Est-ce qu'un écrivain est un homme instruit ? Et, est-ce qu'un homme instruit aime Dostoïevski ?

Je n'ai pas lu Les Frères Karamazov. J'ai lâché Crime et Punition après la moitié, juste regardant à la page finale. Une nuit, quand j'étais en 10e ou 11e année scolaire, au lycée (Seconde ou Première selon le système français), j'ai lu la première moitié. J'ai dû interrompre pour petit-déjeuner et une journée de sport. L'expérience était traumatisante, à un tel niveau que je n'ai pas pu résumer la lecture où je l'avais lâché, ce livre.

J'ai par contre lu une bande dessinée, des Classics Illustrated. Sur la vie de cet auteur, l'activité avant la fausse exécution et le temps en Sibérie après. Assez franchement, j'aime moins bien l'écrivain (une fois les romans approchés) que la personne humaine.

Et la personne humaine n'est pas non plus ma tasse de thé totalement. Désolé, c'est pas avec moi qu'on discute ce Fiodor.

Suis-je donc mal instruit ? Et, est-ce que ça me disqualifie comme auteur ?

D'abord la question de principe. Un auteur doit pouvoir écrire de quelque chose qu'il connaît bien, pour l'avoir inventé très en détail (comme Tolkien inventa le Quenya) ou pour avoir bien étudié la question (comme Tolkien était expert de batailles, pas juste des siennes à la Guerre de 14—18). Mais "instruit" ? Pas si le mot renvoie à la reconnaissance et la familiarité avec un canon préexistant, dont selon certains Dostoïevski.

Platon n'avait pas lu Beaudelaire. Aristote n'avait pas lu Boileau. Virgile et Homère n'avaient pas lu les Inklings Tolkien et Lewis.* Si même être un auteur canonique ne vous oblige pas de connaître, reconnaître et aimer un certain canon litéraire, alors être auteur tout court ne vous n'y oblige pas non plus.

Si être auteur veut dire apporter un point de vue spécifique (certains définiraient être essayiste ainsi) simplement partager le point de vue d'une masse d'hommes est en contraste avec cette description. L'auteur n'est pas le bon écolier qui se fait instruire par les moyens que son prof juge les moyens de s'instruire. Il peut avoir un côté de ça, mais il ne l'est pas par essence.

Je ne suis pas le bon écolier ambitieux qui cherche des lectures en fonction de ce qui va socialement me gêner ou profiter. J'ai cherché la lecture d'Homère et de Virgile parce que CSL et JRRT semblaient les trouver très bons à lire. Et j'ai pris l'opinion de ces deux auteurs, pas en fonction d'une ambition sociale (à l'époque ça aurait été encore davantage foûtu de le faire en Suède), mais en fonction de mon propre goût.

Si je regarde un autre essayiste aussi de la Scanie, Frans G. Bengtsson, il cultiva Homère directement par son goût (et peut-être un brin d'ambition sociale, parce qu'Homère était déjà prestigieux), mais à ma meilleure connaissance, pas Dostoïevski.

Avant de connaître l'auteur*** des Mérovingiens qui laissent pousser les cheveux, je connus déjà Gilbert Keith Chesterton. À droite sur cette image° :

Apprécié°° jusqu'à par le pape:

Encore un homme ou deux qui n'étaient pas totalement fans de Dostoïevski. Pour Tolstoï, Chesterton admirait le raconteur mais déplorait le penseur.

Mais, quand même, Dostoïevski n'est pas rien. Il écrit très bien sur les faits de culpabilité, du choix moralement mauvais, de l'existence de la loi divine et de l'occurrence de sa négation par des méchants ! En effet. J'ai un jour décrit Tolkien comme un homme capable à donner des messages essentiels de Dostoïevski mais de le faire dans un récit pas trop sombre, donc lisible.

Pourtant, les Inklings, ce n'est pas juste Dostoïevski moins l'illisible (pour ma sensibilité, au moins, voir en haut), mais aussi une solide connaissance de Chesterton et de St. Thomas. C'est de Tolkien que je me vais vers Chesterton, et c'est de Chesterton que je me vais vers St. Thomas d'Aquin. Homme assez inconnu par Dostoïevski, chose à méditer pour ceux qui prétendraient que tous et chacun devraient connaître et apprécier un canon spécifique avant de devenir éventuellement des écrivains.

Et contrairement à Dostoïevski, le Docteur Angélique est lisible, pour moi.°°°

Je pense que d'aimer St. Thomas vaut aussi bien d'être considéré instruit comme d'aimer Dostoïevski. Au minimum. Mais comme dit, l'auteur n'a pas besoin d'être un homme instruit dans un canon litéraire. Item pour le fait d'aimer Chesterton et les Inklings, pas le moins si on y ajoute Hilaire Belloc et Charles Maurras.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre BU
Samedi de Pâques
11.IV.2026

Images sourcées: Frans G. Bengtsson (1894-1954), Swedish author, with his son Joachim.}} |Source =''en:Vecko-Journalen'', Christmas issue 1943 |Author =Unknown photographer. |Date =1943 or earlie; George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton; Telegram sent by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pius XII) on behalf of Pope Pius XI to the people of England following the death of Chesterton

* JRRT et CSL, vu que parmi les Inklings se trouvaient aussi le fils de Tolkien, Christopher, et le frère de Lewis, Warren H. **De långhåriga merovingerna *** L'image avec le fils Joachim est par un photographe inconnu, de 1943 et en domaine public. ° Également en domaine public, 1927, The Guardian. J'apprécie également Hilaire Belloc, au milieu. °° L'image n'est pas en domaine public, car créé en 2013. Par contre les conditions CC BY-SA 3.0 me permettent de l'utiliser. Et l'ayant droit semble ne plus exister sur wikimedia: AmChestertonSoc = probablement American Chesterton Society. °°° Je pense avoir un peu mieux compris Prima Via que ce qu'en exprime Chesterton en son livre sur St. Thomas. What's the Nature of Theism and the Pagan Alternative to Theism in Romans 1? Par contre, Chesterton exprime très bien Tertia Via en son livre et après d'avoir feuilleté Gilson, il dicte la seconde moitié de son livre à sa sécretaire. Gilson réplique en disant qu'il avait raison. Did Chesterton Even Read Any Aquinas? w/ Dale Ahlquist.

Sometimes Chesterton was Wrong

I don't mean wrong about ultimate essentials. You cannot be "sometimes" wrong about those. I mean details.

Here I spotted a historical blooper, and if he's in heaven, as I hope he is (getting him out of purgatory for gluttony could otherwise be a daunting task, but I believe in his innocence), ora pro nobis, he'll forgive me for correcting that one.

Now the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from the loss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathen mysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe in Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they overlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps Julius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in Jupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of that age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit personal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, while the heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queer coincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whether they were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his own brain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain such notions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modern sceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural. And this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrant literally pagan might possibly not have done.

Caesar pretty certainly disbelieved in Jupiter quite as much as Gretta Vosper disbelieves in Christ.

There was no such thing as a "philosophy of the age" in his day, since there were no modern school systems. In the nineteenth century, you did have one, and those who were outside it, yes, that existed, usually did not bother readers of their works or readers about their life work with references to their divergent philosophy. When they did, that was marked out as something quaint. Something to be patronised. A biography or interview with a village sage could happen, but the foreword made sure he was not to be confused with the sages of the universities, whom people had come to be told were what they should look to guidance for.

All that was different for old Romans. The nearest they came to having a "philosophy of the age" was having some different competing "fashionable philosophies" which in his day were Stoics and Epicureans, both of which disbelieved in Jupiter. Or rather, they could "believe in Jupiter" in certain moments, just for the mood, in make-believe, but their philosophy very certainly told both of these that the Jupiter Homer and Virgil wrote of did not exist.

I am not sure which of these Caesar was more fond of, I think that in a Japanese fashion, he was fond of both, and for both of their reasons, was not fond of a literal belief in Jupiter. He was an augur, and as such one of the augurs of whom Cicero said (I think it was Cicero) that two augurs cannot meet without a grin. At each other's and their own antics.

Anyway, this affords this university educated man, I really took Latin and yesterday, I understood the first half of Exulta Lusitania Felix, until it tired me, I don't have the same fluency as in English or in French, the opportunity to do homage to Chesterton who was an Art School educated man, and to the men he did homage to as victims of Capitalist evils (the ones that had built the 19th C.)

It also affords me the occasion to most formally protest againt the idea that the hagiographers of the Bible were like [Caesar's attitude on] Jupiter. It was only in later times that Sadduceism became fashionable, and even then the writer of II Maccabees takes issue with it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Chair of St. Peter
18.I.2024

Cathedra sancti Petri Apostoli, qua primum Romae sedit. Ibidem passio sanctae Priscae, Virginis et Martyris; quae sub Claudio Imperatore, post multa tormenta, martyrio coronata est.

PS, I'm off to check whether St. Volusian lived between St. Martin and the time of Clovis.

PPS, indeed, he was the third successor of St. Brice, just before Tours was finally salvaged from Arianism by Clovis./HGL

PPPS, before I forget it, here is the link to Eugenics and Other Evils, from which I quoted part II, chapter IV:

Eugenics and Other Evils
by G.K. Chesterton, 1922
http://www.gkc.org.uk/gkc/books/Eugenics.html

PPPPS, I did a few corrections after signing, like two misspellings and an added phrase in square brackets. I'm still a bit tired this morning.

How a Style is Developed

Here is a word by William P. Lazarus who wrote a manual on "How to Write":

Of course, my teachers tried to “teach” me how to write, but their approach was to have us read books or, in one case, simply copy paragraphs of famed writers. I found that ridiculous.I would never have learned how to write by reading anyone else’s writing. I don’t want to write like Hemingway or Rowling. I have my own style. Everyone does. We all need to express ourselves. I don’t want my students to write like me; I want them to write their own way. That way, the writing is comfortable and easy.

While everyone who ultimately long time writes has his own style, there are two ways of acquiring it.

William P. Lazarus thinks - he sets up some clear goals, and his students then see if they achieve them, regardless of what their style is. Ultimately, you acquire a style. It's a bit of how Germans used to learn Sütterlin : it was very angular on purpose, but ultimately a German using it would develop a rounded style (either u rounded or n rounded, whichever suits his hand best), or make the angles their own style.* A little different, since I don't think Mr. Lazarus is in fact imposing any angular or strict style on his students, but still. He just lets them write, with the goals in mind, and they see how they succeed (he has a teacher's part later on, without a doubt it will show a bit on how).

The other one is the method his teachers chose, and which in fact I chose spontaneously. In writing argumentative essays, I was essentially doing the same thing as Karl May in several chapter beginnings (essentially geographic, political, historical essays disguised as parts of the narrative), and as C. S. Lewis and as G. K. Chesterton in freestanding essays, and so I was fairly consciously doing it like they.

Sure, C. S. Lewis on one occasion gave six rules for good writing:

• turn off the radio
• avoid a typewriter if you can
• always read what you write out loud
• make sure what you write can only mean what you mean, nothing else
• don't use long words if short will do, don't say "mortality rose" if all you mean is "more people died", don't implement your promises, but keep them
• don't use words telling the reader how to feel about something, don't say something was awful or delightful, but describe it so the reader is made to say "how awful" or "how delightful".

While I paid attention to this, I could still not have any teacher actually check my progress in these, and turning off someone else's radio is not always possible, so, I paid more attention to the turns and takes of for instance C. S. Lewis' own writing**, and then glided off to include traits that distinguish me from the Inklings (particularly scholastic writing and scientific writing, lots more maths in my style).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Lawrence of Rome
10.VIII.2020

Romae, via Tiburtina, natalis beati Laurentii Archidiaconi, qui, in persecutione Valeriani, post plurima tormenta carceris, verberum diversorum, fustium, ac plumbatarum et laminarum ardentium, ad ultimum, in craticula ferrea assatus, martyrium complevit; ejusque corpus a beato Hippolyto et Justino Presbytero sepultum fuit in coemeterio Cyriacae, in agro Verano.

PS, later on, I see William P. Lazarus made ample use of incentives in a program with ample writing exercises, and as I made my D level essay or fourth term essay on Erasmus' Opus De conscribendis epistolis, I happen to know this was very standard in the Renaissance and Baroque. In both cases, the goal is to shape, collecively, an élite of writers and orators./HGL

PPS, other point in common with Erasmus, he gives types of writing (in Erasmus the three main types were judiciary, deliberating, describing, as in types of oratory or rhetoric)./HGL

* To the point, and this has been taken over by Germans who write a more normal handwriting, in the lowercase, both n and u have the same basic shape (or ductus), which is basically that of a Russian i : и = n, й = u. Probably, this was taken over from Russian, Bielorussian, Ukrainean, where и and й exist and where и = i, й = yod.

** Or Tolkien's, if you know his few essays or many letters, you know he often likes a ps or an appendix, or often includes a footnote or rather two or three ...

Jules Verne

Mon grand-père en était un grand fan, il était aussi agnostique. Je suis Chrétien, si je me réserve contre Karl May en certaines choses, davantage contre Jules Verne. Je dirais que son meilleur roman est L'Étonnante Aventure de la mission Barsac, mais qu'il n'a pas complété lui-même. Son fils l'a écrit a bout, fini en 1919. Il a très probablement inspiré des auteurs que j'aime. Par motif de chronologie, je dois renoncer à la théorie que ces lignes par Chesterton seraient inspirés par son contenu:

But we were young; we lived to see God break their bitter charms.
God and the good Republic come riding back in arms:
We have seen the City of Mansoul, even as it rocked, relieved--
Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind, believed.

The Man Who Was Thursday : Dedication to Edmund Clerihew Bentley
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton
https://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Gilbert_K_Chesterton/The_Man_Who_Was_Thursday/Dedication_p1.html

Malheureusement, pour ma théorie, Chesterton publia ceci en 1908, c'est donc possible que Michel Verne se soit inspiré de ce poëme par Chesterton, mais impossible qu'il soit inspiré par le roman complété par Michel Verne.

Par contre, le contenu est très probable comme inspiration pour Tolkien, par exemple en ceci que telle fille veut soulager la détresse de son père devenu incapable de bouger, mais encore davantage dans les mauvais:

• Mordor est meurtre en Anglo-Saxon, pays-noir en Sindarin : et Blackland est justement anglais pour pays noir, et son principe politique est le meurtre.
• Le méchant, qui correspond à Sauron, s'appelle William Ferney : comme un petit méchant nommé Bill Ferny chez Tolkien.
• Il est assisté par neuf conseillers, comme les neuf spectres de l'anneau chez Tolkien.
• Mordor est autant technocratique que Blackland.

D'autres aspects collent davantage avec Michel Strogoff, ainsi aussi pour certains parties de la Narniade par C. S. Lewis, comme le Cheval et son écuyer. Mais l'Oncle Andrew dans Le Neveu du Magicien est très collé sur William Ferney. Le choix donné par Jadis à Digory ou par Saruman à Gandalf est proche du choix proposé par William Ferney une fois qu'il avait capturé les gens de l'expédition Barsac.

Or, C. S. Lewis et J. R. R. Tolkien diffèrent nettement de Jules Verne, même de Michel Verne, en diagnostiquant que la culture avec technologie moderne ne souffre pas que pour les maladresses héritées d'avant, le pouvoir, l'argent, mais qu'elle contient une malaise de mégalomanie dans la culture des techniciens elle-même. Le technicien Marcel sert William Ferney par aveuglement, par une folie quelque part incompatible avec la méchanceté de William Ferney, une fois révélée à lui, mais Saruman (dont Orthanc a une économie qui nettement rappelle Blackland, comme le Mordor de Sauron) le fait parce que dominer les autres créatures de Dieu, celles qui sont moins fortes que lui, est ce qu'il aime.

Ils avaient vécu la guerre de 14, et savaient que les techniciens qui avaient aidé l'armée de la Prusse de développer le gaz savaient parfaitement ce que le gaz pouvait faire. Jules Verne était encore à loisir de l'ignorer.

Michel Strogoff est bien entendu aussi un des romans que j'aime, même si je ne trouve pas que le portrait de Harry Blount fasse justice à la Genèse* ... mais, il y a encore L'Île mystérieuse ... je viens d'évoquer* comment Jules Verne se fait admirateur acritique de tout progrès réel ou putative, comme les progrès de l'évolutionnisme, des millions d'années, passées ou à venir, on pourrait ajouter qu'on n'est pas au temps des génies, etc, mais en plus il y a illogisme, l'incohérence, du dialogue entre Cyrus Smith est capitaine Nemo.

Celui-ci a fait des choses en 1866, selon Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers, et Cyrus Smith et les autres sont sur l'île depuis tot en 1865. Et Nemo demande à Cyrus Smith de dire son impression de lui, à partir de ce qu'il a lu dans un livre qu'il n'a pas pu lire ... et Cyrus Smith répond. Ayrcroft a été sur l'autre île encore davantage, et ils n'ont pas rencontré qqn d'autre. Jamais une telle incohérence dans les œuvres de Tolkien ou de C. S. Lewis se pose directement. Ni chez Chesterton.

Il y a des gens qui me demandent si "Karl May est un peu comme Karl Marx?" ou si "C. S. Lewis est un peu comme Lewis Carroll?" - et je commence d'avoir l'impression que Maurras et Mauriac sont la même personne, au moins dans leur monde d'absurdisme. Marx et Marcus font référence à Saint Marc, tandis que May est le mois mai. Et Karl est tout aussi commun que Charles, c'est même le même nom. Lewis est dans les deux cas le même nom, celui de "Saint Lewis of France" ou de "Lewis XIV of France" - c'est l'anglais pour Louis. Par contre, Clive Staples Lewis portait ce nom en tant que nom de famille honnêtement hérité, Charles Lutwidge Hodgson s'en fit en prénom de pseudonyme. Il y a d'autres gens (ou parfois les mêmes) pour qui un fan de Tolkien est un accroc à une herbe qui ne se met pas en état pur dans une pipe, et j'ai envie de demander si un fan de Jules Verne (plus jeune que mon grand-père né en 1900, élevé avant que l'idée du progrès se soit décrédibilisée, si quelqu'un qui est donc encore fan de Jules Verne, le chantre du progrès pourrait être accroc à la coke, mâché ou snorté ...

Même Karl May, suffisamment progressiste pour honorer Benito Juarez, aurait été un meilleur maire de Brest que Jules Verne. Karl May honorait Robert Surcouf dans "Der Kaperkapitän", en la collection de nouvelles "Old Firehand", mais pour Jules Verne, la langue bretonne était vouée à l'extinction, parce que pas langue du progrès ... prince Dakkar, l'identité de capitaine Nemo, aurait inspiré la révolte des cipayes, et il serait capable à se soulager sur son lit de mort par des mots comme "l'histoire a condamné ta cause, mais pas ta personne"? Genre, le combat contre le progrès (toujours identifiables comme tel) serait toujour faux, ceux qui le font par conviction seraient toujours excusables et nobles comme le Jean Chouan de Victor Hugo? Genre, on ne demande pas ce que Dieu va dire, ni comment un pécheur peut in extremis se réconcilier avec le Bon Dieu, on demande juste ce que des gens instruits vont bavarder sur la chose ...

Chez Karl May, un héro n'assiste pas à la mort, même d'un ennemi, sans de rappeler, si ça semble nécessaire, que Dieu punit le péché, et pour le péché mortel sans repentir à la mort, c'est l'enfer éternel, brûlant.

Je n'ai pas à regretter en France d'avoir lu davantage Tolkien et C. S. Lewis que Jules Verne, ou Karl May plus qu'Alexandre Dumas.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
Lundi, novène de Pentecôte,
25.V.2020

* Creation vs. Evolution : What do Harry Blount and Gédéon Spilett have in common?
https://creavsevolu.blogspot.com/2020/05/what-do-harry-blount-and-gedeon-spilett.html

On a considéré Chesterton comme Antisémite

En fait, Chesterton ne se qualifiait pas comme tel de sa propre bouche, il prenait plutôt une neutralité bienveillante entre Chrétiens philosémites et Chrétiens antisémites. Il était un philosémite modéré, qui pourtant ne démonisait pas les antisémites - quand il s'agit des Chrétiens.

Dans la Belle Époque, dans les années 20', et en dehors d'Allemagne, même les années 30' le mot "antisémite" ne visait pas forcément à chaque utilisation quelqu'un qui prenait chaque Juif ou quasiment comme complice des Protocoles des Sages de Sion*, et encore moins à chaque fois quelqu'un qui serait capable de casser la vitrine d'une boutique parce que le proprio était Juif.

Ça qualifiait quelqu'un simplement qui était capable de trouver que tel ou tel Juif avait tort ou faisait le tort d'une manière conditionnée par le fait d'être Juif. Ce qu'était le cas avec Chesterton : mais alors il était aussi philosémite, bien capable de trouver qu'un Juif faisait le bien ou disait le vrai d'une manière également conditionnée par le fait de psalmodier en hébreu ou de vénérer des rouleaux de la Torah.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton était un écrivain assez assidu des nouvelles, dont une grande collection dédié au Père Brown, SJ. Je viens de lire ou de relire deux nouvelles en dehors de cette collection. L'assassin modéré et L'homme au renard, dans le même volume. Par le même traducteur.

Certes. Il y a dans l'un un Juif qui est malhonnête. Le Dr. Gregory. Son malhonnêteté consiste en partie en une capacité de harcèlement sexuel et en partie en une capacité plus grand d'exciter des soulèvements que de s'y sacrifier lui-même. Il ne viole pas et il ne commet pas de meurtre. Un homme un peu plus honnête le donne un coup de poing.

Le même homme qui le donne ce coup de poing est aussi un homme qui dit ou accorde plutôt à une patriote excédée par ses propos anticoloniaux qu'il est menteur - mais dit la vérité.

"Est c'est une situation dangereuse qui prévaut dans la presse et l'opinion quand seulement les menteurs disent la vérité."

Hume le qualifie de menteur parce que Mademoiselle Barbara Traill venait de le qualifier de tel. Mais il ajoute qu'il dit la vérité.

Qui sont les vrais méchants?

Dans l'assassin modéré, où se trouve Dr. Gregory, le vrai méchant en tant que personne humaine est le vice-gouverneur, qui n'aime pas le compromis proposé par le gouverneur de Polybie**, mais pour une raison opposée à celle de Dr. Gregory, anticolonial en principe farouche. Le vice-gouverneur aurait voulu se débarrasser du gouverneur pour faire une politique de zéro autonomie. Même au prix d'une guerre.

Le méchant en tant que principe, pas non plus le Judaïsme, c'est la superstition psychiatrique.

"On reproche aux vieilles nourrices de faire peur aux enfants avec leurs histoires de croquemitaines, qui pourtant tournent vite à la blague. Que ne devrait-on dire de ces nouvelles nourrices qui laissent les enfants s'effrayer tous seuls avec ces modernes croquemitaines qu'ils sont censés prendre aux sérieux! Ma chère enfant, il n'y a pas plus à craindre pour votre frère que pour vous. ... Supposons tout de même qu'il reste un peu plus enfant que nous autres. Est-ce si terrible d'être un enfant? ... Être un enfant n'est pas une maladie. Même rester un enfant n'est pas une maladie."

Plus, bien entendu, la propensité des extrémistes à la violence, qu'ils soient de gauche ou de droite.

Il y a un faux suspect, un vieux "curé" anglicane qui s'intéresse à l'Apocalypse. Tout évidemment, dirais-je, il ne s'intéresse pas à la déclencher, mais ce n'est pas ce que pensent les adeptes des hystéries psychiatriques (les croquemitaines modernes).

Dans l'autre histoire, un prêcheur est effectivement un coupable : il s'agit d'un progressiste, d'un évangélique social, qui recommande le seigneur du manoir de faire son maximum pour fermer les tavernes et éliminer l'alcool.

Ni Mr. Meade, l'anglicane apocalyptique, ni David East, le prêcheur abstentionniste, ni le vice-gouverneur, n'étaient des Juifs.

Je suis sûr que Chesterton n'aurait pas voulu se faire publier en traduction allemande dans Der Stürmer, mais, supposé qu'il l'avait voulu, je ne crois pas qu'il aurait été considéré comme suffisamment antisémite dans le sens hitlérien. Il avait un certain respect pour Mussolini***, une tendresse pour Dollfuß, mais il vomissait plutôt Hitler, en tant que politicien.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Bibliothèque Pompidou
St. Étienne de Lyon
13.II.2020

Antiochiae natalis sancti Agabi Prophetae, de quo beatus Lucas in Actibus Apostolicis scribit. ... Lugduni, in Gallia, sancti Stephani, Episcopi et Confessoris.

PS, évidemment, Chesterton ne considérait pas les TdeJ comme extrémistes politiques./HGL

* Même si c'était le cas d'un père Kolbe, OFM. ** Géographiquement apparenté à Syldavie ou a Ruritania. *** Son attitude à propos du Duce variait. Ses propos les plus généreux envers lui étaient dans le livre The Resurrection of Rome, 1930. Bien avant une quelleconque tournure antisémite ou racialiste de celui-ci.

Rydberg, Chesterton and Tolkien

As a Swede, I have several Christmasses been hearing and some of them singing Victor Rydberg's star of Bethlehem poem, and will quote one line, which in light of the following suggests either Chesterton knew Swedish (though I have no other indications thereof) or that true minds think alike (a saying sometimes misattributed as about "great minds").

Stjärnan från Betlehem leder ej bort, men hem.

The star from Bethlehem leads, not away (from home), but home.

So thought Chesterton:

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

But the same poem also has a Tolkien connection:

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

You recall a dialogue between Eomer and Aragorn? I do.

“Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight?'

A man may do both,' said Aragorn. 'For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!”

J.R.R. Tolkien > Quotes > Quotable Quote / J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/63484-do-we-walk-in-legends-or-on-the-green-earth

There is another connection between Rydberg and Tolkien : trying to search "leder ej bort, men hem" on wiki, I came across Swedish translations of The Hobbit.

This is obviously an excuse for a triple recommendation:

• Read Tolkien - all of him
• Read Chesterton - all of him, and right now the whole of the cited Christmas poem, on a blog by a fellow Chestertonian
• If you know Swedish, read Rydberg's Christmas poem. Even if you don't, enjoy the music.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Holy Martyr and ex-Prefect
St Flavian, husband of
St Dafrosa, parents of virgins Sts Bibiana and
Demetria, all of these also martyrs*
22.XII.2017

PS, I had nearly forgotten who composed the poem to music - but it is Alice Tegnér. Very famous in Sweden.

* Item Romae sancti Flaviani Expraefecti, viri beatae Martyris Dafrosae atque patris beatarum Virginum et Martyrum Bibianae ac Demetriae; qui, sub Juliano Apostata, pro Christo inscriptione damnatus, et ad Aquas Taurinas, in Etruria, in exsilium missus, illic in oratione spiritum Deo reddidit.

Chesterton à l'Institut Saint Pie X

Je viens de voir que Via Romana vient de traduire un chef-d'œuvre de Chesterton. C'est en numéro 330 du Chardonnet, bulletin paroissial de St Nicolas du Chardonnet, pour juillet, août et septembre cette année.

Via Romana, si ce n'est pas connu, c'est un des éditeurs connexes à Saint Nicolas du Chardonnet, à l'Institut Saint-Pie X, ici avec l'aide de 17 étudiants de l'institut. En parlisant un passage que j'avais lu en anglais des années avant, je m'en doutais de fautes de traduction, mais il n'était pas là où je le cherchais. Voici une trouvaille:

"What sort of holy cause is it to inherit from our ancestors, that we should go on hating something and being consistent only in hatred; being fickle and false in everything else, even in our reason for hating it?"

Traduit par Via Romana:

"Quelle cause sainte n'avons-nous pas héritée de nos ancêtres : continuer à haïr quelque chose et demeurer cohérent uniquement dans le fait de le haïr, en ayant tort en tout point, y compris dans la raison de notre haine!"

Ma prétention d'améliorer:

"Quel genre de cause sainte est-ce que nous avons héritée de nos ancêtres : continuer à haïr quelque chose et d'être cohérents avec nous mêmes uniquement dans la haine; d'être infidèles et inconsistants en toute autre chose, y compris dans nos raisons successives de le haïr?"

Il y avait un autre endroit où j'avais prévu de corriger la traduction, mais je me rends compte qu'alors j'aurais corrigé l'auteur lui-même : il identifie vraiment, avec une liberté poëtique de l'histoire des protestantismes, que les sectes américains SONT un protestantisme qui a existé depuis alors 3 et maintenant 4 siècles. Elles en sont les héritiers, et celles qui sont en place maintenant sont héritiers de ceux qui étaient là il y a cent ans, pas simplement identiques.

Mais c'est vrai que le protestantisme très gaudy des sectes américains, parfois, carre mal avec le protestantisme assez sombre et sobre de la Réforme. En quelques détails, il carre mieux avec le Catholicisme, notemment celui de Saint Alfonse Marie Liguori, de Saint Jean Eudes et semblables.

Un représentant helvétique de ce courant, Kim Clement, avait davantage en commun avec les Hébreux ayant fait une imparfaite conversion, au Christ, mais pas à sa vraie église, et une de ses prophéties (quel que soit leur statut théologique, l'église ne s'est pas prononcé que je sache) fait mention du "Cœur de Dieu". À toute évidence, le Sacre-Cœur.

Un de ses admirateurs, un américain, ex-voleur, Trey Smith, a lu un passage du livre de Hénoch, qui ressemble très fortement au passage Stabunt Iusti avec une suite qui indique le Purgatoire : quand les ex harceleurs se confessent stupides, les justes prient pour eux et ils sont sauvés. Donc, il y a une autre confutation que celle définitive des maudits - ce que nous appelons le Purgatoire. Ce que je lui ai indiqué dans un commentaire sous la vidéo, et sur quoi je n'ai pas eu de réponse.

Il y a eu un époque quand un Luthérien, Calviniste ou Anglicain aurait conspué le culte au Sacré-Cœur comme sentimantalité romanisante et le Purgatoire comme une invention des papistes. Et ils y sont encore en quelque forme dans ce train train, donc, toute secte américaine n'est pas leur homologue exacte. C'est à dire, en certaines choses, ces sectes sont mieux qu'eux.

Bon, pour reprendre Via Romana, c'est bien de traduire un livre de Chesterton. Continuez! Après The Thing, pourquoi pas The Well and the Shallows*? Après ça, les livres de voyage : Irish Impressions, The New Jerusalem, What I Saw in America, The Resurrection of Rome, Christendom in Dublin, New London and Newer York.

Et, très à propos: The Superstition of Divorce. Pas moins à propos : Social Reform vs. Birth Control.**

Un petit bémol. Les 17 étudiants de l'Institut ont fait la traduction comme exercise en "l'esprit de cohésion, la maîtrise de la langue, le sens de l'entreprise, les habitudes du travail et la joie d'un dessein ambitieux et digne de la recherche universitaire".

Je ne propose nullement qu'on aurait pu faire au lieu de cet opus une collection de mes essais, je propose qu'on aurait pu le faire aussi. Sinon les étudiants, d'autres, ou d'amis avec des talents égaux aux leurs. Et encore, on vient de me dire que la paroisse est riche en postes clefs pour les éditions, c'est à dire des éditeurs déjà professionnels. Et ça fait déjà depuis 2009, ou depuis le début de 2010, on ne l'a pas fait.

Quant aux habitudes de l'ouvrage - je ne considère pas les œuvres intellectuels comme tripalium - je suis quasi un modèle. Pour ceux qui m'ont vu d'à côté, aux ordinateurs d'une bibliothèque. Et quant au sens de l'entreprise, ça me paraît un peu timide de ne pas le faire quand on a des moyens de le faire à échelle commerciale, comme je le fais moi-même, soit gratuitement par l'internet, soit en échelle domestique - donc aussi pas très commerciale - n'ayant pas de local de stockage.

J'aimerais pas que ce soit un exercice de cohésion avec des éditeurs à Saint Nicolas qui aiment exercer leur oligopole pour m'exclure de la fructification de mes talents? Si mes conditions*** leur semblent peu claire, ça ne parle pas de maîtrise de la langue. Mais je pourrais clarifier, si la question est posé par internet. J'ai un peu marre de réponses purement orales qui sont tellement vagues que je n'ose même pas me fier à ma mémoire pour le texte, tellement peu mémorisables. Aidez les écrits de Chesterton à trouver des lecteurs - et les miens aussi, s'il vous plaît!

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XI
St. Étienne de Hongrie
2.IX.2017

* Il y a des passages dedans qui gêneraient peut-être des National-Socialistes ayant quelque accès à la paroisse, mais, j'aimerais imaginer qu'ils ne contrôlent pas la paroisse toute entière. ** Si vous croyez dans le divorce, pourquoi croyez-vous alors dans le mariage? Ou dans les contrats de tout? Si la prévention des naissances est licite, quel genre d'épargnes peuvent faire alors les patrons, les syndics d'immeubles, les politiciens ....? Chesterton argumente, comme il faut, que le mariage est un contrat liant avec finalité très licite et que les réformes sont mieux que les ... bon, comment on préfère appeler les moyens néfastes pour un but néfaste.

*** hglwrites : Conditions d’utilisations ultérieures …
https://hglwrites.wordpress.com/conditions-dutilisations-ulterieures/

Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic.

1) Answering William Savage's Cleanliness and Class · 2) "If you wanted bacon you had to make it yourself—and what a lengthy, laborious job it was!" · 3) Fridge Logic · 4) Speaking of Drinking Problem for Georgians? That is Anachronistic. · 5) A Distinction and a Gratitude to William Savage

Nevertheless, William Savage poses the question in those terms:

Pen and Pension : Did the Georgians have a Drink Problem?
Posted on November 16, 2016
https://penandpension.com/2016/11/16/did-the-georgians-have-a-drink-problem/

Compared with water, alcohol produced by fermentation contained fewer contaminants; the heating involved usually removed the main sources of infection.

Before you say that, how about proving water was generally infected?

Wine, also, was, unlike beer, not heated before the fermentation. However, both alcohol and polyphenols would likely eliminate most.

That said, drinking is not just for hydration. If you prefer lemonade, coffee or tea over water, it is because you need energy. Alcohol is a carbohydrate as good as sugar.

And getting your carbohydrates mainly through solids might clog the digestion apparatus.

Hogarth’s famous illustration ‘Gin Lane’ is often produced as evidence of disapproval of alcohol. Yet it needs to be remembered that gin was a ‘foreign’ drink, brought over by the Dutch soldiers in William of Orange’s army. If you compare the poverty and degradation shown in ‘Gin Lane’ to its companion piece, ‘Beer Street’ (a solid, English drink) Hogarth’s message isn’t so clear. It seems less about alcohol than a typical crusty English aversion towards foreign food and drink. Beer Street is clean and prosperous, everyone looks healthy and happy — and the pawnbroker has gone bankrupt!

If you drink beer, you hydrate yourself about the pace you get alcohol as energy drink, besides you get a lot of sugars in it too. Before you get VERY drunk, you will have to get a pee. And if you're in for it for the energy, without express intention of getting drunk, you are better placed to slow down before actually getting so.

And if you drink beer, you drink what your neighbour or yourself has brewed.

Obviously more so back then than now.

Do you know that besides grapes, they grow excellent barley in Reims?

But if you want a beer in Reims, from the barley of Reims, it has generally been brewed in Belgium somewhere. The drink that is produced from field to bottle in Reims is of course Champagne.

That has made beer in Reims less likely to keep you out of debt, compared to drinking stronger, though of course Champagne is not very strong either. However, it is expensive, since exported very widely. Local bar visitors do need to compete somewhat to foreigners buying Champagne as a luxury. And some politicians and some Muslim security guards want it that way.

Yep, Chesterton has a better part in Hogarth than teetotallers have.

Beer was good because it was a do it yourself drink. As mentioned, the kind of cook and household book which teaches you to make bacon (that is, to pickle porc) probably also teaches you to brew beer.

It’s fair to say that contemporary attitudes to heavy drinking were class-based — linked to the economic need to keep people productive, especially the ‘working classes’.

Chesterton mentioned the saying "drunk as a lord" - and sometimes alluded to the fact that building workers don't get that by using beer as an energy drink.

Waiters in restaurants don't get that if using wine as an energy drink either (see Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell), it is when they get laid off and drink as much as when they were working that they may (in fairly rare cases even so) become really drunk people.

However you explain it, it seems likely that a good part of the population of 18th-century Britain had, in modern terms, a significant drinking problem, greater the higher up you look on the social scale. Gout was everywhere amongst the rich and the gentry, especially in men, who were the heaviest drinkers. Men boasted of their ability to drink huge amounts and remain able to function.

Oh, certainly. Real drunkenness is as horrible as Teetotalism to a gentleman.

Not meaning just someone of the gentry. (I happen to be proud of a distiller grand pa.)

To qualify as a rake virtually required you to consume up to three bottles of port a day.

To qualify as a rake required you to consume so much you didn't function and still not go to bed, and be observed doing so.

An observation easier to make in lower classes, because they have fewer places to hide in either loneliness or the kind of company which is entirely understanding.

With lower class, some "observations" may be supplemented without adding alcohol by the person's mouth. Like sleep privations and steady offers of sugar-filled both drinks and foods. Like stinginess about the money he could use for washing in laundries (except on Sundays, when I don't wash, generally, holding the Sunday to be free from house chores as well as heavy work - unless emergencies force me).

Note, in Catholic parts of Europe, generally, even lords and gentry (or what corresponds roughly to these English titles) were, especially after the Counterreformation, expected to not get drunk, to drink with moderation, to set an example.

This has not been entirely lost on at least middle class, but actually also lower classes in cities like Vienna or Paris.

Excepting of course recent Muslim immigrants, who are stuck in the choice between Teetotalism or becoming rakes.

During his time as Prime Minister, William Pitt the Younger was said to take up to six bottles daily.

I think Napoleon was more sober.

You have to wonder what effect this had on his decision-making during those years.

If he was used to that quantity without getting drunk (which is possible, if you keep in training), presumably none. Or perhaps as much as drinking six bottles (large ones) of Coke, what with the sugar involved.

It certainly shortened his life.

But on the other hand kept himstrong and healthy while he lived.

There is a thing called the Salerno diet. It was given as medical advise to English kings, by the physicians at the faculty of Salerno.

Since neither they nor the kings wanting their advise were Protestants, they presumably did not foresee six bottles a day, but it included more alcohol than bankers are supposed to drink these days.

It also included much meat.

Obviously, the pious Catholics would abstain from both on Wednesdays and Fridays. And lighten the work burden accordingly, especially in Lent when fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays was more compulsory.

Bad Catholics and after them Protestants would on the other hand not do so, so, if following Salerno diet (which remained popular in the time of Hogarth) they would probably have this health balance:

• on the one hand, no infections, or infections very soon cured, no or very few days off (more important if you are a king or a worker who can be laid off any day, than if you have an employment where a replacement is temporary)
• also, bright wits (but that effect is especially such if actually fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays, otherwise Salerno diet would probably clog you down a bit)
• and on the other hand, accumulating a health problem which takes you off to the graveyard at about 60.

But if Savage thinks the six bottles of wine affected William Pitt's decision making? No, I think he was used to it.

Or, perhaps it did, making him adverse to adopting the Catholic religion, which would probably have cut even him down to five bottles per day (getting drunk being a mortal sin, getting tipsy a venial one).

To think of it, some have considered Chesterton and Belloc as drunks because they enjoyed at certain times three bottles a day - wonder what they would have said about William Pitt ...

I suspect such constant drinking produced some lessening of the immediate effects of alcohol on mind and body — or at least a greater ability to conceal them.

Here is what I learned in school. If you are a teen and you start drinking, you don't need much to get drunk. If you keep drinking, you heighten your tolerance. The danger is when the tolerance doesn't rise more, but breaks.

Obviously it lessens the immediate effect on your mind, if you have a liver reacting promptly.

Obviously it heightens the immediate effect on your mind, if you have a liver which has given up the task of keeping you sober.

But the same is in fact also true for sugar. Or so I ahve found.

I have encountered alcoholics who seemed able to function quite normally most of the time, despite the amount they drank. It caught up with them in the end, of course, but usually the social impact came before the physical one.

If so, perhaps the physical impact catching up with them is due to the social one? Like offering much sugar? Like adding more stress?

What first limited the Nation’s drinking was the spread of evangelical Christianity, especially in the middle class, who had always been more puritanical than those above them.

Er, no. Catholicism had limited the drinking before that. And in the 16th Century, Puritans were MORE liberal with wine and beer than Catholics. Especially as being opposed to taking Lent off.

It is not by chance that Cromwell was a brewer, nor did he in any way discourage anyone from drinking, as long as he didn't get positively drunk (as opposed to just tipsy or simply unaffected because used to it). Brewers may have enjoyed the Reformation, because the time between Christmas and Easter is better business than if you have a Catholic clientele.

Of course, Puritans do loose you a few extra days on the Twelve Days of Christmas or in Easter Octave. But the regular, non-festive fare would make up for that, if you are the kind of brewer and inn-keeper who wants to earn as much money as possible.

During the first 1700 years of the Church, there was not one denomination who thought every faithful should abstain from alcohol all days and not even drink a glass of wine at night. There were people who thought monks should abstain - and St Benedict laments they did not keep the upper hand. BUT he limits a monk's consummation of wine to 1 measure (a little greater than a pint*) of wine per day. Probably a little less of it at lunch (the days there was one) or divided in the working hours, and a little more of it at the refectorium after Vespers. ALONG with soup and beans and perhaps even meat.

Unless of course you count Mahomet as a Christian heretic rather than as a Pagan. His words are by now famous: "if a large amount intoxicates, even a little amount is prohibited", with the word for prohibited being in Arabic original probably "haram".

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Saint Gertrude
16.XI.2016

* If pint is 50 cl in France, and perhaps less in England, the measure given by St Benedict is supposed to have been 66 cl.

Update, 21.XI.2016:

Here is a dialogue in combox under William Savage's post:

noelleg44

Interesting post, William. I discovered that the Pilgrims drank beer pretty exclusively, although children might drink water, if not fouled. That was one of the reasons why they settled where they did – on a site with a brook with clean water. The children also drank small beer, especially on the Mayflower when the water became fouled.

I wonder that the death rate was from cirrhosis in Georgian England? The rich might have been able to handle their liquor with practice, but their livers wouldn’t!

William Savage

No answer to that, since medical science at the time wouldn’t have known what it was. I suppose people reckoned there were so many things around that would kill you, why worry about one more — especially if it was enjoyable while it did it!

noelleg44 is correct - taking liquor without getting drunk is not the same as taking liquor without charging, overcharging or really harming the liver. Hence the wisdom of the monks who were taking far less than William Pitt.

William Savage is incorrect about at least one thing, medical science back then. Or perhaps correct about English version of it, but if so English were behind the times.

English wiki has nothing, but German wiki says: Die erste makroskopische Beschreibung einer Leberzirrhose in der Medizingeschichte findet sich in den Anmerkungen zur Zeichnung del vecchio von Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). Die Zeichnungen zur Gefäßanatomie der Leber basieren auf einer Autopsie, die Leonardo da Vinci 1508 in Florenz an einem über 100-Jährigen vornahm.

Georgian England is after all a few centuries after Leonardo, and if their doctors had no clue what cirrhosis was, they were severely behind the times, compared to the continent./HGL

Beer and Bible

Quoting next essay in this his first essay collection:

"I remember* a pamphlet by that able and sincere secularist, Mr. G. W. Foote, which contained a phrase sharply symbolizing and dividing these two methods. The pamphlet was called "Beer and Bible", those two very noble things, all the nobler for a conjunction which Mr. Foote, in his stern old Puritan way, seemed to think sardonic, but which I confess to thinking appropriate and charming."

And the Holy Writte actually speaks of beer too. Some miss it:

There are two major opinions concerning the literal meaning of verse 1: "Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again." Some believe it refers to maritime commerce, advising to send ships selling grain out to many different ports, for some are bound to gain success. Others believe it refers to casting seed on the shallow areas of a river, with the hope that some will take root. Whatever the literal meaning, the figurative lesson seems to be that a daring, seemingly foolish, distribution of your assets will yield returns in the future.

Scripture Studies forgot the third one. Take a large container of fresh water, throw bread (perhaps old bread even) on it, and after some days you will find liquid bread in the basins : when cereal content of bread has first been dissolved into the water and the liquid then fermented into an oriental (and Russian/East European) type of beer.

In Russian it is called KWAS. In Hebrew it is called Shekor.

Someone missing it may come to wrong conclusions:

First, What does this mean? Try to imagine someone throwing bread upon some water. It could be a pond, pool, or even a lake. At first, it seems innocent enough and even harmless. Maybe the person is feeding some fish or there are some cute ducks nearby and the bread-feeding is a nice picture of serenity and giving. OK, that sounds plausible. We like it. Be nice and throw some bread to the poor fish and birds once in a while. But the rest of the verse says, “and after many days you will find it again.” Now we are confused because when have you ever thrown bread into the water and found it again later on? Or an even more important question would be, why would you want to find it again? I can’t speak for everyone, but bread that comes out of the water is usually pretty wet and soggy and quite unappealing. Have you ever tried eating wet and soggy bread? Yuck! So far this proverb isn’t making too much sense.

When bread is only soggy, that means there are not enough days gone, you have still not found liquid bread in return for the bread which was lost by drying out even before throwing it on the waters.

First bread goes soggy.

Then the remaining crumbs turn to fine flakes and fall to the bottom of the container. The liquid is now no longer clear.

Then the liquid starts to ferment.

Both for taste of final product and for more rapid fermentation, adding fruit is recommended.

• Classic oriental shekor involves dates. (A shekor or "beer" which is kosher for passover is dates without the bread content).
• Sometime in Gaul, the shekor seems to have involved apples. The word "cider" is a loan from shekor. It is now a drink made without the bread.
• Kwas may involve peppermint flavouring ... but I was wrong to suppose it involved dried raisins, unlike Swedish "svagdricka" which according to a recipy I saw does.

"Farbe und Geschmack von Kwas sind mit Malzbier vergleichbar, allerdings ist Kwas nicht so süß. Er besitzt dafür einen leichten Zitronengeschmack, der an Radler erinnert. Der Geruch erinnert an frisches Brot. "

Colour and taste of Kwas are comparable to beer made by malt, though Kwas is less sweet (word means "sour" and might perhaps be comparable to Belgian air fermented beers, like Lambik?). On the other hand, it has a light taste of lemon, reminding of shandy. The smell reminds of fresh bread.

Yes, "the smell reminds of fresh bread". Throw thy bread on the waters, and after many days thou shalt find it again!

The word shekor actually occurs more than once in the Bible - Samson and St John the Baptist had a personal convenant with God forbidding them to drink shekor. As well as wine.

Chesterton said of such, he admired the monk who fasted on water and bread, so others might feast his day with cider and beer, on the other end of the world.

Returning to the advice of King Solomon. Sending grain to diverse places by ship is or was usually not a possibility for the common man. And Proverbs are hardly just advice for kings, inapplicable to commons.

Seeing your bread go dry, perhaps moldy and then reuse it by making bread-beer usually is.

The moral point about generosity is, that what you don't need, giving it away is no more a loss than throwing old bread on water. And getting the return for your generosity, in this life or even better in eternity, on Judgement Day is like finding that fermenting cauldron one fine morning turned to very drinkable kwas.

There is a Christological point too about this. Add normal, but stale bread (perhaps from barley breads, for shekor, or from rye bread for kwas) to water, by a normal process it will turn to one inferior type of wine, namely barley wine, or, in the case of kwas, rye wine (Herodotus calls beer "barley wine", οινος Κριθινος, would probably have described kwas as οινος Σικαλικος), so presumably the best bread in the universe could turn water into the best wine, grape wine? Well, the best bread in the universe is "the bread of angels", and at Cana he used precisely water and obedience to His orders to miraculously make the best wine there is, real οινος Αμπελικος. But now we have gotten into matters I had better leave to the ordained priests, for the rest.

One remaining difficulty, why the word "the waters" is used rather than "water". We would not describe a beaker or cauldron of water as "waters", but either use container name plus "of water" or simply "water", singular. Perhaps a quirk of Hebrew usage I don't know (I am not a Hebraist), perhaps referring to a container in King Solomon's palace where he made his shekor and being so big he called it "the waters", perhaps it was outside the palace and he threw fermented bread on it on the day of preparation, and returned to the pond after Passover, perhaps it describes waters of different tastes (one water with dates, one water with apples, one pure water, one with lemon, one with peppermint ...), perhaps he considered that the state of fermentation reminded him of the possibly unquiet waters described in Genesis 1:2.

Anyway, this point about the literal meaning of the word would obviously be missed by Puritans who are prejudiced against alcohol. I am Catholic, had a grandfather who was a distiller of Swedish vodka (and who would have hated the propaganda useage made of Absolut since his time), and perhaps owe a thing or two to some Jewish converts to Catholicism as well, via Facebook.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris XIII
Sunday on Corpus Christi Octave
29.V.2016

* Quoting : 2. On the Negative Spirit
from Heretics, by G. K. Chesterton
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/heret12.txt

Very exact, Chesterton!

"But there are some people*, nevertheless--and I am one of them-- who think that the most practical and important thing about a man is still his view of the universe. We think that for a landlady considering a lodger, it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy. We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know the enemy's numbers, but still more important to know the enemy's philosophy."

The problem is, when generals these days TRY to, they fail.

A Muslim who bombs other people is often supposed to do so because he takes the Qoran literally, takes Puritan measures to extremes (now, bombing people out of Puritanism is extreme, that is true, killing people at café Carillon because they enjoyed wine was that extreme : but there are ways of taking Islamic Puritanism to extremes without bombing).

And after stating things like these generals do state, they conclude that one has to fight Fundamentalism, but consider all non-Fundamentalist versions of Islam as essentially benign.

False on two points. Christian Fundamentalists are not known to bomb (there was a canular about Breivik being one, but he was as little that as Ken Miller was a traditional Catholic). And adapted Muslims are profiting from the bombings, it is often they who get the jobs for the security measures.

Don't get me wrong, they have, since the shootings, often been correct to me. But they do get these jobs. And that should worry people more than a Christian being a Fundie.

And at least in the most general sense, Chesterton himself considered himself a Fundamentalist:

"For these reasons*, and for many more, I for one have come to believe in going back to fundamentals."

In his day, it seems bomb throwers were usually irrelgious (consider a chapter in The Man Who was Thursday).

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St Augustine of Canterbury
28.V.2016

* Quoting : 1. Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy
from Heretics, by G. K. Chesterton
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/heret12.txt

Chesterton was Right, Of Course!

A quote from History vs the Historians:

A boy cannot see the importance of Latin simply by learning Latin. But he might see it by learning the history of the Latins. Nobody can possibly see any sense in learning geography or in learning arithmetic – both studies are obviously nonsense. But on the eager eve of Austerlitz, where Napoleon was fighting a superior force in a foreign country, one might see the need for Napoleon knowing a little geography and a little arithmetic. I have thought that if people would only learn history, they would learn to learn everything else.

I did learn history, and I learned to learn everything else.

Including Latin.

To put it in its curtest form, my proposal is this: That we should not read historians, but history. Let us read the actual text of the times. Let us, for a year, or a month, or a fortnight, refuse to read anything about Oliver Cromwell except what was written while he was alive.

If you want to do this on the Middle Ages, you are very wise to know some Medieval Latin!

Now Dickens and Rossetti and Macaulay were very great men, and though none of them knew very much about the Middle Ages, their views on that time are bound to be interesting. But there is another humble class of men who might be allowed to tell us something about the Middle Ages. I mean the men who lived in the Middle Ages. There are in existence medieval memoirs – which are nearly as amusing as Pepys, and much more truthful. In England they are almost entirely unknown.

Now, if I cannot reliably do this with the Trojan War, some people saying that Darius the Phrygian's contemporary account was a later fake, if I cannot reliably do this with pre-Flood Wars, Genesis glossing over them and Mahabharata obviously written in a not just post-Flood, but post-Babel setting where Sanskrit had come into being, I can at least do the next best : NOT to look at them through the kind of moderns we are used to, but from the earliest epoch which had some record of them - that being Homer, perhaps 400 years after the Trojan War and he glosses over the fact of the Hittites, and Vyasa, perhaps rather more than 1000 years from the events he recalls, and he glosses over that a Flood had happened between Nod and India.

Third best is looking at how a later generation but not yet modern looked at things.

If St Augustine mentions Romulus, it is not to say "oh, look, these Pagans faked their own history or bungled the separation of facts from fiction" as a modern would, it is in order to say "the Pagans who loved Romulus thought he was a god because they loved him, but the disciples who were with Christ loved Him because He is God. And another Church Father mentions Hercules also not trying to stamp his Twelve labours (at least not all of them) as fiction, but in order to say "sure he was a strong man, but he was not a god".

In other words, the earliest Christians who thought about these matters did not say Pagans got history wrong, they only said Pagans got the theology wrong.

So do Pagans like Atheists to this day. Zola will get the theology of Lourdes wrong. A Marxist will get the Sun miracle at Fátima wrong. A Yugoslav Communist, whether Atheist or Serbian Orthodox is likely to get the character of Cardinal Stepinac wrong.

But Zola did not deny Lourdes had a rumour of miraculous healings. A Marxist will not deny the Fátima revelation "was purported to have happened" at same time nearly as Russian Revolution, the one known as October Revolution because it was during first thirteen days of Gregorian November that year. And a Yugoslav Communist will not deny that after the war, on 17 May 1945, Stepinac was arrested. He was released again 3 June. And: On September 1946 the Yugoslav authorities indicted Stepinac on multiple counts of war crimes and collaboration with the enemy during wartime. On October 11, 1946, the court found Stepinac guilty of high treason and war crimes. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He served five years in the prison at Lepoglava until he was released in a conciliatory gesture by Tito, on condition that he either retire to Rome or be confined to his home parish of Krašić. He chose to stay in Krašić, saying he would never leave "unless they put me on a plane by force and take me over the frontier."

Even if they get some things wrong about history - making Stepinac basically an abettor of Ustaše crimes - they do not bungle all the facts.

Neither need we suppose more civilised Pagans in the time of Romulus or Trojan War bungled all the facts. Neither did early Christian authors suppose they had done so.

By the way, if you want to read more about Chesterton's view (I'll go back and enjoy that article presently), here is the link:

History Versus the Historians
by G.K. Chesterton
on The American Chesterton Society
http://www.chesterton.org/history-versus-the-historians/

Hans Georg Lundahl
Cergy St Christophe
St Catherine of Siena
30.IV.2016

Hat tip to Stephanie Mann for linking to the article: here.

One More Quote, if I May, Please!

1) New blog on the kid : GWW got Aristotle and St Thomas wrong. · 2) HGL's F.B. writings : What Mechanism? Are "Angelic Movers Outside Natural Sciences"? · 3) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : GWW vs Plato, HGL vs GWW · 4) New blog on the kid : Was There No Celestial Mechanics for Tychonian System? Oh, yes! · 5) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : One More Quote, if I May, Please! · 6) HGL's F.B. writings : Sungenis Countering Flat Earthers - with Some Lacks in his Argument · 7) Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : Any Fathers NOT Supporting Round Earth? Any Authorities that DO support Angelic Movers? · 8) HGL's F.B. writings : Debating with Sungenis, Mainly

GWW calls a heading "Is There a Copernican Conspiracy?" We are now on pages 92-93.

GWW

As there are many honest scientists and biblical exegetes who might reveal these facts to the public, there are just as many uneducated ones who are oblivious to them, or knowledgeable but dishonest ones who hide them. Still others are afraid to reveal them and hope that few people will seek to become educated and make provocative inquires, for then the proverbial cat will be out of the bag. Alexander von Humboldt, the founder of modern geography and of whom Charles Darwin said that he was “the greatest scientific traveler who ever lived,” and, of whom, after his death, Geoffrey Martin said “no individual scholar could hope any longer to master the world’s knowledge about the Earth,” acknowledged geocentrism’s viability but also fear of revealing it:

Reference to Geoffrey Martin

Geoffrey J. Martin and Preston E. James, All Possible Worlds: A History of Geographical Ideas, p. 131. If there was anyone who knew his trade, it was Humboldt. In addition to the thirty volumes he wrote about his geographical field studies, in 1845, at the age of 76, he wrote the book Kosmos, which is said to contain everything he knew about the Earth. The first volume, a general overview of the universe, sold out in two months and was promptly translated into many languages. Humboldt died in 1859 and the fifth and final volume was published in 1862, based on his notes for the work.

Humboldt
Alexander von Humboldt
1769 – 1859

I have known, too, for a long time, that we have no arguments for the Copernican system, but I shall never dare to be the first to attack it. Don’t rush into the wasp’s nest. You will but bring upon yourself the scorn of the thoughtless multitude. If once a famous astronomer arises against the present conception, I will communicate, too, my observations; but to come forth as the first against opinions which the world has become fond of – I don’t feel the courage.

Reference

Quoted in F. K. Schultze’s synopsis and translation of F. E. Pacshe’s Christliche Weltanschauuing (cited in De Labore Solis, p. 133). Also cited in C. Schoepffer’s The Earth Stands Fast, C. H. Ludwig, 1900, p. 59.

NOTE

With such a culture of personal deference, you do not need any conspiracy.

And this is the culture of Prussia, the place where Humboldt was from.

What shall we say of Prussia? Here I will get to Gilbert Keith Chesterton. A man who had the sense of loving Austria and Bavaria, and hating Prussia (with a brother dead fighting the Prussians in The Great War).

I first go to my Βιβλιογράφικα/Bibliographica blog. Here I find a page for Chesterton, Belloc and other English and French Catholics and other mystery writers, which links to G. K. Chesterton's Works on the Web of which I always forget the url. On which I do not find what I sought as a direct link, so I google g k chesterton koepenick and get a good hit:

Thoughts Around Koepenick
from 'All Things Considered'
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/20620/

I now get back to his works on the web and find that 'All Things Considered' is from (1908).

Chesterton

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them. They learn to obey symbols, arbitrary things, stripes on an arm, buttons on a coat, a title, a flag. These may be artificial things; they may be unreasonable things; they may, if you will, be wicked things; but they are weak things. They are not Force, and they do not look like Force. They are parts of an idea: of the idea of discipline; if you will, of the idea of tyranny; but still an idea. No soldier could possibly say that his own bayonets were his authority. No soldier could possibly say that he came in the name of his own bayonets. It would be as absurd as if a postman said that he came inside his bag. I do not, as I have said, underrate the evils that really do arise from militarism and the military ethic. It tends to give people wooden faces and sometimes wooden heads. It tends moreover (both through its specialisation and through its constant obedience) to a certain loss of real independence and strength of character. This has almost always been found when people made the mistake of turning the soldier into a statesman, under the mistaken impression that he was a strong man. The Duke of Wellington, for instance, was a strong soldier and therefore a weak statesman. But the soldier is always, by the nature of things, loyal to something. And as long as one is loyal to something one can never be a worshipper of mere force. For mere force, violence in the abstract, is the enemy of anything we love. To love anything is to see it at once under lowering skies of danger. Loyalty implies loyalty in misfortune; and when a soldier has accepted any nation's uniform he has already accepted its defeat.

Nevertheless, it does appear to be possible in Germany for a man to point to fixed bayonets and say, "These are my authority," and yet to convince ordinarily sane men that he is a soldier. If this is so, it does really seem to point to some habit of high-faultin' in the German nation, such as that of which I spoke previously. It almost looks as if the advisers, and even the officials, of the German Army had become infected in some degree with the false and feeble doctrine that might is right. As this doctrine is invariably preached by physical weaklings like Nietzsche it is a very serious thing even to entertain the supposition that it is affecting men who have really to do military work It would be the end of German soldiers to be affected by German philosophy.

NOTE

Chesterton was, unless mistaken, prophetic. Germany (as in Prussian state of 1870!) did loose two wars after the Koepenick incident.

But even more to our point here:

Chesterton

The most absurd part of this absurd fraud (at least, to English eyes) is one which, oddly enough, has received comparatively little comment. I mean the point at which the Mayor asked for a warrant, and the Captain pointed to the bayonets of his soldiery and said. "These are my authority." One would have thought any one would have known that no soldier would talk like that. The dupes were blamed for not knowing that the man wore the wrong cap or the wrong sash, or had his sword buckled on the wrong way; but these are technicalities which they might surely be excused for not knowing. I certainly should not know if a soldier's sash were on inside out or his cap on behind before. But I should know uncommonly well that genuine professional soldiers do not talk like Adelphi villains and utter theatrical epigrams in praise of abstract violence.

NOTE

We really do see a parallel to Humboldt here.

They think the soldier is wearing the right hat, and so they submit.

And those who criticise them "in Germany" (Bavaria might have had more sense than Koepenick, back then!) do very much hang the argument on the hat instead of hanging the hat on the argument.

But what has this to do with modern scientific community?

We cannot believe modern science comes from Prussia, can we?

Well, the attitude of Humboldt has had opportunity of spreading from Prussia.

How? Through Communism.

What has Communism got to do with Prussia? Everything! Marx and Engels were Prussians, though living in spiritually related Victorian England. And Lenin was partly Swedish, at a time when Swedish élite was heavily influenced by ... the Prussian one.

I now go to his works on the web again and consult one or other of his final works, Well and Shallows or The Thing.

On Well and Shallows, I find a promising chapter heading, THE BACKWARD BOLSHIE.

Chesterton

AFTER all, the Bolshevist is really a Victorian. His is a nineteenth-century dream, even if it be a twentieth-century reality. It is notably so in the aspect which now makes the dream a nightmare; I mean the mad optimism about the advantages of machinery.

...

Marx was much more of a Victorian than Morris. He may not have been technically a subject of Queen Victoria, though it is quite likely that he was. By geographical extraction I suppose he was a German--like Queen Victoria's husband and more remotely, Queen Victoria herself. By real or racial extraction he was a Jew; like Queen Victoria's favourite Prime Minister and a good many other persons unnecessary to mention. But the late Victorian period was the very period at which the Jews, and especially the German Jews, were at the very top of their power and influence. From the time when they forced the Egyptian War to the time when they forced the South African War, they were imperial and immune.

...

Now, as a matter of fact, our heads have in many ways advanced a little, since the days when our own Five Year Plan filled England with filth and smoke. Some rather deeper questions have arisen; questions about the individual, about the purpose of life, about religion in history, and so on. Philosophy, even Thomist philosophy, is heard again in Paris and Oxford.

Now Marx had no more philosophy than Macaulay. The Marxians therefore have no more philosophy than the Manchester School.

...

NOTE

I was actually wrong to recall Chesterton considered Marx specifically Prussian.

But it is not a really long stretch, is it?

Marx was, via Feuerbach (a Bavarian of the type that admires Prussia), and Hegel (a West German with less resistance to Prussia than Bavarians have) a disciple of Kant (a Prussian from what is now Kaliningrad).

Anyway, outside Bavaria and Austria, the culture of men like Humboldt was very predominant in the Germanies, at least in cities.

And that is, irrespective of any philosophical discipleships (I am not sure what the reference to Macaulay is supposed to imply, unless it means Macaulay was like Marx Epicurean - which Marx was while still a "Christian" and during his thesis in philosophy), was the culture from which we get so many masters of the modern world like Marx, Engels, Lenin - and who have been especially prominent in the Scientific Community.

Unfortunately, the unhealthy attitude of Humboldt, against sticking out ones neck (Sungenis has Italian American heritage and I was partly raised in Austria!) is even in my own limited experience alive and well. In what would otherwise be a scientific community.

One example: when I was visiting the Freie Universität Berlin back in 2004/2005 (ending March 17th 2005), I was giving a project description to a professor. Namely of collecting the areas of vocabulary in which Indo-European languages do NOT concur with each other. If feet and hearts and eyes and ears and knees are the same from India to Ireland, hands simply aren't. Nor are heads. My point being a scenario in which original Indo-European was less a mother tongue than a failed lingua franca, like Medieval Latin. And I also added my purpose was to counter the idea that Indo-European linguistics and rate of language changed prove ages older than Deluge for a proto-Indo-European language.

This was NOT well received, and the answer was very brief: "here we do science".

Obviously that Prussian professor believed in the kind of scientific culture in which you don't stick your neck out, everything is reglimented by people wearing the right hat, like it was supposed to be in Koepenick.

And as obviously, this is not the real accent of a real scientist. But before asking "what conspiracies are there" we should ask what culture is there. And it is a culture in which Protestant views of "fallen man" have become Prussian views of inadequate individual reason. One in which the collective reason can become deified and anyone refusing that idolatry can be accused of taking himself for God, because he takes himself as equal of the collective which he is immediately up against.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre University Library
Tuesday after III Lord's Day in Lent
1.III.2016