history

True Hero

True Hero on November 10, 2018

On October 21 there died in France one of the few real heroes that our poor modern world could still boast of, Professor Robert Faurisson, in Vichy, France. He was a real hero because in a world of lies he stood with unfailing courage and scrupulous accuracy for truth, on a matter of decisive importance for all mankind. He was repaid with the loss of his job, with the suffering of his family, with ten personal and physical attacks one of which left him for dead, with isolation in his profession and with a relentless series of judicial attacks on the part of his bitter enemies, and yet he maintained towards them a constant courtesy and respect. This way of life he maintained for more than 40 years, never wavering in his service of the truth.

He died on the field of battle, just after returning home from giving one last public conference which was due to be his swansong, in Shepperton, England, the town of his birth nearly ninety years ago. There he spoke with a friend from Italy, who has left us this account of their conversation: “The Professor was as clear-sighted, as balanced and unbowed as ever, but he was tired, very tired, so frail as to seem almost transparent, with the feeling that his task was over. Indeed this super-brave man had achieved everything he was meant to achieve.” And the friend continues, “He leaves behind him an immense contribution to the Revisionist cause [ . . . ] Enemies filled with hate sought to stop him from writing, from living, but he always stood up again, not deflecting by a millimetre from his fearless pursuit of the truth.”

Many readers of these “Comments” know what “Revisionism” is about, and why it is of such importance to all men, including Catholics. As George Orwell said, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their understanding of their history.” Revisionists are historians who see people all over the world being destroyed today by an untrue version of their history, especially of the Second World War, so they do what they can to restore the truth of history. For – again Orwell – “Who controls the past controls the future . . .” meaning that whoever writes the history books controls the future, by the influence that history has on people’s minds, “. . . and who controls the present controls the past,” meaning that if the political masters of the moment use their power to control the history books, then they control the future.

Now the people who hold world-wide power today over politics and the media are people who want the godless New World Order, and they fully understand George Orwell. Therefore they have fabricated a hugely false version of World War Two history to go with a complete fabricated religion to replace Christianity. Now if truth did not matter, and if Christianity did not matter, as many people today think, then they should have no problem with the New World Order taking over, but they will in fact suffer a worldwide tyranny as a result, a prelude to the Antichrist. However Solzhenitsyn, enlightened by Russia’s horrendous 72 years of suffering under godless Communism, warned against building a nation, a continent or a world on lies. Likewise Professor Faurisson had a horror of people building on lies, and he gave his life to re-establishing the truth. The persecution that he underwent for tens of years for telling the truth was the proof from his miserable enemies of the importance and efficacy of what he was doing.

Nor did he promise himself any Heavenly reward for his dedication to truth, because he professed himself to be an atheist. Yet he loved children, was glad of blessings and never repudiated them. Now, as a sister of his pointed out, after going in front of a series of unjust judges who have nearly all buckled under to the New World Order, he has gone in front of the Supreme Just Judge, Our divine Lord Himself. How will Our Lord have judged him? Two things are certain: one, nothing in all the rest of his life will have been remotely as important as that judgment, and two, he merited greatly by men, but that is not the same thing as to merit by God. May he at the very last moment have been given a special grace of conversion, not impossible for God. Mt XXI, 28–29 gives us more than the right to hope and to pray for the eternal salvation of his soul.

Kyrie eleison.

Hammerklavier Sonata

Hammerklavier Sonata on September 12, 2009

Music, history and theology are closely intertwined, because there is only one God and all men were created by him to go to him. History relates their actions amongst one another according as they go to him or not, while music expresses the harmony or disharmony in their souls as they make their history towards him or not. The music of Beethoven (1770–1827), taken as dividing into three Periods, is a clear illustration.

His First Period containing the relatively tranquil works of his masterly apprenticeship to Mozart (1756–1791) and Haydn (1732–1809), corresponds to the last years of pre-Revolutionary Europe. The Second Period containing most of the glorious and heroic works for which Beethoven is best known and loved, corresponds to the French Revolution’s spreading of upheavals and wars throughout Europe and beyond. The Third Period containing profound but somehow puzzling masterpieces, corresponds to Europe’s attempting after the Congress of Vienna (1815) to re-construct the old pre-Revolutionary order on post-Revolutionary foundations – a puzzle indeed.

As Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the “Eroica” (1805), by first giving full expression to his heroic humanism of a new world, was the pivotal work between the First and Second Periods, so his 28th Piano Sonata, the “Hammerklavier” (1817), was the pivotal work between the Second and Third Periods. It is a huge piece, lofty, aloof, admirable, yet strangely inhuman . . .The first movement opens with a resounding fanfare to be followed by a wealth of ideas in the Exposition, a climactic struggle in the Development, a varied Recapitulation and an again heroic Coda, features all typical of the Second Period, yet we are in a different world: the harmonies are cool, not to say cold, while the melodic line is rarely warm or lyrical. The brief second movement is hardly more friendly: a stabbing quasi-Scherzo, a rumbling quasi-Trio. The third movement, Beethoven’s longest slow movement of all, is a profound and almost unrelieved lament, in which moments of consolation merely highlight the prevailing mood as of a resigned hopelessness.

A pensive introduction is needed to make the transition to the Sonata’s last movement, normally swift and uplifting, but in this case swift and grim: a jagged main theme is worked over, slowed down, turned back to front and upside down in successively ungainly episodes of a three-part fugue. To the slow movement’s raw grief is responding raw energy in a musical struggle more brutal than musical, with the exception again of one brief melodic interlude. As in the “Grosse Fuge” string quartet movement, Beethoven is here foreshadowing modern music. “It is magnificent,” the French General might have said, “but it is not music.”

Beethoven himself climbed down from this Mount Everest of piano sonatas to compose in his last ten years some more glorious masterpieces, notably the Ninth Symphony, but they are all somehow overcast. The hero’s uninhibited exultation of the Second Period is a thing mostly of the past. It is as though Beethoven had firstly basked in the godly old order, secondly stridden forth to conquer his human independence, but thirdly been driven to ask: What has it all meant? What does it mean to make oneself independent of God? The horrors of modern “music”are the answer, foreshadowed in the “Hammerklavier.” Without God, both history and music die.

Kyrie eleison.

Documenting Distress

Documenting Distress on April 12, 2008

Commenting on last week’s „Eleison Comments” which were highly critical of the modern Revolutionary art movement known as Dadaism, a Catholic friend wrote to me, „I love Dadaism.” I am not sure of my friend’s reasons, but there is one lovable aspect to many a modern Revolutionary movement, even for Catholics, in fact primarily for Catholics!

This is because Catholics are best able to grasp how the key to the last 500 (or 700) years of the history of mankind has been its apostasy, its slow but steady turning away from God, in particular from his divine Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. This eliminating of the true Messiah has left in men’s lives an enormous gap to be filled, a gap unknown before the Incarnation. Hence a variety of false messianisms in modern times.

Communism is an outstanding example. It is the messianism of materialism. For it may be just as materialistic as the bourgeois society it seeks to destroy, even more so; and it certainly has nothing better with which to replace the residual human values of that society. Yet Communists are driven by a quasi-messianic urge to create their horrible new world. It is as though they are saying, „Better no god than your false hypocritical »God«!” And to the extent that the God of the bourgeoisie is a false god, the Communist messianism rejecting it is not false. In this respect Communists may at least be credited with a messianic dimension. Similarly in the scream of protest of Rock musicians there is something just, however negative their protest proves finally to be.

Now Art, Literature, History, Culture, Music, each of them with a capital letter, are all worshipped as substitute religions by modern devotees who, because they have no present religion, pump up these by-products of true religion in the past to take its place. Hence the Dadaists’ refusal of „Art,” and their „re-definition” of art. „What is your Art?” they ask. „It is our godless god,” say the Art-worshippers.„Your godless god is a urinal!” snorts Dada.

Alas! How many Dadaists or Art-worshippers, or Rockers, or Communists, show any signs of looking for the real solution to that problem which they all share?

Kyrie eleison.