Write the Other Way
March 11, 2017 Leave a comment
“Dover Beach”, Matthew Arnold’s lyric poem, describes the shore at the narrowest part of the English Channel. Dover, on the southeast coast of England in the county of Kent, is famous for its white cliffs and its popular ferry port. The ferry crosses the Strait of Dover to Calais, France. Dover Beach is where Arnold honeymooned. His poem reveals that he also thought about life in the mid 1800’s. 
“Dover Beach”, with imagery of the restless sea and allusions to Ancient Greek Figures, is a metaphor for the ebbing of Christian faith and the surge of the industrial age sensed by Arnold. Mankind is moving away from the community and the collective experience which fosters faith and finds itself left behind “as on a darkling plain” without solace. The poem was written around 1850.
Further Context: T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, also filled with allusions to the collective past, was published in 1922. Eliot is considered the first true modernist in English literature. Eliot’s spiritual quest ended when he embraced the Anglican Church.
(On the right-hand side bar is the sound file where you can listen to Thomas Hampson, world-renowned baritone, sing Dover Beach.)
Dover Beach
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; – on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch’d land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back,and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl’d
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
~~~
A world of “neither joy, nor love, nor light” …
The character Montag, in the novel Fahrenheit 451, reads the last two stanzas of Arnold’s poem to Mildred, his wife, and her female friends. He attempts to expose their shallow nature. Mildred cautions him not to do so:
Mildred: “Montag, hold on, don’t …”
Montag: “Did you hear them, did you hear these monsters talking about monsters? Oh God, the way they jabber about people and their own children and themselves and the way they talk about their husbands and the way they talk about war, dammit, I stand here and I can’t believe it!”
After much resistance, Montag goes on to read the last two stanzas, finishing with
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
Mrs. Phelps was crying.
~~~
To those who have ears to hear…
Fahrenheit 451 (1966), at 58 minutes, Montag quotes another book’s passage out loud to the unwilling (and yes, the acting is atrocious):
Whole Lotta Searchin’ Goin’ On
November 25, 2016 Leave a comment
2016 Proverbs (Observations, generally speaking.):
Astronomers search the universe for cosmic origins.
Physicists seek to understand the behavior of systems at atomic length scales and smaller using quantum mechanics.
Geneticists, in search of disease prevention and cures, scan the genetic code for the secret of life.
Archeologists search fossil and radiometric dating records for what has gone on before.
Anthropologists search for “missing links” and the ways and means of the past.
Nurses sonogram pregnant bellies for signs of life.
Philosophers search for why there is something rather than nothing.
Nihilists search for meaning in nothing and come up empty-handed and nauseous.
Wise men searched the night sky for kingdom beginnings.
Mathematicians seek solutions in our design-inherent universe.
Social scientists seek to nudge a human’s free will toward a “proper” response.
Capitalists seek value.
Socialists seek other people’s money.
Traders seek to buy low and sell high.
Long term stock and bond holders look for a return on their investment at some point in the future.
Investors seek the highest returns while shouldering prudent risk.
Psychologists, asking “how do you feel about that”, seek to redefine consequences away from morality.
Psychiatrists seek out the next tranquilizer to medicate “the problem.”.
Political scientists seek to define the perfect social order with or without property rights.
Attorneys seek favorable jurors and favorable verdicts.
Politicians seek power.
Progressives seek unicorns with your tax dollars.
The Ruling Class seeks to rule by fiat, making us serfs.
The ignorant seek to be reaffirmed in their ignorance.
Media conglomerates seek to capture our attention and our budget.
Homosexuals seek pride in their love of the creature rather than their Creator.
The transgendered seek to be ‘normalized’.
The lazy, self-absorbed and intolerant, but “diverse,” want something for nothing and call their demand “a right.”
Conservatives seek to preserve longstanding meaning, community and high culture.
Millennials, in this Age of Feelings, seek protectionism in safe spaces.
Blue-collar workers, who have not learned new skills, seek trade protectionism.
College students seek affirmation rather than the meaning of life.
Athletes seek trophies and endorsements.
The Good Shepherd searches for the Lost Sheep.
The son of man came to seek and to save the lost.
A woman searches for a lost coin, finds it, and rejoices.
Joseph and Mary searched for the boy Jesus and find him at the Temple, where God dwelt with men.
Christians seek and find faith as small as a mustard seed.
The House of Islam seeks to bring the whole world under submission to a supreme caliphate by any jihad necessary.
Buddhists seek enlightenment within themselves by numbing their consciousness with mantras.
TV preachers and faith-healers seek to wrench filthy lucre from wrenched bodies and souls.
The addicted seek a “fix” and so share a needle with others.
The contented seek to share life’s bounty with others.
High culture seeks to deepen our common religious/ethical community bonds.
Fiction writers seek to tweak our imaginations with universal questions posed by imaginary beings.
Architects seek to place function before form, denouncing the sublime in the process.
Art, high culture art, seeks to give the viewer laudable content in laudable form, evoking old and new sympathies.
Modern art seeks to give the viewer content in shock form, in order to deny meaning its value.
Climatologists seek anthropocentric fault in weather changes and “find” data to say it’s your fault.
“Enlightened” Epicureans seek godless pleasure and find a “way which seems right”.
Abortionists search the womb for “tissue” to suck out beginnings.
Euthanasians search for a vein to end beginnings.
Atheists, with a God-given consciousness, seek for nothing and find it and then credit themselves.
Fortune tellers search horoscopes, crystal balls and tarot cards for the almighty dollar.
Agnostics and Deists seek for a way around God.
And the search continues…
~~~
“At its best our age is an age of searchers and discoverers, and at its worst, an age that has domesticated despair and learned to live with it happily.” –Flannery O’Connor
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Filed under Culture, Current Events 2016 Tagged with 2106 commentary, culture, truth-seeking