Antiquitopia

Late have I loved you, Beauty so old and so new: Late have I loved you. And see, you were within And I was within the external world And sought you there, And in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made The lovely things kept me far from you Though if they did not have their existence in you They had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud And shattered my deafness You were radiant and resplendent, You put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, And I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, And I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, And I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours. (Augustine, Confessions X.xxvii (38))

I've been reading Ovid's Tristia and his Black Sea Letters , and this passage struck me in the beauty of its description of Love's decrepitude: Sleep, that common repose from cares, possessed me, my slack limbs were sprawled out the length of my bed-- when, suddenly, the air was vibrant with beating pinions, and the window creaked softly open. In alarm I started up, propped on my left elbow, slumber gone, driven clear from my thumping breast. There stood Love, one hand grasping the maple bedpost, with a sad expression, not how he used to look, no neck-chain, no hair-comb, locks in wild disorder, not neatly pinned back as of old, but hanging loose around his bristled jawline, wing-feathers ruffled (or so it seemed to me) like those on the back of some homing pigeon, fingered by too many rough hands. (Ovid, Black Sea Letters III.3.7-20) His description of sleep as something that possesses rather than a state is what initially drew me into the passage, as if sleep is a spiri...

In his magisterial multi-volume commentary on Leviticus (for Anchor Bible), Jacob Milgrom, interacting with the work of Mary Douglas, suggests that the ancient Israelite system of sacrifice was not merely a bunch of scattered practices, but a unified system--a symbolic system. The unifying factor for Milgrom is death-avoidance. In response, Jonathan Klawans has suggested a two-fold organizing principle: imitatio dei and attracting/maintaing the divine presence (itself sort of a throwback to R.E. Clements, God and Temple ). Klawans presents imitatio dei as the organizing principle and maintaining the divine presence as the function of sacrifice. See my fuller discussion here . I actually like Klawans's thesis, and use a lot of his insights in my dissertation. Interestingly enough, however, the idea that the ancient sacrificial cult was a symbolic system did not begin with Mary Douglas, Jacob Milgrom, and Jonathan Klawans, but St. Augustine (and perhaps earlier), who suggests a...

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours. (Augustine, Confessions 10.27 (38); trans. Chadwick)

I thought this might be appropriate for inauguration day: Though this equality is only implicit in teh earthly city it permits us to understand interdependence, which essentially defines social life in the worldly community. This interdependence shows in the mutual give and take in which people live together. The attitude of individuals toward each other is characterized here by belief ( credere ), as distinguished from all real or potential knowledge. We comprehend all history, that is, all human and temporal acts, by believing--which means by trusting, but never by understanding ( intelligere ). This belief in the other is the belief that he will prove himself in our common future. Every earthly city depends upon this proof. Yet this belief that arises from our mutual interdependence precedes any possible proof. The continued existence of humankind does not rest on the proof. Rather, it rests on necessary belief, without which social life would become impossible. (Hannah Are...

From Walter Benjamin's "What is Epic Theater?" One can go even further and remember that interruption is one of the fundamental devices of all structuring. It goes far beyond the sphere of art. To give only one example, it is the basis of quotation. To quote a text involves the interruption of its context. In a way, by quoting this text about quotation, I have interrupted Benjamin's context, his discussion of the "quotable gesture" in epic theater. As my quote stands, you may not even realize that this is about gestures or even theater, except that I have told you so. Yet this violence of extraction allows the quotation to take wing; it reinvigorates it with new life as I place it in a new context. Yet to quote also interrupts the context of placement. When I quote something, it interrupts my own prose, creating a cacophany of voices, or, to put in M. M. Bakhtin's terms, heteroglossia. I often find in reading other people's work that I find ...