Readings for Yom Kippur:

• "Stones," from Jewish Heritage Online Magazine
• "The Foundation Stone: The Center of Creation," from Jewish Heritage Online Magazine
• Many Dimensions, a novel by Charles Williams

An article in the current New York Review of Books (dated Sept. 26) on Ursula K. Le Guin prompted me to search the Web this evening for information on a short story of hers I remembered liking.  I found the following in the journal of mathematician Peter Berman:

• A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula K. Le Guin, 1994:
  A book of short stories. Good, entertaining. I especially liked "The Rock That Changed Things.'' This story is set in a highly stratified society, one split between elite and enslaved populations. In this community, the most important art form is a type of mosaic made from rocks, whose patterns are read and interpreted by scholars from the elite group. The main character is a slave woman who discovers new patterns in the mosaics. The story is slightly over-the-top but elegant all the same.

I agree that the story is elegant (from a mathematician, a high compliment), so searched Berman's pages further, finding this:

A table of parallels

between The French Mathematician (a novel about Galois) and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. 

My own version of the Philosopher's Stone (the phrase used instead of "Sorcerer's Stone" in the British editions of Harry Potter) appears in my profile picture at top left; see also the picture of Plato's diamond figure in my main math website.  The mathematics of finite (or "Galois") fields plays a role in the underlying theory of this figure's hidden symmetries.  Since the perception of color plays a large role in the Le Guin story and since my version of Plato's diamond is obtained by coloring Plato's version, this particular "rock that changes things" might, I hope, inspire Berman to extend his table to include Le Guin's tale as well.

Even the mosaic theme is appropriate, this being the holiest of the Mosaic holy days.

Dr. Berman, G'mar Chatimah Tova.

On the soundtrack album of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,"  Clint Eastwood advised us to "eliminate the negative."  As a sequel to the extremely negative note below, written at midnight on the night of September 13-14, 2002, the following is my best attempt, on this very dark night of the soul, to eliminate the negative.  

Some of us are old enough to recall that the beloved Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, died on September 14, 1982 -- exactly 20 years ago --  from injuries she suffered in a car accident the day before.  The following photo recalls happier days of driving the Riviera, in the 1955 film "To Catch a Thief."

This note's title, combined with the photo, suggests that I have a mystical vision of Cary Grant as God.  I can think of worse people to play God.  The best I can do tonight to eliminate the negative is transcribe  the remarks I made in a (paper) journal entry in 1997.  (By the way, I realize that ordinary people are just as important as movie stars, but the latter are more suitable for public discussion.)

In memoriam: Robert Mitchum and James Stewart 

Eternal Triangles (Warren, Pa., July 3, 1997)

Every civilization tells its own story about the relations between heaven and earth.  Some of the best stories -- those of Lao Tsu, the Greek poets, and Buddha -- are now almost 26 centuries old.  Some even older stories -- those told by the Jews -- have enabled our current civilization, led by Charlton Heston as God, to outlast Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.  However, recent claims of Absolute Truth for these stories (The Bible Code) are disturbing.  Perhaps it is time -- at least for Robert Mitchum and James Stewart -- to meet a kinder, gentler God.

I propose Cary Grant -- specifically, as seen in "The Grass is Greener" (1960) with Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, and in "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) with Stewart and Katharine Hepburn.  If we imagine Grant as God, then these films reveal a very old, always entertaining, and sometimes enlightening version of the Trinity:  God and Man as rivals for the Holy Spirit -- as played by Deborah, by Kate, and (in heaven) by Grace.  Such a spirit, at work in the real world, may have influenced two of this century's better Bibles:

1. The Oxford Book of English Prose (1925, reprinted throught 1958), and
2. "LIFE -- The 60th Anniversary Issue" (October 1996)

September 13 was the feast day of St. John Chrysostom. 

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"St. John Chrysostom more than once in his writings makes allusion to the adoration of the cross; one citation will suffice: 'Kings removing their diadems take up the cross, the symbol of their Saviour's death; on the purple, the cross; in their prayers, the cross; on their armour, the cross; on the holy table, the cross; throughout the universe, the cross. The cross shines brighter than the sun.'"

Today, September 14, is the feast day of the Triumph of

The Cross:

"The primitive form of the cross seems to have been that of the so-called 'gamma' cross (crux gammata), better known to Orientalists and students of prehistoric archæology by its Sanskrit name, swastika." 

-- The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume IV
Copyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton Company
Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight
Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

Later writers might choose to omit the above sentence, published in 1908, but, as Pilate said, "Quod scripsi, scripsi."  For modern times, this quotation is perhaps best translated into German, the language of modern Pilates:

Was ich geschrieben habe,
habe ich geschrieben. 

It might well be accompanied by another translation from the same website, which renders the "Ora et labora" of St. Benedict as

Bete und arbeite!

and, indeed, by a classic quotation from twentieth-century German Christian thought:

ARBEIT MACHT FREI. 

Gate of Dachau

The 1946 British film below (released as "Stairway to Heaven" in the U.S.) is one of my favorites.  I saw it as a child. Since costar Kim Hunter died this week (on 9/11), and since today is Friday the 13th, the following material seems relevant.

The doctor in "A Matter of Life and Death" addresses a heavenly court on behalf of his patient, R.A.F pilot David Niven:

In the film, David Niven is saved by mistake from a fated death and his doctor must argue to a heavenly court that he be allowed to live.

In a similar situation, I would want Dr. Alan McGlashan, a real-life psychiatrist, on my side.  For an excerpt from one of my favorite books, McGlashan's The Savage and Beautiful Country,

click here.

As Walker Percy has observed (see my Sept. 7 note, "The Boys from Uruguay"), a characteristic activity of human beings is what Percy called "symbol-mongering."  In honor of today's anniversary of the births of two R.A.F. fighter pilots,

Sir Peter Guy Wykeham-Barnes (b. 1915) and author

Roald Dahl (b. 1916),

here is one of the better symbols of the past century:

The circle is of course a universal symbol, and can be made to mean just about whatever one wants it to mean.  In keeping with Clint Eastwood's advice, in the soundtrack album for "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," to "accentuate the positive," here are some positive observations on a circle from the poet (and perhaps saint) Dante, who died on the night of September 13-14:

In the sun, Dante and Beatrice find themselves surrounded by a circle of souls famous for their wisdom on earth. They appear as splendid lights and precious jewels who dance and sing as they lovingly welcome two more into their company. Their love for God is kindled even more and grows as they find more individuals to love. Among the blessed souls are St. Thomas Aquinas and one of his intellectual “enemies”, Siger of Brabant, a brilliant philosopher at the University of Paris, some of whose teachings were condemned as heretical. Conflicts and divisions on earth are now forgotten and absorbed into a communal love song and dance “whose sweetness and harmony are unknown on earth and whose joy becomes one with eternity.”

Dante compares their dance and song to God’s bride on earth, the Church, when she answers the morning bells to rise from bed and “woo with matins song her Bridegroom’s love.” Some critics consider this passage the most “spiritually erotic” of all the one hundred cantos of the Comedy. It is the ending of Canto 10, verses 139-148.

-- Fr. James J. Collins, "The Spiritual Journey with Dante V," Priestly People October 1997

The above material on Dante is from the Servants of the Paraclete website.

For more on the Paraclete, see

The Left Hand of God.

See also the illustration in the note below.

John Frankenheimer's film "The Train" --

Und was fur ein Bild des Christentums 
ist dabei herausgekommen?

From the New York Times obituaries of 9/11, 2002:

"Henri Rol-Tanguy, one of France's most decorated Resistance heroes, who organized the popular uprising against the German occupation of Paris... died Sunday [Sept. 8, 2002]. He was 94."

Sunday was V-day in Malta.  See my log24.net notes below:

The Maltese Cross,
The Maltese V,
A Birthday Song, and
The Boys from Uruguay.

For another sort of victory, see my log24.net note of August 24,

Cruciatus in Crucem.

The Cruciatus note describes what might be called the "Red" cross, or Croix de Guerre.  The Maltese Cross note describes a cross more properly associated with intelligence than with courage.  (Both qualities are, of course, needed... courage and a brain, as well as a heart.)  More from the Rol-Tanguy obituary:

"From 1964 to 1987, he was a member of the central committee of the French Communist Party... Mr. Rol-Tanguy received most of France's medals of valor, including the Croix de Guerre and the Grand-Croix de la Légion de l'Honneur."

The following quotations are not without relevance.

Ernest Hemingway:

There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

Rick Blaine:

We'll always have Paris.

Here's looking at you, kid.

On this date, director Robert Wise was born in Winchester, Indiana.   Credits include

"Born to Kill,"
"I Want to Live," and
"The Sound of Music." 

"Director Robert Wise suggests that we all share a collective dark side." -- Robert Weston

According to various Web sources, 

• On this date in 1964, Rod Stewart records his first song, "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl."

  Good morning little schoolgirl
  Good morning little schoolgirl
  Can I come home with
  Can I come home with you
  Tell your mama and your papa
  I once was a schoolboy too

• On this date in 1965, The Byrds begin recording "Turn! Turn! Turn!" 

  A time of war, a time of peace
  A time of love, a time of hate
  A time you may embrace
  A time to refrain from embracing

• On this date in 1966, Neal Diamond sings his first chart song, "Cherry Cherry."

  Tell your mamma, girl, I can't stay long
  We got things we gotta catch up on
  Mmmm, you know
  You know what I'm sayin'

With the exception of The Byrds, the above music seems to reflect the spirit of Pan, a god discussed in my September 9 notes below.

For a perhaps more accurate rendition of the spirit of Pan, see the classic Australian film

Picnic at Hanging Rock.

"From the opening shot of Hanging Rock, lovingly framed by cinematographer Russell Boyd, accompanied by the strains of the pan flute played by Gheorghe Zamfir, the film sets its elegant, restrained tone...." 

Born today: Michael Keaton,
star of "The Dream Team"

Regarding my claim in the note below that Michael Dukakis lied about an ancient Greek pledge, thereby incurring the wrath of the Gods...

A Google search for "Athenian pledge" yields four sites, only two of which are relevant.  One is a site in which U. S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY, Harvard '71) parrots Dukakis, and one is from the final home of William S. Burroughs  -- Lawrence, Kansas:

Lawrence the Beautiful

"I ran across this printed paragraph in a supplement to the Journal-World dated, Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1965. The cover, "City of Lawrence, Kansas -- Progress Report", at the top of the inside page has this:

     "City of Heritage. We will never bring disgrace to this city, by any act of dishonesty or cowardice, nor ever desert our comrades; we will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with many; we will revere and obey the city laws, and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence to others; we will strive unceasingly to quicken the public's sense of civic duty; that thus in all these ways, we may transmit this city, greater, better, and more beautiful that it was transmitted to us."

"The Athenian Pledge" 

The link above on Burroughs (Harvard '36) is to a site subtitled "Secret Agent in Hell."  Perhaps he now haunts his old alma mater... 

The excellent 1933 Harvard novel Great Circle, by Conrad Aiken, has in its opening paragraph the following:

By all means accept the invitation to hell, should it come.  It will not take you far -- from Cambridge to hell is only a step; or at most a hop, skip, and jump. But now you are evading -- you are dodging the issue.... after all, Cambridge is hell enough. 

Postscript of 12:55 a.m. September 10:

For a current (9/9/02) Harvard student's view of Hell, see the description of Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle at

http://www.xanga.com/home.asp?user=rcudney.

Honorary Waco Wacko.

By the authority vested in me by the possession of

1. Knowledge of Vivienne Browning's My Browning Family Album, a work dedicated to Dr. Joseph Armstrong, "founder of the Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, Waco, Texas,"
   
   
2. Knowledge that today is the date of the Battle of Marathon, and of the claim that

   "The spread of Pan's worship beyond his home pastures of Arcadia was said to have arisen around the 5th Century BCE. Pan asked why the Athenians neglected him, and promised them victory over the Persians if they would worship him. At Marathon, the Persians were routed and fled in Panic; so, the Athenians built a temple for him on the Acropolis, and his worship soon extended to all Greece."

   2a. (including subsidiary knowledge of the ridiculous falseness of all political statements, including the following contemptible lie by Michael Dukakis in his 1988 Democratic National Convention acceptance speech:

   "And as I accept your nomination tonight, I can't help recalling that the first marathon was run in ancient Greece, and that on important occasions like this one, the citizens of Athens would complete their ceremonies by taking a pledge. That pledge, that covenant, is as eloquent and timely today as it was 2000 years ago.")

   (None of the Harvard intellects associated with Dukakis saw fit to point out that there never was any such pledge. As a consequence, both Harvard University and the Democratic Party remain cursed to this day.),
   
   
3. Knowledge (both intellectual and carnal) of the female form of the god Pan, as seen in the classic and great movie "Sirens" (starring, among others, Hugh Grant) and on the cover of the 1977 Olivia Newton-John album "Making a Good Thing Better,"

   

4. Knowledge that even the best critics can be wrong, as exemplified by Roger Ebert's remarks in his review of "Sirens"...
   

   "Although they are often charged with being emotionally distant, the British have produced more than their share of sexual outlaws, from Oscar Wilde to Aleister Crowley to D.H. Lawrence to Francis Bacon, to balance the ledger. The central figure in 'Sirens' is perhaps vaguely inspired by another legendary British bohemian, Augustus John, an artist whose models and mistresses were interchangeable, and who delighted in scandal.
   
   

   Named Norman Lindsay, the film's hero is played by Sam Neill as a notorious painter who lives on an estate in Australia where his art coexists side-by-side with an experiment in living."

   (Actually, the central figure is not "vaguely inspired" by anyone. He is precisely inspired by an artist named exactly Norman Lindsay, as Roger will learn if he searches the Web. Roger also gets Pan wrong in this film; he says, "the bearded Lindsay is a Pan of sorts." No. The "Pan of sorts" is in fact the girl who romps joyfully with the local boys and who later, with great amusement, uses her divine x-ray vision to view Tara Fitzgerald naked in church.),

   and, finally,

5. Knowledge that, as the Greeks well knew,  there is a dark side to all this Pan business (Vivienne Browning's book reveals that her father was a friend, not only of the bohemian artist Norman Lindsay, but also of the black mage Aleister Crowley. Let us pray that Hugh Grant's performance as a clergyman in "Sirens" and as a defender of the faith in "The Lair of the White Worm" have prepared him to cope with the dark (or, sometimes, "Brown") side of the divine.),

I hereby declare Hugh Grant an honorary Waco (home of the Dr. Pepper Museum, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame, and the Armstrong Browning Library) Wacko.

Sunday in the Park with Forge

From The New York Times obituary section of Saturday, September 7, 2002:

Andrew Forge, 78, Painter
and a Former Dean at Yale, Dies

By ROBERTA SMITH

ndrew Forge, a painter, critic, teacher and former dean of painting at the Yale School of Art, died on Wednesday [Sept. 4] in New Milford, Conn. He was 78...

[As a painter] he reduced his formal vocabulary to two small, basic units: tiny dots and short, thin dashes of paint that he called sticks. He applied those elements meticulously, by the thousands and with continual adjustments of shape, color, orientation and density until they coalesced into luminous, optically unstable fields.

These fields occasionally gave hints of landscapes or figures, but were primarily concerned with their own internal mechanics, which unfolded to the patient viewer with a quiet, riveting lushness. In a New York Times review of Mr. Forge's retrospective at the Yale Center for British Art in 1996, John Russell wrote that "the whole surface of the canvas is mysteriously alive, composing and recomposing itself as we come to terms with it."

Above: Untitled image from Andrew Forge: Recent Paintings, April 2001, Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI

See also

An Essay on the work of Andrew Forge
by Karen Wilkin
in The New Criterion, September 1996

From that essay:

"At a recent dinner, the conversation—fueled, I admit, by liberal amounts of very good red wine—became a kind of Socratic dialogue about the practice of art criticism.... There was... general agreement that it’s easier to find the rapier phrase to puncture inadequate or pretentious work than to come up with a verbal equivalent for the wordless experience of being deeply moved by something you believe to be first rate."

See also my journal note of March 22, 2001, The Matthias Defense, which begins with the epigraph

Bit by bit, putting it together.
Piece by piece, working out the vision night and day.
All it takes is time and perseverance
With a little luck along the way.
-- Stephen Sondheim

In my journal note for Rosh Hashanah (The Boys from Uruguay, Sept. 7) below, I noted that the cross as a symbol of intelligence may be offensive to some readers.

Such readers may contemplate the Maltese cross shown on page 150 of The New Yorker magazine of March 21, 1994, in an article by Nichoison Baker, "The Projector." On page 152 is an explanation of how the cross functions within a motion picture projector, and a statement that "Without this little thing, there'd be no film industry!"

Development of the Web since 1994 allows us to view the Maltese cross in action at the excellent site

Cabaret Mechanical Theatre

The following diagram is from that site:

© Cabaret Mechanical Theatre 1996-01

Today, September 8, is 

The Feast of Our Lady of Victories in Malta.

"The 8th of September festivity is close to Maltese hearts."

Victory Day: 8th September

"The 8th September is a special public holiday because it commemorates in fact three events.  It is the religious feast celebrating the birth of the Holy Virgin, Maria Bambina; it is the day on which the Great Siege of 1565 ended; and it also the day on which the Italian navy capitulated to the British at the beginning of the end of the Second World War. 

But is it best known as victory day, il-Vitorja, in commemoration of the events of 1565 when the Knights of St John and the Maltese Islanders defeated the Ottoman Turks and helped rid Christendom of the Saracen threat. 

The feast is celebrated in the villages and towns of Senglea, Naxxar, Mellieha and Xaghra on Gozo."

From Malta's Importance in History:

"Malta managed to keep the enemy at bay, and was awarded the George Cross for it in 1942. Churchill, Roosevelt, Eisenhower and other leaders visited Malta during this time. Malta was called 'the under-belly of Europe,' and her insidious disruption of the Kesserling-Rommel axis who tried hard, and very nearly successfully, to starve the native population and render all military operations impossible through the lack of food and fuel. The lifting of the siege coincided with the Feast of our Lady of Victory: 'il-Vitorja', the 'national' feast."

IL-VITORJA  

"From about three days before September 8, ground fireworks, Maltese 'giggifogu' (derived from Italian 'guochi di fuoco'), start to light up the Mellieha Parish Square, with amazing effects. The principal show of ground fireworks is held on September 7, a show which ends at about 12.00am.

Fireworks over Mellieha

The D-Day finally arrives. Early in the morning of September 8, many people attend the sermon in honor of Our Lady of Victories."

Today's feast is known to Roman Catholics as The Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady. 

See also the novel by Thomas Pynchon, V. 

• Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (The Killer Angels),
• Peter Sellers ("Doctor Strangelove"), and
• Patsy Cline ("Crazy"):

From a website on Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History... 

"It is like a storyteller looking up suddenly into the eyes of his audience across the embers of a once blazing fire...

...the reader feels privy to the secrets of human experience by their passage down through the ages; the telling and re-telling. A phrase from the ghost in Hamlet comes to mind: ‘I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul…..’ "

This work of literature seems especially relevant at the start of a new school year, and in light of my remarks below about ancient Greek religion. One should, when praising Apollo, never forget that Dionysus is also a powerful god.

For those who prefer film to the written word, I recommend "Barton Fink" as especially appropriate viewing for the High Holy Days. Judy Davis (my favorite actress) plays a Faulkner-figure's "secretary" who actually writes most of his scripts.

Tartt is herself from Faulkner country.  For her next book, see this page from Square Books, 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, Misssissippi.

Let us pray that Tartt fares better in real life than Davis did in the movie.

As music for the High Holy Days, I recommend Don Henley's "The Garden of Allah." For some background on the actual Garden of Allah Hotel at 8080 Sunset Boulevard (where "Barton Fink" might have taken place), see

NAZIMOVA AND THE GARDEN OF ALLA.