Donne, Modern as Ourselves?
Phil Innes
cohesion and regeneration in English writing. Here, at the end of a chapter,
are some remarks on Jonson, Donne then to Shakespeare.
I have some remarks of my own:
1) Who here feels an affinity with Donne as creative agent? This is no minor
question to begin, especially if you have a primarily historical interest in
Elizabethan writers. Possibly your motives are opposite - the historian
wants to substantiate facts and chronologies, sources et. al. in order to
placate and settle the unknown. Creative writers however desire to upset the
apple-cart; to disestablish any status quo, or received ideas, and re-open
settled ideas, no-matter who it discomfits. A powerful psychological factor
when making comments may be a reader's appreciation of his own orientation
to such writers.
2) I notice that the writer below says that we no longer (are able to)
appreciate the Elizabethan period in our current cultural expression, and
are more like Donne who seems to have stepped over it, and who is more a
proto-modern than Sidney, Shakespeare and Spenser.
3) Recently there has been discussion of the nature of the Author of
'Shakespeare's' Work without much definition of his character. Here is a
strong contra-punctual voice, deliberately avoiding Elizabethan and Jacobean
means of expression. Does the nature of this author come over clearer than
toutes les autres? Does this comparison help clarify what is, for example,
'Shakespearean' and what not?
4) I should like to follow this appreciation of Donne, with one of the early
character from Stratford, intending an element of comparison between them
from an historical perspective.
5) It is my primary interest however to review the Author from quite another
perspective, which I previously called 'implicate' [pretentious-sounding,
no?] and which is of greater complexity, even perplexity. However, a
comparison with Donne seems to me to be a way of looking at various
historical canards, possibly providing some insights into the texts
themselves.
Cordially, Phil Innes
~~~~~~~~~~
[...beginning with Jonson]
songs. He also popularised the 'epigram'-a flexible form, which might be
long or short, but is again dominantly intellectual, reflecting on person or
subject. With all this, it is the less surprising that Jonson wrote his
poems the way that Camden had taught him at Westminster, first in prose,
then
turning them into verse. It is hardly the way to gain inspiration, never-
theless Jonson often achieved a classic perfection in his songs and shorter
pieces. He cared everything for 'art'. We are on the way to the
meta-physical school, the cult of cleverness, intellectualism, the
far-fetched conceit: the poets of the next generation were happy to inscribe
themselves of 'the tribe of Ben'.
A Catholic, a member of a persecuted minority, with martyrs in his
family, John Donne did not appreciate the Elizabethan Age-though
he went on one of its grand exploits, the capture of Cadiz-nor did he
think much of its literature. He is a singular, isolated phenomenon, with
no obvious affiliations; of extraordinary originality, emotional intensity,
intellectual vitality, he is already on his way to the next age, a fore-
runner, a precursor. How different a spirit from Sidney, Spenser, Shake-
speare! We could already tell from his images, even if we did not know,
that his was a Catholic background. In one poem we hear of those
whose state
Is poor, disarmed like Papists, not worth hate.
The winds 'in our ruined abbeys roar', and he knows about
Simony and sodomy in churchmen's lives;
about the ways of monks and friars, with their beads and pater-nosters;
fasts are not Puritan, but Carthusian; wasting candle-droppings are kept
like relics.
For, an exceedingly erotic spirit, there is a thin line between religion
and sex in Donne: even his devotion is erotic. And he was obsessed with
sex. Take, again, one poem only:
'On his Mistress Going to Bed.'
Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy:
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times, having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight . . .
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies must unclothed be
To taste whole joys . . .
To teach thee, I am naked first: why then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?
The next poem is more specific in its imagery from war:
Other men war that they their rest may gain,
But we will rest that we may fight again . . .
Near thrusts, pikes, stabs, yea bullets, hurt not here.
How different from those chaste Protestants, Spenser and Sidney!
And again we see how different from the age in that, in his most
ambitious poem, The Progress of the Soul, in the end the soul of heresy,
after a sojourn with Calvin, was to come to rest in the body of Queen
Elizabeth! The poem was, appropriately, abortive and was never finished;
but to it Donne added a coda that expresses a cynical distrust about ever
finding the truth intellectually. This is a Catholic inflexion, not a
Protestant one.
Who'ere thou beest that readst this sullen writ,
Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it,
Let me arrest thy thoughts. Wonder with me
Why ploughing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain's race invented be
And blest Seth vexed us with astronomy.
And the conclusion?-
There's nothing simply good or ill alone: Of every quality comparison, The
only measure is, and judge, opinion. Scepticism, cynicism, relativism: with
that he was finding his way out of Catholicism.
It is an unattractive mixture; but what wins respect is his tormented
search to find truth somehow, somewhere. It took him a long time.
Meanwhile his poetry made a sensation among the young and intelligent. His
method was that of paradox, in verse as in prose; of conceits as
unexpected as might be in order to shock, of analogies so far-fetched as
sometimes to be ridiculous; to twist the accentuation of words and the
rhythms of lines to get away from smoothness, often achieving surprisingly
fine effects; to phrase with telescoped conciseness, and then produce
a catalogue of words, nouns or verbs, one after another. Everything was
done to make verse as different as possible from Elizabethan facility and
ease and regularity. But there is no doubt that this was genuine and
corresponded with Donne's genius: the irregularity of his life is reflected
in the irregularity of his poetry, along with the intellectual restlessness,
torment of mind and spirit-in a word, the Angst-that gives him a
living appeal to us moderns.
Brilliantly gifted, fascinating to women and men-friends alike, he was not a
nice man. Donne's deformation of conventional metrics-for which Ben Jonson
said he should have been hanged-was deliberate and conscious. But
there takes place a comparable breakdown of the famous blank verse line
in the drama, so regular and formal at the beginning. Verse-forms undergo
a certain evolution according to an inner logic, but also in response to
the demands upon them of thought, of content-thus indirectly even
reflecting the conditions of society. Blank verse becomes more flexible,
less end-stopped; with so much pressure of imagination, images, thought, as,
Shakespeare grew older his blank verse became verse-paragraphs. With
others too. A contemporary noticed that blank verse was really too facile
-- for poor poets. In the Caroline drama the deliquescence goes so far,
it often ceases to be recognisable as verse. In Shakespeare difference of
function between verse and prose still exists, in accordance with aesthetic
decorum. Later on, it might often as well be written, as with later Auden,
in the form of prose.
~~~~~
We may conclude that where, before the Elizabethans, there was no
continuous English literature, after them it flourished, rich, mature and
full. They started it. Sidney and Spenser achieved their aim, perhaps
beyond their dreams.
Willedever
>
> 1) Who here feels an affinity with Donne as creative agent?
I like some of his writing, if that's what you mean. If you mean does
his writing make me think I'm like him, no.
>
> 2) I notice that the writer below says that we no longer (are able to)
> appreciate the Elizabethan period in our current cultural expression, and
> are more like Donne ...
I don't think we're like Donne, as a generality, any more than like
the Elizabethans. Donne displays a ~devotion~ which is not
characteristic of our times, as I view them. Despite occasional
forays into high-sounding rhetoric, we're too pragmatic nowadays to
admit such a comparison.
Phil Innes
> > 2) I notice that the writer below says that we no longer (are able to)
> > appreciate the Elizabethan period in our current cultural expression,
and
> > are more like Donne ...
>
> I don't think we're like Donne, as a generality, any more than like
> the Elizabethans. Donne displays a ~devotion~ which is not
> characteristic of our times, as I view them. Despite occasional
> forays into high-sounding rhetoric, we're too pragmatic nowadays to
> admit such a comparison.
In one of the Book Cook articles, the writer makes the same point, speaking
of the difficulty negotiating whatever constituted 'being Elizabethan'. I
think Victorians who could baulk at sexual implications of the Bard, would
not know where to look confronted with a Donne.
By modern, perhaps the writer meant such authors as Lawrence? Or better,
Rimbaud. This modern sense of wrestling with devils and angels, as if even
intellectual life though granted some reprieve from bitter and barbaric
wars, is nevertheless fully engaged in another battle of the spirit?
I think this was Henry Miller's sense of the creative spark of our times.
And arguably, Miller was the last writer of the novel in the C20th
[according to Orwell], and not just America's best, thereby, but of the
world.
The /intensity/ of engagement and struggle in life of
Miller/Lawrence/Rimbaud is perhaps the same as with Donne. What the Author
of the Works engaged seems to me to be some counterpoint of this approach,
and since we have fewer [or none] precedents in Literature or in Life with
the Author, his world is largely beyond the appreciation of our modern
cultural sympathy.
Cordially, Phil Innes
Willedever
>
> The /intensity/ of engagement and struggle in life of
> Miller/Lawrence/Rimbaud is perhaps the same as with Donne. What the Author
> of the Works engaged seems to me to be some counterpoint of this approach,
> and since we have fewer [or none] precedents in Literature or in Life with
> the Author, his world is largely beyond the appreciation of our modern
> cultural sympathy.
It's becoming increasingly difficult even to find culture, by the
standard definitions, in the modern world. Look at Dell Computer
farming out their U.S. customer service to India, for example. Pick
up the phone, dial the number, and you don't know whether the person
who answers is in Dallas or Calcutta. It rather blurs the cultural
divide. As cultural divisions fade, where, then, is "culture" at all?
To identify something, it must be different from something else.
Culture increasingly becomes what people do on weekends, like a hobby.
Will it be long until, when junior asks dad, "Dad, what's a "social
culture?"" dad will reply, "Well, Junior, it's like people having
different hobbies."
Different way of life, you say? Never heard of it. Sounds
impossible. We all live the same.
So when you write, "modern cultural sympathy" you'll have to remember
that I'm a modern westerner, and tell me what you mean. Do they sell
that at Walmart?
:)
I'd say nearly everything before the mass marketing of the automobile
is now beyond our cultural sympathy, or true appreciation,
historically speaking. We live our daily lives so immersed in
technology, it's all we really know. We're immersed in tech the way
earlier peoples were, perhaps, immersed in their religion. But saying
that, doesn't convey any true understanding.
>
>... This modern sense of wrestling with devils and angels, as if even
> intellectual life though granted some reprieve from bitter and barbaric
> wars, is nevertheless fully engaged in another battle of the spirit?
Consider the humble Flea. To Donne, it's an angel. In Donne's poem
he uses the flea to symbolize union with his beloved, marriage, child,
the precious mingling of human life.
Shake-speare mentions fleas a few times, including HenryV.
BOY. Do you not remember, a' saw a flea stick upon
Bardolph's nose, and a' said it was a black soul
burning in hell-fire?
The symbolism there is the reverse of Donne.
But both Donne and S use the flea for symbolism, in an Angel/Devil
way.
Our modern view of fleas? Grab the bug spray! :) A flea nowadays is
a technical problem, to be solved through the mass marketing of
chemical technology.
Donne and S were much closer to each other than we are to either, I
believe.
LynnE
"Willedever" <blags...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4b2c4476.03112...@posting.google.com...
> "Phil Innes" <aong...@sover.net> wrote in message
news:<BXuwb.1544$Ob3.1...@monger.newsread.com>...
> >
> > The /intensity/ of engagement and struggle in life of
> > Miller/Lawrence/Rimbaud is perhaps the same as with Donne. What the
Author
> > of the Works engaged seems to me to be some counterpoint of this
approach,
> > and since we have fewer [or none] precedents in Literature or in Life
with
> > the Author, his world is largely beyond the appreciation of our modern
> > cultural sympathy.
>
> It's becoming increasingly difficult even to find culture, by the
> standard definitions, in the modern world. Look at Dell Computer
> farming out their U.S. customer service to India, for example.
And their Canadian customer service. Sigh.
Pick
> up the phone, dial the number, and you don't know whether the person
> who answers is in Dallas or Calcutta. It rather blurs the cultural
> divide.
As someone who has spent at least thirty hours on the phone to India to try
to get my wireless laptop fixed, I disagree. I think it strengthens the
cultural divide. These guys are making maybe a fifth of what their American
counterparts are making, and I'm also concerned that when they keep saying
"no problem" to every problem I have, and I argue, they are thinking: "Who
is this rich bloody woman who lives in Canada? Doesn't she understand how
privileged she is? Why is she causing us such trouble?" And at some level I
can commiserate with their (projected) point of view.
I'd just like to also put my two cents in regarding Donne.
I always thought he was a fabulous poet. I still do. But then I found out he
was an anti-semite of the worse stripe (his writings on the subject sicken
me) and I don't know which pocket to put that in. So I can't say that my
sensibility approaches his at all, or that his is modern.
LynnE, meandering again.
Phil Innes
"LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:s6Mwb.6924$Eq1.8...@news20.bellglobal.com...
> I'd just like to also put my two cents in regarding Donne.
> I always thought he was a fabulous poet. I still do. But then I found out
he
> was an anti-semite of the worse stripe (his writings on the subject sicken
> me) and I don't know which pocket to put that in. So I can't say that my
> sensibility approaches his at all, or that his is modern.
Hi Lynne, if it is of any worth to your consideration, a greater antisemite
may be Dostoyevski. Nevertheless he expended much, even most, of his
correspondance writing with Jews, whom he evidentally preferred as writers
and cultural commentators.
Susan Sontag in her introduction to Summer in Baded-Baden by Leonid Tsypkin,
amplifies Tsypkin's own comments on his struggle in coming to grips with
this aspect of Dostoyevski - something going on in that relation which
placed this anti-semitism in a lesser category?
Donne was not on anti-semitic. As a 'profound' Catholic he was also
anti-Protestant, and spectacularly anti-Catholic! The wrestling match with
his own soul seems to be of the modern type indicated by the writer of the
piece I cited - quite different from any normal Elizabethan sensibility
which was decidedly more intellectual.
Though I spoke of Lawrence et al, the nearest compound, or reunion, of Donne
and anything normally Elizabethan emerged in mid C19th with Geogre Eliot,
who resurrected this Falstaffian sense of not 'playing along' with this
group or that, coupled with Donne's more fiery sense of personal liberation.
As a writer I suggest that unless there is some high degree of struggle; an
evident amount of unresolved and self-contradicting factors warring in the
text, then the writing is either not honest or not deep. It would certainly
be uncompelling.
Cordially, Phil Innes
> LynnE, meandering again.
>
>
>
bookburn
According to what Le Carre has George Smiley say in *Tinker,
Tailor, Soldier, Spy*, F. Scott Fitzgerald says an artist has the
capability of holding two or more contradictory sets of ideas at
the same time. bb
David L. Webb
"LynnE" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
[...]
> I'd just like to also put my two cents in regarding Donne.
> I always thought he was a fabulous poet. I still do. But then I found out he
> was an anti-semite of the worse stripe (his writings on the subject sicken
> me) and I don't know which pocket to put that in.
As I and others have noted before, it is folly to try to divine the
character or sensibility of an artist from his or her works, as many
anti-Stratfordians are so fond of doing; Donne can perhaps be added to
the list of artists (Richard Wagner, Forrest Carter, etc.) for whom the
loony Looney technique yields conjectural reconstructions that stray far
from fact.
[...]
Phil Innes
"David L. Webb" <david....@dartmouth.edu> wrote in message
news:david.l.webb-6E72...@merrimack.dartmouth.edu...
Are you saying this as a historian or as a Literat? It may be folly for
some, as you say, because they lack the necessary to do so, and are forced
to invent UFOs and such to gloss gaps in their understanding.
You offer a sensible caveat David, however it is too absolute, and overly
defensive.
Cordially, Phil
> [...]
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
I'm familiar with the "Spit in my face you Jews"
poem. Can't say that I've seen anything else
by Donne that might be considered anti-Semitic.
Are you talking about his sermons. (I can't
say that I've read any of them.)
Rob
>
> LynnE, meandering again.
>
>
>
>
Xr...@pxcr8.pxcr.com
Lynne,
The previous post is an old uncompleted draft I sent by accident. (I had
decided that there was reason to bother you with what probably is a pretty
ignorant question.) Please don't feel the least bit obligated to respond.
Rob
KQKnave
Buffet, and scoff, scourge, and crucify me,
For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he,
Who could do no iniquity, hath died.
But by my death can not be satisfied
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety.
They killed once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorified.
Oh let me then, his strange love still admire;
Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment.
And Jacob came clothed in vile harsh attire
But to supplant, and with gainful intent:
God clothed himself in vile man's flesh, that so
He might be weak enough to suffer woe.
Donne, Holy Sonnets XI
The New Testament is "anti-Semitic", if you want to take it
that way:
"Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how
they might entangle them in his talk....
Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to
give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said,
Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites?" Matthew 22.15-18
Are the Jews going to apologize for their "anti-Philistinism"?
"And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying,
What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine,
and taketh away the reproach from Israel? for who is
this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the
armies of the living God?" 1 Samuel 26
Pretty silly, if you ask me.
See my demolition of Monsarrat's RES paper!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/monsarr1.html
The Droeshout portrait is not unusual at all!
http://hometown.aol.com/kqknave/shakenbake.html
Agent Jim
LynnE
it.
In one of his sermons, "A Sermon Preached at St. Dunstan's upon
New-Years-Day, 1624," John Donne, hinting at ritual murder, talks of "the
barbarous and inhumane custom of the Jews" who "always keep in readiness the
blood of some Christian, with which they anoint the body of any that dies
amongst them, with these words, 'If Jesus Christ were the Messiah, then may
the blood of this Christian avail thee to salvation.'"
I came across this several years ago while reading _Shakespeare and the
Jews_, by James Shapiro. I have to say my own blood ran cold when I saw it.
Best wishes,
Lynne
<Xr...@pXcr8.pXcr.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.A41.4.44.031212...@pcr8.pcr.com...
KQKnave
<lynnek...@sympatico.ca> writes:
>It's not an ignorant question at all, and I hope you don't mind my answering
>it.
>
>In one of his sermons, "A Sermon Preached at St. Dunstan's upon
>New-Years-Day, 1624," John Donne, hinting at ritual murder, talks of "the
>barbarous and inhumane custom of the Jews" who "always keep in readiness the
>blood of some Christian, with which they anoint the body of any that dies
>amongst them, with these words, 'If Jesus Christ were the Messiah, then may
>the blood of this Christian avail thee to salvation.'"
>
>I came across this several years ago while reading _Shakespeare and the
>Jews_, by James Shapiro. I have to say my own blood ran cold when I saw it.
>
Sure the reference is correct? I don't see it in that sermon. In that
sermon Donne relates the physical circumcision of the Jews to
a spiritual circumcision of Christians. (New Year's Day was
the Feast of the Circumcision then).
LynnE
"KQKnave" <kqk...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20031212231510...@mb-m17.aol.com...
> In article <SIsCb.15720$aF2.1...@news20.bellglobal.com>, "LynnE"
> <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> writes:
>
> >It's not an ignorant question at all, and I hope you don't mind my
answering
> >it.
> >
> >In one of his sermons, "A Sermon Preached at St. Dunstan's upon
> >New-Years-Day, 1624," John Donne, hinting at ritual murder, talks of "the
> >barbarous and inhumane custom of the Jews" who "always keep in readiness
the
> >blood of some Christian, with which they anoint the body of any that dies
> >amongst them, with these words, 'If Jesus Christ were the Messiah, then
may
> >the blood of this Christian avail thee to salvation.'"
> >
> >I came across this several years ago while reading _Shakespeare and the
> >Jews_, by James Shapiro. I have to say my own blood ran cold when I saw
it.
> >
>
> Sure the reference is correct? I don't see it in that sermon. In that
> sermon Donne relates the physical circumcision of the Jews to
> a spiritual circumcision of Christians. (New Year's Day was
> the Feast of the Circumcision then).
Interesting, Jim. I can't say that it's correct, only that it's correct as
taken from Shapiro. I double checked. He mentions it in several places, and
that's the source he gives for it. The complete source is _The Sermons of
John Donne_, ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, 10 Vols. (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1953-62), Vol. 6, pp. 333-334
I wonder whether he's given the wrong sermon as source or whether the
passage has been expurgated from other editions. If anyone has this edition,
perhaps they'd look and see. I've found Shapiro to be pretty reliable in the
past.
Best wishes,
Lynne
>
>
>
>
>
> Agent Jim
>
KQKnave
<lynnek...@sympatico.ca> writes:
Shapiro has the volume and page number correct. He has the name of the
sermon wrong. It's actually "Preached Upon Christmas Day at St. Paul's, 1625".
I'm not convinced that Donne believed that Jews practiced ritual murder, that
is Shapiro's take on it. Donne's sermon uses Galations 4.4-5 as its theme,
that the messiah would come at " the fulness of time". He goes on to say
that even the Jews considered the time of Christ's birth as "the fulness of
time":
"First we consider it to have been so to the Jews; for this was that fulnesse,
in which all the prophecies concerning the Messias, were exactly fulfilled;
That
he must come whilst the Monarchy of Rome flourished; And before the Temple
of Jerusalem was destroyed; That he must be born in Bethlem; That he must
be born of a Virgin; His person, his actions, his passion so distinctly
prophecyed, so exactly accomplished, as no word being left unfulfilled, this
must necessarily be a fulnesse of time. So fully was the time of the Messias
comming, come, that though some of the Jews say now, that there is no
certain time revealed in the Scriptures when the Messias shall come, and
others of them say, that there was a time determined, and revealed, and
that this time was the time, but by reason of their great sins he did not
come at his time, yet when they examine their own supputations, they are
so convinced with that evidence, that this was the fulnesse of time, that
now they expresse a kind of conditionall acknowledgment of it, by this
barbarous and inhumane custom of theirs, that they always keep in
readinesse the blood of some Christian, with which they anoint the body
of any that dyes amongst them, with these words, if Jesus Christ were
the Messias, then may the blood of this Christian availe thee to salvation:
So that by their doubt, and their implyed consent, in this action, this was
the fulnesse of time, when Christ did come, that the Messias should come."
So Donne is using this story to make a point about the Jews belief
that Christ was the Messiah. I don't see why he has to believe this
literally any more than he has to believe many of the stories in the Bible
literally, because he uses stories like that to illustrate some point. In
any case, in a day when blood-letting was rampant, I doubt that if any
one wanted blood he would have had to resort to murder.
Donne continues:
"And the Devill himself was so full of it, as that in his Oracles he gave
that answer, That an Hebrew childe should be God over all gods, and
brought the Emperor to erect an Altar, to this Messiah Christ Jesus,
though he knew not what he did. This was the fulnesse that filled Jew
and Gentile, Kings and Philosophers, strangers and inhabitants, counterfaits
and devils to the expectation of a Messiah; and when he comes this
fulnesse of time to us, that we feele this Messiah born in ourselves?"
Nothing in what Donne says in this sermon strikes me as "anti-Semitic".
He's doing what preachers do, telling stories to make a point. Donne's
beliefs concerning the Jews were no doubt just like his Christian
contemporaries, when to be a Christian meant in part opposing oneself
to the Jews, while in other ways accepting their heritage. In fact, other
sermons by Donne, for example the New Years Day sermon, make
a point of relating the old Jewish customs to the newer (Improved! More
Sparkling!) Christian religion.
Lynne
Thanks for that correction. Rather an egregious error on his part.
I dunno, Jim. He calls it a "barbarous and inhumane custom..." To me
that means he believes that the Jews literally participate in it. And
if they participate in it, where do they get the blood from? Blood
letting might have been rampant, but I can't see a Christian sitting
still while a Jew took his blood, can you? And it would have had to be
fresh blood. If one reads Shapiro and other authors who speak about
blood libel etc. with regard to this period, it seems clear that many
Christians of the time believed Jews capable of all sorts of crimes,
including murder.
>
> Donne continues:
>
> "And the Devill himself was so full of it, as that in his Oracles he gave
> that answer, That an Hebrew childe should be God over all gods, and
> brought the Emperor to erect an Altar, to this Messiah Christ Jesus,
> though he knew not what he did. This was the fulnesse that filled Jew
> and Gentile, Kings and Philosophers, strangers and inhabitants, counterfaits
> and devils to the expectation of a Messiah; and when he comes this
> fulnesse of time to us, that we feele this Messiah born in ourselves?"
>
> Nothing in what Donne says in this sermon strikes me as "anti-Semitic".
> He's doing what preachers do, telling stories to make a point. Donne's
> beliefs concerning the Jews were no doubt just like his Christian
> contemporaries, when to be a Christian meant in part opposing oneself
> to the Jews, while in other ways accepting their heritage. In fact, other
> sermons by Donne, for example the New Years Day sermon, make
> a point of relating the old Jewish customs to the newer (Improved! More
> Sparkling!) Christian religion.
Yes, but I think it was quite usual to talk reasonably of Jewish
customs or even to learn Hebrew, whilst vilifying the Jews themselves,
who by the way were not even allowed to live in England at the time.
It is hard for me to see his sermon as anything other than
anti-semitic.
Best wishes,
Lynne
Phil Innes
"Lynne" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com...
> Yes, but I think it was quite usual to talk reasonably of Jewish
> customs or even to learn Hebrew, whilst vilifying the Jews themselves,
> who by the way were not even allowed to live in England at the time.
> It is hard for me to see his sermon as anything other than
> anti-semitic.
Except Jews did live in England at the time, though many writers chose not
to countenance the fact.
Jewish influence was the strong fuel for much Neo-Platonism.
One more point - I notice that a fear of Jewish blood-letting [baby-eating,
and so on] may have been prevalent in the country, but this is a sort of
fear-of-foreigners by simple country folk issue, no? Who, with any
education, wrote about actual beastliness, rather than reported on the fear
of it?
Maybe one more - Donne was certainly anti-Jewish, he was also anti-Catholic
and anti-Protestant. He didn't like neo-Platonists either. His dynamic was
like a more fiery-Falstaff, he sought personal release from compulsory
association with each of these ideologies.
Cordially, Phil
> Best wishes,
> Lynne
Lynne
> "Lynne" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com...
>
> > Yes, but I think it was quite usual to talk reasonably of Jewish
> > customs or even to learn Hebrew, whilst vilifying the Jews themselves,
> > who by the way were not even allowed to live in England at the time.
> > It is hard for me to see his sermon as anything other than
> > anti-semitic.
>
> Except Jews did live in England at the time, though many writers chose not
> to countenance the fact.
> Jewish influence was the strong fuel for much Neo-Platonism.
Jews could not live openly as Jews. They had to convert and at least
appear to be Christians. There were of course many Jews or "New
Christians," Lopez, the Queen's physician, to name one who came to a
bad end. Florio, Southampton's tutor, was another. Nunes, a doctor to
Burghley's household and a spy, was a third. Emilia Bassano's family,
brought over from Venice by Henry VIII, was also Jewish. But the only
Jew that I know of in Elizabethan times who chose not to hide his
Jewishness, a mining expert, disappeared. The problem persisted under
the Stuarts. Jews were not allowed in the country from the time they
were expelled in 1290, until they were officially allowed back under
the Jew Bill of the mid 1700s. Many Englishmen(to their knowledge) had
never seen a Jew, and so they were easy to target.
>
> One more point - I notice that a fear of Jewish blood-letting [baby-eating,
> and so on] may have been prevalent in the country, but this is a sort of
> fear-of-foreigners by simple country folk issue, no? Who, with any
> education, wrote about actual beastliness, rather than reported on the fear
> of it?
No, Phil, I don't think so. If you read the literature of and
pertaining to the period, you'll see that Jews were feared and hated
in country and city alike. Who wrote negatively of Jews? Well, Donne,
of course. Marlowe. Chaucer had earlier. And many many others wrote
very negatively about them, often in theological terms. Il Pecerone
was also circulating in translation and was a source for MOV.
Christians believed the Jews used their blood to make matzos, for
example, and thought Jews stole and murdered Christian children. There
is still a town in Europe which commemorates such a story every year,
despite the fact that the Vatican has asked them to stop. Hugh of
Lincoln, much earlier, was another such "blood libel" story that
persisted almost into modern times.
Shakespeare was quite unusual. He gave Shylock a voice that at times
we can empathise with. It's hard to decide where the bard stood with
regard to Jews. And interestingly, he chose to change early versions
of the story MOV is based on, so that the pound of flesh was closest
to the heart, and was not the genitals of the victim. I imagine the
earlier versions were rooted in a fear of circumcision.
>
> Maybe one more - Donne was certainly anti-Jewish, he was also anti-Catholic
> and anti-Protestant. He didn't like neo-Platonists either. His dynamic was
> like a more fiery-Falstaff, he sought personal release from compulsory
> association with each of these ideologies.
The more you say about him, the less I like him and the less modern I
think his sensibilities were. And there's a great difference between
seeking personal release from ideologies or religions and denigrating
their proponents.
Best wishes,
Lynne, who is supposed to be working, but is fascinated by this
thread.
>
> Cordially, Phil
>
Phil Innes
As you have said. And if there were other Jews of influence they were not
written of, though may have left other signs of their population.
> >
> > One more point - I notice that a fear of Jewish blood-letting
[baby-eating,
> > and so on] may have been prevalent in the country, but this is a sort of
> > fear-of-foreigners by simple country folk issue, no? Who, with any
> > education, wrote about actual beastliness, rather than reported on the
fear
> > of it?
>
> No, Phil, I don't think so. If you read the literature of and
> pertaining to the period, you'll see that Jews were feared and hated
> in country and city alike.
This is a very interesting area of speculation where little direct evidence
supports any view, as much as I know. From the Work we have a certain
villainy, and also the most passionate expressions of humanness from the
mouth of a Jew.
> Who wrote negatively of Jews? Well, Donne,
> of course.
And negatively of everyone. I draw your attention to the relative fact that
Donne was no more down on Jews than Proddys.
> Marlowe.
Yet Marlow actively employed Jewish mysticism, sub voce.
> Chaucer had earlier.
200 years earlier.
> And many many others wrote
> very negatively about them, often in theological terms.
Classical scapegoats, which psychologically I also ask you to consider, is a
factor of /public/ group reactionism, rather than individual sensibility.
> Il Pecerone
> was also circulating in translation and was a source for MOV.
> Christians believed the Jews used their blood to make matzos, for
> example, and thought Jews stole and murdered Christian children. There
> is still a town in Europe which commemorates such a story every year,
> despite the fact that the Vatican has asked them to stop. Hugh of
> Lincoln, much earlier, was another such "blood libel" story that
> persisted almost into modern times.
It is my opinion than the Jews understood something of menstruation, and the
force of women, that was entirely antithetical to Vatican's views,
[masculine dominant, then and now] but of which the Vatican owned the press.
> Shakespeare was quite unusual. He gave Shylock a voice that at times
> we can empathise with. It's hard to decide where the bard stood with
> regard to Jews. And interestingly, he chose to change early versions
> of the story MOV is based on,
yes, isn't this a strange episode for the Author?
> so that the pound of flesh was closest
> to the heart, and was not the genitals of the victim. I imagine the
> earlier versions were rooted in a fear of circumcision.
yes, quite a likely reaction. and another source of blood, no? jacobeans
were as prudish as many are now.
> > Maybe one more - Donne was certainly anti-Jewish, he was also
anti-Catholic
> > and anti-Protestant. He didn't like neo-Platonists either. His dynamic
was
> > like a more fiery-Falstaff, he sought personal release from compulsory
> > association with each of these ideologies.
>
> The more you say about him, the less I like him and the less modern I
> think his sensibilities were.
<lol> but Lynne, you are a woman! how will you place any liking in your
philosophy, when the subject is so fascinating, certainly not cute, possibly
compelling?! this was the result of his own public at the time, from men and
women both.
> And there's a great difference between
> seeking personal release from ideologies or religions and denigrating
> their proponents.
true, yet this comment does not sufficiently bite the subject
ask thy husband his frank opinion [who more could I recommend?]
and, strange though we be, yet we be males, forlorn, forsooth, and vastly
proud of all, of course :)
> Best wishes,
> Lynne, who is supposed to be working, but is fascinated by this
> thread.
As with Mr. Fowles, such fascinations...
Cordially, Phil
> >
> > Cordially, Phil
> >
KQKnave
lynnek...@sympatico.ca (Lynne) writes:
Not really. Errors in the notes are common in scholarly books.
Roger Stritmatter might think that it invalidates everything he says,
but it doesn't.
A figure of speech, and "barbarous" and "inhuman" or "inhumane" could
have different meanings then compared with how we use them today,
for example "rustic" or "impolite", as in "Fit for the mountains and the
barbarous caves/ Where manners ne'er were preached!" Twelfth Night
4.1.48-49.
>And
>if they participate in it, where do they get the blood from?
As far as the origin of the bloodI don't know what Donne was thinking
when he wrote that passage, but today, you can make a buck or two
selling blood. I can't imagine that things were any different then. If someone
needed blood, I'm sure there would be someone else willing to sell it.
>Blood
>letting might have been rampant, but I can't see a Christian sitting
>still while a Jew took his blood, can you?
Sure, a poor Christian in need of some cash.
>And it would have had to be
>fresh blood.
Why? The passage in Donne doesn't mention anything about the
freshness of the blood.
>If one reads Shapiro and other authors who speak about
>blood libel etc. with regard to this period, it seems clear that many
>Christians of the time believed Jews capable of all sorts of crimes,
>including murder.
I don't doubt it, but surely these same Christians also believed
that pretty much any person was capable of murder.
>> Donne continues:
>>
>> "And the Devill himself was so full of it, as that in his Oracles he gave
>> that answer, That an Hebrew childe should be God over all gods, and
>> brought the Emperor to erect an Altar, to this Messiah Christ Jesus,
>> though he knew not what he did. This was the fulnesse that filled Jew
>> and Gentile, Kings and Philosophers, strangers and inhabitants,
>counterfaits
>> and devils to the expectation of a Messiah; and when he comes this
>> fulnesse of time to us, that we feele this Messiah born in ourselves?"
>>
>> Nothing in what Donne says in this sermon strikes me as "anti-Semitic".
>> He's doing what preachers do, telling stories to make a point. Donne's
>> beliefs concerning the Jews were no doubt just like his Christian
>> contemporaries, when to be a Christian meant in part opposing oneself
>> to the Jews, while in other ways accepting their heritage. In fact, other
>> sermons by Donne, for example the New Years Day sermon, make
>> a point of relating the old Jewish customs to the newer (Improved! More
>> Sparkling!) Christian religion.
>
>Yes, but I think it was quite usual to talk reasonably of Jewish
>customs or even to learn Hebrew, whilst vilifying the Jews themselves,
>who by the way were not even allowed to live in England at the time.
>It is hard for me to see his sermon as anything other than
>anti-semitic
Well, you are going to have to define "anti-Semitic" a little better.
Christianity is, after all, fundamentally "anti-Semitic". Shakespeare's
portrayal of Shylock could be taken to be "anti-Semitic". But was
Donne's "anti-Semitism" some profound hatred that he personally
had for the Jews, or was it just part of the world view of Christians
of his time? It seems to me to be a little naive to condemn him with
"anti-Semitism" (used in the way that this expression has come to
mean today). You'll be hard pressed to find a Christian of those times
who did not exhibit some of what you call "anti-Semitism" (from Dryden,
Absolom and Achitophel):
"The Jews, a headstrong, moody, murmuring race,
As ever tried th'extent and stretch of grace;
God's pampered people whom, debauched with ease,
No king could govern, nor no God could please;
(Gods they had tried of every shape and size,
That god-smiths could produce, or priests devise:)
These Adam-wits, too fortunately free,
Began to dream they wanted liberty:
And when no rule, no precedent, was found
Of men, by laws less circumscribed and bound,
They led their wild desires to woods and caves,
And thought that all but savages were slaves."
Mark Steese
news:20031215174752...@mb-m07.aol.com:
>>And if they participate in it, where do they get the blood from?
>
> As far as the origin of the bloodI don't know what Donne was thinking
> when he wrote that passage, but today, you can make a buck or two
> selling blood. I can't imagine that things were any different then.
Try harder. Absent any means of typing, preserving, and transfusing
human blood, or otherwise making it medically useful, it has no
commercial value. You can't sell something no one wants to buy.
> If someone needed blood, I'm sure there would be someone else willing
> to sell it.
But no one needed to buy blood in sixteenth-century England. Donne was
an imaginative chap, but I doubt if even he would have imagined that
Christians were willingly selling their blood to Jews for use in
blasphemous rituals.
>>Blood letting might have been rampant, but I can't see a Christian
>>sitting still while a Jew took his blood, can you?
>
> Sure, a poor Christian in need of some cash.
Sure, why not risk eternal damnation for some ready cash? The relevant
question isn't whether you can see it, but whether Donne could have seen
it, and since Jews were not, in fact, practicing blasphemous rituals
with Christians' blood, it is highly unlikely that Donne would have
believed they were but also believed they were obtaining the blood via
relatively humane cash transactions rather than murder.
>>And it would have had to be fresh blood.
>
> Why? The passage in Donne doesn't mention anything about the
> freshness of the blood.
As Donne was presumably aware, blood didn't keep very well in the
sixteenth century. If the Jews kept a supply on hand at all times for
anointing the dead, it would have had to be fresh.
>>If one reads Shapiro and other authors who speak about blood libel
>>etc. with regard to this period, it seems clear that many
>>Christians of the time believed Jews capable of all sorts of crimes,
>>including murder.
>
> I don't doubt it, but surely these same Christians also believed
> that pretty much any person was capable of murder.
Yes, and they believed that anybody who kept a supply of Christian blood
handy at all times had committed murder to obtain it.
[snip]
> Well, you are going to have to define "anti-Semitic" a little better.
> Christianity is, after all, fundamentally "anti-Semitic".
It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the term
has no meaning.
--
Mark Steese
unscramble and underscore to email
----------------------------------
The concept of being quoted out of context was invented, I believe, by
people who blurt out ill-advised statements and then regret them later.
True out-of-context distortion -- someone saying "It's not as if I'm a
thing of evil" and being quoted as bragging "I'm a thing of evil" -- is
rare to the point of being unknown. --Neil Steinberg
John W. Kennedy
> It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
> blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the term
> has no meaning.
The story, as told, doesn't exactly seem "blasphemous" from a
Jewish-but-worried-that-there-might-be-something-in-Xtianity-after-all
viewpoint, which is, after all, what is clearly being posited.
--
John W. Kennedy
"But now is a new thing which is very old--
that the rich make themselves richer and not poorer,
which is the true Gospel, for the poor's sake."
-- Charles Williams. "Judgement at Chelmsford"
Lynne
> In article <cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com>,
> lynnek...@sympatico.ca (Lynne) writes:
>
> > >> Shapiro has the volume and page number correct. He has the name of the
> >> sermon wrong. It's actually "Preached Upon Christmas Day at St. Paul's,
> >1625".
> >
> >Thanks for that correction. Rather an egregious error on his part.
>
> Not really. Errors in the notes are common in scholarly books.
> Roger Stritmatter might think that it invalidates everything he says,
> but it doesn't.
It's amazing how Dr. Stritmatter finds his way into almost every
conversation. I really don't need his help. I *think* I can make my
own case.
> >> snip
> >> So Donne is using this story to make a point about the Jews belief
> >> that Christ was the Messiah. I don't see why he has to believe this
> >> literally any more than he has to believe many of the stories in the Bible
> >> literally, because he uses stories like that to illustrate some point. In
> >> any case, in a day when blood-letting was rampant, I doubt that if any
> >> one wanted blood he would have had to resort to murder.
> >
> >I dunno, Jim. He calls it a "barbarous and inhumane custom..." To me
> >that means he believes that the Jews literally participate in it.
>
> A figure of speech, and "barbarous" and "inhuman" or "inhumane" could
> have different meanings then compared with how we use them today,
> for example "rustic" or "impolite", as in "Fit for the mountains and the
> barbarous caves/ Where manners ne'er were preached!" Twelfth Night
> 4.1.48-49.
I think we know what he meant. It's pretty clear.
>
> >And
> >if they participate in it, where do they get the blood from?
>
> As far as the origin of the bloodI don't know what Donne was thinking
> when he wrote that passage, but today, you can make a buck or two
> selling blood. I can't imagine that things were any different then. If someone
> needed blood, I'm sure there would be someone else willing to sell it.
>
> >Blood
> >letting might have been rampant, but I can't see a Christian sitting
> >still while a Jew took his blood, can you?
>
> Sure, a poor Christian in need of some cash.
Yes, Jim, I can just see him sitting on the corner with his sleeve
rolled up to the top of his doublet, waiting patiently for some Jew to
come by and let his blood for a groat or two.
>
> >And it would have had to be
> >fresh blood.
>
> Why? The passage in Donne doesn't mention anything about the
> freshness of the blood.
Because unfresh blood coagulates so it becomes impossible to anoint
anything with it.
>
> >If one reads Shapiro and other authors who speak about
> >blood libel etc. with regard to this period, it seems clear that many
> >Christians of the time believed Jews capable of all sorts of crimes,
> >including murder.
>
> I don't doubt it, but surely these same Christians also believed
> that pretty much any person was capable of murder.
Not in the same way. Read the material of the time. Read the modern
criticism. I can give you a list if you like. You might actually start
with Shapiro's book, _Shakespeare and the Jews_, or _The Jews in the
History of England 1485-1850- by David Katz, or _Shylock: A Legend and
its Legacy_ by John Gross. Together they paint a rather vivid picture
of what Christians thought about Jews and how these thoughts differed
from what they believed about themselves.
You make a good point; however, what you call the "world view" of most
Christians of his time may make it more understandable, but it still
doesn't mean that he wasn't anti-semitic.
>It seems to me to be a little naive to condemn him with
> "anti-Semitism" (used in the way that this expression has come to
> mean today).
I don't find it naive at all. Someone who hates Jews is anti-semitic,
no matter what the reasons for it or when he said it. This definition
applies unless you happen to be Joe Sobran, who says an anti-semite is
someone Jews hate.
Best wishes,
Lynne
snip
>
> Agent Jim
Mark Steese
$655.34...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
> Mark Steese wrote:
>> It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
>> blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the
>> term has no meaning.
>
> The story, as told, doesn't exactly seem "blasphemous" from a
> Jewish-but-worried-that-there-might-be-something-in-Xtianity-after-all
> viewpoint, which is, after all, what is clearly being posited.
It certainly would have seemed blasphemous to Donne and his audience,
who were familiar with the sacrament of extreme unction, which Donne's
particular blood-libel clearly evokes. If it had occurred to Donne that
his mythical Jews didn't think their actions were blasphemous, I think
he would have ascribed that to their barbarism.
Donne argues that the Jews not only anoint their dead with the blood of
Christians, but that they do so because they secretly believe that Jesus
actually was the Messiah. He will not even allow the possibility that
they are honestly mistaken in their beliefs; they are so corrupt that
they know the truth and still reject it. How is this not anti-Semitic?
The thing I find puzzling is why Jim, and now you, are so keen on
pretending that Donne's sermon was not blatantly anti-Semitic. That he
could hold such beliefs certainly complicates my picture of him, but I
can deal with it. Is it really be so traumatic for either of you to
acknowledge that a seventeenth-century Anglican clergyman held views
that many now consider repugnant? He did.
Lorenzo4344
>From: "John W. Kennedy" jwk...@attglobal.net
>Date: 12/15/2003
>Mark Steese wrote:
>> It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
>> blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the term
>> has no meaning.
>
>The story, as told, doesn't exactly seem "blasphemous" from a
>Jewish-but-worried-that-there-might-be-something-in-Xtianity-after-all
>viewpoint, which is, after all, what is clearly being posited.
>
So it seems. And why take a chance? Is insurance blasphemous?
Lorenzo
"Mark the music."
Mark Steese
news:20031216033322...@mb-m19.aol.com:
>>Mark Steese wrote:
>>> It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of
>>> Christian blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic,
>>> then the term has no meaning.
>>
>>The story, as told, doesn't exactly seem "blasphemous" from a
>>Jewish-but-worried-that-there-might-be-something-in-Xtianity-after-all
>>viewpoint, which is, after all, what is clearly being posited.
>
> So it seems. And why take a chance? Is insurance blasphemous?
Right. I'm sure Donne and his audience thought the mythical Christian-
blood-smearing Jews might actually have some chance of achieving
salvation via their gruesome parody of extreme unction.
It's rather disconcerting that you're the third person so far who's
treated Donne's morbid fantasy about the Jews as though it might have
some basis in fact.
KQKnave
>> A figure of speech, and "barbarous" and "inhuman" or "inhumane" could
>> have different meanings then compared with how we use them today,
>> for example "rustic" or "impolite", as in "Fit for the mountains and the
>> barbarous caves/ Where manners ne'er were preached!" Twelfth Night
>> 4.1.48-49.
>
>I think we know what he meant. It's pretty clear.
Ah, I see. But not Jonson's statements about Shakespeare?
>>
>> >And
>> >if they participate in it, where do they get the blood from?
>>
>> As far as the origin of the bloodI don't know what Donne was thinking
>> when he wrote that passage, but today, you can make a buck or two
>> selling blood. I can't imagine that things were any different then. If
>someone
>> needed blood, I'm sure there would be someone else willing to sell it.
>>
>> >Blood
>> >letting might have been rampant, but I can't see a Christian sitting
>> >still while a Jew took his blood, can you?
>>
>> Sure, a poor Christian in need of some cash.
>
>Yes, Jim, I can just see him sitting on the corner with his sleeve
>rolled up to the top of his doublet, waiting patiently for some Jew to
>come by and let his blood for a groat or two.
I'm sure you can come up with more realistic scenarios than that.
>>
>> >And it would have had to be
>> >fresh blood.
>>
>> Why? The passage in Donne doesn't mention anything about the
>> freshness of the blood.
>
>Because unfresh blood coagulates so it becomes impossible to anoint
>anything with it.
You can anoint with a powdered, dried blood. But are you certain
that there was no way to keep blood liquid? Surely the alchemists
must have worked something out.
>>
>> >If one reads Shapiro and other authors who speak about
>> >blood libel etc. with regard to this period, it seems clear that many
>> >Christians of the time believed Jews capable of all sorts of crimes,
>> >including murder.
>>
>> I don't doubt it, but surely these same Christians also believed
>> that pretty much any person was capable of murder.
>
>Not in the same way. Read the material of the time. Read the modern
>criticism. I can give you a list if you like. You might actually start
>with Shapiro's book, _Shakespeare and the Jews_, or _The Jews in the
>History of England 1485-1850- by David Katz, or _Shylock: A Legend and
>its Legacy_ by John Gross. Together they paint a rather vivid picture
>of what Christians thought about Jews and how these thoughts differed
>from what they believed about themselves.
I don't doubt that Christians of the time had many superstitious and
ignorant beliefs about Jews. And I'm sure that many Jews had
ignorant and superstitious beliefs about Christians.
[snip]
>> Well, you are going to have to define "anti-Semitic" a little better.
>> Christianity is, after all, fundamentally "anti-Semitic". Shakespeare's
>> portrayal of Shylock could be taken to be "anti-Semitic". But was
>> Donne's "anti-Semitism" some profound hatred that he personally
>> had for the Jews, or was it just part of the world view of Christians
>> of his time?
>
>You make a good point; however, what you call the "world view" of most
>Christians of his time may make it more understandable, but it still
>doesn't mean that he wasn't anti-semitic.
If you want me to believe that he was anti-Semitic, in the modern
sense of a personal hatred of Jews, you are going to have to show
me something other than a brief passage mentioning a ritual
he had heard about, used to make another point.
>>It seems to me to be a little naive to condemn him with
>> "anti-Semitism" (used in the way that this expression has come to
>> mean today).
>
>I don't find it naive at all. Someone who hates Jews is anti-semitic,
>no matter what the reasons for it or when he said it. This definition
>applies unless you happen to be Joe Sobran, who says an anti-semite is
>someone Jews hate.
I don't see how that passage shows that Donne hated Jews. If you
read his other sermons, it's obvious that he sees the Jews as
human beings. Donne was no more or less anti-Semitic than Shakespeare.
KQKnave
<makes...@charter.net> writes:
>The thing I find puzzling is why Jim, and now you, are so keen on
>pretending that Donne's sermon was not blatantly anti-Semitic. That he
>could hold such beliefs certainly complicates my picture of him, but I
>can deal with it. Is it really be so traumatic for either of you to
>acknowledge that a seventeenth-century Anglican clergyman held views
>that many now consider repugnant? He did.
>
What "view" was that, Steese? I don't see any "view", I see a legendary
story about the Jews mentioned in passing to illustrate another point.
KQKnave
>Shakespeare was quite unusual. He gave Shylock a voice that at times
>we can empathise with. It's hard to decide where the bard stood with
>regard to Jews.
Shakespeare makes a major Jewish character in his play demand an actual
pound of flesh, and then disposes of that character after he is brought
to justice. As you said in another post "I think we know what he meant.
It's pretty clear." I doubt that will prevent you from ambiguizing.
>And interestingly, he chose to change early versions
>of the story MOV is based on, so that the pound of flesh was closest
>to the heart, and was not the genitals of the victim. I imagine the
>earlier versions were rooted in a fear of circumcision.
Interesting that the pound of flesh was located in a place that would
kill a man, don't you think? If you read Donne's sermon on New Year's
Day 1624/5 at St. Dunstan's, you'll see him devote several pages
to humanizing and empathizing with an old Jew, Abraham, as Abraham
struggles to understand God's command to become circumsized. That
alone should excuse Donne from any charges of "anti-Semitism", and
rather charge his mention of the blood ritual to ignorance.
KQKnave
<makes...@charter.net> writes:
>
>kqk...@aol.com (KQKnave) wrote in
>news:20031215174752...@mb-m07.aol.com:
>
>>>And if they participate in it, where do they get the blood from?
>>
>> As far as the origin of the bloodI don't know what Donne was thinking
>> when he wrote that passage, but today, you can make a buck or two
>> selling blood. I can't imagine that things were any different then.
>
>Try harder. Absent any means of typing, preserving, and transfusing
>human blood, or otherwise making it medically useful, it has no
>commercial value. You can't sell something no one wants to buy.
But supposedly Jews needed it, and it would certainly make more
sense to buy it rather than kill for it. Are you certain that there was
no method to preserve blood in its liquid form? Couldn't you sprinkle
dried blood and accomplish the same thing?
You don't need to have poor Christians hanging around waiting to
sell their blood, as Kositsky ridiculously imagines things. I'm quite
sure that there were enough paupers in England to provide a source
for any Jew who looked.
>> If someone needed blood, I'm sure there would be someone else willing
>> to sell it.
>
>But no one needed to buy blood in sixteenth-century England. Donne was
>an imaginative chap, but I doubt if even he would have imagined that
>Christians were willingly selling their blood to Jews for use in
>blasphemous rituals.
Why? If he believed that some Jews were sympathetic toward Christianity,
then why wouldn't these same Jews have contacts with Christians who
were sympathetic with them? Do you really believe that the average
Christian was educated enough in those days that they would fully
understand what was blasphemous and what was not? These same
people believed that dead pidgeons would suck the bad humours out
of them.
>>>Blood letting might have been rampant, but I can't see a Christian
>>>sitting still while a Jew took his blood, can you?
>>
>> Sure, a poor Christian in need of some cash.
>
>Sure, why not risk eternal damnation for some ready cash?
Ah, I see. So there was never any murder or adultery then either.
Come on Steese.
>The relevant
>question isn't whether you can see it, but whether Donne could have seen
>it, and since Jews were not, in fact, practicing blasphemous rituals
>with Christians' blood, it is highly unlikely that Donne would have
>believed they were but also believed they were obtaining the blood via
>relatively humane cash transactions rather than murder.
I have no idea what Donne thought about the source of the blood. He
doesn't say anything about it. All he says is that they "keep in readiness
the blood of some Christian".
>>>And it would have had to be fresh blood.
>>
>> Why? The passage in Donne doesn't mention anything about the
>> freshness of the blood.
>
>As Donne was presumably aware, blood didn't keep very well in the
>sixteenth century. If the Jews kept a supply on hand at all times for
>anointing the dead, it would have had to be fresh.
Still don't see why dried blood or blood treated in some way to
remain liquid wasn't possible. Did you check all those alchemical
recipes?
>
>>>If one reads Shapiro and other authors who speak about blood libel
>>>etc. with regard to this period, it seems clear that many
>>>Christians of the time believed Jews capable of all sorts of crimes,
>>>including murder.
>>
>> I don't doubt it, but surely these same Christians also believed
>> that pretty much any person was capable of murder.
>
>Yes, and they believed that anybody who kept a supply of Christian blood
>handy at all times had committed murder to obtain it.
You don't know that. You are assuming that Donne thought that.
>[snip]
>> Well, you are going to have to define "anti-Semitic" a little better.
>> Christianity is, after all, fundamentally "anti-Semitic".
>
>It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
>blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the term
>has no meaning.
Steese, crawl out of your hermetically sealed, black and white world
for a second, and think about what anti-Semitism means today, and
how Kositsky is using the term to dismiss Donne while excusing
Shakespeare. Supposedly what Donne said about the blood ritual
means to her that he hated Jews. I can't see how a brief mention
of a ritual which he may or may not have really believed existed,
which was brought up to illustrate another point entirely, means
that Donne hated Jews. Today, the term "anti-Semitism" has come
to mean a personal hatred of the Jews, to the point that you want
them exterminated. You could, if you want to call Donne "anti-Semitic"
in the general sense of just not wanting to practice or promote
Judaism, call him "anti-Semitic", but only if you recognize that
*every* Christian, including Shakespeare, including Christianity itself,
was "anti-Semitic" in that sense, and that Donne was hardly
extraordinary. In fact, if you read Donne's sermons, for example,
the sermon preached on New Year's Day in 1624/5 at St. Dunstan's,
you will see that he goes to great lengths to humanize the Jews.
In that sermon, he spends four or five pages bringing Abraham to life,
making his listeners understand the struggle that Abraham had undergone in
the course of obeying God's order to become circumcised. If Donne
hated Jews, I hardly think he would have gone to the trouble.
Lynne
> In article <cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com>,
> lynnek...@sympatico.ca (Lynne) writes:
>
> >> A figure of speech, and "barbarous" and "inhuman" or "inhumane" could
> >> have different meanings then compared with how we use them today,
> >> for example "rustic" or "impolite", as in "Fit for the mountains and the
> >> barbarous caves/ Where manners ne'er were preached!" Twelfth Night
> >> 4.1.48-49.
> >
> >I think we know what he meant. It's pretty clear.
>
> Ah, I see. But not Jonson's statements about Shakespeare?
Must we always bring in the authorship question when talking about the
Elizabethans or Stuarts? Sigh. If we must I would say that Jonson's
statements might be ambiguous, because they were "literary" poetry or
prose, whereas a statement in a sermon is more likely to have one
meaning only. Ambiguity is a characteristic of literary output and
that is why you'll notice I haven't mentioned Donne's poetry.
>
> >>
> >> >And
> >> >if they participate in it, where do they get the blood from?
> >>
> >> As far as the origin of the bloodI don't know what Donne was thinking
> >> when he wrote that passage, but today, you can make a buck or two
> >> selling blood. I can't imagine that things were any different then. If
> someone
> >> needed blood, I'm sure there would be someone else willing to sell it.
> >>
> >> >Blood
> >> >letting might have been rampant, but I can't see a Christian sitting
> >> >still while a Jew took his blood, can you?
> >>
> >> Sure, a poor Christian in need of some cash.
> >
> >Yes, Jim, I can just see him sitting on the corner with his sleeve
> >rolled up to the top of his doublet, waiting patiently for some Jew to
> >come by and let his blood for a groat or two.
>
> I'm sure you can come up with more realistic scenarios than that.
Of course I could. That's meant to look unrealistic and funny because
your suggestion, which was a "do anything to bypass the idea of blood
libel" kind of statement, was also unrealistic and funny.
>
> >>
> >> >And it would have had to be
> >> >fresh blood.
> >>
> >> Why? The passage in Donne doesn't mention anything about the
> >> freshness of the blood.
> >
> >Because unfresh blood coagulates so it becomes impossible to anoint
> >anything with it.
>
> You can anoint with a powdered, dried blood. But are you certain
> that there was no way to keep blood liquid? Surely the alchemists
> must have worked something out.
And now you're being unrealistic again. Alchemists? John Donne was
suggesting in a Christian sermon that alchemists might keep blood
liquid? I think you must deliberately trying to be funny.
> >>
> >> >If one reads Shapiro and other authors who speak about
> >> >blood libel etc. with regard to this period, it seems clear that many
> >> >Christians of the time believed Jews capable of all sorts of crimes,
> >> >including murder.
> >>
> >> I don't doubt it, but surely these same Christians also believed
> >> that pretty much any person was capable of murder.
> >
> >Not in the same way. Read the material of the time. Read the modern
> >criticism. I can give you a list if you like. You might actually start
> >with Shapiro's book, _Shakespeare and the Jews_, or _The Jews in the
> >History of England 1485-1850- by David Katz, or _Shylock: A Legend and
> >its Legacy_ by John Gross. Together they paint a rather vivid picture
> >of what Christians thought about Jews and how these thoughts differed
> >from what they believed about themselves.
>
> I don't doubt that Christians of the time had many superstitious and
> ignorant beliefs about Jews. And I'm sure that many Jews had
> ignorant and superstitious beliefs about Christians.
Absolutely. Although they didn't need them so much because many of
their ideas about Christians were true. The Christians killed Jews (in
great numbers during the Crusades, to use but one example), they
exiled them, and before their exile Jews were made to live around
cathedrals (ever been to Lincoln Cathedral?) so they could be trotted
out and hassled on Christian holidays, etc. In other words, the
Christians held the power as the Jews were a minority, and they saw
the Jews, as a people, responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. The
fact that Jesus was Jewish also was too often forgotten, or he was
understood to be in a different category.
>
> [snip]
>
> >> Well, you are going to have to define "anti-Semitic" a little better.
> >> Christianity is, after all, fundamentally "anti-Semitic". Shakespeare's
> >> portrayal of Shylock could be taken to be "anti-Semitic". But was
> >> Donne's "anti-Semitism" some profound hatred that he personally
> >> had for the Jews, or was it just part of the world view of Christians
> >> of his time?
> >
> >You make a good point; however, what you call the "world view" of most
> >Christians of his time may make it more understandable, but it still
> >doesn't mean that he wasn't anti-semitic.
>
> If you want me to believe that he was anti-Semitic, in the modern
> sense of a personal hatred of Jews, you are going to have to show
> me something other than a brief passage mentioning a ritual
> he had heard about, used to make another point.
It is a "blood libel," Jim. I've suggested books to you so you can see
how widespread that kind of statement was, and how it showed intense
hatred of the Jews. If you want me to reproduce everything scholars
say about the period and the people (including Donne) who lived then,
it would take several days. I don't have the time to do it and I'm
sure you don't have the inclination to read all I write. What
fascinates me most, though, is your disinclination to believe that
Donne was talking about ritual murder and that he was an anti-semite.
>
> >>It seems to me to be a little naive to condemn him with
> >> "anti-Semitism" (used in the way that this expression has come to
> >> mean today).
> >
> >I don't find it naive at all. Someone who hates Jews is anti-semitic,
> >no matter what the reasons for it or when he said it. This definition
> >applies unless you happen to be Joe Sobran, who says an anti-semite is
> >someone Jews hate.
>
> I don't see how that passage shows that Donne hated Jews. If you
> read his other sermons, it's obvious that he sees the Jews as
> human beings. Donne was no more or less anti-Semitic than Shakespeare.
I'm not sure how true that is. All we have of Shakespeare is his
portrait of Shylock, which I see has been brought up elsewhere,
together with other writings by Donne. If I can get to those remarks,
I'll respond to them.
Best wishes,
Lynne
Lynne
> In article <cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com>,
> lynnek...@sympatico.ca (Lynne) writes:
>
> >Shakespeare was quite unusual. He gave Shylock a voice that at times
> >we can empathise with. It's hard to decide where the bard stood with
> >regard to Jews.
>
> Shakespeare makes a major Jewish character in his play demand an actual
> pound of flesh, and then disposes of that character after he is brought
> to justice. As you said in another post "I think we know what he meant.
> It's pretty clear." I doubt that will prevent you from ambiguizing.
Well, Shylock *is* IMO an ambiguous character. He is nasty, grasping,
and cruel (although if you look carefully you'll see the reason for
his cruelty towards Antonio is Antonio's cruelty towards him earlier)
but he is also victimized by other characters (none of whom are very
virtuous, by the way), and he has the marvellous "Hath not a Jew..."
speech in which Shakespeare appears to be telling us that like
everyone else, Shylock is a human being and worthy of our concern.
I'll reproduce it for you here:
Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer,
as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
poison us, shall we not die?" (III, i, 58-66)
The fact that I've seen Jewish men play the part lately suggests to me
that others can see the ambiguity in his character. This ambiguity, by
the way, is very unusual for its time.
>
> >And interestingly, he chose to change early versions
> >of the story MOV is based on, so that the pound of flesh was closest
> >to the heart, and was not the genitals of the victim. I imagine the
> >earlier versions were rooted in a fear of circumcision.
>
> Interesting that the pound of flesh was located in a place that would
> kill a man, don't you think?
I'm not saying in the least that what Shylock wanted was "a good
thing," Jim. There's no question it would be murder. I'm just saying
that within the context of the play we can see Shylock both as evil
and at the same time as an intensely human character, out to get
Antonio because Antonio had heaped abuse on him for years.
If you read Donne's sermon on New Year's
> Day 1624/5 at St. Dunstan's, you'll see him devote several pages
> to humanizing and empathizing with an old Jew, Abraham, as Abraham
> struggles to understand God's command to become circumsized. That
> alone should excuse Donne from any charges of "anti-Semitism", and
> rather charge his mention of the blood ritual to ignorance.
First, I would say that Abraham is a Biblical Jew, and the feelings of
Donne and others towards Jews in the Bible, classical Jews if you
will, were intensely different from their feelings towards real Jews
who lived in the world at that time. Many Christians seemed to be able
to separate the two in their minds. In fact they had to, because Jesus
was a real tripping place if they didn't. Second, I would look at
Dickens, much more modern. What more anti-semitic portrait is there
than that of Fagin in _Oliver Twist_? And yet Dickens has a
wonderfully sympathetic Jew, a minor character, in _Our Mutual
Friend_. Does that lessen the greasiness or egregious wickedness of
Fagin, and does it excuse Dickens for painting him so? I'm not sure,
but somehow I don't think so.
Lynne
> In article <Xns9452ACFDC36EC...@216.168.3.44>, Mark Steese
> <makes...@charter.net> writes:
>
> >
> >kqk...@aol.com (KQKnave) wrote in
> >news:20031215174752...@mb-m07.aol.com:
> >
> Steese, crawl out of your hermetically sealed, black and white world
> for a second, and think about what anti-Semitism means today, and
> how Kositsky is using the term to dismiss Donne while excusing
> Shakespeare.
Jim, this is not the case at all. This is what I actually said: "I'd
just like to also put my two cents in regarding Donne. I always
thought he was a fabulous poet. I still do. But then I found out he
was an anti-semite of the worse stripe (his writings on the subject
sicken me) and I don't know which pocket to put that in. So I can't
say that my sensibility approaches his at all, or that his is modern."
I'd still say that Donne's "blood libel" writings sicken me, that he
is anti-semitic, and that is a problem for me, a Jew, when I approach
his poetry, even though he is a product of a different age and so I
can see your position to a degree (but not emotionally). This
denigration of the Jews still lingers in some religious settings, by
the way. It is part of a very old tradition. My husband was playing
organ in church around Easter when the minister said: "Judas was an
EVIL MAN. Judas was a JEW." He emphasised the words as I have done
here, seemingly forgetting that Jesus and all the other disciples were
also Jews. He was also so carried away by his own rhetoric that he
forgot his own organist was Jewish. ;)
I'm not keen on Shylock either (you'll notice I said nothing about him
or Shakespeare in my first statement), and I'm not excusing
Shakespeare at all; however, I do think that he was ahead of his time
in painting Shylock as an ambiguous character (taking into account the
confines of the tradition of the period). And if Donne was a rational
and intelligent man, and we are taught to believe he was, surely he
could have been ahead of his time also?
It has taken me a long time, and much reading, to reach these
conclusions.
Tom Reedy
news:<20031217010113...@mb-m05.aol.com>...
> > In article <cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com>,
> > lynnek...@sympatico.ca (Lynne) writes:
> >
> > >> A figure of speech, and "barbarous" and "inhuman" or "inhumane" could
> > >> have different meanings then compared with how we use them today,
> > >> for example "rustic" or "impolite", as in "Fit for the mountains and
the
> > >> barbarous caves/ Where manners ne'er were preached!" Twelfth Night
> > >> 4.1.48-49.
> > >
> > >I think we know what he meant. It's pretty clear.
> >
> > Ah, I see. But not Jonson's statements about Shakespeare?
>
> Must we always bring in the authorship question when talking about the
> Elizabethans or Stuarts? Sigh. If we must I would say that Jonson's
> statements might be ambiguous, because they were "literary" poetry or
> prose, whereas a statement in a sermon is more likely to have one
> meaning only. Ambiguity is a characteristic of literary output and
> that is why you'll notice I haven't mentioned Donne's poetry.
Sermons *are* "literary output."
<snip>
> > I don't see how that passage shows that Donne hated Jews. If you
> > read his other sermons, it's obvious that he sees the Jews as
> > human beings. Donne was no more or less anti-Semitic than Shakespeare.
>
> I'm not sure how true that is. All we have of Shakespeare is his
> portrait of Shylock, which I see has been brought up elsewhere,
> together with other writings by Donne. If I can get to those remarks,
> I'll respond to them.
>
> Best wishes,
> Lynne
Shakespeare is full of disparaging and slighting references to Jews besides
MoV.
BENEDICK
If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am a
Jew. MAAN 2.3
LAUNCE
If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a
Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian. 2GV 2.5
. . . and so on.
The Elizabethan Age was anti-Semitic in the same way the 19th century
American South was racist: it was ingrained in the culture. I don't see how
anybody can argue differently.
TR
Tom Reedy
I suppose that is true if you believe the role of the artist is to improve
mankind's manners rather than draw an accurate portrait.
TR
LynnE
"Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:NE_Db.7873$Pg1....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net...
> "Lynne" <lynnek...@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
> news:cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com...
> > kqk...@aol.com (KQKnave) wrote in message
> news:<20031217010113...@mb-m05.aol.com>...
> > > In article <cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com>,
> > > lynnek...@sympatico.ca (Lynne) writes:
> > >
> > > >> A figure of speech, and "barbarous" and "inhuman" or "inhumane"
could
> > > >> have different meanings then compared with how we use them today,
> > > >> for example "rustic" or "impolite", as in "Fit for the mountains
and
> the
> > > >> barbarous caves/ Where manners ne'er were preached!" Twelfth Night
> > > >> 4.1.48-49.
> > > >
> > > >I think we know what he meant. It's pretty clear.
> > >
> > > Ah, I see. But not Jonson's statements about Shakespeare?
> >
> > Must we always bring in the authorship question when talking about the
> > Elizabethans or Stuarts? Sigh. If we must I would say that Jonson's
> > statements might be ambiguous, because they were "literary" poetry or
> > prose, whereas a statement in a sermon is more likely to have one
> > meaning only. Ambiguity is a characteristic of literary output and
> > that is why you'll notice I haven't mentioned Donne's poetry.
>
> Sermons *are* "literary output."
Not in the same way. It is literary tradition, for example, for a poem to
hold several meanings, although that is not necessarily the case with every
poem.
>
>
> <snip>
>
> > > I don't see how that passage shows that Donne hated Jews. If you
> > > read his other sermons, it's obvious that he sees the Jews as
> > > human beings. Donne was no more or less anti-Semitic than Shakespeare.
> >
> > I'm not sure how true that is. All we have of Shakespeare is his
> > portrait of Shylock, which I see has been brought up elsewhere,
> > together with other writings by Donne. If I can get to those remarks,
> > I'll respond to them.
> >
> >
>
> Shakespeare is full of disparaging and slighting references to Jews
besides
> MoV.
>
> BENEDICK
> If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I am
a
> Jew. MAAN 2.3
>
> LAUNCE
> If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a
> Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian. 2GV 2.5
>
> . . . and so on.
Yes, Tom, thank you for reminding me. These are clearly anti-semitic
statements. However, they're still not blood libel. And unfortunately
they're ingrained in the language even today, such as when a French teacher
of mine said about Gobseck, a miser: "He jewed him." I believe "to jew" is
still present in some dictionaries, or was till very recently, and means "to
cheat."
>
> The Elizabethan Age was anti-Semitic in the same way the 19th century
> American South was racist: it was ingrained in the culture. I don't see
how
> anybody can argue differently.
Yes, that's true. Absolutely. But if you look at the narratives of relatives
of slave owners in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as I
did when writing four children's books about slavery, you will see that
there were some whites who were not racists and did not agree with the
terrible treatment of the slaves. In fact much of what we know about
inhumane treatment of slaves comes from hearings in which relatives of slave
owners and others spoke out in the slaves' defence. One assumes that in
almost every age there are some forward thinkers who break away from the
conventional. Of course, all this brings us to the question of whether
ethics are absolute or relative, which is a very big question indeed.
And there I have to rest my case because I have so much to do for Chanukah
and Christmas.
Best wishes to all (for the second time) I hope you all have loving and
peaceful holidays and that the New Year brings you health and happiness.
Lynne
>
> TR
>
>
Tom Reedy
news:x5%Db.11124$CK3.8...@news20.bellglobal.com...
I think Jim's point in this whole conversation is to illustrate that you --
like most antiStratfordians -- are plagued with sloppy and incomplete habits
of thinking that cause you to continually make sweeping generalities from
which you have to retreat when the obvious inconsistencies are pointed out.
> It is literary tradition, for example, for a poem to
> hold several meanings, although that is not necessarily the case with
every
> poem.
It is curious that every poem mentioning Shakespeare is assumed by
antiStratfordians to "hold several meanings," yet those same people never
bother to give examples all the ambiguity that I assume is rife in poems
about other people.
> >
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > > > I don't see how that passage shows that Donne hated Jews. If you
> > > > read his other sermons, it's obvious that he sees the Jews as
> > > > human beings. Donne was no more or less anti-Semitic than
Shakespeare.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure how true that is. All we have of Shakespeare is his
> > > portrait of Shylock, which I see has been brought up elsewhere,
> > > together with other writings by Donne. If I can get to those remarks,
> > > I'll respond to them.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > Shakespeare is full of disparaging and slighting references to Jews
> > besides MoV.
> >
> > BENEDICK
> > If I do not take pity of her, I am a villain; if I do not love her, I
am
> > a Jew. MAAN 2.3
> >
> > LAUNCE
> > If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a
> > Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian. 2GV 2.5
> >
> > . . . and so on.
>
> Yes, Tom, thank you for reminding me. These are clearly anti-semitic
> statements. However, they're still not blood libel.
Is "blood libel" a higher form of anti-Semitism, or what?
And unfortunately
> they're ingrained in the language even today, such as when a French
teacher
> of mine said about Gobseck, a miser: "He jewed him." I believe "to jew" is
> still present in some dictionaries, or was till very recently, and means
"to
> cheat."
I thought it meant to bargain the price down.
> >
> > The Elizabethan Age was anti-Semitic in the same way the 19th century
> > American South was racist: it was ingrained in the culture. I don't see
> > how anybody can argue differently.
>
> Yes, that's true. Absolutely. But if you look at the narratives of
relatives
> of slave owners in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as
I
> did when writing four children's books about slavery, you will see that
> there were some whites who were not racists and did not agree with the
> terrible treatment of the slaves.
The two do not necessarily go together. Just because a person disagreed with
treating slaves badly does not make that person a non-racist. Abraham
Lincoln was certainly a racist by our standards.
> In fact much of what we know about
> inhumane treatment of slaves comes from hearings in which relatives of
slave
> owners and others spoke out in the slaves' defence.
Which has nothing to do with the fact that the American South in the 19th
century was racist (the American north, as far as that goes, and a goodly
part of the world). Being racist does not automatically mean a person
advocates the mistreatment of slaves, or even the institution itself.
One assumes that in
> almost every age there are some forward thinkers who break away from the
> conventional.
Then your comment above, "Yes, that's true. Absolutely," is not true, is it?
TR
Phil Innes
Hey, all thee, I must protest!
As the Author of this thread, purposely developed as anti-thesis to standard
Elizabethan fare, where do you go but to authorship issues in the Work? And
yet as politicians!
On listerning to the new CD series /BBC Audio Books America/ the impact of
Othello is clear - this introduction by worm-tongued Iago to soft-spoke and
absent-ethiced Rodrigo, thence to the panic of the good father, and thence
to the prosecution of this Alien!
Such satire! How can you prose otherwise? In this case it is a Jew who is
the alien, and an imperfect Jew, much as anyman, who professes his love
unashamed.
Such talk of blood degradations is Iago-tongued, no? The coward, the biggest
coward in all literature, nevermind his froward advocacy.
Such satire!
And as the Author thus addresses the human condition, he notices this state
of cowardice in oursleves, and what force it has!
What you may make of Donne, be it more direct, as befits the passion of this
writer; so couple not thy valiance, Casio.
How should she be black and witty?
Phil Innes
KQKnave
>> Steese, crawl out of your hermetically sealed, black and white world
>> for a second, and think about what anti-Semitism means today, and
>> how Kositsky is using the term to dismiss Donne while excusing
>> Shakespeare.
>
>Jim, this is not the case at all. This is what I actually said: "I'd
>just like to also put my two cents in regarding Donne. I always
>thought he was a fabulous poet. I still do. But then I found out he
>was an anti-semite of the worse stripe (his writings on the subject
>sicken me) and I don't know which pocket to put that in. So I can't
>say that my sensibility approaches his at all, or that his is modern."
The problem is, there are no Donne "writings" on the subject of
"anti-Semitism". There is a passing reference in one
sermon to the Jews anointing the dead with Christian blood. Why
your "blood runs cold" when you see this, but doesn't when you
read Shylock's comments makes no sense to me.
As far as Donne's "sensibility" goes, I assume that anyone using
that word means his artistic sensibility, and he certainly was
"modern" in his rejection of the old forms and the freedom of
his verse. You can't reject Donne's art on the basis of one sentence
in a sermon, unless you want to reject Shakespeare's art too for
4 acts in the play MOV.
>I'd still say that Donne's "blood libel" writings sicken me, that he
>is anti-semitic,
But THERE AREN'T ANY BLOOD LIBEL WRITINGS! There is only
a passing, brief reference to a custom of the Jews anointing their
dead with the blood of a Christian!
>and that is a problem for me, a Jew, when I approach
>his poetry, even though he is a product of a different age and so I
>can see your position to a degree (but not emotionally).
Well, your not being consistent. Shakespeare as far as I can
tell expressed no pro-Jewish statements in his writing, and many
anti-Jew, while Donne has far more pro-Jew statements in his
sermons than anti.
KQKnave
>
>kqk...@aol.com (KQKnave) wrote in message
>news:<20031217010113...@mb-m05.aol.com>...
>> In article <cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com>,
>> lynnek...@sympatico.ca (Lynne) writes:
>>
>> >> A figure of speech, and "barbarous" and "inhuman" or "inhumane" could
>> >> have different meanings then compared with how we use them today,
>> >> for example "rustic" or "impolite", as in "Fit for the mountains and the
>
>> >> barbarous caves/ Where manners ne'er were preached!" Twelfth Night
>> >> 4.1.48-49.
>> >
>> >I think we know what he meant. It's pretty clear.
>>
>> Ah, I see. But not Jonson's statements about Shakespeare?
>
>Must we always bring in the authorship question when talking about the
>Elizabethans or Stuarts? Sigh. If we must I would say that Jonson's
>statements might be ambiguous, because they were "literary" poetry or
>prose, whereas a statement in a sermon is more likely to have one
>meaning only.
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee", is from a sermon,
and sounds awfully "literary" to me. Donne's sermons have survived
because they have literary quality.
[snip]
>> >Because unfresh blood coagulates so it becomes impossible to anoint
>> >anything with it.
>>
>> You can anoint with a powdered, dried blood. But are you certain
>> that there was no way to keep blood liquid? Surely the alchemists
>> must have worked something out.
>
>And now you're being unrealistic again. Alchemists? John Donne was
>suggesting in a Christian sermon that alchemists might keep blood
>liquid? I think you must deliberately trying to be funny.
Donne didn't suggest ANYTHING as far as how the blood was obtained.
It was Shapiro's and your suggestion. All Donne was saying was that
even the Jews thought Jesus might have been the Messiah. I find
it difficult to believe that Donne would simultaneously believe that
Jews would commit the sin of murder, and then use that murder as
an instrument in their salvation.
[snip]
>> If you want me to believe that he was anti-Semitic, in the modern
>> sense of a personal hatred of Jews, you are going to have to show
>> me something other than a brief passage mentioning a ritual
>> he had heard about, used to make another point.
>
>It is a "blood libel," Jim. I've suggested books to you so you can see
>how widespread that kind of statement was, and how it showed intense
>hatred of the Jews.
Your thinking on this is very muddled. You don't seem to be able
to distinguish a personal hatred of the Jews from simply using
a legend or story about them to illustrate another point. The issue
is not how widespread these apocryphal stories were, but whether
or not Donne was actively "anti-Semitic" in the sense that he
had a personal hatred of the Jews. If there were hardly any Jews
in England, it is no big surprise to me that stories about their
supposed behavior were widely known, because that's the kind
of thing that ignorance breeds. Much the same stories
must have been promulgated about the Muslims. Just because
someone tells a "dumb Polack" joke doesn't mean that they have
a personal hatred of the Poles.
>If you want me to reproduce everything scholars
>say about the period and the people (including Donne) who lived then,
>it would take several days. I don't have the time to do it and I'm
>sure you don't have the inclination to read all I write. What
>fascinates me most, though, is your disinclination to believe that
>Donne was talking about ritual murder and that he was an anti-semite.
You've just finished saying that statements concerning blood libel
were common in England. So how does that single out Donne
for an anti-Semitism that was any different from what was practiced
by every Christian in that time and place, including Shakespeare?
If Donne had said in the sermon "Jews murder Christians for their
blood, and we should all hate them", you might have a point, but
nowhere there or anywhere else does he say that.
[snip]
KQKnave
>kqk...@aol.com (KQKnave) wrote in message
>news:<20031217010109...@mb-m05.aol.com>...
>> In article <cc19a094.03121...@posting.google.com>,
>> lynnek...@sympatico.ca (Lynne) writes:
>>
>> >Shakespeare was quite unusual. He gave Shylock a voice that at times
>> >we can empathise with. It's hard to decide where the bard stood with
>> >regard to Jews.
>>
>> Shakespeare makes a major Jewish character in his play demand an actual
>> pound of flesh, and then disposes of that character after he is brought
>> to justice. As you said in another post "I think we know what he meant.
>> It's pretty clear." I doubt that will prevent you from ambiguizing.
>
>Well, Shylock *is* IMO an ambiguous character.
Don't confuse "ambiguity" with "human-like complexity". Shakespeare
unambiguously presents Shylock as the bad guy, just as Iago is made
to be complex. The blood-libel in MOV is far more overt than what Donne
wrote in his sermon. Shylock refers to Antonio as "carrion flesh" ("You'll
ask me why I rather choose to have/ A weight of carrion flesh than to receive/
Three thousand ducats.") Not to mention Shylock's grasping materialism,
an obvious caricature of the "rich Jew":
"A diamond gone, cost me two thousand ducats in Franford!
The curse never fell upon our nation till now, I never felt it till now.
Two thousand ducats in that, and other precious, precious jewels.
I would my daughter were dead at my foot, and the jewels in her ear!"
>He is nasty, grasping,
>and cruel (although if you look carefully you'll see the reason for
>his cruelty towards Antonio is Antonio's cruelty towards him earlier)
>but he is also victimized by other characters (none of whom are very
>virtuous, by the way), and he has the marvellous "Hath not a Jew..."
>speech in which Shakespeare appears to be telling us that like
>everyone else, Shylock is a human being and worthy of our concern.
>I'll reproduce it for you here:
>
>Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
>
>dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with
>
>the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
>
>to the same diseases, heal'd by the same means,
>
>warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer,
>
>as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
>
>If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
>
>poison us, shall we not die?" (III, i, 58-66)
>
>
>The fact that I've seen Jewish men play the part lately suggests to me
>that others can see the ambiguity in his character. This ambiguity, by
>the way, is very unusual for its time.
Sure about that? In Marlowe's "Jew of Malta", Barabas says things
like:
"I have no charge, nor many children,
But one sole daughter, whom I hold as dear
As Agamemnon did his Iphigen".
In any case, if you read Donne's sermons, you will see that he has
a much broader view of Jews than what you seem to see in his
one comment about anointing the dead with Christian blood.
>> >And interestingly, he chose to change early versions
>> >of the story MOV is based on, so that the pound of flesh was closest
>> >to the heart, and was not the genitals of the victim. I imagine the
>> >earlier versions were rooted in a fear of circumcision.
>>
>> Interesting that the pound of flesh was located in a place that would
>> kill a man, don't you think?
>
>I'm not saying in the least that what Shylock wanted was "a good
>thing," Jim. There's no question it would be murder. I'm just saying
>that within the context of the play we can see Shylock both as evil
>and at the same time as an intensely human character, out to get
>Antonio because Antonio had heaped abuse on him for years.
And I say, for the purposes of determining the anti-Semitism of
Shakespeare, that's as useful as reading what Donne says about
the Jews elsewhere.
>If you read Donne's sermon on New Year's
>> Day 1624/5 at St. Dunstan's, you'll see him devote several pages
>> to humanizing and empathizing with an old Jew, Abraham, as Abraham
>> struggles to understand God's command to become circumsized. That
>> alone should excuse Donne from any charges of "anti-Semitism", and
>> rather charge his mention of the blood ritual to ignorance.
>
>First, I would say that Abraham is a Biblical Jew, and the feelings of
>Donne and others towards Jews in the Bible, classical Jews if you
>will, were intensely different from their feelings towards real Jews
>who lived in the world at that time.
How could the English have any real feelings toward Jews of their
own time if they never met any? How do you know what Donne's feelings
were toward "real Jews"? In the passage from the sermon, he seems
to have sympathy for them, because even they recognize the
possibility that Jesus was the Messiah.
>Many Christians seemed to be able
>to separate the two in their minds. In fact they had to, because Jesus
>was a real tripping place if they didn't. Second, I would look at
>Dickens, much more modern. What more anti-semitic portrait is there
>than that of Fagin in _Oliver Twist_? And yet Dickens has a
>wonderfully sympathetic Jew, a minor character, in _Our Mutual
>Friend_. Does that lessen the greasiness or egregious wickedness of
>Fagin, and does it excuse Dickens for painting him so? I'm not sure,
>but somehow I don't think so.
You've dismissed Donne entirely because of what you perceive is
"anti-Semitism", but if you were consistent you would dismiss Shakespeare
as well.
Peter Groves
"And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"
> >
> >The fact that I've seen Jewish men play the part lately suggests to me
> >that others can see the ambiguity in his character. This ambiguity, by
> >the way, is very unusual for its time.
>
> Sure about that? In Marlowe's "Jew of Malta", Barabas says things
> like:
>
> "I have no charge, nor many children,
> But one sole daughter, whom I hold as dear
> As Agamemnon did his Iphigen".
>
But this is irony, not complexity of character: Agamemnon had Iphigenia
killed on the altar of Apollo in return for a favourable wind.
I've always thought that Shylock's best defence is his exposure of the
Christians' hypocrisy in banging on about mercy and the need to love thy
neighbour while trading in human flesh (it's interesting that Shakespeare
doesn't have Portia hear this point, because it's hard to see how she could
have countered it):
DUKE How shalt thou hope for mercy, rendering none?
SHYLOCK What judgment shall I dread, doing no wrong?
You have among you many a purchased slave,
Which, like your asses and your dogs and mules,
You use in abject and in slavish parts,
Because you bought them: shall I say to you,
Let them be free, marry them to your heirs?
Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds
Be made as soft as yours and let their palates
Be season'd with such viands? You will answer
'The slaves are ours:' so do I answer you.
Peter G.
John W. Kennedy
> The thing I find puzzling is why Jim, and now you, are so keen on
> pretending that Donne's sermon was not blatantly anti-Semitic.
I'm not. I'm just pointing out that, from the viewpoint of his posited
insecure Jews, what they are doing is not "blasphemous". (It may be
from a Christian viewpoint, but, ex hypothese, they are not Christians.)
KQKnave
<Monti...@NOSPAMbigpond.com> writes:
>> Sure about that? In Marlowe's "Jew of Malta", Barabas says things
>> like:
>>
>> "I have no charge, nor many children,
>> But one sole daughter, whom I hold as dear
>> As Agamemnon did his Iphigen".
>>
>
>But this is irony, not complexity of character: Agamemnon had Iphigenia
>killed on the altar of Apollo in return for a favourable wind.
Right, I should have looked at the footnote!
John W. Kennedy
> It's rather disconcerting that you're the third person so far who's
> treated Donne's morbid fantasy about the Jews as though it might have
> some basis in fact.
No, we're simply pointing out that you are assuming that Donne is
drawing (or intends his auditors to draw) certain conclusions from that
fantasy which A) cannot, in fact, be legitimately derived from it and B)
have no bearing on the point that he is actually making.
John W. Kennedy
> The Elizabethan Age was anti-Semitic in the same way the 19th century
> American South was racist: it was ingrained in the culture. I don't see how
> anybody can argue differently.
I'm not sure that's quite true. Racism was a defining characteristic of
the South, which I don't think you can say of anti-Semitism and the
Elizabethans. Racism in the North makes a better comparison.
John W. Kennedy
> Is "blood libel" a higher form of anti-Semitism, or what?
The "blood libel" is the belief that Jews actively murder Christians as
a religious ritual. Lynne is correct to say that the statements in
question do not extend to that.
> I thought ["to Jew"] meant to bargain the price down.
I'm not sure. I know that as "to Jew down".
Tom Reedy
news:Kg8Eb.259903$655.46...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net...
> Tom Reedy wrote:
> > Is "blood libel" a higher form of anti-Semitism, or what?
>
> The "blood libel" is the belief that Jews actively murder Christians as
> a religious ritual. Lynne is correct to say that the statements in
> question do not extend to that.
I have read about it, but didn't know it had its own name. Growing up in
Texas, I never ran into anti-Semitism until I was an adult, except in
history books. We were furnished with enough different races to satisfy our
need to be prejudiced.
> > I thought ["to Jew"] meant to bargain the price down.
>
> I'm not sure. I know that as "to Jew down".
Right. According to the Columbia Guide to Standard American English, the
verb "jew" means "to cheat or swindle," and the combined form "to jew down"
means "to bargain to reduce a price."
TR
Mark Steese
news:20031217010111...@mb-m05.aol.com:
[snip]
>>> As far as the origin of the blood I don't know what Donne was
>>> thinking when he wrote that passage, but today, you can make a buck
>>> or two selling blood. I can't imagine that things were any different
>>> then.
>>
>>Try harder. Absent any means of typing, preserving, and transfusing
>>human blood, or otherwise making it medically useful, it has no
>>commercial value. You can't sell something no one wants to buy.
>
> But supposedly Jews needed it, and it would certainly make more
> sense to buy it rather than kill for it. Are you certain that there
> was no method to preserve blood in its liquid form? Couldn't you
> sprinkle dried blood and accomplish the same thing?
As no Jews were actually obtaining Christian blood, it's a moot point. If
Donne had given the story as much thought as you have, he would have
realized how absurd it was.
> You don't need to have poor Christians hanging around waiting to
> sell their blood, as Kositsky ridiculously imagines things. I'm quite
> sure that there were enough paupers in England to provide a source
> for any Jew who looked.
But no Jews were looking!
>>> If someone needed blood, I'm sure there would be someone else
>>> willing to sell it.
>>
>>But no one needed to buy blood in sixteenth-century England. Donne
>>was an imaginative chap, but I doubt if even he would have imagined
>>that Christians were willingly selling their blood to Jews for use in
>>blasphemous rituals.
>
> Why? If he believed that some Jews were sympathetic toward
> Christianity,
If you can imagine that Donne's claims that the Jews "now..expresse a kind
of conditionall acknowledgment of it, by this barbarous and inhumane custom
of theirs," indicates that he believed some Jews were "sympathetic toward
Christianity," I'm afraid you don't have enough knowledge about the subject
to justify commenting on it.
> then why wouldn't these same Jews have contacts with Christians who were
> sympathetic with them? Do you really believe that the average Christian
> was educated enough in those days that they would fully understand what
> was blasphemous and what was not?
I believe that the average Christian in England was well aware that Jews
were associated with blasphemy. When Shakespeare included "Liver of
blaspheming Jew" in the ingredients for a witches' brew, I think he
expected his audience to understand the reference.
> These same people believed that dead pidgeons would suck the bad
> humours out of them.
And they believed that Jews used Christian blood in blasphemous rituals.
Look up the history of the blood-libel if you don't believe me.
>>>>Blood letting might have been rampant, but I can't see a Christian
>>>>sitting still while a Jew took his blood, can you?
>>>
>>> Sure, a poor Christian in need of some cash.
>>
>>Sure, why not risk eternal damnation for some ready cash?
>
> Ah, I see. So there was never any murder or adultery then either.
> Come on Steese.
I'll concede that some poor Christians might have resorted to committing
murder to obtain cash, but I don't see how adultery would have enriched
them. Neither am I sure that murder or adultery would have been seen as
grave an offense in a Christian as aiding and abetting the blasphemous
rituals of the barbarous Jews, but since those rituals were completely
mythical, it's not worth worrying about.
>>The relevant question isn't whether you can see it, but whether Donne
>>could have seen it, and since Jews were not, in fact, practicing
>>blasphemous rituals with Christians' blood, it is highly unlikely that
>>Donne would have believed they were but also believed they were
>>obtaining the blood via relatively humane cash transactions rather
>>than murder.
>
> I have no idea what Donne thought about the source of the blood. He
> doesn't say anything about it. All he says is that they "keep in
> readiness the blood of some Christian".
As I have already noted, you'd have a better context for Donne's remarks if
you were familiar with the history of the blood-libel against the Jews.
The historical context is crucial here. One good starting point is this
page at the Internet Medieval Source Book:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/rinn.html
Wikipedia.com also has a good introduction to the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_libel
>>>>And it would have had to be fresh blood.
>>>
>>> Why? The passage in Donne doesn't mention anything about the
>>> freshness of the blood.
>>
>>As Donne was presumably aware, blood didn't keep very well in the
>>sixteenth century. If the Jews kept a supply on hand at all times for
>>anointing the dead, it would have had to be fresh.
>
> Still don't see why dried blood or blood treated in some way to
> remain liquid wasn't possible. Did you check all those alchemical
> recipes?
The question is not whether it was possible but whether Donne would have
thought that Jews would obtain the blood of Christians without killing
them. It is highly unlikely that he would have thought so.
>>>>If one reads Shapiro and other authors who speak about blood libel
>>>>etc. with regard to this period, it seems clear that many
>>>>Christians of the time believed Jews capable of all sorts of crimes,
>>>>including murder.
>>>
>>> I don't doubt it, but surely these same Christians also believed
>>> that pretty much any person was capable of murder.
>>
>>Yes, and they believed that anybody who kept a supply of Christian
>>blood handy at all times had committed murder to obtain it.
>
> You don't know that. You are assuming that Donne thought that.
It's a reasonable assumption to anyone familiar with the history of anti-
Jewish persecution.
>>[snip]
>>> Well, you are going to have to define "anti-Semitic" a little
>>> better. Christianity is, after all, fundamentally "anti-Semitic".
>>
>>It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
>>blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the term
>>has no meaning.
>
> Steese, crawl out of your hermetically sealed, black and white world
> for a second, and think about what anti-Semitism means today,
As the term has only existed since 1882, it means today pretty much the
same thing it's always meant: "hostility toward or discrimination against
Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group" (www.m-w.com).
> and how Kositsky is using the term to dismiss Donne while excusing
> Shakespeare.
As Lynne has already pointed out, she did not use the term to dismiss
Donne, and she did not excuse Shakespeare.
> Supposedly what Donne said about the blood ritual means to her that he
> hated Jews. I can't see how a brief mention of a ritual which he may
> or may not have really believed existed, which was brought up to
> illustrate another point entirely, means that Donne hated Jews.
If you can't see it, the only explanation I can think of is that you're
wholly unfamiliar with the history of libel and persecution that has
pursued the Jews since the earliest days of Christendom.
> Today, the term "anti-Semitism" has come to mean a personal hatred of
> the Jews, to the point that you want them exterminated.
To whom? Joseph Sobran is widely condemned as anti-Semitic, but so far as
I know no one has argued that he has a personal hatred of the Jews or wants
them exterminated. He is undeniably hostile towards them as a religious,
ethnic, or racial group, though.
> You could, if you want to call Donne "anti-Semitic" in the general sense
> of just not wanting to practice or promote Judaism, call him "anti
> -Semitic", but only if you recognize that *every* Christian, including
> Shakespeare, including Christianity itself, was "anti-Semitic" in that
> sense, and that Donne was hardly extraordinary.
Christianity required (and requires) its adherents to believe that Judaism
is heretical in its refusal to acknowledge that Jesus was the Messiah, but
it never required its adherents to believe in the blood-libel. That Donne
would have promoted such a story indicates that he had more than a merely
doctrinal problem with Jews. I would prefer to think that he was naive
enough to believe it: I find it difficult to imagine that he promoted such
a monstrous lie knowing it was a lie.
> In fact, if you read Donne's sermons, for example, the sermon preached on
> New Year's Day in 1624/5 at St. Dunstan's, you will see that he goes to
> great lengths to humanize the Jews. In that sermon, he spends four or
> five pages bringing Abraham to life, making his listeners understand the
> struggle that Abraham had undergone in the course of obeying God's order
> to become circumcised. If Donne hated Jews, I hardly think he would have
> gone to the trouble.
Abraham lived before the Advent of Christ, and so he could be comfortably
nestled within Christian theology, in the same way that Jesus is
comfortably nestled within Islamic theology (as, indeed, is Abraham). It
is perfectly possible for a Muslim to revere Abraham and Jesus while
despising modern Jews and Christians; it was just as possible for Donne to
revere Abraham while despising modern Jews.
Rita
>
> The Elizabethan Age was anti-Semitic in the same way the 19th century
> American South was racist: it was ingrained in the culture. I don't see how
> anybody can argue differently.
>
> TR
I agree. I've been reading this thread with interest because I would
like to tackle this aspect of Nashe's work on my website, and have
never felt competent to do so. It isn't fair to judge individuals in
a broadly racist/sexist culture by the standards of a different age,
but at the same time you can hardly allow racism to pass without
comment.
So - if you think MoV is anti-Semitic, you should try reading passages
from Nashe's 'The Unfortunate Traveller'. For those who haven't seen
it, it's the picaresque adventures of an English page attending his
master through Italy. All foreigners in it are stereotypes - as so
to some extent are the English, but positive stereotypes of course -
but the treatment of Jews is particularly nasty. It always surprises
me that discussions of anti-semitism in Shakespeare usually mention
Marlowe but seldom seem to bring Nashe in for comparison.
Lynne mentioned Peter Shapiro's book, which I read while trying to
research this. In it he identified the main anti-Semitic stereotypes
circulating in early modern England. Well, the Jews Nashe invents for
'The Unfortunate Traveller' would satisfy almost every bullet point.
They are sadistic; miserly; motivated by a hatred of all Christians;
personally disgusting in their habits, and even (under guise of a
Jewish doctor subjecting Jack to vivisection) guilty of attempting to
drain the blood of nice Christian boys. Admittedly they don't poison
any wells, but one has a game try at poisoning the Pope's mistress.
It's almost as if Nashe was working with a copy of Shapiro's book open
in front of him, sedulously constructing his stereotype to meet its
profile. For example when a rich Jew loses his temper - because his
goods have just been confiscated, which every Elizabethan Christian
seems firmly to have believed was the one thing guaranteed to enrage a
Jew - he explodes into a series of threats that read like an attempt
to meet some anti-semitic checklist. Brace yourselves, I'm about to
quote it:
'If I must be banisht' (Jews as aliens), 'if those heathen dogs (Jews
as Christian-haters) 'will needs rob me of my goods' (Jewish
materialism), 'I will poyson their springs and conduit heades, whence
they receiue al their water round about the citie;'(well-poisoning)
'Ile tice all the young children into my house that I can get, and
cutting their throates' (blood libel) 'barrell them vp in poudring
beefe tubbes, and so send them to victuall the Popes gallies' (Jews
profiteer from supplying dodgy meat to the armed forces?). 'Ere the
officers come to extend, Ile bestow an hundred pound on a doale of
breade' (hypocritical Jewish charity), 'which Ile cause to be kneaded
with scorpions oyle that will kill more than the plague.' (suggestive
link to Jews as furtherers of plague) 'Ile hire them that make their
wafers or sacramentary gods, to minge them after the same sort'
(desecration of the Host), 'so in the zeale of their superstitious
religion shall they languish and droup like carrion...'
Has Nashe left anything out? I don't think so. Even Hitler might
have boggled at compressing so much anti-Semitism into a single
speech. This rant - which literally out-Herods Herod - perhaps calls
into question how seriously Nashe could have meant his portrayal of
life among the Jews to be taken by his readers (and unlike Marlowe or
Shakespeare of course, his work had to be read, it was not accessible
to illiterate groundlings); but it reads very badly to a modern mind.
Another point about Nashe that often seems to escape commentators on
Elizabethan anti-Semitism is that he was actually present at the
arraignment of Lopez. This gives him a personal interest in the case
that both Marlowe and Shakespeare lack.
Sorry to have hijacked a Donne thread, and apologies to all who had to
read the above quote on an empty stomach. I have worried for a long
time about how to tackle this aspect of Nashe's work. In a previous
age it would be his erotic poem that was the Unmentionable, now it's
this.
Rita
Bob Grumman
>'If I must be banisht' (Jews as aliens), 'if those heathen dogs (Jews
>as Christian-haters) 'will needs rob me of my goods' (Jewish
>materialism), 'I will poyson their springs and conduit heades, whence
>they receiue al their water round about the citie;'(well-poisoning)
>'Ile tice all the young children into my house that I can get, and
>cutting their throates' (blood libel) 'barrell them vp in poudring
>beefe tubbes, and so send them to victuall the Popes gallies' (Jews
>profiteer from supplying dodgy meat to the armed forces?). 'Ere the
>officers come to extend, Ile bestow an hundred pound on a doale of
>breade' (hypocritical Jewish charity), 'which Ile cause to be kneaded
>with scorpions oyle that will kill more than the plague.' (suggestive
>link to Jews as furtherers of plague) 'Ile hire them that make their
>wafers or sacramentary gods, to minge them after the same sort'
>(desecration of the Host), 'so in the zeale of their superstitious
>religion shall they languish and droup like carrion...'
But how is this anti-Semitic? It's just a series of curses emitted by someone
subjected to injustice. I'm sure it was meant to cast a very bad light on the
Jews, and it does give the Jew the anti-semite's idea of what he'd say, but it
doesn't seem very anti-semitic to me.
Note: I've just dipped into this discussion, so very possibly am out of context
in one or more ways.
--Bob G.
Phil Innes
"Rita" <nash...@postmaster.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c69e1804.0312...@posting.google.com...
> "Tom Reedy" <reed...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:<NE_Db.7873$Pg1....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>...
> <snip>
>
> >
> > The Elizabethan Age was anti-Semitic in the same way the 19th century
> > American South was racist: it was ingrained in the culture. I don't see
how
> > anybody can argue differently.
> >
> > TR
<...>
> Sorry to have hijacked a Donne thread, and apologies to all who had to
> read the above quote on an empty stomach. I have worried for a long
> time about how to tackle this aspect of Nashe's work. In a previous
> age it would be his erotic poem that was the Unmentionable, now it's
> this.
Rita, that was a most interesting and pungent post.
I am interested in this antisemitic aspect of exclusion from formal society,
and, while Jews were typical subjects for various projections and
exclusions, are they, in this period, say 1590-1612, merely the scape-goats
du jour?
After this time we encounter other handy victims, Catholics, for example.
To contrast Donne with the Author, and where Donne is said to be an atypical
Elizabethan writer, here is a general statement by the Author on this idea
of exclusions:-
Would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs....?
What would you think
To be thus used? This is the stranger's case
And this your mountainish inhumanity.
A psychological point, & from Othello:-
'Tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus.
& this line;
Which might accite thee to embrace--
// a very rare word 'accite', which affords a link to TitusA:
He by the senate is accited home.
And so to the anti-immigration law 1593.
But it is in Othello that we have a Lover and a Jew combined, and my
question is; do we witness one man persecuted for both crimes? The Author,
never more biographical than in Hamlet, is regretting sex:-
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty! --
which continues with that admontion to his Mother
Refrain tonight,
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence; the next more easy ;
For use can almost change the stamp of nature.
to which his uncle then comments about the madness of great ones.
Has Othello become Romeo and Juliet continued? Is the Author soured? As sour
as was Donne, and do they admit their own melancholy, projecting it to
various degrees on others? Donne was very generous with distaste, lavishing
it on one and all, and we are cheated of seeing his muturer view. However,
the Author continues to kill all his lovers (!) and Hamlet/Author's crime is
notably to kill his mother's lover, while his natural father seems to have
no faults at all!
That's a ramble, not a thesis. But is this submerged but very potent and
organic element of sex in the works by writers at this time an unappreciated
element til, perhaps 350 years later when we can encounter more forthright
characters in George Eliot, and then Lawrence's? Do we overlook it and
substitute projections of dissatisfactions in other races, races we have not
integrated to ourselves, so to speak?
Especially projecting onto sensuous southern races.
Cordially, Phil Innes
> Rita
John W. Kennedy
> But how is this anti-Semitic? It's just a series of curses emitted by someone
> subjected to injustice.
Yes, but it's also a catalog of traditional anti-Semitic libels.
Mark Steese
$655.46...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
> Mark Steese wrote:
>> The thing I find puzzling is why Jim, and now you, are so keen on
>> pretending that Donne's sermon was not blatantly anti-Semitic.
>
> I'm not. I'm just pointing out that, from the viewpoint of his
> posited insecure Jews, what they are doing is not "blasphemous". (It
> may be from a Christian viewpoint, but, ex hypothese, they are not
> Christians.)
Unfortunately, the question of what the 'posited insecure' Jews' own
viewpoint was is wholly irrelevant, because they never existed, any more
than did the 'blaspheming Jew' whose liver the Weird Sisters somehow got
ahold of. As I wrote:
"It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the
term has no meaning."
Donne would, in fact, have believed the mythical ritual was blasphemous,
a grisly parody of extreme unction.
Bob Grumman
>"It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
> blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the
> term has no meaning."
I agree with this: Christian blood has less pop than non-carbonated sasaparilla;
only the evilest of anti-Semites could claim that Jews would bother with it.
--Bob G.
Rita
> >>> better. Christianity is, after all, fundamentally "anti-Semitic".
> >>
> >>It seems to me that if believing that Jews keep a supply of Christian
> >>blood handy for blasphemous rituals is not anti-Semitic, then the term
> >>has no meaning.
> >
> > Steese, crawl out of your hermetically sealed, black and white world
> > for a second, and think about what anti-Semitism means today,
>
> As the term has only existed since 1882, it means today pretty much the
> same thing it's always meant: "hostility toward or discrimination against
> Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group" (www.m-w.com).
>
That definition makes Donne, Nashe, Shakespeare and Hitler all
anti-Semites. But this is where it gets tricky. Can you use the
exact same term to describe:
a) someone who in ignorant good faith trusts the negative image of
Jews universal in his culture,
and
b) someone who wilfully chooses to defy both modern ideals of racial
tolerance and normal rational processes in order to believe Jews are
innately evil.
If you happen to be Jewish this may be a meaningless distinction -
would you care if the person lying about you was vicious or just
ill-informed? - but in assessing the culpability of the anti-Semitic
individual, it would matter.
Rita
Mark Steese
$655.46...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
> Mark Steese wrote:
>> It's rather disconcerting that you're the third person so far who's
>> treated Donne's morbid fantasy about the Jews as though it might have
>> some basis in fact.
>
> No, we're simply pointing out that you are assuming that Donne is
> drawing (or intends his auditors to draw) certain conclusions from
> that fantasy which A) cannot, in fact, be legitimately derived from it
Those conclusions can, in fact, be legitimately derived from it by
anyone with a working knowledge of the cultural and historical milieu in
which Donne preached his sermon. To take his words out of their
historical setting and pretend that they are susceptible to
anachronistic interpretations (e.g., Jim's argument that 17th-century
paupers might have sold their blood) is senseless. Given the long
history of accusations that Jews were guilty of ritually murdering
Christians and collecting their blood, do you really suppose that
neither Donne nor his audience would have made that connection, simply
because Donne does not use the word murder?
> and B) have no bearing on the point that he is actually making.
No one has said otherwise.
Mark Steese
news:c69e1804.03121...@posting.google.com:
>> As the term has only existed since 1882, it means today pretty much
>> the same thing it's always meant: "hostility toward or
>> discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group"
>> (www.m-w.com).
>>
>> Mark Steese
>
> That definition makes Donne, Nashe, Shakespeare and Hitler all
> anti-Semites. But this is where it gets tricky. Can you use the
> exact same term to describe:
>
> a) someone who in ignorant good faith trusts the negative image of
> Jews universal in his culture,
> and
> b) someone who wilfully chooses to defy both modern ideals of racial
> tolerance and normal rational processes in order to believe Jews are
> innately evil.
If you don't like the term, you're free to invent another. I see that
James Shapiro critizes applying the term to three-hundred-year-old
beliefs, and he has a point.
Please note, though, that I did not say that Donne was an anti-Semite.
People may hold anti-Semitic beliefs without being defined by them.
Shapiro notes that Martin Luther wrote diatribes calling "for the
burning of synagogues, prayer books, and Jewish homes," which goes well
beyond any hostility expressed by Donne, but there was more to Luther's
work than expressions of anti-Semitic beliefs.
In my opinion neither Donne nor Luther should be condemned because they
expressed such beliefs; but the expressions should not be glossed over,
either. I believe you go too far in suggesting that Nashe, Shakespeare
and Donne acted only in "ignorant good faith" in trusting a "universal"
negative image. They were creators of culture in addition to being
recipients of it. If they are to receive credit for the ways in which
their work rose above the prevalent cultural stereotypes, they should
also be faulted for the ways in which it did not. We are all influenced
by the culture that surrounds us, but we are not enslaved by it.
KQKnave
nash...@postmaster.co.uk (Rita) writes:
> and even (under guise of a
>Jewish doctor subjecting Jack to vivisection) guilty of attempting to
>drain the blood of nice Christian boys.
Aha! See? They didn't have to murder to get the blood!
John W. Kennedy
> "John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in news:RU7Eb.259565
> $655.46...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
>
>
>>Mark Steese wrote:
>>
>>>The thing I find puzzling is why Jim, and now you, are so keen on
>>>pretending that Donne's sermon was not blatantly anti-Semitic.
>>
>>I'm not. I'm just pointing out that, from the viewpoint of his
>>posited insecure Jews, what they are doing is not "blasphemous". (It
>>may be from a Christian viewpoint, but, ex hypothese, they are not
>>Christians.)
>
>
> Unfortunately, the question of what the 'posited insecure' Jews' own
> viewpoint was is wholly irrelevant, because they never existed, any more
> than did the 'blaspheming Jew' whose liver the Weird Sisters somehow got
> ahold of. As I wrote:
It is entirely relevant, because, whether they ever existed or not, they
are what Donne is talking about. Rightly or wrongly, he deserves to be
judged on his own terms.
John W. Kennedy
> "John W. Kennedy" <jwk...@attglobal.net> wrote in news:s68Eb.259759
> $655.46...@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:
>>Mark Steese wrote:
>>>It's rather disconcerting that you're the third person so far who's
>>>treated Donne's morbid fantasy about the Jews as though it might have
>>>some basis in fact.
>>No, we're simply pointing out that you are assuming that Donne is
>>drawing (or intends his auditors to draw) certain conclusions from
>>that fantasy which A) cannot, in fact, be legitimately derived from it
> Those conclusions can, in fact, be legitimately derived from it by
> anyone with a working knowledge of the cultural and historical milieu in
> which Donne preached his sermon. To take his words out of their
> historical setting and pretend that they are susceptible to
> anachronistic interpretations (e.g., Jim's argument that 17th-century
> paupers might have sold their blood) is senseless.
I agree that Jim's hypothesis is weak. Nevertheless, the quasi-Satanic
Jews of the blood libel are not consistent with the fearful
sub-Christians of Donne's tale. There may indeed be -- probably is -- a
case of meme evolution here. But whatever it is, it is not the same notion.
Has anyone tracked down Donne's source for this? I cannot believe that
he made it up himself; apart from the question of simple honesty, it
would be plain sloppy homiletics.
Mark Steese
[snip]
>> Those conclusions can, in fact, be legitimately derived from it by
>> anyone with a working knowledge of the cultural and historical milieu
>> in which Donne preached his sermon. To take his words out of their
>> historical setting and pretend that they are susceptible to
>> anachronistic interpretations (e.g., Jim's argument that 17th-century
>> paupers might have sold their blood) is senseless.
>
> I agree that Jim's hypothesis is weak. Nevertheless, the
> quasi-Satanic Jews of the blood libel are not consistent with the
> fearful sub-Christians of Donne's tale.
Where do you see inconsistency? A recurrent theme in blood-libel
stories is the victim's blood being drained for use in rituals. As for
the "sub-Christians" being fearful -- in Christian lore, even the fallen
angels could acknowledge the true power of God; they were not less evil
for it.
> There may indeed be -- probably is -- a case of meme evolution here.
I didn't know you believed in memes. I'm skeptical of their existence,
myself.
> But whatever it is, it is not the same notion.
It's the same notion. Donne is simply being more allusive than other
writers, probably because (as you yourself noted) atrocities committed
by Jews was not his principal subject.
Mark Steese
[snip]
>> Unfortunately, the question of what the 'posited insecure' Jews' own
>> viewpoint was is wholly irrelevant, because they never existed, any
>> more than did the 'blaspheming Jew' whose liver the Weird Sisters
>> somehow got ahold of. As I wrote:
>
> It is entirely relevant, because, whether they ever existed or not,
> they are what Donne is talking about. Rightly or wrongly, he deserves
> to be judged on his own terms.
I *am* judging him on his own terms, the terms of a 17th-Century
Anglican clergyman who would have considered the ritual he described to
be a blasphemous parody of the sacrament of Extreme Unction. Donne was
repeating a folktale to make the point that Christ was so obviously the
Savior that even the degenerate Jews secretly acknowledged it. The only
inconsistency comes from attempting to apply modern logic to a folktale.
Bob Grumman
>> Jews universal in his culture,
>> and
>> b) someone who wilfully chooses to defy both modern ideals of racial
>> tolerance and normal rational processes in order to believe Jews are
>> innately evil.
>
>If you don't like the term, you're free to invent another.
Or, perhaps, use the one in use intelligently. I would want it to distinguish
between b) someone who wilfully chooses to defy both modern ideals of racial
tolerance and normal rational processes in order to believe Jews are
innately evil, and should be exterminated, and c) someone who wilfully chooses
to defy both modern ideals of racial tolerance and normal rational processes in
order to believe Jews are innately evil, but also believes in live and let live.
Certainly, it should not be used to describe someone who expresses anything
whatever that is negative about Jews, as do a fair number of hyper-sensitives,
most of them fascistically hoping such negative expressions will be outlawed.
--Bob G.
Rita
> nash...@postmaster.co.uk (Rita) wrote in
> news:c69e1804.03121...@posting.google.com:
>
> >> As the term has only existed since 1882, it means today pretty much
> >> the same thing it's always meant: "hostility toward or
> >> discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group"
> >> (www.m-w.com).
> >>
> >> Mark Steese
> >
> > That definition makes Donne, Nashe, Shakespeare and Hitler all
> > anti-Semites.
> If you don't like the term, you're free to invent another.
>I see that
> James Shapiro critizes applying the term to three-hundred-year-old
> beliefs, and he has a point.
> Please note, though, that I did not say that Donne was an anti-Semite.
> People may hold anti-Semitic beliefs without being defined by them.
Ye-es. Tricky ground again here. How do we judge how far someone has
to go before they cease merely to 'hold anti-Semitic beliefs' and
develop full-blown anti-Semitism?
> Shapiro notes that Martin Luther wrote diatribes calling "for the
> burning of synagogues, prayer books, and Jewish homes," which goes well
> beyond any hostility expressed by Donne, but there was more to Luther's
> work than expressions of anti-Semitic beliefs.
Perhaps you've just discovered the boundary between S-a-S and A-S.
There's a saying: 'Follow any belief you like, but stop when you get
to the first pool of blood.' Once somebody starts calling for pogroms
he moves beyond my new category into plain old anti-Semitism.
<snip>
> I believe you go too far in suggesting that Nashe, Shakespeare
> and Donne acted only in "ignorant good faith" in trusting a "universal"
> negative image. They were creators of culture in addition to being
> recipients of it. If they are to receive credit for the ways in which
> their work rose above the prevalent cultural stereotypes, they should
> also be faulted for the ways in which it did not. We are all influenced
> by the culture that surrounds us, but we are not enslaved by it.
>
> --
> Mark Steese
Yes. I can't argue with that. Perhaps in the end one has to make
subjective judgements on each individual case. Personally, I can
overlook Nashe's anti-Semitic writing as I can his sexism: I accept he
failed to rise above prevailing cultural attitudes in those areas, but
forgive him because so few of us, in any age, really challenge the
cultural status quo. In his bloodyminded readiness to shake off
English social cringe and have his say, however, I think Nashe
sometimes did.
Rita
John W. Kennedy
> I didn't know you believed in memes. I'm skeptical of their existence,
> myself.
I don't know about the entire organized meme theory, but it's a
convenient term for a thing that certainly exists in some sense.
>>But whatever it is, it is not the same notion.
> It's the same notion.
But it's not. There is all the difference in the world between a blood
sacrifice to a Jehovah-somehow-turned-Satan and a timid attempt to cover
both bases when one is no longer quite sure which of two benevolent
Jehovahs is the right one.
I can put this no more plainly than, if I were an Elizabethan, having
learned the Blood Libel "on the streets", as it were; hearing Donne's
version, and respecting his learning as far superior to mine; my
reaction would be along the lines of: "Oh. _That's_ how the story
started. But if that's actually how the Jews think, then maybe there's
some hope for reconciliation, after all, even though they've gone
wrong." It elevates the Jews from monsters to men.
Elizabeth Weir
> The thesis of this author is that Spenser and Sidney began a process of
> cohesion and regeneration in English writing.
I've been calling the Sidney-Herberts the 'English Medici'
for a couple of years but I would have to reject 'cohesion'
and 'regeneration.'
The Sidneys were very combatative in their literary opposition
to the Catholic Arundel-Oxford faction, for instance. And there
was really no 'golden age' in English literature to 'regenerate'
but otherwise your thesis is substantively correct.
Best regards,
Elizabeth
Phil Innes
"Elizabeth Weir" <elizabe...@mail.com> wrote in message
news:efbc3534.03121...@posting.google.com...
> "Phil Innes" <aong...@sover.net> wrote in message
news:<B0avb.1314$Re.12...@newshog.newsread.com>...
> > The thesis of this author is that Spenser and Sidney began a process of
> > cohesion and regeneration in English writing.
>
> I've been calling the Sidney-Herberts the 'English Medici'
> for a couple of years but I would have to reject 'cohesion'
> and 'regeneration.'
Say more.
> The Sidneys were very combatative in their literary opposition
> to the Catholic Arundel-Oxford faction, for instance. And there
> was really no 'golden age' in English literature to 'regenerate'
> but otherwise your thesis is substantively correct.
No golden age since 600 years, sure - there was the interuption of all that
legal and ecclesiastic Latin plus Norman French.which in the mid middle ages
made England a tri-languaged nation.
But hey! You happen to be agreeing with the greatest Elizabethan historian
of the C20th (whose words I employed) who was so conservative that he
observed the same, but greater conservancy tending in others (academically)
and said that some Shakespearean ideas, much worked over, were hardly worth
additional comment, and new ideas on the subject "often took a generation or
two to surface academicaaly" - but this most conservative of writers was
less so than what I observe of some current Strats here!
He posited, for example, a substantial possibility that Bacon was the major
<emphasis> influence on LLL. (This is why I wrote to your note one month ago
"Wherefore the love of women" since it is a hardly disguised neo-platonic
text, and all too brotherly and intellectual <grin>)
This same author has supposed collaborations on subsequent plays, although
this influence, in his opinion, diminishes towards the later Works.
Cordially, Phil
>
> Best regards,
>
> Elizabeth
KQKnave
<makes...@charter.net> writes:
>In my opinion neither Donne nor Luther should be condemned because they
>expressed such beliefs; but the expressions should not be glossed over,
>either. I believe you go too far in suggesting that Nashe, Shakespeare
>and Donne acted only in "ignorant good faith" in trusting a "universal"
>negative image. They were creators of culture in addition to being
>recipients of it. If they are to receive credit for the ways in which
>their work rose above the prevalent cultural stereotypes, they should
>also be faulted for the ways in which it did not. We are all influenced
>by the culture that surrounds us, but we are not enslaved by it.
An artist's job is to create something beautiful, it's not his job to rise
above
cultural stereotypes or be a schoolmarm. In this case it's especially
silly to expect Donne, who was a Christian minister, to rise
above the stereotypes that his own religion helped to foster, something
that Shakespeare couldn't do either, given his portrayal of Shylock
and his other comments involving Jews. Donne's Christianity is so
ingrained in Donne that by accusing him of anything more than pro-Christianity
you indict all Christians of that time of the same crime. How on
earth is someone who thinks of nearly everything in Christian terms
going to avoid some anti-Judaism? Here is part of a letter to R.W.,
part of which was about some news concerning the British fleet
and Guiana:
Havens are heavens, and ships winged angels be,
The which both Gospel, and stern threatenings bring;
Guiana's harvest is nipped in the spring,
I fear; and with us (me thinks) fate deals so
As with the Jews guide God did; he did show
Him the rich land, but barred his entry in,
Oh, slowness is our punishment and sin.
Should we throw Catullus in the waste bin because he talks
so casually about (gasp!) slavery?
http://duke.usask.ca/~porterj/DeptTransls/Catullus.html
Poem 10
My friend Varus had taken me from the forum
(I had nothing going on) to visit his latest love —
a little tart, so she struck me at first sight,
not at all without charm and wit.
When we got there we fell into conversation
on a variety of topics, among which was the question of
what Bithynia was like these days, how things were going there,
and whether it had proved at all beneficial to my purse.
I told them the truth — that there was nothing there, either for the locals
or for the praetors or for the praetor's cohort
that would cause anyone to carry a sleeker head —
especially for those who had an irrumator for a praetor,
one who didn't give a straw for his cohort.
"But at the very least," they said, "you must certainly
have acquired what they say is the native custom,
some slaves to bear your litter?" I (thinking I would increase
my standing in the girl's eyes)
replied, "Things weren't so bad for me that,
just because I'd landed a lousy province,
I wasn't able to acquire eight good strong men."
(Yet in fact I had no one, neither here nor there,
who might carry on his neck the
fractured foot of my ancient little cot.)
At this point she said — as you'd expect from a little tramp —
"Please, my dear Catullus: lend them to me,
just for a short while. I want to be carried to Serapis' temple
in style." "Hold on!" I said to her.
"That which I said I had a moment ago —
What was I thinking? My friend,
Gaius Cinna, he acquired them.
But, really, whether they're his or mine, what's that to me?
I have the use of them, just as if I bought them.
But you, with your wicked wit, are a downright plague,
who allow no one the slightest latitude of speech."
The point of my posts has not been that Donne did not have
any anti-Jewish attitudes. How could he not? One point I was
trying to make, and which has been reiterated by others, is
that you can't just utterly dismiss Donne because of some
brief passage describing an unpleasant myth about the Jews,
while simultaneously giving Shakespeare (or any other writer
of the time) a free pass. Another point I tried to make, also
reiterated by others, is that it is a far cry from simply
expressing the prejudice of your social group to expressing
a *personal* hatred of a certain ethnic or religious groups.
The latter is what the phrase "anti-Semitism" implies today,
conjuring up images of neo-Nazi's and the KKK, and those
things have nothing to do with Donne.
Mark Steese
news:20031220193022...@mb-m18.aol.com:
[snip]
> The point of my posts has not been that Donne did not have
> any anti-Jewish attitudes. How could he not? One point I was
> trying to make, and which has been reiterated by others, is
> that you can't just utterly dismiss Donne because of some
> brief passage describing an unpleasant myth about the Jews,
*No one* here has utterly dismissed Donne. Not Lynne, not me, not
anyone. As Lynne has already reminded you, this is what she originally
wrote:
"I always thought he was a fabulous poet. *I still do.* But then I found
out he was an anti-semite of the worse stripe (his writings on the
subject sicken me) and I don't know which pocket to put that in. So I
can't say that my sensibility approaches his at all, or that his is
modern." [Emphasis added]
If that looks like an 'utter dismissal' of Donne to you, you're seeing
things. For my own part, I stated that it seemed obvious to me that
Donne expressed anti-Semitic views. This may shock you, but I believe
that someone can express anti-Semitic views without becoming evil
incarnate.
> while simultaneously giving Shakespeare (or any other writer
> of the time) a free pass.
Neither Lynne nor I have been doing that, either.
> Another point I tried to make, also reiterated by others, is that it
> is a far cry from simply expressing the prejudice of your social group
> to expressing a *personal* hatred of a certain ethnic or religious
> groups. The latter is what the phrase "anti-Semitism" implies today,
No. That's what it implies *to you*. No one else is required to live
by your definition of anti-Semitism. I'm perfectly happy to abide by
Merriam-Webster's:
"hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic,
or racial group"
> conjuring up images of neo-Nazi's and the KKK, and those
> things have nothing to do with Donne.
It's no one else's fault if you choose to overload the term anti-
Semitism so that it only applies to extremist groups. My own use of the
term coincides precisely with the definition quoted above. Shapiro has
a point about the problematic nature of the term's assumption that
Jewishness is a racial characteristic ("Semitism"), and I would be happy
to use a different word - anti-Judaism? - but I see no point at all in
arguing that only people who express their anti-Jewish sentiments
through group violence deserve to be criticized.
--
Mark Steese
Unscramble and underscore to email
---
Not a whit, we defie Augury; there's a special Providence in the fall of
a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come: if it bee not to come, it
will bee now: if it be not now; yet it will come; the readinesse is all,
since no man ha's ought of what he leaves.
Mark Steese
news:bruka...@drn.newsguy.com:
> Or, perhaps, use the one in use intelligently. I would want it to
> distinguish between b) someone who wilfully chooses to defy both
> modern ideals of racial tolerance and normal rational processes in
> order to believe Jews are innately evil, and should be exterminated,
> and c) someone who wilfully chooses to defy both modern ideals of
> racial tolerance and normal rational processes in order to believe
> Jews are innately evil, but also believes in live and let live.
> Certainly, it should not be used to describe someone who expresses
> anything whatever that is negative about Jews, as do a fair number of
> hyper-sensitives, most of them fascistically hoping such negative
> expressions will be outlawed.
So people should use the term "anti-Semitism" correctly, but should
misuse the term "fascistically." Got it.