Quote: On The Teaching of Benjamin Jowett

from, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett: Master of Balliol College, Oxford. by Evelyn Abbott and Lewis Campbell. 1897. Vol I. p. 199-201.

He managed always to direct the study of language so as to promote literary culture. The pieces set by him for composition were choice specimens of classical English, which prompted higher efforts, and led to a closer intimacy with great writers. . .

His criticism in those days stimulated without discouraging. In setting before the mind a lofty idea he implied a belief in powers hereafter to be developed and the belief seemed to create the thing believed in. But the intellectual stimulus was not all. He seemed to divine one's spiritual needs, and by mere contact and the brightness of his presence, to supply them. If he was ready to repress conceit, he was no less ready to bestow encouragement on the diffident, and sympathy upon the depressed; not without timely warning, when he saw the danger or temptation was at hand. His intimate knowledge of his former pupils' lives was applied to heal the errors of their successors, and his own experience of early struggles also had its effect. He ignored trifles, but never let pass any critical point.

. . . If there was less of exact scholarship imparted by him. . . the whole subject was surrounded with an air of literary grace and charm which had a more educative effect.

Mozart's 'Seraglio' Staged as 'Star Trek'

Quote: Sallust on Self-Indulgence

Sallust. Bellum Catilinae. 13. (Trans. J. C. Rolfe. 1921)

. . .the passion which arose for lewdness, gluttony, and the other attendants of luxury was equally strong; men played the woman (muliebria pati), women offered their chastity for sale; to gratify their palates they scoured land and sea; they slept before they needed sleep; they did not await the coming of hunger or thirst, of cold or of weariness, but all these things their self-indulgence anticipated. Such were the vices that incited the young men to crime, as soon as they had run through their property. Their minds, habituated to evil practices, could not easily refrain from self-indulgence, and so they abandoned themselves the more recklessly to every means of gain as well as of extravagance.

Quote: Heidegger on The Poet and the Fugitive Gods

Martin Heidegger. Poetry, Language, Thought. "What Are Poets For?" Translated by Albert Hofstadter

Poets are the mortals who, singing earnestly of the wine-god, sense the trace of the fugitive gods, stay on the gods' tracks, and so trace for their kindred mortals the way toward the turning. the ether, however, in which alone the gods are gods, is their godhead. The element of this ether, that within which even the godhead itself is still present, is the holy. The element of the ether for the coming of the fugitive gods, the holy, is the track of the fugitive gods. But who has the power to sense, to trace such a track?  Traces are often inconspicuous, and are always the legacy of a directive that is barely divined. To be a poet in a destitute time means: to attend, singing, to the trace of the fugitive gods. That is why the poet in the time of the world's night utters the holy.

Lessons for Teachers #9: Oops

Once upon a time when I was a was a wee lad of a teacher, a student needed to make up a test. Lo! The naughty boy did not do so when he should have, so the grade was not posted for his mother, Mrs. Periwinkle, to see when she was looking for it. So when dear Mrs. Periwinkle wrote me to inquire, I said it had then been entered.

Alas, the plot then thickened. Little did neophyte I know that when I entered a grade it wasn't automatically updated on the school database. So the boy's dear mama writes again, inquiring. I update it manually and reply. It's still not showing up so she can see it, so she writes me a third time. Little did I know again that the administrators don't check updates to the database, rather they reference a printout which is, obviously, not current. So I update it on paper in the office. She writes one last time requesting a signed confirmation from an administrator.

Now what I wanted to do was deliver a full-throated Ciceronian lambasting to the staff who made me look like a jackass by not explaining how the lousy software they were using worked and moreover how illogically it was employed.

Instead I replied graciously and took my lumps, opting not to throw anyone under the bus and not even complaining up the chain because I was new at  the job. A few lessons:

First, when you get an email that flusters or frustrates you, don't respond right away. Take time to cool off.

Second, don't be quick to get defensive and blame parents, especially when they're just trying to get information and especially when mistakes have, in fact, been made. Lack of communication is extremely frustrating, and many parents are already defensive because they know they are not as informed as they should be. Add to that low grades for their kid and fears about college, and you have a recipe for stress over what seems slight to you. They'll really appreciate it if, above all things, you are prompt, clear, and take responsibility.

Third, don't lightly throw people under the bus, but it is alright in most cases to let them know they put you in a tight spot.

Finally, take your lumps. I had no reason to expect the software and manner in which the school used it would be so convoluted, but ultimately knowing was my responsibility.

Some Choice Gilbert & Sullivan

The end of The Mikado has, for my money, the jauntiest rhythm and wittiest rhyming in Gilbert and Sullivan.

My favorite bit is the duet between Katisha and Ko-ko in which Sullivan's music has, in essence, re-punctuated the text. The unexpected pairings make you work just a bit harder to piece together the meaning and the result is that the text is splendidly vivid and lively.

If that is so,
Sing derry down derry!
It’s evident, very,
Our tastes are one!
Away we’ll go.
And merrily marry,
Nor tardily tarry
Till day is done!

The finale is such a bright, sprightly conclusion I think it would have made Mozart smile.

YUM. and NANK. The threatened cloud has passed away,
 And brightly shines the dawning day;
 What though the night may come too soon,
 We’ve years and years of afternoon!

ALL. Then let the throng
 Our joy advance,
 With laughing song
 And merry dance,
 With joyous shout and ringing cheer,
 Inaugurate our new career!
 Then let the throng, etc. 

Advice to Myself: On Anger at Those Absent

When you grow angry with someone absent, do not indulge your temper, your wit's ability to craft clever insults, or your imagination's tendency to imagine slights and injustice. Instead, call to mind the face of this person, this object of your anger, and call it to mind as vividly as you can. Then call to mind this person's other deeds, both good and bad, and set this newfound source of anger in its proper context.

If you are too irate or otherwise unable to do this, then find some task at once to distract you from the passion of the moment and revisit the matter later with a clear head.

Belated Thoughts on International Women's Day

I don't have much fondness for holidays, thinking as I do that what is worth commemorating by such a grand gesture is worth remembering more often than once per year. Too I think that celebrating something once a year has less the effect of drawing its value into focus so that we vividly see its meaning than it does of giving license to forget about that meaning through the rest of the year.

That said, I have more faith in some holidays than others. I prefer those steeped at least in tradition, if not religion. Easter reigns supreme, mostly unscathed by modern culture because its preparatory period of abstinence and the ineluctable element of suffering at its heart are unpalatable today. I'm most skeptical of modern, secular, international holidays, as they mostly seem cooked up for contemporary appetites, concocted out of whatever elements happen to be at hand.

It's probably so, though, that many holidays and festivals which today are solemn have an inglorious origin, sometimes pragmatic and others simply expedient. I am reminded of two accounts from Livy, one of my favorite Latin authors and one not remembered well enough as a masterful storyteller, that remind us of what gets lost in the years of retelling.

The first regards how the Lupercalia, a Roman festival of purifying and fertility that included a nude trot along the Palatine, was begun even before the founding of Rome when two youths ran around naked for "sport and wantonness" (per lusum atque lasciviam), in honor of Pan. The second tale concerns the passing of Romulus, who was either carried away on a cloud during a sudden storm on the Campus Martius or, some say, torn to pieces by the senators.

Much like being torn to pieces, International Women's day is hard to like, and not just because I don't have faith in it, a modern, secular, international holiday if there ever was one. Rather it is the spirit of antagonism that never seems to have dissipated from its socialist origins. The first march was organized by socialist-suffragist-activist Theresa Malkiel in 1909 and caught on among the communists until in 1977 that uncorrupted body of wisdom, The United Nations, enshrined the celebration in History for every March 8th thence until the breaking of the world.

—

Despite my reservations, though, I forestalled this mild condemnation because I saw some good women posting good things, which was enough to give me pause. In my further considerations of the day I was reminded of the reaction I had roughly a decade ago upon opening a philosophy book written by a professor of mine in college.

It is the book's inscription to which I refer. First, it was dedicated to her sister, sadly deceased before the age of thirty. Second, that dedication is to "all women who, being great of mind and heart, are denied the life of one in the pain of the other."

My first thought upon re-reading this today, as a stay-at-home dad, was, I confess, one of crudest obscenity. I may not be great of mind but I have a few marbles rolling around up in my head and I spend some days rolling around actual marbles with my daughter. Equally, I will miss these months at home with her terribly when the day comes that I daily leave for the working world. Why should anyone "of great mind and heart" in such a situation, not be regarded?

My first reaction to that line a decade ago, however, was a profound sense of exclusion. Even then, with so little experience, I could not understand why one would narrow one's embrace like that, especially in preface to a book on philosophy. What more could bind all minds and hearts together than the pursuit of wisdom? Did Goethe overreach, and Beethoven when he set to music, Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! ?

But then, though, something pricked my conscience, or I maybe I pricked my own conscience. . . at any rate it occurred to me that women were indeed excluded from many things, in many places, for a long time. Surely many felt excluded, but many surely never even conceived of a life other than what was evident around them.

Still, many and various people were excluded from the many and various things, and continue to be, so I'm not sure just how moved to be by the plight of any one group in particular, more than the plight of unfortunates everywhere and at every time.

In the end, I don't begrudge my old professor her dedication, for all honest emotion starts not in universals but in relations, often suffering, with our loved ones. I do, though, doubt the wisdom of factionalizing sympathy, and wonder whether it might do more harm than good. Perhaps when such sympathy is shared, it is best expressed through that which speaks to all. I am more moved to be a good husband, father, and son, by Shakespeare, for example, than by leftwing ideology and pink-stained influencers, less by hashtagged bromides than by the Bard's plainest, most haunting words, "I might have saved her; now she's gone for ever!"

Still I don't begrudge women their day, but when I weigh the socialism and antagonism I see associated with and brought out on the day, it seems to me that like most recently concocted holidays it has done and continues to do more harm than good. To its organization's credit, though, the website for International Women's day urges us to "Make IWD your day! - everyday!" #Progress

Quote: Bowra on The Greeks and Old Age

from The Greek Experience (1957), by C.M. Bowra, p. 112f

from Ch. 5, The Good Man and the Good Life:

The best solution was not to complain of the passing of youth and its opportunities, but to ask what advantages come with the advance of years, and the answer was that, though a man may lose the good things of life, he can still be a good man with increased power and confidence and experience. He may not be able to enjoy himself so much as before, but he can make more of himself and become a more controlled and more complete being. To each of the four traditional virtues experience brings its special enlargement. Courage becomes a form of patient endurance, as the old Oedipus, worn by blindness and suffering but still noble and majestic, says of himself:

     contentment have I learned from suffering, 

     and from long years and from nobility.*

. . . To each of the four cardinal virtues age brings a new distinction and a richer usefulness. The man who has left behind him youth and its good things, or can enjoy them only fitfully, attains a new dignity through his renewed opportunities of being a good man.

*Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus lines 7f

Quote: Dom Jacques Hourlier on the Fervor of Chant

from Reflections on the Spirituality of Gregorian Chant.
Translated by Dom Gregory Casprini and Robert Edmonson. p. 35f

Unction is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "a fervent or sympathetic quality in words or tone, caused by or causing deep religious feeling." . . . Its principal author is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Divine Love. In the liturgy it evokes holiness, order, and peace, the opposite of dryness and sterility. . . Unction makes it easier to enter into an attitude of prayer and love. . . 

Unction, or fervor, describes the atmosphere which all authentic religious music seeks to create.