(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh dear. My ability to get things done today is suffering from a total lack of - is it motivation, or merely energy? I'm not sure, although my body-clock is still badly messed up. My own fault for not being brutal enough with alarms, I suspect - result is I can't get to sleep, or at least not until after hours of tossing and turning, or more reading in an effort to stop trying to sleep. I don't suffer as badly from insomnia as some, but I'm mildly prone to trouble sleeping anyway, and it's always miserable.

Anyway, as a result I rather quickly read Paula Byrne's Mad World, which is about Evelyn Waugh's friendship with the Lygon family and the influence it had on Brideshead. An interesting book and a rather more nuanced view of Waugh than merely as the unpleasant climber, though I have to say I still don't think I'd have found him all that likable (too prone to petulance and jealousy of his friends' time). Had, as happens surprisingly often when reading biographies, the experience of being jolted by something which I know is not quite right - the usual difficulty being that while it looks like fairly obvious to me, that may just be my weird ideas about what constitutes widespread knowledge.

(The mistake is that, when discussing ex-pat homosexuals in Venice, Byrne refers to "Baron Corvo, the noted homosexual ex-priest and writer". He was homosexual and a writer, but in fact he was never a priest*, because he was chucked out of both St Mary's Oscott and the Scots College in Rome for not having a vocation (and also neglect of his studies and probably his tendency to fall spectacularly out with people); "Baron Corvo" was not his real name; he was called Frederick Rolfe and came from Cheapside, where, Wikipedia informs me, his father made pianos. Granted, all this is not particularly relevant to the main thrust of the book, but Rolfe, also an English convert and author of a very Catholic novel (albeit one that's largely a Mary-Sue-becomes-Pope story), might bear interesting comparison with Waugh.

It's raining. Sooner or later I will have to splash out to the shops, and I fear that my cunning 'wait till it's stopped raining' plan won't work, because it shows very little sign of doing so...


* You can't be an ex-priest, anyway, but that's a side matter.

Comments

[gramina]

"* You can't be an ex-priest, anyway, but that's a side matter."

*Grins* Whereas I have never heard of the gentleman either as Baron Corvo or as Frederick Rolfe (though Rolfe seems like a familiar name for some reason), but "ex-priest" got my usual "yes, yes, not really but I know what they mean" eyeroll :)

I suppose it depends on one's knowledge base :) Mine is much stronger in theology and the history of Christianity than it is in literature or literary/social history.

[tree_and_leaf]

Admittedly I only know about Corvo because I've actually read "Hadrian VII" (the aforementioned Mary-Sue-Becomes-Pope novel). It's dreadful, but in a fairly interesting way.

[gramina]

Oh -- Is that a Pope Joan story? Or just one of those "I happened to read about that and thought it was a cool idea and then made up a version of an RC historical environment that bears little or no resemblance to history and plopped a local-time woman with anachronistic ideas from our time down into it and made her become pope" things?

[tree_and_leaf]

Ah - no - "Mary-Sue" in the sense that the hero is very clearly an author-avatar, who has been repeatedly rejected for training for the priesthood (just like Rolfe), has many of the same tastes and prejudices and lives in a similarly parlous semi-bohemian manner, but who gets a bishop turning up on his doorstep telling him that it was all a mistake and he is ordained and, by a somewhat far-fetched chain of events, ends up becoming Pope (only the second English Pope ever !!11!!eleventy-one! - as we are repeatedly told). Finally he's assassinated and dies in a saintly manner, thus making the world safe for Catholicism. Or something like that. I can't remember whether or not England returns to Rome, but I'd almost be more surprised if it didn't....

[nineveh_uk]

plopped a local-time woman with anachronistic ideas from our time down into it and made her become pope

Except for the "becomes pope" bit I've read a disturbing number of those (in sheep's clothing). The scariest being the two identical birth scenes c. 400 years and a thousand or so miles apart in a row.

[antisoppist]

I blame just general end-of-holiday-itis. I'm shattered by having started work again and I'm not really doing very much at all. Nor have I got jet-lag to contend with.

[tree_and_leaf]

End-of-holiday-itis sometimes - like now - makes me wonder if it was worth going away in the first place (not that that's my considered opinion!) I'm also finding it a bit weird being alone for most of the day, when there have been people about constantly for the last two months.

In theory this should be conducive to getting reading done (or boxes unpacked) - but it doesn't seem to be!

Hope you feel less shattered soon, anyway.

[shewhostaples]

End-of-holiday-itis sounds very plausible. Had I thought about it in advance, I'd have booked myself three extra days leave after getting back from the stupidly busy week in Exeter in which to go flop. I've been exhausted ever since.

[sir_guinglain]

There's a possibility that Rolfe really was adopted into Italian nobility as he claimed and did succeed as Baron Corvo; it must have helped give him a sense of place.

I've a book on Madresfield to read, which pellegrina gave me some time ago, published before Byrne's book; a compare and contrast exercise would be interesting.

Ex-priesthood depends on the beliefs of individuals, I would say from my agnostic perspective; though I note that my Unitarian Anglican clergy didn't, I think, resign their orders when they resigned from their parishes to minister at Unitarian chapels (in the cases of Theophilus Lindsey and John Disney) or just retire to the country (like Christopher Wyvill).

ETA: I suspect that more to the point, Corvo regarded himself as a priest, but the number who shared this view was thankfully vanishingly small.

[tree_and_leaf]

Re the ETA: Of course Corvo did often style himself Fr. Rolfe, but I don't think he actually believed he was a priest (unless I've missed something), just that he had a vocation to the priesthood which the Church had criminally failed to recognise. But he could hardly take the matter into his own hands...

[sir_guinglain]

You know the ins and outs of the technicalities better than I do, and I'm sure you are right.

[kivrin]

You can't be an ex-priest, anyway, but that's a side matter.

I've never really thought about this... but is that because defrocking/resignation/what-have-you like annulment of marriage? It's not ended something, it's showing that it never existed?

[kindkit]

My understanding (obviously I'm not speaking for tree_and_leaf since I'm not her) of the Roman Catholic theology of priesthood is that once you're ordained, you're a priest forever. You can stop exercising the functions of a priest (either voluntarily or because you've been ordered to), and you can be freed from priestly obligations like celibacy, but ordination leaves an imprint on the soul that never goes away.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, pretty much what

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Yes, pretty much what <lj-user=kindkit> says, and the Anglican understanding is more or less the same. "Defrocking" or "laicising" just means that you no longer have the authority delegated from the bishop to <i>act</i> as a priest - but you still are one. I suppose the closest analogy is a doctor having their medical licence suspended.

If it worked like an annullment, then the people you'd absolved, celebrated mass for, or married, would have serious problems!

[tree_and_leaf]

Grr, html fail...

[liadnan]

Bah. Posted a longish ramble about Waugh and it vanished into the ether. Ho hum. The substance was that while Waugh was a deeply unpleasant man* Hadrian VII is a godawful novel.

*The various Mitford correspondence with and about him is illuminating of course and tempered my view of him, as is that with Greene though I've only read bits and pieces from that.

(Incidentally I think Sword of Honour is at least as interesting from a religious point of view as Brideshead)

[tree_and_leaf]

Hadrian VII is a dreadful novel, but in an interesting way - but I agree not to be compared in quality to Sword of Honour or Brideshead.

[nineveh_uk]

See, this is why after the Singapore holiday in which jetlag made me lose half a stone in three weeks (half going out - not a problem waking up at 11am because sister at work and I was perky in the evening - half coming back, a big problem because waking at 3am not conducive to the office, for both of which I could eat only at UK time) I will never again (unless to avoid 20 years in jail) do a long-haul flight without temazepam, which I came back from the US on, overnight, and was up and about for a family party the next day. Though I appreciate that this comment is unhelpful at this juncture.

As it is, could you try some Nytol tomorrow?

[nineveh_uk]

And hope that you are feeling more mojo-full soon, though there seems a generally somnolent end of summer sense around.

[tree_and_leaf]

I'm not sure temazepam would help in this case - I actually slept for about as much of the flight as the cabin crew will let you. But if I don't sleep tonight Nytol is probably a good idea.