Log24

See also earlier Pilgrim posts.

A reported death on November 22 —

An image reproduced in this  journal on November 22 —

"History is now and England." — T. S. Eliot

Yesterday was Bosch Day at the Prado.

For Harry  Bosch . . .

"Welcome to the Garden Club, Pilgrim."

The author of the above title is featured in
a New York Times  obituary today. Another 
book by the same author, On Glory Roads,
appears in some related readings here .

From a news article featured on the American Mathematical Society
home page today —

A joint Vietnam-USA mathematical meeting in Vietnam on
June 10-13, 2019:

This  journal on June 12, 2019:

See also the Twentieth of May, 2008 —

Welcome to the Garden Club, Pilgrim.

Welcome to the Garden Club, Pilgrim

"Program or be programmed."

Detail of illustration by Frederick Alfred Rhead of Vanity Fair,
page 96 in the John Bunyan classic Pilgrim's Progress 
(New York, The Century Co., 1912)

Yesterday's posts Legend and Purple Requiem suggest a review
of John Bunyan.  A search for "Vanity Fair" + "Temple of Art" yields…

The above Vanity Fair  article was linked to here previously.

Nicole Kidman at the end of
“Hemingway & Gellhorn” (2012)

"Bercovitch’s first published article, in 1964, was on
'Dramatic Irony in Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground ';
his second and his third, in 1965, on 'Romance and Anti-Romance
in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ' and 'Three Perspectives on
Reality in Paradise Lost .' Only thereafter does his publication record
begin to reflect his interest in the vagaries of early American culture,
when he published in 1966 his essay, 'New England Epic:
Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana .'"

— "Scholar and Exegete: A Tribute to Sacvan Bercovitch,
Honored Scholar of Early American Literature," by
Christopher Looby

Bercovitch reportedly died at 81 on Dec. 9, 2014.
See his New York Times  obituary from this evening
as well as a passage from Nicholas of Cusa quoted
here, also on Dec. 9, 2014 —

Bercovitch was a professor at Harvard (an institution
apparently unable to state accurately the date of
his death). The translator of of the above Nicholas of
Cusa passage may, I surmise, have been my section
man in a freshman philosophy course at Harvard
in the academic year 1960-1961.

"The way which directs a pilgrim to a city
is not the name of that city." 
— Nicholas of Cusa

Music Box … Continues.

Today's print New York Times  has articles on experimental and
New Age music —

In the Church of Difficult Music and
For New Age, the Next Generation.

I prefer Old Age music… for instance, that of Tony Rice —
also the subject of an article in today's print Times .

The Times  image at right above is of Croagh Patrick.

A New York Times Sunday Magazine  article today
about Reek Sunday (the last Sunday in July) suggests
a review of that Sunday last year, and hence also of
a related post from the Feast of the Transfiguration 
nine days later. 

Today is the 61st anniversary of the publication
of the book Mere Christianity , by C. S. Lewis.

In its honor, here is a link to "Hexagram 61" 
in this journal.

See also "Moonshine and Lion."

"He gazed out of the window hoping that somehow everything could make sense to him."

— "Passing in Silence," by Oliver Humpage

"You gotta be true to your code." —Sinatra

Exercise: Trace a path from the June 27 NY Lottery numbers
to the above two quotations.  Hint: See Cuernavaca and
Pilgrim's Progress  in TIME Magazine, May 3, 1948.

For some further background, click on the CBS quote above.
I still prefer, as I did in 1948, less  up-to-the-minute developments.

* The title refers to the phrase "the artist's signature."

Two definitions–

"In Dante's Inferno  the Harrowing of Hell is mentioned in Canto IV by the pilgrim's guide Virgil." —Wikipedia

"The Easter Vigil…. is held in the hours of darkness between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Day." —Wikipedia

Two more, of acronyms coined by Philip Rieff—

"Rieff is critical of the present 'pop' culture that glories in the 'primacies of possibility' and prefers 'both/and' to 'either/or.' … the 'via'— the 'vertical in authority'—… teaches us our place as we assent to and ascend on via’s ladder." —Philip Manning

Related material:

VIA CRUCIS

The infinity symbol, as sketched in a touching
attempt at scholarship by the late
"both/and" novelist David Foster Wallace—

The Cartesian cross—

The lemniscate—

Lemniscate with Cartesian cross—

The Interpreter’s House

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Second Part, “The Interpreter’s House“–

“When the Interpreter had shown them this, He has them into the very best room in the house; a very brave room it was. So He bid them look round about, and see if they could find anything profitable there. Then they looked round and round; for there was nothing there to be seen but a very great spider on the wall: and that they overlooked.

MERCY. Then said Mercy, Sir, I see nothing; but Christiana held her peace.

INTER. But, said the Interpreter, look again, and she therefore looked again, and said, Here is not anything but an ugly spider, who hangs by her hands upon the wall. Then said He, Is there but one spider in all this spacious room? Then the water stood in Christiana’s eyes, for she was a woman quick of apprehension; and she said, Yea, Lord, there is here more than one. Yea, and spiders whose venom is far more destructive than that which is in her. The Interpreter then looked pleasantly upon her, and said, Thou hast said the truth. This made Mercy blush, and the boys to cover their faces, for they all began now to understand the riddle.‌74‌

Then said the Interpreter again, “The spider taketh hold with their hands (as you see), and is in kings’ palaces’ (Prov. 30:28). And wherefore is this recorded, but to show you, that how full of the venom of sin soever you be, yet you may, by the hand of faith, lay hold of, and dwell in the best room that belongs to the King’s house above!‌75‌

CHRIST. I thought, said Christiana, of something of this; but I could not imagine it all. I thought that we were like spiders, and that we looked like ugly creatures, in what fine room soever we were; but that by this spider, this venomous and ill-favoured creature, we were to learn how to act faith, that came not into my mind. And yet she has taken hold with her hands, as I see, and dwells in the best room in the house. God has made nothing in vain.”

Related material:

The spider metaphor in
Under the Volcano
(April 10, 2004) and
an AP obituary
from yesterday.

The Way of the Pilgrim,
Part III:
 
For the Birthday
of C. S. Lewis

The Tao, Chapter I

“The Chinese… speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.”

— C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man

“In his preface to That Hideous Strength, Lewis says the novel has a serious point that he has tried to make in this little book, The Abolition of Man.  The novel is a work of fantasy or science fiction, while Abolition is a short philosophical work about moral education, but as we shall see the two go together; we will understand either book better by having read and thought about the other.”

— Dale Nelson, Notes on The Abolition of Man

“In Epiphany Term, 1942, C.S. Lewis delivered the Riddell Memorial Lectures… in….  the University of Durham….  He delivered three lectures entitled ‘Men without Chests,’ ‘The Way,’ and ‘The Abolition of Man.’  In them he set out to attack and confute what he saw as the errors of his age. He started by quoting some fashionable lunacy from an educationalists’ textbook, from which he developed a general attack on moral subjectivism.  In his second lecture he argued against various contemporary isms, which purported to replace traditional objective morality.  His final lecture, ‘The Abolition of Man,’ which also provided the title of the book published the following year, was a sustained attack on hard-line scientific anti-humanism. The intervening fifty years have largely vindicated Lewis.”

— J. R. Lucas, The Restoration of Man

In a recent Edge article, “The Vagaries of Religious Experience,” a Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert,  quotes Einstein on his own religious vagaries:

“(I had) a deep religiosity, which, however, found an abrupt ending at the age of 12. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true. The consequence was a positively fanatic orgy* of freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is intentionally being deceived by the state through lies. It was a crushing impression. Suspicion against every kind of authority grew out of this experience, a skeptical attitude towards the convictions which were alive in any specific social environment– an attitude which has never again left me.” (Autobiographical Notes, 1949)

Gilbert adds,

“Einstein’s orgy* of freethinking forever changed our understanding of space and time, and the phrase ‘Religion for Dummies’ became, in the view of many scientists, a redundancy.”

Here is another Einstein quotation, from the paragraph in Autobiographical Notes following the paragraph quoted by Gilbert:

“It is quite clear to me that the religious paradise of youth, which was thus lost, was a first attempt to free myself from the chains of the ‘merely-personal,’ from an existence which is dominated by wishes, hopes and primitive feelings.  Out yonder there was this huge world, which exists independently of us human beings and which stands before us like a great, eternal riddle, at least partially accessible to our inspection and thinking.  The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation…. The road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has proved itself as trustworthy, and I have never regretted having chosen it.”

Einstein describes “the road to the religious paradise” as “comfortable and alluring.”  He might therefore have profited by the book saluted in the previous entry… a book that might be described, to adapt Gilbert’s charming phrase, as “Religion for Dummies like Einstein.”

For an approach to the contemptible religion of Scientism that is more subtle than Gilbert’s, see “Einstein’s Third Paradise,” by Gerald Holton, another Harvard savant.

* In the original, the words “orgy of” appear in square brackets to indicate an interpolation by the editor, Paul A. Schilpp, a Methodist minister (pdf).  Einstein’s own words were “eine geradezu fanatische Freigeisterei.”  Gilbert’s omission of the brackets indicates both the moral slovenliness typical of those embracing Scientism and the current low standards of scholarship at Harvard.  (Related material: The Crimson Passion.)

“George F. Kennan, a diplomat and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who formulated the basic foreign policy followed by the United States in the Cold War, died last night at his home in Princeton, N.J. He was 101….”

The Blues
and the
Abstract Truth

An obituary of jazz artist Jimmy Smith, who died on Mardi Gras, leads, via his album Got My Mojo Workin’, to a 1961 album of Oliver Nelson that in turn suggests the following quotation:

“After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken with a summons by the same post as the other, and had this for a token that the summons was true, ‘That his pitcher was broken at the fountain.’ (Eccles. 12:6) When he understood it, he called for his friends, and told them of it. Then said he, I am going to my Father’s; and though with great difficulty I have got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be my rewarder. When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river-side, into which as he went, he said, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ And as he went down deeper, he said, ‘Grave, where is thy victory?’ (1 Cor. 15:55) So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”

— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress

Truth and Style

From today’s New York Times obituary for Amy M. Spindler, former fashion critic of The New York Times and style editor of its magazine, who died yesterday at 40:

“Anna Wintour, the editor in chief of Vogue, whom Ms. Spindler regarded as a competitor when she became style editor of The Times Magazine, in 1998, said: ‘She took criticism in a new direction. She wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.’ “

“I don’t believe in truth. I believe in style.”
— Hugh Grant in Vogue magazine, July 1995

Again from Spindler’s obituary:

“In a front-page article on Sept. 5, 1995, she [Spindler] noted a new piety on parade, marked by store windows and catalogs full of monastic robes, pilgrim’s boots and dangling crosses. Perhaps, she wrote, ‘the financially strained fashion industry is seeking salvation from above.’ “

Perhaps.

Amy M. Spindler

See also
Strike That Pose (August 1995)
and the two previous log24.net entries
on art and religion at Harvard.

For even more context, see
Truth and Style: ART WARS at Harvard.

The Recruit

From an obituary of Walt W. Rostow, advisor to presidents and Vietnam hardliner:

“During World War II, he served in the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor agency to the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Rostow died on Thursday, February 13, 2003, the anniversary of the 1945 firebombing of Dresden.

Like von Neumann, Rostow exemplified the use of intellectuals by the state.  From a memoir by Rostow:

“…in mid-1941…. American military intelligence… was grossly inadequate….

…military leaders… learned that they needed intellectuals….

Thus the link was forged that yielded the CIA, RAND, the AEC, and all the other institutionalized links between intellectual life and national security that persist down to the present.”

— Walt W. Rostow, “Recollections of the Bombing,”
    University of Texas web page

“Look at that caveman go!”

— Remark in my entry of February 13, 2003

“So it goes.”

— Remark of Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five

See also

Tralfamadorian Structure
in Slaughterhouse-Five,

which includes the following passage:

“…the nonlinear characterization of Billy Pilgrim emphasizes that he is not simply an established identity who undergoes a series of changes but all the different things he is at different times.”

For a more recent nonlinear characterization, see the poem “Fermata” by Andrew Zawacki in The New Yorker magazine, issue dated Feb. 17 and 24, 2003, pp. 160-161.  Zawacki is thirty years younger than I, but we share the same small home town.