Holy Sonnet 14, John Donne

I just love this sonnet. I will not even attempt to explain it.

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

The Best Way is Tolerance

Or is it?

"What is culpable is when those whose life is different and who abhor the deeds of the wicked are nevertheless indulgent to the sins of others, which they ought to reprehend and reprove, because they are concerned to avoid giving offense to them, in case they should harm themselves in respect of things which may be rightly and innocently enjoyed by good men, but which they desire more than is right for those who are strangers in this world and who fix their hope on the heavenly county." City of God, Book I, Chapter 9

Plainly, living one's own life in peace and isolation without regard to the actions of those around you, is not the answer. At least from Augustine's point of view. As a great example, I remember Lot and his tolerance of his neighbours in Sodom and Gomorrah.

And Life's Wheel Turns Upon its Axis

I have never liked Chaucer. But, since I have pretensions to being a medievalist, I decided I owed it to his eminence that I at least read the Canterbury Tales. Oddly enough, I find they are an excellent read. I don't particularly enjoy the stories per se. They are crude, lewd, and enough of the humor is based on a thorough understanding of their world that I miss at least half of them. However, withal, the stories are engaging, and the poetry is catchy.

There are, moreover, two reasons why I am enjoying Chaucer. First, they are an excellent cure for condemnation of the present in favor of the past. I read xanga's featured blogs, they tell me how the world battles with feminism, racism, abuse, and sexual matters of all kinds. They show me that a major chunk of the world finds bodily function humor simply to die for and would choose the $10 dollar Hollywood flick over a good book any day, and cannot seem to fathom that sex may be a private matter. I read them, and I am tempted to think, "ugh, modern culture is a puerile joke, how could we come to this?! If only we had a predominately Christian culture this would never happen!" Well, first, given aside the fact that I keep reading featured xanga blogs, so that makes me party to it, the old world, the predominately culturally Christian one of medieval England is, almost without exception, made up of people exactly like us. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are full of bedroom humor, bathroom humor, and good humor. The Wife of Bath preaches the doctrine of husband management--surely she is qualified having caught, pleased, and left five. The Miller tells a tale of the idiot carpenter who's wife betrays him for the love of the parish priest. The Carpenter in the group gets upset and tells a worse tale of similar vein, and the Knight leads off with a tale of two boys who love each other like brothers, until they fall for the same girl, and eventually, kill each other to win her. The characters are by turns, merry, petty, brave, cowardly, spiteful, and given to joking and considering all the concepts we struggle with today, from feminism to homosexuality. They remind me that it is not era you are in that dictates what you can do and how you should live. All era's are tainted by sin, and for better or for worse, humankind returns to the same sins over and over again. If the Evangelical church swept across America and all converted, we would still have bad comedy-because there will always be human. So, it makes no good for me to pine for the old days when Christ and learning were at the fore, or to pine for the future when we will win or lose this fight for a "Christian culture" (whatever that actually is) but, to do my best in the time and era I have been placed in.

The Second Reason I like Chaucer is less deep. He has a genius for identifying people thoroughly and vividly. In three lines he can give you a picture of both an icon from a prior age who is yet an individual character in his own right. This gives him the play to mock the stereotype while still keeping familiar affections for his character. The Wife of Bath is of questionable virtue, but she is an endearing woman in all of it. This type of satire tutors me in charity. It is all well and good to pillory a bad ideology or group, but within every group there is a trace or tendency of good, and as an author or poet it is as much or more my duty to find that kernel of goodness and make much of it even as I try to undermine the evil. Straight satire may be cathartic, but will it hold true throughout the centuries? Is it winsome enough to snare the attentions of the audience beyond making them merely snicker at folly?

Here closeth a fount of thoughts upon Chaucer.

Explicating Elliot (part 1.1)

I made the mistake of asking a very good friend what I should write about, and she, blessed me with the assignment of writing on any section of T.S. Elliot's Four Quartets. Being a literalist, I took the first part of the first section. Over time, I hope to do the whole work.

I do not understand Elliot. I would like to meet someone who does. It could be a very enlightening experience. Burnt Norton, Section 1, seems to be a long explanation on the relationship of time and memory. He begins with "time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future." He is collating all of time and experience into the present experience and memory of the individual. In this combination of time past, present, and future, "what might have been an abstraction.../What might have been and what has been/Point to one end, which is always present." In other words, all that was, is, and will be, can be captured in the memory and treated, not as a speculation or an abstraction, but what actually Is. I don't consider it too far a leap to posit that he is setting up a field by which things can be evaluated not by the traits one can casually observe, but rather by their Form. Not quite in the manner of the Platonic Form, but similar, but their Divine Essence. This may be a difference with no true distinction, but that is what you get for asking a disciple of the literary cannon to speak on a Master.

Once time and space are one, Elliot moves into the castle of his own creation. He steps into memory "Footfalls echo in the memory/Down the passage which we did not take/Towards the door we never opened/Into the rose garden." Elliot's use of rose imagery is its own tome. Here, he uses his oneness of time to explore all the everything that might have been. I think, he chose a rose garden as a place of protection and as the stepping stone to divine understanding and favor a la Dante's ascension to Paradise. Like Dante, Elliot, once in the memory fears to enter fully. "What am I doing?" "Is this worth it?" Seem to be the questions at hand. If I am going to knock on heaven's door, "disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves" am I doing it with the right questions? For the right purpose?

But, like Hansel and Gretel following a bird to salvation, so Elliot follows a bird into the garden in pursuit of an as-yet-unknown prize. Once committed to the chase, the author seem to enter a Dantean labyrinth of symbolism and ever-increasing understanding. At the first level of understanding he is faced with a thrush. Thrush are practical, common birds, with no great virtue to them, except a talent for survival. They are birds known for placing their eggs in the nests of other, more industrious birds, to be raised by them. Here "into the first world" let us take the thrush to symbolize a pragmatic, common-sense, human understanding of the world. They answer the question, "but how does it help me?"

The second level is past the rush for one's own gain, "there they were, dignified, invisible/Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves/In the autumn heat." No bird is mentioned at this level, yet there is a significant season. Autumn is the time when the earth begins to die yet before the world must fight for survival in winter. A warm autumn is a time of no great growth, yet no great threat. In this season, man can simply exist, drift, without the undignified scramble for gain or understanding. This is the level of blase meditation with no urgency for an answer.

The third level is an area of aesthetic delight yet no understanding. The bird summons us to "unheard music hidden in the shrubbery/And the unseen eyebeams crossed, for the roses./Had the look of flowers that are looked at." At this level, the individual cares for an appreciates beauty, but he appreciates it with no knowledge of what it is about it that is lovely. The flowers are beautiful, for they delight to be looked at, and the music hidden in the shrubbery is sweet, but no one can truly hear it. Art is merely accepting and accepted with no real effort made or received to fathom the wealth of Beauty. The observer is content to leave the music in the bushes and merely gaze upon the roses.

The fourth level is perhaps the most complicated. Here is the seeker observes structure, form, a pattern for beauty. Yet, rather than one form and pattern, it is all forms and patterns played upon each other in all their fullness, "and they, in a formal pattern,/Along the empty valley, into the box circle." The end of this maze of form and meaning is an aesthetic conundrum, "Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,/And the pool was filled with water and out of sunlight,/And the lotus rose, quietly, quietly." Is it a secret that the lotus, the symbol of ultimate revelation stands at the heart of this picture of a barren well and a well full to overflowing? It seems as if at the center of all understanding, one must come to grips with the secret of peace in the midst of waste and plenty. This pool, at once so dry and so full, is the true home of the lotus of wisdom, and only by learning the lessons of both are were rewarded with the sight of it. Is this the last level? I don't think so, but it is the last for now.

For the bird bids us away, we are being watched, "for the leaves were full of children,/Hidden excitedly, containing laughter." Remember, we are still in the memory. One might be tempted to think that our own speculations are private, they bear no witness but our own, yet this reminder of the bird hints at the cloud of witnesses that surround every thought and action. Even more, these are children that surround us. Is it too much of a leap to say that this word of the bird, "human kind/Cannot bear very much reality" is a warning for man to be careful how far he goes within himself to seek wisdom lest he forever give up his chance to learn "like a little child?"

After having dug deep into the mind and heart for the path to wisdom, Elliot returns to reality with a restatement of his collation of time and space, but, with an interesting twist. "Time past and time future/What might have been and what has been/Point to one end, which is always present." What was an is, do not merely have the potential to come together, but, rather, all of time has and always will point to one single end--the present.

There, that is a students attempt to make sense of Burnt Norton, Part 1. Full text is below for the curious.

Burnt Norton, Section 1

I

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

A Child for Victory

Agamemnon, sacker of Troy--he lives in history as a a Conqueror. Yet, also, he bears a more shameful legacy. He is the man that was told by the gods that he could not sail for Troy until he had offered the perfect sacrifice. For this honor, he chose his daughter, Iphigenia. Luring her to the beach with a promise of marriage, he married her to Death. The end of the story comes soon after the Trojan hiatus. Agamemnon returns from the wars only to be murdered by his wife, Clytaemnestra, in vengeance for the death of her daughter.

Her fury is eloquently stated in the line, "Memory womb of Fury child-avenging Fury!" For the memory her body bears Iphigenia the mother, Clytaemnestra would commit murder, overset tradition, and bear herself as a man. And history condemns her for it. Yet in all her evil, there is an edge of proper fury, of righteous anger, of a mother wounded and at bay. The rage of a mother whose child was unjustly betrayed and murdered for a lesser cause--victory.

As the world's womb has aged has it lost it's memory? Women have always murdered their own children, yet now, throughout the world, infants are being sacrificed for victory. Save the environement, decrease the surplus population! Save the state, decrease the cost of the unproductive! Save the woman, decrease her burden in the home. Let us lure our children to the beach with the promise of birth and instead give them a birth to death. Where is the mother's fury at this betrayal of her world that murders her children?

Aware: D. H. Lawrence

Slowly the moon is rising out of the muddy haze,
Divesting herself of her golden shift, and so
Emerging white and exquisite; and I in amaze
See in the sky before me, a woman I did not know
I loved, but there she goes, and her beauty hurts my heart;
I follow her down the night, begging her not to depart.

The Art Makes the Man

Timothy Zahn, perhaps the best of the authors in the Star Wars Cannon, presents us with a very interesting character--Grand Admiral Thrawn. One of the quirks of this character is that his military genius comes from his ability to detect the strengths and weaknesses of a culture by studying and understanding their art. I used to view this hypothesis--the art portrays the cultural soul of the culture--with a sort of admiring skepticism. "Nice idea, plausible enough for fiction, but no one could ever do that in real life." Then, I started reading Paul Johnson's "Art: A New History." In it, he explores the mores of the various cultures as logical extensions of their art. Unfortunately, I am only at the Romans at the moment, so I can't expand the thought too far at this point, but don't worry, more is coming. And his arguments today seem sound. Such as, Egyptian art shows the strong divides between classes as each strata of society had very specific rules as to how they could be portrayed in art. Religion was the center of life--the most rigerous outpourings of artistic endeaver were wrapped around religious iconography. Even dishes of workers were inscribed with the symbols of gods and goddesses. Contrast the Egyptians with the Medes and Persians, who swept through the ancient world assimilating and conquering numerous countries, their art is a collection and incorporation of all the cultures they met. Contrast this to the Babylonian Empire. Their art varies with each king, as kings were replaced quickly by bloody revolution and each new king was anxious to seperate his mark from the previous regime. Similarly, their sculptures and mosaics were all about showing the fierceness and power of the king, no time or motive for grace and gentleness in these kings of Babylon.

It is a fascinating question, "how much can visual art tell about a people?" And, I find myself wondering, what other artistic venues could you use to find the "pulse" of a society? I have also thought that a cultures fairy tales would reveal its soul, but, again this is an ancient venue. Societies have moved from producing fairy tales to endlessly repeating them, whereas visual art still is created. So, question for the reader, do you think American Society is united enough that you could find the "soul" of the American people in our modern art? And do you think there is a specific venue of written literature that could provide this same purpose?