― John Burroughs
John Burroughs (April 3, 1837 – March 29, 1921) was an American naturalist and nature essayist, active in the U.S. conservation movement. The first of his essay collections was Wake-Robin in 1871. Wikipedia
by Dante Alighieri, Anthony M. Esolen (Translator)
Of the great poets, Dante is one of the most elusive and therefore one of the most difficult to adequately render into English verse. In the Inferno, Dante not only judges sin but strives to understand it so that the reader can as well. With this major new translation, Anthony Esolen has succeeded brilliantly in marrying sense with sound, poetry with meaning, capturing both the poem’s line-by-line vigor and its allegorically and philosophically exacting structure, yielding an Inferno that will be as popular with general readers as with teachers and students. For, as Dante insists, without a trace of sentimentality or intellectual compromise, even Hell is a work of divine art.
Esolen also provides a critical Introduction and endnotes, plus appendices containing Dante’s most important sources—from Virgil to Saint Thomas Aquinas and other Catholic theologians—that deftly illuminate the religious universe the poet inhabited.
(Goodreads.com)
Hawthorne’s classic tale of a young Puritan’s meeting with the Devil.
(Goodreads.com)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Benvenuto Cellini | |
|---|---|
| Self-portrait | |
| Born | 3 November 1500 Florence, Republic of Florence |
| Died | 13 February 1571 (aged 70) Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany |
| Resting place | Santissima Annunziata, Florence[1] |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Education | Accademia delle Arti del Disegno |
| Known for | Goldsmith, sculptor, painter |
| Notable work | Cellini Salt Cellar (Saliera), 1543 |
| Movement | Mannerism |
Benvenuto Cellini (/ˌbɛnvəˈnjuːtoʊ tʃɪˈliːni, tʃɛˈ-/, Italian: [beɱveˈnuːto tʃelˈliːni]; 3 November 1500 – 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier, musician, and artist who also wrote poetry and a famous autobiography.
He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism. He is remembered for his skill, in such pieces as the Cellini Salt Cellar and Perseus with the Head of Medusa.
Benvenuto Cellini was born in Florence, in present-day Italy. His parents were Giovanni Cellini and Maria Lisabetta Granacci. They were married for 18 years before the birth of their first child. Benvenuto was the second child of the family. The son of a musician and builder of musical instruments, Cellini was pushed towards music, but when he was fifteen, his father reluctantly agreed to apprentice him to a goldsmith, Antonio di Sandro, nicknamed Marcone. At the age of 16, Benvenuto had already attracted attention in Florence by taking part in an affray with youthful companions. He was banished for six months and lived in Siena, where he worked for a goldsmith named Fracastoro (unrelated to the Veronese polymath). From Siena he moved to Bologna, where he became a more accomplished cornett and flute player and made progress as a goldsmith.[2] After a visit to Pisa and two periods of living in Florence (where he was visited by the sculptor Torrigiano), he moved to Rome, at the age of nineteen.[3][4]
Bust of Benvenuto Cellini on the Ponte Vecchio, FlorencePerseus with the Head of Medusa
His first works in Rome were a silver casket, silver candlesticks, and a vase for the bishop of Salamanca, which won him the approval of Pope Clement VII. Another celebrated work from Rome is the gold medallion of “Leda and the Swan” executed for the Gonfaloniere Gabbriello Cesarino, and which is now in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello in Florence.[5] He also took up the cornett again, and was appointed one of the pope’s court musicians.[3][6]
In the attack on Rome by the imperial forces of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor under the command of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon and Constable of France, Cellini’s bravery proved of signal service to the pontiff. According to Cellini’s own accounts, he shot and injured Philibert of Châlon, prince of Orange[7] (and, allegedly, shot and killed Charles III resulting in the Sack of Rome). His bravery led to a reconciliation with the Florentine magistrates,[8] and he soon returned to his hometown of Florence. Here he devoted himself to crafting medals, the more famous of which are “Hercules and the Nemean Lion”, in gold repoussé work, and “Atlas supporting the Sphere”, in chased gold, the latter eventually falling into the possession of Francis I of France.[9]
From Florence, he went to the court of the duke of Mantua, and then back to Florence. On returning to Rome, he was employed in the working of jewelry and in the execution of dies for private medals and for the papal mint.[10] In 1529, his brother Cecchino killed a Corporal of the Roman Watch and in turn was wounded by an arquebusier, later dying of his wound. Soon afterward Benvenuto killed his brother’s killer—an act of blood revenge but not justice as Cellini admits that his brother’s killer had acted in self-defense.[11] Cellini fled to Naples to shelter from the consequences of an affray with a notary, Ser Benedetto, whom he had wounded. Through the influence of several cardinals, Cellini obtained a pardon. He found favor with the new pope, Paul III, notwithstanding a fresh homicide during the interregnum three days after the death of Pope Clement VII in September 1534. The fourth victim was a rival goldsmith, Pompeo of Milan.[12]
The plots of Pier Luigi Farnese led to Cellini’s retreat from Rome to Florence and Venice, where he was restored with greater honour than before. At the age of 37, upon returning from a visit to the French court, he was imprisoned on a charge (apparently false) of having embezzled the gems of the pope’s tiara during the war. He was confined to the Castel Sant’Angelo, escaped, was recaptured, and was treated with great severity; he was in daily expectation of death on the scaffold. While imprisoned in 1539, Cellini was the target of an assassination attempt of murder by ingestion of diamond dust; the attempt failed, for a nondiamond gem was used instead.[13] The intercession of Pier Luigi’s wife, and especially that of the Cardinal d’Este of Ferrara, eventually secured Cellini’s release, in gratitude for which he gave d’Este a splendid cup.[10][14]
Cellini then worked at the court of Francis I at Fontainebleau and Paris. Cellini is known to have taken some of his female models as mistresses, having an illegitimate daughter in 1544 with one of them while living in France, whom he named Costanza.[15] Cellini considered the Duchesse d’Étampes to be set against him and refused to conciliate with the king’s favorites. He could no longer silence his enemies by the sword, as he had silenced those in Rome.[10]
After several years of productive work in France, but beset by almost continual professional conflicts and violence, Cellini returned to Florence. There he once again took up his skills as a goldsmith, and was warmly welcomed by Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici – who elevated him to the position of court sculptor and gave him an elegant house in Via del Rosario (where Cellini built a foundry), with an annual salary of two hundred scudi. Furthermore, Cosimo commissioned him to make two significant bronze sculptures: a bust of himself, and Perseus with the head of Medusa (which was to be placed in the Lanzi loggia in the centre of the city).
In 1548, Cellini was accused by a woman named Margherita of having committed sodomy with her son Vincenzo,[16] and he temporarily fled to seek shelter in Venice. This was neither the first nor the last time that Cellini was implicated for sodomy (once with a woman and at least three times with men during his life), illustrating his homosexual or bisexual tendencies.[17][18] For example, earlier in his life as a young man, he was sentenced to pay 12 staia of flour in 1523 for relations with another young man named Domenico di Ser Giuliano da Ripa.[19] Meanwhile, in Paris a former model and lover brought charges against him of using her “after the Italian fashion” (i.e., sodomy).[19]
During the war with Siena in 1554, Cellini was appointed to strengthen the defences of his native city, and, though rather shabbily treated by his ducal patrons, he continued to gain the admiration of his fellow citizens by the magnificent works which he produced.[10] According to Cellini’s autobiography, it was during this period that his personal rivalry with the sculptor Baccio Bandinelli grew.[20] On 26 February 1556, Cellini’s apprentice Fernando di Giovanni di Montepulciano accused his mentor of having sodomised him many times while “keeping him for five years in his bed as a wife”.[21] This time the penalty was a hefty 50 golden scudi fine, and four years of prison, remitted to four years of house arrest thanks to the intercession of the Medicis.[19] In a public altercation before Duke Cosimo, Bandinelli had called out to him Sta cheto, soddomitaccio! (Shut up, you filthy sodomite!) Cellini described this as an “atrocious insult”, and attempted to laugh it off.[22]
After briefly attempting a clerical career, in 1562 he married a servant, Piera Parigi, with whom he claimed he had five children, of whom only a son and two daughters survived him.
He was also named a member (Accademico) of the prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno of Florence, founded by the Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, on 13 January 1563, under the influence of the architect Giorgio Vasari. He died in Florence on 13 February 1571 and was buried with great pomp in the church of the Santissima Annunziata.Statue of Cellini, Piazzale degli Uffizi, Florence
Besides his works in gold and silver, Cellini executed sculptures of a grander scale. One of the main projects of his French period is probably the Golden Gate for the Château de Fontainebleau. Only the bronze tympanum of this unfinished work, which represents the Nymph of Fontainebleau (Paris, Louvre), still exists, but the complete aspect can be known through archives, preparatory drawings and reduced casts.[23][24][25]
Upon his return from France to his hometown Florence in 1545, Benvenuto cast a bronze bust of Cosimo I Medici, the Grand Duke of Tuscany.[26] On this statue, Cellini crafted three anthropomorphic heads on to the armour of the duke. The first of them is “grotesque” situated on the right shoulder of Cosimo. The decorative head is composed of lineaments of a satyr, lion and a man. Two other heads, much smaller than the first and almost identical, can be found beneath the collarbones on the bust’s front. His most distinguished sculpture is the bronze group of Perseus with the Head of Medusa, a work (first suggested by Duke Cosimo I de Medici) now in the Loggia dei Lanzi at Florence, his attempt to surpass Michelangelo‘s David and Donatello‘s Judith and Holofernes. The casting of this work caused Cellini much trouble and anxiety, but it was hailed as a masterpiece as soon as it was completed. The original relief from the foot of the pedestal—Perseus and Andromeda—is in the Bargello, and has been replaced by a cast.[10]
By 1996, centuries of environmental pollution exposure had streaked and banded the statue. In December 1996 it was removed from the Loggia and transferred to the Uffizi for cleaning and restoration. It was a slow process, and the restored statue was not returned to its home until June 2000.[citation needed]
Among his art works, many of which have perished, were a colossal Mars for a fountain at Fontainebleau and the bronzes of the doorway, coins for the Papal and Florentine states, a life-sized silver Jupiter, and a bronze bust of Bindo Altoviti. The works of decorative art are florid in style.[10]Leda and the Swan.Cellini’s Saliera, made in Paris, 1540–1543; Gold, partly covered in enamel, with an ebony base.
In addition to the bronze statue of Perseus and the medallions previously referred to, the works of art in existence today are a medallion of Clement VII commemorating the peace between the Christian princes, 1530, with a bust of the pope on the reverse and a figure of Peace setting fire to a heap of arms in front of the temple of Janus, signed with the artist’s name; a signed portrait medal of Francis; a medal of Cardinal Pietro Bembo;[10] and the celebrated gold, enamel and ivory[citation needed] salt cellar (known as Saliera) made for Francis I of France at Vienna. This intricate 26-cm-high sculpture, of a value conservatively estimated at 58,000,000 schilling, was commissioned by Francis I. Its principal figures are a naked sea god and a woman, sitting opposite each other with legs entwined, symbolically representing the planet Earth. Saliera was stolen from the Kunsthistorisches Museum on 11 May 2003 by a thief who climbed scaffolding and smashed windows to enter the museum. The thief set off the alarms, but these were ignored as false, and the theft remained undiscovered until 8:20 am. On 21 January 2006 the Saliera was recovered by the Austrian police and later returned to the Kunsthistorisches Museum where it is now back on Kunstkammer display.[27] One of the more important works by Cellini from late in his career was a life-size nude crucifix carved from marble. Although originally intended to be placed over his tomb, this crucifix was sold to the Medici family who gave it to Spain. Today the crucifix is in the Escorial Monastery near Madrid, where it has usually been displayed in an altered form – the monastery added a loincloth and a crown of thorns. For detailed information about this work, see the text by Juan López Gajate in the Further Reading section of this article. Cellini, while employed at the papal mint at Rome during the papacy of Clement VII and later of Paul III, created the dies of several coins and medals, some of which still survive at this now-defunct mint. He was also in the service of Alessandro de Medici, first duke of Florence, for whom he made in 1535 a 40-soldi piece with a bust of the duke on one side and standing figures of the saints Cosima and Damian on the other. Some connoisseurs attribute to his hand several plaques, “Jupiter crushing the Giants,” “Fight between Perseus and Phineus“, a Dog, etc.[10] Other works, such as the portrait bust shown, are not directly attributed but are instead attributed to his workshop.
Cellini’s Crucifix at El Escorial MonasteryCellini’s Medal portrait of Clement VII and morse
The important works which have perished include the uncompleted chalice intended for Clement VII; a gold cover for a prayer book as a gift from Pope Paul III to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, both described at length in his autobiography; large silver statues of Jupiter, Vulcan and Mars, created for Francis I during his stay in Paris; a bust of Julius Caesar; and a silver cup for the cardinal of Ferrara. The magnificent gold “button”, or morse (a clasp for a cape), made by Cellini for the cape of Clement VII, the competition for which is so graphically described in his autobiography, appears to have been sacrificed by Pope Pius VI, with many other priceless specimens of the goldsmith‘s art, in furnishing the 30 million francs demanded by Napoleon I at the conclusion of the campaign against the Papal States in 1797. According to the terms of the treaty, the pope was permitted to pay a third of that sum in plate and jewels. In the print room of the British Museum are three watercolour drawings of this splendid morse by F. Bertoli, done at the insistence of an Englishman named Talman in the first half of the 18th century. The obverse and reverse, as well as the rim, are drawn full size, and moreover the morse with the precious stones set therein, including a diamond then considered the second-largest in the world, is fully described.[10]Cellini, Benvenuto. Bearded Man. Recto. 28.3 x 18.5 cm. Paper, graphite (1540–1543) (?) Royal Library, Turin.
The known drawings and sketches by Benvenuto Cellini are as follows:
The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini was started in the year 1558 at the age of 58 and ended abruptly just before his last trip to Pisa around the year 1563 when Cellini was approximately 63 years old. The memoirs give a detailed account of his singular career, as well as his loves, hatreds, passions, and delights, written in an energetic, direct, and racy style; as one critic wrote “Other goldsmiths have done finer work, but Benvenuto Cellini is the author of the most delightful autobiography ever written.”[29] Cellini’s writing shows a great self-regard and self-assertion, sometimes running into extravagances which are impossible to credit. He even writes in a complacent way of how he contemplated his murders before carrying them out. He writes of his time in Paris:
When certain decisions of the court were sent me by those lawyers, and I perceived that my cause had been unjustly lost, I had recourse for my defence to a great dagger I carried; for I have always taken pleasure in keeping fine weapons. The first man I attacked was a plaintiff who had sued me; and one evening I wounded him in the legs and arms so severely, taking care, however, not to kill him, that I deprived him of the use of both his legs. Then I sought out the other fellow who had brought the suit, and used him also such wise that he dropped it.— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, Ch. XXVIII, translated by John Addington Symonds, Dolphin Books, 1961
Parts of his tale recount some extraordinary events and phenomena; such as his stories of conjuring up a legion of devils in the Colosseum, after one of his mistresses had been spirited away from him by her mother; of the marvellous halo of light which he found surrounding his head[30] at dawn and twilight after his Roman imprisonment, and his supernatural visions and angelic protection during that adversity; and of his being poisoned on two separate occasions.[10]
The autobiography was translated into English by Thomas Roscoe, by John Addington Symonds, by Robert H.H. Cust and Sidney J.A. Churchill (1910), and by Anne Macdonell. It has been considered and published as a classic, and commonly regarded as one of the more colorful autobiographies (certainly the most important autobiography from the Renaissance).[citation needed][29]
Cancer Full Moon
The eclipse 2 weeks ago was tied to Mercury, which continues to feature strongly in this lunation. The prominence of the Winged Messenger conjunct the Sun in Capricorn and opposing the Moon in Cancer suggests that ongoing discussion and negotiations remain pivotal. These are particularly relevant in situations where there are vastly opposing views and stances. Mercury conveys information to and from various people and places. He is very much the agent of development for ideas and actions and provides a live channel for making progress.
Nonetheless, he has a Machiavellian side and can sometimes deflect attention, play devil’s advocate, or simply stir up trouble for the sake of it. In Capricorn, he may be prone to asserting authority just to establish a rule, tradition, or principle — even when it might be outmoded — or, perhaps worse, when there is no true moral substance behind the action. But any potential troubles that Mercury might signify in such contexts may or may not come to pass, depending on the influence of other people and alternative lines of thought.
This is partly due to the sheer proximity of Mercury to the Sun. There are two points to emphasize here. The first is that, although the planet connects with logical thinking, it is mutable by nature. It can therefore adapt to anyone’s logic if it ensures the right outcome for the interests Mercury represents! He can be a bit of a chameleon and is influenced most by the nearest planet in the astrological chart.
The second point is that horary and related astrological theory considers Mercury combust in this proximity to the Sun (within 8.5° of conjunction), which effectively blows up the power that the planet might inherently possess. There may be plenty of chatter — and even contention — around certain issues then. But the real question is, how far will this affect specific actions?
Looking to where the more obvious power appears in the skies, we find the Moon in Cancer sitting firmly in its sign of domicile, indicating an easy flow and expression of all that the Moon represents: emotions, instincts, and everything that connects us in ways that, while not necessarily visible, are nonetheless significant. We may identify this powerful but often undervalued or unrecognized line of intelligence as our sixth sense, a subtle part of our psyche that communicates information about both internal and external factors. In the normal course of running our lives, we may not have the time or inclination to stop and attune to these subtle signals underlying our conscious needs.
This aspect of our nature may well surface more obviously and hold greater sway than so-called everyday rationale or logical argument. Our intuitive nature may well surface more obviously and hold greater sway than logic. In the days ahead, it may vie for pole position against the backdrop of major planets Jupiter and Saturn having entered the air sign of Aquarius earlier this month on December 16–19. Despite the promises of greater objectivity from those planetary big boys in air, the watery Cancerian Moon may have a way of subtly sidestepping any typical course of events and overriding the usual kinds of decisions that we would make — at least for a little while.
A sense of things being a bit unusual and unpredictable is also emphasized. The Moon sextiles Uranus in Taurus. Uranus is the bringer of unexpected turns of events. With their sextile to the Moon, we are offered a chance to welcome a different approach versus having one imposed upon us, as can happen with the conjunction or opposition. Anything novel, edgy, or exciting should be embraced if we are to be open to beneficial changes in our lives.
Uranus may still bring an amount of disruption with it; growth and improvement don’t necessarily come without discomfort and effort. Nonetheless, interruptions attached to a sextile might be less tricky to manage than under major or hard aspects. With a little willingness and determination, we can enter into a situation that happily sweeps us along by a supportive warm breeze, rather than being blasted by a destructive torrent!
This article is from the Mountain Astrologer, written by Diana Collis.
“Blessed and blessing, this music is in some sort the equivalent of the night, of the deep and living darkness,” Aldous Huxley wrote of Beethoven’s Benedictus in his exquisite meditation on why music enchants us so. But he could have well been writing about Ludwig van Beethoven (December 16, 1770–March 26, 1827) himself — a creator suffused with darkness yet animated by the benediction of light.
Like Frida Kahlo, Beethoven sublimated a lifetime of unbearable bodily suffering to the irrepressible vitality of his creative spirit. Bedeviled by debilitating physical illness all his life — the anguishing pinnacle of which was his loss of hearing at the age of twenty-eight — he nonetheless became a servant of joy. Even Helen Keller, herself deaf and blind, conveyed the timeless transcendence of his music in her moving account of “hearing” his Ode to Joy.
The source of Beethoven’s deafness remains an enigma. Some biographers have speculated lead poisoning and others auto-immune disease, while Beethoven himself attributed it to a mysterious accident induced by rage — according to a second-hand account reported to his first serious biographer, a tenor interrupted Beethoven’s creative flow during a fit a fervent composition, which sent him into fury so violent that he, upon leaping from his desk, sustained a seizure, collapsed to the floor, and was deaf by the time he rose.
Given the mysterious onset of his hearing loss and the rudimentary state of medicine at the time, Beethoven worried that his sudden deafness might be the symptom of a fatal disease. A brilliant and ambitious young man just beginning to blossom into his genius, he was uncertain whether he would live or die — ambiguity enough to hurl even the stablest of minds into maddening anxiety.
Beethoven by Christian Hornemann, 1803
But despite his constant struggle with physical pain and the torment of his deafness — particularly painful since until its loss his exceptional hearing had been a point of pride for him — Beethoven experienced as his greatest malady his bone-deep melancholy and its sharpest flavor of loneliness. He found his deafness “less distressing when playing and composing, and most so in intercourse with others.” Loneliness, indeed, was his basic condition from a young age, only amplified by his deafness. But it was also, as for Blake, inseparable from his genius. The feat of becoming an artist who continues to stir the human heart centuries after his own has ceased beating is all the grander against the backdrop of what Beethoven had to overcome as a creature of flesh and blood in order to serve the creative spirit.
Nowhere does that singular spirit come to life more vibrantly than in the 1927 masterwork Beethoven the Creator (public library) by the great French dramatist, novelist, essayist, and art historian Romain Rolland — not so much a standard biography but a passionately poetic portrait of the great composer and his inner world.
Beethoven in 1805 by the French painter and portraitist Louis Letronne
Adding to literature’s most beautiful writings on the power of music, Rolland channels Beethoven’s singular transcendence:
Music develops in its own elect that power of concentration on an idea, that form of yoga, that is purely European, having the traits of action and domination that are characteristic of the West: for music is an edifice in motion, all the parts of which have to be sensed simultaneously. It demands of the soul a vertiginous movement in the immobile, the eye clear, the will taut, the spirit flying high and free over the whole field of dreams. In no other musician has the embrace of thought been more violent, more continuous, more superhuman.
Rolland — who some years earlier had rallied the world’s greatest intellectuals, from Albert Einstein to Bertrand Russell to Jane Addams, to co-sign the Declaration of the Independence of the Mind — considers the independence of mind and spirit at the heart of Beethoven’s superhuman genius:
[…]
Beethoven belongs to the first generation of those young German Goethes … those Columbuses who, launched in the night on the stormy sea of the Revolution, discovered their own Ego and eagerly subdued it. Conquerors abuse their power: they are hungry for possession: each of these free Egos wishes to command. If he cannot do this in the world of facts, he wills it in the world of art; everything becomes for him a field on which to deploy the battalions of his thoughts, his desires, his regrets, his furies, his melancholies.
[…]
The prime condition for the free man is strength. Beethoven exalts it; he is even inclined to over-esteem it. Kraft über alles! [Power over everything!] There is something in him of Nietzsche’s superman, long before Nietzsche.
That superhuman ability to rise above malady and misfortune comes alive in a spectacular letter to Beethoven’s brothers Carl and Johann, whom he had practically raised after their father succumbed to alcoholism. Found in Beethoven: Letters, Journals and Conversations (public library), the missive — known as the Heiligenstadt Testament — was written in early October of 1802 but intended to be read and fulfilled after his death. Thirty-two-year-old Beethoven — who, in a testament to elemental hardships of the era the absence of which we now take for granted, didn’t know his own date of birth at the time and believed he was twenty-eight — writes shortly after the completion of his Second Symphony:
Born with a passionate and excitable temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If I at any time resolved to surmount all this, oh! how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, sadder than ever, of my defective hearing! — and yet I found it impossible to say to others: Speak louder; shout! for I am deaf! Alas! how could I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought to have been more perfect with me than with other men,–a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that few of my profession ever enjoyed! Alas, I cannot do this! Forgive me therefore when you see me withdraw from you with whom I would so gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe from causing me to be misunderstood. No longer can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society when compelled to do so. I must live like an exile. In company I am assailed by the most painful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed to the risk of my condition being observed… What humiliation when any one beside me heard a flute in the far distance, while I heard nothing, or when others heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing! Such things brought me to the verge of desperation, and wellnigh caused me to put an end to my life. Art! art alone, deterred me. Ah! how could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth all that I felt it was my vocation to produce?
The original Heiligenstadt Testament in Beethoven’s hand
In a passage that calls to mind the wisdom of Galway Kinnell’s beautiful and life-giving poem “Wait,” written for a young friend contemplating suicide, Beethoven adds:
After beseeching his brothers to enlist, after his death, an army surgeon of their acquaintance in describing the nature of his malady, he ends:
[…]
I joyfully hasten to meet Death. If he comes before I have had the opportunity of developing all my artistic powers, then, notwithstanding my cruel fate, he will come too early for me, and I should wish for him at a more distant period; but even then I shall be content, for his advent will release me from a state of endless suffering. Come when he may, I shall meet him with courage. Farewell! Do not quite forget me, even in death.
When Beethoven wrote this impassioned and anguished letter to his brothers, his greatest work was ahead of him. It would unfold over the decades to come, culminating in his crowning achievement — his ninth and final symphony, known for reasons one feels in one’s bones as the “Ode to Joy,” which gives musical form to what Rolland so memorably called “the joy of suffering overcome.”
That rebellious refusal of Beethoven’s to resign himself to his fate is what Rolland celebrates over and over in his intensely lyrical more-than-biography. In a passage that may or may not deliberately invoke the tiny bone in the ear known as the anvil — perhaps a clever play on the composer’s deafness and perhaps linguistic happenstance aided by translation — Rolland captures Beethoven’s strength of character:
Complement Rolland’s altogether magnificent Beethoven the Creator with Alfred Kazin on Blake, Beethoven, and the tragic genius of outsiderdom, then revisit Rolland’s contemporary and compatriot Simone Weil on how to make use of our suffering.
December 24, 2020 • TheOnion.com
On this special Christmas Eve episode of The Topical, Leslie is joined from the North Pole by Jolly Old Saint Nicholas himself who has a very special and very important message for all of his favorite little rubbers and tuggers.
Scott Samuelson (aeon.co)
is associate professor of philosophy and the humanities at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa. His latest book is Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering: What Philosophy Can Tell Us about the Hardest Mystery of All (2018).
Published in association with
The University of Chicago Press
an Aeon Strategic Partner
Edited by Sam Hasel
A utilitarian machine with a suicidal ghost inside. J S Mill (1873) by George Frederick Watts. Photo courtesy Wikipedia
In 1826, at the age of 20, John Stuart Mill sank into a suicidal depression, which was bitterly ironic, because his entire upbringing was governed by the maximisation of happiness. How this philosopher clambered out of the despair generated by an arch-rational philosophy can teach us an important lesson about suffering.
Inspired by Jeremy Bentham’s ideals, James Mill’s rigorous tutelage of his son involved useful subjects subordinated to the utilitarian goal of bringing about the greatest good for the greatest number. Music played a small part in the curriculum, as it was sufficiently mathematical – an early ‘Mozart for brain development’. Otherwise, subjects useless to material improvement were excluded. When J S Mill applied to Cambridge at the age of 15, he’d so mastered law, history, philosophy, economics, science and mathematics that they turned him away because their professors didn’t have anything more to teach him.
The young Mill soldiered on with efforts for social reform, but his heart wasn’t in it. He’d become a utilitarian machine with a suicidal ghost inside. With his well-tuned calculative abilities, the despairing philosopher put his finger right on the problem:
[I]t occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: ‘Suppose that all your objects in life were realised; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?’ And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered: ‘No!’ At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down.
For most of our history, we’ve seen suffering as a mystery, and dealt with it by placing it in a complex symbolic framework, often where this life is conceived as a testing ground. In the 18th century, the mystery of suffering becomes the ‘problem of evil’, in which pain and misery turn into clear-cut refutations of God’s goodness to utilitarian reformers. As Mill says of his father: ‘He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.’
For a utilitarian, the idea of worshipping the creator of suffering is not only absurd, it undercuts the purpose of morality. It channels our energies toward the acceptance of what we should remedy. To revere the natural order could even turn us into moral monsters. Mill says: ‘In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature’s every day performances.’
What Mill calls the ‘Religion of Humanity’ involves pushing aside the old conception of God, and taking over responsibility for what happens in the world. We’re to become the good architect that God never was.
Redesigning the world hasn’t proven easy. Mill claims that our power to inflict suffering is small next to nature’s: ‘Anarchy and the Reign of Terror are overmatched in injustice, ruin, and death, by a hurricane and a pestilence.’ But that’s hard to maintain after the 20th century. What’s the 1755 Lisbon earthquake compared with Auschwitz? What’s a flu epidemic next to Hiroshima? The potential disasters of global warming or nuclear war show that apocalypse isn’t just the prerogative of God.
But the problem isn’t limited to the Religion of Humanity’s catastrophes. Even when things materially improve because of our commitment to utilitarian principles, our increased happiness often doesn’t register as meaningful. Mill’s irrepressible ‘No!’ can be distinctly heard in those I call ‘exiteers’, the growing number of people who, despite their ideological differences, share a desire to exit the system, sometimes with a bang. The irrepressible ‘No!’ haunts even comfy lives in the form of nagging anxieties muted by a steady stream of drugs and distractions. When we see each other in terms of usefulness, as Jean-Paul Sartre observed long before Facebook and Twitter: ‘Hell is other people.’
The problem with our attempt to play God is that it splits us into fixers and problems, marketers and consumers, biotechnicians and patients, entertainers and the entertained, managers and subjects, elites and deplorables, gods and beasts, when we should be workers, doers, caregivers, artists, teachers, students and citizens – roles that involve an openness to risk and vulnerability.
The utilitarian take on the problem of evil is half-right. Suffering ultimately outstrips our goals and beliefs. To claim otherwise is heartless. But it’s wrong to think that the problem of evil brushes aside God or the goodness of nature. When we refuse to accept a fundamental dimension of suffering, we suffer worse. There’s an immense mystery at the heart of being human: the paradox of opposing and accepting suffering. To abandon either side of the paradox is the real problem of evil.
The best things in life clue us into the mystery. Think of art, which by evoking our tragedies fills us with joy. Think of humour, which by registering our humiliations makes us roar with laughter. Think of forgiveness, which allows us to judge and be judged without destroying our relationships. Think of freedom, which by opening us to error gives our lives weight. Though these mysteries don’t preclude the belief in progress, they don’t subordinate all our energies to it. They might often be useless for material improvement, but their uselessness is extremely useful for a meaningful life.
Here’s another irony: what first lifted Mill out of his utilitarianism-induced depression was an act of suffering. Reading a historian’s account of losing his father as a boy, Mill started crying, and the fact that he was crying filled him with happiness: ‘I was no longer hopeless: I was not a stock or a stone.’
Next, he explored Romantic poetry, which nourished the ecosystem of his inwardness. By adding an affective dimension to his life’s projects, literature revealed a new horizon of value, one drawn by the paradox of suffering.
Most importantly, Mill fell in love – with a married woman. After Harriet Taylor’s husband died, Mill wryly observed: ‘[I]t was granted to me to derive from that evil my own greatest good.’ Not only did his eventual wife possess the intellectual vigour that Mill admired in his father, she embodied the poetry that he never got from his upbringing: ‘What was abstract and purely scientific was generally mine; the properly human element came from her.’
Mill tries philosophically to resolve the paradox of suffering by arguing that higher goods such as love and literature are ultimately more satisfying than basic forms of pleasure. In some sense, that’s true. But the terms of this satisfaction are no longer utilitarian; they have more to do with adventure, beauty, even holiness. As the political philosopher Michael Sandel puts it in Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? (2009): ‘Mill saves utilitarianism from the charge that it reduces everything to a crude calculus of pleasure and pain, but only by invoking a moral ideal of human dignity and personality independent of utility itself.’
We should be wary of the Religion of Humanity, because subordinating our lives to utility hollows them out. But we have lots to learn from Mill’s fierce desire to add poetry to progress. Let’s rediscover the paradox that George Herbert – one of those poets excluded from Mill’s education – deftly expressed in 1633:
I will complain, yet praise;
I will bewail, approve:
And all my sowre-sweet dayes
I will lament, and love.
Without goods that explode utilitarianism and open us to the mystery of suffering, even the happiest life is miserable.
Seven Ways of Looking at Pointless Suffering by Scott Samuelson is out now via The University of Chicago Press.
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