Eucatastrophy Reader: 2007

To Kill a King

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 21:27:23 -0700

“not what they want but what is good for them.”
Remark by Oliver Cromwell.

Tonight's movie was To Kill a King. It is the story of the Roundhead's victory over the armies of King Charles in one of England's more interesting revolutions. It's about an inspired movement to dethrone a tyrant without having a clear plan for what sort of regime will replace it. It is about how even leaders of revolutions come to find out that their brothers-in-arms have different visions. And it is about how easily wealth can purchase power out from under idealism as long as there is a table to make deals under. I found myself asking "Am I watching a movie about King Chalres, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Fairfax, the Tower of London, and England? or am I watching a movie about Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Colin Powell, Guantanamo Bay, and Iraq?"

Soon after the Roundhead armies defeat the armies of the monarchists, King Charles goes about bribing parliament to vote to keep him in power. Oliver Cromwell wants to see him tried and beheaded. Lord Thomas Fairfax sees a more moderate approach to change in view, seeing only a need to get Charles to sign a new Constitution limiting his power. Unfortunately for him, he is caught in the middle. His family's privileges have their origins in the Monarchical system whereby families are rewarded with special treatment for serving and defending the crown. The inequalities that he enjoys are founded on a belief in the divine right of kings so ... how can he kill the king?

Eventually, he determines to kill his friend Cromwell instead. It is only King Charles who is not conflicted by second guesses in this portrayal of regime change and personal loyalty. Fairfax's loyalty to his wife, to his children, to his family, to tradition cannot take him on as long a leap as Oliver Cromwell takes. Cromwell seeks not a reformed old order but a completely reformatted new order.

... And yet, a few years into his new regime, Cromwell has to consider that the idea of a king might have its advantages. The following comes from an article by Patrick Little in History Today; Feb2007, Vol. 57 Issue 2, p24-31,

"If his highness can be moved to accept of it [the crown], the services he hath done the nations have abundantly deserved it; but if he who hath so much merited it do judge it fit to continue his refusal of it, the contempt of a crown -- which can not proceed but from an extraordinary virtue -- will render him, in the esteem of all whose opinion is to be valued, more honourable than any that wear it.

WHEN THE AMBASSADOR to France, Sir William Lockhart, wrote this in April 1657, it had been nearly two months since the first formal offer by Parliament to make Oliver Cromwell king, and in England people were waiting anxiously for the Lord Protector to make up his mind. Would he choose to become King Oliver or not?"

Ultimately, Cromwell went with his convictions and insisted that regardless of the pragmatics, it would be a sin to resurrect the idea of monarchy.

"Truly the providence of God has laid this title aside providentially … I would not seek to set up that that providence hath destroyed and laid in the dust, and I would not build Jericho again."

His reference to rebuilding Jericho is from a passage in Joshua where God instructs that the city of Jericho, once razed, should never be rebuilt.

Again, the parallels to Iraq are interesting. Should Iraq have been completly deBaathified? should the Iraqi army have been dismissed entirely? How much change was possible in Iraq in such a short period of time? Should America have ever started using "Cromwellian methods" to achieve what may have been idealistic objectives?

“No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.”
Cromwell on personal fortunes.

Question for Comment: How are you affected when you feel that a cause you have dedicated yourself to has been taken over by someone who is using it for their own purposes?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Cosmopolotan Patriotism

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:28:46 -0700

The Middle East and Islamic World Reader

One of my projects in the last few weeks has been to read the Middle East and Islamic World Reader edited by Marvin Getterman and Stuart Shaar. It would be IMPOSSIBLE to discuss each and every primary source in this anthology (Just the question guide I created yesterday was seven pages). I could, I suppose make a brilliant attempt to solve the various conflicts in the Middle East myself. One idea I had was to take all the people who feel like they have been deprived of hearth and home in some Middle Eastern War in the last 2000 years and let them put up a homestead somewhere in the Green Mountain National Forest. Not that I have anything against the Green Mountain National Forest but ... if it can save the world a bloody nuke job, I am willing to make a sacrifice. I would love to have them solve their problems by themselves but, as Catbert says "It would be nice to eat candy and poop emeralds". It just seems like the Middle East cannot seem to escape its tribalism (can any of us?) Whether it expresses itself in religious forms, national forms, ethnic forms, or economic forms there is this fierce identification with tribe that assumes a limited supply of whatever it takes to survive and a commitment to solidarity.

One excerpt from a speech by Richard Falk comes to mind:

“America badly needs another kind of patriotism, what I will call cosmopolitan or worldly patriotism, a sense of country that blurs the boundaries between the self and others and that is aware that in an era of globalization, all of us have multiple identities based on nationality, race, religion, gender, age, and professional and vocational activities. The physical boundaries of the state never were, and are less and less the source of meaning for our collective selves. To adapt to a world of the Internet in the global market and media, we need to soften the exclusivity of our tribal attachments to a single national narrative. We need to adjust to increasingly post-sovereignty world that is richly diverse and grossly uneven in wealth and influence, and we need to address the injustice is that this unevenness of wealth and power has produced over the centuries, and recognized the dangers of these widening disparities between rich and poor. We cannot dispense with patriotism in such an emergent world, but what is needed are collective attachments that are not tightly tied to an outmoded and myopic national ethos.”
Richard A. Falk, “patriotism and dissent after 911, The Frederick Ewen Memorial Lecture, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, November 7, 2001. Found in the Middle East and Islamic World rRader, edited by Marvin Gettleman and Stuart Schaar.

My question is ... "WHY?" Why do we "need" to change the way we identify ourselves? Why do we need to "soften the exclusivity" of our various tribes? Why do we need to address the injustice that we regard as injustice only when we change the way we think about tribes? The following comes from something H.G. Wells wrote in the early part of WWI:

“Mars [the god of war] will sit like a giant above all human affairs for the next two decades, and thespeech of Mars is blunt and plain. He will say to us all:
‘Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste time, litigate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will certainly come down upon you again. I have taken all your men between eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed such as I pleased; millions of them. I have wasted your substance contemptuously. Now, mark you, you have multitudes of male children between the ages of nine and nineteen running about among you. Delightful and beloved boys. And behind them come millions of delightful babies. Of these I have scarcely smashed and starved a paltry hundred thousand perhaps my way.
‘But go on muddling, each for himself and his parish and his family and none for all the world, go on in the old way, stick to your “rights”, stick to your “claims” each one of you, make no concessions and no sacrifices, obstruct the fresh harvest of live I have spared, all those millions that are now sweet children and dear little boys and youths, and I will squeeze it into red pulp in my hands. I will mix it with the mud of trenches and feast on it before your eyes, even more damnable than I have done with your grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken most of your superfluities already; next time I will take your barest necessities.” - H.G. Wells, What Is Coming

But Americans by and large avoided that whole experience. We sent soldiers to Europe but its been sometime sinse we lived with War on our own turf. Maybe that is why we are still fans of it as a solution to global problems? And maybe that is why we are slow to move away from the sort of patriotic tribalism that has seeminly served us well.

Question for Comment: Do you find yourself agreeing with H.G. Wells and Richard Falk? Even if it means a reduction in the privileges that you enjoy as a member of a successful "tribe" in the world stage? Or is there something greater to be gained by thinking of ourselves as part of a human family?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Romancing the Shadow

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:53:30 -0700

"Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow side: an impulsive, wounded, sad, or isolated part that we generally try to ignore. The Shadow can be a source of emotional richness and vitality, and acknowledging it can be a pathway to healing and an authentic life. We meet our dark side, accept it for what it is, and we learn to use its powerful energies in productive ways. The Shadow knows why good people sometimes do "bad" things. Romancing the Shadow and learning to read the messages it encodes in daily life can deepen your consciousness, imagination, and soul.” from "Romancing the Shadow," by Connie Zwieg, PhD., and Steve Wolf, PhD.

"The Shadow describes the part of the psyche that an individual would rather not acknowledge. It contains the denied parts of the self. Since the self contains these aspects, they surface in one way or another. Bringing Shadow material into consciousness drains its dark power, and can even recover valuable resources from it. The greatest power, however, comes from having accepted your shadow parts and integrated them as components of your Self.” – John Elder

Question for Comment: How might inviting “the shadow” into your conscious life disrupt the external life you have built while it was banished? How might you reconstruct your life after you let your “shadow” have a say in what your life looks like? Would it be possible to include the shadow into your present life without its wrecking chaos all over it? (If you consider yourself not to have a shadow, perhaps you could talk about why not).

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Embrace by Billy Collins

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:19:21 -0700

You know the parlor trick.

wrap your arms around your own body

and from the back it looks like

someone is embracing you

her hands grasping your shirt

her fingernails teasing your neck

from the front it is another story

you never looked so alone

your crossed elbows and screwy grin

you could be waiting for a tailor

to fit you with a straight jacket

one that would hold you really tight.

Billy Collins

Question for Comment: Why is it so difficult to find friends in this world? What makes it difficult for you? Or is it?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

My summer Reading List

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:07:00 -0700

I am not sure that I am going to have much of my summer to read what I want but here is my summer reading list as it is shaping up should I manage to get myself fired so that I can just read what I am interested in. Grin. I am working on developing a course on the Middle East if you are interested in knowing more about why all the books pertaining to that subject are there. I will be presenting a workshop on Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye in the Fall so I am interested in reading more of her books.

Sailing Home: Using The Wisdom of Homer's Odyssey to Navigate Life's Perils and Pitfalls by Norman Fischer,
Elmer McCurdy by Mark Svenvold
The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr
Ahmadinejad by Kaaa Naji
The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy by Walid Phares
Gross National Happiness by Arthur c. Brooks
Gusher of Lies by Robert Bryce
Muqtada by Patrick Cockburn
True Enough by Farhad Manjoo
The Much Too Promised Land by Aaron David Miller
The Sistine Secrets
Predictably Irrational by Dan Arielly
Song of Solomon and Beloved by Toni Morrison
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin
and some Billy Collins poetry

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

"Perhaps men and women should live next door, and just visit now and then"

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:53:31 -0700

"Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door, and just visit now and then." Katherine Hepburn

Heroes, Rogues, & Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior

James McBride Dabbs

Just finished reading Heroes, Rogues, and Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior by James McBride Dabbs. I figured since I have two teenage boys now, it couldn't hurt to start learning what I should have known three decades ago myself. Grin.

Dabbs writes:

“A testosterone measurement is like a weather prediction. He gives a general idea of what will happen, but it leaves much unspecified. . . . the weather can be affected by the vagaries of the jet stream, local wins, fast-moving fronts, and moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. Knowing it is August tells us to expect summer weather, but there is no way to be sure what the weather will be on any given August day. Testosterone is like this. We can count on it to affect behavior in the long run. In the short run, on any given occasion, its effects are likely to be relatively mild, one of many influences on our behavior.”

It occurs to me that asking people to describe themselves as a weather pattern might be an interesting way to get to know them. If they had to pick a place on the earth for the similarity between its weather patters and their emotional lives, where would they locate themselves? the cape of Good Hope? The North Atlantic? San Diego? New Orleans? Saudi Arabia?

Then it occurred to me that people might have three weather patterns, that which they feel and that which they emote privately and that which they emote publicly.

I loved this little tidbit about how testosterone can affect concentration:

"In the novel Lonesome Dove, Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call were driving cattle from South Texas to Montana. The drive was long and hard, and on the Platte River in Nebraska they stopped to visit Augustus's old friend Clara. She tried to persuade visitors to stay. She said, ‘there's cheap land not three days ride from here. You could have the whole north part of the state if you want it. Why go to Montana?’ ‘Well, that's where we started for,’ he said, ‘me and Call have always like to get where we started for, even if it don't make a damn bit of sense.’” P. 45

Question for comment: Do you have an emotional weather pattern? Where would you locate it? To what extent do you think of your emotional self as a product of bodily chemistry?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

"Send a Bullet" (Manda Bala)

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:24:23 -0700

Manda Bala

OK, so my theme for this week is poverty. The other day I had seen the new Incredible Hulk movie and in the opening scenes, there are shots of the favela (slums) in Rio De Janeiro. They almost don't look real all stacked up like milk cartons on the hillsides of destitution. I found myself curious about these other-worldly hives of the poor and rented a movie about the corruption, poverty, and crime in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Sometimes, I don;t know why I subject myself to knowing more than I already know. Manda Balla tells the story of those who profit and loose from life in the swamp. I am sure that there are millions of people in Sao Paulo who would probably say "this is not all there is to this place we love" - even as I often say to people who know that I lived in the Middle East for a few years. But still, I have no interest in going to Sao Paulo if I ever did. The movie illustrates how kidnappings have become big business in São Paulo, and not just for the criminals who do the kidnapping. There are numerous spin off industries that capitalize on corruption and crime. Helicopter pilots and airport facilities (to allow the wealthy to fly above the crime-ridden streets where the kidnappers lurk), There are bullet-proofing modifiers or cars. There are micro-chip makers who make big money inserting tracking chips in the wealthy. There are plastic surgeons making large sums repairing the facial features of victims scarred by hostage takers. There are security forces and body guards and people who charge to teach you how to avoid capture or murder. There are even frog farmers who have gotten wealthy serving as money launderers for crooked politicians. Supply and Demand meets Alfred Hitchcock.

In the last scene a bunch of tadpoles swirl down into a sink drain. I am left wondering Is that all we humans are? Sao Paulo has something like 20 million people in it. I listen to the interviews in this documentary, with police officers, kidnappers, money launderers, crooked politicians, and former hostages and the words of Juvenal, th eRoman Satirist comes to mind.

"Why tell how my heart burns dry with rage when I see the people hustled by a mob of retainers attending on one who has defrauded and debauched his ward, or on another who has been condemned by a futile verdict—for what matters infamy if the cash be kept? . . . Would you not like to fill up a whole note-book at the street crossings when you see a forger borne along upon the necks of six porters, and exposed to view on this side and on that in his almost naked litter, and reminding you of the lounging Maecenas one who by help of a scrap of paper and a moistened seal has converted himself into a fine and wealthy gentleman? . . . If you want to be anybody nowadays, you must dare some crime that merits narrow Gyara or a jail; honesty is praised and left to shiver. . . . For when was Vice more rampant? When did the maw of Avarice gape wider? When was gambling so reckless? Men come not now with purses to the hazard of the gaming table, but with a treasure-chest beside them. . . . What? Is a man who has administered aconite [poison] to half a dozen uncles to ride by and look down upon me from his swaying feather-pillows? "Yes; and when he comes near you, put your finger to your lip: he who but says the word, 'That's the man!' will be counted an informer."
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/juv-sat1eng.html

Of all the places and times in history to be born, why was I so blessed? I cannot imagine waking up to find myself in some Sao Paulo favella. Can't even imagine.

Question for Comment: Is it possible that Marx was right? That wealth inequity kills human societies?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Icons v. Iconoclasts

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:44:11 -0700

Yesterday, I read the chapter in The Story of Art about the Byzantines. One of my favorite things to teach about Byzantium is the iconoclast "wars". On one level the conflict in Byzantium over the use of images was a theological debate about the meaning of idolotry but it was also a political and psychological conflict as well I believe. Christianity's power rests on a belief in certain historical events and abstract concepts. Christians were asked to believe that certain things "happened" that no longer happened and they were asked to believe that these events proved the reality of certain abstract concepts that could not be proven. For these reasons, icons and images had significant power. They served as the evidence in a way. I suppose it might be like some Red Sox fan who has spent their whole life devoted to their team and finally gets to go to Fenway park. It would, we can imagine, leave a powerful emotional imprint. "This is real. This actually exists in time and space" the fan might say. To a Byzantine, standing in front of an icon, or a relic of some Biblical saint, the Pacific emotional impact of abstract breaking through that pinhole of art into reality would have been experienced as a power intrinsic in the object itself. It would not have been the EXPERIENCE that was powerful so much as the object itself.

And there is where the control of icons became a political matter. The Emperor's wanted to control that power and to control the people's access to it. People needed it and it would not do for everyone to have access to it in their own homes. Surely, God intended for the emperor to manage the spiritual power of heaven on this earth and for that reason the war between the icon worshipers and the iconoclasts could lead to altercations that were as bloody as wars for oil or water or land or slaves or natural resources or strategic nodes on trade routes.

In the iconoclasts (The image breakers), theological interests and political interests combined to deprive common people of their easy access to the power of images. Best to have the state control and regulate that access in the benefit of the people. Best for the state and the people the Emperor's theologians would have said. The people's theologians would have said otherwise.

What is particularly interesting to me is that it was, to some extent, the victories of Muslim armies that aided the iconoclastic movement. To many, Islam, with its fierce opposition to the use of images and potentially polythesitic use of icon veneration SEEMED like it was winning battles BECAUSE God was displeased with the way the Christians had forsaken the restriction against "graven images". The iconoclastic movement was a way to "out-Islam" the Muslims in some ways. Emperor Leo V in 814 AD went as far as to assert that iconoclasm was crucial to military strategy in the war with Islam and even the longevity of the imperial lifespan. "All the emperors, who took up images and venerated them," he wrote:

"met their death either in revolt or in war; but those who did not venerate images all died a natural death, remained in power until they died, and were then laid to rest with all honors in the imperial mausoleum in the Church of the Holy Apostles."

I am reminded of a comment from Stephen Vaughn:

"We do not have to believe Santayana when he said that those who fail to remember the past are doomed to repeat it. Still, those who do not remember are in jeopardy of suffering at the hands of those who say they do." Stephen Vaughn, The Vital Past

Question for Comment: Have you ever been spiritually or emotionally affected by an object or a place in such a way as to give yout the feeling that IT had power?

IT is interesting to see how a thousand year old conflict over images translates into a contemporary issue. Taxes. Money is also power. Some argue that the States should control most of it in the interest of everyone. Others argue that the state has no right to interfere with the free excercise of one's own financial power. You have an opinion?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

A Wake Up Call from My Friend Tom

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:59:15 -0700

Awareness

Anthony De Mello

Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony De Mello

OK, my friend, Tom, sent me a book a month or two ago and it is high time I responded to it. Awareness by Anthony DeMello is a spiritual self-help book that asks readers to question some of the basic assumptions upon which they are attempting to navigate their way toward happiness and meaning. Regardless of my specific reactions to father De Marsh Mello’s conclusions, I think he asks good questions.

So, here is his advice in a nutshell:

1. Do not assume that the world you live in is giving you accurate strategies for achieving happiness or your purpose in life. To the contrary, he says, you should assume that the world is crazy and treat its ideas as the ranting of a crazy man.

“You know one sign that you have woken up? It is when you are asking yourself, ‘am I crazy, or all of them crazy?’ it really is. Because we are crazy. The whole world is crazy. Certifiable lunatics! The only reason we are not locked up in an institution is that there are so many of us.” P. 14
“Who determines what it means to be a success? This stupid society! The main preoccupation of society is to keep society sick! And the sooner you realize that, the better. Sick, everyone of them. They are loony, they're crazy.” P. 75

2. Do not assume that you are free from external control as you think you are. Without a rigorous struggle to define reality, pseudo-realities of others will be the default programming that controls you.

“You think you are free, but there probably isn't a gesture, thoughts, an emotion, an attitude, a belief in you that isn't coming from someone else. Isn't that horrible? You don't know it. Talk about a mechanical life that was stamped into you. You feel pretty strongly about certain things, and you think it is you who are feeling strongly about them, but are you really? It is going to take a lot of awareness for you to understand that perhaps this thing you call ‘I’ is simply a conglomeration of your past experiences, of your conditioning and programming.” P. 45

3. Do not make mistake of thinking that emotions are the consequence of external stimuli. They are always the product of your own thought about the external world.

“no person on earth has the power to make you unhappy. There is no event on earth has the power to disturb you or hurt you. No event, condition, situation, or person.” P. 79
… no event justifies a negative feeling. There is no situation in the world that justifies a negative feeling. That's what all our mystics have been crying themselves hoarse to tell us. But nobody listens.” P. 82

4. The belief that human beings need to be loved is an illusion, and a dangerous one at that. Humans desire only to love. The desire to BE loved is imposed into our psyche’s from some outside source.

“Many say we have a natural urge to be loved and appreciated, to belong. That's false. Drop the solution and you will find happiness. We have a natural urge to be free, natural urge to love, but not to be loved.” P. 112
“When I die to the need for people and I'm right in the desert. In the beginning it feels awful, it feels lonely, but if you can take it for a while, you'll suddenly discover that it isn't lonely after all.” 141

“Think of a life in which you depend on no one emotionally, so that no one has the power to make you happy or miserable anymore.” P. 173

5. The knowledge of abstract concepts can never replace the necessity for personal concrete experience because no reality is synonymous with its abstract representation.

“As soon as you look at the world through an ideology, you are finished. No reality fits an ideology. Life is beyond that.” P 148
“Frequently, in the life of a priest, 50 years of experience is one years experience repeated 50 times.” P.160
“If you don't look at things through your concepts, you'll never be bored. Every single thing is unique. Every sparrow is unlike every other spare despite the similarities. It's a great help to have similarities, so we can abstract, so we can have a concept. It's a great help, from the point of view of communication, education, science. But it's also very misleading and a great hindrance to seeing this concrete individual . . . the ass that you mount and that you use to travel to a house is not the means by which you enter the house. You use the concept to get there; and you dismount, you go beyond it..” P. 121, 123

Tom may of course be interested in what I think about these pieces of advice and so I will elaborate. First of all, I think the world has been more successful at finding happiness for itself than I have so I won’t critique it on that point. That said, I think I may have been more successful at living out a meaningful life purpose but who am I to say? What if the world IS crazy but craziness works in a world where everyone else is crazy?

Secondly, I tend to agree with him that we each determine who we “are” or will be by a series of choices between options given to us. Periodically, some of us leap into an original idea and if we are lucky, we have friends try it out to see if it works (Like Lord Henry in Picture of Dorian Gray). I will only say that building an “I” from scratch takes a lot of work. Not a lot of people are up to it. Particularly as it can leave them alone and outside all of the herds they have ever met. They are who they are but they belong nowhere and have no one. Its not a pretty picture even if absolute integrity is the reward.

Thirdly, De Mello’s notion that ALL emotional experience can be controlled by the discipline of one’s own thoughts is an ancient Stoic notion that I think people like me have suffered for implementing. It is an ideal that causes one to think that they are a “Rock. An Island” as the Simon and Garfunkle song puts it. But I am not sure that we are. At some point in time, a person needs to learn how to construct and maintain a network of friends and family. I have tried De Mello’s strategy and wound up in the looney bin. And I have a pretty good mind for that sort of discipline. Maybe just not good enough?

Fourthly, and I apologize for being brief, human beings do need love.

Lastly, I love the analogy of using generalized knowledge like an ass to take you to the door of experiential knowledge. IT is exactly what I need to remember to do in my teaching.

Thanks Tom. Good read.

Question for Comment: If you could clone yourself and raise your clone to live a life more like the one you wish you had, how would you go about it? (assume that your clone was "you" for purposes of the question even that might not be the case.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

"Better a dead husband in hell that reciprocates something than a lying lover in Carthage"

nobody@vox.com(vtpanther) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 21:33:11 -0700

The Aeneid

A little more from the Aeneid today. Aeneas meets Dido on his way through hell to see his father:

"Not far from these Phoenician Dido stood,
Fresh from her wound, her bosom bath'd in blood;
Whom when the Trojan hero hardly knew,
Obscure in shades, and with a doubtful view,
(Doubtful as he who sees, thro' dusky night,
Or thinks he sees, the moon's uncertain light,)
With tears he first approach'd the sullen shade;
And, as his love inspir'd him, thus he said:
"Unhappy queen! then is the common breath
Of rumor true, in your reported death,
And I, alas! the cause? By Heav'n, I vow,
And all the pow'rs that rule the realms below,
Unwilling I forsook your friendly state,
Commanded by the gods, and forc'd by fate-
Those gods, that fate, whose unresisted might
Have sent me to these regions void of light,
Thro' the vast empire of eternal night.
Nor dar'd I to presume, that, press'd with grief,
My flight should urge you to this dire relief.
Stay, stay your steps, and listen to my vows:
'Tis the last interview that fate allows!"
In vain he thus attempts her mind to move
With tears, and pray'rs, and late-repenting love.
Disdainfully she look'd; then turning round,
But fix'd her eyes unmov'd upon the ground,
And what he says and swears, regards no more
Than the deaf rocks, when the loud billows roar;
But whirl'd away, to shun his hateful sight,
Hid in the forest and the shades of night;
Then sought Sichaeus thro' the shady grove,
Who answer'd all her cares, and equal'd all her love.
Some pious tears the pitying hero paid,
And follow'd with his eyes the flitting shade,
Then took the forward way, by fate ordain'd,
And, with his guide, the farther fields attain'd,"

The question is of course, should Dido listen to him? Can this man be regarded as sincere? He claims that just as the Gods REQUIRED him, forced him, compelled him to make this trip through hell where he has accidentally come upon her, so was he forced to leave her to travel to Rome and found his city. Well ... what is the actual case? Was Aeneid FORCED to make this trip to hades? Or, to the contrary, had he ASKED to be allowed to come? Indeed, had he not gone out of his way and taken risks IN SPITE OF A CAUTION NOT TO?

My son refers to "free will" as "free won't". I tend to think Dido is right to ignore him. "Better a dead husband in hell that reciprocates something than a lying lover in Carthage" is the moral of that story.

I also enjoyed the part where Juno, seeing that she cannot keep Aeneas from founding Rome determines to make it difficult for him:

"If Jove and Heav'n my just desires deny,
Hell shall the pow'r of Heav'n and Jove supply.
Grant that the Fates have firm'd, by their decree,
The Trojan race to reign in Italy;
At least I can defer the nuptial day,
And with protracted wars the peace delay:"

She plans thus to make Aerneas' marriage to the local king's daughter fraught with complications. She heads off to the underworld to hire a professional sower of discord, Alecta.

"This Fury, fit for her intent, she chose;
One who delights in wars and human woes. . . .
'T is thine to ruin realms, o'erturn a state,
Betwixt the dearest friends to raise debate,
And kindle kindred blood to mutual hate.
Thy hand o'er towns the fun'ral torch displays,
And forms a thousand ills ten thousand ways.
Now shake, out thy fruitful breast, the seeds
Of envy, discord, and of cruel deeds:
Confound the peace establish'd, and prepare
Their souls to hatred, and their hands to war." Smear'd as she was with black Gorgonian blood,
The Fury sprang above the Stygian flood;
And on her wicker wings, sublime thro' night,
She to the Latian palace took her flight:"

She begins to work her "magic on her intended target, the mother of Aeneas' chosen bride:

"Betwixt her linen and her naked limbs;
His baleful breath inspiring, as he glides,
Now like a chain around her neck he rides,
Now like a fillet to her head repairs,
And with his circling volumes folds her hairs.
At first the silent venom slid with ease,
And seiz'd her cooler senses by degrees;
Then, ere th' infected mass was fir'd too far,
In plaintive accents she began the war"

... and so she works up the conflict be various means, beginning with the family and moving on into the community till everyone is killing each other.

Question for Comment: Have you ever been part of a conflict that seemed to come from outside the circle of the people who were fighting it?

Read and post comments | Send to a friend