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from The Reed of God by Caryll Houselander:
I knew once the primmest old invalid lady who could well have offered her helplessness to God but had a grievance with Him because He had not permitted her to be eaten by a cannibal for the Faith; she could not accept herself as a sick woman but she would have achieved heroic virtue as a cutlet!
Seems quite clear to me...
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Showing posts with label Caryll Houselander. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Caryll Houselander. Show all posts
Monday, February 7, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Reflections: The Banality of Fear
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Yesterday I posted some thoughts of the religious writer, Caryll Houselander, on the subject of existential fear. Today I am going to share some words, from his novel The MacGuffin, by contemporary writer of fiction, Stanley Elkin. I found these passages—upon reading them this morning—to be expressive of the kind of pervasive, low-volume, fear with which most of us live our day-to-day lives. Hannah Arendt, an acolyte of the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, famously coined the term “the banality of evil.” I have found Stanley Elkin to be a master at writing about the banality of fear. I was struck by the coincidence of Houselander’s use of the medical reception room as a locus of our fear in the excerpt from The Reed of God which I posted yesterday, and Elkin’s portrayal of the tailor shop dressing room in which his character, Druff, finds himself as “vaguely medical.” Druff is suffused with a kind of underlying fear, or paranoia, which flavors his every thought, as we follow him through his day in this novel:
xxx“Better try it on, “ the salesman said, “before my tailor goes to lunch.”
xxxDruff following him to the tiny, flimsily contained dressing room with its hard little bench, shallow as a bookshelf, where the man handed over Druffs purchase and left him, the venue suddenly, subtly shifted, vaguely medical now, as though Druff had been called in for devastating examinations, something unforeseen popped up in the blood, the stool. (And this, well, aura, too, like a stall in the gents’ in a restaurant. Something he couldn’t think of as private property, yet understood—from his jacket on the hook on the wall there, like some flag slammed into enemy terrain in a battle—to be his as surely as if blood had been spilled for it, the front lines of the personal here, hallowed ground for sure, if only because of the men who’d occupied it before him, but not so hallowed he didn’t resent them, their collective spoor and lingering flatulence.)
Amazing how closely Elkin’s words echo Houselander’s there.
Druff’s fears are summed up as follows:
xxxDruff’s suit, as his heart had known in advance, did not look good on him. It didn’t. (Druff humiliated by his hologram in the three-way mirror, the comings and goings of his balding, frailing self like a body knocked down on an auction block, going going gone. His image there telling as a CAT scan—of shabby old mortality and downscale being.
Again, the parallels with the passages from Houselander are striking. This is the human condition. And it is the universal human project—the vocation of each individual human lifetime—to learn how to overcome the banality of this existence, as endured in somnambulant passivity.
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Yesterday I posted some thoughts of the religious writer, Caryll Houselander, on the subject of existential fear. Today I am going to share some words, from his novel The MacGuffin, by contemporary writer of fiction, Stanley Elkin. I found these passages—upon reading them this morning—to be expressive of the kind of pervasive, low-volume, fear with which most of us live our day-to-day lives. Hannah Arendt, an acolyte of the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, famously coined the term “the banality of evil.” I have found Stanley Elkin to be a master at writing about the banality of fear. I was struck by the coincidence of Houselander’s use of the medical reception room as a locus of our fear in the excerpt from The Reed of God which I posted yesterday, and Elkin’s portrayal of the tailor shop dressing room in which his character, Druff, finds himself as “vaguely medical.” Druff is suffused with a kind of underlying fear, or paranoia, which flavors his every thought, as we follow him through his day in this novel:
xxx“Better try it on, “ the salesman said, “before my tailor goes to lunch.”
xxxDruff following him to the tiny, flimsily contained dressing room with its hard little bench, shallow as a bookshelf, where the man handed over Druffs purchase and left him, the venue suddenly, subtly shifted, vaguely medical now, as though Druff had been called in for devastating examinations, something unforeseen popped up in the blood, the stool. (And this, well, aura, too, like a stall in the gents’ in a restaurant. Something he couldn’t think of as private property, yet understood—from his jacket on the hook on the wall there, like some flag slammed into enemy terrain in a battle—to be his as surely as if blood had been spilled for it, the front lines of the personal here, hallowed ground for sure, if only because of the men who’d occupied it before him, but not so hallowed he didn’t resent them, their collective spoor and lingering flatulence.)
Amazing how closely Elkin’s words echo Houselander’s there.
Druff’s fears are summed up as follows:
xxxDruff’s suit, as his heart had known in advance, did not look good on him. It didn’t. (Druff humiliated by his hologram in the three-way mirror, the comings and goings of his balding, frailing self like a body knocked down on an auction block, going going gone. His image there telling as a CAT scan—of shabby old mortality and downscale being.
Again, the parallels with the passages from Houselander are striking. This is the human condition. And it is the universal human project—the vocation of each individual human lifetime—to learn how to overcome the banality of this existence, as endured in somnambulant passivity.
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Saturday, February 5, 2011
Readings: Such Ills as the Flesh is Heir To
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I find that these words of Caryll Houselander cover it all, from soup to nuts:
xxxWe are afraid of birth, of the pain, the crudity, the fierceness of birth, of the responsibility of the new life.
xxxWe are afraid of life, of its continual demand on us, of its continual challenge to us: we are afraid of pain, of sickness, and of the pains and sickness of others.
xxxWho does not know the hard anguish of waiting in the specialist’s reception room for the verdict on someone dear to us, the dreadful certainty of the verdicts of modern science, the blood-test and the X-ray?
xxxAnd the fevers of little children: the bright blackness of the eyes, the mouths burning suddenly like malignant dark flowers, and the dreaded six-o’clock, when we must look at the thermometer and we dare not look!
xxxWho has not known fear of the death that comes slowly to old people, old people who are dear to us and who die, or seem to die, in little bits.
xxxAnd who does not know the fear of loneliness and poverty in old age?
What’s that? This is not you, you say? Right. Okay. Whatever you say. And you never lie; and you never masturbate, either – do you, Sparky? Wait. There's more:
xxxThen there is the daily, petty fear; fear of losing a hated job--a job that cramps and constricts the heart but which means the four walls of home, the food and warmth for the little family--fear that moves in a vicious circle, making us hate because we cringe and cringe because we hate.
Is that a little closer to home? If not, hey--I've got some water I'd like you to walk on. We can put it YouTube and go viral together.
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I find that these words of Caryll Houselander cover it all, from soup to nuts:
xxxWe are afraid of birth, of the pain, the crudity, the fierceness of birth, of the responsibility of the new life.
xxxWe are afraid of life, of its continual demand on us, of its continual challenge to us: we are afraid of pain, of sickness, and of the pains and sickness of others.
xxxWho does not know the hard anguish of waiting in the specialist’s reception room for the verdict on someone dear to us, the dreadful certainty of the verdicts of modern science, the blood-test and the X-ray?
xxxAnd the fevers of little children: the bright blackness of the eyes, the mouths burning suddenly like malignant dark flowers, and the dreaded six-o’clock, when we must look at the thermometer and we dare not look!
xxxWho has not known fear of the death that comes slowly to old people, old people who are dear to us and who die, or seem to die, in little bits.
xxxAnd who does not know the fear of loneliness and poverty in old age?
What’s that? This is not you, you say? Right. Okay. Whatever you say. And you never lie; and you never masturbate, either – do you, Sparky? Wait. There's more:
xxxThen there is the daily, petty fear; fear of losing a hated job--a job that cramps and constricts the heart but which means the four walls of home, the food and warmth for the little family--fear that moves in a vicious circle, making us hate because we cringe and cringe because we hate.
Is that a little closer to home? If not, hey--I've got some water I'd like you to walk on. We can put it YouTube and go viral together.
XX
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Reflections: Too Little Seen As Too Much
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Some weeks back, in the course of a discussion about my favorite modern religious philosopher, Simone Weil, Pentimento suggested to me that since I liked Weil, I would probably also appreciate the writings of Caryll Houselander. I seldom ignore book recommendations from persons for whom I have great respect, so I put the name of Houselander at the top of my “to read” list.
This past week I was able to have Houselander’s Marian contemplation, The Reed of God, delivered from the Annex facility of the library in which I work to the main campus, so that I could bring it home and read it. I began to do that this morning. Here, from the Houselander’s Introduction, is an excerpt that immediately caught my attention:
How dear to us St. Catherine of Sienna is, because she loved her garden, because she made up little verses and gilded tiny oranges to humor a difficult Pope. How close she comes to us in her friendships: in the motley company of poets, politicians, soldiers, priests, and brigands; men who idolized her; and not only men, for St. Catherine was not only the most dynamic woman in history but also the best friend to other women that ever lived. Such things almost make us forget that she was fiercely ascetic, that for years she was fed only on the Blessed Sacrament, and that she was an ecstatic: her agony for the world’s sin is hidden under the beautiful cloak of her love for sinners.
“…she was fiercely ascetic…” yet she befriended all kinds of worldly men. Fiercely ascetic, yet she functioned in the world with her sacrifices “hidden under [a] beautiful cloak of love… ” This is a mode of existence for which I have boundless respect.
After a youth and early maturity of hedonistic excess, I have found a certain amount of comfort in the practice of a kind of mild asceticism. I no longer eat for pleasure or entertainment, for instance, but only for nutrition. And I find that in eating a minimal amount of very plain but nutritious food I enjoy my meals much more than I did when what I was consuming was smothered in rich sauces and dripping with fat in its over-abundance. I rise at 4 AM on most days, in order to have quiet time to read and write, or just to think, or pray. I will not provide an extensive catalog of such behaviors here. I cite these few examples only because I have found that people seem to resent such behavior if I happen to mention it. It seems to anger them, as though the way I choose to live is somehow a condemnation of their own lifestyle choices.
It may be that St. Catherine of Sienna had good reasons, other than just not blowing her own horn, to play her ascesis close to the vest.
This past week I was able to have Houselander’s Marian contemplation, The Reed of God, delivered from the Annex facility of the library in which I work to the main campus, so that I could bring it home and read it. I began to do that this morning. Here, from the Houselander’s Introduction, is an excerpt that immediately caught my attention:
How dear to us St. Catherine of Sienna is, because she loved her garden, because she made up little verses and gilded tiny oranges to humor a difficult Pope. How close she comes to us in her friendships: in the motley company of poets, politicians, soldiers, priests, and brigands; men who idolized her; and not only men, for St. Catherine was not only the most dynamic woman in history but also the best friend to other women that ever lived. Such things almost make us forget that she was fiercely ascetic, that for years she was fed only on the Blessed Sacrament, and that she was an ecstatic: her agony for the world’s sin is hidden under the beautiful cloak of her love for sinners.
“…she was fiercely ascetic…” yet she befriended all kinds of worldly men. Fiercely ascetic, yet she functioned in the world with her sacrifices “hidden under [a] beautiful cloak of love… ” This is a mode of existence for which I have boundless respect.
After a youth and early maturity of hedonistic excess, I have found a certain amount of comfort in the practice of a kind of mild asceticism. I no longer eat for pleasure or entertainment, for instance, but only for nutrition. And I find that in eating a minimal amount of very plain but nutritious food I enjoy my meals much more than I did when what I was consuming was smothered in rich sauces and dripping with fat in its over-abundance. I rise at 4 AM on most days, in order to have quiet time to read and write, or just to think, or pray. I will not provide an extensive catalog of such behaviors here. I cite these few examples only because I have found that people seem to resent such behavior if I happen to mention it. It seems to anger them, as though the way I choose to live is somehow a condemnation of their own lifestyle choices.
It may be that St. Catherine of Sienna had good reasons, other than just not blowing her own horn, to play her ascesis close to the vest.
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