Bentley on Shaw (1978)

Given his aspirations, the snobbery Shaw noted in himself was a fatal flaw. Its nemesis was that the man who thought he was at home only with the mighty dead like Shakespeare and Mozart was also at home with the mighty living like Mussolini and Stalin. The man who was incapable of warm-blooded fraternal love for the oppressed was capable of cold-blooded approval of their extermination at the hands of “supermen” who were really submen.
—Eric Bentley, Thinking about the Playwright: Comments from Four Decades (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1986)

Lionel Trilling on the Plastic Arts (July 1957)

Speaking for myself, I find that although my relation with “dehumanized” painting is at best an ambiguous one, I am almost always made uncomfortable by modern representatives of “lived reality.” Whatever reservations I may have about, say, Jackson Pollock, I am on easier terms with him than with, say, Ben Shahn, and I think that my preference is pretty typical of the educated classes.
—Lionel Trilling reviewing Kenneth Clark’s The Nude. “The Nude Renewed,” in Arthur Krystal, ed., A Company of Readers: Uncollected Writings of W. H. Auden, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling from The Reader’s Subscription and Mid-Century Book Clubs (New York, The Free Press, 2001)

Circles of Om

This ends a series.

Circles of Yin and Yang
Circles of Swastikas
Circles of Ankhs

Re: 2005 Catholic Blog Awards

In each category, the 5 blogs with the most nominations will be eligible for votes.

Nominate in the several categories until Friday, February 4, 2005, 12:00 noon EST.

Voting will begin Feb. 9, Noon EST, and continue through Feb. 15, Noon EST.

“The Playwright as Thinker”

The phrase “the playwright as thinker” was suggested to me in 1945 by my friend Jacques Barzun as a possible replacement to my own title for the book (used by my British publisher), The Modern Theatre. Jacques Barzun saw that I was trying to raise the intellectual status of dramatic art at a time when drama critics said it deserved no intellectual status at all, being an entirely un-intellectual thing with anti-intellectuals as its audience. Amidst the polemics that ensued it was overlooked that when I interpreted the two playwrights who more than any others have been called cerebral—Shaw and Pirandello—my thesis was that they were no less impassioned than Ibsen or Strindberg.
—Eric Bentley, Preface to Thinking about the Playwright: Comments from Four Decades (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1987)

Bentley’s “acknowledgements” to the book begins, “Perhaps the greatest psychic need is to feel needed.”

02005 02 03 +

Feast of Saint Blase. My church bulletin at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception refers to him as St. Blasé. After noon Mass at Holy Cross Church across the street from the New York State Office Building Campus where I work, I joined the line of people having their throats blessed by Father Daniel J. Maher.

St. Blaise happens to be the patron saint of the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia where he known as Sveti Vlaho. He supposedly lived in around the 3rd century so the latin form of the name is probably what he answered to.
—Letter from Donald Martinich, 2 February 1998

A Sermon on the Mount

Gospel Scene

Christian Carnival LV

Enjoy Christian Carnival LV at Wittenberg Gate

Christian Carnival #54 at Digitus, Finger & Co.
Christian Carnival LIII at Sidesspot.
Christian Carnival LII at Intolerant Elle
Christian Carnival: 2005 No. 1 at Weapon of Mass Distraction
The Last Christian Carnival of 2004 at MediaSoul
Christian Carnival: Christmas Edition at Patriot Paradox.
Christian Carnival XLVIII at Parableman.
Christian Carnival XLVII at TheGodBlog.com
Christian Carnival XLVI at A Physicist's Perspective
Christian Carnival XLV at CowPi Journal
Christian Carnival XLIV at ChristWeb
Christian Carnival XLIII at Digitus, Finger & Co

Cross 2004

A Java applet

This completes a series.

Cross 2003
Cross 2002
Cross 2001

02005 02 01 +

Spent some time reading the excellent N. T. Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham.

Catholic Carnival XV

Enjoy Catholic Carnival XV at Living Catholicism

Catholic Carnival XIV at Deo Omnis Gloria
Catholic Carnival XIII at A Penitent Blogger
The Catholic Carnival #12: Strong in Faith at Living Catholicism
Catholic Carnival #11 at CowPi Journal
The Catholic Carnival: Holiday Edition at Living Catholicism
Catholic Carnival IX at A Penitent Blogger
The Eighth Catholic Carnival at Living Catholicism.
Catholic Carnival—Advent Edition at Dunmoose the Ageless
The Sixth Catholic Carnival at Happy Catholic
The Fifth Catholic Carnival at Living Catholicism
The Fourth Catholic Carnival at Dunmoose the Ageless
The Third Catholic Carnival at Living Catholicism
The Second Catholic Carnival—On the Eucharist at The Curt Jester
The First Catholic Carnival at Living Catholicism

Notes 83

Am I your disciple, or am I not?

“I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.”

When God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, he does not cause Pharaoh to sin, but punishes Pharaoh’s sins—and not Pharaoh’s only but Egypt’s sins: “But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt.” So a punishment for sin is more sin. This does not mean that a sinner cannot help sinning, but that he is more and more inclined to sin—is more stubborn in his sinning. “Let me sin once more, then I'll repent” is a delusion, all the more so when it seems to be true.

Why “Dictionary of Accepted Ideas”?

Dictionary of Accepted Ideas continues to have viewers, but no one has yet left a comment on what brought him to it.

The 2005 Catholic Blog Awards

You may nominate in the several categories until Friday, February 4, 2005, 12:00 noon EST.

Voting will begin Feb. 9, Noon EST, and continue through Feb. 15, Noon EST.

Thanks to Ales Rarus.

Checklist

A Java applet

Wesley’s Notes on 1 Corinthians 13

Notes 82

To say something well is something, but not enough.

Given original sin, one may assume that others also miss the mark.

I thought a new era was coming, and did not educate myself in the old.

“So is this world to all the faithful seeking their own country, as was the desert to the people Israel.”
—St. Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John, VII, 1

Resolve to hear (obey) and speak (act) with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind—and with the right amount of strength.