Words of Iron

"We must also be prepared, while we are reading Dante, to accept the Christian and Catholic view of ourselves as responsible rational beings. We must abandon any idea that we are the slaves of chance, or environment, or our subconscious; any vague notion that good and evil are merely relative terms, or that conduct and opinion do not really matter; any comfortable persuasion that, however shiftlessly we muddle through life, it will somehow or other come right on the night. We must try to believe that man's will is free, that he can consciously exercise choice, and that his choice can be decisive to all eternity. For The Divine Comedy is the drama of the soul's choice. It is not a fairy-story, but a great Christian allegory, deriving its power from the terror and splendour of the Christian revelation. Clear, hard thought went to its making; its beauty is of that solid and indestructible sort that is built upon a framework of nobly proportioned bones. If we ignore the theological structure, and merely browse about in it for detached purple passages and poetic bits and pieces, we shall be disappointed, and never see the architectural grandeur of the poem as a whole. People who tackle Dante in this superficial way seldom get beyond the picturesque squallors of the Inferno. This is as though we were to judge a great city after a few days spent underground among the cellars and sewers; it would not be surprising if we were to report only an impression of sordidness, suffocation, rats, fetor, and gloom. But the grim substructure is only there for the sake of the city whose walls and spires stand up and take the morning; it is for the vision of God in the Paradiso that all the rest of the allegory exists." ---Dorothy L. Sayers, from the Introduction to The Divine Comedy I: Hell.

Dorothy L. Sayers published her translation of Hell in 1949; she followed with Purgatory, but died before fully translating Paradise. It was finished by her good friend Barbara Reynolds.

When I was in high school we did read The Inferno, as John Ciardi halfway translated the title. Ciardi's translation and notes were written as a poet; Sayers' were written as a poet and a Christian, and I cannot help but think that hers is superior. It reads as clearer and more to the point, and, if I can use the term, snappier. I need to get the other two volumes of Sayers' translation. Years after high school I tracked down Ciardi's other two volumes and read them; I need to compare both works in their entirety.

Dungeons of Isengard Orc Captain

This is it. This is really, really it. The last, the very last LOTR action figure needed to complete my collection. Oh, sure, I could use a Gate Troll and a Fell Beast, but those are "special" items. This is the last figure: the Dungeons of Isengard Orc Captain. Or the Chef Orque des Donjons D'Isengard, as the Canadian bilingual packaging declares him.

And what a figure he is. Though no taller than most human-size figures in the line (6"), he has heft: he is the only fat figure in the series. Even his packing bubble is 1/3 deeper to accomodate his proportions. He is armored, mailed, booted, and gloved from toe to neck, and he carries an enormous mallet and an orc-sword that shows the design change from elf to goblin in it's ancestry. His head is mostly bald with a tripartite top-knot that shows off his pointed ears well. His beautifully sculpted neck-fat fold, his dark-circled yellow eyes, and his fangs protruding over blubbered lips all declare: Look out. Not only will he kill you, he will eat you. And not necessarily in that order.

What a lovely puncuation point he makes to my LOTR action figure collecting, and only 4 or 5 years since the movies concluded. Next: on to army building. And then, of course, The Hobbit. And thirteen dwarves...

UPDATE: Well, I have actually unpacked him and found out that part of what seemed a huge belly is really his armor. Also that his toes are sticking out of his leggings. And he has that most dreaded of action figure features, a mechanical action activated by a button on his back. But he's still great.

There is a Lady sweet and kind: Favorite poems

THERE IS A LADY SWEET AND KIND

There is a Lady sweet and kind,
Was never face so pleased my mind:
I did but see her passing by,
And yet I love her till I die.

Her gesture, motion, and her smiles,
Her wit, her voice my heart beguiles,
Beguiles my heart, I know not why,
And yet I love her till I die.

Cupid is winged, and doth range,
Her country so my love doth change:
But change she earth, or change she sky,
Yet will I love her till I die.

Anonymous, from Thomas Ford's Music of Sundry Kinds, 1607

Descriptive of an experience that has happened to me twice. When I heard James Blunt's song You're Beautiful I recognized it as a modern re-working of this theme.

Rambling Rant On Primitive People

Probably by now everyone has seen the photos of the "undiscovered" tribe in the Brazilian rain forest, threatening with spears and arrows the airplane that is photographing them. Recently it was revealed that these photos were released to dramatize the efforts of a group to protect tribes who had had no outside contact from the depredations of the logging industry in Brazil. The tribe was isolated, but had been known before-hand, especially by the group that had taken the pictures. Which raises several interesting points.

How pure can their culture now be said to be? For all we know, they might have had a rich and complex system of religion or mythology. Then this airplane flies over them. For all we know they might now worship the great white flying thing that buzzes and flappeth not. But we'll never know, because no one has contacted them before, and supposedly never will. The same people who claim to want to protect this tribe from contamination flies right over them. Sure, it's not Cortez, but if there's one thing I've learned from Star Trek, it's that First Contact can have unpredictable repercussions.

Are we treating these people like endangered animals? Everyone wants to preserve their way of life. This is being done by studying them from afar, making a protected prohibited environment for them, and keeping far away from them the dangers (and, let's face it, the advantages) of modern life. What I'm trying to say is, we are, in effect, making decisions for them. We decide they are going to remain in their primitive state. I would like to make contact with them, even if they're only going to tell us to beat it and leave them alone. At least we would be treating them like human beings and not like spotted owls.

I keep having this vision of twenty years from now. "Civilization" has inevitably encroached on these people, and a member of the tribe is angrily confronting some of the conservationists who had been deciding their fate, accusing them of doing nothing while he was pulling undigested nuts out of his poop to survive the drought and his father died of massive blood poisoning and seven of his children died before they were one year old. I hope I'm wrong. I hope they can live in peace. But can it really be at the whim of the myth of the "noble savage"?

Bender and Kif Kroker

Yesterday, thanks to the good efforts of my friend at Z's Toys and More, I got the two figures of Futurama Series Three by Toynami, Bender and Kif Kroker. With them came the final elements to complete the figure of the Robot Devil.

Bender Bending Rodriguez comes with three interchangeable eye units: angry, emotionless, and scared. His accessories include a bottle of booze, a can of Mom's Old-Fashioned Robot Oil, a pile of cash, and the Robot Devil's cane and top hat. His chest cavity actually opens so you can store stuff in there. I found the Robot Devil's top hat slightly disappointing because it has no hole or hollow in the crown; it is simply solid plastic and sits on top of the RB's head. It would have been sweet to have a top hat you could put on other figure's heads as well.

Kif Kroker, Captain Zap Brannigan's much put-upon second in command and boyfriend of Amy Wong, comes with a framed picture of Amy, the cowboy hat he wore in the episode "Where The Buggalo Roam," one of the enemy Ball aliens ("Balls Thoroughly Licked!"), and the Robot Devil's legs. His hat is completely wearable, but is big, blue, and cartoony. It looks like the Homer Simpson action figure could wear it with complete fittingness.

So now I had all the parts needed for the Robot Devil, and I quickly assembled them all. But "Oh what an appallingly ironic outcome!", one of his horns, which had fallen off months ago when I attached the head to the torso, has gone astray, so he is even now incomplete. I know I put it in a completely safe place. I just can't remember where, curse it. It'll turn up someday, I'm sure, when I'm looking for something else. Then I won't be able to find the body.

Coming in the future: Fry as Captain Yesterday, Bender as Super Robot King, Leela as Clobberella, Amy Wong, Calculon, and Lrr of the planet Omicron Perseii 8. What, no Professor?

Odds and Ends 2

We had to remove a baby raccoon from under my nephews room this week. We released it down by the creek at the bottom of the hill. Hopefully it will be too scared to come back.

The Book of the Damned by Charles Fort came in. I dipped into the first chapter and found the prose style very tortuous. Its hard sometimes to see what he's getting at, but he builds up to his point with a sort of slap-dash intensity, till you get an impressionistic idea of what he means. This might have something to do with the fact that he was largely self-educated and a journalist. Still, he has a kind of crackpot charm that comes through, and he makes you think about what he's saying while you try to crack what exactly that is. Charles Fort: The Grampa of the Paranormal.

Saw an article about a study someone did on intelligence using the members of Mensa as a study group, and they found out that among the male members the smartest had this thing in common: they all had very hairy backs. By this criteria I must be freakin' Einstein.

My fortune cookie this Sunday: "The weather is wonderful." I think this is an opinion, not a fortune. Unless it's meant like, you know, metaphorically. I almost felt like asking for my future back.

Favorite Poems: Ode

ODE

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams:

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world forever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world's great cities,

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire's glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song's measure

Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And o'erthrew them with prophesying

To the old of the new world's worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth.

Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, 1844-1881

Probably some of you will recognize a part of this poem from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I love this poem because it discusses a fact I find fascinating: the ability of dreams, imagination, and ideas to impact the reality of the world. A lot of people will tell you we have to deal with things the way they are, as if they were immutable, when much of what cheeses us off is that way because people make it that way. I connect this poem with a small clump of quotes. One is from Peter Gabriel's Mercy Street: "All of the buildings, all of the cars,/ Were once just a dream in somebody's head." Another is from Shakespeare: "Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so," which I associate not so much with moral relativism as that attitude towards facts can be formed by the terms we apply to them. In ancient Ireland bards could bring down a chieftain simply by writing such biting satirical songs that no-one, not even his warriors, would ever take him seriously again. Language is a potent tool; if you don't have the words or terms to express what you mean your very ability to think about something is diminished. But each new word you learn broadens your ability to speculate and add new shades of thought. So it is not the hard-headed realists who change the world in the most profound ways, though they can be masters of manipulating the system as it stands. It is the poets and dreamers who are "the movers and shakers", to use the phrase misappropriated by the money people in the 80's.