Ep. 18 Sermon on F.S. (3 little pigs)

Excerpts from Aesthetical Sermons

Returning in spite of ourselves, we revisit a sermon once excerpted upon the request of our listeners. In this excerpt, we hear Joris' rendition of a well-loved tale.

Transcription of Joris:

Who were they? These pigs. These lightly-haired construers of architectural ingenuity and manufacturers of inhabitable poetry? They were a brotherhood, and it is said in parchments that smell of mould and millennia, that they wielded rare imaginative powers that spanned the very circumference of creation, and even, from time to time, piercing its gauzy membrane to gaze upon the sublimity of chaos. With what delicate care they arranged their artifacts, and with what subtlety they executed their construction, we can only dream—and only in the most tumultuous of dreams. But their contemporaries needed not dream, and with the gross regional prestige the brothers acquired, they quickly became visited by innumerable admirers, who flocked to gaze upon their works and to hear their poems deploying both pastoral and bestial themes.

I have known such acclaim myself. It has haunted me with its complications and visited upon me the foulest expressions of humanity. To be preeminent in anything attracts the most bloodthirsty of flies and the most covetous of monsters. Yes, I too have been chased by wolves. I too have shuddered at the smell of carrion still lingering upon their breath. Such is the irascibility of wolves. And such is their doggedness, that it seemed the blessed porcine trio would inevitably succumb to some tragical conclusion or other.

Ho brothers, spake one pig unto the others. Doth not the wind carry ill omens and write upon the billowing reeds a turn of fortune? Wherefore this dread that sets my skin to ripples and chills me to the bone? Brothers, though our works have always been dedicated to the mountains and rivulets, and to those birds that visit the mountains and rivulets to rehearse their ancient melodies, we must now modify our own pitch to shield ourselves and our philosophy. For violence and violent men detest all that is harmonious. Therefore, let our next works be as mirrors capable of reflecting back unto our aggressors the beastliness of their enterprise, that their attacks upon us be not suffered peaceably, but glazed in the aspect of horror and cruelty.

And create they did… with fibers from the plains, woven in just such a way that their undulations would dazzle the eye of any intruder. And they utilized limbs from the forest, whose rattlings mixed and counter-mixed to produce xylophonic alarums capable of unmasking even the stealthiest of thieves. And hewn from the rarest of minerals, they carved a facade flanked in figures and foliage forever frozen in marble, which bespake, in inanimate pantomime, the countless irrationalities of canine brutality—and were those sculptures not a gleaming, alabaster white, one might have supposed them as stained burgundy-red as the pedestal to a ravenous deity adorned with sacrificial entrails. Then, having finished, the brothers sat around a virgin hearth and proceeded to...

... These eclogues and meditations were, however, lost upon the wolf, who, having thus arrived, said unto them, “Thou quaint brotherhood of the earth, skilled in art and learning. I am come for thee and thine. Long is it theorized that by eating thine meats, the eater might be fortified with the peerless skills of the eaten. Thus, regrettably for you, do I find myself here in your company. Make not my task uneasy, but surrender thyselves willingly unto my fang!"

Yet no sooner had she begun to speak, then the wind began to play upon the reeds to dazzling effect, and the branches then gave way to aeolian harmonies, as if malleted by apollo himself. And, paralyzed by this beauty, the wolf looked upon the marble tableau, which made the full gravity of its meaning known unto her… and she shuddered in remorse. Her image and its role in this terrifying symphony was as conspicuous as blue aster in the fall. “Who is it that thus effected such art from you? Is it the blackbird that daily sings, or the salamander shyly creeping through the grass? Pray tell, was it the eel, or owl, or even these great poplars that posed for thee?” But she knew. She needn’t but glance at those marbles once and her hateful influence was understood. How could she continue her bloodlust? Nay, she could not. She would not. Was not her intention to achieve enlightenment? To eat them now would be uncouth. And with this revelation, she departed, heading for the temperate shore of a long peninsula—adopting, along the way, two orphaned human boys who lay crying by the path she followed…