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This afternoon I finished reading G. K. Chesterton's novel, The Man Who Was Thursday. As a mini-review, I must say that I do not find the book to be nearly as clever or entertaining as hardcore Chesterton groupies declare it to be; but at least this time I did finish it.
While damning it with that very faint praise, I will nonethless share a couple of excerpts gleaned from this reading, each of which I find to contain a large grain of truth.
The first is spoken by one of the "detectives," Ratcliffe, to the central protagonist, Syme:
"Mere mobs!" repeated his new friend with a snort of scorn. "So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than any one else in there being some decent Government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. [p.190]
"The poor man really has a stake in the country." You can take that to the bank (if you still trust the banks.) One might want to consider this speech in the light of the anti-government agitation being conducted 24/7 by the current breed of conservatives/fascists/lackies-of-the-rich.
The second excerpt is short, to the point, and spoken by Syme himself:
When duty and religion are really destroyed, it will be by the rich. [p.210]
Clearly, conservatism was an altogether different beast in turn-of-the-century England than it is in turn-of-the-new-century America.
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Showing posts with label G.K. Chesterton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label G.K. Chesterton. Show all posts
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Readings: Black Swan Rising
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Last night, for the first time in a long time, I took from the shelf The Gary Snyder Reader. In a prose piece about a trip to Australia, Snyder relates the following anecdote, spoken by one of his traveling companions, John Stokes, during a discussion of the disappearance of a baby from a public campground which had been big news the year before:
Stokes then reports what [poet] Robert Bly said at a talk in Adelaide. Bly was commenting on the thirteen young women who all mysteriously disappeared from a picnic at Hanging Rock in the 1890s. No one found out what happened to any of them. Bly says, “You want to know what happened to the girls at Hanging Rock? Because you Australians won’t give the aborigines their land back, your women are going to disappear. What happens then? They turn into black swans and the black swans turn into B52s. How do I know? Because that’s what happened in America.” Very useful commentary, Mr. Bly.
Indeed. I can make use of that by relating it to this quote from G.K. Chesterton’s novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, which I am also currently reading:
Like any man, [Syme] was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it.
Neither, one suspects, was Crazy Horse. Pray for Virginia Dare.
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Last night, for the first time in a long time, I took from the shelf The Gary Snyder Reader. In a prose piece about a trip to Australia, Snyder relates the following anecdote, spoken by one of his traveling companions, John Stokes, during a discussion of the disappearance of a baby from a public campground which had been big news the year before:
Stokes then reports what [poet] Robert Bly said at a talk in Adelaide. Bly was commenting on the thirteen young women who all mysteriously disappeared from a picnic at Hanging Rock in the 1890s. No one found out what happened to any of them. Bly says, “You want to know what happened to the girls at Hanging Rock? Because you Australians won’t give the aborigines their land back, your women are going to disappear. What happens then? They turn into black swans and the black swans turn into B52s. How do I know? Because that’s what happened in America.” Very useful commentary, Mr. Bly.
Indeed. I can make use of that by relating it to this quote from G.K. Chesterton’s novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, which I am also currently reading:
Like any man, [Syme] was coward enough to fear great force; but he was not quite coward enough to admire it.
Neither, one suspects, was Crazy Horse. Pray for Virginia Dare.
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Saturday, July 5, 2008
Retractions: Outing a Pig in Lipstick
In December 2007, prompted by the adulation which I had frequently encountered on Catholic and other blogs, I read and enthusiastically posted on two books by British author, G. K. Chesterton -- Orthodoxy and Heretics. Beginning with a post on December 1st, and continuing with subsequent posts on December 2nd, December 5th, and finally on December 14th, I affirmed my enthusiasm for Chesterton’s prose.
Prior to reading Orthodoxy and Heretics, I had been familiar with Chesterton only through his novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, and his life of St. Francis of Assisi, both of which are in my personal library. I no longer remember what prompted me to buy The Man Who Was Thursday. As a reader of a wide range of fiction, I had probably seen the novel mentioned by some writer or critic of fiction whom I respected as being similar to the fiction of Kafka. I read the book on St. Francis strictly out of my interest in St. Francis. As a non-Catholic I had little interest in Chesterton per se. I admired his aphoristic writing style, but I knew nothing of his biography, nor of his writings other than the four books cited above. I should have been forewarned by Chesterton’s popularity with the authorial hate-mongers at What Wrong With the World that there was something wrong with Chesterton. But I must now admit, red-faced, that my guard was down.
One should never be surprised to discover that any Brit who came up during the waning days of the British Empire was a racist. Nonetheless, I was a bit taken aback when the July 7th and 14th edition of The New Yorker arrived with an article revealing Chesterton to have been a nasty and explicit anti-Semite. I suppose that it’s also the case that one should never be surprised to discover that a Catholic, especially a typically hyper-zealous and orthodox convert, is an anti-Semite. But Adam Gopnik’s article for the “A Critic at Large” feature, entitled “The Back of the World” has now caused me some embarrassment. My gushing over the pious virtues of Mr. Chesterton was badly misplaced. I had kissed a pig.
Unfortunately, the on-line version of The New Yorker does not include the full article, but you can read an abstract of it here.
Gopnik’s article, the occasion for which is to note, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of The Man Who Was Thursday, the publication of two new editions, most tellingly characterizes Chesterton’s racism with passages typified by the following:
The insistence that Chesterton’s anti-Semitism needs to be understood “in the context of this time” defines the problem, because his time – from the end of the Great War to the mid-thirties – was the time that led to the extermination of the European Jews. …He claims that he can tolerate Jews in England, but only if they are compelled to wear “Arab” clothing, to show that they are an alien nation. Hitler made a simpler demand for Jewish dress, but the ideas was the same.
Gopnik provides several instances of Chesterton’s anti-Semitism in his own words. I will let the following autobiographical excerpt stand for the rest:
… [Chesterton] writes of how he appreciates that “one of the great Jewish virtues is gratitude,” and explains that he knows this because as a kid at school “I was criticized in early days for quixotry and priggishness in protecting Jews; and I remember once extricating a strange swarthy little creature with a hooked nose from being bullied, or rather being teased.”
A strange swarthy little creature with a hooked nose: nice stuff. So much for the magisterial Catholic sage. My enthusiasm of last December is retracted. Mea culpa. Discipleship does not cancel out race hatred; it’s the other way around: Chesterton was a false prophet and a swine.
[Note: I was going to link to my previous posts on Chesterton, but have decided against it. Why shed light on my own past follies? If anybody wants to read them, he has the dates, and he will have to go to the trouble of using the archives.]
Prior to reading Orthodoxy and Heretics, I had been familiar with Chesterton only through his novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, and his life of St. Francis of Assisi, both of which are in my personal library. I no longer remember what prompted me to buy The Man Who Was Thursday. As a reader of a wide range of fiction, I had probably seen the novel mentioned by some writer or critic of fiction whom I respected as being similar to the fiction of Kafka. I read the book on St. Francis strictly out of my interest in St. Francis. As a non-Catholic I had little interest in Chesterton per se. I admired his aphoristic writing style, but I knew nothing of his biography, nor of his writings other than the four books cited above. I should have been forewarned by Chesterton’s popularity with the authorial hate-mongers at What Wrong With the World that there was something wrong with Chesterton. But I must now admit, red-faced, that my guard was down.
One should never be surprised to discover that any Brit who came up during the waning days of the British Empire was a racist. Nonetheless, I was a bit taken aback when the July 7th and 14th edition of The New Yorker arrived with an article revealing Chesterton to have been a nasty and explicit anti-Semite. I suppose that it’s also the case that one should never be surprised to discover that a Catholic, especially a typically hyper-zealous and orthodox convert, is an anti-Semite. But Adam Gopnik’s article for the “A Critic at Large” feature, entitled “The Back of the World” has now caused me some embarrassment. My gushing over the pious virtues of Mr. Chesterton was badly misplaced. I had kissed a pig.
Unfortunately, the on-line version of The New Yorker does not include the full article, but you can read an abstract of it here.
Gopnik’s article, the occasion for which is to note, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of The Man Who Was Thursday, the publication of two new editions, most tellingly characterizes Chesterton’s racism with passages typified by the following:
The insistence that Chesterton’s anti-Semitism needs to be understood “in the context of this time” defines the problem, because his time – from the end of the Great War to the mid-thirties – was the time that led to the extermination of the European Jews. …He claims that he can tolerate Jews in England, but only if they are compelled to wear “Arab” clothing, to show that they are an alien nation. Hitler made a simpler demand for Jewish dress, but the ideas was the same.
Gopnik provides several instances of Chesterton’s anti-Semitism in his own words. I will let the following autobiographical excerpt stand for the rest:
… [Chesterton] writes of how he appreciates that “one of the great Jewish virtues is gratitude,” and explains that he knows this because as a kid at school “I was criticized in early days for quixotry and priggishness in protecting Jews; and I remember once extricating a strange swarthy little creature with a hooked nose from being bullied, or rather being teased.”
A strange swarthy little creature with a hooked nose: nice stuff. So much for the magisterial Catholic sage. My enthusiasm of last December is retracted. Mea culpa. Discipleship does not cancel out race hatred; it’s the other way around: Chesterton was a false prophet and a swine.
[Note: I was going to link to my previous posts on Chesterton, but have decided against it. Why shed light on my own past follies? If anybody wants to read them, he has the dates, and he will have to go to the trouble of using the archives.]
Friday, December 14, 2007
Readings: Chesterton's HERETICS
It had not been my intention to put up any more posts on G.K. Chesterton in the near future, even though I borrowed Heretics from the library immediately upon having finished Orthodoxy. But when I came upon the passage below, from the chapter in Heretics entitled “On Mr. Rudyard Kipling”, it seemed so appropriate to our current national dilemma that I was forced to modify my game plan:
The truth is that exploration and enlargement make the world smaller. The telegraph and the steamboat make the world smaller. The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger. Before long the world will be cloven with a war between the telescopists and the microscopists. The first study large things and live in a small world; the second study small things and live in a large world. It is inspiriting without a doubt to whizz in a motor-car round the earth, to feel Arabia as a whirl of sand or China as a flash of rice-fields. But Arabia is not a whirl of sand and China is not a flash of rice-fields. They are ancient civilizations with strange virtues buried like treasures. If we wish to understand them it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. To conquer these places is to lose them. [emphasis mine]
Amen.
Readers might find it interesting to compare the above to Kyle R. Cupp’s take on Interpreting Nations on his blog, Postmodern Papist.
The truth is that exploration and enlargement make the world smaller. The telegraph and the steamboat make the world smaller. The telescope makes the world smaller; it is only the microscope that makes it larger. Before long the world will be cloven with a war between the telescopists and the microscopists. The first study large things and live in a small world; the second study small things and live in a large world. It is inspiriting without a doubt to whizz in a motor-car round the earth, to feel Arabia as a whirl of sand or China as a flash of rice-fields. But Arabia is not a whirl of sand and China is not a flash of rice-fields. They are ancient civilizations with strange virtues buried like treasures. If we wish to understand them it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. To conquer these places is to lose them. [emphasis mine]
Amen.
Readers might find it interesting to compare the above to Kyle R. Cupp’s take on Interpreting Nations on his blog, Postmodern Papist.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Readings: Good-bye to ORTHODOXY
My last post consisted of three excerpts from G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy which were controversial enough to evoke a bit of discussion in the comments section. I didn't choose them because they are controversial; they chose me by striking a sympathetic chord in my conscience. That said, I have no doubt that Chesterton meant the ideas presented by each of them to be striking, if not scandalous, to his readers. I've finished reading Orthodoxy now, but I had one last excerpt squirreled away, and I shall present it below. This one is not controversial, I think; but I like it. It describes a state of mind which, on some of my better days, I catch a rare glimpse of:
Plato told you a truth; but Plato is dead. Shakespeare has startled you
with an image; but Shakespeare will not startle you with any more. But
imagine what it would be to live with such men still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare might shatter everything with a single song. The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast. He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before.
Nice, huh?
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Readings: Chesterton's ORTHODOXY
I've been greatly enjoying my reading of G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy. His aphoristic style is a joy in itself, regardless of whether or not you agree with everything he says. I've had occasion, as I've slowly read this beautiful book, to quote from it in the comment boxes of other blogs. An excerpt from Orthodoxy used in my previous post (which provides the requisite links), elicited an appreciation from a new reader, who is also a fan of Chesterton. For all of these reasons, I thought that I would just post a few more excerpts from this great book, and sit back to see if anybody who happens to come across them is inspired to make any pertinent comments:
Nature:
The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same Father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.
(On a personal note, as an only child, I was particularly moved by this.)
Conservatism:
We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution.
The Rich:
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. ...The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. ...For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes.
Tell it like it is, G.K.
Nature:
The essence of all pantheism, evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is really in this proposition: that Nature is our mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature as a mother, you discover that she is a step-mother. The main point of Christianity was this: that Nature is not our mother: Nature is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same Father; but she has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.
(On a personal note, as an only child, I was particularly moved by this.)
Conservatism:
We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution.
The Rich:
Christianity even when watered down is hot enough to boil all modern society to rags. The mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern world is absolutely based on the assumption, not that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a Christian) is not tenable. ...The whole case for Christianity is that a man who is dependent upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, spritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all the Christian saints have said with a sort of savage monotony. They have said simply that to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to kill the rich as violators of definable justice. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich or to submit to the rich. But it is quite certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard the rich as more morally safe than the poor. ...For it is a part of Christian dogma that any man in any rank may take bribes.
Tell it like it is, G.K.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Reflections: Why I Read
As I was making the morning rounds of my regularly-visited blogs, I read a gorgeous post on Catholic and Enjoying It which begins like this:
“When Evangelicals ask me why the Church keeps holding up Mary alongside Christ, the best answer I can think of is this: There's one thing that even Jesus cannot do.
”He cannot show us what a disciple of Jesus looks like.”
Mark’s post was inspired, I believe, by the Pope’s recent encyclical. It speaks of the Virgin Mary as “the first apostle”. I was inspired by Mark’s post to submit the following comment:
“As a Protestant, let me ask, with reference to all the beautiful (no sarcasm there) writing above, how Mary is to be considered an exemplar for those of us struggling to attain discipleship?
”As the Immaculate Conception, born without Original Sin, it would seem that Mary would have had to struggle supernaturally to turn away from God; whereas the rest of humanity, born with, in effect, two strikes against it, needs to struggle supernaturally in order not to turn away from God, and this, knowing that we will continually fail. Mary never failed. She never needed to fear failure. I will. I can contemplate her with envy, but I can't do what she so effortlessly did. And I say "effortlessly" knowingly. Each and every one of us will face all of the sorrows that she faced, but we will face them as potentially damned sinners, while she faced them with full confidence of a crown and a heavenly throne for both her Son and herself, once the ordeal had been endured. We face our sorrows in hope, perhaps, in our strongest moments, but also in fear. Mary, ultimately, had nothing to fear.
It's all well and good to tell me to do what she did; but I can't do it. I am a sinner; she was not. And this sinlessness was of her essence; it is not of mine.
If Protestants don't get it, I think this, at least in part, is why.”
Having sent the above comment off, I clicked on “Home” and walked across the room from my computer to my recliner in order to pick up one of the books I am currently reading, G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.
Okay, so here is why I read:
On the very next page from where I had left off reading last night, in the chapter entitled “The Eternal Revolution”, Chesterton answers the question posed in the opening paragraph of the comment I had, only three minutes before, submitted to Mark Shea.
And here is how Chesterton does so:
“This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make may rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its own failures are fruitless. The question then becomes this: How can we keep the artist discontented with his pictures while preventing him from being vitally discontented with his art? How can we make a man always dissatisfied with his work, yet always satisfied with working?” [emphasis added]
And thus the demise of my too clever objection to Mary as the ideal for the struggling apostle. Do I thank Mark Shea? Do I thank G. K. Chesterton. Do I file it under “synchronicity”? Or do I thank something Higher?
All of the above.
“When Evangelicals ask me why the Church keeps holding up Mary alongside Christ, the best answer I can think of is this: There's one thing that even Jesus cannot do.
”He cannot show us what a disciple of Jesus looks like.”
Mark’s post was inspired, I believe, by the Pope’s recent encyclical. It speaks of the Virgin Mary as “the first apostle”. I was inspired by Mark’s post to submit the following comment:
“As a Protestant, let me ask, with reference to all the beautiful (no sarcasm there) writing above, how Mary is to be considered an exemplar for those of us struggling to attain discipleship?
”As the Immaculate Conception, born without Original Sin, it would seem that Mary would have had to struggle supernaturally to turn away from God; whereas the rest of humanity, born with, in effect, two strikes against it, needs to struggle supernaturally in order not to turn away from God, and this, knowing that we will continually fail. Mary never failed. She never needed to fear failure. I will. I can contemplate her with envy, but I can't do what she so effortlessly did. And I say "effortlessly" knowingly. Each and every one of us will face all of the sorrows that she faced, but we will face them as potentially damned sinners, while she faced them with full confidence of a crown and a heavenly throne for both her Son and herself, once the ordeal had been endured. We face our sorrows in hope, perhaps, in our strongest moments, but also in fear. Mary, ultimately, had nothing to fear.
It's all well and good to tell me to do what she did; but I can't do it. I am a sinner; she was not. And this sinlessness was of her essence; it is not of mine.
If Protestants don't get it, I think this, at least in part, is why.”
Having sent the above comment off, I clicked on “Home” and walked across the room from my computer to my recliner in order to pick up one of the books I am currently reading, G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy.
Okay, so here is why I read:
On the very next page from where I had left off reading last night, in the chapter entitled “The Eternal Revolution”, Chesterton answers the question posed in the opening paragraph of the comment I had, only three minutes before, submitted to Mark Shea.
And here is how Chesterton does so:
“This, therefore, is our first requirement about the ideal towards which progress is directed; it must be fixed. Whistler used to make may rapid studies of a sitter; it did not matter if he tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter if he looked up twenty times, and each time saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal; for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it does frightfully matter how often humanity changes its ideal; for then all its own failures are fruitless. The question then becomes this: How can we keep the artist discontented with his pictures while preventing him from being vitally discontented with his art? How can we make a man always dissatisfied with his work, yet always satisfied with working?” [emphasis added]
And thus the demise of my too clever objection to Mary as the ideal for the struggling apostle. Do I thank Mark Shea? Do I thank G. K. Chesterton. Do I file it under “synchronicity”? Or do I thank something Higher?
All of the above.
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