The Kids Are Alright

For one of my term papers this semester, I've had the opportunity to sift through a real treat of seventeenth-century Puritan vitriol: William Prynne's massive Histrio-Mastix (1633).  I've only got the first volume of two, and it comes in at just under 570 pages of non-stop raillery, complete with marginal commentary in Latin.  So, I thought I'd share a few gems from Prynne's monster for this week's "forward."

A section that I'm referring to specifically in my term paper is "Actus 5. Scena Septima" (Prynne, writing against "stage-plays," arranges his work into separate Acts and Scenes - how clever).  The section begins: "As Stage-playes are thus unlawfull, in regard of the womannishnesse, so likewise are they in respect of the costly gawdinesse, the immodest lasciviousnesse, the fantastique strangenesse, the meretricious, effeminate lust-provoking fashions of that apparell wherein they are commonly acted and frequented: from whence I shall deduce this 22nd Argument against Stage-playes..."

Oh, for public discourse so enjoyable to read!  Part of me doesn't care what Prynne is arguing - he's got a real knack for invective! Not even Ann Coulter stands a comparison.  

Opening to another page at random (well, at semi-random anyway...everything happens for a purpose, right?), Prynne holds forth thusly: "The third unlawfull Concomitant of Stage-playes, is effeminate, delicate, lust-provoking Musicke, as St. Basil phraseth it, which Christians ought to flie as a most filthy thing; both because it workes upon their mindes, to corrupt them, upon their lusts, to provoke them to all voluptuousnesse and uncleanesse whatsoever."  Even "Heathen Nations, States and Authors, have past a doome upon" such "lascivious, amorous, effeminate, voluptuous Musicke" as can be found in Stage-plays.  It seems the Devil has been lurking in popular music for some time.  

Prynne goes on at some length (as is his wont) before bemoaning the introduction of music into church services: "'Pope Vitalian being a lusty Singer, and fresh courageous Musician himselfe, was the first that brought Prick-song, Descant, and all kinde of pleasant melody into the Church; in the yeere 653."  

I really wish I knew what a "Prick-song" was.  If I did, I would close my day by singing one, and think fondly of Prynne and all other music-haters from my past.  By now, I think we've all been exposed to enough effeminate, delicate, lust-provoking music that our minds are most certainly voluptuous and unclean.  And that, surely, is the reason why SAT scores are down and why schools are struggling all over the U.S. with No Child Left Behind.

Mailman, Bring Me No More Blues

Once again, I'm not much in the mood for anything mentally taxing this week. So, instead, I've done a little cathartic artwork that I'd like to forward along. This is a little "postmodern pastiche," if you will (and I hope you will), of the rejection letters I earned this spring in return for the application materials and fees I sent out back in December.

Enjoy!

I Don't Need No Education

Well, friends.  This week, instead of forwarding one of Seneca's letters, I've decided to forward something different.  Lately I've been tied up with term papers, trying desperately just to get through the remaining weeks of the semester, and I just haven't felt like writing on anything remotely academic.

So, in place of thoughts on Stoical philosophy, please accept this YouTube link.  This is sort of a blast from the past for me -- part of an episode of Mr. Bean that I still think of from time to time...especially when I'm getting ready to take a big exam.

Enjoy.

The Love You Take is Equal to the Love You Make.

More thoughts on seclusion and society this week (Letter IX). Seneca seems to be fond of the topic.

This time, though, he's focused particularly on the question of friendship. "The wise man is content with himself," the Stoical dictum goes. "He is so in the sense that he is able to do without friends, not that he desires to do without them."

"Self-contented as he is," admits Seneca, "he does need friends - and wants as many of them as possible - but not to enable him to lead a happy life; this he will have even without friends. The supreme ideal does not call for any external aids." The only company the truly wise man needs "is his own company. [...] He is self-content and yet he would refuse to live if he had to live without any human company at all."

The upshot of all of this, as I read it, is that ideally, one associates with others not out of lack - not out of a sense of having a need that someone else must fill (i.e. friendship from a motive of self-service) - but out of excess. One is content with oneself and yet desires to share life, in all its fullness, with others. Seneca quotes Epicurus (arch-rival of all Stoics, father of the Epicurean school): "Any man who does not think that what he has is more than ample, is an unhappy man, even if he is the master of the whole world." Finding another similar quotation from a comic poet, Seneca proclaims that "these are sentiments of a universal character."

Much earlier in the letter, Seneca quotes a quick line from Hecato, which really sums all this up very nicely, I think: "If you wish to be loved, love." Simple, sensible and profound, and yet impossibly hard to live out.

Sensible because, of course, friendship should never be a means to a selfish end. Impossible because I don't think I've ever felt sufficient in myself. Losing (or moving away from) a friend is always hard, and making a new friend always improves the quality of my own life, no matter how hard I try to bear both with (as Seneca advises) "equanimity."

I can see the value in the ideal, but all ideals are, by definition, not real. My sense of my own finitude tells me I will never be wholly self-sufficient, and I will always mourn the loss of a friend. Any other response would be, it seems to me, too Stoical.

Why Is It Hard to Make Arrangements With Yourself?

So this week, there's a string of letters from Seneca that deal with the same basic theme: it's better to be in solitude and live a life of contemplation than it is to be in society, "out in the crowd," living an active life. I have difficulty agreeing, but I can certainly identify with his sense of bewilderment about the kinds of activities "the crowd" frequently engage in. Seneca refers specifically to gladiatorial contests, which he describes with some detail.

Part of me wanted to relate the gladiatorial scene Seneca describes in "Letter VII" to "reality TV," but I know it's not the same. Still, there are some striking similarities. I mean, in some of the crueller incarnations of the "reality" fad, viewers really do see people fight to a kind of death, moral and spiritual if not physical. "The spectators insist that each on killing his man shall be thrown against another to be killed in his turn; and the eventual victor is reserved by them for some other form of butchery; the only exit for the contestants is death" (Seneca). Surely, some reality shows are better than others. But I wonder, is the only exit from, say, Fox's "Moment of Truth," death?

In "Letter VI," the tension between the social and the solitary twists the other way: "there is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with." There's a line for Hallmark if I've ever heard one.

Seneca is, as usual, particularly concerned about personal education and edification, and here he points out that "personal converse [...] and daily intimacy with someone will be of more benefit" than any amount of time spent with a book. Having spent lots of time with books, I think I can verify Seneca's observation. "The road is a long one if one proceeds by way of precepts but short and effectual if by way of personal example," he says, and then goes on to list classical philosophers, from Aristotle to Zeno, who would not be the thinkers they were had it not been for their personal interactions with their mentors.

Yet, at the end of the letter, just when you thought Seneca had settled on the overall value of society, he quotes Hecato: "'What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend.' That is progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone, and you may be sure he is a friend of all."

As I write this, now, alone in my apartment, I can tell you that I'm not always completely convinced by what I read in Seneca.