Signs of Life: 40 Years of the New Order

 (On Sunday, the New York Times with unwonted liberality published an Op-Ed by Kenneth Wolfe, "Latin Mass Appeal." In the editorial, Wolfe reflects on the liturgical crisis of the last four decades, its origins, and Pope Benedict's support for the Tridentine Mass, which, with his imprimatur, is growing in popularity and visibility. These are my own anecdotal reflections on the New Order in the Church, its cultural implications, and the new signs of vigor that are challenging decades-old attitudes and hegemonies.)

In the foreword to his 1988 Gelebte Kirche: Bernanos (in English, Bernanos: An Ecclesial Existence), Fr. Hans urs von Balthasar wrote, "The flourishing of Catholic literature, which blossomed so splendidly with Bloy, Peguy, Claudel, and Bernanos during the first half of the century, seems to have left no heirs. We often regret this fact. But we have done very little to make our own what we have already been so richly given."

It is unfortunate that von Balthasar's statements should be so self-evidently true. Catholic Christians are ignorant of or alienated from the early 20th century renaissance of Christian thought. This alienation is parallel with a widespread ignorance of the root-and-branch sources of Christian culture. This ignorance is itself part of a wider cultural and historical amnesia, but there are concerted efforts to change this state of affairs. I intend to highlight a few of them.

Lay movements such as Communion and Liberation, the journals Communio, The Chesterton Review, and Second Spring (UK),  the new religious orders and institutes such as the Fraternity of St. Peter, Benedict the XVI's pontificate and his freeing of the classical Roman liturgy are all powerful spokes in the wheel of reform: all are working in some measure  for lasting renewal, renewal founded on the actual precepts of the Second Vatican Council and its call for resourcement. But what prevented the widespread success of the Council in the first place? Taking a look at the most deleterious after-events of the Council may give us some insight into our current situation and provide prescriptions for future action.

Perhaps the most arresting cultural effect of the bungled implementation of the Council was the rapid destruction of the classic Christian aesthetic: much that was beautiful was callously destroyed or altered, retaining, however, the cheap thrills of devotional kitsch. To my mind, it is not coincidental that the wells of Christian inspiration seemingly dried up at precisely the moment when the Roman Church began to abandon en masse its liturgical and artistic patrimony. In recent decades, we can claim very little of lasting liturgical value: no liturgical art, architecture, or music worthy of its subject matter. But there too we see some incipient dynamism: the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture is establishing itself as a leading institution for church architecture, and the new institutes and orders devoted to the classical liturgy are increasingly in need of new and larger churches to house their growing congregations. In music too, we see the gradual recovery and dissemination of Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony. That recovery and creative re-reception is necessary if we're to again have a native school of liturgical composition. 

The abandonment and repudiation of the classical liturgical patrimony doubtless did much to dry up inspiration, but the concomitant surrender of the educational and apologetic achievements of the past only exacerbated the crisis. In the early twentieth century, the Church, as Fr. Aidan Nichols put it, was a "presentation of truth, goodness, and beauty that was at once a powerful philosophy, a comprehensive ethic, and a vision of spiritual delight." The abandonment of a coherent and reasoned apologetics (pre-empted doubtless by the many doctrinal controversies that rendered the apologetic task largely moot) and the missed opportunity after the Council to renew and reinvigorate the philosophical life of the Church only weakened the Her appeal to men and women of genius. The parochial clergy, whose self-proclaimed task it was to interpret and implement the Second Vatican Council, seem, in retrospect, to have been willfully ignorant of the best currents of European and American Catholic thought and art: instead of attempting to leaven the minds of their parishioners with the best, they often chose the expedient and shallow, adopting music, theology, and architecture devoid imagination, beauty, and order: they served up theological pabulum and political ideology instead of the  thinkers and writers like Henri de Lubac, SJ, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Jean Danielou, SJ, Joseph Ratzinger, and our very own Dorothy Day (whose life and work seems to me to be the most striking evidence for the possibilities of renascence and vigor in the American Church).  

That they chose the easy way is not altogether surprising: an immediately fruitful and lasting reception of Vatican Two would have defied conciliar odds (councils are notoriously productive of schisms, heresies, and controversies); immediate optimism should have been disciplined by a strong statement of the challenges at hand. 

I hope that the efforts at reform, particularly the recovery of the classical liturgy, will spark a renascence of Christian artistry, but suppose that does not come to pass. Previous eras of the Church have been characterized only by stability, not by grandeur or sublimity. Extraordinary outbursts of creativity are fleetingly rare, and men do not live perpetually on the heights. While we hope for the future and the improvement of our estate, we should make every effort to preserve and generously disseminate the patrimony of our past. I believe the pontificate of Pope Benedict will be particularly decisive in this effort. 

All of the efforts of the great pre- and post-conciliar thinkers and actors were ordered towards recovering elements of Catholic life they thought had been overlooked or overlaid in the Tridentine Church: recovering the evangelical counsels for the laity and their transforming role in secular society and the indispensable centrality of the liturgy in the life of the Church and of the individual Christian. In short, the Council was indisputably a call to perfection and holiness in life, liturgy, and theology. That's our still task, a task admirably summed- up by Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP:  "What the Church can do today is to reform herself by repeating like a mantra the words 'only the best will do': the best intellectually, morally, aesthetically."

The Church must not settle down with what is merely comfortable and serviceable at the parish level; she must arouse the voice of the cosmos and, by glorifying the Creator, elicit the glory of the cosmos itself, making it also glorious, beautiful, habitable, and beloved. Next to the saints, the art which the Church has produced is the only real 'apologia' for her history. . . The Church is to transform, improve, 'humanize' the world --- but how can she do that if at the same time she turns her back on beauty, which is so closely allied to love? For together, beauty and love form the true consolation in this world, bringing it as near as possible to the world of the resurrection. The Church must maintain high standards; she must be a place where beauty can be at home; she must lead the struggle for that 'spiritualization' without which the world becomes the 'first circle of hell'.

 Joseph Ratzinger, The Feast of Faith, 124-125

Movie Review: Mon Oncle

Directed by Jacques Tati. 1958.

Mr and Mrs Arpel have really everything they want, they have achieved every success, everything is new in their house: the garden is new, the house is new, the books are new. And I think they need to be warned, somebody should definitely say to Mr Arpel: “Be careful, you should not forget a bit of humour! Your son is only nine and I think you should enjoy yourself and have a good time with him.” People think it is a message but it isn’t: one should be free to say to a man who is building a house “Be careful. It might be too well-built.”

- Jacques Tati

Creating and maintaining that personal tone is perhaps Tati’s greatest achievement in Mon Oncle. Like Playtime, Mon Oncle is not a hyper-intellectualized criticism of modernity. Nor is it an unsparing critique of consumerist habits. Rather it is a wistful look back at the world Tati knew and loved, and a quizzical, apprehensive look at the one he saw replacing it.  He sets up the contrast  no sooner than the opening credits, where the camera pans down the names which are neatly typed out on a neatly designed sign at the loud construction site of a new building. In contrast, the title card is a plain old street corner from Mr. Hulot’s town, with Mon Oncle scrawled on the wall in chalk. Dogs walk by and relieve themselves on the street lamp.

That image, however inglorious, is not a bad representation of Hulot's world. It has puddles, garbage, misshapen patches of grass, cracked stones, and yes, dogs do relieve themselves. It is a lived-in world and one that reflects what the people who live there do. Tati’s town was not built at once according to one master plan, but built and changed over many years as people came and went, as families grew and people passed on. Like his house, it many ad hoc solutions, little cribs, additions, and cheats to meet a new need without destroying what was there.

Sure, it is a rigmarole to get in, but what character it has! Mismatched shutters, mixed styles, hanging laundry, and so on. One wonders many people, how many generations worked on it. It reflects the characters of those who do, and who have, lived there. It is also, of course, Hulot’s home, filled with his friends and neighbors, so why would he want to live elsewhere?


Now the Arpel’s house is certainly a contrast to Mr. Hulot’s, but not so much in terms of outcome as of intent. Sure Hulot’s apartment building is inefficient, but it was not designed with the pretension of efficiency. The Arpel’s house is designed to be the pinnacle of modern style and efficient design. The house was built according to a plan, but a thoughtless, inhuman one. The building is simply not conducive for living. Take the kitchen for example, which looks like a cross between a dentist’s office and a NASA laboratory. It has every convenience, but it is cold and unwelcoming. The appliances buzz and whirr and crank. Even something as simple as a cabinet, which might have a gentle squeak as cabinets often do, instead has been engineered into a mechanical maw which nearly has Hulot’s hand for supper.

The yard is also quite a spectacle. It is large and walled off for privacy. It is the home of a ghastly fountain that only gets turned on for visitors and this touch most epitomizes the whole situation of the Arpels: they have all of this stuff that is not really for them. They have the fountain because it is supposed to impress others or display affluence. They have all of these conveniences and time-saving appliances, and what do they do with the time they save? They spend it on more time saving devices or they spend it away from their house. Have they really thought about what they would like to do, for its own sake? Of course none of what they do is bad, really, but it looks so silly because it is not done for any particular end. Look at the yard:

It is designed into many sections and cordoned off so you are only “supposed” to walk in certain areas. Why? Look at the picture above. In the scene, the party had to move from the other side of the yard to this side to sit down and eat, but there is no room because there is no other space sectioned off “for eating.” They have this big yard and cannot use it for what they want. In the scene depicted above, which may have presaged a similar scene in Playtime that uses cars instead of people, the characters walk around that little square like a circus line, amplifying the ridiculousness of the situation. We are glad to see later, when a dog gets loose at the party, the people running around trying to catch him. We want to say, “Yes, good! Go, run over the lines! It’s your yard, you can set the rules. Have fun in it and make a bit of a mess for once!”

Hulot’s brother in law works is a similarly sterile and highly polished, impersonal world. Trying to make Hulot more like himself, Mr. Arpel asks his boss to hire Hulot. The boss’ office looks like the lair of a James Bond villain, with ceilings so high they are out of sight, strange silver chairs, a map of the world in the back, and the boss sitting at an enormous desk. While in the office, Mr. Arpel phones Hulot to offer him the job, but wherever Hulot is, music is playing and Arpel cannot hear him. In a brilliant touch, Tati lets the music take over the soundtrack, and delightfully, it is as if Mr. Hulot’s world is pouring into that big and cold room, warming it and giving it life for the first time.  Of course the company is not up to any nefarious business like world domination and that is the point, why does it look like that? Why should someone's office, where someone works, be so uninviting? Even Arpel’s briefcase, which looked chichi at home when his wife neurotically dusted it, looks warm in such a hostile atmosphere.

Indeed it is atmosphere, specifically a personable one, that lies at the heart of Hulot’s world. The Arpel’s house, for all of its order, is in fact an order imposed upon them and not by them, and their house reflects their desire to live apart from others. (Recall that cursed, clanking, buzzer-operated fence that closes off their yard.) The human relationships are the heart of Hulot’s town, for better and worse. It is human incongruities that made it mismatched and imperfect, but also the desire of its people to live there, together, that kept it together. The combination of those two elements made it unique. The film’s title suggests what Tati’s quote about the film does: the desire to remind people who choose to live the “new way” to make the human component the heart of their endeavor. Hulot’s nephew is dreadfully unhappy at home. Quite simply, it is too clean and boring and more like living in a hospital ward than a home. When he goes out with his uncle, he rides on his bike amongst the townspeople (as opposed to riding past them in a car,) he eats jam-covered crullers with extra sugar, and plays pranks on people with other boys in the town. The boy’s classic prank, and a running gag throughout the film, is to whistle at someone as he approaches a pole in order to get him to turn around and look at you and thus crash into the pole. Towards the end of the movie, the boy’s father accidentally pulls the prank on someone and the boy grabs and squeezes his father’s hand in excitement as they try to sneak away. It is a beautiful little moment and we hope his father can learn from it.

We hope he learns what Mr. Hulot has taught us, that you have to be willing to make yourself a little vulnerable and go out and live with your neighbors. Sometimes you get splashed, covered in dust, or punched in the face, but that is probably better than having nothing happen at all, the same way the folksy little “town tune” is preferable to the silence of the Arpel household. Yet there is a certain wistful sadness to Mon Oncle, for just as surely as Mr. Hulot was moving away, the old world was passing. This theme is conveyed throughout the movie by cutting to a scene of construction workers tearing down an old building with pickaxes. The town is such a character this feels a surprisingly violent act, but we should not be too alarmed. It is not really the stuff we should be concerned about. Some change is normal, like Hulot’s little neighbor who is all grown up when he leaves. We should just make sure we do not get carried away with change just because it is novel and that we never forget the human element, the humour as Tati said; and in Mon Oncle Tati is not scolding or imploring us. The tone of Mon Oncle is not that of a self-righteous spokesperson crusading for a better world or an intellectual browbeating you into accepting his aesthetic philosophy. It’s more like your neighbor leaning over your fence as you  remodel your home and saying to you, “You’re going to add what? Really? Oh. . . Really?”

Msgr. Albacete contra Christopher Hitchens

On a related bibliographic note, Dr. David Bentley Hart, an Orthodox theologian, has published a book, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies, to counter some of the claims made by the New Atheist authors. Dr. Hart was featured in the July/August volume of the Mars Hill Audio Journal, where he discussed his book and the New Atheism: the interview, however, is only available to subscribers.

(N.B. I cannot recommend the Mars Hill Journal highly enough: consistently high quality, it's worth the price of the subscription.)

Thanksgiving (II)

In the spirit of Mr. Vertucci's list:

1) Gerard Manley Hopkins, Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things—
        For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
            For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
    Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
        Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
            And áll trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

    All things counter, original, spáre, strange;
        Whatever is fickle, frecklèd (who knows how?)
            With swíft, slów; sweet, sóur; adázzle, dím;
    He fathers-forth whose beauty is pást change: 

      Praise him.

2)  Josquin des Prez, Ave Maria Virgo Serena

3) Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop

Father Latour's recreation was his garden. He grew such fruit as was hardly to be found even in the old orchards of California: cherries and apricots, apples and quinces, and the peerless pears of France--even the most delicate varieties. He urged the new priests to plant fruit tress wherever they went, and to encourage the Mexicans to add fruit to their starchy diet. Wherever there was a French priest, there should be a garden of fruit trees and vegetables and flowers. He often quoted to his students that passage from their fellow Auvergnat, Pascal: that Man was lost and saved in a garden.

He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet no lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple--the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it.

4) Henri Matisse, The Plum Blossoms & Blue Nude II

 

5) Richard Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg

Act 3

6) Dante, The Divine Comedy

Paradiso, Canto 33

O Light Eterne, sole in thyself that dwellest,
Sole knowest thyself, and, known unto thyself
And knowing, lovest and smilest on thyself!
That circulation, which being thus conceived
Appeared in thee as a reflected light,
When somewhat contemplated by mine eyes,
Within itself, of its own very colour
Seemed to me painted with our effigy,
Wherefore my sight was all absorbed therein.
As the geometrician, who endeavours
To square the circle, and discovers not,
By taking thought, the principle he wants,
Even such was I at that new apparition;
I wished to see how the image to the circle
Conformed itself, and how it there finds place;
But my own wings were not enough for this,
Had it not been that then my mind there smote
A flash of lightning, wherein came its wish.
Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars.

7)  Johann Sebastian Bach, Cello Suites

Suite No. 1 Prelude

8)  John Constable, Wivenhoe Park

9) James Boswell, Life of Johnson

BOSWELL. 'Pray, Sir, did you ever play on any musical instrument?' JOHNSON. ' No, Sir, I once bought me a flagelet ; but I never made out a tune.' BOSWELL. A flagelet. Sir! — so small an instrument''? I should have liked to hear you play on the violoncello. That should have been your instrument.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, I might as well have played on the violoncello as another ; but I should have done nothing else. No, Sir ; a man would never undertake great things, could he be amused with small. I once tried knotting. Dempster's sister undertook to teach me ; but I could not learn it.'

10) Giovanni Palestrina, Missa Papae Marcelli

Kyrie

Ton Koopman on the Cantatas of Bach

John Finnis on Secularism

When I began this blog, I conceived it primarily as a forum (for Mr. Vertucci and myself and our readers) for 'theoria' as I called it. There are too many blogs concerned with the rather sordid business of practical politics: such blogs no doubt serve their purpose, but for myself, I enjoy an elevated discussion, one that can embrace theology, philosophy, political and economic history, and other relevant branches of human thought and endeavor. 

This blog, like a good many others, exists to raise the tone of discussion and highlight important thinkers and creators. To that end, I'd like to bring to attention an intriguing lecture by Dr. John Finnis.

Dr. Finnis is a leading proponent of the New Natural Law Theory. Among his former students is the distinguished Princeton philosopher Robert George (whose recent involvement in the Manhattan Declaration has stirred up discussion and interest in my own parish). Dr. George, like Dr. Finnis, is Roman Catholic, and since I have recently been occupied with reading the social encyclicals of the Roman Church (including Pope Benedict's Caritas in Veritate), I've spent some time familiarizing myself with the various strains of Catholic political thought, both in this country and in Europe. The New Natural Law Theory is certainly one of the more interesting, but until I spend some more time reading and digesting it, I'll refrain from comment. Mr. Vertucci is an astute reader of St. Thomas Aquinas and of political philosophy in general will doubtless have much to contribute to the discussion.

I hope, in the future, to expand my discussion and commentary on the various strains of Christian political thought. I'm very interested in recent developments in the Catholic Communio circle (represented by David Schindler and Tracey Rowland), the Anglican Radical Orthodoxy Movement, and of course, the Natural Law Theorists.

Around the Web

For the week of Saturday, November 21 through Friday, November 27.

1) In Spiked Online, Frank Furedi on education:

Education needs to conserve the past. As Arendt argued, conservatism, in the sense of conservation, is of the essence of education. Her objective was not to conserve for the sake of nostalgia, but because she recognised that the conservation of the old provided the foundation for renewal and innovation. The characterisation of conservation as the essence of education can be easily misunderstood as a call inspired by a backward or reactionary political agenda. However, the argument for conservation is based on the understanding that, in a generational transaction, adults must assume responsibility for the world as it is and pass on its cultural and intellectual legacy to young people.

2) In the WSJ, Alexandra Mullen reviews, "Mr Langshaw's Square Piano" by Madeline Goold.

3) From Pope Benedict's meeting with artists in the Sistine Chapel on Saturday:

"Beauty ... can become a path toward the transcendent, toward the ultimate Mystery, toward God," Benedict said.

"Too often. . . the beauty thrust upon us is illusory and deceitful. . . it imprisons man within himself and further enslaves him, depriving him of hope and joy," he said.

"Faith takes nothing away from your genius or art," he said. "On the contrary, it exalts them and nourishes them."

Amongst the other guests were Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, whose Maxxi modern art museum has just opened in Rome, and F. Murray Abraham, the American actor who won an Oscar for his role as Salieri in the Mozart film, Amadeus, in 1985.

4) In City Journal, 1919: Betrayal and the Birth of Modern Liberalism.

5) At last someone (Gene Healy at the Cato Institute) has said it, "Obamacare" is unconstitutional:

In answer to the question "by what authority?" Reid's bill offers the Commerce Clause — the go-to provision for friends of federal power. That clause gives Congress the power "to regulate Commerce ... among the several states."

It was a modest measure designed to regularize cross-border commerce and prevent interstate trade wars — so modest, in fact, that Madison described it in the Federalist as a clause that "few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained." [Federalist 45]

The Founders would have worried more had they known that the Commerce Clause would eventually become a bottomless fount of federal power. In 1942's Wickard v. Filburn, the court held that the Commerce Power was broad enough to penalize a farmer growing wheat for his own consumption on his own farm.

That farmer, Roscoe Filburn, ran afoul of a New Deal scheme to prop up agricultural prices. The fact that he wasn't engaged in interstate commerce — or commerce of any kind — was quite beside the point. If "many others similarly situated" engaged in the same behavior, it would substantially affect interstate commerce, and frustrate Congress' designs.

Thanksgiving

Now fear not, I do not intend to make list-writing a habit here, but in light of the time of year I thought it appropriate to share with you some things I am grateful for. This may shed some light on the character of your humble blogger and also offer a foretaste of topics to come here at APLV. This year I thought I would focus on a particular topic: art.

In no particular order:

1) Horace, Ode 2.3

Aequam memento rebus in arduis
seruare mentem, non secus in bonis
  ab insolenti temperatam
    laetitia, moriture Delli,
seu maestus omni tempore uixeris,
seu te in remoto gramine per dies
  festos reclinatum bearis
    interiore nota Falerni.
Quo pinus ingens albaque populus
umbram hospitalem consociare amant
  ramis? Quid obliquo laborat
    lympha fugax trepidare riuo?
Huc uina et unguenta et nimium breuis
flores amoenae ferre iube rosae,
  dum res et aetas et sororum
    fila trium patiuntur atra.
Cedes coemptis saltibus et domo
uillaque flauus quam Tiberis lauit,
  cedes et exstructis in altum
    diuitiis potietur heres.
Diuesne prisco natus ab Inacho
nil interest an pauper et infima
  de gente sub diuo moreris,
    uictima nil miserantis Orci.
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
uersata urna serius ocius
  sors exitura et nos in aeternum
    exsilium impositura cumbae.

Translation and notes by Michael Gilleland.

2) Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro:

Act III: Riconosci in questo amplesso

3) Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot. Directed by Jacques Tati. 1953.

4) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

It was said to me by Elrond Halfelven that I should find friendship upon the way, secret and unlooked for. Certainly I looked for no such friendship as you have shown. To have found it turns evil to great good.' – The Two Towers

Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them.  Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first éored roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken. Fey he seemed, or the battle-fury of his fathers ran through him like a god of old, even as Oromë the Great in the battle of the Valar when the world was young. His golden shield was uncovered, and lo! it shone like and image of the Sun, and the grass flamed into green about the white feet of his steed. For morning came, morning and a wind from the sea; and darkness was removed, and the hosts of Mordor wailed, and terror took them, and they fled, and died, and the hoofs of wrath rode over them. And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City. – The Return of the King

5) Cyrano De Bergerac by Edmond Rostand

'Behold the nose that mars the harmony
Of its master's phiz! blushing its treachery!'
--Such, my dear sir, is what you might have said,
Had you of wit or letters the least jot:
But, O most lamentable man!--of wit
You never had an atom, and of letters
You have three letters only!--they spell Ass!
And--had you had the necessary wit,
To serve me all the pleasantries I quote
Before this noble audience. . .e'en so,
You would not have been let to utter one--
Nay, not the half or quarter of such jest!
I take them from myself all in good part,
But not from any other man that breathes!

[Translated by Gladys Thomas and Mary F. Guillemard]

6) Homer's Iliad.

Book I

Down on the ground
he dashed the scepter studded bright with golden nails,
then took his seat again. The son of Atreus smoldered,
glaring across at him, but Nestor rose between them,
the man of winning words, the clear speaker of Pylos. . .
Sweeter than honey from his tongue the voice flowed on and on.
Two generations of mortal men he had seen go down by now,
those who were born and bred with him in the old days,
in Pylos' holy realm, and now he ruled the third.
He pleaded with both kings, with clear good will,
"No more–or enormous sorrow comes to all Achaea!
How they would exult, Priam and Priam's sons
and all the Trojans. Oh they'd leap for joy
to hear the two of you battling on this way,
you who excel us all, first in Achaean councils,
first in the ways of war.

Stop. Please.
Listen to Nestor. You are both younger than I,
and in my time I struck up with better men than you,
even you, but never once did they make light of me.
I've never seen such men, I never will again. . .
men like Pirithous, Dryas, that fine captain,
Caeneus and Exadius, and Polyphemus, royal prince,
and Theseus, Aegeus' boy, a match for the immortals.
They were the strongest mortals ever bred on earth,
the strongest, and they fought against the strongest too,
shaggy Centaurs, wild brutes of the mountains–
they hacked them down, terrible, deadly work.
And I was in their ranks, fresh out of Pylos,
far away from home–they enlisted me themselves
and I fought on my own, a free lance, single-handed.
And none of the men who walk the earth these days
could battle with those fighters, none, but they,
they took to heart my counsels, marked my words.
So now you listen too. Yielding is far better. . .
Don't seize the girl, Agamemnon, powerful as you are–
leave her, just as the sons of Achaea gave her,
his prize from the very first.
And you, Achilles, never hope to fight it out
with your king, pitting force against his force:
no one can match the honors dealt a king, you know,
a sceptered king to whom great Zeus gives glory.
Strong as you are–a goddess was your mother–
he has more power because he rules more men.
Atrides, end your anger–look it's Nestor!
I beg you, cool your fury against Achilles.
Here the man stands over all Achaea's armies,
our rugged bulwark braced for shocks of war."

[Translation by Robert Fagles.]

7) Beethoven's 7th Symphony

Allegretto

Wilhelm Furtwängler conducting The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Allegro con brio

Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra of London.

8) 2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. 1968

 

9) T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets

from No. 2, "East Coker"

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
    You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
    You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
    You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
    You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

Full texts of the poems.

 10) Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 25, KV.503

Allegro maestoso

Remembrances: H. C. Robbins Landon and Elisabeth Söderström

Remembering two giants of the musical world: musicologist H. C. Robbins Landon (March 1926 - Nov. 2009) and soprano Elisabeth Söderström (May 1927 - Nov. 2009).

Obituary of the late Mr. Landon [The Guardian UK]
Obituary of the late Elisabeth Söderström [Times Online UK]

Jessica Duchen remembers them also at Standpoint Magazine.

In particular I would like to note and praise their many years of study and practice, the many solitary hours of combing through manuscripts or singing scales, that is, all of the thankless, often painfully slow work nonetheless required for such brilliant scholarship and performance.

J. Haydn.

Die Schöpfung, Part I: Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes

Herbert von Karajan. Wiener Philharmoniker.

Beethoven.
Fidelio, Act I: Mir ist so wunderbar

Elizabeth Gale, Elisabeth Söderström, Ian Caley, Curt Appelgren.

Directed by Bernard Haitink. Glyndebourne Festival Opera.

Movie Review: Amadeus (Part III)

This is part three of a three-part review of Milos Forman's Amadeus.

Part I | Part II | Part III

Now that we have discussed the relationships and arcs of the emotions in Amadeus we may discuss their significance.  Specifically for us, we want to know why they are ethically significant, what does Amadeus say is good and bad?

First, the structure of the film suggests that emotions have particular causes and relationships.  Feelings are not random, vague, inexplicable effusions of feeling but specific responses that either please or hurt us, and accordingly can affect our judgment.  Salieri does not decide to murder Mozart because he was slighted, such slights made him angry.  Salieri decides to kill him because Mozart’s existence gnaws at his soul.  Also, jealousy does not motivate Salieri to murder, such a weak feeling of jealousy could not motivate someone.  Envy can.

This may seem trivial, but think how many characters in films and television programs are simply caricatures, with their emotions indistinct and indefinite.  One might say, at best, that their emotion might fall somewhere around something called “jealousy,” but how many characters can you call to mind when you think of the word, “envy?”  Then, thinking of Salieri’s seething envy; how shallow does that “jealousy” seem?  This is not the “light” version of an emotion, this is an emotion in its purest and most elemental form.  It is only by having the characters pass from one distinct emotion through others, to its opposite that we appreciate the range and relationship of feelings.  

Aside from the structural relationships between the emotions, how do the emotions suggest ethics?  Foremost, morally positive emotions attend to happiness and morally inferior emotions lead to despair.  Mozart’s boastfulness only serves to alienate Salieri, and it should be obvious by now that Salieri’s host of emotions leads him down a dark path.  Let us examine him first.

Salieri is overwhelmed  by his emotions, which continually run away with him.  Running unchecked, his emotions degenerate from the positive (calmness, amity, kindness) to their opposites.  Unlike Mozart, Salieri is unable to channel his emotions into his music.  A moment that should have been his triumph, the premiere of Axur, his greatest opera, provides him no joy.  The fact that the emperor loves the piece is just another insult to Salieri, who realizes that even at the height of his powers he is no match for Mozart.  The emperor compounds the insult by awarding him a medallion, which he wears throughout the rest of the film as it becomes an ever-present reminder to the him and the audience of the composer’s mediocrity.  In contrast we see the premiere of Don Giovanni, an opera into which Mozart poured all of his genius, his creative energy, and his emotion, but instead of the great (and hollow) fanfare that Axur received, Don Giovanni is a flop.  Not only is the emperor missing but the house is half-empty and gives him a pitiful applause.  When Salieri turns around he looks directly at Mozart.  All that matters to him is Mozart’s appraisal of the work.  In contrast, Mozart is so carried away with giving his creation life that he can barely stand at the end of Don Giovanni.  Mozart is not awaiting anyone’s approval.  Where Salieri is still stuck in the conventions of the era, where Axur ends with the chorus singing gracefully and waving their little branches in the air, Don Giovanni ends with a chorus of devils waving torches.  (This is actually a bit of a trick on the part of Milos Forman, since Don Giovanni actually ends with another chorus that is a coda for the opera.  It is a just edit though, since the title character’s finale is a sufficient note to end on.  It is also a brilliant touch by Forman and Twyla Tharp, since the musical text of Don Giovanni does not specifically call for the devils or the fire, merely “deep voices.”)

We should also note that more reversals attend to the drama.  The opera that should be a flop is met with great fanfare.  The event that should be the height of Salieri’s career is of significance only in comparison to Mozart.  As Salieri’s emotions are degenerating to the unpleasant, his career reaches its height.  In contrast, the opera that should have been hailed is a disaster.   The event that should be the highlight of Mozart’s career is a flop.  As Mozart’s musical powers are that their height, his life is unraveling. Thus we see that while the more destructive emotions gain sway in Salieri, the significance of the events become much different.  The Salieri that would have rejoiced at having his favorite leading lady star in his best work and at receiving a prestigious award from the emperor fades away into the Salieri of envy. 

Yet Salieri’s faith and his war with God are at the center of his fall. Salieri clearly believes in a god, and he assumes two traits of this god that are relevant to his actions in the plot, 1) that this plays an active role in shaping our human affairs, and 2) that this god plays an active role in creating mankind, deliberately endowing us with certain traits.  One interpretation is that these two beliefs are what caused Salieri’s fall, and that if he believed that he and Mozart were not deliberately fashioned as they were, he might take some consolation in the randomness instead of feeling tested or punished.  Also, one might suggest that if Salieri did not believe a divine force was responsible for their talent, he might have attempted somehow to improve himself (perhaps even condescending to study with Mozart himself), rather than relying on divine intervention for success.  A more theological interpretation would be that Salieri erred in presuming to know the will of God, mainly that his vows were accepted.  Similarly, he erred in presuming to act as he desired (with the desire to becoming a musician) and trying to get what he wanted from God instead of acting to discover God’s plan for him. 

In great contrast to Salieri’s envy we have Mozart.  As an artist, fundamentally he is a creator, especially worthy of our praise because of the genius, joy, and brilliance of his work.  We overlooks his foibles and indiscretions because his powers are beyond ours and he can create what and as no one else can.  The act of giving life to something, Mozart’s creative acts are the perfect opposites to Salieri’s envy.  Mozart’s creative gift is an absolute good, and Salieri’s envy an absolute hatred of that good.  Mozart is the unwitting recipient of much evil by the end of the film, and particularly saddening ones at that.  He not only suffers death but illness and discord beforehand.  He suffers several misfortunes as two of his operas fail to bring him success and prosperity.  On his deathbed, he is deprived of enjoying the good when it finally comes (in the form of the profits of The Magic Flute and the knowledge that it was a success.)  Yet worst of all is that he suffers evil coming from a source from which good should have come, from the man who loved his music most of all. 

The final note on the ethics of Amadeus is that while our hero dies, his destroyer is punished and the greater composer’s music lives on.  Like in Don Giovanni, while the villain might have temporarily gained mastery of worldly matters, in the end supernatural power puts matters as it wishes.  While Don Giovanni killed the commander and outwitted his pursuers and Salieri killed Mozart and got away with it, powers beyond their control had the final say.  Don Giovanni was dragged down, Salieri was subjected to the slow torture of watching himself become extinct, and Mozart’s music is eternal.