for man is a giddy thing (Much Ado V.4.106)

 At the close of William Shakespeare's play, Much Ado About Nothing, one of the main characters, Benedick, who has throughout the play been opposed to marriage but has been converted by the trickery and machinations of his friends, speaks the conclusion to the play and utters this phrase: 

In brief, since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never flout at me for what I have said against it, for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion. (Much Ado, V.4.103-106)

Man is a giddy thing. A dictionary entry defines the adjective giddy as "having a sensation of whirling and a tendency to fall or stagger; dizzy" (https://languages.oup.com/google-dictionary-en/). What is Shakespeare telling us when he has Benedick describe himself, but not just himself, in these terms? Here, I belie,ve is one of those Meta-Shakespeare quotes where the bard makes a statement that outside the context of the play has as much meaning as it does in context. 

For Benedick, his statement is part apology for his changed opinion on the state of marriage. Having stated at previous points in the play that he is "a professed tyrant to their sex" (I.1.160), that marriage is akin to thrusting "thy neck into a yoke" (I.1.191). At another point proclaiming that "I will live a bachelor" (I.1.234). He states that if ever he changes his mind, "let me be vilely painted, and in such great letters as they write 'Here is good horse to hire ... Here you may see Benedick the married man'" (I.1.251-254). 

Benedick's position is clear, yet his friend and lord, Don Pedro, proposes to unmask Benedick's false abhorrence of love and to knit his heart to Beatrice, who, while not being as forecful about never marrying anyone, clearly has a complicated relationship with Benedick. It appears that the two were involved at some level previously. Early in the play, Beatrice remarks that "You [Benedick] always end with a Jade's trick. I know you of old" (I.1.138). Later, after the masquerade ball in which Beatrice spoke harshly to Benedick (whether she knew it was him or not is a matter of debate), Don Pedro tells her "you have lost the heart of Signor Benedick." She replies, "Indeed, my lord, he lent it me awhile, and I gave him use for it - a double heart for his single one. Marry, once before he won it of me with false dice; therefore your grace may well say I have lost it" (II.1.261-266). 

Don Pedro and others devise a plan to make Benedick and Beatrice believe that the other secretly loves them, thus bringing "Signor Benedick and Lady Beatrice into a mountain of affection th' one with th' other" (II.1.346). 

It is this trick played out that changes the heart of Benedick and Beatrice both and gives them leave to love each other. The conclusion to this is that after promising to marry each other, Benedick must explain his previous behavior. Man is a giddy thing. Man is changeable. Man is not surefooted on this earth. Man can change his mind and must when circumstances insist. "When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married" (II.3.230), Benedick states when first his mind is altered to new possibilities. 

When all else has been accomplished and he and Beatrice are forced to see themselves rightly, Benedick's best explanation for the change in himself is that "Man is a giddy thing." 

Meta-Shakespeare

 I've got a daughter in Classical Conversations doing Challenge III this year. That means we'll be studying Shakespeare. I've got five plays lined up to study with her and am already done with Much Ado About Nothing. I had a conversation with my wife while reading Much Ado and thought it would make an interesting study. There are many instances in Shakespeare's plays when he has a line that appears to be universally true, even out of context for the play; think "All the world's a stage" As You Like It 2.7.139. This line says something that is to be understood as true outside the play as well as inside the play. He is making a reality claim, or a meta-claim, if you will. I am facinated by these lines and asked my wife if the current consensus on Shakespeare was that these were intentional not. She felt they were intentional and I like the idea of that. There are times when the poet / playwright speaks to the crowd in unobscured statements about the nature of reality and personal relationships. 

I'm going to study these moments this year with my daughter reading Much Ado About Nothing, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Henry V, and Hamlet. I will post these Meta-Shakepeare ponderings and what I think they mean as we go. Stick around. 

Moana and the Christian narrative

I've often heard it said that all stories participate in the grand narrative in some way. That they all have similar themes and elements. Whether it be the traditional Hero's Journey made popular by mythologist Joseph Campbell and George Lucas's use of the narrative in crafting the first Star Wars segment or some other scheme makes little difference. Leland Ryken makes the argument, and others have as well, that all good stories borrow from the grand narrative of the biblical narrative, the meta-narrative as my pastor calls it: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation, or some variation on that.

My family has watched Moana about fifteen times thanks to my 2.5 year old who has almost all the songs memorized. This is her "Frozen" as that craze died out a couple of years ago. Since I've watched it so many times, I've had opportunity to muse on it. It definitely bears out, though with Polynesian twists, the Christian narrative.

The beginning of the story has Moana's grandmother telling the "Creation" and "Fall" elements of the story, although these get reframed later in the story (which I though was an interesting twist and acknowledgement to how oral tradition works). Now there is no divine fiat creation account, merely a narrative about how the demi-god Maui stole the heart from the creation goddess Te Fiti and plunged the world into chaos. It is up to Moana, we learn, to rescue Maui from imprisonment and restore the heart to Te Fiti in order to "Redeem" the world and bring about the "Consummation" of Moana's people returning to their voyaging ways instead of being scared of the unknown on the ocean.

It is a fun story and well done. The cast have good voices and the songs are instant hits. And it goes to show that good stories are universal. We have been telling them for years. As Douglas Wilson and George Grant both have said before, "The Devil has no stories."

2016 Book Roll

This year I finally got an Audible account for a little while and learned the value of listening to books. Probably half of the books on this list were listened to rather than "read" in the strictest sense of the word. In the case of my first entry, this allowed me to finally "read" something I've been meaning to for some time. That being said, almost my entire book list, minus that first entry, was fiction.

The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman 👂
A Wanted Man - Lee Child 👂
One Shot - Lee Child
The Maltese Falcon - Dashell Hammett 👂
One for the Money - Janet Evanovich
Killing Floor - Lee Child 👂
The Wrath of the Furies - Steven Saylor
The Patriot Threat - Steve Berry
The Pawn - Steven James
The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown 👂
The Rook - Steven James
Sandstorm - James Rollins 👂
The Knight - Stephen James
Die Trying - Lee Child 👂
Never Go Back - Lee Child 👂

Star Trek: Beyond and Independence Day: Resurrection

Two science fiction movies began to get attention in the past couple of days.

Fans have long been waiting for and jumping on bits of internet gossip surrounding a sequel to the 1996 science fiction action film, Independence Day. Rumors were flying in recent months about the cast. A recent article by Deadline: Hollywood claims that two scripts were written for the Independence Day sequel. One that would include Will Smith reprising his role as Steven Hiller and one that would not. When Smith decided not to take the role, they had a backup ready to roll.

This first trailer doesn't give a lot of information, other than the aliens are returning (may have stayed around anyway - based on the graveyard scene), David Levinson (Jeff Goldblum) has been preparing for this for some time by refitting Earth defenses from the wreckage of the last attack, and President Whitmore (Bill Pullman) is pretty haggard. I'm looking forward to this film, as I thoroughly enjoyed the original.

The trailer for the newest installment in the J.J. Abrams parallel timeline, reboot Star Trek series dropped today as well. Abrams is not directing this time, however. We have Justin Lin who is best-known for his work on 3 of the Fast and the Furious films. Star Trek: Beyond's first trailer shows quite a bit of story line and lets us see what happens when, as Eric Deggans puts it, the final frontier pushes back. Unlike some, I have really enjoyed this re imagining of the Star Trek franchise, mostly due to the essential unity in character. While their lives may have been different, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the rest all have essentially the same character traits and personalities that made the original show and movies what they were. I'm looking forward to this one as well.

2015 Bookroll

I took most of the year and read a single series by genre-jumper F. Paul Wilson. I ran across his Repairman Jack series near the end of 2014 (around the time Agnes was born) and was enthralled. Wilson wrote 20+ books around this central character and an epic adventure spanning millennia. He refers to it as The Secret History of the World. The idea intrigued me. His core material was the five-volume Adversary Cycle, one of which introduced Jack as a character. He then began filling in the gaps and writing more Jack books and other short stories that touched on the events of and themes of the core conflict between Rasalom and Glaeken. To that end, I spent much of the year engrossed in that long narrative. It was a lot of fun. If you enjoy mystery books with a central character (think Jack Ryan or Jack Reacher), you might want to try these out. I recommend reading the order from the Secret History of the World, linked above. 

Cold City - Jacks's first adventure begins

The Keep - set in WW2, this spin on the vampire will surprise you

Dark City - continuing Jack's progression to Repairman extraordinaire

Fear City - the conclusion of the early Jack years, finishes with a bang

The Tomb - the first Jack novel from the Adversary Cycle and the appearance of the Rakoshi

Legacies - Jack helps out an estate conflict and learns about free power

Reborn - The third Adversary cycle book chronicles the rebirth of Rasalom, thought to have been killed at the end of the Keep. 

Aftershock and Others - has a few stories that relate to the Secret History

Conspiracies - UFO hunters, Nichola Tesla, and a hole that leads to nowhere

All the Rage - a new drug made from Rakosh blood wreaks havoc in New York and Jack's own life

Hosts - When Jack's sister shows up in New York needing help, the reunion gets tricky when she calls on Jack accidentally. 

The Haunted Air - a house with a supernatural past is now the home of two "mediums." How will their little scheme play out when a real ghost shows up?

Gateways - When Jack's dad is the victim of a hit and run, he rushes to South Florida to help. Trouble follows him, or is it already there. 

Crisscross - The main story advances as a missing persons case for Jack. All the while a global conspiracy is hiding inside a Scientology-like church organization. 

Infernal - When Jack's brother needs help, Jacks ends up taking a trip to Puerto Rico. What he finds puts all he loves in danger. 

Harbingers - After rescuing a friends niece from some ritualistic weirdos, Jack runs afoul of a group of highly trained vigilantes, related to the twins he saw go down the hole in Monroe a few years ago. 

Bloodline - Jack's special talents may be more than coincidence. It might be in his blood to feel the Otherness. 

By the Sword - the appearance of mythical samurai sword keeps the events of the Secret History rushing toward their conclusion, especially when Glaeken shows up. 

Ground Zero - What if the terror attacks of 9/11 were orchestrated to bring about Rasalom's return?

The Touch - the third Adversary book follows a doctor who can heal with a touch. But it costs him too. 

Reprisal - The fourth Adversary book takes place in North Carolina and follows disgraced priest Bill Ryan as he is hounded by Rasalom, who will stop at nothing to even the score.

Fatal Error - Why would you want to crash the internet? To eliminate the noosphere, of course. 

The Dark at the End - While Jack can't engage Rasalom directly, his continued friendships with Weezy and Eddie reveal some interesting discoveries back in their childhood home. 

Nightworld - When holes begin to appear and things from the other side begin to emerge, you know the time has come to finish the Adversary Cycle and end the Jack storyline too. 

I also read most of The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler. 

I attended a lecture series by Brian Godawa with my fifteen-year old and read through some of his book, Hollywood Worldviews. 

I managed a read through Kevin DeYoung's book, What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? 

As the year draws to a close, I am reading a few items. I'm re-reading Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War. I'm about halfway through One Shot, by Lee Child (the Jack Reacher book that formed the backbone of the Jack Reacher movie starring Tom Cruise). 

Grandpa's stamp of approval?

On Facebook, I follow a lot of folks from in and around the Reformed tradition. Some of them have stepped into the waters Anglicanism, following the issues around Federal Vision and whatnot. Recently, I saw the following on a Facebook post, " A good way to test whether your worship music is keeping the 5th commandment: would your grandpa know any of it?"

Now, I understand the argument that our worship music, and the rest of our worship, should be appropriate. What I don't get is the disdain for and ridicule of development and innovation. What seems to be advocated here is a chronological standard on music. If it isn't music (lyrics are not distinguished - so the poster must include tune, instrumentation, etc.) your grandpa would know then you are in danger of violating the 5th commandment.

Was the canon of music sealed along with that of Scripture? If so, where is the sheet music? I know no one who would suggest such a thing. There are those who insist that the Psalms are the only songs worthy of singing in public worship. But then these same individuals typically use music to accompany the Psalms that was written in the 16th and 17th centuries. How did this music get the "grandpa" stamp of approval?

As an aside - those who insist on singing the Psalms don't sing them as found in the Old Covenant text, but as reworded and rethought with references to the church and Christ.

Indeed, how does anything get the "grandpa" seal of approval? One quick glance at history will show the elders typically resist any change or innovation to the status quo.

Imagine if we applied this same 5th commandment test to a host of other issues. How about agriculture? If we applied this test rigorously we would not have any machines for agriculture because the medieval world seriously resisted the industrial revolution. How about science? We all know how strenuously the "grandpa's" of the world reacted to the learning of Copernicus, Galileo, Brahe, and Kepler.

Now I understand that all this begs the question of how we should think about and allow innovation. I don't have a good answer for this, which I'm sure seriously violates the "grandpa" principle. I'm just being a troublemaker. I'm pointing out the flaws in another system without proposing any alternatives or even endorsing an existing alternative. I have no rebuttal for this, as it is completely true.
I'm hoping that I'm not the only one thinking this way and that I'm not the only one turning this over in his mind. Maybe with a few of us carefully dissecting the issue, we can come to a thoughtful response.

The Epic of Gilgamesh - Part Three

This is part three of my series on the Epic of Gilgamesh. In Part One, we looked at the literary concepts of the epic and especially the idea of epic in literature. In Part Two, we began looking at the story up through the point where Enkidu dies. This third segment will finish the narrative and hopefully explore some of the reasons I feel this book belongs in the Great Books.

Mortality Defined

After Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh faces his own mortality, the idea that he will die, with great fear. He embarks on a journey, symbolic in many ways, to find the one person who has escaped the clutches of death, a man named Utnapishtim. 

This attempt to delay or get around mortality is one of the primary struggles of much of Western literature and philosophy. We see this writ large in the pages of such well-known works as Doctor Faustus. However, the theme hides behind many of the attempts to get around the prophecies of the ancient world as well. One need think only of the prophecy to the parents of Oedipus that he would kill his father and marry his mother. The attempt to kill Oedipus is an attempt by King Laius to preserve and extend his own fated death, to avoid his mortality. 

So we see that Gilgamesh's search for eternal life is not all that different from people today cryogenically freezing themselves for a future when their diseases will be cured. The science fiction movie, Prometheus, explores this same concept from a vantage point of setting up the Alien series of movies. 

The Search for Everlasting Life

Gilgamesh travels for many days to the mountains where Utnapishtim dwelt. He finally came to the dwelling of Utnapishtim who questioned the king as to his motives for seeking eternal life. At this point in the narrative is also found one of the most intriguing aspects of the Epic of Gilgamesh: a Babylonian Flood narrative.

The Flood

Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh the circumstances of his gaining eternal life and surviving the flood that the gods sent to destroy all mankind. The Epic of Gilgamesh tells the story of the flood by indicating that the gods, specifically Enlil, were annoyed that mankind was being too loud and making it hard to sleep. Enlil proposes the destruction of the whole world because of this. The other gods, except Ea, seem to agree to this and allow him to play it out. Ea warns Utnapishtim of the coming flood and tells him to make a vessel (I am purposely avoiding the familiar term, ark, so as not to confuse readers of the Bible) to escape in. 

After Utnapishtim builds the vessel, the flood begins. Even the gods are terrified at the awesome destruction the flood wreaks and flee the realm of men. The immediately regret having caused such destruction. Ishtar, herself, realizes she has ordered the destruction of those that she brought forth and give her daily worship. 

The flood lasts for six days and six nights. Utnapishtim remains in his vessel for another seven days, letting various animals out to test the world to see if it was safe to leave the vessel. 

After seven days, Utnapishtim and his family leave the vessel and offer sacrifices to the gods. Smelling the sacrifice and wondering who, in the midst of all this destruction, could still remember and reverence the gods, several gods make their way to Utnapishtim's location. Many of the gods are so enamored by this sacrifice that they grant to Utnapishtim eternal life. Enlil, the god who started all of this anyway, is very upset that any men survivied. The other gods gang up on him and expel him from their number, temporarily anyway. 

Gilgamesh's interview with Utnapishtim

After hearing this story, Gilgamesh is still very intent on learning how he, who has not survived a flood and hasn't got the best track record at pleasing the gods, can gain eternal life. Utnapishtim tells him he must stay awake for a week and then he will be told how to live forever. Gilgamesh is eager for this and agrees immediately. And then proceeds to fall asleep as soon as Utnapishtim begins talking. Utnapishtim bakes a loaf of bread every day that Gilgamesh is asleep and ends up with five loaves when he finally wakes up. Gilgamesh suggests that he had just dozed off for a second, but then is shown the loaves of bread. Gilgamesh is humiliated but remains calm. He leaves Utnapishtim without the secret to eternal life.

A second chance at eternal life

As he is leaving, he is told that a flower grows at the bottom of a lake and is guarded by a serpent and is the key to eternal life. If he can retrieve it, he will gain what he seeks. Gilgamesh swims to the bottom of the lake, retrieves the flower, but loses it to the serpent. He returns to Uruk still a mortal. Though he has learned to embrace his mortality. 

The End of Gilgamesh

After returning from his journey, Gilgamesh continued to rule Uruk. However, his reign from that point is remembered with joy by his subjects rather than the fear they had at the beginning of the narrative. 

In the next installment, I will expound what I consider to the main Great Ideas covered in the Epic of Gilgamesh and why it belongs in a list of Great Books. 

The Epic of Gilgamesh - Part Two

This is the continuation of a post I did last week on the Epic of Gilgamesh where I laid down some introductory remarks on epics and other literary formula. You can read it here.

The Story - Part One

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a great tale of heroism, adventure, mortality, and friendship. It begins in Uruk, where Gilgamesh was king. The epic introduces this king as someone who is a purely tyrannical monarch. He is descended from the gods, and is even 1/3 god (however that works out). The epic explains that Gilgamesh is a mean-spirited king who takes whatever man's wife or daughter he sees fit at whatever time. He forces men to work to death to build the walls of his great city. He is not a idealized pastoral king or shepherd of the land. The people cry out to gods to remove the burden of Gilgamesh from them. 

The gods hear this cry and decide to make a man as strong as Gilgamesh to kill the king. This will appease the crying of the people, they believe. So they create Enkidu. Enkidu is made out in the wilderness. He is a hairy beast of a man who roams with the wild animals and has nothing to do with mankind. This becomes a problem for the local hunters and farmers who rely upon hunting wild game to survive. They go to the city to report the wild man living in the wilderness to the priests and get their sagely advice. This advice is pretty interesting. 

The priests tell the farmer to take a temple prostitute out to the wilderness and let her initiate Enkidu into the ways of civilization through sex. 

There he is. Now, woman, make your breasts bare, have no shame, do not delay but welcome his love. Let him see you naked, let him possess your body. When he comes near uncover yourself and lie with him; teach him, the savage man, your woman's art, for when he murmurs love to you the wild beasts that shared his life in the hills will reject him. 

Sure enough, the harlot and Enkidu come together and have sex for six days and seven nights. However, 

when the gazelle saw him, they bolted away; when the wild creatures saw him they fled

The epic's commentary on all this is that "Enkidu had grown weak, for wisdom was in him, and the thoughts of a man were in his heart."

So Enkidu returns with the harlot to Uruk. To make a long story short (just kidding), when Enkidu and Gilgamesh meet each other, they engage in a massive combat even extending to the city walls. They cannot defeat each other and eventually bond over their mutual strength. They begin a great friendship that comprises the middle section of the epic.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu go off on great adventures. They hunt together, even hunting the great Humbaba. Humbaba was an ancient creature that lived in the Cedar Forest beyond the seventh mountain range. He was the guardian of this land and was placed there by the gods to be a terror to men. Gilgamesh and Enkidu slew this great beast and decapitated it. The gods do not take vengeance upon the heroes because they offer Humbaba's head as a sacrifice for their great victory.

In the sixth tablet of the epic, Gilgamesh has important dealings with the goddess Ishtar. Ishtar, becoming enamored of Gilgamesh and his mighty feats, decides to present him with an offer of marriage. One might think that marrying the goddess of love and fertility is a good idea, but Gilgamesh doesn't see it this way. Gilgamesh responds that he is not the first man the goddess has proposed to, nor does he expect to be the last. Gilgamesh points out that if he should accept the offer, he would have nothing to give the goddess as worship or gift.

Which of your lovers did you ever love for ever? What shepherd of yours has pleased you for all time? 

Then he begins to recount to her the fates of previous lovers and uses these stories to decline the goddesses offer of marriage. Ishtar becomes enraged and cries out for the death of Gilgamesh and Enkidu. She asks her father, Anu, to release the Bull of Heaven to take her vengeance on Gilgamesh for his petulance.

The Bull of Heaven is killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu who then offer its heart to the sun god Shamash. In a moment of extreme impiety, Enkidu rips the thigh off the creatures corpse and hurls it at Ishtar. It is for this action that Enkidu is doomed to die.

The death of Enkidu begins the final stage of the epic saga and truly deserves it's own post. Stay tuned and the final portion of the narrative will be revealed. 

The Epic of Gilgamesh - Part One

Not on the List

The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 3500 BCE) did not make it into the list of great books compiled by Adler and Hutchins, but in my humble opinion, it should have. Therefore I am going to do a quick post about it and my recent reading of it, before I dig into Plato's dialogues (which are the first readings suggested). 

Epic

Epic is a term that has been so horribly misused in recent years, that it is almost impossible to properly explain what it does mean without first dealing with the multitude of concepts it does not mean. Epic has nothing to do with how awesome something is, or how awesomely bad something is. Both of these meanings are the standard understanding of the 30 and younger crowd these days. So let's get selfies gone wrong, crazy accidents, and hysterical tragedies out of our heads. 

Epic is a literary form that is most commonly associated with the great works of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. However, as we will see, the idea behind the epic format fits pretty well with the Epic of Gilgamesh as well. 

Epic stories focus on a hero. Epic stories tell formative information about a nation or specific group of people that will form a nation.

Epics tend to have certain characteristics to their style. They tend to use a high style of narrative that is distinct from common prose. This high style may take the form of repeated epithets used to distinguish common things and people from the special ones. Homer always speaks of the rosy-fingered dawn coming. He always has a descriptive epithet on his tongue when he speaks of a god or goddess. Epics tend to use repeated formula to explain actions or commands. Part of this may have been due to ancient epics being an oral composition that had to be remembered in its entirety by the bard (no small feat when you imagine that a audiobook recording of the Iliad lasts for more than 20 hours)

We may thank the Homeric epics for the characteristic of the epic simile. Homer tended to use very drawn out and very complicated ways of describing events or people. Consider this simile from The Iliad, book 4:

As when rivers in winter spate running down from the mountains throw together at the meeting of streams the weight of their water out of the great springs behind in the hollow stream-bed,and far away in the mountains the shepherd hears their thunder;such, from the coming together of men, was the shock and the shouting.

Homer here compares the shouting of men going to war with water coming out of a mountain, forming a stream and eventually a river. It is certainly memorable - which may have been the main intent. Don't forget that the epics were likely sung or recited in some way.

Homer also typicaly included, as do other epics, great lists of things called Epic catalogs.

Some of the more typical literary characteristics, which are not confined to the Homeric corpus, are allusions and pleonasms. Wikipedia calls Allusion a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or a representation of, people, places, events, literary work, myths, or works of art, either directly or by implication. Some examples cited by the article include the idea of 15 minutes of fame or a catch-22 situation. Both of these expressions allude to some other body of work or idea that they get their meaning from. Wikipedia calls Pleonasm simply using more words or word-parts that is necessary to for clear expression. It gives the phrases black darkness or burning fire as examples of this device.

Next time...

In my next post, we will look at the story of the Epic of Gilgamesh and determine what it has to offer the Great Conversation. 

Stay tuned.....