I recorded an old Randy Stonehill song called "Through the Glass Darkly." I posted about it awhile ago, and noted that it comes from 1 Corinthians 13:12. Someone else noted that a movie is coming out (starring Keanu Reeves) based on Philip K. Dick book called "A Scanner Darkly."
I was watching "Ghost in the Shell," which provided much of the basis for The Matrix (also starring Keanu Reeves), and there's a line early in the movie: "What we see now, is like a dim image in a mirror; then, we shall see face to face." Same line.
I normally don't discuss religious topics online, and would consider it quite OT on Use.Perl. But I'm discussing literature and on-line tools and my experiences with same in a religious context, not Religion per se, so I'll bend my rule.
Shakespear has been accused of composing his plays solely by pasting together a bunch of book titles and lines from novels. This is delightfully ironic, as by this theory, his genius was that all the book titles and most of the quotes his plays are composed of weren't written for 100-400 years. But of what remains of Western Lit that isn't allusive to Shakespear is allusive to the Hebrew and Christian Testaments -- Shaksepeare referred to the then quite new and still politically correct King James translation regularly, as have all literate authors since. (Yes I spelt his name inconsistently; so did Wil[l]?.) In our political correctness, we may lose our cultural inheritance.
I read 1Cor13 at the lectern for my Great Aunt's funeral a couple of months ago. This was strange, since I'm not very Xian, never was very, and usually have a specific aversion to St.Paul and his Epistles encourging adaptive adoptive gentile christianity among the nations of the Empire. I tend to prefer the Gospels or coptic & deadsea apocropha or later saintly spiritual writings (eg, Julian of Norwich), when I'm rarely feeling vaguely xian.
But the whole of 1st Corintians chapter 13 (1 COR 13) is a beautiful (and short) evocation of brotherly love, so much so that it is sometimes subtitled "The Greatest Gift" or "Paul's Ode to Love". This seemed quite appropriate for Auntie, and one of her favorits, I gather. I enjoyed reading it in the service. Some other verses in 1Cor13 that pop up in Western Lit repeatedly are
13:12 "Through a glass darkly"'s promise of only later fully knowing and being fully known reminds me of both the epitaph of Benjamin Franklin
and, via the glass metaphors, Beatrice Ward's injunction that good typography should be the invisible bearer of the words, as a crystal goblet bears the wine.B. Franklin, Printer
(Like the Cover of an Old Book
Its Contents torn Out
And Stript of its Lettering and Gilding)
Lies Here, Food for Worms.
But the Work shall not be Lost;
For it will (as he Believ'd) Appear once More
In a New and More Elegant Edition
Revised and Corrected
By the Author.
Preparing 1COR13 for public reading was a challenge. The "Greatest Gift / Ode to Love" aspect was important in the context of the service -- my Great Aunt was a maiden aunt centarian brimming with brotherly-love. The cultural references and poetry were important, if only to my father the retired English Lit, but we hoped also to the Bible-fearing congregation hosting the service. But the beautiful poetry (and manifold cultural references) of the King James language lacks the key word "love", having an older (mis)translation "charity" throughout. The modern translations lose many or all of the connections / allusions that KJV has built up, by casting in straight language. Many also lose some or all of the poetry. I struggled to find one modern translation that had the best of both, resonance and relevance. In days gone by, this would have involved surrounding myself with multiple Bibles lushly printed and bound, and have been very time-consuming. Today, the internet has several Parallel Translations on-line ; e.g., compare your 1COR13:12 here, or another, and another linked from WWSB. In the end, I had to take the TIMTOWTDI approach and pick-and-choose verse-by-verse and phrase-by-phrase to suit my purpose. The internet -- and the word-processor with two-column format -- and a mechanical pencil for final edits on the trunk of a car -- saved the day.
Re:Re Through a Glass Darkly
pudge on 2005-12-14T22:40:19
Very interesting, thanks. Interesting that you reference the Founding Fathers a few times... the Deists among them would have approved of your TMTOWTDI approach to the Bible. :-) Re:Re Through a Glass Darkly
n1vux on 2005-12-16T19:13:12
Interesting that you reference the Founding Fathers a few timesOnce upon a time, Shakspeare and The Bible were nearly the only literature needed for a learned man. The Founding Fathers were almost entirely composed of learned men, and so they quoted and allueded to the great works. Expanding the list is indeed progress, but striking off the items upon which the later items were built loses something. I may begrudge the hours spent reading Milton and Spencer, but at least I get some of the allusions in later works. And the death of allusion is to be mourned
... in days gone by, Joe Biden's use of bits of Kinnock's speech would have been recognized by well-read gentlemen, and have been considered an honorable honoring of Kinnock, since Biden would have expected it to be recognized; since now we expect he would expect us to not notice, when ONE person does, we leap on it as a flaw.
... the Deists among them would have approved of your TMTOWTDI approach to the Bible. Indeed, the Deists among them were prominent in the rise of the Unitarian, Universalist, and Humanist movements. Alas, though I wander amidst the footsteps of Jefferson, A.Adams, and Emerson/Thoreau/Alcott, I didn't have Jefferson's TMTOWTDI expurgated Bible at hand, and didn't think to look for it.
Happy Holidays of your choice,
