Richard Kaufmann - "Fra det moderne Frankrig"

Marcus Tullius Ciceronis - "De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream"

Ovid et al - "Fasti"

John W Campbell - "The Black Star Passes"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858




I should not dare to describe the productions of my female
correspondents in detail. Suffice it to say, that most of them
contain a smaller proportion of useless information, and a larger
proportion of sentiment, vague aspiration, and would-be-picturesque
description, than those of the men who pay postage on my behalf.
They are longer, and sometimes crossed; it is therefore a greater
task to read them.

My "fair readers"--as the snobs who write for magazines call women--
have not, I trust, misapprehended my meaning and lost patience with
me. I would not be understood as expressing a preference for one
description of letters over another. Every person to his tastes and
his talents. But a letter, which does not represent the writer's
real mood, reflect what is uppermost in his or her mind, deal with
things and thoughts rather than with words, and express, if not
strengthen, the peculiar ties between the person writing and the
person written to,--a letter which is not genuine,--is no letter,
but a sham and a lie. A real letter, on the other hand, whatever its
topic, cannot fail to be worth reading. Great thoughts, profound
speculations, matters of experience, bits of observation, delicate
fancies, romantic sentiments, humorous criticisms on people and
things, funny stories, dreams of the future, memories of the past,
pictures of the present, the merest gossip, the veriest trifling,
everything, nothing, may form the theme, if naturally spoken of, not
hunted up to fill out a page.

No reason for modifying my conclusions occurs to me. It may be said,
that, after all, a poor letter is better than none, because advices
from distant friends are always welcome. But would not a glance at
the well-known handwriting supply this want as fully as the perusal
of a lengthy epistle, written with the hand, but not with the heart?
Does not our chagrin at finding so little of our friends in their
letters more than counterbalance our gratification that they have
been (presumably) kind and thoughtful enough to write? Would we not
gladly give four of their ordinary letters for one of their best?
But the instant they strike off the shackles of regular
correspondence, and despatch letters only when they feel inclined,
replies only while they are fresh, and formulas at other times, if
need be, we have our wish; the miles between our friends and
ourselves shorten, they are really with us now and then, and we take
solid pleasure in chatting with them.

Am I told, that, until these ideas find general acceptance, it is
dangerous to act upon them? that for an individual here and there to
go out of the common course is only to make himself notorious, a
stranger or a bore to his friends? Were such statements true, they
would still be cowardly. We should be faithful to our convictions of
what is due to truth and manhood and self-respect, be the
consequences what they may. Because a few are so, the world moves.
The general voice always comes in as a chorus to a few particular
voices. As for friends who cannot appreciate independence of
character or of conduct, the fewer one has of them, the better.

Such suggestions as have been thrown out are too obvious to have
escaped any one who has given the subject a moment's thought. But
who has time for that? People live too fast, in these days, to pay
such attention as should be paid to those who are more valuable as
individuals than as parts of the great world. The good offices of
friendship, which are the fulfilment of the highest social duties,
are poorly performed, and, indeed, little understood. Not many of
those who think at all think beyond the line of established custom
and routine. They may take pains in their letters to obey the
ordinary rules of grammar, to avoid the use of slang phrases and
vulgar expressions, to write a clear sentence; but how few seek for
the not less imperative rules which are prescribed by politeness and
good sense! Of those who should know them, no small proportion
habitually, from thoughtlessness or perverseness, neglect their
observance.

I know men, distinguished in the walks of literature, famed for a
beautiful style of composition, who do not write a tolerable letter
nor answer a note of invitation with propriety. Their sentences are
slipshod, their punctuation and spelling beyond criticism, and their
manuscript repulsive. A lady, to whose politeness such an answer is
given, has a right to feel offended, and may very properly ask
whether she be not entitled to as choice language as the promiscuous
crowd which the "distinguished gentleman" addresses from pulpit or
desk.

How the distinguished gentleman would open his eyes at the question!
He is sure that what he sent her was well enough for a letter. As
though a letter, especially a letter to a lady, should not be as
perfect in its kind as a lecture or sermon in its kind! as though
one's duties toward an individual were less stringent than one's
duties toward an audience! Would the distinguished gentleman be
willing to probe his soul in search of the true reason for the
difference in his treatment of the two? Is he sure that it is not an
outgrowth from a certain "mountainous me," which seeks approbation
more ardently from the one source than from the other?

There are those who indite elegant notes to comparative strangers,
but, probably upon the principle that familiarity breeds or should
breed contempt, send the most villanous scrawls to their intimate
friends and those of their own household. They are akin to the
numerous wives, who, reserving not only silks and satins, but
neatness and courtesy, for company, are always in dishabille in their
husbands' houses.

Pericles, according to Walter Savage Landor, once wrote to Aspasia
as follows:--

"We should accustom ourselves to think always with propriety in
little things as well as in great, and neither be too solicitous of
our dress in the parlor nor negligent because we are at home. I
think it as improper and indecorous to write a stupid or silly
letter to you, as one in a bad hand or upon coarse paper.
Familiarity ought to have another and a worse name, when it relaxes
in its efforts to please."

The London Pericles, the Athenian gentleman,--and there are a few
such as he still extant,--writes to his nearest and dearest friend
none but the best letters. It appears to him as ill-bred to say
stupid or silly things to her, as to say what he does say clownishly.
He cannot conceive of doing what is so frequently done now-a-days.
He brings as much of Pericles to the composition of a letter as to
the preparation of a speech. We may feel sure, that, unless he acted
counter to his own maxims, he never wrote a line more or a line less
than he felt an impulse to write, and that he had no "regular
correspondents."

It is not every one that can write such letters as are in that
delightful book of Walter Savage Landor, or as charmed the friends
of Charles Lamb, the poet Gray, and a few famous women, first, and
the world afterwards. It is not every one who can, with the utmost
and wisest painstaking, produce a thoroughly excellent letter. The
power to do that is original and not to be acquired. The charm of it
will not, cannot, disclose its secret. Like the charm of the finest
manners, of the best conversation, of an exquisite style, of an
admirable character, it is felt rather than perceived. But every
person, who will be simply true to his or her nature, can write a
letter that will be very welcome to a friend, because it will be
expressive of the character which that friend esteems and loves. The
bunch of flowers, hastily put together by her who gathered them,
speaks as plainly of affection, although not in so delicate tones,
as the most tastefully-arranged bouquet. But who desires to be
presented with a nosegay of artificial flowers? Who can abide dead
blossoms or violent discords of color? Freshness, sweetness, and an
approach to harmony, that shall bring to mind the living, growing
plants, and the bountiful Nature from whose embrace flowers are born,
the acceptable gift must have.

To attempt a closer definition of a good letter than has been given
would be a fruitless, as well as difficult task. "Complete
letter-writers" are chiefly useful for the formulas--notes of
invitation, answers to them, and the like--which they contain, and
for their lessons in punctuation, spelling, and criticism. Their
efforts to instruct upon other points are and must be worse than
useless, because their precepts cramp without inspiring. A few good
examples are more valuable, but a little practice is worth them all.
Letter-writing is, after all, a _pas seul_, as it were; the novice
has no partner to teach him manners, or the figures of the dance, or
to set his wits astir. By effort, and through numerous failures, he
must teach himself. The difficulties of the medium between him and
his distant friend, who is generally in a similar predicament, must
be surmounted. Gradually stiffness gives place to ease of composition,
roughness to elegance, awkwardness to grace and tact, until his
letters at length come to represent his mood, and to interest, if
not to delight, his correspondent. A rigid adherence to times and
places and ceremonial retards this process of growth and advance,
which is slow enough, at best.

But, although most correspondence is, from want of truthfulness,
thoughtfulness, life, good judgment, and good breeding, very
unsatisfactory, it cannot be denied that many good letters are
written every day. Between lovers, parents and children, real and
hearty friends, they pass. Young men on the threshold of life, while
discussing together the grave questions then encountered, write them.
Women, before their time to love and to be loved has come, or after
it is passed,--women, who, disappointed in the great hope of every
woman's life, turn to one another for support and shelter,--are
sending them by every post. Mr. De Quincey somewhere says, that in
the letters of English women, almost alone, survive the pure and racy
idioms of the language; and the German Wolf is said to have asserted,
that in corresponding with his betrothed he learnt the mysteries of
style.

Such letters as these are worth one's reading, because the utterance
is genuine and genial. The writers feel and express in every line an
interest in what they are writing, and do not recognize the
conventional rules which obtain where people rely less upon
inspirations from within than upon fixed general maxims for their
guidance. As in the drawing-room the gentleman or lady behaves
naturally, and not according to the dancing-master, so in their
correspondence the best-bred people act from nature, and not from
instruction.

* * * * *




THE CATACOMBS OF ROME. [Continued.]

Novit etiam pictura tacens in parietibus loqni.

ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA.


IV.

Christian art began in the catacombs. Under ground, by the feeble
light of lanterns, upon the ceilings of crypts, or in the
semicircular spaces left above some of the more conspicuous graves,
the first Christian pictures were painted. Imperfect in design,
exhibiting often the influence of pagan models, often displaying
haste of performance and poverty of means, confined for the most part
within a limited circle of ideas, and now faded in color, changed by
damp, broken by rude treatment, sometimes blackened by the smoke of
lamps,--they still give abundant evidence of the feeling and the
spirit which animated those who painted them, a feeling and spirit
which unhappily have too seldom found expression in the so-called
religious Art of later times. Few of them are of much worth in a
purely artistic view. The paintings of the catacombs are rarely to
be compared, in point of beauty, with the pictures from Pompeii,--
although some of them at least were contemporary works. The artistic
skill which created them is of a lower order. But their interest
arises mainly from the sentiment which they imperfectly embody, and
their chief value is in the light which they throw upon early
Christian faith and religious doctrine. They were designed not so
much for the delight of the eye and the gratification of the fancy,
as for stimulating affectionate imaginations, and affording lessons,
easily understood, of faith, hope, and love. They were to give
consolation in sorrow, and to suggest sources of strength in trial.
"The Art of the first three centuries is entirely subordinate,--
restrained partly by persecution and poverty, partly by a high
spirituality, which cared more about preaching than painting."

With the uncertain means afforded by the internal character of these
mural pictures, or by their position in the catacombs, it is
impossible to fix with definiteness the period at which the
Christians began to ornament the walls of their burial-places. It
was probably, however, as early as the beginning of the second
century; and the greater number of the most important pictures which
have thus far been discovered within the subterranean cemeteries
were probably executed before Christianity had become the
established religion of the empire. After that time the decline in
painting, as in faith, was rapid; formality took the place of
simplicity; and in the course of the fourth and fifth centuries the
native fire of Art sank, till nothing was left of it but a few dying
embers, which the workmen from the East, who brought in the stiff
conventionalisms of Byzantine Art, were unfit and unable to rekindle.

In the pictures of the most interesting period, that is, of the
second and third centuries, there is no attempt at literal
portraiture or historic accuracy. They were to be understood only by
those who had the key to them in their minds, and they mostly
arranged themselves in four broad classes. 1st. Representations of
personages or scenes from the Old Testament regarded as types of
those of the New. 2d. Literal or symbolic representations of
personages or scenes from the New Testament. 3d. Miscellaneous
figures, chiefly those of persons in the attitude of prayer. 4th.
Ornamental designs, often copied from pagan examples, and sometimes
with a symbolic meaning attached to them.

It is a noteworthy and affecting circumstance, that, among the
immense number of the pictures in the catacombs which may be
ascribed to the first three centuries, scarcely one has been found
of a painful or sad character. The sufferings of the Saviour, his
passion and his death, and the martyrdoms of the saints, had not
become, as in after days, the main subjects of the religious Art of
Italy. On the contrary, all the early paintings are distinguished by
the cheerful and trustful nature of the impressions they were
intended to convey. In the midst of external depression, uncertainty
of fortune and of life, often in the midst of persecution, the Roman
Christians dwelt not on this world, but looked forward to the
fulfilment of the promises of their Lord. Their imaginations did not
need the stimulus of painted sufferings; suffering was before their
eyes too often in its most vivid reality; they had learned to regard
it as belonging only to earth, and to look upon it as the gateway to
heaven. They did not turn for consolation to the sorrows of their
Lord, but to his words of comfort, to his miracles, and to his
resurrection. Of all the subjects of pictures in the catacombs, the
one, perhaps, more frequently repeated than any other, and under a
greater variety of forms and types, is that of the Resurrection. The
figure of Jonah thrown out from the body of the whale, as the type
that had been used by our Lord himself in regard to his resurrection,
is met with constantly; and the raising of Lazarus is one of the
commonest scenes chosen for representation from the story of the New
Testament. Nor is this strange. The assurance of immortality was to
the world of heathen converts the central fact of Christianity, from
which all the other truths of religion emanated, like rays. It gave
a new and infinitely deeper meaning than it before possessed to all
human experience; and in its universal comprehensiveness, it taught
the great and new lessons of the equality of men before God, and of
the brotherhood of man in the broad promise of eternal life. For us,
brought up in familiarity with Christian truth, surrounded by the
accumulated and constant, though often unrecognized influences of
the Christian faith upon all our modes of thought and feeling, the
imagination itself being more or less completely under their control,--
for us it is difficult to fancy the change produced in the mind of
the early disciples of Christ by the reception of the truths which he
revealed. During the first three centuries, while converts were
constantly being made from heathenism, brought over by no worldly
temptation, but by the pure force of the new doctrine and the glad
tidings over their convictions, or by the contagious enthusiasm of
example and devotion,--faith in Christ and in his teachings must,
among the sincere, have been always connected with a sense of wonder
and of joy at the change wrought in their views of life and of
eternity. Their thoughts dwelt naturally upon the resurrection of
their Lord, as the greatest of the miracles which were the seal of
his divine commission, and as the type of the rising of the
followers of Him who brought life and immortality to light.

The troubles and contentions in the early Church, the disputes
between the Jew and the Gentile convert, the excesses of spiritual
excitement, the extravagances of fanciful belief, of which the
Epistles themselves furnish abundant evidence, ceased to all
appearance at the door of the catacombs. Within them there is
nothing to recall the divisions of the faithful; but, on the contrary,
the paintings on the walls almost universally relate to the simplest
and most undisputed truths. It was fitting that among these the
types of the Resurrection should hold a first place.

But the spiritual needs of life were not to be supplied by the
promises and hopes of immortality alone. There were wants which
craved immediate support, weaknesses that needed present aid,
sufferings that cried for present comfort, and sins for which
repentance sought the assurance of direct forgiveness. And thus
another of the most often-repeated of the pictures in the catacombs
is that of the Saviour under the form of the Good Shepherd. No
emblem fuller of meaning, or richer in consolation, could have been
found. It was very early in common use, not merely in Christian
paintings, but on Christian gems, vases, and lamps. Speaking with
peculiar distinctness to all who were acquainted with the Gospels,
it was at the same time a figure that could be used without exciting
suspicion among the heathen, and one which was not exposed to
desecration or insult from them; and under emblems of this kind,
whose inner meaning was hidden to all but themselves, the first
Christians were often forced to conceal the expression of their faith.
This figure recalled to them many of the sacred words and most
solemn teachings of their Lord: "I am the Good Shepherd; the good
shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." Often the good shepherd was
represented as bearing the sheep upon his shoulders; and the picture
addressed itself with touching and effective simplicity to him whom
fear of persecution or the force of worldly temptations had led away.
When one of his sheep is lost, doth not the shepherd go after it
until he find it? "And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his
shoulders, rejoicing." "There is joy in the presence of the angels of
God over one sinner that repenteth." How often, before this picture,
has some saddened soul uttered the words of the Psalm: "I have gone
astray like a lost sheep: seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy
commandments"! And as if to afford still more direct assurance of the
patience and long-suffering tenderness of the Lord, the Good
Shepherd is sometimes represented in the catacombs as bearing, not a
sheep, but a goat upon his shoulders. It was as if to declare that
his forgiveness and his love knew no limit, but were waiting to
receive and to embrace even those who had turned farthest from him.
In a picture of very early date in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, the
Good Shepherd stands between a goat and a sheep, "as a shepherd
divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his
right hand and the goats on his left." But in this picture the order
is reversed,--the goat is on his right hand and the sheep on his left.
It was the strongest type that could be given of the mercy of God.
Sometimes the Good Shepherd is represented, not bearing the sheep on
his shoulders, but leaning on his crook, and with a pipe in his hands,
while his flock stand in various attitudes around him. Here again
the reference to Scripture is plain: "He calleth his own sheep by
name, and leadeth them out;... and the sheep follow him, for they
know his voice." Thus, under various forms and with various meanings,
full of spiritual significance, and suggesting the most invigorating
and consoling thoughts, the Good Shepherd appears oftener than any
other single figure on the vaults and the walls of the catacombs. It
is impossible to look at these paintings, poor in execution and in
external expression as they are, without experiencing some sense,
faint it may be, of the force with which they must have appealed to
the hearts and consciences of those who first looked upon them. It
is as if the inmost thoughts and deepest feeling of the Christians of
those early times had become dimly visible upon the walls of their
graves. The effect is undoubtedly increased by the manner in which
these paintings are seen, by the unsteady light of wax tapers, in
the solitude of long-deserted passages and chapels. In such a place
the dullest imagination is roused, troop on troop of associations
and memories pass in review before it, and the fading colors and
faint outlines of the paintings possess more power over it than the
glow of Titian's canvas, or the firm outline of Michel Angelo's
frescoes.

Another symbol of the Saviour which is frequently found in the works
of the first three centuries, and which soon afterwards seems to
have fallen almost entirely into disuse, is that of the Fish. It is
not derived, like that of the Good Shepherd, immediately from the
words of Scripture; though its use undoubtedly recalled several
familiar narratives. It seems to have been early associated with the
well-known Greek formula, [Greek: iaesous christos theon uios sotaer],
Jesus Christ the Saviour Son of God, arranged acrostically, so that
the first letters of its words formed the word [Greek: ichthus], fish.
The first association that its use would suggest was that of
Christ's call to Peter and Andrew, "Follow me, and I will make you
fishers of men,"--and thus we find, among the early Christian writers,
the name of "little fish," _pisciculi_, applied to the Christian
disciples of their times. But it would serve also to bring to memory
the miracle that the multitude had witnessed, of the multiplication
of the fishes; and it would recall that last solemn and tender
farewell meeting between the Apostles and their Lord on the shore of
the Sea of Tiberias, in the early morning, when their nets were
filled with fish,--and "Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and
giveth them, and fish likewise." And with this association was
connected, as we learn from the pictures in the catacombs, a still
deeper symbolic meaning, in which it represented the body of our
Lord as given to his apostles at the Last Supper. In the Cemetery of
Callixtus, very near the recently discovered crypt of Pope Cornelius,
are two square sepulchral chambers, adorned with pictures of an
early date. Those of the first chamber have almost utterly perished,
but on the wall of the second may be seen the image of a fish
swimming in the water, and bearing on his back a basket filled with
loaves of the peculiar shape and color used by the Jews as an
offering of the first fruits to their priests; beneath the bread
appears a vessel which shows a red color, like a cup filled with wine.
"As soon as I saw this picture," says the Cavaliere de Rossi, in his
account of the discovery, "the words of St. Jerome came to my mind,--
'None is richer than he who bears the body of the Lord in an osier
basket and his blood in a glass.'"

In the same cemetery, very near the crypt of St. Cecilia, there is a
passage wider than common, upon whose side is a series of sepulchral
cells of similar form, and ornamented with similar pictures. In one
of them a table is represented, with four baskets of bread on the
ground, on one side, and three on the other, while upon it three
loaves and a fish are lying. In another of the chambers is a picture
of a single loaf and of a fish upon a plate lying on a table, at one
side of which a man stands with his hands stretched out towards it,
while on the other side is a woman in the attitude of prayer. It
seems no extravagance of interpretation to read in these pictures
the symbol of that memorial service which Jesus had established for
his followers,--a service which has rarely been celebrated under
circumstances more adapted to give to it its full effect, and to awaken
in the souls of those who joined in it all the deep and affecting
memories of its first institution, than when the bread and wine were
partaken of in memory of the Lord within the small and secret chapels
of the early catacombs. To the Christians who assembled there in the
days when to profess the name of Christ was to venture all things for
his sake, his presence was a reality in their hearts, and his voice
was heard as it was heard by his immediate followers who sat with him
at the table in the upper chamber. [1]

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