The Norwegian Chesterton?

 

I've seen multiple people refer to Sigrid Undset as the "Norwegian Chesterton."

I am not qualified to make such a claim. I have read just two of her books. Back in 2019 I read Stages on the Road, and I just finished Kristin Lavransdatter.

But having finished her epic novel, I can say it's a better book than any of Chesterton's novles.

Kristin Lavransdatter reminded me  of the great 19th century novels that like. The leisurely pace, the multiple characters explored in depth - especially Kristin - the portraying of life as untidy and even the good characters as flawed; that all resonated with me.

A wonderful read.

I was amused to see that she was also apparently a fan of Chesterton. There is a story that before she. like Chesterton, became a convert she declared to a publisher that The Everlasting Man be translated into Norwegian, then did it herself. Her translation was published in 1931. 

She had earlier lived in London for a year back in 1913, and I wonder is she ever ran into Chesterton somehow, perhaps even attending one of his lectures?

Pearce looking Fierce Clerihew

The look on the face of Joseph Pearce 

was positively fierce. 

As he was about to send his latest out the door 

he suddenly realized he'd written the same thing before.

Spiritual Electric Shock Therapy — Dappled Things

Spiritual Electric Shock Therapy — Dappled Things: Why today’s writers need G. K. Chesterton

Narnia Is for More Than Kids

 

I came across this meme on Facebook. It reminded me of not only Lewis, but, or course, Chesterton, who was a stanch supporter of good children's literature.

I did not have the pleasure of encountering Lewis as a child. I had heard of him, but he was not on the curriculum in my elementary or high schools.

When I was 19, I discovered a set of the Narnia stories in an apartment in New York City I was allowed to stay in for a while (that's another story!)  I borrowed them, and read them all in just a week. I credit them with helping to restore my faith and returning me to the Church from which I had strayed. I read them at the same time as I first read Chesterton's St. Francis and St. Augustine's Confessions, two other works that spoke to me at a time when I need to encounter such works.

Since then, I've gone back and reread all the Narnia stories, and even required The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as summer reading when I taught middle school.

They are more than just children's stories. They teach life lessons, and prepare children - on in my case, child-like 19-year-olds - to face cruel enemies, including, in my case, worldly temptation. 

In them, we see seeming defeats turned to victory, feats of courage, former enemies and perpetrators of evil repenting and finding salvation, and, sadly, people we love turning away (like Susan). Reality. 

One of my favorite scenes is in The Last Battle. Seemingly on the verge of defeat by the Calormines, the followers of Aslan are able to enter "further up and further in," and with them is Emeth, a Calormine. Aslan tells him that his service to a false god, Tash, done sincerely, obeying the natural moral laws (though that term is not used) was actual.y service to Aslan. The lesson is that even seeming enemies, those who follow false beliefs, can be saved. As adults, we can understand that means people of different faiths may find their way into eternity if they honestly follow the promptings of their hearts.

There are so many more lessons in the books. They are children's stories, yes, but they prepare the children to face life and to know they will defeat the forces of darkness in the end. 

That certainly was a good lesson for a certain 19-year-old who was adrift.

A Political Clerihew - Letitia James

 

NY AG Letitia James
was fond of targeting political foes with legal games.
In a twist, this time
she's the target, and there is an actual crime.

Jules Verne

 

Today, February 8, is the 196th birthday of Jules Verne. Happy birthday. 

Verne, of course, gave us such works of fantasy and science fiction as Journey to the Center of the Earth, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, and Around the World in Eighty Days.

I don't know if Chesterton wrote much about Verne. In the essay "The Domesticity of Detectives", he did mention Verne when discussing French writers.

"Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, for instance, both wrote fairy-tales of science; Mr. Wells has much the larger mind and interest in life; but he often lacks one power which Jules Verne possesses supremely—the power of going to the point. Verne is very French in his rigid relevancy; Wells is very English in his rich irrelevance." 

Perhaps Chesterton did write more about Verne. Perhaps some more knowledgeable person could offer some wisdom?  

As for me, I have read some Verne - Journey to the Center of the Earth, From Earth to the Moon, and a children's version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - but I have read far more of Wells's science fiction, and I prefer what I have read of his works.

Still, it might be worth giving Verne some attention - after I finish some of the books currently in my "To Read" pile.

At least I should start with a full version of Twenty Thousand Leagues. 

St. Thomas Aquinas

 

Over on X - Twitter - there is a feature called "Grok." If you ask Grok a question about yourself it scans your recent tweets and answers based on those tweets.

The other day I asked "Which philosopher am I most like?"

The response was: Given your interests and the themes in your posts, you seem most aligned with the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas was a medieval Catholic philosopher and theologian known for his efforts to synthesize Christian theology with the philosophy of Aristotle. His work often deals with ethics, morality, and the nature of God, which resonates with your expressions of faith and moral concerns. Aquinas's emphasis on natural law and the moral implications of human actions could be seen as parallel to your focus on life issues and the integration of faith into daily life.

I was pleased at the response!

Interestingly enough, back in the 1970's when I first discovered Chesterton, the second book of his I read was his study of Aquinas (St. Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox). The first book of Chesterton I read, by the way, was St. Francis of Assisi.

Given their respective sizes, and their brilliance, it was natural that Chesterton would be drawn to St. Thomas. I could imagine Chesterton playing the saint in a play. Hmm. Did he?

The Society of G. K. Chesterton published an his uncollected essay that first appeared in The Spectator on February 27, 1932. That essay appeared before Chesterton wrote his book about Aquinas. I post that essay below.

St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas confronts other creeds of good and evil, without at all denying evil, with a theory of two levels of good.

The difficulty of dealing with St. Thomas Aquinas in this brief article is the difficulty of selecting that aspect of a many-sided mind which will best suggest its size or scale. Because of the massive body which carried his massive brain, he was called “The Ox”; but any attempt to boil down such a brain into tabloid literature passes all possible jokes about an ox in a teacup. He was one of the two or three giants; one of the two or three greatest men who ever lived; and I should never be surprised if he turned out, quite apart from sanctity, to be the greatest of all. another way of putting the problem is to say that proportion alters according to what other men we are at the moment classing him with or pitting him against. We do not get the scale until we come to the few men in history who can be his rivals.

Thus, to begin with, we may compare him with the common life of his time; and tell the story of his adventures among his contemporaries. In this alone he shed a light on history, apart from the light he shed on philosophy. He was born in high station, related to the Imperial house, the son of a great noble of Aquino, not far from Naples, and when he expressed a wish to be a monk, it is typical of the time that everything was made smooth for him – up to a point. A great gentleman could be decorously admitted into the now ancient routine of the Benedictines; like a squire’s younger son becoming a parson. But the world had just been shaken by a religious revolution, and strange feet were on all the highways. And when young Thomas insisted on becoming a Dominican – that is a wandering and begging friar – his brothers pursued him, kidnapped him and shut him up in a gaol. It was as if the squire’s son had become a gipsy or a Communist. However, he managed to become a friar; and the favourite pupil of the great Albertus Magnus at Cologne. He afterwards proceeded to Paris, and was prominent in defending the new mendicant orders at the Sorbonne and elsewhere. From this he passed to the great central controversy on Averroes and Aristotle; in effect to the great reconciliation of Christian faith and Pagan philosophy. His external life was prodigiously preoccupied with these things. He was a big, burly, baldish man, patient and good-natured, but given to blank trances of absence of mind. When dining with St. Louis, the French King, he fell into a brown study and suddenly smote the table with a mighty fist, saying: “And that will settle the Manichees!” The King, with his fine irony of innocence, sent a secretary to take down the line of argument, lest it be forgotten.

Then he could be compared with other saints or theologians, as mystic rather than dogmatic. For he was, like a sensible man, a mystic in private and a philosopher in public. He had “religious experience” all right; but he did not, in the modern manner, ask other people to reason from his experience. He only asked them to reason from their own experience. His experiences included well-attested cases of levitation in ecstasy; and the Blessed Virgin appeared to him, comforting him with the welcome news that he would never be a Bishop. Similarly, we might compare the Thomist scheme with others, touching on the points in which Scotus or Bonaventura differed from it. There is no space for such distinctions here, beyond the general one; that St. Thomas tends at least relatively to the rational; the others to the mystic; we might almost say the romantic. In any case, there was certainly never a greater theologian, and probably never a greater saint. But saying that he was greater than Dominic or Francis, would not (in the sense needed here) even hint at how great he was.

To understand his importance, we must pit him against the two or three alternative cosmic creeds: he is the whole Christian intellect speaking to Paganism or to Pessimism. He is arguing across the ages with Plato or with Buddha; and he has the best of the argument. His mind was so broad, and its balance so beautiful, that to suggest it would be to discuss a million things. But perhaps the best simplification is this. St. Thomas confronts other creeds of good and evil, without at all denying evil, with a theory of two levels of good. The supernatural order is the supreme good, as for any Eastern mystic; but the natural order is good; as solidly good as it is for any man in the street. That is what”settles the Manichees.” Faith is higher than reason; but reason is higher than anything else, and has supreme rights in its own domain. That is where it anticipates and answers the anti-rational cry of Luther and the rest; as a highly Pagan poet said to me: “The Reformation happened because people hadn’t the brains to understand Aquinas.” The Church is more immortally important than the State; but the State has its rights, for all that. This Christian duality had always been implicit, as in Christ’s distinction between God and Caesar, or the dogmatic distinction between the natures of Christ. But St. Thomas has the glory of having seized this double thread as the clue to a thousand things; and thereby created the only creed in which the saints can be sane. It presents itself chiefly, perhaps, to the modern world as the only creed in which the poets can be sane. For there is nobody now to settle the Manichees; and all culture is infected with a faint unclean sense that Nature and all things behind us and below us are bad; that there is only praise to the highbrow in the height. St. Thomas exalted God without lowering Man; he exalted Man without lowering Nature. Therefore, he made a cosmos of common sense; terra vientium; a land of the living. His philosophy, like his theology, is that of common sense. He does not torture the brain with desperate attempts to explain existence by explaining it away. The first steps of his mind are the first steps of any honest mind; just as the first virtues of his creed could be those of any honest peasant. For he, who combined so many things, combined also intellectual subtlety and spiritual simplicity; and the priest who attended the deathbed of this Titan of intellectual energy, whose brain had torn up the roots of the world and pierced every star and split every straw in the whole universe of thought and even of scepticism, said that in listening to the dying man’s confession, he fancied suddenly that he was listening to the first confession of a child of five.