Now, what is a festival? What is festivity? At first sight, the question seems to be quite easily answerable. Everyone knows, it seems, what a feast is, a festival, a festivity. And besides, the question seems to be not especially urgent. Now let us consider first the point of answerability. It is rather likely that whoever tries to answer that question, what is a festival, will make the same experience as St. Augustine did with regard to the question not of festivity but of time. He says, if no one asks me I know.

[01:02]

But if I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not. So the problem is to put into words what everyone means and to some extent knows. And indeed we are forcefully asked both what a feast is and even more, what the human prerequisites are for celebrating a feast. After all, the failure of our festivals, the difficulty to celebrate festively a feast day, The failure, this kind of failure, belongs already somewhat to our recurring experiences. The trick, I am quoting, the trick is not to arrange a festival, but to find people who can and do enjoy it.

[02:14]

This is a quotation I said out of the posthumous writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. He wrote it down almost 100 years ago. I would say that illustrates again that the genius of Nietzsche lay to no small degree in that seismographic sensitivity to what was to come. Now, this sentence implies no less than that festivity in general is in danger of extinction. For it is obvious that a festival does not come about by arrangements alone. But Nietzsche is not the only European thinker who comes to such a diagnosis. In 1906, there was published a brilliant and at the same time a bit confused pamphlet

[03:23]

under the title Festivals of the Unfestive, Feste der Festlosen. The title sums up the whole argument already. And the title is the best of all the pamphlet. The author was the communist intellectual Kurt Eisner. And one of his statements in that pamphlet is this. I'm quoting again. Perhaps the time is approaching when festivals, as mass manifestations of an intensified sense of life, will be nothing more than curiosities to be studied from old pictures and artifacts preserved in ethnological museums. Now, in the meanwhile, it has become a more or less standard matter and even a matter of literary fashion to connect the misery, as they say, of this present age with man's incapacity for festivity.

[04:40]

Now, for the time being, I suspect that this gloomy diagnosis oversimplifies a bit. In all ages, the chances are it was never easy to meet the requirement that great festivals be celebrated in the proper spirit. As the history of religion tells us, empty and worrisome pomp existed even at the famous Greek festivals. Nevertheless, it seems to be peculiar to our time that we may conceive of festivity itself as being expressly repudiated, rejected, which indeed would be something new and unheard of. And it is this very situation which gives rise to the question which we are facing and which prompts us to decide and to express for ourselves what presumably everybody knows and takes for granted.

[06:03]

Namely, what the essence of festivity is and what should be done so that man in our time can preserve or regain the capacity to celebrate real festivals festively, a capacity which concerns the heart of life, I should say, and perhaps constitutes the heart of life. So once again, what is a feast? What is a festival? mere descriptions of classical or medieval or East Indian festivals, no matter how accurate, how stirring, does not answer the question, do not answer those descriptions. I mean, do not answer the question at all. They do not even touch the question.

[07:05]

We must attack it in a far more fundamental and basic sense. Now, certain things can be adequately discussed only if at the same time we speak of the whole of world and life. If we are not ready to do that, we have already given up all claim to saying anything significant at all. Death, for instance, is a subject of this kind, but also love, eros. But festivity, too, must be included in that category. You cannot speak of what a festivity at bottom is if you don't take into consideration the whole of existence.

[08:14]

And this becomes apparent as soon as we try to get beyond mere description of the facts. If, for instance, we start with what lies nearest to hand, and if we consider the distinction between the festive and the worker day. Though we soon realize that this antithesis belongs to quite a different category from, say, that of left and right, or day and night. We do not mean only that a working day and a feast day are just mutually exclusive. We also mean that work is an everyday occurrence, while a feast is something unusual, something special, an interruption in the ordinary passage of time.

[09:20]

Apparently, the festive quality of a holiday depends on its being exceptional. All day Sunday, all day feast day, that's impossible. Festival can arise only out of the foundation of a life whose ordinary shape is given by the working day. So an idle, rich class of do-nothings are hard put to it even to amuse themselves. let alone to celebrate a festival. The dolce vita is a desperately unfestive affair. And this ridiculous figure of the playboy belongs to that.

[10:28]

Hasn't anything to do, not even with amusement, has to do Nothing then, of course, was festive, festivity. There is incidentally considerable testimony that this said truth applied also to the courtly festivals of the Baroque period, which many an innocent historian has described as highly festive occasions. But the probability is, as some new investigations have shown that they, those courtly festivals at the Baroque courts, that they sprang not from joy of living, but from fear, from horror vacui, from boredom. Because the true prerequisite for festivity was lacking at these courts.

[11:30]

They had no everyday life. and no work, and nothing but time on their hands and boredom. But of course, the feast day is not sufficiently characterized by calling it a day of rest from work. And this conception itself means more than the mere fact of non-working. I really don't know whether The English term rest from work has the same connotations as, let's say, the German expression Arbeitsruhe. There is some more, I think, in the German expression. Anyway, this rest from work means that, as an exception, man does not care for what is useful.

[12:35]

That is to say, for what has a purpose outside of itself. This belongs to the very definition, I should say, of usefulness and of utility, that it has a purpose outside of itself. We do what is useful not for its own sake. That is just the definition of the useful. but we do it in order to get or to avoid something else. Now, the old idea of rest from work means to have at least the possibility, the opportunity to do something which is not useful for something else and which has no in order to but which is meaningful in itself. Now, and what is such an activity like?

[13:42]

What is a human activity that is meaningful in itself? These are questions we cannot answer unless we have a conception of man. For what is involved is the fulfillment of human life. and the form in which this fulfillment is to take place. So inevitably, we find ourselves concerned with such ideas as the perfection of man, even eternal life, bliss, paradise. Now, there is little point in learning what any individual thinks all on his own about such fundamental matters. In this realm, we should be wary of originality.

[14:47]

If there is any originality in the answers to such questions, I should say you have to be very mistrustful. It is more rewarding to consider what the tradition of humanity's wisdom, into which the thought of whole generations has entered, has to tell us on this point. Now, and what do the ancients tell us? The ancients are, of course, not the past ones. They are the great ones, the great witnesses of the tradition of human wisdom. Now they say, the ancients say, for instance, that the name for the utmost perfection to which man may attain the fulfillment of his being is

[15:55]

visio beatifica, the seeing that confers bliss. This is to say that the absolutely perfect activity, completely meaningful in itself, takes place in the form of seeing. More precisely, that it is achieved in seeing awareness of the divine ground of the universe. But eschatology alone is not the issue here. That's a misunderstanding which may lie near to hand. The traditional wisdom does not speak only here of the ultimate perfection of life on the other side of death. It speaks also of man as an earthly being appearing in history, and what is asserted here is that man by nature craves the appeasement of his yearnings through seeing.

[17:11]

So in this present life also the utmost happiness takes the form of contemplation. And indeed it is contemplation what the feast day is for. The concept, the very concept of festivity cannot be thought of without at least an element of contemplation. And this accords completely with what ethnology or history of culture, history of religion say. They say, for example, I'm quoting here Karl Kerenyi, the historian of religion and culture, the Hungarian, that to celebrate a festival is equivalent to, I'm quoting now, verbally, to becoming contemplative and in this state, directly confronting the higher realities on which the whole of existence rests.

[18:34]

That's Calcarine. Of course, the question at stake here The questions are extremely difficult and also many-sided. But one thing, I mean, is indisputable. Anyone who is at a loss to say what activity that is meaningful in itself is, he will also be at a loss to say what a feast and a feast day is. There is, however, in question not only the theoretical concept, the concept of festivity. Concerned is even much more the prerequisite for achieving in practice any kind of festivity. So with the death of the concept of human activity that is meaningful in itself, the possibility of any resistance

[19:43]

against or to a totalitarian laboring society also perishes. And such a regime, I mean that has to be said, I'm afraid it has to be said just in this country, such a regime could very well be established even without concomitant political dictatorship. a totalitarian, laboring society. And there isn't any opportunity and possibility of resistance anymore then. It then becomes a sheer impossibility to establish and to maintain an area of existence which is not preempted by work and usefulness. For there is only one single justification for not working.

[20:48]

One single justification that will be acceptable even to one's own conscience. That is dedication of leisure to something meaningful in itself. It is not, as they say in the Eastern totalitarian regimes, it is not only socially more important, but it is also on a higher human level, it is more dignified to work than to kill time. And if we contrast the laboring society and its totalitarian planning for utility, if we contrast that with a civilization mainly dedicated to entertainment, then the former seems without question overwhelmingly superior.

[22:03]

And it will be certainly become superior. But the concept of the day of rest tells us something further about the essence of festivity. The day of rest is not just a neutral interval, but it entails also a loss of utilitarian profit, a resignation, a giving up of that profit. In voluntarily keeping the holy day, man renounces the yield of a day's labor. A definite span of time, of usable time, of precious time, is made, as the ancient Romans understood it and called it, the exclusive property of the gods.

[23:09]

There is precious time. Of course. And like the animal for sacrifice was taken from the herd, so a piece of precious, available, usable time is expressly withdrawn from utility and from using. So what happens in a festival and a festive day is something like a free offering, something like a sacrifice. One could even say what happens is something like waste. And this brings us to a new aspect of festivity, unexpectedly maybe. A festival is essentially a phenomenon of wealth. but not to be sure the wealth of money, but of existential richness.

[24:17]

At any rate, absence of calculation, in fact, lavishness is one of the elements of festivity. Of course, there is a natural peril. There is at least a germ of degeneration inherent in this. The product of a whole year's labor senselessly and excessively can be thrown away on a single day. That is well known, that can be done. Men are quite capable of such behavior. But this potential perversion, I would say, cannot be included in the definition of a festivity, of festivity. as recently has been done by Roger Caillois. I think I quoted already this French philosopher and historian, one of the very few people in the world who wrote about such subjects.

[25:30]

In, I think, 41, he wrote in La Nouvelle Revue Francaise a series of articles, two articles, on théorie de la fête. And there he says, the excess belongs. So I would say that's overdone. The germ, the peril of excess, that maybe belongs. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the predominance of A calculating, economizing mentality prevents both festive excess and festivity itself. In the workaday world, all magnificence and all pomp, which is certainly also there, is calculated and therefore unfestive.

[26:35]

The myriad lights of a commercialized Christmas remain a basically meager display, because they are calculated. There is not any real radiance. You probably remember G.K. Chesterton's keen comment on the dazzling advertisement of Times Square in New York at night. He says, what a glorious sight for those who luckily do not know how to read. So to read that only of shaving cream and toothpaste and all that. So, a day of non-working, a rest from work, a day of contemplation, a prepared span of time wherein may unfold an activity that is meaningful in itself, a time of non-calculation, of wealth, of superfluity, even of waste.

[28:01]

All this is right. But the heart, the heart of the matter, which people have in mind, everybody has in mind, when speaking of a feast day, apparently has not yet even come up for discussion. One could say, with some impatience maybe, is not the feast for the normal human thinking just a day of joy? On a festival day, people enjoy themselves. And Nietzsche, who terms it quite a trick to find such people, in fact is saying exactly the same. And an early Christian Greek went so far as to say festivity is joy and nothing else. Well, but joy at what?

[29:07]

I mean, it belongs to the nature of joy to be a secondary phenomenon. You cannot rejoice absolutely for joy's sake alone. That's not possible. To be sure, it is foolish to ask a man why he wants to rejoice. And to that extent, joy is an end in itself. St. Augustine has it, I think, in the Confessions, if you would ask people, would you like to rejoice? Of course, you would get a thousand answers, yes, yes, yes, but what does it mean? They will not What they wish is not to be in that state of mind of being rejoicing. The longing for joy is nothing but the desire to have a reason for joy.

[30:16]

The reason precedes joy and is different from joy. The reason comes first. And the joy comes second. For the time being, I am at least not able, nor do I wish to make up my mind to consent to Julian Huxley's idea, I think it is a really strange idea, that He told that the people at this symposium, I think I spoke of it already in London some years ago, 1962 I think, on man's future, man and his future, symposium of scientists, biologists mostly. And there he was speaking of the possibility of electric stimulation of a particular area of the brain.

[31:21]

and that that stimulation can produce joy, happiness. And he says, you will call me a materialist, but I'm not afraid to say electric happiness is still happiness. Now, I would say that leads us into the midst of his brother's, Aldous Huxley's, brave new world. So, as far as I am concerned, I would say, for true human happiness and joy, there ought to be not only a cause, like electricity, but a reason. which is something different. And this reason for joy may be encountered, however, in thousand concrete forms, but nevertheless it is always, I should say, the same.

[32:37]

It is, the reason is, possessing or receiving what one loves. whether actually in the present, or hoped for in the future, or remembered in the past. Joy is an expression of love, and one who loves nothing and who loves nobody, he cannot possibly rejoice, no matter how desperately he craves joy. Joy is the response, a response, the response of a lover receiving what he likes. True as it is that a real festival cannot be conceived without joy, it is no less true that first there must be a substantial reason for joy.

[33:41]

which might also be called the festive occasion has to be there, the occasion, the reason. And this may even pass for the inner structure of a real feast, as Johannes Chrysostomus has stated it. I think he stated it in the clearest and tersest possible fashion. He said, I know only the Latin translation, not the Greek one. I couldn't really find that saying on the quotation out of Louis de Tomassin. Now he says, Johannes Chrysostomos says, ubi caritas gaudet, ibi est festivitas. Where love rejoices, there is festivity.

[34:45]

But the question is still open, what sort of reason underlies festal joy, and therefore festivity itself? Now, very different answers have been given to this question. One answer goes like this. I'm quoting. I will say only afterwards whom I am quoting. Plant a flower-deck pole in the middle of an open place, call the people together, and you have a feast. Now, one would think everybody can see that this is not enough, but I did, as I said, I did not invention this sentence as an example of naive simplification. No, it was written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is an almost equally hopeless simplification to imagine that mere ideas could be the occasion for real festivals.

[35:59]

This has been done also. When Easter, for instance, was declared a feast or a festival of immortality, the idea of immortality, it is not surprising at all that no response was forthcoming. Not to speak of such fantastic proposals and suggestions as those of Auguste Comte, whose reformed calendar, self-made calendar, established festivals of humanity, of paternity, and even of domesticity. Not even the idea of freedom, I would say, can inspire people to celebrate a feast, though the event of liberation might do that, assuming that this event, though possibly belonging to the distant past, still has compelling contemporary force and meaning.

[37:16]

But memorial days in themselves are not festival days. That was already an experience of the old Greeks with their Salamis Day and all that. We had it in Germany, the Sedan Day. That's not enough. Strictly speaking, the past cannot be celebrated festively at all. And this has, of course, this is a statement with some heavy consequences. If the incarnation of God is no longer understood as an event that directly concerns the present lives of man, then it becomes impossible, and it becomes even absurd, to celebrate Christmas festively.

[38:20]

Now Joseph Andreas Jungmann has recently suggested that festivals as an institution have already become derivative. They have become already somewhat unreal. He doesn't say that, but derivative. He says the prototypal form of festival takes place wherever a specific event, such as birth of a child, marriage of the daughter, the homecoming of the son out of, let's say, Siberian prisoner's camp. There are occasions like that or events like that are being directly celebrated.

[39:24]

That is the prototypal form of a festival, Jungmann said. Now, this sounds rather plausible, but if the implication is that the specific event is the real and the whole reason of celebration, then I would say the thesis of Jungmann is not altogether convincing. Can we festively celebrate the birth of a child if we hold with Jean-Paul Sartre's dictum, it is absurd that we are born? I think everybody or anyone who is seriously convinced of this he can no more celebrate the birth of his child, no more than any other birthday, his own or anyone's else, the fifties or sixties or any other.

[40:34]

I would say no single specific event can become the occasion for festive celebrations unless, yes, unless what? Here, at this point, we must be able, at this point is where we must be able to name the reason underlying all others, the reason why events such as birth, marriage, homecoming, and so on, can be experienced as the receiving of something beloved. without which there can be neither joy nor festivity. Again, I found Friedrich Nietzsche expressing the crucial insight. I found it in his posthumous notes and it reads thus, to have, he says, to have joy in anything

[41:48]

one must approve everything. That is to say, underlying all festive joy kindled by a specific circumstance, there has to be an absolutely universal affirmation extending to the world as a whole, to the reality of things and to the existence of man himself. Everything that is, is good, and it is good to exist. We spoke already of that dictum, omne ens est bonum, which has a much deeper meaning than we were taught, probably some of us at least, in the neo-scholastic ontology. It has a much deeper meaning.

[42:50]

It goes back to creation, to the concept and to the reality of being a creature. Now this saying, it is good to exist and everything that is, is good, it has little to do with shallow optimism. let alone with smug approval of that which in fact is. Such affirmation may be performed amid tears, and it even proves its seriousness by its confrontation with historical evil. Eric Peterson, the convert, the theologian of New Testament, who was before in the Protestant theological faculty in the University of Bonn, and then converted to the Catholic Church, and he wrote some articles on apocalypse.

[44:04]

He says, that is the distinguishing mark of the Christian martyr, that in spite of all that happens to him, And in spite of all how the world, the world of man must look to him, that in spite of all this, no word against God's creation becomes, he says, audible from his mouth. He still says, everything is good. The world creation is good. So I say that only in order to show that it hasn't anything to do with shallow optimism. But on the other hand, whoever refuses ascent to reality as a whole, no matter how well off he may be,

[45:13]

He is by that fact incapacitated for either joy or festivity. Festivity is impossible to the naysayer. The more money he has, and above all, the more leisure he has, leisure time, free space of time, the more desperate is this impossibility to him. Maybe it becomes conceivable, perceivable even, only then to him that it is impossible to celebrate a festive day if there is so much time. And this is also true of the man who refuses to approve his own existence, having fallen into that mysterious despair from weakness.

[46:16]

We shall speak of that tomorrow in the context of leisure. Despair from weakness, of which Kierkegaard has spoken, and which in the old moral philosophy went by the name of adzedia, slothfulness, Loathfulness of the heart. That issue here is a refusal regarding the very heart and fountainhead of existence itself. Because of the despair of not willing to be oneself. That's a saying of Kierkegaard. Which makes man unable to live with himself. He is driven out of his own house into that hurly-burly of work and nothing else, into the fine-spun, exhausting game of sophistical phrase-mongering, and into incessant so-called entertainment by empty stimulants.

[47:34]

in short, into a no-man's land, which may be quite comfortably furnished, but which has no place for the serenity of real leisure, for contemplation, and certainly not for festivity. Festivity lives on affirmation. Even celebrations of the dead or for the dead, All Souls Day, Good Friday, they can never truly be celebrated except on the basis of the conviction that there is consolation, real consolation. Consolation is a form of joy and rejoicing, although the most silent form of all. Just as Aristotle says, the catharsis, the purification of the soul in witnessing the tragedy, not only on the stage, the tragedy of history also, this catharsis is at bottom also a joyful experience.

[49:02]

That's what Aristotle says. So, strictly speaking, however, it is insufficient to call affirmation of the world a mere prerequisite and a premise for festivity. In fact, it is far more. It is the substance of festivity itself. Festivity in its essential core is nothing but the living out of this affirmation. To celebrate a festival means, this could be taken as a kind of definition, an attempt of a definition. To celebrate a festival means to live out for some special occasion and in an uncommon manner the universal ascent to the world as a whole. And this statement harmonizes very exactly with the conclusions cultural and religious historians have drawn from their studies of the great typical festivals in ancient cultures and among primitive peoples.

[50:24]

And because that ascent to life, if it is there at all, Because if it is there at all, then it is there all the time, and not only on that feast day. So, because it is there all the time, it becomes the wellspring for a thousand legitimate occasions for festivity. May the immediate event be the coming of spring or the coming of a baby's first tooth. There is a famous German poem, Matthias Claudius, on the baby's coming of first tooth. Well, that's possible only on that basis, that everything what happens is adorable, as I think

[51:33]

Was it George Bananos or was it another French poet who said that? And this is the point at which we must state explicitly a conclusion toward which all our foregoing ideas have inexorably led. By the way, I've found time and again this conclusion is usually greeted with some distrust, but I see no legitimate way of avoiding it. It is absolutely compelling, both logically and existentially. So the conclusion is, I would say, divisible or divisible into several parts. First part, there can be no more radical assent to the world than the praise of God, the lording of the creator of this same world.

[52:47]

Perhaps this should be sometimes taken out of the normal, usual terminology. praise of God. What does it mean? I just say, confronting God, you are alright. You can stay as you are, from eternity to eternity. And of course, it would be unnormal if here is one standing and saying that, and here another one saying that, if things are right, it must be a common enterprise, it must be a public enterprise to praise, and that's what I would call worship, cultic worship. So that's then the second part of that conclusion. The ritual cultic worship

[54:00]

and praise is the most festive form that a festivity can possibly take. And third part, there can be no deadlier, more ruthless destruction of festivity in the world than the refusal of that ritual public praise of God. Now, these statements are, as I know, exposed to countless possible misunderstandings. For instance, when I said the ritual festival the most festive of festivities, I do not mean that there can be no secular, no worldly festival. Of course not. I do not mean that. But the matter is rather complicated. and a simple answer does not suffice and is not possible.

[55:05]

On the one hand, real festivity cannot be restricted to any one particular sphere of life, neither to the religious nor to any other. It seizes and permeates all dimensions of existence, if it is really there, if there is a real festival. Until I was eight years old, I thought that Whitsunday simply meant country fair because in our village we celebrated both at the same day. Or take Corpus Christi Day in Toledo. I was some years ago at that day in Toledo in Spain. The streets, canopied with canvas, are transformed into a vast festive tent, whose walls are formed by the tapestry-decked facades of the houses.

[56:18]

and whose floor is truned with rosemary and lavender, which give out a stronger perfume the more they are walked on. And then, of course, it starts with the high mass in the cathedral. And then, the procession. It's following. But if you would see that procession You could say, oh, this is just a musical performance. And it is, and it was. You could also say, isn't that a military parade? Yes, it was at the same time. It was everything. It was also a social display. And of course, it was an escort of the sacrament in the main. But it was everything.

[57:23]

And I think this belongs to a real festival. And the bullfight then, of course, in the afternoon. No, it was, of course, as secular as at other times. But it was the Corrida del Corpus. So, the bullfight of the corpus Christi Day. Now, wherever, I would say, wherever festivity can freely vent itself in all its possible forms, an event is produced that leaves no zone of life, worldly or spiritual or religious, untouched. But now we must consider, on the other hand, There are certainly, worldly, but there are no purely profane festivals.

[58:26]

And we may presume that not only can we not find them in history, they cannot exist. A festival without gods, that is a non-concept. that would have been for the ancient Greeks or Romans, and for primitive peoples, inconceivable. And also, what you have here on, what do you call that in New Orleans, this Mardi Gras? but we have it in Germany, in the Rhineland, Carnival, we call it, that all that remains festive only where Ash Wednesday still exists. And to eliminate Ash Wednesday is to eliminate Mardi Gras and Carnival itself.

[59:38]

But Ash Wednesday is obviously nothing but a day in Christendom's liturgical year. Otherwise, it wouldn't mean anything. So, secular as well as religious festivals have their roots in ritual worship. Otherwise, what arises is by no means a profane festival. but either a new and more strenuous kind of work we had that experience in our Nazi time really much more strenuous kind of work those festivals so-called festivals either this or just an embarrassment something quite artificial.

[60:42]

But what does artificial mean? That is a new question. It is certainly true that all festivals, in one sense, are made by man. If artificial means made by man, then all feasts, all festivals, are in some way artificial. Not only celebrated by man, but also instituted by man. Almost everything about festivals, including the great and traditional ones, is indubitably the result of human arrangements, from the fixing of a particular calendar day to the specific form of sacrifice, ceremonies, parades, and so on. So they are human institutions. But nevertheless, the biblical sentence, which by the way recurs also in Plato, in Plato's dialogue, this sentence remains absolutely valid, that the festival is a day the Lord has made, and not man.

[62:01]

This statement remains true because while man can make the celebration, he cannot make what is to be celebrated. He cannot make the festive occasion, the reason why. The reason for celebrating. For example, the happiness of being created. Donum creationis. Now, what St. Thomas Aquinas considers to be the festive occasion of the Sunday, one of the reasons, because the Sunday is the seventh day on which creation was finished and approved by the Creator. When I was in India, 1962, I attended some Indian festivals, some of them going on for two weeks, in Kolkata, for instance, and I asked many people.

[63:18]

Now, this festival, I said, is an occasion and a day of joy. What is the reason for your joy? About what are you rejoicing? Now, this is, of course, a very Western question, so most people didn't understand it. First, what are the reasons? Because a Sunday is a seventh day on which creation was finished and approved by the Creator. When I was in India, 1962, I attended some Indian festivals, some of them going on for two weeks in Kolkata, for instance, and I asked many people. Now, this festival, I said, is an occasion and a day of joy. What is the reason for your joy?

[64:23]

About what are you rejoicing? Now, this is, of course, a very Western question, so most people didn't understand at first what I was talking about. But some really did understand, and I got wonderful answers to that question. For instance, one educated Orthodox Hindu, not a Christian. An Orthodox Hindu answered, It is the joy of being a creature whom God has created out of joy. I think we couldn't give a better answer. But I have to take up the thread of my unfinished statement. The happiness, I said, of being created. The existential goodness of all things. the participation in the life of God and Christ, the overcoming of death.

[65:29]

All these occasions of the great traditional festivals, they are pure gift. And because no one can confer a gift on himself, So, therefore, something that is entirely a human institution cannot be a real festival. On the other hand, wherever in the course of history we encounter such artificial holidays, we may conclude and presume from the beginning, surmise from the beginning, that they point to a particular interpretation of man's own being, namely to the claim that man, especially in the exercise of political power, is able to bring about his own salvation, his own salvation as well as that of the world.

[66:34]

No proof of such lofty powers can always be simulated, provided political propaganda tries hard enough. The semblance can even kept up at any rate for a while, and on the basis of it The basis of that, artificial festivals, likewise for a time at least, can thrive and can even exert a more or less convincing spell, especially if the combined powers of the pseudo arts... Here comes again a bit into the play what we were talking about last night, the real art, real music. real poetry, and not pseudo-poetry, which is only for entertainment. So, if the combined powers of pseudo-arts, I said, entertainment, sensationalism, and manipulated illusion are brought to bear, and if in addition the political rulers command, and what is even more important, control,

[68:02]

such spontaneous festive gladness. But it does not make too much sense, nor it is necessary, to describe in abstract constructions the counterpart of the true festivals. We can encounter it within our own history. For the first time, as it seems, in some specific establishment of the French Revolution, which here was intended to oust and to replace the former traditional religious feasts and feast days of Christendom. Now the result of these attempts, the result is altogether forgotten, meanwhile. It fell into absolute oblivion. And contemporary accounts reek of boredom when you read that. This infinite boredom of utter unreality, which makes the reading of them a startling experience.

[69:12]

The extravagant expenditure on pinchback, symbolical properties on plaster, cardboard, tin, the bombastic declamations of platitudes, the empty histrionics of the pseudo-liturgy, they emanate a perfume of spook and ghost. When you read, for instance, I am quoting only a few instances, that the mayor of Paris from the altar of the fatherland displayed the book containing the Constitution, holding it out to his fellow citizens like a monster for a while. I don't know how long. Or a girl ignited a Bengal light by means of a magnifying glass, producing then, of course, the holy fire, which then flared up from a Greek vase in the use of the tricolore.

[70:21]

This important festival of the supreme being, founded by Robespierre, celebrated for the first time on June 8, 1794, and staged, by the way, by Jacques-Louis David, this great painter. And the liturgist, let's say, of the ceremonies was Robespierre in person. Thus, at the conclusion of a speech at the Tuileries, He ordered a mighty statue of atheism constructed of an inflammable material, you will see why, to be set afire. And the flames were to reveal an equally enormous statue of wisdom. And at last a hymn was sung, the last stanza in chorus. And now I'm quoting the account

[71:26]

of the Moniteur, the newspaper of that time, Paris. Simultaneously, the account says, the girls tossed flowers on high, the young men drew their swords and swore to make their weapons victorious everywhere, and the old men placed their hands on the young men's hands and gave them their paternal blessing. And finally, the detachment of artillery, arm of national vengeance, fired into the air, and all citizens and citizenesses, expressing their feelings in fraternal embraces, ended the festival by the resounding cry of humanity and civic conscience, long live the Republic. One historian called that a tragic operetta.

[72:31]

But I think such epithets do not do justice to the true evil. They are too light, too superficial, I would say. They do not do justice to the true hopelessness of such lustily celebrated nonsense. But more characteristic even of the new festivals than their empty theatrical pose was their coercive nature. Those who did not participate made them their suspect. Several days beforehand, the Citian could read it in the newspaper, in the Moniteur again, what was expected of him. I'm again quoting the Moniteur. When the bells ring, all will leave their houses which will be entrusted to the protection of the law and the republican virtues.

[73:40]

The populace will fill the streets and public squares aflame with joy and fraternity and so on and so on. Naturally, that sort of thing is not a gentle appeal for the friendly cooperation of the public. It is an edict. And thenceforth, the element of political coercion and propagandistic intimidation remained an essential part of the artificial festival. And this led, inevitably, to a pervasive constitutional dishonesty, which ever since has been another of the characteristic signs of the artificial holiday up to our days. There is no way to tell whether participation in them is a measure of self-protection, because not to participate would be politically dangerous, or whether it is a conditioned response to the deafening blare of the propaganda machine that has taken over every medium of communication.

[75:00]

Even the participant himself can scarcely say how he really feels about it. That may sound incredible, but not to those who know ideologically based despotism from inside, as I do, and some of you perhaps also. Yet we cannot say that the French Revolution is a historical event ushered in the obverse of true festivity. The unrealistic extravagance of this fad their bombast, their enthusiasm, are evidence that the society that launches them had not arrived at the purest form of rationally calculated utility.

[76:05]

And only when that point, I would say, is reached, then we can say that festivity itself, not just a particular variety of festivity, that festivity itself has been negated in principle. And this negation was reserved for a later period, a more consistent age, in which the transformation of the individual into the worker, as one German writer, Ernst Jünger, puts it, would be completed, this transformation, and the romantic notion of the pamphlets of the French Revolution, priest of social felicity, so the members of the Parliament were called, officially almost, when this romantic notion would be supplanted by the more brutal standard of the social engineer.

[77:09]

Now, when the American Federation of Labor decided to set May 1, 1886, as the target date for winning the eight-hour day, which it had been demanding for years, the only thing in favor of the 1st of May was that it was, at that time, maybe it is today, still the moving day. So the usual day when leases and other economic agreements ran out, there was no talk at that time of mythical spring festivals or other ideas rooted in folklore, not at all. The employers, as you know probably, opposed the demand at that time, and so a strike was called for that day. And at a demonstration in Chicago, a bomb was thrown, police fired into the crowd, several of the demonstrators were killed, many wounded, and then a trial in a problematic atmosphere.

[78:20]

Seven labor leaders sentenced to death, four executed. And in memory of all this, The 1st of May was adopted internationally then as a day given over to demonstrating for shorter working hours. And then there was no mention of a feast day at that time. Only five years later, the International Labor Congress in Brussels declared the 1st of May a festival day. for the first time. But herewith, something quite new was started with unforeseeable consequences, which ultimately caused the historical occasion to be completely forgotten, and which came to their full appearance only in the May Day celebrations of totalitarian regimes.

[79:24]

However, the posters and banners carried in the procession, even at that first time, this is the day the people made, for instance, there was one poster, or socialism, thy kingdom come, and so on, and also the propaganda pamphlets and leaflets distributed in honor of the festival, they proclaimed from the beginning the purpose to displace the traditional festivals of Christendom, which are rejected as bourgeois institutions. Now, once again, it must be said that all this is a more or less innocent prelude of what was to come. The thing becomes serious when the Bolshevist regime takes over the socialist holiday, as they call it the 1st of May then, for the day cannot longer, can then no longer retain its character of a demonstration against the established order, because the established order had become just the dictatorship of the proletariat.

[80:35]

But what then is to be done with the 1st of May? Now, it is turned into something quite unexpected, though unexpected only, again, to those who do not have any adequate conception of the nature of the totalitarian labor state. The 1st of May became to put it briefly, a day that differs from all other work days and rest days of the year in that it is celebrated by additional voluntary unpaid work in Russia. Maxim Gorky says at that time, 1920, it is a wonderful idea to make the spring festival of the workers a holiday of voluntary work. The rehearsal for the general strike, that's what Aristide Briand, the French socialist, called it, the first of May, as a rehearsal for the general strike.

[81:44]

Now that is forgotten in Russia. Leon Trotsky, on the contrary, says this holiday is one of general work. Now, naturally, the voluntary nature of this strange holiday work must be understood in a propaganda sense. Again, one must not fail to hear the overtones of threat. Gorky ruled that it was even a crime not to understand the purpose of giving that particular form to the holiday. And the phrase labor deserter begins to bend it about at that time. Now, that heroic effort of 1920 was, by the way, not sustained. Instead, still another meaning, again, a very characteristic meaning, soon came to the fore. From about 1922 on, May 1st became more and more exclusively a day on which the Soviet Union displayed its military strength.

[82:55]

It again came true what Mademoiselle de Scuderi had said in regard to the Baroque festivals. The celebration served chiefly to demonstrate the grandeur of its sponsor. Into the very same, the gigantic May Day celebrations of the Nazi regime ran out. The coercive character, however, came to light even more strongly there. There were not many persons in Germany who could afford to stay away from the parades. And it was not at all surprising that according to the official propaganda instruction, German cities, large or small, could scarcely be distinguished on that day from Italian or Spanish cities decorated for Corpus Christi day or for the festival of a saint. The only reality hidden behind the bombast and empty spectacular spectacle was

[84:00]

just as in the Soviet state, the total subjection of human beings to work. And then the same shift in meaning took place once again in National Socialistic Germany. May 1st became the prime occasion for striking displays of weapons of destruction, which the regime was already accumulating in preparation for total war. And at this point, a terrifying conclusion must be drawn from all this. The artificial holiday is not only a sham festival, it borders so dangerously on counter-festivity that it can abruptly be reversed into something that perhaps should be called an anti-festival. Roger Caillois Again, this French historian, Roger Caillois, tells us that one day he asked himself, in that theory of the feast day, he says that, he tells that one day he asked himself, would nowadays take that place in the life of society which formerly was filled by the great festival,

[85:24]

And he says, at first I imagined that the answer might be vacation, vacations. But then he realized that in the present world it is instead war that fulfills the functions of the great festival. In war, he says, all the attributes of festival may be found. I said it already that Roger Caillois understands the festival to be an occasion of excess, primarily. So he says all the elements are there. the most drastic conversion and consumption of energies, the eruption of stored forces, the merging of the individual in the totality, the squandering of resources ordinarily carefully husbanded, the wild breaking down of inhibitions, and so on.

[86:28]

C'est la guerre qui corresponde à la fête. It is war which corresponds to the festival. Now, once we have recovered from the shock and once we begin casting about for counter-arguments, we are forced to admit, I at least was, to admit, however much against my will, that such an extreme hypothesis is not entirely out of the world. Since the time of Nietzsche, who called himself, that's the other face of Nietzsche, of course, he was a very many-faced thinker. He called himself the destroyer par excellence, and he dreamed of a company of men who wished to be called destroyers. So for almost three generations,

[87:32]

the idea of what he calls active nihilism, or nihilism, the will to nothingness and the pleasure even in destruction, all that has been an element in the modern approach toward life. Even Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, although enthusiastically convinced of the future energy of the cosmos, He feels called upon to speak of a dawning organic crisis in evolution, he calls it so, and of the threat of strikes in the noosphere, which means in the sphere of the intellect and the spirit. More precisely, I'm quoting him, Théâtre de Chardin, More precisely, he says, there is a danger that the world should refuse itself when perceiving itself through reflection.

[88:36]

Now, this strike has evidently already begun. Darkening of the world, flight of the gods, disintegration of reality, absurdity of existence, nausea, Such are the key words ever heard on every hand, whether in philosophical or literary discussions, whether the subject be visual arts or music. He who laughs has not yet received the terrible tidings. That's one verse of a great poem of Bertolt Brecht. He who laughs has not yet received the terrible tidings. Now, it is just a matter of course that these negations, once they reach a certain degree of intensity, they render true festivity impossible.

[89:38]

But at the same time—and this seems considerably less a matter of course, considerably less self-evident—they pave the way for something else. Namely, that the destruction of the world, for example, in a global war of annihilation, is not feared as an unspeakable calamity, but anticipated as something to be desired, even celebrated. As ordinarily, only affirmations can be celebrated. Celebrated as an anti-festival, as one of those I'm quoting again Kurt Eisner. He had this feeling of what was coming also. What he called one of those great uprisings who borrowed the means from war and the mood from festivals.

[90:45]

And when you remember North Island, that they at the same time in some of those terrible nights. They danced and sung and threw bombs. And I heard that here on some campuses the same had taken place. The same very strange mixture of kind of festival, dancing, and killing, and firing, and shooting. And I mean to shut our eyes to the possibility of such a development would mean repressing a whole dimension of reality. This too, I would say, lies within the nature of man as a historical being. And I really do not know how an incorruptible mind faced with the evil in the world could keep from utter despair were it not for the conviction that there is a divinely guaranteed goodness of being which no amount of mischief can undermine.

[92:01]

Perhaps it is only thanks to such super-empirical certainties that man is able to assume the intellectually and existentially extremely demanding task of facing the naked reality without resorting to the evasion either of euphemism or of slander. Both are evasions, I should say. What lastly counts, of course, is truth. And I would say, might it not be the truth that the man who despairs, he in particular, has not yet received certain tidings? On the other hand, whoever did receive them and accept them knows at the same time that the core and the source of festivity remains inviolably present in the midst of society.

[93:06]

and the midst of history and the midst of humanity. Today as a thousand years ago, it remains in the form of the praise given in ritual worship, which is literally performed at every hour of the day. And the festive occasion, pure and simple, the divine guarantee of the world and of human salvation, exists and remains true continuously. And from the basis of this conviction, the empirically patent unfestivity of the contemporary world appears as something not altogether hopeless. It is, however, a condition which is difficult to decipher and, above all, a condition that is, so to speak, in suspense, a condition which involves and conceals and leaves open the extreme historical potentiality, among them the most radical celebration of the Anti-Festival.

[94:24]

The Christian, however, is convinced that no destructive action, no matter how thoroughgoing, even if it is fervently celebrated as a gruesome anti-festival, can ever corrode the substance of creation. Thus, there always remains the festive occasion. The festive occasion. It remains in force, forever undiminished, and not even the complete success, quotation mark, of self-destruction on the part of the human race, not even the complete destruction of the earth, that term Heidegger, Martin Heidegger always uses, not even that could stamp out true festival. To be sure, in that case it would be celebrated Now I have to say something what I said about the sacred action.

[95:33]

It does not take place in this eon, not on earth. But basically I said it already, this is true even for the festivals we celebrate here and now. In this present historical time, as always has been said, in the sacred tradition of the primitive peoples, of the Greeks and of Christianity. While celebrating a real festival, man transcends the border of his temporal and spatial existence. Roger Caillois calls it, we enter the grande espace and the grande temps, and we leave this time and this space. Whereas, on the other hand, unfestivity rightly has been called the immurement within the zone of the given present and the exposure to the terrors of history.

[96:43]

There is only the urgent, actual, timely, topical event and nothing else. But, of course, such thoughts lead far beyond the philosophical study, which is my field of festivity. I am convinced, on the other hand, that it is one of the great privileges of philosophy, and even its very task, to lead to something which is beyond philosophy. And I apparently have, I do have reached that border. at which the philosopher, as such, must necessarily fall silent. But it would be no very exceptional case if this silence, too, made it possible to hear a more than philosophical message.

[97:48]

Thanks.

[97:50]

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