The cowl might make the monk if it were not for satire.

Two things, then, are essential to satire; one is wit or humour founded on fantasy or a sense of the grotesque or absurd, the other is an object of attack. Attack without humour, or pure denunciation, forms one of the boundaries of satire. It is a very hazy boundary, because invective is one of the most readable forms of literary art, just as panegyric is one of the dullest. It is an established datum of literature that we like hearing people cursed and are bored with hearing them praised, and almost any denunciation, if vigorous enough, is followed by a reader with the kind of pleasure that soon breaks into a smile.

…

For society to exist at all there must be a delegation of prestige and influence to organized groups such as the church, the army, the professions and the government, all of which consist of individuals given more than individual power by the institutions to which they belong. If a satirist presents, say, a clergyman as a fool or hypocrite, he is, qua satirist, attacking neither a man nor a church. The former has no literary or hypothetical point, and the latter carries him outside the range of satire. He is attacking an evil man protected by his church, and such a man is a gigantic monster: monstrous because not what he should be, gigantic because protected by his position and by the prestige of good clergymen. The cowl might make the monk if it were not for satire.

—Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism

death a symbol of birth

....

 

I was amazed at how even infants weep as they leave the womb weeping because they come out from darkness into light and from suffocation they issue forth into this world! Likewise, death, too, is for the world a symbol of birth, and yet people weep because they are born out of this world, the mother of suffering, into the Garden of splendors. Blessed is He Who through His Cross has flung open Paradise!

 

.....

 

- from St Ephrem, On Paradise

a lifting by priestly love

Robert Farrar Capon, 1923 - September 5, 2013

A sort of benediction, from The Supper of the Lamb

I wish you well. May your table be graced with lovely women and good men. May you drink well enough to drown the envy of youth in the satisfactions of maturity. May your men wear their weight with pride, secure in the knowledge that they have at last become considerable. May they rejoice that they will never again be taken for callow, black-haired boys. And your women? Ah! Women are like cheese strudels. When first baked, they are crisp and fresh on the outside, but the filling is unsettled and indigestible; in age, the crust may not be so lovely, but the filling comes at last into its won. May you relish them indeed. May we all sit long enough for reserved to give way to ribaldry and for gallantry to grow upon us. May there be singing at our table before the night is done, and old, broad jokes to fling at the stars and tell them we are men.

We are great, my friend; we shall not be saved for trampling that greatness under foot. Ecce tu pulcher es, dilecte mi, et decorus. Lectulus noster floridus. Tigna domorum nostrarum cedrina, laquearia nostra cypressina. Ecce iste venit, saliens in montibus, transilens colles. *

Come then; leap upon these mountains, skip upon these hills and heights of earth. The road to Heaven does not run from the world, but through it. The longest Session of all is no discontinuation of these sessions here, but a lifting of them all by priestly love. It is a place for men, not ghosts — for the risen gorgeousness of the New Earth and for the glorious earthiness of the True Jerusalem.

Eat well then. Between our love and His Priesthood, He makes all things new, Our Last Home will be home indeed.

*  Oh, how beautiful you are, my beloved! Oh, how beautiful you are! Your eyes are like doves! Oh, how handsome you are, my lover! Oh, how delightful you are! The lush foliage is our canopied bed; the cedars are the beams of our bedroom chamber; the pines are the rafters of our bedroom.  (Song of Songs 1: 15 - 17)

Of Dimitrios Sotir

Of Dimitrios Sotir (162-150 B.C.)

Everything he had hoped for turned out wrong!

He had seen himself doing great things,
ending the humiliation that had kept his country down
ever since the battle of Magnesia—
seen himself making Syria a powerful state again,
with her armies, her fleets,
her great fortresses, her wealth.

He had suffered in Rome, become bitter
when he sensed in the talk of friends,
young men of the great families,
that in spite of all their delicacy, their politeness
toward him, the son
of King Selefkos Philopator—
when he sensed that in spite of this there was always
a secret contempt for the Hellenizing dynasties:
their heyday was over, they weren’t fit for anything serious,
were completely unable to rule their peoples.
He had cut himself off, had become indignant, and had sworn
it would not be at all the way they thought.
Why, wasn’t he himself full of determination?
He would act, he would fight, he would set things right again.

If he could only find a way of getting to the East,
only manage to escape from Italy,
then all this strength he feels
inside him, all this energy,
he would pass on to his people.

Only to find himself in Syria!
He was so young when he left his country
he hardly remembered what it looked like.

But in his mind he had always thought of it
as something sacred that you approach reverently,
as a beautiful place unveiled, a vision
of Greek cities and Greek ports.

And now?
                        Now despair and sorrow.
They were right, the young men in Rome.
The dynasties born from the Macedonian Conquest
cannot be kept going any longer.

It doesn’t matter. He had made the effort,
fought as much as he could.
And in his bleak disillusion
there’s one thing only
that still fills him with pride: how even in failure
he shows the world his same indomitable courage.

The rest: they were dreams and wasted energy.
This Syria—it almost seems it isn’t his homeland—
this Syria is the country of Valas and Herakleidis.

- C. P. Cavafy in Collected Poems (translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)

 Waiting for the Barbarians

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

            The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn’t anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

            Because the barbarians are coming today.
            What laws can the senators make now?
            Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.

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

            Because the barbarians are coming today
            and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
            He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
            replete with titles, with imposing names.

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

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

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

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

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

            Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
            And some who have just returned from the border say
            there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

  - C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip
Sherrard. 

http://www.cornucopia.net/blog/back-to-the-walls/

.... Tense times for those watching developments on the Yedikule gardens front. Much seems to depend on whether the Greek community decides to abandon 1500 odd years of history for a couple of flats. A fatal signature could be applied any day now. Meanwhile, a grain of hope must be gained from the echo-credentials of Patriarch Bartholomew (Al Gore called him the 'Green Patriarch'), who on Sunday morning, at 9.00, will be holding a special prayer for the environment. On September 8, the birthday of the Virgin Mary, the Patriarch traditionally visits the market gardens on the Land Walls to confer hs blessing on them. He will surely not wish give his blessing to a brand new block of flats, which the Fatih municipality is keen to add to its bulging portfolio (a famous mint field has been marked down by them as a car park).

Meanwhile the newly formed School of Historical Yedikule Gardens is gaining momentum. On Sunday afternoon, Aleksander Shopov, one of the key figures in the initiative to save the gardens, is presenting a workshop at the exceptionally beautiful Kilise Bostan, a garden known to date back to at least the 16th century, to which all are welcome. Shopov is a lively and engaging speaker, and his talk will be quite fascinating. The garden is very easy to find, just inside the Belgrade Gate, the second gate as you make your way along the walls from the Sea of Marmara. The workshop starts at 4pm and will last an hour. The theme, appropriately enough, is remedies for ailing plants in the 16th century. It will conclude with a symbolic planting of ruccola to mark Peace Day –  ‘roka against rockets’. On Tuesday, September 3, Emrah Altınok of Istanbul Technical University is holding a seminar at the garden entitled ‘It was full of mulberry trees here’, in which he will discuss the Küçükçekmece Water Basin, on the Thracian edge of the city, and the prevailing regime of de-agriculturalisation in Turkey.

Cornucopia, meanwhile, strongly urges its Greek readers to exert as much influence as possible on the Greek foundation that has the power to sign away the Belgrade Church's most precious heirloom.