Monday
Here’s an H.D. poem for those suffering through temperatures reaching up into the 120s (50 centigrade) in places like Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas. Hang in there:
O wind, rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air–
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Cut the heat–
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
Spiritual Sunday
Today I get the privilege of reading the Old Testament lesson to our recently reopened and newly named church (we are now St. Mark and St. Paul on the Mountain). The lesson itself works as a tree poem and it puts me in mind of a gorgeous Robert Haas tree poem, with both poems signaling new hope.
First, here’s Ezekiel (17:22-24)
Thus says the Lord God:
I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out.I will break off a tender one
from the topmost of its young twigs;I myself will plant it
on a high and lofty mountain.On the mountain height of Israel
I will plant it,in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind.All the trees of the field shall know
that I am the Lord.I bring low the high tree,
I make high the low tree;I dry up the green tree
and make the dry tree flourish.I the Lord have spoken;
I will accomplish it.
The poem reminds me somewhat of Joyce Kilmer’s well-known poem “Trees,” which also sees trees sheltering winged creatures while lifting their arms up to the Lord:
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair…
In Haas’s “The Apple Trees at Olema,” meanwhile, a couple comes across two “old neglected apple trees”—like Ezekiel’s dry tree—and are transported upward. She is “shaken by the raw, white, backlit flaring/ of the apple blossoms” while he “is exultant, as if something he felt were verified.” She “takes the measure/ of the trees and lets them in” while he finds that his dismay, like a thin moon, “fades like a scar in the sky to the east of them.”
The concluding image is one where the speaker, knowing that he has a home he can always return to, confidently ventures forth to wander among strangers. The tree of faith gives one that confidence.
The Apple Trees at Olema
By Robert Haas
They are walking in the woods along the coast
and in a grassy meadow, wasting, they come upon
two old neglected apple trees. Moss thickened
every bough and the wood of the limbs looked rotten
but the trees were wild with blossom and a green fire
of small new leaves flickered even on the deadest branches.
Blue-eyes, poppies, a scattering of lupine
flecked the meadow, and an intricate, leopard-spotted
leaf-green flower whose name they didn’t know.
Trout lily, he said; she said, adder’s-tongue.
She is shaken by the raw, white, backlit flaring
of the apple blossoms. He is exultant,
as if something he felt were verified,
and looks to her to mirror his response.
If it is afternoon, a thin moon of my own dismay
fades like a scar in the sky to the east of them.
He could be knocking wildly at a closed door
in a dream. She thinks, meanwhile, that moss
resembles seaweed drying lightly on a dock.
Torn flesh, it was the repetitive torn flesh
of appetite in the cold white blossoms
that had startled her. Now they seem tender
and where she was repelled she takes the measure
of the trees and lets them in. But he no longer
has the apple trees. This is as sad or happy
as the tide, going out or coming in, at sunset.
The light catching in the spray that spumes up
on the reef is the color of the lesser finch
they notice now flashing dull gold in the light
above the field. They admire the bird together,
it draws them closer, and they start to walk again.
A small boy wanders corridors of a hotel that way.
Behind one door, a maid. Behind another one, a man
in striped pajamas shaving. He holds the number
of his room close to the center of his mind
gravely and delicately, as if it were the key,
and then he wanders among strangers all he wants
Friday
The internet is a wondrous place when it can surface a poem that hits as close to home as this Lu Yu lyric. It captures the joys of being about to turn 70 at a time when I am on the eve of turning 70 (tomorrow).
Lu Yu was an 8th century Chinese poet who (this according to Wikipedia) authored The Classic of Tea, “the first definitive work on cultivating, making and drinking tea.” I love how the old man in the poem is carrying a battered book. No wonder he is whooping with delight.
Old man pushing seventy,
In truth he acts like a little boy,
Whooping with delight when he spies some mountain fruits,
Laughing with joy, tagging after village mummers;
With the others having fun stacking tiles to make a pagoda,
Standing alone staring at his image in the jardinière pool.
Tucked under his arm, a battered book to read,
Just like the time he first set out to school.
Carl Jung, while he celebrates the archetype of the “wise old man,” also has positive things to say about the figure of the “old fool.” Dignified old age can get trapped by respectability whereas crazy old age opens up new perspectives on life. W. B. Yeats agrees in his “Crazy Jane” series, having a poor old woman confront a holier-than-thou bishop. “Love has pitched his mansion in/ The place of excrement,” she defiantly tells him. Lu Yu’s old man would have hit it off with Crazy Jane.
While not crazy, my old friend Maureen Holbert Hogaboom, an actress who died at 98, insisted on being called a crone rather than a wise old woman, although she was both. Thinking of herself as a crone gave her the freedom of not always being entirely respectable. She used to tell me that each decade was better than the one before (although she stopped saying this when she hit her nineties).
As I enter my seventies, my prayer is that, like Lu Yu’s old man, I will continue to whoop with delight, laugh with joy, have fun, and act like a little boy.
Thursday
We’re currently traveling so I missed writing about Julia’s and my 48th wedding anniversary, which was Tuesday. I turn to Milton’s celebration of “wedded love” in Book IV because it captures well my own view of marriage.
The scene occurs in Book IV, before the fall. After Adam and Eve have offered up spontaneous prayers of thanksgiving to God (“adoration pure/Which God likes best”), they venture into their “blissful bower,” which is also described as a “shady lodge.” Because they are naked, they don’t have to worry about taking off their “troublesome disguises” but get immediately to business. Milton gets a little cagey at this point, essentially saying that they did not not make love (“nor Eve the rites/ Mysterious of connubial love refused”). Then, rather than provide us with any more detail, he attacks people who attack sex.
Apparently, Milton entered fraught territory by having Adam and Eve engage in sex before before the fall. For Milton, however, this made sense. After all, Adam and Eve, guided by the Puritan work ethic, need children to help them trim the garden.
Sex within marriage is sanctified by the sacred commitment between two people. Marriage is “founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure” and is befitting of “holiest place.” Designed to be a “perpetual fountain of domestic sweets,” marriage provides a bed that (according to saints and Biblical patriarchs) is “undefiled and chaste.” Shifting to a classical allusion (Cupid), Milton writes,
Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels…
In contrast to wedded love is “adulterous lust,” such asis found “among the bestial herds to range.” Such sex can be found in brothels (“loveless, joyless, unendeared,/ Casual fruition”). One sees it in secret assignations, wild parties, and guys singing outside your window. Or as Milton puts it,
…in court amours,
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenate, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
Having distracted the reader long enough so that our prying eyes can’t see their lovemaking, Milton at this point returns to find them asleep in each other’s arms and covered with rose petals. “Sleep on, blest pair,” he says, “it doesn’t get better than this.” Or to quote Milton’s actual words, “O yet happiest if ye seek/ No happier state, and know to know no more.” Here’s the passage in its entirety:
This said unanimous, and other Rites
Observing none, but adoration pure
Which God likes best, into their inmost bower
Handed they went; and eased the putting off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid, nor turned I ween
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused;
Whatever hypocrites austerely talk
Of purity and place and innocence,
Defaming as impure what God declares
Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.
Our Maker bids increase; who bids abstain
But our destroyer, foe to God and Man?
Hail, wedded Love! mysterious law true source
Of human offspring, sole propriety
In Paradise of all things common else
By thee adulterous lust was driven from men
Among the bestial herds to range; by thee,
Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure,
Relations dear, and all the charities
Of father, son, and brother first were known.
Far be it, that I should write thee sin or blame,
Or think thee unbefitting holiest place,
Perpetual fountain of domestic sweets!
Whose bed is undefiled and chaste pronounced,
Present or past, as saints and patriarchs used.
Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights
His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,
Reigns here and revels; not in the bought smile
Of harlots, loveless, joyless, unendeared,
Casual fruition; nor in court amours,
Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,
Or serenate, which the starved lover sings
To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.
These lulled by nightingales embracing slept,
And on their naked limbs the flowery roof
Showered Roses, which the Morn repaired. Sleep on,
Blest pair; and O yet happiest if ye seek
No happier state, and know to know no more.
I don’t go so far as to condemn all sex that happens outside of marriage. I’m not a 17th century Puritan. But I agree something special happens when physical intimacy is linked with spiritual connection. I’m willing to add, as other instances of spiritual connection, committed partnership and even just two people evincing genuine respect for each other.
I think something precious is lost, however, if our sexual relations are no more than that experienced by “bestial herds.”
Love has been lighting his lamp and waving his purple wings over me and Julia for 48 years. Hail wedded love indeed.
Wednesday
I am deeply grateful to be on good terms with my two daughters-in-law, whom I saw again recently for the first time since pre-Covid. Not everyone is so lucky. I was talking to a friend recently whose wonderful daughter is disliked by her mother-in-law. (That her mother-in-law is a rabid Trump supporter makes it even worse, but their friction predates Trump.) My friend advised her daughter that, if she ever feels the need to vent, to do so to her rather than to her husband. After all, a wife-mother battle puts him in a no-win situation. Fortunately, as he sees his mother with clear eyes, no wedge has been driven between him and his wife. Still, my friend’s advice is useful, and her daughter has followed it.
I think how valuable it is to have such third person interlocutors. Anne Elliot, my favorite Austen heroine, plays such a role in Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
In this case, it is the daughter rather than the mother-in-law who is at fault. Anne’s sister Mary is the spoiled wife of Charles Musgrove and complains constantly about her mother-in-law, who lives close by. When Anne visits, she hears from both parties. In this case, the children are a major cause of contention:
One of the least agreeable circumstances of [Anne’s] residence there was her being treated with too much confidence by all parties, and being too much in the secret of the complaints of each house. Known to have some influence with her sister, she was continually requested, or at least receiving hints to exert it, beyond what was practicable….
Mary’s declaration was, “I hate sending the children to the Great House, though their grandmamma is always wanting to see them, for she humors and indulges them to such a degree, and gives them so much trash and sweet things, that they are sure to come back sick and cross for the rest of the day.” And Mrs. Musgrove took the first opportunity of being alone with Anne, to say, “Oh! Miss Anne, I cannot help wishing Mrs. Charles had a little of your method with those children. They are quite different creatures with you! But to be sure, in general they are so spoilt! It is a pity you cannot put your sister in the way of managing them. They are as fine healthy children as ever were seen, poor little dears! without partiality; but Mrs. Charles knows no more how they should be treated–! Bless me! how troublesome they are sometimes. I assure you, Miss Anne, it prevents my wishing to see them at our house so often as I otherwise should. I believe Mrs. Charles is not quite pleased with my not inviting them oftener; but you know it is very bad to have children with one that one is obligated to be checking every moment; “don’t do this,” and “don’t do that;” or that one can only keep in tolerable order by more cake than is good for them.”
To give you a sense of Mary, being from the upper-class Elliot family she has the right to precede her mother-in-law into formal dinners. That she insists on this privilege marks her out as a snob. One of her sisters-in-law complains about it to Anne:
Again, it was Mary’s complaint, that Mrs. Musgrove was very apt not to give her the precedence that was her due, when they dined at the Great House with other families; and she did not see any reason why she was to be considered so much at home as to lose her place. And one day when Anne was walking with only the Musgroves, one of them after talking of rank, people of rank, and jealousy of rank, said, “I have no scruple of observing to you, how nonsensical some persons are about their place, because all the world knows how easy and indifferent you are about it; but I wish anybody could give Mary a hint that it would be a great deal better if she were not so very tenacious, especially if she would not be always putting herself forward to take place of mamma. Nobody doubts her right to have precedence of mamma, but it would be more becoming in her not to be always insisting on it. It is not that mamma cares about it the least in the world, but I know it is taken notice of by many persons.”
Infinitely patient Anne responds through gentle hints:
How was Anne to set all these matters to rights? She could do little more than listen patiently, soften every grievance, and excuse each to the other; give them all hints of the forbearance necessary between such near neighbors, and make those hints broadest which were meant for her sister’s benefit.
Of course, it’s best if one can communicate directly without the need for go-betweens. We generally have achieved this with our own daughters-in-law although even we, upon occasion, have received gentle hints from our sons on certain matters (usually concerning the grandchildren). And although my wife and my 95-year-old mother, with whom we now live, have become best friends, there have been times when I have been called upon to channel my inner Anne Elliot. Even in the best of situations, one stumbles upon an occasional mine.
But minefield or no, Anne acknowledges that Musgrove family life is much richer than the sterile isolation in which her pretentious father and elder sister live. When her navy husband is called to duty and she must seek out family, she is more likely to spend time with the Musgroves than with Sir Walter and Miss Elliot.
Tuesday
Released from Covid restrictions, Julia and I have been traveling and have finally, for the first time in over 18 months, physically hugged grandchildren Esmé, Etta, Eden and Ocean (in Buford, Georgia) and Alban (in Washington, D.C). I hadn’t realized how hungry my arms were for the touch. In the past I’ve cited Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour” to celebrate such moments and turn again to the poem today, even though parts of it are a little creepy.
That’s because the devouring love Longfellow describes overwhelms individual self. The poet’s children first devour him and then he devours them in return. The reference to the wicked Bishop of Bingen, whom legend has it set fire to starving peasants and then was himself devoured by rats, was the subject of a Robert Southey poem https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45179/gods-judgment-on-a-wicked-bishop. The rats, as avatars of divine justice, sniff out where the bishop has locked himself into his castle with his hoarded grain. His cat’s screaming signals that his supposedly impregnable fortress offers inadequate protection:
He listen’d and look’d;… it was only the Cat;
And the Bishop he grew more fearful for that,
For she sat screaming, mad with fear
At the Army of Rats that were drawing near.
For they have swum over the river so deep,
And they have climb’d the shores so steep,
And up the Tower their way is bent,
To do the work for which they were sent.
They are not to be told by the dozen or score,
By thousands they come, and by myriads and more,
Such numbers had never been heard of before,
Such a judgement had never been witness’d of yore.
Down on his knees the Bishop fell,
And faster and faster his beads did he tell,
As louder and louder drawing near
The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.
And in at the windows and in at the door,
And through the walls helter-skelter they pour,
And down from the ceiling and up through the floor,
From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below,
And all at once to the Bishop they go.
They have whetted their teeth against the stones,
And now they pick the Bishop’s bones:
They gnaw’d the flesh from every limb,
For they were sent to do judgement on him!
In Longfellow’s poem, the children are the rats, which would make the father the imprisoning bishop:
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!
They climb up into my turret
O’er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And molder in dust away!
I can’t be overly critical of devouring love because, as I said, my own arms felt hungry for my grandchildren, and we hugged each other tightly for a long time when we met. The love felt so fierce, almost desperate, that devouring seems the right metaphor. In the moment, one wants to banish all separation. I felt caught up in a round-tower of arms.
Immediately afterwards, however, we all returned to our autonomous selves. There’s something wrong in a relationship where you don’t celebrate the loved one’s independence, keeping him or her imprisoned in a dependency dungeon. Hopefully the father in the poem does not, in the subsequent months and years, attempt to keep his daughters young and innocent rather than allowing them to become rebellious teenagers and self-reliant women. Hopefully he is not overly reliant on prepubescent daughters to save him from the night that is “beginning to lower.” The clock must turn on the children’s hour.
Maybe I’m overly concerned, with Longfellow doing more than finding images to capture how fierce and enduring his love is, guaranteed to last until he molders in dust away. In my own case, I know the love will endure. My love for my grandchildren’s fathers, one of whom will turn 40 next year, has only increased with time. I am in awe at how Darien and Toby have grown into adults and parents and husbands. I am in awe of their wonderful wives. Children are very nice, but grown-ups have a depth of soul that leaves me breathless.
All of which is to say that there should be a children’s hour, an adolescents’ hour, a young adults’ hour, a young parents’ hour, a midlife hour, etc. If Longfellow accedes to this, I have no problem with the particular stage he has chosen to celebrate in this poem.
Monday
I’m here to report a Bertolt Brecht sighting, this one with regard to Republican voter suppression efforts. Adam Serwer’s article in The Atlantic applies Brecht’s poem “The Solution” perfectly.
If Republicans voted to block a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 coup attempt, Serwer says, it is
not because they fear Trump, or because they want to “move on” from 2020. They are blocking a January 6 commission because they agree with the underlying ideological claim of the rioters, which is that Democratic electoral victories should not be recognized. Because they regard such victories as inherently illegitimate—the result of fraud, manipulation, or the votes of people who are not truly American—they believe that the law should be changed to ensure that elections more accurately reflect the will of Real Americans, who by definition vote Republican. They believe that there is nothing for them to investigate, because the actual problem is not the riot itself but the unjust usurpation of power that occurred when Democrats won. Absent that provocation, the rioters would have stayed home.
Serwer notes that, in the past, both parties have been guilty of attempting to disenfranchise voters, with the problem now that all the disenfranchisers are in the same party. It is in this discussion that Brecht appears:
The closest historical analogue is perhaps the Gilded Age, when both parties worked to restrict American democracy to its “best men.” In the North, this meant seeking to blunt the influence of immigrants and workers; in the South, it meant disenfranchising Black men and the white poor. The result was a country with widening inequality, and one with an emerging bipartisan consensus on the justness of white supremacy. In Brechtian terms, they dissolved the people and elected another—but at least things grew more civil and less polarized.
Brecht’s “The Solution” is about East German workers striking against work quotas during the Sovietization of East Germany. (Brecht moved to East Germany after the House on unAmerican Activity Committee (HUAC) drove him out of the United States.) Not afraid to call out tyranny wherever he saw it, Brecht challenged doctrinaire communism as he had previously challenged capitalism. The poem was too hot to publish until after Brecht’s death, however, and even then it could only appear in a West German newspaper.
Brecht reminds readers that the government should reflect the will of the people, not the other way around. That principle should be in effect in the United States no less than in East Germany. Here’s the poem:
After the uprising of the 17th June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had forfeited the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
The mindset that Brecht describes, Serwer emphasizes in his conclusion, suggests that, following the 2022 mid-term elections, we are very likely to see minority rule in the United States for some time to come:
Trump’s election was, among other things, a gesture of outrage from his supporters at having to share the country with those unlike them. Successfully restricting democracy so as to minimize the political power of rival constituencies would mean, at least as far as governing the country is concerned, that they would not have to. Most elected Republicans have repudiated the violence of the Capitol riot, but they share the belief of the rank and file that the rioters’ hearts were in the right place.
Indeed, in the last three days we’ve learned that
–Trump tried to get the Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election results;
–Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, told Trump advisor Steven Bannon on a public show that Trump won Texas only because he blocked a great deal of mail in-voting; and
–Oregon Representative Mike Nearman held a meeting with Oregon anti-maskers to plan “Operation Hall Pass.” In the words of historian Heather Cox Richardson, “That operation ultimately opened the Oregon capitol building to far-right rioters, who endangered the entire legislature. The video, which shows Nearman winking and nodding at setting up the invasion, has raised questions about whether other Republicans worked with insurrectionists in other settings.”
Worried about democracy working as it should? Dissolve the people.
Spiritual Sunday
Today’s Gospel reading includes Jesus’s pronouncement about “the eternal sin” ((Mark 3:30), which some people call “the unpardonable sin” or “the unforgivable sin.” It’s a concept that fascinated Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The passage reads,
Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.
Jesus says something comparable in Matthew 12:31-32:
And so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
As I understand the process, given that God enters out hearts in the form of the Holy Spirit, we essentially kill God if we harden our hearts because we deny God entrance. Under normal circumstances, our sins are forgivable because our hearts can soften and we can repent. But the process must start with the heart, without which nothing else is possible. That is why, in a poem like “The Altar,” George Herbert compares his heart to a stone and prays to God to soften it:
A HEART alone
Is such a stone,
As nothing but
Thy pow’r doth cut.
Christophere Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, by contrast, revels in the fact that “my heart’s so harden’d, I cannot repent.” When one is proud that one has killed the god within, one had cut oneself off from divinity.
One sees this pride in Hawthorne’s Ethan Brand, who goes out in search of “the unpardonable sin” and returns years later to give his account of having found it:
It is a sin that grew within my own breast,” replied Ethan Brand, standing erect with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. “A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! The only sin that deserves a recompense of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept the retribution!”
Brand notes the intellectual component to the eternal sin. In an act of pride–notice Brand’s defiant boast–the mind overrides any of those precious feelings we associate with being human, such as compassion, empathy, and “the sense of botherhood with man.” When we take pride in overriding what is best about being human, we—well—override what is best about being human.
Chillingworth in The Scarlet Letter also appears to sin against the Holy Spirit. In this he differs from Dimmesdale and Hester, who only sin against God. The almost dispassionate way that Chillingworth toys with Dimmesdale’s guilt makes him an utter monster.
Hawthorne’s Richard Digby, meanwhile, is a “Man of Adamant” whose sense of righteous superiority over all other humans prompts him to retreat into the woods, where he prays incessantly. When a young woman whom he once converted, Mary Golfe, comes out to plead with him to return to humanity, he spurns her:
“Perverse woman!” answered Richard Digby, laughing aloud,—for he was moved to bitter mirth by her foolish vehemence,—“I tell thee that the path to heaven leadeth straight through this narrow portal where I sit. And, moreover, the destruction thou speakest of is ordained, not for this blessed cave, but for all other habitations of mankind, throughout the earth. Get thee hence speedily, that thou mayst have thy share!”
Later they have this interchange:
“Richard,” she said, with passionate fervor, yet a gentleness in all her passion, “I pray thee, by thy hope of heaven, and as thou wouldst not dwell in this tomb forever, drink of this hallowed water, be it but a single drop! Then, make room for me by thy side, and let us read together one page of that blessed volume; and, lastly, kneel down with me and pray! Do this, and thy stony heart shall become softer than a babe’s, and all be well.”
But Richard Digby, in utter abhorrence of the proposal, cast the Bible at his feet, and eyed her with such a fixed and evil frown, that he looked less like a living man than a marble statue, wrought by some dark-imagined sculptor to express the most repulsive mood that human features could assume. And, as his look grew even devilish, so, with an equal change did Mary Goffe become more sad, more mild, more pitiful, more like a sorrowing angel. But, the more heavenly she was, the more hateful did she seem to Richard Digby, who at length raised his hand, and smote down the cup of hallowed water upon the threshold of the cave, thus rejecting the only medicine that could have cured his stony heart. A sweet perfume lingered in the air for a moment, and then was gone.
“Tempt me no more, accursed woman,” exclaimed he, still with his marble frown, “lest I smite thee down also! What hast thou to do with my Bible?—what with my prayers?—what with my heaven?”
At that point Digby’s heart ceases to beat and Hawtorne tells us that
the form of Mary Goffe melted into the last sunbeams, and returned from the sepulchral cave to heaven. For Mary Golfe had been buried in an English churchyard, months before; and either it was her ghost that haunted the wild forest, or else a dream-like spirit, typifying pure Religion.
Those who glory in their triumph over the heart have blotted out their souls. While technically they could repent—God, after all, cannot be killed—their sin is unforgivable because they won’t allow it to be forgiven.
Friday
I’ve shared this post about H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man a couple of times because it is continues to be so timely. Whenever we have a system that refuses to hold people accountable, the novel is relevant. It increasingly appears that the GOP wants no one to be held responsible for the January 6 insurrection.
I first ran this post in December, 2017 when the GOP was planning massive tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which blew up the deficit while providing peanuts for everyone else. As I noted, they appeared to have learned a version of Trump’s Access Hollywood pronouncement, “And when you’re a star, they let you [kiss beautiful women]. You can do anything… Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Same with the GOP: when you control all levels of government and have dispensed with normal checks and balances, you can do anything.
On June 9, 2020 I ran it again on the issues of immunity for cops. When misconduct of racist cops is routinely buried so that they can shove, beat and even kill people with impunity, they will inevitably do so. There’s little sign that Republicans are willing to hold such cops accountable.
Few maxims are truer than “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s no accident that, upon learning the secret of invisibility, Wells’s protagonist immediately starts violating social norms. It’s an aspect of human nature that Plato explores in the Gyges ring parable that inspired Wells’s story.
The parable appears in Book 2 of The Republic. Arguing with Socrates that people behave justly only because they fear the consequences of not doing so, Glaucon recounts how the shepherd Gyges, after finding a ring that renders him invisible, proceeds to seduce the queen, murder the king, and become king himself. While people might publicly applaud a good man that didn’t take advantage of such a ring, Glaucon states that they would in actuality regard him as a fool.
Rather than such freedom making Gyges happy, Socrates counters that he will always be slave to his appetites. While I believe this to be true, this is of scant consolation to Gyges’s victims, just as George Floyd finds scant consolation in the fact that his killers may never find deep peace. Wells, however, has a different focus, showing how delicious it is to act on dark impulses.
Griffin describes a “feeling of extraordinary elation” when he realizes that people can’t see him. Confiding his history to his college friend Kemp, he says he immediately burned down the house so that others wouldn’t discover his secrets:
“You fired the house!” exclaimed Kemp.
Fired the house. It was the only way to cover my trail—and no doubt it was insured. I slipped the bolts of the front door quietly and went out into the street. I was invisible, and I was only just beginning to realize the extraordinary advantage my invisibility gave me. My head was already teeming with plans of all the wild and wonderful things I had now impunity to do.
He uses the word “impunity” again further on:
Practically I thought I had impunity to do whatever I chose, everything—save to give away my secret. So I thought. Whatever I did, whatever the consequences might be, was nothing to me. I had merely to fling aside my garments and vanish. No person could hold me.
Griffin proceeds to engage in the same range of behavior that we are seeing from cops, from shoving to outright killing. At the beginning, his social infractions are minor:
My mood, I say, was one of exaltation. I felt as a seeing man might do, with padded feet and noiseless clothes, in a city of the blind. I experienced a wild impulse to jest, to startle people, to clap men on the back, fling people’s hats astray, and generally revel in my extraordinary advantage.
When Kent asks about “the common conventions of humanity,” Griffin replies that they are “all very well for common people.”
As Griffin’s madness grows, so do his dark ambitions. Thinking he has successfully enlisted Kemp, he plots ways to wield total power:
“And it is killing we must do, Kemp.”
“It is killing we must do,” repeated Kemp. “I’m listening to your plan, Griffin, but I’m not agreeing, mind. Why killing?”
“Not wanton killing, but a judicious slaying. The point is, they know there is an Invisible Man—as well as we know there is an Invisible Man. And that Invisible Man, Kemp, must now establish a Reign of Terror. Yes; no doubt it’s startling. But I mean it. A Reign of Terror. He must take some town like your Burdock and terrify and dominate it. He must issue his orders. He can do that in a thousand ways—scraps of paper thrust under doors would suffice. And all who disobey his orders he must kill, and kill all who would defend them.”
Note that he uses one of Trump’s favorite words here: “dominate.” He’s prepared to use violence if necessary.
A sadistic thrill comes with asserting your dominance over others. It’s not as fulfilling as serving humankind, as Socrates preaches and enlightened police know, but Griffin, racist cops, and authoritarians like Trump don’t care. They prefer the rush of acting with impunity.
The Invisible Man is transparent. The GOP and America’s police forces, not so much.
