Harry Potter 7, Part 2: My Wife Speaks

Were any of you as disappointed as my wife was upon seeing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2? The movie, she felt, failed to portray many riches found in the book, especially how Harry’s final confrontation with Voldemort underscores Rowling’s chief theme of the power of sacrificial love. In Chapter 36 of the book, “The Flaw in the Plan,” we read:

“You won’t be killing anyone else tonight,” said Harry as they circled, and stared into each other’s eyes, green into red. “You won’t be able to kill any of them ever again. Don’t you get it? I was ready to die to stop you from hurting these people—”

“But you did not!”

“—I meant to, and that’s what did it. I’ve done what my mother did. They’re protected from you. Haven’t you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can’t torture them. You can’t touch them. You don’t learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?” (p. 738)

None of this nuance is portrayed in the film. Instead, after Harry comes back to life, Voldemort is shown to be as strong as he ever was. The diminishment in his powers brought about by Harry’s sacrifice is passed over. True, Voldemort is accurately shown not to be the master of the Elder Wand. But it would have been a much more fitting ending, thematically, if the dialogue from the book quoted above would have been used. Too much time was taken up with Harry’s and Voldemort’s rather boring, and wholly invented, flying grappling match.

A blog I read pointed out that the film also fails to include Harry’s crucial plea for Voldemort to show remorse for the evil he has done:

         “But before you try to kill me, I’d advise you to think about what you’ve done….Think, and try for some remorse, Riddle….”

         “What is this?”

         Of all the things that Harry had said to him, beyond any revelation or taunt, nothing had shocked Voldemort like this. Harry saw his pupils contract to thin slits, saw the skin around his eyes whiten.

         “It’s your one last chance,” said Harry, “it’s all you’ve got left….I’ve seen what you’ll be otherwise….Be a man….try…Try for some remorse…” (p. 741).

Too bad these lines were left out: lines about how even the most corrupt person always has a chance to change his ways…about the meaning of genuine manhood.

“I’ve seen what you’ll be otherwise.” A reference to the  shriveled, damned soul of Voldemort whimpering in its torment which Harry sees at “King’s Cross.” The movie depicts Voldemort’s damned soul quite movingly. It would have done well to also employ Harry’s dialogue quoted above.

And don’t even get me started on what my wife had to say about how the film spoils the book’s portrayal of the true friendship that underwrites Ron and Hermione’s budding romance.

So, Potter fans, what did you think?

   

An Eye for Beauty

The centerpiece of Jacques Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism is Chapter V, “Art and Beauty.” It is a profoundly insightful but also very demanding chapter, as it draws on quite a few technical conceptions from the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. It is, however, a chapter well worth wrestling with, as the notion of beauty is one which at best is widely misunderstood, and at worst thought to be totally irrelevant to the modern notion of art. 

  

So let’s begin this installment of our Virtual Summer Circle of Thomistic Studies with the opening lines of Chapter V, in which Maritain discusses St. Thomas’s definition of beauty:

St. Thomas, who as simple as he was wise, defined the beautiful as that which, being seen, pleases: id quod visum placet. These four words say all that is necessary: a vision, that is to say, an intuitive knowledge, and a delight. The beautiful is that which gives delight—not just any delight, but delight in knowing (p. 23*).

What is beauty? It is that which pleases upon being seen. It may be tempting to conclude from this that what Aquinas is saying is that things are beautiful just because someone finds them pleasing. This would make the beautiful entirely subjective—a mere matter of our feelings, of our reactions to things, rather than a quality of things themselves that inspires pleasure. I don’t think we should understand Aquinas as defending a subjective understanding of beauty. So how should we understand his definition?

The beautiful is something seen. Does this mean something seen by the eyes, or seen metaphorically by the mind? Both, really. The experience of the beautiful begins with the senses, as Maritian affirms later on p. 23. But on p. 25 he elaborates: “Every sensible beauty implies, it is true, a certain delight of the eye itself or of the ear or the imagination: but there is beauty only if the intelligence also takes delight in some way.” Maritain continues:

A beautiful color “washes the eye,” just as a strong scent dilates the nostril; but of these two “forms” or qualities color only is said to be beautiful, because, being received, unlike the perfume, in a sense power capable of disinterested knowledge, it can be, even through its purely sensible brilliance, an object of delight for the intellect.

We saw in the opening chapters of Art and Scholasticism Maritain developing a very intellectual understanding of art. Now we see him following St. Thomas again in developing a very intellectual understanding of beauty. Beauty involves vision, with the eyes and the ears, certainly, but more importantly with the mind. On p. 23 Maritain describes this vision as an intuitive knowledge. What does this mean?

An intuition, in brief, is a reality that is grasped by the mind without mediation of proof. This isn’t as mysterious as it first may sound. There are plenty of realities we grasp without mediation of proof. For example, if you see someone attack an innocent person in the street, the horror of the injustice is grasped by your mind without mediation of proof. Either you see the injustice happening right in front of you, or you don’t (and your moral character is corrupt). Imagine someone, witnessing such an attack, remarking, “Yes, I see what’s happening there; but can you prove to me that it’s unjust?” What would you say to such a person? If you tried to prove that attacks on innocent people are unjust because a well-ordered society depends upon the protection of innocent people, you would find yourself assuming in your “proof” the very thing you were trying to prove—namely, that attacks against the innocent are unjust (or conversely, protection of the innocent is just). This is what philosophers call begging the question. It’s a logical no-no.

The point being: some truths we simply get, without having to follow a series of intellectual steps, i.e., a proof.

But getting back to beauty. Beauty, affirms Maritain, is grasped intuitively by the mind (via either sight or hearing). The mind simply has a vision of the beautiful that requires no mediation of proof. So just as we simply see the injustice when an innocence person is attacked, so too we simply see the beauty when we look, say, at the architecture of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

And along with this vision comes delight—or what St. Thomas calls pleasure. This delight, however, Maritain clarifies, is a delight in knowing, “a delight which superabounds and overflows from this act [i.e., the intuitive vision of the beautiful] because of the object known” (p. 23).

So we’re walking together inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Imagine you’ve never seen it before. Your senses will be pleasantly “washed over” by what you see, and in the midst of that experience your mind also will begin to whirl, and whirl with its own ever-increasing delight. Your mind will begin to “see” things, intuit things, in the sensible feast set before it. These first intuitions will be vague, sketchy, in need of being worked out (perhaps by a docent, or the art historian’s discussion of the Basilica in your guidebook.) No doubt, either you or the docent or the guidebook will start talking about the immensity of the Basilica’s proportions, the majesty of it all, the order, the splendor…

The Basilica is beautiful because, upon being seen by your eyes and by your mind’s eye, it inspires an intellectual delight. And we have already begun to notice that it isn’t our delight that makes the Basilica beautiful. It is the Basilica’s proportions, splendor, and multi-faceted unity that are the cause of the delight we experience.

And so we come to the three prime characteristics of the beautiful (unity, proportion, radiance), which Maritain considers in Chapter V and that we’ll take up next time. So far, we’ve followed Maritain and St. Thomas in delineating an understanding of beauty that, while involving our subjective reactions to things, is nonetheless founded upon the internal, intelligible structure—what St. Thomas calls the form—of things themselves.  

* Page numbers refer to Art and Scholasticism and The Frontiers of Poetry, trans Joseph W. Evans (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974).

From Print Culture to Electronic Culture

A momentous, global revolution in the experience of reading and writing is well underway, and shows no sign of retreat. In brief, we are moving out of print culture and into electronic culture.

Consider. How many of you are reading books now, more or less consistently, on a Kindle, Nook, or some other kind of e-reader device (including your laptop)?

How many of you are aware that sales of electronic books are currently crushing sales of conventional books?

Take a look at some recent statistics from the AAP (Association of American Publishers):

All major adult print segments—hardcover, paperback and mass market—showed a decline in sales in May [2011]…. While e-books showed a steep uptick of 146.9% for the month, bringing in $73.4 million in sales, adult hardcovers dropped 38.2%, adult paperbacks dropped 14.3%, and adult mass market fell 39.4%.

And so far for the calendar year 2011: e-books have brought in $389.7 million in sales, a 160.1% climb over the same period in 2010.

Amazon has said that Kindle books started outselling hardcovers back in July 2010, and began outselling paperbacks in January 2011.

It is thus fair to conclude:

The principal medium for conveying the written word is becoming more and more wholly electronic. (A principle that Borders, now bankrupt, was too slow to recognize and act upon.)

At the same time, writers of both fiction and non-fiction are seizing the moment by eschewing the conventional road to publication. Instead of asking agents and publishers and brick-and-mortar bookstores for help in bringing their wares to market, they are making use of the ease of distribution afforded by such venues as Amazon.com. and going straight to the ravenous e-reading market themselves.

Thriller writer John Locke, for example, recently sold his one-millionth ebook on Amazon. And 26 year-old Amanda Hocking recently made news by selling over one million e-copies of her paranormal romance series—before opting for a more conventional arrangement by signing on for 2 million with St. Martin’s Press. Self-published author Barry Eisler, however, turned down a half-million dollar advance in order to remain self-published.

None of these writers are my personal cup of electronic tea, but they at least prove the eagerness of the ebook market, and the ability of writers to take their destiny into their own hands.

So that we can conclude:

The principal means of publishing and distributing the written word is becoming not only more and more electronic, but more and more in the hands of writers’ themselves.

Which brings us to J.K. Rowling and Pottermore. In June Rowling announced her new Pottermore website (to be launched in October), an immersive experience into the world of the Harry Potter books that will include new material from Rowling (e.g. backstories on the characters), interactivity via fan fiction and games, as well as being the only place in the galaxy where one can purchase e-versions of the Harry Potter books. It’s true. Rowling wisely retained the electronic publication rights for all her books, and so now is able to offer e-versions of them exclusively through her new website.

Of course, it takes someone with a global, pop icon platform like Rowling’s to be able to draw readers to one’s electronic works and make pots of galleons without the help even of Amazon and Barnes&Noble. And it’s not really accurate to call Rowling a self-publisher, since she made her reputation selling gazillions of books through Bloomsbury in the UK and Scholastic in the U.S. (Though for an interesting take on this, see David Gaughran's piece on Pottermore.)

But still, it’s hardly a stretch to surmise that Rowling’s Pottermore website will both entrench and make more exciting the experience of reading and writing through exclusively electronic media—especially in the as yet relatively dormant children’s market. 

Pottermore will also help underscore the third principle of the current revolution in reading and writing: that for both fiction & non-fiction writers, ownership and control are possible like never before.

But the question for you is:

How do you like this revolution? Do you think it’s inevitable? And even if it is, is the revolution good, bad or indifferent for the human experience of reading and writing—for the transmission of ideas and stories?