71. "Bleeding heart"

 

For centuries a bleeding heart was a good thing — Christ's sacred heart bleeding for humanity, Mary's immaculate heart bleeding for her son, human hearts (in the "imitation of Christ") bleeding for their fellows. Catholic painters gave it to you — the actual heart, there, blood streaming — and Protestant authors reminded you of it. Some of Dickens' most sympathetic characters were found in Bleeding Heart Yard. A bleeding heart meant compassion.

Now a "bleeding heart" means "liberal sap." Are you downtrodden? Are you being called imprudent? Is your favorite species in danger? Here's an organ that will bleed for you.

The opposite of a bleeding heart would be a callused heart. "Callused heart" is not used as a comeback in the put-down contest but if it were I suppose liberals would apply it to Ron Paul, who just objected (Fox News, 8/30/11) to FEMA's enlarged part in aid to disaster victims.

Care has to be taken in identifying either kind of heart, though. The callused heart must be distinguished from the tough heart, which can be loving, and the bleeding heart must be distinguished from the compassionate heart, which is … different how? There's a problem. A compassionate heart bleeds, doesn't it?

Yes, but not publicly. The difference is in the display. The person the conservatives identify is saying, "Look at me. Am I not a good Christian? Am I not sensitive to suffering?" It's more than compassion. "Bleeding heart" distinguishes a recognizable type, the heart displayer.

And "callused heart" (in the Bible the "hardened heart") distinguishes a recognizable type, the heart dismisser. The dismissal comes across in the way victims are spoken of. “The bleeding heart will say, well, we have to take care of them,” said Ron Paul of the flood victims. He's betrayed by his indifferent tone. And also, I should say, by his word-choice. Callused hearts often give themselves away by their use of "bleeding heart."

Which isn't to say that heart-display is good or bad. That's very much in dispute, especially since T. E. Hulme complained about it in the Romantic poets. "I object," he said, "to the sloppiness which doesn’t consider that a poem is a poem unless it is moaning or whining about something or other." I think he must have had Shelley in mind. "Wail, for the world's wrong."

Shelley. Would you like to see, or be reminded of, some real sappiness? Follow him through "The Indian Serenade." A dream of his lady wakes him up and a "spirit in his feet," he says, leads him to her chamber window where he's so overcome by love that he passes out.

Oh lift me from the grass!

I die! I faint! I fail!

Let thy love in kisses rain

On my lips and eyelids pale.

My cheek is cold and white, alas!

My heart beats loud and fast —

Oh! Press it to thine own again,

Where it will break at last.

It doesn't help to say that Shelley was writing for a public which at that time admired sensitive male responses. So much the worse for the public and poets who cater to it.

And so much the worse for our definition of "bleeding heart." We've added cynicism to it. When Shelley, at the end of a very serious poem, "Ode to the West Wind," says, "I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed," we see a play to the public. We take him less seriously.

Are Christian hearts more prone to bleeding than others? You'd expect them to be, considering where sin is located for Christians: not in the deed, not in the consequence, but in the motive. Wish to kill your brother and you have killed him. "Whosoever looketh after a woman to lust hath committed adultery in his heart." Locate sin in the heart and you're going to have a lot of looking into it. And oh what temptation to display what you have found, or would like people to think you have found.

Some have wondered whether Christian democracies are more prone to well-intentioned blunders than other nations.   I'd say yes, you'd expect them to be. Their voters will worry more about wanting good ends, having their hearts in the right place, than good means, having their armies in the right place.