Archive for November 9, 2008
Anne Frank: The Face of the Faceless
| Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl – Student Packet by Novel Units, Inc | |
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After I visited the building in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family had to hide during WWII, I finally decided to read her famous diary for myself. And I have to say: I was impressed. The book works very well on a variety of levels:
As History
This is an important historical witness of how the daily life of a teenager was restricted and finally squashed by the Nazi regime in Amsterdam. The humanity of Anne’s daily thoughts – free-flowing and turbulent – make for a stark contrast to Hitler’s cold machinery of might and control. Anne does not embody a perfect human but a real human. She becomes the face for all the faceless who were sucked into a totalitarian system.
As Literature
Considering that the diary is written by a thirteen to fifteen year-old, it is incredibly well written. The Nazis have deprived the world of a witty, pensive and creative writer.
As Psychology
Anne’s diary is filled with insights into human nature. Her reflections on herself and her fellow humans are detailed and instructive, sometimes consciously so and sometimes unconsciously by eloquently voicing the feelings of someone her age.
As Child Education
This is an important book both for teenagers and parents. Anne’s honesty about her feelings, development (physical and otherwise), problems and joys might help teenagers to deal better with their own development – and parents might be moved by Anne to more sympathy for that age group.
In short, this is essential reading, and ideal when discussing the Holocaust and the Second World War with a young teenager.
And this day, November 9, is an especially fitting occasion to remember the face of that Jewish girl of German parentage, because today marks the 70th anniversary of the so-called “Kristallnacht,” which was the beginning of large-scale persecution of Jews in Germany.
May such a day never come again.
C. S. Lewis on “Paradise Lost”
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C. S. Lewis had one great advantage for truly comprehending Milton’s “Paradise Lost”: he shared Milton’s Christianity. It seems that many modern non-Christian critics of Milton impose concepts on the text which would have been foreign to Milton. Lewis, in contrast, belonged in his whole mindset (according to his own admission) much more to bygone ages than to the twentieth century. Thus he was able to understand bygone poets more than most people today.
Added to this advantage is of course Lewis’s gift of having a lucid mind extended by an enchanting pen. His writings, including his academic ones, bristle with a liveliness lacking in most academic circles. “A Preface to Paradise Lost” is no exception in this regard.
As for the content of the “Preface,” Lewis first spends eight chapters describing and defending the style of Epic Poetry, to which “Paradise Lost” belongs. He distinguishes between Primary and Secondary Epic and draws parallels to the Roman poet Virgil. The remaining eleven chapters are used to discuss the theological concepts in “Paradise Lost,” making particular note of St. Augustine’s influence on Milton.
The bottom line of the book is that Milton’s poem, more than anything else, embodies concepts found in the Bible and the teachings of the Church, and that the supposed “revolutionary” concepts in Milton have largely been forced upon the text by later critics.
My own experience of reading Milton, for what it is worth, agrees with this view. I studied the Bible and church history quite extensively before I picked up “Paradise Lost,” and I was surprised to find how very unoriginal the poem was in its portrayed concepts (which does not mean that it is a bad poem); almost everything in Milton has its source either in the Bible or in Christian traditions and teachings.
Edward Wagenknecht from “The New York Times” was right to say that in the “Preface,” C. S. Lewis’s “most valiant service is to protect us against the many students of Milton who have not been able to see the woods for the trees” (taken from the back cover of the book).
A superb academic work – not only for academic readers.
(For those interested in C. S. Lewis and the Bible, see my new book The C. S. Lewis Book on the Bible: What the Greatest Christian Writer Thought about the Greatest Book.)
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