Tag Archives: Literature

Anna Karenina, Observations on chapters 1 & 2 (An adulterer incapable of lying)

24 Wednesday Apr 2019

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Tolstoy’s great novel Anna Karenina begins with a strangely comic scene. The house has been thrown into confusion, because the wife, Dolly, has discovered that her husband Stiva (Prince Stepan Arkadyevich Oblonsky) has committed adultery with their former French governess. Dolly has threatened to leave. The entire house is in turmoil and the children are running about wild.

It is the sort of scene which should be painful and sad, but Tolstoy manages to make it seem ridiculous because the emotional weight in the story is on Stiva. We watch the progress of events from over Stiva’s shoulders. Stiva is not the narrator, but Stiva provides the point-of-view. And Stiva, as we will learn, feels no moral compunction over his conduct; only some distress that his wife is so worked-up.

We pick up Stiva three days into the quarrel and find him waking in his study having had a marvelous dream of a splendid evening. He is disappointed to find himself in a problem with his wife, but he is not described as moral broken.

When he thinks over his quarrel, he chides himself — not for adultery — but for a smile which slipped on his face while responding to his wife. Stiva think the trouble was the smile — he did not manage his wife correctly. That he should not have cheated on his wife is not a concern.

In the second chapter, Tolstoy underscores the distance and irony by stating that Stiva was “incapable of lying”.

This is a brilliant statement: I have known businessmen who were scrupulous in their business dealings and who had a mistress who was a secret to his wife. He considered himself perfectly honest and yet the primary relationship in his life was beset with a lie. Here is Stiva, certain he is utterly truthful — and yet he has betrayed his wife.

He then repents of not doing a better job of hiding his affair from his wife. But after all it could not be his fault because he was a desirable 34 year old man and his wife no longer attracted him sexually. How could he blamed for such a circumstance? Why was his wife so unreasonable?

Then as he considers the matter further, he realizes that he was not even the primary actor — how could he help it?

And everyone in his household was on his side — even though it was his fault.

But a ray of hope falls on Stiva when he learns his sister Anna will come visit and she can fix everything.

Tolstoy has never said, Love or hate any of these people. What he does do is draw out the moral compass of the reader. By forcing the scene through Stiva’s perspective, we are kept at bay from Dolly’s emotional world. Caring about adultery — after you’ve had five children — sounds unnecessary, perhaps in bad taste.

But the reader must do something with this conflict between the horror experienced by Dolly and the lightheartedness of Stiva.

If Tolstoy had started with Dolly, it would be easy to see Stiva as villain. But Stiva cannot possibly be a villain and be so happy. And all of the staff is on his side. Stiva is only following his heart, and Dolly is trying to limit his happiness.

The scene is comic because it is from Stiva’s perspective, but that only makes it more troubling if we consider Dolly. Now to feel sympathy for Dolly, we’ll need to know more of her. At present she is only upset and distant. She will have nothing to do with her husband. She is going to leave to her family.

I don’t know how Tolstoy is going to unfold this tension; I have only read two chapters.

Letter from a Higher Critic

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

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I recently was gifted a copy of Analog 6, published May 1968. It contains a series of short stories from the Analog science fiction magazine. It was written by Stewart Robb. I have not been able to find it easily available elsewhere — so check your used book store and cross your fingers.

The “letter” is dated May 4, 2415 and concerns the theories of American history in the 19th & 20th Century. Using the technique of the “higher critics” of the Bible, this future historians goes on to prove what a remarkable among of myth and fiction makes up the telling of American history.

This future historian self-consciously casts himself in the role of the higher critic who “proved” that David and Moses and Solomon were mere stories:

My method of demolition will be identical to that of those commendably clear-headed iconoclasts of earlier days, the Higher Critics. What they did to the Bible, including the Moses and Christ legends, I shall do with our nearly equally revered American history, so called, and perhaps more thoroughly.

He then goes on to “prove” much of history false. For instance, there was no World War II and no Abraham Lincoln. How so?

World War II is a “fairy tale”. The leader of Germany is “Adolph Hitler”, “a German ogre who burned people alive in ovens by the millions and who nearly conquered the world! now don’t you think that whoever made up this part of the yarn knew that the name Adolph in Old High German means Wolf Prince? Isn’t it a coincidence that he descended like a wolf on the fold of innocent sheep nations of Poland, Czechoslovakia , and other helped countries? This name is a fancy of the poets, surely!

He then goes through all sorts of “coincidence” of all sorts of names and events — all true, but all “too good” to be real.  It is a lovely parody of how the Higher Critics can spin serious theories out of silly ideas.

I have often thought what will future historians do with the two George Bush presidents and two Iraq Wars? Did he serve one term or two? Did he overthrow Sadam or not? Did he hold office before or after the war? And some PhD student will propose the outrageous theory that there were two George’s father and son and there were two wars!

How someone in a study can tell me confidently what sentence was written by Hosea and which was written by Hosea’s redactor is beyond me. But then again, there was no such thing as World War II either.

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams, Part Three (A sight of a cynic)

17 Sunday Feb 2019

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The third poem in what appears to be a triptych of Williams is again named “Pastoral” as was the first in the series. Williams again takes the part of a detached but certainly not disinterested observer. While he does not involve himself in the matter under consideration, he deeply cares about it. Indeed, in this final poem he is “astonish me beyond words”.

This poem again comes around to the poor and their dignity — unknown and unobserved by those of Williams’ native world — but this time he begins with “little sparrows”:

The little sparrows
hop ingenuously
about the pavement
quarreling
with sharp voices
over those things
that interest them.

The scene is easy to understand for anyone who has ever seen a sparrow: the small birds are hoping about doing something and making their sharp sounds. But there are a few things here which are interesting:

First the intensity of the birds’ conduct: they hop, they quarrel, their voices are sharp. There is a great intensity to their conduct.

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(Photo by Jorma Peltoniemi)

Second, the birds have no concern for the poet watching them at their business: the birds hop ‘ingenuously’. There is a complete unstudied and unconcerned freedom about the birds conduct. They have their own world and the poet may not enter: he can see, but not participate. Also, the subject of their quarrel is their own concern: “those things/that interest them.” They simply don’t care about Williams.

The birds’ unconcern is matched by the human detachment:

But we who are wiser
shut ourselves in
on either hand
and no one knows
whether we think good
or evil.

We people “shut ourselves in”. We are “wiser” and so we don’t concern ourselves with these matters. We certainly do not tell anyone, “no one knows whether we think good/or evil.” We — in seeming dignity (as opposed to the undignified “ingenuous” birds) — do not let on our judgment.

There is an ironic allusion here to the Fall: our wisdom (“we who are wiser”) does not lead to us to judgment; no one even knows whether we judge this good or evil. The Fall described in Genesis 3, concerns the temptation of the shrewd serpent who tricked Eve into believing that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would make her wise and she would become as God (of the gods):

Genesis 3:5–6 (NASB95)
5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

All of this wisdom has resulted in a stultified judgment: we simply don’t concern ourselves with these lowly animals.

The faint allusion to the Bible is again hinted at in the next stanza.

Meanwhile
the old man who goes about
gathering dog-lime
walks in the gutter
without looking up
and his tread is more majestic than
that of the Episcopal minister
approaching the pulpit
of a Sunday.

Dog-lime is a riddle. Doing a little looking I found a message board of similarly stumped readers, and someone suggested that it may mean trying to find something to eat in the gutter, or possibly some residue of dog-feces. Whatever the meaning, it is obviously unbecoming: it is a mark of this man “in the gutter” who never looks up: he is the precise opposite of the Episcopal minister on a Sunday morning (the most dignified of men). But here is another use of “dog” and this rather unreverent man which we will consider in a moment.

The reference to “dog” is the exact opposite of “god” (which is an obvious joke made at length by Joyce in Ulysses — which Williams would not have known).

But there is a patent allusion to Wilde in Lady Windermere’s Fan:

Lord Darlington.  No, we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.  [Sits down at C. table.]
Dumby.  We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars?  Upon my word, you are very romantic to-night, Darlington.

Our old man, very unromantically, does not even look up from the gutter: he is scrounging for some offal of some sort.

The old man is like the sparrows: he is about something intently. It is a matter of life and death to him, and he bears no pretense. He has no concern about the poet or anyone else. Like the sparrow he carries on his life in public.

Now let us return to the vague reference to dog-lime which seems to invoke the Cynic Diogenes who carried on his live in public, like a dog, with no concern about the thoughts of others.

Waterhouse-Diogenes

(John William Waterhouse, Diogenes)

Here are some references from Diogenes Laertius which may help explicate this poem. He writes of the first great cynic Diogenes as follows:

Through watching a mouse running about, says Theophrastus in the Megarian dialogue, not looking for a place to lie down in, not afraid of the dark, not seeking any of the things which are considered to be dainties, he discovered the means of adapting himself to circumstances. He was the first, say some, to fold his cloak because he was obliged to sleep in it as well, and he carried a wallet to hold his victuals, and he used any place for any purpose, for breakfasting, sleeping, or conversing. And then he would say, pointing to the portico of Zeus and the Hall of Processions, that the Athenians had provided him with places to live in.

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 25–27.

And one day when Plato had invited to his house friends coming from Dionysius, Diogenes trampled upon his carpets and said, “I trample upon Plato’s vainglory.” Plato’s reply was, “How much pride you expose to view, Diogenes, by seeming not to be proud.” Others tell us that what Diogenes said was, “I trample upon the pride of Plato,” who retorted, “Yes, Diogenes, with pride of another sort.”

Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. R. D. Hicks (Kansas City Missouri: Harvard University Press, November 1, 2005), 27–29.

He would say that men strive in digging and kicking to outdo one another, but no one strives to become a good man and true.

And he would wonder that the grammarians should investigate the ills of Odysseus, while they were ignorant of their own. Or that the musicians should tune the strings of the lyre, while leaving the dispositions of their own souls discordant; [28] that the mathematicians should gaze at the sun and the moon, but overlook matters close at hand; that the orators should make a fuss about justice in their speeches, but never practise it; or that the avaricious should cry out against money, while inordinately fond of it. He used also to condemn those who praised honest men for being superior to money, while themselves envying the very rich.

At a feast certain people kept throwing all the bones to him as they would have done to a dog.Thereupon he played a dog’s trick and drenched them.

So I think it safe to say that this old man in the gutter seeking dog-lime is no romantic; rather, he is the precise opposite of the romantic. But he is also a man utterly without pretense or deception (although he is possessed of a very different pretense; yet, he is an animal and in parallel to the sparrows).

By setting the old man up as a cynic, Williams displays this old man as an honest man. The most famous incident of Diogenes involves a lamp, “He lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, “I am looking for a man.” (λύχνον μεθʼ ἡμέραν ἅψας περιῄει λέγων “ἄνθρωπον ζητῶ.”)

Diogenes_looking_for_a_man_-_attributed_to_JHW_Tischbein

This dog-man is set up in direct contrast to the great master of dignity and civilization and Williams finds the Cynic (Greek for “dog”) more “majestic” than the minister.

The poem then ends with the self-abnegating lines:

These things
Astonish me beyond words.

The irony here is that Williams has actually provided words, may precise and well-calibrated words which make allusion to Oscar Wilde and a Greek philosopher. He is so “astonished” “beyond words” that he has given us words. What this must mean is that his poem aims at but does not achieve the end which he sought (which is the common element of anyone who has written and judged himself honestly).

So what then is the summary of Williams’ attitude to the poor? First, he cannot enter into their world. He is observes from a distance; he is astonished and finds great beauty and dignity; but he is still a world-apart. Second, he sees in them a dignity which transcends their circumstance. They are more “majestic” than the height of Williams’ own class and world. It is a sort of barbaric dignity and beauty which he sees.

Third, his poem is the connection which draws him into their world. He sees, frames, understands and makes their lives something intelligible him; even if that intelligibility leaves him at a distance. His words do something, but they cannot do all.

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams, Part Two

02 Saturday Feb 2019

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Al Que Quiere! - Wikipedia

In a previous post we noted that Williams wrote a series of three poems (published in Al Que Quiere! (1917)) concerning the poor. There was a certain ambiguity in the first poem Pastoral (there is a second poem also named “Pastoral”) concerning Williams’ relationship with the subject: was he mocking the poor or the pastoral form? Was he objectifying the poor and thus dehumanizing their plight? How should we resolve these questions.

In the second poem of the series, Apology, Williams considers not the home of the poor, but the poor themselves:

Apology

Why do I write today?

 

The beauty of

the terrible faces

of our nonentities

stirs me to it:

 

colored women

day workers –

old and experienced –

return home at dusk

in cast off clothing

faces like

old Florentine oak.

 

Also

 

the set pieces

of your faces stir me –

leading citizens-

but not in the same way.

 

Here, Williams considers the “terrible faces” of “our nonentities”.  First we must note that “terrible” does not have the connotations of extremely bad, poor quality, et cetera. Here are some contemporary uses of the phrase “terrible face”:

Quo Vadis, “She imagined him having a terrible face, an immovable malice in the features”. (1899) The Clash, 1922, “the terrible face of the wounded man”. A short story in Good Housekeeping, The River’s End, “It was a haunting and terrible face, a face heavy and deeply lined”. The courage of Captain Plum, 1924, “Nathaniel tried to stifle the cry on his lips, tried to smile, to speak — but the terrible face that stared up into his own held him silent, motionless.” [Both The River’s End and Captain Plum were written by James Oliver Curwood, he apparently like that phrase.] In fact, 1919, was the highpoint in the use of the phrase “terrible face”!

These faces are thus peculiarly striking, they are faces that do something to the observer.

Williams does not speak of horror of these faces, for he refers to the “beauty” of these “terrible faces”. He is walking along and arrested by the horror which has marked and the beauty which shows from the faces of these poor “colored women”. Here are the most downtrodden and he sees them.

There is nothing romanticized about their appearance, and he yet finds elegance here: their faces are beautiful and like “Florentine oak”: a phrase which has a whiff of the ancient world. When combined with the phrase “terrible face” it may not be reading too much allusion to think of some Roman demigod.  Their castoff clothing is then a kind of disguise.

But at the same time, these are poor women in poor clothes walking home from a difficult job as night descends. These women have become real to him. It is as if he has just noticed them.

And note the title, the poem is an “apology”: I am sorry, dear reader, leading citizen, that I have noticed the beauty and humanity of these fellow-creatures whom you have seeming not seen.

He then addresses his “leading citizens” directly: “your faces” — which are “set pieces” also have an affect upon me.

The last line then comes as a cut, “but not in the same way.”

There is nothing smug in Williams consideration of the poor. Rather than objectifying the poor, they have intruded into his conscious as real people. This is not to say he does not recognize a profound distance. He does not pretend to enter into their world. He offers no help. He does nothing to change a thing.

This is only a poem: not a call to some action. But I think for making itself a bare poem — without the pomposity and politics which mar most (all?) contemporary poetry (nothing is so dull and limiting as politics in poetry — the politics are jejune and the poetry is mundane) — makes it more powerful.

The poor who are so often not recognized have become quite real. They are there in beauty with their “terrible faces”. The “leading citizens” are criticized because they have missed what he has found.

These poor women must first become human beings in the eyes of the “leading citizens” before anything can be done. Otherwise, the response to these women will be render them something less than human, lacking agency: objects of the leading citizens’ largesse rather than human being deserving of respect on the same ground as any human: both good and bad.

These women, after all, have “terrible faces” and “beauty”.

Three Poems by William Carlos Williams (Part One)

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

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There are series of three poems from Al Que Quiere! (1917) which concern the same matter of the persons perhaps most likely neglected as objects of poetry. This attention would not be interesting in and of itself today: looking for outcasts, portraying the outcast is sure sign of artistic integrity.

Two of the poems are entitled “Pastoral”, their companion is “Apology”.  The first pastoral begins:

When I was younger

it was plain to me

I must make something of myself

 

The patter is five – five – eight. The longer line exhausts the idea and makes a bit of closure. What then is the idea: ambition: which ambition is going to contrasted with the wisdom of age:

 

Older now

I walk back streets

 

How the opposite of ambition. He is not in a place to be seen, here is in backstreets.

 

Admiring the houses

Of the very poor:

 

He then lists out the items he sees:

 

roof out of line with sides

the yards cluttered

with old chicken wire, ashes,

furniture gone wrong;

the fences and outhouses

built of barrel-staves

and parts of boxes, all,

if I am fortunate

smeared a bluish green

that properly weathered

pleases me best

of all colors.  

 

Before we come to the conclusion, we are left with a bit of a question: Is he ironic? Not ironic in finding the items visually interesting. There is something visually interesting in decay. Any number of photographers have used such things as either the subject or the backdrop for their images.

 

But the irony of saying such a color “pleases” him. There is a strange tone in the pastoral subject of poetry were the poet idealizes another’s poverty as a place of serenity and tranquill beauty – away from whatever ambition and hurry has ceased the poet and his world. But we never see the poet volunteer to become poor. (Dickens, to his credit may idealize some poor people, but he does not romanticize poverty per se.)

 

Is Williams merely finding beauty where it can be found – is it a realization that his ambition is of little good except for beauty? Is there a mocking of the “pastoral”?

 

 

He ends with

 

            No one

will believe this

of vast importance to the nation.

 

What is of no importance? His vision of beauty? The fact that he likes the color? The lives of the poor?

 

We know that he has gotten something wrong – his early ambition has given way to looking at the poor and seeking beauty in their ramshackle existence.

 

The next poem, “Apology” may help understand the first (assuming he holds a consistent position).

What must you know of the author?

18 Friday May 2018

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There is a debate within literature study as to whether one must know about the author or not in order to make sense of the text. Here in the first essay in the Spectator, Addison places the question a bit differently: rather than speaking of “meaning” he writes of “pleasure”:

I have observed, that a Reader seldom peruses a Book with Pleasure ’till he knows whether the Writer of it be a black or a fair Man, of a mild or cholerick Disposition, Married or a Batchelor, with other Particulars of the like nature, that conduce very much to the right Understanding of an Author. To gratify this Curiosity, which is so natural to a Reader, I design this Paper, and my next, as Prefatory Discourses to my following Writings, and shall give some Account in them of the several persons that are engaged in this Work. As the chief trouble of Compiling, Digesting, and Correcting will fall to my Share, I must do myself the Justice to open the Work with my own History.

That places the question of reading on a very different foundation: is this something in which you can take pleasure?

Edward Taylor, Meditation 25, “Why Should My Bells”, Stanza 6

28 Wednesday Feb 2018

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The conclusion of the poem. The prior entry is here:

 

I fain the choicest love my soul can get,

 Would to thy gracious self a gift present

But cannot now unscrew Love’s cabinet.

 Say not this is a niggard’s complement.

 For seeing it is thus I choose now rather

 To send thee th’cabbinet, and pearl together.

 

Paraphrase: The poet desires to send to God some gift as recompense for great gift (the glorious robes) he has received. But he cannot open himself and find something separate to give: he cannot separate his affection from himself — and so he gives himself with his affection.

This sentiment also appears in Isaac Watts’ Hymn “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed”:

But drops of grief can ne’er repay

      The debt of love I owe;

    Here, Lord, I give myself away;

      ’Tis all that I can do

Isaac Watts, The Psalms and Hymns of Isaac Watts. And in “When I Survey the Wond’rous Cross”:

    Were the whole realm of nature mine,

    That were a present far too small;

    Love so amazing, so divine,

    Demands my soul, my life, my all.

This payment of love is the chief duty of the Christian:

Mark 12:29–31 (AV)

29 And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: 30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Here we come to the point of the poem: the purpose of the great love of God toward him in Jesus Christ is to render love in return

A note on “niggard”: unfortunately, some people are confused by the the Middle English nyggard, stingy, miser. It has nothing to do with the racial slur.

Edward Taylor’s Meditation 25, “Why should my bells”

31 Wednesday Jan 2018

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15995848352_ce322e46f4_z

Taylor’s mediation “25” begins as follows:

Why should my bells, which chime thy praise, when thou
My shew-bread, on thy table wast, my King,
Their clappers, or their cell-ropes want even now?
Or those that can thy changes sweetly ring?
What is a scar-fire broken out?  No, no.
The bells would backward ring if it was so.

This poem will speak to the poet’s inability to rightly praise God, he “cannot unscrew [open] love’s cabinet” (which holds his love and praise). It begins with this strange discussion of bells. (That image of bells will appear later as possibly tolling the poet’s death).

The first trick will be to understand the introductory question. It will help to understand the whole to break the subordinate clause:

Why should my bells, which chime thy praise, [when thou
My shew-bread, on thy table wast, my King,]
Their clappers, or their cell-ropes want even now?

Paraphrased: Why should these bells lack a clapper or rope when they should being playing in praise to you?

The rhythm is regular until the final turn of line three “even now”. That accent on the first syllable of “EVen” forces one to stop and underscores the point: At this moment — when I should be praising — I cannot.

The second line contains the image of “shewbread”:

Bread of the Presence. Loaves of bread placed on a special table in the sanctuary or Holy Place of the tabernacle and later in the temple. Two other terms in the OT are used to describe the “bread of the Presence,” which means bread that has been set before the Lord’s face (Ex 25:23, 30; 35:13; 39:36; 1 Kgs 7:48; 2 Chr 4:19). The term “showbread” (kjv shewbread) refers to the arrangement of the bread in rows on the table (1 Chr 9:32; 23:29; 28:16; 2 Chr 2:4; 13:11; 29:18). The term “continual bread” refers to its perpetual offering (Nm 4:7).

David W. Wead, “Bread of the Presence,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 379. By referring to the “shewbread” being on the Lord’s table, it is most likely that Taylor is referring to Lord’s Supper.

Thus, here at the moment where I am contemplating the great gift of God, I find that my praise lacks voice.

Robert Nares Glossary (1859) of idioms and phrases of Shakespeare and contemporaries explains “scar-fire” as “scar-fire or scarefire: an alarm of fire. The cry fire! fire!” It could also refer to the fire itself.

Example,

THE SCARE-FIRE.
by Robert Herrick

WATER, water I desire,
Here’s a house of flesh on fire ;
Ope the fountains and the springs,
And come all to bucketings :
What ye cannot quench pull down ;
Spoil a house to save a town :
Better ’tis that one should fall,
Than by one to hazard all.

Thus, the lines

 What is a scar-fire broken out?  No, no.
 The bells would backward ring if it was so.

Could mean there was a question as to whether a fire had broken out, or an alarm of fire. Either would support the meaning.

Why cannot the poet praise God? Is it because some fire had broken out and destroyed the bells? No, that would be impossible. The “backward” will be picked up in the next stanza.

The Relgion of Mrs. Clenham Part 2

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

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The previous post in this series concerning Dickens’ novel Little Dorrit may be found here.

Arthur Clenham comes home to the dismal, dark house of his childhood. The only decorations were framed  images of the Plagues of Egypt.  He and his father have in China on business for 20 years. His father died and has returned to London and the house of his bed ridden mother:

‘I am able,’ said Mrs Clennam, with a slight motion of her worsted-muffled right hand toward a chair on wheels, standing before a tall writing cabinet close shut up, ‘I am able to attend to my business duties, and I am thankful for the privilege. It is a great privilege. But no more of business on this day. It is a bad night, is it not?’ ‘Yes, mother.’ ‘Does it snow?’ ‘Snow, mother? And we only yet in September?’ ‘All seasons are alike to me,’ she returned, with a grim kind of luxuriousness. ‘I know nothing of summer and winter, shut up here. The Lord has been pleased to put me beyond all that.’ With her cold grey eyes and her cold grey hair, and her immovable face, as stiff as the folds of her stony head-dress,—her being beyond the reach of the seasons seemed but a fit sequence to her being beyond the reach of all changing emotions.

At this place we see more evidence the grim legalism of Mrs. Clenham. The Plagues are not seen from the perspective of God’s people as a glorious rescue. She sees them from the perspective of the judged slave masters, “The old articles of furniture were in their old places; the Plagues of Egypt, much the dimmer for the fly and smoke plagues of London, were framed and glazed upon the walls.” The Egyptians were plagued with flies; the flies are in this dark house ( darkness was also a plague).

She revels in her misery.  She bears her place with a false  humility: “a grim kind of luxuriousness.”

She is a sort of Medusa although her head is the one of stone.

The Religion of Mrs. Clenham, Part 1

28 Thursday Sep 2017

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Mrs. Clenham broods over Dickens’ novel Little Dorrit with her brutal Christless, graceless religion. Her heretical “Christianity” in the end is spurs the trouble which the Christianity of Amy Dorrit (“Little Dorrit”) resolves.

We are introduced to the religion through its effect upon her son Arthur. He has just returned from 20 years in China. It is Sunday morning and we hear the bells through his ears:

Mr Arthur Clennam sat in the window of the coffee-house on Ludgate Hill, counting one of the neighbouring bells, making sentences and burdens of songs out of it in spite of himself, and wondering how many sick people it might be the death of in the course of the year. As the hour approached, its changes of measure made it more and more exasperating. At the quarter, it went off into a condition of deadly-lively importunity, urging the populace in a voluble manner to Come to church, Come to church, Come to church! At the ten minutes, it became aware that the congregation would be scanty, and slowly hammered out in low spirits, They won’t come, they won’t come, they won’t come! At the five minutes, it abandoned hope, and shook every house in the neighbourhood for three hundred seconds, with one dismal swing per second, as a groan of despair. 

‘Thank Heaven!’ said Clennam, when the hour struck, and the bell stopped. But its sound had revived a long train of miserable Sundays, and the procession would not stop with the bell, but continued to march on. ‘Heaven forgive me,’ said he, ‘and those who trained me. How I have hated this day!’

Arthur sees the paradox of his response: he thanks “heaven” that the call to church has ended; then he begs pardon that he hates the call.

The churches themselves abandon hope and continue in despair.

Dickens will later make plain that it is not Christ but this distortion which earns the rebuke. 

But what is this distortion; how was Clenham “trained” so?

There was the dreary Sunday of his childhood, when he sat with his hands before him, scared out of his senses by a horrible tract which commenced business with the poor child by asking him in its title, why he was going to Perdition?—a piece of curiosity that he really, in a frock and drawers, was not in a condition to satisfy—and which, for the further attraction of his infant mind, had a parenthesis in every other line with some such hiccupping reference as 2 Ep. Thess. c. iii, v. 6 & 7. 

We see first it is a religion of judgment of condemnation without redemption; justice without mercy. 

The Scripture tells us to forgive as we have been forgiven. Ephesians 4:32. But there is no forgiveness in Mrs. Clenham nor her religion.

Dickens continues:

There was the sleepy Sunday of his boyhood, when, like a military deserter, he was marched to chapel by a picquet of teachers three times a day, morally handcuffed to another boy; and when he would willingly have bartered two meals of indigestible sermon for another ounce or two of inferior mutton at his scanty dinner in the flesh. 

There was the interminable Sunday of his nonage; when his mother, stern of face and unrelenting of heart, would sit all day behind a Bible—bound, like her own construction of it, in the hardest, barest, and straitest boards, with one dinted ornament on the cover like the drag of a chain, and a wrathful sprinkling of red upon the edges of the leaves—as if it, of all books! were a fortification against sweetness of temper, natural affection, and gentle intercourse. 

There was the resentful Sunday of a little later, when he sat down glowering and glooming through the tardy length of the day, with a sullen sense of injury in his heart, and no more real knowledge of the beneficent history of the New Testament than if he had been bred among idolaters. There was a legion of Sundays, all days of unserviceable bitterness and mortification, slowly passing before him.

Dickens lays the charge upon “her own construction” of the Bible. He charges construction with being only legal demands which could not be met and could not be escaped.

Moreover, it was not judgment on sin but on happiness and love!

as if it, of all books! were a fortification against sweetness of temper, natural affection, and gentle intercourse

These are no sin – quite the contrary- but these are condemned by Mrs. Clenham’s religion.

Thus, Arthur had

no more real knowledge of the beneficent history of the New Testament than if he had been bred among idolaters

Her sin was condemned by Jesus in Luke 11:52:

“Woe to you lawyers! For you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter yourselves, and you hindered those who were entering.”

Not only did Mrs. Clenham not convey true knowledge; she used the Bible to prevent such knowledge.