The Old Men of Moldavia, Corsica, and Port Royal

Aldous Huxley's "Time Must Have a Stop" is one of those novels you pick up because the synopsis on the back cover sounds intriguing and may in some way apply to your life.  It is also one of the novels you debate shelving multiple times because the cultural references of the characters are way over your head.  Many pages were skimmed and most of the Epilogue was skipped altogether.

"Time" is a coming of age novel about a seventeen-year-old Sebastian Barnack, an angelic, curly haired aspiring poet who lives under the care of his aunt in an English town during World War II.  His father is a puritanical socialistic lawyer who won't let the boy have a simple dinner jacket to wear to a party.  When Sebastian is invited to stay with his cultured Uncle Eustace, who is an atheist, he gets to see a different side of life and is even promised evening dress clothes from Eustace's own tailor.  During Sebastian's first night at his uncle's home in Florence, Eustace dies of a heart attack.  Sebastian quickly sells a Degas drawing his uncle has promised him so he could purchase a dinner jacket.  When Eustace's widow has the articles of the house accounted for, the drawing Sebastian sold is quickly discovered missing.  The novel goes back and forth between seances for Eustace and Sebastian meeting with an orthodox religious bookseller named Bruno who attempts to teach him a thing or two about living rightly.

The seances were confusing - probably inspired from Huxley's use of drugs.  And the references to art, poetry, literature, architecture, and other things were way over my head.  What most impressed me were the few religious references made by some of the characters.  One of the lessons of the novel was how ways of thinking can impact the way you live.  It would have been interesting to see how Sebastian would have turned out if his uncle had lived.  The first quote is a dialogue between the atheist Eustace and his believing friend Bruno:

"There's nothing I enjoy more," Eustace was remarking with relish, "than the spectacle of the Good trying to propagate their notions and producing results exactly contrary to what they intended.  It's the highest form of comedy."

"What about the comedy of the Clever?" [Bruno] said at last. "Achieving self-destruction in the name of self-interest, and delusion in the name of realism.  I sometimes think it's even higher than the comedy of the Good."

Sebastian and Eustace were talking after their first night having dinner together at his house in Florence.  They got on the subject of religion and quickly Eustace made a story of how all men are represented by three characters - the Old Men of Moldavia, Corsica, and Port Royal.  He said the Old Man of Moldavia wouldn't believe in Christ so he founded instead the:

"'Cult of Decorous Behavior.' Or, in other words, Confucianism.  But, unfortunately, China was also full of Buddhists and Taoists and miscellaneous war-lords.  People with bullying temperaments, and people with inhibited, scrupulous temperaments.  Horrible people like Napoleon, and other horrible people like Pascal.  There was an Old Man of Corsica who would not believe in anything but power.  And an Old Man of Port Royal who tortured himself by believing in the God of Abraham and Isaac, not of the philosophers.  Between them, they don't give the poor Old Man of Moldavia a decent chance.  Not in China or anywhere else."

"If I had the knowledge," he went on, "or the energy, I'd write an outline of world history.  Not in terms of geography, or climate, or economics, or politics.  None of these is fundamental.  In terms of temperament.  In terms of the eternal three-cornered struggle between the Old Man of Moldavia, the Old Man of Corsica, and the Old Man of Port Royal."

"Christ, of course, had been an Old Man of Port Royal.  So were Buddha and most other Hindus.  So was Lao-Tze.  But Mahomet had had a lot of the Old Man of Corsica in him.  And the same, of course, was true of any number of the Christian saints and doctors.  So you have got violence and rapine, practiced by proselytizing bullies and justified in terms of a theology devised by introverts.  And meanwhile the poor Old Men of Moldavia get kicked and abused by everybody."

Then the last quote I found to be interesting.  Rather harsh but showing the violent side of idealism (any idealism) exactly for what it is.

"Silliness and murder, stupidity and destruction!  He found the phrases waiting for him.  And the motive was always idealism, the instruments were always courage and loyalty - the heroic courage and loyalty without which men and women would never be able to persevere in their long-drawn suicides and assassinations."

"And all those treasures of knowledge placed so unhesitatingly at the service of passion!  All the genius and intelligence dedicated to the attempt to achieve ends either impossible or diabolic!  All the problems inherited from the last crusade and solved by methods that automatically created a hundred new problems.  And each new crusade would leave fresh problems for yet further crusades to solve and multiply the good old way."