Burns Day, Gratitude

My remarkable brother has this thing about “gratitude,” as if it were a very big deal, maybe the biggest thing of all. I'm serious. He thinks it's the essence, essential, like that. A spectacular Louie Schwartzberg video I saw this morning brought my brother to mind for the millionth time.

I have been thinking about this lately because the birthday of The Immortal Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796) is coming up soon, and it was one of the highlights of my university experience.

Notre Dame Basilica, Montreal

My university days in Montreal were hell itself, relieved by rare days like Burns Day, when I was able to get it all into a large, even joyful perspective. Another such day was the annual performance of Handel's Messiah at the Notre Dame Basilica.

Robert Burns

Burns is big in Montreal, and Canada generally, because of all the Scots who emigrated to Canada in its early days. Canada's first two prime ministers, Sir John A. Macdonald and Alexander Mackenzie, were actually born in Scotland. Burns Day was like getting back in touch with the good green earth after the dry, lifeless, abstract, desert of the Enlightenment classroom and January in Montreal can be pretty cold and bleak. That is where I got my first inklings of appreciation of the Romantic era following or supplementing the Enlightenment era, Burns being one the best bards of the Romantic.

Here is an excellent reading of Tam o' Shanter, which was one of his best. You will probably need a reading copy to follow it. There are so many personal favorites which I could have chosen, notably Comin' thro' the Rye; John Anderson my Jo, John; Of A' the Airts the Wind Can Blow.

William Wordsworth

There were so many great Romantic poets. Germany. Everywhere. Wordsworth, yes, but not really as accessible to me in those days as old Burns. Wordsworth's masterpiece Ode: On the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood has this stanza about being grateful for trouble which takes a little more time:

...
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest,
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--
          --Not for these I raise
          The song of thanks and praise;
     But for those obstinate questionings
     Of sense and outward things,
     Fallings from us, vanishings,
     Blank misgivings...

This business of getting the horrors in proper perspective so as to be grateful for them takes a bit more time. I've thought about it often and read about it long ago in such places as St. John of the Cross on The Dark Night of the Soul. There's nothing about it in the Schwartzberg video, great as that is. I know it's true. It just takes a whole lot of thought-work to see it! I'm still working on it!