Still, Why Poetry?

 

Emily Dickenson

I have argued that we need poetry to restore meaning to our lives; to address and evoke truth, good, and beauty.

Still, poetry is hard. Why can’t truths just be spoken as simple declarative sentences?

Firstly, we can really only speak declaratively about material things. Anything beyond that requires metaphor. For example, the word “spirit” actually means breath or wind. “Psyche” actually means butterfly. “Anger” means pain. We have difficulty understanding abstract concepts, spiritual experiences, or emotions, because of this; because we have no way to objectively verify that we mean the same thing by the words we use.

This, without poetry, shuts us off from all the meaning of life, and all meaningful communication with others.

Poetry and the arts, but especially poetry, is necessary to express anything really important clearly. 

There is a second reason why we cannot speak plainly. Some people are invested in lies. They have something to hide. Truth terrifies them.

Jesus says in the New Testament, explaining why he speaks in parables instead of saying thing directly:

“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”

People who are purely materialist and bestial in their concerns will crucify you.

Therefore one speaks in parables.

Emily Dickinson:

“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.” 

The Buddha gives a somewhat similar warning in the Fire Sermon. 

Your house is on fire. Your children are in the house. You cannot simply shout that the house is on fire. They will panic. They will not know what to do. Instead, you lure them out with toys.

Why We Are Here

 “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”—Genesis 2, verse 15,

This is the verse of the Bible in which we are told why we were created. We were created to be gardeners.

There are two kinds of gardens: vegetable gardens, and scenic gardens. There are gardens to produce food, and there are gardens to produce beauty.

There was clearly no need, in this case, to work to produce food. This was the Garden of Eden. All plants there, but one, were edible: “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” There was no reason to worry for the welfare of animals either. They too could, the next verse specifies, eat every plant, and did not eat one another. The lion lay down with the lamb. The need to labour for food, clothing, or shelter came only with the Fall: 

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
    through painful toil you will eat food from it
    all the days of your life.
...By the sweat of your brow
    you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,”

It would be tautological, in any case, to create man only to feed man.

Therefore, our life purpose must be to create beauty, as in a flower garden. Our job is to take the raw material God gave us, “nature,” and transform it into art.

We obviously do not do this by leaving it alone, as in a nature preserve. And it is not about advancement in material comforts. Life is about making beauty.

The Potter's Hands

 

Elon Musk predicts that soon, AI will replace all human jobs. He says this does not mean we all go on Universal Basic Income—rather, on Universal High Income. “There will be no shortage of goods and services.”

I have some trouble getting my head around how this can work. And just because Musk is the world’s proven leading expert on technological futures does not mean his prediction is right. Experts are usually wrong about the future. But if he is right, what will people actually end up doing all day?

It seems to me there is one area of human endeavour that AI cannot ever automate. Create genuine art. Sure, it can create commercial art, Hallmark card level “art,” doggerel. But AI cannot, after all, be inspired. All it is every doing is recycling what has already been done by someone somewhere. In writing terms, it will always be boilerplate and cliché. One way to understand art and the aesthetic experience is that it is a direct Vulcan mind tap, a revelation that one is listening to a fellow intelligent soul. You’re never going to get that, and anyone with a functioning sense of beauty will find this apparent. You will get only the soulless suburbs. You will get endless Star Wars sequels. You will get formula. You will get mere prettiness or, at best, mere entertainment.

That said, it is also true that very few real people can generate genuine art either.

Be that as it may, given the apparent fact that everything else can do can be done as well by machines, it seems to follow that the reason we are here on Earth, the reason God created man, is to create art, to produce beauty. Or at least to all do our best to do so. To sit on the clouds or hilltops with our harps or lyres, and sing. It is fairly obvious that this is just what Jesus and the Bible says:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

That “city on a hill” is the New Jerusalem:

“The city shone like a precious stone, like a jasper, clear as crystal. … The city was perfectly square, as wide as it was long. … The wall was made of jasper, and the city itself was made of pure gold, as clear as glass. 19 The foundation stones of the city wall were adorned with all kinds of precious stones. The first foundation stone was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh yellow quartz, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chalcedony, the eleventh turquoise, the twelfth amethyst. 21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls; each gate was made from a single pearl. The street of the city was of pure gold, transparent as glass.”

The completed cosmos is a vast and perfect work of art. God has given us nature, and the potter’s wheel, our minds. We are to perfect it as co-creators, and that is what art is.

If we can’t do it, we can at least try.

The Loss of Beauty

 

“In evangelization,” Bishop Baron has said, “start with beauty.”

There is a problem with this. Bishop Barron is assuming that beauty, unlike ethics, is accessible to everyone. Many people do not get beauty. Perhaps as many as do not get ethics.

Attending a writers’ meet last evening, I was disappointed that nobody else pointed out the beautiful turns of phrase the featured writer used. “Warmoon.” “None of man, none of nonsense.” “Only the steel husk of empires.” 

“He really ought to be a poet,” I observed.

“Why? You can have beautiful language in prose.” 

You can, up to a point, but then what is the difference between prose and poetry? Poetry is, definitively, beautiful language: “the best words in the best order,” per Coleridge. If the beauty of the language is the focus, that is poetry, not prose.

I gather that poetry was invisible to those present, because beauty in language was invisible to those present—none of them, after all, noticed it in the passage. To them, although writers, writing was apparently about entertainment—an exciting and captivating plot.

One can, of course, have an exciting or captivating plot in either poetry or prose. See Beowulf, or the Odyssey. But put it in beautiful language, and it is poetry.

Even in a supposed poetry group I attended a week ago, a group of published poets, I found no sensitivity to beauty of language. All were to submit a poem on the theme, “on Earth we are all briefly gorgeous.” All submitted, with no special elegance, an expression of some trauma they experienced personally; as if poetry was about venting emotions or grievances. It was only a matter of “my suffering is greater than your suffering.”

This is psychotherapy, not poetry. 

Worse, psychotherapy doesn’t work. It leads only to narcissism.

When I remarked to a well-intentioned friend that I found a particular woman unutterably beautiful, he assumed I wanted to hook up with her. Despite being married. 

We seem to commonly associate beauty with mere sexual attractiveness. With a physical rather than a spiritual pleasure.

Most people say they get a sunset. I wonder… do they? Or do they just know they are supposed to?

Most people seem to like music. But are they reacting only to some physical sensation, like the urge to move your body and feel the healthy stretch of muscles and deep breathing?

Entire religions seem not to get beauty: Islam, with its iconoclasm, banning visual representations. Protestantism, wanting once to ban dancing, the theatre, and celebrations like Christmas. Such things were, according to the Puritans, if not idolatrous, sinfully frivolous. 

This is disturbing, because beauty is one of the three transcendentals, along with the true and the good, from which value itself comes. God himself is definitely, as St. Augustine formulated it, perfect beauty, perfect truth or being, and perfect good.

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!”

To be insensitive to beauty is to turn away from God. 

And I think we are losing our sense of beauty in recent years. The world is getting uglier. The arts seem moribund. 

Perhaps Bishop Barron is right, however. Jesus did not come for everyone; he makes this clear in the Beatitudes. Perhaps sensitivity to beauty is the sign that you are of his flock.

Cultures differ widely in their ability to appreciate beauty. The English, Germans, and Americans have no sense of beauty. The Romance nations, France, Spain, Italy, are good at it. So are the Slavs, and the Celts. The Koreans are much better at it than the Japanese or Chinese. 

In Canada, it is easy to see the difference. Toronto has little beauty. Even the people are slovenly in dress. In Montreal or Quebec City, there is beauty around every corner. The beauty in Ontario is only in small towns settled by the Irish or Scots: Westport, Perth, Elora. Saint John, heavily settled by the Irish, is awash in beauty, the houses brightly coloured.

Why the difference? To some extent, no doubt, religion—the difference between Catholic and Protestant—has its influence. But it also seems to me that the ability to appreciate beauty is related in some mysterious way to the experience of suffering. Jesus more or less says this in the Beatitudes. 

The Theology of Superman

 

Friend Xerxes has rejected monotheism in his latest column, on the grounds of that old saw about God logically not being able to create a stone too heavy for him to lift. Therefore, the concept of God as omnipotent is incoherent.

“Can God do anything?” the boy asked.

“Yes, dear,” said his mother.

“And God can make anything?”

“Yes, dear. That’s why we call him Creator.”

The boy asked, “So could God make a rock so big that even he can’t lift it?”

This is the “irresistible force meets immovable object” paradox. I remember it being the premise of a Superman comic as a child. Superman supposedly being both. It appears in China already in the 3rd century BC. 

Is it a problem for monotheism? No; there are two ancient responses.

It is a logical contradiction to posit that there can exist at the same time both an irresistible force and an immovable object. It is definitionally impossible. And the Christian response is that God is subject to logic, because logic is his own essence—the Logos. God cannot create a square circle, or a female male, or a married bachelor. So he cannot create both an irresistible force and an immovable object, existing at the same time. This is not a limit to his omnipotence, because if you abandon logic, “omnipotence” itself has no meaning.

If, on the other hand, you accept that God is not subject to logic, the problem or paradox still disappears. Then he could create a stone too heavy for him to lift, and lift it. This is only impossible if you accept the need to conform to logic, to Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction.

It is actually an argument for monotheism: if there cannot be both an immovable object and an irresistible  force, there can be only one God, one entity who is both immovable and irresistible.

The Christian belief, that God creates, abides in, and follows laws, gives birth in turn to science. Science is based on the premise that there is no such thing as chance, randomness, or coincidence. Everything has an explanation if we study it closely. As Einstein crudely put it, “God does not throw dice.” God creates and follows laws.

Xerxes then, predictably, raises the problem of evil: if there is a God, and God is good, why is there evil in this world?

And this question too is older than monotheism itself. With or without a God, why is there evil in the world?

The point is, monotheism provides an answer.

To begin with, how do you define evil? How do you know that a thing is evil?

Xerxes’s example is “a logging truck … crushing your daughter’s car.”

This is evil if you define evil as something you do not want. This is obviously a thing you do not want, and something your daughter did not want. 

But does that demonstrate that it is evil? Consider a small child wanting another chocolate before supper. Is it evil that his parents refuse it?

No; to simply define “good” as “getting what we want” is puerile. It also does not work if, say, what we want is something someone else has. Good instead means something like “justice” and what is best for all concerned.

Now, while we know that our daughter does not want to be hit b a logging truck and killed, do we know that it is best for her not to die?

We do not, because we do not know what comes after death. For all we know, death releases her from bonding into a much better life.

We also know we do not want suffering, either the physical pain she might experience in the crash, or our own loneliness at her sudden absence. But do we know that suffering is evil, in the sense of not being in our best interests?

The parent who refuses the child a chocolate makes him suffer. The parent who takes his child to the dentist makes him suffer.

What about the muscle strain and bruising you feel as you win the Grey Cup, or the intense soreness after? Seriously, would the win be as sweet if you had done it without any pain or effort? Is a film fun to watch if nothing bad or scary ever happens to the heroine throughout?

Suppose that ignorance is bliss, and beauty only comes with suffering. Would you rather have a frontal lobotomy and be ignorantly happy? To remain in a childlike or vegetative state? Or is it worthwhile to grow up into wisdom, responsibility, and creativity?

To be, with God, a co-creator?

To embrace logic, justice, and beauty?

The Slow Death of Beauty in Our Lives

 

Friend Xerxes laments that the typical religious service ought to be more of a feast for the senses than it is, and especially ought to consider the sense of touch. Touch, after all, is our largest sense organ, he notes, covering our entire body.

He ought to try Catholicism. The old high mass, at least, was the original multimedia virtual reality event. The bright multicoloured light streaming through stained glass windows; the statues and paintings, the awe of the dome or arched nave; the music and the hymns, the intonations, the responsorial prayer, perhaps more purely aesthetic in their appeal when in Latin, adding the beauty of mystery; the incense, the little bells tinkling and the big bells sounding; the mighty organ swelling; and perhaps not least, everyone in their Sunday best. 

Granted that taste and touch were rarely engaged directly; I think because they are the two senses most associated with physicality as opposed to spirituality, in which basic instincts are least able to be sublimated. Touch is, after all, as Xerxes notes, coextensive with the surface of the body, and taste tends to involve assimilating some physical thing. You do not see taste and touch engaged with much in art generally. And when, say, a posh restaurant makes a claim to art, it always feels like an alibi for gluttony or else a con. Never mind touch… treated “artistically” in various back alleys, or under neon lights.

But even they were there, taste and touch, by implication, in the old High Mass. As for taste, there was the fast, and then the special brunch right after mass, and that was part of the full experience. As for touch, there was the self-anointing with holy water, and sometimes a sprinkling by the priest walking up and down the aisles. And kneeling was a special touch experience one did not get outside church. 

But these in particular tended to be chastisements of these two senses as much as celebrations of them. The point was to sublimate and spiritualize the senses, as art, not to indulge them.

More broadly, being a Catholic is or is supposed to be living a life as a work of art. One crafted oneself into something better; a conquest of nature by art.

There were many beautiful signposts along the way. Not just the mass on Sundays, but Christmas, and Easter, and Lent, and Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday and (yes, it is a Catholic festival) Hallowe’en, to mark the seasons. 

And then, to mark the seasons of your life, there were sacraments like First Communion. It marks the age of reason, age seven, before which a child does not understand the concept of sin, does not have a fully formed conscience, and so cannot properly receive communion. I still remember fondly the day of my First Communion; all the little girls posing on the steps of the church, wearing their white dresses and with lace doilies bobby-pinned in their hair. And me wearing real button-up trousers and a jacket and clip-on tie. It is a great event in the life of a child. 

As I remember fondly those of my two children. 

And I have on my desk before me the carefully preserved little Catechism my younger brother Gerry, now gone, received as a gift for his First Communion. 

Such ceremonies consecrate a life to beauty: confirmation, the doorway you stride through into adulthood; the joy of matrimony; watching your children pass though these doorways in their turn; then extreme unction, and the more solemn beauty of the funeral service. 

These leave all the memories that make an ordinary life meaningful. One’s memories are always of family, and one’s family memories are always of these holy events.

We are losing this; we have let it slip away. The church itself is losing this. The current mass does away with much, most, of what was most beautiful. 

To what possible purpose?

Madness and Civilization

 

Since it came up in our reading, I posed to my students in the last few days the question, “is there a rule book of a program for life? Is there a purpose to life?”

Unfortunately, none could give a satisfactory answer.

My most thoughtful student first offered the constructivist position: the goal and the rules and the real are whatever one’s own society has decided they are.

So, okay, is it, on this basis, legitimate to criticise Nazi Germany—let alone go to war with them? Is it legitimate to go to war to end slavery in a society that accepts it as proper? What about child sacrifice? Cannibalism? Wife-beating? They can be no better or worse in principle than any other random moral standard, right?

And when the world believed the world was flat, then it was flat.

He backed away at this, and proposed instead the existentialist position. We are free to decide for ourselves on our own particular life goals.

We had been reading MacBeth. So, did MacBeth or Lady MacBeth choose properly, in making their life goal to gain power no matter who else got harmed? Don’t they themselves soon come to regret the choice? And indeed, on this basis, o we have any right to criticize John Wayne Gacy? Execute, perhaps; but arbitrarily, in the end.

These are the official, and it seems prevalent, views on ethics and ontology in our time. They are logically and indeed morally untenable. For right and wrong, justice, and reality are actually objective and immutable qualities. You cannot will a thing into being, or into being right.

This shows why mental illness is rapidly on the rise. It explains why drug use and suicide are surging. And it explains why mass shootings and such desperate escapes as transvestitism are on the rise. It explains  social breakdown generally.

The problem is quite simple, and it is drastic: to most moderns, life itself is pointless.

Some, the good among us, will sink into hopeless depression. Some will seek death, a chemical escape, or self-mutilation. Others will conclude that the only value left is self-interest, and become like MacBeth.

This is often a failure of parenting. But then, if the parent has no moral core or values, they have nothing to pass on. And our culture has suffered a collapse of values. 

Going to Catholic schools growing up, the answer to the question was obvious. The purpose of life was to know and love God, and to serve him in this world and the next. There was a rule book: the Ten Commandments. One might reject it, but at least the answer was held out to you. 

Public schools, of course, no longer teach any such thing. They teach constructivism, or existentialism.

There I no excuse for this; for even across all religious beliefs, the purpose of life is clear, and always has been, even to the ancient pagans. The purpose of life is—in fact, self-evidently—to seek and promote truth, justice, and beauty. This corresponds to the Catholic teaching, because that is what God is: the perfect ultimate source and essence of truth, justice, and beauty. But it is equally true ithout that insight. There is, leaving aside the Ten Commandments, necessarily, a necessary rule: the rule of universal love, expressed in all cultures as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Kant demonstrated that, apart from any specific religious belief, this was a categorical imperative: treat others as an end, never a means. Act as you would wish all others to act. Stray from these essential truths, and you are insane.

Most of us are, in the true sense, insane.

It makes me fear to even walk among other men.

Beauty Is Not Skin-Deep

 

Traditional Middle Eastern talisman against the evil eye.

We are often warned not to judge by appearances. We must not judge a book by its cover. We must not assume, because a woman is beautiful, that she is either especially intelligent or moral. This, we are told, is an unjust prejudice. Beauty is only skin deep.

On the other hand, fairy tales always show the beautiful heroine as also highly intelligent and, in the end, moral. And fairy tales are, in effect, the distilled wisdom of our ancestors, advice on life meant to be passed on to the younger generation.

The same is true of the hero legends: Sir Galahad is always handsome, brave, intelligent and highly moral.

So who is right?

We have one automatic reason to assume the fairy tales and hero legends have it right. Not just because they are the wisdom of the ages; because we naturally do not want to believe that beauty, intelligence, and morality go together. It is a harsh thing for the majority of us, who are not exceptionally beautiful, to accept. It means we lose on all counts. We have an ulterior motive to believe the contrary, against all evidence.

In fact, unfair as it might sound, there is good reason to assume that an attractive man or woman will most often also be intelligent.

Here’s why: beauty is most highly valued by men in a mate. A beautiful woman has the best evolutionary chance to get married young to a good husband and have lots of children. This makes evolutionary sense: beauty equates to good physical health. Of course, men also value intelligence, but less so.

Intelligence, in turn, is most highly valued by women in men. This too makes evolutionary sense. While good physical health is less important in the father, the ability to provide financially is vital. An intelligent man will probably be able to support more children. 

So a highly intelligent man usually marries an unusually attractive woman: like Hephaestos and Aphrodite in Greek myth. 

What is then likely to be true of their progeny? Combining the two characteristics, refined and amplified over generations, their progeny is likely to be both highly intelligent and physically attractive.

Fairy tales and hero legends are less likely to equate beauty with moral goodness. In Snow White, the wicked queen is also beautiful, almost as beautiful as Snow White, according to her magic mirror; but she is pure evil. In Cinderella—the original, not the Disney version—Cinderella is prettiest, and good, but her sisters too are beauties. In Beauty and the Beast, Belle is both a paragon of beauty and of morality; but her sisters too are notably attractive, and are selfish and abusive.

So here there seem to be two opposite possibilities.

A beautiful or intelligent child is liable to be spoiled by proud parents or eager suitors; leading to a lack of concern for others. This is so in the original legend of Narcissus.

But a beautiful or intelligent child is also at least equally likely, like Snow White, to be subject to the envy of others. The less beautiful or intelligent, especially those who have invested their self-esteem in being beautiful or intelligent, are liable to hate and wish to destroy the exceptionally beautiful. This is almost the prime lesson of the fairy tales. Even the opposite sex: the reaction may be a desire to possess rather than concern for the well-being of the beautiful. It is the unusually beautiful who have most to fear from rape or sexual harassment; or, for intelligent men, entrapment into marriage. 

Hedy Lamarr,  Hollywood love goddess and co-inventor of wifi.

If being forever flattered and favoured leads to a lack of care for others—and it does—being forever attacked and criticized, as or more often the case, leads to identifying with the downtrodden and a sense of empathy for others. 

So it can go either way, and is liable to be extreme in one direction or the other: either the Wicked Queen, or the exemplary, dutiful Cinderella.

The more extreme the beauty or intelligence, the more likely to have been subjected to envy or harassment rather than favour and support. This too is the lesson of the fairy tales.

Perhaps we have to say it in fairy tales because it is too controversial to say out loud. Envy is powerful.

What Was Her Name?

 

Had a bad night awake brooding last night. Probably mostly just Monday blahs. Another week begins, and no sense of progress; just treading water. Just the same damned thing over and over. I began thinking, “What’s the point of a world in which the Holocaust happened?” And I truly believe it could happen again, is happening again. There are several holocausts ongoing: abortion, “mental illness.” We see the growing scapegoating and persecution of “whites,” males, Christians, Catholics, Asians, Jews.

I look at the present Canadian government: to my mind, obviously corrupt, incompetent, and plain evil, and yet voted in three times as if everything is fine…

When we were young, or at least when I was, we imagined we could make the world better. We haven’t. Or if we have, here and there, the incremental change does not seem to justify a life. 

So what’s it all about? Having kids, doing your best for them, and passing on the flame of life? Cockroaches do as much.

Feeling somewhat cheerier by this afternoon. Two conclusions. 

First, this word is not supposed to be a nice place. This is the valley of tears. Our principal job is to just forge on, trying to do what is right. Anybody who is cheerful in this world has no heart.

Second, for some reason I thought of a girl I went to high school with. I probably haven’t thought of her for forty years. Not my girlfriend; the girlfriend of a friend of mine. But he went off to sea for a year, joined the merchant marine, and she started to make a play for me. Then my family moved to Gananoque, and that ended that.

I never loved her then. As I said, I have barely thought of her since. I backed off, not wanting to betray my friend. And yet now she comes to mind, and thinking of her is oddly consoling.

She was not good looking. Her politics were nuts; she thought the ideal form of government would be a benevolent dictatorship. It would be, too, if there were any way to get a benevolent dictator into power, but there isn’t. Her politics were dangerously unrealistic. But she was a brilliant artist.

And thinking of her consoled me. Why? I was not sure at first. But I conclude that she was an example of a worthwhile life and a worthwhile attitude. Regardless of anything else, relentlessly, we can, do, should, and must find our meaning in the creation of beauty. In any way we can. 

Moreover, these two thoughts twine together. Beauty comes from sorrow. Beauty justifies sorrow.

The Way of the Pilgrim

 

Why are we here?

Many people plainly suppose we are here to seek pleasure. A high school friend used to say “we’re just two ends of a gastrointestinal tract.” A hotel co-worker said sex was what made life worthwhile. 

This is the perspective of an animal or a robot. It is also a will-o-the-wisp. Without hunger, food does not satisfy. Without abstinence, sex is just work. It all becomes addiction, and pleasure is gone.

Some people think life is about achieving “success.” Success here means power and social authority over other people. This is actively active evil. And it certainly does not lead to contentment. “Uneasy is the head that wears the crown.” 

Some people say that life is about having children, and giving them a start in life. This is the Darwinian perspective; the Bible too does say “go forth and multiply.” Kids are part of our job, at least. But it does not entirely satisfy. If your life is meaningless, so are your children’s lives. 

Some people say life is about sacrifice of self to the collective: one owes ultimate allegiance to one’s parents, one’s community, and one’s homeland. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” But this is idolatry: one’s nation, one’s government, or one’s parents can be either good or bad. This leads to “good Germans,” Fascism, racism, and nepotism.

Some say that life is about going about doing good to others. And it is, in detail: we are to clothe the naked and feed the hungry, when we encounter them. But this can easily become a form of ego-worship. The Bible warns that if we do good and are seen to do good, we already have our reward; we are acting in self-interest. God does not need you to save the world; realistically, things are already going as he intends. I suspect figures like Mother Teresa. 

The meaning of life is to seek the true, the good, and the beautiful. 

This is necessarily so, because truth, beauty, and good are the only things of value in themselves. They do not derive their value from anything else, and everything else is valuable only to the extent that it is true, good, or beautiful.

These values can be falsified and misunderstood. People often confuse beauty with sexual allure, for example. People misconstrue fact as truth, truth as fact. Facts are only one form of truth, and a trivial form. And people misrepresent goodness in many ways.

It is not public charity. It is also not being “nice,” and getting along with everyone. That requires having no principles, and giving everyone what they want. This is, at best, moral cowardice, at worst devious self-interest. It requires aiding and abetting evil whenever it appears.

True good is justice. Not to be confused with the current leftist concept of “social justice,” a euphemism for injustice. Justice means giving everyone what they deserve on their merits.

How does one, in practical terms, do this?

First, in art. Good art manifests beauty. Art is adding beauty to the world. This is an intrinsic good, even if no other mortal sees this beauty. God does, and with him you are building the New Jerusalem, which the Bible describes to us as a vast work of art. But if possible, the Bible also tells us to “let your light shine,” and be a leaven to those around you.

Good art must also be true. As Keats said, “truth is beauty, beauty truth; that is all ye know, and all ye need to know.” One may speak truth outside of art, but inside of art, you must. And speaking truth outside of art can be dangerous. Jesus warned: “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” So he spoke in parables. Art is intended, as Emily Dickenson said, to “tell all the truth, but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies.” Those who have eyes to see, will see.

Good art must also serve justice. We are aware of this when, for example, we read or watch a play. We will rebel, intellectually and emotionally, whether watching tragedy or comedy, if the resolution does not serve justice. Karma must come around. No cheap happy endings, and no gratuitous deaths.

Beyond art is something more: the practice of a religion. To bind yourself to a religion is, in effect, to make your life a work of art. Art shows the way; religion IS the way.

But there is no just going through the motions here, no “church on Sunday,” no hypocrisy. We are talking of full commitment, of “prayer without ceasing.” That is the ultimate. That is sainthood.

The Ottawa Is a Dark Stream

 

A recent writing exercise asked to try to remember the first words that struck you as beautiful, that pulled you in to the world of words.

What first occurred to me was this:

Do not forsake me, Oh my darling

On this our wedding day.

I cannot have been older than seven when I first heard it, on the TV; the theme to “High Noon.” I heard it once, and it stuck with me so powerfully that in adulthood I was able to connect it with the movie. Probably the movie had something to do with its power for me.

But what a sad two lines.

Another quotation from TV, from about the same time, that I have not been able to trace. It was from some movie. I do not remember the exact wording.

That is not distant thunder you hear

Those are the big guns. They are coming closer.

Again, dark, and mysterious.

Another bit of lyric verse, often sung by my grandmother, always caught my fancy:

East side, West side, all around the town

Ring around the rosy, London Bridge is falling down

Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke

We tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.

It was the last two lines that connected. “The light fantastic” suggested a portal to a world where things were as they were meant to be; although I knew this was not literally meant. It was the world of art—of dancing, music, and poetry.

Some years later, lines brought home by my older brother:

The Ottawa is a dark stream;

The Ottawa is deep.

Great Hills along the Ottawa

Are wrapped in endless sleep.

The poem spoke of a chance encounter with a beautiful little girl, who simply curtseyed and said “M’sieu.” But she too represented the mystery of art, of beauty. Somehow, this lead-in struck me more than the climax. It was the sense of mystery, of moving to a different dimension of experience.

Compare the tripe I got in school at about the same age as these words were entrancing me:

"Oh, oh!” laughed Dick. 

"Here are Sally and Puff. 

See funny white Puff.” 

Sally laughed, too. 

She said, "Puff is pretty. 

Puff is not yellow. 

Puff is white. 

I can make Puff look pretty. 

Pretty, white Puff.”

School texts are deliberately made boring, as though the intent was to prevent education.

Traditional fairy tales—the ones not adulterated by Disney--are full of dark corners and dangers, and lots of gore.  These are the real education.

It would be so easy to make school better.

Pollution

"Plastic Islands," Madrid, Spain

I read in a textbook from which I am teaching that a fountain in Madrid, Spain, has been filled with 60,000 plastic bottles as an art exhibit, “to raise awareness of the environmental impact of disposable plastics.”

A similar idea is behind the civic sculpture “Pollution,” that has graced the Kingston, Ontario waterfront since 1973. It is just two large green concrete cylinders vomiting forth a formless mass.

"Pollution," Kingston, Canada

Either illustrates well the decadence of contemporary art.

The point of art is to reveal beauty, one of the three transcendental values, along with truth and good. Without beauty, it has no point, and is not art. It is just stuff. 

“Beauty” here does not mean mere prettiness. That would just be kitsch. Beauty is something more profound and honest than that, including the sublime. Shakespeare’s “MacBeth” is not pretty; Colville’s “Horse and Train” is not pretty. They are troubling. But to just display ugliness, to make the point that it is ugly, is the opposite of art. It is just what it calls itself, visual pollution. If you like art, you must oppose it. And, if you oppose pollution, you also must oppose it.

Neither sculpture serving any possible educational purpose either—not that it is the business of art to educate. Didactic art is tiresome and plodding. It is likely that every single person who has walked by that sculpture on Kingston’s waterfront over the past fifty years already knew that pollution was unsightly. It is pretty much what the word “pollution” means. The sculpture taught them nothing. Most who stroll past the installation in Madrid probably have previously seen empty disposable plastic bottles. There is a good chance they are already against leaving them in public fountains. If they were not, there is no reason to suppose that leaving them in public fountains some more will change their minds.

Once, a group of Queen’s students painted the two cylinders of “Pollution” to look like a can of Coke and a can of 7-Up. This was derivative—of Warhol—but a vast improvement. But it counted as “vandalism.”

Angry mobs have demanded the removal of a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s founder, nearby; yet there is not call to remove this eyesore.

Our society has gone mad.

Statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, Kinston, Ontario--since removed.

Beauty or Brains?

Sarasvati

Many women seem convinced that men do not value intelligence in a woman.

This is obviously wrong. Whether they themselves understand it or not, men are instinctively drawn to the best mother for their children. Since it is of obvious benefit for children to be intelligent, and to have a wise mother to care for and instruct them, intelligence in a woman is always highly valued. As in the classical figures of Athena or Sarasvati or Sophia. Traditionally, to be highly marriageable a woman was expected to be “accomplished”: able to play piano, dance, speak French, recite poetry, and so forth.

So too for almost anything else men favour in the opposite sex: it is whatever is best for children. Youth is valued, because a younger woman is most likely to have the most and most healthy children. Beauty is valued because what we consider beautiful is whatever implies good health. A good strong body will produce more healthy children. A gentle personality is preferred, because gentleness is best around children.

The same is true for the opposite sex: women value in a man whatever suggests the best father.

Why are so many modern women misled on this? 

Perhaps women are often poor judges of their own intelligence. Little girls are always told they are wonderful and clever. Eventually, however, if they are not physically attractive, this cannot be hidden from them. As compensation, parents will reassure less attractive girls with some line like “never mind, you are better than those other girls; they may be pretty, but you have more personality. You are more intelligent.” This is a natural dodge, because more difficult to disprove.

School marks might hint otherwise; but modern schools tell everyone they are doing wonderfully. Even when they do not, poor marks may not be as convincing as regular praise. 

And in the absence of such trusted feedback from without, the woman herself is unlikely to know: the infamous Dunning-Kruger effect. 

Then these less attractive women see the pretty girls getting all the guys, and assume it is because men value beauty over brains. 

Not so. Unjust as it may seem, the reality is that attractive people are also likely to be more intelligent: good genes mate with good genes. Even if men value beauty above brains, an intelligent man would stand a better chance of marrying a beautiful woman, and their children would inherit both characteristics.

Paris Is Burning

I am seriously depressed by the burning of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Its rose windows are one of the three or so most beautiful things I have ever seen. Now probably gone forever. They will no doubt rebuild, but it will not be the same.

Others on my personal list of the world’s most beautiful sights:

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, also in Paris

Sinulog, Cebu’s annual festival, Philippines.

Mirinae shrine, Korea, when the cherries are in blossom.

The view of Westport, Ontario, from Foley Mountain, in fall.

Tian Tan Buddha, Hong Kong.

The Sigiriya maidens, Sri Lanka.

Jihua Shan, China.

If the Biblical advice "by their fruits you shall know them" is sound, I count 5 great beauties produced by Christianity, 3 by Buddhism. Other religious traditions seem to trail in their ability to evoke the spirit; although my selection is no doubt biased by both my own preferences and where I have happened to visit. I suspect Hinduism would do rather well had I travelled more in India, On the other hand, I expect Orthodox Christianity would be well-represented here had I travelled more extensively in Eastern Europe.

The Ten Wonders of the World

Sinulog is today. My wife is going. She will not let me go, because it is too complicated and dangerous, she insists, for a foreigner.

Sinulog is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

This got me thinking: I have been around a bit. What are the other most beautiful things I have ever seen?

Here's my list; of the Wonders of the Modern World. Not in any order:

Sinulog – Cebu, Philippines. Catholic religious festival with parade, costumes, dances.

Mirinae Shrine – South Korea. Catholic shrine.

Ji Hua Shan – China. Buddhist sacred mountain, community of temples.

Sigiriya – Sri Lanka. Ancient mountain castle with architectural ruins, fresco, gardens.

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries – Paris, France. Medieval Christian religious allegory.

Rose Windows, Notre Dame Cathedral – Paris, France.

Sistine Chapel – Rome, Italy.

Perth, Ontario, Canada. Perth stands in to some extent for the entire Canadian Shield, and for many small towns almost as beautiful. It was hard to choose between Perth and Westport.

Lower Town, Quebec City, Quebec, Canada.

Kyoto, Japan. Magnificent temples and classic gardens.

One could add individual art works, but then the list gets longer. Shout outs to Botticelli, Vermeer, William Blake, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Krishna Gopala or Radha Krishna cycle.

Perth

Manifesto of the New Pentecost

North Rose Window, Notre Dame de Paris.

Art is the production of beauty.

Without beauty no art.

God is perfect beauty is God.

All beauty is a window on the divine.

All beautiful things are icons.

We must not be distracted by the object itself, or its human creator.

Beauty in artifice is God’s creation just as is beauty in nature.

Beauty without faith is dead and deadly.

Faith without beauty is dead and deadly.

The beauty of the art it evokes is a reliable measure of the worth of a religion. 

Sinulog (Feast of the Child Jesus), Cebu, Philippines.

“By their fruits you shall know them.”

Beauty = truth = good.

Without truth, beauty dies.

Without goodness, beauty dies.

Beauty is unmediated meaning.

Beauty is a priori.

Beauty is in the soul, not the eye, of the beholder.

The Lady and the Unicorn: All My Desire. Paris.

Happiness is ...

North window, Notre Dame de Paris

Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! --St. Augustine, Confessions

You may have read recently, as I have, that Denmark is the happiest place on earth. But then, the OECD, contradicting this, has declared Australia the happiest developed country.

You would do well to read the fine print. These claims are completely bogus, and politically motivated. What these “studies” have done is selected the things they believe are social goods, and declared those countries happiest that have the most of them: highest income, longest lifespan, greatest “civic engagement,” and so forth.

Do these things really produce happiness? We do not know; though there is certainly evidence that high income does not. You might or might not have read the poem “Richard Corey”; but it is built on a common observation.

Dayana Mendoza, Miss Venezuela and Miss Universe 2007.

This is a sad thing about America. It is built on the “American Dream,” and the “American Dream” is basically, based on Calvinist theology, that the point of life is to get rich. A well-read Korean once asked me why it was that American literature almost always rejects the American Dream—that the American Dream is hollow seems to be the one great insight of American literature. There is an obvious reason. It is.

Now think for a moment: how on earth do you really measure happiness? How do you know that Sam, over there, is happier or sadder than James, over here? Happiness is a purely subjective quality. Even if you ask Sam, he cannot know whether he is happier or sadder than James.

But here's a really good idea that someone has actually had: go to Instagram, and tally different countries by the number and size of smiles. That really ought to work: a smile is usually a spontaneous external expression of happiness. And the study is half-blind—the subjects at least do not know they are being studied.

The results might or might not surprise you. Neither Denmark nor Australia make the top ten. Here they are:

1. Brazil 
2. Nicaragua 
3. Colombia 
4. Bolivia 
5. Costa Rica 
6. Honduras 
7. Venezuela 
8. Philippines 
9. Guatemala 
10. Mexico 

What does this teach us? First, as previously noted, having the highest income does not produce happiness. Brazil is the world's 60th richest country by GDP. As a group, in world terms, these countries are resolutely middle income—although dirt poor by Canadian standards. This demonstrates the wisdom of the old adage I just learned: it is best to be neither very rich nor very poor.

Having a democratic government, or even a good government, does not seem to help either. None of these countries would score well on either league table. Venezuela makes the list. On the other hand, none is nearly so efficient as to manage to be genuinely oppressive.

Having a lot of social services or a social safety net? Does not register. Life expectancy does not matter.

Two things do seem to matter: having a Latin culture, and being Catholic. That, and perhaps a warm climate.

Note that, despite being Latin, Spain and Portugal do not themselves make the list. This suggests that being too well-off is a hindrance to happiness. Note that, despite being both poor and Latin, Cuba does not make the list. This suggests that having too many social services is a hindrance to happiness—although it might instead be the absence of personal freedoms that tends to go with them. 

Sinulog, Cebu. It brought tears to my eyes.

I can vouch for the Philippines. It is quite uncanny, really, coming to the Philippines from most other countries in Asia. You go from everybody looking glum to everybody smiling. This despite the fact that most of the surrounding countries are currently richer.

It has also been a common observation about Ireland by those coming there, as most traditionally have, from England: despite everything, the Irish always seem so damned happy. It used to be a common observation about Quebec, by those coming there from English Canada or the USA.

Not all Latin cultures, but all Catholic.

This, to my mind, demonstrates that Catholicism really is the pinnacle of human civilization. As the accountant says in Citizen Kane, “anyone can become rich—if that's all you want to do.” Surely having a rich, full life is more valuable, and sacrificing that to become rich is a fool's bargain. One notes that even English Protestants, once they retire, prefer if they can afford it to move to Spain. Catholicism simply has the different parts of life in proper balance, and it is better at giving meaning to life. Without meaning, there is no happiness—depression is the absence of meaning.

Part of this is an appreciation for other people instead of material things. There is a deep human warmth one feels in an Irish, an Italian, or a Latin community. Part too is an appreciation for beauty. One of the most thoroughly oppressive things I find about England, or the US, or English Canada, something almost suffocating, is their lack of any interest in the beautiful. In fact, they seem to avoid it deliberately, as if they are trying to make a point. 

Notre Dame Basilica, Montreal

To a Catholic, this in itself is sacrilegious. God is three things: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. To deny one is to deny his nature. And this is probably where the Latin cultures specifically are the world beaters. It is not a coincidence, surely, that Miss Universe or Miss World is usually from a South American nation. But I do not mean, of course, only the beauty of women. I mean taking the time and trouble to create beauty in daily life.

That, in a way, is Catholicism. Catholicism takes life, and makes it art.

Tota Pulchra Es

Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn, Vilnius, Lithuania

Tota pulchra es, Maria,
et macula originalis non est in te.
Vestimentum tuum candidum quasi nix, et facies tua sicut sol.
Tota pulchra es, Maria,
et macula originalis non est in te.
Tu gloria Jerusalem, tu laetitia Israel, tu honorificentia populi nostri.
Tota pulchra es, Maria.

You are all beautiful, Mary,
and the original stain [of sin] is not in you.
Your clothing is white as snow, and your face is like the sun.
You are all beautiful, Mary,
and the original stain [of sin] is not in you.
You are the glory of Jerusalem, you are the joy of Israel, you give honour to our people.
You are all beautiful, Mary.

--traditional prayer to Mary, dating at least to the 4th century AD.


One of the things non-Catholics always get wrong about Catholicism is the Immaculate Conception. Typically, the uncatechised assume it refers to Jesus being conceived without sex. Wrong on two counts. It refers to Mary being conceived without original sin.

If Mary was conceived without original sin, as according to definitive Catholic dogma she was, that leads to certain other fascinating possibilities. Death came into the world through sin, for example--”the wages of sin is death.” If Mary was conceived without original sin, and never sinned personally, it follows that she never died. Hence the doctrine of the Assumption, that she ascended into heaven body and soul.

So far, so doctrinally certain.

The grotto at Lourdes. The inscription features Mary's first words to St. Bernadette, in the local dialect: "I am the Immaculate Conception."

But this also implies something else, suggested in the ancient prayer above. Nature fell with man. If Mary never fell, her physical nature also never fell. Her body, too, was the one one would have in Eden. Hence a body fit for heaven.

Unfallen, it would be a perfect body, as originally intended by God. This is what is suggested in the ancient prayer quoted above: her earthly clothing would be immaculate too, her face like the sun.

Would Mary not have been, therefore, necessarily, the perfection of feminine beauty?

After all, as Plato rightly points out, there are in out experience three transcendent values; three things that are divine and eternal, a priori values that give value to all else: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

God, as supreme being, must necessarily be, by his nature, perfect truth, i.e., perfect reality or being, perfect good, i.e., all-good in a moral sense, and perfectly beautiful. We tend to forget the last, for some reason, but it is there from the beginning. “Too late, O ancient beauty, have I loved thee,” lamented St. Augustine.

Because God is perfectly good, anything he created must also be perfectly good, and perfectly beautiful. He would not create anything with a flaw. Therefore, his creation as well, in its own nature, would necessarily be good, and beautiful, prior to the fall of man. If not, as Descartes pointed out, God would not be perfectly good, and he is by definition.

The Assumption; from the National Museum of Catalan Art, Barcelona.

God's own beauty is a spiritual beauty, the beauty of the Logos: the beauty we experience in an elegant mathematical equation or logical deduction. God is spirit.

But Mary, as his one never-fallen creation, represents perfect physical beauty.

No wonder she is such a popular subject for visual artists. In principle, she is the ultimate subject for the visual arts.

Why is it, then, you may ask, that Mary is not famous for her beauty in the way Cleopatra or Helen of Troy were? Why is it that great wars were not fought over her, and a thousand ships launched? Why did successive Emperors not court her? Instead, she found at her door only an old carpenter from Nazareth. An old carpenter who was content never to have sex with her, in the end.

A good question. But consider this: for the past two thousand years, artists of all kinds have sought to portray her. Following the standard of the ancient prayer, they have as a matter of course sought to portray her as the most beautiful woman their imaginations and their craft could achieve.

And yet, how many men, gazing on a statue or a painting of Mary, have feelings of lust? How many think of her sexually?

A beautiful body is one thing. A beautiful body combined with a beautiful spirit, even implied, is something else. That enters the realm of art.

And that is one way to understand Mary: as the great Muse. She personifies what all art aspires to be: perfect physical beauty combined with perfect spiritual beauty.