A work of generations.
Silence is golden. This past week I’ve changed my schedule. Before now we’ve been starting the girls’ bedroom routine between seven and seven-thirty, and getting them down to sleep (at least down to sleep enough that we can leave the room) by eight-thirty or nine. From then I’d work till about eleven (including on these letters), and then I’d walk up to bed, fall asleep by midnight, and wake (unless I was woken up several time at night – which I usually was) just before seven in the morning to shower and start the day.
This past week I’ve been going to bed an hour earlier and waking up an hour earlier, and this has given lie to the idea that an hour here is the same as an hour there. The early morning hour has such greater energy to it. Much more work is done, much greater peace is had, and all are (or at least I am, I don’t think anyone else in the household has noticed) happier for it.
With some trepidation do I report all of this to you. I am not a stranger to changing my routine, and therefore am not a stranger to how the first week so often feels revelatory, as if the whole horizon has changed, only to slide back into ho-hum humdrum. We’ll just have to give it a little patience and see where we’re at in a fortnight, the next time you receive this letter.
|
|
With Our Fathers
“Give me the patience and Papa the patience and..”
This is the prayer Number One usually gives when we try to get her to do ‘personal prayer’ at night. On the theory that the more we push, the more she resents it, we don’t demand any prayer, and for the longest time she would simply repeat the ‘Our Father’ we’d just finished. But now she often asks God to give her, me, my wife, the Baby, and honestly everyone she can think of right at that moment ‘the patience’.
She never says what she prays we have the patience for, but…
I’m grateful for this. While I think she’s merely latched on to one of the prayers I most often say for her and myself, it’s a prayer that needs more repetition in this, our modern world. As we all seem to endlessly lament, there are a thousand-and-one places in daily life where we need patience. I often feel I can’t read two articles before tripping over someone worrying about the “machines” or “mirrors” or “black holes” in our pockets.
Who among us has not had our attention span shredded by these magic boxes?
While everyone speaks about how this shredded attention thwarts our hourly attempts to (let’s say) read a book without checking our phones, we rarely if ever talk about how this impatience operates over years and decades. What I mean can be seen in an anecdote from my mom’s time as a public-school teacher. She regularly complained that her school’s administration, in that strange preference education administrators seem to have for chasing the pedagogically ‘new thing’ over actually teaching students, would every several years alter the curriculum.
My mom and the other teachers would then spend a busy summer updating their lesson plans, followed by a couple strenuous years ironing out its kinks. They’d have got it done, made it work, with room for some flourishes and luxuries, and they’d sit back to enjoy their time with students and just start to look towards the horizon to see what fruits their work would bear – all just in time for the administration to chase the next new thing, come on down from on high, and alter the curriculum all over again. And their work would start anew.
To the degree I have a field, my field is in The Canon – literature and its discontents. We must have patience here too. Not just with the misreadings and disrespect endemic to the present era, but patience with how readily we add or delete from The Canon. Our modern world’s disease is an eagerness to add correction and an impatience with leisurely enjoyment.
C.S. Lewis thought it should take about one-hundred years before admitting any book into the Pantheon of Great Books. We quickly see that this means Lewis’s own work and (perhaps what would have been more distressing for him) Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings has not yet entered The Canon, though you would be crazier than Arkham Asylum if you thought I wasn’t going to read those stories to our children.
Even after those hundred years, though, books fall in and out of fashion, even if they don’t necessarily fall in and out of the Canon. But how many people do you know who have read The Faerie Queene? How many people do you know who have read Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy? If you time-traveled to our forebearers 100-years-ago, they would be shocked at our ignorance.
The CLT (Classical Learning Test) is a competitor to the SAT and the ACT, and in their list of “Classical Learning”, they include Toni Morrison. Her most famous book, Beloved, is barely a third of a century old, and she died in 2018. Assuming the Classical Learning Tests intends to test classical learning, she and her books should not be there (they also include C.S. Lewis, whom I’ve already placed outside the Canon for now). There have simply been too few generations to test her importance.
(Now, whether as a political matter the CLT-board should include Toni Morrison is yet another thing, for of course to be successful they must incite interest from mainstream colleges, and “diversity” is the watchword of our times.)
But here we get to my ever-present worry about sounding like a prophet. To say ‘she does not belong in The Canon’ is to say that I think she ought not to be there now (or yet, or ever – but that’s another argument). And there is a good deal of bother on my side of the internet about the CLT ”going woke”, about how it fails to properly respect The Canon. But we are not French here. We have no Académie Française to regulate our intellectual life for us. The CLT is a business and a social movement first, attempting to give classical schools and homeschoolers an alternative to the SAT and ACT tests; the CLT is not the catholic arbiter of the canonical.
And anyway, the Canon is not constructed to plan like an office building but grown and pruned like a garden or curated like a fine museum. And so while Toni Morrison ought not to be added to the Canon now on thirty-years recommendation (the time since Beloved was published), and though I would not wish to add Morrison to The Canon even after three-hundred-years recommendation (though if she lasts three-hundred-years I would likely reconsider), if someone else wishes her inclusion, he should do what any teacher ought to do. He should teach her (that is, plant her books) and watch to see if she takes to the soil.
(Zora Neale Hurston, on the other hand, is closing in on her centennial and ought to be more read, and so, if I ever teach a class on American literature, I will be sure to include Their Eyes Were Watching God.)
This slow sifting of the Canon is everywhere. Sir Walter Scott used to be more-widely read than any author but Shakespeare. Now few even read Ivanhoe. Even someone as seemingly perennial as Dickens goes through peaks and troughs in his popularity. Dickens famously created a Beatles-effect when he landed in New York City, and he loomed large in my childhood. His works were everywhere in pop culture (‘please, Sir, may I have some more’) and were discussed or referenced in the well-read household. Now I hear very few people talk about him at all, unless they’re talking about A Christmas Carol. Our age, for whatever reason, is not Dickensian, and it is not Scott-ish either.
Yet both I shall pass on to our children. As I intend to pass on Hurston, Lewis, Tolkien, Austen, Spenser, Shakespeare, Alcott, Poe, and hundreds of others. If they happen upon Beloved and want to (in High School) read it – sure. And maybe despite my uninterest, they will fall in love with it, and they will pass it on to my grandchildren. And maybe they will find Austen uninspired (though that opinion would be hard to maintain in this family) or Poe interminably dull, and so they will not pass her or him off to my grandchildren.
I still will, and none of us who argue over the Canon now will likely be around to know who my grandchildren pass to their children. But the Canon itself will persist despite our frail mortality. And it will not be changed by French-like gatekeeper nor Anglo-like fads. We just need some patience.
|
|
Flowerbeds
Forgive me for sounding like Donald Trump for a second, but I’m going to sound like Donald Trump for a second. The Immaculate Conception is not about Jesus – a lot of people don’t know that. The Immaculate Conception is the belief that the Virgin Mary was born free from original sin.
The belief is ancient but the Dogma is modern. Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Ambrose, and many other Church Fathers all believed Mary was immaculately conceived. Not that they necessarily would have phrased it that way; Ephrem the Syrian said she was as innocent as Eve before the fall. Duns Scotus (late 13th Century) was for the belief, while both Bernard de Clairvaux (12th Century) and Thomas Aquinas (middle 13th Century) were against it. In 1477, the Church officially approved the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (though it wasn’t yet called that), and during the Council of Trent (1563), the Church declared Mary free from personal sin (probably in respond, as most of the Council of Trent was, to something the protestants were doing at the time – I haven’t a clue what). But it wasn’t until 1854 that Pope Pius IX, in the papal bull Ineffabilis Deus, declared the Immaculate Conception Dogma.
I admire that restraint. I wish we had more of it. Even in the patient behemoth that is the Catholic Church, modern haste is catching up with us. Take a look at how long it took for the Church to make Saints in the past; St Joan of Arc was not canonized until 1920, though she died in 1431. Then take a look at how readily the Church was to expedite the canonization of our recent Saints; St Pope John Paul II died within not just living memory but within my memory. I’m starting to feel my age – but I’m just not that old!
I don’t mean to disparage the former Pope. Almost everything I know about him makes me wish to praise his name. Nor do I wish to question the legitimacy of his canonization process. I know next to nothing of the canonization process in general and even less about his canonization process in particular. I just know I’d feel more comfortable if we let passions and present politics cool before canonizing books or men. And I’d like a return of Advocatus Diaboli, within the Catholic Church but also in our culture more generally. (Though perhaps in our culture more generally we have too many advocati diabolorum and could use with an advocatus angelici or two.)
In the meantime, enjoy some beautiful paintings about the Immaculate Conception. The 17th Century in particular was a time for Marian devotion in painting.
|
|
|
The Immaculate Conception
Diego Velázquez
1618
|
|
|
The Immaculate Conception
Guido Reni
1627
|
|
|
The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables (Soult Madonna)
Bartolomé Esteban Murillo
1660-1665
|
|
|
Inmaculada Concepción
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
1767-1769
|
|
Hortus Proprius
Zeugma (ZOOG-mah), or adnexio, single supply, or a yoking.
Back in October of last year, before I was writing these letters, I tweeted about a Figure called “aposiopesis”. Here it is:
|
|
Aposiopesis is a Figure of Omission, and so too the Zeugma. Figures of Omission (unsurprisingly) omit a word which would normally be there, and zeugma a particular type of word. From these sentences, you may see the workings of zeugma and the effects. In short, zeugma uses one word (usually the verb but sometimes the noun) to govern two phrases or clauses.
“Out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 2.3)
“But passion lends them power, time means, to meet.” (Romeo and Juliet, 2 Prol. 13)
“See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crowned.” (Espy)
There is some suspicion in older works that a zeugma must, like in the quotation above, misapply the verb. That is to say, though Pomona may very well have a crown of fruit, Pan does not of flocks. But it is only stated boldly by Epsy and we can find many examples (that is, all those so far but the Epsy quotation) which do not follow this “rule”. Forsyth says that this criteria applies mostly to the Figure in Latin, where there are many more opportunities for grammatical kerfuffles. Mostly zeugma is straightforward.
“As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!” (Midsummer Night’s Dream, 1.1.225)
“Tom likes whisky, Dick vodka, Harry crack.” (Forsyth)
“Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematicians, subtile; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.” (Sir Francis Bacon)
Zeugma works because of the focus required to carry over the meaning. You cannot compartmentalize the sentence when you’re holding a verb through the whole phrase. Because zeugma calls attention to itself, it cannot be too often used. But it sounds eminently witty when employed, crisp, clear, and perhaps even a bit dismissive.
“The good end happily and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.” (Oscar Wilde)
Forsyth explains that another reason zeugma is seldom used in English is because English grammar prefers balance to surprise. Latin, like Greek and Hebrew, are quite comfortable dropping words all over the place when extraneous. (So does Spanish, to the despair of many American highschoolers.) English does not, and we’d rather employ an isocolon. As Forsyth says, “ ‘My true love hath my heart and I have his’ wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful if it were ‘My true love hath my heart, I his,’ or even ‘My true love my heart, I have his,’ which is, frankly, [in English] gibberish.”
In English we even have the habit of adding words back into a zeugma. Do you know “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”? Turns out, you don’t — you just think you do. The phrase comes from The Mourning Bride, a play by William Congreve, and the line actually is, “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.” But that just doesn’t sit well with us English speakers
Zeugma works best when it stops you in your tracks, or (especially in dialogue) to show anger or contempt. One cannot rely on it too often, at much length, or for a particularly memorable phrase.
Thank you.
|
|
A Bench Under the Trees
I’m going to do something a little different here. Instead of doing longer summaries of two short essay, I’ve here six essays. All of them cover different angles of the same topic. That is, they all has out the question ‘is the CLT going “woke”’. It was the back-and-forth from these essays that got me thinking about canonicity.
Placing them here without significant comment is mostly me bowing out of a political fight, which is what this feels like. I have a side. At least, I am more sympathetic to one side than another, but instead of taking it I will let my comments in Flowerbeds speak for themselves.
Here are the articles, with short summaries.
“Is White Supremacy a Bug or a Feature of Classical Christian Education?” by Jessica Hooten Wilson
The article that started it all. She argues that there is a strain of racism and misogyny in classical education, and, if classical education is to survive, it must purge that strain.
“Classical Education’s Woke Co-Morbidity” by Matthew Freeman
This article claims Professor Wilson cares more about representation than the classical tradition, and specifically that even if the book lists of the CLT are acceptable now, by caring about something other than the tradition (which he defines as “hero-worship”), Professor Wilson and Jeremy Tate (the founder of the CLT) are injecting a woke virus which will eventually destroy the test.
“Is the CLT going Woke?” by Benjamin Merkle
Responding in part to the controversy and taking issue in part with something Jeremy Tate wrote on Twitter, President Merkle responds to say he (who is a board member) has raised concerns that the CLT is going woke, because they are tracking not the quality of the authors’ work but the identities of the works’ authors. He concludes with full-throated support of the final list of authors, however.
“Diverse Classics and Whole Persons” by Jeremy Tate
Mr. Tate argues that classical education is naturally going to be “broad… if it [is to] encompasse[] ‘all branches of knowledge.’” He further argues that only by reading broadly can one understand what he thinks; “[p]lacing Marx alongside greats… is not an endorsement of Marxism.” And finally he argues for the practical benefits of the CLT, which give parents “an alternative to the SAT that respects the greatest works of the human mind from the classical era to the modern era.”
“What Is the Future of Classical Education?” by Josh Herring
Dean Herring argues against both Mr. Freeman and Professor Wilson. I can’t summarize his article better than he does himself, near the end: “Tate, Wilson, Prather, and others sensitive to the nuances of representation on reading lists, should recognize that the classical renewal movement is not in danger of being too exclusionary, but rather of opening the movement to the forces that derailed mainstream education a century ago. For Freeman, the danger lies in glorifying a classical past and failing to nuance the tradition.”
“Restoration, Not Representation” by Jessica Hooten Wilson
Professor Wilson returns to spend the bulk of her article agreeing with Herring. She says that he (and the broader community) is so broken from the American culture war that they misunderstand her position. She says that classical education as it has existed since the 90s has been representative – of one race and one sex. Then she says, “I don’t want to tokenize minority voices, to throw out Virgil to make room for Terence because the latter was Libyan. I am merely suggesting that classical, Christian education be as restorative in its movement as it promises to be: telling the whole of history from the beginning of the world to now, from Japan and India to Africa and America; sharing the classics from Babylon alongside those of Greece; showing that classical education has always been for everyone and does not belong merely to some people.”
There is not one article with which I disagreed wholly. Each makes some good arguments and everyone presents his (sorry Professor Wilson) case well. I highly recommend each of these; in fact, I recommend them all together. And may you make up your own mind.
|
|
The Amphitheater
I have been following Pilgrims Pass on YouTube since he had about 63 subscribers (he’s now almost to 50,000). He posts videos about pop culture, literature, philosophy, and politics, and most of his takes take me by surprise. He is more sympathetic to the New Right than I am, but, then again, he’s Brasilian and I American – so maybe I misread a cultural difference as a political disagreement.
This vlog (if people still use that term) is about Lord of the Rings, specifically about Gollum, and most specifically about how Gollum is Tolkien’s portrayal of failed masculinity. This is what I mean about his takes taking me by surprise. As with so many of his videos, I disagreed with him until about the half-way point, when I suddenly realized that I didn’t understand how anyone could think differently.
Take a gander.
|
|
Reviso Nostris Patribus et Peroratio
The level of attention children pay to the world is damn near remarkable. It’s enviable too. I wonder if there is much real degradation in our ability to learn after childhood, if there’s nearly as as everyone says, or if the degradation comes not from capacity but from lack of attention. If Simone Weil is right, and attention is love and prayer, then our children are the most religious people going. Jesus seemed to know this (surprise, surprise).
“And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3)
Simone Weil seems to have known it too.
|
|
« Il y a vraiment désir quand il y a effort d'attention. »
(There is truly desire when there is an effort at attention.)
Attende de Dieu
|
|
As always, please share this newsletter with anyone whom you think might like it. If you’ve come here without being a Scriptor, click HERE to sign up for the newsletter. If you’d like to read the back catalogue, click HERE. And if you’d like to share your thoughts with me, please do so. You can reach me below: on Twitter, through my website, or by email. You’d also be doing me a favor if you shared this edition of Hortus Scriptorius on any social media available to you.
Until next we meet, I remain your fellow
Scriptor horti scriptorii,
Judd Baroff
|
|
|
|
