Literary invective

Ezra Pound at James Joyce's grave in Zurich, 1967

I usually enjoy reading The Irish Times's Saturday column, An Irishman's Diary. This weekend column consists of Frank McNally reviewing Gary Dexter's Poisoned Pens: Literary Invective from Amis to Zola.

That literary rivalries and critical zeal produces rather sharp literary judgements is nothing new, but in this review three brief volleys of 'invective' jumped out at me:


I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.
-- Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust

All I can do is wish you every possible success. I will have another go at it, but [...] nothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clap can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization.
-- Ezra Pound on James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (which Joyce had just sent to Pound)

The more I read about him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him.
-- Lord Macaulay on Socrates

technorati tags: Frank McNally, An Irishman's Diary, Gary Dexter, Poisoned Pens, Amis, Zola, Waugh, Proust, Joyce, Finnegan's Wake, Ezra Pound, Macaulay, Socrates, literature, invective

Do you think 'globally'?

The world's 'Top Global Thinkers' that 'mattered most' in 2009, according to Foreign Policy (top twenty of one hundred in the full list here):

1. Ben Bernanke, Federal Reserve Chairman (USA)
2. Barack Obama, President (USA)
3. Zahra Rahnavard, Political Scientist (Iran)
4. Nouriel Roubini, Economist (USA)
5. Rajendra Pachauri, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Chairman (India)
6. Bill & Hillary Clinton, Former President and Secretary of State (USA)
7. Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler, White House Policy Advisor and Economist (USA)
8. David Petraeus, Central Command Commander (USA)
9. Zhou Xiaochuan, People's Bank of China Governor (China)
10. Sayyid Imam al-Sharif, Theologian (Egypt)
11. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Former President (Brazil)
12. Bill Gates, Philanthropist (USA)
13. Dick Cheney, Former Vice President (USA)
14. Larry Summers, Chief White House Economics Advisor (USA)
15. Martin Wolf, Columnist (UK)
16. Mohamed El-Erian, Bond investor (USA)
17. Pope Benedict XVI, Catholic Pope (Vatican City)
18. Richard Dawkins, Sociobiologist (UK)
19. Malcolm Gladwell, Journalist (USA)
20. Ashraf Ghani and Clare Lockhart, Political Leader and CEO (Afghanistan and USA)

A few very quick, off-the-cuff, comments on this list. The majority are Americans and do policy-related stuff. Hillary still can't get separate recognition from her husband. Bill Gates is now recognised primarily as a philanthropist rather than software pioneer. The Pope is followed closely by his scourge. The only European representation in the top twenty is from the Vatican and the UK.

Johannesburg on camera

View towards Hillbrow from my old 17th floor flat in Braamfontein

I've for some time been following an excellent blog, providing daily pictures with brief commentary of Johannesburg with surroundings: Johannesburg Daily Photo(s).

Today I find yet another blog about Africa's brashest city, also with plenty of photographic content: Urban Joburg.

Johannesburg will always be the city I will consider my 'home away from home' in Africa, and one to which I hope to return many times.

technorati tags: Johannesburg, Joburg, Jozi, eGoli, Urban Joburg, Johannesburg Daily Photo(s), Braamfontein, Hillbrow

A Bishop's duty

As the history of child abuse in Dublin's Catholic Archdiocese is uncovered, a heavy responsibility lies on its leaders to set things right. Pace St Paul:


For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker, not given to filthy lucre;

But a lover of hospitality, a lover of good men, sober, just, holy, temperate;

Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.

Titus 1:7-9 (King James Version)

technorati tags: Dublin, Archdiocese, Catholic, church, child abuse, Bishop, Titus, St Paul, Bible, New Testament, Gospel, children

Europe arrives with a bang, or whimper?

And they are...?

With the Treaty of Lisbon now ratified by all EU member states and set to come into force on 1 December, the EU leaders have selected (certainly not elected) its first President of the European Council (Belgian Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy) and High Representative for Foreign Affairs (British EU Trade Commissioner Baroness Ashton of Upholland, who has never held elected office and was eight years ago head of a local British health authority).

Perhaps this rather modest duo (some Anglophone media tends to speak of mediocrity rather than modesty) befits a union, the expanded power of which come as a result of a treaty to which all European citizens, in the few cases they have been directly asked to vote have said no (The Netherlands and France to its very similar predecessor the Constitution for Europe,and Ireland to the Lisbon Treaty until asked by the EU to vote again and deliver the right result).

The EU leadership has thus opted for a 'lowest common denominator' for the union's leaderhip. After all, who has heard of Herman Van Rompuy, Lady Ashton, Fredrik Reinfeldt, or even José Manuel Barroso? Few Europeans know of any of them (except Barroso), and presumably they are all unknown quantities to the major global leaders, from Barack Obama to Hu Jintao.

There will certainly be more European logos, more legislation, more photo ops on Euronews and thousands of new publicly funded staff to support these offices in Brussels. But will these offices command any real respect, or have any real relevance, in global affairs?

Henry Kissinger once asked, 'if I want to call Europe, who do I call?' Will the leaders of the world call on Haiku Herman when there are important matters to resolve, or will it still be the Browns, Merkels and Sarkozys of Europe who continue playing a relevant part in global politics?

I suspect the latter, and as the EU project ends up looking ever more bizarre one wonders for how long the more sceptical members of the Union will put up with it.

technorati tags: EU, Lisbon Treaty, Van Rompuy, Catherine Ashton, Barroso, Reinfeldt, Obama, Hu Jintao, Kissinger, Constitution for Europe, bureaucracy, Brussels, Euroscepticism, federalist, Euronews, haiku

Att bygga andliga och kulturella sandslott

Så var det dags att ryta litet. Den här gången angående den föreslagda kursplanen för grundskolan som inte fokuserar på, eller knappast ens nämner, kristendomen (den nämns bara i anslutning till de andra fyra världsreligionerna). Detta av den häpnadsväckande anledningen att "vi undervisar inte i religion utan om religion", enligt Skolverkets Maria Weståker. (Det tog tre förslag på ny kursplan för att ordet "kristendom" skulle nämnas överhuvudtaget.)

Tidningen Dagen rapporterar här.

Detta beslut om en ny kursplan handlar i detta fall knappast om att prioritera bildning, utan om politikerstyrt avkristnande och som en konsekvens av detta till slut en samhällsvid avkulturalisering.

Detta av sveriges Skolverk hänsynslösa och ignoranta framfarande, som säkerligen uppfattas av sagda statliga verk som utomordentligt upplyst och präktigt på alla sätt och vis, är symptomatiskt av en slags "Svenssonstalinism". Ideologisk konformitet på typiskt försiktigt, men ändå totaliserande svenskt välfärdsvis. Med byråkraters hjältemodiga insatser skall vi skapa en "ny" modern människa fri från historiens alla (ideologiskt) obekväma arv.

(I ett samhälle som sätts i skräck av t ex relativt normala influensainfektioner orkar man, eller vågar man helt enkelt inte konfrontera de stora moraliska och existensiella frågorna: världens verkliga faror och lidanden, vårat eventuella individuella ansvar, ultimata frågor om själaliv och eventuell existens bortom jordelivet osv. Religionstänkande, och för den delen även klassiska filosofiska frågeställningar som insisterar på sådant som i det moderna tidevarvet anses obekvämt eller upprörande vi vill helst inte låtsas om. Ignorans och moralisk eskapism blir vardaglighetens lyckorus.)

Resultatet av denna nya kursplan blir förstås inte en bättre eller mer insiktsfull undervisning för ett mångkulturellt och modernt Sverige, men istället en särdeles urlakad samhällskunskap. Den svenska skolan får nöja sig med att till stor del utexaminera moderna medborgare som i dess andemässiga och kulturella karaktär blir en nutidens kälkborgare (även en sådan biblisk referens till filistinismen kommer väl sedemera att falla i glömska i svallvågorna av denna ideologiskt snäva statliga planeringen av unga svenskars utbildning).

Kristendomen är, på gott och/eller ont, grunden till vår existerande samhällshistoria, musik, konst, arkitektur, osv. så som den utvecklats över ett par årtusenden (om kortare tid än så i just Sverige jämfört med andra delar av världen som inbefattades av t ex det gamla romarriket). De bibliska historierna i gammalt judiskt testament och nytt kristet evangelium - vare sig helig skrift eller mänskligt tillverkad mytologi - ligger till grunden för vår förståelse om utvecklingen och samspelet mellan temporal och spirituell makt, våra sociala normer och våran lag, viktiga delar av filosofin, och givetvis våran litteratur. Ett par århundraden av upplysning, religionskritik och realitivistisk samhällsmoral förändrar inte detta faktum.

Det handlar alltså inte om huruvida man anser det kristna arvet vara bra eller dåligt, eller ens om man faktiskt i kristen bemärkelse är troende eller inte. Vårt kristna arv kan vi inte bortse ifrån annat än utifrån komplett utopiska, och i grunden lögnaktiga premisser om vad vårat moderna samhälle är grundat på. Modernism, humanism och "nyandlighet" ger oss bara en bristfällig bild av hur vårat samhälle utvecklats och hur det är sammansatt. Som Paulus skriver i det första Korinthierbrevet, "nu se vi ju på ett dunkelt sätt, såsom i en spegel", våran "kunskap ett styckverk"...

Det är ledsamt att konstatera, men det känns som ett alltmer andefattigt fosterland man tar i beaktelse. "Fy för fan" hade man väl med ett mindre diplomatiskt och vördnadsfullt språkbruk kommenterat det hela!

technorati tags: Maria Weståker, Skolverket, kursplan, grundskola, religion, kristendom, bibel, Paulus, Korinthierbrev, historia, kultur, utbildning, Dagen, kälkborgerlig, byråkrat, andefattig, humanism, filosofi, nyandlighet, modernism, relativism, svensson, stalinism, jantelag, välfärd, Sverige, samhälle

Asian knout and European stock market

What if ‘the vicious combination of the Asian knout and the European stock market’ (Trotsky’s characterisation of tsarist Russia) proves economically more efficient than liberal capitalism? What if it shows that democracy, as we understand it, is no longer the condition and engine of economic development, but its obstacle?

Slavoj Zizek on the resurgence of anti-Communism (in Europe) and the future of capitalism here.

technorati tags: Zizek, anti-Communism, Trotsky, Asian knout, capitalism, tsarist, stock market, velvet revolution, democracy, development

We want easy choices, please

Peter Ustinov as Emperor Nero in Quo Vadis (1951)

Being confronted with real choices can be one of the most difficult things we deal with in life, when whatever choice one makes entails a significant trade-off. Presumably this is why we would like to have 'easy' choices. But, of course, if the choice is easy is it really a meaningful choice.

Thinking about choice I came across two very interesting musings on the topic from rather different points of view.

In his controversial book, The Closing of the American Mind, the American philosopher and classicist Allan Bloom writes about a modern age in which we have shrunk from the ability to make real choices:

"I'm OK, you're OK." Choice is all the rage these days, but it does not mean what it used to mean. In a free society where people are free - responsible - who can consistently not be "pro-choice"? However, when the word still had some shape and consistency, a difficult choice meant to accept difficult consequences in the form of suffering, disapproval of others, ostracism, punishment and guilt. Without this, choice was believed to have no significance. Accepting the consequences for what really counts is what gives Antigone her nobility; unwillingness to do so is what makes her sister Ismene less admirable. Now, when we speak of the right to choice, we mean that there are no necessary consequences, that disapproval is only prejudice and guilt only a neurosis. Political activism and psychiatry can handle it. In this optic Hester Prynne and Anna Karenina are not ennobling exemplars of the intractability of human problems and the significance of choice, but victims whose sufferings are no longer necessary in our enlightened age of heightened consciousness. America has no-fault automobile accidents, no-fault divorces, and it is moving with the aid of modern philosophy toward no-fault choices.


In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis invites to consider yet another perspective on choice. Arguably one of significant - indeed ultimate - significance:

I am here trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, or you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon: or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.


This from a man who, at the age of thirty, accepted Christ as, in his own words, 'perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England'.

He did not take his choice lightly.

technorati tags: choice, Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, Antigone, Hester Prynne, Anna Karenina, C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Jesus, Christ, God, Devil, moral teacher, convert, no-fault divorce, Quo Vadis, Peter Ustinov, Nero

Pettit Visiting Professor at Queen's

Philip Pettit, the Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Politics and Human Values at Princeton University, has been appointed Visiting Professor in the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast.

Pettit received his PhD in Philosophy from Queen's in 1970.

Read more about this very exciting appointment for philosophy at Queen's here.

technorati tags: Philip Pettit, Queen's, Belfast, QUB, Princeton, philosophy

Pope's international policy

Find here the Thomas More Lecture on Pope Benedict XVI's international policy by Francis Campbell. The lecture encompasses the Pope's thoughts on faith and reason, international development, climate change and disarmament.

Campbell is the British Ambassador to the Holy See and also a politics and scholastic philosophy graduate from Queen's University Belfast. The Thomas More Lectures take place annually at Allen Hall, the Seminary of the Diocese of Westminster.

technorati tags: Francis Campbell, Holy See, ambassador, Pope, Benedict, international policy, Allen Hall, Diocese, Westminster, Thomas More Lectures, Queen's, Belfast, QUB, faith, reason, climate change, international development, disarmament

Brother Ass, your body

While Karl Popper spuriously deduced twentieth-century totalitarianism from Platonism, an arguably better link can be established between the pagan Greek idealisation of the (manly) body and the Nazi cult of the healthy and fit Aryan Übermensch.

St Francis, far removed in both spirit and time from pagans and nazis alike, took a more sensible view on the human body which Francis preferred to think of as 'Brother Ass'. St Francis's view of the body is relayed by C S Lewis in The Four Loves in the following way:

Man has held three views of his body. First there is that of those ascetic Pagans who called it the prison or the "tomb" of the soul, and of Christians like [Bishop] Fisher to whom it was a "sack of dung", food for worms, filthy, shameful, a source of nothing but temptation to bad men and humiliation to good ones. Then there are the Neo-Pagans (they seldom know Greek), the nudists and the sufferers from Dark Gods, to whom the body is glorious. But thirdly we have the view which St Francis expressed by calling his body "Brother Ass". All three may be - I am not sure - defensible; but give me St Francis for my money.

Ass is exquisitely right because no one in his senses can either revere or hate a donkey. It is a useful, sturdy, lazy, obstinate, patient, lovable and infuriating beast; deserving now the stick and now a carrot; both pathetically and absurdly beautiful. So the body.

technorati tags: Popper, Plato, Platonism, totalitarianism, pagan, paganism, Christianity, Christian, Greek, Nazi, Aryan, uebermensch, C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, St Francis, Assisi, Bishop, John Fisher, body, ass, donkey,

Till Far, igen

Nostos, hemfärd

Ingenting annat än himlen
för honom som ligger med
ansiktet, det olyft-
bara, uppåtvänt.

Röda lyktor, tulpaner,
står tända utanför,
där vårens hemslöjdsmatta
för andra fötter vävs.

Ingenting annat än himlen,
ett drivande grått, det blå
flödet utan detaljer,
att ordlöst drunkna i.

Ensam på detta från vinröda
skymningar bortvända hav.
Nostos. Hemfärd till glömskan,
som var före allt.

-- Hjalmar Gullberg, 26.4.59

technorati tags: Nostos, hemfärd, Hjalmar Gullberg, far, saknad

God in the dock

Icarus

The public Western 'dialogue' on faith and religion continues apace and is gathering in ferocity.

In what is perhaps Richard Dawkins's most vicious attack on organised religion yet, this time in the Washington Post's On Faith panel discussion (here), he labels the Roman Catholic Church as potentially the 'greatest force of evil in the world' and continues to revel in remarkably frenzied invective by describing the Church's recent offer of a place to disaffected Anglo-Catholics as 'dragging its flowing skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp: "Give me your homophobes, misogynists and pederasts"'.

It is not entirely difficult to understand why the Daily Telegraph's Damian Thompson wonders whether there's 'something wrong' with Dawkins (here)...

In any case, the here is not to voice outrage at a debate on faith and religion that is seemingly spinning out of control and losing all sense of perspective on that which it is ostensibly aiming to illuminate, but to recall some rather perceptive words written by C S Lewis during World War II and published as Mere Christianity.

Pondering the changing relationship between God and man in the modern era, Lewis writes:

Modern man has reversed the relationship between God and himself. The ancient man ... approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge [although 'kindly' is hardly Dawkins's approach]: if God should have a reasonable defence for being the god who permits war, poverty and disease, he is ready to listen to it. The trial may even end in God's acquittal. But the important thing is that man is on the bench and God in the dock.


I doubt, however, that Lewis could have imagined the debate getting this noxious.

technorati tags: C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, God, judge, dock, man, humanity, religion, Christianity, belief, faith, Richard Dawkins, Catholic, Church, Anglo-Catholic, Damian Thompson, Icarus, hubris

The next Pope?

Cardinal Peter Turkson of the Cape Coast, Ghana has been appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to head the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (report here).

His new and weighty role within the Church has the media inevitably speculating (which is probably of little use given the Byzantine, if that expression may be permitted in this context, process of electing popes) on whether Cardinal Turkson is likely to become Africa's first pope since the fifth century.

Previous African popes were St Victor I (second century), St Miltiades (fourth century) and St Gelasius I (fifth century). In recent decades, Roman Catholicism has expanded faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world.

technorati tags: Cardinal, Peter Turkson, Vatican, Council for Justice and Peace, Pope, Benedict, St Victor, Miltiades, Gelasius, Cape Coast, Ghana, African Pope, Roman Catholic, Catholic

Judge for yourself

I recently blogged on a not very generous review by Paul Johnson of Diarmaid MacCulloch's colossal history of Christianity, the recently published and much discussed A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. It is only fair to note, that in response to Johnson's review, one reader noted:

Sir: Paul Johnson’s review of Diarmaid MacCulloch’s A History of Christianity (26 September) is unnecessarily mocking in tone. Mr Johnson describes Professor MacCulloch as ‘essentially a comic figure’. Any reader of the review who is unfamiliar with the rest of MacCulloch’s work will be unaware that far from being the figure of fun portrayed by Paul Johnson, he is (along with Eamon Duffy) the most distinguished historian of early modern religion working at present in the UK.

C.D.C. Armstrong
Belfast


Archbishop Rowan Williams has reviewed the book here.

Having remained curious about MacCulloch's book, and having now also listened to Andrew Marr discuss the book with the author himself on tonight's Start of the Week on BBC Radio 4, I've now decided to make my own mind up.

The book is duly ordered and on its way. All 1184 pages of it.

technorati tags: Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Paul Johnson, Spectator, Eamon Duffy, Cambridge, C.D.C. Armstrong, Andrew Marr, Rowan Williams, Start the Week, Church, Christianity