Paradiso- Dante  (1321) 
continuing through the third book (canticle) of the Dante’s Divine Comedy. 

Canto 5  
The first sphere: the moon, then to the second sphere: Mercury. 
Beatrice starts by explaining what Dante’s question is: can someone compensate for an unfulfilled vow with another service, so that the person doesn’t incur God’s wrath? Beatrice explains that the greatest gift God has given to man is free will. It is the most conformed to God himself, and that which He most appreciates. All intelligent beings: angels and men, and ONLY them, have been given this gift.  

Making a vow is essentially a pact between man and God: where this treasure, free will, is sacrificed to God in the particular area, so that man voluntarily renounces his freedom to choose to do otherwise. God consents to accept this when man consents to obligate himself. So then, if you freely offer something, then take it back, it has effectively been stolen, and offering to do something else with it is, at the core, offering to do good with what you’ve stolen.  

This being clearly established, one might reasonably ask how it is then that the Church can grant dispensations- an exception from adherence to church laws, particularly in exchange for money. Beatrice breaks down two aspects of a vow: the thing sacrificed, and the pact itself. The pact itself can’t be cancelled until it is fulfilled. For this, the Hebrews were required to make sacrifices, but allowance was made for different levels of financial means in what was sacrificed, so that it wasn’t a sin to exchange one thing for another at times. But no one can exchange the terms of a vow, given the weight of the free will he has sacrificed without 1) the permission of the authority of the Church, and 2) he exchanges it for something worth 1.5 times the original.  

For this reason, men should be exceptionally careful and not obligate themselves in a vow the way they would flippantly engage in idle talk. She gives two examples of vows taken with disastrous consequences. The first is Jephthah, one of the judges in Israel who vowed that he would sacrifice whatever first crossed his threshold if the Lord would give him victory, and that turned out to be his virgin daughter. Beatrice says it would have been better to have admitted he was foolish than commit the even greater sin of actually killing his daughter. The second example is Agamemnon, who sacrificed his daughter Ifigenia in order to obtain a favorable wind from Artemis when sailing to Troy.  

She reprimands Christians for both being fickle and believing that such hasty vows would wash away sins. 

At this point, Beatrice glows even brighter and becomes more beautiful that Dante quiets his questions and then they shoot quickly to the next sphere: Mercury. 

The very planet begins to glow brighter with her presence, and then Dante notices spirits coming towards them, saying “Here is one who can increase our love”. As they approached, one in particular was glowing and spoke to Dante noting that he had not yet died and become a spirit, and to ask whatever he might want. Beatrice encourages Dante to listen to them as one might listen to God. 

Dante then asks who he is and why he inhabits this sphere. The spirit increases in brightness and prepares to answer, which we’ll get in the next canto. 

Canto 6 
The second sphere: Mercury. 
This canto, like the sixth cantos in each of the three canticles, deal with politics. In hell, Ciacco speaks about Florentine politics, in Purgatory, the discussion is about Italy, and here, it has to do with the relationship between political and spiritual authority. 

Dante had asked two questions: who are you? And why do the spirits here inhabit this sphere? 

The answer to the first is that he is Justinian, Roman emperor. He mentions that after Constantine moved the capital east (against heaven’s course, double meaning with against the sun’s course and the will of heaven), the standard of Rome was located on the edge of Europe. He was moved, after having cleared up some errors in his faith, to condense and codify Roman law. 

Then Justinian follows this up with a long-winded history lesson to explain why claiming the mantle of Rome is justified cause for blaming those that would trifle with it. 

He begins by detailing the history of early Rome, from Aeneus through the period of kings, and how Rome continued to grow. The banner of Rome was carried through the republican years as Rome increased its territory. Then, at the time Heaven wanted peace for the peoples of the empire, heaven granted victory to Julius Caesar everywhere he went. That was followed by Augustus. Then a strained passage that has Rome being the vehicle of avenging God’s anger on sin, through its condemnation, and crucifixion of Jesus, following  that up with Titus then having the further honor of avenging the crucifixion on the Jews who called for his crucifixion. Yeah…… 

He moves from that to the Lombard attack on the church, which Charles the Great helped repel. Here we get the fight between the “Holy Roman Empire” and the Papacy, supported by the French kings, and the origin of the Ghibelline and Guelph parties that tore apart Dante’s Florence and exiled him. So the follow up to the question was to stress that Rome was the divinely appointed vehicle to carry the Church, and the faith, forward, so Guelphs and Ghibellines need to be very careful about trying to assume that mantle.  

Now to the answer of the second question: Mercury is adorned with the souls of those men sought fame and honor for a legacy. Justinian notes that when man’s desires are set on fame and honor, it’s inevitable that their desires would burn upward for God very brightly. Nonetheless, seeing that they did not love God as much, they accept that this is a just recompense for their level of commitment. In fact, just seeing God’s perfect justice in action prevents them from inappropriately desiring a higher place. Inside this star, one particular character worth noting is Romeo di Villanova, a humble pilgrim who served under Raimond Berenger. The count had four daughters, and each married a king with Romeo’s help. But the court in Provence slandered Romeo and he ended up leaving older and just as poor as when he came. He finished his life begging his daily bread, which would earn him praise if the world knew it.  

Here the canto ends. 

Canto 7 
The second sphere: Mercury cont. 
Justinian removes himself, but what he said about Rome’s mission being divinely ordained to both send Jesus to the cross to punish the sins of humanity and then punish the Jews for putting Jesus on the cross has Dante wondering. Beatrice intuits his doubt and explains the death on the cross as being the only way to satisfy the debt of sin and show mercy. She then answers another question that Dante has about the eternality of created things, which Beatrice clarifies: things God creates directly are eternal, those that are created through mediums are not.  

Canto 8 
The third sphere: Venus 
Dante begins the canto with a brief intro about Venus, who gives her name to the third sphere he now finds himself in. He had no recognition of having traveled there, he just… was there, only recognizing it from Beatrice’s increased beauty, which occurs as they progress towards God. 

On Venus though he discerns spirits in a dance of communion with the angels that turn the sphere, and when they see Dante, they address him as those full of love. Dante is encouraged by Beatrice to engage them, so he asks who they are. One of the souls begins to shine brighter and, without ever stating his name directly, we are led by the clues to understand he is Charles Martel, who would have ruled over France, Hungary, Naples and Sicily had he not died early. He bemoans that his brother Robert misruled in Sicily, causing the Vespers, and that his greed, though he came from generous stock, caused such problems. 

Dante rejoices that his view was in line with Charles’, but asks how it is that someone like Robert could result from such a good family?  

Charles notes that the Lord causes His providence to operate through the influence of these celestial spheres. God forsees not only human natures, but also how to preserve them, and achieves whatever end He wills. In fact, if this weren’t so, the heavens wouldn’t produce God’s work of art, but ruins, which would mean that God himself were lacking. 

Charles then asks Dante if man would be better off alone or in society with other men? To which Dante affirms man is better off in society.  

Charles continues that this could only be so given that men were doing different types of things, as opposed to being all the same. Accordingly, men need different roots to produce different actions. To this end, some are born statesmen, others generals; some are born priests, and others scientists. The heavenly spheres do this work without distinguishing between families. For this reason, the twins Esau and Jacob had radically different personalities, and Romulus, the revered founder of Rome, came from such humble stock that his birth was attributed to Mars instead. In fact, children would always be exact copies of their parents unless divine providence intervened. Now that this truth has been made known to Dante, he should be able to understand how Charles’ brother Robert could be so stingy, yet come from a generous family. Charles finishes the canto with an additional tidbit for Dante: like any seed set in unsuitable soil, nature produces a bad result when the fortunes of life are not suited to it. If the world paid attention to the foundation that nature lays, it would have plenty of capable men. Instead, it forces born soldiers into the priesthood and makes kings of those born to preach. As such, things go off balance.  

The canto ends here. 

The Roots of National Socialism- Rohan Butler  (1941) 
If you aren’t aware, National Socialism is what we know as Nazism. This book was written in the early days of WWII, before the defeat of the Nazis, and it details, with extensive quotes, the history of Germany and German thought that led up to the rise of National Socialism. I had, based on some other sources, primarily thought that National Socialism was an offshoot of orthodox Marxism, which sounds weird if one of the few things you know about the Nazis is that the Communists hated them, and they hated the communists. But the totalitarian state proposed by Marx was to be a society where private property was abolished and the working class would rule. This would be accomplished by raising “class consciousness”, in essence training the working class to see themselves as oppressed, which would cause them to overthrow the system and implement communism.  
After Marx died it became clear that some of his predictions just weren’t coming true, so fascists reimagined ways in which the totalitarian state could reach its goals without resorting to a class war, which they saw would simply rip up society. Fascism reimagined the totalitarian state coming to power through national consciousness, but a German version, so it was explained, reimagined it as racial consciousness, which grew into National Socialism.  

But, this book spells out a different path. I was unaware of German history but apparently, Germany was a series of smaller principalities even into the 19th century. Friedrich Wilhelm I had ruled Bavaria as a dictator and had both military and organizational success in the 1700s. This led German writers to look to this as a model of how to run a state. The period of Romanticism was roughly from 1800-1850, and stressed, as opposed to the liberal ideas coming out of the Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, subjectivity, beauty, and an idealization of the past. For German thinkers, they saw this in terms of a return to purer German values of folk and submission to authorities, self-sacrifice for the greater good of society.  

As the push for German unification gathered, they increasingly saw militarization as the key to making a great Germany. There was a backlash against liberal ideas, a push for self-sacrifice, and a beauty in what they saw as the noble war-like traditions of their folk past. Of course squaring these notions with the realities they faced meant that there had to be some explanations for why such a magnificent race was not performing as well as England and France, and this was found in great part in blaming the Jews, which had a long established history in Germany anyway. After the defeat of WWI and the devastating reparations they were made to pay, these notions were picked up by the Nazis and, using some of the elements of Marx, modified to suit their purposes, they forged the ideals of the National Socialist state. 

The book is a really fascinating read for me, and it helps fill in the picture for me so I can better understand the zeitgeist of that period, and so understand how the Germans got to National Socialism. 

The Lonely Crowd- David Reisman  (1961) 
The classic poles of American society are the rugged individual and the dutiful, tradition-minded citizen. How do these two archetypes fit together? 

Reisman sees the link between society and its character in the way in which the society ensures some degree of conformity in those that make it up. 

The categories are drawn from demography: noting the S-shaped curve. The bottom of the curve signifies slow, or no, increase, with the births and deaths roughly equal, but both are very high. This high growth potential society translates to a younger population with low life expectancy and rapid turnover. (think Western Europe in the middle ages) 

If something were to happen to decrease the death rate, the population would increase rapidly. This is transitional growth. Then the birth rate declines and evens out with the death rate. This stage, at the top of the curve, features an older population, slower turnover, and is labeled incipient decline. 

High growth potential societies develop a social character in its individuals whose conformity is insured by their tendency to follow tradition: tradition-directed people. 

Transitional population growth societies develop a social character in its individuals whose conformity is insured by their tendency to acquire an internalized set of goals: inner-directed people. 

Incipient population decline societies develop a social character in its individuals whose conformity is insured by their tendency to be sensitized to the expectations and preferences of others: other-directed people. 

In tradition-directed societies, conformity benefits the group in well-defined relationships to the others. 

Inner-directed societies are characterized by rapid, intensive transition. The need to cope with such demands is found best through people who can manage and live socially without strict traditions. Conformity can’t be concerned with behaviors alone, since too many novel situations arise.  

Other-directed societies find conformity in that their contemporaries: friends or media. These outer sources are the sense of direction provided. 

Italian Vices- Silvana Patriarca  (2010) 
The unification of Italy in 1861 brought the entire Italian peninsula, along with Sicily and Sardinia, together under a single state. But these had not been united for 1400 years, so there was a strong push to create a sense of patriotism and belonging… to the new state of Italy. The strategies invoked to accomplish this considered what the specific weaknesses of Italians were, and led infamously to the fascist government.  

This book takes a look specifically at what the historic sentiments regarding the particular vices or weaknesses of the Italians were, and how they continue to inform Italians’ ways of thinking about themselves. 

Some of those vices are: individualism, by which they mean prioritizing personal or family interests over collective or national interests; lack of civic commitment- due to many centuries of foreign domination; opportunism/reformism- referring to an unprincipled adaptability to whatever the current zeitgeist is. The problem with this is that it demonstrates a total lack of principle, citizens just transform themselves to appear to go along, and blend in. But they have no particular belief in any particular set of values. This was demonstrated where citizens would appear to support the fascist regime when in power, become anti-fascist when that was in vogue, be “catholic” when the democratic catholic party was in favor- essentially an unprincipled outlook that just looks to blend in, on the surface, with whatever political situation is in power.  

Much of the problem though came from looking not at Italians as themselves, but looking at England and France, and seeing that Italy was not ‘keeping up’, particularly with respect to colonies. So the defects in Italian character were something that needed to be fixed, and Italian power manifested, so that the other nations could see that Italy was just as important.  

A High Wind from Jamaica- Richard Hughes  (1929) 
The story is based around the children of a few families in colonial Jamaica. A hurricane blows through and destroys much of the area, and the parents, feeling the children would be better off back home in England, are sent on a ship voyage back home. But the ship is intercepted by pirates and the children are taken. The captain of the attacked ship mistakenly believes the children were all mercilessly killed by the pirates, and reports back to the families that their children are dead. The pirates stop in Cuba to offload the booty they had gained, and the oldest of the boys accidentally falls forty feet from a window to his death. The other children suppress this and continue on the journey, most not even recognizing they are on a pirate ship. The oldest girl has been taken as a mistress by the first mate. And at one point, the captain, in a drunken stupor, attempts to take the second youngest, Emily, who is maybe 11 at the time. But she, not quite understanding what is happening, bites him and for a while he leaves her alone. At one point during the journey, Emily is injured in the leg and laid up for a while. During this time, the pirates waylay another vessel, imprison the captain in the hold with Emily, and then board the other ship. While tied in the hold, the captain tries to get Emily to cut him loose, but for some reason, she is terrified of him. At the point he is about to get free, Emily grabs a knife and stabs him several times, and he dies. The pirates are aghast at this and begin to look for a way to get rid of the children. The eventually disguise their ship and turn the children over to a steamship, with orders for the kids not to tell anything about who they are. But Emily blurts it out and the pirates are chased down and brought back to England. The children meanwhile are reunited with their families. The oldest girl, Margaret, is a basket case and Emily is deadly afraid the authorities will discover she was the murderess. At the trial, the men are convicted and hanged, and the book closes with Emily in school, seemingly just as normal as all the others. 

But profound changes had taken place in each of these children’s lives. 

A House for Mr. Biswas- V.S. Naipaul  (1961) 
Mohun Biswas is born in a rural area of Trinidad to Indian parents. His birth was considered unlucky and he was considered somewhat cursed. His father died when he was young in an accident. Young Mohun gets a job as a sign letterer and sees a young pretty shop-girl, Shama, at one of his jobs. He writes her a note that he “loves her and would like to speak to her”, but the note is intercepted by her mother, who is only too happy to marry her off. Before Mohun can fully comprehend what is happening, he finds himself betrothed to the girl, and tries to get out of it, but too late: he is married. The family sets him up in their ‘cosmos’, but he is unhappy with his lot as one of the lower beings within the family. He yearns to have his own place, his own house. 

The dynamic throughout is of Mr Biswas, probably representing all of us at some time or another, at odds with the collective. The collective is supportive and forgiving, as long as one submits to it, but automatically envious and destructive of anyone who would presume to stand out or better themselves. Understand “better” as a relative term: anyone who attempts to improve their lot beyond what the others in the collective have.  

In sum, the Tulsi household seems to represent the collective side of society, and Mr Biswas represents the individual attempting to break out.  

The Day of the Locust- Nathanael West  (1939) 
Short novel about people who came to LA for the movie industry. Faye Greener is a beautiful but talentless actress around whom the male characters move. Tod Hackett came west as an artist hired by the studios. Homer Simpson (yes, THE Homer Simpson is named after this character) came west from Iowa after his doctor told him the warm weather would do him good. He is smitten by Faye, who he takes in and promises to support until she hits it big, at which point she will pay him back. Three more minor characters are Earle, a cowboy from Arizona, Miguel, his Mexican friend, and Abe Kusich, a dwarf with an attitude. The men all lust after Faye, who, unable to find regular work on movie sets, occasionally hires herself out as a call girl. Things come to a head when a fight breaks out among the secondary characters over Faye. Tod and Homer aren’t involved, but the next morning Faye leaves and Homer is so disheartened by the loss that he ends up inadvertently causing a riot at a premiere. The riot is the culmination, the depiction of all those broken dreams that LA represents, coming to an explosive head.  

A Room with a View- E.M. Forster  (1908) 
Lucy Honeychurch, an upper middle-class young English woman, is on her tour of Italy, staying in Florence. There she meets Father and son Emerson. While wandering lost above Florence in Fiesole, she happens across the son, George, who embraces her and kisses her. She is surprised by her chaperone, who saw the whole thing, and while Lucy hadn’t courted the kiss, neither did she hate it. Her chaperone, Miss Bartlett, tells her it would be forget about the incident and not tell anyone. But after returning to England, and finding that the Emerson’s have not only moved close by, but George has become friends with her brother, she begins to worry. She has, upon her return to England, assented to an engagement with an upperclass Englishman, Cecil. Cecil is a bit of a douche, and considers himself above Lucy’s family and friends. 

As she deals with her conflicted emotions and tries her best to put George out her mind and accept Cecil with all his faults, it comes to a head and she finally calls it off with Cecil. At last she acknowledges her feelings for George and they elope back to Florence. 

The Gilgamesh Epic 
Gilgamesh, king of Uruk in Mesopotamia, is the strongest, most handsome man in the kingdom. But he is oppressive to his people. The gods create a rival, Enkidu, a wild man who lives among the beasts. A shepherd seems him one day and notes that he would be an equal to Gilgamesh. He goes to town to find out how to approach him, and brings back a prostitute to tempt him. Once Enkidu sleeps with the prostitute, he slowly becomes more civilized. He goes to Uruk to challenge Gilgamesh, and after they fight, they become respected best friends.  

Gilgamesh and Enkidu travel to the Ceder Forest to slay Humbaba, a huge giant. 

The goddess Ishtar offers herself to Gilgamesh, but Gilgamesh spurns her advances, noting that she is never enamored of men for long, and after she is done with them, she punishes them. In a fit of anger at rejection, she punishes Enkidu with a fatal illness and he dies. 

Gilgamesh travels to meet Utnapishtim, who with his wife, were the only two to have survived the disastrous flood, and so discover the secret of eternal life. But is told mortals can’t find eternal life. 

The tale of the flood is told. The last small chapter has Gilgamesh pass away.