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Post by Ranger on Nov 12, 2015 11:13:50 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 20, 2015 22:02:25 GMT
Read Piers Paul Read's new novel SCARPIA, in which the villainous police chief of Puccini's opera TOSCA is reinvented as a melancholy and often sinful, but not fundamentally malevolent Catholic Royalist who has risked his life for his cause and is hunting Jacobins who are generally (not exclusively) crooks and killers. Those not familiar with the opera's plot can check the link below: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tosca It's an interesting example of what is called a "retcon" (i.e. retrospectively constructing a backstory for a known fiction which gives a different meaning to what has already been seen), and Read does not shirk on the darker side of ancien regime Italy and Rome, but I don't think it works in the end for the following reasons: (1) It reads to a considerable extent like an illustrated history lecture, with large amounts of information dumped in on the reader and Scarpia seen as much from the outside as within. There is no sustained attempt to explore how the worldview of a C18 Sicilian aristocrat might operate in practice. (2) The contrast of the Sicilian outsider Scarpia with his somewhat naive belief in honour and the corrupt Romans who will collaborate with whoever's on top is very characteristic of Read - innocence corrupted is one of his favourite themes - but in the end, while Scarpia is not seen as sinless, I think he comes across as a bit too good to be true. Whatever about the French republican bias of the original, the willingness of people who have power to use it to exploit the vulnerable is pretty much a constant. (I can think of some nasty examples in Ireland in 1798 who are rather like the operatic SCarpia, and the fact that those people operated under a Protestant ancien regime rather than a cAtholic one doesn't alter my point.) Read had quite an interesting article about his novel in the CATHOLIC HERALD last week, but I don't think it's available online. BTW there are quite a number of seductions (this issue was raised in the reviews) but they are rather less explicit than I feared they might be. (This is not always true of Read's work - some time ago I acquired some of his early novels and was so shocked I disposed of them). A caution is necessary for anyone who thinks they might be susceptible to occasions of sin.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 20, 2016 20:53:57 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 27, 2016 20:27:31 GMT
Passed through Merrion Square today and noticed that someone had painted a picture of Oscar Wilde on an electricity installation outside the park, near his statue. One nice little feature of this is that Wilde is shown holding a wooden staff which is starting to bud and produce leaves. This is presumably a reference to one of the last verses of THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL, referring to a buried prisoner executed for murder: Out of his mouth a red, red rose Out of his heart a white! For who knows how, in what strange way God brings the truth to light When the barren staff the pilgrim bore Bloomed in the great Pope's sight. This is in turn inspired by a feature of Wagner's opera TANNHAUSER. The minstrel Tannhauser goes on pilgrimage to Rome doing penance for his sins (which include having an affair with the goddess/demon Venus) but is told by the Pope that he can no more be forgiven than the Pope's staff can bloom green again. At the end of the opera, as Tannhauser dies, pilgrims arrive from Rome with the news that the Pope's staff has blossomed. I don't suppose the artist of the Wilde picture had in mind Wilde's deathbed repentance, but it's an interesting angle - and something we all should bear in mind.
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Post by hibernicus on Sept 27, 2016 21:19:35 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 20, 2016 22:46:26 GMT
Read Hans Urs von Balthasar's study of Georges Bernanos. A few points come to mind: (1) It shows up what a shallow pastiche of Bernanos the movie CAVALRY actually is. (2) Bernanos was a remarkably honest man, who was willing to criticise his allies when they did wrong, irrespective of the consequences. His public denunciations of massacres he witnessed carried out by Nationalists in Spain (and he supported the Nationalists) is a case in point. He was an example of a right-winger who idealised feudalism/chivalry but recognised that fascism was not as it was often presented a revival thereof, because in theory chivalry was based on mutual honour and duty, whereas the fascist leaders presented themselves as demigods who could not be under obligation to anyone. The anti-Hitler journalist Fritz Gerlich is another example. (3) He is very perceptive on the clericalisation and bourgeoisification of Catholicism which he saw as going back to the counter-reformation era (he absolutely hated the JEsuits as authoritarians who infantilised their pupils) and the way thiS led to a pietism divorced from everyday liFe and an equation of the clergy with the church. This is one of the things against which liberal Catholics legitimately reacted, and though their solution was misplaced we need to know what provoked their reaction. Similarly, he is quite scathing about episcopal complacency and seLf-congratulation (though he always refrained from criticising tHe Pope in person) and aware of the extent to which the Christian Democrat and Catholic Action projects were doomed to fall short of their dream of re-evangelising society. Whether he had any serious alternative is another matter. (4) There are some very odd affinities with aspects of Chesterton, though you might not think of them as having much in common - such as the insistence on keeping in touch with the simplicity and straightforwardness of the child he once waS. Perhaps the scene in THE BALL AND THE CROSS, to which I often return, in which MacIan iS shown the chivalric society of his dreams and realises, when his guide dismisses an act of injustice as unimportant, that it is a demonic illusion, might be another. Part of the difference between them might be that GKC as a convert to a minority had a tendency to idealise, whereas Bernanos as a born Catholic in a historically Catholic culture was more aware of shortcomings. This post is getting long - I may do another.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Oct 21, 2016 10:49:02 GMT
The complete rejection by Hitler and most Nazis of chivalry is one of the hardest things to understand historically.
As a reaction against Marxism and communism, one would think that the Nazis would have at least pretended to embrace chivalry. But Hitler could not have been more explicit in his rejection of it. He told his generals before Operation Barbarossa that they were to discard any notion of chivalry.
Marxism and Nazism both seemed to revel in a kind of brutal realism, or what they imagined was realism. This is another thing I find disturbing about the 'Alt Right' (though that's another thread)-- this sort of brutal 'realism' is also very much in evidence there.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 23, 2016 21:06:04 GMT
The Nazis' pretensions to chivalry are a bit more complicated; they did in fact appeal to elements of it, such as the emphasis on honOur and Himmler's deployment of the symbolism associated with the mediaeval knightly orders in relation to the SS - he restored a mediaeval castle as a SS sanctuary and training centre and developed various rituals in association with it. (The reason why they bother to exhort each other not to be chivalrous in that particular context is to square their actions with their claims to be men of honour.) Chivalry was an attempt to Christianise (with limited success) an existing cultural phenomenon - the king or nobleman surrounded by a select band of warriors whom he maintains and who are bound to him by oaths of mutual loyalty and by a shared code of honour to be lived to the death. Such honour-groups are by definition based on exclusion - the code only applies to those who possess honour (the Mafia claim to be men of honour is based on the idea that they observe the honour code with each other; the 'ndrangheta of southern Italy even claim they were founded by mediaeval knights; most C19 German university duelling fraternities used to exclude Jews by saying that by definition they had no honour to defend). The Christian knightly code extended this to include in the warrior's honour the idea of duties towards those outside the honour group. Nazism was a rejection of this veneer and a return in the name of Social Darwinism to the older exclusive ethos of the warrior group. One contemporary German observer of Nazism - I forget was it Haffner or von Hildebrand - noted that much of its language and symbolism presented Hitler as the Germanic chieftain rewarding his loyal followers with the loot of battle - or thievery and murder in fact. Bernanos picks up on this rejection of Christian knighthood, and Gerlich realised something else - that Hitler did not really observe the warrior-group ethos which he invoked, because he saw himself as a sort of god who could be under obligation to no-one even when they were under obligation to him; and of course all the little Hitlers saw themselves in the same light when it came to their subordinates, and that was how they rationalised their murders and thievery.
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Post by hibernicus on Dec 17, 2016 19:14:38 GMT
We are going to be hearing quite a bit about Martin Scorsese's forthcoming movie based on Shosaku Endo's novel SILENCE. Here is an interesting article about the novel and the questions it raises, which shows that while Endo's relationship to Catholicism was ambivalent it is a good deal more serious than (say) equivalent novels by Brian Moore in which believers are repulsive fanatics and apostates are taking the only morally serious course. Bear in mind also that the issue of Japanese Catholics being descended not from the martyrs but from those who outwardly conformed and participated in acts of desecration while inwardly retaining the faith has analogies in other places of persecution, as shown by the histories of Catholicism in England and our own country for example. (In the C18 quite a few Irish aristocrats conformed outwardly to Anglicanism while remaining crypto-Catholics and were able to help their co-religionists thereby. I'm not saying this was right, but it's a sobering reminder that we ourselves might not endure under such conditions.) www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/5281/reading_isilencei_for_the_first_time.aspx#disqus_thread
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 19, 2017 0:06:40 GMT
Saw the Scorsese film of SILENCE recently. May write something about it elsewhere, but here are a few scattered thoughts: (1) Donald Clarke's comment that he couldn't care less about the theme of the film is even more foolish than I first thought. The way the authorities in the film pressurise the protagonist into apostasy is a classic example of how Stockholm Syndrome is created and how abusers make their victims feel completely dependent and blame themselves for the abusers' own crimes. (One odd little detail is that at one point one persecutor tells the priest that they have lied to another priest about him, but this does not seem to make him consider that they might be lying to him.) This is probably not so obvious in the novel which focuses intensely on his point of view as it is in the necessarily two-dimensional visual medium. (2) The protagonist comes across as being more a proxy for the sceptical C20 reader than an early modern Jesuit. Despair is a temptation in every age but it takes different forms. It's very noticeable for example that he never refers to the devil, who features prominently in THE SPIRITUAL EXERCISES; and his response to the executions of the martyrs does not strike me as the reaction of someone living in a society where public executions are fairly commonplace, animal butchery is an everyday event, etc. (3) One odd little point is that the persecutors are quite contemptuous towards the Christians for being mere peasants and fishermen. (Of course the protagonist condescends to them as well; his spiritual pride is so blatant it's almost ridiculous.) It reminds me of a certain sort of snob traditionalist who maintains that aristocratic descent is a positive advantage to sanctity. BTW they also repeatedly say that stamping on the image of Our Lord is "a mere formality" - but of course it isn't or they wouldn't insist on it, and it is an odd statement to make given that traditional Iapanese culture is highly formalised. (4) One element which probably comes from Scorsese (though there may be an element of it in Endo, given that he was writing in the Vatican II era) is that the early part of the film emphasises sacramental ritual, LAtin prayers etc (oddly enough in the novel one of the martyrs sings a Iapanese hymn as he dies, but in the film it is "Tantum Ergo") and the protagonist moves from this to a form of secret and privatised religion which does not appear sacramental at all and exists only in the mind; the film might be read in this context as a "Spirit of Vatican II" product.
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Post by hibernicus on Jan 24, 2017 21:43:18 GMT
Another odd little detail about the SCorsese film is that when the body of one of the martyrs is taken down from his cross Scorsese clearly creates a visual resemblance to paintings of the Deposition from the Cross. This is both beautiful and appropriate, but it sits rather oddly with the protagonist's statement that he sees the deaths of the martyrs purely as gruesome and futile.
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Post by hibernicus on Mar 24, 2017 20:36:49 GMT
A piece on some examples of Christian-influenced science fiction, including RA Lafferty's PAST MASTER where St Thomas More winds up on another planet which he initially sees as Utopia, but ends up being martyred. If you actually try to read Lafferty, bear in mind that his style is wild and wonderful and hard to pin down. www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/03/ecclesiology-in-space
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 1, 2017 21:46:06 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 26, 2017 18:11:09 GMT
I have seen THE MAN ON A DONKEY by HFM Prescott praised as one of the finest historical novels ever written, but I have never managed to find a copy. (It is about the Pilgrimage of Grace, the large-scale rising of Northern England against Henry VIII's religious changes, and its defeat by treachery. The author was an Anglican, but it is generally sympathetic to the rebels.) I have now come across this review by Peter Hitchens of a recent reprint, which will make me keep an eye out for it even more. Readers of this board may be interested. hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/08/a-review-of-the-man-on-the-donkey-by-hfm-prescott.html
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Post by assisi on Oct 7, 2017 10:27:59 GMT
The Awakening of Miss Prim is an unusual work written in 2013 by a Spanish novelist Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera. It is her first novel as far as I can see and sometimes it shows as the style can be a little pedantic and ponderous at times.
The protagonist Miss Prim is a librarian, well qualified, logical, modern with a smattering of feminist sensibility, but not quite at ease with her current life. She goes to work as librarian for a man who lives in a big old house in a small town where he studies ‘dead’ languages and educates a small band of children in the old traditional classical mode of education.
The town itself is a retreat from modernity that has attracted a collection of like-minded souls fleeing secular life to settle there. The residents value faith, wisdom and tradition above the materialist functionality of the modern world. Much of the novel revolves around the tension (and budding romance) between Miss Prim’s logical approach to life and education, and the spiritual and traditional approach of her employer, the man in the big house.
The novel has a few interesting themes that are topical. There is the Home Schooling debate, a town that is a ‘Benedict Option’ retreat from modernity, state education versus a classical education. The novel is peppered with classical quotes and allusions, the ladies of the town gather together over plates of home cooked dainties and delicacies to discuss the goings on in the town, like something from a Jane Austen novel. There are references to Chesterton, Newman , John Donne and many other pearls of wisdom are thrown in.
This would be a nice book to read coming up to Christmas, an antidote to the usual bestsellers about serial killers, missing persons, dystopias and family and relationship breakdown. Not a classic by any stretch but it is an easy and gentle read.
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