Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page
Categories
QuicksearchLinks
Blog Administration |
Tuesday, November 27. 2007QQQ"Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea," but "reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so to make it finite.... The poet asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits." G.K. Chesterton, as quoted at One Cosmos in Lunacy and Salvation in the Cosmic Funhouse Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry
No Trackbacks
Comments
Display comments as
(Linear | Threaded)
Few have ever so consistently loaded so much meaning onto so few words as did GK Chesterton.
Lunacy and solvation; one and the same not salvation, opposite of lunacy.
GK took helmet of salvation to keep his skull from splitting by lunacy from without and solvation from within. Faith and reason serves him well. if you think the current complexity of the war against jihad is new under the sun, read his epic poem "Lepanto" sometime.
He covers the literally Byzantine politics in beautiful allusion, and in so doing transmits an attitude--the one attitude among many choices--that will yield victory. Boil it down to "laughing Don Juan" fighting in a sort of joyous release, against a mysterious deadly enveloping 'other'. It's just a great, great piece of work (imho). Especially for those who have looked into the story of the Battle of Lepanto. Very good, buddy.
The lunacy from without then, as now, is the heretical usurper. Only it isn't mysterious but transparent. Like modern atheism Islam is a denial of right faith and reason, la ilaha-No God. Pope and Don both took it on with the help of the Virgin Mother and the victory was celebrated liturgically as "Our Lady of Victory." well put--indeed it is, a signal victory of Catholic faith.
...as expressed by the free hands of Venetian shipwrights and cannon-casters, of course.
Pope Pius V gathered fleets from Venice, yes.
And don't forget Genoa and from Spain, and from the Knights of Malta. St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north (Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.) Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift. He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone; The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone; The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes, And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom, And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,— But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea. Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips, Trumpet that sayeth ha! Domino gloria! Don John of Austria Is shouting to the ships. http://www.bartleby.com/103/91.html
#3.1.1.1.1
Leag
on
2007-11-27 14:04
(Reply)
The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,
The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young. In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade. ********* http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/lepanto.htm
#3.1.1.1.1.1
buddy larsen
on
2007-11-27 14:42
(Reply)
Love the quote! Love and insanity can bring one closer to God than self-satisfied logic! Beauty is truth, and truth beauty...
Beauty is truth
Truth is beauty God is love Love is duty Mired in duty just now, reminding myself that beloved puppies are worth it...
well i'm down to only one who still needs me--after that, the tricked out motor home, and the 5 year 50 state travel-book-writing project. Look for it on the remainder shelves, under "Out of Gas in Death Valley"
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.”
Emily Dickinson i bet she would have been fun to have at parties. So long as the poet has logicians and engineers to build IPods for him, all is well....
LOL --true--in a world without poets, engineers would build a facsimile. In a world without engineers, poets would be imaginary beings.
made it up off'n the stimulus herein provided--glad u like, ap!
"The poet asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head."
Considering God is the supreme engineer and logician, why in heaven's name would He split the head of the logician and spare the poet? He created both in his image, after all. ''Lepanto for Saturday Verse''
that'd be great--i think (& hope). The battle context is critical to the poem--the disarry and demoralization, after a century in the face of the relentless & constant jihad, in Christendom's highest councils. How the times needed and then in the eleventh hour found heroes to pull together a defense. How the stakes--Italy, Vatican, Europe, the Judao Christian culture, were literally up for grabs. How the Ottomans were comin' on, how their war aim was to take everything everywhere the western ocean seas lapped upon the shores of Europe. yes, an outbreak of testimony--those who've sifted carefully thru the agnostic canon and yet come up with faith are like fresh air, even in the terse commentary of this ultra-short form.
Brother Leag,
Could you take time for an exegesis of the following: "Like modern atheism Islam is a denial of right faith and reason..." [Leag] And... "Thus, as usual, extremes meet: like the religious literalist, "the materialist's world is quite simple and solid.... materialists and madmen never have doubts." [Gag quoting Chesterton] My interest, of course, is the ready lumping of non-believers into large baskets that contain madmen and Islamists. Also, which is the right faith? Thank you. Self exegesis is beyond my favor but I do appreciate yourn.
Gag miscasts GK, me thinks, GK's quote is a skeleton exegete might, if it appears in context sans .... , be pleased to consider further. Master Chesterton is a joy. Muhammadan's are atheist by confession, la ilaha. But as they are so fond of saying you must understand arabic. Baskets is a fine suggestion, mita. Madmen and Muhammadans can fit snugly in one. Right reason and faith resides in Jesus and His Church, Whom is the what Muhammad blasphemed and set his dupes to seek and destroy. Are you versant in Quran, mita? awww geeez buddy--would you pedal just a little slower--puhleeeze!!
LOL--you're right, a little orotundity do go a long ways. trying to talk up to the grand topic dontcha know.
:-) great timeline--a few holes here n there, such as (cough) the Battle of Lepanto.
:-\ Now, what impetus denies the pole of the sixteenth century but losers.
Very PC site displaying informed ignorance. It sure didn't miss a chance to report on the great schisms in Christendom vs itself, and vs Judaism, did it. The Huguenots for example get skewed way forward in the religion wars.
A fish in the water that is thirsty is in need of serious professional counseling.
This is a very fascinating time in history, and one about which I know very little.
It might be nice to acquaint today's voting public via the use of film. What do you say--think Mel Gibson could put this on the silver screen and do the facts some justice? you know, you're right--and a spectacular idea, too. What a film could be made, the visuals from that era are fantastical. Maybe the Catholic Church would invest--who knows? The time is right, that's for sure.
Battle of Lepanto would be great on the big screen.
Muhammadan riots at the extras notice might be insurmountable problem. Live action film of cloud over old safavid stompin' grounds' better educational value for voters. (But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!) Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop, Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds, Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds, Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty. Vivat Hispania! Domino Gloria! Don John of Austria Has set his people free! GKChesterton great stuff. there he's talking about the 12,000 or so Christian galley slaves freed in the battle from the Moslem holds.
|