Saturday, April 22, 2023

The Song of the Strange Ascetic

Sent over the transom by commenter Earl Wajenberg, a sci-fi writer who comes to pub night on Thursdays betimes.  This fondness and understanding for pagans as something far more than mere unbelievers and in much better spiritual shape than modern cynical, humanist skeptics resonated much with CS Lewis, who expressed similar sentiments

The Song of the Strange Ascetic

by G. K. Chesterton

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have praised the purple vine,
My slaves should dig the vineyards,
And I would drink the wine.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And his slaves grow lean and grey,
That he may drink some tepid milk
Exactly twice a day.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have crowned Neaera's curls,
And filled my life with love affairs,
My house with dancing girls;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And to lecture rooms is forced,
Where his aunts, who are not married,
Demand to be divorced.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have sent my armies forth,
And dragged behind my chariots
The Chieftains of the North.
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And he drives the dreary quill,
To lend the poor that funny cash
That makes them poorer still.

If I had been a Heathen,
I'd have piled my pyre on high,
And in a great red whirlwind
Gone roaring to the sky;
But Higgins is a Heathen,
And a richer man than I:
And they put him in an oven,
Just as if he were a pie.

Now who that runs can read it,
The riddle that I write,
Of why this poor old sinner,
Should sin without delight-
But I, I cannot read it
(Although I run and run),
Of them that do not have the faith,
And will not have the fun.


In his modern fantasy American Gods, Neil Gaiman has Mr. Wednesday (really Odin) encounter a modern neo-pagan who lectures at him some about vegetarianism and defying the patriarchy etc. and is quite the modern puritan.  Odin then remarks to his mortal assistant (our viewpoint character), “There is one who does not have the faith and will not have the fun.”

3 comments:

  1. I loved American Gods, though I must confess that when I saw one of the episodes from the TV series they made, in which Bilquis (AKA Sheba, AKA "that whore of a goddess") preaches the Nu-Age gospel of free love in a church, I immediately grasped the appeal of a conquistador tearing down heathen idols and putting the worshippers on a pike.

    The only references to Jesus in the book are pretty oblique, and the shadow of the cross is avoided entirely. I didn't mind it when I first read it years ago, but now that I have returned to the church I find myself annoyed. Perhaps I should grow a thicker skin. Or maybe someone else could bring the Saints to Mr Gaiman's world.

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  2. And yet so many who say they believe live like Higgins.

    "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." (John 10:10, NIV)

    related, do we convince ourselves we are giving up dancing girls and wine to avoid what's really tempting us?

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  3. I don't think he could have written the book if he'd tried to take Jesus into account, even in the worship = power paradigm. Only the God of Media (Prince of the Power of the Airwaves?) would have been more significant than Jesus, and Wednesday would be pretty much nowhere, no matter what he tried.

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