The Mahwah Literary Review

"The Insane Sin of Man": Two Poems for Good Friday

2009-04-10T07:58:00.003-04:00

We're coming out of retirement to share these two sonnets by Luís de Camões, translated by William Baer.

The Passion

So why has the triune God, in agony,
sacrificed himself for the insane sin
of Man? Because no man could ever begin
to withstand the just and heavy penalty.
Who could endure the necessary pains?
Who could suffer such injury, death, and disgrace?
No one, except for God, whose sovereign grace
commands, and reigns, and obeys, as He ordains.
The resources of men are way too weak and small;
they could never sustain the pain of God’s just plan
For righteous and necessary restitution.
So God’s great strength endures it all,
with a pure and merciful love for helpful Man:
who makes the error, but never the retribution.

O Glorious Cross

O glorious cross, O victorious
and holy prize that encompasses everything;
O chosen miraculous sign ordained to bring
Your remedy to each and every one of us.
O living font of sacred blood, expel
our sins and cure our sinful souls. In You,
O Lord, we know the almighty God, who
embodies the gentle name of mercy as well.
With You, the time of vengeance ends. A new
compassion flowers forever, and ever,
like after winter, when springtime blossoms again.
So vanquish all your enemies, Lord, You
who’ve made so many changes, yet never
cease to be exactly what you’ve always been.

Politics & English Grammar

2008-11-12T20:59:00.003-05:00

Pundits are offering all sorts of reasons to explain why Democrats won and why Republicans lost. Most of these explanations are of very little interest to writers, but the real reason certainly is.

It’s simple: The GOP loves Lee Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.” Naturally, we have no grievance with an artist, or even a country music singer, expressing his religious beliefs through his craft. Our problem with this song is that its chorus relies on a mixed construction. As Diana Hacker explains, a writer “should not begin with one grammatical plan and then switch without warning to another.” But look what Greenwood does:

And I’m proud to be an American,
Where at least I know I’m free.

The first line proclaims his pride in being something; but in the second line, the pronoun “where” refers to a place. (As you can see, this grammatical situation is slightly more complicated than the standard pronoun/antecedent disagreement.) If the lines ran, “I’m proud to be an American / ‘Cuz at least I know I’m free” or “I’m proud to be in America / Where at least I know I’m free,” we wouldn’t be bothered; but they don’t, so we are.

It’s fine for writers to occasionally slip into a mixed construction. It happens to the worst of us. But Greenwood recorded his, he sings it every day, and he spreads it like a usage virus. Whenever anyone sings this song, they’re participating in and perpetuating Greenwood’s grammatical sin.

The Gods of Grammar will not stand for it. They have shown their displeasure in the last two elections. If the GOP doesn’t distance itself from Greenwood, it will soon be eclipsed by the Green Party.

Gioia to Resign in January

2008-10-25T22:20:00.008-04:00

Why are we always the last to find out about these things?! Dana Gioia is resigning as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in January. From the New York Times:

“I’ve given up six years of my life as a writer,” Mr. Gioia, 57, said earlier in the week from his office in Washington. “I felt I had to go back to writing when I still have the kind of stamina to do it seriously.”

This is bad news for the NEA; it's good news for American poetry. To mark the occasion, here's one of his best (from the collection Interrogations at Noon):

"Summer Storm"

We stood on the rented patio
While the party went on inside.
You knew the groom from college.
I was a friend of the bride.

We hugged the brownstone wall behind us
To keep our dress clothes dry
And watched the sudden summer storm
Floodlit against the sky.

The rain was like a waterfall
Of brilliant beaded light,
Cool and silent as the stars
The storm hid from the night.

To my surprise, you took my arm–
A gesture you didn't explain–
And we spoke in whispers, as if we two
Might imitate the rain.

Then suddenly the storm receded
As swiftly as it came.
The doors behind us opened up.
The hostess called your name.

I watched you merge into the group,
Aloof and yet polite.
We didn't speak another word
Except to say goodnight.

Why does that evening's memory
Return with this night's storm–
A party twenty years ago,
Its disappointments warm?

There are so many might have beens,
What ifs that won't stay buried,
Other cities, other jobs,
Strangers we might have married.

And memory insists on pining
For places it never went,
As if life would be happier
Just by being different.

The Catholic (?) Short Fiction of T.C. Boyle

2008-10-21T21:36:00.011-04:00

We’ve recently been enjoying a number of short stories by T. C. Boyle. We’d read some of his work before (“Greasy Lake” comes to mind), but what inspired us to return to his work this time was that we noticed a story of his was included in a collection called The Best American Catholic Short Stories (Sheed & Ward, 2007). His work had never struck us as particularly Catholic, so his inclusion surprised us. We resolved to take a look at some of his work--which we're happy to say is much more enjoyable than looking at his publicity pictures, in which he consistently looks like the bassist for an 80s arena-rock band now playing at county fairs.

A couple of the stories were quite good, but their subject matter puts them out of the purview of this site. “Balto” and “1300 Rats,” from a recent The New Yorker. The former is a realistic short story; the latter is strange but not fantastic. It’s also the weakest of the bunch, as the narrator’s voice and knowledge is inconsistent.

The first story worth considering here is called “Killing Babies.” We’d had this in a collection (the 1999 edition of The Best American Short Stories) for some time and hadn’t gotten around to reading it because, seeing that it had originally been published in The New Yorker, we’d assumed it would be a pro-choice story. It isn’t. We’d like to write more about it later, but for now we’ll just say that while the narrator, whose brother is a doctor who performs abortions, hates the pro-life advocates who protest his brother (and these protestors are certainly not presented with much sympathy), the story’s tone changes suddenly at the end with a very surprising simile. We finally interpreted it as a pro-life story, but one with serious reservations about the pro-life movement.

The other stories are both from his 1989 collection If the River Was [sic!] Whiskey. “The Devil and Irv Cherniske,” included in The Best American Catholic Short Stories, is not a specifically Catholic story, but is a recasting of Washington Irving's moralistic "The Devil and Tom Walker" in a modern American suburb: a greedy businessman and father, frustrated in his marriage and his professional life, is approached by the devil, who makes him an offer he should refuse. The devil “wanted the usual deal, nothing less, and he held out to Irv the twin temptations of preternatural business success and filthy lucre.” Bless his heart, Irv initially resists the temptation. But His wife Tish, no pleasant help-mate, scolds Irv for being so stupid, and sets out to seal the deal with the Dark Prince herself. This does not end happily for her.

Irv eventually accepts Satan’s offer, and in ten years becomes one of the fattest fat cats around. But he wonders about his devilish deal, so “he returned to the church—not the Roman church, to which he’d belonged as a boy, but the Church of the Open Palm, Reverend Jimmy, Pastor,” who preaches the power “of the one and only God—profit,” and whose scripture is The Wealth of Nations. This new faith gets him richer and happier, but of course it’s only doing his soul more damage, and (like Tom Walker) he can’t avoid his fate, which we’re afraid is much less pleasant than the Washington Irving story to which the title alludes. (If only Daniel Webster were there to help!)

The next story in the collection is “The Miracle at Ballinspittle,” which is as irreverent as the title suggests. Two drunk Americans visit Ireland on a whim to see “the snotgreen likeness of the Virgin” which “was seen one grim March afternoon some years back to move its limbs ever so slightly, as if seized suddenly by the need of a good sinew-cracking stretch.” Of course, the vision is doubtful--at least in part because it was experienced by a lone young girl in the midst of a fifteen-day Marmite and soda binge--but that doesn’t keep the site from becoming a popular pilgrimage destination.

Still, it turns out that there is something miraculous about the statue, which suddenly statue calls out to one of the drunk Americans, Davey McGahee. The other many pilgrims watch as she speaks to him. He begins praying the Hail Mary, but when he asks her to pray for sinners, she retorts,

“And you think it’s as easy as that, do you?...Gone is the beatific smile, gone the gace of the eyes and the face is a gargoyle’s, a shrew’s, and the voice, sharpening, probing like a dental tool, suddenly bears an uncanny resemblance to his ex-wife’s. ‘Sinner!’ the gargoyle hisses. ‘Fall on your knees!’”

When he drops, a vision marches out before him and all of the other pilgrims, a vision of all of his sins. All of the alcohol he’s consumed appears in barrels. All of the women he’s lusted after, every sinful sexual act, all of the excess food he’s eaten, right there for the world to see. For two days.

When Davey awakes, he’s humiliated but surprised to learn that it’s been declared “the greatest vision vouchsafed to man since the time of Christ.” He’s also become an object of praise, veneration, and publicity. But as he’s receiving this praise, he is moved to move his bowels (hey, it’s been two days!), and when he does that on a holy site (oh, the irony!) not only do the pilgrims turn on him, but the skies open and his many sins fall down like rain on him, and he (like Irv C., though in less sinister manner) disappears…

The site becomes one of the great holy places of the world, but Davey McGahee is never heard from again. “Some say he descended into a black hole of the earth, others that he evaporated, while still others insist that he ascended to heaven in a blaze of light, Saint of the Common Sinner.” We’re not sure Davey’s like all of us—some of his sins are pretty bad. But the point of the story is to parody the sort of vision that we hear about, to turn it into something absurd and disgusting. For that reason, it’s hard to call it a Catholic story, because it demeans the notion of a miraculous vision. Then again, sin is real in this story: it is manifest before the world, made as clear to the world as it to God. It's just difficult to determine whether Boyle is also mocking this element of the vision.

Solutions for the Poetry Crisis

2008-10-01T22:07:00.009-04:00

Charles Bernstein has some timely advice for bailing out poetry:

Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets....

As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers. What began as a subprime poetry problem on essentially unregulated poetry websites has spread to other, more stable, literary magazines and presses and contributed to excess poetry inventories that have pushed down the value of responsible poems.

It's funny because it's true!...Well, sort of. Here's the rest.

Chesterton

2008-09-28T14:01:00.003-04:00

For those of you looking for a quick Chesterton fix, InsideCatholic.com has a couple of reviews up. One is positive; the other, less so. (Note: although the headline of the second link calls The Man Who Was Thursday as a novella, our well-placed sources inform us that the author of the review knows better.)

David Foster Wallace, R.I.P.

2008-09-14T11:34:00.005-04:00

From the LA Times:

David Foster Wallace, the novelist, essayist and humorist best known for his 1996 novel "Infinite Jest," was found dead Friday night at his home in Claremont, according to the Claremont Police Department. He was 46.

Mark Hemingway has some kind words over at NRO. Here are Michiko Kakutani's thoughts over at the New York Times.

How 'Bout Some Poetry?

2008-09-04T22:06:00.003-04:00

So how long has it been since we've featured some poetry at the old Review? Too long, at any rate. One of the purposes behind starting this site was to feature the new works of Mahwavians, so it would nice to do this more frequently. Towards that end, and with a hope that it will encourage some of our old (and new) friends to submit their work for posting, here's a little something I wrote over the summer. It is based on an event which occurred during Columbus' final voyage. Enjoy.

The Voyage of Diego Mendez

In naked Jamaica, Columbus’ last crew
Sat in extremest enervation
By the side of their ocean-battered ship -
Struck there in helpless dilapidation -
And cast their eyes on the volatile sea
Where they looked for death and not salvation.

Then Diego Mendez rose and he said:
"I will cross the forty leagues of the sea
To Hispaniola, and bring us help
From the men of the Spanish colony;
And I trust for the goodness of the attempt
That our gracious lord will favor me."

So he gathered Flisco, his old friend,
And a few of the sailors fortified
Against the perils of such a task,
And some Arawak, to serve as a guide;
Then they all set out in two canoes
That could barely float above the tide.

The sea swelled flat and tranquilly
Like a plate of blue suspiring glass;
The immoderate sun burned painfully,
Unveiled by a single cloud's thin mass;
And the tangible breeze that stirred at times
Smelled thick with mangrove and sassafras.

But the ocean current under their boats
Ran steady and strongly against their head,
So they pulled at the oars through the seering day
Till their palms hard creases blistered and bled -
All day and all night, and when morning came
One man from the strain of it all lay dead.

For two more days and for two more nights,
Across the forty leagues of the sea,
They pulled for Hispaniola's coast
Which their faint eyes searched out desperately,
And two more died, and the others looked
On their quiet cheeks with jealousy.

Still, on they toiled, these fugitive men,
To one another so little known,
With little more language fit to commune
Than a weary and labor-wrested groan,
Or the misery drawn on each taut cheek
That reflected to every man his own;

Cast suddenly in the midst of a sphere
Unknown to them, and unknowable;
Uncertain of how to find their bearing
On a trek momentous and wonderful
Through a natural frame of things at once
Gorgeous and adversarial;

In constant terror of ruinous storms
Arising upon them unaware;
In constant reliance on other's strength -
Both strangers and friends - to get anywhere;
Fatigued to a soul-deep lassitude,
Surrounded by death, beset by despair.

Yet whatever they lacked in that arduous course
They were not deprived a mind assured
Of its righteous aims, nor a tested arm,
To every trial at sea inured,
Nor a spirit in every season inclined
At all pains to do the will of their lord;

And certain it is, whatever the cause,
Whatever the source of that tendency,
And whatever it meant in the final word,
Those little boats and their company
Were the only thing in that mystical realm
That moved against the prevailing sea.

At last the distorted shape of the moon
Gave evidence of the solid shore;
So revivified, they plied at the wave
With a vigor drawn from hope's last store.
At dawn they made land, and the natives came
To greet and succor the exhausted corps.

They brought many fruits, and spirits to drink,
And garments woven white for this band
That had struggled so long and with such good cause,
Then they lay them down on the night-cooled sand,
Where there was no fear of the sudden gale,
Neither labor, nor heat of the sun to withstand.

Tom Wolfe on Fiction, Himself

2008-09-01T10:48:00.009-04:00

Here's an interview with the always-quotable Tom Wolfe. Predictably, he criticizes the state of contemporary fiction:

There's so little of it now that it's pathetic, and it's pathetic all over. Writers come from master-of-fine-arts programs now. If you add up the college education of Steinbeck, Hemingway and Faulkner, you get to spring break of freshman year.

MFA programs are an easy target. Their advantages: the best programs give young writers an opportunity to learn from writers they admire; they provide a community with which to share one's work; and they help establish connections with agents, publishers, etc. But it is a shame that they're becoming almost obligatory, and based on what I've seen from them, MFA seminars often foster conformity and sameness among the stories and poems they generate.

Where's Writer's Block When You Need It?

2008-08-23T00:00:00.004-04:00

If our review of Exiles is un-enthusiastic, we’re still pretty certain, based on this review, that Hansen’s novel is better than the latest by Robert Olen Butler, a collection of stories that consists entirely of the thoughts that characters (primarily historical figures) have during sex. Butler likes writing gimmicky stories, and sometimes they work—“Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot,” like the other stories of Tabloid Dreams, was inspired by a goofy headline, and is both a very funny and moving story. But this gimmick is just sad and shameless, and reinforces the importance of works like Hansen’s, which while falling short of expectations, still attempts to clear a path for thoughtful, faithful literary fiction.

Exiles: The MLR Review!

2008-08-20T23:33:00.006-04:00

We had been eager to read Ron Hansen’s Exiles. He is easily the most acclaimed novelist—whose work is always well-received by critics and film producers—who is proud of his Catholic faith, and here was a novel that was about Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of his favorite poets. It’s a perfect storm of Catholicism! (Excuse the tumultuous maritime pun.)

The exiles to which the title refers are six characters: five German nuns leaving Bismark’s kulturkampf, hoping to start a school in Missouri (which, for our many international readers, is a state in the Midwestern United States). They never reach their destination, dying in a shipwreck off the coast of England. The sixth exile is Gerard Manley Hopkins, who at the start of the novel—that is, at the time of the Deutschland’s wreck—is a young priest in Wales. Reading about the death of the nuns, he is inspired to write a poem for them, and the novel traces his struggles writing what would become “The Wreck of the Deutschland”—as well as his personal, religious, and health problems—until his own early death.

Hansen’s affection for Hopkins, and his sympathy for the priest’s struggles as an artist, are clear; we also enjoyed the details of the everyday lives of these holy people. Hansen makes them human and imperfect, but never diminishes their sacrifices or their holiness. Indeed, it is their apparent normalcy that makes their decisions to enter Holy Orders compelling.

Still, we couldn’t help but feeling a bit let down by the novel. The main reason for this disappointment is the telling-instead-of-showing that Matthew Lickona observes, which makes the novel seem impersonal. The novel is short (just over 200 pages), so there’s not enough room to engage with six characters in very much detail. Hansen devotes about half of the novel to the nuns and half to Hopkins, which makes formal sense. The trouble is, he’s totally democratic with the nuns—they each get the same amount of back-story, the same attention in the present, etc. We suppose it would seem a bit crude to determine that one of these nuns is better than the others, or more worthy of our attention. For the sake of the novel, though, the author needs to make that decision, and I would have liked to have seen Hansen write that particular half of the novel from the perspective of one of the nuns. By trying to show us all of them, we end up not knowing any of them very well. They are all admirable and likeable (and, because they’re human, unlikeable) in different ways, and of course their deaths are very moving, but their narrative is unfocused, and not as powerful as it could be. (This same impersonal feeling is even true of the Hopkins half of the novel, as Hansen rushes through much of the priest’s life.)

Another formal problem arises because of the time differences between the narratives. At the start, there are only a few days difference between the departure of the nuns for America and Hopkins’s attempt to write the poem. Toward the end of the novel, as Hopkins nears the end of his own life, there are years between him and the wreck, but the novel alternates between the two plot strands as it had in the start. By now, though, the time difference makes this alternating seem forced, a formal relic from the start of the novel that seems irrelevant by the end because Hopkins was no longer preoccupied with thoughts of the shipwreck.

I’ll end with a minor gripe. At one point, Hansen refers to “a handwritten poem in Shakespearean blank verse of five accented syllables per line.” There’s no such thing as Shakespearean verse as opposed to plain old blank verse; blank verse is more complicated than just five accented syllables; and the lines that he actually provides aren’t blank verse, either. That just annoyed us; we assume that Hansen knows what blank verse is, and was simplifying the definition for his readers, but there’s a difference between simplifying and getting it wrong.

This is not a bad novel, only a disappointing one. That disappointment could be as much our fault as Hansen’s, since we built unrealistic expectations for The Great Catholic Hope. For now, though, we still prefer his short stories (in many regards, especially the understated presentation of the tragic deaths, this novel reminds us of “Wickedness”) or his essays in A Stay Against Confusion.

A Few Harsh Words

2008-08-04T11:47:00.003-04:00

It is normally our policy at the Review to refrain from any unpleasant comments directed at members of the literary community. Normally. But I am afraid it is about time to direct some harsh words towards a certain type of critic, and a certain type of criticism, which is emerging of late, and which deserves quite a number of harsh words directed towards it. I am referring to that species of literary criticism which makes pretense to being a scientific inquiry, and applying a scientific methodology to the comprehension of literature. The latest performance of this meaningless though increasingly popular farce was put on by one Philip Davis in the pages of the Literary Review; it is quite representative of the phenomenon, and on this account (and no other) merits our attention.

The upshot of Mr. Davis’ article is that he and a number of apparently unoccupied “brain scientists” have discovered that listening to certain lines in Shakespeare makes certain lights on certain machines flash in a certain way. Employing their EEG’s, their MEG’s, and their fMRI’s – you know, the usual tools of the literary critic – they found that listening to sentences containing various types of what Davis calls “functional shifts” causes things called N400 and P600 effects, which are surges in the amplitude of waves moving through different locations of the brain. These surges are indications of the brain’s aroused attention, its preparedness to “work at a higher level.” Since the “functional shifts” which were used in the experiment are similar to the ones that Shakespeare frequently employed, Davis concludes that Shakespeare can be said to goad our brains “into working at a higher adaptive level of conscious evolution,” and leaves from his experiment with “a greater sense of how and why Shakespeare really does something to our inner reality.”

Where to start. First, quite obviously, no discovery is being made here; Davis is not presenting any substantial information here which hasn’t been known for centuries. That Shakespeare makes our brains “work at a higher level” or, in less pretentious terms, that he makes us think, is, I would suggest, a less than earth-shattering assertion. One doesn’t need an MEG machine in one’s study to adequately grasp the way “Shakespeare does something to our inner reality.” Similarly, the pleasing and arresting qualities of “functional shifts” of language have been known to rhetoricians from antiquity to the Renaissance, as is indicated by Davis’ citation of Puttenham, and are readily apparent to any sensible reader. After all, why did Davis choose to experiment upon precisely these features of Shakespeare’s language if he hadn’t felt their power prior to stepping foot into the lab?

I know the response; Davis and his ilk will say, now we have proof, by which they mean scientific verification, the only thing they will admit as proof. Its not true, but suppose even that it were. There are a million experiences in the course of our lives which we admit as legitimate and settled without scientific verification; we could hardly get on were it not the case. We do not ask the little men in white coats to “prove” to us that chocolate has a wonderful taste, or that an unexpected clap of thunder shocks us; indeed, to ask for such proof in such cases would be tantamount to a sort of paranoia. If a man should say to us, “I believe I am rather fond of Beethoven’s chamber music, but I am heading downtown today to have my brain scanned in order to be certain that is the case,” I think we would all suspect his sanity. But when a man writes “I believe that I find Shakespeare’s style striking and lovely, but I had the brain’s of several unwitting strangers scanned in order to prove it,” he is published in the Literary Review and, quite likely, takes one step closer to that cherished tenure-track position. The dogma that scientific modes of verification are the only legitimate modes of verification is nothing more than an epistemological disease of the modern world; it is a dogma because no one can possibly demonstrate why scientific modes of verification are the only valid ones available on all matters, particularly on those matters of which we possess phenomenological knowledge. A man who says to himself, and to the readers of the Literary Review, that we only possess certain or clear knowledge of a feature of Shakespeare when it has been subjected to scientific procedures is a man whose mind is in serious epistemological disorder.

Such would be the case even if Davis’ experiment proves what he thinks it proves. But, as I said, it doesn’t. It proves nothing because it explains nothing. Here is what Davis knows: when his subjects read certain kinds of “functional shifts,” a change in wave amplitude – called a P600 – is observable, and correlates to an increase in attention. Now here are all the things that Davis doesn’t know: why is a P600 triggered by a “functional shift” instead of one of the other literary devices, such as metaphor or synecdoche? Why does a “functional shift” cause a P600 effect, instead of a P700, or a N300, or a XYZ56 and a third? How can there exist a causal relationship (as opposed to the observable correlation) between language heard and changes in wave amplitude in the brain? How can there exist a causal relationship (as opposed to the observable correlation) between changes in wave amplitude in the brain and increases of awareness? How can there exist a causal relationship between brain processes and increases of awareness? Or between brain processes and awareness itself? How can matter in any form or arrangement fully account for the phenomenology of subjective experience?

If Mr. Davis had done more than dip his little toe into the baby pool of philosophy, and gone diving into the deep end instead, he would understand that these are fundamental and intractable problems which have no answers now, and very likely never will. Yet his whole article presupposes that all of these questions have been tidily answered by now, and of course, in this, he is no different than that army of academic frauds in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, neuropsychology, etc, etc, who, by producing mountains of new empirical data every year, think they can pretend to have answered the philosophical dilemmas presented by subjective experience. But it is the most ridiculous thing in the world for Mr. Davis to suppose that he has presented an explanation of the beauty of Shakespeare’s style clearer or more compelling than one offered in purely phenomenological terms, when his own explanation carries with it dozens of insoluble difficulties.

All of this is bad enough, but perhaps the worst part of the article is that reference to Shakespeare causing our brains to operate at “a higher level of conscious evolution.” Of course, this is a phrase with no meaning. There are no such things as higher levels of evolution, nor is there any such thing as an evolution of consciousness. What Mr. Davis is attempting to do here is smuggle into literary studies the language of sociobiology, or totalizing Darwinism. And in this, he has quite a number of accomplices. Darwinian literary criticism (a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education covers the phenomenon) is the latest challenger for the title of most ludicrous ideology to corrupt literary studies, vying with feminism, multi-culturalism, and deconstructionism for the distinction. Any decent person who – in an act of penance or of masochism – has read a sociobiological account of ethics or politics knows how incoherent, equivocal, and downright revolting such accounts can be, and any such person with a love of literature would want to make sure that sociobiology, with all of its phony methodology and all of its dishonorable prejudices, be kept as far away from the literary arts as possible. The literary Darwinists are like credulous merchants, plunging recklessly into the ports of some long-rumored kingdom, only to carry back in their voluminous holds all the vile, corrosive, vermin-born plagues of abused science, wherewith to infect the happy realm of letters.

The fact remains that Mr. Davis’ experiments offer no grounds for distinction between the “functional shifts” as they occur in Shakespeare and in his own examples; they both apparently produce the same changes in the amplitude of brain waves. A method of criticism which provides us with no grounds for distinguishing between the style of Shakespeare and the style of a scribbler for the Literary Review is a perfectly worthless and irrelevant method of literary criticism; that, and nothing more, is what Mr. Davis has presented in his article. That, and nothing more, is what all “scientific” literary critics have to offer. I trust that all intelligent readers recognize this fashionable travesty for what it is, and regard it with the sort of disdain that it deserves.

"With Hope in Our Hearts and Wings on Our Heels": Chariots of Fire

2008-08-02T13:29:00.008-04:00

We were recently watching Chariots of Fire, and it occurred to us that the movie is a great example of an extraordinary work of art that engages with religion in a serious and thoughtful way. In this regard, it’s a model for young artists seeking to use their art to present their faith without being polemical.

A brief plot summary in case you haven’t seen it: the movie follows two British sprinters as they prepare for and compete in the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) is the son of a Lithuanian Jew, and who constantly feels as if he is treated unfairly by his countrymen because of his religion. (We see this unfair treatment for ourselves in the behavior of two Cambridge dons, who I think are played by Statler & Waldorf.) He races in part to prove his worth to his countrymen. As he says, to prove himself he’ll “take them on, one by one, and run them off their feet."

Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), meanwhile, is a Scot and devout Christian. Like Abrahams, his religion defines him, but in his case there’s more of a conflict between faith and sport: he is torn between his talents as a runner and his family’s missionary work in China. He eventually decides that because his talent is a blessing from God, he should continue to run to glorify Him. As he explains to his sister (in a beautiful scene shot on Arthur’s Seat overlooking Edinburgh), “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” Liddell’s greatest challenge comes when he learns that his qualifying heat is on a Sunday. (I won’t give away the outcome.)

Some qualifications. First, the movie comes awfully close to reinforcing some stereotypes: the wild and talented but unrefined Scotsman who trains by running through the hills, the Robert Burns of running; the ambitious Jew who comes dangerously close to becoming a professional athlete by hiring a coach. And of course, the film takes liberties with history, among them that Liddell knew that his heat was on a Sunday long before the Olympics. This site has plenty of left-wing complaints, too (basically, “the movie says that liking your country is a good thing, which movies really shouldn’t do when Margaret Thatcher is prime minister!”) Though the article is silly, it does clarify that Abrahams converted to Catholicism, which would indeed clarify why his funeral is in a church!

Still, the movie has cracked our all-time favorite list. It helps that we’re an Anglophile (and a Scotophile, too)—there’s lots of British culture here, and many beautiful scenes in English manor houses, ancient universities, the Scottish Highlands, plus the famous opening and closing running scene along the beach (filmed in St. Andrews, but which is presented as Kent in the film).

But what makes the movie extraordinary and moving is its presentation of these two very driven men whose religions are central to their lives and their senses of themselves. The movie is not preachy, yet still makes clear that these men are admirable for both their ambition and their devotion. Still, the movie doesn’t present these men as exactly the same. It suggests that Harold will never be satisfied, that he will never think he’s done enough to feel like he’s accepted by his countrymen. (That’s why the complaint that the movie is excessively nationalist is so misdirected—this sense of dissatisfaction is the country’s fault more than it’s Harold’s.) Liddell’s desire, though still rooted in his faith and the faith of his family, is fueled less by a sense of dissatisfaction or resentment, so he’s much more satisfied and content after the Games, having done what he set out to do for God.

And although the movie gives voice to the critics of these men—Liddell’s decision is said to smack of “fanaticism,” and they’re both criticized for putting their religions over their countries—the movie presents their beliefs sympathetically and realistically (the two are not contradictory!).

It’s an inspiring movie for many reasons, including Liddell’s belief that his running matters because it’s an opportunity to glorify God. As his father tells him, “You can praise the Lord by peeling a spud, if you peel it to perfection.” (That sounds like Josemaria Escriva!) It’s also inspiring to recognize that the movie was widely acclaimed in 1981 (it won the Oscar for Best Picture), which suggests that even in a “post-Christian” popular culture, there is a place for great art that presents religion as an important force in the lives of great men.

In Defense of the Graphic Novel

2008-07-30T23:02:00.005-04:00

Last month, we posted some unpleasant thoughts about EW's Top 100 Reads of the last 25 years, and complained that there were too many comic books on the list. Our friend Joe posted a reply in which he defended the genre, which we're pasting as a posting below. But first, in related news, here's the trailer for the film adaptation of Watchmen. (Warning: it features Billy Corgan's very annoying voice):

Take it away, Joe!

I'll personally vouch for half of the comic book entries (Side note: "Graphic Novel" is a legitimate term, but it's often misapplied by people who are embarrassed to admit that they read comic books. A graphic novel is any comic book that acts as a stand-alone work of previously unpublished material. Following this definition, "Maus" and "Persepolis" would be graphic novels, but "Watchmen" and "Sandman" would not.) I've said on more than one occasion that "Sandman" and "Watchmen" belong among the greatest literary works of the past quarter century.

"Watchmen" works, not just as a fantastic, genre-bending adventure story, but also as a loving deconstruction of the super hero mythos in American culture. Moore juggles a lot of philosophical perspectives, namely the plight of man navigating the space between determinism (represented by Doctor Manhattan) and nihilism (represented by Rorschach), and touching on a lot of really fascinating stuff along the way.

"Sandman" is absolutely unparalleled in terms of breadth and scope. It's an Aristotelian tragedy told in more than seventy-five parts over nearly ten years. Gaiman incorporates his incredible knowledge of mythology, history, and literature into a breath-taking epic that is alternately thrilling, frightening, and touching. Start with "Preludes and Nocturns" and keep reading; each book gets better and better.

I would also argue that "The Dark Knight Returns" and possibly "Batman: The Killing Joke" belong on the list as well.

Comic books and graphic novels are a medium just like any other; they have certain advantages and limitations and they have their own way of conveying a story and information. I think to write off the entire genre would be the equivalent to saying "Film is a waste of time," or "Books are for nerds."

Ron Hanen, "Exiles"

2008-07-24T10:35:00.003-04:00

There's an interesting conversation at InsideCatholic.com about Ron Hansen's new novel, Exiles. We're not done with the novel yet, so we're not in position to evaluate the comments, but we're very impressed that Hansen himself joins in a conversation that often isn't very nice to him. One of the discussion's central themes is what constitutes Catholic fiction, so it should be of interest to any Mahwahvian.

Bogus Brideshead

2008-07-21T16:36:00.006-04:00

The New York Times has more on the new film version of Brideshead Revisited. As Ross Douthat observes, the directors claim to have made an effort to be true to the novel, but have given Hopper "a positive spin." (We're also sorry to hear that Anthony Blanche has only a passing role -- Nickolas Grace's portrayal is a highlight of the mini-series.) Click here for our earlier post on the topic.

UPDATE: Deal Hudson chimes in over at IC.

Kay Ryan: Poet Laureate

2008-07-20T17:49:00.010-04:00

The Library of Congress has announced that Kay Ryan will become the new Poet Laureate this October. Here's a New York Times profile of her; here's one of her poems; here's some footage of her at a public reading (warning: the audience suffers from OLS (Over-Laughing Syndrome)). The NYTimes piece includes this notable testimonial:

Dana Gioia, a poet and the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was an early supporter of Ms. Ryan’s work, describing her as the “thoughtful, bemused, affectionate, deeply skeptical outsider.”

“She would certainly be part of the world if she could manage it,” he said. “She has certain reservations. That is what makes her like Dickinson in some ways.”

Ryan writes interesting, accessible poetry with a humor that reminds us of Billy Collins, but with a more careful attention to phrasing and sound. Still, although she's a fine choice for the position, we can't help but think that she'll have as much success broadening the nation's interest in poetry as David Beckham has had in making soccer our national sport.

Thomas Disch, R.I.P.

2008-07-19T11:50:00.008-04:00

J. Bottum has a moving tribute to Thomas Disch, who committed suicide earlier this month. Here's perhaps his best-known poem, which Dana Gioia has been known to recite:

Ballade of the New God

I have decided I'm divine.
Caligula and Nero knew
A godliness akin to mine,
But they are strictly hitherto.
They're dead, and what can dead gods do?
I'm here and now. I'm dynamite.
I'd worship me if I were you.
A new religion starts tonight!

No booze, no pot, no sex, no swine:
I have decreed them all taboo.
My words will be your only wine,
The thought of me your honeydew.
All other thoughts you will eschew.
You'll call yourself a Thomasite
And hymn my praise with loud yahoo.
A new religion starts tonight.

But (you might think) that's asinine!
I'm just as much a god as you.
You may have built yourself a shrine,
But I won't bend my knee. Who
Asked you to be my god? I do,
Who am, as god, divinely right.
Now you must join my retinue:
A new religion starts tonight.

Billy Collins: Porky Pig Poet

2008-06-29T15:48:00.013-04:00

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal features an article by Billy Collins, the most popular poet in America and former Poet Laureate. Collins makes a few interesting observations about artistic influence: “the question of literary influence is a tricky one. For one thing, it offers the author the opportunity to duck it by substituting for his actual influence certain names the dropping of which is designed to impress.” He notes that writers tend to only name artists from their own genre, when “the truth is that influence enters us from all sides. . . . A short-story writer may have been influenced by 18th-century Dutch painting as much as anything else—or by his mother’s cooking.” Unfortunately, Collins spends the rest of the article describing how Warner Brothers cartoons influenced his own work:

Characters could jump dimensions, leaping around in time and space, their sudden exits marked by a rifle-shot sound effect. Anticipating the tricks of metafiction, these creatures could hop right out of the world of the cartoon and into our world, often Hollywood itself to consort with caricatures of Eddie Cantor and Marilyn Monroe. Or Bugs would do the impossible by jumping out of the frame and landing on the drawing board of the cartoonist who was at work creating him. This freedom to transcend the laws of basic physics, to hop around in time and space, and to skip from one dimension to another has long been a crucial aspect of imaginative poetry. Robert Bly developed a poetics based on the notion of psychic “leaping,” where the genius of a poem is measured by its ability to leap without warning from the conscious to the unconscious and back again.

We can agree with the broader statement about imaginative leaping (Keats’s “To a Nightingale” is another great example, as is Ashbery’s “The Instruction Manual”), but the connection between cartoons and great art is more than a little labored.

There’s nothing pretentious about Collins, which we admire. But his article will not comfort anyone who believes that there isn’t enough substance to his poetry. Case in point:
the poetry (first published in 1977) that accompanies the article. For example:

Porky
Happy only
when he is gardening alone
far from conversation
and the terrible stammering
far from Petunia, nag and tease
just resting on a hoe
unembarrassed
as he contemplates
the blue background of his flat world --
a Zen pig.

We do not count ourselves among those who think that pop culture can inspire only bad poetry, but this has all the heft of a kindergarten haiku, and is neither interesting nor (worst of all!) even funny. We prefer this one by William Trowbridge, which a) surprises the reader and b) makes connections between the subject matter and the speaker’s life.

Baer is Blogged

2008-06-26T16:36:00.006-04:00

InsideCatholic has a profile about Dr. Baer. The piece covers Baer's nurturing of a Catholic literary scene, as well as his important work with formal poetry. (Best of all, it appears that its author is cut from our Mahwahvian cloth.) A blurb:

Like many other Catholic writers, Baer believes that faithful Catholics do not need to convey a specifically Catholic teaching through their art: "Their work can be simply entertaining; or it can be moral; or it can offer a specifically Catholic perspective. Catholic writers can do all sorts of things, as long as they consider whether it's pleasing to God."

That passage also wins the Southwell Award for "The Most Uses of the Word 'Catholic' in a Paragraph."

EW's 100 "Best Reads"

2008-06-24T09:09:00.007-04:00

Entertainment Weekly has a list of the 100 best books of the past 25 years. Ross Douthat vents here. Like him, we're not happy that a Harry Potter comes in at #2. We're also amazed that of the four comic books on the list, two are in the top 15. A couple would be fine...and we really enjoyed The Watchmen when we read it in junior high, which is when you should read comic books (sorry, we're not calling them graphic novels). But let's not get carried away. It says a lot about the state of "things" that the list includes so many works written for adolescents, yet no poetry collections and (again, by our unofficial tally) only four collections of short stories (Munro, Moore, Danticat, and Carver.)

Nick Hornby & the Insular Novel

2008-06-05T10:40:00.024-04:00

We’ve been enjoying Housekeeping vs. The Dirt, a collection of critical essays that Nick Hornby wrote for The Believer. In these essays, Hornby writes about the books he read, and lists the books he bought, each month. If you’ve read High Fidelity, About a Boy, A Long Way Down, or any of Hornby’s novels, you know that his voice is fun and welcoming. He also makes some sharp observations about literature. We don’t always agree with him, but since this site says nothing nasty ’bout nobody, we’ll focus on what we like.

Hornby is concerned that not only is the average Joe reading less and less, but novelists are making matters worse by writing too much about writers and book nerds—that, in short, “the world of books seems to be getting more bookish.” He names a few novels to make his case, focusing particularly on Ian McEwan’s Saturday, whose narrator is a successful neurosurgeon with a daughter and father-in-law who both won the prestigious Newdigate Poetry award while students at Oxford. Hornby writes:

There are, I think, two reasons to be a little queasy about this trend. The first is, quite simply, that it excludes readers; the woman in the barber’s is not the only one who wouldn't want to read about the Newdigate Prize. And yes, maybe great art shouldn’t be afraid of being elitist, but there’s plenty of great art that isn’t, and I don’t want bright people who don’t happen to have a degree in literature to give up on the contemporary novel; I want them to believe there’s a point to it all, that fiction has a purpose visible to anyone capable of reading a book intended for grown-ups. Taken as a group, these novels seem to raise the white flag: we give in! We don't know what those people out there want! Pull up the drawbridges!

And the second cause for concern is that writing exclusively about highly articulate people….Well, isn’t it cheating a little? McEwan’s hero, Henry Perowne, the father and son-in-law of the poets, is a neurosurgeon, and his wife is a corporate lawyer; like many highly educated middle-class [they seemed more like upper-class to me] people, they have access to and a facility with language, a facility that enables them to speak very directly and lucidly about their lives…, and there’s a sense in which McEwan is wasted on them. They don’t need his help. What I’ve always loved about fiction is its ability to be smart about people who aren’t themselves smart, or at least don’t necessarily have the resources to describe their own emotional states. That was the way Twain was smart, and Dickens; and that is surely one of the reasons why Roddy Doyle is adored by all sorts of people, many of whom are infrequent book-buyers. It seems to me a more remarkable gift than the ability to let extremely literate people say extremely literate things.

Right on—and this isn’t much different from what Tom Wolfe writes in “My Three Stooges.” Not only does this trend suggest a lack of imagination, it also flatters the writer. If we remember right, McEwan’s novel [SPOILER ALERT] ends with Robert Browning crashing through the skylight to pummel an armed intruder who threatens the hero’s family. Ah, poets—the unacknowledged superheroes of the world!

Let’s face it: reciting “Dover Beach” isn’t going to dissuade anyone from kicking your ass. (Playing Eric Johnson’s “Cliffs of Dover” might.) Of course literature is important, but the more novelists and poets write about novelists, poets, and the people who love them—that is, people like themselves—the less average people will read quality literature. Writers should not dumb-down their craft, but must recognize that they may not be quite as interesting as they think.

Fighting for Pfleger

2008-06-02T13:06:00.009-04:00

Readers of this site know that one of its main purposes is to explore ways to integrate faith and art. We therefore rarely delve into political controversy, but we think it's important to make an exception in the case of Father Michael Pfleger. Though he has apologized for his recent sermon, in which he ridiculed Hillary Clinton, we praise and applaud him for using the art of stand-up comedy to spread the Catholic gospel of social justice. In case you haven't seen it:

His impersonation of Hillary Clinton— "I'm white! I'm entitled! There's a black man stealing my show!!!"—is stand-up gold, as the crowd's reaction shows. It is very possible that he looked to Chris Rock for his inspiration:

(Sorry, but that was just about the only clean clip we could find.) Father Pfleger is breaking ground for Catholic clergy, and his brother priests would do well to follow his example by impersonating celebrities and political figures during their sermons.

They may also consider incorporating some meditations into the different driving styles of black and white people, like this one from The Simpsons:

Comedian: Yo, check this out: black guys drive a car like this.
[Leans back, as though his elbow were on the windowsill]
Do, do, ch. Do-be-do, do-be-do-be-do.
Yeah, but white guys, see, they drive a car like this.
[Hunches forward, talks nasally]
Dee-da-dee, a-dee-da-dee-da-dee-da-dee.
[Audience howls with laughter]
Homer: Ah ha ha, it's true, it's true! We're so lame!

Stay strong, Father Pfleger—and don't forget: women be shoppin'!

The Use of Verse in Drama

2008-05-29T23:04:00.002-04:00

This weekend, the third annual Southwell Institute Writers Conference will convene in Mahwah. The focus of this year's conference will be playwriting, so I would like to offer a few thoughts on the topic. Particularly, I would like to make a short case for the long-neglected genre of verse-drama. One of the principal aspects of the Mahwavian movement thus far has been the cultivation of formal verse, so my first argument in favor of verse-drama would be that it is in keeping with this endeavor. But I think there are other arguments, too.

The tradition of modern realist drama, inaugurated by Ibsen and Shaw, has largely eschewed the devises of artifice - including verse - formerly employed by playwrights, in order to present what its practitioners regard as a true-to-life depiction of nature. Thus, a Eugene O'Neill or an Arthur Miller can draw scenes for the stage in no material way differening from the scenes of common life. The emphasis is on this naturalism, which is everywhere opposed to artifice.

But we would do well to remind ourselves (here and always) of Burke's grand dictum: "art is man's nature." One enters into a strange building, one pays money for a ticket, one takes a seat in an auditorium designed for the presentation of plays, one sees strangers moving around in unfamiliar garb, and speaking in unfamiliar accents - in such a situation, one cannot possibly expect to witness ordinary life. In such a situation, the expectation is art - which is to say, something more beautiful and more significant than ordinary life. The stage is like a pedestal, an instrument designed explicitly for the presentation of the art work, and in effect signaling to the viewer the presence of that unique object which is the work of art. It would be no less ridiculous to see a man sitting on a pedestal in the Louvre, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the paper, than it is to see a troupe on stage at Carnegie Hall, acting no differently than they do at home in their own dining rooms.

The ancient playwrights understood this perfectly, and that is why all early drama - whether we look at the tragedy of the Greeks, the No dramas of Japan, or the Sanskrit plays of early India - is heavily stylized. And the drama of the Renaissance and Neoclassical periods - the drama of Shakespeare, Calderon, and Racine - while abandoning much of the rigidity in the formal structure of those early works, still displayed a wealth of artifice, largely drawn from the stores of rhetoric. To be sure, the aim of the playwright was always to imitate nature. But simply to say that X imitates Y, is to state that X is something different than Y. To say that art should imitate nature is to say that art is something different than nature, and what it is is that collection of principles and techniques, the employment of which allows the maker to fabricate objects excelling the commonplace world in truthfulness and beauty. First among the techniques available to the playwright to fashion a dramatic performance uniquely impressive and lovely is verse.

Whatever their thoughts on this question, I wish the new members of the Southwell family the best of luck over the next couple of weeks, as they get to work on their plays. I hope the Mahwah experience is as special and momentous for them as it was for me, and I hope we hear from some of them soon here at the Review.

A Psalm & A Poem

2008-05-29T09:28:00.003-04:00

Psalm 19
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament showeth his handiwork.

2 Day unto day uttereth speech,
and night unto night showeth knowledge.

3 There is no speech nor language,
where their voice is not heard.

4 Their line is gone out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.
In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun,

5 which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.

David Middleton
“Things”
After Psalm 19:3-4

We live among them here and partly are
What they have always been and still will be
When soul from flesh is sheared along the scar
That marks the stitching-place as soul breaks free.

Yet if we hold them wholly in the mind
To take apart and savor, then let go,
The essence of our senses but the rind
Of some rich fruit we taste but hardly know—

The bare pecan whose trunk is simply there,
Its winter limbs against a winter sky,
The squirrel that brings the nut through dusk’s dim air,
Just doing what it must to live and die—

Such things in turn may be more than they seem
In matter’s shadow-land of squirrel and tree:
Creatures who’d wake with us in that first dream,
Time’s common tongues in timeless colloquy.

(From Measure 3.1)

Type rest of the post here

A Good Critic is Hard to Find

2008-05-22T14:04:00.001-04:00

Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is the most disturbing work of literature I know of; reading it is a genuinely painful experience. An author (at least, a respectable one) who subjects her readers to such an experience must have a very important insight to convey, and I think O'Connor does. Here is how I read her story (with a nod to Dr. Russell for some of his insights); let me know how I do.

The family is described at the beginning of the story as quite ordinary; they are immersed in their mundane tasks, the father reading the newspaper, the children perusing the comics. Little love - one might even say, little concern - is apparent among the various members of the family; Bailey ignores his mother as she speaks to him, the children speak disrespectfully towards their grandmother. To ask if these are good people or bad people seems entirely inappropriate; they are uncommitted people, who, like the great horde in the antechamber of the Inferno, have never taken the side of good or evil in their lives.

The grandmother seems particularly frivolous, fawning over her kitten, obsessed with making a decorous appearance. When the family stops at Red Sammy's barbecue, she mourns with the proprietor over the loss of "better times," and they agree that "Europe was entirely to blame for the way things were now." This preoccupation with other people's sinfulness seems to mark in O'Connor's work those characters who fail to live a genuinely moral life (I am thinking here of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own").

Then the accident happens and the Misfit appears. Here is a character who clearly has taken a side, and its the side of evil, the most heinous evil imaginable. He explains to the grandmother that the reason he acts as he does is because he is convinced that he has been wronged by his incarceration; since the world is a realm of injustice, he sees no reason why he himself should be any different: "You can do one thing or you can do another, kill a man or take a tire off his car, because sooner or later you're going to forget what it was you done and just be punished for it." As he goes on to say, "I call myself the Misfit, because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment."

Of course, the Misfit's conception of himself as "a man more sinned against than sinning" reveals an obvious, even ridiculous, lack of self-understanding. But I think it is also true that his words have a representative character; all men, in so far as they are subject to "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" find it impossible to match their sufferings to their sins in a comprehensive manner. This, in the most practical sense, is what it means to live in a fallen world.

And yet, as the Misfit recognizes, if Christ rose from the dead, then the order of an unjust world (which is essentially disorder) has been overthrown, and our duty is to commit ourselves to acting in accord with the just order of the world to come: "If He did what He said, then its nothing for you to do but throw away everything and follow Him." Of course, the other alternative is apparent: "if He didn't, then its nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness." His words here are reminiscent of Ivan Karimozov's dictum "if God does not exist, then all things are permitted." The life of the Misfit demonstrates as emphatically as possible what exactly he believes concerning this question.

But the grandmother? Her response to the Misfit is "maybe he didn't raise the dead." This response, too, is revealing and what it reveals is a soul uncommitted. But an unrestrained commitment is precisely what the Misfit (and not just the Misfit) says Christ's triumph requires of us. So in this respect, the grandmother and the Misfit are living lives of a similar moral tenor; this is why the grandmother's last words to the Misfit are: "You're one of my own children." Both have failed to make that commitment to the Gospel which alone can justify the strenuous efforts of a moral life. Both of them, in the absence of that commitment, enjoy that awful liberty which is really death, the liberty to do whatever we want. The difference between them is that the Misfit is conscious of this, and the grandmother is not; the enormous disparity in the kinds of lives they live is really a consequence of taste, more than anything. But the grandmother, in so far as she too belongs to the unjust order of a fallen world, is a misfit also. We all are, and it is only in a consistent commitment to the kingdom of heaven that we can discover the world into which we truly fit.

Waugh, Waugh, Waugh!

2008-05-21T23:04:00.008-04:00

We’re crying over this adaptation:

Ross Douthat says that the apparently over-sexed adaption of Brideshead Revisited may be just what the novel needs, because even Waugh thought his book was sentimental and sappy. We agree that parts of the novel are overwrought, but it would be nice to have a movie that didn’t elide the novel’s Catholicism…or compress the time-line to create a bi-sexual, pseudo-incestuous love triangle…or turn Lord Marchmain into a proud pimp of a pappy.

That’s not to say the movie shouldn’t be sexless; after all, the novel is subtitled The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. And of course, it’s dangerous to assume too much from a trailer alone. Maybe the preview intentionally misrepresents the film to generate more interest, and the movie is actually a fair adaptation of the novel, one in which Catholicism is presented as a serious and positive force in the characters’ lives. From the looks of it, though, we’re afraid that this movie will be as disappointing as the 1999 adaptation of The End of the Affair, which took some, er, liberties with the strength of Sarah’s conversion.

(By the way, we're tempted to agree with Douthat’s claim that the Sword of Honour trilogy is Waugh’s superior serious work. But Waugh swings too far into his ironic mode with his [SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT] sudden, unsatisfying, and emotionless description of Virginia’s death.)

An Implausible Thesis

2008-05-19T21:34:00.002-04:00

Much futile ink has been spent dissecting the so-called "new atheist" movement, which in fact has nothing new in it besides an unprecedented measure of impudence and asperity. Some have argued that the phenomenon is a reaction to modern fundamentalisms; others have maintained that it is the latest defense of Enlightenment rationalism. To many, the appearance of this faction has appeared quite puzzling. But to my mind, it is not very hard to understand what sort of thing this movement is, nor in what prior circumstances it has its causes.

Even the most cursory glance at the writings of Dawkins and Hitchens (and what sensible person could stand anything more than a cursory glance at their writings) reveals that their particular take on religion consists not merely of disagreement, but of disdain. Those who believe in a god are not simply persons maintaining the truth of a proposition insufficiently demonstrated; they are persons adverse to all rational demonstration. They are fools and liars. Their beliefs have no more intellectual substance than belief in unicorns and elves. They are not to be trusted, in the words of Hitchens. They are abusers of their children, in the words of Dawkins and Dennett. They are objects of pity, when isolated from the public sphere, and objects of unrestrained loathing, when engaged in the public sphere. Perhaps the most striking example of the "new atheist" contempt for religion can be found in their assertion that theology is not even a legitimate field of study; there can be no grander disdain for an opponent's position than the claim that the opponent has no real position.

Thus, in considering the general stance of the new atheists, one cannot escape the conclusion that, if they are correct, everyone who ever wrote or spoke in defense of a belief in God, a God to whom we owe certain duties, was perfectly benighted and untrustworthy. Simply put, the new atheist thesis boils down to the following: we have reached the point in history when the superstition of Plato, and Aristotle, and Isaiah, and Cicero, and Boethius, and Abelard, and Dante, and Chaucer, and Aquinas, and Donne, and Sir Thomas Browne, and Pascal, and Bishop Butler, and Samuel Johnson, and Edmund Burke, and Kierkegaard, and Cardinal Newman, can be replaced with the light and wisdom of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris.

That such a ridiculous thesis could seem plausible to such large numbers of people is attributable to one obvious fact. No fair-minded person who has read Dawkins and Cardinal Newman would consider Cardinal Newman the bigger fool; the only reason why so many people in our age have convinced themselves of this falsehood is simply because they have not read Cardinal Newman. They have not read Cardinal Newman, nor have they read any of the other classic authors, though they may have flipped through the latest issue of the New Yorker or the last installment of Harry Potter. The new atheist movement is nothing more than the entirely predictable consequence of the mis-education of the Western world over the last several generations; it is nothing but the upshot of the now intractable stupidity of Western populaces, which alone could turn a Sam Harris or a Christopher Hitchens into a respectable intellectual figure.

Or, to state the same in somewhat more dramatic fashion, the rise of such evidently ignorant and dishonest men to the status of intellectual authorities in our age fulfills the dire prophecies of Arnold, Spengler, Ortega, Chesterton, and others who wrote at the beginning of the modern era, and confirms that the barbarism which they foretold has now settled firmly over the west.

Glory, Praise, & Puppets

2008-05-15T10:28:00.002-04:00

A friend sent us the following footage of an unusual liturgical celebration. We were particularly fascinated by the large puppets that enter during the procession.

Of course, puppets are especially successful in attracting young people to the Church, which explains why the average age of the worshipers above appears to be somewhere around 90 years old.

Still, the usual curmudgeons are upset by this style of worship, which they consider inappropriate and vulgar. These Philistines do not recognize that there is in fact a proud precedent for such celebrations, like this:

And this:

We think that the West Coast Call to Action Conference should be commended for incorporating these celebratory accessories into their liturgy, and we are particularly interested in seeing what muppets they use for their service next Good Friday.

A Thing Ineffable

2008-05-14T12:59:00.000-04:00

In his essay "The Study of Poetry," Matthew Arnold employs a now famous method of delineating poetic excellence. He claims that we should "have always in one's mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and...apply them as a touchstone to other poetry," and then proceeds to cite a number of lines which he considers worthy of such exemplary status. This method, no doubt unrigorous and capricious, has come in for considerable derision from subsequent critics, not entirely without justice. Yet Arnold's larger point in this passage is sound, and particularly helpful to young poets searching for guidance through the wasteland left behind by modernism.

The criterion of excellence which Arnold points to is "in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness," and it is fair to say that gravity is a characteristic which all of his examples possess. He goes on to maintain - and this is the real insight, I think - that it is just that "seriousness" which produces real stylistic excellence: "the superior character of truth and seriousness, in the matter and substance of the best poetry, is inseparable from the superiority of diction and movement marking its style and manner." Or to put it in contemporary terms, the beauty of poetic style is largely a consequence of the wisdom of its content.

Let me offer an example of a passage which illustrates this point, one which quite merits placement even among the samples offered by Arnold himself. In the fourth act of "King Lear," the old king awakes from his curative sleep to find Cordelia beside him; remembering the hasty injustice he committed against his one faithful daughter, he acknowledges her perfect right to resentment: "If you have poison for me, I will drink it./ I know you do not love me, for your sisters/ Have, as I do remember, done me wrong./ You have some cause; they have not." To which Cordelia's simple response is: "No cause, no cause." Now, it is just these four syllables which I often think must be the most gorgeous four syllables in all of English literature; they are certainly an unrivaled example of pure poetic beauty. There is an unobtrusive tropical effect in the repetition, although in this case, the artifice is hardly distinguishable from a natural speech pattern. But, of course, the beauty of the line is really a consequence of everything it expresses: the tender and humble pathos of human forgiveness. Here, as in all fine poetry, and in confirmation of Arnold's proposition, truth and beauty become one thing.

What can we say about the causes of this union? As Arnold pointed out, nothing at all; this is the ineffable thing in poetry. But as incapable as we are of understanding the roots of this identity of truth and beauty, we are perfectly capable of recognizing it as the most prominent feature of all great poetry. Many important things follow from such a recognition, but let me point to one. Aestheticism, or the creed of "art for art's sake," explicitly rejects all moral or theological content in poetry, regarding these things as obstacles to the pure pleasure of the aesthetic experience. But, considered in the light of Arnold's observation, we can see that such a notion fails entirely to account for the unique beauty of poetry, which has its essence, not its hindrance, in truth.

Aestheticism has been one of the fundamental impulses of modernism, and its rejection can help liberate us from the brutalizing strictures of the modernist program. Art is not for art's sake; nothing exists for its own sake; all things, art included, exist for the glory of God. When we commit ourselves as poets to search only for that beauty which has its life in a serious reflection upon His truth, I think we will find ourselves, and our tradition, back on the right path. Then perhaps we will begin to understand the deep significance of those long-contested words which Keats overheard from the lips of the urn, that beauty is truth, and truth indeed is beauty.

A Sonnet for the Internet Age

2008-05-07T23:02:00.000-04:00

By Marion Shore, from (where else?) Measure:

“Lost in Cyberspace”

Confession: here’s the latest of my vices,
small but time-consuming all the same
(Guilty pleasure? Maybe. Midlife crisis?)—
I Google long-lost friends’ and lovers’ names.
Classmates.com, Switchboard, and the like
can yield up treasures. Other times I slog
through a mire of hits. Sometimes I strike
the mother lode: a Webpage or a blog.

So anyway, I type your name, press “search”:
an e-zine has a poem of yours—quite clever;
you’re organist and choirmaster of some church;
you’re on your second wife—or third? Whatever.
I wonder, as I press the enter key,
darling, do you ever Google me?

Mary Jo Salter in "Measure"

2008-05-06T00:12:00.001-04:00

The current issue of Measure opens with several poems by Mary Jo Salter, followed by an enlightening (and, as always, inspiring) interview between Salter and Dr. Baer. What we appreciated most about the interview was Salter’s unpretentious recognition of her audience, which she attributes to her time working as an editor for The Atlantic. There, she explains, she realized that poets “aren’t just writing for ourselves; we’re writing for other people.” Or, as she says elsewhere, “it’s the audience that truly matters.” As a result, “to this day I have very little patience for people with unintentional slowness in writing. I realize that some very great writers have a style that depends upon the slow accumulation of detail—writers like Henry James or Anthony Hecht, for example—but, for the most part, I feel that such writers create a comfortable pace within a gradual buildup. Their readers know that they’re getting somewhere, and they feel it’s worthwhile.” This outlook really should seem obvious, but the fact is that the desires to communicate and to capture the reader’s interest immediately seem unfashionable compared to the instinct to simply get one’s thoughts down on paper, and leave all the hard work to the reader.
Dr. Baer also asks her about the religious overtones of her work. Though she explains that she has “vacillated over the depth of [her] belief in God,” she explains that “I do feel, on some level, that there’s a force out there that teaches us how to love, or that, at least, makes it possible for us to love.” She continues by describing the connection between her poetry and her belief in “a God of love”:

It seems to me that much of the very act of poetry—making likenesses, and metaphors, and similes—is consonant with human love. That’s what Herbert thought poets were doing. Finding and acknowledging the likenesses in the universe. So even though I don’t go to church or feel part of any organized religion, I can’t either as a person or a poet, completely discount the yearning for something divine.

Here’s our favorite from the selection in Measure; it is also available here. (Unfortunately, because we're still tyros at this, we're unable to get the formatting exactly right: the second line of each stanza should be indented.)

“Erasers”

As punishment, my father said, the nuns
would send him and the others
out to the schoolyard with the day’s erasers.

Punishment? The pounding symphony
of padded cymbals clapped
together at arm's length overhead

(a snow of vanished alphabets and numbers
powdering their noses
until they sneezed and laughed out loud at last)

was more than remedy, it was reward
for all the hours they’d sat
without a word (except for passing notes)

and straight (or near enough) in front of starched
black-and-white Sister Martha,
like a conductor raising high her chalk

baton, the only one who got to talk.
Whatever did she teach them?
And what became of all those other boys,

poor sinners, who had made a joyful noise?
My father likes to think,
at seventy-five, not of the white-on-black

chalkboard from whose crumbled negative
those days were never printed,
but of word-clouds where unrecorded voices

gladly forgot themselves. And that he still
can say so, though all the lessons,
most of the names, and (he doesn't spell

this out) it must be half the boys themselves,
who grew up and dispersed
as soldiers, husbands, fathers, now are dust.

The Future of Catholic Fiction

2008-05-01T23:23:00.000-04:00

There’s an interesting discussion going on over at InsideCatholic.com about the future of Catholic fiction. Todd M. Aglialoro observes:

There's no question that Catholic fiction these days is pretty slim pickin’s. Those of us yearning for novels with Catholic themes, supported by a Catholic moral universe, are generally forced to go back fifty years, to Waugh or Greene or O'Connor. We hunt down Sigrid Unset, or play up the Catholic signals (just don't call it allegory!) in Tolkien. Or maybe we cruise used bookstores and seminary going-out-of-business sales for some of the many less-masterful but still quite solid examples of popular Catholic fiction that abounded in the first half of the last century…And so I ask, along with the frustrated authors, where is the Catholic fiction?

One respondent identifies Ron Hansen as a particularly good Catholic novelist. We’ve been reading a bit of Hansen ourselves lately and will be posting about his A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith & Fiction. (Surprisingly, though, nobody’s yet mentioned J.F. Powers, even as one of the great Catholic writers of the past.)

A First Measure of the New "Measure"

2008-04-28T22:12:00.000-04:00

Happy day—the new issue of Measure has arrived! We haven't been this excited for the mail since we ordered that decoder ring from the back of Archie Comics. (That was...what, 5-7 weeks ago? It should arrive any day!) We haven’t had time to read through the entire issue carefully yet, but are looking forward to exploring (and writing about) its contents over the next couple of weeks. This one opens with six poems by Mary Jo Salter, followed by an interview with Salter conducted by Papa Baer. The issue also includes twelve finalists of the Howard Nemorov Sonnet Contest. The winner is A.M. Juster’s “No”:

No, not this time. I cannot celebrate
a man’s discarded life, and will not try;
these knee-jerk elegies perpetuate
the nightshade lies of Plath. Why glorify
Descent into a solipsistic hell?
Stop. Softly curse the waste. Don’t elevate
his suffering to genius. Never tell
me he will live on. Never call it fate.

Attend the service. Mourn. Pray. Comfort those
he lacerated. Keep him in your heart,
but use that grief to teach. When you compose
a line, it is a message, not just art.
Be furious with me, but I refuse
to praise him. No, we have too much to lose.

Frederick Turner’s introductory note to the poem—and what he calls the poem's “searing denials, its noble ethical ruthlessness barley suppressing its grief and denials, its noble ethical ruthlessness barely suppressing its grief and pity”—captures the poem’s moral force and critical relevance:

The absolute naturalness and idiomatic force of its dramatic monologue is perfectly constrained within the form—not a beat is missed—just as the love the speaker has for the suicide is constrained by the terrible Dantean judgment the speaker must recognize. The poem…reminds us that art—even art as great as Sylvia Plath’s—is also irreducibly a message, with the responsibilities of any message. The poem is then an important critical document, rebuffing both the moral relativism and sentimentality of much contemporary literature and the shallow aestheticism of some of its critics.

Formal excellence, “Dantean judgment,” and moral seriousness—a Mahwahvian’s dream!

By the way, here’s subscription information for Measure. The price is right, and the editors have announced that they will now be publishing two issues a year. And here’s information about this year’s Nemerov Sonnet contest, judged by Timothy Steele.

The English Language Is In a Bad Way

2008-04-19T14:42:00.000-04:00

Note to Self: add Ian Robinson's Untied Kingdom to Self's summer reading list. Self likes what he learned in B.R. Myers's recent review in The Atlantic. According to Myers, Robinson writes that the U.K. "has 'lost its mind, a state that prevents it from taking anything seriously.'" Robinson associates this state with what Myers calls "the spread of careless language" debasing our culture and politics. Robinson, who has harshly criticized recent translations of the Bible, associates the decline of language with the dire state of religion in England. But even Myers, who wishes that "Robinson had made a little less of his faith in this book," concludes that "when it warns against slovenly language, the voice of faith sounds to this heathen ear a lot like the voice of reason." Self, this is remarkable -- faith and reason NEVER agree!

Fanny's Blog

2008-04-15T22:37:00.001-04:00

As we all know, Flannery O'Connor's short stories, essays, and letters stand among the greatest achievements in twentieth-century American literature. Unfortunately, these works over-shadow her contributions to the blogosphere. Enjoy.

Wordsworth's Legacy

2008-04-08T17:54:00.000-04:00

I too have found some thoughts originally intended to be a comment grow to a greater length, so let me go ahead and post them here. I think the topic merits the extended discussion; the influence of Romanticism is still very much with us, and we will be well served as writers to recognize which aspects of that influence are beneficial, and which are otherwise.

I think there is considerable agreement here. I share C. Seamus' love of Wordsworth's poetry; in fact, he is one of the few Romantics whose work I appreciate more, rather than less, as I get older. I agree that all young poets working in English should put themselves to school with his craft at some point in their development. Likewise, I agree that his efforts towards a revival of the ballad form were an invaluable enrichment of the formal repertoire of English poetry, an enrichment which had its origins in a reverence for tradition. I am not trying to form an estimate of Wordsworth's accomplishments as a poet, which I think were tremendous; I am trying to discern what elements of his legacy may bear a disadvantageous sway over contemporary poetry. Great artists leaving dangerous precedents are a common phenomenon. Think about Milton; his style has proven to be both sublime and inimitable, and the eighteenth century is littered with unintentional parodies of the Miltonic tone, from Young to Thomson to Akenside. Or, in another art, consider Beethoven; his undeniable masterpieces are in large part a consequence of his expressive innovations, but by the time we get to the narcotizing moodiness of Debussy and Mahler, we wonder if it was not time for Western music to put Beethoven's expressivity aside and search for models elsewhere. I think Wordsworth's legacy may be something like this.

I mentioned parenthetically the discrepancy between Wordsworth's theory and his practice, and of course, I should have considered this fact at greater length. It is the theory I find much more pernicious, and the poetry is most excellent, I think, precisely where it departs from the theory, which is, as Coleridge asserted, in "two-thirds at least of the marked beauties." The unhealthy legacy of Wordsworth's actual compositions, I think, is in his very frequent thematic choice of "incidents and situations from common life." I have no objection to this kind of poem in and of itself, but I find this mode of writing has arisen to monotonous exclusivity in our times, and often with some very ridiculous results; after all, to find the "unusual aspect" in commonplace things takes an unusual mind on the level of Wordsworth. Put simply, I think a distinct lack of variety in contemporary verse can be traced to Wordsworth's compelling precedence, which is, of course, no indictment of Wordsworth himself; in this respect, to imitate Wordsworth is certainly not to imitate Wordsworth.

As I said, it is Wordsworth's theories with which I take the greater issue, and I think the considerable disregard for them displayed in his own compositions tells against these ideas quite a bit. Throughout the Preface, I perceive a continuous opposition of what is "natural" and "spontaneous" and "simple" to what is merely the effect of "false refinement." The passage quoted by C. Seamus from the Appendix seems to imply a kind of literary Rousseauism, according to which ancient poets wrote from a "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" which their corrupt descendants could only imitate with insincere tropes. Poetic traditions necessarily decline as they continue. This subtle primitivism, neglectful of the grand dictum of Burke, that "art is man's nature," is what I mean by an "embarrassment at art" and "suspicion of artistry."

In his Preface, Wordsworth states, "if my conclusions are admitted, and carried as far as they must be carried if admitted at all, our judgments concerning the works of the greatest Poets both ancient and modern will be far different from what they are at present, both when we praise and when we censure." This appears to me to be identical to the claim that, recognizing his principles cannot be reconciled to the practice of many acknowledged masters, Wordsworth has chosen to prefer his principles to the precedent of those acknowledged masters. This is what I mean by a "hostility to tradition."

I agree that these words could be interpreted as C. Seamus did. Coleridge himself tried to interpret the seeming hostility to tradition in Wordsworth's claim as a specific challenge to neo-classicism, "the gaudy affectations of a style which passed too current with too many for poetic diction." But I think its fair to say that they could be interpreted far differently as well; the choice here between Coleridge and Wordsworth may be less a choice between who is right and who is wrong, as opposed to a choice between who is clear on these topics and who is ambiguous.

The question is, which reading of Wordsworth, with which influence, has passed into our time, and again, I think it is fair to say that it is the reading of Wordsworth which I put forward in my first post which has prevailed, the Wordsworth who emphasized the commonplace and the commonplace language, in defiance of poetic tradition. The animus to tradition in modern poetry hardly needs to be argued for. The commonplace, as I said, is so frequently recurring in contemporary poetry as to seem (to myself at least) rather tedious. The commonplace language, devoid of tropical and figurative effect, predominates.

Of course, there is not space enough here to produce samples as evidence, and I am speaking from a general impression of contemporary poetry, but let me cite one example of contemporary criticism, from a source familiar to C. Seamus, the Reaper Essays. In the essay "The Death of the Lyric," one of the points of culpability of the contemporary lyric (which, unquestionably, is culpable in many, many respects) in the eyes of the author is the fact that "they do not remotely sound like the words that real people in real situations would ever say." Doesn't this at least sound like the remnant influence of Wordsworth's most dubious tendencies?

Now, I think one response to this statement is the response which Coleridge essentially made - neither Pindar nor Virgil nor Petrarch nor Spenser nor Keats nor Tennyson "sound like the words that real people in real situations would ever say." This is just not a standard which can fairly be derived from even the most cursory reading of the masters. And this was my point in preferring Coleridge’s revolution. If we find contemporary poetry stagnant and unsatisfactory, and if we as writers wish to create really excellent works, a reconsideration of Coleridge and the principles upon which he wrote (and C. Seamus is right that I am focusing here only on one part of his work, but I think it is the better part) will be wonderfully beneficial towards guiding us out of the present morass. Particularly, his compelling critique of those tendencies in Wordsworth's ideas which are still quite prevalent will serve to remind us that present canons of taste may not always have the greater part of truth in them.

How Wordsworth Helps

2008-04-05T22:46:00.000-04:00

We were originally going to post this as a comment to Signor L.E.’s recent post about Romantic poetry, until it grew into a post of its own. Long story short, we disagree with much of what our fellow Mahwahvian says about the value of Wordsworth’s poetry.

It is true that a lot of contemporary poetry is too much like Wordsworth at his most solipsistic. While “Tintern Abbey” is one of our absolute favorite poems, and we love The Prelude, it would be nice if contemporary poets moved outside of their own minds to explore other lives and other minds. But many of Wordsworth’s poems were narratives about extraordinary events of ordinary people (that is to say, common and rural rather than aristocratic and urban), such as “The Idiot Boy,” “The Thorn,” “Goody Blake” (just to name a few from Lyrical Ballads), and modern readers tend to overlook major, un-personal efforts like Ecclesiastical Sketches (a sonnet series about the history of Christianity in Britain) and The White Doe of Rylestone. (And it’s also worth noting that his most insular work, The Prelude, was never published in his lifetime.)

Most importantly, it’s not fair to say that Wordsworth expressed “embarrassment at art,” that he was “hostile to the [tenets] which had prevailed in the Western tradition from its beginning,” or that he was suspicious of “artistry in all its forms.” Wordsworth displays strict artistic discipline, and there’s nobody better to look to as a model for formal craftsmanship and artistry in blank verse, the sonnet, and the ballad. In fact, one of the central purposes of the Lyrical Ballads (as the title suggests) was to revive the ballad, which was of course an ancient medieval form, by incorporating lyrical elements to varying degrees. So, in at least that case, he was trying to bring new life to a Western tradition.

The sort of artistry Wordsworth was attacking was narrow and well-defined. He was not challenging all artifice but what he called “poetic diction,” or “the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers.” He explains this in an appendix to the Preface of Lyrical Ballads:

The earliest poets of all nations generally wrote from passion excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men: feeling powerfully as they did, their language was daring, and figurative. In succeeding times, Poets, and Men ambitious of the fame of Poets, perceiving the influence of such language, and desirous of producing the same effect without being animated by the same passion, set themselves to a mechanical adoption of these figures of speech, and made use of them, sometimes with propriety, but much more frequently applied them to feelings and thoughts with which they had no natural connexion whatsoever. A language was thus insensibly produced, differing materially from the real language of men in any situation.

He concedes “that the language of the earliest Poets was felt to differ materially from ordinary language, because it was the language of extraordinary occasions; but it was really spoken by men, language which the Poet himself had uttered when he had been affected by the events which he described, or which he had heard uttered by those around him.” He also acknowledges that the earliest poets added “metre of some sort or other” (which he of course does himself) which “separated the genuine language of Poetry still further from common life, so that whoever read or heard the poems of these earliest Poets felt himself moved in a way in which he had not been accustomed to be moved in real life, and by causes manifestly different from those which acted upon him in real life.”

He also approves of that distance between the poetic and the common, but also calls it the “great temptation to all the corruptions which have followed: under the protection of this feeling succeeding Poets constructed a phraseology which had one thing, it is true, in common with the genuine language of poetry, namely, that it was not heard in ordinary conversation; that it was unusual. But the first Poets, as I have said, spake a language which, though unusual, was still the language of men. This circumstance, however, was disregarded by their successors; they found that they could please by easier means: they became proud of modes of expression which they themselves had invented, and which were uttered only by themselves.”

Put more simply, Wordsworth was annoyed with the clichéd phrases and abstractions that populated eighteenth-century poetry especially. One can prefer the more abstract and artificial (in the negative sense) style Wordsworth was resisting, but he certainly was not throwing out centuries of English poetry with the bathwater.

One last thing. While Coleridge’s most famous poems (Rime of the Ancient Mariner, “Kubla Khan,” and Cristabel) are supernatural or dream-like, much of his poetry was very much like what Wordsworth was writing at the same time, both in subject matter and form. His conversation poems (“The Aeolian Harp” and “Frost at Midnight” are my favorites) and “Dejection: An Ode” are very personal and, while metaphysical in some regards, are certainly not supernatural tales.

We say all that to say all this: Mahwahvian poets should look to Wordsworth as a model, because his technique was superb, he understood the power of poetic tradition—and wasn’t afraid to reject what was false and phony in fashionable poetry. His arguments about poetic language are still important, especially for younger poets, who tend to resort to abstractions and stock phrases. Nor would it hurt us to emulate the variety of his subject matter and style, as he explored not only his own consciousness in exciting ways through his lyric poems, but also presented the lives of other people, and evokes powerful emotions, through his narratives.

"The Ballad Rode Into Town"

2008-04-05T10:02:00.000-04:00

As long as we're posting about ballads...Here's one by the Godfather of Mahwah himself, Dr. Baer.

“The Ballad Rode Into Town”

The ballad rode into town one day,
wearing his deadly gun,
and his Mexican spurs jingled along
in the heat of the mid-day sun.

He wore his blacks, he wore his boots,
he wore a Colt on his hip,
with a re-bored barrel, its trigger filed,
and a custom black-butt grip.

He’d come across the desert heats,
like Dante through his hell,
over the mesas, day and night,
through the sage and the chaparral.

Right up the only street in town,
he and his Morgan came,
as the free-verse rummies scattered,
and slithered away in shame.

But at the saloon, the rondels came out,
with the pretty villanelle,
“Now, that's what I would call a man—
a man with a story to tell.”

And even the gambler couplet agreed,
“That's a mighty heroic chap,
who'll face them alone, and fire his Colt,
with the crack of a thunderclap.”

They followed him past the Sheriff's door,
abandoned back in June,
then passed the burned-out Weekly Press,
in the silent afternoon.

The ballad rode into town that day,
wearing his deadly gun,
and his Mexican spurs jingled along
in the heat of the mid-day sun.

He rode his Morgan up the street,
and stopped at the only birch,
where all the decent blank-verse folk
were coming out of church.

“Where is she?” he said and waited,
under the Texas skies.
“I'm here!” the lovely sonnet called,
and lit up the rider’s eyes.

“They've terrorized this western town,
and bullied us all, my dear.
So set things right and proper,
then take me away from here.”

Right then, the critics gang rode up,
a motley crew of thugs,
with .38s and rifles cocked
with lethal dum-dum slugs.

Quickly, the fearful crowd dispersed,
to hide and watch and wait;
the gang boss sneered, “Any last words?”
as he aimed his .38.

But the ballad blew a bullet hole
right through the de-con's eye,
and dropped the freud and marxist crits,
and then the gender guy.

There were, when his chambers were empty,
six dead in the Texas heat;
there were, when he holstered his .45,
six thugs on the dusty street.

And when the celebration peaked,
Miss Sonnet reappeared,
and she and her man rode off to the west,
and even the rummies cheered.

So the ballad rode out of town that day,
still wearing his deadly gun,
and his Mexican spurs jingled along
in the heat of the mid-day sun.

Two Romantic Revolutions

2008-04-02T10:24:00.000-04:00

I have been covering the Romantic period with my class over the last few weeks, and consequently, have been spending a good deal of time thinking about the work of Wordsworth and Coleridge. And since I know the literature of this period is a matter of special interest and expertise to at least one member of the Review's illustrious staff, I thought a few reflections on these two authors might be of interest here.

The publication of the Lyrical Ballads is recognized, I think, as the most revolutionary event in the history of English poetry. That revolution was almost entirely of Wordsworth's making; that is to say, the principles of taste which have arisen to precedence since the publication of that book were drawn from Wordsworth's work, both from his poetry and his theoretical musings in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (I am ignoring for now the very real inconsistencies between the two). Some of the most famous of these principles are the well-known focus on "incidents and situations from common life," a preference for the "language really used by men," and a general suspicion of artistry in all of its forms.

But we should remind ourselves that another, and very different, revolution was undertaken by Coleridge, both in the poems he published in the Lyrical Ballads, and in his own critical reflections later presented in the Biographia Literaria. It is interesting to note one place where he and Wordsworth concurred; they both agreed that the tenets laid down by Wordsworth in his Preface were radically hostile to the ones which had prevailed in the Western tradition from its beginning. For Wordsworth, this was cause enough to reevaluate that whole tradition, including the work of many long acknowledged masters; for Coleridge, this was self-evident proof that these principles were themselves inadequate.

Coleridge's revolution was specifically against the stultified mannerism of late neo-classicism, but it took the form of an appeal to the long tradition of poetry preceding the neo-classical period; in this sense, it was more a reform than a revolution. The masters to whom Coleridge appealed "placed the essence of poetry in the art," who aimed at an "exquisite polish of the diction." The language they used had a greater affinity with the language of the philosophers than the language of the common man. His own great contribution to the Lyrical Ballads, the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," is unquestionably one of the most artificial - in the true sense of the term - works in the entire history of English poetry.

Over the last two centuries, it is Wordsworth's revolution that has carried the day. True to his boast, he has indeed established the taste by which not only his own works, but, to a great extent, all poetic works, are judged. The contempt for artistic tradition, implicit in Wordsworth's theory, has become overt and prominent in the modern age. The language of ordinary life is the only language employed by contemporary poets; an "exquisite polish of diction" would be regarded now as something merely archaic or pretentious. The embarrassment at art expressed by Wordsworth can still be recognized in the lack of stylistic effect so common in contemporary poetry; the death of rhetoric has been both a cause and an effect of this figurative deprivation. The concern with the quotidian remains central; the latest click on the Eratosphere reveals poems written on the following, very mundane topics: the poet's backyard, the poet's driveway, a pigeon, aftershave, garbage floating in the ocean, a dog burying a bone, and (believe it or not) sheet protectors.

But if we want to restore poetry to a flourishing condition, we might want to consider reviving Coleridge's revolution instead, and seek, as he sought, a poetry of rich artistry, with all the freedom that such artistry bestows; a poetry which does not flatter the reader with a familiar language or thematic content, but which attempts to elevate the mind of the reader through extraordinary language and extraordinary insight; a poetry, above all things, formed and directed by the same principles which have formed and directed the tradition of Western poetry, and the works of the incomparable masters so plentiful in that tradition.

Opening Day!

2008-03-30T22:11:00.000-04:00

We believe the following poem is the most poignant metaphysical meditation on baseball since Field of Dreams. And although it has its share of metrical infelicities, at least it doesn't have Kevin Costner.

"On the Eternal Implications of America's National Pastime"

For me, the World Series of 1990
Had all the holy force of St. Paul's blinding.
O! the Lord did earn my infinite praise
When Cincinnati swept the Oakland A’s.
As I watched each game I was begging, kneeling,
clasping my hands and staring at the ceiling.
I promised God that, should the good guys win,
I’d lead a holy life, one free from sin.
An early homer clubbed by Eric Davis
Confirmed the gospel word that Jesus saved us;
His Resurrection was briefly in doubt
With runners on corners and no one out,
But God can lose no spiritual quibble
If His bullpen includes Robbie Dibble,
Who did much more than simply save two games—
He saved my soul from Hell’s fierce flames.

To cheer a losing club for nine long innings
Can kill your soul as sure as mortal sinning.
For Heaven’s sake, be careful who you choose—
Eternal damnation’s yours if they lose.
That deadliest of vices, Doubt, creeps in
When your team’s dead last and can’t buy a win.
The faith of fans is fragile: “Oh, why bother
To reconcile my soul with God the Father
When He and I could never get along:
His taste in teams is vile! His judgment, wrong!
It’s bad enough He lets a good man suffer—
But letting Boston blow a two-run buffer?!”
(So Billy Buckner lost the Catholic Church
With that famous, graceless, run-ceding lurch.)

It seems unfair that Peter turns his keys
For all those jerks who root for the Yankees;
Meanwhile, no Cubs fan’s passed through Heaven’s gate
Since, what, nineteen hundred and zero-eight?
But don’t question God’s justice or wisdom.
Just find a first-place team and root for them—
Until they start to stink. Your next move’s simple:
Go cast them out, like changers from the temple;
Profess your faith in who’s the new best squad,
Till one wins it all—and wins you for God!
The jealous, bound to law, won’t understand;
These Pharisees will spit, “fair-weather fan!”
But years from now, enjoying paradise,
You’ll thank me for my verses and advice.
(I’ll be wearing a hat beneath my halo,
Spitting seeds with Christ and Christopher Sabo.)

Harry & Man at Yale

2008-03-26T21:46:00.000-04:00

Does anyone else find this news a bit depressing?

Drawing on their expertise in theology, children’s literature, globalization studies and even the history of witchcraft, professors have been able to use Harry Potter to attract crowds of students eager to take on a disciplined study of the books.

We realize that nearly everyone but us has read the books, but does that mean a series written for children should be getting so much attention in universities? One can point out that C.S. Lewis’s children’s books get serious consideration, but Lewis wrote other works, too, and they articulated a clear philosophy that The Chronicles of Narnia illustrated. To my knowledge, Rowling's done no such thing.

Even if you don’t mind college students--including Ivy Leaguers!--studying Harry Potter, let's agree this comment is absurd: “What [Rowling's] really done is come up with a mode of captivating a whole generation...As an adult, you’ll be thinking, ‘What would Harry have done?’” WWHHD? I know people like to see Harry as a Christ figure, but that’s taking it a bit too far.

And by the way: if you’re an adult who aspires to act like a fictional adolescent wizard, seek professional help.

The Trial of Veronese

2008-03-25T21:46:00.000-04:00

In 1573, the painter Paolo Caliari (a native of Verona, and so more familiarly known as Paolo Veronese) was summoned before the Venetian office of the Inquisition. He had recently completed a depiction of the Last Supper in one of the city’s basilicas, and the Inquisitors wanted to know why he had filled his picture with such seemingly irreverent figures as dwarves, dogs, and a servant with a bloody nose.

Particularly suspicious were a number of figures who appeared German or Swiss, and thus were presumed to represent Protestants. Veronese addressed his interlocutors with great confidence, asserting that it was his privilege and duty as an artist to paint according to the precedence of artistic tradition, and the lights of his own talent. Eventually, he appeased the Inquisitors by simply changing the title of his work.

This little episode, when it is remembered now at all, usually takes its place in the tired modern narrative, as but another example of the Magisterium’s nefarious authority, exercised across two millennia for the exclusive purpose of suppressing every noble and civilizing impulse in the soul of Western man. From this perspective, it is a parallel to the more famous trial of Galileo, revealing the same spiritual despotism of the Church at work in the artistic, as well as the scientific, realm. The notion that any authority - most especially, a religious authority - can have a just capacity to place any limits on the creativity of the individual artist is almost universally regarded nowadays as an exploded myth from the dark days of superstitious tyranny, from which we and our enlightened predecessors have long been liberated. Cries of censorship and dictatorship accompany even the attempt to withhold public funding from the latest abomination on display at the Whitney or the BMA, so perfect is the contemporary belief in the inviolability of the artist's vision.

And yet, this absolute deregulation of the arts is less likely a sign of their liberation, than of their insignificance. The era of modern art began with the "art for art's sake" movement, whose proponents disclaimed any moral import in the work of art. Within less than half a century, the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset could claim, “to the young generation, art is a thing of no consequence.” And of course, this is the obvious effect of the Decadent credo, for when art has been divested of any moral content, it has quite simply ceased to be of relevance to the lives of individuals or societies. On account of its irrelevance, the people grow increasingly indifferent towards it, and as the people grow indifferent towards it, their laws grow indifferent towards it. The negligence which modern jurisprudence displays towards the arts is not like the respectful restraint it shows towards property rights; it is like the insouciance it reveals towards the choice of baby names. No modern authority finds it necessary to regulate the arts, precisely because every modern authority is certain that none of its citizens takes the arts the least bit seriously.

But the Inquisitors at Veronese's trial did most certainly take the arts seriously; I would maintain that they took the arts far more seriously than the fine arts professors or gallery owners or non-profit directors, who are so loud in their proclamations of art's importance. They took the arts seriously, insomuch as they believed the arts had a significant influence over the opinions and behaviors of the people, and it is hard to see how anyone can share this conviction, without recognizing the need for some parameters - broad and informed, no doubt - to check the abuses of this potentially momentous influence. After all, it was not only the Church which exercised such an authority over art in past ages; Augustus exiled Ovid for the poet's licentious verses; Shakespeare composed under the gaze of Elizabeth's vigilant censors. And the fact remains, that great poets like Ovid and Shakespeare flourished in ages when such regulations were in place, and that since these regulations have been removed, we have had no such great poets. I think the reason for this is simply because those masters lived in ages which took the arts seriously, and we do not.

We're in the News!

2008-03-24T12:48:00.001-04:00

Well, not really...and not recently, either. We're only just now finding this early-2007 article from the National Catholic Register about "several literary efforts underway aimed at supporting existing Catholic writers and fostering new ones." The Southwell Institute gets plenty of attention. Here's the Godfather:

“Catholics have kind of let the arts go,” said Baer. “The culture has gone further secular, and is even inimical to what the writer of faith is up to. As Catholics, we’re supposed to be creating art.”

We're happy to see the coverage, but it's a shame the article doesn't mention The Mahwah Literary Review -- your one-stop shop for one year-old news!

Two Easter Sonnets

2008-03-23T08:52:00.000-04:00

“Easter Communion,” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Pure fasted faces draw unto this feast:
God comes all sweetness to your Lenten lips.
You striped in secret with breath-taking whips,
Those crooked rough-scored chequers may be pieced
To crosses meant for Jesu’s; you whom the East
With draught of thin and pursuant cold so nips
Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships,
You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,

God shall o’er-brim the measures you have spent
With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze
And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment
Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease.
Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent:
Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

“Composed in One of the Valleys of Westmoreland, On Easter Sunday” by William Wordsworth

With each recurrence of this glorious morn
That saw the Saviour in his human frame
Rise from the dead, erewhile the Cottage-dame
Put on fresh raiment—till that hour unworn:
Domestic hands the home-bred wool had shorn,
And she who span it culled the daintiest fleece,
In thoughtful reverence to the Prince of Peace,
Whose temples bled beneath the platted thorn.
A blest estate when piety sublime
These humble props disdained not! O green dales!
Sad may I be who heard your sabbath chime
When Art’s abused inventions were unknown;
Kind Nature’s various wealth was all your own;
And benefits were weighed in Reason’s scales!

Donaghy's Stations of the Cross

2008-03-21T13:10:00.001-04:00

Last year we posted William Donaghy's sonnet series on the Stations of the Cross, originally published in a defunct Catholic journal called Spirit. Here they are again:

I. He Is Condemned

Pilate must heed the public pulse and poll,
As every politician quickly learns,
The multitude that smiles, as quickly spurns,
And so he shrugs his shoulders and his soul;
His fingers flutter in the brazen bowl;
The guilt is off his hands and head; he turns
To take the spotless towel; in him burns
A doubt; but Caesar's favour is his goal.

"Sub Pontio Pilato"--down the years
Before a man may truly live, reborn
Of water and the Holy Ghost, he hears
Caught in the Creed, those words of pitying scorn
For him whose heart was meagre, not malign,
Who used ironic water for a sign.

II. He Carries His Cross

No parable my heart so cruelly cleaves-
The Prodigal among the snorting hogs,
Nor Lazarus doctored by the kindly dogs,
The stranger beaten, stripped and bruised by thieves,
The thorn-torn Shepherd seeking, as he grieves,
Some lost sheep bleating in the briars and bogs-
Sadder to me than all these analogues,
The fruitless fig-tree stands with leathern leaves.

For this is all the kingly city 'gives,
A cursed fig-tree; and a tree of blood
Denuded, ribald, it no longer lives,
Bereft of branches, shorn of bark and bud;
And yet its roots are slumbering, vital still,
At Nagasaki, Tyburn, Auriesville.

III. He Falls

The crowd is thrilled to see a fighter downed,
Battered and bloody, sprawled upon the floor,
Like multitudinous surfs upon the shore
Its shout arises; so the sickening sound
Of splintering wood upon the flinty ground
Brings from this mob a swelling, bestial roar.
What though the fall renewed the wounds and tore
His flesh, and jarred His head so crudely crowned.

These worthy citizens are men of name,
Respectable, judicious, just, discreet;
I cannot bear to have them know my shame-
My brother dying in a public street-
And though I hear our mother's choking sob,
I turn and shout "My brothers!" to the mob.

IV. He Meets His Mother

This afternoon in loud Jerusalem
They meet and part once more; no touch nor kiss
Can ease their anguish; while the mockers hiss:
"And he's the fool who thought his streaming hem
Could cure the woman. See the two of them,
The son and wife of Joseph come to this."
Two hearts cry out-abyss unto abyss,
And Jesse's flower is cut from Jesse's stem.

Perhaps she thinks of Nain-of all the land
Where wonders blossomed as He walked three years;
Of Jairus, Lazarus, the withered hand,
Of flowing mercies and of drying tears;
And still she knows her bitter place and part,
He will not heal her withered, widowed heart.

V. Simon Helps Him

Poor Simon's back was aching, and his legs
Were weary from the kicking of the plough;
And he had many worries-for his sow
Was sick; his prize hen was not laying eggs;
His crops were far behind; and floating dregs
Had spoiled the profit on his vines; and now
As he is hurrying home with heavy brow,
The soldiers seize him, though he brawls and begs.

He burns the Romans with a look of hate,
Then lends his grudging rhews to this doomed Man,
He grasps the rough-hewn beam, but feels no weight,
Though he is straining, taking all he can.
And from the Stranger, down the cross's length
There flow to Simon peace and tranquil strength.

VI. Veronica's Veil

Stout Peter struck one blow with blundering aim,
But now his futile sword abandoned lies;
Tumultuous Thomas shakes his head and sighs,
Beset with doubts and fears, and sick with shame;
The whispering Boanerges mock their name;
But in this shrilling street where valor dies,
Veronica cleans His face and wipes His eyes
And shares forever Magdalen's fragrant fame.

That screaming mob is muted; drowned in blood,
The curse has fallen on those unbent heads;
And Peter's sword has melted into mud,
The Temple veil hangs sundered into shreds;
But still her tiny veil survives, unfurled,
A banner and a bandage for the world.

VII. He Falls Again

It is too much! His watery sinews yield,
He sags and slumps; the wavering cross goes down;
Gethsemane, the night, the lash, the crown-
Could one poor heart bear these,though triple-steeled?
The hard-faced Roman legionaries wield
Their whips to drive Him out beyond the town
Where Calvary rises bushless, burned and brown;
While Judas festers in the Potter's Field.

And still no one remembers; Pharisees
And Scribes are smiling as they watch Him squirm,
Befouled and scoffed at, beaten to His knees,
Exhausted, panting, weaker than a worm.
And Jeremiah's keenings fail and fade,
Isaiah is an echo and a shade.

VIII. He Meets the Women

Last Sunday all Jerusalem had cheered,
But now the hushed hosanna's ringing note
Has soured to snarling in each fickle throat,
And all His followers have disappeared
Except these wailing women, josted, jeered,
Unwavering still, like her who sought the groat
And loyal yet, while priests and people gloat-
This is a day of shame for brawn and beard.

Jerusalem, O town of stupid men,
These tears will be your testament; the Lamb
You slaughter will not guard your doorposts when
The tearless Titus sets his battering ram;
Because this Victim vainly dies alone
There shall not be a stone upon a stone.

IX. He Falls the Third Time

They leave the city now; the blood and sweat
Are caked upon Him; and the clustering flies
Are crawling on His blackened wounds; His thighs
Are veined with lire; and now His torturers fret
Lest He may die and thwart them even yet;
For while they watch He stumbles, falls and lies,
Then heaves and struggles weakly to arise
And looks toward Calvary's somber silhouette.

Upon this very road will Godfrey spur,
Leading his knights-a charge of flaming swords-
Against the foemen of the carpenter
Who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords;
His strong voice hurling, like a catapult,
The thunder-breathing war-cry, "Deus vult."

X. He Is Stripped

Through rolling clouds no shaft of sunshine gleams,
A bitter breeze is stirring, sharp and chill,
The crowd sways in, blood-lusty for the kill,
Rough hands rip off the robe which has no seams,
And from reopened wounds the tired blood streams;
He stands among them, without word or will,
A shorn lamb, naked on this stunted hill,
While in the distance Tabor looms and dreams.

There was a man went down to Jericho-
See! parable is prophecy in part-
Here is the victim, scarred from head to toe,
Here are the thieves who have no heed nor heart;
Here are the proud who spurn a broken man,
Levite and priest-but no Samaritan.

XI. He Is Nailed to the Cross

This sound had echoed back in Nazareth,
The thudding hammer on the singing nails,
When Mary hastened off in flying veils,
With eyes like violets, and quickened breath,
Her Babe within her, to Elizabeth.
Now Mary winces, clenches hands, and pales,
Her dauntless spirit cringes, twists and quails,
And at each jolt she dies a double death.

The soldiers need not force Him for He lies
Patient beneath them; as the nails tear through,
His shining prayer is piercing inky skies,
"Forgive them; for they know not what they do."
And even now the arms which they transfix
Would guard them as a mother bird her chicks.

XlI. He Dies

The bleeding hours drag on; His drooping head
Sinks lower; and His parched and swollen lips
Can speak no longer; now a black eclipse
Extinguishes His eyes; the buzzards tread
The air above Him, waiting to be fed.
Once more He shifts on dislocated hips,
And cries aloud; His last vein bursts and drips-
He hangs upon His wooden monstrance, dead.
This is the triumph of the Sanhedrin,
To snare Him with its little traps and tricks,
To make Him scapegoat for all human sin
And build the first immortal crucifix.
Adoring ages, while the Scribes sneer,
Reply, "O Salutaris Ifostia."

XIII. He Is Taken From the Cross

Now you may have Him, Mary, they are done,
The shepherd stricken lies; His little flock
Had fled before the crowing of the cock;
Now Caiphas is happy; he has won;
He does not heed the frightened crowds that run,
Jerusalem is shaken; shock on shock
Upheave the temple sanctum, rive the rock;
Now you may have the Thing that was your Son.

He cannot hear you, darling, He is dead-
Come, now, and we will hide Him from their sight;
He cannot feel your kisses on His head-
See-Nicodemus waits no more for night.
Look-he and John and Joseph stand in grief
And look to you for refuge and relief.

XIV. He Is Buried

The mourners slowly bring Him through the gloom,
The valiant women, and three faithful men;
Her shoulders shaking, stormy Magdalen
Is weeping as in Simon's dining room;
But she who felt Him moving in her womb,
Who wrapped and laid Him in a manger then
Is still His handmaid, ready once again
To wrap Him up and lay Him in His tomb.

Once Delphi was the navel of the earth,
But now this sepulchre, which blackly yawns,
Becomes the point and center of all worth,
The focus of all sunsets and all dawns;
Within this cavern, could the world but see,
Mythology yields place to mystery.

In Defense of "The Loved One"

2008-03-15T23:07:00.000-04:00

We recently came across Edmund Wilson’s review of Waugh’s The Loved One. Though Wilson liked Waugh’s early work (especially A Handful of Dust), he became annoyed with his more overtly religious work, including Brideshead Revisited. He wasn’t particularly impressed by Waugh’s send-up of California funeral homes and cemeteries, in part because he thought Waugh’s religious vision of death was just as laughable:

The Loved One is a farcical satire on those de luxe California cemeteries that attempt to render death less unpleasant by exploiting all the resources of landscape-gardening and Hollywood mummery. To the non-religious reader, however, the patrons and proprietors of Whispering Glades [the novel’s opulent funeral home] seem more sensible and less absurd than the priest-guided Evelyn Waugh. What the former are trying to do is, after all, merely gloss over physical death with smooth lawns and soothing rites; but for the Catholic, the fact of death is not to be faced at all: he is solaced with the fantasy of another world in which everyone who has died in the flesh is somehow supposed to be alive and in which it is supposed to be possible to help souls to advance themselves by buying candles to burn in churches. The trappings invented for this other world by imaginative believers in the Christian myth—since they need not meet the requirements of reality—beat anything concocted by Whispering Glades.

Obviously, there’s not enough space here to address the issue of whether Catholics—or anyone who believes in an afterlife—ignores “the fact of death,” etc. On a more basic level, Wilson’s criticism does not engage with what makes the people of Whispering Glades so ridiculous. It’s not only that they “gloss over physical death,” but that they try to project meaning onto death by appropriating religious language but divorcing it from God. Here’s the inscription on the gates of the cemetery:

Behold I dreamed a dream and I saw a New Earth sacred to HAPPINESS. There amid all that Nature and Art could offer to elevate the Soul of Man I saw the Happy Resting Place of Countless Loved Ones. And I saw the Waiting Ones who still stood on the brink of that narrow stream that now separated them from those who had gone before. Young and old, they were happy too. Happy in Beauty, Happy in the certain knowledge that their Loved Ones were very near, in Beauty and Happiness such as the earth cannot give.
I heard a voice say: ‘Do this.’
And behold I awoke and in the Light and Promise of my DREAM I made WHISPERING GLADES.
ENTER STRANGER and BE HAPPY.

The language, tone, and imagery are from Revelation. There’s even mention of a soul. But here, Heaven is a place on earth, and God isn’t there. Without Him, the Biblical language is all sound and fury. So it’s not just that the people at Whispering Glades are trying “to render death less unpleasant,” but that they’re trying to do so in religious terms without religious substance. Waugh’s central character clarifies this a bit later, when he speaks to his love interest (an employee at the Whispering Glades) about the home’s star embalmer, Mr. Joyboy: “Now your Mr. Joyboy is the incarnate spirit of Whispering Glades—the one mediating logos between Dr Kenworthy and common humanity.” The cult of the funeral home, although completely devoid of any Christian context, has developed its own trinity. As Ann Pasternak Slater says in her introduction to the Everyman edition, “The new religion is entirely secularized. It is a celebration of life alone.”

Waugh also critiques the celebration of life alone with Kaiser’s Stoneless Peaches, whose radio spots declare that “no other peach now marketed is perfect and completely stoneless. When you buy Kaiser’s Stoneless Peach you are buying full weight of succulent peach flesh and nothing else...” Pasternak Slater claims that this product symbolizes the eradication of “the little difficulties that give life its sharpness.” It does that, and more: without the seed inside of the pit, no part of the fruit endures; it is a physical presence with no meaning beyond itself, a human body without a soul.

The working stiffs at Whispering Glades share this superficial vision of life and death, and they promote it with equally vapid language--language from which they removed the core of religious meaning and relevance.

“We Do Not Know What that One is With Whom (or with which) He is Now at One.”

2008-03-11T00:20:00.000-04:00

We’re working on a long-ish post about death (Hey, it’s Lent!) for later in the week. In the meantime, here's Graham Greene's very funny parody of a New Age funeral in Brighton Rock. It speaks for itself—and for a lot of real-life clergy:

‘Our belief in heaven,’ the clergyman went on, ‘is not qualified by our disbelief in the old medieval hell. We believe,’ he said, glancing swiftly along the smooth polished slipway towards the New Art doors through which the coffin would be launched into the flames, ‘we believe that this our brother is already at one with the One.’ He stamped his words like little pats of butter with this personal mark. ‘He has attained unity. We do not know what that One is with whom (or with which) he is now at one. We do not retain the old medieval beliefs in glassy seas and golden crowns. Truth is beauty and there is more beauty for us, a truth-loving generation, in the certainty that our brother is at this moment reabsorbed in the universal spirit.’ He touched a little buzzer, the New Art doors opened, the flames flapped and the coffin slid smoothly down into the fiery sea. The doors closed, the nurse rose and made for the door, the clergyman smiled gently from behind the slipway, like a conjurer who has produced his nine hundred and fortieth rabbit without a hitch.

When Greene wrote that, in 1938, it may have been an exaggeration of shallow belief; it isn't now. We especially like that the clergyman strikes at the medieval beliefs for their absurdity and tries to replace them with modern certainty and truth--but he's uncertain what this truth actually is, who “that One is with whom (or with which) he is now at one.”

Christopher Hitchens Finds God!

2008-03-04T21:10:00.001-05:00

Last weekend, political pundit, literary critic, and evangelical atheist Christopher Hitchens announced that he now believes in God. Well, not quite, but he implied as much on Real Time with Bill Maher. During a typically slanted panel discussion about religion, the guests wondered why divorce rates for Evangelicals are so high. Hitchens explains (about 2.40 into this clip):

The reason for Evangelical hypocrisy is simple.…It's the same as Larry Craig. It's the Craig Factor. Those who condemn things mightily, and go on hammering the pulpit about them, have a secret share in the desire for them.

Hitchens, author of God is Not Great and editor of The Portable Atheist, condemns religion mightily, and hammers on the pulpit about it—so according to the Craig Factor, he must have a secret desire for religion! Good for him. We've taken issue with Hitchens in the past, but we'd like to be the first to congratulate him on his conversion.

Staging Shakespeare, Part II: The Good

2008-03-02T23:17:00.000-05:00

The American Shakespeare Center offers a nice remedy to the ubiquitous performances of Fakespeare. Located in the heart of Shakespeare country (Staunton, VA—where else?) the company resists the trend toward phony modernized versions. That means not only staying true to the original language, but also using spare sets (elaborate sets didn’t come into play (pun not intended, but welcomed) until the Restoration) and keeping on the house lights (Renaissance theater had universal lighting). This second makes a big difference: universal lighting seriously diminishes the barrier between actors and audience (as does the fact that about eight audience members sit on the side of the stage). The head of the ASC explains his rationale here.

We enjoyed two plays at the ASC last week: Macbeth (Saturday night) and Ben Jonson’s Volpone (Sunday afternoon—what we literary types like to call a “matinee,” French for “cheaper tickets.”). Of course the plays were remarkable, and so was the acting. The same actors performed in both, which a) says a lot about the range of their acting ability, as they moved from dark tragedy to not-so-dark (“light” isn’t the right word) comedy; and b) made the experience even more personal for those who’d been there the night before. And the venue, Blackfriars Playhouse, is striking despite its simplicity. The virtual tour on this page gives you a good idea, but they’ve since adorned the balcony with a great marble façade. (We liked it, anyway; one of our uncouth companions preferred the more basic wood.)

Having said all that, we should say all this. If you make the trip to see Shakespeare in the Shenandoah, don’t expect to feel like you’ve traveled back into the Renaissance. For one thing, the ASC apparently does not have a large budget for costumes. During Macbeth, some characters wore approximations of ancient Scottish clothes, while others were dressed as gangsters. In Volpone, Sir Politic Would-be wore a bright yellow zoot suit that he might have stolen from Flavor Flav. But the effect of all this is more slap-dash or impressionistic than embarrassingly pretentious. Similarly, the actors play songs before the play and during intermissions, all of which were modern but appropriate to the plots. Before Macbeth they played “Leave Your Lights On” by Everlast & Santana. Never one of my favorites, but it worked. And again, they’d only do this before the play and during intermissions, so it was never distracting.

My only complaint about the ASC is that they sell bumper stickers that say something like, “The American Shakespeare Company does it with the lights on.” Those jokes were never especially funny, just like their cousins, the “Co-ed Naked” sports t-shirts from the nineties. But most of them at least make sense to the average observer. You don’t need to know a coal miner to understand the humor behind “coalminers do it in the dark.” But if you saw the ASC’s bumper sticker on a Prius or Jetta you’d have to ask the driver what it meant. The goateed young man or lip-pierced young woman would then go into a 15-minute rant about universal lighting, bastardized versions of Shakespeare (perhaps even using some lame term like “Fakespeare”), and remind you why you never hung out with the theater crowd in high school.

Staging Shakespeare, Part I: The Bad

2008-02-27T00:59:00.000-05:00

If you’ve seen a Shakespeare play recently, you know exactly where this Onion headline is coming from: “Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play In Time, Place Shakespeare Intended.” Modern directors seem to assume that what audiences find most difficult about Shakespeare’s plays isn’t their language, but the socio-political relevance of their settings. So directors displace the plots, characters, and even the language into what they estimate is a modern equivalent of the original place and time.

A few months ago, we saw a staging of The Taming of the Shrew that maintained the play’s original language, but combined plot lines, altered scenes, and took place in a trailer park in some un-named and stereotypical part of the Deep South. To be fair, the set was impressive, complete with a dirty kiddy pool, a picnic table, and even a trailer with a porch and an old refrigerator outside. But this set underscored the absurdity of the director’s adaption: why set a play in so different a time and place without also changing the language? Presumably because the language is impossible to improve upon. But transferring Shakespeare's language into a totally different setting makes both the language and the setting seem…ridiculous. Neither is realistic, neither is credible. Of course, the director of this version of The Taming of the Shrew had a political point to make. That play troubles modern audiences, so he wanted to emphasize the cruelty Kate experiences. At the same time, as he explained in the playbill, he set it in the present to show that the situation of women really hasn’t made much progress since Shakespeare’s day, and are still treated like cattle. (He actually used the metaphor. Who should be insulted by this remark, the women in the audience or the men?)

In 2005 we saw a performance of Julius Caesar that, while less excessive, was still very frustrating because it was performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-Upon-Avon. This production was set in some vague recent time, which we could tell because for the first three acts, the actors wore suits rather than togas. That adaptation doesn’t require much of an imaginative leap, because we have an easy time imagining that today’s politicians don’t differ much from Roman ones. Things became less convincing at Act IV, when the politicians traded their suits for camouflage uniforms and semi-automatic machine guns. Today’s politicians declare wars; they don’t actually fight in them. The people we had been imagining as politicians suddenly seemed like grown men running around in plastic toys. We were embarrassed for them. The director’s decision actually highlighted the differences between Caesar’s time and ours, which we suspect was the opposite of what he wanted.

Perhaps directors make such decisions in part to show how relevant Shakespeare still is. We can appreciate that, because we agree. But displacing the time and place of the original plays without adapting the language—without writing a new script, basically—is a clunky device that makes both the director and Shakespeare seem foolish and irrelevant. (And it’s also a bit condescending to the audience, as if we couldn’t identify the play’s relevance to modern times without the director’s heavy-handed help.) If we wanted modern versions of Shakespeare’s plays, we’d rent The West Side Story, 10 Things I Hate About You, or Scotland, PA . The language wouldn’t be as beautiful, but at least we wouldn't get the sense that it was being yoked onto totally different. (And in the case of Scotland, PA, we’d get to enjoy some Bad Company all movie long!)

But the news isn’t all bad. We’ll continue post a heartening sequel to this missive over the weekend.

Small Consolation from A.E. Housman

2007-11-05T23:09:00.000-05:00

In memory of Ryan Shay.
"To An Athlete Dying Young"

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

It's Been a While But We're Back in Style...

2007-11-03T17:00:00.000-04:00

We apologize for our extended absence. We’ve been very busy over the past few months: some of us have expanded their family and taken the LSATs, while others have relocated to a secure location deep in the mountains. All the while we’ve been hoarding material and subject matter to post. For example…

The Spring/Summer issue of Arion has a fairly surprising piece by Camille Paglia arguing for the central role of religion in a revitalization of arts in America. Paglia reminds us that she’s “a professed atheist and a pro-choice libertarian Democrat”; nonetheless, she contends that “a renaissance of the American fine arts lies through religion.” In either a totally deft or tone-deaf rhetorical move, she targets both the left and the right for the divorce of art and faith:

For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center. Profaning the iconography of other people's faiths is boring and adolescent….To fully appreciate world art, one must learn how to respond to religious expression in all its forms. Art began as religion in prehistory. It does not require belief to be moved by a sacred shrine, icon, or scripture. Hence art lovers, even when as citizens they stoutly defend democratic institutions against religious intrusion, should always speak with respect of religion. Conservatives, on the other hand, need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture. Every vibrant civilization welcomes and nurtures the arts.

Progressives must start recognizing the spiritual poverty of contemporary secular humanism and reexamine the way that liberalism too often now automatically defines human aspiration and human happiness in reductively economic terms. If conservatives are serious about educational standards, they must support the teaching of art history in primary school—which means conservatives have to get over their phobia about the nude, which has been a symbol of Western art and Western individualism and freedom since the Greeks invented democracy. Without compromise, we are heading for a soulless future. But when set against the vast historical panorama, religion and art—whether in marriage or divorce—can reinvigorate American culture.

Though we here at Mahwah obviously agree with her general argument, we find it a bit condescending. Her tone is a sort of pat on the back, reassuring religion that even though it’s wrong, it sure is a nice, “complex symbol system,” and darn it, people like it! That said, we much prefer this approach to the alternative offered by evangelical atheists like Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, et al.

What makes it hardest to stand by her argument is this embarrassing mischaracterization of world music:

In popular music, the spasmodic undulations and ecstatic cries of camp-meeting worshippers were borrowed by performers like Little Richard, Elvis Presley, and the late, great James Brown, whose career began in gospel and who became the “godfather of soul” as well as of funk, reggae, and rap. Gospel music, passionate and histrionic, with its electrifying dynamics, is America 's grand opera. The omnipresence of gospel here partly explains the weakness of rock music composed in other nations—except where there has been direct influence by American rhythm and blues, as in Great Britain and Australia.

Umm, Ms. Paglia—haven’t you ever heard of Sweden? You know, the nation that gave us ABBA? The Cardigans? Roxette? Ace of Base? The Hives? Scorpions?

A Prediction

2007-07-09T11:50:00.000-04:00

Posting will be even more sparse than usual for the rest of the month and probably into early August. We're moving and we're traveling. Bide your time by reading Andre Dubus's "Miranda Over the Valley," about which we plan on writing when we get the chance.

Richard Wilbur's Religious Poetry

2007-07-07T19:53:00.000-04:00

We haven’t been posting lately because sinister forces, scandalized by The Crytogram of Caravaggio, have silenced us. But we have escaped their deadly grasp…for now.

In other news...the other day I was flipping through the Library of America’s American Religious Poems, an anthology whose title is a bit misleading, since many of the poems are actually anti-religious...sort of like including Hitchens in a collection of great religious thinkers. But there are good poems in it, including several by Richard Wilbur. Here’s “The Proof”:

Shall I love God for causing me to be?
I was mere utterance; shall these words love me?

Yet when I caused his work to jar and stammer,
And one free subject loosened all his grammar,

I love him that he did not in a rage
Once and forever rule me off the page,

But, thinking I might come to please him yet,
Crossed out delete and wrote his patient stet.

In the fantastic collection of interviews Fourteen on Form, Dr. Baer talks to Wilbur about the role of religion in his poetry. Baer notes that much of Wilbur’s work--including “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World” (one of my all-time favorites—Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry!), “A Christmas Hymn,” “Matthew VIII, 28ff.,” “Peter,” “A Wedding Toast”--has “the sense of a part of the world that goes beyond just the material.” Wilbur responds:

Probably I can, in a loose way, be classified as a religious poet. It’s harder nowadays to write poetry that lies comfortably and coherently within the boundaries of some particular faith, than it used to be. There is nothing limited about George Herbert’s poetry, but it is poetry which cheerfully accepts the whole vocabulary and vision of Anglicanism. I’m an Anglican, I guess, but because I’m three centuries after George Herbert, I don’t write in an Anglican vocabulary, or always with a governed vision that specifically belongs to any one faith. (13-14).

That remark says so much about how religion has faded in the public sphere and the creative mind. His reference to “the vocabulary” of a religion is particularly interesting to me, because it suggests that we just don’t know how to talk or write about what we believe, that we’ve lost a shared way of communicating about these things. That said, Wilbur manages pretty well for somebody without a “whole vocabulary.”

The Cryptogram of Caravaggio

2007-06-29T19:06:00.000-04:00

Since Wednesday's post, we've heard from many readers who've been eager and anxious to view the manuscript fragment retrieved by Randal Bufton and sent to us. We want to warn you once again, though, that its contents are very controversial, and are liable to offend, provoke, and otherwise shock many of your most deeply-held beliefs. But we believe that beliefs are most believable when their very believability face unbelievable doubts.

A final prefatory note before the feature presentation. Mr. Bufton notes that in the manuscript's margins, the un-known author has written: "Insert this during scene in museum, while Lincoln and Marie are in London." That we do not have the rest of the novel, or even the scene, is a great loss that calls to mind the destruction of the Library of Alexandria.

And so, if you are ready to forget all you know...and all you think you know, click below.

From The Cryptogram of Caravaggio:

For several moments they stared at the painting before them. Finally, Lincoln’s voice broke the silence.

“Truly remarkable,” he said.

“What is it?” Marie’s voice rose as if she were excited to know the answer to her question.

“I don’t know how I’ve overlooked this.”

She asked again, “What?” Her anticipation came through in the way she spoke.

“What I’ve observed is quite interesting!”

“I can’t wait to find out what it is.” If you could have heard her, you would be able to tell that she was very excited, and you would have believed it when she said, “I can’t wait to find out what it is.”

Lincoln directed her attention to the center of the canvas, on which Caravaggio had placed variously hued paints in a deliberate manner.

“Do you notice anything peculiar about the hands of Jesus?”

Marie observed the painting more carefully. Though this was her first time seeing this painting, it looked like many others by Caravaggio. She’d adored Caravaggio’s work since she was a little girl, when her grandfather, who—she would be shocked to learn much later—was also the father of one of her own parents, used to show her around the art museums of the remarkable European city in which she grew up. Even as a child she knew that Caravaggio had literally given birth to paintings that, metaphorically-speaking, amazed people to this day. You’d recognize many of these works, even if his name doesn’t ring a bell. He’s sort of like that band Three Dog Night—when you mention their name, everyone’s like, “who’s that?” Then you say, “You know,” and start singing “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!” and “Celebrate! Celebrate! Dance to the music!” and “Momma told me not to come!” and “American Woman!” Then the person’ll say, “oh yeah, I know them! They’re awesome!” But you’d be wrong, because the Guess Who does “American Woman,” but they’re another band like that. In fact, the Guess Who’s a better example, because Three Dog Night didn’t write their own songs, but the Guess Who did, and Caravaggio painted his own stuff.

He was very successful in his own lifetime, but one day he killed a person and had to flee Rome. He spent the rest of his life on the lamb, which was a strange form of transportation even then. Still, the Italian continued to paint nice things until he died suddenly of very mysterious causes, joining Keats, Dickinson, and Cobain in the pantheon of visionaries too soon lost to this world.

She’d memorized every detail of the painter’s greatest works. So she was delighted to be staring at an un-discovered masterpiece, but frustrated that she was unable to answer Lincoln’s quiz. No matter how much she squinted her eyes or blurred her vision, no image hidden in the background gradually appeared in the forefront. It remained a typical Caravaggio, with a single light source, dramatic action, and an event that was probably based on some book, maybe a play by Shakespeare or Chaucer or someone like that.

“I can’t see what you’re talking about,” she articulated. Her voice was now sad, almost unhappy. “Everything looks fine to me.”

Though they’d only spent a few hours together, Marie had the impression that she knew Professor Rupert Lincoln fairly well. As soon as she met him, Marie sensed that Lincoln was about six feet tall and had an athletic build, rare among scholars of his stature. She could tell that he liked to wear a sports coat, cotton Dockers, a checkered dress shirt and a solid tie. With his charming demeanor and full head of hair, peppered with salt-colored gray streaks, she knew he had no trouble attracting women. As a professor, he was popular among his students; as a scholar, revered by his peers; as an author of popular-yet-respected art history books suitable for the classroom and coffee-table, successful.

Perhaps she knew him so well because their hours together were exceptionally exciting: first the discovery of the body in that strange place; then the phone call at an odd hour; a couple of people whom neither of them trusted very much; that one person who she trusted but he didn’t, and whom she shouldn’t have and he was right not to; the woman he trusted and she didn’t, and once again he was right because it turns out that woman was only speaking Portuguese, not in anagrams as Marie had suspected.

“Are you sure?” he asked. This was in response to her statement that everything about the painting looked just fine; she’d said that just a moment ago; it only feels like longer.

“Yes. It looks just like any other Caravaggio. What do you see?”

“Let me put it this way: I’d love to give you a hand.” Then he pointed at the canvas, directly at the hands of Jesus.

“They’re closed,” she said. “So what?”

“Remember the painting we saw in Rome early this morning?”

Of course she did. Its image was seared in her consciousness like a strong memory. “He was pointing right at St. Matthew,” she said.

“Yes, he was. The position of his hand gesture was based on Michelangelo’s painting of the creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. There both God and Adam are gesturing that way.”

“Then it’s quite appropriate,” she ventured, “that Caravaggio would have Jesus pose that way, since the Sistine Chapel is such a masterpiece.”

Lincoln shook his head ruefully. “If only it were that simple, Marie. If only.” She could tell by the way that his second sentence repeated a key phrase from his first that this regret was sincere.

“This is not a matter of mere art history,” he continued. “No, I’m afraid it’s much more than that. This painting may change everything we ever thought about Caravaggio, and even Christianity.”

He paused for several seconds.

“My interest is piqued,” she said.

“As you probably know, the world used to be a crazy place, thanks in no small part to the invention of the printing press in 1492 or thereabouts. Before the printing press, very few people could read. Those few who could read were easy to identify even when they weren’t reading. You see, people who read a lot become reliant on visual gestures for communication. Hearing is no longer enough; they must also see the information they want. Because before the printing press very few people could read, hand gestures were a mark of refinement and education. Just as you can now identify a person’s personality by the car they drive and the clothes they wear, before the printing press the extent of their gesturing was a fair barometer of wealth.”

“Only an idiot would not find this fascinating,” said Marie.

“I know. But with the advent of the printing press, more people read; as more people read, more people gestured. Soon it was like a popular dance move: everyone was doing it. Chubby Checkers would’ve written a song about it. So by the time Caravaggio was born, gestures were not an upper-class symbol, but a lower-class one. Consequently, to represent their distance from the masses, the rich began to gesture less.”

“I think I can see why representations of Christ would be so significant. But please explain to make sure I’m right.”

“Of course. It was important for painters of the time be as theologically accurate as possible, so when gesturing became a mark of poverty, the Vatican insisted that paintings represent Jesus as a gesturer, like the poor people he served. That explains Caravaggio’s painting of St. Matthew. And do you remember the one we saw in the millionaire’s mansion in Paris this morning?”

“Yes! He was raising Lazarus from the dead with the same gesture.”

“Precisely. And the postcards in the airport in Egypt this afternoon?”

“He was blessing the bread with the same gesture. He does it again in the later version of the painting we saw in Beijing just before dinner!”

“Yes. And in some of the works, saints make the same gesture. Like the one of St. Thomas hanging in Reykjavik we saw during desert.”

“And the one of St. Andrew in Cairo.”

“Precisely.”

“And when St. Peter denies Jesus, he makes the opposite gesture—he points inward!”

“Let’s not get carried away. The point is that Caravaggio’s paintings conveyed the party line of the Vatican. And thanks to his paintings, Christians continue to believe that Jesus was a poor man; and as a result, Italians still gesture emphatically when they speak!”
But around this time arose an underground, heretical sect called the Society Not of Belief. Basing their opinions on ancient scrolls and apocryphal texts, the SNOBs argued that Jesus was, in fact, rich. Not only had Mary’s parents been loaded, but Joseph’s carpentry business didn’t do so bad for itself. When Joseph died, Jesus inherited the family fortune.”

“So that’s why the Bible doesn’t even mention that Joseph died!”

“Precisely. With that money, Jesus retired early and traveled the Middle East before getting mugged at Calvary.”

The truth dawned on Marie, casting its light on her mind the way the sun casts light on the horizon at the end of the day. “So if the Society of Not Belief is right, then much of the Bible is just wrong, right? All that talk about the poor inheriting the earth?”

“Rubbish.”

“That last shall be first, the first shall be last?”

“Not so much.”

“What about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than the rich to enter Heaven?”

“That one just doesn’t even make any sense!”

“And you’re suggesting that this painting means that…”

Suddenly a door slammed upstairs. They stayed as still as possible. They could recognize the heavy footsteps of the murderous nun with the acne problem.

The Cryptogram of Caravaggio: Preface

2007-06-27T22:47:00.000-04:00

Several years ago, The Da Vinci Code radically altered the way we think about the Catholic Church and how we use the English language ("Monet literally gave birth to the Impressionist Movement"). Now a mysterious new novel promises to pick up where Dan Brown left off, and that's bad news for Catholics everywhere.

A reader named Randal Bufton, whom I don't know but who is apparently pretty smart because he likes this site, sent us a very strange, very troubling manuscript. After reading the document myself, I've decided that it's so important it merits a double-post. Today I'll post his explanation for how he got hold of what he sent us. Later this week I'll post the amazing text itself.

Without further ado, here's Mr. Bufton's preface:

"I was at my neighborhood franchise of a national chain of coffee shops last week, reading the Times and listening to the incredible new Paul McCartney album (fyi, it really is as good as his Wings material!) when I was distracted by the commotion at a nearby table. Two men were having a quite heated exchange. One of them looked like a student, the other was a priest (I'm basing this on his attire -- he was wearing a habit or whatever you call it) in his middle ages. The priest was saying, 'You don't realize what this means! This could do irreparable harm to everything we know!' The student was shaking his head vigorously and waving sheets of paper, saying, 'No Father, I DO know what it means, which is why I'm writing it -- the truth must be told!'

"At that, the priest reached over the table to grab the manuscript, but was only able to seize a few pages before his adversary drew them out of reach and ran out the door. Rather than giving chase, the priest cursed in frustration, then crumpled the papers and stuffed them into his half-finished grande latte. He sat there and shook his for a few minutes before leaving, and once he was gone a mob of patrons and baristas rushed to his table to see the document that had so upset him. I managed to get there first to retrieve the cup and its controversial contents.

"After shaking the excess coffee and cream from the sheets, I saw no no name attached to the document, nor was there a date. It was handwritten in black ink on looseleaf paper, apparently college-ruled.

"Though I'm not Catholic, I found the fragments quite shocking, and it indeed did upend all that I knew about Christianity. Knowing that yours is one of the most [important] and [interesting] websites around, I thought you'd be interested in reading and posting this."

Indeed we are. Stay tuned for the manuscript itself...

Douthat on Hitchens

2007-06-26T16:22:00.000-04:00

Earlier this month I complained about Christopher Hitchens, particularly how his anti-religious bigotry affects his abilities as a book critic. Ross Douthat (who, like Hitchens, often contributes to The Atlantic) has a great review of Hitchens’s God Is Not Great in the latest Claremont Review of Books. The first paragraph is classic:

Every talented writer is entitled to be a bore on at least one subject, but where religion is concerned Christopher Hitchens abuses the privilege. For years now, he has supplemented his prolific punditry and criticism with a stream of anti-theistic diatribes, and now these rivers of vituperation have pooled into a single volume, an omnium gatherum of God-bashing (although he insists on using the lower-case “g” throughout) that exceeds most of its predecessors in the felicity of its prose, but matches them in the tedium of its arguments. “I have been writing this book all my life,” Hitchens declares in the conclusion to God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, “and intend to keep on writing it.” One hopes that someone near and dear to him will have the courage to firmly suggest that he stop.

Here’s the whole thing.

Jersey Mark Fights Back!

2007-06-25T15:06:00.000-04:00

At long last, here is Mark's thoughtful response to my post from last week. We thought enough of it to integrate a new "Read More" feature to accommodate its loquaciousness, which explains all the technical difficulties of late, but please be warned that toward the end Mark has some critical words for everyone's favorite Peacock farmer. Viewer discretion is advised.

"Well, any position which puts me in disagreement with both C. Seamus and Jacques Maritain is a position which requires defending, so let me see what I can do.

The first argument I would offer in response to C. Seamus is the historical argument, to which I have already alluded; the "fragmented/irregular/anti-narrative forms" he mentions were the creation of the modernists (there are some precursors to these things before the modern era - Tristram Shandy comes to mind - but their establishment as a style or movement is unique to modern times). They were the creation of men who generally did not believe in God and who generally subscribed to various ideologies either explicitly (Nietzsche, Freud) or implicitly (Sartre) hostile to Catholicism. These "anti-forms" they invented were, so I would argue, created in order to be at once the vehicle and the formal metaphor of those ideological convictions. The evidence for this assertion can be blatant - as with the Freudianism of Joyce's Ulysses - or rather more subtle, as in the concept of freedom implied in "free verse," which is far more akin to the non-essentialist freedom of later existentialism than the freedom of Catholic tradition, which is, as F.P. Seamus explained it somewhere, "the ability to do what we ought to do."

Yes, serious Christian writers did subsequently adopt the modern styles (Eliot probably being the most notable example), but this does not change the fact that these styles originated with authors whose convictions were decidedly inimical to the traditional beliefs of the Catholic, and originated as expressions of those convictions; of those Christian authors who work or have worked in modernist styles I can only say, without questioning their sincerity at all, I think that they are working according to an aesthetic standard which belies the substance of their belief. But in order to offer proof of this, I need to move on to a more substantial line of argument.

In answer to the question: "should we as Catholic artists write about the world as it should be, or as it is?" - I answer, with C. Seamus and Flannery O'Connor, "as it is." I am all for reality, but let me say a few things about reality, and about how art represents reality. Let me begin with that venerable critical distinction between form and content. I am claiming that Catholic theology does imply certain formal norms; I am saying nothing whatsoever about that theology in relation to content. I do not think Catholicism implies any definable limits concerning what an author may represent in his work.

But the form of a poem does not represent anything at all; it delights. Form is there to delight, and it does so by appealing to our common instinct towards "unity and harmony" which F.P. Seamus called to our attention. Horace's old dictum was that a poem should "teach and delight," but I think it would be more accurate to say that a good poem teaches because it delights; when we take pleasure in the harmony of a well-constructed poem, we learn through reflection that a love of harmony is one of the fundamental parts of our nature. It is a lesson that a formless poem quite simply cannot teach, or at least, cannot teach very well.

Form delights; form also reveals. What it reveals is a shared understanding of human nature between poet and audience, an understanding that the instinct towards unity and harmony is at the center of what it means to be human. In a sense, the adoption of formal techniques is an assertion by the poet of his belief in the integrity of the human mind. It is a huge mistake - and one made with great regularity by the opponents of formalism - to claim that formal poetry cannot represent the most profound depths of evil and suffering; to my mind, the most terrifying literary depiction of the nothingness of human existence is Oedipus Rex, Sophocles' elaborately formal tragedy. The random nature of fortune, the inextricable corruption of our souls, and the unmitigated brutality of violence, can, and have, all been represented quite powerfully by formal poetry. But, even when these elements are present in a formal work, there is something else present as well, and that is (simplistically redundant as it may sound) form, which becomes an assertion of man's rational soul over the chaos of irrational nature, and the melody of spiritual beauty running in harmonious counterpoint to the harsh, grating ugliness of circumstance.

The form of a poem is a kind of protest of man's better self against the deficiencies of nature, and that protest is at the heart of Catholicism. A quote from Pascal might be helpful here; he wrote, "Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed...even though the universe should crush him, man would still be nobler than what kills him since he knows that he dies...all our dignity consists then in thought." I would say the form of a formal poem is quite simply the manifestation of that dignifying thought, which does not prevent or even mitigate, but which still mysteriously conquers, the evil of the world; I would contend that to practice the art of formal verse is to believe - consciously or unconsciously - that man is a creature torn apart by irreconcilable desires, enslaved by his weakness, irretrievably perplexed by his ignorance of the final things, and subject forever to "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," yet with an inalienable sense of truth and beauty abiding in his spirit in the midst of its corruptions and its sorrows. This appears to me to be the true conception of man, and it also appears to me to be the Catholic conception of man. To write with this conception in mind seems to me to be very much writing about the world "as it is."

What of the practitioner of those "fragmented/irregular/anti-narrative forms?" What is he asserting about the nature of man? Here I would suggest that neither C. Seamus nor Flannery O'Connor is quite grasping the full philosophical implications of these formless forms. What is unique about these works is not their depiction of suffering or human corruption, since, as I mentioned, formal poetry is just as capable of depicting these things; what is unique about formless poetry is the lack of that assertion of man's rational integrity, and this implies, so I would argue, a lack of real belief in that very rational integrity. The incoherent melange of images in Eliot, for instance, seems to imply an incapacity of the mind to achieve an ordered comprehension of sensation; the plotless dramas of Beckett appear to suggest the impossibility of recognizing continuity or purpose in human life; the illogical twaddle of Ashberry very clearly manifests a lack of faith in the ability of language to convey any meaning at all. These certainly seem like "distortions that destroy", and what they destroy is that belief in the integrity of the human soul. The conception of man implied by the manner in which these writers worked is not simply that of a creature beset by irrationality and corruption, but a creature wholly overcome by these things; a creature not merely foolish and perverse, but one incapable of anything but folly and perversion; a creature without reason or language, entirely impotent in the face of the world's arbitrary cruelty, and his own persistent sinfulness - in contradiction to Pascal, a weak and entirely unthinking reed.

Now, whatever else we want to say about such a conception of man, it is certainly not true that it is the conception of man contained in the Catholic doctrine of original sin, as we come to understand that doctrine either from its exposition in theology, or from its effects in our everyday lives (if something like this conception of human nature can be found anywhere in theology, it is in the thought of Luther). The modern styles manifest the modern philosophical conception of man as fundamentally irrational and brutish; whatever else it means to be a creature of a fallen nature, surely it does not mean this. No, the true conviction revealed by the formlessness of modern poetry is not original sin, but nihilistic despair. C. Seamus talked about calling our attention to the instinct for unity and harmony by representing their absence, and this is fair up to a point, but when unity and harmony are completely absent from a work of art - as is in fact the case with so much modern poetry - the effect is nihilistic.

Well, I don't believe in nihilism. I do not think that human nature, however fallen, is genuinely devoid of language and reason and the enduring desire for beauty. To write in a manner that implies such a conception of man appears to me to be writing about the world neither as it is, nor as it should be, but quite simply as it is not.

Let me conclude by adding - though I know this is an admission bordering on the heretical from a member of the Southwell - that though I enjoy some of O'Connor's stories, I would not consider her work to stand in the ranks of the very best literature, and her explanation of the principles which informed the composition of her stories, while helpful in understanding those stories, does not to my mind offer the best guidance to Catholic writers intent on creating the very best literature."

Solution

2007-06-25T14:34:00.001-04:00

The technical difficulty appears to have been solved...

...by Hansonius.

Technical Difficulties

2007-06-22T13:23:00.000-04:00

We're having some problems today, which is why the site looks a little funky. I'll be posting Mark's response to my post as soon as we get things taken care of.

UPDATE: The technical difficulties have been resolved, but I'm still figuring out a way to post Mark's long message...Stay tuned.

Toward a Catholic Aesthetics, Part II: The Devil's Advocate

2007-06-20T10:25:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Mark for a very thought-provoking post. Thanks also to the mysterious F.P. Seamus for his response, though I should warn him that the administrators of this site, Hansonius and C. Seamus, disdain pseudonyms.

But to Mark’s question, “Is there a danger of stultification in attempting to limit the range of stylistic options available to a sincere Catholic?”, I have to answer yes.

For the record, I prefer formal poetry. It’s more musical, more accessible, more memorable, and generally more interesting than free verse. It demands greater craftsmanship. And I certainly agree that formal poetry has a lot to offer those who want to write in the Catholic tradition. I also agree that “the aesthetic standard which we employ as artists implies certain ethical and metaphysical commitments on our part.”

Still, I think that free verse, and (as long as we’re at it) fragmented forms of fictional narration can fit within a Catholic literary framework. The central question is: should we as Catholic artists write about the world as it should be, or as it is? Maybe one way to think of the problem is to distinguish the way we are called to live and the way we live now, between what we want to see and what we do see. These approaches probably require different forms. As Mark suggested, the fragmented nature of narratives by Faulkner and Joyce may be reflective of a fragmented personal identity. But a novelist can use that form to suggest that’s how we are without suggesting that’s how we should be.

F.P. Seamus has a point when he claims that the Catholic “seeks to bring unity, integrity, and harmony to a soul wounded by sin.” But must a work of art accomplish this by representing the presence of unity, integrity, and harmony? I think it is actually possible to bring these three things by showing their absence. No surprise that Flannery O’Connor has written some tremendous stuff about this, and she was smart enough to agree with me. In “The Church and the Fiction Writer,” she claims that “If the Catholic writer hopes to reveal mysteries, he will have to do it by describing truthfully what he sees from where he is. An affirmative vision cannot be demanded of him without limiting his freedom to observe what man has done with the things of God” (150-51). In “The Novelist and the Believer,” she describes writing Everything that Rises Must Converge, a novel whose central scene is a baptism. The problem for her was that most readers don’t consider baptism a big deal, so she had to write about it in a way that would draw their attention to its significance. She did this by distorting the novel’s form:

I have to bend the whole novel—its language, its structure, its action. I have to make the reader feel, in his bones if nowhere else, that something is going on here that counts. Distortion in this case is an instrument; exaggeration has a purpose, and the whole structure of the story of novel has been made what it is because of belief. This is not the kind of distortion that destroys; it is the kind that reveals, or should reveal. (162)

In other words, a Catholic writer can underscore the importance of his project by distorting forms and narratives. There’s more than one way to do this. She expands on this idea in “Catholic Novelists”:

[The] Catholic writer often finds himself writing in and for a world that is unprepared and unwilling to see the meaning of life as he sees it. This means frequently that he may resort to violent literary means to get his vision across to a hostile audience, and the images and actions he crease may seem distorted and exaggerated to the Catholic mind” (185).

I interpret “violent literary means” to mean not only violent action, but also violent or disturbing/unsettling forms. But the two can be connected—what we’re discussing re: form also applies to content (as is often the case). Here’s one more from Fanny O.:

When we look at the serious fiction written by Catholics in these times, we do find a striking preoccupation with what is seedy and evil and violent. The pious argument against such novels goes something like this: if you believe in the Redemption, your ultimate vision is one of hope, so in what you see you must be true to this ultimate vision; you must pass over the evil you see and look for the good because the good is there; the good is the ultimate reality.

The beginning of an answer to this is that though the good is the ultimate reality, the ultimate reality has been weakened in human beings as a result of the Fall, and it is this weakened life that we see. (178-79)

All of these arguments challenge Mark’s claim that formal poetry is the default mode for the Catholic writer. It is certainly a possible mode, and again it’s the one I prefer, but free verse specifically, and fragmented/irregular/anti-narrative forms more generally, can be the “violent literary means” or revelatory distortions that help us draw attention to “the ultimate reality [that] has been weakened in human beings.”

If the wisdom of the Hillbilly Thomist isn’t enough, maybe Jacques Maritain will convince you: “It would therefore be futile to try to find a technique, a style, a system of rules or a way of working which would be those of Christian art. The art which germinates and grows in Christian man can admit of an infinity of them.” (By the way, a little twist of irony for you…The title of Rebel Angels, the great collection of New Formalist verse, refers to a Satanic thought by Keats: “I feel confident I should have been a Rebel Angel had the opportunity been mine.”)

Mark and the mysterious F. P. Seamus, what do you say to those apples?

Toward a Catholic Aesthetics

2007-06-16T17:26:00.000-04:00

Our friend and fellow Mahwahvian Mark S. has contributed a thought-provoking guest post about the formal and aesthetic implications of our faith.

"Now that the second annual Southwell Conference has drawn to a close, and the Mahwahvian movement can celebrate its one year anniversary, I thought it might be time for a little reflection on "the movement" and what its all about. Specifically, I want to consider Mahwahvian poetics.

Those of us who participated in the Southwell poetry seminar will probably realize that we have become a part of two discernible "movements." The first is the larger effort of the Southwell Institute to revive the literary arts among Catholics, and the second is the effort to help revive the formal techniques of poetry which have largely gone out of use over the last several decades. The thesis I wish to propose is that these two movements are not coincidental, but rather, we value and seek to revive the tradition of formal poetry because of what we believe as Catholics.

This is an enormous topic, and I can only hint here at the shape of an effective argument, but what I am asserting is that the aesthetic standard which we employ as artists implies certain ethical and metaphysical commitments on our part. Isn't this evident throughout the works of the twentieth century? Aren't the fragmented narratives of Joyce and Faulkner a reflection of the fragmentation of personal identity which is such a consistent theme in modern philosophy? Aren't the syntactic abnormalities of an Ashberry or a Graham a reflection of post-modernist doubts concerning the efficacy of language? Isn't the vulgarity of Ginsburg's poetry a perfect analogy for the vulgarity of Ginsburg's politics? Isn't the bleakness of so much modern poetry a consequence of the bleakness of so much modern thought?

So, in what way does our Catholicism dispose us to value the tradition of formal poetry? The first and most obvious answer is simply that it is the tradition that has prevailed for millenia in the Western world, and we as Catholics are inclined to respect tradition, particularly the traditions of the West. Then there is the fact that a poet who is using formal techniques is very deliberately and sincerely pursuing a kind of beauty, and an affection for beauty has always been one of the distinctive elements of Catholicism. I would think the clarity and coherence that generally characterize formal verse are more congenial to the Catholic mind, with its respect for man's rational faculty, than modernism's tendency towards obscurantism, which is always the handmaiden of irrationality.

Most fundamentally, the appeal of meter and rhyme and stanzaic pattern stems from human nature - human biology, even - which is drawn to rhythm; a poet working with meter and rhyme is a poet respectful of human nature and willing to gratify it through his art. Well, isn't it true that as Catholics we consider human nature a wonderful, though tragically deficient, thing? And don't we understand the divine will to be in the most profound sense gratifying to our nature - as Dante wrote, in His will is our peace? So as Catholics, we are accustomed to consider spiritual growth, in some sense, a matter of satisfying human nature, and as poets working through form, we are attempting just such a thing. A Catholic and a formal poet are both people who regard human nature to be a proper and adequate vehicle of divine grace, or divine inspiration.

The argument is scant, as it must be here, but I wanted to put the thesis out there. So, fellow, Mahwavians [and anyone else who's interested! -- ed.] what do you think? Is there truly a significant relationship between our creed and the aesthetics involved in formal poetry? Or is there a danger of stultification in attempting to limit the range of stylistic options available to a sincere Catholic? I invite your thoughts on this topic. "

Dryden on the Eucharist

2007-06-10T13:10:00.000-04:00

Today the Church in America celebrates the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, so it seems appropriate to offer some more thoughts on the Eucharist. These come from John Dryden, who converted to Catholicism in 1686. It was at first seen as a bit of a political move, as the new king, James II, was himself a Catholic, but Dryden and his children stayed Catholic even after James was deposed. His first post-conversion poem was The Hind and the Panther (1687), a beast fable that presents a conversation between the Panther, representing the Anglican Church, and “A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged,” representing the Catholic Church. It meditates on a number of political and theological issues, including the consequences of the Church of England’s attempts to steer a middle course between Rome and the Lutherans and Calvinists.

Our Panther, though like these she changed her head,
Yet, as the mistress of a monarch’s bed,
Her front erect with majesty she bore,
The crosier wielded, and the mitre wore.
Her upper part of decent discipline
Show’d affectation of an ancient line;
And Fathers, Councils, Church, and Church’s head,
Were on her reverend phylacteries read.
But what disgraced and disavow’d the rest,
Was Calvin’s brand, that stigmatized the beast.
Thus, like a creature of a double kind,
In her own labyrinth she lives confined.
To foreign lands no sound of her is come,
Humbly content to be despised at home.
Such is her faith, where good cannot be had,
At least she leaves the refuse of the bad:
Nice in her choice of ill, though not of best,
And least deform’d, because reform’d the least.

Talk about damning with faint praise. Dryden contends that the middle-road approach of Anglicanism leads to a fuzzy theology of the Eucharist:

In doubtful points betwixt her differing friends,
Where one for substance, one for sign contends,
Their contradicting terms she strives to join;
Sign shall be substance, substance shall be sign.
A real presence all her sons allow,
And yet ’tis flat idolatry to bow,
Because the Godhead’s there they know not how.
Her novices are taught that bread and wine
Are but the visible and outward sign,
Received by those who in communion join.
But the inward grace, or the thing signified,
His blood and body, who to save us died;
The faithful this thing signified receive:
What is’t those faithful then partake or leave?
For what is signified and understood,
Is, by her own confession, flesh and blood.
Then, by the same acknowledgment, we know
They take the sign, and take the substance too.
The literal sense is hard to flesh and blood,
But nonsense never can be understood.

I love that last couplet. The poem also includes a more personal meditation on Dryden’s conversion, one that doesn’t get enough attention from Catholics anymore.

What weight of ancient witness can prevail,
If private reason hold the public scale?
But, gracious God, how well dost thou provide
For erring judgments an unerring guide!
Thy throne is darkness in the abyss of light,
A blaze of glory that forbids the sight.
O teach me to believe thee thus conceal’d,
And search no farther than thyself reveal’d;
But her alone for my director take,
Whom thou hast promised never to forsake!
My thoughtless youth was wing’d with vain desires;
My manhood, long misled by wandering fires,
Follow’d false lights; and when their glimpse was gone,
My pride struck out new sparkles of her own.
Such was I, such by nature still I am;
Be thine the glory, and be mine the shame.

Dryden then defends Catholic teaching of the Eucharist by pointing out that it is consistent with the most basic tenets of Christianity, shared by Catholics and Protestants alike. Those who believe in the Trinity and the Incarnation are in no position to posit the impossibility of transubstantiation.

Good life be now my task; my doubts are done:
What more could fright my faith, than Three in One?
Can I believe Eternal God could lie
Disguised in mortal mould and infancy?
That the great Maker of the world could die?
And after that trust my imperfect sense,
Which calls in question His Omnipotence?
Can I my reason to my faith compel,
And shall my sight, and touch, and taste rebel?
Superior faculties are set aside;
Shall their subservient organs be my guide?
Then let the moon usurp the rule of day,
And winking tapers show the sun his way;
For what my senses can themselves perceive,
I need no revelation to believe.

Dryden also defends the consistency of Catholic belief in the Eucharist with scriptural accounts of Christ’s nature:

Can they who say the Host should be descried
By sense, define a body glorified?
Impassable, and penetrating parts?
Let them declare by what mysterious arts
He shot that body through the opposing might
Of bolts and bars impervious to the light,
And stood before his train confess’d in open sight.
For since thus wondrously he pass’d, ’tis plain,
One single place two bodies did contain.
And sure the same Omnipotence as well
Can make one body in more places dwell.
Let reason, then, at her own quarry fly,
But how can finite grasp infinity?

And later, on the importance of resisting the urge to rely entirely on the senses:

Why choose we, then, like bilanders, to creep
Along the coast, and land in view to keep,
When safely we may launch into the deep?
In the same vessel which our Saviour bore,
Himself the pilot, let us leave the shore,
And with a better guide a better world explore.
Could he his Godhead veil with flesh and blood,
And not veil these again to be our food?
His grace in both is equal in extent,
The first affords us life, the second nourishment.
And if he can, why all this frantic pain
To construe what his clearest words contain,
And make a riddle what he made so plain?
To take up half on trust, and half to try,
Name it not faith, but bungling bigotry.
Both knave and fool the merchant we may call,
To pay great sums, and to compound the small:
For who would break with Heaven, and would not break for all?
Rest, then, my soul, from endless anguish freed:
Nor sciences thy guide, nor sense thy creed.
Faith is the best insurer of thy bliss;
The bank above must fail before the venture miss.

As much as I enjoy this poem, it also depresses me a bit because I can’t imagine a Catholic writer capable of defending this faith so vigorously and creatively. In some ways, that could be a good thing—maybe nobody in the English-speaking writes like this because we don't feel persecuted enough to have to justify our beliefs. But would we even be able to articulate them like this?

If It's a Symbol, to Hell With It

2007-06-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi, though we don’t celebrate it in America until this coming Sunday. The solemnity makes me think of a letter from Flannery O’Connor that a lot of people have quoted lately, but that's so good it deserves another run. It's from a letter written in December 1955, in which she describes a dinner with the “Big Intellectual” Mary McCarthy, as well as Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, and others.

Having me there was like having a dog present who had been trained to say a few words but overcome with inadequacy had forgotten them. Well, toward morning the conversation turned on the Eucharist, which I, being Catholic, was obviously supposed to defend. Mrs. Broadwater said when she was a child and received the Host, she thought of it as the Holy Ghost, He being the “most portable” person of the Trinity; now she thought of it as a symbol and implied that it was a pretty good one. I then said, in a very shaky voice, “Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.” That was all the defense I was capable of but I realize now that this is all I will ever be able to say about it, outside of a story, except that it is the center of existence for me; all the rest of life is expendable.

This is O’Connor at her best: unpretentious, sharp, and right. Of course there are better ways to explain the Eucharist, but this is about as good as you're gonna get in ten syllables. (And give her credit for ending with two iambs!)

By the way, that anecdote comes from a longer letter that also includes an explanation of her most sacramental story, “A Temple of the Holy Ghost.” The last sentence is powerful even out of context: “The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host drenched in blood and when it sank out of sight, it left a line in the sky like a red clay road hanging over the trees.”

For the poetically inclined, this here site has a timely hymn by Aquinas and Hopkins's translation.

William Baer, "Adam"

2007-06-07T01:16:00.000-04:00

The second annual St. Robert Southwell Literary Workshop has been going on this week in the scenic and musically-named hamlet of Mahwah, New Jersey. To commemorate the occasion, here's a sonnet from the Wizard of the Workshop, the Master of Meter, the Emperor of Iambs, the Dean of Dactyls, the Father of Forms, the Sultan of the Sonnet, & c., Dr. William Baer.

Adam

He'd seen this thing before, of course, but never
like this. After Eden, he'd found a swan
lying motionless and silent, forever
rotting, irretrievable, and gone.
But now, it's his boy, the brother of Cain,
the shepherd son, the kind and faithful friend
of He-Who-Is, lying quiet and slain:
finished, futureless, at the end of his end.
Once, Adam had named the names, and named his own
two sons, and named this curse, which nullifies
and terminates, as: "death." But he who'd known
the awesome power of God looked to the skies,
knowing, without a doubt, though nothing was said,
his God both could and would undo the dead.

The poem is from "Borges" and Other Sonnets, as well as this here collection.

Hitchens on Waugh

2007-06-02T19:56:00.000-04:00

This week's New York Times Book Review includes a review of Fathers and Sons: An Autobiography of a Family by Alexander Waugh, the grandson of Evelyn Waugh. When American editors want somebody to review Waugh or Greene, they seem to seek out Hitchens because a) he's smart b) he's English. But he's also virulently anti-religious, and particularly hostile towards Catholicism, so he's generally dismissive of central facets of Waugh's and Greene's work. He simply cannot see religion as anything other than a dangerous or foolish influence.

In a review from a few years ago [subscription needed for access to the full article], Hitchens said of Brideshead Revisited, Waugh's most explicitly Catholic novel and perhaps his greatest work: "the narrative is made ridiculous by a sentimental and credulous approach to miracles or the supernatural." He uses this shortcoming to support Orwell's claim that "One cannot really be Catholic and grown-up." Yes, it's true that at the end of Brideshead, Charles Ryder seems to have become Catholic; and the novel is certainly sentimental, a sort of elegy for English pre-war nobility. But to say that the book's approach to the supernatural is "credulous" is just nonsense. The novel's characters constantly doubt or challenge their faith, and those who don't doubt are made to look ridiculous. But Hitchens either doesn't remember this, or he associates all religious belief with gullibility.

This week's book review also shows this blind spot. Hitchens presents this passage that Arthur Waugh wrote his son Alec:

“The nails that pierce the Son’s hands pierce the Father’s also: the thorn-crowned head of the Dying Savior is seen to be lying upon the Father’s bosom. And it is always so with you and me. Every wound that touches you pierces my own soul also: every thorn in your crown of life tears my tired head as well. Be sure of that, as you are also sure (for you must be that) that when your hour of redemption comes, the first to share it will be the father who has never doubted or given way. ... With deep love and unfaltering trust, still and always, your ever devoted and hopeful Daddy.”

Somebody with any level of sympathy for Christian theology or symbolism would be moved at least a little by this admittedly dramatic expression of love. Not Hitchens: "One notes here not just the absence of stiff upper lip but something verging on the creepy: it is almost as if the man believes himself to be his boy’s mother." Eh?

I don't doubt that Hitchens is very, very smart. But his aversion to religion often damages his interpretations and reviews. Yes, religious belief can regress into superstition and credulity -- but the excessive skepticism and prejudice of Hitchens's atheism is just as foolish and limiting.

(But at least Hitchens uses the term "Wavian," which is almost as good as "Mahwahvian." And the similarity is a happy one, because most Mahwahvians are Wavians.)

More Powers to Ya!

2007-05-25T17:08:00.000-04:00

John Derbyshire also wrote a thoughtful essay about Powers's work in 1999. (The archived link doesn't load, so I'm sending you to a cache. Be patient, it takes a while to load.) It's very different from Bottum's because Derbyshire is English and not a Catholic, but he still appreciated Powers. This passage complicates Bottum's reasoning about Powers being too clerical for the modern reader:

Peter De Vries thought that Powers was not really a religious writer at all. I don’t agree, but I see what he means. There are no angels in Powers, no miracles, no sudden shafts of light breaking through overcast skies. The supernatural, in fact, is entirely absent. The world of Powers's books is the world we all inhabit: the world of bills and assessments, of irksome duties, comforting habits and tiny pleasures, of tiresome colleagues we have no choice but to get along with, of dead-wood subordinates who must be found something to do and cloth-eared superiors making all the wrong decisions. The work of these priests resembles very closely, in fact, the work most middle-class Americans do in corporate offices or public bureaucracies.

Sounds about right to me.

The novel for which Powers won the National Book Award, Morte D'Urban, is very funny, unlike "Lions, Harts, Leaping Does," but in its final chapters it too becomes a moving treatment of mortality, perhaps a more moving one because it comes so suddenly. Father Urban is another great character because he's very likeable, but his single-minded desire to raise funds is troubling, and unlike Didymus he doesn't seem to have much of a spiritual side. The novel suggets that Powers was really troubled by the place of money in the Church and priestly life, a problem to which he returns in his final novel, Wheat The Springeth Green. (Note to self: start a literate Catholic rock band, the Smiths meet Jars of Clay meet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Name it Wheat That Springeth Graham Greene. Speaking of Christian rock, here's a link in case the allusion in this post's title is too obscure, which I really hope it is.)

Some other bits from Derbyshire's essay that make me appreciate Powers even more:

If he is ever canonized, Powers could serve as the patron saint of slow writers. Katherine [his daughter] said, “He had powers of procrastination that went far beyond the merely amateur.”...Powers took infinite pains with his work. He deplored writing that was careless or inflated, or even just verbose. He did not like the great English novelists of the last century because he thought they used too many words to say what they wanted to say. God, said Powers, has demanding standards. “We couldn’t have art unless there were some higher authority that says, ‘Yes, that’s right’. God gave us that mentality, that kind of judgment. I don’t think God likes crap in art.”

I can't help but think of Chris Ofili when I read that last line.

Some Thoughts on J.F. Powers

2007-05-25T01:20:00.000-04:00

Most discussions of great Catholic fiction writers of the 20^thcentury revolve around Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, yadda yadda yadda. They really should also include J.F. Powers. In the 50s and 60s especially, he was the man, winning the National Book Award in 1962. (The winner the previous year was The Moviegoer by Percy the Papist.) Though he’s still celebrated by fiction writers (and not just Catholic ones), few others read him. Joseph Bottum (who praised him at last year’s Mahwah workshop) offers this reason for J.F. Powers’s lack of staying power:

His specialty was scenes of clerical life, especially at mid-century, especially in the bleak, wind-swept parish houses of the Midwest. And the major reason for the fading of J.F. Powers is the decline of his topic once the reforms of Vatican II took hold—or rather, once what was perceived in America to be the “spirit” of Vatican II had destroyed the setting of his fiction. Powers had a uniquely talented eye for the little negotiations, compromises, and squabbles of bachelors living together—but such things cannot in themselves carry a story. What gave his fiction its force was the contrast between those little foibles of priestly life and the constantly looming reality of what a priest actually does in the sacraments.

That seems as good an explanation as any. In the piece (and at last year’s workshop) Bottum praised the story “Lions, Harts, Leaping Does.” He’s right to say that it “can stand beside anything by Flannery O’Connor,” and that it is a very “moving interior description of dying.” It’s about a lot of other things, including the concern of the main character (a Benedictine named Didymus) that he does not sacrifice enough, and the consequences of his attempts to compensate. And like many of O’Connor’s best characters (very few of whom are explicitly Catholic), Didymus struggles with pride. There’s a great moment when he wonders whether he’s right to have chosen to teach geometry when other vocations were more obviously humble.

Was Didymus wrong in teaching geometry out of personal preference and perhaps—if this was so he was—out of pride? Had the spiritual worth of his labor been vitiated because of that? He did not think so, no. No, he taught geometry because it was useful and eternally true, like his theology, and though of a lower order of truth it escaped the common fate of theology and the humanities, perverted through the ages in the mouths of dunderheads and fools.

He also worries that the three vows of the Franciscan order just aren’t difficult enough: poverty in the modern world “was no heavy cross,” and chastity and obedience were no longer difficult for him in his old age. So when he received a letter informing him that his brother (also a monk) was dying, Didymus to resist his desire to visit him. “Therein, he thought, the keeping of the vows having become an easy habit for him, was his opportunity—he thought! It was plain and there was sacrifice and it would be hard. So he had not gone.” Of course he regrets his decision. When he learns that his brother has died, he goes to the chapel to pray…and falls asleep. (The scene is explicitly compared to the apostles falling asleep in the Gethsemane, but without being heavy handed.)

After this, the story becomes more about Didymus’s own mortality. As a result of what his doctor diagnoses as just “one of those things,” he is confined to a wheelchair, and concludes that the confinement was God punishing him for having “gloried too much” in not visiting his brother: “The intention—that was all important, and he, he feared, had done the right thing for the wrong reason. He had noticed something of the faker in himself before.” He also ruminates on how to deal with his sickness: “Humbly he wished to get well and to be able to walk. But it this was a punishment, was not prayer to lift it declining to see the divine point?...By some mistake, he protested, he had been placed in a position vital with meaning and precedents inescapably Christian. But was the man for it? Unsure of himself, he was afraid to go on trial.”

It’s an incredibly rich story (and beautifully written, though too many sentences begin with adverbs), and I could go on with examples of the depth, complexity, and frustrations of Didymus’s faith. He’s a great character because he’s both very devout and very flawed. Most of Powers’s best characters are like this, including Father Burner (more on him in later posts, I hope) and Father Urban of Morte D’Urban.

Fortunately, his short stories and two novels are back in print, in nice-looking but very fragile editions published by the New York Review of Books.

Mark S. on Difficult Poetry

2007-05-14T09:48:00.000-04:00

This contribution comes from fellow Mahwahvian Mark S. It's a good one:

In an article recently published in Slate, former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky takes issue with what he calls "the stupid and defeatist idea that poetry, especially modern or contemporary poetry, ought to be less 'difficult,'" arguing that difficulty constitutes a significant part of the pleasure which poetry brings, and citing a number of poems which illustrate this idea. I think he is a little bit right, but a little more wrong.

No doubt, the general decline in literacy in recent years has made comprehending the sophisticated structures of poetry increasingly difficult to the common reader. I wish I could find the precise statistic, but I remember reading somewhere that the length of the average English sentence has decreased 60% since the early twentieth century, and all one has to do is read the periodic sentences of Burke or Gibbon to see how much complexity the English language has lost over the years. I find even relatively simple works like the ballads of Wordsworth or the epigrams of Housman are equally impenetrable to my students as the grandest passage in Milton, so there is a serious case to be made that the contemporary reading public simply does not possess the necessary linguistic tools to appreciate fine poetry.

On the other hand, I think it is equally unquestionable that modern poetry can be characterized by a unique reliance on obscurity. Tolstoy was one of the first to call attention to this phenomenon, complaining that "haziness, mysteriousness, obscurity, and exclusiveness...(are) elevated to the rank of a merit and a condition of poetic art" and that "obscurity (is) elevated into a dogma among the new poets." And since obscurity remains a common feature of poetry right up to our time, the modern reader also has a case to make against the difficulty of contemporary poetry.

It might be helpful to distinguish between two types of obscurity in poetry, what might be called verbal obscurity and conceptual obscurity. Verbal obscurity might be defined as a lack of clarity caused by an intricate syntactical structure or exotic diction. So for instance, an example of verbal obscurity would be the following lines from Shelley: "there are spread / On the blue surface of thine aery surge,/ Like the bright hair uplifted from the head / Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge / Of the horizon to the zenith's height / The locks of the approaching storm." Here, the subject and verb are separated by five lines of phrases, and the image of the Maenad is, at least to the modern reader, not immediately recognizable. On the other hand, conceptual obscurity might be defined as a lack of clarity resulting from the indecipherability of a line's reference, such as Eliot's "behaving as the wind behaves / no nearer" or Dylan Thomas' "I must enter again the round / Zion of the water bead / And the synagogue of the ear of corn." Here, I would contend, even once we recognize the syntactical structure of the line and the significance of individual words, the proposition of the sentence has no real reference to the world of objects or ideas, or, perhaps more precisely, the sentence makes no real proposition.

Both types of obscurity may be vicious, but, to my mind, conceptual obscurity is always so; verbal obscurity can sometimes accompany real technical virtuosity and so be conducive to artistic pleasure in the way that Pinsky asserts. The difficulty that results from verbal obscurity may be fairly said, at least on occasion, to be the responsibility of the reader, but the difficulty that results from conceptual obscurity is generally the fault of the poet. And since it's practice has relied so heavily on conceptual obscurity, the serious reader does have a legitimate complaint to make against modern poetry.

Get Over Yourself

2007-05-08T15:17:00.000-04:00

As the second annual St. Robert Southwell Literary Workshop approaches, here’s a tip for the new class on how to avoid Baer attacks. Nothing is more likely to bring out the claws and fangs than a maudlin, self-absorbed confessional poem. The Mahwahvian Movement prefers the iamb to “I am.” (This poetic dictate has Biblical precedent, as Christ once said to an aspiring poet, “It is you who say iamb.”)

Dr. Baer is not the only so-called New Formalist with this aversion to confessional poetry. In an interview from The Formalist a few years back, Dana Gioia complained of confessional poems “that were, in some sense, sexual self-advertisements of [the authors] as sensitive, caring lovers. I always found that distasteful and dishonest. I strongly dislike any kind of self-congratulatory, moralizing poetry in which the author advertises his own moral perfection. Yet that type of poetry is still quite common. It’s a kind of new didacticism with a narcissistic bent.”

Anyone who has every taken a creative writing course will know that this anti-solipsistic perspective is rare nowadays, but there is great precedent for it. In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot insists that “the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career. What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”

Even in the romantic period, which our friend Helen C. White complains is to blame for excessive individualism, saw a couple of great defenses of un-confessional poetic theory. The most famous one is John Keats’s claim that his “poetical character…is not itself—it has no self—it is everything and nothing—it has no character….A poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence, because he has no identity, he is continually in for—and filling—some other body.”

A similar remark comes from Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine in 1817, which takes exception to the “absurd self-elevation” of Coleridge and Wordsworth in particular. As opposed to their solipsism, most men of genius, living or dead, rarely write about themselves.

It would seem that in truly great souls all feeling of self-importance, in its narrower sense, must be incompatible with the consciousness of a mighty achievement. The idea of the mere faculty or power is absorbed as it were in the idea of the work performed. That work stands out in its glory from the mind of its Creator; and in the contemplation of it, he forgets that he himself was the cause of its existence, or feels only a dim but sublime association between himself and the object of his admiration.

For more recent and very entertaining critiques of the solipsism of modern writing, particularly poetry, check out The Reaper Essays.

Why Don't We Write About Science?

2007-05-05T10:50:00.000-04:00

Earlier in the week, we posted remarks by Archbishop Chaput about the threats that science and technology pose to our spiritual lives. Helen C. White recognized some of these same dangers, but she believed that there was also a danger in over-reacting against science. In 1944, she wrote about "the role of poetry in a world of science, naturally submerged for the present in a world of war."

It is a topic on which humanists have in general been understandably somewhat on the defensive. The achievements of science have been so genuinely impressive and demonstrable that it is hardly surprising that a materialistic age, avid of short-cuts around the labors of thought, should have concluded that here was the answer to man’s ancient quest. There is no question that the popular faith in the omni-competence of science has been excessive, but Catholics of all people should know the perils of meeting superstition with iconoclasm.

In the next paragraph she actually criticizes Spirit, the poetry journal for which she's writing this essay. Apparently she thinks that the poets writing in it are wrong to ignore science as a subject:

Science as a method has its undoubted place if it is not taken for the only method, and its discoveries are endlessly stimulating not only to the appetite for fact, but to the imagination as well. I have often wondered if the great scholastic doctor who transformed Aristotle from a menace to a buttress of the faith would not have known how to meet modern science in a larger and more confident Spirit than some of his contemporary followers. And I cannot imagine Dante maintaining such a complete immunity to some of the most dramatic constructs of the contemporary mind as do most of the poets of Spirit.

One of the reasons religious writers are "immune" from science is that, unlike when Dante was writing, science is now perceived to be contrary to a belief in God. This is obviously a flawed perception, but it's prevalent. (On a recent sitcom, a character is asked whether he believes in God, and he replies, "No I don't believe in God. I believe in science." If Extras doesn't reflect the state of society, what does?!) And it holds for both sides of the debate -- Catholics, and I think most Christians, have perhaps un-intentionally bought into the God-versus-Science dichotomy. This is the "iconoclasm" she mentions in the first paragraph. We tend to think of science exclusively as a force against our faith and human dignity, something to be fought rather than what Helen C. White is promoting, a positive stimulant for the imagination.

To be fair, though, this imaginative blind-spot isn't unique to Christian writers. As she's suggesting in the first sentence above, it's "the humanities vs. science" as much as it is "religion vs. science." So maybe it stems from how we're educated -- perhaps our educations are so specialized now that the sort of person interested in writing can go through life never having to really engage with any scientific ideas. And when humanities courses do explore science, it's always in negative terms (the threat of the nuclear bomb, but not the development of penicillin).

Then again, maybe we want to avoid the humiliation of having our books in the Science Fiction section of Barnes & Noble.

On Tradition

2007-05-04T09:39:00.000-04:00

I'll just let Helen C. White speak for herself when she discusses “the value of a knowledge of literary tradition for the poet.”

Tradition gives a poet perspective, standards; it gives him discipline. The contemporary poet needs to be reminded of this for, like most contemporary men, he shares the contemporary illusion that the present has a reality, a validity that never was and probably never will be again. This is instinctive, I suspect, to untutored humanity. But the poet is not instinctive and untutored man or, if he is, there is no need of his remaining so. For in the works of his predecessors he has access to a sympathy and a support which his own immediate world may not always afford him.

The past is not a prison house to which he dare not return. It is the treasury of the past experience of men from which any intelligent man may draw. It is an arsenal of techniques, of imaginative resources, of hints and suggestions, of insights, and warnings, and reassurances, from which the man not imprisoned in his own moment may draw at will. Its vitality is his own surest pledge of future sympathy and helpfulness. For tradition is the continuing and deepening and widening stream of human experience. Not to enter into its mighty current is to be becalmed in a backwater, however turbulent. Not to be aware of its existence is to live and to die without ever entering into one’s human inheritance and to leave the world poorer than one found it. Tradition should be presented to the poet, then, not as something monitory or disciplinary but as something creative and fructifying and dynamic. It is that dynamic, creative function of tradition that should be stressed. And the loyalty to be invoked is not to the past but to the future.

For more along these lines, read T.S. Eliot's essay if you haven't already.

Helen C. White, Part 2

2007-05-01T22:04:00.000-04:00

During another interesting passage from the introduction to Drink from the Rock, White compares the writing of poetry to prayer, both “how they are alike and the ways in which they are different.”

For the first, they belong to the same realm, to the realm of contemplation. Both are based on the recognition of a reality in which truth and beauty have, to put it as generally as possible, very intimate relations. From the point of view of Spirit both are concerned primarily with the God Who is to be worshipped both in truth and beauty.

Her reference to “truth and beauty” recalls the final lines to Keats's “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: “Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe / Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, / ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Keats wasn't working from a Christian framework; the charge is probably even greaterwhen truth and beauty are meant to represent God and His creation. But that's Maturin territory, and I should probably save that for later.

As for the differences she identifies:

But the techniques of prayer and poetry are different, and their objectives are different. A great prayer may be a great poem, as the hymns of the Church like the Dies Irae and the Stabat Mater so well demonstrate. But two separate and distinct kinds of excellence have gone in their making.

I wish she said more about what kinds of excellence go into each, but I suppose one difference relates to the fact that a prayer can be a powerful, efficacious prayer without being original or even eloquent -- the spirit of the prayer-giver is what makes the difference. On the other hand, there's nothing worse than an earnest unoriginal poet.

Not only are there similarities between poetry and prayer, but poetry can also benefit from prayer. And I don't mean that one can become a great poet by begging God for help breaking through writer's block. The form of prayer can inspire great poetic innovations...In The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845–1961, Ian Ker argues pretty convincingly that Hopkins's sprung rhythm was influenced by the litany.

(Pedants among you will have noticed that when I quoted Keats, I closed the internal quotation at “truth beauty” -- there is some controversy as to whether the quotation should actually run through the end of the poem, so that the urn, not the speaker, says “that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Either way, a loquacious vase.)

Chaput: America's Faith is Kaput!

2007-04-30T17:28:00.000-04:00

Mark passes along a piece he thinks our vast readership will find interesting. Here's a teaser:

Americans now face the same growing spiritual illness that J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, Romano Guardini, and C.S. Lewis all wrote about in the last century. It’s a loss of hope and purpose that comes from the loss of an interior life and a living faith. It’s a loss that we can only make bearable by creating a culture of material comfort that feeds—and feeds off of—personal selfishness.

As I read the article, I was thinking that I'd mention a Flannery O'Connor line that tied in nicely with the theme, but unfortunately great minds think alike and Archbishop Chaput beat me to it. (It's actually a line she uses in more than one story, uncreative hack that she was.) Is it my imagination, or does the article (along with Bernanos's essays) seem a bit harsh in its criticism of technology? Surely the dangers of the light bulb and the Internet shouldn't be compared to the atomic bomb! Still, I like this from the same section: “Christianity sees the most important moments of the human story to be the past event of the Incarnation and the present moment of my individual opportunity to love.”

The Archbishop also mentions a company that makes mints called “ImpeachMints” and “National EmbarrassMints,” all with pictures of Bush et al. I've seen those all over the place, and am surprised they haven't lampooned Bush's tax policy with “ImpoverishMints.” But what's the company going to sell if a Democrat wins the White House? “Save the EnvironMints”? “Her Husband Was Actually Impeached Mints”?

(By the way, I don't really think Flannery O'Connor was a hack.)

How to Write with Helen White, part 1

2007-04-27T00:42:00.000-04:00

Our friend Hansonius has been generous enough to invite me to post on his blog. Thanks Hansonius, whoever you are! I thought I’d start with a series of posts about an essay written by Helen C. White, about whom you could read more all the way over here. She wrote the introduction to Drink from the Rock (1944), which is a collection of poems from Spirit, a Magazine of Poetry published by the Catholic Poetry Society of America. I confess that I haven’t read much of the poetry from the collection, so I can’t say how accurate her assessment of Spirit is. But her short essay offers some provocative insights into the creation of not only Catholic poetry, but all sorts of Catholic writing, and religious art more generally. Many of her points anticipated issues we discussed last summer in Mahwah: what makes literature Catholic? What should religious poetry do? How do religious artists reconcile their faith with their artistic responsibilities? There are so many interesting bits that rather than offering them all at once, I’m going to milk them for what they’re worth over the next week or so.

First things (no allusion intended) first. She begins her introduction by discussing the tension between the poet’s responsibility to his individual consciousness and the world at-large:

“Spirit in its very basic undertaking of encouraging the writing and reading of poetry grounded in a spiritual approach to the universe, met head-on some of the most important challenges of its day. It challenged, first of all, the unrestricted and uncontested individualism of the romantic movement. [I'll bite my tongut about why I think she's being unfair to the romantics...] It did not deny the preeminence of the individual for the creation of poetry, but it challenged the insulation and the self-sufficiency of romantic individualism. On the other hand, the Editors of Spirit defended the integrity and significance of the individual against that rush to lose the individual consciousness in the imagined consciousness of the mass of humanity in which so many disillusioned individualists of a decade ago sought to recover a sense of moral significance. It tried to do justice to two realities, both indispensable to poetic creation, realities which never should have been set in opposition to each other, the individual consciousness and the relation of that consciousness to the world without.”

But here's the rub:

“In doing so, Spirit faced squarely the burning issue of poetry and propaganda. With the critics of romanticism it agreed that the individual owed an allegiance beyond himself, that the content of a poem could not be a matter of light concern to either the poet or his reader. But it insisted no less firmly that poetry was something more than a medium for expressing ideas. It maintained this basic position against the proletarian school, that advanced the propagandist view of poetry on behalf of a materialist ideology which Spirit could not accept.”

Our ears should really perk up with the next paragraph, which reminds us that parroting catechesis does not compensate for a lack of technical and artistic ability:

“But with even more courage and independence Spirit maintained the distinctive character of poetry against the propagandists of its own point of view. As Spirit was quite historically oriented enough to know, this was a much older foe and a much more dangerous one. For the notion that correct theological ideas and praiseworthy sentiments would redeem any rhyme and lay an obligation upon the pious reader has long been the curse of religious poetry. Spirit saw clearly that the pious platitude might be a poetic blasphemy, and from the first it has waged unremitting war against the substitution of piety for poetry.”

“Pious platitude”—good stuff, isn’t it? She later calls the tension she’s describing “a confrontation of unworldly and unpoetic sanctity.” And it’s something that Flannery O’Connor discusses often in her letters and prose.

I wonder if the religious devotion and artistic excellence she’s talking about here go hand-in-hand. If a Catholic writer cannot express Catholic ideas and beliefs originally or creatively, it could very well be because he does not quite understand the ideas and teachings to begin with well enough to make them part of his individual consciousness. It’s the same with any idea: the quality of the writing very often depends on the depth of the knowledge and the strength of the understanding.

That's it for now. Now do me a favor and post a response. And stay tuned next week when Helen C. White tells us how poetry is like prayer.

Stations of the Cross

2007-03-30T17:21:00.000-04:00

Chris sent these in with this to say:

They're a few sonnets from a Catholic poetry journal called "Spirit," published in the 1940s through (I think) the 1960s, and which included contributions from a young Thomas Merton and a woman named Helen C. White, who was the first female English professor here at UW-Madison (in fact, the very ugly building that houses the English department is named after her). The sonnets I'm attaching were written by a Jesuit priest named William Donaghy.

I. He Is Condemned

Pilate must heed the public pulse and poll,
As every politician quickly learns,
The multitude that smiles, as quickly spurns,
And so he shrugs his shoulders and his soul;
His fingers flutter in the brazen bowl;
The guilt is off his hands and head; he turns
To take the spotless towel; in him burns
A doubt; but Caesar's favour is his goal.

"Sub Pontio Pilato"--down the years
Before a man may truly live, reborn
Of water and the Holy Ghost, he hears
Caught in the Creed, those words of pitying scorn
For him whose heart was meagre, not malign,
Who used ironic water for a sign.

II. He Carries His Cross

No parable my heart so cruelly cleaves-
The Prodigal among the snorting hogs,
Nor Lazarus doctored by the kindly dogs,
The stranger beaten, stripped and bruised by thieves,
The thorn-torn Shepherd seeking, as he grieves,
Some lost sheep bleating in the briars and bogs-
Sadder to me than all these analogues,
The fruitless fig-tree stands with leathern leaves.

For this is all the kingly city 'gives,
A cursed fig-tree; and a tree of blood
Denuded, ribald, it no longer lives,
Bereft of branches, shorn of bark and bud;
And yet its roots are slumbering, vital still,
At Nagasaki, Tyburn, Auriesville.

III. He Falls

The crowd is thrilled to see a fighter downed,
Battered and bloody, sprawled upon the floor,
Like multitudinous surfs upon the shore
Its shout arises; so the sickening sound
Of splintering wood upon the flinty ground
Brings from this mob a swelling, bestial roar.
What though the fall renewed the wounds and tore
His flesh, and jarred His head so crudely crowned.

These worthy citizens are men of name,
Respectable, judicious, just, discreet;
I cannot bear to have them know my shame-
My brother dying in a public street-
And though I hear our mother's choking sob,
I turn and shout "My brothers!" to the mob.

IV. He Meets His Mother

This afternoon in loud Jerusalem
They meet and part once more; no touch nor kiss
Can ease their anguish; while the mockers hiss:
"And he's the fool who thought his streaming hem
Could cure the woman. See the two of them,
The son and wife of Joseph come to this."
Two hearts cry out-abyss unto abyss,
And Jesse's flower is cut from Jesse's stem.

Perhaps she thinks of Nain-of all the land
Where wonders blossomed as He walked three years;
Of Jairus, Lazarus, the withered hand,
Of flowing mercies and of drying tears;
And still she knows her bitter place and part,
He will not heal her withered, widowed heart.

V. Simon Helps Him

Poor Simon's back was aching, and his legs
Were weary from the kicking of the plough;
And he had many worries-for his sow
Was sick; his prize hen was not laying eggs;
His crops were far behind; and floating dregs
Had spoiled the profit on his vines; and now
As he is hurrying home with heavy brow,
The soldiers seize him, though he brawls and begs.

He burns the Romans with a look of hate,
Then lends his grudging rhews to this doomed Man,
He grasps the rough-hewn beam, but feels no weight,
Though he is straining, taking all he can.
And from the Stranger, down the cross's length
There flow to Simon peace and tranquil strength.

VI. Veronica's Veil

Stout Peter struck one blow with blundering aim,
But now his futile sword abandoned lies;
Tumultuous Thomas shakes his head and sighs,
Beset with doubts and fears, and sick with shame;
The whispering Boanerges mock their name;
But in this shrilling street where valor dies,
Veronica cleans His face and wipes His eyes
And shares forever Magdalen's fragrant fame.

That screaming mob is muted; drowned in blood,
The curse has fallen on those unbent heads;
And Peter's sword has melted into mud,
The Temple veil hangs sundered into shreds;
But still her tiny veil survives, unfurled,
A banner and a bandage for the world.

VII. He Falls Again

It is too much! His watery sinews yield,
He sags and slumps; the wavering cross goes down;
Gethsemane, the night, the lash, the crown- Could one poor heart bear these,
though triple-steeled?
The hard-faced Roman legionaries wield
Their whips to drive Him out beyond the town
Where Calvary rises bushless, burned and brown;
While Judas festers in the Potter's Field.

And still no one remembers; Pharisees
And Scribes are smiling as they watch Him squirm,
Befouled and scoffed at, beaten to His knees,
Exhausted, panting, weaker than a worm.
And Jeremiah's keenings fail and fade,
Isaiah is an echo and a shade.

VIII. He Meets the Women

Last Sunday all Jerusalem had cheered,
But now the hushed hosanna's ringing note
Has soured to snarling in each fickle throat,
And all His followers have disappeared
Except these wailing women, jostJed, jeered,
Unwavering still, like her who sought the groat
And loyal yet, while priests and people gloat-
This is a day of shame for brawn and beard.

Jerusalem, O town of stupid men,
These tears will be your testament; the Lamb
You slaughter will not guard your doorposts when
The tearless Titus sets his battering ram;
Because this Victim vainly dies alone
There shall not be a stone upon a stone.

IX. He Falls the Third Time

They leave the city now; the blood and sweat
Are caked upon Him; and the clustering flies
Are crawling on His blackened wounds; His thighs
Are veined with lire; and now His torturers fret
Lest He may die and thwart them even yet;
For while they watch He stumbles, falls and lies,
Then heaves and struggles weakly to arise
And looks toward Calvary's somber silhouette.

Upon this very road will Godfrey spur,
Leading his knights-a charge of flaming swords-
Against the foemen of the carpenter
Who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords;
His strong voice hurling, like a catapult,
The thunder-breathing war-cry, "Deus vult."

X. He Is Stripped

Through rolling clouds no shaft of sunshine gleams,
A bitter breeze is stirring, sharp and chill,
The crowd sways in, blood-lusty for the kill,
Rough hands rip off the robe which has no seams,
And from reopened wounds the tired blood streams;
He stands among them, without word or will,
A shorn lamb, naked on this stunted hill,
While in the distance Tabor looms and dreams.

There was a man went down to Jericho-
See! parable is prophecy in part-
Here is the victim, scarred from head to toe,
Here are the thieves who have no heed nor heart;
Here are the proud who spurn a broken man,
Levite and priest-but no Samaritan.

XI. He Is Nailed to the Cross

This sound had echoed back in Nazareth,
The thudding hammer on the singing nails,
When Mary hastened off in flying veils,
With eyes like violets, and quickened breath,
Her Babe within her, to Elizabeth.
Now Mary winces, clenches hands, and pales,
Her dauntless spirit cringes, twists and quails,
And at each jolt she dies a double death.

The soldiers need not force Him for He lies
Patient beneath them; as the nails tear through,
His shining prayer is piercing inky skies,
"Forgive them; for they know not what they do."
And even now the arms which they transfix
Would guard them as a mother bird her chicks.

XlI. He Dies

The bleeding hours drag on; His drooping head
Sinks lower; and His parched and swollen lips
Can speak no longer; now a black eclipse
Extinguishes His eyes; the buzzards tread
The air above Him, waiting to be fed.
Once more He shifts on dislocated hips,
And cries aloud; His last vein bursts and drips-
He hangs upon His wooden monstrance, dead.
This is the triumph of the Sanhedrin,
To snare Him with its little traps and tricks,
To make Him scapegoat for all human sin
And build the first immortal crucifix.
Adoring ages, while the Scribes sneer,
Reply, "O Salutaris Ifostia."

XIII. He Is Taken From the Cross

Now you may have Him, Mary, they are done,
The shepherd stricken lies; His little flock
Had fled before the crowing of the cock;
Now Caiphas is happy; he has won;
He does not heed the frightened crowds that run,
Jerusalem is shaken; shock on shock
Llpheave the temple sanctum, rive the rock;
Now you may have the Thing that was your Son.

He cannot hear you, darling, He is dead-
Come, now, and we will hide Him from their sight;
He cannot feel your kisses on His head-
See-Nicodemus waits no more for night.
Look-he and John and Joseph stand in grief
And look to you for refuge and relief.

XIV. He Is Buried

The mourners slowly bring Him through the gloom,
The valiant women, and three faithful men;
Her shoulders shaking, stormy Magdalen
Is weeping as in Simon's dining room;
But she who felt Him moving in her womb,
Who wrapped and laid Him in a manger then
Is still His handmaid, ready once again
To wrap Him up and lay Him in His tomb.

Once Delphi was the navel of the earth,
But now this sepulchre, which blackly yawns,
Becomes the point and center of all worth,
The focus of all sunsets and all dawns;
Within this cavern, could the world but see,
Mythology yields place to mystery.

WILLIAM A. DONAGHY.

Stephanie's Peregrinations

2006-10-22T10:19:00.000-04:00

Stephanie has sent in this photograph of Beatrice's tomb in Florence.Joe Hemmerling has subjected it to a severe linguistic analysis. He claims that it contains a secret code, a code that makes reference to "gli mahwahviani" and a "bear attack" that will end "il modernismo." Oh that Joe and his Dan Brown books!

Chris's Poem about Pumpkins and Poetry

2006-10-22T10:10:00.000-04:00

Here's a timely poem for the advent of Halloween. (Dr. Russell would kill me if he saw those quasi-Christian terms tossed together so carelessly.)

Smashing Poetry

The pumpkin’s collision with the sidewalk shocks me
into silence—I stand mute and inglorious,
although I’d watched the stranger climb the balcony

and grab the décor. Hollering, he shook his fist
in conquest, as if to declare, “Man over gourd!”
I’m a coward before this minor injustice,

and act as though his hatred for a carved fruit bores
me. Truth is, I despise his malice and want to
tackle him, rub his grinning face in the orange gore

he battered from the well wrought squash. (His girlfriend, too,
who watches from below and giggles her support
for his success at turning artifice to goo.)

I nearly tell him, “you’re an asshole,” try to thwart
the thug with the obvious. But there’s a paper
due tomorrow; I should start it. Time’s always short

On Halloween. Turning my cheek, loving my neighbor
In deference to this sacred Christian holiday,
I head for home to write (and pray I get an A for

a change). As assignments go, this one is okay.
It has me digging through defunct British journals,
unearthing obscure poets, like this “E.S.J.,

Author of William and Ellen”—no eternal
bards here, just sickly scribblers confined to brown sheets
that crumble at your touch. In these, my nocturnal

musings, I trickily treat Henry Pye’s complete
works, or enough of them to conclude that the long-dead
laureate’s a hack. Critical hindsight is sweet

And I’m passing it out in handfuls to well-read
visitors. I condemn the style of Pye’s instant,
what Wordsworth so wisely rejected. Why—instead

of panegyric dreck to a royal infant,
odes to Albion’s peace—didn’t Pye ignore trends,
Write something timeless, like me and Billy Collins?

It’s late by now. Somewhere outside, my vandal friends
are looking for targets, eager to strike again.

The Kindlings

2006-09-09T10:49:00.000-04:00

I would like to bring another blog to your attention at this link. It belongs to a group called The Kindlings. I, though now a member, am not responsible for the name. It's a play on the Inklings, of course.

We're meeting every other Monday in my "library" (i.e. converted car port) to critique one another's work. The Spirit of Mahwah is stirring in Phoenix.

A Poem by Mark Signorelli

2006-09-09T10:46:00.000-04:00

One Night in Copenhagen, or Kierkegaard and Regina Meet a Final Time

“God keep you,” she said, and nervously paused before him –
She had been his betrothed and beloved, let her heart adore him
Once without restraint, but that was before the day
He abandoned her to pursue in his singular way
The truth of things, and bring profit to all mankind
By the sum of his writings – at least, so it seemed to his mind.
Now she stood before this man for a final time
On the eve of her parting into the foreign clime
Of the Caribbean, and he, he eyed her with wonder
As the glow from the gas-lamp fell on her cheek and under
The raven curls that unfolded along her shoulder –
No less fair was that face, though some twenty winters older
Than when it had leaned against his own young cheek –
He fumbled his hat, and vainly struggled to speak;
He desired to say how sorry he was for the act
That hurt her, how sure he was at the time of the fact
That he acted with virtue, that sometimes he seemed to hear
A strange voice out of heaven – not often heard in this sphere –
That told him he must forget and forfeit all
Of his joy in this world if he would be true to the call
Of his Master, and serve his duty adequately;
But also he wanted to say that he loved her greatly,
That since that time not a day – not an hour – went by
But some vision of her and her grace would occupy
His memory, that often he paused and wondered how life
Would have past, with what peace, had he taken her then for his wife,
And as often he wondered whether indeed he had made
The nobler decision, but Time went by, and had laid
Her petrifying hand on that distant choice.
Regina looked up at him, and attempted to voice
The unclear emotions that troubled the well of her soul –
She wanted to say she forgave him the deed and the dole
It had caused her in youth – though she never could comprehend
The hard pilgrimage he made of his life, in the end
She knew he did all to serve God in the best of his light,
And that she, a young girl, and naïve – however she might
Rebel at the truth – she could never expect that her beauty
Could impose on his heart an equally binding duty
As the heavens oblige, but that still remembrance had kept
A place of affection for him, and sometimes she wept
When she thought of his gentle ways, as she wept when young.
So she wanted to speak, but the words would not form on her tongue,
And she only stood uneasy before him, shy, and repeating
The very words she had barely whispered in greeting:
“God keep you,” she said, “and may all go well with you.”
Soren was paralyzed with sorrow all through,
And could only manage to make an awkward bow
And walk on, though with heavy and hesitant shuffle, and now
The ambient light of the gas-lamp glows thin on a street
That is empty, as round the corner the sound of her feet
Fades away, and he, he climbs the ill-lit stairs
That lead to his studious chambers, and all that he hears
Is the harsh, distinct noise of his steps as they fall
On the wood, and reverberate through the silent hall.

The Minotaur - Jamie Hanson

2006-09-09T10:43:00.000-04:00

My seniors and I read the Aeneid at the beginning of this year. We Jorge Luis Borges's short story called The House of Asterion. Both of those inspired this.

The Minotaur

For just a moment Theseus stood and paused
a little hesitant to strike again.
The thing lay still and quiet. There was no noise
except expectant breathing from his men.
They watched the thing, motionless in torch light,
its eyes still shut, to see what it would do.
Nothing. The thing just lay there - breathing - still.
The men relaxed; the prince breathed easier, too.
And then the eyes were open. They saw
the hero's knuckles suddenly go white,
the figure silhouetted in the flames
receding, something sharp catch light.
It bellowed, Theseus always said, and shook
in rage. He made no mention of its look.

Tim's Poems

2006-08-20T17:12:00.000-04:00

Tim has sent me two poems. One (Echo Lake) is posted here. The other (which is somewhat longer) is accessible by this link. Enjoy!

“Echo Lake”

By rope swings, cliffs, and lofty trees
Where we swam and played in spring’s obliging breeze
Residing ‘tween two mountains of hollow height
Is the water called Echo Lake,
And once I went there alone
To bathe away the day’s toilsome stains
And feel ‘freshened by lapping lulls
And a deep vibrating secret sway
That Echo Lake always makes,
The lake was deeply pressed with green that day
And swirling with blue songs like the sky
And because of the hollow heights about
Words echoed throughout
Though only one Word each time,
And once I went there alone
And swam to the middle
And with chilly waves splashing my face
My body numb in the water’s embrace,
The sun bleating upon my face
And that infinite flow without origin or termination
Piercing me like blood,
I wanted to drown in His pleasure,
Like a little flower plucked to death.

Speaking of Stephanie

2006-07-10T15:01:00.000-04:00

One role that the MLR has taken upon itself is to publicize (consider yourself the public) the successes of fellow Mahwahvians.

In that vein, please direct your attention to this story by Stephanie in the most recent edition of "Dappled Things."

The Basement - Stephanie Manuzak

2006-07-10T11:28:00.000-04:00

Stephanie has posted a story called "The Basement." Stephanie says her minimalist notions of character-driven storycraft have been turned on their heads. As a result she says she is really interested in getting suggestions for this: what works, and what doesn't.

Mahwahvians: Let us not leave her disappointed.

Joe Hemmerling, Primus Inter Pares

2006-07-07T13:48:00.000-04:00

Joe is officially the first among equals since he was the first to send in something to post. You may access his short story Helpless Cases as a .pdf file, read it, and then comment on it. You may do that publicly at this blog by clicking on "comments;" or you may e-mail Joe privately with scathing criticism and laudatory encouragement. You decide.

The Mahwhah Diaspora

2006-06-25T15:51:00.000-04:00

I hope that everyone's journeys were completed in safety. Now that we are scattered to the four corners of this round world we'll have to make an effort to remain in touch. Whether that effort is worth your while only you can decide.

To encourage Mahwahvians to post their works for critique I will designate the first person to e-mail me something the Primus Inter Pares (Prima for the females, of course). An august title, to be sure.

You may send your work to jnhanson2003@yahoo.com.

A Mass of Mahwahvians

2006-06-24T10:06:00.000-04:00

Here, for your viewing pleasure, are the major players in the Mahwah resurgency:This is the future of American letters.

Writers of Prose May Rejoice

2006-06-23T16:23:00.000-04:00

The poets have it easy. Most of what we write is short enough to be posted in blog format. What about the short stories, though, the critical articles, or exposés of deep-seated allegories? They're too long to be read conveniently in blog form.

Have no fear. The Hansonian Institute has broken new ground. They have taken advantage of some personal webspace offered by a Phoenix internet provider that would otherwise lie fallow.

This means that stories can be sent to the MLR moderator in either Word format or as PDFs and made easily accessible from the MLR blog site. With that kind of convenience what's keeping you from winning the Pulitzer? Answer: only you.

Viva la revolución!

The Mahwah Literary Review

2006-06-23T00:17:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the inaugural post of the Mahwah Literary Review. If you have found your way here you may congratulate yourself for having spelled Mahwah correctly. And, in case you hadn't noticed, history has been made.

What is the purpose of the MLR? It has two goals. One, to maintain connections between participants in the St. Robert Southwell Literary Workshop. Second, to encourage those participants to continue to write by providing an easy to use, electronic forum for pre-publication critique.

How does it all work? Well, I've made myself moderator by self-proclaimed fiat. As moderator (perhaps "Lord of the Blog" would be an apter term) I would receive works-in-progress via e-mail. I would then post the author's work on the blog and other Mahwahvians could comment. That work, benefitting from the helpful insights of others, is then published by a real journal and brings home a large cash payment to the author and fame to the Mahwah School of Literature. Plus, civil society is sustained by wholesome, Catholic literature. The rewards are virtually endless.

At the very least, this is a makeshift until some other Mahwahvian creates a better means of satisfying the two aforementioned goals. Are you that Mahwahvian?