Defending the 12th century since the 14th; blogging since the 21st.

Catholicism, Conservatism, the Middle Ages, Opera, and Historical and Literary Objets d'Art blogged by a suburban dad who teaches law and writes stuff.


"Very fun." -- J. Bottum, Editor, FIRST THINGS

"Too modest" -- Elinor Dashwood

"Perhaps the wisest man on the Web" -- Henry Dieterich

"Hat tip: me (but really Cacciaguida)" -- Diana Feygin, Editor, THE YALE FREE PRESS

"You are my sire. You give me confidence to speak. You raise my heart so high that I am no more I." -- Dante

"Fabulous!"-- Warlock D.J. Prod of Didsbury

Who was Cacciaguida? See Dante's PARADISO, Cantos XV, XVI, & XVII.


E-mail me

 
Blog-break until Tues. Feb. 3

Cacciaguida and family are going Yaling.


posted by Cacciaguida at 5:15 PM

 
Bergères mail bag

Responding to this post, David Nishimura, of Cronaca, writes:

Believe this comes from the old song that begins, "Il pleut, il
pleut, bergère, presse tes blancs moutons".
Here's a link: Frenchsong.net

And with slightly different words, but with music: auxpetitesmains.free.fr
Cheers

James Englert, to similar effect:

The phrase is the beginning of a french nursey song. I can only remember a
little:
Il pleut, il pleut, bergeres,
Rentrez tes blanc moutons,
Allons dans la chaumiere,
bergeres, vite allons.

J'entends le feuillage...

Can't remember the rest -- eventually the storm lifts. Maybe there's a stanza
about a snowstorm..

The first two lines of the song are sung offstage toward the beginning of Act 2
of Massenet's Therese, prompting this from Andre:

ANDRE
(répétant le refrain avec une colère ironique)
«Il pleut, il pleut bergère»
Mais il pleut des décrets proscrivant les bergers!
(Cris lointains plus accentués.)

James J. Englert, Esq.
Rendigs, Fry, Kiely & Dennis, LLP
900 Fourth and Vine Tower
5 West Fourth Street
Cincinnati Ohio 45202
513.381.9327 (direct)
513.381.9276 (fax)
jenglert@rendigs.com

Many thanks to both! I'm rather ashamed I didn't spot the Massenet connection, though he has never been a favorite of mine.


posted by Cacciaguida at 4:51 PM

 
Old Oligarch calls the shots on Iraq

According to Zorak: "O.O.'s prediction of how President Bush would announce war during his speech: 'At this very moment, somewhere in Iraq, towels are flying off heads.'"

ROTFL!

Mom, can I say things like that when I'm an old oligarch?


posted by Cacciaguida at 11:36 AM

 
Just so you know

Little Green Footballs reports on Islamic Awareness Week at Northwestern University.
posted by Cacciaguida at 10:03 PM

 
Conversation chez Cacciaguida

Cacciaguida (reading from a newspaper): Says here, "Women's problems with the opposite sex begin in the womb because boys -- according to a new study -- cause more complications than girls during labor and delivery."

Cacciadelia (age almost-8): Of course. We're more ladylike.

Cacciaguida (continuing to read): "Male infants require more Caesarian sections and instrument deliveries than girls, cause longer labor, and need more fetal blood samples and hormone stimulation to induce contractions, doctors said yesterday."

Elinor: Tell me about it.
posted by Cacciaguida at 9:54 PM

 
"Human shields"

Apparently, a certain number of mostly Western anti-war types are sure that if they go to Iraq as "human shields," then Bush won't start his imperialist war, see, because that way, some of the limbs flying will be white, not brown, see, and that's the very opposite of what Bush wants, right?

As pointed out here on Tech Central Station (and thanks to PejmanPundit for the link), these guys are placing excessive confidence in (a) their theory of the racist nature of American military policy, and (b) the weight that their continued survival will carry relative to other military factors.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:27 AM

 
Dave Barry is blogging!


posted by Cacciaguida at 11:10 AM

 
Keegan on Iraq

The advisability of war with Iraq stands or falls on the question of whether Saddam today is or is not like Hitler in, say, '36, or '38. I don't have a final opinion on this, but when John Keegan says the Hitler-in-the-'30s analogy is valid, I take notice.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:07 AM

 
Conversation chez Cacciaguida

Elinor: This is one of those moments when I wish my standards weren't so high.

(It turns out she was thinking about reality TV.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:53 AM

 
Just so you know

The Times (London): Imam 'instructed British Muslims to kill infidels'

posted by Cacciaguida at 5:21 PM

 
Those impetuous Jacobeans

My wife has Googled a Richard Lovelace gem out from its hiding place: go here, scroll down to "I love Google," and click on "click here".
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:12 PM

 
Mexicans or Martians?

Headline in the Jan. 20 Human Events: "Botched Immigration System Spawns Alien Menace."

While it's sometimes easy to tease Human Events, it's actually a good publication. A good five years or more before NR was born or thought of, Human Events was around giving a movement-conservative perspective on actual news developments. Today, and for many years past, John Gizzi's political reporting is/has been worth the cost of a subscription. David Freddoso's ambush interviews of Senators are cool too. (He chases them down the hallways with his tape recorder. Really.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:05 PM

 
Will this be a covered benefit under Democrats' alternative health plan?

"Dear Abby" praises muscular dystrophy victim for seeking "sexual experience," and friend for arranging it; condemns the man's parents for objecting.
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:55 PM

 
Greek-Orthodox Church, at last, gets into the swing of the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity (as the Church has been doing for years.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 1:50 PM

 
Il neige bergères

That means "It's snowing shepherdesses," which means it's snowing a lot, which it is where I am -- an area where it generally doesn't neige very much at all.

I don't know why "shepherdesses." I'd like to hear any theories from The Rat, who is a treasurehouse of outré French expressions. :)

Anyway, it's a phrase I picked up once in a village called Montpiton, in the Upper Savoy area of southeastern France, near Geneva. Actually the expression was "Il pleut bergères" ("It's raining shepherdesses"), but I have no doubt it works both ways.
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:24 AM

 
"Jacob Marley": It's good to be heckling again!
"Robert Marley": It's good to be doing anything again!
Both: HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR!

-- Statler and Waldorf, playing "the Marley brothers" in A Muppet Christmas Carol

Sorry for the bloggap over the last few days. Suffered a computer glitch at the office (all's well now); also, thought I'd put in some time on my tenure-pieces, as the board at my university seems to appreciate that sort of thing so much.

Now that I'm back:

The bloglinks at Mommentary are now hotlinks. Elinor agrees passionately with old Mr. Larabee about the 20th century, but the 21st still has some potential.

Corrected some spelling errors in posts from the previous two weeks or so.

Welcome to some people new to blogwatching thanks to a hardware upgrade.

posted by Cacciaguida at 7:48 AM

 
Exciting news about the President's plans for the Supreme Court....
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:39 PM

 
The Rat lists Dante among the writers she admires but wouldn't particularly care to meet. Dante, she writes, "was just really unpleasant (going by his work, as well as by contemporary accounts)."

Being Cacciaguida, I think I can account for that perception. It's like I told the boy back in Paradiso XVII 52-69:

The public will, as always, blame the party
That has been wronged; vengeance that Truth demands,
Although, shall yet bear witness to the truth.

You shall be forced to leave behind those things
You hold most dearly, and this is the first
Arrow the bow of your exile will shoot.

And you will know how salty is the taste
Of others' bread, how hard the road that takes
You down and up the stairs of others' homes.

But what will weigh you down the most will be
The despicable, senseless company
Whom you shall have to bear in that sad vale;

And all ungrateful, all completely mad
And vicious, they shall turn on you, but soon
Their cheeks, not yours, will have to blush from shame.

Proof of their bestiality will show
Through their own deeds! It will be to your honor
To have become a party of your own.

He had a lot to be bitter about. But I thought then, and I think now, that if he had remembered Beatrice sooner, and spent less time with politicos and warlords trying to master the "art" of returning from exile and tossing your enemies out on their keesters (see Inferno X 46-51 and 77-78), he'd have been better off. But who knows, we might not have had the Commedia that way.

I'm going back to the Empyrean now. Bye.



posted by Cacciaguida at 2:32 PM

 
Eve, listing her desert-island books, starts with:

New Revised Standard Version Catholic Bible. Uh, feel free to yell at me about the NRSV, but it's what I've got.

Someone get this girl a copy of the Douay-Rheims and the Revised Standard Version/Catholic Edition now.

(In the NRSV, that would be "Someone get this person a copy....")


posted by Cacciaguida at 11:11 AM

 
Davidic repair order backs up OT history of Jerusalem

Snaps to Zorak for bringing to our attention this item about a significant archeological discovery in Jerusalem: it is a tablet apparently addressed by King Joash to a priest, concerning repairs to the Temple. The Temple, as in the Temple.

The BBC article tells us that King Joash, the tablet's apparent author, reigned about 2800 years ago. More to the point, see 2 Chronicles 24 and 2 Kings 12. (If you're using the Douay, that's 2 Paralipomenon 24 and 4 Kings 12.)

From the BBC article:

The incomplete sandstone tablet contains an inscription in ancient Phoenician in which a king tells priests to take "holy money... to buy quarry stones and timber and copper and labour to carry out the duty with the faith".

And the priest says, "Hey, I can get it for you wholesale." JUST KIDDING!!!!!!

More from the article:

Muslim clerics have denied any Jewish historical connection with the site, revered by Jews as the location of their biblical temples.

Oh, but Muslims "consider the Old Testament part of revelation," right? Yeah, right.

The blackened stone was unearthed during renovations by Muslim authorities on a mosque compound, known to Muslims as Haram as-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount, according to the Ha'aretz daily.

It's a wonder they didn't just smash it, like they did to those Buddhist statues in Afghanistan.


posted by Cacciaguida at 5:59 PM

 
Blogs come, blogs go

Chris, of Chicago and of Rosa Mystica, welcome to my blogroll!

Goliard -- you're pushin' up daisies, dude!
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:53 PM

 
Dialogue from Dialogues of the Carmelites, II

From the death scene of Mme. de Croissy, the Prioress. We are still in Act I.

The Prioress: ...How much time does M. Javelinot [the doctor] give me to live?

Mother Marie of the Incarnation: Your temperament is one of the strongest he's seen. He fears for a you a slow and difficult passage. But God --

The Prioress: God Himself has become a shadow. Alas! Thirty years since my profession, twelve as Prioress, I've meditated on death every hour of my life -- and now it does me no good at all!

(Long silence)

I think Blanche de la Force is quite late?

(Silence)

Since our meeting yesterday, does she still stand decidedly by the name she has chosen?

Mother Marie: Yes, with your gracious pleasure, she still wishes to be called Sister Blanche of the Agony of Christ. You always seemed to me quite struck by that choice?

The Prioress: Because it was my first one, long ago. Our Prioress in those days was Mme. Arnoult: she was eighty years old. She said to me: "Question your strength. Whoever enters Gethsemane does not come out again. Do you feel in you the courage to remain to the end the prisoner of the Most Holy Agony?"


posted by Cacciaguida at 4:38 PM

 
Just so you know

Did you think I had forgotten about this "continuing feature on Islam" that I promised? Not a chance.

Today's entry: Turkey Investigating Capuchin for Baptizing a Muslim.

Please note that this is Turkey, the much-vaunted "secular" Muslim state.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:39 AM

 
The Cranky Professor adds his perspective here re exam-whinging students. (On my blogroll? Of course he's on my blogroll -- just look!)
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:58 PM

 
Where does Islam stand on cloning -- or abortion?

Malaysia's National Fatwa Council, described as that nations's highest religious authority, has come down squarely against what has been deceptively labeled "reproductive cloning," as though the entity thereby created were something fundamentally different from one created for "therapeutic cloning."

The National Fatwa Council (no, I'm not making that up) added this:

On the use of embryonic stem cells for therapeutic research, such
as the growing of new organs for transplants, the council said it was
permissible as long as the embryo was not cloned and was below 120
days or four months.
"Before 120 days, the embryo has not yet been infused with a soul
(roh)," Dr Ismail said.

Sorry, Dr. Kreeft, but "Ecumenical Jihad," my rohmp.
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:26 PM

 
Things the Rat missed about the U.S. while she was in Paris:

(First, click here for her complete list of both did-misses and didn’t-misses.)

English. This isn't just me being insular—I've lived somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of my life outside the United States. English simply allows for more nuances—five or six, or more, ways for saying a thing for which, in many languages, there may be only one, or none.

Generally true. But I sometimes encounter the reverse. In translating a passage from Dialogues des Carmélites a few posts down, I found the verb s’attendrir to be untranslatable; I went with “make a fuss over,” but that’s too colloquial.

All translators are liars, but I suspect translations of foreign literature into French are on average further from the original than are translations into English; there are simply fewer directions you can go in French than in English. Also, French sounds much worse than does English when spoken by angry ladies in subways and by drunks.

I’ve never heard it spoken by those particular players, but I’ve many times heard it spoken by teachers who were themselves angry ladies. Such folk don’t show any language at its best.

Variety in publishing. There are fewer publishing houses there and many things, especially the classics, are available under only one imprint (though the cover illustrations are sometimes changed after a few years just to keep you guessing). This helps ensure that the books on your shelf are of uniform height, but that's lame.

Garnier Flammarion. Été there, lu that.


posted by Cacciaguida at 10:52 PM

 
Jeff Miller, of Atheist to Theist, welcome to my blogroll!
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:52 PM

 
The Claremont Institute, a fine west-coast-Straussian think tank, has thrown down the gauntlet to the young look-ma-I'm-cool conservative writers (not including anyone on my blogroll!) who find praiseworthy matter in rap music and in movies like 8 Mile and Die Hard. Claremont writer Spencer Warren stoutly defends '50s movies. Any comments?

And while we're on pop culture, I see where HBO is putting an end to Four Superannuated Prom Queens With their Palms Glued to their Thighs, or whatever it's called.
posted by Cacciaguida at 8:18 PM

 
Go here for a lovely comeback to a particularly nasty piece of preening by the generation that thinks it discovered sex. (The comeback is by Moira Breen, on her blog Inappropriate Reponse, proving beyond cavil that Canadians do something besides skate and consume U.S. medical care.)
posted by Cacciaguida at 5:43 PM

 
Old Labour family values -- whoa!

You know how I've wondered from time to time where the social conservatives in Britain are? Well, it turns out they were active in the late 1940s and 1950s -- in the Labour Party!

Click here for an op-ed in the Daily Torygraph by one Neil Clark, a self-identified "Old Labour Euro-sceptic," who blames the recently deceased Roy Jenkins, former Labour Home Secretary and Chancellor, for being the vanguard of permissivism.

Throughout the piece, Mr. Clark expresses views that the Conservative Party chairman, Theresa May, condemns as "nasty" when Conservatives express them. Which, by the way, they hardly ever do.

I - I think I may be an Old Labourite. My world is reeling. Gimme air....
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:57 AM

 
The Exam Whingers -- I (numeral added because I'm sure there'll be more)

Scene: Yesterday. Cacciaguida is consulted by student with a raw score in the mid-70s (out of 100) on an exam where everyone else was in the high-80s to mid-90s. He can't understand why he got a D.

Student: But I got almost 80 out of 100 points.

(I endeavored to explain the concept of "curve." Students are often confused about this: they think all it ever means is that you get a higher grade than you deserve.)

Student: But I'm an A/B student.

Me: Well, why didn't you tell me? Then I could have just given you an A or a B right off the bat, and in the time I took to grade your exam, I could have done something interesting!

No, I didn't say that, but I should have.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:35 PM

 
Inquiring operagoers want to know....

An opera friend writes, with regard to Dialogues of the Carmelites:

I have ask a really dumb question, however, pertaining to the finale. WHAT
do they use to simulate the sound of the guillotine? And please don't tell
me they're backstage executing sopranos...this could get way expensive.

Answers will be posted as they become available.

posted by Cacciaguida at 4:59 PM

 
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead...

a.k.a. Roy Jenkins, Labour backbencher in the Atlee government, Labour Chancellor under Harold Wilson, co-founder of the Social Democratic Party, and acclaimed biographer of Gladstone and Churchill, died earlier this week.

He had the good sense to see that Labour's "left-wing loony" phase of the 1980s was a bad idea. His Churchill book is excellent, though I thought he was too dismissive of Churchill's anti-socialist rhetoric in the 1945 election. (That was, after all, the election that first brought Jenkins into Parliament.)

R.I.P.
posted by Cacciaguida at 2:16 PM

 
Dialogue from Dialogues I

Herewith, the first of several excerpts from Dialogues of the Carmelites, the play by Georges Bernanos on which Poulenc based his opera.

Blanche de la Force consults Mme. de Croissy, the dying Prioress, about joining Carmel.

The Prioress: What draws you to Carmel?

Blanche: Does Your Reverence command me to speak altogether frankly?

The Prioress: Yes.

Blanche: Well then, the attraction of a heroic life.

The Prioress: The attraction of a heroic life, or that of a certain manner of life that seems to you -- quite wrongly -- as though it must make heroism easier? Put it, so to speak, in the palm of one's hand?

Blanche: My Reverend Mother, forgive me, I have never made such calculations.

The Prioress: The most dangerous of our calculations are those that we call illusions.

Blanche: I may have illusions. I would ask no better than that you relieve me of them.

The Prioress: That we relieve you of them. You'll have to take care of that yourself, my daughter. Everyone here already has too much to do with her own illusions. Don't go imagining that the first duty of our state is to come to each other's aid, so as to make ourselves more attractive to the divine Master, like young people who share their powder and their rouge before appearing at the ball....Poor little one! You've dreamed of this house the way a timorous child whom the servants have just put to bed dreams in his dark bedroom of the drawing room, of its light, of its warmth. You know nothing of the solitude where a true religious is exposed to live or die....Oh, my child, it is not in accordance with the spirit of Carmel to make a fuss over people, but I am old and sick and very close to my end, and I can make a fuss over you. Great trials await you, my daughter.

Blanche: What does it matter, if God gives me strength.

The Prioress: What He wants to test in you is not your strength but your weakness.



posted by Cacciaguida at 7:57 PM

 
MOMMENTARY...

has a new look (Elinor didn't much care for the one I chose for her, I guess!), and several new posts on matters literary and journalistic.
posted by Cacciaguida at 6:56 PM

 
Dialogues broadcast today

Dialogues of the Carmelites (see post immediately below) is the Met's broadcast opera this afternoon. Starts at 1:30. In New York, it's on WQXR. In Washington, it's on the public radio stations (WETA, I think -- not WGMS, which dropped the Met broadcasts and should get its ass boycotted off). Anywhere else, consult local listings or visit the Met's site.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:41 AM

 
DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES

I saw Francois Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites at the Metropolitan Opera on December 30. This opera is about the martyrdom of the Carmel of Compiegne in July, 1794, at the height of the French Revolution's "Terror" phase (like it seriously had any other....)

I had seen the Met's wonderful production of this opera at least once before, but since then, the play by Georges Bernanos on which it is closely based has become a regular part of my spiritual reading, especially during Holy Week. It is not just about a bunch of Carmelites who get martyred: Bernanos went behind that historical event and, through an added fictional heroine, explored the themes of fear and doubt as inevitable parts of the journey to sainthood.

Poulenc's music in this opera is atmospheric; modern yet tonal and accessible; and, where appropriate, heroic -- but never, ever "religion-y." The day after seeing Dialogues, I listenened to a recording of Parsifal, Wagner's last opera and one widely but erroneously thought to have serious Catholic content. I love Wagner's music, don't get me wrong; but in this case, going from Dialogues to Parsifal was like going from a sung Gregorian High Mass to an unusually cheesy Hollywood Bible epic.
posted by Cacciaguida at 3:23 PM

 
LOHENGRIN

Listening to Wagner's Lohengrin while grading exams -- mmmm! The Barenboim recording, on Teldec: wonderful pacing and dynamics.



No way this recording deserved to end up on the remainder table three years after coming out, but it did, and that's why I have a copy.
posted by Cacciaguida at 11:11 AM

 
From THE TWO TOWERS



EOWYN OF ROHAN (Miranda Otto)

"Lord of the Rings reveres and talks about things I think society is aching to get back to. A lot of films these days concentrate on so many negative aspects of society. In the '40s, ideals were about honor, loyalty, and dignity -- qualities that we tend to forego so quickly for money." -- Miranda Otto, quoted in Focus on the Family's pop-culture newsletter Plugged In, Jan. '03, p. 4.

posted by Cacciaguida at 9:29 AM