From: rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu (Roger Squires)
Subject: Re: Sado-Methodism
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 06:52:49 GMT
Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

In article <NIKOLAY.92Nov6194028@scws7.harvard.edu> nikolay@scws7.harvard.edu (Philip Nikolayev) writes:
>E. P. Thompson cites, in _The Making of the English 
>Working Class_, some fine specimens of early Methodist
>hymnody. I hope their graphic vividness will please
>the readers of this learned newsgroup.
>
>Here, for example, is a little ditty which visualises 
>the wound in Christ's side as a desired refuge from sin.
>

	O, then you will certainly enjoy

		Look on your Lord, Man, hanging on the Rood,
		And weep, if you can weep, tears all of blood.
		For see how his head is hurt with thorn,
		His face and spear-wound spat on in scorn.
		Pale grows his fair cheek, and darker his sight,
		Now droops on the Cross his body bright,
		His naked breast glistens, now bleeds his side,
		And stiff grow his arms extended wide.
		Look at the nails in hands and in feet,
		And the flowing streams of his blood so sweet!
		Begin at the crown and search to the toe,
		Nothing shall you find there but anguish and woe.

	Wish I had the original text, not this 'modern english version.'

	Interesting the difference in viewpoint between this poem
	and the ones Mr. Nikolayev cites; his entreat the hearer
	to come bathe in the Blood, while the above encourages 
	empathy with and meditation on the crucified Christ.  This
	reminds me of a posting a while back on soc.religion.christian
	detailing the crucifixcion tortures (including the medical
	possibility of the 'blood and water' passage in I think John,
	which could very well just be simple rhetoric, not a description
	of the actual occurrence).  Anyway, I found the post thoroughly
	distasteful and morbid, obviously appealing to the strange
	potentialities for pleasure in maso-sadism that Nietzsche has
	fun with in _Human, All Too Human_ and elsewhere.

	The above poem, however, and the one that begins:

		Lovely tear from lovely eye,
		Why do you give me woe?
		Sorrowful tear from sorrowful eye,
		You break my heart in two.

	and other medieval poems I have seen, have this
	melancholy sweetness about them that makes the word
	Passion meaningful and apropos.

>
>More by Charles Wesley, in a somewhat different vein:
>
>	Ah, lovely Appearance of Death,
>	    No Sight upon Earth is so fair.
>	Not all the gay Pageants that _breathe_
>	    Can with a dead Body compare.
>

	different indeed from the Danse Macabre type of
	fascination with the nastier details of death
	and disentegration one sees in, e.g.:

		When my eyes are fogged
		And my ears are clogged
		And my nose turns cold
		And my tongue's back rolled
		And my cheeks slacken
		And my lips blacken
		And my mouth blubbers
		And my spittle slobbers
		And my hair stands up
		And my heart-beats droop
		And my hands quiver
		And my feet stiffen,
		All too late, all too late,
		When the bier is at the gate!
			Then I shall go
			From bed to floor,
			From floor to shroud,
			From shroud to bier,
			From bier to pit
			And be shut in it.
		Then lies my house upon my nose,
		And all my care for this world goes.

>And here's one from Isaac Watts' 'Divine Songs for Children':
>
>	When children in their wanton play,
>	    Serv'd old Elisha so;
>	And bid the prophet go his way,
>	    "Go up, thou bold-head, go:"
>	GOD quickly stopt their wicked breath,
>	    And sent two raging bears,
>	That tore them limb from limb to death,
>	    With blood, and groans, and tears.
>
>Well, cool, or what?
>

	Either that or another example of the pointless wanton
	cruelty that Ivan rejects in the Rebellion chapter.

>Philip Nikolayev
>nikolay@husc.harvard.edu

Roger Squires
rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,alt.horror