translation (2)
“Everything is political” = “Everything is political when people whose politics I dislike try to talk about something other than politics, but have you seen my kitty video?”
translation
“You may not have said it, but you implied it” = “I continue to insist that you believe this nasty thing even though I have no evidence in support of my insistence.”
The Tree
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Wistman’s Wood[/caption]
In the last chapter, Fowles relates a trip to Wistman’s Wood, an ancient scrap of oak forest on Dartmoor. He finds himself struck dumb: “Fairy-like, self-involved, rich in secrets … such inturned peace, such profound harmlessness, otherness, such unusing … all words miss, I know I cannot describe it.” It’s both moving and humbling to watch so great a writer labour at the outer reaches of language. I went there myself this September, even locating what I thought might be the same “patriarchal gnome-oak” that had sheltered Fowles as he racked his brains. I sat down, too, wondering if I was feeling what he had felt. Only now do I realise my mistake. Next time, I’ll put the book away and listen for what no human voice – not even John Fowles’s – can tell me.
a thought on Endo's Silence
(a comment on this post by Adam Roberts)
… let me just offer one thought about Silence (the novel — like you, I haven’t seen the movie)…. Rodrigues had always thought of himself as a Sidney Carton kind of hero, and had in a sense prepared himself for Cartonesque acts — but not for the choices he ended up facing. The key to his character, I think, is that he had always (Endo makes this clear) believed that it’s not wrong for the poor native Christians, weak as they are, to trample the fumie, but it’s wrong for him because he is a priest of God, a missionary, one presumably equipped for every challenge. It almost doesn’t matter whether he ends up trampling on the fumie or not, because his entire self-understanding is (I’m using the word advisedly) crucified by the mere fact that he has no idea what the right thing to do is. Is that really Christ telling him to trample? If so, then Christian faithfulness is not what Rodrigues always thought it was. Is it a false Christ, an apparition of his tormented mind giving him a way out? If so, then Rodrigues is not the Christian he always thought he was. The shift at the end to third-person narration is (to borrow your term) a withdrawal, but perhaps of a different kind: perhaps a gracious and compassionate turning away from the utter destruction of this man’s whole self-image.
For what it’s worth, I always think of Rodrigues in contrast to Isabella in Measure for Measure, who is given by Angelo a very similar choice: Do this thing you believe wrong or someone you care about will die. And Isabella never for a moment hesitates: “More than our brother is our chastity.“ Rodrigues may be (indeed is, in several ways) a miserable failure, but I’d rather be Rodrigues than Isabella.
And I think the plight of these two characters sheds some light on another question you raise, though in a complicating rather than simplifying way: When you learn that the choices you make for the sake of your own soul have profound consequences for other people, does that place you in a position of power? Or rather of a particularly miserable sort of powerlessness?
Horizontorium
John Jesse Barker after a design by William Mason (active 1822–1860), Horizontorium, 1832. Lithograph.
— Graphic Arts Collection, Princeton (via John Overholt on Twitter).
John Fuller
This is a really lovely profile of the poet and critic John Fuller, whom I admire greatly in both of his roles, on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. When I was working on my critical edition of Auden’s poem The Age of Anxiety, I of course heavily consulted Fuller’s magisterial commentary on Auden — and then when I was working through the Auden manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Humanities Center at the University of Texas, I would sometimes find in the folders and notebooks small handwritten notes by Fuller, correcting some mistaken attribution or pointing out some further piece of information. When working in those archives he had taken the time and trouble to make things easier for those who would come after him — an extraordinary act of scholarly generosity.
And then, when the edition came out, I received a gracious letter from Fuller. In a gently apologetic tone, he explained that, though he had been asked to review the book, he could not, as he had retired from reviewing. But he wanted me to know that he thought I had done an excellent job and that he had learned a good bit about the poem from my introduction and notes. For a few days I was quite swollen with pride about that.
The profile concludes with these lovely lines from Fuller’s new book:
Lucent the points of burning air. To sit On terraces is to not want to go So long as the flames glow. No, not one bit. Reluctance is a struggle: burning slow, Or hoping to be suddenly relit Like those renewing birthday candles. Though Birthdays have been and gone, and few will come Again, still, think of this: there may be some.
There may be some, indeed; and I hope for Mr. Fuller more than a few. He is a gentleman and a scholar and, of course, a poet.