“Immalee, overpowered by this torrent of words, to her unintelligible words, in vain asked a connected explanation of them. The demon of his superhuman misanthropy had now fully possessed him, and not even the tones of a voice as sweet as the strings of David’s harp, had power to expel the evil one. So he went on flinging about his fire-brands and arrows, and then saying, “Am I not in sport? These people,” said he, “have made unto themselves kings, that is, beings whom they voluntarily invest with the privilege of draining, by taxation, whatever wealth their vices have left to the rich, and whatever means of subsistence their want has left to the poor, till their extortion is cursed from the castle to the cottage—and this to support a few pampered favourites, who are harnessed by silken reins to the car, which they drag over the prostrate bodies of the multitude. Sometimes exhausted by the monotony of perpetual fruition, which has no parallel even in the monotony of suffering, (for the latter has at least the excitement of hope, which is for ever denied to the former), they amuse themselves by making war, that is, collecting the greatest number of human beings that can be bribed to the task, to cut the throats of a less, equal, or greater number of beings, bribed in the same manner for the same purpose. These creatures have not the least cause of enmity to each other—they do not know, they never beheld each other. Perhaps they might, under other circumstances, wish each other well, as far as human malignity would suffer them; but from the moment they are hired for legalized massacre, hatred is their duty, and murder their delight. The man who would feel reluctance to destroy the reptile that crawls in his path, will equip himself with metals fabricated for the purpose of destruction, and smile to see it stained with the blood of a being, whose existence and happiness he would have sacrificed his own to promote, under other circumstances. So strong is this habit of aggravating misery under artificial circumstances, that it has been known, when in a sea-fight a vessel has blown up, (here a long explanation was owed to Immalee, which may be spared the reader), the people of that world have plunged into the water to save, at the risk of their own lives, the lives of those with whom they were grappling amid fire and blood a moment before, and whom, though they would sacrifice to their passions, their pride refused to sacrifice to the elements.”—“Oh that is beautiful!—that is glorious!” said Immalee, clasping her white hands; “I could bear all you describe to see that sight!”

“Her smile of innocent delight, her spontaneous burst of high-toned feeling, had the usual effect of adding a darker shade to the frown of the stranger, and a sterner curve to the repulsive contraction of his upper lip, which was never raised but to express hostility or contempt.

‘Melmoth the Wanderer’ by Charles Robert Maturin

And this abyss of interior solitude is a hunger that will never be satisfied with any created thing.

The only way to find solitude is by hunger and thirst and sorrow and poverty and desire, and the man who has found solitude is empty, as if he had been emptied by death.

He has advanced beyond all horizons. There are no directions left in which he can travel. This is a country whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You do not find it by traveling but by standing still.

Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

Although it is true that this solitude is everywhere, there is a mechanism for finding it that has some reference to actual space, to geography, to physical isolation from the towns and the cities of men.

There should be at least a room, or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you. You should be able to untether yourself from the world and set yourself free, loosing all the fine strings and strands of tension that bind you, by sight, by sound, by thought, to the presence of other men.

“But thou, when thou shalt pray, enter into thy chamber, and having shut the door, pray to thy Father in secret…”

‘New Seeds of Contemplation’ by Thomas Merton

CALIBAN:
 All the infections that the sun sucks up
 From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
 By inchmeal a disease! His spirits hear me,
 And yet I needs must curse. But they’ll nor pinch,
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i’ th’ mire,
 Nor lead me like a firebrand in the dark
 Out of my way, unless he bid ’em. But
 For every trifle are they set upon me,
 Sometimes like apes, that mow and chatter at me
And after bite me; then like hedgehogs, which
 Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount
 Their pricks at my footfall. Sometime am I
 All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues
 Do hiss me into madness. Lo, now, lo!
Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me
 For bringing wood in slowly. I’ll fall flat.
 Perchance he will not mind me.
[He lies down and covers himself with a cloak.]

The Tempest — Shakespeare

Stop thinking, and end your problems.
What difference between yes and no?
What difference between success and failure?
Must you value what others value,
Avoid what others avoid?
How ridiculous!

Other people are excited,
As though they were at a parade.
I alone don’t care,
I alone am expressionless,
Like an infant before it can smile.

Other people have what they need,
I alone possess nothing.
I alone drift about,
Like someone without a home.
I am like an idiot, my mind is so empty.

Other people are bright;
I alone am dark.
Other people are sharper;
I alone am dull.
Other people have a purpose;
I alone don’t know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.

I am different from ordinary people.
I drink from the Great Mother’s breasts.

Tao Te Ching
Verse 20
Stephen Mitchell translation

Higher Laws

If one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,—that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.  “Walden” Henry David Thoreau

During the two-month sabbatical, a spiritual identity based upon confidence emerged within a condition I use to recognize as failure and the need to depend upon others. While still turning to others—malleable and listening, centering within my years of aging, I discovered self-assurance, grace infusing the reality I could depend upon myself. At my core was a humility. Shame and guilt are not problem solvers. I underestimated myself. Within my presence was a nature predisposed toward prayer and meditation. I recognized the fact during religious life days and nights. I did not build upon it. Inherently, I possess the means to spiritually blossom. 

In Indianapolis, a counselor—a flamboyant gay young man—emerged as an influence guiding me into trusting myself, while sharing his devotion to Dharma Recovery, a Buddhist approach to healing. Along with the Gothic novel immersion, meditation and yoga became a part of my daily Indianapolis routine. Exercise, a determined sleep routine, mindfulness—an openness to all counselors and individuals desiring to assist, all became a concentrated ritual in Indianapolis. The Rosary never ceases in vitality. My heart remains anchored where only it can be. An openness arose that pulled me from conservative reasoning. The strong influence of Father David Mary, Rush Limbaugh listening, a commitment to unaware assumptions were all dissipated. It aligned perfectly with an abandonment to worldly concerns and political disassociation.

Passions of youth were rekindled. The writings Hermann Hesse, the devouring of Jung, the pursuit of Tibetan Buddhism, the Vedas, Bhagavad Gita, Tao Te Ching and Stephen Mitchell, Joseph Campbell, Homer and Greek mythology, literature/film/music, an overall fascination with the arts, the admiration of Basil Pennington, Thomas Keating, and intrigue with Merton—all this and more were staunched by the baggage I kept packing as I identified myself as a conservative Catholic. Political obsession became a part of an authoritarian mindset viewing the world in a conflicting manner. It was time to shed that skin. Too easy, it adorned without effort while tainting spiritual growth. The drinking binges kept attacking. Humility grew sounder as failures mounted. Sustained moments of sanity were broken by lapses into madness. God is good and providing in wisdom within the worst of self-inflicted consequences. 

After Indianapolis, care was assigned from an organization in Royal Oak, Michigan. Virtual in tending, day trips were pursued on Thursday, coinciding with community free concerts in the evening. Life was to be enjoyed as a deeper healing was practiced. On my own, I sought any and every means of recovery I could encounter. Buddhism became a common theme—a cope network developing that grounded me in a local building. I became friendly with a Tibetan Buddhist monastery led by an eighty-three-year-old former marine. Their company is easy, proper in spiritual camaraderie. In fact today during Adoration immersed within a Rosary, I felt the presence of the abbot. Coming full circle, it is invigorating to embrace the ways of my young mind. A Sunday morning lunch group has appeared, friends drifting into my life. Old ways of self-assigned certainties, others allocating advocacy and authority are being proper sized. Fellowship and boundaries are necessary in establishing strength and freedom.

Academically, American Literature is being embraced, the opening of Thoreau purposeful and immediate. Self-Reliance. The pursuit of faith without the slightest attachment to authority. Emerson and his influence on Nietzsche, friends in the fight, a new mindset will assume direction for this blog. The prolonged period of silence was necessary. Now it is time to start talking again. Hopefully more in a voice that will produce greater fruit of sustainability and maturity. My own voice now seeks to be heard. Transcendentalist: Alcott—Louisa and Bronson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and then Melville, Poe, Dickinson, Whitman, and Longfellow. A distant time demanding to be heard.

“Pearl,” said he, with great solemnity, “thou must take heed to instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?”

Now Pearl knew well enough who made her; for Hester Prynne, the daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with such eager interest. Pearl, therefore, so large were the attainments of her three years’ lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson’s question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door.

This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the Governor’s red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window; together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in coming hither.

Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something in the young clergyman’s ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,—how much uglier they were,—how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen,—since the days when she had familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now going forward

“This is awful!” cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the astonishment into which Pearl’s response had thrown him. “Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no further.”  –‘The Scarlett Letter’ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Dark Night of the Soul

On a dark night,
Kindled in love with yearnings
—oh, happy chance!—
I went forth without being observed,
My house being now at rest.

In darkness and secure,
By the secret ladder, disguised
—oh, happy chance!—
In darkness and in concealment,
My house being now at rest.

In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
Nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide,
save that which burned in my heart.

This light guided me
More surely than the light of noonday
To the place where he (well I knew who!)
was awaiting me—
A place where none appeared.

Oh, night that guided me,
Oh, night more lovely than the dawn,
Oh, night that joined
Beloved with lover,
Lover transformed in the Beloved!

It has been well over six months since I last posted. I am ending a two-month sabbatical, a summer time of healing that found me in Indianapolis for thirty days, and then onto the guidance of a recovery center in Royal Oak, Michigan. Most recently, I am coming off a weekend at the Eucharist Congress of 2024 in Indianapolis—a reinvigorating time deepening Catholic commitments and devotions. An emerging conviction, and thorough effort, is being invested in my formation as a teacher of English Literature. The time away from worldly concerns, and assumptions, deepened my passions, while assisting in identifying strengths which will allow me to live a healthy life. Self-destructive ways have their roots which guilt and shame will not alleviate. My God given talents and interests will be unleashed. Self-reliance, trust, and confidence will be recognized as assets. Diligence, fortitude, and a strong work ethic are called forth.

During the 30-day Indianapolis retreat, I devoured English, and one Irish, Gothic novels, while holding to a Catholic spiritual path with the reading of Father Donald Haggerty’s ‘Saint John of the Cross’. Many influences were explored in Indianapolis. A quote from the saint’s ‘Ascent of Mount Carmel’: “The heart of the fool, states the Wise Man, is where there is gladness; but the heart of the wise is where there is sadness.” I would like to examine the consumed Gothic novels.

First a difficult and long read, yet amazing in moments of terror and depth of character exploration. ‘Melmoth the Wanderer’ by Charles Robert Maturin captivated as I slowly moved through it. It called forth the deep dive into Gothic novels. Stories and tales nested within one another, ‘Melmoth the Wanderer’, intensely delves through massive depths of despair and darkness as the inheriting nephew of misfortune attempts to untangle the overarching complications caused by his ancestor’s evil alliance. Melmoth haunts the novel detailing the fate of others. One of the others is the Spanish survivor of the witnessed shipwrecked, Alonzo Moncada. The Spaniard tells of his foiled escape from the monastery his family imprisoned him with the assistance of his brother who will futilely lose his life in the desperate deed. The nature of the ferocity of Maturin’s storytelling is apparent in a quote in which Alonzo and his brother endure through the trials of their shared failure. The quote is a moment in which the struggling brothers are granted a false sense of victory.

“Yet I was now on the verge of liberty, and though drenched, famishing, and comfortless, was, in any rational estimate, an object much more enviable than in the heart-withering safety of my cell. Alas! It is too true that our souls always contract themselves on the approach of a blessing, and seem as if their powers, exhausted in the effort to obtain it, had no longer energy to embrace the object. Thus we are always completed to substitute the pleasure of the pursuit for that of the attainment,–to reverse the means for the end, or confound them, in order to extract any enjoyment from either, and at last fruition becomes only another name for lassitude.”

Lassitude being a condition of weariness or debility, a condition I found enwrapping me in Indianapolis. Age accumulating, I feel the time of my years weighing down, yet nowhere near being defeated by them. A sense of urgency arises which calls forth further the pursuit. The next Gothic novel was Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein’, the fantastical unrealistic science fiction novel of a manmade man contemplating the nature of existence. His obsession with his irresponsible creator devours his mind and actions after a failed attempt to lovingly, compassionately, and caringly integrated himself with his fellow living beings through a family escaping worldly complications as they secrete themselves within the beauty of nature provided by a mountainous hideout. The hideous monster fails miserably in his effort of social integration. Due to his physical deformities, the family recoils abhorrently upon his carefully planned out introduction. First, he presented himself to the blind father, able to hide his ugliness until the children appeared. True in intent, honorable in heart, I found his alienated reasoning impressive: “I admired virtue and good feelings and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my cottagers, but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except through means which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and unknown, and which rather increased the satisfied the desire I had of becoming one among my fellows.”

The next Gothic novel was the most bizarre. Matthew Lewis’ sensational and bonkers novel ‘The Monk’ took the Gothic genre immensely into the supernatural and realm of extraordinary events. I recognized a common theme within the Gothic novel genre. Typically, Gothic stories are set in exotic foreign countries of Catholic devotion, usually Spain or Italy the culprit. Superstitious Old-World settings of corrupt religious practices play themselves out in mammoth aged monasteries or castles. The colossal structures of times-since-past are inhabited with secret passages, hidden rooms, underground lairs, ghosts, creaking sounds and unfathomable depths of decadence and corruption. Darkness and mystery lurk behind locked and hidden doors. In mindset, a not-so-subtle protestant and puritan assault upon Catholicism pervades the English and Irish Gothic novels.

‘The Monk’ possesses an astonishing complicated plot of several stories concurrently swelling into a romantic happy ending; however, pleasantries are overshadowed by the perversity and degradation of the atrocious relationship between the prideful abbot Ambrosio—the story intimately detailing his obsessive decline and frustrating descent into mortal sin and ultimate self-chosen damnation—with his deranged occultist inferior brother, Rosario, who turns out to be a sister, and the demoralized ways of the austere and ruthless Poor Clares. The extremes of the depravation inflict the story with an absurdity that negates serious critique. Maturin is ignorantly errant of the monastic life he attempts to dissect as corrupt. His fictious monastic order is a Franciscan order. In truth, Franciscans did not exercise cloistered monastic lives, instead involving themselves in the world as mendicants. St Francis had his time of hermitage, as all Franciscans do, yet the Franciscan charism is one of tending to and giving back to the world, an immersion in the mud with their brothers and sisters. Lewis’ impressive literary skills, including his writing of poetry filling the novel, give credence to the worthiness of a read, yet in other regards it can easily be dismissed as imprudence. Though Lewis intends to credit many of Ambrosio’s faults to the monastic life, I did feel his defining of a corrupt spiritual life of one devoted to the pursuit of faith to be worthy of consideration.

“His instructors carefully repressed those virtues whose grandeur and disinterestedness were ill-suited for the Cloister. Instead of universal benevolence, He adopted a selfish partiality for his own particular establishment: He was taught to consider compassion for the errors of Others as a crime of the blackest dye: The noble frankness of his temper was exchanged for servile humility; and in order to break his natural spirit, the Monks terrified his young mind by placing before him all the horrors with which Superstition could furnish them: They painted to him the torments of the Damned in colors the most dark, terrible, and fantastic, and threatened him at the slightest fault with eternal perdition. No wonder that his imagination constantly dwelling upon these fearful objects should have rendered his character timid and apprehensive. Add to this, that his long absence from the great world, and total unacquaintance with the common dangers of life, made him form of them an idea far more dismal than the reality. While the monks were busied in rooting out his virtues and narrowing his sentiments, they allowed every vice which had fallen to his share to arrive at full perfection. He was suffered to be proud, vain, ambitious, and disdainful; He was jealous of his Equals, and despised all merit but his own: He was implacable when offended, and cruel in his revenge.” Quite a wretched and irrational portrayal Lewis ascribes to one who rises up through the ranks of a monastery, yet not without a certain merit for consideration.

The next English Gothic novel was ‘The Castle of Otranto’ by Horace Walpole, another tale set in the superstitious Old World of Catholicism: Italy and a castle riddled with secret passages, a prophecy of doom pervading, a corrupt obsessive king abusing power, and a hero emerging into an identity to righteously claim his throne.

“The beholders fell prostrate on their faces, acknowledging the divine will. The first that broke silence was Hippolita. My lord, said she to the desponding Manfred, behold the vanity of human greatness! Conrad is gone! Matilda is no more! In Theodore we view the true prince of Otranto. By what miracle he is so, I know not—suffice it to us, our doom is pronounced! Shall we not, can we but dedicate the few deplorable hours we have to live, in deprecating the farther wrath of heaven? Heaven ejects us—whither can we fly, but to you holy cells that yet offer us retreat?—Thou guiltless but unhappy woman! Unhappy by my crimes! Replied Manfred, my heart at last is open to thy devout admonitions. Oh! Could—but it cannot be—ye are lost in wonder—let me at last do justice upon myself! To heap shame upon my own head is all the satisfaction I have left to offer to offended heaven. My story has drawn down these judgements: let my confusion atone—But ah! What can atone for usurpation and a murdered child? A child murdered in a consecrated place?—List, sirs, and may this bloody record be a warning to future tyrants.”

Anne Radcliffe’s ‘The Italian’ stepped the Gothic novel genre into a new realm of romantic literary excellence. The magnificence of her graceful writing: vocabulary, sentence structure, character development, and storytelling soothed with a preciseness and purpose. Like Louisa May Alcott, Radcliffe was a writer who enjoyed immense success during her lifetime, able to earn substantial income. Something few could achieve through writing. Yet she remained a publicly elusive woman, hiding in the privacy of her homelife. She never ventured away from her home during her time of writing. A product of English Protestantism, her childhood was immersed in the culture of Unitarian Dissent. Depth to her personal beliefs is never defined. The darkness of her tales opposed upbringing and contemporary standards. There were long periods of non-writing, as well as a lack of self-diagnosed literary commentary. Though successful, no one knew exactly what she was up to. Criticized as an enchantress of terror, there is the idea she was highly sensitive to her critics, while others identify her husband’s puritanical disapproval of her perceived macabre stories. There would be no explanations to her lengthy novels. Her husband would burn her unpublished writing after her death. The woman of tremendous influence remains aloof.

I found her imagination and care with her characters to be inspiring. Her contemplative ability to course her writing into a descriptive immersion into the beauty of nature proves to be a splendid spiritual excursion—a Transcendental endeavor. Ellena imprisoned in the monastery of San Stefano, amidst the horror of her human condition while victim to infallible institutional powers, discovers access to a terrace overlooking the mountains. Horribly grief stricken, she can sit ahigh and contemplate the wonders of creation. The marvel suffices against her wretched woes—alleviating yet not resolving. Her natural state of awareness is provided a means of expression. Nature not only abounds, it sustains and breathes truth beyond human understanding and condition.

“Hither she could come, and her soul, refreshed by the views it afforded, would acquire strength to bear her, with equanimity, thro’ the persecutions that might await her. Here gazing upon the stupendous imagery around her, looking, as it were, beyond the awful veil which obscures the features of the Deity, and conceals Him from the eyes of his creatures, dwelling with a present God in the midst of his sublime works; with a mind thus elevated, how insignificant would appear to her the transactions, and the sufferings of this world! How poor the boasted power of man, when the fall of a single cliff from these mountains would with ease destroy thousands of his race assembled on the plains below! How would it avail them, that they were accoutered for battle, armed with all the instruments of destruction that human invention ever fashioned? Thus man, the giant who now held her in captivity, would shrink to the diminutiveness of a fairy; and she would experience, that his utmost force was unable to enchain her soul, or compel her to fear him, while he was destitute of virtue.”

The final Indianapolis novel, Jane Austin’s ‘Northanger Abbey’, though not truly a Gothic novel, highlights the fascination of nineteenth century readers with Gothic novels. The main character, Catherine Morland, is obsessed with Gothic novels, especially Radcliffe’s ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’. Catherine asserts that her experience of Gothic novels will be “…all story and no reflection”, yet in this coming-of-age tale it is interesting to see the effects dark stories have upon her imagination and perception of others. All ends well as Catherine sticks to her principles while holding no resentments after being unjustly evicted from the home of the Tilney family she came to love. Her good manners are rewarded with a proposal from Henry, the Tilney’s son.