Politics of Hell

Born today: Michael Keaton,
star of "The Dream Team"

Regarding my claim in the note below that Michael Dukakis lied about an ancient Greek pledge, thereby incurring the wrath of the Gods...

A Google search for "Athenian pledge" yields four sites, only two of which are relevant.  One is a site in which U. S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY, Harvard '71) parrots Dukakis, and one is from the final home of William S. Burroughs  -- Lawrence, Kansas:

Lawrence the Beautiful

"I ran across this printed paragraph in a supplement to the Journal-World dated, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1965. The cover, "City of Lawrence, Kansas -- Progress Report", at the top of the inside page has this:

     "City of Heritage. We will never bring disgrace to this city, by any act of dishonesty or cowardice, nor ever desert our comrades; we will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with many; we will revere and obey the city laws, and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence to others; we will strive unceasingly to quicken the public's sense of civic duty; that thus in all these ways, we may transmit this city, greater, better, and more beautiful that it was transmitted to us."

"The Athenian Pledge" 

The link above on Burroughs (Harvard '36) is to a site subtitled "Secret Agent in Hell."  Perhaps he now haunts his old alma mater... 

The excellent 1933 Harvard novel Great Circle, by Conrad Aiken, has in its opening paragraph the following:

By all means accept the invitation to hell, should it come.  It will not take you far -- from Cambridge to hell is only a step; or at most a hop, skip, and jump. But now you are evading -- you are dodging the issue.... after all, Cambridge is hell enough. 

Postscript of 12:55 a.m. September 10:

For a current (9/9/02) Harvard student's view of Hell, see the description of Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle at

http://www.xanga.com/home.asp?user=rcudney.

On this, his birthday, actor Hugh Grant
is hereby named an

Honorary Waco Wacko.

By the authority vested in me by the possession of

1. Knowledge of Vivienne Browning's My Browning Family Album, a work dedicated to Dr. Joseph Armstrong, "founder of the Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, Waco, Texas,"
   
   
   
2. Knowledge that today is the date of the Battle of Marathon, and of the claim that
   

   "The spread of Pan's worship beyond his home pastures of Arcadia was said to have arisen around the 5th Century BCE. Pan asked why the Athenians neglected him, and promised them victory over the Persians if they would worship him. At Marathon, the Persians were routed and fled in Panic; so, the Athenians built a temple for him on the Acropolis, and his worship soon extended to all Greece."

   
   

   2a. (including subsidiary knowledge of the ridiculous falseness of all political statements, including the following contemptible lie by Michael Dukakis in his 1988 Democratic National Convention acceptance speech:

   
   

   
   

   "And as I accept your nomination tonight, I can't help recalling that the first marathon was run in ancient Greece, and that on important occasions like this one, the citizens of Athens would complete their ceremonies by taking a pledge. That pledge, that covenant, is as eloquent and timely today as it was 2000 years ago.  

   
   

   'We will never bring disgrace to this, our country, by any act of dishonesty or cowardice. We will fight for the ideals of this, our country. We will revere and obey the laws. We will strive to quicken our sense of civic duty. Thus, in all these ways, we will transmit this country greater, better, stronger, prouder and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.' ")

   (None of the Harvard intellects associated with Dukakis saw fit to point out that there never was any such pledge. As a consequence, both Harvard University and the Democratic Party remain cursed to this day.),
   
   
   
3. Knowledge (both intellectual and carnal) of the female form of the god Pan, as seen in the classic and great movie "Sirens" (starring, among others, Hugh Grant) and on the cover of the 1977 Olivia Newton-John album "Making a Good Thing Better,"
   

   

   
   
4. Knowledge that even the best critics can be wrong, as exemplified by Roger Ebert's remarks in his review of "Sirens"...
   
   

   "Although they are often charged with being emotionally distant, the British have produced more than their share of sexual outlaws, from Oscar Wilde to Aleister Crowley to D.H. Lawrence to Francis Bacon, to balance the ledger. The central figure in 'Sirens' is perhaps vaguely inspired by another legendary British bohemian, Augustus John, an artist whose models and mistresses were interchangeable, and who delighted in scandal.
   
   
   

   Named Norman Lindsay, the film's hero is played by Sam Neill as a notorious painter who lives on an estate in Australia where his art coexists side-by-side with an experiment in living."

   
   

   (Actually, the central figure is not "vaguely inspired" by anyone. He is precisely inspired by an artist named exactly Norman Lindsay, as Roger will learn if he searches the Web. Roger also gets Pan wrong in this film; he says, "the bearded Lindsay is a Pan of sorts." No. The "Pan of sorts" is in fact the girl who romps joyfully with the local boys and who later, with great amusement, uses her divine x-ray vision to view Tara Fitzgerald naked in church.),

   
   

   and, finally,

   
   
5. Knowledge that, as the Greeks well knew,  there is a dark side to all this Pan business (Vivienne Browning's book reveals that her father was a friend, not only of the bohemian artist Norman Lindsay, but also of the black mage Aleister Crowley. Let us pray that Hugh Grant's performance as a clergyman in "Sirens" and as a defender of the faith in "The Lair of the White Worm" have prepared him to cope with the dark (or, sometimes, "Brown") side of the divine.),

I hereby declare Hugh Grant an honorary Waco (home of the Dr. Pepper Museum, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame, and the Armstrong Browning Library) Wacko.

ART WARS of September 8, 2002:

Sunday in the Park with Forge

From The New York Times obituary section of Saturday, September 7, 2002:

Andrew Forge, 78, Painter
and a Former Dean at Yale, Dies

By ROBERTA SMITH

ndrew Forge, a painter, critic, teacher and former dean of painting at the Yale School of Art, died on Wednesday [Sept. 4] in New Milford, Conn. He was 78...

[As a painter] he reduced his formal vocabulary to two small, basic units: tiny dots and short, thin dashes of paint that he called sticks. He applied those elements meticulously, by the thousands and with continual adjustments of shape, color, orientation and density until they coalesced into luminous, optically unstable fields.

These fields occasionally gave hints of landscapes or figures, but were primarily concerned with their own internal mechanics, which unfolded to the patient viewer with a quiet, riveting lushness. In a New York Times review of Mr. Forge's retrospective at the Yale Center for British Art in 1996, John Russell wrote that "the whole surface of the canvas is mysteriously alive, composing and recomposing itself as we come to terms with it."

Above: Untitled image from Andrew Forge: Recent Paintings, April 2001, Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI

See also

An Essay on the work of Andrew Forge
by Karen Wilkin
in The New Criterion, September 1996

From that essay:

"At a recent dinner, the conversation—fueled, I admit, by liberal amounts of very good red wine—became a kind of Socratic dialogue about the practice of art criticism.... There was... general agreement that it’s easier to find the rapier phrase to puncture inadequate or pretentious work than to come up with a verbal equivalent for the wordless experience of being deeply moved by something you believe to be first rate."

See also my journal note of March 22, 2001, The Matthias Defense, which begins with the epigraph

Bit by bit, putting it together.
Piece by piece, working out the vision night and day.
All it takes is time and perseverance
With a little luck along the way.
-- Stephen Sondheim

The Maltese Cross

In my journal note for Rosh Hashanah (The Boys from Uruguay, Sept. 7) below, I noted that the cross as a symbol of intelligence may be offensive to some readers.

Such readers may contemplate the Maltese cross shown on page 150 of The New Yorker magazine of March 21, 1994, in an article by Nichoison Baker, "The Projector." On page 152 is an explanation of how the cross functions within a motion picture projector, and a statement that "Without this little thing, there'd be no film industry!"

Development of the Web since 1994 allows us to view the Maltese cross in action at the excellent site

Cabaret Mechanical Theatre

The following diagram is from that site:

© Cabaret Mechanical Theatre 1996-01

The Maltese
V

Today, September 8, is 

The Feast of Our Lady of Victories in Malta.

"The 8th of September festivity is close to Maltese hearts."

Victory Day: 8th September

"The 8th September is a special public holiday because it commemorates in fact three events.  It is the religious feast celebrating the birth of the Holy Virgin, Maria Bambina; it is the day on which the Great Siege of 1565 ended; and it also the day on which the Italian navy capitulated to the British at the beginning of the end of the Second World War. 

But is it best known as victory day, il-Vitorja, in commemoration of the events of 1565 when the Knights of St John and the Maltese Islanders defeated the Ottoman Turks and helped rid Christendom of the Saracen threat. 

The feast is celebrated in the villages and towns of Senglea, Naxxar, Mellieha and Xaghra on Gozo."

From Malta's Importance in History:

"Malta managed to keep the enemy at bay, and was awarded the George Cross for it in 1942. Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and other leaders visited Malta during this time. Malta was called 'the under-belly of Europe,' and her insidious disruption of the Kesserling-Rommel axis who tried hard, and very nearly successfully, to starve the native population and render all military operations impossible through the lack of food and fuel. The lifting of the siege coincided with the Feast of our Lady of Victory: 'il-Vitorja', the 'national' feast."

IL-VITORJA  

"From about three days before September 8, ground fireworks, Maltese 'giggifogu' (derived from Italian 'guochi di fuoco'), start to light up the Mellieha Parish Square, with amazing effects. The principal show of ground fireworks is held on September 7, a show which ends at about 12.00am.

Fireworks over Mellieha

The D-Day finally arrives. Early in the morning of September 8, many people attend the sermon in honor of Our Lady of Victories."

Today's feast is known to Roman Catholics as The Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady. 

See also the novel by Thomas Pynchon, V. 

In honor of the September 8 birthdays of

• Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (The Killer Angels),
  
• Peter Sellers ("Doctor Strangelove"), and
  
• Patsy Cline ("Crazy"):

From a website on Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History... 

"It is like a storyteller looking up suddenly into the eyes of his audience across the embers of a once blazing fire...

...the reader feels privy to the secrets of human experience by their passage down through the ages; the telling and re-telling. A phrase from the ghost in Hamlet comes to mind: ‘I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul…..’ "

This work of literature seems especially relevant at the start of a new school year, and in light of my remarks below about ancient Greek religion. One should, when praising Apollo, never forget that Dionysus is also a powerful god.

For those who prefer film to the written word, I recommend "Barton Fink" as especially appropriate viewing for the High Holy Days. Judy Davis (my favorite actress) plays a Faulkner-figure's "secretary" who actually writes most of his scripts.

Tartt is herself from Faulkner country.  For her next book, see this page from Square Books, 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, Misssissippi.

Let us pray that Tartt fares better in real life than Davis did in the movie.

As music for the High Holy Days, I recommend Don Henley's "The Garden of Allah." For some background on the actual Garden of Allah Hotel at 8080 Sunset Boulevard (where "Barton Fink" might have taken place), see

NAZIMOVA AND THE GARDEN OF ALLA.

For Elia Kazan:

A Birthday Song:
Las Mañanitas

(Song, lyrics, and animated story) 

Today is the anniversary of the opening of the New York Post Office Building in 1914.

Today is National Postal Workers Day.

From the website Elia Kazan: Postage Paid...

"Many years later Kazan said 'Viva Zapata!,' which he was filming during the time of his committee testimony, 'was structured to expose the ineffectiveness of idealistic revolutionaries, I believe that democracy progresses through internecine war, through constant tension - we grow only through conflict. And that’s what democracy is. In that sense, people have to be vigilant, and that vigilance is effective. I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.' This was a profound statement about his values and beliefs. Kazan never backed away from his statements."

Note: In honor of Kazan and of Brando, who really is a contender, the background music of this website has been hushed, so that those who click "A Birthday Song" above can hear it clearly.

The Boys from Uruguay

If one were to write a "secret history" of the twentieth century,
one possible organizing theme might be the religious struggle between
worshippers of the Semitic deity (variously known as Yahweh, God, and
Allah) and worshippers of the Aryan deities... notably, the Aryan god
of music, light, and reason, Apollo.

(See my jounal notes of Monday, Sept. 2, 2002, below.)

In perhaps the best academic website I have ever seen, Karey L. Perkins quotes Walker Percy:

"The truth is that
man's capacity for symbol-mongering in general and language in
particular is…intimately part and parcel of his being human, of his
perceiving and knowing, of his very consciousness..."

The greatest symbol-monger of the twentieth century was,
of course, Adolf Hitler. His use of the Aryan sun-wheel symbol rose to
the level of genius. Of course, it ultimately failed to win the
approval of the sun god himself, Apollo, who is also the god of reason.

Since symbol-mongering cannot be avoided, let us hope that
it can be done in a somewhat more reasonable way than that of the
National Socialist movement. Two examples suggest themselves.

1. From Peggy Noonan's column of Friday, Sept. 6:

   The cross, the heart, and the flag.

2. From Karey Perkins's website:

   A brain, a heart, and courage. 

On this Rosh Hashanah, the cross as a symbol of intelligence may be offensive to some worshippers of Yahweh. Let them read The Archivist, a novel by Martha Cooley, and then my journal note The Matthias Defense.

They might also contemplate the biblical quotation in the musical
"Contact" broadcast from Lincoln Center on September 1, 2002: "Let
there be light!"

Three Jews named Paul have been associated with light...

1. Saul of Tarsus, who later assumed an alias.

2. Paul Newman, whose performance in "The Verdict" continues, indirectly, to trouble Cardinal Law of Boston.

3. Paul R. Halmos, a personal hero of mine ever since I saw his Finite Dimensional Vector Spaces and Measure Theory as an ignorant young undergraduate browsing the bookstores of Harvard Square.

In accordance with the "secret history" theme mentioned above, the
struggle between Aryan and Semitic religions may also be viewed in the
light of the struggle between Christianity and Communism. Hitler
exploited this viewpoint very successfully, pretending to be the
champion of the Christians against the godless Reds. Peggy Noonan also
successfully uses this strategy. Both Hitler and Noonan manage to
ignore the fact that Christianity is itself one of the Semitic religions, and that at least two of its three deities are Jewish.

As for me, I rather identify with the young Hitler clone at the end
of the film "The Boys from Brazil." Forced to decide between Gregory
Peck and Sir Laurence Olivier, he sides with Olivier. His reason? Peck
lied.

In a similar situation, forced to decide between Peggy Noonan and
the Jew Halmos, I would probably side with Halmos. Halmos, who should,
if not a saint, be at least dubbed a knight, does not, unlike the great
majority of the damned human race, lie.

See Halmos's memoir, I Want to Be a Mathematician. In particular, see the single index entry "communist by allegation" and the 29 entries under "Uruguay."

Happy birthday to Elia Kazan and Peggy Noonan, and a happy and prosperous New Year to should-be-Sir Paul R. Halmos. 

Santa's Wit

Edmund Gwenn, actor, died on September 6, 1959.

When asked if he thought dying was tough, Gwenn reportedly said,

"Yes, it's tough, but not as tough as doing comedy."

This may or may not be true; if it is, Gwenn may be the true source of a quotation variously attributed to Edmund Kean, Edwin Booth, David Garrick, Donald Wolfit, William Holden, and Groucho Marx, Marcel Marceau, Noel Coward, and Oscar Wilde:  

"Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."

A very dubious version of the Gwenn story attributes the "comedy is hard" part to Jack Lemmon:

The lesson is best illustrated in a story involving Jack Lemmon, whose best work was in comedy. He visited the British actor Edmund Gwenn, suffering in a hospital. Gwenn is said to have lifted the flap on the oxygen tent and said, ''It's really tough to die.'' And Lemmon responded, ''It's not as tough as doing comedy.''
-- Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times Week in Review, Sunday, August 25, 2002

David Bruce, an English instructor at Ohio University, supplies another version of the Gwenn story, from Movie Anecdotes, by Peter Hay. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990:

Edmund Gwenn won an Oscar playing Santa Claus in the movie Miracle on 34 Street. As he lay dying, Jack Lemmon visited him and asked if dying was dead. [sic]  Gwenn replied, "Oh, it's hard, very hard indeed. But not as hard as doing comedy."

Santa might appreciate the above misprint, as would Vladimir Nabokov...

"Life Everlasting--based on a misprint!"
-- Pale Fire 

and John Donne...

"And death shall be no more, Death, thou shalt die."
-- Holy Sonnets

Arrow in the Blue

A description by Arthur Koestler (born Sept. 5, 1905) of a

close encounter with the divine:

"...a wordless essence, a fragrance of eternity, a quiver of the arrow in the blue."

Koestler also mentions the "blue Andalusian sky." 

Some thoughts suggested by the above and by the Sept. 5, 2002, New York Times story on the first anniversary of the murder of the Mexican lawyer

María de los Angeles Tames....

1. The blue of the Andalusian sky is essentially the same as the blue of the sky above Baja California.  See photographs of the last Jesuit mission in Mexico,

Santa María de los Angeles. 

2.  A Google search for "blue Andalusian sky" yielded two results: the Koestler page quoted above, and a page on the Gypsy film "Vengo."  For a reasonable likeness of St. Sara, patron saint of the Gypsies, also known as The Dark Lady, also known as Kali, see the poster of dancer

Sara Baras at Flamenco-world.com. 

For the music Sara dances to, composed and played by Jesús de Rosario, listen to audio clips at

Juana la Loca: Vivir por Amor.

3. For an American version of The Dark Lady, see an homage from Catalonia to

Emmy Lou Harris. 

For a Harris song that seems appropriate to the blue-sky theme above, see

Thanks to You.