beauté de la souffrance

La Valse d'Amelie - Yann Tiersen


beauté de la souffrance.....a subject my thoughts turn to occasionally. this poem by Hopkins that I studied in 20th century literature helped me express my understanding of the mystery of suffering and the possible hand of divinity within its experiences. 

The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerald Manley Hopkins is a contemplative meditation on his philosophical view of suffering. Its also a compassionate dedication to five Franciscan nuns aboard the ship who were exiled from Germany on account of their Christian Faith whose ship runs aground in a December blizzard in the year 1875. In Hopkins’ contemplations of original sin, suffering is the only means to attaining wisdom due to the sins of man. A key principle behind the poet’s writings is the theory of inscape and haecceitas. (1. Haecceitas is the premise that everything is loved into existence. It is the unique essence beyond the unifying essence. In other words, creation pulses with the heart of God and this is a constant reminder of His existence. Through nature He is reflected like a mirror, and His fingerprints are pressed indelibly on all things perceived by our senses, the physical world, and even moments in history. 2. Inscape is the uniqueness of a thing, the oneness of its being in which it expresses its purpose of creation. 3. Instress is a passionate perception directed to an object, a sudden revelation. Through this moment of epiphany comes an understanding of inscape.) However, secular philosophies do not expressly define inscape in a religious sense as does Hopkins, making his profoundly distinctive. Suffering in itself is so often misunderstood by the majority of humanity, being strictly avoided by the “common sense” to seek happiness and evade unnecessary discomfort. Conversely Hopkins delineates his viewpoint with shocking language to startle the common projections of modernity, prodding the reader’s conscience. Observably the poet recognizes suffering in this mystical, haecceitas sense that suffering is unavoidable. God is contrastingly illustrated as “lightning and love”, as “winter and warm”, a strong connection to the necessary paradox of suffering and love. His creation is palpable, stimulated by feeling, and not comfortably numb as a mass amount of humanity wishes or strives to be if they cannot attain happiness on this earth. The storm is a symbolic imagery of God’s love through suffering, its role plays as an inscape to the power, beauty, and majesty of God. Through the beauty, glory, and deadliness of this elemental nature we see the beauty, glory, and deadliness of the Hand behind its force. In a sense all points to Him because He willed all into being. Captivated by the terrifying face of the storm, which depicts the terrifying face of God’s wrath, the poet is faced with the frightening actuality of capitulating to this unavoidable reality. He is stricken by the “frown of his face before me, the hurtle of hell behind…and fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.” This moment of instress is a reminder of the presence of God found in suffering and also elemental power. God is not to be blamed entirely for the horrors we come across in living. The line “hard down with a horror of height, and the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress” aptly describes how life itself can be in many cases. In Hopkins’ inscape he points back to where the roots of horror stem from man’s original sin. Because of humanity’s weakness and forgetfulness man either has no understanding of suffering or he wavers in the face of suffering and “horror”. But in reality the death of each of these drowning individuals is a gateway to their life. Death in itself is a painful experience for all and it is necessary to attain true happiness. The crucifixion is the ultimate inscape of love and suffering, and even the greatest saints received the worst sufferings as a gift from God for willingly choosing to suffer in His name. In His words “there is always respite in suffering, an ark available to all who repent.” I see the storm as a symbol of God’s love.... As we pursue the paradoxical mystery of haecceitas, it becomes evident that these two are never separated: suffering and love.  With the knowledge of such comes a deeper inscape to true justice and democracy.  Hopkins, through his language of poetry, strives to relate the most puzzling and seemingly contradictory message to his audience.  Suffering has never been, and most likely will never be fully understood or accepted. Particularly by myself. Its no wonder the reader is struck when realizing Hopkins’ message is that when God seems to wring our heart out in anguish at times until it bleeds with its wounds and we cry out “Enough!” in hurt outrage, He was actually lovingly fondling it all along. Meditating upon that we find this is the very opposite of numbness. Our vulnerability to His love is like a raw nerve. The realization of this, whether through literature or a moment of inscape, is truly shocking, as it entails so much feeling. Studying the character of the nun, we see her as an instrument making music amidst a babble of torment. Tolling like a bell, she is bringing, or rather singing souls to Christ. Amidst all this the nun is being continuously spat at by the waves, stung and blinded even as she prays. She is banned from the land of her birth for her Christian faith, hated and exiled by her people, and yet she joyfully embraces a situation that most people would admit as a personal moment of despair. And this leads us to the crucifixion, which is the mystical meaning of love, the ultimate love in suffering. The crucifixion is basically as deep as it gets. The nun baptizes her worst moment with prayer, and she has her reward throughout all this suffering. “She has Thee for the pain.” She really is the finger of providence; a St. John the Baptist figure. Her voice above the pounding waves to the despairing sailors is like a bell to ring the love of God into the sheep’s’ heart, to startle them back to safety, back to their Shepherd. It is a reminder that God is also the ancient lord of death, and that the storm is necessary to put things right, to bring peace. Unbeknownst to the sailors, God is lord of the storm, He is in it. In Thomistic language, God is staunch. Staunch is to stop and to heal. He stops, prevents, and heals. God is quench. Quench is to satisfy, to put out. That which extinguishes the desire satisfies it, for example, you cannot look at the crucifixion without looking at and understanding the resurrection. They go hand in hand. Again, God is kind as in kindred, king and kindly. Royally reclaiming His own through storm and suffering in these three senses. It is then we come to grasp that our true home, our true ultimate happiness, is solely to be found in the love of Christ’s burning fire...

"autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay..."

la dispute - yann tiersen

"Madness, provided it comes as a gift from heaven, is the channel by which we receive the greatest blessings.... If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a great poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman."

--Plato

Autumn approaches… been reading the French poet Peguy, studying the German language with my little sis, transforming my diet to a whole new level of health (thanks to my family’s newly enforced dieting menu plan). Gah I just want a donut. Enough with the salads, fruit, and microscopic portions of oatmeal. Barefoot running every other day, and noticing a steadily increasing passion for running, and longer distances. Born to Run by Christopher McDougall honestly changed my perspective on life, I keep that book next to my bible. The incessant rainstorms here in Florida give ample room for meditating, reading, and my sewing projects. This skirt pattern I’m working on is making me a little uneasy, as its being hand-sewn. I need a machine…this is gunna take forever!!!


         Milton is one of my favorite poets, and Paradise Lost my favorite book. Whether it is theologically accurate or not doesn’t concern me, I just simply love the brilliance of Milton’s mind, woven in beautiful language throughout this literary masterpiece. Book IV is particularly my favorite, as I find it the most intriguing. Milton expresses, through profound use of prose, the powerful linguistic seductions of Satan to Eve. Easily said, Satan’s intention is to find either Adam or Eve and persuade them to disobey the command of God by eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Preferring to find Eve alone in the garden, he gleefully spots her alone and confronting her in the form of a snake he proceeds to carry out his evil quest in different manners of speech. He starts with excessive praises of her beauty, her superiority to man, and her near likeness to divinity. Eve (oh Eve…) is amazed that a snake can talk and intrigued, she questions him as to how this came to be. He tells her that he was endowed with this power because he ate the fruit of a certain tree and that she too can have this power and knowledge. He then leads her to the alleged tree where she recognizes the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan then persuades her into thinking that she is superior to all creation and with these delusions of grandeur she begins to desire to be ranked parallel with God. She eats of the fruit and immediately fears her separation with Adam regarding her fate. Running to him she persuades him to eat of the fruit as well and share her fate. Because of the unique language of Satan and the use of reason, observation, scientific language, and experience in his discourse with Eve, his devious wiles prove effective, with fateful consequences. So, his intelligence, knowledge, and experience impress her and in her naivety she trusts him…

I see this story in Genesis as a very figurative tale, told in this form simply to inform mankind of his weak nature, and the necessity of avoiding and learning from our mistakes. The seducer/snake/satan/whatever could be anything that tempts us into sin. Satan appears to Eve in the physical form of a serpent. He is precisely described as a “Mere Serpent” and this most likely means that he was simply a serpent and not the half-woman and half-serpent that he was often depicted as in paintings before and during Milton’s time. He approaches her as a majestic serpent and tries to “lure her eye” towards him. In his first speech to Eve he primarily flatters her beauty with smooth compliments. He works on her pride and takes advantage of her naivety out of extreme envy and hate: “what hither brought us, hate, not love, nor hope/ Of paradise for Hell, hope here to taste/ Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy…other joy/ To me is lost.” He calls her “sovran mistress” and his use of this word sovran brings to mind when he previously called the fallen angels by this adjective as well. Not only is he everything despicable and filthy, but he’s also redundant… Ok, so then he describes his state when in her presence as: “I approach thee thus, and gaze/ Insatiate,” While flattering her with this adjective it also seems to represent in a way his defective view of all creation as desiring something insatiate. He talks about how the animals do not appreciate her beauty and are “shallow to discern half what in thee is fair”. He verbally notes also that she is appreciated by one man only when he says, “one man except/ Who sees thee? (and what is one?)” And he tells her she deserves and ought to be recognized as a goddess ceaselessly by a numberless amount of angels: “who shouldst be seen/ A Goddess among Gods, ador’d and serv’d/ By Angels numberless, thy daily Train.” By this point Eve does not seem to be entirely taken in by his cajoling but rather, astonished and intrigued that an animal has the power to talk. Satan continues to play on her pride, working on this as he’s already got her curiosity rather peaked. He goes further, placing her in equality with God Himself: “But all that fair and good in thy Divine/ Semblance, and in thy Beauty’s heav’nly Ray/ United I beheld; no Fair to thine/ Equivalent or second, which compell’d/ Mee thus…to come/ And gaze, and worship thee of right declar’d/ Sovran of Creatures, universal Dame."

After his praises in the physical aspect he moves on to talk of interior facets, in particular the ability to reason. He claims the fruit of the tree instilled in him a higher degree of reason: “Strange alteration in me, to degree/ Of Reason in my inward Powers,” Still unwary and amazed, Eve asks him to bring her to this tree but upon seeing it she recognizes it as the tree forbidden by God, saying, “Serpent, we might have spared our coming hither/ Fruitless to mee, though Fruit be here to excess…of this Tree we may not taste nor touch;/ God so commanded, and left that Command/ Sole Daughter of his voice; the rest, we live/ Law to ourselves, our Reason is our Law.” Basically, she’s stating that His command was revealed merely through a voice from Heaven and more of a revelation than an absolute direct command. She therefore mitigates God’s strict forbiddance to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and particularly notes her independence outside of this divine command, relying on her reasoning as law. Perhaps this is because of her interest and belief in the serpent’s story and because of a desire to partake in the fruit as well. Satan then claims that using the great power of the tree to reason he can scrutinize this questionable imposition and sympathize with man. He boldly questions the justice of God for inflicting death on His creation, saying “I feel thy Power/ …to trace the ways/ Of highest Agents deem’d however wise.” After presenting God’s command as questionable he goes on to claim it as completely untrue: “Queen of this Universe, do not believe/ Those rigid threats of Death; ye shall not Die.” He speaks of death as a trivial and vague thing, “the pain/ Of Death…whatever thing Death be”. He argues that God cannot therefore be a good or just God if He causes her to be inflicted with death or pain of any kind… (this always makes me think of the subject of suffering as expressed in the Wreck of the Deutschland). “God therefore cannot hurt ye, and be just;/ Not just, not God; not fear’d then, nor obeyed:/ Your fear itself of Death removes the fear.” He then concludes that the reason for God’s command to not eat of the fruit assuredly was to keep man in constant awe or fear, and in ignorance of true knowledge and from sharing in His divine power. He says “Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe,/ Why but to keep ye low and ignorant,/ His worshippers; he knows that in the day/ Ye Eat thereof, your Eyes/…shall perfectly be then/ Op’n’d and clear’d, and ye shall be as Gods” He finishes by entreating her to eat of the fruit: “Goddess humane, reach then, and freely taste.” His paradoxical name for her touches on the possibility of soon becoming god-like and is also a reminder of her mere and impaired humanity if she does not eat the fruit. 
I find it extremely hard in understanding Milton’s character of Satan… He’s complex, inhuman…just utterly void of life. Through his spite Satan causes Eve’s loss of salvation and hope because of his own dire loss of all salvation and hope. In using his deft guile Satan is too often successful in snaring unsuspecting or careless souls. Milton aptly relates the state of these two creatures that have fallen from the grace of God through the sin of pride, and to the strong tendency of modern man towards pride. As Eve was foolishly seduced through her vanity and naivety, Adam was quite un-involved in her protection and weakly convinced by her entreaties. This lack of Manliness on is part is equally matched by her degenerated role as Woman. Purity and Strength are a battle worth fighting for, and this story hopefully will serve solely as an example of what to personally avoid every.single.day. Eve’s false perception of herself as impaired, compared to the serpent, is ironical because her soul is pure and the serpent’s is not. It seems that overall Milton was trying to express a depiction of and his profound sorrow for a fallen humanity. It seems he is relating this knowledge of the origins of mankind’s fallen state to us so that mankind will fight to regain once again his Paradise lost.

"Hope is a little girl, nothing at all…

What surprises me, says God, is hope. 

And I can’t get over it. 

This little hope who seems like nothing at all. 

This little girl hope." - Peguy