Books Do Furnish a Room…
A commenter on my Daily Mail Blog asked me a few questions about "modern" verse, specifically what I thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins and T.S. Eliot. A political blog with a shelf-life of three days is no place to discuss "the permanent things" (to borrow a famous phrase from Eliot himself), and I have been feeling vaguely guilty about abandoning this website for the bright lights of a London newspaper whose readers seem less than thrilled by my observations.
What I do not have time for, I realize, are lengthy introductions and expositions of important books. On the other hand, I think I can go back to my original concept, which was to share with friends, colleagues, and readers at least the titles of what I am reading and give perhaps a brief sketch of why a book may be or may not be worth reading. In the course of this, I shall introduce very soon a discussion of some of my favorite 20th century poets.
I am seeking guidance on how to arrange this. My initial thought is to start a thread on a book or set of books, adding to it in the course of a week or so, before posting a new column on a new topic. If there is a better way, I am open to suggestions. ust to kick this off, I am going to list some books I have been reading.
For entertainment, I have read the first two Andrea Camilleri novels about Comissario Montalbano, La Forma dell' Acqua and Il Cane di Terracotta. I enjoyed both thoroughly, and they are teaching me some of Camilleri's rather fanciful version of the Sicilian dialect. Montalbano is a great character. He has a keen mind, informed by voracious reading and an athletic body formed by voracious eating of Sicilian delicacies and disciplined by swimming. He is extremely duplicitious and mendacious with people he does not respect and yet hates telling even a white lie to his questore.
A good friend of mine observed, in recommending these books (and the television series) that Camilleri's plotting is somewhat muddled. My own view is that the problem is that he wrote too much for TV, with the result that he thinks too much in terms of scenes and episodes. In later novels, some of which I have seen on television--though I had to buy the DVDs, because I have no television service--or read in English, he has a tighter grip. His blurry approach is very much on display in the Terracotta Dog, which has two current plot lines about crime and one going back to WW II.
As hard as the Italian originals are, because of the dialect, I enjoy them more than the translations, partly because the fading in and out of Sicilian offers infinite complexities of tone and register. Nonetheless, I did read one in English and it was wonderful. Start with the first.
In preparation for our Summer School and The Age of Constantine, I have been rereading A.H.M. Jones' monumental two volumes on The Later Roman Empire. Like many monuments, TLRE is solid but dull, and his lack of sympathy with Christianity makes him a bit tone deaf from time to time. Still, it is a great introduction not to the narrative history but to the administration--civil and military--economy, institutions of the later empire.
More useful to me is H.A. Drake's Constantine and the Bishops. Drake has a number of interrelated theses. Historians have gone off base in analyzing Constantine because, for example, they are convinced that Christianity is essentially intolerant, thus where Constantine shows forbearance to pagans, it means he is either a hypocrite or under constraints. What Drake attempts to show and does to some extent is that Constantine was always in search of consensus: first a consensus with pagans on monotheism and second, a consensus within the Church. In this scenario, moderates and acommodators win, zealots, fanatics, and intransigents lose. The Arians lose when they refuse to back down at Nicaea, but Athanasius loses when he first persecutes the Meletians and then refuses to reinstate Arius.
Along these lines I have been looking at the pagan side--Philostratus' Life of the miracle-worker Apollonius of Tyana and Eunapius' Lives of the Sophists. On a deeper level, I have returned to Plotinus and reread Pierre Hadot's fine book on Plotinus. I am beginning to frame an hypothesis about Plotinus and Porphyry in relation to Christianity but will postpone discussion till later, except to say that I do not agree at all with historians who have tried to blame Porphyry for egging on Diocletian's persecution. I think they--particularly Jeremy Schott--fundamentally do not understand the decency, honesty, and kindness of these saintly pagans. I do however believe that a careful scrutiny of the legend of Apollonius, the fragments of Porphyry, the responses of Eusebius and Lactantius to his anti-Christian arguments might lead us to an understanding of why so many intelligent pagans rejected Christianity, why their opposition--reformulated as the perennial wisdom--has always attracted idealistic men, whom it corrupted.
Enough
I'll be returning to Plato to finish off the discussion that was inspired by a study of the 7th Letter.
The Age of Constantine is a very controversial period, mostly because it is ground over which Christians and anti-Christians have fought but also more traditional catholic Christians (lower c intended) and the revolutionaries who sincerely believe that we can restore the Church of Peter and Paul. That this woulld be something like the Shakers does not appear to disturb adherents to this way of thinking.
In crude terms, the argument goes something like this. The Church corrupted by its embrace of the Roman Empire and/or the Empire was corrupted by the Church. Constantine set the pattern both for the East's Caesaro-Papism and for the Western Church's arrogation of political power via the fictitious Donation of Constantine by which the Pope received the power to govern Italy. Since Constantine was an ambitious political leader and perhaps usurping tyrant, this means he had to be cynical, feigning conversion in order to gain the adherence of Christians, who were increasingly important because paganism was failing, etc etc. Others see Constantine as a religious bigot whose kicked off the persecution of pagans.
Traditional catholic Christians--which includes Lutherans and Calvinists who do not rebel against the traditions of the early Church--sometimes see Constantine as a saint, a sincere Christian who has been misunderstood. As I understand it, this is the position taken by Peter Leithart, whose work I have not read but in extracts and summaries strikes me as too partisan, though I could be doing him a disservice. I'd be very interested in Robert Peters' view of Leithart and on his recommendation I would happily read the book. The very title, however, gives off a whiff of apologetics.
Speaking personally, my dislike of Constantine derives from, first, the monstrous statue in Rome, and second, from the tone of his letters and edicts. I am reminded of rich Americans who fund conservative think tanks and think because they have money they also have sense. In principled arguments, they are forever seeking compromises that wiser heads know are impossible. I have no such people on my board, but I have considerable experience with them. Imagine a debate in biology over inheritance of acquired characteristics. The Leader does not have to be Stalin, who favored Lysenko's absurdly wrong theory, but imagine a Brezhnev or Gorbachev calling for mutual respect and toleration.
On the other hand, Constantine was not entirely wrong to regard himself as a man chosen by God to save the Empire and promote the full truth taught by Christianity and the partial truths taught by pagan monotheists. If he was arrogant in his pretension to theological knowledge and ecclesiastical authority, how much more arrogant are modern theologians who reject his work out of hand and who would craft and alternate history for the Church. The mainstream of Christianity BEFORE Constantine had pronounced against the rigorists of every school. Those who fully understood the significance of the Incarnation did not demand a life of absolute self-denial or martyrdom from the poor frail mothers and fathers and children who make up the Church. Whereas, Montanists, Novatianists, Donatists, Pelagians in different ways demanded a perfection that we should be ever seeking but can hardly expect to attain. When a consensus of bishops opposed them, these authors of choices, that is, heresiarchs and heretics, rejected all authority but their own self-important judgment. Such people are with us today, and it is with some relief that I realize that St. Peter was no ultra-Calvinist.
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An excellent way to return to the booklog, Dr. Fleming! I think this is a fine approach for those of us most interested in your reading interests but with due appreciation for the time constraints precluding lengthier posts.
Pursuant to the Daily Mail blog - keep up the good work! I eagerly await them and have even enjoyed some of your fellow bloggers on that site - Synon and Burleigh - the latter of whom I've know only through his books. Your perspective is a necessary one among the larger UK newspapers.
Thanks. I'll tell Mary Ellen Synon, who is a good friend of mine. I have her to blame for recommending me to the Daily Mail. Although she has lived in Europe almost her entire adult life--England, Ireland, Rome and now Brussels, and has forgotten how to talk American, she is one of us. While her interests are largely economic and political, she is as hard-headed a conservative as one can meet.
I think I can make this work if I do two things: 1) Write off the cuff about literary things, and 2) use this column as a means of taking notes on things I have to read in preparation for lectures or for things I am writing. If I don't always respond, it will not necessarily signify lack of interest so much as lack of time.
Dr. Fleming,
For what its worth, I think this is a splendid idea. I have enjoyed your columns for years but find reading them over at the Mail Online, to be like attempting to read Plotinus in a Strip Joint --- so many distractions. I do,however take a perverse enjoyment in the visceral and angry responses to your columns as antidotal evidence to the growing feral condition of what's left of even the Mother culture across the pond. I also am impressed by your intellectual courage and humility in posting even the most stupid and angry of responses as an illustration of where we are in terms of what was once considered "the common reader". That audience has dwindled to the point where most of what you write is considered outlandish by the common reader and rather tame fare for the civilized reader. As for me, I say keep up the good work and don't weaken until they arrive with the Patty Wagon.
Off the cuff in my opinion is good in your case. Perhaps inadvertently, though inevitably sparring with the sensibilities of the Daily Mail's readership, gets you in shape for a little more spontaneity and accessibility For those a bit more in sync with your offerings. We aren't the champs of the masses. They walk into the punch of their champ everyday and apparently prefer it. Caesars have always been rather popular with them one way or another; so be it. And that would be a treat spontaneity in literary matters. Save us all a little bit of time, as your time allows, for as I think Wilde pointed out, too-much experience, can be so retarding!! ... Remember though with spontaneity you need *not be perfect anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. Enjoy, so we get the sense we can as well, if possible.
Dr. Fleming,
Before I knew about the topic of the summer school, which I may or may not be able to attend, I had placed, among others, three books relating to Nicaea and the Trinity on my "Christmas list." Providence willed that I received all three of them: Athanasius by Peter Leithart, Defending Constanine by Peter Leithart, and Retrieving Nicaea by Khaled Anotolios. I am reading each of them "together": a chapter of one, a chapter of the second and a chapter of the third. I have neither the scholarly experience nor the contextual understanding to adequately judge the scholarship of the works, but they have "put me to thinking" on the topic; and the summer school, whether I attend or listen to the CD's, can deepen or correct the thoughts which they have stimulated. I look forward to the to your introductions and expositions.
Dear Dr. Fleming:
An excellent piece. As much as I enjoy reading your regular political blogs, I value your forays into the "permanent things" as much, if not more. I know what you mean about the limited shelf life but we need "permanent things" now more than ever.
Dr. Fleming,
I've followed you here from the Daily Mail blog (of which I'm an avid reader), and am looking forward to your thoughts on Eliot & other things. Even though I know there's no conceivable way I can keep up with your reading list, I look forward to adding your recommendations to my ever-growing-never-shrinking list.
I've never heard of Comissario Montalbano before, but I've always enjoyed detective stories. The only Italian literature I think I've ever read would be Don Camillo and Dante's Divine Comedy.
Understanding lengthy exposition is not possible in this forum, the only thing that I could think of suggesting as far as format goes would be possibly mixing it up every now and then and, perhaps posting a classic great book with a specific question or theme for discussion? I've gone back and read the posts you wrote on Plato and enjoyed them. I offer this idea for purely selfish reasons, me spending much of my time trying to work through the classics I should have read long ago and finding few if anybody to discuss them with. And by classics I don't just mean Homer or Shakespeare but even fairly recent writers like Flannery O'Conner, Evelyn Waugh, and Walker Percy.
I'll be returning to Plato to finish off the discussion that was inspired by a study of the 7th Letter.
The Age of Constantine is a very controversial period, mostly because it is ground over which Christians and anti-Christians have fought but also more traditional catholic Christians (lower c intended) and the revolutionaries who sincerely believe that we can restore the Church of Peter and Paul. That this woulld be something like the Shakers does not appear to disturb adherents to this way of thinking.
In crude terms, the argument goes something like this. The Church corrupted by its embrace of the Roman Empire and/or the Empire was corrupted by the Church. Constantine set the pattern both for the East's Caesaro-Papism and for the Western Church's arrogation of political power via the fictitious Donation of Constantine by which the Pope received the power to govern Italy. Since Constantine was an ambitious political leader and perhaps usurping tyrant, this means he had to be cynical, feigning conversion in order to gain the adherence of Christians, who were increasingly important because paganism was failing, etc etc. Others see Constantine as a religious bigot whose kicked off the persecution of pagans.
Traditional catholic Christians--which includes Lutherans and Calvinists who do not rebel against the traditions of the early Church--sometimes see Constantine as a saint, a sincere Christian who has been misunderstood. As I understand it, this is the position taken by Peter Leithart, whose work I have not read but in extracts and summaries strikes me as too partisan, though I could be doing him a disservice. I'd be very interested in Robert Peters' view of Leithart and on his recommendation I would happily read the book. The very title, however, gives off a whiff of apologetics.
Speaking personally, my dislike of Constantine derives from, first, the monstrous statue in Rome, and second, from the tone of his letters and edicts. I am reminded of rich Americans who fund conservative think tanks and think because they have money they also have sense. In principled arguments, they are forever seeking compromises that wiser heads know are impossible. I have no such people on my board, but I have considerable experience with them. Imagine a debate in biology over inheritance of acquired characteristics. The Leader does not have to be Stalin, who favored Lysenko's absurdly wrong theory, but imagine a Brezhnev or Gorbachev calling for mutual respect and toleration.
On the other hand, Constantine was not entirely wrong to regard himself as a man chosen by God to save the Empire and promote the full truth taught by Christianity and the partial truths taught by pagan monotheists. If he was arrogant in his pretension to theological knowledge and ecclesiastical authority, how much more arrogant are modern theologians who reject his work out of hand and who would craft and alternate history for the Church. The mainstream of Christianity BEFORE Constantine had pronounced against the rigorists of every school. Those who fully understood the significance of the Incarnation did not demand a life of absolute self-denial or martyrdom from the poor frail mothers and fathers and children who make up the Church. Whereas, Montanists, Novatianists, Donatists, Pelagians in different ways demanded a perfection that we should be ever seeking but can hardly expect to attain. When a consensus of bishops opposed them, these authors of choices, that is, heresiarchs and heretics, rejected all authority but their own self-important judgment. Such people are with us today, and it is with some relief that I realize that St. Peter was no ultra-Calvinist.
In the few history classes I’ve taken & books I’ve read (emphasis on few), Constantine comes across as an earnest but not brilliant man. His “I’m the bishop outside of the Church” stance seems wrong from today’s perspective, but even the fact that he was willing to “share” leadership of the Church with the bishops seems like a remarkable gesture during the time in Rome where the godhood of the Emperor had been mandatorily proclaimed for years. Certainly, it makes him no less foolish to try to compromise his way through religious truths, but unlike today’s rich, who think money gives them power to overturn the traditions of Western Civilization, he was the emperor within a tradition where he supposedly should have had the power to overturn just about anything. I guess my expectations of humility for him are lower than for the modern man who really ought to know better.
And some of the legislation he passed, such as the preventing of branding slaves in the face “because man is created in the image of God” seem to show someone who, though confused, did want to be the kind of leader God called him to be. I also know that he did some unsavory things in his personal life involving his family, so I’m thinking he may not have been the most balanced individual (and which always makes me think the title “saint” is a little too much), but then, at that time, being a Roman Emperor and not being completely off one’s rocker seemed a hefty accomplishment. And the part about him persecuting pagans is new to me. I guess I usually just focus on St. Athanasius because his is such a dramatic story.
I guess the part of the argument from the “Revertionists” that I have the most trouble following is why they think the Church had to exist with no relation to the state whatsoever (or why they assume any influence of the state would be corrupting). Isn’t this a very modern sensibility being read back into history? The Israelites never had any sense of the separation of Church & State (they wanted a King because everyone else had a King), and the early Christians don’t seem overly concerned with such a concept (from St. Paul telling people to pay taxes to Tertullian, before becoming a heretic, bragging how much the Christians supported the state as soldiers, public officials . . .etc.). None of the great Church Fathers like Augustine, Ambrose, John Chrysostom . . .etc. seemed concerned. And, as Chesterton pointed out in “The Everlasting Man”, the whole Arian crisis was a perfect example of how hard the Church fought against the corrupting power of the state, at least where doctrine was concerned. Theological arguments aside, it seems like they’re critiquing history against a completely imaginary possibility with no causal link between the two.
It also seems baseless to blame Constantine when they say he lead to Caesero-Papism in the West, which to me seems like it would have been the natural trend for the reigning government to always want to interfere with any authority that challenges its supreme control (history and human nature seem to bear that out), and the political rise of the Church in the West, which the bold moves of St. Leo the Great & especially St. Gregory the Great reveal to be the natural filling of the void of the Empire moving East. Certainly St. Gregory didn’t want to be in charge of Rome, but someone had to do it. And, while popes afterwards did get overly entangled in political affairs, shouldn’t history and human nature again point to this as not being any sort of surprise. I guess I’m never surprised when things sour, but every Cluny and St. Louis IX is like an unexpected break in the clouds.
"The mainstream of Christianity had pronounced against the rigorists of every school. Those who fully understood the significance of the Incarnation did not demand a life of absolute self-denial or martyrdom from the poor frail mothers and fathers and children who make up the Church. Whereas, Montanists, Novatianists, Donatists, Pelagians in different ways demanded a perfection that we should be ever seeking but can hardly expect to attain. When a consensus of bishops opposed them, these authors of choices, that is, heresiarchs and heretics, rejected all authority but their own self-important judgment. Such people are with us today, and it is with some relief that I realize that St. Peter was no ultra-Calvinist."
God Bless you, Tom Fleming. I hope you live another 40 years to continue to rub the sore spots of the proud and to console the meek and poor frail mothers and fathers .... who make up the Church.
Mr. Fleming, I'm looking forward to reading your insights on 20th-century poets. By the way, I greatly enjoyed your own poetry in the March issue, particularly "At the Ford of the Rock."
"It is with some relief that I realize that St. Peter was no ultra-Calvinist." Yes, that is a relief. It reminds me of some of your other book logs from the past where you discussed how Walter Scott and James Hogg gave brilliant treatments of the radical covenanters in their novels. I for one would be eager to get your off-the-cuff thoughts on any of Scott's works. Having just read through "Old Mortality", I find it to be one of the most evenhanded presentations of the complexities of religious conflict within British Protestantism I've yet seen. Scott includes admirable and damnable characters in all parties concerned. Some of the covenanters are psychopaths and killers, others are goodhearted if foolish. And he is just as hard on the worst of the Cavaliers, while the protagonist is himself a moderate Presbyterian.
During one of your columns on booklogs from the last few years, you pointed out the sad fact that the 20th century overall was a huge bust artistically, and more specifically you said that among the Christian novelists of the century, the only substantial achievements were among the Catholics. I was perplexed by that statement, and looking into it I found that I had to agree with you largely. But I believe I've found one counterexample. John Buchan was a very good Presbyterian novelist whose books I've been enjoying more and more recently. (His book on Sir Walter Scott is both very good literary criticism and adequately balanced biography, with a wholly positive verdict on Scott's achievement.) I'd also love to get your take on Buchan, if any.
Edward,
"20th century overall was a huge bust artistically"
I would agree readily with the assessment, especially with regards to literature, but what about cinema? Certainly, the preponderous of it is garbage, but from Fritz Lang and Charlie Chaplin to Ingmar Bergman and John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock, there's some truly fantastic artists and works of art. I won't argue that cinema is not some sort of lesser art, it being so intrinsically bound to technology, but when it's good it can be truly great. It is, for better or worse, the dominant art form of the 20th century (I guess TV has somewhat taken over which is now giving way to Internt serials on YouTube - ugh, what a depressing degredation from Buster Keaton down to the latest inanity on YouTube).
That aside, I've not read any of the books or authors you mentioned, and will add them to my list. "Old Mortality" in particular has piqued my interest.