51
20
5655
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5973e3a7e255296eb6aaf91f5ff312d6
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Text
�2
�us
ief s
as
of
when this deciIf we have
b
Some
te
is
other
years
etc
ears
as
301-269-6232
261-2233 (D.C.
9-5. Mon.-Thurs.; 9-noon, Friday
�Gifford
89
�He erudi
es us
their
act as a supraand assericial
liberal
introduced
had
dimento our
argues that,
never let extraneous
itical concerns to affect inion of the law.
these
egislative branch.
Thus,
the entire
t
of our
democratic institutions has
een c
Dr. Russell Kirk asserts in his work
that,
servatism is the
Indeed
a
that embraces such
strains as classical conserclassical
iberaland neoob s erv aism
e true
I
atfour other sessions
of which
have
space to
relate the outcome
here
However
what
ame
clear to me was Dr. Kirk s
assertion.
Conservatism
seeks a return
order
yes
a
soc
in the interest
narrow-minded
ther
ins
Readers
countries.
To learn more about the rewardand your ooss11D1e
write to: Father
Columban
NAME
ADDRESS
�89
�987
of Anna24
P .. M. in
the Creative
Saturday s
there wil be
the Card
Hall
chodiscriminat
and
show of f 11
and
skills of
The
music
of
aided
clutches of the Devil
self..
The monks are
even to the
of the dance ..
sen ts
lents
Stewart
sical ballet
Performance
other
are
f
s as
���1
It
is
gay
at St.
students interviewed
said
knew of ten
gay students at this campus
but
suspected there were
many more who
sexual
The
ion
dents is
isn't exac
the
most gay students
with, as
ted out,
�re
alumni
founded
sexual interests and
interested in
and
re not
es ted in you .. "
From
time to
ime
someone sugges s that a gay
says
she
see a studentation
111
students are also
concerned
at what effect
an
would
have on
s
agree
that
is
an easy
says
i
s
examine their own values as
Mr
expresses it the
ible
does put the
question to you in a rather
dramatic way. But some gay
students don't believe that
these same read
s have any
effect on the attitudes of
their
classmates
Mr. Randles
who res that the students in
seminar
terms of hetero-
is
such
�12
gay
eas or
fixed on
�5
s,
members
your
ent-abou
lie
3
987
stuff
general
The vandal ism
iviliz
ehavior
rise, and it is
Other
ics
22 agenda inc
of the
c
the new
nated
for local
cated
an invest
VCR
on
e
the
the
�e
Each year
in front of
the Liberty Tree
thousands
swarm to catch a gl
of
the titanic battle
the
most well-tuned
aspire to
annual epic
gest that
ruthless athletes
man,
trained from
to take part in this match.
This fas
ed and dangernot to mention
le between St
the U S
Naval
pits these heroic
head
head
mallets
test
end
on
that
cket.
If
off
dead,
a
fun
a
mallets
the
sugand
ball until he
the next
after
is live
a
all on
there
he
any
hi
that
two
strokes
There are
may
a
mallets
ength from the
all and take
in
I
You
�1 15
1987
�16
r
.
it
I
by Hichael r·IcShane
I 88
Mr .. Alan Greenberg is a
man, an architec ~ with a
dream.. He delivered a lee
ture at St.. John's March 26
called "The Architecture of
Democ
in which he told
us of his fantastic ideas ..
Mr.. Greenberg dreams
cal dreams of an
return to a glorious classical past. A past he also
dreams. Such dreams are not
uncommon today;
have
dangerous
itical and noral
ications..
.. Greenberg himself would be
foolish
f he were
fluential
organ of
Mr
Greenberg
rooms
ay
certain
berg showed of his work was
the "chambers" of the U .. S ..
Secretary of State. He said
he wanted Thomas Jefferson
to feel as at home" there
as
or
e
Schultz ..
Greenberg s
notions
have
been
es teemed
officials of the
branch of our
this comes as no
The men installed
there
commissioned
Mr ..
Greenberg to des
an official treaty-s
room; a
in which the
U S ..
concontrac ts
sal return to his
,
can his tobacco leaf mot
mean in a U.S.. government
s
room? Who is
meant to feel at home" in
such a room with such a
function and such a motif?
Tobacco as a
ol in
this context can refer to at
least
separate hiss, each
its
ations Mr. Greenberg supplied one
himself
say
that
to invoke the memory
of the American Indian traof
peace
some formal agreement
What
can
Greenberg mean by
of
s
men
trated the general
that was the
S
orchesa troc
Indian
feel
his rooms
speak
riod
e souvenirs for
or
his
eccentrics
"buffsn
r1r.
Greenberg orders his rooms at what he
calls the "center" of AmeriRooms in which
or
itical decisions
affecthe lives of all
come
about
e
ers
nif ic anc e of Hr
ideas and work
Mr
Greenberg showed
some slides of what he has
made of this
s
room .. One aspect he seemed
part
of is
motif
tobacc
leaf
Greenberg s
given rfr
a
ions ab
So
noer-
would
today
feel
The second his
that Mr
Greenberg's
obacco motif sugges s is
the time of American tobacco
in
the
one
treaties or
were
bind
in
�sel
of
create
i f ferent
�18
Roberta Rusch
I.
Nick
gible
for
game,
vited
of
cer
open dates on
schedule
e
games
as far as blazer
s and team
but nonetheless
orous
ex is , on
Thursdays
at 2:45 or so
known a
Thursday
game at
2:45 of
ion to
that
I am unsatisfied
th the amount of t
energy
I
ab le
devote to the program,
the ways in
I
perceive as
the
needs of students
��20
Let
surf ace wi
Somet
even
Shift over the slow
The breeze in the
from the grey
in the
mountains
of
Lances and glitter of sun on the helms
In the joust
fields in
From the cursed sword and its ancient
Enchanted scabbard and all the
hands that strive to take it.
queen and her
eyes, away from the sad sad face
of the
who c imbs the s
To her tower wi
lowered eyes and
Face. Bear me b
torches
tutors
of the Board
Governors.
To
sword
in proteccos ts $45
sub
�
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The Gadfly</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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thegadfly
Text
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20 pages
Original Format
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paper
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Fine, Sallie (Editor)
Title
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The Gadfly, Vol VIII Issue 12
Date
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1987-04-15
Description
An account of the resource
Volume VIII, Issue 12 of The Gadfly. Published April 15, 1987.
Identifier
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Vol. 08 #12
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Publisher
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St. John's College
Language
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English
Type
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text
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
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pdf
Gadfly
Student publication
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a9e789dd87db25d3c46739a690b139e3
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Text
�2
Dear Dean S
I
was distressed
read your letter
me so
- it seems
to miss
complete
at issue ..
The tradition of
formal
tion of the
senior student to the f aculc
and
excused,
freedom
ts
from
to
from
per
the
s
faculty
could f
at
the
-St
time
essays
Inome
conapproof
resident
the
d
am
to you
ern over the
increased incidents
vandalism
I have
given
the
and
respect
f
mus
facul
devote themselves
to the c
serve
numbers of papers and exams
with which your peers in the
PURCHASES
�I
sug-
Pol
enied
campus for
of the
ter must
ler
end of
ster ..
e c
�4
Rebecca Wilson, News and
Information Service
Weekend
number may
of
be
classes ..
Please encourage your
to register in the
A schedule of
Coffee
the
senior orals
President's
available
schedule of
Coffee
s
Students whose
reception
attend the
1
from
:30 to 6:00 P.M .. at
the President s House are
invited to accompany them ..
ln the event of rain, the
l.n
reception
e
the
Foyer ..
that
Students
some c
this fall ..
have
in al
there
new
confees
and
procedure
pick
Card
ion*s
ates for this
reg tration are
for seniors and
and
tember 3
301-269-6232
261-2233
9-5,
�e
�lem
Surf
for
have
th
from home
Send
self-addressed
for
goo-goo
other. While
back
where
b
Today
Ener-
s elf-motivated,
etails, book-
D
L
es
��8
Greet
s
greet
fellow Polity members
McNabb,
We
some theme costumes
so
friends and
defender
to
�g
Berns
year,, I
ike
have a German iterature
group.. We could
read
later)
e
novella ..
be so much on translaion,,
ion as on
based on the understand
of conthe relat
of the text
tent and
interested
in
group
Students
to see
the
Bill
rogram
filmed at
s are
advised that
Library
make i s television
available at 1:00 P.M .. Sunday
3 when that s
in the
series
land Public
e aired on
Television ..
The St
John s
1 be the third of ten in
the
series
Sea.re
The
program
parts
of a seminar between Mortimer Adler and 13 S ..
s
students
Also to be inc
ed
be parts of Mr
Adler s annual lecture here
and a conversation
etween
Mr .. Adler and Mr ..
�rove in
St
Wl.lle
Amazons
Pts.
8
Greenwaves
5
s
15
10
11
�2
of
Bu
the
the
mentioned
to run
The
the
from
difficu ies s emmed
the absence of the
As i
runners
actual
e a
one
cameo appearance
and because of
25th
savage
s out
greater
It was
vie tory
of the
The
��
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Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The Gadfly</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
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thegadfly
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.
12 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
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Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fine, Sallie (Editor)
Title
A name given to the resource
The Gadfly, Vol VIII Issue 13
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1987-04-29
Description
An account of the resource
Volume VIII, Issue 13 of The Gadfly. Published April 29, 1987.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Vol. 08 #13
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Gadfly
Student publication
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93fdff7f4078a611d0c559231bab9ea3
PDF Text
Text
�rl.
article
neous
AIDS.
First
either
to
a.rt ic
has
partners.. Seabstinence. Third, a
facts ..
er
lood
is
less certain form of
tion i.e .. ,
guarantee of
roper
most
nal works from
sance period
of mus ica.l
�I
of
adviceco
approach-
co
ends
tment
Cl.al
her
�it ..
conthe
s
so poor
a
he u la tant student
abuses
of
rivi
that
have occurred this
year.
!nae t
aoou t
conmai.n c
t
adminis c:ra-
y_uorum on
the
been
from.
vote
c
seID.ester
able
its
-.............. ,..is tr at ion.
Simon
dismisses
er
there have
t
t
the
is leadereen
t
the
c rrent lead
---....... --less of the views
very concerned.
how-
�"
fo
is
taken
virus
further
sion
virus can
use of various
combined use of
tion-motivation-ski 1
d
sero
l.C
and contact trac
cat
could e iminate
substantial
reduce
n
or
e
risk
e reached
mot
vated to take personal respons il
to
protect
themselves.
t such an
effort, AIDS
continue
il ever-increas
numers of
ans
tne
ab
mal
oody
to give
adminis ra
owers now assuwed by
.c --money wou
oe saved and our muc
Qtudent
would no
as an object
r
ic le
of
���ie Fine
and
thus
incorporated poe
gone for
ends my
years
accomplishmen
of his year s
o a
and
d ed at ed
competent
staff and he time has
for them to receive
over-due c red i
Joe Mi ler has handled
paste-up
finesse
were we faced
that
b
age blues
Sunday afternoon
at
weekend
0£
t
the much apprecia ed assistance of Anne Leonard and
Pam Halket
ic
a
ribution
appeal
once did
about a cover
tos and never was 1
appointed
ali
the art he
our
rookie
editor and al
in a
a pretty hot
seas,0n.. This was the firs
year that the
had a
student fill this posi ion
and I think that there is
potential for both the ed
pos 1
and
sports staff alike
we
haven t
the
the
off
paid
f inancia
and s i l
endent
ent
lication. He was
a business partner and a
friend in a situation where
c
ination is invaluale. His absence from the
staff was sore
missed sec
semester.
Marcus Eubanks did a
f
for the
a
time here and
guess ,I should
Marcus Eubanks
for
e
Marcus Eubanks
Gifford was an innocent
Fe ransfer
the start of the year. Little d
he
s
what
was in store for him. His
first mistake (?) was to
prove himself not
to be
a
writer
but one who
made
deadline.
Who ever
heard of such a
St
f
was
o mai
scribers for
paper
he firs
successes of
the
varied
greatest
his year was
contributions
students ti fac-
and administration~
ut from alumni and other
subscribers as well.
The
focus of the
been that of a communewspaper and it
ial
sat
year not
paper reach out to the
mun
but it also
people into our community.
Once aE,a
a most sincere
�Special Girl
Pol
grades
may be given
lete
es
When such is
the
e that
given were
ete work not made
indicated
The
is
for
the case of
of
She doesn't have a happy life;
her parents treat her rough,
So she thinks she's different
and sees what we don't see.
She dresses all in black or wears a blanket for a dress
And thinks she understands things that most people only guess.
People have been mean to her and made her sunshine bad.
She says she's superior to them because she's sad.
Always runs away
from being like everyone else;
Doesn't trust them; they don't like her, and she hates herself.
Always into morbid things- she loves the wind and rain,
Puts no trust in pleasure, so she glories in her pain.
in
over
or before the
November
in
of
work
lef
over
second semester
e in an annual
essay may
e c
at
any time. If a tutor fails
to
indicate an alternate
e,
e is automatical
recorded as an F.
Pol
Beautiful but deadly, she'll stomp right on your heart
So sure that no one's like her that she'd rather stay apart.
Doesn't have a way out,
sees a different side
can't believe in happiness
always been denied
living in a lonely room
can't be helped; she won't believe
won't go 'till she wants to leave
just like anybody else.
-Scott Baxter
�Stand
Amazons
Furies
Maenads
3
Re-
3
f rom
works
hun-
Tucson,
s
ill.
e needed.
E
Cot
1407
Norman
who smacked three
shots
for homers
before
r
defense
was
JUSt
as
Oklahoma
9
AZ
��2
�
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>The Gadfly</em>
Description
An account of the resource
Founded in 1980, <em>The </em><em>Gadfly</em> is a weekly student publication distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.<br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="The Gadfly" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=16&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the <em>The Gadfly</em> Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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
thegadfly
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.
12 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
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/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fine, Sallie (Editor)
Title
A name given to the resource
The Gadfly, Vol VIII Issue 14
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1987-05-13
Description
An account of the resource
Volume VIII, Issue 14 of The Gadfly. Published May 13, 1987.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Vol. 08 #14
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Gadfly
Student publication
-
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ca8b5818574b60bf4ad2d38908826e1d
PDF Text
Text
�ENERGEIA:
The activity in which anything is fully itself.
n••• vou
,,
tvlpyE~a ~w~ •••
.
STAFF:
Cover phot<;> by Ondine McRoberts
It's called "fiighland Down"
Printed by th~
St. John's Coll~ge Press
St. John's College,
Annapolis, Maryland
(Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b)
co-Editors:
Faculty Advisor:
Chris Bailey
Talke Breuer
Susan Borden
Barbara Gesiakowski
Nancy Harriss
Steve Jackson
AJ Krivak
Bernadette Rudolph
Gabrielle Fink
Joe Macfarland
Jonathon Tuck
Unfortunately due to the limited length of Energeia only excerpts have been
taken from some of the senior essays. If you would like to read these essays
in their entirety, you may find the prize essays in the library or by
contacting the editors.
The editors of Energeia extend an apoloqy to Bruce Johnsen for the
unauthorized editing, excerpting, and publishing of his ·essay "For My Soul is
Filled with Troubles" in the Fall 1984 issue.
Energeia is a non-profit, student magazine which is published three times a
year and distributed among the students, faculty, alumni and staff of St.
John's College, Annapolis and Santa Fe. The Fall issue contains a sampling of
the student work from the previous school year which the prize conunittees of
both campuses have selected for public recognition. For the Winter and Spring
issues, the Energeia staff welcomes submissions from all members of the
community
essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects,
drawings, and the like.
Note: A brief description of the author accompanies all work not by current
St. John' s students.
Please include some such statement along with your
submission. Thank you.
�r '
CONTENTS
..
..
ANNUAL SENIOR ESSAY (ANNAPOLIS)
''A HORRIBLE AND BLOODY MISCHANCING
OF HUMAN AFFAIRS":*
WILLIAM FAULKNER'S ABSALOM, ABSALOM!
Mark Streeter
1
Michael Strong
17
Stuart Sobczynski
25
Liz Waldner
.25 ·
Daniel Schoos
26
Nancy loevinger
33
Karel Bauer
42
Mark Manry
49 ,
David Amirthanayam
50
ANNUAL SENIOR ESSAY (SANTA FE)
''A SHALLOW READING OF MARX" AND
OTHER LIKELY STORIES*
HONORABLE MENTION, ORIGINAL POETRY (ANNAPOLIS)
MA ... DEMOISELLE
BEST
TRAN~LATION
OF A FRENCH POEM (ANNAPOLIS)
WUIS MFNARD'S "CIRCE"
ANNUAL JUNIOR ESSAY (ANNAPOLIS)
A FISHHOOK FOR HOBBES'S LEVIATHAN
ACKNOWLEDGED FOR EXCELLENCE (SANTA FE)
THE TWO HANDS OF GOD: AN EXAMINATION
OF GOETHE'S FAUST*
ACKNOWLEDGED FOR EXCELLENCE (SANTA FE)
PERCEPTION AND ANALYSIS IN
UNDERSTANDING BEING
BEST TRANSLATION FROM A GREEK TEXT (ANNAPOLIS)
·A CHORUS FROM ARISTOPHANES' THE FROGS
ACKNOWLEDGED FOR EXCELLENCE (SANTA FE)
ON POETIC RECOGNITION
ANNUAL SENIOR ESSAY (ANNAPOLIS)
THE SEARCH FOR WHAT THE MEMORY HOLDS:
MEMORY, IDENTITY AND THE USES OF THINGS Liz Waldner
,.
*excerpts
65
�''A horrible and bloody mischancing of human affairs":
William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!
Mark Streeter
It's just incredible. It just does not explain. Or perhaps that's it: they don't
explain and we are not supposed to know . We have a few old mouth- to- mouth tales; we
exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature,
in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or
nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit
or Chocktaw; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we
ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now
heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence,
impervious ~o time and inexplicable--Yes, Judith, Bon, Henry, Sutpen: all of them.
They are there, yet something is missing; they are like a chemical formula exhumed
along with the letters from that forgotten chest, carefully, the paper old and faded
and falling to pieces, the writing faded, almost indecipherable, yet meaningful,
familiar in shape and sense, the name and presence of volatile and sentient forces;
you bring them together in the proportions called for, but nothing happens; you
re-read, tedious and intent, poring, making sure that you have forgotten nothing,
made no miscalculation; you bring them together again and again nothing happens: just
the words, the symbols, the shapes themselves, sha.dowy inscrutable and serene,
against that turgid background of a horrible and bloody mischancing of human affairs.
--Mr. Compson (pp. 100-101)
••
~
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'.
Absalom, Absaloml by William Faulkner-·is the story of Thomas Sutpen. However,
it is not a story in the sense that one would expect, where a narrator, first person
or third, omniscient or limited, tells the story with at least some regard for chr~
nology and fact.
Rather, the story of Thomas Sutpen is told by four narrators :
Miss Rosa Coldfield, Sutpen's sister-in-law; Mr . Jason Compson; QUentin Compson (his
son); and Shrevlin Mccannon, Quentin's roonunate at Harvard, from Edmonton, Alberta,
Canada. Each of them gives an account of a part or of the whole of the story, often
repeating and revising previous accounts by other narrators; they disregard chronology, jumping from one scene to another twenty years previous without warning or explanation; they not only have a limited knowledge of the facts of the story, but often
seem not to care about the facts. For the narrators speak in 1909 and 1910, forty
years since the death of Thomas Sutpen, and their interest lies not so much in exactly what happened (though they certainly do guess about what must have happened) as in
why what happened did happen. When Quentin and Shreve are imagining together the
scene on that Christmas Eve when Sutpen called Henry into the library, imagining Bon
and Judith walking in the garden just beyond the library, the author as omniscient
narrator inserts:
It would not matter here in Cambridge that the time had been winter in that
garden too, and hence no bloom nor leaf even if there had been someone to
walk there and be seen there since, judged by subsequent events, it had
1
�been night in the garden also. But that.did not matter because it had been
so long ago. It did not matter to them [Quentin and Shreve] anyway.
(p. 295)
Nor is the narrators' a passing interest, for their enterprise seems at times to border on an obsession (especially with Miss Rosa and Quentin) , or at least a fascination with the motivations and thoughts of their long-dead subjects. The cause of
their fascination is not at this point immediately apparent; however, let it suffice
for now to say that they are all involved and interested in the story and in their
telling of it, even though only one of the narrators, Miss Rosa, was present and involved when any of the events took place (and she only in a relatively minor role).
In telling it, even by telling it, the narrators are trying to make sense of the story, to make the story itself make sense. Their involvement with and interest in the
story of Thomas Sutpen and his design demand that they endeavor to obtain some meaning and truth from it (and this is possible only by telling it), which is often personal, and prejudiced, and yet is not useless or even false. The narrators tell and .
retell sutpen's story, each of them seeing (telling} it differently, as if each sees
through a piece of tinted glass colored according to his or her own character or
personality, which often results in a distorted, inaccurate, and, for the reader,
confusing picture.
It is through this medium that ·the reader must come to learn,
know, and be fascinated with, the story of Thomas Sutpen.
Rosa portrays Sutpen as an unscrupulous and ruthless villain with a hidden and
unspeakable past, who not only knew what he was doing, but went ahead and did it anyway, as if, she says, he was sent by Heaven as the bearer of letribution and punishment to expiate some long-forgotten familial sin. She speaks in a stylized and extravagant language, employing many "religious" and sexual images to express the extent of her outrage. Combined with the affront which Sutpen committed against her
when he suggested that they "breed like dogs" and await the result before marrying,
the ruination of the Coldfield family causes Rosa not only to hate sutpen and desire
revenge, but to cry when she learns that he is dead:
*'Dead? ••• Dead? You? You lie; you're not dead; heaven cannot, and hell dare
not, have you ! '
(p. 172)
Rosa herself is an old woman of sixty-four years, who was born into her parents'
middle age (her mother died while giving birth to her), and who describes herself as
never having been young,
Since what creature in the South since 1861, man woman nigger or mule, had
had time or opportunity not only to have been young, but to have heard what
being young was like from those who had, (p. 19)
and because, she says,
The
Narra~ors
The reasons for each narrator's fascination with Thomas Sutpen are dependent
upon each narrator's character and experience and are therefore as different as the
narrators themselves. Because the novel is also in some sense the story of the narrators, I will here concentrate on them and their enterprise, returning to the subject of Thomas Sutpen later in this essay.
Miss Rosa's account comprises Chapters I and V: in Chapter I she is talking to
a somewhat unwilling Quentin, having asked, "summoned, him to call on her on that
September afternoon, while in Chapter v Quentin is recalling internally her words
while sitting upon the porch of his house that same evening, waiting for the time
when he must go and get her in the buggy to make the trip out to Sutpen's Hundred.
Rosa's subjects in Chapter I are Sutpen's early days in Jefferson, his marriage to
her sister Ellen, and her relations with and attitude towards the Sutpen family in
the days before the war. In Chapter V she recalls the events following the death of
Charles Bon by Henry's hand, and, with herself as main character, tells of Sutpen's
return from the war, her engagement to him, and her life in Jefferson following her
outraged flight from Sutpen's Hundred.
Rosa• s account is filled with her visions of Sutpen as a hell-born demon or
ogre, with outrage and unforgiveness, and with her "cold, implacable, and ruthles~"
hate of the man whom she blames for the destruction of her family. She blames him
not only for the destruction of her family, and of his own, but also for the destruction of the South itself:
11
*[this is] why God let us lose the war: that only through the blood of
our men and the tears of our women could He stay this demon and efface his
name and lineage from the earth. (p. 11)
*All quotations marked with an asterisk are passages from the book which appear there
in italics. In.the book, italics are used to signal the thoughts of a character as
opposed to his or her speech; for instance, almost the whole of Chapter V is not Rosa
speaking, but Quentin remembering Rosa speaking (he is still on the porch).
2'
I was born too late. I was born twenty-two years too late--a child to whom
out of the overheard talk of adults my own sister's and my sister's children's faces had come to be like the faces in an ogre-tale between supper
and bed. (p . 22)
When Rosa was young she was isolated and outcast, for her father was neither prepared
nor inclined to give her what she needed. The aunt who lived with them did not provide the care and attention which was her due either. Both father and aunt were too
concerned with Ellen, who had already been married seven years and given birth to her
two children by the time Rosa was born. It was, Rosa thinks, as if she had never
been born because she had never been raised. This was why Rosa was never young: she
had neither received the attention proper to an infant nor ever heard any words but
those about Ellen's marriage to that "ogre."
Rosa was rudely introduced to the anguished adult world very early in her ife
by listening outside of closed doors.
*So that instead of accornpl~shing the processional and measured milestones
of the childhood's time I lurked, unapprehended as though, shod with the
very damp and velvet silence of the womb, I displaced no air, gave off no
betraying sound, from one closed forbidden door to the next and so
acquired all I knew of that light and space in which people moved and
breathed.
(p. 145)
Rosa was always on the outside looking in, unable to participate in the scene unfolding before her. so was it also with love. During that "summer of wistaria" when she
was fourteen, Rosa fell in love.
She at first fell in love with Judith's beau
Charles Bon, even though she had never seen him. However, in realizing that Bon was
unavailable to her she,also realized that she would forever be on the outside of any
possible love relationship. She therefore fell in love with love itself; she became
*"all polymath love's androgynous advocate" (p. 146)
3
�When Ellen on her deathbed asks Rosa to protect Judith and Henry.., she is inviting
Rosa into her family as an actual participant, yet Rosa, who is herself younger than
both the children, is unable to comply. Her inability stems not from herself, she
would probably desire such a role, but from the children themselves. Henry is away
at the war, and she will not see him again until that September night in 1909. She
attempts to save Judith when she goes to Sutpen's Hundred immediately after the death
of Charles Bon, hoping to give comfort and sympathy to Judith in her mourning. Yet
when she gets there she is met not with bereavement but with that mask which Judith
wears that shows no emotion. Rosa is repulsed and relegated to her role of onlooker
once again.
Sutpen's proposal of marriage to her was probably a source of hope for her, hope
that someone would see her and c a re for her, yet this too turne d sour . Rosa believes
that she died at that moment when she realized that Sutpen did not want her for herself but only for her possibility as a breeder ("my life was destined to end on an
afternoon in April forty-three years ago" (p. 18)). She never could get past that
moment. She is a Southern lady of tradition , principl e, honor, and pride, who is
obsessed with he r hatred of Thomas Sutpen. Mr. Compson says that she is now a ghost
because that is what the war did to ladies, though she herself blames Sutpen (who for
her practically represents, symboli~es, the war) for her ghosthood.
Her character
and words recall Dylan Thomas' words :
'We who are young are old . It is the oldest cry.
Age sours before youth's tasted in the mouth
And any sweetness that it has
Is sucked away. '
For Rosa, any sweetness that she ever had has long ago turned to bitterness and rage.
Mr. Compson's nar ration dominates Chapters II through IV as he talks to Quentin
on the porch the ev e ning following Quentin's visit to Miss Rosa. Mr. Compson first
tells of sutpen's early days in Jefferson, his arrival, the town's reaction, and his
marriage to Ellen .
He then takes up Rosa as his main character and examines her
relationship with sutpen and his family.
(It is interesting to note that Mr.
Compson's narration covers the same material as Miss Rosa's immediately preceding in
Chapter I . This allows the reader to get some sense of what is going on in the book,
for he is confronted with two narrators telling the same part of the story differently.)
Finally, in Chapter IV, Mr. Compson speaks about the relationship between
Charles Bon, Henry, and Judith.
M . Comps on is de t a che d , e ve n cynical, in hi s t e lling, using hi s s kept ical
r
cynicism as a defense against becoming too involved with the story, against being
forced to acknowledge the tragedy which he ultimately believes the story to be. He
is afraid of the force of the story, its ability to move him, and protects himself by
his personae using his knowledge of classical mythology and tragedy to create
separate personae for the characters of the real story. He sets up a stage upon
which sutpen and his fellow actors move and strut, where while sutpen was "still
playing the scene to the audience, behind him Fate, destiny, retribution, irony,--the
stage manager, call him what you will--was already striking the set and dragging on
the synthetic and spurious shadows and shapes of the next one" (pp. 72-73).
Mr.
compson applies this tragic and theatric formula to the story, completing the
metaphor himself by becoming the director who sits in the empty auditorium and tells
the actors what to say and do. The characters become his playthings. Mr. Compson
does believe sutpen's story to be tragedy; yet by applying to it his own tragic form
and setting, he denies the real tragedy of it, and changes it into a trite, banal,
and distant happening.
Mr. compson distances himself from the story because he sees in Sutpen's fall a
;4 :
microcosmic symbol for the fall of the South, and sees in its characters "the people
in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting" (p. 101). The
story is part of Mr. Compson's heritage, which is filled with those same undying
ghosts of which Quentin speaks, and which is that past or history which is yet present. Consistent with his tragic setting, Mr. Compson believes the characters of the
story larger-than-life, heroic.
.
'
••• of that day and time, of a dead time; people too as we are, and victims
too as we are, but victims of a different circumstance, simpler and therefore, integer for integer, larger, more heroic and the figures therefore
more heroic too, not dwarfed and involved but distinct, uncomplex who had
the gift of loving once or dying once instead of being diffused and scattered creatures drawn blindly limb from limb from a grab bag and assembled,
author and victim too of a thousand homicides and a thousand copulations
and divorcements.
(p. 89)
Mr. Compson obviously envies this distant and "simpler" time, and accordingly withdraws, not only from the trenchancy of the story, but from his own life as well.
The reader of the book very well may pause at this point and breathe a sigh of
relief, for with the end of Chapter V comes also the end of the most difficult half ,
of the book (from the standpoint of a first reading). The reader at this point has
been provided with most of the known facts of the story, and the second half is an
attempt by Quentin and Shreve to further explain and understand those facts. The two
of them try to recreate the events of the story by placing themselves in the shoes of
their characters. In this manner they hope to understand why and how such a "bloody
mischancing of human affairs" could ever occur.
The character of Quentin Compson dominates the book - he is the central narrator
and his role is of almost equal importance to Sutpen's. The book is in many ways
about Quentin Compson. He is always present, listening more often than speaking, yet
when he speaks or thinks he gives voice to some of the most important and germane
ideas and themes of the novel. His "section" comprises Chapters VI through IX where
he and his Canadian roommate Shreve recreate (or relive ) the story, their enterprise
occasioned by Quentin's receipt of a letter from his father telling of Miss Rosa's
death.
It is now almost exactly four months since Quentin and Rosa went out to
Sutpen's Hundred to find whatever it was "living hidden" in the house.
Quentin resembles his father in many ways, yet differs in one major aspect: he
is unable to distance himself from the story, to allow it to remain mysterious and
inexplicable, as his father can and does. Quentin is obsessed with the story of
Thomas sutpen and is compelled to listen to it and tell it, even though the listening
and telling disturb him both emotionally and physically ("now he began to jerk all
over, violently and uncontrollably until he could even hear the bed" (p. 360)).
Quentin is consumed by his feeling of purposelessness. He cannot reconcile himself
with his tradition, the tradition and history of the South, and because of this has
no foundation upon which to build his life. He is lost.
3
Quentin grew up in a land where "tragedy is secondhand"
and he accordingly
seeks to understand those tragedies in the hope that he might finally understand himself.
It was a part of his twenty years' heritage of breathing the same air and
hearing his father talk about the man Sutpen ••• Quentin had grown up with
that; the mere names were interchangeable and almost myriad. His childhood
was full of them; his very body was an empty hall echoing with sonorous
defeated names; he was not a being, an entity, he was a commonwealth. He
was a barracks filled with stubborn back-lo~king ghosts still recovering,
5,
�- - - - -- - - -
even forty-three years afte:rward, from the fever which had cured the disease, waking from the fever without even knowing that it had been the fever
itself which they had fought against and not the sickness, looking with
stubborn recalcitrance backward beyond the fever and into the disease with
actual regret, weak from the fever yet free of the disease and not even
aware that the freedom was that of impotence.
(pp. 11,12)
The characters of those Southern tragedies are to Quentin also ghosts which haunt and
inhabit his very soul. With the story of Sutpen, Quentin is confronted with one of
those tragedies, yet this one is more meaningful than the others, because in the story of Thomas Sutpen~Quentin sees not only a story of the South but also himself in
the person of Henry.
Becauoe of this Quentin is obsessed with the tragedy of Thomas
Sutpen and most specifically with the character of Henry Sutpen.
Quentin sees himself as two separate entities; the one self trying to continue
living in the present, and the other unable to live in the present without the
copresence of the past.
He [Quentin] would seem to listen to two separate Quentins now--the Quentin
Compson preparing for Harvard in the south, the deep South dead since 1865
and peopled with garrulous outraged baffled ghosts, listening, having to
listen, to one of the ghosts which had refused to lie still even longer
than most had, telling him about old ghost-times; and the Quentin who was
still too young to deserve yet to be a ghost, but nevertheless having to be
one for all that, since he was born and bred in the deep South the same as
she was--the two separate Quentins now talking to one another in the long
s1lence of notpeople, in notlanguage.
(p. 9)
These two polarized selves pull Quentin apart and render him a non-entity, one of the
"notpeople." Like the post- war South, he is impotent, unable to act; he is paralyzed
into a permanent state of anxiety and indecision. This is apparent in his relation
to the story. The telling of the story fills him with a kind of terror, yet he desperately wants and needs to tell it. Finally he is unable to prevent the telling of
it:
*Am I going to have to have to hear it all again ••• ! am going to have to
hear it all over again I am already hearing it all over again I am
listening to it all over again I shall have to never listen to anything
else but this again forever .
(p . 277)
Furthermore, Quentin's impotence makes him unable to bring peace to his two warring
and conflicting selves; the war will always be still being fought within Quentin.
'Nevermore of peace.
Nevermore of peace.
Nevermore Nevermore Nevermore.'
(p. 373)
Unable to relegate that ghost-history of the South to the past, Quentin lives in
guilt, shame, and remorse. Quentin's attitude towards the South is best expressed in
his answer to Shreve's question: "Why do you hate the south?" When Quentin answers
"I don't hate it," the reader must know that Quentin both loves and hates the South,
and that he is forever doomed to both love and . hate the South, its history, and his
tradition. Nor is this any passive ambivalence about his home; rather, it is a passionate affirmation of his own bipartite and lost self.
The guilt and confusion
which Quentin feels, and which Jim Bond both excites and symbolizes ("You still hear
him at night sometimes. Don't you?" (p. 378)), must make him hate the South and the
6
..
heritage it has bequeathed to him. Nevertheless, Quentin deeply loves the south and
its traditions because it is his home. Unable finally to break ~he hold which the
past has on him, Quentin commits suicide in June of the same year, finally silencing
the ghosts which haunt him and which have made him "older at twenty than a lot of
p7ople who have died" (p. 377). Quentin himself expresses his condition best, and
finally one can only conclude with him,
*Yes. I have heard too much, I have been told too much; I have had to
listen to too much, too long. (p. 207)
Shreve is obviously the most curious choice as a narrator, yet he is entirely
necessary to the purpose of the book. Set as a counte:rweight to Quentin in order to
balance the narration and keep it sane, he at first forces the reluctant Quentin into
reliving the story once again, then insures that Quentin does not become bogged down
in his obsession by either prodding Quentin along or by taking over the telling himself. Neither born in the South, nor involved in the story, and from farther north
even than the North, Shreve is the one narrator who can ever be disinterested or
ambivalent to the story, who can lay it aside and forget it when he so desires;
however, he too is fascinated by Sutpen. One reason for his interest in the story is
his natural youthful enthusiasm of a freshman at Harvard; for Shreve the telling is a l
kind of "play" (p. 280), that is, his fascination with Sutpen is not imbued with the'
outrage, anxiety, or dread of the other narrators. Shreve simply recognizes that the
story of Thomas Sutpen is an amazing and incredible one, and one that excites his ·
interest.
But perhaps Shreve is most _
valuable because he takes upon himself the part of
the reader, giving voice to words that must at times be on the reader's own tongue.
One often hears Shreve saying "Wait!", trying to slow QUentin down and make him explain those points about which, though Quentin knows the truth, neither the reader
nor Shreve have the slightest understanding.
Shreve is also of great value to the
non-Southern reader, whose interest and confusion about the South are expressed in
Shreve's words:
·
*Tell about the South. What's it like there. What do they do there.
do they live there. Why do they live at all.
(p. 174)
Why
On the subject of what it's like to live in the South, to be a ghost living among
other ghosts, Shreve gives the best explanation, even though he is only voicing his
own confusion and ignorance, and although Quentin answers him with a final "You can't
understand it. You would have to be born there."
I just want to understand it if I can and I don't know how to say it better. Because it's something my people haven't got. or if we have got it,
it all happened long ago across the water and so now there ain't anything
to look at every day to remind us of it. We · don't live among defeated
grandfathers and freed slaves (or have I got it backward and was it your
folks that are free and the niggers that lost?) and bullets in the dining
room table and such, to be always reminding us to never forget. What is
it? Something you live and breathe in like air? A kind of vacuum filled
with wraithlike and indomitable anger and pride and glory at and in happenings that occurred and ceased fifty years _
ago?
A kind of entailed
birthright father and son and father and son of never forgiving General
Sherman, so that forevermore as long as your childrens' children produce
children you won't be anything but a descendant of a long line of colonels
killed in Pickett's charge at Manassas? (p. 361)
7 ~
�Shreve encourages the reader to dare to fashion his own version of the story by showing no hesitation in submerging himself in the story and in telling portions of it,
though he is unqualified and ill-equipped to do it in comparison with the other narrators. Though he often stings Quentin with his jokes and irreverance ("Jesus, the
South is fine, isn't it ••• It's better than Ben Hur, isn't it·." (P. 217)), Shreve is
sincere in his efforts to understand the South and Thomas Sutpen.
Considering the relativistic and biased accounts of the narrators, which they
yet hold to be true, one must wonder about the nature of truth in this book. Is
truth a personal thing, where each narrator's account is true only because it is
true, because it has meaning, to them? The following quotation sheds some light on
what the narrators are doing as they tell their stories, and search for what is true.
It did not matter to either of them (Quentin and Shreve ] which one did
the talking, since it was not the talking alone which did it, performed and
accomplished the overpassing, but some happy marriage of speaking and hearing wherein each before the demand, the requirement, forgave condoned and
forgot the faulting of the other--faultings both in the creating of this
shade whom they discussed (rather, existed in) and in the hearing and sifting and discarding the false and conserving what seemed true, or fit the
preconceived. (p. 316)
The narrators are trying to "conserve" what seems true, and yet what is true to them
is oftentimes that "might-have-been which is more true than truth," and the true that
is more true than truth (factual truth) is actually factual falsity. In their act of
creating the characters of sutpen and all those who surround him, the narrators are
like the woman singer in Wallace Stevens' s "The Idea of Order at Key West" who gives
order and meaning to the otherwise mute and meaningless sea in and by her singing.
The story of Thomas Sutpen is nothing without them.
The narrators' distance from the actual events allows them not only to embellish
the story, but also, it seems, to see it more clearly and meaningfully. When Quentin
is imagining Sutpen's return to Jefferson in the middle of the war with the marble
slabs for his and Ellen's graves, the omniscient narrator states, "he could see it;
he might even have been there," and Quentin thinks, *"No. If I had been there I
could not have seen it this plain" (p. 190). Thus, the narrators examine the story
as they are telling it for its meaning and truth, for had they been involved in the
actual events, their involvement would have been too much for them to have any perspective on it; they would have been overwhelmed with the living of it. Shreve, it
seems, speaks for all of the narrators when, recalling Miss Rosa's words, he says:
there are some things that just have to be whether they are or not, have
to be a damn sight more than some other things that maybe are and it don't
matter a damn whether they are or not. (p. 322)
Shreve is saying that some things are truer than fact, that facts can get in the way
of truth and obscure it, and that what is most true is that with which the narrators
imbue their accounts: their own innate meaning which they find in their hear ts, or
sub-conscious, or somewhere.
Because the narrators' accounts are meaningful and
true, and put together where the reader can experience all of them, they yield, from
the very union of these personal and true accounts, a truth which is the reader' s
own, and which is greater than any of them separately.
Quentin and Shreve demonstrate the problem of historical truth~ how anyone can
ever really know the past. They attempt to "know" by placing themselves inside their
characters and by trying to imagine what they felt and thought. Their endeavor to
experience history "first-hand" indicates the historical validity and value of a nov-
8
..
el like War and Peace; by placing his reader in that world, Tolstoy allows him to
feel what it was like to be there and to know at least better than before what went
on in the hearts and minds of the people living at that time.
.
Quentin thinks that the narrators have a true relation to the story and that any
differences between their stories and the original are due only to a different "temper~tur~" and "molecularity" of the medium through which the story must pass.
That
medium is the narrator. Yet Quentin, with his relationship to history, believes that
the story in its truth is "unchanging", and that all the narrators are determined by
and dependent in their very being upon Thomas Sutpen; for Quentin, history determines
both the physical and spiritual reality of the present, and is therefore present also.
*Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished.
Maybe happen is never
once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks, 'the ripples
moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilical water-cord
to the next pool which the first pool feeds, has fed, did feed, let this
second pool contain a different temperature of water, a different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered, reflect in a different tone the
infinite unchanging sky, it doesn't matter: that pebble's watery echo whose
fall it did not even see moves across its surface too at the original
ripple-space, to the old ineradicable rhythm thinking Yes, we are both
Father. Or maybe Father and I are both Shreve, maybe it took Father and me
both to make Shreve or Shreve and me both to make Father or maybe Thomas
Sutpen to make all of us. (pp. 261-262)
Thomas Sutpen
So who is this man Thomas Sutpen? For the reader, he must at first be , and
finally remain, an enigma. Reminiscent of Milton's Satan, he is described as a demon, a Faustus, a man who "given the occasion and the need ••• can and will do anything" (p. 46) , and yet also as a tragic hero whose "trouble was innocence" (p. 220) ,
a symbol of human folly before Nature, Fate or God, and a man who embodied those
American ideals of hard-working ambition, independence (self-reliance), integrity,
perseverance, and success. He is portrayed as an unscrupulous and inhumane man,
about whom the townspeople "thought of ruthlessness rather than justice and of fear
rather than respect, but not of pity or love" (p. 43), who "had never learned how to
ask anybody for help or anything else" (p. 273), and was underbred yet still accomplished his climb to the aristocracy, and who at times legitimately arouses the reader's pity and sympathy. He is Cadmus with his "ironic fecundity of dragon's teeth "
and Abraham whose children "sho:uld have been the jewels of his pride and the shieid
and comfort of his old age, only-- (Only they destroyed him or something or he destroyed them or something. And died)" (p. 9), and lastly David, who wanted a son and
got one too many. The narrators never stop talkin9 about him or thinking about him,
even when they are talking about someone or something else, and the reader is therefore inundated with descriptions, opinions, and reflections about him. The image of
the townspeople who chant "in steady strophe and antistrophe: *Sutpen. Sutpen.
Sutpen. Sutpen." (p.32) hangs over and infiltrates the book. Sutpen elicits both the
reader's awe, respect, and fascination, and his revulsion and indignation.
Finally, however, one must make a decision about Sutpen. was he a victim of
history, circumstance, and coincidence, or was there something truly evil in and
about him?
Perhaps by examining his life, his design and his actions, his
motivations and concerns, we can reach some understanding of the man who was Thomas
Sutpen.
The years of his youth in the mountains were definitive in forming his charac-
r.:
�ter. There, a man was judged "by lifting anvils or gouging eyes or how much whiskey
[he] could drink then get up and walk out of the room" (p. 226), and not by either
possessions or birth. so that when he was introduced to traditional Southern society, plantation society, with its rigid caste system and blatant discrimination,he
was·shocked.
He had never heard of, never imagined, a place, and land divided neatly up
and actually owned by men who did nothing but ride over it on fine horses
or sit in fine clothes on the galleries of big houses while other people
worked for them; he did not even imagine then that there was any such way
to live or to want to live, or that there existed all the objects to be
wanted which there were, or that the ones who owned the objects not only
could look down on the ones that didn't, but could be supported in the
down-looking not only by the others who owned objects too but by the very
ones that were looked down on that didn't own objects and knew they never
would. (p. 221)
Sutpen thought that these "down-looking" men were only "lucky", men whose advantage
. and "superiority" were given them by chance and circumstance, "and that the lucky ·
:·ones would be even slower and loather than the unlucky to take any advantage of it or
credit for it, or to feel that it gave them anything more than luck; and he still
thought that they would feel if anything more tender toward the unlucky than the unlucky would ever·need to feel toward them" (p. 226). Thus, when he walked up to the
front door of that plantation house and was told by a house servant to go around to
the back, the shock was not only because of the intrusion of reality upon his private
world, but also from the realization of his own innocence of that reality.
~e lost that innocence then, but not all of it, or maybe it was that he lost one
kind of innocence and retained or gained another. This other innocence was implicit
in his design, though it was not the innocence or naivete that allowed him to believe
that he could ever be anything but underbred in that aristocracy to which he aspired;
rather, it was the innocence which believed that the features of this aristocratic
life could be bought and possessed like objects, and that they were accessible in
their genuine form to anyone, provided that he was courageous and shrewd (and Sutpen
probably did understand one or the other of these to mean unscrupulous). Sutpen's
innocence takes the form of an abstraction which he performed upon and extended to
all the facets of his life, and his life was really only one prolonged and
iron-willed struggle towards the implementation and accomplishment of his design;
anything beyond or outside of it, which coul d not be used towards the f u lfillment of
it, was of no interest or concern to him.
(He could never love nor hate anyone or
anything because neither love nor hate made any difference in his plan.)
This innocence become abstraction is visible in his conceptions of tradition,
respectability, morality, and slavery. Sutpen thought of tradition and respectability not as traits inherited or handed down in families and towns, but as material
as could be assumed upon oneself like a new set of clothes could be purchased and
worn. Because these were necessary to his design, he chose to possess them regardless of the persona l or f amilial cost, t hough he never los t sight of his per sonal
integrity, for that too was for him part of respectability. When speaking to General
Compson about his "second choice," the decision about what to do about Bon, Sutpen
says,
either choice which I might make, either course which I might choose, leads
to the same result: either I destroy my design with my own hand, which will
happen i~ I am forced to play my last trump card, or do nothing, let matters take the course which I know they will take and see my design complete
10 \
itself quite normally and naturally and successfully to the public eye, yet
to my own in such fashion as to be a mockery and a betrayal of that little
boy who approached that door fifty years ago and was turned away 1 for whose
vindication the whole plan was conceived and carried forward to the moment
of this choice. (p. 274)
This need for respectability is also why he had to "put aside" his first wife.
Whether he objected personally to her black blood is beside the point here;
plantation owners just did not have part-Negro women, not even octoroons, as their
"ladies-of-the-house."
Sutpen's morality is likewise abstract and betrays the same kind of innocence.
According to General Compson, Sutpen believed:
that the ingredients of morality were like the ingredients of pie or cake
and once you had measured them and balanced them and mixed them and put
them into the oven it was all finished and nothing but pie or cake could
come out. (p. 263)
General Compson also testifies that it was this same morality, "his code of logic and
morality, his formula and recipe of fact and deduction whose balanced sum and product
declined, refu:s@d to swim or even float" (p. 275), which would not permit him to
"malign or traduce the memory of his first wife, or at least the memory of the marriage even though he felt that he had been tricked by it" (p. 272). He refused to do
this even when she had, it seems, sought him out in order to avenge herself upon him
after more than thirty years. Thirty year s, sutpen says,
after my conscience had finally assured me that
to rectify it. (p. 265)
I
had done what
I
could
All these things, morality, justice and conscience, are caught up in sutpen's
rational, business-like, and abstract scheme of things. For sutpen, conscience is
something that can be bought off and convinced either by arguing with it long enough
or by utilizing that concept of justice which is nothing more than a business transaction. The simplicity and innocence of Sutpen's morality is most evident in the way
he handles his first wife; he believed that by giving her money he would automatically gain her forgiveness, and that his conscience should not trouble him because of
the great amount of money which he gave her. General Compson can reply to sutpen's
words quoted above only by exclaiming,
'Conscience? Conscience? Good God, man, what else did you expect? Didn't
the very affinity and instinc. for misfortune of a man who had spent that
t
much time in a monastery even, let alone one who had lived that many years
as you lived them, tell you better than that? Didn't the dread and fear of
females which you must have drawn in with the primary mammalian milk teach
you better? What kind of abysmal and purblind innocence could that have
been which someone told you to call virginity? What conscience to trade
with which would have warr anted you in the belief that you could have
bought immunity from her for no other coin but justice?' (p . 265)
Such characters as Miss Rosa and Wash Jones associate Sutpen with the south and
the sin of slavery, that South which had, according to Mr . Coldfield,
er ected its economic edifice not on the rock of stern mor ality but on the
shifting sands of oppor tunism and moral brigandage . (p. 260)
11 '.
�One interpretation may indeed equate sutpen 1s fall with the fall of the South and
view the book as a kind of allegory and explanation of the ruin of the Old South.
Yet such an interpretation of the book, where Sutpen in his prosperity, sin, and final ruin is a metaphor for the South, does not fit in many ways. The failure of
sutpen's design is not contingent upon the outcome of the war; even if the So?th had
won, Henry still probably would have had to kill Bon in order to prev~nt him from
marrying Judith. Nor is sutpen typical of Southern plantation owners1 his character
traits, the optimism, innocence and strong-willed and unflagging determination, are
.neither emblematic nor especially suggestive of the planter class. sutpen was always
on the fringe of the aristocracy 1 and the town's partial acceptance of him was a truce
called only when the townspeople realized that it was too late to stop him because of.
the money and power he had amassed. The following passage indicates both Sutpen ' s
differences with the typical male Southerner, and his attitude towards those "committees" which were the germ of the Ku Klux Klan:
*That was the winter when ••• the ruined, the four years' fallow and neglected land lay more idle yet while men with pistols in their pockets gathered
daily at secret meeting places in the towns. He did not make one of thesei
I remember how one night a deputation called, rode out through the mud of
early March and put him to the point of definite yes or no, with them or
against them, friend or enemy:
and he refused, declined~ offe.re~ them
(with no change of gaunt ruthless face nor level voice) defiance if it was
defiance they wanted, telling them that if every m~n in th~ South would do
he himself was doing, would see to the restoration of his own land, the
general land and South would save itself. (p. 161)
as
Finally, the differences between sutpen and Southern aristocracy are most apparent in his attitude towards blacks and slavery. sutpen grew up in a place ·"where . the
only colored people were Indians and you only looked down at them over your r~fle
sights" (p. 221) , and so he not only had no understanding of the fact that the lives
of people of another race could be usurped for one's own ends, but also.he had none
of the fear and insecurity inherent in such an attitude. Sla~ery was JUSt a~oth~r
practice which he appropriated for himself from the pl~nt~r soc~ety; there was in him
no innate belief in his own white superiority, a superiority which never ?eeded to be
doubted or tested. sutpen' s belief in his own superiority was something which . he
tried and proved both to himself and to his slaves by stripping down and stepping
into the ring with them, "fighting not as white men fight, with rules ~nd weapons,
but as negroes f ight to hurt one another quick and bad" (p. 29), gouging eyes ~nd
drawing blood. sutpen never escaped from those brutal tests of a man's worth which
he had learned as a boy, because they were part of his innocence: .
The presence and acceptance of Clytie in the family also indicates that Sutp7n
had no special discriminatory feelings about blacks. She is acknow~edge~ as his
daughter and lives with the family in the house, and her sometimes being discove:ed
·
with Judith in the bed or on the pallet probably caused no especi~l
1
~o~:i~~~ation or distress for sutpen. Rosa's indignation about this.is the a~prop:i
at e and expected southerner ' s response . Be caus e sutpen re?ards.clyti~ as benign with
res ct to his design, he allows her to coexist and grow with hi~ f~ily.
.
peYet with Charles Bon it is a different matter. sutpen, seeing in Bon a.definite
threat to the success of his plan, cannot tolerate Bon's presen~e in t?e family • . T~e
harm which Bon could do is of two sorts: the first concerns his marriage to ~udit ,
and the second involves sutpen's inability and refusal ~o recognize .Bon as his so~.
Neither of these matters devolves from sutpen's own opinions or feelin~s abo~t Bo~~
bl k blood· it is only the perfection, both inner and outer, of his design wi .
wh~~h he is 'concerned. For had he allowed Charles to marry Judith, the apparent com-
pletion and success of his design would be a "mockery and betrayal" of the design
itself, not in the eyes of the world and the society, for no one would ever need to
know of Ben's true nature, but in Sutpen's own eyes. The reality of his design would
not fit that abstract picture in his mind of the perfect aristocratic family and
life . The fact that he knew that Bon was black disallowed any marriage, fo r such an
event would render his design imperfect. It is Sutpen's abstract conception of blackness as something unsuitable and bad which determines his thoughts and actions.
Sutpen's inability to recognize or acknowledge Bon as his son also depended on
the success and ultimate perfection of his design. To have acknowledged Bon would
mean to acknowledge and accept his own failure, again not necessarily in society' s
view but in his own. The perfection of his design had already been impeded and
marred by the travesty (in Sutpen's eyes) which was his first marriage. Sutpen r e garded his virginity as part of his design, as he tells General Compson:
'On this night I am speaking of (and until my first marriage I might add) I
was still a virgin. You will probably not believe that, and if I were · to
try to explain it you would disbelieve me more than ever. So I will only
s~y that that too was a part of the design which I had in my mind.'
(p. 248)
Not only did he lose his virginity in that first marriage, but for the price of it
got a black wife and a black son, who:
made an ironic delusion of all that he had suffered and endured in the past
and all that he could ever accomplish in the future toward that design.
(p. 263)
So that when he saw Bon when Henry brought him home that first Christmas, he knew, .
sensed , what was going to happen, and:
he must have felt and heard the design--house, position, posterity and
all- -come down like it had been built out of smoke, making no sound, creat_ing no rush of displaced air and not even leaving any debris. (p. 267)
Sutpen had failed and probably knew it, yet never gave up trying. He chose to play
his last trump card and use Henry to stop Bon. Sutpen's inability to acknowledge Bon
is also the reason why he had to use Henry as his instrument in disposing of Bon; had
Sutpen himself acted against Bon , it would have been tant amount to acknowledging
Ben's existence both as his son and as a problem.
sutpen did practice slavery, yet did not reserve blacks for this treatment. He
used anyone who could possibly further his design:
both his wives, Eulalia and
Ellen, Rosa, Henry, Mr. Coldfield, the French architect, and his slaves.
Sutpen
"chose them with the same care and shrewdness with which he chose the other livestock--the horses and mules and cattle" (p. 61} , and used them in the same way, as
tools and instruments to accomplish his design, never recognizing them as individuals, human beings who had lives and thoughts and feelings of their own. In one sense
he was trying (like Judith in giving Bon's letter to General Compson's wife) to make
an impression, leave his mark, only in his case by establishing a dynasty; yet, he
never realized (as Judith did) that his own actions affected and were intertwined
with the actions and lives of other people, and that in his blind monomania he might
hurt one of those people to the . extent that his business- like justice and recompense
could never repair the injury done . Sutpen touched and harmed the "central I - Am" of
many of the people with whom he came in contact, but the harm a r ose not out of any
par ticular verbal or physical blow; rather, the harm arose out of his re j e ction of
13 '
12
I
�and his blindness to the fact that those people even had an "I-Am," that they had any
other existence but that which he could manipulate and use.
Sutpen did not deny his own hwnanity because he was never aware that there existed anything like humanity that could either be embraced or denied; he was simply
"innocent" of any concept which postulated a shared and common existence. He could
never imagine or comprehend that he had wronged anyone, or done anyone an injustice,
or, if he had, he believed that he had done everything in his power to make it right.
He never realized that someone might give him something like love and not demand
something in return.
'You see, I had a design in my mind. Whether it was a good or bad design
is beside the point; the question is, Where did I make the mistake in it,
what did I do or misdo in it, whom or what injure by it to the extent which
this would indicate. I had a design. · To accomplish it I should require
money, a house, a plantation, slaves, a family--incidentally of course, a
wife. I set out to acquire these, asking no favor of any man.'
(p. 263)
sutpen is incapable of seeing himself as culpable for any injustice or inhumanity
which would warrant the seeming punishment and destruction which Bon was poised
(whether intentionally or not) to mete out and accomplish.
And he [Sutpen] not calling it retribution, no sins of the father come home
to roost 1 not even calling it bad luck, but just a mistake: that mistake
which he could not discover himself.
(p. 267)
su~pen • s inability to recognize his shared humanity, his inability to ask something
of someone without believing that sooner or later they would require him to repay his
debt 1 and his "crimes" against humanity, are part of the tragedy of his life.
The final and fatal irony, however, which completes the tragedy of Sutpen himself 1 is that in perpetrating his crimes, sutpen re-enacts the very offense which was
done to that little boy before the front door of that plantation house, and which was
the impetus and reason for his design. The plantation owner rejected him because he
was guilty of that very same blindness of which Sutpen himself was subsequently
guilty, that blindness which in the planter's case designated some people as simply
inferior because of the color of their skin or because of their poverty. At one
point in the book Sutpen tells General Compson that if a little boy were to knock on
his front door:
that now he would take that boy in where he would never again need to stand
on the outside of a white door and knock at it: and not at all for mere
shelter but so that that boy, that whatever nameless stranger, could shut
that door himself forever behind him on all that he had ever known, and
look ahead along the still undivulged light rays in which his descendants
who might not even ever hear his [the boy's] name, waited to be born without even having to know that they had once been riven forever free from
brutehood just as his own [Sutpen's] children were. (p. 261)
This passage might be viewed as a glimpse of Sutpen's humanity, of some kindness, yet
I think that it only lends further emphasis to Sutpen's innocence. I do not doubt
that he might say this and believe it of himself, yet it is ironic that even while
saying this he was in the process of turning away a little boy {Bon) and that.he had
shut the door in the faces of many others, while simultaneously (and unconsciously)
advocating and practicing that very "brutehood" from which he believed he had
escaped.
14
Though until now Sutpen has been portrayed as a tragic figure, it is difficult
to see hi~ as the final embodiment or resultant of that tragedy. Sutpen never does
escape his innocence, he never learns the true nature of his mistake or fault, and
lastly he never gives up trying to bring his design to fruition. It finally requires
Time itself to come personified as wash Jones with that rusty scythe to stop him.
Sutpen simply refused to admit and accept his ultimate failure.
Conclusion
Thomas Sutpen was an amazing man; one cannot help but be attracted and fascinated by him. I have tried in this paper to illuminate the tragic aspects of sutpen and
his life, but finally I think his character resists any simple or easy formula .
Sutpen refuses to be labeled as simply "tragic" because he never learns (as Judith
and Henry do) and never gives up on his design. Yet other characterizations lead to
problems also, such as the identification of Sutpen as a symbol for the South, or as
simply an evil man. I have chosen the tragic because I think that it yields the most
fruit; that is, reveals the most about Sutpen • s character. He remains an enigma.
The sensitive reader, I think, may very well sympathize and understand Wash when he
thinks:
*How could I have lived nigh to him for twenty years without being touched
and changed by him? (p. 287)
Thomas sutpen and his story affect one powerfully, but not simply. The reader may
very well find himself vacillating between two extreme and oppos~te feelings about
him; at one moment he m~y feel pity for Sutpen, and at the ne~t be thinking with
wash,
*Better if his kind and mine too had never drawn., the breath of life on this
earth.
Better that all who remain of us be blasted from the face of it
than that another Wash Jones should see his whole life shredded from him
and shrivel away like a dried shuck thrown onto the fire.
(pp. 290-291)
Thomas Sutpen's story is a story about the South, but it is also ·a story about America, in which the American dream of rising from poverty to wealth and fame becomes a
nightmare.
Because you make so little impression, you see. You get born and you try
this and you don't know why only you keep on trying it and you are born at
the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same
strings are hitched to all . the other arms and legs and the others' all trying and they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one
another's way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same
loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it
can't matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have
arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on
trying' or having to keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over
and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided
there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or
had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after a while
they don't even remember the name and what the scratches were trying to
tell, and it doesn't matter. And so maybe if you could go to someone, the
stranger the better, and give them something--a scrap of paper--something,
15
�anything, it not to mean anything in itself and them not even to re~d it or
keep it, not even bother to throw it away or destroy it, at least it wou~d
be something just because it would have happened, be remembered even 7f
only from passing from one hand to another, one mind to another, and 1 t
would be at least a scratch, something, something that might make a mark on
something that was once for the reason that it can die someday, while the
block of stone can't be is because it never can become was because it can't
ever die or perish ••• (pp. 127-128)
Footnotes
1.
There is also an omniscient narrator who plays a minor role. He sets the scene
for each conversation, and gives an account of Sutpen's arrival in Jefferson in
the beg inning ·of Chapter I I.
2.
From Dylan Thomas's poem "The World Is Too Much With us."
stanza.
3.
From The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner.
is something that Mr. Compson says to Quentin.
4.
In The Sound and the Fury we learn that Quentin is obsessed with his sister's
virginity, and contemplates incest as a means to "preserve" it. Quentin and
Henry share many conunon traits, not the least being the close relationships they
have with their sisters.
s.
From The sound and the Fury.
This is the first
I cannot find the line, but it
Quentin drowns himself in the Charles River on
June 2, 1910.
6.
The best example of this is the delayed fact that Milly's baby was a girl (see
p. 292).
(All page numbers used in this essay refer to the Vintage Books Edition of Absalom,
Absaloml by William Faulkner.)
161
''A Shallow Reading of Marx" and Other Likely Stories
Michael Strong
'.
This is a waffling essay. I have tried to be fair in judging two antagonists .
They have each in turn seduced my judgement entirely. I hope that I have put each in
some perspective so that the place of each contribution might be appreciated.
If
nothing else, the issues have been clarified somewhat, at least for me.
First I introduce the problem: virtually all of those who make it their profession to study economic phenomena believe that Marx is wrong. In trying to understand
their reasons for believing so, I point out the flaws in Marx's theory of value from
their perspective. I then review the teaching on value of the father of economics,
Adam smith. Although he adheres to a labor theory of value that is not in its essence different from Marx's labor theory of value, I show how his theory is "corrected" by subsequent economists. I then turn to Marx and follow his argument on value
in the beginning of Das Kapital. I try to show how radically different the entire
endeavor of his theory is. Finally, I try to delineate the advantages and disadvantages of each theory.
It is almost too easy to defeat his argument: first, it is unnecessary, if not
ridiculous to assume that the commonality of commodities relies on a property inher'
ent in them.
It can be pointed out that the relational aspect of the exchanging
parties, both with respect to each other and each with respec~ to their commodities,
is obviously significant in determining the quantitative relation in which use-values
are exchanged. That is, how much of each commodity each party has in its possession,
and how great
the need or desire is for each commodity that is not in its
possession. or to be generous and speak in Marx's terms, it is not true that "only
one property remains, that of being products of labor." (p. 128) Another property
remains, that of being scarce items relative to demand. Marx has been defeated in
his argument for his labor theory of value.
It is too easy to "defeat" Marx's arguments. Especially when he is not arguing
what one thought he was arguing. I shall consider the foregoing a shallow reading of
Marx as I now proceed to understand him on his own terms. It is very plausible to
r ead Mar x in the above manner, and, given the presuppositions of a political economist, it is difficult not to do so.
.
First of all, such a concept of "defeating" an argument assumes that Marx is
arguing in a logically sequential and dependent manner: a deductive sequence rather
than in the dialectical mode. I here understand the dialectical mode as one in which
a thought is developed until it makes sense, and then another is contrasted with it
to deepen it. Like the verbal process of dialectic, the dialectical mode is almost a
s e ries of appr ox imations, asymptotically approaching the truth, although a de finite
margin of error may exist on either side. Indeed, the error is almost used to define
the next step in the logic, for it necessitates its own correction. If this is an
accurate description of Marx's method of argument, it is pointless to pull out individual statements as inaccurate in hopes of "proving" Marx wrong. Inaccurate statements will probably be corrected by subsequent developments in the theory.
Second, Marx is not trying to argue for a labor theory of value. He is cr~ating
the first theor y o f t he commodity . This distinction will prove most helpful in un-
17
�derstanding his argument and hence his contribution to the study of political economy. Statements that seemed to be virtually ridiculous will now have a context in
which they make sense. The first step towards understanding Chapter 1 is to read the
preface to the first edition.
\
Marx writes in the preface to the first ed~tion of Das Kapital his conception of
the nature of his project:
Beginnings are always difficult in all the sciences. The understanding of
the first chapter, especially the section that contains the analysis of
commodities, will therefore present the greatest difficulty. • • • The value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form, is very simple and
slight in content. Nevertheless, the human mind has sought in vain for
more than 2,000 years to get to the bottom of it, while on the other hand
there has been at least an approximation to a successful analysis of forms
which are much richer in content and more complex. Why? Because the complete body is easier to study than its cells. Moreover, in the analysis of
economic forms neither microscopes nor chemical reagents are of assistance.
The power of abstraction must replace both. But for bourgeois society, the
commodity-form of the product of labor, or the value-form of the commodity,
is the economic cell-form.
Marx conceives Das Kapital to be the beginning of a science. He believes that no one
before him has satisfactorily illuminated the economic process; he is writing a critique of all previous political economy. His conception of the scope of his science
does not seem to be limited to measuring variations in the Market. He perceives his
great scientific triumph to be the discovery of "the value-form, whose fully developed shape is the money-form." If it is thought that Marx is offering a labor theory
of value, then it does not make sense for him to make the extravagant claim that he
has discovered something that "the human mind has sought in vain for more than 2,000
years." At the very least, Smith and his followers had been discussing something
like that for almost 100 years. However, he is not simply offering a theory of
prices, for Marx understands the value-form to be prior to the money-form. Moreover
the form is very important to Marx. Nor is he studying the Market, for that would be
"the---cc;mplete body". Marx understands wealth to be nothing more than a great collection of commodities. The commodity is the cell-form or capitalism, the basic unit
behind even the great structure of the Market. Thus Marx begins his analysis of economic activity by examining the commodity. I will return to Chapter 1, "The Commodity", Section 1, "The Two Factors of the Commodity: Use-Value and Value" and try to
understand the development of his argument a little more deeply.
The first step for Marx is to define what is meant by a commodity. Marx's analysis of the colIUl\Odity-form is philosophical rather than scientific. He wants to know
the nature and the source of this form.
He begins with the distinction between
use-value and exchange-value. To be a commodity, an article must have both kinds of
value: There must be a use for it, and it must have some value in exchange.
Marx describes use-value as the value that an object has through its usefulness
to human beings in a given society at a given time. An object with use-value has
qualities which satisfy human needs of whatever sort. "Use values are only realized
in use or in consumption." (p.126 ) They are "only realized", meaning they are merely
potentially use-values previous to their consumption.
Use-values are strictly a
function of the qualities of an object, without regard to quantity.
Marx centers his discussion of the commodity on exchange-value, because it is
exchange-value which distinguishes the commodity-form of use-value from other forms
of use-value:
.18
[Exchange-value] appears first . of all as the quantitative relation, the
proportion, in which use values of one kind are exchanged for use values of
another kind. This relation changes constantly with time and place. Hence
exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and
consequently an intrinsic value, i.e. an exchange value that is inseparably
connected with the commodity, inherent in it, seems a contradiction in
terms. (p. 126)
,"Appears first of all as the quantitative relation" refers to the genesis of the existence of exchange-value. The question is "How does the commodity-form come to be?"
Its distinguishing component is exchange-value. Thus he embarks on his investigation
of exchange-value.
Marx has introduced the basic problems associated with having a knowledge of
"exchange value". It is true that it appears first of all as the quantitative relation, and it has always been quantified. The exact amount, however, does change
constantly with time and place. It does seem to be a purely relative phenomenon.
But some exchange-value is the prerequisite to a commodity-form. If Marx wants to
understand the commodity-form, then he must understand the nature of this exchange-value as prerequisite. Thus, in this logical structure, Marx knows ~ priori
that the relativity is merely an appearance. This statement still appears at first
to be absolutely absurd; the high exchange- value of a fashionable dress this year can
fall to virtually nothing in five years. However, such examples are easily dismissed
already; in order for an object to be a commodity, it must have a use-value. In such
extreme examples, the object no longer has a use-value.
Or if it does have a
use-value, it is not the same use- value it originally had, and therefore is not the
same commodity that it originally was. The original use-value of the dress was to
display the fashionability of the wearer much more than to protect against the elements. As the original use-value vanishes with time, .the remaining use-value transforms the dress into a very different commodity with a very different exchange-value .
An intrinsic value becomes a possibility. because a commodity is not simply a material
object in Marx's usage.
Marx now deduces the relation of exchange-value to commodity:
Let us now take two commodities, for example corn and iron. Whatever their
exchange relation may be, it can always be represented by an equation in
which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron, for
instance 1 quarter of corn = X cwt of iron. What does this equation signify? It signifies that a common element of identical magnitude exists in
two different thing s , in 1 quarter of corn and similarly in x cwt of iron .
Both are therefo re equal to a third thing, which in itself is neither the
one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange-value, must
therefore be reducible to this third thing. (p. 127)
"Let us now take two commodities"--The question is,
tween two commodities that makes them such? Because
have a common element.
Exchange-value is that
commensurable entities. Because he is investigating
commodity, not value, it is no longer absurd for Marx
what is the common element bethey are commodities, they must
which makes two commodities
specifically the na ture of the
to state:
This common element cannot be a geometrical, physical, chemical or other
natural property of commodities. (p. 127)
When he claims that "only one property remains, that of being products of labor", he
is intentionally defining his analysis in terms of the properties of the commodity.
19
1
�Moreover, he is not ignoring the relational aspects of exchange-value (the supply-demand arguments} , as his subsequent discussion of the nature of this "labor"
reveals. In the analysis of his theory, it is more helpful to consider some kind of
"labor" as being a property of the commodity-form. In addition, this sort of analysis falls out of the dialectical method--he proposes a hypothesis that is plausible
and then refines it as additional theoretical burdens are required of it. It will
turn out that this labor is very abstract and relational.
Indeed, Marx's next point is that this labor is not any particular kind of labor--it is abstract labor:
But even the product of labour has already been transformed in our hands.
If we make abstraction from its use-value, we abstract also from the material constituents and forms which make it a use-value ••• All the sensuous
characteristics are extinguished ••• With the disappearance of the use.ful
character of the products of labour, the useful character of the kinds of
labour embodied in them also disappears; this in turn entails the disappearance of the different concrete forms of labour. They can no longer be
distinguished, but are all together reduced to the same kind of labour,
human labour in the abstract. (p. 128)
The point seems easy enough to understand: the labor that is the source of value is
abstract labor, not any particular kind of labor •. It has to be something general
enough to contain all the varied particular forms of labor. Apparently all that is
meant by "abstract labour" is labor insofar as it creates value. However, this is a
topic on which Marx provides some wonderful metaphors to help us understand how he is
really thinking of abstract labor:
Let us now look at the residue of the products of labour. There is nothing
left of them in each case but the same phantom-like objectivity; they are
merely congealed quantities of homogeneous human labour-power expended
without regard to the form of its expenditure. All these things now tell
us that human labour-power has been expended to produce them, human labour
is accumulated in them. As crystals of this social substance, which is
common to them all, they are values--commodity values. (p. 128)
time to complete the article.
He then corrects himself:
.,
The labour that forms the substance of value is equal human labour, the
expenditure of identical human labour- power.
In addition to the abstraction from the particularities of any given profession,
Marx's abstract labor is abstracted from the proficiencies of any given worker . It
is becoming clear that Marx is not suggesting any simple proportion between hours
worked and exchange-value resulting. His theory of value is not meant to be a calculus for comparing prices separated by great temporal or geographical distances,
though it is similar enough to Smith's theory to work at that level as an approximation. Marx's point is that regardless of particular conditions, the source of value
behind all market variations, in all commodities, is abstract labor.
We have learned that a commodity has two factors, use-value and exchange-value.
Use-value was purely qualitative, exchange-value was purely quantitative. Labor was
the only "property" that commodities had in common which could explain the possibility of exchange-values. This labor was very abstract, at the least an abstraction
from the particularities of type of labor and proficiency of labor. Marx wants to
learn what makes a commodity what it is. In the last Section of Chapter 1, on "The
Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret", Marx states:
A commodity appears at first sight an extremely obvious, trivial thing.
But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing, abounding in
metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.
So far as it is a
use-value, there is nothing mysterious about it ••• But as soon as it emerges
as a commodity, it changes into a thing which transcends sensuousness •••
The mysterious character of the commodity-form consists therefore simply in
the fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men's
own labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves ••• the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of
labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the
physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of
this.
It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. (p. 163-165)
Marx paints a vivid picture of the commodity-form of value. He speaks in terms of
labor as a human experience. The "residue of the products of labour" suggests that
which is left behind after one has labored. That nothing has been left in them but
"the same phantom~like objectivity" tells us that the subjectivity, the personality,
has been taken out. That they are merely "congealed quantities of homogeneous human
labor" provokes images of something blood-like having been left behind in the process
of laboring towards this commodity. Abstract labor is not simply non-specific labor.
It is also no longer human labor, a sign that the capitalist system of production
itself is no longer a system of economic relations between people, per se.
An
observer of the Market would pass over this facet of the economic relation as not
pertinent to economics. Marx places it in the middle of his dialectical analysis of
the commodity.
Next Marx refines the concept of abstract labor: The labor must be "socially
necessary" labor. In discussing how labor is to be measured, Marx discovers that it
is to be measured by duration. He then replies to himself:
In the first analysis of Marx's text, I took a commodity to be an obvious, material
thing. Marx's explanation of value in that context was lacking. Here we see that
Marx's conception is much more complex. The commodity-form is a congealed version of
the social relations between men. As such, for Marx there can be no separation between an economic science and a sociological science, and thus any moral implications
that are associated with the revealed social relations. The cell-form of the economic system represents the relations between men.
Now that I have some appreciation of the richness and complexity , as well as a
knowledge,of the basic elements, of Marx's commodity theory, I am ready to begin to
understand what he is saying. To help in this, I will move to his discussion of
classical political economy with regard to its failings in analyzing the value-form.
In "The Fetishism of the Commodity and Its Secret", Marx states:
It might seem that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour expended to produce it, it would be the more valuable the more
unskillful and lazy the worker who produced it, because he would need more
Political economy has indeed analyzed value and its magnitude, however incompletely, and has uncovered the content concealed within these forms.
But it has ne ver once asked the question why this content has assumed that
2b
21
�particular form, that is to say, why labour is expressed in value, and why
the measurement of labour by its duration is expressed in the magnitude of
the value of the product.
These formulas, which bear the unmistakable
stamp of belonging to a social formation in which the process of production
has mastery over man, instead of the opposite, appear to be political economists' bourgeois consciousness to be as much a self-evident and nature-imposed necessity as productive labour itself. (p. 173-175)
Now, one sentence at a time:
Political economy has indeed analyzed value and its magnitude, however
incompletely, and has uncovered the content concealed within these forms.
The first clause is a statement of the purpose of value theory in classical political
economy. Marx is aware of the insufficiencies of classical value theory in achieving
its purpose of analyzing economic magnitude.
The "content concealed within these
forms" is opaque from the point of view of political economy. For Marx, the "con.:.
tent" is labor and the "form" is exchange-value.
But it (political economy) has never once asked the question why this content has assumed that particular form and why the measurement of labour by
its duration is expressed in the magnitude of the value of the product.
What does he mean "Why the measurement of labour by its duration is expressed in the
magnitude of the value of the product"? What kind of answer could there be to such a
question? I thought that Marx had deduced this relationship in Section 1. There is
no need to ask such a "why". Isn't it like asking why mass "is expressed" as weight?
Mass is expressed as weight because the force of gravity pulls on masses equally,
thus assuring a proportion between the masses of bodies and their weights. That's
just the way gravity works.
Likewise, labor "is expressed" in value because the
demand for labor pulls on the products of labor equally, assuring a proportion
between the duration of labor in a product and its value. That's just the way demand
works.
Fortunately, Marx provides us with a footnote to clarify this point:
It is one of the chief failings of classical political economy that it has
never succeeded, by means of its analysis of commodities, and in particular
of their value, in discovering the form of value which in fact turns value
into exchange-value.
"which in fact turns value into exchange-value." What value into exchange-value? In
conformity to the usual contrast, I take the it to be use-value that is transformed
into exchange-value. The point Marx is developing is that it is not necessary for
use-values to be exchange-values. There are alternative value-forms, in alternative
economic systems:
(same footnote continued)
The value-form of the product of labour is the most abstract, but also the
most universal form of the bourgeois mode of production~ by that fact it
stamps the bourgeois mode of production as a particular kind of social production of a historical and transitory character. If then we make the mistake of treating it as the eternal natural form of social production, we
necessarily overlook the specificity of the value-form, and consequently of
the commodity-form together with its further developments, the money-form,
the capital-form, etc.
22
.,
These remarks provide some idea of the scope of Marx's investigation and what he
means by a deeper analysis than that of classical political economy. Marx is concerned with where the Market came from and where it is going to. Since the commodity
is the cell-form, he is interested in how it came to be that particular cell-form and
what other cell-forms are possible. In a communist society, commodities, and thus
exchange-values, will not exist. In feudal society, use-values were distributed by
means of the corvee and tithes in addition to the commodity-form and its exchange-value; thus Marx's criticisms of the narrowness of political economy. Nor are
these idle observations, of interest solely to those who believe in the revolution or
with a historical fondness for medieval times. The distinction between use-value and
exchange-value, taken for granted in a capitalist system, is the source of a major
difficulty, even in a capitalist system. Use-values are commensurable with "human"
values1 exchange-values are not.
We choose between the various ways of using our time: eating, sleeping, thinking, acting, etc. our time is necessarily consumed by acquiring certain use-values,
such as food and shelter. Human values, too, must be expressed in the same finite
period of time. There are circumstances in which we choose between the two in our
allotted time.
We can build an extra shelter or we can study the stars, build a
plaything or take time with our civic responsibilities.
In our decision-making, we
naturally decide between use-values and human values.
This is not the case with exchange-values and human values. Exchange-values are
the quantity of labor that can be conunanded by a given article, a commodity-form of
labor. Exchange-values are quantitative, and, qua exchange-value, more is better.
(Thus Marx's later characterization of capital as an uncontrollable, self-sustaining
creature that necessitates its own growth.) There are no qualitative considerations
in exchange-value. Marx recognizes the critical importance of the distinction between use-value and exchange-value; this importance is not in facilitating calculations, but in the fact that it is an unnecessary, and largely undesirable, social
distinction.
If we return to the quoted text (leaving the footnote), we can now understand
the last sentence:
These formulas, which bear the unmistakable stamp of belonglng to a social
formation in which the process of production has mastery over man, instead
of · the opposite, appear to the political economists' bourgeois consciousness to be as much a self-evident and nature-imposed necessity as productive labor itself.
To start with the final (easier) clause, of course the commodity-form, exchange-value, and duration as a measure of labor's value producing capacity appear as
givens in the system of economic science.
Economics by Marx's time had already
defined itself as the study of the Market in capitalist society. An economist would
not find Marx's insult interesting or informed.
Why "these formulas" bear the stamp of a social formation, in which the production process has mastery over man, is directly related to Marx's emphasis on understanding the nature of the conunodity-form. The "stamp" that these formulas bear is
that of the alienating commodity-form, with its congealed abstract labor; the commodity-form, of which the only intrinsic property is exchange-value. Marx sees, in the
"givens" of political economy, the essence of human domination by the material forces
of production. One of his more extravagant metaphors might now be taken more seriously: The "dead" labor of a commodity, because of the very nature of the commodity-form, sucks the life-blood from living labor.
Marx's theory does provide us with a more detailed picture of economic relations
than does a merely descriptive theory. Because of science's wondrous successes at
23
�prediction, the bulk of attention is directed towards meticulous description, in
hopes that it will lead to accurate predictions. An understanding for its own sake,
of what occurs in economic transactions, is not generally appreciated. Yet regardless of accuracy, Marx's theory enables us to consider the type of interactions that
occur. It thus allows us to consider factors other than maximizing material wealth.
Marx's theory is not very useful for analyzing the fascinating rules which govern the Market mechanism. On the other hand, economic relations become significant
human activities in the theory, in that it depicts the dehumanizing aspects of commodity-production in a capitalist system. In addition, one might question the legitimacy of a social theory based strictly on man's material intercourse. Objects that
are bought and sold can be quantified and commodities can be defined as such objects.
If value is simply a reflection of price, it too can be quantified. But there may
yet be a purpose in qualitative observations on these material relations; such observations may even be useful to the quantifiers.
The issue of whether the laborer is "exploited" depends on whether labor is the .
sole source of value. This question remains undecided.
Marx uses the claim that labor is the sole . source of value1 whether that claim
is derived from an explicit labor theory of value or a theory of the commodity-form,
it still amounts to the same thing when he applies it to his theory of surplus value
and exploitation of the worker. Is this claim defensible?
Marx's labor is abstract, identical, socially average labor. In order for an
object to be a commodity, it must have both a use-value and an exchange-value • . If a
commodity has use-value in a given society, then Marx would claim that the ultimate
source of its value is congealed socially average labor-time. Such a statement seems
true; I know of no objects that are purchased that do not have some labor- time
congealed in them. The claim that their value is in some sense proportionate to the
amount of labor-time congealed in them is less obvious. Yet the qualifications that
the labor-time be socially average labor-time and that the object have a use-value
make the proportion impossible to calculate with any precision. Moreover, Marx is
willing to believe in a discrepancy between relative price and exchange-value. Given
Marx's conditions, it is very plausible that labor is the source of value; but it is
not proven in any definite sense.
I had hoped to resolve something in this essay. I now fear that Marx is right
in that there can be no compromise with bourgeois political economy. Marx's analysis
of the commodity has convinced me that exchange-value is incommensurable with human
values. I had hoped to see an economic science that could be cognizant of the human
condition, as Marx's analysis is. As long as the fi r st distinction in an economic
theory of value is between use-value and exchange-value, such a "sensitive" economics
is impossible. It is difficult to imagine an economics that begins in any other way.
Ma . . . demoiselle
Stuart Sobczynski
o
I
Ma ••• demoiselle
Liquide
Splendide
Flowing down the street
Glancing from curb to curb
Like your eyes within your gaze
so of ten
So of ten
I remember my delight at the beach
Staring sullen straight into the sunset
As patience alone
Caused the sea to stand still
Though the waves sang still
And the same at the sight
Of your eyes
Dancing within your face
Your smile
Singing
Light
Still
A Translation From Louis Menard's Circe
Liz Waldner
Sweet as a beam of moon, as a tone of lyre
At her single smile the feral yield with soft moan.
With her eyes' caressing a magical fire
Burns each our breath with ecstasy kindling on bone.
The lions wild and roaring, the great grizzled bears
Lick their ivory claws; a cloud slow from her censers
Envelops them. She sings, she allures, she ensnares,
Sinister Pleasure, with all powerful philt.r es.
All page numbers used refer to the Vintage Books Edition of Capital by Karl Marx.
Under yoke of desire she draws in her wake
Innumerable troops of creatures, her retinue,
Charmed by her virgin regard, her mouth's lies rehearsed
Tranquil, irresistible. Ah! accurst, accurst!
Since you change man into beast at least lull to sleep
The shame and remorse in our hearts sore full of you.
24
25
�..... .
A Fishhook for Hobbes's Leviathan
Daniel Schoos
.
How are we to understand the Leviathan to be Christian, or in other words, in
what way is a Hobbesian commonwealth a Christian commonwealth? Hobbes is subtle in
revealing his true thoughts on this matter, despite his passion for his exactness in
speech and his apportionment of the entirety of Part III of Leviathan to the topic
"Of a Christian Common-weal th." Hobbes's caution is merited by the heretical and
atheistic foundation on which the structure of his commonweal th stands, for hi~
analogy between the sovereign and God, which appears throughout Leviathan, is not an
analogy at all, but rather an identity, a practical equivalence.
In chapter 43, Hobbes states, "The (Unum Necessarium) Only Article of Faith,
which the Scripture maketh simply Necessary to Salvation, is this, that Jesus is The
Christ. By the name of Christ is understood the King, ••• " However, throughout the
book Hobbes's intent is to argue for the converse of that assertion, namely that the
king, or sovereign, is Christ. When we say, "is Christ," it is not meant that the
sovereign is truly Jesus Christ, the Saviour, God-man, of Scripture. Rather, the
sovereign takes the place of Christ.
This is the essence of Hobbes's perfect
Leviathan, or Christian commonwealth, specifically, that if the "sovereign" be
Christ, then his commonwealth is salvation, or heaven on earth. What Hobbes does not
mean is for salvation to rest in God replacing the sovereign. Instead, it is that
salvation rests in the sovereign replacing God.
The first step towards a better understanding of this answer lies in recognizing
the difference between the "Commonwealth" or "Leviathan" as described by Hobbes, and
any other kingdom or commonwealth. Hobbes is not looking at any past or contemporary
government as a model for the art whereby he builds his "Common-wealth." Instead, he
compares himself with Plato, as one who is creating new rules by which the best of
commonwealths would be structured. This is an important distinction whose significance is highlighted by a complimentary distinction Hobbes makes in chapter 31.
Throughout Leviathan Hobbes speaks of a "Kingdom of God," but there are two
kinds of such a kingdom, and these are described in chapter 31. The first is the
"Natural!," the second is the "Prophetique," also called the "peculiar." Hobbes defines the "Natural!" as, "wherein God governeth as many of mankind as acknowledge his
Providence, by the natural! Dictates of Right Reason." Shortly before this passage
Hobbes had explained that those who do not "acknowledge his Providence," such as
"Bodies Inanimate" and "creatures Irrationall," as well as "Atheists" and "They that
believe not that God has any care of the actions of mankind," are not properly speaking, God's subjects, but, at least for human beings, "are to be understood as Enemies."
The "Prophetique" or "peculiar" kingdom is described as, that "one peculiar Nation (the Jews ) " which God chose to rule "not only by natural! Reason, but by Positive Lawes, which he gave them by the mouths of his holy Prophets." Later, in chapter 35, Hobbes dismisses the notion that by the kingdom of God is meant, "Eternall
Felicity, after this life, in the Highest Heaven." He restates his belief that it
means nothing more than "the Monarchy, that is to say, Soveraign Power of God over
any Subjects acquired by their own consent, ••• " (italics mine) The first of these
"peculiar" kingdoms was that with Abraham. Hobbes is careful to stress in chapter 40
26
'
that the covenant God made was with Abraham only, and that it was due to the prior
situation, wherein Abraham had a "lawful power" · to make all his family and future
family "perform all that he covenanted for them," that Abraham was able to extend his
covenant over them. This kingdom lasted through Jacob, "but afterwards no more, till
the Israelites ••• arrived at the foot of Mount Sinai; and then it was renewed by
Moses •.• " According to Hobbes, Moses was not the true "soveraign" of the Israelites
until at Sinai they declared: "speak thou with us, and we will hear, but let not God
speak with us, lest we die." Afterwards, the succession continued through Aaron's
heirs, ending with the election of Saul as king. For when the Israelites "deposed
the High Priest of Royal Authority, they deposed that peculiar Government of God."
It is this "peculiar" kingdom which Hobbes claims Christ shall restore at his
second coming, as in "The World To Come" presented in chapter 38. Hobbes makes it
clear in chapter 35 that this is a "Civill Kingdome" and explains:
The Kingdome therefore of God, is a reall, not a metaphoricall Kingdome;
and so taken, not onely in the Old Testament, but the New; when we say, For
thine is the Kingdome, the Power, and Glory, · it is to be understood of Gods
Kingdorne, by force of 00r Covenant, not by the Right of Gods Power; for
such a Kingdome God alwaies hath; so that it were superfluous to say in our
prayer, Thy Kingdome ~' unlesse it be meant of the Res:auration of t~at
Kingdome of God by Christ, which by revolt of the Israelites had been interrupted in the election of Saul.
In Chapter 12, Hobbes reveals that in the "peculiar" kingdom of God, "the policy, and Lawes Civill, are a part of Religion; and therefore the distinction . of
Temporal!, and Spiritual Domination, hath.there no place." Now as there was a distinction between a "Natural!" and "peculiar" kingdom of God, so is there a distinction made in chapter 12 between the "Natural!" seeds of religion and the
"supernatural!" seeds of religion. What shall proceed to be shown is that the "peculiar" kingdom of God is one based on the supernatural seed of religion planted by
God. Yet for Hobbes this supernatural! seed, based on revelation by God, is only an
empty argument, leading us back to the natural seeds of religion. From there the
only path is that to the converse of the "peculiar" kingdom of God, where the sovereign replaces Christ.
That the "peculiar" kingdom of God is based on the supernatural seed of religion
is evident from chapter 12, where Hobbes describes the two seeds of religion. "Divine Poli tiques," as opposed to "humane Poli tiques," is organized by men "by Gods
commandment," men such as Abraham, Moses, and Christ, men "by whom have been derived
unto us the Laws of the Kingdome of God." Hobbes elucidates later: "But where God
himselfe, by supernatural! Revelation, planted Religion; there he also made to
himselfe a peculiar kingdome; and gave Lawes."
The relationship between the "peculiar" kingdom of God and "supernaturall Revelation" clearly established, let us explore the signi.ficance of "~upernaturall Re~e
lation," to see why it cannot stand on its own as a viable foundation for a Hobbesian
"Common-wealth.... The very opening of chapter 12, "OF RELIGION," immediately t~rows
suspicion on any attempt to distinguish between seeds of religion. Hobbes writes:
"seeing there are no signes, nor fruit of Religion, but in Man onely; there is no
cause to doubt, but that the seed of Religion, is also onely in Man." Hobbes explains that "every man" is "in an estate like to that of Prometheus," because he
"hath his heart all the day long, gnawd on by feare of death, poverty, or other calamity." Fear and ignorance are the basis of the natural seed of religion.
.
But to return to the "supernatural! Revelation," the seed of God's "peculiar"
kingdom, we find throughout Leviathan that Hobbes meticulously and methodically removes all power from the side of the supernatural.
Hobbes more often connects
27
�"supernatural!" or "spiritual!" with fear, darkness, strife, and evil, than with God.
Hobbes disparages the "Pretense of Inspiration" (ch. 29), cautions against the role
of miracles (ch . 37) , and is utterly suspicious of prophecy (ch. 36) •
Hobbes is clear: "there is no Covenant with God, but by mediation of some body
that representeth Gods Person; ••• [viz.] Gods Lieutenant, who hath the Soveraignty
under God."
In Leviathan the example is given of Abraham, previously mentioned,
whose covenant with God extended to his heirs only because of a previous, natural and
civil, agreement. "God spake onely to Abraham," Hobbes claims, "and therefore contracted not with any of his family, or seed, otherwise than as their wills ••• were
before the Contract involved in the will of Abraham." In other words, the "peculiar"
kingdom of God was first founded, indeed, could only have been founded, because there
existed already a civil sovereign. In chapter 40 Hobbes states that, "they to whom
God hath not spoken immediately, are to receive the positive commandements of God,
from their Sovereign; as the family and seed of Abraham did from Abraham their Father, and Lord, and Civill Soveraign."
What of those to whom God hath spoken immediately? Hobbes's discussion on
prophecy and inspiration is lengthy and complicated, yet a concise explanation of
this particular situation can be given. Hobbes is careful by dividing such prophets
into two categories, the "Prophets of perpetuall Calling" and "subordinate prophets."
The former class were "first Moses; and after him the High Priest, every one for his
time, as long as t..hc priesthood was Royall." After the so-called revolt of the Jews
from God, "those Kings which SUbmit.tQd them.s elves to Gods government" were the
"Soveraign Prophets. "Of the subordinate Prophets" Hubbes concludes!
I find not any place that proveth God spake to them supernaturally; but
onely in such manner, as naturally he inclined men to Piety, to Beleef, to
Righteousnesse, ••• Which way, though it consist in Constitution, Instruction, Education ••• yet it is truly attributed to the operation of the ••• Holy
Spirit ••• For there is no good inclination, that is not of the operation of
God. But these operations are not alwaies supernaturall.
We see that the "Prophets of perpetual! Calling" are already sovereigns. The only
outstandi,ng quality of the "subordinate Prophets" is their inclination to virtue,
nurtured by institutions of the state. As a result, Hobbes asserts: "When therefore
a Prophet is said to speak in the Spirit of God .•. he speaks according to Gods will,
declared by the supreme Prophet." Therefore, a true prophet is either a sovereign or
one who obeys the sovereign.
It is the "peculiar" kingdom of God which Christ is expected to restore in "the
World to come." The "Natural!" kingdom is not mentioned. How will this new "peculiar" kingdom arise? It can only be instituted through the cooperation of a civil
sovereign, as with Abraham or Moses. Will Christ be striking deals with the world's
leaders at his coming to rule? This is peculiar. Hobbes stressed in chapter 41, "Of
the Office of our Blessed Saviour,,-,-that during his first coming, Christ did or
taught nothing which would tend "to the diminution of the Civill Right of the Jewes,
or of Caesar," and "did therein nothing against their laws." Hobbes explains, "The
Kingdome hee claimed was to bee Li another world," and consequently his preaching of
it was not seditious .
But what is to happen at Christ' s second coming? Hobbes
states that Christ will "execute the Off ice of a King." How will he be able to do
this without finding himself guilty of the very sedition that Hobbes describes he was
innocent of at his first coming? What if Christ restores the "peculiar" kingdom
through conquest? Still, as Hobbes writes in chapter 20: "It is not therefore the
victory, that giveth the right of Dominion over the vanquished, but his own Covenant." The problem remains.
We have shown that the "peculiar" kingdom of God is founded on divine revela-
tion, the "supernaturall" seed of religion, and have furthe:anore outlined what little
power Hobbes leaves for divine revelation. Hobbes observes in chapter 12
ing:
the follow-
. '.
For seeing all formed Religion, is founded at first, upon the faith which a
multitude hath in some one person, whom they believe not only to be a wise
man, ~nd to labor to procure their happiness, but also a holy man, to whom
God himselfe vouchsafeth to declare his will supernaturally, •••
If we view the possibility of supernatural governance with grave suspicion and as a
result postpone consideration of the supernatural! as related in the
't ab
what re .
. th d f. . . .
quo e
ave,
. mains is
~ e inition of a "Common-wealth." Compare the quote from cha ter
12 with the following from chapter 17:
p
••• the Common-wealth; .•• is One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude b
mutuall Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the, Au:
th~r, to th7 end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall
think expedient, for their Peace and common Defence.
And he that carryeth this Person, is called SOVERAIGNE, and said to have
Soveraigne Power; and every one besides, his SUBJECT.
We notice that in • the passag.e f rom c h apter 12, Hobbes speaks of the foundation of
•
•
11
11
"all form~~ relig10~
(it.alic s mine).
No distinction is made for "peculiar" or
Naturall..
Hence, if we include the "peculiar" with the "all " it
·
th
h
"Co
lth"
appears
at t e
mmon-wea
or Leviathan" can be equated with the "peculiar" kingdom of God th
"Mortall God," which Christ, the "Immortal God," the "SOVERAIGNE "
'll
t '
e
"the World to come."
-' wi
res ore as
11
•
.
,
.
Let us consider the passage in chapter 38 where Hobbes speaks of this "World to
come," salvation:
There are three worlds mentioned in Scripture, the Old world, the Present
World, and the World to~-·· So the first World was from Adam to the
g7nerall ~lood. Of t~e present World, our Saviour speaks, (John 18.36) My
Kingdo~e ~ not of this World. For he came onely to teach men the way of
Salvation, and to renew the Kingdome of his Father, by his doctrine. Of
the .world to come, St· Peter speaks, Neverthelesse we according to his
pro~ise lo~k for ~ Heavens, and~~ Earth. This is--:that World, wherein
Christ coming down from Heaven, in the clouds, with great power ••• and
thence forth reign.
'
The ~orld to Come is only in the future insofar as Hobbes states earlier, in the conclusion of Part II, that: "I am at the point of believing this my labour, as useless,
as the Common-weal th of Plato.
And later: 11 I recover some hope that one t ·
th
th ·
. .
,
ime or
o. er,
is wr1~1ng of mine, may fall into the hands of a Soveraign, who
w1ll. •. convert this Truth of Speculation, into the Utility of Practice." In other
word~, the World to ~ome does not begin on Judgement Day, as one may think after
rea~1ng that passage in c~apter 38~ b~t it begins when some prince privately reads
Leviathan and puts th.e entirety of it into practice. (Maybe this is the Day of Right
Judgement.) That prince would be the practical equivalent of Christ. Christ does
not replace the prince. The prince, or "soveraign, 11 replaces Christ.
(And Hobbes is
John the Baptist?)
Only now is the power of that which is called supernatural restored. All such
power has as its source the 11 soveraign." There is no covenant with God, ex . .: " pt
11
28
29
�through the sovereign. The hazards of action in accordance with that which men may
think to be divine inspiration or prophecy, a folly which would lead such men to,
"despise the Commandements of the Common-wealth," (ch. 26) dragging the state into
civil war, are all removed when the sovereign is the sole determiner of divine Law
and true prophecy. There is no universal church, only the church which the sovereign
creates. Hobbes states in chapter 39:
I define a CHURCH to be, a company of men professing Christian Religion,
united in the person of one Soveraign: at whose command they ought to assemble, and without whose authority they ought not to assemble.
Again in chapter 42, on ecclesiastical power, Hobbes asks:
How then can wee be obliged to obey any Minister of Christ, if he should
command us to doe any thing contrary to the Command of the King, or other
Soveraign Representant of the Common-wealth ••• ? It is therefore manifest,
that Christ hath not left to his Ministers in this world, unless they be
also endued with Civill Authority, any authority to command other men.
In addition only the interpretations of scripture presented by the sovereign are
to be accepted. In chapter 40 Hobbes uses a metaphor to explain this point further.
(Whatever became of the warning against metaphor?) He first quotes two passages from
Exodus:
Take heed to yourselves that you goe not up into the Mount, or touch the
border of it; whosoever toucheth the Mount shall surely be put to death.
Goe down, charge the peoples, lest they break through unto the Lord to
gaze.
Hobbes then explains that the Scriptures are the Mount Sinai mentioned above, and
"the bounds whereof are the Laws of them that represents Gods Person on Earth." For
the subjects in a commonwealth, as the sovereign replaces God, so do the laws act for
the Scriptures (as interpreted by the sovereign ) . Hobbes continues:
To interpret them; that is, to pry into what God saith to him whom he
appointeth to govern under him, and make themselves Judges whether he govern as God commandeth him, or not, is to transgresse the bounds God hath
set us, and to gaze upon God irreverently.
The "them" above are the laws of the commonwealth, as with the bounds previously mentioned and again seen above: "the bounds God hath set us." Then clearly is for
"God" in that context to be read "soveraign."
The equating of the sovereign with God is given special attention in chapter 30 ,
which is entitled, "Of the Office of the Soveraign Representative." In this chapter
Hobbes explains the duties of the sovereign and his subjects in light of each of the
Ten Commandments. The first in this pattern, "Subjects are to be taught not to affect change of Government," is presented:
The desire of change, is like the breach of the first of God's
Commandements:
For there God sayes, ••• Thou shalt not have the Gods of
other Nations; and in another place concerning Kings, that they are Gods.
30
.
'
Another list appears in chapter 31, for the "Attributes of Divine Honour." Many
of these reflect standard, widely-accepted notions on the nature of a supreme being,
for example, that he exists, and is infinite. Later, however, this is all qualified
by Hobbes: "And because words (and consequently the Attributes of God) have their
signification by agreement, and constitution of men," then those attributes and their
associate honors, obedience being of paramount importance, depend on "the will of the
Common-wealth, by Lawes-Civill." Hence the sovereign, as the maker of laws, determines what attributes and honors are to be followed in his commonwealth. This is
something of an expansion on the placing of ecclesiastical powers in the sovereign's
hands, which we have previously discussed. The sovereign not only makes the ceremonies, he makes the god, and this god is himself.
Hobbes even accounts for the doctrines of the immortality of God in his argument
for the sovereign. In chapter 19 he states: " ••• as there was ord.e r for an Artificial Man, so there be order also taken, for an Artificial! Eternity of life," and
then proposes that, "This Artificial! Eternity, is that which men call the Right of
Succession."
In chapter 31 Hobbes asserts:
The Right of Nature, whereby God reigneth over men, and punisheth those
that break his Lawes, is to be derived, not from his Creating them, as if
he required obedience, as of Gratitude for his benefits; but from his Irresistible Power.
As a result, those attributes of God one may generally think to be universal, especially God as creator, disappear on the whim of the sovereign. By excluding all such
elements while solely concentrating on power as the cause of God's right to rule,
Hobbes again points to the special relationship of God and the sovereign of a civil
state. "Jesus Is the Christ. By the name of Christ is understood the King, ••• " is,
if by the name of King is understood Christ, this exclusive interpretation as to the
nature of God which can allow Hobbes to found his World to Come in the present, on
earth.
In other words, when it is said that the king is Christ or replaces Christ, we
mean not that the sovereign is similar to Christ, or "is as Christ" metaphorically.
Instead, we mean that the sovereign defines Christ; that for Hobbes, although he never openly reveals himself, there is no God, unless he be that "Artificial! Soul" of
the commonwealth, the king. As we have seen, throughout Leviathan Hobbes systematically removes all of God's powers to the civil sovereign. At the same time, he
warns that if the absolute power be usurped from the sovereign, the conunonwealth
would be dissolved, and the former sovereign be not a sovereign anymore. In chapter
29, Hobbes discusses this subject, "those things that Weaken, or tend to the DISSOLUTION of a Common-wealth." His list proceeds in every case to describe a situation
where absolute power of the sovereign is being diminished, including "Private Judgement of Good and Evill," the "Pretense of Inspiration," and "Subjecting the Soveraign
Power to Civil! Lawes." The attributes which define God's power become for Hobbes
both the necessary and sufficient attributes which define the sovereign.
"The Present World" as Hobbes speaks of it in chapter 38 is consistent with this
view. He quotes John 18: 36, "My Kingdom is not of this World," which is clearly
opposed to earlier lengthy and vehement arguments - Hobbes citing from many passages
in both the Old and New Testaments - for an earthly kingdom of God. The quote from
John is simply a restatement of Hobbes's observation that no Leviathan, as he is
describing it, has ever been seen in world governments . Following the quote from
John, Hobbes writes: "For he [Christ] came onely to teach men the way of Salvation,
and to renew the Kingdome of his Father, by his doctrine." There is no renewal or
restoration, since no true Hobbesian commonwealth, according to the author, ever ex-
31
i
�isted. The doctrine is, in Hobbes' view, nothing more than obedience.
Obedience is for Hobbes the same thing as faith, and obedience is assured of
being obtained only when power is present to enforce it. Hobbes gives examples in
chapter 12 of the causes which weaken faith, one of which is a dearth of miracles.
The example is cited from Exodus of the absence of Moses and the resulting revolt
from God through the act of constructing the gold calf as a god. Hobbes continues:
And again, after Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and that generation which had seen
the great works of God in Israel, were dead; another generation arose, and
served Baal. So that Miracles fayling, Faith also failed.
However, earlier in the same chapter, Hobbes left open the chance that a "soveraign"
has an effective means with which to restore faith. As we have seen, when "they that
have the Government of Religion," the sovereign, "shall be unable to shew any probable token of Divine Revelation," then their religion shall become suspect and rejected. But there is a very important qualifier added parenthetically by Hobbes, namely:
"(without the feare of the Civill Sword)." In other words, miracles are not necessary to the sovereign if he retains power in the commonwealth. As Hobbes explained
in the beginning of chapter 17, there must be a visible power to hold men out of the
"condition of warre," and to "tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of
their covenants."
The Leviathan is Christian, then, in the sense that the sovereign replaces
Christ (with Hobbes as the voice crying out in the wilderness). The sovereign may
enforce in any way his right to honor through obedience, this honoring (obedience)
being another formulation of what faith is. Rules which guide the subjects in their
endeavor to obedience must be promulgated by the sovereign, and can be derived from
the Ten Commandments. The commonwealth is sustained by the obedience of its subjects
to their sovereign, or rather, Salvation, the kingdom of God, is only possible
through faith.
In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned
into joy before him.
(Job 41: 22)
All quotes from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan are taken from the Penguin English Library
edition, edited by c. B. Macpherson.
The quote from Job was taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible, published
by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
The Two Hands of God:
An Examination of Goethe's Faust
Nancy Loevinger
What good is it i f you construct a wh.olt:?
The public takes it all apart again.
(102-103)
-------------------------------------------------Faust is a different man from most of us, more ruthless, more passionate, m
ore
destructive, more noble. Yet through his striving he asks the same questiuns c ha~ we
ask: What does it mean that man was created in God's image? What kina of l~r2. ~nd
hence what kind of action, will render man's life meaningful in the face GL (i·a~h?
What place does love have in this life?
Faust's striving is ruthless and unrepentant, and it is hard to understand why
he is saved in the end. Interceded for by a creature whom he had abandoned and destroyed, he is whisked off to Heaven by seductive cherubs in a battle of roses, on
the very day that he had caused the deaths of a pious old couple. What does this
mean? The most obvious interpretation of the work is that it is a glorification of
striving as such, regardless of means or end. When I started this paper ~ believed
in a diametrically opposed interpretation: it was Gretchen's love alone that sav~d
Faust. Slowly I have come to realize that neither interpretation alone is ~rue, t hat
wanting to choose either one or the other is succwnbing to Faust's need for dicnotomies, not Goethe's, and that it is not Faust's striving alone tnat ::aves l"l..L n . nor 's
it Gretchen's love alone. It is the combination of the. two, the mysterious ana illogical reconciliation of two irreconciliably opposed ways of life.
I have not fought my way to freedom yet.
Could I but banish witchcraft from my road,
Unlearn all magic spells -- oh, if I stood
Before you, Nature, human without ' guile,
The toil of being man might be worthwhile.'
( 11403-11407)
As the first scene of Part Two opens we see Faust "reclining on a lawn with
flowers." He is still restless (unruhig), but he is inunediately comforted by spirits
who "cleanse his mind of memories that smart," and rock his heart "in Kindesruh," the
rest of children. It was the memory of such childhood peace that saved Faust from
despair on the night before Easter, and here too Faust is saved from despair, f rom
the pain of remembering Gretchen's ruin without understanding her salvation. .Just as
the chorus of angels sang then of Christ's resurrection, the heavenly spirits have
now come to Faust with a message of rebirth. The spirits bathe Faust in "the dew of
Lethe's spriy," instilling in him the ritual forgetfulness that will prepare him for
a new life.
As the spirits descend to Faust they sing:
When the vernal blossom showers
Sink down to embrace the earth,
32
33
�isted. The doctrine is, in Hobbes' view, nothing more than obedience.
Obedience is for Hobbes the same thing as faith, and obedience is assured of
being obtained only when power is present to enforce it. Hobbes gives examples in ·
chapter 12 of the causes which weaken faith, one of which is a dearth of miracles.
The example is cited from Exodus of the absence of Moses and the resulting revolt
from God through the act of constructing the gold calf as a god. Hobbes continues:
And again, after Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and that generation which had seen
the great works of God in Israel, were dead; another generation arose, and
served Baal. So that Miracles fayling, Faith also failed.
However, earlier in the same chapter, Hobbes left open the chance that a "soveraign"
has an effective means with which to restore faith. As we have seen, when "they that
have the Government of Religion," the sovereign, "shall be unable to shew any probable token of Divine Revelation," then their religion shall become suspect and rejected. But there is a vert important qualifier added parenthetically by Hobbes, namely:
"(without the feare of the Civill Sword)." In other words, miracles are not necessary to the sovereign if he retains power in the commonwealth. As Hobbes explained
in the beginning of chapter 17, there must be a visible power to hold men out of the
"condition of warre," and to "tye them by feare of punishment to the performance of
their covenants."
The Leviathan is Christian, then, in the sense that the sovereign replaces
Christ (with Hobbes as the voice crying out in the wilderness). The sovereign may
enforce in any way his right to honor through obedience, this honoring (obedience)
being another formulation of what faith is. Rules which guide the subjects in their
endeavor to obedience must be promulgated by the sovereign, and can be derived from
the Ten Commandments. The commonwealth is sustained by the obedience of its subjects
to their sovereign, or rather, Salvation, the kingdom of God, is only possible
through faith.
In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned
into joy before him.
(Job 41:22)
The Two Hands of God:
An Examination of Goethe's Faust
Nancy Loevinger
What good is i t i f you construct o. wh.olt:?
The public takes it all apart again.
(102-103)
-------------------------------------------------Faust is a different man from most of us, more ruthless, more passionate, rr ore
destructive, more noble. Yet through his striving he asks the same questions : ha~ we
ask: What does it mean that man was created in God's image? What kina of i~r2. i nd
hence what kind of action, will render man's life meaningful in the face o~ ~1 a~h?
What place does love have in this life?
Faust's striving is ruthless and unrepentant, and it is hard to understand why
he is saved in the end. Interceded for by a creature whom he had abandoned and destroyed, he is whisked off to Heaven by seductive cherubs in a battle of roses, o.n
the very day that he had caused the deaths of a pious old couple. What does this
mean? The most obvious interpretation of the work is that it is a glor1f 1cation of
striving as such, regardless of means or end. When I started this paper ~ believed
in a diametrically opposed interpretation: it was Gretchen'.s love alone that sav~d
Faust. Slowly I have come to realize that neither interpretation alone is true, t hat
wanting to choose either one or the other is succumbing to Faust's need f or dichotomies, not Goethe's, and that it is not Faust's striving alone tnat :::aves 1 n . nor !s
·i..L
it Gr.e tchen' s love alone. It is the combination of the. two, t~e mysterious ana i_logical reconciliation of two irreconciliably opposed ways of life.
I have not fought my way to freedom yet.
Could I but banish witchcraft from my road,
Unlearn all magic spells -- oh, if I stood
Before you, Nature, hwnan without ' guile,
The toil of being man might be worthwhile.·
( 11403-11407)
All quotes from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan are taken from the Penguin English Librart
edition, edited by C. B. Macpherson .
The quote from Job was taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible, published
by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
As the first scene o f Part .Two opens we see Faust "reclining on a lawn with
flowers." He is still restless (unruhig), but he is immediately comforted by spirits
who "cleanse his mind of memories that smart," and rock his heart "in Kindesruh," the
rest of children. It was the memory of such childhood peace that saved Faust from
despair on the night before Easter, and here too Faust is saved from despair, f rom
the pain of remembering Gretchen's ruin without understanding her salvation. .Just as
the chorus of angels sang then of Christ's r esurrection, the heavenly spirits have
now come to Faust with a message of rebirth. The spirits bathe Faust in "the dew of
Lethe's spr~y," instilling in him the ritual f orgetfulness that will prepare him for
a new life.
As the spirits descend to Faust they sing:
When the vernal blossom showers
Sink down to embrace the earth,
32
33
�When green fields, alive with flowers,
Fill all human hearts with mirth,
Then great spirits, looking lowly,
Rush to help those whom they can;
Whether wicked, whether holy,
They would heal the wretched man.
(4613-4620)
This is a very different song from the one the angels sang on Easter morning. Both
songs speak of love and rebirth, but the change in language from Christianity to nature broadens the message in a way that changes its meaning. Since the love of
Christianity only applies to those who believe in Christ, Faust was ultimately excluded from grace that Easter morning; but the forgiveness of nature applies to all,
"whether wicked, whether holy." In the dungeon scene we saw that ordinary moral justice was allied with the devil, rather than with heaven, and here too the ordinary
dichotomy between good and evil is superseded. Heedless of these supposed opposites,
heaven, despite Faust's clear moral guilt, heals him of remorse so that he can continue his striving. "Deep within you (Nature) prompt a stern decision: to strive for
highest life with all my powers" (4684-4685).
Since nature is no longer acting as judge, Faust need no longer confront it
merely as an antagonist, and this change is reflected in a change of imagery. Instead of being shown within his study, surrounded by dusty books, Faust is shown reclining upon a spacious lawn, surrounded by flowers. The flowers, with their
ephemeral beauty and annual rebirth, represent the regenerative power of nature, and
so its eternal forgiveness. Moreover, the spirits that heal Faust are "charming" and
"friendly," as opposed to the more impersonal angels of Part One. This change is
also brought out in the appearance of Ariel. Ariel had appeared earlier, in
"Walpurgis Night's Dream," a dream of the devil. Here, however, he acts in conjunction with heaven, as a personification of the aethereal, and so spiritual, aspect of
nature. In this way hell, heaven, and earth are shown to be united.
This change in nature, and so in Faust, is also evident in Faust's first speech.
Forced to turn away from the sight of the rising sun, Faust contemplates with delight
a waterfall and its rainbow:
The rainbow mirrors human ••• strife.
Consider it and you will better know
In many-hued reflection we have life.
(4725- 4727)
In Part One, Faust spoke on Easter morning to Wagner about the beauty of nature
(1068-1099), but there the glorious sight of the sunset angered and dismayed him, by
reminding him of his limitations in not being able to follow it. Here Faust accepts,
at least for a moment, man's inevitable failure to directly confront life, and in
doing so recognizes the value of capturing a reflection of nature in transitory images, a capitulation that earlier would have seemed to him ignoble. Furthermore, the
image of the waterfall itself is an image of hope. The constant action of the water
forms mist, and when this is illuminated by the light of the sun, a rainbow appears,
"enduring through all change." Thus human striving, despite the ephemeral nature of
its effects, is capable of creating beauty when it is illuminated by a sense of the
divine (v. 4634, "the holy light.") •
Healed in this manner, Faust returns to the world, and his less antagonistic,
and so more fruitful relation to nature is reflected in his marriage to Helen. Faust
first saw Helen in the witch's mirror, where she personified both the beauty of nature and its elusiveness. Helen is, for Faust, the incarnation of beauty without
34
shame, and so an image of man before the fall. This image can only be represented on
earth by innocence and purity, a representation necessarily sterile. Faust pursued
Gretchen after his view of Helen in the witch's mirror. He sought in her Helen•s
earthly image, and he left her, among other reasons, because, once possessed, her
innocence was destroyed, and so she no longer contained that image. But Helen forgives herself for her actions in a way that Gretchen could not, and, because of this,
her kinship with nature and her ability to create are not destroyed by her lack of
innocence. It is thus possible for Faust to achieve through Helen a consummation
with nature that was impossible with Gretchen. The marriage of Helen and Faust is
celebrated in an idyllic forest grotto, and t~eir child is spoke of as "a faun with
no brute nature" (p. 198, Act Three, Arcadia) • By reenacting his relation with
Gretchen in this manner, Faust is finally freed from his need to possess nature
through the feminine, and, after Helen's death, he turns to the more masculine realms
of war and social action.
It is significant that for his last battle against nature Faust chooses the sea.
The sea is a symbol of nature in its most indifferent and alien form, nature, that
is, as Mephisto sees it. "For God separated the earth from the sea on the third ay,
and before that the sea was all" (Genesis 1:9-10). Man was given dominion over tne
fish of th sea, but never over the sea itself. In this way, the sea, as a symbol of
the primal watery chaos, represents a negation of human meaning, which is dependent
upon the existence of boundaries, particularly the boundaries of good and evil. Good
and evil were separated from each other, and so created, through the action of the
fall. In the same way God created the earth by separating it from the sea. Thus, by
further separating the earth from the sea and so creating a new earth, Faust hopes
finally to prove his likeness to God and so create meaning for his life.
My eyes were turned toward the open sea:
Its towering swell against the heaven it :Dore,
Then, shaking out its waves exultantly,
Came charging up the level stretch of shore.
This grieved me, that a haughty arrogant flood
Can cast free spirit, prizing ever right,
Through passion of the wildly kindled blood,
Into a trough of feeling's vexed despite.
So in a thousand channels creeps the sea,
Sterile itself, it spreads sterility.
It seethes and swells and streaming far and wide
Takes desolate regions in its rolling tide.
There wave on wave, by hidden power heaved,
Reigns and recedes, and nothing is achieved.
This thing can sadden me to desperation,
Wild elements in aimless perturbation!
To soar beyond itself aspired my soul:
Here would I strive, and this would I control.
(p. 220-221, Act Four,
Mountain Heights)
For more than fifty years Faust fights the sea, pushing it back inch by inch,
creating gardens and meadows, harbors and towns, "offering men a new existence." But
Faust must use Mephisto to create this paradise. By day the ditches are dug with
shovels, by night the canals are built with human sacrifice. And so, just as in his
relation to Gretchen, the closer Faust comes to God, the closer he is chained to the
devil . This opposit;on between means and end confronts Faust in the personae of
35
�Baucis and Philemon.
Faust hopes to build a lookout on their land in order to view
from above the new world that he has created, and so ignore the particular means that
were used to create it, just as earlier he had hoped to use Gretchen to comprehend
the earth spirit, while ignoring the particular fact of her seduction. Faust has
come to terms with the feminine aspect of Gretchen in his marriage with Helen, but he
still has not come to terms with her purely human aspect. That is the test before
him now.
Faust is infuriated by Baucis and Philemon because they remind him of the entire
history of his aspirations and failure. First and foremost, they remind ·raust of the
individual and physical aspects of the earth spirit that he has always be.n unable to
face. They remind him also that he need not have chosen Mephisto, by showing him . the
peaceful life of the farmer that he had rejected before taking the potion of youth
(2353-2361). The serenity of their married life reminds him of the future that he
destroyed for Gretchen, and, finally, the tolling of their church bells reminds him
of the Easter bells of fifty years ago and their promise of peace, a peace that he
has nev~r known. Faced with these gentle bu.,t unyielding judges, Faust reverts to his
former nature, gives in to impatience, and turns to force. As before, he evades tak~
ing responsibility for his actions by asking Mephisto and his henchman to evict the
old couple, and, as before, he becomes disturbed and uneasy when he is finally confronted with his destruction of life. "Commanded fast, too fast obeyed" (11382).
But this time no supernatural spirits descend to Faust to heal him, and in the smoke
of the fire Care appears • .
Why does Care appear now to Faust, but not Guilt? Care (Sorge) is defined as
sorrow, anxiety, or uneasiness. Faust spoke of her in Part One, on the night before
Easter. "Deep in the heart there dwells relentless care/ And secretly infects us
with despair ••• She always finds new masks she can employ" (644-647). Here Care masks
herself as the fear of death. Guilt in itself does not inhibit action, but fear
does. In this way Care can be seen as a sister to Gretchen's evil spirit in
"Cathedral," and she comes in a similar role, to test Faust's strength. Faust refuses to recognize the power of Care and so wins the test, but she blinds him as the
scar of the victory. When men defy gods, they cannot hope to escape unscathed. When
Jacob wrestled with the angel of God, the angel, "seeing that he could not master
him, struck him in the socket of his hip," and Jacob went limping from Peniel
(Genesis 32:26-31). In the same way Faust is branded and so set apart. So, too,
Cain was branded when he dared to defy God's judgement. Yet Faust still refuses to
yield. Hearing the approach of death in the darkness, he returns to his project with
a strengthened resolve.
But Care is a test of more than j ust Faust ' s strength . When Faust confronts
Care and demands that she leave, she refuses. For perhaps the first time in his
life1 Faust curbs his impatience.
Faust (first irate, then calmer, to himself):
Beware and speak no word of sorcery.
(11424)
This is a crucial turning point for Faust. Impatience has always been Faust's familiar; and magic, the mode of immediate mastery, is the ultimate tool of impatience.
It was by the lure of magic that Mephisto first caught Faust, and it was by Faust's
impatient pursuit of Gretchen, and his consequent use of magic as an aid in seduction, that Faust's bond to Mephisto was sealed. But, through the ruin first of
Gretchen, and then of Baucis and Philemon, Faust realized the destructive force of
magic, and through magic, of action itself. It was by the curse of patience that
Faust ~ejected the earthly and heavenly wor lds in the pact scene in Part one
(1583- 1604) . Thus, hav i ng acknowledged pat ience and r ejecte d magic, even if only
36
temporarily, these worlds become possible for him again.
Blind, and standing on the edge of this grave, Faust dreams of a new life :
T '
This is the highest wisdom that I own,
The best that mankind ever knew:
Freedom and life are earned by those alone
Who conquer them every day anew.
Surrounded by such danger, each one thrives,
Childhood, manhood, and age lead active lives.
At such a throng I would fain stare,
With free men on free ground their freedom share.
Then, to the moment I might say:
Abide, you are so fair! •••
As I presage a happiness so high,
I now enjoy the highest moment.
(11573-11586)
Here again it is evident that Faust has changed. Earlier, Faust had theoretically
sought conununion with humanity, but, faced with a given situation, he invariably
treated people merely as obje_ ts . This is evident not only in his treatment of
c
Baucis and Philemon, but also in his exploitation qf his patients during the plague,
and in his exploitation of Gretchen. Even in his final battle against the sea, Faust
was primarily concerned with himself and God, and any benefit to mankind was secondary. Here, however, Faust accepts his place within humanity as an equal among
equals and so finally comprehends the earth spirit. Yet this understanding, while
real, is only conditional. Faust is not yet able to accept man as he is, and his
acceptance rests upon his dream of a new man, purified and hardened by a new life.
Faust's ambivalence is mirrored in the language of his speech. Faust says both that
he~ enjoys the highest moment, and that "then to the moment I might say. "
In the
German, Faust uses the subjunctive ("Zurn ·A ugenblicke durft ich sagen"), and thus
Faust both enjoys the highest moment, and does not, and both loses the wager with
Mephisto, and wins it.
Mephisto also has both lost and won. Faust has died a natural death, but the
original pact is still to be fulfilled. Just as Mephisto was Faust's servant in this
life, so Faust will be his in the next. And Mephisto has the "blood-signed scroll"
to prove it. Legally, everything is clear. Yet what happens? An army of seductive
cherubs fly down from heaven, strewing roses, and Mephisto's devils flee in terror.
Caught up in lust, Mephisto do~s not notice unt il t oo late t hat t he angels have
carried away Faust's soul:
A peerless treasure, stolen shameful.ly:
The noble soul that pledged itself to me
They snatched from me, and now they moralize.
(11829- 11831)
M
ephis to c l a ims that the angels have r obbed him unjustly, and he seems to be right.
In what sense then is Faust's salvation justified?
Let us return to Genesis. After the fall, God curses the serpent and says to
him:
I will make you enemies of each other:
you and the woman,
your offspr ing and her offspring.
It will crush your head
37
�. And you will strike its heel
(3: 15)
That helped win the victory,
Helped the lofty work conclude
And this precious soul to save.
(11942 -11946 )
Compare this with the "Prologue in Heaven." There God says to Mephisto:
Man's activity can easily abate,
he soon prefers uninterrupted rest1
To give him this companion hence seems best
Who roils and must as Devil help create.
(340-343 )
Evil is given to man so that man will respond to it, and so continue to act. But why
is constant action so important? Striving, or incessantly searching for knowledge
through action, is the highest use that man can make of the gift of reason, yet it
.seems merely to exile man from God, as all action in this world necessarily involves
evil. Hence, the more man seeks to become like God through action, the less like Him
. he becomes. Yet it is the evil inherent in action that eventually brings man back to
God. That is why when God exiled man, He gave him the serpent also, and that is why
God does not hate Mephisto.
"Man errs a·s long as he will strive" (317), but "unless you err, naught can be
truly known" (p. 134, Act Two, Again on the Upper Peneus). It is by the inevitable
failure of his actions that man learns the restrictions of his reason. Through reason man abstracts himself from life, and posits himself as a god. Thus Faust,
immured in his study, felt himself to be a god in relation to the macrocosm (439).
Through the development of his reason through action, and its subsequent failure, man
is then forced to confront life, and so to realize his distance from God. Thus
Faust's involvement in life ultimately brought death to those around him. This failure to become like God through action alone forces man to recognize that, if he is to
resemble God, he must do so by other means.
In this way, striving both separates man from God and eventually brings him back
to Him. This two-fold aspect of striving explains the seeming injustice of Faust's
salvation. Faust both deserves to be saved, and he does not. In other words, just
as Faust's striving contains both constructive and destructive aspects, and just as,
because of this, Faust both loses and wins the pact, Faust is ultimately saved both
by his own actions, that is, by his striving, and by grace, that is, by the undeserved forgiveness of love. ·
This seemingly contradictory statement is explicitly brought out in the text.
When the angels reach Heaven carrying Faust's soul they sing:
Saved is the spirit kingdom's flower
From evil and the grave:
"Who ever strives with all his power,
We are allowed to save."
And if, besides, supernal love
Responded to his plight,
The blessed host comes from above
To greet him in delight .
(11934-11941)
Here it seems that Faust was saved by his striving alone, and that the power of love
merely added to his acceptance. Yet the song continues:
Loving-holy women gave
Penitent, the rose to me,
38
Here it seems that the power of love was a decisive factor in Faust's salvation.
That the army of cherubs that sweep down to battl.e Mephisto represents love is also
evident. What else would lust represent in a devil?
This two-fold aspect of Faust's salvation reflects not only a division within
Faust's life, but also within human life in general. In Part One Goethe snows us the
collision of two opposed modes of life: the mode of action, represented by Faust,
which is necessarily amoral, and the mode of purity, represente-a by Gretchen, which
can only flower when isolated from the world. These two modes could also be stated
as wordly vs. spiritual, or intellectual vs. emotional, or in any other similar way.
When brought together, the two modes inevitably destroy one another, for involvement
in the world destroys purity, and an over-scrupulous concern with a moral ideal inhibits, and so destroys, action. The opposition of these two modes is seen most
clearly in the dungeon scene, and it is the pain of their mutual destruction that
constitutes the tragedy of Part One .
Yet, as we have seen, these two modes are not as opposed as they originally
seem. For example, Faust's relation to Gretchen is inextricably composed of both
lust and love. In the same way, Faust's striving for knowledge is composed of both a
lust for power and a yearning to know God. But it is a mistake to think of one of
the modes as evil, and of one as good, and to think of their unification as merely
the inevitable mixing of good and evil on earth due to man's imperfection. Both
modes share a common origin: they seek to create, and so to express man's likeness to
God. It is through this relation to God that the two modes complement one another,
and it is through this relation that they are ultimately reconciled. It is the reconciliation of these two modes that Goethe shows us in Part Two. This unification is
seen most clearly in Faust's salvation and in the last scene in heaven, and it is the
necessary imperfection of any earthly unification that constitutes the tragedy of
Part Two.
What does it mean then for these two modes to be brought together? Let us turn
again to Genesis, and the story of the fall. Because of his action, and his
consequent knowledge of action's correlate, evil, man is condemned to till the soil
daily in pain. In this way the knowledge of evil ensures man's continuous striving.
This is the first step toward man's redemption, but it is not enough. This _striving
is striving against the world. Through action man comes to know himself, but only in
a negative manner. He knows, through failure, of his difference from God. And so
man despairs. Feeling ashamed, he denies his actions. Thus the darkest moment of
the fall is not when Eve eats the. apple. It is when Adam crawls out of hiding and
says to God: "It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit" (3 :12-13 ) .
Yet through woman man is given the knowledge not only of evil, but also of good.
woman too was cursed in the fall. She was condemned to long for man, yet always to
be ruled by him, and to bear him his children in pain. In this way the knowledge of
good and evil brings forth love. It is only after the fall that the bond between man
and woman is consummated. Through the fall man is condemned to strive, and to fail,
and woman is condemned to love, and to fail, but through their union a new life is
brought into being. This is the second step toward man's redemption. Through the
creative marriage of action and love, man realizes his likeness to God and so is released from despair.
Thus, if there is hope for man's redemption, it must come through a synthesis of
action and love. The play ends with a stanza on the Eternal-Feminine because for the
last five hundred pages we have been given the story of the Eternal-Masculine. It is
39
�Bibliography
the combination of the two that is important. As Aristotle states in the Ethics, man
bouncas from one unbalanced vice to another, continually trying to come closer to the
mean.
In the same way the eternal balancing of action and love brings man closer to
the ideal that he seeks, whether that be called God or Nature. If there is a God
worthy of the name in heaven, he will not condemn man for trying, and so failing.
Apostle, Hippocrates. tr. Aristotle: The Nichomachean Ethics, D. Reidel Pub. Co.,
1975
\ J
I
What is destructible
Is but a parable;
What fails ineluctably,
The undeclarable,
Here it was seen,
Here it was action1
The Eternal-Feminine
Lures to perfection.
(12104-12111 )
Arndt, Walter. tr. & Hamlin, Cyrus, ed. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: Faust.
Critical Edition, W w. Norton & Co., 1976
.
Bloom, Allan, tr. The Republic of Plato.
Norton
Basic Books, Inc., 1968
Doherty, Chava. "Goethe's Faust: A Book of Life."
1984
Gregory, Horace. tr. Ovid: The Metamorphoses.
Senior Essay, St. John's College,
Viking Press, 1958
Hunt, Margaret and Stern, James. tr. The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales, Pantheon
Books, Random House, Inc., 1944
It is no trifle to put forth in one's eighty-second year what one conceived in
one's twentieth, and to clothe such an internal, living skeleton with ligaments,
flesh, and skin, and on top of that to wrap a few mantle folds around the finished
product that it may altogether remain an evident riddle, delight men on and on, and
give them something to work on.
Goethe, letter to Zelter, 1831 5
Jones, Alexander. ed. The Old Testament of the Jerusalem Bible.
1966
Kaufman, Walter. tr. Goethe's Faust • . Doubleday & Co., 1961
Ryan, John K. tr. The Confessions of st . Augustine.
1960 ·
Wayne, Philip. tr. Goethe: Faust/Part Two.
Footnotes
1
For an example of the myth of Lethe, see Plato , The Republic, Book Ten,
620e-62lb, p. 303 in the Bloom tr.
2
All quotations from the section of Part Two not translated by Kaufman are from
the following edition: Philip Wayne, tr., Goethe: Faust/Part Two, Penguin Books,
1959. As this edition does not include line numbers, all citations will be referred
to by page, act and scene.
3
For an earlier version of their story see: OVid, The Metamorphoses, Book
Eight, 11.670- 724, p. 234-23 7 in the Horace Gregory tr.
4
Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Book Two, Chaps. 6-9, p. 28-34 in the
Apostle tr.
Kaufman, Introduction, p. 11
40
Image Books, Doubleday and Co.,
Penguin Books Ltd., 1959
Oh, that at long last you had the courage for once to yield yourselves to your
impressions, to let yourselves be delighted, let yourselves be moved, let yourselves
be elevated, yes, to let yourselves be taught and inspired and encouraged for something great1 only do not always think that everything is vain if it is not some abstract thought or ideal.
6
Goethe, Conversation with Eckermann, 1827
5
Doubleday and Co.,
41
�Perception and Analysis in Understanding Being
Aristotle acknowledges that some subjects are beyond definition in this quote ·
from The Physics,
Karel Bauer
As far as trying to prove that Nature exists, this would be ridiculous, for
it is evident that there are many such things; and to try to prove what is
evident through what is not evident is the mark of a man who cann~t judge
what is known through itself from what is known not through itsel~.
We perceive through various mechanisms of the soul which we group together under
the terms "senses" and "intelligence". Through the cooperation of these mechanisms
we move toward an understanding which Aristotle posits to be the perfect harmony between ourselves and our environment. This motion toward understanding manifests itself in what we call analysis. Analysis is the process through which we interpret
our experiences. For instance, in order to designate a piece of our instantaneous
experience as an object, we must distinguish that piece from its environment, using
whatever criteria we have accepted as valid for such a process. we assign the object
a symbol;· that is, a name, and by so doing provide it a place in our memory. Then we
can begin to consider and discuss it. r't seems clear that in discussion we cannot
exchange actual experiences or objects, but only our representations of them provided
through words: language is the exchange of words, not objects. Since this is the
case, any understandings which we arrive at through discussion depend for their accuracy upon our understanding of how the names, or words, represent the objects being
discussed. Can words represent the essence of objects, or only some collection of
their attributes? Can we as readers understand the essence, the Being of an object
described through mere strict interpretation of the words, or must we provide some
factor entirely of our own experience if we are to achieve true understanding of what
is being communicated? The latter is my assertion in this paper. I maintain that in
naming and discussing an object· we cannot represent the essence of its Being to ourselves, but only a collection of attributes representing facets of its Being, leaving
some other part of us to provide the sense of the Being's essence. This may be the
problem of analytical understanding of which I am aware when I read Aristotle. This
disparity between our experience of Being and our ability to discuss Being is the
subject of this paper.
That there are problems in trying to discuss Being is evident at the outset. As
Aristotle puts it in the Metaphysics:
And so it remains something to be looked for,
from of old and now and forever, and thus
something that offers no way out: What is Being? 1
The problem of defining Being is the longest standing and deepest concern of philosophy. The problem, as I see it, is centered around the fact that our processes for
developing understanding are built upon logic which is an analytical process of
examination. Analysis is defined as: a separating or breaking up of any whole into
its parts, especially with an examination of these parts to find out their nature,
proportion, function, and interrelationship. 2 The breaking or separating of the
whole, analysis, necessitates the loss of the whole as a whole in our minds, and this
loss is the key to the problem of defining Being. When we discuss Being, or read
Plato or Aristotle discussing Being, we are dealing with explanations of parts, or
attributes of Being, not with the whole that is Being. But Being is somehow more
than the collection of its attributes, it seems, in fact, to be beyond definition.
42
How, then, are we to understand the attempts of philosophy to define Being?
If
breaking up a subject into parts is the only method we have for developing understanding of it, what is it that allows us to achieve an understanding of the subject
as a whole? Or can we ever achieve such an understanding?
The recognition of Being simply as an unqualified, universal continuum does not
appear to be the understanding that Plato and Aristotle are trying to communicate.
Being is completely universal--the most pervasive, underlying fact of our universe
and of any expefience. As one author put it, "The [any] thing is, and it is, merely
because it is."
Anything that we can call a thing partakes of Being, and partakes
of Being to the same degree that any other thing does. All things that are, are
equally. It is not the Being of an object that defines that object.
In order to
recognize an object as an object, we must see more than just Being, for everything in
our field of perception is equally. In order to recognize a rock, for instance, we
must provide some kind o°"f"definition which will allow us to differentiate its Being
from the whole, continuous Being of our perception. If we do not make this differentiation, if we simply experience the whole of our perception without interpretation, we are experiencing something very basic, perhaps even eternal. But to what
end is this apparently unsophisticated experience? The aim of Western attempts to
define Being does not seem to be merely saying, "this is a universal experience", but
brings the universal experience, somehow, into the realm of rational understanding.
Thus to say, "Being is the primary factor that underlies all experience," is, in a
sense, useless. As Aristotle says at the beginning of the Physics,
For if Being is only one and is one in this manner, no principle exists at
all, seeing that a principle is a principle of some thing or things. Indeed, to inquire wh~ther Being is one in this manner is l~e arguing
against any other paradox maintained for the sake of argument •••
The paradox that Aristotle speaks of is this: to state that Being is one and only
one, immovable and universal, presupposes any analysis, and leaves the inquiry wi th
nowhere to go. For Aristotle, understanding is equat~d with knowing the first principles of a thing; if we posit that Being to be so encompassing that it in effect has
no principles, we've made it unknowable (this does not contradict the paper's position, which is, that though Being is the universal experience, it also possesses many
aspects ) . We already are aware of Being in the sense of its universality. we acknowledge that universality every time we say that something is, which we do
regularly. Our pursuit is not to recognize that everything is, but to understand
something about that isness.
This is why analysis comes into the picture. In order to try to understand what
Being is and in order to be able to talk about it, we break our experience of Being
into parts, or attributes of Being. Perhaps the first act of analysis we perform is
to select an object so that we can limit our experience of Being and consider an object as a whole having or representing Being, rather than Being enveloping us, for we
have already seen that to unqualifiedly experience Being as an enveloping force is
not und1>rstanding as we are here concerned with it. We qualify our perception in
order to be able to think about it.
We define it somewhat, by representing it
43
�through an object. This allows us to consider it as something distinct from our-·
selves and from our environment as a whole; a necessary step if we are to be able to
maneuver it as a conceptual object, and the first step of our analysis. From this
point analysis continues, and we assign more definitions and create more distinctions
as our attempt to understand or communicate increasingly specific ideas or aspects
grows. We have acted upon our ability to separate and examine specific aspects,
yielding specific understandings, but in so doing, we have lost a sense of the initial experience which prompted the whole reaction (analysis). This loss is inevitable: the experience itself was an instantaneous event. What we are dealing with
afterwards is our attempt to represent and interpret the experience; to apply some
kind of reason to it.
In his discussion of the "qualities by which truth is attained", Aristotle describes five distinct functions or regions of the mind, each responsible for separate
kinds of understanding. They are: Pure Science, Art, Practical Wisdom, Theoretical
Wisdom, and Intelligence. Four of these involve rational processes. The fifth, Intelligence, is a non-rational function and an element necessary to each of the other
four; it is the function which apprehends the principles fundamental to reason, and
is the function responsible for our perception. Of the role of Intelligence in our
understanding, Aristotle says,
It is intelligence, not reasoning, that has as its objects primary terms
and definitions as well as ultimate particulars ••• For it is particular
facts that form the starting points or principles for the goal of
action ••• Hence one must have p~rception of particular facts, and this perception is intelligence. Intelligence, therefore, is both starting point
and end; for demons~rations start with ultimate terms, and have ultimate
facts as their ends • .
I interpret this to mean that it is Intelligence that is . responsible for our experience of (perception of) an object or of Being. The quality of our Intelligence determines the quality of our understanding in experience; however, analysis of experience is a process of reason, not of Intelligence. Therefore our ability to connect
these functions so that they may influence each other is crucial to the development
of our understanding. If we are to grow in-our understanding,we must integrate the
information from our reasoning faculties into the function responsible for perception, our Intelligence. ·
·
We have seen that to bring Being from. the point of pure experience to the realm
of reason ·requires analysis. We have,. in ef feet, dismantled our experience and examined its various parts seeking a greater understanding, a deeper view, than our
initial experience provided us with. But what we're now left with is a pile of parts
and our respective understanding of them. This is not the understanding of the whole
that we were striving for. The endeavor is to achieve perception with understanding,
not to perceive, then shatter our perception into a swarm of individual understandings.
In order to do this we must develop the function responsible for our
perception, Intelligence. Somehow we must effect a resynthesis of the fragments of
our perception that will allow us to re-experience Being with deeper understanding of
its nature.
A simple reversal of the process that allowed us to dismantle our experience and
examine each of its parts is not sufficient to provide a recombination truly descriptive of Being. We must also provide the sense of inunediacy that was lost when we
represented our experience of Being as an object, in order to analyze it. As a simple demonstration of this necessity, let us consider the analysis of a fragment of a
poem by E. E. Cummings:
.44
o sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the doting fingers of
purient philosoph9rs pinched
and poked thee •••
we may count its words (17). We may try to discern its meter, the individual meanings of its words, the significance of any misspelled words, its spacing--there are
any number of criteria that we can apply in the attempt to reach a deeper understanding of the poem--and doubtlessly they all can contribute to understanding. But we
cannot assemble the bits of information determined through our analysis into a group
and claim that this assembly constitutes our deeper understanding of the poem. Reading a list of facts, however pertinent, will not give us the feeling that we understand the poem, and we obviously do not expect this. Instead, having analyzed, we
reread the poem, and our new perception which results is a step towards the understanding that we seek.
This new perspective is not the culmination of our endeavor--the process of understanding is an ongoing one (for we say that no person knows all about anything).
This is however a peak in the process; it is a return to the starting point, but at a
higher level. The process here described can be imagined as a spiral path; in order
for our understanding to grow, rather than remain at a certain level, we must reanalyze our newly-gotten perception, and the process continues, at times, very quickly.
This flux of our understanding is, I think, what makes attempts to define Being,
and to understand attempts to define Being, so difficult. Written communication allows us to consider many attributes of Being, but minimizes the possibility of dealing with Being as a whole. At the beginning of the Metaphysics Aristotle says,
The investigation of truth is in one sense difficult, in another easy. A
sign of this is the fact that neither can one attain it adequately, nor do
all fail, but each says something about the nature of things; and while
each of us contributes nothing or little to the truth, a considerable
amount of it results from all of our contributions ••• to have some of the
whole truth, and not be able to attain the part that we are aiming at, this
indicates that it is difficult. Perhaps the cause of this difficulty,
which may exist in two ways, is in us, and not in the facts. For as the
eyes of bats are to the light of day, so is the intelleq_f of the soul to
the objects which in their nature are most evident of all.
The investigation of truth that Aristotle addresses here, he later in the same passage equates with the investigati9n of Being:
Accordingly, as each thing is related to its existence, so is it related
to its truth.
Aristotle's awareness of this difficulty of defining Being, coupled with his perspective on the functions of the soul described earlier, seems to be responsible for the
structure of the Physics. The method of this book is described in its first chapter,
and is equivalent to the process of analysis discussed in the first part of this paper. In Aristotle's words,
The natural way to proceed is from what is more known and clearer to us to
what is by nature clearer and more known ••• So we should proceed in this
manner, namely, from what is less clear by naIBre, though clearer to us, to
what is by its nature clearer and more known.
45
�Through this process we are able to examine aspects of Being, in the case of Physics,
the Being of objects, without inunediately having to deal with the overwhelming fact
of their nature, the Being itself. An understanding of Being is what we are working
towards and what, for Aristotle, is "By its nature clearer and more known." In order
to achieve this understanding, we must analyze and, as we have seen, we must integrate the results of our analysis with our perception. This is an essential step in
our understanding, and it is here that I see one of the major roles of the Prime Mover. As quoted earlier in this paper, Aristotle considers it useless to attempt to
prove "what is known through itself through what is known not through itself" (this
is not a contradiction of the process of analysis described above, in which the movement is from the superficially evident to the self-evident) • It seems clear that
this quote applies especially to Being, which is by its nature most known through
itself .
Hence Aristotle posits the Prime Mover as an attempt to represent this
self-evident factor, Being. The Prime Mover is actually actualized, the purest form
of Being expressible in words or the idealized experience of Being. Perhaps positing
the Prime Mover allows Aristotle to keep a representation of the essence of Being as
nearly available as possible while discussing attributes of Being. This proximity is
definitely desirable when we remember that, in order to complete each cycle of our
developing understanding, we must re-experience that which we wish to understand.
The position of the Prime Mover at the end of the Physics is a strong one, for in a
sense, trying to conceive of the Prime Mover induces us to re-experience. We can, it
is true, attempt to create a sense of Prime Mover in our imagination, but this sense
will not be effective in creating an understanding which will be in agreement with
the world to which it is applied. For, says Aristotle,
Imagining lies within our power whenever we wish, but in forming opinions
[and understandingsl we are not free: we cannot escape the alternative 9f
1
falsehood or truth.
We cannot escape having to apply our understandings to the world--this is what they
are for. The Prime Mover is real experience, idealized. The only way we can really
grasp it is to experience. We can go no further in analyzing Being from our old
starting point.
qur capacity for analysis is .what allows us to develop understanding; indeed,
this capacity is considered to be the quality that separates man from the animals.
The goal of any analysis we perform is the growth of our understanding, which growth
depends on our ability to integrate the results of analyses with our experience.
This remarkable process in which we are engaged, constantly experiencing, analyzing,
integrating, and re- experiencing, is highly active (earlier I likened it to an upward
spiral). It is possible that in my attempts to discuss this process, I have made it
appear more static than I conceive it to be. This stasis is, in part, an inherent
problem in written communication: a problem I hope to have elicited in this paper.
As stasis is the antithesis of active understanding, writers of philosophy must be
especially aware of this difficulty of creating experience through words. In order
to understand what is written, a reader must bring to the reading something beyond
what the writer can provide. As readers we must bring our own experience in such a
way that is consciously applied to the reading. Only then can the synthesis of active understanding occur.
In the final part of this paper I would like to explore some implications of
this active understanding as Aristotle has written about it in De Anima.
As our understanding develops, we become aware of increasingly fine delineations between objects and experiences. our awareness of the texture and detail of our environment grows. Initially, perhaps, we become aware of objects. Next, ourselves.
Then our attentions shift to the relationships which exist between ourselves and the
objec~s •. As.we become increasingly aware of the complexities of these relationships,
the distinctions we are able to draw between self and object become subtler. It becomes difficult to say where "I" ends and where "it" begins.
The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable
of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be ~~tentially identical
in character with its object without being the object.
With the continuing growth of our understanding this potential identity of character
is becoming actual identity. From relationships initially vague due to poor delineation, objects which appeared to become recognizable as distinct entities are again
becoming less distinct because of the difficulty of distinguishing between mind and
object. The process of analysis that initially seemed to be happening in our minds
about their objects, now seems to actively involve both our minds and their objects
equally. What seemed to be an interval between mind and object, we now begin to see
as our experience of thinking.
Mind is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects are. For
in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks and what is
thought are identical; for speculative knowledge and its object are identical. •• In the case of these which contain matter each of the objects of
thought is only potentially present. It folriws that while they will not
have mind in them, mind may. yet be thinkable.
We are drawing ever closer to a complete experience of understanding, an experience
so total that we are aware of the whole of our perception. When this occurs completely we are aware of every facet of the object of our perception and of our relationship to it. There is nothing that remains outside of our awareness. Analysis
has become synthesis. We have embraced, or been embraced, by all. At this point our
thought becomes its object, the two merge, and understanding occurs in the truest
sense. The object and understanding have become one, and as such, the understanding
defines the object entirely. This, for Aristotle, is the culminating point of the
mind for which we have been striving; this is Actual Knowledge. As he says,
In every CfSe the mind which is actively thinking is the object of which
it thinks.
Mind, thinking itself in the state of true understanding, has become equatable with
the Prime Mover,
When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what
it is and nothing ~gre: this alone is immortal and eternal ••• and without
it nothing thinks.
Thinking, both speculative and practical, is regarded as akin to a form of
perceiving; for in one case as well 's the other the soul discriminates and
1
is cognizant of something which is.
46
47
�A Translation of a Chorus from
Aristophanes' The Frogs
FOOTNOTES
1
Aristotle's Metaphysics, The Peripatetic Press, Grinell, Iowa; 1969
Hippocrates G. Apostle
Mark Manry
Trans.
2The Webster's New World Dictionary; 1972
3Aristotle's Physics, The Peripatetic Press, Grinell, Iowa; 1969
G. Apostle 193a3
4
The Phenomenology of the Spirit, G. Hegel
5
6
Trans. Hippocrates
Physics, 185a5 .
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Bobbs-Merrill Publishing, Indianapolis; 1962
Trans. Martin Oswald 1139b15
7
Ibid, 1143b
8 100 Selected Poems, E. E. Cummings, Grove Press, Inc., New York; 1923
11Aristotle's be Anima, Random House, New York; 1941
Ibid, 427a18
Ibid, 429a14
14 b'd 430a3
I l. '
15
Ibid, 431b17
16
Step forward!
See that you exalt, singing with noble voice,
The Savior Goddess,
Avowed protector of our city now and forever,
Even if Thorykion does not wish it.
{ant.
Trans. Richard McKeon
427bl8
Demeter, queen of holy, secret rites,
Stand by to assist us;
Preserve your band of singers and dancers.
Grant me safe playing and dancing
The whole day.
(str.
Let me proffer myriad jests,
And many weighty sayings, too,
Sporting and mocking worthily for your festival,
And victoriously, to be crowned with the wreath
Of the victor.
lOPhysics, 194a16
13
{str.
Come now! Sing anew in praise to the harvest queen, the goddess
Demeter; honor her with sacred songs.
#5
9Metaphysics, 993b
12
Go now, all men!
Into the blooming bosom of the meadow,
Dancing, mocking, playing, and jeering;
For there has been enough partaking.
(ant.
Now invite the fair god here with hymns,
This chorus' fellow traveler.
Ibid, 430a23
Highly honored Iacchos,
Most pleasant member found at the festival,
Accompany the goddess here. .
And show that you have completed the great course
Without weariness.
Iacchos, friend of dancers,
Guide me!
For you have torn this my sandal
And my ragged garment
To make me silly and shabby.
And you have contrived this
So that we may play and dance
Without loss?
Iacchos, friend of dancers,
Guide me!
48
(a.
(b.
49
c
�OD. Poetic Recognition
David Amirthanayagam
The essential moment in poetic experience--both for poet and listener, though I
will have to speak for the latter until I am a poet--is a moment of recognition.
Poetic recognition begins in a simple way. Aristotle, in the Poetics, explains
that:
The experience of learning things is highly enjoyable, not only for
philosophers but for other people as well, only their share in it is limited; when they enjoy seeing images, therefore, it is because as they
look at them they have the experience of learning and reasoning out what
each thing represents, concluding, for example, that "this figure is so
and so"; for if the image depicts something one has not seen before, the
pleasure it gives will not be that of an imitation but will c~me from its
workmanship or colouring or some other such source. (1448b4)
We like to recognize what things represent. But these words are not as simple
as they might seem: works of art, whether made with colours, tones, movements,
words, sticks and stones or anything else, re-present objects or experiences to us.
As such we can re-cognize them--that is, rethink them, apprehend them afresh, so that
in some sense we see them for the first time. At least we never see them in the same
way again. A professor once led me through the original Italian of a single tercet
in the second canto of Dante's Inferno, at the place where Virgil has revived the
pilgrim's wilted spirit with a story of three gracious ladies in heaven.
Here
translated, gamely but miserably, into English, Dante writes that he recovers:
As little flowers, which in a frosty night
Droop and shut tight, when the sun shines on them
Stretch and look up, erect upon their stalks.
(II 127-9)
He thudded down, his gear clanged on his body,
and blood bathed his long hair, fair as the Graces',
braided, pinched by twists of silver and gold.
Think how a man might tend a comely shoot
of olive in a lonely place, well-watered,
so that it flourished, being blown upori
by all winds, putting out silvery green leaves,
till suddenly a great wind in a storm
uprooted it and cast it down: so beautiful
had been the son of Panthoos, Euphorbos,
when Menelaos killed him and bent over
to take his gear.
(50-6 0)
Bernard Knox quoted this passage in his lecture The Iliad: ~ war Poem, and there
pointed out that if one had ever seen olive trees in Greece, which only reveal the
silver-gold underside of their leaves when swayed by wind, one would realize how apt
is Homer's image, how subtle its pathos.
.
At the finely crafted close to the finely crafted fifth book of The Odyssey, we
find Odysseus the great tactician on shore in Phaiakia, half-drowned, having long
since shed the tangled sea-cloak of Kalypso and forsaken his raft, and having loosed
Ina's veil; he deliberates on his course of action, how to find shelter from the cold
and the wild beasts. Presently,
He made his way to a grove above the water
on open ground, and crept under twin bushes
grown from the same spot--olive and wild olive-a thicket proof against the stinging wind
or Sun's blaze, fine soever the needling sunlight;
nor could a downpour wet it through, so dense
those plants were interwoven. Here Odysseus
tunnelled, and raked together with his hands
a wide bed--for a fall of leaves was there;
Odysseus' heart laughed when he saw his leaf-bed,
and down he lay, heaping more leaves above him.
A man in a distant field, no hearthfires near,
will hide a fresh brand in his bed of embers
to keep a spark alive for the next day;
so in the leaves Odysseus hid himself.
I have many times seen flowers open up at dawn, but never again in the same way after
hearing the music of Dante's Italian. Similarly, during Maryland's splendid summer
lightning storms, I find it second nature--literally--that some of King Lear's tempestuous invectives, or perhaps Homeric epithets from Fitzgerald's Iliad ("Zeus who
delights in thunder") weave their way into the sea bolts, seen and heard.
I shall illustrate the case where the "image depicts something one has not seen
before," by invoking Homer and his olive trees.
At the beginning of Book XVII of the Iliad, young Euphorbos, son of Panthoos,
the first to hit Patroklos though Hektor won the glory, comes forward to challenge
Menelaos, who is now defending the body of Akhilleus' beloved. They exchange the
spine-chilling taunts that so personalize the encounters in the Iliad--the elder angered by the younger's vanity and animal audacity, the younger made bold by thoughts
of revenge for his brother, killed by Menelaos in the bloom of his manhood and marriage.
But there is never any doubt as to the outcome; only listen to Homer's
simile, as Atreid~s' spear hits home:
The last line translates ~OA.ouc:n KaA.0\jJcno : so in one graceful stroke, we see
what the nine years have been for him with Kalypso, at once a protective covering
from danger but at the same time a shroud that hid his inner fire. And now, as ever,
above and around him, the intertwined boughs of a deeper love constitute his true
home and safety, and are ready at last to reappear: olive and wild olive, Penelope
and Odysseus.
When he is finally carried in asleep to Ithaka, he is met on the beach by Athena
in the guise of a shepherd, who later prepares him amongst her caresses for his
upcoming ordeal with the suitors. The place where he lands is described in this
somehow recognizable way:
50
51
Phorkys, the old sea baron, has a cove
here in the realm of Ithaka; two points
�of high rock, breaking sharply, hunch around it,
making a haven from the plunging surf
that gales at sea roll shoreward. Deep inside,
at mooring range, good ships can ride unmoored.
There, on the inmost shore, an olive tree
throws its wide boughs over the bay...
(XIII 96-103 )
Two high points of rock encircle and protect a bay from the sea, so that ships can go
unmoored within their arms; on the beach, an olive tree spreads its protective
boughs. Is this an image of Ithaka as it ought to be, with its lord and lady present?
And then they meet, after the suitors have been disposed of. The decisive--but
not the first--act of recognition between them involves a certain bed Odysseus made,
and Penelope claims to have moved, much to Odysseus ' surprise and anger. He himself
describes how he made it out of a certain kind of tree:
An old trunk of olive
grew like a pillar on the building plot,
and I laid out our bedroom round that tree,
lined up the stone walls, built the walls and roof,
gave it a doorway and smooth-fitting doors.
Then I lopped off the silvery leaves and branches,
hewed and shaped that stump from the roots up
into a bedpost, drilled it, let it serve
as model for the rest. I planed them all,
inlaid them all with silver, gold and ivory,
and stretched a bed between--a pliant web
of oxhide thongs dyed crimson.
There's our sign!
I know no more.
Could someone · else ' s hand
have sawn that trunk and dragged .the frame away?
(XXIII 190 -204 )
Perhaps we understand why, though exhausted, Odysseus' heart laughed at the sight of
those two olive shrubs and his bed of leaves on Phaiakia. Their secret revealed,
Penelope and Odysseus embrace, and re-knit their worn hearts' web, tell~ng tales and
making sweet love through Athena's magic length of night.
Now I have never seen an olive tree--or at least never recogn'ized one. When I
am at last introduced to one, I doubt I shall be at a loss for words.
Let us now consider a different, deeper kind of poetic recognition, not simply
that "this figure is so and so". I began by speaking of a "moment", because I think
this kind of recognition takes place in a moment. We remember, though, that moments
are living, supple, hard to measure quanta of time: the literal moment it takes for
Odysseus' foot to splash in Eurykleia' s basin in Book XIX of The Odyssey involves
many many lines of poetry, including a digression about a hunting trip, while very
few lines--a moment of poetry--relate nine years of Odysseus' detainment on Ogygia.
To aid in this discussion let us enlist Aristotle again, this time from the
Metaphysics. Hare he aays:
a
T W ]J 2\ 1 y p
\)
( ,
~
.,,
Tl
a 0x n ,
fl
'TT 0 1 fll W
V
"'
~\
~
VOU S'
l1
i \J
TE;X \JT)
T~
l\
l')
'TT 0 1 0
UV T l
OUV <l lJ lS TlS'
(1025b22-3)
Thia is the Loeb translation, with my alternate readings in brackets: "For in the
52
case of things produced [poems ] the principle of motion [ first cause, origin] (either
mind or art [skill, cunning] or some kind of potency [power, strength, force, meaning]) is in the producer [poet ] ." I could describe the moment of poetic recognition
as C_;>extensive with the apprehension of these . a pxal, whether VO US, TEX\)n,
or ouvaµ 1~' within the poem.
- There are several reasons why I shall not. These three are well-chosen terms--I
can't imagine three better--but I do not in principle find a categorical approach
satisfactory. One good reason is that I am talking about the essential moment in
poetic experience, and a reader never experiences one of these principles without one
of the others. If one finds VO VS' or mind in a work, for example, perhaps in the form
of an argument or a philosophy, this necessarily implies craft. After all, if a poet
had something to say in the form of an argument, he would (or should) have said i t ,
and not wr"itten a poem. Readers of Plato's Dialogues can spend a lifetime discussing
the relationship between philosophy and art as expressed ~ these very dialogues', a
form of writing which Aristotle mentions in the Poetics among kinds of mimes that
have not acquired a common name (a447b8-9 ) . Further, if a reader thrills to the power of force of meaning ( o uv a µ t S"J enmeshed in a poet's words, he never fails to admire as well the poet's skill at his craft.
Finally, if one comes to know a work of art through the mind, craft and power
within it--whatever their ultimate source--one has come to know something in much the
same way that one comes to know a person. And if one does not subject people one
knows to such a categorical analysis, why should poems one loves be so deserving?
~hink of Odysseus, for example:
to know him in terms of . vous; , · T £_x vn , and cS u vau u" ·
i s t.o know him well, but they are not in him as distinct characteristics rather he
is_ a living, acting mixture of these elements, together with traces. of other ingredients that will forever wreck our best-laid schemes.
Getting to know someone, well enough to recognize him or his handiwork, clearly
involves getting to know oneself, because of the similarity in natures. The same can
be true of a poem. The deeper kind of poetic recognition I am addressing often involves seeing oneself, or an element of one's thought or experience, reflected in the
work or its author. The poem becomes a mirror; as such, it allows us to see ourselves, in great detail or perhaps in a glass darkly. And when it becomes a mirror,
a poem can show us ne~ things, possibilities hidden beyond our minds' corners, as a
glass held to an open door can reveal great secrets. But the sun's unexpected reflection may blind us.
we should also note that the relationship between poem and listener is not one
sided, for the poem needs us, in our attentiveness and love, to give it life. We
understand why identifying with a poem, or with a character or with its author, is
such a wonderful way into the poem's landscape, because one then becomes part of the
poem itself--literally one of it~ own metaphors.
Dante brings this discussion to bear in unique ways on canto XXVI of the
Paradiso. Here the pilgrim meets Adam, described metaphorically as an "animal under
cover" (97 ) . The first father begins their meeting by saying he can:
discern what you wish better
Than you can the things you see most clearly;
Because I see it in the true mirror
Which makes itself the image of other things
While nothing makes itself the image of him.
(10 4-8 )
Adam is usually taken to be referring to God as this true mirror. He then goes on to
list the pilgrim's questions and then answer them in the wrong order. Now two of
these answers have no Biblical authority; when asked how long it had been since he
53
�r
was exiled from the Garden, he responds first by saying how long he remained in Hell:
From that place whence your lady brought Virgil,
I longed for this assembly while the sun
Revolved four thousand three hundred and two years;
These extracts follow in his conclusion:
[The translator's ] task, minute by minute and hour by hour, is not the
invention of a beautiful imitation--and did not Remy de Gourmont say that
the imitation of a beautiful thing is always ugly?--but the effacement of
himself, so far as may be, before the text ••• The translator's mind is an
empty room in which the verses float before him, surrounded as it were by
what he has extracted, as possibly relevant, from the half-irrelevancies
of dictionaries and the confusing propositions of commentators. The moment comes--sooner rather than later, later rather than sooner, according
to the difficulty (for him) of the passage--when he sees through the
original to the matter--the actual objects--of the original.
It is at
that moment that his own.,words form, and he has to take what he is given
and to say what he sees.
(118-20)
and then when answering how long he had actually lived in the Garden, he relates:
On the mountain which rises highest above the waves,
I was, counting my pure life and the other,
From the first hour until the hour which follows
The sixth hour, when the sun passes meridian.
(139-42)
Strangely enough, after Dante reaches limbo, "that place whence your lady
brought Virgil," he spends the rest of the Inferno, save four lines at the end, in
Hell; in other words, four thousand three hundred and six lines minus four, or ~our
thousand three hundred and two. And the time Dante spends in the Earthly Paradise is
3
from dawn until the sun reaches the meridian, or six hours.
Clearly, Dante (poet
and pilgrim) is identifying himself with Adam in some way, and if he represents
Everyman, so do we. The question forms, is this (heretical) identification meant to
be hidden, except from the eyes of those who care to untangle his numerical knots?
And who is a better candidate for being that "true mirt'or" than Dante himself, that
cagey poet?
We must look further for a way of elucidating poetic recognition.
If not
Aristotle, then to whom do we have recourse in our still dark forest, where the "sun
4
is speechless 11 ?
Fortunately, we have a wonderful and neglected resource, provided
by people who claim the most intimate relationship in all poetry. These people are
translators of poetry, from verse in one language to verse in another, and our resource is their experience, as related in Translator's Introductions. I shall let
them speak for themselves; see how my "moment of poetic recognition" comes to life.
c. H. Sisson, a recent British translator of Dante, describes an early encounter:
the first sight of Dante, for one who catches a glimpse from afar, is of
a tailor narrowing his eyes to thread a needle, or a gaggle of cranes
stretched across the sky. That does not give you a style to imitate; it
gives you a perception of the maximum which can be done, in a few words,
to evoke a physical presence. The lesson from this is , silence: t her e
is certainly no encouragement to produce °5 few more pages of verse for
the next reading, or the next poetry prize.
Later, we hear that
In my experience, there is an identifiable moment when the translator can
first say: I can translate a particu.l ar poet. Until that moment, all is
uncertain ••• What might be called the subjective authorization to translate Lucretius came to me on the bus between Avignon and Tarascon : •• The
phenomenon is as definite as that of writing a poem: more consciously
prepared, perhaps, but finally as spontaneous . After that, the ~our~e ~f
the labour before one is clear. Through whatever morass of linguistic
and other scholarship you may pass before it is finished you kno~ th~t,
as the meaning clarifies itself line by line and page by page, it w~ll
take on itsell that newly discovered form to which no further reflection
can be given.
54
I feel that not only translators are privileged with this kind of experience. All
good listeners strive for the same kind of intimacy of awareness and recognition that
Sisson describes.
Allen Mandelbaum, in the introduction to his rendering of Virgil's Aeneid,
speaks of a journey through his past associations with Virgil, and the influence on
him of two other poets, Giuseppe Ungaretti and Dante himself, until he finds "the
path that opens when the guides, for whom one has been grateful, fall away or say: 'I
crown and mitre you over yourself. 1118
Robert Fitzgerald doesn't seem to write Translator's Introductions. I like to
think that this is because he sees a translation of his as itself an introduction--li terally a leading within.
It might be instructive to look at two translations. The passage I have selected is the closing eight Latin lines of the Aeneid.
Aeneas has just recognized
Pallas' armour on warlike Turnus, supplicant at his feet; here follow Allen
Mandelbaum's lines:
And when his eyes drank in this plunder, this memorial of brutal grief,
Aeneas, aflame with rage--his wrath was terrible--cried:
"How can you
who wear the spoils of my dear comrade now escape me? It is Pallas who
strikes, who sacrifices you, who takes this payment from your shameless
blood." Relentless, he sinks his sword into the chest of Turnus. His
limbs fell slack with chill; and with a moan his life, resentful, fled to
Shades below.
Notice that Mandelbaum reproduces Virgil's sudden change of tense in the middle of
the narrative ("relentless, he sinks his sword ••• ).
The present tense makes the
scene and the thrusting act strangely present to us, but it never fails to surprise
us as part of the narrative. We remember that in Homer, when used in the narrative,
it is employed strictly in the service of analogy:
collecting all his might the way an eagle narrows himself to dive through
shady cloud and strike a lamb or cowering hare: so Hektor lanced ahead
and swung his whetted blade;
(Illiad XXII 307-11)
and:
Conspicuous as the evening star that comes, amid the first in heaven, at
full of night, and stands most lovely in the west, so shone in sunlight
the fine-pointed spear Akhilleus poised in his right hand.
(317-20)
55
�My thoughts on the subject are not as mature as I would like, but this is how
the question forms: by introducing the present tense into the narrative, does Virgil
intentionally place his story, and send his heroes, into the world of analogy and
simile, that translucent, shimmering shadow land? Here the spirits of the poet could
remain undefiled, escaping the relentless run of time and history, which even got
Rome in the end.
I agree this is fanciful; Allen Mandelbaum simply says "there is no uniform explanation for these shifts (of tense] in Virgil; but each instance counts in its
place and is motivated there."
Mr. Mandelbaum himself says the project of translating Virgil came out of his
greater, overarching concern with translating Dante. Here now is a version of the
above lines rendered by a translator who travelled Virgil's own route--through Homer:
For when the sigh came home to him,
Aeneas raged at the relic of his anguish
Worn by this man as trophy. Blazing up
And terrible in · his anger, he called out:
"You in your plunder, torn from one of mine,
Shall I be robbed of you? This wound will come
From Pallas: Pallas makes this offering
And from your criminal blood exacts his due."
He sank his blade in fury in Turnus's chest.
Then all the body slackened in death's chill,
And with a groan for that indignity
His spirit fled into the gloom below. 10
Fitzgerald eschews the narrative present tense in this case and appears to follow
his own rules with regard to its translation throughout his version. One doesn't
know what to think of this; should we recognize the special authority he claims, as a
poet viewing a poet, to the point where it is up to him whether he translate verb for
verb?
I have a final observation to make here, a confusing recognition, if you will.
These lines are spoken to Hektor by Akhilleus in Book XXII of The Iliad, after Troy's
hero, beguiled by Athena, has stopped his running and turned to face his pursuer. He
asks for a guarantee that the loser's body be returned to his respective side.
Akhilleus responds:
"Hektor, I'll have no talk of pacts with you, forever unforgiven as you
are. As between men and lions there are none, no concord between wolves
and sheep, but all hold one another hateful through and through, so there
can be no courtesy between us, no sworn truce, till one of us is down and
glutting with his blood the wargod Ares •.•
Now there is no way out. Pallas Athena will have the upper hand of you.
The weapon belongs to me. You'll pay the reckoning in full for all the
pain my men have borne, who met death by your spear."
(261-72)
I hear an unmistakable echo of this speech in Virgil's final lines. Both Akhilleus
and Aeneas speak of acting on behalf of their own, and--inexplicably--refer to themselves as instruments of Pallas, though one meant the daughter of Zeus, and the other
the son of Evander.
so Aeneas is identified with Akhilleus in this final gruesome moment (at least
in The Iliad we end with the funeral, not the death), and indeed he can be seen as a
ruthless invader; Turnus is identified with Hektor, a native defending his
56
father~and. But this only points up the incongruity that earlier in the poem, Aeneas
was painted as a kind of Odysseus, returning, in fact, to his true destined home with
a long exiled people, while Turnus, the frustrated suitof when he enters alone into
1
the Teucrian camp--"a tiger mingling with cowed cattle" --calls himself "Achilles"
by name.
My preliminary conclusion from this is that Virgil's relationship with Homer,
poet to poet, is an essential part of his poem, but remains the hardest depth to
fathom in The Aeneid's Roman music.
.
Some poems have it central to their experience that they be interpreted. I find
interpreting the whole Iliad something like interpreting the ocean stream· Dante's
Commedia, h~wev~r, is overtly allegorical, and hence demands this kind of ~esponse.
Interpretation is not.r:cogniti~n; .if it is good, it follows from and is inspired by
the ~oments ?f recognition and insight we experience. At its best, it is an attempt
to fin~ m~aning ~n~ order, with~n and without, in the many visions a poem grants us;
a nourishing activ~ty for the mind which helps keep a listener's relationship with a
poem--or another listener--fresh. Bad interpretation abounds, however; this can res~lt through the ~mposition of an external order on the poem, or the too hasty spinn~ng out of theories from a too limited vision of the object.
The great sin of assigned analytical papers in literature classes is that they encourage both these latter.
Dante Alighieri .or all poets has suffered most at the hands of his interpreters.
He is only to blam~ in that he makes it clear his lines have two meanings, a literal
one and an allegorical one. But this does not license an editor to flood an edition
of the Commedi~ ~ith 7omment~ries, so ~s to make the .poem inaccessible. obviously.
Some modern editions in English come with companion volumes of commentary, twice as
long as the poem. At least three editions preface each canto with a detailed summary
and fol~ow it u.p with more notes than there was poetry. The poem has to be read like
a mag~zine article (turn to page 16C for the next installment) ! one gets the impression that Dante must be a "solved" writer, a poet destined. to be "all figured
out" by modern scholarship.
Fo: this reason, Ernest Fortin' s lecture, How To ~ Dante• s comedy, was
refreshing.
He showed how Dante eludes his interpreters, how he hides himself
above, underneath, inside his own comedy. As many mirrors confuse the eye so with
Da~te' s Comm~dia~ one doesn't know what to think, even about the poet's ~eligious
faith· F?rtin .cited many examples, including the secret identification with Adam I
have mentioned. He also pointed out a scheme that explains the role of statius, one
of the pilgrim's three poet-guides, for whom Dante invents a life history: before he
purportedly discovered Christian faith, Statius wrote two pagan epics (that is, he
said the wrong thing and too much); afterwards, Statius hid his Christianity, he
didn't say enough--he was a poetic miser.
Virgil, the first poet-guide, was a
non-Christian poet who wrote a non-Christian epic; Statius was a Christian poet who
wrote a non-Christian epic; Dante, last in the trio and his own poet-guide, "crowned
and mitred over himself", is supposedly the Christian poet who writes a Christian
epic. But this setup leaves open a tantalizing possibility: the non-Christian poet
who writes a Christian epic. "Who dat?" asks Mr. Fortin. He closed by revealing how
in the last canto of the Paradiso, the anticipated allegorical level actually masks
the literal meaning; the supposed Beatific vision, a description of the Trinity, fits
a~ well, if ~°Jt better, with the object which literally consumed Dante's eye sight:
his own poem.
I have my own response to these matters. What follows is my guided trip through
canto XVII of the Paradiso, where Dante meets his ancestor Cacciaguida.
I think
something of Dante's experience came home to me as I read this canto.
Perhaps I
delude myself; I cannot be the judge.
57
�c,_..-
If Homer's Odyssey is a poem of return, and The Aeneid is a poem about carrying
in one's household gods, Dante's poem is a poem of exile, in all its salt anguish and
longing.
In two previous cantos, in the sphere of Mars, Cacciaguida has chronicled the
golden age and then the decline of Florence. Now, in the opening tercet of the central canto of the Paradiso, Dante approaches Cacciaguida, his ancestral father,
As there once came to Clymene, to ascertain
The truth of what he had heard said against himself,
The young man who is still a caution to fathers.
(1 -3)
The young man is Phaeton, who came to his mother to find out for sure who his father
was. It turns out this was Phoebus, the sun god; to prove it to him, as one version
of the myth goes, Phoebus offered Phaeton any favour he wished. The son rashly chose
to drive his father's chariot, which he couldn't control, burning earth, mountain and
sky, before Zeus killed him with a thunderbolt. Dante's analogy is cryptic at best.
The poet asks Cacciaguida to explain the many prophecies he has heard while: ,
climbing up the mountain which cures souls
And going down into the dead world,
(20-21)
-
-
--
Heaven chased them out, so as not to become less beautiful,
And the depths of hell also re]ected them,
Lest the evil might find occasion to glory over them. (Inf. III 40-2)
Cacciaguida tells Dante that he:
will learn how salt is the taste
Of other people's bread, how hard the way
Going up and down other people's stairs.
(58-60)
These words speak for themselves. I might only suggest that as Beatrice, a girl our
poet once knew, c~e to represent more and more to Dante, until she became Divine
~ove or Re~ealed Wisdom, so perhaps did his exile from Florence take on deeper meanings for him; perhaps Dante saw in it the germ of that greater longing the longing
caused by man's exile from the Kingdom of God. We are less mysti'fi'ed 'then b h'
1 t
.
.
,
,
y is
a er i. d en t. f ying with Adam, the first exile from that Kingdom.
1
.
Dante goes on to hear many more things, things "incredible to those who will
li~e throu?h them" . (93). Then he makes a fresh start; fearing that his poems might
alienate him, not Just from Florentines, but from all others as well he explains to
Cacciaguida that in his journey,
'
and he responds:
I have learned things which, if I repeat them,
Will have a bitter taste for many people;
Without the circumlocutions in which people
were swallowed up before the slaughter of
The lamb of God who takes away sins •••
And if I am a timid friend to truth,
I fear to lose the life I have among those
Who will call the present time, ancient times.
But in clear words and plain exact speech •••
Hidden but appearing in his smile.
(31-36)
This clarity of speech represents the way in which the Christian .Aoyos transformed,
fulfilled, and retroactively clarified Old Testament prophecy.
Cacciaguida tells Dante of his upcoming exile from Florence. He prefaces the
hard words with this explanation:
(116-20)
Sho~ld he hold back his bitter words, for practicality's sake, or reveal all for posterity? Of course we know what he cpgoses; Brunetto Latini, the rhetorician who "instructed.· .how man may be eternal,"
is eternally running around the burning sands
of Dante's Hell. Cacciaguida says:
let them scratch wherever they may itch.
Contingency, which does not stretch beyond
The limits of your material world,
Is all set out before the sight of God:
For if your words are objectionable
At the first taste, they will yield nourishment
Afterwards, once they have been digested.
But does not on that account become necessity
Any more than a ship which is drifting downstream
Drifts as it does because a man sees it.
(37-42)
This cry of yours will do as the wind does,
Strike hardest on the summits which are highest.
The image of a man watching a ship drifting would be simpler if Dante had not described his own poem as a vessel, as at the opening of the Purgatorio; if we ha~ not
4 if
been audience to the profoundly moving story of Ulysses' Promethean ship voyage;
he had not used Jason and the Argona._psts as a recurring theme, which even finds its
way into the final canto of his poem.
For the first time, the man and the ship are
separated, if we think of the man as longing to be on board that drifting ship, for
whatever reason--perhaps he is marooned and longs in vain for family and friends;
perhaps it ought to be steered upstream--we see the power and subtlety of this image,
as it bears on Dante's exile. The helplessness one feels when one is not allowed to
participate is, I think, central to Dante's experience of exile. We remember the
place Dante gives to those people and angels who, by their own choice, refused to
participate:
58
(129-34 )
We are reminded again of Phaeton, swooping low in his borrowed chariot. But if Dante
is playing God for a day, he is only the charioteer; it is the sun that
th_ poet.
e
burns , not
Cacciaguida ends the canto by explaining that Dante has been shown
Only the souls of those who are known to fame;
For the listener's mind will not find its rest
Nor fix its faith unless it finds examples
Of which the root is known and not hidden ,
And arguments which are plain as day.
(138-42 )
In ligh~ of Mr. Fortin's arguments, this is clearly ironic. Dante himself, save for
the unmistakable longing that is the root of his words' beauty, remains, as ever, far
59
�from plain view. . .
we have yet to acknowledge the most dramatic of all moments of recognition, the
one Aristotle mentions by name. These are experienced by characters; two standard
examples are the "recognition scene" between Elektra and Orestes in Aeschylus'
Libation Bearers (Sophocles' Elektra has a fascinating version of the same scene, and
:Euripides' Elektra provides a hilarious parody), and the moment Oedipus discovers the
t~th about himself in Oedipus Rex.
Aristotle explains:
Recognition(\va.yvwp101S'), as the word itself indicates, is a change from
ignorance to knowledge, leading either to friendship or to hosti~ity on
the part of those persons who are marked for good fortune or bad.
It is the second of three elements in a tragic plot, the others being suffering
~ ~ (mi eOS' ) ·and reversal (TIE p 1 TIsTs1 a.) ("a change from one stat\Ef.f affairs to its exact opposite •. in conformance1 with probability or necessity." ) • Though there are
many types of ~va.yvwp101s--and we have seen two in Penelope and Odysseus and Aeneas
and Turnus--Aristotle says, "The best form of recogWion is that which is accompanied by a reversal, as in the example from Oedipus."
surely one of the most sublime of all recognition scenes in dramatic poetry is
Act IV Scene 6 of Shakespeare's King Lear. The recognition takes place between Lear
and Gloucester.
There is no re-;ersal; Gloucester's earlier blinding is a classic
ex~le from this play of recognition · combined with reversal, for as he is blinded,
he discovers the wrong he has done Edgar. To include this later scene in his Poetics,· Aristotle would have to coin a new terin: recognition through suffering.
--. we have been through the banishments and the slow descent; we have wit11essed
:&ear and his poor naked train on the heath; we have seen the unimaginable in
· Gloucester's blinding.
The schemes . of the play's five fiends--Edmund, Regan,
Goneril, Cornwall, and oswald--are working themselves to fruition. And we have seen
justice responding in a few noble souls: service in Kent and Gloucester, king~iness
in France, conscience in Albany and valour in Cornwall's slaves. The scene is set
for the final meeting between the two suffering old men.
The scene as a whole explores the power of the imagination. It is in part a
man's imagination that determines his world.
we open with Gloucester's attempted suicide, from a cliff that is not there. I
think it well to note that on Shakespeare's unadorned stage, there is no reason to
believe the audience will not be deceived along with Gloucester.
Edgar's speech
about the cliff is superb descriptive poetry; until his explanation:
Why I do trifle thus with his despair
Is done to cure it,
(32-3)
we, in our heightened imagination, are on the edge of that cliff, careful that we do
not "topple down headlong" (24).
The deception prepares us to question our own
imagination and conception of what is real; if a detailed account of cliff-side sensations is all we need to believe the men before us are standing on a cliff, in what
other ways do we fool ourselves? (The men are standing on a stage, incidentally.)
When his father falls, Edgar worries because he
know[s] not how conceit may rob
The treasury of life when life itself
Yields to the theft.
(42-4)
But Gloucester recovers, to be convinced again by Edgar's story, this time of a miraculous fall and the fiend whom he left on top of the cliff. The message here is
60
strong, however we feel about Edgar's purposes, and bears on all the speeches about
the gods and fiends we hear in this play. Whether the gods are kind and just, or
whether the world is full of fiends and beasts, can only be revealed through our own
actions, just or unjust. We must take the world as what it appears to be, but at the
same time it is our world to make; often it appears to others only as we present it
to them.
Enter the king himself. He invades our discussion by living in his own world,
gliding down from unseen heights, to dwell, for a moment, eye to eye with Gloucester.
In his first speech, he is apparently hallucinating. George Kittredge explains it
this way:
In his delirium he sees constables who try to arrest him as a coiner of
counterfeit money.
The next moment he is a captain engaged in the
enlistment of drafted men and in testing the recruits.
Suddenly he
catches sight of an imaginary mouse •.• Then he is a champion defying all
opponents; then a captain once more; then a spectator at an archery contest; then, catching ~ht of Edgar, he becomes a sentry and challenges
him: "Give the word."
Lear plays six roles in seven lines. Yet he remains completely genuine: as natural
as a thunderbolt, or a bastard son.
Gloucester says,"I know that voice" (95). Even without seeing him, he recognizes the authority which so masters Kent. "Hal Goneril with a white beard?" (96) responds Lear. We are used to Lear' s imbuing the world with his own pains and concerns; if Poor Tom has b~in reduced to a naked wretch, it must be because he, too,
had ungrateful daughters.
But Lear continues:
·When the rain came to wet me once, and the wind to make me chatter; when
the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found 'em, there I
smelt 'em out. Go to, they are not men o' their wordsl They told me I
was everything. 'Tis a lie--I am not ague-proof.
{100-05)
Apparently we can be greatly deceived by others, even about ourselves.
But Gloucester is sure of what he has heard. Though the words make no sense,
Glau. The trick of that voice I do well remember.
Is't not the king?
Lear.
Ay, every inch a kingl
When I do stare, see how the subject quakes.
(106-08)
·Lear works himself up to a fever pitch of fury and revulsion1 the world around him
seems populated by demi-human beasts. "Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary,"
he says, "to sweeten my imagination." {130-1)
If we must mark the instant, Lear's recognition begins with Gloucester's plea,
"O, let me kiss that hand!". (132) Here is the first heartfelt attempt to make contact with Lear, to touch him, show a sign of love. And Lear hears it. "Let me wipe
it first," he says, "it smells of mortality." It seems that Gloucester's loving gesture has united the two, so that they can recognize each other as fellow sufferers:
as such they live in the same world. Lear tunes in and out--he calls Gloucester
"blind Cupid" (137)--but the bond is still there:
Lear.
o, ho, are you there with me? No eyes in your head, nor no money
in your purse? Your eyes are in a heavy case, your purse in a light.
61
�Yet you see how this world goes.
Glou.
I
see it feelingly.
(144-8)
Lear then begins a tirade against the two-faced justice and corrupted authority
that plague the world. Again, the outward appearances deceive:
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pygmy's straw does pierce it.
None does offend, none--I say none! I'll able 'em.
(164-7)
Mind in the passive .sense is such because it becomes all things, but mind
has another aspect in that~~ makes all things(ITOlEl~]; this is a kind
of positive state like light.
My theme has been poetic recognition, and this is its highest form: recognition of
oneself as poet and listener, maker of one's life and world, yet also audience to
their creation, in the moments when we live.
Christian Holland, in reference to this speech, makes this revealing comparison:
In the story of the stoning of the adulteress Jesus shows that he knows
that no man is without sin. He therefore urges all of us to take our own
sinfulness to heart when we judge the wrongdoings of our fellows. Jesus
. pardons, forgives the adulteress, and commands her to go and sin no more.
Lear enables the adulteress to go on sinning. Since human beings are no
more than beasts, and beasts cannot be said to be sinners~ Lear refuses
to acknowledge any wrongdoing on her part. Sin is nothing. 2
Finally, Lear knows his friend and servant by name:
If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.
I know thee well enough; thy name is Gloucester.
Thou must be patient. We came crying hither;
Thou know' st, the first time that we smell the air
We wawl and cry.
(175-9)
We have witnessed a grand but simple encounter. The world can deceive; to some degree, we all live in our own imaginings. But these two, Lear and Gloucester, though
one is blind and the other mad, have recognized each other. By weeping each other's
fortunes, having acknowledged their sins, they have managed, for a moment, to share
the world.
But the gods must have their sacrifice. we must offer our best. Cordelia and
Lear have learned the art of self-sacrifice, the one by nature, the other through
suffering . They are nature's masterpieces. And what goddess demands this ritual,
other than Nature herself--the goddess of this play--terrible in her magnificence?
The closer one gets to King Lear, or any work of art, the harder it gets to keep
oneself clear, as to where the poem's world ends and the real world begins. From my
experience with Lear, getting close to the play involves hearing it all inside onesel~, becoming all the parts--hero and villain, king and subject, philosopher and
natural fool. As the lines re-echo, the play begins to sound more and more like a
piece of music, with its own inner meaning that defies interpretation. And the music
of King Lear needs no translation. One simply listens, and returns to the world, ·
full of words to experience it with.
we begin to see the dialogue that poetry fosters:
great poems, like these I
have discussed, are creations in words that reflect and reshape our experience; but
their words in turn become part of us, the matter with which we ourselves remake and
ennoble our lives. we remember these words of Aristotle, from his treatise On The
Soul:
62
63
�Footnotes
The Search for What the Memory Holds:
M~mory, Identity and the Uses of Things
1.
Aristotle, Poetics, trans. James Hutton
2.
The verb is KaA.UrrTw,,meaning to cover up or envelop for protection, preservation, or concealment (Cunliffe).
I owe this passage to Jerome Downey, whose
insight is at times as big as the rest of him.
3.
Ernest Fortin, How To Read Dante's Comedy, lecture given Spring 1984.
4.
Dante Alighieri, Commedia: Inferno , I . 60
5.
Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. c. H. Sisson, Regnery Gateway, pg. 37
6.
Ibid., pg. 39
7.
Ibid., pg. 42-3
8.
Allen Mandelbaum, The Aeneid of Virgil, University of California Press, pg. 336
For a moment they are say and are a part
9.
Ibid., pg. X
Of an element, the exactest element for us,
10.
Ibid.
In which we pronounce joy like a word of our own.
11.
Virgil, The Aeneid, trans. Robert Fitzgerald, Random House, pg . 402
12.
Ibid., pg. 286
13.
Fortin, paraphrased from memory
14.
Alighieri, Commedia: Inferno, XXVI
15.
Ibid., Paradiso XXXIII . 94-6
Without the labor of thought in that element,
16.
Ibid., Inferno, XV. 85
And we feel, in a way apart, for a moment, as if
17 .
Ar i s t otle, 1452a
There was a bright scienza outside of ourselves,
18.
Ibid.
19.
Ibid.
20.
William Shakespeare, King Lear, ed. George Kittredge, pg. 114 (note to 11.
83-92)
Liz Waldner
OF BRIGHT AND BLUEBIRDS AND THE GALA
SUN
Some things, nine, some things are like this,
That instantly and in themselves they are say
And you and I are such things, o most miserable •••
It is there, being imperfect, and with these things
And erudite in happiness, with nothing learned,
That we are joyously ourselves and we think
A saiety that is being, not merely knowing,
The will to be and to be total in belief,
21.
Shakespeare, III. 4. 47
22.
Christian Holland, Edgar's Growth in King Lear, Energeia, Winter 1984, pg. 77
23.
Aristotle, On The Soul, Loeb, 430a14-16
Provoking a laughter, an agreement, by surprise.
- Wallace Stevens
All quoted passages of Dante ' s Comrnedia were translated by C. H. Si sson; all the
paasagea from Homer were translated by Rober t Fi tzger a ld.
64
In book X of his Confessions, Augustine endeavors to say what he now is, not, as
before, what he has been. His love for God kindles in him the desire to know his
God; therefore he hopes, by confessing what he knows and what he does not know of
himself, to make his soul a fit dwelling for that God who loves the truth. The attempt to say what he is comes as r~~E__onse to his longing for knowledge of God and
65
�builds on his conviction that what he is and perhaps who he is may be discovered in
light of his love for God. In general, knowing what someone loves may help us to
understand who she is; believing we are made to love and serve God, Augustine expects
to know his own nature better as he delves into God's. Thus Augustine makes a beginning by asking what it is that he loves when he loves his God:
But what do I love when I love Thee? Not the beauty of bodies, nor the
fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our
eyes, nor sweet melodies of varied songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs acceptable to
embracements of flesh. None of these I love, when I love my God; and yet
I love a kind of light and melody and fragrance and meat and ernbracement
of my inner man: where there shineth unto my soul what space cannot contain and there soundeth what time beareth not away and there smelleth what
breathing disperses not and there tasteth what eating diminisheth not and
there cleanseth what satiety divorces not. This is it which I love when I
love my God. And what is this? [I asked ••• ] (p. 208)
The pleasures which the senses make available are not those loved in loving God,
but they are like them; they remind one of the thing sought for. The beauties of
this world, subject to diminishrnent, dispersal and ravishment by time are pale in
comparison to God who made them. Against the view that the joy we take in air and
light, in having a body is full and final, Augustine levels the testimony of the
pleasure-givers themselves: heaven and earth and everything in them bid Augustine
love God and declare, "I am not He, but He made me." The pleasures of the changeable
world are understood to be harbingers of an unimaginable goodness of which they bear
tidings.
From the world around him, Augustine "turns himself to himself," demanding "Who
are you?" Soul and body represent themselves to him upon his answering, "A man ." It
is the inner man, "I, the mind" allied with soul who, questioning the things of the
world, is able to discern in their form of beauty the report of the outer man: not I,
but He made me. For Augustine, it is this inner man who wonders at himself, pondering his memory, its force "excessive great" a power of his through which and in which
he seeks his God.
·
As reason is set over the senses to judge of their reports, so God is "above the
head of the soul".
Reason enables Augustine to read in the loveliness of the
creation--between its lines, as it were--testimony illegible to beasts and' undiscerned by those mastered by the outer man, testimony to the existence of "one greater
than I". Because he has avoided mistaking the thing made for the maker, Augustine 's
world, like a choirmaster, directs him in a rehearsal of the inquisitive mode: if
not you, then whom do I love? Thus, allegiance to the inner man is requisite to the
"rising by degrees" which is his pilgrim's progress toward God's metaphorically mixed
locus "above the head of my soul;" otherwise he would have loitered unawares and
discomfited among way-markers, signs, and images. By means of his soul, Augustine
finds the right way; on this he finds the fields and palaces of his memory.
Every opportunity is taken to emphasize the expanse and amazing character of
this treasure-trove found in the head of the soul. The search for God has led from
admiration and inquiry "of the seas and the deeps, the whole air with its inhabitants·, sun, moon, and stars and all that encompass the door of his flesh," to that
door itself which, opened in answer to his knock discloses images of all he has
admired, his admiration, and, wonder of wonders, himself. The stages of his journey,
early and late, and souvenirs thereof, even up to his entry just made, are caught up
and held for him--inside of himself. As Augustine somewhat defensively opines, it is
as if the memory were the belly of the soul; the outside is taken in and stored
66
there. The more spacious the palace, the more numerous the mansions of this house,
the more inexpressible its windings, unfathomable its depths, various its cupboards
and pantries, the more wonderful the fact that anything therein should ever be
recalled, the more awesome the realization that this great and strange power of
remembrance is ours, part of our nature, a thing to be spoken of when saying "what I
am." Since this power also bears witness to the yet greater glory of God who made
it, the source and object (in true genitive fashion) of Augustine' s search, fear,
love and reverence for God increase accordingly. Awe in the presence of God and the
search for him are at least furthered if not begun by wonder at his works, which include oneself.
In the wondrous cabinets of memory, then, we find two sorts of things: those
which the senses bring into it from all sorts of perception, to be stored according
to kind; and those "whereof we imbibe not the images by our senses," but have in memory the things themselves. The latter are perceived within, by the mind's experience
of its own passions. Numbers and geometry's fissures are among these, as is "all,
learnt of the liberal sciences and as yet unforgotten." They are "removed as it were
to some inner place, which is yet no place." These lie unknown, scattered and neglected until received and ordered through recollection.
The images transported by sense are preserved distinctly; when one is remembering the look of an adobe wall on a winter's evening, the smell of the second floor
bedroom at one's grandparents house in 1962 neither intrudes nor commingles. Despite
occasional contretemps--a bevy of eager memories present themselves when only one is
called for {requiring their dispersal from "the face of remembrance" with "the hand
of the heart" ) ; or the would-be rememberer is made to wait unduly long for the
desired article while encountering various unexpected, inexplicable others--Augustine
suggests that things go on here in an orderly way. One enters his storehouse, requests what he will, and it is fetched, with more or less dispatch as its cubby-hole
is far or near, more or less swallowed by forgetfulness. The latter resembles a species of snow which accumulates with time, through every weather; gentle and diligent,
it obscures and at last buries what it falls on.
The woman of the parable, having lost her groat, sought it with a lamp: one
might say that lit lamp is memory: unless she had remembered it, she would never have
found what she sought. Memory then, acts as a place holder, albeit a fickle one--a
somewhat inconstant zero. Something there is which is not here, it reminds us feeling "that it did not carry on together all which it was wont, and maimed, as i~ were,
by the curtailment of its ancient habit, demanded the restoration of what it missed."
( ~. 2~1). Unfortunately for all who would be reminded, it can't be counted on to persist in its demand. Some count this a blessing. The tutor remembered Monday's meeting with his advisee until Friday; on Monday he found himself with the unwonted luxu- ry of an hour before his next class, an hour which he thoroughly enjoyed, disturbed
~nly once~ as he stirred his coffee, by the familiar feeling of memory's suffering
its curtailment: he was forgetting something. He decided it was sugar for his coffee, whic~ he got. At 6:30 the next morning the sugar packet, transubstantiated,
revealed itself to have been an appointment.
Bad conscience or gratitude rose
thereupon, like a signal effluence of character. Thus we see the toll taken by th~
~assage of time (which time ought to be paying, since it is doing the moving, making
~nroads o? memory; memory might do well to add this claim to its suit, as long as it
is demanding restorations) upon the figure cut in his memory by the tutor's appointment; it retained a recognizable face for several days, whereupon weathering so eroded its form that it was mistaken for a condiment.
It is possible, however, for memory to serve as an enduring standard for the
lost, a flag waving Provenance, not lowered until the object of the search at last
arrives and identifies itself as prodigal but true-born inheritor of that standard's
device-whereupon that device is discerned.
When something has slipped one's
67
�mind--what, for instance, was that large-eyed woman-waif's name in Fellini's "La
strada"?--one makes attempts to bring before memory's throne the syllables sought.
This can be something like memory's holding Cinderella's glass slipper and our
proffering multifarious objects, only discovering it was a foot we were loo~ing for
when memory exclaims, Ahal It fits!
{Lest we be seized rather by exasperation than
by Augustine' s admiration at such antics on memory' s part, we may remark these
slippers of memory's are sometimes very transparent.)
sometimes, however, we have a little more to go on, a feeling for the r~ytlun of·
the name or for the sound of its vowels. Then it is like seeing that a foot is wanted and stage-mothering our best friends, mothers, aunts, cousins and lovers into
t~ing out for the part--go on, you're a shoe-in. Thus I bring ~efore memory ~uch
essays as Dulcinea? Giusetta? Jucipetta? until I say, Ahal or give up •. {Happily,
memory is not like those kings who behead their daughter's unsuccessful .suitors.)
The woman seeking her groat persisted until she said Aha, kept mindful of her
loss and ready to identify the speck when found, meanwhile dismissing pretenders and
imposters, by power of her now steadfast and scrupulous, not out-to-lunch memory.
one of the memory's more dependable characteristics, and perhaps most wondrous
of all, is its capacity to serve as a chamber wherein one may hold court with oneself. · The court, at least, will be there. In it, Augustine finds, he can confer
with himself as he now is, or ponder himself in the various guises with their concomitant settings of the "Ancestor Augustines" that he has been.
(Of these lat~er,
those in favor or disfavor--of especial note to the visiting royalty--are most likely to accept i~vitations; others incline to the impromptu. Still others may decline
an interview altogether.) "A large and boundless chamber! Whoever sounded the bottom thereof?" Visiting there, Augustine knows he is surrounded by myriad slumbering
things of which he is unaware (and some of which are he) whose awakening.is the exercise of a power that he, its owner, does not comprehend. .Hence t~at dictum re~ark
able in its somber and devoted astonishment: "Therefore is the mind too strait to
contain itself."
The vast lumber room of memory, the head of the soul, recalls God's mindfulness
of His creation, His attending to sparrows and numbering the hairs of the head.
Heaven and earth and all that one could think thereon, besides what one has forgotten, are there to serve him who sits in the seat of the mind as the material of inference , hope , J'udgment, discretion, surprise, counsel, resolve, laughter . and red
gret--a large and boundless chamber, indeed. A wonderful admiration surprises an
amazement seizes Augustine:
brought together in the mind is properly said to be thought upon." (p. 215) Refusal
to have any truck with re-incarnation and a virtue that is the gift of a panoply of
Gods may be reasons for his failure to remind us of the fair Meno and his would-be
slave, the torpedo fish, who will again stir the memory when Augustine takes up the
question so like Meno's: whence have we the idea of a happy life, which all desire,
without ever having known it? Virtue, we remember, is not acquired through recollection; nor, we shall see, is the knowledge of God which is granted in the moment of
learning" him. Let us then scrutinize some sort of happiness that can be learned.
Prudence will stand us in good stead.
Like the numbers wherewith we number, prudence is recollected and dwells in
memory before and after the event, inchoate in its deepest recesses before, near at
hand after. We are ignorant of prudence until by conception we order and arrange its
scattered components, thus marking or recognizing it for what it is. It is somewhat
disconcerting to allow for the presence in memory of unidentified snips and tatters
of an idea, languishing until the treacherous spark of conception animates it, only
to relegate this creation to memory's caves. Yet the concept does not enter the
mind--as a thoughtful effluence, say, commensurate · with some "sense" of the inner
man1 its elect bric-a-brac are there already waiting. Apparently, it is galvanized,
a sort of elective affinity provoking the arrangement of constituent bits into agreement with Prudence encountered in the flesh. We come into its presence and, Ahal
Behold! That's Prudence, we exclaim.
Socrates, investigating this phenomenon, consulted "certain wise men and women,
priests and priestesses" who sought "to give a reason of their profession," and poets
who spoke by divine inspiration. By their account,
the soul is inunortal, born into the world and leaving it in death many
times. Hence the soul has learned all things, and there is no difficulty
in her eliciting, or as men say, learning, out of a single recollection,
all the rest, if one is strenuous and does not faint, for all inquiry and
all learning is but recollection. (81C-D)
This bewilderment--how is it that I, the mind, find myself in memory?--leads to
another: how is it that I find God who is not in my memory? An examination of ~he
difference between recollection and "learning God" leads to Augustine's conclusion
that the search for what the memory holds is itself a sign pointing beyond the memory. At that point the importance of the remarkable array of memory' aspects and
abilities is addressed.
As we have seen, recollection is that sort of remembrance which is not an image,
but consists in the presence in the mind of the thing remembered. How do we come.by
reasons and laws concepts like eloquence? We recollect them. Although Augustine
does not his ex;lication and etymology do call Meno and Socrates to mind. "The mind
has appr~priated to itself this word cogitation, so that what is recollected, i.e.,
As for the catalyst, the impulse toward recollection seems to be the encountering of
difficulties.
Why is this so? It would seem that a full knowledge, or fullness of being, is
primary, and ignorance like so many clouds before its sun. The soul "wants" to unfold, wholly to recollect the things it holds, thus renewing its acquaintance with
the whole of the intelligible world--returning to pay a visit to The Forms. Difficulties keep it from its native place, prolonging its exile; hence they kindle its
desire to see its homecoming.
Thus, the slave boy possessed of a perplexity,
divested of confidence because cognizant of his ignorance, is a slave boy possessed
by desire to know. That favorite among the Emperor's New Clothes, that fashion time
never renders passe, which moth hardly corrupts and no one need steal, namely, the
fancy that one knows what one does not, in fact, know (which is reversible and may be
worn as well as complacency: there is no knowing and no use trying to) is shrugged
off in exchange for a Deianira's cloak of desire.
The truth of all things, then, has always existed in the soul, awakened into
knowledge by the putting of questions to it. Questions are put to the soul when the
head of the soul is perplexed. One's loss, one's ignorance is recognized. Knowledge
is sought after and spontaneously recovered in recollection.
The torpedo fish's
sting effects a confusion, a torpor like that bothersome feeling that one has forgotten something. we sense a disturbance, a throbbing in the back of the mind, a repeated inkling. The brow wrinkles: what is this? The soul returned greets the
world: Aha, aha, aha! I remember you. Furrowed forehead: on the trail. Recollection's nod: the lost is found. A laughter is provoked, "an agreement, by surprise."
68
69
For we are not now searching out the regions of heaven, or measuring the
distances of the stars, or enquiring the balancings of the earth. It is I
myself who remember, I, the mind. It is not so wonderful if what I myself
am not, be far from me. But what is nearer to me than myself? And lo, the
force of my own memory is not understood by me. (p. 218)
�Having pondered the ways in which lost things are found and considered recollection's recovery of knowledge, Augustine returns to his question, What do I love when
I love Thee? His answer divulges that his love has been suffered as search, as desire: "When I seek Thee, my God, I seek a happy life." (p. 222) It also reveals his
recognition that its converse is false, which is apparent only to those who "learn
God," as it turns out.
At this point in his inquiry, Augustine echoes Meno: "How then do I seek a happy life, seeing I have it not, until I can say where I ought to say, It is enough?
As though I had forgotten it, remembering I had forgotten it? Or desiring to learn
it as a thing unknown?" (p. 2 2 2) The answer 1 ie s somewhere in between or above ,
encompassing and superseding remembering the forgotten and recollection. To arrive
at the answer the inner man pursues that path which reason discerned and desire
traced among the reports of the senses upon the things of the world. He who has ears
to hear perceives that "when I seek God I seek a happy life" lies in the direction
indicated by the earlier answer, "we · are not he whom you seek, but he made us." It,
too, points the way. The inner man "solves" the equation "seek God = happy life"
when he comprehends that the concept of a happy life itself points to something
beyond it.
As we remember, virtue was said by Socrates and Meno to be recognized but not
acquired by means of recollection. The problem with seeking God is that he can't be
recollected, much less acquired thereby. To be learned as a thing unknown, like prudence, he would somehow have to be present in memory, unrecognizable in the rags and
tatters of the idea of himself. Although he does prove to have been with Augustine
all along and in a sort of disguise, God himself is not present in the memory until
learned. Nor yet, Augustine continues, is he among the images of corporeal things
stored there, nor in the affections of the mind~ nor is he the mind itself, being
rather its lord.
The problem with seeking a happy life is that everyone remembers, loves and
longs for it without having known it: "All will the happy life; no one altogether
wills it not. This could not be unless the thing whereof it is the name is in memory o II (p. 223)
The · problem to · end all problems is that seeking God . is seeking a happy life:
therefore the thing sought must be at once in and not in the memory. with -the help
of the inner man' s audio acuity Augustine reduces this absurdity to a state of
impending grace, to be inaugurated by an act of grace, the bursting of the surd, his
deafness.
All indeed desire to attain the same end, but many fall short, deceived and distracted by semblances of joy. These semblances, lesser happinesses, are present in
memory, are recollectable--and hence mistakable for him who made them.
Just as
Socrates and Meno agree that some desire what they suppose to be goods, although they
are really evil, so Augustine maintains that those who seek a happy. life in anything
but loving God for his own sake--rejoicing "to, of and for Him"--rejoice in falsehoods. we may seek a happy life without seeking God but the desire that urges one is
the mark of God's call. Neither the attainment of the thing in which "false" joy was
sought, nor the presence of the thing itself in memory, end the search for a happy
life; and this argues that we have not yet found what is wanting. Loving God for his
own sake requires, first, learning him and this, as Augustine confesses, can prove a
lengthy and painful process. Seeking a happy life necessitates willing it entirely;
only then is it possible to learn God. Satisfaction with semblances of joy is a sign
of partial willing.
Although one must recollect the meaning of the testimony of the senses before
God can be learned, no accumulation of such knowledge will amount to or spontaneously
convert to knowledge of God. The moment in which he is learned is God's gift. As it
was possible for Meno to inquire into the nature of any of virtue's swarm by means of
70
recollection, so Augustine queries and ponders the created world while seeking its
creator. In each case the seeker has a vague idea of the thing sought. Socrates
explains this with his tale of the soul's previous visits to mortality. Augustine
offers us the idea of a happy life which is a placeholder.
Recollectable and
desired, the idea whets the appetite for The True Happy Life since each desire satisfied only inflames a brighter successor.
In this way the happy life we seek in the senses' pleasures is sought like a
thing forgotten: we are restless, something is wanting; we know to look for it in
its absence and judge of the satisfactions found. However, nothing the senses or the
mind offer will satisfy memory, the desires' keeper, for the thing sought, the truly
happy life, discloses itself only to a humbled heart whose provenance is the unified
will. Toward this disclosure the head of the soul guides us through false joys by
means of the desire it tends, accepting no substitutes, unassuaged by the offerings
of the outer man.
Information gleaned about God from the world induces an ordering of ourselves, a
collecting of our wits and wills in preparation for seeing what no ready willingness
on our part can make appear. The search is a prelude, initiatory. Augustine's is a
God who hides himself; the seeker must wait for revelation of the face behind the
veil of the idea of the happy life in his memory. When recognition occurs it is recognized as a gift, as grace. Muscular exertions of will are of no avail, necessary
but insufficient exercises. Socrates declared virtue to be the gods' gift to the
virtuous; learning God is God's gift to those who deem knowledge of him sweeter than
honey.
What does Augustine tell us about the experience of . learning God? God called,
shouted, and burst his deafness. He flashed, shone, and scattered his blindness.
Afterwards, he sees "Thou wert within and I abroad. Thou wert with me but I was not
with Thee." God was present but unknown. Where did Augustine find him? "Place
there is none." The no place in which God is learned is like the some place in which
God was with Augustine all along: the will shapes it.
This place is created in a moment during which the previously incomplete will is
aligned by a whole-hearted desire to know God. Then God makes his presence known,
enables Augustine to note in retrospect God's abiding with him. He understands that
the unresolved image from unresolved will had obscured his vision. Whereas the "miserable and ill-fated" of the Meno become so through ignorance of the nature of · the
good, for Augustine knowing is not enough: one must wholly will the good. Unfortunately it is as Pogo announced: we have met the enemy and they are us. "The mind
conunands the mind, its own self, to will and yet-- i t does not." (p. 165) This, says
Augustine, who knows whereof he speaks, is monstrousness. A healing of this split,
however momentary, is accomplished in the moment of learning God.
Having learned God, Augustine, like the slave-boy of the Meno, is humbled, recognizing the extent of what he does not know, and smitten with desire to know more.
Augustine's passion is greater than when he sought surcease of desire plunging amid
fair forms; touched by God, he burns for his peace.
The two-ness of the mind, its ability to resist its own command, its
guardianship of a lost thing which can't be found, thus leading the head of the soul
on to the true object of its search, all recall and deepen Augustine's amazement at
the varied identities and uses of memory. I-the-mind, the inner man, head of the
soul, image in memory, rememberer, chamber wherein image meets rememberer and
thoughts upon that meeting--and upon all else that has crossed his mind: this is
memory.
To what end is memory made multifaceted? How are what conceives and what marks
that conception related? It is possible to dismiss Augustine's perplexity as the effusiveness of a hobbyist or scholasticism. On the other hand, we may avail ourselves
of an opportunity to recollect, bidding our souls god-speed.
Thus to give
71
�Augustine's peculiar and alarming metaphors their due--which is to say, consider them
rather than remark on them as distasteful conceits, startling but essentially decorative figures --may yield some insight into his attempt to reduce a conundrum to a figure of accessible wonder.
If Christ were understood to be head of the mystical body all share, whose body
all comprise; and if, in order so to share, one -must crown the ,inner man king and
declare him judge; and if that inner man were understood to have a spiritual body
like Christ's, comprising and made in his image (once removed or twice projected, as
you will), then it is not surprising that the soul, identified as the inner man,
should have a head, that memory should be at its head, nor that the scattered mate7ials of concepts-to-be should be found in a lodging suitable for One whose concepts,
in fact, are being. As Christ is mankind's connection to God, so is memory the inner
man 's : in an upper room God "has builded a sanctuary", designing to take a room in
our
spacious palace
for
his
residence.
Thus
memory
is, for
the
inner-man-which- is-I-the-mind, the head of that mind--the mind's mind, as it were, a
truly inner sanctum, a room with a view to an end: love of God.
This purposiveness of memory's activities taken as a whole, its finai cause, ·is
a paradigm for the curious teleological character of that constituent function, conception. Memory's semblance to packrat's den would puzzle the admirer of nature's
famous economy were it not understood that its vast inventory is potentiality earmarked for its bearer's actuality, for Augustine's benefit in his search for The Happy ~ife. God will use all heaven and earth outside and all of that within memory to
turn the inner man toward him, to incline his ear--in other words, to push him to
· make that effort to unify inner and outer man (also known as mortifying the
flesh)--in preparation for God's bursting that ear's deafness. That we have memory
is a sign that this hearing, learning God, is the true nature and end of human life,
just as perplexity indicated obstruction of the recollecting soul's complete knowledge. Therefore, Memory as the stuff of self, than which nothing is nearer to us,
without which we cannot so much as name ourselves , is the stuff of epiphany. our
sense of self, of character, personality, identity is developed gradually during the
search for God, who reveals himself to whomever he will. Augustine says what he is
and spe~ks truly in th~ light of God's self-disclosures, whether they be impending or
accomplished. Memory is manifestation's medium.
As certain hi the_ to unnoticed odds and ends in the memory unmarked except by
r
their destiny (which in this context is to say except by God) ~re fore - ordained to
concept-hood, so the entire inventory is dedicated to fostering self- hood without
which the inner man has no ear to hear. By means of this slug's trail of personal
experience and pr~vate histor y , a n on- going col l ection of a ccumulat ed percept ion,
thought, and emotion, . we ~hoose our next direction, next move. Decision, such as
tha.t to be f!ee from the law of sin, is bound up with the will, with sense of self:
with the understanding of identity in the context of human nature. This sense is
developed in ~he interaction of a personal past and the present moment, which is made
our own by vi~tue of our past's presence in it, in memory. Memory interprets "now"
for us; dangling the carrot of our desire, it suffuses the present with our hope for
the future·
It's as if the slug's silver trail were each moment's expression of
self, which, in memory's overview, marks a path with evidence visible only to the
i ndividual, a more intimate earnest of "things unseen" than the testimony of heaven
and. earth. In fact, .it is just this string of memories that makes their testimony
audible; by means of it we have intercourse with the world . Interpenetration of past
a nd present in memory's chamber is the process of making sense of what we encounter
whose eventuality is the generation of self- identity and whose end is the encounte;
with God . As we make our way, each moment, the self is sloughed, its abrasion by the
present countered in its conversion into trail, to memory's entailment .
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Memory is both marker of the way chosen and source of the trail, urging the
pilgrim along toward an end obscure to him. This trail-blazing has the feel of a
thing half-forgotten, vaguely familiar, almo::;t reco~nized: wending our way toward
that which we desire, we travel a path whose origin is with us, in memory. Thus, its
end moves as we do; arriving at the place of the desired we hear its call beyond us.
we have displaced it. Hearing God's call to the soul, memory serves as a lamp unto
the path, marking the last step and lighting the way for the next. Despite its attendant images of dim attic, dusty cabinet, dark cave and subterranean winding, memory is the light of the mind, for by it we are enabled to see what we have been, and
thus to say what we are.
By analogy to Christ's position as head of the mystical body and as the way to
God , the "head
the soul" seeks to make straight the way to knowledge of God . M
emory, like Christ, stands as an interpreter, mediating between our experience in the
world and the meaning of that experience. As an intercessor, memory seeks to bring
these to an accord: the happy life is the life desired; the life desired is love of
God. The soul is restless until rest is found in him. In this way memory serves as
an augury of journey's end and a sign of kinship to God, to whom Augustine prayed at
the outset of his undertaking, "Let me know thee as I am known."
What might such knowledge be like? It would be comforting to believe that God's
knowledge of us included a mindfulness of our memories. Melancholy it is to feel
that when I die, my dear memories will be no more. No one else remembers them as I
do, no one else has them, no one else can know them, no one else will be me when I am
dead. The attitude toward death of the solicitous self is a peculiar poignancy, a
protective regret that these memories--so long and hard in the making, so rich and
complex and, now one thinks of it, quite wonderful--shouldn't be allowed to go on
absorbing and furnishing the world. The indignation is King Lear' s at Cordelia's
death: what! a horse, a dog have breath,. but my poor fool have none? We are attached to it, fond; we shall miss it, this memory of ours.
But if God knows me, he must know my memories. Thus sorrow over their frail
dependence on mortal us is changed in an inkling to joyful hope: all that I remember
is with God, already is in God. Home is where the heart is; I am at home in my memories; my memories are remembered by God. My heart, my self, is kept a place in
God's memory, a home in the house of many mansions. Nothing is lost. The world will
be made whole. My memories are waiting there for my arrival, for me to claim them
and be claimed by them at the joyful end of the race well run, with much exclamation
and delighted reminiscence, mutual congratulation and grateful amusement: remember
how I almost missed you? all become one voice--mine, identical with their sum total
at last . source of restless wa nder ings and cove nant like the rainbow b ridging "head
of the soul" and Godhead, portent of and guide to rest for the weary, memory is a
beacon, calling soul home.
What does it mean to experience one's life as a seeking in response to a call?
Augustine peers back through time at himself, at his life, and pronounces, "I was
ever restless until I found my rest in Thee." His conversion interpreted the meaning
of memory's content. Stolen pear, Manichaeanism, Monica, Alypius, Ambrose--all are
imbued in retrospect with the appearance of trial and error, with the urgency of
search.
A moment has occurred in which meaning became apparent.
Like a golden
thread shot through a dark fabric, ~ t traced a pattern, in-woven, of revelation's
design. Its glint is recognized now in the remembered and recast darkness of which
it was part. Conversion's hindsight sheds revealing light on events which now by
reflection declare themselves: see? We, too, were with you all along. Previously
unnoticed in the context of the present1 because discrete, not yet bound to like fiber in other moments, now this thread binds up and repairs the old garment of our
days. Thus refurbished, our lives seem to fit, to have been made especially for us,
here, now; and as we are.
of
73
�This garment i~ fastidiously mended; each loss is restored by its incorporation
into foil for that thread of gold. Past grief prepared Augustine for the moment of
learning real joy. His painful searGh along a difficult w~y is redeemed by the understanding that the road was made dark and treacherous by the blemish in his own
soul, by his not-altogether-willing will. In retrospect, pain is seen to have been a
reminder of God's call, proof for Augustine of his fierce love. God was with him,
turning his mis-steps back into· the right way, using his error to lead him to knowledge.
Past joy is also reinterpreted; renamed sin, it is occasion for remorse, but as
such, for present gratitude and praise for forgiveness and mercy. His actions were
evidence of God's call, being befuddled responses thereto, and thus witness to his
mercy. The fabric of his history is shot through with the meaning that flashed and
shone when God scattered Augustine's blindness. Sight restored, loss is restored:
he sees he is looked after. Every memory, every moment passed has been bound up into
an infinite and all-redeeming Now.
The world has spoken to the seeker in an intimate voice words most fit--full of
his desire's satisfaction--for his very own ear. He has been known: all along some
One has been noting, keeping track, waiting for him. It is like discovering we have
always had a mother who loved us 1 only our own waywardness had kept us from full
knowledge and actual experience of her loving presence. She was with us all along;
it was we who were not with her. She, in our seeking her at all times and in all
places, was within, while we floundered among her witnesses without. Now that we ·
have found her we are no longer lost. One moment's epiphany entailed adoption of
orphan aimless moments passed, discovered to us their place and made them at home.
These things were preparing a place for us, making straight the way at whose end we
exclaim, Aha! This is who I was becoming! as we step into the waiting shoes which
that loving Presence made ready. Safe, consoled, befriended, as one, we have learned
the uses of the things of the world. we are at home.
"I am I!" we say. Memory, trusty guide and interlocutor, enables the world to
yield us a life that fits us. In the twinkling of an eye, meaning flashes, gathered
from and reflected upon the darkness of the previous moment's ignorance. Its brilliance illuminates the present, and marks it as ours. I.t is recognized as the destination prepared for by all our days.
It is a mirror. we see ourselves in this
bright element.
But what can we say about such a moment when it is not understood to be learning
God, a gift whose acceptance marks us as God's own? What do we make of the event
which yields reconciliation, solace, hints of home, but which is not identified as
response to Augustine's God's call? Since this moment, referred to hereafter as the
Moment, seems to point to "a bright scienza outside of ourselves" as did Augustine's
creation when interrogated, it is natural for the Christian to ascribe to it evidence
for Christianity. Since it initiates us into mystery, permits us to enter that element in which "we pronounce joy like a word of our own," we give it to religion.
Since it allows us to become "erudite in happiness with nothing learned" we give it
to the omniscient. Since it is a breath of safe-keeping, hearth and home awaiting
us, we attribute it God, the Father. Certainly we know a grateful healing, a respite
for the heavy laden, refreshment for those who hunger and thirst--a mending of what's
ragged. Jesus' promise of rest and peace goes right to the weary heart, but can it
relieve those who bear memory's burden and suffer its thirst? What would such relief
mean for them? How would their understanding of the world and their relation to it
be altered?
Everyone lives with memory, with seeking and longing and loss; the experience of
restoration is indeed a gift. Receiving it, we feel it has been given by one who
knows our heart. our understanding of the uses of memory an.d hence of the things of
the world determines our relation to the world. we can put it into the context of
74
Christianity, discovering its use as beacon and beacon's follower, God shining and us
finding our way into and finding ourselves in that beam which we follow toward Him.
What would our experience of seeking and finding reveal in another context?
Baudelaire's ·"Le Cygne" offers us an opportunity to find out. Who has given us this
knowing gift, self and the present wrapped in meaning? Who calls us, and to what
end?
"Andromaque, je pense a vousl" says Baudelaire as he walks through a city whose
form has changed more quickly than his heart. His heart contains the city memory has
built, .a citadel of the self. Therein the city through which he once walked is kept,
taken into memory. He walks across the new Carrousel, and suddenly his fertile memory bears fruit.
The river swelled by Andromache's tears, the mirror of her
widowhood's grief, has made fecund Baudelaire's fertile memory. The present is made
to point beyond itself--to something in Baudelaire. Remembering the old Carrousel,
Baudelaire suffers one of the Moments.
Andromache's grief has made Baudelaire's
fruitful; the thought of her is the water bringing forth and preserved in the fruit.
What nourishment, what refreshment does it contain?
As Baudelaire crosses the new Carrousel he sees with his mind's eye that which
is no more: the camp of booths, the shattered capitals, the hewn stones greened by
their pools. The presence of the new place reminds him of the absent one, evokes "en
1' esprit" its presence as memory. An inventory of sights remembered is scanned by
the mind's eye; among the confused bric-a-brac it comes upon the menagerie that used
to sprawl over the tiles there. There he saw one morning, under
clear and cold sky
at the hour when Labor awakes, where streetsweepers raised in the silent air a somber
hurricane of dust--a swan.
Although the memory received and now recalls
he~ter-skelter a record of time and place, light, weather, characters and activity,
among these blue sky, dust cloud, waterless gutter and a swan bathing in dust stand
out. The memory has marked these as self's own, capable now of speaking meaningfully
to the beholder. Recognition has occurred. Memory, a Nathan who, like King David's,
is no respecter of persons, has declared: that swan is you.
The heart of the swan is full of his beautiful natal lake. In a dry and dusty
place, waddling over pavement on webs meant to paddle, dragging white feathers over
rough and broken ground, the swan bathes in dust by a gutter without water and addresses a blue sky: water, when will you rain down? The present provokes memory and
exacerbates the pain of remembering.
The lake remembered is no more.
It is
inaccessible to sense, no part of the outside world, yet present to mind. The lake
carried in the heart cannot be entered, its waters cannot wash away the dust or refresh the parched throat except in this experience of longing for it, of suffering
its loss.
Because of the desert, the lake is recalled; the lake welling up in memory waters thirst, and "suckles grief," by incorporating, naming its own, those aspects of
the present which need has marked--thus giving to us what we have of it, of solace.
In this way identity is developed; the remembered and its elect in the present are
bound up into self via need. The self in the present holds within it past selves and
their passed presents. When something outside, something now present as an object to
self touches what is held within as memory--as dust cloud touched the swan's
lake--the remembered is brought to life in the present. This arousal is a claiming
of the stuff of the self, identifying dust cloud as meaningful because related to and
ordered by its natal place in the heart. Identification of self's objects as development of meaning allows the self to incorporate the outside, to "take it in". Identity is strengthened and its number of possible objects multiplied.
Thus the swan speaks to its own, out of its full heart, when it addresses a blue
sky clouded only by the streetsweepers' dust. The swan's posture of reproach is an
attitude of need: I am full .of desire both because of the presence in my heart of
this lake and for this lake no longer present and accessible in the WQrld precisely
a
75
�....,
because it is in my heart. The swan is stretched by the lake in the heart from dry
ground to cloudless sky. Its presence come to life inside defines him as a figure of
longing, impressed by the remembered from within and. shaped by its absence without.
Begging a "-sky cruelly and ironically blue" for rain would be merely ridiculous
were it not that from it alone relief is to be wrested. In his need for it the swan
has all that he ever did and ever will have of it. This is ironic. He cannot help
needing it; nor can he reach it. This is cruel. Need itself must blossom into all
the recompense it requires. Only the cold clearness of blue sky can satisfy the
thirsty swan; absence is made fruitful. This is the exile's sublimity.
The swan remembered is present to Baudelaire as a vision by which he is transformed.
The memory reveals meaning in the present; in this case the revelation
catches up memory itself. No longer "La, je vis " , past tense, but here, now " Je vois
ce malheureux, mythe etrange et fatal." The memory yields the vision of swan as exile, a strange and fatal sight: it bears like a contagion the revelation of identity.
seeing the swan's exile, he sees his own. Memory has brought the sight; by witnessing, it as a thing seen in memory, by looking on it in the present, he is transformed
into an exile. Remembering the swan has made him like the swan: he sees what is not
there. An exile, Baudelaire sees what is in_ his heart. He sees the swan in front of
the Louvre as one might see the child's features in the face of the mother. In this
case those features are discovered to be one's own, become so through one's looking.
This surely is a Greek swan, no doubt one of Zeus' bastards, mythic in its
potency to reveal, fatal in its relation to us as ancestor perceptible only in retrospect. Its pattern, its story, its word, or muthos, is like Baudelaire's; it explains his present by impregnating a past moment with its image. Thus, as Yeats'
account of Leda's "annunciation" has it, "burning Troy engendered there" is discerned
(in the past rape) from the vantage of the present. This is a writing of history
backwards, as must happen if it is to be made meaningful, using the present to give
life and understanding to the past--in order to say what one is.
The swan's presence in the new Carrousel is something like the presence of
Zeus-as-swan in the new Troy of the false Simo is.
It renders history as change
allegorical, composing autobiography, an account not of discrepancies wrought by
time' s march on the future, but of identities perceived in retrospect. Something
past is built up by the present to be its own foundation. That is, what is real is
what is remembered. The present is the mother, nurturing the past, "suckling grief".
We discern the mother's features in the face of the child which is born of her labor,
her flesh and blood. The only sight we have of her is in the face of her child. What
we know of the present is that which elaborates and explicates the past. What we
have of the present is whatever the past, inspired by memory, needs in order to live,
but lacks. In other words, we have a present to call our own thanks to our character
.as exiles.
The present city becomes allegory, its new palaces, old neighborhoods, and scaffolding encounterable, comprehensible and thus assimilable only as they refer to the
self, the more enduring city in the heart, built of "chers souvenirs" heavier than
stone. Walking among them we touch, we taste and see; we carry off within us an
effluence, an essence which lack and loss of them inspires. They yield to us their
souls 1 at last we are with them . At last we know them. At last we are possessed of
a world.
Baudelaire in the new Carrousel like the swan in the old yearns for a past place
in the heart. Baudelaire desires the place in which he saw the swan stretched by
desire. Once there, in memory, he stands congruent with the swan and there understands: I am, like the swan, an exile, possessing by pain of its absence the past
place and possessed of a self by virtue of this pain. He acquires a present by extension (like swan's neck} of need; need identifies self's objects, those ordained to
make up self, by its arousal in their presence. Its objects are allegorical. What he
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notices is what need points out. What he hears is what tells us about the past.
Loss remembered identifies what belongs to self in the present. The present reveals
the identity of the self by relating and furthering the meaning of the past.
The world speaks to Baudelaire in rhymes of loss.
The memory of the old
carrousel contains an image of the rememberer and his loss. Now and Before are
bridged by identity. swan and Baudelaire and exiles everywhere meet in memory on the
banks of the river of tears they share.
Baudelaire, then, like the swan is grieved andguided by the lost, by what is no
more. Hearts full of a present which has dried like pressed flowers, they suffer
loss's determination of the new moment's appropriation. Understandably the image of
the swan is oppressive; he sees in its mad gestures his own. He, too, is.wrung ~y
its relentless desire; the fullness in the heart evoked by th.e prese~t filling it
with his need for what it cannot give him precisely because he needs it. His ?eed
comes from within and can be satisfied only there. To set there, to come within a
thing must be memory--which is experienced as desir~ for its lost state a7 Present.
Need is our element, "O most miserable," the air we breathe. We thrive on ne~d.
we have no choice; without our gnawer, our desire, we're as nothing. If not sublime
and ridiculous exiles, we become apathetic nobodies, citizens of nowhere. Because
Odysseus• identity was so strongly determined by his desire to see the day of his
home-coming, he could afford to deceive the Cyclops by saying he was "no-man." Without a like desire we cannot say, I am, let alone what or who we are. Memory consigns
us to a life of seeking, drives us to ask the present for what it has supplanted,
whose absence it signifies. Need rises like a smoke, conflagration of desire sen~ing
up sign~ls of our incongruence with the present, lake in the heart feeding the fire.
This smoke's particles congealed and constellated cover the present, marking w~th an
outline of our desire what is ours, bringing it to stand before us as- what is not
here. The things that are here we have only by remembering, in their passing into
our memories.
Andromache, deine among exiles, is the form of the fruit of Baudelaire's recognition of self in the swan. His loss is swelled into fruition by their shared grief,
a river that calls forth and keeps their tears. She is remembered as another for
whom relation to and hence meaning in a new, changed city is informed by the internal
gravity of a past not passed, an unbudgeable city of melancholy. The new Ca~rousel
and the second Troy weigh upon those who hold within them their predecessors. Their
external presence renders the memories they've vitalized insuperably private,
inaccessible and inescapable. The remembered as present' s referent is source of
tears; as present it is the power which bends Andromache into her ecstasy of grief.
The sight of the second Simois is magnified by Andromache's tears. She sees in
it both her reflection at the moment--"femme de Helenus"--and the context or support
for that reflection, the first Troy, the true Simois, and the reflection's_ original--"veuve de Hector." The moment of ecstasy unifies these, wresting into agreement
the forms of widow and wife. The "slower" heart suffers the impossibility of identity, the incongruence that memory, like the river, engenders and preserves.
Andromache has become a "vil betail," a pack-anima. led from a fallen husband's
l
arms by the hand of his proud enemy. Stretched between the two men, between past and
present, she is burdened with implacable desire for what was r~ndered past ~oo sc:>°n
while bearing the weight of the present necessity. She carries her memories like
burdens. The present carries its own weight, only weighing on us when and where we
remember. Where we mark an absence within, there the present's touch becomes insupportable.
Andromache bent before the empty tomb is like Baudelaire oppressed by the image
of his great swan: each is the image of the image before which she or he bows. T~mb
and swan become allegorical. Andromache holds memory within as the tomb holds its
emptiness; each marks by its presence something absent. As the emptiness within and
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�the space around it define the tomb, so Andromache is shaped by her intangible memories and the lack and absence to which they refer. The tomb is built out of memory's desire; so is Andromache. Each is present bearing witness to loss, full of what
it does not hold. Andromache's posture, bent in tension between Hector and Helenus,
burdened by the weight of airy present on the nothingness she carries within, is that
of mediator, of exile, grounding memory with grief, watering herself with her tears.
What the heart holds is what we have of the lost. The blow struck us by the
reminder of its absence stirs its memory, working it to ripeness.
This fruit' s
succulence is the preservation and transformation of the tears that brought it forth.
Tasted, it yields nourishment of knowledge, of fortified self-identity: by such
fruits we know ourselves. Its flavor is bitter; it is ripened in the flaring of
grief, solstice of that hot sun's season. For one terrible moment we are one in our
longing with the longed-for. Very longing has blossomed into its own satisfaction,
an "ecstasy of grief." The present is eclipsed by the ripe moment's flaming forth1
dark and cold it is as nothing for us, stirring no memory. Memory itself rises and
swells in us to fill all the shape of our desire. Resolution of the internal and
external bring them to bear as one on the self, removing us for an instant from the
cycle of need-engendering need. The moment of remembering belongs neither to past
nor present. For us it is timeless, bearing us outside of time. Remembered and
rememberer meet transformed "en !'esprit."
This moment of identification, the deepening and enlarging of self, restores an
imbalance which is our natural state. Once passed it is felt to have concretized the
present; the lost, so painfully present, are restored and re-stored with our experience of this restoration in memory. The moment's ripeness has burst, scattered and
conduced outward~ back into the world of the present. Collapsed, the fruit sows the
seeds of self, laying claim to what will grow to be self's own.
Thus identification contains in the moment of identity with the remembered the
transcendence of memory's pain as well as- the · seeds of pain's -source, of its
offspring comprising the present regained. In this way Andromache's "Simois menteur"
is strengthened; in its drinking of the present it is all the more p0tent to grieve
us again. If the river as symbol of loss, as witness to and ·· evidence of the absence
of the desired, is enlarged by her tears, so is the present in which it is so experienced. This is bitter fruit, but to be desired:
the deeper the river the more
fruitful the memory and hence, the richer the self and more meaningful the present.
The Simois, then, however false, is not like a river of Dante's hell, encircling .a
repetition, a fruitless imitation of living. On the contrary, the wider the river,
the wider the array of self's objects in the present: more of the world is our
own--in which to walk as an exile. memory's "blast of the horn" in the forest gives
the lost soul direction--and punctuates distance, revealing the extent of the dark
wood it wanders. our sense of self, of our relation to the world, is forged by such
· memory-stirring blasts.
When we hear this call we answer out of our experience, out of our identity
which is never identical with what is present to it now, never belongs.
The
emaciated negress begging in the mud asks a wall of fog for the coco-palms of proud
Africa·. The mind is helpless, desire puissant. Living in accord with the ponderous
city in the heart, she is bound by its necessities. Where are you, desired? water,
when will you rain down? we demand of the desert. Mad gestures--there is no help
for it: this memory, this need, this voice is our own. Because we are given stones;
we ask for bread. When we receive it we are bent and bowed like Andromache by such
necessitous fare.
Because the name the exile has for herself, her "I", was given her by people and
places not there anymore, she suffers their claim on her present, unable and unwilling to be free of them: they are all she has of who she is. Shun them and the present collapses into unidentifiable rubble like the detritus of the old Carrousel,
78
building blocks without an architect's design. The old Carrousel's shattered capitals
and crumbling stones were appropriated and restored by memory's "plan". They were
needed to make sense and self of Now. The absent whom we need and desire re-invent
for us the meanings and thus the uses of things, adjusting Now to meet Then. We are
the malleable joint suffering the alignment only to prepare, by our presence, its
going awry once more. we "tettons la Douleur", suckle grief.
were Andromache to forget Hector immediately upon his death, the painfully perfect fit of her days would be altered. we know the lost through memory's suffusion
of the form of its absence, by nursing grief until it grows to press upon the shape
of its absence held in memory, holding us tight against its absence in the world
around. Like the tomb, we are sculpted by loss. We bear the imprint of the desired.
we bear its likeness. Remembered and rememberer meet. This burden of so coming together as to be alike is memory's fruit. This is longing's recompense and the communion of exiles. such painful accord cannot undo loss, yet on it the future world
depends: it builds up of these accords self and self's world. Time's erosion itself
gives us the stuff of a world. Consuming our souls in the coming together of Then
and Now, breathing a smoky future, we are formed by memory's immense store of debris,
by the accrual through memory of the ashes of the lost.
Baudelaire's thought passes from the swan to Andromache to the Negress and on to
all who have lost what can never ever be found, who water themselves with tears,
suckling Grief like a good she-wolf. Paris changes, his melancholy remains.
The
changing external city is, in a sense, the timeless if not the eternal1 outside of
us, it is outside of our time. When we mother grief, we acquire through time the
personal experience that mingles the times and places of the external with ourselves.
The city memory holds is mortared by identity. Once the present is so enjoined, its
material claimed--this is my present--then the presents past in memory go to work on
it, hewing and chiseling and joining, making it in their image. The external city,
unalloyed with time, at large, not yet part of ourselves, wears away the
already-fashioned. Memory harnesses this erosion, turning it to its use, using it to
fashion self. we stand remembering between this erosion coming against us and the
inertia of the past which, if left isolated and fixed in its grief, would not yield
an "I" who can make sense of Now, thereby claiming it. Memory mediates between these
forces whose interplay determines the development of identity. Thus we are strangely
allied with time whose presence in our memories is their guarantor of ultimate obliteration, whose advent as portended by arousal of desire is accomplished in the search
to satisfy it.
we depend on memory to make time's constructs real, accepting the unweildy present with hands guided by time passed, always seeking to accomplish what desire
pre-figured and time proposed: homecoming.
we are given an inhospitable present; in it we find no chair familiar with our
figure. In fact, we discover here the inexorable eraser of all our imprints. Memory
goes before us to e'ncounter the present on our behalf, to save a seat and warm a
chair. Memory is Proust's angel custom, making a habitable room of the world.
But while we are given this present, we are denied the past as equally present,
though present it is to us, in memory. There its comfort of the accustomed is beyond
our immediate need to be held; we can't sit in the memory of that old chair. Nevertheless its presence in memory is understood as the subject of an imperative: go
home! You go home, you who know and need this very chair, find it! Be one with itl
so we seek it. we arrive homesick; homesickness is our native state, furnishing
its native daughters and sons with homegrown amenities as souvenirs: melancholy,
longing, lonesomeness--our inalienable suitcases. Our native land exists in our experience of the breach and lapse, discord and distance between the city in the heart
and that city through whose heart we pass seeking it.
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�sailors forgotten on an island, captives, the conquered--all are hailed with an
old Memory's "plein scuffle du cor." All answer to the name of exile, flock to Memory's summons, as do "bien d'autres encore." Not only those who live with great loss
held by memory's terrible fidelity, but any who seek to make sense of their present
while grieved because they cannot touch their desired, come to be numbered among the
company of exiles. The hero seeking to embrace the underworld's shade wraps his arms
around himself--foolish gesture, mad gesture, the exile's fraternal greeting. They
are brothers to grief and related by it to others so related.
The oddly anti-climactic "an many others, as well" at the poem's end is like the
failing echoes of the horn's blast among the trees. Memory's transcendent moment,
the moment of the exile's "kinship", subsides into the ebb and flow of longing, into
isolation. The roll call of exiles begun by Baudelaire's particular grief fades from
individual, to group, to revery's all-embracing melancholy, its "pauvre et triste"
mirror. He is again, as he began, alone.
Who then calls us? Memory calls us. Memory gives us to ourselves. Memory
leads us into a valley of shades where we come into the presence of the lost • . In
memory's court where we are changed by grief at its loss into its likeness we become
one with its memory. we instill into it our breath of life and it gives us in return
our human life..
Praise and thanksgiving are compounded with grief and reproach.
Their ally, the exactest element for us, is Andromache's ecstasy of grief, a conversion not . of sorrow into joy, but of joy and sorrow into an "I" unconstrained by
time's narrow file, a self who knows and is known--as an exile. What is lost holds
us, with its knowing arms, in an embrace of the absent, the company of exiles.
What we had and knew in a time passed is truly known and possessed when we are
possessed of and by its memory. We suffer the thing we seek to know. Recalling it,
we become like it, transformed by this memory's presence in our present, we know it
, as knowing us: it has come in response to our need for it. It has come to assuage
· our sorrow at its absence. It has come in answer to a summons written in grief from
what has taken its place. It delivers us from a welter of presence, unmarked as
Mine, interpreting for us its unintelligible formless address. The remembered arranges and orders that hodge-podge, mediates between the woven "I" and the stuff of
experience, incorporating the undiscerned design of the moment, binding up with our
monogram the wound its summoner has opened in the flawless flatness of Now.
Not memory as fact, as noun, as word referring to incident or to sight, but the
activity of remembering, capitalized and old, sower of seeds which in us bloom into
memories, calls us. It is a power, a source. We are patterned by it. It is an activity. we participate in it, making it our own in the ecstasy of grief. we are
struck with passion; its touch sparks desire.
It is an activity like thinking on
thinking, an inexplicable going round, a spiraling which entails us: we are moved by
it. we remembering, partake of its moving, the past recollected inspired, collecting
and breathing life into the present whose second coming as memory initiates what is
for us its real life and continues our resurrection. Each memory thus redeemed furthers our ascension to the outside-time and no-place wherein we stand one with our
longing, and congruent with the figure of our losses. We raise, remembrance by
remembrance, a body of self-knowledge into its unfigured garment, a waiting air.
Baudelaire's understanding of memory does, then, hint of a completion, a wholeness to be attained, just as it did for Augustine. Something is watching over, waiting for us; why else this longing, this search? How else should the world speak
words meet and fit for us?
Even without the meaning-giving "speech", the resolution of fragments into a
pattern-casting leaded glass of the Moment, the fact of our longing proposes to us
the existence of a grail probably holy. That there is a lost thing we seek, something we remember we have forgotten says to us faith is being kept: the memory will
not forget us; we are engraved on the palms of its hands. It has slipped our minds,
80
this word on the tip of the tongue, but it will wait for us. So habitual is the attitude, we forget it is that of searching. our days are tinged with apparently native desire, aroused when we stray into the presence of the desired. The thing itself beckons, urges us. We say, No, not this, unable to say what it would be. we
feel drawn; we follow; arriving, we sight it elsewhere. It is in our memory, it has
become of what has been and yet we turn to face it as though it is yet to be, to be
discovered at once, complete and whole. It is what we have of our living. It seems,
thus, to be "not-I" , outside of ourselves. We hear its call in the things of the
world, but cannot discover the caller there.
In this way the things of the world point beyond themselves. For Baudelaire,
too, a kind of outer self gathers the mundane material from which the inner gleans,
gathering not evidence of, but the unseen itself--the stuff of self. The outer notes
the details of the Carrousels prompted by the inner' s longing. The inner is the
seeker, sifting the wealth brought before it by the outer, for mementos of the
desired.
In each case the Moment gives access to a deeply inner self secretly
wrought in the room of our days, whose continuity--recognized existence--is at once
surprise and confirmation, "an agreement provoked by surprise". All along we have
sought; only we are surprised to see what it is that we sought. In the moment of
"Aha" is "Yes, here it is" and "What? Is this it?" "This" feels somehow familiar.
The inner self senses in the things of this world the presence of it lost, which
are at once its progeny and its self-to-be. The memory of the swan belonged to
Baudelaire; he had seen it. The memory was one of self's brood, but was held captive
in the new Carrousel. That in the new Carrousel which touched on the swan hidden
there was claimed by memory to belong. Chance released it. Chance revealed it.
Exiles, sublime and ridiculous, are "idiotai", idiots, answering voices only they
hear, recovering property that exists only when they are touched by it. They hold
their hands before them like sleepwalkers; what is theirs must 'touch them.
When stwnbling in the waking world upon last night's dream, we know a
quickening. On the verse of recollection, a sense of wonder transforms us. We enter
for a moment that element compounded of instantaneous participation in the dream with
the present touchstone yielding it, thus displacing memory and bestowing a wondrous
buoyancy on the present. The inner self senses this compound's presence, living in a
perpetual state of advent. Always it listens, absent-mindedly heeding, turning toward--toward what? What moved it?
It may happen that we discover what called us. This feels like grace. This
feels like redemption. We feel, for a moment, that we have arrived at a lucidity
which raises us, effortlessly. An alignment, a resolution of attention yields an
atmosphere of vast transparency. we sense mystery, privy to intimations of a world
made whole. Disparate events, tergiversating, have eschewed time's rank and file to
lie superimposed, revealing as would transparencies, outlines of correspondence.
The thing sought and revealed in the Moment is identified through and identifies
the self. The "souls" of those the self has lost, imprisoned in objects, can call it
because they share a name. The recognition of this kinship affirms the self and its
place in the world. We feel as if two fingers touch, reaching from this world to
another whose existence longing suggested and recognition confirms. In this Moment
our past is caught up and shown to have spoken the words whose meaning we apprehend
now. Our comprehension results in a rapture; we are raised above time, lifted out of
ourselves. We feel we have, by participation in something larger than us, learned
who we are. There is a knowing, and we are part of it and in these Moments we have
access to that knowing and hence to· ourselves. Thus we discover what we have desired
and what our desire makes us.
This, too, recalls Augustine. How do I say what I am? I seek to discover what
I love. In the Moment, identity is discovered as a particular relation to the world.
Recognition of identity is portentous; its revelation determines the uses of and re-
81
�lation to the things of the world. Thus the Moment's activity is world-making. In
its raising us above time, allowing its interpretation to insinuate itself retrospectively, claiming past events as its emissaries, it is ahistorical and proposes that
we, too, are properly more akin to the spiral than to the line. Its meanings spread
backwards in a wave, obliterating cause and effect, washing from effect over cause.
In the Moment we can see that all those precedents, those causes were this moment;
they just happened to be scattered. Something about our presence, something in our
nature keeps us from always seeing them wholly recollected, but we have the sense
that there is a place where memories gathered meet as one with the rememberer.
Recollection is the paradigm. The whole world is memory's treasure-house. Memory gathers up the multifarious outside, extrudes it through self and grounds it in a
Larger Than Self.
Augustine read the sequence in the opposite order.
One God
through his people, created in his image, works to deliver--to create--a kingdom of
heaven. All creation groans in this labor of turning the inside, Christ's kingdom in
our hearts--out. Thus the Christian's relation to the mystical body will determine
the uses of the things of this world.
Baudelaire interprets the sequence in another way, emphasizing our kinship with
the "lesser" creation. Nature is a temple wherein we encounter symbols that look at
us and do so familiarly, "avec des regards f amiliers." Here the puppets dance of
their own accord in the playroom by night. We may on occasion dance to their melancholy tune, which we're apt to hum, absent-mindedly, while crossing the new
Carrousel. we are one of them and all together, taken as one, we in our whirligigs,
dervish-like, find revealed in ourselves the figure of a larger, yet like, dance.
The things of the world act on us. Because of our presence among them we are swept
up into the dance. They speak to us; because their speech is familiar, if confused,
we can answer their · overtures. It happens on occasion that we feel they answer to
us: for an instant we correspond. Deep and twilit, the Larger-Than-I is unveiled.
Through suffering them and being moved by these things we develop identity and a
sense of infinite. The very fact that the poets of actuality are outside of us
supposes that they are kin to us, will be bound into the final cause, the shape of
self to come. They correspond to something within us1 we in turn answer to something
in the Larger-Than-I toward which we live. Augustine dismisses the things in favor
of the God they bring. They are throw-aways, career emissaries not properly lovable
in themselves. our kinship with God is stressed; strengthening this binding tie is
the work determining the uses of things. Thus love of music for the pleasure it
gives is suppressed; the words' kinship to The Word and music's place as an adjunct
to worship are stressed.
Baudelaire, on the other hand, counters that what the senses bring to us is
bound up in our experience of the infinite. Sense is not a vehicle abandoned at its
destination, but is integral to the destination. There is in us sense which answers
to color, sound, taste and touch1 and mind, or "l'esprit". In Augustine's view, the
former are poor relations, black sheep to be avoided if one would claim inheritance
in God's kingdom. For Baudelaire, sense and mind are a desirable continuum, whose
inseparability is the source of their transport which the sense of the infinite
sings.
Each man would claim that the unity of inner and outer precedes the Moment, but
for Augustine such accord is understood to be the inner man's conquest of the outer,
whereas for Baudelaire each realm is heightened, overflowing bounds to intermingle.
Baudelaire is not troubled by Augustine's pause wherein the complete will awaits
God's visit.
As sense and mind are a continuum so is their transcendence.
Augustine's moment of helplessness and humility during which he waits for God is the
source of his memory's transformation. Its emptiness, its need, are the perfect receptacle for God's presence. Only its pain is fit to hold true joy; thus past occasions of grief are filled with joy.
The finding of the lost requires the submersion of their absence in God's presence. What was dear is denounced by Augustine in order to widen the gap between inner and outer man, drawing inner nearer to God. Memory's grief is still, as for
Baudelaire, the source of identity, but it is grief at sin, at offending and thus
distancing himself from God. Grief over his loss of his mistress is drowned in joy
of loving God.
Some part of this joy is remorse at having dallied elsewhere,
confused by less fair forms. The moment of conversion inhales . not only all moments
past to mark them with its reinterpretation but exhales interpretations of the moments which follow it. This is the working out of self. The capitalized--Travail,
Douleur, Souvenir--in "Le Cygne" are present in Augustine's Confessions of what he
is. In the pause before conversion they are stilled, stopped. The inner has vanquished the outer. Learning God, Augustine learns new uses for them. They deepen
the rift between inner and outer. They split asunder what they had bound together,
in order to bind anew.
Whether in Augustine's or Baudelaire's view, we are in the middle. Mysterious
longing is our lot. We mediate between Then and To Come, between the made and the
being made, outside and in, between many things and one, happy life and Happy Life.
The inner man's body is a middle term1 memory as the head of the soul is closest to
their home, that head from which all souls flow. Through "un vieux Souvenir" the
exile approaches home remembered; as its call fades his vision fades; he is lost in
the wood once again.
Being thus in the middle we affect what we see. We see ourselves in what we
look at. The inner man finds evidence of the inner man's existence. If the world
points beyond itself, saying not we but he made us, it points in our direction. To
see beyond ourselves we have to see through ourselves. When the world points, we are
part of . the vision indicated, for we are part of the pointing world. The witness to
a Presence, allusion to One, is like our shadow; our own presence as an integrated
and integrating one among the world's manifold casts it.
A sun shines in the moment of looking; when looking recognizes its shadow then
it feels the sun. Andromache sees its glint on her river mirror; in its flash she
sees herself, heart full of Hector and Troy, reflected in the present of the second
Simois; Andromache in the river and Andromache on its bank are brought together. The
sun is here is with her; she knows it in that moment.
Correspondence of self in the world, its shadow there, with the inner self who
hears its voice and understands its speech yields a sense of an encompassing presence. From the private and particular, from the intimacy of a world which observes
us with familiar looks, we are caught up into a sense of infinite things. The world
has known this; it is the knowing temple, the portal and dwelling place of this Moment. we have been called into its presence by name. Because the world is kin, we
make sense of its speech: it speaks with our voice syllables of accord, sounded by
our presence and revealing our nam'e .
82
83
A CONCLUSION OR TWO
we all make ourselves at home in the world by means of memory's mediation .
Among us are those whose memory holds for them a reminder of another mediator who, by
sharing in our memories, shares in memories' uses. This memory in the flesh is a
friend.
The Shakespeare of sonnets 29 and 30 was one possessed of such a friend. The
friend sympathizes as "deaf heaven" is troubled with "bootless cries." His presence
belies utter disgrace "with Fortune and men's eyes": here is one who loves me, who
holds me in his regard1 this is great good fortune. All-alone-weepings of outcast
states are transformed by the happenstantial thought of the friend's acceptance of us
�1
and presence in our lives, thus enfranchising and offering access to conununity. As
one who knows us, sharing in our memories, mindful of our needs and hopes, the friend
grounds us in the present, in an outer changeable world. The friend is a bridge to a
familiar world whose presence there enables us to see ourselves at home in it.
Memory's grief is converted by the remembrance of the friend.
When the
remembrance of things past alienates us from the present, eclipsing it, remembering
the friend restores the lost, clearing a way back to the present. In the thought of
the friend, our grief catches on something external, refers us to someone who, u~like
those who people memory, is not-us and is part of the present. The need born of memory is diverted and no longer gnaws at us; from a solitary descent inward, we are
restored to a footing in the populous present.
The friend grants restoration by remembering us. Relieving our woe in the absence of those who knew us, whom we love and in the remembered presence of those who
hurt us, the friend's knowledge of and care for us brings solace: we are not alone.
we who remember are remembered; memory's burden is shared. The existence of the
friend affirms and sustains our own loss-riddled existence.
Augustine, after learning God, had a permanent friend. His friend said, I will
never forget you; his friend's immortality gave his words unconunon weight.
His
friend said, I am always with you, even to the end of the world. Augustine's friend
knew his heart, for he made it. His disappointments and sorrows were shared with
Christ who promised rest and peace for the troubled and heavy-laden. His happiness
was magnified by his friendship with the God he knew to be the source of every joy.
Friendship with this never-failing friend transformed the memory of his solitary
seeking, revealing in them his friend's benificent presence. With him, the world
which had been rendered two-faced by the split in the pilgrim's soul appeared whole.
Befriended loss and being lost are seen to be questions of perspective. The finding
of the lost sinner "finds out" all his losses, transforming their relation to him
through memory' s transformation.
Once he is found, Augustine' s "lost" are found.
The press of memories can never oppress by their presence. They have been, along
with Augustine, restored in an eternal present. Augustine's memory is grounded beyond this world, in his God.
In the Happy Life there is no real loss.
For the
friends of Augustine's God, this world is not a vale, but a veil of tears. Behind it
is the face of a permanent friend. Augustine never walks alone.
Baudelaire, as he crosses the new Carrousel, is quite alone--with the company of
his memories. Only he bears them. Their oppression widens the rift between the city
within and that without, strengthening the inner with pain come of the outer until it
swells in an access of grief into access to the company of exiles.
Memory's grief is Baudelaire's "dear friend"; his "chers souvenirs ••• plus lourds
que des roes" abide with him, grounding him in grief itself--in the river to which
all exiles' tears are tributary. Every exile has a friend in that river wherein he,
like Andromache, sees his other self. Exiles are friends not with one another but
with their grief. Thus a.11 are related by this common friend in a fellowship entered
into always and only "en l'esprit."
such a friend does not share in and keep one's personal memories, but preserves
them tr an sf ormed and sublime as "Souvenir." A memory recalled led Baudelaire to
Andromache's Siioois; the memory of an exile led him to the exile's "home."
Andromache remembered and no citizen of the new Paris led him through his old
Carrousel to the bank of the river where exiles weep.
For Baudelaire, loss is inalienable and its character indelible. No transformation or realignment of the soul through a friend's presence alters loss' s form or
meaning. Loss itself, intransigent and untransfigured, leads him to memory where the
exile's friend is found. Loss here is not restored but deepened. Its "unpublished
virtue" runs deep in the cleft between present and past. The friend recalled and
God's presence revealed lead, like Ariadne's thread, out of the maze of memory back
84
into the light of day.
Baudelaire's friend is found in the heart of the maze1
through his grief, enlarging and elaborating its intricacy, he reaches the no-place
wherein he finds its river. There the remembered presses upon the rememberer its
likeness.
Through this "Travail" life is re-stored and restored to memory.
Baudelaire enters into the exile's communion: he is one with his memory.
The friend Proust seeks is himself. An unknown Proust is hidden in a morsel of
tea-steeped cake. Trying its taste, he savors himself. He is his own "dear friend"
the encounter with whom in memory's chamber effects a strange restoration.
"What is nearer to me than myself?" asked Augustine. Madeleine and cup of tea
come between Proust and Proust; matter intrudes, recalcitrant matter. Proust is a
god who hides himself and seeks himself in cups of tea and the smell of varnish. He·
is an outer man and an inner; the outer reveals what the inner hides. Were all the
faithful smells and tastes of things relieved of the burden of "their vast structure
of recollection," Proust to Proust would be utterly restored.
I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls
of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an
animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and so effectively lost to us
until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the
tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then
they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have
recognized their voice the spell is broken. we have delivered them: they
have overcome death and return to share our life.
And so it is with our own past. It is a labor in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is
hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some
material object {in the sensation which that material object will give us)
which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance
whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die.
(p. 34)
Recognizing the voice of the little lost Proust of Sunday mornings at Combray,
Proust is filled with a "gaiety that is being," that element "in which we pronounce
joy like a word of our own."
No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate
than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the
extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had
invaded my senses, but individual, with no suggestion of its origin • . And
at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me
the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence1 or rather
this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal.
Whence could it have come to me, this
all-powerful joy? (p. 34)
A genie of vapor freed from madeleine and tea, Proust past welcomes Proust home.
AN APOLOGIA
Proust is my cup of tea. By that I mean two things. His "overture" to swann's way
was my chosen essay subject 1 reading it recalled to me my feeling for the momenta
like his with tea and madeleine, and served as occasion for one of my own. Out of my
85
�reading and thinking and remembering in preparation fc;:>r my attempt, this paper,
sprang into being. Thus, you have had before you its recalcitrant vapor, outwardly
Proustless, and now arrive at its genius, the cup of tea:
And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by filling a porcelain bowl with
water and steeping in it little crumbs of paper which until then are without character or fo:an, but, the moment they become wet, stretch themselves
and bend, take on color. and distinctive shape, become flowers, or houses or
people, pe:ananent and recognizable, so in that moment all the flowers in
our garden and in M. Swann's park, and the water-lilies on the Vivonne and
the good folk of the village and their little dwellings and the parish
church and the whole of Combray and of its surroundings , taking their proper shapes and growing solid, sprang into being, town and gardens alike,
from my cup of tea.
Bibliography
Augustine; Confessions, Everyman's Library, Dent/Dutton
Plato1
~,
trans. Jowett; Liberal Arts Press
Baudelaire, Charlesi Le Fleurs du Mal, Garnier-Flammariol
Proust, Marcel; Du Cote de Chez Swann, trans. Moncrieff, Random House
Stevens, Wallace1 The Palm at the End of the Mind, Vintage
86
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SPRING 1986
�ENERGEIA: The activity in which anything is fully itself.
~
... vou ev&pyew. ~co~ ... (Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1072b)
Cover:
The Emerging Odyssey by Jennifer A. Lapham
Ink and Watercolor
Printed by the
St. John's College Press
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Staff:
Barbara Gesiakowski
Chris Howell
Steve Jackson
A.J. Krivak
Bernadette Rudolph
Co-Editors:
Gabrielle Fink
Joseph MacFarland
Faculty Advisor:
Jonathan Tuck
Energeia is a non-profit, student magazine which is published three times a year and
distributed among the students, faculty, alumni and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis
and Santa Fe. The Fall issue contains a sampling of the student work from the previous school year which the prize committees of both campuses have selected for public
recognition. For the Winter and Spring issues, the Energeia staff welcomes submissions
from all members of the commun~ty-essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab
projects, drawings, and the like.
Note: A brief description of the author accompanies all work not by current St. John's
students. Please include some such statement along with your submission. Thank you.
�CONTENTS
PHOTOGRAPH
Christopher K. Watson
1
THE CHARACTER OF A METER
David Amirthanayagam
2
POEM
James Brown
8
THE GORGON AND THE BRIDE
OF LEBANON
Catherine Irvine
10
SOCRATES
Elizabeth De Mare
22
THE JACOBSEN CUT:
A GEOMETRICAL PROPOSITION
Henry Higuera
27
PHOTOGRAPH
Christopher K. Watson
33
PURGATION OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT
William O'Grady
34
A WAY TO THINK ABOUT DARK TIMES
William O'Grady
40
TWO POEMS: #3 AND #8
Stuart Sobczynski
45
FINAL CAUSE AND THE PROBLEM
OF EXISTENCE
Jim Guszca
46
ANTIGONE
Hugh Brantner
49
THREE FACES (WATERCOLOR)
Yolanda Rivera
55
SONNET FOR A SLAVIC MINER
A.J. Krivak
58
THE DEAD
Renee Bergland
59
THE FLESH MADE WORD:
SOME THOUGHTS ON GOGO~S
STORY "THE OVERCOAT"
Christopher K. Watson
61
LA REINE DE JADIS
Liz Waldner
67
�1
�The Character of a Meter
David Amirthanayagam
A friend of mine who helps young children learn to read and write told me recently about a special class of children:
these children read very well, in that
they can follow words on a page with their eyes and sound them out. If, however,
they are asked about the meaning of a passage they have just read, they make no connection. The words themselves and the act of reading seem to bear no relation in
their understanding to anything the words might mean. For this reason, schools single them out as "problem" children; the young learners grow greatly distressed and
discouraged by their confusion and its effect of singling them out.
Yet I wonder whether the problem lies not with the children, but with the words,
and whether, taken another way, this "problem" can be seen as the root and mainspring
of our poetry. For clearly, words have a dual nature, which confuses children, and
ought more often to arrest us. First, they are signs, which have a relationship with
what they signify, or simply with what is outside them, by which we express their
"meaning".
(This relationship of "meaning" is clearly very subtle and complex, and
might hurl us into philosophy.) Second, they are things in themselves, half-created,
sensible measures of space and time.
In this second nature, words are elements of
poetry. We can see that the connection between meaning and the words themselves
might not be obvious for children. I suggest that, if we are willing to accept that
words have two natures, neither of which is necessarily problematic, the tension (or
harmony) between the two might be the richest source of our best poetry.
I reflect on these things because I have been asked, for my edification, to do
what problem children do, that is, to sever the connection between measure, or form,
and meaning. In examining the iambic pentameter as used by five English poets, I see
that this can be done fruitfully, both for its own sake, because the meter itself is
a changing thing of beauty and character, and for the sake of reharmonizing the
duality. I mean that one can see a kind of meaning in meter. Even with my limited
knowledge of metrics, the simplest awareness of metrical, or more generally, formal
purposiveness on the part of the poet sent my study into realms of significance deeper than this paper can practically follow--waters I fear to tread safely for long,
though I might, in what follows, rush in on impulse.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, and Wordsworth all employ the iambic
pentameter line.
I will look, as agreed, at the opening of the Canterbury Tales,
Sonnet 29, the opening of Paradise Lost, An Essay On Criticism, and "Tintern Abbey".
The line is recognizable in each poem as the material and vehicle of the art; yet in
each it takes on a characteristic signature dress. Calling the line of each poet a
signature might allow me to conceal my critical, formal duty behind a claim for the
uniqueness and individuality of each poet. Yet I find I can get a good way into the
individuality of the poets by treating their lines formally, arranging their dress
into its parts. Three "parts,''. or elements, of the pentameter line single themselves
out, as signature strokes: rhyme, enjambment, and metrical substitution. Each is
conspicuous through its presence or absence.
From hearsay I gather that the Old English poetic line had four strong Germanic
stresses, with a great variety of syllable counts and sometimes a dropping of the
fourth stress. The effect of these was vigor and variety, without rhyme. My crude
2
sense of such things is that the Norman conquest brought French grace and syllabic
verse into our language, producing at last the harmonious synthesis of Chaucer's
five-stress, ten-syllable, Middle English line.
There is nothing composite or artificial, however, about Chaucer's line, despite
its genealogy; there can be no more natural a line than Chaucer's in English. Dryden
later characterized the verse as having "the rude Sweetness of a Scotch Tune ... which
is natural and pleasing, though not perfect". The last remark was based, I think, on
an incomplete appreciation of final "e" and the phenomenon of elision. Following my
text's editor's instructions, I find Chaucer's lines to be true pentameters. Consider lines 13-14 of the General Prologue:
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes
If palmeres scans as a dactyl, the second foot of the first line is an anapestic substitution; final -e in kowthe elides with the following vowel.
These are two
pentameters with feminine endings. I think Dryden's Scottish prejudice stems from
the Middle English vowel sounds, and so I partly hear his "rude Sweetness"; yet at
the same time, the most remarkable thing I observe about the lines is their elegance
and stately grace of movement, unmatched in the later poets. The cause of this grace
is the gentle lilt of the French "e" and of the long vowels. The latter essentially
introduce the quantitative element into a stress meter; the combined effect of quantity, stress, and final "e" seems impossible now to reproduce. Consider line 5:
When Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
In the iambic scansion, it seems to run spondee, pyrrhic, trochee, iamb, iamb. This
peculiarity comes to light, however: the initial spondee is a stress spondee, while
the other feet are stressed and quantitative. Note the breathtaking way the line
prepares for "sweete breeth"; I would prefer to measure only four feet, naming stress
spondee, quantitative anapest, anticipatory pyrrhic, gorgeous quantitative cretic.
Rude sweetness indeed!
In terms of our three signatures, we call this verse rhyming, closed, and metrically variant, though all five poets employ metrical variance, and so the question
becomes one of degree. Here the amount of metrical substitution is relatively small,
though we have seen its artful use.
I think Chaucer's regular iambic line, with
stress, quantity, and romance "e", is too musical to become monotonous, even in
lengthy service. The romance "e" also waters the significance of the rhyme; in Middle English, rhyme seems more nature than art. Not so with Modern English: compare
Dorothy Sayers' translation of Dante's Italian, which does nothing but mock the terza
rima with forced rhymes.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 reveals the modern iambic pentameter as an element of an
overarching form. The sonnet itself is larger than any particular language: it is a
form of "thought poetry," shaped by end rhyme into three quatrains and a couplet, or
two quatrains and a sestet. The form is logical, and yet the poem's meaning is rarely the implied syllogism. The question of poetry's dual nature, and ours, becomes
~ipe and mysterious in the sonnet.
The sonnet's thought is a thought that needs measure and time, and spaced rhyme.
And not just any measure:
in English the
pentameter is no arbitrary brick, but the only measure to suit and space the rhymes,
the only context that gives the thought its life. English hexameters fall apart at
the seam; tetrameters are too short (see Shakespeare's unimitated sonnet number 145).
Here follows the poem. Note the structural significance of end rhyme, the occasional tasteful trochaic or spondaic substitution, and the stunning use of enjambment
in line 12, made most poignant and meaningful by its avoidance elsewhere.
3
�When in disgrace with Fortune and mens eyes,
I all alone beweepe my out -cast state,
And trouble deafe heaven with my bootlesse cries,
And looke upon my selfe and curse my fate.
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possest,
Desiring this mans art, and that mans skope,
With what I most injoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts my selfe almost despising,
Haplye I thinke on thee, and then my state,
Like to the Larke at breake of daye arising
From sullen earth sings himns at Heavens gate,
For thy sweet love remembred such welth brings,
That then I skorne to change my state with Kings.
A peculiarity of this sonnet is that it "turns" twice, once at line 9, and again
in the closing couplet. This is to say, it exhibits a tension between the Petrarchan ·
(octe t-sestet ) and Shakespearian forms.
I noticed this also in two of Charles
Baudelaire's sonnets, "La Beaute" and "La Musique". The tension there pulls the other way: both are Petrarchan sonnets, but with closing couplets in the sestet . In
"La Beaute" the couplet stares at us with "de purs miroirs qui font toutes choses
plus belles:/Mes yeux, mes larges yeux, aux clartes eternelles!" In "La Musique", it
introduces elements of the dark and dreadful with a sinister enjambment ("Me
bercent"), then turns the poem on its head with despairing swiftness: "D'autres fois,
calme plat, grand miroir/De mon desespoir!"
In Shakespeare's sonnet, enjambment and substitution are used sparingly, as
counterpoint, and so with great effect. In Milton, they become the rule, producing a
line of awesome power and vigor. His iambic pentameter is unrhymed, open, and full
of substitution.
Milton's case against rhyme (or Rime) is powerfully made, "as a thing of itself ..• trivial and of no true musical delight; which consists onely in apt Numbers,
fit quantity of Syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings." He was wrong, however, to call
rhyme "the Invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter,"
for Chaucer defies any such criticism. But English had changed. I am no linguist,
but Milton's language seems less French than Chaucer's, but more Anglo-Saxon and more
Latin. Under these conditions, the pentameter unleased the power of stress.
Heroic verse, except in Old English, had known no such stress.
Homer's and
Virgil's lines were also open and unrhymed, but Homer's Greek hadn't stress (and
didn't need it!) while Latin stress was more or less strait-jacketed by the adoption
of Greek quantitative standards.
In Milton, open lines and substitution bring the
stressed feet into their own.
Milton's freedom in substitution was no license:
his line was strictly
decasyllabic, so only trochees, spondees and pyrrhics could be used.
Consider the
effects these three have in sharpening the image and making the line itself brood:
And chiefly Thou 0 Spirit ...
.•. with mighty wings outspred
I confess I am better at feeling than pointing out such usages, unless they are both
obvious and effective, as above. That we feel the effects of such substitutions
without always needing to account for them, was made apparent to me when I looked
again at Blake's The Sick Rose; for our class's discussion, and the poem's interest,
surely stemmed from the black and consummating spondaic substitution in the phrase,
"dark secret love".
One characteristic of the open line is that it can begin with a verb. A whole
range of effects can be transmitted this way; here we see an active, Middle English
verb opening the line with a stressed spondee, supporting sense with number:
Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th'Ethereal Skie
With hideous run and combustion down
To bottomless perdition.
I find it remarkable and ironic that in looking back to classical poetry, the
English iambic pentameter rebels against the norms of its upbringing, and yet discovers not something classical, but something completely new about itself. A rebellious
line for a rebellious angel!
Pope, on the other hand, as a translator and critic, is a follower and no rebel,
though he makes an i mpass ioned eulogy and justification of t he critical life in his
Essay On Criticism. I find his iambic pentameter the most troubling of all.
By our classification, the lines are closed rhyming couplets with a fair amount
of substitution. This sounds like Chaucer's line (!), but the two are even further
apart than their separation in time would indicate. Rhyming here is premeditated
bravado.
In modern English it can be a powerful tool, and surely Pope can thank
rhyme for immortalizing some of these lines; used at length, however, end rhyme in
couplets tire s the reader, even if the rhymes themselves are full of wit, as Pope's
are.
A further distinction must be made between his and Chaucer's lines because Pope
follows Dryden; Pope 1 s must, therefore, according to convention, be called "heroic"
couplets. The use of heroic couplets in something called An Essay On Criticism, as
opposed to The Aeneid, might imply broad irony on the poet's part ( in particular if
one considers the respective heroes of the two poems). Irony is perhaps the critic's
strong suit. The title itself seems ironic: This is an essay on criticism that is
itself a poem.
The metrical variations attempt to compensate for the regularity of the rhyme;
coming from a critic, they are very self- conscious. Consider these examples; first
lines 150-51 on poetic license:
Thus Pegasus, a. nearer way to take
May boldly deviate from the common Track.
The word "deviate", being hard to say in two syllables, is itself the deviation.
Here is line 356:
A needless alexandrine ends the Song,
That like a wounded Snake, drags its slow length along.
Dove like satst brooding on the vast Abyss
And mad'st it pregnant ...
Clearly, such a technique of metrical substitution can be used with great subtlety.
4
The wounded alexandrine is needlessly lengthened by trochaic and spondaic substitution. More metrical wit follows a few lines later:
When Ajax strives, some Rocks' vast Weight to throw,
5
�The Line too labours, and the Words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th' unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.
The first couplet suggests weight and slow labor with spondaic substitution, while
the last line, though an alexandrine, runs fastest of all because of a pyrrhic. .
My quarrel with Pope is that he has turned the iambic pentameter into a society
man, with too much wit and too little real art. An irony that might be lost on Pope,
since he translated Homer into couplets, lies in his emulating ancient poets and
critics, and yet using a poetic line that, unlike Milton's, has nothing in common with
them. Closed rhyming lines better suit the Grinch than Pope's nobler sentiments •.
With Wordsworth's poem of loss and reconciliation, let us conclude. The lines
of "Tin tern Abbey" are open and unrhymed, and employ much artful substitution. We
might expect a line with Milton's vigor and cadence, but again, the English
pentameter discovers a new character and motion. "Tintern Abbey" is sweetly elegiac,
longing in mood, above all reflective in its use of rhythm. The sensibility of the
poem cannot be separated from our familiar yet newly flowing meter.
I believe the open lines permit Wordsworth this elegiac mood, by freeing him to
let his lines overflow and commingle, repeating words in different stress positions,
and so heightening the sense of reflectiveness and of passing things over in memory.
Consider how the fives in the opening lines set the tone:
Five years have passed, five summers, with the length
Of five long winters, and again I hear
These waters rolling from their mountain-springs
With a sweet inland murmur.
Notice then the quiet repetitions in these lines near the end, as the poet addresses
his sister seeing the country for the first time:
For thou art with me, here upon the banks
Of this fair river, thou, my dearest friend,
My dear, dear friend, and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh, yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear sister!
He has learned an art of poetry, to hear, in an iambic line, "the still sad music of
'
humanity. " In what follows, the number and meaning of the verse are completely interfused, and. we leave our study of Wordsworth's line, our numbered English line,
awake to all its possibilities:
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts, a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man-A motion and a spirit that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods
And mountains, and of all that we behold
From this green earth--of all the mighty world
Of eye and ear, both what they half-create,
And what perceive--well pleased to recognize
In Nature and the language of the sense
The anchor of my purest thought, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
In a shifting and unmusical world, at least we still speak English. Where so
many read, and where so many words and symbols re-echo in commercial profusion, still
there breeds in our world a deeper illiteracy. But the rhythms and meters of English
spring from the language itself, and thankfully, for as long as English lives, their
numbers await the rediscovery of new poets, who will learn to keep proportion and
mend our broken time.
I do not believe that these five poets, or their many
imitators and occasional equals, have come near to exhausting the rhythms of the
iambic pentameter. Perhaps we won't see the Shakespearian sonnet again, or the heroic couplet; but new poets will discover new movements, ascending in iambs, moving
with thought, with power, with wit, with longing--a sweeter breath, perhaps,
stressing always from within, like a wind through a mighty English oak.
(115-22)
Sometimes the verse has the quality of measured prose, breathing and moving in
natural rhythm; yet the meter is always there, spacing and nudging the lines, a pervasive force that anchors and shapes the whole meditation. At the heart of the poem
the poet reconciles himself to his loss:
For I have learned
To look on Nature not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. '
6
7
�----- ,
Poem
James Brown
Because I cannot forget,
Because every day flickers sickly empty .•.
waits for action! watch the deserts in a smile
or breath, my soul,
I breathe .
(Which man is meditating on the mountain, he of skin, of desire, of soul)
Reason exceeds all bounds, resting in a meshland crushed.
The little bits we held tightly vanish.
Beauty
is on the table
Love
in the wineglass
in the countryside
in the emotion.
as I saw a lone sparrow creeping across my wet sky of dreams
poets and ghosts invited me to a celebration
(fame in the sense show,
the hostile cracks of contact, of lambs and dry blood ••• )
blood in the doorway,
blood in your mouth.
The ground is disguised as a cracked smile,
the cymbal ceases after the throat swallows,
preparing to laugh.
Too many torn, ripped, wounded words.
Blow on a feather bursting in repose,
now is a moment I give you forever.
So I'm bound, you stuck seer,
so I'm free, you roaming eyeless face.
Calamity beckons me,
nestled in wooly womb of letters I thrust meaning in your face.
Somewhere I lose, I have lost.
Intimate memories surround, hemorrhaging .
My blood is soft, flowing through screens of dying sanity,
screams unquenchable and unfulfilled.
Does this anger have a home?
Can I come home?
(a mirror speaks in shades of light,
darkness in absence thereof.
And thus the silence)
Spliced awareness
The replication can be divided
( the quartering cleavage in pregnant hips,
new sorrow,
shivering at dusk,
my disheartening years)
I once believed the colors I see
came from within,
seasons of delight.
But in the crowd of people I forgot myself:
and so I disappeared.
Now t he qui tters return (so then )
abashed and speechless with dumb shame.
Some times I (look the dther way)
In the game show I was the victor: look!
8
9
I
�The Gorgon and the Bride of Lebanon
Catherine Irvine
In The Divine Comedy, the images of the Gorgon and of Beatrice are intimately
connected by the notion of love. The connection is based upon the idea that when the
human being loves, he may be led either to salvation or into the depths of Hell. .
What will be shown in the following pages is that both the Gorgon and Beatrice
represent the two faces of Dante's own loves. In ~ppearanc~ an~ in eff~ct they are
opposites. The Gorgon is ugly and destructive, while Beatrice is beautiful and redeeming.
Their opposition, however, will be seen to stem from the human element. For the
soul immersed in sin, to look upon love is to look upon the Gorgon and be doomed.
For the soul in grace who follows the true path, to look upon love is to look upon
Beatrice and find the doors of Paradise swung wide open.
These two images stand out amongst the hordes of others which fill The Divine
Comedy.
The atmosphere at the Gates of Dis is full of tension caused by a combination of doubt, fear and danger. This makes it a dramatic moment in the story.
There is a feeling that the whole of the journey is in jeopardy and that its success
is at stake.
The same kind of feeling accompanies the reading of Cantos XXX through XXXII of
the Purgatorio in which the unveiling of Beatrice occurs. This ~ime, however~ the
tension is not born of danger and suspense. It is a result of climax . There is an
exaltation, a culmination of emotion, present that makes the scene sparkle in the
memory.
The life that both images take on is so real and persuasive that in remembering
them they become strongly bound to one another. They have an interdependence that is
a determining factor with regard to the existence of the story. The prevention of
the first instance, Dante's looking upon the Gorgon, allows the possibility of the
second, Dante's looking upon Beatrice. Likewise, the allowing of the first would
result in the prevention of the second. In the first case there is a story to tell
of Dante's journey . In the second case The Divine Comedy would have ended at the
Gates of Dis.
Looking closely at this interdependence, one sees that the key to both situations is the act of beholding. The effectiveness and potency of the images lies in
Dante's looking at them. There are no other elements involved. If Dante looks upon
the Gorgon he will become stone. If he does not look upon her he will remain untouched.
Beatrice has an influence upon Dante that extends beyond his looking at her~ for
instance, in his memory of her. But the actuality of the good she promises him is
only accomplished through his beholding. Although Dante undergoes change up to the
point where he encounters her, his full purification does not take place until he
looks fully at her.
It is also the case that when Dante is involved in this act, he must be involved
alone.
It is a private experience. Virgil has no influence upon what Dante se~s.
With the Gorgon, Virgil encounters the possibility of a situation in which he will
not be able to help his charge. Virgil can exert no control over what happens to
10
Dante if Dante looks. The only thing he has control over is whether or not Dante
looks, and that is a control that does not involve reason, but command and force. If
Virgil fails to prevent Dante from looking at the Medusa, he can do no more.
Similarly, Virgil has much influence over Dante in the period of time before
Dante meets Beatrice, but precisely at the moment when Dante sees Beatrice, Virgil is
gone. He is completely absent during the unveiling.
It might be looked at in this way. Virgil's function is to bring Dante to the
point where Dante will be able to look at Beatrice. This being so, his function in
the jo·u rney is also to prevent Dante from looking at the Medusa. Virgil has a definite relation and function with regard to the two, but the act of beholding in itself
and the consequences of it are beyond his realm. This act Dante must do without the
aid of his mentor and guide.
*****
At the Gates of the City of Hell the situation is menacing. Virgil's capabilities are inadequate. He cannot use reason or art upon these souls who do not even
respond to the truth that all of Hell, in addition to all of Heaven, is under divine
will. Virgil must wait for divine aid. Meanwhile, he has no idea what the inhabitants of the dread city might do. They are rebellious and unreasonable.
If they
show aggressiveness they have the power to harm Dante.
Dante is doubtful and insecure, for the most part because he sees Virgil, who is
his only safety, in a position of weakness.
The appearance of the mad and
self-destructive Furies who attack intensifies Dante's fear and Virgil's anxiety.
Hence, even though the act of beholding the Medusa is only a potential one, it is
clear that Dante is in danger. If the potentiality of that act were to become a reality - and there is a possibility of that happening - Dante would be lost.
Virgil, accordingly, reacts immediately to the threat alone. He does not wait,
not even for a moment, to see if it will be carried out. The Medusa is a force he
cannot reckon with if Dante is to be her victim. The only way that Virgil can protect his charge is by forcing Dante not to look.
'Turn your back and keep your eyes shut tight;
For should the Gorgon come and you look at her,
Never again would you return to the light.'
This was my Guide's command. And he turned me about
Himself, and would not trust my hands alone,
But with his placed on mine, held my eyes shut.
(Inferno IX, 52-57)
The Medusa is a formidable enemy. Firstly, the temptation to look upon her is
so great that Virgil does not trust Dante to resist alone. Secondly, should Dante
submit to the temptation, he will be transformed into stone. His being will be drastically altered: animate to inanimate, rational to unthinking.
This inanimate characteristic of stone would alone doom Dante to remain in Hell.
In addition, when Virgil tells Dante that he would never return to the light he is
referring to man's need to have light, both phys{cally and mentally, in order to be
the creature that he is. Physically, as stone, Dante would remain stationary in the
darkness. But the implication is also that mentally Dante's capabilities of distinguishing right from wrong, good from evil, and beautiful from ugly will be destroyed.
On this level, Dante will become in life what the souls of Dis are in death:
eternally sinful and rebellious, with no hope of ever leaving Death's kingdom and
with no hope of ever being able to see his own miserable condition. This is the
threat that the Medusa poses. She would alter him so greatly that his nature would
11
�become essentially 'other'. In doing so she would doom him to a world of blindness
and immobility - a world without God, a world without hope, a world that for a man
become stone is a world of eternal death.
*****
In Cantos XXX through XXXII of the Purgatorio, the beholding is not potential
but actual. Beatrice's unveiling takes place gradually, since it is a process rather
than a mere possibility which can only _ be looked at in terms of result, as in the
case with the Gorgon. Dante's beholding takes place in three stages. Each stage has
more power over him.
The first time that Dante sees Beatrice he undergoes a kind of fixation which he
describes as a stupefaction. He recognizes his emotional reaction as that of his old
love for the mortal woman. Yet Dante is not completely riveted. Recognizing this
emotion, he is able to turn to Virgil. He is free to move his attention elsewhere.
He is able to be distracted away from Beatrice when he discovers that his guide has
left his side. He is not quite overcome by Beatrice yet.
Dante feels the pain of Virgil's disappearance acutely. He is fully involved
with grieving until Beatrice begins to reprimand him as a woman would reproach a lover who has strayed. She demands that he confess his infidelity to her. Dante is so
overwhelmed by her reprimand and the harshness with which it is delivered that he
says he became frozen in place. He confesses that he has sinned. This confession is
essential to the process of unveiling, for if he does not confess, Beatrice will not
unveil.
The second time Dante looks upon Beatrice is when she prods him to feel the full
weight of his sin. Dante says:
With my tear- blurred and uncertain vision
I saw Her turned to face that beast which is
One person in two natures without division.
Even veiled and across the river from me
Her face outshone its first-self by as much
As she outshone all mortals formerly.
And the thorns of my repentance pricked me so
That all the use and substance of the world
I had most loved, now appeared my foe.
Such guilty recognition gnawed my heart
I swooned for pain.
(Purgatorio XXXI, 79-89)
image of the Griffon reflected. Dante describes how a thousand .burning passions held
his eyes fixed upon hers and how his soul "in wonder and delight/ was savoring the
food which in itself I both satisfies and quickens appetite"
(Purgatorio XXXI,
127-129).
While he is still in this state of bliss, he is led to her mouth.
Beatrice's face is now completely uncovered.
The vision that Dante sees when he looks upon her smile is indescribable. It
leaves him even more helpless than he had been before.
My eyes were fixed with such intensity
On quenching, at long last, their ten years' thirst
That every sense but sight abandoned me.
Tranced by the holy smile that drew me there
Into the old nets, I forgot all else My eyes wore blinders, and I could not care.
(Purgatorio XXXII, 1-6)
Beatrice has now completely taken off the cloak of mortality t hat she wore in Dante's
mind when he first glimpsed her in the pageant. She has a god-like potency for him.
Here when he is finally able to look upon her with no obstruction between his sight
and her face, he is made incapable of doing anything but stare. Every other bodily
sense has ceased . He i s t ransfixed . Dante gazes with such intensity that he is
forced to look away, and when he does look away he discovers that the brightness of
his vision has blinde d him.
In addition to being aware of the effect that the unveiling has upon Dante, it
should be noted that when Beatrice begins to explain her purpose to Dante, she says:
I see your mind
Turned into stone, and like a stone, so darkened
That the light of what I tell you strikes it blind.
(Purgatorio XXXIII, 73-75)
It is important that Beatrice says this about Dante's mind. What it implies is that
during the process of unveiling Dante's mind has become like a stone, so that it does
not respond to what he is being told.
When the unveiling is completed, Dante drinks from the Eunoe and is made
•.. new, ... per f ect, pure and ready for the Stars." (Purgatorio XXXIII, 142-146).
"
What Beatrice has worked in Dante, through his beholding, is a final purification
that will allow him entry into Paradise.
*****
This time Dante sees Beatrice as more than the mortal woman he had loved. She has a
great control over him, a power that she never had while she lived. As he looks upon
her when she faces the Griffon, he comes t o know his sin and to fear it - so much so
that he cannot bear even to look upon her anymore. He is rendered unconscious in a
faint.
When Dante wakes from this swoon he finds that he had been immersed in the waters of the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. From that immersion he rises in a new
purity that will enable him to look fully upon the face of his beloved. Previously,
the weight of his sin caused him so much agony that he could not stand the sight of
Beatrice's face even still covered.
Now, the memory of t hat sin and that grief
washed away, he may look upon her naked face fully conscious and gain from what he
sees.
The four nymphs who are Beatrice's ordained handmaids come and lead Dante to
this final beholding. Dante looks into Beatrice's eyes. There he finds the changing
Having looked at both situations in detail, it becomes evident that Beatrice has
essentially done to Dante what the Gorgon threatened to do.
She has frozen him
still, immobilized him, blinded him, and caused his mind t o be turned to stone. The
things she does to him, however, have been done for his redemption rather than for
his destruction.
When he is initially frozen cold by her, what results is his confession . The
swooning leads to his immersion in the Lethe:, which then enables him to look upon
Beatrice fully.
The blinding is the result of being forced to look away from the
most beautiful being he has ever seen. The gazing and the forcing away are both good
things. What Dante experiences when he looks at her smile is a heavenly rapture, but
Dante himself says that while he gazed he forgot all else - and did not care that he
had. Since he may now go with Beatrice to Paradise, he cannot be allowed to stare
forever at the smile of his beloved. His condition then would be stationary. No
12
13
�-,
growth would take place within him.
So although he suffers from temporary loss of physical sight, ultimately he
gains from that loss. As for his mind being turned to stone, Beatrice tells Dante
that this has been done for good purpose. It is meant to demonstrate, in a potent
way, how far his attempts to know the truth are from the truth itself. Furthermore,
Dante must have a completely clean slate, one unconfused by many previous thoughts,
so that he can go on and learn in the Paradiso.
[My words] 'fly so high', she said, 'that you may know
What school you followed, and how far behind
That truth I speak its feeble doctrines go;
And see that man's ways, even at his best,
Are far from God's as earth is from the heaven
Whose swiftest wheel turns above all the rest.'
(Purgatorio XXXIII, 85-9 0)
Nevertheless, though the content of what Beatrice does to Dante differs from the .
content of what the Gorgon would have done, it is still the case that both have the
same power over Dante. If these two entities exercise the same power, then why would
the Medusa's power be destructive while Beatrice's power is constructive?
** * **
To
We know
love in
tion by
this by
begin searching for an answer, let us look at what we know about Beatrice.
much more about her than we know of the Medusa. Beatrice is connected with
two important ways. The first is that it is she who set the journey in mogoing to Virgil and sending him to Dante. Beatrice claims to be spurred on to
love.
It is I, Beatrice, who send you to him.
I come from the blessed height for which I yearn.
Love called me here.
(Inferno II, 70 - 72)
The second is that Beatrice was Dante's greatest mortal love while she lived. It is
because of her that Dante finds enough courage and confidence to make the journey.
When Dante sees her again in the Earthly Paradise, he describes what this mortal love
had done to him .
My soul - such years had passed since last it saw
That lady and stood trembling in her presence
... - now •.. felt the full mastery of enduring love •.•
... I was smitten by the force,
Which had already once transfixed my soul
Before my boyhood years had run their course.
... I recognize(d)
The tokens of the ancient flame.
(Purgatorio XXX, 34-48)
XXX, 130-132). In reproach she tells Dante that after she had died he should not
"have been weighed down by any joy below/ - love of a maid, or any other fleeting/
and useless thing ... " (Purgatorio XXXI, 58-60).
Since Dante's love for Beatrice kept him on the true path and his love for othe r
things led him astray, it seems that the answer to the question about Beatrice and
the Gorgon lies in what love means to the human soul.
*****
Virgil tells Dante "that Love alone/ is the true seed of every merit in you,/
and of all the acts for which you must atone." (Purgatorio XVII, 102 - 105). Thus it
may be concluded that if love led Dante to Beatrice and from thence to the highest
good, then love must also have led Dante to his confrontation with the Medusa.
Accepting this conclusion, what is it about love and the human soul that causes
this two-faced image of love to appear? To answer this we must begin by looking at
where the source of man's love is in the scheme that Dante provides.
Marc the
Lombard informs Dante that:
From the hand of God, whose love
Shines like a ray upon it, even before birth,
Comes forth the simple soul which,
Like a child at play, cries, laughs,
And ignorant of every measure
But the glad impulse of its joyous Maker,
Turns eagerly to all that gives it pleasure .
(Purgatorio XVI, 85 - 90)
Virgil similarly says:
The soul, being created prone to Love,
Is drawn at once to all that pleases it,
As soon as pleasure summons it to move.
From that which really is, your apprehension
Extracts a form which it unfolds within you;
That form thereby attracts the mind's attention,
Then if the mind, so drawn, is drawn to it,
That summoning force is Love; and thus within you,
Through pleasure, a new natural bond is knit.
(Purgatorio XVIII, 19- 27)
Virgil further comments that this inclination towards what is pleasurable is an
"innate primordial appetite/ •.. as within the bee/ the instinct to make honey· and
such instincts/ are, in themselves, not blameable nor worthy. 11 (Purgatorio X~III,
57-60).
However, man is attracted to what is pleasurable with his mind: "Neither Creator nor his creatures move ... / .•. but in the action/ of animal or of mind- directed
11
love·
(Purgatorio XVII, 91-93). The pitfall in this is that after Adam disobeyed
God's command and fell from grace, man's reason was no longer sustained by the clear
light of the truth. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us:
Beatrice indicates that Dante's love for her was desirable. He had had such
potential for fulfillment that as long as she lived and he could keep his gaze upon
her countenance he was not in danger of straying from the true path. She says, however, that as soon as she left him "He turned his steps aside from the True Way, pursuing the false images of good that promise what they never wholly pay." (Purgatorio
The human reason cannot have a full participation of the dictate of the
divine reason, but according to its own mode, and imperfectly. Conseq~e~tly, just as ~n the part of the speculative reason, by a natural participation of divine wisdom, there is in us the knowledge of certain com-
14
15
�mon principles, but not a proper knowledge of each single truth, such as
that contained in the divine wisdom, so, too, on the part of the practical reason, man has a natural participation of the eternal law, according
to certain common principles, but not as regards the particular determinations of individual cases .
(Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae . Q. 91, Art . 3)
Man does not always perceive the truth and he cannot always correctly distinguish
between what is good and what is bad. He is given a natural light which helps him to
determine what is true and what is false, but being instinctively drawn to pleasure,
he does not always discern correctly which pleasures are good and which are bad.
In The Divine Comedy, St . Thomas gives Dan te the following advice:
Move slowly, like a weary man,
To the 'yes' and 'no' of what you do not see.
For he is a fool, and low among his kind,
Who answers yea or nay without reflection,
Nor does it matter on which road he runs blind .
Opinions too soon formed of ten deflect
Man's thinking from the truth into gross error,
In which his pride then binds his intellect.
(Paradiso XIII , 113-120)
The hastiness that Aquinas warns against is precisely what is dangerous about pleasure. The mind deems that something is pleasurable and it is prone to rush after it
without careful consideration. Marc the Lombard describes how men are caught up in
sin because of this. The simple soul "tastes small pleasures first . To these it
clings,/ deceived, and seeks no others" (Purgatorio XVI, 91 - 92) .
Things appear
worthy of love, but "though love's substance always will appear to b71 a go.od,. not
every impress made,/ even in the finest wax, is good and clear.
(V1rg1l
Purgatorio XVIII, 37 -39 ).
Being in the dark, so to speak, and with this natural handicap, man does not
always realize that the love and pursuit of God would give him the greatest pleasure .
Man has the insightful knowledge, however, that there is a good in which he will find
what he most seeks : a fulfillment in loving.
All men, though in a vague way, apprehend
A good their souls may rest in, and desire it ;
Each, therefore , strives to reach his chosen end.
(Purgatorio XVII, 127-129)
This desire spurs man on and encourages him to love.
Man is endowed with a free will, and hence is able to choose, through the use of
his intellect, the good that will give him salvation rather than damnation. He can
escape the trap that loving sets for him. Virgil says:
Natural love may never fall to error.
The other [mind- directed love] may .••
While it desires the Eternal Good and measures
Its wish for secondary goods in reason,
This love cannot give rise to sinful pleasures.
But when it turns to evil ...
The creature turns on its creator.
(Purgatorio XVII, 94-102)
16
and he continues:
Now, that all later wills [after the natural impulse] and this first bent
May thrive, the innate counsel of your Reason
Must surely guard t he threshold of consent.
This is t he principle from which accrue
Your just deserts, according as it reaps
And winnows good or evil love in you.
... all love, let us say,
That burns in you, springs from necessity;
But you still have the power to check its sway.
(Purgatorio XVIII, 61 - 72)
St . Thomas describes how this rational aspect of man leads him into sin:
Everything, by its own natural appetite and love, loves its own proper
good because of the common good of the whole universe, which is
God ..• Hence in the state of integral nature man ref erred the love of
himself and of all other things to the love of God as to its end •.• But
in the state of corrupted nature man falls short of this in the appetite
of his rational will, which •.. follows its own private Good .
(Sunnna Theologica, Prima Secundae . Q. 109, Art . 3)
It is this rationally chosen love of the lesser things that dooms man by bringing him
into sin.
Because man does not find satisfaction in t he false pleasures that he
loves, if he is not somehow checked, he begins to travel down a pathway littered with
one love after another. Eventually, in his greed for satisfaction , his ability to
distinguish what is good and what is bad is undermined by his growing desire . He
does not look closely at what appears to be good in orde r to judge whether or not he
has found the true provider of this satisfaction. As he is continually tempted by
false promises and is continually deprived, he begins to care less and less about the
things he pursues. He thereby falls into error with increasing frequency.
The influence and good of his reason is submerged beneath his passion, and
finally, if he never turns away from the path he has taken, it will die. He will not
be able to use his power of judgement any longer. As Virgil says of the souls in
Hell, they have lost the good of intellect. They were led to that state by perverted
love .
Augustine says in The Confessions:
We are carried away by custom to our own undoing and it is hard to
struggle against the stream. Will this torrent never dry up? How much
longer will it sweep the sons of Adam down to that vast and terrible sea
which cannot easily be passed. . .
(Book I, 16)
*****
The next question is why the weakening of the intellect is the greatest cause
for punishment. On the most obvious level, what results from weakened reason is sin.
But this extends further beyond punishment for doing wrong. It delves into the soul
of man and claims that his very being finds its greatest fulfillment in the per fection of the intellect, and its damnation in the loss of that intellect.
St. Thomas says:
Each thing is inclined naturally to an operation that is suitable to it
17
�.I
according
since the
a natural
according
to its form: e.g., fire is inclined to give heat. Therefore,
rational soul is the proper form of man, there is in every man
inclination to act according to reason; and this is to act
to virtue.
(Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae. Q. 94, Art. 3)
He also says:
The law of man which ..• is allotted to him according to his proper natural
condition, is that he should act in accordance with reas on; and this law
was so effective in man's first state, nothing either outside or against
reason could take man unawares. But when man turned his back on God, he
fell under the influence of his sensual impulses. In fact, this happens
to each one individually, according as he has the more departed from the
path of reason.
(Summa Theologica, Prima Secundae. Q. 91, Art. 6)
Since man is given intellect, if he utilizes the ability to distinguish right
from wrong he will be able to see that the highest good and the highest pleasure is
found in God. Or, to put it another way, he will see that the false pleasures he
loves do not give him the rest he seeks, and so, whether he has full knowled~e of God
or not, he will use his rationality and willinglychoose the other alternative: God
and the truth. If he does not come to this conclusion, then he is being unreasonable. Thus the souls who are in Hell have chosen to be unreasonable because they
have travelled along the path of perverted love. As a result, they are unable to
perceive and acknowledge the truth.
Being unreasonable, they have become 'other'
than what they were created to be: reasonable creatures.
Therein lies the cause of man's greatest sin. He is fallen, but he is given the
opportunity to rise. If he does not take this opportunity then he falls again, only
this time he falls to a condition that is beyond redemption.
It is true that man
requires guidance from the law and from grace in order to avoid this. But even if a
man is caught unawares in the trap that his own loving sets for him, he is doomed
unless he finds his power of judgement and realizes that the path he is on will lead
him to damnation. Treading on this path will turn him to stone: the image of which
conveys the impression of being stuck in one place, unable to move and not knowing
enough to realize that one should move.
Virgil tells Dante that:
Within the habit of mankind
You set your whole intent on earthly things,
The true light falls as darkness on your mind.
(Purgatorio XV, 64-66),
and Beatrice says:
Tranced in blind greed, your ever deepening curse,
You have become as mindless as an inf ant
Who screams with hunger, yet pushes away his nurse.
(Paradiso XXX, 139- 140) .
*****
'mmersed 1'n the surge of its passions in this manPlotinus describes t h e sou 1 1
ner:
18
The ugly soul •.• is dissolute, unjust, teeming with lusts, torn by inner
discord, beset by craven fears and petty envies .•. friend to filthy pleasure, it lives a life abandoned to bodily sensation and enjoys its
depravity .•. The life it leads is dark with evil, sunk in manifold death.
It sees no longer what the soul should see.
(The Essential Plotinus, Beauty, p. 38-39)
Although Plotinus' idea of how the soul comes to be in this condition may not be completely in accord with Dante's, his description is surely in agreement. It is when a
man is in this condition that to look upon his love fully is to look upon the Medusa
and be turned to stone. Prior to Dante's waking in the Dark Wood, his soul was in
this condition, and as he stands at the Gates of Dis his condition is not much
changed. He realizes that he is lost, but he is still full of sin.
Dante is hesitant. He has confidence in Virgil, but he lacks confidence in himself.
He lacks this confidence because his mind is clouded over with false impressions and his reason is weak from long disuse. His weakened reason rebels at the
decision that he has made to follow Virgil into the underworld. He rebels because he
fears, and he fears because he does not see the truth.
This state of wavering from his resolve is very much present at the Gates of
Dis. Virgil has had to constantly support Dante. At Dis Dante is so awe-struck and
frightened by the resistance that they meet that he is more willing to turn around
and put an end to the journey than he is to face the difficulty before him.
Oh my beloved Master, my guide in peril,
Who time and time again have seen me safely
Along this way, and turned the power of evil,
Stand by me now ... in my heart's fright.
And if the dead forbid our journey to them,
Let us go back together toward the light.
(Inferno VIII, 94-99)
Even though he is on the way toward salvation, before these Gates he is dangerously
close to being stone. He is teetering upon the edge . He has not climbed up far
enough to be safely out of danger. Dante is unprepared to look upon love while in
this premature and sinful condition. It would destroy him. It would make him truly
stone.
Dante is making this journey in order to gain back his good judgement and be rid
of the things that are false within him. He is on his way to seeing "what the soul
should see. " What is seen in his encounter with Beatrice is a much more mature
Dante.
He had undergone a gradual process of elimination.
Virgil has taken him
through Hell where he had seen the damned. Dante has been through Purgatory, and the
seven deadly sins, in the form of . P's, have been removed from his forehead. He has
not yet seen the full truth, but he has seen the false. By the time he reaches the
Earthly Paradise he has been able to witness the false loves that made up the crooked
path upon which he had been walking. Dante has been able to see the sin within himself. He has been purged.
Dante's soul is so greatly changed that Virgil relieves himself of his role as
guide:
I have led you here by grace of mind and art;
Now let your own good pleasure be your guide;
You are past the steep ways, past the narrow part ...
Expect no more of me in word or deed:
Here your will is upright, free and whole,
19
�And you would be in error not to heed
Whatever your own impulse prompts you to:
Lord of yourself I crown and mitre you.
(Purgatorio XX.VII, 130-132, 139-143 )
Love prompts men to do all that they do, whether it be love of glory, or wealth,
or another human being ...... the list could go on and on. Even if he does not love
what he does in a specific instance, he is acting for the love of something else.
Consequently, the two faces of love, either that of the Medusa or that of Beatrice,
await him around each corner as he walks upon the paths of life.
False pleasures have no allure for Dante now because he is capable of seeing that
they are false. He is ready to rush joyfully after all that pleases him. He is no
longer in danger of rushing after the wrong thing. Dante is prepared to l ook upon
his love. This time it will not bring him death and destruction, but eternal life.
Beatrice will make him ready to go on and stand upright before the bright glory of
what is true and can never be false.
In this cleansed state love will infuse him
completely, leaving him whole, perfect and fulfilled. This means the rising of the
intellect, within the mortal body, to the utmost height:
Bibliography
Main text
The truth I wished for came
Cleaving my mind in a great flash of light ...
... I could feel my being turned Instinct and intellect balanced equally.
(Paradiso XXXIII, 140- 144)
Three volumes of The Divine Comedy :
The Inferno, Dante
John Ciardi
New American Library Inc.
1954
*****
At this point it would be well to remember t hat Dante is still living when he
makes this journey. For the soul that is dead there is no Gorgon and no Beatrice .
The life of that soul has already come to the conclusion of its earthly travels and
is already in its chosen place.
What Dante faces when he encounters the Medusa and Beatrice is the culmination
of the two paths upon which love may take him . It is as though, for Dante, love with
all its power contained in the two faces of the Medusa and Beatrice exists simultaneously in its end result in Dis and in the Earthly Paradise. To look upon his love
naked and powerful when he is in sin or when he has been purified is to choose the
pathway that he will take in the life he still must lead .
Thus it is appropriate that Beatrice was a mortal woman whom Dante loved and who
is now, in Paradise, filled with divine love. It is also appropriate that the Medusa
was the only one of the three Gorgons who was mortal and is now, in Hell , filled with
perverted love. Could not the Medusa, once a beautiful woman, represent the false
pleasures which Dante had loved after Beatrice left him? The potency which the two
hold then stems from the fact that Dante loved both.
That the opposition between the Medusa and Beatrice should find its source in
the human beholder is not surprising when one recalls that they bo th have their birth
from out of the human element. Hell exists precisely for the punishment of human
sin. The Gorgon dwells within the walls of t he City of Hell. Grace exists solely
for the redemption of man . Bea trice is the being through which Dante re ceives divine
aid, and she resides in Paradise.
Both Beatrice and the Medusa stem from that force, that necessary instinct in
man, of love . Love is what spans the distance between Heaven and Hell. It is the
force that has the greatest power over the human heart. Love has driven men to the
greates- heights and it has caused men to fall into total ruin. Because man's heart
t
is schizophrenic when it comes to loving, love often works its two-faced might in the
mind of one and the same man. Sometimes it causes him to do the noblest of deeds,
sometimes the most foul . Man's heart is deep and mazed. Love enters into it and in
that natural bond between man and the things he loves the contradiction, and perhaps
the tragedy, that is present in all facets of his behavior is born.
20
The Purgatorio , Dante
John Ciardi
New American Library Inc.
1957
The Paradiso, Dante
John Ciardi
New American Library Inc.
1961
Supplementary text
The Divine Comedy, Dante
Prose Translation
H.R. Huse
Rinehart and Winston Inc.
1954
Other sources quoted from:
The Essential Plotinus
Elmer O'Brien
Hackett Publishing Company Inc.
1964
The Confessions, St. Augustine
R. S. Pine-Coffin
Penguin Books Ltd.
1961
Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas
Anton C. Pegis
Random House
1945
21
�I still remember you as children, small and afraid, on the day of your father's
execution, although by now you must be young men just beginning t o set out to make
lives of your own .
It is to help guide you in this endeavor that I am wri ting now .
I had come into Athens to
I only met your father once - on the day of h i s dea th.
trade some oriental fab rics, and by a stroke of luck happened t o accompany Phaedo to
the prison where your father was be ing held.
I am no philosopher, but the will and
intellect of your fathe r was so strong that they seized my attention, and I listened
intently to all that was said.
Some of the things that your father said seemed so
inconsistent with the man himself and what he said and did, that I have been thinking
about them ever since , and, in thinking about these contradictions, I have come t o
some small understanding of wha t your father believed .
Crito promised that he would make
I have imagined you growing up as orphans.
sure that you were well cared for, but he is such a practical man tha t I fear he has
not told you anything real about your father.
It is perhaps presumptuous of me to
believe that I could tell you anything about Socrates, after only meeting him once.
And yet, because of all of the thinking that I have done about the things that he
said, I hope that I might be able to explain him to you, and help you to come to love
the man as I have .
By now your memo rie s of you r father mus t have become so jumbled
with all of the things that you have heard about him t hat you can hardly know what to
think .
On the day of his dea t h , your father spent mos t of his time discussing what
might happen to the soul afte r the death of the body . We considered whether it was
immortal or not, and what type of o t her world it might inhabit i f it were.
This
might seem to you to be a t opic mos t wo rt hy of discussion, particularly in the hours
just before death , and so it seemed to all of us listening.
But the further we got
into the discussion , the more each of us began to realize t hat we we re not going to
find any concrete answers to the questions which we were ask ing. We all came to feel
that the immortality of the soul could not be proven beyond a doubt .
I have since
learned that your father must have known this from the v ery beginning. On the day of
his trial he had said that anyone who t hough t that he knew anything about death was a
fool, for it was simply unknowable .
This was t he first contradiction that I became
aware of between what your father said and what he did, and it set my mind buzzing,
trying to figure out what the man was up to.
I think that I have finally come to
understand something of this.
I believe that your father was not particularly interested in finding answers,
in knowing the knowable things, because answers can not really explain anything .
This is certainly the impression I got from listening to him talk about his experience with natural science . He said that he became interested in natural science be cause it promised him the knowledge of the cause of everything.
What he found instead was a description of the materials of which things were made and the shapes
which these materials took . He found these sorts of descriptions to be confusing and
misleading, for they did not approach an explanation of the kinds of causes he was
concerned with.
Yet it was easy for men to get caught up in them and forget about
their real concerns.
I had always believed that natural science was an important
study of why things happened, but I think that your father was looking for a differ ent type of 'why', one that would explain things and actions in human terms rather
than describe strange substances and proclaim them t o be the reas ons for everything.
Your father was trying to find answers to human concerns - -an swers t ha t need t o be
c o uched in human terms. What is interesting ab ou t a thing is its relati on t o mankind
in general and the individual in particular, not t o some other t hing .
Once he realized that natural science was not going t o prov ide the answers he
was seeking, your father devised a system of his own that explained absolutely
everything. He explained that a beautiful thing is b eautiful because it partakes in
absolute beauty.
To all of us listening t his seemed to be a mos t elegant and
understandable explanation of things, one which could faultlessly answer any
questions we might poss ibly ask.
But as I th ought more about this formulation o f
things, I came to realize that it, to o , does not begin t o deal with any of our real,
our human, concerns.
It does not help us t o understand anything which we do not
already know .
I think that your father also realized this, and that after his
encounter with natural science he had come to realize that answers were not really
what humans are after.
In order to help us to come t o feel thi s way to o , he
concocted this incredibly simple system which could answer all of our questions and
none of our concerns.
Your father used many such inherent contradictions and
paradoxes--such as "the answer is not really The Answer"--to get us all to think.
What becomes evident to all who do think a bou t this is that we are not really looking
for simple answers to the questions which perplex us.
Well then, what are we looking for and how d o we come t o have some human under standing of things which are not thus "knowable" , like the soul or virtue or knowledge itself? Although we may not really wish for God , or Socrates, t o drop down out
of the heavens and just give us some answer--this would not truly help us to understand anything which we did not already know--we do care ab out these things and need
to have some understanding of them which can serve as a b asis f o r our actions in the
world.
I think that your father was using this discussion of the soul as a paradigm
to show us how best to approach all of our human concerns with the unknowable.
Since I knew nothing of philosophy, there were many thing s about the way your
father spoke--with such keen intelligence and lively imagination--that struck me as
strange that day, but one of the words your father used seemed par ticu lar ly unusual.
Early in the morning he said that it would be fitting for him µu80Aoy21v
about the
soul.
This word, a combination of
A.oyos
, rational speech, and
µG8os
story, seemed a particularly striking one, since the two terms are often t hought t o
be opposites. But throughout the rest of the day, your father employed both of these
means in his discussion of the soul.
, 1
.
The young men in your father ' ,s company were very read y t o accept
AOyo1 , rational argumen ts,as a means of prov i ng t he immortality of t he soul . This type of discussion was apparently customary f o r your father.
Indeed, h e proved the immortality
of t he soul twice, once beginn ing with t he notion that learning is recollection and
then, when we were n o t satisfied by t ha t, in a very involved argument using the relationship between oppos ites and some t hird accompanying factor . But Simmias and Cebes
- I suppose you know the men I mean - seemed able to come up with objections to even
the finest of arguments, until finally we all despaired of even understanding any t hing through A.6yos .
Your father was very careful t o make sure that we never let ourselves come to
mis trust Aoyos comple tely. He seemed to believe that our trust in arguments and use
of them was a v ery es sential thing .
I have b een thinking about why he felt so
s trongly about this, and I think that I have the answer.
These arguments of your
father's began with some belief that one of us had, such as the idea that learning
22
23
Socrates
Elizabeth De Mare
Dearest children,
�was recollection, the soul is a harmony, etc ., and examined it.
By means of a dis cussion, we were able to see if this concept had any self - cont r adictions and if it
contradicted any of the other things which we believed.
The idea of contradiction
was very important to your father . He believed that a man could not hold two contradicting beliefs at the same time, once he had been made aware of these contradictions.
I think that on his last day, he was using theses arguments which dis closed contradictions in par t t o force us into really thinking about the things that
he was talking about.
For if he is right, and a man cannot hold two contradicting
views, then that man must try to reconcile them within himself .
In the process of
this reconciliation he comes to understand the topic at hand more thoroughly.
Arguments also proved to be a marvelous way for a man to come to understand himself and discover the things which were important to him.
When two of Simmias' beliefs were shown to contradict one another, that learning is recollection and the
soul is a harmony, he had then to choose the one more important to him and stick by
that. Argument could not tell him which one was true, but it could force him to re alize which things he wanted to stand for.
The importance of comparing two ideas did
not lie in their contradicting each other absolutely, but rather in how they related ·
back to the person who was believing them, and how he was t o reconcile himself to
them.
Once our beliefs were found not t o involve us in contradiction , your father was
able to lead us in a discussion of what the logical consequences of these beliefs
were.
As in his proofs of the immortality of the soul , he could help us build an
almost mathematical system, beginning with our conceptions and deducing necessary
consequences from them .
The young men surrounding your father were frustrated because his Aoyos could
not give them beliefs which they did not already have; but they did not realize how
much more confident it could leave them about beliefs which they did have . For they
had weeded through many things they had heard and thought, until they arrived at a
few beliefs which were important to them, and these beliefs had been tested against
themselves and others and found t o be sound.
They were therefore as likely to be
true as it is humanly possible to insure.
In addition to arguing , your father also told us many stories . He used two distinct types of µG8os . The first was the simple example. Throughout the discussion,
both your father and the young men, used examples in order to make their meanings
clear.
I was very surprised to find lovers, coats, and lyres, to be the stuff of
philosophy.
The second was the full - fledged myth .
After we all had become
frustrated with argument and sure that it could not give us the answers we believed
we wanted, your father replied to a question by telling us some of his life story.
He ended with a myth about the real configuration of the world and the after-world.
Crito, always the practical one, seemed to believe that all this story-telling
amounted to nothing .
Though your father said that only a fool would believe that
everything was exactly as his story made it out to be, he defended stories against
Crito's disbelief.
Again it took me some time to understand what your father could have meant by
insisting that myths were important. One of the very first things he did as we went
in to him that morning was to tell a myth about one of the gods having joined pleasure and pain at the head because the two could never stop quarrelling . Then, only
five minutes later, he said that he was not a maker of myths .
Here was another of
his blatant contradictions which was, I believe, designed to set our minds racing.
What could this man who obviously could make up tales, mean by insisting that he was
not a maker of myths? These stories shared with examples that ability to make things
exceedingly clear .
They had a very soothing effect, calming us all where arguments
had left us heated and emotionally disturbed.
But your father seemed t o want us to
think of them as more than mere emotional outlets.
24
Then I remembered that your father, by using the word µu6oA.oyElV , had given
e qual importance to µD8os and .\oyos , and that Simmias had warned that arguments
based upon pro bability , in philosophic .\oyos as well as mathematics, were unreliable.
From these facts, I deduced the importance of story-te lling .
In addition to making
ideas seem much mo re vivid to those trying to understand , stories actually help us to
understand our principles.
In a story we can examine the questions, "What would it
be like t o live that way?" and, "What are the possible and probable consequences of
our system of beliefs?" Story-telling can succeed in a regi on where logical argument
fails to have any real sway : stories are able to look at the probable ends of abid ing by your beliefs.
This examination by µD8os is jus t as important as a logical
one, for it is possible that all of a man 's principles are logically sound, and yet
once he looks beyond their logic to the consequences of believing such things he dis covers that they lead him or others to evil.
By imagining what things your beliefs
will probably lead to, you then have another means besides contradiction to judge
whether they are truly the things which you want t o believe in or not.
One of the necessary parts of an approach through A6yos is the breaking down of
an idea , and the examination of its component parts. MUAos , on t he other had , serves
as a means of seeing the entire system of your beliefs .
In this sense, µu8os can
come much closer to relating those beliefs to the real, whole world.
Logical arguments and µu8os thus compliment each other. Aoyos serves the essential function of sorting through beliefs t o find those which are the truest (least
contradictory) ones possible, and then deducing the absolutely logical consequences
of these beliefs . M08os can take over from there and make sense of the possible and
probable consequences of these beliefs.
A6yos without µu8os does not fully relate
ideas to the human realm, and µu8 os mus t have a firm beginning of noncontradictory
beliefs from which to opera te or it becomes meaningless .
Perhaps you are surprised to hear that such human things were your father's concerns.
Most people imagine philosophers to be men who take leave of their senses,
removing themselves from their own bodies and all things tainted with humanity, and
concentrate their attention upon understanding those things which are not seen by the
rest of mankind .
Indeed I have heard of a play by Aristophanes which protrays your
father as such a man . During the course of your father's last day, Socrates himself
gave just such a definition of a philosopher, elaborating upon it several times.
I,
like the rest of the company, swall owed it whole at the time; it sounded so usual.
But because your father is renowned for convincing people who believe they know some thing that they do not, I believe that he said such things just to make us all think
about the differences between his own philosophical life and the stereotype which we
carry around inside us and sometimes try to emulate.
Your father was certainly not a man who had drawn away from himself and his f ellow humans . He always seemed supremely present in the room and in the conversation.
I have rarely met a man who observed so carefully, cocking his head to listen and
piercing us with his gaze . And he certainly understood our moods.
Although he was
about to die, he seemed much less afraid than we, because he understood the fear of
death, both his and our own. He was quick to resp ond to our feelings of distrust in
A6yos
which followed the loss of our hope for an answer. Whatever his philosophy
did involve, it clearly was not a withdrawal from this real world.
I believe that philosophy for him did not involve avoiding people, but rather
involved examining their principles by means of his beautiful and ordered stories and
arguments. He sang the people's own beliefs and deeds to them as Homer sang those of
the heroes.
Your father was concerned with matters which could not be called mun dane, such as the existence of absolutes and the meanings of opposites, but I think
that he understood that both this world of absolutes and the world of mere bodily
sensations meet and join harmoniously in the man who thinks and acts . Your father's
concern seemed to be how these absolute things, envisioned by the human mind, related
25
�to our human affairs, rather than study of them as unrelated to human thought.
He
certainly did not attempt to discuss matters which were not heart-felt by us all.
I think I may have a clue to what your father thought was important above all.
He spent much of his time talking about invisible things or worlds, and the way to
approach these. He said that we must do this through A6yo1, speeches, for the task
was beyond our other means.
What kind of a realm can be approached through speech
with others?
From what happened on the day he died, I can only suggest this much:
while I was listening to your father, I felt and thought about myself and others,
more perhaps than I ever had up until then.
By means of a discussion, he managed to
expose our thoughts, beliefs, hopes and fears.
I think that it is these human ideas,
suggested by the world around us, yet existing separately from it, which are the
things which people your father's invisible world. Thus he was a man concerned not
with some kind of distant ultimate world as we tend to believe all philosophers must
be, but rather with the much more human world of our intellectual beliefs and hopes
which can be entered whenever we think and converse. I think this was what he meant
when he envisioned a world above this one, clearer and more pure.
I believe that he
thought of this world as better, not because it was full of bodiless souls, for he
spoke of its inhabitants as having senses, but because they had lost the basest concerns of the body, such as illness and decay, and had realized that thinking about
their beliefs was essential. They were therefore able to live together and approach
a perfect society where justice and virtue were realized in action and thought and
men were able to think and love and hope much more exquisitely.
The things which I heard from your father on that day have changed my life , not
all at once , but gradually as I have come to understand them better .
I have not
given up my lifestyle to become a philosopher; however I have come to understand that
it is essential for a man to examine all his beliefs to discover what exactly they
are, in orde r for him to be able to live a truly full life. A man who neglects the
search of the soul for an understanding of the absolutes and unknowables is not fully
living as a human being .
This wonder about the absolutes combines in man with an
understanding of the visible world and makes all of his actions much more certain.
He understands why his beliefs are important to him and acts upon them.
By knowing
the values that he holds, he can become a better person, aspiring to that ethereal
world while living in this one.
I shall not rec ount the noble manner in which your father died, for you have
only to ask anyone about it.
Rather I shall end here and hope that these few words
have made some difference to you, that somehow they will help you to know that above
all a man must examine his beliefs closely and, if he is convinced they are the best
he can find , he must stand by them and mold all of his actions after them.
This , I
think, is what your father believed .
The Jacobsen Cut: A Geometrical Proposition
Henry Higuera
I would like to share a solution I discovered to a question about conic sections
proposed by Bryce Jacobsen--largely because his conjecture, which I proved to be
correct, is so pretty. I hope the reader feels as I do, and that his interest in the
question helps get him through my proofs.
In addition, I managed to prove it by
purely Apollonian means, which increased my admiration for the power of his approach;
and for this reas on too my proof is worth sharing.
This is the situation which made Bryce and me wonder:
A
You are given an oblique cone with
axial triangle ABC perpendicular to
the
base
of
the
cone.
(Upperclassmen will
recall
that
with this kind of cone and axial
triangle there are two kinds of
cuts which will produce a circle a fact which will become important
in a moment).
Now, if you take
this cone and start making cuts
producing ellipses, a couple of
facts are obvious:
A steep cut, like the one in Figure 2, will
give you a highly-elongated ellipse:
i.e.,
DE will be the major axis and will be much
bigger than the minor axis; and the ellipse
will get more highly-elongated the closer D
gets to A.
This is clearly true as well for a cut down
the other side of the axial triangle, as in
Figure 3. Again DE is the major axis and will
be much bigger than the minor axis; and again
the ellipse gets more elongated the farther
down D is.
Mr . Higuera has been
currently on leave.
26
a
tutor
at
St.
John's
since
1982
and
is
�I say t hat RO>OE, so that HE is the minor axis.
But what if your cuts get less steep, so that the ellipses become less highly
elongated? Does t he effect eve r get reversed? Specifically, what if (so Mr . J .
mused) you make a cut at an angle in between a cut parallel t o the bas e and a
"subcontrariwise" cut?
These two cuts [Apol. I 4, 5] give you circles, i.e.,
"non- elongated" ellipses; so, do cuts in between give you ellipses elongated the
other way, with DE as the minor axis? And if so, is there one specific cut for any
oblique cone that gives you the "fattest" ellipse? The answer is "yes" to all these
questions, as I hope to show.
For, DP : PE :: HO : OE and HO:OE: : FN:NE; theref ore OP and NO when joined are parallel
to HD and FH , respectively [Eucl. VI 2]. But F, Hand Dare all on AB, so N, O and p
are all on a straight line parallel to AB, one side of t he axial triangle.
Produce line NOP t o meet AC at T and BC at U, and from U draw UV ou t to the
conic surface perpendicular to BC. Then UV is parallel to LG and MK, and thus to QN,
RO, and SP as well . And QN , RO, SP and UV are all in one plane, having a common
1
transver sal TU . Therefore, by Apollonius I 11 that plane produces a PARABOLA when
it cuts the cone --with ve rtex T, diameter TU, and ordinates QN , RO, SP, &c . The
proof basically rests on this fact.
A
The. f"\ysh.ry C1.1t
~
Now from 0 draw OW parallel to FE and meeting AC or AC produced.
OWll FE and L ABC=LAEF from the subcontrariwise cut; so,
Now ,
DEii
BC, . UTllAB ,
I. To prove that t he elongation becomes
reversed--the so- called "Jacobsen Effect . "
LCBA=LCUT=LEPN
while LCBA=LAEF=LEWO;
so
EPN= EWO .
2
Now , EON> EPN [Euc . I 17) , so LEON )ilEWO.
£EWO; then LEOY<L.EON and
(This proof uses an easily-proven LEMMA: Given three lines A, B and C, if A:B>B:C,
then sp.A :s q . B:?J\:C. I'll sketch an argument for this in a note when I use it.)
Construct a new angle,LEOY, equal t o
EN>EY . 3
OK, here we go: Given a cone with axial triangle ABC perpendicular to the base .
Make three cuts, all intersecting side AC at the same point E:
one parallel cut,
producing a circle with diameter DE [Apol . 1.4]; one subcontrariwise cut, producing a
circle with diameter FE [Apol. L 5]; and a random cut in between , producing an
ellipse with axis HE [Apol . 1. 13, 7]. Of course the common sections of the cutting
planes and the plane of the base, LG and MK, have to be perpendicular to BC produced
[Apol . I 5, 13] ; thus they are parallel to one another .
Now you've
Therefore :
constructed
EOY equal t o
OWE,
while
YEO= EOW
[alt .
int.
angles].
b YEO is similar t o 6EOW 4
and EY : EO::EO:OW.
BUT EN >EY, so EN:EO)EO:OW [Euc . V 8 , 13];
Bisect
the
diameters FE, HE, DE
at N, 0, P respectively;
and
draw NQ, OR , and
PS
out
to
the
conic
surf ace
to
LG
parallel
These
(and MK) .
are all ordinates
I
13]
[Apol.
therefore
and
conjugate axes of
their
respective
diameters [Apol. I
15]; and QN=NE and
SP=PE, since those
cuts
produced
circles.
therefore sq . EN : sq . EO>EN:OW [LEMMA] 5 .
Now, EN:OW: : NO : OT [Euc. VI 4]
so sq. EN: sq. EO)NT:OT [Euc . V 13] ;
but sq. QN: sq. RO::NT:OT [Apol. I 20],
since QN and RO are ordinates, and NT a.nd OT abscissas of a parabola; furthermore
QN=EN , since they're radii of the subcontrariwise circle, so sq. QN=sq. EN.
Therefore sq. EN: sq. RO :: NT : OT [Euc . V 7, 11]
and sq . EN : sq. EO)sq. EN: sq. RO [Euc . V 13].
Therefore sq. RO)sq. EO [Euc . V 10]
and RO)EO . Q. E. D.
28
29
t
I
I
�I
I
II.
To prove that the cut bisecting the angle between the parallel and the
subcontrariwise cuts -- the so-called "Jacobsen Cut" -- produces the maximum degree
of elongation the other way.
I say that KG:GE)LH:HE--i.e., the Jacobsen ellipse is more elongated out towards
the reader than an ellip se resulting from any other cut.
For, extend HG to meet AC at M, and from H draw RN parallel to DE meeting AC or
AC produced.
Then, first, KG and LR are ordinates of a parabola with vertex M, so
Proving this involves a preliminary fact
that I'll establish separately: a Jacobsen
cut cuts off an isosceles triangle on the
axial triangle.
sq. KG: sq. LH :: GM :HM [Apol. I 20];
but, second, GE: HN::GM:HM [Euc . VI 4] ,
so sq. KG: sq. LH::GE:HN [Euc. V 11] .
Let GE bisect the angle between DE and FE,
so that:
Now, with GE as a common height, GE:HN:: sq . GE : r.GE, RN,
LGEG=,LFED.
so sq. KG: sq. LR:: sq. GE : r. GE, RN ,
or sq. KG: sq. GE :: sq. LR : r. GE, RN, alternating.
Then, since in addition LABC=LADELAEF, because of parallels and the subcontrariwise
cut, LGED+LADE=tFEG+LAEF [C.N. 2];
NHM .
Now, it was given that LADE=LAED , so because of parallels, LNHM=LHNM .
Therefore:
but LGED+LADE=LAGE [Euc. I 32]
while LFEG+LAEF=LAEG,
LEHN<LENH.
Cons truct a new angle,LEHO, equal to LENH , with 0 on DE .
so LAGE=LAEG and 6AGE is isosceles.
Then, LEHO>LEHG and EG< EO.
Meanwhile, LOEH=LEHN too [alt. int. angles], so
Now to prove
that the Jacobsen
cut delivers the
maximum
Jacobsen
Effect.
Given a
Jacobsen Cut, so
that LADE= LAED,
producing
an
ellipse with DE as
min.or axis and KG
as
major
axis;
given
also
a
cut
random
producing
an
ellipse with FE as
axis and LR as the
6
conjugate axis (G
and
H are
the
midpoints).
..60EH is similar to 6EHN and
EO : EH : : EH : RN .
But EG<EO, so EG:EH(EH:HN
or EH:EG)HN:EH, inverting;
therefore sq. EH rect.)GE,HN. [Apol . I 34, n. l]
But it was shown above t hat :
sq. KG: sq. GE: : sq. LR : rect.GE,HN,
sq. KG: sq. EG)sq. LR : sq. EH [Euc . V 8 , 13]
and KG:GE)LH:EH.
A similar procedure would deal with cases where F is above D.
Q.E.D .
30
31
But EHG
�NOTES
1.
Euclid never bothers to prove t hat three parallel lines with a common
transversal must be in the same plane, which is too bad. I won't try to do it
here, but I'm sure it's true.
2.
Here you can see one reason why the Jacobsen Effect only exists in between the
parallel and subcontrariwise cuts: if 0 were below P , EON would be less than
EPN and the proof wouldn't hold.
3.
Is this self-evident?
At any rate, if you look at all the angles in the
triangles involved, EYO> ENO, so EYO has to be the exterior angle of NYO , or
Euc. I 17 is violated.
4.
Here's another reason why the Jacobsen Cut has to be in between. If 0 is above
N, then even if (as is perfectly possible) EON> EPN, as in the earlier part of
the proof, the angle EWO will here be the exterior angle of EOW, and it won't
be similar to YEO.
5.
Given three lines A, B, and C, if A:B>B:C, then sq.A:SQ.B A:C; basically because
the first ratio if compounded of A:B and A:B, while the second is compounded of
A:B and A:C .
6.
Note that the cut FE doesn't have to be above the parallel cut for this proof t o
hold--the ratio just keeps decreasing.
33
32
_
II
�Purgation of the Human Spirit
William O'Grady
enjoyed my drinks.
make you I?
What happens i f you drop all the things that
I would like to present some quite fragmentary thoughts about Dante's Purgatory
and about what the purgation of the human spirit might mean, why human beings might
hope for it and why they might fear it.
I am very eager to know whether these
thoughts make sense to you.
She means, I think, and Augustine means, that what arouses dread is not so much
the prospect of giving up the reliable pleasures for the sake of something less well
known, nor even the anticipated pain of the straightening of what has been crooked in
one's life and one's self; but rather the possibility that there will be nothing left
to mean when I say "I"-- the very word will nu longer have content. What am I, am I
anything at all, when stripped of the ways of being l have chosen to make my own and
have somehow placed myself into and taken responsibility for in laboring through my
life?
When the human spirit, my very own spirit, has been purged of all that is displeasing to God, will there by anything left of me?-- this most disquieting of
questions is felt by Dante the pilgrim as well as by ourselves.
I
II
Let me begin with a passage from Augustine's Confessions, occurring just before
he recounts the moment in the garden when he hears a voice "as of a child" inviting
him to "take up and read" a passage from St. Paul that seems addressed specially to
him. He reads and "as if before a peaceful light streaming into my heart, all the
dark shadows of doubt fled away". But this is how Augustine describes his condition
before receiving and responding to the invitation:
I think it is impossible to understand Dante without holding fast to the realization that he insists with equal passion on the legitimacy of two fundamental
human desires: the desire to enjoy the highest good, to be in the loving presence of
God, to be as full of His grace and light as one may be; and the desire to be one's
very self. Neither of these desires must be sacrificed to the other--this is the
source of many of the great tensions of the Comedy (as well as being the reason, I
think, why there is no regret, let alone resentment, in a hierarchical paradise:
Cunizza, for example, within the sphere of Venus, knows that she could be a more
perfect vessel for God's light only by ceasing to be Cunizza--and this she cannot
want).
Because of the properly irreducible duality which Dante recognizes as fundamental to humankind's deepest desire, the purgation of the human spirit is a complicated
matter.
But it is also of the greatest importance that the journey of Dante the
pilgrim does not begin at the base of the mount of purgation. If that were so, some
calculation of cost and benefit might be imaginable: how much is one willing to sacrifice for how great a good. The fact is, however, that Dante arrives at Purgatory
having emerged from Hell, having seen with the greatest clarity--a clarity none of
us, I take it, possesses--what the alternative to purgation is. That alternative is
unbearable.
Therefore purgation is necessary:
Dante cannot impose conditions or
otherwise negotiate; he can only hope that at the end of the purgation of his spirit,
his "I myself" will still have some content, and indeed will have its most proper
content, whose properness is recognizable not only by God but also by Dante himself.
(In memory of my mother, Isabel Geddes O'Grady)
What was there that I did not say against myself?
With what
scourges of self-condemnation did I not lash my soul, so that it
would follow me as I strove to follow you? [All of these words are
spoken of course to God] Yet it drew back; it refused to go on, and
it offered no excuses for itself. All arguments [against being a
Christian] were used up, and all had been refuted. There remained
only speechless dread and my soul was fearful, as of death itself,
of being kept back from that flow of habit by which it was wasting
away unto death.
In order to understand something of Augustine's paralyzing dread, which only the
most definite invitation (as Augustine understood it) from God Himself could overcome, we must understand something of what he means by "the force of habit", which is
his remarkable and bold paraphrase of what St. Paul calls "the law of sin". I think
he means by habit something very radical, something that is perhaps suggested in some
words spoken by the adulteress--heroine in Grahame Greene's novel The End of the Affair. Sarah is resisting the renunciations--above all the renunciatiDn-o~her lover--which she is coming to believe God requires of her in fulfillment of a bargain
into which she entered out of desperation and love. She writes in her diary:
Nothing to do till seven when Henry
Had a couple of drinks by myself. It
give up drinking too? If I eliminate
I was somebody who loved Maurice (her
(her husband) would be back.
was a mistake. Have I got to
everything , how will I exist?
lover) and went with men and
Mr. O'Grady was a tutor at St. John's from 1970 until his death last
January.
34
III
The alternative to purgation (whether in this life or afterwards) is Hell. Allow me to digress briefly upon what I take to be the principle of the choice for
Hell.
I think that according to Dante's presentation the principle of that choice
is, above all, the unwillingness to be moved by another, to have the source of one's
motion outside of oneself.
That is why the extreme of Hell is sheer frigid
immobility:
those who were unwilling to be moved by another are ultimately unable
themselves to move; at the furthest point from the unmoved mover Who draws all beings
to Himself, we encounter the unmoved movers whose only power--an irresistible power,
it seems--is to repel.
It is important to be aware that the unwillingness to have the source of one's
motion outside of oneself can, and often does, assume subtle guises. It is possible
to seem to be moved by another, by a being outside of oneself, while in fact using
35
�11
that other as a mere substratum upon which to project one's own fantasies, so that in
fact one is being moved by one ' s own fantasies, and the sou rce of one's motion is
exclusively and securely within oneself . This appears to be part of t he meaning of
the dream of the siren, the ancient witch, which Dante experiences upon the terrace
of sloth.
IV
I said earlier that Dante as a characte r in t he poem p oss es s es perfect clarity
concerning the alternative to purgation, and t ha t we do not.
But we seem t o have
some clarity about that alternative, and in any case neither Dante's submission t o
purgation nor our own seems comprehensible as nothing but flight from; there is surely also an element of the motion toward.
After all, what overcomes Dante's final
dread of the flames through which he must pass is the promise of Beat rice awaiting
him on the far side.
But the elements of flight from and motion toward seem to me
intimately connected, as I shall try to indicate by distinguishing between t wo aspects of purgation of the spirit as presented by Dante.
The first has to do with the so-called seven deadly sins.
Of three of
these--pride, anger and lust--Dante knows himself to be more guilty than he is of the
others.
These sins, or perhaps roots of sin, are surely serious and dangerous matters; but one can, after all, do something about them. At least within certain limits, willing avails to mortify pride, for example, and to restrain at least the out ward eruptions of anger--one can undertake to practice gentleness of speech.
But t o be lost in the dark wood, to come t o oneself again in the dark wood,
seems t o involve more than recognition of one's entanglement in particular sinful
ways.
Dante's own heart is not fully healed until at the top of the mount of
purgation, "the ice that was bound about my heart turned to breath and water and with
anguish came forth from my breast by mouth and eyes".
What had happened to Dante,
above and beyond his particular violations of the conduct proper for human beings, is
that his heart had grown hard and cold; and he knew that; and he knew that he could
not, by howsoever heroic an act of will-power, undo that hardness and coldness. The
most he could do--and that was difficult enough--was to sustain his sorrow that it
was so, his sadness that his heart was no longer capable, as the heart of the young
boy had been capable, of opening in awe and gratitude in the presence of the beauty
presented to him in the figure of a little girl, and of resolving to be as good as he
could be so as to be worthy, not indeed to possess her, but to be in the world that
contained her. Had Dante been unable to sustain his sorrow over the growing coldness
of his heart, had he self-distractingly or cynically accommodated himself to it, he
would have be en truly dead, and neither the grace of God, nor the graciousness of
Mary , Lucy and Beatrice, would have availed him anything.
v
Let us now finally enter Purgatory with the pilgrim Dante .
In the fi r st Canto
he is perfectly silent. What does this silence contain? There mus t be in it great
re lie f, and wonder, and some bewilderment. Above all, there is the certain knowledge
that Hell must be rejected , and hence the way of purgation must be chosen, must be
submitted to.
What will this submission require? Dante first of all hears the se vere Cato say that although Marcia was, in the old mode, t he surpassing love in his
life, in the new mode he is wholly unmoved by he r.
Whatev er Cato means by these
words, they must be heart -rending for Dante to hear.
When Dante does finally speak, in the second Canto, it is to ask Casella, the
friend of his young manhood, to sing for him "one of the songs of love which used to
36
quiet all my longings, so as to refresh my soul with them for a while, which is so
spent coming here with my body . " But Dante prefaces his request in this way:
"If a
new law does not take from you the memory and use of these songs." It seems to Dante
entirely possible that a new law does forbid lovely and, as it seemed, innocent
t hings which once brought him consolation and refreshment --and if it is so, the new
law must nevertheless be submitted to.
But what then will be left, not merely of
consolation and refreshment, but of Dante himself?
I think these worries are very
much on Dante's mind, as they may be on ours, and they are hardly alleviated by
Cato's sharp rebuke, castigating delight in song as blamable negligence .
Well, it requires the presentation of Paradise itself before Dante and we can
even glimpse the aliveness, the richness and fullness of personality, the being more
myself than I have ever been before, enjoyed by the spirits whose purgation has been
completed . But there are two moments within Purgatory itself that I should like to
indicate briefly as bearing upon our hopes and fears in this matter.
The first occurs in the second Canto . As the thousand souls disembark from the
angel- piloted ship , they sing, all together with one voice , In exitu Israel de
Aegypto, "when Israel went out of Egypt" , a hymn of liberation anddeliverance . And,
Dan t e expressly tells us, they sing "all that is written after of that psalm".
Let
us listen to a few more words from this hymn (Psalm 114) which Dante heard:
The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like young sheep -- Why,
mountains , do you skip like rams, and you, hills, like young sheep?
Dance, 0 earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the
God of Jacob, who turned the r ock into a pool of water, the granite
cliff into a fountain.
There is in these words heard by Dante the promise that in the delivering,
liberating, purging action of God there comes to pass the greatest and most joyous
enlivening of all his creatures-- submission, still less renunciation and loss, are
very far from being the final moment.
VI
And yet as we read the end of the Purgatory--t he second moment to which I wished
to call attention--we cannot help but feel a heart - rending sense of loss :
"But
Virgil had left us bereft of him, Virgil sweetest father, Virgil to whom I gave myself for my salvation"; and Dante, in Eden, weeps.
I cannot say anything adequate about this moment. But I would like to say some thing about Virgil's words, Vir gil's poetry, of which Dante has not been lef t bereft;
and then, very shyly, about Virgil himself .
In the thirtieth Canto , in which is told the re-union of Dante and Beatrice and
the loss of Virgil , we encountei two lines from the Aeneid, the first spoken as it
were by Dante the poet, the second by Dante the pilgrim.
The poet in describing the pageant in honor of Beatrice tells us that as she
approaches "there rose up a hundred ministers and messengers of eternal life, who all
cried, Benedictus qui venis ("blessed are you who come", which must be referred to
Beatrice despite the masculine grammar) and, t hrowing flowe r s up and around , Manibus
o date lilia plenis ("with full hands give lilies")". The second of these utterances
occurs originally in book six of the Aeneid, as Anchises speaks sorrowfully of the
early death of the beautiful young man Marcellus, his life cut short before its full
flowering, bringing a sorrow which is not overwhelmed by the splendor of Rome's
accomplishments.
At first glance it appears that by transferring to an occasion of reJ01c1ng
words originally belonging to an occasion of mourning, the Christian poet is correct-
37
�ing the pagan poet who knew so well of the tears of things and the affairs of mortals
that touch the heart:
mourning has been transformed into joy.
But upon reflection
we find that it is not so simple. For the words "Blessed are you who come", that is,
"Blessed are you who come in the name of the Lord" (Ma tthew 21-9) are spoken to
Christ on Palm Sunday as he enters Jerusalem acclaimed by a greai crowd.
That is,
they are spoken at the beginning of the week of the Passion of Christ, the agony that
revealed most fully the depth of the tears of things.
The Christian poet cannot
simply transform or reverse Virgil's words - -mourning into rejoicing; he must first of
all deepen them or at the very least--which is not so little--remember them.
Now let us turn to the words from the Aeneid which Dante the pilgrim utters at
his moment of greatest need, of greatest awe, bewilderment, and overfullness. As he
sees Beatrice and once again, for the first time in ten years, feels "ancient love's
great power", he can find no words of his very own, no words originating with him.
But he needs words, and words are available, from Virgil:
"Not a drop of blood is
left in me that does not tremble; I know the marks of the ancient flame."
"I know the marks of the ancient flame"--the words are Dido's as she comes to
realize that the part of her that died with the death of Sychaeus is coming to life
again in the presence of Aeneus.
That the story which comes out of this experience
turns out painfully is immaterial here; what matters is the experience itself, an
experience which has befallen men and women in all times and places, and which once
upon a time was tenderly and truly understood and put into unforgettably beautiful
words. That true and unforgettable words had once been found for such an experience,
and that, through the loyalty and devotion of Dante they were not forgotten, had the
result that in the most overwhelming moment of his life, Dante did not have to live
wholly out of his own resources.
It is true of course that the pilgrim Dante must
make Virgil's words his own: Virgil's Latin becomes Dante's Italian.
Kepler puts it more fully, "formed, contained and terminated" by Christ.
Or, as St .
Augustine says near the beginning of the Confessions, quoting the 139th Psalm which
speaks to God: "If I descend into hell, you are present."
VII
I cannot close without trying to say something about the loss of Virgil himself at
the peak of the mount of purgation, whatever may be the consoling power of the
knowledge that we do not lose his words. Of the distressing question of the destiny
of the "virtuous pagans" much could be said, and the least that should be said is
that their apparent exclusion from the presence of God seems to have been as dis tressing for Dante as for many of us--he returns to it again and again, finally in
the heaven of Jupiter, the sphere of justice , where his question about the possible
salvation of those who know not Christ receives a negative answer theologically but
an affirmative answer empirically:
the pagan Ripheus, an obscure figure in the
Aeneid who is said in that poem to be the most righteous of the Trojans, is encountered by Dante in Paradise .
The only suggestion I have to make about this matter is the following.
I think
Dante would have been very grateful for, and would have made good use of, a certain
speculation of the astronomer Johann Kepler .
Traditionally, of course, Christ is
thought of as the mediator between man and God , as occupying a sort of in-between
position.
Kepler suggests an image complementary to this one in his discussion of
the regions of the world.
There are three of these, he says, corresponding to the
three Persons of the Trinity by way of a "divine symbolizing." In the center is the
sun, symbolizing the Father.
The sphere of the fixed stars symbolizes the second
Person, Christ; and the region in between, which of course includes the earth and its
denizens, is pervaded by the Holy Spirit. Thus it is we human beings who occupy the
in-between position, our lives centered in the Father and contained by Christ; or as
38
39
�A Way to Think about Dark Times
William O'Grady
transcending his r age and despair .
Had Priam come earlier his pe ti tion would have
been futile .
Bu t if the gods had not , contrary to all rational expectation, pre served the body of Hector while Achilles was enduring and laboring through his rage,
if divine grace had not secured harmony between t he requirements of Achilles's inner
time and the requirements of the world-time which men share, Achilles would have had
nothing t o offer Priam except regret, and the most beautiful moment within the Iliad,
from which light streams upon all of the darkness and bitternesses of the poem, would
never have occurred. Homer writes:
But when they had put aside their desire for eating and drinking,
Priam, son of Dardanos, gazed upon Achilleus, wondering
at his size and beauty, for he seemed like an outright vision
of gods. Achilleus in turn gazed on Dardanian Priam
and wondered, as he saw his brave looks and listened to him talking.
I have been asked to talk about dark times, about t he darkness of the times in
which we live .
I shall try to do that, bu t it seems t o me t hat , being who I am, for
better and for worse, I can only indirectly carry out what has been asked. A sign of
that· indirectness, which I hope will not dismay you, is that I shall present what I
have to say in the form of refle ctions on brief passages from four books, t he most
recent of which was writte n about seven centuries ago. But I shall try very hard to
make myself understand and I hope t ha t some good may come from our being together.
From t he Iliad of Home r, composed more t han 2500 years ago, I wish t o talk about
what it means for one human being t o offe r another as much time as he needs; from the
Confessions of St. Augustine ab ou t what it means to be faithful t o that original care
for one's own well-being which seems t o be a part of each of us; fr om Dan te's
Purgatory about the sort of weeping that might b e redemptiv e and about how one can
keep intact one 's capaci ty f o r that sort of weeping; and finally from the Gospel of
St. John about why it might be that if all the deeds done by Christ were t o be written down, the world itself could not contain the books t ha t would b e re quired .
I would like to b egin with a moment in the Iliad because that book seems t o me
t o be very much about time.
In pondering the assignment to speak of living in dark
times, I had to ask myself what it would b e like t o live in bright times .
And it
occurred to me that the difference between dark times and bright times might not be
the most important diffe ren ce , just as Achilles , t he beautiful young warrior who is
the he r o of Homer's poem, comes to his proper wisdom when the choice which had always
seemed so important to him--a long life versus a short life, much time versus little
time --comes to be re placed by the difference which depends not upon choice, but rather upon a sor t of g race.
I shall try to explain what I mean.
Because o f a certain
prophecy, Achilles believes he has a choice between a brief life of unforgettable
glory or a long, undistinguished--though not unhappy--life. He broods much over t his
choice and is greatly confused .
Then his dearest friend is slain in war and he is
impelled into acti on of a despairing and merciless sort. He slays scores of men and
even does battle against a mighty river. He finally slays Hector, the slayer of his
friend .
In his rage he drags the body of Hector on the ground behind his chariot,
around and around the camp , every day for twelve days.
But the gods Apollo and
Aphrodite protect Hector's body, and the natural outcome does not en sue -- Hec t or 's
body is preserved rather than being mu tilated beyond rec ogni ti on.
Finally on the
twelfth day Priam, who is very old , the father of Hec t o r, c omes t o Achilles t o ask
for his son's body so that a proper funeral might be celebrated, with ritua l
lamentation and the feasting of a great feast.
Achilles and Priam weep together,
Achilles now f or his own father, now for his dead friend, Priam for his dead son.
Their tears somehow form one stream and are indistinguishable.
Achilles, moved by the beauty of Priam, grants his reque s t--h e is willing to
restore the body of Hector .
And--this is the one act of divine grace which takes
place within the Iliad--there is a body t o restore not a formless mutilated obscenity
which would break Priam's heart to see, but the body of Hector, young and handsome .
Reconciliation takes plac e within the Iliad because Achilles has been given enough
time, as much time as he needs . At no earlie r moment would he have been capable of
Achilles has been given--graciously, independently of any claims he might have
--e nough time, and he knows it. Anyone who has experienced being given enough time-and part of that experience seems to be a powerful sense of how easily things might
have gone otherwise, how likely it is for one to be given not quite enough time--the
question of much t ime versus little time, of a long life versus a short life, cannot
seem very important.
Thus Achilles asks Priam how long he will need to mourn and bury his son. Priam
says t welve days and explains why . Achilles grants him twelve days - he will hold
back the war for that long.
Achilles, having himself been given time, gives Priam
enough time. This is Achilles ' imitation of t he gods , his truly god-like act within
the Iliad. And it seems to me that for us too, it is utterly important to give people
as much time as t hey need, t o let them tell us just how much time t hat is, and to
understand that clear reasons cannot always be given for needing just that amount of
time.
But I do not think that many of us - I leave out of account a few great souls
among us - are capable of giving another time unless we ourselves have, in one form
or another , had the experience of being given, beyond any fair claims we can make,
and contrary to all rational expectation, enough time.
However dark our times may
be, I do not think that such experiences are altogether impossible for us . And when
they do befall us, surely gratitude requires that we make available to another, as
graciously as may be, what has been made available to us.
Let me now turn to the Confessions of St . Augustine, a book written about 1500
years ago.
The title Confessions means something different from what we might sup pose .
For Augustine , the proper subject of confession is the goodness of God.
But
God 's goodness is shown not only in the deep-down, always - presen t goodness of His
creation, but also in t he mercy He shows to sinful man .
Hence to acknowledge and
praise God ' s goodness includes acknowledging and praising His mercy, and that re quires that the occasions of that mercy, the sins and sinfulness of our lives, be set
forth .
That in turn requires a travelling through memory .
This is what Augustine
does in his Confessions : he presents himself in his neediness in order to present
God in His graciousness and to give Him praise for His graciousness.
According to
Augustine, this praise is not so much our duty as it is our deepest delight, the de ligh t for which we were made .
I would like t o consider with you something Augustine says about himself as a
young child. He finds something wonderful in that child, something altogether worthy
of praise.
That something is no achievement of the child, nor any potential for
achievement, but rather something wholly God- given :
it is, Augustine says, "a care
for my own well- being" which shows itself, among other ways, by the fact that " I
shunned sadness and dejection."
This may seem s trange t o us. We are accustomed to saying and perhaps thinking
40
41
�that it is a matter of course for each of us to care for himself--"to take care of
number one," as we sometimes say--the only surprising thing--perhaps even a miracle-being that occasionally we also care for other people. But for Augustine the most
difficult thing in the world is to care for our own well-being, or more precisely, to
be faithful to that original care for our own well-being with which God endowed us
in the beginning, to ~ on caring for our own well-being, to ~ on shunning sadness
and dejection. The reason is that we grow weary, feel worn-out, are bewildered and
embarrassed as we attempt to sustain the care for our own well-being. We long for
rest.
Not that Augustine thinks we ought not to long for rest.
He says to God:
"Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." But until that most proper rest
comes to be, the human task is to be faithful to the original restlessness and to the
original care for our own well-being from which it springs.
Augustine does not praise himself in the Confessions, one reason being that he
knows the great power of what he calls "the passion for self-vindication", that is,
not merely pride in the sense of having too high an opinion of ourselves, but rather
the awesome passion to vindicate ourselves when accused, whether by others or by ourselves. Augustine does not suppose that this passion within him needs any help from
him. But if he were to praise himself, to find something praiseworthy in his life-achieved with the help of God of course but still achieved by Augustine--it would be
for being faithful through many years to his own restlessness, for sustaining, in the
face of so many temptations to come to some false settlement, to some false peace,
that restlessness which so wearied him.
From the point of view of Confessions, written when he was about forty-five, he
writes of himself in his thirty-first year, fully the thirteenth year of his most
earnest searchings for a truth in which his heart and mind could find genuine rest-that is, the 13th year of what we so easily refer to as an "adolescent religious crisis." He writes of how weary he was, and how embarrassed--how embarrassed, since he
had been making such a fuss about his own well-being for so long a time, instead of
getting on with the practical business of life (he was, after all, a Roman). But he
held out in his weariness and his embarrassment until, as he recounts it, he received
a true invitation from the true God. And then he said yes.
Now let me turn to a passage in the Divine Comedy. There is a certain story
told to Dante by a soul in Purgatory which I would like to tell you. But first I
must say a few words about how Dante thinks of Purgatory. The souls in Purgatory-every one of them--will one day be in Heaven with God and each will be f illed--in the
measure possible for each without his ceasing to be himself--with light and joy. But
first--and this is what Purgatory is for, according to Dante--a kind of patience is
necessary, and a coming to understand the ways in which our lives have been perverse,
and an attempt--for once, happily, an attempt which is bound to succeed--to
straighten out what has been crooked in them, not because otherwise God could not
stand the sight of us, but because otherwise we would be simply ashamed and bewildered and miserable in the presence of God. The straightening out of what has been
crooked in our lives--in us--is painful, but it is pain which the souls in Purgatory
do not wish to avoid.
Now let me recount to you the story which one of the souls in Purgatory tells
Dante. His whole life, he says, or almost his whole life, had been full of violence
and hatred, of hating and being hated . He met his death hunted down by his enemies,
who wounded him and drove him into a swamp, where as he lay dying he saw pools of his
blood form alongside him in the stinking water. He was alone and there was no one,
even far away, who loved him. The moment before his death he shed a tear: " I ended
on the name of Mary and there fell and only my flesh remained" (Purgatory V. 101-2).
The devils came to take him away to Hell. But angels came who would not permit them.
The devils were furious at the unfairness of it: "On account of one little tear (una
lacrimetta in Dante's Italian) we are deprived of what is rightfully ours," they
shriek, "What is one little tear against a whole life-time of violence and hatred?"
But the angels are firm, and the soul goes to Purgatory, to prepare itself for the
presence of God.
I want to reflect with you upon that one little tear, so strangely powerful.
First, I think it must be not merely a tear of self-pity, of feeling sorry for oneself--! think some wider sorrow must be in it, some sorrow for having offended God or
having offended against the beauty of His creation or some sadness at having betrayed
things one shouldn't have betrayed. But I am not so sure that there may be nothing
of self-pity in it. It would be strange, after all, and perhaps perversely prideful,
to see and sorrow over the deep sadness of the world--the "tears of things", as
Virgil says--and to exempt oneself, to stand above that sorrowful world and look down
upon it. No, I do not think that self-pity--of which we so often speak harshly-must be excluded from that tear, although of course much more must also be included.
Second, we must be aware that to shed such a tear, to shed the right kind of
tear, is not an act of will. We cannot heroically, at that final moment, make ourselves do it through strenuous exertion. Such a tear comes forth or it does not. It
comes forth from a heart in which there is still some goodness. Here, I think, is
where the will comes in, where trying hard and struggling come in. Not indeed the
kind of struggle to be as good as good can be, the struggle to be very good. Rather
I am thinking of human beings in· whose lives it is much too late in the day to make
of their lives a beautiful thing which might gladden those who behold them, but for
whom the question is: after so many betrayals of the things I ought least to have
betrayed, after so many acts of violence against what I ought most to have cherished,
what difference could one more betrayal, one more act of violence, possibly make?
What difference could there possibly be between a thousand betrayals and a thousand
and one? Perhaps I could resist this present temptation to betrayal--it would be
painful, but perhaps I could do it--but what's the use? What difference could it
possibly make? And surely tomorrow I shall be guilty of some new betrayal.
What Dante means to say, I think, is that it does make a difference: that one
moment of fidelity in the midst of a thousand betrayals does not indeed make a life
into a beautiful thing in which men and angels may rejoice, but i t may be enough to
keep somehow intact a heart capable of shedding the right kind of tear when
it matters most.
Let me conclude by saying a few words about the final sentence of the Gospel of
St. John.
That sentence says: "But there are also many other things which Jesus
did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not
contain the books that would be written." This makes sense, I think, only if we suppose that John does not have in mind only the deeds of Jesus during his thirty-three
years in Palestine, where of course he encountered only a not very great number of
souls. Rather, John must mean that every soul that has ever been in the world or
ever will be encounters Jesus in one guise or another, knows him by one name or another, responds, however obscur~ly, to his invitation.
And I think it is not
blasphemous to speak of these deeds of Jesus as being not only for our rescue--although surely it is right for us to think of them in this way most of the time--but
also for this own fullness and therewith for the fullness of the creation.
For we
must take seriously his being a person. And of myself as a person I know that there
are some things in me which are brought out -- and in some mysterious way even called
into being--only by a certain friend, other things brought out only by another
friend. The loss of a friend is the loss of a part of me. As Jesus issues his invitation in as many ways as there are souls in the world, the creation comes fully
into its own.
These words may sound to you outrageously serene coming from one who was asked
to speak about the darkness of our dark times. Surely an urgent and bewildered sense
of our need for rescue, and painful doubts about the very possibility of rescue, its
42
43
�availability in any comprehensible way, are among the deepest parts of our experience
here and now . But I wonder whether there are not moments in the experience of each
of us in which we can somehow sense the truth of these words spoken by Wisdom, that
is, somehow , by Christ:
"I am from eternity, and before the earth was made I was
with Hi m forming all t hings , and was delighted every day, playing at His feet at all
times; playing in t he world. And my delights were to be with the children of men."
How such moments--moments in which the world seems a deeply innocent place--are
to be put t ogether with the dark moments is very hard to say--it is surely beyond my
powe r t o say--but not t o give voice t o them at all seems to be a lie.
#3
I lay on my back in a field
Beneath the moon
I close my eyes, open them
And the moon is no longer above but before ,
Earth no longer beneath but behind ,
Like a wall where prisoners are sent to die.
#8
Now you've left,
My bed is flat Hot
I'm falling asleep
A drop of spit
on a just-hot griddle
Skittering,
Diminishing.
Stuart Sobczynski
44
45
�]I
Final Cause and the Problem of Existence
Jim Guszca
Though separated by nearly 2000 years, Aristotle and Erwin Straus asked some of
the same questions about the causes of human existence in their re spective works,
Parts of Animals and "The Upright Posture" . Both philosophers questioned the validi ty of ~ientific theories that only gave "material" causes for "the products of nature."
Both believed that a Final Cause must be given to explain why animals,
particularly the human, exist as they do.
Aristotle was refuting one of the physiologers when he said that "it must be
explained how it comes to pass that each of these [non-uniform parts] is charac terized as it is and by what force this is effected" (640b - 20).
In other words, it
is not enough to say that the stomach, for example, is formed by water flowing
through the body; a re ason mus t be given for the specific form of t he stomach, a complicated non- uniform part of the body .
To do t hi s, one must consider the precise
purpose for which the stomach exists.
This purpose is observed as the function t he
stomach performs in its environment.
Straus had a similar argument against t he paleontologists. He said, in effect,
that it is not enough to say that man developed from the primates through an evolutionary process.
"Paleontology t ells us wha t man o r what his ancestors once were,
but not what man actually is ..• it has little to say about how the change to modern
man came about and what its final result was" (pg . 140).
In other words the prehis toric forms of our ancestors do not explain how or why humans exist as t hey do in the
present.
Both philosophers advocated similar scientific methods: t hat we accept as given
whatever is and go on to state its cause . Mere observation isn't enough. The reason
why something came to be as it is is necessary in order to understand its place in
the world.
Aristotle gave t he example of the house.
The house is formed by a
certain process .
Each step of the process, however, is determined by the house's
Final Cause.
That is, we first consider the function, and therefore the nature, of
the house in relation to its environment and then go on the build it in such a way
that it will se r ve its function.
So the process of formation itself isn't the cause
of the final form of the house, or similarly the animal, since the process is ultimately dependent on the house's (animal 's ) function in its environment.
In describing the automobile, Straus gave a similar example.
One cannot "explain its present
form and shape by mere reference to its forerunner" for "it is the automobile's own
function and dynamic structure that determines its shape".
The development of the
automobile didn't occur spontaneously . Certain problems with its functioning lead us
t o draw up new plans for design.
Let us note that both men dealt with the hand as an "organ" because they both
considered its Final Cause . The important fact about the hand is not that it is made
up of certain uniform parts in a certain way.
The hand exists as a part of us and
has a special function.
That function explains why the human body has the hand that
it has.
It also explains why it is an organ, as oppos ed to the finger, whose func tioning is incomplete out of the context of the whole hand.
What each of the philosophers gave as their Final Causes differed, however. To
illustrate this difference, we will consider the authors' respective treatments of
the human hand.
46
Both authors allowed that the upright posture is a necessary prerequisite for
the human hand (Aristotle, 687a 10; Straus, pg. 149) . Aristotle, however, went on to
say that the human being "has his hands because he is the most intelligent animal" .
That is, he has his hands because of the nature of his soul; his soul is not determined by the nature of his hands.
In On the Soul, Aristotle called the soul the
Final Cause of the living body: "Just as the mind acts with some purpose in view , so
too does nature, and this purpose is its end.
In living creatures,
the soul
supplies such a purpose ('function') , and this is in accordance with nature, for all
natural bodies are instruments of the soul" (415b 15) .
Aristotle also compared the
living being to a wax figure.
The body is the "wax" in the raw state, and the soul
is t he "impression" made on the wax to give it shape.
The impression is what must
contain the Final Cause of the figure if its final form is to agree with its func tion.
Neithe r can exist without the othe r, but it is clear that the wax (body) exists for, and is moulded to conform to the needs of the impression (the soul). Thus ,
the soul is the Final Cause of the body . It determines the form and the function of
each of the parts of the body.
Straus wasn't quite so definite in giving the Final Cause of the body o r of its
parts.
Like Aristotle (687al0) , Straus said that "In upright posture, the frontal
extremities are no longer asked to suppor t and carry the body ... they are free for
new tasks" (pg . 149) .
So the anterior limb of the primates develops into the human
arm , and t he hand develops into an "organ of gnostic toughing". Note the implication
that the hand is formed the way it is to perform certain functions :
"The hand is a
tool in re lation to the living, experiencing being" .
For t he development of the
hand, "upright posture is not only the gene tic condition, but also continues to domi nate the function of the hand" (my underline) .
In this last quote, uprigh t posture seems to be to Straus the same type of Final
Cause as the soul is to Aristotle . But although Straus listed a number of body parts
denoting intelligence:
"While upright posture permits the formation of the human
skull, and, thereby, of the human brain , the maintenance of upright posture demands
the development of the human nervous system", he was unclear about the role that
human intelligence plays in causality: "Who can say what comes first and what comes
last --what is the cause and what is the effect (pg . 164)".
So could we say that the Final Cause of the human form is an evolutionary inter action between the sensory organs and the central nervous system?
"The sensory o rgans cannot change without a corresponding change in the central nervous system.
No
part could be altered alone.
With upright posture, there is a transformation of
sensorium and motorium , of periphery and center, of form and function." The implica tion is that the development of one, either mind or body , creates a function that the
other must develop in such a way as to serve .
So we could say that Aristotle and
Straus disagreed as to whether the body adapts for the soul or whether the "soul", or
mind, adapts along with the body .
But I don't want to end with this comparison, either.
Using this evolutionary
interaction to explain our present state of existence seems like the physiologers'
use of purely material causes to explain the stomach. Why does this development take
place and why does this development produce the changes it does?
Bo t h bel ieved that body and soul are interdependent.
But where Aristotle be lieved that the body exists for the sake of the soul, Straus believed that the two
cannot be separated in this way.
He did say that all of the evolutionary "alterations (in nervous and sensory parts) are related to upright posture as their ba sic theme".
Thus the upright posture is the Final Cause of the human mind/body complex . Going back to t he house analogy, upright posture is the basic structure, while
evolution works out the details as development proceeds. There are, then, two levels
of final cause here.
The reason Erwin Straus, a phenomenologist, wrote about the upright posture is
47
�that it has had an important role in determining our present form and therefore our
present existence.
But specific causes are needed to explain specific evolutionary
changes. These come from problems with our being -in-the-worl d on a biological level .
The existence of the creatures we once were was threatened by various cases of
incompatability with their environment.
As nature's trial-and-error process of development stepped in to change our form, the factors of upright posture and
intelligence began to have more major parts to play in the development.
Presently ,
they play the most important parts in the makeup of our being -in-the-world.
Aristotle, it seems, would agree with Straus . Like Straus, he knew that a reason must be given for everything that happens in nature. Not being an evolutionist,
he personified Nature and give her the ability to make rational, and very economical,
decisions that directly determine the order of things.
Straus believed that nature
makes her decisions by the trial- and - error process of evolution .
Both men made it a point to explore human existence through biology.
They did
this by trying to determine the way in which man arose out of nature, that is, what
his final cause is. As one man put it, this isn't the type of science you smash atoms with, but it does deal effectively with the key problem of our existence: how we
live our lives.
48
Antigone
Hugh Brantner
At the time of the first paper on Antigone it seemed to me that the character of
Antigone was unambiguous; so much so that she was difficult to write about.
Indeed,
it seemed she was so intent upon her actions and so unremitting of them that she was
a long distance from audience sympathy.
"Her unwavering intent upon her goals dis tances us from her such that our ability to live with her through her role is diminished." Perhaps it was a reluctance on my part to see Antigone's faith in her own
actions as anything but the negative sense of the the Greek word
- an untold presumption or arrogance.
Perhaps it was also because Sophocles presented her
character to us in such a way that access to her heart is not allowed until late in
the play, and then not simply by watching her.
There is little doubt that Antigone's intentions in the play are of a righteous
nature.
Long before they are uncovered by the plot, the audience knows her actions
to be well done. Yet from the first lines of the play it is much easier to be sympathetic with Ismene's fears for her sister and her subsequent unwillingness to cross
the state decree.
Perhaps this is the result of an inability to see the human
usefulness of such an action, which makes it difficult for us to find the reserve of
strength necessary to fly into the face of death.
Of course we don't want Antigone
to die; we have the belief that she is right. Yet we are not one with her.
Indeed,
what she does seems beautiful, but its apparent cost causes us to shrink into
ourselves, away from her.
Antigone, though, is not all strength and purpose.
She is human.
As a human
she too must recognize death and know its meaning.
It is in acknowledging this that
Antigone seems to become accessible to the audience. It is through her last lines in
the play that we can come to affirm her judgement and perhaps come to love her.
It
is here that the superhuman effort needed to overcome the all too human fears falls
away leaving an heroic but very human being.
To accept this interpretation of Antigone's character is to step into some apparent controversy over a series of lines in the play.
Sir Richard Jebb along with
some other translators find these lines, vv 904 - 920, to be spurious.
Perhaps these
lines are not authentic as Jebb argues.
If this is the case it would seem that the
audience is robbed by the playwright of a view into another mortal's soul-- the soul
of the namesake of the play. If o?e reads this play without these lines he is denied
the realization that the actions of the play are all human actions.
Instead the veil
that surrounds the driven Antigone remains drawn. Creon dashes his ship upon her, an
unmoving, unyielding rock.
If, however, the lines stand, then Antigone is not the
foil of Creon.
Certainly they cross one · another, but i t is in going to different
destinations.
It is as if Creon has set his sights upon the monsters lurking at the
edge of the sea thinking them to be beauties.
He sails by his own navigation over
the edge.
Antigone runs afoul of Creon enroute to her own destination. She is purposeful, like a river flowing where it must until the very end.
Jebb's arguments against these lines are fairly concise.
It seems that he objects to them primarily on grounds of logic and grammar. He states three objections
to these lines.
The first objection is: "The general validity of the divine law, as asserted tn
vv. 450-460, cannot be intelligibly reconciled with the limitation in vv. 90 5-9 0 7."
49
�In lines 450-460 Antigone asserts in her confession of the rites of burial for
Polyneices that the immortality of the gods is to be respected above all. A law of
the gods must be obeyed prior to any law of man who is mortal.
It is not possible
for any of man's laws to "over-run" one of the gods'. Since the rites of death have
long been held as an act of piety towards the gods, Creon's order to withhold burial
rites cannot be obeyed. She acknowledges that death is necessary, for she must cross
a man's law. She obviously does not perceive any hope of Creon rescinding his edict.
But what kind of ill could death at the hands of man be when held in relation to the
ill of being impious to the immortal gods? These lines do seem clear in affirming a
belief in that law.
Jebb apparently feels that lines 905-907 contradict the priorities Antigone
states in lines 450-460.
After having uttered these lines, why would Antigone say
that the actions would not have been done had she been a mother or wife with a child
or husband mouldering away? He seems to feel that if one is ready and willing to die
to honor divine law above mortal law, then it would make no difference what the mortal-world conditions were.
The divine law must take precedence.
Therefore, it is
illogical to babble in the later lines about a child and husband.
Jebb's second objection is an extension of the first:
"A still further limita:....
tion is involved in 911 ff.
She has buried her brother, not simply as such, but because, while he lived, he was an irreplaceable relative.
Could she have hoped for
1
the birth of another brother, she would not then, have felt the duty so binding . "
Jebb seems to feel that this statement by Antigone further eclipses her from
lines 450-460.
Again it is illogical that any mortal condition, even human love,
should stand in the way of the priority of divine law.
How could the loss of a
"replaceable" brother possibly alter the law? It would still stand, and the lack of
burial rites would of course be impious.
The third objection Jebb cites is simply that:
"The composition of vv. 909 1
912 is unworthy of Sophocles."
Further down in his line-notes, Jebb elaborates with three points. The first is
about a word which is not believed to have been in Attic use at the time of
Sophocles.
The second is about the jumbled hypotheses in the lines.
The arguments
are not kept grammatically clear and distinct, but instead fall over one another.
His third is again a point over awkward grammar.
An overview of Jebb' s statements seems only to turn up the two categories of
objection:
logic and grammar.
These seem odd grounds in some ways upon which to
base a decision about the authenticity of these lines .
Antigone is about to die .
Would anyone ask of a person facing death by any form of execution that he be consistently logical and grammatically correct? Perhaps.
If the person was of high moral
character, strong, confident in the righteousness of his actions , then one might come
to expect coherency from him even in the worst of conditions.
Antigone is all of
these, but it seems that Sophocles shows us more of her character than just this
side. What Sophocles shows us is important in order to fully understand Antigone as
a human character, to sympathize with, and possibly to love her.
Sir Richard Jebb was a Greek scholar impossibly far beyond my own abilities as a
student of the Greek language.
If he says that a point of grammar is so or that usage in a particular fashion is unusual, I must believe him. However, I see no reason
to hold fast to his conclusion that lines 905-912 are not Sophocles'; and that lines
904 and 913-920 must fall also because of unity within lines 905-912.
Jebb may be
right and the play should be read without these lines.
If so, then an image of a
strong character until the end prevails.
Sure in the righteousness of her actions,
Antigone sails straight to her destination, slipping off the edge of the mythical
sea, but into immortal fame.
If, however, one grants that the lines were penned by
Sophocles, then the picture, it seems, is different.
The rough grammar and the
twisted logic portray another depth of character.
The superhuman effort breaks up,
dashed upon the reality of Antigone being human. Then these lines would be a mark of
50
a skilled playwright rather than the crude insertions of a lesser mind.
. One ,Problem for ~hose wh? call these lines spurious is their appearance in
Aristotle s, The Art of Rhetoric.
Jebb answers this by saying that the lines mu t
ha:e been inte.rpolated shortly after the poet's death, perhaps by the poet's so:.
This chronological approach is far less interesting than the points Aristotle mak
·
·
es
in t h e section i n wh"
ich he quotes Sophocles.
.
I~ t~e Nic~omachean Ethics Aristotle writes that it is by a man's actions along
with his intentions that man should be judged.
Outlining the nature of Tragedy, he
writes in the Poetics that action must occur within the narration for there to be a
good story. Action takes precedence over character; then character fleshes out that
action for the listeners. In the Rhetoric he draws a distinction for how an audience
will perceive an action, given the type of motivation for that action.
Do not let your words seem inspired so much by intelligence, in the manner now current, as by moral purpose:
e.g. 'I willed this; aye, it was my moral purpose; true,
I gained nothing by it, still it is better thus.' For
the other way shows good sense, but this shows good character; good sense making us go after what is useful, and
good character after what is noble.2
Aristotle has drawn a dichotomy in the reasons for which a person may be perceived to accomplish an act. On the one hand, he could be doing something because it
is useful.
This usefulness could admit of several species, such as prof it, need,
desire, etc.
On the other hand, he could be doing something out of "moral purpose".
Motives springing from usefulness are perceived as less honorable than those of moral
purpose.
The primary difference seems to come with the lack of visible gain in the
latter. One does something out of moral purpose with no end in mind, perhaps even at
a great cost to himself.
The point that Aristotle is taking up is that it is desirable to show character
in a play. Moral interest and moral purpose show character in a way that purely sensible actions springing from reason cannot.
When we see a character on the stage
move through actions motivated by reason alone we judge him by that reason. Our sympathies and energies focus on the action in terms of the steps leading to the end.
Perhaps the end is not clear to an audience right away, but his actions nonetheless
move in quantifiable, logical steps.
He is acting upon a common ground we all can
trea~ and so can look backwards and forwards, coming to know what he has done, what
he might do, and why. Of course reason is not always consistent between men. When a
character makes an unexpected move we search for the reason in the new action that
might indicate the new end sought.
We see action that might indicate the new end
sought. We see action in terms of a motivation towards that end.
However, if a character is ac~ing from moral purpose, the linear quality of reason breaks up.
It is no longer clearly motivation with an end in mind
+
action
toward that end + end.
Instead the action and the end can become one.
No longer
is there a more-or-less objective grid available to trace an action upon.
The act
must be perceived in a more subjective manner.
This places two individuals in a
realm where emotional responses must be elicited.
The first person is of course the
character who will display qualities of some emotional and moral depth.
The second
is the individual member of the audience who will see this side of the character and
must respond in kind. He will not be able to appeal to some more neutral contrivance
as a reason to judge the character's actions and intentions. Instead he must respond
emotionally from inside of himself. The more morally deep the action, the more depth
the audience member must plumb in himself if he is to understand what is going on
before his senses.
It is this type of character who can move an audience and give
meaning to a play.
51
�l
T
I will lie together with him, a beloved together
with a beloved
A playwright must have some moral purpose motivating a character received with
some emotional attachment by t he audience , and that character must display the pur pose through his action, his wor ds , or through other charac te rs a r ound him. In some
way or another the intention behind the actions must be made manifest for the audi ence.
Aristotle continues beyond these points i n the Rheto r ic to the actual quote of
Sophocles . He cites lines 911 and 912 as an example t hat gives cause to Antigone's
behavior :
It is, however, the pie t y of lines 74-77, and 89:
having dared a righteous crime; since the time
is greater
for those below , who it is necessary for me to please,
than for those here.
There I will lie forever . But it may seem right to you
to hold in dishonor the things the gods hold in honor.
Where any detail may appear incredible, t hen add the cause
of it; of this Sophocles provides an example in the Antigone,
where Antigone says she had cared more for her brother than
for husband or children, since if the latter perished they
might be replaced,
'But since my father and mother in their graves
Lie dead, no brother can be born to me. ,3
But I know that I am making good to whom it is necessary
to most have pleased.
which gets carried forward from this scene and reaches its climax in lines 450- 460 .
Somehow Antigone's love drops beneath the surface of the play . Ismene's expression
of love in line 99 seems to heighten the obscurity of Antigone's feelings:
This cause is an irreplaceable love .
This, however , does not seem to convey the
whole picture to me . These l i n e s are important for showing Antigone's cha r ac t er and
purpose . It does not seem , however , t hat Antigone feels love for Polyneices because
he is irreplaceable . Neithe r does it s e em tha t she would ac t any di f fer ently i f t he
dead was a r eplaceable loved one. Ar i stotle se ems r igh t i n hi s unde rstanding t he
underlying cause for Antigone' s action as love . Yet he wants to put a qualifier on
the depth of the love which seems to delimit some of the character t hat may have been
put into the play by Sophocles .
If Antigone is not elucidating a reason for her actions, and not contradicting
herself, then what do t hese lines say? Simply that Antigone is shuddering under t he
mantle of her own actions . It i s not a shuddering of r e gret , but rather a giving ouz
of the extreme reserve of st r ength necess~ r y to "go to t he fullest verge of daring",
t o find "the high foundation of jus t ice" .
She is now alone . The act has be en done ,
the confrontation is past. Her momentum is all but spent. She seems like a rough
stone ball which rolls when i t has force and momentum, but which to t ters, wobbles ,
and shudders in its motion as t hat force is spent .
Her speech of lines 891 - 928 is not spoken to Cr eon or the chorus . It is spoken to the dead, and as an inwa r d reflection t hrown outwar d. The wo r ds she speaks
seem to be ones of some doubt . They seem to be casting about for a reason . Yet the
anguish which r ises up thr ough the lines indicates that there is no doubt. Antigone
has not changed. Her self is no longer full of her singular will. Instead she is
giving herself over to emotions which have only been undercurrents through the earlier portion of the play .
Antigone's action of performing burial rites for Polyneices is of course the
center of the play. When she talks early in the play, the reasons she gives for her
action are those of piety . Yet they are not purely of piety. In lines 27 - 29 she
speaks of the burial rites not in terms of piety, but rather in reference to mortals:
they say he has proclaimed to the whole town
that none may bury him and none bewail,
but leave him unwept, untombed .. .
'Go , if i t seems so to you ; but know this, that foolish
you go, but by those who love you, rightly loved . '
Ismene, while running short of the strength necessary to act as Antigone asks, none theless has the ability to r each beyond those limit s with an expression of love .
Ant igone's interest in piety is a real one .
It is neither a cover for her
actions, nor the prime motivation for them . If her actions were guided purely by an
interest in piety, then the lines Jebb questions would indeed sound out of place.
She would be denying herself the very r eason for her action . In this light Jebb's
arguments would be a little bit more persuasive .
As it turns out, Antigone's lines of 909- 920 do sound odd. Falling on our ears
as they do, they seem in contrast to the hardened Antigone who leaves Ismene in the
first scene, and who corrosively responds to Creon's vehemence against her. They do
not make sense with the other things we have heard from Antigone. Because they seem
in contrast, they do not pass by smoothly. Instead they stick and jam and must be
internalized . Their meanings do not indicate why they are spoken.
Only in their
disorder do they convey their meaning. The unities we expect of logic and grammar
become broken. Mortal conventions fall before an immortal passion of the soul.
The Antigone who leaves Ismen e in the opening scene is har dened, anneal e d f or
what she wills. The task she asks Ismene to share must now be done alone. Arguing
piety, she leaves for her task with Ismene' s words of love falling like petals on
frozen ground. When we see her next she must confront the attacks of Creon. Defiant
and firm she remains hardened. She cites the divine law as her defense. She answers
law with higher law as they exchange barbed statements over the justice of the situation . Finally in lines 522 - 523 t hey come to the issue at hand:
5
Creon :
Antigone:
She seems to see the burial rites in terms of the human needs to which they attend.
Here she is not thinking of piety as much as expressions of love for one who has
died. Lines 48 and 73 reflect not primarily pious thoughts, but ones of love:
Never the enemy, even in death,
a friend.
I cannot share in hatred but
in love.
6
Antigone's response falls upon our ears in an odd way much like line 909-920,
though this line (523) is prior . Antigone uses the verb ¢uw , which here means that
But there is not for him a right to shut me
out from those of mine.
53
52
I_
�T
it is by nature that she is disposed not to join Creon in hating Polyneices, but
rather love him.
It is a strange statement falling after the rapid-fire, heated
words over justice. It is hard to reconcile this vision she has of herself with her
character on stage. She has been scathing in her treatment of Ismene and of course
Creon. The words seem somehow misplaced. However, there is not time to reflect on
them as the force of Creon's reply, along with the momentum of the preceding lines,
carry us quickly beyond them. His reply itself in lines 524-525 only helps bury her
words, for he cannot connect with her sense of love:
And now he leads me, taking me by force
unbedding, without a wedding song, obtaining
not a share of a wedding feast nor in the nurture
of a child,
7
but an ill-fated one, alone from friends.
The lines preceding line 905 from line 897 also speak of her idea of love in ref erence to the burial rites she has attended for her father, mother and brother,
Eteocles. Couched between her expressions of love for others in the past, and those ·
once hoped for in the future, these lines lead us to see that her actions sprang not
from a need to be right, to honor the gods, but rather to express her love for her
brother.
Thus we are led deeper into the soul of Antigone and for a moment can be sure of
her actions and humanity. Indeed what we once shrank from may seems less fearful for
a moment. In finding her motivation we have to open ourselves up to the love we have
known. And for that moment our hearts are open in an attempt to understand, death
seems to be remote while it is Antigone who is near.
Sir Richard Jebb has his reasons for eliminating these lines which seem to open
Antigone up. Somehow though, I find his Antigone colder and more removed.
I have
come to like the closeness that this perhaps less scholarly interpretation allows of
her character. There is meaning and depth in her which are born of love. Yet when
all is said and done, I think that it is the sense of promise that I most respond to;
the promise that the love I experience in this human existence can be powerful enough
to extend me beyond the self which delimits my existence in terms of fear and death.
This is a promise one cannot be reminded of too often.
1 - Jebb, Sir Richard, The Antigone of Sophocles abr. version, E.S. Shuckburgh,
editor; Cambridge Univ . Press .
2
Aristotle, The Art of Rhetoric, W. Rhys Roberts, trans., III, 16, lines 24 - 27.
3 - Ibid, III, 16, lines 28 - 33.
4 - Antigone, Elizabeth Wyckoff, trans, lines 852 - 853.
5 - Ibid, lines 27 - 29.
6 - Ibid, lines 522 - 523.
7 - Ibid, lines 524 - 525.
55
54
�56
57
�r
Sonnet for a Slavic Miner
A.J. Krivak
The Dead
Renee Bergland
Let us roll all our strength, and all
our sweetness, up into one ball:
and tear our pleasures with rough strife,
through the Iron gates of life.
Thus though we cannot make our sun
stand still, yet we will make him run.
In this town, along this river, down these shafts
Darkness reigns under the earth.
In America, a still struggling re-birth
Carries you along, men in and endless rafts
Of coal out in a stream of blood-smeared dust .
From Prague peasants rode the civilian trains
To steamships waiting in Hamburg . The rains
Come for days to thaw, the leeching cars leave rust
On your hard blue hands; the tortuous sound
Of ceiling drops, muffled ground-thunder below .
Memories of the old kawntree fade,
Your children soon are breaker boys who pound
Piles of stone with hammers for pay. Shenandoah
fires burn, your Anna collapses in tears she made.
58
-Andrew Marvel
"To His Coy Mist,ress"
Gabriel Conroy is falling asleep. His wife is beside him, dreaming dreams which
have no room for him. He muses, "Better pass boldly into that other world, in the
full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age". Then he falls
asleep peacefully. His soul swoons slowly into sleep, and the snow falls faintly
upon the living and the dead . We close the book peacefully and fall asleep ourselves, lulled and comforted by the warmth of human hospitality and kind humor which
Gabriel has told us about. We are certain somehow that Michael Furey, beautiful,
passionate, blazing boy that he was, was somehow wrong. We do have world enough and
time. Eternity is not a pressure, but a peaceful promise.
Gabriel brings us glad tidings. Tidings of peace on earth in a joyous, but
somehow wistful manner ... Something in the struggle and the blaze is attractive to
the human soul. Tragedy is romantic, powerful, and moving in a way which no happy
ending can ever be. It is strange that his glad tidings are not more powerful, nor
any more compelling. And at the same time it is utterly appropriate. One could not
paint peace in violent, vivid color. His message has, as he himself does, a melancholy, almost awkward, glory.
What is this peace? The biggest, best part of it is the fact that the war with
time is over. The sun need not stand still, nor fly from us. For somehow, as the
snow falls, blanketing absolutely everything, truce is declared.
Yes, yes, that
would happen very soon, Gabriel muses on Julia's death, knowing that he does not need
to fear her death, or even his own. We are all, living and dead, in this thing together . Death is all that has ever given time any sting at all. But strangely, the
victory over time strikes me as a bigger one than the one over death. Time's shrinking gives Michael and Gabriel the chance to love Gretta completely or shall I say, to
make Gretta completely loved , each loving as much and as well as he can. Were Gretta
loved by one man or the other, she would be a sad, grey woman.
She is not. Two
loves in two different time schemes have made her warm, rich and beautiful; and each
love has done the same for each man as well.
When Gabriel accepts Michael's love, he joins Michael in a new, strange world
where the living and the dead are equally present, equally important. That world,
however, has been building the whole time. Part of the reason a timeless, deathless,
lifeless, snowy world seems so natural is that we have spent most of the story at a
holiday ball; it holds every one of its past manifestations in it, as only an annual
party held where it has been held for a good thirty years can hold its past. What is
59
�it about that party which makes it see so frighteningly real? Reading the story now
halfway between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the parties I have been attending
since I was born, I feel self-conscious. That's it. That's a holiday ball. Right
down to Freddy Malins and his poor mother, everything is captured. Everything can be
captured because there is a universal element to a party like Julia and Kate's. Year
after year they remain the same; and year after year t hey go off splendidly, in spite
of Freddy and Mr. Browne. Every year the old ones get a little frailer, and every
few years one of them dies. The party never changes . This party, t his truly changeless, unremarkable occasion is our entrance into timelessness. Having entered, we
find eternal love, and we find it twice: Living and dead.
The two loves do not oppose each other. Both are warm and fiery. One is a pale
and tender flame which never wavers, and the other is a blast of heat and fury,
quickly doused in rain. But as Michael Furey dies for Gretta, he gives her all his
warmth in one mightly explosion.
He leaves her warm, but ready to receive more
warmth, quieter and steadier. Gabriel gives her this with all his heart and with all
his tender, deep passion, dissolved across years, books and children, but never
stilled, never doused. His love grows when he learns that it has been completed by a
strange young boy from Galway long ago.
It grows more quiet , but it also grows
stronger. Finally Gabriel sees that there is nothing to fight and no need t o deny.
He can go west. He is not excluded and he does not lack the wild watery romance
which is Ireland. Rather, he shares in it through his wife, who has been filled with
it by another, different lover. And at the same time, as he watches the quiet snow
which binds him to the wildness with peace, he holds his wife close to himself, and
he rests deeply and warmly with her. He guards Gretta, he keeps her feet dry. She
lets him watch her, hair dry, bronze, and clean . They are dry and warm and safe.
Michael Furey is wet and cold and dead. Both, or shall I say all three, are quiet,
peaceful, snowy.
Times' winged chariot may hurry as close as it likes. It is empty. It has been
emptied by a new, compound, eternal love, shouted forth by two men:
one tearing
through the iron gates of life toward death; and the other , quietly, with world
enough and time, letting his vegetable love grow vaster than empires and more slow.
The Flesh Made Word: Some Thoughts on
Gogol's Story "The Overcoat"
Christopher K. Watson
If modern philosophy can be said to begin with Descartes'
methodological skepticism, his making ontology essentially problematic, a whole tradition of the novel, as the paradigmatically
modern
narrative
genre,
is
informed by
the
same
critical-philosophical awareness, beginning almost a half-century before Descartes with Cervantes . Ontological critique in the novel,
moreover, is carried on typically not as discursive exposition but
as a critical exploration through the technical manipulation of
the very form that purports to represent reality.
This observation by Robert Alter in his book Partial Magic is extremely helpful
in a consideration of Gogol's "The Overcoat", for in such an endeavor one must necessarily begin with the problem of perspective. However, the story does not willingly
lend itself to the normal avenues of approach. In fact, the most revealing characteristic of the story seems to be its virtual absence of perspective . We are not
presented with a concrete structure but with an elusive and constantly changing entity. This applies equally to the parts as to the whole. For this reason "The Overcoat" tends to escape the greedy and prosaic clutches of analytical interpretation .
Not because its words and sentences will not retain meaning, but because its protean
prowess is so great as to enable it to take on all possible meanings. This process
extends itself in such a way that a complete reversal of meanings, hierarchies , and
even characters can be seen to occur throughout the course of the story . Hence, ongoing metamorphosis being the predominant aspect of this text, one begins to question
the place in which a reader might figure in this self - contained and (as will be
shown) self -consuming Gogolian universe.
In the department ...
Starting with the first paragraph, we are immediately exposed to Gogol's elliptical style . The normality of the first three words is fleeting and they quickly
become enshrouded in an elaborate digression. Thus the formal beginning is yanked
out from under the reader, exposing him to the acutely self-conscious considerations
of the author. Gogol forces the reader to realize just how impossible it is to designate relevancy or give meaning to anything without dangerously enormous and escalating effects. He even repeats this process in the digression when he claims that
he can't recall the town of the police commissioner even though the incident occurred
"not so very long ago". The careful reader finally has to commiserate and even take
on a certain amount of the anxiety that has infected the narrator. The whole process
ultimately endows the undefined department with immense significance. As if by magic, a concerted attempt to make something insignificant and undefined has mysterious ly given it the utmost significance. But what is significance? "A certain department" could mean anything, and in its infinite possibilities lies both its significance and absence.
60
61
�Absence most certainly plays a central role in the dynamics of the story. The
most perplexing absence is that of the narrator. As the classical pillar of perspective, the narrator's frequent disclaimers, his states of amnesia, and his lack of
control over the course of events and descriptions of characters (as if they were
queuing up behind his pen and pushing it across the page) continually def late his
worth as an interpretive gauge. His self-professed lack of memory progresses to such
an extent that towards the end of the story he says:
••. everything in St. Petersburg, all the streets and houses, has become so blurred and mixed up in our head that we find it very dif f icult indeed to sort it out properly.
An amusing example of Gogol's craftiness in this respect is the derivation of
Akaky's name, undoubtedly from the Greek 6.Ka.Kos:
"innocuous" or "guileless", of
which the narrator innocently states:
His name and patronymic were Akaky Akakyevich. The reader may think
it a bit odd, not to say somewhat recherche, but we can assure him
that we wasted no time in searching for this name and that it happened in the most natural way that no other name could be given to
him.
The name itself denotes absence (in-nocuous or guile-less. Among other things,
Gogol has conceived a multilayered mimicry of his own denial of device). Of course,
the christening of Akaky comes about in the most unnatural way: this is, through an
obstinate mother's fear of novelty and the creative whims of an intractable calendar.
Akaky himself, who when only a tot seems to have had "a premonition that he would be
councillor one day", is described as the paradigm of stasis:
his
a titular
constancy is so extreme as to verge on non-entity:
price of the new overcoat and after reconciling himself to the fact "His whole existence indeed seemed now somehow to have become fuller".
The overcoat becomes "a
sweet helpmate", "as though he had got married" and "his character even got a little
firmer" . The day of the overcoat's delivery is "one of the greatest days in Akaky's
life", a life which has been depicted as an absolute homage to uneventfulness.
Akaky, who previously was gustatorily unconscious_ . eating "flies and all", is even
,
affected physically: his heart begins "beating fast", he suddenly is aware of the
St. Petersburg night life, and he _i_~ls the first impulses of erotic attraction.
When he is invited and compelled to the assistant head clerk's birthday party, he is
like a debutante going to her "coming out" party: "and indeed he had not left his
room in the evening for several years".
At this point I would like to make my own small tribute to excursiveness and
absurdity. When Akaky grins in front of the provocative painting of a woman "taking
off a shoe and showing a bare leg", the narrator questions, "Why did he grin?". He
then proceeds to posit the following seriocomical reasons:
It might have been because he had seen something he had never seen
before, but a liking for which is buried deep down inside every
one of us, or because (like many another Civil Servant) he thought
to himself, "Oh, those damned Frenchmen! What a people they are,
to be sure!
If they set their heart on something, something ..• well, something of that kind ... " But perhaps he never
even said anything at all to himself. How indeed is one to delve
into a man's mind and find out what he is thinking about?
This implies that the character's derivation is not one from nature but from nature
as refracted by established fictional conventions. This serves to nullify any understanding of Akaky qua human being.
Seen in this light, Akaky's quest for a new overcoat, which is properly spurred
by physical necessity (it is the inclemencies of the St. Petersburg weather which
drive him into the world of contingency), seems to be a progression towards normality. He raises his voice "probably for the first time in his life" upon hearing the
This last question, adequately dressed in ironical trappings, is perhaps one of the
most central questions of the story; however, another, completely illogical intuition
arises as an answer to the initial question--that is, posterity. In the beginning
stages of the story the narrator, struggling to find something revealing about
Akaky's "unremarkable" persona, traces the etymology of his surname, Bashmachkin , to
the word "bashmak" --"to wit, shoe". But any facts concerning the "metamorphosis"
remains a mystery,
the whole endeavor seems to yield nothing. Nevertheless, this
simple act of research impresses the image of a shoe on the reader's mind; and
through Gogol's artistry this word, as do many others, takes on a certain magnetism
and seems by itself to be able to retain the reader's attention. This also serves as
a good example of how Gogol's concerns for the insignificant, the purely quotidian,
pervades the whole story.
Returning to the hypothesis that Akaky's overcoat may represent a catalyst for
i dent i t y , or even a spiritual mediator (a kind of textile Beatrice), we must immediately begin to doubt it. An inspection of the overcoat's source seems to be the most
proper place to begin. And, although one might contest the source as not being in
any one place, Petrovich, the tailor, appears to be its most striking abettor.
In introducing Petrovich, the narrator gives us subtle admonition: "We really
ought not to waste much time over this tailor". However, "time", which seems to have
very little to do with this story anyway, is wasted and Petrovich proceeds not only
to function as an important transitional vehicle, but also as the most externally
unique character in the story. Everything that characterizes him is mysteriously
nefarious, his flat is in a back alley and surrounded by mist so dense "that even the
very cockroaches could no longer be seen". He drinks "in the tradition of his forebears", "on any church holiday, on any day, in fact, marked with a cross in the calendar".
And when Akaky brings him his bedraggled overcoat, Petrovich is sitting
"with his legs crossed under him like a Turkish pasha"--an infidel. To his wife he
is a "one-eyed devil" or at least a lesser demon under the dictates of a Devil, who
occasionally nudges him and makes "him ask more than he is worth himself". And one
62
63
During all the years he had served in that department, many directors and other higher officials had come and gone, but he still
remained in exactly the same position, in exactly the same job, doing exactly the same kind of work, to wit, copying official documents.
We are told that Akaky is ithelbutt of the off ice wits' jokes, but that he is utterly
immune to their disparaging jibes, living in "a multi£ arious and pleasant world of
his own"--the Russian alphabet.
Moreover, his "tormentors" must invent special
stories about him, as they are hard-pressed by his lack of character. Even an attempt to compare Akaky to a "real-life" counterpart is baffled by Gogol; for he says
that Akaky's rank, which is equivalent to his identity.
... has been sneered at and held up to scorn by all sorts of writers
who have the praiseworthy habit of setting upon those who cannot hit
back.
�must concede that it is a brilliantly comical stroke on Gogol's part to emphas i ze in
this way the necessity for a t ailor af t er the fall .
Petrovich is said to be "greatly pleased that he had neit her demeaned himself
nor let down the sartorial art".
Here one must ask oneself just what it i s t hat
this "sartorial art" consists of : a tailor patches, he alters , he hems and covers,
he is the "Artificer" . And at a crucial point in their encounter he seems even to
cast a spell over Akaky:
At the word "new" a mist suddenly spread before Akaky' s eyes
and everything in the room began swaying giddily. The only thing he
could still see clearly was the general's face pasted over with paper on the lid of Petrovich's snuff box.
This is an amazing example not only of the command which the insignificant exercises
over the events of the story, but also of the way in which Gogol is able to reverse
and even merge opposites, in this case presence and absence . The clearest thing to
Akaky in his state of ve r tigo is a non- picture. We had previously read of this por ~
trait of "some" general that "the place where the face should have been had been
poked in by a finger and then pasted over with a square bit of paper" . But this pic ture is more than simply an amplified abs ence : it is also an example of t he way in
which predestinat i on seems t o fi gure in this Gogolian un i v erse . No t unl i ke Akaky ' s
premonition that he would one day be come a titular councillor, we discov er later on
in the story that the rank of the Very Important Person , who ul t imately becomes
Akaky's agent of doom (being his last hope for the recovery of his overcoat), is th~t
of a "general". Moreover, Akaky' s encounter with the Very Important Person culminates with Akaky fainting in front of him .
But who is this Very Important Person? On one level he is seen as the menacing
counter-pole to Akaky's meek obsequiousness. However, there are striking parallels
that seem to call this relationship into question . In the first place, we are told
that this Very Important Person was once a "rather unimportant person" which seems to
oddly echo what was previously speculated about Akaky's diligence:
If he had been rewarded in accordance with his zeal, he would to his
own surprise have got as far as a state councillorship.
Like Akaky, who on his nocturnal excursion drinks champagne and feels sexual desire
before the disaster, so the Very Important Person seeks diversion in champagne and a
visit to his mistress before the ghostly encounter. The Very Important Person is
defined by his false and authoritarian facade:
"Strictness, strictness, and again strictness!" he usually declared, and at the penultimate word he usually peered very significantly into the face of the man he was addressing. There seemed
to be no particular reason for this strictness, though, for the
dozen or so Civil Servants who composed the whole administration
machinery of his off ice were held in a proper state of fear and
trembling, anyhow .
towards a "fuller" self is thwarted. The overcoat now begins to symbolize a spurious
growth towards selfhood, a false _ idol. And Akaky' s former state, which "might have
flowed on as happily to a ripe old age", appears idyllic, as i f it were a kind of
civic Eden. Also in support of this view one comes to see another correlation, but
in this case it is to literature itself. The first details of the robbery are related as follows:
Soon he approached the spot where the street was intersected by an
immense square with houses dimly visible on the other side, a square
that looked to him like a dreadful desert.
A long way away--goodness knows where--he could see the glinnner
of light coming from some sentry-box, which seemed to be standing at
the edge of the world.
Is this not reminiscent of Dante's and after him Tennyson's depiction of Ulysses'
errant quest to "the unpeopled world"? Perhaps for a brief instant we imagine Gogol
with disheveled hair laboring away in the eighteenth ring of the Inferno.
To isolate either one of these views as "correct reading of the text" would be
just as erroneous as taking Chaucer's Nun's Priest seriously when he asks his audience to "taketh the fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille". For, as has been mentioned
above, Gogol does not always create a reversal of hierarchies and meanings, but seems
to merge them as well. So that the final effect becomes what Nabokav calls "a vicious circle". The ghost at the end of the story which is taken as being Akaky's is
in fact that of the miscreant who had robbed Akaky in the first place (he displays "a
fist of a size that was never seen among the living" and "a pair of huge
moustachios"). Even the most traditional opposition is blurred: the cops and robbers, the good guys and the bad guys. We recall that the story began with a police
commissioner, and that both the policemen and the thieves are characterized by the
same anatomical parts. The first policeman that Akaky bumps into is defined by his
"calloused fist", well-used and expansive receptacle for snuff. And the "guardsmen",
who were the only known witnesses to Petrovich' s wife's facial appearance, have
"twitching" moustaches, all of which correspond to Akaky' s marauders with their own
moustaches and "a fist the size of a Civil Servant's head". Can we in any way not be
dizzy at this point? Is it not clear that this conglomeration of words will not allow themselves to be glossed over and quickly reshelved?
Ultimately a "message" must be discerned through the sentiments of the reader
himself, priority must be imposed. Gogol's comedy seems to have an uncanny effect
upon its reader:
if pondered too long it unfolds, revealing a limitless sadness
which cannot be defined by any text. The way in which this occurs structurally is by
a dovetailing of humor and horror. The most striking instance of this is the effect
of Akaky's voice on the departmental rookie who falters:
... abruptly at Akaky's mild expostulation, as though stabbed through
the heart; and since then everything seemed to have changed in him
and he saw everything in quite a different light. A kind of unseen
power made him keep away from his colleagues whom at first he had
taken for decent, well- bred men. And for a long time afterwards, in
his happiest moments he would see the shortish Civil Servant with
the bald patch on his head, uttering those pathetic words, "Leave me
alone!
Why do you pester me?" And in those pathetic words he
seemed to hear others: "I am your brother".
The voice of Akaky Akakyevich when he asserts himself "for the first time in his
life" at the police department and threatens "that i f he lodged a complaint against
them, they would see what would happen" is equally authoritative. Further, the rumor
of his vindictive ghost (as if it were a new fashion trend) is enough to cause "alarm
and dismay among all law-abiding' citizens of timid dispositions".
Viewed from this angle our initial and instinctive sympathy for Akaky's progress
Here, unlike the other examples, there is no "vicious circle", and there is no sign
that the young man returns to his former state; he is unable to sneak back through
64
65
�the point of departure. Something similar occurs with the Very Important Person when
he is remembering his delightful evening at the party:
La Reine de Jadis
Liz Waldner
Feeling very pleased, he recalled without much affort all the pleasant happenings of the evening, all the witty sayings, which had
aroused peals of laughter among the small circle of friends, many of
which he even now repeated softly to himself, finding them every bit
as funny as they were the first time he heard them, and it is therefore little wonder that he chuckled happily most of the time ... All
of a sudden the Very Important Person felt that somebody had seized
him very firly by the collar. Turning around, he saw a small-sized
man in an old, threadbare Civil Service uniform, and it was not
without horror that he recognized Akaky Akakyevich.
It is most likely impossible to state succinctly what Gogol wants us to consider
when he propels us into this realm, but I leave you with Pascal's thirteenth pensee,
which seems to come close.
Two faces are alike; neither is funny by itself, but side by side
their likeness makes us laugh.
I.
Here again amongst flowers and candle-not roses, no more the little lantern
its breathy fog, its quavering star
no night through the casement rolled wide, but a dry
room, splintered and bare, higher in air: this is winter.
Old brick, this; old wood, old care
cups of tea old, too, however made new
in hope of the queen's coming.
Remembering the advent of various princes
of wine in the afternoonses, kisses
elaborated, slumbers ennervated, many
a dawn met with an own transparency
temporary, for the medium of air;
hair that flowed while walking, that bobbed
that flew, that lay on the pillow so
and new new new: nothing to think on
simply to do. Feel the night, meet the day
go on an own way, back remarking angles of repose
along the stem of the carnation
spiraling into a receiving known as the heart
of the rose, a hope for coronation. Goes, goes
the time proposed; my assent was head to toe
and then some. But here the chair scrapes the floor
and I sit on bones that scrape the chair
feeling my knowing Ago and There, ghosted by this or that
remembered damp. Fair, fair was eclipse of apperception
debonair was skin's near kin. How then with such short hair
have I come to be here in the presence of dead wood
and the province of books? It was memory
brought the one and stole the other flower.
My like power, until my book is opened anew
shrinks to two breadths and inkily goes
as prose across some page. Is it reading
or writing the queen must do?
The candle climbs the carnation across or through
the angle of wall and roof. I sit and drink and stick
tea twigs into its steepley flame and look
at the shadow not mine any more, nor mine were I in disbelief
to look to lovemakings not mine anymore
to deliver me from Memory who will deliver me my name--mine
whose hand was raised against every man's
who reaches now to those who felt its blow before I knew Ago.
66
67
�II.
IV.
My hand itches where the scab is coming off pink skin
and I am filling the room with heat and drinking, thin
the first uncalculated drinks in years since when
in my other life where it was warm, I'd swallow
afternoons entire to evade their evenings; even so
such quickenings are only signs by which I know
I am
into
Like
or a
I am
that I am dead. For instance, when I read that the queen
that Elizabeth of Romania called Carmen Sylva
(given a Celtic brooch and a Balmoral shawl by Queen Victoria)
waved a napkin to a grazing cow she'd taken
for a loyal subject , then I knew . Quixote, aha, oho
I said; the life is mor e tban windmills . I know
when one lives and when one's dead (as Lear
also de la Mancha , s aid) . For me no feather
sirrah, nor mirror . Cordelia lives and I am dead;
these are clear .
III.
It's not the food that I want--it never was;
but the jars of jelly marked a place and held it
unti l another day I could in atonement
come bellying up like a fish to the surface
to t he grinding place where the days and I met
like a face with a mirror, gnashed together our teeth
held one another to the promise:
asked for bread, ate want made flesh.
It's not the moon which isn't risen yet
or is set, nor her Pleiades
nor the loved men named Baptiste or Ben
neither the life nor the death of the motorcycle boy
nor the women peculiar with liquids and bridge-the myriad longed for, imagined one by one
now arriving like leaves on the top of a pond
that cancel the sky with their gold;
growing in, growing in, growing in
the life my mother bled.
a window framing a very particular air
shape, a figure, heading through an air
come to stand inside her knowing.
A luxury here of knowings how:
of how
one loves, of how they need
of how one needs, of how they love
how one is no more taken care of-here, just here, I stand congruent with her.
She bled a prescient blood.
surprised by the silence and numbed by the air
in the coolness of distance I hear with her ear;
hailing Mary, angels bear Damocles' sword.
Denied! I heard. Bleed air, breathe fire
spin, spin, spin. Take in
the laundry of the earth and hide its poor
beneath your skirts. Beware
the dark, the car, the bar, the men .
Then flee, flee, flee on what ass?
to the stable, the gate, the way you came in .
See her shadow pour from your feet as you walk
see her eyes in the mirror they will bring.
Or sing: Stella Maris, amongst women
blessed, and what for? She gave no birth unbegun
of her blood; unbegun and always her blood
was a window giving onto his growing in
to be born of her prescient blood .
not any silence o f Cordelia's, Hermione's, Penelope's
Philomenas who showed me the surface of faith
not the thought of the thinker, a profile in lamplight
a Gretel fed on breadcrumbs behind somebody's back
but to be in clear wat er
safe, unseen
suspended and shadowless :
not to be denied.
Liz Waldner is a St. John's alumna, class of 1985.
68
69
�Non-Profit Org.
BULK RATE
U.S. POSTAGE
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland 21404
PAID
PERMIT No. 120
ANNAPOLIS, MD .
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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<em>Energeia</em>
Description
An account of the resource
<em>Energeia</em> is a non-profit, student magazine, which is published once a year and distributed among students, faculty, alumni, and staff of St. John's College, Annapolis. Staff welcome submissions from all members of the community -- essays, poems, stories, original math proofs, lab projects, drawings, and the like.
Publisher
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St. John's College
Coverage
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Annapolis, MD
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Identifier
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energeia
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.
i, 69 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
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Creator
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Fink, Gabriell (Co-Editor)
Macfarland, Joseph C.
Title
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Energeia, Spring 1986
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1986
Description
An account of the resource
Issue of the Energeia, published in Spring 1986.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Energeia Spring 1986
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
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English
Type
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text
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
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pdf
Energeia
Student publication
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Dublin Core
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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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:08:36
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
In Praise of Caloric
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 10, 2017, by Howard Fisher as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lecture is part one of a two-part series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard
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
2017-02-10
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Part two" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1800">Part two</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Fisher_Howard_2017-02-10
Friday night lecture
Tutors
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952fb51c8b4e8d250f5f7a6cfb4de909
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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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
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
wav
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:06:08
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
Entropy, the New Caloric
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture delivered on February 12, 2017, by Howard Fisher as part of the Formal Lecture Series. The lecture is part two of a two-part series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard
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
2017-02-12
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library."
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Relation
A related resource
<a title="Part one" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1799">Part one</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Fisher_Howard_2017-02-12
Tutors
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PDF Text
Text
�������������������
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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
19 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
Faraday's electric eel, part 1 : the body electric
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on March 29, 2006 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard J.
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
2006-03-29
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
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003318
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PDF Text
Text
�����������������
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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
17 pages
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Faraday's electric eel, part 2 : an undulatory life
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on April 26, 2006 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard J.
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
2006-04-26
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
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
24003320
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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.
23 pages
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Maxwell reads Faraday
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on April 24, 2020 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard J.
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
2020-04-24
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
Maxwell, James Clerk, 1831-1879
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_FisherH_Maxwell_Reads_Faraday_2020-04-24
Friday night lecture
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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.
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
The magnificent pendulums
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given on November 18, 2020 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. The Dean's Office provided this description of the event: "With Galileo, we learn to understand the two natural motions by reducing change to constancy (constant speed, constant acceleration). But trying to understand the motion of a pendulum by Galileo’s way generates an infinite task. Instead, we look to the Form of pendular motion: the Paradigm Circle. To what extent does the Paradigm Circle tell us which properties of the pendulum are essential to its distinctive motion, and which are merely extrinsic or fortuitous? We will look at several pendulum clock mechanisms, as well as a mechanical device that demonstrates the relation between the pendulum and its Paradigm."
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Fisher, Howard J.
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
2020-11-18
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
Subject
The topic of the resource
Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_FisherH_The_Magnificent_Pendulums_2020-11-18
-
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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
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wav
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01:02:19
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Vibrating bodies, disembodied vibrations
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture given on April 27, 2018 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2018-04-27
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Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
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sound
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mp3
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Electromagnetic waves
Vibration
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English
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Fisher, 04-2018
Friday night lecture
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St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
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St. John's College Meem Library
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Santa Fe, NM
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01:02:16
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Vibrating space
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture given on May 2, 2018 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series.
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Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2018-05-02
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sound
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mp3
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English
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Fisher, 05-2018
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3db26f32f3d7a5bb28d89ba2438c6768
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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St. John's College Meem Library
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Santa Fe, NM
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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.
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paper
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26 pages
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Faraday's Galvanometer
Description
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Transcript of a lecture given on February 22, 2023 by Howard Fisher as part of the Dean's Lecture and Concert Series. The Dean's Office provided this description of the event: "Today we think of the galvanometer as a device that measures electric current. But Faraday’s galvanometer principally measured charge rather than current. That distinctive capability (which modern instruments do not possess) played a vital role in shaping Faraday’s understanding of magnetic lines of force—and especially their physical character.
Faraday’s galvanometer shares essential mechanical characteristics with our old friend the pendulum. I will discuss the design of Faraday’s instrument and demonstrate its distinctive action with the aid of a simple homemade model."
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Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2023-02-22
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text
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Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867
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English
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SF_FisherH_Faraday's_Galvanometer_2023-02-22
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St. John's College Lecture Recordings—Santa Fe
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St. John's College Meem Library
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Santa Fe, NM
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m4a
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01:02:38
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Alternating Current
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Howard Fisher on April 26, 2023 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "The technology of alternating current was developed almost entirely in response to the emerging demands of large-scale power generation and transmission. Perhaps for that reason, educational institutions tend to treat it as a subject of practical rather than theoretical interest: alternating current is studied extensively in engineering schools, more perfunctorily in physics departments. But alternating current reveals a number of perplexing electrical phenomena that carry deep theoretical significance. Maxwell understood these phenomena through several remarkable analogies, couched in a highly metaphorical terminology that later generations viewed with suspicion and disdain. Maxwell, though, understood that analogy and metaphor are the most intellectually responsible forms of expression when we are reaching towards theories that lie, as yet, beyond our grasp."
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Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2023-04-26
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sound
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mp3
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Electric currents, Alternating
Maxwell, James Clerk, 1831-1879
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English
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SF_FisherH_Alternating_Current_2023-04-26
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https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7755
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b227db32913978575ac398583d8bd9cb.pdf
da0c883f6eacef07a660e0b643760a2f
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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St. John's College Meem Library
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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.
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paper
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24 pages
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Title
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Alternating Current
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given by tutor Howard Fisher on April 26, 2023 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "The technology of alternating current was developed almost entirely in response to the emerging demands of large-scale power generation and transmission. Perhaps for that reason, educational institutions tend to treat it as a subject of practical rather than theoretical interest: alternating current is studied extensively in engineering schools, more perfunctorily in physics departments. But alternating current reveals a number of perplexing electrical phenomena that carry deep theoretical significance. Maxwell understood these phenomena through several remarkable analogies, couched in a highly metaphorical terminology that later generations viewed with suspicion and disdain. Maxwell, though, understood that analogy and metaphor are the most intellectually responsible forms of expression when we are reaching towards theories that lie, as yet, beyond our grasp."
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Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2023-05
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Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
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text
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pdf
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Electric currents, Alternating
Maxwell, James Clerk, 1831-1879
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https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7751
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English
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SF_FisherH_Alternating_Current_2023-04-26_text
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b393f396b3805c85894b602b54edfc86
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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&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&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.
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
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St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
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formallectureseriesannapolis
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wav
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01:10:49
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A Grecian Urn
Description
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Audio recording of a lecture delivered on April 6, 1984, by Howard J. Fisher as part of the Formal Lecture Series.
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Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
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Annapolis, MD
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1984-04-06
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A signed permission form has been received giving St. John's College blanket permission to make audiovisual recordings of Howard J. Fisher's lectures, speeches, and addresses available online, and to make copes of typescripts of Howard J. Fisher's lectures speeches, and addresses available online.
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sound
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mp3
Subject
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Symmetry
Art
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English
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LEC_Fisher_Howard_1984-04-06_ac
Friday night lecture
Tutors
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PDF Text
Text
1
What is the Measure of Electricity? 1
Howard J. Fisher
What is the measure of electricity? The question itself raises questions. For not all
things are susceptible to measure; and even when they appear to be, it is not always
clear whether “measure” applies to them as wholes, or only in certain respects. For
purposes of this talk, let me propose that a measure of something must, at minimum,
enable us to speak of that thing in terms of more and less. Faraday inherited an
electrical vocabulary that appraised electricity as more and less in two respects: first,
in quantity; and second, in intensity. At the outset of Faraday’s researches, neither he
nor anyone else had been able to state just what these two characteristics were, nor to
explain how they related to one another. On the other hand, everybody had some rough
and practical idea of them, as we may gather from Faraday’s unassuming
characterization in the Third Series:
The term quantity in electricity is perhaps sufficiently definite as to
sense; the term intensity is more difficult to define strictly. I am using
both terms in their ordinary and accepted meaning. [360, note]
If Faraday regarded the term “quantity” as relatively straightforward, it is probably
because at the time he began his researches, the conventional idiom of electrical
thinking was that of electric fluid, a special kind of substance, thought to be endowed
with the power to attract or repel other portions of electric fluid. Electric fluid was either
vitreous, like that which could be evolved upon glass surfaces, or resinous, like that
which could be produced on rubber, gum, amber, and similar materials. Portions of
unlike fluids attracted one another; portions of like fluids repelled each other; and the
more fluid there was, the stronger that attraction or repulsion would be. It is easy to
know what we mean by “quantity” if electricity is a fluid. But is it a fluid? And how can
we know?
In contrast, as Faraday implies, the fluid language fails to offer a similarly clear
image of intensity. What can it mean for a fluid to be more or less “intense”? Faraday
will seek, and perhaps he will find, a clearer understanding of both these terms.
As the Third Series opens, we find Faraday in almost the same position as Socrates
of the Meno; for how can we hope to know the properties of electricity unless we first
know what electricity actually is? We well remember Meno’s reply when Socrates
asked after the “what” of virtue:
1
Meno. “There will be no difficulty, Socrates, in answering that. Take
first the virtue of a man: it is to know how to administer the state, in
which effort he will benefit his friends and injure his enemies, and will
take care not to suffer injury himself. A woman’s virtue may also be
easily described: it is to order her house, and keep what is indoors,
Lecture delivered 23 February, 2024 at St. John’s College, Santa Fe
�2
and obey her husband. Every age, every condition of life, young or old,
male, or female, bond or free, has a different virtue....” [71]
Meno is positively exultant as he contemplates the rich variety of virtues! How
disheartening is it, then, to consider that the electrical science of Faraday’s time,
though professing to seek a unitary account of electricity, can offer little more than a
Meno-like catalog of “electricities.” These include:
Voltaic electricity, which is evolved by devices like Alessandro Volta’s “cups.”
Faraday will study voltaic action extensively in the Seventh Series and will show there
its relation to chemical combining power.
Magneto-electricity, obtained through the
relative motion of magnets and conductors, and
which Faraday had already studied in the First
Series.
Thermo-electricity, produced when the junction
between two different metals is exposed to heat.
A.
B
Animal electricity, which is produced by several fascinating families of both
freshwater and saltwater fishes. Faraday will study the wonderful electric eel in the
Fifteenth Series, one of the most engaging of all his researches. And, finally...
Common or ordinary electricity. This is what we
now call “static” electricity: the electricity produced
primarily by friction—for example, by rubbing a
resinous rod with wool, or a glass rod with silk. But how
often do we undertake such highly specialized activities
as these, except in a classroom or similarly contrived
setting? In our day there would seem to be nothing at
all “ordinary” about the electricity that arises from
friction; but I assure you that when I was a child, rugs,
sofas, and especially automobile seats, could easily give
you a very unpleasant jolt if you carelessly walked across a carpeted room, or slid out
of an upholstered piece of furniture, and then touched a doorknob or a water faucet.
Today, many fabrics contain antistatic materials which greatly reduce the frequency of
�3
such experiences; so for us, the terms “common electricity” and “ordinary electricity”
are no longer apt, and they are consequently no longer in common use.
Unfortunately, today’s more familiar term, “static electricity,” is misleading in its
own way; for many of the signs that alert us to the presence of static electricity occur
precisely when that electricity is not static! Those unpleasant shocks which lurked in
my family’s home and automobile, patiently awaiting their opportunity to strike,
represented the discharge of electricity which had previously been built up by friction:
they were instances of electricity in motion, not electricity at rest.
Faraday’s efforts to demonstrate the identicality of this “swarm” of electricities
occupies the first and longer part of the Third Series. Only then does he set out upon
the second part, where the topic is measure—and particularly the measure of quantity.
Readers may notice a distinctive suppleness in the language Faraday adopts for this
discussion: while he does not reject the imagery of electric fluids outright, he never
crafts his descriptions in a way that depends on that imagery.
Now, one way we can estimate quantity—whether of electricity or anything that is
evolved or produced—is to identify a repetitive element in the process that produces it;
then, presumably, each repetition of that action will produce an equal amount afresh.
Faraday obtained common electricity from a frictional “plate machine,” in which a large
plate of glass was rotated against a fixed
“rubber”—which was usually made of silkwrapped leather, rather than what we now
call rubber. The appliance shown here is a
smaller version of Faraday’s enormous
machine, which featured a glass plate of
fifty inches diameter—nearly four times as
large as this one. 2
At several points in the Third Series
Faraday treats each turn of his machine as
developing the same quantity of electricity.
You can see why such a supposition is
reasonable; for it is easy to make sure that all revolutions of the crank are
accomplished with uniform effort and speed. And to the extent that individual turns
are identical to each other, there is no obvious reason why successive turns would not
produce identical results.
2
Photo courtesy London Science Museum. The glass disk is 35 cm in diameter.
�4
This “same-again” principle of reasoning is familiar to us in other contexts, such as
grinding pepper in a mill. Indeed, in the case of grinding we are rewarded with a clear
image of “quantity” in the form of a heap of the ground
substance, as shown here. But when Faraday cranks
his plate machine, no “heap” of electricity is produced.
Is electricity even the sort of thing that possesses
“quantity” in the sense of a heap, a pile, or a mound?
Once again we are reminded of Socrates’ lament to
Meno: “If I do not know the ‘what’ of something, how
can I know the ‘such’ of it?” 3 In our present case, if we
do not know the “what” of electricity, is it really
meaningful to ask the “how much” of it?
When Faraday remarked that the term quantity
was “perhaps sufficiently definite as to sense,” he
meant to acknowledge that we habitually think of “quantity” through images of
accumulation or gathering up. But do not overlook the note of reservation suggested
by his word “perhaps.” Faraday is far from confident that electricity is really amenable
to such imagery. We regularly use such language for electricity without a second
thought; but can we point to any body of experience that gives real content to that
language?
If electricity does not manifest its quantity directly in experience, might it do so
indirectly? Sometimes, for example, we think it natural to express the magnitude of
something in terms of the power it exercises. Galileo offers a memorable instance in
the Two New Sciences; Sagredo is speaking:
“Thus a vast number of ants might carry ashore a ship laden with
grain. And since experience shows us daily that one ant can easily
carry one grain, and it is clear that the number of grains in the ship is
not infinite, but falls below a certain limit, then if you take another
number four or six times as great, and if you set to work a
corresponding number of ants they will carry the grain ashore and the
boat also. It is true that this will call for a prodigious number of ants...”
[67]
That delightful phrase, “a prodigious number of ants,” seems to employ the imagery
of number; but its rhetorical burden is rather the sheer magnitude implied by the
ability to move “the grain and the boat also.” The phrase expresses huge
undifferentiated totality, whose greatness is known primarily by what it can
accomplish. It is an indirect representation of quantity.
3
71A
�5
Frictional electricity, too, seems to express quantity only indirectly. When a rubber
rod is stroked with woolen cloth, it acquires the power to attract a small ball of cork or
I
\
pith. We say that the rod has been electrified, or charged with electricity; and in the
left-hand sketch, the electrified rod has succeeded in drawing the ball aside through a
moderate angle of perhaps 9 or 10 degrees. But after receiving additional strokes with
the wool, the rod is able to urge the ball to a greater angle—perhaps as much as 18 or
20 degrees, as shown on the right. Is it not reasonable to believe that the rod on the
right exerts more attractive force precisely because it has acquired more electricity?
But this is conjecture, not direct experience. Any notion of quantity we can gain
from this experiment is limited to what we can surmise from the angle of the
suspended pith ball. But angle is no image of “muchness,” and it shares none of the
straightforwardness of such eminently legible figures as heap, mound, or—in the fluid
case—puddle.
If not the pith ball, then, might some other electrical instrument offer a more
immediate experience of electrical “quantity”? The distinctive power of electrified
bodies to attract or repel other electrified bodies is the principle of several electric
indicators that are considerably more refined than the pith ball.
Two early
instruments operate on the principle of mutual repulsion. The leaves of the gold-leaf
electroscope, pictured here on the left, diverge from one another more or less,
.
depending, partly, on how many times the rubber rod has been stroked. On the right,
Henley’s electrometer calls even sharper attention to angle by incorporating an obvious
pointer and protractor in its design; when the instrument is mounted on the electrified
conductor of a plate machine like Faraday’s, the pointer is repelled from the body, just
like the leaves of the electroscope. With its angular scale, the Henley instrument
emphatically announces its rhetoric of numerical measurement—and hence its name
“electrometer” rather than “electroscope.” But what, exactly, does it measure? The
�6
angle of the pointer, even when expressed numerically, still seems far removed from a
direct image of quantity.
In fact, one of Faraday’s experiments in the Third Series suggests that the
electrometer is better understood as indicating some other electrical attribute—an
attribute rather different from quantity, though it may be related to quantity. Faraday
describes that experiment in paragraph 363 of the Third Series. It involves an array,
or “battery,” of fifteen identical Leyden jars, like this one. You see that the central
conductors, which are connected to the jars’ inner coatings, are all joined together.
Within the wooden container, the outer coatings rest upon a conductive plate that is
connected to the flexible chain B, which in turn is connected to the earth.
Faraday will charge these jars using the plate electric machine. Notice the Henley
electrometer mounted on the prime conductor; this was one of the chief applications
of the Henley device.
At first Faraday connects only eight of the jars, charging them by thirty turns of the
plate machine. This causes the electrometer to rise to some position A. Does that
position represent the quantity of electricity supplied to the jars? Certainly that
quantity must be considerable, since Faraday noted that merely one revolution of the
plate will, in his words, “give ten or twelve sparks from the conductors, each an inch in
length.” 4
At a later stage of his experiment, Faraday charges all fifteen jars, again by thirty
turns of the machine. This time, he reports,
The Henley’s electrometer stood not quite half so high as before...
4
Paragraph 290.
�7
Obviously the electrometer is not measuring quantity! For the quantity of
electricity was the same in both cases—the result of thirty turns of the machine. Yet
with a greater number of jars, the electrometer reading was lower by more than half.
What electrical characteristic was it, then, that the electrometer measured when it
registered that striking reduction?
In hopes of answering this question, let us conduct an experiment of our own. Recall
that Faraday noted the generous number of sparks produced with each turn of the plate
machine. This should give us pause: why does the machine produce a series of sparks
rather than one continuous spark?
To study the conditions under which spark develops, I will use an electrometer of
still greater refinement—one which, although invented long after the Henley device,
does not differ greatly from that instrument in the essentials of its operation. The
electrostatic voltmeter operates on the principle of attraction rather than repulsion. On
C
the left is a photograph of our meter. It dates from the 1950s, and is therefore
calibrated in units whose defining assumptions would have had little meaning to
Faraday. But we can regard the scale divisions as arbitrary units of attractive force; let
me explain this.
On the right is a much-simplified diagram of the meter’s internal mechanism. A
movable plate B is mounted on a pointer which pivots at C and is held in an equilibrium
position by a very light spring. Plate A is fixed in place. When the plates are oppositely
electrified, they attract one another; and plate B will move upward until its force of
attraction is balanced by the spring. The pointer’s angle of displacement then reflects
the amount by which the spring has been stretched, and therefore, also, the force of
attraction between the plates. The scale divisions are so marked as to represent,
broadly, equal increments of that force. 5
We will connect the electrometer’s plates to a Wimshurst machine. I have separated
the machine’s terminals by about a millimeter or so (VIDEO BEGINS).
This is not really accurate, since true volt-meters must take into account both the plate separation and
effective plate area, both of which vary as the reading increases. But in the meter we are using, the
correction can be ignored for our purposes.
5
�8
Next, I will slowly crank the machine—and notice that the meter rises until a spark
develops, at which point the needle suddenly falls. As I continue to crank, the meter
repeatedly exhibits this pattern of rise to a maximum, followed by abrupt descent when
the spark passes. The maximum is not always the same; but there always is a
maximum, and the subsequent descent always coincides with the spark.
The regular association between the meter’s descent and the spark suggests a more
pointed question: “What is the condition between the terminals just before the spark
passes?” Whatever that condition is, it evidently results in spark each time it occurs.
And since the electrometer consistently develops a maximum reading just prior to each
spark, it seems very likely that the electrometer is indicating precisely that condition
which, when it reaches a certain degree, results in spark. What, then, is the nature of
that condition?
Faraday thought of the spark—and, for that matter, all instances of electric
discharge—as the breakdown of an antecedent state of stress in the region where the
discharge takes place. Faraday calls that region, or the material which may occupy it,
the “dielectric.” Here is his description in the Twelfth Series:
All the effects prior to the discharge are inductive; and the degree of
tension which it is necessary to attain before the spark passes is
therefore ... a very important point. It is the limit of the influence
which the dielectric exerts in resisting discharge; it is a measure,
consequently, ... of the intensity of the electric forces in activity.
This golden passage finally lends imaginative content to the term “intensity,” which
seemed so questionable to Faraday at the outset of the Third Series. The chief
manifestation of electrical action is a condition of tension in the region between two
surfaces, and that action is said to possess intensity commensurate with the degree of
that tension. “Intensity,” then, characterizes the action; “tension” the region or
material that experiences that action.
The distinction between intensity and tension is a subtle, but a natural one. We find
a comparable distinction in two descriptions of Odysseus’ great bow in Book 21 of the
Odyssey. The suitor Antinous knows the bow in terms of its own strength, which makes
stringing it so difficult. He warns the crowd: 6
6
Homeric passages translated by Gilbert Murray.
�9
“For not easily, I think, is this polished bow to be strung.”
(line 90)
(The image in this slide is that of a fifth-century Theban coin.) But once the bow is
strung and in action, it is known by the thrum of its string, the sign of surpassing
tension: 7
And Odysseus held it in his right hand, and tried the string, which sang
sweetly beneath his touch...
(line 408)
Just as Odysseus’ stout bow reveals its strength through the superlative degree of
tension it creates in the string, so electric action reveals its strength, or intensity, in the
form of tension in the material between oppositely-charged electrodes. Intensity and
tension are two different rhetorical aspects of electrical action: “intensity”
characterizes the action itself (corresponding to the bow); “tension” characterizes the
material or region which experiences that action (analogous to the bowstring). Do not
underestimate the scientific importance of such metaphorical images as those of string
and bow. Without them, or something like them, our understanding of natural powers
would degenerate into a merely formal correlation of numbers with numbers. But any
reader of Faraday quickly discovers that Faraday has little interest in symbols,
numerical or otherwise. Faraday is constantly alert for legible images that convey the
essential character of nature’s beings and powers. What is so remarkable about
Faraday’s experimental practice is how much of it consists in allowing the phenomena
to reveal their own images. 8
7
8
Illustration: detail from an etching by Theodoor van Thulden, part of a series produced in 1632–33.
Fisher, Howard, “The Great Electrical Philosopher,” The College, XXXI,1 (July 1979).
�10
Faraday’s interpretation of electrical discharge as being essentially a release of
antecedent tension departed sharply from the then-accepted account, represented here
on the left. Conventional thinking posited a buildup of opposite electric fluids on the
0 5 ed buildup of
.
Sup_
1• e (+) electric fluid
pos11v
sed buildup of .
Supo. (-) electric fluid
negative
j Tension
surfaces between which spark took place. As those fluids accumulated—or so the
account maintained—the inherent repulsion of like portions of fluid, combined with
the mutual attraction of unlike portions, would eventually propel the electrical
substances across the gap to combine with and nullify one another. Notice that the
conventional view recognizes no role for the space or material between the charged
surfaces; all action is ascribed to the electrical fluids.
Faraday’s view—represented on the right—reverses the order of priority by
focusing on the gap rather than the bodies which it separates, ascribing tension to the
gap, but assigning no causative role to the adjoining bodies, nor to any supposed
buildup of electricity upon them. If the dielectric material occupying the gap is capable
of sustaining high degrees of tension, it constitutes what we call an “insulator”; but all
known insulators, including air, have a limit to the tension they can sustain, and when
this limit is exceeded, they break down, electrically speaking. The release of tension
associated with that breakdown is disruptive discharge, or spark. In contrast to
insulators, the materials classed as “conductors” are incapable of withstanding any
tension at all; they break down under the slightest degree of electrical tension, and the
condition of continuous breakdown under tension is how Faraday understands
“current” in a conductor.
Thus the electrometer’s pattern of rise and sudden fall in our spark experiment
gives us reason to believe that the electrometer measures that very tension—or its
rhetorical counterpart, intensity. 9 How does it do so? If you recall our earlier diagram
of the electrometer’s inner workings, you will remember that the needle’s
Throughout the Eleventh and Twelfth Series we find Faraday using the terms “tension” and “intensity”
almost synonymously.
9
�11
displacement indicated the degree of extension of the internal spring, and hence the
force on the moving plate—or, rather, the tension in the region between the plates. But
of course the condition of the electrometer’s own plates is not what we are interested
in! If the electrometer is to function as a measuring instrument, the pointer’s
displacement must tell us about some other object—the object whose condition we
wish to measure. How is that possible?
Consider, from the standpoint of tension, what must be the case when the
electrometer plates are connected to the terminals of the Wimshurst machine. When
C
the machine is operated, electrical tension is established in the air between its
terminals D and E. I say that equal tension must therefore develop in the region
between the electrometer plates A and B; for if the tensions were not equal, the
conductors DA and EB would together have to bear the difference between those
tensions. But recall that, for Faraday, a conductor is incapable of sustaining electrical
tension. Thus the tension between A and B must be equal to the tension between D
and E; and the needle’s displacement will therefore reflect not only the tension
between the electrometer plates but the tension between the Wimshurst terminals as
well.
Have we gained any fuller understanding of those troubling electrical terms,
quantity and intensity? Faraday’s study of the forms of electric discharge, especially
spark, led to the idea of electric tension; and that image of tension, in turn, does indeed
seem to offer a firmer notion of intensity, namely, the action producing a certain level
of tension in a dielectric.
But what about quantity? Initially, we looked to the electroscope as an indicator of
quantity; but successive refinements of that instrument brought us, not closer to, but
farther and farther away from the expected imagery. All our attempts to find, in
experience, the imagery that a material substance would ordinarily demand—a
localized heap, mound, or puddle—have led us instead back to tension. Why do the
phenomena of static electricity seem to lead us so persistently away from “heap”
imagery and toward the vocabulary of tension? Might that be a sign that tension is
actually more fundamental than quantity?
In fact, Faraday already has ample grounds for this view; for if electrifying a body
really represents the accumulation of electric substance upon it, we ought to be able to
�12
electrify a body “absolutely," that is, without relation to any other body—just as we can
fill a glass with water regardless of whether or not we fill any other container with
water. But Faraday’s famous Cage Experiment, along with other investigations,
showed definitively that no body can be in a “charged” condition at all except through
a mediating relation with some other, oppositely charged, body. This means that there
is no such thing as a quantity of electricity in itself. Every instance of electric charge is
but one element of a mutual relation to which Faraday gives the name “induction”; and
in a striking passage in the Eleventh Series he explicitly elevates the relation over the
things related:
All charge is sustained by induction. All phenomena of intensity
include the principle of induction ... All currents involve previous
intensity and therefore previous induction. INDUCTION appears to be
the essential function both in the first development and the
consequent phenomena of electricity. [1178]
Furthermore, since all of what Faraday calls the “phenomena of intensity” involve
tension in a dielectric, then it is the dielectric, not the so-called “charged” body, which
is to be counted as the principal entity in static electricity. In Faraday’s words,
In the theory of induction founded upon ... action of the dielectric, we
have to look to the state of that body principally for the cause and
determination of the ... effects. [1368] 10
If the dielectric is indeed the principal entity in static electric induction, it is easy to
see why Faraday devoted so much of the Eleventh Series to studying the dielectric
specifically. To that end, he designed the special “inductive apparatus” illustrated here.
The appliance on the left is an historical reproduction; 11 Faraday’s own diagram
appears on the right. Today we would call this contrivance a spherical capacitor; but it
In an omitted term Faraday characterizes the action in question as “molecular.” By this he merely means
action at the level of small portions of the dielectric. He does not refer to chemical molecules of the sort
propounded by atomic theory—as readers of his 1844 paper, “A Speculation touching Electric Conduction
and the Nature of Matter,” will appreciate. See Experimental Researches in Electricity, Vol. II (1844), p. 284.
10
Photograph generously supplied by Dietmar Höttecke; see Höttecke, Dietmar, “How and What Can We
Learn From Replicating Historical Experiments? A Case Study.” Science & Education 9, 343–362 (2000).
11
�13
is essentially a Leyden jar consisting of an outer and an inner conductor, with electrical
connection to the inner conductor established by a conductive wire terminating at the
little sphere on top. Faraday’s experiments established for all time the pre-eminent
role of the dielectric in induction.
We can emulate Faraday’s induction experiments. 12 In place of his spherical
capacitors, we shall use a pair of our adjustable plate capacitors, set to equal plate
separations and thus electrically identical.
Faraday placed his two identical inductive devices on a grounded metal work
surface, so that their outer conductors were permanently connected to the earth while
their inner conductors remained free. We will use a heavy copper wire for the same
purpose by connecting it to the earth. The righthand plates of our capacitors are joined
to it, and are thus in permanent electrical contact. The lefthand plates will be isolated
from one another, except when I briefly connect them later.
To measure the electrical tension that developed when his devices were charged,
Faraday employed a sensitive torsion balance, pictured here on the left. That fine
instrument balanced the tension between two electrified spheres against the elastic
twist of a slender thread—just as our modern electrometer, as in the diagram we saw
earlier, balances the tension between two electrified plates against the elastic stretch
of a spring. Both instruments, therefore, serve to measure electric tension.
12
Faraday describes this series of experiments in paragraphs 1208–1214.
�14
Faraday possessed only a single balance with which to measure both his inductive
devices; but we have the luxury of using two electrometers, one for each capacitor,
A
B
To earth
designated A and B, respectively. Let me first outline the procedure we shall be
following; then I’ll show some videos of the actual experiment.
Faraday began by charging only one of his devices. Similarly, I will connect the
Wimshurst machine to capacitor A alone, and crank it until the electrometer
B
To earth
approaches its full scale reading. Capacitor A will thus sustain a definite tension,
indicated by the electrometer. Capacitor B, of course, will remain uncharged and will
sustain no electric tension.
Next I will momentarily join the ungrounded capacitor plates. Now, think about
To oatlh
what must happen when I do that. The joining wire is a good conductor, so it cannot
�15
sustain tension; therefore when contact is made, the electrical condition of both
capacitors should instantly change to make their respective tensions equal, and we
should expect both electrometers to read the same. That will constitute the first part
of our experiment; so now, let us carry out the steps I just described (VIDEO BEGINS).
Here is the setup. The copper wire that is appearing on the left will connect
capacitor A to the Wimshurst machine... Now I am cranking the machine, and you can
see the electrometer rise almost to its full scale.
And here is a closeup view of the electrometer; it shows that Capacitor A is
sustaining a tension of 2.80 units. I could not fit the second electrometer into this view,
but it reads zero—as of course it must, since Capacitor B was not charged.
Now I join the capacitors momentarily ... and the tension in Capacitor A falls; we’ll
take a closeup look at the electrometer to see the new value...
The tension in Capacitor A has fallen to 1.37 units, while the tension in Capacitor B has
risen to the same amount, as it must—though, again, I could not include both meters in
the same view.
Now, this change in tension took place when I allowed Capacitor A to share its
electricity with Capacitor B. But since the capacitors are identical, they ought to divide
that electricity equally—so that each capacitor should now embrace half the quantity
of electricity that resided originally in Capacitor A alone.
And the tension in both capacitors is 1.37 units, that is, almost exactly half the initial
tension of 2.80 units. Thus as the quantity of electricity in Capacitor A diminished to
half, so too its tension diminished to half. Evidently tension is here proportional to
�16
quantity! But doesn’t this contradict what we saw in the Third Series? For there, when
Faraday charged first eight Leyden jars, and then fifteen, with the same quantity of
electricity, his Henley electrometer gave two different readings; and obviously if one
magnitude can take on two different values while the other remains unchanged, those
magnitudes cannot be proportional.
This reasoning, though, overlooks a critical difference between the two
experiments. In the Third Series, Faraday was comparing the tension of a fixed quantity
of electricity distributed first over eight jars and then over fifteen jars, as illustrated
here. The electrometer readings are indeed very different, just as Faraday reported.
But our experiment, like Faraday’s in the Eleventh Series, compares the tensions of
different quantities of electricity in one and the same capacitor. The two experiments
are not comparable, because in the earlier exercise the physical environment
underwent significant change—from a smaller number to a greater number of jars—
while in the later experiment the environment did not change: the electrometer
measured the variation of tension in one and the same capacitor.
Clearly, the physical environment affects how much tension a given quantity of
electricity will develop. This should not surprise us, since that environment includes
the dielectric; and we have already seen how central is the role of the dielectric,
according to Faraday’s thinking.
The next step in Faraday’s experiment, and in ours, will confirm that central role by
showing that different dielectric materials develop specifically different tensions.
Faraday filled the air space in one of his devices with various substances; and we shall
do the same to our capacitor B by inserting a sheet of glass between its plates. Then
we will run through the same experimental sequence as before; but remember that this
time, our capacitors will no longer be identical.
(VIDEO BEGINS.) You see I have mounted a glass sheet between the plates of
Capacitor B.
�17
And again we connect Capacitor A to the Wimshurst machine, and charge it to an
initial tension.... Its electrometer reads 2.83 units, nearly the same as before, while of
course the other electrometer continues to read zero.
Again I briefly join the two capacitors together; and the electrometers once more
display equal deflections—as they must, since the tensions have to be equal. But notice
that this time the tension is not equal to half the original tension... Instead the tension
is only 1.02 units, roughly one-third of the initial tension. How shall we understand
this?
When Faraday obtained a similar result with his spherical capacitors, he concluded
that the apparatus containing a solid dielectric had, in his words, “a greater aptness or
capacity for induction” than the apparatus whose dielectric was air. To see what he
means by this phrase, let us analyze our results in the same way that Faraday
interpreted his. When I joined the two devices, the charged capacitor gave some of its
electricity to the uncharged capacitor. Specifically,:
The capacitor with air dielectric lost a certain quantity of electricity, and
its tension decreased by 1.81 units.
The capacitor with glass dielectric gained that same quantity of
electricity, but its tension increased by only 1.02 units—a much smaller
amount.
Air dielectric-greater change
Glass dielectric-smaller change
I~ \
I~ \
by 1.81 units
by 1.02 units
�18
Thus one and the same quantity of electricity is associated with lower
tension when the dielectric is glass, and higher tension when the
dielectric is air.
Evidently, then, “greater capacity for induction” means the ability to sustain the
same quantity of electricity at a lower tension. Or, equivalently, it denotes the ability
to sustain a greater quantity of electricity at the same tension.
We could go on, as Faraday does, to show that a dielectric’s “capacity for induction”
depends on its dimensions as well as its specific material. But the main point is clear:
where static electricity is concerned, our only access to electrical “quantity” is
indirect—through the measurement of tension, 13 taking account of the medium’s
capacity for induction. And thus we must regard electrical quantity as only an
alternative rhetorical expression for tension—a special figure of speech. Recall
Faraday’s earlier remark, that we have to look principally to the state of the dielectric
for the determination of the electric effects. In contrast, he described the supposedly
“charged” conductors in this almost dismissive way:
The conductors ... may be considered as the termini of the inductive
action.... [1361]
Charged bodies, then, are merely the boundaries of electrical action, not its cause!
To say that a body is “charged” no longer labels it as the source of electric effects, but
merely the place where a medium that does sustain tension switches to a medium that
does not. With this characterization, Faraday has effectively turned the conventional
order of causal priority on its head. Charge is no longer prior to tension; rather, tension
is prior to charge. Whatever else this may mean, it fatally undercuts the notion that
“charge” is the name of an electrical substance, for—to use an Aristotelian formulation
that would have been quite foreign to Faraday: “How can a non-substance be prior to
a substance?” 14
I hope I have conveyed how thoroughly Faraday’s account of electricity inverted the
conventional understanding. At the same time, I hope it is clear that Faraday did not
arrive at his unorthodox view through polemic or disputation. He did not marshal
evidence so as to refute the established conceptual scheme. In fact, at least in the
Experimental Researches, Faraday hardly ever engages in “collecting evidence,” any
more than he engages in symbolic mathematics. Instead, he looks directly to nature
showing itself.
Classic doctrines of scientific “method” emphasize putting hypotheses and
conjectures to the test, establishing a preponderance of evidence for or against them.
For electricity undergoing discharge, as Faraday shows, the ballistic galvanometer offers an alternative
measure of quantity. But while it might seem obvious that when electricity discharges, its quantity in
discharge must be the same as its quantity prior to discharge—when it was still static—the problem of
correlating the measures of static and dynamic electricity would prove to be a knotty one. It would
eventually become the problem of relating the electrostatic unit to the electromagnetic unit, the problem
that would lead Maxwell to his electromagnetic theory of light.
13
14 Aristotle, Physics, Book I (189a34) tr. Cornford. In the present case, how can tension (not a substance) be
prior to electric fluid (a substance)?—implying that electric “fluid” is not actually a substance after all.
�19
Such an approach is suited to an alien world, a world indifferent to human
understanding, a world in which, as has been said, “nature loves to hide.” 15 Faraday’s
world, on the contrary, shows itself in forms that may challenge our understanding;
but they are not incommensurable with it. Faraday’s science flourishes in a world that
is fit for us, a world that is preeminently knowable.
How did Faraday manage to nourish a scientific outlook so little influenced by
conventional scientific doctrine? A customary answer to this question singles out
Faraday’s lack of a conventional education. To be sure, Faraday had little formal
education and was largely self-taught; but the materials of his self-education were
steeped in established knowledge. As a bookbinder’s apprentice, he read volumes of
the Encyclopædia Britannica while engaged in binding them. By his own account he
benefited greatly from Jane Marcet’s Conversations in Chemistry, a lovely book which,
however, reliably held to established and accepted teachings. 16 Through the
generosity of a friend of his employer, Faraday was able to attend lectures by
Humphrey Davy, an establishment figure in science if there ever was one. I do not think
it was ignorance of established science that explains Faraday’s relative indifference to
it. Much of his practice in “reading the book of nature” 17 points instead to his religious
tradition.
Faraday belonged to a very small Christian denomination, the Sandemanians, a
dissenting offshoot of the Church of Scotland. Sandemanians eschewed theology and
had no established clergy; instead, the Bible was the central source of guidance in every
aspect of their lives. Reading the Bible demanded no special credentials, for it was
written in human language for the sake of human understanding. 18 Similarly, they saw
the natural world as having been created as a gift and a fitting home for mankind. Like
the biblical text itself, the created world was seen as a channel of God’s communication
with the human race.
You can see how such views concerning nature could inform Faraday’s methods of
natural investigation. If natural phenomena show themselves in terms we can grasp,
they will not need to be expressed mathematically—or, for that matter, through any
other external symbology. We see from Faraday’s own example that the study of
nature requires patient and prolonged labor—but much of that labor stems not from
nature’s recalcitrance but from our own sluggishness to put familiar thought patterns
aside—what Faraday once called “mental inertia” 19—and allow the phenomena to
speak to us directly. For Faraday, at least, the means for cultivating an ear for nature’s
15
Heraclitus, B123
Jane Marcet never sought to break new scientific ground; but by composing instructional texts that were
explicitly directed to young women, she conspicuously broke new social and educational ground.
17 Geoffrey N. Cantor, “Reading the Book of Nature: The relation between Faraday’s Religion and his
Science” in Faraday Rediscovered: Essays on the Life and Work of Michael Faraday, 1791–1867. The
Macmillan Press, Ltd. (1985).
16
See David Gooding, Michael Faraday, 1791–1867: Artisan of Ideas. http://www.bath.ac.uk/~hssdcg/
Michael_Faraday.html, 15 June 2002; accessed 4 September 2023 through the Wayback Machine.
18
See Faraday’s “Observations on Mental Education” (1854) in Experimental Researches in Chemistry and
Physics (1859), p. 463
19
�20
dialect and an eye for its forms are practical rather than analytical. Before he asks
questions in speech, he asks them in practice; such are Faraday’s experiments.
Nevertheless, while Faraday’s mode of experimenting clearly reflects central
elements of the Sandemanian outlook, it would be a mistake see him only as dutifully
putting the Sandemanian creed into action. Faraday just doesn’t write as though he
were feeling the weight of doctrinal obligation. His prose, both in his laboratory Diary
and in the published Researches, is simply too fresh, too lively, too responsive to what
just happened. There is a palpable difference between being open to nature and
observing a code of being open to nature. I invite you to think about that difference—
the difference between responsiveness and responsibility 20—and how it plays out both
in consciousness and in speech. But for now let us return to the terms “quantity” and
“intensity,” the two candidates for electrical measure; for as regards their lucidity, I
think we will have to acknowledge that the terms have effectively exchanged places.
The term intensity, which Faraday initially found “more difficult to define,” has
gained considerable clarity, since Faraday has been able to assimilate to it the figures
of speech associated with tension; and we may now understand electrical intensity as
commensurate with the degree of tension developed in a specified region. But the term
quantity, which Faraday previously thought “sufficiently definite as to sense” has
instead become highly questionable. For the “definite sense” of that term rested on the
image of heaping up or accumulation of electrical substance; and we have seen how
that image has repeatedly failed to find any grounding in experience. Moreover, now
that Faraday has identified the primary electrical entity as being the dielectric under
tension, not the so-called charged body, any idea of “quantity of electric substance” can
only be regarded as a merely verbal one—a figure of speech. Under such
circumstances, would it not behoove any responsible thinker to avoid the term
“quantity of electricity” altogether? And yet Faraday continues to speak of “quantity of
electricity” throughout the remainder of the Eleventh Series, and in the Twelfth,
Thirteenth, and Fifteenth Series. Why would he do this?
Faraday nowhere speaks directly to that question as regards electrical terminology;
but he does address a similar one in connection with the language of atoms. Some of
you have read, and some of you will read, his 1844 paper, “A Speculation touching
Electric Conduction and the Nature of Matter.” 21 In that essay, after having reviewed
his many reservations about the theory of atoms, and hence also the atomic language
that takes their existence for granted, he nevertheless admits,
I feel myself constrained, for the present hypothetically, to admit them
[that is, atoms], and cannot do without them.
Here, then, is another instance where Faraday feels obliged to make at least
provisional use of a terminology that has not been grounded in phenomena. A
doctrinaire purist would have avoided such a compromise; but Faraday’s openness
Contrast, for example the Knight of Faith in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling with the rule-inferring
“insomniac” who, reflecting on Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac, confidently deduces, “Oh, I see how
it works: you raise the knife, and then suddenly there’s a ram!”
20
21
Experimental Researches in Electricity, Vol. II (1844), p. 284, esp. page 289.
�21
extends to language as well as to experience, for each of these must evolve along with
the other.
Natural phenomena show themselves in forms and images that human beings can
apprehend; and those images continually try to shape a language that is anchored in
the phenomena. But such a language requires discovery, interpretation, and
adeptness; and these in turn require time, patience, and love. As we do not expect to
take in a dialogue, or a drama, on first reading, we must not expect to “perform”
experiments once only and then set them aside. We must live with them, enter into
them, and try them again and again. The idea is less to get the right answer, than to
capture the right idiom. The book of nature deserves multiple readings; and no two of
those readings are likely to be quite the same.
�
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St. John's College Lecture Transcripts—Santa Fe
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21 pages
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What is the Measure of Electricity?
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Transcript of a lecture given by tutor Howard Fisher on February 23, 2024 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Faraday made use of numerous electrical measuring instruments; but what, exactly, did they measure? What properties of electricity are "measurable" at all? Faraday's efforts to identify these properties raised a question which Meno would have recognized: how can we know the properties of electricity unless we first know what electricity actually is?"
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Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
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St. John's College
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Santa Fe, NM
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2024-02-23
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Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Format
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pdf
Subject
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Electricity
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867
Language
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English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_FisherH_What_is_the_Measure_of_Electricity_2024-02-23
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b7151d2faef25702618219262a03973f.mp3
ee63e1a2cad5b9fd192ca595b1a6782b
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.)
01:03:30
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
What is the Measure of Electricity?
Description
An account of the resource
Audio recording of a lecture given by tutor Howard Fisher on February 23, 2024 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: “Faraday made use of numerous electrical measuring instruments; but what, exactly, did they measure? What properties of electricity are “measurable” at all? Faraday’s efforts to identify these properties raised a question which Meno would have recognized: how can we know the properties of electricity unless we first know what electricity actually is?”
Creator
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Fisher, Howard J., 1942-
Publisher
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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
2024-02-23
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online.
Type
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sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
mp3
Subject
The topic of the resource
Faraday, Michael, 1791-1867
Electricity
Relation
A related resource
<a href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7885" title="What is the Measure of Electricity? Transcript">https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/7885</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_FisherH_What_is_the_Measure_of_Electricity_2024-02-23
Friday night lecture
-
https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/2689666d1da8a00f354c975ab498fc44.pdf
acfa92beb17bbdb4ca373b8160a5b135
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
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Speedy Achilles
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given by tutor Howard Fisher on April 9, 2025 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Galileo’s mathematical treatment of 'speed' perennially draws questions about both the validity and the presuppositions of his argument. But perhaps we can make more sense of Galilean speed when we find in it traces of Homeric speed: the speed of 'speedy Achilles.' We may also find some Homeric grounding for an algebraic form of discourse exemplified by the Taylor Series—a form that moves uneasily between favoring <em>being</em> and favoring <em>fact</em>."
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
2025-04-09
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
Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642. Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche. English
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_FisherH_Speedy_Achilles_2025-04-09
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
paper
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
16 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
Speedy Achilles
Description
An account of the resource
Transcript of a lecture given by tutor emeritus Howard Fisher on April 9, 2025 as part of the Dean's Lecture & Concert Series. The Dean's Office has provided this description of the event: "Galileo’s mathematical treatment of 'speed' perennially draws questions about both the validity and the presuppositions of his argument. But perhaps we can make more sense of Galilean speed when we find in it traces of Homeric speed: the speed of 'speedy Achilles.' We may also find some Homeric grounding for an algebraic form of discourse exemplified by the Taylor Series—a form that moves uneasily between favoring <em>being</em> and favoring <em>fact</em>."
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
2025-04-09
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
Galilei, Galileo, 1564-1642. Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche. English
Language
A language of the resource
English
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SF_FisherH_Speedy_Achilles_2025-04-09