Fairytales

Chapter XVI of 'Tremendous Trifles' contains a delightful comparison between two sorts of literature:

Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is - what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is - what will a madman do with a dull world? In the fairy tale the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity f the cosmos. 

'Everything is interesting'

Chapter XV of 'Tremendous Trifles' finds Chesterton in a railway carriage with nothing to do. He does not have a scrap of paper with him, there is no view due to rain, and there are not even advertisements on the walls of the railway carriage. Since he denies 'most energetically that anything is, or can be, uninteresting', he starts by contemplating the wood of the walls and seats, remembering Jesus was a carpenter. Then he remembers he could examine the unknown content of his own pockets.
The first item are tram tickets, suggesting 'that municipal patriotism which is now, perhaps, the greatest hope of England'. Furthermore, these tickets carry on them advertisements for a certain pill, which could be further analyzed. The second item is a pocket knife, suggesting battle. Then he finds matches, suggesting fire, chalk, suggesting art, a coin, suggesting government, etc.
When I will find myself without anything to do, and without any Chesterton to read, I may try this mental experiment for myself.

"Should shop assistants marry?"

I am puzzled to think what some periods and schools of human history would have made of such a question. The ascetics of the East or of some periods of the Early Church would have thought that the question meant, "Are not shop assistants too saintly, too much of another world, even to feel the emotions of the sexes?" But I suppose that is not what the purple poster means. In some pagan cities it might have meant, "Shall slaves so vile as shop assistants even be allowed to propagate their abject race?" But I suppose that is not what the purple poster meant. We must face, I fear, the full insanity of what it does mean. It does really mean that a section of the human race is asking whether the primary relations of the two human sexes are particularly good for modern shops. The human race is asking whether Adam and Eve are entirely suitable for Marshall and Snelgrove. If this is not topsy-turvy I cannot imagine what would be. We ask whether the universal institution will improve our (please God) temporary institution. Yet I have known many such questions.

As a sequel to 'The wind and the trees' (see below), Chesterton again exposes materialistic reasonings about what is really the essence of things in chapter XIV of 'Tremendous Trifles'.

The wind and the trees

Chapter XII of 'Tremendous Trifles' starts with a parable: a boy walks in severe wind and decides that he does not like the wind. He notices the trees moving and asks if the trees couldn't be cut down, so that the wind would stop blowing. Chesterton continues:

Nothing could be more intelligent or natural than this mistake. Any one looking for the first time at the trees might fancy that they were indeed vast and titanic fans, which by their mere waving agitated the air around them for miles. Nothing, I say, could be more human and excusable than the belief that it is the trees which make the wind. Indeed, the belief is so human and excusable that it is, as a matter of fact, the belief of about ninety-nine out of a hundred of the philosophers, reformers, sociologists, and politicians of the great age in which we live.

In this parable, 'the trees stand for all visible things and the wind for the invisible. The wind is the spirit which bloweth where it listeth'. Material things, like cities and civilizations, are actually moved by immaterial things, like philosophy, religion and revolution. 'You cannot see a wind; you can only see that there is a wind'.
This piece ties in nicely with Chesterton's observations in 'Heretics' that a man's beliefs are the most important thing about him: beliefs and philosophies actually cause more visible things to change.

Symbolic actions

Chapter IX of 'Tremendous Trifles' finds Chesterton still in France. While contemplating the destruction of the Bastille, he makes some interesting observations about (the lack of modern) architecture:

Architecture is a very good test of the true strength of a society, for the most valuable things in a human state are the irrevocable things - marriage, for instance. And architecture approaches nearer than any other art to being irrevocable, because it is so difficult to get rid of. [-] A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like a dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely is is obviously because we have not enough dogmas

Besancon

Sometimes Chesterton's 'Tremendous Trifles' make one wish to enter in his experiences (from 'the end of the world):

For some time I had been wandering in quiet streets in the curious town of Basancon, which stands like a sort of peninsula in a horse-shoe of river. You may learn from the guide books that it was the birthplace of Victor Hugo, and that it is a military station with many forts, near the French frontier. But you will not learn from guide books that the very tiles on the roofs seem to be of some quainter and more delicate colour than the tiles of all the other towns of the world; that the tiles look like the little clouds of some strange sunset, or like the lustrous scales of some strange fish. They will not tell you that in this town the eye cannot rest on anything without finding it in some way attractive and even elvish, a carved face at a street corner, a gleam of green fields through a stunted arch, or some unexpected colour fro the enamel of a spire or dome.

 I long to visit France again...

The ball and the cross

Today, I finished the surreal novel 'The ball and the cross'. After the beautiful introduction, I encountered Turnbull and MacIan and their travels through England in search of an opportunity to fight their duel. The conversations were interesting, their adventures by times hilarious.
With their arrival in the lunatic asylum, however, the novel continues on a slightly different note. Just as the other novels by Chesterton that I read ('The Napoleon of Notting Hill' and 'The man who was Thursday'), the story becomes more and more surreal. MacIan and Turnbull first encounter 'the Master' in their respective dreams/nightmares; then he turns out to be the head of the asylum. One by one, all the other characters from the book assemble together, and the story goes to its apotheosis.

A fascinating detail of the story is the reason the different persons are assembled in the asylum. For instance, we have Mr. Wilkinson. A few chapters ago, Turnbull and MacIan 'borrowed' his yacht. Now the doctor tells Turnbull that "he tells everybody that two people have taken his yacht. His account of how he lost it is quite incoherent. [-] It is a most melancholy case, and also fortunately a very rare one. It is so rare, in fact, that in one classification of these maladies it is entered under a heading by itself - Perdinavititis, mental inflammation creating the impression that one has lost a ship. Really, [-] it's rather a feather in my cap. I discovered the only existing case of perdinavititis." When Turnbull tells the doctor that he and MacIan actually took Wilkinson's yacht on their travels, he is quickly diagnosed with 'Rapinavititis', "the delusion that one has stolen a ship. First case ever recorded."