Detail of the face of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Cropped version of the painting where Mozart is seen with Anna Maria (Mozart’s sister) and father, Leopold, on the wall a portrait of his deceased mother, Anna Maria. Painted by Johann Nepomuk della Croce (1736-1819)

Fair be the breeze
And calm the seas,
May earth, fire, water, air,
Kindly answer this our prayer.

Quite probably the most beautiful music written for a trio of voices. Five lines that convey longing, despair and heartbreak because a loved one has left. One of the voices here is the incomparable Renée Fleming.

The novelist McCall Smith writing in the WSJ revealed this about his writing habits:

Music may get in the way of words, but only if it is too loud, too strident, or creates the wrong mood. Music has the ability to affect how we feel: Its capacity to evoke emotions lies at the heart of what it is. For this reason I believe that music may help the novelist to write with the passion and feeling that fiction needs if it is to be convincing.

I choose the music according to the novel that I am writing, and that can vary a great deal. Sometimes I need to hear from Arvo Pärt, sometimes from Peter, Paul & Mary (my taste is eclectic). But there is one piece of music above all others that inspires me in my work and that I listen to a great deal when writing. This is the trio “Soave Sia Il Vento” from Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte.”

It is a morally disturbing opera. Two young women are saying goodbye to lovers who are about to deceive them in a way that will reveal the women’s own weakness. Nasty and cynical things are about to happen, yet Mozart graces a grubby tale of deception and inconstancy with a score that soars effortlessly above the libretto’s limitations.

Not only is this one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed, but the words are extraordinarily peaceful, generous and resolved. “On your voyage, may the winds be gentle; may the waves be calm; may all the elements respond to your desires…”

What more can we wish anyone setting off on life’s journey? I listen to this several times a day; I never tire of it. It is music suffused with the greatest possible sympathy and humanity. It expresses what I want to feel about the world. It is the deepest truth.

We are, in other words, conditioned by the identity of the object towards which we tend. If so, it stands to reason to say that, God being the Trinity, every human relation to the divine sphere is “intentionally” Trinitarian. But how? You are drawn to these daffodils and they are part of a universal apprehension of the divine: in other words, the divine commands our attention, our intention. Reduced to its most universal common denominator, such intentionality is found in facing that which we cannot control but which de facto conditions, and limits, us. The recognition of such uncontrollable external conditions is and has ever been an objective factor in the life of every single human being.

GIORGIO BUCCELLATI is the director of IIMAS — The International Institute for Mesopotamian Studies, co-director of the Mozan/Urkesh Archaeological Project, director of the Mesopotamian Lab of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, and Professor Emeritus of the Ancient Near East and of History at the University of California, Los Angeles. This is all part of a much larger piece that has most recently been published in Communio and is available here. In these sections Professor Buccellati contrasts the monotheistic Trinity with polytheism and the significance of both, how they contrast and complement each other.

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“The Trinity is inevitably present in seed form wherever God is sensed.”

Non chiederci la parola che squadri da ogni lato l’animo nostro inform: …

Don’t ask of us the word that might our shapeless soul squarely and neatly frame.

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The Central Concept
One way to approach the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is to explore the experience through which the reality behind the dogma came to be apprehended in the New Testament; and that the Old Testament experience of Yahweh, already essentially Trinitarian, was as if a catechumenate that ultimately made such apprehension possible.

By way of contrast, I have also argued that the polytheistic stance towards the divine is essentially non-Trinitarian, because it emphasizes the aspect of control and ownership vis-à-vis the monotheistic stance that sees an interpersonal sharing within the absolute as fully real without implying fragmentation.

I will argue here for a converse point of view that will complement the considerations made in the second paper. While a pagan, or polytheistic ethos is indeed essentially non-Trinitarian in the articulation of its sensibilities and thought processes, it cannot, at the same time, escape from the deeper Trinitarian dimension of the divine reality.

A Polytheistic Opposition
The explicit polytheistic opposition to a monotheistic dimension is dramatically complemented, in my view, by a deeper, inescapable apprehension of what is ultimately the only proper configuration of the divine, i.e., the Trinity. The Trinity is inevitably present in seed form wherever God is sensed.

The Church Fathers spoke of a lógos spermatikós referring to the inevitability of Christ being present as seed in the human experience of the divine even when not so recognized explicitly. But recognizing the Logos as seed implies, inevitably, a seed-like Trinitarian apprehension — a Trinity spermatiké. The equivalent Latin term, semina verbi, “the seeds of the word” is also central to the understanding of the commonalities among world religions. We should then ask: what, if any, is the difference between the Old Testament catechumenate and such a veiled polytheistic perception of the Trinity?

And in turn, how does the fuller disclosure, as offered by Jesus, impact our human experience of divine reality? In other words, how is our basic human confrontation with God enriched as a result of being, through Christ, more explicitly Trinitarian?The thrust of this article aims to give an answer to this question.

Monotheism and Trinitarianism
Semantically, it would appear sufficient to say that Trinitarian is not three-theism: the three persons are not three gods. But there is a more subtle conceptual dimension that may easily hide behind the semantic veneer. It emerges when, in a converse (vocab: All S is P, the converse is All P is S) sort of way, monotheism comes to be understood as “one-theistic”: there is only one god, but with the emphasis on the numerability of the “one.” He is still subject of counting.

This means that conceptually he is seen as one in a series of units, a series that belongs to a broad set where everything is numerable. “One-theism” is not very different from henotheism, a term which refers to the process of rarefaction whereby pre-eminence is given to a single deity out of a pantheon of many, to the point where the other gods almost disappear. In such a perspective, the characteristic of oneness remains one of superiority rather than of utter otherness.

It is such utter otherness that is, instead, the hallmark of monotheism. Oneness means, in this case, a one that is not so much above a multitude of other ones as it is, rather, wholly set apart. The semantic trap to which I was alluding lies in assuming that the one is opposed to the many. Where polytheism admits many deities, monotheism is assumed to admit one.

It comes down to a matter of scale: the one is of the same order as the many, except that it is numerically limited. But it is a trap. The insight of monotheism lies in proposing an altogether different scale, a different plane of reality where, we might say, one is opposed to one. The “one” of polytheism is a mononumerical set, but remains a set within a series of numerical sets. The “one” of monotheism is outside any such series of sets.

Metábasis Eis Állo Génos
The notion of transcendence refers to just such an understanding. The monotheistic God transcends human concepts in the way described by Kierkegaard as a metábasis eis állo génos, a “rising to another genus,” using language borrowed from Aristotle. The “other genus” is not something higher within the same range. It is rather a distinct range altogether. Nor is it a truly parallel order of being, because it is wholly outside our concept of order, related to ours only analogically.

If we take seriously transcendence as metábasis, and parallelism as analogia entis, then the point made above, about the importance of considering the oneness of God outside of any notion of numerical sets, will become clearer. So will, also, the realization that there is no contrast between monotheism and Trinitarianism. The Trinity is not a set any more than the One God is a set.

We may think of the Trinity as the inner articulation of the altogether different order of being which we call absolute. An excessive conceptual reliance on the notion of oneness may easily work against the very impetus of monotheism, as if the reductiveness of the single count could give us control on transcendence, as if transcendence could in effect be imprisoned in the immanent function of the numeric concept.

“Understanding” God
If transcendence implies transference to an altogether different plane of reality, an állo génos, then how is it possible for humans to rise to this other level, how does the metábasis (vocab: a passing from one thing to another; transition.) take place? In particular, within our present context, what kind of basic human understanding is possible of the Trinitarian mystery?

Is the Trinitarian állo génos (other kind) so alien that there are no footholds in normal human experience on which to stand in order to reach for some kind of plain and simple human comprehension? Are we called to love what we can- not possibly understand? But if our love is to be genuine, how can it not be human, how can it be directed to what is alien to experience, to understanding?

These considerations are valid for any attempt to reach the divine sphere, but they are especially pertinent when reflecting on the Trinity. If revelation is seen as merely the acquisition of information, then we may develop the wrong feeling that knowing about the Trinity means that we can “explain” God. But we would be wrong in equating understanding with explanation.

Understanding = An Inner Disposition Of Love
Understanding does not mean explicating in the sense of dissecting, analyzing, breaking down a composite into its constituent parts. In the traditional sense of wisdom, understanding means to apprehend the whole as meaningful apart from, or rather beyond, its being the sum of its components. When reflecting on the Trinity, we must, accordingly, relate to the mystery as a whole, without the tacit pretense that by describing it as a triadic sum we have exhausted its inner significance. Knowing about the Trinity is not a call to acquire and exchange information, it is not an explanation. It is, rather, a call to develop a relationship.

Ultimately, this means that “understanding” the Trinity entails an inner disposition of love. We cannot love without understanding the target of our love, nor can we understand without the inner thrust of a full and genuine human love. Not, however, as though love were an irrational feeling. True, it would be a sad day when we could “explain” why we love someone, for explanation would entail love as a necessary consequence.

But it would also be a sad day when we felt love to be irrational, i.e., wholly divorced from reason. Rather than in conflict, love and reason are in a mutual relationship of harmony, and it is through reason that we, lovers, “understand” our beloved.

The Role of Apologetics
It is in fact valid to say that explanation plays a propaedeutic [vocab: (of an area of study) Serving as a preliminary instruction or as an introduction to further study.] role in nurturing understanding, hence love. We cannot convince someone, through argument, that he or she must love someone else. On the other hand, arguments can direct the inner movement of souls to where, beyond the dissecting arguments, the whole explodes in its own clarity.

Analogously, no amount of analytical criticism can force you to enjoy a poem or a painting; but the same criticism can predispose your sensitivity so that it is trained to accept modalities and styles that might at first have seemed alien. It is in this sense that we can bridge the gap between positive and negative theology, by seeing the first as preparing the ground for the second, by seeing argument and explanation shaping our consciousness and preparing it for the explosion of understanding.

Knowing And Understanding
There is an analogous distinction between knowing and understanding. “Knowing” relates to capturing information, “understanding” to an inner disposition of apprehension and readiness. Thus it is that when we seek to do the will of God, we do not properly seek explicit orders or a clarification of situations, wherein we are told do A rather than B.

Explicit Divine Requests
Explicit divine requests are the exception. Consider the three fiats (vocab: a command or act of will that creates something without or as if without further effort):

1. Only the first is Mary’s response to an explicit “word”: fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum (Luke 1:38).
2. The second is the Our Father, where we are asked to accept a will that does not necessarily translate into any explicit word: fiat voluntas tua (Matthew 6:10).
3. The third is Jesus’ own Our Father, when, in the agony at Gethsemane, he contrasts his own instinctive desire to avoid the Passion with the will of the Father that the Passion should take place, a will that is perceived but is not confirmed as an articulate command: fiat voluntas tua (Matthew 26:42) | non mea voluntas sed tua fiat (Luke 22:42).

A Christian Epistemology I
This last fiat is especially tragic and meaningful. It is preceded, in each of the two gospel narratives, by an if-clause that projects uncertainty. Jesus does not seem to “know” for sure what the Father’s will is: “Father, if it is possible, let this chalice go away from me — except, not as I wish, but as you do… . If this cannot go away unless I drink it, let your will take place” (Matthew 26:39.42); “Father, if you wish, remove from me this chalice — except, not my will, but let yours take place” (Luke 22:42).

It seems as though part of the agony is the obscurity that involves uncertainty about the Father’s precise intentions. Jesus’ surrender is more important, it would appear, than his acceptance of any specific marching orders. The will of the Father is not information to be articulated in words that one can “know,” but rather a creative power to be adhered to with understanding. The if-qualifications of the last fiat do not seem resolved as, in his agony, Jesus cries from the height the cross: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matthew 27:46 | Mark 15:34). No direct answer is forthcoming. No explicit explanation. No spoken word of comfort. Instead, the final understanding of the Father’s will comes to the dying Jesus, extraordinarily, through a fellow human being: one of the two men who have been crucified alongside him — Dismas, as tradition calls him.

There is a startling dimension to this episode (Luke 23:39–43), one that can nurture much awed reflection. Think about it: Jesus finds the strength to accept his final collapse (Luke 23:46) through the unexpected support of an unknown criminal. It is, mark well, the lowliest human on the social scale, one who had never received anything from Jesus, one whose name was unknown to even the few bystanders (Dismas being a later appellation).

It is this very man who is called to give the Father’s answer to the Son, to give Jesus the courage to die. Remember: Jesus had been asking for help from the three apostles he took near him at Gethsemane, and they fell asleep; there, he had asked the Father for direction, and had met with silence; as he is led to the summit of the skull, he sees his closest friends disappear (except for his mother and a young disciple), and it is the outsiders who then begin to rally around his loneliness.

In this darkness we can see how Jesus’ own fiat, his “understanding” of the Father’s will, is not rooted in the acquisition of a specific, overt, articulate command that might confirm his mission, but in his fundamental posture of availability and openness, ready to accept whatever sign may come his way. Any source, even the most unexpected, may be the effective conduit to an understanding of what we are to be available for. For Jesus, it was, first, a foreigner along the way (Simon of Cyrene, Matthew 27:32 | Mark 15:21 | Luke 23:26), and then, at the top, an unnamed confessed criminal.

Jesus lives a profoundly human situation as he seeks through uncertainty the will of the Father.

A Christian Epistemology II
So did his mother when facing the behavior of her adolescent son. Having found him in the Temple after an anguished search, and having heard his explanation as to why he had not alerted them regarding his whereabouts, we are told that Mary and Joseph “did not comprehend the spoken (explanation) (ou sunē’kan tò rē’ma)

[In the Annunciation, the “word” to which Mary assents is lógos in Greek. The term used here instead is rē’ma, which has more the connotation of “saying, speech, statement,” hence “explanation” and then even “event, fact.” The same term is used in the plural in what follows immediately in the text, where it is said that Mary pondered in depth “all the spoken (events) (pánta tà  rē’mata).”] which he had spoken to them” (Luke 2:50).

But reflect on it they did, after the fact, and intensely so: “His mother was watching-and-guarding-through-and-through (dietē’rei) in her heart all the spoken (events) (pánta tà rē’mata)” (Luke 2:51). She accepts and basically understands her son even when, offered an explanation, she does not fully comprehend it. At the root, and in a nutshell, this is the Christian epistemology, particularly when facing the Trinity.

“Intentionality”
It is also, in a way, the common Trinitarian epistemology, i.e., the non-Christian confrontation with the Trinity. The central question we are asking here concerns precisely the way in which, however veiled, the Trinity may be sensed outside of the framework unveiled through the Incarnation of the Logos. If even in the wake of that revelation our “understanding” is at once piercing and obscure; if even Mary and Joseph “did not comprehend the explanation” explicitly offered by Jesus; how then do the countless humans who are not privy to the same revelation face the inescapably Trinitarian dimension of the divine?

The phenomenological concept of “intentionality” is helpful in this respect. On the analogy of planets held in orbit by the pull of their sun, so are we tending towards objects that exert their attraction regardless of how explicit our perception of their precise identity may or may not be. We are, in other words, conditioned by the identity of the object towards which we tend. If so, it stands to reason to say that, God being the Trinity, every human relation to the divine sphere is “intentionally” Trinitarian . But how?

There is, in the first place, a universal apprehension of the divine: in other words, the divine commands our attention, our intention. Reduced to its most universal common denominator, such intentionality is found in facing that which we cannot control but which de facto conditions, and limits, us. The recognition of such uncontrollable external conditions is and has ever been an objective factor in the life of every single human being.

There is, however, a fundamental difference in how we articulate our perception of this reality, a difference that comes down to two basic alternatives. Common to both is the realization that we can progressively gain an ever greater measure of control over what could not previously be controlled — for instance, control of the outer spaces through astronomy, of disease through medicine, of our own remote past through paleontology and archaeology.

Peculiar to the first mode of thought is the belief that this “progress” is, itself, unconditional. In other words, nothing will ultimately condition progress because progress will achieve full ultimate control on whatever external conditions seem to limit us now (see in the next installment, 4.3).

Peculiar to the second mode of thought is instead the belief that there is an ultimate “beyondness” that conditions us in ways that escape all possibility of control on our part. The intentional aspect is the same: in both cases the existence of conditioning factors that cannot be controlled is undeniable, and un-denied. The difference is in the perceptual resolution, both positions being a matter of belief.

We either believe, in the polytheistic frame of mind (the first mode of thought), that full ultimate accretion is possible (there is an ultimate explanation of everything, the last bit of which will come from the ultimate accumulation of all previous knowledge). Or else we believe, in the monotheistic frame of mind (the other mode of thought), that accretion is itself conditioned, that our own ability of control is framed by uncontrollable conditions. Neither belief can be demonstrated. But both are the result of an objective, “intentional” confrontation with a reality which we experience: a conditioning that is beyond our control.

The point I wish to stress in this context is that there is a Trinitarian dimension even to the polytheistic perception of the “beyondness.” Therein humans face, “intentionally,” a dynamics at work in the divine reality, through the very paradox of progress understood as the ultimate goal. The paradox lies in the notion that a never ending progress may in some way end. Progress entails the capturing, along the line, of fragments of a dynamic absolute, yet progress will, by necessity, come to an end when there are no more fragments — at which point the dynamics ends.

The paradox, then, is in the belief that stasis is the final outcome of forward movement, that this dynamics can be seized — do we not, in fact, gradually appropriate an ever greater share of the universal progress? In this light, the death of god appears in an even more tragic light: at the very moment that we appropriate the dynamics of the absolute, we nullify the absolute. The death of god (as in Nietzsche) is the final stasis: what we presume to kill is, in reality, the dynamics of the absolute. We kill, in fact, that veiled perception of a Trinitarian reality wherein we saw the absolute as endowed with an inner vitality and particularity. The death of god is, in fact, the abrogation of the Trinitarian dimension within the absolute.

In interviews with the Boston Herald and InsideHigherED.com, one professor described the display of crucifixes as offensive, while another found it “insensitive” and “indicative of a bias toward one way of thinking, elevating one set of ideals above others, honoring one group of people in preference to the rest.” Complaining about the crucifixes, Boston College Chemistry professor Amir Hoyveda wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Herald, saying that he could “hardly imagine a more effective way to denigrate the faculty of an educational institution.” Yes, this is Boston’s premier Catholic institution of higher learning, much the way that the Red Sox are our premier baseball organization.

Ignoring U.S. bishops, the Catholic university will honored an abortion-rights supporter yesterday. The companion piece to this is the post Boston Strong. You will see it is no accident that Boston was the center for the homosexual priest scandal in the U.S. or that our secular leaders in this city no longer allow priests to act as first responders and administer last rites to the dying at disaster scenes like the marathon bombing a few months ago.

Ms. Hendershott is a sociology professor at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, and the co-author of Renewal: How a New Generation of Priests and Bishops are Revitalizing the Catholic Church,” forthcoming from Encounter Books.

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At Boston College’s commencement ceremony on Monday, Cardinal Sean O’Malley won’t be in attendance. The leader of the Boston archdiocese announced on May 10 that he would not deliver his traditional graduation benediction at the Catholic school because the college had invited Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny — a supporter of abortion rights in Ireland — to deliver the graduation address and receive an honorary degree.

The cardinal said the invitation has caused “confusion, disappointment and harm” by ignoring the U.S. bishops “who have asked that Catholic institutions not honor government officials or politicians who promote abortion with their laws and policies.”

In April, Mr. Kenny’s coalition government introduced legislation with the curious title “The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013.” It will allow access to direct abortion for pregnant women if they claim to be so distraught about the pregnancy that they are in danger of committing suicide. Mr. Kenny has said that he “would like to see the legislation enacted before the Dail [parliament] rises for the summer.”

The prime minister’s actions have been condemned by the Catholic bishops of Ireland, who released a statement that warned: “International experience shows that allowing abortion on the grounds of mental health effectively opens the floodgates for abortion . . . it is the unborn child’s common humanity that makes his life equal in value to that of the mother.”

Boston College has responded to criticism of its invitation to Mr. Kenny — from Cardinal O’Malley, a pro-life student group at Boston College, and the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, among others — by saying that the decision was about common culture, not legislation. On May 10, college spokesman Jack Dunn told the Boston Globe that the invitation was extended “in light of our long-standing connection with Ireland and our desire to recognize and celebrate our heritage,” and was made “independent of the proposed bill that will be debated in the Irish parliament this summer.”

The abortion bill is just Mr. Kenny’s most recent clash with the Catholic Church. Last year, for instance, his government promoted a bill which would impose criminal penalties, including imprisonment, on priests who refuse to violate the seal of the confessional — normally sacrosanct — in cases of sexual abuse. On July 20, 2011, Mr. Kenny told the Irish parliament that the Vatican, in a bid to preserve its power, has “downplayed” the “rape and torture of children.” Later that year, he closed the Irish embassy to the Holy See, citing economic reasons.

Ireland’s prime minister isn’t the first abortion-rights proponent to be honored by the college. In 2010, the pro-choice Republican senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, delivered the commencement address at the Boston College School of Law. In 2007, the law school invited Edward Markey — a Massachusetts Congressman with a 100% abortion rights voting record in Congress — to speak at its commencement. In 2006, Mr. Markey joined 54 other Catholic Democrats in the House in signing a “Catholic Statement of Principles,” reserving the right to disagree with the Catholic Church on important issues like abortion. Mr. Markey is now running for John Kerry’s vacated Senate seat.

There has been an uneasy relationship between the church and the wider Boston College campus community as well. In 2009, when college administrators placed 40 crucifixes on classroom walls throughout the Boston campus, a number of faculty members were furious.

In interviews with the Boston Herald and InsideHigherED.com, one professor described the display of crucifixes as offensive, while another found it “insensitive” and “indicative of a bias toward one way of thinking, elevating one set of ideals above others, honoring one group of people in preference to the rest.” Complaining about the crucifixes, Boston College Chemistry professor Amir Hoyveda wrote a letter to the editor of the Boston Herald, saying that he could “hardly imagine a more effective way to denigrate the faculty of an educational institution.”

Boston College pro-choice law students have formed BC Law Students for Reproductive Justice. On their website as of May 16, the Boston College pro-choice law students vow to “promote awareness of reproductive issues in order “to ensure that future lawyers will be prepared to successfully defend and expand reproductive rights.”

In a sense the professors and students are continuing the tradition of the longtime proponent of abortion rights, the late Rev. Robert Drinan, who was dean of Boston College Law School for 14 years (1956-70) before serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. While a congressman, Drinan could be counted on to vote for increased access to abortion, just as earlier, while a dean, he had helped counsel Catholic politicians on how to accept and promote abortion with a clear conscience. In 2011, the Boston College Law School held a symposium to honor Drinan.

Yet Cardinal O’Malley’s refusal to countenance the college’s support for Prime Minister Kenny may be a sign that things are about to change. In April, Pope Francis chose Cardinal O’Malley as one of eight cardinals to advise him on running the church and reforming the Vatican bureaucracy.

This honor brings with it a responsibility to ensure that Catholic colleges and universities are faithful to the Catholic mission. The cardinal’s Boston College boycott is a good start.

Auden’s journey began with the mind and ended with the spirit. His rationality gave way to passion, which in turn opened the door to religious rediscovery. It is due to, not despite, this journey that Auden still reigns as a poetic master, and his depth progressively grows with study across the decades of his career. But, as Auden would undoubtedly argue, it is the poet’s duty to discover the relevant questions of one’s times — and to do so requires the type of journey which comprised the life of W. H. Auden

Mr Pressley’s website is here and filled with interesting stuff.

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Wystan Hugh Auden died in 1973 having accomplished a remarkable journey that spanned decades — and left him established as one of the premier poets of the 20th century. This journey began in England, deepened in America, and ended in Vienna, leaving an unrivaled legacy. It is a journey of both body and poetic voice, and is expressed forever in his verses. For a serious discussion of Auden the poet, it is necessary to explore the journey of Auden the wanderer, constantly reinventing himself along the way.

Auden was the son of a doctor, which had a profound and lasting effect upon his style of verse. As Stephen Spender says, “There is a dualistic idea running through all [Auden's] work which encloses it like the sides of a box. This idea is Symptom and Cure” (Spears, Auden: A Collection of Critical Essays, 28). Moreover, the early interest of Auden in things scientific — he originally wished to pursue a career in biology or medicine like his father — shows heavily in his use of detail and his approach to verse.

Quite frequently, Auden’s lines are densely analytical in nature, or “diagnostic” as many critics have put forth. At the beginning of Auden’s career, this scientific-rational tendency was the predominant quality of Auden’s poetry. His intellectualism and psychology predilections are demonstrated markedly in works prior to 1932, such as “The Letter” (published in 1928).

The Letter

From the very first coming down
Into a new valley with a frown
Because of the sun and a lost way.
You certainly remain: to-day
I, crouching behind a sheep-pen, heard
Travel across a sudden bird,
Cry out against the storm, and found
The year’s arc a completed round
And love’s worn circuit re-begun,
Endless with no dissenting turn.
Shall see, shall pass, as we have seen
The swallow on the tile, spring’s green
Preliminary shiver, passed

A solitary truck, the last
Of shunting in the Autumn. But now,
To interrupt the homely brow,
Thought warmed to evening through and through,
Your letter comes, speaking as you,
Speaking of much, but not to come.

Nor speech is close nor fingers numb,
If love not seldom has received
An unjust answer, was deceived.
I, decent with the seasons, move
Different or with a different love,
Nor question much the nod,
The stone smile of this country god
That never was more reticent,
Always afraid to say more than it meant.

(Ellmann and O’Clair, Modern Poems: A Norton Introduction 410)

The above lines represent Auden in his youth, a prodigy, according to some critics. There is no playfulness of craft to this work reminiscent of Auden’s later periods — the syllabic meter is strict, using rhymed couplets of nine syllables per line in the first stanza and eight per line in the second with barely a hint of variety. There is, however, a cool analytical approach to the subject matter, almost impersonal. The central theme is the cycle of life as represented through a failed love.

Most interesting — and typical of Auden — is the usage of scientific, in this case electrical, imagery in the poem. He uses terms like “arc,” “circuit,” and “shunting” in the context of the work, which I read as comparing the connection of a relationship to the connection of an electrical circuit. This provides a contrast with the more pastoral/natural elements of the poem: storm, bird, seasons, Spring and Autumn, etc.

This is Auden the post-Romantic; we don’t necessarily feel the grief of the voice character in this work, but are presented with a dialectical insight through the varying details provided within the poem. Although “The Letter” may be construed as more technically primitive and somewhat obscure as compared with Auden’s later craft, it reflects a style that would be refined and evolve into clever twists of form and content.

Auden began teaching at a school in Herefordshire in the Fall of 1932, and this marks a major milestone in his poetic development. To quote The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry:

In that mellow world his poetry opened like a bud, becoming more expansive and richer in surface detail. This is the start of the second “chapter,” the phase when Auden, drawing on Marx and Freud, was able to make a brilliant stream of connections between individual guilts and pleasures and the crisis that seemed to be eating away at European civilization. Simultaneously, his interests in the possibilities of verse forms burst out in a profusion of beautifully adroit sonnets, sestinas, and ballads (Hamilton, 22).

The period from 1932 to 1940 earned Auden the praise of his contemporaries as well, including T. S. Eliot who once said, “This fellow is about the best poet I have discovered in several years” (Davenport-Hines, Auden, 121). The following poem shows a more unrestrained Auden at work; Auden has latched onto the theme of grand Love, and shows an emotion in his poetry not entirely present in “The Letter”:

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good

(Mendelson, As I Walked Out One Evening: W. H. Auden, 43).

Once again, Auden chooses his details carefully, considering each one for their effect, and each detail is given even more prominence within the poem by the use of end-stops on each line. The poem operates on two distinct levels. First, the literal interpretation of a love who has died — it is that inner state of grief over love’s loss which his younger poems lack. Can the third stanza be more plain, or more eloquent in its understated grandiosity? Here Auden is less the clinician and more the participant, for all he decried showing oneself as a poet within the poetry.

On a more ephemeral level, one can read “Funeral Blues” as bemoaning the death of God, not an altogether unfamiliar theme following the first world war and with Europe facing the prospect of another. This poem was also written after Auden’s service in Spain, which left him disillusioned with the state of the world in many respects. Stanza four is as huge as stanza three is compact.

Because of this, however, and because of this departure from Auden’s usual detachment from subject matter, I view this poem as more of an elegy for God than for a lost lover. Although Auden uses hyperbole with elan in other works, it seems somehow misplaced given the circumstances if the subject is a loved one. In a sweeping gesture, Auden calls for an end to the world in the space of four lines, dismissing the notion that there can be any good left in the world with the passing of the subject of the poem. The imagery of the stars being dampened, or pouring out the oceans, is the utter annihilation of creation — as such, it represents the death of the Creator.

The final stage of Auden’s poetic journey, and the most problematic from the critical perspective, is comprised of the years after 1946 (when Auden officially became a U. S. citizen). Age and a rediscovery of Anglicism gave new artistic bents to Auden’s poetry. 1948′s The Age of Anxiety won Auden the Pulitzer, and his verses after began to take on a more meditative air — “too religious,” according to many of the critics who had earlier hailed Auden as a poetic genius. Or, as his biography suggests, “He was now widely misunderstood as a reactionary coward who had reneged on the radicalism of his youth” (Davenport-Hines, 266).

Auden’s quest for Love in the divine sense is typified within the tercets of his poem, “Archaeology”, which was published in the posthumous volume, Thank You, Fog:

Archaeology

The archaeologist’s spade
delves into dwellings
vacancied long ago,

unearthing evidence
of life-ways no one
would dream of leading now,

concerning which he has not much
to say that he can prove:
the lucky man!

Knowledge may have its purposes,
but guessing is always
more fun than knowing.

We do know that Man,
from fear or affection,
has always graved His dead.

What disastered a city,
volcanic effusion,
fluvial outrage,

or a human horde,
agog for slaves or glory,
is visually patent,

and we’re sure that,
as soon as palaces were built,
their rulers,

though gluttoned on sex
and blanded by flattery,
must often have yawned.

But do grain-pits signify
a year of famine?
Where a coin-series

peters out, should we infer
some major catastrophe?
Maybe. Maybe.

From murals and statues
we get a glimpse of what
the Old Ones bowed down to,

but cannot conceit
in what situations they blushed
or shrugged their shoulders.

Poets have learned us our myths
but just how did They take them?
That’s a stumper.

When Norsemen heard thunder,
did they seriously believe
Thor was hammering?

No, I’d say: I’d swear
that men have always lounged in myths
as Tall Stories,

that their real earnest
has been to grant excuses
for ritual actions.

Only in rites
can we renounce our oddities
and be truly entired.

Not that all rites
should be equally fonded:
some are abominable.

There’s nothing the Crucified
would like less
than butchery to appease Him.

CODA

From Archaeology
one moral, at least, may be drawn,
to wit, that all

our school text-books lie.
What they call History
is nothing to vaunt of,

being made, as it is,
by the criminal in us:
goodness is timeless.

(Mendelson, As I Walked Out One Evening: W. H. Auden, 302-304)

The analytical muse in this poem has been turned introspective, and ultimately the internal inquisition leads to a conclusion of morality. Auden uses science to demonstrate its own weaknesses, the frailty of human knowledge with such lines as “…has not much to say that he can prove: the lucky man!” and “guessing is always more fun than knowing”. Simply put, Man can be quantified, whereas faith cannot. Science, as represented through archaeology, can but give us temporal answers at best. But does study and human learning provide deeper insight? In this poem, Auden states with his typical, unique verve: “That’s a stumper.”

The end stanzas and coda provide the keys to unlocking Auden’s meaning in the poem. He has not succumbed to religion as Eliot did in later years, yet ends the work on the note of a sermon. History is merely a recording of the misdeeds of men, whereas there is a suffusing “goodness” that exists outside the boundaries of learning. If our collected knowledge is fallible concerning ourselves, then it cannot be expected to approach an understanding of God – only the endurance of faith suggested by the final line of the poem can provide that.

By comparison with his earlier work, Auden as represented in “Archaeology” is wistful. While he does not, as I read it, repudiate his scientific bent toward detail and analysis, he admits in this poem that it means little if not coupled with faith in something beyond the human experience. Love must have its place in the world.

Auden’s journey began with the mind and ended with the spirit. His rationality gave way to passion, which in turn opened the door to religious rediscovery. It is due to, not despite, this journey that Auden still reigns as a poetic master, and his depth progressively grows with study across the decades of his career. But, as Auden would undoubtedly argue, it is the poet’s duty to discover the relevant questions of one’s times — and to do so requires the type of journey which comprised the life of W. H. Auden.

The Golden Circle is a naturally occurring pattern, grounded in the biology of human decision making, that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others. The Golden Circle is a model that codifies the three distinct and interdependent elements (Why, How, What) that makes any person or organization function at its highest ability. Based on the biology of human decision making, it demonstrates how the function of our limbic brain and the neocortex directly relate to the way in which people interact with each other and with organizations and brands in the formation of cultures and communities.

Described as “a visionary thinker with a rare intellect,” Simon Sinek teaches leaders and organizations how to inspire people. With a bold goal to help build a world in which the vast majority of people go home everyday feeling fulfilled by their work, Simon is leading a movement to inspire people to do the things that inspire them.

You would think the Church would know everything Simon seems to know and just naturally go about achieving all the things the Wright Brothers, Martin Luther King and the Apple company do. But it doesn’t. Sinek points out the Martin Luther King didn’t have a plan but a dream.

Every Sunday my parish priest gathers a group of what Simon would probably call the last adopters and reads a homily that sounds as though it was written elsewhere and not for any of the people who are gathered there. I dutifully gather with all the others and listen. But people like Simon make me think: here is an organization, the Church, that has all the right answers and doesn’t get anything done in the political or cultural marketplace. What’s wrong with that picture? What is not happening? Is Sinek on to something here?

A trained ethnographer and author of Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action, Sinek has held a life-long curiosity for why people and organizations do the things they do. Fascinated by the leaders and companies that make the greatest impact in the world, those with the capacity to inspire, he has discovered some remarkable patterns of how they think, act and communicate. He has devoted his life to sharing his thinking in order to help other leaders and organizations inspire action.

He is best known for discovering the Golden Circle and popularizing the concept of Why, the purpose, cause or belief that drives every one of us. The Golden Circle is a naturally occurring pattern, grounded in the biology of human decision making, that explains why we are inspired by some people, leaders, messages and organizations over others. The Golden Circle is a model that codifies the three distinct and interdependent elements (Why, How, What) that makes any person or organization function at its highest ability. Based on the biology of human decision making, it demonstrates how the function of our limbic brain and the neocortex directly relate to the way in which people interact with each other and with organizations and brands in the formation of cultures and communities.

Sinek’s unconventional and innovative views on business and leadership have attracted international attention and have earned him invitations to meet with an array of leaders and organizations, including: Microsoft, MARS, SAP, Intel, 3M, the United States Military, members of the United States Congress, multiple government agencies and entrepreneurs. Sinek has also had the honor of presenting his ideas to the Ambassadors of Bahrain and Iraq, at the United Nations and to the senior leadership of the United States Air Force. Perhaps someone should add Pope Francis to that group or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and get them to listen to Simon.

Knowledge without Wisdom, Poster by Paulo Zerbato
“What we call “church” is too often a gathering of strangers who see the church as yet another “helping institution” to gratify further their individual desires. One of the reasons some church members are so mean-spirited with their pastor, particularly when the pastor urges them to look at God, is that they feel deceived by such pastoral invitations to look beyond themselves. They have come to church for “strokes,” to have their personal needs met. What we call church is often a conspiracy of cordiality. Pastors learn to pacify rather than preach to their Ananiases and Sapphiras. We say we do it out of “love.” Usually, we do it as a means of keeping everyone as distant from everyone else as possible. You don’t get into my life and I will not get into yours.”
Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens

We are taught by our secular educational masters that Eliot’s greatest poems were his early, bleak ones: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Wasteland. But this, I urge you, Choruses from the Rock, written some seventeen years after “Prufrock” and seven years after Eliot‘s conversion to the Anglican Church is just as worthy a candidate. Here we see Eliot, the older soul in search, who finally found what he was looking for in the Christian Church. Being that I’m pretty old myself, universally acknowledged as downright cranky and am searching in the Catholic Church, this strikes me as a beautiful poem and one of his best.  Read it aloud in your solitary room and see if it doesn’t echo throughout your day:

Choruses from the Rock (1934)

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

The lot of man is ceaseless labor,
Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder,
Or irregular labour, which is not pleasant.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know
That it is hard to be really useful, resigning
The things that men count for happiness, seeking
The good deeds that lead to obscurity, accepting
With equal face those that bring ignominy,
The applause of all or the love of none.
All men are ready to invest their money
But most expect dividends.
I say to you: Make perfect your will.
I say: take no thought of the harvest,
But only of proper sowing.

The world turns and the world changes,
But one thing does not change.
In all of my years, one thing does not change,
However you disguise it, this thing does not change:
The perpetual struggle of Good and Evil.

You neglect and belittle the desert.
The desert is not remote in southern tropics
The desert is not only around the corner,
The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,
The desert is in the heart of your brother.

Let me show you the work of the humble. Listen.

In the vacant places
We will build with new bricks

Where the bricks are fallen
We will build with new stone
Where the beams are rotten
We will build with new timbers
Where the word is unspoken
We will build with new speech
There is work together
A Church for all
And a job for each
Every man to his work.

What life have you, if you have not life together?
There is not life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

And now you live dispersed on ribbon roads,
And no man knows or cares who is his neighbor
Unless his neighbor makes too much disturbance,
But all dash to and fro in motor cars,
Familiar with the roads and settled nowhere.

Much to cast down, much to build, much to restore
I have given you the power of choice, and you only alternate
Between futile speculation and unconsidered action.

And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls.”

When the Stranger says: “What is the meaning of this city ?
Do you huddle close together because you love each other?”
What will you answer? “We all dwell together
To make money from each other”? or “This is a community”?

Oh my soul, be prepared for the coming of the Stranger.
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.

There is one who remembers the way to your door:
Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.
You shall not deny the Stranger.

They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.

Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of
the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and
purblind as ever before,
Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on
the way that was lit by the light;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other
way.

But it seems that something has happened that has never happened
before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has
never happened before
That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.

What have we to do but stand with empty hands and palms turned
upwards in an age which advances progressively backwards?

There came one who spoke of the shame of Jerusalem
And the holy places defiled;
Peter the Hermit, scourging with words.
And among his hearers were a few good men,
Many who were evil,
And most who were neither,
Like all men in all places.

In spite of all the dishonour,
the broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.

Our age is an age of moderate virtue
And moderate vice

The soul of Man must quicken to creation.

Out of the meaningless practical shapes of all that is living or
lifeless
Joined with the artist’s eye, new life, new form, new colour.
Out of the sea of sound the life of music,
Out of the slimy mud of words, out of the sleet and hail of verbal
imprecisions,
Approximate thoughts and feelings, words that have taken the
place of thoughts and feelings,
There spring the perfect order of speech, and the beauty of incantation.

The work of creation is never without travail

Light
Light
The visible reminder of Invisible Light.

O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.

For Condorcet, as for the Plato-Protagoras of the Epimetheus story, Man is driven; there is no end to what he cannot become. The need to discover and invent, to remake, improve, is essential to him. He must pursue perfection come what may. More land must be brought under cultivation, with higher productivity per acre; higher production, higher sales, more profits must be our goal; a higher population to make up the workforce and the pool of consumers, a higher leaving age for school students, a higher life expectancy. Only when all these, as Condorcet lays them out in the tenth part of the Sketch, have been achieved at last, and perfection is within his grasp, will Man be happy.

David Malouf is Australian, some say the leading contemporary author down under, author of eleven novels, as well as bountiful collections of stories, poetry and opera libretti. He has won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Prix Femina Stranger and the Australia-Asia Literary Award; he has also been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. This post (and the previous) come from a little book titled The Happy Life, an elegant, succinct, secular meditation on what that makes for.

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What is extraordinary, when we come to the present, is the reversal that has occurred in our notion of “unrest” in a century of iPods, mobile phones, multitasking; of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter; of news bites, 24-hour news cycles, jump-cut video clips; and the stimulation of our senses at every moment, in public as well as private spaces, by verbal admonitions and warnings and visual enticements of every sort, from rolling advertisements at bus stops and TV monitors at supermarket check-outs, to plasma screens in bars and pubs.

Far from being an existential state of anxiety requiring cure, unrest is itself the cure, and for something quite opposite but equally close and pervasive: the fear of inactivity, of stillness; most of all, of the withdrawal of every form of chatter or noise in an extended and unendurable silence.

As if that terror of “the eternal silence of infinite spaces” that haunted Pascal in the seventeenth century had found its new form on Earth, and had now to be exorcised from every lift in every public building; every bar and restaurant (right down to the toilets); every supermarket or boutique or waiting room in every city, great or small, of the civilized world; even from our telephones as we wait to be “connected.”

But then it was Pascal who first identified in us an earlier and more essential anxiety. “I have discovered,” he tells us, “that all our ills derive from a single cause. That we cannot live at peace in a room.” (So much for Montaigne’s “little back-shop” and the consolations of retirement into the self.)

A lone figure in a closed and lonely room is our image now for existential dread. That inner life where, for Montaigne as for the ancients, the freedom of self-containment, of self-sufficiency was to be worked for and found, is no longer a choice because it is no longer an option.

Imagine a modern politician who is announcing his retirement telling the media pack at a press conference, “I’m hoping to spend more time with myself.” A Montaigne or a Jefferson might get away with it, but a Bill Clinton or a Tony Blair would be mocked around the clock from Wapping to Waterloo or Woolloomooloo. The “little back-shop all our own” is to be escaped at all cost, by more and more adventuring elsewhere — on the moon, in the furthest reaches of space — or is to be filled with noise and such activity, virtual or real, as is permanently available at the touch of a keyboard.

It would be easy to dismiss this as shallow, mindless; to see in the sensory overload of these contemporary diversions a sign — like consumerism and the pursuit of the fifteen minutes of celebrity we have all been promised — of the decadence that comes with affluence, and the fact that we now have on our hands so much time that has to be filled. But there is another and more interesting possibility.

It is that this is a new form of “being” in which the Ego is by-passed not in the old way, by contemplation in the Greek and Roman sense of internal argument, or in the Eastern way through meditation — both of which require and make a virtue of silence — but through an overload that is the equivalent, in mental activity, of those extreme forms of physical activity that are a feature of some sports. We know that the high levels of endorphins released by intensive physical exercise produce euphoria.

Perhaps the exercise of the brain, when it is involved in dealing with rapid stimulus and response, as in video games or in the sort of attention we call upon when we are multi-tasking, creates in us a similar rush of wellbeing, of exhilaration, elation; an awareness of intense personal presence, in a fast-moving and richly crowded world that we are intensely in tune with, and where a new form of “happiness” may be found.

What this suggests is the possibility that the mind — or, more precisely these days, the brain — is still evolving, and at an increasing rate as technology presents it with new forms to master and new stimuli to respond to. This would mean that the mind, as Aristotle might have known it, and Montaigne too in the state of slow change that existed in the long period between his century and the fourth century BC, is quite a different mind from the one a five-year-old is employing when he deals with a video game today.

One aspect of the Epimetheus version of the creation story is that in this account of things the history of Man can have no end, is never done. So long as we are driven by the need to make up for our needs; by the restless sense that we are not yet fully assured of our place in the world and our hold on its swarming phenomena; so long as there is more to be discovered and made, more to grasp for and make real, we must go on inventing ourselves.

And as technology goes on increasing, and at greater speed, so the agency in us that allows us to deal with the world must go on evolving to keep up with it. Jefferson’s guarantee of happiness for all might be seen, in this context, to have been made to a generation of beings that had still to come into full existence, to be a condition that was to be aimed for rather than an immediately available gift.

It was Jefferson’s contemporary, the Frenchman Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, who first understood the power of this idea of “futurity” and in 1793, in his Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, laid out a theory of “History as Progress.” It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of this astonishing work.

First published, after Condorcet’s death, in 1795, it replaced forever what had till then been an unchallenged orthodoxy: that history was a closed system, a storehouse of exempla; of human character-types, events, movements that were fixed in number and endlessly repeatable from age to age, so that for every apparently new event, or great man or “change,” there was an existing prototype or model. Condorcet’s idea of Progress was one of those Copernican moments when a reality, as we had previously taken it to be, was turned on its head.

Condorcet considers the progress of Man through nine stages, from the nomadic hordes of pre-history to his own early-Industrial present and the establishment, in 1789, of the French Republic. He concludes that:

“from observation of the progress which science and civilization have hitherto made, and from the analysis of the march of human understanding and the development of his faculties, Nature has fixed no limits to our hopes … The advantages that must result from this state of improvement … can have no limit but the absolute perfection of the human species.”

Such new orientations in thinking produce others, and rapidly. The notion that history might be progressive rather than cyclical, that an event, a thought, an individual man (Napoleon, for example) might have no precedent — might, in the whole of time as we knew it, never have occurred or been seen before, and was original rather than recurrent — directed our attention away from the past and towards the future. We no longer had to look to the past for the interpretation of present happenings, or to consult it, study its events and types, so that when they arrived in a new guise we could recognize and identify them.

Our attention had now to be used in a new way, in developing an eye for occurrence rather than recurrence, for the unknown, the unexpected, the unlikely, the entirely new. Time had another shape and we stood at a different point in its unfolding. Once the future had been opened up to our vision as the direction in which we might turn our face, it developed a vastness as infinite, if only in prospect, in our imagination, as the immemorial past. All kinds of new ideas would depend upon it: Darwin’s theory of evolution, when it came half a century later; in the arts the notion of an avant-garde–that only what had never been done before, what moved things forward, what belonged, like Wagner’s “Music of the Future,” to Progress and the New, could be properly significant.

The eighteenth-century belief in a progressive future, the assurance of an improved and better time to come, together with a growing sense, as I suggested earlier, that true goodness is the goodness that we extend to others (as Condorcet puts it in the last part of the Sketch, “the general welfare of the species, of the society in which one lives”), accounts for a new willingness in men and women to devote themselves, politically, but now with an almost religious fervor, to the future; to living so that future generations may be “happy” even if they are not. This is the note we hear, of such plangency and with such a mixture of hopeless desperation and hope, in Chekhov’s sad comedies of Russian life at the turn of the twentieth century: in the doctor, Astrov, in Uncle Vanya, and Vershinin in The Three Sisters.

“I wondered,” Astrov tells the old nurse Marya, “whether the people who come after us, in a hundred years’ time, the people for whom we are now blasting a trail — will they remember us kindly?” Later in the play, he comes back to the idea, but more bitterly: “The people who come a hundred years, or a couple of hundred years, after us and despise us for having lived in so stupid and hopeless a fashion — perhaps they’ll find a way to be happy.”

Vershinin is in no doubt of it, nor of the part he must play in bringing it about:

“All the same, I think I do know one thing which is not only true but also very important. I’m sure of it — oh, if only I could convince you that there’s not going to be any happiness for our own generation.. . We’ve just got to work and work. All happiness is reserved for our descendants, our remote descendants.“

Chekhov is wonderfully sympathetic towards these good men with their passionate feeling for others and their yearning — their sentimental nostalgia we might call it — for a future that will justify their existence as they cannot justify it in the present, even to themselves. He recognizes their pain, their desperate sense of being, as Dostoevsky puts it, ciphers, superfluous, unnecessary men. But their rush to self-denial and self-sacrifice disturbs him.

What haunts us in the plays is that the future for which these characters are so ready to sacrifice their lives and their own chance of happiness has already arrived now and passed. We know only too well the fate of that future generation — Shukhov, for example, where we found him in his Gulag — who will be the inheritors of those “happy lives.”

Behind Condorcet’s optimistic belief in infinite progress we hear Mao’s proclamation of “perpetual revolution” and the murderous slogans of the Cultural Revolution, Trotsky’s scornful evocation of the “scrapheap of history” that is reserved for those who stand in the way of historical necessity; and on the other side of politics, what was put to idealistic young SS men after Heydrich’s announcement to the Wannsee Conference, in 1942, of the Final Solution: that whatever the moral cost to those whose duty it would be to dispose of the millions who could have no place in it, future generations of the Thousand Year Reich would recognize their sacrifice and, as Astrov puts it, remember them kindly.

Condorcet was a mathematician — his special interest was probability theory — but also a philosopher with a keen interest in education (he designed the education system that would later be used throughout post-Revolutionary France). He was also a member of the National Assembly in the best days of the Revolution, a moderate who voted against the execution of the king. Hounded out by the Jacobins, he wrote his Sketch on the run, and died, by poison perhaps, in hiding, five months before Thermidor.

Condorcet had a large influence on the thinkers, and especially the poets, of the generation immediately behind him: Wordsworth, Coleridge, de Quincy, who wrote The Confessions of an English Opium Eater, the Ettrick Shepherd James Hogg, who wrote The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Novalis and Holderlin in Germany — all born around 1770 — who, as they came into their twenties, found his idea of infinite energy, of perpetual change and progress, of particular significance to their own rising wave of revolutionary Romanticism.

They were the first generation — there have been many since — to recognize energetic unrest as a requisite of creative genius and to cultivate intensity for its own sake as a reassurance of presence, of being, though the intensity was not always of a happy kind, and did not, for their purposes, need to be. As well as Joy, Delight, Ecstasy, there was also Terror, the source of the Sublime, and intensity could sometimes manifest itself as Dejection (Depression we would call it) or Rage. Their chief demand was that it should be permanent, that the emotions should at all times be at the highest pitch, and, when this could not be achieved (that is, when the body lapsed into the ordinary), it had to be maintained, as we see in Coleridge’s case, and de Quincy’s, with drugs. The “fine frenzy” to which these poets aspired could also be a form of madness.

For Condorcet, as for the Plato-Protagoras of the Epimetheus story, Man is driven; there is no end to what he cannot become. The need to discover and invent, to remake, improve, is essential to him. He must pursue perfection come what may. More land must be brought under cultivation, with higher productivity per acre; higher production, higher sales, more profits must be our goal; a higher population to make up the workforce and the pool of consumers, a higher leaving age for school students, a higher life expectancy. Only when all these, as Condorcet lays them out in the tenth part of the Sketch, have been achieved at last, and perfection is within his grasp, will Man be happy.

It is no coincidence that Condorcet’s close contemporary was Goethe. There is something Faustian in this new, this “modern” version of Man as both the happy child of progress, of the will to knowledge and power, and its endlessly unresting slave.

What Protagoras identifies as the irritant in human nature that makes the pearl is our essential restlessness, our dissatisfaction, our unrest; a lack in us that has endlessly to be filled. But this “endlessly” is also the cause, in the individual, of a spiritual disabling that it is the role of philosophy and the rival Athenian schools, in their different ways, to cure.

David Malouf is Australian, some say the leading contemporary author down under, writer of eleven novels, as well as bountiful collections of stories, poetry and opera libretti. He has won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, the Prix Femina Stranger and the Australia-Asia Literary Award; he has also been short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. This post (and the next) come from a little book titled The Happy Life, an elegant, succinct, secular meditation on what that makes for.

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In Plato’s Protagoras, the Sophist who gives his name to the dialogue offers his listeners a version of the origin of things, a creation story of how animal and human life on the planet came to be. It is a story. It does not claim, as Darwinism does, to be scientifically true, or like the Biblical version demand belief.

In the sophisticated way of classical thinking it begins with the world as we observe it — our place in creation, our history — and comes up with a speculative version of the origin of all this that will allow us to think through what is peculiar to the animal world on the one hand, and humans on the other, so that we can arrive at a clearer understanding of what is.

Plato’s interest here is in which of our capacities (he is particularly concerned with the civic virtues) are learned, and may therefore be taught, and which are innate, but the story Protagoras tells is open to other readings. It also has something to say, as the German philosopher Heidegger used it in a series of lectures in 1942 — at the precise moment, incidentally, when the entire industrial complex of his country was devoted to the manufacture of weapons of war and the extermination, by the use of advanced technology, of several million human beings — about the part that techne (art, craft, invention) has played in our unfolding history, and where, in its late-industrial form as technology, it may be leading us.

In the genesis story as Protagoras tells it, Zeus, the father of the gods, who might have seen to things himself, passes the job of creation to the Titan Prometheus, and he in turn passes the actual handling of the business to his brother and twin, Epimetheus.

The brief is to distribute among the various species a supply of qualities that will provide each animal, or reptile or bird, with a life in the world that will be fruitful and full, and at the same time to establish among them a balance that, given their difference in size, strength, aggressiveness etc., and the inevitable rivalry that must arise over resources, will keep the species safe from one another and the whole system sustainably intact.

Epimetheus begins by distributing to each of the creatures in turn the special quality they will need to protect them from the elements, the fur or feathers or thick hide that will keep them dry and warm; then the fangs or claws that will protect one beast from another or the fleetness of foot, or power of flight, or capacity to dart away underground that will allow them, when threatened, to escape. He compensates for sheer size with slowness to move, makes some animals plant-eaters only and the carnivore predators rare and with few offspring, but their prey, so that their numbers will be maintained, both fertile and abundant.

But Epimetheus, as his name tells us, has a deficiency.

Prometheus in Greek suggests forethought or thinking ahead, Epimetheus afterthought or thinking later or too late. Epimetheus is associated, in a positive sense, with the power of memory but also with forgetting. His is the spirit of reflection, of looking back and reconsidering, but also, as on this occasion, of oversight.

When he has distributed as wisely as possible all the qualities at his disposal, created for each creature a good and safe life and a proper balance among them, he looks around and discovers, standing patiently behind him, entirely naked and unaccommodated, another creature that he has entirely forgotten — perhaps he has left this creature till last because its needs are more difficult to satisfy than the rest. Man has been given no quality or gift and the sack is empty.

With neither feathers nor fur nor hide to protect him from the elements, no shell to house him or cover his head, no hoof or padded foot to protect him from sharp flint or thorns, no great size to deter aggressors, no speed like the big cats to run down prey or like the mouse to scurry away, no wings to fly upward out of reach, there he stands, and there is nothing in the sack to provide for him. In desperation at this oversight, this huge error, Epimetheus turns back to Prometheus, who in his usual way takes a daring leap into the unknown and comes up with a solution.

What the gods have done for others, Man will have to do for himself. He will have to be, from start to finish, the inventor of his own nature, and to get for himself the gifts he was denied. With no natural advantage, he will have to become an improviser, the shaper of his world, of his environment and conditions, to the service of his own weakness. He will be a designer and builder of shelters, a maker of clothes and tools; the fashioner of the weapons he will need to keep him safe, and of the hoe and spade and plough that will force the earth to feed him; of the machines and engines at last that will give him the speed that went to the cheetah and the power of flight that went to the sparrow and the hawk.

But to do all this he will need to develop in himself such “interior” and godlike qualities as the power of imagination, of invention, and these Prometheus agrees to steal for him out of the realm of the gods, from Heaven itself; beginning with the earliest and most essential of skills, and the source of all technology, the knowledge of how to make fire and carry it with him wherever he goes.

This version of the creation myth sets Man in a heroic light. His life is endless unaided struggle against the odds. Everything that has to do with him, everything human, beginning from an original error, an oversight on the part of the Creator, will be an attempt to rectify that error and make good what was denied him, to turn what was an essential weakness to strength. He is to be the self-sufficient custodian and creator of his own nature, his own history and fate.

A lonely figure, heroic but also restlessly anxious and eternally incomplete, this is Man the Maker, whose peculiar gift is craft or techne, the capacity to forge, shape, fashion; to take a world that had no place for him and make it his own. To turn wilderness into a fruitful landscape and lay down roads to move on; above all, to found societies and build cities, those ideal human artefacts, the embodiment of neighborliness and civic virtue and industry, of good governance and the rule of law.

But the special quality with which Man is endowed in this version of our story, and with which, in a risky experiment, he has been sent forth to claim the world — this techne and capacity for invention — implies other and earlier qualities. Curiosity, for example, and, preliminary even to that, a flair for observation, for seeing below the surface and beyond the recording of singular phenomena, for setting two separate things side by side and deducing a relationship; the capacity for productive thought.

A capacity, simply, for looking about and being puzzled and asking why, and moving on from puzzlement to the demand for an answer. And what this speaks of is dissatisfaction, a sense of insecurity and final incompleteness; a belief always that there is more to be discovered and claimed, and that until you have grasped this “more,” and have it in hand, you will be neither happy nor whole.

What Plato uncovers, at least in Heidegger’s late and “modern” reading of the Protagoras, is what it is in the make-up of our human nature, our psychology, our psyche or soul, that makes Man supremely, among the creatures, the one that sets out to take the world he is in and shape it to his needs, but more significantly, to be led, by the spirit of invention, beyond the mere satisfaction of those needs to what, already in Plato’s time, was the wonder of “civilization,” the complex working unit of the city-state; “Athens,” with its dedication to order, productivity, democracy and the rule of law, to science, the arts of sculpture and architecture, of poetry, music, drama, dance, games and the sort of mind-activity that is represented by the schools of philosophical enquiry of which Plato’s Academy is just one.

What Protagoras identifies as the irritant in human nature that makes the pearl is our essential restlessness, our dissatisfaction, our unrest; a lack in us that has endlessly to be filled. But this “endlessly” is also the cause, in the individual, of a spiritual disabling that it is the role of philosophy and the rival Athenian schools, in their different ways, to cure.

I will return to the philosophical schools, and their versions of the “talking cure,” in just a moment. What I want to look at now is another creation story, one that springs this time from the other side of our heritage, the Judeo-Christian, though this, too, like the Epimetheus version, is not the usual one. It comes in a poem, “The Pulley,” by the seventeenth-century devotional poet George Herbert:

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by;
“Let us” (said He) “pour on him all we can:
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honor, pleasure:
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all His treasure
Rest in the bottom lay.

“For if I should” (said He)
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness:
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.”

Here, as in the Epimetheus story, the Creator has gifts to distribute but decides, deliberately, to withhold the last of them. Man, he tells us in a nice pun, can have the rest, but the gift of “rest” itself — peace, contentment, final satisfaction — will be denied him. Unrest will be his condition until he finds rest in the Lord.

Though these readings of Man’s nature, of where, as humans, we stand in the crowded ranks of creation, belong to cultures — Greek and Christian — that are often seen as opposite and antagonistic, they agree in this: that our defining quality as humans is restlessness, unrest.

In the classical version, this restlessness is the source of all that is productive in our lives and is to this extent good, but in its negative sense it can be a source of anxiety that is deeply injurious. To this extent it is a disease in need of cure. The cure is philosophy, a long course of study, of argument and analysis, question and answer, through which the individual, by learning to distinguish between real and unreal desires and fears, frees himself from the “busyness” of a world that is endlessly pushing for the new, the more; from engagement, attachment, dependency; from what, as we have seen in Montaigne, in being external takes us away from the sufficiency of the self.

This is very different from the cure that Herbert turns to. The cure here is resignment from the self, and submission, without argument, to the Divine Will. Man gives up his natural tendency to willful disobedience and devotion to a fallen world and becomes simply a child again of the strict, all-loving Father:

Throw away Thy rod,
Throw away Thy wrath: O my God
Take the gentle path.
For my heart’s desire
Unto Thine is bent:
I aspire
To a full consent.

We get an even more dramatic version of the same act of submission in another Herbert poem, “The Collar.” Here the move, within the thirty or so lines of an almost hysterical monologue, is from the rebellious anger (“choler”) of:

I struck the board, and cried, “No more.
I will abroad.
What? Shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store .. .

to

But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Me thoughts I heard one calling, Child!
And I replied, My Lord.

The Christian cure for unrest, as here, comes in a moment. The soul is caught by surprise, a sudden flash of illumination, in a spontaneous yielding of individual consciousness to the finality of Faith.

By breaking away from the domestic context favored in so many other treatments of the Annunciation, Jan van Eyck created an image packed with coded messages about the triumph of the new faith over the old scriptures.

Mr. Cork’s latest book is “The Healing Presence of Art: A History of Western Art in Hospitals” (Yale, 2012). This article was printed in the WSJ a while back.

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Nothing in the Bible story is more astounding than the pivotal instant when, quite suddenly, the Virgin Mary receives an unexpected visitor. Brandishing a resplendent pair of wings, the Angel Gabriel descends from heaven and gives the young woman some shocking news: She will conceive and give birth to Jesus, the Son of God.

Most Renaissance painters who tackled this popular subject ensured that a sizable gap divorces Mary from Gabriel. But when Jan van Eyck took up the challenge, he broke through to a radical alternative. Based in Bruges as court painter to Philip the Good, the powerful Duke of Burgundy, van Eyck was renowned as a pioneer of naturalism in the new medium of oil paint.

And in a tall, narrow painting made about 1435, executed with mesmerizing precision and a wealth of meanings, he removes the setting from the Virgin’s home. Instead, “The Annunciation” now occurs in a richly detailed church. By breaking away from the domestic context favored in so many other treatments of the subject, van Eyck creates an image packed with coded messages about the triumph of the new faith over the old scriptures.

At first, our eyes are caught up in the intensity of the encounter between Angel and Virgin. In this thin panel, we grow conscious of how very close these figures are to one another. Although the ecclesiastical setting could hardly be more formal, their encounter feels like a private moment, no doubt reflecting van Eyck’s own awareness that Mary is now being impregnated with the seed of the Christ child. Rays of golden light shoot down from an upper window, bearing the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. One ray descends directly onto the crown of the Virgin’s head, piercing her so that Jesus can be conceived.

No wonder she seems so apprehensive and confused. Van Eyck makes no attempt to invest her with poised, spurious glamour. She is a real woman, with a long nose, protruding ear and the beginnings of a double chin. Her head is tilted, probably to acknowledge and receive the golden ray. This diagonal inclination makes her look unsteady, and both her hands are raised as if in shock. But there is also something worshipful about these blanched, wavering fingers. Directly below them, lilies soar up from a vase to symbolize the Virgin’s purity. Painted with consummate skill, the flowers affirm the principle of vitality and fresh growth.

As for the Angel, van Eyck has transformed this divine messenger into a magnificent apparition. Gabriel’s extraordinary rainbow wings echo the dove flying down through the church. Yet they are far larger than the bird’s wings, and shimmer with an iridescent glow. The Angel’s elaborately woven cope looks like a priest’s vestment of the 1430s. So it must have given Gabriel a contemporary appeal to viewers at that time, and the fabric is dominated by an enormous dianthus flower, said to be the flower of God. The petals spring to life through van Eyck’s virtuoso handling of light.

The same luminosity illuminates the Virgin’s face, strikes the crystal scepter clutched by the Angel, and dances all over the bejeweled accoutrements he is wearing with such pride. The colors appear to glow from within, and this sense of ecstasy is embodied above all in Gabriel himself.

His smiling, tender face glistens as much as his fair, curly hair. He looks transported with excitement, and lifts his pale, slender index finger in a gesture of friendly beckoning. With amazing boldness, he pushes his left leg toward Mary’s body. It seems at first like an invasive movement, making us wonder if the Virgin might feel threatened by Gabriel’s proximity.

But there is nothing remotely alarming about this radiant messenger, and the words that issue, in Latin, from his parted lips confirm his innate gentleness: “Hail, full of grace.” Although Mary seems hesitant, she responds by declaring: “Behold the handmaiden of the Lord.” Yet her words are not addressed simply to the Angel. Van Eyck paints them upside-down and back to front, so that God may read them more easily from his heavenly vantage.

As well as evoking a God of Love rather than a stern God of Judgment, this inexhaustible painting is packed with references to the old Scriptures and the victory of the new faith, Christianity. Why did van Eyck set his “Annunciation” in a church? As our eyes travel over this superbly convincing location, we realize that he is telling us a great deal about the larger meaning of the dramatic event occurring here.

At the top, God stands isolated in a stained-glass window and personifies the ancient Jewish belief that He was alone. But gradually, as we move down the church, the old insistence on a solitary deity is replaced by the Christian Trinity. Symbolically ranged behind Mary’s face are three windows, announcing the triple identity of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.

Hence van Eyck’s readiness to make Gabriel such a glittering figure. He is heralding the advent of the new religion, and the wall-paintings above him depict Old Testament scenes regarded by medieval theologians as events that prefigure Jesus’ life and fate. After the baby Moses is handed to Pharaoh’s daughter, the adult Moses receives the Ten Commandments. And on the church floor, violence erupts. The victorious David hacks off Goliath’s head, while Absalom — tucked away behind a prayer-stool — hangs by his hair from a tree as a grim prophecy of Christ’s crucifixion.

Nearly five centuries after it was painted, “The Annunciation” became the focus of a battle between the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and an obsessive American multimillionaire. In June 1930, Hermitage officials were appalled by Stalin’s decision to sell key paintings in its collection to wealthy foreign collectors. But Andrew Mellon, the U.S. secretary of the Treasury, bought “The Annunciation” with 20 other Hermitage paintings before locking them away in a basement near his Washington home. And in 1935, after the U.S. government brought tax-evasion charges against him, Mellon suddenly announced that he would found a great gallery in the capital.

Six years later, the National Gallery of Art was duly inaugurated by President Franklin Roosevelt. And one of its star paintings is undoubtedly “The Annunciation.” Its impact today prompts many visitors to scrutinize this luminous image with a sense of wonder, just as Christians have always marveled at the infinitely mysterious miracle of the Virgin birth.