The Sun of York

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

On this last day of Winter, the words from Shakespeare Richard III reverberate. But we discover in the first line already, if we read it closely, that the subject here is really discontent, not the season that, just now, buds energetically in a young but still weak sun. Comes the second, punning line. The sun of York was King Edward IV of England. He’s dubbed the sun because he later adopted a blazing sun as his badge. And he was the son of York because he was the son of Richard Plantagenet, third Duke of York. Richard III, briefly king of England himself, was Edward’s youngest brother. Edward’s dates were 1442-1483, a mere 41 years. Despite living in a violent time—much of the violence caused by his own good self (but in a good cause, as always)—he died of natural causes. So much for life expectancy then. And though a king of England, he was born in France. Now to provide the flavor of the fifteenth century, here is Edward’s early resume as brought to us by Wikipedia: “Before becoming King he was 4th Duke of York, 7th Earl of March, 5th Earl of Cambridge, and 9th Earl of Ulster. He was also the 65th Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece.” (Image source is here).

What sort of world was the fifteenth century? Here in the Americas, the big name was Moctezuma. The Aztecs had reached their pinnacle—but the European ships were heading out their way. Just nine years after Edward died, Columbus landed. In the Old World the Ottomans were just beginning their great expansion into an empire. The Hunnish Golden Horde had invaded Siberia a couple of years before Edward was born. Joan of Arc was a big name, but she was burnt alive (at 19) eleven years before Edward was born. In Edward’s time, and under his rule, civil war raged in England, not between the haves and have nots but between the House of York and the House of Lancaster. That was the War of the Roses. Other wars? How about the Thirteen Years War? In that conflict the Teutonic Knights buckled under and Poland seized Prussia. There was the Hundred Years War, the Valois v. Plantagenets (to the latter of whom we are related, in this post, by way of Edward’s dad). The Sikh religion was founded in 1469 with Edward just 27.

Now some footnotes. The Order of the Golden Fleece was a chivalric order founded in 1430 in Burges in Flanders. That word in the quote, lour’d? It comes from Middle English louren. One of its meanings is to lie in wait; another is to look sullen or to frown. And thus the line might be rendered modern by saying “And all the clouds that frowned upon our house.”

Now our distance in time from the Sun of York’s ascension to the throne (1461) is 550 years. And his world looks very, very different from ours—except for the important things, the wars. So I got to thinking. What might it be like 550 years from now, thus in the year 2561. I was hoping that Star Trek would help me. But it happens that the farthest-out episode in that glorious series, in this millennium, anyway, is 2387. Now around our clan we like to sigh, or acerbically remark, that we’ve not yet achieved a Star Trek level of civilization. And, indeed, I rather suspect that we won’t. But what we might achieve is whatever blazing glory Edward IV represented. And with that in mind, the winter of our discontent might ease up just a little—especially since the sun will dawn on Spring tomorrow.

Another Divide

Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! So, gentlemen,
With all my love I do commend me to you:
And what so poor a man as Hamlet is
May do, to express his love and friending to you,
God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together;
And still your fingers on your lips, I pray.
The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Nay, come, let’s go together.
[Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5]

The sense that times are out of joint is present at all times and in every clime, so much so that it seems to be a defining marker of existence. The root of the feeling is that the social landscape is disorganized; we can always trace it to groups, to institutional constraints—or lack thereof. Along with this feeling comes a totally unjustified nostalgia for another kind of order. In democratic times we yearn for royalty, in royal times for liberty, in isolated times for great families, for coherent clans; in times when families dominate, we long for privacy.

Disorder leads to polarization. Here is how: somebody must be responsible for it, and that somebody ain’t me. So it must be those people. And looking at those people, we soon recognize their common traits, ignore the traits we share with them, and now we have someone to blame. But our own desperate coping just adds to the disorder. And those people are doing the same thing. So it goes.

There is a kind of comfort in being, say, a Guelf or Ghibelline. We’re born into one or the other, we learn the ways of our party and find them, therefore, natural. There is a significant sense of exposure and solitude associated with rising above these natural polarizations, like being on a mountaintop without adequate clothing, the wind tearing through the sky. Not only can it be seen by others as indifference, but, to remain detached, one has to practice indifference voluntarily. You can see from the mountaintop but you can’t join in the melee, and it is precisely in the joy of battle that we experience solidarity with our fellow man.

These are real problems. The only way to see reality sharply is by reason, but the polarization that takes place is guided by feeling, by selective viewing, and by shallow penetration. To see things clearly produces the state of indulgence suggested by Madame de Staël: Tout comprendre rend très indulgent*. When people are irritated, they don’t want to be rendered indulgent; they want to be confirmed and want to be fed red meat. This, of course, applies to me as well as anybody else. That’s why I describe this situation as a problem.

As Hamlet says, “O cursed spite!” He expresses precisely the feeling I often have when, stopping in the middle of a passionate rant I realize what I am doing. Damn! The very state to which I aspire demands quite often that I stop indulging in passion and render myself indulgent of bottomless stupidy which, not surprisingly, does take on the semblance of unmitigated evil.

This much by way of trying to transcend the feelings of upwelling ire aroused in me by reading today’s morning paper.

* * *

These days a phrase like Guelfs and Ghibellines may appear like ostentatious display of learning. In the modern manner, I apologize for that. The words refer to what today we would call political parties. Guelfs, to be sure, have a somewhat more intimate relationship to Ghulf Genes because, long ago, I deliberately named a fictional, futuristic family—which was also much more than a family—for the Guelfs. Indeed, my own Ghulfs also had color-based branches, just like, in Italy, the Guelfs came in white and black varieties. But back to the background.

During the so-called Dark Ages, the Western Roman Empire was overrun by Germanic tribes; and the descendants of these became one branching of the upper layers, the aristocracies, of Italy. Both of these names were originally of Germanic origin, the Guelfs were from the Bavarian house of Welf, the Ghibellines came from the Hohenstaufen line, the name itself derived from their castle of Waiblingen. Two important parties or factions rose from these roots, divided politics, and produce endless civil wars in the Middle Ages, especially in Italy, dominated, as it was, by small city states. The Ghibellines were the party of empire, thus associated with the Holy Roman Emperor from the time of Charlemagne (the first of these) down through time. The Guelfs, by contrast, were aligned with the Papacy, which was the counter-weight to the imperial power. The world tends always to divide into parties, hence my choice here of these two—especially because we are in Ghulf territory here, and, despite aspirations to transcendence, I remain a Ghulf.

* * *

Last, one sentence in that speech of Hamlet's bothered me enough so that I rendered it in modified English for easier grasp. It is:

.... So, gentlemen,
I recommend myself to you, I do.
And what a poor man, like Hamlet, can show
You in the way of love and friendship,
In that, God willing, there shall be no lack.”

Presumptuous? Come on... All poets belong to the same union.
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*That phrase is often misquoted. The correction necessary is indicated here.

A Well-Worn Phrase

I used one yesterday to round out the rhythm of a sentence: “Be in the world but not of it.” The phrase has the smooth, comfortable feel of a very well-worn tool obtained from one of the two main sources for such things in English: the Bible or Shakespeare. It comes from neither. Its logical structure is ambiguous at best, but the meaning is accessible. It illustrates wonderfully how far we really are from mere collocations of atoms. The phrase suggests that we may have a choice: in the world or out. We don’t. And if we opt to be in, it suggests that we may in some sense be of it, in another sense not. But what do these options mean? I’d hate to be the one assigned to teach a computer, destined to serve in Artificial Intelligence, exactly how to handle this string of words, how to parse it, how to apply it in actual life situations. People have no such problems. What a piece of work is man…