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. 

Plumb

Many New Zealand (serious) novels are so gloomy I no longer bother to read them as they arrive in the bookshops. Mr Pip was a (relatively) recent exception; although it was serious in tone, it somehow managed to have both a positive attitude to life and bring humour to the story. I think the book that finally 'done me in' regarding NZ novels, was The Hard Light, by Stuart Hoar, better known as a playwright. I was supposed to review it, so read it from cover to cover - it was an endurance test.

Anyway, all that by way of introduction to the fact that I've finally got round to reading Plumb, by Maurice Gee, a book which had stayed in the back burner of possible books to read because of what I felt about NZ novels. Plumb turns out to be immensely readable, even though the narrator (Plumb himself) is a character whose opinions are often at odds with the facts (as far as the reader can glean them) and whose short-sightedness in regard to the lives of other people is destructive for some, and a joke to others. Plumb is based on a real person - Gee's grandfather - and you can only hope that the real man was more perceptive and insightful than the fictional character.

Plumb becomes a Presbyterian minister early in the story (early in the chronology - the story runs in two separate time-frames as well as wandering off into other periods in Plumb's history) and is surprised to find that the Church doesn't find his radical views fit well with their institutional approach to Christianity. The problem is that Plumb is always at odds with some group or other: so convinced of his own rightness, he never has time for anyone else's point of view, and makes strong enemies. But his views change from period to period: one year Christian, the next liberal, the next freethinker, the next....well, Plumb goes through pretty much every possible viewpoint that existed in the early 20th century, and still manages to scoff at his long-time neighbours who go through every (what we'd now call New Age) philosophy that arises.

He and his long-suffering wife produce twelve children, yet he spends little time with any of them. One of the saddest moments is after the death by drowning of one of his younger children; he has to admit that he barely knew her. He continually claims to love his wife, but at the end of the story, it seems he loved his own thinking far more. Thinking is what Plumb does; the irony is that he so often thinks wrongly. He sees himself as a kind of prophet, yet if that's truly the case, his prophetic work is not just out of kilter with his society (nothing unusual in that, as regards prophetic voices) but, more importantly, is actually out of kilter with reality. Towards the end of the story he mentions that his last 'book' (little more than a pamphlet) barely sold at all, and some hundreds of copies sit in his basement. The problem seems to be that he is almost entirely intellect, and very little heart. He warms to only a few of his children, rejects one entirely, and is at odds with his grandchildren - except one. Even this child he beats at checkers, so that the child doesn't get above himself.

This all makes him sound like an entirely objectionable character, and in a sense, he is. Yet somehow Gee makes him extraordinarily interesting and readable. Plumb makes a vivid narrator, and we see the world and the people he meets through his eyes in considerable detail. The book is a great achievement, and deserves the praises it's received. There are two sequels, Meg, and Sole Survivor. I'm not sure yet if I'll read them, but time will tell...

Intuition and Structure in Composing and more...

I bought a copy of a book called Performer as Priest and Prophet a few months ago, but hadn't got round to reading it. I first came across it at work, where my boss had a borrowed copy from the Hewitson Library. Something about it rang bells, and I bought a secondhand copy (it's out of print). However, with all the shifting around in the house due to the renovation of the kitchen, it kind of got shelved in more ways than one.

The book is by Judith Rock, a professional dancer (and former auxiliary NYPD police officer!), and Norman Mealy, a liturgist and musician (and occasional hymn-writer) - Mealy died before it was completed, but still had a great deal of input.

I only began reading the book this morning (in the bath - a great place to read: the mind seems more relaxed, and absorbs more, and is less distracted), so I can't really comment on it overall. But one thing struck me, and that was Rock's comments on intuition in the arts. (She wrote the Introduction.)

It made me consider how I write music. To an extent, I've tended to put down my way of composing. For the most part, I start at the beginning and finish at the end. Sometimes I do some chopping and changing on the way (particularly now that I work half between the piano and half between the Sibelius program), and at all times I'm looking for the right note or chord in relation to what goes before and after. But I seldom start out with a 'plan,' and sometimes the music just doesn't go - even though it seemed promising at the time - and gets abandoned before it reaches the end. Sometimes something that seemed promising is promising, but it takes a patch of time away from it to realise it. My piano piece, the one that wound up with the title, A Cowboy Learns the Tarantella, is a case in point. I woke up with the 'theme' running around in my head, went to the piano, jotted it down and then thought: that's pretty basic. But a few days later it came together, and 'basic' or not, it works. And Schoenberg Plays with his grandchildren - another piece that didn't in any way start out with that title (the titles tend to come later) - also started out with what seemed a great idea, but it just didn't want to work. It was only after I came back to it some time later than I saw the potential: same kind of material, but different approach.

I kind of find the music as I go along, rather than having it all worked out beforehand. Even with songs, it's as if a particular idea connects itself to the opening words, and we go along from there. It's very possible that a totally different idea could work - in fact, more than possible. What gets written on Tuesday may not have turned up on Thursday.

Structure suffers a bit in the process - I've discussed this several times in this blog - and there have been pieces, particularly pieces for larger forces than just a piano, or piano and voice, that have required some considerable sorting out. That's perfectly normal, of course, for any work, and I probably do it more with the piano pieces and such than I remember afterwards. It's just because they're smaller scale and more manageable in terms of tidying up structure.

What I'm saying is that I suspect far more composers work intuitively than we're led to believe by musicologists. The latter find all manner of connections in works afterwards; the composer doesn't think 'rationally' about these connections at the time; he or she tends to be so focused on getting the thing down on paper (preferably before it all blows away and he or she loses concentration) that he/she doesn't pick up a number of the connections.

But when you go back over your own work - particularly some time later, after you've forgotten the sweaty stage - you can often be surprised by what's turned up.

And talking of that, in one of the posts I just picked up regarding structure, I find that I was writing about a screenwriter called Blake Snyder. I'd forgotten his name altogether, but now realise I've just read a book by him called Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: the screenwriter's guide to every story ever told. It's a sequel to Save the Cat! the last book on screenwriting you'll ever need. When I got Save the Cat! on interloan, I thought it was the first of the two books I was getting; it was the second. This second title goes through about fifty well-known movies and shows how each and every one of them follows a structure that's virtually identical.

Now whether that's really true is another matter. Whether the scriptwriters sat down and said: here's the structure, what story can we tell, is another matter altogether. I rather think Snyder has come along, like a musicologist, and made these films fit his theory. In the end the book isn't very inspiring. I'd still like to have a look at the first of the two books, though I suspect it's title is a little overblown. Yes, certain facets of storytelling turn up again and again, particularly in the movies - and there's a certain satisfaction in that. But quirkiness in movies, oddball approaches, the thing that is different, is also satisfying, and it would be horrible to think that we would have to endure endless movies all plotted along similar lines forever and ever Amen.

(Incidentally, I've just seen that Snyder died just last month of a pulmonary embolism- he was only 52.)

Well, I've strayed a fair way from my opening, but that's what happens when you don't have to go to work for a couple of days, and can relax while blogging!

Another word on Gilead

To my surprise I discovered, on looking back through my old files, that I've never written a review of Gilead, in spite of being so deeply affected by it the first time, and very pleased to have read it again. The only time I came close to reviewing it was when I did the annual triple-brief review for the local paper, and space being what it is in those reviews, Gilead, like the other two books, got barely a 100 words. Hardly enough to do it justice.
But I'm more surprised that I didn't review it for Tui Motu, which would have been the obvious place to have written about it. Perhaps I felt it was just too big a book for me, in some ways. Not that it appears to be 'big' (like War and Peace, for instance, or one of Dickens' novels). I think it's more that the way it's written almost precludes getting ahold of it enough to try and sum it up.
The story seems very simple, yet it's a story full of stories (from the main biographical one to the puzzle of the main character, John Ames' godson to the story of the crazed old prophet of a grandfather to the strangely hilarious story of the horse that slowly sank into the tunnel under the road). The theology seems straightforwardly about grace and forgiveness, yet there are all the other elements that come into it too. Grace and forgiveness turn out to be only part of the theology; the book is almost thick with theology, but theology done in such a way that you just absorb it as you go along.
There are different slants on Christianity: Ames seems to be the most straightforward - but that's an illusion. The father seems to have been a good solid minister, but he's also a mystery. And the grandfather is John the Baptist come to life again, or Ezekiel, or one of the weird prophets out of Kings or Chronicles. He makes us realise just how hard to live with those OT prophets must have been.
Then there's the wife, who appears out of nowhere (she has no history in the book, unlike her husband, who is as much history as present), and who simply tells the man he should marry her and he does. Her Christianity is childlike, almost, and so open that even the difficult godson is honest with her.
There are almost no un-Christian characters in it; the outside secular world barely impinges. (A television makes little impact, and while a couple of the characters go to the movies, we hear nothing much about it.) This is a world where the Christian worldview is pretty much the norm. When the older brother comes home with his heretic views, he doesn't really seem to make much of a dent on the surroundings.
I'm sure I could say a lot more, could rave on about it. This is enough for the moment.

Performer as Priest and Prophet

...mediocrity is where most performers exist: midway between extremes, neither brilliant nor excessively dull. One does one's best with the gift one is given. The point is that to say yes to that gift as it really is, is to say yes to its limits - and yes to the honest work that hones and polishes the gift. This is not the anxious, angry work that is really a denial of limits: 'If I just do a little more, then I'll be able to..." A Salieri can never become a Mozart. To say yes clears the air so that one can see and rejoice in things as they really are.

From Performer as Priest and Prophet, chapter 4 (pg 75), by Judith Rock and Norman Mealy, published Harper & Row 1988

I don't think the authors mean by 'mediocrity' a state of poor artistry, but of the 'mean' between brilliant and excessively dull.