access to them otherwise. But the Psalmist testifies: O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit and when I rise; You understand my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down; You are aware of all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, You know all about it, O LORD. You hem me in behind and before; You have laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. (Psalm 139:1-7) To whom, then, is the offeror signifying the intentions of his heart, if not to God, who already knows them even better than the offeror? If it is not for the benefit of God, is the sign rather for the benefit of the offeror, as was the gift? Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |5 If so, then we have here another reversal of human signing: the offeror signifies the intentions of his heart, not to make his heart known to God, but rather known to himself before God. By his rituals of sacrifice he rouses his own heart, mind, and body to the worship of God, as does the Psalmist when he addresses his own soul thus: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. (Psalm 103:1) However, surely it matters that these ritual acts of self-reflection take place in the presence of God, so to speak. I say so to speak because the offeror believes that God is always present everywhere and always cognizant of the offeror. It is the offeror who builds altars and temples dedicated to mindfulness of God. When he approaches these sacred places to bring his mind, heart, and body before God, what does he seek? What desire of his heart does his sacrifice signify? He seems to wish to know himself as he is known by God, the Searcher of hearts, according to the words of the psalmist: Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the way everlasting. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |6 This judging of the heart of the offeror by God can be seen in God’s disregard of Cain’s offering. By means of a question, God refers Cain’s external offering to his internal disposition: Why are you angry, said the LORD to Cain, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it. (Genesis 4:6-7) Why indeed is Cain angry? Does he himself not know whether he meant to do what is right? It is a freewill offering, so no disregard of an express law or command is at issue. And if God has no use for the fruits of the earth, no defect in the matter of the sacrifice matters. The defect is in the intention of the heart. The visible sacrifice is regarded by God as a sign of an invisible sacrifice of the heart, and he looks with disfavor on Cain’s. This first presentation of sacrifice in the Bible reduces it to its bare essentials. The mother of all sacrifices is a freewill offering of thanks for the gifts of God. The presentation of the finest fruits of the creation and work of one’s hands is a visible expression of the invisible intentions of one’s heart: the heart seeks God’s favorable regard, and in it, its own favorable self-regard. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |7 Now, sacrificial ritual as such concerns the external expression rather than the internal intention. It takes the form of conventional signs. This first biblical vignette of ritual sacrifice anticipates a first distinction between offering fruits of the earth and fruits of the womb, or food and animal sacrifices. These two primary types are developed in the next two vignettes of Genesis: the sacrifice of Noah and of Melchizedek. The story of Noah’s sacrifice introduces animal sacrifice in the sense not only of presenting but also of slaying. As with Cain and Abel, there is no command of God’s. The sacrifice is a freewill offering of Noah’s, as follows: In Noah’s six hundred and first year, on the first day of the first month, the waters had dried up from the earth. So Noah removed the covering from the ark and saw that the surface of the ground was dry. By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was fully dry. Then God said to Noah, Come out of the ark, you and your wife, along with your sons and their wives. Bring out all the living creatures that are with you—birds, livestock, and everything that crawls upon the ground—so that they can spread out over the earth and be fruitful and multiply upon it. So Noah came out, along with his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives. Every living creature, every creeping thing, and every bird— everything that moves upon the earth—came out of the ark, kind by kind. Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. And taking from every kind of clean animal and clean bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |8 When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done. (Genesis 8: 13-21) This narrative prefigurement of Mosaic sacrifice anticipates several of its ritual elements: there is an altar; and there is a distinction made between clean animals acceptable for offering and unclean ones; and there is not only the slaying of the animals but the burning of them on the altar. In form, this sacrifice of Noah’s anticipates what the Law will call a whole burnt offering or holocaust, which was not feasted upon, but rather completely consumed by fire on an altar, for a pleasing aroma to God. Was this the intention of Noah’s heart in offering burnt offerings? The text does not tell us the intention of Noah’s heart. Rather, it gives us the thought of God’s heart. He is appeased enough for the evil inclination of man’s heart to vow never again to destroy the living creatures of his creation because of man’s evil. So, has sin entered in, and with it the sin-offering? But Noah was saved because he is a righteous man. A sacrifice of thanksgiving for deliverance seems called for rather than of propitiation for sin. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �On Christ’s Sacrifice |9 Can we infer the intention of Noah’s sacrifice from its prefigurement? Noah’s burnt offerings recall the daily offering that God will command Israel to offer him at the beginning and close of each day, as follows: This is what you are to offer regularly on the altar, each day: two lambs that are a year old. Offer one lamb in the morning and the other at twilight. With the first lamb offer a tenth of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with a quarter hin of oil from pressed olives, and a drink offering of a quarter hin of wine. And offer the second lamb at twilight with the same grain offering and drink offering as in the morning, as a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the LORD. For the generations to come, this burnt offering shall be made regularly at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting before the LORD, where I will meet you to speak with you. I will also meet with the Israelites there, and that place will be consecrated by My glory. So I will consecrate the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve Me as priests. Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. And they will know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. These holocausts were kept burning all night and day, for a perpetual offering. The heart of this perpetual offering, the invisible offering it signifies, is Israel’s consecration to God. The complete burning up of the animal makes clear that any use of it to man is renounced. This is not a thanksgiving sacrifice for benefits received, to be delighted in before the Lord after blessing Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 10 him for it. The holocaust is, rather, an act of adoration and purification. In response to it God will consecrate the Tabernacle and altar that have been dedicated to remembering his presence, power, and favor dwelling among the Israelites. Such a daily recognition is no doubt ordered to fulfilling the first and greatest commandment of the Law: Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is One. And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These words I am commanding you today are to be upon your hearts. In this way, again, sacrifice is a matter of the heart, indeed of love. Noah’s heart is represented as freely anticipating the demands of the Law to come. And God’s favorable regard is expressed as delight in the rising aroma of roasting meat. I take this to be a poetic transference: God’s sharing in man’s delight in the aroma figuratively expresses God’s delight in man’s offering it up. It is a poetic expression of God’s acceptance of Noah’s worship, namely, the delight Noah takes in delighting God. The pleasing aroma will be invoked repeatedly in the Law of Moses as the sign of God’s favorable regard of the sacrifice—or more to the point, his acceptance of the worship rising from of the heart of the one offering it up. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 11 God’s delight in Noah’s sacrifice is followed by an extraordinary grant by God, as follows: And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you will fall on every living creature on the earth, every bird of the air, every creature that crawls on the ground, and all the fish of the sea. They are delivered into your hand. Everything that lives and moves will be food for you; just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you all things. But you must not eat meat with its lifeblood still in it. Surely I will require the life of any man or beast by whose hand your lifeblood is shed. The roasting flesh that delighted God is in turn given by God to delight man. The slaying of animals for man’s food and pleasure is sacralized: it is granted by the Lord, and a sacrificial form of acknowledging his Lordship has been initiated by the righteous patriarch Noah, the Adam of the second creation. But there is a limit to the divine grant, a perpetual reminder of the Lordship of the Lord who grants it: the lifeblood of the animal is reserved to the Lord and prohibited to man. It is the Lord who gives life, and only the Lord may justly take it away. It is only by a divine grant that man has a right to use the animals for his food and pleasure. But God remains the sole Lord of life, and he will avenge any spilling of lifeblood done without his leave. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 12 This understanding will become the heart of Mosaic animal sacrifice. The essence of the sacrifice will be the collecting of the blood of the slain animal and pouring it out at the base of the altar, or else anointing or sprinkling the altar with it. That will be the essential act of worship. Here is what the Lord says in Leviticus: For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make expiation for your souls upon the altar; for it is the blood that expiates the soul. Fatty portions of the animal are then burned on the altar for a sweet aroma, to rise up to God as a sign of the offeror’s heart being raised to God’s. In peace offerings, the other parts of the animal are shared with the priest and offeror for a sacred feast. This visible feast among men is a sign of an invisible one with God, a communion of the offeror’s heart with God’s. The offeror seeks the peace of being at one with God—hence the English coinage atonement or “atone-ment”. On the other hand, there is the unbloody form of sacrifice, which is prefigured in Genesis in the sacrifice of Melchizedek. The story seems to come out of nowhere, as does Melchizedek, in the middle of a narrative about warring kings, as follows: Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 13 After Abram returned from defeating Chedorlaomer and the kings allied with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine—since he was priest of God Most High — and he blessed Abram and said: Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. Then Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth of everything. The new element of Mosaic sacrifice that the story prefigures is priesthood, an order of divinely appointed intercessors. Abraham freely gives to Melchizedek the tithe due the priest under the Law. But the narrative does not give us the lineage of this king nor tell us how he became appointed a priest of God Most High. The Law’s ordination to the priesthood of the descendants of Aaron and the tribe of Levi will be a matter of much legal and ritual detail. Notwithstanding, Melchizedek’s offering of bread and wine to God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth, as a thanksgiving sacrifice for deliverance, is clearly approved of by the narrator and by Abraham. We saw in the passage I quoted above that such cereal offerings were commanded alongside the daily holocausts. But they were also offered on their own, mixed with olive oil and frankincense for a pleasing aroma when a portion was burned on the altar, accompanied by a libation of wine. The Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 14 remainder was given to the priest as his “most holy” portion of the offering, to be eaten by him within the Holy Place. If the priest offered a cereal offering for himself, then all of it was burned on the altar for a sweet aroma to the Lord. Another offering of loaves of bread was offered perpetually on behalf of all Israel in the Sanctuary beyond the courtyard, which contained a golden table for the purpose. There was a perpetually burning menorah beside it, and another golden altar for offering incense during animal sacrifices in the courtyard. The golden table of the Presence was so called because God commanded that twelve loaves of unleavened bread for the twelve tribes of Israel be on it perpetually before his Face, together with two portions of frankincense. Once a week the priests would replace the loaves with fresh ones, and eat those removed in a sacred place. This perpetual offering of the Bread of the Presence was likewise called by the Lord a most holy part of the priest’s share of the offerings to the Lord. Beyond this Sanctuary of the two golden altars and the menorah was the curtained Holy of Holies, where the ark of the covenant was reserved, which contained the two Tables of the Law; and a portion of the manna that sustained the Israelites during their wandering in the dessert; and the rod of Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 15 Aaron which miraculously flowered to prove the divinity of his ordination as high priest. This elaborate provision of a Sanctuary, altars, and a priesthood; and detailed ordinances for the types, times, and rubrics of sacrifice, is all commanded by God expressly through the Law of Moses. God thereby appropriates and regulates human practices of ritual sacrifice. The freewill sacrifices are reformed by God and made duties of religion. God teaches the Israelites how to approach him ritually; and he teaches them how to make peace with him ritually; and he commands them to do so continually. There is a prefigurement of such divine pedagogy in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Out of the blue God commands Abraham: Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you. The text remains silent about what Abraham thought or felt about this command. The informed reader, knowing the story of Isaac’s miraculous conception by Sarah in her old age, may well infer that this beloved only-begotten of Abraham’s was his dearest blessing from God. The informed reader knows also that God had earlier prophesied to Abraham that his progeny would serve as slaves in a foreign land for 400 years, until God should redeem them. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will return here, God tells Abraham, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. Prominent among the iniquities of the Amorites, whom God would destroy by the returning Israelites’ genocidal warfare, was the burnt offering of their children to their god Molech. God mentions this practice in particular as abominable to him. So why command Abraham to do it? Abraham does not question the command, nor remonstrate with God, as he had to save his brother Lot from God’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. His carrying out of the ritual is described in dramatized detail: So Abraham got up early the next morning, saddled his donkey, and took along two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had designated. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Stay here with the donkey, Abraham told his servants. The boy and I will go over there to worship, and then we will return to you. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac. He himself carried the fire and the sacrificial knife, and the two of them walked on together. Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, My father! –Here I am, my son, he replied. The fire and the wood are here, said Isaac, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham answered, God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two walked on together. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 17 When they arrived at the place God had designated, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood. He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar, atop the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. Just then the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham! –Here I am!, he replied. Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him, said the angel, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me. Then Abraham looked up and saw behind him a ram in a thicket, caught by its horns. So he went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. And Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. So to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.” This dramatic resolution of the ritual action hearkens to the enigmatic reply of Abraham to Isaac’s question: God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. Was this what Abraham expected? Or hoped? Or wished for? Did he believe it? In any case, if it was an expectation, it was met; if a hope, it was realized; if a wish, it was granted; believed or not, it proved true. The narrative began with this much explanation to the reader: God put Abraham to the test. That he passed the test is perhaps clearer than what the test was. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 18 This offering of Abaraham’s was not a freewill offering, but rather commanded by God. It was a duty of obedience. Was it a thanksgiving offering? Did Abraham take delight in making it? Presumably not. Was it an act of submission, an acknowledgement of the Lord’s lordship over the lifeblood of Isaac? Perhaps it was. Was it an act of love of God above even love of Isaac? Was adoration the intention of Abraham’s heart? The narrative does not say. Rather, it reveals the thought of God’s heart: Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me. God approves Abraham’s awe of him, as well as his willingness to give back to God the son God gave to him. God then provides Abraham with a ritual expression both of his awe and of his willingness to spare God nothing. It is the ritual principle of substitution. In the Law of Moses, the offeror or priest will lay his hands upon the victim, to identify the victim with the offeror and the offeror with the victim, before first slaying it and then offering it on the altar. Thus, ritually, every offering is a self-offering. By providing Abraham with the ram to slay instead of his son, God provides a ritual sign of Abraham’s willingness to not withhold even his beloved son from God, Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 19 but even more than that, to acknowledge that there is nothing God has not given and may not take away. This is still true. The willingness of Abraham must be the willingness of every believer. God has always provided the offering. The only question has ever been about the willingness of the offeror’s heart to give it up to God. In the Law of Moses, every Israelite will be commanded to offer his firstborn son to God, in remembrance of God’s destruction of the firstborn of Egypt: God commands every Isralite to redeem his firstborn by the sacrifice of a lamb. God has provided this ritual substitute as a perpetual reminder of the unconditional awe that is owed him and of the imperative of a perpetual readiness to show it. [ PREGNANT PAUSE ] Now, what has any of this to do with the crucifixion of Jesus? Well, his crucifixion is called a sacrifice in many places in the New Testament. And Jesus himself uses sacrificial language to describe his death to his disciples at his Last Supper with them, the supper itself being the communion feast following a thanksgiving offering of the Paschal lamb following the Law of Moses. Jesus had commanded Peter and John to procure the Pasch for the Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 20 supper, which meant its being sacrificed at the Temple by the priests, who poured out its blood at the base of the altar and gave back the body for a feast. When Jesus sits down with his twelve Apostles to the communion banquet, he says, With desire have I desired to eat this Pasch with you before I suffer (LK 22:15). Why? What was the intention of Jesus’ heart that night before he died? When at the usual blessing of the bread Jesus adds the words, Take and eat. This is my body, which is given up for you, he is using the language of sacrificial oblation (LK 22:19). He uses even more express sacrificial language in blessing the cup of wine: Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins (MT 26:27-28). I have cited Matthew. When Luke and Paul cites Jesus’ words, they add this imperative, Do this in commemoration of me. Then Paul adds this gloss: For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the death of the Lord until He comes (COR 11:26). How is that? How would consecrating bread to eat and wine to drink show the Jesus’ death on the cross? How is that signified? This final command of Jesus’ to his Apostles to commemorate his death in this way is a complex anticipation of that commemoration. He teaches them both what is to be commemorated and how it is to be commemorated. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 21 He had anticipated his violent death before, much to the consternation of his Apostles, telling them that he is to be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, to be condemned, mocked, and crucified. But it is on this final night with them that he interprets that death for them in sacrificial terms: his blood will be poured out and his body offered up as a sin offering, to ratify a New Covenant with them and with many in his blood. He enjoins them thus to remember his death as a sacrifice by means of a Passover rite of blessing bread and wine, a rite transformed into a cereal sacrifice by his identification of it with his bodily sacrifice. Made by him into signs of his sacrifice on the cross, the consecrated bread and wine become a sacramental sacrifice in their own right. They are in truth the cereal sacrifice of the eternal Melchizedek, the true High Priest of God Most High, who has entered with his own glorified blood into the Sanctuary of God’s Majesty to intercede for sinners. Jesus thus provides that his bloody sacrifice on the cross be commemorated by an unbloody one. In himself he has provided his Apostles with a new offering and a new priesthood. The death of the cross is a sacrifice he himself will offer but once, but believers will re-offer it perpetually in the form of a cereal sacrifice signifying it. Moreover, in the eating of it, this cereal Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 22 offering of the sacrifice of the cross takes the form also of a communion sacrifice of thanksgiving for it. Christ our Pasch has been sacrificed, writes Paul: Let us keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Thus do I come at last to the Book of Hebrews, which explicates in detail this identification by Jesus of his crucifixion with a Mosaic sin offering. To anticipate, the Author identifies Jesus’ death not only as a sacrifice of atonement, but as the consummating sacrifice of all sacrifices—not just by way of analogy with, but as a fulfillment of them all. The Letter begins by declaring that we are in the last days of divine revelation because in these days God has spoken to his through his Son, who is the radiance of his glory and the seal of his substance. He sets the keynote of his Letter when he says, After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. We will see, in fact, that this provided act of expiation must extend on high, in that it has its expiatory effect from a heavenly Sanctuary, of which the Mosaic Sanctuary was but an earthly image. The Letter declares that God’s intention was to bring many sons to this heavenly glory, and it was fitting for him to make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering (2:10). He shared in our humanity so that Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 23 by his death he might destroy the power of death and the fear of death (2:1415). For this reason, writes the Author, he had to be made like his brethren in every way, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, in order to make expiation for the sins of the people. Thus the identification of Son with the people and the people with him began, in the first place, with his taking on their humanity—the Son of God becoming the Son of Man—and, in the second place, with his suffering the death they suffer for their sins. Next begins the Author’s explication of his sacrifice in terms not of the Paschal lamb of the Passover, but of the sacrificial goat of the Day of Atonement. Once a year, the high priest was commanded by the Law to offer sacrifice in expiation of the sins of the whole people of Israel. On that day alone the high priest, dressed in the linen ephod, entered into the inner Sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, with the blood of the goat, to sprinkle the ark with the blood. We, however, have a great high priest, writes the Author of Hebrews, who has passed through the heavens (HEB 4:14ff). This disanalogy with the Mosaic high priest’s proves more significant than any analogy: Jesus enters the Sanctuary that is eternal, and the blood is his own glorified blood. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 24 The Author appeals to the figure of Melchizedek to explain further the difference of Jesus’ priesthood: Every high priest is appointed from among men to represent them in matters relating to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. … No one takes this honor upon himself; he must be called by God, just as Aaron was. So also Christ did not take upon Himself the glory of becoming a high priest, but He was called by the One who said to Him: You are My Son; today I have begotten you. And in another passage God says: You are a priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. During the days of Jesus’ earthly life, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him and was designated by God as high priest in the order of Melchizedek. [HEB 5:1ff] This appeal to Melchizedek clearly resonates with Jesus’ injunction to commemorate his death with an offering of bread and wine. But an eternal ordination of him by his Father as high priest is the Author’s main point. Jesus’s priesthood is from eternity and to eternity, a source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. A further disanalogy with the priesthood of Aaron is that this High Priest can sympathize with the sinners he saves, not by being a sinner, but by suffering sin, and his assimilation is perfected by his Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 25 willingness to suffer it. His offering is not a ritual substitute for himself. His sacrifice is himself; yet not offered for himself, but rather for others. We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain, writes the Author, because you are dull of hearing. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity. [See! He too thinks the reading list is boring!] The Author bids our hope enter into the inner Sanctuary, behind the curtain, where Jesus has entered on our behalf, as a high priest forever in the order of Melchizedek (6:19-20). In a continuing comparison with Melchizedek, the Author explains that Jesus became a priest not by a law of succession, but by the power of an indestructible life (HEB 7:16). This rests the power of Jesus’ priesthood and sacrifice on his resurrection. It is because he now lives forever, because he can no longer die, because his divine life is an indestructible life, that his priesthood and its effect is permanent. It is also why he can save completely those who draw near to God through him. Christ Jesus lives eternally to intercede for sinners, who are under the power and fear of death, the wages of sin (ROM 6:23). Such sinners have need of such a high priest, says the Author, who is holy, innocent, undefiled, set apart from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 26 not need to offer daily sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the people’s: this he did once for all when he offered up himself (HEB 7:26ff). The Author proceeds to explain that the sacrificial rituals of the Law were expressions of desires they could not fulfill and signs of what was yet needed and yet to come. He describes the Sanctuary of the Mosaic Tabernacle as arranged by the Holy Spirit to show the way into the heavenly one. It is an illustration for the present time, he writes, because the gifts and sacrifices being offered were unable to cleanse the conscience of the worshipper (HEB 9:9). He called them external regulations for purification of the body. They concerned only ritual purity, a legal fitness to approach the altar of Moses. But what the heart of the approaching sinner desires is the purification of his guilty conscience. And the Law can never by the same sacrifices year after year make perfect the offerors who draw near, for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (HEB 10:1-2). Those sacrifices are intended as an annual remembrance of sins. The Law, the Author says, was only a shadow of the good things to come, not the realities (HEB 9:11ff): But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come, he went through the greater and more perfect Tabernacle that is not made by hands and is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 27 the blood of goats and calves, but He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by His own blood, thus securing eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that their bodies are clean, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, purify our consciences from works of death, so that we may serve the living God! In sum, Christ has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself (HEB 9:26). But self-sacrifice is not selfexplanatory, is it? The Author offers us offer us some account. He ascribes the 40th Psalm to Christ, as follows: Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said: Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings You took no delight. Then said I, Here am I: It is written about me in the scroll: I have come to do your will, O God. (HEB 10:5-7) And by that will, asserts the Author, we have been sanctified through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. The essence of Christ’s sacrifice was his willingness to do the will of God. And the will of God was that he accept crucifixion at the hands of sinners, and beg forgiveness for them from the cross they prepared for him. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 28 This suffering of their evil, his victimhood at their hands, is the completion of his sacrificial identification with them, the consummation of his taking flesh to dwell among them. And now the people must identify with their victim. In his crucifixion narrative, John upon the death of Jesus quotes this prophecy of Zecharaiah’s: They shall look upon him whom they pierced; and they shall grieve for him as one grieves for an only-begotten son (12:10). The removal of sin begins with this grievous recognition. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? is the cry of the just man in the hands of his enemies. When the Son of God makes this cry his own, and the evil of human sin is displayed in him crucified, it receives God’s final judgement. This final conviction is God’s final appeal to the human conscience. Finally his sent his Son, thinking: They will revere my son (MT 21:37). Christ obediently accepts this death. For what? He tells the Roman ruler who condemned him to it: I came into the world for this: to bear witness to the Truth. His death was the price of his bearing witness to the world of the truth about sin, and about righteousness, and about judgment (JN 16:8). Crucifixion was the price of our salvation set by the rulers of this world, the rulers of Temple and Empire. Christ’s acceptance of this price in his blood Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 29 was a freewill offering of it to God to achieve God’s will. He tells Pilate, You would have no power over me whatever if it was not willed above; and he tells Peter, Do you not think I can call on my Father to at once put at my disposal twelve legions of angles? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way? For this is the way of saving sinners willed by the Father. He who knew no sin became sin for our sake by suffering our sin (2 COR 5:21). The love of God was shown for us most of all in this, writes Paul: that while we were yet sinners, Christ Jesus died for us (ROM 5:8). In an awful reversal, God did not spare his own Son, but offered him as a sacrifice for us all, writes Paul (ROM 8:32). God has provided us with the sacrifice to offer Him, the acceptable propitiation for our sins: Christ’s willingness to pay our price. There were two sin offerings under the Law. The first was to atone for unintentional sins that rendered the offeror ritually unfit to approach the altar. The second was to offer satisfaction for sins against others, including reparations. But such legal exoneration did not have the power of eternal forgiveness and regenerative sanctification wielded by the risen Christ, according to Hebrews: But when this Priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, He sat down at the right hand of God. Since that time, He waits for His Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 30 enemies to be made a footstool for His feet, because by a single offering He has made perfect for all time those who are being sanctified. The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says: This is the covenant I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put My laws in their hearts and inscribe them on their minds. Then he adds: Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. (HEB 10:12ff) In Christ we have the sinless intercessor who has pleased God perfectly with his perfect self-offering. God accepts his bloody intercession for sinners as an acceptable propitiation for their sins, and God has provided it to sinners as the acceptable offering to him for their sins. Therefore, writes the Author, we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way opened for us through the curtain of his body. Here the visible body of the risen Christ is represented as the veil of his invisible divinity in the Sanctuary of God’s glory. Those who draw near with sincere heart and sure faith may do so with confidence only because their hearts have been sprinkled with blood that has power to sanctify them for entry. Let us hold resolutely to the hope we profess, writes the Author, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to spur one another on to love and good deeds. If we deliberately go on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no further sacrifice remains, but only a fearful expectation of judgment (HEB 10:23ff). Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 31 It is in his commanded commemoration of if that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross becomes a sacrifice of thanksgiving, a eucharistic sacrifice. The form of this commemoration has been set by Christ himself as an oblation of bread and wine. In the risen Christ, God has provided for both the sacred offering and the sacred banquet. In the Catholic Church, the consecrated bread and wine are believed to be sacramental forms: God-given signs that contain the mystery they signify and effect what it pledges. What they signify is Christ’s body offered up and blood poured out as a sin-offering; and what they effect is the forgiveness of sins and the sanctification of believers. To begin with, the Church in its liturgy presents to God at its altars giftofferings of bread and wine, as in the Law, as fruits of the earth and works of human hands, and God is blessed for his blessings. In the Law of Moses, the oblation of such offerings was signified by an alteration of it, namely burning a portion on the altar for a sweet aroma. In these new rites of the New Covenant, God is entreated to effect the alteration by his Holy Spirit, according to the words of Christ: the bread becomes his body and the wine his blood, and under this sacramental separation of his blood from his body is shown forth ritually his death on the cross, for the adoration of believers. Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 32 This sacramental presentation of Christ’s saving death on the cross is then offered to God as a true sacrifice on behalf of those offering it, a sin-offering acceptable to God for the forgiveness of their sins and their consecration to him in Christ. It is at the same time also a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for this same forgiveness and sanctification. It is a sacrifice provided to the offerors by God for the benefit of the offerors, who feast on it before God in a sacred communion rite, each communicant taking and eating their priestly portion of this most holy food in the holy place. The forms of Mosaic sacrifice are signs that could not fulfill the human desires they signified. But they have all been fulfilled by Christ’s sacrifice. The forgiveness they sought has been secured by Christ; the sanctification they sought is in the power of Christ; the salvation from the power of death they sought is promised by Christ; the peace with God they sought is in Christ—and only in Christ. Christ’s sacrifice effects every intention that every other human sacrifice can but signify. In the Bread of his indwelling Presence, he descends among the offerors in the form of a most holy food, thereby to come dwell within them as their heart’s desire. This living Bread that comes down from heaven has power to nourish the spirit of the offeror with intimate Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 �O n C h r i s t ’ s S a c r i f i c e | 33 knowledge of God’s love for it; and this blessing cup can save the offeror’s soul from death by making it a partaker of Christ’s divine life. Indeed, those who with a sincere heart and sure faith partake of it, are made partakers in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). In the spirit of the Letter to the Hebrews, the Apostolic churches of Christianity have brought to bear on their sacramental offering to God of Christ’s sacrifice much of the ritual of Mosaic sacrifice. What perished from Judaism with the destruction of the Temple lives on in Catholicism. In Rabbinic Judaism sacrifice is perforce perpetuated only in devotional practices and spiritual symbolism; and in much of Protestantism, because of a decided eschewal of ritual sacrifice. Islam has neither sacrifice nor priesthood. It is only in the catholic and apostolic churches of Christianity across the earth that the prophecy of Malachi is believed to be fulfilled to the letter: My name will be great among the nations, from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty. (Malachi 1:11) Jo h n T o ma rc h i o, S t. J o h n’ s C o ll eg e, 2 .2 2 .2 6 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Description An account of the resource Speeches, presentations, and other lectures given at St. John's College. These include convocation addresses delivered in both Annapolis, MD and Santa Fe, NM.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Speeches, presentations, and other lectures" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=15">Items in the Speeches, presentations, and other lectures Collection</a></strong> to <span>view and sort all items in the collection.</span> Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context speechespresentationsotherlectures Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 33 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource On Christ's Sacrifice Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on February 22, 2026, by Annapolis tutor John Tomarchio. Mr. Tomarchio describes his lecture: “This lecture is inspired by the Letter to the Hebrews as a theological tour de force. Hebrews transfigures the brutal Roman execution of Jesus into the perfect Mosaic sacrifice. The Author brings Mosaic sacrificial ritual to bear in detail on the crucifixion of Jesus, to reveal it as the quintessential offering to God that accomplishes once and for all the human intentions of all ritual sacrifice. The lecture looks at sacrifice in Genesis and in the Law of Moses to elucidate its use in the Letter to the Hebrews to sacralize the crucifixion of Jesus. This account of that death as a sacrifice has inspired much of the ritual of Christian celebration of it, which has sacramentalized Mosaic sacrifice ritual. The ulterior intention of the lecture is to elucidate these sacramental forms of Christ’s sacrifice.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tomarchio, John Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-22 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Jesus Christ--Crucifixion Bible. Hebrews Sacraments--Catholic Chursh Sacrifice--Christianity Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Tomarchio_2026_02-22 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8e07564ce859ce793c39feff1cef8485.MP3 01d16688fdde8b3ede0f9d07fc0f8bce Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data mp3 Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:54:32 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on February 18, 2026 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Overland telegraph technology implicitly embodied a familiar image of electricity as being a mobile substance confined to conductors. But phenomena encountered in undersea telegraph cables presented a competing image, one far more suggestive of Faraday’s image of tension in a dielectric. Subsequent production of electromagnetic waves could be seen as the ultimate practical expression of Faraday’s 'tension' image. But if they were to serve as a communications medium, electromagnetic waves had not only to be produced but be detected; and although various detecting mechanisms were developed, their operation was mysterious: the received images of electric current appeared to provide little clarity." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Telegraph, Wireless Relation A related resource <a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/8163">https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/8163</a> Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FisherH_Telegraphy_and_Radiotelegraphy_audio_2026-02-18 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/da1f508026d92e2df9b586037d088a9f.pdf d5f566071fcda915ec4fa85c23ab5e68 PDF Text Text Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy1 Howard J. Fisher Welcome, everyone, to this first of three talks on early radio technology. The talks are three in number because the history of radio communication may be said to fall into three periods. The first was the era of signaling, in which radio transmission was limited to the dots and dashes of Morse code; accordingly, this first talk will be on telegraphy and radiotelegraphy. The third period, which dates from about 1920, is that of transmission and reception of voice and sound; so that the final talk in this series will be on broadcast radio. Between these periods there appeared one magnificent invention, which alone made it possible to advance from the first era to the third. This was the vacuum tube, and that will be the topic of my next talk, to be given in April. Thus the three periods of radio development are more or less defined by three specific technologies. These bodies of knowledge and practice are highly interesting, both historically and in their own right; but I wish to pay special attention to what we might call their rhetoric—because each of them embodies, in its own way, an implicit image of electric current. Each of them implies a picture of electric current as some sort of motion; but they appear to paint with different palettes when they try to contend with what, exactly, is doing the moving. Let us begin by considering—or, for some of us, remembering 2—the telegraph. If you have ever made an electromagnet from a nail, a length of wire, and a battery, you have already constructed the heart of a potential telegraphy system. The telegraph “sounder,” on the left, is basically a pair of electromagnets; they pull down the pivoting bar when current flows through the coils, and the bar springs back when the current ceases; both the pull and the release make a distinctive click. The telegraph “key,” on the right, is 1 2 Lecture delivered at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, on 18 February 2026. Western Union sent its last telegram on January 27, 2006. �2 simply a switch that closes when the knob is pressed. (The shorting switch, marked with a red arrow, keeps the key closed when it is engaged; we will see in a moment why this is useful.) I have connected this battery and key to the sounder at the side of the room; you can hear it respond as I press the key: a short press for a dot, a long press for a dash. Does anyone here know Morse code? . . . I just sent “S J C”: dit dit dit for “S,” dit dah dah dah for “J,” dah dit dah dit for “C.” Here is a diagram of our wired connections. The battery and key are here at the table, the electromagnet is part of the sounder, and when the key is closed we have an unbroken pathway, which evidently transports electricity from the battery to the sounder, and back again. The “back again” element is crucial. If a break occurs anywhere in the path—whether in the red or the black wire in our drawing—the action will cease. We usually speak of this fact as showing the need for “a closed circuit.” The terminology we conventionally use to describe this system is revealing. We say that the wire is a “conductor,” and that a “current” of electricity “flows” through it. These are all, clearly, metaphorical terms, drawn from the behavior of water or other liquid. The metaphor portrays electricity as a mobile substance which, just like ordinary liquids, requires a source of motive power to maintain its flow. Can we be content with metaphorical imagery? Don’t we want a true image of electrical action? But I don’t see how we can escape metaphor. We cannot observe “electricity itself” (whatever that means); so it is impossible to speak “literally” about electricity, or to imagine it in any terms other than what we had previously gleaned from other realms of experience. But what we can do, and should, is to remember that our description is metaphorical—and that other metaphors may be possible, perhaps even preferable. Our telegraph system, in its present form, gives perfect expression to the fluid-flow metaphor by treating the wires as paths of circulation for electricity. But as familiar systems expand into new settings, new phenomena sometimes appear, which may not be easily accommodated by the received imagery. When that happens, alternative idioms of expression, images which might previously have seemed merely speculative or idiosyncratic, may perhaps take on new persuasive force. I think we will encounter an example of this, as our telegraphic system becomes more refined. �3 Now, with the apparatus I have assembled, I can send messages to you, but you cannot send back to me. We can fix that by adding a second key at your end and a second sounder at mine, like this: We might also want to add an extra battery, since we will be operating two sounders at once. Now I can send to you and you can send to me. As long as my key is closed, your key is what turns the current on and off; so I can receive the message you send; that was the purpose of the shorting switch I pointed out in our first slide. When it is time for you to receive, you keep your key closed; then my key controls the current, and you can receive the message I send. But a useful telegraph system must be capable of operating over greater distances than the length of a lecture hall! When the first railroad tracks were laid from Lamy Station to Santa Fe, in 1880, telegraph lines were strung along the right-of-way, a distance of some 17 miles. How would you adapt our telegraph system to that distance? Would you suspend the wires on poles, like this? That would work, of course; but it would involve twice as much wire, and nearly twice as much labor, as you really need. For the earth itself can serve as a conductor; in fact, over long distances it is often more effective than a wire would be. So instead of stringing both the red and blue wires on poles, as pictured here, connect the blue wires to the earth by driving a long copper rod into the ground at each station; like this: �4 Now our system seems complete. Is there any reason why it could not in principle be extended to greater and greater distances? True, we find that longer distances require additional batteries; but that presents no great challenge. We understand that the wire in some measure resists the flow of current even while conducting it. Longer distances therefore represent more resistance, and that is overcome by using more batteries—sometimes by simply adding to the ones already in use; but more often by another technique, which I want to take note of here because the same principle will come up later in another connection. To produce a clearly audible signal, a telegraph sounder requires a fairly strong current; mine needs a current of about 375 milliamperes for reliable operation. But the currents which could realistically be maintained in a telegraph wire hundreds of miles long were typically only about one-eighth of this. How then, with a such a small current, could the sounder be activated? That problem was solved by the relay: this is an electromagneti- cally operated switch that requires only a weak current to turn it on. As you see here, the incoming current energizes the relay’s electromagnet and closes the red contacts. Once these contacts are closed, a much stronger current from the batteries can pass and activate the sounder. It is as though the weak current were able to do the job of a much stronger current. Although telegraphers sometimes spoke of this arrangement as “magnifying” the incoming current, you can see that such a description is misleading. The relay cannot “magnify” anything; it is a control mechanism, not a transforming one. It does not alter the incoming current, but only enables it to trigger a more powerful one. With this latest development, it seems that the only barrier to unlimited expansion of our telegraphic system is the ocean: you can’t erect telegraph poles in the middle of the deep blue sea! But poles would be unnecessary if a telegraph wire could be laid directly on the seabed itself. In 1850 a telegraph cable was indeed laid along the floor of the English Channel. The �5 first successful transatlantic cable was achieved in 1865. 3 But not only were undersea cables enormously expensive, their transmission speeds proved to be extremely slow compared to overland telegraph lines; let’s try to see why. The 1865 transatlantic cable ran 2900 miles from the west coast of Ireland to the shores of Nova Scotia. As we just saw, distance in itself is not a novel problem. 2900 miles happens also to be the distance between New York and San Francisco; and that mileage had already been covered with the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line in 1861. But overland wires are surrounded by air. What happens to such a wire when it is surrounded by seawater? The 1865 cable is reported 4 to have contained a central conductor of about 64 thousandths of an inch in diameter, surrounded by gutta-percha insulation to a diameter of 3/8 of an inch. Then the wire proper will have had a circumference of .204 inches. The cable was 2900 miles long, or 183 million, 744 thousand inches; so the outer surface of the conductor would have had area of nearly 37 million, 484 thousand square inches. This means that more than 37 million square inches of copper was separated by a little over 1/8 inch from an equal surface of excellently-conducting saltwater. What do we have when these two conductive surfaces are separated by a thin layer of insulating material? We have the equivalent of a gigantic Leyden jar. 5 3 4 An earlier cable, the first, carried its inaugural message in 1858 but failed within three weeks. Bright, Charles, The Story of the Atlantic Cable (1903), pp. 46, 52. 5 Faraday observed behavior similar to that of the Leyden jar when very long wires were buried in the earth. See Faraday, Michael, “On Subterraneous Electro-Telegraph Wires,” Philosophical Magazine, June 1854. �6 Imagine what would happen if we added such an enormous Leyden jar to our telegraphic line between Lamy and Santa Fe: For simplicity, we’ll consider only a one-way system, with a single battery. When the key is closed, current flows to the Leyden jar as well as to the sounder; the jar becomes charged, and the sounder clicks as its electromagnet is energized. But when the key is released, the Leyden jar will still be charged. It will then discharge through the sounder, keeping the electromagnet energized until discharge is complete. This means that after the key is released, there will be a delay before the sounder is released. If the key operator sent a “dot,” the receiving operator might hear a “dash!” We can mimic this effect. Here I have connected the sounder normally; you can see it respond faithfully when I tap “dots” and “dashes” on the key. Next I will connect a capacitor—the modern equivalent of a Leyden jar— across the sounder’s terminals to represent the result of submerging the cable. The capacitor is only about an inch in diameter; nevertheless it is electrically equivalent to many millions of Leyden jars! Let’s see how the �7 sounder responds . . . Did you notice how sluggishly the sounder’s armature released? When I tried to send “S J C,” the sounder quickly became paralyzed, and the message was completely garbled. The only way to avoid confusion is for the key operator to allow time for the jar to discharge between each “key up” and the next “key down.” But this requires sending very slowly. The 1865 undersea cable could not carry more than about 8 words per minute. 6 By comparison, skilled landline telegraphers were expected to send and receive between 20 and 40 words per minute; while the lines themselves could support speeds three times as fast using automated sending and receiving apparatus. The problem, then, with an undersea cable is not the cable but the sea! But doesn’t that cast serious doubt on the imagery of electric current as a species of flow, with the telegraph wire as its channel or conduit? For the performance of a pipe or channel is ordinarily determined by the conditions inside it, not the conditions outside it. To take only the most naive example, water flowing through a pipe is majestically indifferent as to whether that pipe is suspended in air, lying on the ground, or buried in the earth—in stark contrast to the submarine cable’s susceptibility to its environment. Moreover, if a telegraph cable immersed in saltwater behaves conspicuously like a Leyden jar, then surely the same cable suspended in air must likewise act like a Leyden jar—but merely to a lesser extent. How, then, can any realistic image of electric current privilege a supposed process of “flow” within the wire, while excluding any representation of the conditions surrounding the wire? Yet that is just what the conventional “flow” image does. Faraday, in his Eleventh and Twelfth Series, especially, found that for purposes of understanding the Leyden jar, an image of electrification that emphasized tension in the surrounding dielectric was far more fruitful than was the image of electricity as residing in or on a conductor. A more Faradayan account of our telegraph system might proceed like this: 6 Even this was a vast improvement over the first, 1858, cable, which required 16 hours to transmit a 98-word message from Queen Victoria to President James Buchanan—a speed of 1/10 word per minute! �8 The telegraph key has just sent a single “dot”—a short pulse. While the key was closed, the battery began to impose tension between the left end of the wire and ground. That tension spread to the right as each region affected the adjacent region. Similarly, when the key was opened, tension at the wire’s end returned to zero; and this condition too propagated to the right from region to region. The result is a zone of tension that has moved from the telegraph key about halfway to the first telegraph pole. A moment later, that zone of tension will have moved just beyond the first telegraph pole... And from that point nearly to the second pole... Finally it will approach the telegraph sounder; and when it reaches that device, the tension will discharge in the sounder’s coils, developing the momentary magnetic field which attracts the armature, thus signaling that a “dot” has been received. Let us view these images as a sequence, to give a better sense of how this wave of tension—for it is a wave—travels. Notice that while the wave may be said to be guided by the telegraph wire and the �9 earth; it is not travelling through either of them. It is traveling through space. You see how the behavior of the transatlantic cable is far more concordant with Faraday’s “tension” image than with the image of flow through a wire. Moreover, by acknowledging the relevance of action outside the wire Faraday’s image provides a more natural rhetorical context for the phenomena encountered in submarine cables. But I would not wish to argue that either image is the “true” one. Both of them bear a metaphorical stamp, in that both work to render unfamiliar phenomena in familiar terms. Returning, then, to the telegraphic predicament, I had suggested earlier that the problem was not the cable but its submersion in the sea. On the other hand, inasmuch as there is no way to suspend a cable above the sea, from a practical point of view the problem was the cable; and the solution would be to eliminate the cable altogether. 7 But how is that possible? Indeed, it is not possible if electric current is essentially flow through a wire, as the conventional image represents it; for then a wire will be indispensable. But if current is essentially a wave of tension, new possibilities for transmission would seem to open up, in imagination if nothing else. I am not sure to what extent Faraday actually contemplated the idea of “separating the current from the wire,” so to speak, though some of his later writings are highly suggestive. 8 But Maxwell certainly did—and largely on the basis of Faraday’s views on the nature of conduction. As juniors will see for themselves later in the semester, Maxwell’s theory implies that every electric current necessarily generates an electromagnetic wave—and although currents cannot travel without wires, electromagnetic waves travel in space. Maxwell’s calculations provided compelling reasons for him to believe that light was an electromagnetic wave, but he did not conjecture whether there might be other kinds of electromagnetic waves, nor whether such waves could be produced in practice by electrical means. That achievement—the generation of electromagnetic waves—was accomplished by Heinrich Hertz in 1888. By no means, of course, have submarine communication cables been abandoned! Dramatic improvements have resulted from the use of better insulation, inline repeaters, and, since about the 1980s, transition from electrical to optical cables. 7 8 See, for example, “Thoughts on Ray-Vibrations,” Experimental Researches in Electricity, vol. III, p. 447; “On Subterraneous Electro-Telegraph Wires,” ibid., p. 521; “On Electric Induction— Associated cases of current and Static Effects,” Phil. Mag, Series 4, vol. 7, no. 44 (March 1854), p. 197. �10 Hertz’s apparatus is shown in this haunting photograph—taken, I believe, by Hertz himself. The pair of long rods with large globes at their ends form the radiating structure—what we now call the “antenna.” 9 The large coil at the far left end of the bench produced pulses of very high voltage which discharged through the spark gap at the center of the rod pair, and so initiated in them a rapidly oscillating current. Although a spark discharge inherently produces waves exhibiting a huge range of frequencies, Hertz’s rods and spheres were sized to favor waves having a length of about 6 meters and a frequency of about 50 million cycles per second. Hertz demonstrated the existence of these waves by showing their effect on a separate wire loop, interrupted by a spark gap of its own; here is Hertz’s diagram. 10 Whenever the main apparatus sparked, a discernable spark developed across the gap at M, even when the loop was held twenty or thirty feet away, thus demonstrating that the waves were indeed traveling through the air. Antenna—Latin term for sailyard, yardarm; later (15th cent.) the long protruding “feeler” of an insect—became the accepted name for such a radiator by 1902. 9 10 Redrawn from Hertz, Electric Waves (1893). �11 Hertz’s apparatus could not transmit waves over distances useful for practical communication. Nor had Hertz harbored any such intention; his interest was in confirming Maxwell’s electromagnetic theory. But a young Guglielmo Marconi saw these “Hertzian waves,” as they were then called, as a potential means of wireless communication. Instead of turning an electric current on and off in short and long pulses, it was only necessary to turn the spark generator on and off. Pulses of electromagnetic waves would then carry messages in the same form as landline telegraphy did; but it would be wireless telegraphy. Marconi began experimenting with his own wave apparatus in 1894; he succeeded in transmitting over distances that gradually increased from one-half mile, to 10 miles in 1897, across the English Channel in 1898, and in 1899 to a vessel at sea 66 miles away. 11 A few years ago I made a spark transmitter from old automotive ignition parts; I even tried to imitate Hertz’s antenna: The two copper sheets correspond to Hertz’s globes, while the brass spheres at the center form the spark gap. The two cylindrical objects are a pair of automotive ignition coils, wired back-to-back. They take the place of Hertz’s enormous induction coil. Here is the transmitter in operation . . . The buzzing sound you heard is a set of contacts in the battery circuit; each time they open, a spark is generated. With the aid of this Hertzian memorial, Mr. Franks and I were able to send a signal from the portico of Weigle Hall to his office in ESL—a magnificent range of one hundred twenty feet! The wave produced by this series of sparks is, accordingly, a series of wave pulses. A new pulse is produced each time the buzzer contacts open— in my transmitter that is about 500 times per second. But each pulse itself oscillates at a frequency of roughly 50 million times per second, and it also decays slightly in amplitude. So if I hold down the transmitter key for the 11 Largely because of Marconi’s single-minded pursuit of wireless telegraphy, it is his name that is most prominently associated with its development; but Marconi was by no means the sole originator. In the year when Marconi began his experiments Oliver Lodge, already a scientific luminary, would introduce the “syntonic” (tuned) transmitter in a memorial lecture on Hertz (Royal Institution, June 1894) and transmit wireless Morse messages between two Oxford University buildings (British Association meeting, August 1894). �12 length of one “dash” (about a third of a second) it produces a wave shape like the one drawn at the top of this slide. A Morse “dot,” which should be about a third of the length of a dash, is drawn at the bottom. With the steady growth of wireless range it seemed inevitable that wireless transmission would eventually extend from continent to continent; it was only a matter of commandeering more electric power for the spark and building more efficient radiating and receiving structures. But the intermittent character of the spark wave was a serious impediment to transmission power. As the slide shows, only about 50% of the transmission time was actually occupied by a wave! This is deplorably inefficient, and various methods were developed to make the radiated wave more nearly continuous. One of them utilized a Leyden jar and a coil, like the ones highlighted on the right, to prolong oscillations in the antenna. Instead of the intermittent pulses generated by the earliest transmitters, this and other improvements resulted in a wave that was nearly continuous, so that Morse “dashes” and “dots” had waveshapes like these: But even with the greater efficiency obtained with improved wave continuity, the power needed for long-distance wireless transmission was �13 far greater than any battery could supply. Marconi’s most powerful transmitters employed steam-powered electric generators like these: 12 As you might imagine, the sparks produced by such enormous machines were distressingly noisy. The residents near one installation 13 complained that the sound of the spark could be heard four miles downwind of the station! The radiating and receiving antenna structures likewise grew in scale and complexity, as more and more came to be known about the behavior of electromagnetic waves. Here are two of Marconi’s transatlantic antenna arrays, the one on the left was located in Nova Scotia, Canada; the one on the right was constructed in Cornwall, England around 1902. But successful reception of the transmitted electromagnetic wave was not, in itself, sufficient to establish communication; the recipient had to know that it was received! The wave had to be detected. How was this to be achieved? When an electromagnetic wave is intercepted by a conductor, an electric current tends to develop in it. Roughly speaking, a conductor will develop a current insofar as it is parallel to the incoming electric field, or perpendicular to the incoming magnetic field. (Recall that Faraday had shown, long before, that a conductor tends to develop a current when it 12 13 Bucher, Elmer. Practical Wireless Telegraphy (1917), p. 295. South Wellfleet, Mass. See https://www.nps.gov/caco/learn/historyculture/marconi.htm �14 “cuts” lines of magnetic force.) Any phenomenon associated with this current will, therefore, signal the reception of an electromagnetic wave. So long as Hertz’s wire loop was within a few dozen feet of the transmitter, the currents that developed in it were strong enough to produce a spark, though a very feeble one (Hertz had to darken the room and use a magnifying lens to see it). But the currents that would develop in a far distant conductor—even in a sophisticated and elaborate array like the ones shown here—would be incomparably weaker. A far more sensitive indicator would be required to discern them. Numerous such indicators were contrived, several of them truly ingenious; but most were either too delicate or too slow for practical use. The first device to gain widespread adoption was one whose operation no one really understood. This was the “coherer,” widely credited in principle to the French physicist Édouard Branly, although many other investigators, including Marconi, contributed to its practical utility. On the left is one of Marconi’s coherers; and on the right you see how it would have been incorporated in an actual wireless receiver, mounted in a mechanism I will explain in a moment. The coherer itself is a length of glass tubing fitted with two electrodes, the space between them filled loosely with metal filings. Although metals are generally good conductors, tiny shards of metal do not contact one another very well, so the coherer does not readily conduct an electric current. But in the presence of a high-frequency electromagnetic wave the metal filings mysteriously “cohere”—hence the name—and the device becomes suddenly conductive. We can see the “cohering” behavior using little more than a heap of metallic spheres. 14 I have squeezed about a dozen four-inch squares of This was one of Branly’s early versions; see Fleming, J. A., Principles of Electric Wave Telegraphy and Telephony, 3rd ed. (1916), p. 478. My version is adapted from a YouTube video whose presenter identifies himself only as “Mr. Whibley”: look for https://youtu.be/ESgoNEH__E8?si=Xw5a7Zzmhb8Q5G6Y—truly a little gem. 14 �15 aluminum foil into spheres about one-half inch in diameter and placed them loosely in the glass beaker. Strips of foil taped to opposite sides of the beaker connect the pile of spheres in the circuit of a battery and flashlight bulb. As you see, the bulb is not lit, even though aluminum is a good conductor. Evidently the loose contact between the spheres cannot pass enough current to light the bulb. But we know from Hertz that an electric spark generates electromagnetic waves. This battery-operated stove lighter generates a series of electric sparks when I press the trigger; it’s what I use to light my propane stove at home. In a wireless telegraphy receiver, the incoming electromagnetic wave would have been routed to the coherer by means of a wire from the antenna; but since my sparker is only a few feet away, we need no special conductor. See? When the discharge occurs, the pile of spheres suddenly becomes conductive, and the lamp lights. But you can also see the great deficiency of this device: it remains conductive, and the lamp stays lit, even after the spark �16 and its radiated wave have ceased. It cannot distinguish a dot from a dash; indeed, so long as it remains conductive it will not be able to detect the arrival of a subsequent pulse, whether dot or dash. What seems to be happening is that the sudden spike of electromagnetic disturbance generates tiny sparks between the foil surfaces, which momentarily raise the temperature at the discharge points sufficiently high to weld the spheres together. But notice that when I give the cup a sharp tap, the current ceases. Evidently a slight disturbance is enough to break the tiny bonds—today they are called “microwelds”—between the foil spheres. Such was the purpose of the elaborate mechanism in which the coherer was typically mounted. The moment Marconi’s coherer became conductive, it passed a current through an electromagnet; this in turn caused a steel tapper to strike the glass tube and “de-cohere” the particles, opening the circuit. The tapper would immediately spring back; and if the received pulse had been a short “dot,” the coherer would now be ready to receive the next pulse. If, however, the pulse had been a long “dash,” the wave would still be present; the particles would cohere again, the tapper would strike the glass once more; and this process would repeat, and the tapping would continue, until the cessation of the “dash.” This principle—the “switch that turns itself off”—is the principle of the electric buzzer, and when the decoherer was in operation it created a similar buzzing sound. 15 The coherer was, however, far from satisfactory. One engineer complained, “It was publicized as wonderful, and it was—wonderfully erratic and bad. It would not work when it should, and it worked overtime when it should not have.” 16 Another described it as “the bête noir of radiotelegraphy,” since it could not reliably distinguish between “legitimate signals, static disturbances, a slipping trolley several blocks away, and even This “buzzer” style of decoherer was only one of many methods that were developed to enable the coherer to control an indicator, or even a recorder. 15 16 Robert Marriott, quoted in Lewis Coe, Wireless Radio, A History, 2nd ed. (2006), p. 6. �17 the turning on and off of electric lights in the building.” 17 But perhaps the most serious deficiency was its sluggishness; the coherer’s cumbersome tapping mechanism limited reception to about 12 or 15 words per minute— barely a third of the standard for landline telegraphers. Still, even with these limitations, the coherer was a tremendous advance over Hertz’s spark detector, because it acted indirectly. Let me explain what I mean by this. The spark Hertz observed in his wire loop detector was the direct manifestation of the current induced in it by the intercepted electromagnetic wave. Nothing intervened between the current and the spark; indeed, from Faraday’s point of view, the current was the spark. Necessarily, then, the perceptible indication of the electromagnetic wave could be no more energetic than was the received wave itself. The coherer, by contrast, allows a weak incoming current to trigger a separate and much stronger current— the same principle we saw earlier in the telegraphic relay, only effected by different means. The relay used electromagnetic attraction to close a switch mechanically, thus completing a battery circuit. In the coherer, heat from tiny sparks creates microscopic welds between the metal shards; it completes the battery circuit by fusing conductive fragments together. The coherer, like the relay, makes possible a much more pronounced effect than the wave itself would have been able to produce; and since the wave-current only triggers the current which produces the sensible outcome, I call the coherer an indirect detector. Notice that the crucial element in the operation of the coherer is production of heat; everything else depends on that. But until about twenty years ago, when research finally confirmed it, 18 the role played by heat in the operation of the coherer could at best be only surmised. Nevertheless, to G. W. Pickard, “How I Invented the Crystal Detector,” Electrical Experimenter (August 1919), p. 325. 17 18 Falcon, Eric; Castaing, Bernard. "Electrical conductivity in granular media and Branly's coherer: A simple experiment," American Journal of Physics 73 (4): 302–307 (2005). �18 early twentieth-century investigators, explanations based on heat would have seemed the most reasonable and natural among the available candidates. We find a striking example of this in the work of G. W. Pickard, an American engineer. In 1902 Pickard was experimenting with the detector shown here on the left, a sewing needle laid across two carbon supports; and perhaps because it involved loose contact between conducting bodies, Pickard thought of his detector as a type of coherer. In contrast to Marconi’s coherer, though, this one was self-restoring; it did not need to be tapped after each received pulse. Nevertheless, Pickard was using it just as he would have employed an ordinary Marconi coherer: the detector was connected to a set of batteries, so that when it became conductive in the presence of an electromagnetic wave, the resulting rush of current from the batteries would produce a distinctive clicking sound in a Bell-style telephone earpiece, pictured on the right. Pickard’s great discovery occurred when he accidentally disconnected the batteries, yet continued to hear clicks in the earpiece whenever a wave pulse was received at the antenna. But with the batteries disconnected, the only source of electrical energy was the current from the antenna. Pickard was astonished to realize that the telephone diaphragm was being operated solely by the energy of the receive[d] signals. 19 What was astonishing about this? I’m guessing here, because Pickard did not say very much more about the course of his thinking. But everyone knew, and he would have known, that the current coming directly from the antenna should have been incapable of activating the telephone. G. W. Pickard, “How I Invented the Crystal Detector,” Electrical Experimenter (August 1919). Emphasis in the original. 19 �19 Let us understand why this is so. Remember that every wave has an oscillatory or, we might say, alternating character. For example, when we send a wave along one of our Bell wave machines, the wave itself travels horizontally; but every point on it moves vertically—alternating between motion up and motion down. Here is a clip from a 1959 instructional film; the presenter is John Shive, who invented the Bell wave device. Keep your eye on any of the crossbars, and notice their alternating up-and-down displacement. A vertical red line will assist you in this. Analogously, each of the components of an electromagnetic wave—the electric field and the magnetic field—undergoes a similar alternation between positive and negative. Maxwell depicted that alternation in this drawing; it is Figure 66 from his Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. When the incoming electromagnetic wave is intercepted by the receiving antenna of a radiotelegraphy station, the alternating fields induce an alternating current. What happens, then, if this current is sent directly to a telephone receiver? The Bell telephone earpiece of 1900 (and they really haven’t changed all that much, even today) consists of a permanent magnet, shown here in blue, and a coil and a flexible steel diaphragm, shown in red. The diaphragm, �20 being attracted to the magnet, is permanently deflected in the magnet’s direction. But when an alternating current is sent through the coil, the coil’s magnetic field will alternately reinforce and oppose the magnet’s field. As a result, the diaphragm will be deflected now more, and now less; it will attempt to vibrate with the frequency at which the current alternates. But this frequency would have been in excess of hundreds of thousands of vibrations per second, for that was typical of the electromagnetic waves used in radiotelegraphy. No telephone diaphragm could sustain such rapid vibrations; and even had it done so, Pickard could never have heard them! For the limit of human hearing is at best about twenty thousand vibrations per second. What Pickard did hear in the earpiece was a sequence of clicks. What kind of current would cause that? The same kind of current that produced the clicks in our telegraph sounder earlier: a steady current—what we now call a direct current—turning on and off. Just as with the sounder’s armature, the telephone’s diaphragm is pulled towards the magnet when the current is on, then released when the current is off. Here I have an actual Bell receiver mechanism from about 1915; listen in the following video as I repeatedly connect, then disconnect, a battery. In the video I have amplified the sound considerably, and you can also see the diaphragm moving in and out. Here, then, is the problem. Pickard’s antenna was sending an alternating current to the detector—but the telephone was receiving a direct current from the detector! The detector, then, must either be transforming an alternating current into a direct current, or it must be replacing one current with the other. Pickard assumed the second option: replacement rather than transformation. We know this because in his patent certificate of 1906 20 he states: The energy of the received oscillations is converted into heat at the .. . junction.. .. This heat energy is then, according to this invention, regenerated or converted into a direct electric current. 20 U.S. Patent no. 836,531 issued November 20, 1906. �21 Pickard is asserting that the process has two stages: first, the alternating current produces heat; next, the heated junction between two dissimilar materials produces a direct current. Both of these phenomena were well known. Electrical production of heat had been described by Joule in 1840, and the thermal generation of electricity—Faraday called it “thermoelectricity” in his Third Series—was discovered by Seebeck in 1821. On what basis did Pickard offer this interpretation?—or, rather, this conjecture, since as far as I know, there existed at that time no research confirming the idea that heat was really involved. I think his word “regenerated” is telling. In the absence of a clear picture of electric current, he cannot think of “current” as a thing capable of being wrought from a serpentine profile, like this: into a rectilinear profile, like this: Current, for him, does not seem to be the sort of thing that can be fashioned “as clay in the hands of the potter.” 21 Without a clear picture of its nature, electric current can only be conceived as a manifestation of the power that generates it; the only way it can change its character, therefore, is to perish in one form, then be re-generated in another. Pickard’s attempt to avoid the idea of “transformation” would prove to be mistaken. His device actually does transform the current as such—not by converting it to heat and back again, but by a different process altogether. 21 Jeremiah 18:6 �22 That process would finally reveal itself with the advent of the vacuum tube. That invention will be the topic of my talk in April, and I hope many of you will be able to come. The vacuum tube would not only address the problem of wave detection in a much improved way, it would make possible sweeping advances in the production and transmission of electromagnetic waves. It would, above all, enable electromagnetic waves to convey sound—giving rise to the fascinating technology we now call “radio.” Additionally, the vacuum tube will raise anew, and perhaps in a more visualizable form, our former question, that of the nature of electric current. I hope you will join me for that discussion. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College at the Santa Fe, NM campus. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data pdf Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 22 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Telegraphy and Radiotelegraphy Description An account of the resource Transcript of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on February 18, 2026 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Overland telegraph technology implicitly embodied a familiar image of electricity as being a mobile substance confined to conductors. But phenomena encountered in undersea telegraph cables presented a competing image, one far more suggestive of Faraday’s image of tension in a dielectric. Subsequent production of electromagnetic waves could be seen as the ultimate practical expression of Faraday’s 'tension' image. But if they were to serve as a communications medium, electromagnetic waves had not only to be produced but be detected; and although various detecting mechanisms were developed, their operation was mysterious: the received images of electric current appeared to provide little clarity." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Fisher, Howard J., 1942- Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-02-18 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_FisherH_Telegraphy_and_Radiotelegraphy_2026-02-18 Subject The topic of the resource Telegraph, Wireless https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f8fdac12c38dfdb4603dbf71f5bcd51c.jpg a5234547e38a4649b4722edfb1b07c0d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource <p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials.  The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p> To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Black and white photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 20.5 x 25.5 cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jon Tuck and Hugh McGrath in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Description An account of the resource Jon Tuck as Bottom and Hugh McGrath as Quince in a King William Players production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare in 1986. The play was performed in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. From the back of the photograph: "1986 - May, Midsummer Night's Dream, Jon Tuck, L., Bottom, Hugh McGrath, Quince." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Tuck, Jonathan McGrath, Hugh P., 1914-1995 Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Midsummer night's dream Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COM-FAC-TUCK-P-0008 King William Players Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8d133718e3a90f669642a6e72ad1ec34.jpg 135999f7d1cf83d6f6d4e3075d0fb710 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource <p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials.  The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p> To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Black and white photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 23.5 x 18.5 cm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jonathan Tuck Description An account of the resource Jonathan Tuck, tutor, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, 1991. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Harvey & Harvey Photographers Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Tuck, Jonathan Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COM-FAC-TUCK-P-0003 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a9f1010fa10ada28f6071f7734fc271b.jpg bfb4b6d6c30308de235e97a5880d15bb Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource <p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials.  The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p> To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Black and white photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 21.5 x 14 cm Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Begone Dull Care Description An account of the resource Begone Dull Care concert with Henry Higuera (guitar); Judith Seeger (guitar); Tony Seeger (banjo) and Jonathan Tuck in the Great Hall of McDowell Hall, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland, circa 1990-2000. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1990-2000 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Tuck, Jonathan Higuera, Henry Seeger, Judith Leeland, 1944- Seeger, Anthony Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COM-FAC-TUCK-P-0004 Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7351f94117e50782ba56cde3d5f0c5a1.jpg 9ffeb0f8aef051358d90a2ebc50929b0 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource <p>The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials.  The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. </p> To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <strong><a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a></strong>.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Black and white photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 20.5 x 25.5 cm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The mechanicals in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Description An account of the resource The mechanicals (Peter Kalkavage, John White, Jon Tuck, Hugh McGrath, and Malcolm Wyatt) in a King William Players production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare in 1986. The play was performed in the Francis Scott Key Auditorium, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland. From the back of the photograph: "Midsummer Night's Dream, May 1986, The Mechanicals - L to R. Peter Kalkavage, Flute, John White, Snout, Jon Tuck, Bottom, Hugh McGrath, Quince, Malcolm Wyatt, Starveling, reproduce as is June Reporter." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource In copyright. Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Tuck, Jonathan McGrath, Hugh P., 1914-1995 Wyatt, Malcolm White, John Kalkavage, Peter Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Midsummer night's dream Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context COM-FAC-TUCK-P-0007 King William Players Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/463476f4d3ecae136b50b47821ced3af.pdf 46eecc8e44bfbc7e33bd52a26848e094 PDF Text Text Gargantua’s Gaines Jonathan Tuck A lecture delivered at St. John’s College, Annapolis January 16,2009 This lecture is dedicated to the memory ofBrother Robert Smith. 1 �(A GargantHa’s Games In the first twenty-four chapters of Gargantua, Francois Rabelais describes the birth, childhood and education of the giant whose name is also the title of his book. Chapter 22 begins as follows: Then, most lazily mumbling a snatch of grace, he [Gargantua] washed his hands with fresh wine, cleaned his teeth with a pig’s foot, and chatted joyfully with his men. Then, when the green cloth was laid out, they brought out plenty of cards, plenty of dice, and enough boards for checkers or chess. There he played: Flush, Grand slam. Trump, Primiera, Beggar my neighbor, Odd man out. Tarots, Backgammon, Shuffleboard, Hopscotch, Lawn billiards. Coddling the hare. Trudge-pig, The moping owl. Gossip, lend me your sack, Marseilles figs. The false clown. Quoits, Chaw-turd, Barley-break, Whirlygig, .. Fast and loose. Pick-a-back to Rome, Fart-in-throat, Billy boy, give me my lance. Frogs and toads. The greedy glutton. The pigeon has flown. Fatass, Lady, I wash your cap. Baste the bear. Cross questions and crooked answers. Butting rams. The madge owlet. 2 �Flirts on the nose. Larks. After playing well, sifted, passed, and bolted the time, it was time to have a little drink—that was eleven gallons per man—and, right after banqueting, to stretch out and sleep two or three hours on nice bench or a nice big bed, meanwhile to think no evil or speak no evil. (p.1.22, pp. 50-54. All quotations from Rabelais are identified by book and chapter numbers and by pagination in the translation of Donald Frame, U. of California Press, 1991.) Now those of you who have read The Chronicles of Gargantua and Pantagruel, or at least Book I of it, known as Gargantua, will realize that I have seriously misquoted and mi ^represented this passage. I only gave thirty-six of the games that Rabelais lists. The true number is 216, three fiill double column pages in Donald Frame’s excellent translation, plus parts of two other pages. There are many such lists in Rabelais’ work, but this is one of the longest. What on earth can be the point of such an enumeration? Perhaps in approaching this question, I can also more generally suggest some of Rabelais’ strategies, his designs on us, his readers, and some of the reasons that we should cherish his strange but wonderfill book. In reading such a list, or in hearing it read, we feel a mixture of perplexity and pleasure. Where does die pleasure come from? Perhaps we are gladdened at the thought that there can be so many games, real or imaginary, in the world, or that our author can think of so many. Plenitude, copiousness of imagination, is an emblem of the abundance of nature itself perhaps, or at least of human nature, since the games are human artifacts. And if some of the games are imaginary, so much the better. No human, of course, could actually play all these games in a single afternoon; but remember that Gargantua is a giant— Rabelais is telling a tall tale. In fact, there was a lengthy oral and wntten 3 �tradition about the giant Gargantua in the Touraine, the region where Rabelais lived—a cycle of tales comparable to our yams about Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill. Gargantua’s adventures (and those of his son, Pantagruel) often have some of the almost surreal, daimonic, out-of-control quality of these folk tales. Paul Bunyan is a hero of sorts, but not a comfortable one; we may not feel for him the normal empathy that we would expect to have for the protagonist of a conventional narrative. Perhaps we’re not altogether sure that he is the “good guy,” or that he feels as humans do. Such a question can certainly arise about Gargantua, whose pranks include stealing the bells of Notre Dame to use for the neck of his mare, and drowning 260,418 nameless Parisians by casual urination. But as often with Rabelais, this is only cartoon violence. We do not pause to mourn for the drowned Parisians, any more than we fear for Wile E. Coyote when he plunges off a cliff. Gigantism here may be monstrous or hyperbolic, but as we come to learn, it may also be an emblem for the possibilities of humanity, a literalizing of human greatness, power, and freedom. No longer is humanity cowering and subservient, dwarfed by the stature of our ancestors or our God. Instead, we may consider Rabelais as a Renaissance humamst, hyperbolically portraying what Pico della Mirandola called “the dignity of man.” But perhaps I’m waxing hyperbolic myself. The list of games lacks the grandeur and nobility of an epic catalogue—the catalogue of the ships in Hiad Book II, for example. There the purpose was not simply to amass a multitude, but to order it. The list of games, by comparison, is a mere heap; the sequence seems arbitrary and the whole effect is grotesque. Though at the outset, the narrator mentioned cards, dice, and board games, many of the games enumerated are of a different kind altogether—^hop-scotch and lawn-billiards, for example. Others seem to be children’s role-playing games, a kind of �make-believe. Some of them seem to be made up on the spot. We are reminded of the list given by Jorge Luis Borges: The ambiguities, redundancies and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia called the Heavenly Emporium ofBenevolent Knowledge. In its distant pages it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) the embalmed ones; (b) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel’shair brush; (1) et cetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that from a distance resemble flies... (“John Wilkins’ Analytical Language,” in Selected Non-Fictions, p. 231.) The implication of any list is that its elements are units, of like kind. The wild heterogeneity of Rabelais’ list of games raises the question of what kind. What is a “game,” anyway? If an imaginary game is enumerated in the list, does the act of listing it give it existence? And if so, is that act of creation peculiar to games—do we think that an imaginary game is as much a game as a “real” game, or perhaps more so? Is any game “real”? Would the act of listing some other kind or class of beings call its items into existence? What power does the teller of this story implicitly claim to have, and does he really have it? Rabelais, in listing so many games, implies but does not mention yet another game, the one he is playing with us, his readers, and with language itself. The power exerted by listing and naming is illustrated in another list of Gargantua’s activities as a younger child: He was always wallowing in the mud, getting his nose dirty. Messing up his face, wearing down his shoes at the heel, gaping after flies, and running happily after butterflies...he pissed on his shoes, shat in his shirt, blew his nose on his sleeves, sniveled in his soup and made a mess everywhere...He sharpened his teeth with a clog, washed his hands with soup, combed his hair with a goblet, sat between two saddles with his tail on the ground,... �farted for fat, pissed against the sun, hid in the water for rain, struck while the iron was cold...flayed the fox, said the monkey’s paternoster, returned to his sheep, turned the sows out to hay...put the cart before the oxen, scratched himself where he did not itch, drew worms from his nose, bit off more than he could chew, ate his white bread first, shod grasshoppers... offered the gods straw for wheat... ate cabbage and shat leeks...counted without his host....always looked a gift horse inthe mouth...hoped to catch larks if the skies fell, made a virtue of necessity, cared as little about the shaven as the clipped... (I.ll, pp.30-31) In this enumeration, which I have once again drastically abbreviated, a list of actual forms of toddler mischief somehow metastasizes into a Sancho Panza-like list of proverbial expressions. Some, but perhaps not all of them, seem to be there because they are metaphors for activities that are ill-advised or counterproductive. I think many of the * items on the list are there only because they are vividly concrete and nonsensical. The list lists for the sake of listing. Whatever this is, it is not narrative as we usually understand it. Language seems to have taken on a life of its own. When poets make lists—epic catalogues, for example—they are often lists of proper names: warriors or nymphs, rivers or cities or other place-names. It seems to be the act of a true poet to love exotic, resounding but ultimately meaningless names—think of Whitman or Sandburg or Stevens, rolling out a polysyllabic Native American proper name, tasting it, luxuriating in its sound alone. Rabelais has some of this poetic impulse too—he is one of the greatest French prose stylists, primarily because there is a wild, anarchic energy in his language. Consider the first introduction of one of his main characters: In the abbey at that time there was a claustral monk named Friar John of the Hashes, young, gallant, fiisky, cheerful, very deft, bold, adventurous, resolute, tall, thin, with a wide open throat, well fixed for a nose, a great dispatcher of hours, a great unbridler of masses, a 6 �*5 fine polisher-off of vigils, to sum it all up briefly a real monk if ever there was one since the monking world first monked in monkery... (1.27, p.66) The word “monk” is repeated partly in derision—Rabelais, as will become clear, is no admirer of the monastic ideal as we usually think of it, despite being techmcally a monk himself. More to the point, the sound of the word “monk” becomes a jingle, an incantation, even a sensual act. Rabelais loves words, especially nonsense-words, madeup words, ridiculously long words, spoonerisms, bad puns, and words in resonant, learned-sounding foreign languages. When Gargantua takes the bells of Notre Dame for his mare, the Faculty of Theology sends its oldest sophist, Janotus de Bragmardo, to recover them. Here is an excerpt from his oration, which is generously sprinkled with outrageously bad Latin: “Ozuw's clocha clochabilis, in clocherio clochando, clochans clochativo clocharefacit clochahiliter clochantes’’’ (1.19, p.45). Roughly translated: “Every bellable bell, in belling bellery, belling hellishly makes the bellers bell.” Of course Rabelais offers no such translation; he expects us to be a learned audience, even as he mocks learning itself. The same zest for languages emerges in a scene in the second book, known as Pantagruel, where we first meet Panurge, who will become the manic sidekick of Pantagruel, the son of Gargantua. Note in passing that the name Panurge is taken, without gloss or explanation, from the Greek word Ttavoupyog, one who will do anything, a rascal or scoundrel. (The same Greek etymologizing is present in many of Rabelais’ names—^for example. King Picrochole, the villain of Book I, the Xerxes-like figure whose dreams of world conquest trigger the war between himself and Grandgousier, Gargantua’s father. Clearly we are expected to recognize that “Picrochole” is derived 7 �r from TciKpog, “bitter” and ^o^c,, “wrath.”) When Pantagruel and his companions first meet the mysterious stranger Panurge, he hails them successively with fourteen little one- paragraph untranslated orations in German, in an imaginary language from the Antipodes, in Italian, in Scots dialect, in Basque, in Lantemese (another imaginary language), in Dutch, in Spanish, in Danish, in Hebrew, in Greek, in Utopian (a third imaginary language)^ in Latin, and finally in French, which turns out to be his native tongue (11.9, pp. 163-166). We might think that the linguistic dispersion of the human race, after the Tower of Babel, is no cause for rejoicing; but the sheer profusion of languages^ their plenitude, seems to be celebrated here. Panurge, who as his name implies will do or say anything, in any language, and Rabelais, his creator, both take pleasure in the fact of language and languages, for their own sake. Both are profound scholars in their own way, and both are highly irreverent toward scholarship. Even so, there is also a moral lesson: Each of Panurge’s elegant polyglot addresses is to the same effect: “Please, for charity’s sake, give me something to eat and drink.” And each time, his listeners focus on the philology instead of giving him aid. In this scene, Rabelais implies, there is a universal language of physical need that transcends the Babel of linguistic differences among humans. Generosity is simple and unlearned, but it trumps the learning of the wise. Since we are now entered on the subject of Rabelais’ view of learning, I should certainly mention that the list we began with, the list of Gargantua’s games, is actually given in condemnation of Gargantua’s idleness, to show that his education is being neglected. The young giant is naturally possessed of many intellectual virtues, but it seems that they are misdirected. We get an early glimpse of his natural curiosity and 8 �desire to learn: At the age of five he embarks spontaneously, with the energy of a Bacon or a Faraday, on a course of experimentation whose object is the discovery of the perfect ass-wipe. After a long list of candidates tested and rejected, Gargantua announces proudly that the softest, warmest and most delightful thing to wipe your ass with is the downy feathers of a young, live goose. This discovery delights his father, but in tide following years Gargantua’s potent intellect is left to fust unused. A sophist named Thubal Holofemes proves unequal to the task of the education of a noble youth. The two lists I gave, of games and other proverbial activities, are both given as evidence of the waste of the young giant’s time. So his father the King engages a true humamst tutor with the appropriate Greek name of Ponocrates—“the power of work.” We then get an enthusiastic seven-page description of the best educational regimen, both in music and gymnastic. Not an hour of the day is to be wasted. Even at dmner, Gargantua and his tutor discuss the origins and properties of everything they are served, complete with a citation of pertinent passages from “Pliny, Athenaeus, Dioscorides, Julius Pollux, Galen, Porphyry, Oppian, Polybius, Heliodorus, Aristotle, Aelian and others” (11.23, p.56). The concern for education is passed on to the next generation: In Pantagruel there is a famous letter to the hero from his father, Gargantua, setting forth his own omnivorous zest for learning and his wishes for his son to feel the same. Referring to his own education, Gargantua says: The time was still dark, and smacking of the infelicity and calamity of the Goths, who had brought all good literature to destruction; but, by God’s goodness, in my own day light and dignity has been restored to letters...Now all branches of learning are reestablished, languages restored: Greek, without which it is shameful for a man to call himself learned; Hebrew, Chaldean, Latin; truly elegant and correct printings are now customary, which were invented in my time by divine inspiration.. .The whole world is full of erudites, of veiy learned 9 �teachers, of very ample libraries; and in my judgment, neither in Plato’s time, nor Cicero’s, nor Papinian’s, were there such facilities for study as we see now... As for the knowledge of nature’s works, I want you to devote yourself to that with care: let there be no sea, stream, or spring, whose fish you do not know: all the birds of the air, all the trees, shrubs, and bushes of the forests, all the herbs of the earth, all the metal hidden in the bowels of the depths, the precious stones of the Orient and Southern Hemisphere: let nothing be unknown to you. (II.8, pp. 160-161) The vaunting and exultant spirit of the Renaissance seems to breathe forth, completely unironically, in this passage, perhaps the most famous in Rabelais’ work, although not necessarily the most typical. The book as a whole seems to be a medley of different genres—by turns a mock epic, a romance, a satire, a folk tale— but one genre to which it clearly alludes here is the humanist treatise on the education of the ruler. The tradition starts with Plato’s Republic and Xenophon’s Cyropaideia, both recently rediscovered in the grand retrieval of classical texts. It continues with books as varied as Machiavelli’s Prince, Erasmus’s Education ofa Christian Prince, Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, The Book ofthe Governor by Sir Thomas Elyot (from whom the twentieth­ century poet Thomas Steams Eliot claimed he was descended). Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier, and a book called The Schoolemaster by Roger Ascham, tutor to Queen Elizabeth L All of these works, in different ways, exhibit a vivid confidence in the power and possibility of human learning. The trope of educational reform is used as a way both to hand down the received tradition and to rethink it. Young Gargantua, having fallen initially into the wrong hands, must be rescued from a rigid but perfunctory scholastic education. What we might call the “progressive” aspect of Rabelais’s humanistic educational prescriptions is taken up again by Montaigne, in his chapter “Of the 10 �•1 Education of Children,” and we can thence trace its effects all the way to Rousseau, to Dewey, and to our own curriculum. It’s always hard to tell when Rabelais is being sincere, or what he really cares about; but I want to claim that the right kind of education is very close to his heart. He himself had made the wrong move of entering the Franciscan order in his youth. Not only did the austerity of the corded Friars disagree with him, but at this time and place, at least, they were actively hostile to the new learning and the Greek and Latin texts that conveyed it. It was not necessarily safe to be a Humanist in early sixteenth century France—several of the greatest scholars fell victim to the Inquisition. After Erasmus published a commentary on the Greek New Testament, the priestly scholars of the Sorbonne caused a law to be passed forbidding the teaching of the Greek language anywhere in France. Rabelais was later able to disengage himself from the Franciscans and throw in with the Benedictines, who were more tolerant of his intellectual adventurousness, up to a point. Even so, he seems to have drifted away from the Church more and more, as he found powerful patrons and won the favor of the King himself. He took all knowledge for his province, even the carnal kind: In middle age he studied and practiced medicine—a more earthy and secular occupation—and he seems to have fathered several illegitimate children. This may be as good a time as any to address the issue of Rabelais’ obscenity. The story of the search for the perfect ass-wipe may have caught your attention, or the somewhat raunchy names of several of the enumerated games. Rabelais sometime seems to exhibit an inexhaustible, childish joy in the portrayal of the sheerly physical— interestingly, at least as often in excretion as in sexuality. I have observed that for some �* k '* I) ■' ; -t readers of his books, scatology and other kinds of explicitness can be a significant stumbling block. Isn’t he being merely nasty—^rubbing our noses in it, as it were? I’m not sure that I can undertake a full-scale defense of Rabelais on this score, and as an aficionado of scatological humor. I’m not even sure that I want to. But here are a few observations: Rabelais’ world is a comic world, a carnival world, as his great modem critic Mikhail Bakhtin has shown. Carnival, etymologically, means “farewell to flesh”— not only to meat-eating, at the beginning of Lent, but to many other kinds of fleshly activity; and we value more that which we must forsake. The carnival world is characterized by inversion—the rule is misrule. Kings are reduced to beggars, and beggars are temporarily crowned king. This comic world is also a comic-book world, crude and exaggerated. Whatever truth it has is true only in context, and by a kind of necessary contrast with its opposite. I think that Rabelais would have heartily approved of a children’s book published in 1993, whose title was an incontrovertible truism: - Everyone Poops. On its first appearance the book aroused a firestorm of protest: Yes, everyone does, but what is the point of dwelling on it? Rabelais might answer this way: The point is to elicit that very response. If you are among the dainty-minded, perhaps you need to examine your own motives for seeking to deny your own physicality. It is not a particularly safe thing to do; the physical world has its way of taking its revenge on those who deny its importance. In this way as in so many others, Rabelais is a provocateur. One of the games that the book Gargantua plays with its readers is to make them self-conscious about their responses to it. Another physicality much celebrated by Rabelais is the heroically excessive consumption of alcohol. Notionally at least, wine is a venue for the intersection of the w 12 �physical and the spiritual—not only a sacrament but a source of wisdom. Early on in the Gargantua, just before the birth of the hero, a whole chapter is devoted to phrases used by drinkers to urge each on; Frame translates its title as “The Palaver of the Potted.” There is also, throughout the Chronicles, a lot of very enthusiastic eating, overeating, farting, and belching, as well as much talk about sexuality (though very little of it actually happens within the story). In short, one of the master images of the Chronicles is physical metabolism. I want to claim that Rabelais uses it partly as a metaphor for cognitive activity: intellectual intake, processing and output, learning, reading, interpreting, writing. I have used the word “omnivorous” in describing his zest for learning; that such a usage is still common—we devour books and drink in learning— shows that the metaphor is not strange to us. The chronic allusiveness of Rabelais’ book—^perhaps exceeding even that of Montaigne—shows his intellectual metabolism at work, processing what he reads. It is an ancient trope, reaching back at least to Plato, to refer to one’s own books as “children,” attempts to perpetuate oneself in a bid for a qualified kind of immortality. But we might think of a book as a less glorious kind of bodily product: Montaigne ironically refers to his chapters as “excrements” (111.9, “Of Vanity,” near the beginning). Perhaps the scatology of Rabelais is playing a similar game with us. Even excrement has its uses after all, not only for catharsis but as a means to future fertility. We can see the metaphors of eating and drinking in the Author’s Prologue to Book I, which I have distributed to you as a handout. [The text is appended.] I want to spend a little time on this Prologue, which seems to me to anticipate many of the themes of the whole work. The speaker is presumably M. Alcofidbas Nasier, Abstractor of the 13 �•“ “ ' 'J ■A Quintessence, the anagranunatic pseudonym Rabelais used for the first two books of his Chronicles. In reading Rabelais, as in reading Chaucer, Cervantes and many other storytellers, we must be wary of identifying the persona of the narrator with the actual author. He addresses us at the outset as “Most illustrious topers” and “most precious poxies.” We are “topers,” drinkers, consumers both literally— since he later urges us to read with the book in one hand and the bottle in the other—and metaphorically, according to the metaphor of metabolism. We are “poxies” perhaps because of the book’s occult curative powers. (The prologue to Book 4 will spell out this metaphor more fully; we remember that Rabelais was in fact a physician.) Despite this earthy beginning, the first paragraph plunges immediately into an ostentatious classical allusion—^appropriately, to Plato’s Symposium, where there is truth in wine, and where the highest things may be talked of in the midst of pleasure and laughter. But as we will see, the Prologue, like the rest of the book, will continue to employ allusions to Plato and other classical authors, in ways that will turn to be more and more suspect. In the same way that Socrates resembled a Silenus, so too does Rabelais’ book: grotesque and misshapen on the outside, but containing within itself divine and precious wisdom. The “outside” is identified in the third paragraph with the title, by which the book should not be judged. The juxtaposition of lofty learning and earthy physicality is perfectly summed up by such titles as On the dignity ofcodpieces and On peas with bacon cum commento. (Both titles appear again in Rabelais’ work, the first in Chapter 8 of Book I and the second in Book II, in a long list of the titles of the books supposedly in the theological Library of St. Victor in Paris [11.7]. A few—but only a few—of the other titles in the list refer to actual works.) W 14 �The word/flesh duality of the titles corresponds to the two possibilities the Prologue discusses: If the story the narrator is about to tell has a higher, spiritual significance—like the allegorical meanings some readers found not only in Scripture but in Plato, Homer and Ovid as well—then patience and leamedness are needed to extract it; we must bum the midnight oil, as it were, puzzling it out. But if it does not point beyond itself to some precious marrow of meaning contained within, we can simply enjoy it as itself, as a fiction, an ephemeral entertainment. The description of Socrates by Alcibiades seems to privilege the claim of a higher significance; we should disregard the rough and grotesque exterior of the Silenus-like Socrates in order to view the valuable content inside. The reference to the Republic in the third paragraph is more equivocal. In Plato’s version, Socrates’ characterization of the dog as a philosopher is already a joke, but at least it refers to the socially useful function of the dog. In performing his assigned task of guarding the house, he barks at those visitors he does not recognize, thus proving that all dogs by nature desire to know. Rabelais’ dog, however, shows his philosophic nature in performing a merely appetitive, private, metabolic function. And after all the labor of breaking the marrow bone, the speaker of the prologue asks us, “What is the hope of his endeavor? What good does he aspire to? Nothing more than a little marrow.” It sounds here as if our expectations, and those of the dog, have been frustrated. The forbidding exterior of the bone did not hold the golden images of the gods after all. But wait—there is another inside to the marrow, even after its extraction from the bone. It may not look like much, but it is exceptionally delicious. And if we are willing to wade through two formidable passages in Galen—sort of an intellectual version of the bone’s tough 15 �exterior—we discover that marrow is the most nutritious food in nature. But it is still food for the body, not the soul. Ironically, the image of the philosopher-dog offers only a a fleshly reward. Paragraph 5, however, gives us the allegorical significance lurking behind the literary image of the marrow, that is, “abstruse doctrine,” “lofty sacraments and horrific mysteries.” In passing we get a brief allusion to yet another Platonic dialogue, this time the Meno, in the phrase, “in the certain hope of being made more astute and brave by the said reading.” “Certain hope” in itself sounds a bit conflicted. We remember that at Meno 86B, Socrates does not confidently assert that we will be made better, braver and less useless by actually searching for what we do not know; but he will fight, in word and deed, to defend the claim that we will be made braver and better by supposing ft is necessary to search. The process of reading “these exquisite books” may be more openended than we hoped; perhaps we should not have expected that “abstruse doctrine” and “horrific mysteries” would offer us any closure or enlightenment. But are they even there to be found? In the very next paragraph, the prologue veers back in the opposite direction with no explanation or excuse: “Do you believe in all good faith that Homer.. .ever thought of all the allegories with which he has been calked...? .. .If you believe it, you come nowhere near my opinion by either hand or foot...” What happened to the marrow we were meant to search for inside the bone? “These were as little thought of by Homer as were the sacraments of the Gospel by Ovid.” It seems that Homer’s precedent, not Plato’s, will now be decisive for the speaker of the Prologue. The beginning of paragraph 7 manages to confuse us completely: “If you don’t believe that, on what grounds will you not do so with these merry new chronicles, although, while dictating 16 �them, I had no more thought of it than you..If you don’t believe what? Aren’t there too many negatives in this sentence? And even if the author had no deep meaning in mind, are we thereby absolved of the need to look for one? Do wine and oil never miy? Paragraphs 7-9 seem to dismiss the possibility of a higher spiritual sense. But in Paragraph 10 we get yet another reversal: Demosthenes was reproached by one sourpuss claiming that his orations smelled like the clean up rag of a filthy dirty oil-seller. Therefore interpret all my deed and words in the most perfect sense; hold in reverence the cheese-shaped brain that is stuffingyou with these fine idiocies, and, as best you can, always keep merry. “The most perfect sense” reminds us of the “perfection” of the marrow in Paragraph 4. Surely “perfection” must imply greater refinement or a higher degree of spirituality? But here we seem to be told not to look beyond the merry surface, on penalty of being pretentiously learned, like Demosthenes. Wine, not oil, was expended in this work’s composition. The book is no longer like a Silenus whose inside belies its outside. The frolicsome title is a true indicator of the content; the robe does make the monk. But the injunction to “interpret all my words and deeds in the most perfect sense” still sounds like a plea for a reading that, as St.Augustine would say, furthers the reign of charity. Once again, at the prologue’s end, how we are to interpret what we read is made both a theme and a problem. Has the Prologue in any way settled the question of how we are to read the book? I claim that it has raised the question and left it open. Phony, ostentatious learning is lampooned in this passage, but true and fully assimilated learning is needful in order to read it at all. In appearing—at least at the Prologue’s end—to disclaim any deep 17 �It « « intention for his book, may Rabelais not be practicing a little reverse psychology? “Don’t put beans in your ears.” “Don’t look for deep significance in my story.” Or in Mark Twain’s words: Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. It’s appropriate that I quote from Huckleberry Finn, because it, like Tom Jones, Don Quixote and Gargantua (a book which I believe Fielding, Twain and Cervantes all knew and loved), certainly does have a motive, a moral and a plot. One of the motives of all four books is to make us more self-conscious about how we read, and how we interpret what we read. The theme of interpretation is always cropping up in Rabelais’ work. In Gargantua, we see it again almost immediately after the Author’s Prologue. In Chapter 1, we are told that the genealogical records of Gargantua were unearthed in a farmer’s field, in a “huge, stout, big, gray, pretty little moldy book smelling more but not better than roses,” which the narrator was able to decipher by “practicing the art by which one can read invisible letters, as Aristotle teaches.” In addition to the genealogies, the volume contained a treatise entitled “The Antidoted Friggleffaggles,” a long poem in ottava rima, with many initial letters of lines omitted, as if the rats had nibbled at the manuscript. The poem is, so far as I or any commentator I know of can tell, entirely gibberish. What is the purpose of its inclusion? Who knows? Perhaps to make us laugh, at others who might think it means anything or at ourselves once we realize it doesn’t. Perhaps to knock us off kilter right away, to destabilize the reader. There is a similarly long and portentous poem at the end of Book I, symmetrically framing the Gargantua by imposing another interpretive task on the reader. The Chapter (number 58) is entitled “A Prophetic Riddle.” It is not quite the same as the 18 �“Frigglefraggles,” however. Here we are given what sounds like an apocalyptic annunciation of the dire torments that the round earth will suffer at the end of days, to try the faith of the true Christian elect—^including deluges of waters, violent blows to the globe itself, and the darkening of Heaven’s light. At the poem’s conclusion, Gargantua and Friar John have a brief exchange on the meaning of the poem. Gargantua claims that it is all about “the continuance and upholding of divine truth.” The monk, however, gives a contrary interpretation: The poem is about a tennis match: the deluge of waters is the perspiration of the players as they inflict blows on the round globe, the tenms ball. Heaven’s light is darkened at the end of the day, when the game is suspended by the coming of evening. The first book leaves us exactly there, and we are not told which is the “true” interpretation. What would it mean for either reading to be “true”? Would Rabelais’ book be better if he privileged one reading over another, the sacred reading over the earthy, trivial one, or the other way around? I want to adduce one more example of the way Rabelais continually makes interpretation both a theme and a problem. Chapter 38 of the Gargantua was particularly loved by Brother Robert Smith, who taught me how to begin to read this crazy book. It recounts how, during the Picrocholine War, six pilgrims are frightened by the battle and take refuge in a garden, hiding “between the cabbages and the lettuce.” Gargantua arrives with his army; and feeling in need of refreshment, the young giant goes into the garden and takes greens to make himself a salad. The hapless pilgrims are carried off in his hands, deluged when he washes the greens, and swallowed whole, like the prophet Jonah. But they manage to find safety in the recesses of Gargantua’s teeth and avoid being washed down by an enormous draft of pinot noir. Prodding his gums with their 19 �staffs, they cause him to dislodge them and spit them out; they then endure several other tribulations, including near drowning by another of Gargantua’s ruinous urinations and being caught in a wolf net. Once they finally escape, the six pilgrims reflect on their experience and find that all their torments had been predicted, point by point, in Psalm 124, which they proceed to quote in the Vulgate version and gloss from one phrase to another. Here the “text” to be interpreted is the pilgrims’ physical experience, and the interpretation is furnished by another text, that is, the Holy Scriptures. But in order to find clarification, the pilgrims must be willing to read the psalm in a certain way. Should it matter to them, or to us, that the psalm seems to speak of the experience, not of these six pilgrims but of the children of Israel? Does one interpretation exclude another? There is a longstanding hermeneutic tradition that the Bible can have different meanings on different levels. As the old rhyme puts it, Littera gesta docet; Quid credos allegoria; Moralis quidagas; Quo tendas anagogia. In translation: The literal sense teaches deeds, the allegorical sense teaches what to believe, the moral sense teaches how to act, and the anagogical sense teaches where we are tending toward. This fourfold tradition, grounded in the interpretive practices of St. Paul and St. Augustine, among others, allows us to take episodes in the Hebrew scriptures as both historically true and prophetically referring to episodes in Christ’s life, while simultaneously applying to our own moral lives. A whole system of Biblical typology emerges: For example, when Moses strikes the rock with his staff and brings 20 �X forth water, he foreshadows the piercing of Christ’s side by the spear, bringing forth life­ giving blood. Things can both be themselves and simultaneously symbolize other things. Clearly this possibility of multivalent meanings is the basis for using scriptures as a kind of fortune-telling tool, as Augustine does at the climax of his conversion narrative in the Confessions. We might ask ourselves if it is also the basis of our taking any book seriously and appropriating it for our own purposes. If the pilgrims’ interpretive method has such a distinguished and sacred history, how can we cope with Rabelais’ Chapter 38, which appears to ridicule it? The pilgrims are miniaturized in a way that might seem to belittle them intellectually; but to themselves, they are foil-sized, their tribulations are genuinely terrifying and their deliverance is genuinely miraculous. They are the normal-sized humans; their stature, we have to admit, is the same as our own. Nonetheless, we are invited to look at them through the eyes of a giant, and the portrayal gives them a charming daintiness, a bit like Gulliver’s Lilliputians, but presented far more sympathetically. It is instructive generally to compare Swift’s use of scale with that of Rabelais. Swift’s portrayal of both the tiny people of Lilliput and the giants of Brobdingnag maintains a very consistent and precise set of ratios in comparing each race to Lemuel Gulliver. Though the reader’s eye may be directed to see in different ways, no character changes size. The giants of Rabelais, on the other hand, seem to have a bewildering mutability, as if the author felt free to change the scale at will and without announcement. Compare the episode of the pilgrims in the salad with another near the end of Book 2. Here, in Chapter 32 (p. 238), the narrator claims to have climbed into the mouth of Pantagruel, whom we might expect to be of roughly the same size as his father Gargantua. Inside his mouth, the narrator finds a 21 �whole new world, with its own sun and moon, and with such large cities as Larynx and Pharynx, mountain ranges, meadows, fields, country villas, tennis courts, and so forth. He enjoys himself so much that he stays inside there for four months. This episode is brilliantly analyzed by Erich Auerbach in one chapter of his great critical work Mimesis. I cannot do justice here either to the complexity of the episode or to Auerbach’s treatment of it; I only want to use it to illustrate the way the physical stature of the giants is subject to continual revision. Clearly, Pantagruel in this chapter is far bigger than Gargantua in the chapter of the pilgrims in the salad. Both, however, are far bigger than the Gargantua who seems to be able to associate on equal terms with normal-sized human beings like Friar John, or the Pantagruel who sails in a normal-sized ship in Books 4 and 5. It cannot be the case that the size of Gargantua is simply irrelevant; so much is made of his gigantism that we are positively invited to wonder how big he is, and what his size represents. But once again, we are given no stable and comforting viewpoint from which to look at him. At one moment a giant can be a whole parallel universe, and we are left wondering if we as humans are microcosms, containing multitudes and mirroring all possible outer experience within ourselves. At the next moment, the same giant is only slightly larger than ourselves. Size itself becomes another treacherous signifier. If indeed it points beyond itself, we might expect to find moral or intellectual greatness in Grandgousier, in Gargantua or Pantagruel; and indeed, sometimes they behave with admirable piety and magnanimity. But then there are the other, more disquieting episodes. Changing scale is another game that Rabelais’s book plays with the reader. 22 �It should be clear why Rabelais is now fashionable again, among the post-modem theorists of textuality, to use their trendy word. The stories of Gargantua and Pantagruel continually call attention to themselves as texts, in need of interpretation. Even the choice not to interpret, to read only for amusement or for escape, is itself an interpretation. The interpretive choices we make tell us as much about ourselves as about the book we are reading. The wildly various history of the interpretation of Rabelais’ own book would delight him, I think. Early in the twentieth century he was being hailed as a precursor of the Enlightenment, frankly pagan, at best a Deist, an apostle of Reason. Later in the twentieth century it was claimed that he was a reforming evangelist and a crypto-Protestant —even though he was roundly vilified by his archenemy, John Calvin. Later still, he was seen as a man of his own time, a sincere (if somewhat anticlerical) Catholic. His book is put in the tradition of late medieval folk literature and then characterized as a severely classical epic, an imitation of the Aeneid, or an oddly prescient anticipation of modernism, a grotesque experiment whose style was taken up by Sterne, Joyce and Nabokov. Sometimes he is funny or ribald, at other times pious and sincere, sometimes genuinely and deeply learned, at other times dry and almost unreadable in his mockery of false or pretentious learning. Which Rabelais is ours? We are free to choose. The problem of interpretation becomes, for Rabelais, another occasion for the reader to affirm his human freedom by exercising it. The intent of the Chronicles is made explicit near the end of Book V, in a passage I especially want to claim as genuinely Rabelaisian. In response to the puzzling Oracle of the Bottle, the priestess Bacbuc tells Panurge and his fiiends, “You yourselves be the interpreters of your own undertaking”(y.45, p.710). In the same way, the 23 �Protestant reformers of the Church claimed the right to interpret the Scriptures themselves, guided by the spirit. But the necessity and the difficulty of interpretation are inescapable, whether the text is Scripture or a very secular fiction like Gargantua, or even the text of Nature itself. The great image of freedom at the end of Gargantua is the Abbey of Theleme (from the Greek Gekripa, “will” or “free will”), with its motto FAYCE QUE VOULDRAS, “DO WHAT THOU WILT” (1.57, p.l26). The Abbey, which Gargantua builds to reward the trusty Friar John, stands monastic discipline on its head. It is a haven, without walls, for beautiful and noble young men and women, who are free to leave at any time. While they are there, they are not governed by vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience—^rather they are free to marry, they are to “be rich and to live at liberty.” They are not governed by hours or clocks or bells, but by their own pleasure and good sense. True worship consists not of slavish adherence to an externally imposed regimen, but in liberal and generous living, taking pleasure in God’s gifts. Human fallenness can be redressed, and the goodness of human nature can be restored, through the right application of reason and the right kind of education; as Virgil says to Dante at the top of Mt. Purgatory, “Henceforward take thy pleasure for thy guide” {Purg. XXVII. 131). The power of the closing image of the Abbey, whose way of life is lovingly described for six chapters, is then qualified in the first book’s last chapter. I have already described the “prophetic riddle” which can be read either as a terrifying description of the persecution of the elect or as a description of a tennis match. The riddle is actually found on a bronze plate, at the foundations of the Abbey of Theleme. If the Abbey stands for our interpretive freedom, there seems to be a problem or an enigma at the very basis of �that freedom itself. The solution of the enigma is dichotomized by Gargantua and Friar John into two possibilities, one serious and one playful. There is also a playfulness in the interplay of the two possibilities, one of which is literally a game, a game of tennis. It was not an accident that I began with a list of Gargantua’s games. Game and play are central to Rabelais because it is his free playfulness as a wnter that opens a space for our free interpretation. In making our own hermeneutic choices, we are obliged to become more self-conscious about the activity of reading. The playfulness of the text also keeps us off-balance, and therefore alert, as we continually adjust to the changes of tone, of narrative mode, of allegorical level. We must remain nimble; as soon as we lapse into any interpretive routine, the book forces us to revaluate what we thought was the right way of reading. As readers, we are invited to play the narrator’s game; but every game has rules, and part of this game is to figure out, at any given moment, which game we are playing and what its rules might be. “Seriousness” is a hallowed word for us at this college; we consider it a term of highest praise, and justly so. But playfulness is not inevitably opposed to seriousness. The seemingly paradoxical Latin phrase serio ludere, “To play seriously,” exemplifies an ideal of Renaissance thought that has not lost its value. For Nicholas of Cusa, for Marsilio Ficino and the Neoplatonists, for the Humanists More and Erasmus (one of whose disciples was Rabelais), the highest seriousness could be attained only through playfulness. Perhaps the irony of Socrates is another example. Rabelais teaches us always to be learning, but to wear our learning lightly and with laughter, so that we can learn better. All work and no play makes Johnnie a dull student. The playfulness of 25 �Rabelais often seems to be anarchic, grotesque and bewildering; but bewilderment may be a cousin of the wonder in which philosophy begins. 26 �Author’s Prologue [to Book I, Gargantua] [1] Most illustrious topers, and you, most precious poxies—for to you, not to others, my writings are dedicated—Alcibiades, in Plato’s dialogue entitled The Symposium, praising his master Socrates, incontrovertibly the prince of philosophers, among other things says he is like the Sileni. Sileni were in olden times little boxes, such as we see nowadays in apothecaries’ shops, painted on the outside with merry frivolous pictures, such as harpies, satyrs, bridled goslings, saddled ducks, flying goats, harnessed stags, and other such paintmgs imagined at will to set everyone laughing (such was Silenus, master of good old Bacchus); but inside they preserved fine drugs such as balm, amergis, amomum, musk, civet, precious stones, and other valuables. [2] Such he said was Socrates, because, seeing him from the outside and estimating him by his external appearance, you wouldn’t have given a shred of an onion peel for him, so ugly in body was he and ridiculous in bearing, pointed nose, glance like a bull’s, face of a madman, simple in maimers, rustic in clothing, poor in fortune, unlucky in women, inept for all offices of the commonwealth, always gibbering, always dissembling his divine learning, but, on opening the box, you would have found inside a heavenly drug beyond price: superhuman understanding, wondrous virtue, invincible courage, matchless sobriety, certain contentment, perfect assurance, incredible disesteem for everything on account of which humans so lie awake, run, labor, sail, and fight. [3] To what purpose, you may well ask, does this prelude and essay point? It’s inasmuch as you, my good disciples, and few other unoccupied madmen, reading the merry titles of certain books of our creating, such as Gargantua, Pantagruel, Tosspint, On the dignity of codpieces. On peas 'with bacon cum commento, etc., too easily judge that inside there is nothing treated but mockeries, tomfooleries, and merry falsehoods, seeing that the outward sign (that is the title) is commonly received without further inquiry as derision and jest. But it is not fitting to assess the works of humans so lightly, for you say yourselves that the robe does not make the monk, and a man may wear a Spanish cape who in courage has no relation to Spain. That is why you must open the book and carefully consider what is expounded in it. Then you will recognize that the drug contained inside is of quite other value than the box promised, that is to say that the matters here treated are not so foolish as the title above claimed. [4] And, even in case in the literal sense you find these matters rather jolly and corresponding to the name, you should not stop there, as the Sirens’ song, but interpret in a higher sense what peradventure you thought was said casually. Did you ever pick a lock and swipe some bottles? Son of a bitch! Call back to memory the way you looked. Did you ever see a dog coming upon some marrow bone? That is, as Plato says. Book 2 of The Republic, the most philosophic animal in the world. If seen one you have, you were able to note with what devotion he watches it, with what care he guards it, with what fervor he holds it, with what prudence he starts on it, with what affection he breaks it, with what diligence he sucks it. What leads him to do this? What is the hope of his endeavor? What good does he aspire to? Nothing more than a little marrow. True it is that this little is more delicious than the much of all the others, because marrow is the food elaborated to perfection by nature, as Galen says, iij Facu. natural., and xj De usu parti. [5] After this example it behooves you to be wise enough to sniff out and assess these exquisite books, to be light footed in pursuit and bold in the encounter; then by careful reading and frequent meditation, break the bone and suck out the substantific marrow— that is to say what I mean by these Pythagorean symbols, in the certain hope of being �made more astute and brave by the said reading; for in this you will find quite a different taste and more abstruse doctrine, which will reveal to you some very lofty sacraments and horrific mysteries, concerning both our political state and our domestic life. [6] Do you believe in all good faith that Homer, writing the Iliad and Odyssey, ever thought of all the allegories with which he has been calked by Plutarch, Heraclides Ponticus, Eustathius, Comutus, and what Poliziano stole from them? [7] If you believe it, you come nowhere near my opinion by either hand or foot, which affirms that these were as little thought of by Homer as were the sacraments of the Gospel by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, as a certain Friar Booby, a real bacon-snatcher, has tried to demonstrate, on the chance that he might meet up with folk as crazy as he, and, as the proverb says, a cover worthy of the pot. [8] If you don’t believe that, on what grounds will you not do so with these merry new chronicles, although, while dictating them I had no more thought of it than you, who peradventure were drinking as I was? For in the composition of this lordly book, I neither wasted nor ever employed any more or other time than that which was established for taking my bodily refection, that is to say eating and drinking. And indeed that is the right time for writing these lofty matters and this profound knowledge, as Homer well knew how to do, the paragon of all philologists, and Ennius, father of the Latin poets, as Horace testifies, although one boor said that his songs smelled more of wine than of oil! [9] One no-good says as much of my books; but shit on him! The fragrance of wine, how much more appetizing, laughing, inviting, heavenly, and delicious it is than that of oil! And I shall glory as much in people’s saying about me that I have spent more on wine than on oil as Demosthenes did when they said of him that he spent more on oil than on wine. To me it is due honor and glory to be called and reputed a good fellow and jolly companion, and in that name I am welcome in all good companies of Pantagruelists. 10] Demosthenes was reproached by one sourpuss claiming that his orations smelled like the clean up rag of a filthy dirty oil-seller. Therefore interpret all my deeds and words in the most perfect sense; hold in reverence the cheese-shaped brain that is stuffing you with these fine idiocies, and, as best you can, always keep merry. [11] So now rejoice, my loves, and merrily read the rest, all for the ease of your body and advantage of your kidneys! But listen, you donkeypricks (may boils and blains rack you!), remember to drink to me in return, and I’ll drink to you all on the spot. (translated by Donald Frame; paragraph numbers have been added.) � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. 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Title A name given to the resource Gargantua's Games Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on January 16, 2009, by Jonathan Tuck as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Mr. Tuck describes his lecture: "Gargantua and Pantagruel, by François Rabelais, is one of the great masterpieces of European literature. It was published serially, beginning in the 1530's. It is a wild, brawling, bewildering, crazily funny book, notorious in its own time for its alleged atheism and obscenity. Its influence on subsequent prose fiction has been enormous, and it was a crucial event in the formation of the modern French language. Rabelais was a hugely learned man, a humanist and a disciple of Erasmus, and his book is enthusiastically strewn with allusions to Plato, Homer, and other Greek authors that had been newly rediscovered in the early Renaissance. But few learned authors have worn their learning as lightly as Rabelais, and the book is also uncannily modern, edgy and subversive. Until recently it was a fixture on the reading list at St. John's. I hope to show that it is a book we cannot do without. The lecture will not presume any previous acquaintance with the book, and it will be R-rated (for language)." Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Tuck, Jonathan Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009-01-16 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Subject The topic of the resource Rabelais, François, approximately 1490-1553? Gargantua et Pantagruel Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Tuck_Jonathan_2009-01-16 Friday night lecture Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/534b2e70ffd1835efa34b6b805bcb492.mp3 497142fbfc981632f4e51b11a904d97d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:55:01 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A Moral Philosophy That Will Change Your Life: On Emmanuel Levinas's Totality and Infinity Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Claudia Hauer on January 30, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “Emmanuel Levinas is a moral philosopher of the highest order. A student of Martin Heidegger’s, Levinas absorbed the tools of the phenomenological method, yet was repulsed by his teacher’s (at best) moral neutrality and (at worst) moral depravity. Levinas puts his fluid method to work in the volume Totality and Infinity in order to distinguish between Totalities (which include political regimes) that can ideally administer a lukewarm morality in the form of justice and human rights, and Infinities, which give expression to the infinite individuality of each human being. Levinas grounds his ethics in his Talmudic conviction that morality originates in our duties to the poor, the widow and the orphan. His secular ethics in Totality and Infinity focuses on looking into the eyes of the stranger, the Other, and opening ourselves to an individual with a unique story to tell. Levinas cautions us against putting strangers into broad totalizing categories, such as the ‘abject poor and homeless,’ or the ‘suit-clad professional.’ Levinas reminds us that human moral sentiment originates in our ability to be surprised, moved, and touched by the infinity of the Other. Our St. John’s College community reflects Levinasian ethics in our willingness to meet one another in and out of the classroom, and engage in the play of free discourse with open-minded curiosity. In this talk, I will endeavor to outline the basics of Levinas’s ethics.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hauer, Claudia Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-01-30 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Lévinas, Emmanuel. Totalité et infini. Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_HauerC_A_Moral_Philosophy_That_Will_Change_Your_Life_2026-01-30 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c4354ceb35c82e159f0443b773dd405d.mp3 36c4fe4b8235d47317bcef4f93d11f9e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data M4A Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:46:06 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Theism and Atheism in Patañjali's Yoga: Three Perspectives Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture given by Andrew Nicholson on January 23, 2026 as part of the Dean’s Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean’s Office has provided this description of the event: “The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali (c. 4th century CE) have been an inspiration for philosophers and yoga practitioners for over 1500 years. For just as long, the meaning of certain terms in Patañjali’s celebrated text have been in dispute. One such dispute is the question of what Patañjali meant when he encouraged ‘dedication to the Lord’ (īśvara-pranidhāna, YS 2.32). Worshippers of Śiva and Viṣnu in medieval India took this to be a clear reference to an omnipotent, omniscient God, the source of all creation. By contrast, some western scholars in the 20th century understood this ‘Lord’ not as a God who possesses any agency of His own, but rather as one who exists merely as a passive object of meditation. The historian of religions Mircea Eliade, for instance, called Him the ‘archetypical yogi.’ I will argue, based on evidence from other first millennium CE works in Sanskrit, that there is a third possibility. Patañjali’s Lord is neither an absolute creator God nor a purely passive ‘archetype,’ but rather a compassionate, eternally liberated being who repeatedly takes embodiment in the world to help yogis break free from the afflictions that bind them to suffering.” Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Nicholson, Andrew Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2026-01-23 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Patañjali. Yogasūtra Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_NicholsonA_Theism_and_Atheism_in_Patanjalis_Yoga_2026-01-23 Friday night lecture Rohrbach lecture