A Sweet Life

I have put the Longaevi to bed, and braided my hair. The room is clean, cool, comfortable, haunted with music and little breezes. On a night like this, I can imagine that I am home. In my mind I am straying through the woods beyond our house, or sitting for an hour beside the stream, fascinated by the play of light on water.

On a night like this, I am back in the soft blue-rose shadows of my own room, sitting perhaps at the mahogany desk with secret drawers in it, or in front of my mirror at the vanity table, with candles on either side of a dark oval frame, and brass gleaming in the soft light. My bed's headboard belonged to my great-grandmother, and so did my chest of drawers. Everything is dark wood, rich and glowing, with shades of red sifted through the velvety brown. Russet wood and red-brown leather always seem to me to signify the deepest things of life, the very heartbeat of being.

Three colors, three specific shades, matter to me above all others. The first is blue: that particular blue that comes only at twilight in October, or in the morning in April, or in June at midnight. It is a color sometimes met with in the sea, rarely in cloth. This blue means to me "tenderness" and "belonging" and "intellegere." It is the color that I associate with God the Father, and with my own father.

The second is red-brown, this velvet depth and complex shading of vividness veiled in quieter strength. Red has always frightened me just a little--it is such a bold color. It is a color that says "I desire." Brown is the color of faithfulness, of abiding strength, of honesty, I think. Red-brown means to me "faithful love," a love that will sacrifice and stand firm and exist always, that will demand my whole soul, my heart, my life. But it will also give all for me. This is the color that I associate with God the Son, my Savior and Beloved.

The third color is green. Mama has green eyes, and so does Mike, and so do Marjorie and Charity. Green is life to me; it is wit and spark and vivere and the forest, my beloved forests of the Virginian hills, or the forests of the western mountains. But ever since I was a little girl, there has been one shade of green that matters most--I mean the one that is mingled with gold. Green-gold was the eye color that I chose for favorite characters in my stories as a teenager. It is the color of the sun on a streambed, all shimmer and warmth. It is the color that causes me to feel overwhelmingly alive, ready to do and be and laugh and dance. It is the color, to me, of the Holy Spirit and the New Jerusalem.

Oh yes, colors matter to me. Not fifty yards away I can see one of our campus lamps shining. It is my pretend that those lamps are warm-voiced spirits, angels, who keep watch over us while we sleep. Frequently, walking back and forth behind Dorm 5 at night, I will pause beside a particular lamp which is low enough for me to touch, and cup my hands around the glow, and look across at the pond, and be still for a few moments. I love the Psalm that speaks of longing for God as a watchman longs for the morning. I feel that I am always longing after colors, after light, as the watchman longs for the color and light of dawn. They are to me the sign of God's presence and love--darkness makes me afraid.

Whatever my sorrows, however discouraging my sins, no matter what it is that brings me pain, I have never known a morning without the sun. I have never known a day without light. I have never been left in an eternal, cold, and angry darkness. Night is not one eternal sleeping, though Catullus thought it was. How frightened he must have been, to think that this brief day as a blade of grass was all he had, all there would every be. Nevertheless he was right to say, "Let us live, let us love." Let us live indeed, live for God, and live for always because he has given us eternal life. Let us love indeed, love the Christ, and love always because he first loved us.

O Trinity, you are blue and red-brown and green to me. You are every color; you are white; you are light! You have loved me, a wretched rebellious girl who is here today and tomorrow will not be, and yet will be, because I will be caught up to you through your salvation. You are my holy sweetness, and I say with Augustine that I cannot describe you or praise you or tell your beauty and goodness and love as you deserve... as you will always deserve, for you are the Being in whom every excellence meets... but that I must try, for all my life, with all the ability that you give me.

It is a sweet life, my Lord. It is a great gladness to live glorifying you, enjoying you, at rest in you, for whom my restless heart was made. You alone satisfy. Tu solum. Da mi, Domine, videre te ut es, te amare... te amo, Christus. Oh, te amo! Tu es vis meae vitae, et tu es cum me aeternum.

A Perfectly Splendid Battle

Danya and I were talking on the phone last night at about 9:30 PM. It was one of those delightfully random conversations that one has sometimes with people whom one loves.

"Did you know that they rehearse greyhound races beforehand? They see which color bunny makes them run fastest. That's why they need me. I'm an art major." He said. I chuckled.

"Oh, really? You know, Danya, when we get home this summer you need to teach me some stuff about art history. I'm interesting in seeing how it relates to literary history."

"Oh, wow, Sis! It's so cool! You remember back in high school, watching all the movements of society? That was what was fun. Society, Christy, society! And the permutations thereof! Ohhhh...the permutations..."

I laughed a laugh of pure pleasure. Danya has always been one of those rare people who sees, and--mirabile visu!--is excited about the intersection of the arts. We kicked around comparative studies for awhile, talking art theory history and literary theory history with respect to answering the questions: what is art? What is literature?

It was somewhere in the middle of all this that the bathroom door burst open, and seven girls armed to the teeth with pillows began to beat me about the head. My cell phone went flying. I picked it up, said a hasty goodbye ("'Scuse me, Danya... you understand, it's a pillowfight. I have to go kill somebody. I love you!" And he understood perfectly, because he and Mike and Nate raised me in the grand tradition of pillowfighting), and caught up my weapon.

"You girls are toast! Who do we kill next?" Paradoxical, I know, but the desire for personal revenge in such instances as these generally mutates quickly into a longing to join and conquer someone else.

They welcomed me, and we proceeded through Dorm 3, plundering and rampaging, then to Dorm 2, and finally to Dorm 1.

"We're not actually going to go hit D5, are we?" I asked. "We can't even go into the wings!"

"We'll hit the lounges." Sarah replied. "Girls, move out! D5 next!"

So we ran. By this time my Viking blood had begun to assert itself, and all those fond memories of passionate pillowfights, daring raids, and glorious ambushes as a child with my brothers had risen up from their dormant state. I was positively thirsting for somebody to whack, and girls just aren't very satisfying on that front, because they tend to cower under blows (from this category I except Amanda, Emily T., my sisters, and Margaret, who are all quite brave about pillowfighting. They do their gender credit.)

So we came pounding into D5, and plunged into the gloom of the first floor lounge, where Jonathan Kanary astonished me by using all the classical techniques which my brothers taught me (that of sandwiching your opponent's pillow under one arm and beating them about with the pillow held in your other hand). I was astonished because I know that he only has one sister, and where he learned to fight like that I can't imagine! Of course I have been too well trained to let go my pillow, so I maintained a death-grip on it with one hand while using the other to ward of his blows. This tends to lead to stalemate, but is very satisfying in the meantime, as both people feel that they are in a position of advantage.

Well, we were driven back, and that was inglorious. We progressed up to Founders, lured the security guard outside, and ambushed him. By this time D5 had collected a few brave souls and their supersoakers, so the girls decided to make a hard-hitting raid against D4, and ran around the far side of the pond to get there. We made it just in time to barricade ourselves into the D4 lobby, as six or seven big goons stood just outside with water weapons.

Problem.

We tried a parley (really it is NOT good to have a waterfight indoors) but they would have nothing of it, so we broke through their ranks and got soaked in the process and flanked them by regrouping in D5. There we massacred and were massacred, and I fought Jonathan again and came to the same stalemate, except that this time I was wet and exhausted and had been running and fighting nonstop for about half an hour. Then we had to fight our way back through the ranks of guys with water buckets, and struggle somehow back to the safety of the dorms. When I got back to my room, I took one look in the mirror and began to laugh.

Mom called, and I was up until 2 AM on the phone. The fight amused her greatly.

"Was it cathartic, honey?"

"Oh wow, Mummy, yes! It felt so good!"

And it did feel good. SO GOOD. It's been a long time since I had a fierce, clean, all-out war with a bunch of comrades-in-arms and worthy opponents.

I miss my brothers, but I'm grateful for last night. Thank you, Lord, for pillowfighting! Sit vivere semper!

Weary

"Debes cenare, Musa..."

I shook my head dully. "Noli, Paradoxus. I don't want to eat."

"When was the last time you ate?"

"Yesterday, I think." When was I last hungry? I don't know.

"Stulta."

I shrugged him off my shoulder, where he had been standing to peer at the computer screen. "Go away. I'll eat."

"Liar." Paradoxus murmured, now hovering beside my ear. Posy looked at me with big frightened eyes, and Simile frowned. Chiasmus stopped rearranging my bobby pins. He glided across the room--how I wish I could fly, like my Longaevi!--and stood with Deton and Polly, who were between the other three and Litotes. The whole row of them stared at me, a spectrum of colored wings and bright soft eyes, all mournful, all reproaching.

"Noli me videre!" I said, angrily. "Stop looking at me!"

They looked all the more. I couldn't bear their concentrated gazes. "All right! I'll eat!"

"Do you promise?" Paradoxus demanded. He knows that I cannot go back on a promise.

"I promise."

Litotes narrowed his eyes shrewdly. "When will you eat?"

I opened my mouth, closed it, and sat quiet. He had trapped me neatly, and any further postponement would only cost me more silent pressure from all seven of them. I had to make Posy smile. I wanted Chiasmus to return to his silly arrangements, which made him so happy. I wanted Polly's lips to stop trembling.

"Tonight," I told them, wearily. "I promise I'll eat tonight."

Posy came cooing to me, and Paradoxus, satisfied, tweaked my hair. Chiasmus went back to his bobby pins, and Litotes, after giving me a look that said "you are a silly girl" returned to his nest. He is working on a treatise on the nature of caterpillars as related to the conscious and unconscious of muskrats, or some such. I don't often inquire, because he is all too eager to explain. Polly and Deton went back to their game--they are playing at chalk-drawings on the side of my desk--and Simile, folding her great blue wings, gave me a sad smile. Simile always understands.

"Tyrannus!" I said softly to Paradoxus, accusing.

"Ita." He replied, and, spreading his green-gold wings, floated gently away. I heard him playing his pipes a few seconds later, from the nest which he has made for himself behind my books.

I stared out the window at nothing, and then at my wall-schedule. I have to get Ecce out. I have two papers, three exams, and classes next week. I have a reading log to write. I have assignments, responsibilities, relationships... and there is no time. I laugh and joke every day, and no one knows what it costs me to do so. They don't know--how could they?--how hard it is to smile.

Domine... Deus meus....

Paradoxus is playing the 23rd Psalm on his pipe. God looks down from Heaven and longs over me, and will draw me to himself. My sins, my self-centeredness, my fear, my pride--all will be abolished at last, and I shall be at rest in the heart of my Lord.

I am not alone.

Spero.

Danya

I strayed back into my room this morning, after a comfortable half-hour spent outside in my warmest shawl, discussing God with the wing and watching the parade of students leaving their dorms on account of a fire drill. The night before last we had a fire alarm at 3:15 in the morning, and stayed outside until 3:50 AM, and these things tend to leave one with the feeling that a second alarm in two days is a bit thick. Thus, our dear RA took us outside beforehand and spared us the pain of being rudely ousted from our dwelling twice in 48 hours.

But I digress. On returning to the room, I found the following IM message from my little brother, Danya, who is a 19-year-old sophomore and graphics arts major at UMBC in Maryland. It read as follows:

"Hi! You're wonderful you're beautiful I miss you I love you!"

I laughed the delighted laugh of sisters who know that they are dear to their brothers. "That's Danya," I said to Helen. "In his freshman year at UMBC, he IMed me almost every morning to tell me that he loves me."

"Wow." She replied, suitably impressed. Helen knows that I was up until all hours (2 AM) a few nights ago, reading Davy's Xanga site (see sidebar if you want to be profoundly amused) and making exclamations of pleasure.

His name is David Severn, which is just plain cool. I call him Deej (DJ) because of his fascination with music, or Danya (because he loves all things Russian), or Davy (his nickname as a small child). I seldom, if ever, call him by his real name. Much of the time a sort of caressing "hey there, you. It's you!" is an appropriate mode of address.

"You're my magical sister." He tells me. "You have to stay home and bake cookies with me!"

The "stay home and bake cookies" is a code-phrase for our family. It means "Don't go away. I'll miss you too much!" It's right up there with "you can stay for another week," which means, "hey, you rock! I'm impressed!" and "you are my little bunny," roughly translated as "you are mine and nobody else's and I love you."

It was Davy who made my Ecce graphic for me. It was Davy who trudged back and forth across the fields to private school with me in every conceivable weather in high school. It was Davy who, during my first lonely year at PHC, worked at the receptionist desk (he graduated with me, but 16 is a little young for anybody to go to college) and always made me feel that seeing my face was the highlight of his work day. It is Davy who still grabs my hand whenever we are both at home, and says, "Oh, Chris! I have to show you....!" The "show you" is always something exciting, whether a story he's written, a fresh insight into Scripture, a new piece of music, or a new graphic.

We've both grown up. Davy is now at least 4 inches taller than I, but I still tower beneath him, or at least pretend to. He is the leader of our church's ministry outreach to UMBC, a fearsome responsibility for a 19-year-old, and one which they could easily have given to someone else. They didn't, though, because he is mature and humble enough even for that task. He can't live without his Quiet Times, and I've never in my whole life met anybody so loving, so witty, so funny, so wonderful. I may be magical in his eyes, but oh, my Lord, who am I that I should be blessed with such a brother?

Danya, Deej, Davy, dearest Blue-Eyed-Boy, you can stay for another week. I can't wait to come home and bake cookies with you, for you are my little bunny!

Superman and Super Freshmen...

Ever since Caleb Dalton informed me, sometime back in February, that Plato was a "brilliant moron," I have been waiting for the freshmen to encounter Nietzsche. This morning in Chapel, as I sat listening to Sam explain the Nietzschian symbolism inherent in his dark suit and red tie, I knew that the period of anticipation has finally come to an end. Sam isn't even in philosophy, but the majority of his class is, and these things spread around.

Responses are every bit as diverse as I had hoped.

"He's an idiot! He's a crazy idiot!"

"I like Nietzsche. He's wrong, but he's so poetic!"

Caleb's comment: "He's not even consistent!"

I am not shocked by their vehemence. I am sympathetic to it. When I was in the throes of Nietzsche, it so happened that I had a double dose--Nietzsche in Freedoms and Nietzsche in Philosophy. My cumulative disgust finally found vent in a comment to Dr. Stacey...

"Sir, they're all so close and so far away and so wrong and I'm sick of it!"

I slammed my book down on the desk as I said it. Dr. Stacey merely smiled through his beard, trying to smirk, but only succeeding in appearing sympathetic (after an amused fashion). "Tell us how you really feel, Christy."

How did I really feel? Angry. Deeply angry, even savage. You see, I have been to the Holocaust Museum. I have read my history and literature. I know what diseased thoughts, what twisted hopes and warped actions have resulted from this man's philosophy. One feels helpless before it, as though looking up at a dark spectre vast as the sky, all malice, all opposition, all desire to hurt you. It is like watching the sun set very quickly, and knowing while you watch that the night will be full of Creatures who wail and moan and whistle and seek your blood. And you are willing to grasp at any straw, even Kierkegaard, to keep the sun from setting. You do not believe that it will rise again.

Things that are obviously evil evoke in me a certain type of hatred which I can only describe as "pure, intense, and tending towards action." I see evil, whether in myself or in a philosophy or in a practice or in another's eyes, and I want to kill it. I do not necessarily want to torture it or give it a slow and painful death. I simply want to destroy, to remove even the memory of it. Perhaps this is strongest with me concerning my own worst enemy: pride. Pride comes in so many forms in my soul--I see it in the way I walk, speak, think, act, give, yearn, and fail to trust, in the way I seek control, in my self-righteousness, in my longing for glory or esteem or even love. As I grow up into Christ, the glimpse of it--thank God for a conscience, and an increasingly sensitive one, by his grace!--is enough to put me in a mind to do anything, risk anything, give anything, which will free me from its hold.

And what will free me from it? Pride cannot stand in the face of love, nor in the face of humility, its direct antithesis. I choose to trust God, and thereby put not trust in my own judgment. That is a massive blow to pride. I choose to love, which is of all things the least self-centered, and that is a mortal blow to pride. I choose to humble myself before my God, and pride cannot stand. There is a wonderful quote: "if you kneel to God, you can stand up to anything."

And so I faced Nietzsche, and progressed through all the stages of pain, fear, anger, hatred, and came at last to recognize my own pride. How am I any better than Nietzsche, if I cannot trust God to overcome him? As a wit once put it...

"God is dead." - Nietzsche

"Nietzsche is dead." - God.

And now I can even feel compassion for this man, who desired all that was great and good, but looked for it in himself. Do I not do the same every day? Domine, serva me ab iniquatate, ab superba, et doce me amare in humilitate.

Behold Nietzsche, and let the sight drive you to savor the cross. Nietzsche is the cave, but we have been brought out, and stand awestruck in the light of our God. This is not of our doing, and it should be marvelous in our eyes.

Paradoxus and Company

The day before yesterday, someone gave me a flock of Longaevi "to take care of me." But goodness, I don't think that the giver realized what a lot of trouble Longaevi are! They do take excellent care of me; they sing to me quietly as I am falling asleep, and follow me everywhere and make Latin jokes in my ear--for, you know, Longaevi speak only Latin. It is their language of love. They tease me out of my sadness and make me laugh. They play with my hair and are always making comments that sound strangely like Scripture.

But they are always getting into trouble! There are seven of them, you know (Longaevi always go about in flocks of seven) and their leader (who is born, not made, he being the oldest of the siblings) is the most mischevious of all. His name is Paradoxus Maximus, and that is too much name for anybody whom I can hold in my hand. Paradoxus has unruly brown hair (but at least it is not curly! Chiasmus is bad enough in that respect!) and green eyes, just like my brother Mike. The other six (there are four male and three female in all) obey his lead, and it is enough sometimes to drive me to distraction.

Chiasmus is excessively attentive to proper and complex structures; he prides himself on his dandified appearance--which is quite ridiculous, because you cannot look like a dandy if you have a head of red curls, as he has--and fancies himself an authority on all matters of form. Really, I do not know how his former keeper managed him!

Simile, one of my sweeter fairies, is a delight to me. She is always drawing connections between things which I had not considered to be at all alike, but are. For example, today she murmured in my ear that dandelions are the jewels that Terra likes to put in her green hair, and it is a pity that the landscaping folk are so greedy as to pluck them out. I laughed and laughed. Simile's eyes are blue as the sea, and her wings flash green-blue, flecked with silver along the edges.

What shall I say about Asyndeton and Polysyndeton, my twins? I have taken to calling them Deton and Polly. Deton (I mean, Asyndeton) is older, and the boy, and he has to look after his twin sister. They are dear--both of them have blond curls and enormous gray eyes. The only trouble is that I cannot get Deton to use conjunctions, whereas Polly uses them far too much. I wish that they would learn from one another, but perhaps they will grow out of it.

Of the last two, Litotes is a bit of a wet blanket, but also quite sensible and gives disgustingly good advice. He has black hair and melancholy, velvet-black eyes. I keep telling him that I can advise myself, thank you, but he says that that's what everybody--by which I suppose he means his former keeper--thinks, and nobody can advise themselves really and I ought to listen to him. I was tempted to fetch a gag instead, but I don't have a handkerchief small enough.

My littlest Longaevi has the longest name, except for Paradoxus Maximus. She is Onomatopoeia, and I call her Posy. She is my darling, all pink and brown, with soft brown eyes and long dark curls and pink wings. Posy reminds me of Emma though; she is always getting into difficulties of some sort, and I cannot seem to make her siblings understand that baby Longaevi need to be looked after and not left to their own devices.

When they first came to me, of course, I asked Paradoxus what family of Longaevi they belonged to, and he looked offended and demanded to know whether I really couldn't tell right off that his nose was the nose of a Longaevus Rhetoricus, and obviously the family of Orator. I apologized, because I didn't know any better, and he's been lording it over me ever since.

They nest all over my room--Posy likes to sleep in my jewelry box--and air themselves outside while I am in Chapel (I had to explain quite sternly to Paradoxus that I cannot be distracted by Longaevi, of the family of Orator or otherwise, while I am trying to worship), and always come dashing to dance around me when I get out, and tell me what they found, or did, or discovered. Already once they have lost Posy in a hyacinth blossom.

I love them dearly, and would not trade them for anything in the world. But now I must go, because Paradoxus is eyeing my scissors, and I will not have him trying to "trim" Simile's hair for her again.

Sad, Yet I Breathe

To whatever extent--not much--that I thought about getting through this day, I didn't expect to do it successfully. I fell asleep last night in the midst of explaining to my roommate about how being a Christian is like living in a rainbow, and woke feeling rather numb.

The numbness continued. I am sure that people spoke to me, but I don't remember most of their words. It has been a very Aprilish sort of day, a day in which laughter and tears were well mixed. Hugo meant this, I am sure, when he wrote of Cosette that she sometimes looked a little strange because her smile was joyous and her eyes were sad.

But you see, my dear, I shall get through tomorrow too, and the day after, and the day after that. Eventually, the pain grows somewhat less. You don't ever forget; you don't ever quite stop hurting; but you are made for Christ, not for sorrow. Therefore you cry a little, but you remember that weeping is for a night, and that joy cometh in the morning.

On a day like this, I am not surprised to open my assigned reading--C.S. Lewis' Studies in Words--and find that the chapter is on the word "sad." What did surprise me, what surprised and comforted me, were Lewis' comments on the subject. He explains that the origin of the word is the Anglo-Saxon saed, which is cousin to the Latin satur, and that both mean "gorged, full (of food), replete." Lewis goes on to relate this concept of "having your fill" or "having more than your fill" to the Latin gravis, the sense of heaviness and solidity.

Things that are heavy are physically difficult to move. If your fortress gates are heavy, then they will be a force to be reckoned with, and a deterrent to the enemy. Lewis explains that the word "sad" came to have a connotation of heaviness and solidity, and even of wisdom. To be "sad" is a virtue of the mature or elderly person, and to have a "sad" head on young shoulders is to be wise beyond your years.

In both the sense of having had too much, and in the sense of weight, I feel "sad" beyond my years. I am filled with sorrow and pressed down, but also intensified and purified. I believe that wisdom and worship accompany this sort of trial. Something important has been done, something right and honorable, something that was not what I wanted but was, I believe, pleasing to God. It was an act of worship, of laying something on the altar.

I remember telling someone, at the end of last semester, that suffering should never be a consideration when one is trying to decide what is right to do. At the time I was about to choose a particular course of action, knowing full well that very great suffering would be the result, but knowing also that what I did was right. The outcome was, as I knew it would be, pain... and not just any sort. It was stabbing, suffocating pain, the kind that makes eating a chore and breathing an exercise and living a dullness and the sun not a sun and--hardest for me--light not light, colors all gone gray.

All this I had expected, but I did not expect to find joy in the midst of it. My world went dark and gray, but the face of my Beloved blazed with light and color. As human loves betrayed me one by one, divine love came to dominate my vision. I found that, losing all, I gained everything. I found that, though I have not forgotten the pain, and though I will bear sad--and I mean by that "weighty"--memories always, nevertheless I would not trade that experience for any treasure on earth. It taught me to trust my Lord; it showed me, more clearly than ever before, the radiant and all-sufficient love of Christ.

Truly, we do not need earthly relationships and friendships in any essential sense, for when they all fall away, Christ is more than enough for us. The things which happened last semester gave me wisdom, and solidity. I stand firmer through this trial, with less of pain and more of gladness, with less of fear and more of trust, than ever before. I am reminded of Psalm 73, for God is continually with me, and holds my right hand. For me it is good to be near him, and I have made him my refuge, so that I may tell of all his works. Do you see that the point of making God our refuge is so that we might glorify him by expressing the ways in which he has spared and saved us--his marvelous works and unfailing love?

You ache now, O my soul, but scis in quo credidisti. Turn the eyes of the soul up and away, away from myself, my sin, my failings, my pain... it is good to know that we have sinned, because they love much who know that they have been forgiven much. But it is wrong to dwell on ourselves in any way, in any form. Crede me, intellege me. You will be glad for this trial soon, quite soon. Concentrate on breathing, O my sad soul. Do you not know that the word for hope (spero) is related to the word for Spirit (spiritus) which is related to the word for "breath"? The Holy Spirit indwells me, to rebreathe me in Christ's image, to breathe hope into me, to be my Comforter.

Fix your gaze on that, on Christ crucified, and wait for day. It will come soon, very soon. Weeping lasts for a night... God only permits one night of weeping, and it is a short night, not an aeterna dormienda, not an eternal sleeping. Suns rise and set here, and night is here, and night is frigida, nigra, irata here, but Heaven is aeterna lux, the eternal day. Gaude.

Aut Prodesse Aut Delectare

This is probably the most important paper which I have written this semester, which is why I am going to post one of my own essays for the first time in my personal blogging history. This, as I told my professor, is what I think a Christian Renaissance would look like, with respect to literature.

Aut Prodesse Aut Delectare

Sontag is modest; she challenges only the entire tradition of literary criticism from Plato to Pound. Beginning with the statement that “the mimetic theory, by its very terms, challenges art to justify itself” (545), Sontag points out that “it is the defense of art which gives birth to the odd vision by which something we have learned to call ‘form’ is separated off from something we have learned to call ‘content,’ and to the well-intentioned move which makes content essential and form accessory” ( 545).

Of the numerous well-taken points made in her essay, I will deal primarily with Sontag’s view of form as at least equal to—and probably superior to—content. For her, “Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art . . . . Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all” (550). Sontag believes that we must not “sustain the fancy that there really is such a thing as the content of a work of art” (546). For her, the experience of art, the “sensuous surface” (550) of it, is what matters. She rebels against the idea that “a work of art is its content” (545).

Sontag’s argument against the reduction of art to content, and the subsequent interpretation of that content ad nauseum, is persuasive. In fact, she misses nothing in her analysis except the ultimate point—by which I mean the ultimate end of art, the reason for which art was intended, the function which it is designed to perform.

Sontag considers what art does, what art means (or rather, why we should not try to discover what it means), but never what art ought to do, or what it should mean. For that, we must revert to an age which still expected to be taught something true by its artists—I mean that we have got to go back before Nietzsche, who misrepresented language, and Kant, who misrepresented truth. We have got to get back to the telos of art, for art is not an end in itself. Art is a means to an end, and mankind—being akin to art in that regard—must surely see the necessity of understanding “what it is we were put on this earth to do.”

Horace gave us a summation of art’s telos in this phrase: aut prodesse aut delectare: to teach and to delight. Sidney sets forth an explanation of it, first declaring that, “Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for so Aristotle termeth it in his word mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth—to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture; with this end, to teach and delight” (137-138). Sidney insists that the power of art lies in its ability to clearly represent good and evil, as the philosophers do, and then impel us towards the good, as the philosophers cannot:

Seeing in nature we know it is well to do well, and what is well and what is evil . . . but to be moved to do that which we know, or to be moved with desire to know, Hoc opus, hic labor est[2]. . . . Where the philosophers, as they scorn to delight, so must they be content little to move . . . (144)
So much for the telos of art—now consider it in light of the telos of man, for they are profoundly connected.

Christians understand well that “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” John Piper (and before him Jonathan Edwards) phrased it, “to glorify God by enjoying him forever.” Bearing in mind the earlier dichotomies of content and form, teaching and delighting, consider these horizontal categories and their vertical parallels:

Content Form
Teaching (By) Delighting
Glorifying God (By) Enjoying God

We are taught, by means of content, how to glorify God. This is the realm of the theologians, of Sidney’s philosophers. The great power of literature is that it adds form to content, delight to teaching, the enjoyment of God to the glorification of God. It moves us to do through its form that which it also teaches us is right through its content. As we see the form, we are drawn to the content; as we delight, we are taught; as we enjoy, we glorify.

That is what art ought to do, what good art really does. That is why Christians object to art which depicts good as evil, and evil as good—because art has the power to impel us towards what it teaches. There is another way of misusing art, however, and it is a peculiarly modern one. The new question is: what if the people do not want to learn?

One seldom hears, these days, of literature which anybody expects to act upon. The food of literature is not now a way of strengthening the body for labor; it is instead grounds for deferring labor in order to quarrel over the flavor of last night’s béarnaise sauce. We do not say, “Teach us, that we may know what is right to do,” but rather “Now, concerning the command that you gave me, I do not like the manner in which it was given” or “Good physician, I do not think you have quite convinced me that every part of your order hangs precisely together. Therefore I will not do as you say and take water to that dying soldier over there.”

I do not mean reasonable and legitimate objections, the kind that men use to distinguish right from wrong when they have every intention of doing what is right as soon as they can clearly make it out. I mean the sort of objections that a child makes in order to avoid his little bed. The point is that the people do not want to obey—that they would rather ask for another story, and then quibble about whether the dragon in it is metaphorical, in order to postpone that moment when the light is turned out.

They want to be entertained, to delay the consideration of night—or perhaps they do desperately want to learn how to sleep safely through it and wake again, but their teachers have discarded the sacred obligation of guiding them towards eternal day, and are now themselves engaged in arguing about dragons.

What a pretty pass! It is small wonder that Sontag prefers to study form rather than content. Whereas form is still a matter of delighting, content has ceased to teach. What good, therefore, is content? Why does it exist now, except to have the stuffing kicked out of it, and its sensuous surface “mucked about” (559) by pedants? Sontag is wrong to say that “what is needed, first, is more attention to form in art” (549), but who can blame her, considering the content with which she has had to deal?

Sontag could not be more accurate in her statement that “Real art makes us nervous” (547). It makes us nervous because it has the power to move us, to bring us to the point of action. That is a frightening power indeed, and that is what form can do. But there is no salvation in the form alone—to love a work of art for its form only is like loving a woman for her body only, and not for her soul.

Again, form is not everything, but it is not nothing. In effect, Sontag is backing up Sidney when she writes, “By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art” (547). Stripped of form, art no longer moves. It becomes once more a matter for the philosophers. But Sontag is crucially mistaken in her insistence that “The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means” (550).

Meaning matters, and always has mattered. Criticism should show what a work of art is, certainly—but this throws us back upon the question: “what is art?” Art is content full of a teaching message clothed in a form full of delight. Form, so pleasurable or nerve-wracking, so moving, impels us towards the meaning of the content. Art itself—not merely a defense of poetry made necessary by the Republic—testifies against Sontag’s attack. Why does Crime and Punishment so stir us? It is because Dostoevsky’s message, which he imparts through a form perfectly tailored to it, is powerful; a lesson that nihilism ultimately leads to despair.

Sontag remarks that “it is still assumed that a work of art is its content” (545), but she is mistaken. For Sidney, at least, a work of art is content and form, teaching and delight, the glorification of God, and the enjoyment of him. In the fullest sense, perhaps, it is teaching by delight; glorification by enjoyment. Sontag’s solution—the elevation of form at content’s expense—fails. It fails because, like lessonless content, it falls short of the harmonious whole which both teaches and delights. Aut prodesse aut delectare is the proper function of art, just as glorification and enjoyment is the proper business of man, and with the same object: God. A theory of literature which defiles either—teaching or delighting—will destroy the marriage-bond of both, distort their children beyond recognition, and divert them from the worship which is their joy.

[2] “That is the labor, that is the task.” Virgil, Aeneid 6 (Richter 144).

Dr. Esolen

As a freshman, he awed me. As a soon-to-be senior, I find him intriguing and enlightening. Dr. Esolen is a man out of time, perhaps, but he belongs to the time with which I have always identified most--I mean the Middle Ages.

He knows the Bible well, and he knows his church fathers. He can quote Augustine or Aquinas. He reminds me of C.S. Lewis: always apt, always clear, always refreshing. Tonight I heard Dr. Esolen explain that, in his opinion, Bush deserves trust. What was perhaps more surprising was his quiet statement that he himself trusts our President. We students hear so many words, so many theories. It is somewhat rare to see people living them out.

This is the Dr. Esolen whom I know: a man with dark eyes that have seen much. Yet the faith, hope, even joy, in his gaze is undiminished. How many students could say the same?