Power and Might

"Now the whole earth had one language and few words" when the line of cursed Canaan began to build the infamous tower, when the Lord thwarted their arrogance by acting to "confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." (Gen 7) It is terrifying, these words, terrifying to think what power lies in language. In pure language, tainted by sin but as yet unbroken, there are "few words." One word holds a vast amount of reality, which is not yet dissected by syllogisms hypotheses logarithms &c. This makes sense, since God, who is perfect, has only One Word by which all things were created, and from which all things take their identity. The multiplicity of creation serves, each bit, to illuminate another aspect of the fullness of Reality, which is God.
Now, thousands of years after Babel, the perversion and reduction of language to babble if not drivel--in accursed "texting", and when language is bent and twisted to serve hideously warped philosophies, two facts are driven home to me:
The centuries-old wisdom of a Latin Liturgy, immune to the perversions and corruptions of time, common usage, colloquialism, ignorance. Yes, Latin is immune to ignorance, for those who do not want to bother with learning, which not all need do!, cannot cheapen the meaning of a Latin word through everyday usage or incomplete comprehension, as happens to the common vocabulary. How right and wise and foreseeing were these ages of the Church, and what a calamity has overtaken the modern Liturgy, which inevitably, inevitably I tell you, sinks to the lowest common denominator!*

Secondly, though, and not completely separately, is the occult dimension which seeks power over the material world by attempting to rediscover words of power--real, actual utterances of the mouth by and through which they can control physical and even human realities. Lewis knew of this aspect of language (and Tolkien, although he focuses on it to a much lesser extent)--they were, after all, first philologists and linguists, the both of them, and only secondarily writers. It runs through his stories, even Narnia:

"The Queen let go of [Digory's] hand and raised her arm. She drew herself up to her full height and stood rigid. Then she said something which they couldn't understand (but it sounded horrid) . . . and those high and heavy doors trembled for a second as if they were made of silk and crumbled away until their was nothing left of them."
and the "Deplorable Word", that  "secret of secrets", by which Jadis (the White Witch) had destroyed her world. (The Magician's Nephew)

It makes the kernel of That Hideous Strength, where Lewis recreates the story of Babel in the modern scientific and academic worlds, where Merlin has returned to help overthrow the new evil and wants to "wake [nature]. I will set a sword in every blade of grass" and Ransom rebukes him:

"I forbid you to speak of it . . . whatever of spirit may still linger in the earth has withdrawn since your time. You shall not speak a word to it. You shall not lift your little finger to call it up. I command you. It is in this age utterly unlawful."

Oh man! I won't draw this out any longer. But ponder, in your own mindframe and your own time, what insights are here in these brief sentences. Power over creation; the idea that body and spirit are drifting further apart with each passing year day hour; things that were possible or permissible ages ago simply may not be so any longer, yet people seek it because perhaps of pride and desire for more power than humans should have (cf Revenge of the Sith and Anakin's fall), or maybe because they desire mystery, that sense of more-than-self that does not exist in the mind that does not know God.




*The "Latin Mass" community is NOT perfect, nor does it have all the answers, and I am frequently ashamed and appalled at the arrogance and judgementalism with which its adherents attempt to propagate and defend their position. It is inexcusable. I speak "merely" of the language itself, not in defense of the unChristian attitude of any individual who might agree.

False Dichotomies

"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom or philosophy." - Ludwig von Beethoven
Once in another life I acquired a t-shirt for the main purpose of vexing someone whom I wished to vex. Many, many years later, and much worn, it still reads quite clearly. Beethoven is one of my favourite composers, and I was delighted at its defiant proclamation of sense over reason. When my dad read it, his comment was simple: the quotation creates a false dichotomoy between knowing through reason (philosophy) and knowing through the sensed (art). I admitted, at the time begrudgingly, that he was right, and that at the very least philosophers need to accept that art teaches in many ways that reason cannot, and artists need to accept that their philosophies form their art. Well and good.
"The world of the fairy-story is that world which is opposed throughout to the world of rational truth." -Novalis.
I love George MacDonald, and was very excited to finally acquire and begin reading his Phantastes. In the beginning quotation, however, I stumbled upon this sentence and was troubled by it. Perhaps it is intended to mean that we cannot be bound by the rules of the natural world when entering "Faerie"(Tolkien), that we must leave behind our preconceptions and expectations of normal cause-effect, even. Well and good to this, as well. I would like to think that. But it doesn't say that, quite. It says rational truth. Perhaps it is using a dangerous word, or perhaps the translator mis-chose (although I question that: When those Germans go wrong, they get *really* nutty). This seems to me to be once again setting up a false dichotomy. Art is not its own truth; Faerie is not its own truth, and to leave behind the world of truth when entering the world of art is to enter the world of lies. A work of art can depart from the world of literal truth, but not from the world of moral truth: one could even say it must do the former and must not do the latter.
off the cuff, I would say that this continued and insistent dichotomy is the work of arrogance. Find the humble artist, the humble philosopher, the humble scientest, and you have found truth and goodness and beauty--or at least the way there.

Tolkien and Heroism

i alluded previously, briefly, to my interest in what makes Tolkien's heros heroic. of course, it is easy to see what in the protagonists of Lord of the Rings, but most of the history of Middle Earth is much darker than this. as i gradually work my way through Silmarillion, what seems a painfully obvious point occurred to me: they all fight for something greater than themselves. the tragic heros, such as Feanor and even Melkor, are those who cause division and strife for their own ends. even those who seem to fail, however--what Gandalf will later describe to Frodo as a time of "sorrow . . . and gathering dark, but great valour, and great deeds that were not wholly vain." (bk.1, chp. 2) it does not seem high praise, but perhaps takes greater valour than we can understand in our self-bound age, a sort of courage that holds the self as little or naught and the goal as everything. it is a sort of valour, indeed, which none but a Christian could fully understand--to face death boldly, to lose everything, and yet not for self-gain. or, to paraphrase Chesterton, the soldiers of Christ go singing gaily in the dark. for it is also true that only in sorrow and gathering dark can the light of great deeds shine forth.
to be continued . . .

Tolkien and Manhood

Someday, that mythical day when I have time, energy, and focus, I would like very much to write an article on Tolkien's idea of heroism. While The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, of course, show heros being successful at seemingly hopeless tasks, many if not most of his other tales are of men (and sometimes women) embarking on truly hopeless tasks, fighting the darkness when it cannot be overcome, of sacrificing everything for a cause already lost. What, then, is the difference between heroism and foolishness? Can an action be both? I don't know, and I will have to spend many more moons pondering this question.
In the meantime, though . . . I am not a fan of Hugh Jackson's movies. In fact, parts of them make me so angry that I am sorely tempted to throw things at the screen. One of the main reasons for this is because Jackson consistently undermines Tolkien's entire conception of what manhood is, what it means to be a man and a leader and a king. Elrond, the wise half-elven tried by battle, length of years, and sorrow upon sorrow, yet still with hope and wisdom and gentleness and light, becomes an angry, bitter, cruel father. And Faramir, that beautiful, wise, grave, gentle, learned warrior, with a strong and true heart, becomes a angst-ridden figure nearly giving in to temptations that, in Tolkien's portrayal, do not exist. Even Denethor, once wise and become overwhelmed by real trials, becomes merely heartless, with none of the anguish that Tolkien gives to him.
And is this not a problem overall? Have we not lost the conception of what a true man is? I take it as no coincidence that any man who loves beauty automatically is in danger of being labelled "homosexual"--as if loving beauty were not a mark of a real man! This ubiquitous division of the lover and the fighter, the artist and the sportsmen, the scholar and the soldier, has done incalculable damage to our men.
Here, then, is another task for a mother: to ensure that my sons know they can be both, to guide them to a path where they can be men without fear or shame.