Laudator Temporis Acti

Language is speaking. It is my wish to convert as many colleagues and students as possible away from conceiving of language as a matter to be grasped with the eye fixed on letters and through abstract imagination, to assimilating it by speaking and hearing. In this way, and particularly by memorizing many impressive quotations, they will be imbued, so to speak, with the language.

Labels: typographical and other errors

A student of English literature who doesn't know the Bible doesn't know what is going on in English literature.

The most complete form of this myth is given in the Christian Bible, and so the Bible forms the lowest stratum in the teaching of literature. It should be taught so early and so thoroughly that it sinks straight to the bottom of the mind, where everything that comes along later can settle on it. That, I am aware, is a highly controversial statement, and can be misunderstood in all kinds of ways, so please remember that I'm speaking as a literary critic about the teaching of literature. There are all sorts of secondary reasons for teaching the Bible as literature: the fact that it's so endlessly quoted from and alluded to, the fact that the cadences and phrases of the King James translation are built into our minds and way of thought, the fact that it’s full of the greatest and best known stories we have, and so on. There are also the moral and religious reasons for its importance, which are different reasons. But in the particular context in which I'm speaking now, it's the total shape and structure of the Bible which is most important: the fact that it's a continuous narrative beginning with the creation and ending with the Last Judgement, and surveying the whole history of mankind, under the symbolic names of Adam and Israel, in between. In other words, it's the myth of the Bible that should be the basis of literary training, its imaginative survey of the human situation which is so broad and comprehensive that everything else finds its place inside it. Remember too that to me the word myth, like the words fable and fiction, is a technical term in criticism, and the popular sense in which it means something untrue I regard as a debasing of language.

So, the Trojans have struck you down and trampled on the oaths sworn.
Still the oaths and the blood of the lambs shall not be called vain,
the unmixed wine poured and the right hands we trusted.
If the Olympian at once has not finished this matter,        160
late will he bring it to pass, and they must pay a great penalty,
with their own heads, and with their women, and with their children.
For I know this thing well in my heart, and my mind knows it.
There will come a day when sacred Ilion shall perish,
and Priam, and the people of Priam of the strong ash spear,        165
and Zeus son of Kronos who sits on high, the sky-dwelling,
himself shall shake the gloom of his aegis over all of them
in anger for this deception. All this shall not go unaccomplished.

ὥς σ᾽ ἔβαλον Τρῶες, κατὰ δ᾽ ὅρκια πιστὰ πάτησαν.
οὐ μέν πως ἅλιον πέλει ὅρκιον αἷμά τε ἀρνῶν
σπονδαί τ᾽ ἄκρητοι καὶ δεξιαὶ ᾗς ἐπέπιθμεν.
εἴ περ γάρ τε καὶ αὐτίκ᾽ Ὀλύμπιος οὐκ ἐτέλεσσεν,        160
ἔκ τε καὶ ὀψὲ τελεῖ, σύν τε μεγάλῳ ἀπέτισαν
σὺν σφῇσιν κεφαλῇσι γυναιξί τε καὶ τεκέεσσιν.
εὖ γὰρ ἐγὼ τόδε οἶδα κατὰ φρένα καὶ κατὰ θυμόν·
ἔσσεται ἦμαρ ὅτ᾽ ἄν ποτ᾽ ὀλώλῃ Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς ἐϋμμελίω Πριάμοιο,        165
Ζεὺς δέ σφι Κρονίδης ὑψίζυγος αἰθέρι ναίων
αὐτὸς ἐπισσείῃσιν ἐρεμνὴν αἰγίδα πᾶσι
τῆσδ᾽ ἀπάτης κοτέων· τὰ μὲν ἔσσεται οὐκ ἀτέλεστα.

A solemn and moving profession of faith, proverbial in tone and language....This is the first general statement in Greek literature of the powerful dogma that Zeus always exacts vengeance in the end, and that it may spread into the transgressor's family. Agamemnon stops just short of saying that a man might die unpunished himself, but that then his descendants will suffer, a refinement developed in Solon and Aeschylus — see also Hesiod, Erga 282-5, Parker, Miasma 201 and H. Lloyd-Jones, The Justice of Zeus² (Berkeley 1983) 7f., 37, 44.

And so the king gave his daughter, Gisla by name, to be the wife of that same duke, and he gave the specified territory from the river Epte to the sea as an allod and property; and the whole of Brittany to live off.

Rollo was unwilling to kiss the king's foot, and the bishops said: "He who accepts a gift such as this ought to go as far as kissing the king's foot." And he replied: "I will never bow my knees at the knees of any man, and no man's foot will I kiss." And so, urged on by the prayers of the Franks, he ordered one of his warriors to kiss the king's foot. And the man immediately grasped the king's foot and raised it to his mouth and planted a kiss on it while he remained standing, and laid the king flat on his back. So there arose a great laugh, and a great outcry among the people.

Dedit itaque rex filiam suam, Gislam nomine, uxorem illi duci, terramque determinatam in alodo et in fundo, a flumine Eptae usque ad mare, totamque Britanniam de qua posset vivere.

Rolloni pedem regis nolenti osculari dixerunt episcopi: "Qui tale donum recipit, osculo debet expetere pedem regis." Et ille: "Nunquam curvabo genua mea alicujus genibus, nec osculabor cujuspiam pedem." Francorum igitur precibus compulsus, jussit cuidam militi pedem regis osculari. Qui statim pedem regis arripiens, deportavit ad os suum, standoque defixit osculum, regemque fecit resupinum. Itaque magnus excitatur risus magnusque in plebe tumultus.

• With Knee to Man Unbent
• Every Knee Must Bend

There is no remembrance of former things.

Non est priorum memoria.

Neither the rough landscape of thick woods and high mountains, nor powerful rivers with their rushing whirlpools, nor fortresses protected by their sites, nor cities by their walls, nor trackless stretches at sea, nor dismal expanses in the wilderness, nor hollows, nor even caverns beneath forbidding cliffs could baffle the barbarian hordes.

non densi nemoris, celsi non aspera montis,
    flumina non rapidis fortia gurgitibus,
non castella locis, non tutae moenibus urbes,
    invia non pelago, tristia non eremo,        170
non cava, non etiam tetricis sub rupibus antra,
    ludere barbaricas praevaluere manus.

167 non densi Ellis: condensi codd.
171 tetricis Ellis: metuendis codd.: nudis Bury

First, Io, I shall tell you about the wanderings on which you will be driven: inscribe them on the memory-tablets of your mind.

σοὶ πρῶτον, Ἰοῖ, πολύδονον πλάνην φράσω,
ἣν ἐγγράφου σὺ μνήμοσιν δέλτοις φρενῶν.

The 'wax-tablets of the wits' are a conventional but vivid metaphor for the faculty of memory (so e.g. Pind. O. 10.2, Aesch. Cho. 450, Eum. 275, Soph. Ph. 1325; further Sansone 60-2, 'Aesch. has only one metaphor for memory, and he uses it at least six times.' The phrase here implies close attention, as much as memory.

To grow up in ignorance of what is in the Bible or Homer is as crippling to the imagination as being deprived of the multiplication table.

Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n.

As for the points in dispute, although I know them well, I shall by no means make mention of them; for I consider it a sort of insane folly to investigate the nature of God, enquiring of what sort it is. For man cannot, I think, apprehend even human affairs with accuracy, much less those things which pertain to the nature of God. As for me, therefore, I shall maintain a discreet silence concerning these matters, with the sole object that old and venerable beliefs may not be discredited. For I, for my part, will say nothing whatever about God save that He is altogether good and has all things in His power. But let each one say whatever he thinks he knows about these matters, both priest and layman.

τὰ δὲ ἀντιλεγόμενα ἐγὼ ἐξεπιστάμενος ὡς ἥκιστα ἐπιμνήσομαι· ἀπονοίας γὰρ μανιώδους τινὸς ἡγοῦμαι εἶναι διερευνᾶσθαι τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ φύσιν, ὁποία ποτέ ἐστιν. ἀνθρώπῳ γὰρ οὐδὲ τὰ ἀνθρώπεια ἐς τὸ ἀκριβὲς οἶμαι καταληπτά, μή τί γε δὴ τὰ εἰς θεοῦ φύσιν ἥκοντα. ἐμοὶ μὲν οὖν ταῦτα ἀκινδύνως σεσιωπήσθω μόνῳ τῷ μὴ ἀπιστεῖσθαι τὰ τετιμημένα. ἐγὼ γὰρ οὐκ ἂν οὐδὲν ἄλλο περὶ θεοῦ ὁτιοῦν εἴποιμι ἢ ὅτι ἀγαθός τε παντάπασιν εἴη καὶ ξύμπαντα ἐν τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τῇ αὑτοῦ ἔχει. λεγέτω δὲ ὥς πη ἕκαστος γινώσκειν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν οἴεται, καὶ ἱερεὺς καὶ ἰδιώτης.

How very artfully you interweave
The counsels of the gods with your own wishes.

Mit seltner Kunst flichst du der Götter Rat
Und deine Wünsche klug in eins zusammen.

We are most willing to appeal to laws
When we can make them weapons of our wishes.

Wir fassen ein Gesetz begierig an,
Das unsrer Leidenschaft zur Waffe dient.

Do not, of thy pity, seek to cozen me with words untrue; for foulest of plagues do I account dissembling words.

                                          μηδέ μ᾿ οἰκτίσας
ξύνθαλπε μύθοις ψευδέσιν· νόσημα γὰρ
αἴσχιστον εἶναί φημι συνθέτους λόγους.

Here is the advice that Cecaumenus, a retired general, gives to a young man destined for a military career:

When you are free and not busy with a commander's duties, read books, both histories and Church writings. Do not say, 'What benefit is there for a soldier from ecclesiastical books?', for you will profit greatly from them. If you pay sufficient attention, you will reap from them not only doctrines and edifying stories, but also gnomic, moral and military precepts. Indeed, almost the entire Old Testament is concerned with strategy. From the New Testament, too, the assiduous reader will derive many precepts for the mind.

And again: 'Read a great deal and you will learn a great deal. Persevere, even if you do not understand, for after you have read a book several times, you will receive discernment from God and you will understand it.' And once more:

When you have taken a book, read it in private. After you have read a little, do not start counting pages or choosing passages you like best and reading only those. Nay, you should start from the cover where the text begins and read the book until not a single word is left, and in this way you will profit greatly. For it is the trait of a superficial person not to read a whole book twice or three times, but to pick some snippets out of it for the sake of chatter.¹⁴

14 Cecaumenus, Strategicon, ed. G.G. Litavrin, §§ 21, 46, 63, pp. 154, 212, 240.

• Opposing Voices
• Reading from Inclination or Duty

Life teaches us, and you will learn it too,
To be less rigorous with ourselves and others.
Mankind is of such strange complexity,
So variously made up and interwoven,
That to remain pure, to avoid confusion
Within ourselves or in our dealings with
Our fellow men, is possible to no one.
Nor are we meant to judge ourselves: a man's
First duty is to walk and watch his path,
For he can seldom rightly judge what he
Has done, and still less judge what he is doing.

Das Leben lehrt uns, weniger mit uns
Und andern strenge sein; du lernst es auch.
So wunderbar ist dies Geschlecht gebildet;
So vielfach ist's verschlungen und verknüpft,
Dass keiner in sich selbst, noch mit den andern
Sich rein und unverworren halten kann.
Auch sind wir nicht bestellt uns selbst zu richten;
Zu wandeln und auf seinen Weg zu sehen
Ist eines Menschen erste, nächste Pflicht:
Denn selten schätzt er recht was er getan,
Und was er tut weiß er fast nie zu schätzen.

The human soul was visualized as a citadel that had to be vigilantly guarded against external attack. Its weakest points were its gates which were five in number, corresponding to the five senses. The first gate, that of speech, needed to be fortified by the braces and cross-bars consisting in the constant recitation of Holy Scripture: in this way all undesirable entrants would be excluded. The second gate was that of hearing: it was essential not to admit through it any idle gossip or anything unseemly. The third gate, that of smell, had to be bolted in the face of all sweet scents which had the effect of slackening the 'tension' of the soul. The gate of sight was particularly exposed; hence it was important to see as few women as possible and avoid the theatre. The proper function of sight was to behold the beauties of nature. The fifth gate, that of touch, had to be guarded against soft clothing, comfortable beds and contact with other human bodies. It was not, however, sufficient to keep watch at the gates; the citizens living within the citadel of the soul had to observe 'stringent and fearsome laws' and to obey their own 'magistrates'.²⁸ Equally negative prescriptions applied to the morality of the body. A man had to abstain from fornication, drunkenness and gluttony, a woman from the use of perfume and artificial adornment. The body required only such care as was sufficient for the preservation of health.²⁹

Among the many vices and failings to which human beings are prone, some were viewed with a degree of reprobation that may appear to us rather bizarre. It is not perhaps surprising that in a period when foodstuffs were generally in short supply, gluttony should have been considered a grave sin, but it is not so evident to us that it leads to impure desires and licentiousness and is the gateway to all evil. Yet such was the prevalent opinion, and it was held that just as smoke drives away bees, so the glutton drives away from himself the grace of the Holy Spirit.³⁰ Outspokenness (parrhēsia) was also regarded as a great failing as was the sin to which monks were particularly subject, namely indifference of boredom (akêdia). On the other hand, mourning (penthos) was considered a virtue, especially necessary for monks, but commendable in everyone. Strangest of all is the condemnation of laughter: 'It is generally forbidden to Christians to laugh, and particularly to monks.'³¹ Christ, it seems, had never laughed. At the most, one could allow oneself to smile as did the Syrian saint Julian Sabas when he heard news of the death of Julian the Apostate.³²

28 John Chrysostom, De inani gloria, ed. A.-M. Malingrey, §23ff.

29 John Chrysostom, In epist. I ad Timoth. hom, iv, PG lxii, 524.

30 Antiochus, Pandectes, ch. 4, PG lxxxix, 1444.

31 Ibid., ch. 95, col. 1721. See discussion in I. Hausherr, Penthos, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 132 (Rome, 1944), 109ff.

32 Theodoret, Historia religiosa, ed. P. Canivet and A. Leroy-Molinghen, ii.14, vol. i (Paris, 1977), 224-6.

• Against Monastic Laughter
• Now Hear About Laughter
• No More Laughing, No More Fun
• Stop Laughing
• Don't Laugh
• Crassus Agelastus
• Did Adam Laugh Before the Fall?
• Against Laughter
• Agelasts
• Did Christ Ever Laugh?

The traditional English primers — Hillard & Botting may be named as their representative — are not an attraction but a deterrent. At this point I expect to be told by respected colleagues — in fact, I have so been told more than once: 'Are primers really so important? After all, you've got to learn your elements — a matter of cramming and drudgery, unavoidably; and it does you good. I did get my Greek from Hillard & Botting, and I learned it quite well, I dare say.' And one would, I suppose, have to admit that a gifted and devoted learner, and even a listless crammer, may acquire quantum satis from the dreariest manual. We could perhaps suggest that he would have worked more pleasantly and efficiently with a better primer; but what we cannot, within the bounds of politeness, tell him, and what he will never know, is the essential; namely, that his whole concept of Greek, and his attitude to it, has been distorted for life by that perverse first experience and its automatic sequel. But for Hillard & Botting and their like we would not be told, in this year of Grace 1973, that one learns Greek because 'it provides a valuable training of the mind' (crossword puzzles serve the same end at less expense) and that its supreme upshot is 'a really nice prose', parading Gladstone in the garb of Demosthenes, Macaulay à la Thucydides, and Spinoza πλατωνίζοντα. And 'verse', too.

Few youngsters of the present age will be attracted by goals like these, and we can no longer force them: they are free to choose. If they are to choose Greek, we must be able to offer them something better than these broken shells of a once flourishing rhetorical tradition. They expect by learning Greek — if they choose to learn Greek — to open up the way to experiences which no précis and no translation can convey. They are right in this expectation; but if it is to be fulfilled a lot of Greek will have to be mastered. A mere smattering — such as, for example, most theologians are given today — will not get them nearer the original message than (in fact, not even as near as) a competent and responsible translation; and a mere 'inkling' is not worth the time lost in securing it. They will then have to be taught effectively, and in a manner which can hold and stimulate their interest. These needs cannot be met by the Hillard & Botting type of primer.

I have written down these criticisms with much reluctance. They tend, however, to confirm a tenet which I have urged before; namely, that nobody today is able to write what could pass for original Greek, or for its equivalent. And why should we trouble to do it? Enough original Greek has been left by the original Greeks — and this is what we want to study.

Rawdon Crawley had already (apropos of play, of which he was immoderately fond) fought three bloody duels, in which he gave ample proofs of his contempt for death.

"And for what follows after death," would Mr. Crawley observe, throwing his gooseberry-coloured eyes up to the ceiling. He was always thinking of his brother's soul, or of the souls of those who differed with him in opinion: it is a sort of comfort which many of the serious give themselves.

Silly, romantic Miss Crawley, far from being horrified at the courage of her favourite, always used to pay his debts after his duels; and would not listen to a word that was whispered against his morality. "He will sow his wild oats," she would say, "and is worth far more than that puling hypocrite of a brother of his."

This attitude with respect to the past implies on the one hand a certain way of reading books from the past and also supports a certain consideration of the classics of the past. As to how we should read books from the past, two principles emerge from Strauss's books. One is that in order to understand a writer one must follow him, not guide him, trying to bear in mind all of the meander and apparent contradictions of his thought. For Strauss, the possible danger lies in the fact that a reader might superimpose his own notions of the past onto the past even before he discovers what the ancients thought of a particular issue. Hence, Strauss's lengthy discussion of the book by E.A. Havelock, The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics (1957) in the Review of Metaphysics 12 (1959): 390-439. Strauss does not like liberals in the modern sense; thus he does not like the attempt (indeed a weak one) by Havelock to single out a liberal tradition in Greek thought. Strauss's indignation is directed against the modern interpreter who replaces the thought of the author he is interpreting with his own personal thought: "Havelock takes it for granted that the modern social scientist, but not Hesiod, understood what happened in Hesiod or to Hesiod."⁶

6. Review of Metaphysics 12 (1959): 404.

It is typical of Strauss that in reaffirming his Judaism he should declare: "the most profound truth cannot be written and not even said." He also adds, "a secession from this world might again become necessary for Jews and even for Christians."

Strauss has been able to uphold certain principles of Arab and Jewish medieval philosophy in the contemporary debate between historicism and sociology; he has developed (under the influence of traditional methods of Talmudic exegesis) an original hermeneutics of texts; finally, he has proceeded from medieval thought to classical thought, not with the intention of rediscovering the modernity of the classics but of drawing inspiration from their example in order to fight the moderns. "Modernity has progressed to the point where it has visibly become a problem."²³

23. What Is Political Philosophy, 172. (See G.P. Grant in Social Research 31 [1964]: 45-72. Among the most recent writings of L. Strauss's [sic, read Strauss is?] "Notes on Maimonides Book of Knowledge," in Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented to G.G. Scholem. Jerusalem, 1967, pp. 269-83.)

On the north wall, the single symposiast prepares to try his luck at the kottabos game. He is sighting over his kylix, in which there are wine lees ready to be projected toward the target (not shown), as is being done by the nearer symposiast reclining on the central couch. The older man of the pair on the central couch turns his attention to the couple on the farther kline. Here the youth grasps his lyre to his chest while discouraging the advances of the older man who caresses his head.

He took the elementary teaching of Greek no less seriously, particularly for those beginning their studies in the Theological Faculty. In England (as also in Germany) Greek teaching was being more and more driven out of the schools, and he saw in this a fundamental task for the University teacher, without which all other endeavours would be built on sand. With tireless energy and pedagogical talent he introduced many generations of students to Greek language, culture and history, since his Greek courses provided more than simply basic knowledge. It is only too easy to understand that he disliked the narrow horizons of many young theologians, who were only interested in the fiction of 'New Testament Greek'. Professor Herington remembers:

how he would come into the staff Common Room after teaching one of these classes and announce to his colleagues: 'Well, I converted three of them to paganism this morning!' It was a joke; but the joke had a certain bite to it.⁴⁴

⁴⁴ Letter of 24 January 1994.