The Leisure to Be Dead

One of the pleasures of reading the old writers of the supernatural is that, even if a story doesn't wind up being as scary as you hoped, you will invariably be treated to some wonderful examples of style. This was the case in Ambrose Bierce's "A Jug of Sirup" (from Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce).

Bierce develops an entire story from one captivating turn of phrase: "... well within a month Mr. Deemer made it plain that he had not the leisure to be dead." The irony of the story is that Mr. Deemer does not have the leisure to be dead because he never had (or permitted himself) the leisure to be truly alive. In fact, his ghostly appearance is little different than his living appearance: In both cases, he is utterly absorbed in the clerical work of running his general store. The story has a comic element in the mob that storms the store when it becomes known that a specter is appearing within. No one paid much attention to Mr Deemer when he was alive; now that he's dead, people fight for the chance to get a glimpse of him, a glimpse that is indistinguishable from the thousands of glimpses they had of him while he was alive. The crowd has no time for the substantial appearance of an ordinary man; it is only when he is a shadow of his former self that he generates any interest. Why do men prefer the ethereal to the substantial? Perhaps this is a form of original sin, since to prefer evil to good is to prefer the less substantial to the more substantial.

The deadly sins kill supernatural life, so the man who succumbs to a sin like sloth (as Mr. Deemer has) is already dead in the only way that matters. When he finally dies a bodily death, his existence is not substantially changed; for him, perhaps, he does not even notice that he is dead. The story shows two forms of sloth: The man entirely immersed in the cares of the world (Luke 10:41-42), and the crowd captivated by the phenomenal at the expense of the enduring.

DeFanging the Dragons

Good article from Jonah Goldberg on one of my favorite topics, the subversion of traditional children's literature. Jonah doesn't mention them, but the Shrek films are high on my list of cultural subversives. Like the modern Grinch, Shrek is merely misunderstood rather than an example of the uncompromising evil of the traditional ogre. As soon as Shrek used pages from a book of traditional fairy tales for toilet paper, I knew I was going to hate him.

Another modern theme that parallels the subversion of traditional icons of evil is the too easily defeated paragon of evil. In Harry Potter, for example, Lord Voldemort is an example of dedicated, mature, adult evil. Traditionally - and in truth - such deep evil can only be defeated by a similarly mature and deep good. Thus Pippin, when he gazes into the magic orb of Sauron, is captured by it and must be rescued by the intervention of Gandalf. Frodo Baggins himself is finally unable to overcome the evil of the One Ring on his own. Yet Lord Voldemort is repeatedly defeated by the schoolboy Harry Potter. This undermines the moral seriousness of the series and, despite all its pretensions, puts it on the level of Home Alone rather than Lord of the Rings.

But pretending that monsters aren't really evil, or that evil is never so serious that it can't be defeated by a child, does not do a child any favors. It only educates him into a dangerous naivete. Traditional literature used to introduce the child to the mystery of evil, not necessarily by scaring the bejeebers out of him, but by revealing to him that there is indeed deep and implacable evil in the world; evil that he cannot defeat on his own but against which he has good and powerful allies - fairy godmothers, handsome Princes and maybe, even God.

The Gods Are Here

The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world.

This line is from the story The Willows by Algernon Blackwood (from his Best Ghost Stories .) Without spoiling the story, it is uttered by a nameless character known only as "the Swede", a character the story describes as "an unimaginative man." He utters it when he and the narrator become stuck on an island in the Danube, in a section of the river they had been warned to avoid. If you have seen The Blair Witch Project, The Willows is a similar story, but one written by an author of great imagination, depth, and a supreme ability to evoke supernatural horror.

The line captures for me just the feeling I get (or hope I get) when I walk into a Catholic Church, especially one in the traditional style that has not had its beautiful artwork spray-painted over. Perhaps "feeling" is the wrong word, for it emphasizes the subjective. Perception is probably a better word, for perception refers to the external origin of a feeling, rather than the feeling itself. When I walk into a Catholic Church, I perceive that the gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world. Part of that feeling is induced by the ancient history of the Church. As I have remarked in other posts, the Church doesn't go away. Just as we would find disturbing a man who lived for two-thousand years, so I find a public institution that has survived for two-thousand years to be disturbing. What I experience is a feeling, but it is a feeling that is a proper reaction to a fact in the external world. The Church should have died many times in its long history (at least five times according to G.K. Chesterton in The Everlasting Man), and yet it lives. If this isn't the makings of a true religion, it is at least the makings of a good ghost story. If the Western world is no longer Catholic in fact or spirit, it is still haunted by Catholicism; and this ghost is a lot more real than anything in Blackwood or M.R. James. It is as real as the old Romanesque Church down your street.


The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world.

Blackwood captures the ambivalent reaction of his characters to their encounter with the supernatural. They have ignored warnings about traveling down the river, blithely confident in their own ability to handle whatever comes. But as the unusual events begin to accumulate, the characters are simultaneously attracted and repelled. As adventurers, the unusual is just what they were seeking. The nature of the events, however, makes them wonder if they have encountered something more than they can handle. Their confidence slowly transforms into terror...

The ambivalent reaction is, I think, appropriate when we attend Mass. God is not Someone to be trifled with. But rather than turning into terror, our apprehension should turn into joy. Thou art glorious in heaven, all-powerful on earth and terrible in hell; but in the Blessed Eucharist Thou art mild, consoling, sweet, and liberal. Yet , what if we never experience that feeling of apprehension? If I am not anxious at all, if I walk into church with an easy-going confidence, can I truly sat that I perceive that "the gods are here?" The primary icon in the Church, the Crucifix, a representation of God Himself suffering a brutal, bloody, humiliating execution, should be reminder enough that we should approach the Eucharist in some trepidation. God is the primary casualty in the spiritual war going on all around us, and in us, but we are subject to becoming casualties as well. In fact, we already are casualties, one manifestation of which is an easy-going approach to Mass. For in that insouciant attitude we reveal our disconnect from reality, our failure to perceive that the gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world. We should remember that, not only is God present in the Eucharist at Mass, but the gods may be hanging around as well; for the Eucharist is the primary weapon in our battle against sin and evil, and the gods have an interest in undermining it...

M.R. James and the Discovery of Sin

Here I remarked on a problem for the modern Christian, which is more the discovery of sin than the discovery of forgiveness.

One of my favorite fictional genres is the classic English ghost story, especially those of M.R. James. James did not write with any explicit spiritual or pedagogical purpose; he wrote just to give his readers a thrill. But it is in the nature of the great artist to achieve purposes beyond his conscious expectations. Perhaps we can measure the greatness of an artist by how far his work transcends his intentions.

Why are ghost stories a peculiarly modern genre? I am not the first to remark that they may be a consequence of the disenchantment of the world that followed the scientific revolution. Classical man lived in a world of gods, fairies and demons. These were all banished by modern science, with some excellent results (like the end of belief in witches), but also some unintended consequences. A world full of gods and fairies is a world full of personality; it is a human world. The cold, mechanical world of modern science is dead and inhuman. It is a world in which man finds himself a stranger, a world in which his alienation is profound, since he is the only personality in it. This alienation finds its expression in ghost stories. Man is not quite convinced that science has completely disposed of the world of spirits. But what place do spirits have in the mechanical world of modern science? They have no more place than does man, so they become alienated as well. And an alienated spirit is a powerful, dangerous, and downright scary thing.

But the modern, mechanical world also seems to have no place for sin. Yet we cannot shake the feeling that the loss of the sense of sin is not necessarily something good. This theme gets regular play in the stories of M.R. James. A regular character in the James stories is the scientific antiquarian, a collector of old books and visitor of ancient religious sites. This gentleman is the archetype of the Edwardian, scientific man of leisure. He has the appropriate scientific disdain for ancient legends and curses and is not intimidated by warnings from elderly women or village priests. Of course, he gets his comeuppance when the book he obtains or the treasure he seeks contains a little more than he bargained for. James is an absolute master at building suspense and horror in these situations; what I especially appreciate is the way he works in the notion of trespass, which is close to the notion of sin. His characters investigate "interesting" sites or decode "interesting" codes purely out of curiosity, blithely ignoring the subtle but persistent warning signs that some things are best left undisturbed. The puzzles can be so interesting that the reader feels himself pulled in, and be torn between the thrill of solving the puzzle and the dread of what might happen if he does.

Ghost stories are parables for the modern world. James began writing at the turn of the twentieth century, when Edwardian confidence was at its height. His stories show a presentiment that all was not well with the world despite appearances; that our scientific genius, while creating for us undreamt of marvels, also had the capacity to unleash undreamt of horrors. Sin did not disappear with the disappearance of witches, as the world was about to find out in the fields of Flanders and the Somme.