War and Peace

I've reading War and Peace by your man, Tolstoy. It's one of those famous Great Books which are frequently mentioned in jokes as proverbial examples of a Big Ponderous Tome.

I've avoided it all these years, partly (I think) because Chesterton never had very much good to say about Tolstoy. Or rather, he had little good to say about him as a social reformer. He was most complimentary about his writing. Still, I knew about Tolstoy's (later) social views from Chesterton, and they seemed quite needlessly ascetic and miserable.

I also knew from reading Paul Johnson's Intellectuals that he was quiet the hypocrite, and behaved abysmally towards his long-suffering wife. Still, if we were to avoid authors on that account, we'd miss out on an awful lot of great stuff-- sad to say.

I'd watched the 1972 BBC series based on the book, starring Anthony Hopkins, about ten years ago. I watched all fifteen-hours in a few sittings, with the result that I barely remember it. I don't remember being greatly impressed with it, though. (I persisted with it because I had bought it on DVD. That was back in my bachelor days when I would regularly buy DVDs on a whim.)

I'm not sure what impelled me to finally try War and Peace, but I'm glad I did. It's an absorbing experience-- just like The Brothers Karamazov, which I read six years ago.

When I read Russian literature of the nineteenth century, I'm struck by the similarities between the Russia of that time and the Ireland of that time, at least as they are portrayed in literature. Perhaps these traits have even endured, although I'm never sure about that. What traits am I talking about? Well, here are a few; lyricism, melancholy, piety, a preoccupation with martial honour, an inner conflict between tradition and modernity, Western Europe and insularity. And, of course, alcohol.

Anyway, here are my Facebook posts:

Have any of my friends read War and Peace? About five hundred pages into it and it continues to be absorbing. It's like a panorama of human life, although it pays very little attention to the commercial classes.

It's exactly the sort of book I hoped Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time might be, but we disappointed in that case. Powell was too ironic and flippant and satirical for my taste. I want an epic novel to be serious.

I'm about four hundred pages into War and Peace. It's a very good read! Full of incident, drama, and variety.

I've read a few novels by Dostoyevsky (The Brothers Karamazov was my favourite) and now I'm reading this. They seem to have this in common, that they are novels of ideas. We are privy to the character's thoughts (sometimes pages and pages of them) and the characters have long conversations about their beliefs and views. For instance, there is a good scene between one character who has become a Freemason and is suddenly passionate about schemes of social improvement, and another character who is more fatalistic and cynical about such things. (Although later, ironically, we learn that the latter character actually made all the improvements the first character, with the best of intentions, never could. They are both landowners.)

What I like about these Russian novels is how direct they are. Somewhere in the twentieth century, it seems to me, obliqueness became obligatory in literary fiction. Nothing can be spelled out, everything has to be implied. It's the job of literary commentators to draw out the meaning. I find that tiresome and childish. I like authors who are happy to supply the commentary themselves.

I'm still reading War and Peace, about halfway through. It might as well be called War and Peace and Everything Else. It's really about all human life.

But I'm particularly impressed by Tolstoy's depiction of war. Tolstoy was famously a pacifist. He also had first-hand experience of war and was decorated for his courage. Apparently when the book came out, people with experience of battle praised it as an accurate description.
Tolstoy is scathing about war and portrays it as evil, anti-human, and mostly farcical and chaotic. But he doesn't portray it as sheer hell. In fact, he makes it quite clear that many soldiers enjoy it on some level, including the experience of facing enemy gunfire

As a confirmed physical coward who would certainly pee his pants on a battlefield, and undoubtedly get killed within minutes, I find this hard to understand. But not hard to believe. It's quite clear from history and biography that it's true. In fact, "war is unadulterated hell" fiction has always seemed very unconvincing to me.

I suppose the best anti-war novels acknowledge this already. I read All Quiet On the Western Front in my teens. The part that stands out to me the most is when the protagonist is given home leave and can't wait to get back to his comrades because civilian life suddenly seems meaningless to him.

This is an interesting passage in War and Peace. It reminds me of the Celtic Tiger and its aftermath!

"The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear to us now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand, its advance into the heart of Russia late in the season without any preparation for a winter campaign and, on the other, the character given to the war by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the foe this aroused among the Russian people. But no one at the time foresaw (what now seems so evident) that this was the only way an army of eight hundred thousand men—the best in the world and led by the best general—could be destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half its numerical strength, and led by inexperienced commanders as the Russian army was. Not only did no one see this, but on the Russian side every effort was made to hinder the only thing that could save Russia, while on the French side, despite Napoleon’s experience and so-called military genius, every effort was directed to pushing on to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to doing the very thing that was bound to lead to destruction.

"In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolénsk, and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the campaign was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of telling us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself—pointing to notes, projects, and letters which contain hints of such a line of action. But all these hints at what happened, both from the French side and the Russian, are advanced only because they fit in with the event. Had that event not occurred these hints would have been forgotten, as we have forgotten the thousands and millions of hints and expectations to the contrary which were current then but have now been forgotten because the event falsified them. There are always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that however it may end there will always be people to say: “I said then that it would be so,” quite forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures many were to quite the contrary effect."

I don't want to be a bore about War and Peace, but it continues to be excellent. One of Tolstoy's arguments in the book (and I love that it's didactic) is that history is not swayed by "great men" like Napoleon. In fact, his argument is that very often what happens is the opposite of what everybody is trying to achieve. For instance, that the famous tactic of luring Napoleon's army into the depths of Russia was not at all what the Russian army was trying to achieve, but quite the opposite. And also that Napoleon himself had no intention of a prolonged winter campaign but found himself irresistibly drawn onwards by circumstances or his own army.

Anyway, this occurred to me today with the whole question of "equality and diversity" today. Never has "diversity" been such a totem as it is today. And yet we seem to be achieving quite the opposite-- homogenization-- and very often it's THE VERY POLICIES which are imposed in the name of "diversity" which bring about this homogenization, or at least assist it.

Now, you might say that this is quite deliberate, and you might be right. At a high level, perhaps it is. But I'm sure there are some deluded souls out there who sincerely believe they are on Team Diversity when they're actually on Team Homogenization.

My Recent Reading

I've been reading a lot of fiction lately. In recent years, I've read a lot more non-fiction than fiction, so this is unusual for me.

I'll admit that I'd developed a prejudice against fiction, a prejudice that I accept is unreasonable. This prejudice stems from a few different sources.

One is the rather excessive prestige that seems to attach to fiction vis-a-vis non-fiction. When people talk about great books, they always seem to mean novels. Look for any list of the greatest books of all time, or the greatest book of the twentieth century, and it's likely to be dominated by novels.

Another source is the neglect of poetry. Yes, I've written ad nauseum on this subject before. But it really does bother me that people consider themselves cultured and well-read and traditional without ever reading poetry, or reading it once in a blue moon.

There was a time when novels were considered rather trashy; entertaining diversions, at best. And it's certainly the case that the mental and imaginative exertion required for novel-reading is minimal, compared to the that required for poetry. Reading poetry is a vigorous hike. Reading a novel is lying on the couch eating doughnuts-- in comparison.

The fact that we are all plugged into electronic media now makes even novel-reading seem like a cause for self-congratulation. And it is, but that only means our standards have slipped ever further.

Another reason I've developed a prejudice against fiction is because there's so much to learn about the real world. History has been going on for a very long time now, and a man could spend his life studying cocktails or Finnish folklore or typography. Reality is a bottomless buffet. Do we really need to make things up?

I feel this reaction most especially when I come across a book with an interesting title, like A Trek Through the Phoneboxes of Darlington, and it turns out to be a stupid novel whose author thought he was being quirky.

I think there's something to be said for all these reactions, but...well, we still seem to need fiction. Take a book like 1984 by George Orwell. The most exhaustive study of real-world totalitarian regimes wouldn't quite capture the essence of totalitarianism as well as Orwell's masterpiece does.

One way or another, I found myself reading a good few novels recently.

The first was The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. Blatty was a believing Catholic, although he did get married a few more times than a Catholic is supposed to. In any case, the book takes exorcism (and Catholicism) very seriously.

I've never been a huge fan of the film, although it's certainly good. The book is a much more immersive and powerful experience. It does what a film can never do, without the rather corny use of voice-overs; that is, it takes you into the minds of the characters. (Except, interestingly, the little girl who suffers the possession.)

The night I actually finished The Exorcist, I was profoundly moved and inspired. Blatty presents the two priests who perform the rite as heroic and self-sacrificing. Given the culture of misandry we live in today, it was a very welcome change. The novel also makes the reality of supernatural warfare very compelling.

And it's so seventies!

After that I read Catcher in the Rye, one of those iconic books that I'd never got around to reading. One of the reasons I'd avoided it is because I feared Holden Caulfield would be a sixties counter-cultural hero, especially as I'd heard that he lambasts "phonies" all the time. But it didn't turn out like that at all. The book was published in 1951, but society has already started to become more crass and vulgar. Caulfield is actually very disdainful of all this. He doesn't have much time for Hollywood, sexual promiscuity, or consumerism. In fact, one of his happier encounters is with a pair of nuns (although he also makes it clear that he's not a believing Christian, though.)

After that, I read The Shining by Stephen King. King's genius seems as obvious as a hammer on the head to me. He makes you care, not only about the big things that happen to his characters, but even the little things. I especially liked The Shining because it's mostly set in one building, the old and elegant Overlook Hotel. The main character is working as its winter caretaker, since it becomes completely snowed in and inaccessible in the winter months.

I love stories centred on a particular building. I feel we don't pay enough attention to buildings, as entities in their own right. Perhaps it comes from growing up in the Ballymun flats.

After that I read On Writing by Stephen King. Whenever I mention Stephen King to anybody, this is the book they always talk about. I've avoided it, because I avoid books about writing. I read several of them when I was younger. One of them, How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction, had a big influence on me, one that's difficult to put into words. But, even with that book, there was an undertone I hated; a supercilious, well-now-young-feller sort of attitude that makes me feel stupid for even thinking about writing.

King's book isn't the worst when it comes to this, but it's still there. And it wasn't even that relevant to my own efforts at writing, since it's aimed at fiction writers. I have tried writing fiction in the past, but I don't know if I'm ever going to try it again. I might.

After On Fiction, I decided to opt for another classic that I've avoided all my life, and that's War and Peace.

I'm about seven hundred words into War and Peace, and it's a lot more readable than I expected. For a start, I've always been a Russophile, so I enjoy the Russian atmosphere. The sheer breadth of the novel is also enjoyable; it's like a panorama of human society, in all its different moods and atmospheres. Tolstoy writes as respectfully about young women preparing for a ball as he does about soldiers preparing for battle.

There are a lot of characters in War and Peace, but even if you forget the names (which I regularly do), you usually recognize the characters because they have been drawn so vividly. They're also typical of Russian literary character in that they talk a lot and think a lot. "Show don't tell" is a favourite adage of modern fiction writers, but Tolstoy seems to have paid little attention to it. He'll often spend pages telling you exactly what's happening in a character's soul, instead of trying to dramatize it through action or dialogue.

Before I'd actually started reading the book, I thought it was one of those books that everybody is always writing about. Now I'm immersed in it, I've actually found it difficult to find commentary on it-- outside the pages of dull academic journals.

That's been my reading recently. Doubtless I'll have another turn against fiction soon. But I hope I don't neglect it quite as much as I have in recent years.

Happy All Saints Day!

"But how can we become holy, friends of God? We can first give a negative answer to this question: to be a Saint requires neither extraordinary actions or works nor the possession of exceptional charisms. Then comes the positive reply: it is necessary first of all to listen to Jesus and then to follow him without losing heart when faced by difficulties. "If anyone serves me", he warns us, "he must follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant be also; if any one serves me, the Father will honour him"."

Pope Benedict XVI, All Saints Day homily 2006

This is a Wonderful Story

A Cork national school is marking the 50th anniversary of its unique tradition known as 'Conker Comp' in which students compete to win the coveted David Geary Perpetual Conker Trophy.

Since 1975, students from First to Sixth class in Crosshaven Boys' National School have participated in the annual conker competition.

The trophy has been presented to the winner of the competition since 1989 and is named after a pupil, David Geary, who died at a young age.

Read more here.

A Decade of the Rosary

Some time in the year 2014, I made a vow to the Virgin Mary to say the rosary every day for the rest of my life. Or, if you are a pedant, I made a vow to say five decades of the rosary every day for the rest of my life.

I was standing outside the Merrion Shopping Centre on Merrion Road when I made the vow. I can't remember the date, but I have the feeling it was in summer. So it's most likely been ten years by now, since I'm writing this in October.

I've kept the vow, or perhaps the Virgin Mary has kept it for me. 

Well, I've pretty much kept it. I've missed a day here and there, but very rarely. Maybe a couple of times a year at most. Sometimes it's because I've clean forgot. Other times it's because the day has been so busy I genuinely haven't had the time. (There are such days, now and again.) Sometimes I try to pray it last thing at night (or in the early hours, most likely) but fall asleep in the effort.

Fr. Patrick Peyton, the famous rosary priest, said that it took ten minutes to pray a rosary (although all of the videos of him praying the rosary on YouTube are about sixteen minutes long). Anyway, I've rarely been able to pray it in less than twenty minutes. And very often longer, since my mind nearly always wanders during the rosary. (My mind wanders all the time.)

If I didn't allow my mind a certain amount of wandering during the rosary, I would never finish it. I can't exactly say how much is too much, but when I decide I've hit that limit, I begin the decade I was praying over again. Sometimes I have to do it twice or three times. Generally I let it go after that.

My judgement on whether I should start the decade again also has to do with the nature of my wandering thoughts. If my mind is dwelling on something that seems important or spiritually significant, I might decide to count it as prayer.

Anyway, the Catechism says that trying to pray is itself prayer. A comforting thought.

I've prayed rosaries in all sorts of ways. Very often, when I'm tired, I'll listen to a YouTube rosary on this channel. Kate and Mike have become old friends to me! Mostly, I'll say it on my beads, but sometimes I say it on my fingers. Sometimes I've said it on my fingers while sitting at a dinner-table or having a conversation. Sometimes there's just no other way.

How has the rosary benefitted me? Well, how can I possibly say?

The idea for my book occurred to me when I was praying the rosary. And I'm sure I've had other inspirations while praying it, though I don't remember them right now.

My daily rosary might have had all kinds of beneficial effects, aside from its innate spiritual value. I'm sure that it has. I'm just not one for claiming supernatural intervention except where it's obvious.

In all honesty, it's always felt like a duty, a self-imposed duty. To my shame, I rarely if ever turn to my rosary with delight. I once heard a priest say: "Don't just get your rosary in. Get into your rosary." Good advice, but I find it hard to follow.

Being a lover of tradition, I've often tried to excite myself about my daily rosary by hyping up its traditional aspect in my mind; my own daily tradition! And a venerable one, now! But it rarely seems to work.

I don't want to make it sound like I hate saying the rosary. That's not true at all.

I have my preferences. The Luminous Mysteries always seem like a treat, especially the Transfiguration. I feel like it's not only OK, but in fact entirely appropriate, to play up the awe, wonder and brilliance of the scene. A "peak experience" if ever there was one-- pun entirely intended. I've never been satisfied with any artistic depiction of the Transfiguration. If I painted one (I'd have to learn to paint first) I'm sure it would be universally condemned as tacky and garish. It would be Spielbergian, to say the least.

My other favourite mysteries are the Descent of the Holy Spirit and the Presentation of the Temple. (Are there any more moving words than those of Simeon: "Now, my Lord, you may let your servant depart, according to your Word, because my eyes have seen your salvation..."

I've tried not to play up my daily rosary too much in this blog entry. I've become somewhat allergic to "gushing" in religious discourse. But perhaps I've gone too far in the opposite direction. I'm very happy that my daily practice of the rosary has lasted ten years, and I hope that it lasts to my death. Very often it has comforted me in times of distress, and given me an outlet for my gratitude in happy times. Thank you, Mother Mary!

Provincialism in Time

This post is a bit of a stopgap, something I found in my Google Drive. I sent it to some conservative magazine or website: First Things, or the Imaginative Conservative, or something like that. They didn't bite. Anyway, here it goes.

Some months ago, I found myself making a study of Idylls of the King, a long poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson which was published between 1859 and 1885, and which Tennyson considered his most important work. A long blank verse running to thousands of lines, it chronicles the decline of Camelot over many interlinked stories, and Tennyson used it not only to comment on the human condition but on the Victorian England in which he lived.

The poem was of interest to me for several reasons. The main reason was that I had long admired its sublime climax, “The Passing of Arthur”, which was in fact the earliest part of the poem to be written. Many of its lines would be widely recognized. The line “authority forgets a dying King” is quoted in the movie JFK, and the exchange from which it is taken—between the wounded Arthur and the last of his knights—supplies some more oft-quoted lines:

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?
I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within himself make pure! but thou,
If thou shouldst never see my face again,
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of.

The whole poem is an argument for the spiritual in the face of the material and utilitarian, although that is simplifying its theme considerably.

I was also attracted to the poem because it is rather neglected. Back in its day, it was a popular favourite, selling (hard to believe now) tens of thousands of copies. Today, in a time when long poetry is rarely read—and I find it a trudge, as much as anybody else does—the Idylls are a masterpiece more known about than known. The brave souls who embark upon long poetry for its own sake might tackle Paradise Lost or The Faerie Queen, but not Idylls. The road not taken has its own appeal.

I also wanted to know what commentators had said about the poem. Luckily, my library job gives me access to the archives of most literary journals, so I printed off about a dozen essays on the poem, ranging from the early twentieth century to today.

Reading them, I found myself falling into a rather strange and pleasant mood. It reminded me of how I used to feel as a teenager, when I would read a bundle of recent newspapers, enjoyably insulated from the immediacy of their controversies.

Nearly all of the articles mentioned the critical vicissitudes of the poem over time, very consciously relating it to the intellectual and scholarly preoccupations that had succeeded one another since its publication. Victorian critics had admired the idealism of the poem; critics in the interwar and post-war eras preferred the darker, more pessimistic undertones (after all, the whole poem is about the fall of Camelot, and the inability of King Arthur’s knights to live up to his angelic ideals); when post-modernism became the fashion, critics began to pay more attention to the poem’s intricate narrative structure, with its nested tales within tales and its unreliable narrators.

Here’s a funny thing, I found myself thinking. Why do I find myself enjoying this bird’s eye view of Idylls of the Kings’s critical history, admiring how each period had its own relationship to the text, when I am so scornful of academic fashions in general? I remembered my brief foray into studying English at university level, and the disdain I felt for the feminist, post-modernist, and post-colonial approaches they took to the various texts. Literature, I thought, should be timeless, universal, addressed to the depths of the human condition that are beyond the catch-cries of the day. Now, however, as I savoured the critical history of Idylls of the King, I felt like a party pooper.

And it confronted me with a question which I’d never contemplated before. That is, why did conservatives (like) myself have such a deep appreciation of character and atmosphere when it came to place, but a rather disdainful attitude towards character and atmosphere when it came to time? Why was I delighted to learn that a country or a region or a village had its own distinctive ways and manners, but so hostile towards any notion of a zeitgeist, or contemporary sensibilities? Why was I so warm towards provincialism in space, but so hard on provincialism in time?

It’s certainly the case that conservatives should defend eternal truths of the human condition, and indeed the supernatural order, over ideologies of the moment. But is there perhaps, a danger that we are too intolerant of the flavour of our particular niche in time? As pilgrims on this earth, shouldn’t we be as eager to enjoy the distinctiveness of the time we pass through as travellers in a foreign country?

Ivy Day 2024

Happy Ivy Day 2024!

Ivy Day is the annual commemoration of Charles Stewart Parnell, the "uncrowned king" of Ireland who came close to winning Home Rule. He died on this day in 1891.

Every year since then, there's been a commemoration at his grave in Glasnevin cemetery. It used to be a big deal (a long time ago), but it's a pretty subdued affair now. There's a speech by a dignitary, a wreath-laying, and a piper playing a tune or two.

As my readers will know, I'm mad about the traditions, especially neglected and minor traditions. So for many years, I meant to attend the Ivy Day commemoration, but never got round to it. Last year I finally did, and this year I attended a second time. So it's a bona fide personal tradition now.

This year, the speaker was the Taoiseach, Simon Harris. For this reason, I thought there might be more of a crowd, but there wasn't. There was probably around fifty people there.

I actually wrote an article on the history of Ivy Day for this month's Ireland's Own. You can read the first few paragraphs here. (Or you can subscribe and read the rest of it, and all my other articles, including my Irish priests series which now includes thirty-five priests.)

Here are some pictures and a very amateurish minute or so of video from today's event.

Back to the Seventies

 

I've just finished reading The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics by Bruce Schulamn. It held my interest from beginning to end. I don't think there's really more of a compliment you can pay to a book, unless it's that you return to it.

I've been fascinated by the seventies all my life. Here's a blog post I wrote about the atmosphere of the seventies. Are such musings of interest to anyone else? Maybe not. But that's the benefit of a blog; you can write about things that might or might not be of interest to other people.

I love everything about the seventies. I love the music: Led Zeppelin, Slade, Horslips, Wings. (Actually, three of those bands happened to break up in 1980!) I love the movies: Shaft, Airplane! (I know it was released in 1980), The Wicker Man, Halloween, The Color of Money. (And let's not forget the best Carry On films, like Carry On At Your Convenience.) I even love the interior decoration, which is possibly the most detested aspect of the seventies now-- apart from disco, that is.

Speaking of disco (which I personally like), here is the funniest paragraph from the book: "The anti-disco frenzy reached its peak in Chicago on a hot July in 1979. Desperate to revive sagging attendance at home games, the White Sox sponsored Disco Demolition Nite at Comiskey Park. Before a game with the Detroit Tigers, the master of ceremonies detonated a mountain of disco records piled up on the stadium floor. Thousands of white teenagers flooded onto the field; the resultant riot lasted for two hours, causing much damage, many injuries, and isolated incidents of mayhem in the surrounding black community. The White Sox forfeited the game."

In a way, the seventies are topical right now. The event that determined the course of the decade, more perhaps than anything else, was the 1973 Yom Kippur war and the OPEC oil embargo of Israel's allies. The price of oil shot up and, even after the embargo, it remained high. This brought an end to the unique economic growth of the post-war world. Today, of course, Israel seems to be once again at the centre of world history.

The nineteen-seventies also saw the rise of the religious right in America, and a general flourishing of interest groups and identity politics. Black nationalism, "white ethnic" nationalism (like Chicano nationalism), gay rights, feminism (and anti-feminism), and other interest groups began to distinguish themselves from the mainstream. In some ways, I find this sort of climate congenial, even though I haven't much fondness for some of the social movements involved (like feminism). Pluralism appeals to me, as long as it's operating within the context of a shared culture (which I think America has always had).

The book has little to say about Ireland, which isn't too surprising. Or Catholicism, rather more surprisingly.

Nor does it (as far as I can remember) mention the book I'm reading now, The Exorcist (1973), or indeed any of the horror sensations of the decade: The Omen, Halloween, The Amityville Horror, or the rise of Stephen King to literary superstardom.

But, on the whole, certainly a book I would recommend to anybody with even a passing interesting in the decade of glitterballs, earthy tones, and stagflation.

A Big Buffet of Facebook

I post a lot of stuff on Facebook. It's mostly miscellaneous musings, ideas that strike me throughout the day. Now and again it occurs to me that my blog readers might be interested in some of them. Here goes.

I really dislike this campaign. So that's not us. OK. Who ARE we, then? It seems to me that today's Ireland (and not just Ireland) is trying to construct an identity based on negatives, or at the best, abstractions like 'inclusivity". Is this really possible?

I remember in sixth class in school, when I was 11 or 12, I wrote a "column" with the title Bald Hawk Pool (a fanciful translation of my first name), sitting at my desk. I remember the very first article was in defence of stereotypes and the truth they generally contain. That's how long I've felt like this. Ha!

Well, Robert Kee is not afraid to use rare words. As well as "flagitious" (wicked), his book on Parnell uses the word 'condonation', meaning 'The act of condoning, especially the implied forgiveness of an offense by ignoring it.' Mostly a legal term.

I'm always interested in learning new words, but it raises an issue in terms of writing. The consensus these days (and for quite some time) seems to favour a simple, direct style. This isn't just a question of communication but also of aesthetics. Plain English is held to be more elegant and forceful.

And I completely agree with this. (My own exemplar of masterful language use is Yeats's couplet: "The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun".)

But isn't there a danger that language will become unduly simplified if writers avoid the rare and archaic?

I remember reading an interview with the children's writer Helen Cresswell in which she was asked about her tendency to use rather advanced vocabulary in her books. (She actually introduced me to the word 'stipulate'.) Her reply was: "Well, if my readers don't know a word, they can jolly well look it up in the dictionary".

And, although the most poetic language is generally simple, this isn't always the case. Many of the most popular passages in English literature retain their popularity despite archaic terms. Who talks about fardels or a bare bodkin these days? An example that often comes to my mind is the enduringly popular Irish ballad A Nation Once Again. As a kid, I was stumped by the words "our fetters rent in twain". Not a phrase anyone would use today. It doesn't stop anyone belting it out in the pub.

I hope my Facebook friends will excuse a spell of navel-gazing on my part. I'm in pensive mood tonight. I'm thinking about my temperament and how difficult I find it to assign myself to either Team Optimism or Team Pessimism. (No, I don't think that makes me special.) I'm wondering if any of my friends share my temperament, or something like it.

In the first place, I am a melancholic. I wish I wasn't. I can't help suspecting that melancholics are a drain on the world insofar as they are melancholics, while cheerful and exuberant people lift us all up.

My melancholia consists mostly in anticipating failure for myself and everything I care about. I'm always fighting a battle against this. On a larger scale, this means anticipating defeat for every cause I cherish. My outlook is like Tolkien's. The Shadow is only ever defeated temporarily.

Another source of melancholia is a deep, deep sadness at the transience of all things. I can never remember a time I did not feel this.

My anticipation of failure gives me a sort of Hobbesian appreciation of any kind of social order. (I've never read Hobbes.)The absence of famine, war and chaos seems to me a massive achievement in itself. I am always apprehensive any radical change will endanger this.

OK, that's the downer stuff. Underneath all that, there is a sense of wonder which I've always felt but which was hugely developed when I discovered G.K. Chesterton.

I can wholeheartedly agree with Chesterton that mere existence itself outweighs infinitely anything that can be said against it. I love his words about the abyss of light that lies at the back of all our minds. As one Church Father said: "Concepts create idols. Only wonder understands".

But, a step below that (as it were) I feel a constant wonder and gratitude at how things are in their simplest categories. Space and time: man and woman: sleep and waking etc.

And finally, a lifelong humanism, best expressed perhaps in Hamlet's "What a piece of work is a man" speech.

I mentioned I was looking for a reference in Chesterton's work recently. Actually it was an allusion to a previous generation's love of ceremonial; toasts, and speeches, and orotundity in general. I couldn't find it.

But it came into my mind through reading the Parnell biography I'm reading. They really did love to be ceremonial back then. It was customary for a person chairing a meeting to surrender the chair so that someone else could occupy it and call for a vote of thanks for the previous chair. Unyoking horses from a guest of honour's carriages so that the crowd could pull it themselves was another practice. And so on....the book is full of toasts, banners, rosettes, banquets, parades, processions, custom-written ballads, and so forth. And this seems to have been a popular appetite, not just an upper-class thing.

I guess you like this sort of thing or you don't. I like it. There is far too little ceremony in today's society, for my liking. I'm always pleased when I walk past the O'Reilly Hall in UCD and there are graduates in their robes and mortar-boards outside. It's one of the few ceremonial occasions we have left. One of the lecturers told me that, some time ago, there was a proposal to remove Latin from the graduation ceremonies. It quickly died a death, in the face of popular opposition. People wanted their "Harry Potter moment", as he put it.

One of my favourite funny passages from Chesterton, which I came across just now while looking for something else. The old duffer can still make me laugh out loud in this era of alternative comedy and dank memes. Stick with it.

"I cannot help having a dim suspicion that dignity has something to do with style; but anyhow the gestures, like the songs, of my grandfather’s time and type had a good deal to do with dignity. But, used as he was to ceremonial manners, he must have been a good deal mystified by a strange gentleman who entered the office and, having conferred with my father briefly on business, asked in a hushed voice if he might have the high privilege of being presented to the more ancient or ancestral head of the firm. He then approached my grandfather as if the old gentleman had been a sort of shrine, with profound bows and reverential apostrophes.

“You are a Monument,” said the strange gentleman, “Sir, you are a Landmark.”

My grandfather, slightly flattered, murmured politely that they had certainly been in Kensington for some little time.

“You are an Historical Character,” said the admiring stranger. “You have changed the whole destiny of Church and State.”

My grandfather still assumed airily that this might be a poetical manner of describing a successful house-agency. But a light began to break on my father, who had thought his way through all the High Church and Broad Church movements and was well-read in such things. He suddenly remembered the case of “Westerton versus Liddell” in which a Protestant churchwarden prosecuted a parson for one of the darker crimes of Popery, possibly wearing a surplice.

“And I only hope,” went on the stranger firmly, still addressing the Protestant Champion, “that the services at the Parish Church are now conducted in a manner of which you approve.”

My grandfather observed in a genial manner that he didn’t care how they were conducted. These remarkable words of the Protestant Champion caused his worshipper to gaze upon him with a new dawn of wonder, when my father intervened and explained the error pointing out the fine shade that divides Westerton and Chesterton. I may add that my grandfather, when the story was told, always used to insist that he had added to the phrase “I don’t care how they are conducted,” the qualifying words (repeated with a grave motion ot the hand) “provided it is with reverence and sincerity.” But I grieve to say that sceptics in the younger generation believed this to have been an afterthought.

Here's something odd. I recently found myself reading about a Lord Mayor of Dublin back in the day. It occurred to me that I didn't know who the current Lord Mayor of Dublin is. (I'm guessing you don't, either. I asked a few people and they didn't know. It's James Geoghegan of Fine Gael.)

And, for some reason-- how can you explain this?-- I derive GREAT PLEASURE from reflecting that the Lord Mayor of Dublin is an ancient title, going back to 1229, and that (most of the time) most people don't know who it is. The pleasure is from the combination of those facts. I can't explain it. I could analyse it in a long discursion, but nobody wants that.

I suppose I only notice the Lord Mayor when he/she does something controversial or annoying. Looking at the recent holders of the office, I remember Caroline Conroy because she got rid of the live animal Crib at the Mansion House. And I remember Hazel Chu because everything she says and does is annoying.

"I mentioned that Lord Monboddo told me, he awaked every morning at four, and then for his health got up and walked in his room naked, with the window open, which he called taking an air bath; after which he went to bed again, and slept two hours more. Johnson, who was always ready to beat down any thing that seemed to be exhibited with disproportionate importance, thus observed: 'I suppose, Sir, there is no more in it than this, he awakes at four, and cannot sleep till he chills himself, and makes the warmth of the bed a grateful sensation.'"
From The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell (1791).

Interesting in the light of what historians are now discovering about "biphasic sleep".

For many years now (easily a decade) I've set my alarm two hours earlier than I have to get up, so I can wake up and immediately go back to sleep. Somehow I feel it prepares me for the shock of getting up and makes it easier. Otherwise I feel I've just closed my eyes and have to get up again. I've been told this is very unhealthy but perhaps I'm just continuing a venerable tradition!

But the genius of Boswell to remember these little trifles...

Computers and Me

When I was a kid, I used to marvel that my parents remembered a time without television. It never occurred to me that I would witness a technological transformation of society that is comparable to the arrival of TV. (Whether it's more dramatic or less dramatic of a change is an open question. I can see arguments on both sides.)

I grew up without computers but I was always aware of them. They were a long time coming. They were standards of fiction long before they became part of the furniture of everyday life.

I think the first computer I ever actually encountered was a console with a simple table tennis game. It's the game the Americans call Pong. It couldn't have been more simple: a green screen, two vertical lines moving up and down the screen, and a white dot as the ball. The console hooked up to the television. I never actually played this, just watched other people playing it. I'd guess this was the early to mid eighties. (I can't find any photos where the screen is green. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.)

Years later, my cousin (who was an only child and had the best of everything) had a games console; a Spectrum or Amstrad, I can't remember which. Again, I didn't get to play it, just to watch my cousin and older brother playing it. I can remember the title of some of the games: Sport of Kings, War of the Worlds, and Back to Skool. The last one captured my imagination the most, it featured a schoolboy getting into all sorts of trouble. It may have inspired a story (or game) that I developed at great length myself; The War in the School (I feel a bit pretentious italicizing it), which was an elaborate tale of a school battle involving peg-guns, catapults, pea-shooters, and other improvised, non-deadly weapons.

I remember these computer games took longer to load than to actually play. Aesthetically they were quite appealing, with their simple bright colours and very stylized graphics.

On another occasion, I can remember playing a handheld computer game for hours and hours. I'm guessing this was in the late eighties or early nineties. It was a device that you held up to your head and looked into like a pair of binoculars. The graphics and gameplay were very simple. It was a shoot 'em up in which you tried to shoot (or maybe harpoon) waves of shark attacks. They came faster and faster as you progressed. I remember playing it for hours, but not for days. Either I got bored of it or lost access to it.

Although this seems to be my first personal use of a computer, I don't remember being terribly excited about it.

My primary school had a computer, which kids were sometimes allowed to use in an after-school club. But it was very simple. The only game it had was an anagram game, and there were only a few anagrams so it quickly got boring.

When I went to secondary school, there was a computer lab and, from about fourth year (1994), we had a computer class. There was no internet connection. We didn't do much besides write CVs and play with a paint package. I remember we found the term "log off" amusing, being teenagers.

My family got a computer in 1994. It was a hand-me-down from a bank, my father edited a community magazine and somehow acquired it for this purpose. He never actually used it, that I can remember, and I'm not sure it was ever used much for the community magazine. But we used it plenty. It had Microsoft Works (I think), a simple word processor, spreadsheet, and database programme.

I lost no time in using it for writing. It was on this computer that I seriously started writing poetry, which isn't very romantic. I also wrote a diary of my fifth and sixth year in school (aged seventeen to eighteen), which I very much wish I still had. I can actually remember many things from this time simply because I wrote them in my diary, and often re-read it. The computer didn't have internet access.

We did find a computer game we could play on it, Sid Meier's Civilization. Tetris, as well. I can remember playing Tetris for hours and hours well into the early hours, while listening to Abba Gold.

I played another computer game, Shogun Total War, for sixteen hours a little bit later. After that, I resolved on no more computer games.

I can't remember when my family got a computer with an internet-connection. Email became near-universal (among young people) around 1997, I think. My access to the internet was occasional and situational for a long time. I remember the first website I visited regularly was the Philip Larkin Society website.

I didn't get a mobile phone of any kind, never mind a smartphone, until 2004. I vividly remember getting it. I'd just watched the remake of The Manchurian Candidate in the cinema in the Omni Centre, and I went straight from that to the Vodafone shop. I was clueless about mobile phones and asked: "Does it have texting?" The guy didn't even understand what I was asking. I can't remember when I first got a smartphone.

As I've said, computers were plentiful in the world of fiction, even when they were rare in reality. One of my favourite comic stories was called Computer Warrior, and it was a boy who went into his computer to play computer games for real. Another story I liked was The Thirteenth Floor, in which a computer called Max controlled an apartment building. (Wouldn't you know, he became overprotective towards his tenants, and people who came to the building with ill-intent found themselves on the thirteenth floor. But there was no thirteenth floor!) Both of these stories ran in The Eagle, though the thirteenth floor first ran in the short-lived comic Scream!

On the whole, I am all in favour of computers. Every technology has its downside. I don't remember people being more cultural or literate or imaginative in the pre-computer days, whatever they say now-- at least not in the pre-computer days that I experienced.

You Are Cordially Invited...

 What are you doing on the 24th of October?

If the answer to that is "nothing", why not come to the launch of my friend Jonathan Barry's book Great Classic Stories in Hodges Figgis on Dawson Street?

You can read an interview with Jonathan about the book here.

I will be there, still recovering from the gala celebrations of my 47th birthday on the 22nd. (I wish.)

My Fifty Favourite Poems of All Time

I spent a sleepless hour or two after midnight, this weekend, coming up with this list. 

Why fifty? Well, it seems a manageable sort of number.

Despite the title of the post, I can't really claim this is my definitive fifty favourite poems. In another mood, at another time, it might have looked somewhat different. But these are all poems which have a huge personal significance to me, lines from which regularly come unbidden into my memory, and (most importantly) which move me immensely. Most of them are poems that I've loved for decades now. I can't even imagine my life without some of them.

I tried to put them in vague order of preference, but for the most part, this is very fuzzy. It's really the top ten or so where the order matters the most. I can pretty confidently assert that "Ulysses" by Tennyson is my single favourite poem of all time, and that "To Helen" by Edgar Allen Poe comes second. I'm not particularly confident of the placing after that-- is "The Burning of the Leaves" really more important to me than "Locksley Hall?"-- but I'm fairly sure that there's nothing in the top twenty that doesn't deserve to be there.

Beyond that, the placing of a poem is less important than its presence on the list.

Arthur Quiller-Couch, the first editor of The Oxford Book of English Verse, famously wrote that "the best is the best, though a hundred judges have declared it so". Well, this list makes no claim about what's best (these are my personal favourites, nothing more) but I share his general sentiment. Pretty much all of the poems here are standards of poetry anthologies, although many of the Irish choices would only be encountered in Irish poetry anthologies. Popular taste, over time, is a sure sign of greatness in poetry-- although my guess is that this requires a poetry-reading public, which today (for the first time ever?) doesn't exist. Hopefully this is just a hiatus.

Having said that, I've omitted a few of the most popular poems of all time. (You can compare my selection with the BBC's "favourite poems" poll of 1995.) There's no "Daffodils", no "Road Not Taken", no "Elegy in a Country Churchyard". It's not because I don't love those poems. I do, especially the first. I just couldn't put them above other poems on my list. Similarly, there's no John Betjeman on my list, even though I'm a huge admirer of Betjeman. There's just no stand-out poems among his works that appeal to me so much they would get in the top fifty.

On looking at this list, somebody said to me: "You like Yeats, don't you?". Yes, I like Yeats. In fact, I could easily have filled half of the places on this list with Yeats poems.

I think "Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album" by Philip Larkin might be the template for half the poems I've written. But don't hold that against it!

"Fanfare for the Makers" by Louis MacNeice is a poem (or excerpt from a poem) that had a massive influence on my as a teen, and indeed ever afterwards. But I don't like the last line. Life can't be confirmed by suicide. Suicide only confirms despair.

Anyway, I hope the list affords you some diversion, and perhaps introduces you to some new favourites of your own.

Ulysses by Tennyson

To Helen by Edgar Allen Poe

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer by John Keats

“Our revels now are ended” by William Shakespeare

The Burning of the Leaves by Laurence Binyon (only the first part)

Locksley Hall by Tennyson

Snow by Louis MacNeice

Lines on a Young Lady's Photograph Album by Philip Larkin

Easter 1916 by W.B.Yeats

Morte d’Arthur by Tennyson

“Fanfare for the Makers”, an excerpt from Canto VII of Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice

The Fisherman by W.B. Yeats

"Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" by William Shakespeare

Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats

Death of an Irishwoman by Michael Hartnett

The Fool by Patrick Pearse

Psalm 23 of the King James Bible

Composed Upon Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth

She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron

The Kraken by Lord Alfred Tennyson

MCMXIV by Philip Larkin

A Prayer for my Daughter by W.B. Yeats

And Then No More by James Clarence Mangan

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti

Aedh Sings of the Rose in His Heart by W.B. Yeats

If-- by Rudyard Kipling

Loveliest of Trees by A.E. Housman

Sad Steps by Philip Larkin

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

The Wayfarer by Patrick Pearse

Church Going by Philip Larkin

“Sirs, I am but a nameless man...” from The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

Ozymandias by Percy Shelley

When I Was One and Twenty by A.E. Housman

The Song of Wandering Aengus by W.B. Yeats

The Toys by Coventry Patmore

Piano by D.H. Lawrence

Plurality by Louis MaNeice

To a Friend by Matthew Arnold

Dying Speech of the Old Philosopher by Walter Savage Landor

To Edmund Clerihew Bentley by G.K. Chesterton

The Oxen by Thomas Hardy

The Burning Babe by Robert Southwell

The Man Who Dreamed of Faeryland by W.B. Yeats

To Althea from Prison by Richard Lovelace

Mine Own John Poinz by Sir Thomas Wyatt

Requiem by Robert Louis Stevenson

Unto Everything There is a Season from the Book of Eccleasiastes

Chesterton and Education: A Talk

Readers of this blog are invited to a talk by Emily de Rotstein on “Celebrating 150 years: How GK Chesterton continues to ‘evangelise’ through education”.

Saturday 7th September, 12 pm
Central Catholic Library
74 Merrion Square, Dublin 2

Emily de Rotstein serves as Executive Director of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a worldwide lay apostolate established in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. The mission of the Society is to evangelise through education, inspiring people to live joyful, holy lives, with G.K. Chesterton as a model of lay spirituality.

The Society runs the Chesterton Schools Network, which involves more than 60 Catholic schools in the US and abroad. (See https://chestertonschoolsnetwork.org )

Emily served as a Board member and founding Executive Director of the first Chesterton Academy, and later helped launch the Chesterton Schools Network. Prior to Chesterton, she served as vice president of marketing of Aveso Displays, a venture-backed flexible electronic display company she helped spin out of The Dow Chemical Company. She holds a BA from the University of Minnesota and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton.

As seats are limited, please reserve your place writing to irishchesterton@gmail.com