Monthly Archives: July 2023

Jul042023

A closing

A remarkable novel comes to an end. A stamp placed upon its pages. I am reminded of a distant novel read in Fremont, Ohio ‘Mr. Ive’s Christmas’ by Oscar Hijuelos. God is good and merciful.

It was laughable. I actually laughed aloud, panting a little, leaning against one of the vine-stakes, and looking at the pale sea of mist in which villages and village churches and poplar- lined roads lay drowned. The setting sun pierced through with difficulty to light that buried world. I could feel, I could see, I could touch my guilt. It was not only that my heart had become a nest of vipers, that it had been filled with hatred for my children, with a lust for vengeance and a grasping love of money. What was worse than that was that I had refused to look beyond the tangle of vile snakes. had treasured their knotted hideousness as though it had been the central reality of my being as though the beating of the life-blood in my veins had been the pulse of all those swarming reptiles. Not content with knowing, through half a century, only of myself what was not truly me at all, I had carried the same ignorance into my dealing with others. The expression of squalid greed on the faces of my children had held me fascinated. Confronted by Robert, I had been able to see only his stupidity, because it was all I had wanted to see. I had never once realized that the superficial appearance of others was something I must break through, a barrier that I must cross, if I was ever to make contact with the real man, the real woman beyond and behind it. That was the discovery I ought to have made when I was thirty or forty. . . .

But now I am an old man. The movement of my heart is too sluggish. I am watching the last autumn of my life as it puts the vines to sleep and stupefies them with its fumes and sunlight. Those whom I should have loved are dead, and dead, too, those whom I could have loved. I have neither the time now, nor the strength, to embark upon a voyage of exploration with the object of finding the reality of others. Everything in me, even my voice, even my gestures, belongs to the monster whom I reared against the world, the monster to whom I gave my name.  –“The Knot of Vipers” Francois Mauriac

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Jul032023

Maturing

The soul is therefore, set towards God; in the midst of its desolation, it has no wish for creatures, it wants God; it does not rejoice in His presence, yet has no pleasure but there; in spite of its aridities and repugnances, it thirsts after solitude; the omission of prayer would produce remorse and create a frightful void; it wants everything when it has not God.

The mind is turned towards God by only a simple, vague, confused thought, by a general and unvarying remembrance of Him. “God is not represented to the soul under any form, no words can convey the idea which she forms of Him; He is not conceived precisely as great, nor as beautiful, nor as good, nor as powerful; her idea of Him is not this, and yet it is all this; or, better still, it is something above all this. God, God. God, is the only word which the soul can utter to express her thoughts about Him.” (Abbe Auguste Saudreau) Evidently the intellect is here not much engaged, a thousand distractions beset it; but the distractions once passed away, the occupations once ended, if we want to think of God, it is always the same simple and general thought that recurs to the mind, and we can find no other.  –“The Ways of Mental Prayer” by Dom Vitalis Lehodey

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Jul022023

Knot of Vipers

I have been carrying forth through the novella ‘The Knot of Vipers’ by Francois Mauriac, unsure of where it is going. The novella is a final departure letter from an embittered husband, Louis, to his wife, an attempt to bring about retribution for a lifetime of her cruelty. Inferior due to breeding, Louis, in his esteem, suffered through a lonely childhood as an outcast, the only child of a loving widow—his parents peasant farmers. Yet in reality, his parents were responsible intelligent people who handled their property wisely, investing properly, providing him with a life of abundance. His upbringing established discipline, direction, and the means for Louis to mature into a highly successful lawyer. His determined shrewdness assured his surpassing of his wife’s upper class family linage in terms of wealth. His hard-earned wealth provided him with the means to tyrannize his family. Ferocious in nature, Louis is strict and unforgiving with everyone, including himself. He perceives himself to have suffered through a loveless marriage with a cold manipulating wife, his miserable fate announcing itself a fateful night in the very beginning of their marriage. His wife could never love him because she loved another. Yet, also the mastery of the novel, as Louis provides details in the writing of his letter, or diary, it is obvious he was cheating on his wife, Isa, at this time. As he writes, Isa’s prejudiced deplorableness fades. The further I read him write his letter to right all the wrongs he suffered, I identify Louis’ faults. In truth, the good guy/bad guy thing is a grey area. A highly critical atheist, his attacks and scheming upon his wife, children and their loved ones, in addition to his illegitimate son—one of his perpetual affairs—never ceases. In fact, his deviousness and cleverness in plotting against his family has become his only purpose for living–that and the writing of the letter. Determined, he is obsessed with the condition that his totalitarianism must reign after his death. Yet as he writes the letter something is happening to him. The knot of vipers that he describes as having a hold of his heart are being removed. At least that is my interpretation. The end is yet to be revealed. The section I first quote is him exploring his nephew Luc, one of the two children he loves. The children he loves died young. The other is his daughter Marie who died slowly as a young girl from disease. His living children he despises. The children he loves are from the past and gone. One wonders how much romanticism he attaches to them. Luc is the son of Marinette, his wife’s sister. Marinette married a much older man as a young woman in her twenties. Widowed before thirty, her deceased husband willed her a fortune under the conditions she could not remarry. If she remarried, she would be stripped of the fortune. The free-spirited Marinette moves in with Louis and Isa. Everyone is staunch in protecting, influencing, and ensuring that Marinette abides by the conditions of her fortune. Louis takes to riding horses with her, countering her foolish bantering about money meaning nothing. Louis admits he sees the loss of the fortune as a personal matter. He identifies her fortune as his. Marinette ends up running off with a journalist, marrying him, losing the fortune, and giving birth to Luc. She will die when Luc is young. Luc’s father will remarry and abandon him for the most part. Louis and Isa shoulder the burden of ensuring Luc receives a decent upbringing. Reflection upon Luc brings forth something missing in Louis. Notice he even says something kind about his son Hubert while immersed within thoughts of Luc. In all other accounts, his sentiments toward Hubert border on violence. The final two quotes are wonderful turnings of the tide—Louis opening up to the humanity and imperfections of his wife.

He (Luc) invariably looked me straight in the face. There was nothing shifty about his eyes. He wasn’t frightened of me: the idea of being frightened of me never entered his head. If I happened to come home unexpectedly after a few days’ absence, and caught the smell of cigar smoke in the house, or found the carpet up in the drawing-room with all the signs of a hastily interrupted party (I had only to turn my back for Geneviève and Hubert to provoke an “invasion”-in spite of my strict injunctions to the contrary-and you always aided and abetted their disobedience, because, you said, “one must return hospitality”), it was invariably Luc they sent to make their peace with me. The terror I inspired just made him laugh…

That boy was the only person in the world I couldn’t scare. Sometimes, when he set off on a day’s fishing, I used to go down to the river with him. Usually, he could never keep still, was forever dashing about here, there and everywhere, but on those occasions he was capable of standing perfectly motionless for hours on end, all eyes. It was exactly as though he had been turned into a tree: the slow, noiseless movements of his arm were like that of a swaying branch. Geneviève was perfectly right when she said that he would never be “literary”. He couldn’t be bothered to go out on the terrace at night to look at the moon. He was entirely without a feeling for nature, because he was nature, was wholly absorbed into it, was one of its forces, a living spring among its many springs.

I used to think of all the drama his young life had known-a dead mother, a father who was never mentioned in our presence, a lonely life in a remote school. Much less than all that would I have sufficed to fill me with bitterness and hate. Everybody loved him, and that seemed strange to me, whom everybody loathed. Yes, everybody loved him-even I. He had a smile for all, including me-but not more for me than for the others.

His nature was purely instinctive, and what struck me more and more, as he grew older, was his purity, his unawareness of evil, his utter disregard of it. I don’t mean to imply that our children weren’t “good”. Hubert, as you always said, was a model youth. In that respect, I must admit, your early training had borne fruit. I wonder whether, if Luc had lived into manhood, he would have remained so utterly untroubled. I never got the impression that, with him, purity was something he had been taught, something of which he was conscious. It had the limpid quality of water running over a stony bed. It glittered on him like the dew on grass. I dwell on this because it had a profound effect on me. Your parade of high principles, your hints, your expression of distaste, your pursed lips-these things never made me so truly aware of evil as did that boy, though I was not conscious of it at the time, nor for many years afterwards. If, as you hold, humanity carries in its flesh the stigma of original sin, then, all I can say is that no living eye can ever have seen the mark in Luc. He had come from the hand of the potter uncracked and lovely. I felt myself, in comparison with him, deformed.

Is it accurate to say that I loved him like my own son? No, because what I loved in him was that complete absence of all trace of myself. I know only too well what of myself I have bequeathed to Hubert and Geneviève-sharpness of temper, the exorbitant value which they attach to material things, and a certain violence of contempt…I could always feel quite sure that I should never bump up against myself in Luc.

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She (Isa) was walking with the gait of those to whom walking is painful. I could almost hear her groaning, “Oh, my poor legs!” Husbands and wives of long standing never hate one another as much as they think they do.

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I stared at the vines and said nothing. I was a prey to sudden doubt. Is it possible that a man can live for nearly half a century noticing one side only of the person who shares his life? Can it be that, from long habit, he picks and chooses from among her gestures and her words, keeping for use only those that feed his grievances and perpetuate his resentments? There is a fatal tendency in all of us to simplify others, to eliminate in them everything that might soften the indictment, give some human lineaments to the caricature which our hatred craves in order to justify itself….

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Jul012023

Skinned knees and failings

Beyond me, this paragraph from Nietzsche’s ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ stimulates many thoughts, feelings, and dissolutions—apophatic tendencies prevailing. Once again, my return to college to complete a bachelor’s degree at sixties years of age motivates my reading pursuit. In comparison, I reflect upon the education of the author. The German world at that time experienced an apotheosis in human thought. Nietzsche, a philologist studying languages concentrating upon literature (ancient texts and the Bible)—a branch of linguistics, personally experienced a scholarly life beyond anything I could imagine as a midwestern United States born and raised man of the late twentieth century moving into the twenty-first. The pursuit of ideas had been elevated in a manner, while reaching back into antiquity, I propose, unfathomable to my mind. I can touch, prod and poke, yet I cannot embrace or properly dissect. I do not possess the abilities. Still, there is something there. I think of the book ‘Nietzsche and the Nazis’ by Stephen Hicks—an exploration on Nietzsche’s philosophical influence upon German National Socialism. Mr. Hick’s puts forth that the German world at that time was the highest educated culture in the world. Nazism was not a populist movement driven by the common mob. It was academic and given birth by highly educated minds. It is important to understand that the infamous Nazi Book Burnings were conducted by student groups–not government officials nor laboring mobs. I do not want to exploit history, exercising an academic curse of our times: Presentism. History, salvation history as I recognize it, is a complex issue better to be studied than used for justifying one’s opinions. The point I am establishing is that Nietzsche was a man possessing an intellect, skills—I marvel that he played piano and wrote music (his legendary friendship with Wagner), and education that far surpass my own. I respect and admire the fact. With the last name Hofbauer, I romantically look back at his time, and the time of other thinkers and artists during the remarkable European and burgeoning United States post-Enlightenment epoch and the onslaught of the industrial revolution. To throw caution more to the wind before posting this paragraph, I think it is important to focus upon the man. What type of life did Nietzsche live? Was he a happy man? I was struck by his harsh criticism, using the word dangerous, in regard to the religious ‘neurosis’ of prescribing solitude. It made me scratch my head as he was a solitary man himself. Raised amongst many, families at that time always possessing numerous members involving husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, nephews, nieces—individuals of all ages and familial interconnectedness were a part of one’s upbringing, yet Nietzsche lived his adult life alone—embracing the very lifestyle he would insult religion for, in his mind, promoting. He had friendships, yet no marriage, no children. Friendships were harshly ended. The most memorable romantic experience ended with the woman partnering off with an acquaintance. Few men were more alone than Nietzsche. The classes he taught were notoriously empty. His later healthy years he lived wandering about Europe, unable to settle into a stationary state. He did not repose into an idyllic home, retiring into his ideas and work as Hermann Hesse and C.J. Jung did. One possibility of a modern thinker who shared his solitary, social misfit, life is Schopenhauer. The superior intellect and advanced education never produced a stable life. He was forced from academia due to poor health in his early thirties. He endured public brutal intellectual confrontations. The scholar Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff academically used the words: ‘rape of historical facts and all historical method’ when criticizing the early writing of Nietzsche. He harshly rebuked Nietzsche as a soothsayer, exaggerator and historically uninformed, one who should “gather tigers and panthers about his knees, but not the youth of Germany.” For myself, reading every word he writes insinuates a viciously critical rage being unleashed, while evoking the spirit of a possessed prophet—something striving for an unnatural brilliant perversion. There is no peace. He was a man who would reason and will his way into a surpassing of everything before him. Dramatically and famously, Nietzsche was forced into an asylum due to a mental breakdown during the end of his life. I think it is important to consider his use of prescribed drugs, notably the sedative Chloral hydrate, also recognized as a hypnotic. The complexities of the man are immense, yet honestly, being one myself, I have always delighted in walking contradictions. I must mention the movie by the remarkable Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr ‘The Turin Horse’ as my romantic, poetic envisioning of the man Nietzsche and his influence upon the world, and then overall the world in comparison to the singular scholar/writer Nietzsche. A lasting effect of Nietzsche is surreally played out in the film. The fierce, wind howling, undefined daily life of common peasants and their horse. The horse that Nietzsche would witness being whipped thus inducing his mental breakdown. Life is brutal. Ultimate victory is a rare thing. I think of my own life, the mistakes, the bad decisions, the curse I have been onto myself in many ways. Experientially, I reflect upon what works and what does not work. I know that I have been blessed with a strong prayer life, the ability to utilize prayer as a strengthening device. It is a gift. I am grateful. I know where I belong within prayer. It is intuitive. It is centered within grace, guided by Catholic teachings, while also influenced by others. Experiencing ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ I found solace in Nietzsche identifying psychology as the most efficacious science. I felt a ‘yes’ being confirmed. The idea that the healing of individuals is of the upmost importance. My dabbling in the arts and reasoning are usurped without the slightest consideration. I am humble regarding my limitations. Reasoning will never be my guiding force. I doubt myself to the extreme. I doubt others in the same regard.

Has it been observed to what extent outward idleness, or semi-idleness, is necessary to a real religious life (alike for its favourite microscopic labour of self-examination, and for its soft placidity called “prayer,” the state of perpetual readiness for the “coming of God”), I mean the idleness with a good conscience, the idleness of olden times and of blood, to which the aristocratic sentiment that work is DISHONOURING—that it vulgarizes body and soul—is not quite unfamiliar? And that consequently the modern, noisy, time-engrossing, conceited, foolishly proud laboriousness educates and prepares for “unbelief” more than anything else? Among these, for instance, who are at present living apart from religion in Germany, I find “free-thinkers” of diversified species and origin, but above all a majority of those in whom laboriousness from generation to generation has dissolved the religious instincts; so that they no longer know what purpose religions serve, and only note their existence in the world with a kind of dull astonishment. They feel themselves already fully occupied, these good people, be it by their business or by their pleasures, not to mention the “Fatherland,” and the newspapers, and their “family duties”; it seems that they have no time whatever left for religion; and above all, it is not obvious to them whether it is a question of a new business or a new pleasure—for it is impossible, they say to themselves, that people should go to church merely to spoil their tempers. They are by no means enemies of religious customs; should certain circumstances, State affairs perhaps, require their participation in such customs, they do what is required, as so many things are done—with a patient and unassuming seriousness, and without much curiosity or discomfort;—they live too much apart and outside to feel even the necessity for a FOR or AGAINST in such matters. Among those indifferent persons may be reckoned nowadays the majority of German Protestants of the middle classes, especially in the great laborious centres of trade and commerce; also the majority of laborious scholars, and the entire University personnel (with the exception of the theologians, whose existence and possibility there always gives psychologists new and more subtle puzzles to solve). On the part of pious, or merely church-going people, there is seldom any idea of HOW MUCH good-will, one might say arbitrary will, is now necessary for a German scholar to take the problem of religion seriously; his whole profession (and as I have said, his whole workmanlike laboriousness, to which he is compelled by his modern conscience) inclines him to a lofty and almost charitable serenity as regards religion, with which is occasionally mingled a slight disdain for the “uncleanliness” of spirit which he takes for granted wherever any one still professes to belong to the Church. It is only with the help of history (NOT through his own personal experience, therefore) that the scholar succeeds in bringing himself to a respectful seriousness, and to a certain timid deference in presence of religions; but even when his sentiments have reached the stage of gratitude towards them, he has not personally advanced one step nearer to that which still maintains itself as Church or as piety; perhaps even the contrary. The practical indifference to religious matters in the midst of which he has been born and brought up, usually sublimates itself in his case into circumspection and cleanliness, which shuns contact with religious men and things; and it may be just the depth of his tolerance and humanity which prompts him to avoid the delicate trouble which tolerance itself brings with it.—Every age has its own divine type of naivete, for the discovery of which other ages may envy it: and how much naivete—adorable, childlike, and boundlessly foolish naivete is involved in this belief of the scholar in his superiority, in the good conscience of his tolerance, in the unsuspecting, simple certainty with which his instinct treats the religious man as a lower and less valuable type, beyond, before, and ABOVE which he himself has developed—he, the little arrogant dwarf and mob-man, the sedulously alert, head-and-hand drudge of “ideas,” of “modern ideas”!

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