Monday, January 27, 2020
Aeschyluss Oresteia: Summary and Analysis
Aeschyluss Oresteia: Summary and Analysis Aeschyluss Oresteia touched a chord within Francis Bacon both in its themes of parental violence and pursuit by the Eumenides and in the way Aeschyluss poetry communicated in a subconscious emotional level.Analyzing three triptychs, a closer examination is made between the works. Francis Bacon paints images communicating his feelings and emotions but which transcend his own personal experience and convey the tensions and violent emotions of the twentieth century, and possibly beyond their creative timeframe to become universally pertinent and timeless for all mankind.In reading Aeschyluss Oresteia, the poetry touched a chord within him such that he was to use motifs from the trilogy in a number of his works but also it pointed the way for him to engender strong emotions through his paintings without employing narrative.Additionally the fate driven outcomes of the plays relate to Bacons painting practice of utilising accident in developing his paintings.The initial appeal of Aeschylus was most likely rooted in this bloody story of parental violence, revenge and exile from the home and the ongoing pursuit by the Eumenides. The extensive records of Bacons conversations will be used to prove that Aeschylus was an influence and it will be seen how Bacon translates the cathartic experience of tragedy into the medium of paint.After a brief examination of the influence of his childhood, we will look at the general influence of Aeschylus on his work before analysing three triptychs based on The Oresteia.To show the relationship between these paintings, Aeschylus Oresteia and Bacon, an in depth analysis of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944) will be made, following this up by examining the Second Version of Triptych 1944 (1988) and Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus (1981). In conclusion Aeschyluss influence will be confirmed and Bacons status of an painter of epic emotions and universal relevance will be raised. It is difficult to say with any certainty how much Bacon was influenced by his interest in literature because he so often contradicts himself that one can never be quite sure what he really means. Most of the time when one talks about painting, one says nothing interesting.Its always rather superficial.What can one say? Archimbaud (1993) p171 Despite this comment, he was a most vociferous painter.One only has to read David Sylvester and Michael Peppiatt to find many instances of contradictory views.For example his desire to avoid narrative painting is frequently stated on record, yet when talking with David Sylvester, Bacon says: I dont want to avoid telling a story but I want very, very much to do the thing that Valery (the French poet) said to give sensation without the boredom of conveyance. Sylvester (1980) p 65 Bacon used interviews skilfully to manage how his work was perceived and interpreted, sometimes being open and clear and at others intentionally misleading or at least spreading an air of mystery about his images and sources.The interviews with David Sylvester are a mine of information about his work and in them he acknowledges his profound debt to literature specifically Aeschylus and Eliot. Additionally he could list for Michael Leiris, cited in Gale (2008), p23, what books informed Triptych 1976.And Michael Peppiatt recorded that Bacon admitted that literature had more effect on his paintings than anything else. Bacons primary aim was to convey strong feelings and emotions: the shock of violence, fear of the threat and rumblings of fate. He wanted to communicate up onto the nervous system using subconscious feelings and raw emotion rather than tell or show directly.This is just what he got from Aeschylus and T. S. Eliot.The Wasteland is not a narrative poem; it evokes feelings and, The Oresteia of Aeschylus . . . its epic nature and hyperbolic language and imagery make it into something more universal . . . its inherent emotional violence. Gale (2008) p21 And Bacon was a man steeped in violence.Francis Bacons father, Edward, was a hardened war veteran with an innate belief in physical courage and toughness.He brought his children up under a tough military regime and had little time or affection for his son.Being an asthmatic, allergic to dogs and horses didnt prevent his father from forcing him to ride to hounds and is reputed to have had him beaten by the grooms in the stable for no reason other than to make a man of him.These grooms were also those with whom he had sex after he was expelled from public school for his relationships with other boys.This fusion between sex and violence is probably what forged his sadomasochistic instincts.Finally, his father discovered him dressed in his mothers underwear and expelled him from the family home to which he was never to return.The paternal violence and the experiences of being cast out could have been linked to why The Oresteia struck such a chord with him.The tormented personal history, is subconsciously awoken by the poetry of Aeschylus, Eliot and others, particularly Shakespeare, and is expressed by Bacon in the violence of all his works.And it is Bacons intention that these paintings communicate this violence of his life and sources to the viewer through feeling rather than narrative.As Andrew Brighton writes, Bacons stories of his traumatic childhood and early sex life may have been told for their own sake honest and cathartic revelations and fibs but they give us one of Bacons pretexts.By word of mouth and in published sources, his account of himself increasingly accompanied him and his work.They lent authenticity to his art and its rhetoric of despair.They tell us something both of how he wanted others to understand his history and how he understood it himself.These understandings became sources for his paintings; they are in a sense part of the literature on which his work drew. Brighton (2001) p17 Whilst in this essay the focus is on Bacon and Aeschylus, Bacons literary influences extended to T. S. Eliot (The Family Reunion amodern reworking of The Oresteia), W. B. Yeats, Frederico Garcia Lorca, Ezra Pound, William Shakespeare (Hamlet being another reworking of The Oresteia motif) Webster, Conrad and Freke Brut, Satre (Les Mouches yet another reworking of the Oresteia) and on to Sigmund Freuds writings and theories which were very in vogue at the time. The common thread in many of these writers is tragedy.Aristotle commented that the purpose of tragedy was to purge by pity and terror.This cathartic theatrical experience, which can be related to Freudian theory, could well be a further aspect of the plays that attracted Bacon to the tragedies and that dramatic effect what he wanted to achieve through his painting, reworking the themes and motifs in a very different medium. Bacon referred to these paintings as sketches for the Eumenides, the ancient pursuers of revenge for familial murder.Bacons source for these creatures was The Oresteia, a trilogy by Aeschylus. (see Appendix A for a prà ©cis of The Oresteia) What might the Eumenides mean to man, particularly Francis Bacon, well read in Freudian theory?Could they represent the super ego, Freuds internal parent which governs our excesses?Bacons father as discussed was a brutal, disciplined man with very different value to Francis whose super ego would have been the internalisation of his parents value system.Are they subconscious feelings such as guilt or even pressure to conform to social mores of the time?Bacon viewed his homosexuality as a defect when society viewed it with such abhorrence that it was still a criminal act until 1968. Whilst these deductions have evidence to support them, what is more overwhelmingly true of Bacon is that he absorbed the feelings that poetry aroused in a subconscious, non verbal manner. When he painted he used these feelings as sources of inspiration thus painting from deep within himself where his life experience and the poetry synthesised to create paintings raw with human experience. It is notable that Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, the turning point of his career, is an expression of his own demons.The whole painting conveys a savage inhuman terror, wrought with pain.The Eumenides are avengers of familial murder so it is pertinent that Bacon chose them instead of the traditional saints as his figures at the base of the crucifixion, symbolising the sacrificial murder of Jesus Christ by His Father and could be a subconscious expression of his feelings about his fathers abuse of him when a child but from the outset showing his sensitivity to mans inhumanity to man. I know for religious people, for Christians, the crucifixion has a totally different significance.But as a non-believer, it was just an act of Mans behaviour, a way of behaving to another. Although many state that the painting was completed in two days, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, dated 1944 was developed over a number of the preceding war years and many interpreted the triptych as Bacons reaction to the horrors of war.But Bacon tended not to depict mankind in general, such as Picasso did in Guernica, but often painted single figures which communicated with the individual in each of us to share universal truths and personal feelings. In Greek and Roman mythology there are overlapping similarities between the Eumenides known as the Erinyes (the angry ones) before their transformation to the Eumenides (the kindly ones), the Furies and the Gorgons.In ancient myths these creatures have heads wreathed in snakes, eyes dripping with blood, the body of a dog and bird or bat wings.In The Family Reunion, the play by T. S. Eliot in which he reworked the motifs of The Oresteia,Harry, the protagonist, describes them as sleepless hunters that will not let me sleep a phrase which engenders the unremitting hounding they represent.Eliots The Family Reunion was Bacons introduction to Aeschyluss Oresteia, the play that was to provide inspirational source material for many of his paintings.The Oresteia is a play steeped in multiple murders, revenge and retribution where the Erinyes/Eumenides pursue Orestes after he murdered his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus in revenge for his mothers murder of her husband Agamemnon and his mistress Cassandra in revenge for his sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia.These merciless creatures with an unassuageable thirst for mindless retribution of familial murder were the subjects of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion.Bacon stated that they were influenced by Picassos biomorphs and when he wanted to further explore the organic form that relates to the human image but is a complete distortion of it, Sylvester (1980) p8, the Eumenides would have provided an ideal opportunity. The development of the biomorphic figures in Three Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion can be seen in earlier Bacon paintings: Man in Cap (1943); Figure Getting out of a Car (1943) and Man Standing (1941-2) and in subsequent paintings of that era:Figure Study I (1946) and Figure Study II (1946) which show reworking but with clothing and everyday props such as plants and flowers. These placements of the figures, with everyday objects that enter into our personal world, make them all the more threatening.From these beginnings, the Eumenides would become a recurring icon that Bacon would revisit many times until his Second Version of Triptych 1944. Bacon said that he chose the triptych because he couldnt paint everything he needed to on one canvas. Ive never been able to make the one image that sums up all the others.So one image against the other seems to be able to say the thing more. Sylvester (1980) p22 However, it is also interesting to note that crucifixions traditionally adopt the triptych format.The three figures stand in for the saints traditionally depicted at the base of the cross or even for Christ himself and the two thieves crucified with him. Additionally, The Oresteia is three plays and there are three Furies so the number three is woven throughout this work. The cadmium orange background, another element of this triptych that he would reuse throughout his career has been interpreted as a metaphor for violence but the evidence for this isnt clear.Nevertheless the grating burnt orange used in these painting demands the viewers attention and is unsettling.In this painting, the paint is applied more thinly than in later years and the Eumenides are contained within their distinct biomorphic forms.At this stage of his life and career he may have needed to contain the figures symbolically controlling his own psychological demons. In later paintings, where he is a more experienced and established painter, he allowed himself to work more freely and allow accident to play its part. In the Oresteia, the Eumenides are black but Bacon paints them white and grey like classical Greek statues, the shades of stone reminding us of the Gorgons. In the left hand painting an armless, legless or kneeling female with her head hung in despair or supplication appears to be more of a victim than an instrument of vengeance. Hugh Davies viewed her as a mourner at the cross. whilst Michael Peppiatt as Clytemnestra brooding like a hen over her sorrow Peppiatt (2007) p112. The central figure, blinded by a cloth draped over her eyes, is sourced from the blindfolded Christ in Grunewalds Mocking of Christ with the cloth being a metaphor for the blind pursuit of retribution by the Eumenides. The right hand biomorph looks like a penis with a savage biting mouth. Taking a psychological interpretation, this can be viewed as the Eumenides representing Bacons own guilt about his sado-masochism and homosexuality. Aeschyluss phrase the reek of human blood smiles out at me touched a nerve with Bacon and his paintings of mouths in this and other paintings is him expressing it though his own medium. In visual terms, a major visual source for this mouth was a still of the Nurses scream in the film Battleship Potemkin (1952) by Sergai Eisenstein. Bacon originally intended this painting as a study for a further, mush larger crucifixion painting but this intention was never fulfilled. Nevertheless, many characteristics of this painting would be reused: the cadmium orange background; the triptych format; the gaping scream and the biomorphic Eumenides. In 1988 he painted Second Version of Triptych 1944 which became his last painting of the Eumenides. It is over twice the size of the 1944 version and the harsh orange was replaced by saturated blood red backgrounds in the outer paintings and a carpet of blood red running down the central one. This is the blood red carpet that Clytemnestra lays down for Agamemnon as her ironic greeting welcomes him home to his death.             Spread tapestries in his way. Let the great king             Walk a crimson pathway to the home             He never hoped to see. A crimson path! His just reward; now justice shall be done. Step down, my lord. The rest will follow. I shall not rest Till the gods grant what you have earned. The bloody yet regal colouring, the grander scale, the more refined technique and the compositional symmetry afford this painting a more majestic formality. The backgrounds are simpler and flatter and the figures smaller making the feeling of the later version less claustrophobic and despite being diffused in blood, it has less of the horror of the 1944 triptych. The Eumenides return as Martin Harrison remarked, as a sign of Bacons own fury and despair. Martin Harrison, in Rachel Tant in Gale Stephens (2008) p234 In the left hand panel the figure is less substantial and the chair more so, giving the figure an unearthly characteristic. This Eumenides has more distinct wings and is less frightening than her predecessor. She is more of an onlooker, a creature of despair perhaps even Bacons mother? The central figure has an egg-like form and looks out at the viewer with a grimace of pain. Perhaps Bacon the child? One of the stands legs looks like a scythe, the grim reaper on the red carpet on which Agamemnon was murdered. Here we have birth and death in the same painting. The right had biomorph is more like a human body squatting on a table ready to pounce. Perhaps his father? The Second Version of Triptych 1944 is a grander more refined, more mature painting than the original 1944 triptych but the raw pain is diluted suggesting a man more in control of his own demons and calmer in his advancing years. The Triptych Inspired by the Oresteia of Aeschylus, 1981 shows sparse modern room settings which relate the theme of these pictures to the present day. The epic sensations of the Oresteia: fear, revenge, power, envy, desire, guilt, family infighting, are just as relevant today, in fact they are timeless. Although each panel is set in a room, the figures are supported or contained by a framework of lines, a common Bacon technique. Frank Laukotters (2006, p184) view was that these shifting spatial perspectives indicate the vagaries of fate. On the side panels these lines lead into a doorway leading into a dark abyss, whereas in the central panel they form a plinth and a structure symbolising a throne on the blood red carpet. This bloodied carpet will be revisited by Bacon in his later triptych, Second Version of Triptych 1944, of the Eumenides. The Oresteia is a violent and murderous play with constant references to blood:             Death and grief forever             Blood of a people lost. Agamemnon, Lines 715-716 Blood calls for Blood             Libation Bearers, Line 77             The Gorgon waits, Living and dead are watching, Waiting to see The killer killed, Blood spilled for Blood. Libation Bearers, Lines 832-837 Step in blood, On thrones of blood, Blood-smeared from head to toe. Eumenides, Lines 163-165 Bacon wrote to Michael Leiris in 1976 that he was working on a large triptych in which the accidents were based on the Oresteia. I could not paint Agamemnon, Clytemnestra of Cassandra as that would have been merely another type of historical painting. . . Therefore, I tried to create an image of the effect it produced inside of me. Francis Bacon in Gale Stephens (2008) p216 Christopher Collard, in the introduction to his translation of the Oresteia, says that a detailed knowledge of the Oresteia is necessary in unravelling the depth of meaning in this triptych. Whilst this obviously helps with a concrete analysis and may also contribute to a subconscious understanding, in Bacons own terms, it is not an absolute necessity for the communication of the feelings of loneliness, violence and despair that he aims to convey up onto the nervous system. The central panel is the first to command the viewers attention. A contorted figure, with a grotesque, elongated neck and exposed vertebrae is bent down so that the head lies against a bowl of dark genitalia. This decomposing figure symbolises decaying power, defeat and death and arouses our pity as it struggles onto a raised platform. Here is a figure eaten away by inner conflict; consumed and gnawed by guilt. The blood red carpet suggests that the figure is Agamemnon but it could equally be Orestes and in the linked paintings, the Eumenides appear as they do in the Oresteia after the murder of Clytemnestra. On the left hand panel, a winged Eumenides with legs is flying over the door where matricide has taken place, into the framed space in front of it, already in pursuit of Orestes. Under the door, from the black abyss symbolising the never ending pain of sin, flows a rivulet of the victims blood. It seems most likely that this rapacious mutant, often blood-smeared and as if about to pounce on its prey, represented a deeply uneasy conscience. . . When Bacon remarked the Furies often visit me,he was alluding to what he considered the most insidious punishment of all: guilt, which he believed stalked modern post-Freudian man as the Erinyes pursued the Greeks. Peppiatt (2008)p 334 This painting shows a particularly good example of the operation and control of accident in his technique. Out of the face of the left hand Eumenides, is a congealed streak of blood where Bacon has squeezed paint directly out of the tube and then controlled the tail with a light brushstroke. As Andrew Durham says, Chance is exploited but the result is far from arbitrary: the creative and the critical become a single act. Ades Forge(1985) p 233 In the right-hand panel, a headless male, probably Orestes is being burrowed in to by a Eumenides, visually linked to the left hand one by the similar legs. In this way, the murder of the left hand panel is linked to the retribution in the right. Orestes seems to be cleft in half by the door signifying the tragic curse that tore the House of Atreus apart and the cycle of murders that forces him into exile. The feeling engendered in Bacon by this aspect of the Oresteia would have potently echoed his own rejection when his father found him dressed in his mothers underwear and cast him out of the family home when only fifteen.         As was discussed at the start of this essay, one cannot always accept Francis Bacons spoken words absolute fact. He was a manipulator of his own image and often contradicted himself. However, in the case of the influence of Aeschylus on his paintings, we have extensive evidence recorded in interviews that is confirmed by the examination of the paintings themselves. On examination of Bacons childhood, parental cruelty, the blurring of sex and violence and the experience of being cast out from the family home at age 16, it can be seen why Aeschyluss Oresteia,struck such a chord within him. The murders committed by both parents, the sexual deceit, the exile of Orestes and the pursuit of the Eumenides, which Bacon admitted often visited him.         But, it was the way in which the poetry of Aeschylus conveyed subconscious raw emotion that was the greatest influence on Bacon. Always avoiding the narrative in his paintings he looked to convey feelings directly, without the conscious intervention of storytelling. His paintings communicate up onto the nervous system. His emotions speak directly to ours. And on seeing the Oresteia, it is not so much the story that provides the cathartic experience of tragedy, but again profound emotions stirred by shocking violence and terror.         In analysing the three triptychs influenced by the Oresteia, it is clear that Bacon used the Eumenides to depict his own demons: his fathers betrayal of his parental role, his experience as an outcast, he guilt about homosexuality and sadomasochism, his belief in mans inherent. In the Oresteia triptych (1981), he shows us the decaying power of authority, the blood red carpet of the murder scene of a dying dynasty. One of the figures eating himself away, consumed by guilt. Aeschylus provided the inspiration and the means to paint the pain and horror of his existence, which he did so every morning before blotting it all out in an alcoholic anaesthetic.         Aeschylus wrote about fate and accident and this too was important to Bacon who used to try to use accident in his painting in order to move it further onto the subconscious plane and to make it more spontaneous and visuaqlly interesting.         Aeschylus was an epic poet who has used universal themes and powerful language to create a masterpiece of unquestionable greatness that has stood the test of time. I am a great fan of Francis Bacons paintings which to me are magnetic, full of emotion and mystery and over time, my interest has increased rather than waned. But it is too soon to say whether or not he is an epic or even a great painter. Bibliography Ades, Dawn, Forge, Andrew, with a note on technique by Andrew Durham (1985) Francis Bacon, London: Thames and Hudson, in association with the Tate Gallery. Aeschylus (1991) Plays Two, Oresteia, Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides, Translated by Frederic Raphael Kenneth McLeish, Introduced by J. Michael Walton, London: Methuen. Archimbaud, Michel (1993) Francis Bacon: In Conversation with Michel Archimbaud, London: Phaidon Brighton, Andrew (c2001) Francis Bacon, London: Tate Gallery. Cork, Richard (), Bacon and Edge Sunday Times Magazine, Daniels, Rebecca (2008) Behind the Myth of Francis Bacon, The Daily Telegraph Review, 16.08.08, pp.1-3. Deleuze, Gilles (2004) Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dickinson, Hugh (1969) Myth on the Modern Stage, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Eliot, T. S. (1972) The Wasteland and other Poems, London: Faber Faber. Ficacci, Luigi (2006) Bacon, Germany: Taschen. Gale, Matthew Stephens, Chris (2008) Francis Bacon, Tate Publishing. Harrison, Martin Daniels, Rebecca (2008) Francis Bacon: Incunabula, foreword by Barbara Dawson, London: Thames Hudson. Hatch, John G (1998), Fatum as Theme and Method in the work of Francis Bacon, Artibus et Historiae, Vol 19, no. 37 pp. 163-175, Januszczak, Waldemar (2009) A career in three slices, Sunday Times Culture Magazine. Laessoe, Rolf (1983) Francis Bacon and T.S, Eliot, Hafnia Copenhagen Papers in the History of Art, Vol 9. Leiris, Michel (1983) Francis Bacon: full face and in profile, Oxford: Phaidon, Oxford. Maughfling, Gavin (2001) The Pulverising Machine in Engage, Issue 10, Autumn. Peppiatt, Michael (2008) Anatomy of an Enigma, London: Constable. Peppiatt, Michael (2009) Portrait of a Paradox, Study of a Saint and a Sinner, Sunday Times Culture Magazine. Perl, Jed (2009) Slaughterhouse, New Republic, Vol. 240, Issue 10, pp.25-28. Porter, David H. () Some Inversions not Righted: A note on the Eumenides, The Classical Journal, 101.1, pp.1-10. Stanford, W. B. (1942) Aeschylus in his style: a study in language and personality, Dublin: The University Press. Sylvester, David (c1998) Francis Bacon: the human body, London: Hayward Gallery. Sylvester, David (c1980) Interviews with Francis Bacon 1962-1979, London, Thames and Hudson. Trucci, Lorenzo (1976) Francis Bacon, London: Thames and Hudson. Yezzi, David (2008) Bacons Theatre of the Absurd, The New Criterion, December, pp. 25-28 Zweite, Armin (ed) (2006) in collaboration with Maria Muller, texts by Peter Burger [et al.], Francis Bacon: the violence of the real, London: Thames Hudson.
Sunday, January 19, 2020
President Roosevelt’s Goals
Upon his election to deliver the New Deal, an unprecedented number of reforms addressing the catastrophic effects of the Great Depression, Roosevelt felt it was the federal government's duty to help the American people weather these bad times. His first duty as president was to declare a four-day bank Holiday, during which time congress drafted the Emergency Banking Bill of 1933, which stabilized the Banking ystem.This restored faith in the Banking systems for the people. Three months later he signed the Glass-Steagall Act, which created the FDIC, federally insuring deposits. The Civil Conservation Corps was one of the New Deal's most successful programs. It addressed the pressing problem of unemployment sending millions of men to the Nations' forests to work. The Works Progress Administration program; Roosevelt's major work program, would employ 8. 5 million Americans to build airports, parks, ridges, etc.Other programs included were, The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) and The National Recovery Administration (NRA) were created to help unemployment. The Federal Emergency Relief Program (FERA) gave 3 million to states for work relief programs. The Agricultural Act subsidized farmers for reducing crops and provided loans for farmers facing bankruptcy. The Home Owner's loan Corporation (HOLC) helped people save their homes from foreclosure. The Deal Programs did not end theGreat Depression, they did however help Americans by taking care of their basic needs and giving them the dignity of work and hope. President Roosevelt not only got the American people a start in the Great Depression but he would go on to pass a few more important deal programs. The Wagner Act, one of the most important pieces of labor legislation in History. It supported the rights of working class Americans, guaranteeing workers' the right to organize Unions and bargaining with management. Then there was the SocialSecurity Act in 1935 proposed by Roosevelt. This Act has proved to be the most significant and far-reaching of all the New Deal initiatives. The Social Security Act was to help those who were disabled, blind, or elder. The New Social Security tax took money right out of worker's pockets and placed it into a retirement trust fund, exacerbating the shrinking money supply that was one of the main causes of the Great Depression. President Roosevelt created another major bill called the Revenue Act, it raised taxes on annual income above $50,000.Estate and Gift taxes also rose as did the corporate tax rate. This caused an uproar among businessmen and conservatives, who were fuming at Roosevelt saying he was moving dangerously into a radical direction. Roosevelt countered by stressing he had no love for socialism. Roosevelt steered a zigzag course between the extremes of unregulated Capitalism and socialism. The Greatest failure of the New Deal was its inability to restore economic regulatory powers of t federal welfare system.Roosevelt was no socialist, he sought o preserve the basic capitalist structures. The New Deal represented a â€Å"halfway revolution†that altered the Nation's social and political landscape. President Roosevelt had three main goals while in office, to provide assistance to millions of needy Americans, to improve the level of the Economy, and to pass laws that would eradicate poverty and unemployment. People called this the Three R's; Recovery, Relief, and Reform. Due to his dedication to save America from the Great Depression we today can live a better life.
Friday, January 10, 2020
Hadith: Islam and Islamic Community Essay
The Islamic faith began with one man and his spiritual encounters with god and his angel Gabriel. Muhammad, the Prophet, as he is referred to by his followers, is considered to be the last prophet sent by god to interact with human beings on earth. Due to his importance and his influence over the people of his time his words and actions have been collected, over a mass number of years into a book referred to as, The Hadith. The Hadith, is second in line of importance in the Islamic community only behind the Qur’an. The term, Hadith, has been interpreted to mean talk or speech due to the innards of the book being collections of the words and actions of Muhammad (Bentley, 211). During its creation years numerous pieces, referred to as canons, were collected and studied by scholars to prove legitimacy. As it grew the canons were proved either to be accurate or false of authenticity. However, with its completion the Hadith serves as more than just religious guidelines as it sheds light upon social, political, economical, and cultural aspects of the Islamic community similar to works of other faiths and philosophical views. In the early years of many religions government seemed to be greatly influenced by the beliefs and traditions of its people. In the Islamic community Muhammad paved a path for Muslims that not only constructed the foundation of the faith, but also called the attention of government officials to follow and practice the ways of Islam. Before Muhammad’s death he chose no successor to take the role of a religious leader. This may be due to the fact that he was deemed â€Å"the seal of the prophets,†no other human being would have the role of a prophet bequeathed upon them. Within a year after his death the Islamic community saw it important, to at the very least, place one person in as somewhat of a substitute for Muhammad. This person was dubbed a caliph (deputy). The role of a caliph besides being the head of the Islamic state included many other aspects. He took on the role as head of military and a chief judge. This is just one spot where it is evident that the religion took on a larger role than just a stream of spiritual beliefs. In a reading pertaining to Muhammad and his words about the peoples’ role under their rulers he stresses the importance of obedience, â€Å"Obedience is the duty of a Muslim man†(Reilly, 290). The words attributed to Muhammad in this section are a part of the Hadith and break through a singular religious subject. They marry quite a few aspects together, such as: religion, politics, and social order. â€Å"Do not revile the Sultan, for he is God’s shadow on God’s earth†(Reilly, 290). By Muhammad saying that it is the duty of a Muslim man to obey his rulers he is implying, very strongly, that these leaders follow the same spiritual path as the people and that it unites them as a community. A community consists of a cornucopia of factors and a few of them being shared religious belief, government (or a basic code of conduct), and unity. An individual is considered to be a part of the Muslim community if he or she has accepted the Islamic faith (Bentley, 205). Within the collection of the Forty Hadith Qudsi many deal with the proper way in which Islamic people were to handle social and economic situations. One in particular pertains to the order in which one may handle an issue of debt. This pulls in a human’s sense of humane economics. In Hadith 12 Muhammad is quoted as he relayed a message from Allah, â€Å"We are worthier that you of that. Let him off.†What is being demonstrated in this canon is that an individual that finds himself in a debt of another and incapable of repaying said debt may be let off due to good character. If the one in debt has proved himself to a be a person of upstanding character then he should be viewed as a man who is in need of a certain charity for he has done nothing to cross the man in which he owes. Good character and an absence of greed were seen to be crucial in dealing with social and economic situations. The hand of religion has once again been spotted molding the world in which these people live cultivating a society where faith and societal structure are one in the same. In some aspects the Hadith spells out similar messages to Muslims like the Bible does for Christians. Fearing god is a theme in which both religions share. This fear is not a sensation that one would feel in the presence of danger, but rather it describes a lifestyle of consequence. God, in both religions, is seen as a judge, one who holds the fate of each individual in his hands. To live the life that has been preached by religious leaders is the path to follow to reach a heavenly paradise after a human’s departure from the physical world. This lifestyle which the people of both religions are to follow created a domino effect into a cultural standard. The scripts of both these religions hold many similarities. The following examples exemplify a communal guideline to form a structured and righteous community, a culture. Hadith 23 reads: â€Å"Where are those who love one another through My glory? Today I shall give them shade in My shade, it being a day when there is no shade but My shade.†The ninth commandment in the Holy Bible reads: â€Å"Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.†Religion has a strong arm in the molding of a culture. For the devoted followers of a faith the words of guidance, like the ones above, become an imbedded character trait within a person and in the all the ones of the same faith. And by the following of these codes one has this earlier discussed sense of fear that their god is going to reward them or punish them for not falling in accordance. The words conveyed to them are moral imperatives. The potency in which this faith has on its people has been carried through the centuries with an immense sense of pride. Islam is one of the largest religions on earth and like others it remains interweaved in the cultural societies of many countries. It does not hold a structure like the caste system which the religion of Hinduism does, but rather it still to this day has influence in many military forces and daily structures of multiple nations. The implementation of faiths with such monumental scriptures and even just ideas areas of the world have been molded and brought reality to its beginning preachers. For those looking solely at the surface of multiple religious etiquettes the similarities may be overlooked and the faiths and ideas may be seen as nothing but different. However, many of these religions and ideas are closely related. Confucianism, a socio-philosophical system, and the faiths of Islam and Hinduism can be seen as holding some of the same characteristics. Like stated before Islam and Hinduism differ in their societal structures, but still have formed faiths that mold cultures together by standards, found in readings of the Gita, Hadith, and other pieces of literature, that have survived through long periods of time and continue to thrive. The aims of many of these faiths and systems share in common beliefs. Confucianism aims to cultivate a society in which people can live and assume their personal responsibilities to manufacture a peaceful society. Like the Analects of Confucianism, Muhammad has constructed a framework through the Hadith implementing ethics and morality for the public. This too is similar to the words of the Gita in the Hindu faith. Krishna portrays, somewhat abstract at times, a set of guidelines for the followers of Hinduism. Religion has the power to mold the essence of human behavior and create unity amongst a mass number of people sharing in the same belief. When the words and doings of its most respected leaders are noted more than just a set of beliefs can be understood. A framework to a lifestyle can be comprehended and practiced by those following and believing in its meaning creating a community of people living and interacting with each other painting a society by standards in which to live. The Hadith has done just this in the Islamic community, a culture of people has been molded and its life will be watered by its words and the impact which it has had and continues to have on its people. Work Cited Patton, Laurie L. trans. The Bhagavad Gita. London: Penguin Group, 2008. Print. Bentley, Jerry H., Herbert F. Ziegler, and Heather E. Streets. Traditions & Encounters: A Brief Global History. Boston: McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2006. Print. Forty Hadith Qudsi. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Thursday, January 2, 2020
Essay on Prisoner Without a Name Book Review - 819 Words
Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a number â€Å"Argentina is God†Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a number is a melancholy novel that expresses Argentina’s terrorist state. Jacob Timerman, a well respected man of Argentina, an editor of a well know Argentinian paper, La Opinion, tells the audience his story of the terrorist state of Argentina from 1967-1978. His gripping novel both describes his personal experience being kidnapped by terrorist, while he tells us about the condition of the terrorist state of Argentina. His book is important because it tells a first hand account of the fear, the distrust, and the mere insanity of conditions in the country of Argentina during its darkest time. In Timerman’s first†¦show more content†¦This encounter that he describes is an important aspect of his book, in that it represents an encounter with another person struggling through the same pain, and same tourture that he is experiencing. This can be looked at as a simile towards the conditions in t he country of Argentina. After Timerman describes his torture and isolation while under imprisonment, his next chapter tells us about the chaos that has under gone in Argentina, and her government. He explains to the readers that there are two sides in this civil war between the two parties of government, and describes all of the violence that has occured as a by-product of this war. He tells us of his encounters with the hysteria before he was kidnapped, and the disarray that was upon Argentinians. Timerman uses a quote by Luis Borges that was very interesting and nsightful, claiming that â€Å"the Argentine is not a citizen but an inhabitant; that he lacks an idea of the nation where he resides , but views it as a territory†¦Ã¢â‚¬ which is an understandable view. The people of Argentina, as Timerman describes, are scared of their government and the terrorism that is upon them. Timerman describes Argentina is such a state that there is no government, and, that the gover nment is corrupt and that there is no trust authorities. Timerman, throughout the book, tells about mothers, fathers, relatives, and friends coming to La Opinion asking to write a letterShow MoreRelatedA Woman Whose Cells Founded A Multi Million Dollar Industry1658 Words  | 7 Pagesdiseases such as leukemia, hemophilia, influenza and countless others yet almost no one knows her name. Her true identity was in the shadows for years after her death in 1951. Little did her family know that she lived on through her cell line which is estimated to have a cumulative weight of around 50 million metric tons today. For years after her death no one knew anything more about her other than the name given to her cell line: HeLa. 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