Reviews for The Orient In Chaucer And Medieval Romance

The average rating for The Orient In Chaucer And Medieval Romance based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-01-13 00:00:00 Paul L Henkel George Santayana (1863-1952) A philosopher, social and literary critic, poet, novelist and essayist, Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás - better known as George Santayana - once a household name in his temporarily adopted homeland America,(*) has fallen between the cracks and largely disappeared from view. Apolitical scholar-aesthetes are no longer welcome in an increasingly politicized age of rabid Know-nothingism; and what room is there now for his five volume magnum opus of moral philosophy The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress? Reason! One can only scoff in Trump's America and pull the fiery red MAGA cap lower over one's eyes. Late in his life Santayana said in an overview of his voluminous work "It aspires to be only a contribution to the humanities, the expression of a reflective, selective, and free mind." Free indeed from the fear either of embracing simultaneously the materialism of Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius and the view that beauty was an end in itself, or of writing philosophy with a poet's sensibility and poetry with a philosopher's mind. The perfect union of his philosophical-poetic-critical nature is to be found in Three Philosophical Poets (1910), where he meditates upon the work of Lucretius, Dante and Goethe, each of whom he viewed as "typical of an age" and together as "sum[ming] up all of European philosophy" in that they were the "unmatched" poets of "naturalism", "supernaturalism" and "romanticism". Aside from the tendentious choice of the term "supernaturalism", one can nod one's head in some kind of general agreement, but Santayana's view of Romanticism is rather more Nietzsche than Goethe: Their will summons all opportunities and dangers out of nothing to feed its appetite for action; and in that ideal function lies their sole reality. Once attained, things are transcended. Like the episodes of a spent dream, they are to be smiled at and forgotten; the spirit that feigned and discarded them remains always strong and undefiled; it aches for new conquests over new fictions. But then the Goethe at the center of Santayana's attention is not the Goethe of the West-östlicher Divan but the Goethe of Faustus, particularly of the posthumously published portion. Taken together with De rerum Natura and Comedìa one sees Santayana had ambition when composing this slim volume. Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) In his characteristically clear and delightful prose Santayana commences his chapter on Lucretius by summarizing his philosophical forebears' - Democritus and Epicurus - positions and rightly emphasizing Epicurus' asceticism and flight from the world but incorrectly describing him as a "timidly sensual" humanitarian or his moral philosophy as hedonism. There is nothing timid or sensual about Epicurus' central goal of attaining the state of ataraxia and nothing hedonistic in his philosophy of renunciation.(**) But then Santayana's focus in this chapter is Titus Lucretius Carus, or, better said since we know next to nothing about the man, his absolutely unique epic poem On the Nature of Things. If he doesn't quite do Epicurus full justice, how does he handle Lucretius? Well, he gives Lucretius his full due as an imaginative poet who captures the reader with vivid details and masterful rhetoric, and if one hasn't read De rerum natura before, this chapter will provide the motivation to do so. But Santayana quickly focuses in on the process at Nature's heart: death arising from life and life from death. And for the materialist there can be no comforting stories about the resurrection and eternal life of any individual (to stand in as example of the many, many stories humankind tells itself to hold back the dark). "Therefore Lucretius, who is nothing if not honest, is possessed of a profound melancholy." Perhaps my reading of Lucretius is distorted by the harrowing century that separates the composition of this review from that of Three Philosophical Poets, but I find more than melancholy in many passages of his poem, profound or not. Though there is joy in the text, there are passages of black pessimism. Indeed, the poem as it has come down to us closes with a rhetorically rich meditation on pestilence and drought, finishing up with the great city of Athens succumbing to a vicious plague. Granted, it is likely that the ending either disappeared or Lucretius wasn't able to finish the poem, but this is the text we have, and Santayana's speculation about an ending in which Venus and Mars appear - they are Lucretius' embodiments of the creative and destructive portions of Nature's cycle - to re-balance the text somehow is at this point just wishful thinking. Though ancient Greek philosophy certainly tried to be rational,(***) when Santayana writes … yet if we consider in Greek religion its characteristic tendency, and what rendered it distinctively Greek, we see that it was its unprecedented ideality, disinterestedness and aestheticism. it is clear that he has no idea of the revolutionary paradigm change coming with E.R. Dodds' The Greeks and the Irrational, where the cold silence of the temples of Apollo and Athena yields to the wild processions and the magical, dark caverns of Dionysus where mind-altering substances were employed to heighten the communion with the Divine and probably also to facilitate the total abandonment of hesitation in the accompanying orgies. In fact, come to think of it, Santayana clearly had some familiarity with Nietzsche's work, but he apparently overlooked Nietzsche's exultant praise of the Dionysian over the Apollonian (which he viewed as degenerate) in Greek culture, particularly in Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik. Pleasantly surprising are the pages where Santayana contrasts Lucretius with two other, very different poets of Nature - Shelley and Wordsworth - and with another Epicurean poet - Horace - which cast an illuminating light on all four poets. This chapter is certainly thought-stimulating, even when protest and not accedence is brought forth from the reader. Guy Carleton Wiggins (1883-1962) Turning now to Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri - better known as Dante - I must admit that I have never finished the Divine Comedy; as impressed, and even moved, as I was by the diction and imagination of the poet, I was thrown out of my thrall to Dante's words each time a Christian belief I simply don't accept showed up, even garbed in Dante's radiant robes. I find the Inferno horrifying (viewed solely as an act of imagination, it is magnificent) and the Paradiso only slightly less so, since I have a certain empathy for the desire to meld with the Godhead (the final pages of Hesse's Siddhartha always draw tears from me). The theology of the Purgatorio leaves me cross-eyed. This to signal that I am not going to try to quibble with Santayana in this section. Though an atheist in adulthood, Santayana was raised in Mediterranean Catholicism, which marked him for life. He seemed to view Protestantism (which marked me for life) as a Teutonic aberration and, aesthete that he was, revelled in the beauties of the Catholic rites and beliefs. (I grant that some of those beauties are quite appealing to me as well.) So he is at home in Dante's worldview, not least because that worldview contained Neoplatonism and Aristotelian ethics in the form to which Thomas of Aquinas gave his blessing. True, Santayana does reproach Dante for his egoism, which made the entire transcendent experience that of his alter ego; ditto for the revelations. He also accuses said alter ego of timidity. But he asserts "Here, then, we have the most complete idealization and comprehension of things achieved by mankind hitherto." Fascinating to me are the pages in which Santayana sketches the rise of Christian theology (and Dante's intellectual context) from its roots in Neoplatonism and Jewish theology as well as the political setting in which Dante was working. He felt that the Pope had betrayed his spiritual calling, the French king aided by his Florentine compatriots had betrayed the Holy Roman Emperor, and that his own exile and poverty were due to the machinations of evil persons. "They helped to pour forth the intense bitterness of his heart with the breath of prophetic invective. … His political passions and political hopes were fused with a sublime political ideal [the universal religion and the universal, God ordained empire - my comment] ; that fusion sublimated them, and made it possible for the expression of them to rise into poetry." Further: "On the other hand, the sting of Dante's private wrongs, like the enthusiasm of his private loves, lent a wonderful warmth and clearness to the great objects of his imagination." Finally, Santayana's view of the Divine Comedy is admirably expansive: Thus, throughout the Divine Comedy, meaning and meaning lurk beneath the luminous pictures; and the poem, besides being a description of the other world, and of the rewards and punishments meted out to souls, is a dramatic view of human passions in this life; a history of Italy and of the world; a theory of Church and State; the autobiography of an exile; and the confessions of a Christian, and of a lover, conscious of his sins and of the miracle of divine grace that intervenes to save him. So expansive that I will have to make yet another go at it... Robert Birdwell (1924-2016) On to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, an iconic figure in one of the European cultures I am most familiar with and whose work I have read rather broadly, though far from completely. For Santayana in this text Goethe is solely the author of the verse plays Faustus (I and II), and, for a change, he doesn't reproach him with timidity. On the contrary. After reviewing the historical and cultural background of the figure of Faust, which arose in an apparently real person who lived during the Renaissance but who became legendary shortly after his death, motivating the Church propagandists to pelt him figuratively with offal and Christopher Marlowe to turn him into a somewhat reluctant martyr for the values most prized by the Renaissance. The great Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderón de la Barca reclaimed him for the church in El mágico prodigioso, while Goethe, in another age, shoveled the Renaissance figure out of the orthodox dungheap to show the spirit of the Renaissance liberating the soul and "bursting the bonds of traditional faith and traditional morals." Not unexpectedly (and not unjustifiably), Santayana focuses on the naturalistic cycle of creation and destruction and how it plays itself out in Faustus. In the earlier version of the play the impatiently striving Faust summons the Earth-Spirit, which duly appears and is much more than the human being can cope with: it is the unbound energy of Nature itself encompassing both creation and death, sweeping all before it remorselessly, indeed disinterestedly. In the later Faustus Mephistopheles is the Earth-Spirit's servant embodying the destructive portion of Nature's flow. Goethe's Mephistopheles is a zealot who strives to return Creation to the pre-Creation state of nothingness. By performing evil he creates a good by eliminating the greater evil of Life. In Santayana's memorable words: "He is the cruel surgeon to the disease of life." To my mind Goethe's zealot is more memorable, almost admirable, than Milton's prideful Satan, not the least because he knows he is still only Nature's servant, that while his scythe reaps, behind his back the seeds of life are being taken by the wind. Goethe's Mephistopheles is ancient, knows and despises everything, sourly opposes all of Faust's silliness and romanticism. But Faust hungers for all that can be experienced, without fear or hope, while Mephistopheles, who has been everywhere and done everything, snorts and enables. Unlike the original Renaissance legend, Faust does not trade pleasure here for torments later; not unlike the original "sin" in the fabled garden, Faust wants to know, not in the abstract but in experience. And Goethe/Mephistopheles takes him through a rich series of experiences I falter to describe, unlike Santayana. Finally, Faust grows old and weary, having if not drained the cup, then certainly emptied some of its vastness. Goethe/God reaches in while Mephistopheles is vainly readying his nets for Faust's soul and declares that to live as Faust did is to live as one should, that in so doing he was God's servant all the while. The aged Goethe writes a final scene: Faust's apotheosis. In a Conclusion Santayana contrasts these three very different poets from rather empyrean heights. It is best if you ponder his words in situ, for the brief summary I wrote just won't do. And then - stimulated, aggravated, inspired - return to the remarkable originals. (*) with a best selling memoir, a Pulitzer Prize nominated novel, and a Time magazine cover story, not to mention a professorship at Harvard, where he contributed significantly to what is called the Golden Age of the Harvard Department of Philosophy (**) I have discussed Epicurus' system at some length in an earlier review: (***) I exclude from this claim the later Neoplatonists, whose magical Idealism so influenced the formation of theology in the early Christian church (Santayana gives an idea of some of that influence in the section on Dante) and who remind me of the more popular (and in my view degenerate) form of Taoism that competed so ruthlessly with Buddhism during the T'ang dynasty.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-21 00:00:00 Bruce Lodge This book is foul. Not the text especially but its self. It literally makes me sneeze it's so grotty and old. I read some article in the Berkeley Philosophy Journal Qui Parle a while back which sort of pegged George Santanyana as a politically indifferent Bourgeois Classicist, and maybe he is. I really don't think any sort of direct critique of thought or people or anything is very interesting anyway, as if Nature's true meaning can be just 'had out' by some yapping grad-student.. Just look at language itself the word Writan which meant 'scratch' and gives us writing written backwards damn near gives you Nature, and Nature written backwards gives you 'Ruttin' or perhaps Ratan.. at any rate, there are far too many variables in Nature for human thought to become anything other than another level of irony in that final reckoning whatever sublimely horrible decoction that will be. In 3 philosophical poems, GS not only grapples with each of these figures, but takes the time to dig up the criticism which has been done and basically offers "mediated encounters" and subsequent meditation. Sometimes you think the critic is right, at first, until further hermeneusis by George on the text which amounts to him gargling some wine and spitting it in your face. Ha! This books is actually not even a book, but a kind of delirious wine tasting by one of the great modern Epicureans! I like George Santanyana precisely because he is unpopular, and a bit wrong-headed and goes on about 'chaste folds' and innocent marbles far too long to take seriously, which I absolutely do!