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Thomas Hardy, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, makes a series of clear religious statements. Clearly not plying a course in support of orthodox Christianity, which is consistently portrayed as hypocritical and dangerous to the fortunes of his beloved heroine, Hardy goes as far as turning his primary antagonist, Alec Stokes-d’Urberville, into a preacher, only to have his newfound religion prove empty and without power once confronted with another opportunity to take advantage of young, ill-starred Tess, while Angel Clare, the son of another avowed preacher, is himself a Dissenter, and his ideas idolized. It is a debate among sophisticated systems. However, if we maintain our focus there, we reduce Tess; she is merely reactive, and has no function in the religious debate presented within the novel. She is little better than the object tossed about by these differing views, and loses much of her apparent force as a character. In fact, Tess is something much, much stronger; she is Persephone, a figure of natural, primitive religion, as opposed to the developed religions of society which ultimately fail her. Hardy’s own struggles with Christian orthodoxy, his complex ideas regarding the nature of God as an unsympathetic universal consciousness, certainly influenced him in this regard; indeed, he has a history of portraying the universe as controlled by capricious forces opposed to the good of man, to which, he seems to suggest, the only natural response is paganism, which Hardy appears to consider the only way to rebel against a meaninglessness he could not deny, yet which clearly left him dumbfounded in fear and grief.
The nineteenth century was a period of intense intellectual and spiritual upheaval in European Christianity. Long complacent in its dominance of religious life, it was struck by two outside forces seemingly simultaneously: the first was the materialist worldview made possible by Charles Darwin, who postulated a feasible source for life without the intervention of God, and the second the rise of spiritualism and romanticism, a sort of functional paganism that denied basic Christian ideas regarding the nature of God and the soul, looking backwards to pre-Christian religions, eastward to Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sufism, as in theosophy, and inward to personal spiritual experience as authoritative. So we saw in this period prominent writers from Rilke to Yeats treating on myths both ancient and newly-devised, in an effort to construct a meaningful world apart from Christianity; Yeats in particular had strong connections to the theosophical movement. Of particular note was the release of Sir James Frazier’s The Golden Bough.
The Golden Bough, a comparative mythology, was controversial at its initial unveiling, taking as it did the story of Christ and considering it in the same tradition of the sacrifice of God-kings prominent in ancient world, and claiming the agnostic position that “Man in fact created gods.” Hardy’s difficulties with the materialist worldview, his description of astronomy and geology as “terrible muses” that force man to understand his life as brutish and brief, arising from dust and returning to it in a vast and empty void, likely influenced his appreciation of mythology as a way to cast meaning upon the world. Thus, The Golden Bough, immensely influential in its day, became a principal source for Hardy, who used it to cast his story, an otherwise-unremarkable series of unfortunate events, as the violence of unfeeling fate playing out in the struggle between paganism and Christianity, with Tess as the central victim of that struggle. In fact, the entire sequence of tragedies begins when the Durbeyfields learn of their descent from “Sir Pagan d’Urberville,” an unwelcome pagan past intruding on the Christian present. The conflict sets itself up immediately.
Tess’s pagan associations only escalate. She is shown at the very beginning participating in the last of the Cerealias, the ancient dances of harvest dedication to Ceres, which Marlott alone preserves. Hardy describes it as less a walking club than a “votive sisterhood,” deliberately religious language for a custom which, had it survived elsewhere, would be little more than a cultural relic, which Hardy ties immediately to an additional intrusion of the pagan past upon Tess’s world, “the forests [having] departed…some old customs of their shades remain.” The dance prefigures Tess’s eventual end, the story beginning “with a moving circle of girls and women in white (among them is Tess, marked out by her red ribbon), performing a pagan ritual; it ends within the immobile circle of grey stones, a heathen temple of nature.” In between them fly a cascade of paganism: the woodland around the d’Urberville estate, with its “primeval yews and oaks,” Tess’s association with the earth, Hardy saying “a field-woman is a portion of the field…she had somehow…assimilated herself with it.” Tess is almost an incarnation of nature, and certainly a representative of an older order which has somehow placed itself within her.
Tess, then, as much as she supposes to accept Angel’s philosophy, lives in a world of fate and omens, the signals of the order to which she figures. From her “blighted star” to the afternoon crow which presages her marriages untimely end, her life overflows with portents of meaning. She is, left and right, mocked by fate in the signs that surround her; swearing upon a cross she will never tempt Alec again, she learns that what she had supposed a cross was indeed far more sinister
‘What is the meaning of that old stone I have passed?’ she asked of him. ‘Was it ever a Holy Cross?’
‘Cross – no; ‘twer not a cross! ‘Tis a thing of ill-omen, Miss. It was put up in wuld times by the relations of a malefactor who was tortured there by nailing his hand to a post and afterwards hung. The bones lie underneath. They say he sold his soul to the devil, and that he walks at times.’
Tess, it seems, cannot escape her fate, and has sworn unknowingly to the devil himself. Hereafter does Alec begin his cruel turn, beginning the final crescendo, the weight of which will crush Tess Durbeyfield underfoot. For Hardy, fate is an external force, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, which roves about and does its will through other external forces; Tess is not brought low by herself, her own inclinations and beliefs and actions, but by how she is acted upon; “The few moments spent with Alec doom Tess forever.” Tess is continually frustrated by the actions of fate beyond her control, from the very revelation of her lineage to Angel’s unwillingness to hear her confession. She is, it appears, still very much a victim or pawn, played by fate or by Alec or by Joan, instead of being a force all her own. This is, I suppose, inevitable; Hardy is, above all, interested in fate and fatedness, the forces of the universe acting upon someone. And yet, it doesn’t make Tess as passive as one might suppose at first glance.
Tess’s pagan associations, in fact, make her a force in the novel in apparent defiance of the machinations of fate or the purely material universe, against both of which she sets herself in opposition. In Tess’s character, Hardy proposes that the only sane response to a senseless, dismal, bleak world, the world proposed by his “terrible muses” of astronomy and geology, is to thrust meaning on the material world. The only sane response is to become a pagan.
In fact, our heroine, such as she is, has done much more than become a pagan; she figures as Persephone, or Prosepina, herself, daughter of nature-goddess Demeter, or Ceres in Latin, whose very round she had danced in her first appearance, the Cerealia. Persephone is a life-death-rebirth goddess, of the very cycles Frazier had written in The Golden Bough; broadly speaking, Persephone figures principally in what’s called the abduction myth, that she was taken into the underworld by Hades, forced to remain there in her consumption of a forbidden fruit – here the pomegranate, but such a recurring motif in ancient literature that it could have been anything – and eventually allowed to leave, causing the earth, previously caught in a deep, prolonged winter in Demeter’s grief, to flush to life with her joy. Persephone is, then, the archetypical etiological myth, explaining the cycle of the seasons in her annual and alternating departures from and returns to Hell.
The parallels with Tess are clear, and the entirety of the Persephone myth can be seen allegorically as what I’m going to call the Tess myth, a sort of legendarium of her story. A young girl, intensely close to nature (Hardy calls her a “daughter of the soil”) is thrust into an unhappy connection to a duplicitous man. Unable to sever the tie fully, she tries to leave but finds himself deeper in his care. Her eventual escape involves both quite literally cutting the connection and her own death, followed in her symbolic rebirth in the ‘Liza-Lu, securing for her sister all of what she had sought from Angel for herself.
Granted all that, Tess is no longer merely acted upon, but actor, the Iron Queen of Hades, ensuring the annual return of spring, the marriage of ‘Liza-Lu, and not merely resigned to her fate hanging from the gallows, but embracing it as a positive action to restore things aright. “‘It is as it should be,’ she murmured. ’Angel, I am almost glad–yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!’…’I am ready.’” It is as it should be. This is not the statement of a fatalistic acceptance of the world as it is; she has not merely acquiesced to the inevitable. No, she makes a much broader statement than that, that things not only are what they are, but are what they ought be. It’s a positive statement. Persephone is smiling. Persephone has won.
In this perspective, Tess’s murder of Alec Stokes-d’Urberville was not bending to fate, but the act of severing the chords that bound her to it as much as they did to Alec. Forasmuch as Hardy calls the events of the novel the sport of the “president of the Immortals,” it is notable that it isn’t fate he cites, but rather Zeus, who is master of the Gods, but not of the world. This ambiguity, for an ending seemingly-clear at first in its indictment of the universe for destroying Tess, finds further uncertainty in the novel’s last line, the joining of Angel and ‘Liza-Lu, the very act of Tess’s rebirth. Their taking of each other’s hand is Tess’s act of triumph, begun in Alec’s murder, cemented on the altar at Stonehenge, and sealed and completed at the gallows. Tess’s death allows life to continue as it should. She is not decimated, but the victor. Her struggle has been against a force bound to disrupt, not only her life, but the life of many others.
The next pillar was isolated; others composed a trilithon; others were prostrate, their flanks forming a causeway wide enough for a carriage; and it was soon obvious that they made up a forest of monoliths grouped upon the grassy expanse of the plain. The couple advanced further into this pavilion of the night till they stood in its midst.
“It is Stonehenge!” said Clare.
“The heathen temple, you mean?”
“Yes. Older than the centuries; older than the d’Urbervilles!”
The nature of her death as sacrifice is made clear at Stonehenge. The ancient megalithic temple to the sun, aligned to its movements and therefore likely carrying with it associations of rebirth (also serving as it did as a burial site for centuries), highlights this connection. Upon lying on the altar, her thoughts turn immediately to ‘Liza-Lu, her symbolic continuance, her rebirth, and to making Angel swear promises to take her as his next wife. Asking Angel to whom was offered sacrifice at that place, Angel replies, “I believe to the sun. That lofty stone set away by itself is in the direction of the sun, which will presently rise behind it.” This imagery, the rising sun, brings to the fore Tess’s ultimate declaration of resurrection: “Do you think we shall meet again after we are dead?” Tess, I believe, is sure she has just secured that meeting in arranging the marriage of her soon-to-be widower and her sister.
Hardy has thus set up in Tess practical immortality, used her to force meaning upon meaninglessness, and declared in her that it is possible to fight, and to fight successfully, against the dread intent of an empty, vile world.
H/t Mark Shea:
Whoever expected this exchange on Fox News? If nothing else, I hope the end of the Bush Administration means the end of the coopting of conservatism by Any Means Necessary warhawks.
I’ve been wracking my brain trying to find a way to turn this into a post, but all I can do is focus on the lazy choreography of the backup dancers…
Maybe I could condemn the schadenfreude, this gleeful embrace of another person’s misery. Maybe I could comment on the insufficience of revenge. Maybe I could contrast it with the priest forgiving the women who stabbed him (below). All of these are valid angles.
But seriously, that choreography.
The Rev. Michael Massaro says he has a few aches and pains, but a good night’s sleep has done him some good as he recovers from being attacked Saturday with a knife in a confessional at his church.
The Rev. Michael Massaro is recovering from two stab wounds that required 14 staples to close.
It was one of the most harrowing weekends in the 28 years he’s been a Roman Catholic priest, Massaro said. But it won’t stop him from hearing confessions.
“We’re at the mercy of the people we serve,” Massaro told CNN. “We can’t live in fear. God has asked us to live in trust. If it’s going to happen again, it’s going to happen again, but that’s not going to prevent me from doing God’s work.”
Massaro had just finished hearing confessions in his Florida church when he was stabbed twice in the back by a woman who later told police Massaro is the Antichrist.
I have to say, I’m pretty interested in the whole Antichrist angle. What could convince a woman a priest in Vero Beach could be the Antichrist?
It was the second run-in with Gatchell at Holy Cross Catholic Church, according to police and church workers. She was arrested in January, records show, accused of breaking off a piece of a religious statue inside the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament. She also allegedly resisted arrest and reached for the officer’s weapon.
She was confronted by Deborah True, the parish manager.
“I took it away from her and asked her why she did that,” True told CNN. “She said she did it because it was from her husband’s funeral, forty years ago, and Father Massaro stole it, and he was the Antichrist,” she said.
Ah. She’s crazy. There you go.
A lone woman, a humble priest. Convinced she had a religious duty, she assaulted an innocent man. And yet, in that deep and frightening night, the heroism of love shows itself stronger than any mere steel blade. Massaro, like a strange visitor from another planet, showed the superhuman power to forgive. File this one under ‘S’ for ’superhero’ in the infinite archives of…the Twilight Zone.
Well, we’re in that fun part of an outbreak where we’re trying to figure out if the swine flu is the next Black Plague. I remember when we were worried about SARS, and that fizzled, but the photos of people in other countries going about their day in surgical masks are just as disturbing. It makes me think of Herr Doktor Schnau images, the black and beaked plague doctors of the middle ages.
As this current disease continues to spread, as the worry continues to mount, one can only hope that prudence will trump panic, but all too often, the one causes the other; some legitimate authority takes an honest and beneficial action, and everyone sees it and assumes it means the threat is worse than it is. After all, why else would they do it, if the virus wasn’t about to kill us all?
And so, in Austin, the Diocese has suspended Communion under both species. The blood has always resonated with me more than the flesh, and so if they take this action here in Richmond, I will be very disappointed. Not surprised, and neither critical, but disappointed. Caution, though, is a good thing in these frightening early stages.
I have been in conversation with members of the State of Texas Health Department. There seems to be more unknown, than actually known about the swine flu virus. We do not want to create a “panic” but the reality remains that the virus has infected people in Texas and many unanswered questions remain. Therefore, it is wise to be cautious. For the sake of caution and respect for life, I am requesting that we do not offer communion under both species until further notice. Please do not offer the Blood of Christ at Eucharist until more is known about the virus. It seems that having the public drink from the chalice may be an unnecessary risk. This is also an opportunity to make sure all ministers of communion, ordinary and extraordinary, should have clean hands. Thanks for your cooperation. Let us pray for those whose lives have been taken in death and for those fighting the virus.
The funny thing is that I hadn’t been following the news until a day or so ago, and so, while I’d heard about the swine flu, I had had no idea it was causing the panic it was. I feel like I’ve awoken from a deep sleep into some terrifying dystopia, and then decided to blog about it…
Oh man, that’s a great idea for a blog.
Off the cuff, cuz Brian is yakking politics and knows better. I haven’t been faithful to you, faithful St. Superman readers, but Brian forced my hand, in an indirect way. Click it for fullsize.
Monologues and Dialogues, no kittens though, maybe next time.
One love and all that.
Well, I’ve been disconnected from the news lately for a variety of reasons, and I get word today from my friend and former-roommate True (from the Blarg!) that Arlen Spector has apparently switched to the Democratic Party. Longtime readers of Saint Superman will be aware of the fact that I’m not a partisan in American politics, because neither party represents the Catholic understanding of the world and man’s role in it in anything even vaguely resembling fidelity. While I identified as a Republican until about 2004, I today consider myself an independent, finding it difficult to find much to compel me to support either party.
Therefore, I tend to support the principle of divided government. I like the idea that Congress and the President should be at odds, because it either encourages compromise or at best moderates one party’s demands, especially when neither party contains a supermajority in Congress. And yert, now, the Democrats control both the Executive and are the unassailable, undisputed masters of the Legislature. Throw compromise and moderation right out the gorram window.
True maintains that this makes the Democrats more likely to moderate, that they’ll be more willing to placate their own moderates than they would be to reach out to the Republicans; I severely doubt this. The numbers are what the numbers are, and while, true, it is a collection of individuals with disparate interests, they are all Democrats for a reason; this means they generally have philosophical assent with each other, or at least more with each other than with the Republicans. This is precisely why Spector switched.
Spector has been a thorn to the Republicans for years, and yet, he remained. But, as True aptly points out, he has an upcoming tough primary, he’s alienated his base by supporting Obama’s budget, and so on. All of those are factors. But all they mean is that the forces that kept him a Republican have evaporated. It’s not that he’s being pushed, but that he’s no longer being pulled. It’s like Zell Miller; he stayed a Democrat, not because he believed in its message, but because he depended on the political system in which he been raised to office.
So here we are. The Dems have their supermajority. Now let’s all watch Washington burn for eight more years.
What’s going to be occupying my time for the next few days — a five-pager on Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which requires me to delve into nineteenth-century pagan revivalism. If anybody has any sources, I’d be much obliged!
Thomas Hardy, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, makes a series of clear religious statements. Clearly not plying a course in support of orthodox Christianity, which is consistently portrayed as hypocritical and dangerous to the fortunes of his beloved heroine, Hardy goes as far as turning his primary antagonist, Alec Stokes-d’Urberville, into a preacher, only to have his newfound religion prove empty and without power once confronted with another opportunity to take advantage of young, ill-starred Tess, while Angel Clare, the son of another avowed preacher, s himself a Dissenter, and his ideas idolized. It is a debate among sophisticated systems. However, if we maintain our focus there, we reduce Tess; she is merely reactive, and has no function in the religious debate presented within the novel. She is little better than the object tossed about by these differing views, and loses much of her apparent force as a character. In fact, Tess represents a very real phenomenon, a sort of pagan revival, a mystery religion, which serves as a real counterpoint both to the orthodox Christianity present in the novel and Angel Clare’s supposed-freethought. She is a figure of natural, primitive religion, as opposed to the developed religions of society which ultimately fail her.
Buy a PS3, and get a free Bible bundled in! The entire article is in Polish so I can’t read a lick of it.
Original Article here.
Last night, Kevin and I, along with a couple of very good friends, went to go see Video Games Live at Richmond’s stunning and historic and dully-named Landmark theatre. The theatre was built in the 1920’s by the Shriners, and, for the first seventy years of its existence, bore the name “the Mosque,” due to its unique-for-the-area Turkish architectural elements. It’s a broad, yellow edifice with two spindly minarets sticking into the sky, swords and stars atop them, with every inch of interior wall covered in elaborate mosaics. Clearly misplaced in time and space, here we, studiously overdressed, gathered to participate in culture.
Video Games Live is a symphonic concert of…video game soundtrack music, performed last night by the Richmond Symphony. Here, in this ancient-looking place, screens stood across which Sonic the Hedgehog and Mario danced, and a stunning game of Guitar Hero was played.
We’re dorks, you see. Gamers. We all game in one way or another; Kevin’s the hardcore gamer who plays a lot more than he probably should, I’m a PC gamer, True’s a strategy gamer, Tim’s a sports gamer, and MaryEllen’s an indirect one. But all of us love video games, and appreciate them as a valid form of culture alongside movies and television, which have stories that cang engage us intellectually, emotionally, and perhaps more importantly, are shared experiences that provide us a common link.
That’s culture: shared experience and expectation that unifies a group into a community. And so, as Kevin said later, we experienced full-on, Grade A culture. And what did we celebrate that night? Not just a love of fun — but the accomplishment of skill, an appreciation for technology, of drama and storytelling, a reminiscence of youth, and characters who have been parts of our lives for as long as we can remember.
So yeah. We’re dorks, and we went to celebrate being dorks. But it was a really emotional experience, no way around that, and much more than you might think. Culture can be found everywhere.
