There Goes the Sun King

 I finished reading my hardback copy of the first printing of the book, The Age of Louis XIV, Part VIII of the Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. The subtitle is "A History of European Civilization in the Period of Pascal, Moliѐre, Cromwell, Milton, Peter the Great, Newton, and Spinoza: 1648-1715." The book was published by Simon and Schuster, Inc. (New York) in 1963.

My copy of the book (no dust jacket).

MY OVERALL OPINION

👍Thumbs up (i.e., that means I like it). Very glad I read it. Would recommend it to anyone who is curious about history, science, philosophy, culture, and theology. 

WHY I READ THIS BOOK

The short answer was that I read the Age of Louis XIV because I wanted to find out more about the political climate at the time The Pilgrim's Progress (TPP) was written. The Christian aspect of TPP was obvious to me but I was also aware that the author, John Bunyon, had started writing it when he was in prison for his religious beliefs. TPP was mentioned or referenced several times in Part One of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott which I read last year. 

Most of the material I encountered online was about the religious aspects of TPP. One day I realized that there might be something in The Story of Civilization series of books that I have carried around for many years barely touching except when I moved. This volume, Part VIII, includes about five (5) pages on John Bunyan. And that whetted my appetite for more. So I kept reading.

Illustration of statue in the Louvre (Paris)
of Louis XIV by Francois Girardon.

BOOK DETAILS

Published: 1963 by Simon & Schuster (New York).

804 pages plus xviii pages of front matter, and three unnumbered sections containing 59 B&W illustrations.

The main text portion concludes on page 721 and is followed by a Bibliographical Guide (10 pages), Notes (24 pages), and an Index (36 pages); the final two pages are "About the Authors." The endpapers contain four maps (see picture below).

Maps in the front endpaper.

My copy of this volume also included a little pamphlet  containing an essay by Gilbert Higher that was reprinted from the Book-of-the-Month Club News.

Click on the image to open a larger window to read this essay.

It appears that the series is no longer published in a physical hard back book. Simon and Schuster appear to only offer an E-book version. Used copies of the books can still be found via the various used book sellers. You can read the book (and the entire series and more) online.

The series is intended for the general reader, not the scholar.

ORGANIZATION OF THE VOLUME

The text is divided into five (5) books:

1. Book I: The French Zenith (1643-1715)
2. Book II: England (1649-1714)
3. Book III: The Periphery (1648-1715)
4. Book IV: The Intellectual Adventure (1648-1715)
5. Book V: France Against Europe (1683-1715)..

From the Preface ("Dear Reader"):

This volume is part VIII in a history whose beginning has been forgotten, and whose end we shall never reach. The subject is civilization, which we define as social order promoting cultural creation. It includes government,. economy (agriculture, industry, commerce, finance), morality, manners, religion, art, literature, music, science, and philosophy.

The scene is Europe. The time is from the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) to the death of Louis XIV, whose reign (1643-1715) dominated and named the age.

The pervading theme is the Great Debate between faith and reason. 

 MY READING APPROACH

I don't remember when I exactly started reading this volume. I suspect it was sometime in October 2020. I tried to read a section each day.Some of the longer sections I broke into two reading sessions. I like to read in the morning with a fresh cup of coffee by my side and a dawning day outside the window.

The vocabulary sometimes challenged me. As much as I hate to say this, I liked using Google's Dictionary. In addition to the definition of a word, it would demonstrate how to pronounce. And there was a second way to explore pronunciation: in American English and British English and to even slow the pronunciation. This was very engaging. I tried to find something similar that was not on Google but was not successful.

Example of Google Dictionary.

I also would use Wikipedia to augment the text in order to find out more about people and places. Perhaps the ability to supplement the text with online material made the reading experience more satisfying for me.

Finished the book on Saturday April 17, 2021.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

I really, really enjoyed reading this book. Nearly every day, their dry wit brought a smile to my face.

While I was reading the first part of the book, the 2020 US Presidential election was underway. Nearly everyday, I found something in the early days of Louis XIV that correlated with the contemporary political scene in the US. When I heard news commentators exclaim that some event or situation was unprecedented, I was often amused because I had just read something similar that happened in 17th Century France. Later, when I read about the English Civil War, I again found many touch points with the contemporary US political environment. 

Earlier this year, while I was reading A Wrinkle In Time, I was reading in The Age of Louis XIV about physics (Newton) and astronomy (Halley) and then philosophy (Descartes, Locke, George Berkeley, Leibniz, and Spinoza). What is real? So much overlap between the two books at that time. Quite fascinating. 

So much to learn.

NEXT

Am currently reading Ready Player One (started Saturday April 10, 2021).

Started Part IX of the Story of Civilization, The Age of Voltaire, on Thursday April 22, 2021.

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Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_XIV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Civilization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Durant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_Durant
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moli%C3%A8re
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Cromwell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Milton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
http://ricketwrite.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-pilgrims-progress.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Women
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bunyan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Girardon#/media/File:Louis_XIV_statue_equestre.JPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Girardon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Highet
https://erenow.net/modern/the-age-of-louis-xiv/ 
http://ricketwrite.blogspot.com/2021/03/a-wwwrinnnkllle-innn-tttimme.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ready_Player_One
https://erenow.net/modern/the-age-of-voltaire-a-history-of-civlization-in-western-europe-from-1715-to-1756/
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Written Sunday 25 April 2021

A Wwwrinnnkllle innn TTTimme

 

Cover of Tina's homemade note to me.

I am writing this post about a month after I actually finished the book (but I'm dating the post closer to when I think I completed the book). The Covid chaos (to simplify the accumulation of distractions, frustrations, and anxieties) has resulted in diminished motivation for things like logging my activities, filing receipts and anything that is not needed for basic living.

Anyone who has read Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time will recognize my reference in the title of this blog post. I wrote about the background to my reason for reading this book in a previous post. After wracking my brain trying to recall when I finished the book, I  thought the book title to be a most appropriate title for the blog post.

My sister, Tina, sent me a note (see picture above) in answer to my inquiry on why she sent me the book. I thought the note was pretty cool, and a good way to start the post.

Bottom line: I finished the book, enjoyed it immensely, and heartily recommend it.
(Apparently Disney produced a movie version a few years ago but I have no interest in that). I just finished the Durant's book (see below) and I'm anxious to post about it but don't want to let my thoughts about A Wrinkle in Time slip away.

There is a lot I could say about this book but I don't want to write a dissertation here. If you are keen to discuss the book, call me and let's talk.

The book is beautifully summed up in 90 seconds in this video:

As you may know, while I was reading AWIT, I was also plowing through Will and Ariel Durant's The Story of Civilization (Part VIII) The Age of Louis XIV. During the various narratives about time travel in AWIT, I was also reading about Newton and Leibniz developing the Calculus, Physics and Science and Astronomy (Halley's comet) and philosophy (John Locke, George Berkeley, Spinoza). So there was a lot of philosophical and astronomical overlap between the two books.

The Black Cloud (1957 US edition).

Later, in some of my supplemental reading about AWIT, I learned that Madeleine L'Engle was reading about Einstein as well as the astronomer and science fiction author Fred Hoyle. It appears that his novel, The Black Cloud, influenced "The Dark Thing" in AWIT.

Overall, I enjoyed the book but was disappointed in the ending: "All You Need is Love" which I found to be contrived and convenient (need to find an ending, quick. "Love" is always a nice solution). But what exactly is love? It's more that the main character Meg running around IT shouting, "I love you." This was simple and silly because it seemed to come out of nowhere, like clicking your heels ans chanting "there's no place like home."

This book turned into The Time Quintet series and four (4) more books were published during the next thirty years. I don't know if I will read those. Perhaps I might if someone gives them to me as a gift or I find them cheap at a used book sale.

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Links:
http://ricketwrite.blogspot.com/2021/02/tomorrow-never-knows.html
https://www.madeleinelengle.com/
https://read.macmillan.com/mcpg/a-wrinkle-in-time/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhsCCQrCNAs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Quintet
https://vimeo.com/222978679
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Written Sunday 18 April 2021.

The Pilgrim's Progress

 

This is probably not exactly what I hoped to write about my experience of reading The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyon but I have been procrastinating and I don't want to lose this accomplishment as I have to so many other posts intended for this blog that I never got around to writing. And there is no time like the present. So here I go.

I am dating this post March 3rd because that is the day I finished my reading; however, I am writing this much later (see below). Being something of a mathematical, engineering mind, I am partial to numbers and take pleasure in symmetry (03/03). I didn't plan this date but it seemed like a good place to stop my study of TPP.

My endeavor to read TPP began a few years ago when R.C. Sproul's Renewing Your Mind show featured the book in promotion of Derek Thomas' lecture series for Sproul's Ligonier Ministries. Intrigued by the several sample lectures, I provided a token donation in order to obtain the promised book and lectures DVD (see above). I had heard of TPP before but it was never on my reading list. Challenged by its label of being a classic as well as the observation that it is rare reading for today and even rarer to finish both parts, I began my study. For whatever reason, though, my efforts stalled about a quarter into the first part.

And so the book and DVD joined the heap of my other unfinished (reading) projects. My interest was rekindled during my reading of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women where it was a frequent component of the first part of that book. [An interesting connection between both LW and TPP is that both started out as a single book with a later sequel that were then combined into a single volume.] 

One of the biggest challenges for me in reading TPP was the lack of chapters; it is just one long text. The lecture series didn't help by specifying the corresponding pages of the book. This is what did me in the first attempt. I became overwhelmed trying to match up the lectures with the reading and checking the scriptural references. For my second try, I set my own pace and just read something every day (no rush).

Another challenge was the antiquated syntax (I think that's the correct word). It's like the difficulty with comprehending the King James Version of the Bible but not as bad as deciphering Shakespeare.

It didn't help that the Penguin edition seemed to contain too many typos regarding the scriptural references in the margin notes. What saved me was finding an online version that had the (seemingly) correct references. This version was also divided into sections which helped me to gauge my progress. I think I was like a slow driver: going 30 mph in a 35 mph zone.

The map on the front cover was also a fun help. I wish there was a larger version because that would make it easier to follow. I do like maps, recipes for traveling. Being on the right path is helpful.

Once I finished the first part, I was eager for more. So I started over and this time made an effort to coordinate the lectures with my reading (again, not easy because an explicit guide was not part of the package). During my first attempt, I did not watch the lectures but rather listened to them via MP3 files saved to my cell phone which I listened to during my evening walks. For my second try, I did not have a good earphone so I was somewhat forced to watch the lectures. This turned out well even though the visuals were boring and virtually useless. There were no maps, illustrations, or visual supplements; just Dr. Thomas talking to a bunch of people. Fortunately, each lecture was rather short, about 25 minutes.  These overviews helped to focus on the story and the various themes.

A highlight of the lectures for Part One was learning that the British composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was highly influenced by TPP even though he was something of an atheist. This led me initially to weekend of listening to RVW music, especially Symphony No. 5 and then No. 3. His was a fascinating life story worth its own post (alas, another of my unfinished projects). The culmination of his life's work was an opera version of TPP.

Around November (2020), I started reading The Second Part of TPP. The first part dealt with the journey of the man, Christian while the Second Part deals with his wife, Christiana, and their four boys. SPOILER ALERT: Both Christian and Christiana make it to the Celestial City (aka Heaven). The story of the four boys was saved for another potential book that was never written.

Although the book is revered as a Christian (religious) classic, I was intrigued with the political background that caused Bunyon to write these stories. The introductory material in my Penguin edition was interesting but served me merely as an appetizer. There's got to be more to the story (background): history, you know? That quest led me to my set of Durants' The Story of Civilization (but that is another post, hopefully).

Certainly the religious preaching in these books is an obstacle to the skeptic, atheist, non-Christian, Catholic, etc. However, from an intellectual and historical perspective, I found them (i.e., both parts of TPP) to be provocative. The book raises questions about (among others) deity/God, religion, life after death, reality, salvation, etc. I could write lots about the religious aspects of the story. The short answer is that it didn't convince me to convert and give my life to Jesus. 

In the end, this book was like a century bike ride for me. I accomplished my goal and enjoyed the ride. The journey motivated me to start another ride with the Durants. So far so good with that.Reading has helped me to get this far through the Covid lockdown. 

If you have read The Pilgrim's Progress and/or are fan of Ralph Vaughan Williams, I would love to hear from you. Any intelligent, respectful response is always welcome.

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Written Saturday 30 March 2021 (first day of Spring).