Rod Dreher has really been killing it lately, and I'm probably going to be featuring a bunch of posts from him in my next Odds and Ends, but the introduction to his post on Dante yesterday really resonated with me. I started out as a medievalist, and I think, in our ahistorical modern mindset, that it is easy to forget how people viewed the world for many generations prior to the Industrial Revolution and the skepticism that accompanied the Enlightenment. Personally, I think something very important has been lost, and I'd be interested in a discussion on how to reclaim it.
"Dante, along with his fellow medievals, lived in a sympathetic universe that was fraught with meaning and purpose. The stars were not dead and cold, cut off from the lives of men; their positions and movements rained down influence on the Earth, even as great upheavals in the earthly realm were reflected and broadcast in the heavenly. The medievals, like the ancients before them, referred to the universe by the Greek word kosmos — a word whose root meaning is “ornament” (as in our modern word, cosmetics). The cosmos was considered by ancients and medievals alike to be ordered and harmonious, because it was created by a God of order and harmony. It was, in fact, God’s ornament. Both humanity and nature were part of God’s cosmic order and harmony, and thus it was only natural that the two should exist in sympathy with one another. Dante’s universe did not simply exist; it meant, and it meant intensely. The universe was less a thing to be studied than a poem to be loved and enjoyed."
~Louis Markos, Heaven and Hell: Visions of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition. New York: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2013, quoted in Dreher.
That is absolutely lovely. When surrounded by nature I find I revert to a appreciation of the beauty of creation, but when immersed in the ho-hum media-rich everyday I tend to see the world as a slightly terrible place that we'll escape from someday. Looking forward to your next odds and ends.
ReplyDelete