Supplementing my deepening appreciation for live classical performances, I have found the pursuit of choir concerts to be a prayerfully enriching experience. Expanding. The Chicago Benedictines, with their associated Schola Laudis, are now a fixture. Two Cleveland area choirs have also been added: the Cleveland Chamber Choir and the Oberlin College choir—I believe there are a couple at Oberlin. The photo presented is from the Fairchild Chapel at Oberlin in which we saw a performance last night. A wonderful show. The idea of traveling to Cleveland was to catch a performance by a friend from St Paul Shrine. He was performing at the Cleveland Museum of Art, however by the oddest set of circumstances the show was canceled. The Cleveland Museum closed due to a power outage. I am not sure about details. I provided a performance by Jason.
Throughout my life I have wrestled, meditated upon a book, many books, yet this one in particular. Hermann Hesse’s ‘Beneath the Wheel’, a story of failure mesmerized me as a young man, etching itself into my journey. I am not sure my interpretations are accurate for it is decades since it was read. Befriended and enamored with a charismatic poet, a student fails in his studies, becoming an outcast. He is, forced, within his perceptions, to return to the life of a laborer, to return to the people of his upbringing. Once perceived as promising, he is now received as just another trying to make it in life. Idealism lost, education, artistic expression buried, he straps on the clothes of a worker, attempting to accept toiling in the flesh. He fails once again, drowning when returning home from a drinking binge with his new brothers in arms. The scene of the apples, cider making, drunkenness, revelry, people upon people, coalescing with the image of the apple and original sin, often plays within my meditations, assisting me in a deep caring—fighting against the deep dependency to love humanity while hating people. Finally, a video providing insight into the song Hesse points to.
Augustin loses his girlfriend, his money, his clothes, all Vienna’s been taken away by the plague, but Augustin keeps singing for the Vienese. They even have to tell him to lie down in this grave- he didn’t stay in it the first time! This simple song is said to date back to 1679 in Vienna, Austria – Marx Augustin was a cheery, popular balladeer and bag-piper of the time, reviving people’s spirits in that dark year of another outbreak of the Pest, the Black Death, He was also an accomplished drinker. One night, he was found lying in the gutter, drunk, but mistaken for dead, a Schnapsleiche, ‘a schnaps corpse’, someone so dead drunk they’re taken for dead.And he was actually taken for dead! The Siechknechte, ‘sick-menial-workers’, the convicts assigned to collect the plague corpses, found him, threw him and his presumably infected bagpipe onto the cart with all the rest, and hauled him off to the mass grave. Bagpipes were at that time still common across Europe and not yet identified with Scotland. They pitched him in with the other bodies, and next morning he awoke among the bodies, and couldn’t climb out of the pit- so he set to playing his bagpipe, deciding he’d die the way he lived. Instead, people heard him and pulled him out.
O, du lieber Augustin, Augustin, Augustin, (O, you dear, dear Augustin, Augustin, Augustin,)
O, du lieber Augustin, alles ist hin. (O, you dear, dear Augustin, I just can’t win!)
Geld ist weg, Mäd’l ist weg, (Money’s gone, gal is gone,)
Alles hin, Augustin. (I just can’t win, Augustin!)
In spite of the laments of Durtal at having to leave Ligugé, those who were the intimate friends of Huysmans are clearly of opinion that he would not, in any case, have stayed there much longer. He had no real love of the country, he detested ‘the provinces’ in all that the word implies, he disliked the local inhabitants, he had even begun to fall out of love with the monks.
Gustave Coquiot¹ says that he felt around him an atmosphere of hostility it was impossible to mistake. It was inevitable that it should be so. The monks did not understand his extremely personal attitude to religion; they were shocked by his freedom of speech. From the literary point of view the law against the monasteries was a God-send to Huysmans. It enabled his experiment in oblature to end with a bang instead of a whimper. He came back to Paris, says Coquiot, exhausted and cast-down but yet with the firm, if unacknowledged, conviction that he really couldn’t live anywhere else.
Hearing of his return, François Coppée offered him an apartment in the house where he lived himself: No. 12 Rue Oudinot. It was a pleasant apartment with the use of a garden and at a reasonable price, and Huysmans was ready to move in. Unfortunately the proprietor, on hearing that a famous novelist was about to become his tenant, put up the rent.
We know that the Prior of Ligugé had proposed that he should take refuge with the Benedictine nuns in the Rue Monsieur, and this he now decided to do. He did not like the room that was offered to him, but Jean de Caldain, whom we have already seen performing kindly services for him, pointed out that he had only a few steps to go in order to reach the chapel; and there was room for his books. Huysmans was installed.
He tried count his blessings. The fact that the gate was shut at nine o’clock at night excused him from all invitations to dine out. In fact, from this point of view he was better off than he had been at Ligugé; the monastic atmosphere was more pronounced. All the passing Benedictines looked in (there were many of them in Paris owing to the upheaval) and one of these, Dom Dubourg, formerly Prior of the Paris Benedictine house of St. Marie, was actually lodged in the room above. He became Huysmans’ confessor and friend.
While still in his own monastery Dom Dubourg had heard of Huysmans’ conversion and had read En Route, as he confesses, with a mixture of admiration and repugnance. He was moved by its apparent sincerity and outraged by its realism, and for long he was unconvinced that the conversion was real. His doubts vanished when he met the author, although he was still puzzled by the contrast between Huysmans in private life, simple, natural and affable, and the creator of so many strange characters and shocking situations.
‘The First Decadent: Being the Strange Life of J.K. Huysmans’ written by James Laver
How God renders this soul attentive to prayer, replying to one of the above-mentioned petitions.
THEN the Eternal God, turning the eye of His mercy upon this granting her requests, proceeded to satisfy the last petition, which she had made concerning His promise, saying, “Oh! best beloved and dearest daughter, I will fulfill thy desire in this request, in order that, on thy side, thou mayest not sin through ignorance or negligence; for a fault of thine would be more serious and worthy of graver reproof now than before, because thou hast learnt more of My truth; wherefore apply thyself attentively to pray for all rational creatures, for the mystical body of the Holy Church, and for those friends whom I have given thee, whom thou lovest with particular love, and be careful not to be negligent in giving them the benefit of thy prayers, and the example of thy life, and the teaching of thy words, reproving vice and encouraging virtue according to thy power.
Many people who practice prayer adopt a contrary approach. They seek their own gratification and satisfaction, rather than what is pleasing to God. To our surprise, perhaps, what is pleasing to God in our prayer may often contradict our own preference. What God desires especially is that we empty ourselves for love of him; nothing less and nothing more. Yet how difficult to accept this idea of prayer as a progress in self-emptying rather than a path of advancement in knowledge and experience of God. As Saint John of the Cross writes in this section, “I think it is possible to affirm that the more necessary the doctrine the less it is practiced by spiritual persons” (AMC 2.7.4). This “doctrine”, as it were, is the reality of the cross encountered, not just in trials in life, but in the purifying interior experiences of the life of prayer. If we forget that the cross is met not only in the exterior trials of life but in prayer itself, then we erect a barrier on the path to greater love for God. The identification with the Beloved who is the crucified Lord must be fully embraced in prayer itself if prayer is to advance in a genuine manner. The seeking of consolation is not just a fault and an indulgent weakness, but essentially a refusal to embrace the crucified Lord as the Beloved. The following words are a sharp rebuke to this tendency: “From my observations Christ is little known by those who consider themselves his friends. For we see them going about seeking in him their own consolations and satisfactions, loving themselves very much, but not loving him very much by seeking his bitter trials and deaths. I am referring to those who believe themselves his friends, not to those who live withdrawn and far away from him” (AMC 2.7.12).
‘Saint John of the Cross: Master of Contemplation’ written by Father Donald Haggerty
Further Chicago exploring—centering upon State Street—the Gene Siskel Film Center. There is a parking garage right across the street, access from Randolph Street. With a purchased ticket, parking for the day is $20.00. Fun garage with a steep ascending and descending spiraling drive, covering six floors or so. From the exterior, it is hard to notice from the street. It is an excellent downtown location to use as a homespot. Between the two films, I walked north on State Street, passing the Chicago Cathedral, crossing the Chicago River, eating at a fast food chicken joint—awesome lightly-greasy fried chicken and empanadas at the intelligent fast food joint Pollo Campero. They serve their sit-down dinners on high quality ceramic colorful plates. Cheap easy quality eating. The first film of the night was Sick of Myself, Scandinavian, odd sense of humor, distinctly European. Exercising an absurdity and ridiculousness I could not finish in Everything Everywhere All at Once, this film won me over. Busting me out in laughter many times with its relevant biting insight. It pokes fun at self-absorption—narcissism and the needy. Fantasy, dreams, and delusions a perverted way of life. The humor is abrasive yet engaging, daring and willing to carry everything to a pathetic ending. In the final scene the adorable female lead is sprawling upon the ground uttering a pollyannaish mantra amidst her wellness group. Mexican fried chicken and empanadas quickly consumed, I barely made it back in time for the second feature. My last minute arrival forced me to sit in the front row, directly in the middle, a gap of four chairs. Human Flowers of Flesh was preceded by a Film Center employee introducing the director Helena Wittmann, announcing she would be taking questions afterwards. The viewing proved bountiful—meditative still cameras broken by the countable moving shots. Openness and diving in, broad expanses and penetrating—crossing the Mediterranean, a journey with friends, blueish green translucent water, motion unique and odd, curiously following the path of the current French Foreign Legion, before meeting a stern captain in Algiers, a man who juggles eggs before scrambling them. Quieting, the movie is calming, an immersion into pleasant images and imaginative interior interruptions: the microscopic devouring–the invisible and miniscule; water diving the camera–panning from the floating Ida, female lead amidst men, the camera descends deeply into the Mediterranean. Something blurry draws closer and comes into focus. It is a World War II bomber on the bottom of the sea. Another interruption is the blueish over-exposed dream sequence. I was lucky enough to ask Helena about it. She said it took her a year to complete—never sure it would be included in the final cut. She worked closely with her music director in creating a distant other-reality motif. Another interruption is the passionate percussive dance scene, the physicality and altered reality a release for the sojourners. The crew finally lands in Sidi Bel Abbes, the trail of a legionnaire becoming a focal point. The actor is Denis Lavant from Claire Danes Beau Travail, a critically acclaimed remake of the French Foreign Legion take on Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. Helena Wittmann rides only trains when traveling in the states. She speaks wonderful English, a charm to behold. I included an interview with her posted on YouTube.
Recent Comments