Sublimity now!

An Inside Catholic column by Eve Tushnet. It speaks to me, because, in part, it deals with the difference between a beauty that is merely cutesy-pie (a beauty that one can master) and a Beauty that is as "terrible as an army with banners" (a Beauty that masters one).

About six years ago, on this blog, I tried to categorize the different types of beauty, and came up with four "beauties": the Awesome, the Pretty, the Gorgeous, and the Cute. I blush to recall the absolute silliness of my attempt at being, what? serious? philosophical?, but I think I might have hit on something akin to the Sublime when I was writing about the Awesome. (The Gorgeous, if I remember correctly, was also a kind of beauty that masters one, but it lacked the element of holiness or purity that the Awesome possessed.)

I don't know if there was a difference, or can't remember what the difference was, between the Pretty and the Cute. But it seems that both of those beauties were of the type that one could possess or master. It was a beauty that delighted and charmed, not a beauty that terrified or thrilled or caused one to seek divine help to keep from fainting.

Anyway, go read Eve's column, as it will edify far beyond anything I have to say.

Understatement

Being reborn in Jesus is not rapid for many of us.

Jean Vanier, via February's Magnificat, p. 119

5.43 am

Last night I read nearly half of David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day. Literary junk food. Uproariously funny. Occasionally the sarcasm becomes wearisome, as in the chapter about performance art and drug use (although it's good to be sarcastic about performance art, I suppose), but oftener than not I'm laughing out loud, whether it's guitar lessons or speech therapy or his vulgar-mouthed younger brother he's writing about.

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The Boston mayor's race is getting crowded. The sixty-something thick-tongued incumbent, Thomas Menino, may run for a fifth term. But there's a moderately progressive former city council president, 39-year-old Michael Flaherty, and an ultraprogressive city councilor at large, thirty-something Sam Yoon, who'll be opposing the mayor. I say good on both of them. Although Menino is still fairly popular and (depending on who you talk to) effective, I'm not sure a twenty-year mayoralty is something desirable for anyone other than the mayor. Menino's immediate predecessor, Ray Flynn, served nearly ten years, and Kevin White, before Flynn, served sixteen. So Boston has had only three mayors since 1967, when Lyndon Johnson was president.

If I were still living within the city limits of Boston, I'd probably vote for Flaherty.

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There was a crane collapse near the beloved Brattle Book Shop. One man was killed. The crane landed in the discount book lot next to the bookstore, the $1 to $5 shelves. Customers were browsing the outdoor shelves at the time (I think), but no one on the ground was injured. A lot of inexpensive books were destroyed, but of course, that's of no consequence compared to the loss of a human life.

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My favorite morning news reporter is back from vacation! Let there be sung Non nobis and Te Deum! A half-hour ago she wasn't wearing a hat. Now she is.

It's 28 degrees in Boston, a bit of a cooldown after yesterday's relative warmth. It hit fifty but stayed quite breezy, so there was something of a wind chill. The wind made one's eyes water as one was walking from the church to the pharmacy.

But the point is, I don't blame her for putting the hat on.

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I've never met a Methodist I didn't like. (More on this later, maybe.)

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Dentist tomorrow to get a filling "re-done." They never give me enough Novocaine; I always feel the drill. This time, I will be politely emphatic in my request for enough Novocaine.

:: :: :: :: ::

Time to start the coffee, methinks.

Poetry question : Vernon Watkins

Maybe readers from the UK can help. I have an imperfectly remembered poem going through my mind. I'm certain the author is Vernon Watkins (1906-67). Can someone provide the title, or maybe even the rest of the poem?

Wits that learn from mother-wit are keenest
Nor is there nobility of style
Till the proud man kneels to help the meanest
Those who justify themselves are vile

This weekend's Marianne Moore

Hair should not be synonymous with a hurricane.

From "Dress and Kindred Subjects," in The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore, p. 597

Political quiz

Here's the quiz. It's rather long!

(Found here.)

My results:

My Political Views
I am a right moderate social libertarian
Right: 3.16, Libertarian: 1.93

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Foreign Policy Views
Score: -3.84

Political Spectrum Quiz


My Culture War Stance
Score: 2.7

Political Spectrum Quiz


Addendum : Longtime readers of this blog will note that my foreign policy views, especially, have changed since 2003.

Quotation

He never exactly obeyed you; he sometimes agreed with you.

C S Lewis on his dog Tim, in Surprised by Joy, p. 163

Cummings

"joyful your complete fearless and pure love": #87 from 95 Poems.

The Screwtape Letters

Recently re-read it after about 15 years. It retains its potency!

But I have one question, addressed to those who have also read the book. (And I'm trying to avoid spoilers out of consideration for those who haven't.) The fellow whom the devils were trying to ensnare -- did he marry the girl, or were they just engaged, or boyfriend/girlfriend? I could go back and re-read the relevant letters, but I don't feel like it. (I'm embarrassed by my faltering ability to retain even what I've just read!)

I'm under the impression that they were not married. Am I right, or did I miss some crucial phrase?

Yes

Mark Shea on Richard Williamson and his rad-trad supporters.

I don't get no respect

If Rodney Dangerfield had been Catholic.

From Poetry magazine

A presto manifesto! In defense of rhyme. By A E Stallings.

To paraphrase Denis Leary

Russia, Germany, Romania -- they can have all the democracy they want. They can have a big democracy cakewalk right through the middle of Tiananmen Square and it won't make a lick of difference because ...

we've got the Williams sisters.

Therefore, we rule.

If I were sixteen today (1958): this weekend's Marianne Moore

I would, if I could, let little things be little things -- would be less susceptible to embarrassment. David Seabury says, "When you are saying, 'I can't be calm, I can't be calm,' you can be calm." Don't relive bad moments, or revive them for others, or be expecting more of them. To postponers, I would say, DO IT NOW; and to firebrands of impatience, ROME WAS NOT BUILT IN A DAY. "Superiority" is at the opposite pole from insight. Fashion can make you ridiculous; style, which is yours to control individually, can make you attractive -- a near siren. What of chastity? It confers a particular strength. Until recently, I took it for granted -- like avoiding "any drugs."

from The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore, p. 503

Cummings

what time is it?it is by every star
a different time,and each most falsely true;
or so subhuman superminds declare

--nor all their times encompass me and you:

when are we never,but forever now
(hosts of eternity;not guests of seem)
believe me,dear,clocks have enough to do

without confusing timelessness and time.

Time cannot children,poets,lovers tell--
measure imagine,mystery,a kiss
--not though mankind would rather know than feel;

mistrusting utterly that timelessness

whose absence would make your whole life and my
(and infinite our)merely to undie

Two posts about anger

from the Orthodox Christian priest who blogs at Glory to God for All Things: Understanding Anger and Loving an Angry God. To be read, and perhaps to be re-read.

Two poets discuss the Psalms

This exchange may be of interest to some. Poets Peter O'Leary and Alicia Ostriker discuss the poetry of the Psalms; unfortunately, the translation they use in their correspondence seems a mite unpoetic (a version produced by one Robert Alter, attempting fidelity to the Hebrew).

The discussion is valuable (to me, at least) for the light it sheds on the art of translation, and for the other poets alluded-to (among them John Berryman and Walt Whitman; in fact, one of my favorite Whitman passages is quoted by Ostriker).

Interview meme

Here are the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me".
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. (I get to pick the questions).
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post. (I guess you ask to be interviewed by putting a comment in the combox that says, "Interview me!")
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

Five questions for me from Enbrethiliel of Sancta Sanctis:

1) If you were to write a Fan Fiction story, which movie, book or TV show would you take for your canon?

Hmm. Tough one. I'm not good at any kind of fiction, but a movie that I think is unjustly underrecognized is Johnny Stecchino starring Roberto Benigni. Maybe I'd try something with that!

2) If your favourite food were a poem, which poem would it be?

It would have to be something Italian and satisfying! Maybe the sonnet in Dante's La Vita Nuova that begins "Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare / La donna mia ..." ("So gentle and so virtuous appears / My lady ...")

3) Which three songs would be essential to a road trip mix?

Easy one:
"Give Me One Reason" by Tracy Chapman
"Moondance" by Van Morrison
"How Soon Is Now?" by the Smiths

4) Would you rather have been named after Dylan Thomas or Bob Dylan? (I'm assuming Dylan is your real name!)

I chose my pen-name dylan to pay tribute to Dylan Thomas, who in spite of many personal flaws was a most compelling poet.

5) Where were you when you learned that Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had been elected pope?

When I learned that Cardinal Ratzinger had been elected, I was in East Boston, Massachusetts, USA, on my computer. When the world learned he had been elected, I was at Boston Medical Center in the South End of Boston, accompanying my mom to a doctor's appointment. Pleasant weather that day, IIRC.

Thank you, Enbrethiliel!!!

Least religious states?

Caught it out of the corner of my eye, but apparently someone did a survey or study or poll and concluded that the least religious states in the Union are:

1. Vermont
2. Massachusetts
3. New Hampshire
4. Maine

Update: I accidentally flipped the order of #2 (NH) and #3 (Massachusetts). Oops! And it was a survey of the whole country.

New York and California nowhere to be found? Or was this a New England-only survey? I'll have to check again.

But Vermont doesn't surprise me; in places like Brattleboro and Putney (from what I saw twelve years ago), the religion is very much college-campus-style progressivism. (I can visualize the bookstores, much like Harvard's, with the shrines to Obama in the front windows. I can visualize whirled peas.)

Massachusetts does surprise me; you have plenty of tenacious Catholics, and others who have lapsed in every meaningful respect, but who still wouldn't dream of eating a hamburger on Ash Wednesday. New Hampshire is a bit of a shocker: Northern New Hampshire, especially, instills religious thoughts! And I don't know enough about Maine, but I think there's a similar hippie/earthy-crunchy vibe -- similar to Vermont, that is. (Yes, Maine has two Republican senators, but they're both pro-choice women. I think Vermont has a Republican governor, also "progressive" where it matters to progressives.)

But back to religion. I've mentioned only Catholics, but there are other denominations of Christianity, and other religions, that might find adherents among even the most incorrigibly "liberal." Heck, Catholicism has its incorrigibly liberal adherents! (Many of them can be found in this, the second "least religious state" in the survey!) So I don't know who did this survey, but I suspect that something's amiss.

Steam o' consciousness

[yes, "steam," as in the steam rising from the morning coffee, at six a.m., when the matter below was written]

The poet W. H. Auden was in the irreverent habit, in idle moments, of replacing references to God in Sacred Scripture with the phrase "Your mother." I have no idea why. But I do something similar with hymns, except my replacement-words are "Heather" (name of a very dear friend since childhood) or "belly." Therefore, "Good King Wenceslas" becomes:

Heather is a lib'ral kid
And she has a belly;
Heather likes gigantic squid,
I like Trappist jelly

Or something like that.

I think I have a two-year-older's attitude toward language, in my idle moments. Sounds are playthings. The actor/author Stephen Fry is like this, too. He wakes up with nonsense phrases on the brain, like "Hoversmack tender estimate" or "Gwendolyn Bruce Snetterton." And he'll repeat these words to himself while shaving, or something.

The Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, one Sal DiMasi (rhymes with "Tracy," I think), is stepping down for ... personal reasons. The possible ethics violations hanging over his head, of course, have nothing to do with it. I never liked the guy. One should never judge by appearances, but I think in his case I did. Something about his looks rubbed me the wrong way. Of course, we all can't be as telegenic as I am. Ha!

I no longer have a beard. When I had a beard, several years ago, I was told more than once that I looked like the bearded guy on Home Improvement (Richard Karn, later to be host of Family Feud).

Not all attractive women are near occasions of sin. (Some are near occasions of anger, because of their politics!) But some are just so sublimely beautiful and sweet, one merely marvels, and doth not covet.

Yes, I'm non-sequituring like it's going out of style!

If I ever get a dog (as is the case with Malia Obama, allergies would make that tricky), I'd name him or her Anathema. So I could say, "Anathema, sit! Good dog!" [Dreadful Latin pun which I must share with Sam, the Latin teacher.]

The blogger at Some Have Hats writes that she's heard only one anti-abortion homily since she's been a Catholic, and wagered with a friend last Easter that the homilist would say "gay" before he would say "Resurrection," and she won the bet. Here in libera-bibble Massachusetts, the situation is not so dire! Of course, not every priest is Fr D at St Agnes's (an exuberant traditionalist who has preached against not only abortion but contraception), but still ...

I need some grand summation to this post. It's getting a bit like my senior-year (high school) oral report on Dylan Thomas and William Blake, where I rambled off the cuff for 25+ minutes, carried by enthusiasm over my subject, but didn't quite know how to end. Robert Graves once ended a poem "at a careless comma," but that's been done. Eliot famously ended the world "not with a bang but a whimper." And the psalter ends with the phrase "Praise the Lord." If I were Rod Blagojevich, I'd end with a choice expletive! A three-letter word, as Joe Biden might say.

I'll end by stealing from Edward Estlin Cummings, on mortality and im-:

death,as men call him,ends what they call men
--but beauty is more now than dying's when

I'm linking to Andrew Sullivan

Apparently, one of the SSPX bishops whom Pope Benedict has restored to communion with the catholica is quite the unpleasant character. Maybe he has sound views on liturgy, but if what Sullivan tells us is true, I find myself wishing that the bishop could have been left "in the cold." (Although I don't know if his unpalatable views are excommunicable offenses, perhaps His Holiness could have restored the bishop to communion while simultaneously suspending his faculties.)

Of course, Andrew Sullivan would gladly see the Church transformed into the other extreme, with The Vicar of Dibley as Supreme Pontiff, but his concerns about Bishop Williamson (most of them, anyway) seem valid.

TSO on Springsteen

and the possible inverse relationship between contentment and artistic achievement.

Two gems from the Ironic Catholic

First: Thou mayest kick ass.

And: Park not.

Dov'è il Vaticano?

On YouTube!

Domini est terra

(Four versions of Psalm 24, verse one)

King James Version : The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

1928 Book of Common Prayer : The earth is the LORD's, and all that therein is; the compass of the world, and they that dwell therein.

Revised English Bible : To the LORD belong the earth and everything in it, the world and all its inhabitants.

New American Bible : The earth is the LORD's and all it holds, the world and those who live there.

My preference here is for the KJV. I usually read the 1928 BCP version of the Psalms with the most delight, but here the Authorized Version has the slight edge. The Revised English Bible, while I do read it occasionally, and prefer it generally to the New American Bible, here seems lackluster.

Awe, holy fear, and the unmistakable

consciousness of one's own inadequacies: a profound awareness that one is in the presence of a revelation of the Majesty and Mystery of Almighty God -- these sensations occur most often on the Number 15 bus. (I don't think I exaggerate.) But they were also present, untainted by any inconvenient emotion, when, one Sunday morning several Novembers ago, I poked my head into the Divine Liturgy at an Orthodox (OCA) church in the Boston area.

I was conscious of not being properly dressed, for one thing; the Orthodox still believe very much in wearing their Sunday best to church, and my blue jeans and windbreaker didn't seem to cut it. But I was enraptured by the chant, magnetized by the icons, overwhelmed by the solemnity.

What was I doing there? I stayed for about two or three minutes -- left, in part, because I thought I was being stared at, due to my casual attire, but also there was the very real experience of Non sum dignus* ...

That sensation of Non sum dignus -- combined with the joy of witnessing unforgettable Beauty -- herein lies the connection between the two apparently otherwise unconnected phenomena (the beauty of women seen on the bus, and the beauty of the ancient liturgy).

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Speaking of women: I think it is apt that Scripture in some places personifies wisdom as a woman (but here I am perhaps derailing my train of thought?). For many years, I would picture one particular woman when I read these verses:

"She is the radiance that streams from everlasting light, the flawless mirror of the active power of God, and the image of his goodness. [...] She is more beautiful than the sun, and surpasses every constellation. Compared with the light of day, she is found to excel, for day gives place to night, but against wisdom no evil can prevail" (Wisdom 7: 26, 29-30, Revised English Bible with Apocrypha).

Also: "I am the mother of fair love, and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope" (Ecclesiasticus 24:18, King James Version with Apocrypha).

Perhaps more later on this subject, if I can unscatter my brain.

*Non sum dignus = "I am not worthy"

This weekend's Marianne Moore

[...] gusto thrives on freedom, and freedom in art, as in life, is the result of a discipline imposed by ourselves. Moreover, any writer overwhelmingly honest about pleasing himself is almost sure to please others.

from The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore, p. 426

Two phrases that troubled me

in the President's inaugural speech: the one about discarding "worn-out dogmas" and the one about "remaking America."

I'm a fan of what others might deem worn-out dogmas. I liked Calvin Coolidge's line about not hesitating to be as reactionary as the multiplication table when the situation requires.

As for remaking America, I don't know how seriously to take that. Ronald Reagan would quote Thomas Paine to the effect that "we have it in our power to begin the world anew" or something like that -- to which George Will replied in a column, "Anywhere, at any time, that is nonsense." Elsewhere, Will wrote, "Quick changes are the business of bad men."

Peggy Noonan was on the Today show yesterday, saying that she thought the inaugural speech was (she used the word nearly a dozen times) "moderate." I thought it was unmistakably progressive, but not dangerous -- apart from those two phrases. "Remaking America" could be one of those standard flourishes like 41's "new breeze blowing" or 42's "in the midst of winter [...] we force the spring" -- a fresh start, a clean slate, etc. But combine "remaking America" with the disdain for "worn-out dogmas," and I worry. A little.

Postscript : Exact words:

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

Saint Faustina Kowalska

Everything I look at speaks to me of God's mercy.

(via Magnificat, January 2009, p. 296)

The inaugural poem

Praise Song for the Day by Elizabeth Alexander.

My opinion (as seen in one of the comboxes below): not bad at all. Apart from that line about "a widening pool of light," which I thought a tad new-agey ... and apart from the title ... I found it refreshingly free of bombast.

By what criterion ...

can this possibly be considered a poem?

An anniversary

Twenty-five years ago, my grandmother went to her rest in the hope of rising again; please join me in praying for the happy repose of her soul.

improvisational sequence

1
Sun over snowfield
feeble blot of whitish ink
leaking through gray cloud

2
Cantankerous crow
complains of the cold
with a colder cry

3
Wine gladdens the heart
bread strengthens the sinews and
oil makes the face shine

4
Woman with eyes like
stars in the midnight sky
where have you gone

5
Trudge through snow
toward the Sunday sacrifice
beatific day

6
Slumdog Millionaire
and the other much-praised films
don't think I'll see them

7
O tremendous dream
of ecstatic atonement
you've disturbed my peace

8
Noise of fretful mind
much concerned with that and this
will you never cease

9
Miss Marianne Moore
sapient Presbyterian
Brooklyn Confucius

10
when my life is spent
how stern will Your mercy be
how sweet Your justice

This weekend's Marianne Moore

With regard to emphasis in Biblical speech, there is a curious unalterableness about the statement by the Apostle James: The flower "falleth and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth." Substitute, "the grace of its fashion perisheth," and overconscious correctness is weaker than the actual version, in which eloquence escapes grandiloquence by virtue of gusto.

from The Complete Prose of Marianne Moore, p. 425

Somerset Maugham

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

(via Google's Quotes of the Day)

"Personal relationship"

Eve Tushnet reflects on the phrase "personal relationship with God" in this essay for Inside Catholic. With references to one of the penitential psalms.

The comments contain an anecdote about Fr Rutler's response to the question "Do you have a personal relationship with Jesus?" -- a response which I may have to steal and use as my own!

W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009)

The Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet has died. Here is his "April Inventory."

Books

Books can speak to us like God, like men or like the noise of the city we live in. They speak to us like God when they bring us light and peace and fill us with silence. They speak to us like God when we desire never to leave them. They speak to us like men when we desire to hear them again. They speak to us like the noise of the city when they hold us captive by a weariness that tells us nothing, give us no peace, and no support, nothing to remember, and yet will not let us escape.

Books that speak like God speak with too much authority to entertain us. Those that speak like good men hold us by their human charm; we grow by finding ourselves in them. They teach us to know ourselves better by recognizing ourselves in another.

Books that speak like the noise of multitudes reduce us to despair by the sheer weight of their emptiness. They entertain us like the lights of the city streets at night, by hopes they cannot fulfil.

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, Part One, chapter XIV (Image Books, 1968, pp. 61-62)

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When Merton writes of books that speak with the noise of the city's multitudes, noise that is ultimately empty, I think he may have anticipated the poetry of John Ashbery, whose clever orchestrations of language do not point to anything higher than the words themselves.