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portwyne

Listed below are comments made by portwyne between Tuesday, 26th May 2009 and Sunday, 7th June 2009.

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PMS crisis is a satanic attack, says new Moderator 10:56am on 07 Jun 2009
Hey guys - completely off-thread - an opportunity has come up for me to do something I've very much wanted for some time. Do not expect to be able to post again until the Autumn. Have a good Summer - look forward to rejoining the fray in due course!
Irish hierarchy crosses the Rubicon 10:58pm on 29 May 2009
RJB - Brian had me up to 2 am on Thursday morning reading Shelley's Defence of Poetry, now you've set me to read the four Gospels to discover Jesus' third commandment to Peter! At least this one's likely to be an enjoyable and profitable exercise. Have a good weekend y'all...
Horus and Jesus: mythological plagiarism? 10:52pm on 29 May 2009
Then to Shakespeare.

"History? Bah humbug! Lets ban it! Meaning? Bah humbug! Lets twist it to our own purposes! Intention? Bah humbug! Lets ignore it! Context? Bah, humbug! Irrelevant! Preserve art? Bah humbug! Who cares if it is all smashed to smithereens"

Well, I've got to give it to you, Brian, that's a pretty fair, if unnuanced, summary of my position.

I do not consider that the opinions or insights of the author of any work of art on that work are of any greater significance than those of anyone else who comments on it: what is important in art is the individual encounter, the subjective response, the assumption of the create into the consciousness of the audience or observer and the interaction that follows.

I believe that an author is quite incapable of even knowing what his intention is in the act of creation. The discernment of an engaged respondent is as likely to elucidate meaning as the recollection of the creator.

I am not sure where you are going with the supposed parallels from classical texts, even if I accepted they might be significant (which I do not) what are they meant to prove? Shakespeare's genius was not in his ability to turn a mean pun, it was in his ability to see into the human heart and to express those insights in language of sublime beauty - "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature". What matters is what we see when we look in the mirror.

I hope to return to the argument when I come back from the weekend - my first off work for over a month - in the mean time just a parting shot. I loved your inclusion of culturally significant soap-references in the debate (post # 284 ) - Hilda Ogden had a porcelain duck on her murial, do you think it an indication that she was a post-modernist?
Horus and Jesus: mythological plagiarism? 9:43pm on 29 May 2009
Bernard, I apologise for post #304 "Bernard has said all I want to about Sinn Fein - I agree with him completely" - I hope I did not shock you too much and that I may claim your forgiveness - I plead the hour and the company. You will, of-course, have known that I only agreed with your conclusions, not your arguments!

Brian - let's to Sinn Fein (first)...

To suggest that people cannot change - that is really to "have no faith in humanity". To suggest that engagement and dialogue are of no effect - that is to demonstrate you have equally no faith in politics.

I am not a nationalist - of any description - I care not a jot whether NI remains under British administration or joins the Irish Republic. I have no interest in supporting any party just because it advocates Irish unity.

My objection to the SDLP is much the same as to Alliance - they are the nice left, the mildly moderate left, the de haut en bas left. They make me sick! When I was at university I was perceived as something of a Trotskyist-anarchist and you are seriously suggesting to me that now I should consider supporting Alliance?! Alliance!!

I would happily support the PUP; I have seen the empowerment that comes when people in urban working-class communities think for themselves, speak for themselves and act for themselves. I think, for example, David Ervine genuinely turned from violence and sought to turn his community from violence. I consider people like him beacons of light and it can be nothing other than innate bigotry to suggest the phenomenon is confined to the Protestant tradition. I give that endorsement freely and whole-heartedly and I give it with the recollection that many years ago the UVF callously and brutally took the life of someone I loved deeply, someone indeed with whom I was 'in love'.
Horus and Jesus: mythological plagiarism? 03:07am on 28 May 2009
Had we but world enough and time I would give you a longer answer Brian - but that will have to wait so a very summary response for the moment.

Shakespeare and classics: I prefer to believe Shakespeare's contemporaries rather than modern so-called scholars. Ben Jonson, for example, in the very poem from which you quote says "thou hadst small Latin and less Greek". I do not deny him the Latin of a grammar-school boy of his time (surpassing modern standards) and that, with material available in translation, would have been quite sufficient for his invention. The Latinate use of Latin words was common at the time, less pronounced in Shakespeare than other contemporary writers - it is probably his popularity and accessibility which allowed so many of his coining to survive.

The idea that poetry outlasts stone as a memorial is a topos of classical literature and formulations of associated thoughts do not predicate direct translation.

You cite two of the sonnets to demonstrate Shakespeare's belief of the persistence of art and its ability to confer virtual immortality. I do not know how much of one's philosophy of life can be derived from the hyperbole of love poems, even when so exquisitely crafted as your examples. What did Shakespeare himself think of such poems?

As every present time doth boast itself
Above a better gone, so must thy grave
Give way to what's seen now! Sir, you yourself
Have said and writ so, but your writing now
Is colder than that theme, 'She had not been,
Nor was not to be equall'd;'--thus your verse
Flow'd with her beauty once: 'tis shrewdly ebb'd,
To say you have seen a better.

I would cite Sonnet LXXIII as much closer to mytaste:

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

I would disagree with your understanding of the theme of the Tempest and will take you up on that again. In the meantime counter for me, if you will, the assertion of my quotation that "this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave[s] not a rack behind" - an idea echoed in the epilogue to A Midsummer Night's Dream where Puck descibes the play as "No more yielding but a dream".

Shelley - I had not read The Defence of Poetry nor did I claim to have done so - I prefer to read actual poetry and a quick scan has done little to change my mind - perhaps it is the post-modernist in me which feels that Shelley has more to say as a poet than as a critic. Nonetheless I do not read his essay as having the remotest interest in the past as history - rather his contention seems to be that the poet has an ability to uncover that which is universal, that which persists because it stands outside time and beyond the particular.

Shelley speaks of the eternal in poetry (and this is after but a quick glance) not the immutable: "if no new poets should arise to create afresh the associations which have been thus disorganized language will be dead to all the nobler purposes of human intercourse" and "this is true with respect to poetry in its most extended sense: all language, institution, and form require not only to be produced but to be sustained". The idea that the poet taps into and expresses something sublimely true, something timeless, something essential does not mean that the poet's work is not subject to the ravages of time and circumstance.

Bernard has said all I want to about Sinn Fein - I agree with him completely.
Will the Catholic church pay more? 00:35am on 28 May 2009
mccamleyc

I recollect two commands that our Lord gave to Peter, the Father of His Church.

The first was: "Feed my sheep, Feed my lambs" - Sustain. Nurture. Build-up. Care.

The second was: "Put away your sword" - the only defence Christ requires from His church is to live His life in the world.

I tell you, mccamley, PUT AWAY YOUR SWORD! You are not defending the Church, your words and the blindness from which they proceed dishonour Christ and disgrace the Church.
Will the Catholic church pay more? 00:14am on 28 May 2009
RJB thank you.

You have spoken openly of your experiences, how you felt as this story was reported, and how you feel as you read the reaction of commentators. You are very self-aware. Your engagement with humanity and your love for Christ's Church burn brightly when you write and must, I suspect, at some level help sustain you now.

There will be, however, others reading this blog, but silent, who also suffer and who may perhaps lack any kind of comfort. I hope you will not think me presumptuous if I pass on a couple of reflections on your comments which might amplify them for their benefit; perhaps you will disagree with me where it would be useful to do so or add any further thoughts of your own.

I often think, and I am sure you know, that apparent ease in dealing with the pain of life may reveal a grace but it usually conceals a struggle. I see no shame in that struggle, no shame in defeats or set-backs, no shame if one occasionally stands back from the fight.

I think we humans have two pre-programmed responses to danger: fight or flight. I find some therapies can be very macho, I don't know if you would agree, and one can come to feel that one must always confront, always battle, always win. I think sometimes flight answers the bill much better - sometimes it's good to turn away and acknowledge that one needs just to escape, just to forget. That wouldn't be weakness, I would think it common sense.
Horus and Jesus: mythological plagiarism? 00:48am on 27 May 2009
Graham - post # 292 - if the "Port" refers to me I did not make any accusations against you, silly or otherwise!

Brian - post # 284

I have not retreated in the least! I do not know how I can make the distinction more clear: I do not advocate wantonly smashing the David but, if it happened, I would not be at all concerned. Similarly I could cope with the slashing of Guernica. I value things for what they are while they exist but I am not excited about preserving them at all costs. I was, for example, outraged that after the earthquake which wrecked the Basilica of St Francis at Assisi greater priority was given to restoring the Giotto frescos than to rehousing the poor of the city whose homes had also been destroyed.

We have clashed before, of-course, in our opinions on the extent of Shakespeare's classical education - I tend to think he used some sort of compendium and may have had fairly limited knowledge of the original sources.

I beg to differ with your contention, too, that Shakespeare saw a "prevailing" or persistent power in his art. The poet was well aware of the transience of his craft - like the transience of life itself - I refer you to Prospero's words from The Tempest:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Compare Shelley's:

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!-yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever

Ozymandias is about the folly of presumption in the face of that transience. The words Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair! mean one thing on a proud statue in a thriving city and are still true but have an entirely different, indeed an inverted meaning when seen on a broken wreck abandoned in a desert. It is an extra layer to the irony that the absence of an audience mocks the pretensions of art as much as the broken statue mocks the pride of kings.
Will the Catholic church pay more? 10:49pm on 26 May 2009
RJB, I hear you and I want to send you in whatever way I can my love.

I read your recent comments and, taken in the context of the history of your other posting on this blog, I can see you exemplifying what Okri said of humanity "The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering".

I burn with indignation that there can be those who do not see how suffering may persist even when we have overcome its raw power and I curse those who add to it with their callousness.

I am so fearful of the damage that this stirring of the pot of memory will do; I am especially concerned for those who had buried their pain beyond consciousness. Any of us who has strength to spare at this time will not in life come closer to Jesus than we will by offering unconditional support to those who may feel alone or abandoned in their pain.
Will the Catholic church pay more? 09:43am on 26 May 2009
I have been afraid to post on this topic: afraid of what I might say, afraid that no matter what I said I could not say enough.

I recognise that the Catholic church brought education, prospects and advancement to generations of the poor in Ireland who were oppressed and disadvantaged by their Protestant landlords and employers. I recognise the work done by organisations like SVP to alleviate hardship and promote social justice. I recognise the holiness, devotion, and spirituality of many individual priests and religious for I have seen Christ playing in the features of their faces and living in the work they do.

However, speaking as someone intimately acquainted with man's inhumanity to man, when I learned of the extent and nature of this abuse I was drained of every joy in life, what happened in institutions like Artane was the purest evil: the word Satanic does not even begin to convey the horror of it.

I have spoken to two former inmates of Artane and listened at length to their stories. I have no resources to express what I felt never mind convey anything of the emotional desolation in those lives. I am practised in clearing my mind of the distress I encounter but I have never been able to purge those stories from my consciousness.

This was evil by individuals on a mass scale but it was also institutional evil, it is an evil that reaches to the very top of the church and contaminates it through and through. The hierarchy knew what was happening and concealed it, they added to the suffering of the abused, they dismissed and denigrated those they should have pastored in love.

The Catholic Church can have no vestige of moral authority, indeed can make no claim that is not utterly risible to be a Christian institution until it addresses this issue adequately.

For many it is already too late, for many who still live the grievous reality is that nothing is likely to repair their lives, I cannot speak for the survivors, I cannot only say that as a concerned outsider I do not think sorry is remotely appropriate as a response. I have not yet heard anyone in authority say Mea maxima culpa but even that would fall far short of meaningful. The Catholic Church understands the importance of symbolism, it endorses the penances of Lough Derg and Croagh Patrick; it might be a start if the Cardinal donned sackcloth and ashes and crawled on his hands and kness from Artane to Armagh, it would be better if the Pope joined him, but they would need to throw open the coffers of the Church as well and say to the victims "whatever it takes we'll give".

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