Classical Period (2018) Movie Script
1
Describing the state of Florence
at the time Dante was writing,
Henry Napier writes,
in his Florentine history,
"It was not the simple movement
of one great body against another,
"not the force of a government
in opposition to the people.
"Not the struggle
of privilege and democracy,
"of poverty and riches
or starvation and repletion,
"but one universal burst
of unmitigated anarchy.
"In the streets, lanes and squares,
"in the courts of palaces
and humbler dwellings
"were heard the clang of arms,
the screams of victims
"and the gush of the blood.
"The bow of the bridegroom
launched its arrows into the very chambers
"of his young bride's parents
and relations,
"and the bleeding son,
the murdered brother or the dying husband,
"were the evening visitors
of Florentine maids"
"and matrons and aged citizens."
"Every art was practiced to seduce
and deceive and none felt secure,
"even at their nearest
and dearest relatives."
"In the morning,
a son left his paternal roof..."
Do you have the source of the anecdote
about Dante being a bad climber?
It's not so much an anecdote.
It's something Ruskin talks about
in a book of his.
There's a long extract from it
in Longfellow's footnotes.
Throughout the Comedy,
Dante often depicts Virgil
as needing to carry him around.
Do you remember which canto that's from?
- Which canto has the footnote?
- Yeah.
Well, they're ascending or descending
a slope, I can't remember which one.
I think it's towards
the end of the Inferno.
Dante describes this one slope
as very alpine,
and Ruskin goes into what Dante
would have meant by an alpine slope.
I love how, uh,
Dante doesn't idealize
his poetic persona as this great climber,
whether it's literal,
physical strength or, you know,
allegorical, moral strength...
emphasizes the strength of his master,
Virgil, carrying his weight.
So, the other day,
I became really interested
in contextual thinking
and the relation to psychedelic drugs.
I started reading the
Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs
because in there they provide some
contextual history to them.
And I became really interested
in this Claviceps purpurea,
which is what LSD derived,
for most people now.
And actually, one of the things
that is comes from is ergotamine
and, in the 20th century,
Albert Hofmann had discovered it
and realized that it was
beneficial for psychiatry.
So, it became this like whole neuro,
psycho-pharmalogical perspective.
But what's really funny is,
in the late 16th and 17th century,
it became this like metaphysical
Christian theological perspective
and the fungus was actually considered
the Devil's Bread or St Anthony's Fire.
People actually thought the Devil
would possess the bread
and then possess the eater of the bread
and I just found it,
like, extremely fascinating.
- So...
- Cool.
Yeah.
I've been studying
sort of along the same lines.
I've actually been reading
a medieval grimoire.
Why are you interested in that?
Well, mainly, I think it's interesting
how medieval magic
might represent a holdover of...
pagan religious practice
into Christian times, like,
in Constantinople,
for instance, in the eighth century.
So, you know, 400-500 years
after the last temple
of Alexander the Great had been closed,
a Byzantium writer tells us that people
are still wearing amulets
with Alexander's image
for magical protection against disease.
And, you know, in that time
and even later,
the Alexander Romance was
still a highly popular work,
depicting Alexander like a god,
so that in the art of the time,
he's often depicted
- as a type or forerunner of Jesus.
- Hmm. That's interesting.
I actually read something briefly about
the Alexander Romance the other day.
What's that about?
It was the main source for late antique
and medieval people
on Alexander the Great's life.
It portrays him with these
mysterious divine attributes,
like two different-colored eyes
and this pleasing aroma
that he exuded all the time.
And he goes on these crazy adventures,
like traveling to Heaven and back,
and conquers his enemies
with godlike power.
But in the Renaissance,
people started looking back
to more authentically ancient sources
like Seneca, Livy, Plutarch,
re-evaluating Alexander the Great
and the Romance fell into disrepute.
Copies of the Romance from this time
have headings like
"This is based on apocryphal tales",
and one manuscript from the Renaissance
actually ends abruptly
with this note by the scribe.
"I didn't want to copy any more"
"because what came next
was too ridiculous."
Here it is. This is the book
that I photocopied
the Dante stuff out of earlier.
"They thought that a work dictated by
the Holy Spirit was an absolute text.
"In other words, a text
in which the collaboration of chance
"was calculable as zero.
"This portentous premise
of a book impenetrable to contingency,
"of a book which is a mechanism
of infinite purposes,
"moved them to permute
the scriptural words
"add up the numerical value
of the letters and capitals,
"seek acrostics and anagrams
"and perform other exegetical rigors
which is not difficult to ridicule.
"Their excuse
is that nothing can be contingent"
"in the work of an infinite mind."
I've never read the Borges book
this quote is from.
Where do you find this?
I came across it
in the library a while ago.
I wound up purchasing it,
like, three weeks ago.
I'm pretty much finished with it.
You can borrow it, if you want to.
I might.
My brother and his wife
are coming over in about an hour.
- Have you ever met them?
- I don't think so.
I thought maybe had.
They're from New Jersey.
I'm thinking of buying my brother's car.
He's getting rid of it.
Do you drive?
Well, technically, yes, but...
I have a license,
but I haven't driven in about four years.
- What do you need a car for?
- I don't know.
He was thinking about selling it,
and I thought I might buy it.
It would definitely be practical.
Did I tell you about the opera
I went to the other day?
No.
Well, I saw a flyer in a cafe
for Rigoletto and it was a little strange,
the name of the tenor had been struck out
and replaced with this guy, Don Greenberg,
and the name of the singer
in three smaller roles
had also been struck out.
I found out later that she was the girl...
Sorry. That might be my brother early.
All right.
Yeah.
I think I can make it.
Okay.
Hey, is this yours?
- Yes.
- You left it inside the meeting house.
- Thank you.
- Are you a friend?
No. I've just been coming out
to see the city's historic meeting houses,
churches, synagogues,
seeing the architecture.
Do you know the Powel House?
No. What's the Powel House?
Well, it's the one house in Philadelphia
from the colonial era.
It's a real high society kind of house.
It's... Well,
it's right around the corner.
- Would you like to see it?
- Sure.
- All right. Let me show it to you.
- All right.
So, this is it, the Powel House.
Might not look like much,
but that's kind of the point.
It's a middle Georgian building
after the style that was popular in London
about a half century before.
It takes a while for these kind
of trends to travel
from the mother country to the colonies.
Now, you can fairly conclusively date
this building to the 1750s,
based off of the flat pediment
of the frontispiece above the door.
This was a device first used
in Philadelphia
by Edmund Woolley at the State House,
now Independence Hall.
And, after it was used there,
it became prominent at a number
of Philadelphia buildings for a time.
Now, if you take a look
at the rest of this,
you can see we have a two bay front room
followed by the entranceway.
This disrupts the symmetry
that this style so values.
The way this house makes up for it
is that it's a mirror image
of the neighboring house.
Now, this isn't original,
but the original house
would have had the same layout.
So, the symmetry that's lost
and the level of the individual house
is gained on the street as the whole.
If we were to go inside,
you would see
it'd be a completely different world.
You would lose the decorous public
view of this house from the street,
and you get into
the private side of things,
the sumptuous side of things,
the "this is where high society happened"
"in revolutionary era Philadelphia."
General and Lady Washington
were frequent guests here
at the balls that the Powels would put on.
And this almost certainly happened
on the second floor,
where, since you don't need
an entranceway,
you can give over the whole front
of the house to a grand ballroom.
What are you doing up so early?
I have a doctor's appointment.
They couldn't give me any other time.
What are you doing up here?
I haven't gone to bed yet.
The past few nights,
I had the worst insomnia.
I was up all night reading.
When the sun came up, I went for a walk.
- Does that help?
- No.
It's something to do, though.
- What are you reading?
- Different things.
Poetry, mainly.
Simple poetry in English.
Last night I was reading Denise Levertov.
I don't know her.
She grew up in England
and started writing poetry there,
but then she moved to New York.
She was close with
William Carlos Williams
and her poetry is a bit like his.
I think she became a Catholic later
and also very politically
engaged in the '60s.
Last night, I was reading a collection
about her impressions of everyday life.
I particularly like her first two volumes
that she wrote in America, Here and
Now and Overland to the Islands.
I can lend them to you, if you want.
- I'm not holding you up, am I?
- Oh, no.
Where are you going?
Home, eventually.
You going this way?
Find anything?
The Renegado by Philip Massinger.
I read it a few years ago.
"Why should I study a defense, or comfort?
"In whom black guilt,
and misery if balanced,
"I know not which would turn the scale,
"look upward I dare not,
for should it but be believed,
"That I dyed deep
in hell's most horrid colors,
"Should dare to hope for mercy,
"it would leave no check or feeling,
in men innocent
"To catch at sins,
the devil ne'er taught mankind yet,
"No, I must downward, downward,
though repentance
"Could borrow
all the glorious wings of grace,
"My mountainous weight of sins,
would crack their pinions,"
"And sink them to hell with me."
I was really surprised by the play's
approach to religious themes,
given the time it was written.
Some people argue Shakespeare
was secretly Catholic,
because of the way he portrays
Catholicism in some of the plays.
Other people say,
"No, this is just a local color,"
because the plays are set in Italy
or pre-Reformation England.
But Massinger goes way beyond local color
and goes out of his way to introduce,
in a neutral or positive light,
justification by works,
baptismal regeneration,
the sacrament of confession,
the miraculous power of relics,
everything calculated to offend
an English Protestant audience in 1624.
Hm. Yeah.
I've never heard of it.
Now's your chance to get acquainted.
I'm curious,
but I'm not going to get anything.
I have too many books at home already.
And then there are
so many things I've read,
but I'd have a hard time
quoting anything for you.
There are books and essays
I consider fundamental,
in terms of how I see the world,
but I feel like I forget them so easily.
Do you keep a notebook?
Sometimes, but I'm not consistent.
Maybe that could help.
I don't know.
Whenever I go to visit my parents,
I usually end up
bringing books back too, to read again.
Are you going to get that?
No. I already have a copy at home.
Sorry.
I don't know how much longer
this is going to take,
but it's been on my mind,
so I figure I'm going to get it done.
I'm corresponding
with this architect in Germany.
He's written a book comparing
Philadelphia and Cologne, of all places.
It's actually the most comprehensive book
about the freeway revolt
in Philadelphia that I've read.
Do you know the story?
The expressway that would have cut
right through South Street,
if it had ever been built?
Good thing it never was.
Yeah, but it's not really that simple.
So, to put it into context,
it's the 1950s.
There are no expressways,
certainly not in Philadelphia,
but the city planners at the time,
they have this idea of an expressway box,
around Center City.
And this is pretty much
what we have today.
You have the Delaware Expressway,
95 along the Delaware River,
you have the Schuylkill Expressway
along the Schuylkill River,
you have the Vine Street Expressway
sunken along Vine Street
and then you would have had,
to complete the box,
an expressway
that cut right along South Street.
I mean, in some sense,
this is a heroic story.
This is the big planners from on high
coming down and planning
and planning an expressway
that would have gone right
through the neighborhood.
And then you have the little people,
who actually live in the neighborhood,
who go out into the street
and say, "No way."
And they fight the expressway,
they kill off the expressway
and they preserve the neighborhood.
This is the story people like to hear.
But the thing is, these folks,
these neighborhood activists,
they actually had a positive vision
of neighborhood development
that went alongside
their negative vision of no expressway.
But they took
the city planning operation to task.
They fought, they won.
And suddenly they've de-legitimized
the one institution
that actually had the power to do
coordinated neighborhood developments.
And, so, it's left to the markets,
which did a pretty poor job
providing, naturally.
I don't know, coordinated
neighborhood development
doesn't sound that much better
than even the expressway.
How do you mean?
Well, you said this was
the early '50s, right?
So, you know, coordinated
neighborhood development
isn't going to get started till, when,
the '60s and '70s
and what would have been built
in that time?
South Street, as we know it,
still gets demolished
and in its place we get row after row
of concrete and glass boxes
that all look the same.
You know, library, health clinic,
department store, branch bank.
You step back from the street
with a parking strip
for their customers to, you know,
come in from the suburbs
where they actually want to live,
while Philadelphia is left with a street
with no character, no grandeur,
no sense of permanence, no architecture.
What, if it doesn't meet your standards,
it's not even architecture?
My...
the three virtues of architecture
have been recognized since antiquity
as commodity, firmness and delight.
You know Vitruvius was a hack, right?
I know he was a hack
who represents
the accumulated wisdom of his age.
And I would take a hack of Vitruvius' time
over a leading architect of modern times.
Like, take Frank Lloyd Wright.
Do you know every one
of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings leaks?
That has nothing to do with anything.
It shows their entire attitude is wrong.
Frank Lloyd Wright says,
"I want a flat roof."
So, against the weight
of all human history and common sense,
he wants a flat roof,
so he builds a flat roof.
But then winter comes
and the snows pile up.
And, of course, in the spring,
the rain forms ponds and the roof leaks
right on to the little people
who actually live in the house.
While architects stand around and say,
"Oh, a flat roof,
we've never seen that before."
"How innovative. What a genius."
Well, you know, when you're trying
something out for the first time,
you don't always get it just right.
But we've done a pretty good job
since then on flat roofs
and we can make one these days
that doesn't leak.
Well, why did a flat roof
need to be tried out
for the first time in the first place?
You know, architecture is supposed
to reflect timeless proportions
and man's embedded
relationship with nature.
And...
Frank Lloyd Wright's houses may be pretty.
They're beautiful.
I'm not denying his houses
are even beautiful.
They just don't fit in
with the real world.
You know, they're works of art,
not architecture.
Thanks.
So, Evelyn is already here
and Chris should be here shortly.
Okay.
I picked this up in Venice
on my last trip there, in the spring.
This is original Italian,
beautiful illustrations.
Very nice.
"And one began:
"Each one has confidence
In thy good offices without an oath,
"Unless the I cannot cut off the I will;
"Whence I, who speak alone
before the others,
"Pray thee, if ever thou dost see the land
"That 'twixt Romagna lies
and that of Charles,
"Thou be so courteous to me of thy prayers
"In Fano, that they pray for me devoutly,
"That I may purge away my grave offences.
"From thence was I;
but the deep wounds, through which
"Issued the blood wherein I had my seat,
"Were dealt me in bosom of the Antenori,
"There where I thought
to be the most secure;
"'Twas he of Este had it done, who held me
"In hatred far beyond what justice willed.
"But if towards the Mira I had fled,
"When I was overtaken at Oriaco,
"I still should be o'er yonder
where men breathe.
"I ran to the lagoon, and reeds and mire
"Did so entangle me I fell, and saw there"
"A lake made from my veins
upon the ground."
"Then said another: " Ah, be that desire
"Fulfilled that draws thee
to the lofty mountain,
"As thou with pious pity aidest mine.
"I was of Montefeltro, and am Buonconte;
"Giovanna, nor none other cares for me;"
"Hence among these I go
with downcast front."
"And I to him:
"What violence or what chance
"Led thee astray so far from Campaldino,"
"That never has thy sepulture been known?"
"Oh," he replied, "at Casentino's foot
"A river crosses named Archiano, born
"Above the Hermitage in Apennine.
"There where the name thereof
becometh void
"Did I arrive, pierced through
and through the throat,
"Fleeing on foot, and bloodying the plain;
"There my sight lost I, and my utterance
"Ceased in the name of Mary, and thereat
"I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.
"Truth will I speak,
repeat it to the living;
"God's Angel took me up, and he of hell
"Shouted: 'O thou from heaven,
why dost thou rob me?
"Thou bearest away
the eternal part of him,
"For one poor little tear,
that takes him from me;
"But with the rest
I'll deal in other fashion!'
"Well knowest thou how
in the air is gathered
"That humid vapour which to water turns,
"Soon as it rises
where the cold doth grasp it.
"He joined that evil will,
which aye seeks evil,
"To intellect, and moved the mist and wind
"By means of power,
which his own nature gave;
"Thereafter,
when the day was spent, the valley
"From Pratomagno to the great yoke covered
"With fog, and made the heaven
above intent,
"So that the pregnant air
to water changed;
"Down fell the rain,
and to the gullies came
"Whate'er of it earth tolerated not;
"And as it mingled
with the mighty torrents,
"Towards the royal river with such speed
"It headlong rushed,
that nothing held it back.
"My frozen body near unto its outlet
"The robust Archian found, and into Arno
"Thrust it, and loosened
from my breast the cross
"I made of me, when agony o'ercame me;
"It rolled me on the banks
and on the bottom,"
"Then with its booty
covered and begirt me."
"Ah, when thou hast
returned unto the world,"
"And rested thee
from thy long journeying,"
"After the second
followed the third spirit,
"Do thou remember me who am the Pia;
"Siena made me, unmade me Maremma;
"He knoweth it, who had encircled first,"
"Espousing me, my finger with his gem."
Evelyn, you had said before
that you especially liked
the second half of Canto V?
Yeah. I was really struck
by the note of progression.
- Would you like to begin there?
- Sure.
But there's a few things
in the beginning too.
I was struck
by the speed the souls are walking.
It's a lot faster
than the ones in the previous canto,
who are excommunicated
and who walk very slowly.
It's as if the souls in Canto V
have pushed off responsibility
until the last minute
and then are making up for it
by moving very quickly.
And I remember Dante
looking at their faces to see
if there's someone he could recognize.
I could just imagine him looking.
I actually had a question
in the same section.
There is a line I couldn't understand
that was kind of confusing to me.
- Which one is that, Chris?
- Um...
"Unless the I cannot cut off the I will".
Yeah, that confused me too.
Yeah, maybe it's just the way
it's translated?
Yeah, the translation is pretty odd.
I didn't get it either
till I looked back at the Italian.
So, it's not, "Unless the I
cannot cut off the I will,"
it's "Unless the I cannot
cut off the I will,"
So, they trust in Dante to pray for them,
unless his desire to do so
is overpowered by his human weakness.
Okay. Thank you, Cal.
I also looked up the song
the souls are chanting as they're walking.
It's Psalm 51.
"Have mercy upon me.
O God, after thy great goodness."
"According to the multitude
of thy mercies, do away mine offenses."
It reminds me of Amazing Grace.
Is this song also sung at funerals?
I'm not sure.
Yeah, it is traditionally chanted
at funerals
and any other penitential occasion.
The same song is sung as the Asperges
at the beginning
of the traditional Sunday mass.
Thank you, Cal.
There's a footnote later on in the
book with an excerpt from the Convivio.
It relates to this, I think.
"Hence we see children
desire exceedingly an apple
"and then, going farther,
desire a little bird
"and, farther still, a beautiful dress
"and then a horse and then a woman
"and then wealth not very great
and then greater
"and then greater still.
"And this cometh to pass because
she findeth not in any of these things"
"that which she is seeking
and trusteth to find it farther on."
In the Miserere, the souls are asking
for help from God and guidance.
And here Dante's talking
about the idea of the soul
being led by the supreme desire
to eventually find God.
I wonder why some souls are in Hell
and some in Purgatory,
when they all are born
with the desire to reach God.
Do any of you know
if Dante believed in free will?
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, uh, it's freedom,
but freedom has a purpose.
It's not an indifferent choice
what do you do with your life,
it's freedom to pursue
man's final purpose.
And what is that purpose?
You know, to know and love God,
the highest good, the first cause
and final end of all things.
So, is that innate or by choice?
It's an innate end of human nature,
and it's a choice to pursue it or not.
Like, if I give you a box
labeled "right side up"
you can turn it right side up
or you can turn it some other direction
and face the consequences,
but it has that innate orientation.
Thank you, Cal.
Would any of you like to discuss
the three souls Dante talks to?
Yeah. I wonder why...
"My utterance ceased in the name of Mary."
So, in his last moments,
he couldn't even get her whole name out.
Wasn't that her whole name?
Isn't it just Mary?
Mary of Joachim,
Mary of Nazareth?
Uh, I think, in the Greek liturgy,
she's called,
"our all-holy, spotless and
most highly blessed lady,"
"mother of God and ever-virgin Mary."
Okay, but she didn't have those names
in her own time, right?
Well, Bonconte died in Dante's time,
he can call her whatever he wants.
Anyway, his last moment in life,
his last word is Mary,
and now he wants to go on speaking,
to say all the words
he couldn't say in life or that he didn't.
Not that he couldn't say them,
he just didn't.
Here.
"Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord:
and my mouth shall show Thy praise,"
in the Miserere.
I guess, in relation to that,
the need to tell their stories
is what they're asking Dante
to do for them.
It evolves throughout the canto,
like, the details as well.
The first two are very graphic
and detailed,
with Jacopo del Cassero, who was
assassinated for political reasons,
and Bonconte, who died in battle.
And the third one, Pia, is very short
and has almost no details.
Yeah. When Jacopo
and Bonconte ask Dante
and anybody else Dante can get
to pray for them,
to speed their souls' passage
into purgatory,
Jacopo asks Dante
to get everybody from Fano,
where he's from, to pray for him,
Bonconte says,
"Get my family to pray for me,"
and then Pia asks Dante alone
to remember her in his prayers.
Yeah, when he has the time.
What did all of you think about the use,
the description of rain
in Bonconte's story?
There was a lot of nature imagery
in this one.
What does Jacopo mention about his body?
- About the pool of blood?
- Yeah.
"But the deep wounds through which
Issue the blood wherein I had my seat...
"I ran to the lagoon and reeds and mire
Did so entangle me I fell and saw there"
"A lake made from my veins
upon the ground."
Yeah, I noticed that too.
The notes in Longfellow
and in the Italian edition both cite this
one verse from Leviticus, I guess.
In the Vulgate translation, it says,
"The blood is the seed of the soul."
And when he says,
"The blood where I had my seat,"
it's a human soul that's speaking,
not a whole human person,
which is why,
in the beginning of the canto,
the souls in Ante-Purgatory are amazed
when Dante comes in, in his body.
And this image of the separation
of blood from the body,
to me, serves as a visceral image
of the separation
of the soul from the body.
That's really prominent here, the image
of the body and the soul being separated.
Bonconte says,
"And thereat I fell,
and tenantless my flesh remained."
And Pia says she is unmade.
I think the footnotes are more enjoyable
than the poem itself.
- Because of the language.
- Yeah, a little bit.
I heard the translation by Carlyle,
which was the most popular
before Longfellow's,
is similar in style
but easier to understand.
Why is that, Cal?
Well, in general
there are fewer inversions, and...
Carlyle tends to prefer Anglo-Saxon words,
where Longfellow chooses romantic
and Latinate ones.
My stumbling block is less the language
and more the obscurity
of the reference points.
Every time I'm reading it, it's...
when someone new is introduced,
I'm reading two or three columns of notes
about who they were, which is fine.
But you find the bibliographic material
more interesting?
I think so,
but I have to read each canto twice,
which isn't a complaint, necessarily.
I think anyone who reads it today
would have that problem.
Yeah, not just today. I was reading
some of the critical excerpts
in the back of the book,
the stuff in French after the Paradiso,
and even in the 18th century,
people were already complaining,
"lt's impossible for anyone
to understand the Comedy now
"because Dante packed it
with so many references"
to people and events of his own time.
There's very little knowledge
as to who Pia was
and very little agreement about it either.
But that works, I think,
without knowing anything about her.
Or maybe that's the point.
Yeah. Of the three people
Dante meets here,
Pia is the closest
to leaving Ante-Purgatory,
to enter Purgatory proper,
and she doesn't want to focus on herself.
Of the three, she makes
the most modest request of Dante.
I remember a footnote quoting Ruskin's
Lives of the Painters
about Dante's skill in conveying so much
in such a brief and compressed space.
In contrast to Virgil.
But I guess you'd have to read Virgil
to really see it.
You have these three successive stories,
then there's this progression
in the details
and the kinds of details
and the style of the storytelling,
and also in terms of the kinds of things
they're asking Dante to do for them.
And it culminates in this,
the briefest, the most compressed
and the saddest.
This woman
who just wants to be remembered.
There's nothing to drink here.
What is this place?
I mean, who lives here?
It belongs to Larry Mickler.
Well, Mr Mickler upstairs,
unconscious in the bathroom,
and Mrs Mickler's in the bedroom.
Someone insulted the hostess earlier.
Well, I guess that means
we have the living room to ourselves.
Come on, let's get out of here.
- Well, do you want to go get dinner?
- No, I already had a sandwich.
You think we should say goodbye to Larry?
I suppose.
I think I'm going to go home
and go to bed.
Oh, you can't go just yet.
I ran Sam Holmes the other day.
She's having a party tonight.
She has a party every Thursday.
I promised her I'd go.
So were there a lot of martyrs
at this time,
during the English Reformation?
Oh, yeah, there were many martyrs.
One martyr who had an interesting career
was Saint Edmund Campion.
As a young man,
he was a student at Oxford,
a poet, a scholar, a gentleman.
And the normal course
of a university education at that time
was seen as preparation
to enter the clergy,
so he put off his theological studies
as long as possible,
because, at this time, having opinions
on theological questions
could get you killed.
There had been Catholic persecution
of Protestants,
then Protestant persecution of Catholics,
then Catholic persecution
of Protestants again,
then Protestant persecution
of Catholics in Campion's time.
So, he stuck as long as he could
to a less controversial issues
of philosophy and natural science.
But there came a point in his studies
where he had to move on to theology.
So, he started reading the Church Fathers,
the Christian authors
from the first centuries,
and the experience of many people
reading these ancient books,
at least Campion's experience,
is that it's a slam dunk for Catholicism
being the ancient faith
over any Protestant denomination.
At the same time, he's close friends
with the Bishop of Lincoln,
whose name is Dick Cheney.
And Bishop Cheney is as close
to a Catholic as you can be,
as an Anglican bishop of that time
or even closer than you can be.
He's actually excommunicated
by the other bishops
for his ultra high church opinions -
what would later be called high church -
and Campion is reading the Church Fathers,
he's listening to his friend Dick Cheney,
and he is in such doubts,
he goes to a friend of his
who is a specialist in patristic theology,
and he says, you know,
"Well, how do you reconcile this?
"How can you know as much
as you do about the Fathers"
"and still accept the theology
of the state church?"
And apparently the guy openly told him,
"Well, if I believed the Fathers
as well as read them, I'd be a Catholic."
"I go along to get along."
So, Oxford at this time is still a pretty
pro-Catholic academic environment,
and Campion can be open about the way
his studies are leading him,
but the authorities in London
are turning up the...
At this time,
if you're in any public office,
you have to swear an oath recognizing
Queen Elizabeth as the head of the church.
And if you refuse to take the oath twice,
the penalty is death.
So, as the pressure ramps up,
Campion has to get out of town
and he goes to Ireland,
where the same laws officially apply,
but everybody who is anybody is Catholic
and you can, uh...
you can get away with it.
But then this pirate,
Thomas Stukley, shows up in Spain
and tells the King of Spain
he can conquer Ireland for him.
And the King of Spain
isn't really interested in the offer.
But spies bring information
of this back to England
and Lord Burghley...
stirs up fears of this impending
Catholic invasion of Ireland
and tells the authorities in Dublin,
"Round up any suspected Catholics."
So, Campion has to get out of even there
and sail for Europe and,
on a ship to Europe,
he's actually intercepted
and the ship is searched
and he's found and arrested
and brought back to English shores.
But the captain, fortunately,
is more interested
in taking Campion's wallet
than actually getting the prisoner
all the way back to London.
So, he's able to raise some money
from his friends and get on another ship.
This time he actually makes it to France.
There he ends up entering the Jesuits
and becomes a priest.
And the Jesuits, at this time,
are dedicated to sending
as many missionaries as possible
back to England,
to minister to the faithful.
The English Reformation
is often thought of
as this bottom-up revolt
of the people against the church,
telling them what to think,
but modern historians
see it as more top-down,
from Church and government officials.
Most people were perfectly happy
with historic English devotion,
and the reality in most places was people
hid away their rosaries and statues
until things blew over
or even openly kept them out
against the orders of the bishops.
Supposedly in some places,
the parish priest would begin the day
saying Mass for the Catholics
in his own house.
Then he'd go over to the parish church
and do his official duties
of saying morning prayer.
So, not everyone agrees
with the Jesuits sending the flower
of English Catholic youth
to be martyred in England.
But apparently the Jesuit superiors
think it's worth it.
So, Campion and his companions
arrive in England and they decide
to write these personal statements,
in case they're captured and killed,
they can put out against
any government propaganda
saying who they really are
and what they're really here to do.
So, Campion writes this letter
in a very audacious tone,
saying, you know,
"I'm Father Edmund Campion, SJ,
"I'm here to win England back
to the true faith and the one true Church.
"And I'll take on any of their Protestant
bishops and theologians,
"anytime, anywhere,
and prove to them how wrong they are,"
"from Scripture and the Fathers."
And this letter begins to circulate
in all the towns and villages,
and Campion already becomes quite famous
as he enters the life
of an underground priest.
He goes from place to place,
ingratiates himself in the great houses
of aristocrats and merchants
who are still Catholic in sympathy,
lives in secret hidden rooms,
at night, says mass, ministers
to the servants and tradespeople.
At night, Campion and his companions
will each celebrate
five or six masses in a row.
And people sit through it because,
in a time like this,
you take the masses you can get,
and then Campion begins to preach,
and none of his sermons are written down.
We only have fragmentary quotations,
but we know in his own time
they were the main basis of his fame.
By night, he preaches,
the next day people go around saying,
"Oh, the famous Father Campion was here."
"Greatest sermon I ever heard,
changed my life."
So, he draws larger and larger crowds
everywhere he goes.
One night, he's visiting this noble house.
They say, "Well, while we have
Father Campion here",
"we have to hear him preach.
Everyone says it's not to be missed."
So, word is sent out, a crowd gathers
and one guy who gets in
is a bit unscrupulous
and runs off to the authorities
to inform on Campion.
They come and arrest him and bring him
to the Tower of London
where he's tortured,
trying to get him to inform
on other members
of the Catholic Underground.
And, at one point,
he's even brought into the presence
of the Queen and her ministers
and offered a chance to recant,
become a good Protestant again
and re-enter the Anglican clergy.
There is still no telling
how high he might rise
in the Anglican Church,
but he stands firm.
So, one morning he's woken up early,
brought out in chains and led,
to his surprise, into this room,
to have the debate he had challenged these
Protestant theologians to in his letter.
And it's a little lopsided,
because he's tortured, sleep deprived
and relying only on memory
against these multiple guys
with access to books.
But the judgment of the sources
at the time, apparently,
is that Campion still had the upper hand,
there were broadside ballads
being sold in the street,
making fun of the state church
for being unable to take on Campion.
But, you know,
winning the argument
isn't able to save him.
He still ends up being hanged,
drawn and quartered.
Have you written anything recently?
I saw some of your stuff in sedition.
I thought it was really nice.
Thanks. I haven't.
I'm not much of a poet.
You don't happen to have any manuscripts
on you now, do you?
Sorry, ask someone else.
There's this way, you know,
before you get your bearings in a place
when you're new, you spend time
with people you wouldn't normally.
How do you mean?
Folks, I'm gonna go get some more beer.
You guys want anything?
- No, thanks.
- All right.
I bought this book called The
Cats of Copenhagen by James Joyce,
which was advertised like
it's this great classic children's story,
but, really,
it's just this extract from a letter
he wrote to his grandson or something,
and it didn't really work as a story.
So, I decided I was going to get my $10...
That was so obnoxious.
- Sorry?
- That question.
If I was carrying around a manuscript
of poetry or something.
He knows just what to say to
get on my nerves
and make me not want to talk.
Why would I be?
Why would I want to share something
like that here anyway?
I don't know why
I can't speak to people more directly.
You don't find him annoying?
No, not really.
You find it easy to tolerate people
who like to hear what you have to say.
He wanted to know the history...
And you filled him in.
You have a kind of smugness
about your relations with other people
that's getting on my nerves
more and more. It's irritating.
I guess you have another one
of your anecdotes to tell now.
I guess it's just so foreign
to my own way of being in the world,
relating to other people.
Remember that line about Pia
being unmade by the air in Maremma,
how the air was unhealthy?
Maybe that's how I was feeling in there.
And there's something Simone Weil writes,
about the baseness of the air we breathe
or something like that.
It's just a suffocating room,
or suffocating people or something.
- Sorry. I don't know why...
- Are you still working...
- you're getting on my nerves.
- ..on Levertov's poetry?
- Sorry?
- Uh, Denise Levertov.
What do you mean?
I'm reading it.
I'm not planning
to write about it or anything.
It's just something to read at night.
Though I did find an interesting article
comparing her way of writing
to some ideas in Weil's.
Maybe there's something there.
What I need to do now is find a subject,
something very specific to focus on
and follow through with.
I'm too all over the place right now.
The other night, I couldn't sleep at all
and, in the afternoon,
I went to see a play my friend is in.
She's in a fringe troupe
and they're doing a stage version
of this Buster Keaton movie,
The Navigator,
but with anarchists like Emma Goldman,
who were deported to Russia
by boat around the same time.
But I couldn't concentrate at all.
My mind kept wandering.
I need to clear my head somehow.
We should meet more often.
The group with Sam and Chris.
I find it useful talking to other people
about those things,
But we're meeting less and less
and Chris tells me he's going away soon.
Chris is going away?
Yeah. I don't know for how long.
I finished Purgatory this morning.
The last three cantos,
when Beatrice finally arrives
and he's going up to Paradise.
I don't know how to describe it.
They're amazing, though.
You should let me know when you get to it.
Sure.
I might go get something to eat.
Are you hungry?
It's a 15th century spiritual manual,
you know, uh...
"the knowledge of Christ surpasses
all worldly wisdom,
"withdraw into yourself, hate the world,"
"think frequently
about death and judgment."
Very influential over the centuries,
like, when you read the spiritual classics
of later centuries,
like Ignatius of Loyola
or Francis de Sales,
part of their advice is, "Go
read The Imitation of Christ."
So what else have you been up to, Cal?
Just the usual, you know,
reading, writing.
So, Cal, the piece
we were playing earlier,
it begins with an introduction,
an introduction in C minor,
a rushing arpeggio,
double forte,
the loudest possible dynamic,
that foreshadows Beethoven
as the transitional composer
who takes us from the classical
to the romantic period.
Following that, Beethoven goes
into his actual theme for the movement,
which is a seven-note theme.
Or...
And Beethoven,
even at this early stage in his career -
he was only 23 when he wrote this -
was able to take this theme
and do interesting things with it,
such as here.
Following this, he takes those
seven notes and breaks it down,
the first four notes
and then the last three notes.
And they're switching
between the different instruments
and the different hands of the piano.
For instance, the first four notes...
followed by the last three notes.
And if that was not enough,
while the piano
plays the last three notes,
the violin plays the first four notes,
but instead of doing it normally...
the violin inverts it.
So, when played together,
it sounds like this.
Piano trios before this,
in the classical period,
the cello part was really
much less significant
than the violin and piano parts.
It would just serve as
a sort of accompaniment.
But here the cello actually picks up
the theme at times.
And while it does that,
the piano has its own theme going on.
Beethoven also has
beautiful classical themes.
For instance, this theme in E-flat major,
the relative key of C minor.
Then the violin picks it up,
with a flowing piano accompaniment.
And even without the violin here playing,
you can still sort of hear that theme.
Just because Beethoven
sets up the accompaniment
so effectively with it.
I'm on a strict schedule now,
waking up early to read in the morning,
partly to avoid the heat.
But also I'm more productive this way.
I forgot, I meant to bring you a book
I just finished reading.
It has a chapter about Cato's
role in Purgatory.
Oh, Cato.
How, in spite of his suicide,
his life as a statesman
prefigured his role as a guardian
of the gates of Purgatory,
so that the earthly Cato
is the concrete and historical figure
and then the Cato in Purgatory
is revealed or fulfilled figure.
In Purgatory,
he's guarding Christian freedom
and he proved his ability to do this
by choosing to die voluntarily,
rather than live a life
of political servitude.
I just re-read this 18th century play
about Cato by Joseph Addison,
which dramatizes his death
as the struggle
between liberty and tyranny.
But, you know,
it inspired a lot of people at the time,
George Washington had it staged
for the troops at Valley Forge,
but, you know, I don't like this
glamorization of Cato's suicide
as the ultimate assertion
of individual autonomy against tyranny.
Cato, as a stoic, accepted suicide
only when it was no longer possible
to live virtuously.
And he thought, as a senator,
he would have to be complicit
in the tyranny, if he continued to live.
He told everyone around him,
"Withdraw from public affairs
and don't follow my example."
And, you know,
when it's interpreted as, you know,
this refusal to live under a tyranny,
what's the message?
If you're a slave or if you're living
under an absolute monarchy,
you should also kill yourself?
So, do you disagree with Dante's choice
to put Cato in Purgatory,
or do you disagree
with the interpretation?
I don't know. Dante must have had
some reasoning to excuse the suicide,
but I think the real main reason
that Cato is there
is Virgil had described
the afterlife in the Aeneid
and he says that Cato is there as the
lawgiver to the happy souls in Elysium.
Now that I've finished
Purgatory,
I've been leafing through
some of the notes.
Some of the stuff that he references,
I'd like to read,
like some verses from
The Laws of Candy.
I was curious about this book
and looked it up.
Evidently, its chief interest to scholars
is the disputed authorship
between John Fletcher
and Philip Massinger,
the author of The Renegado,
which I still haven't read.
So, Longfellow probably read it to.
Describing the state of Florence
at the time Dante was writing,
Henry Napier writes,
in his Florentine history,
"It was not the simple movement
of one great body against another,
"not the force of a government
in opposition to the people.
"Not the struggle
of privilege and democracy,
"of poverty and riches
or starvation and repletion,
"but one universal burst
of unmitigated anarchy.
"In the streets, lanes and squares,
"in the courts of palaces
and humbler dwellings
"were heard the clang of arms,
the screams of victims
"and the gush of the blood.
"The bow of the bridegroom
launched its arrows into the very chambers
"of his young bride's parents
and relations,
"and the bleeding son,
the murdered brother or the dying husband,
"were the evening visitors
of Florentine maids"
"and matrons and aged citizens."
"Every art was practiced to seduce
and deceive and none felt secure,
"even at their nearest
and dearest relatives."
"In the morning,
a son left his paternal roof..."
Do you have the source of the anecdote
about Dante being a bad climber?
It's not so much an anecdote.
It's something Ruskin talks about
in a book of his.
There's a long extract from it
in Longfellow's footnotes.
Throughout the Comedy,
Dante often depicts Virgil
as needing to carry him around.
Do you remember which canto that's from?
- Which canto has the footnote?
- Yeah.
Well, they're ascending or descending
a slope, I can't remember which one.
I think it's towards
the end of the Inferno.
Dante describes this one slope
as very alpine,
and Ruskin goes into what Dante
would have meant by an alpine slope.
I love how, uh,
Dante doesn't idealize
his poetic persona as this great climber,
whether it's literal,
physical strength or, you know,
allegorical, moral strength...
emphasizes the strength of his master,
Virgil, carrying his weight.
So, the other day,
I became really interested
in contextual thinking
and the relation to psychedelic drugs.
I started reading the
Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Drugs
because in there they provide some
contextual history to them.
And I became really interested
in this Claviceps purpurea,
which is what LSD derived,
for most people now.
And actually, one of the things
that is comes from is ergotamine
and, in the 20th century,
Albert Hofmann had discovered it
and realized that it was
beneficial for psychiatry.
So, it became this like whole neuro,
psycho-pharmalogical perspective.
But what's really funny is,
in the late 16th and 17th century,
it became this like metaphysical
Christian theological perspective
and the fungus was actually considered
the Devil's Bread or St Anthony's Fire.
People actually thought the Devil
would possess the bread
and then possess the eater of the bread
and I just found it,
like, extremely fascinating.
- So...
- Cool.
Yeah.
I've been studying
sort of along the same lines.
I've actually been reading
a medieval grimoire.
Why are you interested in that?
Well, mainly, I think it's interesting
how medieval magic
might represent a holdover of...
pagan religious practice
into Christian times, like,
in Constantinople,
for instance, in the eighth century.
So, you know, 400-500 years
after the last temple
of Alexander the Great had been closed,
a Byzantium writer tells us that people
are still wearing amulets
with Alexander's image
for magical protection against disease.
And, you know, in that time
and even later,
the Alexander Romance was
still a highly popular work,
depicting Alexander like a god,
so that in the art of the time,
he's often depicted
- as a type or forerunner of Jesus.
- Hmm. That's interesting.
I actually read something briefly about
the Alexander Romance the other day.
What's that about?
It was the main source for late antique
and medieval people
on Alexander the Great's life.
It portrays him with these
mysterious divine attributes,
like two different-colored eyes
and this pleasing aroma
that he exuded all the time.
And he goes on these crazy adventures,
like traveling to Heaven and back,
and conquers his enemies
with godlike power.
But in the Renaissance,
people started looking back
to more authentically ancient sources
like Seneca, Livy, Plutarch,
re-evaluating Alexander the Great
and the Romance fell into disrepute.
Copies of the Romance from this time
have headings like
"This is based on apocryphal tales",
and one manuscript from the Renaissance
actually ends abruptly
with this note by the scribe.
"I didn't want to copy any more"
"because what came next
was too ridiculous."
Here it is. This is the book
that I photocopied
the Dante stuff out of earlier.
"They thought that a work dictated by
the Holy Spirit was an absolute text.
"In other words, a text
in which the collaboration of chance
"was calculable as zero.
"This portentous premise
of a book impenetrable to contingency,
"of a book which is a mechanism
of infinite purposes,
"moved them to permute
the scriptural words
"add up the numerical value
of the letters and capitals,
"seek acrostics and anagrams
"and perform other exegetical rigors
which is not difficult to ridicule.
"Their excuse
is that nothing can be contingent"
"in the work of an infinite mind."
I've never read the Borges book
this quote is from.
Where do you find this?
I came across it
in the library a while ago.
I wound up purchasing it,
like, three weeks ago.
I'm pretty much finished with it.
You can borrow it, if you want to.
I might.
My brother and his wife
are coming over in about an hour.
- Have you ever met them?
- I don't think so.
I thought maybe had.
They're from New Jersey.
I'm thinking of buying my brother's car.
He's getting rid of it.
Do you drive?
Well, technically, yes, but...
I have a license,
but I haven't driven in about four years.
- What do you need a car for?
- I don't know.
He was thinking about selling it,
and I thought I might buy it.
It would definitely be practical.
Did I tell you about the opera
I went to the other day?
No.
Well, I saw a flyer in a cafe
for Rigoletto and it was a little strange,
the name of the tenor had been struck out
and replaced with this guy, Don Greenberg,
and the name of the singer
in three smaller roles
had also been struck out.
I found out later that she was the girl...
Sorry. That might be my brother early.
All right.
Yeah.
I think I can make it.
Okay.
Hey, is this yours?
- Yes.
- You left it inside the meeting house.
- Thank you.
- Are you a friend?
No. I've just been coming out
to see the city's historic meeting houses,
churches, synagogues,
seeing the architecture.
Do you know the Powel House?
No. What's the Powel House?
Well, it's the one house in Philadelphia
from the colonial era.
It's a real high society kind of house.
It's... Well,
it's right around the corner.
- Would you like to see it?
- Sure.
- All right. Let me show it to you.
- All right.
So, this is it, the Powel House.
Might not look like much,
but that's kind of the point.
It's a middle Georgian building
after the style that was popular in London
about a half century before.
It takes a while for these kind
of trends to travel
from the mother country to the colonies.
Now, you can fairly conclusively date
this building to the 1750s,
based off of the flat pediment
of the frontispiece above the door.
This was a device first used
in Philadelphia
by Edmund Woolley at the State House,
now Independence Hall.
And, after it was used there,
it became prominent at a number
of Philadelphia buildings for a time.
Now, if you take a look
at the rest of this,
you can see we have a two bay front room
followed by the entranceway.
This disrupts the symmetry
that this style so values.
The way this house makes up for it
is that it's a mirror image
of the neighboring house.
Now, this isn't original,
but the original house
would have had the same layout.
So, the symmetry that's lost
and the level of the individual house
is gained on the street as the whole.
If we were to go inside,
you would see
it'd be a completely different world.
You would lose the decorous public
view of this house from the street,
and you get into
the private side of things,
the sumptuous side of things,
the "this is where high society happened"
"in revolutionary era Philadelphia."
General and Lady Washington
were frequent guests here
at the balls that the Powels would put on.
And this almost certainly happened
on the second floor,
where, since you don't need
an entranceway,
you can give over the whole front
of the house to a grand ballroom.
What are you doing up so early?
I have a doctor's appointment.
They couldn't give me any other time.
What are you doing up here?
I haven't gone to bed yet.
The past few nights,
I had the worst insomnia.
I was up all night reading.
When the sun came up, I went for a walk.
- Does that help?
- No.
It's something to do, though.
- What are you reading?
- Different things.
Poetry, mainly.
Simple poetry in English.
Last night I was reading Denise Levertov.
I don't know her.
She grew up in England
and started writing poetry there,
but then she moved to New York.
She was close with
William Carlos Williams
and her poetry is a bit like his.
I think she became a Catholic later
and also very politically
engaged in the '60s.
Last night, I was reading a collection
about her impressions of everyday life.
I particularly like her first two volumes
that she wrote in America, Here and
Now and Overland to the Islands.
I can lend them to you, if you want.
- I'm not holding you up, am I?
- Oh, no.
Where are you going?
Home, eventually.
You going this way?
Find anything?
The Renegado by Philip Massinger.
I read it a few years ago.
"Why should I study a defense, or comfort?
"In whom black guilt,
and misery if balanced,
"I know not which would turn the scale,
"look upward I dare not,
for should it but be believed,
"That I dyed deep
in hell's most horrid colors,
"Should dare to hope for mercy,
"it would leave no check or feeling,
in men innocent
"To catch at sins,
the devil ne'er taught mankind yet,
"No, I must downward, downward,
though repentance
"Could borrow
all the glorious wings of grace,
"My mountainous weight of sins,
would crack their pinions,"
"And sink them to hell with me."
I was really surprised by the play's
approach to religious themes,
given the time it was written.
Some people argue Shakespeare
was secretly Catholic,
because of the way he portrays
Catholicism in some of the plays.
Other people say,
"No, this is just a local color,"
because the plays are set in Italy
or pre-Reformation England.
But Massinger goes way beyond local color
and goes out of his way to introduce,
in a neutral or positive light,
justification by works,
baptismal regeneration,
the sacrament of confession,
the miraculous power of relics,
everything calculated to offend
an English Protestant audience in 1624.
Hm. Yeah.
I've never heard of it.
Now's your chance to get acquainted.
I'm curious,
but I'm not going to get anything.
I have too many books at home already.
And then there are
so many things I've read,
but I'd have a hard time
quoting anything for you.
There are books and essays
I consider fundamental,
in terms of how I see the world,
but I feel like I forget them so easily.
Do you keep a notebook?
Sometimes, but I'm not consistent.
Maybe that could help.
I don't know.
Whenever I go to visit my parents,
I usually end up
bringing books back too, to read again.
Are you going to get that?
No. I already have a copy at home.
Sorry.
I don't know how much longer
this is going to take,
but it's been on my mind,
so I figure I'm going to get it done.
I'm corresponding
with this architect in Germany.
He's written a book comparing
Philadelphia and Cologne, of all places.
It's actually the most comprehensive book
about the freeway revolt
in Philadelphia that I've read.
Do you know the story?
The expressway that would have cut
right through South Street,
if it had ever been built?
Good thing it never was.
Yeah, but it's not really that simple.
So, to put it into context,
it's the 1950s.
There are no expressways,
certainly not in Philadelphia,
but the city planners at the time,
they have this idea of an expressway box,
around Center City.
And this is pretty much
what we have today.
You have the Delaware Expressway,
95 along the Delaware River,
you have the Schuylkill Expressway
along the Schuylkill River,
you have the Vine Street Expressway
sunken along Vine Street
and then you would have had,
to complete the box,
an expressway
that cut right along South Street.
I mean, in some sense,
this is a heroic story.
This is the big planners from on high
coming down and planning
and planning an expressway
that would have gone right
through the neighborhood.
And then you have the little people,
who actually live in the neighborhood,
who go out into the street
and say, "No way."
And they fight the expressway,
they kill off the expressway
and they preserve the neighborhood.
This is the story people like to hear.
But the thing is, these folks,
these neighborhood activists,
they actually had a positive vision
of neighborhood development
that went alongside
their negative vision of no expressway.
But they took
the city planning operation to task.
They fought, they won.
And suddenly they've de-legitimized
the one institution
that actually had the power to do
coordinated neighborhood developments.
And, so, it's left to the markets,
which did a pretty poor job
providing, naturally.
I don't know, coordinated
neighborhood development
doesn't sound that much better
than even the expressway.
How do you mean?
Well, you said this was
the early '50s, right?
So, you know, coordinated
neighborhood development
isn't going to get started till, when,
the '60s and '70s
and what would have been built
in that time?
South Street, as we know it,
still gets demolished
and in its place we get row after row
of concrete and glass boxes
that all look the same.
You know, library, health clinic,
department store, branch bank.
You step back from the street
with a parking strip
for their customers to, you know,
come in from the suburbs
where they actually want to live,
while Philadelphia is left with a street
with no character, no grandeur,
no sense of permanence, no architecture.
What, if it doesn't meet your standards,
it's not even architecture?
My...
the three virtues of architecture
have been recognized since antiquity
as commodity, firmness and delight.
You know Vitruvius was a hack, right?
I know he was a hack
who represents
the accumulated wisdom of his age.
And I would take a hack of Vitruvius' time
over a leading architect of modern times.
Like, take Frank Lloyd Wright.
Do you know every one
of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings leaks?
That has nothing to do with anything.
It shows their entire attitude is wrong.
Frank Lloyd Wright says,
"I want a flat roof."
So, against the weight
of all human history and common sense,
he wants a flat roof,
so he builds a flat roof.
But then winter comes
and the snows pile up.
And, of course, in the spring,
the rain forms ponds and the roof leaks
right on to the little people
who actually live in the house.
While architects stand around and say,
"Oh, a flat roof,
we've never seen that before."
"How innovative. What a genius."
Well, you know, when you're trying
something out for the first time,
you don't always get it just right.
But we've done a pretty good job
since then on flat roofs
and we can make one these days
that doesn't leak.
Well, why did a flat roof
need to be tried out
for the first time in the first place?
You know, architecture is supposed
to reflect timeless proportions
and man's embedded
relationship with nature.
And...
Frank Lloyd Wright's houses may be pretty.
They're beautiful.
I'm not denying his houses
are even beautiful.
They just don't fit in
with the real world.
You know, they're works of art,
not architecture.
Thanks.
So, Evelyn is already here
and Chris should be here shortly.
Okay.
I picked this up in Venice
on my last trip there, in the spring.
This is original Italian,
beautiful illustrations.
Very nice.
"And one began:
"Each one has confidence
In thy good offices without an oath,
"Unless the I cannot cut off the I will;
"Whence I, who speak alone
before the others,
"Pray thee, if ever thou dost see the land
"That 'twixt Romagna lies
and that of Charles,
"Thou be so courteous to me of thy prayers
"In Fano, that they pray for me devoutly,
"That I may purge away my grave offences.
"From thence was I;
but the deep wounds, through which
"Issued the blood wherein I had my seat,
"Were dealt me in bosom of the Antenori,
"There where I thought
to be the most secure;
"'Twas he of Este had it done, who held me
"In hatred far beyond what justice willed.
"But if towards the Mira I had fled,
"When I was overtaken at Oriaco,
"I still should be o'er yonder
where men breathe.
"I ran to the lagoon, and reeds and mire
"Did so entangle me I fell, and saw there"
"A lake made from my veins
upon the ground."
"Then said another: " Ah, be that desire
"Fulfilled that draws thee
to the lofty mountain,
"As thou with pious pity aidest mine.
"I was of Montefeltro, and am Buonconte;
"Giovanna, nor none other cares for me;"
"Hence among these I go
with downcast front."
"And I to him:
"What violence or what chance
"Led thee astray so far from Campaldino,"
"That never has thy sepulture been known?"
"Oh," he replied, "at Casentino's foot
"A river crosses named Archiano, born
"Above the Hermitage in Apennine.
"There where the name thereof
becometh void
"Did I arrive, pierced through
and through the throat,
"Fleeing on foot, and bloodying the plain;
"There my sight lost I, and my utterance
"Ceased in the name of Mary, and thereat
"I fell, and tenantless my flesh remained.
"Truth will I speak,
repeat it to the living;
"God's Angel took me up, and he of hell
"Shouted: 'O thou from heaven,
why dost thou rob me?
"Thou bearest away
the eternal part of him,
"For one poor little tear,
that takes him from me;
"But with the rest
I'll deal in other fashion!'
"Well knowest thou how
in the air is gathered
"That humid vapour which to water turns,
"Soon as it rises
where the cold doth grasp it.
"He joined that evil will,
which aye seeks evil,
"To intellect, and moved the mist and wind
"By means of power,
which his own nature gave;
"Thereafter,
when the day was spent, the valley
"From Pratomagno to the great yoke covered
"With fog, and made the heaven
above intent,
"So that the pregnant air
to water changed;
"Down fell the rain,
and to the gullies came
"Whate'er of it earth tolerated not;
"And as it mingled
with the mighty torrents,
"Towards the royal river with such speed
"It headlong rushed,
that nothing held it back.
"My frozen body near unto its outlet
"The robust Archian found, and into Arno
"Thrust it, and loosened
from my breast the cross
"I made of me, when agony o'ercame me;
"It rolled me on the banks
and on the bottom,"
"Then with its booty
covered and begirt me."
"Ah, when thou hast
returned unto the world,"
"And rested thee
from thy long journeying,"
"After the second
followed the third spirit,
"Do thou remember me who am the Pia;
"Siena made me, unmade me Maremma;
"He knoweth it, who had encircled first,"
"Espousing me, my finger with his gem."
Evelyn, you had said before
that you especially liked
the second half of Canto V?
Yeah. I was really struck
by the note of progression.
- Would you like to begin there?
- Sure.
But there's a few things
in the beginning too.
I was struck
by the speed the souls are walking.
It's a lot faster
than the ones in the previous canto,
who are excommunicated
and who walk very slowly.
It's as if the souls in Canto V
have pushed off responsibility
until the last minute
and then are making up for it
by moving very quickly.
And I remember Dante
looking at their faces to see
if there's someone he could recognize.
I could just imagine him looking.
I actually had a question
in the same section.
There is a line I couldn't understand
that was kind of confusing to me.
- Which one is that, Chris?
- Um...
"Unless the I cannot cut off the I will".
Yeah, that confused me too.
Yeah, maybe it's just the way
it's translated?
Yeah, the translation is pretty odd.
I didn't get it either
till I looked back at the Italian.
So, it's not, "Unless the I
cannot cut off the I will,"
it's "Unless the I cannot
cut off the I will,"
So, they trust in Dante to pray for them,
unless his desire to do so
is overpowered by his human weakness.
Okay. Thank you, Cal.
I also looked up the song
the souls are chanting as they're walking.
It's Psalm 51.
"Have mercy upon me.
O God, after thy great goodness."
"According to the multitude
of thy mercies, do away mine offenses."
It reminds me of Amazing Grace.
Is this song also sung at funerals?
I'm not sure.
Yeah, it is traditionally chanted
at funerals
and any other penitential occasion.
The same song is sung as the Asperges
at the beginning
of the traditional Sunday mass.
Thank you, Cal.
There's a footnote later on in the
book with an excerpt from the Convivio.
It relates to this, I think.
"Hence we see children
desire exceedingly an apple
"and then, going farther,
desire a little bird
"and, farther still, a beautiful dress
"and then a horse and then a woman
"and then wealth not very great
and then greater
"and then greater still.
"And this cometh to pass because
she findeth not in any of these things"
"that which she is seeking
and trusteth to find it farther on."
In the Miserere, the souls are asking
for help from God and guidance.
And here Dante's talking
about the idea of the soul
being led by the supreme desire
to eventually find God.
I wonder why some souls are in Hell
and some in Purgatory,
when they all are born
with the desire to reach God.
Do any of you know
if Dante believed in free will?
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, uh, it's freedom,
but freedom has a purpose.
It's not an indifferent choice
what do you do with your life,
it's freedom to pursue
man's final purpose.
And what is that purpose?
You know, to know and love God,
the highest good, the first cause
and final end of all things.
So, is that innate or by choice?
It's an innate end of human nature,
and it's a choice to pursue it or not.
Like, if I give you a box
labeled "right side up"
you can turn it right side up
or you can turn it some other direction
and face the consequences,
but it has that innate orientation.
Thank you, Cal.
Would any of you like to discuss
the three souls Dante talks to?
Yeah. I wonder why...
"My utterance ceased in the name of Mary."
So, in his last moments,
he couldn't even get her whole name out.
Wasn't that her whole name?
Isn't it just Mary?
Mary of Joachim,
Mary of Nazareth?
Uh, I think, in the Greek liturgy,
she's called,
"our all-holy, spotless and
most highly blessed lady,"
"mother of God and ever-virgin Mary."
Okay, but she didn't have those names
in her own time, right?
Well, Bonconte died in Dante's time,
he can call her whatever he wants.
Anyway, his last moment in life,
his last word is Mary,
and now he wants to go on speaking,
to say all the words
he couldn't say in life or that he didn't.
Not that he couldn't say them,
he just didn't.
Here.
"Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord:
and my mouth shall show Thy praise,"
in the Miserere.
I guess, in relation to that,
the need to tell their stories
is what they're asking Dante
to do for them.
It evolves throughout the canto,
like, the details as well.
The first two are very graphic
and detailed,
with Jacopo del Cassero, who was
assassinated for political reasons,
and Bonconte, who died in battle.
And the third one, Pia, is very short
and has almost no details.
Yeah. When Jacopo
and Bonconte ask Dante
and anybody else Dante can get
to pray for them,
to speed their souls' passage
into purgatory,
Jacopo asks Dante
to get everybody from Fano,
where he's from, to pray for him,
Bonconte says,
"Get my family to pray for me,"
and then Pia asks Dante alone
to remember her in his prayers.
Yeah, when he has the time.
What did all of you think about the use,
the description of rain
in Bonconte's story?
There was a lot of nature imagery
in this one.
What does Jacopo mention about his body?
- About the pool of blood?
- Yeah.
"But the deep wounds through which
Issue the blood wherein I had my seat...
"I ran to the lagoon and reeds and mire
Did so entangle me I fell and saw there"
"A lake made from my veins
upon the ground."
Yeah, I noticed that too.
The notes in Longfellow
and in the Italian edition both cite this
one verse from Leviticus, I guess.
In the Vulgate translation, it says,
"The blood is the seed of the soul."
And when he says,
"The blood where I had my seat,"
it's a human soul that's speaking,
not a whole human person,
which is why,
in the beginning of the canto,
the souls in Ante-Purgatory are amazed
when Dante comes in, in his body.
And this image of the separation
of blood from the body,
to me, serves as a visceral image
of the separation
of the soul from the body.
That's really prominent here, the image
of the body and the soul being separated.
Bonconte says,
"And thereat I fell,
and tenantless my flesh remained."
And Pia says she is unmade.
I think the footnotes are more enjoyable
than the poem itself.
- Because of the language.
- Yeah, a little bit.
I heard the translation by Carlyle,
which was the most popular
before Longfellow's,
is similar in style
but easier to understand.
Why is that, Cal?
Well, in general
there are fewer inversions, and...
Carlyle tends to prefer Anglo-Saxon words,
where Longfellow chooses romantic
and Latinate ones.
My stumbling block is less the language
and more the obscurity
of the reference points.
Every time I'm reading it, it's...
when someone new is introduced,
I'm reading two or three columns of notes
about who they were, which is fine.
But you find the bibliographic material
more interesting?
I think so,
but I have to read each canto twice,
which isn't a complaint, necessarily.
I think anyone who reads it today
would have that problem.
Yeah, not just today. I was reading
some of the critical excerpts
in the back of the book,
the stuff in French after the Paradiso,
and even in the 18th century,
people were already complaining,
"lt's impossible for anyone
to understand the Comedy now
"because Dante packed it
with so many references"
to people and events of his own time.
There's very little knowledge
as to who Pia was
and very little agreement about it either.
But that works, I think,
without knowing anything about her.
Or maybe that's the point.
Yeah. Of the three people
Dante meets here,
Pia is the closest
to leaving Ante-Purgatory,
to enter Purgatory proper,
and she doesn't want to focus on herself.
Of the three, she makes
the most modest request of Dante.
I remember a footnote quoting Ruskin's
Lives of the Painters
about Dante's skill in conveying so much
in such a brief and compressed space.
In contrast to Virgil.
But I guess you'd have to read Virgil
to really see it.
You have these three successive stories,
then there's this progression
in the details
and the kinds of details
and the style of the storytelling,
and also in terms of the kinds of things
they're asking Dante to do for them.
And it culminates in this,
the briefest, the most compressed
and the saddest.
This woman
who just wants to be remembered.
There's nothing to drink here.
What is this place?
I mean, who lives here?
It belongs to Larry Mickler.
Well, Mr Mickler upstairs,
unconscious in the bathroom,
and Mrs Mickler's in the bedroom.
Someone insulted the hostess earlier.
Well, I guess that means
we have the living room to ourselves.
Come on, let's get out of here.
- Well, do you want to go get dinner?
- No, I already had a sandwich.
You think we should say goodbye to Larry?
I suppose.
I think I'm going to go home
and go to bed.
Oh, you can't go just yet.
I ran Sam Holmes the other day.
She's having a party tonight.
She has a party every Thursday.
I promised her I'd go.
So were there a lot of martyrs
at this time,
during the English Reformation?
Oh, yeah, there were many martyrs.
One martyr who had an interesting career
was Saint Edmund Campion.
As a young man,
he was a student at Oxford,
a poet, a scholar, a gentleman.
And the normal course
of a university education at that time
was seen as preparation
to enter the clergy,
so he put off his theological studies
as long as possible,
because, at this time, having opinions
on theological questions
could get you killed.
There had been Catholic persecution
of Protestants,
then Protestant persecution of Catholics,
then Catholic persecution
of Protestants again,
then Protestant persecution
of Catholics in Campion's time.
So, he stuck as long as he could
to a less controversial issues
of philosophy and natural science.
But there came a point in his studies
where he had to move on to theology.
So, he started reading the Church Fathers,
the Christian authors
from the first centuries,
and the experience of many people
reading these ancient books,
at least Campion's experience,
is that it's a slam dunk for Catholicism
being the ancient faith
over any Protestant denomination.
At the same time, he's close friends
with the Bishop of Lincoln,
whose name is Dick Cheney.
And Bishop Cheney is as close
to a Catholic as you can be,
as an Anglican bishop of that time
or even closer than you can be.
He's actually excommunicated
by the other bishops
for his ultra high church opinions -
what would later be called high church -
and Campion is reading the Church Fathers,
he's listening to his friend Dick Cheney,
and he is in such doubts,
he goes to a friend of his
who is a specialist in patristic theology,
and he says, you know,
"Well, how do you reconcile this?
"How can you know as much
as you do about the Fathers"
"and still accept the theology
of the state church?"
And apparently the guy openly told him,
"Well, if I believed the Fathers
as well as read them, I'd be a Catholic."
"I go along to get along."
So, Oxford at this time is still a pretty
pro-Catholic academic environment,
and Campion can be open about the way
his studies are leading him,
but the authorities in London
are turning up the...
At this time,
if you're in any public office,
you have to swear an oath recognizing
Queen Elizabeth as the head of the church.
And if you refuse to take the oath twice,
the penalty is death.
So, as the pressure ramps up,
Campion has to get out of town
and he goes to Ireland,
where the same laws officially apply,
but everybody who is anybody is Catholic
and you can, uh...
you can get away with it.
But then this pirate,
Thomas Stukley, shows up in Spain
and tells the King of Spain
he can conquer Ireland for him.
And the King of Spain
isn't really interested in the offer.
But spies bring information
of this back to England
and Lord Burghley...
stirs up fears of this impending
Catholic invasion of Ireland
and tells the authorities in Dublin,
"Round up any suspected Catholics."
So, Campion has to get out of even there
and sail for Europe and,
on a ship to Europe,
he's actually intercepted
and the ship is searched
and he's found and arrested
and brought back to English shores.
But the captain, fortunately,
is more interested
in taking Campion's wallet
than actually getting the prisoner
all the way back to London.
So, he's able to raise some money
from his friends and get on another ship.
This time he actually makes it to France.
There he ends up entering the Jesuits
and becomes a priest.
And the Jesuits, at this time,
are dedicated to sending
as many missionaries as possible
back to England,
to minister to the faithful.
The English Reformation
is often thought of
as this bottom-up revolt
of the people against the church,
telling them what to think,
but modern historians
see it as more top-down,
from Church and government officials.
Most people were perfectly happy
with historic English devotion,
and the reality in most places was people
hid away their rosaries and statues
until things blew over
or even openly kept them out
against the orders of the bishops.
Supposedly in some places,
the parish priest would begin the day
saying Mass for the Catholics
in his own house.
Then he'd go over to the parish church
and do his official duties
of saying morning prayer.
So, not everyone agrees
with the Jesuits sending the flower
of English Catholic youth
to be martyred in England.
But apparently the Jesuit superiors
think it's worth it.
So, Campion and his companions
arrive in England and they decide
to write these personal statements,
in case they're captured and killed,
they can put out against
any government propaganda
saying who they really are
and what they're really here to do.
So, Campion writes this letter
in a very audacious tone,
saying, you know,
"I'm Father Edmund Campion, SJ,
"I'm here to win England back
to the true faith and the one true Church.
"And I'll take on any of their Protestant
bishops and theologians,
"anytime, anywhere,
and prove to them how wrong they are,"
"from Scripture and the Fathers."
And this letter begins to circulate
in all the towns and villages,
and Campion already becomes quite famous
as he enters the life
of an underground priest.
He goes from place to place,
ingratiates himself in the great houses
of aristocrats and merchants
who are still Catholic in sympathy,
lives in secret hidden rooms,
at night, says mass, ministers
to the servants and tradespeople.
At night, Campion and his companions
will each celebrate
five or six masses in a row.
And people sit through it because,
in a time like this,
you take the masses you can get,
and then Campion begins to preach,
and none of his sermons are written down.
We only have fragmentary quotations,
but we know in his own time
they were the main basis of his fame.
By night, he preaches,
the next day people go around saying,
"Oh, the famous Father Campion was here."
"Greatest sermon I ever heard,
changed my life."
So, he draws larger and larger crowds
everywhere he goes.
One night, he's visiting this noble house.
They say, "Well, while we have
Father Campion here",
"we have to hear him preach.
Everyone says it's not to be missed."
So, word is sent out, a crowd gathers
and one guy who gets in
is a bit unscrupulous
and runs off to the authorities
to inform on Campion.
They come and arrest him and bring him
to the Tower of London
where he's tortured,
trying to get him to inform
on other members
of the Catholic Underground.
And, at one point,
he's even brought into the presence
of the Queen and her ministers
and offered a chance to recant,
become a good Protestant again
and re-enter the Anglican clergy.
There is still no telling
how high he might rise
in the Anglican Church,
but he stands firm.
So, one morning he's woken up early,
brought out in chains and led,
to his surprise, into this room,
to have the debate he had challenged these
Protestant theologians to in his letter.
And it's a little lopsided,
because he's tortured, sleep deprived
and relying only on memory
against these multiple guys
with access to books.
But the judgment of the sources
at the time, apparently,
is that Campion still had the upper hand,
there were broadside ballads
being sold in the street,
making fun of the state church
for being unable to take on Campion.
But, you know,
winning the argument
isn't able to save him.
He still ends up being hanged,
drawn and quartered.
Have you written anything recently?
I saw some of your stuff in sedition.
I thought it was really nice.
Thanks. I haven't.
I'm not much of a poet.
You don't happen to have any manuscripts
on you now, do you?
Sorry, ask someone else.
There's this way, you know,
before you get your bearings in a place
when you're new, you spend time
with people you wouldn't normally.
How do you mean?
Folks, I'm gonna go get some more beer.
You guys want anything?
- No, thanks.
- All right.
I bought this book called The
Cats of Copenhagen by James Joyce,
which was advertised like
it's this great classic children's story,
but, really,
it's just this extract from a letter
he wrote to his grandson or something,
and it didn't really work as a story.
So, I decided I was going to get my $10...
That was so obnoxious.
- Sorry?
- That question.
If I was carrying around a manuscript
of poetry or something.
He knows just what to say to
get on my nerves
and make me not want to talk.
Why would I be?
Why would I want to share something
like that here anyway?
I don't know why
I can't speak to people more directly.
You don't find him annoying?
No, not really.
You find it easy to tolerate people
who like to hear what you have to say.
He wanted to know the history...
And you filled him in.
You have a kind of smugness
about your relations with other people
that's getting on my nerves
more and more. It's irritating.
I guess you have another one
of your anecdotes to tell now.
I guess it's just so foreign
to my own way of being in the world,
relating to other people.
Remember that line about Pia
being unmade by the air in Maremma,
how the air was unhealthy?
Maybe that's how I was feeling in there.
And there's something Simone Weil writes,
about the baseness of the air we breathe
or something like that.
It's just a suffocating room,
or suffocating people or something.
- Sorry. I don't know why...
- Are you still working...
- you're getting on my nerves.
- ..on Levertov's poetry?
- Sorry?
- Uh, Denise Levertov.
What do you mean?
I'm reading it.
I'm not planning
to write about it or anything.
It's just something to read at night.
Though I did find an interesting article
comparing her way of writing
to some ideas in Weil's.
Maybe there's something there.
What I need to do now is find a subject,
something very specific to focus on
and follow through with.
I'm too all over the place right now.
The other night, I couldn't sleep at all
and, in the afternoon,
I went to see a play my friend is in.
She's in a fringe troupe
and they're doing a stage version
of this Buster Keaton movie,
The Navigator,
but with anarchists like Emma Goldman,
who were deported to Russia
by boat around the same time.
But I couldn't concentrate at all.
My mind kept wandering.
I need to clear my head somehow.
We should meet more often.
The group with Sam and Chris.
I find it useful talking to other people
about those things,
But we're meeting less and less
and Chris tells me he's going away soon.
Chris is going away?
Yeah. I don't know for how long.
I finished Purgatory this morning.
The last three cantos,
when Beatrice finally arrives
and he's going up to Paradise.
I don't know how to describe it.
They're amazing, though.
You should let me know when you get to it.
Sure.
I might go get something to eat.
Are you hungry?
It's a 15th century spiritual manual,
you know, uh...
"the knowledge of Christ surpasses
all worldly wisdom,
"withdraw into yourself, hate the world,"
"think frequently
about death and judgment."
Very influential over the centuries,
like, when you read the spiritual classics
of later centuries,
like Ignatius of Loyola
or Francis de Sales,
part of their advice is, "Go
read The Imitation of Christ."
So what else have you been up to, Cal?
Just the usual, you know,
reading, writing.
So, Cal, the piece
we were playing earlier,
it begins with an introduction,
an introduction in C minor,
a rushing arpeggio,
double forte,
the loudest possible dynamic,
that foreshadows Beethoven
as the transitional composer
who takes us from the classical
to the romantic period.
Following that, Beethoven goes
into his actual theme for the movement,
which is a seven-note theme.
Or...
And Beethoven,
even at this early stage in his career -
he was only 23 when he wrote this -
was able to take this theme
and do interesting things with it,
such as here.
Following this, he takes those
seven notes and breaks it down,
the first four notes
and then the last three notes.
And they're switching
between the different instruments
and the different hands of the piano.
For instance, the first four notes...
followed by the last three notes.
And if that was not enough,
while the piano
plays the last three notes,
the violin plays the first four notes,
but instead of doing it normally...
the violin inverts it.
So, when played together,
it sounds like this.
Piano trios before this,
in the classical period,
the cello part was really
much less significant
than the violin and piano parts.
It would just serve as
a sort of accompaniment.
But here the cello actually picks up
the theme at times.
And while it does that,
the piano has its own theme going on.
Beethoven also has
beautiful classical themes.
For instance, this theme in E-flat major,
the relative key of C minor.
Then the violin picks it up,
with a flowing piano accompaniment.
And even without the violin here playing,
you can still sort of hear that theme.
Just because Beethoven
sets up the accompaniment
so effectively with it.
I'm on a strict schedule now,
waking up early to read in the morning,
partly to avoid the heat.
But also I'm more productive this way.
I forgot, I meant to bring you a book
I just finished reading.
It has a chapter about Cato's
role in Purgatory.
Oh, Cato.
How, in spite of his suicide,
his life as a statesman
prefigured his role as a guardian
of the gates of Purgatory,
so that the earthly Cato
is the concrete and historical figure
and then the Cato in Purgatory
is revealed or fulfilled figure.
In Purgatory,
he's guarding Christian freedom
and he proved his ability to do this
by choosing to die voluntarily,
rather than live a life
of political servitude.
I just re-read this 18th century play
about Cato by Joseph Addison,
which dramatizes his death
as the struggle
between liberty and tyranny.
But, you know,
it inspired a lot of people at the time,
George Washington had it staged
for the troops at Valley Forge,
but, you know, I don't like this
glamorization of Cato's suicide
as the ultimate assertion
of individual autonomy against tyranny.
Cato, as a stoic, accepted suicide
only when it was no longer possible
to live virtuously.
And he thought, as a senator,
he would have to be complicit
in the tyranny, if he continued to live.
He told everyone around him,
"Withdraw from public affairs
and don't follow my example."
And, you know,
when it's interpreted as, you know,
this refusal to live under a tyranny,
what's the message?
If you're a slave or if you're living
under an absolute monarchy,
you should also kill yourself?
So, do you disagree with Dante's choice
to put Cato in Purgatory,
or do you disagree
with the interpretation?
I don't know. Dante must have had
some reasoning to excuse the suicide,
but I think the real main reason
that Cato is there
is Virgil had described
the afterlife in the Aeneid
and he says that Cato is there as the
lawgiver to the happy souls in Elysium.
Now that I've finished
Purgatory,
I've been leafing through
some of the notes.
Some of the stuff that he references,
I'd like to read,
like some verses from
The Laws of Candy.
I was curious about this book
and looked it up.
Evidently, its chief interest to scholars
is the disputed authorship
between John Fletcher
and Philip Massinger,
the author of The Renegado,
which I still haven't read.
So, Longfellow probably read it to.