"Gratitude," by Abba.

A post from my father on the meaning behind Thanksgiving... 

"Gratitude:

"An acknowledgement of what the L-rd has meant to us in the past and what He still means to us today, as well as an avowal of what our relationship to Him has been and should be.

"Our Sages comment that when one day in the new future that is to come, all things on earth will be in such an ideal state that there will be no more cause for prayers and offerings; even then, prayers of gratitude and offerings of thanksgiving will never cease. For it would be only under such conditions that these acts would attain their true significance. How great is gratitude, the noblest of all human traits and destined to endure throughout eternity.

"May we be made aware of the vanity of all the years of our life, of the inadequacy of all that which lies beyond us and which we think we can attain as the years go by.

"All he joy and happiness of which any of us is capable of attaining dwells in the certainty that we have lived all our days, hours, and minutes on earth in gratitude and loyalty to G-d, and that we have faithfully discharged our duty throughout time.

"And whenever G-d sees fit to call us away, we will boldly heed the summons, content in the thought that we have realized the goal for which we were created.

"May He, therefore, teach us how to number our days aright and greet each day with a heart full of gratitude for, each day is one more day in His service. What an awesome privilege to remain in His employ, unworthy servants such as we are.


"Happy Thanksgiving."

An Argument for the Awesomeness of Tennyson

                                                                            

                    “I hold it true, whate'er befall;

                    “I feel it when I sorrow most;

                  “ ‘Tis better to have loved and lost

                    "Than never to have loved at all."

Everyone has heard the latter part of this stanza at least once in their lifetime, but not everyone knows who penned these famous words about love and loss. The author was Alfred “Eccentric” Lord Tennyson, one of the greatest poets who ever lived, and certainly the greatest poet of his time.

Alfred was born in England, the fourth of twelve children, in 1809, the same year in which Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were also born. When he was eighteen in 1827 he left to study at Cambridge, where he became part of a literary group called the “Apostles”. He toured Europe with his best friend Hallam, who later became engaged to Alfred’s sister Emily. In 1833 Alfred went back home, no longer able to afford college tuition, and it was there that he learned that Hallam had died suddenly of fever while travelling abroad. His terrible grief at his friend’s death influenced much of his later poetry, especially the great elegy “In Memoriam.”

In 1850 William Wordsworth, Britain’s Poet Laureate, died, and Tennyson was named to take his place. He married Emily Sellwood, whom he had loved since 1836, and they moved in 1853 to a country house on the Isle of Wight where they raised two sons named Hallam and Lionel. Later in life Tennyson continued to write and gain popularity, and his poetry began to follow a narrative style. In 1884 Queen Victoria and Prince Albert granted Alfred a baronetcy. In 1892 he died at the age of 83 from heart failure and was buried in Westminster Abby. 

Although Tennyson was popular in his own day, his successors the Edwardians and Georgians of the early 1900s often mocked and ridiculed him, accusing him of escapism in his themes of knights, Camelot, and chivalry. Today, however, many critics consider him the greatest poet of the Victorian age. From Milton to Tennyson there was no poet combining in his person all the skills of expressing detail, love and reverence for God, optimism, and penetrating introspection with uniqueness, nor has there been one since Tennyson. To the critics, four predominant poetic traits make Alfred Lord Tennyson the greatest poet of the Victorians – to me, they make him one of the greatest poets in the history of language. These are: his skill in portraying details such as color, how he stands out from the other Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Keats, the method by which his poems culminate in optimism and hope in God, and, most importantly, his belief in and reverence for God.

 One of Tennyson’s most prevailing characteristics is his ability to convey color to the mind’s eye of the reader. For example, in “The Lady of Shalott”, Sir Lancelot’s attire is described in rich detail: “All in the blue unclouded weather / Thick-jewell’d shone the saddle-leather / The helmet and the helmet-feather / Burn’d like one burning flame together / As he rode down to Camelot. / As often thro’ the purple night / Below the starry clusters bright / Some bearded meteor, trailing light / Moves over still Shalott. / His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d / On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode / From underneath his helmet flow’d / His coal-black curls as on he rode / As he rode down to Camelot.”

Tennyson learned much of this sense of imagery from Keats, but his portrayals are vivid rather than vague, his colors brilliant in imagination rather than soft and fanciful. In “Morte d’Arthur”, Excalibur's hilt "twinkled with diamond sparks, / Myriads of topaz-lights, and jacinth-work / Of subtlest jewelry.” Tennyson was famous for these passages of sparkling color and poetic artistry and it is one of the strongest points of his poetry. As an early twentieth century critic praises this ability; “His appreciation for sensuous beauty, especially color, is acute…his descriptions are magnificently beautiful, often with much detail…Add the truth and tenderness of his emotion, and it results that he is one of the finest and most moving of lyric poets.” (Alfred Tennyson from A History of English Literature, by Robert Huntington Fletcher, 1918)

Another one of Tennyson’s greatest assets was his singularity among all of the other Romantic poets, including Keats, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. He stands alone in many of his themes, motifs, and symbols, as well as his modes of expression and ideals. Unlike the other Romantics, who viewed nature as a sort of thing to be worshipped, Tennyson put nature into its proper perspective as a medium expressing and pointing the way towards the higher Creator Being. Some of his predominant themes are, the reconciliation of religion and science, the virtues of perseverance and optimism, and the glory of England, while some of Keats’ prevailing themes consist of the inevitability of death and the worship of beauty in nature, (“Beauty is truth, and truth, beauty.”) Wordsworth mourned the passing of England’s glory and Coleridge is notorious for a certain bizarre use of language and remoteness from reality –these characteristically Romantic traits contrast Tennyson’s reverence for England and for the importance of accurate scientific detail in his poetry. Undoubtedly Tennyson was influenced by his Romantic predecessors, but he veered from their path in numerous ways, and became the father of Victorian poetry in so doing.

   Out of Tennyson’s poetic themes, extolling the virtues of optimism is one of the greatest and most unique – after his best friend’s death he struggled through a time of intense despair, which he eventually overcame. Many of his poems exemplify this struggle with despair and hope, culminating in the ultimate victory of optimism over depression, and the realization of the need to carry on trusting in God. This need for perseverance is best expressed in the works “Ulysses” and “In Memoriam,” but it also appears in “The Lotos Eaters”, “The Lady of Shalott”, and “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” The latter two glorify characters who embrace their destinies in the face of death.

The ideas of Tennyson’s poetry are noble, yet conservative, expressing the Victorian ideals of his time. Instead of becoming confused and straying from religion because of the scientific discoveries of his time, as so many Christians did, he used his poetry to reconcile this newly discovered science with God.

God is essentially the optimism of Tennyson’s poetry. It is best expressed in his long “In Memoriam”, a series of short poems woven together to create an elegy to his dead friend, Arthur Hallam. It begins as a tribute to the “Strong Son of God”, and folds out into the argument that, though man, never having seen God’s face, has no proof of His existence, he can still reach God through faith. Tennyson attributes the sun and moon to God, acknowledging Him as the creator of life and death. The Son of God Tennyson portrays as both human and divine – man controls his own will, but the Son of God has also predestined each man for a purpose. The speaker in “In Memoriam” expresses the hope that “knowledge [of God will] grow from more to more” though this knowledge should be combined with a reverence for God’s incalculable wisdom. The speaker also repeatedly asks that God would forgive him for his grief for “Thy creature, whom I found so fair.” Yet Tennyson concludes the poem with the hope that his best friend lives on in a better and higher World.

 “In Memoriam” is seen as the ultimate expression of Tennyson’s belief in God; “In religion, his inherited belief, rooted in his deepest fibers, early found itself confronted by the discoveries of modern science, which at first seemed to him to proclaim that the universe is much what it seemed to the young Carlyle, a remorseless monster, 'red in tooth and claw,' scarcely thinkable as the work of a Christian God who cares for man. Tennyson was too sincere to evade the issue, and after years of inner struggle he arrived at a positive faith in the central principles of Christianity.” (Alfred Tennyson from A History of English Literature, by Robert Huntington Fletcher, 1918

Thus Tennyson stands alone on a pedestal of greatness, for though the Romantic Keats and Wordsworth had genius, they did not have belief in God, and their genius was misplaced worshipping ideas such as Nature and Innocence. Though many more modern poets following Tennyson have used their poetry and genius to glorify God, they have not expressed their ideals as exquisitely, nor with as much skill, as Tennyson has done. His vivid and beautiful use of the English language combined with the wide variety of  poetic forms he mastered, such as lyrics, ballads, “descriptive poems, sentimental reveries, and idyls; long narratives, in which he displays perfect narrative skill; delightfully realistic character-sketches, some of them in dialect; dramas; and meditative poems, long and short, on religious, ethical, and social questions”, (Alfred Tennyson from A History of English Literature, by Robert Huntington Fletcher, 1918) place him among the great geniuses of literature. Alternatively, his departure from the accepted and usual themes and ideals of these geniuses set him apart into his own category of greatness, reserved only for those masters who gave glory to their Giver for their mastery.

You Thought "Gulliver's Travels" Was For Kids Didn't You??? - Part Four

True Houyhnhnm Happiness                                                                   

            “As these noble Houyhnhnms are endowed by nature with a general disposition to all virtues, and have no conceptions or ideas of what is evil in a rational creature, so their great maxim is, to cultivate reason and to be wholly governed by it.”

            The last country in which Gulliver finds himself is that of the Houyhnhnms, or talking horses, who have been “endowed by nature,” not only with a “virtuous disposition,” but with human reason as well. These horses live very simple and quiet lives, unable to understand the concepts of lying and deceit, and naturally given to kindness, honesty and intelligence in every aspect of living. They take Gulliver in hospitably, teach him their language, and show a keen interest in his nation and people. In this country, Gulliver believes he has found the ultimate society, and his experiences there make him a changed man upon his return. In a way, the nation of Houyhnhnms is also Jonathan Swift’s representation of perfect government, for he contrasts the Houyhnhnms to their ape-like neighbors the Yahoos, abominable creatures suspiciously similar to human beings. The Houyhnhnms’ land is perhaps a place Swift himself would have also been reluctant to leave.

            The Houyhnhnms’ society brings to mind simple, strict cultures like those of Laconia and Sparta. Their wants and passions are very few, their vocabulary narrow, though appropriate to their simplicity of emotion, and their thinking objective, reasonable, honorable, but somewhat cold. Like the Spartans, they have no use for ars gratia artis, nor for beauty for beauty’s sake. As the Spartans left their newborns on hilltops to die if they were weak, so also the Houyhnhnms don’t place a high regard on the family or upon bonds of motherhood, love, or childhood. For example, Gulliver observes that “strength is chiefly valued in the male, and comeliness in the female; not upon the account of love, but to preserve the race from degenerating…” This worship of strength and beauty was also practiced in Sparta. Gulliver also notes that “Temperance, industry, exercise and cleanliness” are most important in Houyhnhnm life. In these aspects Spartan and Houyhnhnm institutions and values are almost identical.

            This lack of passion and emotion is a major flaw in Hoyhnhnm society. They exclude God and know nothing of religion, making them somewhat self-satisfied in their self-sufficiency. They don’t mourn the dead or express sorrow; rather the deceased is “buried in the obscurest place that can be found, their friends and relations expressing neither joy nor grief at their departure”… This cold absence of feeling is ultimately what causes the Houyhnhnms to send Gulliver away, as they perceive he is too similar to their enemies, the detestable Yahoos. Swift’s perfect society without emotions, governed by objective reason, devoid of passion and complications of relationship pales in comparison with our life on earth – its beauties, comedies, tragedies, loves, arts and passions, creations of a perfect God. Moreover, it is this same Creator Who has redeemed mankind from the human flaws Swift was so ashamed of. The Houyhnhnms, with all their rectitude and morality, prove themselves to have more in common with the Yahoos than Gulliver does, for without the acknowledgment of the Creator, they stand on the same level with the senseless beasts living in ignorance and immorality.

           

You Thought "Gulliver's Travels" Was For Kids Didn't You??? - Part Three

Long Life in Luggnagg                                                                                              

                                                                                                                       

            When Gulliver’s embarks upon his third adventure, he becomes shipwrecked yet again and eventually finds himself in the country of Luggnagg. Among the strange features of this country, Gulliver discovers the Struldbruggs, or Immortals, inhabitants of Luggnagg who possess the apparent wonderful fortune of living forever. They are marked at birth by a red circular spot on the forehead, a mere effect of chance. Gulliver exclaims, as any of us would, “Happiest beyond all comparison are these excellent Struldbruggs… without the continual apprehension of death!” It seems an appropriate enough view of the Strildbruggs’ good luck, but Gulliver soon discovers that he is mistaken.

            For, as the Luggnaggians explain to him, the Struldbruggs “had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more… they were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative; but incapable of friendship…” Gulliver’s companion goes on to explain in detail the misery of these seemingly fortunate Immortals, recounting their bad memories, wickedness, death in the eyes of the law at eighty and subsequent poverty, and generally wretched way of life. Gulliver meets a few of these individuals for himself and is quickly convinced to change his opinion – “my keen appetite,” he writes, “for perpetuity of life was much abated. I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed”…

            This sad tale of the Struldbruggs is wonderfully allegorized to the futility of mankind’s material desires. Our visions of things we can’t have, such as perpetual life, vast wealth, and fulfillment of all our wants are things we believe will make us truly happy, but in reality, none of it is important compared to eternal life in the world to come. The example of the unhappy Struldbruggs shows us that even if we did live forever, we might come to despise life, much less live eternally grateful with our lot. This same lesson is taught by the Preacher in the Bible when he exclaims that everything on this earth – riches wisdom, power – is “meaningless and grasping for the wind.”

            On another level, the Struldbruggs’ story shows us another kind of human futility – that of wanting what we can’t have. Then, when we have it, it seems so much less wonderful and glittering than it did from afar. When a desire is within our grasp, many times we find we’ve been disillusioned. “I thought,” observes Gulliver after realizing the true misery of the Struldbruggs, “that no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure from such a life.” And yet before he was disappointed, he tells us he had “frequently run over the whole system of how I should employ myself if I were sure to live forever.” Perpetual life on this earth, however, is not as wonderful as it seems to us mortals, and having what we cannot is never a sure guarantor of happiness.

You Thought "Gulliver's Travels" Was For Kids Didn't You??? - Part Two

Theory of Relativity in Big Brobdingnag                                                                                         

            

             “I assured his Majesty that I came from a country which abounded with several millions of both sexes… where the animals, trees and houses were all in proportion… to this they only replied with a smile of contempt.”

            After concluding his adventures in the miniature country of Lilliput, Lemuel Gulliver in Jonathan Swift’s fictional satire Gulliver’s Travels ends up in yet another country called Brobdingnag, inhabited by huge giants. In addition to the physical difficulties which Gulliver’s tiny size imposes upon him, he also meets with other problems, such as those of making himself heard, understood and believed. For instance, upon their first meeting, the king of the giants refuses to believe that Gulliver is not a small animal or a piece of clockwork. Gulliver experiences the feelings of the tiny Lilliputians and becomes, as he admits himself, more understanding of the Lilliputians’ attitude towards him.

            On account of his relative weakness and smallness, Gulliver is also unable to prevent the giants from taking advantage of him in several situations. His first owner, the farmer, discovers in him a profitable source of income and forces him to perform for crowds until Gulliver nearly dies with exhaustion and ill-use. He is then sold like a piece of goods to the queen, who treats him (though not unkindly,) like a toy. In his many discussions with the king, that monarch generally treats him condescendingly, even contemptuously at times, as when he exclaims, “I cannot but conclude that the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.” Gulliver’s seriousness is rarely taken seriously, and his skills in navigation and music are treated as clever tricks of a little circus dog.

            More than anything it is Gulliver’s pride that is most injured, especially when one of the royal ministers “observed how contemptible a thing was human grandeur which could be mimicked by diminutive insects as I… and thus he continued on, while my color came and went several times with indignation to hear our noble country… so contemptuously treated”…

            However in the next paragraph he continues – “But… I began to doubt whether I were injured or no.” Because after he has been in Brobdingnag for awhile, he begins to see himself as abnormally small while the giants seem completely normal in stature, “so that I really began to imagine myself dwindled many degrees below my usual size.”

            This phenomenon is very well explained by Aristotle’s definition of large and small, in which he says objects are only “large” or “small” in comparison to even larger or smaller things. Thus Gulliver, after residing among the giants of Brobdingnag, comes to see himself as strange and them as perfect, though at first he was highly critical of their vast sizes and disgusted by their giant coarseness. This demonstrates that humans can generally become accustomed to anything, and may come to easily change their views if everyone around them does so.

You Thought "Gulliver's Travels" Was For Kids Didn't You??? - Essay One

A Bigger Picture Behind Little Lilliput                                                                                               

            

            Gulliver’s Travels, a political satire written in the eighteenth century by Englishman Jonathan Swift, is predominantly a critical commentary upon human society generally and upon European and English society in particular. It is the fictional account of Lemuel Gulliver’s adventures as he travels the seas and visits four different counties. The first country at which he ends up is named Lilliput, inhabited by a very tiny people mostly hostile to Gulliver. Gulliver recounts their customs and habits in great detail, including their criminal justice system, education, mannerisms, government and wars with the neighboring country of Blefescu.

            The culture and mannerisms of Lilliputian life are ones very similar to those of Swift’s England during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries – years marked by events such as the Civil War, Cromwellian government, the Restoration, the Glorious Revolution, the Enlightenment, and English colonialism overseas. Jonathan Swift was highly critical of these events and of the people and institutions which caused them. Thus his fictional Lilliput mirrors and mocks his own tiny England, big with self-importance.

            For instance Swift’s account of the ridiculous argument with Blefescu may easily be seen as a mockery of the Civil War between England, Scotland and Ireland. In England, the cause was the opposition to King Charles I’s rule by Parliament, which Swift considered wrong. In Lilliput, the cause of dispute was which end an egg should be cracked on first. Swift saw both conflicts as equally petty. Blefescu may also represent France during the Glorious Revolution, which was constantly threatening England during the reign of Mary and William of Orange.

            “There have been two struggling parties in this empire, under the names of Tramecksan and Slamecksan, from the high and low heels on their shoes, by which they distinguish themselves”… This is the account given by the royal secretary of Lilliput to Gulliver of the opposing parties within the kingdom. One cannot but help think of King Charles I, who was very fond of high-heeled shoes and was beheaded in the Civil War. Tramecksam and Slamecksan also bring the Whigs and Tories to mind, which two opposing parties appeared in Parliament for the first time after the Restoration.

            Lilliput’s naval defeat of Blefescu is similar to England’s famous defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 – her test of jump-roping to choose courtiers is a mockery of English politics – and her pride and injustice serve as a commentary upon England, a tiny country that thought very highly of itself during Swift’s time.