Life of Robert Southwell

The Life of Robert Southwell, Poet and Martyr by Christopher Devlin, 324 pages

Born into a well-connected family in England in the middle of the sixteenth century, as a teenager Robert Southwell, possibly under the influence of recusant relations, converted to Catholicism and departed to the Continent where he could practice his faith freely, beyond the reach of Protestant persecution.  Attracted, like many devout young men of the time, to the Society of Jesus, he entered the Jesuits after an initial rejection and became first a student and later a professor at the English College in Rome.  He left behind this position to become a missionary in his homeland, where he managed to minister to the Catholic community for several years before finally being cornered, captured, tortured, and executed.  Southwell's poetry, much of it written while in hiding, would serve as an inspiration to Shakespeare, Jonson, Donne, and Hopkins, among others, while his holy life and martyrdom led to his canonization in 1970, 14 years after this biography was published.

In the author's note that begins this biography, Christopher Devlin connects Southwell with St Edmund Campion, the illustrious Jesuit scholar and martyr of the preceding generation, and refers readers to the "brilliant study" of Campion by Evelyn Waugh.  Just as Southwell lived happily in the shadow of Campion, so Devlin writes in the shadow of Waugh.  While Devlin cannot match Waugh's literary genius, he compensates with thorough scholarship, something sorely needed when the historical record is so fragmentary.  

Polyeuctus

Polyeuctus, from Polyeuctus/The Liar/Nicomedes by Pierre Corneille, translated by John Cairncross, 100 pages

Paulina, the daughter of Felix, the Roman governor of Armenia, was quite in love with the gallant Severus, but his lack of distinction prevented her father from consenting to their becoming wed.  Severus having been reported dead in battle after great feats of heroism, Paulina married instead her father's choice, Polyeuctus, a noble Armenian youth.  As it transpired, however, Severus survived, the Persian foe having honored his valor by nursing him back to health and returning him to the Romans with offers of lasting peace.  So Severus, now high in the esteem of the emperor, returns to Armenia to renew his suit, not knowing that the woman he loves is already married to another.  Polyeuctus, meanwhile, has secretly converted to Christianity, and his newfound faith will inevitably bring him into conflict with pagan Rome, ultimately costing him everything he loves in this world.

The conventional view on Polyeuctus, as represented by Cairncross' introduction, is that the drama of the thwarted romance of Paulina and Severus is far more interesting than that of Polyeuctus' zeal for his newfound faith.  This is sadly to be expected of conventional critics for whom such zeal is alien and frightening, of course, but even the summary above reflects it.  Although it is Polyeuctus with whom the play begins and it is his decisions which drive the main conflict, his character is not where our attention naturally rests.  The tale of Paulina and Severus is one of passion barely subjected to reason, that of Polyeuctus a story of the straightforward martyrdom of a fanatic.  Yet it is Polyeuctus' supreme devotion to the highest Good that demonstrates the goal to which the pagan virtues of the other characters aspire, a truth that is beautifully consummated at the conclusion of the play.

Dying for Ideas

Dying for Ideas: The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers by Costica Bradatan, 238 pages


Summary from Goodreads: What do Socrates, Hypatia, Giordano Bruno, Thomas More, and Jan Patocka have in common? First, they were all faced one day with the most difficult of choices: stay faithful to your ideas and die or renounce them and stay alive. Second, they all chose to die. Their spectacular deaths have become not only an integral part of their biographies, but are also inseparable from their work. A "death for ideas" is a piece of philosophical work in its own right; Socrates may have never written a line, but his death is one of the greatest philosophical best-sellers of all time.

Dying for Ideas explores the limit-situation in which philosophers find themselves when the only means of persuasion they can use is their own dying bodies and the public spectacle of their death. The book tells the story of the philosopher's encounter with death as seen from several angles: the tradition of philosophy as an art of living; the body as the site of self-transcending; death as a classical philosophical topic; taming death and self-fashioning; finally, the philosophers' scapegoating and their live performance of a martyr's death, followed by apotheosis and disappearance into myth.

While rooted in the history of philosophy, Dying for Ideas is an exercise in breaking disciplinary boundaries. This is a book about Socrates and Heidegger, but also about Gandhi's "fasting unto death" and self-immolation; about Girard and Passolini, and self-fashioning and the art of the essay.

Bottom line: I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I learned some things I didn't know before but the book falls short for what it is supposed to be. It seems as if Bradatan is trying to provide an argument about philosophers who end up dying for ideas. It is more of a chronicle of instances where they have. While Bradatan does use sources from other disciplines I am not sure how much he is breaking boundaries.