Supreme Katharsis

Is it right to let us see men dying? Yes. Is it a sacrilege? No. If our spirit be purged of curiosity and purified with awe the sight is hallowed. There is no sacrilege if we are fit for the seeing … I say it is regenerative and resurrective for us to see war stripped bare. Heaven knows that we need the supreme katharsis, the ultimate cleansing. We grow indifferent too quickly … These are dreadful sights but their dreadfulness is as wholesome as Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’. It shakes the kaleidoscope of war into human reality … I say that these pictures are good for us.

~ James Douglas, The Star, 25th September 1916

This quote is so powerful. What Douglas is here dealing with is one of the toughest issues man faces. He wrote this after a viewing of the 1916 film The Battle of the Somme, a battle which occurred the same year. Two cinematographers filmed during the war and made a movie out of it which was then released in the British Isles. It was very popular and its effect was enormous. Not until then had the reality of World War 1 hit the British peoples. This quote captures so much of that film, and so much of the issues which surround similar situations today. Why, some would ask, ought we to watch war films or death onscreen. This would be my reply. Not because it is good, but because we are bad and require a jolt to think outside our own reality.

Quotes for Seniors

I finished Dante's Paradise today, and I have many quotes to put on my blog. But these two quotes seemed to relate to my own position as a senior most, so I shall share them first. The first is what I would say to my mother, my teacher. In the second, I felt God speaking to me as one going into a new part of her life.

You are my sire. You give me confidence to speak. You raise my heart so high that I am more than I. My soul is overflowing with the joy that pours from many streams, and it rejoices that it endures and does not burst inside.

~Dante, Paradise, Canto 16

You shall be forced to leave behind those things you love most dearly, and this is the first arrow the bow of your exile will shoot. And you will know how salty is the taste of others' bread, how hard the road that takes you down and up the stairs of others' homes. But what will weigh you down the most will be the despicable, senseless company whom you shall have to bear in that sad vale; and all ungrateful, all completely mad and vicious, they shall turn on you, but soon their cheeks, not yours, will have to blush from shame. Proof of their bestiality will show through their own deeds! It will be to your honor to have become a party of your own.

~Dante, Paradise, Canto 17

I'm telling you...

All of life is a Pixar film.

Where to Begin

If men on earth were to pay greater heed to the foundation Nature has laid down, and build on that, they would build better men.

~Dante, Paradise, Canto 8

Please Note

On my other blog at http://tofindtruthinart.blogspot.com/ is a post I think the men who read this blog ought to take note of.

Another Dante Quote

Once there [heaven] we shall behold what we hold true through faith, not proven but self-evident: a primal truth, incontrovertible.

~Dante, Paradise, Canto 2

Ah, the Classics and Inflected Languages!

What glorious things you learn from them! They are fountains of water on a dry soul, food to nourish a youthful mind. If you study them and really, truly learn them, your mind will be stretched irrevocably for the better and your grasp of language will never be the same.

Since my Greek class has finished Plato's Apology, our teacher, Dr. Bruce McMenomy, has begun doing grammar review. This class period, he shared with us fascinating information about Greek and Latin cases and how they make sense when viewed in correspondence to the original Indo-European cases from which they arose.

For example, many people who study Latin get confused at the difference between the ablative of agent and the ablative of instrument. The only difference between them, they claim, is that the former uses people and the latter things. But our teacher explained to us that the Latin ablative of agent and the Greek genitive of agent both came from the Indo-European "ablative" case used to convey separation, while the Latin ablative of instrument and the Greek dative of instrument both came from the Indo-European "instrument" case used to convey means. Here is the climax of his point:

"But the point here is that in the agent construction — in both Latin and Greek — the sense feeding into it historically — and probably still there in the conscience of those using the language at the time — is separative. The action implicit is action FROM someone. This is very different from action BY MEANS OF something. Once you really understand that, the ablative of agent in Latin, and the genitive of agent in Greek, both become vastly richer connotatively for you. You understand that there's almost a physical sense of motion underlying every transitive verb. Action comes FROM something and goes TO something."

Wow, I thought. In these differences between cases there is embodied the idea that action comes from someone and goes somewhere. The idea there there is no "just happening" and random acting. That all things come from a specific source, and that they all lead to a definite end.

Grammar has never seemed more important to me.

In Search of Angel's Bread

Here is a gorgeous quote from Dante's Paradise. The title is a phrase, which I also love, from the next canto which I thought fit well.

"Among all things, however disparate, there reigns an order, and this gives the form that makes the universe resemble God," she said; "therein God's higher creatures see the imprint of Eternal Excellence - that goal for which the system is created, and in this order all created things, according to their bent, maintain their place, disposed in proper distance from their Source; therefore, they move, all to a different port, across the vast ocean of being, and each endowed with its own instinct as its guide. This is what carries fire toward the moon, this is the moving force in mortal hearts, this is what binds the earth and makes it one. Not only living creatures void of reason prove the impelling strength of instinct's bow, but also those with intellect and love.... But, it is true that just as form sometimes may not reflect the artist's true intent, the matter being deaf to the appeal, just so, God's creature, even though impelled toward the true goal, having the power to serve, may sometimes go astray along his course; and just as fire can be seen as falling down from a cloud, so too man's primal drive, twisted by false desire, may bring him down."

~Dante, Paradise, Canto 1

Here is my prayer today. Lord, help me keep to the order ordained for me at the beginning of time. Help me move when I should move and stay when I should stay. Guard me from the twistings of false desire. Keep me from going astray and being deaf to the appeals of my own artist: yourself. Lord, keep me searching for angel's bread.

Frank Sinatra - Nice "N" Easy

I love this song so much!

Today

I finished Plato's Apology in Greek today. It was wonderful! I must admit, at times in the middle I felt very muddled and inept. But it was so very worthwhile. There really is nothing like reading something in the actual language in which it was written. You bond with the work in a special way, and it will forever be different for you. It's message will sink deeper, and it's words will be set apart from others in your minds.

Here is the very end of the Apology; it's truly beautiful. Though Socrates claimed he wasn't an orator, he is a master of rhetoric.

ἀλλὰ γὰρ ἤδη ὥρα ἀπιέναι, ἐμοὶ μὲνἀποθανουμένῳ, ὑμῖν δὲ βιωσομένοις: ὁπότεροι δὲ ἡμῶνἔρχονται ἐπὶ ἄμεινον πρᾶγμα, ἄδηλον παντὶ πλὴν ἢ τῷ θεῷ.

It means: "But indeed it is already the hour to leave, for me to die, but for you to live; but which of us two goes to a better way of life is unknown to all except the god."

I pray that I will be able to face my own death with such composure, such magnanimity - the kind which comes from knowing I go to a better place.

It's Called a Cruel Irony

So, I was sitting on our library couch tonight, reading Dante's Purgatory. I felt a rumbling in my tummy, so I went into the kitchen, washed an apple, and cut it. As I bit into my first delightful piece, I looked down at my book again.

I was beginning Canto 23, the ring where gluttons are punished.


Go figure.