Eli fell off a chair and broke his neck

Posted by Chris

I'm teaching a western Civ class this summer. We recently got around to reading selections from Augustine's City of God. Augustine is lots of fun, but he's also a bit excitable. Here's a passage, in the rather outdated translation that we use (to save money, since the copyright has lapsed):

. . . who can describe, who can conceive the number and severity of the punishments which afflict the human race - pains which are not only the accompaniment of the wickedness of godless men, but are a part of the human condition and the common misery - what fear and what grief are caused by bereavement and mourning, by losses and condemnations, by fraud and falsehood, by false suspicions, and all the crimes and wicked deeds of other men? For at their hands we suffer robbery, captivity, chains, imprisonment, exile, torture, mutilation, loss of sight, the violation of chastity to satisfy the lust of the oppressor, and many other dreadful evils. What numberless casualties threaten our bodies from without - extremes of heat and cold, storms, floods, inundations, lightning, thunder, hail, earthquakes, houses falling; or from the stumbling, or shying, or vice of horses; from the countless poisons in fruit, water, air, animals; from the painful or even deadly bites of wild animals . . . What disasters are suffered by those who travel by land or sea! What man can go out of his own house without being exposed on all hands to unforeseen accidents? Returning home sound in limb, he slips on his own door-step, breaks his leg, and never recovers. What can seem safer than sitting in his chair? Eli the priest fell from his, and broke his neck.

You know, Augustine had me right up to the end, but the bit about Eli just cracks me up. Usually the introduction of the particular into a passage like this makes the writing more vivid. Here, the choice of the particular example is so anticlimactic that it drains the preceding general claims of their power. What was a pretty decent lament about the woes of the world is suddenly transformed into the sort of thing you'd hear from a cranky old man sitting on his porch, bitching away without really caring if you're listening: ". . . And did you hear what happened to Eli? He was sitting in his chair, and the next moment his neck was broken! I tell you, the world is . . ."

Posted by Chris at June 17, 2005 12:26 PM