Category: Poetry

Dante observes an eclipse

The scientific examination of a solar eclipse, the exact astronomical calculations to determine the dates and times of their manifestations, with diagrams, and advice on how to observe them; it all detracts from the poetry. The sky darkens, and the birds fly to their roosts, the land falls silent, if for a few minutes before some very puzzled birds start their song again.

Before Copernicus discovered real astronomy, men of learning knew that the Moon passing over the Sun causes the latter to be eclipsed. Dante settled down to writing a scientific description of an eclipse, using it to examine and refute the idea that the patches on the Moon are the result o differing densities of matter. However he was Dante, an extraordinary poet, reviving the lost art of the Roman writers, and he could no more write it as a dull scientific treatise than I could imitate him:

She somewhat smil’d, then spake: “If mortals err
In their opinion, when the key of sense
Unlocks not, surely wonder’s weapon keen
Ought not to pierce thee; since thou find’st, the wings
Of reason to pursue the senses’ flight
Are short. But what thy own thought is, declare.”

Then I: “What various here above appears,
Is caus’d, I deem, by bodies dense or rare.”

She then resum’d: “Thou certainly wilt see
In falsehood thy belief o’erwhelm’d, if well
Thou listen to the arguments, which I
Shall bring to face it. The eighth sphere displays
Numberless lights, the which in kind and size
May be remark’d of different aspects;
If rare or dense of that were cause alone,
One single virtue then would be in all,
Alike distributed, or more, or less.
Different virtues needs must be the fruits
Of formal principles, and these, save one,
Will by thy reasoning be destroy’d. Beside,
If rarity were of that dusk the cause,
Which thou inquirest, either in some part
That planet must throughout be void, nor fed
With its own matter; or, as bodies share
Their fat and leanness, in like manner this
Must in its volume change the leaves. The first,
If it were true, had through the sun’s eclipse
Been manifested, by transparency
Of light, as through aught rare beside effus’d.
But this is not. Therefore remains to see
The other cause: and if the other fall,
Erroneous so must prove what seem’d to thee.
If not from side to side this rarity
Pass through, there needs must be a limit, whence
Its contrary no further lets it pass.
And hence the beam, that from without proceeds,
Must be pour’d back, as colour comes, through glass
Reflected, which behind it lead conceals.
Now wilt thou say, that there of murkier hue
Than in the other part the ray is shown,
By being thence refracted farther back.
From this perplexity will free thee soon
Experience, if thereof thou trial make,
The fountain whence your arts derive their streame.

from Divina Commedia: Paradiso by Dante Alighieri, trans. The Rev. H F Cary MA

See also

Books

And Criffel sink in Solway

The end of the War, eighty years ago, and I look at how peace has changed us as a nation. Peace is a state earnestly to be desired, but is not the natural state of mankind, leastwise our vigorous nation, when we were a vigorous nation. We have for many centuries faced threats with a solid wall of force. Could we now though?

When Burns wrote a song for the Dumfries Volunteers in 1795, he was in no doubt: every man would stand and defend Britain. The French Revolutionary War was bursting with flame, soon to become the Napoleonic Wars that would last until another twenty winters had passed. In the face of the threat of invasion, volunteer units formed themselves, and Burns was instrumental in raising a unit in his home town.

Does haughty Gaul invasion threat ?
Then let the louns beware Sir;
There’s Wooden Walls upon our seas,
And Volunteers on shore, Sir:
The Nith shall run to Corsincon,
And Criffel sink in Solway,
Ere we permit a Foreign Foe
On British ground to rally !
We’ll ne’er permit a Foreign Foe
On British ground to rally !

The Volunteers on shore were fit, armed and ready – in Dumfries and across the land.  Burns realised the local and the national. (The Nith runs from Corsencon Hill, and Criffel stands solidly looming over the Solway Firth, as the local men would have known; reliable, eternal truths.) The national defence was unquestioned, against a foe who might have seemed distant to Dumfries, but a danger to one and to all.

Be Britain still to Britain true,
Amang oursels united;
For never but by British hands
Maun British wrangs be righted!

Can we be as sure of ourselves today?  Do we even have a single nation “amang oursels united”? The Army’s Scottish regiments were amalgamated because they were unable to recruit, and all across the land a similar tale is told. An Army consisting only of Geordies, Ulstermen and Gurkhas might be formidable in ferocity, but it is no sure defence alone.

Patriotism is derided in high circles by sluggards and cowards, for little reason than asserting an imagined, false intellectual superiority. They have an impact, creating shame in those who should be solid. The attachment to the nation cannot be relied upon when there is no nation, by any understood definition, left. There are solid men left, but if a foreign foe were to tread the shore, are they, we, enough? Would there be more bayonets to our backs, from our own, than facing us?

(Of those who are solid, many alas are too solid physically – watching YouTube videos on the audacious exploits of the Second World War from the sofa, without the muscle to them that made their forefathers the unbreakable wall they were. It is curable, but needs work and commitment.

O how unfit! )

The world is not peaceful, and the implication of facing it with a dead national spirit is a horror to think of.

See also

 

Books

Stars that shall be bright when we are dust

They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old. We have said that every Remembrance Sunday, and it chills at each reading. It must be every year, because as the echo of the Great War recedes into the past, as even the understanding of the Second War fades, a nation needs to be reminded, generation by generation.

It is not so far from them as the carefree youngster of our day might think. The dry pages of a history book conceal the truth that it is the story of youth: young men and boys like themselves, with the same hopes and dreams and silly humour, were cast into the adventure. They acquitted themselves gloriously; both those who emerged and those left on the field. Those who fell shall not grow old; but that phrase is from a longer poem, not all mournful but also praising the fallen for their dauntless spirit, which is to praise the spirit of young men:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted;
They fell with their faces to the foe.

Today the world is unquiet.  Britain and Western Europe have, thanks be to God, rested in peace for nearly eighty years, though the edge of the continent has latterly been convulsed by that ancient curse. It is hard to imagine what the war was, or why. We have even had comedies set in the trenches. Actually though, in the shell-holes and trenches  there was still comedy, because it keeps a man sane. If you ever hear the songs the German soldiers sang, grim dirges they are looking forward to death, and compare them to Tipperary and others our boys sang in the midst of the destruction, that might give a clue to how a British sense of humour must have helped  us win through. These were young men just like those of our own day, and those of our own day need to be reminded.  Whatever wars we weep with when we wander to our quiet homes, if those who want to march at their anguish, they are nothing compared to the twentieth century.

Except, that a mother weeps as much or her son if he is one, or one of two million.

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

See also

Books

Waiting for the Barbarians

This morning, C. P. Cavarty, translated by Edmund Keeley, reproduced here in blatant disregard for the copyright of both, to those who are directionless now we are free from the lockdown at last:

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

      The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?

      Because the barbarians are coming today.
      What’s the point of senators making laws now?
      Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate,
in state, wearing the crown?

      Because the barbarians are coming today
      and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader.
      He’s even got a scroll to give him,
      loaded with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

      Because the barbarians are coming today
      and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

      Because the barbarians are coming today
      and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?

      Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
      And some of our men just in from the border say
      there are no barbarians any longer.

Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.

Books

Wonder of the Peak 0: introduction

De Mirabilibus Pecci is one of the lesser works of Thomas Hobbes, but influential, as others have followed him to explore and describe the Seven Wonders of the Peak. Over the next seven days (if I can manage it) I would like to look at them too.

William Camden may have been to record the tradition of seven wonders in the Peak District:

There are in High Peake wonders three,
A deepe hole, Cave, and Den,
Commodities as many bee,
Led, Grasse, and Sheepe in pen.
And Beauties three there are withall,
A Castle, Bath, Chatsworth.
With places more yet meet you shall
That are of meaner worth.

The Peak District is a wonderous place, certainly, and choosing just seven places for a list is limiting. The list, by Camden then by Hobbes, is fixed now, and ranges in themes that explore the eclectic nature of the Peak District.

Hobbes was born, of course, in Wiltshire, but he travelled widely, and lived for many years as a guest of the Earls of Devonshire, his patrons. He composed De Mirabilibus Pecci (‘Of the Wonders of the Peak’) as a grateful tribute to the 3rd Earl, his former pupil and his patron (who owned much of the Peak). It is a long poem, in Latin so I cannot comment on the quality of the poetry. The quality of the seven wonders he listed however I can explore. Mercifully for readers, I will do so in prose.

See

0 Introduction – 1 Chatsworth – 2 The Ebbing and Flowing Well – 3 Eldon Hole – 4 St Ann’s Well – 5 Poole’s Cavern – 6 Mam Tor – 7 The Devil’s Arse