Christmas with Terry Eagleton

To call Terry Eagleton a critic, or even a Theorist (note the capital T) is really to damn him with faint praise. The man is uncommonly erudite and he writes with singular panache—so much so that when reading him I'm reminded of social critics on the order of Voltaire and Nietzsche, with touches of Ezra Pound and Wyndham Lewis thrown in for good measure. 

Like those brilliant and scurrilous gadflies, Eagleton is a counterpuncher who feigns and jabs, often hitting his mark, while seldom planting his feet on the mat long enough for us to figure out where he really stands.

But perhaps this is a false impression, based on the fact that I’ve read only a few of the essays collected in his book Figures of Dissent: Critical Essays on Fish, Spivak, Žižek and Others.  

My favorite line from that book: “For postmodern thought the normative is inherently oppressive, as though there was something darkly autocratic about civil rights legislation or not spitting in the milk jug.”

That remark strikes me as both funny and true.

I recently stumbled upon Eagleton’s book, Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. Reading the first chapter, “The Scum of the Earth,” I was impressed by his grasp of Jesus’s mission, Aquinas’s analysis of first causes, and so on. He’s well aware, as few thinkers are today, that we all live in the midst of numerous categories of being--the practical, the ethical, the aesthetic--and often partake of several simultaneously.

A few Eagleton sallies:

In Nietzsche’s view, the death of God must also spell the death of Man—that is to say, the end of a certain overweening humanism—if absolute power is not simply to be transplanted from the one to the other. Otherwise, humanism will always be secretly theological. It will be a continuation of God by other means. God will simply live a shadowy afterlife in the form of respectable suburban morality, as indeed he does today.

He responds to Christopher Hitchens assertion that “thanks to the telescope and the microscope, [religion] no longer offers an explanation of any­thing important” as follows:

But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.

Pursuing the issue of God as creator, Eagleton continues:

God for Christian theology is not a mega-manufacturer. He is rather what sustains all things in being by his love, and would still be this even if the world had no beginning. Cre­ation is not about getting things off the ground. Rather, God is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever. Not being any sort of entity himself, however, he is not to be reckoned up alongside these things, any more than my envy and my left foot constitute a pair of objects.

In case we haven’t quite wrapped our heads around this concept, Eagleton lays it on a little thicker, jumping from point to point as if he’s afraid our attention might be wandering.

God and the universe do not make two. In an act of Judaic iconoclasm, we are forbidden to make graven images of this nonentity because the only image of him is human beings. There is a document that records Gods endless, dispiriting struggle with organized religion, known as the Bible. God the Creator is not a celestial engineer at work on a superbly rational design that will impress his research grant body no end, but an artist, and an aesthete to boot, who made the world with no functional end in view but simply for the love and delight of it.

Or, as one might say in more theological language, for the hell of it. He made it as gift, superfluity, and gratuitous gesture—out of nothing, rather than out of grim necessity. In fact, for Christian theology there is no necessity to the world at all, and God may have long ago bitterly regretted succumb­ing to the sentimental impulse which inspired him to throw it off in the first place. He created it out of love, not need. There was nothing in it for him. The Creation is the original acte gratuit.

The danger implicit in this position is that morality relinquishes pride of place to delight. But where’s the danger?

If we are God’s creatures, it is in the first place because, like him, we exist (or should exist) purely for the pleasure of it.

And where does Jesus fit into all of this? The radical Romanti­cs (according to Eagleton) including Marx, find in Jesus a character who fully grasped this radical disjunct between instrumental reason and the ontological freefall we actually live.

 Jesus, unlike most responsible American citizens, appears to do no work, and is accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. He is presented as homeless, propertyless, celibate, peripatetic, socially marginal, disdain­ful of kinsfolk, without a trade, a friend of outcasts and pa­riahs, averse to material possessions, without fear for his own safety, careless about purity regulations, critical of traditional authority, a thorn in the side of the Establishment, and a scourge of the rich and powerful. Though he was no revolu­tionary in the modern sense of the term, he has something of the lifestyle of one. He sounds like a cross between a hippie and a guerilla fighter.

A friend of mine remarked recently that life's two great mysteries are God and death. I would suggest that these mysteries are corollaries of a still greater mystery out of which they flow--presence. Being here, now. You and me and everyone we know and don't know. This is what seems to vanish at the end of life, and also what drives our most rewarding theological musings.

Christmas has a moral dimension, to be sure--our savior, charitable living, and all of that--but it also has a magical dimension: darkness and twinkling lights and warmth and togetherness. Colorful packages. Extravagant Food. Familiar music, most of it vocal. This year, it will be quieter for most of us. More open space, perhaps, to pursue--among other things--that elusive zone of existential frisson, both personal and cosmic, that defies description.

At Play in the Fields

 A landscape is like a poem, and walking it is like reading it. You don't have to understand it—the geology, the human history—to appreciate the lay of the land: the balance and perhaps the depth. Variety of vegetation and terrain, openness, density, expanse. The rise and fall, the arrangement of woods, fields, marshes, potholes, lakes. A shapely island of sumac here, a copse of silvery aspens in the distance over there.

Hilary and I have been walking quite a few landscapes these last few months. We have our favorites, but we don't want to wear them out through familiarity. We try to visit new places, too, and also attack the old ones from new perspectives. The back route into William O'Brien S.P. from the gravel parking lot on County 4 stands near the top of our list, though it's no longer new. We recently began a hike at O'Brien from the standard trailhead but headed south across the fields immediately, turning up into the lozenge-shaped hills from a new angle. And just the other day, we felt our way along back roads to a new point of entry into Afton S.P. off 50th Street, which made it easy to reach the beautiful fields in the park's northwest corner without first walking a mile and a half from the main parking lot down to the St. Croix River and then up through a ravine (yes, a beautiful ravine) and on through the backpacking campground.

Afton State Park

But it might have seemed that we were getting desperate when we ventured, a week or two ago, up to Crow-Hassan Regional Park.  Although it's arguably the wildest—or at any rate the least developed—of the parks in the Three Rivers system, we have never found it much fun to explore. We would invariably arrive at the gravel parking lot after a dull drive up Interstate 94 followed by a seemingly endless meander through the farm county west of Rogers, our only real hope being to spot a rough-legged hawk on one of the stunted trees alongside the last stretch of two-lane road leading to the park.

A mink fishing on the Crow River

Upon arrival, we would head off to the west over a few hills and then through a stretch of maple woods, eager to make contact with the Crow River, which forms the park's western boundary. 

After wandering alongside the river, which is substantial, for a few hundred yards, the trail would bring us up a hill through oak woods and past a stand of handsome Scots pines planted  by some long-forgotten farmer, or perhaps a park ranger, decades ago. Here the vast expanse of rolling, grass-covered fields that covers the north half of the park presents itself. To the northeast, maybe half a mile away, you can see another grove of stately pines in the midst of a deciduous woods. 

A glance at the map—I hope you print out a PDF of the park map before you leave; signage in the park is terrible—will suggest that the river valley curls to the east just beyond those trees. It would be nice to explore up that way ... but it's windy and cold out there in the open, we've already walked a mile or two, and we're ready to head back to the parking lot, following a trail that hugs a bank of woods and then veers out into some low hills briefly before rising to the north side of the lot.

A few days after that hike, so similar to previous hikes—decent enough, but hardly exhilarating—it occurred to me that we were going the WRONG WAY. Why start off so precipitously to the west every time, heading for the river? Why not head north towards the fields immediately? Or better yet, wander amid the woods and ponds on the east side of the park on our way north to the fields and wooded patches that have always remained just beyond our reach?

With only a hint of reluctance—after all, we'd just been there—Hilary agreed to return to Crow-Hassan with me to try out the new route. And we agree, it gives the park an entirely new and more agreeable flavor. It happened to be a cold, blustery day, and our meander east and north through the woods took some time. As a result, we once again decided to turn back before reaching the enchanted woods at the northern edge of the park. But we did see a lot of new and attractive terrain, and we also explored one or two trails that don't appear on any map. The trail heading south along the west side of South Twin Lake was especially nice. We passed fields of bluestem dotted with blazing star and bee-balm—all dead, but lovely just the same in their variegated shapes and textures. Bird-life consisted of two low-flying trumpeter swans that appeared out of nowhere and one low-soaring bald eagle.

At the first of several unmarked junctures we turned right, not wanting to head back to the trail we'll come north on. At the next fork we went left; didn't want to curl around in a circle—it's easy enough to do. It was a thick, gray day and the sun was no help at all.

I knew roughly where we were, but when we finally arrived an intersection with a park sign and a map, I discovered I was wrong. We weren't anywhere near where I thought we were. I had become discombobulated by a good ninety degrees as we jogged this way and that amid the rolling hills and ice-covered ponds. "Number 11?" I said in disbelief. "That can't be right."

"I seem to remember that last week we came up through those woods," Hilary reminded me. "We went down this hill and turned left." She was right. That's what we'd done, arriving at the same point from the opposite direction. But it didn't jibe at all with the directional scheme I'd build up in my head.

So, Crow-Hassan is back on the map. Lots of new trails to explore in the months ahead. We'll make it to the north end of the park one of these days, it isn't that far. Maybe on skis!     

December Lockdown

Let's just call it a quiet holiday: wandering the house like a good citizen, going for walks in the woods daily, working desultorily on projects on the computer (as usual), making pre-dawn runs to the supermarket, figuring out new things to do with the left-over turkey, chatting with friends and family on the phone, streaming the occasional TV show, and taking advantage of the ample arts and entertainment events being offered online by local organizations in dire need of support.

We're used to hosting three or four generations for Thanksgiving, but this year it was just the two of us. We roasted a twelve-pound turkey nevertheless, along with stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and pumpkin pie topped with masses of fresh-whipped cream. Hilary put together a hearty assortment of leftovers for her mother, but we still had quite a bit of turkey to consume.

That first plate of leftovers is almost better than the original meal. The second one isn't too bad, either. A few days later I was eating turkey salad sandwiches heavily laced with tarragon. The next night turkey quesadillas were on the menu.  And just last night we finished things off with some delectable turkey pot pies.

The musical offerings have also been top-flight. We listened to several performances from the Schubert Club's Courtroom Concert series, which are traditionally staged at noon at the Landmark Center in St. Paul. One of them featured a local ensemble of musicians performing music from India, and another was a rebroadcast of a sterling performance of Debussy's String Quartet which lacked a video component. 

It might seem strange to be sitting in front a computer screen looking at a static image of four musicians, but it nevertheless gives one the feeling of attending a musical event. And the music itself was gorgeous.

On December 3 the Schubert Club will be streaming an outstanding vocal quartet, "To Joy," by local composer David Evan Thomas. We heard the original performance and were stunned by its exuberant accessibility and sensual appeal. The entire text was extracted from the Oxford English Dictionary's entries for the word "joy." And joyous it is.

The most unusual of the events we took in recently was a two-part performance by the Boston Early Music Society of Monteverdi's opera L'Orfeo and —two days later—Charpentier's La descente d'Orphée aux enfers. Oblivious to Eastern Standard Time, we tuned in to the first one an hour later, just when Orpheus is crossing the Styx, and we left the second one early ... because we'd heard the story before. But in both performances the singing was measured, stately, and haunting.     

After the second show I pulled my copy of Robert Graves' classic The Greek Myths off the shelf, and also Ann Wroe's Orpheus: the life and myth of humanity's eternal muse. There are quite a few variations to the tale, and no one seems to know exactly what any of them mean.

On another occasion we listened in on a poetry reading sponsored by Subtext Books during which Norita Dittberner-Jax and Mary Moore Easter read from recent works. In case you missed it, these two poets will be joined by Margaret Hasse and Emilio DeGrazia at Next Chapter Books on December 10 for a repeat performance. It should be a stunner. Tune in here.

The highlight of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Film Society's fall season has been the new documentary by Frederick Wiseman, City Hall. It follows a number of events taking place in the city of Boston, from firefighting to Veteran's Day gatherings to garbage collection to community zoning meetings. Sound dull? It's not. During the first hour we hear a little too much of mayor Marty Walsh's oratory, perhaps, but the film soon finds its pace and begins to direct its attention not only to people merely talking about doing things but also to people doing them. We watched it in installments over the course of three days,  and by the start of the fourth hour, we were hooked.

Just joking. But the film is four and a half hours long, so be prepared.

The best of the Netflix shows we've been streaming is a five-part series on dance called MOVE. Dance is not a medium of expression we explore often, but these shows are dazzling, high-energy pieces focusing on Jookin' (Florida and LA), Gaga (Israel), flamenco (Spain), Dancehall (Jamaica), and Kathak dance (England/Bangladesh).

Home-grown entertainment can also be top-flight. One Saturday evening our friends Tim and Carol put together a pub-quiz that kept us up well past our bedtime: politics, geography, and even a music round that required the identification of brief clips by Eric Satie, Neil Sedaka, and Sugar Ray (who?). Which, do you think, is the largest of these three countries: Chad, Sudan, Algeria?

The closure of bars and restaurants has been rough on proprietors and waitstaff, no doubt, but we've made it a point to explore a few new takeout options. We stopped in at the Mill Valley Market at the Trailhead in Wirth Park several times with my sister after hiking the circuit along "tornado alley" and under Highway 55 to the Wirth Lake Pavilion and back. The food there is much better than you might expect.

And the Japanese street food from PinKU, right across the steet from Surdyk's Liquor Store, is mighty fine. And just the other day Hilary discovered that a taqueria that had burned down in NE Minneapolis has relocated nearby.

Thus the days remain interesting. But it sure would be nice to see a few friends face to face, the way we used to do, sitting around a firepit, or even inside! The lockdown expires on December 18. Just in time for a solstice party?