O Sapientia, December 17

O Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimi prodisti, attingens a fine usque ad finem, fortiter suaviterque disponens omnia: veni ad docendum nos viam prudentiae.

"Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold where they fine it. Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone. He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection: the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death. The flood breaketh out from the inhabitant; even the waters forgotten of the foot: they are dried up, they are gone away from men. As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire. The stones of it are the place of sapphires: and it hath dust of gold.

"There is a path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye hath not seen: The lion's whelps have not trodden it, nor the fierce lion passed by it. He putteth forth his hand upon the rock; he overturneth the mountains by the roots. He cutteth out rivers among the rocks; and his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth the floods from overflowing; and the thing that is hid bringeth he forth to light. But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me.

" It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels of fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.

"Whence then cometh wisdom? and where is the place of understanding? Seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air. Destruction and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven; To make the weight for the winds; and he weigheth the waters by measure. When he made a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder: Then did he see it, and declare it; he prepared it, yea, and searched it out. And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding."

"Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast. And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem; and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day's journey; and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers. And when they saw him, they were amazed: and his mother said unto him, Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business? And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.

"And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."

"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made any thing from the beginning. I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived. Neither had the fountains of waters as yet sprung out: The mountains with their huge bulk had not as yet been established: before the hills I was brought forth.

"He had not yet made the earth, nor the rivers, nor the poles of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was present: when with a certain law and compass he enclosed the depths: When he established the sky above, and poised the fountains of waters: When he compassed the sea with its bounds, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their limits: when he balanced the foundations of the earth; I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times, playing in the world: and my delights were to be with the children of men.

"Now therefore, ye children, hear me: Blessed are they that keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and refuse it not. Blessed is the man that heareth me, and that watcheth daily at my gates, and waiteth at the posts of my doors. He that shall find me, shall find life, and shall have salvation from the Lord."

"At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him."

"In her is an understanding spirit, holy, one only, manifold, subtle, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good, quick, which cannot be letted, ready to do good, kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things, and going through all understanding, pure, and most subtle, spirits. For wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness. For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore can no defiled thing fall into her. For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness. And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God, and prophets.

"For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom. For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it. For after this cometh night: but vice shall not prevail against wisdom. Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things."

"It is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God."

"Wisdom shall praise her own self, and shall be honoured in God, and shall glory in the midst of her people, and shall open her mouth in the churches of the most High, and shall glorify herself in the sight of his power, and in the midst of her own people she shall be exalted, and shall be admired in the holy assembly. And in the multitude of the elect she shall have praise, and among the blessed she shall be blessed, saying:

"I came out of the mouth of the most High, the firstborn before all creatures: I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth: I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom of the deep, and have walked in the waves of the sea, and have stood in all the earth: and in every people, And in every nation I have had the chief rule. And by my power I have trodden under my feet the hearts of all the high and low: and in all these I sought rest, and I shall abide in the inheritance of the Lord.

"Then the creator of all things commanded, and said to me: and he that made me, rested in my tabernacle, and he said to me: Let thy dwelling be in Jacob, and thy inheritance in Israel, and take root in my elect. From the beginning, and before the world, was I created, and unto the world to come I shall not cease to be, and in the holy dwelling place I have ministered before him. And so was I established in Sion, and in the holy city likewise I rested, and my power was in Jerusalem. And I took root in an honourable people, and in the portion of my God his inheritance, and my abode is in the full assembly of saints.

"I was exalted like a cedar in Libanus, and as a cypress tree on mount Sion. I was exalted like a palm tree in Cades, and as a rose plant in Jericho: As a fair olive tree in the plains, and as a plane tree by the water in the streets, was I exalted. I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon. and aromatical balm: I yielded a sweet odour like the best myrrh: And I perfumed my dwelling as storax, and galbanum, and onyx, and aloes, and as the frankincense not cut, and my odour is as the purest balm. I have stretched out my branches as the turpentine tree, and my branches are of honour and grace. As the vine I have brought forth a pleasant odour: and my flowers are the fruit of honour and riches.

"I am the mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope. In me is all grace of the way and of the truth, in me is all hope of life and of virtue. Come over to me, all ye that desire me, and be filled with my fruits. For my spirit is sweet above honey, and my inheritance above honey and the honeycomb. My memory is unto everlasting generations. They that eat me, shall yet hunger: and they that drink me, shall yet thirst. He that hearkeneth to me, shall not be confounded: and they that work by me, shall not sin.They that explain me shall have life everlasting.

"I, wisdom, have poured out rivers. I, like a brook out of a river of a mighty water; I, like a channel of a river. and like an aqueduct, came out of paradise. I said: I will water my garden of plants, and I will water abundantly the fruits of my meadow. And behold my brook became a great river, and my river came near to a sea: For I make doctrine to shine forth to all as the morning light, and I will declare it afar off. I will penetrate to all the lower parts of the earth, and will behold all that sleep, and will enlighten all that hope in the Lord. I will yet pour out doctrine as prophecy, and will leave it to them that seek wisdom, and will not cease to instruct their offspring even to the holy age. See ye that I have not laboured for myself only, but for all that seek out the truth."

A Review of The Shaping Book 1: Satan's Saga, translated by Douglas VanBenthuysen (AKA Parch)

Satan's Saga is the first part of VanBenthuysen's rendering of the Old English poems conventionally called Genesis A and B. He calls them The Shaping, in accord with his preference for the vivider feel and image of the English root. The title puts God, angel, devil, men, and women (the shapers, manglers, and begetters of our reality in the poem) in a continuum with poets (Old English "scop," or “shaper”), translators, and other makers who strive to give a certain shape to the pure, impure, always dynamic, and often recalcitrant elements in which they work. This title, more native and near in feel than Genesis, yet also far more odd and rife with suggestive possibilities, sets the tone for his choices through the rest of this first installment of the old English epic. This first book he has deceptively designated “Satan's Saga.” This is because VanBenthuysen hopes that Satan sells books, and not because the Devil either owns the story or plays the role of protagonist.
Some translators of literary works seek a conventional idiom of their own time and attempt to recast the original's images, feelings, and meanings within patterns effortlessly accessible to its readers. VanBenthuysen has a different aim. Though he uses modern words, he makes them work and ring in ways that our language has forgotten. In the vital, formulaic baby-talk of his translation, the differences between common nouns and proper names, the one and the many, sign and signified, medium and message, seem always about to disappear—giving the reader a sense of being plunged into proximity with the origins of mind, meaning, and things themselves. He, moreover, insists on leaving core elements of Old English vocabulary essentially untranslated. "Mod," for instance, (a thick word which in Old English means “courage,” “heart,” “anger,” and “intent”) is consistently rendered "mood," where most translators would opt for a variety of renderings. The result of such choices is a kind of exploded modern English, immediately familiar yet obviously working in unfamiliar ways. In the poem, we love God “with our moods”; the devil's party fell “through over-mindfulness”; the devil himself is “overly moody,” he uses “hate-speech” and “pride words” and sets “a sick helmet” on his head; the Angels and Satan and Eve are “shiny”; heavenly bliss is a “dreaminess”; the fallen angels lament that their “reach” is not “roomier” and that God has taken “the heaven reach” from them; the tempter promises Adam that, if he eats the forbidden fruit, “your mood-safe would become more, and your body much more light, your shape much more shiny”; God is “the meter” that moves through the cosmos, through our nature and moods and poems, and with or against which we shape our “wyrds,” so that Adam and Eve “began, at God's behest, to beget children as the meter bid them”; immensities are, strangely, “the unmet,” e.g. “the unmet evening,” as if—when we lack meter, reject what or how God metes out to us—we will nor really “meet” anyone anymore, doomed to a life and death of “unmet evening”; the Creator possesses and shares a “genitive power”; to “deal” is often to divide one thing into two, so that part of Adam's curse is that “for you, body and soul have become dealt”; Adam is a “self-shaped man,” Eve “a free-willed woman”; the first couple are “the marriage-bound two”; to leave is “to lay tracks”; God decides to “nail those born of the curse” with a flood; the ark is a “temple” in which Noe (“Noah”) and his sons and their wives are “ghost's riders”; when Noah grows drunk, “his mind-safe goes away.” 
If this sounds forbidding, it shouldn't. Language is no fixed thing—as if God or man formed it only to be abandoned in frigid chains. It was made to play, and mingle, and produce new ways of saying. The mind and ear soon quicken and move to the meter of this poem's new-old idiom which keeps coming into being as it is read (preferably aloud!). We rejoice to remember that our words have “shaping” and “dealing” energies within them, genitive power, roomy reach; they are self-shaped, free-willed. 
Not only the immediate experience of the poem, but also the story it tells is surprisingly fresh—even to readers who may be familiar with the Biblical narrative or Milton's epic. The temptation of Adam and Eve, for instance, has many very distinctive and provocative features. Since in this poem Satan—more like Dante's Lucifer than Milton's—remains in the prison of Hell, chained in “great grids of hard, heat-forged irons,” not he but a “go-between youngling” tempts the first parents. This lesser fiend boldly claims to be a messenger of God who carries a divine command with the sanction of divine punishment. And, since Adam and Eve cannot really know whether he is telling the truth, their trial requires of them a special steadfastness and “self-shaped” courage. Indeed, the awful responsibility of every individual man and woman is one of the poem's most often sounded themes: “men's children might make a choice: good or evil; each person, wellness or woe.” “I don't know, though,” says Adam to the tempter, with startling authority, “if you fare with secret thought, or if you are the chief's go-between from heaven. Listen. I cannot know your pattern a whit, words or ways, treks or sayings. I know what he bid me himself, our savior, when I saw him last. He ordered me to hold worthy his words and hold them well, track his lore. You be not like any of his angels I have seen before. . . . For this, I cannot hear you, but you may go forth. I have fast belief up to the almighty God who wrought me here with his own arms and with his own hands. He may give me every which good from his high reach, though he need not send his youngling.”
Turning to Eve, the tempter tells her that Adam's proud refusal of his command has earned him God's wrath unless she will carry it out. She seems genuinely deceived by the fiend (as Adam is later by her), thinking that she is doing God's will. Even more interesting is the tempter's promise of angelic vision: “Eat of this fruit!” he tells her, “Then, your eyes will become so light that you may afterwards see so widely over the world, and your master's own seat, and have his favor henceforth.” And so complete is the tempter's deception that, on eating, she seems indeed endowed with angelic powers of vision: “Then, she could see widely through the loathesome one's loan, … so that she thought heaven and earth whiter, and all the world lighter, and God's work much and mighty, though she did not see it through human thought.” She tells Adam that she sees God himself, and so wins her husband over, “I may see from here where he himself sits . . . wound in goodness, he who shaped the world. I see his angels hovering around him with feather-cloaks, the foremost of all folks, the most joyful of riders. Who might give me such wits if God, heaven's wielder, did not send it directly? I may hear roomily and so wide, across the whole world over this broad creation! I may hear sky games in heaven! It became for me light in mind, outside and inside, since I bit of that fruit!” This angelic imagination, this mind that Eve is loaned for a time, seemingly flooded with unmediated light, seems to me a truly unique and provoking element of this telling.
After Adam succumbs and the bright vision darkens, showing itself to be “death's dream” indeed, the man cries out, “Whom shall we two now become?” and wishes God had never made Eve. Yet the poem sees Eve better than Adam does in his grief, and immediately corrects him. There is goodness, generosity, penitence, and courage in her, it tells us: “She was God's work, though she had become deluded by the devils craft. 'You may hurt me for it, my friend Adam, with your words, though it may not pain you worse than it does me at heart.'” Adam too is full of nobility. Not future punishments but the thought of being no longer under God's word, in his loving friendship and service no more—this is the blow that devastates him. He does not know if he will ever hear a word from God again. Even an angry word would be a balm: “Even if heaven's God, in hate, now orders us to fare, wading in a flood, it would not be as fearfully deep as this! No ocean-streams as this! For that, my mood has become forever betrothed to his. But I would go into the ground if I might work God's will.” There is tenderness, nobility, realism in these speeches of our first parents—and they give us man and woman in the heroic mold. 
In another inspired passage, the poem's vision opens after the first murder, when man first “slew his free-kinsman, his own brother, and spilt his blood, Cain of Abel.” From this act a tree of death sprouts and spreads and roots itself across time and space: “Middle-earth swallowed that one's death gore, man's blood, after the slaughter stroke. Woe, pain's progeny, was reared. Ever since, from that twig, horrible fruits have loathesomely grown, longer as more strongly. That crime's boughs have spread widely throughout men's homelands. The harmful branches, severely and sorely, have struck mankind's sons. They still do! From then, broad blades of evil began to sprout! We must lament that story, slaughter-grim wyrd, with weeping, not at all without cause.” 
Beautiful too is poem's sense of how good it is, even in a woe-wracked world, to “fill the earth and subdue it,” to possess the ground, look up at the stars, establish a household, a family, a line—to share in the genitive power of the shaper, by action and word and procreation initiating a free future whose ends are beyond our scope and control, but embraced in the divine meter of wisdom and love: “Malalehel held the land and goods for a swarm of seasons. The first-spear had five and sixty winters when he began begetting children by a wife. The bride brought him a son, a maiden into mankind. He was powerful in his tribe, they tell me, a warrior from youth called Iared. Afterwards, Malalehel lived here long and enjoyed bliss, mankind's dream, here among worldly-treasures. He had five and ninety winters, and eight hundred, when he went forth. He left heirs, land, and tribal guardianship. Long since, he brought guys gold gear. The earl was noble, an honor-fast hero, and the first-spear was beloved to his free-kinsmen.”
It is to be hoped that VanBenthuysen, or Parch, or whatever he calls himself in future, will complete and publish the rest of The Shaping. I would encourage him, even as he encourages me in his dedication, to “keep your line alive”!

Roman Fountain (Villa Borghese) Rilke, Translated by Len Krisak Two basins, one above the other, from within an ancient rounded marble rand. And from the top one, waters softly come, spilling to waters under them that stand and wait and meet their whispers, playing dumb. Hidden, as in the hollow of a hand, they show them sky behind the green and gloom, like some strange object from a foreign land. Calmly, within their lovely basin-shell, they widen—never homesick—ring by ring, and only sometimes, ping by dream-soft ping, drop down the mossy scrim in single file to reach that final mirror softening the basin with its stone-transforming smile.

Römische Fontäne (Villa Borghese) Zwei Becken, eins das andere übersteigend aus einem alten runden Marmorrand, und aus dem oberen Wasser leis sich neigend zum Wasser, welches unten wartend stand, dem leise redenden entgegenschweigend und heimlich, gleichsam in der hohlen Hand, ihm Himmel hinter Grün und Dunkel zeigend wie einen unbekannten Gegenstand; sich selber ruhig in der schönen Schale verbreitend ohne Heimweh, Kreis aus Kreis, nur manchmal träumerisch und tropfenweis sich niederlassend an den Moosbehängen zum letzten Spiegel, der sein Becken leis von unten lächeln macht mit Übergängen.

'With What Eyes': Seeing Tragically at Colonus

'With What Eyes': Learning to See Tragically at Colonus

Socrates asks us to consider two states of the soul that look the same to those who see someone in them, and that feel the same for someone experiencing them. A person stumbles and gropes about, because the eyes the soul are bewildered and can find no familiar object on which to focus, no anchor of safety on which to rest. It may be that one has stepped down from the light into darkness. Or it may be that, 'having turned from darkness to day [one] is dazzled by excess of light' (Republic 7.518). Genuine learning does not happen without disorientation. As one takes the first steps out into a fuller, bigger, brighter, realer reality, things turn out not to be what and where you always thought they were; things that you thought were solid give way when you lean on them; you bump into objects you didn't know were there, you stumble about in 'a region of unlikeness'. In extreme cases—which we all may be headed for—the very ground seems to give way beneath our feet, and we are suspended flailing in a horrifying free-fall. If we can bear this state of disorientation, suffer through it, then, slowly, a new and deeper ground will rise out of the darkness to support us, things will come into new focus, we will live a different life, conversant with mysterious realities. We will draw near to sources of blessing and power to which many are oblivious.

Think of Oedipus at the beginnings and ends of his two tragedies. At the beginning of Oedipus Rex he appears an almost god-like figure, hearing the cries of his people with great-hearted sympathy, poised to become their savior for a second time. At the end of the play, the ground has been swept out from under his feet—his life, as he has now discovered, is not the life he thought it was. The most familiar and basic realities—mother, father, marriage, home, city, daughters, sons—turn a countenance of horror toward him which bansishes all comfort, all stability, all peace from his world. For his relationship to each of these basic human realities has concealed a horrible, perverting secret. Most horrible of all, that secret is somehow he himself, who he is, what he is—and there is nowhere he can go to escape it. We leave him at the end of the play cast down from his former serene authority, flailing about in the face of his fate, his eyes bleeding from self-inflicted wounds—wanting to look upon the world no longer. Though in an agony more excruciating than despair, he does 'not choose not to be'. He does not despair. There is something of the proud and great-hearted king still in him, something that cannot be beaten into quiet submission and despair. He suffers a rapture of agony and disorientation, humiliation and shame, but he goes on. He does not choose not to be. It looks like he has been plunged in darkness, but could it be he is taking the first steps 'from darkness to day, dazzled by excess of light'?

At the opening of Oedipus at Colonus, we see an old man, beggar, vagabond, with no home or city to call his own, an oucast 'from whom men shrink,' polluted as he is by incest and parricide. He has suffered twenty years of hunger, weather, sleeping out of doors—relying on the charity of strangers—consoled only by the presence of his loving daughter, on whom he must lean for support and guidance. Instead of eyes, uncanny pitted hollows gape upon his face. And yet he is unbowed by all his calamities. In the slow passage of time, he has achieved an inner quiet in which he takes pride; “suffering and time, / vast time, have been instructors in contentment, / which kingliness teaches too,” he says (Colonus, 6-8). At the end of the play, he exits, not guided or leaning on others, but leading them (as far as they can follow), by means of an inspired second sight, into the sacred darkness at the heart of the cosmos, crossing the threshold of mystery to a place of blessedness, honor, and power into which heaven or earth, opening with love, receives him. He now sees aright. He is no longer dazzled by the darkness or excessive light of reality, but moves through its dimensions with a marvelous liberty and assurance.

How has he arrived at this almost god-like condition, so different from that which he seems to possess at the beginning of Oedipus Rex? I want to return briefly to what seems to me a crucial turning point in the first play, one without which the events of the second play could never have happened. Having realized the full horror of his actions, Oedipus rushes with wild frenzy into the house, where he finds his wife Jocasta—whom he now knows as his mother also—swaying dead from the roof beam. His drawn sword is in his hand. But instead of taking his life, he drives Jocasta's brooches into first one eye, then his other. The chorus of Thebes' old men does not understand or approve: “I cannot say your remedy was good.” they say, “You would be better dead than blind” (Rex, 1368). But Oedipus defends his action, protesting, “What I have done here was best done—don't tell me otherwise, do not give further counsel. I do not know with what eyes I could look upon my father, when I die and go under the earth, nor yet my wretched mother ...” (Rex, 1370 ff.). This is a sublime response. For one thing, we see that Oedipus is thinking of the afterlife, the otherworld. Unlike the chorus who only want to rid the city of pollution, put it away, put it out of sight, out of mind as fast as possible, Oedipus knows that realities, the truth of things, cannot simply be dismissed. “I do not know with what eyes I could look upon my father ...” “With what eyes?” Not with these eyes that have deceived me, luring me on to think that evils were goods, that the monstrous horrors in which I have in fact been snared were comforting, sweet, and noble relationships. With what eyes, then?

Oedipus's act of self-mutilation, in fact, is a cry to the gods to grant him an entirely new way of seeing, a resurrected sight that has passed through destruction and calamity. In the midst of his darkness, he grasps upon the seemingly flimsly hope, yet hope nonetheless, that one day—in the underworld—he will encounter his mother and father, his children, and be able to see and love them rightly, though up to now everything has been wrong, wrong, wrong. Moments later he says, “Yet I know this much: … I would not have been spared from death, if not for some strange ... fate. Well, let my fate go where it will” (Rex, 1455).

In our play for today, Oedipus at Colonus, the Tragic poet Sophocles, himself at the end of his life, returns to his most famous and total Tragedy to see it anew, and reflect on what Tragedy—the work of his life—most really and fully means. What is it for? In the play, we see various ways of undergoing tragedy represented by Antigone, Polyneices, and, of course, Oedipus himself—as well as patterns of witnessing Tragedy, in the responses of the citizens of Colonus, and the hero Theseus. Creon falls into both categories, because he thinks he is witnessing a Tragedy when in fact, through his unfeeling pride, he is falling into one of his own making (a dire warning for us).

Like Sophocles, Oedipus has been reflecting on Tragedy. For twenty years he has been wandering through Greece, in his own inner darkness, led on by a fate that—as he recognized in the earlier play, “goes where it will”—all the while reflecting on the Tragic experiences of his life. As any tired beggar might, the old king sits down to rest on a kind of natural park bench made of stone within a cool, dark grove. He does not know that he has stumbled on the grove of the Furies.

Who are these august, terrible ladies whose sacred grove he seems to have violated? They are ancient, primordial goddesses, older than the Olympians, daughters of that original Night that is at the beginning of all things. The Night from which light and all things first came into being, a night pregnant with possibility and mystery, the night of creation and generation, but also the night of unmaking and annihliation—a night that remains in background and waits to engulf us all. The special domain of the Furies, the all-seeing ones, is to haunt and pursue with calamity those who have committed sacreligous violations, oath-breach, kin-slaughter, parricide, infanticide, incest, cannabalism—Oedipus's own life has been well acquainted with the Furies. Yet they are also called 'the Holy Ones', 'the Kindly Ones'. In part, these are euphemisms, we call them 'the kindly ones' because we hope they will be 'kindly' to us. But it's more than that; for to those who regard them wisely and uprightly (to those who dwell in sober recognition of possibilities terrible, as well as possibilities deeply happy), they grant blessings: friendships and homes and marriages with a fruitful and rich inner life, cities capable of courageous action and self-defense, reverent communities who stand in right relation to the divine. These blessings are represented by the inhabitants of the Furies' grove: in this space of shelter, protected from the sun, and immune to weather, dwell clear-running water, blooming flowers, the singing nightingale, the rooted olive tree 'planted by running streams,' the threshold of the otherworld, and, in the end, Oedipus' himself.

Oedipus' life has prepared him to receive the blessings of the Furies. When he learns from the scandalized citizen of Colonus that he has stumbled on the Furies' grove, he recognizes a providence in the action: “May they be gentle to the suppliant. / For I shall never leave this place” (Colonus, 44-5). This recognition is explained a few lines later in his prayer to the Furies to let him remain in their covert: “For when [Apollo] gave me oracles of evil,” he says “he also spoke of this: a resting place, / after long years, in the last country, where / I should find a home among the sacred Furies” (Colonus, 87 ff.). His whole life has been leading to this end, as he now sees. In that very oracle which before seemed to have foretold him only unspeakable horrors, he finds, after long reflection, a promise of blessedness. And to the people, the audience that can rightly receive him and his story—to those who can receive his Tragic wisdom—he will become a transmitter, a conduit and conductor, of the Furies' blessings. If we (the audience) reflect on his sufferings with openness and generosity, with pity and fear and growing understanding, his sufferings will deepen, strengthen, and bless our lives.

How then do we receive these blessed influences? In the citizens of Colonus and in Theseus, their king, we find a pattern of how to respond to the Tragic figure. When he first appears in Colonus, Oedipus seems to the citizens little more than a vagabond, the refuse of the earth—possibly a petty threat, likely harmless. Nevertheless, such people, beggars, outcasts, unexpected guests are protected by the gods—and a good city must try to do what it can for them. The lone stranger who first meets him challenges him for tresspassing, yet is courteous and informative, clearly proud of his little city and Theseus its Athenian King. He is interested in the stranger and recognizes that there is something out of the ordinary about him, “You're clearly well-born,” he says, “though obviously unfortunate” (Colonus, 76). Aristotle tells us that the tragic hero is someone “better than the average man, though not preeminently good,” and a person who suffers a terrible reversal of fortune. While not knowing his story, this citizen bypasser already senses Oedipus's tragic stature.

Perhaps because they appear in numbers—and a crowd is never as intelligent as its individual members—when the whole chorus of the townsfolk appear their response to the stranger is far more extreme, “Impious, blasphemous, shameless! / ... Not of our land!” they cry, “... Vagabond! Vagabond!” (Colonus, 120 ff.) They are indignant at his trespass, but they dread the inhabitants of the grove that he has made his own, and so fear to remove him forcibly. When they see him, they are initially struck with pity by his blindness, and ask him to come down from the grove to give an account. But, since they fear that he will contaminate them, they make him remain at a distance, still half in the grove, to speak with them. They are both attracted by pity and repelled by fear. His very presence makes them experience contradictory emotions.

But when they discover who he is, their repulsion is visceral and total. This is not just fear, but horror. And remember that Oedipus is horrible. He is polluted, unclean, 'one from whom men shrink'. Not only does he have monstrous hollows in place of eyes, he married and lay with his mother in love, re-entering the womb where his father, whose blood was on his hands, begot him; his sons are his brothers, his sisters are his daughters--”Away with you! Out with you! Leave our country!” “Wind not further your clinging evil upon us!” (Colonus, 226, 235-4)

Only the beautiful and faithful daughter Antigone, Oedipus' fellow sufferer, who has given up her life to care for him, manages to waken their pity again—she pleads with them and helps them see Oedipus not as grotesque monster, but a helpless man in need. Her eyes of love intercede with them to have pity on the eyeless father whom she has loved so selflessly. Such things as happened to Oedipus could come upon all of us, she says, “You will never see a man in all the world whom God has led to escape his destiny!” (Colonus, 237-50). This is a fellow human being like you and me—and what happened to him, could happen to you. The young Saint Francis could not bear to look upon, much less touch a leper, whose face and flesh were so horribly disfigured. When he learned to see a fellow human being in the leper, he took the first steps in the love of God. When he kissed him, he was flooded with peace and consolation and a new unshakable stability—and in the end he came to see, in the face of leper, the face of Christ. Tragedy makes us look at horrors that overtake and disfigure human life, things we recoil from, would prefer not to look, possibilities we would prefer not think about. It is okay, it is natural to feel revulsion (if you haven't felt it, that means you're repressing it—you will feel it eventually), but we must overcome that initial reaction and learn to look on monstrous suffering with kindness and a desire to understand.

Now the citizen-chorus is evenly poised between pity, fear, and horror—they can do nothing but listen, while Oedipus tells his story. He has gained new insight in twenty years, and now he can boldly insist on his innocence—he did horrible things, but he thought he was doing good and noble things—how could he have known otherwise? His horrible acts were things he suffered, not things he willed and performed. If the citizens of Colonus should add to his suffering by rejecting him (as the citizens of Thebes have done), they would commit a great injustice. Gesturing to the dark grove that looms ominously behind himself, he says, “In reverence to your gods, grant me this shelter. … Think, their eyes are fixed upon the just, fixed on the unjust, too” (Colonus, 275 ff.). With the Furies behind him, he warns them, “that he is one endowed with powers beyond nature” (Colonus, 287-6). Hearing this, the chorus allow that his is a weighty case, one that they are in no position to judge; they are content to wait until their King arrives.

As they wait, sitting and watching the blind Oedipus, their wonder and their curiosity grows. Though still in horror, they are no longer in shock—and their horror has been softened a bit by pity and awe. After a long silence, they address Oedipus again, with gently probing curiosity, “What evil things have slept since long ago, It is not sweet to awaken, and yet I long to be told ...” (Colonus, 510 ff.) Line by line, they draw his story out from him. This exchange is painful for him, and he suffers the old pain again in having it teased out in the open like this. And yet, to share it with a sympathetic audience is also healing. “You suffered” “Yes unspeakbaly” “You sinned!” “No! I did not sin! … Before the law—before God!--I am innocent!” We would like the sufferer to be guilty, because then we could separate himself off from us in our minds and hearts—we could pity him, yes, but from a position of superiority and immunity, in which we do not really enter into his fate with genuine compassion. Yet, bit by bit, these defences we throw up to seal ourselves off from the suffering creature, must be worn away, undermined, and we must see feelingly that we too are vulnerable to Tragedy. If we do not, we can neither truly see our world, or love each other genuinely, or act in it effectively—we will always be shying away from, resisting the truth of our lives. If you hide from the truth, the eyes of your soul will grow blind, your world will grow dim; within its blankets of self-protection, your heart will slowly, surely die. Watching a tragedy helps us be vulnerable and open to the action of the truth. And the truth will set you free.

The chorus is opening itself to this truth when Theseus appears to show and teach them (and us) how finally to respond to the Tragic hero. Theseus himself is a hero, he has battled down bandits, robbers, and cruel outlaws. Though he himself was born in another city, he freely took Athens' curse upon himself, delivered himself up into the labyrinth, did battle with the horrifying Minotaur in the darkness, prevailed, and so saved the city. Such a man has undergone himself the depths of privation and uncertainty. Such a man fears nothing. Nothing can unsettle him beacause he has given himself to his mission so totally. He has left behind natural, self-protective impulses and has made a venture, a gift of himself. He knows there are dangers, and that victory and hapinness are not certain in our mortal life. Because he does not hide from reality, he can act in accord with it. He sees right. He acts decisively.

Even if on my way I was not informed,

I'd recognize you, son of Laius. The garments

and the tortured face make plain your identity.

I am sorry for you. And I should like to know what favor here

you hope for from the city and from me. …

Tell me. It would be something dire indeed

To make me leave you comfortless, for I

too was an exile. I grew up abroad,

And in strange lands I fought as few men have

with danger and with death.

Therefore no wanderer shall come, as you do,

and be denied my audience and aid.

I know I am only a man; I have no more

To hope for in the end than you have. (Colonus, 553 ff.)

Theseus alone will see the mysterious end of Oedipus. It takes place off-stage and neither we nor the citizens of Colonus (who stand in for us in the play) are given this final vision. Yet we hear something of it, and can receive something of its mysterious blessing.

But in what manner

Oedipus perished, no one of mortal men

Could tell but Theseus. It was not lightning

Bearing its fire from God, that took him off;

No hurricane was blowing.

But some attendant from the train of Heaven

Came for him; or else the underworld

Opened in love the unlit door of Earth.

For he was taken without lamentation,

Illness or suffering; indeed his end

Was wonderful if mortal’s ever was. (Colonus, 1655 ff.)

Even Theseus, who alone beholds this mystery, shades his eyes 'as if from something awful, fearful and unendurable to see' (1650 ff.). If we want to be prepared for an experience of the-more-than-human, the more-than-natural, if we want to have hearts open to God, we must be open to the wisdom of tragedy, we must create a place within our minds, hearts, and cities to behold and dwell upon imgaes of the utmost suffering to which our human state is vulnerable. We must learn to see with clear and steady eyes of compassion. We must love the sufferer that we meet even as we love ourselves, and in doing so, we will recognize that we too are balanced precariously over an abyss of possiblities, terrible, horrible some of them, and some of them filled with divine blessing beyond what our minds can conceive.

Let us retrace the reactions and responses of the people of Colonus to the Tragic figure of Oedipus, and internalize their succession and pattern, so that we can receive the same education in Tragedy that they do.

We challenge the stranger courteously, and see that he seems like a noble man who has undergone some nameless misfortune. Since he trespasses in places that we would fear to tread, we are indignant and afraid of him—we would like to write him off as a trespassing vagabond, and get the proper authorities to take him away. But when we are reminded, by one who loves and cares for him, that he is suffering something that we could suffer too, we feel pity once more, and sit to hear the story. Yet when we recognize the deep horror of his experience, we recoil once more and more deeply, frantically wishing that this monster be removed from our experience, yet dreading to do so ourselves for fear of becoming contaminated or committing a terrible injustice. So we sit and wait, helplessly poised between pity, fear, horror, and an almost religious awe, and as we sit, we eventually grow quiet within, and quietly looking on, we see another human being once more, and are moved by curiosity and wonder, ready now to hear and imagine his story more inwardly, putting ourselves in his place, acknowledging that we are no position either to judge the suffferer or to seal off our world from his. Suddenly, the possibilties of our world are opened, deepened—life is more dangerous but also resonates with divine voices. Now, we are ready to follow Theseus, the hero who generously makes the lot of suffering humanity his business, and receives the blessing of Oedipus for himself and his people.

A Word of Introduction to Vergil's Georgics

A Word of Introduction to Vergil's Georgics

     Each book of the Georgics--ploughing and planting fields (book 1), growing vines and trees (book 2), herding sheep, goats, horses, and cattle (book 3), and beekeeping (book 4)--takes place within a lover's quarrel between the farmer and the earth. And each book is filled with hypnotically clear and loving transcription of the particulars of its realm. The farmer's world appears in its bright, raw, naked thingliness and always alive with suggested feelings, analogies, and thoughts.
     Vergil's theme is not merely the natural order and the goods and beauties it offers, nor merely that order in fruitful tension with human effort, making, and civilization, but something active within both of these: the intuited radiance of the divine creation that fills the poet's eye and heart with light. Vergil's realism gives us soils and ruminating or stamping creatures, birds and stars, a leaf unfurling, the rich textures of human crafts, the waxen wicker of the hive humming with its communal life, all as lit up by the active presence of their Creator, with the breath of God still on them, freshening them.
     That is why the world appears to him as a radiant, gigantically strange, and ever-proceeding gift, to be newly received again and again. One could prove this by quoting almost any line of the poem! But one thinks especially of the passage that recalls the first Spring of the rising world, of the wild trees of hills and forests that offer themselves to our sight and use in a ceaseless, prodigious free gift, and of--that first line of book 4--"heaven's gift of honey, pure as air."
     This intuition is why Vergil can so delight in the world, even as he acknowledges and feels deeply that nature, culture, and human history include terrible pain, ugliness, futility, frustration, and inexplicable evil. Witness his cry of despairing prayer over the Roman future at the end of book 1; his reflection on the corruption of urbanized manners in contrast to the piety and steadfastness that characterize the family farm, his many-sided meditation on human lots--blessed and unblessed--the farmer's, the philosopher's, the public man's, his own (the poet's)--at the end of book 2; the brutal plague he pursues in brutally exhaustive detail at the end of book 3; the unsettling picture he paints of the inundations of animal love that sweep over animal and human herds; his exploration in the Orpheus and Eurydice-story of the haunting power of poetry, but also its impotence in the face of death, and the unknown destiny of human loves.
     It is books 2 and 4, the world of trees and vines and the virtuous society of the bees (both which realms are blissfully free of animal passions, heat, blood, and sex), that most unmistakeably communicate the undying light of the first creation, but even here blight, unruliness, toil, war, plague, and death have made inroads. Between himself and the powers of darkness, Vergil interposes not the intellectual life (not the philosopher's visionary detachment) nor optimism about the civilizing project of Rome--though both hold great interest and attraction for him--but the native stoicism, practical wisdom, and piety of the surefooted Italian farmer on the one hand and, on the other, his own peerless poetic gift, whereby he sees--even if he cannot explain it--the world in its thisness and whatness charged by the grandeur of God.