There is a side of things Boethius does not talk about in the passages we have already seen.  He does not ask whether the good man who is destroyed or harmed by the wicked suffers real harm or destruction.  He talks about this elsewhere, however, and the answer is No.

It seems to me that Boethius must say this in order for the world to be set right.  If one is seriously to believe that the wicked have no power, while one nevertheless experiences the mundane fact that the wicked kill people every day, or forge malevolent rings, or construct unassailable fortresses from which to deploy vast armies of orcs, then one must save face somehow.  One must revert to saying that those who seem to have power over the body have no power over the soul.  And perhaps one will emphasize the fact that the wicked have only a transitory power even over the body, and that in the resurrection, the wicked will have power over nothing.

The resurrection is a controversial subject to broach in Middle Earth.  Elves have no need of it, and Men do not philosophize about it.  Death is a gift, a boon from Iluvatar, and appears not to need revoking.  I will let that sleeping dog lie.  But even without a resurrection in Middle Earth, it is fairly clear that death is not an evil.  In the unknown realm into which the dying go, the goodness of Iluvatar must still order all things.  And one suspects that in that realm, whether in or out of the world, wrongs will be set right.

Thus Boethius appeals to the afterlife:  no matter what goods may be destroyed in this world, our happiness consists in another, in becoming divine (as he puts it): in becoming “gods.”  This, too, is what the wicked lose.  Moreover, whatever wrongs we suffer in this life at the hands of wicked men or fickle Fortune, are actually goods sent by divine mercy to prepare us for the long-awaited happiness.

These are threads Tolkien does not weave into the trilogy.  The reward of good deeds in Middle Earth is the song that is sung of them afterwards, by whoever is left to sing.  The righting of wrongs in the afterlife is a hope which, if yearned for, is still unspoken.  And yet there is the hint eveywhere that death is not really to be feared, that (like Gandalf, perhaps) the righteous man is ultimately unslayable.  He may go to the halls of his fathers, he may go down into the earth or pass over the falls to the sea–but in the end he is accounted for, and preserved from the reach of those who can kill the soul.  In whatever place the dead wait, he too awaits the unbending of the world and the fate of the children of Iluvatar.

So since he who has control over good things can do all things, whereas those who control evil things cannot do everything, it is clear that those who can do evil things are less powerful.

The professor whom I am assisting in the course on Boethius neatly divides Boethius’s “evil beings” into three categories.  Some men are evil through ignorance, because they simply do not know what the good is, or because they are deceived.  Some are evil through weakness of the will, because they know what is good but they desire evil more than the good.  But some are evil through malice, and they do what is evil because they know it is evil.  They take delight in the harm they cause.

In the case of Tolkien’s characters, at least the ones who are tempted by and succumb to the Ring, the first two categories seem to merge.  Through weakness of will Isildur keeps the Ring on account of its beauty, and he is thereby deceived into thinking it harmless.  Through ignorance, Bilbo and Frodo keep and use the Ring for many years, and it wears away the strength of their wills to the point that Bilbo barely gives it up, and Frodo cannot do so at all, even though at the last he knows with perfect clarity how evil it is.  Gollum desires the beauty of the Ring from the beginning, and murders for it; he is then deceived into thinking that, with the Ring’s help, he can learn great secrets under the mountains.  In all such cases, the action of the Ring depends on deception and the weakness of its wearer’s will, and its result is not to increase the wearer’s power, but to drain it away.

But what of the beings who are evil for evil’s own sake?  In what sense are they powerless?  Here I think my two previous meditations pertain the most.  For it is of these evil men, and only of these evil men, that Boethius asserts that they simply do not exist.  He qualifies this, of course, by saying that such men do not exist as men—they exist as something less, as corpses exist.  But do what sorts of powers pertain to a corpse?

… All power is to be reckoned among desirable things, and all desirable things are related to the good as to the high point of their nature.  But the capacity to wreak evil cannot be related to the good, and so is not something to be desired.  Yet all power is desirable, so it is clear that capacity for evil is not a power.

As it is with the Ring, so it is with Sauron and all evil beings.  They possess no powers except temptation and deception, acting like parasites on the ignorance and weakness of other beings.  In cases where these other beings resist temptation and deceit, they sometimes have the power to destroy.  But Sauron and all his ilk are wholly powerless to create: they can only destroy what has already been created.  They are powerful in the sense that leeches are powerful, deriving their capacity to cause harm only from the constitution of their victims, and not from any real power radiating from their own beings.

You see kings seated high on lofty thrones,
In gleaming purple bright, fenced by grim arms,
Speechless with rage, threats on their louring brows.
Draw back this veil of arrogant, empty show,
Then see close chains which bind the lords within.
Lust with its poisonous greed excites their hearts;
Wild anger whips up storm-waves in their minds;
Grief plagues these captives, slippery hope torments.
The king you see by many lords possessed,
His aims frustrated, by harsh masters pressed.

Or, as Boethius writes in the following chapter:

True voices and true shapes were lost;
Bereft of human norms,
Their minds alone endured unchanged
To mourn their monstrous forms.

(Consolation of Philosophy, V.2 & 3)

“But evil men, you will say, have power.”

My second meditation on Boethius begins with his own objection.  Having pressed his claim that evil men do not exist, Boethius comes to the sticking point:  if evil men don’t exist, why are they so powerful?  This is neither more nor less than the problem we have with Sauron and the Nazgul.  If Tolkien really embraces the Boethian/Augustinian view that evil is nothing, why is it that his evil creatures can cause so much harm?

“I would not deny this myself, but their power stems not from their strength but from their weakness.”

What weakness is this?

“If, as we concluded a little earlier, evil is nothing, it is obvious that wicked men have no power, because they can perform only evil deeds.”

This is hard to swallow.

The thing is that you can’t criticize Boethius for not knowing how much harm an evil person can do.  You can’t bring the Holocaust or World War II against him.  As Boethius pens the lines above, he is witnessing the final collapse of Roman civilization while pining in the prison whither he has been sent after betrayal and disgrace by his fellow senators.  The wicked men he mentions will eventually put him to death—an eventuality that he already suspects.  So there is no telling him that he does not know what he is talking about when it comes to the power wielded by evil men.

But power, Boethius suggests, is always a power for something.  Now, what if you set about to get something you want, but it turns out that every power you thought you had ends up hindering you in your quest?  Clearly these “powers” would not be real powers at all—they would be handicaps, because they would render you powerless to fulfill your desires.

It is precisely this that becomes the curse of the wicked.  For they too have desires (for happiness of course, like the rest of us), but they have chosen the ways of evil to bring them about.  And the problem with the ways of evil is that they take no account of the good.  But the good, as Boethius argues, is what all desire, and what is necessary for happiness.  Thus, having cultivated the wrong powers and become strong in the wrong paths, evil men are powerless to attain the good.

What is the weakness of Sauron?  It is the weakness that Boethius ascribes to the evil man.  “He is very wise,” Gandalf says of Sauron, “and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice.  But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts.”  In his weakness of mistaking power for the only desirable good, Sauron is blind to all other goods.  On this blindness depends the web and weft of the ensuing plot:  Sauron cannot think that someone would refuse power, and actively seek to destroy the One Ring.

Until now, I had thought that Tolkien’s representation of evil followed either Augustine or the Angelic Doctor or both.  But teaching a bit of Boethius to my undergraduate students this week has opened up new worlds of possibility.  Boethius has much to say of evil, even though it be hard to be understood.  Moreover, it is material Tolkien would have known well, as Boethius’s works impinged like no others upon the medieval world of which Tolkien was a student.

What I am doing for the next couple weeks, therefore, is to take a break from dogging the Fellowship so literally, and instead to look at the theme of evil in Boethius.  This post is the first of four meditations on Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.  In all these meditations I will try to uncover the hidden tracks of Boethius’s influence over Middle Earth, and with the aid of Lady Luck perhaps this will redeem said meditations from the tedium of the lecture hall.

Quoth Boethius:

“This claim of ours may perhaps sound surprising to some, that wicked men, who form the majority of mankind, do not exist, but that is the actuality.  I am not denying that evil men are evil, but I am claiming that in the pure and simple sense they do not exist.”*

There is a claim to wake one up in the morning, no?  But it fits hand-in-glove with the hints Tolkien has been dropping about the Nazgul.  I think Boethius puts the case more strongly than either Augustine or Aquinas.  He goes on to draw an analogy:

“You could say that a corpse is a dead man, but you could not call it a man pure and simple; in the same way, I grant that corrupt men are wicked, but I refuse to admit that they exist in an absolute sense.  Whatever maintains its due order and preserves its nature, exists; if it abandons its nature, it ceases also to exist, for its existence is bound up in its nature.”*

So corrupt men are like corpses.  The image resonates with the Barrow-Wights, with the army of undead cowards in the Paths of the Dead, and with the nature of the Nazgul as “less” than men.  How is it that these men lose their nature as Men?  Boethius tells us that the nature of Man is to seek the good.  The wicked fail to seek the good for whatever reason.  And that makes them corpse-like, for man is not man insofar as he lives but insofar as he lives well.

There is more where this comes from, and I will wrest a few more thoughts out of it before moving on.

 *Should you like to read this passage and the more that is where it comes from, as indeed you should, you will find it in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, Book IV, at the end of chapter 2.  Should you have difficulty finding Boethius in the archives of your library, perhaps you might look for him under his full name, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus Boethius.  There is a Tolkienesque ebullience to such a name, and it suggests that his mother most likely thought him important.

Boethius and Philosophy, Mattia Preti

I’ve been more or less in bed for a week, after falling and spraining my ankle. I’ve done this before, but I always had someone with me. This time, Charles came for several days, which was very helpful, but now I’m alone except for the cats whom I don’t have the emotional strength to engage with. Yesterday I ignored Fitzroy all day (fed and brushed him but distractedly, and yelled at him a few times); by bedtime I was ready to relent. He jumped on the bed and wandered around, first lying near my head, then by my knees, then by my head again. He bit me on the nose and knuckles as he does when he wants to wake me in the morning: not generally a nighttime behavior. He mewed and circled my body in the dark, like a Victorian suitor finally told, after years, that he can commence making love—who then doesn’t know quite what to do, where to begin, what he wants, or why.

My poor neurotic cat! I’m used to my quirks but it’s sad to see an animal flail in this nervous, closed-up life, especially without books and television or the consolations of philosophy.

The Consolation of Philosophy was written by Roman statesman and Philosopher Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius in AD 524, while imprisoned awaiting execution for treason. It’s a meditation on the nature and meaning of suffering, particularly the suffering of good men; on fate, predestination, God’s mercy, etc.  I read sections of it in college, retaining only a vague pleased sense of how much thought and literature lurked around and between the brightly lit arenas of Athenian Democracy, The Renaissance, Napoleon, George Washington, Paris in the 20’s, WWII, and Watergate. I was fond of the strenuous and dazzlingly elaborate logical structures Boethius, like many Christian writers, built to decipher and justify the unfathomable. I liked the combination of quivering intensity (his) and backwater charm (my perspective). The intellectual rigor worked on both levels. It was a man’s only weapon in the fight for his soul, yet also, to this reader, a delicious kind of puzzle and distraction.

But my current idleness reminds me of what I love best, what I still think of as myself, no matter how many other selves I acquire or display. This self is a privileged, exquisitely sensitive young  creature with a romantic intelligence, an amiable nature and a  greedy heart. A heart with a trapdoor. Such a person manages to avoid things like treason and prison.

A 14th century Japanese poet, Kenko, wrote this in his era’s version of the personal blog—an essaylike form called “zuihitsu” or follow the brush—

“About the twentieth of the ninth month, at the invitation of a certain gentleman, I spent the night wandering with him viewing the moon. He happened to remember a house we passed on the way, and, having himself announced, went inside. In a corner of the overgrown garden heavy with dew, I caught the faint scent of some perfume, which seemed quite accidental. This suggestion of someone living in retirement from the world moved me deeply. In due time, the gentleman emerged, but I was still under the spell of the place. As I gazed for a while at the scene from the shadows, someone pushed the double doors open a crack wider, evidently to look at the moon. It would have been most disappointing if she had bolted the doors as soon as he had gone! How was she to know that someone lingering behind would see her? Such a gesture could only have been the product of inborn sensitivity. I heard that she died not long afterwards.”

Meanwhile, the cat has returned and sits by my bed (where I’m laptopping, leg elevated), looking at me.  It’s always disconcerting when you realize they’ve been looking at you for a while.

“Hello, my dearest feline,” I say.

“Meow,” he replies—a plaintive, long-drawn-out meow, soulful and irritating. He needs to get out more.

The Harvest Moon

The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.

So people can’t sleep,
So they go out where elms and oak trees keep
A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.
The harvest moon has come!

And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep
Stare up at her petrified, while she swells
Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing
Closer and closer like the end of the world.

Till the gold fields of stiff wheat
Cry `We are ripe, reap us!’ and the rivers
Sweat from the melting hills.

–Ted Hughes

First, I would like to point out: The Shack is not a brilliant piece of theology.  It’s not really theological at all.  It is a novel, a story, an idea, an image.  Its Trinitarian theology is weak and clearly the product of someone who sat at a few typical Protestant sermons but never actually spent time reading up on the Trinity.

Because once you’ve read up on the Trinity, you are never so bold as to attempt something like The Shack.

However, The Shack does not commit all of the sins that Mark Driscoll claims it does.  Perhaps this is because Mark Driscoll can’t read.  I should qualify that:  Perhaps this is because Mark Driscoll can’t read literary endeavours (not that The Shack is a shining example of that, either).  Unsurprising amongst the New Calvinists is this idea that we can read a work of fiction as though it were theology.  Everyone already did this with The Da Vinci Code.  I’d hoped we’d become a bit more nuanced in our reading than that.

Nevertheless, Driscoll first says that The Shack commits idolatry, that in representing the unseen, invisible Members of the Trinity, Young has made a graven image.  Wm. Paul Young has not, in fact, made a graven image, and not only because you don’t engrave novels.  Young is not saying in The Shack that God the Father is a black woman named Papa, nor that the Holy Spirit is a small Asian woman named Sarayu.

These characters are merely representations of the characters* of the First and Third Persons of the Trinity.  They are meant to help show Mack and the reader what the inner heart of these Persons is.  No one has seen God; neither did Mack in the book.  The possibility of God showing Himself as a vision is, however, real.  Isaiah had a vision, Ezekiel had a vision, John the Divine had a vision.  These visions were not actually sightings of the invisible God but representations of Himself that he chose to give to His children so that they could understand better a certain aspect of His character.

Then Driscoll argues that The Shack is guilty of modalism (or Sabellianism).  This heresy is the same thing as what Oneness Pentecostals believe — God is One, and the Son and the Holy Spirit are different modes by which He has chosen to operate in the world.  The heresy denies any difference of person amongst the members of the Trinity.  Driscoll’s argument for that is when Papa says that she has already been human through Jesus.

This is further evidence that Driscoll is not a subtle reader but out for the kill.  Yes, when God the Son was incarnate, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit were not.  However, since we believe in one God, not three, the remarkable thing is that they have an intimate sharing of each other’s experiences.  God the Father, being in a state of perfect, unbreakable communion with God the Son, knows exactly what God the Son went through during His days on earth.  Therefore, God the Father, in a very true sense, was, in fact, human through Jesus.  He was never incarnate.  He did not die or rise from the dead.  Yet He has shared intimately those things that Jesus went through while on earth.

St. Athanasius teaches that while God the Son was incarnate, His divine nature never ceased ordering the cosmos and keeping the stars in place (De Incarnatione).  If He could engage in that work of the Godhead whilst confined to a human body, no doubt the Father knows exactly what it is to be human as a result of the Son’s incarnation.

Driscoll proceeds to argue that The Shack promotes Goddess worship.  This is because God the Father is portrayed as a black woman.  Of course, Papa admits that He is not always female, as we see at the end of the book, when He portrays Himself as a man to Mack.  God the Father reveals Himself to us in a myriad of ways, sometimes subtly, sometimes not, but always in the way that we need at that time.  There are times He gives us the tenderness of a mother, times He gives us the sternness of a father.  He is the perfect Father, and so, for the purposes of this fiction, Mack saw Him more as a mother, an image that is used to demonstrate the warm, nurturing heart of the Father.

The final argument made by Driscoll is about hierarchy.  I broadly agree with him.  In The Shack, the Trinity has no hierarchy of any sort, no Person of the Trinity being above the others.  They are simply in an endless, loving communion with one another.  Driscoll points out that, while all the Persons of the Trinity are equal, they still have deference, for Jesus says that He only does what the Father tells Him to do, and that He does the will of the Father, and that the Father sent Him into the world.

The Shack is a novel, not a work of theology.  We cannot take its images of the Trinity as being theological, because then we would be on the start of a road to the modern heresy of vagueness.  I believe that both its supporters and its opponents have completely missed the boat, however.  Regardless of its merit as a novel, it is art.  We should treat it as art, not as theology, which both sides of the argument miss.

But where do we go for Trinitarian theology in a world that has lost its focus on the true nature of God?  People are turning to The Shack as theology (both for a lovefest as well as for the attack) because not a lot of people draw nigh to this question.  “Theology” today is usually actually, “A Christian/biblical approach to issue x, y, or z.”

Start over on the right on the main page with The Creed of Saint Athanasius.  I have a friend whom it once saved from Arianism.

“Beyond Personality” in C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.  I read it on Trinity Sunday a couple of years ago and benefitted greatly.  There is a reason Mere Christianity is a classic.

Intimacy and Ecstasy: When the Holy Spirit Meets the Human Spirit by Edith M. Humphrey.  This book is principally a book about Christian spirituality, but it takes its starting point as the Holy Trinity and deals with various aspects of Trinitarian theology, asking along the way, “How now then shall we live?”  Humphrey is a real, live theologian, unlike certain other writers out there.  Plus, she’s an orthodox Anglican.

Understanding the Trinity by Alister McGrath.

The best guides are likely the ancients, however.  Here are two:

Boethius On the Trinity and St. Augustine On the Trinity.  Boethius is shorter; both are online.

*I would have said personae, but that word has been co-opted for theological purposes at this time.

Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, an allegorical painting by Agnolo Bronzino (1545)

Concupiscence

Any ardent desire, but especially sexual desire; lust.

Good men seek it by the natural means of the virtues; evil men, however, try to achieve the same goal by a variety of concupiscences, and that is surely an unnatural way of seeking the good. Don’t you agree?
— Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

Under a forehead roughly comparable to that of the Javanese or the Piltdown man are visible a pair of tiny pig eyes, lit up alternately by greed and concupiscence.
S. J. Perelman, The Best of S. J. Perelman, Introduction (1947)

Like the use of the word ‘concupiscence‘ in an earlier age to describe sexual desire, the use of the word ‘pollution’ to describe essential aspects of the productive activities of an industrial society represents an attempt to defame an entirely proper human capacity by means of using an evil sounding name for it.
– George Reisman, Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996)

Etymology
Neoclassical euphemism, adopted from Latin concupiscens, very desirous: com; an intensifier, and cupere, meaning “to long for”. Easy to remember, because Cupid comes from the same root.

Note
With the rise of sexual repression in Christianity, this word sometimes took on a pejorative connotation as a sexual euphamism, but is originally a poetic term for desire in general.

Edward Gibbon made a famous claim in chapter 3 of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that

“If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus.”

Not many people these days would be able to do this kind of thing ‘without hesitation’ (“ Oh, yes, 96 to 180AD, I remember it well…”), but Gibbon makes a good point: we organise our lives around a concept of human happiness and prosperity. It’s very important to us both within our national economies and or household economies to know whether things are getting better or worse, and whether this trajectory, once identified, is ‘normal’ or ‘exceptional’.

Gibbon’s intuitive opinion, ‘without hesitation’ was not only that happiness and prosperity were getting worse but that this had been the normal state of the world for a period of roughly 1600 years since the end of the Roman Empire. The former view was somewhat tempered by the latter. Since decline amounted to a long-term trend, it was nothing much to get excited about.

The industrial revolution made Gibbon’s historical reconstruction with its mood of nostaligia seem ‘ridiculous’ (J.C. Stobart). Not at first, since the dark satanic mills actually produced a decline in life expectancy, at least until roughly the middle of the 19th century. But it transformed the way people in England regarded the Golden Age. Now, with new and wondrous inventions appearing seemingly every year, it was increasingly obvious that the best was yet to come, not in the afterlife, as previously, but in the here-and-now or, to be precise, the here-and-soon. We are still living in this brave new world of constant progress and the pace of fabulous change continues to increase.

These two conflicting positions on the Golden Age were impressed upon me as a child by the popular culture I imbibed through the medium of television. I avidly tuned in every Thursday evening to watch a show called ‘Tomorrow’s World’. Each episode showcased a new or developing technology that was just about to transform our lives for the better and for ever. I vividly remember the episode which revealed for the first time a music CD. The presenter made a hole in it with an electric drill, yet it still played without skipping a beat. Amazing! (and not entirely honest, we might suspect, with the benefit of hindsight). The world of tomorrow, emphatically, was destined to be better in every way than that of today. At the same time as this futuristic stuff, my parents liked to watch shows presented by the poet John Betjemen. These would typically involve the great man visiting old village churches or branch line railway stations and declaiming on their faded, passing beauty, as though everything worthwhile in this life was about to be turned into a car park – the eclipse of ‘our lost Elysium’ by an ‘age without a soul’. So these diametrically opposed views of progress seemed to coexist and it was up to me to negotiate as best I could.

But perhaps there are more options than simply progress or decline…

Why should this matter? Historian Bryan Ward-Perkins claims that historians’ views of the decline of the Roman Empire tie in very neatly with their more modern concerns. In the 1940s, he points out, French historians had a strongly ‘decline’ centred view, depicting the northern Germanic ‘invaders’ as barbarous and cruel. Hardly surprising, that,  given the time these historians were writing in. Similarly he connects the more recent revisionist view of Rome’s decline as a relatively gentle assimilation of the northern tribes with the contemporary climate of European Union (especially Franco-German)  rapprochement.

Bryan Ward-Perkins, 2005: 182 The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

“I have… become increasingly puzzled that the word ‘decline’ should be so contested in historical writing when ‘rise’ is used all the time, without anyone ever batting an eyelid.”

“Present-day historians seem to feel more comfortable discussing the ‘rise’ of this or that, because there is absolutely no risk in this vocabulary of anyone being criticized or any negative value judgement being made; rather the reverse – everybody is being awarded a reassuring pat on the back. This is I think the main problem with the new way of looking at the end of the ancient world: all difficulty and awkwardness are smoothed out into a steady and essentially positive transformation of society.”

“there is a real danger for the present day in a vision of the past that explicitly sets out to eliminate all crisis and decline’ (p. 183)

What we have here is a claim that the concepts of ‘rise’ and ‘decline’ in history are constructed in relation to the historian’s own intellectual environment. It’s as though we can’t help inventing an overall assessment of the state of things, which operates in the background and conditions our thinking, linking our descriptive thinking about ancient empires (the ‘facts of the past’) with our normative thinking about present social arrangements.

I note that around the same time Ward-Perkins wrote this in 2005 there was something of a popular return to decline – especially in the form of Jared Diamond’s widely read book, Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005), followed by Thomas Homer-Dixon’s book, The Upside of Down. Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization (2006).

These writers are not historians. They are relying on the work of earlier decline-focused historians and the message they are promoting is the Egalitarian message that great empires are fragile and they fall and that  if we don’t change our own civilization’s values it will fall too. Note the assumptions in the subtitles: that it’s possible somehow to choose not to collapse, that civilization is in need of and capable of renewal. At the end of his book, Homer-Dixon recounts a visit to the Hajar el Hibla at Baalbek in modern Lebanon. This is a collossal stone plinth weighing 1,000 tonnes, quarried by the Romans in order to extend an already enormous temple. The point is, of course, that they never managed it. The rock lies in the quarry, never to be erected. Homer-Dixon writes:

If my supposition was right, the rock before me – the last rock – was a powerful symbol of the exhaustion of an enormous social and political enterprise. It was enduring evidence of overreach. The Romans had oaught to cut and move a stone unlike anything they’d ever moved before. And they couldn’t do it. In the end, Rome’s existential values – values that said, among other things, that life’s meaning could be found partly in monumental efforts of engineering – led the empire into a dead end from which it couldn’t escape. (p.307f.)

Just in case we haven’t got the message yet, he continues:

Will our civilization have its last rock too… Or maybe, just maybe, before we’ve exhausted nature and ourselves in a futile effort to produce meaning from material things, we’ll reconsider our values and recognise that we can choose another path into the future. (p. 308)

This is all very stirring, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about either the past or the present – except that we construct them the way we want them to be – declining or rising, according to how we believe the world in general must be shifting.Grid-Group Cultural theory would connect these views to the four cultures it describes.

Egalitarianism is committed to a world of decline – just as Rome fell, so will we if we don’t treat one another and nature properly.

Individualism is committed to a world of increase. It’s nonsense to see Rome as a high point. The real high point is the immediate future, in which things will be even better than they are now. Civilizational collapse is for losers!

But there are two more views available.

The Hierarchical approach sees order and management not just as bulwarks against collapse but as denials of its very possibility (or more precisely, collapse could theoretically happen if order were to break down, but in practice it just isn’t going to, so collapse is only ever a threat rather than an actuality). Think of the rulers of the Eastern Roman Empire, which lasted another thousand years after the so-called collapse of Rome. Or of Mehmet II who conquered Byzantium in 1453 and named himself Kayzer-i Rum (Caesar of Rome), then attempted to ‘reunite the Roman Empire’ by invading Italy in 1480. Or of Charlemaigne, who had himself crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800 (Karolus serenissimus Augustus a Deo coronatus magnus pacificus imperator Romanum gubernans imperium it said on his charters) . For such leaders and their courts, the Roman Empire never went away- it is simply and forever under new management.
Finally there is the Fatalist view of history: everything rises and falls and, crucially, there’s not a thing we can do about it. It’s an outlook summed up by The Consolation of Philosophy (524) by Boethius, one of several figures named ‘the last of the Romans’.

I turn my wheel that spins its circle fairly; I delight to make the lowest turn to the top, the highest to the bottom. Come you to the top if you will, but on this condition, that you think it no unfairness to sink when the rule of my game demands it.

This work has been seen as a bridge between classical literature and the changed sensibilities of the Middle Ages. It popularised the rota fortunae, the  image of the wheel of fortune, depicted in the medieval Carmina Burana as a king travelling up, over and back down a wheel. I will reign, I reign, I have reigned, I am without a reign, the captions read. It is also well illustrated by the words of a song from that collection, Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi (Fortune, empress of the world).

So when is/was/will/will not be the golden age? And are things getting better, or worse? The answers to these questions are not merely of historical interest. They are what our culture uses to teach us what it would take for us to be, in Gibbon’s words, ‘happy and prosperous’. So it is worth taking stock of how these four alternative visions of decline and fall make use of us, perennially, as their mouthpieces.

I just learned about this band “Pens” and am highly dismayed to see they coincidentally JUST PLAYED SF  (they are from LONDON) and I missed them. They’re playing in Sacramento tomorrow and Santa Cruz on Wed. I don’t have time to go to those places for this band. They have a video of Amanda on their page!!  I’d be just the creepiest of old men if I drove all clammily for 2 hours just to hear their pretty squall live. Why is it so important for me to try to get a nightblind glimpse of these young avant-popstresses (GOOD GOD, Andrew, really??? are you really typing this??) in the flesh (really????)???

What will they wear to their show? Will they smile?  (It seems likely that they’ll smile.)

GOD. SORRY. Office anomie converts easily into icky  internet hipster putrefaction. “I hate myself.” [link]

[POSTSCRIPT: Maybe Pens will sleep with Daniel Johnston, making all of my dreams come true ("see below"). Hearing the drums on these songs makes me not want to play in a band, which I already didn't want to do, even though I had plans to do it. I feel like the drummer for this band will always beat me. Even if I become awesome, she has already Tantrically acheived the heavens, and destroyed my path in her wake.  I give up.

PPS: What???? I need to get off the internet. I am going to the nut-house. I love England. I need to take Flinstone vitamins but instead of Flinstones they are shaped like little Nick Caves, Tom Waitses, Dean Warehamz, Morrisseys, the founder of Siltbreeze recordsszs, the keyboard player from Times New Vikings, mes, mes as a 17-yr-old, Martin Newellsz, the keyboard player from Scritti Polittis, I hate myselves, etc]

PPS I also hate this blog post

(Familia, 2005)
Însuşi faptul de a se programa într-un concert al filarmonicii din Oradea (cu două zile înainte de Crăciunul anului 2004) Missa Solemnis în Re major op. 123 de Beethoven e un eveniment în sine. Concertul a fost dirijat de Ervin Acél, corul filarmonicii a fost pregătit de Avram Geoldeş, iar soliştii invitaţi au fost soprana Irina Iordăchescu, mezzo-soprana Lucia Papa, tenorul Marius Budoiu şi basul Gheorghe Roşu.
Ar fi ridicolă şi inoperantă o comparaţie între zecile, poate sutele de capodopere lăsate de Beethoven, dar Missa Solemnis ocupă un loc cu totul special. „Am auzit spunându-se că a doua Missă (Missa Solemnis – n. n.) e considerată de el cea mai bună lucrare a sa” (Edward Schulz, 1823). Impulsul creării unei mari compoziţii religioase a survenit într-un moment excepţional din viaţa lui Beethoven, când el a renăscut după câţiva ani de criză în plan artistic şi personal (1814–1818). Comanda exterioară a lucrării, pentru slujba de înscăunare a arhiducelui Rudolf, protectorul său, ca arhiepiscop de Olmütz (Olomouc) în 1820, a fost doar un pretext nimerit. Dar după ce entuziasmul din 1818–1820 s-a estompat, strecurându-se în locul lui emoţii mai interiorizate şi chiar angoase până în 1822, când a terminat-o în sfârşit, rămâne întrebarea dacă prilejul festiv nu a influenţat prea mult caracterul acestei lucrări. Fiindcă încă din 1819-1820 şi apoi din nou în 1824, Beethoven proiecta o a treia Missă, în do diez minor, cu orchestra redusă la suflători şi orgă (cel puţin pentru „Kyrie”), deci implicit cu un caracter mai recules, oarecum conform admiraţiei sale declarate pentru Palestrina şi adevărata muzică religioasă, a cappella.
Totuşi, grandoarea Missei în Re şi absoluta sinceritate emoţională pe care şi-a impus-o, mult sporite şi faţă de Missa în Do major op. 86 (1807), au dus-o la dimensiuni duble faţă de celelalte misse ale perioadei clasicismului. Această extensie la dimensiuni duble faţă de cele uzuale ale diferitelor genuri se observă şi la alte lucrări foarte importante pentru Beethoven, de ex. Simfoniile a III-a „Eroica”, a VI-a „Pastorala” şi a IX-a, Concertul pentru vioară, Sonata nr. 29 pentru pian op. 106, Variaţiunile Diabelli, Cvartetele op. 132, 130 şi 131. Unificarea fiecăreia dintre marile secţiuni ale textului liturgic („Kyrie”, „Gloria”, „Credo”, „Sanctus – Benedictus” şi „Agnus Dei”) oarecum în felul unei mişcări de simfonie provine aici din missele lui Haydn, dar Beethoven era totuşi un simfonist mult mai mare, aşa că la el această unitate e de cele mai multe ori cu adevărat organică şi simfonică. Şi chiar când nu e, voinţa formidabilă către coeziune pare suficient de convingătoare în sine. Mai ales în „Gloria” şi „Credo”, unitatea e construită prin numeroasele şi mult-comentatele episoade instrumentale de legătură, precum şi prin „leit-motive” ca în missele din secolul al XVII-lea, cel mai important fiind motivul generator sol – fa diez – si – la – sol – fa diez („eleison”), ce apare de la începutul lui „Kyrie” şi se transfigurează uimitor în Preludiul la „Benedictus”. Uneori, instrumentele au chiar rolul tematic principal, în timp ce vocile declamă textul, procedeu modern pe-atunci, prefigurat şi în „Dort im ruhigen Tal”, al treilea lied din sublimul ciclu „Către iubita îndepărtată” (1816).
Şi asta în ciuda sarcinii suplimentare supraomeneşti pe care şi-a impus-o Beethoven de a ilustra muzical aproape fiecare cuvânt. Această minuţiozitate n-a fost nici măcar intenţionată de vechii maeştri, în frunte cu Bach şi Mozart, mai ales că ei tratau în mai multe numere separate fiecare secţiune a missei. Nici chiar ei nu-i puteau furniza un model prin realizările lor de vârf, fiindcă enorma Missa în si minor de Bach e o colecţie de piese diferite, adăugate mult mai târziu Missei de tip luteran („Kyrie” şi „Gloria”) din 1733, şi nu s-a cântat integral decât în concertele moderne, iar Missa în do minor KV 427 de Mozart, puternic influenţată pe alocuri de Handel şi care ar fi atins dimensiuni comparabile cu Missa Solemnis de Beethoven, a rămas neterminată şi a fost transformată în oratoriul în limba italiană „David penitent” KV 469.
O analiză la Missa Solemnis e inepuizabilă şi oricum nu-şi are locul aici. Printre alţii, Romain Rolland a intuit multe adevăruri despre creativitatea şi spiritualitatea lui Beethoven în ciclul „Marile epoci creatoare”, 1928-1945 (volumul „Cântecul învierii”, din 1937, conţine un amplu capitol despre Missa Solemnis). Ceea ce merită măcar punctat pe parcurs în continuare, graţie cercetărilor mai recente şi nu atât de răspândite (în principal studiul lui Warren Kirkendale „New Roads to Old Ideas in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis”, în volumul „The Creative World of Beethoven”, editat de Paul Henry Lang, Norton & Co., New York 1971), e legătura lui Beethoven cu marea tradiţie a muzicii religioase occidentale, pe care o studia mulţumită bibliotecii arhiducelui Rudolf, ceea ce infirmă falsa lui imagine de prim romantic, total subiectiv şi „expresionist”. De exemplu, în „Kyrie”, însăşi formula ritmică utilizată de Beethoven pe cuvântul Kyrie e un arhetip din missele barocului, în majoritatea cazurilor apărând într-o Missa Solemnis, adică în a cărei orchestră erau incluse trompete şi timpani pentru a-i reda caracterul festiv. Notele repetate simbolizează apatheia, impasibilitatea lui Dumnezeu Tatăl, iar schimbarea de măsură la „Christe eleison” (trei doimi) semnifică elementul uman survenit prin Hristos. În „Gloria”, alura ascendentă a primei teme e o anabasis corespunzând cu ridicarea cu bucurie a mâinilor de către preotul ce oficiază liturghia. „Et in terra pax” e aproape identic cu „and peace on earth” din corul „Glory to God” („Mesia” de Handel). La „adoramus” tonul e coborât, aşa cum preotul înclină capul, iar prima apariţie a trombonilor, la prelungul acord pe cuvântul „omnipotens”, precum şi saltul de octavă al vocilor (la bas, duodecimă) sunt o reflectare a atotputerniciei divine. La „qui sedes ad dexteram patris” şi „qui tollis peccata mundi”, acompaniamentul include tremolo-uri simbolizând înfiorarea în faţa Tronului Judecăţii (ca şi la „et iterum venturus est” din „Credo”), respectiv în faţa sacrificiului lui Iisus, precum şi ritmul punctat cunoscut din uvertura franceză de pe vremea Regelui Soare şi devenit de mult un topos pentru ideea de măreţie. Etc., etc.
Această compoziţie crucială i-a fascinat şi i-a influenţat decisiv în plan muzical şi uman pe mulţi, de la marele dirijor Wilhelm Furtwängler la (cu voia dv.) autorul acestor rânduri. „Am dirijat-o de mai multe ori, spunea Furtwängler. Toate marile lucrări simfonice ale lui Beethoven sunt astfel scrise încât un dirijor capabil poate să scoată ceea ce a vrut Beethoven. Dar cu Missa (Solemnis – n. n.), lucrarea lui capitală, lucrurile stau altfel. Ea nu mi-a reuşit niciodată în asemenea măsură încât să fiu mulţumit. N-am reuşit să scot niciodată ceea ce zace în ea şi zău că nu se cade să-l reinstrumentăm pe Beethoven. Aşa că nu-mi rămâne altceva de făcut decât să iau hotărârea de a nu mai prezenta această lucrare. Şi cât de bine o cunosc…” Poate că marele interpret şi admirator al lui Beethoven şi-ar fi revizuit hotărârea dacă viaţa i-ar fi permis să descopere curentul de autenticitate în prezentarea muzicii vechi, care a început să se nască după moartea lui. Fiindcă dincolo de o profundă experienţă de viaţă şi spirituală, redarea acestei lucrări necesită acel sunet clar, specific vechilor instrumente şi care nu acoperă vocile, precum şi rafinamentul în frazare pe care ele îl permit, spre deosebire de volumul (în sens subiectiv, de masivitate, nu numai de intensitate sonoră) al celor moderne. Interpretările muzicii vechi cu instrumente de epocă nu sunt o marotă, sound-ul lor e de dorit nu doar fiindcă „aşa era atunci”, ci pur şi simplu fiindcă e mai frumos, mai fin şi mai clar decât al celor cu instrumente şi stiluri moderne, cu forţa lor brută şi vibrato-ul lor exagerat şi păstos. În săli mai mici, instrumentele de epocă au efecte chiar mai puternice şi mai surprinzătoare, iar oricum muzica bună a fost întotdeauna rezervată celor puţini. Lucrarea preferată a lui Beethoven merită curăţată de tonul brahmsian pompos şi nepotrivit ce s-a depus pe ea de atâtea decenii, revitalizându-i-se diversitatea de emoţii, texturi şi nuanţe.
Dintre înregistrările autentice de până acum cu Missa Solemnis, cele mai apreciate în lume sunt cele dirijate de Philippe Herreweghe (cu La Chapelle Royale, Collegium Vocale şi Orchestre des Champs Elysées), Sir John Eliot Gardiner (cu corul Monteverdi şi Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique) şi Terje Kvam (cu corul catedralei din Oslo şi Hanover Band) – curioşii pot verifica pe Internet, între două chat-uri, dând o căutare mai utilă: „Beethoven Missa Solemnis period instruments”. Un antidot la posibila autosuficienţă provincială care ne paşte mereu e faptul că nici una din versiunile acestea lăudate cu entuziasm, datorate unor mari interpreţi şi unor ansambluri specializate în muzica veche, nu a întrunit sufragii unanime şi nu a scăpat de unele critici. Interesant e că unele comentarii ale acestor înregistrări subliniază scrupulozitatea lui Gardiner şi grija lui pentru detaliu, întrucâtva în detrimentul unei anume călduri spirituale (mai proprie versiunii lui Herreweghe), ceea ce observasem în mod independent încă în 2002 în „Familia” nr. 9 în legătură cu înregistrările respectivilor cu Simfonia a IX-a. Dar dincolo de această mică satisfacţie la adresa intuiţiei şi simţirii personale, şi mai interesant e că efectivul corului Monteverdi (pe care Gardiner l-a fondat în 1964, când era încă student la Cambridge) numără doar 36 de persoane! Iar exegeza elogiază grija deosebită pentru cultivarea unei emisii vocale diferenţiate pe care Gardiner a depus-o cu acest mic ansamblu, reuşind şi efectele de forţă cerute de multe ori de partitură şi ţinând piept orchestrei uluitor de eficient.
În concertul de la Oradea, numai vocile feminine din cor au fost 35 (pe lângă cei 21 de bărbaţi), în majoritatea timpului fiind practic singurele care au dominat orchestra, fără să-şi rateze nici dificilele note supraacute, ceea ce le atrage meritate felicitări. Componenţa numerică a orchestrei orădene (17 viori, 5 viole, 5 violoncele, 5 contrabaşi, plus suflătorii), deşi mai puţin echilibrată, nu a fost mult diferită de cea a orchestrei lui Herreweghe (20 viori, 7 viole, 5 violoncele, 4 contrabaşi etc.), dar corul lui număra doar 23 de femei (şi tot 21 de bărbaţi). E evident şi din aceste comparaţii că doar tonul masiv al instrumentelor moderne (sau cel puţin maniera modernă de emisie a sunetului instrumental) e cel care creează probleme vocilor. În ce priveşte cvartetul de voci soliste, el a fost cu totul dezechilibrat de tenorul Marius Budoiu, care i-a acoperit pe toţi ca un veritabil primo uomo, uneori chiar cu strigăte stridente, cum a fost la „passus” din „Credo” (şi ţinea lângă el pe scenă un frumos flacon verde, de plastic). Şi în această lucrare, scriitura vocilor soliste e polifonică, în felul unui mic cor sau a unui cvartet de coarde, pe urmele celei a lui Mozart din Requiem, aşa că toţi patru soliştii trebuie să aibă importanţă egală şi o omogenitate desăvârşită a sonorităţii rezultante. Ce să mai spunem de vibrato-ul imens şi de intonaţia operistică, după ce chiar Beethoven critica deja muzica religioasă a vremii sale pentru influenţa operei italiene? Sau, dacă vrem să fim foarte riguroşi, ce să mai zicem de pronunţia italiană pentru „qui tollis”: „cui tollis” în loc de cea corectă, „cvi tollis”? (Pentru maximă autenticitate în înregistrarea Requiem-ului de Mozart cu Les Arts Florissants, William Christie a angajat experţi în pronunţia latinei în Austria anilor 1790! Un capitol din broşura discului respectiv tratează numai această chestiune)
Şi-aşa, prezentarea muzicii bisericeşti în concert (şi, la Oradea, fără orga cerută de partitură) e în general destul de ciudată. De altfel, după prima audiţie absolută de la Sankt Petersburg (7 aprilie 1824), într-un concert caritabil iniţiat de prinţul Nikolai Galiţân, mare admirator al lui Beethoven, prima audiţie vieneză (şi fragmentară) a avut loc tot în concert (7 mai 1824, împreună cu uvertura la „Sfinţirea casei” şi cu Simfonia a IX-a), cu titlul cenzurat „Trei mari imnuri” (textul latin al primei Misse, în Do major, fusese tradus în germană fiindcă Biserica romano-catolică nu admitea să se cânte textul liturgic originar în concert într-un teatru, considerat loc de pierzanie). Însuşi Beethoven a plănuit această prezentare a Missei Solemnis în concert, în maniera unui oratoriu, după ce prilejul ecleziastic festiv care o comandase a trecut.
Din toate aceste elemente reiese că Missa Solemnis e un ocean cu mulţi şi foarte diferiţi afluenţi. Dar punctul nodal e că „prin elaborarea acestei mari Misse, principalul meu scop a fost să trezesc şi să fac durabile sentimentele religioase în cântăreţi şi în public” (Beethoven). O interpretare mai degrabă pompoasă şi uniformizatoare, cum a fost în linii mari cea de la Oradea, sacrifică toată poezia intimă dulce-amară atât de tipic beethoveniană (ce ar fi necesitat măcar un real pianissimo), precum şi multitudinea de nuanţe şi tranziţii, unele extrem de subtile şi rafinate, accentele, eforturile supraomeneşti către certitudine.
De exemplu, unde a văzut dirijorul acel crescendo pe care l-a cerut timpanistului înainte de erupţia lui „quoniam tu solus sanctus” din „Gloria”? Cel puţin în ediţia Dover (New York 1991), republicare după Opere complete (Breitkopf und Härtel, Leipzig 1864), cele două măsuri de tremolo la timpani au doar un pp. E drept că multă lume, inclusiv subsemnatul mai demult, simte nevoia unui crescendo pe acest tremolo de timpani, iar efectul lui astfel e remarcabil. Totuşi, Beethoven nu l-a dorit aşa, iar opţiunea lui îşi are efectul de surpriză specific. Tempourile amplei fugi „in gloria Dei patris, amen” care urmează au fost luate destul de prudent, ca şi în multe alte ocazii pe parcursul concertului, dar mai problematică a fost introducerea în ultimele două-trei măsuri ale fugii a unui emfatic ritardando inexistent în partitură (falsificând astfel efectul de nesuprapunere ritmică a corului cu orchestra dorit de Beethoven, ca şi cum cântăreţilor li se taie răsuflarea de bucuria nebună a acesei secţiuni  – al cărei tempo trebuie să fie Presto).
În „Credo”, care e o profesiune de credinţă către Sfânta Treime, ilustrarea muzicală a fiecăreia dintre Persoanele divine are o introducere orchestrală, ca pentru divinităţile şi regii din opera barocului: primele două sunt identice, iar a treia e uşor modificată fiindcă Sfântul Duh e „diferit”. „Deum de Deo” şi „Deum verum de Deo vero” sunt cântate unisonic, pe arpegiul tonic, sugerând autoritatea şi stabilitatea dogmei, iar „lumen de lumine” în Do major (tonalitatea cea mai „luminoasă”) e o aluzie clară la lumina din text. „Et incarnatus” e scris în stil de cantus planus, în modul doric, fiindcă „în vechile moduri bisericeşti, devoţiunea e divină” (Beethoven, 1809) – a se corela şi cu planul din 1818 al unei „Cantique” pentru Simfonia a X-a („cânt devoţional pentru o simfonie, în moduri vechi”), precum şi cu sublimul „Cânt sacru de recunoştinţă al unui însănătoşit către Divinitate” în modul hipolidic, partea a treia din Cvartetul în la minor op. 132 – lidicul era considerat revitalizant pentru suflet şi trup, după cum îi scria Cassiodorus lui Boethius (Zarlino, „Istituzioni harmoniche”, 1558). Nici alegerea doricului pentru „incarnatus” n-a fost întâmplătoare, ca de obicei la Beethoven: conform aceleiaşi surse, doricul e „modest şi cast”. Mai mult, imnul catolic „Ave maris stella” şi conductul monofon al lui Pérotin „Beata viscera Mariae Virginis” încep cu aceleaşi trei-patru note ca şi „et incarnatus” al lui Beethoven! Faţă de vechimea acestor trimiteri, prezenţa pastorală a flautului (de la „de Spiritu Sancto”) şi trilurile lui simbolizând Sfântul Duh ca porumbel sunt aproape nişte locuri comune, în tradiţia missei baroce şi clasice.
De remarcat în concertul orădean a fost încredinţarea începutului lui „et incarnatus” est vocii tenorului solo, conform copiei pe curat făcute în 1823 pentru arhiducele Rudolf, precum şi primei ediţii (postumă, la Schott şi fiii, Mainz 1827), contrar practicii curente de a-l încredinţa tenorilor din cor, cum cer manuscrisul autorului şi ediţia din Opere complete (Breitkopf & Härtel, 1864). Ambele versiuni au farmecul şi justificarea lor. La „Crucifixus” abundă formulele ritmice în contratimp (tmesis), tremolo-ul, sincopele, septimele micşorate ca unul din cele mai dramatice elemente de expresie muzicală din epocă, precum şi intervalele melodice „încrucişate” (de ex., la tenor în măsura 158). După alte aluzii arhetipale, secvenţa se încheie cu o coroană pe o cvartă, adică pe un acord incomplet (deci moartea lui Iisus nu e o încheiere), vocile de tenor anunţă Învierea aşa cum testis din vechile Patimi ale barocului era tot o voce de tenor, iar cuvintele „secundum scripturas” sunt cântate de cor a cappella, în stilul lui Palestrina, ca o referire la vechimea şi autoritatea dogmei. După o incursiune în la bemol minor, tonalitate rarisimă pe atunci (extremum judicium), „judicare” declamat în note lungi semnifică detaşarea divină (cum tranquillitate judicas). Detaliile semnificative sunt şi aici nenumărate: et mortuos e tratat brusc piano, în note lungi şi joase şi în acorduri fără terţă (componenta care dă modul major sau minor al unui acord). Motivele din „et exspecto” sunt anticipate de orchestră, iar mult comentata escamotare declamativă de la secţiunea despre Sfântul Duh poate fi nu atât o lipsă de interes, ci mai degrabă semnifică tocmai dogma dincolo de discuţii („Religia şi basul general sunt lucruri aparte/închise în sine, asupra cărora n-are rost să discuţi” – Beethoven).
Tema imensei fugi în două secţiuni „et vitam venturi saeculi”, cu arpegiul ei tonic, dă un sens de împlinire, dar blând şi plin de pace în prima secţiune prin răspunsul la cvartă în loc de cvintă. Lungimea acestei fugi care a necesitat eforturi supraomeneşti şi l-a adus pe Beethoven într-o stare de exaltare cu totul neobişnuită (a se vedea relatarea lui Schindler din vara lui 1819) simbolizează eternitatea din viaţa veacului ce va să vină, ca şi secvenţa pe cuvântul „saeculi” întinsă pe măsurile 351 – 356. „Plaudite, amici” (aplaudaţi, prieteni), a scris sarcastic Beethoven pe o schiţă a acestei fugi, cu trimitere la admiraţia previzibilă a „prietenilor” ce-i criticau mai mult sau mai puţin direct ştiinţa componistică. Redarea în concert a fugii n-a avut în prima ei parte caracterul aproape imaterial şi contemplativ intenţionat de autor (Allegretto ma non troppo – adică repejor, dar nu prea -, în măsură de trei doimi, puţini cresc. şi forte, iar fortissimo abia la sfârşit), fiind luată prea rapid şi sonor. Ca atare, nici secţiunea a doua a fugii n-a avut efectul de contrast dorit prin entuziasmul ei formidabil din partitură (Allegro con moto).
Aici revine în memorie documentarul unei înregistrări cu Variaţiunile Diabelli de către tânărul pianist de mare talent Piotr Andreszewski, difuzat de Mezzo TV. Vorbind de extraordinara elevaţie şi încărcătură spirituală a capodoperelor lui Beethoven, Andreszewski, care nu e un adept al instrumentelor de epocă, a exemplificat cântând reducţia la pian a primei secţiuni a acestei fugi. Fervoarea cuvintelor lui întretăiate de muzica sublimă nu se poate reda, esenţial e că el ilustra astfel ceea ce considera pe drept cuvânt a fi miezul creaţiei lui Beethoven, evident mai ales în Missa Solemnis: „acele urcuşuri continue către lumină – şi acele recăderi – şi reculegeri – şi iar urcuşuri – şi efortul pe care ele îl cer…” Iată un artist, iată un om care a înţeles.
Participarea alămurilor în „Sanctus” e o trimitere la „trâmbiţele” îngerilor şi ale preoţilor din imnul serafimilor deasupra Templului (Isaia, 6:3). Tremolo-ul (tremor) pe un acord de nonă micşorată, ca la sublimul „über Sternen muss er wohnen” din Simfonia a IX-a, reflectă înfiorarea în faţa viziunii supraumane. Apoi survine însă una din cele mai dificile probleme de interpretare sub aspect strict auditiv, ceea ce generează de obicei corectarea lui Beethoven de care se ferea Furtwängler. Exuberantele „Pleni sunt caeli” şi „Osanna” sunt scrise pentru soliştii vocali şi orchestra aproape completă (fără tromboni până spre sfârşit), forte şi apoi fortissimo. În concertele moderne, ele se încredinţează corului, cum a fost şi la Oradea; mai mult, „Osanna” s-a cântat prea lent, deşi e scris în Presto. La obiecţiile lui Schindler asupra posibilităţii unei audiţii bune, pentru ca vocile să nu fie acoperite de instrumente, Beethoven a răspuns răspicat: „Trebuie să fie voci soliste!”. Poate voia să estompeze această izbucnire pentru a asigura unitate părţii, sau poate era o aluzie la cele patru făpturi din Apocalipsă care îl laudă pe Dumnezeu cu primele cuvinte din „Sanctus” (Apoc., 4:8). Problema e destul de delicată azi, dar înregistrările cu instrumente de epocă respectă bineînţeles dorinţa autorului şi sunt perfect inteligibile, inclusiv înregistrarea lui Herreweghe, făcută în concert public (la „Auditorium Stravinski” din Montreux, în 1995).
Când „Sanctus” se lungea polifonic, Consacrarea preceda „Benedictus”, nu-l urma. Ca atare, sublima introducere orchestrală la „Benedictus” e un fel de preludiu ca de orgă, în registru grav şi dulce, în stil de improvizaţie polifonică, cu armonii sonore, suspensii şi pedale, amintind iar de „Ihr stürtzt nieder, Millionen” din Simfonia a IX-a (un alt moment când mulţimea îngenunchează). Acest Preludiu a reliefat cel mai evident dezechilibrul între compartimentele corzilor grave din orchestra orădeană în acest concert (prea puţine viole şi prea mulţi contrabaşi), fiind scris pentru sonorităţile învăluite ale unui ansamblu de viole şi violoncele divisi, contrabaşi, flaute în registrul grav, fagoturi, contrafagot şi orgă. Extaticul „Benedictus” în tonalitatea blândă a subdominantei simbolizează coborârea lui Hristos în ostia de pe altar (katabasis, coborâre, la flaut şi vioara solo). Solo-ul de vioară a fost interpretat de Florin Avram, concert-maestrul din acea seară, stând în picioare, ca la un concert pentru vioară şi orchestră, iar tempo-ul a fost accelerat în mod nejustificat la „Osanna”, a cărui încheiere prea puternică a fost departe de acel crescendo – decrescendo scris de Beethoven.
În „Agnus Dei”, începutul se făcea în mod tradiţional în relativa sau tonica minoră, „dona nobis pacem” revenind pe tonica majoră; în Missa Solemnis, îndureratul „miserere” e în relativa si minor („tonalitatea neagră” – Beethoven). Fanfarele ce întrerup prima dată ruga pentru pace provin nu numai de la Haydn (Missa in tempore belli), ci încă din vechile misse votive (Missa pro pace, sau Missae tempori hostili din „Sacramentariul Leonin”, cea mai veche colecţie de rugăciuni pentru Missa – în „Agnus” se inserau deseori tropi explicativi ai ideilor textului, uneori sub amprenta momentului). După Alain de Lille („Summa de arte praedicatoria”), pacea implorată are trei componente: pax temporis (exterioară), pax pectoris (interioară) şi pax aeternitatis (pentru morţi, în Missa pro requiem). Iar conform papei Inocenţiu al III-lea, primul „miserere nobis” se referă la suflet, al doilea la trup, iar „dona nobis pacem”, la ambele. Una din temele lui Beethoven din „dona nobis pacem”, sugerând stabilitate prin cvartele ei, e aproape un citat după o temă („and He shall reign for ever and ever”) a faimosului cor „Halleluiah” din oratoriul „Mesia” de Handel, modelul venerat al lui Beethoven. Încheierea destul de abruptă şi fără festivism a Missei Solemnis, care a alimentat atâtea speculaţii referitor la credinţa lui Beethoven, îmi pare mai degrabă apropiată prin discreţie şi împăcare, dar şi prin alura generală, codei finalului din Simfonia Pastorală, şi el tot în măsura de şase optimi.
Întotdeauna va rămâne ceva nespus despre o asemenea lucrare şi aşa e bine să fie. În concluzie, pentru Oradea e o realizare şi faptul că acest concert a putut avea loc. Să sperăm că e un început care va fi continuat şi perfecţionat, fiindcă, după cum zice o veche vorbă mare dar adevărată, nu noi reluăm capodoperele, ci capodoperele ne reiau pe noi.

There is a sense of impending doom about most modern attempts to describe the late Roman empire … Nothing is more redolent of the age than the melancholy reflections of the late Roman philosopher Boethius (c.480-525). “The most unfortunate sort of misfortune”, he wrote in his Consolations of Philosophy, “is once to have been happy.” (Davies, Europe, pg. 213)

Photo by Barry Yanowitz on Flickr

Who would give a law to lovers?  Love is unto itself a higher law.  ~Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

When there’s little to look forward to next week than the autopsy photos of Michael Jackson surfacing in the tabloids as inevitably as oil globules from an ambushed battleship, one would conclude we’re in a pretty grim run.

Indeed. I’ve seen little over the past few weeks of encouragement. The media has hung onto to the exploits of a freakish family of 10 where the micromanaging mother is obviously insane and the milquetoast father understandably wants out. A U.S. Senator who cuckolded a member of his own staff. A governor who tried to turn down stimulus money for his beleaguered state but was more than eager to use taxpayer bucks to visit his mistress in Argentina, then lie about it.

The economy bobs a little up one week, but down the next. Pundits have been guessing whether it’s hit bottom for seven months now. It might be going somewhere – in two years. But no one’s taking any bets.

I wonder what Walter Cronkite, the one remaining symbol of post-war rectitude, might make of all this. However, he’s apparently on his deathbed.  Ensconced in the next life, he might have the opportunity to ask Jacko what the hell happened. However, celebrity interviews were never his forte.

We could ask Walter Cronkite what he'd make of this, but it's probably too late.

On the microcosmic level, things aren’t much better. I’ve been all but berating clients to pay me so I can keep up. A dear friend, my daughter’s godparent, just underwent surgery for cancer that’s proven to be nearly as tough as he is. Given I am what Southern author Walker Percy would refer to as a lapsed Jew, I’m not buying into the power of prayer pitch. But I am beginning to comprehend why gentiles drink so much.
Yet despite the grimness, I feel there is a spark of optimism. Maybe all this mayhem, Jon & Kate Disintegrates, the King of Pop as Elvis redux, is the beginning of the end of obsession with celebrity, a tacit acknowledgement of how toxic it actually is. The fact that the savings rate is up for the first time in nearly two decades is astonishing to me – an apparent overnight reversal of the spend-now, pay-later culture we’ve been buying into forever.

And the bleak circumstances also forced me to rethink my business. I’m now focused more on publishing than piecework. It’s an odd thing, having spent 20 years as an obscure writer, suddenly doing graphic design, compiling mailing lists, and “dialing for dollars” from potential investors and advertisers. It may not work, but I suspect it will. If it does, it will put my family and myself in decidedly more stable finances in the long run. And like the rest of shell-shocked America, we’re no longer going to be snapping up every bauble that bewitches our vision.

“No man can ever truly be secure until he has been forsaken by fortune.” That’s from Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, the early Medieval work that every English major is forced to read when studying Chaucer. Yet the major themes of the work resonate today: good luck and bad luck comes in cycles. You only have to last long enough for things to change.

The Boethian worldview and changes of fortune was the bulwark of another Southern author, one who wrote in an absurdist/comic vein much like Walker Percy. But he was not nearly as prolific as Percy, primarily because he killed himself when he couldn’t find a publisher for his first novel. Years later, the author’s mother all but stalked Percy to get him to read the dog-eared manuscript. The novel, “A Confederacy Dunces,” brought author John Kennedy Toole a posthumous Pulitzer Price. He should have tried to hang around a bit longer.

My family and I spent today driving out the country, where we picked cherries. They’ll be used tomorrow in the dessert we’re cooking for visiting relatives – the kind of relatives we actually like. They’re little things. But they’re enough to make us want to hang around, knowing that it can’t stay this way forever.

(Familia, 2003)

Orice text, inclusiv cel mai mare (Universul) fiind un ansamblu de semne, înţelegerea lui implică o operaţie de decriptare conform unui sistem de convenţii. Deşi simbolurile sunt plurivalente, cu atât mai mult în sisteme culturale diferite, iar uneori au chiar sensuri antagonice, există întotdeauna o modalitate de interpretare care e cea mai apropiată de Adevăr (atât cât poate fi el exprimat prin mijloacele manifestării lui relative). Pentru aceasta e nevoie însă de un principiu călăuzitor, altfel multitudinea de posibilităţi e o junglă în care se pierd prin divagaţii relativizante sau refuză să intre chiar comentatori de calibru. De exemplu, Nicolae Manolescu îmi mărturisea astfel reticenţa faţă de linia hermeneutică René Guénon – Vasile Lovinescu (după care ne vom ghida în cele ce urmează): “Nu cred o iotă, e o forţare a lucrurilor pentru a scoate apă din piatră seacă. Cu puţină imaginaţie şi inteligenţă, o astfel de interpretare se face oricând. După părerea mea, nu totul e semnificativ într-o operă. Dacă vreau, pot să caut o semnificaţie în orice. În orice operă de artă există şi multe elemente aleatorii”.
Lumea este în viziunea filosofiei şi misticii tantrismului o ţesătură (tantra) de inter-relaţii posibile, astfel că numai o cheie adecvată scopului pe care ni l-am asumat ne permite să alegem drumul corect de la un ochi al reţelei la altul, adică de la o condiţie existenţială la alta. “Tot ce-i vremelnic e numai simbol”, spune Goethe în “Faust” – căruia Doinaş i-a fost cel mai inspirat şi fidel traducător în româneşte. Deci totul e semnificativ, Universul e simbolul lui Dumnezeu. Astfel, Macrocosmosul, împreună cu Microcosmosul uman, capătă sens şi finalitate la nivel individual prin valorizarea lor de către conştiinţă, pe când în viziunea profană, cantitativă şi relativizantă, care domină azi (inclusiv în critica literară, de ce ar face ea excepţie?) ele sunt haotice, aleatoare sau mecanice. Recitite în această cheie, cuvintele de mai sus ale criticului rămân la fel de corecte (cu excepţia ultimei propoziţii, în care ar trebui să înlocuim “aleatorii” cu “personale”), căci totul depinde de perspectiva asumată, integratoare în Principiu sau dezintegratoare. Căutând un sens spiritual reintegrator în orice manifestare, nu avem decât de câştigat (ca să-l parafrazăm pe Pascal), pe când “fără muzică, viaţa noastră nu e decât o rătăcire” (mousike însemnând pentru antici în primul rând armonie, adică ordine).
Cine nu caută un sens unificator şi în manifestările literare nu-l caută de fapt în nici un fel de manifestare. Dacă acest sens pare la prima vedere forţat sau chiar ireal comparat cu ce ştiam înainte, e pentru că misterul nu e accesibil oricând şi oricum, altfel n-ar mai fi mister. Aşa cum Adam a pus nume tuturor animalelor, scoţându-le din indistincţie şi conştientizându-le, lectura devine în acest caz un act ordonator, care revelează conştiinţei individuale cosmosul în ceea ce profanul vede doar haos şi arbitrar. Considerată altfel (de către autori şi cititori deopotrivă), literatura devine, din simbol al căilor spiritului de la şi înapoi la Sursa lui, doar o joacă gratuită care ajunge cel mult la nivelul psihologiei ce proliferează în lumea modernă, adică la nivelul intermediar al psihismului, încă departe de adevărul metafizic, mai ales dacă e lipsită de principii care s-o ghideze ascendent.
Problema pentru cei mai mulţi oameni e că nu e suficientă erudiţia, comodă prin neimplicare, ci e nevoie de trăire şi devenire personală, de acel “mori şi devino” al oricărei evoluţii spirituale; altfel, vorba iniţiatului Goethe, suntem doar “oaspeţi melancolici pe pământul întunecat”. Faimosul banc cu cei doi ciobani pe care turistul străin îi întreabă drumul în mai multe limbi îşi are doza lui paradoxală de adevăr profund: la ce i-a folosit aceluia că ştie atâtea limbi, dacă nu se poate descurca singur? În faţa lui Dumnezeu nu contează ce ştim, ci ceea ce suntem şi devenim. Iată de ce acest text nu e în nici un caz critică literară şi nici chiar eseu, blindat sau nu cu citate savante. Ştiu că asupra sa se vor exersa ironiile suficiente ale breslei, dar scopul lui nu e să convingă şi nici să demonstreze. Dacă e un adevăr în cele scrise aici, el va trezi prin rezonanţă un ecou similar în cei asemănători lui, care vor putea eventual să-l completeze şi să-l precizeze mai mult decât am putut, într-o revistă totuşi de cultură.

Înarmaţi astfel, putem intra acum în lumea capodoperei lui Ştefan Augustin Doinaş. Această baladă e una din puţinele poezii de mare popularitate (ceea ce sună destul de surprinzător faţă de caracterul intim până la ermetic al genului poetic în general). Trebuie şi merită să menţionăm că la aceasta a contribuit frecventa sa prezentare în spectacolele cenaclului “Flacăra” al lui Adrian Păunescu din anii ’80, în interpretarea excepţională a actorului Mihail Stan şi cu un inspirat fond sonor la orgă elecronică asigurat de Idu Barbu. (n. n. – Paragrafele anterioare nu au apărut în “Familia”) Detaliile de istorie literară legate de geneza baladei în perioada Cercului literar de la Sibiu pot fi găsite uşor, ca şi cheile de lectură structuralistă sau simbolică: tablou al existenţei superioare, tragice, a omului faustic, cu sacrificiul său ritual (considerând valoarea simbolică a vânătorii în toate culturile vechi) în căutarea idealului spiritual, sau artă poetică reprezentând “l’errance de l’écriture” în căutarea Operei ideale, himerice, în opoziţie cu realul pe care nu-l încape.
Ceea ce ne interesează aici este însă ordonarea acestor posibilităţi conform unei chei mai profunde care să unifice contrariile până la nivel individual (şi esenţial, pentru că “Împărăţia Cerurilor e în voi”). Ne vom ghida pe cât posibil după semnificaţiile indo-europene ale simbolurilor, considerând că acestea îi sunt mai la îndemână din subconştientul colectiv unui poet european, dar şi având în vedere apropierea mai mare a acestui grup de culturi de tradiţia hiperboreană, primordială şi supremă în actualul ciclu cosmic conform datelor tradiţionale. Nu ne vom întreba aici prin ce mijloace pot ajunge unii scriitori să intuiască şi să exprime mai coerent decât alţii anumite adevăruri iniţiatice, mai mult sau mai puţin conştient ori influenţaţi de iniţiaţii veritabili dacă nu sunt chiar ei iniţiaţi. De asemenea, din raţiuni de spaţiu şi nu numai, ne vom limita la câteva particularizări, fiindcă nu e locul aici să precizăm funcţiile şi modul de operare al miturilor, nici date despre istoria mitică a omenirii sau specificul diferitelor tipuri de căi spirituale; cei interesaţi le pot găsi uşor în cărţile lui Guénon, V. Lovinescu, Fritjof Schuon şi ale altora.
Judecând după nivelurile de interpretare pe care le-a indicat el însuşi pentru balada sa, explicitându-le după “Dicţionarul de simboluri” al lui Jean Chevalier şi Alain Gheerbrant (pe care-l vom utiliza şi noi mai jos, printre altele), Doinaş pare să o fi scris conştient de unele din semnificaţiile ei spirituale ascunse, dar s-a oprit cu comentariul la nivelul relativist al lecturilor ambivalente (“ritual al iniţierii” sau “ritual al unui act profanator sau uzurpator”). “Totul depinde de ce anume vedem în mistreţ”, indică marele poet, sugerându-ne astfel un capăt al firului Ariadnei. De ce chiar în titlu e prezent mistreţul şi nu prinţul, eroul acţiunii, identificat în tot textul doar prin originea sa răsăriteană în timp ce mistreţul himeric are parte de o serie de atribute?
În Europa creştinată, mistreţul figurează ignoranţa şi pornirile bestiale, sau în general manifestările invizibilului, ca toate fiarele, vânătoarea fiind un act civilizator care desacralizează câmpurile în vederea cultivării. Dar simbolismul indo-european al mistreţului e mult mai vechi şi mai profund, provenind din tradiţia hiperboreană: el reprezintă autoritatea spirituală (brahmanii şi druizii, retraşi în pădure: singularius, de unde sanglier în franceză). Mistreţul se hrăneşte cu fructele stejarului, arbore sacru al cunoaşterii, şi cu trufe, misterioase produse ale trăsnetului (“arma” lui Dumnezeu în toate culturile), fiind consacrat de celţi zeului Lug, Strălucitorul (după unele interpretări, zeul suprem celtic).
În spaţiul indian, actualul supraciclu cosmic (Kalpa), compus din 14 Manvantara (cicluri de câte patru epoci de ocultare gradată a spiritualităţii corespunzând cu vârstele de aur, argint, aramă şi fier din antichitatea greco-latină), se numeşte Shri Sveta Varaha Kalpa. El e consacrat celui de-al treilea avatar al lui Vishnu (aspectul conservator al Divinităţii), care sub forma simbolică de mistreţ alb (Sveta Varaha) a readus pământul la suprafaţa apelor în colţii săi. Întâi ascuns sub formă de purcel în nămol (mâlul primordial, borboros), sanctificându-l doar prin prezenţă, el a fost determinat la actul mântuitor numai de Shiva (aspectul transformator), care l-a străpuns cu lancea cunoaşterii. Murind ca purcel, Vishnu izbucneşte în râs şi se transformă în Mistreţul Alb, exercitându-şi apoi misiunea avatarică. Tot sub formă de mistreţ, Vishnu a intrat în adâncul pământului căutând piciorul stâlpului de foc, axis mundi, semnul (lingam) lui Shiva, în timp ce Brahma (aspectul creator), sub forma lebedei Hamsa, îi căuta vârful în înaltul cerului. Deci, investitura spirituală a Mistreţului e supremă, fiind în legătură directă cu Polul, axul de coborâre a graţiei divine în lume. Încă Dürer, cu îndrăzneală de iniţiat, înlocuia la ieslea Nativităţii boul şi măgarul cu mistreţul şi leul, simboluri directe ale puterii sacerdotale şi regale a lui Iisus Hristos.
Numeroasele vânători de mistreţi din legendele galice şi greceşti sunt amintiri ale revoltei reprezentanţilor puterii temporale, a regalităţii (a doua castă, clasa cavalerilor la celţi, cum îi numea Caesar, sau kshatriyas în India), contra supremaţiei castei preoţeşti (brahmanas). Revolta a avut loc chiar înainte de începutul actualei “vârste de fier”, perioada de maximă decădere spirituală şi dezagregare morală (kali yuga), care cuprinde istoria cunoscută oficial. (În treacăt fie zis, revolta negustorilor şi “burghezilor” – vaishiyas, a treia castă – împotriva nobililor la Revoluţia Franceză, precum şi cea a “servitorilor” şi lucrătorilor manuali – shudras, a patra castă – în revoluţia socialistă sunt doar unul din simptomele decăderii spirituale continue din istoria lui kali-yuga). La celţi, Cian, tatăl lui Lug, se transformă în mistreţ pentru a scăpa de urmăritori, dar moare în formă umană, ca şi prinţul din balada lui Doinaş (dar să nu anticipăm semnificaţia acestei metamorfoze).
În mod obişnuit, prinţul simbolizează fiinţa excepţională, investită cu potenţialitatea puterii regale, încă nestăpânite şi neexercitate, eroul ca arhetip al bărbatului. Misiunea lui Făt Frumos şi a eroilor din legendele cavalereşti e întotdeauna căutarea (questa) unui ideal, conform specificului gradual şi emoţional al căilor spirituale ale războinicilor, faţă de caracterul mai direct şi intelectual al căilor sacerdotale. În toate culturile tradiţionale, vânătoarea simbolizează căutarea spirituală, aşa că, privind-o la nivel individual, putem vedea în ea mai mult decât revolta nobililor. Posibilităţile lui aflându-se încă într-o stare virtuală, Prinţul din baladă are un singur atribut (“din Levant”), care indică însă orientarea sa preponderent luminoasă şi îl distinge de pericolul potenţial pentru orice om de a înclina către Prinţul decăzut al tenebrelor, Lucifer. Orientul (nu numai în sens simbolic) a reprezentat întotdeauna spiritualitatea, originea luminii (“ex oriente lux”). De exemplu, călătoriile iniţiatice sufite încep cu un “exil occidental”, adică o întoarcere la materia prima înainte de reintegrarea în sursa “răsăriteană” a cunoaşterii, Spiritul.
“Un prinţ din Levant, îndrăgind vânătoarea…” În relativa lui indistincţie, Prinţul are totuşi o tendinţă care-l va salva, îndrăgeşte “vânătoarea” (tipic pentru o iniţiere cavalerească, bazată pe dragoste sub forme din ce în ce mai elevate). Fără această aspiraţie spontană, căutarea spirituală e o minciună. “Prin inimă neagră de codru trecea”, cu “hăţişuri” şi “păduri nepătrunse”, e o imagine ce evocă europeanului la selva oscura de la începutul călătoriei lui Dante (şi ea o cale a inimii, cavalerească, marele florentin fiind membru al grupării ezoterice de tip cavaleresc “Fede Santa”). Dar ea evocă şi noaptea sufletului de care vorbesc marii mistici, indistincţia teribilă dinaintea revelaţiei, sau, pentru psihanaliză, inconştientul enigmatic ce conţine totul. Inversând perspectiva, pădurea e însă şi sanctuar pentru toate culturile indo-europene, iar prin latura sa maternă e una din rarele prezenţe feminine ale baladei (raritate ce prevesteşte caracterul metafizic, sacerdotal, deasupra dualităţii, din etapele superioare ale căii cavalereşti a Prinţului). Traversându-şi obstacolele/încercările, Prinţul cântă dintr-un flaut de os (ca în “Mioriţa “ sau ca în India şi Tibet, cu sens de asceză şi transcendere a vieţii şi morţii), ceea ce accentuează caracterul ritual al acţiunii. Flautul de trestie (ney) al ceremoniilor dervişilor învârtitori, care “repetă Doamne, Doamne! fără vorbe şi nu într-o limbă anume” (Rumi), reprezintă sufletul despărţit de sursa lui divină şi aspirând la reîntoarcere. Şi fluierul lui Marsyas şi al misterelor dionisiace e animat de suflu (prana), care ţine de planul subtil intermediar în ierarhia celor trei lumi (corporal-fizic, emoţional-subtil şi mental-cauzal), toate acestea fiind din nou în acord cu specificul căilor cavalereşti.
Dar în ardoarea sa şi conform înclinaţiilor castei sale, Prinţul vrea să-i conducă şi pe alţii spre realizare, uitând că aceasta nu poate fi decât individuală şi că el însuşi, neuns încă rege, nu o stăpâneşte încă. Prinţul din Levant nu e încă un Crai de la Răsărit. De aici provine, la nivel vizibil, scăderea treptată a autorităţii sale asupra servitorilor pragmatici lăsaţi treptat în urmă, ceea ce semnifică în plan individual detaşarea de natura sa inferioară sau, mai profund, de organele de acţiune. Prinţul e conştient de caracterul inefabil pentru Creaţie al Mistreţului (căci deţinătorul funcţiei se identifică în esenţă cu aspectul divin pe care îl reprezintă, după cum se ştie în orice tradiţie autentică). Mistreţul e “fioros”, cutremurarea (tremor) în faţa enigmei teribile a prezenţei divine în lume fiind o emoţie mistică fundamentală. El are o aparenţă versatilă, dar fixitatea “ochiului sticlos”, deci nenatural, sugerează prezenţa în subsidiar a Permanenţei. Din Mistreţul Alb (Sveta Varaha) a mai rămas vizibil în kali-yuga doar albul colţului de argint, semn de puritate. Deşi de obicei în legătură cu Luna feminină, simbolismul argintului e mai complex şi mai nuanţat. Argentum provine de la rădăcina sanscrită arj, strălucitor (a se vedea, de exemplu, numele eroului Arjuna din “Bhagavad-gita”). În miturile egiptene, carnea zeilor e de aur, dar oasele sunt de argint, iar în creştinism acesta reprezintă înţelepciunea divină. Mai mult, albul argintului provine direct din simbolismul metafizic hiperborean, în timp ce aurul regal ţine de un sistem simbolic solar, “emoţional”, derivat ulterior.
Servitorii (shudra) aparţin unei categorii inferioare şi nu pot asimila specificul căii princiare către absolut, ei tind să se disperseze în realizări parţiale, cu atribute senzoriale (“vânatul cu coarne, ori vulpile roşii, ori iepurii mici”). Din antichitate, coarnele sugerează tendinţe divergente, dar şi puterea şi fecunditatea. Ambivalenţa vulpii ca dublu al personalităţii omeneşti, oscilând între ipostaza de erou civilizator şi cea de înşelător uneori donjuanesc, face trecerea spre fecunditatea elementară, dezlănţuită, a iepurelui lunar. Să nu uităm nici sensul general al imaginilor animaliere, care reprezintă energiile inconştientului şi ale cosmosului. Ţinând cont în perspectivă mai largă de finalitatea questei Prinţului către maturizare, merită remarcată alchimizarea, stăpânirea şi transcenderea energiilor reprezentate cinegetic de la grosier la mai subtil (prin animale din ce în ce mai mici), deci către reintegrare şi resorbţie.
Prinţul, “atent la culori” (adică vigilent la măştile iluziei, Maya), priveşte “printre arbori”, deci vede pădurea în ciuda copacilor şi transcende tentaţiile. Zâmbetul lui detaşat e semnul unui ales, căci calea spirituală e, după cum spun marii sfinţi şi mistici, o bucurie crescândă, nu mortificare cum ar crede profanii pentru care şi postul e o obligaţie. El depăşeşte (sau asimilează) şi “căprioara cuminte” (în care e prefăcută în unele basme Prinţesa), energie a afectivităţii pure, precum şi linxul cu proverbiala sa vedere, pătrunzătoare până la clarviziune. Numit în irlandeză tot Lug, ca şi zeul celtic, acesta simbolizează şi (clar-)auzul, căci corzile harpelor cu sunete divine ale barzilor erau făcute din intestine de linx.
După ce a transcens simţurile şi emoţiile, ascensiunea Prinţului se precipită: “sub fagi”, “sub ulmi”, “sub brazi (simbol hiperborean – n. n.)”. Dând “buruiana-ntr-o parte”, adică realizând separatio alchimică de energiile solare condensate prin pământ în plante, Prinţul are o primă viziune “nu departe” a Mistreţului “stingher” (adică unic), care “se-nvârte făcându-ne semn (subl. n.)”, indicaţie clară a axului lumii (lingam). Fiindcă la nivel individual, Polul este oriunde şi oricând deschidem ochii şi primim graţia. Apoi, Mistreţul “pufneşte şi scurmă”, deci prezenţa sa devine mai evidentă prin acţiuni asupra aerului Yang şi a pământului Yin, pentru ca în final să fie din nou mai perceptibil aspectul său neutru, transcendent, pregătitor al pătrunderii într-o realitate superioară (“unde-şi află odihnă şi loc”, adică pe “creste”, ca Shiva pe Muntele Meru, în ipostază de suprem ascet). Ascensiunea spre crestele muntelui îşi are evident un corespondent la scară microcosmică, întrucât Muntele Meru este şi coloana vertebrală, în vârful căreia e legătura cu Shiva prin centrul coronar. Aluzia la o tradiţie anterioară în virtutea căreia acţionează Prinţul (şi care va trebui continuată de servitor) apare în versul “Mistreţul cu colţi de argint, din poveste”. Deci, se dovedeşte încă o dată că Prinţul nu e un kshatriya revoltat, ci urmăreşte o realizare individuală prin identificare cu “vânatul” său, conform sensului simbolic al tradiţiilor cinegetice.
E foarte important că, în fazele superioare ale iniţierii sale cavalereşti, Prinţul începe să uzeze şi de mijloace ale căii directe, metafizice, specifice castei sacerdotale, şi anume ekagrata, concentrarea. Cele trei săgeţi succesive, de lemn, fier şi foc, sunt pătrunderea fecundatoare a gândului către obiectul dorinţei sale, anticipând depăşirea condiţionărilor distanţei. Prinţul reia astfel ritual gestul iniţiator al lui Shiva cu lancea cunoaşterii şi îşi pregăteşte identificarea cu “Dumnezeu-arcaş” (cum spune Origene), sagitta având aceeaşi rădăcină cu sagire, a pricepe. Lemnul (hyle) fiind în Grecia antică sinonim cu materia prima, el reprezintă aici tendinţa de expansiune în Creaţie, putând fi asimilat cu tendinţa centrifugă, orizontală (rajas), prima ca importanţă pentru un cavaler dedicat acţiunii. Fierul, metal inferior în Biblie şi China antică, rezervat în hinduism demonilor asuras, nu era folosit în Atlantida (Platon, “Critias”) şi nici de către druizi, el simbolizând în acest context tendinţa descendentă (tamas), spre infernuri şi somnul conştiinţei, iar focul este evident tendinţa ascendentă (sattva), conex şi cu lumile subtile. Astfel, Prinţul devine stăpân al celor trei lumi (Triloka) şi a trei din cele patru stări de conştiinţă: veghe, somn şi vis.
Apa, iarba şi luna în care se presimte, pentru cine are ochi să vadă, prezenţa colţului Mistreţului (adică semnul lui distinctiv), indică şi ele gradata ascensiune şi cosmizare a conştiinţei care percepe din ce în ce mai mult spiritualul în material. În prezenţa lui magnum mysterium, Servitorul (nu de mult coagulat individual din pluralitatea servitorilor) e însă incapabil de atitudine justă, care pentru condiţia lui ar fi fost veneraţia în tăcere (“Taci”, îl atenţionează Prinţul de fiecare dată). Imagine, la nivel individual, a personalităţii limitate şi a logicii care la omul inferior îşi depăşeşte abuziv rostul de instrument, de “servitor”, el verbalizează din ce în ce mai sceptic şi ironic, ca orice laic “raţional” de azi şi dintotdeauna când e confruntat cu realităţi de deasupra raţiunii comune (de unde şi derizoriul unor comentarii literare ale baladei care deplâng ipocrit “rătăcirea” donquijottescă a Prinţului).
Revelaţia are loc la amurgul Lunii, adică într-un moment simbolic neutru şi suspendat între două cicluri, ceea ce din nou e corect din punct de vedere ezoteric. În perspectivă temporală, questa Prinţului din Levant poate avea şi o semnificaţie profetică, de final de ciclu, după fierul săgeţii din kali-yuga şi focul purificator, apocaliptic, al celei de-a treia săgeţi. Suntem în momentul marilor recuperări şi reintegrări ale tradiţiei primordiale, care revine la unitatea de dinainte de diferenţierea în atributele sacerdotale şi regale. La zorii vârstei de aur a noului ciclu (sau, în perspectivă individuală, ai trezirii spirituale) asistă “luceferii palizi ai bolţii”, cu traseu ceresc contrar Soarelui. Lucifer asistă în formă plurală, dezagregată, la realizarea Prinţului uman, “purtătorii luminii” sunt acum palizi faţă de ceea ce va răsări. Prinţul e aplecat la izvor, deci prosternat umil la sursă pentru a primi graţia. În această stare, “veni un mistreţ uriaş, şi cu colţii…” de argint, ne-am aştepta noi, dar surpriza versului următor e totală, ca într-un koan Zen pentru blocarea minţii discursive: “îl trase sălbatic prin colbul roşcat”. “Complementar şi în aceeaşi clipă (cu săgetarea – n. n.), şi invizibil ca reacţie concordantă, îngerul (anghelos, adică trimisul – n. n.) animalului vânează pe vânător, atingându-l tot într-un punct vital, inimă, frunte sau creştetul capului” spune V. Lovinescu, explicitând simbolismul vânătorii. Pentru a avea contact direct cu discipolul cavaler, principiul divin i se revelează printr-o formă individuală, un maestru spiritual am zice, identic cu principiul în esenţă şi totuşi diferit pentru profani: “un mistreţ”, dar “uriaş”, adică universal. Pentru a-l proiecta pe Prinţ în transpersonal, acţiunile mistreţului uriaş şochează şi depăşesc “sălbatic” înţelegerea obişnuită. Cu scopul de a-l trezi la o nouă viaţă, totală, care să integreze în conştiinţa infinită şi victorioasă chiar şi abisurile, el îl face să cunoască şi să integreze direct “colbul roşcat”. Acesta e roşu nu de sângele bietului Prinţ, ca într-o interpretare sentimentală a baladei, ci e de fapt materia bazală, de culoarea focului impur, subteran, pe care o transfigura şi Vishnu ca Mistreţ Alb, pământul roşu din care a fost creat Adam.
Este momentul de descumpănire, moartea iniţiatică a Prinţului, adică moartea părţii lui muritoare. “Ce fiară ciudată mă umple de sânge?” exclamă el surprins, dar în Biblie (şi nu numai) sângele e viaţa, spiritul, aşa că întrebarea capătă în mod fericit un sens propriu legat de renaştere: “mă umple de viaţă, de spirit”. Este o ungere regală, revelatorie, cu propriul spirit. Vânătoarea “mistreţului meu”, adică în formă personală, e oprită, nu întreruptă, deci şi-a atins finalitatea. Pasărea neagră, mesager intermediar între zei şi oameni, care “plânge” în Lună moartea în planul sublunar a părţii omeneşti a Prinţului, poate fi un corb solar al lui Apollo şi al celţilor, profet şi ghid al sufletelor. Ea figurează pe discul alb al Lunii o jumătate dintr-o diagramă Yin-Yang: un punct Yin într-o pată Yang, căci sufletul individual perfect e total receptiv faţă de influenţa superioară a spiritului. Este o imagine perfect complementară mistreţului negru cu colţ de argint, el fiind în acest sens cealaltă jumătate a diagramei Yin-Yang: un punct Yang într-o pată Yin, căci Centrul sau spiritul superior e Yang faţă de rest. Diagrama Yin-Yang rezultată e un semn al echilibrării contrariilor ca o condiţie a trecerii pe un nivel superior de existenţă. Mijlocirea între divin şi uman e reprezentată în tradiţia ezoterică europeană (de exemplu, la Basilius Valentinus) prin corb şi lebădă, încă o imagine complementară, care aminteşte şi polaritatea Mistreţului şi a lebedei Hamsa în căutarea capetelor lingam-ului universal al lui Shiva, adică în căutarea lui Shiva însuşi.
În tradiţia hindusă, Luna e locuinţa Pitri-lor, strămoşii generatori ai actualei umanităţi, deci Luna simbolică e poarta strâmtă dintre lumea formală şi cea informală, iar prin ea urcă doar cel care s-a lepădat de toate. În Occident şi în India, păsările sunt sufletele care se aşează ierarhic pe crengile Arborelui Lumii, adică îşi asumă diversele stări de existenţă, iar conform Coranului, sufletele martirilor vor zbura spre Paradis sub forma unor păsări verzi. Prin absolutul negativ al “culorii” sale, pasărea neagră care reprezintă sufletul Prinţului indică însă o realizare completă, desprinderea de orice condiţionări, moartea totală pentru lumea manifestată. Să nu uităm că acestea se petrec la asfinţitul Lunii, deci la sfârşitul domniei tenebrelor, şi totuşi nu apare nici măcar o aluzie la Soarele luminos care va răsări, acesta fiind cu totul interior Prinţului. Ultima desprindere operată înaintea marii unificări e cea faţă de timpul ciclic: “Ce veştedă frunză mă bate mereu?” Înţelegerea ei aduce eternitatea.
Cele trei întrebări, despre natura “mistreţului” (prezenţa divină), a “păsării negre” (sufletul individual) şi a ciclului eternei reîntoarceri, pot fi şi adresate în realitate Servitorului (minţii discursive) într-un demers iniţiator, pentru a-l trezi la adevăr. Servitorul intuieşte ceva, dar rămâne tot la rolul său de spectator al unor semne pe jumătate înţelese: “sub copaci”, spune el, nesesizând unicitatea Pomului Vieţii, singurul care putea fi conştientizat în prezenţa unui asemenea act revelator. “Ascultă cum latră copoii gonindu-l”, încearcă apoi să-l consoleze, brusc compasiv, dar inutil-sentimental, pe Prinţ. Trimisul sau împăratul ideal este la Dante un copoi (veltro), identificat de unii cu înainte-mergătorul revenirii lui Hristos, ce va hăitui Lupoaica şi puterile infernale. În baladă, copoii sunt singurii în stare să acţioneze în plan vizibil, urmându-l pe Mistreţ (călugării dominicani erau numiţi Domini canes, câinii Domnului). Ei îl “gonesc” doar prin prisma moral-duală a Servitorului, în realitate Păzitorii Pragului îl ocultează din nou pe “reprezentantul” (sau semnificantul) divin după ce şi-a acordat iniţierea celui care o căuta.
Dar identificarea dintre vânător şi vânat e acum perfectă, mai ales că, prin acţiunea bruscă a mistreţului, ei şi-au inversat aparent rolurile. Să ne amintim aici de Cian, tatăl zeului Lug, care era urmărit sub formă de mistreţ şi murea în formă umană. Identitatea dintre subiectul cunoscător, obiectul de cunoscut şi cunoaştere este semnul realizării supreme a conştiinţei individuale. Prinţul îndeamnă pentru a patra oară la tăcere, pentru el nu mai există căutare: “Mai bine ia cornul şi sună întruna (subl. n.),/ Să suni până mor, către cerul senin…” S-a depăşit lumea sublunară a Micilor Mistere (realizarea cosmică), urcând în cerul pur al Marilor Mistere (realizarea metafizică). Transcendenţa este acum percepută senin, ca absolută libertate, în perfectul echilibru al celei de-a patra stări de conştiinţă, inexprimabila turya. “Goarnele” de la început s-au transfigurat în cornul sacru, instrument triumfal sau funerar (şi trâmbiţele îngereşti din Biblie erau tot un fel de corni). În toate civilizaţiile tradiţionale, actele cele mai intense ale vieţii sociale sau personale sunt scandate cu ajutorul muzicii, care are rol de mediator capabil să extindă comunicarea până la Divin. Ştiinţa suflului este deci mandatată Servitorului, căruia îi revine implicit şi misiunea de a perpetua prin limbajul inefabil al sunetului tradiţia acestei căi de realizare spirituală (căci altfel cum ar fi ajuns la alte generaţii “povestea” Mistreţului şi a Prinţului?). “Atunci asfinţi după creştete Luna”, iar lumina directă (adică nu reflectată de Lună), nemenţionată de text, ce răsare în locul ei, e de fapt totală în fiinţa Prinţului. Sunetul de corn adresat cerului senin trebuie să se reintegreze în muzica sferelor (“Cosmosul e un concert magnific”, scria în spirit pitagorician Boethius). Reprezentare auditivă, pentru noi ceilalţi, la cel mai înalt nivel elemental (în eterul subtil, akasha), a Logos-ului primordial, sunetul este şi o figurare a căii mantrelor, şi ea specifică iniţierilor de tip kshatrya.
“Şi cornul sună, însă foarte puţin” poate să mai semnifice la acest nivel o cădere bruscă în dramă personală, adică Prinţul jertfit a mai trăit foarte puţin? Renaşterea metamorfozată pe un plan superior, mai liber, de existenţă este esenţa şi scopul tuturor religiilor. Ce mai poate fi tragic pentru cel care a depăşit contrariile? Lumea materială rămâne doar cu exuvia lui, fiindcă numai ce e muritor (adică limitat) moare. Mai degrabă, versul final se referă la Servitor, lipsit de suflul unei experienţe directe şi pierzându-şi interesul şi perseverenţa, cum se vede atât de frecvent în cele mai diferite situaţii din lumea profană de azi. “Jertfa” Prinţului pe culmea muntelui, sub cerul senin, are o coloratură dacică, şi ea în acord cu caracterul metafizic al realizării sale finale. De aceea, accentul e pus pe faptul că sufletul individual, Prinţul, moare pentru lume, adică din perspectiva Servitorului (cea prin care ni se relatează, căci numai el mai asistă în final, chiar dacă nu pricepe totul), iar Servitorul Prinţului, mintea discursivă, rămâne în viaţă, în lume. Dar nu sună întruna din corn pentru a transmite direct şi trans-verbal specificul căii şi al realizării, ca un adevărat iniţiator şi păstrător al tradiţiei. El cade în mitologie, povestind în baladă faptele exterioare ale Prinţului, printre care vestigiile adevăratei acţiuni, cea în spirit, se mai disting doar per speculum, in enigmate, după cum am văzut.

Boethius’s Consolidations of Philosophy might not be as famous as Plato’s Republic or Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Despite its being forgotten from the classroom (especially in comparison with the other “big names”), this work is considered to be quite influential, and it serves as a direct application of the philosophical process to human life.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius himself – born around 480 AD - was a consul to the  kingdom of the Ostrogoths. As the son of a consul, with both popes and Roman emperors in his heritage, young Boethius was privileged to attain a formal education in Greek – possibly in Alexandria. Working to a position of vast governmental significance under Theodoric, Boethius was unfortunately accused of treason for a cause that is not known.

After his arrest, Boethius was sent away to Pavia, where he would wait for his own death without any of the fruits of his life’s labor, or the pleasures he has become accustomed. During this wait, he wrote Consolations of Philosophy – where he writes the book as in interesting dialogue between himself and the physical, female embodiment of philosophy itself.

In these dialogues, Boethius explores the ideas of fate, the nature of happiness, and God. Lady Philosophy attempts to reveal to Boethius that his happiness needn’t depend upon fortune and external events, but that – given his understanding of philosophy – it should reside under his command.

These reflections are poignant, and directly relevant to the most important issues Boethius must have been juggling with as he waited for his execution in prison. A particular quote resonates well with Boethius’s fall from remarkably good fortune to remarkably bad, and it brings a fascinating issue to the table:

“For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy”

Ah, isn’t it so. Most people can immediately find a situation in their own life to tie in with this quote as soon as it is read. Can you?

Here Boethius expresses an idea to the colloquial phrase “we don’t know what we’ve got ’til its gone.” The insight here is that all of our conditions are filtered through our perspective, and if our conditions are relatively worse than they were before, we’re often going to feel it.

It is commonly said that the poor and wakes up poor every morning and is barely troubled, while if the rich man woke up poor he would be tremendously troubled. We become accustomed to and potentially identifies with certain conveniences, certain pleasures, and certain privileges.

Once these are removed, our focus is not on what is left – on what is present – but on what was, and is now lost. Our daily lives may become filled with ideas of what we once had in similar circumstances, but no longer have. This focus on loss and the past continues, and so we suffer.

The good news is (there’s good news?!), this suffering is completely dependant on the objects of our perception. Our sense of self may have been attached to those things or circumstances which good fortune had brought us. Our continued focus on them in their absence will bring about a sinking feeling.

Think about something simple, like an iPod and a laptop computer. I didn’t have either of these two items a few years ago. If I woke up tomorrow and my macbook/iPod were gone, I would – to be honest – at least feel an initial pang of pain.

These objects have become such an easy way for me to store and record important information, they aide in my ability to study and grow. If I never owned these objects, then waking up without them would likely not bring down my emotional state.

Taking the insight of Boethius into account, we might make note of those things and situations which we genuinely appreciate. We might also understand that our continued focus on that which is lost will only bring about feelings associated with loss – and that overcoming this aspect of our condition implies control of our focus.

Just from reading this blog post, it might be hard to immediately apply these ideas to a situation as serious as that of Boethius. However, if in the near future you only have to deal with a missing iPod and not your impending doom, you might be able to put your conscious perspective to work.

___

If you enjoyed this post and the material on this site, consider signing up for my RSS feed or bumping this material only StumbleUpon or Digg. Thanks a lot!

The Quill has taken a bit of a well deserved break, after revolutions and turmoil, ruptures and pressures, incoherent Friday nights and a food poisoning to rival all others. And a few other things. It’s times like these when I authentically need to pick up Seneca’s works and see what wise words he has to impart to the situation at hand.

Instead of Seneca, I found my consolatio in Plutarch. Perhaps even that is a misnomer, as Seneca is much better at entering into the situation with a subject, sharing the moment and feeling and then judging you for actually undergoing emotional reactions (crudely put). Plutarch’s reversioning of turmoil and disturbance of the soul is not an accusation against the subject per se, but does turn the focus back on the internal life: the mourners mourn for themselves, those who are frightened are not moved by a global sense of responsibility but are in it for their own peace of mind. The suggestion need not be that all negative emotions are facets of self-pity, but the middle-platonist psychology keeps a control element in place to prevent you from escaping the level of introspection that Plutarch thinks is necessary in such a situation.
The Senecan consolation is much easier to stomach, even if it is because Polybius is actually receiving some sympathy as well as advice:

…if words can be of any avail, let us complain together: “What did you mean, O Fortune, by being so unjust and so violent? Did you repent so quickly of your former kindness?

Seneca is permitted this excess of empathy because his view is loyal to the Stoic principles of extirpation of the excess of emotions, but recognises that the soul is still captured in a body. The Tusculan Disputations are infinitely more rigorous in the insistence of the harmony, order and organisation of the soul from the lower to the higher elements, but the purpose of the texts does explain at least some of the unexpected comparisons. Thinking of Cicero, you don’t think of the same immutable moralist as you do after reading a bit of Seneca – instead you conjure up a view of a well rounded politician, orator and a bit of a pragmatist. The way we ‘feel’ about authors is often confused and misguided to begin with: Seneca might be a world class moralist, but he does write a kick ass tragedy with full-throttle psychological angst from page one onwards.

Is the Senecan show of emotion still the better option? Is the offer to “complain together” a better option than to think of the magnitude of the universe together, and see how together we’re but a miniscule aberration in the cosmic whole? There are stages to dealing with turmoil, and perhaps the paedagogy here is valid: in the first instance to distance yourself from the matter may not even be possible, which is why you must approach a friend with an empathetic ear. After the phase ends, or at least calms down somewhat, it will be easier to ponder the consequences of the situation, the context and the best ways forward.

There would be an amazing opportunity to engage in a tour de force here, thanks to the gentle hint that Cicero makes by instigating the theme De contemptu mundi which Boethius then takes on and develops. But as the Consolation of Philosophy isn’t really a consolation in the same way that the moral tomes briefly touched on here, I’m going to leave that to another, happier time. So await for further revelations – I may still have a tutorial essay somewhere about the nature of time and the following line:

Manet etiam spectator desuper cunctorum praescius deus uisionisque eius praesens semper aeternitas cum nostrorum actuum futura qualitate concurrit bonis praemia malis supplicia dispensans (De Consolatio, V, Prosa vi)

Even in the midst of exhaustion and daily grind, stress and the occasional clash of personalities, the Ancients run to our help and are ready to lead us from fatigue to fanfares. I’m off to jolly ole Finland for a week now, but will be taking my copy of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations with me to keep me company on my travels. That, and some bottles from the duty free

Notre bon vieil ami  romain Boethius (480-525) a raconté cette histoire sur son rival Pythagore, et ce quelques siècles après la mort de ce dernier. Pythagore serait passé devant un forgeron quand le son des marteaux sur les enclumes attira son attention. Pourquoi, à répétition, entend-il le même son? Il tenta d’échanger les marteaux entre les forgerons, mais en vain, la force de l’homme sur le-dit marteau ne changeait rien au son. La curiosité de Pythagore fut piquée, et il passa plusieurs jours à observer les forgerons. Il pesa les marteaux utilisés, puis compara les résonances. Il établie ainsi la gamme musicale qui repose principalement sur les quatre intervalles consonants (unisson, octave, quinte, quarte). Il montre par exemple qu’à partir d’un do, une corde deux fois plus courte permettrait d’entendre un DO élevé d’une octave et une corde trois fois plus courte donnerait un sol. Il est fort intéressant de constater que Pythagore avait trouvé le lien mathématique de la musique, et ce, avant la naissance du Christ!

Ici nous voyons Pythagore (à droite) vs Boethius (à gauche), selon leur méthodes de calcul respectives

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. Penguin Classics. Victor Watts trans. 164 pp.

The Penguin Classics edition shows Philosophy talking to Boethius while Fortune turns her wheel in the background

The Consolation of Philosophy is a fairly well-known little work.  Wikipedia has good background information on it and it’s author, Boethius.  He was a sixth century Roman patrician who’d lost the king’s favor and wrote the book while in prison in 524 or 525 awaiting execution and musing on his fall from grace.  Though a Christian, he drew on classical themes and motifs for the work, which is fundamentally a theodicy.

The book is a dialog between Boethius and Philosophy, who is personified as a woman and contrasted with Fortune (cf. the image of Wisdom as a woman and Folly as a harlot in Proverbs—the work isn’t wholly uninformed by the Christian tradition).  Boethius, who had previously served as Consul and in other high positions while he had the king’s favor, complains to Philosophy that he had “never been moved from justice to injustice by anything.”

You and God, who has sowed you in the minds of wise men, are my witnesses that the only consideration to impel me to any office was a general desire for good.  This was the reason why I had no alternative but grimly to resist evil and why in the struggle to defend justice I have always been indifferent to the hatred I inspired in men who wielded greater power than mine—an indifference inspired by the knowledge that I had freely followed my conscience. (10)

He feels betrayed by Fortune, which had previously blessed him with respect and success.  “I cannot deny the speed with which I rose to prosperity.  It is the very thing, in fact, which makes me burn with grief as I remember it.  In all adversity of fortune, the most wretched kind is once to have been happy.”  Philosophy consoles him that Fortune hasn’t changed her attitude towards him, she is the same as always: changeable.

The author goes on to examine the things that he had lost and why he ought not to lament his dispossession of them.  He looks at wealth, and how people who pursue it above all else never have enough and end up serving their money and stuff rather than vice versa.  “No good thing harms its owner … but wealth very often does harm its owners.” (36)  Power likewise is not the summum bonum; it doesn’t bring happiness or safety, but frequently the reverse.  His insights on those topics is good, but I most enjoy his analysis of fame:

Just think how puny and insubstantial such game really is.  It is well known, and you have seen it demonstrated by astronomers, that beside the extent of the heavens, the circumference of the earth has the size of a point; that is to say, compared with the magnitude of the celestial sphere, it may be thought of as having no extent at all. … This is the tiny point within a point, shut in and hedged about, in which you think of spreading your fame and extending your renown, as if a glory constricted within such tight and narrow confines could have any breadth or splendour. (41)

I can’t help but wonder if Carl Sagan was thinking of that passage when he wrote Pale Blue Dot.  Beothius further comments out that

Many men have been famous in their time but their memory has perished because there were no historians to write about them.  And yet the very histories are of little use when like their authors they become lost in the depths of time which make all things obscure. … If you think of the infinite recesses of eternity you have little cause to take pleasure in any continuation of your name. (42)

He then analyses the good, identifies it as the summun bonum that all people desire and are drawn to, and identifies it with God.  These passages owe much to Plato and need little explanation for anyone familiar with his concept of the good.

The passages in the work on the problem of evil (or the problem of undeserved suffering) are interesting.  He states the problem quite well:

The greatest cause of my sadness is really this—the fact that in spite of a good helmsman to guide the world, evil can still exist and even pass unpunished. … But there is something even more bewildering. When wickedness rules and flourishes, not only does virtue go unrewarded, it is even trodden underfoot by the wicked and punished in the place of crime.  That this can happen in the realm of an omniscient and omnipotent God who wills only good, is beyond perplexity and complaint. (85)

Later, he calls the problem of evil “the greatest of all questions, a question that can never be exhausted.”  He says that “when one doubt has been removed, countless others spring up in its place, like the hydra’s heads.”  While the statement of the problem is excellent, The Consolation hardly the definitive solution.  Philosophy answers Boethius much as God answered Job out of the storm: “It is because you men are in no position to contemplate this order that everything seems confused and upset. … It is not allowed to men to comprehend in thought all the ways of the divine work or expound them in speech.  Let it be enough that we have seen that God, the author of all natures, orders all things and directs them towards goodness.” (106, 109)  As for suffering that the good endure, “in the very short space of a human life, nothing can be so late in coming as to seem to the mind long to wait for, especially as it [the mind] is immortal.” (97)

Another image of the Wheel of Fortune (Rota Fortunae), from a 15th century manuscript

But Boethius goes beyond this; he offers arguments that all things, both those apparently good and those apparently bad, are for the better, because “all fortune whether pleasant or adverse is meant either to reward or discipline the good or to punish or correct the bad. … [therefore] all fortune is good.” (111)  While there is a bit more to his argument, it is unconvincing and few readers will accept his claim that “evil is [only] thought to abound on earth. … if you could see the plan of Providence, you would not think there was evil anywhere.” (110)  The arguments he adduces to prove the nonexistence of evil are sophistical and detract from what preceded them.

The last matter dealt with is divine foreknowledge as it relates to free will, a topic which I normally find it useless to discuss, an opinion that Boethius does nothing to modify.  The penultimate sentence of the work reminds me of the verses appended to the end of Ecclesiastes: “Avoid vice, therefore, and cultivate virtue; lift up your mind to the right kind of hope and put forth humble prayers on high.”

The Penguin Classics edition contains the 1960s translation by Victor Watts, who adds a 26-page introductory essay that provides context and interpretive help for The Consolation. The poetic passages that intersperse the dialog parts don’t seem particularly skillful, and only a few lines stand out for their beauty, images, or form.  I don’t particularly recommend this edition above any other, but the work as a whole is well worth reading for anyone familiar with classical philosophy.

Cerberus at Hell’s gate was still,
dazed captive to an unknown song:
no longer plunged the turning wheel,
and Tantalus,athist so long.

Heeded the streams no more : the three
avenging goddesses of ill
wept,sad at heart ; of melody
the very vulture drank his fill.

Yea,thou hast conquered,’said the Lord
of Shadows,’Take her,but on her
turn not,this side of Hell,thine eyes.’

Yet is not Love his greater law ?
and who for lovers shall decree ?
on the sheer threshold of the night
Orpheus saw Euridice,

Looked,and destroyed her.Ye who read,
Look up : the gods in daylight dwell.
All that you hold of loviness
sinks from you,looking down at Hell.

BOETHIUS

I will return to Part Two of the teleological argument soon, but for today – it’s eternity.

Sometimes used to mean simply the whole of time; but more usually used to mean a timeless realm (with no past or future) in which God lives.

Boethius defined it as the “total and perfect possession at once of an endless life.”  It seemed unthinkable that for God there should be a “no longer” and a “not yet.” Most Christian thinkers since the fourth century (unlike the authors of the Bible) held that God exists outside time, but in his timeless realm simultaneously acts at and knows about every moment of time.

It is, however, doubtful if this is a coherent claim—if God sees some event in 500 BC as it happens and sees some other event in 2000 AD as it happens, and all divine seeings are simultaneous with each other, then 500 BC must be the same year as 2000 AD—which is absurd.

Richard Swinburne, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995), 251.

For Further Reading

God and the Nature of Time, Garrett J. DeWeese

Time and Eternity: Exploring God’s Relationship to Time, William Lane Craig

Spurred on by a production of the Flying Dutchman in the Royal Opera House quite recently, I started thinking about female virtue today. And as all men know, and especially men who have visited the classy parlours of central London such as Tiger Tiger or The Verve, that something has been lost from the ideals from the olden days. Perhaps men too should look back and find their virtus, but the female virtue of pudicitia is certainly a trait to be desired by men and women alike – albeit from different perspectives.

The whole Western canon – I do enjoy making these sweeping generalisations - is permeated by the sense of what it means to be a proper woman. Invariably it involves being lifted to a pedestal, remaining the image of chastity and delivering the conjugal goodies with… if not panache, at least flawless execution. The Ancients are, if you will, full of it. Think of a Senecan advice, Aurelian guidance. Think upon the slightly dismissive comments that Aristotle makes of the womanfolk, as you resist the flow of my argument by reminisching about the Platonic ideals of equality in Utopia. You may recall Boethius, whose imprisonment is consoled by a female Philosophia, appearing clothed in constancy and equipped with the balm of soothing words. Dante’s Beatrice serves another female resplendent in female purity and then in Petrarch we find the interest moving from the pure and clean, to the more carnal, and sexual – though still in the fashion of the courtly love poetry. That tour de force coming to an end, what are we left with? What is it that the female virtue consists of?

Pudicitia is often considered as chastity, purity, even aloofness of the manly realm of desire and action. Female goddesses can personify that which the male mentality couldn’t, in the good old pagan times. There has clearly been a transmission of these qualities to the Virgin Mother of God in Christian thought, and legitimately or not, the status of Mary has taken on new levels – and the idea of female purity sharpens in the focus of the Western imagination. Dante is already completely over-awed with the cultus of the Queen of Virgins, and what is there not to be inamored with? She brings together purity and virginity, with the possibly even more primal fecundity and efficaciousness. She remains ethereal, not to say immanent, but manages to hear the prayers of her children. She is a protectress, a mother – but remains obedient and meek.

Pudicitia then establishes a model for the female sex to organise their life by: the expectation is aroused that a wife is to remain chaste in the external forum, and fertile in the household. She must be modest in her words, subservient to the male in his role as the head of a household, but equally supportive in times of trial and a constant source of  stability for the offspring.

Wagner’s Senta is an archetypal representation of female virtue in action; the female vices of inconstancy (Lehar’s La donna e’ mobilesprings to mind) and sexual prowess meet their match in the super-woman that raises more questions than she answers. Totally uninterested in the realizability of the ideal, the question that first occurs to me is where does this image arise from. What unconscious yard-stick is Wagner waving in our faces, when the opera has been accepted as his first masterpiece? For should anyone have thought it impressive had it lacked any resonance beyond the haunting melodies and the impressive & powerful choral pieces? No, the opera is a success story because it appeals to an image that every man will recognise, and every woman would like to burn down along with the suffragettes’ foundation garments.

The contemporary man (in the inclusive sense) questions whether this image is possible, whether anyone can remain in a habitus of virtue throughout their life as Senta does. The redemption of the Dutchman is dependent on the constancy of a woman, and so uncommon is it to find it in the world, that he believes he is doomed to sail the waves for eternity, until the awe-full Judgement Day. Wagner’s libretist clearly appreciates that this is in fact uncommon, that in the changing world of flux and imperfect ideals we are often lacking in those virtues we hold the highest – but he still manages to pluck a string in the lyres of our souls which resonates despite societal transformations, the rallying cries of oft-unjustified equality, and yes, the suffragettes as well.  

Is there an argument against the female virtue, can we say the idea is outdated and even harmful? Not only to be contrary but aware that this will be the outcome, I assert that the virtue the Roman referred to as pudicitia is a useful, even admirable one. It was certainly something that in the writings of Livy would turn Lucretia into an exemplar in his society, but nothing stops our admiration of his creation. In fact, is it not the case that we see something almost other-worldly in a woman that instead of craving for further excesses in immodesty chooses the path less-trodden? What man would not find attractive a chaste, virginal woman whose good judgement is renown? Then again, how many of them are there left in Tiger Tiger?

Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Chapter Four: “Rhetoric in the Latin Middle Ages”
Thomas Conley

Augustine
The Rhetorical Tradition
Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg

On Christian Doctrine
Augustine

Boethius
The Rhetorical Tradition
Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg

An Overview of the Structure of Rhetoric
Boethius

Anonymous
The Rhetorical Tradition
Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg

From The Principles of Letter Writing
Anonymous

Christine de Pizan
The Rhetorical Tradition

Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg

From The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pizan

From The Treasure of the City of Ladies
Christine de Pizan

Rhetoric Retold
Cheryl Glenn
Chapter Three:
“Medieval Rhetoric: Pagan Roots, Christian Flowering, or Veiled Voices in the Medieval Rhetorical Tradition.”

Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Chapter Four: “Rhetoric in the Latin Middle Ages”
Thomas Conley

The chapter opens with the traditional take on rhetoric in the middle ages, which Conley then refutes by the second full page of the chapter.

First, there is far more gong on in the history of medieval rhetoric than once was thought.  Indeed, since the 1960s, it has become a scholarly commonplace that it no more possible to speak as though there were a “medieval rhetoric” than it is to speak of “Classical rhetoric” as though it were a unitary concept.  Second, medieval rhetoric was far more than a mere transmission of mummified traditions that were poorly understood by those who transmitted them…It is clear, however, that such  a representation fails dismally to do justice to the intellectual complexity and sophistication of medieval rhetorics. (73)

Cicero is the major figure–according to Conley–that influences the work of medieval rhetoricians–essentially clergy.

For Conley this means following the work without using prefabricated categories; the taxonomy, in his estimation, is broken and not a good representation of how rhetoric in the medieval period actually worked.

Augustine was a trained rhetorician/rhetor before his conversion and professional life as a member of the clergy.  He, like other clergy of his time, proclaimed rhetoric as bordering on a sin and at the same time used it in their treatises on how to convert the masses.  As Conley points out, most of De catechizandis rudibus (On Indoctrinating the Uncultivated) reads a a text highly influenced by Ciceros’ De oratore (75-76).

De doctrina christianais in the Ciceronian fashion of making meaning.  In this case its focus is scripture (exegesis) and also how that interpretation of scripture is to be delivered to the masses (76-77).

Boethius subordinates rhetoric to dialectic in his works, and changes how Cicero is read and used from his time period until late in the 15th century.  Rhetoric is the arrangement of speech that would idle rambling without the truth finding powers of dialectic.  This is a reversal of Cicero, and definite tilt more towards Aristotle’s ideas concerning rhetoric.

Treatsie concerning the church were actually rhetoric tomes that allowed  for the continuation of an idea of a unified culture, hence the importance of Cicero and his concepts of service to the state.  It seems, though, there is this odd conflict since the spin is also Aristotilean.  Rhetoric is less about making knowledge and more about proving/persuading, ie, the vehicle that moves the unenlightened to accept the church and the governmental structure that under-girds it. (86)

Gerbert of Reims forwarded the idea that theology can only be taught after a thorough and systematic grounding in the liberal arts.  Gerbert conceptualized rhetoric as more than eloquence; he wanted his students to posses the wherewithal to stand up and argue a case (88).  There was, in Gerbert paradigm, a connection between eloquence and action.

And while Alcuin, for instance, seems to have considered rhetoric a civil science, Gerbert is here far more specific than his predecessor about the practical implication of such a conception of the art.  That rhetoric should be useful in the active life is more than  a scholastic commonplace for Gerbert…He was recognized in his time as a consummate stylist and as a powerful advocate in political causes…with no little justification.  (88)

NokterdevelopedGerman translations of Latin texts for his students (he was a monk and teacher at the monastery at St. Gall), and also taught and theorized rhetoric as something more concerned with invention (substance) than style (elocution).  He felt the “old” rhetorics of  his immediate time privileged style over substance (89).  For Nokter “[t]he end of rhetoric is not just ’speaking well,’ but the vital purpose of eliminating conflict and establishing concord” (90).

Conley floats the idea that since both Gerbert and Nokter lived in the age of iron and lead (a turbulent time it seems) that they emphasized the ability of rhetoric to elimante discord through “rhetorical sweetness” (90).

In the 11th and 12th centuries there was an intense interest in rhetoric as “a school discipline and as an art that could be usefully exploited” (91).  This led to new commentaries on classical treatises on rhetoric.  Toward the end of the 11th century are examples of new systematic treatises on letter writing, poetic composition, and preaching.  These concepts were based on “Ciceronianism.”

Definition of Ciceroianism bracketed on 91.  Essentially, develops along two lines split by region.  In places like France, rhetoric was more theoretical, and is often the “sterile” rhetoric reviled by Renaissance humanists.  In places like Germany, Italy, and England, there is more a concern about the practical–rhetoric as “civil science” which manifests self in preaching and letter writing.  More than regionalism, this was also based  on Boethian (more theoretical) and Ciceonian(more practical) interpretations of rhetoric.  I assume this means both strains used the language, figures, and strateigies of Cicero’s treatise, but the actions prescribed by each were very different in accordance to their theoretical lens.

In both of the above mentioned environment, rhetoric becomes the handmaided to another art or science (93, underline and bracket).

The final section of the chapter deals with the Cicero’s influence in the arts, specifically artes dictaminis (the art of letter writing), artes praedicandi (the art of preaching), and artes poetriae (the art of poetry). In each Conley demonstrates how each art was actual a way of producing discourse–either how to write or to preach, or how to judge and produce commentaries on these subjects.  This much different than the move made by rhetorics influenced by Boethius.

Augustine

Converted late in life to Christianity (age 32).  Trained in a throughly secular manner in the liberal arts, and eventually converted his training as a way to defend church doctrines from challengers; he, according to B & H, considered himself a “controversionalist…defending the correct doctrine of a young and volatile Christian Church against various heresies–as if transforming for sacred use his old ambition to be a secular lawyer” (450-451).

On Christian Doctrine (Doctrina Christiana)

The first three books discuss how to interpret the Bible while book four takes up the important topic of how to convey the truths discovered (451).  Note: Augustine is dealing with/talking about sermons that are delivered orally that are only partially composed before delivery.  The preacher may have notes, should be well-versed in Scripture and Christian doctrine, and he must be able to adapt his discourse on the spot. Wisdom, in the Platonic sense, is more important for Augustine than eloquence (wisdom equates to understanding the bible).

Augustine asserts that the preacher can not assume everyone will accept, outright, the Christian church.  In this way, it becomes important to use rhetoric to persuade people to what is actually in their best interest (Cicero, Isocrates connection).  Augustine stresses that there can be no decptioninthis persuasion; such persuasion is not true turning towards (conversion) but coercion (so here is a break with Quintillian).

Augustine, like Cicero, sees three offices for rhetoric: pleasing, teaching, and moving to action.  The appeal of Christianity at this time is its more democratic ideals, and Augustine is dealing with a more diverse audience than Cicero at this time.  In contrast to Cicero, Augustine emphasized the truth of Christian doctrine over the plausibility of future action.  Through this, rhetoric is given the heavy responsibility of assisting divine grace, and therefore, many scholars do not see Augustine as arguing for the evil of the Second Sophistic as pruning its excesses.

Augustine believes in using a rhetoric based in wisdom (aka “Truth” captial”T” intended) that will allow the preacher to speak persuasively and interpret the true meaning of the writers of the Bible.  Scripture is hard reading, and it is a task that provides enjoyment for its completion and in finding the truthofthe text.  It is also a way to correct human sin of pride.  Logic is privileged in his system over disputation because logic allows the individual to see the pre-existing truthGodalready laid out; Sophistic disputation (forensic rhetoric?) is dangerous as it allows falsehood to become truth through the speaker’s words.  Augustine recovers classical learning by saying it’s alright to use it, which is in contrast to his predecessors since they used such scholarship but publicly denounced it as paganism (Augustine seems to have an affinity for Plato).

“Augustine employs Cicero’s conception of the three offices of rhetoric and also of the three levels of style.  He fuses these categories more neatly than Cicero does…The Christian orator should use subdued style to teach, temperate style to “condemn or praise,” and grand style when he wants to move to action” (454).

Augustine has no qualms withplagiarism.  Truth is the not the individual’s, but God’s, and so one preacher may read and use another’sworksince no one person can lay claim to true exegesis of Scripture.  Good words that persuade the masses to what is right is part of the collective commons.

The first half of the text, which is Book IV, expounds the connection between wisdom and eloquence.  When one has been blessed, through research, work and prayer, with the true meaning of Scripture, than he is able to speak wisely about divine word, and therefore, in his understanding can speak eloquently because he knows the simplest but most persuasive words to convey this truth to the congregation.

It seems that Augustine is pressing the Bible as the ultimate model for eloquence, once it is properly understood.  This wisdom has been written by men, but men who have been given Divine Grace.  The orator/preacher is the conduit.

Para 31: The pruning of the Second Sophistic (468).

Para 33: The importance of rules and teaching, of guidance, of being prepared (469).

Para 34: Underlined.  The articulation of the synopsis (469).

Para 38: The three registers of discourse as called out in the synopsis (underlined 471).

“[T]hesethreestyles can be found scattered through their many writings and treatises, and can, through abundant reading and hearing, with the addition of practice, become engrafted in students’ minds” (478).  Even though Augustine opens this book saying rhetorical training is something that this text will not cover, he is still covering issues of style/eloquence as they matter within Scripture and preaching.  So, I don’t think he would see this as rhetorical training but as professional training for the up and coming clergyman.  Is this a moment of the professionalization of the clergy?  A codification and licensing of clergy who are officially licensed by the orthodox church to teach the masses?

All orations should use to use all three purposes of oratory and use all three registers to lead the masses to the truth as given by Scripture.  ”[U]nlessthespeaker can makes himself both understood and enjoyed, he cannot make himself persuasive” (482). 

Para 62: Section on the collective commons of good words which move people to good living, ie, there is no such thing as plagiarism (485).

Boethius

Boethius was a Christian scholar who served in Theodoric the Great’scourt.  Theodoric was an Ostrogothwho ruled Rome after the fall of the last Roman Emperor.  Boethius was a philosopher who was in charge of education Theodoric’s family and was eventually put to deathundersuspicion of colluding with the Byzantine empire to overthrow Theodoric. 

Boethius is considered important to rhetorical theory although he thought little of rhetoric, and described himself as a philosopher practicing philosophic argument, or dialectic (see a full explanation on 486 in the bracketed section).  For Boethius rhetoric is subordinate to dialectic; rhetoric has no epistemological force of its own and becomes the means of applying general rules of argumentation that have been established by dialectic.  This means no knowledge can be generated through rhetoric (out Aristotling Aristotle).  This colors Boethius’ description of rhetoric.  In “Overview of the Structure of Rhetoric”, Boethius “barely mentions style, memory, and delivery, giving the reader very little sense of how rhetoric might be used to affect an audience” (487).  He sees rhetoric’s purpose in Ciceronian fashion in that it should teach and move, but he “omits the third duty…namely ‘to please’” (487).

An Overview of the Structure of Rhetoric

The texts seems a rehash of stasis theory.  The language is very cyclical, and reads like the classic “A Friend is a Friend” essay that uses nothing more than maxims to define friendship.

Anonymous

A basic overview of the history of letter writing.  Letter writing was an important genre, and much like the Egyptian rhetoricsdiscussed with Lipson, these texts were meant to be read aloud.  Also, the letter was had to follow strict rhetorical moves to ensure that the intention and views of the ruler were understood and made abundantly clear.  Due to the aural status of the genre, monks like Alberic of Monte Cassino connected the art to Cicero’s ideas about the form of spoken orations (see 493 for more info).  Over time, rhetoric was taught solely in this discipline.  As the discipline of letter writing was absorbed into law, it became exceptionally formulaic.

From The Principles of Letter Writing

This text displays the formulaic quality mentioned above.  Much of the text consists of writing the appropriate salutations (all of which would be in Latin, it seems).  The types of verbs to use, titles to mention, and emotions to evoke through word choice and motive are all discussed at length here.  Most interesting is the small section page 502, “The Securing of Goodwill.”  In this section there is even advice how to not secure goodwill but to invoke animosity (see underlined section in text).  By the end of this section the importance of the salutation is brought up once again, since the writer(s) point out most goodwill can be garnered through a salutation which honors the receiver of the letter through the use of titles and politeness strategies germane to the receiver’s social status.

Christine de Pizan

Women involved in rhetoric does not have to mean women writing treatises on rhetoric.  The definition can be broadened to mean women concerned with the education of women and “how they should use language at court and in other walks of life” (Glenn qtd. in Bizzell and Herzberg 540).  The first of such women to meet such a definition of rhetoric is Christine de Pizan. 

Pizan’s father was the astrologer and physician to King Charles V of France.  She was educated by her father and other court tutors.  Pizan acquired literacy in Italian, French, and Latin; knew some classical texts in their vernacular translations; and was aware of the scholarly discourse of the middle ages.  She married one of Charles’ legal secretaries, and learned the conventions and rhetorical moves of  legal/royal letter writing (ars dictaminis) from him.

After the death of her father, husband, and patron-king, Pizan became a letter writer and active critic (see the Quarrel of the Rose 541) and eventually found paying work as the historian for Charles V’s reign.  From there she began producing texts arguing for women’s rights and recogniton of the roles in soceity (541-542), and because of this is often seen as a protofeminist.  Along the way she invents the genre of autobiography and is the first to voice socially conscious criticism concerning gender; Pizan saw gender as a social construction leveraged by men to create an exclusively female social–and economic–underclass (demonstrated in the texts excerpted in The Rhetorical Tradition).

While all the character constructions of Pizan’s texts are involved in the secular and civic world (Dame Reason, Worldly Prudence–counter to the tradition of intelligent women turning to convent life in fiction and reality) they are also often working behind the scenes  and using persuasive lanugae to move men to action. The advice often extended to imagined female readers of thesetextsis realistic and practical (taking stock and pride in the roles they–women–played in civic and public life; how to use language to benefit them in a range of situations) and at the same time exceptionally conservative (Pizan points out she would have never entered into public life if not forced to; Pizandoesnot advocate for a redrawing of labor lines but recognition of the labor women already and its importance; she argues for more freedom of movement for women on the basis it was needed to take care of daily familial business) (542-543).  Still, she is considered the beginning of the Renaissance humanist movement and an important figure within feminist rhetorical studies; however, her lack of a explicit concern with rhetoric and lack of education in the classics often brackets her from being labelled a Renaissance humanist (543).

In The Book of the City of Ladies, Pizan:

sets her accounts of these of these women into a discussion of socially  reinforced misogyny and the limitations it has placed on women.  In spite of these odds, as her famous examples show, women have achieved far more than their critics give them credit for.  In the passage excerpted here, Christine defends the right of women to be educated. (541)

In The Treasure of the City of Ladies, Pizan

provides instruction that will help fit women of all social ranks for inclusion in Christine’s ideal female community.  Although the same three virtues briefly appear to introduce the teachings, the main voice of instruction belongs to a character named Worldly Prudence. This choice is meant to indicate that the book will focus primarily on the active life of a woman engaged in familial and civic affairs, rather than that of one withdrawn into contemplative religion. (542)

From The Book of the City of Ladies

The first full paragraph on the second page (545) demonstrates Pizan’s conservative nature; the section bracketed discusses the good and right choice of the Church limit acceptable fields of study.  It doesn’t appear ironic.

From The Treasure of the City of Ladies

Page 546: The first full paragraph in the second column is a good example of a female rhetorworkingbehind the scenes and using language to persuade those in power to do what is ethically right.

“Since the good lady…”(547).  This seems an example of the good woman trained well in speaking.  The ideal woman is what Pizan is constantly forwarding in this text.

Part Two explains the pitfalls of language, whereas part one dealt with how to language persuasively.  Slander is the worst thing that happens in this set up; the worst part is that it reflects poorly on the speaker practicing slander (549 bracketed).  

550 serves as the marker that this section is a practical way to navigate life at court.  This echos the section of the summary.

Rhetoric Retold

Cheryl Glenn

Chapter Three:

“Medieval Rhetoric: Pagan Roots, Christian Flowering, or Veiled Voices in the Medieval Rhetorical Tradition.”

Glenn opens with an interesting and articulate statement about what rhetoric meant to Aristotle and Plato, continues on with how Christianity appropriated pagan rhetoric for its own end, and then explains how medieval rhetoric actually worked to disenfranchise both men and women, but especially women, by limiting its practitioners to men of the clergy. At the end of the intro she explains several women did contribute to rhetorical theory and practices in an indirect fashion.

Two such figures would be Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe. Through their inclusive mysticism they created a feminine rhetorical power based on religious devotion and fervor that allowed them to speak about the world in ways that still matched the epistemology of their world. Through their literay activity, they provided the most important texts of the Middle Ages, “mystical treatises, available to all in the vernacular” (117).

“Bolstered by their Christian faith, these women (Julian and Kempe) inscribe the rhetorical tradition in new ways: they break their silence, speak in the vernacular, as women, and reach women and men of all classes” (75).

Page 76-77 list the work/social roles women participate in that Pizan argued should be recognized. On 77 there is an interesting note: lineage (and therefore rights to titles and wealth?) is passed through women, not men.

78 through 79 Glenn discusses religion at this time, and its propensity towards misogyny. She equates Augustine’s ideas about exegesis and hermeneutics to the ability to take from pagan culture without fear of damnation, and especially any ideas or concepts that “justify the terms of human (in)equality” (78). Glenn also points out that Christ protected and healed men and women alike, which would point to the concept of an egalitarian social system devoid of division based on sex. Unfortunately, this concept was filtered by the social mores of this time, and only women who desexed themselves through devotion to the Church (nuns) was a woman able to receive such treatment in the material world. A woman who did not desex was offered the promise of a better society “‘in Christ,’ not the real world” (78).

This meant a huge amount of power in monastic life (running convents financially and socially) but still meant a denial of participation in dealing with the more esoteric practices of church philosophy. This lack of accessibility meant the creation and recreation of a worldview which constantly pejoritized woman.

This pejoritized woman was reified by the character constructions floating around at the time.  All fictional women were “emotional creature[s]” who were “inherently weaker than and inferior to rational man” (87). 

God becomes the Word, that is, language itself.  Rhetoric becomes the way to defend the Church from pagans and heretics.  So, although the Church looked down on pagan rhetoric, it was still motivated to appropriate Rhetorica as a way to become mobile, persuasive, and defensible. “Christianity, about words, their interpretation, belief, and practice, colored all intellectual activity including each of the several liberal arts” (88).

“In the better convent schools, women learned the trivium, the Holy Scripture, the Fathers, and music.  Because of Church-supported educational opportunities, nearly all the medieval women in rhetoric were convent educated; all of them were religious women” (92). 

Julian and Kempe’s work should be literature as viewed by Burke, that is, well executed rhetoric.  In this way, there is an amount of authorial intention and self-determination we can give to the writers since they can be interpreted as rhetoricians working in a specific, limiting rhetorical situation.