"If everybody always lies to you"

"The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please."

     Hannah Arendt, "Hannah Arendt:  from an interview," The New York review of books 25, no. 16 (October 26, 1978):  18.  "Hannah Arendt made the comments that follow in 1974 during an interview with the French writer Roger Errera."  Could that actually be 1973?  (I haven't watched that yet.)

Gallows humor

      "When the attackers approached the house they were not sure whether Gunnar was at home, and wanted someone to go right up to the house to find out.  They sat down on the ground, while Thorgrim the Easterner climbed on to the roof.  Gunnar caught sight of a red tunic at the window.  He lunged out with his halberd and struck Thorgrim in the belly.  Thorgrim dropped his shield, lost his footing, and toppled down from the roof.  He strode over to where Gizur and the others were sitting.
     "Gizur looked up at him and asked, 'Is Gunnar at home [(Hvárt er Gunnar heima)]?'
     "'That's for you to find out,' replied Thorgrim.  'But I know that his halberd certainly is [(Vitið þér þat, en hitt vissa ek at atgeirr hans var heima)].'
     "And with that he fell dead."

     Njal's saga 77 (trans. Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson (London:  Penguin Books, 1960), 169).  Original (which I know nothing about) from the critical edition upon which the above translation is based:  Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson (Reykjavík : Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954), 187.

"the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." But it can be crossed once and for all.

     "If only it were so simple!  If only there were evil people somewhere insiduously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.  But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being."

     Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The gulag archipelago [(Архипелаг ГУЛАГ)] 1918-1956:  an experiment in literary investigation I-II, pt. 1, chap. 4, "The bluecaps," trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York:  Harper & Row, 1973), 168.  On the other hand (174-175),

     There was a rumor going the rounds between 1918 and 1920 that the Petrograd Cheka, headed by Uritsky, and the Odessa Cheka, heading by Deich, did not shoot all those condemned to death but fed some of them alive to animals in the city zoos.  I do not know whether this is truth or calumny, or, if there were any such cases, how many there were.  But I wouldn't set out to look for proof, either.  Following the practice of the bluecaps, I would propose that they prove to us that this was impossible.  How else could they get food for the zoos in those famine years?...  Those enemies were going to die anyway, so why couldn't their deaths support the zoo economy?...  Wasn't it expedient?
     That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross.  But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear.
     Physics is aware of phenomena which occur only at threshold magnitudes, which do not exist at all until a certain threshold encoded by and known to nature has been crossed....
     Evidently evildoing also has a threshold magnitude.  Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life.  He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again.  But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope.  But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.

"without water there is no mystery of regeneration"

"the three witnesses in baptism are one: the water, the blood, and the Spirit, for, if you take away one of these, the sacrament of baptism does not stand.  For what is water without the cross of Christ except a common element without any sacramental effect?  And again without water there is no mystery of regeneration [(sine aqua regenerationis mysterium est)].  For 'unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.'  Moreover, even a catechumen believes in the cross of the Lord Jesus, with which he, too, is signed, but, unless he be baptized 'in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,' he cannot receive remission of sins nor drink in the benefit of spiritual grace."

     St. Ambrose, De mysteriis 20, trans. Deferrari (Theological and dogmatic works, FC 44 (Catholic University Press, 1963), 12).  =SC 25, 113, ll. 26-27.  Liturgy of the hours (Universalis):

the three witnesses in baptism – the water, the blood and the Spirit – are one. This means that if you take away one of these the sacrament is not conferred. What is water without the cross of Christ? Only an ordinary element without sacramental effect. Again, without water there is no sacrament of rebirth: Unless a man is born again of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. The catechumen believes in the cross of the Lord with which he too is signed, but unless he is baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit he cannot receive the forgiveness of sins or the gift of spiritual grace.

God is still incarnate. Not

      "When [the fisherman] had gone to heaven, the lord [Kṛṣṇa (?)], yoking himself to the Self which is Brahman, imperishable, beyond thought, identical with Vāsudeva, without imperfection, unborn, immortal, the measureless Viṣṇu, the Self of all, having gone beyond the three guṇas, abandoned his human body."

     Viṣṇu Purāṇa 5.37.1-76, as trans. Classical Hindu mythology:  a reader in the Sanskrit Purāṇas, ed. & trans. Cornelia Dimmitt & J. A. B. van Buitenen (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 1978), 146.

An arranged marriage

      "Thjostolf rowed away up the fjord, while Thorvald's men shouted curses at him.  He made no reply, but carried on rowing until he reached home.  There he beached the boat and walked up to the house with his blood-smeared axe on his shoulder.
     "Hallgerd was outside.  'There is blood on your axe,' she said.  'What have you done?'
     "'I have now arranged that you can be married a second time [(Nú hefi ek þat at gǫrt . . . at þú munt gefin verða í ǫðru sinni)],' replied Thjostolf."

     Njal's saga 12 (trans. Magnus Magnusson & Hermann Pálsson (London:  Penguin Books, 1960), 60).  Original (which I know nothing about) from the critical edition upon which the above translation is based:  Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson (Reykjavík : Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954), 35.

"labor und error"

"nothing would be more absurd than to interpret every image of [the externally multifarious and internally complex pagan and especially 'Christian'] labyrinth . . . as the manifestation of but a single sense.  The intention behind every single [(jeder einzelne)] employment of the figure . . . must be groped after differentially [(differenzierend . . . ertastet)]. . . ."

     Wolfgang Haubrichs, "Error inextricabilis:  Form und Funktion der Labyrinthabbildung in mittelalterlichen Handschriften," in Text und Bild:  Aspekte des Zusammenwirkens zweier Künst in Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit, hrsg. Christel Meier und Uwe Ruberg (Wiesbaden:  Reichert, 1980), 158 (63-174), translation and underscoring mine.  Needless to say, I have yet to read (all 112 pages of) this impressive-looking article as a whole.

     "Little can be said with certainty about the function and significance of church labyrinths.  Most accounts, for example, of labyrinths having served as paths of repentance and as symbolic pilgrimages are only hearsay and must be very late, possibly from the 18th century.  Despite this, I shall endeavor to present several possible interpretations" [tied to some of the different historical exemplars]. . . .  And so, on "The path to Jerusalem" interpretation, "Several northern French pavement labyrinths were referred to as the 'Chemin du Jérusalem,' the path to Jerusalem.  We do not know how old this designation is; I do not know of any sources that date further back than the 18th century.  This relatively recent appellation is probably just as uncharacteristic of the labyrinth as is the speculation that surrounds it:  that such labyrinths are from the time of the Crusades and offered those who remained behind—those for whom a pilgrimage to the Holy Land was not possible—a substitute pilgrimage of a penitential nature. . . .
     "We can take our cue as to how seriously to take such speculations about the labyrinth being a substitute pilgrimage to the actual city of Jerusalem from a map of Lille, where, also in the mid-19th century, a route for pilgrimages was planned."

     Hermann Kern, Through the labyrinth:  designs and meanings over 5,000 years (Munich:  Prestel, 2000), 146, 148.  Regarding that map of Lille included in the prize-winning but unused 1856 plan by Clutton and Burges for the design of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-de-la-Treille in Lille, see p. 155:  "Representations of the cities pilgrims would have travelled through on the 'Path to Jerusalem' appear in the spandrels:  Lille as the starting point, Rome, Constantinople, and, lastly, Jerusalem.  The design was a Neo-Gothic version of an only slightly older idea, taken literally, and thus deprived of its spiritual character and given a practical, geographical slant as a manual for pilgrims" (with sources).