“Be watchful! Be vigilant; for your enemy, the devil, prowls around seeking whom he may devour!”
As my access to the internet is, to put it mildly, skittish, I have not been able to verify the exact wording for those admonitory sentiments. Are they from evensong? I feel I should know. And I do know that at least one of my readers will be shouting at the screen at my laxity of memory and be repeating the correct wording (and punctuation!) and stating the exact location of the opening.
One is reminded of Saint Anthony; he of the temptations. As far as I know the exact nature of the temptations that afflicted the poor man are not known. This explains why it was a very popular painters’ choice because it gave them the opportunity to exert their imaginations and paint subject matter which was generally forbidden by the strictures of the church.
For most painters the nature of the temptations could only be one thing: sex. They were therefore able to paint scantily clad females in all sorts of alluring positions as long as they remembered to paint a frustrated (and sometimes irritatingly serene) saint somewhere in the orgy of female pulchritude.
Some painters, especially of the Bosch and Grunewald school of demented ‘surrealistic’ visual expression also found room for the most fantastic demonic monsters, but generally it was the naked ladies that made the most convincing temptations for the single gentleman saint.
Jesus of course was tempted by the illusion of power offered by the shadowy personage mentioned in the opening; though 2 i/c to Satan is not a convincingly attractive proposition. And anyway a position already held by That Woman!
But I digress. History has shown that the lure of ‘sex’ has been generally effective: from your new wife waving an interesting piece of fruit for you to eat, to the good old fashioned beautiful Russian spy of the Cold War – it all worked!
Have times changed? Are we looking for something more than sex? [Rhetorical.]
There was that wonderfully kitsch film “Needful Things” with that Swedish actor that played Death at chess in the Bergman film (you can tell that I don’t have the internet!) who played a sort of curio seller who had just the thing you wanted, be it a rare cigarette card or whatever, for which you were prepared to sell your soul. Of course, it being an American film, he was not allowed to win, but he did survive the mayhem he had helped create and, striding through fire, he drove off in his satanic Rolls Royce.
We are now surrounded by small objects of desire - perhaps best exemplified by the ipod nano. This elegantly svelte gleaming miracle of consumer exploitation; this iconic apotheosis of manufactured necessity; this, this wonderful little gadget! Who would not want one? And before you say, “Well, I wouldn’t, for one!” I must warn you that I regard bad-mouthing ipods to be inverted Luddite snobbery of the worst sort; and not to own an ipod to show contempt for modern living which puts me in mind of the worst excesses of the Sacking of Byzantium. I speak, of course, as someone (as I might have mentioned this once or twice before) who owns (count them) three ipods. As Milton might well have put into the mouth of Satan, “Not to own three ipods argues yourself unknown the lowest of your throng!”
Perhaps in a modern version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony electronic devices of personal gratification would be seductively passed on conveyor belts in front of the holy man with the Evil One intently watching his itching fingers!
All of which is a typically digression laden preamble to my having seen a pictorial representation of a portable computer with a small screen on the outside of the cover together with illuminated buttons. Why there is a screen on the outside I know not, but it makes my boringly featureless portable computer cover with merely a vulgarly inert logo in the centre a thing of horror and repugnance to me!
Monday will find me wending my way to Gava to the Media*Markt® - an Aladdin’s Cave of screen adorned gadgetry – to gaze with unashamed desire at something I don’t need.
After all: what is life about? Be fair!
As my access to the internet is, to put it mildly, skittish, I have not been able to verify the exact wording for those admonitory sentiments. Are they from evensong? I feel I should know. And I do know that at least one of my readers will be shouting at the screen at my laxity of memory and be repeating the correct wording (and punctuation!) and stating the exact location of the opening.
One is reminded of Saint Anthony; he of the temptations. As far as I know the exact nature of the temptations that afflicted the poor man are not known. This explains why it was a very popular painters’ choice because it gave them the opportunity to exert their imaginations and paint subject matter which was generally forbidden by the strictures of the church.
For most painters the nature of the temptations could only be one thing: sex. They were therefore able to paint scantily clad females in all sorts of alluring positions as long as they remembered to paint a frustrated (and sometimes irritatingly serene) saint somewhere in the orgy of female pulchritude.
Some painters, especially of the Bosch and Grunewald school of demented ‘surrealistic’ visual expression also found room for the most fantastic demonic monsters, but generally it was the naked ladies that made the most convincing temptations for the single gentleman saint.
Jesus of course was tempted by the illusion of power offered by the shadowy personage mentioned in the opening; though 2 i/c to Satan is not a convincingly attractive proposition. And anyway a position already held by That Woman!
But I digress. History has shown that the lure of ‘sex’ has been generally effective: from your new wife waving an interesting piece of fruit for you to eat, to the good old fashioned beautiful Russian spy of the Cold War – it all worked!
Have times changed? Are we looking for something more than sex? [Rhetorical.]
There was that wonderfully kitsch film “Needful Things” with that Swedish actor that played Death at chess in the Bergman film (you can tell that I don’t have the internet!) who played a sort of curio seller who had just the thing you wanted, be it a rare cigarette card or whatever, for which you were prepared to sell your soul. Of course, it being an American film, he was not allowed to win, but he did survive the mayhem he had helped create and, striding through fire, he drove off in his satanic Rolls Royce.
We are now surrounded by small objects of desire - perhaps best exemplified by the ipod nano. This elegantly svelte gleaming miracle of consumer exploitation; this iconic apotheosis of manufactured necessity; this, this wonderful little gadget! Who would not want one? And before you say, “Well, I wouldn’t, for one!” I must warn you that I regard bad-mouthing ipods to be inverted Luddite snobbery of the worst sort; and not to own an ipod to show contempt for modern living which puts me in mind of the worst excesses of the Sacking of Byzantium. I speak, of course, as someone (as I might have mentioned this once or twice before) who owns (count them) three ipods. As Milton might well have put into the mouth of Satan, “Not to own three ipods argues yourself unknown the lowest of your throng!”
Perhaps in a modern version of The Temptation of Saint Anthony electronic devices of personal gratification would be seductively passed on conveyor belts in front of the holy man with the Evil One intently watching his itching fingers!
All of which is a typically digression laden preamble to my having seen a pictorial representation of a portable computer with a small screen on the outside of the cover together with illuminated buttons. Why there is a screen on the outside I know not, but it makes my boringly featureless portable computer cover with merely a vulgarly inert logo in the centre a thing of horror and repugnance to me!
Monday will find me wending my way to Gava to the Media*Markt® - an Aladdin’s Cave of screen adorned gadgetry – to gaze with unashamed desire at something I don’t need.
After all: what is life about? Be fair!
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