Commonplace Blog

Some Ado About Melancholy

[From Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare, I.3]

    There is no measure in the occasion that breeds;
    therefore the sadness is without limit.[...]
    I wonder that thou, being, as thou sayest thou art,
    born under Saturn, goest about to apply a moral
    medicine to a mortifying mischief. I cannot hide
    what I am: I must be sad when I have cause and smile
    at no man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait
    for no man's leisure, sleep when I am drowsy and
    tend on no man's business, laugh when I am merry and
    claw no man in his humour.[...]
    I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in
    his grace, and it better fits my blood to be
    disdained of all than to fashion a carriage to rob
    love from any: in this, though I cannot be said to
    be a flattering honest man, it must not be denied
    but I am a plain-dealing villain. I am trusted with
    a muzzle and enfranchised with a clog; therefore I
    have decreed not to sing in my cage. If I had my
    mouth, I would bite; if I had my liberty, I would do
    my liking: in the meantime let me be that I am and
    seek not to alter me.

-Don John

Jesus, Party Animal

[From The Sacred Heart, by Dietrich von Hildebrand, p. 124]

The first miracle of our Lord at the wedding of Cana is one of the three mysteries of the feast of Epiphany. The Gospel says: "He manifested his glory, and his disciples believed in him." The Church sees in this miracle the manifestation of the divinity of Christ primarily. Yet, it also is a revelation of the boundless superabundance of divine love. The first miracle of Christ was neither the healing of the sick, nor the restoration of a natural good--like the sight to the blind--nor even an indispensable good like the multiplication of the loaves. The transmutation of water into wine was not an indispensable good either for the couple or for the wedding as such. It served merely to heighten the joy of the feast. It was not even absolutely lacking, but was only in insufficient quantity. Divine superabundance! Christ our Redeemer, who continually exhorts us to seek only the one thing necessary, manifesting such an interest in the wedding taking place in cloudless joy, that the bridegroom should not be humiliated or perturbed by the insufficiency of wine!

Divine, boundless superabundance of love! What an abyss separates it from the hard zeal of many pious people who are moved and interested only when either something vital to their neighbor's eternal welfare or at least some elementary indispensable good is at stake. That the wine was not sufficient for a wedding would strike those "pious souls" as a trifle not deserving their attention. They forget that the sublime words of St. Aloysius, Quid ad aeternitatem? "What is this to eternity?" should be applied to one's own person only, but never to one's neighbor.

The Marriage in Cana

The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity

Dietrich von Hildebrand

The Mystery of Man

[From "The Warrior's Soul," by Joseph Conrad]

There were three of us round my fire. The third one was that adjutant. He was perhaps a well-meaning chap but not so nice as he might have been had he been less rough in manner and less crude in his perceptions. He would reason about people's conduct as though a man were as simple a figure as, say, two sticks laid across each other; whereas a man is much more like the sea whose movements are too complicated to explain, and whose depths may bring up God only knows what at any moment.

The Death of Cato

[From Appian's Civil Wars, bk. 2, para. 98-99]

When these facts became known at Utica some three days later, and as Caesar was marching right against that place, a general flight began. Cato did not detain anybody. He gave ships to all the nobility who asked for them, but himself adhered firmly to his post. When the inhabitants of Utica promised to intercede for him before doing so for themselves, he answered with a smile that he did not need any intercessors with Caesar, and that Caesar knew it very well. Then he placed his seal on all the public property and gave the accounts of each kind to the magistrates of Utica. Toward evening he bathed and dined. He ate in a sitting posture, as had been his custom since Pompey's death. He changed his habits in no respect. He partook of the dinner, neither more nor less than usual. He conversed with the others present concerning those who had sailed away and inquired whether the wind was favourable and whether they would make sufficient distance before Caesar should arrive the next morning. Nor did he alter any of his habits when he retired to rest, except that he embraced his son rather more affectionately than usual. As he did not find his dirk in its accustomed place by his couch, he exclaimed that he had been betrayed by his servants to the enemy. "What weapon," he asked, "shall I use if I am attacked in the night?" When they besought him to do no violence to himself but to go to sleep without his dirk, he replied still more plausibly, "Could I not strangle myself with my clothing if I wished to, or knock my brains out against the wall, or throw myself headlong to the ground, or destroy myself by holding my breath?" Much more he said to the same purport until he persuaded them to bring back his dirk. When it had been put in its place he called for Plato's treatise on the soul and began to read.

When Plato's dialogue had come to an end and when he thought that those who were stationed at the doors were asleep, he stabbed himself under the breast. His intestines protruded and the attendants heard a groan and rushed in. Physicians replaced his intestines, which were still uninjured, in his body, and after sewing up the wound tied a bandage around it. When Cato came to himself he dissembled again. Although he blamed himself for the insufficiency of the wound, he expressed thanks to those who had saved him and said that he only needed sleep. The attendants then retired, taking the dirk with them, and closed the door, thinking that he had become quiet. Cato after feigning sleep, tore off the bandage with his hands without making any noise, opened the suture of the wound, enlarged it with his nails like a wild beast, plunged his fingers into his stomach, and tore out his entrails until he died, being then about fifty years of age. He was considered the most steadfast of all men in upholding any opinion that he had once espoused and in adhering to justice, rectitude, and morality, not as a matter of custom merely, but rather from a high-souled philosophy.

The Death of Cato, Giclee

The Ambiguity of Evil

[From Under Western Eyes, by Joseph Conrad, Pt. 4, Ch. 1]

This much said, there is no need to tell anything more of that first interview and of the several others. To the morality of a Western reader an account of these meetings would wear perhaps the sinister character of old legendary tales where the Enemy of Mankind is represented holding subtly mendacious dialogues with some tempted soul. It is not my part to protest. Let me but remark that the Evil One, with his single passion of satanic pride for the only motive, is yet, on a larger, modern view, allowed to be not quite so black as he used to be painted. With what greater latitude, then, should we appraise the exact shade of mere mortal man, with his many passions and his miserable ingenuity in error, always dazzled by the base glitter of mixed motives, everlastingly betrayed by a short-sighted wisdom.

Under Western Eyes (Penguin Classics)

Joseph Conrad

The Bible on Alcohol

[From Ecclesiasticus, Chapter 31]

How sufficient is a little wine for a man well taught, and in sleeping thou shalt not be uneasy with it, and thou shalt feel no pain. Watching, and choler, and gripes, are with an intemperate man: Sound and wholesome sleep with a moderate man: he shall sleep till morning, and his soul shall be delighted with him. Challenge not them that love wine: for wine hath destroyed very many.

Fire trieth hard iron: so wine drunk to excess shall rebuke the hearts of the proud. Wine taken with sobriety is equal lire to men: if thou drink it moderately, thou shalt be sober. What is his life, who is diminished with wine? What taketh away life? death. Wine was created from the beginning to make men joyful, and not to make them drunk.

Wine drunken with moderation is the joy of the soul and the heart. Sober drinking is health to soul and body. Wine drunken with excess raiseth quarrels; and wrath, and many ruins. Wine drunken with excess is bitterness of the soul. The heat of drunkenness is the stumblingblock of the fool, lessening strength and causing wounds.

Wine

R.I.P., Luciano Pavarotti

Nessun dorma!

Luciano Pavarotti

"Oh would'st thou sing what Heroes Windsor bore"

[From "Windsor Forest," by Alexander Pope]

The groves of Eden, vanish'd now so long,
Live in description, and look green in song:
These, were my breast inspir'd with equal flame,
Like them in beauty, should be like in fame.
Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain,
Here earth and water, seem to strive again;
Not Chaos like together crush'd and bruis'd,
But as the world, harmoniously confus'd:
Where order in variety we see,
And where, tho' all things differ, all agree.
Here waving groves a checquer'd scene display,
And part admit, and part exclude the day;
As some coy nymph her lover's warm address
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress.
There, interspers'd in lawns and opening glades,
Thin trees arise that shun each other's shades.
Here in full light the russet plains extend;
There wrapt in clouds the blueish hills ascend.
Ev'n the wild heath displays her purple dyes,
And 'midst the desart fruitful fields arise,
That crown'd with tufted trees and springing corn,
Like verdant isles the sable waste adorn.
Let India boast her plants, nor envy we
The weeping amber or the balmy tree,
While by our oaks the precious loads are born,
And realms commanded which those trees adorn.
Not proud Olympus yields a nobler sight,
Tho' Gods assembled grace his tow'ring height,
Than what more humble mountains offer here,
Where, in their blessings, all those Gods appear.
See Pan with flocks, with fruits Pomona crown'd,
Here blushing Flora paints th' enamel'd ground,
Here Ceres' gifts in waving prospect stand,
And nodding tempt the joyful reaper's hand;
Rich Industry sits smiling on the plains,
And peace and plenty tell, a Stuart reigns.

The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)

Alexander Pope

A Fable of Faction

[From The Examiner, Numb. 32, by Jonathan Swift (Major Works, pp. 264-5)]

Liberty, the daughter of Oppression, after having brought forth several fair children, as Riches, Arts, Learning, Trade, and many others, was at last delivered of her youngest daughter, called FACTION; whom Juno, doing the office of the midwife, distorted in its birth, out of envy to the mother, from whence it derived its peevishness and sickly constitution. However, as it is often the nature of parents to grow most fond of their youngest and disagreeablest children, so it happened with Liberty, who doted on this daughter to such a degree that by her good will she would never suffer the girl to be out of her sight. As Miss Faction grew up, she became so termagant and froward that there was no enduring her any longer in Heaven. Jupiter gave her warning to be gone, and her mother rather than forsake her, took the whole family down to earth. She landed at first in Greece, was expelled by degrees through all the Cities by her daughter's ill conduct; fled afterwards to Italy, and being banished thence, took shelter among the Goths with whom she passed into most parts of Europe; but driven out every where, she began to lose esteem, and her daughter's faults were imputed to herself. So that at this time, she has hardly a place in the world to retire to.

One would wonder what strange qualities this daughter must possess, sufficient to blast the influence of so divine a mother and the rest of her children. She always affected to keep mean and scandalous company; valuing nobody but just as they agreed with her in every capricious opinion she thought fit to take up; and rigorously exacting compliance though she changed her sentiments ever so often. Her great employment was to breed discord among friends and relations, and make up monstrous alliances between those whose dispositions least resembled each other. Whoever offered to contradict her, though int he most insignificant trifle, she would be sure to distinguish by some ignominious appellation and allow them to have neither honour, wit, beauty, learning, honesty or common sense. She intruded into all companies at the most unseasonable times, mixed at balls, assemblies, and other parties of pleasure; haunted every coffee-house and bookseller's shop, and by her perpetual talking filled all places with disturbance and confusion. She buzzed about the merchant in the Exchange, the divine in his pulpit, and the shopkeeper behind his counter. Above all, she frequented public assemblies where she sat in the shape of an obscene, ominous bird, ready to prompt her friends as they spoke.

The Major Works (Oxford World's Classics)

Jonathan Swift

The Literary Life Condemned

[From Letters to a Doubter, by Paul Claudel (letter to Jacques Riviere in February 1910), pp. 183-4]

There is no worse profession in the world than that of a writer who has to live by his pen. And here are you constrained henceforth to produce with one eye upon a patron, the public—to give him, not what you love, but what he likes, and God knows how elevated and refined his taste has always been! Say what you like—rather than lead the life of a Monsieur X, I would cobble shoes. I always think of tragic figures like Villiers de l'Isle Adam, or Verlaine, with the relics of their talent clinging to them, like the fur on a moth-eaten coat. It is not an honorable thing to live on one's soul and to peddle it to strangers. The contempt of the world has always had for actors and artists is a quite legitimate one.

And you are a married man![...]

You have one great fault. It is the way you exaggerate your weakness, your incapacity for any dull, prolonged task. You always want to prove that life is in the wrong. Life is life. But you stand at a point where an access of despondency or a hasty decision may have results for you that I shudder to contemplate. I repeat to you with all the energy of which I am capable, and with the full memory of certain terrible examples in my mind's eye: there is no worse trade than literature!

Letters to a doubter,

Paul Claudel