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.