00:00:02
S1: So my name is Mark Mennel and I've been to a number of hotspots before. Um, and it's, but it's the first one I've been to since Covid. So it's very nice to be back. Um, and, uh, yeah, it's a very happy place for me. I hope it is for you. Um, and, uh, I want to think about this question of the long defeat. It's something that has been percolating in my mind for the last couple of years, probably, um, and feels more relevant than ever. Um, and, uh, and yet it's not a straightforward thing. It's a difficult thing. Um, but that makes it all the more important, it seems to me. But anyway, there'll be time for interaction and questions. Um, even though the phrase is associated with Tolkien. I'm not spending my whole time talking about Tolkien. I'm just using that as a lure to rabbits because I know you're all suckers. And basically, if you see Tolkien somewhere, you'll be here, which is it's worked like a dream. So thank you very much. Um, let me, uh, let me pray as we begin. Father, you are a good God. You have good purposes, and we trust you as we sang earlier. Thank you that you are at work. Even when the world seems anarchic and chaotic. That you are at work, even despite evidence to the contrary. We pray that this might give us insight into how we can trust in your providence. With so many other things going on that don't seem to make much sense. For your glory sake. Amen. Now, the phrase the long defeat actually comes only once in the entire Lord of the rings trilogy. Um, and it comes in 1 or 2 other documents. Um, basically it's mentioned a handful of times in Tolkien's letters, and so it's a very rare one, but actually it's fairly fundamental to the way he thought and what he understood his worldview to be. So this is one letter he wrote in December 1956 to someone called Amy Ronald. Um, and in the collected letters, there are a number of letters he wrote to her. I don't really know anything about her. I haven't done any digging around, but, um, they had quite a correspondence and she would ask questions and, and so on. And so this is a paragraph from that letter of 1956. Frodo was not, in modern terms, a pacifist. Of course, he was mainly horrified at the prospect of civil war among hobbits, but he had, I suppose, also reached the conclusion that physical fighting is actually less ultimately affected than most effective. The most good men think it is. Actually, I'm a Christian and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat, though it contains and in a legend may contain more clearly a movingly. Some samples or glimpses of final victory. Human history can only be a long defeat. And, of course, that is in marked contrast to the modernist enlightenment understanding of the world, whether it's the capitalist version or the communist version, that we are constantly making something better and we are making progress. It's funny how being progressive has become. Certainly in this part of the world, identified with one political strand, but actually it's riven through the whole of enlightenment, thinking that we are always making progress to some greater, better stage and age. But that is not a biblical or Christian worldview at all. And Tolkien was very, very clear about this. It's not surprising, perhaps, from somebody like Lewis, who had been in the First World War trenches. So what does he mean by the long defeat? Well, I want to consider. Oh, hello. There we are. It's going to come and go. That's fine. You. You can't come and go. You've just got to stay where you are. Um. I want to talk about for. Well, they're not quite all white and they're not quite all European, but they're all very dead and they're all men. Um, so I've got four dead. Almost white, almost European men. I want to talk about today. Um, not that I think I want to make a point of that, but these four, it seems to me, um, have really helped me understand this, but maybe you can think of living non-white non-male um, others who can chip in. Tolkien obviously was English. He was a scholar primarily as well as a novelist. Shusaku Endo was a novelist in Japanese, Roman Catholic, and he was his mother had become Catholic. Um, Prokofiev was Ukrainian, Russian, um, who lived some of his time in the West and was lured back to Russia by Stalin. Very, very clever little sort of campaign. Mind games. Come on in. Um, and, uh, he, he, he came back to Russia and was given a sort of marvelous sort of fated tour around the country. And everybody loved him. And he went back to the States and he was offered another tour, comes back to Russia, and then they take his passport. So he never leaves again. And then T.S. Eliot, I want to close with a little bit of Eliot, because that's always a wise thing to do. And this will entail definitely some plot spoilers. Um, and I'm completely unashamed about that. So let's think about the long defeat in middle earth. First of all. He, Tolkien had no illusions about history or about the future. And, um, he, like Elrond, knew that from this world, many fair things will fade and be forgotten. That is my belief, says Elrond. Many beautiful things will be destroyed. I just three weeks ago was in Ukraine, and it's a country I've been to a number of times and have grown to love very much. And there are beautiful things and beautiful people being destroyed on the whims of a megalomaniac who's not mad. He has purpose. He has reason, he has an ideology, but it is malicious and cruel and, um, profoundly unjust. Uh, please don't believe any of the rhetoric about the invasion of Ukraine being anything other than megalomania and, um, self-aggrandizement. He's certainly not extending or restoring Christian civilization. That is Absolute baloney. Um, but the interesting thing is that Tolkien was like Elrond not despairing and not a pessimist. And here is the single mention from Lord of the Rings in Galadriel in that beautiful moment is speaking to Frodo. I'm not going to try and do a Galadriel accent. I don't look or sound like Cate Blanchett. No, no I don't. Um, okay. Your quest is known to us, said Galadriel, looking at Frodo. But we will not hear speak of it more openly. Yet not in vain will it prove, maybe, that you came to this land seeking aid, as Gandalf himself plainly purposed for the Lord of the. Galadriel is accounted the wisest of the elves of Middle earth and a giver of gifts beyond the power of kings. He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn. And I've dwelt with him. Years uncounted. For air the fall of Nargothrond our Gondolin. I passed over the mountains. And together, through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat. It's melancholy. And heavy. And it forces us to confront the ultimate futility of human's best laid plans and projects. One writer put it like this after all, the long defeat is not simply a fading away of magic and beauty. It is also decline. The arch of history does not only point downwards, it does so in a spiral, each cycle being lesser than the one before. Now there are two key places, I think, where you see this at work. Um, in the narrative. So I'm going to start the first one is at Helm's Deep. I'll play you the clip. Um, and, um, and I think. I've included enough to give a sense of just the sheer hopelessness of it. And that's the point. This is futile. And what we see is that basically all is lost.
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S2: So the fortress is taken. It is over. You said this portrait would never fall. You didn't defend it. They sealed it. They have died defending it.
00:10:56
S3: Breaking in.
00:11:06
S4: Is another way for the women and children to get out of the caves. They said no other way.
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S5: There is one passage.
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S2: It leads into the mountains. But they will not get far. There are too many.
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S4: Send word for the women and children to make for the mountain pass and barricade the entrance.
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S6: So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?
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S7: Right out with me. Right out of me.
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S2: For death and glory. For Roman.
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S7: For your people.
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S2: Your sun is rising. To my coming at first light on the first day. That door look to the east.
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S5: Yes. Yes.
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S2: The Horn of Helm Hammerhand shall sound in the deep. One last time. Yes. Let this be the hour when we draw swords together. Now. The ruin and the Red Dawn.
00:14:06
S8: Look it up.
00:15:11
S1: That's enough of that rubbish. Well. Um, obviously the way Peter Jackson portrays it is entirely fitting with what Tolkien is talking about. But this is a supernatural intervention. This is this is futile. It's impossible. They're doomed. And so they can only ride out for death and glory. Um, and you know, there's plenty of precedent of that. You know, even in ancient classical history, just, you know, that's the true heroism, um, of legend. Um, but obviously it's a defeat until it's just at the last moment turned. And that is what Tolkien described as a eucatastrophe. It's turned to bring about good at the last moment when it was least expected and most impossible. The interesting thing is that, um, there is another moment of this at the climax of the entire trilogy at Mount Doom. And, you know, after all this time and effort and agony and suspense, tension, pain, wounds, you name it. And particularly in Frodo, the suffering and the scars that he bears. Um, at the very end, all seem in vain. It's chaotic. When Sam Frodo finally gets the mountain, they're hardly speaking. Um. Gollum suddenly appears and he's there too. And it's absolutely unclear who's in charge of what and who's going to make things happen. And. And finally, after all this time, Frodo gives in. And takes the ring at the final furlong, if you like. This is the conclusion of the matter. The. The fires below awoke and anger. The red light blaze and all. The cavern was filled with a great glare and heat. Suddenly Sam saw Gollum's long hands draw up towards. To his mouth his white fangs gleamed and then they snapped a bit. As they bit, Frodo gave a cry, and there he was, fallen on his knees at the chasm's edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. It shone now as if verily it was wrought. Of living fire. Precious, precious, precious Gollum, cried my precious. Oh, my precious! And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then, with a shriek, he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail. Precious. And he was gone. You see, even at this point it's an accident. He trips. After all this time and the purpose, the energy that, you know, the fellowship to get these two hobbits to the to the mountain in the end. It's an accident. Their efforts, while remarkable and almost superhuman to got there. They are not enough. Theirs was a long defeat. Frodo and Sam failed, which is an agonizing thought, isn't it? Now you see, here's the thing. Ted Turner, in his book Oasis of Imagination, has a lovely section about this. He says, against the sort of dimming of the world, there is no cause for despair. Ultimately, there are some reasons for despair, but ultimately there is no cause. In fact, Galadriel is happy to fight the long defeat because the alternative, not fighting, is intolerable. Despair. In the trilogy is repeatedly linked with evil a device of the enemy. The deadliest weapon of the Nazgul, the ringwraiths captains of Sauron's armies, is the power to inspire despair, to tempt enemies, to give up and cave. There's a kind of parallel, isn't there, in Harry Potter with the Dementors. Gandalf is the wisest of the heroes in the story. He has but one main task to encourage the peoples of middle earth to resist and draw them out of despair into hope. That's his job, is to keep them at it despite it all. And he does that literally with Théoden curing him of the spells of his despair and the passivity imposed on him by Wormtongue. He does it again for the soldiers of Gondor during the siege of Minas Tirith. This is what Jake Mead says about it. For Tolkien, the demands of honour wed to wisdom and prudence are generally the only demands on us when we consider what we ought to do. History is simply the stage on which we act, playing our part well or poorly. Our feet are set down at some moment in time by forces entirely beyond our control, and we must then decide how to walk. As the wizard Gandalf counsels elsewhere in Lord of the rings, all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that's given us. Notice it's not saying we've got to have grand strategies and amazing plans, and we've got to be the sort of the individuals who bestride the world like a colossus, sorting it all out. There are many people in global politics who feel that that is their job. But Tolkien is very clear that that is nobody's job, in actual fact. All we have to do, says Gandalf, is do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. I want to come back to that. But that is the kingdom of God. That's what it's like. It is not of this world. It does not require or depend on our genius or our strategic brilliance or even our endurance. That's the shock of the Frodo incident, isn't it? His endurance was insufficient. Well, let me come to. Japan. How many people have read the book? Handful. How many people have seen the movie? Handful. Okay, I'll try and give a bit of explanation. It is a hard watch. You have to be in a good frame of mind to watch it. It's not light entertainment. It has no Muppets and things like that in it. I mean, it would be surprising if it did, but. So 16th century Japan Jesuit missionaries. Um, Japan has had various stages of being closed to the rest of the world and then being opened up, particularly by trade. Um, and then recognizing that things were, you know, um, making their culture and, and identity vulnerable. And so it gets clamped down on again. Shusaku Endo um, first published this in Japanese in 1969. And he grew up feeling a complete fish out of water. Um, Japanese and Roman Catholic. Um, and they're just not many of them around. Certainly not then. Certainly not now. Um, and he had a kind of lifelong quest to square the circle. He thought as a young student, he would go to France because that was a Catholic country. Um, go to France and explore what it means to be Catholic in a country that's Catholic. Well, little did he know that France by then was completely secular. And it was around the time of the protests in Paris in 68 and all of this sort of stuff, as well as existentialism and and all of that. Um, so that was really shocking and very, very disturbing for him. Um, if you want a sort of more, um, not palatable, sort of easier access novel by endo to get into is his book wonderful. Full, full. He talked about this strange Frenchman who appears on a freighter in. In Japan, and is a kind of Christ figure like sort of Dostoyevsky. Idiot. Um. And he wrote that after after coming back from Paris, I think. Um, but anyway, this was a time of real turmoil in Japan and the Jesuits. Being some of the most adventurous but also theologically flexible. That's interesting. The Jesuits has always been very good at sort of ducking and diving almost to the point of, um, uh, changing things radically. Um, but being very good at having the sort of mindset that works how to enculturate and adapt. And so they had considerable success, um, uh, with a deep, tragic irony in, um, the area around Nagasaki in particular. And there are two key characters, Father Rodriguez and Father Garupe, who is sent on an arduous journey to Japan to discover what had happened to their mentor, Father Ferreira. Um, because the news has sort of filtered back somehow that he has apostatized given up the faith and, um, has basically completely undermined the mission. And so, um, neither of them can quite believe it. They hugely respected, um Ferreira and so they want to find out what's going on and rescue the situation. Um, when they finally get there, they're in hiding, um, and protected by Christians who are being persecuted and hunted down. Um, and they more than meet their match in the so-called Inquisitor. He himself had been a Christian, so he knew all, He knew it all. And so he knew exactly where their vulnerable spots were, their Achilles heels. He knew exactly how to play mind games with them and was profoundly, well, extraordinarily inventive in his malice and cruelty. And he's based on an historical figure. Um, the other key character is this guy Kichijiro, who is a local believer. Um, and the priest, these two priests who've arrived depend on him, but he is far from dependable and actually betrays them more than once. And yet the deeply uncomfortable suggestion is that he is the one who is most like Christ. And it's part of the journey for Rodriguez is to figure out actually what it really means to be like Christ in a sort of Philippians two sense. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be exploited, but made himself nothing. Um, and so, um. We see, um, the narrative mainly through the eyes of, of Rodriguez. Um, and we, we sense his profound disorientation and confusion and the sense that everybody around him, certainly the Japanese authorities are several steps ahead of him at each turn. So this is, um, I'll read you a little bit from this. Um, he is being forced to watch Christians being tortured and killed, um, to try and get him to recant. Yet his perplexity did not come from the event that had just happened so suddenly. What he could not understand was the stillness of the courtyard. The voice of the cicada, the whirling wings of the flies. A man had died, yet the outside world went on as if nothing had happened. Could anything be more crazy? Was this martyrdom? Why are you silent here? This one eyed man has died. And for you? You ought to know. Why does this stillness continue this noon day? Stillness. The sound of the flies. This crazy thing, this cruel business. And you avert your face as though indifferent. This I cannot bear. Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy. His trembling lips moved a while in prayer, but the words faded from his lips. Lord, do not abandon me any more. Do not abandon me. In this mysterious way is this prayer for a long time. I believe that prayer is uttered to praise and glorify you. But when I speak to you, it's only as if I only blaspheme on the day of my death too. Will the world go relentlessly on its way, indifferent, just as now, after I murdered. Will the cicada sing. And the flies whirl their wings inducing sleep. Do I want to be heroic as that? And yet am I looking for the true hidden martyrdom. Or just for a glorious death? Is that what I want? To be honored. To be prayed to be called a saint. Clasping his knees. He sat on the floor, looking straight in front of him. It was almost noon until the third hour. Darkness covered the earth. Here's a clip from the movie. And of course, Scorsese. Martin Scorsese spent 30 years trying to make this movie. Um, and the book was really important for me. Years ago when I read it. And so it's one of those situations I was terrified of, you know, how it was going to transfer to screen because so often it's rubbish. This is one of the few occasions that really wasn't rubbish. It was amazing. Like Slough House, if you ever got into the Slough Slow Horses books, that um, completely different genre and it's all very silly and it just popped into my head so I thought I'd just say it. Um, but those are books I love and that's a brilliant, um, dramatisation. But anyway, forget that. Back to 16th century Japan and depressing stuff. Um, so, um, here. So, um, uh, Andrew Garfield is playing Rodriguez. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think this makes self-explanatory.
00:31:32
S2: I have labored in this country for 15 years.
00:31:35
S1: Ferreira.
00:31:38
S2: Our religion does not take root in this country because the roots have been torn up. No, because this country is a swamp. Nothing grows here like the subway here, and the roots rot. There was a time when Christianity grew and flourished here. When in your time, father, in your time. Before you became like. Like her. Like her. Yes. Please. Listen. The Japanese only believe in their distortion of our gospel. So they did not believe at all. They never believed. How can you say that? I remember the time of Saint Francis Xavier through your own time. There were hundreds of thousands of converts. Converts, converts? Yes. Francis Xavier came here to teach the Japanese about the Son of God. But first he had to ask how to refer to God. David. He was told, until I show you they are tiny, G. They hope there is the Son of God, God's only begotten son. And the scriptures say Jesus rose on the third day in Japan. The Son of God rises daily. The Japanese cannot think of an existence beyond the realm of nature. For them, nothing transcends the human. They can't conceive of our idea of the Christian God.
00:33:04
S7: You're wrong.
00:33:05
S2: They worship God.
00:33:07
S7: God our Lord. They praise the name of Davis.
00:33:11
S2: That's just another word for God. They never knew.
00:33:15
S7: I saw men die.
00:33:17
S2: I did too.
00:33:18
S7: For they use on fire with their faith.
00:33:22
S2: Till martyrs may have been on fire, father. But it was not with the Christian faith.
00:33:27
S7: I saw them die. I saw them die. They did not die for nothing, I did not.
00:33:35
S2: They're dying for you.
00:33:46
S1: It's a devastating conversation, and it kind of haunts him for the rest of the movie because it feeds. It digs right at the roots of all his doubts. Um, and the Ferreira character is not the only person who will say Japan is a swamp that will come from the Inquisitor and it's part of the, if you like the, the the agenda, the propaganda for us. Explaining why this should not be allowed. Um, so it's agony. Um, and the silence and the way the soundtrack is made is ingenious. Um, Scorsese absolutely takes that idea of, um, you know, the sounds of insects as basically being the sound of God's silence. That's all you can hear if you sort of listen carefully, which is basically not God at all. Um. But God is not silent. And God does speak to Rodriguez in the most startling and unsettling and dangerous of ways. And this is this is the remarkable thing. Oh, they've given up early. Losers. Anyway, um. The um it's the most remarkable thing about this whole narrative. Um, and so the big question is how long can Rodriguez stand it knowing that the longer he resists, the more people will die? Um, and so one of the tactics that the Inquisitor uses is for people to tread on the fumiart, which is, um, and I've seen a number of them, they're in museums now basically they are Christian images in sort of bas relief or something. And the idea is that you tread on it as the ultimate insult and the ultimate declaration that you've rejected this. So you know, Christ on the cross to tread on. That is, you know, the ultimate insult. Um, but the Inquisitor is shrewd enough to recognize that you can do this as a one off, but he makes them do it every week. They've got to keep doing it. Um, so his mind games are absolutely, um well honed. Oh, it might, might be Mary and the Christ child. Whatever. It's basically to demonstrate publicly your rejection of the faith. Um, and it's a kind of antithesis of baptism in a way. And after months and months, maybe years, we don't know. Can't tell. He finally gives in, just as Father Liam Neeson did. The first rays of the dawn appear. The light shines on his long neck, stretched out like a chicken, and upon bony shoulders the priest grasped the. Fumi. This is Rodriguez, by the way. The priest grasped the Fumi with both hands, bringing it close to his eyes. He would like to press it to his own faith. That faith trampled on by so many feet. With saddened glance, he stares intently at the man in the center of the Fumi. Worn down and hollow with the constant trampling, trampling. A tear is about to fall from his eye. Ah, he says, trembling the pain. It's only a formality. What do formalities matter? The interpreter urges him on excitedly. Only go through with the exterior form of trampling. That's all you need to do. The priest raises his foot in it. He feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he's considered the most beautiful thing in his life, or what he's believed most pure. And what has filled with the ideals and dreams of man. How his foot aches. And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest. Trample, trample. I, more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample. It was to be trampled on by men that I was brought into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross. The priest placed his foot on the Fumiart dawn broke, and far in the distance the cock crew. The big surprises of this book? Well, there are a lot. One is there is a church in Japan still. Um, Endo is trying to explore what it means to be Japanese and believe in the Christian God. And in fact, the film Scorsese he makes is dedicated to Japanese believers. How can it be in this religious swamp that the shoots of new life can grow? But more even than that is the question is human failure and even apostasy the end of the story? Well, God can even use that. Perhaps human plans to overcome and conquer are doomed to fail always. But God can water the seed and build his church. Which is why it's such an amazing moment when Kichijiro comes to Rodriguez for confession. After. Both have outwardly become conforming Buddhists. Jesus was the one to call on him, to trample, in other words, to commit the act of apostasy himself. And the thing about Kichijiro is, when I first tried to get my head around him and what's going on with him, he seems utterly despicable. And, you know, talk about a fair weather friend. But actually, he's the most human of them all, and he's the one that Rodriguez needs to learn from, because the problem is, Rodrigo Rodriguez thinks he's better than him. MM. With good reason. At one level, he he betrayed him to the authorities. And that's made very explicit. He's given 30 pieces of silver. But despite his repeated cowardice and it is cowardice. Kichijiro cannot sever himself from Christ. He says this. No matter how often I betray him, I cannot wash his name from my lips. His weakness is itself a strange, backhanded testimony to the persistence of faith. So this is that scene where both of them now are living respectable Japanese lives. Rodriguez has been given a wife and family. Um, she was the widow of one of the Christians who'd been executed.
00:41:59
S7: I heard the message is meant for you. Was there trouble? No. Just. They only wanted to make sure I wrote the call. My latest pronunciation. Thank you. I think I must. Thank you. For being here with me. You sure need them. That's right. No, no. I'm not. Not anymore. I'm a fallen priest. What do you want? The last priest left. You could still hear my confession. No, I can't. No, I can't. I still suffer for what I did, but. I betrayed you, I betrayed my family. I betrayed our Lord. Please. Share my. Lord. I fought against your silence. I suffered.
00:44:07
S2: Beside you. I was never silent.
00:44:16
S7: I know. That even if God had been silent my whole life. To this very day. Everything I know. Everything I've done. Speaks of him. Because in the silence that I heard your voice.
00:45:22
S1: When Rodriguez dies with Buddha's name and imposed wife. The narrator says this. He loved him now, in a different way than before. Everything that had happened until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. And when he's given funeral rites, a tiny crucifix is found concealed in the palm of his hand. Treading the fumiart itself is, paradoxically, paradoxically, a sign of the survival of his faith, because it is about the total identification with Jesus, the outcast. Rodriguez reflects that the image of Christ to be trampled is itself the gospel. He said this the face of the man on the fumiart was filled with suffering, inviting all to share in his pain. It's hard to get our heads around. It's part of Endo's personal. Working out what it means to be a Japanese Christian. That has no history of so-called Christian triumph. Um, in some ways, one of the worst things that ever happened to Christianity was the Emperor Constantine, when suddenly power became synonymous with church. Um, and the sort of iterations of this down the centuries have been terrible. Um, and endo is kind of saying, well, at least Japan didn't have that. Um, and what I love about the way that scene is, is crafted, um, he doesn't actually give him absolution, but he totally identifies with him and comes down to his level and it's sort of forehead to forehead, isn't it? And it's like, at last You'll together. It's a stunning moment. And the character. I just love him. He's just amazing. If you, um, know Graham Greene's novels, there are definitely resonances with, um, the power and the glory and the whisky priest. Um, and Endo was sometimes described as, um, the Japanese green. Maybe green was the English endo, I don't know. Um, but, um, but actually Graham Greene was a huge admirer of this novel and was one of the people who really, um, spoke for it and pushed it out. Um, it's in the very failures of this man that actually God is at work and it's so subversive to the way we think naturally as Westerners, but also as Western Christians. We think it's all about our strategies and our five year, ten year plans and, you know, our nice franchised courses and conferences and all kinds of sort of cunning plans for changing the world. And basically, it's just worth a hill of beans. What's the point? I'm exaggerating, but only just. Okay, well, let's change tune completely again. And now think of some music. So Prokofiev, um, was born in 1891. So, um, the last, um, 15 or so years of Tsarist rule born in what is now Ukraine. Um, and um, his seventh Symphony is his last one. Um, and, uh. This was the last composition he had performed before he died. Um, and by some weird, dark quirk of fate, he died less than an hour before Stalin, on the same day of the same cause they both had a brain hemorrhage on the same day. So the world didn't find out that Prokofiev was dead for several days. Because, of course, Stalin took central billing. Um, and, um, Prokofiev writes this from 51 to 52. He's aged 60. He's back in Russia. He's living in poverty. So, you know, he'd been lured back, um, and basically was very gullible and thought that, you know, his fame would protect him. It didn't. Um, so he has this triumphant tour goes back to the States. Lured back for another tour and then it's game over. And basically he was utterly dependent, like all musicians and artists of any sort in the Soviet Union, on government patronage. And lest we sort of feel superior about it, basically, it's not that different from capitalist patronage in the West. And the way this would work often is that, um, the, the various different art forms, they'd have their commissions, committees and commissars and things, and there would be annual prizes for good work that met certain guidelines and criteria and all the rest. And that would mean, um, you would be given prize money that would enable you to live. And so, um, it's the carrot and the stick if you want to succeed, if you want to, you know. feed your family and, you know, do what you want to do, uh, artistically. Then you have to walk a tightrope between obedience and integrity. It's incredibly difficult. And, um. By 1951, um, as I say, he was in poverty. He was pretty ill. And, um, he needed to win the Stalin gold Prize. Um, so an annual prize for music. It was worth 10,000 rubles. Um, that would, that would see him through for a few months. Um, and there was huge pressure. He'd actually been commissioned by the children's radio division of Soviet radio and they, they commissioned a lot of great music actually, and from, from all the greats. So there's some wonderful stuff, um, they commissioned, they seem to know what they were doing. Um, and, um, this symphony has sometimes been called the Children's Symphony. It's very accessible. It's not the sort of plinky, plonky, quirky, angular stuff that some people might expect is glorious. And, um, my great musical hero, Shostakovich, he, he had great admiration for this symphony because it really it has a clarity, it has a simplicity. It's direct, grabs you by the lapels and draws you in. And you feel the sort of narrative as it goes along. It's fantastic piece, but all the time the huge dilemma is how do you have artistic integrity and yet stay alive literally, because a wrong step or a miscalculation in terms of what you compose or paint or write could lead to the gulag, if not execution in a KGB basement. Um, and all the big names that if you know anything about sort of Soviet arts. All the big names had lost close friends. Um. And basically what you get in these for movies. We don't have time to play the whole thing, sadly, but I would encourage you to. And I put a couple. Of suggested recordings on the sheet. Um, but it takes us on a big kind of trip, almost a sort of trip through. Russian history. Um, not in a very sort of systematic way. And I don't want it to get the impression that it's. You know, you can identify different moments. It's not like that, but it's, it's kind of a full immersion in the cultural legacy and, and inheritance, if you like. And there's some glorious things. And Prokofiev really enjoys himself in this. Um, and you know, at moments you can sort of almost picture sort of Aristocratic country balls and going for sleigh rides in the winter and things like this. Um, you know, or vast empty landscapes in the Eurasian steppes. Um, but for all the sort of momentary highlights, one of the things that becomes very clear is that none of these moods is sustainable, and the darkness always creeps in and he just can't keep at it. So the fourth movement is the climactic one, the fourth one, and it begins, and I am going to play the whole of the fourth movement before I finish. But it begins with a real sort of sense of optimism and energy, and it's very exciting and it sweeps you up in it. You think, oh, this is great. It's kind of like a sleigh ride or a gallop across the fields. Um, and it's almost as if Prokofiev is in a rush. You can almost feel the orchestra tripping over themselves to get somewhere. Um, but that's not sustained for the whole eight minutes of this movement. It's interrupted by something. There's a kind of military march past at one point that's a bit weird. Um, but it's almost humorous and jokey, so that's also a bit weird. That doesn't quite jar. Are we in the realms of dreams? You can't tell, but things don't feel completely right. It doesn't sort of delay the gallop. You'll hear that the gallop suddenly picks up again and we're off. Um, but it just adds a different flavour. And I don't think you can pin down exactly what what's going on. Um, but that's part of the intrigue of it. And then as it draws to a close, you have this big epic theme that keeps being interrupted by a sort of clip clopping theme. Um, and there's a repeat of a theme from the very first movement and then the whole symphony loses momentum. The tempo just winds down. It's like for all these moments of exuberance and joy, even he just can't do it. He just can't do it anymore. It's like he's too exhausted to keep fighting the system. I want to play a couple of little clips. Um, before I play you the whole movement. So I've sort of isolated this sort of motif that you get in the first and the fourth movement of this sort of ticking clock. It's not quite a ticking clock, but that's the kind of feeling it gives. So hopefully this will work. Okay, so listen out for that. Now, the reason for picking on this movement and this symphony is that Prokofiev needed to get that money because he was starving. Um, his close friend, um, Slava Rostropovich, the cellist was a young man. Um. And Rostropovich, um, was shocked. He went to visit him. I think Rostropovich was in his early 20s, went to visit him at his apartment in Moscow and was appalled by how emaciated and weak he was. And so started just bringing food to him and things. Um, and, um. Prokofiev needed the money. And so he knew that what he wanted to write would not win the prize. So he has to write what's known as the official ending. Um, and you can still get recordings of the official ending. Often when people release discs of it, they'll, they'll do both. So you can compare them. Not always, but anyway. So this is the official ending. Um, and I won't say anything about it, but just tell me what you think of this. So this is the final couple of minutes of the official ending of this movement. Thoughts? What does that sound like to you? Triumphant. Yeah.
00:59:48
S9: Sounds like a conclusion.
00:59:50
S1: It does. Yep. It's tied up in bows.
00:59:55
S10: Thinking of American manifest destiny. It shares some of the same. What would I associate from childhood with the sort of Old West stories? Like, oh, this is this is our empire.
01:00:03
S1: Right? So yeah, there's a there's a sort of profound, sort of satisfied optimism about it.
01:00:12
S9: Reminiscent of like the writing about.
01:00:14
S1: Okay, yeah. You can't escape Wagner in the 20th century.
01:00:21
S9: Almost made me think it sounds more than a little bit like Copland.
01:00:24
S1: Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
01:00:26
S9: Just.
01:00:27
S1: Yeah, I mean rodeo. There's a bit of that in there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
01:00:36
S9: Kind of like forced and fake.
01:00:37
S1: Right?
01:00:38
S9: Like.
01:00:39
S1: Yeah.
01:00:40
S9: Here we go. I mean, just I was waiting for it.
01:00:44
S1: It feels to me anyway, utterly hollow.
01:00:47
S9: Yeah. Almost a mockery, almost like cartoon.
01:00:51
S1: Right. So I always think of Looney Tunes. It's just sort of. Okay, I'm done with that. Tie it up in a bow. Put it on the conveyor belt. Gone. Exactly. That's all folks. It's heartbreaking, actually. It's sort of Disney kitsch. It's not an honest musical statement. Whereas the rest of the symphony has been, in some ways he's wrestling with things. But it feels like a kind of shallow hat tip to officialdom. As one writer said, it needed to end with a nice big bang. And so it did. Prokofiev had to avoid a musical face crime. You know what a face crime is is where your face reveals your true feelings. He's not smiling confidently enough. But is not what Prokofiev wanted. And he told Rostropovich, um. Here he is with Rostropovich. Um. As a young man, he told him, Slava, you'll live much longer than I. And you must take care that this new ending never exists after me. So he gave Rostropovich the real ending to be protected for such a time as it was possible to perform it. In his last month he worked on other pieces, but he was sickening, and to his wife's distress he found. She found him each morning more and more depressed. When she asked if he felt pain anywhere, he said, my soul hurts. He was defeated and I think we hear it. So here's the Gallup. Big scene from the first movement. It's just gone. Here's the triumph. It is in his defeat that he's made something stunningly beautiful and real and is in itself a hopeful act. And there's something inspiring about doing that, even when you know you're dying and you're sick and you're fed up and the world is imploding and you live under the reign of a bastard dictator who is basically out to destroy everything good. Incredible beauty and even hope in the face of his own despair and pain. Jake Maeder again, the possibility of a final disastrous defeat is uncomfortable for us. You don't say. Steeped as we are in Post-enlightenment progress narratives in which the world is always improving through innovation, technology and human boldness. Are we doomed? Feels like it sometimes. I was in Kiev when that big summit happened in Beijing with Putin and Modi and Co, and it was the topic of conversation with everybody I met. It felt like the end. The odds are stacked against things of beauty and truth and justice. There are days when the arc of the universe does not bend towards justice. Of course, when Doctor King spoke of that, he was speaking in eschatological terms. He wasn't necessarily necessarily saying, we will see it in human history, but that doesn't mean you don't try. The odds are stacked against us. But this is the world of the long defeat. It's part of its very nature. But that doesn't stop Galadriel from urging Frodo on. It doesn't stop Arwen from giving up her immortality. It doesn't stop the hobbits from even trying. It doesn't stop Aragorn. They know it is beyond their hands, and basically it is much less explicit in middle earth than it is in Narnia. But it is clear that the only thing they have to depend on is Providence. As Jake Meador says, everything sad comes untrue. As Sam White says near the end. This kind of event, which Tolkien called a eucatastrophe, the hope unlooked for when all seems lost. In other words, it's so lost that you've given up looking. Allows good to face evil, even though history remains something of a long defeat. It's so interesting, isn't it, that people talk about being on the wrong side of history or, um, having this sense that we will overcome and we will make progress? Um, it's pure humanism. And hubris. God is bigger than all our flaws and our failures and beauty is still possible. And sometimes beauty is what breaks in. We trust in Eucatastrophe, even though it is a fool's hope and the world around us thinks we are insane. Like Noah building a boat in a desert. What a moron. And the thing is. The triumph is never guaranteed or certain in this life. So maybe this is the end of the ascendancy of the West. Maybe that's no bad thing. Maybe we're just going to have to come to terms with that like the rest of the world has for generations. Big deal. Ya boo! Now, there are plenty of things I will be very sad about. And there are things about, um, what we have had that seem precious and worth fighting for. I am absolutely in no doubt about that. But we need to do what Augustine did when writing The City of God after the sacking of Rome. That actually is not the end of the world. It's the end of this empire. It's the end of this framework and this dispensation, if you like to call it that. It's the end of the way. We are used to things. So I'm, you know, I've been involved in Christian missions in for the last 25 years. One of the things that actually we're having to recognize is Western and particularly American Christian money is not going to be around forever. And we need to start thinking about, well, there's a lot of Chinese Christian money, but what agendas is that going to set? There's a lot of things that are changing. We're going to have to adjust. It's going to be very uncomfortable. And when the world is in flux, that's when people do extreme things and go a bit bananas. But I want to end with these words from Elliot because, um. He's a dead white European male. And he saw the light. Actually, he was American, but he renounced his American citizenship to become British, which is just marvelous and entirely appropriate. Um, but at the end of the choruses from the Rock, the Rock was a play. Um, and I think this, this little sequence has become my motto, really. I come back to it all the time. And I think this is plumb center to what we're talking about. And it's a kind of Ecclesiastes. The lot of man is ceaseless labor Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder or irregular labor. Labor which is not pleasant. I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know that it is hard to be really useful. Resigning the things that men count for happiness. Seeking the good deeds that lead to obscurity. Accepting with equal face those that bring ignominy. The applause of all or the love of none. All men are ready to invest their money. But most expect dividends. I say to you, make perfect your will. I say, take no thought of the harvest, but only of proper sowing. I don't think you would have put it like this, but that is how to live in the world of the long defeat. You don't know what difference. Whatever you do makes. It's impossible to know. It's the butterfly's wings in the Amazon. You don't know. But that doesn't mean you don't do the right thing. And Theoden marching out from Helm's Deep. Has no certainty at all. In fact, it's unlikely that he believes it's going to happen at all, that it's going to create a pincer movement when he does. Because basically he could have given up. But it meant that the orcs had to fight on two fronts. If he hadn't done that, it wouldn't have worked. Well, that's quite enough of all that rubbish. Um, we've got time for questions or comments. Thoughts? Um. I don't know why that TV keeps going on and off. But there we go. Far away.
01:20:06
S11: The scriptural allusion that keeps speaking to me throughout all we put before us so powerfully today is the one that's meant most to me in my adult life. And that's the account of Jesus, Lazarus, and the incongruent facts that he delayed coming, right, knowing. And when he arrived, the sister said, what have you had been here? He'd be alive. And I love his response. Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God? It's too late. It's over. There's no there's no.
01:20:51
S1: Yeah. That's beautiful.
01:20:52
S11: They rolled the stone away and said, unbind him and let it go.
01:20:56
S1: Yeah, absolutely.
01:20:57
S11: That's where we put our trust.
01:21:01
S1: Yeah. It's it's a fool's hope. And yet we believe in a holy fool.
01:21:08
S11: Amen.
01:21:09
S1: Yeah, I was quite pleased with that. Yeah, I'm very pleased. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Hi.
01:21:17
S10: Um, one of the things that, you know, they were all they all lived through part of the 20th century. And one of the times they would have been in is the Second World War, which I don't want to rehash the whole, like Tolkien, World War two. Here's what the characters were and Hitler or whatever. But, um, it is interesting because the difference with 1945 was a very specific thing, because that war ended in just a horrible, shocking way, which kind of reminds me of the official end of the symphony because it was like, hey, we won. We're all done. Let's not talk too much about how horrible the ending of this was and how many questions it really left unanswered, and the way that these empires fell, which is the good guys won. Let's just leave it there. Um, so I don't know if you want to talk at all about the historicity of, I mean, uh, endo would have lived in Nagasaki, so it would have lived through this totally. Oh, I didn't know how you thought that impacted particularly his writing.
01:22:24
S1: Mhm. Um, I did think about that in prepping, but didn't sort of run out of time. I didn't really dig down into precisely. There's no doubt that he would have engaged with it, I'm sure. Um, and it's interesting, I suspect. The First World War shaped Lewis and Tolkien in terms of how visceral and brutal and cruel and terrible. It is because they were both there. But there's no question that I think we forget. And people lay into the appeasers, don't they? But we forget that it's only 20 years. It's only 20 years since there was a world war. And so they're saying we must avoid this. And everybody hated Churchill. He was so unpopular because he kept on saying, no, we've got to take our bombs. Oh, he's such a warmonger. He wants to go back to war. And there was an element of Churchill who, yeah, he did enjoy war. Um, he was good at it. But yes, you're right. Um, and I suppose there's a continuity there because basically what you have in Mordor and in the trenches and the destruction, um, for hundreds of miles and then that that gets repeated in the eastern front in the Second World War. Um. I'm wibbling. Um. I think it's a continuity in terms of human ingenuity and sort of enlightenment technology, the application of science for various ends to achieve things that you can predict. Um. That is a world that we control. And I think, you know, the Oppenheimer film, Nolans Oppenheimer film does bring that out. The destroyer of worlds from the Bhagavad Gita and stuff. Um, and it's almost like Oppenheimer does and doesn't know what he's doing. Um, I mean, it's Becca was talking about this with, um, funky man. What's he called? Ultraman. Ultraman. So the Japanese manga and the sort of superheroes and stuff born very much out of the horrors of nuclear devastation. Um, I mean, do you want to comment on that more?
01:25:02
S10: No, I think that's accurate. Thank you.
01:25:06
S1: Yeah.
01:25:06
S12: I was actually just going to add that your book by Fujimura that's on your list speaks to a lot of those issues and the impact of that on Japanese culture and that perspective that for those of us in the West maybe have not spent enough time sitting in. Um, I really, really recommend that because it also elaborates a lot of the issues.
01:25:27
S1: Yeah. Thank you. A couple more.
01:25:34
S12: Yeah, it was really struck listening to piece this time about how frantic the first seven minutes of that fourth movement are. And, um. I just felt so relatable to, you know, the pace of life and, you know, we think, oh, it wasn't that busy then or whatever, but that this is a, there's something repeatable in that too. Just that it felt.
01:26:10
S13: Like to me. It was just, it just fell off or he jumped off, you know, just.
01:26:22
S12: Yeah. I mean, like musically. Yeah. You make the fourth movement faster. I mean, that's sort of a symphonic tradition that he was obviously following, but I just thought it was so interesting that it felt, you know, he wound it all the way.
01:26:36
S1: Yeah.
01:26:37
S12: Just to have it.
01:26:38
S1: And there's a there's a inbuilt into it is a he's on the edge of control. Yeah. So he's tripping over himself and that. And it doesn't work if it's too slow. So he's almost he's he's managed to convey that. Um, but that makes that that is what makes the ending have sense because basically he can't keep going.
01:27:06
S12: With the first time you heard that, did you feel disappointment or relief when it finally dropped off at the end?
01:27:11
S1: You know, I cannot remember. I cannot remember.
01:27:14
S12: What do you feel now?
01:27:16
S1: Um, deep pathos and deep sadness. Just because I think, you know, the whole relationship between art and biography is a tricky one. But knowing the story and knowing that Rostropovich preserved that until after his death. Yeah.
01:27:37
S12: I agree, I felt deeply unsettled by that.
01:27:39
S1: Yeah.
01:27:40
S12: Churning underneath. I thought it was really scary. I also was wondering like, can I listen to this? In the same way that I listened to Peter and the Wolf? For certain, instruments are personified by certain characters and those deep underbelly instruments, brass. There's something unsettling about it. Is that a fair way to listen to this piece?
01:28:04
S1: Well, if it's unsettling you, it's unsettling you. Um, and in the end, that's all that matters. It's then you want to figure out, okay, so why why is this having this impact on me? Now, a related, but a separate question is, is this what Prokofiev is seeking perhaps now? It's very difficult to know. You can't. You know, the whole authorial intent is a tricky one. I don't think we abandon it completely. But particularly with music, which is the ultimate, you know, Non-textual music is the most abstract art form there is. So how do you pinpoint or pin down meaning is a very tricky one, but it's fascinating, isn't it, how even just with a little bit of knowledge of the language of music, there can be similar things. And I suspect you're not alone in feeling that. And that I think it reflects whether he would articulate it verbally or not. I think it reflects Prokofiev's emotional state.
01:29:09
S12: For me, the uncomfortable thing about it was that it evoked confusion, like it almost screams a lack of identity, like a divided or split.
01:29:21
S1: He keeps being interrupted by other stuff as well.
01:29:23
S12: Yes, and I think that unsettles a lot of people. Or you can't pin something down, or your brain is so wrapped up that it's twirling at a mile, you know, like you can't stop thinking. And so like you said, he just stops. Yeah.
01:29:41
S1: Do we need to stop? Are you okay?
01:29:44
S10: I was just thinking about, um. And with the silence, um, that the the great overwhelming defeat, um, isn't a defeat of everything, though. It feels like a defeat of everything but a defeat of the self. And, um, like with the, it feels like he's tripping over himself and it just keeps getting more and more chaotic. And towards the end, I kept thinking that it was ending. Like I kept thinking that he was giving up and like, there's a descending line over and over and over again. Um, and then there's a silence at the end.
01:30:17
S1: And did you pick up? It's almost like he's on his deathbed and it's sort of there's a last gasp. Ah.
01:30:27
S10: It's even like it's a wind instrument. Like there's the literal like outpouring of wind, but, um, but that, and then also the, the silence, the book ends, the literal silence and that, um, it's the death of ourselves that leads to Jesus. And you must be born again like that. We want to fill it with noise, and we want to fill it with ourselves. But then it's in silence that we hear God speak.
01:30:57
S12: I was kind of going to say something similar with the two endings are actually two different kinds of surrender. The official ending is this surrender to the practical, practical needs and to the government and so forth. The other is this sense of surrender, of like, I can't win this. Somebody will, but I can't, right? Like it's a, it's a two different good.
01:31:26
S1: You have the last word. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody.
S1: So my name is Mark Mennel and I've been to a number of hotspots before. Um, and it's, but it's the first one I've been to since Covid. So it's very nice to be back. Um, and, uh, yeah, it's a very happy place for me. I hope it is for you. Um, and, uh, I want to think about this question of the long defeat. It's something that has been percolating in my mind for the last couple of years, probably, um, and feels more relevant than ever. Um, and, uh, and yet it's not a straightforward thing. It's a difficult thing. Um, but that makes it all the more important, it seems to me. But anyway, there'll be time for interaction and questions. Um, even though the phrase is associated with Tolkien. I'm not spending my whole time talking about Tolkien. I'm just using that as a lure to rabbits because I know you're all suckers. And basically, if you see Tolkien somewhere, you'll be here, which is it's worked like a dream. So thank you very much. Um, let me, uh, let me pray as we begin. Father, you are a good God. You have good purposes, and we trust you as we sang earlier. Thank you that you are at work. Even when the world seems anarchic and chaotic. That you are at work, even despite evidence to the contrary. We pray that this might give us insight into how we can trust in your providence. With so many other things going on that don't seem to make much sense. For your glory sake. Amen. Now, the phrase the long defeat actually comes only once in the entire Lord of the rings trilogy. Um, and it comes in 1 or 2 other documents. Um, basically it's mentioned a handful of times in Tolkien's letters, and so it's a very rare one, but actually it's fairly fundamental to the way he thought and what he understood his worldview to be. So this is one letter he wrote in December 1956 to someone called Amy Ronald. Um, and in the collected letters, there are a number of letters he wrote to her. I don't really know anything about her. I haven't done any digging around, but, um, they had quite a correspondence and she would ask questions and, and so on. And so this is a paragraph from that letter of 1956. Frodo was not, in modern terms, a pacifist. Of course, he was mainly horrified at the prospect of civil war among hobbits, but he had, I suppose, also reached the conclusion that physical fighting is actually less ultimately affected than most effective. The most good men think it is. Actually, I'm a Christian and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect history to be anything but a long defeat, though it contains and in a legend may contain more clearly a movingly. Some samples or glimpses of final victory. Human history can only be a long defeat. And, of course, that is in marked contrast to the modernist enlightenment understanding of the world, whether it's the capitalist version or the communist version, that we are constantly making something better and we are making progress. It's funny how being progressive has become. Certainly in this part of the world, identified with one political strand, but actually it's riven through the whole of enlightenment, thinking that we are always making progress to some greater, better stage and age. But that is not a biblical or Christian worldview at all. And Tolkien was very, very clear about this. It's not surprising, perhaps, from somebody like Lewis, who had been in the First World War trenches. So what does he mean by the long defeat? Well, I want to consider. Oh, hello. There we are. It's going to come and go. That's fine. You. You can't come and go. You've just got to stay where you are. Um. I want to talk about for. Well, they're not quite all white and they're not quite all European, but they're all very dead and they're all men. Um, so I've got four dead. Almost white, almost European men. I want to talk about today. Um, not that I think I want to make a point of that, but these four, it seems to me, um, have really helped me understand this, but maybe you can think of living non-white non-male um, others who can chip in. Tolkien obviously was English. He was a scholar primarily as well as a novelist. Shusaku Endo was a novelist in Japanese, Roman Catholic, and he was his mother had become Catholic. Um, Prokofiev was Ukrainian, Russian, um, who lived some of his time in the West and was lured back to Russia by Stalin. Very, very clever little sort of campaign. Mind games. Come on in. Um, and, uh, he, he, he came back to Russia and was given a sort of marvelous sort of fated tour around the country. And everybody loved him. And he went back to the States and he was offered another tour, comes back to Russia, and then they take his passport. So he never leaves again. And then T.S. Eliot, I want to close with a little bit of Eliot, because that's always a wise thing to do. And this will entail definitely some plot spoilers. Um, and I'm completely unashamed about that. So let's think about the long defeat in middle earth. First of all. He, Tolkien had no illusions about history or about the future. And, um, he, like Elrond, knew that from this world, many fair things will fade and be forgotten. That is my belief, says Elrond. Many beautiful things will be destroyed. I just three weeks ago was in Ukraine, and it's a country I've been to a number of times and have grown to love very much. And there are beautiful things and beautiful people being destroyed on the whims of a megalomaniac who's not mad. He has purpose. He has reason, he has an ideology, but it is malicious and cruel and, um, profoundly unjust. Uh, please don't believe any of the rhetoric about the invasion of Ukraine being anything other than megalomania and, um, self-aggrandizement. He's certainly not extending or restoring Christian civilization. That is Absolute baloney. Um, but the interesting thing is that Tolkien was like Elrond not despairing and not a pessimist. And here is the single mention from Lord of the Rings in Galadriel in that beautiful moment is speaking to Frodo. I'm not going to try and do a Galadriel accent. I don't look or sound like Cate Blanchett. No, no I don't. Um, okay. Your quest is known to us, said Galadriel, looking at Frodo. But we will not hear speak of it more openly. Yet not in vain will it prove, maybe, that you came to this land seeking aid, as Gandalf himself plainly purposed for the Lord of the. Galadriel is accounted the wisest of the elves of Middle earth and a giver of gifts beyond the power of kings. He has dwelt in the West since the days of dawn. And I've dwelt with him. Years uncounted. For air the fall of Nargothrond our Gondolin. I passed over the mountains. And together, through ages of the world we have fought the long defeat. It's melancholy. And heavy. And it forces us to confront the ultimate futility of human's best laid plans and projects. One writer put it like this after all, the long defeat is not simply a fading away of magic and beauty. It is also decline. The arch of history does not only point downwards, it does so in a spiral, each cycle being lesser than the one before. Now there are two key places, I think, where you see this at work. Um, in the narrative. So I'm going to start the first one is at Helm's Deep. I'll play you the clip. Um, and, um, and I think. I've included enough to give a sense of just the sheer hopelessness of it. And that's the point. This is futile. And what we see is that basically all is lost.
00:10:42
S2: So the fortress is taken. It is over. You said this portrait would never fall. You didn't defend it. They sealed it. They have died defending it.
00:10:56
S3: Breaking in.
00:11:06
S4: Is another way for the women and children to get out of the caves. They said no other way.
00:11:16
S5: There is one passage.
00:11:18
S2: It leads into the mountains. But they will not get far. There are too many.
00:11:27
S4: Send word for the women and children to make for the mountain pass and barricade the entrance.
00:11:31
S6: So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?
00:11:43
S7: Right out with me. Right out of me.
00:11:50
S2: For death and glory. For Roman.
00:11:56
S7: For your people.
00:11:58
S2: Your sun is rising. To my coming at first light on the first day. That door look to the east.
00:12:15
S5: Yes. Yes.
00:12:22
S2: The Horn of Helm Hammerhand shall sound in the deep. One last time. Yes. Let this be the hour when we draw swords together. Now. The ruin and the Red Dawn.
00:14:06
S8: Look it up.
00:15:11
S1: That's enough of that rubbish. Well. Um, obviously the way Peter Jackson portrays it is entirely fitting with what Tolkien is talking about. But this is a supernatural intervention. This is this is futile. It's impossible. They're doomed. And so they can only ride out for death and glory. Um, and you know, there's plenty of precedent of that. You know, even in ancient classical history, just, you know, that's the true heroism, um, of legend. Um, but obviously it's a defeat until it's just at the last moment turned. And that is what Tolkien described as a eucatastrophe. It's turned to bring about good at the last moment when it was least expected and most impossible. The interesting thing is that, um, there is another moment of this at the climax of the entire trilogy at Mount Doom. And, you know, after all this time and effort and agony and suspense, tension, pain, wounds, you name it. And particularly in Frodo, the suffering and the scars that he bears. Um, at the very end, all seem in vain. It's chaotic. When Sam Frodo finally gets the mountain, they're hardly speaking. Um. Gollum suddenly appears and he's there too. And it's absolutely unclear who's in charge of what and who's going to make things happen. And. And finally, after all this time, Frodo gives in. And takes the ring at the final furlong, if you like. This is the conclusion of the matter. The. The fires below awoke and anger. The red light blaze and all. The cavern was filled with a great glare and heat. Suddenly Sam saw Gollum's long hands draw up towards. To his mouth his white fangs gleamed and then they snapped a bit. As they bit, Frodo gave a cry, and there he was, fallen on his knees at the chasm's edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle. It shone now as if verily it was wrought. Of living fire. Precious, precious, precious Gollum, cried my precious. Oh, my precious! And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then, with a shriek, he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail. Precious. And he was gone. You see, even at this point it's an accident. He trips. After all this time and the purpose, the energy that, you know, the fellowship to get these two hobbits to the to the mountain in the end. It's an accident. Their efforts, while remarkable and almost superhuman to got there. They are not enough. Theirs was a long defeat. Frodo and Sam failed, which is an agonizing thought, isn't it? Now you see, here's the thing. Ted Turner, in his book Oasis of Imagination, has a lovely section about this. He says, against the sort of dimming of the world, there is no cause for despair. Ultimately, there are some reasons for despair, but ultimately there is no cause. In fact, Galadriel is happy to fight the long defeat because the alternative, not fighting, is intolerable. Despair. In the trilogy is repeatedly linked with evil a device of the enemy. The deadliest weapon of the Nazgul, the ringwraiths captains of Sauron's armies, is the power to inspire despair, to tempt enemies, to give up and cave. There's a kind of parallel, isn't there, in Harry Potter with the Dementors. Gandalf is the wisest of the heroes in the story. He has but one main task to encourage the peoples of middle earth to resist and draw them out of despair into hope. That's his job, is to keep them at it despite it all. And he does that literally with Théoden curing him of the spells of his despair and the passivity imposed on him by Wormtongue. He does it again for the soldiers of Gondor during the siege of Minas Tirith. This is what Jake Mead says about it. For Tolkien, the demands of honour wed to wisdom and prudence are generally the only demands on us when we consider what we ought to do. History is simply the stage on which we act, playing our part well or poorly. Our feet are set down at some moment in time by forces entirely beyond our control, and we must then decide how to walk. As the wizard Gandalf counsels elsewhere in Lord of the rings, all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that's given us. Notice it's not saying we've got to have grand strategies and amazing plans, and we've got to be the sort of the individuals who bestride the world like a colossus, sorting it all out. There are many people in global politics who feel that that is their job. But Tolkien is very clear that that is nobody's job, in actual fact. All we have to do, says Gandalf, is do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us. I want to come back to that. But that is the kingdom of God. That's what it's like. It is not of this world. It does not require or depend on our genius or our strategic brilliance or even our endurance. That's the shock of the Frodo incident, isn't it? His endurance was insufficient. Well, let me come to. Japan. How many people have read the book? Handful. How many people have seen the movie? Handful. Okay, I'll try and give a bit of explanation. It is a hard watch. You have to be in a good frame of mind to watch it. It's not light entertainment. It has no Muppets and things like that in it. I mean, it would be surprising if it did, but. So 16th century Japan Jesuit missionaries. Um, Japan has had various stages of being closed to the rest of the world and then being opened up, particularly by trade. Um, and then recognizing that things were, you know, um, making their culture and, and identity vulnerable. And so it gets clamped down on again. Shusaku Endo um, first published this in Japanese in 1969. And he grew up feeling a complete fish out of water. Um, Japanese and Roman Catholic. Um, and they're just not many of them around. Certainly not then. Certainly not now. Um, and he had a kind of lifelong quest to square the circle. He thought as a young student, he would go to France because that was a Catholic country. Um, go to France and explore what it means to be Catholic in a country that's Catholic. Well, little did he know that France by then was completely secular. And it was around the time of the protests in Paris in 68 and all of this sort of stuff, as well as existentialism and and all of that. Um, so that was really shocking and very, very disturbing for him. Um, if you want a sort of more, um, not palatable, sort of easier access novel by endo to get into is his book wonderful. Full, full. He talked about this strange Frenchman who appears on a freighter in. In Japan, and is a kind of Christ figure like sort of Dostoyevsky. Idiot. Um. And he wrote that after after coming back from Paris, I think. Um, but anyway, this was a time of real turmoil in Japan and the Jesuits. Being some of the most adventurous but also theologically flexible. That's interesting. The Jesuits has always been very good at sort of ducking and diving almost to the point of, um, uh, changing things radically. Um, but being very good at having the sort of mindset that works how to enculturate and adapt. And so they had considerable success, um, uh, with a deep, tragic irony in, um, the area around Nagasaki in particular. And there are two key characters, Father Rodriguez and Father Garupe, who is sent on an arduous journey to Japan to discover what had happened to their mentor, Father Ferreira. Um, because the news has sort of filtered back somehow that he has apostatized given up the faith and, um, has basically completely undermined the mission. And so, um, neither of them can quite believe it. They hugely respected, um Ferreira and so they want to find out what's going on and rescue the situation. Um, when they finally get there, they're in hiding, um, and protected by Christians who are being persecuted and hunted down. Um, and they more than meet their match in the so-called Inquisitor. He himself had been a Christian, so he knew all, He knew it all. And so he knew exactly where their vulnerable spots were, their Achilles heels. He knew exactly how to play mind games with them and was profoundly, well, extraordinarily inventive in his malice and cruelty. And he's based on an historical figure. Um, the other key character is this guy Kichijiro, who is a local believer. Um, and the priest, these two priests who've arrived depend on him, but he is far from dependable and actually betrays them more than once. And yet the deeply uncomfortable suggestion is that he is the one who is most like Christ. And it's part of the journey for Rodriguez is to figure out actually what it really means to be like Christ in a sort of Philippians two sense. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be exploited, but made himself nothing. Um, and so, um. We see, um, the narrative mainly through the eyes of, of Rodriguez. Um, and we, we sense his profound disorientation and confusion and the sense that everybody around him, certainly the Japanese authorities are several steps ahead of him at each turn. So this is, um, I'll read you a little bit from this. Um, he is being forced to watch Christians being tortured and killed, um, to try and get him to recant. Yet his perplexity did not come from the event that had just happened so suddenly. What he could not understand was the stillness of the courtyard. The voice of the cicada, the whirling wings of the flies. A man had died, yet the outside world went on as if nothing had happened. Could anything be more crazy? Was this martyrdom? Why are you silent here? This one eyed man has died. And for you? You ought to know. Why does this stillness continue this noon day? Stillness. The sound of the flies. This crazy thing, this cruel business. And you avert your face as though indifferent. This I cannot bear. Kyrie eleison. Lord have mercy. His trembling lips moved a while in prayer, but the words faded from his lips. Lord, do not abandon me any more. Do not abandon me. In this mysterious way is this prayer for a long time. I believe that prayer is uttered to praise and glorify you. But when I speak to you, it's only as if I only blaspheme on the day of my death too. Will the world go relentlessly on its way, indifferent, just as now, after I murdered. Will the cicada sing. And the flies whirl their wings inducing sleep. Do I want to be heroic as that? And yet am I looking for the true hidden martyrdom. Or just for a glorious death? Is that what I want? To be honored. To be prayed to be called a saint. Clasping his knees. He sat on the floor, looking straight in front of him. It was almost noon until the third hour. Darkness covered the earth. Here's a clip from the movie. And of course, Scorsese. Martin Scorsese spent 30 years trying to make this movie. Um, and the book was really important for me. Years ago when I read it. And so it's one of those situations I was terrified of, you know, how it was going to transfer to screen because so often it's rubbish. This is one of the few occasions that really wasn't rubbish. It was amazing. Like Slough House, if you ever got into the Slough Slow Horses books, that um, completely different genre and it's all very silly and it just popped into my head so I thought I'd just say it. Um, but those are books I love and that's a brilliant, um, dramatisation. But anyway, forget that. Back to 16th century Japan and depressing stuff. Um, so, um, here. So, um, uh, Andrew Garfield is playing Rodriguez. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think this makes self-explanatory.
00:31:32
S2: I have labored in this country for 15 years.
00:31:35
S1: Ferreira.
00:31:38
S2: Our religion does not take root in this country because the roots have been torn up. No, because this country is a swamp. Nothing grows here like the subway here, and the roots rot. There was a time when Christianity grew and flourished here. When in your time, father, in your time. Before you became like. Like her. Like her. Yes. Please. Listen. The Japanese only believe in their distortion of our gospel. So they did not believe at all. They never believed. How can you say that? I remember the time of Saint Francis Xavier through your own time. There were hundreds of thousands of converts. Converts, converts? Yes. Francis Xavier came here to teach the Japanese about the Son of God. But first he had to ask how to refer to God. David. He was told, until I show you they are tiny, G. They hope there is the Son of God, God's only begotten son. And the scriptures say Jesus rose on the third day in Japan. The Son of God rises daily. The Japanese cannot think of an existence beyond the realm of nature. For them, nothing transcends the human. They can't conceive of our idea of the Christian God.
00:33:04
S7: You're wrong.
00:33:05
S2: They worship God.
00:33:07
S7: God our Lord. They praise the name of Davis.
00:33:11
S2: That's just another word for God. They never knew.
00:33:15
S7: I saw men die.
00:33:17
S2: I did too.
00:33:18
S7: For they use on fire with their faith.
00:33:22
S2: Till martyrs may have been on fire, father. But it was not with the Christian faith.
00:33:27
S7: I saw them die. I saw them die. They did not die for nothing, I did not.
00:33:35
S2: They're dying for you.
00:33:46
S1: It's a devastating conversation, and it kind of haunts him for the rest of the movie because it feeds. It digs right at the roots of all his doubts. Um, and the Ferreira character is not the only person who will say Japan is a swamp that will come from the Inquisitor and it's part of the, if you like the, the the agenda, the propaganda for us. Explaining why this should not be allowed. Um, so it's agony. Um, and the silence and the way the soundtrack is made is ingenious. Um, Scorsese absolutely takes that idea of, um, you know, the sounds of insects as basically being the sound of God's silence. That's all you can hear if you sort of listen carefully, which is basically not God at all. Um. But God is not silent. And God does speak to Rodriguez in the most startling and unsettling and dangerous of ways. And this is this is the remarkable thing. Oh, they've given up early. Losers. Anyway, um. The um it's the most remarkable thing about this whole narrative. Um, and so the big question is how long can Rodriguez stand it knowing that the longer he resists, the more people will die? Um, and so one of the tactics that the Inquisitor uses is for people to tread on the fumiart, which is, um, and I've seen a number of them, they're in museums now basically they are Christian images in sort of bas relief or something. And the idea is that you tread on it as the ultimate insult and the ultimate declaration that you've rejected this. So you know, Christ on the cross to tread on. That is, you know, the ultimate insult. Um, but the Inquisitor is shrewd enough to recognize that you can do this as a one off, but he makes them do it every week. They've got to keep doing it. Um, so his mind games are absolutely, um well honed. Oh, it might, might be Mary and the Christ child. Whatever. It's basically to demonstrate publicly your rejection of the faith. Um, and it's a kind of antithesis of baptism in a way. And after months and months, maybe years, we don't know. Can't tell. He finally gives in, just as Father Liam Neeson did. The first rays of the dawn appear. The light shines on his long neck, stretched out like a chicken, and upon bony shoulders the priest grasped the. Fumi. This is Rodriguez, by the way. The priest grasped the Fumi with both hands, bringing it close to his eyes. He would like to press it to his own faith. That faith trampled on by so many feet. With saddened glance, he stares intently at the man in the center of the Fumi. Worn down and hollow with the constant trampling, trampling. A tear is about to fall from his eye. Ah, he says, trembling the pain. It's only a formality. What do formalities matter? The interpreter urges him on excitedly. Only go through with the exterior form of trampling. That's all you need to do. The priest raises his foot in it. He feels a dull, heavy pain. This is no mere formality. He will now trample on what he's considered the most beautiful thing in his life, or what he's believed most pure. And what has filled with the ideals and dreams of man. How his foot aches. And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest. Trample, trample. I, more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample. It was to be trampled on by men that I was brought into this world. It was to share men's pain that I carried my cross. The priest placed his foot on the Fumiart dawn broke, and far in the distance the cock crew. The big surprises of this book? Well, there are a lot. One is there is a church in Japan still. Um, Endo is trying to explore what it means to be Japanese and believe in the Christian God. And in fact, the film Scorsese he makes is dedicated to Japanese believers. How can it be in this religious swamp that the shoots of new life can grow? But more even than that is the question is human failure and even apostasy the end of the story? Well, God can even use that. Perhaps human plans to overcome and conquer are doomed to fail always. But God can water the seed and build his church. Which is why it's such an amazing moment when Kichijiro comes to Rodriguez for confession. After. Both have outwardly become conforming Buddhists. Jesus was the one to call on him, to trample, in other words, to commit the act of apostasy himself. And the thing about Kichijiro is, when I first tried to get my head around him and what's going on with him, he seems utterly despicable. And, you know, talk about a fair weather friend. But actually, he's the most human of them all, and he's the one that Rodriguez needs to learn from, because the problem is, Rodrigo Rodriguez thinks he's better than him. MM. With good reason. At one level, he he betrayed him to the authorities. And that's made very explicit. He's given 30 pieces of silver. But despite his repeated cowardice and it is cowardice. Kichijiro cannot sever himself from Christ. He says this. No matter how often I betray him, I cannot wash his name from my lips. His weakness is itself a strange, backhanded testimony to the persistence of faith. So this is that scene where both of them now are living respectable Japanese lives. Rodriguez has been given a wife and family. Um, she was the widow of one of the Christians who'd been executed.
00:41:59
S7: I heard the message is meant for you. Was there trouble? No. Just. They only wanted to make sure I wrote the call. My latest pronunciation. Thank you. I think I must. Thank you. For being here with me. You sure need them. That's right. No, no. I'm not. Not anymore. I'm a fallen priest. What do you want? The last priest left. You could still hear my confession. No, I can't. No, I can't. I still suffer for what I did, but. I betrayed you, I betrayed my family. I betrayed our Lord. Please. Share my. Lord. I fought against your silence. I suffered.
00:44:07
S2: Beside you. I was never silent.
00:44:16
S7: I know. That even if God had been silent my whole life. To this very day. Everything I know. Everything I've done. Speaks of him. Because in the silence that I heard your voice.
00:45:22
S1: When Rodriguez dies with Buddha's name and imposed wife. The narrator says this. He loved him now, in a different way than before. Everything that had happened until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. And when he's given funeral rites, a tiny crucifix is found concealed in the palm of his hand. Treading the fumiart itself is, paradoxically, paradoxically, a sign of the survival of his faith, because it is about the total identification with Jesus, the outcast. Rodriguez reflects that the image of Christ to be trampled is itself the gospel. He said this the face of the man on the fumiart was filled with suffering, inviting all to share in his pain. It's hard to get our heads around. It's part of Endo's personal. Working out what it means to be a Japanese Christian. That has no history of so-called Christian triumph. Um, in some ways, one of the worst things that ever happened to Christianity was the Emperor Constantine, when suddenly power became synonymous with church. Um, and the sort of iterations of this down the centuries have been terrible. Um, and endo is kind of saying, well, at least Japan didn't have that. Um, and what I love about the way that scene is, is crafted, um, he doesn't actually give him absolution, but he totally identifies with him and comes down to his level and it's sort of forehead to forehead, isn't it? And it's like, at last You'll together. It's a stunning moment. And the character. I just love him. He's just amazing. If you, um, know Graham Greene's novels, there are definitely resonances with, um, the power and the glory and the whisky priest. Um, and Endo was sometimes described as, um, the Japanese green. Maybe green was the English endo, I don't know. Um, but, um, but actually Graham Greene was a huge admirer of this novel and was one of the people who really, um, spoke for it and pushed it out. Um, it's in the very failures of this man that actually God is at work and it's so subversive to the way we think naturally as Westerners, but also as Western Christians. We think it's all about our strategies and our five year, ten year plans and, you know, our nice franchised courses and conferences and all kinds of sort of cunning plans for changing the world. And basically, it's just worth a hill of beans. What's the point? I'm exaggerating, but only just. Okay, well, let's change tune completely again. And now think of some music. So Prokofiev, um, was born in 1891. So, um, the last, um, 15 or so years of Tsarist rule born in what is now Ukraine. Um, and um, his seventh Symphony is his last one. Um, and, uh. This was the last composition he had performed before he died. Um, and by some weird, dark quirk of fate, he died less than an hour before Stalin, on the same day of the same cause they both had a brain hemorrhage on the same day. So the world didn't find out that Prokofiev was dead for several days. Because, of course, Stalin took central billing. Um, and, um, Prokofiev writes this from 51 to 52. He's aged 60. He's back in Russia. He's living in poverty. So, you know, he'd been lured back, um, and basically was very gullible and thought that, you know, his fame would protect him. It didn't. Um, so he has this triumphant tour goes back to the States. Lured back for another tour and then it's game over. And basically he was utterly dependent, like all musicians and artists of any sort in the Soviet Union, on government patronage. And lest we sort of feel superior about it, basically, it's not that different from capitalist patronage in the West. And the way this would work often is that, um, the, the various different art forms, they'd have their commissions, committees and commissars and things, and there would be annual prizes for good work that met certain guidelines and criteria and all the rest. And that would mean, um, you would be given prize money that would enable you to live. And so, um, it's the carrot and the stick if you want to succeed, if you want to, you know. feed your family and, you know, do what you want to do, uh, artistically. Then you have to walk a tightrope between obedience and integrity. It's incredibly difficult. And, um. By 1951, um, as I say, he was in poverty. He was pretty ill. And, um, he needed to win the Stalin gold Prize. Um, so an annual prize for music. It was worth 10,000 rubles. Um, that would, that would see him through for a few months. Um, and there was huge pressure. He'd actually been commissioned by the children's radio division of Soviet radio and they, they commissioned a lot of great music actually, and from, from all the greats. So there's some wonderful stuff, um, they commissioned, they seem to know what they were doing. Um, and, um, this symphony has sometimes been called the Children's Symphony. It's very accessible. It's not the sort of plinky, plonky, quirky, angular stuff that some people might expect is glorious. And, um, my great musical hero, Shostakovich, he, he had great admiration for this symphony because it really it has a clarity, it has a simplicity. It's direct, grabs you by the lapels and draws you in. And you feel the sort of narrative as it goes along. It's fantastic piece, but all the time the huge dilemma is how do you have artistic integrity and yet stay alive literally, because a wrong step or a miscalculation in terms of what you compose or paint or write could lead to the gulag, if not execution in a KGB basement. Um, and all the big names that if you know anything about sort of Soviet arts. All the big names had lost close friends. Um. And basically what you get in these for movies. We don't have time to play the whole thing, sadly, but I would encourage you to. And I put a couple. Of suggested recordings on the sheet. Um, but it takes us on a big kind of trip, almost a sort of trip through. Russian history. Um, not in a very sort of systematic way. And I don't want it to get the impression that it's. You know, you can identify different moments. It's not like that, but it's, it's kind of a full immersion in the cultural legacy and, and inheritance, if you like. And there's some glorious things. And Prokofiev really enjoys himself in this. Um, and you know, at moments you can sort of almost picture sort of Aristocratic country balls and going for sleigh rides in the winter and things like this. Um, you know, or vast empty landscapes in the Eurasian steppes. Um, but for all the sort of momentary highlights, one of the things that becomes very clear is that none of these moods is sustainable, and the darkness always creeps in and he just can't keep at it. So the fourth movement is the climactic one, the fourth one, and it begins, and I am going to play the whole of the fourth movement before I finish. But it begins with a real sort of sense of optimism and energy, and it's very exciting and it sweeps you up in it. You think, oh, this is great. It's kind of like a sleigh ride or a gallop across the fields. Um, and it's almost as if Prokofiev is in a rush. You can almost feel the orchestra tripping over themselves to get somewhere. Um, but that's not sustained for the whole eight minutes of this movement. It's interrupted by something. There's a kind of military march past at one point that's a bit weird. Um, but it's almost humorous and jokey, so that's also a bit weird. That doesn't quite jar. Are we in the realms of dreams? You can't tell, but things don't feel completely right. It doesn't sort of delay the gallop. You'll hear that the gallop suddenly picks up again and we're off. Um, but it just adds a different flavour. And I don't think you can pin down exactly what what's going on. Um, but that's part of the intrigue of it. And then as it draws to a close, you have this big epic theme that keeps being interrupted by a sort of clip clopping theme. Um, and there's a repeat of a theme from the very first movement and then the whole symphony loses momentum. The tempo just winds down. It's like for all these moments of exuberance and joy, even he just can't do it. He just can't do it anymore. It's like he's too exhausted to keep fighting the system. I want to play a couple of little clips. Um, before I play you the whole movement. So I've sort of isolated this sort of motif that you get in the first and the fourth movement of this sort of ticking clock. It's not quite a ticking clock, but that's the kind of feeling it gives. So hopefully this will work. Okay, so listen out for that. Now, the reason for picking on this movement and this symphony is that Prokofiev needed to get that money because he was starving. Um, his close friend, um, Slava Rostropovich, the cellist was a young man. Um. And Rostropovich, um, was shocked. He went to visit him. I think Rostropovich was in his early 20s, went to visit him at his apartment in Moscow and was appalled by how emaciated and weak he was. And so started just bringing food to him and things. Um, and, um. Prokofiev needed the money. And so he knew that what he wanted to write would not win the prize. So he has to write what's known as the official ending. Um, and you can still get recordings of the official ending. Often when people release discs of it, they'll, they'll do both. So you can compare them. Not always, but anyway. So this is the official ending. Um, and I won't say anything about it, but just tell me what you think of this. So this is the final couple of minutes of the official ending of this movement. Thoughts? What does that sound like to you? Triumphant. Yeah.
00:59:48
S9: Sounds like a conclusion.
00:59:50
S1: It does. Yep. It's tied up in bows.
00:59:55
S10: Thinking of American manifest destiny. It shares some of the same. What would I associate from childhood with the sort of Old West stories? Like, oh, this is this is our empire.
01:00:03
S1: Right? So yeah, there's a there's a sort of profound, sort of satisfied optimism about it.
01:00:12
S9: Reminiscent of like the writing about.
01:00:14
S1: Okay, yeah. You can't escape Wagner in the 20th century.
01:00:21
S9: Almost made me think it sounds more than a little bit like Copland.
01:00:24
S1: Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
01:00:26
S9: Just.
01:00:27
S1: Yeah, I mean rodeo. There's a bit of that in there. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
01:00:36
S9: Kind of like forced and fake.
01:00:37
S1: Right?
01:00:38
S9: Like.
01:00:39
S1: Yeah.
01:00:40
S9: Here we go. I mean, just I was waiting for it.
01:00:44
S1: It feels to me anyway, utterly hollow.
01:00:47
S9: Yeah. Almost a mockery, almost like cartoon.
01:00:51
S1: Right. So I always think of Looney Tunes. It's just sort of. Okay, I'm done with that. Tie it up in a bow. Put it on the conveyor belt. Gone. Exactly. That's all folks. It's heartbreaking, actually. It's sort of Disney kitsch. It's not an honest musical statement. Whereas the rest of the symphony has been, in some ways he's wrestling with things. But it feels like a kind of shallow hat tip to officialdom. As one writer said, it needed to end with a nice big bang. And so it did. Prokofiev had to avoid a musical face crime. You know what a face crime is is where your face reveals your true feelings. He's not smiling confidently enough. But is not what Prokofiev wanted. And he told Rostropovich, um. Here he is with Rostropovich. Um. As a young man, he told him, Slava, you'll live much longer than I. And you must take care that this new ending never exists after me. So he gave Rostropovich the real ending to be protected for such a time as it was possible to perform it. In his last month he worked on other pieces, but he was sickening, and to his wife's distress he found. She found him each morning more and more depressed. When she asked if he felt pain anywhere, he said, my soul hurts. He was defeated and I think we hear it. So here's the Gallup. Big scene from the first movement. It's just gone. Here's the triumph. It is in his defeat that he's made something stunningly beautiful and real and is in itself a hopeful act. And there's something inspiring about doing that, even when you know you're dying and you're sick and you're fed up and the world is imploding and you live under the reign of a bastard dictator who is basically out to destroy everything good. Incredible beauty and even hope in the face of his own despair and pain. Jake Maeder again, the possibility of a final disastrous defeat is uncomfortable for us. You don't say. Steeped as we are in Post-enlightenment progress narratives in which the world is always improving through innovation, technology and human boldness. Are we doomed? Feels like it sometimes. I was in Kiev when that big summit happened in Beijing with Putin and Modi and Co, and it was the topic of conversation with everybody I met. It felt like the end. The odds are stacked against things of beauty and truth and justice. There are days when the arc of the universe does not bend towards justice. Of course, when Doctor King spoke of that, he was speaking in eschatological terms. He wasn't necessarily necessarily saying, we will see it in human history, but that doesn't mean you don't try. The odds are stacked against us. But this is the world of the long defeat. It's part of its very nature. But that doesn't stop Galadriel from urging Frodo on. It doesn't stop Arwen from giving up her immortality. It doesn't stop the hobbits from even trying. It doesn't stop Aragorn. They know it is beyond their hands, and basically it is much less explicit in middle earth than it is in Narnia. But it is clear that the only thing they have to depend on is Providence. As Jake Meador says, everything sad comes untrue. As Sam White says near the end. This kind of event, which Tolkien called a eucatastrophe, the hope unlooked for when all seems lost. In other words, it's so lost that you've given up looking. Allows good to face evil, even though history remains something of a long defeat. It's so interesting, isn't it, that people talk about being on the wrong side of history or, um, having this sense that we will overcome and we will make progress? Um, it's pure humanism. And hubris. God is bigger than all our flaws and our failures and beauty is still possible. And sometimes beauty is what breaks in. We trust in Eucatastrophe, even though it is a fool's hope and the world around us thinks we are insane. Like Noah building a boat in a desert. What a moron. And the thing is. The triumph is never guaranteed or certain in this life. So maybe this is the end of the ascendancy of the West. Maybe that's no bad thing. Maybe we're just going to have to come to terms with that like the rest of the world has for generations. Big deal. Ya boo! Now, there are plenty of things I will be very sad about. And there are things about, um, what we have had that seem precious and worth fighting for. I am absolutely in no doubt about that. But we need to do what Augustine did when writing The City of God after the sacking of Rome. That actually is not the end of the world. It's the end of this empire. It's the end of this framework and this dispensation, if you like to call it that. It's the end of the way. We are used to things. So I'm, you know, I've been involved in Christian missions in for the last 25 years. One of the things that actually we're having to recognize is Western and particularly American Christian money is not going to be around forever. And we need to start thinking about, well, there's a lot of Chinese Christian money, but what agendas is that going to set? There's a lot of things that are changing. We're going to have to adjust. It's going to be very uncomfortable. And when the world is in flux, that's when people do extreme things and go a bit bananas. But I want to end with these words from Elliot because, um. He's a dead white European male. And he saw the light. Actually, he was American, but he renounced his American citizenship to become British, which is just marvelous and entirely appropriate. Um, but at the end of the choruses from the Rock, the Rock was a play. Um, and I think this, this little sequence has become my motto, really. I come back to it all the time. And I think this is plumb center to what we're talking about. And it's a kind of Ecclesiastes. The lot of man is ceaseless labor Or ceaseless idleness, which is still harder or irregular labor. Labor which is not pleasant. I have trodden the winepress alone, and I know that it is hard to be really useful. Resigning the things that men count for happiness. Seeking the good deeds that lead to obscurity. Accepting with equal face those that bring ignominy. The applause of all or the love of none. All men are ready to invest their money. But most expect dividends. I say to you, make perfect your will. I say, take no thought of the harvest, but only of proper sowing. I don't think you would have put it like this, but that is how to live in the world of the long defeat. You don't know what difference. Whatever you do makes. It's impossible to know. It's the butterfly's wings in the Amazon. You don't know. But that doesn't mean you don't do the right thing. And Theoden marching out from Helm's Deep. Has no certainty at all. In fact, it's unlikely that he believes it's going to happen at all, that it's going to create a pincer movement when he does. Because basically he could have given up. But it meant that the orcs had to fight on two fronts. If he hadn't done that, it wouldn't have worked. Well, that's quite enough of all that rubbish. Um, we've got time for questions or comments. Thoughts? Um. I don't know why that TV keeps going on and off. But there we go. Far away.
01:20:06
S11: The scriptural allusion that keeps speaking to me throughout all we put before us so powerfully today is the one that's meant most to me in my adult life. And that's the account of Jesus, Lazarus, and the incongruent facts that he delayed coming, right, knowing. And when he arrived, the sister said, what have you had been here? He'd be alive. And I love his response. Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God? It's too late. It's over. There's no there's no.
01:20:51
S1: Yeah. That's beautiful.
01:20:52
S11: They rolled the stone away and said, unbind him and let it go.
01:20:56
S1: Yeah, absolutely.
01:20:57
S11: That's where we put our trust.
01:21:01
S1: Yeah. It's it's a fool's hope. And yet we believe in a holy fool.
01:21:08
S11: Amen.
01:21:09
S1: Yeah, I was quite pleased with that. Yeah, I'm very pleased. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Hi.
01:21:17
S10: Um, one of the things that, you know, they were all they all lived through part of the 20th century. And one of the times they would have been in is the Second World War, which I don't want to rehash the whole, like Tolkien, World War two. Here's what the characters were and Hitler or whatever. But, um, it is interesting because the difference with 1945 was a very specific thing, because that war ended in just a horrible, shocking way, which kind of reminds me of the official end of the symphony because it was like, hey, we won. We're all done. Let's not talk too much about how horrible the ending of this was and how many questions it really left unanswered, and the way that these empires fell, which is the good guys won. Let's just leave it there. Um, so I don't know if you want to talk at all about the historicity of, I mean, uh, endo would have lived in Nagasaki, so it would have lived through this totally. Oh, I didn't know how you thought that impacted particularly his writing.
01:22:24
S1: Mhm. Um, I did think about that in prepping, but didn't sort of run out of time. I didn't really dig down into precisely. There's no doubt that he would have engaged with it, I'm sure. Um, and it's interesting, I suspect. The First World War shaped Lewis and Tolkien in terms of how visceral and brutal and cruel and terrible. It is because they were both there. But there's no question that I think we forget. And people lay into the appeasers, don't they? But we forget that it's only 20 years. It's only 20 years since there was a world war. And so they're saying we must avoid this. And everybody hated Churchill. He was so unpopular because he kept on saying, no, we've got to take our bombs. Oh, he's such a warmonger. He wants to go back to war. And there was an element of Churchill who, yeah, he did enjoy war. Um, he was good at it. But yes, you're right. Um, and I suppose there's a continuity there because basically what you have in Mordor and in the trenches and the destruction, um, for hundreds of miles and then that that gets repeated in the eastern front in the Second World War. Um. I'm wibbling. Um. I think it's a continuity in terms of human ingenuity and sort of enlightenment technology, the application of science for various ends to achieve things that you can predict. Um. That is a world that we control. And I think, you know, the Oppenheimer film, Nolans Oppenheimer film does bring that out. The destroyer of worlds from the Bhagavad Gita and stuff. Um, and it's almost like Oppenheimer does and doesn't know what he's doing. Um, I mean, it's Becca was talking about this with, um, funky man. What's he called? Ultraman. Ultraman. So the Japanese manga and the sort of superheroes and stuff born very much out of the horrors of nuclear devastation. Um, I mean, do you want to comment on that more?
01:25:02
S10: No, I think that's accurate. Thank you.
01:25:06
S1: Yeah.
01:25:06
S12: I was actually just going to add that your book by Fujimura that's on your list speaks to a lot of those issues and the impact of that on Japanese culture and that perspective that for those of us in the West maybe have not spent enough time sitting in. Um, I really, really recommend that because it also elaborates a lot of the issues.
01:25:27
S1: Yeah. Thank you. A couple more.
01:25:34
S12: Yeah, it was really struck listening to piece this time about how frantic the first seven minutes of that fourth movement are. And, um. I just felt so relatable to, you know, the pace of life and, you know, we think, oh, it wasn't that busy then or whatever, but that this is a, there's something repeatable in that too. Just that it felt.
01:26:10
S13: Like to me. It was just, it just fell off or he jumped off, you know, just.
01:26:22
S12: Yeah. I mean, like musically. Yeah. You make the fourth movement faster. I mean, that's sort of a symphonic tradition that he was obviously following, but I just thought it was so interesting that it felt, you know, he wound it all the way.
01:26:36
S1: Yeah.
01:26:37
S12: Just to have it.
01:26:38
S1: And there's a there's a inbuilt into it is a he's on the edge of control. Yeah. So he's tripping over himself and that. And it doesn't work if it's too slow. So he's almost he's he's managed to convey that. Um, but that makes that that is what makes the ending have sense because basically he can't keep going.
01:27:06
S12: With the first time you heard that, did you feel disappointment or relief when it finally dropped off at the end?
01:27:11
S1: You know, I cannot remember. I cannot remember.
01:27:14
S12: What do you feel now?
01:27:16
S1: Um, deep pathos and deep sadness. Just because I think, you know, the whole relationship between art and biography is a tricky one. But knowing the story and knowing that Rostropovich preserved that until after his death. Yeah.
01:27:37
S12: I agree, I felt deeply unsettled by that.
01:27:39
S1: Yeah.
01:27:40
S12: Churning underneath. I thought it was really scary. I also was wondering like, can I listen to this? In the same way that I listened to Peter and the Wolf? For certain, instruments are personified by certain characters and those deep underbelly instruments, brass. There's something unsettling about it. Is that a fair way to listen to this piece?
01:28:04
S1: Well, if it's unsettling you, it's unsettling you. Um, and in the end, that's all that matters. It's then you want to figure out, okay, so why why is this having this impact on me? Now, a related, but a separate question is, is this what Prokofiev is seeking perhaps now? It's very difficult to know. You can't. You know, the whole authorial intent is a tricky one. I don't think we abandon it completely. But particularly with music, which is the ultimate, you know, Non-textual music is the most abstract art form there is. So how do you pinpoint or pin down meaning is a very tricky one, but it's fascinating, isn't it, how even just with a little bit of knowledge of the language of music, there can be similar things. And I suspect you're not alone in feeling that. And that I think it reflects whether he would articulate it verbally or not. I think it reflects Prokofiev's emotional state.
01:29:09
S12: For me, the uncomfortable thing about it was that it evoked confusion, like it almost screams a lack of identity, like a divided or split.
01:29:21
S1: He keeps being interrupted by other stuff as well.
01:29:23
S12: Yes, and I think that unsettles a lot of people. Or you can't pin something down, or your brain is so wrapped up that it's twirling at a mile, you know, like you can't stop thinking. And so like you said, he just stops. Yeah.
01:29:41
S1: Do we need to stop? Are you okay?
01:29:44
S10: I was just thinking about, um. And with the silence, um, that the the great overwhelming defeat, um, isn't a defeat of everything, though. It feels like a defeat of everything but a defeat of the self. And, um, like with the, it feels like he's tripping over himself and it just keeps getting more and more chaotic. And towards the end, I kept thinking that it was ending. Like I kept thinking that he was giving up and like, there's a descending line over and over and over again. Um, and then there's a silence at the end.
01:30:17
S1: And did you pick up? It's almost like he's on his deathbed and it's sort of there's a last gasp. Ah.
01:30:27
S10: It's even like it's a wind instrument. Like there's the literal like outpouring of wind, but, um, but that, and then also the, the silence, the book ends, the literal silence and that, um, it's the death of ourselves that leads to Jesus. And you must be born again like that. We want to fill it with noise, and we want to fill it with ourselves. But then it's in silence that we hear God speak.
01:30:57
S12: I was kind of going to say something similar with the two endings are actually two different kinds of surrender. The official ending is this surrender to the practical, practical needs and to the government and so forth. The other is this sense of surrender, of like, I can't win this. Somebody will, but I can't, right? Like it's a, it's a two different good.
01:31:26
S1: You have the last word. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody.
