Hello
everyone –
The
next fortnight will witness the arrival of several holidays, all in a row –
including Lincoln’s Birthday (2/12), Mardi Gras (2/13), Valentine’s Day (2/14),
and Chinese (Lunar) New Year (2/16). I’ll have some poems related to the Lunar
New Year next time, but for now – I’m reprinting two selections of relevance to
Lincoln’s Birthday and Valentine’s Day (although I must confess that my article
about courtly love was originally penned for Sweetest Day!). Enjoy!
Excerpts
from Abraham Lincoln’s “Address Before the Wisconsin State Agricultural
Society”
Delivered
at Milwaukee – September 30, 1859
This leads to the further reflection, that no other human occupation opens so
wide a field for the profitable and agreeable combination of labor with
cultivated thought, as agriculture. I know of nothing so pleasant to the mind,
as the discovery of anything which is at once new and valuable -- nothing which
so lightens and sweetens toil, as the hopeful pursuit of such discovery. And
how vast, and how varied a field is agriculture, for such discovery. The mind,
already trained to thought, in the country school, or higher school, cannot
fail to find there an exhaustless source of profitable enjoyment. Every blade
of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a
profit and a pleasure. And not grass alone; but soils, seeds, and seasons --
hedges, ditches, and fences, draining, droughts, and irrigation -- plowing,
hoeing, and harrowing -- reaping, mowing, and threshing -- saving crops, pests
of crops, diseases of crops, and what will prevent or cure them -- implements,
utensils, and machines, their relative merits, and [how] to improve them --
hogs, horses, and cattle -- sheep, goats, and poultry -- trees, shrubs, fruits,
plants, and flowers -- the thousand things of which these are specimens -- each
a world of study within itself.
In all this, book-learning is available. A capacity, and taste, for reading,
gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others. It is the key,
or one of the keys, to the already solved problems. And not only so. It gives a
relish, and facility, for successfully pursuing the [yet] unsolved ones. The
rudiments of science, are available, and highly valuable. Some knowledge of
Botany assists in dealing with the vegetable world -- with all growing crops.
Chemistry assists in the analysis of soils, selection, and application of
manures, and in numerous other ways. The mechanical branches of Natural
Philosophy, are ready help in almost everything; but especially in reference to
implements and machinery.
The thought recurs that education -- cultivated thought -- can best be combined
with agricultural labor, or any labor, on the principle of thorough work --
that careless, half performed, slovenly work, makes no place for such
combination. And thorough work, again, renders sufficient, the smallest
quantity of ground to each man. And this again, conforms to what must occur in
a world less inclined to wars, and more devoted to the arts of peace, than
heretofore. Population must increase rapidly -- more rapidly than in former times
-- and ere long the most valuable of all arts, will be the art of deriving a
comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose
every member possesses this art, can ever be the victim of oppression of any of
its forms. Such community will be alike independent of crowned-kings,
money-kings, and land-kings.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a
sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all
times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass
away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! -- how
consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.” And
yet let us hope it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best
cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual
and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political
prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which,
while the earth endures, shall not pass away.
Leadership
Reflection for October 2014
Leadership
in the Home: Family Relationships
Reprinted
from the Secretariat’s October 2014 Newsletter
In my writings about leadership, I usually expound on how we can exercise
leadership through exerting a positive influence in our workplace, often with
reference to great leaders of the past and present and the lessons that they
have to teach us. I’m going to make a departure from this customary point of
view by sharing something with you about how the way we exercise leadership at
home – in our family relationships – can transform society in a positive way.
I’m going to expound on the medieval ideals of “courtly love” and how its
practice changed how people thought about love and family relationships, both
within and beyond their households.
One major assumption behind the ideals of “courtly love” was the equal
partnership of men and women in building a better society and handing down
these chivalric values to future generations. In the egalitarian ideals of
“courtly love,” we can glimpse a foregleam of the women’s rights movement that
was spearheaded by such luminaries as Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) in the
United Kingdom and Sojourner Truth (1797-1883) in the United States. The ideals
promulgated by the troubadours of medieval Europe have ultimately led to the
opening of leadership roles to women in many levels of society, 800 years
later.
The
Occitan Culture of Love
By
Rob Chappell, M.A., JSMT Advisor
Reprinted
(and Slightly Revised) from Cursus Honorum (Course of Honors) VII: 3
(October 2006)
Let’s take a few moments to reflect on where the Western world got its basic
ideas about romantic love. An overview of this topic could fill an entire book,
but in brief: our Western notions of romantic love really began to take shape
in 12th-century Occitania, a once-autonomous region in southern France that
included the French Pyrenees and the Riviera.
The spark that lit the flame of the Occitan “Culture of Love” was its
cosmopolitan outlook. Occitania was a multicultural melting pot during the High
Middle Ages, and its vibrant society was rather progressive for its time. In
12th-century Occitania, for example, religious tolerance was extended to most
adherents of the Abrahamic faith traditions; and women were allowed to own
property, engage in commerce, enjoy literary activity, and rule sovereign
territories on their own. Within this tolerant atmosphere, the arrival of new
belief systems from Eastern Europe, the importation of sophisticated love
poetry from the Arab world, and the recovery of Classical Latin texts on the
ancient Roman art of love profoundly impacted all levels of Occitan society:
the nobility, the newly emergent middle class, and the peasantry.
A new breeze was blowing in this open-minded corner of Europe that would
forever change the Western outlook on romantic love. Instead of treating women
as property that could be carried off or bartered away at will, the “Culture of
Love” placed women on an equal par with men. Gentlemen had to practice “courtly
manners” to woo the ladies of their choice, and “being courtly” included such
things as serenading ladies from beneath their windows and exchanging gifts as
tokens of love on a regular basis. To be successful suitors, gentlemen also had
to become well versed in the Seven Liberal Arts, undertake heroic deeds of
chivalry, and compose love poetry!
The “Culture of Love” and its lofty romantic ideals quickly spread to royal
courts and noble households across Europe. A new generation of love poets – the
French troubadours and German Minnesingers – introduced their audiences
to the new ideals of courtly love by composing and performing versified stories
of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The chivalrous characters in
these popular stories modeled the “art of courtly love” and held forth a new
set of ideals for people to emulate.
The “Culture of Love” has been preserved for us in countless Latin and
vernacular books and songs from the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Here
are some links to online resources about the “Culture of Love” that is still
influencing us today, eight centuries after its zenith in Occitania.
·
Courtly Love: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/140814/courtly-love
à This article summarizes
the origins and spread of the culture of courtly love in Occitania and how its
ideals have influenced Western civilization ever since.
·
Dante’s La Vita Nuova (The New Life): http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/TheNewLife.htm
– Dante
Alighieri (1265-1321) narrates his own experience of courtly love with Beatrice
Portinari in this autobiographical masterpiece, composed in both poetry and
prose.
·
Eleanor of Aquitaine: http://www.royalty.nu/Europe/England/Angevin/Eleanor.html
– Eleanor,
originally Duchess of Aquitaine (1122-1204), became Queen of England, chief
patron of the troubadours, and mother of King Richard the Lionhearted!
Until
next time – may the calendar keep bringing happy holidays to you! :)
Rob
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.