Slouching towards Bethlehem?

Joan Didion died 9 days ago,
on December 23, 2021

Yeats said it first

By Moristotle

A dear friend warned me this morning that a massive change is coming along with a truth that will rock the entire world, but when I asked him what the changes would be and whether they would involve the Second Coming, he was willing to characterize them only as “another chance for human kind to straighten up and fly right and be nice to each other.” I was reminded of W.B. Yeats’ 1919 poetic description of big changes he saw coming over a hundred years ago. I read it again today, and I invite you to read it too:

Bye, bye, Boris & others

From recent correspondence

Edited by Morris Dean

Funny article on Boris Johnson as Blackadder’s dashing Lord Flashheart. Lots of good links that explain the social interactions of the British conservative grandees. It reads like the introduction to an Ian McEwan novel that, like Amsterdam or Saturday, makes fun of the English upper class. “Bye bye, Boris, the man who wouldn’t clear up his own mess” [Marina Hyde, Guardian, June 30] Excerpt:

Tuesday Voice

Oliver Sacks

Thoughts upon hearing that Oliver Sacks will soon depart

By Bob Boldt

It was a dark and stormy night when I ventured out into one of the biggest blizzards of the young year 2007. My destination was the Lensic Theater, where one of their landmark discussions was being held by the Lannan Foundation. The night’s guest was Lawrence Weschler, who was hosted by Oliver Sacks.

In doubt about where we end out

Back in Rummidge from his trip to Hawaii, Bernard (in David Lodge's novel Paradise News) is giving the term's opening lecture, which might be titled "End Doubts":

"Traditional Christianity was essentially teleological and apocalyptic. It presented both individual and collective human life as a linear plot moving towards an End, followed by timelessness: death, judgment, hell, and heaven. This life was a preparation for eternal life, which alone gave this life meaning. To the question, 'Why did God make you?' the Catechism answered, 'God made me to know him, love him, and serve him in this world, and to be happy with him for ever in the next.' But the concepts and images of this next world which have come down to us in Christian teaching no longer have any credibility for thoughtful, educated men and women. The very idea of an afterlife for individual human beings has been regarded with scepticism and embarrassment—or silently ignored—by nearly every major twentieth-century theologian. Bultmann, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Tillich, for example, even the Jesuit Karl Rahner, all dismissed traditional notions of personal survival after death. For Bultmann, the concept of 'translation to a heavenly world of light, in which the self is destined to receive a heavenly vesture, a spiritual body,' was 'not merely incomprehensible by any rational process' but 'totally meaningless'....
      "Of course, there are still many Christians who believe fervently, even fanatically, in an anthropomorphic afterlife, and there are many more who would like to believe in it. Nor is there any shortage of Christian pastors eager to encourage them, some sincerely, some, like the TV evangelists of America, with more dubious motives. Fundamentalism has flourished precisely on the eschatological scepticism of responsible theology, so that the most active and popular forms of Christianity today are also those which are the most intellectually impoverished. The same seems to be true of other great world religions. In this, as in so many other areas of twentieth century life, the lines of W. B. Yeats hit the nail on the head:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

                                          [pp. 280-281]

[The conclusion of the lecture will be posted tomorrow under "Sheep and goats."]
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Disclaimer: I acknowledge that I don't have the right to publish long excerpts from copyrighted work (such as the novels of David Lodge). I console myself with the thought that I have so few readers—a few friends—I can hardly be said to be "publishing" anything. It's more like calling the friend over to my reading chair and saying, "Come here, look over my shoulder. What do you think of this?"

A colder eye

Hugh Kenner is perhaps my favorite literary critic, and his book A Colder Eye: The Modern Irish Writers is perhaps my favorite of his works. I was reminded of the phrase "a colder eye" this morning, as I quoted the following couplet from W.H. Auden:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That for all they care, I can go to hell.
                – "The More Loving One"

This couplet reminded me of perhaps my favorite of all limericks, also written by Auden:

As the poets have mournfully sung,
Death takes the innocent young,
      The rolling-in-money,
      The screamingly funny,
And those who are very well hung.
                – "The Aesthetic Point of View"

And taking these two small verses together, I realized that Auden had as cold an eye as anyone...and I myself seem to have a colder eye. I'm skeptical, even at times sardonic (scornful, mocking, cynical—my standard attitude toward all things Bushevik; of course, when it comes to our "president," a lot of us are sardonic).

Maybe I really do have a colder eye, and that's why I'm so drawn to James Joyce and Flann O'Brien and W.B. Yeats? (Yeats's tombstone enjoins us:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!)

I've made a note now to re-read A Colder Eye.