Petrarch and Laura

Francesco Petrarch is best known for The Canzoniere: 366 poems written to/for his beloved Laura. He also wrote many fine letters - such as The Ascent of Mont Ventoux - and moral essays. His Secretum is a masterful discourse between himself, St. Augustine and Lady Truth. It is a profound and rigorous examination of conscience. He is often referred to as the Father of Humanism and was an inspiration to countless poets, including Shakespeare. He was crowned with laurels in Rome for his tremendous literary achievements and is usually pictured thus.

POEMS TO LAURA
Francesco Petrarch

Discussion questions:
1. The Muse: what part does she play in the artist's life and work?

2. "For the very art of being a Muse is to nourish love in the poet, to let him realize that she loves him - that in fact she loves him much too well ever to grant him anything." - Etienne Gilson, Choir of Muses. Do all Muses love this well? What happens when they don't? Is it necessary to the poet and his poetry that his Muse be unattainable?

3. "Laura is for [Petrarch] the straight road leading to the supreme Good; but though he is sure to reach this Good through her, he will never win the woman herself by whom he comes there." - Choir of Muses. Is Laura as successful as Beatrice in her mission of leading her lover to God? Do modern Muses understand the nature of their responsibility?

4. Petrarch's love is clearly, if not wholly, carnal. Are his poems more, or less, appealing than poems devoted to purely spiritual love?

5. Is Petrarch sincere? Is he in love with a real woman, or his own image of her (which does not change over the years), or in love with being in love? Which is easier? Does it matter?

6. The fruit of Petrarch's love is his poetry, but is it overly introspective?

7. His struggles against vice are a recurring theme; is a moral battleground necessary to good poetry?

Further Reading:
- Choir of Muses, Etienne Gilson, Sheed & Ward, 1953

Of Related Interest:
- Cyrano de Bergerac, play written by Edmond Rostand, 1897
- Cyrano de Bergerac, 1950, film starring Jose Ferrer, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for this performance.

Dostoyevsky Is Not Considered Summer Reading

Summer Reading:

1. 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff - The charming correspondence between a New Yorker and an English book dealer.

2. The Professor & the Madman by Simon Winchester - Truth is stranger than fiction. A tale of murder, insanity & the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. Caution: there are some disturbing elements to the madness.

3. Autobiography of a Hunted Priest by John Gerard, S.J. - The story of an English Jesuit on the mission under Elizabeth I & James I. It reads like a suspense novel. Some editions have an introduction by Graham Greene.

4. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K.Jerome - Delightful Victorian humor.

5. Wodehouse on Crime - P.G.Wodehouse - One of the better anthologies; sure to please.

6. A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle - Laugh out loud. The first in a great series.

7. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson - Ditto.

8. Travels With My Aunt by Graham Greene

Then and Now

"When lovely woman stoops to folly,
And finds too late that men betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy?
What art can wash her tears away?

The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from ev'ry eye,
To give repentance to her lover,
And wring his bosom is - to die."

Oliver Goldsmith - She Stoops to Conquer
(2001 Reading List)



"When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces around her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramaphone."

T.S.Eliot - The Waste Land
(2006 Reading List)

Life of Johnson

James Boswell's lengthy biography of Samuel Johnson is available in both abridged and unabridged editions. It is wise to begin with the abridged! I found an abridged version - Everybody's Boswell (G.Bell & Sons, London, 1930) - illustrated by Ernest Shepard, of all people. His illustrations are typically charming.

Boswell was the first to use actual conversation as material for biography. And Dr. Johnson had conversation in abundance: he was a philosopher, scholar, wit, curmudgeon and Establishment man.

This painting of Johnson, circa 1772, is by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Discuss the following quotes:

(Honorary Member) Matt Anger's selections:

"Pity is not natural to man. Children are always cruel. Savages are always cruel. Pity is acquired and improved by the cultivation of reason."

"If he really does think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons."

"The history of manners is the most valuable. I never set a high value on any other history."

"Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things."

"The excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation raised as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectations raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken."

Anna's selections:

"Nature has given women so much power that the law has wisely given them little."

"One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts."

"Go into the street and give one man a lecture on morality and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most."

And for many more great quotes go here.

Transient Things

"... the tearoom will reopen where women can forget about dieting for fashion, enjoy life more, eat cakes, drink coffee or tea, sip and gossip about the transient things, which are even more important than the permanent ones ... like romance, courtship, childbirth, fidelity, infidelity and death." - John Senior, 'The Restoration of Christian Culture'

The Four Men

THE FOUR MEN
Hilaire Belloc, 1911

“My country, it has been proved in the life of every man that though his loves are human, and therefore changeable, yet in proportion as he attaches them to things unchangeable, so they mature and broaden.” – The Four Men

Discussion questions:
1. Were the four men portrayals of the four temperaments? The four men can also be taken as different aspects of Belloc’s personality. How much self-knowledge and integrity would it take to write such a piece about oneself? Would a ‘modern man’ be capable of it?

2. Was anyone reminded of ‘The Wind in the Willows’ while reading this story?

3. The flavor of the book is autumnal; decay and death are recurring themes. Is it right to mourn loss and alienation? Does ‘modern man’ mourn effectively? How should one mourn the loss of a civilization and all that is dear to one? What gives rise to hope in the midst of mourning?

4. There are beautiful, poetic passages describing the capacity of common things to evoke fond memories. Are ‘modern’ things capable of being this evocative? How have the senses been affected by the ‘modern’ world?

5. What is the value of companionship to ‘modern’ men? How have the customs associated with companionship changed? (drinking, singing, joking)

6. “It takes an awareness of reality to make the best jokes. An appreciation of the absurd is only possible where a man already has a grasp of things in their everyday, normal proportions.”* What has happened to humor?

7. “There are certain moods in which [Homer] seems, as it were, boys’ poetry, depending both for its charm and for its limitations on a certain naivety …” ** Is it this Homeric ring which gives the story its boyish flavor?

8. “The [Greeks] heart’s desire was the timeless, the unchangeable, and they saw time as mere flux. But the Romans were different. … Virgil’s heroes were not men fighting for their own hand like Homeric heroes; they are men with a vocation, men on whom a burden is laid.”** The Homeric ring to the story is unmistakable; is there a Virgilian ring? Does Belloc go beyond mourning a lost civilization to contemplate the transition into a new one? We cannot fault Homer for not being Virgil, nor Belloc for not being … who? Are there writers today who tackle this theme of transition? Who chronicle the “shift of civilization … the transformation of the little remnant, the reliquas, of the old, into the germ of the new.”**?

9. If we are the remnant of Western Civilization, journeying from old to new, what type of things should we be taking with us?

* All Saints and the Sussex Countryside, Matthew Anger & Michael Hennessy, The Bellocian, 2004
** A Preface to Paradise Lost, C.S.Lewis

A Drinking Song

Song of the Pelagian Heresy for the Strengthening of Men's Backs and the Very Robust Out-thrusting of Doubtful Doctrine and the Uncertain Intellectual.

Pelagius lived in Kardanoel,
And taught a doctrine there,
How whether you went to Heaven or Hell,
It was your own affair.
How, whether you found eternal joy
Or sank forever to burn,
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,
But was your own concern.

[semi-chorus]
Oh, he didn't believe
In Adam and Eve,
He put no faith therein!
His doubts began
With the fall of man,
And he laughed at original sin!

[chorus]
With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow,
He laughed at original sin!

Whereat the Bishop of old Auxerre
(Germanus was his name)
He tore great handfuls out of his hair,
And he called Pelagius shame:
And then with his stout Episcopal staff
So thoroughly thwacked and banged
The heretics all, both short and tall,
They rather had been hanged.

[semi-chorus]
Oh, he thwacked them hard, and he banged them long,
Upon each and all occasions,
Till they bellowed in chorus, loud and strong,
Their orthodox persuasions!

[chorus]
With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow,
Their orthodox persuasions!

Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold,
Exceedingly bold indeed;
And the masses of doubt that are floating about
Would smother a mortal creed.
But we that sit in a sturdy youth,
And still can drink strong ale,
Oh - let us put it away to infallible truth,
Which always shall prevail!

[semi-chorus]
And thank the Lord
For the temporal sword,
And howling heretics too;
And whatever good things
Our Christendom brings,
But especially barley brew!

[chorus]
With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow,
Especially barley brew!

- from 'The Four Men' by Hilaire Belloc

The Four Temperaments

THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS
Rev. Conrad Hock
1934, reprinted 1962 Pallottine Fathers, Milwaukee, WI

If you had difficulty discovering your temperament, answer this simple multiple choice question:

While reading Dostoyevsky do you:
a. Compassionate with these poor souls who are struggling with such incredible interior turmoil? (you’re melancholic)
b. Suppress a desire to take a machine gun to the entire cast of characters for their inability to get off their butts and do something to solve their problems? (you’re choleric)
c. Get bored with the whole complicated scenario after the first few chapters and ditch the book for a martini and a phone call to a fellow book group member to find out what she thinks about it? (you’re sanguine)
d. Get bored with the whole complicated scenario after the first few chapters and go take a nap? (you’re phlegmatic)

Discussion Questions:
1. “Know yourself” – the Socratic axiom – is the subtitle of this booklet. Was the booklet’s explanation and analysis of the 4 temperaments useful for acquiring self-knowledge? Did it ring true?

2. “…while humility is dependent on true self-knowledge, such knowledge is better obtained by studying what God is, than what we ourselves are.” – Eugene Boylan, ‘This Tremendous Lover’. Is there danger in self-analysis? What is the difference between self-analysis and self-knowledge?

3. The 4 temperaments were analyzed by the ancient Greeks, so there is nothing ‘modern’ about it. Has Freudian psychology left a distrust of all psychology in the minds of sincere Christians?

4. How do temperamental similarities and differences play out with friends, spouses, co-workers, and children? In each of these relationships is it more important to have similar or different temperaments?

5. Temperaments are inherited; how does this play out in families, ethnic communities, countries? Does it help to explain the natural virtues and vices which seem to prevail among certain groups? For instance, can one safely say that the Irish are melancholic and the English choleric? How does this affect our attitude to history?

6. Does knowing about the temperaments really help us – as the author purports – to understand our fellow men? Aristotle said that thought, by itself, never moves us to action. What moves us to compassionate with a real person (act) instead of being satisfied with understanding a theory (thought)?

Of Further Interest:
- ‘The Four Temperaments’ ballet choreographed by George Ballanchine to Paul Hindemith’s music.
- Nielsen ‘Symphony No 2, The Four Temperaments’.

Suggested Reading:
- ‘The Temperament God Gave You’ – Art & Laraine Bennett. 2005, Sophia Institute Press.
- ‘Psychology as Religion’ – Paul Vitz.

Hot Off The Press

Matt Anger has just finished editing a collection of Hilaire Belloc's short stories.

From the back cover: "Hilaire Belloc remains for many an undiscovered gem. Yet for those who have the good fortune to have discovered him he is one of the finest jewels in the twentieth century's literary crown. Matthew Anger is one of those few who have made the discovery. What is more, he has assembled some of Belloc's finest short stories into one cherishable volume, sharing his discovery with others." – Joseph Pearce, author of Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc

For a little more info go here. To buy a copy go here.

Shakespeare

"Shakespeare's stuff is different from mine, but that is not to say that it's inferior." - P.G.Wodehouse

Recommended reading: 'God & Bertie Wooster' and The Wodehouse Apostolate.

2006 Reading List

• The Innocence of Father Brown - G.K.Chesterton
• Our Street - Compton MacKenzie
• Rasselas - Samuel Johnson
• The Waste Land - T.S.Eliot
• Moralia, Loeb Vol. 6 - Plutarch
• The Four Temperaments - Rev.Conrad Hock
• The Four Men - Hilaire Belloc
• Life of Johnson, abridged - James Boswell
• The Canzoniere - Francesco Petrarch
• The Women - Claire Booth Luce
• Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens

2005 Reading List

• The Ideal Husband - Oscar Wilde & The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands - Dr.Laura Schlessinger
• The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Women of the Bible - Cardinal von Faulhaber
• Ester - Jean Racine
• Sophie's World - Jostein Gaarder
• The Napoleon of Notting Hill - G.K.Chesterton
• Rerum Novarum - Leo XIII
• Old Goriot - Honore de Balzac
• The Tenth Man - Graham Greene
• Twelfth Night - Shakespeare

2004 Reading List

• By Love Refined - Alice von Hildebrand
• What's Wrong with the World - G.K.Chesterton
• Space Trilogy - C.S.Lewis
• Joan of Arc - Mark Twain
• Women in the Days of the Cathedrals - Regine Pernoud
• I Am One of You Forever - Fred Chappelle
• Crime and Punishment - Feodor Dostoyevsky
• The Camp of the Saints - Jean Raspail
• short stories of Saki

2003 Reading List

• The Abolition of Man - C.S.Lewis
• A Man For All Seasons - Robert Bolt
• The Book of Virtues - William Bennett
• Interior Castle - St.Theresa of Avila
• Restoration of Christian Culture - John Senior
• Serpent on the Rock - Alice Thomas Ellis
• Les Precieuses Ridicules & Tartuffe - Moliere

2002 Reading List

• Tolkien: A Celebration - Joseph Pearce
• Henry IV, Part 1 - Shakespeare
• The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni
• A Severe Mercy - Sheldon Van Aukin
• The Ballad of the White Horse - G.K.Chesterton
• Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
• Antigone & Medea - Sophocles
• Deep River - Shusako Endo
• The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
• In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash - Jean Shepherd

2001 Reading List

• Case For Christianity - C.S.Lewis
• The Three Clerks - Anthony Trollope
• Lord of the World - Robert Hugh Benson
• The School for Scandal - Richard Sheridan & She Stoops to Conquer - Oliver Goldsmith
• Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
• Lost in the Cosmos - Walker Percy
• Song at the Scaffold - Gertrude von Le Fort
• Only the Lover Sings - Josef Pieper
• Essays on Man - Alexander Pope
• Code of the Woosters - P.G.Wodehouse

2000 Reading List

• The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
• Robbery Under Law - Evelyn Waugh
• The Stripping of the Altars - Eamon Duffy
• Edmund Campion - Evelyn Waugh
• The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R.Tolkien
• Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
• The Great Santini - Pat Conroy
• Christianity and Culture - T.S.Eliot
• Vanity Fair - William Thackeray
• Assorted detective stories

1999 Reading List

• Heart of Compassion - Gerald Vann, O.P.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
• The Spear - Louis de Wohl
• Psychology as Religion - Paul Vitz
• King Lear - Shakespeare
• Paradise Lost - Milton
• Utopia - St.Thomas More
• The Idea of a University - John Cardinal Newman
• Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

1998 Reading List

• Hallowed Be This House - Thomas Howard
• Divine Mercy in My Soul - Bl.Faustina Kowalska
• The World, the Flesh and Father Smith - Bruce Marshall
• Till We Have Faces - C.S.Lewis
• Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
• Quo Vadis - H.Sienkiewicz
• Letters of a Woman Homesteader - Elinore Pruitt Stewart
• My Spirit Rejoices - Elizabeth Leseur
• Gaudy Night - Dorothy Sayers

1997 Reading List

• Can You Forgive Her? - Anthony Trollope
• My Daily Psalm Book
• Rome Sweet Home - Scott & Kimberly Hahn
• A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
• He Leadeth Me - Fr.Walter Ciszek
• The Aeneid - Vergil
• Dairy of a Country Priest - Georges Bernanos
• The Path to Rome - Hilaire Belloc
• The Best of Friends - video
• Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irving
• Notes From the Underground - Feodor Dostoyevsky
• Personal Pleasures - Rose Macauley