Agatha Christie and the Latin Mass

The detective/murder story is arguably the most philosophical form of popular fiction. The sleuth, confronted with a set of clues that present themselves as a puzzle that baffles the ordinary man, must use his superior powers of reason, logic and deduction, as well as his insights into human nature - powers of the mind - to expose a hidden truth; it is an inherently intellectual enterprise. The genre is also deeply moral and even theological in as much as it concerns justice and the battle of good against evil. Murder is a primordial sin; the detective represents order, law and civilisation itself. Thou shalt not kill. Every whodunit concerns eternal themes of guilt and justice.

It is a great pity then that, in popular culture, the genre has now degenerated such that the detective is no longer the hero; instead he has been displaced by the forensic scientist, the man in the white coat, who solves the crime using not raw nous but rather the technology of the laboratory. Science has eclipsed philosophy. While the moral dimension remains (usually), it is less a theological quest and more a technocratic problem in which there is little sense of cosmic violation and even less of original sin.

In classic detective stories - those of Agatha Christie, for instance - the reader is always left reflecting on the mortal condition. The crime is solved but human imperfection remains. In the more recent TV crime shows we are left marvelling at the wonders of science instead. Science itself is the focus of such shows. The detectives are shallow and forgettable as characters and the crimes are either banal or unnecessarily perverse. The microscope is the hero.

This is a failing away into a tawdry secularism. In its classical form the genre is deeply religious - which is to say in most Western contexts, Christian. A story like Murder on the Orient Express is morally complex, and is so in a specifically Christian way. The background and assumptions of such a story are those of a Christian society. Not surprisingly, such stories are often decorated with overtly religious motifs and the genre has attracted strongly religious writers, Chesterton's Father Brown mysteries being an example. Christie herself is often cited as a distinctly Christian writer. As she admitted, her early stories took the form of simple Christian morality tales. As she grew in her craft her stories grew in complexity and became more morally nuanced, but there can be no doubt that they are all the product of a Christian moral sensibility.

* * * 

Officially, Agatha Christie - touted as the world's most read author following the Bible and Shakespeare - was an Anglican. Her parents baptised her an Anglican as a child and she remained in the Church of England throughout her life. According to their station in British society, they were of the so-called 'High' Church. Her mother, however, had broad spiritual interests and introduced her daughter to both Catholicism and some of the 'occult' traditions, theosophical and orientalist, that were then in fashion, especially among educated ladies. These more esoteric interests are reflected in Agatha's passion for archaeology and archaeological research into ancient and arcane traditions, these matters forming the background to some of her more exotic stories. Her Christianity took shape less in overt churchgoing than in the lifelong practice of reading Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ before going to sleep at night; it was, it is said, her constant bedside reading (a habit she passed on to one of her most famous literary creations, the spinster sleuth Miss Marple.) Her second husband Max Mallowan was a practising Catholic but as a divorcee he - and his wife - were forbidden from taking the sacrament at mass.

Despite this unquestionably Christian and indeed Anglo-Catholic background, it is nevertheless largely an incidental matter by which Agatha Christie's name has become associated with an important aspect of Christian sanctity. Almost by accident, she has become known for efforts to preserve the traditional liturgical legacy of the Catholic Church. It happened thus: In the wake of the deconstructive self-vandalism of the Second Vatican Council and the modernising papacy of Paul VI, especially the introduction of the 'New Order' 'hippie' mass in the vernacular, leading British intellectuals and public figures fought to retain the old Latin or Tridentine liturgy. A petition was presented to the pope urging him to reconsider the scope of his reforms. Here is a list of those who signed it:

Harold Acton, Vladimir Ashkenazy, John Bayler, Lennox Berkeley, Maurice Bowra, Agatha Christie, Kenneth Clark, Nevill Coghill, Cyril Connolly, Colin Davis, Hugh Delray, Robert Exeter, Miles Fitzalan-Howard, Constantine Fitzgibbon, William Glock, Magdalen Gofflin,, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Ian Greenness, Jo Grimond, Harman Grisewood, Colin Hardie, Rupert Hart-Davis, Barbara Hepworth, Auburn Herbert, John Jolliffe, David Jones, Osbert Lancaster, Cecil Day-Lewis, Compton Mackenzie, George Malcolm, Max Mallowan, Alfred Marnau, Yehudi Menuhin, Nancy Mitford, Raymond Mortimer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Iris Murdoch, John Murray, Seán Ó Faoláin, E. J. Oliver, Oxford and Asquith, F. R. Leavis, William Plomer, Kathleen Raine, William Rees-Mogg, Ralph Richardson, John Ripon, Charles Russell, Rivers Scott, Joan Sutherland, Philip Toynbee, Martin Turnell, Bernard Wall, Patrick Wall, E. I. Watkin.

They argued that the outright abolition of the Tridentine rite was ill-considered and impoverishing and that the old rite had a special historical significance for British Catholics, and they requested a disposition from Pope Paul to allow the old rite to be continued among those who preferred it. The modernising pontiff was notoriously impatient with those who wanted to cling to the old forms and who resisted his reforms, but it is reported that when he cast his eye over this petition and came to the name 'Agatha Christie' he stopped and said, "Oh. Agatha Christie!" and relented. The resulting indult (papal permission) that gave (limited) license to continue the Latin mass in England is accordingly known as the Agatha Christie Indult, and the original petition the Agatha Christie Letter, making her name synonymous with the struggle to preserve the traditional rite.

Aside from the undercurrent of Christian morality in her detective stories, and their concern for what are undoubtedly Christian themes, this - unwittingly - is the great contribution Agatha Christie made to the Christian faith. Her reputation, the import of her name on a petition, swayed a pope.

* * *

The story of the Agatha Christie Letter came up in conversation the present author was having with Catholic friends who regularly attend the Latin mass. Although she was not herself a Roman Catholic Dame Agatha (Lady Mallowan) is reported to have regarded the Mass of Paul VI (Novus Ordo) as a desecration and an abomination and an unwarranted deviation from tradition, as did the other non-Catholics who signed the petition. A great many Catholics feel the same. Since it was first introduced in 1969 the 'Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite' promulgated by Paul VI has been subject to withering criticism both within and beyond Catholic ranks.

It is no small matter. Liturgy is the great treasure of the Catholic tradition, just as music and song are the treasures of the Protestant tradition and iconography is the treasure of the Orthodox. No one questions the right of Popes and Councils to make appropriate revisions of the liturgy from time to time, and thus to maintain a living tradition that responds to the needs of changing circumstances, but the Mass of Paul VI was a comprehensive and radical break from tradition, a reform that did far more than revise and adjust: it completely overturned many of the norms of the Tridentine rite and all previous rites before it.

Leaving aside serious questions about its theological validity, it is artistically and aesthetically inferior, lacking in solemnity and devoid of the spiritual depth characteristic of the traditional liturgical forms. This is obvious to even a casual observer with no religious sensitivity at all. The 'new mass' is banal and uninspiring; it trades sanctity and solemnity for the cheap virtues of inclusiveness and accessibility.

Yet the old rites still have a dedicated following and, as the Agatha Christie Letter shows, have had since the time the changes were first made. There are traditionalists, and re-creationists (people not necessarily of the Catholic faith who love the liturgy for its historical and aesthetic qualities) preserving the old forms.

* * * 

Below is a video presentation of an historical re-creation prepared by a Swedish Dominican group of the Latin mass for 4th October 1450, the eighteenth Sunday after pentecost. The introduction in Swedish is as follows:

"Five hundred years ago, the universe seemed much more understandable than it does for us. All of existence was framed by a number of ceremonies and behavioral patterns which were a matter of course for people at the time. And the most important of them was the Holy Mass - that ring of charged words and actions which surround the central mystery in the Christian faith: That Jesus becomes man anew in the creatures of bread and wine. 

"We have reconstructed a High Mass from 500 years ago in an ordinary Swedish parish church, namely in Endre Church, one mile east of Visby in Gotland. We imagined ourselves to be participating in this high mass on an autumn Sunday in the middle of the 15th century. It is local people who are participating in clothes typical for the time, and we have tried as much as possible to reconstruct [something to do with (worship) services] in the Diocese of Linköping at that time - since Gotland belonged to that diocese. 

"The service is conducted in an incomprehensible language, a language incomprehensible to the people: Latin. Because church services at the time were not considered a medium for communicating information, except for silent prayers. Just as one cannot describe what is fascinating about a melody or a sight, one shouldn't be able to understand or describe the central mystery of the universe. The congregation waits for the central moment, when the bread and wine shall be transformed into the body and blood of Christ. 

"The priest was helped by a chorister, perhaps the [experienced?] youth whom [his soul has discovered?] and who with time would be sent to Linköping in order to attend the cathedral school. Songs, mostly from the Bible, were sung by the local cantor. We don't know exactly how the music went in the medieval churches. Maybe Endre Church had a specific order which required a qualified cantor like the one we shall see here. 

"The Sunday service began when the priest sprinkled Holy Water on the congregation. This was to remind them that they had become members of the Christian church through baptism. The Holy Water would drive away all the powers of evil. 

"Let us now place ourselves in the Middle Ages. Let us try to grasp the atmosphere in a normal Swedish parish church, in a time where man still believed himself cast out into an empty, cold existence, when Europe was still unified, and when the central mystery around which everything revolved was that Jesus Christ, had become man, had died, and risen again for all."

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

The NRx Hillbilly - Restoring A Traditional Music

These pages rarely mention matters of music, the chief reason being that the author is himself musically illiterate. At a young age he decided to concern himself with literature and painting – silent arts - and to forgo the arts which were more popular among his peers, namely cinema and rock. It is not a choice he regrets, although he does feel that his insensitivity to music is an impairment of sorts. He is very aware of its universality and especially its pride of place in the traditional Platonic/Pythagorean curriculum. Other than an incidental exposure to the ubiquitous and banal rock/pop of his youth, the only time he has come into close proximity to anything resembling real, living music was a period of two years adrift in an Irish Catholic bluegrass scene in his early twenties and then, at the higher end of the scale, exposure to Chopin and classical piano in the home of a mentor later in life. 

The truth is, though, that he rarely listens to music and instead relishes the increasingly rare pleasure quietude. Indeed, it seems to him that there is rather too much music in the world. The world is awash in music, especially in the pop genre, such that it is very hard to get away from it. People now do everything accompanied by music – recorded music. The worst of it is in eating establishments. It is almost impossible to find a restaurant or café that does not inflict inane pop tunes upon its patrons, often at volumes such that patrons have to raise their voices just to speak to one another. This seems to be a worldwide malady now. Throughout his recent travels the present author found that eateries everywhere are infected with loud music. The idea that people might like to eat in peace, or enjoy a conversation over dinner, has been lost. Similarly, in buses, taxis, lifts, shopping malls – everywhere – we are bedevilled by music. In some areas of Japan they pipe pop music into the streets through speakers attached to lamp-posts. 

Why then play music at home? Home becomes the only place where one can escape it and find the joy of silence. The very worst of it - the pits - is that the same music prevails everywhere. It is all post-70s hits and memories. If there is alcohol on the menu in an eatery in any tourist town in Asia then you’ll almost certainly be made to listen to endless loops of Bob Marley, while everywhere you go – everywhere! – there is John Lennon’s Imagine, an anthem of our era.

In view of this background, the author encountered two items on music recently, both of which caught his attention and, to him, were mutually illuminating. One was a short account of the ‘Tyranny of Pop’ by the doyen of conservative aesthetics, Sir Roger Scruten, (see below) and the other was a very fertile entry on the Neoreactionary reddit entitled, encouragingly, ‘How To Restore Aristocracy: Step One’ by a gentleman signing in as Hansderfieldler, see here. 

Sir Roger’s contribution was predictable in itself but did contain a number of stimulating points. The main target of his critique was the atonality that he claimed had ruined modern art music. The point of interest he made in this was that until this breach with normative aesthetics there had been a common language of musical values shared at all levels of society, from the dance venue, the work song and the private family parlour to the church and the concert hall. This unity had been shattered in the early XXth century, he said, with dire consequences not only in music itself but throughout all levels of society. Pertinent to this he made the further point, moreover, that “our civilization was built upon music” and that the degeneration of music in our times corresponds therefore to civilizational decay. This writer was very happy to hear him complain about the intrusion of bad music into all aspects of life, and especially restaurants, and to hear him relate the common experience of being treated as a strange old weirdo when one asks the waiter or restaurateur if the music could be turned off or at least down. Sir Roger is the foremost and most articulate spokesman for a civilized philosophy of aesthetics today, and his account of the Tyranny of Pop is on the mark. Architecture is perhaps the art he knows best, but his knowledge of music – and what has gone wrong in Western music – is almost as impressive. Some comments in response to his diatribe beg to differ about his dismissal of modern composers, and no doubt he is guilty of generalizing, but it is not without cause. One only needs to tune into the relevant BBC or ABC art music programs and listen to the latest compositions to appreciate how distant they are from the great canon of Western high music. This or that contemporary composer might have merit, but Sir Roger’s critique still stands. It is hard to argue with his claim – made elsewhere – that Scriabin was the only decent composer of the ‘modernist’ school and the last sweet note in serious Western music.

This grim view of modern Western music is reiterated in the account of the reddit contributor. He makes the sweeping claim that nothing decent has been composed since the 1940s, or so. As with the Scruton claim, this was subsequently challenged by responders citing this or that recent composer and the counter-claim that music is not really in such a bad state after all. But again, the general claim seems justified despite exceptions, and quibbles about this or that recent artist miss the point. In this case too, the contributor is not primarily concerned with music qua music, but rather with music as a cultural force, and his case is that the decline in music mirrors and shapes the broader decline in the fabric of civilization. He goes beyond Scruton, however, in being concerned with a remedy for such decline. This is what makes his brief ‘How To Restore Aristocracy: Step One’ so fertile as an item of NRx commentary. His thesis, rendered merely as a sketch, is that music – a musical tradition – is the very lifeblood of an aristocratic culture, and that in order to restore aristocracy it is necessary to restore an aristocratic music. He proposes that this is largely done through the proper relation of patron and artist. In contrast, the decadent condition of modern music is a result of the perverse distortions of music industry patronage, on the one hand – a corrupt capitalism - and the state sponsorship of approved “arts” on the other hand. Only when these two degenerate modes of sponsorship are replaced with a traditional patron/artist relationship will the cacophony of modern music end.

Herr Hansderfielder makes many startling points in his short proposal and in the reddit discussion it provokes. He starts with: “The duty of the Aristocrat is to preserve culture.” A good start. Then he follows with: “Culture develops around a music scene.” This, he says, is “the secret generative technology of culture.” He adds: “Everywhere you find an instance of authentic culture and unified identity, there you will also find a thriving music scene.” He gives some examples to support this hypothesis, including the “thriving subcultures” of Post-WWII such as “punks, goths, hippies…” in which the “charism” of the culture was carried in music. He then follows with the broader assertion that “from this charism came the other diverse arts – fashion, visual art, drama and fiction, poetry.” Thus, according to this account, music is primary, and the other arts follow. The present author is reminded of Schopenhauer’s thesis that music is the prime art because it “imitates nature least” and, of course, the elevated attention which Plato devotes to music in the Republic and elsewhere. Indeed, it is a truism of Platonism that a degenerate music will lead to a degenerate civilization, and conversely a noble music a noble one. Once more the present author notes the ways in which Neoreaction – rethinking from first principles – arrives at distinctly Platonic conclusions.

In any case, this is a reddit post worth contemplating. It is surely proper to draw attention to the role of music in the creation and maintenance of a healthy traditional culture, and it is surely right to draw attention to the way in which aristocratic patronage creates and maintains such a music. The reddit author’s analysis of degenerate corporatism leading to what he calls the “dilapidation of authentic culture” is surely on the mark as well. Nor, therefore, is he to wrong to announce his panacea. “Here is the solution,” he proclaims. “Create a music scene!” How do we create an aristocracy? His recipe is: “Those who have enough money should seek musicians whose work-product facilitates the appropriate ethos. By funding this music scene the wealthy person acquires aristocratic status.” These are, no doubt, only half-baked ideas, and one looks forward to Step Two, but if we accept Scruton’s assertion that Western civilization was built upon musical foundations, and we embrace the wider nexus between civilizational health and a healthy music, then this recipe is not untoward. Assuredly, a new civilization will need a new music, and perhaps it is not putting the cart before the horse to suppose that a new music needs to come first.

The truly surprising claim made by the reddit writer, however, comes in the discussion that follows. Someone inquires as to what exactly such a music might be like? If the way forward to creating a new aristocracy is to sponsor an appropriate music, then what music is appropriate? Here Herr Hansderfielder makes a sensible distinction between high and low, between art music, or high music, and low music, or “demotic” or folk music. There is much to discuss regarding such distinctions, of course, and especially the relationship between the two – does not the ‘high’ music of the European tradition largely arise out of ‘folk’ music?, and if so why, and how, and what is the difference, etcetera – but amidst this discussion he makes one concrete suggestion that caught the present writer’s attention. Concerning what he calls “demotic” music, the reddit writer suggests that the appropriate mode of music for aristocratic sponsorship is none other than… bluegrass. This is because, he says, it still retains certain aristocratic characteristics, most notably the patronage of the “hills gentry” in the relevant parts of the United States. He is not so much concerned with the nature of the music itself; it is the social function of the music that recommends it. High music, art music, is another matter: but when it comes to ‘low’ music, a music of the folk, it is to bluegrass that we should look for an appropriate example. The NRx hillbilly.

He does not elaborate on this recommendation, but he might. As a “folk” genre – and leaving aside “progressive” forms and fusions such as Western Swing - bluegrass is especially well-preserved as a “roots” music with deep connections to Irish, Scottish and English musical traditions going back into the premodern past. Perhaps the fact that it is white, southern and Christian and relatively uninfected with African motifs recommends it too. It is a self-consciously traditional European music alive and well in contemporary America. No doubt much of it has been turned into Nashville treacle, yet it still retains an integrity – and a very rich repertoire – that is relatively unadulterated by corporate exploitation. George Clooney singing ‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ in the Cohen’s O Brother Where Art Thou? is a black mark on the genre to be sure, but all things considered we might agree that, compared to other genres, it is in a robust state. Like any genuinely demotic music it is also adaptable to local players of diverse standards: it is a family and community music in which most everyone can play or sing along. As related at the outset, the present author spent some of his early adult years in the company of a bluegrass sub-culture. It was a wonderful experience. Late nights. Old time songs. Impromptu performances. A shared heritage of melodies and lyrics about heroes and tragedies, homes and journeys, loves lost and found. It was an education in the natural aristocracy, if we can call it that, of a living demotic tradition. Herr Hansderfielder’s observation that bluegrass offers a genuine prospect for cultural renewal is therefore astute. There is no reason to doubt his claim that its health is due to a vestigial aristocratic patronage in the Appalachias and that this constitutes a foundation upon which to build. (And it prospers well beyond its heartland. It is booming, they say, in the Czech Republic.)

The cure for a degenerate high music is less straightforward, but it surely lies in restoring the same nexus of proper patronage. The question is: what were the conditions that created the great music of the western canon in the first place? And the next question becomes: is it possible to restore such conditions and herald a new age of great music in some imagined future? The general NRx position seems to be that if you remove the impediments and dismantle/defund the false egalitarian culture of modernity then, left to itself, nature will take its course. This suggests the interesting supposition that modernity is not really a mode in itself but rather the negation of tradition. Bad music is not really a music in its own right but rather the negation, the deconstruction, of good music. Perhaps so. We can be certain in any case that it is not something that can be engineered in either state committees or corporate boardrooms; it is necessarily and intrinsically organic. The best you can do is create the conditions in which it is likely to thrive. We can also be certain that you cannot simply revisit the past. For a start, the whole matter of artistic reproduction and distribution has been changed fundamentally by technology and is likely to be changed yet more in times hence. Technological determinism is always, at least, a factor. Was not the piano forte – with its taut strings of steel - the very embodiment of the industrial mode? On this account alone it seems very unlikely that a music of the future will resemble the music of the past even if it returns to the same system of harmonies and aesthetic foundations. All the same, though, we must agree with Herr Hansderfielder that if it is to be any good, and if it is to function as a unifying cultural force, then it is bound to be aristocratic. Mass man produces abominations like John Lennon’s Imagine. A sacred music over and above the aristocratic is another matter again. It is a question surely related to the broader question of liturgical renewal. There again, perhaps it is the music that must come first and, once more, a proper culture of patronage is the precondition to that.

* * * 

Faded Coat of Blue by the Carter Family

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Sissman and Sworder: Death, An Introduction

L. E. Sissman

Things sometimes, or often, or perhaps usually, come together in ways that seem odd. With the recent death of Roger Sworder (see here) the thoughts of many of those who were close to him turned not to his philosophy and his teaching - these things being outstanding and obvious - but to his poetry. It is likely, we know now, that he probably had some foreknowledge of his impending demise and this explains why, in his last few months, he wrote a series of long autobiographical poems in a very straightforward, unaffected narrative style of blank verse, a reflective poetry that looked back to important and lingering incidents in his younger days. He had dabbled in poetry over many years and a collection of his verse, along with several essays on poetry, was published by Connor Court Press. It is hoped that his final poems will be published in due course. When they are it will be seen that they are strikingly different to his earlIer poems; as death approached he adopted an entirely different style, seeking a naturalness of voice, a plainness and a simplicity not found in his more overtly intellectual earlier poetry. From being immersed in the high idiom of the English romantics, in his last year or two he had acquired a taste for American poets and was especially fond of Edwin Arlington Robertson. The influence of Robertson is evident in these last poems. 

Stop. Don't Read. - Essays and Poems by Roger Sworder, 

published by Connor Court Press.

An even more telling comparison can be made, however, with another American poet with whom, unfortunately, Dr Sworder was most likely not familiar, namely the little known L. E. Sissman. As it happens, the present author spent his last meetings with Dr Sworder discussing the advent of Neoreaction as a political philosophy, and they spoke explicitly about the labours of Mencius Moldbug. What they failed to discuss was Mr Moldbug's fine taste in poetry - a topic that would assuredly have roused Sworder's interests even more than the Moldbugean critique of democracy. Sissman is a Moldbug "discovery". In one of his posts on Unqualified Reservations he boldly proclaims Sissman to be his choice for poet of the XXth century, see here. It is a matter of great regret that Sworder did not live to become properly acquainted with either Neoreaction or Moldbug, and even more so with Sissman because, on the evidence at hand, he would surely have found a kindred voice. 

Sissman himself was influenced by and admired Edwin Arlington Robertson, and, remarkably, wrote a poetry of impending death in a style to which Sworder's last poems bear a striking resemblance. Sissman had been diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. He turned to poetry and published a book of poems entitled Death: An Introduction, in 1968. His poems are typically in blank verse, affect no poetic idiom and are characterised by what Moldbug describes as a "naturalness of voice." "Ours is an age of faux-unaffected verse, of contrived pseudo-simplicity," says Moldbug. "When you read Sissman you feel the difference." His poetry is "completely direct. It has no hidden meanings at all. There is zero Empsonian ambiguity. It is almost light verse...." These are exactly the qualities typical of Sworder's final poems too. The present author - and others in his circle - have struggled of late to place Sworder's last poems, so different are they to his others. There is some T. S. Eliot in there, certainly, and, as already noted, some Robertson - but their directness and "naturalness of voice" is so similar to that of L. E. Sissman it is hard to believe he was not channeling him from the beyond. 

Yet we can be fairly certain that he did not know Sissman's work. Sissman is, as Moldbug observes "untaught, unknown, and out of print." It seems, rather, that Sworder was able to avail himself a certain mode of American poetry, a mode of which Sissman is a shining, albeit obscure, example. Like Sissman, Sworder was a man of unusual verbal dexterity, a man with a vast vocabulary - the sort of man who could rip through a cryptic crossword in a matter of minutes. But the shadow of death brought a new concentration upon simplicity and directness and sincerity. All pretence and cleverness is gone. 

The present author finds it extraordinary - or at least odd - that an unlikely circle of connections (Moldbug - Sissman - Robertson etc.) might suddenly shine such a revealing light upon these poems. These are men somehow all on the same page. He is not at liberty to publish Sworder's last poems here just yet (they are being collected and edited by Brian Coman) and so in that absence he will instead offer a collection of some very fine Sissman poems below. It was while reading these that he encountered a strangely familiar voice. They are, no doubt, better than Roger Sworder's poems - Moldbug is right, Sissman is a great poet - but this is nonetheless the poetic voice to which the last poems of Sworder ought to be compared. 

* * * 

 

LOVE-MAKING; APRIL; MIDDLE AGE

A fresh west wind from water-colored clouds
Stirs squills and iris shoots across the grass
Now turning fiery green. This storm will pass
In dits and stipples on the windowpane
Where we lie high and dry, and the low sun
Will throw rose rays at our gray heads upon
The back-room bed's white pillows. Venus will
Descend, blue-white, in horizontal airs
Of red, orange, ochre, lemon, apple green,
Cerulean, azure, ultramarine,
Ink, navy, indigo, at last midnight.
Now, though, this clouded pewter afternoon
Blurs in our window and intensifies
The light that dusts your eyes and mine with age.

We turn our thirties over like a page.



THE MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY

Struck dumb by love among the walruses
And whales, the off-white polar bear with stuffing
Missing, the mastodons like muddy buses,
I sniff the mothproof air and lack for nothing.

A general grant enabled the erection,
Brick upon brick, of this amazing building.
Today, in spite of natural selection,
It still survives an orphan age of gilding.

Unvarnished floors tickle the nose with dust
Sweeter than any girls' gymnasium's;
Stove polish dulls the cast-iron catwalk's rust;
The soot outside would make rival museums

Blanch to the lintels. So would the collection.
A taxidermist has gone ape. The cases
Bulging with birds whose differences defy detection
Under the dirt are legion. Master races

Of beetles lie extinguished in glass tables:
Stag, deathwatch, ox, dung, diving, darkling, May.
Over the Kelmscott lettering of their labels,
Skeleton crews of sharks mark time all day.

Mark time: these groaning boards that staged a feast
Of love for art and science, since divorced,
Still scantily support the perishing least
Bittern and all his kin. Days, do your worst:

No more of you can come between me and
This place from which I issue and which I
Grow old along with, an unpromised land
Of all unpromising things that live and die.

This brick ark packed with variant animals --
All dead -- by some progressive-party member
Steams on to nowhere, all the manuals
Of its calliope untouched, toward December.

Struck dumb by love among the walruses
And whales, the off-white polar bear with stuffing
Missing, the mastodons like muddy buses,
I sniff the mothproof air and lack for nothing.

VISITING CHAOS

No matter how awful it is to be sitting in this
Terrible magazine office, and talking to this
Circular-saw-voiced West side girl in a dirt-
Stiff Marimekko and lavender glasses, and this
Cake-bearded boy in short-rise Levi’s, and hearing
The drip and rasp of their tones on the softening
Stone of my brain, and losing
The thread of their circular words, and looking
Out through their faces and soot on the window to
Winter in University Place, where a blue-
Faced man, made of rags and old newspapers, faces
A horrible grill, looking in at the food and the faces
It disappears into, and feeling,
Perhaps, for the first time in days, a hunger instead
Of a thirst; where two young girls in peacoats and hair
As long as your arm and snow-sanded sandals
Proceed to their hideout, a festering cold-water flat
Animated by roaches, where their lovers, loafing in wait
To warm and be warmed by brainless caresses,
Stake out a state
Of suspension; and where a black Cadillac 75
Stands by the curb to collect a collector of rents,
Its owner, the owner of numberless tenement flats;
And swivelling back
To the editorial pad
Of Chaos, a quarter-old quarterly of the arts,
And its brotherly, sisterly staff, told hardly apart
In their listlessly colored sackcloth, their ash-colored skins,
Their resisterly sullenness, I suddenly think
That no matter how awful it is, it’s better than it
Would be to be dead. But who can be sure about that?

A DEATHPLACE

Very few people know where they will die,
But I do; in a brick-faced hospital,
Divided, not unlike Caesarean Gaul,
Into three parts; the Dean Memorial
Wing, in the classic cast of 1910,
Green-grated in unglazed, Aeolian
Embrasures; the Maud Wiggin Building, which
Commemorates a dog-jawed Boston bitch
Who fought the brass down to their whipcord knees
In World War I, and won enlisted men
Some decent hospitals, and, being rich,
Donated her own granite monument;
The Mandeville Pavilion, pink-brick tent
With marble piping, flying snapping flags
Above the entry where our bloody rags
Are rolled in to be sponged and sewn again.
Today is fair; tomorrow, scourging rain
(If only my own tears) will see me in
Those jaundiced and distempered corridors
Off which the five-foot-wide doors slowly close.
White as my skimpy chiton, I will cringe
Before the pinpoint of the least syringe;
Before the buttered catheter goes in;
Before the I.V.’s lisp and drip begins
Inside my skin; before the rubber hand
Upon the lancet takes aim and descends
To lay me open, and upon its thumb
Retracts the trouble, a malignant plum;
And finally, I’ll quail before the hour
When the authorities shut off the power
In that vast hospital, and in my bed
I’ll feel my blood go thin, go white, the red,
The rose all leached away, and I’ll go dead.
Then will the business of life resume:
The muffled trolley wheeled into my room,
The off-white blanket blanking off my face,
The stealing secret, private, largo race
Down halls and elevators to the place
I’ll be consigned to for transshipment, cased
In artificial air and light: the ward
That’s underground; the terminal; the morgue.
Then one fine day when all the smart flags flap,
A booted man in black with a peaked cap
Will call for me and troll me down the hall
And slot me into his black car. That’s all.



THE TREE WARDEN

I.

A FAREWELL TO ELMS

In late July, now, leaves begin to fall:
A wintry skittering on the summer road.
Beside which grass, still needing to be mowed,
Gives rise to Turk's caps, whose green tapering ball-
Point pens all suddenly write red. Last year,
The oriole swung his nest from the high fan
Vault of our tallest elm. Now a tree man
Tacks quarantine upon its trunk. I hear

An orange note a long way off, and thin
On our hill rain the ochre leaves. The white
Age of a weathered shingle stripes the bark.
Now surgeons sweat in many a paling park
And bone saws stammer blue smoke as they bite
Into the height of summer. Fall, begin.

II.

THE SECOND EQUINOX

Perambulating his green wards, the tree
Warden sees summer's ashes turn to fall:
The topmost reaches first, then more, then all
The twigs take umbrage, publishing a sea

Of yellow leaflets as they go to ground.
Upon their pyres, the maples set red stars,
The seal of sickness unto death that bars
The door of summer. Bare above its mound

Of leaves, each tree makes a memorial
To its quick season and its sudden dead;
With a whole gale of sighs and heaving head,
Each ash attends its annual burial.

The warden, under a boreal blue sky,
Reminds himself that ashes never die.

III.

DECEMBER THIRTY-FIRST

The days drew in this fall with infinite art,
Making minutely earlier the stroke
Of night each evening, muting what awoke
Us later every morning: the red heart

Of sun. December's miniature day
Is borne out on its stretcher to be hung.
Dim, minor, and derivative, among
Great august canvases now locked away.

Opposed to dated day, the modern moon
Comes up to demonstrate its graphic skill:
Laying its white on white on with a will,
Its backward prism makes a monotone.

In the New Year, night after night will wane;
Color will conquer; art will be long again.

IV.

MAY DAY

Help me. I cannot apprehend the green
Haze that lights really upon the young
Aspens in our small swamp, but not for long.
Soon round leaves, as a matter of routine,

Will make their spheric music; and too soon
The stunning green will be a common place.
Sensational today runs in our race
To flee the might of May for willing June.

To reach a bunch of rusty maple keys,
Undoing a world of constants, more or less,
I tread on innocence. The warden sees
In May Day the historical success
Of labor; a safe date for planting trees;
A universal signal of distress.

NOTES TOWARD A TWENTY-FIFTH REUNION

"And what do you do?" Mrs. Appoplex,
Fat dam of some dim Story Street savant
In baggy Marimekko muumuu and
Barbaric Inca necklet, asks my wife
At some dream sherry party packed with ham-
Strung academics swaying gently in
The wind of Babel. "Why, just cook and fuck,"
My wife does not, so sweetly, tender in
Reply, although I wish like hell she would.
Whose world is real, for Christ's sake, anyway?
Their sculpture gallery of images
That move mechanically in circumscribed
Tangents and - this is a recording - talk
In selfsame selfsongs all the livelong day?
(I must say I have just enough of a
Foot in that world to see its tiny point
Flash in the haystack of irrelevance.)
Or my free-form theatre of absurd,
Unaugurable happenstance, in which -
For gain, my lads, for gain - we businessmen
Risk all upon a nutty and divine
Idea of weal and on our con-man's skill
To sell it to each other, I'll back that
Frail matchstick pyramid of barest will,
On which to balance, one exposes all
To the black, hithering eye of the abyss,
As realer than the static autoclave
Of academe, full of blunt instruments
Becoming sterile as they sit and steam.
And yet, when I return in steaming June
To my Reunion in the pullulant
Hive of the Yard, I'll look with shuttering
Eyes on my unknown classmates, businessmen
Who have no business with me, and greet
The likes of Mrs. Appoplex and her
Effete levée with a glad, homing cry.
The question is, what kind of fool am I?

****

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Revitalizing the Humanities: A Course in Western Traditions

The degenerate state of universities, and especially the Humanities and the Arts, requires no account. The free-market conservatives who argued, from the 1970s onwards, that an end to free tuition and the exposure of institutions of higher learning to market forces would end the leftwards rot were wrong. On the contrary, universities are now almost wholly strange little colonies of leftist liberal ideology the product of which, as Mencius Moldbug astutely remarked, is not knowledge or skill or wisdom but cadre. The rot has advanced apace. The long march through the institutions is done. 

The purpose of this post is not to lament this state of affairs - lamentable though it is - but to celebrate what once prevailed in the Humanities in by-gone days. The present author had the great fortune to teach in a traditional Humanities course in Australian higher education for the better part of two decades. He was asked recently how, if he had his way, he would construct a coherent Humanities course today. It is a matter he sometimes discussed with the late, great Platonist and pedagogue, Roger Sworder. The answer, on the whole, is that he would return to the structure of the 'Western Traditions' Bachelor's Degree first designed by Sworder, along with the poet Clive Faust and Mr Maurice Nestor, which was taught at a regional College of Advanced Education beginning in or around 1981. It was beautifully conceived and very successful and still suggests a model of what an integral, generalist Humanities undergraduate course ought to be like. 

Needless to say, our Marxist and progressivist academic colleagues fought relentlessly to prevent its accreditation, first, and then to bring it to an end thereafter, and eventually they succeeded. But not before it produced hundreds of graduates and demonstrated the good sense of a structured, integrated curriculum based on the classics and 'Great Books' model. It should be stressed that, while it was undoubtedly conservative in its principles and assumptions, it was not by any means just a tool of conservative propaganda. One of its principles and assumptions is that students require exposure to a wide range of points of view in their undergraduate years. Accordingly, the staff who taught the course included among their number classicists, Platonists, Epicurians, Christians, Marxists, atheists, Buddhists, secular humanists and traditional Catholics, among others. Such diversity, in fact, is a conservative value. It is the so-called liberals and progressives, the cultural Marxists, the feminists and the globalists, who have since created intellectual monocultures - complete with 'safe spaces' and 'trigger warnings' - in our Arts courses today. 

* * * 

What follows is a flight of fancy. The question is: if you could construct a Humanities undergraduate degree anyway you'd like, carte blanc, without institutional restraints and with unlimited resources, how would it be done? 

The main variation of the degree structure below compared to what was actually offered is that it is expanded from three to four years of study and is thus more demanding. A mere diploma once required some twenty-five semesters of study. These days you can manage an entire Bachelor of Arts in Australia for just twenty units. This has been one of the unforseen consequences of 'market forces' - academic inflation and a race to the bottom. What is clearly needed, if an Arts degree is to have any value, is to make it much more onerous, much more difficult, much more rigorous and only open to students of real quality. 

The abiding assumption underpinning the course is that students ought to know the great treasures of Western civilization. The pedagogical assumption is that a planned, structured sequence of studies is better than a smorgasbord of random and disconnected subjects. In the end, let it be noted, the Western Traditions course with which the present author was associated was brought undone in the name of "student choice". This is the war cry of educational relatvists, and they were empowered by the free-market-will-fix-everything cuckservatives. Freedom be damned. Freedom is the prerogative of post-graduates after they have mastered a discipline.

Similarly, the programme is not "research driven". The "research" fetish in higher education - propelled by the "market's" demand for incessant innovation - is deeply corrosive. What do we need more, an education system that fosters a deep and sensitive appreciation of Shakespeare, or one that encourages reckless speculation about whether or not Hamlet was written by a woman? The purpose of education, to put it plainly, is the transmission of a body of wisdom and ways of understanding from one generation to another. Education, not "research".   

* * * 

Studies in Western Traditions: Compulsory Core

The central feature of this structured degree programme is a compulsory core consisting of semester-length studies of important "nodes" in Western civilization. These run roughly chronologically and each has its own emphasis. Greek Mythology features the mythic mode and symbolism. The Biblical World in the following semester features close textual study. Medevial Civilization features gothic architecture. Renaissance Studies features painting. Romanticism, poetry. And so on. Other "nodes" can be substituted for those listed. The present author added a semester-length subject called 'Islam and the West' - the Crusades "node" - to this sequence, for instance. 

1. Greek Mythology
2. The Biblical World

3. Medieval Civilization
4. Renaissance Studies

5. Enlightenment & Romantic
6. Modernity & Post-Modernity

Communications

As well as the compulsory core, students are required to take a year-long semiological unit called 'Communications' (or similar) which features reflective studies on different modes and languages. This subject includes cinema (German Expressionism?), advertising, social media and, importantly, an obligatory component of formal grammar. 

Major Studies

For our purposes, the traditional Humanities disciplines are reckoned to be Literature, History and Philosophy. Students must major in one of these. Wherever possible, these disciplines are structured in concert with the compulsory core. Thus, for example, the History discipline begins with Ancient and Biblical history to be studied at the same time as Greek Mythology and the Biblical World. And so on. These disciplines can draw on the compulsory core which frees them from having to provide students with background and context. The emphasis throughout is on 'Great Books' and classic texts.

*Literature
*History
*Philosophy

Minor Studies

Outside of the core disciplines there is, of course, a wide range of other disciplines that might be included: Religious Studies, Theology, Economics, Geography, Anthropology, Art History, and so on. These, however, must be regarded as second-tier studies vis-a-vis the core disciplines. 

Narcissistic victim-based pseudo-studies - an education in resentment - such as 'Queer Studies' and 'Post-Colonial Studies' have no place in a programme like this.

Creative Arts

Students are required to study and practice (to the level of a sub-major, at least) one of the creative arts: story writing, poetry, painting, photography, film-making, a musical instrument, etcetera. 

European Languages

Students are required to study and attain proficiency in (to the level of a sub-major, at least)a European language: Greek, Latin, French, German, Spanish, etcetera. 

* * * 

Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Socrates at the Piraeus: Voegelin on Plato

One of the keys to a full and proper understanding of the Platonic dialogues is the setting and the time signatures – the time and the place - given to the work by Plato. In particular, festivals, with their presiding deities, are especially revealing since, in many cases, if not all, the content of the dialogue will be appropriate to the festival and to the god in question. Particular festivals have particular themes, are dedicated to particular deities and are usually centred in particular locations. All of this is carefully crafted by Plato. The dialogues are crafted works of art in which nothing is accidental. If a dialogue takes place at a particular time in a particular place and a particular god or goddess is invoked, mentioned or alluded to, then it is all to a definite purpose, and we then find that the philosophical content of the dialogue is illuminated by the given context. 

There is a tendency among classical scholars and philosophers to ignore the framing of the content and to consider the arguments of a dialogue out of the context in which Plato has placed it. This is always a mistake. A dialogue is a complete package. Nothing is extraneous. Plato provides clues and signals to his meaning, and to how the work ought to be approached, and he does so in many forms, some of them extremely subtle or even cryptic. This is even more the case for modern readers since we are likely to miss signals that ancient readers would have found plain and obvious. For a start, we almost always treat the dialogues of Plato as secular works and see them through a secular lens, when in fact they were, in their time, embedded in the sanctity of Athenian institutions and the Athenian religion, along with other more esoteric institutions such as the Mysteries and the Pythagorean brotherhood. 

This was the subject of the present writers doctoral dissertation where he argued that the Platonic cosmology, especially as found in the dialogue called Timaeus, needs to be read through the lens of the cultus of Athene and that the fact that that dialogue is set on the Panathenaea, the principle festival of the goddess, is of primary significance. We are very likely to misread the dialogue if – as many classical scholars have done and still do – we skip the first five pages and overlook its setting. In fact, as a general rule of thumb, the present author proposes that each of the dialogues of Plato is dedicated to a certain deity and that the first task in reading the dialogue aright is to determine which deity and why.

Such an approach to the dialogues, however, leaves us confronted with a conundrum when it comes to the greatest of all Plato’s works, the Republic. There are clear signals regarding time and place, festival and deity, but it is hard to say how such signals relate to the subject matter of the work itself. It begins with Socrates leaving the city proper and walking the several miles down to the docks at the Piraeus in order to witness a new festival sacred to the goddess Bendis. It is rare for Socrates to venture that far, and the circumstances of him doing so are very carefully constructed and described in some detail by Plato. There is to be a torch race and Socrates is persuaded to stay and it is in this context that he becomes engaged in a discussion regarding justice. It is unclear, though, how this setting – and the Bendidia festival and the goddess Bendis – are related to the subject matter of the work. Bendis is not even an indigenous Athenian deity. She is a Thracian goddess whose cult has been recently incorporated into the city’s religion to appease the immigrant workers resident in the port. The question is: why is the Republic set on the Bendidia and how is the topic of justice related to the goddess Bendis?

Some have supposed that the setting of the dialogue may have been motivated by Plato’s patriotic xenophobia. In that case, he has Socrates go down to the Piraeus and describe the Ideal State – an idealized Athens – in the face of and counter to the influx of foreigners. The festival, then, is ironic: Socrates delivers his account of an Athenian utopia not on an Athenian festival but on a festival sacred to an alien deity as a way of underlining the declining integrity of the Athenian state. This is the explanation offered by those who, like Karl Popper and his followers, regard Plato as a type of proto-Nazi. Such a setting turns the entire dialogue into one long racial slur. This is an unsatisfying explanation on a number of grounds, not least of which is that it would be a clumsy and artless prologue to what is otherwise a masterpiece of subtlety and finesse. Are we really to suppose that Plato had Socrates go down to the Piraeus as a way of taking a cheap shot at the Thracian “wogs” who worked there? Surely there is some more noble design we are overlooking?

The problem lies with the goddess Bendis. We know relatively little about her and her cultus, except the fact that she was assimilated to the Greek goddess Artemis. There are archaeological depictions extant that show her in the attire of the goddess of the hunt, so we know with some certainty that the Greeks (Athenians) regarded her as the Thracian version of Artemis much as they understood the Egyptian goddess Neith as a version of Athene. The assimilation of alien (barbarian) cultures was accomplished in this way, by matching pantheon to pantheon. But how is the Republic and its treatment of justice related to the goddess Artemis? And if it is, why then this (alien) version of Artemis? It is a conundrum that has occupied many readers of the Republic, and for many years it confounded the present writer, convinced as it was that the setting of the work on the Bendidia, with its nocturnal torch race at the Piraeus must be a key to understanding the Republic as a whole. No amount of creative interpretations of Artemis/Bendis helps. It is difficult to find any sense in which the Republic is appropriate to a festival of Artemis/Bendis and how its discussion of justice should be framed by the setting of the Bendidia.

We can only make headway on this problem, then, if we accept that we are missing something important or that our assumptions are incorrect. Reading through the introductory passages of the dialogue once more, we must ask what clues are outstanding? What peculiar and unusual features stand out? The answer to this is the torch race that Socrates says he wants to see. This is why he has uncharacteristically ventured from the city down to the docks. It is an unusual event, a strange spectacle, a torch race on horseback at night. The question becomes, why is this the central rite of the festival and what does this tell us about the new goddess? Once again, the standard comparisons of Bendis with Artemis draw a blank. There is no conceivable way that such a torch race conforms to the classical cultus of Artemis. So this, in that case, must be our problem. Plato’s text gives otherwise unaccountable emphasis to the nocturnal torch race; the Republic begins with it and, on any sensitive reading, we are to keep it in mind while moving through the dialogue. As Socrates discourses on justice we are given the image of the torch race, sacred to the goddess Bendis. This is surely a key.

The difficulty is resolved when we abandon the parallel of Bendis with Artemis and understand, instead, that by other assimilations this Thracian goddess was considered by the Athenians to be a version of Hecate, the underworld goddess, as well. We know this from other archaeological evidence and specifically a temple at the Piraeus. Bendis may well have been understood as the Thracian Diana in some contexts, but the Bendis of the Piraeus seems to have been equated to Hecate. The polytheistic pantheons are complex like that. Local variations are all-important. It seems that the goddess of the Thracian workers of the Piraeus was specifically a goddess of the dark moon and so a parallel not to Artemis but to Hecate. This is why she was honoured by a torch race at night. The torches point to Hecate. Plato’s emphasis on the torch race underlines this. Socrates is curious about the torch race. That is why he has made to journey down to the docks. There is a new festival being instituted, and it is characterized by the spectacle of the torch race which, as Socrates says, is an unusual thing. Plato has given emphasis to the torch race for a reason. Again: no details are superfluous in a Platonic dialogue. Some suppose that this detail is simply to provide a dramatic date for the work, since Athenians would have known what year it was the Bendidia was inaugurated. True enough, this device lends the dialogue historical verisimilitude. It is located at a specific point in time. Plato is always careful to walk the line between history and fiction. But there is surely more at play in this motif. The question becomes: why is the dialogue prefaced by a torch race sacred to Bendis/Hecate? 

Bendis shown in the attire of Artemis, votive stele, Piraeus circa 400BC. Artemis is a moon goddess, but it is more specifically in the aspect of Hecate (sub-lunar) that Bendis is relevant to the Republic of Plato.

* * *

The most intelligent and insightful answer to this question, and along with it the most perspicuous reading of the Republic as a whole, is offered by Eric Voegelin in volume III of Order & History. There can be little doubt that his reading of this issue is correct. It is sensitive to all the right matters, including the mythic framing that is typical of Platonic dialogues. Too many readers of Plato suppose that the mythological motifs are superfluous or – as per Leo Strauss’ often bizarre misreadings – insincere gestures to popular religion. In the case of the Republic, many readers dispense with the prologue and the setting, making nothing of it, and at the same time excise the conclusion, namely the so-called ‘Myth of Er’ with which the dialogue ends. Voegelin, on the other hand, understands perfectly well why the discussion on justice has these particular book-ends at start and finish. Socrates’ journey down to the Piraeus is, as Dr Voegelin has it, a journey into Hades, and so it is framed by the procession sacred to Hecate at the start and the eschatological visions of Er the Armenian at the end. Only a reading of the Republic that gives a full and contextual reason for the whole of the dialogue and all its features, from start to finish, is of any worth. We cannot lop off the start and finish in order to demythologize it and so make it conform to our horizontal and secular assumptions and our impoverished notion of what constitutes philosophy.

As Dr Voegelin says, the key to the Republic is announced in its first word: kateben = I went down. This, as Plato’s contemporary readers would have known very well, is the word Odysseus uses to describe his descent into Hades. Voegelin’s instincts as a reader, sensitive to the mythological keys, are exactly right. He writes:

The first chapter of the Republic sets the dialogue into motion. Its opening passage… assembles symbols that recur in its course. And the first word, kateben (I went down), sounds the great theme that runs through it to its end.

Voegelin gives a lesson in how to read Plato correctly. Far from being incidental and irrelevant to the serious business of political philosophy that constitutes the core of the dialogue, the prologue – like the conclusion – is replete with symbols that are keys to a proper understanding of the dialogue. Socrates’ sojourn down to the Piraeus to see the new rites of Bendis/Hecate is a symbolic journey into the underworld and the discourse on justice that follows must be understood in that context. Herr Voegelin’s account of it is worth reproducing here in full, as follows: 

Socrates walked down the five miles from the town to the harbor. Down went the way from Athens to the sea in space; and down went her way from Marathon to the disaster of the sea power in time. Socrates was a man of his people and participated in its fate. With the people, streaming down on the festive occasion, he went to the Piraeus with its mixed population of citizens and foreigners. For, with the unfolding of Athenian sea power under Pericles, the Piraeus had grown through the influx of foreign traders and workers. The Thracian businessmen, seamen, and harbor workers had brought with them their cult of Bendis. It had been recognized by Athens as a public cult, at least since 429/8, and found adherents among the citi- zens. Cult fraternities of Thracians and citizens had formed and now they had organized a great public festival in honor of Bendis with rival processions.4 Socrates went along to watch the spectacle; and while he found the effort of his co-citizens excellent, the foreigners proved their equals in putting up a dignified public appearance. Athens and Thrace had found their common level in the Piraeus. As a citizen, with due respect for recognized cults, he offered his prayers to the foreign goddess who had come to the polis over the sea—but then he wanted to go back to Athens. At that point, however, he was detained. He had gone down, and now the depth held him as one of them, friendly, to be sure, but with a playful threat of force by superior numbers, and a refusal to listen to his persuasion to let him go (327c). In the depth that held him he embarked on his inquiry; and he used his persuasive powers on his friends, not to let him free to go back to Athens, but to make them follow him to the polis of the Idea. From the depth of the Piraeus the way went, not back to the Athens of Marathon, but forward and upward to the polis built by Socrates with his friends in their souls.

The kateben opens the vista into the symbolism of depth and descent. It recalls the Heraclitian depth of the soul that cannot be measured by any wandering, as well as the Aeschylean dramatic descent that brings up the decision for Dike. But above all it recalls the Homer who lets his Odysseus tell Penelope of the day when “I went down [kateben] to Hades to inquire about the return of myself and my friends” (Od. 23.252–3), and there learned of the measureless toil that still was in store for him and had to be fulfilled to the end (23.249–50).

All of the associations have their function in the Republic, as we shall see, but the Homeric kateben is the one more immediately intended in the construction of the Prologue. For the Piraeus, to which Socrates descends, is a symbol of Hades. The goddess whom he approaches with prayer is the Artemis-Bendis, understood by the Athenians as the chthonian Hecate who attends to the souls on their way to the underworld.5 And the immediately following scene confirms and clarifies the meaning of the symbol insofar as the old Cephalus is moved to his reflections on justice by his impending descent to Hades. For “there,” as the tales (mythoi) go, men must pay what is right in compensation for the wrong they have done “here” (330d–e). To be sure, the interest of Cephalus in justice, while sincere, is not less shallow than his motivation by tales about punishment in Hades; and the old man, when the debate becomes more strenuous, retires to sacrifice and sleep. Nevertheless the little scene illuminates the profounder concern of Socrates, as well as the function of the Piraeus as the Hades that motivates his inquiry into the nature of justice and right order.

The descent of Socrates to Hades-Piraeus in the opening scene of the Prologue balances the descent of Er, the son of Armenius the Pamphylian, to the underworld in the closing scene of the Epilogue. Moreover, Plato underlines the parallel between the underworlds of Socrates and Er by a play with symbols. For the festival of the Piraeus in honor of Bendis is characterized by the equality of the participants. Socrates can find no difference in the quality of the processions; a common level of humanity has been reached by the society of which Socrates is a member. In Hades, in death, again all men are equal before their judge, and Er, the teller of the tale, is a Pamphylian, a man “of all tribes,” an Everyman. In the organization of the dialogue the symbolic byplay on the pamphylism of both the Piraeus and Hades, thus, confirms and strengthens the parallel. At the same time, however, it leads back to the great issue that sets the dialogue moving. For it is the pamphylism of the Piraeus that makes it Hades. The equality of the harbor is the death of Athens; and at least an attempt must be made to find the way up to life.

The Descent formulates a problem and the judgment provides a resolution. In the Descent the human condition appears as existence in Hades, and the question arises: Must man remain in the under- world, or has he the power to ascend from death to life? In the Judgment Plato expresses his conviction of the reality of the power and describes its modus operandi. The Pamphylian myth tells of the dead souls who in afterlife receive reward or punishment according to their conduct in life. The bad souls will go to their suffering below the earth, the good souls to their blessed existence in heaven. After a thousand years they come up, or down, from their abode to the seat of Lachesis at the center of the cosmos, there to draw their lot and to choose their fate for the next period of life. When they are assembled, the Herald of Lachesis steps up to a platform and announces to them the rules governing the proceedings (617d–e):

Ananke’s daughter, the maiden Lachesis, her word: Souls of a day! Beginning of a new cycle, for the mortal race, to end in death!
The daemon will not be allotted to you; but you shall select the daemon. The first by the lot, shall the first select the life to which he will be bound by necessity [Ananke]. Arete has no master; and as a man honors or dishonors her, he will have her increased or diminished. The guilt [aitia] is the chooser’s; God is guiltless [anaitios].

The cosmic law is terse, but its meaning is clear. Plato restates the problem of freedom and guilt, with slight variations of Homeric and Heraclitian symbols. With Homer he shares the aetiological concern. More radically than the poet he declares God, the one God, to be guiltless (anaitios). Divine substance has found its symbol, in the Republic, in the idea of the Agathon. And the Good can cause only good, not evil. The position is an impoverishment of the problem of theodicy, compared with Homer and Aeschylus, who both recog- nized evil that was caused neither by the gods of right order nor by man. And, let us hasten to say, it is not Plato’s last word in the matter either, as we shall see in the analysis of the Statesman and the Laws. Still, in the Republic he insists uncompromisingly that the souls lead the lives they have chosen for themselves. Recalling the Heraclitian B 119, “Character—to man—daemon,” Plato declares the daemon, to whom man is bound in life by necessity, the result of his free choice. For the Arete of the soul has no master; and when man bewails the consequences of his contempt for Arete, he has nobody to blame but himself.

The choice is free. And man has to bear the responsibility for the daemonic necessity of his life. But the choice cannot be wiser or better than the character that makes it. The aetiological speculation on the sources of good and evil has radically eliminated the gods, but the dialectics of freedom and necessity falls now with its full weight on man and his character. Man’s choice of his daemon in the other world is guided by the character he has acquired during his preceding life in this world. And the souls in Hades make odd choices. Those who formerly have led a dubious life, and as a consequence not only have suffered punishment themselves but also have seen the suffering of others, generally are cautious. Those who previously have lived a good life in a well-ordered polis, and participated in Arete from habit rather than from love of wisdom (philosophia), are apt to make foolish choices. They will jump, for instance, at a glittering tyranny and discover too late the evil of the soul in it (619b–620d). This is the great danger in the terrible hour of choice. And in order to reduce, if not to avert, the danger, man in this life should concentrate all his effort on one thing: to find the man who will enable him to distinguish between a worthy and an unworthy life, so that he can make a reasonable choice, with his eyes fixed on the nature of the soul, not diverted by the circumstances and events, pleasant or unpleasant, of a life. He will be able to make the right choice when he can recognize as bad, a manner of life that pulls the soul down and makes it more unjust, and as good, a manner of life that leads the soul upward toward a higher state of justice. When a man goes down to Hades, he must carry with him an adamantine conviction (doxa) that the quality of a life must be judged by its suitability to develop the Arete of justice in the soul (618b–619a).

The souls of the dead choose a life, and with the life the daemon that of necessity goes with it. Into their choice they can put no more wisdom than they have acquired. And on that occasion is revealed, as we have seen, the value of certain types of life. Those who have suffered punishment for the evil they have done, and have gained wisdom through suffering (in the Aeschylean sense), are likely to make a better choice than others who have led a righteous life and were rewarded with heavenly bliss. The relation between Arete and the course of a life is complicated. In the dialogue Socrates must face certain blameless characters who will arouse sympathy. There is old Cephalus, who furnishes an instance of the man who leads a reasonably righteous life and is willing to compensate for the minor offenses he committed by means of his wealth. He represents the “older generation” in a time of crisis, the men who still impress by their character and conduct that has been formed in a better age. The force of tradition and habit keeps them on the narrow path, but they are not righteous by “love of wisdom,” and in a crisis they have nothing to offer to the younger generation, which is already exposed to more corruptive influences. The venerable elder who arouses our sympathy will not lose it on closer inspection, but the sympathy will be tempered by a touch of condescension, if not contempt, for his weakness. For the men of his type are the cause of the sudden vacuum that appears in a critical period with the break of generations. All of a sudden it appears that the older generation has neglected to build the substance of order in the younger men, and an amiable lukewarmness and confusion shifts within a few years into the horrors of social catastrophe. In the next generation, with Polemarchus, the understanding of justice is already reduced to a businessman’s honesty. And it comes almost as a relief when in the sophist Thrasymachus there appears a real man who pleads the cause of injustice with luciferic passion. He at least is articulate, he argues and one can argue with him, and Socrates can come to grips with a problem that remains evasive when represented by respectability and venerable tradition without substance. A pattern, a paradigm of life, thus, is not easy to choose, for the conventional standards of desirability do not apply to the divine substance of order in the soul, to the daemon. Hence, Plato does not offer recipes for moral conduct; and with regard to a right paradigm of life he does not go beyond a hint that in such matters the mean (to meson) is preferable (619a). The point must receive some emphasis because it will recur in the interpretation of Plato’s construction of a right order for the polis, which all too frequently is misunderstood as a recipe for a good constitution...

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Few have written so well on the Republic. The point of this post, finally, is to draw attention to the work of Eric Voegelin and most especially Voegelin as a reader of Plato. Mention was made earlier of Karl Popper: Voegelin is akin to Popper in having devoted his intellectual life to explaining and understanding the roots of XXth century totalitarianism. But whereas Popper offered only a superficial misreading of Plato in order to identify him as the 'father of fascism' in the western Tradition - a slur that has marred Plato's reputation throughout the second half of the XXth century - Voegelin offers a deep and insightful reading that does justice to Plato's foremost position among Western philosophers. In short, Voegelin is a much deeper thinker than Popper. It is a travesty that he is little known while Popper's influence upon post-War intellectuals has, regretably, been extensive. The work of Herr Voegelin is championed by the Eric Voegelin Society, a link to which follows:

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Yours,

Harper McAlpine Black

Neoreaction Explained

Frederich the Great - a Neoreactionary hero

Several associates of the author of these pages have expressed some mystification regarding the contemporary phenomenon known as Neoreaction (or NRx for short).  They are aware that it is a political philosophy occupying a place on the Right (or Dexter) half of the political spectrum, and that it is perhaps related to the so-called 'Alt Right' (i.e. 'Alternative Right') and/or that mode of conservatism prefixed with paleo- (meaning old or primal or archaic), but just what it is and what it espouses escapes them. What exactly is Neoreaction? Can you explain it in fifty words or less? Why are NRx blogs and webpages so frustratingly dense and opaque? 

The topic was treated in a very introductory way on these pages recently, here, and as the new year (2017) dawns and the author's sojourning through India and Asia has come to an end and he has settled again into a domestic routine, it is hoped that further matters relevant to NRx can be treated in more detail in future posts. Indeed, it is hoped that Out of Phase might become more explicitly neoreactionary than it has been in the past. Neoreaction is a lively intellectual movement, and one entirely in keeping with the tenor and assumptions of this author. Just look at the content of these pages: neo-colonial, neo-orientalist, neo-this and neo-that. And whether it is matters of art or matters of esoterica, the author shows an abiding preference for the ways of by-gone days and a consistent aversion to modern innovations. There is no harm in making these pages more forthright in their intellectual affiliations. 

Let us, therefore, attempt a brief and demystified explanation of the Neoreactionary viewpoint. It is, admittedly, not an easy matter because the NRx community is never in any hurry to make it easy. The entire business is, to be sure, elitist, and Neoreaction has adopted an opaque posture and vocabulary as a deliberate strategy against entryism, which is to say against infiltration by hostile or just unworthy characters. It is no exaggeration to say that many of the prime movers in the movement are longwinded, while others are prolix and obscuritanistic. People complain: "I've read lots of Neoreactionary stuff, and I'm still none the wiser! What does it all mean?" Here is what it means:

A reactionary is someone who advocates a return to a status quo ante, a return to a previous status quo. Specifically, as a political proponent, a reactionary is someone who advocates a return to a political system from the past. This is different to a conservative, who merely wants to defend and preserve the current status quo. A reactionary wants to restore a status quo long since gone. In popular parlance, they want to turn back the clock, go against the tide of so-called "progress", and rebuild and restore something of value that has been lost.In reaction we find a rejection of the ideology of "progress", a critique of the conditions of modernity and a determination to recover a lost virtue. 

A neo-reactionary, therefore, is one of a new breed of reactionaries. In recent times the label has been applied especially to a diverse group of thinkers and advocates who have coalesced around a blogger known pseudonymously as Mencius Moldbug.

To be yet more specific, Neoreaction, as a political position, values and seeks a return to many of the things which prevailed in the past but which were swept away recklessly by such watersheds as the French and American Revolutions, including: monarchy, aristocracy, nobility, fealty, heroic values, vocation, loyalty, classical international law, hierarchical organisational structures, family, patriarchal social relations, localism, ethnic identity, religious observance and religious morality. It follows that, in general, Neoreactionaries are opposed to the corrosive, flattening, quantifying modern cult of equality and all the related the assumptions of progressive (Whig) ideology.In particular, Neoreaction is anti-democratic. It sees democracy as an inherently Leftist mode that is counted as the worst and least stable form of government. 

As someone explained it, Neoreactionaries want to return to the 50s. The 1450s. 

This is not to say that there is a single programme of Neoreaction. Not all Neoreactionaries are monarchists, for instance. And not all of them are religious, by any means. Ethnic identity is more important to some than to others. But they all share a determination to learn from the pre-modern era, share a rejection of progressive historiography and a belief that a great many pre-modern institutions were better than what has replaced them. In general, they subscribe to the view that traditional (pre-modern) societies were founded in realities, the stuff of nature, and that the modern project, on the contrary, is founded in delusions, wishful thinking, and serious, diabolical miscalculations of the human predicament. 

Mencius Moldbug - the face of Neoreaction

While its opponents might present Neoreaction as "Far Right" it is not, it should be stressed, a movement of political activists and agitators. No one supposes that the wished-for Restoration of Tradition and historical norms can be brought about through the ballot box or collecting petitions or staging street marches. Contemporary Neoreaction is an intellectual movement that has grown out of the above principles, largely based in a careful reading of old (pre-modern) texts and a meticulous re-reading of history. Neoreactionaries read old books. That is mainly what they do. They read old books without the lens of modern liberalism. Foremost among their favoured authors is the XIXth century Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle, the great spokesman of old Europe. 

Also worth mentioning here is that contemporary Neoreaction - based as it is in the analysis of Mr Moldbug - proposes that the roots of Leftism are to be found in Calvinist Protestantism and that Leftism is itself essentially religious (eschatological) in its motivations. Progressive democracy, the human rights cult, egalitarianism, feminism, radical environmentalism, Whiggism of all stripes: all these related phenomena constitute a religion. They are more than political, they are religious in nature. This is an important feature of Neoreactionary thought. The NRx analysis goes much deeper than garden variety right-wing sloganeering. Finally, it is a metaphysics. 

In conclusion, contemporary neoreaction is anything but empty nostalgia. It is a rigorous field of genuine politico-philosophical inquiry, albeit conducted almost entirely outside of the formal structures of academia. The following links will take the reader to some of the more illustrious and rewarding NRx blogsites active today:

Unqualified Reservations

Outside In

The Future Primeval

Neocolonial

The Froude Society

Social Matter

Yours

Harper McAlpine Black