What are you currently reading?

Started by Francisco Suárez, December 26, 2012, 09:48:56 PM

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Jacob

#1920
July 01, 2018, 11:00:36 AM
Quote from: Pon de Replay on July 01, 2018, 09:57:06 AM
When the sensitive and perceptive soul collides with an incomprehensible level of beauty and grace, then it becomes almost impossible to see one's way to the traditional ordering of the passions.  It has nothing to do with vanity or self-aggrandization, I don't think.  It is simply madness from being overwhelmed.  And I don't think Werther could help that.  We might say that he should "be more sensible," but he is not so made. 

Werther needed to read Sense and Sensibility.
"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
--Neal Stephenson

John Lamb

#1921
July 01, 2018, 02:30:11 PM Last Edit: July 01, 2018, 02:32:06 PM by John Lamb
Quote from: Pon de Replay on July 01, 2018, 09:57:06 AM
But Werther precedes Byron and Romanticism.  If he's doing anything along the lines of a trend, he's actually starting the trend.

Yes, he's a precursor.

QuotePerhaps if he had a better religious formation things would have played out differently for him.  Or perhaps not.  Suicide is always a ghoulish act, but at what point does "too much" become "too much to bear?"  When the sensitive and perceptive soul collides with an incomprehensible level of beauty and grace, then it becomes almost impossible to see one's way to the traditional ordering of the passions.  It has nothing to do with vanity or self-aggrandization, I don't think.  It is simply madness from being overwhelmed.  And I don't think Werther could help that.  We might say that he should "be more sensible," but he is not so made. 

But I'm not saying that he should be "more sensible" or even that he should necessarily "order his passions". Plato says in the Phaedrus that love can be seen as a form of madness, and I agree. From the world's perspective the saints seem mad. If anything I'm saying that he is being too sensible because he's confining his love to the earthly realm and not letting it rise to the heavenly. Actually, he sort of gets stuck midway between heaven and earth. Natural / earthly love does not make anyone commit suicide. It's when people try to make a false heaven-on-earth that destruction occurs. He wants to place Charlotte on a pedestal and treat her like a goddess, but he fails because of his lack of real piety. It's a kind of romantic constipation where he fails to deliver / give birth to his love and he ends up dying with it. Like Kierkegaard said in the lengthy passage I quoted, a true romantic does not care what the "princess" is doing in the temporal realm because he is united with her perfectly in the eternal realm - where it actually matters. Dante was a perfect practitioner of this. He didn't kill himself when Beatrice died; he got on with the daily business of his life because he had faith that he would be united with her in heaven. The fact that Werther had to kill himself when it turned out he couldn't be with her in the earthly realm proves that he is a false romantic and indeed a poseur; his suicide was a pretentious and futile gesture - he couldn't succeed in loving her properly so he despised and killed himself. He was distraught over the fact that he wasn't a true romantic - which his vanity had convinced him he was - and couldn't bear to live with himself.
"Let all bitterness and animosity and indignation and defamation be removed from you, together with every evil. And become helpfully kind to one another, inwardly compassionate, forgiving among yourselves, just as God also graciously forgave you in the Anointed." – St. Paul

Mono no aware

#1922
July 01, 2018, 06:06:37 PM Last Edit: July 01, 2018, 06:13:31 PM by Pon de Replay
Quote from: John Lamb on July 01, 2018, 02:30:11 PMBut I'm not saying that he should be "more sensible" or even that he should necessarily "order his passions". Plato says in the Phaedrus that love can be seen as a form of madness, and I agree. From the world's perspective the saints seem mad. If anything I'm saying that he is being too sensible because he's confining his love to the earthly realm and not letting it rise to the heavenly. Actually, he sort of gets stuck midway between heaven and earth. Natural / earthly love does not make anyone commit suicide. It's when people try to make a false heaven-on-earth that destruction occurs. He wants to place Charlotte on a pedestal and treat her like a goddess, but he fails because of his lack of real piety. It's a kind of romantic constipation where he fails to deliver / give birth to his love and he ends up dying with it. Like Kierkegaard said in the lengthy passage I quoted, a true romantic does not care what the "princess" is doing in the temporal realm because he is united with her perfectly in the eternal realm - where it actually matters.

Yet for Werther, it is not merely wanting to treat Lotte like a goddess, but that she is a goddess.  There is nothing that compares to her, not even the heavenly.  I think Werther would probably agree with St. Paul that faith is "the evidence of things that appear not."  But he lacks that faith.  He is a child of Enlightenment doubt.  He has been inculcated with some Christian learning, but what can he know of "things that appear not"?  Those things remain obscure to him.  Lotte, at least, appears.  She is real.  And because he is so acutely sensitive to beauty and grace, and because she is so beautiful and graceful, the heavenly unfortunately hasn't a shot.  It's certainly true that to Christian eyes he is "stuck between heaven and earth."  To him, however, Lotte is the heavenly.  That she cannot return his love is hell.  After that, suicide is something, to him, akin to annihilation.

We will probably end up having to agree to disagree, but this has been a good discussion, and it's a provocative book whether you love it as I do, or don't, as you do.  I was doing an internet search this morning for the passage about madness and the Pharisees, and I found this one on suffering.  It expresses a nearly Schopenhauerian pessimism.  What a great book (IMO).

QuoteThere is not a moment but preys upon you,—and upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, forever devouring its own offspring.

Pax.

MilesChristi

#1923
July 02, 2018, 01:50:44 PM
The Birth of Tragedy

(Taking a break from the Summa summary)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Greg

#1924
July 05, 2018, 02:37:49 AM
This forum.
Contentment is knowing that you're right. Happiness is knowing that someone else is wrong.

clau clau

#1925
July 05, 2018, 02:54:47 AM
Father time has an undefeated record.

But when he's dumb and no more here,
Nineteen hundred years or near,
Clau-Clau-Claudius shall speak clear.
(https://completeandunabridged.blogspot.com/2009/06/i-claudius.html)

MilesChristi

#1926
July 06, 2018, 05:28:23 PM
Julius Caesar
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

MilesChristi

#1927
July 08, 2018, 10:15:32 AM
The Four Loves
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Jacob

#1928
July 08, 2018, 10:24:04 AM
The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher Koch.

Arc words: "What then must we do?"
"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
--Neal Stephenson

LausTibiChriste

#1929
July 08, 2018, 10:58:21 AM
A Mind for Numbers - Barbara Oakley
Story of A Soul - the John Clarke translation
Start with Why - Simon Sinek
Lord Jesus Christ, Son Of God, Have Mercy On Me A Sinner

"Nobody is under any moral obligation of duty or loyalty to a state run by sexual perverts who are trying to destroy public morals."
- MaximGun

"Not trusting your government doesn't make you a conspiracy theorist, it means you're a history buff"

Communism is as American as Apple Pie

maryslittlegarden

#1930
July 12, 2018, 07:47:30 AM
The Winds of War by Herman Wouk
For a Child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counsellor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace

Vetus Ordo

#1931
July 12, 2018, 08:23:47 AM
Teaching Concepts: an Instructional Design Guide by M. David Merrill and Robert D. Tennyson.
DISPOSE OUR DAYS IN THY PEACE, AND COMMAND US TO BE DELIVERED FROM ETERNAL DAMNATION, AND TO BE NUMBERED IN THE FLOCK OF THINE ELECT.

red solo cup

#1932
July 13, 2018, 04:26:27 AM
The Honorable Schoolboy by John LeCarre.
non impediti ratione cogitationis

Carleendiane

#1933
July 14, 2018, 11:41:16 AM
The Life of Christmas by F Sheen. A bit flowery for me, but provides much to meditate on. My weakness is complex, twisted plots, with suspense, death, villians and heroes. So how come I have to make myself read the Life of Christ? Maybe because it will lead to meditation, which is good forme?
To board the struggle bus: no whining, board with a smile, a fake one will be found out and put off at next stop, no maps, no directions, going only one way, one destination. Follow all rules and you will arrive. Drop off at pearly gate. Bring nothing.

Jacob

#1934
July 18, 2018, 09:34:37 AM
Quote from: Jacob on July 08, 2018, 10:24:04 AM
The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher Koch.

Arc words: "What then must we do?"

I finished this yesterday.  Excellent read, highly recommended.  There is some sex, but nothing graphic.  The book is actually quite hostile towards the Sexual Revolution, equating it with the downfall of civilization.  Rather prophetic for a mainstream novel published in 1978.

Going to finish up Part I of Don Quixote and then I have a long list of books I have culled from my notes from which I have to choose.  I am thinking Hilaire Belloc: No Alienated Man by Frederick Wilhelmsen looks good.
"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be—or to be indistinguishable from—self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time."
--Neal Stephenson
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