Tag Archives: Beauty

Edward Taylor, Meditation 35.5

14 Wednesday Jul 2021

Posted by in Edward Taylor

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Stanza Seven

But oh! Thy wisdom, Lord! Thy grace! Thy Praise!

Open mine eyes to see the same aright.

Take off their film, my sins, and let the rays 

Of thy bright glory on my peepholes light

I fain would love and better love thee should,

If ‘fore me thou thy loveliness unfold.

Stanza Eight

Lord, clear my sight: thy glory then out dart:

And let thy rays beam glory in mine eye

And stick thy loveliness upon my heart,

Make me the couch on which thy love doth lie.

Lord make my heart thy bed, thy heart make mine.

Thy love bed in my heart, bed mine in thine.

Summary: These last two stanzas should be taken together. They amount to first a praise to God for his wisdom (in providence). Second a prayer for sight. Third, a prayer for communion with Christ. Rather than examine these elements by stanza, it would be clearer to look consider them by them.

Notes:

Praise of God

But oh! Thy wisdom, Lord! Thy grace! Thy Praise!

The praise of God’s wisdom and grace and frequent in the Bible. But perhaps the most pertinent allusion in these lines comes at the end of Romans 11. In chapters 9-11, Paul has been unpacking the doctrine of election and speaking of the manner in which God so orders the history of humanity as to give display of both his mercy and his judgment.

The poet’s meditation has been sparked on the mystery of being chosen by God:

Lord am I thine? Art thou, Lord, mine? So rich!

How doth thy wealthy bliss branch out thy sweets

Through all things present?

Accordingly, Paul’s spontaneous outburst of praise for God’s mercy in salvation seems particularly relevant here: 

Romans 11:32–36 (AV) 

32 For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. 

33 O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out! 34 For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counsellor? 35 Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? 36 For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen. 

Petition, Open my eyes:

Open mine eyes to see the same aright.

Take off their film, my sins, and let the rays 

Of thy bright glory on my peepholes light

I fain would love and better love thee should,

If ‘fore me thou thy loveliness unfold.

Lord, clear my sight: thy glory then out dart:

And let thy rays beam glory in mine eye

We can segregate the petitions as follows:

First, “Open my eyes to see the same aright”. The “same” is the wisdom of God. This is a prayer to be able to see the wisdom of God in its working out of providence. 

This prayer to open my eyes likewise comes in connection with Paul’s understanding of the providence as shown in election, In Ephesians 1, Paul, having spoken of the manner in which believers having been “chosen in [Christ] before the foundations of the world” (Eph. 1:4) Paul launches into a prayer which contains the language of eyes being opened to see the providence of God:

Ephesians 1:15–19 (AV)

15 Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints, 16 Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers; 17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him: 18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, 19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,

Second, there is a prayer to remove the hinderances to his sight: “Take off their [my eyes] film, their sin.” This is paralleled by “Lord, clear my sight.”

This prayer concerns what in technical parlance is called “noetic effects of sin.” This has to do with the manner in which sin distorts our understanding of the world. A full explication of the doctrine would overwhelm a post. To put it in a summary fashion (based upon Romans 1), sin affects my ability to know/understand; it affects my desires, emotions, and affections; in short it makes me incapable of knowing of what is good and evil, right and wrong. To have a debased mind is to have a mind which cannot probably evaluate anything. 

Taylor’s prayer is based upon a close reading of Romans 12:1-2. He is praying for a mind which is conformed to the right understanding provided by God.

Romans 12:1–2 (AV) 

1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

The reprobate mind of Romans 1:28 is to be the mind which is “able to prove” in Romans 12:2. It is not as clear in English, but the Greek of Romans 1:28 is a mind which is not capable of making judgment. The Spirit transforms the mind to make it capable of making correct judgment.

Taylor’s prayer is that his mind is becomes capable of rightly evaluating the work of God.

If sin did not occlude his sight, he would see 

                        the rays 

Of thy bright glory on my peepholes light

I fain would love and better love thee should,

If ‘fore me thou thy loveliness unfold.

The beauty of God is always apparent; it is always showing in the world. The trouble is that we do not rightly see God’s glory. Taylor prays that God would strip the sin from his life so that he could rightly see God.

Second petition

The first petition is object: remove the impediments from my sight. The second petition is subjective: make me receptive to that vision:

And stick thy loveliness upon my heart,

Make me the couch on which thy love doth lie.

Lord make my heart thy bed, thy heart make mine.

Thy love bed in my heart, bed mine in thine.

Think of it like this: Imagine a blind man in an art museum. At first, he would be unable to see anything. He would first need vision to see anything at all. But if he were to see, he would need to see with judgment. 

An artist does not paint with the hope that none will see or understand. His hope is to affect someone. 

Yet with God the hope is that His artist will transform us: Taylor prays not merely that he will rightly see God’s providence, but that it will “stick upon my heart.” May I see and be transformed: not merely for a moment, but may the transformation be permanent.  (I can’t find my copy of Rilke at this moment, but I remember a line – I believe it is from a poem on seeing a bust of Apollo, ‘you shall be changed’)

The prayer is that his heart be transformed. 

The third petition

There is a third petition which fits as subsection of the second: he prays not merely that he be capable of being affected by the sight of God but that there be a complete union. The language in this concluding petition is language which sounds, frankly, odd in our Modern way of speaking about salvation: Jesus is thought as a ticket to “Heaven” [the Eddie Money song, Two Tickets to Paradise, comes to mind], but that is not at all the way Taylor is conceiving of the matter: the idea is not that I, as I am at present will go to Heaven, but that I will be radically transformed to be fit for heaven.

The language of marriage sounds “stark mad” to our ears, but I truly hits the point. Marriage requires a radical transformation of the individuals: we must become something different an “us” for marriage to be its intended end.  It exposes our selfishness and demands are transformation. How can one raise children and be a loving spouse without dying to self?

But faith requires and demands day-by-day a greater death to self: the good of our Lord supersedes our present hopes and plans. How then can we enact such a death to self? It is only by means of an abiding sight of the beauty for Christ and our desire for Christ’s glory? The language of eros which is the human parlance for loss of selfish ambition for the glory of another which will suffice:

And stick thy loveliness upon my heart,

Make me the couch on which thy love doth lie.

Lord make my heart thy bed, thy heart make mine.

Thy love bed in my heart, bed mine in thine.

Aside

Trees, William Carlos William

20 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by in Literature, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Trees, William Carlos William

Tags

, , , ,

 

Crooked, black tree

on your little grey-black hillock,

ridiculously raised one step toward

the infinite summits of the night:

even you the few grey stars

draw upward into a vague melody

of harsh threads.

 

Bent as you are from straining

against the bitter horizontals of

a north wind – there below you

how easily the long yellow notes

of poplars flow upward in a descending

scale, each note secure in its own

posture – singularly woven.

 

all voices are blent willing

against the heaving contra-bass

of the dark but you alone

warp yourself passionately to one side

in your eagerness.

At one level this poem is silly: there is no music actually playing. The trees and flowers and stars are playing no melody. There is no blending of voices. A tree is certainly never passionate nor eager.

There is certainly something striking and picturesque about a tree bent against the wind. It is a common symbol of resolution before contrary forces.

Then what is the point of such a poem? What does Williams do with these words – if anything?

First, the poem permits us to see something of the world. We are so busy with our lives, that we easily fail to take notice or thought of what is before us. We live with pre-digested entertainment, carefully constructed to make sure we know exactly how we are supposed to feel.  We use things for what they can do for us. We become the center of our world.

But this poem does nothing for us: it will not make anyone richer. There is no secret embedded within. But also it is not particularly easy. It is not digested for us: it makes some demands up the reader with his observations.

The poem re-presents a moment of observation: He saw a tree on a hill bent against the wind and standing beneath the stars. The moment must have been lovely.

The measure and harmony between the earth and sky is striking.

In fact, as he looked from the poplars below to the crooked black tree on the hill and up to the stars, he sees a harmony and proportion between the trees and stars and the darkness. All of it comes together into a whole.

Hence, there is a music between the parts. It is not just that the scene is aesthetically pleasing; it is that the scene is harmonious: there is a sympathy from the trees to the stars.

Look at how he notes the trees reach to the sky:

 

ridiculously raised one step toward

the infinite summits of the night

 

The phrase “ridiculously raised” is the key: Yes, there is an infinite space from the tree to the stars. The tree cannot possibly hope to reach the stars; it is “ridiculous,” and yet the tree reaches.

 

The tree on its hill has been shaped from the conflict here on earth:

 

Bent as you are from straining

against the bitter horizontals of

a north wind

 

The tree becomes even more comic and endearing. It reaches to the sky while it strains against its own conflict. And then below, there is a place of peace: the yellow poplars. How we know the poplars are yellow in the dark and starlight is not explained. In fact, it is the music, not the trees which are yellow: long yellow notes.

 

The tree now occupies a place between heaven and earth: the earth comes to the tree; the tree reaches to the sky.

 

The objects are all singing a counter melody to the darkness; those things that are hang against what is not:

 

all voices are blent willing

against the heaving contra-bass

of the dark

 

But the tree occupies a unique space:

 

            but you alone

warp yourself passionately to one side

in your eagerness.

 

The tree again is comic: it is passionate and eager; it even warps itself in its straining so.

 

And so the poem brings us in a moment of Willams’ revery.  We can see a moment through his eyes from 100 years ago and look at this tree.

 

But is there is something more than just a quirky thought of a long dead physician? There is a way of seeing the world in harmony and sympathy. There is a pattern which runs through creation and engenders an affection for even a crooked black tree.

 

I remember being in college and trying to gain some important proposition out of a poem. But I now I understand something about poems like this which I did not understand then. Looking at the world as Williams did so long ago; imaging that moment of an evening by the trees, beneath the sky; has its own effect.

 

We often wonder and worry what effect this or that photograph or word or scene or videogame or movie or what not will do to someone. The world is stuffed full of wickedness and corruption and truly hateful things. And all such things have a corrosive effect upon us all.

 

But moments of beauty, the delight in the common grace which God has bestowed upon us all from his unending wealth and lavish care, have their own effect. I think we are better for such observations.

 

C.S. Lewis speaks of his salvation coming in through the idea of joy: why is there joy in a brutal meaningless world? Why is there beauty? How is that explained? Why is there harmony and sympathy through the creation?

 

 

Shakespeare Sonnet 7 (Notes)

14 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by in Literature, Shakespeare, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

 

Johann_Liss_006

 

The fall of Phaethon, Johann Liss,

[1]       Lo, in the orient when the gracious light

[2]       Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

[3]       Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,

[4]       Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

[5]       And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

[6]       Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

[7]       Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

[8]       Attending on his golden pilgrimage.

[9]       But when from highmost pitch with weary car

[10]     Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

[11]     The eyes, ’fore duteous, now converted are

[12]     From his low tract and look another way.

[13]     So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,

[14]     Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

 

This sonnet develops a central metaphor of the sun’s progress across the sky, which each successive stanza taking a different part of the day: morning, noon, afternoon. The progress of the sun is used a proxy for the progress of one’s life. At the end, the sun sets and life ends. From this metaphor, Shakespeare draws a conclusion, you will be like the sun after it has set if you do not have a son.

First Stanza

[1]      Lo, in the orient when the gracious light

[2]       Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

[3]       Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,

[4]       Serving with looks his sacred majesty;

 

The sun is developed in metaphoric language. In fact, Shakespeare never uses the

“sun” in the poem, apparently as a set up for the use of the word “son” in the final line.

 

The poem begins with “Lo” – Look! The rising sun draws all attention.

 

The sun rises in the “orient”, not the east. The orient, in Shakespeare time, was the land of magnificent treasure,

 

He kissed—the last of many doubled kisses—

(FTLN 0557)      [47]     This orient pearl.

 

 

Antony and Cleopatra Act I, Scene

After this, he was taken out of his chaire of Majestie, having upon him an upper robe adorned with precious stones of all sorts, orient pearles of great quantitie, but alwayes augmented in riches: it was in waight two hundred pounds, the traine, and parts thereof borne up by 6. Dukes, his chiefe imperiall Crowne upon his head very precious:

Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of the English Nation Made by Sea or Overland to the Remote & Farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at Any Time within the Compasse of These 1600 Yeares, vol. 2 (Medford, MA: E. P. Dutton & Co., n.d.), 271.

The sun gives a “gracious light” and “Lifts up his burning head”. The sun is a colossus which rises over the landscape. His light is gracious – he is a king. And the response is the response to a king:

 

each under eye

[3]       Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,

[4]       Serving with looks his sacred majesty

 

All pay “homage” and do so by looking upon the “sacred majesty”.

 

Second Stanza

[5]       And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

[6]       Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

[7]       Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

[8]       Attending on his golden pilgrimage.

 

The second stanza develops the image of the sun. He shows his strength by climginb up the “steep” “heavenly hill” of the sky. He power is such that even in middle age he has the beauty of youth. And he continues to receive homage by “mortal looks” which now “adore his beauty still”.

He progress is a “golden pilgrimage” which the mortals “attend” to.

Third Stanza

[9]       But when from highmost pitch with weary car

[10]     Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

[11]     The eyes, ’fore duteous, now converted are

[12]     From his low tract and look another way.

At this point, the imagery of the sun shifts in two ways. First, it concerns the sun’s decline. Second, the sun is no longer climbing himself but now is in a car; which reminds us of  Phaethon who attempted to drive the chariot of the sun but veered wildly out of control and brought the sun too near the earth. 

Shakespeare does not make that precise point, but does allude to one who is too weak to control the sun.

But when from highmost pitch with weary car

[10]     Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

At the height of trip, the sun in weakness: weary car, feeble age, reelth, loses control and the sun falls from the sky. Seemingly in the height of power, the sun is actually grown week.

And the response of the mortals is no longer to look but now to look-away:

[11]     The eyes, ’fore duteous, now converted are

[12]     From his low tract and look another way.

The language of homage and adoration, part kingly, part religious returns. The eyes no longer perform “duty” (like a subject). The mortals are “now converted.” With the swings in Shakespeare’s day between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism would have shown many “conversions”, thus, the language would have resonance.

The moral is obvious: you are beautiful now, but soon you will be weakened, your beauty gone – you will be like the falling sun where all look away.

 

Couplet

[13]     So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,

[14]     Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son.

The metaphor is drawn tight: you are like the sun. Yes you are at noon, but noon does not last. Everyone will look away from you in your age and weakness, “unless thou get a son”. The use of the “son” in the last syllable is purposeful, because he has studiously avoided the word “sun” throughout the poem.

You will fail like a failing “sun” unless you get a “son” – who himself be a new “sun.”

Shakespeare Sonnet 4

21 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Shakespeare, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

 

[1]       Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

[2]       Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?

[3]       Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,

[4]       And being frank, she lends to those are free.

[5]       Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

[6]       The bounteous largess given thee to give?

[7]       Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

[8]       So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?

[9]       For, having traffic with thyself alone,

[10]     Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

[11]     Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,

[12]     What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

[13]     Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

[14]     Which usèd lives th’ executor to be.

 

 

First stanza:

[1]       Unthrifty loveliness, why dost thou spend

[2]       Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy?

[3]       Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,

[4]       And being frank, she lends to those are free.

 

The first two lines set up the basic conceit of the poem: the proper investment of human beauty. The argument of this poem is profoundly countercultural to present moment. Our lives are considered our own to dispose of as we each individually please (“it’s my life and I’ll do what I want”).

We can choose our own identity to the point of actual restructuring our bodies and changing our sex in the name of gender identity.

The arguments of sexual freedom in all its related issues ultimately rest upon the proposition of a profound human autonomy in the area of sexual practice (it is interesting that the very same people most insistent upon radical sexual freedom are the most insistent upon conformity in other aspects).

Here Shakespeare attacks an “unthrifty loveliness”: beauty being wasted, misspent. It is misspent because it devolves back upon the self: why dost thou spend/Upon thyself thy beauty’s legacy”. This continues the thematic strand from the other sonnets on the aspect of humanity being one of continuity and unity: there is the lineal descent from and hopefully through the object of the poem; as well as the duty to, the unity with the rest of humanity.

Thus, there is something anti-human, something unnatural in seeking to spend one’s beauty on one’s self.

The autonomy of the self is further attacked by positing in relation to nature: Your beauty does not come from you: it has been lent to you by nature to used rightly:

Nature’s bequest gives nothing but doth lend,/And being frank, she lends to those are free.

You have been given something you did not earn: it was lent to you by nature (and nature ultimately leads to God).

The last concept “those are free”: not horders, move the conceit to the next stanza.

 

Second stanza:

[5]       Then, beauteous niggard, why dost thou abuse

[6]       The bounteous largess given thee to give?

[7]       Profitless usurer, why dost thou use

[8]       So great a sum of sums yet canst not live?

This stanza then argues to the paradox of selfishness. You are given a great deal, but you hoard it (“niggard”); and in so doing abuse the wealth you were given. In fact, you are a usurer – which would normally result in a tremendous profit to the usurer, but in this case, it creates no profit. The irony of your hoarding is that are losing what you are hoarding: it does you no good to hoard this beauty, because not only is it unnatural and unhuman, it does you positive harm.

Compare this concept with the idea in our culture who refuses children because it will interfere with career or beauty? The one who spends the beauty youth on one’s own desire is an ideal. It is foolish to plunge into the great stream of human history: nothing is owed to the past or to the future. In fact, to bear children is either foolishness or evil.

So here is Shakespeare, a paragon of culture: here speaking directly against our current culture.

Third stanza:

[9]       For, having traffic with thyself alone,

[10]     Thou of thyself thy sweet self dost deceive.

[11]     Then how, when nature calls thee to be gone,

[12]     What acceptable audit canst thou leave?

The final stanza turns to death: because sex and death are profoundly related and in direct competition. Birth is a race against death, and there is no ultimate Darwinian advancement. Death always works.

And so to the object: you are engaged in commerce, trade (traffic here means trade), but there is no other in your trade. You are seller and buyer, but is so doing, you are ultimately hurting yourself the most. You are deceiving yourself.

This then comes to judgment: when you die, what will be the profit of this life? You have done nothing.

Here, Shakespeare becomes even more counter cultural: not only is birth incumbent upon human beings, but without such birth, what have you actually done? What have you done to perpetuate life?

At this point, I think a word of kindness is appropriate. Many people through no fault of their own are unable to bear children. Shakespeare is not speaking to them. This is to one who is deliberately selfish. Shakespeare’s critique is of a self-centeredness which is far different than inability.

Moreover, even though it goes beyond scope of this narrow poem, it should also be known that Shakespeare world would have deep biblical roots, even among the less devoted. Shakespeare’s use of the Bible has been well documented. There are biblical promises to those without children:

Isaiah 56:4–5 (ESV)

4           For thus says the Lord:

“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,

who choose the things that please me

and hold fast my covenant,

5           I will give in my house and within my walls

a monument and a name

better than sons and daughters;

I will give them an everlasting name

that shall not be cut off.

 

And:

Isaiah 54:1 (ESV)

54 “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;

break forth into singing and cry aloud,

you who have not been in labor!

For the children of the desolate one will be more

than the children of her who is married,” says the Lord.

The application of these passages being beyond the scope of this piece, I will not explain them beyond just point to the fact of such ideas in Shakespeare’s world.

Couplet

[13]     Thy unused beauty must be tombed with thee,

[14]     Which usèd lives th’ executor to be.

Your beauty will be buried. The final line means that if you used your beauty, it would remain behind to be your executor: If your beauty were used it would be your executor and deliver your estate to another.

But there may be an irony here (the line contains some ambiguity): It may be possible to read the final line as the tomb – which are are in fact using – is the only thing which lives and is your executor: delivering to your death your beauty.

Shakespeare Sonnet 1

26 Friday Jul 2019

Posted by in Literature, Shakespeare, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Sonnets1609titlepage

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

[3] But, as the riper should by time decease,

[4] His tender heir might bear his memory.

[5] But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

[6] Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

[7] Making a famine where abundance lies,

[8] Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

[9] Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

[10] And only herald to the gaudy spring

[11] Within thine own bud buriest thy content

[12] And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

[13] Pity the world, or else this glutton be—

[14] To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

The sonnet fits perfectly into three quatrains and a couplet. The argument fits into the form with the first line of each quatrain a topic sentence and the couplet a conclusion.

The poem is a request that the recipient of the poem (a person of endless speculation) would have children. By having children you achieve a kind of immorality and bless the world. But selfishness is a gluttony where you spend yourself upon yourself in death.

The first stanza sets out the primary argument of the poem: have children! Shakespeare gives two reasons: It is a good to the world for the best to have children; and, it is a good to you to have one who carries on your memory:

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

[3] But, as the riper should by time decease,

[4] His tender heir might bear his memory.

The argument skillfully weaves the two argument into one.

The Perpetuation of Beauty

The first argument appears in lines 1-2.

[1] From fairest creatures we desire increase,

[2] That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

There are two elements to this argument: (a) origin, and (b) desire.

Origin of Beauty

This argument would be easily missed, because it is a concept so foreign to our “modern is best” understanding. We are anxious over the newest; we think the present is best and the future is better. We have a Hegelian progress of history (I don’t mean in some technical Hegelian manner, but as a general understanding) in which the present is better than the past.

This understandings of the progress of history is precisely the opposite of pre-Hegelian forebears. The earth at the first was pristine: It was best at first. This concept appears worldview which would have been available to Shakespeare. First, the Bible begins with the Garden of Eden. The original world was pristine. But world was altered, through the Fall of Adam into sin; and then, through the devastation of the Flood.

Second, classical mythology understands the history of the world to have progressed through a series of ages beginning with the Golden Age:

First of all [110] the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods [115] without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good things, [120] rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods. 

 Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Works and Days. (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1914). “Then” a second, silver age of men were found upon the earth:

then they who dwell on Olympus made a second generation which was of silver and less noble by far. It was like the golden race neither in body nor in spirit. 

 Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Works and Days. (Medford, MA: Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1914).

Thus, when we think of a great good like beauty, we think of it as an artifact of the pristine world. Beauty was something in the world from an earlier age and now descended to us. The ancient was not a place of foolish superstition and bad science, it was an age of greater truth and beauty. We are not the accumulation of wisdom but the running down of the world.

With that idea in mind, consider the second line of the sonnet

That thereby beauty’s rose might never die,

The rose of beauty can be lost — indeed, it will be lost if we are not careful to preserve it.

This idea, when it exists in our present age, exists in our understanding of non-human nature. This curious, but not necessarily without foundation. Remember that the Greek concept of a Golden Age comes from a Pagan conception of the universe without a Creator-Creature divide. Moreover, the relationship of human beings to the created order is fundamentally different. The concept of the “image of God” does not appear in the same way in pagan anthropology.

On that issue, the best starting place would be Peter Jone’s, The Other Worldview.

The concept of a pristine earlier age does exist in environmentalism. There is an ecological understanding of the human beings as the agent of defection, the means of devastation. The absence of human activity is good; the presence of human activity is what makes the world worse.

The Desire for Beauty

Beauty — with truth — is also an object of desire and the charm and foundation of life. Keats in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn famously wrote:

When old age shall this generation waste,
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
         “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
Christianity would posit this triad, the true, the beautiful and the good.

We desire the best creatures to reproduce (increase) so that beauty will continue in the world.  We – the rest of the world – desire all of the best creatures to fill the world. There is a faint echo of a biblical theme. Prosperity is always marked as “increase”:

Psalm 115:14 (KJV): The Lord shall increase you more and more,

You and your children.

“Fairest” is the praise of Canticles 1.8, 5.9, 6.1. But this is mixed with a Roman theme of an heir to bear one’s memory.

The Beautiful Should Desire the Continuation of Beauty: Memory as Immortality

The movement of lines 2-4 take this public theme of all the world desires the perpetuating of this beauty to this continuing the beauty is a private benefit of one’s memory.

The trick in the argument is the world “But” at the beginning of line 3. The But shifts the argument to a second theme. We don’t know the rhetorical trick because the But is followed by a parenthetical which distracts us.

A second But turns the private argument on its head. But you are so concerned with yourself that you do not even consider your memory.

This stanza says you have no sense of time. A theme Shakespeare will repeatedly consider is the ever present fact of death.

Stanza Two: The effect upon you for your folly

You are consuming your beauty and youth while not even considering the effect this will have upon yourself and upon others:

5] But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes,

[6] Feed’st thy light’s flame with self-substantial fuel,

[7] Making a famine where abundance lies,

[8] Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel.

You are making a famine of yourself.

Ironically, the poet cares for the subject than the subject does to his or her self.

The final stanza moves from argument to rebuke:

9] Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

[10] And only herald to the gaudy spring

[11] Within thine own bud buriest thy content

[12] And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding.

You are the spring of the world, but you do not care. You the Spring of the world. Your stinginess, your “niggarding” is a waste.

The beauty of your life and body can only be preserved by having a child.

One theory of Shakespeare is that Shakespeare was the front for Edward DeVere. If so, this poem makes sense as a complaint to Elizabeth Queen.

 

I am unaware of anyone advancing that theory and it may be just nonsense — but then most of the speculation on the “reality” behind the sonnets is nonsense. All or anyone of the sonnets could be fabrications of his imagination. Shakespeare was at the very least inventive.

The couplet draws these themes together into a rebuke

13] Pity the world, or else this glutton be—

[14] To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

It also multiples implications by the sheer compression of the languag.

You are a glutton who eats what is due another by dying- because you will die. You could do us good, but you will not.

The grave is a glutton and eats people. You are a glutton to yourself by giving yourself to the grave.

Selfishness is death in life and a severer death of being forgotten after death.

Science and the Beauty of God

05 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by in Apologetics, Art, Vern Poythress

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

In “Surfing the Universe,” Benjamin Wallace-Wells, of physics as a search for beauty:

Physicists have long looked to higher math for insights into the workings of the universe. “If a figure is so beautiful and intricate and clear, you figure it must not exist for itself alone,” John Baez, a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Riverside, said. “It must correspond to something in the physical world.” This instinct—the assumption that beauty will stand in for truth—has become a habit. Some physicists now worry that string theory’s mathematics have grown permanently unmoored from the real world—an exercise in its own complexity. And so modern theoretical physics has become, in part, an argument about aesthetics.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/21/surfing-the-universe

Interestingly, Poythress explains that seeing such beauty is right, because such beauty is a disclosure of God:

Scientific laws, especially “deep” laws, are beautiful. Scientists have long sifted through possible hypotheses and models partly on the basis of the cri­teria of beauty and simplicity. For example, Newton’s law of gravitation and Maxwell’s laws of electromagnetism are mathematically simple and beauti­ful. And scientists clearly expect new laws, as well as the old ones, to show beauty and simplicity. Why?

 

The beauty of scientific laws shows the beauty of God himself. Though beauty has not been a favorite topic in classical expo­sitions of the doctrine of God, the Bible shows us a God who is profoundly beautiful. He manifests himself in beauty in the design of the tabernacle, the poetry of the Psalms, and the elegance of Christ’s parables, as well as the moral beauty of the life of Christ.

 

The beauty of God himself is reflected in what he has made. We are more accustomed to seeing beauty in particular objects within creation, such as a butterfly, or a lofty mountain, or a flower-covered meadow. But beauty is also displayed in the simple, elegant form of some of the most basic physical laws, like Newton’s law for force, F = ma, or Einstein’s formula relating mass and energy, E = mc2. Why should such elegant laws even exist? Beauty is also dis­played in the harmony among different areas of science, and the harmony between mathematics and science that scientists rely on whenever they use a mathematical formula to describe a physical process.

 

Poythress, Vern S. (2006-10-13). Redeeming Science: A God-Centered Approach (Kindle Locations 369-377). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

 

Crosses Warranted to Last Five Years

08 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Literature, Thomas Hardy

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

It was as old-fashioned as it was small, and it rested in the lap of an undulating upland adjoining the North Wessex downs. Old as it was, however, the well-shaft was probably the only relic of the local history that remained absolutely unchanged. Many of the thatched and dormered dwelling-houses had been pulled down of late years, and many trees felled on the green. Above all, the original church, hump-backed, wood-turreted, and quaintly hipped, had been taken down, and either cracked up into heaps of road-metal in the lane, or utilized as pig-sty walls, garden seats, guard-stones to fences, and rockeries in the flower-beds of the neighbourhood. In place of it a tall new building of modern Gothic design, unfamiliar to English eyes, had been erected on a new piece of ground by a certain obliterator of historic records who had run down from London and back in a day. The site whereon so long had stood the ancient temple to the Christian divinities was not even recorded on the green and level grass-plot that had immemorially been the churchyard, the obliterated graves being commemorated by eighteen-penny cast iron crosses warranted to last five years.

We live in a time and place in which progress and new overwhelm our desire. We cannot be relish the new. However, such is not the only way to understand time. Consider the above-passage from Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure. The description moves from quaint, to bitter irony, to plain mockery. Try to work out the levels of irony in this paragraph.

The sense of the “modern” is quite similar to the modernization depicted in Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. It is interesting that on the front side of this phase of modernization, the best saw the ugliness and brutality in triumph; but how little can we see it now that we have grown accustomed.

A Sermon Must Have Beauty

08 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by in Preaching

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , ,

Shedd next explains that a sermon must have “beauty”; yet notice how he defines beauty according to a classical measure:

“The third fundamental property of style is beauty. The best definition that has been given of beauty is that of the Roman school of painting, namely, il piu, nell’ uno, multitude in unity. The essential principle of beauty is that, by which all the manifoldness and variety in an object is moulded into unity and simplicity”

William Greenough Thayer Shedd. “Homiletics and Pastoral Theology.” I heard Paul Tripp one time speak of a sermon as a meal; there are ingredients, but they must be brought together as a whole. Many “sermons” are merely separate ingredients, but they amount to know significant whole. Shedd speaks of such a thing:

“Take the case of the sacred orator, and see how true this position is. Suppose that the preacher, in the composition of a sermon, altogether or in part neglects the necessary property of unity, and endeavors to superinduce upon a heterogeneous mass of materials, which he has gathered together, the element and property of beauty. By the supposition, he has not moulded these materials in the least. There they lie, a great “multitude” of items and particulars, but the mind of the preacher has pervaded them with no unifying, and no simplifying principle. There is multitude, manifoldness, variety, but there is no unity. Now it is not possible, for him to compose a beautiful oration in this manner. He may decorate as much as he pleases; he may cull words, and invent metaphors, and wiredraw metaphors into similes; he may toil over his work until he is gray; but he cannot, upon this method, compose a truly beautiful work. So long as this sermon is destitute of a moulding and unifying principle which assimilates, and combines, this multitude of particulars into a whole, into a simple and pure unit, it cannot be made beautiful. So long as this sermon is destitute of a moulding and unifying principle which assimilates, and combines, this multitude of particulars into a whole, into a simple and pure unit, it cannot be made beautiful. So long as this sermon is destitute of unity, it must be destitute of beauty”

Tripp explained that a “meal” of mere ingredients is inedible; likewise a sermon devoid of beauty is neither true to the text nor useful. Thus, to truly be a sermon the sermon must have beauty:

“Thus it appears, that true beauty is not an ornament washed on from without, but an efflux from within. The effort to be methodical results in beauty. The endeavor after unity results in beauty The effort to be simple results in beauty. But method, unity, and simplicity, are essential properties. True beauty in rhetoric, therefore, is the natural and necessary accompaniment of solid and substantial characteristics, both in the matter and in the form. It is found in every composition that is characterized by “unity in multitude,” and by simplicity in complexity.”

Although Thy Size & Years are Doubled

04 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Jonathan Swift

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , ,

This poem is the answer for those who wished to loved for the beauty of their mind and not body.

ON STELLA’S BIRTH-DAY

By Jonathan Swift

Stella this Day is thirty four,
(We won’t dispute a Year or more)
However Stella, be not troubled,
Although thy Size and Years are doubled,
Since first I saw Thee at Sixteen
The brightest Virgin of the Green,
So little is thy Form declin’d
Made up so largely in thy Mind.
Oh, would it please the Gods to split
Thy Beauty, Size, and Years, and Wit,
No Age could furnish out a Pair
Of Nymphs so gracefull, Wise and fair
With half the Lustre of Your Eyes,
With half thy Wit, thy Years and Size:
And then before it grew too late,
How should I beg of gentle Fate,
(That either Nymph might have her Swain,)
To split my Worship too in twain.

Beauty in Preaching

20 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in Preaching

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

The previous post in this series may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2014/02/26/a-sermon-must-have-force/

Shedd now turns to a third element of the sermon: beauty. He defines beauty not as an ornament hanging on the sermon, but rather the unified, elegant structure and relationship of all parts of the sermon:

“The third fundamental property of style is beauty. The best definition that has been given of beauty is that of the Roman school of painting, namely, il piu, nell’ uno, multitude in unity. The essential principle of beauty is that, by which all the manifoldness and variety in an object is moulded into unity and simplicity

William Greenough Thayer Shedd. “Homiletics and Pastoral Theology.” Thus, we do not truly understand the beauty of any art unless we both understand the particulars and the comprehensive structure. One who merely sees the whole but does not know the particulars or structure is a “brute”. Beauty is seen when one moves from the particulars to the whole:

It is not until the analysis stops, and the synthesis begins; it is not until we are aware that all this multitude of particulars has been moulded, by the one idea of the artist’s imagination, into a single breathing unity, that we feel the beauty that is in the painting. If the mind of the beholder could never get beyond this analysis of particulars, and could never do any thing more than enumerate these items, it could never experience the feeling of beauty.

And:

But if the definition that has been given be the true one, beauty is rather an inevitable accompaniment, than a labored decoration. It has a spontaneous origin. It springs into existence, whenever the mind has succeeded in imparting the properties of unity and simplicity to a multitude of particulars which, taken by themselves, are destitute of these properties. But unity and simplicity are substantial properties; they have an intrinsic worth. True beauty, therefore, springs into existence at the very time that the mind is seeking to impart to the object of its attention its most sterling and necessary characteristics

Since beauty flows from the structure of the sermon, it is not an addition but rather a necessary and inseparable component. Since it tailors structure to the content, it can never be an excess:

And, certainly, that definition of beauty which makes it to be more than mere decoration,—which regards it as the result of a unifying principle, moulding into one a great multitude of particulars,—is a safe one for the preacher, in the respects of which we are speaking. There is no danger of an excess of unity and method in the sermon. The closer and more compact the materials, the simpler and more symmetrical the plan, the better the sermon. These characteristics never can become exorbitant, and hence that beauty which springs out of them can never become an extravagant and false ornamentation. The same is true of simplicity.

The beauty of the sermon must always be for the purpose of making the content of the sermon more comprehensible. Beauty must be understood as the sharp edge of the blade, but not as the sword:

First, the preacher should always make beauty of style subservient to plainness and force. This third fundamental property should not overflow, and submerge, the first two. In all its degrees, from neatness up to beauty in the stricter specific sense, it should contribute to render discourse clear to the understanding, and influential upon the feelings.

Second, the nature of the beauty must match the skill of the preacher. Shedd defined elements of beauty ranging from “neatness” to “specific beauty.” A room may be spare, neat and beautiful. There is also a beauty of a more elaborate yet equally ordered room which displays elegance and grace. The preacher who can go beyond proper order, so be satisfied with what he can do, less he mar the whole:

Secondly, the degree and amount of beauty in style should accord with the characteristics of the individual. The style of some preachers contains more of the beautiful than that of others, and ought to. For there are differences in the mental structure. Some minds are more imaginative and poetic than others. Yet every mind possesses more or less of imagination. “Even the dullest wight,” says Coleridge, “is a Shakspeare in his dreams.” Hence, while the property of beauty, as we have already remarked, belongs to style generally, and should be seen in every man’s manner of discourse, it is yet a thing of degree and amount.

This degree and amount must be determined, by the amount of imagination that has been bestowed upon the individual. Some men are so constituted, that neatness is the utmost that is proper in them. If they attempt more than this lowest grade of the beautiful, they injure their style, and render it positively offensive to taste. Stopping with neatness, they secure beauty.