Aforismi in lingua originale - Pride.

Pride is a weakness in the character; it dries up laughter, it dries up wonder, it dries up chivalry and energy.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - He is the Man, the most terrible of the beasts.

We make our friends; we make our enemies; but God makes our next-door neighbour. Hence he comes to us clad in all the careless terrors of nature; he is as strange as the stars, as reckless and indifferent as the rain. He is Man, the most terrible of the beasts. That is why the old religions and the old scriptural language showed so sharp a wisdom when they spoke, not of one’s duty towards humanity, but one’s duty towards one’s neighbor... we have to love our neighbor because he is there — a much more alarming reason for a much more serious operation.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Grande ritorno di Aforismi in lingua originale - The supreme adventure is being born (L'avventura suprema è nascere).

An adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us. It is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose. Falling in love has been often regarded as the supreme adventure, the supreme romantic accident. In so much as there is in it something outside ourselves, something of a sort of merry fatalism, this is very true. Love does take us and transfigure and torture us. It does break our hearts with an unbearable beauty, like the unbearable beauty of music. But in so far as we have certainly something to do with the matter; in so far as we are in some sense prepared to fall in love and in some sense jump into it; in so far as we do to some extent choose and to some extent even judge—in all this falling in love is not truly romantic, is not truly adventurous at all. In this degree the supreme adventure is not falling in love. The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Una copia della prima edizione
di Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - There is non such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person. Nothing is more keenly required than a defence of bores. When Byron divided humanity into the bores and bored, he omitted to notice that the higher qualities exist entirely in the bores, the lower qualities in the bored, among whom he counted himself. The bore, by his starry enthusiasm, his solemn happiness, may, in some sense, have proved himself poetical. The bored has certainly proved himself prosaic.

We might, no doubt, find it a nuisance to count all the blades of grass or all the leaves of the trees; but this would not be because of our boldness or gaiety, but because of our lack of boldness and gaiety. The bore would go onward, bold and gay, and find the blades of grass as splendid as the swords of an army. The bore is stronger and more joyous than we are; he is a demigod—nay, he is a god. For it is the gods who do not tire of the iteration of things; to them the nightfall is always new, and the last rose as red as the first.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Humility preserves the stars from wrong.

It is humility, and not duty, which preserves the stars from wrong, from the unpardonable wrong of casual resignation; it is through humility that the most ancient heavens for us are fresh and strong.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Gloriously surprised.

Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall be gloriously surprised.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

 

Un invito per il Falò del 2 Settembre 2023 dai Gruppi Chestertoniani Veronesi!

Il nostro caro amico chestertoniano Roberto Prisco detto Rob ci ha fatto pervenire questo invito, che è ormai una consolidata tradizione, da parte degli amici dei Gruppi Chestertoniani Veronesi, e questo carteggio che volentieri vi giro perché chi vuole possa aderirvi.

Marco Sermarini

___________

Dal finale di Eretici

Fuochi verranno attizzati per testimoniare che due più due fa quattro. Spade saranno sguainate per dimostrare che le foglie sono verdi d’estate. Noi ci ritroveremo a difendere, non solo le incredibili virtù e l’incredibile sensatezza della vita umana, ma qualcosa di ancora più incredibile, questo immenso, impossibile universo che ci fissa in volto. Combatteremo per i prodigi visibili come se fossero invisibili. Guarderemo l’erba e i cieli impossibili con uno strano coraggio. Noi saremo tra quanti hanno visto eppure hanno creduto.

Finale of Heretics

Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.

Falò di sabato 2 settembre 2023 - Via Nuova, 22 a Quinzano – Verona

Ore 18,30 Arrivo e cena al sacco.

Ore 19,30 Accensione del falò

- lettura dei brani di Chesterton:

quella dell’ordinario da Eretici

quella del proprio commentato dai presenti - snudamento delle spade
- taglio e degustazione del formaggio;

- distribuzione del rum;
- spegnimento del fuoco;

- fumata finale del sigaro ed eventuale ripresa della discussione.

Lettura del proprio del Falò del XX settembre 2023

da “L’Uomo che fu Giovedì” - Primo Capitolo

Io vi dico che, ogni volta arriva un treno in stazione, io sento che esso ha spezzato delle batterie d’assedianti e che l’uomo ha vinto una battaglia contro il caos. Voi dite con tono sprezzante che quando si è lasciata la stazione di Sloane Square si deve arrivare a Victoria: ebbene, io dico che si potrebbero fare mill’altre cose, invece, e che ogni qualvolta pervengo realmente a Victoria ho il senso d’esservi riuscito appena per un pelo. E quando odo l’inserviente gridare la parola “Victoria”, non è questa per me una parola senza significato: per me è il grido d’un araldo che annuncia una conquista. Per me è proprio “Victoria”, è la vittoria di Adamo!

“The Man Who Was Thursday” - Chapter I

“I tell you,” went on Syme with passion, “that every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word ‘Victoria,’ it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed ‘Victoria’; it is the victory of Adam.”

Verità di paradossi, Emilio Cecchi recensisce Eretici per Il Marzocco.

Ottobre 1910, su Il Marzocco Emilio Cecchi recensisce Eretici, o meglio Heretics (non ancora tradotto in italiano).

Lo potete leggere qui oppure direttamente dall’archivio del Gabinetto Vieusseux:

https://www.vieusseux.it/coppermine/displayimage.php?album=309&pid=15024#top_display_media

Qui si va sempre alla grande.

Non è il primissimo articolo di Cecchi su Chesterton ma probabilmente il secondo, e non è poco. Qui iniziò l’ingresso in Italia del Nostro Eroe.

Marco Sermarini

Aforismi in lingua originale | Heretics.

Adventures are to those to whom they are most unexpected—that is, most romantic. Adventures are to the shy: in this sense adventures are to the unadventurous.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Heretics...

When Thomas Aquinas asserted the spiritual liberty of man, he created all the bad novels in the circulating libraries.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Una prima edizione
dell'ora.

Aforismi in lingua originale | Heretics - Swords will be drawn to prove...

The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics

Aforismi in lingua originale - Heretics - The supreme adventure is being born...

The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in
wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics

Aforismi in lingua originale | Heretics, riso e umiltà, una cannonata spirituale.

The secret of life lies in laughter and humility.

 Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Ecumenical Diablog: Fr Brett's Sermon On The 12th Annual GK Chesterton Pilgrimage (grazie a Stuart McCullough).

Chesterton wrote Heretics (1905) and Orthodoxy (1908) long before he was received into the Church on July 30th 1922, 100 years' ago. Truth, orthodoxy, excludes error. There is no room for half-truths in Chesterton:

"There is something to be said very error, but whatever may be said for it, the most important thing to be said about it is that it is erroneous." (Orthodoxy).

Il resto qui sotto:

http://ecumenicaldiablog.blogspot.com/2022/10/fr-bretts-sermon-on-12th-annual-gk.html

Aforismi in lingua originale - Heretics.

The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap. There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before. Our father and mother do lie in wait for us and leap out on us, like brigands from a bush. Our uncle is a surprise. Our aunt is, in the beautiful common expression, a bolt from the blue. When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world that we have not made. In other words, when westep into the family we step into a fairy-tale.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Una delle pagine più belle e divertenti di Eretici.

It is exactly because our brother George is not interested in our religious difficulties, but is interested in the Trocadero Restaurant, that the family has some of the bracing qualities of the commonwealth. It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind. Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Aforismi in lingua originale - Questo lo si dovrebbe riconoscere facilmente...

Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.

Un aforisma in lingua originale al giorno.

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.⁠

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Heretics.