Tea at Trianon: Seeing the Lighter Side

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Seeing the Lighter Side

The world is becoming such a dark place that I fear there is very little genuine humor left (except on a few of my favorite blogs.) Here is an essay by Mitchell Kalpakgian about the ability to see the lighter side. To quote:

Nonsense is evidence of liveliness and a youthful spirit. As Chesterton remarks in Orthodoxy, "angels can fly because they take themselves lightly," and "a characteristic of great saints is their power of levity." Although nonsense does not have a literal meaning or present historical fact or represent scientific truth, it possesses poetic knowledge -- the ability to make new metaphors, see fresh comparisons, and form striking analogies in original ways....

Silliness is healthy medicine, and counteracts the disease of seriousness. In Chesterton's words from Orthodoxy, "Pride is the downward drag of all things into an easy solemnity. One 'settles down' into a sort of selfish seriousness, but one has to rise to a gay forgetfulness. A man 'falls' into a brown study; he reaches up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue.... Satan fell by the force of gravity." Share