Entertainment for the Masses

[ada_col]

I must admit despite Mrs. Hamilton's amusing little issues, I have been bored lately. Then I came across this:
Next! on LITERARY DEATHMATCH! Fitzgerald versus Wilde in... the CAGE

Comments

[sic_et_non]

Though I was an old man and infirm, I could certainly have defeated that arthritic abbot of Clairvaux in a fair fight, had I been permitted even that level of civility, instead of being condemned without a hearing. The fool, afraid of his precious faith being picked apart and broken like a common compass! And he believes-- he still believes! that his fragile devotion, so easily smudged and smashed by logic's clumsy fingers, is stronger-- he still believes himself to be a better Christian than I! The foolish, pandering

Hedonism may make one soft, npaganini, but fasting and incessant self-flagellation make one pretty damned brittle.

Er. . .pardon my occasional bitterness. I forget that I am supposed to have forgiven the pompous jackass that absurdity Bernard. Well, one can't remember everything without going mad, can one?

Anyway, I don't think he'd be seen around this little corner of heaven, the sanctimonious toad.

[ada_col]

Do not be so confident that your nemesis will not appear. I have noticed a tendency hereabouts to have least-favored "friends" appear. If you are lucky, Héloïse may also join you one day. However, I have been waiting for my Charles for a long time with no success.

However, I do not doubt that you can take Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Aren't saints generally frail?

[sic_et_non]

Oh, Christ on a cruller, they made him a saint?

Why am I not surprised? I always knew the Church was hurtling straight down to hell in a greased cistern. You know, we used to revere the thinkers who used their God-given intellect to. . . oh, never mind.

Yes, very frail. This one, anyway. Gave himself rheumatism by the age of twenty-five by sleeping hunched and bent in moldy cells with deliberately low ceilings; ruined his bowels with fasting; wreaked ruin on his own body before it could wreak any on him. Utterly vain and foolish, and in a way, not foolish. I suppose one takes one's solace where one can.

They were nearly the same age. He and the Abbess, I mean. The same generation, in some ways very much the same. Human variety is astonishing in. . . I mean, the variety with which we. . . I mean, insofar as our frailties. . .I mean. . . oh, God, I don't know what I mean.

Well, he can't hide behind the Pope in here, can he? If he does show up, I'll be ready for him, won't I? Obviously this time will be different.

[seventhpillar]

Hm...I find fasting and self-flagellating to be quite invigorating. Especially the latter.

[ada_col]

In honor of that, in a self-match: T.E. Lawrence Against Himself!

If you get sick of wielding the whip yourself, I do believe we have quite a few in this company who would get off on beating you be happy to help you.

[sic_et_non]

Well, you'd fit right in at Clairvaux. They may still be in operation; I'm afraid I have no idea what the state of monasticism in France has come to. Indeed, if the dismaying trends evident in my own lifetime have continued to the present day, they probably have daughter houses all over Christendom, and have moved on to concoct huge horrible machines with which to injure themselves ever more efficiently (when not declaring holy wars on the Muslim countries, that is).

I myself have often suspected that some of those Cistercians got rather more out of their mortifications than was strictly Christian, if you know what I mean.

[seventhpillar]

and have moved on to concoct huge horrible machines with which to injure themselves ever more efficiently (when not declaring holy wars on the Muslim countries, that is).

Well, better themselves than my Arabs.

I think, if I had the chance again, I would take on Clemenceau. I would take on the whole country of France, too, but somehow I think they would give me a beating. C'est une cause perdue.

Better a Limey than a Frog, I suppose

[dasafrikakorps]

I'd happily team up with you to take on the French. They quite rightly fear me.