Thought for the Day No. 8: The End of the World

The world will perish in fire. Fire is essentially good; it used to be one of the four basic forms of matter. But man cannot survive pure fire. It is a high kind of reality that destroys everything impure. In that, it is like the face of God. Indeed, perhaps the end of the world will occur when God turns and faces it.

Belloc Wednesday - Wisdom in the Old Roads

From Hilaire Belloc's The Old Road (Philadelphia: J.B. Libbencott Company, 1905), p. 3.

There are primal things which move us....Of these primal things, the least obvious but the most important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own country on foot, and to whom its every phase of climate is delightful, receive, somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They feel a meaning in it; it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it explains its own vagaries, and it gives a unity to all that has arisen along its way. But for the mass The Road is silent; it is the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest and the most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest pioneers of our race. It is older than building and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places, and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have made.

It is easy to re-create in oneself to-day a sense of what the Road means to living things on land: it is easy to do it even in this crowded country. Walk, for instance, on the neglected Pennines along the watershed of England, from Malham Tarn, say, to Ribblehead, or from Kirkby Stephen up along the crest to Crossfell and so to Alston, and you will learn at once what follows on an untouched soil from the absence of a track - of a guide. One ravine out of the many radiating from a summit will lead to the one valley you seek; take another stream and you are condemned at last to traverse mountains to repair the error. In a fog or at night, if one has not such a path, there is nothing to help one but the lay of the snow or the trend of the vegetation under the last gale. In climbing, the summit is nearly always hidden, and nothing but a track will save you from false journeys. In descent it alone will save you a precipice or an unfordable stream. It knows upon which side an obstacle can be passed, where there is firm land in a morass, and where there is the best going; sand or rock - dry soil. It will find what nothing but long experiment can find for an individual traveller, the precise point in a saddle or neck where approach is easiest from either side, and everywhere the Road, especially the very early Road, is wiser than it seems to be. It reminds one of those old farmers who do not read, and whom we think at first unreasoning in their curious and devious ways, but whom if we watch closely, we shall find doing all their work just in that way which infinite time has taught the country-side.

The Heroic and the Mundane

Jailor: You understand my position, sir, there's nothing I can do; I'm a plain, simple man and just want to keep out of trouble.
from Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons.

μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα, φαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ.
βουλοίμην κ’ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,
ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,
ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.
Homer, Odyssey, 11.488-491.

Let me hear no smooth talk
Of death from you, Odysseus, light of councils.
Better, I say, to break sod as a farm hand
for some poor country man, on iron rations,
than lord it over all the exhausted dead.
Homer, Odyssey, trans. Fitzgerald, 11.577-581.

'For little price,' he said, 'do Elven-kings sell their daughters: for gems, and things made by craft. But if this be your will, Thingol, I will perform it. And when we meet again my hand shall hold a Silmaril from the Iron Crown; for you have not looked the last upon Beren son of Barahir....
Then Beren and Lúthien went through the Gate, and down the labyrinthine stairs; and together wrought the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves or Men. For they came to the seat of Morgoth in his nethermost hall that was upheld by horror, lit by fire, and filled with weapons of death and torment.
from J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion.

Of all the themes chosen by the poets, none has endured so long as the tale of the heroic. It is in the earliest epics, earlier even than the Odyssey. It is a greater theme than romance, though romance, ordinarily a lyric condition, occasionally rises to it. Did a man know every language every spoken, and had he read every work ever written, were he to find and record only the smallest part of only the most profound writing upon the heroic, he should have to sit in his high-tech library for months.

There is something in the hero of song and music. It is in the music of his laugh which disdains an enemy. It is in tears as tragedy inevitably strikes, and more than once in the same place. It is in the murmur and thanks of the poor in spirit who look on and suffer. It is in the deep chorus of the sea which carries him from his home, and washes him back upon it. It is in tender words for his lover, O three graces in one, my Beauty, Joy, and Plenty. It is in the glad tidings of victory, and it is in the dull silence of defeat. And this is why the earliest poets chose to sing their stories in song, for they heard this music, which is the trilling echo of divinity, the shadow of Glory.

And yet the poet finishes the song, and the hero must die, after all of his sufferings, and sometimes in the midst of them, and what must be done after it is finished? Even Beren the Befriended died in battle, but was brought back in resurrected body only at the strange mercy of the gods. And the gods were moved by the lamentation of Lúthien daughter of Melian, who miraculously found the thread of song to tell her sorrow in some wayward weft of the eternal fabric lost long ago, so that no woman is ever likely to repeat her deed.

A man may only bear so much divinity before it kills him. Prospero abdicates his power that he might return to Italy with his newly-wedded daughter and son. The mundane has its place, in which the crowds share, and in which the hero must share if he is to live well. For heroism always depends upon extraordinary grace. Homer knew this, and that is why his heroes have the blood of gods in their veins, why gods smith their armour, why gods advise and protect them. But there is an ordinary grace for the ordinary existence - for marriage, for labour with the hands until evening, for quiet and a simple gravestone. If a man is to leave this ordinary existence, he must be called. There is grace appointed for such times. But the man who leaves without a call presumes upon God's extraordinary grace. He commits sacrilege. To avoid this, the hero must study when it is fitting to subdue and to suffer, and when it is fitting to walk away.

Richard Wagner's Ring cycle idolizes the most pernicious form of modern heroism- the heroic romance. Here is Brunnhilde in the early part of the Götterdämmerung, speaking of the ring, now a love-token from Siegfried, to her Valkyrie sister Waltraute:

Ha! know'st thou what 'tis to me?
How canst thou grasp it, loveless maid!
More than Vahalla's rapture,
more than the fame of gods is this my ring:
one glance at its lustrous gold,
one flash of its holy fire
more is to me e'en than all the heaven's aye-enduring delight.
For blissfully there shineth the love of Siegfried.
Love of Siegfried!
O might but its rapture be told thee!
that lives in the ring.
Go hence to the holy council of gods!
And of my ring tell o'er to them my words:
(rather more slowly) from love I never will turn,
of love they never shall rob me,
though into ruins
Valhalla's splendor should fall!

To the credit of Wagner's genius, Brunnhilde indeed sees the ruin of Valhalla. The love she snatched with Siegfried from out of the ordinary life, without marriage, communal covenant, or obedience, can only find consummation in life through consumption in a fiery death. Having forsaken the gods, the lovers must play their own sacrificial lambs in order to atone for their sacrilege.

That death is no death proper for men, and moreover it is quite ridiculous when we jump out of myth and into the present. Practically speaking, whatever the commercials suggest, there is only a small need for heroism. These days, if it is possible at all, to be heroic is to suffer deeply with stubborn charity, and who goes looking for that? Perhaps only Christians and event-coordinators, and anyway it will come to them unhoped for in its due time. But still the best of life is to be had in the mundane, ordinary existence: "Territory, status, and love, sing all the birds, are what matter: ... a place I may go both in and out of."

Of course ordinary men and women must have fun and adventure too: there is a place for theatre and the make-believe epic, and that is one of the chief reasons we love the writings of G.K. Chesterton. But the really demanding sort of heroism in which Chesterton himself lived - the deadly seriousness, the fury, and the compassion that churns the gut - to hold these things in one's soul is a rare calling. Be wary of taking it up, and be ready to lay it down. (These days we have too many wannabe heroes calling themselves pundits. You can tell this by the way they contrive in themselves feelings of shock and horror, for effect. Sadly, many cases practice the art so often, they either deceive themselves into thinking that their horror is real, or they lose their capacity to feel anything else.)

Those who are summoned to heroism must remember that the dark valley of heroism is called the Terrible. It is, to put it lightly, a rather unpleasant place. It also happens to be impossibly difficult to mess and win through it. And the character of impossibility is precisely what allows for a heroic situation, for the stonewall defiance against the impossible is precisely what stamps the rare title of hero upon a man or a woman. But if it is impossible, how is it accomplished, and how is anyone called a hero? Here is the answer. Every hero's success, and every pedestal of fame, must inescapably come as a gift of God, since it is only God's Mercy which has the power, at the last moment, to turn the tables upon doom. Only divine Pity completes the impossible quest. So it must be whenever a man burning with desire attempts the indestructible to destroy or the free to possess.

Then, if all that can be done is in good faith done, whether Pity has broken the spell, or whether the quest has failed, greatness must breathe a sigh of relief: it must diminish, and go into the West (which is the old world for Home).

Silent Music

In a strange twist of events, I've moved to Indianapolis to teach a one room high-school, and I live in the basement of my employer's home. Since, on the advice of St. Thomas to his Brother John, you must "love to be in your room frequently, if you wish to be led to the wine cellar," I must make my new room lovable. How to do it, and how to unlock the door to the wine cellar? Well, I consider the chief circumstance: but for the occasional rumble of household machines, the basement of the Brill family is beautifully quiet. I figured the time was right to stop playing recorded music, a thing which has grown to dominate my various physical homes and even my mental order. I would devote my room to true spiritual silence. But alas for the flesh! I found after just a day I couldn't stand the vacancy.

So I bethought to myself, "self, wither mayest thou look for a music in concorde with the spirit of silence?" Then I remembered the plainchant of Gregory the Great which filled the monasteries of Western Europe. And indeed, after enjoying a few days of chant, testing whether I might hold to the firm principle of silence with the aid of this ancient artifact, I found that it had no addictive power, and yet it played a marvelous peace upon my soul. So I settled that chant, a capella developments of it as but no more complex than the music of Palestrina, and absolute quiet would compose the auditory architecture of my room.

In this experiment, I have discovered two curious properties of plainchant:
1) Through rooms and floors which are generally quiet, the music carries a clear and satisfactory sound much further than does other music at a similar volume. In other words, one never knows discomfort when listening to the distant sound of chant. But the distant sound of any other music drives me mad. I can't ignore it completely, but I can't piece it together either.
2) Plainchant is retiring. It hides in the background of almost any other noise.

At least two interesting conclusions follow.
1) Plainchant requires a special place, set apart for its purposes. A man may feast on the rewards of plainchant only if he cultivates his home diligently and thoughtfully.
2) Plainchant is fundamentally at odds with a world of machines.

The central function of plainchant is, of course, worship, which is the heir of the mind of God and the elder brother of philosophical contemplation. It is not clear to me whether the background playing of plainchant, however well it orders the mind in the habit of contemplation, contributes anything to a habit of worshipfulness, but it seems possible, since contemplation is so closely related to worship. And I assert the possibility that an engineered pattern of silence irrigates a place with a sanctifying grace. All men everywhere have found this. The Orient has found this, and practised it with fervour (though the Buddhists take this practice too far, and so commit both idolatry and intellectual error.) Since Christians inherit the special blessing of God, let them all the more so labour to engineer their homes and their churches with silence, let them pray that the Holy Spirit may irrigate with his grace, and let them look for aid in their labours to the singers of silent music.

And while they're at it, smash the machines.

Belloc Wednesday - Chesterton on Belloc

This is the first description of Belloc that Chesterton put to writing, which he wrote for the introduction to Hilaire Belloc: The Man and His Work by C. C. Mandell and E. Shanks, 1916.

From Masie Ward, Gilbert Keith Chesterton (London: Sheed & Ward, 1944), p. 113.

When I first met Belloc he remarked to the friend who introduced us that he was in low spirits. His low spirits were and are much more uproarious and enlivening than anybody else's high spirits. He talked into the night, and left behind in it a glowing track of good things. When I have said that I mean things that are good, and certainly not merely bons mots, I have said all that can be said in the most serious aspect about the man who has made the greatest fight for good things of all the men of my time.

We met between a little Soho paper shop and a little Soho restaurant; his arms and pockets were stuffed with French Nationalist and French Atheist newspapers. He wore a straw hat shading his eyes, which are like a sailor's, and emphasizing his Napoleonic chin.....

The little restaurant to which we went had already become a haunt for three or four of us who held strong but unfashionable views about the South African War, which was then in its earliest prestige. Most of us were writing on the Speaker....

...What he brought into our dream was this Roman appetite for reality and for reason in action, and when he came into the door there entered with him the smell of danger.

Thought for the Day No. 7: Justice and Mercy

I think that if, at the end of my brief life (hopefully longer than Keats's), I should have contributed anything to the great body of Western political philosophy, it will have been an exposition of the following principle:

Justice for all, mercy for each.