It is a surprising but perhaps not unusual fact that criticism of Hamlet has hardly dealt at all with the question of Hamlet’s precise nature as an educated man in the midst of a Christian court. However, the prince’s identity as a Christian intellectual within the courtly milieu colors the entire play. It is this new element which distinguishes Shakespeare’s version of the tale from its predecessors and, ultimately, its pre-Christian source material. Critics trot out innumerable theories to explain Hamlet’s inaction and waffling but their answers remain unsatisfactory, because they have missed that the essential cause of Hamlet’s tortuous passivity is the conflict between his instinctive, emotional, and culturally-conditioned desire for revenge (on Claudius, on Gertrude, perhaps also on his father) on the one hand and his educated—and thus sophisticated and theological—religious consciousness and conscience on the other. These contraries create the iconically neurotic, fretting figure of the prince in black, and it is this tension which has so long evaded the eyes of the critics.
As the first foray into a basically new critical direction, this essay has a limited but definite agenda. Four particular topics call for reexamination in this initial attempt: Hamlet’s status and self-identification as a theologically educated intellectual, the nature and role of his father’s ghost, his self-appointed role as avenger and scourge, and his reflection on the nature of humanity. No doubt there are other topics worthy of consideration, but they have, at least for the moment, eluded my attention or exceeded my capacity for critical insight.
I. Hamlet’s Christian Intellect
One of the commonly noted, but little pondered, features of the play is the apparent inconsistency in temporal and cultural context. At one moment, it appears that the presumed time and the cultural setting of the play are one and the same—namely, the high medieval period of Roman Catholic Christendom. Certainly, Shakespeare’s predecessors set their works in this period. However, Shakespeare—as he does elsewhere (cf. Kent’s anti-papal fling about “eat[ing] no fish” in King Lear)—periodically introduces obviously Protestant, and hence, post-Renaissance and post-Reformation elements. This has proved puzzling to many commentators, although others are, naturally enough, content to accept such occurrences as conscious anachronisms and cede them to the artistic license of the playwright. I am inclined to affirm this latter interpretation, but with the caveat that Shakespeare is not merely pandering to his (presumably Anglican-Reformed, though, admittedly, also Anglo-Catholic) audience. To be sure, this is probably one reason why he does so, as it almost certainly is in Lear. However, it also serves a thematic purpose: it introduces the quality of Hamlet as a young and reform-minded intellectual.
This is not exclusively related to his religious thought—it also comes to the surface, for instance, in his criticism of the Danish tradition of carousing, wherein he bitterly refers to Claudius’s drinking of “Rhenish” (wine from the Rhine Valley) and his wild dancing in procession through the castle—but it does include it. He and Horatio are specifically said to study together at the university at Wittenberg, the school of Luther and the site of the first tremors of the Reformation. The reference would not be lost on Shakespeare’s audience: it establishes the pair as rising academics of a new, Protestant generation, a religious type of Young Turks. Then, too, since the ambiguous or doubled timeline (seemingly at once high medieval and post-Renaissance) applies, Denmark can be at once a Catholic nation and a Lutheran. Hamlet, the sober, introspective Protestant serves as a counterpoint to the impulsive, extroverted Claudius, the standard-bearer of old Catholic culture.
But this suggestion of Hamlet’s nature as a theologically conscious thinker is not based solely on setting and biography. There are three chief episodes—not by any means an exhaustive list, but some of the more memorable and important happenings in the play—during which Hamlet openly and obviously engages in theological reflection. For one, his discovery of Claudius, alone and unprotected: Hamlet happens upon the king and debates with himself whether to take the chance to kill him or not. He ultimately decides against it and justifies his decision (for I do not believe the reason he gives is the real reason, as I will outline later) by reflecting that he has caught Claudius at his prayers, when there is danger that the old usurper will repent and be forgiven. Here we see something of a Catholic view—that redemption can be gained and subsequently lost—but it is nonetheless an instance of theological reflection.
For another, we have Hamlet’s famed soliloquy on the attractiveness of suicide. Hamlet—akin as he is to the Stoic, Horatio—longs for peace and release from the Sturm und Drang of his daily life. He can, in fact, see no earthly reason to go on living. Why then, does he not in fact end his own life? Hamlet provides the answer twice, on two different occasions: because “the Everlasting had… fix’d his canon ‘gainst self-slaughter,” and because “what dreams may come” in the sleep of death “must give us pause.” The apparent appeal of the old pagan philosophy is forestalled by Christian theological considerations. If this is not recognized as the activity of a theological, religious mind, it must be tempting if not inevitable to view this sequence as a mere authorial device to at once establish Hamlet’s deep malaise and yet prevent his suicide.
And finally we have perhaps the example par excellence of Hamlet’s theological meditation, his threefold response to the existence of the ghost. On learning of the apparition’s existence, Hamlet offers three distinct explanations for it: it may be a genuine and benign spirit (either his father’s actual ghost or a ministering angel, a “spirit of health”); it may be hallucinatory, though this is dismissed as unlikely due to the witness of the others, Horatio, Bernardo, and Marcellus; and it may be, as Hamlet opines in a statement which many commentators have overlooked, a tempting devil, a “goblin damn’d” sent to seduce the prince into sin. This is obviously the thought process of a man who has thought (or been taught) about spiritual entities. Pre-Christian literary figures did not doubt the identity of apparitions, or not in the same way. Though the gods might take human shape, as do Athena, Apollo, and Poseidon in the Iliad, ghosts or shades are presumed trustworthy. When the slain Patroklos appears to Akhilleus (I follow here Robert Fitzgerald’s transliteration of the names), Akhilleus does not doubt the nature of the appearance. Likewise, in the Odyssey, the titular hero is sure of whom he addresses in Hades. In prior adaptations of the Hamlet source material, the hero does not consider the possibility that he is being tempted. (Indeed, it is only the proposed Ur-Hamlet which even contains a ghost, and it is highly doubtful that this source, if it even exists at all, introduces doubt as to the ghost’s nature.) And this fact leads us to the next area of inquiry, the nature of the apparition.
II. The Ghost
Hardly any critics have spent significant time on the exact character of the specter of the dead Hamlet, and those who have generally argue that it is precisely what it appears to be. Typically, however, the arguments on this side tend toward circularity: the ghost is a good spirit because a good spirit would have the right to do what the ghost does. Obviously, this is not a satisfactory justification. Likewise, the possibility of hallucination is more or less untenable, as it would be absurdly anachronistic to impute to Shakespeare some kind of theory of shared hallucinations. Marcellus and Bernardo are, by themselves, perhaps not sufficient witnesses to establish their claim, but the addition of the skeptical Horatio and the prince himself all but destroys the possibility that the ghost is illusory. We are left, then, with the last possibility, that the ghost is a tempting devil. Of course, the process of elimination is hardly strong ground on which to establish an argument. We need some positive evidence, and thus, we will lay it out.
To begin with, there is the fact that the circumstances of the spirit’s appearances are alarming and suggestive of evil. The spirit walks about at midnight, a time associated with witchcraft and unwholesome spirits. It is evidently of such awful and fearsome presence as to prompt Marcellus’s famed “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" (of course, this is a layered and even prophetic utterance, which is not applicable solely to the presence of the ghost in itself, but it nevertheless does include the presence of the ghost). And it vanishes with the crowing of the cock, an event endowed by popular medieval thought with the power to banish evil spirits—the characters themselves even refer to this, and skeptical Horatio even admits, “I do, in part, believe it.”
Secondly, the ghost’s interaction with Hamlet is suspiciously well tailored to Hamlet’s own psychological state. Prior to encountering the spirit, Hamlet laments the situation in which he finds himself, bitterly complaining of his uncle (whom he does not yet know has killed his father) and depreciating him in comparison to his deceased brother (the dead king, he says, was as “Hyperion to a satyr” when compared with Claudius), praising the elder Hamlet, and expressing resentment (though tinged with affection) toward his mother. The ghost’s conversation with Hamlet corresponds quite precisely to each of these movements of thought. Of course, the spirit excoriates Claudius for the murder—but he also makes pointed remarks regarding the natural inferiority of the usurper (“a wretch whose natural gifts were poor to those of mine”), as Hamlet had beforehand, and abhors what he considers the incestuous relationship between his brother and his widow (again, one of Hamlet’s concerns). The ghost goes on to demand retribution on Claudius but, strikingly, insists that Gertrude be left untouched. Almost as an afterthought, he suggests that her bad conscience will be punishment enough. This neatly mirrors Hamlet’s own disappointment in but lingering love for his mother.
The next claim I make is likely to be unpopular amongst Christian readers of Hamlet, who tend to be offended by the persistent claim of Oedipal themes in the play. Though I share with such readers a dislike of the dogmatic Freudianism of many critics, I find myself unable to deny the existence of such undercurrents. As such, I interpret Hamlet’s effusive praise of his father (prior, that is, to his first encounter with the ghost) as an attempt to salve his tender conscience, as an effort to atone for the subconscious hostility he had borne toward his father. Thus also his anger at his mother, combined with his evident tenderness toward her: it is an expression of his self-conscious filial piety toward his father (he is offended on the dead king’s behalf by the faithlessness of his widow) and also of his un-or-half-conscious feelings of possessive love for her. It is difficult, too, to explain away the rather uncomfortable tendency of the prince to dwell on the marital bed of his parents (and, of course, that of his stepfather and uncle).
Such Oedipal subtext is quite in keeping with the behavior of the ghost. It, too, dwells with overt disgust (but seeming fascination, as well) on the marital relations of Claudius and Gertrude. It, too, disparages Claudius in relation to the elder Hamlet. It, too, is inclined to be gentle with Gertrude. And, assuming for a moment that the ghost is in fact, a devil, it is entirely probable that such a tempter would appear to Hamlet in the guise of his father, toward whom he is conscious (or sub-conscious) of guilt, and to whom he is therefore anxious to prove his loyalty.
The ghost, then, appears to and deals with Hamlet in such a way as to exacerbate the tendencies which are already present in his mind. Indeed, Hamlet as much as admits this when, having been told that Claudius has murdered his brother, he says to himself, “Oh, my prophetic soul! Mine uncle!” That is as good as to say, “I knew it!” It is also, incidentally, another instance of Hamlet’s casting of himself in a religious light (i.e., as a prophet).
Additionally, there are marked red flags in the explanations and behavior of the ghost. First of all, the ghost claims to be suffering purgatorial pains. This, in itself, would represent a difficulty for Shakespeare’s audience—of whom at least a large portion would be Protestants, and thus regard the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory with suspicion and hostility—and for Hamlet himself, as a product of a Protestant education. There is also a possible self-contradiction within the ghost’s presentation of this idea: he seemingly expresses self-pity and bemoans his sufferings in Purgatory, whereas, speaking in doctrinally correct terms, the soul being purged ought to be glad of it and eagerly expect and await its time of admission into heaven.
Furthermore, the ghost appears with a demand for vengeance. Speaking from a popular-level medieval viewpoint, this is to be expected. Indeed, the source material for the play is an expression of pre-Christian Europe’s ethic of revenge and familial duty. However, given both the Christian context of the play and the spirit’s claim to be a purgatorial sufferer, difficulties arise. For one, revenge has no place within the Christian ethic. Besides the well-known “turn the other cheek,” there is the prophetic declaration, “Vengeance is mine, says the LORD.” Private vengeance as a source of justice is denied to the Christian, giving way instead to the juridical rights of the state (whose rulers “do not bear the sword in vain”) and to the providential or eschatological justice of God. Hamlet himself, therefore, ought not to seek private vengeance, but this applies even more so to the ghost: souls in Purgatory are supposed to be incapable of further sin. The ghost’s self-identification is thus not consonant with its proclaimed mission of vengeance.
It is interesting to note that most critics regard the dilemma of the ghost’s identity to be solved in the same way that Hamlet himself—at least superficially—does, namely by the revelation that its claims regarding Claudius are true. On one level, this is understandable: the devil is the father of lies, and one would assume a devil to be a liar. On the other hand, the devil is clearly not bound or obligated to lie in all things. Indeed, the most famous (or infamous) account of temptation in the scriptures, the episode of Satan’s appearance to Christ in the desert, suggests the direct opposite: the devil appears with words of truth (i.e., scriptural statements) but twists them to his own ends. Likewise, it is entirely plausible, assuming for the moment that the ghost is, in fact, diabolic, that the specter would make use of a verifiable fact as the basis for his temptation. There is then no risk of Hamlet discovering a truth which unravels the whole plot. And, it is important to note, Hamlet would himself be aware of this fact, at least in an intellectual sense. To make use of psychological categories, at the very least his ego would know it, even if his id refused to accept it. Furthermore, the fact that Hamlet feels compelled to test the veracity of the spirit’s claim at all indicates his perhaps subconscious suspicion of it. It is interesting to note that most critics seem to impute a sort of theological naïveté to the prince, when it is likely that he is better trained and more able than they to “reason in divinity,” as Canterbury says of the king in Henry V.
As a last piece of evidence, the scene of Hamlet’s encounter with the ghost contains elements that cast some suspicion on its claims. Most obviously, when the ghost demands that Hamlet’s companions swear themselves to silence regarding the encounter, it speaks from beneath the stage, as though crying out from underground. The imagery is intuitively hellish: a fearsome specter crying awfully from the netherworld. But secondly, and perhaps secondarily, Hamlet’s choice of words at one point is intriguing. He refers to the spirit—in a sort of jocular bravado, as he is no doubt shaken by the encounter—as “old mole” upon hearing its voice from beneath the earth. The word “mole” is used only one other time in the play, and only shortly prior to this instance, when the prince makes reference to a “vicious mole of [human] nature” (“vicious” here taking its old meaning of “characterized by vice”). At least linguistically, then, the ghost is linked with human wickedness.
That the ghost’s character is at the very least suspect, if not outright diabolic, ought to inform our perception of Hamlet’s subsequent behavior. Indeed, it is difficult if not impossible to account for his actions otherwise. Where in previous iterations of the basic story of the play (which is derived from Saxo Grammaticus’s account of a Danish prince named Amleth), the prince feigns insanity in order to enact swift and decisive vengeance, Shakespeare’s Hamlet apparently does so only in order to gain time to think. It is fundamentally a delaying tactic, and his use of it betrays his inner uncertainty.
III. Hamlet as Avenger
Hamlet (and certainly its source material) revolves around the idea of vengeance. However, Shakespeare’s version of the revenge tale is nuanced and multi-layered. At its most basic, it is a story of filial piety and filial duty: the murdered father is avenged by the loyal son. But Hamlet’s resentments go deeper than this: he views his uncle as a usurper (though Claudius’s ascent to the throne is technically legal) and as the seducer of his mother; he is angered by his mother’s quickness in marrying his uncle, and here there is the added factor of his probable Oedipal complex; he despises his former friends, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as puppets for his manipulative uncle; he is contemptuous of Polonius for his banality and for keeping him from Ophelia, and he is probably also jealous of Laertes for his closeness to her. In one way or another, Hamlet causes the deaths of each of these characters (of all of them, Gertrude goes most willingly and with the least help from Hamlet). Claudius, Polonius, and Laertes he kills outright—though with the latter, he seemingly makes peace before they both expire—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern he has executed, and Gertrude dies, perhaps of her own accord, as a result of becoming entangled in his quarrel with the king.
Statistically speaking, Hamlet appears to be a most successful minister of vengeance: all those he wishes dead do in fact die, even if he must go as well. But Hamlet is anything but the typical or archetypical avenger. He is angst-ridden and depressive—even suicidal—and far more pensive than active. This is true of the prince from the earliest part of the play, in which we learn of his plans to leave Elsinore for Germany, so that he can continue in his studies. (A more traditional hero, along the lines of Odysseus or Virgil’s Aeneas, would much rather fight for the kingship. Hamlet, however, is a largely antiheroic figure.)
Hamlet’s inactivity is all the more striking, however, after his encounter with the ghost. Having seen and spoken with the likeness of his dead father, having been commanded to take vengeance on a hated usurper and a despised stepfather, Hamlet continues to bide (or waste) his time. He does nothing. He bewails this himself upon seeing the passion one of the actors is able to summon, realizing that he himself has hardly behaved according to the classical ideal. And yet, even after such self-criticism, Hamlet is unable to bring himself to act. Every instance of his violence is reactionary: he stabs Polonius after discovering the latter spying on him; he has Rosencrantz and Guildenstern killed by simply turning the tables on them (or, more appropriately, hoisting them on their own petard); Laertes and Claudius he kills only after they spring their trap to kill him. This basic passivity is the chief critical issue of Hamlet.
It is the chief question, but few proposed answers to it seem satisfactory. In general, critical theories reduce to the same essential claim: that Hamlet is a character of intense introspection or introversion and is unable to overcome his innate meekness. But this explanation strains the credulity. Hamlet does not appear to be so very passive as he is often portrayed: his interaction with the ghost is actually quite bold, as he displays genuine bravery in following it away from his friends; his challenge of Laertes at Ophelia’s grave is, if anything, overbold; his orchestration of the pirate attack on his ship and his destruction of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is decisive and dynamic; and he clearly is capable of extreme action when provoked. Besides which, someone who could be given as much motivation as Hamlet has without being impelled to some sort of decisive action for no other reason than lack of initiative or personal vitality would be already implausible.
The critics of this interpretive school fundamentally miss the importance of Hamlet’s religious nature. He is not merely an intellectual, he is an intellectual of a spiritual stripe. Many critics recognize in him a conflict between id and superego; few have recognized that it is just as much a conflict between the Christian individual (particularly his intellect and his conscience) and the still largely pre-Christian culture in which he finds himself. The court at Elsinore retains much of the trappings and ethos of paganism, though it is formally and ostensibly Christian.
A brief digression may be necessary here. First, it is important to note that Roman Catholicism in the age of Christendom was an often syncretistic force. Folk culture in much of Europe during this period (and to this day) retains much of its mythic and superstitious character from antiquity. Second, the revenge tale as a genre is most closely related to the fervently Catholic nations of Spain and Italy. The revenge tale, then, is a product of Christian-pagan syncretism. A similar hybridization is noticeable in Anglo-Germanic legends as well (cf. Beowulf’s heavy emphasis on “wergild,” the blood price of a slain kinsman). Third, both Roman and Germanic cultures (the chief influences on Europe and the chief elements in the Christian-pagan synthesis of Christendom) laid heavy emphasis on the idea sacrosanct patriarch: the Roman paterfamilias was imbued with solemn religious authority over his household; the Germanic king wielded authority through the sacred bonds of loyalty, mund, imposed on his subordinates (see Herman Dooyeweerd’s Roots of Western Culture). Denmark in the high medieval era and afterward would contain much influence from both Roman and Germanic culture. (In what is likely merely rhetorical, but is nonetheless interesting, Hamlet very frequently speaks of his father in terms of classical mythology, most notably calling him “Hyperion,” and Claudius “a satyr,” satyrs being associated with lust and rude rusticity.) Fourth, and last, Scandinavia was notoriously resistant to Christianization, even after the ascendancy of Christianity in southern and western Europe. Danish culture therefore would quite likely retain a sense of the sacred inviolability of both king and father.
This, then, is the vast weight which comprises the motivation for Hamlet to act: a deeply ingrained cultural and quasi-sacred demand for vengeance, combined with a tremendous sense of injustice and personal loss. The situation is much the same for Hamlet as it is for Malcolm in Macbeth, and both plays invoke a favorite theme of Shakespeare’s, namely the “great chain of being”—the idea that what affects a higher being on the hierarchical ladder (say, a king) affects those below it (“Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”).
But against this great impulse to action is the contrary impulse of Hamlet’s conscience, shaped by religious faith and education. Modern readers tend to forget that, in Shakespeare’s time, to be educated essentially meant to be taught theology. One might learn the philosophers in the university, but it was for the end of understanding doctrine. Hamlet would have spent much of his adult life in theological reading—and, indeed, he has a certain propensity for scriptural references (“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow”; he calls Polonius a “Jephthah” for his use of Ophelia as bait) as well—and, especially given his association with the Protestant Wittenberg, he would have been keenly aware of the often sharp opposition of prevailing cultures to the contents of Christian belief. In listing his faults, he even calls himself “revengeful.”
Hamlet attempts to reconcile the opposing principles by deciding to identify himself as the scourge of God, sent to punish the sins of Claudius (and, to some extent, Gertrude). However, this idea is in itself a syncretistic one, incompatible with sincere belief in the scriptures. Indeed, the concept is most famously associated with Attila the Hun, who was no Christian himself. And Hamlet seems unable to really commit himself to it. Meeting the undefended Polonius vulnerable and unsuspecting in prayer, Hamlet—if he really sees himself as a divine avenger—should see providence at work and leap at the chance to strike. Instead, he passes on, claiming that he does so because he does not want to risk Claudius dying in a state of grace. The prince’s reasoning here has the ring of a justification: he continues to find himself unable to exact revenge, but he is unwilling to admit this to himself.
This also would seem to be the reason behind the ghost’s “visitation” to “whet [Hamlet’s] almost blunted purpose.” This is an extraordinary episode: the spirit finds it necessary to appear again to Hamlet in order to spur him on against Claudius. If Hamlet did not have a deeply ingrained reticence toward taking revenge, it seems hardly possible that multiple supernatural encounters would be needed to drive him to it. And, of course, the scene is entirely in keeping with the theory of the ghost-as-devil. He simply wants to make sure of his man.
Lest someone accuse me of overhasty moralizing, the play’s closing scene merits some examination. Structurally, it is an intricate and complex denouement, as four characters—Claudius, Gertrude, Laertes, and Hamlet—lie dead. Their deaths are precipitated by the killings of the elder Hamlet and Polonius and the suicide of Ophelia. We see at once a fratricide and a dutiful brother, and a man who is at once an avenging son and the murderer of a father. On top of this, we have the arrival of two foreign parties: the messengers of the English court, announcing the needless deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and the conquering Prince Fortinbras of Norway, arriving at the Danish capitol in time to witness the self-destruction of its royal line.
Notably, Fortinbras is himself a filial avenger in conflict with his reigning uncle: he has carried on a campaign of vengeance against the Danes because of his father’s death in battle against them, against the wishes of the dead king’s enthroned brother. We see in the end of the play the destructive results of cyclical violence, another common Shakespearean theme (cf. Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Henry IV). It is the Stoical Horatio (by his own admission “more an antique Roman than a Dane”) who approves of Hamlet’s actions as consonant with classical—but not Christian—ideals. (As a side note, the major flaw in Kenneth Branagh’s otherwise excellent film version is his insistence on presenting Hamlet as a Christological figure, as he is borne out in a crucified position by the Norwegian soldiers.) Rather, it is Fortinbras who correctly characterizes Hamlet’s behavior as warlike, giving him a soldier’s funeral. The play itself ends with the stage direction, “Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after the which a peal of ordnance is shot off.” All of which serves much more as an implicit criticism of Hamlet’s conduct than an authorial endorsement.
IV. Hamlet’s View of Humanity
Seventeenth-century English literature featured a particular tendency toward introspection and brooding, known as the “cult of melancholia,” of which Hamlet himself (“the Melancholy Dane”) is probably the most famous product. The prince is, of course, a depressed and suicidal man at the play’s beginning, and what befalls him hardly ameliorates this condition. This mood is, of course, to be expected. Even a rather simple application of psychology would readily uncover several sources of Hamlet’s alienation and melancholy: the death of his father, his removal from his studies, perceived treachery on the part of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his mother’s rapid marriage to his hated uncle, Ophelia’s unaccustomed distantness, the failure of the Danish nobles to elect him as king (Denmark’s succession operated on a quasi-elective basis, much like the Holy Roman Empire, though it was assumed that the monarch’s eldest son would succeed him). However, this explanation, taken alone, does not account for the depth of Hamlet’s feeling and some specific choices in rhetoric.
I must note at the outset that I adopt a compromise view of a particular textual debate regarding Hamlet: I believe that Hamlet employs a pun in his soliloquy on suicide, relying on the similar sounds of the words “solid” and “sullied.” Though “solid” is found in the first folio and is the majority opinion amongst commentators, “sallied” is found in early quartos and is generally considered a misprint or variant spelling of “sullied.” Hamlet uses it thusly: “O that this too too solid [or sullied] flesh would melt, thaw and resolve itself into a dew!” As I read it, Hamlet intends a primarily visual image—the solidity of his body giving way to liquidity and dissolution—with a secondary meaning arriving via the Pauline meaning of the term “flesh” (i.e., sinfulness, human nature), punning on “sullied” (i.e., dirty, stained) for “solid.” Hamlet here connects death and unrighteousness in a very typical and appropriately theological way.
Later, in what is perhaps his most famous rhetorical flourish outside of “To be or not to be,” Hamlet bitterly renounces humankind as the “quintessence of dust.” It is easily and often recognized that the prince here makes reference to God’s pronouncement of the curse of death in Genesis (“For you are dust and to dust you will return”). It is less recognized that Hamlet is also making use of that other great thread of western thought (other, that is, than the Bible), Greek philosophy: Aristotle theorized that, besides the four earthly elements of fire, air, water, and earth, there was a fifth, celestial and divine element called "ether," which was contained beyond the moon. “Quintessence” literally means “fifth essence,” and refers to ether.
Hamlet’s use of the word in conjunction with the biblical “dust” clinches his rejection of the humanistic anthropology of the Renaissance. His prior exclamations, best delivered ironically, are typical of humanism: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in Reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!” But this opinion is untenable to Hamlet: “Man delights me not; no, nor woman neither.” In varying ways, Hamlet’s conclusion is compatible with most Protestant thinkers of the Reformation—certainly with Luther, and with certain moods of Zwingli and Calvin, though the latter two tended to counterbalance this judgment with an insistence that God’s glory is revealed in human attainment. When, however, Protestant thinking is set polemically against Renaissance humanism (though there is a kind of Protestant humanism) and Roman Catholicism, both of which build heavily on Greek foundations, it will almost assuredly sound very much like Hamlet’s speech at this moment.
Finally, Hamlet’s confrontation with Ophelia sees the prince in direct meditation on the sinfulness of human beings. “I am myself indifferent honest,” he says (“indifferent honest” meaning, roughly, “somewhat or middling virtuous”):
[B]ut yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious; with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.
(It bears notice that “nunnery” was not just a term for a convent, but also a euphemism for a brothel.) Hamlet at this point has had such experiences of human beings—the revelation of his uncle’s murderousness, his realization that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are, in essence, corporate shills or puppets for “the establishment,” his disappointment in his mother’s apparent disregard for the memory of his father—as to truly bring home the traditional Christian doctrine of human sinfulness (at least, traditional in the western church, which holds to a doctrine of original sin) and the Reformation doctrines of total depravity and the spiritual death of sin. His speech recalls two important biblical texts. Its broad meaning recalls, “All our righteousnesses are as a filthy rag [more literally translated as “menstrual cloth”]” (Isaiah 64:6). The phrase “between earth and heaven” recalls, “You have made him [i.e., man] a little lower than the angels [the Hebrew may actually mean “God,” but the Septuagint translates it thusly]” (Psalm 8:5).
Hamlet’s pessimism, then, is not only experiential: it is the result both of his own misfortunes and the theoretical education he has received as a Christian scholar. It is this combination that explains the depth and intensity of the feeling, which is otherwise inadequately explained by his personal disappointments alone. Hamlet’s depression is the profound and spiritual depression of Job, not simple discontent.
Implications
If one accepts the reading of Hamlet as a story of a crisis of conscience rather than a crisis of confidence, the results are quite radical. To begin with, it solves, or at least mitigates, the difficultly of Hamlet’s reaction to the ghost. If Hamlet is assumed to believe the ghost implicitly (which even a superficial reading of the text cries out against), his failure to act on its commands strikes the reader as evidence of an implausibly effete character. If, however, one recognizes that Hamlet has very real doubts as to the veracity of the ghost’s claims and even suspicions of its diabolism, his apparent disregard for it can be contextualized within the broader conflict of Hamlet’s id and superego, or his desires and his conscience (depending on how much of a psychologist the reader is).
Second, it sets the prince up as an archetypal figure of the youthful intellectual in conflict with the aged authority. Claudius (along with the elder Hamlet) represents an old order—the Catholic world of the medieval era—where Hamlet represents the alternative, new vision of Protestantism. This has the added benefit of resolving the difficulty of the play’s setting: Shakespeare intentionally blurs two distinct time periods in order to bring them into conflict.
Third, it provides an explanatory basis for Hamlet’s odd behavior. If the play is fundamentally about his attempt to decide between his instinctive and culturally conditioned desires and his religious and moral duty, his seemingly random actions are truly stalling tactics, the prince’s effort to buy more time so that his internal battles can play out. Thus, Hamlet’s sparing of Claudius at his prayers—a crucial and interpretively difficult moment in the play—receives a clear explanation: Hamlet rationalizes his decision not to strike so as to avoid a clear conclusion one way or another. If he were to admit to himself that he does not truly think that taking his revenge is right, he would have to give up the project altogether, and his conscience will not allow him to actually end the problem by killing his uncle—hence, he comes up with a rationale for not killing Claudius while preserving the possibility of doing so later.
Fourth and finally, it results in a reading of Hamlet himself as a definite antihero. He is neither a classical hero, like Akhilleus, whose self-will and desires find glorious expression in action, nor a traditional Christian hero, like Messiah in Milton’s Paradise Regained, whose commitment to duty and right action win out over his passions and appetites. Rather, he is caught between the contrary impulses to imitate either one. His inclination toward the classical model is revealed in his reflection on the player’s story of Pyrrhus and Hecuba; his inclination toward the Christian model is revealed in his consistent failure to actually take his vengeance. We are left, then, with a man unable to master himself (in either one way or another, contrary way) and who is caught off guard by events which outpace him.
Hamlet thus resists a simplistic reduction into either a happily pagan story of filial piety and revenge or a saccharinely pietistic tale of self-denial. It presents the title character as a complex and fallible man, one with noble and laudable moral vision but subject also to powerful currents of emotional impulse and selfish aims, and it makes him a philosopher, too, that he might impart some insight with regard to these contraries. In other words, a religious reading of Hamlet preserves its complexity and its nature as a truly human piece of fiction. Hamlet is, in all, a rather ordinary, even if gifted, individual: he is, like most of us, unable to follow what he recognizes as the good.
A Final Note
I would be remiss not to mention that something rather like my understanding of Hamlet has already been proposed by the critic W. Thomas MacCary, who suggests that Hamlet is confronted by a choice between duty to family and duty to God, both high stresses within Roman Catholicism. However, in my opinion, he fails to take proper account of the Protestant elements of the play. For one thing, Protestantism does not allow for a division between “religious” and "irreligious" life, as Catholicism does in its sacramental division of the laity from clerical and monastic life. This has the effect of making the moral conflict more immediate to Hamlet. Catholicism also has a patriarchal model of authority, as the pope (derived from the Latin "papa", meaning “father” or “daddy”) embodies paternal authority, which Protestantism lacks. Protestantism's ecclesiology and its doctrine of justification also emphasize personal and individual experience of God and Christ, which ultimately lessens what is, in Catholicism, the sacred importance of family. And lastly, as a movement much less tolerant of syncretism, Protestantism undercuts and opposes the cultural demand for vengeance, which serves to make Hamlet’s instinctive desire for it a more equal foil for his theological conscience.
Additionally, I must note that, although as I have said, most critics accept the identity of the ghost at face value, there are some who concur with me. Eleanor Prosser, for instance, agrees with my perspective on the issue, though this view is still a minority one- MacCary identifies it as "extreme."
And finally, I would like to acknowledge a very interesting thought suggested to me by my father, who believes that Hamlet's reluctance to kill Claudius bears a strong resemblance to David's hesitancy to touch Saul as God's anointed king. I think he is quite probably right. This would introduce a strong notion of the divine right of kings- a common, if ambiguous, theme in Shakespeare- and quite frankly complicate my thesis. However, Anglican Protestantism was still compatible with divine right, even if more militantly Reformed groups (e.g., the Puritans) would reject it.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Saturday, October 1, 2011
We None of Us Are (Short Story)
He brought coffee. That was a bad sign right from the start. He brought coffee and he had clearly been eating some kind of a pastry. I could see the crumbs on his tie, and his fingertips were shiny with what I could only assume was glaze. His sleeves were rolled up and he had slicked back his graying hair with some kind of product, and I felt that that, too, was a less than stellar omen. He had apparently taken the time to stop for breakfast before coming to my office in the back of the old church.
"Good morning, Tim,” I said, extending my hand. I intended to try and make a real go of this thing.
“Morning,” he said. He shook my hand tough-guy style, trying to crush my fingers with his own meaty palm. He was a large man, Tim McLaughlin, and both his face and his hands were a peculiarly violent shade of scarlet. The abundant stubble along his jaw line—naturally, he had neglected to shave—was mostly pepper but with a healthy sprinkling of salt.
“I think you know why I asked you to come in today,” I said as he sat down on the other side of my small and cluttered desk. I hurriedly pushed aside several volumes by Bavinck and Warfield to make some space on its surface.
I winced slightly as he put his mug down on top of my copy of last year’s acts of General Assembly. He leaned back in the little wooden chair and for an instant I pictured his not insignificant bulk falling backward onto the surprisingly hard floor with its faded brown carpeting. That prospect did not concern me unduly.
He gave his scruff a lazy scratch as though contemplating what I had said.
“Can’t say that I do, actually,” he said meditatively, and folded both large, red hands across his belly. He gave me a snide look as if challenging me to—but that was just me being pissy. I took everything too personally. It wasn’t doing me any good to think bad thoughts about Tim McLaughlin.
“Tim, you and I both know that’s bull,” I said.
In response, he said—nothing. He just looked at me levelly and somewhat coolly. I had to admire his poise. He had a very evident and apparently unshakable self-confidence, a quality which has never been one of my strong suits. Looking at him, I could tell that he was the kind of man who thinks of himself as possessing “piercing blue eyes”—he was quite obviously trying to use them to good effect, staring at me from under hooded lids. I noticed that he was, perhaps unconsciously, rubbing the glaze off of his fingers on his pale blue shirt. I waited for maybe twenty seconds or so, but the silence persisted.
“Come on, Tim,” I sighed. “This is ridiculous. We can just talk like adults, can’t we? Does it always have to be a game like this?”
“I really don’t know what you mean,” he said slowly, the first three fingers on his right hand fiddling with a button. “Frankly, I think it’s a little inappropriate that you bring me in here—on a Saturday, no less—and expect me to be kissing your ring or something. And I think that if there’s a game being played here, it’s your game, not mine.”
“Tim, seriously. I am not going to play with you today. I’m asking you to be cooperative and agreeable, and that’s all. I am not asking for reverence, I’m not asking you to wear a hair shirt, okay? I just think it’s important that we both acknowledge that there is a problem.”
He leaned forward, putting his elbows on my desk—nearly knocking over his coffee in the process—and an exceptionally thick index finger in my face.
“I. Have. Done. Nothing. Wrong,” he said through gritted teeth, “And I do not appreciate what is going on here. I’ve been on the board for twelve years. Twelve years! How long have you been here? Thirteen months?”
“Sixteen,” I muttered, not meeting his gaze. I felt the flush—the damn stupid flush—spread across my cheeks, hot and bitter.
He leaned back once more, a look of satisfaction on his red face. He clasped his hands behind his head and his mouth twisted into a smirk. Perhaps I was still being a little pissy after all.
“Listen, Steve,” he said, “I’m willing to let this slide. You’ve embarrassed yourself, you’ve embarrassed me, but if we drop this thing right now, I’ll shake your hand and walk out that door. We’ll never have to talk about this again, and I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone else. How does that sound?”
Now it was my turn to speak through gritted teeth.
“We are not going to sweep this under the rug. We are not going to pretend that you have done nothing wrong, and you are not going to bully me into letting you go. You know as well as I do that what you did was unacceptable.”
“Unacceptable?” he snorted. “I have done nothing wrong. Matter of fact, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the way you cheated Mark Fincher,” I said, “And don’t pretend that you didn’t.”
“So that’s what this is,” he said, though he showed no surprise of any kind. “Cheated him? I did nothing of the sort.”
“Of course you did,” I answered. “You haven't finished the work. You told him you would, or he wouldn't have to pay for the rest of the time, but you're still charging him. Did I get everything?”
“Is that what he told you? You should read the contract. I never said I'd finish the work, just that he'd have access to the building, and I've provided that: there's a door, and there are walls." He took a long pull from his coffee mug before putting it back down. I could see a brown, wet ring developing on the copy of the acts of General Assembly.
"You’re not a man of business, son,” he said, and here he adopted a grandfatherly, didactic attitude. “You don’t understand how these things are done. I've done everything according to standard practice. Now let’s just put this matter to rest and get on with our lives. Sound good, Steve?”
“I think I understand perfectly well. All you’re doing is playing word games, Tim. You’re hiding behind a contract, and that’s as dishonest as an outright lie. It is not right for you to be doing this. It is not right. I would be saying this to you if I’d heard you were doing something like this to any man, let alone another member.”
He stood up out of his seat and looked down at me. He stared and I returned his gaze for some time. At length, he straightened his tie and reached for his coffee before turning to go. He stopped at the door to my office before turning around to look at me once more.
“I’ve been on the board here for twelve years, and I was a member for a decade before that,” he said, and his face was hard and serious. “I’ve seen five men come through and hold your job. I’ve kept my place through all those years, and you’d better believe I’ll still be here when you’re gone.”
With that, he left. I slumped back in my chair, tired and angry. After a few minutes I took my keys out of the desk drawer and got up to go.
I pulled into the driveway outside my (small, ugly) house and shut off the engine. The front door was locked, and I was angry enough still that I fumbled with the keys trying to unlock it. I dropped them, along with my briefcase and suit jacket, on the small table in our utterly unnecessary foyer before trudging into the living room and collapsing onto a musty, aging armchair, its blue upholstery rapidly approaching total disintegration. For a long while I just sat there, eyes closed, breathing deeply and doing my best (well, possibly not my best) to avoid thinking violent thoughts.
After perhaps an hour, I heard the door open and close. My wife walked in—my beautiful, wiry wisp of a wife—and I opened my eyes again. She came and sat on one of the arms of the chair.
“That bad?” she asked.
I rubbed at my temples with both hands.
She put her right arm around my shoulders. We sat that way quietly for a stretch of a few minutes.
At last, I looked up at her—into her lovely face, her nose bridged and slightly crooked from being broken years ago, her blue-green eyes, her dark hair.
“Am I a good man?” I asked.
She took her arm from around me. It looked as though she were deep in thought.
“No,” she said, finally. “But then, we none of us are.”
“Thank you,” I said, and took her hand and kissed it.
"Good morning, Tim,” I said, extending my hand. I intended to try and make a real go of this thing.
“Morning,” he said. He shook my hand tough-guy style, trying to crush my fingers with his own meaty palm. He was a large man, Tim McLaughlin, and both his face and his hands were a peculiarly violent shade of scarlet. The abundant stubble along his jaw line—naturally, he had neglected to shave—was mostly pepper but with a healthy sprinkling of salt.
“I think you know why I asked you to come in today,” I said as he sat down on the other side of my small and cluttered desk. I hurriedly pushed aside several volumes by Bavinck and Warfield to make some space on its surface.
I winced slightly as he put his mug down on top of my copy of last year’s acts of General Assembly. He leaned back in the little wooden chair and for an instant I pictured his not insignificant bulk falling backward onto the surprisingly hard floor with its faded brown carpeting. That prospect did not concern me unduly.
He gave his scruff a lazy scratch as though contemplating what I had said.
“Can’t say that I do, actually,” he said meditatively, and folded both large, red hands across his belly. He gave me a snide look as if challenging me to—but that was just me being pissy. I took everything too personally. It wasn’t doing me any good to think bad thoughts about Tim McLaughlin.
“Tim, you and I both know that’s bull,” I said.
In response, he said—nothing. He just looked at me levelly and somewhat coolly. I had to admire his poise. He had a very evident and apparently unshakable self-confidence, a quality which has never been one of my strong suits. Looking at him, I could tell that he was the kind of man who thinks of himself as possessing “piercing blue eyes”—he was quite obviously trying to use them to good effect, staring at me from under hooded lids. I noticed that he was, perhaps unconsciously, rubbing the glaze off of his fingers on his pale blue shirt. I waited for maybe twenty seconds or so, but the silence persisted.
“Come on, Tim,” I sighed. “This is ridiculous. We can just talk like adults, can’t we? Does it always have to be a game like this?”
“I really don’t know what you mean,” he said slowly, the first three fingers on his right hand fiddling with a button. “Frankly, I think it’s a little inappropriate that you bring me in here—on a Saturday, no less—and expect me to be kissing your ring or something. And I think that if there’s a game being played here, it’s your game, not mine.”
“Tim, seriously. I am not going to play with you today. I’m asking you to be cooperative and agreeable, and that’s all. I am not asking for reverence, I’m not asking you to wear a hair shirt, okay? I just think it’s important that we both acknowledge that there is a problem.”
He leaned forward, putting his elbows on my desk—nearly knocking over his coffee in the process—and an exceptionally thick index finger in my face.
“I. Have. Done. Nothing. Wrong,” he said through gritted teeth, “And I do not appreciate what is going on here. I’ve been on the board for twelve years. Twelve years! How long have you been here? Thirteen months?”
“Sixteen,” I muttered, not meeting his gaze. I felt the flush—the damn stupid flush—spread across my cheeks, hot and bitter.
He leaned back once more, a look of satisfaction on his red face. He clasped his hands behind his head and his mouth twisted into a smirk. Perhaps I was still being a little pissy after all.
“Listen, Steve,” he said, “I’m willing to let this slide. You’ve embarrassed yourself, you’ve embarrassed me, but if we drop this thing right now, I’ll shake your hand and walk out that door. We’ll never have to talk about this again, and I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone else. How does that sound?”
Now it was my turn to speak through gritted teeth.
“We are not going to sweep this under the rug. We are not going to pretend that you have done nothing wrong, and you are not going to bully me into letting you go. You know as well as I do that what you did was unacceptable.”
“Unacceptable?” he snorted. “I have done nothing wrong. Matter of fact, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about the way you cheated Mark Fincher,” I said, “And don’t pretend that you didn’t.”
“So that’s what this is,” he said, though he showed no surprise of any kind. “Cheated him? I did nothing of the sort.”
“Of course you did,” I answered. “You haven't finished the work. You told him you would, or he wouldn't have to pay for the rest of the time, but you're still charging him. Did I get everything?”
“Is that what he told you? You should read the contract. I never said I'd finish the work, just that he'd have access to the building, and I've provided that: there's a door, and there are walls." He took a long pull from his coffee mug before putting it back down. I could see a brown, wet ring developing on the copy of the acts of General Assembly.
"You’re not a man of business, son,” he said, and here he adopted a grandfatherly, didactic attitude. “You don’t understand how these things are done. I've done everything according to standard practice. Now let’s just put this matter to rest and get on with our lives. Sound good, Steve?”
“I think I understand perfectly well. All you’re doing is playing word games, Tim. You’re hiding behind a contract, and that’s as dishonest as an outright lie. It is not right for you to be doing this. It is not right. I would be saying this to you if I’d heard you were doing something like this to any man, let alone another member.”
He stood up out of his seat and looked down at me. He stared and I returned his gaze for some time. At length, he straightened his tie and reached for his coffee before turning to go. He stopped at the door to my office before turning around to look at me once more.
“I’ve been on the board here for twelve years, and I was a member for a decade before that,” he said, and his face was hard and serious. “I’ve seen five men come through and hold your job. I’ve kept my place through all those years, and you’d better believe I’ll still be here when you’re gone.”
With that, he left. I slumped back in my chair, tired and angry. After a few minutes I took my keys out of the desk drawer and got up to go.
I pulled into the driveway outside my (small, ugly) house and shut off the engine. The front door was locked, and I was angry enough still that I fumbled with the keys trying to unlock it. I dropped them, along with my briefcase and suit jacket, on the small table in our utterly unnecessary foyer before trudging into the living room and collapsing onto a musty, aging armchair, its blue upholstery rapidly approaching total disintegration. For a long while I just sat there, eyes closed, breathing deeply and doing my best (well, possibly not my best) to avoid thinking violent thoughts.
After perhaps an hour, I heard the door open and close. My wife walked in—my beautiful, wiry wisp of a wife—and I opened my eyes again. She came and sat on one of the arms of the chair.
“That bad?” she asked.
I rubbed at my temples with both hands.
She put her right arm around my shoulders. We sat that way quietly for a stretch of a few minutes.
At last, I looked up at her—into her lovely face, her nose bridged and slightly crooked from being broken years ago, her blue-green eyes, her dark hair.
“Am I a good man?” I asked.
She took her arm from around me. It looked as though she were deep in thought.
“No,” she said, finally. “But then, we none of us are.”
“Thank you,” I said, and took her hand and kissed it.
Prolegomena: Three
This is the third part of my introductory discourse to this site. Please read parts one and two before this.
First of all, I think that Protestant art must necessarily involve some degree of naturalism. By this, I do not mean that more imaginative or fantastical subjects or settings are not allowable—they most certainly are—but that an effort should be made to link even very alien concepts to the reality we perceive in the world around us. Protestant doctrine has a quite populist feel in contrast with the Roman (no sacramental division between laity and clerisy, generally a less authoritative central governing body, etcetera), and Roman Catholic art has generally been made for the church itself, and thus has in mind the distinction between “religious” and “secular” life, a line which, in Catholicism, is hard and definite. (Lutheranism retains something of this distinction, and its art overall represents more of an adaptation of Roman material than a break with it—hence, I will from here on out assume a Reformed perspective and use the terms “Reformed” and “Protestant” interchangeably.) By contrast, Reformed art should ideally not be esoteric or fanciful in its coloration—regardless of who its characters are, they should behave as real human beings do. It should not convey a sense of an idealized upper realm, as Catholic art frequently does (Dante, for instance, comes readily to mind).
Secondly, Protestant art ought to be characterized by a very real moral sense. Beauty for the sake of beauty is a thoroughly ambivalent concept. In one sense, it is valuable: what is beautiful is good in itself. It needs not be covered over with a fabulous (in the sense of “told about in fables”) lesson. In another sense, however, it is obviously wrong: a Reformed standpoint cannot call anything autonomous other than God. With this in mind, it must be always “beauty for the sake of God.” Beauty is then created with the intent of being offered to God as a fruit of labor. But we are called to work also for the building up of the church, and it is in this sense that the beautiful ought also to be useful. Beauty ought to draw us to goodness.
Note well that I do not intend, here, to conjure images of cautionary tales and bedtime stories, in which the virtuous hero always triumphs and according to which the chief of virtues is always (saccharine) niceness. What I have in mind here is rather something much like the work of Dostoevsky, that most Calvinistic of the Orthodox. What I have in mind is the cry of the nameless narrator of Notes From Underground, “They won’t let me… I can’t… be good!” or the steadfast hope of Dmitri Karamazov that he will sing a hymn to God from beneath the earth. What I mean by “moral sense” is the bone-deep conviction that there is good and that there is evil in this world, and that we ought to be on the side of the good.
It will not, perhaps, be surprising if I suggest that this moral vision is mostly to be found in the tragic mode. Hamlet’s self-assessment, “I myself am indifferent honest,” is a declaration of mediocrity, but, poised between his knowledge of his uncle’s sheer wickedness and his own clear and religious conscience, it takes on new meaning. Between the great possibilities of evil and righteousness, we can attain a new level of understanding and insight. The prototype of this is, of course, the beautiful and profound Book of Job. Job finds himself unable to account for evil, both in the sense of what we might call “natural” or “circumstantial evil” and outright moral evil. He knows there is both good and evil, righteousness and unrighteousness, and he cries out to God—now in reverence, now in frustration—to reveal and unmask them. It is the very type of the believing but fallen man.
Third and finally, Protestant art must have a pregnant sense of redemption. This does not need to be immediate, personal, and realized (what I will call “salvific” redemption), it can also be expectant, hoped-for, prophetic. It can be eschatological, the sense and trust that redemption is intended and will come—the “desire of the everlasting hills.” It can be the enacted redemption of Sydney Carton—“It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known”—or the prophesied redemption of Hieronymus in Thomas Mann’s underappreciated story, “Gladius Dei”:
And there, against a yellow wall of cloud that had drifted from across the Theatinerstrasse with a soft roll of thunder, he saw the broad blade of a fiery sword, outstretched in the sulfurous sky above this lighthearted city... 'Gladius Dei super terram,' his thick lips whispered; and drawing himself to his full height in his hooded cloak, he shook his hanging, hidden fist convulsively and added in a quivering undertone: 'cito et velociter!'
This is a theme made available to the Reformed artist by a monergistic understanding of salvation. Because all things are in God’s hands, and His alone, redemption is never impossible. It merely waits upon the good pleasure of the Lord.
This may do as a final summation of Protestant art: all things are open to it. It has the right to treat the king and the criminal alike, as fallen men before the great Judge. It has its doctrine of total depravity and the helplessness of man to open up the great, wide vistas of tragedy. It has its belief in the utter and unlimited redemptive powers of God to open up truly comic and even, one might almost dare say, humanistic avenues of flourishing and rightness, a picture of the shalom of God and a far-off vision of the New Jerusalem. “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof,” the Psalms say, and this is the heart of the Protestant ethic of art.
First of all, I think that Protestant art must necessarily involve some degree of naturalism. By this, I do not mean that more imaginative or fantastical subjects or settings are not allowable—they most certainly are—but that an effort should be made to link even very alien concepts to the reality we perceive in the world around us. Protestant doctrine has a quite populist feel in contrast with the Roman (no sacramental division between laity and clerisy, generally a less authoritative central governing body, etcetera), and Roman Catholic art has generally been made for the church itself, and thus has in mind the distinction between “religious” and “secular” life, a line which, in Catholicism, is hard and definite. (Lutheranism retains something of this distinction, and its art overall represents more of an adaptation of Roman material than a break with it—hence, I will from here on out assume a Reformed perspective and use the terms “Reformed” and “Protestant” interchangeably.) By contrast, Reformed art should ideally not be esoteric or fanciful in its coloration—regardless of who its characters are, they should behave as real human beings do. It should not convey a sense of an idealized upper realm, as Catholic art frequently does (Dante, for instance, comes readily to mind).
Secondly, Protestant art ought to be characterized by a very real moral sense. Beauty for the sake of beauty is a thoroughly ambivalent concept. In one sense, it is valuable: what is beautiful is good in itself. It needs not be covered over with a fabulous (in the sense of “told about in fables”) lesson. In another sense, however, it is obviously wrong: a Reformed standpoint cannot call anything autonomous other than God. With this in mind, it must be always “beauty for the sake of God.” Beauty is then created with the intent of being offered to God as a fruit of labor. But we are called to work also for the building up of the church, and it is in this sense that the beautiful ought also to be useful. Beauty ought to draw us to goodness.
Note well that I do not intend, here, to conjure images of cautionary tales and bedtime stories, in which the virtuous hero always triumphs and according to which the chief of virtues is always (saccharine) niceness. What I have in mind here is rather something much like the work of Dostoevsky, that most Calvinistic of the Orthodox. What I have in mind is the cry of the nameless narrator of Notes From Underground, “They won’t let me… I can’t… be good!” or the steadfast hope of Dmitri Karamazov that he will sing a hymn to God from beneath the earth. What I mean by “moral sense” is the bone-deep conviction that there is good and that there is evil in this world, and that we ought to be on the side of the good.
It will not, perhaps, be surprising if I suggest that this moral vision is mostly to be found in the tragic mode. Hamlet’s self-assessment, “I myself am indifferent honest,” is a declaration of mediocrity, but, poised between his knowledge of his uncle’s sheer wickedness and his own clear and religious conscience, it takes on new meaning. Between the great possibilities of evil and righteousness, we can attain a new level of understanding and insight. The prototype of this is, of course, the beautiful and profound Book of Job. Job finds himself unable to account for evil, both in the sense of what we might call “natural” or “circumstantial evil” and outright moral evil. He knows there is both good and evil, righteousness and unrighteousness, and he cries out to God—now in reverence, now in frustration—to reveal and unmask them. It is the very type of the believing but fallen man.
Third and finally, Protestant art must have a pregnant sense of redemption. This does not need to be immediate, personal, and realized (what I will call “salvific” redemption), it can also be expectant, hoped-for, prophetic. It can be eschatological, the sense and trust that redemption is intended and will come—the “desire of the everlasting hills.” It can be the enacted redemption of Sydney Carton—“It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known”—or the prophesied redemption of Hieronymus in Thomas Mann’s underappreciated story, “Gladius Dei”:
And there, against a yellow wall of cloud that had drifted from across the Theatinerstrasse with a soft roll of thunder, he saw the broad blade of a fiery sword, outstretched in the sulfurous sky above this lighthearted city... 'Gladius Dei super terram,' his thick lips whispered; and drawing himself to his full height in his hooded cloak, he shook his hanging, hidden fist convulsively and added in a quivering undertone: 'cito et velociter!'
This is a theme made available to the Reformed artist by a monergistic understanding of salvation. Because all things are in God’s hands, and His alone, redemption is never impossible. It merely waits upon the good pleasure of the Lord.
This may do as a final summation of Protestant art: all things are open to it. It has the right to treat the king and the criminal alike, as fallen men before the great Judge. It has its doctrine of total depravity and the helplessness of man to open up the great, wide vistas of tragedy. It has its belief in the utter and unlimited redemptive powers of God to open up truly comic and even, one might almost dare say, humanistic avenues of flourishing and rightness, a picture of the shalom of God and a far-off vision of the New Jerusalem. “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof,” the Psalms say, and this is the heart of the Protestant ethic of art.
Prolegomena: Two
This is the second part of my introductory discourse on this site. Please read the first part before this.
What I have called “Protestant art” has a much smaller corpus than the Roman Catholic, and my opinions on its shortcomings are both suspect (as I am a Protestant myself) and underdeveloped (as I think I would need more time to consider it in its full breadth, and as it is much less frequently held up to the public eye). However, I think I can identify the characteristic Protestant fault: it is, plainly, ugliness. Bad Catholic art is lascivious and florid; bad Protestant art is correspondingly moralistic and totally lacking in beauty. Perhaps I ought to say instead that Catholic art is ugly with the ugliness of the fop, Protestant art with the ugliness of the miser. Roman art of low quality swallows up the figure in finery; poor Reformed art smears the figure with mud.
But I am not here to criticize Protestant artistry, I am here to defend it (I come not to bury, but to praise). This is my chief aim. To begin with, then, I must answer the questions, Where is Protestant art to be found? It is somewhat different in character from Catholic art—it is less visual and more literary, though it does have its notable painters—so what are its chief characteristics? What are its inner qualities, what makes it worthy of notice? These are hard questions, but they must be answered—and I will do so to the best of my capabilities.
Protestant art has roots in the time before the Reformation. The Franco-Flemish painters and their conventions would be the guiding light for subsequent Protestant forays into the plastic arts. A school of realistic art with an emphasis on the life of the ordinary citizen grew up in the Low Countries prior to the sixteenth century—this is the aesthetic that would guide the great figures of the Dutch Golden Age of visual arts. A concern for the common (as well as a certain penchant for stark and wintry scenes) plays a part in the Protestant artistic ethos. But the best embodiment of the Protestant visual style is, undoubtedly, Rembrandt. His biblical pieces are more human and restrained than the corresponding works of the Roman tradition, his portraiture is realistic but sympathetic and simultaneously conveys an affirmation of life and a moral sense. His “Return of The Prodigal Son” is arresting, a scene of intense but human momentousness appearing out of the starkness of the black canvas. His “Raising of the Cross” is the strongest argument I have found against my own iconoclastic position: an eloquent depiction of religious truth (it is Rembrandt who crucifies the Christ in the piece, just as it is all of us in fact). His work is the positive pole of Calvinism which is almost never seen or noticed—the world seems only ever to find the negation in the Reformed position, not its affirmation.
But, as I mentioned, the characteristic art of the Protestant world has been literature more than painting (sculpture has remained largely a Catholic domain, perhaps due to the influence of iconoclasm), and it is here that I feel most inclined and most able to speak. I wish very much that I had the talent for visual art—it is expressive, concise, and eloquent in a way that no other art can be—but I do not, and my critical eye for it remains, at best, that of a slightly educated amateur. But if I have any art in me at all, it is literary, and if I have any critical faculty at all, it is for literature.
I said before that Dante is one of the world’s treasures in the field—well! let that stand, it is so—but I will take John Donne over a hundred Dantes. The characteristic Protestant form is not the epic—Milton is, to my mind, an aberration and atypical, as is Spenser—but the lyric (not, however, that there are not good Catholic lyrical poets), and Donne is a master of the style. Donne’s specific theological commitments are somewhat less than clear, though I am inclined to think of him in a Reformed context (whether he is a predestinarian or not), and he certainly represents, to me, a kind of archetypal Calvinist artist. He raises hard questions, his words are sharp-edged and bold—he even dabbles in some risqué material (in a way that I cannot really imagine a good Anabaptist or Methodist doing). His work has dark tones, but its structures are breathtakingly gorgeous. And, vitally, his work (especially the later work) is characterized by a kind of moral incisiveness that is indispensible for the kind of Protestant milieu I have in mind.
The same holds true, as I see it, for the more serious works of Shakespeare. I am well aware that the actual ecclesial allegiance of the playwright is questionable (though I personally find it hard to believe that he is anything but a member of the Church of England), but his work occurs in the post-Reformation period of England, at a time when Reformed influence was high (though, it is true, there was much influential Catholicism as well). And I cannot think of anything else to call Hamlet and Macbeth than meditations on the depravity of man, in a very Protestant (and perhaps even Calvinistic) mode. Hamlet and Horatio are, after all, young students from Wittenberg (Luther’s school), well aware of the wickedness of men—“this quintessence of dust”—and Macbeth’s headlong charge into what he knows full well is evil bears the marks of Luther’s rejection of the Aristotelian notion that all men seek the good.
But what I have said to this point is really only circling the issue—as I said, I believe that the artistic potentialities of Protestantism are largely untapped: Scotland and the Netherlands never produced a truly great composer (and England’s best, Handel, was really a German), the overzealous segments of the Reformed movement were actively anti-artistic, America had little time to create prior to the onset of modernism as a philosophy and form, and so forth. What I mean when I say “Protestant art” is still largely an ideal, not an actuality. We see glimpses of it in various artists, but it rarely if ever truly expresses itself fully. I suppose, then, that I should lay it out plainly and simply.
What I have called “Protestant art” has a much smaller corpus than the Roman Catholic, and my opinions on its shortcomings are both suspect (as I am a Protestant myself) and underdeveloped (as I think I would need more time to consider it in its full breadth, and as it is much less frequently held up to the public eye). However, I think I can identify the characteristic Protestant fault: it is, plainly, ugliness. Bad Catholic art is lascivious and florid; bad Protestant art is correspondingly moralistic and totally lacking in beauty. Perhaps I ought to say instead that Catholic art is ugly with the ugliness of the fop, Protestant art with the ugliness of the miser. Roman art of low quality swallows up the figure in finery; poor Reformed art smears the figure with mud.
But I am not here to criticize Protestant artistry, I am here to defend it (I come not to bury, but to praise). This is my chief aim. To begin with, then, I must answer the questions, Where is Protestant art to be found? It is somewhat different in character from Catholic art—it is less visual and more literary, though it does have its notable painters—so what are its chief characteristics? What are its inner qualities, what makes it worthy of notice? These are hard questions, but they must be answered—and I will do so to the best of my capabilities.
Protestant art has roots in the time before the Reformation. The Franco-Flemish painters and their conventions would be the guiding light for subsequent Protestant forays into the plastic arts. A school of realistic art with an emphasis on the life of the ordinary citizen grew up in the Low Countries prior to the sixteenth century—this is the aesthetic that would guide the great figures of the Dutch Golden Age of visual arts. A concern for the common (as well as a certain penchant for stark and wintry scenes) plays a part in the Protestant artistic ethos. But the best embodiment of the Protestant visual style is, undoubtedly, Rembrandt. His biblical pieces are more human and restrained than the corresponding works of the Roman tradition, his portraiture is realistic but sympathetic and simultaneously conveys an affirmation of life and a moral sense. His “Return of The Prodigal Son” is arresting, a scene of intense but human momentousness appearing out of the starkness of the black canvas. His “Raising of the Cross” is the strongest argument I have found against my own iconoclastic position: an eloquent depiction of religious truth (it is Rembrandt who crucifies the Christ in the piece, just as it is all of us in fact). His work is the positive pole of Calvinism which is almost never seen or noticed—the world seems only ever to find the negation in the Reformed position, not its affirmation.
But, as I mentioned, the characteristic art of the Protestant world has been literature more than painting (sculpture has remained largely a Catholic domain, perhaps due to the influence of iconoclasm), and it is here that I feel most inclined and most able to speak. I wish very much that I had the talent for visual art—it is expressive, concise, and eloquent in a way that no other art can be—but I do not, and my critical eye for it remains, at best, that of a slightly educated amateur. But if I have any art in me at all, it is literary, and if I have any critical faculty at all, it is for literature.
I said before that Dante is one of the world’s treasures in the field—well! let that stand, it is so—but I will take John Donne over a hundred Dantes. The characteristic Protestant form is not the epic—Milton is, to my mind, an aberration and atypical, as is Spenser—but the lyric (not, however, that there are not good Catholic lyrical poets), and Donne is a master of the style. Donne’s specific theological commitments are somewhat less than clear, though I am inclined to think of him in a Reformed context (whether he is a predestinarian or not), and he certainly represents, to me, a kind of archetypal Calvinist artist. He raises hard questions, his words are sharp-edged and bold—he even dabbles in some risqué material (in a way that I cannot really imagine a good Anabaptist or Methodist doing). His work has dark tones, but its structures are breathtakingly gorgeous. And, vitally, his work (especially the later work) is characterized by a kind of moral incisiveness that is indispensible for the kind of Protestant milieu I have in mind.
The same holds true, as I see it, for the more serious works of Shakespeare. I am well aware that the actual ecclesial allegiance of the playwright is questionable (though I personally find it hard to believe that he is anything but a member of the Church of England), but his work occurs in the post-Reformation period of England, at a time when Reformed influence was high (though, it is true, there was much influential Catholicism as well). And I cannot think of anything else to call Hamlet and Macbeth than meditations on the depravity of man, in a very Protestant (and perhaps even Calvinistic) mode. Hamlet and Horatio are, after all, young students from Wittenberg (Luther’s school), well aware of the wickedness of men—“this quintessence of dust”—and Macbeth’s headlong charge into what he knows full well is evil bears the marks of Luther’s rejection of the Aristotelian notion that all men seek the good.
But what I have said to this point is really only circling the issue—as I said, I believe that the artistic potentialities of Protestantism are largely untapped: Scotland and the Netherlands never produced a truly great composer (and England’s best, Handel, was really a German), the overzealous segments of the Reformed movement were actively anti-artistic, America had little time to create prior to the onset of modernism as a philosophy and form, and so forth. What I mean when I say “Protestant art” is still largely an ideal, not an actuality. We see glimpses of it in various artists, but it rarely if ever truly expresses itself fully. I suppose, then, that I should lay it out plainly and simply.
Prolegomena: One
Before I begin producing typical content, I think it is worthwhile to present a clearer picture of the philosophy of this project. What follows, in two or three parts, is an adapted form of an essay I have written on the concept of "Protestant art," a concept at the core of this site's mission. For information on the overarching philosophy, research at the Reformational Publishing Project, the site for the Canadian think-tank Cardus, and simple reading of, in particular, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Dooyeweerd are suggested. A great deal of criticism has been leveled at this philosophy (which is generally called either Neocalvinism or Reformational philosophy) from many different quarters, but it bears mentioning the following:
a.) Neocalvinism is fully compatible with "classic" Calvinism. I myself am a classic Calvinist. The ideas are quite interrelated- Neocalvinism owes much of its impetus to classic Calvinism- but are ultimately operative in slightly different spheres. Neocalvinism is fundamentally a philosophy, Calvinism, a theology.
b.) While, it is true, there exists in Neocalvinism the potential for the softening of specific Christian salvific doctrines, it is not a necessary consequence. Indeed, if push comes to shove, I am far more willing to surrender my philosophical stance than my doctrinal. At its best, Neocalvinism represents a broader, richer application of the theme of salvation rather than a confusion of it.
c.) Neocalvinism is not necessarily restricted to Calvinists at all. There are Kuyperian Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and so forth. While I believe it is most germane to a Calvinist milieu, the idea is compatible with any understanding of God as creator and redeemer of the world.
So, without further ado, the first section of the essay. Its title is "God's Open Spaces."
“Into God’s wide open spaces, hurrah!”—Thomas Mann, “The Road to the Churchyard”
I sit and write in Salzburg, Austria, which is sometimes called “The Baroque City.” It well deserves the name: the small medieval section of the city contains a number of highly ornate, heavily gilt churches which house a vast collection of frescoes, sculptures, and paintings from the Baroque era. Many of these pieces—and nearly all of the architecture—are of magnificent technical quality and imaginative skill, but almost none of them (excepting the architecture, which is astounding) give me any pleasure to look at. Baroque, and the closely related Rococo, represents an artistic sensibility that I neither enjoy nor value for its ideological standpoint (i.e., I find it neither pleasurable nor edifying). In fact, I find Baroque, with its hyperactive, crowded visual style and its infatuation with gold (and gilding), to be oppressive and almost claustrophobic.
I am here to take classes, one of which is a sort of interdisciplinary study of German culture (and Salzburger history). Naturally enough, part of the conversation is about the interplay between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in the German Sprachraum, and much emphasis has been given to the iconoclastic controversy—again, natural enough given that we have with us professors of music and art history—and it has been almost tacitly assumed that the Reformed position on iconography is, if not wrong outright, at least a possible deterrent to those who would have to choose between the churches. Baroque art is assumed to be an advantage for the Roman Church, a sort of built-in sales pitch. But my personal experience—even if it is not indicative of widespread feeling—is at least evidence that not every person would find such a lavish and overwhelming mode of expression a positive. And that is, in fact, what I wish to argue. I have two essential concerns: first, to demonstrate that the characteristically Roman Catholic artistic form (which extends, both forward and back in time, from the Renaissance and Baroque period) is not, by its nature, the supreme form; and second, to defend the Protestant (and Reformed) position on the arts, which is rarely understood correctly, and offer a small glimpse at the potentialities of such a Protestant ethic of art, which I believe are vast and yet largely untapped.
I want to preface my statements on Roman Catholic art with a different statement: I believe that there has been a great deal of good art in the Roman tradition. Dante’s oeuvre is one of the world’s great literary treasures, Michelangelo and Bosch and a host of others made invaluable contributions to the visual arts, the influence of Catholic composers (particularly Italians) has been similarly indispensible in the development of music. These things are all true, but they are not the extent of the truth.
I also want to take a moment to clarify what I mean by “Roman Catholic art”: I do not mean art that is (necessarily) made by a devout Catholic (or Catholics). I mean that art which develops under the guiding power of Roman Catholic culture(s) and exhibits the marks of Catholic thought and practice. Hence, European art from the middle ages onward, especially in Italy, France, and Spain fits the criteria in a way that art from a modern American Catholic might not. Over against this stream of artistic expression, I mean to set what I will call “Protestant art”—this means, chiefly, artistic expression from the age of the Reformation onward, in the north and west of Europe, as well as (to some extent) in America.
If there is a characteristic fault of Roman Catholic art—and here I am thinking especially of the visual arts, though of opera as well, and to some extent of poetry—it is that it is excessive. I mean this as bluntly and simply as it may be construed. The Roman tradition of the visual arts—especially the Renaissance and Baroque period—is noticeably (too) large, (over)full, and (hyper)active (please do me the courtesy of remembering that what I say is always accompanied by an unspoken, “In my opinion”). The installations in the Salzburg Baroque churches are massive—both large and heavy in appearance—overflowing with cherubs, saints, martyrs. They are dizzying—vertiginous. They seem discontent with all that is not gilt and awful (in the old sense). I find this especially disappointing in light of the fact that the geographical region—the Austrian Alps and, particularly, the lakes region of the Salzkammergut—is one of the most beautiful in the world, or at least one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The physical surroundings are austerely, starkly beautiful, with an undertone of softness and sensuality. The art is (as I see it) blusteringly sensual with an undertone of flat sterility.
Catholic art is, of course, bound up with the Roman-classical tradition. The classical ideal of form, therefore, is the defining aesthetic of Roman Catholic art, and it develops into a particular sort of extravagance in composition and intensity in coloration. In more conceptual terms, it represents an attempt to render otherworldly glory through earthly media. This is particularly the idea behind iconography and church art in the specific sense of art in churches (generally frescoes, but installations and canvass paintings as well): the appearance of the church interior is meant to give the parishioner a sense of heavenly splendor as well as underscore the idea of Mother Church as the storehouse of grace and God-given treasures. As such, it typically combines a fine and minute sense of detail (the better to express formal beauty) with fantastic imagery and design (to offer a sense of the unworldly). It overawes—perhaps even browbeats—the viewer. Its ambition, at least, is to strike him dumb. When and where this goes awry, it goes awry in floridness, in excess and undisciplined indulgence (as I have said, its characteristic flaw is excess, the proposed austerity of the Counter-Reformation notwithstanding). Even where its artists are highly talented and highly trained, then, the Roman tradition is vulnerable to flaw and failure (as, of course, is always true). Technical precision (which is a great gift of the Roman tradition) can only do so much—style carries much weight; good content covers over a host of sins.
a.) Neocalvinism is fully compatible with "classic" Calvinism. I myself am a classic Calvinist. The ideas are quite interrelated- Neocalvinism owes much of its impetus to classic Calvinism- but are ultimately operative in slightly different spheres. Neocalvinism is fundamentally a philosophy, Calvinism, a theology.
b.) While, it is true, there exists in Neocalvinism the potential for the softening of specific Christian salvific doctrines, it is not a necessary consequence. Indeed, if push comes to shove, I am far more willing to surrender my philosophical stance than my doctrinal. At its best, Neocalvinism represents a broader, richer application of the theme of salvation rather than a confusion of it.
c.) Neocalvinism is not necessarily restricted to Calvinists at all. There are Kuyperian Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, and so forth. While I believe it is most germane to a Calvinist milieu, the idea is compatible with any understanding of God as creator and redeemer of the world.
So, without further ado, the first section of the essay. Its title is "God's Open Spaces."
“Into God’s wide open spaces, hurrah!”—Thomas Mann, “The Road to the Churchyard”
I sit and write in Salzburg, Austria, which is sometimes called “The Baroque City.” It well deserves the name: the small medieval section of the city contains a number of highly ornate, heavily gilt churches which house a vast collection of frescoes, sculptures, and paintings from the Baroque era. Many of these pieces—and nearly all of the architecture—are of magnificent technical quality and imaginative skill, but almost none of them (excepting the architecture, which is astounding) give me any pleasure to look at. Baroque, and the closely related Rococo, represents an artistic sensibility that I neither enjoy nor value for its ideological standpoint (i.e., I find it neither pleasurable nor edifying). In fact, I find Baroque, with its hyperactive, crowded visual style and its infatuation with gold (and gilding), to be oppressive and almost claustrophobic.
I am here to take classes, one of which is a sort of interdisciplinary study of German culture (and Salzburger history). Naturally enough, part of the conversation is about the interplay between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism in the German Sprachraum, and much emphasis has been given to the iconoclastic controversy—again, natural enough given that we have with us professors of music and art history—and it has been almost tacitly assumed that the Reformed position on iconography is, if not wrong outright, at least a possible deterrent to those who would have to choose between the churches. Baroque art is assumed to be an advantage for the Roman Church, a sort of built-in sales pitch. But my personal experience—even if it is not indicative of widespread feeling—is at least evidence that not every person would find such a lavish and overwhelming mode of expression a positive. And that is, in fact, what I wish to argue. I have two essential concerns: first, to demonstrate that the characteristically Roman Catholic artistic form (which extends, both forward and back in time, from the Renaissance and Baroque period) is not, by its nature, the supreme form; and second, to defend the Protestant (and Reformed) position on the arts, which is rarely understood correctly, and offer a small glimpse at the potentialities of such a Protestant ethic of art, which I believe are vast and yet largely untapped.
I want to preface my statements on Roman Catholic art with a different statement: I believe that there has been a great deal of good art in the Roman tradition. Dante’s oeuvre is one of the world’s great literary treasures, Michelangelo and Bosch and a host of others made invaluable contributions to the visual arts, the influence of Catholic composers (particularly Italians) has been similarly indispensible in the development of music. These things are all true, but they are not the extent of the truth.
I also want to take a moment to clarify what I mean by “Roman Catholic art”: I do not mean art that is (necessarily) made by a devout Catholic (or Catholics). I mean that art which develops under the guiding power of Roman Catholic culture(s) and exhibits the marks of Catholic thought and practice. Hence, European art from the middle ages onward, especially in Italy, France, and Spain fits the criteria in a way that art from a modern American Catholic might not. Over against this stream of artistic expression, I mean to set what I will call “Protestant art”—this means, chiefly, artistic expression from the age of the Reformation onward, in the north and west of Europe, as well as (to some extent) in America.
If there is a characteristic fault of Roman Catholic art—and here I am thinking especially of the visual arts, though of opera as well, and to some extent of poetry—it is that it is excessive. I mean this as bluntly and simply as it may be construed. The Roman tradition of the visual arts—especially the Renaissance and Baroque period—is noticeably (too) large, (over)full, and (hyper)active (please do me the courtesy of remembering that what I say is always accompanied by an unspoken, “In my opinion”). The installations in the Salzburg Baroque churches are massive—both large and heavy in appearance—overflowing with cherubs, saints, martyrs. They are dizzying—vertiginous. They seem discontent with all that is not gilt and awful (in the old sense). I find this especially disappointing in light of the fact that the geographical region—the Austrian Alps and, particularly, the lakes region of the Salzkammergut—is one of the most beautiful in the world, or at least one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The physical surroundings are austerely, starkly beautiful, with an undertone of softness and sensuality. The art is (as I see it) blusteringly sensual with an undertone of flat sterility.
Catholic art is, of course, bound up with the Roman-classical tradition. The classical ideal of form, therefore, is the defining aesthetic of Roman Catholic art, and it develops into a particular sort of extravagance in composition and intensity in coloration. In more conceptual terms, it represents an attempt to render otherworldly glory through earthly media. This is particularly the idea behind iconography and church art in the specific sense of art in churches (generally frescoes, but installations and canvass paintings as well): the appearance of the church interior is meant to give the parishioner a sense of heavenly splendor as well as underscore the idea of Mother Church as the storehouse of grace and God-given treasures. As such, it typically combines a fine and minute sense of detail (the better to express formal beauty) with fantastic imagery and design (to offer a sense of the unworldly). It overawes—perhaps even browbeats—the viewer. Its ambition, at least, is to strike him dumb. When and where this goes awry, it goes awry in floridness, in excess and undisciplined indulgence (as I have said, its characteristic flaw is excess, the proposed austerity of the Counter-Reformation notwithstanding). Even where its artists are highly talented and highly trained, then, the Roman tradition is vulnerable to flaw and failure (as, of course, is always true). Technical precision (which is a great gift of the Roman tradition) can only do so much—style carries much weight; good content covers over a host of sins.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)