Antonio Rosmini: Persecuted Prophet

 This is my review of a relatively new book by Father John Michael Hill, a Rosminian who has lived in Dunedin (my home town) for many years. I first met him when he was the editor of the Catholic magazine, Tui Motu, where he often published book reviews I'd written, and we've remained friends since. He's now retired, and this book, which has probably been a long time in the making, is one of the fruits of his retirement. 

What a delight this biography is. Immensely readable from beginning to end, with both the complex historical background and Rosmini’s sometimes difficult philosophical concepts handled with deftness.  

Born in 1797, when Napoleon was at his apex, Rosmini grew up in an Italian town that had been under Austrian rule for a 100 years; it remained that way until the end of the First World War. France ruled a good deal of the rest of northern Italy, and the south was a conglomerate of territories that gave the lie to the country being in any way united. The glory that had been the Roman Empire was long gone.

Rosmini’s family were wealthy; the house he grew up was sumptuously decorated. One of his uncles was the artist, Ambrogio Rosmini, and Antonio appears as a character in one of his larger canvases. From an early age, Rosmini was a voracious reader and an outstanding intellectual, debating philosophy with others when only in his teens. Gradually he leaned towards the priesthood, which ultimately brought him into contact with Rome and the Papal court, some of whom would in due course become close friends, some enemies.

Alongside this he formed a desire to build an order of brothers. This group, begun with only a couple of companions, would eventually become the Institute of Charity, though the order is often known simply as the Rosminians. Unlike many other orders, this group wouldn’t focus on a particular area of charitable work, but would practice Rosmini’s ‘principle of passivity.’ This idea is spelled out by Rosmini in two simple sentences:

1. Not to undertake any work of charity on my own initiative but to apply myself to putting right my own life;

2. Not to refuse any work of charity when it is offered me by the providence of God and not to prefer one work to another but do them all with equal enthusiasm.

If it seems at first that there’s an element of self-centredness here, the vast number of works Rosmini and his brothers (and later, sisters) did for others over the ensuing decades give the lie to it. Rosmini always believed there was a necessity to make sure his own spiritual life was in good working order first, but once satisfied with that, he reached out generously to others.

He saw charity in three different lights: spiritual, temporal and intellectual. The spiritual was the pastoral element and meant bringing God to people. The temporal was the place where the brothers got their ‘hands dirty’, doing the ordinary work needed in a material world, both within their brotherhood and without. The intellectual was the area Rosmini felt most called to ˗ in fact he was advised by one of the Popes to focus on it since he had an enormous gift for it. Intellectual charity, for him, meant to understand and teach the truths of faith.

He wrote prodigiously throughout his lifetime: not only books but thousands of letters to people working with him, to other people in the church, to people beyond it. He had a knack of knowing what to say, especially to his brothers in the Institute: some needed a reprimand because they were overtaxing themselves and needing to consider rest; some needed to be encouraged to go beyond what they thought were their abilities. Always he wrote with compassion and wisdom.

The book is entitled Persecuted Prophet, and while this is apt, some readers may feel that the level of persecution Rosmini suffered was small compared to other saints of the church. Nevertheless, the persecution affected him at his strongest points: his intellectual and mediation skills. Like so many other prophets he eventually found himself on the wrong side of church men whose spirituality ran a distant second to their political ideas.

Rosmini could hold his own with such men, of course, but he chose to follow the example of his Master, and, having spoken the truth to them, retreated back to his brotherhood. However, some of his views on the church bore fruit much later, at the Second Vatican Council in 1962.

Though the book focuses at times on Rosmini’s intellectual arguments and discussions, it also shows his wonderful warmth and humanity. Rosmini made friends with people from all walks of life and was loved by many. He was well aware of his own failings, and this gave him a true compassion for others.

I’m grateful to Michael Hill for writing this book: it’s introduced me not only to a wonderful saint of the church, but also to a man who was human in the best sense. 

Paradoxical cat

Apparently it was Erwin Schrödinger's birthday yesterday, our time, and because the UK and US are still catching up, they're still celebrating it.  Google, in fact, has celebrated it by producing one of its doodles:

I'm not quite sure why there's a particular fuss about this one of Erwin's birthdays; it's only his 126th, not the sort of number you'd normally celebrate with or without the hundred.  Can anyone remember their 26th birthday celebrations?  I'm not going to ask if anyone can remember their 126th, because I don't expect that people of such an exalted age will still be playing on their computers at this time of night. Actually, according to our current records, no one has lived to the age of 126 as yet - to find people that old you have to go back to early Biblical times.  The oldest person on record in modern times was Jeanne Calment, of France, who lived to 122 years, 164 days, and her birth date was verified.  Jeanne was certainly close to celebrating her 126th birthday, you might say. 

Meanwhile back to Schrödinger, who's famous in popular science, as it were, mostly for his paradoxical cat - or the lack of his cat.  Don't ask me to explain, because quantum physics - in which the cat features to a certain extent - isn't one of my specialties.  The cat features even more in science fiction, I think, where some very clever stories have been woven around this fictional creature.  For some reason the cat has taken on a life of its own, becoming part of popular culture, and while its name is known the reason why it is important (or unimportant) is much less known.  That's a bit of a paradox in itself.

 

Wodehouse - and deaths in books

I became a fan of P G Wodehouse's books when I was still in my teens, and have read most of the ones I have on my shelves.  I'd never read French Leave, and since it had been sitting on my shelves since I got it at a sale somewhere - it has Rental stamped inside the front cover in two places - and since I have marked it with a code that I used when I was still in the aforesaid teens, that sale must have occurred a long time ago.

I'd thought it was one of his later books, but the title page says it was published in 1955- Wikipedia, curiously, insists it came out in 1956 - which makes it about two-thirds of the way through his very large canon.   Because I thought it was one of his later books, I assumed that was why it seemed a bit weak in places.  The plotting is intricate, and yet there are some very loose ends (what does happen to the dossier Quibolle, for instance?).  The metaphors are superb in many places and unusually clichéd in others.  It has some slow patches, and some brilliant ones - and for some reason, at the end of chapter 11, we skip nine months, arrive in chapter 12 and discover that most of the cast have been ditched (no matter at what point they were still trying to unravel themselves from the plot) and everything has been sorted out for a very small number of the main actors.  Having expected a good deal of unravelling, it's surprising to find almost none.

It takes some time to figure out who the main two lovers are (they survive into chapter 12, at least), since a variety of other characters get plenty of room to show off their nonsense.  There's a typical Aunt - mostly known as Mrs Pegler, but also by two or three other names - but she's dismissed around chapter 10 after making her presence seriously felt throughout most of the story.  It's a puzzle how she suddenly loses all her fire.  There's the hero's father, a Frenchman with a ridiculous title (Marquis de Maufringneuse et Valerie-Moberanne), who was Mrs Pegler's husband at one point; his first appearance is a delight, in which he deals with the boredom of an office job, and he has several funny scenes.  There is the French policeman, a Commissaire, who is always behind the eight ball because he knows no English and refuses to learn any.  In fact, some of the best parts of the book include scenes in which two people are talking to each other in two different languages without either having much idea what the other is talking about.  But Wodehouse also manages to make the scenes in which people are speaking the same language amusing, especially those which include only French characters.  There are a bunch of other characters, some of whom (the young ones in particular) are virtually indistinguishable, even though they seem vital to the plot.   

Looking back on it, and having got over the shock of it seeming to end so suddenly, I'm more in favour of it than not.  There are much better Wodehouse books, but this one obviously pleases a vast number of his fans, so why should I knock it any further?

And talking of shock endings: the last scene of the 2012 Christmas special of Downton Abbey Iwhich we watched last night) came across to me as inconsiderately brutal.  Julian Fellowes, the writer, had already killed off a major character in the middle of the 2012 season.  Killing off yet another seemed arbitrary and only done for the sake of making people miserable.  Yes, it leaves lots of questions to be answered, which is no doubt part of the reason for doing what he did, but the death came out of nowhere, in the dramatic sense, and damaged what had been an otherwise interesting episode.

I find such deaths can put me right off a story: I remember reading A J Cronin's Hatter's Castle in which the young man who makes one of the main characters pregnant is killed in a train crash not long after.  I put the book down, unable to read any further.  He hadn't done anything to justify such a death.  In the second book of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, (The Subtle Knife) the boy has finally met his father, who's been missing up until now.  Towards the end of the book, the father is killed in what seemed to me at the time to be a quite off-hand fashion.  I almost stopped reading the trilogy at that point, so angered was I by what had happened.  I'm sure authors take the deaths of their characters seriously - there's usually a reason for what they do - but such seemingly random deaths can affect their readers in ways the authors never intended.  Perhaps I get too emotionally involved with characters, but I suspect I'm not the only one.  After all, stories are intended to affect our emotions.

Jean Cras

I was driving home from an appointment this morning and on the car radio the presenter announced a Piano Concerto by Jean Cras.  Jean Cras?  I'd never heard of him.  The Concerto was accessible and accomplished and worth hearing again.

Cras was a French composer whose main career was in the Navy (in which capacity he also invented an electrical selector and a navigational plotter protractor, which was used until replaced by an electronic equivalent.).  He wrote a great deal of his work in his spare time, which makes him an amateur composer - indeed, from the biography on this site it seems he was mainly a self-taught composer, apart from a brief three-month stint with the older composer, Duparc, who admired his talent immensely.  However, it might also be considered that he was a man who managed to combine two careers, both of them effectively.

He wrote a substantial number of works, including an opera that was so successful it made him a household name for a period.   However, the bulk of his work is chamber music.  Until recently his music had almost entirely vanished from the repertoire.  There is now an increasing impetus to bring him back into focus again, and people are beginning to enjoy this music that has rarely been heard for more than half a century.

Strangely, neither of the biographical links above mention his Piano Concerto!

Astonished

It's not an uncommon thing for parents to (wisely or unwisely) name their newborn after a celebrity, or even an event.  This happens, no doubt, all around the world.  In some cultures, the naming of the child is far more significant than in ours, for instance, where trends tend to push names rather than wisdom.   (The sort of trend that meant there were seven Michaels in one of my classes at school, back in the fifties.)

But you have to ask yourself why someone - a woman in France - would name their child, Jihad.  Was there some way in which she didn't realise the significance of this name?  Or was it just an attempt to fly in the face of the current cultural climate?   Perhaps there was intended to be some kind of humour in the naming.  We don't know.

What we do know is that the child's uncle bought him a long-sleeved t-shirt with the words, I am a bomb, on it, and he was sent to his nursery school wearing it.  On the back of the shirt were the words: Jihad, born on September 11. These words were actually true, in that the child was born on Sept 11th, 2009. 

His teacher alerted authorities about the words on the shirt, and the town's Mayor asked prosecutors to investigate.  His mother and uncle were charged with condoning a crime over the alleged reference to the Sept 11th attacks in New York.  The trial has been postponed until next March. 

Apparently, the mother was astonished at the reaction to her child's top, and seems to think the affair has mushroomed out of all proportion. 

Two classics

In this current round of catching up with movies on DVD (courtesy of the Public Library's very reasonable prices) my wife and I watched Babette's Feast yesterday, and I watched Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of St Francis this morning.   (We also watched the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, about which I'll write later, since it's quite a different kettle of fish to these other two movies.)

I've known about these two movies for a long time - the Rossellini since I was a teenager, I'd imagine - so it's good to catch up with them at last.  I feel a bit as though sometimes I'm trawling my way through the 1000 movies I should watch before I die, but that's not really the case.  Some movies just stick in the brain as being classics that it would be good to see at some point.

Federico Fellini had a hand in writing the script for the Rossellini movie, and I suspect there are scenes where his influence is quite strong, such as in the crazy bit where the simple brother, Fra Ginapro, decides to prepare fifteen days worth of food at once so that he can go preaching.  The slightly senile old grandfather who's joined the brothers helps him by throwing the wood for the fire into the pot where the food is cooking (as he's done in a lesser way earlier on).   Or the scene where Ginapro is allowed to go preaching, winds up in a camp of soldiers and their hangers-on who are holding siege outside some town, and meets the commander who spends most of his screen time encased in an absurd suit of armour that's still being built around him.  Interestingly enough, the man playing the commander is the only one in the film who was a professional actor, yet he comes across as though he was playing in some silent movie, with wide eyes, large gestures, the lot.  The rest of the cast are rank amateurs, drawn in part from the Monks of the Nocere Inferiore Monastery.  Brother Nazario Gerardi played St Francis, though he's not credited in the movie.  He brings a deep seriousness to the role, a great deal of warmth, some humour, and occasional exasperation at the incompetency of some of the other brothers. 


The movie is simply made in every respect - the only 'big' scene is at the siege camp, where there are a large number of extras, horses, wooden structures, and a fire destroying everything at the end.  Everything else is done in the open air, and the buildings that the brothers make early in the film are the simplest of constructions.  Much of their time is spent tramping through open countryside, with few roads or paths.  The opening scene has them spending a great deal of time in the pouring rain, and towards the end Francis and another brother are thrown into the wet mud - learning what happiness is in the process (!)


The script is based on the well-known stories of St Francis.  There are nearly 80 of these parable-like tales called The Little Flowers of St Francis but the movie uses less than ten.  However, in a very detailed review of this movie on epinions the writer points out that the reason Fra Ginapro takes such a prominent role in the film is because more than half the stories were based more on The Life of Father Ginapro rather than on the The Little Flowers of St Francis.


The film is episodic in the extreme, with little in the way of character arc or climax, or the usual techniques of storytelling.  The filmmakers rely on the spiritual strength of the stories being acted out by people who themselves have no airs and graces.  In fact, there are several scenes where the brothers are more like children than adults - one usually skips everywhere when the brothers are heading somewhere, and at the end they're told to spin round until dizzy in order to find out where God wants them to go.  It's a bit of a joke on Francis' part, I suspect, but none of them regard it as unusual.  Another scene is nothing more than Francis discovering a leper walking slowly past in the dark, his bell clinking as a warning.  The man's face is covered in sores, and Francis breaks into tears, and then follows the man, finally embracing him.  And then the man goes on his way - a little puzzled!


Babette's Feast is a different kettle of fish, yet presents its spirituality in as equally quiet a way, avoiding overt preaching (we never hear the Franciscans preach in the other movie either), and showing how a purposeful act of love can affect people deeply.   The film focuses on two sisters, the daughters of a strictly religious man who has formed his own little following in a tiny village in the Jutland region.  The daughters are both courted by young men at different times, but their father's gentle persuasion keeps them from accepting the men.   As the film opens we see them as old women.  Their father has died, and their servant Babette, (Stéphane Audran) a Frenchwoman who fled the civil unrest in France, has been with them fourteen years.  The little community of Christians has reduced in number, and is still squabbling, much to the sisters' dismay.  Babette, who was sent to the sisters by one of the men who'd come courting so long ago, wins 10,000 francs in the lottery and decides to blow the whole amount on an extraordinary French cuisine meal for the little community.  The ascetic community decides they can eat the food, but not approve of it, and that they won't speak any good about it.  But in spite of themselves they're won over by it, and begin to enjoy a freedom of the spirit, and a joy that they've never previously exhibited.  A general is also at the meal: he courted one of the sisters years ago.  Having had experience of life outside the confines of the village, he realises that the person doing the cooking is a chef of the highest order.   In fact, he gradually recognises the menu as being one he's experienced in Paris many years before, a meal that cost 10,000 francs for twelve customers.  His continual delight and surprise is wonderful, as is the held-back delight of the other people at the table.  They may hold their tongues but they can't contain their joy.  And an audience watching the movie won't be able to either. 


The film is beautifully photographed in soft, warm colours; even the mists and rains are filmed with an eye to their colours.  The interiors, houses sparse in furniture and fittings, are filmed in a fittingly cooler style - except the kitchen where Babette works, which is alive with colour.  She has two companions in there on the night of the feast: a boy from the village who does all the serving, and who manages to imbibe a little along the way, and finish off some of the leftovers, and the coachman who brought the former suitor (now a general) and his aged aunt.  This man not only benefits from being in the kitchen, but sees the feast being prepared.   His delight is a joy to see.  


The pure and joyful asceticism in the Francis movie, in its context, is an apt expression of love for others.  The humanity that overcomes misaligned asceticism in Babette is an equally apt expression of love for others.  There's the wonderful line spoken about Babette by one of the sisters when she realises how impoverished Babette's life has been with them for fourteen years: In Paradise you will be the great artist that God meant you to be. Ah, how you will delight the angels!  This is in response to Babette's heartfelt cry: Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me the chance to do my very best. 


This movie is superb, and original. 

The Wah-Wah Diaries

Seem to be reading a book a day at the moment...it won't last. I need to get on with some other more important things!

Anyway, yesterday while filling in a bit of time at the library, I came across The Wah-Wah Diaries by Richard E Grant. Wah-Wah was a movie written and directed by Grant back in 2004, and the book is a record of the day-to-day trials and tribulations he experienced, less on the shooting of the movie itself than on the pre- and post-production, when his French producer either failed to communicate vital information, or get things done on time, or kept putting various spanners in the works for no good reason - except that she was the producer.

The book starts in 1999, when the idea for the movie was first mooted and the script drafted. From then on it's a constant swing between highs and lows as producers come and go, the script is revised and revised, actors are gained and lost, and the aforesaid producer gets it into her head that everything should be done with French technicians. This book should warn anyone off co-production between England and France forever, though to be fair, there are some very good French technicians involved, the editors in particular.

The actual shoot is a breeze by comparison with everything else that goes on, with near-perfect weather in Swaziland (where it is all filmed, often in places that Grant grew up in and knows like the back of his hand). The amazing thing is that while Grant has some extreme moments of stress and insomnia from all the hitches (and, of course, the French producer), the film gets made, and he survives without going insane. His determination and fortitude prove to be far beyond what he himself thinks he's capable of, especially since this is the first time he's ever directed a movie, and it's an extremely autobiographical one at that.

It's perhaps not the ideal book to read before embarking on getting a musical up and on stage, although the financial aspects of my show won't be nearly as daunting as those Grant faced, nor will we be working with people who don't speak our language - in any sense of the phrase. Nevertheless it shows the value of having a good solid team around you, for support in times of stress and when things all seem to be going down the tube....!

Weight loss and ghost writers

I've never tried weight loss drinks, though a couple of members of my family have, and found them effective. As with all diet approaches, it's a matter of keeping the weight off once you've lost it! Certainly the drinks helped. But motivation to lose weight helps even more.

On another tack entirely, I came across this intriguing paragraph yesterday:

The film’s plot is also controversial, based on a disputed literary theory that [Alexandre] Dumas’s anonymous white collaborator, Auguste Maquet, should get much of the credit for the plots and drafts of Dumas’ most famous works. "Possibly for commercial reasons, they are white-washing Dumas in order to blacken him further," said the Council of Black Associations. Ironically, the term in French for a ghostwriter is a “nègre littéraire (a literary Negro),” and ghostwriting is called “negritude.”

The paragraph comes from an article about a new film on the life of Dumas, in which white actor, Gerard Depardieu, plays the writer. However, as Dumas once responded to a critic: “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, sir, my family starts where yours ends.”

I don't know that I've ever been aware that Dumas was a 'figure of colour' as the French apparently put it. He's not high on the list of authors I've read, although I found The Count of Monte Cristo surprisingly absorbing. All 900 small-print pages of it!

However, there's been a bit of a hue and cry over Depardieu playing him in a film, and the question has been asked: aren't there any actors of colour in France who can play him, and, will black actors be allowed to play white roles? I'm sure there are, and possibly they could be, but Depardieu is one of France's great drawcards when it comes to promoting films....for better or worse.

However, all the controversy aside, I think the most intriguing thing I found about this article was the language used for the ghost-writer: nègre littéraire (a literary Negro),” and ghostwriting: “negritude.

Isn't language the oddest thing? I never ceased to be amazed at the way we use words.

Back to my first thought: perhaps Dumas could have profited a little by those famous weight loss drinks - if they'd been around in his day. Or perhaps, like so many other people of weight in the 19th century, he didn't consider it a big issue.

Couple of movies

Over the weekend I watched a couple of movies, one from New Zealand and one from France. The NZ one was well done, and had some moments of fun, but overall took itself fairly seriously. The French one had no fun and took itself intensely seriously. It was called The Bridesmaid, (La demoiselle d'honneur). [Actually, La demoiselle d'honneur sounds more like our 'matron of honour, ' but apparently it applies to both, according to a French/English dictionary on the Net. ] It was directed by Claude Chabrol, who's been making a couple a movies a year for decades, and certainly knows how to do the stylish French thing. He was 74 when he made this movie.
It's adapted from a Ruth Rendell mystery, which was also called the The Bridesmaid, and which sounds to be pretty similar to the movie in plot. I came into it about half an hour late, though that didn't make a lot of difference. It concerns a youngish, very responsible young man, the oldest in a family of three children, who like his sisters, still lives at home with their mother (the father hasn't been on the scene for a long time). At his older sister's wedding he is spellbound by one of the bridesmaids, and within a very short time, she convinces him that they were destined for each other. And to prove their love, they should each do for things: write a poem, plant a tree, sleep with a member of their own sex, and kill someone. He thinks she's joking, but she's deadly serious - and a psychopath, something that audience is aware of a good deal earlier than the young man.
He eventually takes the opportunity to claim that he's killed someone they both know who just happens to have vanished conveniently. She takes him at his word and goes out and kills someone else they both know. But in neither case are things as they seem, and the ending has two or three twists.
It's a fairly absorbing movie, but it's so bloomin' intense! Were any two lovers ever quite so mad about each other? (Well, he is about her - we never quite know where we are with her about him.) There are echoes of an inverse Flying Dutchman - the girl is called Senta, though she's the one who seduces the young man, and their love is bound to end in death - of some sort.
I missed where the strange carved stone head of the woman came from (it resembles Senta and is in the story before she is), and it was a bit puzzling why the young man seemed as much in love with it as with the girl. Pays to see the whole movie, obviously.

The NZ movie was called Apron Strings. It has two stories running in parallel, though they only just coincide and no more. In one, a control freak of a mother, who owns a cake shop, is still controlling her 40-year-old son to such an extent that he can't get out and make a life of his own. Her daughter has long since flown the coop, but returns during the course of the story, pregnant, and not worried about keeping in touch with the UK father - who turns out to have been a very black man; their child is as black as the family is white.
The other story is about a gay half-Indian, NZ born youth called Michael, who comes across his aunt's Indian restaurant and manages to get himself a part-time job there. His father has long since vanished (as well) and he hasn't ever had contact with his Indian family because his mother, a celebrity cook on TV, had him out of wedlock, and spoilt the aunt's chances of marriage. The two women haven't talked since. This side of the story is the warmer, by far, and the one that's more conventionally done and receives a more conventional 'happy' ending.
The other story almost pulls together the shreds of the family - the daughter and her grandmother are easily reconciled, but it takes the mother a good deal more to overcome her inability to let things loose, and in the end her son winds up in jail, possibly for some time. A wreck of a man, without self-esteem or self-control, he's the victim to a great extent of his mother's fear that he'll go off and kill himself like his father did.
Absent fathers all over the show here.
The NZ film was enjoyable, though the ending seemed a bit truncated for my liking. It didn't go for the intense tone of the French movie, thank goodness, and had that likable quality that's so typical of a NZ film. Very good cast, and well put together.

Photos of Claude Chabrol, and Scott Wills (the weak man in Apron Strings).