rash vows
A Defence of Rash Vows
by G.K. Chesterton
An abridged version of a chapter in Chesterton’s book The Defendant.
If a prosperous modern man, with a high hat and a frock-coat, were to solemnly pledge himself before all his clerks and friends to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up to the City on one leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill’s ‘Liberty’ seventy-six times, to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name of Brown, to remain for thirty-one hours holding his left ear in his right hand, to sing the names of all his aunts in order of age on the top of an omnibus, or make any such unusual undertaking, we should immediately conclude that the man was mad, or, as it is sometimes expressed, was ‘an artist in life.’ Yet these vows are not more extraordinary than the vows which in the Middle Ages and in similar periods were made, not by fanatics merely, but by the greatest figures in civic and national civilization—by kings, judges, poets, and priests. One man swore to chain two mountains together, and the great chain hung there, it was said, for ages as a monument of that mystical folly. Another swore that he would find his way to Jerusalem with a patch over his eyes, and died looking for it. It is not easy to see that these two exploits, judged from a strictly rational standpoint, are any saner than the acts above suggested. A mountain is commonly a stationary and reliable object which it is not necessary to chain up at night like a dog. And it is not easy at first sight to see that a man pays a very high compliment to the Holy City by setting out for it under conditions which render it to the last degree improbable that he will ever get there.
But about this there is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved in that way in our time, we should, as we have said, regard them as symbols of the ‘decadence.’ But the men who did these things were not decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classes of what is generally regarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men essentially sane performed such insanities, it was under the capricious direction of a superstitious religious system. This, again, will not hold water; for in the purely terrestrial and even sensual departments of life, such as love and lust, the medieval princes show the same mad promises and performances, the same misshapen imagination and the same monstrous self-sacrifice. Here we have a contradiction, to explain which it is necessary to think of the whole nature of vows from the beginning. And if we consider seriously and correctly the nature of vows, we shall, unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion that it is perfectly sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that, if insanity is involved at all, it is a little insane not to do so.
The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one’s self, of the weakness and mutability of one’s self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man. Now, it is this horrible fairy tale of a man constantly changing into other men that is the soul of the decadence. That John Paterson should, with apparent calm, look forward to being a certain General Barker on Monday, Dr. Macgregor on Tuesday, Sir Walter Carstairs on Wednesday, and Sam Slugg on Thursday, may seem a nightmare; but to that nightmare we give the name of modern culture. One great decadent, who is now dead, published a poem some time ago, in which he powerfully summed up the whole spirit of the movement by declaring that he could stand in the prison yard and entirely comprehend the feelings of a man about to be hanged.
‘For he that lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.’
And the end of all this is that maddening horror of unreality which descends upon the decadents, and compared with which physical pain itself would have the freshness of a youthful thing. The one hell which imagination must conceive as most hellish is to be eternally acting a play without even the narrowest and dirtiest greenroom in which to be human. And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of the free-lover. To be everlastingly passing through dangers which we know cannot scare us, to be taking oaths which we know cannot bind us, to defying enemies who we know cannot conquer us— this is the grinning tyranny of decadence which is called freedom.
Let us turn, on the other hand, to the maker of vows. The man who made a vow, however wild, gave a healthy and natural expression to the greatness of a great moment. He vowed, for example, to chain two mountains together, perhaps a symbol of some great relief of love, or aspiration. Short as the moment of his resolve might be, it was, like all great moments, a moment of immortality, and the desire to say of it exegi monumentum aere perennius was the only sentiment that would satisfy his mind. The modern aesthetic man would, of course, easily see the emotional opportunity; he would vow to chain two mountains together. But, then, he would quite as cheerfully vow to chain the earth to the moon. And the withering consciousness that he did not mean what he said, that he was, in truth, saying nothing of any great import, would take from him exactly that sense of daring actuality which is the excitement of a vow.
The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words—‘free-love’—as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.
It is exactly this backdoor, this sense of having a retreat behind us, that is, to our minds, the sterlizing spirit in modern pleasure. Everywhere there is the persistent and insane attempt to obtain pleasure without paying for it. Thus, in politics the modern Jingoes practically say, ‘Let us have the pleasure of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.’ Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: ‘Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to the Virgin and Priapus.’ Thus in love the free-lovers say: ‘Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.’
Emphatically it will not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the aesthetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing. It must have satisfied even the giant hunger of the soul of a lover or a poet to know that in consequence of some one instant of decision that strange chain would hang for centuries in the Alps among the silences of stars and snows. All around us is the city of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats, but surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.
rash vows
A Defence of Rash Vows
by G.K. Chesterton
An abridged version of a chapter in Chesterton’s book The Defendant.
If a prosperous modern man, with a high hat and a frock-coat, were to solemnly pledge himself before all his clerks and friends to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up to the City on one leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill’s ‘Liberty’ seventy-six times, to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name of Brown, to remain for thirty-one hours holding his left ear in his right hand, to sing the names of all his aunts in order of age on the top of an omnibus, or make any such unusual undertaking, we should immediately conclude that the man was mad, or, as it is sometimes expressed, was ‘an artist in life.’ Yet these vows are not more extraordinary than the vows which in the Middle Ages and in similar periods were made, not by fanatics merely, but by the greatest figures in civic and national civilization—by kings, judges, poets, and priests. One man swore to chain two mountains together, and the great chain hung there, it was said, for ages as a monument of that mystical folly. Another swore that he would find his way to Jerusalem with a patch over his eyes, and died looking for it. It is not easy to see that these two exploits, judged from a strictly rational standpoint, are any saner than the acts above suggested. A mountain is commonly a stationary and reliable object which it is not necessary to chain up at night like a dog. And it is not easy at first sight to see that a man pays a very high compliment to the Holy City by setting out for it under conditions which render it to the last degree improbable that he will ever get there.
But about this there is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved in that way in our time, we should, as we have said, regard them as symbols of the ‘decadence.’ But the men who did these things were not decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classes of what is generally regarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men essentially sane performed such insanities, it was under the capricious direction of a superstitious religious system. This, again, will not hold water; for in the purely terrestrial and even sensual departments of life, such as love and lust, the medieval princes show the same mad promises and performances, the same misshapen imagination and the same monstrous self-sacrifice. Here we have a contradiction, to explain which it is necessary to think of the whole nature of vows from the beginning. And if we consider seriously and correctly the nature of vows, we shall, unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion that it is perfectly sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that, if insanity is involved at all, it is a little insane not to do so.
The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one’s self, of the weakness and mutability of one’s self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man. Now, it is this horrible fairy tale of a man constantly changing into other men that is the soul of the decadence. That John Paterson should, with apparent calm, look forward to being a certain General Barker on Monday, Dr. Macgregor on Tuesday, Sir Walter Carstairs on Wednesday, and Sam Slugg on Thursday, may seem a nightmare; but to that nightmare we give the name of modern culture. One great decadent, who is now dead, published a poem some time ago, in which he powerfully summed up the whole spirit of the movement by declaring that he could stand in the prison yard and entirely comprehend the feelings of a man about to be hanged.
‘For he that lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.’
And the end of all this is that maddening horror of unreality which descends upon the decadents, and compared with which physical pain itself would have the freshness of a youthful thing. The one hell which imagination must conceive as most hellish is to be eternally acting a play without even the narrowest and dirtiest greenroom in which to be human. And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of the free-lover. To be everlastingly passing through dangers which we know cannot scare us, to be taking oaths which we know cannot bind us, to defying enemies who we know cannot conquer us— this is the grinning tyranny of decadence which is called freedom.
voti temerari
In difesa dei voti temerari
di G.K. Chesterton
Versione abbreviata di un capitolo del libro di Chesterton The Defendant.
Se un prospero uomo moderno, con cilindro e finanziera, si impegnasse solennemente dinanzi a tutti i suoi impiegati e amici a contare le foglie di ogni terzo albero di Holland Walk, a saltellare fino alla City su una gamba sola ogni giovedì, a ripetere l’intera ‘Libertà’ di Mill settantasei volte, a raccogliere 300 denti di leone in campi appartenenti a chiunque porti il nome di Brown, a rimanere per trentun ore tenendo l’orecchio sinistro nella mano destra, a cantare i nomi di tutte le sue zie in ordine d’età in cima a un omnibus, o a intraprendere una qualsiasi impresa altrettanto inconsueta, concluderemmo immediatamente che l’uomo era pazzo, o, come talvolta si dice, era un ‘artista della vita.’ Eppure questi voti non sono più straordinari dei voti che nel Medioevo e in epoche simili venivano fatti, non da meri fanatici, ma dalle più grandi figure della civiltà civica e nazionale—da re, giudici, poeti e sacerdoti. Un uomo giurò di incatenare due montagne insieme, e la grande catena rimase là appesa, si disse, per secoli come monumento di quella mistica follia. Un altro giurò che avrebbe trovato la via per Gerusalemme con una benda sugli occhi, e morì cercandola. Non è facile vedere come queste due imprese, giudicate da un rigoroso punto di vista razionale, siano più assennate degli atti sopra suggeriti. Una montagna è comunemente un oggetto stazionario e affidabile che non è necessario incatenare la notte come un cane. E non è facile vedere a prima vista come un uomo renda un altissimo omaggio alla Santa Città mettendosi in cammino verso di essa in condizioni che rendono all’ultimo grado improbabile che egli mai vi giunga.
Ma su questo c’è una cosa notevole da osservare. Se gli uomini si comportassero in tal modo nel nostro tempo, noi, come abbiamo detto, li considereremmo simboli della ‘decadenza.’ Ma gli uomini che fecero queste cose non erano decadenti; appartenevano in genere alle classi più robuste di quella che è generalmente ritenuta un’epoca robusta. Di nuovo, si obietterà che se uomini essenzialmente sani compirono tali follie, fu sotto la capricciosa direzione di un superstizioso sistema religioso. Anche questo non regge; poiché nei dipartimenti puramente terreni e persino sensuali della vita, come l’amore e la lussuria, i principi medievali mostrano le stesse folli promesse e imprese, la stessa deforme immaginazione e lo stesso mostruoso sacrificio di sé. Qui abbiamo una contraddizione, per spiegare la quale è necessario pensare all’intera natura dei voti fin dal principio. E se consideriamo seriamente e correttamente la natura dei voti, giungeremo, se non m’inganno di molto, alla conclusione che sia perfettamente assennato, e persino sensato, giurare di incatenare insieme le montagne, e che, se una qualche insania è coinvolta, sia un po’ insano non farlo.
L’uomo che fa un voto prende un appuntamento con sé stesso in qualche lontano tempo o luogo. Il pericolo di ciò è che il sé stesso non mantenga l’appuntamento. E nei tempi moderni questo terrore di sé stessi, della debolezza e mutevolezza di sé stessi, è pericolosamente cresciuto, ed è la vera base dell’obiezione ai voti di qualsiasi tipo. Un uomo moderno si astiene dal giurare di contare le foglie di ogni terzo albero di Holland Walk, non perché sia sciocco farlo (fa molte cose più sciocche), ma perché ha la profonda convinzione che prima di essere giunto alla trecentosettantanovesima foglia del primo albero sarebbe eccessivamente stanco del soggetto e vorrebbe tornare a casa per il tè. In altre parole, temiamo che per quel tempo egli sarà, secondo la comune ma orribilmente significativa espressione, un altro uomo. Ora, è questa orribile fiaba di un uomo che continuamente si trasforma in altri uomini a essere l’anima della decadenza. Che John Paterson debba, con apparente calma, attendersi di essere un certo generale Barker il lunedì, il dottor Macgregor il martedì, sir Walter Carstairs il mercoledì, e Sam Slugg il giovedì, potrà sembrare un incubo; ma a quell’incubo diamo il nome di cultura moderna. Un grande decadente, ora morto, pubblicò tempo fa una poesia, in cui riassunse con forza l’intero spirito del movimento dichiarando di poter stare nel cortile della prigione e comprendere interamente i sentimenti di un uomo in procinto di essere impiccato.
‘Poiché chi vive più vite d’una più d’una morte deve morire.’
E la fine di tutto questo è quell’esasperante orrore d’irrealtà che discende sui decadenti, e a paragone del quale il dolore fisico stesso avrebbe la freschezza di una cosa giovanile. L’unico inferno che l’immaginazione possa concepire come il più infernale è recitare eternamente un dramma senza neppure il più angusto e sudicio camerino in cui essere umani. E questa è la condizione del decadente, dell’esteta, del libero amante. Passare in eterno attraverso pericoli che sappiamo non poterci spaventare, prestare giuramenti che sappiamo non poterci vincolare, sfidare nemici che sappiamo non poterci vincere— questa è la ghignante tirannia della decadenza che si chiama Libertà.
Let us turn, on the other hand, to the maker of vows. The man who made a vow, however wild, gave a healthy and natural expression to the greatness of a great moment. He vowed, for example, to chain two mountains together, perhaps a symbol of some great relief of love, or aspiration. Short as the moment of his resolve might be, it was, like all great moments, a moment of immortality, and the desire to say of it exegi monumentum aere perennius was the only sentiment that would satisfy his mind. The modern aesthetic man would, of course, easily see the emotional opportunity; he would vow to chain two mountains together. But, then, he would quite as cheerfully vow to chain the earth to the moon. And the withering consciousness that he did not mean what he said, that he was, in truth, saying nothing of any great import, would take from him exactly that sense of daring actuality which is the excitement of a vow.
The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words—‘free-love’—as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.
It is exactly this backdoor, this sense of having a retreat behind us, that is, to our minds, the sterlizing spirit in modern pleasure. Everywhere there is the persistent and insane attempt to obtain pleasure without paying for it. Thus, in politics the modern Jingoes practically say, ‘Let us have the pleasure of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.’ Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: ‘Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to the Virgin and Priapus.’ Thus in love the free-lovers say: ‘Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.’
Emphatically it will not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the aesthetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing. It must have satisfied even the giant hunger of the soul of a lover or a poet to know that in consequence of some one instant of decision that strange chain would hang for centuries in the Alps among the silences of stars and snows. All around us is the city of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats, but surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.
Volgiamoci, d’altro canto, a colui che fa voti. L’uomo che fece un voto, per quanto folle, diede espressione sana e naturale alla grandezza di un grande momento. Fece voto, per esempio, di incatenare l’una all’altra due montagne, forse simbolo di qualche grande sollievo d’amore, o d’aspirazione. Per quanto breve potesse essere l’attimo della sua risoluzione, esso era, come tutti i grandi momenti, un attimo d’immortalità, e il desiderio di dire di esso exegi monumentum aere perennius era l’unico sentimento che potesse appagare la sua mente. L’uomo estetico moderno, naturalmente, coglierebbe con facilità l’occasione emotiva; farebbe voto di incatenare l’una all’altra due montagne. Ma, allora, con altrettanta allegria farebbe voto di incatenare la terra alla luna. E la mortificante consapevolezza di non intendere ciò che diceva, di non dire, in verità, nulla di grande momento, gli toglierebbe proprio quel senso di audace concretezza che è l’emozione di un voto.
La rivolta contro i voti è stata spinta, ai nostri giorni, perfino fino a una rivolta contro il voto tipico, quello del matrimonio. È quanto mai divertente ascoltare gli avversari del matrimonio su questo tema. Sembrano immaginare che l’ideale della costanza sia un giogo misteriosamente imposto all’umanità dal diavolo, invece di essere, com’è, un giogo che tutti gli amanti impongono coerentemente a se stessi. Hanno inventato una frase, una frase che è una netta contraddizione in due parole — ‘libero amore’ — come se un amante fosse mai stato, o potesse mai essere, libero. È nella natura dell’amore vincolarsi, e l’istituzione del matrimonio non fece che rendere all’uomo comune l’omaggio di prenderlo in parola. I sapienti moderni offrono all’amante, con un ghigno malevolo, le più ampie libertà e la più piena irresponsabilità; ma non lo rispettano come lo rispettava la vecchia Chiesa; non scrivono il suo giuramento nei cieli, come testimonianza del suo momento più alto. Gli concedono ogni libertà tranne la libertà di vendere la propria libertà, che è l’unica che egli desideri.
È esattamente questa porta di servizio, questo senso di avere una ritirata alle spalle, ciò che, a nostro avviso, è lo spirito sterilizzante del piacere moderno. Ovunque c’è il tentativo ostinato e folle di ottenere piacere senza pagarlo. Così, in politica, i moderni sciovinisti in pratica dicono: ‘Godiamoci il piacere dei conquistatori senza le pene dei soldati: sediamoci sui divani e siamo una razza gagliarda.’ Così, in religione e in morale, i mistici decadenti dicono: ‘Godiamoci la fragranza della sacra purezza senza i dolori dell’autocontrollo; cantiamo inni alternativamente alla Vergine e a Priapo.’ Così, in amore, i liberi amatori dicono: ‘Godiamoci lo splendore di offrire noi stessi senza il pericolo di impegnarci; vediamo se non si possa commettere suicidio un numero illimitato di volte.’
Con ogni evidenza, non funzionerà. Vi sono momenti emozionanti, senza dubbio, per lo spettatore, il dilettante, l’esteta; ma c’è un brivido noto soltanto al soldato che combatte per la propria bandiera, all’esteta che si affama per la propria illuminazione, all’amante che compie finalmente la propria scelta. Ed è questa trasfigurante autodisciplina che rende il voto una cosa davvero assennata. Deve aver appagato perfino la gigantesca fame dell’anima di un amante o di un poeta il sapere che, in conseguenza di un solo istante di decisione, quella strana catena sarebbe pesa per secoli sulle Alpi tra i silenzi delle stelle e delle nevi. Tutt’attorno a noi c’è la città dei piccoli peccati, ricca di vicoli e di ritirate, ma di certo, presto o tardi, la fiamma altissima si leverà dal porto ad annunciare che il regno dei codardi è finito e che un uomo sta bruciando le proprie navi.