Friday, January 6, A.D. 2012

Thus Saith Yeats

I would like to wish everyone who follows the old calendar a lovely Christmas Eve today and a very merry Christmas tomorrow.

For those on the new calendar, may you have a blessed Epiphany today.

It is fitting to offer something mirthful on the feast, but I give you rather something sadly humorous. Last week, I found Eric Metaxas’ “Does Anyone in the Media Ever Read the Bible?” on Fox News. Metaxas recounts various episodes of shocking biblical illiteracy, including a remarkable example from George Whitman’s obituary in The New York Times:

“[George] welcomed visitors with large-print messages on the walls. ‘Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise,’ was one, quoting Yeats.”

Yeats!? Did you catch that? I choked on my toast. Did the Times actually just say that “Be not inhospitable to strangers, lest they be angels in disguise” was from Yeats? Unless I had fallen down a rabbit hole, that quote was from the Bible. It’s from Hebrews 13:2 and it’s quite famous. If you didn’t catch it, don’t feel too badly, because you are probably not The New York Times. You are probably not America’s “paper of record”, proud owner of 106 Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism—more than any other newspaper. You probably don’t have squadrons of fact-checkers on your payroll.

I still couldn’t believe what I’d just read, so I kept reading, looking for some explanation. There was none. I then shook the paper to make sure I was reading an actual newspaper, and not, say, an email forward from an aged friend. Nope. This really was the New York Times, the Old Grey Lady, whose motto was “All the News that’s Fit to Print.” And let’s face it, if W.B. Yeats was the real author of the Bible’s “Book of Hebrews,” that really would be big news!

I often express to family and friends how surprised I am by widespread scriptural ignorance, especially in the young. Even Protestant youngsters are clueless. It is no wonder that apostasy is so rampant. Christian parents are failing miserably to raise their children in the faith.

The world is going to hell in a handbasket, but let me rescue this post from too much despair—or at least philistine despair. To tie together the feasts celebrated today, East and West, with the hallowed inspiration of the Irish Bard, here is “The Magi”:

Now as at all times I can see in the mind’s eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary’s turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.

To mix further the sacred and the profane, I wonder if Yeats’ poem was one of the inspirations for U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”

In any case, merry Christmas! Christ is born!

Posted by Joseph on Friday, January 6, A.D. 2012
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Friday, September 9, A.D. 2011

Norman and Saxon

To end the fortnight of Anglophile celebration, enjoy Kipling’s homage to some of the ancestral nations of England, “Norman and Saxon”:

My son,” said the Norman Baron, “I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for my share
When we conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:—

“The Saxon is not like us Normans, His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, “This isn’t fair dealings,” my son, leave the Saxon alone.

“You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your Picardy spears,
But don’t try that game on the Saxon; you’ll have the whole brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They’ll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.

“But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs and songs.
Don’t trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale of their wrongs.
Let them know that you know what they’re saying; let them feel that you know what to say.
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear ‘em out if it takes you all day.

“They’ll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour of the dark,
It’s the sport not the rabbits they ‘re after (we ‘ve plenty of game in the park).
Don’t hang them or cut off their fingers. That’s wasteful as well as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man-at-arms you can find.

“Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and funerals and feasts.
Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish priests.
Say ‘we,’ ‘us’ and ‘ours’ when you’re talking instead of ‘you fellows’ and ‘I.’
Don’t ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell ‘em a lie!”

Britain and India should be very proud to have such a son.

Posted by Joseph on Friday, September 9, A.D. 2011
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Tuesday, June 21, A.D. 2011

Hoffnung

I wish you a merry summer solstice. Gather up some Saint John’s Wort to don as you celebrate the longest day of the year—fourteen hours, fifty-five minutes, and thirty-six seconds in Cincinnati, fourteen hours, fifty-three minutes, and forty-eight seconds in Washington, and eighteen hours, fifty minutes, and nine seconds in Saint Petersburg. Those white nights in June!

On a less joyous note, Lawrence Auster posted mixed news yesterday. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last June and has been undergoing treatment since. The disease is typically unrelenting, but Auster has experienced an uncommon recovery. I hope that my posts have encouraged this site’s readers to visit Auster’s View from the Right; his relatively obscure, one man blog has more insight and honesty in it than most all journals and media outfits. Please keep him in your prayers. May he have many more years to continue his work.

Given the solstice and the news about Auster, I offer a poem today from Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, “Die Hoffnung.”

Es reden und träumen die Menschen viel
Von bessern künftigen Tagen,
Nach einem glücklichen goldenen Ziel
Sieht man sie rennen und jagen.
Die Welt wird alt und wird wieder jung,
Doch der Mensch hofft immer Verbesserung!

Die Hoffnung führt ihn ins Leben ein,
Sie umflattert den fröhlichen Knaben,
Den Jüngling begeistert ihr Zauberschein,
Sie wird mit dem Greis nicht begraben,
Denn beschließt er im Grabe den müden Lauf,
Noch am Grabe pflanzt er - die Hoffnung auf.

Es ist kein leerer schmeichelnder Wahn,
Erzeugt im Gehirne des Toren;
Im Herzen kündet es laut sich an,
Zu was Besserm sind wir geboren!
Und was die innere Stimme spricht,
Das täuscht die hoffende Seele nicht.

George MacDonald translated it into English for you Deutschensprachefürchtigen.

Men talk with their lips and dream with their soul
Of better days hitherward pacing;
To a happy, a glorious, golden goal
See them go running and chasing!
The world grows old and to youth returns,
But still for the Better man’s bosom burns.

It is Hope leads him into life and its light;
She haunts the little one merry;
The youth is inspired by her magic might;
Her the graybeard cannot bury:
When he finds at the grave his ended scope,
On the grave itself he planteth Hope.

She was never begotten in Folly’s brain,
An empty illusion, to flatter;
In the Heart she cries, aloud and plain:
We are born to something better!
And that which the inner voice doth say
The hoping spirit will not betray.

It is a happy summer day to read a pious Jock translate an impious Kraut.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, June 21, A.D. 2011
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Thursday, December 2, A.D. 2010

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

My father recently sent me a Kipling poem, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings.” I found the fact curious until I discovered that Glenn Beck has popularized the poem in the past year. Beck is an odd ball—he converted to Mormonism, after all—but I am glad that he seems to be successful in renewing Americans’ interest in the great treasure of the recent West. If only we could get another talking head to get Americans to read Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Cicero, Seneca, and other worthy ancients. It could happen. Who knows? Even some evangelicals are beginning to read Ignatius, Irenaeus, Augustine, and the fathers. Are we entering into another age of ressourcement?

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

The Indian born Joseph Rudyard Kipling is among the many men who justify the existence of the English nation. Since the Romans, what other people have adjusted so well to every corner of the world that they inhabited? Other men may colonize ghettos, rob savage natives, and mark their limited niches, but the English people create new worlds that are proper civilizational progeny. How unfortunate it is to see the children of Alfred the Great squander their inheritance.

Posted by Joseph on Thursday, December 2, A.D. 2010
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Monday, November 1, A.D. 2010

Shakespeare in the Original

University of Kansas theater professor Paul Meier is staging A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the original accent of the bard’s age: “Professor’s research allows audience to hear Shakespeare’s words in his own accent.”

So what will the KU audiences hear when they attend this production?

“American audiences will hear an accent and style surprisingly like their own in its informality and strong r-colored vowels,” Meier said. “The original pronunciation performance strongly contrasts with the notions of precise and polished delivery created by John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and their colleagues from the 20th century British theater.”

Meier said audiences will hear word play and rhymes that “haven’t worked for several hundred years (love/prove, eyes/qualities, etc.) magically restored, as Bottom, Puck and company wind the language clock back to 1595.”

“The audience will hear rough and surprisingly vernacular diction, they will hear echoes of Irish, New England and Cockney that survive to this day as ‘dialect fossils.’ And they will be delighted by how very understandable the language is, despite the intervening centuries.”

I do not know enough about the linguistic and literary research to judge whether such is convincing, but it appears reasonable. Meier argues that sixteenth century English English resembles the colonial accents of the Anglophone world more than the standard British English of today, and by that I mean the Queen’s English, too, not simply chav. When I studied early modern French literature in undergrad, we learnt that modern Québécois is much closer to the Parisian accent of Molière’s stage than contemporary standard French. Settler populations tend to conserve dialects better.

Posted by Joseph on Monday, November 1, A.D. 2010
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Tuesday, June 9, A.D. 2009

How 1984 Killed Orwell

Last month, The Observer published a fascinating article on the circumstances under which Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell, wrote 1984, “The masterpiece that killed George Orwell.”

In case you ask yourself, the David Astor mentioned in the article was the owner and editor of The Observer as well as an heir to the New York-English Astor dynasty.

Posted by Joseph on Tuesday, June 9, A.D. 2009
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