Initial “Dental” Impressions; Dracula

Dracula doesn’t just fit the Gothic genre but embodies the entire theme. Every trope available to the Gothic author is apparent within its first few chapters; a naïve young man journeys to a strange country at night in a darkened stagecoach to meet with an aristocrat who is feared and shunned by the local population and who just happens to live in a ruined castle in a darkened forest, filled with wolves and who is randomly disturbed by itinerant gypsies whilst trying to grab forty winks in his own crypt. (Did I mention that he sleeps in a coffin filled with the earth of his homeland, consorts with the undead and is petrified of crucifixes?) If it wasn’t for the fact that this story is an original, one could be forgiven for pulling the cliché card. The beauty of the story lies in the authentic imagination of its author who has not only captured the mood of the Gothic narrative but embellished it. Stoker has stolen the Gothic football and not only run with it but kicked it through the dilapidated twin towers – bat ridden and ivy enveloped of course – explaining the enduring popularity of the novel and the fact that it reads as contemporary.

Naturally, because we’ve been spoilt with production after production of “Dracula,” it’s hard to form an original image in one’s mind as continually – at least in my own imagination – I see a pale skinned man dressed in a high collared cloak with exaggerated widows-peaks. The only thing remiss is the Eastern European lilt of, “I vant to suck your blood!” Because one cannot escape the modern appeal of the story one has to try to appreciate the novel as a genre archetype and in doing so admire its obvious quality and recognize the immediate differences from those we’ve read thus far. To date we’ve read of the abusive, the ghostly, the uncanny and the unthinkable however, Dracula refreshingly embodies true horror.

There are several instances of pure genius that erupt from the pages. The first is the disembodiment of Dracula into a cloud of particulates; something with which we are now overly familiar with in Hollywood productions; the seemingly solid individual who suddenly disappears in a puff of smoke only to re materialize from thin air. This imagery is sublime and I believe without having experienced this via the medium of film I would still have been taken aback – as it did stun me when I first read it – as the description was so immediately recognizable. The image of Dracula crawling – as the author goes to great pains to describe – down the perpendicular wall of the castle. This is not only unheimlich but also super natural. Dracula isn’t just a bad seed he also possesses super-human powers – the first Romanian super hero perhaps? The shock at the lack of reflection in the looking glass and the over eager excitement generated by Harker’s blood are also vivid in description and although familiar are none the less remarkable from the point of view of the Victorian Fantastic.

Rather than romance as we experienced in “Frankenstein” and “Wuthering Heights” there is an undisguised sexuality that permeates the story; in particular, the three voluptuous and overtly sexualized women we initially meet at the castle. The poignant kissing scene when Harker chooses to sleep outside of his bed chamber could very easily be construed as something quite different. This theme of sex is constant throughout the novel and there are manifest portrayals of female lust. Stoker attempts to show us through the letters and diaries of Mina and Lucy exactly what women really want. More traditionally the women are continuously objectified by the admiration and wooing of their male counterparts from whom Lucy has a hard time choosing and who wishes, quite scandalously, that a woman should be able to marry more than just one. Disturbingly the beauty of the corpse is not free, even in death, from the licentiousness of the living as it grows page by page more ample and zaftig to the point of unhealthy admiration by those who view the body. Clearly sex sells and “Dracula” as well as archetypally Gothic incorporates many of the tropes of a bodice-ripper as well

WUTHERING HEIGHTS – “ELEMENTARY GOTHIC MY DEAR WATSON”

“When the sublime is impossible Watson, then only the Gothic is possible”

      Bronte’s novel is everything one would expect from a Victorian Gothic; a third party fireside tail related by a servant who can only reveal that which she believes to be true. This lends the story a mythical quality as the falling action is merely perceived truth, as we never truly see into the minds of the protagonists. Set in a bleak Yorkshire landscape an ancient house, that dates back centuries, is battered by the elements on a wind riven, snow gusted promontory, arousing both the sinister and melancholy. Small enclosed windows allude to ominous shadowed interiors shielded by a stalwart stone construction that has allowed the house to endure the passing of countless seasons. Wuthering Heights is no castle but with a maze of wooden stair cases, dark hallways and locked rooms it is a foreboding location. The atmospherics are enhanced by a room, in which nobody is allowed to sleep, that conceals long forgotten books containing clues to the families strange and dramatic past. To compound the horror and suspense there is the foreshadowing of names penciled into a window frame. From the outset the reader is acquainted with a supernatural dread and an expectation that worse is to follow. This suspicion is confirmed by the appearance of the ghost at the window and perhaps more disturbing, the figure of Heathcliff barging through the door “with candle wax dripping off his fingers” who then pulls open the casement windows to scream insanely at the tempest raging outside. One might be forgiven, that rather than a sedentary Northern English farm house, that one had entered a lunatic asylum. From the uncanny and mysterious, to the downright diabolical, the novel contains it all; including obligatory, incomprehensible yokels. Bronte brilliantly achieves an element of the unheimlich; the ghost at the crossroads, the hanging dog, the sounds of horse’s hooves and unseen riders escaping into the night all margin the immediate and thrill the reader. Could anything be more Gothic? 

         We join Lockwood in what should be a familiar domestic setting but instead find ourselves in an alien and uncanny environment; the novel immediately sets the reader ill at ease. The assumptions made by Lockwood regarding the interfamily relationships presented to him are all incorrect and so, like him, we stare around a room at a group of characters of whom we know absolutely nothing. The rapid confusion of shared and similar names adds to the initial disorientation of both the reader and unwanted guest. Who is who, and why on earth would Lockwood decide that he needed to revisit a house that was initially so inhospitable to strangers? Bronte places her reader at a deliberate disadvantage so that from the outset they are back-footed, causing them to suspect the worst of what is obviously a dysfunctional situation and search for the natural yet nonexistent clues in an attempt to comprehend what is clearly incomprehensible. This oppressive if dynamic suspense is neither welcoming nor does it encourage one to read further and yet, the introductory intrigue is so dense that one is forced to plough through the chapters at a blistering rate in an effort to garner clarity. “Wuthering Heights” is a novel which at every twist and turn reveals or rather conceals yet another hidden truth. Just as Lockwood is eager to hear the fire-side gossip of Nelly Dean, the reader too is on tenterhooks to discover whatever truth she may reveal.

        Thrushcross Park and marriage to its owner gives Cathy the ability to save the man she herself cannot save; a manifestation of true love where one lover cares more for their partner than they do for themselves. Cathy surrenders her own feelings for the benefit of Heathcliff – by marrying Linton a man she doesn’t really care for and who is the antithesis of the childhood friend – who’s been brutally crushed by Earnshaw to the point where only the memory of her erstwhile companion is left. Despite the financial benefits of her union with Edgar she’s optimistic that her elevated position will rescue Heathcliff from his untenable existence. Recognizing that they’re kindred spirits, she realizes that they can never be together as due to the lack of care and education at Wuthering Heights – enjoyed whilst favored by Earnshaw senior – Heathcliff is doomed to a life ignominy and misfortune. It’s only upon his escape and return to the moors that she begins to question her own position.

       Selfish regret and egotistical revenge exhibited by both protagonists late in the novel lend clarity to the true natures of Cathy and Heathcliff. Cathy clearly on a path to self-enrichment has finally bitten off more than she can chew and despite her avarice discovers that her fatal flaw is her love for the Byronic hero Heathcliff. Unfulfilled by material acquisition the objects of her desire – be they physical or emotional – always seems to inflict distress on those supposedly closest to her. After barely a thought to Heathcliff – except the terse explanation that he is now beneath her thanks to his neglected education – her few weeks at Thrushcross awaken her inner narcissist and after sampling the good life abandons everything she allegedly holds dear in order to maintain it. No longer the wild, care-free, moor-roaming child she’s quixotically content to enjoy the confines and luxuries of the grange. Rather than a portrayal of a capricious child we are offered the mind of a devious anti-heroine who doesn’t give a damn about anybody else except herself. Her explication on the notion that marrying Heathcliff would degrade her speaks volumes and yet she is frivolous with her Husband’s affections in her continued correspondence with him. Cathy cares about one thing and that’s Cathy. If anything she mirrors Heathcliff more in later life than she did in her youth as she contends her “lovers” one against the other. Cathy has nothing to lose and everything to gain from their rivalry. Should Heathcliff have killed Linton then Thrushcross would have been hers. Her husband prevailing on the other hand changed nothing. It was only the unforeseen effects of weak constitution coupled with pregnancy and exacerbated by her hysteria that eventually killed her. This mirroring is seen in the Heathcliff’s marriage to Isabella whose only design is to put him one step closer to owning Thrushcross and destroying those – as he’d already done at Wuthering Heights – he considered to have done him ill. One could almost believe that the love they purportedly share for one another is secondary to their ulterior desires. Theirs is a dysfunctional attraction which ultimately destroys the lives of those around them as well as their own.

      The sentiment of nature versus nurture was a key question in Frankenstein: whether or not the creature was truly terrible or made so by circumstance. This applies equally to the Heathcliff character who for all intents was an innocent – foundling child – who receiving the love of old Earnshaw thrived and when abused by Hindley became the black-hearted villain and seminal destructive force in Wuthering Heights. The notion of “other” is ubiquitous as reactions to him despite his physical differences were dependent upon those who both loved and hated him. Instead of analyzing the notion of “other” in Heathcliff, perhaps we should consider the discrepancies in his nurturing. Was it “other” that made him different or the perception of him – as either a blessing or a threat – by those with whom he interacted? Heathcliff is a product of the limited society he enjoyed and therefore judging him a villain by his degree of “otherness” would be mendacious.

      Alternatively one could debate the notion of free will and that by choosing to follow the path he did, is responsible for his own actions. In the vein of Eastern spiritualism one has to experience the darkness in order to appreciate the light. The idea that the consciousness grows form each experience clearly does not appear to apply to Heathcliff and therefore one has to conclude that his lack of humanity is innate. Attempting to perceive Heathcliff as a victim and therefore forgive his indiscretions is disingenuous of the consummate villain that he is.

DIE HARD – A VICTORIAN GHOST STORY

           

Thunder cracked and lightning forked in the night sky as an incessant rain beat a diabolical tattoo off the leaded glass of Ye Olde Sheep Stealers Inn. Fog swirled among the gas lamps and, drifting slowly up from the river, muffled the cacophony and obscured the nocturnal iridescence of heavy industry; the occasional crash of the new iron-age, chorus to the rare abatements in the tempest raging overhead. The cobbles were awash and slick underfoot; the biting cold of December evident from the huddled, shrouded figures scurrying home to the warmth of hearth fires; the promise of brief respite from arduous factory shifts in decrepit tenements; the spasmodic covenant perhaps of pressed flesh.

            The Sheep Stealer was an ancient coaching inn that had stood sentinel since time immemorial. The auberge was replete with a rich and colorful history and the patrons that passed through its nail-studded doors never failed to be impressed by the tales of roundheads and cavaliers who’d plotted and planned around it wooden tables; of the highwaymen who’d escaped the hangman’s rope through its upstairs casements and of the great plot to kill King James when Guido Fawkes himself had spent a restless night underneath its dilapidated slate roof. Although a neighborhood landmark it wasn’t long for the modern world as with the new municipal transport system being ploughed through London there was little hope for its survival. In its place would come the necessary ephemera of tunnels and termini that would usher in the new age, transforming the ancient city of London into a Victorian Babylon. The modern era was expeditiously replacing all that had been familiar and in a world of a change, a beacon of nostalgia was a welcome sight to the weary traveler.

            The pot man looked up from his duties as the door swung upon. The candles guttered and the flames in the grate roared as the night air rushed into to fill the room. “Shut the bloody door before we all freeze damn you!” challenged the bar keep at the silhouette that had suddenly appeared from out of the night.

            A fire blazed in the hearth and the smell of roasting meat filled the ale house; spurious shadow creatures and shapes diabolical danced on the flaking plaster walls. The stranger rubbed his hands and gasped at the welcome warmth already beginning to drive out the aching cold that’d permeated his bones. Throwing the cloak from his shoulder and removing his hat he revealed the scarlet jacket of a soldier, the white piping that clutched at his collar and cuffs an odd contrast to the martial figure and saber slashed face that made its way to the bar.

            “A room and some food,” said the soldier throwing gold onto the counter, “and a pot of ale to wash it down with.” The innkeeper eyed the sovereign, nodded and, wiping his hands on his greasy apron, pulled a pewter mug from the rack above his head and proceeded to fill it. The soldier quickly drained it and it was immediately replaced with another.

             “Your food’ll be out in a little while Captain. Why don’t you take the weight off and go and sit by the fire and warm yourself? I’ll bring it over when it’s ready.”

            Two, worn high backed chairs stood in front of the hearth and as the soldier approached he noticed skeins of smoke rising above the leather head rest. As he came closer he saw that it was occupied by another man. Undaunted by the company he sat down.

            “Come far ‘ave you?” asked the stranger.

            “Far enough,” he replied noncommittally.

            The stranger stared at the soldier’s uniforms his eyes drinking in his insignia and the regimental crests on his silver buttons. “The 69^th  Regiment of Foot. I was with them in Belgium at Quatre Bras back in ‘15. Bloody mess that was. Not many of us made it out of there.”

            The soldier looked up at his companion, disbelieving yet curious. “Who was your Colonel?” There were enough confidence men and tricksters on the streets and with a silver tongue and a few war stories it was easy to illicit money from drunken redcoats and so the pretense of having served the colors was an easy scam to pull.

             “McDonald . Colonel Jock McDonald. You ‘eard of him?”

            The soldier started. Who hadn’t?  Black Jock McDonald was a man of myth and legend and tales of the death-dealing mayhem he’d wrought on the Frogs that June afternoon were still told by the men of regiment. “Garn! Get out of it you old codger. You was with Black Jock?

             “Aye lad. Side by side in that field of burning corn outside of Waterloo. Shoulder to shoulder we stood, brothers to the end. Steeped in the blood of our comrades and the enemy alike we was.” The old man stared at nothing in particular and pulled on his clay pipe, the escaping smoke from his nostrils lending him an unearthly aspect as the light from the fire played upon his ancient face.

            The soldier put the tankard to his lips and drank in the rich warm taste of bitter beer, smacked his lips and contemplated the old man. Quatre Bras had been the most destructive day in the history of the regiment where nearly two hundred men had found their deaths in the space of an hour at the hands of the French. Despite the enormous body count the regimental colors had been saved and with the late arrival of the Prussians the French had eventually been repelled. June 17^th 1815 was a symbol of regimental pride; a day of bloody infamy that lived on in the tales told by the new recruits and old sweats alike.

            “Quatre Bras,” mused the old man, “I remembers it like it was yesterday.” With that his eyes glazed over and he began to relate the events of that fateful summer day forty years ago.

*

            Bugles sounded and whistles shrilled as the sergeants berated the men into line abreast. The companies broke out of their columns and shook themselves into single file.

            “Move your arses.”

            “What you waiting for Jones, a bloody invitation?”

            “Look alive. The Frogs are over the hill.”

            Both the King’s and the Regimental silks whipped over their heads as the infantrymen efficiently came into line attack and proceeded to walk across the field. With bayonets fixed and muskets held at waist height they advanced to where they presumed the enemy was entrenched. Suddenly, out of nowhere, swarms of French cavalrymen appeared on their flanks. The leading scouts saw them immerge from the dead ground, screamed their alarm and, fearful of being caught in the open, sprinted back to the safety of the main body of soldiery. The French seizing the element of surprise spurred their horses, lowered their swords and, sensing victory, galloped towards the vulnerable open ranks of the British.

 

*

            “They was them armored Frogs with the blue uniforms and steel breast plates. Cuirassiers; heavy cavalry,” explained the old man. “Big men with faces full of moustache on monstrous ‘orses.” The old man became agitated, his face twitching, his hands shaking as he told his tale. “Evil bastards with long, wicked swords. Well, we was done for. Only defense against cavalry is square and we were stretched out from one ‘orizon to the next. We didn’t stand a bleeding chance.”

*

            The French crashed into the British line and turning like mackerel – their swords flashing and falling in air – swooped down on men who, although they didn’t know it yet, were already dead. Men screamed as blood drenched sabers thrust and plunged, the horses trampling the corpses and finishing the work of the men on their backs. The blood lusted cavalrymen yelled their challenges and stabbed and slashed as the madness of combat engulfed them rendering them automatons of death. The British could do nothing. Soldiers turned to face their enemy and holding up their arms in a pathetic attempt to ward of the attackers, fell to the ground; their life blood draining into a foreign soil that would be forever England.

*

            “Easy pickings we was for them Frogs. Riding field days ‘round us they were. Hundreds of the ‘orrible bastards grinning and screaming as they skewered man after man. It was McDonald who rallied us. Centre Company and the color platoon managed to square up we did, grounded our muskets and presented Sheffield‘s finest to the enemy. With our bayonets creating a steel hedge the nags wouldn’t come close and we began to fight back; shooting the riders down like ducks as they rode about us.”

             The soldier had heard the story a thousand times before but now, told by someone who’d actually fought the engagement, it took on a whole new life. He could hear the shouts and screams, taste the gun powder from the muskets and through the fog of war hear the cries and prayers of both the living and dying.

             The old man’s eyes clouded as he went on. “It was numbers game and seeings ‘ow there was more of them than there was of us we weren’t going to last long. Slowly but surely they wore us down till there were less than thirty men stood ‘round the colors. McDonald stood next to me in the front rank screaming like a bleeding banshee for the boys to hold, “Die hard 69^th. Die hard.”

             The old man’s face grimaced as he remembered. “There was no chance for a man alone and the only ‘ope we had of getting off that field alive, at the rate Frogs was picking us off, was to stick together or stay until the last man fell. Any rate we was down to our last balls and if it hadn’t been for the arrival of the Prussians and old Black Jock we’d still be on that field. Say what you want about the Teutonics but on that particular day I was never gladder to see anybody.” The old man grinned and nodded. The soldier smiled back recognizing a brother in arms, one who’d endured and who’d been a part of a thin red line of heroes protecting king and country.

            The soldier lifted his tankard in salute, “Die hard 69^th! Beer?”

            The old man smiled, “Aye lad I will.”

            The soldier got up and went to the bar keep. “Two ales.”

            “Two?”

            “Aye. One for me and the General over there,” he said pointing to his companion sitting by the fire.

            The bar keeper looked at him and then looked towards the fire. “You ‘aving a laugh soldier.”

            The soldier grimaced clenched his fist and brought it down hard on the wooden bar. It was bad enough that soldiering was a profession that commanded little respect, but to be disrespected to your face by some loathsome toad of a civilian went beyond the pale. “Two, he growled, “and shift your arse.”

            The man behind the counter stared at the soldier. “Think you’ve ‘ad enough lad. There aint nobody ‘ere but me an’ you, in fact there’s been nobody ‘ere all night what with this blasted weather.”

            The soldier looked back towards the two empty seats by the fire. Smoke curled in the air; the only indication that anyone, or anything, had ever been there at all.

THE SIGNALMAN – CHARLES DICKENS

THE ALLUSION OF GOTHIC JUXTAPOSED BY THE ALLEGORY OF MODERNITY

We’ve already established that the tropes of Gothic literature although easily recognizable are also very adaptable; whether a castle in the Rhineland or an old house on a windswept moor, the necessity of the setting is more psychological than it is physical.  If one considers the work of Stephen King then one could suggest that “Christine”, a 1958 Plymouth Fury and the very personification of twentieth century modernity, could be construed as Walpole’s Otranto or even the Signalman’s tunnel. It’s the evocation of the unheimlich that causes the reader to second guess their natural instincts in order to enjoy the delicious fear they evoke – as Woolf writes – within controllable boundaries. The fact that “The Signalman” contains a ghost is classic Gothic, as is the desperate location of the man’s employment and his acute loneliness. The combination of location and psychological state as well as the inferred and unseen – bells which ring and yet which are never witnessed – all create the necessary tension required for Gothic literature. There is an expectation that something beyond the peripheral is occurring and yet enigmatic to the point where even the reader doubts what they have experienced is real.

The story has everything to do with the machine age and of old values being discarded for new. The Industrial Revolution saw the rapid movement of people away from an agrarian economy into the cities to labor and live. The changing of the seasons and the usual elemental clues that had been constant reminders of the passing of time were replaced by factory clocks and steam whistles. The story continually alludes to the juxtaposition of modernity and traditionalism found in the many references to the complete saturation of the modern age. The signalman is a student of mathematics, a philosopher of the natural sciences; that everything happens for a reason and yet despite the telegraph, whistles, flags and bell system we’ve still not reached a point – despite scientific advancements – where we have full understanding of nature and earth processes. The Victorian age with its huge shift in attitudes towards, religion, society, science and human relationships – and in particular the natural world – must have been for many extremely disturbing. Dickens himself was involved in a train accident and so this story can be read as allegorical; to not put ones faith completely in modernity – personified by the signalman – and to heed the wisdom –personified by the ghost – that until that particular period had always sufficed. (One could associate this allusion with Frankenstein’s keen interest in the alchemists only to have his focused shift to the bright bauble of contemporary science and all that it entailed.) Instead of insisting upon reason there is a strong suggestion that one should use all of ones faculties and pay attention to one’s own gut feeling. If one where to rely completely on Google Maps then what would be the point of knowing that the sun rises in the East? On the other hand possessing this crumb of knowledge is extremely useful.

I don’t believe that Dickens’ allusion lends itself to fatalistic suggestion but instead should be seen as an admonishment. His own near death in a railway disaster would have brought him to sharp realization that modernity although useful is not always ideal. His story though Gothic in nature has very real implications for burgeoning modernity and consequently it would be simplistic to suggest that this is merely a ghost story and question whether or not the apparition portends good or evil.

VIVA LA CREATURE

An argument against feminist criticism in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

               Frankenstein is a novel of parallels and although Professor Mellor makes a convincing argument that the novel is an allusion to the repression of female sexuality and the negation and usurpation of nature, it is the anthropomorphism of nature as female that weakens her argument. One could with equal authority claim that it was God in his heaven who was the creator of all and that nature is simply and extension of himself if one chose to sexualize creation. It’s true that throughout classical literature, nature has consistently been characterized as female; obvious given the parallels between the mysteries of child birth and the seasonal earth processes attributed to Mother Nature: it’s Mother Earth after all who is credited with the bounty of the harvest and the caprice of the seasons.  One only has to consider the abduction of Persephone to understand the relationship between natural processes and the female. Given her authority in the field of feminine criticism and her declared position as a feminist it’s forgivable that she underwrites her own argument with cherry-picked inferences and lobbies the importance of what was almost certainly the emergence of a proto-feminist voice and the hypothesis that “Frankenstein” is representative of female equality and suffrage. By her own admission and the evidences of further reading, it was Mary’s mother –Wollstonecraft – who was the feminist and not she herself. Consequently, parallels between Shelly’s life and the novel are much easier to accept than imputations to gender rhetoric. Evidently there were larger social issues at hand – during the period that Frankenstein was written – than just the awakening of female equality.

                The novel was written in 1816; the year after the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. For the entirety of Mary’s life England had been at war with France and consequently the subject of revolution and the divine right of kings would never have been far from public discourse. Rather than the emancipation of women as the burgeoning topic of the day it would have been the emancipation of the proletariat as evidenced by the Slave Trade acts of 1807 and the French Revolution of 1789. To give the professor credit she does touch on this at the end of the lecture, comparing Napoleon to Prometheus which I believe is the true nature of the novel. Personal inference of the author’s own life experience within the novel aside, the creation of the creature and the application of a Marxist theory reveal the clash of political ideology and the turmoil in which Europe found itself during and after the revolution. If one where to characterize the Revolution as “the creature” then the creation of both can be seen as world changing events. Frankenstein is a novel of public awakening and social realization; the creation of a “brave new world” by the common man contrary to the hegemony of the old world order. The creature personifies both the aspirations and fears of revolutionary change

               From the very beginning Frankenstein is enamored with the ancient order and determined to follow the path of alchemy. It isn’t until he goes to the university to receive enlightenment that he’s confronted with a new way of thinking and comes to understand that there is an alternative approach to the scientific model. By utilizing both theoretical and practical methodology he quickly surpasses his peers and arrives at the idea of creating life itself. An aberration perhaps of the nature of man but an exciting prospect that something else is achievable; that the old ways don’t necessarily have to be adhered to following the axiom that age is no guarantee of wisdom. Coming from a wealthy, ranking family as he does, his perspective is bourgeois and therefore his creation is more of a challenge than it is a correction to accepted nature. Frankenstein symbolizes those ancient European hierarchies who – rather like the gods – toy with their subjects knowing that no matter the outcome of their social experiments and repressive politics they can always revert to the old customs; or, as in Shelley’s book, simply kill the creature. What is not understood by those institutions, portrayed by the character of Frankenstein, is that given the tools of life the creature, or the proletariat, comes to realize that “they” too are relative beings and, just as the feminists proclaim their own equality, so they proclaim the “Rights of Man.”

               It’s interesting that just as we read in chapter one the view point of Frankenstein and the bourgeoisie we are allowed to hear the common voice of the “prols” via the creature in chapter two. Having been endowed with the spark of life – or societal recognition depending how one wishes to view Shelley’s analogy – the creature wishes nothing more than to emulate those who created him. Similarly the books read by the creature to educate himself describe both the fall of man – Milton – and failed empires –Plutarch – and that this literature is pertinent to recent historical events and isn’t coincidental. Milton’s “Paradise Lost” was famously used for rhetorical purposes to support and decry both states of being both pre and post revolution. Having been given life the creature wants nothing more to share in the most basic of human values. He doesn’t seek wealth or prestige, despite the fact that given his physical attributes he could probably achieve both, but instead craves the most basic of human traits, that of inclusion. Therefore, the creature doesn’t threaten the status quo but simply asks to be recognized by it.

               In later chapters we see the entire Histrionic of the French Revolution from the Terror – the stalking of Frankenstein’s family – to the ultimate failure and the death of revolution – the killing of the second creature and ultimate suicide of the first – and the return to accepted normality. Just as the creature was a well-intentioned experiment that got out of hand, so too the Revolution came to personify the worst rather than the best in humanity. With direct allusion to social indifference and the inequality of 19^th century society, Shelley has penned a political novel that – although shrouded in Gothic tropes – attempts to trace the rise and fall of revolutionary France and in doing so recognized the necessity for change whilst advising caution.

So what is Modernism…?

A DEFINITION…OR RATHER AN ANSWER TO A TRICKY EXAM QUESTION.

The turn of the twentieth century witnessed the denunciation of preceding literary and aesthetic traditions through the rejection of Victorian realism. There occurred a conscious aesthetic movement away from artistic didacticism toward a style that was infinitely more liberating and self-representative. Modernist art – instead of conforming to the restrictions of the traditional process – immersed itself in individuality and reflected the idea that art could exist for its own sake. Although the Romantics of the previous centuries had revealed hidden aesthetic truths it was the Modernists who promoted the concept of artistic acceptance. This innovative, artistic form generally adhered to Ezra Pound’s axiom of “make it new.” The esthetic, or “the aura of art,” as Adorno called it, required only to be receptive to the recipient i.e. the eye of the beholder and therefore art didn’t have to induce mass appeal. Just because it wasn’t appreciated by the masses didn’t detract from its intrinsic beauty and therefore art could exist independently. Given that artistic restraint was dispensed with, the artist and writers of the period were free to create following their own conscious desire whilst expressing contemporary sensibilities and rescinding traditional values.

            Adorno described the changes in human sense perception brought about by the dialectic that exists in literature. Just as society is mutually effective, art, as the modernist movement proved, like everything else, is subject to causation. Things only exist in relationship to one another and therefore the modernist movement could only have been created by the period in which it was conceived. Modernism therefore reflects itself as well as its period. Everything is cause and effect. 

             This shift from traditionalism took on many forms and the period gave birth to a diverse variety of aggressively modern movements – among many others – such a Futurism, Vorticism, and Cubism. Although modernism can be regarded as an artistic singularity that is both provocative and experiential, Levinson sees it as “the emergence of an adversary culture of the New that [is dependent] on audiences as well as artists, enemies as well as supporters.”  Modernism therefore was a manifestation of the selfish and reactionary. This accounts for the short lived artistic movements that disappeared as quickly as they appeared only to be replaced by something equally exotic.

            The new machine age invigorated the rejection of symbolism by those who were tired of sentimentality and artistic decadence. Not only was it the esthetic that changed but also humanities sense of itself. The outbreak of World War One and the destruction it wrought gave rise to a pessimistic world view thanks to the political and philosophical upheavals created by the conflict. This caused people to reassess their values and gave rise to philosophers such as Freud who began to question the notion of human rationality; the plausibility of exact truth and a mistrust of institutionalized ideas such as empire, church and country. Literary groups such as the Bloomsbury Set created manifestos rejecting everything apart from friendship, estheticism and personal pleasure.

             This idea gained momentum and novelists began to experiment with the hermetic style of free thought writing which, instead of following the traditional literary mileposts of the bildungs roman or Victorian Romance novel, experimented with the concept of stream- of-consciousness that allowed the reader to see into the characters mind; offering an extra dimensional allusion to a character or story. Poets and writers like T.S Eliot in the poem The Wasteland and James Joyce in his novel Ulysses were extremely adept with parataxis; a modernist literary method that was developed to disrupt and fragment conventional sequencing, creating literature that was innovative and unique. The literature that grew from this stylistic adaptation was invariably introspective and probed the darker aspects of the human psyche and can be classed as quintessentially Modernist.

MOTHER COURAGE – BRECHT

Mother Courage and the Theatre of the Absurd

            In America in 1947 at the end of the Second World War, a committee was formed for the investigation into un-American activities. It was claimed that America and in particular the Hollywood movie industry, had been infiltrated by Communist sympathizers and with the fear of the spread of the Soviet idealism many celebrities where put on trial for their professional lives. One such figure who was interviewed by the committee was Bertolt Brecht. Brecht was a Bavarian and an immigrant playwright who’d fled the Nazis at the beginning of the war. Ironically he’d been persecuted in Europe for anti-fascist incitement which had led to his exile in Denmark, only later to be pursued in America for alleged Soviet affiliations.

             Neither a Communist nor a Fascist, Brecht was an absurdist; a playwright who’d invented a new genre of theater that did not follow the Aristotelean model as proscribed in the Poetics. (White. 6)  Subjected to the illogical scrutiny of ideological purity he eventually left America and settled in Berlin in the former D.D.R. where he continued to pursue his craft. Although subscribing to Marxist ideology he never joined the Communist party however, did declare his support for the Socialist Unity Party of Germany. (7) Brecht in his politics as in his writing was himself absurd to the point of contradiction; a man who curiously welcomed the Socialist Ideal and the cache of the Workers’ Paradise whilst being personally sustained by the West thanks to the remunerations of his many plays. A man who claimed not to be a Communist and yet who willingly lived behind the Iron Curtain.

             The Theatre of the Absurd which is widely attributed to the modernist period was the progeny of Brecht and was much emulated during and after his lifetime.  Bertolt Brecht’s, “play style followed plots that were cyclical or absurdly expansive… [and consequently]either a parody or dismissive of realism… [as well as] the concept of the well-made play.” (White. 16)

            Mother Courage probably the most famous of Brecht’s plays is a depiction of a family struggling to survive the Thirty Years War (a conflict which initially pitted Catholics against Protestants during the seventeenth century; 1618-1648) Although historically relevant it is easy to understand how contemporary theatre has portrayed his work as analogous to the influx of Communism in Eastern Europe and the conflict of political conscience. Originally written to warn of the rise of fascism in Germany during the thirties, it has seen myriad performances globally to great acclaim. The play is said by some to be the greatest play of the twentieth century and also the greatest antiwar play of all time. Labeled as epic-theatre it includes all the absurdist’s devices that Brecht has become synonymous with. The play includes bright, garish white lighting rather than the subdued lighting contemporary audiences have become accustomed to, minimalist stage props to indicate location, live stage direction during the performance and hand held placards to insure that the audience is aware of the falling action. Mother Courage is an austere, scaffold of a play that operates in full view of the audience and juxtaposes the traditionally polished performances modern audiences have come to expect. Nothing is hidden from the audience and even the costume changes are performed on stage. Brecht was intent upon total immersion theatre where the audience was conscious the whole time that the play wasn’t just a work of entertainment or an exposition of art but a necessary, visceral interaction between the performers and the audience in order to evoke a reaction. By adding a nontraditional dimensionality to the performance Brecht expected that the audience would identify with the actors and not just their characters. Brecht wanted his audience to experience his plays rather than just observe them. By witnessing the construction of the play as well as the performance each participant i.e. member of the audience, would take away an individual experience of that which they’d seen. By purposeful construction Brecht created a very private performance in a very public space, where no two plays were exactly the same and where each performance allowed the audience to experience something fresh. This is not dissimilar to the sixteenth century street theatre of the Commedia dell’arte where, although the audience was familiar with the stock characters and their representative personality traits, each was a separate and distinct performance. This ensured that the characters and the production had longevity and the story remained vital and financially viable. Brecht borrowed heavily from a genre famous for sketch and improvisation; something he achieved with great success in the subsequent themes of his own productions.

            Mother Courage and her three children are tinkers who harness themselves to their own wagon and who drag it from battlefield to battlefield. Their poverty is abject and their only source of income is the chandlery they sell to the Protestant soldiers of the Thirty Years War. Conflict rages on all fronts and the corpses of the dead, whose only value in death is the clothing and equipment they still wear, are innumerable. Courage and her family strip the dead in order to resell it so that they, by means of war profiteering at its most meagre, may survive: albeit from hand to mouth.

            During a lull in the fighting Courage happens upon two recruiters who, looking for fresh cannon fodder to replace those already killed distract her with an offer of money in order to trick her youngest son Eilif – an anagram for life – into joining the Protestant Army. Unable to prevent what will almost certainly be the death of her son she prophetically lists the fates of all her three children. Eilif will die for his courage, her second son Swiss Cheese for his honesty and her daughter Kattrin for her kindness. The progress of the play, despite the obvious qualities that her children possess, will prove the validity of her predictions.

             The play advances by several years, as it does in each subsequent act, to another battlefield where in the pursuit of her livelihood she comes across her brave soldier son Eilif who is now a decorated hero. Reunited with her son Courage ponders the soldierly virtue of bravery and realizes that if commanders need brave men then trouble is surely on the wind. A minor character chatters about the righteousness of the campaign and how if their leaders hadn’t been ordained by a Protestant God to destroy the Catholics they would surely be accused of war profiteering. This is ironic in that everybody in the microcosm of the world of the camp followers is doing exactly that. Eilif is eventually caught by the Catholics doing that for which he has been decorated by his own side and is executed for his “courageous” deeds. Seen as an enemy by the Catholics and not as a hero, Brecht presents the paradox of one man’s freedom fighter being another man’s terrorist. Eilif is hanged in chains for his part in the war. Likewise his brother Swiss Cheese, also a member of the Protestant Army, is caught and executed whilst trying to protect the regiment’s payroll. In an act of honesty, as predicted by his mother, he too is hanged.

            Berieved of both her boys, Mother Courage finds herself alone with just her daughter in a burned out village where the wounded from the latest battle lay dying on the ground. In need of rags to stem their bleeding a commander begs Courage for some of her shirts to rip into rags to turn into bandages. Courage refuses saying that she will not part with her officers’ shirts, her most valuable merchandise, unless it is for money. Courage understands the suffering of the wounded and despite having lost her own children persists in the absurdity of survival that the shirts represent to her. Without the sale of the shirts she herself will die of starvation; an obvious paradox of who deserves to live and who deserves to die.

             In the midst of the carnage of war Courage finds love however, in order to be with a man who will save her from herself and the war, she must abandon her daughter Kattrin her only surviving child. Once again Courage is faced with the agony of decision and ultimately chooses to relinquish her love and remain with her daughter: an act of self-sacrifice in a world where nobody notices and nobody cares.

             The play ends several years after it has begun. Overrun by the Catholics whilst Courage goes to town for supplies, her daughter is witness to the advancing enemy. Climbing onto the tinker’s wagon, Kattrin sounds out a drum to warn the locals of imminent danger and for her kindness and bravery is shot and killed. Mother Courage returns to the wagon and the corpse of her dead daughter. Instead of burying the girl herself, she uses that which is most important to her and pays the local villages to do the job instead. With nobody left in the world, her children dead and her love lost, the only thing that survives is her diabolical occupation. Strapping herself into the harness of the wagon as though she were a horse, she moves forward to join up with the advancing Protestant Army. Her final words which strike deep into any audience with revulsion for war and an awareness of social subjugation are, “I must return to business.”  This is particularly pertinent and representative of indifferently turning the other cheek whilst living under intolerable, irrevocable strain. Brecht may have lived in East Germany but his message is very astute to anybody paying the least attention.

                        According to Blau, “Brecht is a polemicist… and his dialectic approach is rhetoric.”(4) This is conceivable when one considers that Brecht was the founder of the theatrical epic (Mother Courage is a performance that endures for a full three hours) and the avant-garde of modernist twentieth century political theatre. His play Mother Courage relates the story of those who participate in war, not for patriotic or selfless reasons, but for financial gain; those who paradoxically make their living from the carnage of which they themselves are victims. The symbolism is that of an ordinary woman trying to survive in an impossible situation. In order to preserve the lives of her children she must ultimately sacrifice them all to feed the war machine that sustains her own life. Rather than the epitome of conflict and courage she represents human absurdity. Brecht’s play is therefore, a polemic on war and an exposition of the tragedy of the human condition.

            Mother Courage has unusual facility in that it can be recast to suit any number of political topics. In the past the play has been used to highlight climate change, racial segregation, geo-politics and in particular anti-Soviet rhetoric. The story is a survival story that portrays the protagonist as a besieged, embattled figure. This of course can be representative of almost any conflict and accounts for both the longevity and brilliance of Brecht’s play writing. It is the method by which he portrays his subject that is the most enduring; a theatrical framework that espouses no particular ideology but which unapologetically renounces the subjugation of human freedoms.

             Mother Courage although first appearing in the first half of the twentieth Century is as relevant today as it was in 1939. Given Brecht’s own persecution at the hands of the Un-American committee in 1947, the play has come to be seen as a prophetic piece of writing similar to the dystopian novel 1984, that was published just a couple of years later in 1949 by George Orwell. Just like Orwell, Brecht realized the necessity of highlighting the dangers of totalitarianism and the ineffectuality of the individual when faced by the crushing power of overt political will. Whether an envisaged dystopia, or protracted warfare created by unseen forces in order to realize political goals beneficial to the few at the expense of the many, Brecht created an “every woman” in Mother just as Orwell created an “everyman” in Winston Smith. In Brecht’s own words, “The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn’t hear, doesn’t speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn’t know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn’t know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies.” (White. 17) This reflects Orwell’s own treatise of, “War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is truth.”(Rodden. 5)

             Brecht despite his socialist leanings realized that no matter the quotidian politic, whether it was Capitalist or Communist, the dangers to civil liberties where very real and that everything should be done to preserve those hard won freedoms and the sanctity of human life. It is this kind of theatrical discourse that makes Brecht such a political chameleon and could possibly explain his ability to live in affability whether in the West or behind the Iron Curtain. Although espousing socialist tendency it was the rights of man which were truly at the heart of his political genius rather than ideological dogma.

Works Cited.

Blau, Herbert. Mother Courage: The Rite of War and the Rhythm of Epic. The Johns Hopkins University Press. Educational Theatre Journal, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Mar., 1957), pp. 1-10. Print.

Brecht, Bertolt. Mother Courage and her Children. Arcade Publishing. New York. 1994. Print

Rodden, John. George Orwell: the politics of literary reputation. New Brunswick,N.J. Transactions Publishers. 2002. Print.   White, John J. Bertolt Brecht’s dramatic theory. Camden House. Rochester, N.Y. 2004. Print.

THE ART OF EQUIVOCATION AND FOURTEENTH CENTURY VICE

Medieval Morality Inversion

             Nothing is more mercurial than a liberal society and the attitudes and morals of those citizens who live within it. What’s acceptable today is unacceptable tomorrow, the waxing and waning of human values seemingly as ephemeral as the moon. That being said, the sins as described by Evagrius, have not always been regarded, even during the medieval period, with the same, strict uniformity or enjoyed the same level of adherence. In fact, contemporary society would no doubt disagree with his compilation upon principal and unashamedly cite political correctness as its raison d’etre. Consequently the measure with which we weigh the sins can be reduced to their quotidian import with regard to what is expedient, how they affect society and will their abuses be tolerated? One only has to observe the imperialistic ambitions of American geo-political maneuverings in the Middle East, in what are clearly self-aggrandizing nation building endeavors, to understand this.

            The taxonomy of the sins as originally proposed by Evagrius and proliferated by Cassian were in essence, not just a tool to bring the supplicant closer to God, but to engender a lifestyle that would be convivial to all. A fail safe control mechanism that would draw the boundaries of societal acceptance, coerce appropriate behavior and allow trespassers of etiquette to be duly punished. The idea was simple enough, but actually adhering to them as the centuries have revealed, has been fraught with difficulties and excess. This is not a modern issue by any notion and one can trace the paradox of doing wrong in order to do right throughout the annals of history. This becomes clear when one probes the original meaning of some of the sins and explores how they mutated through time. The changing attitudes towards sin, especially Avarice and Wrath, are particularly conspicuous during the Peasants Revolt of 1381 and the Black Death which swept through Europe during the fourteenth century. By examining these deadly sins and their subsequent metamorphosis from their original intent it is possible to analyze the degree to which their meanings have changed, even to the point where instead of being considered sinful some of the tenets are now considered virtues. 

            The Seven Deadly Sins were instrumental in the medieval period to illustrate the dangers of human frailty. Not only where they a guide to life but also a means of control by which the Roman Church could exercise its power and ensure the subservience of its congregations. The priests, through the ever present threat of sinning, could literally damn a man into hell or praise him into heaven. The Church-centric world of the medieval period was the norm and church going an expectation and therefore, there would have been a familiarity by both the clergy and the lay population with the taxonomy. Imagery of the Seven Deadly Sins would have been emblazoned in the painted murals of the religious buildings they attended or they would have been a gentle reminder on the cleric’s lips as to their relevance to daily life. The sins were taught in a simplified, easy to understand format (given the dearth of literacy during the period) to the people either visually or preached from the pulpit. Despite their lack of formal education the message was abundantly clear and congregations were put in mortal fear of their souls. The Seven Deadly Sins were beyond reproach and an empirical devise with which a man could recognize his own failings and in doing so attempt to correct his human weaknesses by treading the path of the righteous. Although this was true of the period, it would appear that there was also ample wriggle-room.

            Life in medieval times was seen as an interim to heavenly reward, the afterlife being far more important than the temporal sufferings of the great unwashed. Therefore, in order to ensure one’s place on the path of righteousness, one had to abide by clerical law and pray fervently in the hope of divine intervention or suffer eternal damnation. Needless to say the system was based upon human frailty and inevitably therefore, doomed to failure. In a society that was established on the estates of being and where feudalism was the accepted hierarchy, the differences between those who had and those who had not must have been abyssal. Little wonder then that the boundaries of sin where blurred to account for these differences and manipulated according to the crisis of the moment. The fourteenth century witnessed everything from abundance to plague and starvation to war as well as religious and political upheaval. Not so different from the great state of being that shapes our own modern twenty-first century lives.

            Ownership of property and land was based ultimately on position and therefore on God’s grace. If God had deigned that one was to fulfill one’s mortal role in a particular category of the estates then one should of course accept one’s lot in life and make of it what one could. This gift from God it would appear was not enough and often those with temporal position felt that despite being divinely rewarded it was their duty in life to acquire as much as they possibly could during their lifetime. The sin of Greed being a venial sin could easily be dismissed, as power and position trumped any notion that the holding and acquisition of wealth was bad. So long as one was contrite in prayer and contributed to the Church and gave alms for the poor then the pursuit of earthly delight was reasonable if not forgivable. According to Goddard, “Research on late medieval and rural economic social history reveals that the privilege of land and money was without doubt controlled by the manorial Lords” (89) Huge tracts of land in England known as the wastes, which then constituted much of the barren moorland to be found throughout the British Isles, were jealously possessed by its then owners. Rather than wasteland, manorial lords saw the means for profit in a land which until the Norman Conquest had been in the hands of the commoners. The waste lands were part of the common heritage and were used to graze animals and to supply sundry basics such as wood. That was of course until greed reared its ugly head and the inevitable realization by the already wealthy of the immense profits to be made from them. There are countless accounts of commoners being prosecuted for using the lands without permission or utilizing the raw materials found upon it. The quarrying of material to manufacture mills stones, despite the economic boon they would provide to the local community and the tithes paid by the miller to the incumbent Lord, was punishable by death in the county of Devon. “All the furzes, heath moors, marshes, commons, ways and waste grounds,” (33) land which had been communal, now constituted pure profit to those granted tenancy by the crown. This acrimonious business was not confined between the lords and the peasants but also between the king and his barons: the question of greed eventually coming to a head at Runnymede in 1215. King John, writes McKechnie, God’s representative on earth and answerable to none other than the almighty, was malicious in both reign and taxation. (12) “ Renowned for his jealousies, wrath and avarice, he was eventually forced by those able to wield a sword against his dictatorship to sign the Magna Carta diminishing some of the powers of the crown and forever setting in motion the rights of free men.” (3) Greed and acquisition of wealth by any means was, in the opinion of the crown, a God given right despite the tenets of the Seven Deadly Sins. The king’s attitude towards them was not dissimilar to the manorial lords who regarded their gargantuan estates as theirs alone. Clearly the idea of sinning was arbitrary when it came to collecting what was “rightfully” one’s due, no matter the consequence to those affected. The acquisition of land by the crown by usurpation wasn’t halted, writes Goddard, until 1359 under the council of the Black Prince who “ensured that land given could not be retaken through right of writ.”(33) No matter the pedantic nature of the King the tenant Lords could be sure that unless forfeited by an act of treason, the land would be theirs in perpetuity. Not so the experience of the serf who had no rights under English law and therefore remained subject to the whims of the manorial lords. Clearly the distinction between sin and sinning was based on ones proximity to those “of the manor born,” and therefore the ability to eke out a life at the expense of the lord’s profits was clearly not recommended if one wanted to enjoy a full and rewarding life. Despite the veniality of the lordship’s sin and the opportunity for the serf to enjoy the eventual treasures of heaven, this would have been poor reward after suffering prosecution and even death at the hands of a land grabbing tyrant. Clearly God was on the side of the rich and the sin of greed merely a question of semantics providing that manorial justice and not heavenly truth was being applied.

            Just as with any paradoxical situation the observance of the Seven Deadly Sins lends itself to interpretation and therefore their relevance is a product of contemporary attitudes. The accidental execution of venial sins and the misappropriation of vice instead of virtue is fundamentally a narrow path to walk and one which even we, living in a supposed modern progressive society, have difficulty in avoiding. Although in retrospect we clearly see the misappropriations of the common land as theft and the punishment of the serfs as unjust, this would have been viewed quite differently by those guilty of the exploitation.  Although one could suggest, in mitigating the gross injustices visited upon the poor, that they were simply the victims of moral hypocrisy. That is to suggest that despite the manorial lords best intent to preserve what was rightly theirs, or the King his, there would still exist a conscious awareness that one was doing wrong even when acting within the law or through the supposed grace of God. This hypocrisy is apparent in the actions of the barons towards their King who held him accountable for what they themselves were committing on their own lands and to their own people. Clearly sin, at least in this instance, was in the eyes of the beholder – the peasants – rather than the perpetrators. Many of the virtues themselves could be perceived as sins and therefore digression from the higher and narrow path to Truth is understandable thanks to their ambiguity and therefore perhaps excusable under the auspices of medieval canonical law. In Prudentius’ Psychomachia he describes a battle between the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Virtues. All individual combat is easily won by the Virtues except in the instance of one. Avarice initially takes the upper hand when his character is mistaken for Frugality rather than Avarice. It is only when the vice is discovered to be appropriating the virtue that Avarice can be defeated.

            The idea that man is beyond helping himself despite the taxonomy of the Sins is never clearer than in Langland’s parable told by the Friars when confronted by the dreamer in Piers Ploughman. When seeking the home of Do-Well the dreamer questions the notion of virtue when, “…even as the Bible says, even the just man falls into sin seven times a day.”(82) The Friars concede that mankind is afloat on an ocean that tosses and turns and though the dreamer may fall and flounder, as long as he stays within the boat, he will be saved.(83) The boat of course is an allusion to the Church and the sea, the troubles and vices of the world. Consequently admit the Friars, even the most conscientious person succumbs to sin. Newhauser writes that it only through the painstaking analysis of sin that there can be any possible recognition of guilt.(5) “Theologians were aware of the ambiguity,”(5) and despite their attempts to resolve it, moral hypocrisy remained, as Langland observes, a very real medieval concept.

            The relevance of ambiguity with regards to sinning is founded during the medieval period in political and social upheaval and the necessitating of centralized policy. Emphasis and even mutability can be found in the medieval texts and one perceives that although retribution is set in stone, the hell fire to be endured wasn’t always as hot as the priests declared. This isn’t untrue of religion itself which, insidious in nature, tends to adopt that with which a society is familiar with and usurps it for its own ends. Evidence can be found of local saints being beatified into the Catholic pantheon and even traditions and customs being adopted on a regional basis in order to make the “new” religion more appealing. Just as local customs became Christian doctrine so too the Deadly Sins were applied with an uneven hand. The perception that sin is mutable is not a recent one and is an idea that is recurrent throughout history. One often hears of Victorian values and yet we know that they were not the same as either those of the Georgians or the Edwardians. Sin is culturally relevant and therefore, is based on the period in which it is experienced or dependent upon a quotidian political climate. Often in contemporary culture, in order to accomplish certain goals, pride and greed are interchangeable as well as absolutely necessary.  Norman Cantor writes, “Through economic necessity or, as in the context of extraordinary situations such as the plagues of the fourteenth century, people are often empowered to take advantage of that which ordinarily would be beyond their scope. (12) In his book, In the Wake of the Plague, he explores the devastating effect the epidemic had on Europe and what affect the near extinction of the entire population had on the socio-political and religious way of life, as well as the prevailing attitudes towards the Seven Deadly Sins. The upheaval of contemporary living and the ensuing social chaos it created meant that nothing, as he describes, would ever be the same again; including the values of those who survived. Suddenly the boot was on the other foot and those who previously had little or no power found themselves in positions of influence. Labor was suddenly valued, food was at an optimum and the fact that the plague could kill a king as easily as it could kill a peasant leant itself to a new psychological paradigm. The serf suddenly had an opportunity to exact some kind of retribution and enact those lessons which they’d been taught so painfully well.

            The great plagues that wiped out more than a third of the population after sweeping through Europe helped to assimilate the dilemma of sin. When work was plentiful peasants were more than happy to accept a reduced wage; however, due to the untimely death of the working population the power of the medieval proletariat, as opposed to the power of the medieval bourgeoisie, became the standard.(28) Workers fomenting their new found status and their own inherent appreciation of avarice could now withhold their labor and demand higher wages, much to the chagrin of the lords who’d regularly, thanks to their own tenuous relationship with avarice, abused and underpaid them. The lack of available labor was so prolific thanks to the horrific death toll extorted by the plagues that records reveal children, women and prisoners were set to work alongside the men in order to curtail the shortage of willing hands. The rise of avarice and even the recognition by women of their previously unattributed value, thanks to the economic prosperity generated by global catastrophe, changed by definition the sex of the working class and consequently a woman’s economic value. (29) This was something that had been unthinkable, writes Goddard,  prior to the pestilence, as evidenced by the diverse labor force used to complete “Royal Works” of the post-plague period (233) The plague didn’t only bring death and disease but also moral enlightenment. Thanks to the economic pressures and demographic inequality the accepted attitudes toward sin were suddenly liable to revision. A man who had been happy with his lot was now capable of doubling his earnings and even of owning land. The pressure of labor was such that some peasants ultimately became wealthy land owners themselves (yeomen) and challenged the natural order of things. (65) Just as wealthy industrialists in the nineteenth century had challenged the birth right of the gentry, money was the new key to influence. It was money rather than blood that was asserting political and social change on what had, up until the period, been accepted as self-evident and God ordained. Men weren’t just greedy for wealth, but for position and power as well.

            Avarice and pride weren’t the only acceptable faces of revisionary sin and in a post plague period gluttony also had its part to play. Diet was a matter of class and meat was primarily, especially the likes of game, consumed by the gentry. The serfs existed on a diet of cereal and occasional dairy but were forced to farm live stock for those who ate it. The problem with livestock farming was that it was inefficient, as the animals had to graze on land which could otherwise be used for cereal. Further, the animals had to be fed from the harvest that was supposed to feed the serfs. Despite the inconstancy of harvests due to the unusually wet summers of the period the meat dishes were still required by the gentry. Rather than acquiescing to Mother Nature and accepting to share the burden of meager harvests, the gentry insisted that the forfeiture of food and consequently the malnutrition and death that followed was borne by the serfs. Once again sin was obfuscated by rank, the restrictions of piety not pertaining to all estates. Newhauser relates the story of Augustine and the “rich and aristocratic Proba” who finding herself living in grandiose circumstances and unbelievable opulence garnered by what is related as “great cruelties” questioned whether she was succumbing to the sin of Avarice. Augustine responded that “so long as she lived in abundance but distanced herself from the “riches of the heart she did not have to reject the superfluously of her surroundings.”(6) Newhauser describes how the clergy of the day had difficulty in defining sufficiency and that the Church, given the acquisition of fantastic riches over the ensuing centuries, not unlike Proba, must have been asking themselves the same question? Similarly the survivors of the plague found themselves enjoying a disproportionate advantage as well as abundance and so it is hard to moralize on their greed and avarice considering the conspicuous wealth of the estates to whom they were subject. Therefore to strip off the mask of Avarice as in Prudentius Psychomachia would be to expose the post-plague acceptability of new found affluence as a possible sin. Fortunately for the sinners they didn’t have to wait for God’s wrath but instead could look forward to extra taxation and judicial decree by a King who needed their wealth more than they did. King Richard, writes Dean, installed legislation that limited the wages of the workers as well as imposing recurring poll taxes that would force the peasants to exchange their sin of avarice to that of wrath. (119)  

            Warfare, a constant drain on financial resources, was rife during the period. If it wasn’t the French, then it was the Scottish or the Irish: bloody murder decreed by imperial expansion and the divinely ordained birthright of being English. Although God was apparently on England’s side at Crecy and Poitiers under the generalship of Edward III, the warlike activities of the Peasants Revolt in 1381 was not seen in the same religious light. Their willingness to burn, murder and pillage cast the peasants as outlaws, despite the fact that once again it was the circumvention of the sins that had caused their grievances. Avarice, however, came at a price and those who survived the Black Death didn’t have it all their own way for long. The ensuing power struggle between the factions of the “estates” as they tried to hold onto what they’d gained thanks to the ravages of the plague, with those who’d previously been manorial lords. Sinning or rather hypocrisy had once again become necessary and this time by the hand of King Richard. If he was to fill his coffers, wage war and enrich both himself and his followers then the money had to come from somewhere. Naturally the burden fell to the poor who, with little or no means, were required to staunch a crumbling monarchy. Notwithstanding his years the King took it upon himself to ignore any religious instruction he’d ever received and instead, do what he felt was “best” for the country. The negation of the sins, for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many, hopefully struck him as ironic when surrounded by the angry mob at Smithfield.

            John Ball one of the leaders of the rebellion understood that in times of struggle it was men who would stand and fight who were required, not those who would quibble and quake. In order to supplant the idea of rebellion in the minds of God fearing citizens it was necessary for him to equivocate with the sins and, rather than perpetrate them, he bent them to his will and in so doing turned vice to virtue. Ball would have been aware of the ambiguity of sin just as, according to Newhauser,(5) Pope Gregory had been. Gregory noted that prodigality, avarice and inconstancy could all be juxtaposed with mercy, parsimony and flexibility (10) and likewise, Ball understood that the vice of wrath was the antithetical virtue of valor and justice. He proposed in a letter, writes Dean, that it was necessary “to stand manly together to help truth, in order that truth will help them.”(136) In short they were tired of paying taxes for foreign wars, of bearing witness to the nobles enriching themselves in spite of the peasantry and seeing their only asset, their labor, financially restricted. John Ball and his followers wished to instill the revolutionary idea that a man should be paid an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s labor; a principle that socialists throughout the twentieth century have fought and died to uphold. Thinking only to lose his chains and not his head by uniting the workers of medieval England he lists the Seven Deadly Sins in his letter and appropriates each to the royal aberration of power. In his list of seven he actually only names six. The seventh, wrath, he saved as the virtue he hoped to inspire in his followers in order to carry the day. Unluckily for John Ball the rebellion failed and the wrath he hoped to serve on the king was revisited disproportionately upon him with capital justice and royal revenge.

            Having analyzed The Seven Deadly Sins and Evagrius’ original intent to create a platform from which one could lead a principled and God-fearing life, it is possible to perceive the morality shift that has been their constant companion. The hypocrisy of which Gregory the Great wrote in defining the virtues that closely resembled the Sins was not only a medieval conundrum but also a contemporary paradox with quotidian relevance. Many of the tenets of medieval vice, just as they were then, are now seen as modern virtues.  Despite the dichotomy of immoral war we honor our warriors, applaud our self-aggrandizing governments and continue to vote for those charlatans we think will do us the most good in order to selfishly improve our own social and financial standing. Capitalism by default demands this and so we endeavor to better our international neighbors whilst scaling the dizzying heights of corporate ladders.  Brimming with self-righteousness and driven by self-obsession, we ignorantly shun those with diverse beliefs, avoid those with alien ethnicity and minimal wealth and enact just laws to ensure that the tired, poor and impoverished masses don’t sully our neighborhoods and impact our property values whilst infringing upon housing association regulations. In short, as with all compartmentalized human society, there is more than a tang of hypocrisy wrapped in faux piety and the outward sheen of virtuosity camouflages those characteristics we would rather not display. The perversion of the original taxonomy of the Sins is clearly not a modern dilemma by any notion and one can trace the ambiguity of committing sin in order to appear virtuous throughout the annals of history.

 

Bibliography

Cantor. Norman F. University Press. In the Wake of the Plague.  NY. 2001. Print.

Dean, James M. Medieval English Political Writings. Medieval Institute. Michigan. 1996. Print.

Goddard. Langdon.Muller .Survival and Discord in Medieval Society. Brepols Publishers N.v.

Turnhout, Belgium.2010. Print.

Langland, William. Piers Plowman. Trans. A. V. C. Schmidt. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1992.

McKechnie, William Sharp. Magna Carta: a commentary on the great carter of King John. Glasgow. J.Maclehose and Sons, 1905. Print.

Newhauser, Richard. “On Ambiguity in Moral Theology: When the Vices Masquerade as Virtues.” Trans. Andrea Nemeth-Newhauser. In R. Newhauser. Sin: Essays on the Moral Tradition in the Western Middle Ages. Variorum Collected Studies Series, CS869. Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. Essay I.Print.

Prudentius. Psychomachia. Trans. H. J. Thomson. In Prudentius, vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library, 387. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1949, reprint 1969

Medieval Revolt and the Dialectic of the Icon

Instruments of Devotion and the

 Demise of the Icon with the Advent of Lollardry

 

            The idea that an image can convey a message is nothing new; in fact, the genre that society has become so familiar with through the medium of film and graphic novel can probably trace its roots back to the cave paintings in Lascaux in France. Although early man was illiterate, he was able to convey that which was important to him through imagery. In Lascaux we see images of what appear to be hunters chasing wild animals, many of which are now extinct. The only surviving record of them apart from their inanimate presence in the fossil records is the extraordinary animation they retain, despite the millennia they have endured, on the lime stone walls of the French caves. Just as primitive man wished to convey a message, so did those living in the Church-centric world of the Middle Ages. Despite the fact that literacy as a medium was not as prominent in the laity of the period, there existed a strong alternative through which “necessary” information could be conveyed. In exploring the significance of the medieval icon one can begin to understand the willingness with which it was accepted and the utility it supplied in supporting the hegemony of the Catholic Church. Not only did icons help to maintain the defacto power of the institution through their spiritual and financial exploitation, they also gave rise to a Reformist voice in the form of Lollardry. By comparing and contrasting both the importance and the controversy that surrounded reliquary and iconography and the reformist teachings and movements of the period, it is possible to identify some of the many reasons that led to the eventual collapse of the spiritual monopoly enjoyed by the Catholic Church.

            The medieval period bore witness to the sacerdotium, the earthly priestly hierarchy responsible for the salvation of souls. This meant that not only was the heavenly salvation of the public, via their earthly wealth, up for grabs, but so was their usefulness via their tacit acquiescence. In order to achieve these ends there had to be a means by which the people of the period, either through cognitive dissonance or religious indoctrination, would allow themselves to be manipulated. Through the coercion of Biblical readings, textual exploitation and most importantly iconography, the church was able to maintain its position of dominance and remain at the center of medieval life for many centuries. It’s the importance of iconography both literal and physical that is significant.

            According to Yale professor Keith Wrightson, who lectures on early medieval Catholicism in England, there were “myriad examples of functional iconography to be found within the churches and cathedrals of the period, where beautiful examples of medieval art were available to a God fearing public.” (115)  In particular the cathedrals of Ely, York and Durham offered the illiterate laity a visually rich religion. Access to God for the common man was through the Church and its sacraments and in particular through partionary prayer. By offering gifts or by venerating icons the supplicant was able to ask the painted, plaster saints to intercede with God on their behalf. Given that there was widespread illiteracy amongst the contemporary public and that the Bible was only available in Latin, the conveyance of the Biblical narrative was most successfully achieved through visual representation. “Rood screens, paintings, statues and religious relics were all stock-in-trade pedagogic ephemera to the Catholic Church.” (122)  The Stained glass windows, for example, in Exeter Cathedral depict in seven glass panels the wounds of Christ interconnected to images of the seven sacraments and served as a focus for congregational education and veneration. “The contrived link,” writes Wrightson, “between Christ and the Church precipitated community participation and a general understanding of what it was the Catholic Church was trying to convey.”(137) Similarly the devotion to the shrines of particular saints is well documented and those of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral and the great shrine of Saint Cuthbert in Durham were both important destinations of medieval pilgrimage. “Pilgrims would decorate icons with rosary beads and offer gifts for the dressing of statues… in the account books of contemporary church wardens the wills and generous donations of prominent parishioners can be found for the beautification and restoration of alters and chapels dedicated to favorite saints.” (136) The Christian religion of the medieval period lent itself to the aphorism that an image was representative of a thousand words and therefore, was nothing if not opulent.

            Although the word of God in the form of the Bible was of primary importance in proliferating Christianity, it was the instruments of devotion that helped to spread and sustain the faith. Concrete, albeit painted, evidence of a divinity that existed beyond the constraints of an earthly realm was necessary in order to excite the imaginations of the faithful and ensure sustained obedience to the teachings of the Church. This was demonstrated in ways which are still accessible to contemporary scholars. The iconography of the period hangs in museums and galleries, the tales of pilgrims on the road to Canterbury can be found in our libraries and the objects of medieval adoration can still be seen to this day in many European cathedrals.  Instruments of Devotion deals with the subject of iconography, its effect and its social, religious and political importance. The book edited by Henning Laugerud and Laura Katrine Skinnebach delves into the practices and objects of religious piety from the period of the Late Middle Ages onwards. This collection of lectures and essays, through which the editors offer well-researched historicism, documents the importance of religious imagery to both the Church and those who viewed it. The book describes in detail, what to contemporary society may appear as simply pictographs, the complex, instructional medium that helped to bind the common man to the Church and helped maintain it in its position of preeminence during a historical period when Christianity was at the center of public life. People lived in a God-centric universe defined by preordained estates and owed their allegiance and prayers to those who existed beyond the mortal plain. According to Laugerud, “… life on earth was simply the interim of hardship before the reward of eternal bliss.” (6) This being so, it was the duty of the Church to inform those of their congregation who were inevitably destined for heaven or hell of their options and what could be done on earth to assuage the demons of mortality and insure the angels of grace. By means of “visual theory,” (7) pictographs and artistic impression developed into a viable means of medieval pictorial technology. Successful information dissemination was therefore established via the medium of art.

            The chapter  Piety, Practice and Process which references an excerpt written by Henrik Von Achen, deals with the phenomenon of a rewarded life, where Henrik proposes that human redemption is not encapsulated within the limits of the soul but rather, that salvation was accessible through “books, pictures, music, and liturgical practices.” (24) Von Achen suggests that piety can be studied through the instruments of devotion that were utilized during the period. This being “true,” the religious ephemera which we still see in our modern society takes on a whole new meaning. Rather than gaudy, expensive and over expressive, the icons that have survived can be seen at their most basic as instructional and at their most sinister as religious propaganda. The traditions of “spiritual deference” (13) embodied within medieval art are an “important ingredient” (13) in understanding the medieval psyche. Von Achen suggests that “the instrument, or image, played a constitutional role in creating that special, intense, and existential meeting between God and the individual believer,”(14) and so rather than just color on canvas or paint on brick, iconography was fundamental  in what we today recognize as faith. Modern Christians may also speak of faith whereas the medieval characterization of the same religious emotion would be devotion or objectified fetishism; something which is still very apparent in the contemporary Roman Catholic Church.

            Given the position of the Church and its rivalry with monarchy in the temporal hierarchy of the estates, their ability to communicate and show the message of God would have been akin to being the owner of the only newspaper in town. Equally able to repress and promote the pertinent message of the hour, the Church was the sole source of doctrinal dissemination and the Rupert Murdoch of its day. In order to popularize their ideas, themes were a very important part of illumination. Recognizable Biblical characters and religious tracts were incorporated into art with the addition of recognizable human emotion. For instance, the image of the heart which we see time and again in clerical imagery is one that has been coopted to represent so many different things. In particular, in the iconography of the period, man’s immediate access to God through means of either Grace or heartfelt prayer. In ancient cultures the heart had consistently been seen as the source of reason but instead rose to prominence in the late medieval period as the center of human emotion, something with which our own society is still familiar.  Iconography created a common ground that reflected on the relationship between the art and the supplicant instead of the dogmatic teachings that had been common in earlier religious education. (27)

            The Medieval citizen, according to the essays edited by Flemming in the work Medieval Iconography and Narrative, “had a more inclusive concept of reality [and] … saw much more than we do.”(187) Knud Banning, one of the collected essayists, proposes that a modern day visionary is understood to see beyond what is the norm and in this sense can be applied to medieval supplicants of religious art. His essay, The Book and Church Wall, goes even further and boldly states that during the period, visions defined reality and that religious art was a means of “giving their own mysticism [substance and even] credibility. (187) Banning points out that although the experience of God is not within the art, it is the art that provoked the sense of Christ that was used as an aid to visualization during private moments of devotion and prayer. The evocation of Christ through familiar religious symbolism would probably have stayed with the devotee for the rest of their life. Hence, the importance of icons in rural churches, as well as those to be found in major centers of population. No matter the location and despite the fact that most congregations wouldn’t have been able understand the Latin used during the sermon, there would have existed a religious affinity, albeit with an individual image emblazoned upon their memory.

            “The importance of images had to do with the importance of sight and vision and their connection with knowledge and understanding.” (173) Fleming focuses particular attention in several of the collected essays to impress the idea of a story-board iconography that could impart this idea. The concept, for instance, of the painted Triptych which can be found in so many of our Cathedrals and galleries today is not an artefact of artistic whim, but rather a means of apportioned learning. The book delves into the process of conquering souls through intense focus, where the Triptych could be separated and used, much as a teacher uses a black-board, to educate congregations. Not only was it utilitarian in its pedagogical sense, but it was also a point of focus for prayer and supplication. Rather than an ephemeral, stylistic image of God in his heaven, a universal icon was available that could create a sense of unity and community. It wasn’t for nothing that pilgrims would progress to distant destinations to view a remarkable mural or observe a particular relic. It was precisely the visual that was their reward for their ardors and a moral boost to their already keen sense of what they believed: the imagery confirming their own “true” paths and ultimate destinations. According to the essay The Role of the Frontispiece or Prefatory Picture by Elizabeth Salter and Derek Pearsall, medieval scholars understood that “the theory of visual cognition became the common ground for all theories of vision in the Middle Ages.”(175) Saint Augustine writes in The Confessions, as they remark, “that sight is the chief of our senses in the acquisition of knowledge and is… the divine language”(175) and the modern aphorism of “a lust for the eyes” can be found in Augustine’s fifth century writings, although this was first emphasized in the Gospel of Saint John, which helped develop Augustine’s later comments on the importance of sight, when John writes, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” “The act of seeing was both a sacramental aspect and an aspect of identification.”(180) By persevering with the idea that religious devotion as well as religious hegemony  were of major importance to the Church, the book continues to define the icon as not simply  a work of art but as an “instrument of piety”(180) utilized as a medium for the “transference of grace.”(180) But this is perhaps a one sided view.

            The medieval period is renowned for the ecclesiastical iconography that framed both the ambition of the Catholic Church and its ability to maintain control over a servile population. Given that the tools of the trade were in the hands of Mother Church, one can easily envision how the ignorant masses were psychologically coerced: a classic example of knowledge being the key to power and the mysterious revelations of all things Biblical existing as the only moral route to heaven. In a society that was both controlled and ruled by the Church, an illiterate lay population would have been relatively easy to manipulate through the power of iconography and strict adherence to Church doctrine. The perception that clerical truth was the only tolerated truth was implemented via the teachings of the Church and through the iconic representation of religious lore. Professor Wrightson describes the resentment felt by those eager for the reform of an institution “that failed to castigate pride and worldliness, especially within its own organization.” (142) The use of religious icons to generate clerical wealth went far beyond scripture and consequently was unrepresentative of the teachings of God.

             One such dissenter to these contrived teachings, writes Christ Von-Wedel, was Erasmus of Rotterdam, “a seminal figure in the proto-protestant movement, whose ideas and dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church gave rise to the advent of other dissidents such as John Wycliffe and the Lollard movement.”(64) Erasmus, she states, was hostile to the privileges extolled by the Church and recognized the reverence to guilded saints as fraudulent and idolatrous, purgatory as a false doctrine and sermons for souls as a racket based on a misappropriation of  Biblical authority. As Erasmus was keenly aware, the worship of imagery was bound to induce clerical corruption given the esteem with which they were held by a supplicant laity. Erasmus of Rotterdam was a man more interested in a Bible centered faith than religious fetishism and famously remarked “that with all the true splinters of the cross to be found in the churches and cathedrals throughout Europe, there were probably enough to rebuild Noah’s Ark.” (66)

            This search for true faith, writes Dean, is evident in the anticlerical literature of the period and the denouncement of religious orders, such as the friars, in their ability to adhere to the pious lifestyles they proposed for others. William Langland’s Piers Ploughman is vociferous on this issue and can be read as a polemic in its clerical views and recognized as a piece of “early” propaganda for a religious alternative to the Catholic Church. “Langland’s narrator,” writes Dean, “consults friars – a Franciscan, a Dominican, an Augustinian and a Carmelite, respectively – hoping to learn what he calls the “graith,” the plain truth, but is dismayed that the friars instead denounce the rival fraternal orders or try to dun him for money.” (15) Langland writes of the familiarity the laity has with the clerical devices and the icons of the church, but of the inability of the individual to delve deeper into the true theology of the Bible.(15)  Langland’s dreamer remonstrates that many people know their prayers, their specific saints and canonical responses but little else. Dean points out that, “The implication is that the friars do not know the Creed, which was a charge often leveled against the fraternal orders.” (16) Awakening from the cognitive malaise in the belief of the power of the Church, Langland’s protagonist recognizes in himself that there is more to scripture than is being represented by the clergy and that the way to God is not through the veneration of reliquary and pilgrimage but through truth and personal spiritual supplication as witnessed by his quest for the characters of Lady Study, Clergy and Scripture.(90) The engagement with something deeper mirrors the concerns voiced by Erasmus and later by John Wycliffe and Martin Luther. There is an awareness, writes Langland, of  kynd  – “the father and maker of everything ever made” (87) – of something else, of an existential preexisting relationship between man and God that transcends parables, decorated alters and pilgrimages.

             The later emphasis given by the Church to the Ten Commandments instead of the Seven Deadly Sins, to the eventual detriment of the Church’s own hegemony, also reflected a conscious movement towards a tangible God, as evidenced by the first three of the commandments in the Decalogue that are all concerned with disavowing idolatry: a misstep perhaps of naïve, pious intent on the part of the Church? The earlier teachings of the Church, Bossy writes, as proposed by Augustine, were later accepted, along with the new moral code represented by the Ten Commandments, by both the Catholics and Lutherans, which included the prohibition of graven images (217) “As well as being a ritual and moral code … against the worshipping of strange gods… the rationale of the Decalogue was the prohibition of idolatry.”(217) It was thought that the movement away from the teachings of the Seven Deadly Sins in favor of the Decalogue presented a moral code that was more focused on one’s own obligations to God than it was to painted imagery and reliquary. Naturally this radical change in teaching met with opposition and support from both sides of the aisle and in particular Saint Antonio of Florence who decreed that equal time should be given to both the Sins and the Decalogue.(226)  Bossy suggests (226) that this schism was caused by business morality and not spirituality and may account for the climax of religious art in the mid sixteenth century by “artists who depicted the Seven Sins with more vigor than ever before” and who had never found true inspiration in the Ten Commandments. This historical switch between fundamental moral teachings can be seen in particular with the Church reformists such as the Lollards who in “an iconoclastic passion…destroyed a whole epoch of European visual culture.” (229) Thanks to the ethics of the newly revived Decalogue and the advent of religious reformism, idol worship became the fundamental enemy of all Christians.

            The Lollards, according to Rex were “a decentralized religious movement with no core belief system or doctrine…their ambition to remove the obstacle of the Church from a personal relationship with God was paramount in their aspirations.” (24) Rather than follow the obviously corrupt Catholic Church the Lollards used original scripture to further their religious goals. Recognizing, just as the dreamer had in Langland’s poem, that the Church had been corrupted by pride and self-aggrandizement in the pursuit of temporal wealth, it had metamorphosed into a misrepresentation of its own Christian heredity and therefore, Christianity as a whole. (27)  The Lollards insisted that chantries, dispensations and the idea of purgatory was anathema to the “true faith” and were merely instruments of clerical coercion in the control of the populous and the accumulation of wealth. The Lollards also expressed iconoclasm. The excesses of the Catholic faith were seen as wasteful and the money used to adorn churches and the like could better go to help the poor and the needy. The worship of idols and painted saints was perceived as derogatory to true faith, as it took away from that which was truly owed to God.

             This iconoclastic belief was inherent, according to Hudson, in what can be regarded as their spiritual manifesto, known as The Twelve Conclusions, which they posted in 1395 as testimony to their own beliefs.(71) Understanding the business like nature of the Catholic Church and its accumulation of wealth through reliquary and iconic representation as well as other insidious means, their first conclusion stated “forbid the acquisition of temporal wealth by any means as this was detriment to Christian values and led to greed.”(72) The eighth conclusion also attacked idolatry and directly referenced the worship of saints, the adoration of the image and the homage of the pilgrimage, all of which were central to the spiritual lives of medieval Christians. (72) The Conclusion points out the farcicality of reverence towards images and statues, “If the cross of Christ, the nails, the spear and crown and thorns are to be honored, then why not honor Judas’s lips, if only they could be found?”(59) This veniality towards idolatry and therefore by extension the religious icon  can be seen in later years with the advent of Protestantism and to a larger degree in Puritanism where everything representative of God and the scriptures was completely removed from the Church to the extreme that medieval images painted on church walls were white-washed over.

            Having compared and contrasted both the importance and controversy that surrounded reliquary, iconography and reformist teachings it is possible to identify some of the events and attitudes that led to the eventual collapse of the spiritual monopoly enjoyed by the Church. Although the Lollards were suppressed and some of their number burned at the stake, writes Rex, their ideas eventually succeeded to the point that the hegemony of the Catholic Church and the importance of iconology within the Christian tradition, especially in England, was eviscerated. (65) The relationship with God would become a personal one communicated by prayer and contrition rather than the adoration of ephemera. The relevance of iconography was that it established an important instrument of power wielded by the Church over its followers and the very real danger to the status quo of organized, centralized religion that the advent of the Lollards and their translation of the Bible as well as other reformists represented. Rome’s hegemonic power was experiencing a momentous destabilization that would eventually manifest itself as Protestantism, the rise of the Iconoclasts and eventual schism. The word would take the place of the symbolic which ironically, as we recognize from our own modern culture which thrives on advertising and product placement, would lead to the negation and demise of religion in Western society. No longer being able to experience theistic imagery would take away the personal experience of a painted God and instead resign human salvation to the black and white of Caxton’s press. The eventual preeminence, Bossy writes, of the Ten Commandments and the success of reformists such as the Lollards  meant that churches were stripped of their icons and religious murals and in their place, “above the denuded altars of English churches” (228) textual representations of the Decalogue were painted, replacing the Host, Lights, images and sacramental paraphernalia of the old regime (228) Illustrating this point, Thomas Hardy wrote in Jude the Obscure, “ The tables of Jewish Law towered sternly over the utensils of Christian grace.”(229) Therefore, the demise of reliquary and iconography was the consequence of the prohibition of worshipping false gods and a shift in religious teaching and reformist attitudes.

 

Bibliography

Ed. Flemming G. Andersen. Medieval Iconography and Narrative. Odense University Press.Odense.1980. Print.

Banning, Knud. The Book and the Church Wall. Ed. Flemming G. Andersen. Medieval Iconography and Narrative. Odense University Press.Odense.1980. Print. Ch 10.

Bossy, John. Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments. In Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe. Ed.Edmund Leites.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Paris: Editions de la maison de sciences del’homme,1988. Pp 214-34

Christ Von-Wedel, Christine. Erasmus of Rotterdam. University of Toronto Press.Toronto, ON. 2013. Print.

Dean, James, M. Six Ecclesiastical Satires. Medieval Institute Publications. Kalamazoo, Michigan.1991. Print. 

Hudson Anne. Selections from English Wycliffite Writings. University of Toronto Press. Toronto.1997.Print.

Trans. A.V.C. Schmidt. Langland, William. Piers Ploughman. Oxford University Press. New York. 1992

Ed. Henning, Langerud and Laura Skinnebach. Instruments of Devotion.  Aarhus University Press. Gylling, Denmark.2007.Print.

Von Achen, Henrik. Piety, Practise and Process. Ed. Henning, Langerud and Laura Skinnebach. Instruments of Devotion.  Aarhus University Press. Gylling, Denmark.2007.Print. Ch 4.

Laugerud, Henning. Visuality and Devotion in the Middle Ages. Ed. Henning, Langerud and Laura Skinnebach. Instruments of Devotion.  Aarhus University Press. Gylling, Denmark.2007.Print.Ch 10.

Rex, Richard. The Lollards. Houndsmill, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York: Palgrave 2002.Print

Ed. Keith, Wrightson and David, Levine. Poverty and Piety in an English Village.Terling. Oxford University Press, U.S.A. 1997.Print.

Damned and Blasted – Wyndham Lewis and the Modernists

        BLAST MAGAZINE AND THE ADVENT OF THE VORTICISTS

 

 

    Described by Hemmingway as the man with “the eyes of an unsuccessful rapist” and by his contemporary T.S. Eliot as “the most fascinating man of our time,” Wyndham Lewis, although not entirely resigned to the dusty book shelf of “Modernist” history, is a giant among the dead and nearly forgotten. A novelist, poet, artist, entrepreneur and soldier, among many other titles, he’s personifies the concept of the “Mask” to which Yeats often referred. Hidden behind the many visors of literary and artistic endeavor he was undoubtedly one of the driving forces behind the British “Modernist” art movement and the architect of his own brain child “Vorticism.” Wyndham’s pioneering work can perhaps be described through the analogy of the development of early aircraft which at the beginning of the century consisted of nothing more than rude mechanisms of wire and cloth and which, by the end of World War 1, had metamorphosed into engineering fetes of aerodynamics worthy of “those magnificent men.” One tends to forget the pioneers and remembers the entrepreneurs: those who take concept to the next level. In this sense Wyndham’s magazine “Blast” was just such a foundation stone, a necessary pioneering prototype in what would later lead to post-modernist magazines and the kinds of literature available to contemporary readers.

            “Blast” although leaning heavily on the work of Marinetti and “The Futurists” does have a style of its own and rather than concentrating on the phenomenon of speed and mechanical innovation recognizes instead the inevitability of modernity. Rather than simply embracing the idea of change, “Blast” documents word and image and in doing so exhibits a “new vision.” Just as the label “Vorticism” invokes that all change comes from the fringe, never from the center, the idea of a spinning vortex illustrates how radical “Modernist” thinking, emerging from the outer reaches of the artistic fraternity, would eventually move towards the main stream: not dissimilar to the imagery of a whirlpool or that of water disappearing down a sink. Influenced by the maelstrom of avant-garde interpretations “Blast” added its own literary and artistic ethos to the “Modernist” ideal and so was an addition to the movement rather than an innovator of it.

            “Blast” is both an “anti-magazine” and a polemic. In what appears ostensibly as a collection of random brush strokes, graphic art and impenetrable prose, it is synchronically unreadable in parts and fascinating in others. “Blast” although originally designed as a quarterly magazine only ever appeared in two issues. It had a limited readership and was poorly circulated by an artistic movement that created one gallery event that virtually nobody patronized. “Blast” and “Vorticism” was more an indication of mood rather than a literary movement. Stamped indelibly with British humor and tongue in cheek cynicism one has to wonder just how serious Lewis and his partner Ezra Pound were with their project? Not unlike the “Da Da” movement and their contemporary Tristan Tzara, the “Vorticists”, in the great tradition of breaking down institutional walls, clearly had their place.

            The fact that “Blast” is a polemic is self-evident by its manifesto. Contained within the first issue it appears to be more of a jibe at Britain, its place in the world and that of its neighbors, than a public declaration of “Vorticist” policies and aims. The use of text emboldened by disproportionate type-set attempts to emphasize reason and yet verges on the edge of gibberish. Once can almost visualize what it was that Wyndham was trying to convey but ultimately, thanks to the disparity of ideas that bear neither resemblance nor affinity to one another, the thread of thought and comprehension is dashed upon the rocks of juxtaposition. The descriptions are lurid even vague, the diatribe cutting and yet, one is left questioning the intent of Wyndham and his fellow artists. The writing in the manifesto portion is glib and asinine and so the reader is left with feelings of curiosity and bewilderment. The reader is purposely hindered in the pursuit of the idea that somewhere amongst the bombast of words hides a deeper meaning. Not unlike Biblical allusion where one is instructed in connotation, “Blast” holds a deeper secret that can only be revealed by its authors: a rash of words and prose that don’t stand upon a structured scaffold but rather like pebbles on a beach, even when collected together, offer no clue to their truth.

            Anti-disestablishment and none conformist the Vorticists “Discharg[ed] themselves from both sides” as they “bless and blast” those they list in no particular order in what appear to be random selections of what England is and what it will be. Although paying homage to the sanctity of the hairdresser and his professional equivocation with nature one has to wonder why? Is it supposed to shock, to make one sit up and take notice? Not dissimilar to the Sarah Kane play entitled “Blasted” (1995) that is both provocative and shocking, “Blast” is meant to elicit reaction. One doesn’t expect to be informed or enlightened by the contents of “Blast” but rather awakened. “Blast” is an assault on the senses; the thought process it creates delivering an incomprehensible literary slap in the face. Rather than adhering to literary tradition the magazine is an in-road to “Modernist” discourse. Following neither convention nor tradition, not dissimilar to “Bloomsbury dogma”, it blazes its own path through conventional expectation. It’s easy to dismiss the style as beyond logical, unreadable and unnecessary and yet ploughed between its furrows is the germ of something intangible. It’s the undefinable that the Manifesto attempts to list, criticize and praise; an esthetic and yet very real; the notion of something, rather than a clear image. One can almost grasp the intent but at the last second the prose are elusive and intangible. “Blast” is a magazine that’s provocative and witty but at the same time indecipherable.

            The magazine contains no commercial advertising and is not linked to any third party organization and so to suppose financial enterprise would be wrong. “Blast” simply exists in and of its own right, showcasing likeminded poets, authors and artists and appears to be a self-contained work of art distributed in order to influence. The magazine failed to garner recognition because of its intentional overt “Modernist” principles and was therefore an attempt – more than likely – at co-opting the notoriety of the “Futurists” in order to embellish the cache of its contributors. “Blast” even goes as far as to incorporate pseudo commercialism to entice its “readers.” Thumbing its nose at convention and the mediocrity of capitalism it advertises the advent of a nonexistent circus to the reader. The announcement heralds the impending arrival of an unlikely cast of circus performers and their animals upon an indefinite date “Some bleak circus, uncovered, carefully chosen vivid night that is packed with posterity!” The circus of course is pure fiction and will only perform in the theatre of the reader’s mind and is merely an allusion to the idea that “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players.” The humor is obvious when one realizes the entropy of performance art when paralleled with a society that serves exactly the same purpose.

            In what can only be attributed to proto “da-daism” there is an empty playbill with no text, no dramatis personae or story line that is randomly placed in the magazine. The blank playbill mutely questions the utility of acting and the necessity for traditional artistic endeavor when, as “Blast” continues to allude, life is nothing more than a play. The use of Shakespearian idioms unintentionally negates the “Modernist” crusade for an alternative voice. There is, as they prove by their own implication, no such thing as essence as everything is derived from something else: as expressed by “determination theory”. Society is created by contradictions and that is exactly what “Blast” offers: things only exist in relationship to one another and so everything is cause and effect. Consequently, “Nothing is bad, but thinking makes it so.” “Blast” demands this of the reader and although seeming to offer very little in the way of literary prowess, is a part of an optimistic experiment in mutual effectivity: the magazine on its readers and the readers on society. This cerebral provocation by “Blast” induces personal revelations which, once established, can never be forgotten. “Blast” rather than just a magazine is an important instrument in the universal dialectic.

            Not only does “Blast” contain a philosophical treatise but it also acts as a showcase for “Vorticist” poets and authors containing as it does, a selection of their poetry and short stories. As can be expected the selection isn’t the usual metered verse nor the delicate prose one reads to entertain oneself. The poetry of Ezra Pound is jarring, difficult and uncomfortable and listed under the self-effacing epitaph of “Poems.” This is almost a reminder, rather than a chapter header to the reader, to treat them as such, even if they liken more to “stream of consciousness” than poetry. Pound’s verse is deliberately obtuse and is an obvious attempt to separate the traditional from the modern. The sentiment of the Romantics and the Victorians is anathema to Pound and his fellow poets, who do all they can to distance themselves from conventionality.

            The short stories “Blast” contains run in the same vein. Difficult to read, they offer narrative commentary, dislocated text and open ended conclusions. There is little finality and the reader is left wondering at the experience. The stories pour cold water over reader sensibilities and leave one unfulfilled. Tradition and societal expectations are attacked and in particular, the institution of marriage in the story “Indissoluble Matrimony” by Rebecca West. Rather than the romantic notion of marriage one would expect to find in a comedy of manners or a “Bronte” novel, marriage is viewed as claustrophobic and inescapable: a predicament to be shunned rather than aspired to. “Blast” turns the “civilized” world on its head by declaring that which is supposedly beneficial to social felicity, as retrograde to human desire.

            “Blast” and “Vorticism” along with other “Modernist” concepts were knee jerk reactions to the past; metaphorical lines drawn in the sand that clearly stated that the era of “Romanticism” was gone forever. The First World War didn’t just destroy life and property but also obliterated the engrained attitudes and traditions of the proceeding century. Although similar to “Futurism” and Marinetti’s own manifesto, “Blast” was English centric. This probably accounts for its revival if not its longevity. The fact that the various pages are labelled as “Damned and Blasted” seems to be Anglo idiomatic and consequently pleasantly humorous. Although conservative in writing style, it was bold in design and content and if nothing else, controversial. A clear example of “Modernist” estheticism, “Blast” is a bare bones structure that emulates a period of perceptional and societal change. One does have the feeling that there is irony in the text and the question remains as to whether “Blast” is a work of art or a literary magazine. If a work of art then clearly Wyndham has the last laugh, as it was probably never meant to be read in the first place. The fact that “Blast” enjoys contemporary popularity proves that the passage of time and the inevitability of main-stream acceptance is the ironic evolution of every “Modernist” movement.