A 17th Century German Hymn to Summer

Paul Gerhardt was already a familiar name before I went for a walk around the Nikolaiviertel (St. Nicholas Quarter) here in Berlin, around 2023. But as I was treading setts, rounding the medieval stone church that lent the quarter its name, and looking up at the half-timbered houses cuddled around the house of worship,* I was surprised to find a plaque to Gerhardt. — *That said, the church and houses were in fact rebuilt here from post-World War II ruins by the former German Democratic Republic when Berlin celebrated its 750th anniversary in the 1980s. They are not the originals that a visitor would have seen in the Baroque period. — In a way he was a Berliner; he moved here after studying at the University of Wittenberg, in 1643. Starting in 1657, he was employed as the pastor of the Nikolaikirche.

He was a Lutheran theologian and hymn writer whose oeuvre is still known today. A few of his verses — written in the clear and peculiarly grounded style of his generation — are standard modern Christmas repertoire, with fittingly beautiful musical settings, in Germany. "Wie soll ich dich empfangen" and "Ich steh' an deiner Krippen hier"** are perhaps the most famous.

Perhaps they are also especially poignant because of the difficult times in which Paul Gerhardt lived. To quote from Wikipedia:

Wie viele andere Familien in Kursachsen hatten auch die Gerhardts unter den Folgen des Dreißigjährigen Krieges – Hungersnot, Seuchen und den Übergriffen der Soldaten – zu leiden. 1619 starb sein Vater, 1621 seine Mutter.

In other words: the Gerhardts had settled in Saxony-Anhalt during the Thirty Years' War. His family suffered from famine, pestilence, and marauding soldiers, to the point that his parents both died by the time he was 15 years old. Paul had an older brother and two younger sisters at the time, the article adds. The rest of his biography, a litany of personal tragedy, also has overtones of Voltaire's Candide.

Even decades later, when Gerhardt arrived in Berlin in 1643, the Thirty Years' War was still being fought, and the fighting as well as dysentery, a plague, and smallpox had reduced the city's population by more than half. So, although of course interpreting authors' works through their biographies is rather more of a 19th-century approach than an approach that 21st-century literary theoreticians would support, I will venture to say it is for this reason that there is always a chiaroscuro, in the sense of blended effects of light and darkness, in Gerhardt's works.

** "Wie soll ich dich empfangen" was scored by Johann Sebastian Bach in his Christmas Oratorio as well as by Johann Crüger; I like both settings, and recordings of both are easily discoverable on YouTube. "Ich steh' an deiner Krippen hier" has also been 'done' by Bach, as well as by Georg Christian Schemelli.

Labors of the Months: June, from a Flemish Book of Hours (Bruges)
Painted in early 16th century by Simon Bening
via Wikimedia Commons

*

Rather than dwell on Paul Gerhardt's well-known Advent songs, I want to write about a summer poem, "Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud." — In German one would call its subject matter a Kontrastprogramm ('programme of contrast') to the drab weather of a north German November.

For brevity's sake, I'm only offering rough translations of the first seven verses of the original fifteen. For indolence's sake, I've not even attempted to keep the AABCCB rhyme scheme.

Geh aus, mein Herz, und suche Freud
in dieser lieben Sommerzeit
an deines Gottes Gaben;
Schau an der schönen Gärten Zier,
und siehe, wie sie mir und dir
sich ausgeschmücket haben.

Go forth, my heart, and search for joy / in this dear summer time / from your God's gifts; / Look on the pretty gardens' ornament, / and see how they, for me and you, / have put on decorations.

Die Bäume stehen voller Laub,
das Erdreich decket seinen Staub
mit einem grünen Kleide;
Narzissus und die Tulipan,
die ziehen sich viel schöner an
als Salomonis Seide.

The trees stand full of leaf / the earthen realm has decked its dust / with a green dress; / daffodil and tulip, / these put on their clothes more beautifully / than Solomon his silk.

Die Lerche schwingt sich in die Luft,
das Täublein fliegt aus seiner Kluft
und macht sich in die Wälder;
die hochbegabte Nachtigall
ergötzt und füllt mit ihrem Schall
Berg, Hügel, Tal und Felder.

The lark wings into the air, / the little dove flies from its rocky cleft / and makes for the woods; / the highly skilled nightingale / amuses and fills with her sound / the mountain, valley, hills, and fields.

Die Glucke führt ihr Völklein aus,
der Storch baut und bewohnt sein Haus,
das Schwälblein speist die Jungen,
der schnelle Hirsch, das leichte Reh
ist froh und kommt aus seiner Höh
ins tiefe Gras gesprungen.

The mother hen leads out her folk, / the stork builds and tenants his house, / the swallow feeds her young, / the fleet stag, the light-footed deer / is joyous and comes down from its height / leaping into the deep grass.

Die Bächlein rauschen in dem Sand
und malen sich an ihrem Rand
mit schattenreichen Myrten;
die Wiesen liegen hart dabei
und klingen ganz vom Lustgeschrei
der Schaf und ihrer Hirten.

The little brooks rush in the sand / and paint themselves upon their banks / myrtles full of shadows; / the meadows lie fast by / and fairly ring from happy cries / of sheep and of their shepherds.

Die unverdrossne Bienenschar
fliegt hin und her, sucht hier und da
ihr edle Honigspeise;
des süßen Weinstocks starker Saft
bringt täglich neue Stärk und Kraft
in seinem schwachen Reise.

The unperturbed swarm of bees / flies to and fro, seeking here and there / its fine repast of honey; / the sweet grapevine's rich juice / daily brings new strength and force / in its feeble shoot.

Der Weizen wächset mit Gewalt;
darüber jauchzet jung und alt
und rühmt die große Güte
des, der so überfließend labt,
und mit so manchem Gut begabt
das menschliche Gemüte.

The wheat grows with mighty force; / young and old rejoice thereat/ and praise the great goodness / of him, who refreshes so abundantly, / and many a good thing bestows / upon the human spirit.

In the Bleak Midwinter, in a Nutshell

Christina Rossetti, one of the clan of Pre-Raphaelites, wrote a religious poem that has since been set to music by Gustav Holst and others, and turned into a Christmas hymn.

I've not entirely been a fan of her writing style, which in the first verse of this poem has a kind of literally lapidary Cubist quality even if she was writing decades earlier, in the 19th century. But it is undoubtedly also moving.

From Pre-Raphaelitism and the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood (1905)
Likely by William Holman Hunt, via Wikimedia Commons

In the bleak mid-winter

Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.

Night
by Edward Burne-Jones
via Wikimedia Commons

Our God, Heav’n cannot hold him
Nor earth sustain;
Heav’n and earth shall flee away
When he comes to reign:
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty
Jesus Christ.

[...]

What can I give him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can I give him,
Give my heart.

***

To me, an element of William Blake's mysticism tinges the second verse: having an idea of religion in which there is always a conflict or a wrangling for a central role, the Tyger and the Lamb. Maybe inspired by Paradise Lost?

I see this portrait of conflict as projecting a personal struggle with faith, or with the world. Seen as an 'objective' reader of the poem: why, in a Christian cosmology, can't a loving God coexist with heaven and earth?

It's also unclear why Jesus would expect gifts; but that might be just my opinion, influenced by my Black Friday season anti-consumerism.

*

'Pre-Raphaelite window
in Highfield United Reform Church, Rock Ferry'
In the Pre-Raphaelite style.
via Wikimedia Commons

The King's College Choir at Cambridge recorded a rather fine version of Holst's musical setting in 2005, and it is available on YouTube.

In the Bleak Midwinter (1872) [Wikipedia]

Sunday Theology: A Jewish Prayer in Isaac Bashevis Singer's Poland

Before I cut short the reading in German translation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's novel The Magician of Lublin, I copied a quotation into my notes:

"Was sind wir, was unser Leben, was unsere Gnade? Was unsere Frömmigkeit, was unsere Hilfe, was unsere Kraft, was unsere Stärke? … Alle Helden sind wie nichts vor dir, die berühmten Männer, als ob sie nie gewesen, die Weisen wie ohne Erkenntnis, die Einsichtigen wie ohne Verstand, denn die Menge ihrer Werke ist eitel, und die Tage ihres Lebens sind nichtig vor dir."

These words are spoken in a place of worship by an Orthodox Jewish man who is praying by himself. The character of the Magician (who is wrestling, like the author himself, with contradictory forces of secularism and faith) overhears him on one of his journeys from Lublin.

To translate roughly: What are we, what is our life, what is our mercy? What our piety, what our assistance, what our power, what our might? ... All heroes are as nothing before you, the famous men are as if they never existed, the wise are without knowledge, the perceptive without reason, for the mass of their works is in vain, and the days of their lives are nothing before you.

Whether it is an excerpt from a known religious text, as I assume, or Singer's own composition, I was struck by it.

From a literary perspective, its words are weighty. Atmospherically I feel pathos in it — a sadness about not living up to an individual ideal — rather than a brutal denial of humanity at large, although this is debatable.

What I like in a subjective, non-literary way is the sense of proportion of a human's role in the history of the world, and in the width and breadth of the present time. It appears healthy to follow a religion or philosophy that is not meant to coddle and feed ego, but rather to help us look beyond ego.

I also like the idea of a God who is forceful enough to influence our lives through the quieter inner paths of conscience and the path of outer events without clear cause and effect, not a thin-skinned, fragile narcissist who relies on human propaganda, vigilanteism and perpetual obeisance to achieve the good. (Whatever that good may be.)

On the other hand, I may have quoted before the thought that God is infinitely small as well as infinitely great. We do not need to worship a Nietzschean superman.

*

On second thought, writing about a Jewish prayer on Sunday may be clumsy. So apologies for that, as well as for the perhaps frivolous habit of picking and choosing from religions what interests me and what doesn't, and offering an uneducated opinion without taking into account what the reactions may be.

Source: Der Zauberer von Lublin, by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Translation by Susanna Rademacher. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2017.

The Bach Motet: Jesu, meine Freude

A colleague sent me a new recording of a Bach motet. Aside from the anti-coronavirus masks worn by all the singers, as they stand and perform in a church in Prague for the Spring Festival, on May 18th this year; and aside from the quality of the singing of music, which had been unknown to me before; what struck me was the lyrics.

J.S.Bach - Motet: Jesu, meine Freude BWV 227 - Collegium 1704
[YouTube: Bachology,
May 22, 2020]

While Baroque-era Christianity had its fanatic aspects, and the wars of religion were terrible, I find hymns like the ones that were incorporated in the motet touching and sympathetic. They attempt to come to terms with the worst of humanity and the best of existence, all in one. To me they seem like an example of the massive efforts that men made in the 17th century, perhaps more than we do today.

Written by Johann Franck, the hymns in the motet were written in the middle of the 1600s. They are simple in construction: an aab ccb dee rhyme scheme, for example, mostly emphasized in trochees.

I tend to like the first two or three lines of each hymn best. For example, at the beginning of the motet:

Jesu, meine Freude,
Meines Herzens Weide,

The 'pasture of the heart' is tranquil and idyllic, insofar as it makes me think of a landscape painting with a grazing cow shaded by tall, old-growth trees. Why the thought of a cow should feel poetic, rather than reminiscent of milk and steak, I don't know.

Unter deinem Schirmen
Bin ich vor den Stürmen
Aller Feinde frei.

is also pleasant. (To translate roughly: 'Beneath your shelters, I am free of the storming of all foes.' The Bachology YouTube video presents a more elegant translation: "Beneath your protection/I am free from the attacks/of all my enemies.")

Grimm Fairy Tales: The Star Talers

"Illustration of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale 'The Star Money'" (1862)
by Ludwig Richter (1803-1884)
via Wikimedia Commons

GROWING UP amongst the dark firs and bristling blackberry bushes, fragrant lilacs and apple trees, and the distant rushing of the wind in the hill where my family lived in Canada, I became immersed in the world of Grimm fairy tales. I would sit in the attic, where my siblings and I slept like contented nestlings as the nightlight shone from underneath the window, and imagine a fairy tale in old Europe with the help of Ludwig Richter's illustrations (frogs, ancient leafy trees, wells and courts and birds whose species were unfamiliar beyond the Atlantic) from the early 1860s. We had an expurgated edition that did not have all of the tales and was in modern High German, no regional German dialects as far as I recall.

I read, for example, The Star Money, "Die Sterntaler." It is as brief and as simply-cut as its heroine's shirt, because the Grimm brother who wrote it down was sketching a mere memory of the tale's plot.

It presents a main character and nameless wayfarers: a parentless figure who wanders through the world, who sees the woes of fellow-travellers and has the means to 'fix' them — so she does.

***

Es war einmal ein armes, kleines Mädchen, dem war Vater und Mutter gestorben, es hatte kein Haus mehr in dem es wohnen, und kein Bett mehr, in dem es schlafen konnte, und nichts mehr auf der Welt, als die Kleider, die es auf dem Leib trug, und ein Stückchen Brod in der Hand, das ihm ein Mitleidiger geschenkt hatte; es war aber gar fromm und gut. Da ging es hinaus, und unterwegs begegnete ihm ein armer Mann, der bat es so sehr um etwas zu essen, da gab es ihm das Stück Brod; dann ging es weiter, da kam ein Kind, und sagte: „es friert mich so an meinem Kopf, schenk mir doch etwas, das ich darum binde,“ da thät es seine Mütze ab und gab sie dem Kind. Und als es noch ein bischen gegangen war, da kam wieder ein Kind, und hatte kein Leibchen an, da gab es ihm seins; und noch weiter, da bat eins um ein Röcklein, das gab es auch von sich hin, endlich kam es in Wald, und es war schon dunkel geworden, da kam noch eins und bat um ein Hemdlein, und das fromme Mädchen dachte: es ist dunkele Nacht, da kannst du wohl dein Hemd weggeben, und gab es hin. Da fielen auf einmal die Sterne vom Himmel und waren lauter harte, blanke Thaler, und ob es gleich sein Hemdlein weggegeben, hatte es doch eins an, aber vom allerfeinsten Linnen, da sammelte es sich die Thaler hinein und ward reich für sein Lebtag.

THE FAIRY TALE is read as an allegory about the Christian's notion of charitable deeds.*

* See "Allegorie" in the Wikipedia article here.

It is a tale that, to my leftist mind, epitomizes the absurdity of the world before modern social security, where a girl could be abandoned by society and yet be forced by her conscience to rectify the world's inequality out of her slender means.

To the proto-feminist part of my mind, it is impressive that the tale's reward for kindness is financial independence at nobody else's expense rather than, let's say, a husband.

But I have to add: from a non-cynical, religious standpoint, the insistence that a kind gesture to meet the needs of others is never in vain and never unappreciated by God is touching, although it is implausible and difficult to realize.

*

There was once a poor, little girl. Her father and mother had died, she had no house left to live in, no bed to sleep in, and nothing in the world other than the clothes she wore on her body and a piece of bread in her hand, which a pitying person had given her. But she was pious and good. She went away then, and along the way she met a poor man who begged so much for something to eat that she gave him the piece of bread. Then she went further, and a child came, and it said, "I am so cold where my head is, please give me something that I can bind around it." So she took off her cap and gave it to the child. And when she had gone a little further, a child came again and had no jacket, so she gave it hers; and still further, a child begged for a frock and she also gave it hers. Finally she reached a forest, and it had already become dark. Another child came and begged her for a shirt, and the pious girl thought: 'It is dark night, so you may as well give your shirt,' and so she gave it. All at once the stars fell from the sky and were many hard, shining coins. And although she had given away her shirt, she had one on after all but this time it was made of the finest linen. So she gathered all of her coins into it and was wealthy for the rest of her life.
(Free translation, based in part on Margaret Hunt's version.)

"Das arme Mädchen (1812)" [Wikisource - in German]
"Grimm's Household Tales, Volume 2/The Star Money" [Wikisource]
"Die Sterntaler" [Wikipedia - in German]
"Star Money" [Wikipedia]

The Orderly God in Leibniz's Vision

Discourse on Metaphysics
by Gottfried Leibniz, translated by George Redington Montgomery
Discours de métaphysique (1686) GP iv 427-463
via Wikisource

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz wrote this treatise in 1686 during a letter exchange with a French fellow philosopher, Antoine Arnauld. It wasn't published until over a century later. So I surmise it didn't play a role in founding Leibniz's reputation as a philosopher who rather heartlessly argued that the world is perfection and that, by implication, anyone who suffers or rebels against it is too thick to understand God's machinery. Leibniz was 40 at the time of writing; his influential work Monadologie was produced about 30 years later, and Candide, Voltaire's riposte, was published in 1759.

Turning to Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, I see that Leibniz's chapter begins on a firm note: firstly, the German philosopher was apparently "not admirable" as a person. Also, part of Leibniz's work was meant to appeal to his royal patrons and not to 'rock the boat,' which mined its worth from a philosophical point of view.

It was the popular Leibniz who invented the doctrine that this is the best of all possible worlds

***

Here Leibniz sets out his Logical God, and a Connect The Dot metaphor:

VI. That God does nothing which is not orderly, and that it is not even possible to conceive of events which are not regular.The activities or the acts of will of God are commonly divided into ordinary and extraordinary. But it is well to bear in mind that God does nothing out of order. Therefore, that which passes for extraordinary is so only with regard to a particular order established among the created things, for as regards the universal order, everything conforms to it. This is so true that not only does nothing occur in this world which is absolutely irregular, but it is even impossible to conceive of such an occurrence. Because, let us suppose for example that some one jots down a quantity of points upon a sheet of paper helter skelter, as do those who exercise the ridiculous art of Geomancy; now I say that it is possible to find a geometrical line whose concept shall be uniform and constant, that is, in accordance with a certain formula, and which line at the same time shall pass through all of those points, and in the same order in which the hand jotted them down; also if a continuous line be traced, which is now straight, now circular, and now of any other description, it is possible to find a mental equivalent, a formula or an equation common to all the points of this line by virtue of which formula the changes in the direction of the line must occur. There is no instance of a face whose contour does not form part of a geometric line and which can not be traced entire by a certain mathematical motion. But when the formula is very complex, that which conforms to it passes for irregular. Thus we may  say that in whatever manner God might have created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypotheses and the richest in phenomena, as might be the case with a geometric line, whose construction was easy, but whose properties and effects were extremely remarkable and of great significance.

***

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, c. 1700
Portrait by Johann Friedrich Wentzel (1670–1729)
via Wikimedia Commons

***

Russell argues against using God as a logical solution to philosophical problems.

The God of the Old Testament is a God of power, the God of the New Testament is also a God of love; but the God of the theologians, from Aristotle to Calvin, is one whose appeal is intellectual: His existence solves certain puzzles which otherwise would create argumentative difficulties in the understanding of the universe. This Deity who appears at the end of a piece of reasoning, like the proof of a proposition in geometry, did not satisfy Rousseau, who reverted to a conception of God more akin to that of the Gospels.

Leibniz, I gather, runs the risk of not loving his fellow man enough to consider God's purpose in light of man's welfare, and of seeing God in the bloodless way Russell describes.

Furthermore, the British philosopher counters the 'best of all worlds' argument as efficiently as Voltaire. First he recapitulates the Leibnizian reasoning: God made a world that has evil too, rather than all good, he writes; and

That is because some great goods are logically bound up with certain evils.

He further explains Leibniz's point with this example: a drink of water would not be appreciated as a great good if one were not thirsty.

In short:

The world that resulted [from God's decision] [...] has a greater surplus of good over evil than any other possible world; it is therefore the best of all possible worlds, and the evil that it contains affords no argument against the goodness of God.

But Russell then argues that this line of reasoning is self-interested. It might appeal to Leibniz himself and to Leibniz's patrons, but not to much of the rest of the world:

This argument apparently satisfied the Queen of Prussia. Her serfs continued to suffer the evil, while she continued to enjoy the good,* and it was comforting to be assured by a great philosopher that this was just and right.

My father and I once talked about a different metaphor for an organized/disorganized world: If we inspect a carpet from beneath, as human beings do when we look at the world, we see the frayed ends of yarn, the unfinished appearance, etc. Whereas a being who is looking at the carpet from the top, like God, is seeing and understanding the pattern. Not that I remember Papa presenting this belief as his own; he was discussing it as an illustration.

I like the Connect the Dot metaphor, too. But I think I'd substitute the modern metaphor of 'not seeing the forest for the trees.' When the world is composed of many elements, it can be hard to see patterns and organization that may exist.

***

"Bertrand Russell Smoking A Pipe"
"The Welsh philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell smoking the pipe while sitting on an armchair. 1954 (Photo by Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)"
via Wikimedia Commons

***

My two cents: I'm not entirely opposed to the idea that "What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter" — that it is possible to believe in a God whose reasoning is not always understandable but might be explained to us in the afterlife. That said, I object very much to human beings explaining away the hardships of others, by attempting to intuit God's reasoning themselves. I think that it's nicer to have the sense to see that this is a tricky endeavour, and have the compassion to see that it should not be undertaken if it makes people feel even worse.**

Sources:
"Discourse on Metaphysics" [Wikipedia]
"Monadology" [Wikipedia]
"Leibniz" in The History of Western Philosophy, 2nd ed., by Bertrand Russell (London: George Allen + Unwin, 1979), pp. 563-576
John 13.7, King James Bible [Kingjamesbibleonline.org]

* (His premise that Queen of Prussia was happier than her subjects because she was richer is not watertight. But I agree that the world might make far greater sense to her, because it feels materially fulfilling, than it would to a peasant to whom it feels materially precarious.)
** I should state that I am not thinking of specific examples of this behaviour! — this is not a passive-aggressive allusion or 'subtweet.'

Physiologus's Salamander

THIS time the literary text discussed on this 'Alexandrian' site does, in fact, come from Alexandria. Last year in university, the teacher of a Byzantinian folk literature course started his semester by presenting three tales from Physiologus.

One fable reminded me particularly of end of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (the healing sun berries that are carried to the old star by the firebird) and C.S. Lewis's other Narnia books, and in retrospect the Wikipedia article clarifies that Physiologus, written apparently before the final downfall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D., is in fact the origin of Christian beast myths which are present throughout Europe even in these centuries.

To the Young (and Catholic) Amongst Us

I wanted to translate the 'tweets' of Pope Francis's Italian Twitter account, from April 26 - May 3, 2013, copied them into Google Translate, and found that I rather liked the result in literary terms.

(Of course these tweets come in an official English version, too. Still, I assume, for no direct reason, that the Italian text is the prototype.)

In terms of the content, the virtues of prayer are a familiar theme, of course. But I like the mixing of partly quite traditional, partly not so traditional thoughts.

In any case, I am still happy about the new Pope, particularly since being baptized Catholic, and thereby associated with the Church, is an uneasy thing at times from a moral standpoint.

*

It would be nice, in the month of May, to recite the Holy Rosary together in the family. Prayer makes even stronger family life.

I think of those who are unemployed, often because of a selfish mentality that seeks profit at any cost.

Dear young people, learn from St. Joseph, who has had difficult times, but he never lost faith, and has been able to overcome them.

We have faith in God! With Him we can do great things, therein he will make us feel the joy of being his disciples.

How nice if each of us in the evening could say: Today I made a gesture of love for others

The Holy Spirit transforms us and really wants to transform, through us, the world in which we live.

Dear young people, don't bury the talents, the gifts that God has given you! Do not be afraid to dream big things!

***

In the Italian, the same quotations:

The Fox and the Geese

Fox once came upon a meadow where a herd of lovely fat geese was sitting. He laughed and said, "I have come at the right time. You are sitting together so nicely that I can eat you up one after the other." The geese quacked with affright, leapt to their feet, and began to wail and plead piteously for their lives. Fox, however, refused to listen to them and said, "There will be no mercy here! You must die." At last one of them took heart and said, "If we poor geese are to lose our lives in the flower of youth, grant us one favour and allow us a prayer, so that we do not die with our sins upon us; and afterwards we will even set ourselves in a row so that you may always choose the plumpest." — "Very well," said Fox, "that is fair and it is a pious request. Pray; I will wait that long." So the first started a pretty long prayer, always "Gah, gah," and because she refused to stop, the second did not wait for her turn, but also started: "Gah, gah!" The third and fourth followed her example, and soon they were all quacking together. (And when they have prayed themselves out, this tale shall be told further; but they are still perpetually praying on.)

Original text: "Der Fuchs und die Gänse," Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
in the Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Bayreuth: Gondrom Verlag, 1982)

THE END

The Moon

From the Grimm fairy tales, a little cosmogony:

***

Once there was a land where the night was always dark and the sky was spread over it like a black cloth, for the moon never rose there and no star winked in the darkness. At the creation of the world the light of night had been sufficient. From this land, four lads once went wandering and arrived in another realm, where in the evening, when the sun had vanished behind the mountains, a glowing sphere stood on an oak tree, pouring out a soft light far and near. People could see and tell apart everything very well in it, even though it was not as bright as the sun. The wanderers stood still and asked a farmer, who was driving past with his cart, what sort of light that was. "That is the moon," the man answered. "Our mayor bought it for three Talers and fixed it to the oak tree. He must pour oil to it daily and keep it clear, so it always burns brightly. For that, we give him a Taler every week."

When the farmer had driven away, one of them said, "We've a use for this lamp. At home we have an oak tree that is exactly as large; we can hang it on there. What a joy it will be not to tap around in the darkness at night!"

"Do you know," said the second, "we'll fetch a cart and horse and carry off the moon. These people here can buy themselves another one."

"I climb well," said the third, "I'll fetch it down proper."

The fourth fetched a cart with horses and the third climbed up the tree, drilled a hole into the moon, pulled a rope through it and lowered it down. When the shining sphere lay in the cart, they covered it in a cloth so that no one would notice the theft. They brought it happily to their land and set it onto a tall oak. Old and young were happy when the new lamp sent its light glowing over all the fields and filled the halls and chambers with it. The dwarves came out from their caves, and the little brownies danced rings on the meadows in their red frocks.

The four supplied the moon with oil, cleaned the wick and received their Taler every week. But they became old men, and when one of them sickened and foresaw his death, he commanded that the fourth part of the moon be given into the grave with him, as his property. When he had died, the mayor climbed into the tree and cut off a quarter with his hedge shears, and it was laid in the coffin. The light of the moon fell off, but not noticeably yet. When the second died, the second quarter was given with him, and the light diminished. It was even weaker after the death of the third, who equally took his part with him, and when the fourth entered the grave, the old darkness set in again. When people went out without a lantern of an evening, they bumped their heads together.

The Term of Life

"Three studies of a donkey" by Gerard ter Borch the Elder (ca. 1612)
Watercolour and ink on paper?, in Museum het Rembrandthuis (Amsterdam)
From Wikimedia Commons

"Die Lebenszeit" from the fairy tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm:

***

Ballade des Pendus

Even the experience of studying a poem for school or university often fails to dilute its potency, and such was the case for me with François Villon's "Ballade des pendus," or "Ballad of the Hanged." (In Georges Pompidou's Anthologie de la Poésie française, which I have at hand, it is entitled, "L'Epitaphe Villon.") Though I may have analyzed the structure and extracted themes, the poem was, and is, still painful and striking to read. At the time I came across a recording where someone (Louis Jouvet?) recites it in a mournful, aged and broken tone, like what I imagine the literary "mendicants' whine" must be, and it deepened the impression. Anyway, while it is not precisely uplifting, the theme of death and the afterlife is timely given that today is Pentecost Sunday.

* * *

Villon is one of the interesting villains of French literature. [N.B. I'm taking the following information from an eminently readable article on Villon available here.] Born in Paris, 1431, he lost his father at an early age, and thereafter his name and education were bestowed upon him by the canon Guillaume de Villon. In university, though intended to study theology, he became enmeshed not only in the turbulent politics of that setting but also, apparently, in the circle of the criminal "Coquillards," who marauded certain regions of France in that day. In 1455 he fatally wounded a priest, presumably of similarly dubious piety, in some dispute, and fled Paris only to return when his friends procured two royal pardons on his behalf. Upon his return he alternately dabbled in burglary, to some effect, and poetized, principally for an ethically undemanding audience of adolescent criminals. In 1457 he was established in Charles of Orleans's court, writing milder verses in honour of his host's newly-born daughter and then writing less mild verses in dishonour of his host's poetic pen-pal, the latter of which caused his swift ejection.

Long story short, he spent a couple of years being in fair or foul favour with divers authorities and writing reams of ballads, one of which was often the consequence of the other. Then at last he returned to Paris, professing much remorse likewise expressed in the form of ballads, which did not prevent him from dabbling in burglary again, albeit more modestly. The upshot of this lifestyle was that he was condemned to be hanged at the approximate age of thirty-two, after a brawl in which he ironically appears to have been an innocent bystander. Whilst thus imprisoned he wrote the "Ballade des pendus." Then, in a surprising act of mercy, the court commuted his sentence to ten years' banishment. He wrote two final poems, went out into the countryside in the midst of winter in early 1463, and was never heard from again as far as posterity is concerned.

The ballad is spoken by gibbeted corpses to passersby, describing in graphic detail the decay of the hung bodies, which seems to metaphorically express the poet's profound feeling of debasement, and pleading for pity. At least the sense that I have is that the narrators are metaphorically tugging at strangers' clothes, to force them to look at them and recognize that they are also humans, as they repeatedly invoke the doctrine that we are all sinners and all in need of divine mercy. The refrain is "Pray to God that He might absolve us all."

The idea that the society of Villon's time would manifest consideration toward dead, convicted criminals may seem implausible given the judiciary system before the Enlightenment. But one of the more gruesome tales of the Grimm brothers, "Die beiden Wanderer," indicates that a superstitious respect was accorded to the gibbet and its occupants; the dew that falls on hanged men restores the sight of a tailor whose eyes had been gouged out (by a psychopathic cobbler who didn't like the cut of his jib). Of course this tale was published much later, in the 19th century, so it is unlikely that it would faithfully depict the situation in France five hundred years earlier. In the ballad itself, the narrators' fear of laughter, harassment and mockery is not promising.

* * *

Frères humains qui après nous vivez,
N'ayez les coeurs contre nous endurcis,
Car, si pitié de nous pauvres avez,
Dieu en aura plus tôt de vous mercis.
Vous nous voyez ci attachés cinq, six:
Quant à la chair que trop avons nourrie,
Elle est piéça dévorée et pourrie,
Et nous, les os, devenons cendre et poudre.
De notre mal personne ne s'en rie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

Si frères vous clamons, pas n'en devez
Avoir dédain, quoique fûmes occis
Par justice. Toutefois, vous savez
Que tous hommes n'ont pas bon sens rassis;
Excusez-nous, puisque sommes transis,
Envers le fils de la Vierge Marie,
Que sa grâce ne soit pour nous tarie,
Nous préservant de l'infernale foudre.
Nous sommes morts, âme ne nous harie,
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

La pluie nous a débués et lavés,
Et le soleil desséchés et noircis;
Pies, corbeaux, nous ont les yeux cavés,
Et arraché la barbe et les sourcils.
Jamais nul temps nous ne sommes assis;
Puis çà, puis là, comme le vent varie,
A son plaisir sans cesser nous charrie,
Plus becquetés d'oiseaux que dés à coudre.
Ne soyez donc de notre confrérie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

Prince Jésus, qui sur tous a maistrie,
Garde qu'enfer n'ait de nous seigneurie:
A lui n'ayons que faire ni que soudre
Hommes, ici n'a point de moquerie;
Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absoudre!

* * *

Here is what Pompidou has to say on the subject of Villon:

Le XVe siècle est un siècle triste. Comme toutes les civilisations à leur déclin, le Moyen Age s'attarde désespérément à ce qui fit sa grandeur ou son charme, et qui va mourir. De l'homme du Moyen Age, la poésie nous fournit deux types exemplaires. [. . .] Si Charles d'Orléans a toutes les grâces du Moyen Age, Villon en incarne les angoisses et les remords. Plus qu'une banale préfiguration des poètes maudits, cet étudiant bourgeois devenu bandit exprime la grande terreur du peuple médiéval en proie à la misère et à la maladie, angoissé par la mort et l'audelà, réconforté par les plaisirs élémentaires de la table et du lit et, parfois, par l'espérance. Il a peu écrit et encore y a-t-il dans son oeuvre beaucoup de vers inutiles. Mais les quelques centaines de vers qui comptent [. . .] suffisent à faire de lui l'un des grands parmi les grands, avant et avec Baudelaire, celui qui a su le mieux parler de la mort.

In English: "The fifteenth century is a sorrowful century. Like all civilizations at their decline, the Middle Ages linger desperately at that which constituted their greatness or their charm, and which will perish. Of the man of the Middle Ages, poetry furnishes us with two exemplary types. [. . .] If Charles of Orleans possesses all the graces of the Middle Ages, Villon incarnates its anguish and remorse. More than a banal prefiguration of the accursed poets, this bourgeois student turned bandit expresses the great terror of the medieval people — preyed on by misery and maladies, anguished by death and the beyond, comforted by the elementary pleasures of the table and the bed and, at times, by hope. He wrote little and in his work there are many useless verses still. But the several hundreds of verses which count [. . .] suffice to make of him one of the great ones among the great, before and with Baudelaire — he who knew best how to speak of death."

Source: Anthologie de la Poésie française, Georges Pompidou, ed. (Hachette: 1961), pp. 22-23

* * *

François Villon [Poesies.net]
Collected works of Villon (French)

"Ballade des Pendus" [Textatelier Hess von Biberstein]
The French text of the poem, followed by a German, Basle-region dialect, and English translation, and then a biography of the poet.

First Nations and an Imperfect World

Growing up in Victoria, I was exposed a lot to Native American culture and history, in school and elsewhere. Never mind that the art often came in the form of tourist souvenirs; at least my family twice had the privilege of watching bona fide totem poles being carved, and, once, of sitting and listening to a drumming circle at the shore of Elk Lake

It is customary in leftist events (especially demonstrations) – which tend to celebrate e.g. saving the rainforest through decriminalizing marijuana and joining the European Union and stopping discrimination against women to pacifism – to mention that said event is taking place on Coast Salish territory. Certainly not all encounters are prejudicial. There is undoubtedly, however, a widespread stereotype that natives are lazy, alcoholic, and petty criminals, which a handful of classmates repeated without being challenged.

At any rate, as for the natural history of First Nations and their interactions with the temperate rainforest in British Columbia down all the way to Oregon, though it is rather a botanical than anthropological work — a helpful text is Plants of Coastal British Columbia (Lone Pine, 1994), by Jim Pojar and Andy MacKinnon. It is principally intended as a field guide, to help the botany enthusiast identify the plants he encounters on his rambles. There is a fair range of diverse detail, though, and I am quite satisfied with its plentiful images of the plants to help identify them in the wild, as well as with the paragraphs that verbally list the manifold uses of plants like the cedar tree or tule (a type of rush that grows in watery ground, for instance).

Anyway, what principally interested me here, given the context of Sunday and religion, are the native creation myths. There is not one overarching myth. Around Victoria, the major groups are the Coast Salish, the Nootka (a.k.a. Nuu-chah-nulth) and, to the north, the Kwakiutl (a.k.a. Kwakwaka'wakw), though the Haida (a.k.a. xaa.aadaa 7laaisiss, but "Haida" is fine for most mortals) from the Queen Charlotte Islands are also prominent. Not only are the myths and legends of these tribes diverse; there are, of course, still greater differences between their beliefs and those of the Native Americans in the prairies and the East. What I like about the Pacific Northwest Coast myths is that they are not humourless, and that they, far from painting the world in black and white, recognize psychological complexities. The spirit-figures in them (e.g. the Raven) have the moral ambiguity, and the capriciousness, which also characterize the gods of ancient Greece.

The tome of native legends, which I thought we had in our apartment, we either don't have, or it is temporarily hidden among the thousands of other books. Fortunately, my grandfather mentions Tlingit tales (the Tlingit being a people which inhabits the general vicinity of the Alaskan panhandle) in his unpublished memoirs,* as these tales were recounted in Raven, by Dale Burlison De Armond (Anchorage: Alaska Northwest, 1975).

In the first story, it is told how Raven created the world from earth and stones. The world that he created did not please the Raven; it was not the way he had envisioned it. So he destroyed it and formed another world, which he didn't like either. After further efforts, he gave up trying to create a perfect world. He said, "To hell with it!" and left the world imperfect – and so it has remained. [ . . . ]

In further stories, the Raven brings light, water and fire to the earth, and sets the sun in the firmament. This was after a flood, which he had caused himself, out of curiosity; for though he may be an intelligent, clever and wise bird with an enchanting voice, whose sounds are characteristic in southwestern Alaska, he is also a rogue, who likes to do mischief.

As all the people had died in the flood, or he had turned them into stone, he created new people out of leaves. That is why many people die in autumn, when the leaves fall from the trees.

* Erinnerungen: "Ein Traum ist das Leben" (German-English translation by me)


Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest (Introduction to excellently detailed series of essays)
Flickr Photos (Kwakiutl, Coast Salish, Haida)

Plants of Coastal British Columbia (Publisher's information on book)

Tlingit Myths and Texts (Myths as stiltedly recorded in 1904 by John R. Swanton)
Seeking Native American Spirituality (Amusingly but justly irate warning against quack spirituality)
Society-Tlingit (Short essay on the Tlingit)

[N.B. Edited November 2, 2014.]

Sunday: The Parable of the Rings

The central message of Lessing's Nathan der Weise is embodied by the famous Parable, which Nathan recounts to Saladin, who has asked him which is the true religion. In summary:

A man of the east possesses an opal ring whose quality it is to make the bearer agreeable to God and to man. This ring is passed down to his most dearly beloved son, independent of order of birth, etc., and so on down the generations. Eventually there is a father who loves all three of his sons equally, and has promised his ring to all three of them. So he asks an artist to make two identical rings. Then, when he is on his deathbed, he gives each of them a ring and a blessing, and then dies. Afterward his sons squabble over who received the true ring, but it is never discovered.

But this tale is not without holes in its logic. In some indignation, Saladin asks Nathan whether this is the answer to his question, and Nathan humbly replies, "Shall I ask forgiveness if I do not trust myself to choose among the rings, which our Father made in the intention that they bear no difference?" Saladin counters that the religions are different, so much so that even the food and drink diverge. But, says Nathan, the origins of these religions are the same, and these religions are histories that all describe the same thing. He then explains why he chooses to be Jewish if other religions are equally valid. The traditions of Judaism have been transmitted to him by his parents, and is it not natural that we would prefer, and trust in, a history that has been recounted to us by persons who have proven over and over again that they love us, and that they would not lie to us?

Another flaw is that all three of the sons are behaving quite disagreeably, which should not be the case if one of them had the ring. And this apparent plot-hole is addressed in the second part of the parable:

The brothers take their complaints to a judge. He asks if two of the brothers love the third more. They evidently do not, and the judge, waxing wroth, says that they only love themselves, and that none of the rings is the right one. This one ring has presumably been lost, and three replacements made. Even if the ring hadn't been lost, the father would not have wanted one of the sons to be favoured at the expense of the other two, or to endure the tyranny of the one ring any longer. So the judge, in a fine oration, exhorts the sons to find the true ring by practicing its virtues:

Es strebe von euch jeder um die Wette,
Die Kraft des Steins in seinem Ring' an Tag
Zu legen! komme dieser Kraft mit Sanftmut,
Mit herzlicher Verträglichkeit, mit Wohltun,
Mit innigster Ergebenheit in Gott
Zu Hilf'! Und wenn sich dann der Steine Kräfte
Bei euern Kindes-Kindern äussern:
So lad ich über tausend Jahre
Sie wiederum vor diesen Stuhl. Da wird
Ein weisrer Mann auf diesem Stuhle sitzen
Als ich; und sprechen.

In other words, "Let each of you contend to show the power of the stone in his ring! Come to the aid of this power with a mild spirit, with hearty concord, with beneficence, with the most profound submission to God. And if, then, the powers of the stones should become apparent in your children's children, I invite you again before this chair in a thousand years' time. Then a wiser man than I shall sit in this chair, and speak."

So, I suppose I should be commenting on this, but I prefer to leave the parable as is, and let the reader make up his own mind about it. I will only say that religious strife, in my view, has much more to do with the pursuit of power than with the pursuit of truth.

* * *

Tale in the Decameron (First Day, Novel III):
English, Italian

Sunday: The Spider

After finding the Catholic Bible readings for today, and not finding them any good in my evidently not-so-humble opinion, I have stepped over temporarily to the Other Side. So I will discourse of one and a half verses in our Koran (Oxford University Press, 1983), which was nicely translated by Arthur J. Arberry (1905-69). The verses in question form the beginning of the chapter, or sura, known as "The Spider."

Do the people reckon that they will be left to say
'We believe,' and will not be tried?
We certainly tried those that were before them,
and assuredly God knows those who speak truly,
and assuredly He knows the liars.
Or do they reckon, those who do evil deeds, that
they will outstrip Us? Ill they judge!
Whoso looks to encounter God, God's term is coming;
He is the All-hearing, the All-knowing.

Whosoever struggles, struggles only to his
own gain; surely God is All-sufficient
nor needs any being.
And those who believe, and do righteous deeds,
We shall surely acquit them of their evil
deeds, and shall recompense them the best of
what they were doing.

What struck me first is how very like the New Testament, or other Christian texts, these verses are. Lines 10-12 are echoes of Milton's in "On His Blindness" — "God doth not need / Either man's work or his own gifts." — or, as the Koran is the older text, rather vice versa. What also struck me was that the verses are agreeably mild, as religious texts generally have no shortage of blood-and-thunder passages.

There are two points, to diverge from literary criticism to theological criticism (if one can dignify my musings with that name), with which I take issue. The first is the concept of God testing his believers. If one argues that He is omniscient, it must follow that He already knows how people would respond to the trial. As for the trial of Job, it is hard to believe much in a God who would kill off a family and use the paterfamilias as a guinea pig in order to settle an argument with Old Nick. So, in my view, there are far more convincing ways to account for the presence of trouble in the world. But, oddly, even Voltaire accepts the concept, as he writes in Zadig, "il n'y a point de hasard: tout est épreuve ou punition, ou récompense ou prévoyance."*

The second point is that I don't believe that good deeds should be an alibi for bad deeds, though perhaps the underlying statement is that people who do bad deeds should not have to fear eternal damnation if they strive to do well.

Altogether there are no passages in these verses that will linger happily in my memory, like "Blessed are the meek," and yet the assurance that good will prevail is, I guess, heartening.

*"There is no such thing as chance; everything is a test or punishment, or reward or admonition."

"The Persian or the Scholar?" (Time article on Arthur J. Arberry, 1950)
The Koran (Index of links to Koran chapters)
"The Koran" (Encyclopaedia entry on the Koran)