Exposure to Sin - Milton

One of the interesting arguments that Milton brings forth in 'Areopagitica' is that in order to show true virtue, one must be able to sin.  If your virtue is enforced, is your only choice, then it doesn't mean as much.

I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

On the face of it, this makes sense to me, but rarely has a society agreed with Milton here.  We shun indecency and vice.  We especially work hard to keep it away from those least likely to fall prey to its temptations.  But of course Milton was speaking of books.

And this is the benefit which may be had of books promiscuously read.

How can we know what we're arguing against if we never hear those arguments?  We run into this today in modern politics where it is increasingly easy to read only opinion that you already agree with.  If your mind isn't exposed to the ideas of the opposition, it will probably never be changed.  Like Milton, I can't praise that 'fugitive and cloistered virtue'. 

Note: I just discovered that the previous couple of entries didn't publish for some reason.  They are below in their proper time slots.

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poetry

Next up in the poetry list is the 'Concord Hymn' from Ralph Waldo Emerson, a name I recognize but I must admit I know next to nothing of the poet.  This poem is about the Battle of Concord, the first battle in the Revolutionary War.  It was first recited on July 4th, 1837.

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

You know what catches my eye after reading through this?  There is no mention of why the battle was fought.  This poem could apply to almost any battle that is fondly remembered.  Only the first stanza gives hints as to what happened.
Which may not be that big of a deal.  This poem debuted some sixty years after the fight took place and Emerson may have reasonably thought that the details would be well known to anyone that came to visit Concord.  Maybe it's a very modern thing that we feel the need to explain and justify our battles to future visitors.
The poetry is fine, though it doesn't really sing for me.  The line 'shot heard round the world' is famous and justly so.  I don't know that anything else here is striking. 

The Life of a Book - Milton

One of my favorite passages in 'Areopagitica' is when Milton speaks of why we must be careful when 'confine' or 'imprison' books, as is the case when we censor them.

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

That's exactly right.  When an author pours his intellect into a book, it is a reflection of the author's intellect or soul.  When that author pours his very best, then it is of the purest soul.  He continues:

Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.

That's a quote for the ages right there.

Nearly twenty years ago, I first read a book by Umberto Eco called 'The Name of the Rose' and it blew me away.  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.  [SPOILER ALERT]  The book is largely set around a medieval library and at that climax of the story it goes up in a conflagration.  After I read the book, I passed it on to my dad and he also loved it.  We talked about this scene and he talked about how it was like a punch to the gut.  All of the monks, all of the other characters in the book were long gone and worm food by the time the book was written.  The books however could have lived forever if they'd survived.  Unfortunately, they were lost, some of them certainly the only copies left.  The world was left much poorer because of it.

On Poetry and Loving

A lovely piece about a pair of contemporary poets, wife and husband.  I liked this bit:

When someone died whom we loved, we went back to the poets of grief and outrage, as far back as Gilgamesh; often I read aloud Henry King’s “The Exequy,” written in the seventeenth century after the death of his young wife. Poetry gives the griever not release from grief but companionship in grief. Poetry embodies the complexities of feeling at their most intense and entangled, and therefore offers (over centuries, or over no time at all) the company of tears.

'Poetry gives the griever not release from grief, but companionship in grief'.  I kind of think that Aristotle would have agreed.

September Readings

Just one author, though it counts as two pieces.

September
Pascal: Pensees (72, 82-83, 100, 128, 131, 139, 142-143, 171, 194-195, 219, 229, 233-234, 242, 277, 282, 289, 298, 303, 320, 323, 325, 330-331, 374, 385, 392, 395-397, 409, 412-413, 416, 418, 425, 430, 434-435, 463, 491, 525-531, 538, 543, 547, 553, 556, 564, 571, 586, 598, 607-610, 613, 619-620, 631, 640, 644, 673, 675, 684, 692-693, 737, 760, 768, 792-793)* link
Pascal: Treatise on the Arithmetical Triangle link

*I'd thought that the Pensees were like Proverbs, very short.  But in fact, they are more like essays of varying links.  I've just started them and they're well worth reading.

Keats - Poetry

The next poem on the list is one that I've certainly heard of but not one that I know.  It's Keat's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A Flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme;
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape        
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'  

The poem is a bit on the flowery side, for me.  In some ways it seems like an exercise in finding flowery language moreso than expressing an idea.  But that may be unfair.  The entire poem is simply comentary on scenes found on a Grecian urn.  We have a piper who is playing but is obviously 'unheard'.  The music is only in the head of the patron.  There is a tree that will never lose it's leaves.  A bull on its way to be sacrified.  Each scene gets a story written about it.
And then we get to the heart of the poem.  "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - this is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."  Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
Is that true?  Are all true things beautiful?  Or all beautiful things true?  Are beautiful things sometimes beyond the importance of truth?  Are artistic statements true, because of their beauty, rather than out of some pedestrian fidelity to honesty?
Keats thought so.  I'm not so sure.

Aeropagitica - Milton

John Milton is better known (much, much better known) for his poetry, but 'Aeropagitica' is a thing of beauty.  At the time it was written, there was a Licensing Order in place in England in which an author needed permission from a state appointed official before publishing something.  He published this in direct violation of the act.
The arguments are still familiar today.  They should be as Milton lays down what we would think of in America as First Amendment freedoms.  The sad thing is that we'd even need to argue this anymore, but there is some part of humanity that fears free expression. 
He starts with three basic arguments: 1) 'the inventors of it be those whom ye will be loathe to own' (the censors will not be good people), 2) the order will do nothing to stop 'scandalous, seditious, and libellous books' and 3):

Last, that it will be primely to the discouragement of all learning, and the stop of truth, not only by disexercising, and blunting, our abilities in what we know already, but by hindering and cropping the discovery that might be yet further made both in religious and civil wisdom.

This is a huge point, still relevant.  If you restrict the scope in which people can argue, you will make it impossible to learn new things.  Later on he expands on this point by comparing Jesus, the savior, to Truth itself.  He says that it deceivers rent that truth apart into a thousand pieces and scattered them to the winds.  That search still continues, he says, but will be stopped if the search is censored. 
Milton also notes that the censorship will surely spread:

If we think to regulate printing, thereby to rectify manners, we must regulate all recreation and pastimes, all that is delightful to man.  No music must be heard, no song be set or sung, but what is grave and Doric. There must be licensing dancers, that no gesture, motion or deportment be taught our youth but what by their allowance shall be honest;...

Once we accept the logic of broad censorship, it grows and grows.  Our current society has settled this to some extent by simply labeling some writings (music, movies, etc.) so that people have an idea of what to expect.  Parents can (mostly) keep adult materials away from kids.  Violent materials are clearly labeled.  Religious writings are free, with some notable and important exceptions.  Political writings aren't as free as they should be, but in general, opposing viewpoints are allowed. 
I wish we had read this whole piece, or at least excerpts, back in high school.