As a nod to today’s Feast of Saint Valentine, patron of engaged couples, this edition of Friday Links begins with “A New Book on Bl. Karl of Austria for Marriage Preparation.” The book, Bold Union, uses examples from the marriage of Blessed Karl (Charles I of Austria) and his wife, Servant of God Zita, the last Emperor and Empress of Austria-Hungary. Its “religious-themed illustrations which contextualize sanctity in the 21st century” are by illustrator John Ritter, “a Post-Pop artist whose works have appeared The New Yorker, Time, GQ, The New York Times, and Harper’s.”
For another look at saintly characters, this time at how they are represented in fiction, “Dostoevsky’s Literary Burden of Representing Saints” is about Fyodor Dostoevsky’s various attempts to portray saintly characters in The Idiot and Brothers Karamazov. Notre Dame University Theology Professor, Cyril O’Regan, explains that representing saints is a burden for a writer because literature “requires characters that are not only believable in the modern world, but show the capacity to negotiate and transcend it.”
“Alice Mcdermott’s Dying Breed” is another article that mentions how difficult it is for a fiction writer to write about holy characters. As its author, Rabbi Shalom Carmy, writes, “[W]e underestimate how devilishly difficult it is to depict devout, God-centered characters convincingly, without making them plastic saints or thrillingly flawed extremists,” and, he asserts, “In recent decades, the novels of Alice McDermott have done exactly that.”
And, as a bit of a contrast to holy love and saintliness, we end with a news story about the first of four divorces of classic Hollywood screen idol, Bette Davis, this one on uncommon grounds: “Bette Davis Divorced: “She Read Too Much,” Says Husband (1938).”
In these two cartoons from Jason Beck, some of the other saints are giving Valentine a hard time in heaven about how his name is associated with romantic effusions on his feast day. “Super Moravia Bros.” are Saints Cyril and Methodius, whose feasts are celebrated February 14 in the new Roman calendar. Click the images to view them at the Jason Bach Cartoons website, where he explains how the first cartoon, above, which he originally made for friends, went viral, and led to a cartooning career.
