A short and wonderfully-written history of the Sagrada Familia. You will definitely need to get some kind of coffee table book with pictures of all Gaudi's main works, as well as with photographs the Sagrada (or look them up online) otherwise the read won't be as illuminating.
Being quite heavy on the political and historical context of the building of the cathedral and it is less detailed on the religious and biographical context, which is fine. But readers might want to see the author's biography of Gaudi, as well.
I cannot recommend enough the wonderful film, Sagrada: the Mystery of Creation. It is really moving, thanks in great part to the photography. The film also spends quite a lot of time with the Japanese sculptor Etsuro Sotoo - 外尾悦郎. Sotoo is a fascinating person--from Japan, he left his country decades ago after feeling called by the stones he saw in wait at the Sagrada building site... after learning Spanish, he then converted to Roman Catholicism and insists that it is through the lens of Gaudi's faith that one must approach the miracle of La Sagrada Familia. I was so happy that van Hensbergen ended his book with the story of Sotoo--who is, I believe, the only official sculptor working on La Sagrada Familia. A remarkable man from Japan.
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Suntory ad that launched the Gaudi boom in Japan here
Yesterday, in a post at 3 Quarks Daily, I declared that Don Quixote was a novel I could cross a desert with. Long ago, I once asked whether a friend had just one book that he would happily re-read over and over until the end of time? I had thought I had a my own definite answer to this question; for my "novel of a lifetime" has always been The Brothers Karamazov.
This changed, however, in an eye-blink when I finally began Don Quixote.
Like Karamazov, the Quixote is chock full of philosophical questions that would engage a reader endlessly. And what the Quixote may be lacking in religious truths, it more than makes up for in humor. And indeed, don't we want to keep laughing? The countless droll and surprising images in the book can become like little poems that a reader can carry around with them in their pocket and bring out whenever they want to smile or giggle, or to just plain fall on the floor laughing! I love el Quixote and was not surprised one bit to hear that it is one of the most requested book by the inmates at Guantánamo. (That, according to Quixote scholar Roberto González Echevarría).
But of course, my two favorite books are connected. So deeply did Dostoevsky love the Quixote that he wrote his own version of the story, in his novel The Idiot. This below is from a letter Dostoevsky wrote from Geneva to his niece as he was working on the book:
The main idea of the novel is to present a positively beautiful man. This is the most difficult subject in the world, especially as it is now. All writers, not just our, but European writers, too, have always failed whenever they attempted a portrait of the positively beautiful. Because the task is so infinite. The beautiful is an ideal, but both our ideal and that of civilized Europe are still far from being shaped. There is only one positively beautiful person in the world, Christ, and the phenomenon of this limitlessly, infinitely beautiful person is an infinite miracle in itself. (The whole Gospel according to John is about that: for him the whole miracle is only in the incarnation, in the manifestation of the beautiful.) But I am going too far. I’d only mention that of all the beautiful individuals in Christian literature, one stands out as the most perfect, Don Quixote. But he is beautiful only because he is ridiculous. Dickens’ Mr. Pickwick (who is, as a creative idea, infinitely weaker than Don Quixote but still gigantic) is also ridiculous but that is all he has to captivate us. Wherever compassion toward ridiculed and ingenious beauty is presented, the reader’s sympathy is aroused. The mystery of humor lies in this excitation of compassion.
"This excitation of compassion"
It has been so interesting sitting in on a class on the Quixote with 25 undergraduates at Caltech. They do not seem overly impressed by the hero's idealism--and indeed rather than a hero, one even referred to him as an anti-hero. They are concerned about the havoc he wrecks and the people he hurts. They also worry about his influence on Sancho. This has been very strange. Certainly DQ is no Odysseus. He is not even an Aeneas. But wouldn't they be surprised to learn that it was not just Dostoevsky who considered Don Quixote as a "Spanish Christ." No lesser figure than the great Spanish philosopher, Miguel de Unamuno, declared him to be likewise so.
To paraphrase Kessel Schwartz: like Christ, Don Quixote went out into the world with his disciple, where he was persecuted; "not so much for his beliefs but for what he thought of as the Kingdom of Heaven." He was ridiculed for trying to tend to the needs of men.
Luke 4:18-19 King James Version (KJV) 18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised...
I think the students would be shocked by this because, strangely, they do not seem to see him as a hero. He does cause a lot of trouble along the way...it's true.
Would love to get a copy of Unamuno's book, The Life of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Below from Ley's wonderful essay:
His main argument, which he sustained, tongue in cheek, over more than four hundred pages, is that Don Quixote should be urgently rescued from the clumsy hands of Cervantes. Don Quixote is our guide, he is inspired, he is sublime, he is true. As for Cervantes, he is a mere shadow: deprived of Don Quixote’s support, he hardly exists; when reduced to his own meager moral and intellectual resources, he proved unable to produce any significant work. How could he ever have appreciated the genius of his own hero? He looked at Don Quixote from the point of view of the world—he took the side of the enemy. Thus, the task which Unamuno assigned to himself was to set the record straight—to vindicate at last the validity of Don Quixote’s vision against the false wisdom of the clever wits, the vulgarity of the bullies, the narrow minds of the jesters—and against the dim understanding of Cervantes.
In order fully to appreciate Unamuno’s essay, one must place it within the context of his own spiritual life, which was passionate and tragic. Unamuno was a Catholic for whom the problem of faith remained all his life the central issue: not to believe was inconceivable—and to believe was impossible. This dramatic contradiction was well expressed in one of his poems:
…I suffer at your expense, Non-existing God, for if You were to exist, Me too, I would truly exist.5
In other words: God does not exist, and the clearest evidence of this is that—as all of you can see—I do not exist, either. Thus, with Unamuno, every statement of disbelief turns into a paradoxical profession of faith. In Unamuno’s philosophy, faith ultimately creates the thing it contemplates—not as subjective and fleeting autosuggestion, but as an objective and everlasting reality that can be transmitted to others.
And finally it is Sancho Panza—all the Sancho Panzas of this world—who will vouch for this reality. The earthy Sancho, who followed Don Quixote for so long, with skepticism, with perplexity, with fear, also followed him with fidelity. Sancho did not believe in what his Master believed, but he believed in his Master. At first he was moved by greed, finally he was moved by love. And even through the worst tribulations, he kept following him because he came to like the idea. When Don Quixote lay dying, sadly cured of his splendid illusion, ultimately divested of his dream, Sancho found that he had inherited his Master’s faith; he had acquired it simply as one would catch a disease—through the contagion of fidelity and love.
Because he converted Sancho, Don Quixote will never die.
Thus, in the madness of Don Quixote, Unamuno reads a perfect illustration of the power and wisdom of faith. Don Quixote pursued immortal fame and a glory that would never fade. To this purpose, he chose to follow what would appear as the most absurd and impractical path: he followed the way of a knight errant in a world where chivalry had disappeared ages ago. Therefore clever wits all laughed at his folly. But in this long fight, which pitted the lonely knight and his faithful squire against the world, which side finally was befogged in illusion? The world that mocked them has turned to dust, whereas Don Quixote and Sancho live forever.
In its full splendor, El Quijote not only has given birth to an adjective but also has become a doctrine, an ideology dictating the way people ought to live their lives. What exceptionalism and the American Dream are to the United States (more about that later), this ideology—Quijotismo—is to Spain and its former colonies across the Atlantic. Its central tenet is the implicit concept of rebellion: paraphrasing Montaigne, to sacrifice one's life for a dream is to know the truth. -- Ilan Stavans
Cervantes in Algiers: A Captive's Tale by Maria Antonia Garcés
Has any writer had a more adventurous life than Cervantes?
First of all, he was at the legendary Battle of Lepanto. Yes, you heard me right. And there, by all accounts, he was very heroic. Hit three times by harquebus fire, he was struck twice in the chest and once in the left hand. Luckily, his armor deflected the chest wounds, but his left hand was permanently damaged during the battle. His maimed hand earned him the nickname, "El Manco de Lepanto." His heroic service that day got him several letters of commendation; one being from his "serene highness" Don Juan himself. Unfortunately, these letters were on his person when he was captured by the dreaded Barbary pirates and taken to Algiers. His new master, believing him to be a man of great value because of these letters, set his ransom to an exorbitant amount of money, thereby ensuring he stayed a captive for five years, most of which he felt hopeless for ever being ransomed!
Returning home, I wonder if he didn't struggle with trying to fit back into life there. It can be very hard coming home after an intense period abroad because things that you once thought as being "obvious" or "natural," no longer feel that way and you find yourself questioning everything. Cervantes clearly does this in a different way by basically pitting all manner of preconceived notions and narratives against each other--constantly calling into question the act of storytelling itself. Is Don Quixote mad or is the world mad? Are all those notions held by people in various times and places somehow "real" or are we all not bewitched like actors playing parts in a wondrous play?
María Antonia Garcés is one of my intellectual heroes. And her book, Cervantes in Algiers is revelatory. Evoking Freud, she discusses the way that in some people trauma is actually bypassed in the mind: it is not experienced directly and instead is registered in the psyche as a kind of memory of the event that patients or survivors return to again and again, neurotically trying to process what happened to them. Of course, many people have traditionally processed traumatic events by revisiting them in art -- and Cervantes indeed seems to return again and again to issues of captivity and broken narratives. For what is trauma but a deep interruption? Falling through the cracks of one's own life is how I used to put it until I read María Antonia Garcés' book. For trauma is an interruption of life, like a broken thread (el roto hilo de mi historia). And Cervantes himself uses the language of tying up the broken thread in his telling tales. As a former captive of Columbian guerrillas, María Antonia Garcés is is very compelling.
This is an award-winning book for good reason. The opening chapters on the history of Algiers and the Barbary pirates is very interesting. I don't think I have ever read this history before and after going through her two opening chapter twice, I learned so much.
This book is very dear to me. Eye-opening on the history of the time, you will learn more than you imagine on Cervantes life. But, I would add, it is what she has to say about the life-saving grace of literature and about trauma that moved me tremendously.This is an interesting article on her work from BBC culture... and I am posting at 3Quarks Daily tomorrow on it as well.
Dropped smack in the middle of Part One of Don Quixote is the "exemplary novella" El Curioso Impertinente. Grossman translates this as The Novel of the Man Who Was Recklessly Curious. I am not crazy about that translation. Not that I am second-guessing the great and glorious Edith Grossman--nor to suggest that I can read Spanish, even!!-- But I probably would have kept this closer to the original:
A Novella of Reckless Curiosity
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Curiosity has an interesting history in the history of ideas, which I became very interested in two years ago while sitting in on a history of science class at Caltech. Though it has become one of the greater goods in our society-- with parents encouraging their children to demonstrate curiosity and especially around Caltech, curiosity-led research is the kind of ultimate Good, it was not always held in such high esteem. In fact, in the long history of philosophy, curiosity was considered to be a vice, rather than a virtue. There was a time when children were not encouraged to ask too many questions as being curious had much in common with gossip and slothfulness (lack of a disciplined mind).
There is a wonderful essay on the history of "curiosity" by Latin scholar PG Walsh, called The Rights and Wrongs of Curiosity (Plutarch to Augustine). In the essay, he discusses the spiritual dangers of curiosity; indeed it was considered as being a serious vice going back in time all the way to the ancient Greeks (akin to hubris and lack of restraint). While Walsh mainly examines curiosity in terms of Plutarch and Augustine, in fact the topic itself encompasses a long history that spans in time from Apulius' Golden Ass all the way to Pascal. As I said, that something can be wrong with "curiosity" seems incomprehensible to modern Americans. And yet, the idea that this idle seeking of knowledge about anything and everything is an impiety-- and worse a perversion-- goes all the way back to Aristotle at least. So much was it derided that Walsh is surprised it never made it into the top seven of seven deadly sins.The standard reason given for this is that the seven deadly sins themselves derive from eastern monasticism and that the western formative figures of Augustine and Ambrose were bypassed in this particular sin. But it does have all the hallmarks of the others, in terms of being a perversion or lack of restraint of something. Like lust or gluttony, it is a kind of unrestrained questioning--not leading to God but toward idleness.
Below is a long excerpt with commentary as illuminated in Catholic philosophers Josef Pieper's wonderful book on virtue. (My book is called, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart but he has another famous one on the four cardinal virtues).
In the book, Pieper rightly sets up the following contrast between curiositas (curiosity) and what he calls "studiositas." And remember that all the vices were kinds of persions: perversions of love or appetite; perversions of eating or knowing. Curiositas is a kind of unrestained perversion of sight or knowledge.
Curiositas vs. Studiositas
[The original meaning of sight and its distortion]
There is a lust for seeing that perverts the original meaning of sight and casts a person into disorder. The meaning of sight is the perception of reality. However, the “lust of the eye” does not seek to perceive reality but rather just to see. Augustine notes that the “lust of the palate” does not attain satisfaction but only results in eating and drinking: the same holds true for curiositas (curiosity) and the “lust of the eyes”. In his book Sein und Zeit (Being and time), Martin Heidegger says, “The concern of this kind of sight is not about grasping the truth and knowingly living within it but is about chances for abandoning oneself to the world.”
[The root of the distortion]
The degradation into curiositas of the natural desire to see can thus be substantially more than a harmless confusion on the surface. It can be the sign of one's fatal uprooting. It can signify that a person has lost the capacity to dwell in his own self; that he, fleeing from himself, disgusted and bored with the waste of an interior that is burnt out by despair, seeks in a thousand futile ways with selfish anxiety that which is accessible only to the high-minded calm of a heart disposed to self-sacrifice and thus in mastery over itself: the fullness of being. Since such a person does not truly live out of the wellspring of his being, he accordingly seeks, as again Heidegger says, in the “curiosity to which nothing is closed off”, “the security of a would-be genuine ‘living life’”.
[The effects of the distortion]
The “lust of the eyes” reaches its utmost destructive and extirpative power at the point where it was constructed for itself a world in its own image and likeness, where it has surrounded itself with the restlessness of a ceaseless film of meaningless objects for show and with a literally deafening noise of nothing more than impressions and sensations that roar in an uninterrupted chase around every window of the senses. Behind this papery facade of ostentation lies absolute nothingness, a “world” of at most one-day constructs that often become insipid after just one-quarter of an hour and are thrown out like a newspaper that has been read or a magazine that has been paged through; a world which, before the revealing gaze of a sound spirit uninfected by its contagion, shows itself to be like a metropolitan entertainment district in the harsh clarity of a winter morning: barren, bleak, and ghostly to the point of pushing one to despair.
[The heart of the problem; a "summary", if you will]
Still, the destructive element of this disorder, born out of and shaped by illness, is found in the fact that this disorder obstructs the original power of man to perceive reality, that it renders a person unable not only to attain his own self but also to attain reality and truth.
[The cure]
If, therefore, a fraudulent world of this kind threatens to overrun and conceal the world of reality, then the cultivation of the natural desire to see assumes the character of a measure of self-preservation and self-defense. And then studiositas (diligence) means especially this: that a person resists the nearly inescapable tempation to indiscipline with all the power of selfless self-protection, that he radically closes off the inner space of his life against the pressingly unruly pseudo-reality of empty sounds and sights---in order that, through and only through this ascetism of perception, he might safeguard or recoup that which truly constitutes man's living existence: to perceive the reality of God and of creation and to shape himself and the world by the truth that discloses itself only in silence.
Romans 12: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
--Josef Pieper, A Brief Reader on the Virtues of the Human Heart, pp. 39-40
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This was picked up by Kierkegaard in his idle chatter and there is something akin to gossip.
Gregory M Reichberg has a great article on Studiositas as a kind of mindfulness, or "the virtue of attention" that I like a lot.
He begins his essay with Dante:
At the entrance to the first ring of Hell, Dante reads the famous lines inscribed above the outer portal to that accursed city, an inscription which concludes with these famed and ominous words: "abandon every hope, ye who enter here." Perplexed and troubled, Dante seeks clarification from his guide Virgil, who utters this simple phrase in response: "we have come to the place where ... you will see the wretched people who have lost the good of the intellect." As if to offset the force of this harsh and enigmatic explanation, Dante confides how Virgil "placed his hands in mine, and with a cheerful look from which I took comfort. he led me among the hidden things."
The good of the intellect: this is what the wretched people have lost.
It's quite an image and quite a thing to think about that human misery is connected to the incapability of the intellect (an inability to pursue truth). Rather than an idle pursuing of whatever interests a person at any given time (this has more in common with escapism), studiositas is more of a disciplined pursuit, requiring a kind of fortitude. It is related to sōphrosynēs, which carries the sense of soundness of mind, discretion, and prudence.
Self-knowledge Self-restraint Harmony
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Nature Journal editor has a great book out on the history of curiosity in science.
This old picture of the baby showed up in my newsfeed. It's about ten years old so that means he was around six. We were out to see the still-frosty hills near our house blanketed in purple blossoms. The flowers are one of my favorite flowers of the year. But would you believe that for the life of me I could not recall the name of the flowers in Japanese or English?
Now, I am really feeling old.
Thankfully, I started blogging around that time so going back to the start of my blog I found the post on かたくりの花.
(March 26, 2007)
Erythronium japonicum.
The Japanese dogtooth violet--just like its American counterparts--is a small flowering plant that grows along shady hillsides. Understated is to put it mildly. These stubby little lilies are reminiscent of wildflowers --but because they don't flower every year, the blossoms are even less noticeable if that's possible. Especially compared to the cherry blossoms which bloom just a few weeks later and which are so dramatic they are able to utterly transform an entire landscape. Compared to that, these little blossoms seem hardly worth the time. And yet, the hillside is always packed with flower viewers. On this day, I remember all the amateur photographers camped up along the edge of the path waiting for the perfect shot.
"The perfect shot."
And in addition to the flower photography enthusiasts, hikers and flower lovers were hiking upward toward the top of the hill: "Oh, look, aren't they adorable?" "Look at the lovely white ones." Like I said, at first glance it was almost hard to believe. But then looking a little closer-- yes, those little dogtooth violets could really break a person's heart they were so sweet. Like ferns, they seem somehow almost prehistoric, with their one heavy flower bobbing on the end of a leaf-less, squat stem. The Japanese variety have very attractive mottled leaves which are almost mossy or ferny looking. Built low, the pendant flowers seem like they are almost too heavy for the stems to support. An older gentleman who was eavesdropping on our conversation as we stopped to point something out to the baby piped in to mention that the mature plants we were looking at were eight years old and that only one of many many plants will blossom at the same time so that there are good years and bad years for katakuri viewing. Eight years, no wonder people applaud them.
There are so many reasons to love Japan--none the least the way this humble little blossom is appreciated. Indeed, the humble katakuri have been revered at least since the times of the Manyoshu Poems. The Collection of the Thousand Leaves is not only Japan's oldest poetry anthology, it is without question its most beloved. The poems in the collection date from 600 to 794 ad, and they are really thought to capture the spirit of the Japanese people. I think poems about sakura are surprisingly absent from the collection. Still the collection is full of flowers-- to put it mildly! And, not surprisingly, our little dogtooth violet makes an appearance.
大勢の乙女たちが入り乱れて水を汲む、寺の泉のほとりにひっそりと咲くカタクリの花よ。
Dogtooth violets inconspicuously blooming/ In the crannies of the fountain, where young women are noisily drawing water
Because their heads point shyly downward they have been idealized as lovely young women since ancient times, and even in the year 2007, all around the hillside we heard them praised for their feminine gentleness やさしい and prettiness 可憐な.
Watching the men who lined the hillside path cameras held patiently in their white-goved hands, I wondered what exactly they were each hoping to capture? And, how would they even know when the perfect moment had arrived?
In the traditional art of Ikebana, the main aim is for the practioner to transport the beauty of flowers-- such as they appear in their natural state in the fields or mountains-- into the very different setting of being cut and arranged in the interior of a room. In other words, the object is arrange the flowers in such a way as the bring about their maximum inherent beauty as it exists in nature. Ike-bana literally means "living flowers"-- an interesting name given that one is significantly shortening the livespan of the flowers by cutting them and placing them in a vase. But, an ikebana teacher might argue that, no, quite the opposite to shortening their lives, ikebana aims to give the flowers a kind of immortality. By meditating on their true essence in order to arrange them in the most beautiful way possible to express their inner nature, the Way of Ikebana is actually the way of "living flowers"-- hence the name, perhaps?
A famous ikebana teacher wanting to answer the question why people can be moved so deeply by flowers said simply, we love them because お花は一生懸命咲きます。Flowers bloom "ishokenmei." "Ishokenmei" is another uniquely Japanese word that is rather hard to find a fitting English equivalent. "Ishokenmei" connotes someone throwing all their energies-- their very Self-- into something. That is, throwing one's heart and soul into something. I really like that. "Flowers bloom with all their heart." "Flowers bloom to the utmost of their ability to bloom." Its true, most flowers either don't bloom at all or seem to hit the 100% mark. If they aren't duds, they are perfect. Even those humble little katakuri on the mountainside. Taking a full eight years to produce a flowers that seems almost impossibly too heavy for its wobbly stem, when it finally blooms; well, it is perfection. And for that it is something to marvel.
80 singers from my beloved LA Master Chorale singing wall-to-wall choruses. The last time we saw Israel in Egypt performed was in Jerusalem in 2013. I was terribly jet-lagged and was drifting in and out of sleep. Now, when I look back on that night, it feels like a wonderful dream. But there were not that many singers on stage. So one could actually drift in and out of sleep.
Last night's show was completely different. In addition to the soundscape, Grant Gershon commissioned Syrian Armenian visual artist Kevork Mourad to create visual images to accompany the piece. He worked for 15 years with YoYo Ma's Silk Road project and his work on the Exodus for this show was this really compelling blend of drawing, animation, and film. For me, it was very reminiscent of Chinese ink painting and calligraphy. Much of it was done in real time, so there was no going back... images of people carrying heavy items on their back, hunched over as they struggled forward--less luggage or personal belongings, it was as if they were carrying pieces of civilization itself on their backs. There was humor (Land brought forth frogs--counter tenor).
(I loved hearing that Handel sued the oratorio music he composed in London to pay for his operas--which were all in the red! I always tell my astronomer that there are three things I love about LA: the Getty, the Master Chorale and I can never remember what the third is...? What could it be?)
I just finished the last essay in the Don Quixote Casebook (the essay actually appears first but I ended up reading it last). This is a fantastic collection of essays on Don Quixote that is used as part of Yale University's wonderful Open Course, which is taught by the editor of this collection of essays, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria. Along with the novel and the casebook, the famous history of Spain by Elliot is also suggested reading for the course. I highly recommend all the books, in addition to the course. The collection has all kind of essays--from introductory to classic essays on the novel. Georgina Dopico Black's essay, "Cannons Afire: Libraries, Books and Bodies in DQ's Spain," alone is worth the price of this book! I really loved this essay in particular.
Anyway the first essay (which I read last) is by Manuel Duran and is about "Cervantes' Harassed and Vagabond Life." I think it is true that you would have a hard time finding an author who has had as adventurous and interesting a life as Cervantes. Not even Hemingway fought at Lepanto or was capture by pirates and held in captivity! After cataloguing the trials and tribulations that was Cervantes' life, Duran says something interesting. Cervantes, says Duran, had bad luck. And his life was not a successful story. Despite having two successful works of art (DQ and Exemplary Novels), he was rarely in control of his life and things were constantly teetering out of control. This started in his early childhood in fact.
I was interested in Duran's use of the word luck and also his pairing of luck versus control.
One of the most interesting philosophy books I have read in recent years was by Genevieve Lloyd, called Providence Lost. The book is about the centrality of the concept of Providence in our Western Heritage until the Reformation basically. Traditionally, human virtue was achieved not through a mastery of our freewill to control the world around us but rather through the shaping of our lives around necessity. This is so far from our shared human imaginary that for us as modern secular human beings it is almost hard to recall that there was a time when people did not believe they could control the world around them or their own lives--as there was something called fortune.
So that, if he had not been so proud and drawn his sword in a dual, he would not have been in such trouble that he would have to flee his native Spain and find refuge in Italy; where he would not have been in the right place at the right time to join with the forces of the Holy League and become a great hero at Lepanto. But if he had not been at Lepanto and become such a hero, he might not have been captured by pirates and held in captivity for as long as he was. He then would not have gone on to have a difficult time adjusting back in his own native land--without which (his adjustment disorder) he might not have gone on to write this extraordinary book.
It is precisely this kind of thinking that led Voltaire to write Candide and to declare that all we can do is understand those things we can control and those things we cannot control; and to shape our lives according.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” --Voltaire
Contrasting this traditional understanding to the modern secular age, Lloyd says that we are left now with what can only be described as an unending sense of responsibility-- it never ends (this human cause of fault in everything) because we no longer have Providence (God or Luck or Spinoza's nature or even Fingarette's Holy Rites to fall back on as blame) so that now it's always up to us. And that this never ending sense of responsibility is too much for some people. From the Buddhists to Nietzsche, from the Stoics to Voltaire, the philosophers agree that loving one's fate is paramount.
"Objectively" says Duran, "Cervantes' life was not a success story. He was seldom in full control: he was too poor, for many years he lacked public recognition. Yet as Angel del Rio points out, 'there is not reason to lament Cervantes' misfortunes nor the mediocrity of his daily life. He could thus, through an experience which is seldom obtained when the writer is successful and wealthy, know, observe, and feel the beat of Spanish life in its greatness and its poverty; in its heroic fantasy and in the sad reality of an imminent decadence. He was to leave in his books the most faithful image of this life, as reflected in multiple perspectives with bittersweet iron and penetrating humor.'"
Sancho was incensed when the ruffians decide to have a little fun with him at the inn. Tossing him up onto the air on a blanket--this "tossing on a blanket" was a carnival game usually played with a dog! Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, in his Open Yale Course on the Quixote, reminds us that these men, while ruffians, were not inherently evil characters.
Don Quixote says as much:
'You are a bad Christian, Sancho,' said Don Quixote; 'You never forget an injury once done you, though you should know that a noble and generous heart sets no store by such trifles. Did you come out with a lame foot or a broken rib or a cracked skull, that you cannot forget that jest?
But Sancho is simply offended by the entire thing.... And here we approach the burlesque. For this is no laughing matter for Sancho -- and there is something sweet about the way Don Quixote tries to comfort Sancho. Also it is rich to the reader since all this is coming from a man whose very existence has become a kind of jest-- a great satire of the Spanish trying to live in an imagined glorious past-- a national delusion that is maybe even reminiscent of Make America great again?
Don Quixote trying to console Sancho says, in what for me is a truly unforgettable scene:
You have no lame leg, no fractured rib, no broken head to show for it; so why can you not forget that bit of buffoonery? You have no lame leg, no fractured rib, no broken head to show for it; so why can you not forget that bit of buffoonery? For when you look at it closely, that is all it was: a jest and a little pastime; for had I not regarded it in that light, I should have returned and, in avenging you, should have wrought more damage than those Greeks who stole Helen of Troy.
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The lost art of laughter... It was one of my greatest shocks returning to an America where people don't laugh anymore. When did we lose our ability to joke with each other or laugh at ourselves?
I have been feeling my age. My reactions to the stories in the Quixote are so different from the young students I am sitting with. I don't understand how the world could have changed so much and sometimes I even get a sinking feeling they are right. Most of the comments in class regarding the characters have centered around both characters' lack of personal responsibility. That DQ is "evil" and an anti-hero--this concerning how much trouble he causes (which is true, he leaves certain destruction in his wake whereever he goes). They also have taken exception to Sancho's abandonment of his family and "being a bad husband."
I've been surprised that not one student--being that they are young-- applauded the characters for their great friendship or anti-establishment behaviors. Part of me feels sad that they have internalized all the hoops that one needs to jump through to be "good;" the lack of nuance in their judgements and even cynicism; but part of me wonders if they aren't right? I often feel very blue. My astronomer and I feel such affection and admiration for these two characters. On two occasions I tried unsuccessfully to stick up for Sancho because I don't feel he abandoned his wife or is a "bad" husband... I ended up feeling stupid for my opinions and wished I wasn't in the room at all. From ballet to opera; from Freud to Levinas--not to mention Nabokov and Dostoevksy-- these characters continue to ring true and inspire something in the greatest artists and thinkers. And I think the tossing on the blanket is representative of the unforgettable nature of these two deeply moving men.
Telemann's The Tossing of Sancho Panza in the Blanket
And oh, that was the miracle of those two spires of Chartres Cathedral! Separated in time by some four hundred years, the spires can still be glimpsed past fields of wheat, rising up over the low town; a town which itself has somehow retained its old medieval quality. Very much like the legendary first view of Mont Saint-Michel one gets from a distance, it is the unexpected vision of those cathedral spires arising out of the clear blue sky that makes arriving at Chartres so emotionally stirring an experience.
We were following in the footsteps of Henry Adams.
The son of Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to London, it wasn't just his father who was a great man; for Henry Adams' grandfather and great-grandfather were US presidents. A historian and man of letters, I had never realized until I stumbled on his book about Chartres that Henry Adams was a Harvard-trained medievalist. And an excellent one at that. His book, Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres is written in the finest 19th century classical essay style. Engaging and filled with all manner of playful and dazzlingly-told medievalisms, the book became the blueprint for our own journey in Northern France this past summer.
So, since Adams begins his travelogue with Mont Saint-Michel--so did we.
I've already written about our stay on the Mont in my July post Benedictine Dreams. Even now, I cannot get the sound of the seagulls and church bells out of my mind: or of walking across the bridge of dreams toward that fairy palace shimmering in the summertime air. It was utterly otherworldly. Its infamous mudflats and quicksand, which pilgrims of old had to cross in order to reach the Mont, were known in the Middle Ages as the "path to paradise." And it's true. The Mont is, as they say, one of the great wonders of the western world. Everyone should try and go see it someday. Henry Adams was also much beguiled by the vision of the great fortress abbey, perched on top of a granite rock in the middle of the strongest tidal currents in Europe. He describes it as a monument to the masculine. And in his book, he sets up Mont Saint-Michel as a kind of "yin" to Chartres' "yang."
He has a point; for if the massively fortified Mont was dedicated to the archangel Michael, commander of the army of God and weigher of human souls; Chartres, by contrast, has always been dedicated to the Virgin Queen.
Indeed, even before there was a cathedral at Chartres, this place had already been known as a holy place in the Druid cult of the divine feminine.
But how did this cathedral survive intact for so long?
Only think of what happened to Notre Dame in Paris during the French Revolution. Or the way the people in Chartres dismantled all those thousands of pieces of original 12th and 13th century glass to hide them away during WWII--only to have to somehow reassemble them again after the War! To this day, the cathedral of Chartres stands as one of the best preserved 13th century Gothic churches in France--if not in all the world. There was, of course, the great fire in 1194, when everything but the Western facade (pictured above) was destroyed. The people were in great dismay since Chartres is home to one of the most important relics in all of Christendom. The Sancta Camisa, believed to be the tunic worn by the Virgin Mary at the time of the Christ's birth, was said to have been brought back from Jerusalem by Charlemagne (never mind that Charlemagne had never actually stepped foot in the Holy Land). It was then later donated to Chartres by his son, Charles the Bald. It was this relic that put Medieval Chartres on the major pilgrimage map.
That so, it was a source of great wealth to the town. Seeing the cathedral burning down in front of their eyes, the people became panicked over the fate of the revered relic. Waiting till the fire died down, people probably didn't dare to hope that a piece of cloth could emerge unscathed. So, imagine how their anguish turned to delight when the priests brought out the cloth unscathed from the smoldering ruins of the cathedral! Not surprisingly, this was thought of a sign from the goddess that she was not done with the people of Chartres quite yet. And so they embarked in great enthusiasm to build her a new temple.
In one of my favorite descriptions of the cathedral, Adams describes Chartres as, "A toy house to please the Queen of Heaven--to please her so much that she would be happy in it,--to charm her till she smiled." I suppose some will find his fanciful description of the Virgin Mary offensive. What? Because she is a woman, he assumes she loves dolls and finery? Well, Henry Adams died a long time ago. So, we will perhaps have to cut him some slack. Also, one might admit that there is something really appealing about seeing this great cathedral, which has always stood as a shrine to the Virgin, as a castle fit for a queen:
The Queen Mother was as majestic as you like; she was also absolute; she could be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still a woman, who loved grace and beauty, ornament--her toilette, robes, jewels; who considered the arrangements of her palace with attention, and liked both light and color, who kept a keen eye on her Court, and exacted prompt and willing obedience from the King and Archbishops as well as from beggars and drunken priests.
A castle indeed. And even castles sometimes need to be cleaned right? Well, I suppose by now everyone has heard of the kerfuffle over the recent renovations of the interior at Chartres?
The "debate" began making international news in 2014 when the painting was just under way. And, the renovations are still in the news today. Yes, that's right. We are not talking about comparatively uncontroversial window cleaning or even of the cleaning of walls and pillars but rather the renovation project is seeking to bring the cathedral back to its glory days by painting the interior a light beige with other accent colors--since, well, that's actually how it used to be.
As you can see in the picture just left, the change is quite dramatic. That is because the cathedral had accumulated on its walls and pillars a very thick coating of soot and grime. And it simply has to be added that Chartres had become in modern times appreciated precisely for the romantic and mysterious quality of its filthy walls-- recalling to modern minds an exquisite patina or fine bottle of very old wine.
But despite great public outrage, the scholars in charge of the restoration continued to insist that this was the color that the cathedral used to be. In fact, on the day we were there, we were so lucky to get to participate in one of world-expert Malcolm Miller's tours of the cathedral. Miller is a legend in his own right ---and some claim he knows more about the cathedral than anyone in the world. Well, Miller reminded us of the media row and declared the naysayers to be ridiculous as not only is the whitewashing authentic to the 13th century but now, at last --in the new brighter interior-- you can see the windows in all their clarity.
And, it is true, for the windows shine very brightly in the lighter interior. As Miller pointed out the stained glass windows were meant to be read and that is something that is now possible thanks to the cleaning. Watching videos of the restoration process, you can see for yourself how the restorers in removing the layers and layers of grime, literally pealed back time to show the whitewashed color that used to be there--as well as the marbled effect that was created on some of the pillars.
But, as American architecture critic Martin Filler lamented in the New York Review of Books blog, what are they going to do next re-attach arms to the Venus de Milo?
Even the cathedral’s iconic Black Madonna had been repainted white. We know that ancient Greek temples and sculpture were all likewise painted in bright colors, so are we to bring back everything to its original polychrome state? Should all the ancient marble statues in the Louvre, for example, be likewise repainted?
Speaking for myself, I felt very much as if seeing the Venus de Milo painted and with arms or Winged Victory painted and with a new head. For me, all I can say is that I was not prepared for the white-washed interior. I found it garish and ugly. But, of course, I can claim ignorance to what things were like back then in the era that was being highlighted (13th century). And that is a point to be considered since the cathedral has looked differently during various periods in its history; so that in prioritizing the 13th century colors, they were neglecting some beautiful Renaissance painting that once also graced the cathedral--not to mention our modern dark but mysterious much-admired patina.They were trying to bring back a certain period of time in a very long stretch of history.
This 2015 Apollo article is excellent. It pits the Chartres restoration project yeasayers against the naysayers in the voices of two scholars, Jeffry F. Hamburger (Yea) and Adam Nathaniel Furman (Nay). It is a wonderfully engaging discussion, and I highly recommend it. I am sure its true, as Hamburgers declares, that people complained when the Sistine Chapel painting was restored and that no matter what, the corrosive particulates simply had to be removed. But there is also a question of limits. I was pleased that one of the scholars (Furman) brought up the work of Svetlana Boym, about whom I wrote in these pages last year. Boym, who sadly passed away in 2015, wrote a brilliant book on the concept of nostalgia--and her unpacking of the notion is quite pertinent to the question of Chartres.
According to Boym there are two kind of nostalgia: restorative and reflective. While restorative "stresses nóstos (home) and attempts a transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home. Reflective nostalgia thrives in álgos, the longing itself, and delays the homecoming—wistfully, ironically, desperately."
Nostalgia is a combination of the Greek nostos, meaning home or the return home, with algos, meaning pain, so that its literal meaning is a pain associated with the return home. Part of this inquiry will involve a rethinking of the mood of nostalgia and what that mood encompasses. Rather than understand the nostalgic as characterized solely by the desire to return to a halcyon past, it is explored through the connotations suggested by its Greek etymology as precisely a longing for the return home—a return that cannot be achieved—a form of homesickness, and so as unsettling rather than comfortable, as bringing with it a sense of the essential questionability of our own being in the world.
Indeed, we know from how the word is used in other cultures that the concept of nostalgia involves not just a longing for home or a longing for something from the past, but rather it is a longing and deep sadness for something that is actually gone forever--and implies a kind of homelessness or groundlessness.
This is without a doubt perfectly embodied in Andrei Tarkovsky's film, Nostalghia.
Anyone who has lived abroad for a significant period of time will probably understand Tarkovsky longing to go home; for like Tarkovsky they too will almost surely discover that the home they are longing for no longer exists. And it is in that moment, I would argue, that the real pain begins. Reconstructed versions of some lost golden age will simply bring more pain. And this is precisely the point Furman tries to make about Chartres. That in the end, the imposing of an idealized version of a particular time in history in the name of restoration is an act of absolutism.
It is also futile--as the past can never be brought back.
Would Henry Adams agree with Furman? He would have to, I think. For Adams, was in exile. Deeply alienated from his own time period, he sought refuge in the medieval riches of his own imagination. The Chartres of his experience (like the Chartres of my experience) existed at that precise intersection between the physical reality and human imagination. His vision of Chartres was no more "real" than his understanding of the 13th century Catholicism as a moment of great unity--in contrast to the chaos of everything he felt was happening in the world of his own time (19th century Boston). While he never converted to Roman Catholicism, he instead found solace in the ambiguity of Chartres; for in its murky and open-ended "patina" he found, as Furman so eloquently suggested, a perfect place to "think about the passing of time and of things." And this was possible precisely because no one particular vision of "the past" was being imposed upon us.
The restoration at Chartres is none of my business. I only wish I had had a chance to see Chartres prior to 2017-- for all these reasons I am sure my experience there would have been quite different.
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Recent article in the Guardian with "black Madonna" (in my photo above still untouched) now white
Video below of some pictures from the trip. (My brooding teenager is seen crossing the mudflats--if only the quality of the video was better, you could see all the pathos of the teenage "pilgrim" in his dark expression....woe is he who is forced on a family trip to Europe with their parents at 16...)
