Post by seraphim on Mar 10, 2009 0:02:56 GMT -5
The other day I had the opportunity to watch Nicholas Nickleby on Hulu and found myself taken with the character Smike. And I had thought to write a little about others of his type, the suffering innocent of which Dickens makes great and varied use in his novels. It is a type of character that can easily overwhelm a story with treacle....done well though it leaves one asking for "more please." Other examples outside of Dickens I think are characters like Billy Budd or the Little Prince. Harry Potter is a mixture of this type and the dream that such a character might desire to be. We might also add to this list characters like Fiver in Watership Down and Canus Mundi Dog or Wee Widow Mouse in the Book of the Dunn Cow.
It would have been interesting to explore this character type in literature, especially in SFF, but then while tracking down a theological jackrabbit my horizon expanded a little and it occurred to me that Smike and those like him belonged to/defined a theological character category or at least as significant subset of that category. I'm speaking of the philotimetic character type.
Yes...I just made the word up...almost... because I've never seen this kind of character broadly addressed theologically except in some instances like Billy Budd as a Christ figure. And that does cover a good bit of the territory analogically/allegorically speaking , but it doesn't deal with the whole category or its readerly effect.
I derive the world philotimetic from the theologcial term philotimo (http://orthodoxwiki.org/Orthodox_Living). It means a responsive gratefulness...the action of the mind that dwells on whatsoever is good and pure and honorable...the grateful love of the honorable.
It is with respect to this quote above I call Smike and those like him philotimetic characters, because they both depict philotimos in the character and engage the philotimos of the reader.
They have an ennobling effect on the human heart, their pain saves and transforms..and we see this in them and have respect...honor towards it...and in that taste a little of that goodness and transformation ourselves. Consider Smike could not have believably been the creature of pure and simple love he became when rescued unless he had first known great, even helpless suffering. The character who suffers a little we expect to be angry or bitter...but an innocent tormented with great suffering we hope emerges as stranger to bitterness. We dread the death of innocence. It is one of the great ironies of real life...so when we see it in a story, if not overdone it provokes in us a corresponding harmonic of sweetness, of forgiveness...of the sacred potential in pain and suffering...the hard won treasure of simple charity...philotimos...and its close kin philokallos, the love of beauty.
These characters I think do not just engage our sympathies, but reveal them to us, showing us the deepest inclinations of our own hearts...which in turn gives us hope, for we see that there is indeed a beachhead of mercy within us....and as we all know, or should know, deep calls to Deep.
And I think if there is a particular theological end or justification for Christian writing of any category it might well be this that whatever form or tack it takes it should in some way nurture the heart in philotimos, causing it to find occasion to be lifted up, if only a little in responsive gratitude. And this frees us from the temptation to be too overt...too spot on in developing the particular theological subtext of a story, if any. Sometimes it may be enough that we have evoked pity and a "reverent" admiration...for a mouse or a monkey...or even a carelessly plucked leaf. And in that the reader is left with a better disposed heart than before. The next story, the next author might move them a little further on and a little deeper in.
Thoughts? Critiques? Elaborations?
It would have been interesting to explore this character type in literature, especially in SFF, but then while tracking down a theological jackrabbit my horizon expanded a little and it occurred to me that Smike and those like him belonged to/defined a theological character category or at least as significant subset of that category. I'm speaking of the philotimetic character type.
Yes...I just made the word up...almost... because I've never seen this kind of character broadly addressed theologically except in some instances like Billy Budd as a Christ figure. And that does cover a good bit of the territory analogically/allegorically speaking , but it doesn't deal with the whole category or its readerly effect.
I derive the world philotimetic from the theologcial term philotimo (http://orthodoxwiki.org/Orthodox_Living). It means a responsive gratefulness...the action of the mind that dwells on whatsoever is good and pure and honorable...the grateful love of the honorable.
Another way of thinking about philotimo is when considering a clean or clear conscience and how one act eagerly upon that which the conscience dictates. Philotimo is therefore intimately intertwined with the grateful conscience, the stirrings of one's inner disposition, but it is infinitely more.
Olivie Clement says the following about love in his book 'The Book of Christian Mysticism,' "spiritual progress no other test in the end, nor any better expression, than our ability to love. It has to be unselfish love, founded on respect; a service, a disinterested affection that does not ask to be paid in return ("our" philotimo), a 'sympathy,' indeed an 'empathy,' that takes us out of ourselves enabling us to 'feel with' the other person and indeed to 'feel' him or her. It gives us the ability to discover in the other person an inward nature as mysterious and deep us our own, but different and willed to be so - by God.
Olivie Clement says the following about love in his book 'The Book of Christian Mysticism,' "spiritual progress no other test in the end, nor any better expression, than our ability to love. It has to be unselfish love, founded on respect; a service, a disinterested affection that does not ask to be paid in return ("our" philotimo), a 'sympathy,' indeed an 'empathy,' that takes us out of ourselves enabling us to 'feel with' the other person and indeed to 'feel' him or her. It gives us the ability to discover in the other person an inward nature as mysterious and deep us our own, but different and willed to be so - by God.
It is with respect to this quote above I call Smike and those like him philotimetic characters, because they both depict philotimos in the character and engage the philotimos of the reader.
They have an ennobling effect on the human heart, their pain saves and transforms..and we see this in them and have respect...honor towards it...and in that taste a little of that goodness and transformation ourselves. Consider Smike could not have believably been the creature of pure and simple love he became when rescued unless he had first known great, even helpless suffering. The character who suffers a little we expect to be angry or bitter...but an innocent tormented with great suffering we hope emerges as stranger to bitterness. We dread the death of innocence. It is one of the great ironies of real life...so when we see it in a story, if not overdone it provokes in us a corresponding harmonic of sweetness, of forgiveness...of the sacred potential in pain and suffering...the hard won treasure of simple charity...philotimos...and its close kin philokallos, the love of beauty.
These characters I think do not just engage our sympathies, but reveal them to us, showing us the deepest inclinations of our own hearts...which in turn gives us hope, for we see that there is indeed a beachhead of mercy within us....and as we all know, or should know, deep calls to Deep.
And I think if there is a particular theological end or justification for Christian writing of any category it might well be this that whatever form or tack it takes it should in some way nurture the heart in philotimos, causing it to find occasion to be lifted up, if only a little in responsive gratitude. And this frees us from the temptation to be too overt...too spot on in developing the particular theological subtext of a story, if any. Sometimes it may be enough that we have evoked pity and a "reverent" admiration...for a mouse or a monkey...or even a carelessly plucked leaf. And in that the reader is left with a better disposed heart than before. The next story, the next author might move them a little further on and a little deeper in.
Thoughts? Critiques? Elaborations?