The Grand Inquisitor redux
Several times before I’ve posted excerpts from Dostoevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor,” part of the book The Brothers Karamazov. Unfortunately, the passages seem to always bear repeating, now more than ever.
So here it is again, a slightly longer quote. The Grand Inquisitor is here addressing Jesus, who has come back to earth. Alhough the Inquisitor is a man of the Church, he is not in favor of what he believes Jesus offers to humankind, which is free will. Instead, the Inquisitor proposes to enslave people, and he tells Jesus how he will go about doing it.
I’ll probably be referring back to this in the near-future. I’ve divided it into paragraphs that are not there in the original, the better to clarify what’s being said:
Command that these stones be made bread–and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by bread alone– was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was precisely in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial spirit would one day rise against, struggle with, and finally conquer Thee…
Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee–a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel…
…It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread?…In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them–so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!
The Brothers Karamazov first appeared in 1880, and Dostoevsky died just a few months later. That sounds like a long time ago, but it’s really not that long in the scheme of things (for example, three of my four grandparents were born before then).
I first encountered “The Grand Inquisitor” in the 60s, when we read it in high school. I didn’t fully understand it at the time (not that I fully understand it even now), but it gripped me with a memorable power, and I understood it well enough to be frightened by it, to get the gist of it, and to consider it important.
A lot of years have passed since then, and it only seems more important.
I read The Brothers K. at about age 30 and I can see I’d better get it out at 61 and give it another go. I don’t remember this at all.
Freedom, like mercy and compassion, are things that the strong can make good use of. The weak do not have, just look at how many self identified victims like to push their boot into the skulls of people even weaker than them.
People who are strong enough to resist authority, whether their internal desires and instincts or external influence, are few and far between.
Bread is only useful as a leverage for people who are controlled by their hunger or who have dependents who need the bread. For those humans conditioned to cut open their stomachs in ritual suicide or those humans that would prefer death to dishonor/slavery, it will be exceptionally hard to impossible to control those given insufficient leverage.
Neo: You went to a very good high school.
As I read through these passages they kept bringing to mind those old USFS signs we used to see when I was a kid on vacation with my parents in the family station wagon, riding through the beautiful Great Smokey Mountain National Park: ”DON’T FEED THE BEARS”.
Dostoyevsky describes the consequences of ignoring that commandment, but we’re living them, no?
carl in atlanta:
The funny thing is that I really didn’t go to a good high school. I went to a very blue collar NYC public high school. It had a lot of fairly poor kids, a significant number (for those days, anyway) of minority (i.e. black) kids, and in particular maybe only half the students got what was called an “academic diploma.” The rest got general diplomas, which meant they didn’t even take the basic courses, they took dumbed-down things like “business math,” which was just basic arithmetic. Probably compared to NYC schools today it was paradise, but it was no elite school.
However—and this is a big however—we had honors classes. Our entire grade had about 640-700 people in it, but there were only about 30-60 people in one or at the most two honors classes in each subject (it was pretty much the same people over and over). The honors classes had pretty good teachers for the most part, with a couple of standouts and a couple of lemons. The standards for the honors classes were pretty high, but for the other classes they were not.
Many years ago, when I first learned of the movement against tracking in schools, I shuddered with sympathy for the kids who would end up bored to tears.
Were mankind’s essential nature “weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious”… civilization could never have arisen and tribalism would have proven to be an unbreakable barrier.
The Grand Inquisitor does not possess a deeper insight into God’s creation than does the Christ.
It is a truism that, “It is always darkest before the dawn” and “Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.” – George Orwell
Evil always sows the seeds of its own defeat. For its very nature commands it.
The inquisitor is boasting in vain because socialism cannot provide what he claims. He’s not even promising utopia, just to feed the masses. Socialism can’t even do that well.
Matt_SE:
Actually, they don’t have to do it well.
They just have to promise it long enough that people give them control. Once they have iron control, it can be quite hard for people to get free even if socialism doesn’t fulfill its promises (it does have to provide the barest minimum to keep people alive, though). Also, many people prefer the system even if they don’t have quite enough, because fewer people have so much more.
Geoffrey Britain:
The Inquisitor is describing a certain impulse to power, and a certain desire of many human beings to surrender their freedom in order to be taken care of. Dostoevsky isn’t saying which one he thinks will triumph in the end.
It was assigned in my first semester freshman composition course in 1984 (31 year ago, yikes!). I was intrigued enough to take the same instructor’s course during the May mini-term a few months later where the subject was Russian literature, and the first novel assigned was Crime and Punishment. Over the years, I have managed to read everything Dostoevsky published. I will be a fan until I die.
IMHO all bets are off on the grand inquisitors scenario, the monkey wrench is the Internet.
(thank you al gore)
I discovered Dostoevsky in the 60’s also, when I read Crime and Punishment in college. It had such an effect on me that I periodically re-read it every few years. After reading Crime and Punishment the first time, I went on and read The Brothers Karamazov and I remember thinking that time that I don’t know what the Grand Inquisitor was trying to say except that he was being very cynical. Of the two books my sentiment is with Crime and Punishment with its characters trying to cope with their anguish and even sense of hopelessness brought on by their economic station in life.
I’ve seen your posts in the past where you’ve referenced the parable in Dostoevsky’s masterpiece The Brothers Karamozov involving the Grand Inquisitor. The Brothers Karamozov is one of my favorite novels, and that section is one that caught my attention from the moment I first read it. It clearly offers an insight into the thinking of progressives, their lust for power, and the enslavement that results from progressive policies. But, there is another passage that exemplifies another characteristic of progressivism, the disassociation between the collective and the individual. It takes place as a conversation in Zosima’s cell where the monk recalls a conversation he had with a doctor years earlier.
“He spoke just as frankly as you have done, but with humour, bitter humour. I love mankind, he said, but I’m surprised at myself; the more I love mankind in general, the less I love men in particular, that is, separately, as individuals.
“In my thoughts, he said to me, I’ve often had a passionate desire to serve humanity, and would perhaps have actually gone to the cross for mankind if I had ever been required to do so, and yet at the same time, as I well know from my personal experience, I’m incapable of enduring two days in the same room with any other person. The moment anybody comes close to me, his personality begins to overpower my self-esteem and intrude upon my freedom. Within one day I can end up hating the very best of men, some because they’ve taken too long over their dinner, others because they’ve caught a cold and keep blowing their noses. I become a misanthrope, he said, the minute I come into contact with people.
“And it has always been the same with me; the more I have detested people individually, the more passionately I have loved humanity in general.”
For another take at the same topic, look at the Israelites in Exodus. Moses freed them from slavery in Egypt, and practically the first thing they did was wish that they were still enslaved because they could get food from the fleshpots in Egypt.
GB: That Evil always sows the seeds of its own defeat matters only in geologic time, and so is small comfort even if true . Defeating it needs to be a rather more acute endeavor, as the past several days has shown us.
“He spoke just as frankly as you have done, but with humour, bitter humour. I love mankind, he said, but I’m surprised at myself; the more I love mankind in general, the less I love men in particular, that is, separately, as individuals.
I first heard this from Lucy Van Pelt: ‘I love mankind, it’s people I can’t stand.’
My house was built in that year. Yeah, I don’t know. Many of the classic writers had a good idea, but then just didn’t quite find the way. Much as classic philosophers. Aristotle, Plato, and the like. Reading them, now, mostly, for me, is like having a scratch on the back that I can’t reach, and having someone try to scratch it, but seemingly missing the spot on purpose. Almost torturous. I liked them until my mid-teens, after moving on to history, and seeing what the utopia these writers promised turned out to be. In various words, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot. The older writers I can forgive to some small degree, they didn’t know. Later writers not so much.
In this, he does seem to have finally hit upon it. On a portion of the topic he chooses. When the prophet was unhappy about the Jews choosing a king, God told him not to worry… it was not the prophet they were rejecting, but God. Though where it goes from there I can’t remember, in the Dost’s book. I read him in my early teens, most of his books. This one I am almost sure.
I argue with God, and what I believe to be God’s will, just the same. True. If most arguments, for me, are now settled. I see exactly what he discusses in this. I am still never sure if he was for or against freedom, despite what he says. Much as I know Animal Farm was actually written by a man who believes in socialism, and many of the dystopian writers were socialists/communists. Was “1984”, for example, written with hope of that becoming the future, or a warning… considering the source. And, actually, “Animal Farm” as well. They had to know, by then, that their politics of choice always lead to these things. Regardless of what they suggested publicly, even if consciously sincerely, the numbers don’t add up. You can lie to yourself, and others, but you mind always knows, as does your heart, that a lie is just that.
Doom:
There is little question that Orwell wrote both of those books as warnings about Communist totalitarianism. There is also little question that he identified as a Socialist. It is an enormous puzzle, but I wrote about it here, and I think I came up with a pretty good explanation. It’s worth reading if you’re interested in the topic, I think. Here’s an excerpt:
However–and this is a big however–we had honors classes. Our entire grade had about 640-700 people in it, but there were only about 30-60 people in one or at the most two honors classes in each subject (it was pretty much the same people over and over). The honors classes had pretty good teachers for the most part, with a couple of standouts and a couple of lemons. The standards for the honors classes were pretty high, but for the other classes they were not.
Many years ago, when I first learned of the movement against tracking in schools, I shuddered with sympathy for the kids who would end up bored to tears.
Ditto and ditto: my schools in North Carolina were the same. My “pod” of academically gifted students (about 35 in a class of 750) had no contact with the “average” and “slow” students except in gym class.
I also am beyond grateful I didn’t have to be dumped in with the other kids. And dammit, expecting the brightest to “teach” the dumbest is child abuse. (The dumb kids don’t like it either, I bet!)
I first CRIME AND PUNISHMENT when I was 12. It just happened to be in the bookcase. Neither of my parents really desired me to distract myself by reading for pleasure.
DEMONS (aka THE DEVILS or THE POSSESSED) remains my favorite of Dostoyevsky’s novels. The variety of intensely memorable characters can’t be beat. Also: STAVROGIN’S CONFESSION, usually included as an addendum but in a certain sense the most amazing portrait of evil ever written.
Then there is THE IDIOT, which not only features Prince Myshkin, the heartchilling portrait of how a modern “Christ” might be perceived. Also has the all-time best portrait of a self-tormented femme fatale, Nastasya Filoppovna.
The new translations by Larissa Volkonsky and Richard Pevear are fantastic and pep things up enormously, especially the dialogue.
Whenever I teach college courses in political philosophy I *always* do at least one class on the Grand Inquisitor. Not only is it every bit as important as neo and others feel it to be, but it also has a mysterious power to generate that nearly physical feeling students need to jolt them awake.
In every course I’ve taught, whenever a student tells me of a favorite class topic or lecture, it is overwhelmingly the Grand Inquisitor that gets the vote. Perhaps I just teach it well because of the unique urgency I feel it possesses and the way it poses the fundamental problems, but I doubt that – more likely, Dostoevsky in his genius crafted a work that both stimulates the mind and, so to speak, grabs you by the throat.
Should be mandatory reading. If I *had* to pick, I would ditch 1984 and Brave New World in favor of it. It reads almost like a lost prophetic book in the Bible.
There aren’t all that many great commentaries on it either. I eagerly awaited reading Ellis Sandoz’s volume on the GI, as he’s not only a student of the brilliant Eric Voegelin but generally an insightful thinker in his own right. Yet even his book I found something of a letdown (“Political Apocalypse” is its title, in case is anyone is interested). My sense is that the GI reaches something so deep in human nature that it’s hard to articulate in the fashion of a commentary. However it is Dostoevsky said it is the best way to say it. Whenever I teach it I just make sure the students get the Biblical and other allusions, unpack the connecting ideas a bit, and then get out of the way.
The work’s power has barely been tapped yet.
Miklos: “The new translations by Larissa Volkonsky and Richard Pevear are fantastic and pep things up enormously, especially the dialogue.”
I’m glad to hear you say this, their translation of the Brothers K. is the one I have now. Just started it last night and it reads very well.
“Ditto and ditto: my schools in North Carolina were the same. My “pod” of academically gifted students (about 35 in a class of 750) had no contact with the “average” and “slow” students except in gym class.
I also am beyond grateful I didn’t have to be dumped in with the other kids. And dammit, expecting the brightest to “teach” the dumbest is child abuse. (The dumb kids don’t like it either, I bet!)”
Same here – but in southern California – working class, blue-collar, low-income far-distant suburb. Class of 600+, but a small pool (I’d guess about 30) taking the honors classes, and a foreign language. Didn’t mix much with the regular students, unless accidently assigned to a normal class (oh, dear, the sheer mind-numbing boredom of a regular class) or gym.
I think they stopped tracking students in the LA Unified School District right about the time I graduated.
“And it has always been the same with me; the more I have detested people individually, the more passionately I have loved humanity in general.”
The more I learned about human nature and the depths to which humanity sinks, the more I recognized the exceptional qualities of Socrates, Sarah Palin, Leonidas, and various other humans who either refused to obey authority or found some other way to elevate their individual soul over the masses of retarded foolish slavish peons.
It’s one of those prices to knowledge.
As for loving humanity in general… there is no such thing as love for an abstract concept, that’s merely a construct people use to rationalize atrocities or their own guilt.
I cannot qualify that as the real thing. It’s much like M O being proud of her country, that kind of “love”.
I seem to remember that Dostoevsky could go for pages without a paragraph break. If you don’t put them in yourself, you’re going to be putting up some long excerpts.
I read Crime and Punishment as a young man and loved it, but for some reason never went on to read The Brothers Karamazov until my thirty-year-old son read Crime and Punishment and enjoyed it as much as I had. We decided to read The Brothers Karamazov together, sharing our questions, comments, and insights via email. He found the book “deathly dull.” To me it was, and is, thrilling, perhaps the best novel ever penned.
He was especially put off by the Grand Inquisitor scene. The allusions to Jesus’ discourse in John 6 were too distracting to him though they do not control the interpretation of the text. I found the biblical allusions added layers of richness to the entire story, though I would have missed much that would have been meaningful to the Russian Orthodox.
Good comment.
Never been able to read Russian literature. Something that needs to be corrected … probably.
I tried it in high school, but too many babushkas and village idiots on the one hand and pompous psychopaths and depressive matrons on the other. They seemed like a different species of mankind altogether.
However I have become much more broad-minded and accepting of human failings since then, and would probably be able to refrain from despising the characters long to get to the moral point of the characterizations.
However I don’t think that I am alone in this reaction. And I certainly wasn’t the first to react that way. It seems to be a widespread attitude in our culture, one of which I was not even aware at the time, and even something of a trope. Seen as it is, in both movies (“Love and Death” comes to mind), and song. (Some Gershwin song)
DNW:
It’s this Gershwin song. As you can see, it’s Russian plays, not novels. And the play is probably by Chekhov, whose works I never much cared for.
On the other hand, I had the exact opposite reaction to the novels. As soon as I encountered them, the people seemed somehow more familiar than most English or American novels to me. Maybe “familiar” isn’t quite the right word, but they were wrestling with issues that seemed like ones that interested me.
Of course, my father’s side of the family had emigrated from Russia. Same for the Gershwins.
kolnai:
I would love to take a seminar in the GI now that I’m just a bit older than high school age. Would love to see more of what you have to say—not that that’s an assignment or anything 🙂 .
I agree about its power. The word “genius” is overused, but I think Dostoevsky was one. As I said earlier, in high school I didn’t get it exactly when I read it, and I knew I didn’t get it, but it still grabbed me. And our class discussions weren’t exactly illuminating back then, either.
Russian literature? how about
ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVICH by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
http://www.kkoworld.com/kitablar/aleksandr_soljenitsin_ivan_denisovichin_bir_gunu-eng.pdf
the difference between Slzhenitsyn and Doestevsky and pushkin, et al…including even machiavelli, etc…
is that they were musing theorists who could and did imagine the principals in operation and where the premises would lead given human nature and no angels.
but Solzhenisyn is writing from the experience of the realization of those musings in some real form outside of monarchy, etc. That rather than reveal a hypothesis and fantasy as what might be, he is informed by what was and is.
for me the most important part of this book is the showing as to the ideas brought forth above of a humanity as a population as a larger thing as an organism itself, and the individual…
in fact, long before we mused there were people that broke it down that the real fight between the US and other systems was the fight of the individual to be master of his own life, and not have someone declare if the body organism is the population humanity, then i must be the head and brains… given that we have Tom Le Fol running things with sidekick of later period Chicot…
is it a wave or a particle?
is it a desert topping or a floor wax?
is it a collection of individuals or a population
the duality of the universe is inherent in everything thanks to the origins of said universe being the splitting of nothing into something and antisomething before it returns to the void.
the indvidual cant not die
to those that realize we are all separate and barely connected, to those that think the body politic can have rogue cells that are cancerous to the lead brains ideas
one would think that the one place that such inhumanity trying to lead humanity to a utopia it cant concieve through that inhumanity and its ideas… could crush the individual.. that the gulag of all places one should not see that..
but if one reads, one realizes that the individuals humanity is what makes our societies humanity, and that it was this that not only brought us from the trees, to the oceans, to the savanaahs to civilization post domestication then farming… was that individual humanuty against others inhumanity.
whether large and out in the open, like the american revolution was, and the french pretend and communists make a farce of… or in the most dark places where the most basal evil is free to do what it wants without limits, and such humanity lives like grass growing through the pavement cracks.
Jethro Tull
It is our duty to gain a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the nature of the matters related to the abuse of power. Time will pass and we shall die, we are all mortal, but so long as we work we can and must clear up many points and tell the truth to the Party and to the people……This we must do so that such things never happen again. – Khrushchev
“But Shukov wasn’t made that way–eight years in a camp couldn’t change his nature. He worried about anything he could make use of, about every scrap of work he could do–nothing must be wasted without good reason.” pg. 88
“Who’s the zek’s main enemy? Another zek. If only they weren’t at odds with one another–ah, what a difference that’d make!” pg. 101
“You should rejoice that you’re in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.” pg. 136
neo-neocon at 7:41 pm,
The impulse to power is an impulse to domination and, if quite common, cannot lead where the mass of men refuse to follow. Thus, the need for an educated, principled populace.
Many human beings do indeed wish to exchange their freedom in order to be taken care of… my assertion is that, where that becomes the dominant paradigm, civilization collapses because that paradigm is unsustainable.
“GB: That Evil always sows the seeds of its own defeat matters only in geologic time, and so is small comfort even if true .” Frog
Geologic epochs extend far beyond civilizations, so I take you mean from generational to millennial. Which I readily admit. I will not offer the comfort of illusory promise, only probable consequence. America’s demise will result in a new dark age, followed by a new dawn. Light follows the night.
Yeah you are probably right. I can hear the voice of Ella Fitzgerald in the background as the steaks grill, the in-laws laugh on the patio, and the kids play in the yard. Make my martini with a stuffed olive please … gin, not completely dry, 6 to 1.
Huh. That’s really interesting – seriously. That emotional identification, or sympathy factor. You ought to make it into a posting theme Neo: “Volunteer the names of books you have read wherein the characters resonated with you, as if you actually knew them.”
I can think of one piece of writing like that, a book excerpt I think, that I read in junior high school; but I don’t actually know what it was or where it was from. Resonated with, and upset me so powerfully that I still don’t like to think about it. I think I mentioned it before.
Where in Russia, and what did they do there?
Artfldgr,
Attacking Dostoyevsky as a mere theorist or dilettante is a new one to me. I can’t believe you’re unaware that as a young man he was imprisoned as a political subversive in Siberia and even underwent a mock execution in which he stood in front of a firing squad and heard the order to fire — a life-changing event.
DNW:
That is an interesting topic. I had quite a few books like that, but Jane Eyre was the strongest one. I connected with her emotionally in a big big way.
As for my father’s family, they came from Belarus but had only lived there when it was part of Russia, so I say they came from Russia although technically it was Belarus I suppose. I didn’t know the older generations because they died before I was born and there were very few other relatives we were in contact with. However, about ten years ago an elderly relative came forward and explained that the family had only been in Russia for a couple of decades. They had come during the reign of the reformist Czar Alexander II, because they had been brewers in Alsace-Lorraine and he wanted to promote the beer industry in Russia. Then I guess they kind of got stuck there until they were able to emigrate to this country during (or shortly after) the Russo-Japanese War.
Tracking in schools is under attack because of disparate impact. The political belief is that all children are equally bright.
“neo-neocon Says:
July 2nd, 2015 at 2:35 pm
DNW:
That is an interesting topic. I had quite a few books like that, but Jane Eyre was the strongest one. I connected with her emotionally in a big big way … They had come during the reign of the reformist Czar Alexander II, because they had been brewers in Alsace-Lorraine and …”
Ah so you are really French. I think we sensed that all along. Probably related to Simone Weil.
Be careful or you will wind up another Edith Stein.
Do the book thing.
DNW:
Ah, but my mother’s family came here from Germany in 1848.
As the American education system continues to implode:
“School’s Out at Columbia, but a Debate Over Trigger Warnings Continues” By Mike Vilensky Updated July 1, 2015
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB11871130314313103897904581072491560572586
The books in the Western literature course wouldn’t appear, at first glance, to be controversial choices: They include Shakespeare’s “ King Lear,” Homer’s “The Odyssey” and Plato’s “Symposium.”
But students said the school is prioritizing an outdated, Eurocentric selection despite Columbia’s diverse student body, mandating works with overtones of racism and sexism and teaching them uncritically.
Timely:
Dostoevsky’s 6 Nightmare Prophecies That Came True in the 20th Century.
Not that it made any difference to the proceedings …
I was going to brag that I first read C&P when I was 12 or 13, but Miklos beat me, apparently I am not so exceptional. The second time I read it was a couple of years later when it was an assigned reading at school.
I read “The Brothers Karamazov” sometime between the two C&P readings, in early high school. I remember it as really potent stuff, it impressed me mightily. Later it was an assigned reading at university and for some reason I did not appreciate it as much. (The opposite happened with “Madame Bovary”: I thought it rather dull and uninteresting when I had to read it in high school, but as I reread it for that same university class, I discovered a whole new nuanced level to it that I had somehow missed.)
My favorite Dostoevsky, however, turned out to be “The Gambler”. For reasons that elude me, I really appreciated this short, but highly interesting work. I picked it out of boredom a couple of years ago, as a summer reading, and it turned out to be very interesting.
I never managed to finish “The Idiot” nor “The Possessed”. No idea why. Maybe I picked them at a wrong moment, or had other things to do, but they are something that is still hanging over my head on the “books-to-finish” list.
Walter Sobchak:
They mostly complain about Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”, as it depicts rape. I wonder what kind of hell would break loose if somebody dared to assign “Ars amatoria” – a sort of seduction manual – where one finds an *actual* rape apology, with its legacy of “vis grata puellae” mentality…
Much of Ovid’s verse is beautiful, though.
DNW –
“Never been able to read Russian literature. Something that needs to be corrected … probably. ”
Russian literature, from what I’ve seen, is very pessimistic. ‘War and Peace’ is a what passes for an optimistic Russian novel. And without going into details, one of the character quite literally dies because he feels that life is being too good to him.
I had to read ‘Crime and Punishment’ in High School, and didn’t enjoy it. It’s possible that I might like it better now. ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ was much more interesting to me at the time, though that was historical and not a fictional novel.
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“lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread!”
Parallels today, making a living requires us to either stay quiet or align our beliefs with the social justice movement. The cathedral holds in its hands our ability to get our daily bread and if they take away their hand…
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“Ah, but my mother’s family came here from Germany in 1848.”
The Year Of Revolutions. Which didn’t pan out well for the revolutionaries.
So they decamped en masse to London and New York and everyone lived happily ever after.
Anna:
Puts a new slant on the old engineering expression: RTFM (Read the #$%^ing Manual).
There’s much confusion in the youth of today because there’s no safe way to introduce them to the uncomfortable fact that relations between the sexes are far more complex and ‘interesting’ than the official morality (whether Victorian or Radical Progressive) would have it.
No prizes for guessing my favourite painting at the Met, BTW. It hangs near the Turners. Or it did. Been a while.