The best service our nerves can render
is not to remind us they exist.[1]
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
In This Chapter
Placidity requires a minimum of entertainment. The only thing genuinely entertaining in life is contacting a higher value, which conveys an impression that is simultaneously enthralling, attractive, and difficult to express.
One would say a medieval copyist exercised a monotonous occupation. But looking at illustrations of the time, one notices that through this unpretentious work, the master’s pen gradually shows the higher values that give life its authentic entertainment.
Compared to the holy and entertaining medieval placidity, today’s world is a “nervousary,” meaning a barn of nervous people. To vibrate and listen to the sound of one’s nerves is a fun instrument full of masochism. It is the opposite of the copyist, whose delight is to live with his nerves in such a state that he does not even notice they exist. And the best service our nerves can provide is not to remind us they exist.
Knowing how to rise to higher values from the most minor things of existence is the formula to escape today’s “nervousary.”
[1] 12-23-74.
A Copyist
Behind True Entertainment, an Absolute Value
Like it or not, man is a rational animal. However much they wish to degrade him to animality, however animalistic he may become, he is a rational animal. So, there is always a way to stimulate what is rational in him and to counteract exclusively temperamental tendencies.
Entertainment is only genuine and adequate to human proportions when it enables a particular contact with a higher value, which gives the impression of being enthralling, attractive, and difficult to express. When someone comes into contact with higher things, he looks, pays attention, feels attracted and is somehow taken over by that higher reality. Deep down, without realizing it, he refers to God and finds in this an attraction, attention and pleasure that constitute life’s authentic entertainment.
A Copyist
Medieval illuminations offer endless learning and are usually a model of entertainment. In them, you see a whole world entertained in innocence. Take, for example, a beautiful illumination depicting a man copying a book. At the time, there were many professional calligraphers, some of whom were true artists. The calligrapher in the picture is seated at a table by a window, dressed in sizeable brown-and-black clothing that he can move entirely at will, protecting him well. He is sitting with a placid face, copying something with a sumptuous duck feather.
The work table was a kind of ledge looking to a street or garden, making the little room autonomous. To his right is a green-colored window allowing the light to enter from right to left and thus illuminating the work correctly. The floor is a wooden platform slightly above ground level, forming a peninsula on the fringes of the home’s beaten path.
That green light was not the same in the rest of the room but projected the copyist into a surreal fantasy. Beside the window, a parapet with a small vase and a little flower is looking at him. A delicate, petite, cute, bright, attractive, alluring flower, almost like a little bird singing to entertain him.
At the center of the drawing, this man quietly does his job. It is a handsome work; one sees he has a knack for it. He has no hurry, hunger, anguish or fatigue and is highly entertained while earning a living. Entertained with what? Not only with his beautiful handwriting but also with that ambiance that expressed specific absolute moral values that can be conceived as necessarily identifying with the things that surround him.
According to these moral values, the picture as a whole can be summed up as operative placidity.
Operative Placidity
Placidity is a moral value. It combines two contrary and harmonic perfections, placidity and operosity, with a beautiful balancing note when kept in operating mode. The copyist’s entire environment is impregnated with operative placidity, of which God is the supreme and uncreated model and immobile engine. At the same time that it descends from the highest heavens, this man’s well-being is born from the innermost depths of his personality. He is not having fun; he is working, but not like stewardesses in certain ads, with that artificial joy.
In his naturalness, smooth like a river, he endeavors to do a job for which he is perfectly cut out. He feels a thousand aspirations of his temperament, which meet with moral values, elevating him to God. He feels well doing what he does. He does not think he had a perfect day but considers it normal. This delightful but not delicious normality is real entertainment.
Normality’s Entertainment
In life, fun and pleasure are exceptions. The usual thing for man is to find some delectability in every daily action. How many people, after the workday, stand side by side talking or joshing a little, in the good sense of the word? This entertainment can lead to a combative, dynamic, genuinely active man. This is how I entertain myself. I am amused by watching a lit lamp or reading a history book. I am reading about the life of a Tsarina told by her daughter. This entertains me placidly and quietly; it is very relaxing.
This placid and tranquil entertainment is the pleasure of life. I come out of it with strength to fight. If I did not have this kind of entertainment but rested the modern way, I would be neurotic. In this lifestyle, you grab a good book and move beyond the secondary illiteracy of a man not in the habit of reading. For this secondary illiterate, picking up a book is a sacrifice, a painful escape from reality.
Entertainment and Masochism
The illumination with the placid copyist has an insinuated underlying meaning. It shows that a person does not entertain himself by stimulating his nerves but by leaving them alone. This point most shocks the modern concept of entertainment, which is to enjoy one’s temperamental state more than the delectable thing itself. A common example is a person who makes a trip but delights less with what he sees than with the emotions he stirs up in himself while traveling.
To vibrate and hear one’s own nerves is a masochistic instrument of amusement. It is the opposite of the copyist, who has the delight of living with his nerves in such a state that he does not even realize they exist. Our nerves provide the best service when we have no idea they exist. A person without nervous problems does not know what nervous problems are. This is the perfect situation, and medieval illuminations show it excellently as they do not display nervousness.
Holy Christ who was at Lepanto
Nobody can escape this choice: to enjoy a trip is not to think of yourself or your nerves but about what you see. If I am going to the cathedral of Barcelona to pray before the crucifix that was on the bow of Dom John of Austria’s flagship during the battle of Lepanto and start “rooting” about it, I manufacture nervousness, for example, by imagining myself fighting at Lepanto. And when I come to, I will be replacing Dom John of Austria… If I had done that, I would not have seen the crucifix but myself and felt my own nerves.
The correct position is the opposite: to look at it so that we do not even remember we have nerves. For this purpose, nerves should be as non-existent as electricity wires, pipes, etc. They render us service, but we do not remember they exist. They are built-in; you turn them on or off, open or close a tap. They exist to serve and their service is not to make news of themselves. The problem begins when we realize they exist, for that is when they are malfunctioning. The same happens with our nerves. Whoever acts differently renounces true entertainment.
Between the world of nerves and the world of holy and entertaining medieval placidness, there is the same incompatibility between the world of disorder and holy tranquility. In some ways, based on temperament and not ideas, human society today is a kind of great “nervousary” that vibrates in common.[1]
Note:
[1] 12-23-74.