Guys. I just. GUYS. This WORLD, I can't EVEN.
Okay so this is totally not the post I meant to be making today but MEH.
So for the last couple of weeks I've been reading through some of my textbooks for next term because a) I'm secretly Hermione Granger, b) next semester is going to be an intimidating amount of work so anything I can do to get ahead is a good thing to be doing, and c) some of my textbooks for next term are really, really cool. Case in point: "The Discarded Image", which is allegedly an introduction to Medieval literature but the more I read it the more I think it's actually an introduction to Medieval thought in general, using examples drawn from Medieval literature. Oh, and it's written by C. S. Lewis. So before I even opened it I pretty much knew it had to be an awesome book. Which, spoiler alert: it is!
It's like - okay, what I really truly love about studying history is the juxtaposition between the familiar and the alien. Which is to say, you're reading through primary sources and there's this wonderful clash between the fact that these are people, these are human beings just like us and they felt and thought and acted in a lot of the same ways for a lot of the same reasons, but at the same time their actions and thoughts and perceptions of the world are ordered in ways and patterns that are completely and utterly foreign to the modern/Western way of thinking. It's when these two things jut up against each other that I find humour and joy in the study of history; when Boethius says something utterly incomprehensible and then in the same breath follows it with something you could as easily have heard on the street today.
And the thing is, I think C.S. Lewis really gets that. I feel like he's looking at the texts the same way I do, like he has the same sort of... sense of humour and wonder all intermingled, and it makes the book an absolute joy to read even when I don't understand a quarter of what he's saying. (He tends to assume one is fairly well versed in Medieval literature. Which I, sadly, am not. Or at least no QUITE so well as he's assuming.) And nothing shows that more than when we's trying to help his readers understand just how the Medieval mind viewed the cosmos.
I mean, sure, he goes through a technical description of how the movements of the spheres worked and all that, but then he pleads with the reader to just go outside and... look. Go outside and look at the night sky. But don't look with your own eyes. Look with the eyes of a Medieval scholar. Juxtapose it, right there, in your head, with your eyes, on your earth under your sky.
You've been trained to see infinity; to know that you're looking off into an endless horizon. Wrong. Look again. You're at the base of a skyscraper, staring up; it's huge, and you're tiny, but it's finite. The spheres end. And outside them, in that vast beyond, you've learned to see the emptyness of space. But it's not. Because beyond that last sphere is God. Pure God. Beyond that last sphere isn't nothingness, it's everythingness. It's warmth and light and beauty. Right there. Keep looking. Look into the blackness. It's not black at all - the universe is suffused with light, just filled with it. We're in the shadow of the earth, a cone of darkness reaching out to the outer ring of planets, but we're looking through darkness, not into it. Look again. It's light out there. Now listen. Listen past the cars and the drunken party your neighbours are throwing and the million sounds of a city. Listen hard. It's not quiet. It can't be. Because the spheres are moving, singing - the music of the spheres, kind of a metaphor and kind of really not - a low deep hum like the sound of a finger on the rim of a crystal wineglass, but deeper and slower and so much more. The universe is warm and bright and loveing and singing and you are right. there. in the middle of it all.
*deep breath*
And that, ladies and gentlefolk, is why I study history.
crossposted from Dreamwidth |
comments on original post
So for the last couple of weeks I've been reading through some of my textbooks for next term because a) I'm secretly Hermione Granger, b) next semester is going to be an intimidating amount of work so anything I can do to get ahead is a good thing to be doing, and c) some of my textbooks for next term are really, really cool. Case in point: "The Discarded Image", which is allegedly an introduction to Medieval literature but the more I read it the more I think it's actually an introduction to Medieval thought in general, using examples drawn from Medieval literature. Oh, and it's written by C. S. Lewis. So before I even opened it I pretty much knew it had to be an awesome book. Which, spoiler alert: it is!
It's like - okay, what I really truly love about studying history is the juxtaposition between the familiar and the alien. Which is to say, you're reading through primary sources and there's this wonderful clash between the fact that these are people, these are human beings just like us and they felt and thought and acted in a lot of the same ways for a lot of the same reasons, but at the same time their actions and thoughts and perceptions of the world are ordered in ways and patterns that are completely and utterly foreign to the modern/Western way of thinking. It's when these two things jut up against each other that I find humour and joy in the study of history; when Boethius says something utterly incomprehensible and then in the same breath follows it with something you could as easily have heard on the street today.
And the thing is, I think C.S. Lewis really gets that. I feel like he's looking at the texts the same way I do, like he has the same sort of... sense of humour and wonder all intermingled, and it makes the book an absolute joy to read even when I don't understand a quarter of what he's saying. (He tends to assume one is fairly well versed in Medieval literature. Which I, sadly, am not. Or at least no QUITE so well as he's assuming.) And nothing shows that more than when we's trying to help his readers understand just how the Medieval mind viewed the cosmos.
I mean, sure, he goes through a technical description of how the movements of the spheres worked and all that, but then he pleads with the reader to just go outside and... look. Go outside and look at the night sky. But don't look with your own eyes. Look with the eyes of a Medieval scholar. Juxtapose it, right there, in your head, with your eyes, on your earth under your sky.
You've been trained to see infinity; to know that you're looking off into an endless horizon. Wrong. Look again. You're at the base of a skyscraper, staring up; it's huge, and you're tiny, but it's finite. The spheres end. And outside them, in that vast beyond, you've learned to see the emptyness of space. But it's not. Because beyond that last sphere is God. Pure God. Beyond that last sphere isn't nothingness, it's everythingness. It's warmth and light and beauty. Right there. Keep looking. Look into the blackness. It's not black at all - the universe is suffused with light, just filled with it. We're in the shadow of the earth, a cone of darkness reaching out to the outer ring of planets, but we're looking through darkness, not into it. Look again. It's light out there. Now listen. Listen past the cars and the drunken party your neighbours are throwing and the million sounds of a city. Listen hard. It's not quiet. It can't be. Because the spheres are moving, singing - the music of the spheres, kind of a metaphor and kind of really not - a low deep hum like the sound of a finger on the rim of a crystal wineglass, but deeper and slower and so much more. The universe is warm and bright and loveing and singing and you are right. there. in the middle of it all.
*deep breath*
And that, ladies and gentlefolk, is why I study history.
crossposted from Dreamwidth |
comments on original post