Turn Inward: Augustine on Teenage Love and The Theater

I came to Carthage and all around me hissed a cauldron of illicit loves.  As yet I had never been in love and I longed to love; and from a subconscious poverty of mind I hated the thought of being less inwardly destitute.   I sought an object for my love; I was in love with love, and I hated safety and a path free of snares.

-Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, Book III

A friend of mine once told me that reading Augustine was kind of a breathe of fresh air for those interested in classic literature.   I asked him why and he pointed to this passage above saying, “Well – unlike all those philosophers or historians talking about the deeds of great men or hubristic folly, this seems a lot more normal.  Augustine seems pretty human.  I can relate to this.”

So this blog post is going to zero in on that portion of Augustine’s life right before the events spoken of in Turn Inward: Augustine On Grief.   This is Augustine essentially “going to college.”   Remember, he’s the smart aleck kid from the backwater hinterland boondock of Roman Algeria who just got a free ride to study in Carthage.

What’s Carthage?    To us that’s the equivalent of going to study in New York, Paris, London, or Rome.   In Augustine’s day, Carthage was already a place of important history – the Romans fought their greatest general Hannibal during the Punic Wars for control the Mediterranean.   It was also a city of great antiquity, having been mentioned in Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid, specifically where the hero Aeneas has a hot torrid romance with Queen Dido of Carthage.   Incidentally, The Aeneid was one of young Augustine’s favorite works of literature.

..the poetry I was forced to learn about the wanderings of some legendary fellow named Aeneas (forgetful of my own wanderings) and weep over the death of a Dido who took her own life from love.

…….

I wept over a Dido who ‘died in pursuing her ultimate end with a sword.’

-Augustine, Confessions, Book I

It is a familiar story isn’t it?   Adolescent youth a little too smart for his own good enters the big city with all the sights, sounds, and delights of the world.   And from the bits of pop culture, literature, and the beating of his heart our little scholar thinks he knows what love is about.

Romantic Movement by Karl Louis Preusser

So he seeks….he pursues…

To me it was sweet to love and to be loved, and more so if I could enjoy the body of the beloved.  I therefore polluted the spring water of friendship with the filth of concupiscence.  I muddied its clear stream by the hell of lust, and yet, though foul and immoral, in my excessive vanity, I used to carry on in the manner of an elegant man about town.  I rushed headlong into love, by which I was longing to be captured.  “My God, my mercy,” in your goodness you mixed vinegar with that sweetness.  My love was returned and in secret I attained the joy that enchains.  I was glad to be in bondage, tied with troublesome chains, with the result that I was flogged with the red hot irons of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and contention.

-Augustine, Confessions, Book III

And in the quote above, we can see our older Bishop Augustine’s analysis.   Ultimately, like all teenagers, he really didn’t know what Love was actually about.   But it just felt good to be in an adolescent romance.   And undoubtedly, it was a bit of a learning experience as he went through all the other emotions that such a romance would entail.It probably didn’t help too much that, like teenagers, he took part of his orientation for life from movi-, I mean from theatrical shows.

I was captivated by theatrical shows.  They were full of representations of my own miseries and fulled my fire.  Why is it that a person should wish to experience suffering by watching grievous and tragic events which he himself would not wish to endure?  Nevertheless he wants to suffer the pain given by being a spectator of these sufferings, and the pain itself is his pleasure.  What is this but amazing folly?   For the more anyone is moved by these scenes, the less free he is from similar passions.   Only when he himself suffers, is it truly called misery; when he feels compassion for others, it is called mercy.-Augustine, Confessions, Book III

Does Art imitate Life?   Or does Life imitate Art?Augustine and many other Western writers might point to the fact that at minimum, certain people do take their orientation of how to live their lives from fictional works.   I submit two examples gentle reader for your approval:

1.)The great German writer and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote the bestselling novel of the late 1700s called The Sorrows of Young Werther, about a melancholy soulful youth in love with a married woman.     It is a tale of friendship, unrequited love, and suicide.    The net effect? Copycat suicides.  Lots and lots and lots of copycat suicidesby teenagers and young adults so moved by The Sorrows of Young Werther that they even copy his suicide letters, dress up like the character, and take a pistol to their heads in the same manner.   At the time, this was dubbed Werther Fever.

2.) A more modern example – has anyone reading this ever watched a Spanish telenovela?  For the Americans reading this, NPR did an excellent story about how former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez affected the telenovela industry.  I’m going to link the story but I wanted to quote a relevant part of the report first.

He says he thinks Venezuelans take cues about how to act in everyday life from soap operas. They’ve watched so many, that they’re practically actors themselves. Like many Latin Americans who grew up on a telenovela diet, my own nostalgia for the genre is offset by a deep discomfort about the fantasy world that is portrayed.

The shows are followed by mostly dark-skinned, working-class audiences, but they tend to feature a European-looking heroine, who always ends up marrying the wealthy leading man. That’s simply not the way things work on a continent with the greatest economic inequality in the world.

Jasmine Garsd, Morning Edition, How Chavez Changed Venezuela’s Telenovelas, April 12, 2013

How Chavez Changed Venezuela’s Telenovelas

So… what does Bishop Augustine, our much older and more sober mind, think of all that transpired in his youth as he reflects on these matters?

My hunger was internal, deprived of inward food, that is you yourself my God.  But that was not the kind of hunger I felt.  I was without any desire for incorruptible nourishment, not because I was replete with it, but the emptier I was, the more unappetizing such food became.   So my soul was rotten in health.  In an ulcerous condition, it thrust itself to outward things, miserably avid to be scratched by the contact with the world of the senses.  Yet physical things had no soul.  Love lay outside their range.

-Augustine, Confessions, Book III

Ultimately, Augustine believes that he was looking for love in all the wrong places.  That he didn’t really understand what Love, in its most fullest since, meant.   As I stated in my previous post, Turn Inward: Augustine On Grief, the only way he thought it possible to Love other people and things is to understand the source of Love.

Hence our dear Algerian scholar would eventually walk down a path of faith, finding his heart’s rest in the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob.

 

 

 

 

Entertaining Desserts: Blueberry Cornmeal Cake with Poached Pear

Many years ago when I was at university, I would often find myself up wide-awake on Saturday mornings.   Although I would like to say that it was the result of some sort of midnight revelry, more often than not it was due to my incessant insomnia.

My flatmates were usually sound asleep and wouldn’t be up until 10 AM at the earliest.   In the fall and the winter season, to pass the time and heat myself up from the morning cold – i started baking.

This blackberry cornmeal cake was a bit of a morning treat for neighbors and friends.   I’ve tried many variations over the years, but found the recipe from Huckleberry’s in Santa Monica, California to be quite serviceable.  Obviously this is under Zoe Nathan’s copyright and I make no claim to the recipe itself.

Ingredients:

• 1½ cups all-purpose flour, spooned and levelled
• ¾ cup cornmeal
• 2¼ teaspoons baking powder
• ¾ teaspoons baking soda
• 1 cup + 2 tablespoons whole plain yogurt
• ½ cup + 1 tablespoons ricotta
• ¾ cup + 1½ tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature
• ¾ cup + 3 tablespoons sugar, plus 2 tablespoons more
• 1½ teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 eggs
• 4½ tablespoons canola oil
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup fresh blackberries

 

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 F.  Proceed to line and grease a 10 inch round cake pan.
2.  Using a mixer, cream the butter and add sugar/salt at medium speed until contents are light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs in, one a t a time, beating each into the mixture.
4. Add canola oil, maple syrup, and vanilla into mixture at Low Speed.
5. Stop mixing and add flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, yogurt, and ricotta.  Proceed to mix until contents are incorporated – don’t overdo this segment.
6.  Pour mixture into 10 inch pan and top with blackberries.
7. The baking time should be around 1 hr.
8. Sprinkle sugar on top if so desired.

 

On occasion I would serve this blackberry cake with a vanilla enhanced poached pear for my guests.   It usually makes for a lovely afternoon dessert.

Ingredients:

• 4 Pears, skinned.
• 2 cups of sugar – although this is variable to your tastes
• 1/2 vanilla bean, split
• a cinnamon stick

Directions:

1. Add sugar, cinnamon stick, and vanilla bean to 5 cups of water in a saucepan large enough to accommodate the size of your pears.
2. Peel pears.  Leave the stem on as you will need to lower the pears into the infusion created at high heat. Be sure to core the pear with a pairing knife .
3. Lower pears into boiling infusion.   Turn pears over every 5 minutes.  After 20 minutes, turn off the heat and let the pears cool in the liquid.
4. Place pears onto service plates.   Reduce the liquid the pears were soaking in to about 1 cup and pour contents onto pears.

 

 

 

Tea Culture: Wedgwood Queensware

In my previous post on Agrarian doubts about Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, I had noted that one of the new members of the industrialist class was a nonconformist potter by the name of Josiah Wedgwood.     Wedgwood was an experimenter, entrepreneur, and abolitionist whose industrious way of life lead to a revolution in the production of crockery the world over.

One of his earliest triumphs was Queensware, named after his royal client Queen Charlotte.   The Queen’s initial tea service was modest – about a dozen cups, six fruit baskets with stands, six hand candlesticks, and six melon preserve pots.   For his service, Josiah was named Potter to Her Majesty and allowed to advertise his Cream-coloured earthenware as Queen’s Ware.   For obvious reasons, the nobility had followed in suit, substantially increasing his orders for this creamware.

As Josiah himself noted in the Fall of 1767:

“The demand for this sd. Creamcolour, Alias Queens Ware, alias, Ivory still increases – It is really amazing how rapidly the use of it has spread allmost over the whole Globe, & how universally it is liked.- How much of this general use, & estimation, is owing to the mode of its introduction – & how much to its real utility & beauty?”

By 1775, Queensware would be imitated all across Europe, with earthenware no longer being referred to as “Common Pewter” but rather as “Common Wedgwood.”

As the Frenchman Faujas de Saint Fond remarked upon the quality of the earthenware:

“Its excellent workmanship, its solidarity, the advantage which it possesses of standing the action of the fire, its fine glaze, impervious to acid, the beauty, convenience and variety of its forms and its moderate price have created a commerce so active and so universal, that in travelling from Paris to St Petersburg, from Amsterdam to the furthest points of Sweden, from Dunkirk to the southern extremity of France, one is served at every inn from English earthenware. The same fine articles adorn the tables of Spain, Portugal, & Italy, and it provides the cargoes of ships to the East Indies, the West Indies and America.”

Entertaining Desserts: Cabinet Pudding

The origin of Cabinet Pudding or Chancellor’s Pudding remains a mystery to me, although I have been told that its beginnings lay in France where it is known as Poudin a la chanceliere. I’ve also been informed that the Cabinet pudding is quite similar to the Newcastle Pudding.

A thing that’s always caught my curiosity is…the name.   Is there some sort of political connection or story behind it?  Or is it some enterprising chef’s name-tweak to the traditional bread pudding or trifle?

The picture above might throw off many of the Americans who read this blog, so let me state that pudding does not in fact begin and end with what the Jell-O product line offers us.   Puddings in North America tend to be things like mousses or instant custards of some sort.

The Cabinet Pudding is a Steamed dessert, usually made from some sort of sponge cake, Savoy cake, or even lady fingers.   Glace cherries, sultanas (raisins), and currants are mixed in with a liqueur for flavor.

I must confess that I’ve always found the traditional Mrs. Beeton recipe to be a bit of an undertaking.

So instead I would encourage you all to hop on over to Niamh Mannion aka The Game Bird’s blog

http://thegamebird.blogspot.com/2014/10/cabinet-pudding.html

I’ve found her recipe to be much more manageable and timely in our busy age.

 

 

Entertaining Desserts: Eton Mess

The Oxford English dictionary defines “mess” as – “[a] serving of food; a course; a meal; a prepared dish of a specified kind of food.” or “[a] portion or serving of liquid or pulpy food such as milk, broth, porridge, boiled vegetables, etc.“

The Eton Mess‘ particular history dates back to the 1900s where it would be traditionally served at Eton College during the annual Eton vs. Harrow School cricket game – possibly one of the oldest sporting events in the world given that the first match was in 1805.

The “mess” usually involves a mixture of strawberries, bananas, ice cream or regular cream, and pieces of meringue.    A dash of port can also add a bit more flavor.

I’ve found that Nigella Lawson’s recipe has been quite popular amongst friends and guests.  It also is a rather easy treat to conjure within 10 minutes time.   I’ve reproduced it below for those who would like to give it a trial – (Copyright 2007, Nigella Express, Hyperion, All Rights Reserved)

Ingredients:

• 4 Cups of strawberries
• 2 teaspoons of Caster sugar
• 2 cups whipping cream
• 2 teaspoons of pomegranate juice
• 1 packet of individual meringue nests

Directions:

1. Hull/Chop the strawberries and mix it in a bowl with the sugar and pomegranate juice.  Allow it to macerate (soak).
2. Whip cream until soft, then crumble 4 of the meringue nests into the cream, allowing it to settle in chunks.
3. Take a half cup of the strawberries and fold it into the cream.
4. Arrange in cups or as a mound for a dessert center piece.