Having Two Legs: Literature

Showing posts with label Literature. Show all posts

Friday, November 12, 2010

David Hart on Tolkien and Politics

David Hart quotes from a letter Tolkien wrote to his son:

My political opinions lean more and more to Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning the abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs)—or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy. I would arrest anybody who uses the word State (in any sense other than the inanimate real of England and its inhabitants, a thing that has neither power, rights nor mind); and after a chance of recantation, execute them if they remained obstinate! If we could go back to personal names, it would do a lot of good. Government is an abstract noun meaning the art and process of governing and it should be an offence to write it with a capital G or so to refer to people. . . .

And Hart continues with similar sentiments:

If one were to devise a political system from scratch, knowing something of history and a great deal about human nature, the sort of person that one would chiefly want, if possible, to exclude from power would be the sort of person who most desires it, and who is most willing to make a great effort to acquire it. By all means, drag a reluctant Cincinnatus from his fields when the Volscians are at the gates, but then permit him to retreat again to his arable exile when the crisis has passed; for God’s sake, though, never surrender the fasces to anyone who eagerly reaches out his hand to take them.

Yet our system obliges us to elevate to office precisely those persons who have the ego-besotted effrontery to ask us to do so; it is rather like being compelled to cede the steering wheel to the drunkard in the back seat loudly proclaiming that he knows how to get us there in half the time. More to the point, since our perpetual electoral cycle is now largely a matter of product recognition, advertising, and marketing strategies, we must be content often to vote for persons willing to lie to us with some regularity or, if not that, at least to speak to us evasively and insincerely. In a better, purer world—the world that cannot be—ambition would be an absolute disqualification for political authority.

You can read the rest here.

Monday, March 01, 2010

Stories that Create Children

Newsom explores the genre of the prose introduction of Job and settles on a "didactic tale," drawing off of elements of fairytale as well as prophetic/parabolic tales.

She interacts with Susan Suleiman's work Authoritarian Fiction, who notes that didactic literature "infantilizes the reader." Newsom explains: "The subject position that didactic narratives offer the reader of whatever age is that of a child."

The genre of fairy tale, parable, or didactic tale as Newsom calls it revels in security and reassurance, a simple and unified vision of the world and morality, and all from the an authoritative voice.

While Jesus is clearly playing with some of these expectations in His parables, it is nevertheless striking to note how in this sense the genre of Jesus' stories assumes and even creates a child audience. If parables have at least on the surface a "paternal" voice, then Jesus is the Word of the Father for the children of Israel. Or in other words, the parables are children's stories only appreciated and loved by those who have "become children" for the Kingdom. Or yet another angle: These stories of Jesus are one of the effective ways that Jesus calls into being and creates a childish people. Listening to the stories of Jesus in faith is the way to become children who may enter the Kingdom. Parables are stories that create children.

Friday, January 29, 2010

Havering to You

haver [ˈheɪvə]
vb (intr) Brit
1. to dither
2. Scot and northern English dialect to talk nonsense; babble
n
(usually plural) Scot nonsense
[of unknown origin]

"And if I haver yeah I know I'm gonna be/
I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you."

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Falling and Singing

"When I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I’m even pleased that I’m falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn."

-Fyodor Dostoevsky

HT: Remy Wilkins

Monday, August 17, 2009

Doing the Math of Mercy

Taught on Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman this morning, and the role that the past plays in the present is haunting.

Willy Loman is exhausted, worn down by a life of misdirection, misunderstanding, and failure. He followed a dream, and the dream let him down.

The story traces (indirectly) Willy Loman's life from a hopeful, friendly husband and father to the crust of bread that he is in the present. And what is unveiled is the reality of the weight of guilt. Loman's great failure is his failure to repent of sin. His failure is a blindness to his own failures. His dream was the dream of fame and fortune, of becoming "number one." Even Loman's death is an illustration of his inability to see himself. The weight of failure has piled up, and it comes out that he has been contemplating suicide. We find out that the real motivating factor in this consideration is the fact that he has a life insurance policy that might be cashed out for his wife and two sons. Maybe twenty grand will give them a new start at life.

But this is more of the same. Willy Loman thinks that life is found in money, in fame, in material possessions, and all along he is slowly ripping his family off. He is cheating his wife and sons out of the love and attention they deserve and keeps offering them the cheap substitutes of money and mammon.

The terrifying thing is that Willy's sons have learned the lessons well. Just as Willy is reaping the crop he has sown over the course of his life, his sons emerge embodying this same harvest. They are selfish womanizers. They have dreams of making it big, and they purchase their dreams with the same empty, creative spin as their father.

This is no surprise really when God has promised to be jealous for our worship. He promises to visit the iniquities of unfaithful fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations.

However, in the same place in the Second Word of the Ten Commandments, God likewise promises mercy to thousands of generations (Ex. 20:5-6). And this really is mind blowing.

Think about it: If Adam was created roughly 6000 years ago, that means there has only been about 150 generations on this planet so far. Even if you push it out a little ways for so-called gaps in the genealogies, you won't come up with half that. Assuming forty years per generation, you have to assume 40,000 years before you get to one thousand. And God says that He shows His mercy to thousands. That's plural.

So on the one hand we have the startling and terrifying warning regarding worshiping carved images and idolatry, the sins of fathers handed down to grandchildren and great-grandchildren. God keeps those accounts open for three and four generations. But the following verse bursts out like the grace that it is. God may keep counting for three or four generations when it comes to iniquity. But then He stops. He stops counting and clears those accounts. But He keeps on counting when it comes to mercy. He keeps those accounts wonderfully open. He loves to pay out mercy for thousands of generations. He loves to keep track of the grace He gets to pour out. And then we realize that there hasn't even been a thousand generations yet. Then we realize that God has only just begun to keep track of that mercy.

But notice that this also has implications for history. God only remembers sin for three or four generations, but He remembers mercy for thousands. This means that mercy is adding up. We have mercy accumulating. Grace adds up on top of grace, mercy on top of mercy. Or to put it another way, God's grace and mercy is greater towards those who love Him and keep His commands today than it was one hundred years ago. God's mercy is growing with every generation. The mercy He promised Abraham is still in the bank, and that tiny nugget of investment has multiplied beyond recognition.

Of course Jesus is the Faithful One beyond compare. His obedience and love for God the Father far outshines every human attempt. And if we are in Him, if we are sons of the Most High, then our inheritance is great indeed. The grace and mercy stored up for us and our children is infinite, extending to thousands of generations.

One last point is that all of this is reason for gratitude, thankfulness to God, to Christ of course. But it's also reason for thankfulness to our parents, to grandparents, to great-great-great-great-great grandparents, names we don't even know any more, faces we cannot even imagine. But we had ancestors who were faithful, who loved the Lord Jesus and kept His Word, some of whom died for the faith. And God is blessing us today with the mercy He promised them and to their descendants to a thousand generations.

There may Willy Lomans. There may be many Willy Lomans. But they only get three or four generations. Failure has an end. It's great-grandchildren are the end of the road. But mercy multiplies. Our God is saving up to bless us and our children. And that's the math of mercy, full and overflowing.

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Lewis, Stories, and Imagination

I just finished reading The Silver Chair out loud to my son. We have one more to go before finishing the Chronicles of Narnia series.

It's taken a bit longer to get through this one as we started it before our move several months ago. And with sicknesses, new schedules, and everything else, it's taken longer to get back into the routine, but River is excited about The Last Battle not only because it has the word "battle" in it and it's the last book of the series, but our edition has a pretty rad picture of a unicorn on the front cover with blood dripping off his horn. Hard to beat that.

But what I wanted to comment on was the fact that Lewis still gets me. He still wins me; I'm still a believer.

As the story winds up, Jill and Eustace have brought the long vanished Prince Rilian back to Narnia from the underworld formerly under the dominion of the wicked witch and her enchantments. Puddleglum, our beloved marshwiggle, is busy being his delightfully pessimistic self. King Caspian of Voyage of the Dawn Treader fame is on his death bed as he returns from one last voyage and lives only long enough to see that his son is home and bless him before passing on. Aslan arrives to begin bringing Jill and Eustace home to England, but before going they watch in wonder as a drop of blood from Aslan's paw revives the old, dead Caspian who they find resting in peace beneath the waters of a gentle stream in Aslan's land. Caspian grows younger and younger and then leaps up alive again, full of vigor and joy. Aslan agrees to give him five minutes in England as the children return to their own stories. And of course that means facing the obnoxious teachers and classmates of Experiment House, some sort of modernistic huddle of ideological buffoonery. Of course one of the teachers sees the monstrous lion, the armor clad boys, the school wall burst open, and she calls the police. But by the time the police arrive the children have quietly returned to their living quarters, Aslan has repaired the wall, and he and Caspian have returned to Narnia. The Head Teacher is left alone with only with her mental categories in shambles. And this, Lewis says, is why she was immediately promoted to Supervisor before finally being sent off to Parliament where she lived happily ever after.

The wonder of great fiction, and yes even great fantasy or any other fiction genres really is the ability to comment on and revel in various aspects of our world without feeling the need to present it like a chemical equation, a mathematical chart, or the like.

You don't read the Chronicles of Narnia to figure out your Systematic Theology. You read the Chronicles of Narnia to love Jesus more, to love his world more, to be drawn into the story of God and his people. What great fiction accomplishes is this longing for something like that. One wishes to be in Narnia, one longs to be in Middle Earth, and then with a few seconds of thought it suddenly dawns on you that you are. We have an Aslan, and a greater than Aslan. We have had and continue to have Edmunds and Lucys. We have King Caspians and Wicked Witches with enchantments. And it's all there: sin, atonement, resurrection, forgiveness, renewal, politics, and faith. Sure, it takes a little imagination to continue living in this world like the story is in fact true. But that is the point, isn't it? That is what faith is all about, living our stories as though they belong to that one good story. Hebrews 11 is all about that story, the narrative of faithful men and women who imagined what they could not see because they believed what God had said.

Anyway, not to belabor the point, as we finished the last chapter of The Silver Chair the other night, I was caught up. I was won over again; I was converted. And I certainly hope and pray that my son continues to grow up with a longing for Narnia, a longing which as it turns out is a longing for the real world, the world God made, the world that Jesus is renewing.

So get your sword, River Edmond, and slay the wicked witch.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Who's the Human?

My wife pointed out this morning that in many ways the Frankenstein creature is far more human than his creator, Victor Frankenstein. The creature longs for human society, friendship, community, virtue, etc. Victor on the other hand is this reclusive scientist bent on knowledge and glory, and then even after his experiment goes horribly wrong, he continues his isolationism, fleeing company, fleeing society and friendship.

She pointed out in particular the contrast between their loves. Victor has this beautiful woman, Elizabeth, patiently waiting for him at home and yet is slow to pursue her. It is his creature who so wants a female companion, an Eve, because he knows it is not good for him to be alone. Victor is the monster, and the monster is depicted as being far more human. Victor is mechanical, scientific, driven, but the creature has emotions, seeks virtue, and would love to have a wife and experience real love and friendship.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Frankenstein on Individualism

Frankenstein's creature explains his realization of his monstrosity: "I was, besides, endued with a figure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same nature as man. I was more agile than they and could subsist upon a coarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to my frame; my stature far exceeded theirs. When I looked around I saw and heard of none like me. Was I, then, a monster, a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and whom all men disowned?" (Frankenstein, Penguin Classics, 150)

The creature's realization of his individuality, his overwhelming uniqueness is the realization of his monstrosity. To be utterly different and unrelated is to be a monster, an outcast. It is in fact our relatedness to others that establishes our identity, and that identity is already bound up with others. And then there are all of the characteristics that we share with one another. The Disney-MTV Gospel proclaims the glory of difference, the salvation of isolation and autonomy, and is it any wonder then that this comes to its fullest expression in people that embrace increasingly monstrous expressions. To be completely different, to be completely unique, one must become completely other, completely severed from the human race. One must become a monster to become a pure individualist.

Monday, September 08, 2008

Elizabeth on Father Foxe

Queen Elizabeth was so impressed by Foxe's Book of Martyrs that she ordered a copy of it to be chained along side the Bishops' Bible in every cathedral church.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Frankenstein Against Nature

Frankenstein opens as a series of letters from Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret Saville. Walton has determined to find a sailing passage through the north pole, and the letters detail his travels to St. Petersburg, Russia, and then on to the coast before finding a boat and a crew. The story begins on a note of impossibility and doom. Even as the sailors set out in clear water, it's autumn, and Walton notes that winter is coming on; he doesn't know if he'll be able to find a clear passage through the north pole. This sets up the setting for the whole story: a mission of doom, striving against nature, trying to accomplish the impossible. The story begins in autumn; it begins just as everything is about to freeze, as everything is about to die.

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797 - 1851) lived what appears to been be a fairly horrific life. She easily stands as a sort of icon for the romantic, feminist, intellectual and bohemian lifestyle. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, famed early feminist, died giving birth to her, her father, William Godwin, was a philosopher (enough said), her step-mother openly hated her, her step-sister was suicidal and eventually succeeded in the deed, and at the age of 19, Shelley tried to escape her familial hell by eloping with the soon-to-be literary genius of the English speaking world, (and already married) Percy Bysshe Shelly. The two of them and a sister left for the continent for a year of travels and returned with Mary pregnant with their first child that would die in infancy. Of their four children, only one survived, and Percy Shelley drowned only a few years later in a boating accident at the age of 30.

Speaking of her book Frankenstein, she writes in her Author's Introduction: "And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper. I have an affection for it, for it was the offspring of happy days, when death and grief were but words which found no true echo in my heart. Its several pages speak of many a walk, many a drive, and many a a conversation, when I was not alone; and my companion was one who, in this world, I shall never see more. But this is for myself; my readers have nothing to do with these associations." (Frankenstein, Puffin Classics, 7-8)

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Moses & Other Exposed Infants

Several commentaries point out that the story of Moses' exposure in the Nile parallels other legendary figures. Moses joins Hercules, Cyrus, Romulus and Remus, and Oedipus as an infant child given up to nature, to the wilds, to death who is nevertheless destined for greatness.

Of course Moses' story dramatically differs from many of these. In fact the circumstances of Moses' birth are the photo negative of the typical hero. First, Moses' family is anonymous and ordinary, whereas these Persian, Greek, and Roman narratives have these infants coming from important families: royalty, clergy, or even deity. Secondly, there has usually been some omen or prophecy foretelling the child's greatness; Moses has no such herald of his birth. He enters the world literally "hidden" by his nameless parents, another Hebrew son to be cast into the Nile. Thirdly, the rescued infant usually grows up with a hidden identity to be discovered at the climax of the story or at least after some great struggle. Moses, on the other hand, apparently knows who he is from birth as do all the people directly involved. Ironically, it would appear that the only one 'in the dark' about Moses' identity may have been Pharaoh.

Finally, these differences seem significant to the scope of their stories. Where the pagan legends seem to put great stock in the original status, fate, the gods which ensure that the infant's exposure will not end in death but at last a return to greatness (even if in sorrow e.g. Oedipus), Moses' story is not about return but Exodus. Where the typical story structure leads a person of fame into anonymity back into fame. Moses leaves anonymity for the fame of Pharaoh's palace only to finally seek out a "fame" apart from Egypt, a "fame" of the wilderness and Sinai.

Thoughts?