Flannery O’Connor published this short story in 1955 in the collection of stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find. It still is one of the better examples of the Southern Gothic style of writing.

My reading of this great short story appears here at this recording.

A copy of the text can be purchased here: “The life you save may be your own.”

My reflections on this story appear here at this recording.

I will try to get that up this evening.

Here is an interesting wee bit from the lair of the caterpillar:

Herodotus and Plutarch both attest to a connection between the Egyptian story of ISIS and the Greek / Roman story of DEMETER / CERES. All of Roman mythology was influenced by Greek mythology (“Graecia capta ferum uictorem cepit et artis / intulit agresti Latio.” - Horace) but much of Greek mythology was influenced by Egyptian.

“Greek colonists and visitors to Egypt had drawn parallels between Egyptian deities and their own, in a process known as interpretatio graeca. Herodotus, a Greek who wrote about Egypt in the fifth century BCE, likened Isis to Demeter, whose mythical search for her daughter Persephone resembled Isis’s search for Osiris.”

• Wiki

This adaptation, or parallelism of the deities seems to have been fairly common in the ancient world, often reflecting a conqueror of one people by another (Zios taking over from Dios who is relegated to the pos and becomes Posiedon…) or a trade with another people (the introduction of Dionysus to Greek culture from India) or a common ancestry (as Zeus/Dios and “sky father” Jupiter {Zeu-pater} in Greek and Roman respectively).

The great achievement of polytheism is the articulation of a common semantic universe. ... The meaning of a deity is his or her specific character as it unfolded in myths, hymns, rites, and so on. This character makes a deity comparable to other deities with similar traits. The similarity of gods makes their names mutually translatable. ... The practice of translating the names of the gods created a concept of similarity and produced the idea or conviction that the gods are international.

• Jan Assmann (unfortunately)

IDK if it was “the great achievement” but it certainly was an aspect, Dr. Assmann, of the ancient world. The pursuit of these connections is a wonderful rabbit-hole to leap into.

~Herself a retelling of the Persephone / Hades story, I warrant!~

So the story is that Isis, whilst looking for the body parts of Osiris (dismembered by his brother Typhon/Set), meets a young queen, Astarte, whose baby, Dictys, she tries to make immortal.

Plutarch relates the story thus:

(Isis) came to Byblus and sat down by a spring, all dejection and tears;⁠ she exchanged no word with anybody, save only that she welcomed the queen’s maidservants and treated them with great amiability, plaiting their hair for them band imparting to their persons a wondrous fragrance from her own body. But when the queen observed her maidservants, a longing came upon her for the unknown woman and for such hairdressing and for a body fragrant with ambrosia. Thus it happened that Isis was sent for and became so intimate with the queen that the queen made her the nurse of her baby. They say that the king’s name was Malcander; the queen’s name some say was Astartê, others Saosis, and still others Nemanûs, which the Greeks would call Athenaïs.

…Isis nursed the child by giving it her finger to suck instead of her breast, cand in the night she would burn away the mortal portions of its body. She herself would turn into a swallow and flit about the pillar with a wailing lament, until the queen who had been watching, when she saw her babe on fire, gave forth a loud cry and thus deprived it of immortality.

Who was Astarte? What was the Acacia? Why was the Acacia the tree within which the body of Osiris was contained? What do Astarte and Diktys, ailing as he is, represent there in the city of Byblos? Is Isis’ attempt to make him immortal at all connected to her attempt to reconstitute the body of Aus-Ra?

English botanist and gardener Philip Miller adopted the name Acacia in 1754. The generic name is derived from ἀκακία (akakia), the name given by early Greek botanist-physician Pedanius Dioscorides (middle to late first century) to the medicinal tree A. nilotica in his book Materia Medica. This name derives from the Ancient Greek word for its characteristic thorns, ἀκίς (akis; "thorn"). The species name nilotica was given by Linnaeus from this tree's best-known range along the Nile river. This became the type species of the genus.

Whatever the answer, the Greeks go on to translate the story of Isis into the character of Demeter (Ceres, in Roman) who, searching for her daughter, Persephone who has been captured by Hades, stops at the home of Queen Metaneira where, in the guise of Doso, she does the identical thing with the child, Demophoon.

At night, when Metaneria and Celeus were fast asleep, Doso did something that required even more secrecy. She went to the hearth, where the fire burned all night, and placed Demophoon in the fire. Because she was a goddess, the fire did not hurt the baby. Instead, the fire worked a great wonder in the child, and he grew beyond his age, and his face looked like the face of one of the gods.

Not only that, but if a goddess can hold a mortal child in the fire night after night, eventually that child can become immortal, too. Doso loved the little boy, and hoped to hide Demophoon in the fire night after night, until he became deathless and unaging, just like her.

But Metaneira suspected that Doso was doing something to the boy in secret. So one night, she kept watch on Doso from the door of her bed chamber. When she saw Doso put Demophoon into the fire, she feared for her son’s life, and cried aloud in her fear.

“Demophoon, my son,” she cried, “why is this strange woman burying you deep in the fire?”

Doso heard her cry out, and grew terribly angry. With her divine hands, she snatched the child from the fire, and cast him from her to the ground.

“You mortals are witless!” she said to Metaneira. “You are utterly unable to understand whether good or evil comes upon you. For now in your heedlessness you have been foolish past healing. I swear by the relentless water of Styx, which is the most sacred oath of the gods and goddesses, that I would have made your dear son so that he would never age all his days. I would have made him so that he would never die. I would have bestowed on him everlasting honor. This is why I put him in the fire. Now, because of what you have done, he can never escape death and age.

“Yet even so I have made sure unfailing honor will always be his, for he lay upon my knees and slept in my arms. Lo! I am Demeter, who is the greatest help and cause of joy to the undying gods and mortal humans.”

• Olivia Coolidge (I think)

The similarities exist because the cultures simply adopted the good story, modified it, and broadcast it to their own local idiom.

This makes human culture fascinating and raises all sorts of questions about interconnectivity, the passing on of cultural heritage, and the symbolic meaning which remains consistent from story to story. It is a prime example of Bernard Batto’s “mythopoeic speculation” - thinking about our human experience through the medium of reconstituted mythology : dare I say, re-assembly of the body parts of deceased myth?

How many of our own stories (the ones we haven’t yet scuttled) have a connection to ancient lore and myth? And how much triage and recovery will we need after our current era of Typhon has shredded and scattered the original body of the living sun god?

What exactly is a “miracle”?

(Latin miraculum, from mirari, "to wonder")

In general, a wonderful thing, the word being so used in classical Latin; in a specific sense, the Latin Vulgate designates by miracula wonders of a peculiar kind, expressed more clearly in the Greek text by the terms terata, dynameis, semeia, i.e., wonders performed by supernatural power as signs of some special mission or gift and explicitly ascribed to God.

The word terata literally means "wonders", in reference to feelings of amazement excited by their occurrence, hence effects produced in the material creation appealing to, and grasped by, the senses, usually by the sense of sight, at times by hearing.

When we look at the long line of history we begin to see moments when complete disaster or ruin or destruction is narrowly avoided. Sure, this might be relative to the perspective of those saved: salvation of one culture might mean destruction of another, after all. But those saved, having recourse to a vision that the Divine Powers work in providential mercy, look upon such moments as miraculous.

Certainly this seems to be the case for certain historic figures such as George Washington who saw in the victory of the colonies over the forces of England something little less than miraculous:

Providence, to whom we are infinitely more indebted than we are to our own wisdom, or our own exertions, has always displayed its power and goodness, when clouds and thick darkness seemed ready to overwhelm us. The hour is now come when we stand much in need Of another manifestation of its bounty however little we deserve it.

Abraham Lincoln saw miracles in the impossibility of holding together the Union during the Civil War. Such visions of miracles prompted him to perform the great act of emancipation in 1863. As Gideon Welles, secretary of the Navy wrote in his diary:

(Lincoln) remarked that he had made a vow, a covenant, that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle he would consider it an indication of Divine will, and that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation.

Winston Churchill, who used the word “miracle” sparingly, nevertheless saw it in the amazing escape of the English Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in 1941:

A miracle of deliverance, achieved by valor, by perseverance, by perfect discipline, by faultless service, by resource, by skill, by unconquerable fidelity…

Such a vision of deliverance from implacable peril extends back even to the Israelites in the 8th century BC who were spared initial destruction at the hands of the Akkadians during the Levantine War in 701BC.

Human civilization first emerged from protected forts designed to guard agricultural settlements. These forts, known as city-states, normally sprang up around water sources such as the city of Uruk, which is located where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers merge into one and flow into the Persian Gulf. Given the abundance of food available to farmers, people had time to sit, discuss, invent, and create artwork.

But independent city-states needed governance and this led to power structures within the city. Eventually, rulers of these cities saw an opportunity to increase their own wealth & power by welding together, through a combination of force & politics, the other cities in their area. And thus emerged the first empires.

Sargon I (Sargon of Akkad, or Sargon the Great) created the first known empire of western culture by conquering and welding various city-states into a single controlled unit called The Assyrian Empire.

Many years later, Sargon II, king of the neo-Assyrian Empire (911 BC–609 BC) from 722 BC to his death in battle in 705 BC, took his name from Sargon the Great.

The son of Sargon II, Sennacherib, during the The Levantine War of 701 BC, tried to extend the empire into the Levant area of the Middle East, a land which was already occupied by the Hebrews (Israelites, Jews).

In 705 BC, Hezekiah, the king of Judah, had stopped paying his annual tribute to the Assyrians and began pursuing a markedly aggressive foreign policy, probably inspired by the recent wave of anti-Assyrian rebellions across the empire. After conspiring with Egypt (then under Kushite rule) and Sidqia, an anti-Assyrian king of the city of Ashkelon, to garner support, Hezekiah attacked Philistine cities loyal to Assyria and captured the Assyrian vassal Padi, king of Ekron, and imprisoned him in his capital, Jerusalem.^[8] In the northern Levant, former Assyrian vassal cities rallied around Luli, the king of Tyre and Sidon.^[40] Sennacherib's arch-enemy Marduk-apla-iddina encouraged the anti-Assyrian sentiment among some of the empire's western vassals. He corresponded with and sent gifts to western rulers like Hezekiah, probably hoping to assemble a vast anti-Assyrian alliance.

• Wiki

The army, however, caught a disease and became so depleted it could not maintain the campaign in the Levant and retreated back to Mesopotamia.

This devastating event is described in the Bible’s book of II Kings 18 as “the angel of the LORD” - a messenger from heaven bringing deliverance through disease. This is the same type of messenger as seen in Apollo of the bow in Homer’s Iliad, book 1. But in the Bible the messenger is not just the plague sent from a fickle god persuaded by a lovely nymph to make trouble against the Achaeans. Here, the angel is seen as miraculous, for without his plague it might have been that the Jewish culture was wiped from the earth and, by extension, that the Incarnation and thus Christianity never occurred.

In II Kings 18-19 we read that:

In the fourteenth year of King Hezeki′ah Sennach′erib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. ¹⁴ And Hezeki′ah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me; whatever you impose on me I will bear.” And the king of Assyria required of Hezeki′ah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. ¹⁵ And Hezeki′ah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasuries of the king’s house. ¹⁶ At that time Hezeki′ah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the doorposts which Hezeki′ah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria. ¹⁷ And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab′saris, and the Rab′shakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezeki′ah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the Fuller’s Field. ¹⁸ And when they called for the king, there came out to them Eli′akim the son of Hilki′ah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the secretary, and Jo′ah the son of Asaph, the recorder.

Assyria had already conquered the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BC and had taken the people captive. Then King Sennacherib’s men attacked forty-six of Judah’s fortified cities and captured them. Finally he threatened Jerusalem.

The Rab’shakeh, chief of the princes/cup-bearers, the vizier speaks to the people of the city saying,

‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this confidence of yours? ²⁰ Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? On whom do you now rely, that you have rebelled against me? ²¹ Behold, you are relying now on Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who rely on him. ²² But if you say to me, “We rely on the Lord our God,” is it not he whose high places and altars Hezeki′ah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, “You shall worship before this altar in Jerusalem”? ²³ Come now, make a wager with my master the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders upon them. ²⁴ How then can you repulse a single captain among the least of my master’s servants, when you rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? ²⁵ Moreover, is it without the Lord that I have come up against this place to destroy it? The Lord said to me, Go up against this land, and destroy it.’”

This was an overwhelming tsunami. No one stood up to Sennacherib and the Assyrian army.

²⁸ Then the Rab′shakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! ²⁹ Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezeki′ah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. ³⁰ Do not let Hezeki′ah make you to rely on the Lord by saying, The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ ³¹ Do not listen to Hezeki′ah; for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me; then every one of you will eat of his own vine, and every one of his own fig tree, and every one of you will drink the water of his own cistern; ³² until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live, and not die. And do not listen to Hezeki′ah when he misleads you by saying, The Lord will deliver us. ³³ Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? ³⁴ Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharva′im, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samar′ia out of my hand? ³⁵ Who among all the gods of the countries have delivered their countries out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’”

He goes on insulting their god and making the practical observation that other cities had faith in their god… and were destroyed.

The vibe is a bit like the mouth of Sauron coming to speak to Aragorn and Gandalf near the end of Tolkien’s great epic:

‘Do not let your God on whom you rely deceive you by promising that Jerusalem will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria. ¹¹ Behold, you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all lands, destroying them utterly. And shall you be delivered? ¹² Have the gods of the nations delivered them, the nations which my fathers destroyed, Gozan, Haran, Rezeph, and the people of Eden who were in Tel-assar? ¹³ Where is the king of Hamath, the king of Arpad, the king of the city of Sepharva′im, the king of Hena, or the king of Ivvah?’”

Naturally Hezekiah is pretty scared and waffling about loyalty to the LORD vs. utter destruction at the hands of the king of Assyria.

But the king consults Isaiah who reassures the king of God’s support and prophecies that the army of Sennacherib will be defeated.

Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezeki′ah saying, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Your prayer to me about Sennach′erib king of Assyria I have heard. ²¹ This is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:

^“He shall not come into this city or shoot an arrow there, or come before it with a shield or cast up a siege mound against it. ³³ By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, says the Lord. ³⁴ For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”

³⁵ And that night the angel of the Lord went forth, and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. ³⁶ Then Sennach′erib king of Assyria departed, and went home, and dwelt at Nin′eveh. ³⁷ And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adram′melech and Share′zer, his sons, slew him with the sword, and escaped into the land of Ararat.

It’s a great read - and really illustrates the nature of a terata, a miracle. Deliverance from the inevitability of destruction. Such deliverance comes at a high price, it is true, for many of the Assyrians never made it home and even Sennacherib himself was eventually murdered - but the city and people of Jerusalem survived.

Soon after, during the reign of king Josiah, the book of the law was “found” and the religion of faithfulness to The LORD was restored.

And Hilki′ah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the book of the law in the house of the Lord.”

The efficiency of the Assyrians is paralleled by other great empires such as the Romans, the Prussians, and modern industro-technological America. Who can stand up to such “innovation, administration, infrastructure”? You must bend to the inevitable and submit your personal conscience to the domination of the Tudors, or the Nationalists, or the Rockefellers, right?

And yet… there is always the terata, the miraculum, the miracle that occurs in the middle of the night. Perhaps Apollo of the bow might strike, the angel of the LORD will come, the ring will go into Orodruin, and the forces of darkness melt away like the dew at the sunrise.

One might speculate about how miracle and prophecy work here:

• did the prophet foresee the deliverance? or was the prophet the creation of a later writer putting “prophecy” of interpretation into the mouth of his fictional character?

• was the miracle a deliverance by the Divine to secure the future of this small, Levantine religion? or did that same religion looking back at and constructing their history see the documented event through the lens of Providence?

Augustine himself claims that the working of Providence is seen, not when looking to the future, but when, from a place of happiness and salvation, one looks back at the past to see all the moments that led to one’s current state. It’s a bit of an attitude shift, I suppose, a gratitude at deliverance from the fleshpots of Egypt, and noticing what all was necessary to discover the books of the law within ourself.

In the 19th century, the poet, George Gordon, Lord Byron, wrote a poem about this called “TheDestruction of Sennacherib“.

The Destruction of Sennacherib

BY LORD BYRON (GEORGE GORDON)

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

So what exactly is “a miracle”? Did the army of Sennacherib retreat because of a disease? was it the angel of the LORD? was it perhaps both? was it perhaps simply gratitude on the part of the Israelites that they had been spared the horrors outlined by the Rab’shakeh?

Who is to say?

Ultimately, whatever the awful thing threatening annihilation “hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!” - and that’s something to be grateful for, indeed.

Trust in God in Time of Danger

¹ A psalm of David. When he was fleeing from his son Absalom.

² O Lord, how great is the number of my enemies,
how many are those who rise up against me.
³ How numerous are the ones who say of me,
“He will not receive salvation from God.” Selah

⁴ But you, O Lord, are a shield to protect me;
you are my glory and the one who raises my head high.
⁵ Whenever I cry aloud to the Lord,
he answers me from his holy mountain. Selah

⁶ I lie down and sleep;
I awaken again, for the Lord sustains me.
⁷ Thus, I will not fear the multitudes
who have surrounded me on every side.
⁸ Rise up, O Lord!
Rescue me, O my God!
You will strike all my enemies across the face
and break the teeth of the wicked.
⁹ Salvation comes from the Lord.
May your blessing be upon your people. Selah

Psalm 3 is normally read as a positive song to the LORD. It reinforces our safe sense that all is well in the world because our trust in the LORD will not be unrewarded. The very subtitle (later added) is “Trust in God in Time of Danger.” And indeed it does us well to believe that God does not abandon those he loves.

We take great solace in knowing that the LORD is fighting on our side and responds to us when we urge Him, saying,

“Rise up, O Lord!

Rescue me, O my God!

You will strike all my enemies across the face

and break the teeth of the wicked.”

In Latin:

Exsurge, Domine;

salvum me fac, Deus meus.

Quoniam tu percussisti omnes adversantes mihi sine causa;

dentes peccatorum contrivisti.

But let’s for a moment consider another angle to the psalmist’s words.

Psalm 3 is the very first psalm to contain the word “Selah”.

What Ashley Lyon in her article “What Does Selah Mean?” calls the “puzzle of ordinary readers and the despair of scholars.”

Interpretations of the word

have included that

1. Selah indicates a pause in the text.

2. Selah is a synonym of Hebrew words that mean “forever.”

3. Selah is a derivative of the Hebrew root salal (note the s and l), which means to “raise voices in praise” or “make the instruments louder.”

4. A final option, found mainly in rabbinic tradition, is that Selah is an acronym for a phrase in Numbers 14:19, “Please forgive the sins of this people”.

I like this last one. “Please forgive, LORD. Forgive the sins of this people.”

“Forgive”

Notice that Selah occurs three times throughout the psalm—and always at important transitions in the cycle of lament;

1. sin

2. judgment

3. redemption

• “Forgive” - In Psalm 3:2 it marks the sin of those who seek the speaker’s life;

• In 3:4 “forgive” situates God on his holy hill (the place of judgment);

• and in 3:8 it marks the redemptive-salvific nature of those who trust in Him. “forgive”

But let’s look at some context concerning this Psalm that might show us a bit more about selah, “forgive”. The psalm is (allegedly) written during David’s war with Absalom - or at least it is set during that time; sometime before Absalom’s death.

See, David, like most kings of the ancient world, had many wives (eight all told, and 10+ concubines). Maacah from the kingdom of Geshur is his second wife and bears him two children, Absalom (“Peace of the Father”) and Tamar (“sweet fruit”: “date”).

Of all his sons, David loved Absalom the best.

The text of 2 Samuel tells us that

1. Tamar was assaulted by Amnon, their half-brother, the son of David and Ahinoam of Jezreel, and the heir to the throne of the House of David.

2. David does nothing to punish Amnon for this awful act so Absalom takes matters into his own hands, kills Amnon, and then flees to Geshur.

3. But David misses him and, after three years, grants him a pardon whereupon Absalom returns.

4. But in disgust at his noble family, Absalom raises an army against David at the city of Hebron.

5. David flees Jerusalem to the Kidron valley where Absalom’s forces catch him and attack.

6. At the Battle of the Wood of Ephraim, though, Absalom’s forces are routed and Absalom is caught by his hair in a great oak tree (quercum magnum).

He is left

“hanging between heaven and earth”

“suspenso inter caelum et terram”.

Joab, the major general of David, spears him in the side and then

“ten young men, Jo′ab’s armor-bearers, surrounded Ab′salom and struck him (percutientes: To strike through and through, to thrust or pierce through ), and killed him.”

“decem juvenes armigeri Joab, et percutientes interfecerunt eum.”

This is done despite the fact that David, the King, has urged them to “‘For my sake protect the young man Ab′salom.’”

Surprisingly, when the news is brought to David, instead of rejoicing …he weeps bitter tears: “Contristatus itaque rex” and cries out a lament for his son saying

• Fili mi Absalom, Absalom fili mi: quis mihi tribuat ut ego moriar pro te, Absalom fili mi, fili mi Absalom?

• My son, my son; who might grant to me that I should die in your place, O Absalom my son, my son?

Why would David cry at the death of his enemy?

Remember that the psalm follows the pattern of sin, judgment, and redemption - but if the psalm is written by David during, or set during the confrontation with Absalom - the prince is not yet dead and yet is also the enemy of the king. Therefore, Absalom is “the (wicked) enemy whom the LORD will strike across the face and break all his teeth.”

In a supreme and tragic irony, the KING is calling for deliverance, calling down punishment from the LORD upon his own son!!!

• that his son might die so that the king might live.

How anguished his terrible cry must have been not only to learn that his boy was dead, but that his boy was dead BY HIS OWN PRAYER TO YHWH.

Keep in mind today two things:

1. How much others have done for us; fathers, mothers, grandparents, uncles & aunts; sacrificing that we might be happy, enduring so that we might be at ease, suffering that we might not suffer.

2. How terrible might be the consequences of the words we say; many of which might actually come true causing us not joy but tremendous sorrow.

Do not pray:

• percussiste omnes adversantes mihi sine causa; dentes peccatorum contrivisti!

• strike all my enemies across the face and break the teeth of the wicked!

Pray instead

“Selah”

“Please forgive the sins of this people”

“Forgive.”

“The Frankfurt School” refers to a group of toads… um… people who gathered together at the University of Frankfurt am Main (Goethe University Frankfurt) during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s in order to discuss how best to “improve” the world with communism. These “intellectuals, academics, and political dissidents” were dissatisfied with the socio-economic systems of the 1930s and “sought alternative paths to social development”, that is, they tried to craft through discussion, debate and other forms of legerdemain a better future for the whole of humankind. Freakin’ do-gooders. Significant figures associated with the school include

• Max Horkheimer,

• Theodor Adorno,

• Walter Benjamin,

• Erich Fromm,

• Wilhelm Reich,

• Herbert Marcuse, and

• Jürgen Habermas

Together these disconsolate doctoral dickwads decided that breaking down the social norms of beauty, truth, and goodness (as well as traditional marriage and family life) would bring about a happier and gentler world.

They proposed that rather than searching for meaning and order in works of art, literature, music and art should be ripped into little shreds and examined as artefacts of oppression, as a man might search through a pile of pearls to find an oyster shell or two.

What unites the disparate members of the School is a shared commitment to the project of human emancipation, theoretically pursued by an attempted synthesis of the Marxist tradition, psychoanalysis, and empirical sociological research.

Their shared commitment to the project eventually became what is referred to in the white towers of academic intellectual potency as “critical theory”, the ultimate goal of which is to instill socialist values into every citizens in order to bring about the bright new communist society of next Tuesday.

During the Nazi period, the group was exiled to New York, from where it returned to Frankfurt in 1950. The group espoused a non-dogmatic version of Marxism, which they called “critical theory”, incorporating various influences from modern traditions of philosophy, sociology and psychology.

In order to accomplish their program of creating the glorious communist world of next Tuesday this merry bunch of pals followed the advice of the Italian, Antonio Gramschi. They postponed, that is, rejected the brutal, violent revolutionary tactics advocated by Vladimir Lenin and instead sought to infiltrate all the major institutions of human thought in the West, scooping out the insides of each form of human expression and then wearing the appearance like a Xipe Totec leisure suit.

“The Revolution won't happen with guns, rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism.”
― Max Horkheimer

Later generations influenced by these dudes were

• Saul Alinsky

• Abbie Hoffman

• Katie Couric

• Barak Obama

• Bernie Sanders

• Hillary Clinton

Queer studies, African-American studies, Women’s (Womyns?) studies, and other righteous grievance studies were all influenced by this school.

“The critical theorist is aware (claims) that the way in which s/he sees the world is conditioned by political and ideological structures of the society.”

Unfortunately, the critical theorist sees the world this way because they too are conditioned by political and ideological structures of the society. They want to see similar conditioning in every person regardless of the society in which they lived without acknowledging that THEIR OWN CRITICAL THEORY IS A PRODUCT OF THEIR CONDITIONING! (if I hear one more spouter spouting off about how the Iliad or the Odyssey were written to reinforce the patriarchy I’m going to harden a pointed stick in the fire of the cave…)

In order to create this great new society filled with the warmth of communism the members of the Frankfurt School promoted all sorts of lascivious perversions… that is, liberating forms of free love that were not just titillating and obsequious for the professors themselves but could be used as a weapon to smash the patriarchy and bring down the house of cards that was Western Civilization.

EVERY SINGLE ITEM from the traditional world of beauty was considered part of the inherited and unacknowledged systems of oppression which infected the cultures of Europe and America and had, consequently, to be infiltrated, co-opted, perverted, repurposed and/or smashed.

Poetry?

“Poetry leads to genocide.” - Adorno.

Sentimental bourgeoisie drivel! composed by dead white males! (unlike the Frankfurt thinkers who were LIVING white males so come over here you sweet undergraduate thing and let me ameliorate your environment!)

Literature?

Merely expressions of the structures of oppressors to oppress the oppressed.

“The unity of style not only of the Christian Middle Ages but of the Renaissance expresses in each case the different structure of social power, and not the obscure experience of the oppressed in which the general was enclosed. The great artists were never those who embodied a wholly flawless and perfect style, but those who used style as a way of hardening themselves against the chaotic expression of suffering, as a negative truth. The style of their works gave what was expressed that force without which life goes unheard”
― Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

Burn the traditional books and replace them with works that repudiate power, smash the patriarchy, radicalize the youth, increase the social frictions, and/or affirm the exalted nature of the oppressed groups.

“There is only one expression for truth: the thought which repudiates injustice. If insistence on the good sides of life is not sublated in the negative whole, it transfigures its own opposite: violence.”
― Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments

Tolkien directly opposed this, btw. True, he hated the fascistic movement on the continent and wrote a letter in defiance of Chancellor Hitler and his brownshirts. But in his letters and in his famous essay written in 1947, “On Fairy Stories” Tolkien explicitly laid out a reason for and method of creating artwork, specifically fantasy:

• To make a Secondary World inside which the green sun will be credible, commanding Secondary Belief, will probably require labour and thought, and will certainly demand a special skill, a kind of elvish craft. Few attempt such difficult tasks. But when they are attempted and in any degree accomplished then we have a rare achievement of Art: indeed narrative art, story-making in its primary and most potent mode.

• The magic of Faërie is not an end in itself, its virtue is in its operations: among these are the satisfaction of certain primordial human desires. One of these desires is to survey the depths of space and time. Another is (as will be seen) to hold communion with other living things. A story may thus deal with the satisfaction of these desires, with or without the operation of either machine or magic, and in proportion as it succeeds it will approach the quality and have the flavour of fairy-story.

• Fairy-stories offer also, in a peculiar degree or mode, these things: Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, Consolation…

• In this inheritance of wealth there may be a danger of boredom or of anxiety to be original, and that may lead to a distaste for fine drawing, delicate pattern, and “pretty” colours, or else to mere manipulation and over-elaboration of old material, clever and heartless. But the true road of escape from such weariness is not to be found in the wilfully awkward, clumsy, or misshapen, not in making all things dark or unremittingly violent; nor in the mixing of colours on through subtlety to drabness, and the fantastical complication of shapes to the point of silliness and on towards delirium.

• Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter.

This, I do not doubt, is one of the reasons he is even now rejected by most all the universities of America despite being one of the most popular writers in the 20th century.

Traditional Family Life?

“Sexuality is by nature polymorphous-perverse” - Marcuse

Capitalist society “brainwashes” people to concentrate only on procreative sex in order to generate new workers for the capitalist machine. Sexual liberation, therefore, is a weapon or tool to free the individual from capitalism so they might find self-actuation in the new communist utopia.

“Narcissistic self-love (masturbation) … can lead to culture-building” - Marcuse

Architecture?

“Beauty is a tool of oppression” - Adorno

Capitalist crap built to glorify the haves over the have nots! Tear it down and replace it with formless, faceless, featureless blocks of steel and grey concrete. We’ll call it something catchy like… Brutalism!

Music?

Music was always considered the most pure art; no medium between the listener and the mathematical reality that reflects the mind of God. Frankfurt School’s opinion?SLOP! written to reinforce society’s norms of harmony, progression, religious thought and completion. Needs to be replaced with sentimental hogwash, brutal repetitive atonal music played at extremely loud decibels.

and yes, I just included that. Suck it up.

“There are no trees for the poor lost poor children. They have only chaos to climb.”

A better tune than Arnold Schoenberg or John Michael Talbot!

Their opinion of Jazz alone should rank the Frankfurters (or whatever they called themselves) as suss (and yes, I know, they also extolled Bach and Beethoven but whatevs). “Pseudo-individualization”???? What a bloody killjoy! Sometimes a jazz solo is simply a jazz solo, mr. Adorno.

In short, the Frankfurt School and its bastard children of critical theory might have contributed something valuable by examining the “interplay of culture and systems of power” but in this humble prole’s opinion they have done more to bring ugliness, darkness, depression, confusion and ruin into the world than almost any other group of intellectual collegiate elitist wankers known to man… um… personkind.

The play, “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar“, was first performed in 1599. Queen Elizabeth was nearing the end of her 45 year regency, the Spanish Armada had been defeated, a period of brutal control and social unrest had come to its conclusion & Catholicism was almost purged from England. Shakespeare, composing some of his best work during this era, looks back to the historic assassination of Julius Caesar on the 15th of March, 44 BC as told through Plutarch’s writings.

This play has been read as a tragedy rather than a history (and indeed is called “The Tragedy of Julius Caesar”) wherein Caesar is noble but human and Cassius is a jealous social climber. Brutus comes from a noble line stretching back to the beginning of the Republic, and one might say that he himself has done little and is not worth much as a man so is easily drawn into a conspiracy to tear down the regency. A popular read of the play is that it is a critique of good men that get swept up in the moment and destroy a noble enterprise such as what Caesar was attempting.

Shakespeare paints Brutus in a favorable light. He is a noble character that does what he does because he believes it is the right thing to do, and Shakespeare never places personal motivations as a factor in his actions. Brutus goes so far as to murder his friend, Julius Caesar, because he deems it the right course of action for his country. He is torn between something he loves, Caesar, and something he believes in, freedom from tyranny.

It has also been read as a tragedy wherein Caesar is a grasping tyrant and noble men seek to thwart his plans by assassination. Their attempts fail, however, and tyranny dominates a once noble republic.

So which is it? Is Caesar a noble man brought low by jealous conspirators? or is he a grasping tyrant executed by noble men?

The play might be more aptly titled “Brutus” but I suppose that didn’t sell too well on the marquee. More to the point, what if the play ISN’T really about Brutus (who is only one of the conspirators) nor is it about Cassius, or Casca, or even really about Julius Caesar the man? What if the play is more about the legend, the godlike status, that eventually became attributed to the name “Caesar” - a status that, though stemming from a less than statuesque man, eventually became concretized in statues and governments throughout Europe?

But, what if the real tragedy is about England and the real tragic hero is English society itself? The Czar, the Kaiser, the Emperor, the King; all were divinely appointed to rule with autocratic control. “How did this monarchic regime begin?” asks Shakespeare. “Could it have been stopped? or is the cynical drive toward tyranny inevitable?” This is the big theme of the play embodied in that iconic, cutting, and powerful name of Rome’s first great monarch.

Consider Mark Antony and his power grasping nature.

This is the sort of man that capitalized on the new wealth gained from controlling the trade routes of “Mare Nostrum” - “Our Sea”. Antony is a man who uses words, duplicity, belligerence, and subtle force to get exactly what he wants. The dangerous ambition of a tyrant lurking behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people. (Federalist No. 1)

Consider also his uncanny ability to work a crowd to his benefit - the implications therein of how power is maintained not by virtue and good policy but by showmanship (bread and circuses) and the appeal to emotion.

Brutus never has sought fame or reputation but has instead sought goodness and honor, and how this leads to his attempt to rectify what he sees as tyrannical usurpation and an end to his ideals. The play, it seems, is more of a complex warning by Shakespeare about the perils of dealing with powerful figures & meddling in things beyond our ken.

Why, for instance does the play open with a triumph by Caesar over Pompey; a triumph which represents what is essentially the end of the Republic?

Why, for instance, does Cassius say about honor

I cannot tell what you and other men

Think of this life; but, for my single self,

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

and about freedom

I was born free as Caesar; so were you:

And why, for instance does Caesar’s opening line - the line that so often in Shakespeare plays defines a character - consist of his wife’s name “Calpurnia” - commanding her to stand where Mark Antony can touch her while he runs by in the victory race (so she might be blessed and no longer be barren). Though depicted in other versions as a noble and inspirational man, a strong and terrifying tyrant, Shakespeare’s Caesar seems a weak, addled, superstitious man afflicted with epilepsy and desirous of power; not at all a noble ruler.

Cassius, I think, is not seeking to become an emperor himself but is justifiably worried that this very mortal and flawed man is now milking his godlike reputation for all it is worth.

Ye gods, it doth amaze me

A man of such a feeble temper should

So get the start of the majestic world

And bear the palm alone.

...this man

Is now become a god, and Cassius is

A wretched creature and must bend his body,

If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.

Caesar is a mortal, a man, with mortal flaws and weakness just like Cassius, Brutus or any of the other conspirators. Cassius’ motivation may not be without ambition but is mostly an honest concern over tyranny and the ruin of a government set up to ameliorate tyranny. The fault that prevents Cassius and his compadres from advancement is also the fault that prevents them from stemming the bleeding out of their Republic, a fault that “lies not in the stars but in themselves.” They are not the kind of men that have the lean and hungry look that takes advantage of the economic and political shifts in society.

Even the “lean and hungry look” attributed to Cassius by Caesar is not a condemning attribute partly b/c it is the look of the wolf-like hero (Lycurgus or Leonidas or Autolycus) and partly b/c Caesar himself prefers all his subjects to be fat, like sheep that he can fleece or cull when he wishes.

Caesar
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

Cassius even addresses this wolf to sheep comparison when talking with Casca in scene III

And why should Caesar be a tyrant then?

Poor man! I know he would not be a wolf,

But that he sees the Romans are but sheep:

He were no lion, were not Romans hinds.

Those that with haste will make a mighty fire

Begin it with weak straws: what trash is Rome,

What rubbish and what offal, when it serves

For the base matter to illuminate

So vile a thing as Caesar!

In other words, Caesar’s wolfish nature is exacerbated by the fact that the populace of Rome are such sheep; power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In a different circumstance Caesar might not be a lion but that the Roman people are hinds (interesting play on words, not “deer” but “hinds” like “behinds”) upon which such dangerous leonine men feed.

Here is Ciaran Hinds in the role of a very lionesque Caesar:

The idea that the Roman people are trash, rubbish, offal, is born out at the very opening of the play when the reeking breath of the ungoverned crowds almost overwhelms Flavius and Marullus. This again is shown later when the crowd is whipped up by Mark Antony.

Cassius, Brutus, and the other conspirators (Casca) seem to be far more honorable men. And they are honorable. Otherwise Antony’s ridicule of them in his speech would make no sense. Their honorable nature is reinforced after the murder of Caesar when they submit their act to the judgment of the populace. It is especially apparent later in the play when the squabbling camp of Mark Antony, Octavius, & Lepidus stands in direct contrast to the attempt at amity btwn Brutus and Cassius in IV, 2&3.

Cassius is thinking not for immediate gain in killing Caesar but for the long term effects of his actions. If they are to stop the shift in government towards absolute tyranny they have to act immediately and nip it in the bud. And yet they are timid sheep whose character fault prevents them not only from advancing their own cause but from preventing the blood-dimmed tide that threatens to overwhelm the Republic.

The tragedy of the play is not that Brutus gets swept into intrigue but that no intrigue can stanch this inevitable tsunami of tyrannical rule.

Shakespeare, writing in a Europe which had inherited such form of rule and even calcified it with the religious theory of the divine rite of kings, wouldn’t directly critique his own monarch; but the indirect critique here (similar to the critique in Richard II and the “but save ceremony” critique in Henry V) seems pretty strong.

Writing in our own age, I read the play as a powerful critique of any leader transforming himself into a ruler. What sort of dilemma does that create for other citizens?

• Allow him to have his way and soon there will be black lists of enemies, violations of individual rights, purges, executions and terror squads.

• Try to stop him by force and he becomes a god and rallying point for other tyrants using his image as a cause celebre.

What then must we do?

Thanks to T.M. down under and to J.E. in the frozen wastelands of Nador.

1. My Friend Down Under (FDU)

I put my thoughts on The Odyssey film into AI and this is its version of them. I think you are circling around a very substantial criticism of the modern heroic film—not merely that The Odyssey was too slow or that certain episodes were abbreviated, but that the filmmakers seem uncertain whether heroism, homecoming, authority and civilization are ultimately things worth affirming.

Your wife’s review—“It was slow for half the film, and Matt Damon is a good actor, but he’s too small”—is wonderfully direct. And I think “too small” may describe more than Damon’s physical stature. He is an excellent naturalistic actor, but the Odysseus Nolan has written for him seems psychologically diminished. He has endured tremendous ordeals, but the film does not finally enlarge him into a king, husband and father capable of restoring his household.

That is where your comparison with Ben-Hur becomes especially illuminating.

Ben-Hur is also a homecoming story

Judah Ben-Hur returns to a home that has been devastated. His mother and sister have disappeared, his people are oppressed, and he has acquired power, wealth and an understandable desire for vengeance. The real conflict is not simply whether he can defeat Messala. It is whether Rome’s cruelty will reproduce itself inside him.

His encounter with Christ does not make him passive or cause him to abandon his responsibilities. It transforms the spirit in which he carries them. Christ’s mercy releases him from hatred, enabling him to return completely to his family. The ending restores several things simultaneously:

• the household;

• Ben-Hur’s moral integrity;

• Miriam and Tirzah’s health;

• his relationship with Esther;

• and his capacity to live without being ruled by Rome internally.

The miracle is not merely that his family is healed. Ben-Hur himself is healed.

That is profoundly different from ending with the hero sailing away.

Nolan’s ending turns homecoming into another departure.

The film apparently presents Odysseus’s departure as a form of exile or punishment following the killing of the suitors, rather than ending with his complete restoration as king of Ithaca. That is one of Nolan’s significant alterations to Homer’s conclusion.

I understand what the ending is presumably trying to say: violence has consequences; the returning warrior cannot simply resume ordinary life; Odysseus remains marked by what he has done. That connects The Odyssey with Nolan’s continuing interest in guilt, obsession and men whose great abilities estrange them from normal human existence.

But it creates exactly the problem you identified. The entire story has been about getting home, yet home proves unable to hold him.

Penelope has waited. Telemachus has grown up without a father. The kingdom has been occupied by predatory men. Odysseus returns, destroys them—and then leaves the weakened household and kingdom to deal with what follows. Instead of completing his responsibilities, he appears to escape their most difficult stage.

The message becomes something like:

A great man may save his home through violence, but he cannot remain there afterward because the very qualities that enabled him to save it make him unfit to govern it.

That is a recognizably modern conclusion, but it is not necessarily a satisfying or civilizationally healthy one.

Telemachus is crucial to the problem.

Had the film established Telemachus as a strong and increasingly capable successor, Odysseus’s departure might have felt like a genuine transfer of responsibility. But, as you say, the film leaves Telemachus looking unequal to the task.

Some of that may be intentional: Tom Holland’s Telemachus represents a generation raised without its fathers, trying to inherit a world it does not understand. But the film needed to show him becoming visibly stronger—perhaps standing beside Odysseus, learning from him and finally demonstrating that he could defend Ithaca himself.

Without that development, Odysseus’s departure is not a successful passing of the torch. It looks like the abandonment of an unprepared son.

That explains the sense of doom you felt. The old order has returned only momentarily. The father leaves; the son is inadequate; the institutions of Ithaca remain fragile. Nothing assures us that the suitors will not simply be replaced by the next group of predators.

The film is simultaneously too long and too abbreviated

Your point about the Cyclops is exactly right. A film can be almost three hours long and still feel strangely underdeveloped. Nolan condensed the 24 books of Homer into approximately three hours, and some commentators have specifically observed that the Polyphemus material receives much less development than it does in the poem.

The difficulty is not simply running time. It is allocation of dramatic weight.

The Cyclops episode should be a miniature epic within the epic:

1. the discovery of the cave;

2. the men’s uneasiness;

3. the appearance and physical scale of Polyphemus;

4. the horror of his first attack;

5. Odysseus devising the “Nobody” deception;

6. the preparation of the stake;

7. the blinding;

8. the tense escape beneath the sheep;

9. and Odysseus’s disastrous decision to reveal his name.

That final act is essential because it contains Odysseus’s greatness and his flaw in the same moment. His cleverness saves everyone who survives—but his pride brings Poseidon’s curse upon him. If the sequence passes too quickly, it becomes another action set piece rather than a revelation of character.

So yes: this may genuinely have been better as a three-and-a-half- or four-hour film with an intermission. An intermission would not merely accommodate length. It could provide formal structure: the fall of Troy and wanderings before the interval; the movement toward Ithaca, recognition and restoration afterward.

Older epics understood that magnitude requires time.

Why the older epics often feel richer

The great films of the 1950s and early 1960s were generally willing to make firm moral distinctions without making their characters simplistic.

Bridge on the River Kwai is morally complicated. Nicholson is brave, disciplined, intelligent and catastrophically vain. Yet the film does not conclude that courage, discipline and duty are themselves fraudulent. It shows how a virtue can become corrupted when separated from its proper purpose.

Likewise, Ben-Hur condemns vengeance without condemning strength. Judah is not required to become weak. He must become merciful.

That distinction is important. Much modern filmmaking appears to assume that deconstructing the hero is automatically more mature than presenting one. Older films frequently did something more difficult: they tested the hero, purified him and then returned him to the world with renewed responsibilities.

The older epics also gave physical space to human beings. They used wide compositions, processions, crowds, landscapes, elaborate sets and deliberate pacing. The viewer was permitted to look at Rome, Jerusalem, the bridge, the galley or the chariot arena and understand where people stood in relation to one another. Modern films may have extraordinary photography, but rapid editing, overwhelming sound and enormous close-ups can sometimes make the world feel smaller rather than larger.

Your point about guilt and the West

I think you are also identifying the distinction between moral reflection and moral paralysis.

A civilization must examine its failures. Otherwise it becomes dishonest and repeats them. But a civilization that teaches every generation to regard its inheritance primarily as a catalogue of crimes eventually loses the confidence required to defend anything—including the principles that made self-criticism possible.

There is a legitimate place for films such as Oppenheimer. The atomic bomb created moral and strategic questions that ought to be examined. But that cannot be the only story we tell about the generation that fought the Second World War. They were not merely traumatized victims or morally compromised instruments. They were also people who faced appalling circumstances, accepted responsibilities and defeated murderous regimes.

The retrospective viewer possesses knowledge, security and time that the people making decisions during the war did not possess. That does not make criticism illegitimate, but it should produce some humility.

And you are right that decisive leadership requires a particular temperament. The person responsible for lives in war cannot endlessly reopen every decision while the decision is being made. Prudence requires reflection beforehand and accountability afterward—but action itself requires commitment.

A culture needs both the person who asks, “Are we doing the right thing?” and the person who, once the decision has been made, says, “This must be done, and I will do it.” It becomes unhealthy when it admires only the first personality and automatically suspects the second.

Yet, there is a deeper problem with this Odyssey.

A genuine homecoming story should answer the question:

“What has the hero learned that will allow him to live rightly at home?”

Ben-Hur answers: “mercy is stronger than vengeance.”

The Lord of the Rings offers two complementary answers. Aragorn returns and assumes kingship; Sam returns to ordinary family and civic life. Frodo leaves not because responsibility is meaningless, but because his sacrifice has wounded him beyond complete healing in Middle-earth. His departure is surrounded by others who remain and rebuild. The world is safe enough for him to leave because Aragorn, Sam, Merry and Pippin have all become capable guardians of it.

Nolan’s Odyssey, as you describe it and as I also understand its ending, does not provide that reassurance. Odysseus’s suffering does not clearly prepare him to govern better, reconcile his household or form his son. It primarily demonstrates that he has been damaged.

That is perhaps the central difference between much classical storytelling and contemporary prestige filmmaking:

• The older story asks how suffering can transform a person.

• The modern story often settles for showing that suffering has traumatized him.

Trauma is real, but it is not a complete philosophy of human life. A satisfying epic must show not only what suffering does to the hero, but what the hero ultimately does with it.

One more thought: Yes—and that makes the film’s moral vision much stronger than a simple movement from violence to gentleness. Judah does not learn that conviction, loyalty or resistance are wrong. He learns that hatred must not become the ruling principle of his resistance.

At the beginning, Messala offers him safety, influence and continued friendship—but only if Judah helps Rome identify those who resist its rule. Judah refuses to become an informer against his own people, even though he understands that refusing Messala may turn a powerful Roman officer into his enemy. That refusal is the first great proof of Judah’s integrity: he will not purchase personal security through betrayal.

Later, his adoption by Quintus Arrius gives him nearly everything Rome can offer: citizenship, rank, wealth, protection and the prestige of a Roman name. The ring represents all of that. It is not merely jewelery; it is a portable sign of Roman authority and of Judah’s privileged relationship with one of Rome’s most powerful men.

When Judah removes it and asks that it be returned to Arrius, he is relinquishing a real shield. He refuses to let gratitude to Arrius—or the genuine affection between them—turn into acceptance of Roman domination. He can love and honour a Roman man without surrendering his identity or abandoning his people.

That is what makes the ending so satisfying. Judah’s encounter with Christ does not dissolve his loyalties into a vague universal benevolence. He remains a Hebrew. He still recognizes injustice. He still stands with the oppressed. He does not conclude that Messala’s actions were acceptable or that Rome’s cruelty should simply be ignored.

What changes is the condition of his own soul.

Before Christ’s death, Judah’s resistance has become entangled with an consuming desire for revenge. Messala has not merely injured him; Messala has begun to determine what kind of man Judah will become. Judah risks allowing Rome’s brutality to reproduce itself within him. He wants justice, but hatred is steadily transforming justice into vengeance.

Christ frees him from that inner captivity. Judah can therefore surrender hatred without surrendering courage.

That distinction is beautifully expressed through the ring:

1. Earlier, Judah refuses dishonourable security by refusing to betray his people.

2. Later, he relinquishes privileged security by returning the symbol of Roman citizenship.

3. Finally, he relinquishes the false security of hatred—the belief that vengeance is what gives him strength.

In all three cases, Judah gives up something that might protect him personally in order to remain faithful to something higher.

And that is why mercy in Ben-Hur never feels weak. It is not capitulation. It requires Judah to become freer and braver than he was when he was driven by revenge. Hatred had provided him with purpose, energy and a clear enemy. To relinquish it means standing against injustice without being sustained by the emotional intoxication of vengeance.

The film therefore joins together things modern storytelling often pulls apart:

• mercy and justice;

• forgiveness and loyalty;

• universal human love and particular obligation;

• moral transformation and public courage.

Judah does not have to cease being a son of Israel in order to follow Christ’s teaching. In fact, the lesson of Christ allows him to stand with his people more truthfully, because he is no longer using their suffering merely as fuel for his personal hatred of Rome.

This also sharpens the contrast with the ending of The Odyssey. Judah gives up Roman status and security, but he does not sail away from the consequences. He returns to his mother, sister and Esther. He relinquishes power in order to belong more fully to his home and people.

Odysseus, by contrast, finally reaches his home and then relinquishes his presence there. Judah’s sacrifice deepens his commitment; Odysseus’s departure appears to weaken his.

So the conclusion of Ben-Hur is not:

“the heroic man must become less heroic.”

It is:

“The heroic man must learn what his strength is for.”

Judah’s strength is no longer for revenge or self-preservation. It is for fidelity, protection, justice, love and service. That is a genuine completion of the heroic journey—and one reason the ending feels uplifting without feeling sentimental or morally evasive.

WJKL

Some great thoughts here (though what is AI and what you I am unclear; let’s just say all you). I’m not gonna defend Nolan’s flick - I enjoyed it and saw a profound commentary on something that has gone wrong in the West. Still think it a good movie. The points about the hero, the passing of the heritage, the need for a real story arc, the sacrifice (in the image of the ring) are all far better than the pablatum and straw man arguments I have heard from most people on the right, though. So…

Yes, I agree, there needed to be more of the heroic in that movie (Nolan’s). IDK if Nolan can tell that tale. It just isn’t in him. His closest is the Batman series about the hero that Gotham deserves rather than the want it needs (or whatever) and even there the “hero” of Batman is more like a Shane anti-hero. So, I don’t think that “hero” is really in the lexicon of Christopher Nolan. Even his character way back in Inception is a deeply flawed guy trying to do what he was doing to confront his own demons; not to sacrifice himself for another person. Certainly the Odysseus of THIS version is similar - he doesn’t travel home, confront the monsters, defy the gods, or cleanse the hall out of a need to re-establish himself as the proper heroic ruler worthy of the throne. More like a angel of vengeance reeking punishment on all these pusillanimous Gen-Xers.

BUT

I think as a Shane story, or a John Wick story about vengeance it certainly is entertaining. I also still appreciate Nolan’s attempt to give some voice to something that has gone wrong in modernity (which is what the movie is really about, not 13th century BC Ithaca). This raises two points in concurrence with yours...

First, I don’t think that Nolan is naming the right source of the problem. He like a great many hollywoders sees the problem as being too insensitive to the needs of others; not compassionate enough; using the arts of xenia to trick the people whom we should welcome as fellow humans and thus setting off a chain reaction of insensitivity and rudeness on (the internet) society. I don’t think this is correct and in fact may be duplicitous (if it is not simply Hollyweird stupidity, visavis Ann Hathaway who is as dumb as Sauerkraut!)

Nolan, like most of the hollywooders will not, cannot acknowledge that there is a group of folks who consciously have eroded Western culture, systematically have ruined the old institutions of courtesy and manners and charity, and deliberately set fire to the bulwarks of civilization that allow us to treat others in a decent manner. Call the group commies, progressives, liberals, LGBTQplussers - it is far more in their arsenal of dirty tricks to have done this and then turn around and say “it’s the cruel conservatives who love the military industrial complex!” “Trump!”

They refuse to acknowledge, unlike people on the right, that the ultimate source of this cruel and barbaric behavior is calculated from a cabal of Jacobins who seek to rule through a one world government backed by the world banks (nee the Fabians). Nolan’s movie comes close to this, IMO, in the monstrous figure of Agamemnon - a sort of Darth Vader marble bust of a figure who should be sitting on the shelf of the president of First World Bank Switzerland rather than stomping through the halls of burning Troy. But that statement in Nolan’s work doesn’t go far enough; it stops with “mean capitalists who want to control the trade routes”. I extrapolate that these “mean capitalists” are really the NWO in disguise who are capitalist when it benefits them and communist when capitalism fails to benefit them - they are above the fray and employ others to do their dirty work (until they get home, that is, and have to pay for the abortion they forced upon their mistress in order to advance their career).

And perhaps here I can defend Nolan in saying that IF he intended the Agamemnon character as a figura for the NWO Davos-types then good for him. They do seem to be the ones at the center of the chaos for the past 100+ years and I have a hard time seeing it otherwise.

But that leads to...

Second, your sense of dread seems spot on, even with the “happy ending”.

I disregard most of the changes in the movie from the epic since Nolan is not retelling the epic but re-interpreting it;

“sing, Muse, for our own time also…”

Ne’etheless, even my sister who is pretty darn savvy said that this ending was ... off. The epic has Odysseus being spared an island-wide civil war by the goddess Athena and then told that he must go NORTH until he finds a people that do not know what an oar is and cannot recognize weapons of war. There he is to plant the oar in the ground and make offering to Poseidon asking for reconciliation. My sister saw this as an expiation for the perpetual contending with the gods. I see it as an ending to the perpetuity of violence and need for subterfuge. “Sailing into the West” is a metaphor (Christian) for death. Indeed, a good metaphor b/c it holds with it the promise of being with your best gal and being happy, but Odysseus essentially dies at the end.

What with my long contention that the original epic is a retelling of the Ra in the Duat story (Regions of Darkness and Thick Night) the scenes of sailing into the west with Penelope, toward the setting sun and between two mountains are appropriate; RA (Osiris) and Isis in the Mesektet boat btwn the pillars of Hercules (the ax-heads of the two mountains of Manu and Bakhu) descend into the underworld of the Duat to fight the many-headed dragon, Apophis. That fits in the epic where the many-headed Polyphemus of the crowds present constant challenges to the sun-god character, Odysseus, winning home and restoring his rule.

But Nolan’s story doesn’t tell this at all.

His movie is NOT a reiteration of this 7000 year old story, but a commentary in disguise on our current state of shitieness. His Odysseus is not the solar god (see Kirk Douglas 1954 for that) but the runty Matt Damon (a little short for a solar trooper?) whose performance I admired, but he wasn’t really Odysseus. He wasn’t the hero returning to his home and restoring his throne but the brawler, the little scrapper, who refused to accept the misery that the one world Agamemnon government had tried to enforce on him (”I’ve followed Agamemnon long enough”). Nor was ODamon the heroic boaster who tricked and boasted at the same time; “I am Otis” and later “Know, I Cyclops, that it is I, the giver and receiver of pain, who has bested you this day!” - No, he was just an average shmo, suffering guilt and PTSD for having been put through the ringer of war only to discover that it was all pretty freaking pointless.

So here is where I think the “dread” comes from.

“Dread is what you feel when you are strongly afraid of an event, thing, or place that you’ve seen before, and it is stronger than simple apprehension or anticipation. It’s an actual fear of something very bad happening, an anticipation of danger.”

https://wherewordsflow.weebly.com/musings/fear-terror-horror-and-dread-the-syntax-of-horror

wherewordsflow.weebly.com

I remember reading somewhere in my dragon horde of knowledge an analysis of Hitchcock films that conjure real dread. Dread is anticipatory - not like superstition or foolish fear, but based on signs and symbols, past experience, and human nature - all culminating in something hard to name but oppressive. The cock of Norman Bates head or flicker of his smile, the gathering of birds on a gym set, peering out a back window at the apartments across the lot, the knowledge that this guy and his mother are Nazi psychopaths and your best girl is trapped in their house. That’s dread.

Our CURRENT problem is not just one of civilizational collapse (sea peoples and all that) due to not being nice enough but of past experience of manufactured global catastrophes - degeneration and destruction of culture on a monumental scale - rise in violence and clash of cultures - growing concern over technology out of control & a warping of the natural environment. We fear something even greater on the horizon.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the second coming is at hand.

“The Second Coming” - maybe that’s what we dread. Why? Is it because we don’t actually believe in God or that God loves us? Have we been so wrapped up in fear that we are no longer capable of seeing the second coming as a time of rejoicing for those who believe or that we will all be sinners in the hand of an angry god? or that our “fear and trembling” is not going to be the working out of our salvation?

What might alleviate that fear? - a fear which I think is very real among a large swathe of the population whose first and foremost religion (being tied to something; re+ligio) is not God, not Christ, not even material goods or wealth - but is the internet; social media; the illusion of control through peering into the palantir.

Nolan (like Huxley, Orwell, Bradbury, Lucas (in his first incarnation) and Herbert before him) sees the problem to a great degree - and perhaps articulates it pretty well if xenia is an adequate stand-in for “love the Lord your god with your whole mind, your whole soul, your whole strength; and love your neighbor as yourself” (an analog which I am still not entirely convinced is adequate); but his solution, like those before him, is utterly insufficient. Huxley’s solution was suicide of the savage; Orwell’s was submission to the state; Bradbury’s was escape from society and nuclear annihilation; Lucas’ was escape from the underground world and face the sun; Herbert was seize power and start another jihad. NONE were any more satisfactory than the other. Because the only satisfactory answer, the only one that doesn’t leave one filled with dreadful brooding on our reclining-chair thrones like Conan of old - is giving oneself over to Christ.

Who cares (at this point) what is meant by “The Christ”? Who cares if there is or isn’t a God exactly like we were taught in Sunday School? Ultimately, the problem of these big thinks (the asteroid impact, the global pandemic, the rise of the machines, the takeover by the NWO, nuclear devastation, etc. etc. etc.) is that they think too big - and in doing so think that they have to have a solution to THE PROBLEM of being alive. They try to wield the ring in order to stop Sauron and thus become the dark lord himself. The only solution is to cast it into the fire. Recognize our own stupidity, smallness, ineptitude and sinfulness and give it over to Christ - allowing Him to do what He intends.

What does that mean practically? And what does it mean for the Nolan Odyssey?

Practically I think it means that we keep our head down and avoid presumptuousness; try to discern what is best for our own little world of the household; and try to clean the home of our own soul of the demons that keep trying to infest the joint.

For the Nolan Odyssey?

I wish it had never been made in my lifetime!

I loved the movie - still do - and think it a marvelous work of art.

But it ain’t the Odyssey.

“Odysseus” (from the Greek ‘Odyssasthai’) means to give and receive pain. The epic is the retelling of an ancient story revealing that the patterns of death and resurrection are eternal patterns; Neteru (Egyptian) - the LOGOS (Greek). We humans (a la Homer’s retelling) participate in that pattern in that we have in us the potential for heroic greatness when called upon. We are Hobbits that nevertheless can be princes and heroes. Homer’s epic reminds us that though we are besieged again and again with the many headed chaos dragon seeking to devour us, we can “win home” and “cleanse the halls” in order to restore the order of the rational, clean (sana) mind/soul.

This, in Christian terms, is the promise of salvation; or at least, it prefigures that. A good retelling of that story, minus all the Hollywood cheese that always dwells on the big lie of books 9 - 12, would have been nice to see. I shall not in my own lifetime see it. And the Church refuses to acknowledge that it is so. And the artwork of the time condemns it as juvenile. And the bilge we call novels openly mocks it. And the architecture of the time rectifies all the winding lines of the organic universe into rigid lines of steel and glass. And the autotuned music of the time umptsa-umptsa-umptsas it into meek silence. So I live in a wasteland of silence where the beauty is mostly on autoplay within my mind.

Without the heroic there is no rock to cling to against the rising tide of perceived chaos gleaned through the Palantir. That is Dread. On that you and I can certainly agree.

2. My Friend in the Medical Field (FMF)

I have to admit that I unexpectedly hated the movie, but not for any thoughtful or literary reason. My problem: It Wasn’t. Any. Fun!

I always thought of the Odyssey as a grand adventure full of exotic places and fantastic creatures. There is tragedy and hubris, tension and suspense, but the fun and adventure is what captivated my imagination as a young boy.

​I concur. It is one of our Western perennial myths - the myth of the solar god; the return to the home; the underdog; the return of the father (call it what you will). The exotic places and fantastic creatures (books 9-12), though part of a big fish story told by Odysseus, illustrate the creativity and vibrance of the original epic.

​IDK if this is what Nolan was trying to tell. I think he was using the vehicle of the story to tell his own critique of modernity. Mind you, I think it an inferior tale to the epic, but the cognitive dissonance was somewhat lessened by not thinking the movie is the same as the epic.

FMF

It was one endless string of suspenseful scenes, with nothing but visceral tension (done effectively, mind you). Never coming up for air. Emotionally monotone. I was in a constant state of nausea and angina for 2.5hrs. I don’t think I would ever watch it again. I was so distracted by the endless malaise that I couldn’t really get much else out of it.

​This is the heart of the matter. I disagree with Nolan on two points (neither of which is his deviation from the epic b/c, as I said, I don’t think it is the same story).

First, I think Nolan has a perennial problem of NOT connecting with the larger audience. There is a Nolan fanboy base that loves all his stuff - I sort of am one - but the general audience finds him obscure, loud, ponderous, self-important and indulgent. He frequently does something in a movie b/c he can, not b/c it serves the movie.

Moreover, I can’t think of a single one of his movies that suffers from the burden of humor. All his movies are serious, dark works of art about dark subject matters of ponderous dark importance often wrapped in enigmas of dark esoteric symbolism inaccessible by the majority of viewers.

If you are going to say something in a movie, IMO, you have to be able to say it so people understand it.

It’s one thing to have levels of meaning to a single image (yes it’s baseball, and it’s Arthurian legend, and it’s redemption imagery “The Natural”) - it’s another thing to intentionally create obscurity which only a few people can get. As a friend of mine said, it was a 3 hour yawn fest.

Second, I completely agree with you that Nolan’s funrides are unremitting roller coaster trips in one direction (either up or down, IDK). The Nausea and Angina seem to be the point. Not only unalloyed with humor, quiet or beauty, but intentionally increased through sound, music and escalating plot (like that shepherd’s tone in “Dunkirk” - stop already!).

As another friend of mine (from OZ) said, the effect of this is “a perpetual sense of dread.” I personally do not mind this so much, but think that he fails, again, to connect with a larger audience due to this monotony.

More to the point, though he may analyze a very real problem in our current society, what solution does he offer in the movie? Especially through the increasing dread. Same with Interstellar and Tenet and Inception (and Batman for that matter). He’s like the doctor saying “You have a terminal disease and there is no solution. Bye!”

I would argue a third thing that tempers my enthusiasm for the movie (and I am enthusiastic if for no other reason than that he drives traffic toward the original epic). I think the “breaking of xenia” might indeed be a symptom or indicator of the virus eating away at our culture but I also think that

A. it’s more than respecting the law of Zeus - it’s abandonment of the Beatific Vision. It is the end result of the ruination of Christianity as a bulwark of western civilization.

AND

B. This ruination is done intentionally. Nolan’s hand-wringing, like so many Hollywood types, is a bit like bemoaning the problem while refusing to accept the cause of the problem. Like all good progressives, he wants a kinder, gentler world based on rational, progressive principles devoid of the superstitious mumbo-jumbo of Christian religion. This is not possible. The more I study the ancient world, heck the more I study the world, the more I am convinced that w/o Christianity there is only the law of the jungle - survival of the fittest - nature bloody tooth and claw. The Utopian vision of a united Federation of Planets w/o recognizing the Creator and the Image of the Creator in Man is a pipe dream created by Gene Rodenberry. Pleasant. Utterly impossible. Normally resulting in fields of blackening corpses.

I mean, when it comes down to it: why do anything to benefit other people or society or whatevs if there is no god and there is no image of god in man?

FMF

I was able, though, to roll my eyes at the usual modern trope of trying to explain away the gods by making them more psychic projections rather than true deities.

​Agreed - especially if this is supposed to be a movie set in the Ancient world. The gods were very real and the non-believers were very dead. Not an age of greater faith, but an age of greater celerity of execution of all those Oedipuses who denied the gods.

IF the movie is a metaphor for the modern world, the sentiment expressed by Odysseus (and by the ghostly, anemic Athena) is comprehensible as it is a modern saying their creed. Hokey doke.

I am reminded of the poem by Wordsworth:

The World Is Too Much With Us

By William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

It is interesting now having read for two days and finished Richard III how amazing I find this play… again.

The drama begins with this glorious opening speech.

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York..."

I really think that speech sums up the play, or at least the major theme of the play. Here’s a war veteran, who from birth has either been physically unattractive or thought himself physically unattractive. He is a man not suited to be able to

“caper nimbly in a lady’s chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.”

(wonderful onomatopoeia in that line – all those luxurious Lulling about what the lick lick lick L sound. Perfect) Instead, Richard is built for war, survival, strength. I think that’s what others like Ann see in him at the crucial moments in the play – he will keep them alive, or he’ll roll over them if they get in his way.

But that’s understandable given the tumult and violence out of which England has emerged recently (at the start of the play). The War of the Roses, essentially a civil war on the island, has caused devastation and ruin throughout the countryside and Richard, three or four generations after the beginning of this struggle, has grown up in a world of betrayal, carnage, and the very sudden reversals in fortune suffered by those near to him.

In essence, Richard is very dangerous man.

He can “add colors to the chameleon”.

His intelligence and capacity for violence is coupled with his insight into the darkness of the human heart. Because he can imagine what others cannot, Richard is able to do to them first the violence which they only later want to do to him.

I think that the opening speech also sets us up to consider the legitimacy of Richard’s claims. Peace has been purchased at a tremendously high price and now all the court, heck… all of England, seems well content to forget all that and think that comfort and luxury are the normal when Richard sees correctly or incorrectly that the normal is hard scrabble danger; suffering, pain and struggle. He even seems like some slightly edgy prophet telling the audience at least that even in “this weak piping time of peace” danger is around every corner.

This is a bit like the controversy between Thomas Hobbes and John Locke on whether the original state of nature is happy and joyful or “solitary poor nasty brutish and short”. Both Hobbes (5 April 1588 – 4 December 1679) and Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) lived through the struggle between Parliamentarians and Royalists which came to be referred to as “The Civil War” in England (1642 to 1651); not to mention the execution of Charles I, Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, and the 1688 Glorious Revolution. Both men were deeply affected by the chaos of their times; Hobbes associated with many Royalists living in exile in Paris, Locke went into political exile for five years in the Netherlands after his colleague and patron, Lord Shaftesbury, fell out of political favor and died.

But the experiences of the two men led them to very different views both of human nature/life and to how humans ought to govern and be governed. Hobbes wrote in his great political work, Leviathan (1651), that human life without government is in a perpetual state of war in which life is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Humans, for Hobbes, are essentially bad and will make life bad for others in a situation of all against all.

In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death

Humans, moreover, are essentially selfish and are quick to betray, lie, steal, kill in order to escape the pinch of continual fear and the danger of violent death. Thus the worst kind of man is one who uses language (that of religion, for instance) to manipulate others:

evill men under pretext that God can do any thing, are so bold as to say any thing when it serves their turn, though they think it untrue

The job of a person must be to not fall into credulity and be the dupe of every evill man:

Ignorance of naturall causes disposeth a man to Credulity, so as to believe many times impossibilities: for such know nothing to the contrary, but that they may be true; being unable to detect the Impossibility. And Credulity, because men love to be hearkened unto in company, disposeth them to lying: so that Ignorance it selfe without Malice, is able to make a man bothe to believe lyes, and tell them; and sometimes also to invent them.

Governments must, according to Hobbes, be the strong force of secular and sacred united together that prevents such evill men from abusing and manipulating others. This all-powerful force he calls “the Leviathan” (or, A COMMON-WEALTH ECCLESIASTICAL AND CIVILL)

Locke was not so sardonic about human nature. In his great political work, the Second Treatise on Government, Locke posited that man in a state of nature was not quite so bestial. Just as Hobbes saw the natural state as a state of war, Locke considered it to be

a state of perfect freedom to order (men’s) actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

Locke’s state of perfect freedom was “A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another,” wherein at heart humans stripped of wealth, rank, lineage and material goods were all equal in their faculties. In such a state the Creator of the Universe has given to all men equal rights that cannot be removed from his person.

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

War, according to Locke, is a result of unfortunate accidents and decisions of men, rather than a natural state inalienable from the human person. Consequently, Locke sees the purpose of government to be the securing of these sort of rights.

All this is a generation or two after Shakespeare (the American founders who read both Hobbes and Lock as well as Shakespeare were yet another generation away), but the dilemma raised between the two political thinkers seems to manifest in the earlier play.

Even in the play itself we see the defeated enemies of past wars lurking in the shadows, planning future disasters. Edward credulously chooses to ignore such shadows as though by choosing to ignore them they will go away. Yet he is like the pacifist criticized by George Orwell who said “One can only abjure violence because others are prepared to endure violence on their behalf.”

The relationship here between Gloucester and Edward reminds me a great deal of the relationship between Shylock and Antonio in “Merchant of Venice”; just as Edward seems to choose a willed ignorance, so too does Antonio choose a generosity that borders on recklessness.

Men like Gloucester and Shylock who are survivors look with contempt on such man, see them as marks or fools, and probably grow angry that those are the people in charge. It is, after all, well and good to have naïve, happy go lucky leaders running the ship of state ...until the ship hits an iceberg. Sure Richard is a monster, murderous, rapacious, ruthless, strong, predatory. But he lives in an era (as did Shakespeare) where that sort of personality is more capable of surviving both the tigers of the political jungle and the physical travails thrown at them by the world.

And the questions continues: is the state of man a state of “war of all against all”? Is it naive to think that the state of nature is “a state of perfect freedom in which to order our actions”?

There is to Richard, I would venture to say, almost a nobility akin to Homer’s Odysseus, or John Milton’s Satan, or, Mary Shelley‘s later construct of the creature in Frankenstein. Toughened by the cruelty of the world, he is one man alone in a state of war - able to see the “reality” of life’s cruelty without the naivete that leads others to become victims of violence.

Like those other authors it seems Shakespeare is asking an age old question going back to the Greeks;

“Is life peace with the inconvenience of occasional war? or is life war with the illusion of occasional peace?”

We tend to judge Richard harshly because our modern experience is one of peace, luxury and self indulgence. We’re all really very woke. But is it possible that this is the sort of personality which would allow the race to survive a calamity of tremendous proportions?

IDK but I like that Shakespeare raises such a question in so wonderful a character. If we are able to look at the character of Richard not as some monster out there but rather as the monster we might have to become in order to fight the monsters (as Nietzsche suggested) I think the play takes on a whole new dimension.

(a reprint of an article first published at blogger in February, 2020)

I am enjoying a reread of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, a play I have not visited since grad school. It would seem, though, that it would be very difficult in our modern era not only to grapple with the violence but to also include this work with the great texts produced by Mr. W.S. Does Titus compare to Hamlet? to Romeo & Juliet? to Julius Caesar? It may compare to Macbeth but even that play seems restrained in its use of gore and abuse of the human person. Certainly the play, being Shakespeare’s first tragedy, was mimicking the gore-saturated spectacles popular in late 16th century England & hadn’t yet the full stamp of masterful language and insight into character of the great works of the later years.

I’ve always had difficulty reading the work for its cumbersome use of too much violence and seen it as a 16th century slasher film; ye olde Freddie Kruger or something. But even in this play I am seeing the first musings of the Bard that would come to resolution in his later works. In many ways it is a precursor of The Tempest especially.

Shakespeare lived in a violent era where only 30 years prior to Billy’s birthday Thomas More was convicted of treason, beheaded, quartered and had his parts publicly exposed on the entrances into to London. Hangings were a picnic spectacle. Civil war was an ever looming fear. Banditry, disease, poverty, filth and horrendous surgical practices were commonplace. A world lit only by fire (as William Manchester points out) was a world surrounded by terrors and not far removed from the terrors of prior generations as far back as Rome or Greece. C.S.Lewis points out that such men of Shakespeare’s era had more in common with Greeks and Romans (1600 years in the past) than they did with people 300 years later in the 1900s.

If there were reason for these miseries,
Then into limits could I bind my woes:
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'erflow?
If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad,
Threatening the welkin with his big-swoln face?
And wilt thou have a reason for this coil?
I am the sea; hark, how her sighs do blow!

We seem currently to be living in a particularly antiseptic and pampered era; an era of great wealth and comfort; of great technological and societal advancement - yet a world that seems to be gravitating toward some fated doom. Heavy weighs on us the sense that nothing can be avoided; nothing can be redeemed; nothing can be salvaged. A violent age; an obscene age (as Richard Weaver claimed) where the veil that once held back the violence and horror of the world has been torn aside, and now all manner of sins are paraded before the scena.

Violence seems to pile on violence and, like Hurin in Tolkien’s great story of the Silmarillion, we feel compelled to gaze upon the violence, or like Denethor unable to tear himself away from the horrors of the palantir. We are immobilized by the baleful eye of the dragon while around us ogrish, Grendelian characters, Belle Gunness, or Mary Mallon, Lizzie Borden or Howard Unruh; Karl Panzram, Jeffrey Dahmer, Charles Manson, the Zodiac Killer, Son of Sam, or Jim Jones, run rampant through the gated communities of Nargothrond, Chicago, Arcadia, Rome.

Nor is such awfulness limited only to our own age, for in that palantir nightmare one can find horror stories of mafia kills, or foreign dictators sending their rivals through wood chippers, or starving their own people, or locking them inside the walls of their city and denying them flu medicine; a long record of cursed lives and actions.

The point being that no era is virginally free of humans imposing cruelty and violence on their fellow humans.

Perhaps Shakespeare, seeing the depravity to which people in his own era could fall, was creating a reflection on what the response to such depravity ought to be. Do we seek revenge for the ills done us? Is it an eye for an eye? Should we, like Al Pacino’s character, Michael, gun down all those who have so harmed our family and our persons?

Do we, as Sam Gamgee suggests to Galadriel, “make the bad men pay”?

Wouldn’t life then become a monotony of violence; “tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow” creeping in a petty pace from day to day? How do we seek revenge and “taint not (our) mind”? How do we keep from being “fortune’s fool” or try to become masters of our own fate?

That question seems to plague many of Shakespeare’s later plays and only begins to find resolution, I think, in “The Tempest”.

If we are ever to escape the primordial cycle of violence & power it is almost as if we have to eschew violence & power and seek, instead, to love other people, listen to them, seek their good; forgiving our enemies and praying for those who persecute us - submitting to the possibility of our own defeat and ruin with the idea that there is something greater, some “undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns”

An unredeemed world is a world of violence, revenge, darkness and perversion; where power is the bank and blood is the currency. Perhaps we ought to turn instead from the “cursed life” of the unredeemed Roman, Titus Andronicus, reject the cycles of power, and recognize that “underneath are the everlasting arms”, that is, a peace which passeth understanding.

Elizabeth Nickson writes in her article “The Delicious Humiliation of the Man Who Poisoned the World and the Ignominious Death of ‘The Science.’” about the nature, as she sees it, of the globalist powers imposing their will on the common populace. I encourage everyone to go and read her rather longish but extremely intriguing insight. In the article she paraphrases the ideas of Michael Belcher, a member of the New Hampshire Legislature who has written a “dense, but readable book on the new priesthood and their ruinous thick mats of self-serving lies that are bringing down Western Civilization.”

This, he says, is a new religion, based on an old one, Hermetic, Egyptian, pre-Christian. It has nothing to do with truth. It is their truth, their world, their democracy. Everything else is anathema.

It seems fairly obvious to me that the “new religion” has been in production at least as far back as 1880, perhaps earlier (see the writings of Etienne-Gabriel Morelly). It is an offshoot of the Enlightenment attempt to break from traditional culture/religion and establish control over the universe through science and, inevitably, elitist money. This is an old saw, friends. Rodney Stark in his most excellent book “Discovering God” points out that the oppression of the weak by the strong through state-sponsored religious power is as old as, well, humanity.

Basically, it is Old Scratch in one form or another pushing the buttons of our fallen human nature so that one person thinks that their better way will work if only they could have the power to fix all the wrongs before them. As long as two people are alive one is going to want the other to submit. As Stark notes, though, there have always been “two religions” in every faith; a state sponsored religion (mandating what is believed and condemned, dictating the forms of worship, demanding the outward compliance of the citizenry & basically controlling the message of the metaphysical) and a common religion (“bush religion” of individual devotions, personal faiths, daily practices and home-based worship in community).

Call them “high church” & “low church” if you must Anglicize them. High Church always ends up, somehow, as a tool of the powerful to try and control the weak. Low church, inevitably, always becomes a tool of resistance and authentic living. Seems to certainly be true with the Church of England as railed against by William Blake in “London”

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

and in his poem “The Divine Image”

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

and in his work “I saw a chapel”

I saw a chapel all of gold
That none did dare to enter in 
And many weeping stood without 
Weeping mourning worshipping

I saw a serpent rise between
The white pillars of the door 
And he forcd & forcd & forcd 
Down the golden hinges tore 

And along the pavement sweet 
Set with pearls and rubies bright 
All his slimy length he drew
Till upon the altar white

Vomiting his poison out
On the bread & on the wine
So I turnd into a sty
And laid me down among the swine 

Or in “The Everlasting Gospel”

The vision of Christ that thou dost see  
Is my vision’s greatest enemy.  
Thine has a great hook nose like thine;  
Mine has a snub nose like to mine.  
Thine is the Friend of all Mankind;          
Mine speaks in parables to the blind.  
Thine loves the same world that mine hates;  
Thy heaven doors are my hell gates.  
Socrates taught what Meletus  
Loath’d as a nation’s bitterest curse,        
And Caiaphas was in his own mind  
A benefactor to mankind.  
Both read the Bible day and night,  
But thou read’st black where I read white.  

It seems to have been true with the Medieval local churches vs the Church of Rome (leading to the glad acceptance by the populace of Henry’s split from Rome in the early days of the English Reformation). It seems to have been true in Roman religion & in Greek; Babylonian and Persian Zoroastrianism; even in Buddhism and Hindu religion have always had such a split between “high church” and “low church”.

Odd that.

Our current “religion” (and here I am in full agreement with Nickson and Belcher) seems to be of the Church of Progress. All the signs are there; a priestly class, modes of worship, Pharisaical conformity of thinking, a salvific promise of Eutopia on the horizon. And, as Stark outlines, the current religion is an arm of the state to be used for controlling the populace.

As my son pointed out, “their truth, their world, their democracy” is a form of nominalism - the idea that images and forms are man-made and subject to human alteration. A purely materialistic vision of “truth”.

But the earlier paraphrase by Nickson of Belcher’s thesis that this religion is “based on an old one, Hermetic, Egyptian, pre-Christian” quite intrigued me.

In Ancient Egypt, as Stark iterates, the priests of the Temple of Thebes were the “High Church” of 3000BC Egypt. They dictated to the populace what was and was not “proper” worship and were, essentially, an arm of the state. The belief that Pharaoh (“the big house” or “big guy”; “mr big cheese”) was ACTUALLY the god Amun-Ra on earth put a great deal of power in the hands of Mr. Big Stuff State.

The language, forms of worship, requirements of attendance at high holy days - all were methods of coercion to motivate large groups of people to military action, social compliance, or building operations. How do you think Zahi Hawas’ large piles of rock were put together anyway? Jews?

One of the phrases that the Theban priests seems to have inculcated into the populace was “the Cattle of Ra”^tm. This phrase meant “the Egyptian People”; and it did show “god’s divine authority and the prosperity he bestowed upon the land and its people”.

The Egyptians depended on cattle not only for agricultural work but also for milk, meat, leather, and dung (which was used as fuel). Given their economic importance, cattle naturally became symbols of life, fertility, and divine favor.

The veneration of sacred bulls was a prominent feature of several Egyptian cults. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Apis bull, worshipped at Memphis as an incarnation of the god Ptah. Each Apis bull was believed to be a living manifestation of Ptah on Earth, and upon its death, the bull was given elaborate burial rites and succeeded by a new, divinely chosen calf.

Similar to the Apis bull, the Mnevis bull was sacred to the sun god Ra and was worshipped in Heliopolis, another major religious center. These sacred bulls were treated with great reverence, housed in special enclosures, and adorned with elaborate rituals.

It also confirmed that the populace of Egypt were metaphorically cattle and were thought of by the elite as literally cattle.

This same phrase drifts down into Greece and the epic by Homer, the Odyssey, where in Book XII of the epic the comrades of Odysseus are condemned to death for eating the cattle of the sun god (Helios in Greek: Amun-Ra in Egyptian) on the island of Thrinacia

Now the cattle, so fair and goodly, were feeding not far from the ship; the men, therefore drove in the best of them, and they all stood round them saying their prayers, and using young oak-shoots instead of barley-meal, for there was no barley left. When they had done praying they killed the cows and dressed their carcasses; they cut out the thigh bones, wrapped them round in two layers of fat, and set some pieces of raw meat on top of them. They had no wine with which to make drink-offerings over the sacrifice while it was cooking, so they kept pouring on a little water from time to time while the inward meats were being grilled; then, when the thigh bones were burned and they had tasted the inward meats, they cut the rest up small and put the pieces upon the spits.

Roger Sworder notes

these immortal cattle (were) handsome (ἄριστος), wide-browed, fat (εὐρυμέτωπος) and straight-horned (ὀρθόκραιρος). The cattle were guarded by Helios’ daughters, Phaëthusa and Lampetië, and it was known by all that any harm to any single animal was sure to bring down the wrath of the god.

• Roger Sworder in his ‘Science and Religion in Archaic Greece’

Phaëthusa and Lampetië, “shining” and “radiance”, seem like parallels to Isis and Nephthys, “Lady of the Throne” and “Lady of the House” who flanked Amun-Ra in his journey in the Solar Barque. The description in Homer of the cattle as handsome, wide-browed, fat and straight-horned might be a generic description of cattle but also seems parallel to the Egyptian depictions of cattle of Amun-Ra (ie. the Egyptian populace).

But something is already happening in Homer’s epic which seems to be unlocking humanity from being controlled by Amun-Ra (and from the state). Cattle provide milk, plowing force, and leather but also meat. Lots of meat. They are the go to animal for sacrifice in the ancient world as the sacrificers could, after sending the smells up to the gods, consume the beef that remained. The primary function of cattle is to be consumed, or at least it is so in the ancient world. So what does that say about those who bear the epithet “the cattle of Ra”? Sure, the divine authority might care about his people as Ra cares for his cattle, bestowing prosperity upon the land and the people, but it seems true also that The Big House could “eat” the people in the same way that Amun-Ra could eat his bovines. People of low church should recognize their place in society, be grateful for whatever prosperity was handed to them, and not be surprised when they are scooped up and devoured by the needs of the state.

Homer seems to be unlocking that conception; the men who represent the chaos dragon of Apophis poach in the fields of Helios and eat the cattle as “many-voiced” Polyphemus ate the companions of those same men in his cave in an earlier book. Like Polyphemus they are duly punished.

But then there is another shift that occurs in the gospels. Why are people referred to in the New Testament as “sheep” rather than cattle or goats? Why is Christ referred to as “The Good Shepherd” rather than “the good cattle driver” or “the good goatherd”?

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. - Matthew 9:36

Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. - Matthew 10:16

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” - Matthew 15:24

Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32

As he went ashore he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. - Mark 6:34

And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ - Mark 14:27

Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Hebrew called Beth-za′tha, which has five porticoes. - John 5:2

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber - John 10:1

So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. - John 10:7

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. - John 10:11

And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd. - John 10:16

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me - John 10:27

A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” - John 21:16

Why are people referred to in the New Testament as “sheep”?

Is this part of the difference in physical traits? How are cows different physically from sheep? How do they act differently? What does that symbolize?

Why is Christ referred to, not only as “the Good Shepherd” but also as “the Sacrificial Lamb”?

Sure this is based on an earlier image of Hermes Kriophoros - the god Hermes bearing the ram to the sacrifice - or even to the Moschophoros bearing a cow.

But the gospels make a point not only to emphasize this identification of humanity as sheep (not goats or cattle) but also this identification of Christ as a shepherd and as a sacrificial lamb. How does a shepherd treat his sheep compared to a cattle herd treating his cattle? What is the ultimate end of cattle? What product do they produce? What product do sheep, shorn, produce?

And how are we, redeemed by one who was like us in all ways but in sin, called to resist a state that wants to make us merely cattle for the dinner table of the big shots who seek to dominate?

For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. - Hebrews 4:15

Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 
Gave thee life & bid thee feed. 
By the stream & o'er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing wooly bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice! 
         Little Lamb who made thee 
         Dost thou know who made thee 

         Little Lamb I'll tell thee,
         Little Lamb I'll tell thee!
He is called by thy name,
For he calls himself a Lamb: 
He is meek & he is mild, 
He became a little child: 
I a child & thou a lamb, 
We are called by his name.
         Little Lamb God bless thee. 
         Little Lamb God bless thee.