The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton 0811209318, 9780811209311

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BOSTON PUBLIC

The Literary Essays

THCMAS MEKTON

SOME OTHER THOMAS MERTON BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

NEW

The Asian Journal The Collected Poems

DIRECTIONS

of

Thomas Merton

Gandhi on Non-Violence My Argument with the Gestapo

New Seeds of Contemplation Raids on the Unspeakable

The Way of Chuang Tzu The Wisdom of the Desert Zen and the Birds of Appetite

The Literary Essays

thgmas MERTON EDITED BY

BROTHER PATRICK HART

A New

Directions

Book

—

© 1960, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1973, 1975, 1978, 1981 by the Trustees Copyright © 1959, 1961, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1981 by The Abbey of Gethsemani, Copyright © 1953 by Our Lady of Gethsemani Monastery Copyright

of

the

Merton Legacy Trust

Inc.

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, or television review,

electronic

or

no part of

mechanical,

this

book may be reproduced

including photocopying and

storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing

Manufactured

in the

First published

587

in

any form or by any means, or by any information

recording,

from the Publisher.

United States of America

clothbound by

New

Directions in

1981 and as

New

in 1985

Published simultaneously in Canada by Penguin Books Limited Canada Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Merton, Thomas, 1915-1968.

The literary essays of Thomas Merton. (A New Directions Book) 1. Literature, Modern History and criticism

—

Collected works.

I.

Hart, Patrick.

809'.03 pn 710.M338 1984 isbn 0-8112-0931-8 (pbk.)

II.

Title.

84-20561

New Directions Books are published for James by New Directions Publishing Corporation, 80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

Laughlin

Directions Paperbook

—

CONTENTS Acknowledgments

ix

Hart

Introduction, by Brother Patrick

I

xi

Literary Essays (1959-68)

New

Blake and the

News

Theology

3

of the Joyce Industry

A Footnote from

12

Ulysses: Peace

and Revolution

The True Legendary Sound The Edwin Muir The Pasternak Affair :

23

Poetry and Criticism of 29

37

Pasternak's Letters to Georgian Friends

"Baptism in the Forest":

Wisdom and

84

Initiation in

William Faulkner Faulkner and His

92 117

Critics

"To Each His Darkness": Notes on Louis Zukofsky

The Answer

a

Novel

of Julien

Green

—The Paradise Ear

128

and Resistance

of Minerva: Pacificism

in

Simone Weil Roland Barthes J.

134

—Writing as Temperature

Morte D'Urban:

F. Powers

William Styron—Who Flannery O'Connor

The

Is

Two

140

Celebrations

Nat Turner?

—A Prose Elegy

159

of

162 168

Camus (1966-68) A Commentary and

181

Camus:

Camus: Journals

The Deputy

—The Legend of Tucker Caliban

Seven Essays on Albert

The Plague

147 152

Trial of Pope Pius XII: Rolf Hochhuth's

William Melvin Kelley II

124

Introduction

of the Plague Years

218

Terror and the Absurd Violence and Nonviolence in :

Albert

Camus

Prophetic Ambiguities

Camus and

232 :

Milton and

Camus

252

Church Three Saviors in Camus: Lucidity and the Absurd

261

The

292

the

Stranger Poverty of an Antihero :

275

Introducing Poets in Translation (1963-66)

III

Ruben Dario

305

Raissa Maritain

307

Fernando Pessoa

309

Cesar Vallejo

310

Alfonso Cortes

311

Rafael Alberti

313

Andrade

318

Pablo Antonio Cuadra

321

Ernesto Cardenal

323

Jorge Carrera

IV Related Poetry,

Literary Questions (1953-68)

Symbolism and Typology

Poetry and Contemplation

:

A

327

Reappraisal

338

Theology of Creativity Message

355

to Poets

371

Answers on Art and Freedom

375

Why Alienation Is for Everybody

381

Appendixes I

Nature and Art

An II

William Blake:

in

Essay in Interpretation (1939)

387

Early Literary Essays and Reviews (1939-40)

Huxley and the Ethics

of Peace

457

—Standards for Critics Vladimir Nabokov— Realism and Adventure John Cowper Powys — In Praise of Books John Crowe Ransom

462 464

466

Herter—In Defense of Art Agnes Addison Love of Change for Its Own Sake R. H. S. Crossman Restaging the Republic Christine

—

—

—John Skelton, Scholar, Poet, and Lewis — A Spirited Debate on E. M. W. Tillyard and C.

William Nelson

Satirist

468 470

472 474

S.

Poetry

476

Hoxie Neal Fairchild

— Background of Romanticism

479

G. Wilson Knight— That Old Dilemma of Good and Evil

481

The Art

483

Hughes William York Tindall D. H. Lawrence: of Richard

—

Himself

as a

Messiah

Huxley's Pantheon

Who Saw 488

490

Ill

Two

Transcriptions of Merton's Talks on William

Faulkner (1967)

Time and

the

Unburdening and

Easter Service in Faulkner's

the Recollection of the

The Sound and

Faulkner Meditations: The Wild Palms

Index

the

Lamb:

Fury

497 515

537

4

Digitized by the Internet Archive in

2015

https://archive.org/details/literaryessaysofOOmert

—

:

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Grateful acknowledgment

is

made

and publishers of the

to the editors

following journals and magazines where some of these essays and reviews

The American Benedictine Review, American Pax, The Catholic Worker, The Catholic World, Charlatan, The Columbia Review, Commonweal, Continuum, The Critic, ]ubilee, Katallagete, Motive, New Lazarus Review, The New Yor1{ Herald Tribune Boo\ Review, The New Yor\ Times Boo\ Review, Saturday Review, The Sewanee Review, Thought, Unicorn Journal, first

appeared, but in considerably different form:

and Worship.

The ment

publisher and editor

who

to all those

would

also like to

gave permission

extend grateful acknowledg-

to reprint

from previously pub-

lished sources

The

following essays are reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus

and Giroux,

Inc.:

"The Pasternak

Thomas Merton (Copyright

©

Affair" from Disputed Questions by

1953, 1959, 1960

by The Abbey of Our

Lady of Gethsemani); "Peace and Revolution: A Footnote from Ulysses" and "The Answer of Minerva," from The Nonviolent Alternative by

Thomas Merton (Copyright

©

1971, 1980 by the Trustees of the Merton "The Legend of Tucker Caliban" from Seeds of Destruction by Thomas Merton (Copyright 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964 by The Abbey of Gethsemani).

Legacy Trust)

;

©

"Baptism in the Forest:

was

Wisdom and

Initiation in

originally used as an introduction to

George A. Panichas (Copyright published by

William Faulkner"

Mansions

of the Spirit, ed.

© 1967 by the University of Maryland)

Hawthorn Books;

it

is

reprinted here by permission of

Elsevier /Nelson Books. "J.

F. Powers

lished in

/.

Morte D'Urban:

Two

Celebrations" was originally pub-

F. Powers, compiled by Fallon Evans and published by Herder

Book Company;

it

is

reprinted here by permission of

Tan Books and

Publishers, Inc.

"Albert Camus' The Plague: Introduction and Commentary" by Thomas Merton (Copyright 1968 by The Seabury Press, Inc.) is reprinted by permission of The Seabury Press, Inc. "Camus and the Church" is reprinted by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., from A Penny a Copy, ed. by Thomas C. Cornell and

©

James H. Forest (Copyright

© 1968 by Macmillan

Publishing Co., Inc.).

ix

—Love

Change for Its Own Sake," "William Nelson—John Skelton, Scholar, Poet, and Satirist," "E. M. W. Tillyard and C. S. Lewis—A Spirited Debate on Poetry," "G. Wilson Knight—That Old Dilemma of Good and Evil," and "William York Tindall— D. H. Lawrence: Who Saw Himself as a Messiah" first appeared as book reviews in The New Yor{ Times (© 1939, 1940 by The New York Times "Agnes Addison

Company) and

of

are reprinted by permission.

Quotations from Collected Poems by

Edwin Muir (Copyright

©

1960

by Willa Muir) in Merton's essay on Muir are reprinted by permission

Oxford University

of

Press, Inc.

Excerpts from Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, translated by

ward and Manya Harari (Copyright as quoted in "The Pasternak Affair,"

©

Max Hay-

1958 by Pantheon Books, Inc.),

are reprinted by permission of the

publisher.

Quotations from All: The Collected Short Poems, 1956-1964 by Louis

© 1966 by Louis Zukofsky), cited in "Louis Zukof—The Paradise Ear," are reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton &

Zukofsky (Copyright sky

Company,

The

Inc.

excerpts

from William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury

(Copyright 1929; renewed 1957 by William Faulkner) and The Wild

Palms (Copyright

1939;

renewed 1967 by Mrs. William Faulkner and

Mrs. Paul D. Summers), quoted in Merton's talks on Faulkner, are printed by permission of

Many

re-

Inc.

persons have been helpful with suggestions and encouragement

during the progress of tions,

Random House,

Naomi Burton

this

work, notably James Laughlin of

Stone and

Tommie

Merton Legacy Trust. Others have provided valuable

Abbot Timothy

ful advice:

Thomas

Kelly,

New

Direc-

O'Callaghan, Trustees of the assistance

and help-

Monsignor William Shannon, Fathers

Twomey, and George Kilcourse, Columban (Richard) Weber and Daniel Carrere, James Y.

Nelson, Paul E. Dinter, Gerald

Brothers

Holloway, Robert Lax, Michael Higgins, Victor A. Kramer, Robert E.

Daggy, Anne McCormick, Deba

P. Patnaik, Else Abrecht-Carrie,

Fox, Peter Glassgold, Marquita Breit, and Michael Mott. all

whom I may

Finally,

I

my deepest gratitude. my appreciation to The

To

Peggy

these,

and

have omitted,

wish

to express

Trustees of the Mer-

ton Legacy Trust for permission to include four hitherto unpublished essays:

Thomas

"Why

Alienation

nando

Pessoa, as well as Merton's Master of Arts thesis, "Nature

in

x

Merton's critique of Rolf Hochhuth's play Is for

William Blake."

The Deputy,

Everybody," a short piece on the poetry of Fer-

and Art

INTRODUCTION Following the death of Thomas Merton by accidental electrocution in

Bangkok over

decade ago, there has been an enormous upsurge of

a

and

terest in his life

new

editions,

and

writings.

own

His

early

and

collections of his essays

in-

books are being reissued in letters are

beginning

to

appear both in America and abroad. However, Merton's true stature as a literary critic has yet to be fully appreciated.

One

reason for this

haps due to the fact that a collection of his distinctly essays has not

up

to this

is

per-

critical

last years of his life, these essays

published in a variety of journals, some well-known, others

first

much

and

time been collected and published in book form.

Written for the most part during the

were

literary

less

well-known

—

all

nearly inaccessible now.

been added a number of hitherto unpublished tion of this

volume

literary talent

Born of

and

artist

it

is

critical

hoped

To

these there has

With

pieces.

the publica-

that a deeper appreciation of Merton's

judgment may be advanced.

parents (an

American mother and a

father) in southern France near the Spanish border

New

Zealander

on January

31, 1915,

Merton's early education in France, England, and America was often interrupted by travel with his father after his mother's death. Merton's first

inclinations to a literary career can be traced to his juvenile novels

while attending the lycee in France and later in his school days at Oak-

ham

in Rutland, England,

when

in 1931

he became editor of the school

magazine, The Oa\hamian (he was sixteen

and poems contributed by Merton, variety of subjects,

under

made The Oa\hamian

his editorship.

He

wrote an

at the time).

Witty drawings

as well as his short stories

on a wide

take on a cosmopolitan air

article describing

New

York

as

"The

City Without a Soul"; others about Strasbourg Cathedral, an incident on a French train,

and

a strangely prophetic piece

on Hitler and the German

presidential elections of 1932.

Following a turbulent year left

England

relatives.

for

at

Cambridge

good and came

to

after his father's death,

America

to live

Merton

with his mother's

In 1935, he entered Columbia University and soon became a part

of the literary

Columbia

group on campus, serving

in 1936 (he

as art editor of

was editor of The Columbia

The

Jester of

Yearbook, in 1937),

with Robert Lax as editor and Ralph Toledano as managing editor. Durxi

ing his undergraduate years at Columbia, there

numerous

cartoons, poems,

and

editorials in

Review, and The Columbia Spectator.

Review are included

in

Appendix

II:

Two

untitled story about "Observation Roofs"

September

4,

in

now

the

Throughout

1936.

The

Jester,

review

The Columbia from The

articles

is

likewise responsible for an

which was included

in a

column

defunct Rockefeller Center Weekly of these years there

Mark Van Doren,

ence of such professors as

record of his publishing

"Huxley and the Ethics of Peace"

and "The Art of Richard Hughes." Merton

"What Goes On"

is

was the profound

Joseph

Wood

influ-

Krutch, and

Daniel C. Walsh, as well as the stimulating companionship of fellow students,

who

included Robert Lax,

Robert Gibney, John

and

Slate,

Edward

Rice,

Seymour Freedgood,

Robert Giroux, John Berryman, Robert Gerdy,

Ad Reinhardt.

After graduation in 1938, Merton continued his studies on William

Blake and

finally

Blake," which

wrote his Master's

thesis,

"Nature and Art in William

included in this volume as Appendix

is

I.

During

this

The New Yor\ Herald Tribune Boo\ Review and The New Yorf{ Times Boo\ Review. The earliest of these were on The World's Body by John Crowe Ransom and Laughter in the Dar\ by Vladimir Nabokov, both of which were published in A Thomas Merton Reader (edited by Thomas P. McDonsame time, Merton began writing book reviews

nell;

Doubleday Image Books, 1974). Merton continued

for both

The

New

Yor\ Times Boo\ Review and The

Tribune Boo\ Review during 1939 and "Huxley's Pantheon" appeared in

titled

vember

issue of 1940,

These

to

mature

entitled Journal of

under the

New

left

My

title

flames.

The

left for

Asia on his

The

Catholic

Gethsemani

in 1941.

York

for

World last

in the

review

No-

article

(See Appendix

II.)

work; they

Gethsemani, Merton destroyed

Only one novel, written Escape from the Nazis

of

My Argument

contract for this

after his death.

His other

in the (it

of 1941,

was eventually pub-

shortly before

Merton

but was not published until the year

The Labyrinth, The Man in the Dover, which became The Night Be-

early novels, Straits of

summer

with the Gestapo), escaped the

volume was signed

final pilgrimage,

Sycamore Tree, and The xii

Yor\ Herald

in the years that followed.

of his early fiction.

lished

New

early reviews demonstrate Merton's critical faculties at

Shortly before he

most

of

to write reviews

1940. Finally, a critical essay en-

which apparently was Merton's

Abbey

before entering the

were

for

summers Bob Lax and Ed Rice in a

fore the Battle (an autobiographical novel), were written in the

and 1940 when Merton

of 1939

lived with

cottage belonging to Lax's brother-in-law in upstate

Merton was

York.

one section of which he typed out before entering the monas-

bia years,

tery as a gift to Baroness Catherine de

The Cuban

Journal,

Secular Journal of

St.

it

Hueck Doherty.

was not published

Thomas Merton, and

he was teaching

1941, the years

then at

New

keeping a journal during these post-Colum-

also faithfully

at

God

devoted to

bine a

life

poets,

and prose

clear that

it

writers,

Columbia University Extension and

The

to enter the Franciscans.

Merton was seeking

a

way

with his writing. There are notes about

and the opening and closing

com-

to

artists,

entries are, signifi-

Other sections include commentaries and critiques

cantly, about Blake.

on Dante, Graham Greene, Lorca, Rilke, Kierkegaard, Bloy, George Joyce,

The

title

covers the period of 1940 and

Bonaventure College and trying

Secular Journal makes

Originally called

under the

until 1959,

Elliot,

to name only a few. Fra Angelico and Brueghel are comment as he attended the art exhibit of the New York The Secular Journal says a great deal about Merton the

and Huxley,

singled out for

World's Fair. artist, as

well as the

the contemplative

man who

life.

Although there was

little

years in the monastery, sion in his later years. his lifetime,

seriously considered dedicating himself to

many

of

it

time for essay writing during Merton's

was

He

to

become

his

most popular mode of expres-

published over two hundred

which were

first

and

later collected

fifty essays

during

published in

book

form, such as Seeds of Destruction, Disputed Questions, Seasons of Celebration, Mystics tion in a

World

and Zen Masters, and Faith and Violence {Contemplaof Action

was

partially collected

by Merton himself but

was edited and published posthumously). Disputed Questions (1964), in particular, is of interest to us here, because this volume contained Merton's early essays

on Boris Pasternak.

It

was decided

to include these

Pasternak essays in the present book along with Merton's later essay on "Pasternak's Letters to Georgian Friends," written in 1968, which was

found among Merton's unpublished manuscripts following

"The Answer

of Minerva: Pacifism

also included as

and Resistance

an example of Merton's

social

in

his

death.

Simone Weil"

is

concern expressed in the

literary essay.

Thomas Merton worked with

ease (and not a

little

speed!) within the

xiii

4

framework of the

essay, especially

of Novices (1955-65), since there a full-length

book would

during the years when he was Master

was

require. Doubtless another reason

the review article or essay as a literary

made upon him by

time for the sustained writing

little

editors of

why

he chose

form was the constant demands

magazines and journals. At

first,

these re-

quests were for pieces on racial justice (his essays on peace and nuclear

warfare came later).

A

Different

Kelley,

A

Drummer,

which

There

is

a strong personal appeal in the tone of these essays.

His ap-

Merton did

His

his

such requests.

and provisional rather than

gifts as

and an engaging personal Master of Arts

his doctoral research

Hopkins. His of the

title

difficult to refuse

didactic, dictatorial, or authoritative.

had begun

"The Legend

Tucker

his lucidity, fluidity,

that

his review article of

of

it

usually conversational, tentative,

is

was

this

by a Negro writer, William Melvin

included here under the

is

Caliban." Merton found

proach

good example of a first novel

thesis

essayist are notably

on nature and

on the English

which he saw

as

may

be recalled

art in

Blake and

Jesuit poet

interest in the nature of art flowed

artist's role in society,

an

style. It

from

Gerard Manley

his consciousness

having an intimate connec-

As Ross Labrie has rightly pointed out in his sensitive study of Merton {The Art of Thomas Merton, Texas Christian University Press, 1979) "He [Merton] came to feel that in a technocracy such tion with morality.

:

as that evolved

was necessary

who

fled

that, in

by twentieth-century to sustain art.

from the

sterility

He

man some form

of religious idealism

sympathized with contemporary

and vulgarity of

their civilization, but

artists

he

felt

the absence of any alternative value system, these artists were

destined to vanish in the dead world of subjective abstraction."

Thomas Merton was and

his ability as

true greatness

and

an

not a literary

critic in

the usual sense of the term,

essayist has only recently

versatility,

by Ross Labrie and George

begun

to

be seen for

its

thanks in large measure to the recent studies

Woodcock (Thomas Merton: Mon\ and

Poet,

Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1979), as well as the comprehensive study of

Merton

as a poet

the Poetry of

by

Sister

Therese Lentfoehr (Words and Silence:

Thomas Merton,

New

On

Directions, 1979). Merton's essays

tended to coincide with his usual Sunday afternoon conferences to the

community at the Abbey of Gethsemani during these last years of his life. Whatever he happened to be engaged in at the moment turned out to be the subject of his talks to his fellow monks. This was especially true of xiv

on Albert Camus and William Faulkner.

his lectures

on Faulkner which appear

in this

volume were

Two

of the essays

actually written for publi-

Merton himself, while the other two were transcriptions from and edited for publication in Katallagete by James

cation by

his taped conferences

The

Holloway,

its

distinguish

them from

They

cation.

editor.

have been included

as

which Merton wrote

showing how

are significant in

themes

literary

latter

the essays

Appendix

Merton could

easily

monastic and contemplative

to the basic values of

III to

precisely for publirelate

life.

Both Camus and Faulkner were considered by Merton as genuinely

monk, which

prophetic in their writing, taking over the function of the

was seen by Merton

from formally

mid-sixties to shift his attention

ary models. After a

New

way

and

to his publisher

to

Gethsemani

friend,

and he agreed

Directions, that both Maritain

living

was

religious writings to liter-

from Jacques Maritain

visit

Merton wrote

of 1966,

This vision led Merton in the

as prophetic witness.

in the fall

James Laughlin of

that perhaps the

most

to approach theological and philosophical problems in our day

form of

in the

"creative writing

James Laughlin, October

Merton wrote

of a Stranger"

on the voices he chose

1967) a paragraph

(Letter to

literary criticism."

1966)

8,

"Day

in

and 1

{The Hudson Review XX,

for his solitude. It provides the

reader with a rather accurate picture of his select hermitage library:

There

is

a mental ecology, too, in living balance of spirits in this corner of

the woods.

Of

There

Vallejo

Ungaretti,

for

is

room here

Or

instance.

for

many

Rilke,

Edwin Muir, Quasimodo

or or

other songs besides those of birds.

Rene Char, Montale, Zukofsky, some Greeks. Or the

certing voice of Nicanor Parra, the poet of the sneeze.

Tzu whose

A

climate

is

perhaps most the climate of

climate in which there

companionship of many

is

Tzu,

Tu

And

a big graceful scroll

Fu.

Philoxenus.

no need

silent

this silent

for explanations.

Here

is

dry, disconalso

Chuang

corner of woods. is

the reassuring

Tzu's and Fu's; King Tzu, Lao Tzu,

And Nui Neng. And Chao-Chu. And

And

Here

from Suzuki. Here

also

Meng

the drawings of Sengai.

is

a Syrian hermit called

an Algerian cenobite called Camus. Here

is

heard the

clanging prose of Tertullian, with the dry catarrh of Sartre. Here the voluble dissonances of Auden, with the golden sounds of John of Salisbury.

Here 1

is

the deep vegetation of that

Peregrine Smith,

Inc.,

is

more ancient

forest in

which the angry

publishing "Day of a Stranger" as a book illustrated

by photographs taken by Merton

at this time.

XV

and Jeremias, sing. Here should be, and are, feminine voices from Angela of Foligno to Flannery O'Connor, Theresa of Avila, Juliana of Norwich, and, more personally and warmly still, Raissa Maritain. It is good birds, Isaias

to choose the voices that will be

heard in these woods, but they also choose

themselves, and send themselves here to be present in this silence. In any case there

Many

is

no lack of

voices.

of these voices are heard in this volume, but there are other

voices as well, beginning with

William Blake and James

Joyce, Boris

Pasternak and William Faulkner, Simone Weil and Julien Green, Roland Barthes and William Styron. Part

II is

prophetic witness of Albert Camus.

comprised of seven essays on the

The

third section of the

book

voted to Merton's introductions to some of his favorite poets

Latin Americans, whose work he frankly admitted he preferred to of the

North American were

their roots

poets.

in touch

their struggles for peace

He

admired these poets

de-

is

—mostly many

especially because

with the native Latin American people and

and

justice.

Cardenal (he was once a novice

at

There are short

essays

on Ernesto

Gethsemani when Merton was Novice

Master), Alfonso Cortes, Pablo Antonio Cuadra, Cesar Vallejo, and Jorge

Carrera Andrade, as well as the contemplative poet Raissa Maritain, certainly

one of

his favorites. "Rafael Alberti

and His Angels" came

after-

ward, along with Fernando Pessoa and Ruben Dario. Merton's translations of all these poets

Thomas Merton (New Finally, there

is

have been included

The

in

Collected

Poems

of

Directions, 1977).

a fourth section of related literary essays

which address

such questions as "Poetry, Symbolism and Typology," "Poetry and Contemplation: tion Is for

A

Reappraisal," "Theology of Creativity," and

Everybody"

ary group but for

— the

latter

earlier

"Why

Aliena-

for a local Louisville liter-

some unknown reason has remained unpublished

now. To round out the volume, an

was written

it

was decided

to include

volume {Raids on the Unspeakable)

two

entitled

essays

until

from

"Message

to

Poets" and "Answers on Art and Freedom," which discuss once again the problem of the responsibility of the morality.

hoped

With

artist,

the question of art and

the availability of these literary essays in one volume,

that the reader will be in a better position to evaluate

Merton's literary

gifts

and

critical

acumen and thus come

to

it is

Thomas a fuller

understanding of his message for our times.

Brother Patrick Hart xvi

I

LITERARY ESSAYS (1959-68)

4

NEW THEOLOGY

BLAKE AND THE when

Thirty years ago

was doing Blake

I

in graduate school there

were

few people who thought the prophetic books could possibly mean any-

One

thing to ordinary men. esoteric world, get the

might, of course, become initiated into their

why

cosmic dramatis personae sorted out, discover

Los and Urizen did not agree, and become familiar with Beulah, Albion,

Enitharmon, and even Luvah. But

was to a

this

had

world belonging

a purely subjective

handful of Blake students. So

if,

to

was

Damon and as

if

life itself. It

Blake only and relevant only

a

book

Milton O. Percival

called

William Blade's

book was received without comment, put on the

Circle of Destiny, the

forgotten. It

do with

to

at that time,

worked out Blake's "system" and produced shelf with Foster

little

the other Blake books,

and more or

someone had produced an obscure but useful

less

refer-

ence book on alchemy. Since that time Blake has fared better. People have given up the idea that he

was

a

madman who

wrote a few good short poems and

many bad

long ones. They have shown themselves more and more inclined to recognize

him

as a

prophet and apocalyptic visionary

insight into the world of his time

made somewhat

easier to accept

and of

who had

a very real

ours. This, of course, has been

by two world wars, the atom bomb, the

gradual disruption of Western civilization, and the emergence of a troubled and revolutionary Third World. In this situation Blake can be

who exactly predicts who "utters" and

read as a "prophet" not of course in the sense of one future events, but in the

more

traditional sense of

"announces" news about man's

own

from the very ground of that trouble intensity of Blake's prophetic fervor

one

deepest trouble in

man

—news

that emerges

And

of course the

himself.

was increased by the anger with

which he viewed the blind complacencies of rationalism, of Enlighten-

ment deism, and

of the established Churches.

of Blake: "most of the

men

conflicts

...

in the historical situation to

intuition immediately led him."

Written in April 1968,

Autumn

Schorer has well said

of his time, certainly most of the poets, had

no sense whatever of [the]

which Blake's

Mark

1968. See

this

review

Appendix

bia University, "Nature

I

for

and Art

article first appeared in The Sewanee Review, 76, Thomas Merton's Master of Arts thesis at Colum-

in

William Blake," presented

in

February 1939.

3

The growing enthusiasm for Blake has finally erupted full force in the latest book of Thomas Altizer, the radical American God-is-dead theologian whose Blakean tract, The New Apocalypse^ drafts Blake with all his works into the militant ranks of the new antireligious Christians. And of course this

not hard to do, since in fact the so-called Christian

is

atheism and radical Christianity stem via Nietzsche, Hegel, and Kierke-

gaard from roots in the Romantic era in literature and philosophy.

The

revolutionary energy of Blake and his impassioned fight for charism and

dogma and

vision against cal Christians.

Blake

"the most

is

institution

make him an

obvious saint for radi-

Dr. Altizer's book therefore abounds in declarations that .

a radical Christian

.

and "the only

."

would be

most original prophet and

in all categories about

."

.

Blake

likely to get excited.

of vision"; "he

is

is,

which

then, "the

Christendom, ... he

seer in the history of

new form

created a whole

.

the only Christian visionary

who

has envisioned the universal role of the female as both a redemptive

and

a destructive

power"; "the

first

who

visionary

chose the kenotic or

self-emptying path of immersing himself in the profane reality of experi-

ence as the

way

to the

kenotic and visionary

Blake

"the

is

first

God who "way

is

all in all

God" we

to

in Jesus."

But despite

Christian atheist" as well as "the most Christocentric

of Christian seers." All this

Christian theology, and

is

now

the familiar stock in trade of radical

we must keep

in

mind

the language of that

theology for here "Christocentric" has nothing to do with what :

for instance, to

Evelyn Underhill.

The

God" moves

"death of

place of the dead

this

are also told repeatedly that

God; but

It

means

just

it

means,

about the exact opposite.

the radical Christian to put Christ in the

the kenotic Christ has so completely emptied

himself that in fact he cannot be found anywhere except in "the individual" and in a generally "fallen humanity": the Christlike, for fallenness itself bit

is

redemptive, and

about the "redemptive work of Satan." This

there are grounds for

Blake himself, "the

all

this in

the energetic

fallen, the

we even

more

hear quite a

not sheer jocosity, and

and

creative visions of

sole creator of a post-Biblical Christian apocalypse,"

which we find "the only Christian

in

is

more

ment of God or the Godhead." Without pausing to dispute

vision of the total kenotic

these statements, one

by such a profusion of "only" and one

is

tempted

is

to

move-

brought up short

muse on

a lot of

names, some of which Dr. Altizer mentions, others of which he perhaps overlooks: Soloviev, Berdyaev, and the Russian Sophianists; 1

Thomas

J.

}.

Altizer,

The

New

Apocalypse:

The Radical

Christian

William Bla\e (Ann Arbor: Michigan State University Press, 1967).

4

Boehme Vision of

and Eckhart; Paracelsus; Nicholas of Cusa; Joachim of Flora; Scotus Erigena; Cathars.

host of medieval visionaries, Bcghards, Beguincs,

a .

.

.

has rather

One

feels thai

Blake

more company than

lesychasts,

I

1

apocalyptic prophecy .'mo protest

in his

Altizer suggests,

proclaim

to

his zeal

in

Blake "a major prophet for the contemporary radical Christian." But zeal

is

misguided. Radical theology could hardly find

not

more persuasive prophet. Blake

ideal for

is

better

;i

purposes and, as

its

thai

a

and

matter

who gains in st;itnre by the association, but radical theology. Dr. Altizcr's new book is the first one of his that shows, at least to my satisfaction, that the new theology is to be taken seriously. One can certainly agree with Altizer that Blake cannot be explained either by those who seek to reduce him entirely to orthodox Christian mysticism or by hose who show him purely as a heterodox and anti of fact,

it

is

not Blake

t

Christian seer.

then

he-

is

Christian

a

accounted for

tianity has to be mystic:,

Blake

If

is

— and

some very

in

he certainly

And

way.

special

very peculiar kind of mystic;. There

;i

Buddhist

tian. Blake's is

.

there

is

clear

a

and

parallel

same time Blake's apocalyptic theology

he-

inverts the

basically Chris

is

kenoticism seems anti-Christian, Altizer thinks, only because

so true: to the "original" apocalyptic Christianity whic h (supposedly)

and

light of this later institutional

His heaven and the City of

un-dialectical Christianity with

God made

visible

Church, Blake's marriage of heaven and

hell

OH earth by

is

much more

true to the

"freedom of the

Christianity.

New

scjus of

Testament and

God"

Without arguing

than

a

really Urizen,

Gospel message of

pomt, theologically, wc

thai the

Nobodaddy, and

eve-n

Cod

of the

Satan

man who empties himself to become identified with M;m, whom man sets up against himself, investing him with the

of

power which Caesar's."

are not "the things of

There

powerful poetic

is

Blake's

vision

effect

is

Cod"

nejt

but

Christian the: ;i

lewe-r

specter

trappings of

but really "die tilings thai are

much in Blake that anticipates with and human authenticity — the ideas of

indeed

alienation in Fcuerbach,

attack

the-,

radical Christian in Ins belief thai

Churches had perverted Christian truth and

Churches was

blasphemous

for Altizer

to the

in

orthodox, traditional Church

is

for or against this

can certainly agree that Blake was

a

the

in

God

hierarchical

the:

nothing but

and antinomian attack on established order. But

the

a

between the

vanished after Constantine and Augustine's City of God. Judged

is

is

form of Blake's

and the apocalyptiw become ne>t an poems problem, is necessary to write- problematical

dee-ply involved.

and passive

thought,

he-

modern

certainly have me>re

of a poetic Vocation and has

experience but

man and

to sing to.

works

pe>e-t

comics than with Shakespeare- but he

less

ss

le

the-ir

exercised by an admittedly unruly

is

"heard."

modern world,

have- since- surprised us: the- influence

possibilities that

Soviet poets reading

audience that

now,

is

Rome

technology came- more

;is

nature-,

despair about the

dcfi

punctuated

are-

hopeless predicament, (ornpletely cut off fre>m

in a

no inkling of

man and

betwee n

audience, with no owe to talk

of

poetry

the-

cjiily

book

the-

te-xts

not

immediacy

the

aloud. Monastic is

and more

State."

re-;ic|

for

he-

natural estate

the

reader. (Readers of manuscripts in

the-

printed hook

the-

may

author himself

the-

For Muir, then,

mental, abstract. In his deep gloom about

fingiftg.)

visual,

and

poet

the-

This

litrrafure.

in

eds no interpreter and no rnedi

general possession

a

that

felt

contact with an audience- to which

t

I

a collective person.

Middle- Ages usually

the-

critical disci

he "natural estate" of poetry

\

poetry was already deranged hy printing, which put

of

man him

tli.it

thought our refined modern criticism too esoteric, and

If

I

order

in

survive.

was only

is

Muir

the past.

in

Ofdcf that there

Muir pi inc.. it

and

the present

iii

For Muir,

the-

it

that critics will be interested in discussing.

If the

critics

ignore you, you

poem

as the

are no poet.

Indeed, what really matters brilliancy of

poetry

is

existence-

So,

Muir

its

only

a

critical

the-

audience has turned "kept"

analysis.

nc;f

so

The-

much poem

humble-, ordinary, rather

by allowing says,

is

critic isrns

te,

pod having in

bIc>om lost

all

OVCf

1

tree-

its

with

Contact t

i

c

>

n

s

crowning

;m occasion.

c,nly

is

use-less

elespair to the co n so a

existence-. Poe ts have-

the-

which

brane

he

Jiving

a

s

like-

a

its

ore nidi.

and populai

o\ an imprisoned

locked "themselves into

bus

'I

justifies

hygienic

and

prison in

35

which they speak only

one another and

to

the

to

critic

stern

their

warder." Such a situation gives Muir claustrophobia.

Doubtless Muir

too pessimistic.

is

some exaggeration and he

to

critical

methods. Yet

it is

which the poem

into

teacher's

mind. As a

is

His romantic

allergies incline

him

perhaps too negative in his estimate of

is

true that they

may become,

as

he

says,

machines

put in order to achieve a result already in the

result poetry itself tends to

become

un-

artificial,

natural, unimaginative, a formalistic exercise without interest except for

who have a private code they like to play games with. Muir's own poems are, then, deliberately left in a state which many

those

readers might consider crude

naive.

now seem

except for the fact that poets able interest, not for the

and

way he

to

He

could easily be neglected,

be reading

says things but for

him with

what he

consider-

actually says;

not for the sophistication of his technique but for his imaginative power

and

his concern for "the creation of a true

doubt

a poet

to his

own

who wrote

inflections

skimmed over with self,

to

be read aloud.

and some

the eye.

I

for all poetry:

legendary sound." This

know

if

Muir

is

no

wrote with his ear attuned

poems scan with

difficulty

when

he was a good reader him-

and then they would reveal is

serve."

Muir himself was not

for

which no other kind

is

to

us their "true

keen awareness that "The

imaginative truth."

is

"the

of speech can

a technical but a charismatic poet,

faithful to his special grace: his

giance of any poet

to

perhaps essential to poetry, which

communication of something

36

do not

He

life."

but perhaps these poems should be given the benefit that he de-

manded

was

of his

image of

and he

first alle-

THE PASTERNAK AFFAIR 1.

Memoriam

In

On

the night of

The

closed.

A

Pasternak Affair was finally

30, 1960, the

of seventy years

came

colony which he had

made

lonely Russian poet's mysterious

to a peaceful

famous

Monday, May

end

in the

—Peredelkino,

dacha

at the writer's

life

twenty miles outside of Moscow.

year and a half had passed since the brief orgy of political animosity

and righteous indignation which had celebrated the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in the

of 1958.

fall

The

alone but for his whole

presumably also for fused the prize.

life

work

Under

want

much

over the explosion that Pasternak

else.

made

While still

would

the

smoke was

general,

survive.

all

still

thick,

and the excitement

one could do was

There seems

to

to

hope and pray

have been every expecta-

both in the West and in Russia, that Pasternak was about to be-

come

The Russian

a "nonperson."

their eagerness to

could.

Western

become

as

writers

to be,

when

down he was

suffered to continue. Pasternak's

section of this essay,

left alone.

book form

introduction as a part of

possibly

effective

than

was added

was front-page news,

The

after

visits of foreign news-

letters to

Peredelkino, were

immense correspondence was apparently

"The People with Watch Chains," appeared first part, "Spiritual Implication," was pub-

and the longer third Thought, Winter 1959, under the

in Jubilee, July 1959,

An

as they

Although the poet was men-

his case

men, the "pilgrimages" of Western men of

lished in

over one another in

were probably more

the cool objectivity of nonpartisan fairness.

The second

all

from him

asked that Pasternak's case be examined with

aced in every way, especially the excitement died

fell

disassociated

writers, in appeals that

anyone expected them

tive."

press

his

of the Pasternak case, with the usual gesticulations on both sides

of the iron curtain.

tion,

The

a great deal of excitement everywhere.

from

away" from

to "get

native country because he did not feel that he could be happy any were

There was

and

Soviet pressure Pasternak re-

also refused a proffered opportunity to "escape"

Soviet Russia, pointing out that he did not

to

Pantheon, 1958)

in poetry, for his other prose works,

his translations.

He

had been offered

prize

(New York:

Pasternak, not for his novel Dr. Zhivago

to these

"The Pasternak Affair in Perspecwhen it was brought out in 1960 by Farrar Straus and Cudahy.

title

two

Disputed Questions in

parts

37

not

much

and things went on "as usual" except

interfered with,

poet could not write poetry or

work on

novel which he had planned.

He

the historical play or

was kept too busy with

The last phase The whole world

the writing of letters.

of his extraordinary

most

(including

active of

all.

writers in the Soviet a

man whose

great

term

Union) had turned

him

to

ascendency was primarily

It is

broad and more or

and

visitors

was the

life

of the younger

as to a prophetic figure,

The impact of religious, if we take

spiritual.

and sympathetic figure has been almost in a

many

that the

on the new

this

that

unqualified sense.

less

and genuinely Christian elements

true that there are striking

in

the outlook of Pasternak, in the philosophy that underlies his writing.

But of course

to

him

claim

an apologist for Christianity would be an

as

is something more general, more more existential. He has made his mark in the world not so much by what he said as by what he was: the sign of a genuinely spiritual man. Although his work is certainly very great, we must first of all take

exaggeration. His "religious" character mysterious,

account of what himself so

is

many

believes in, or

He

usually called his personal "witness."

of the things

wants

to believe

honesty, integrity, sincerity creative personality.

He

was

embodied

modern man pathetically claims he in. He became a kind of "sign" of

which we tend

to associate

in

still

that

with the free and

an embodiment of that personal warmth

also

and generosity which we seek more and more vainly among the alienated

mass-men of our too organized world. In one word, Pasternak emerged as a

genuine

became

human

a symbol,

being stranded in a

and

all

attached themselves in

those

who

some way

to

felt it

mad

way or another ceased to quality turned away from him, and found words to dismiss him from their thoughts. a real

human

one of the most heated squares

being and

all

to be

human

appropriate slogans or catch-

who was

the rest were squares.

salient characteristics of the

mad

given up, or

"for" Pasternak

On

the contrary,

Pasternak Affair in

its

most

moments was the way Pasternak got himself surrounded by coming at him from all directions with contradictory opinions.

Naturally, those

who

sanctified, or reborn.

"believed" in Pasternak were not thereby justified,

But the

fied spiritual appetites of

abstract, than

But what,

modern after

all,

men

society

fact

remains that he

for ideals a

seems

little

to offer

stirred

more

up the

personal, a

unsatis-

little less

them.

has been the precise importance of Pasternak?

this the last, vivid flareup of the light of liberal

38

who had

believe in this kind of

This does not mean, of course, that everyone

was

immediately

was important not

him. Those

sold out, or in one

He

world.

Is

and Christian humanism?

Docs he belong purely

to the past?

Or

he

is

some way

in

the link be-

tween Russia's Christian past and a possibly Christian future? Perhaps

one dare not ask such questions, and the following two studies are not by any means attempts to do

The

essay

first

the

is

so.

more

literary of the two.

development of the "Pasternak Affair" and

in

detail, the

its

significance for the spiritual

do

movement,

and

intellectual life of

examines,

tries to assess

our time. In neither

appropriate Pasternak for any special cultural or religious

to

try

I

The second

him up with any

to line

religious position that

may

be

fa-

miliar in the West, or to claim that he stands four-square for culture

and democracy

might

I

world,

find

I

as against

admit

as well it

barbarism and dictatorship. looking

that,

at the divisions of the

modern

hard to avoid seeing somewhat the same hypocrisies, the

same betrayals of man, the same denials of God, the same

evils in differ-

ent degrees and under different forms on either side. Indeed, these things in myself. Therefore

cannot find

I

it

I

find

all

myself to put on a

in

mentality that spells war. These studies of Pasternak are by no means

my

be interpreted as

to

want any

contribution to the Cold

part of the war, whether

what Pasternak himself did:

God — not

image of

am happy

I

these

two

to

speak

to

speak a

to record the fact that

studies,

my mind

set piece

and accepted

it

War, because

cold or hot.

is

it

my

I

she

is

am of

I

owe him

Pasternak himself read the

for

many

things, this

book

of

1

among

nak than these words of

and which

coming

"Man

I

dedicated to his

the great classics of the language.

his

own which

have quoted again

mem-

in

life

I

can think of

and death of Paster-

express his belief in immortality

the second study. Because of the

mind of Pasternak himself: but at home in history, while

of Christ, says Zhivago, speaking the

does not die in a ditch like a dog

work toward

in this

is

her other great writers, and that Dr. Zhivago will be studied

no better and more succinct comment upon the

1

first

The second was Because of my own

with kind approval.

persuaded that Russia will one day be as proud of Pasternak as all

in Russian schools

the

social situation.

personal admiration for this great poet, and because of the debt of

gratitude ory.

don't

out of love for man, the

dictated by

not sent to him, being to a great extent "political."

warm

I

seek only to do

I

the conquest of death

—

is

in full swing;

he dies sharing

wor\r

See pages 81-82 for the text of his

puted Questions

last letter to

the author.

Merton dedicated Dis-

to Pasternak.

39

2.

The People with Watch Chains

My

sister-called-life, like a tidal

Swamps

wave breaking

the bright world in a wall of spring rain:

But people with watch-chains grumble and frown

With poisoned

politeness, like snakes in the corn.

From My It is

perhaps not quite

from an that

poem.

early

may

fair to start a discussion of

He

repudiated his earlier

style,

Pasternak with lines

(He

much

together with

was written by the Futurists and Symbolists who were

forty years ago.

one

Sister Life.

his friends

did not, of course, repudiate his friends. For some-

like Pasternak, friends

He may

cannot become "nonpersons.")

or

not have pardoned us for enjoying the freshness of this early verse,

but in any case

and

his bride

it is

who was

clear that Life

his very self in

his "sister" in 1917

became

Dr. Zhivago ("Doctor Life"). Life

once the hero and the heroine (Lara) of

seemingly

this strange,

is

at

pessi-

mistic but victorious tragedy: not, however, Life in the abstract, certainly

not the illusory, frozen-faced imago of Life upon which constructs

its

spiritless fantasies of the future.

painful, ambivalent, yet inexhaustibly fecund reality that

A

of Russia.

reality

which, with

all

overflows

all

of turbulent

and

all

the possible limits of recorded history.

Hundreds

and exquisite prose give us some insight

the

was experienced, quite

which

of pages

into the vastness

providentiallv. by one of the

it

few

original spirits that survived the storm.

and

is

the very soul

that followed, but

of that reality as sensitive

is

paradoxes, has certainly mani-

its

fested itself in the Russian revolution

Communism

Life for Pasternak

And

since Life

cannot be confined within the boundaries of one nation, what Pasternak has to sav about It is

overflows symbolism, into every corner of the world.

it

the mysterv of historv as passion

and resurrection

who

obscurely in the story of the obscure Doctor novel. This frustrated, confused, nist

is

man"

but

gives his

we glimpse name to the

somehow triumphant protagoand even Russia, but mankind not

and

yet

—

not only Pasternak himself

"twentieth-century

that

man who

is

perhaps too existential and

mysterious for any label to convey his meaning and his identity. course, are that

That

is

the

We,

of

man.

mark

of a reallv great

body and everybody

is

involved in

book

it.

:

it is

in

some way about every-

Nothing could be done

to stop the

drab epic of Zhivago, like the downpour in the 1917 poem, from bursting

on the heads of

For that

40

all

and swamping them whether they liked

exactly

what Life cannot

The appearance

of Dr. Zhivago,

is

refrain

and

it

or not.

from doing.

all

the confused

and largely

absurd reactions which followed upon

form

it,

meaningful

a verv

inci-

dent at the close of an apparently meaningless decade. Certainly the sur-

and instant

prise publication

Russia,

where

has been avidly read in manuscript by

it

who

intellectuals

could get hold of

the noise and

all

success of the novel everywhere (including

empty oratory

has

it)

more

of the Soviet fortieth anniversary. This

significance will of course be missed bv

all

book

as all black or all white, all

The dimensions tual

those simple

and

good or

all

bad,

worldview are more

of Pasternak's

and are decidedlv beyond

left

In bursting upon the heads of all

who and who

those

purely partisan and simpliste view of events, the

young

the

all

to say in retrospect than

and

all,

pontifical souls

on taking

insist

a

therefore interpret

or

all left

all right.

and

existential

spiri-

right.

Zhivago inevitably deluged

whose Gospel

first

of

passive conformity

is

with the politicians and bigshots, with the high priests of journalism and the doctors of propaganda: rate their

upon

those

who though

paunches with cheap watch chains,

they no longer decothrive

still

on conformity

with the status quo, on either side of the iron curtain.

Zhivago

one of those immensely "popular" books that has not

is

been popular. it

with

It

has been bought by

Pasternak's heavy

and

No

understanding.

full

volume

wrong

for the

in their

reasons.

more people than were

doubt

others

the unquiet feeling that

businesslike.

For such

it

who have

read

only vaguely

it

have put

it

was somehow not

as these, "life" has ceased to

For the people with watch chains, a This has been brought

it

means

that gets along

life

home

it

sufficiently

mean what

independently of the plans of politicians and economists a reactionary illusion.

able to read

who have had

of those

hands have approved of

And

down with

to Pasternak.

many

really

nothing but

is

Pasternak in no

to

uncertain terms by his devoted confreres in the Soviet Writers' Union.

But the same judgment has

finally

worked

where Isaac Deutscher, the biographer of being another

Oblomov and

"an atrocity." Let us face

it,

scolded

him

its

way out

Stalin, has accused

it

also,

Zhivago of

for considering the revolution

the people with watch chains can easily

reconcile themselves with any atrocity that serves their

whether

West

in the

own

opportunism,

be in the form of a revolution or of an atomic bomb. Life

(claimed as a

sister

by escapists and cosmopolitan

learn to get along in these

new

circumstances.

mad

The

dogs) had better

atrocities are here to

stay.

All great writing tionary, because

it

is

in

some sense revolutionary. Life

constantly strives to surpass

itself.

itself is

And

be something more than the record of society's bogging

if

revolu-

history

down

in

is

to

mean41

men, then

ingless formalities to justify the crimes of

same time great

in

its

own

impact on the world of

right,

its

book that

a

and moreover lands with

a

is

at the

tremendous

time, deserves an important place in history.

why Dr. Zhivago is significant is precisely that it stands so far above politics. This, among other things, places it in an entirely different category from Dudintsev's Not by Bread Alone. Attempts to in-

The

reason

volve Pasternak in the Cold

The cloud

futility.

War

have been remarkable above

of misunderstandings

and accusations

all

by their

surrounded

that

the affair did not engulf Pasternak: the confusion served principally to

emphasize the distance which separated him from

and

his accusers

his

admirers alike.

Both

and

as a writer

as a

man, Pasternak stands out

His

spiritual genius

cance does not solitude

essentially

is

and powerfully

precisely in this.

lie

made him men

contacts with

Rather

as a sign of con-

and power

tradiction in our age of materialism, collectivism,

solitary.

Yet

capable of extraordinarily intimate and understanding

over the face of the earth.

all

formula for the unification of mankind, not a the evils in the world:

The

thing that attracted

collectivist

was the man himself, the truth

it

with

his simplicity, his direct contact

of the only revolutionary force that is

his signifi-

in the fact that his very

it lies

people to Pasternak was not a social or political theory,

new: he

politics.

life,

and the

was not

it

panacea for

that

fact that

was

in

he was

a

all

him, full

capable of producing anything

is

full of love.

Pasternak

is

then not just a

man who

refuses to

conform (that

is

to

The fact is, he is not a rebel, for a rebel is one who wanes own authority for the authority of somebody else. Pasternak is one who cannot conform to an artificial and stereotyped pattern because, by the grace of God, he is too much alive to be capable of such say, a rebel).

to substitute his

treason to himself

same way said:

that

and

to

life.

Gandhi was

"Passive resistance

is

He

is

not a rebel but a revolutionary, in the

a revolutionary. all

And

in fact those

right against the English but

who have it

would

never work against Russia" must stop and consider that in Pasternak did, to

some

extent,

work even

be compared with Gandhi.

to

ways, his protest

manity

itself,

is

Though

itself

servile

42

different in so

speaking not with theories

and asking

to

Like Gandhi, Pasternak stands out

be judged on as a gigantic

and mercenary conformities. His presence

an inescapable

is

ultimately the same: the protest of

of love,

simply affirming

in Russia. Pasternak

effect:

it

its

certainly a

many

it

man

accidental

life itself,

of hu-

and programs but

own

merits.

paradox in a world of

in such a

world has had

has struck fear into the hearts of everyone

else,

whether

in Russia or in

waves of

America.

love, fear, hate

The

reaction to Pasternak, the alternate

and adulation that have rushed toward him

from every part of the world, were

motion by the

all set in

society that has consciously and knowingly betrayed

out to

guilt of a

and sold

life,

itself

formalism, and spiritual degradation. In some (for instance,

falsity,

the pundits of Soviet literature) this guilt has produced hatred and rage

The

against Pasternak.

more loudly

There were

even

talent, like Ilya

intolerable.

were themselves

His colleagues

and

in

yelled all the

servile

few notable exceptions, rare writers of

a

and second

integrity

and

Ehrenburg.

politicians of the

Kremlin, on the other hand, not being writers,

not thoroughly understanding what

moved

was

to yell for his blood,

in proportion as they

rate.

The

fear he aroused

Union began

the Soviet Writers'

it

was

all

and were slow

to guilt, felt less fear,

about anyway, were

to

less

do much about the case

at first.

In the

same

West

fear,

was

tion

was

the reaction

mode and

but in a different

to

the courage

We

felt

the

degree.

On

the whole our reac-

different.

same

guilt, the

Pasternak with fervent accolades: to admire in him

run

to

and

integrity

we

we can

lack in ourselves. Perhaps

taste a

little

vicarious revolutionary joy without doing anything to change our

own

lives.

tution

I

ness

we

To

justify

think

our

own

condition of servility and spiritual prosti-

admire another man's

sufficient to

it

show

think that later pages of this study will

That

essentially Christian.

is

of Pasternak's "Christianity" barest

and most elementary

human

lies

creating

dynamic and itself

As soon

as

anew

in the fact that :

is

reduced

intense awareness of

all

which

honors

really

to

the

cosmic and into love as

this "Life"

by

— Christ's—image.

Dr. Zhivago appeared everybody began comparing Pas-

The comparisons were

ternak with Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

sometimes

it

and the consequent plunge

creative force

in Life's

that Pasternak's wit-

the trouble: the problematical quality

essentials

reality as "life in Christ,"

the only

is

integrity.

trite,

obvious,

but basically legitimate. However, they run the risk of

creating misconceptions. Pasternak does not merely

work on an enormous

canvas, like the classical novelists of the nineteenth century. Sholokhov also

has done that, and Pasternak

khov, competent as the Tolstoy

is

is

latter

immensely more important than Sholo-

may

be.

in fact to disqualify oneself for

an original and unique genius of his Pasternak a

new

Tolstoy

is

But

to

be a twentieth-century

comparison with one

own

age.

The

precisely the fact that

he

who was

thing that makes is

not Tolstoy, he

43

—

is

Pasternak.

and

He

is,

original vision,

that

is

whole new world. But

it is

an enormous

in

not the world of

constructed in the same way. In

fact,

War and

which Tolstoy was

not,

and the

He

structure of

is

of

new

area, creates a

Peace and

Pasternak has as

with Joyce and Proust as he has with Tolstoy. cian,

man

power, a

to say, a writer of great

whose work takes

much

it is

is

not

common

and

a poet

Zhivago

in

a musi-

symphonic,

thematic, almost liturgical. Both writers are "spiritual" in a very deep

way, but the spirituality of Tolstoy

Like Dostoevsky, Pasternak atic is

always more ethical and pedestrian.

sees life as a mystic,

kenoticism of the Brothers Karamazov.

more

less

is

latent,

more cosmic, more pagan,

sophisticated, free

therefore a "newness"

ingly with the

worn and mature

for a brief

of Christ seen in

moment do

aside" to let the worshippers

of Pasternak

more

hieratic forms.

much

There

is

suffering. Pasternak's simple

illustrates this point. It is the

and through nature. Only

The

a country church.

come

primitive,

Zossima purified of

sanctity of Staretz

death

discreetly

forms present themselves,

ritual

emerge from

like. It is

in his spirituality that contrasts strik-

and moving poem on "Holy Week"

see a procession

you

and untouched by any

and freshness

self-consciousness by the weariness of

and resurrection

if

but without the hier-

The mysticism

as

and

when we

birch tree "stands

forth but the procession soon returns

into the church.

And March scoops up the snow on the porch And scatters it like alms among the halt and As though a man had carried out the Ark And opened it and distributed all it held. All the reality of

shape

—a

Holy Week

shape given to

it

is

there,

lame

but in a very simple, elementary

by Pasternak's humility and contact with the

"sacred" earth.

The

very scarce and slight expressions of explicit spirituality in Dr.

Zhivago are uttered by people who might have qualified

for a place in

the Brothers Karamazov (Uncle Nikolai and the seamstress of Yuriatin),

but they have about them the ingenuousness of a spirituality that has never yet become quite conscious of

itself

and has therefore never needed

be purified.

to

If

Pasternak's view of the universe

of Genesis, not the churchly

is

liturgical,

and hierarchal

that liturgy,

from the

44

and belongs

to

liturgy frequently

and

in

It

is

the cosmic liturgy

liturgy of the Apocalypse, of

pseudo-Dionysius, and of the Orthodox Church. that Church.

it

And

yet Pasternak loves

even occurs to him to quote

strange places: for instance, these

:

words which he declared indicate a poets Blok

"Let

and

bling,

flesh

be silent and

remain

let it

no living being think within

let

in terror,

immolation and

to

become

Notice, though, in

just as itself

Through

text.

say then that

with which

all flesh

And

so,

On

is

its

rumor

better weather

a liturgical character

the contrary,

though Pasternak any

poem on

it is

is

not to accuse

Love which is

is

all

by

hymn

unstrained by formal or hieratic

has a kind of pre-Christian character. In

find the ingenuous Christianity of an

has discovered Christianity

to

the image of the Creator.

deeply and purely Christian, his sim-

ritualistic routine,

sort,

of

it

to praise the spontaneity

and reverence spring up on every page

cries of joy

rigidities of

stanza of the

power of the Resurrection.

Zhivago has

untainted by

last

will fall silent

forth

soon as there

the sanctity of Life and of that

plicity,

In the

can be overcome

the

hieratic ceremoniousness.

in

midnight comes

All creatures and

Death

Himself

on the Easter Vigil:

his lines

On hearing Spring put That

to offer

subdued and apologetic manner Pasternak

a

himself makes use of this powerful

And when

in trem-

the food of the faithful."

what

"Holy Week," we read

and

For behold, there

itself.

cometh the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords

To

the

and Mayakovsky

human

all

basic liturgical inspiration in

anima

itself. It is

him we

naturaliter Christiana that

a Christianity that

home with dogmatic formulas, but gropes after own clumsy way. And so in his Christianity and in

is

not per-

fectly at

revealed truth

in

all

its

ality

Pasternak

ful qualities

is

exceedingly primitive. This

and we owe

the State in Russia.

it

no doubt

Where

the

is

one of

his

his spiritu-

most wonder-

to the persecution of Christianity

Church was

free

we

by

got the complex,

tormented Christianity of Dostoevsky. Where the Church

is

confined and

we get the rudimentary, "primitive" Christianity of Pasternak. What Zhivago opposes to Communism is therefore not a defense

limited

Western democracy, not a

and

still

less a tract in

munism with clusions.

platform for some kind of liberalism,

favor of formal religion. Zhivago confronts

life itself

Communism

political

and

Com-

leaves us in the presence of inevitable con-

has proposed to control

and with the tyranny of

of

artificial

forms. Those

delusion and yielded themselves up to

it

life

with a rigid system

who have

believed in this

as to a "superior force"

have

45

human

paid the penalty by ceasing to be complete

word, by ceasing

live in the full sense of the

beings, bv ceasing to

be men. Even the

to

and devoted Strelnikov becomes the victim of

own

his

idealistic

and Lara

ideals,

can say of him: It

was

As

something abstract had crept into

as if

human

a living

it

image of an

...

idea.

realized that this

I

had handed himself over

and

will not spare

man and

The

fact that this

sounded

is

had happened

to a superior force that

in the end.

was the

It

judgment

me

to

him because he

to

deadening and

was

that he

much

food for

definite

way

The

reflection.

at the

The

man"

"beast in

and made

life

bv the influence of inner and

spiritual music.

man

has for centuries raised

inward music; the tion of

its

example.

of

life,

the most important thing that

He

munion,

is

life is

The words Gandhi. The

that

symbolic because

about the rest,

maxims and commandments. But

it is

mortals

is

what

power

of

unarmed

truth" are pure

gives Pasternak's vision of the world

and sacramental character (always remembering

much

established ritual

and

entirely nonhieratic

Everyone has been

form

that in

him sacrament

or not,

struck, not to

plunged

is

dition of "natural contemplation"

had been

set

in

has not been altogether

Orthodox Church. The

that his

its

"lit-

implies not so

as living mystery).

mention embarrassed, bv the over-

powering symbolic richness of Dr. Zhivago. In it

idea that

immortal, and that the

meaningful.

"irresistible

is

is

he knows

The

for

from

about the inextricable union of symbolism and com-

urgy"

it

not the cudgel but an

that Christ speaks in parables taken

is

communion between

in life itself,

liturgical

after

is

truth, the powerful attrac-

explains the truth in terms of everyday reality.

underlies this

whole of

unarmed

and love

has always been assumed that the most important

It

things in the Gospels are the ethical

me

to serve creativeness

above the beast

power

irresistible

all its vari-

not to be tamed bv threats, but must be

is

brought into harmony with

What

yet

is

Christian

very beginning of the

book, as one of the themes which will recur most strongly in ous parts.

pitiless

marked

a

Freudianism and

so closely akin to

is

and

in a strong

seemed

is

colorless.

it

a principle, the

doom.

seal of his

Christian gives one

explicitlv

note

that this

him

and made

his face

had become the embodiment of

face

fully

into

fact,

Pasternak, whether

midstream of the

lost

tra-

which flowed among the Greek Fathers

motion by Origen. Of course the tradition lost,

fact

is

and Pasternak has come upon clear in

any

case:

it

in

the

he reads the Scriptures

with the avidity and the spiritual imagination of Origen and he looks

46

on the world with the illuminated eyes of the Cappadocian Fathers

—but

without their dogmatic and ascetic preoccupations.

However, concerned.

not with scriptual images that Pasternak

is

it

The

primarily

is

Fathers of the Church declared that the Scriptures are a

recreated world, a Paradise restored to the cosmic liturgy by his

fall.

man

Pasternak

Adam

after

had disturbed

not the prophet of this

is

gained Paradise, as were Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. Rather he

who

prophet of the original, cosmic revelation: one figures of the inward, spiritual world,

Not

so

that

is

much written

in the formal,

down

It is as artist,

is

beings and

a

the

men.

and empires and mys-

in the indescribable inter-

their destinies.

symbolist,

and prophet

in opposition to Soviet society.

He

illusory, history of states

human

in

in the history of

in books, but in the living, transcendental

terious history of individual

weaving of

and

all

is

symbols and

sees

working themselves out

mystery of the universe around him and above

re-

Adam, and

He

that

himself

therefore also, in

some

Zhivago stands most a

is

man

One

instance, the description of the Edenlike

lonely coppice

The

fragrant

garden

fields,

where Yurii speaks with

at

Lara

is

shown

of those innumerable coincidences

supreme significance

in his novel)

Eve and

Duplyanka

in the very

the heat, the flowerbeds, the

his angel or his

to us in the

is

should examine, for

presence (again a sophianic presence) seems to surround too Lara, as a girl,

radically

Eden, of Paradise.

sense, Christ.

Sophia (the Cosmic Bride of God) and Russia.

beginning of the book.

of

mother whose

him

here.

Here

beginning of the book (in one

which Pasternak himself regards

as of

:

Lara walked along the tracks following a path worn by pilgrims and then turned into the

fields.

Here she stopped and,

closing her eyes, took a deep

breath of the flower-scented air of the broad expanse around her.

It

was

dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a

moment

she rediscovered the purpose of her

grasp the meaning of

name,

or, if this

successors

The

life.

wild enchantment, to

were not in her power,

who would do

it

She was here on earth

call

is

each thing by

its

to

right

to give birth out of love for life to

in her place.

allusion to that primeval, Edenic existence in

animals their names all

its

transparently obvious.

which

And Eve

is

Adam

gave the

the "Mother of

the living."

Yurii and Lara will be united in another Eden, at Varykino, but a strange

Eden

of

snow and

silence, lost

in

a vast landscape

wasted by

47

armies. There Yurii will give himself, in the night, to his most fruitful

work

of poetic creation.

Eden image which symbolizes

In contrast to the

and Lara, of Adam, of

of Yurii

One

tures in Yuriatin.

called "Opposite the

most

of the

House

the sophianic world

House

Christ, stands the

of the Sculptures."

Duplyanka. The opposition

(Lara) Antopova lived

at the

It

did indeed live up to

was something strange and disturbing about

surrounded by female mythological figures half

Between two gusts of the dust storm

ings.

women

in the

him over

warmth

that per-

obvious.

is

corner of Merchant Street opposite the dark,

blue-grey house with sculptures. ... there

it

as big again as

seemed

name and

its

entire top floor

Its

it.

to

him

human

as

if

house had come out on the balcony and were looking

the balustrade.

.

.

At the corner there was

is

Old Testament, speak-

ing by lamplight in the same enchanted atmosphere of fields of

book

where the

the one

It is

seamstress develops the typological figures of the

vaded the

of the Sculp-

significant chapters of the

all

was be-

the

down

at

.

a dark grey house with sculptures.

square stones of the lower part of

its

The huge

facade were covered with freshly

posted sheets of government newspapers and proclamations. Small groups of people stood

on the sidewalk, reading

With uncanny

in silence.

.

.

.

insight, the poet has portrayed the bourgeois

world of

the nineteenth century, a grey facade covered with "sculptures"

mous and meaningless figures.

Yet

a dust

figures of nothingness, figures for the sake of

storm gives them an illusory

life.

Decorations with no

inner reference: advertisements of a culture that has lost

run soberly raving through ful of rubles. All that

set for the Posters

Novy Mir

its

own

remained was

be gutted and emptied of

to

—enor-

its

head and has

its

backyards and factories with a hand-

house

for the

semihuman

itself

behind the facade

content: then everything was

and Proclamations of the Red

the editors of

state. If

read Dr. Zhivago with understanding they would have found

in this passage a

much more profound condemnation

Communism

of

than in the description of the Partisan battle which they picked out for special reproof.

On

the one

hand we have the revolution "what they mean by :

ideas

nothing but words, claptrap in praise of the revolution and the gime.

.

.

."

Against

this

pseudo-scientific array of

stands the doctor and poet, the diagnostician. (the term

he

is

is

chosen advisedly)

able to get "an

is

One

propaganda

By

a situation as a

the Marxists vainly hope to achieve by pseudo-science. But

48

re-

cliches,

of his greatest sins

his belief in intuition.

immediate grasp of

is

his intuition,

whole" which

what does he

seek most of all?

What is his real work? As poet, his function is not own state of mind, and not merely to exercise his

merely to express his

own

artistic

power. Pasternak's concept of the poet's vocation

once

at

is

dynamic and contemplative: two terms which can only be synthesized

in

the heat of a prophetic ardor.

Language uses.

a

This

mine

When

is

not merely the material or the instrument which the poet

is

the sin of the Soviet ideologist for

of terms

Human

Nature

and individual

exploited.

(the

God-manhood that speaks

—

of

is

God new

wonderful and

the transfigured, spiritualized,

is

it

Word

then in the very flow of

intuitions, the poet utters the voice of that

and divinized cosmos its

human language

—Divinity and Sophia)

mysterious world of

simply

is

of inspiration the poet's creative intelligence

married with the inborn wisdom of

and

language

and formulas which can be pragmatically

moment

in the

whom

through him, and through him

utters

praise of the Creator.

Language, the home and receptacle of beauty and meaning, think and speak for

man and

nority but in terms of the impetuousness like the current of a its

mighty

itself

begins to

turns wholly into music, not in terms of so-

and power of

river polishing stones

its

inward

flow.

and turning wheels by

very movement, the flow of speech creates in passing, by virtue of

laws, meter

and rhythm and countless other

more important, but which

Then,

relationships,

which

its

own

are even

are as yet unexplored, insufficiently recognized,

and unnamed. At such moments, Yurii Adreievitch

felt that the main part work was being done not by him but by a superior power that was above him and directed him, namely the movement of universal thought

of the

and poetry felt

in

its

ment

possible.

This

is

complete

word).

and

existentialist

One might

(in the

most favorable and

make

ask, in the light of this passage,

is

no.

less

developed than that of Berdyaev.

if

his Christian

What we The

of Dante, for example,

to a is

It is

contemporary of Einstein and Bergson: but

also akin to the vision of St.

let

to

have here

is

a

imthis is

a

less articu-

Christian cosmology

was static and centripetal. But Christianity bound up with Ptolemaic astronomy. Pasternak is absorbed in his of a fluid, ever-moving, ever-developing cosmos.

he

move-

He

more than secondary symbols, subordinated

dynamic worldview. The answer

and

this

religious sense of the

Christian existentialism like that of Berdyaev, and of course far late

And

one to come.

in the

the very key to Pasternak's "religious philosophy."

ages were nothing great,

present historical stage

himself to be only the occasion, the fulcrum, needed to

is

not

vision

a vision appropriate

us not forget that

it

Gregory of Nyssa.

49

not necessary at this point to investigate further the depth and

It is

genuineness of the Christian elements in Pasternak. They are clearly present, but their presence should not delude us into

There are many

tions in his regard.

differences

any oversimplifica-

between

his Christianity

To

and the Protestant, or even the Catholic Christianity of the West.

what extent are

fundamental?

these differences

to this question elsewhere. Sufficient to

book Christ becomes

of the

We

remember

may

that

perhaps return

in the first pages

if

a kind of ideological or symbolic center for

the whole structure, this does not alter the fact that Uncle Nikolai pro-

pounds

which cannot help but perplex

his belief in the following terms,

the average believer:

One must

be true to Christ.

possible to be an atheist,

it

why, and yet believe that

and

tory,

that history as

Christ's Gospel

.

.

.

What you

don't understand

possible not to

is

is

that

know whether God

is

it

exists or

man does not live in a state of nature but in we know it now began with Christ, and

his-

that

foundation.

is its

Without commenting on

this passage, let us

typical of the "religious statements"

made

simply remark that

is

it

here and there in the book

which very frequently are much tamer and more simple than they appear to be at first sight.

word

"agnostic," as

clear

is

not necessarily

Here

What

"atheist."

the difficulty arises largely

from

make

Sima on

a

misuse of the

his

own

explanation.

Note

is

that Pasternak does

himself personally answerable for the theology of

Uncle Nikolai, and that he records with discourse of

from

Pasternak really means, in our terminology,

the miracles of the

greatest miracle, the Incarnation. It

is

full

approval the remarkable

Old Testament

as "types" of the

clear that Christ, for Pasternak,

is

a

transcendent and Personal Being in the sense generally understood by such

orthodox theologians as Soloviev or the Russian

The

Christ of Pasternak

view of the cosmos

is,

is

Soloviev in Egypt. His protestations that for is

mind

who has no pretension So much for his terms. But as one

is,

after

all,

his "sister Life"

who

appeared to

"believing in

not quite the same thing as

popular anthropomorphic for

and

Sophia

him

Berdyaev.

"God-manhood." His

the Christ of Soloviev's

like Berdyaev's, "sophianic"

has, in fact, all the characteristics of the Sancta

in "the Resurrection"

existentialist

it

God"

might be

or

to the

quite legitimate self-defense

of talking like a professional theologian. for his intentions

and

his spirit, of these

there can be no doubt: they are genuinely religious, authentically Christian,

5°

and

all

the

more

so for their

spontaneous unconventionality.

But the important thing

to realize

tual thinkers, to concentrate

strict analysis

and formulas

of concepts

The

great error, the

which the Communists themselves plunge headlong

error into

opportunity,

and

to try

is

ready-made plain

on a

with the man's basic intuitions.

to lose contact

is

that here, as with all deeply spiri-

is

to

peg genius down and make Pasternak

classification.

man

not a

is

And we must

definite category.

for

fit

it

at the first

whom

not try to tag

some

into

there

him with

names: Christian, Communist; anti-Christian, anti-Communist;

is

a

easy

liberal,

reactionary; personalist, romanticist, etc.

As Lara

one of her most "sophianic" moods:

says, in

only in

"It's

mediocre books that people are divided into two camps and have nothing

do with each other. In

to

real

everything gets mixed up! Don't you

life,

think you'd have to be a hopeless nonentity to play only one role

have only one place

to

life,

in

your

all

always to stand for the same

society,

thing?" Both the admirers and the enemies of Pasternak have tried to do

him

this great

books," and to

make

of

lamentable prejudices. plain

—and

is

not too politely

—"like

some names

true that

It is

him into one of their own "mediocre him a stereotype to fit and to excuse their own Thus do the "people with watch chains" com-

dishonor: to write

much

certainly very

sian.

His

a lot safer to say that

would be

it

and not very much of of

is first

all

he

is

a

Communist.

quite personal, then quite Rus-

and then again Russian, though

politics are personal first of all

might be

But

fit

of a Christian

Nevertheless his Christianity

it

snakes in the corn."

Pasternak better than others, and that he

antipolitical rather

than

utterly false to say (as his accusers said)

political.

that he

had

rejected the Russian revolution as a whole.

Where

precisely does he stand?

stands nowhere, but moves.

and

this

stood.

what must be taken

is

From

the very

first

The answer

He moves

into account

we must

is

that like life itself he

in a definite direction, if

he

is

to

however,

be properly under-

realize that this direction does not

lie,

simply, west of Russia. Pasternak's tendencies are neither geographi-

cal

nor

political.

His movement

is

beyond the

rigid,

more confused, the West.

it

is

of the future

not yet with us.

He

looks

frozen monolith of Soviet society; he looks beyond the

shifting,

What

new dimension

into the

which we cannot yet estimate because

and colliding forms that make up the world of

does he see? Freedom.

after the mythical

Not

"withering away of the

sponsibility that leaves

psychological forces.

the freedom of Soviet state."

Not

Western man the captive of economic,

Not even

that vision

man

the chaotic irresocial,

and

which has been irreverently de51

freedom of the sons of God, on

scribed as "pie in the sky," but really the

which "individual

earth, in

contents

life

becomes the

story of

life

God and

its

the vast expanses of the universe."

fill

Spiritual Implication

3.

Boris Pasternak established himself in

(

1

one of the very few un-

>SS as

questionably great writers of our century. For forty years this deeply sensitive

and

original poet

had remained hidden and

Russia that seemed entirely alien to his genius.

in a

statement to say that Soviet

him

scorning

as a

It

would be an under-

him

criticism relegated

official

unknown

practically

to oblivion,

bourgeois individualist and an internal emigre. Rut

and November 1958 were

the events of October

bring out the fact that

to

Pasternak had remained one of the most admired and loved Russian even

poets,

Russia

in

who had

miraculous being, life

but with his

dom and

itself. It

full

both

true,

is

But that was precisely

a poet's poet.

Russia and outside

in

his importance.

He

was

it

a rare,

he was almost

survived the Stalin purges not only with his

independence:

spiritual

creativity in the midst of an

kind of symbol of

a

alienated society

— an

free-

alienated

world.

The

fact that the prize

award followed

on the publication and

closely

made it easy new gambit in

the world-wide success of Dr. Zhivago that the

whole thing was

a plot, a

for politicians to say

the Cold

War. This

popular oversimplification obscured the literary importance of the novel

which represented the waiting in silence for

maturing of

final

many

pline of sorrowful gestation

had given the book

demanded

sive sincerity that

unable to express

years,

to

be heard.

And

book

really

Were

Tolstoy? dences? people

how

have a structure?

And When

who

clear

above all

said to

and too

It

conviction.

many

were

was heard,

it

many

in spite of

things in

it.

Was

Did

the

said,

curious and arbitrary coinciit

was

their time in

really

still

evident that the

doing

so. It

was some-

penetrated the meaning of Dr.

vital a creation for

story

all

away by

its

The book was criticisms to have much

such

own overwhelming

was involved because

mattered was that the book was

S2

disci-

these questions were really irrelevant.

swept them

The

long

absurd to compare such a writer to

it

so

anyone who had

much

too big

why

these things

all

A

the characters really characters?

Was

them were wasting

Zhivago that meaning.

all,

itself.

kind of unruly, explo-

a

the fact that critics took occasion to complain of the story too involved?

had been

a great talent that

alive.

You

life

is

strength and

involved: and what

could not only forgive the

complexity of the

but you were drawn to lose yourself in

plot,

it,

and

to

retrace with untiring interest the crossing paths of the different char-

Dr. Zhivago

acters.

by which is

critics

one of those books which are greater than the rules

is

condemn them: and we must remember

seek to

precisely with such

books

when everyone had had

In the end,

and the

his say,

first

ments on the book could be evaluated and summed up, the deeper and more original

critical

minds were

obviously preparing to undertake a deeper and the work. This

was the

came out with one {The

New

case with

Edmund

of the most serious

November

Yor\er,

that

it

as this that literature advances.

15,

sold

more

it

pronounce-

was

on

it.

clear that

They were

detailed study of

Wilson, for example,

who

and favorable studies of the novel and who

1958)

plunged more

later

deeply into what he believed to be the book's symbolism {The Nation, April 25, 1959). a

It is

interesting that Wilson's enthusiasm led

him

into

kind of Joycean labyrinth of allegory which he imagined he had

dis-

covered in the book, and this evoked an immediate protest on the part of the author. Pasternak emphatically denied any intention of creating

Wilson had "discovered." But the

the allegorical structure

was

protest

Dr. Zhivago.

to increase one's respect for

It

means another Ulysses or Finnegans Wa\e. The genius quite other than the genius of Joyce,

and landscaping In any case,

his

it is

symbolism

is

and

to miss

to

effect of this is

not by any

of Pasternak

is

imagine him plotting out

what he

is

really doing.

quite clear that the publication of Zhivago was one of

the most significant literary events of the century. This

is

confirmed by

the fact that every scrap of poetry or prose Pasternak ever published

is

being dug up, translated, and printed in every language and that his great novel shall

is

now undoubtedly have

aspect of Pasternak's

The

joicing.

and over the

life

a lush crop of doctoral dissertations

and work, and

perfectionistic critics, the least relics of Melville

Pasternak alone, which

many

We

already beginning to be the object of exhaustive study.

sensitive

and

is

that are not fully

is

certainly

on every

no cause for

re-

group who have been turning over

and Henry James

will probably leave

fortunate for everyone concerned. But a great

alert writers are

come up with wonderful things a great sea full of

this

going

for the rest of us, because

sunken treasures and

expended

in a

to dive into Pasternak

in

him we

column and

and

Pasternak

is

have, for once, riches

a half of the

Sunday Book

Section. It is

not out of place to start by this affirmation that the award of the

1958 Nobel Prize for Literature

was

a

treated almost exclusively, both in Russia

literary event.

and out of

it,

Last

year

it

was

as political event.

53

was

It

be expected that Soviet officialdom would react a

to

award. Since Marxists think entirely in

cally to the prize

gories, their hysteria

was

a vile

a direct plot

was

necessarily political.

The

hysteri-

little

political cate-

publication of the book

and sweeping attack on the revolution. The prize award was

blow

at the Soviet

cooked up on Wall

Union. The whole thing was a reactionary Pasternak was an unregenerate

Street.

relic of

who had somehow been suffered to survive and to air of a new Soviet world. The capitalist wolves had of this occasion to howl for Soviet blood. One mixed

the bourgeois past pollute the pure

taken advantage

metaphor

No

was

It

after another

denounced the shameless author.

one was or should have been surprised inevitable,

and

at this

mechanical routine.

have been supremely boring

so familiar as to

to

who appreciated his talent and personality enough to fear for his life. Nor was it entirely surprising that our side picked up the ball and got into the same game without a moment's delay. To the Western journalists, Pasternak at once became a everyone except the author and to those

martyr, a symbol of democracy fighting for recognition under

Red

anny, another proof of the arbitrary perversity of Soviet dictatorship. of course

was

all this

partly true.

emphasis that was not

The

that prevail here.

which

is

Dr. Zhivago

almost as dead in the West as

men

fondly believe that the

of crass materialism. Let us

not one of the

it is

spirit

it is

more dead

is

in

And

a political

no sense

and economic systems

political

Pasternak defends

liberty that

Perhaps, in a certain way,

is

was slanted and given

really there, because

tain.

Zhivago

it

Western democracy or of the

a defense of

spirit

But

tyr-

is

a liberty of the

behind the Iron Cur-

in those situations

where

can continue to live in an atmosphere

remember

that the vilest character in Dr.

Communist automatons but

the shrewd, lecher-

ous businessman, Komarovsky.

The

Christ

fact that

parts of the

book and

is

mentioned with sympathetic approval

that there are quotations

the liturgy was perhaps overstressed by those in

in all

from the Bible and from

who were

too eager to find

Dr. Zhivago an apologia for a vague and superficial Christianity. Here

too,

Pasternak does not lend himself so easily to exploitation in favor of

a cause. This

is

not a book that can be used to prove something or to

something, even

if

that

something happens

to be the Christian faith.

sell

The

dogmatic ambiguity of Pasternak's religious statements takes good care of that. Pasternak himself denies

"message" religious

in his

54

there

is

an

explicitly

religious

mean that the book is not deeply The sincerity of the author's own

book. But this does not

and even

religious feeling

that

is

definitely Christian.

overpoweringly evident, even though

it

is

not always

how

easy to see

much

but

would be

translated into clear theological

Is it

not perhaps

this too

not only understand-

of asking a citizen of

periodically with a

language of

all

is

would think

to burst out

in the exact technical

dogma?

or

Who

be desired?

to

Union today

the Soviet

couched

to be

is

But can we not believe that

propositions. able,

that feeling

manual

a

too evident that to

little

homily,

of Catholic moral

demand such

a thing

put ourselves unconsciously on the same footing as the Soviet

to

who

Writers' Union,

To me, on

must have

insisted that Pasternak

West, and must be engaged

tions in the

mood

is

secret connec-

an ideological plot?

most persuasive and moving aspects

the contrary, one of the

of Pasternak's religious

in

spontaneity.

slightly ofT-beat

its

It

is

precisely because he says practically nothing that he has not discovered

on

own

his

one

articulate tradition,

is

immersed

he can

of the authenticity of his religious

what they devoutly

it.

more than he knows and more than

One

desire

wide and free-flowing stream of

in a

easily say

he means, and get away with in Christ

me

that he convinces

When

experience.

can be content to

and

expect,

work

of a

man who,

his brethren

no more and no

Dr. Zhivago, and the deeply religious poems printed in the

tell

its

less.

But

final section, is

in a society belligerently hostile to religion, has

discovered for himself the marvels of the Byzantine liturgy, the great

mystery of the Church, and the revelation of

The newspapermen who

Sacred Scriptures.

dacha were

all

God

in

His word, the

interviewed Pasternak in his

struck by the big Russian Bible that lay on his desk and

gave evidence of constant use. Pasternak's Christianity

is,

then,

something very simple, very rudi-

mentary, deeply sincere, utterly personal and yet for

all its

questionable

expressions, obviously impregnated with the true spirit of the Gospels

and the

liturgy.

Pasternak has no Christian message.

He is not enough And this is the

of a Christian "officially" to pretend to such a thing. secret to the peculiar religious strength that

may

not be at

members

all

evident to most of us

of the visible Church. But

very profound impression on

it

those

who is

is

in his book. This strength

are formally

and

"officially"

certainly calculated to

who

make

a

think themselves unable to

believe because they are frightened at the forbiddingly "official" aspects

our faith sometimes assumes. Dr. Zkivago

is,

then, a deeply spiritual

humble but inescapable portent. bring out and to emphasize the essentially

event, a kind of miracle, a It is

my

purpose

to

character of the Pasternak affair. for

it

is

That

is

precisely

its

spiritual

greatest importance

one of the few headline-making incidents of our day that has

clearly spiritual bearing.

The

literary significance of

a

Dr. Zhivago and

55

a

Pasternak's verse would never have accounted for the effect they have

ot

On

had on our world. Pasternak's

work

companied

his

sofar as

prominence

was

it

the

other hand,

negligible,

is

and the

the

news was quite

in the

work have been responding,

accidental, except in-

first ol

the religious content of his

consciously or otherwise, not so

Formal Christian witness as to

Pasternak stands

all

deep and uncompromising

a

of the individual person, tor

dwells.

man

image

the

For Pasternak, the person

to the collectivity.

own

He

ot

God,

for

the refusal

for

to

whom man

manentlv

man

ot

This

why

is

a

and the

is

new way.

own more a

On

Over against

modern man,

Pas-

new

and most

per-

all

that

is

sanest

tradition, but

what makes him dangerous

final,

from the dead

voice

exist.

of

of contemplation. But he does so in

and cultural

intelligent

Isaac Deutscher) have

nothing but

empty humanism

with the voice of a

time.

precisely

the

fire

Tie speaks for

vital in religious

our

whom

symbolism, the power of imagination and of intuition,

sets creative

the glory of liturgy,

words, in

nobility

in

fighting tor man's

is

does not vet truly

empty scientism

the technological jargon and the

ternak

and

man

under

compromise with slogans and

imposed by compulsion. Pasternak

— for

spirituality.

and must always remain prior

is

true freedom, his true creativity, against the false and of the Marxists

to a

stands for courageous, independent loyalty to his

conscience, and

rationalizations

much

for the great spiritual values that are

attack in our materialistic world, lie stands lor the freedom

God

of

recognition of Pasternak as a spiritual influence in

a tacit

Those who have been struck by

the world.

content

political

real

brief political upheaval that ac-

done

to the Marxists,

and damning pro-Soviet all

critics

and

this

(for instance

they could to prove that Dr. Zhivago

despairing outburst of romantic individualism

is

—

past.

the contrary, however, the fervor with

which writers and thinkers

everywhere, both in the West and in Russia, have praised the work and the

person of Pasternak, quickly

made him

the center of a

spontaneous spiritual movement. This has not received the press, but

men The

still

it

still

much

kind of

publicity in

goes on. Pasternak became the friend of scores of

capable of sharing his hopes and fighting for the same ideal.

beauty of

this

"movement"

and has had nothing

to

is

that

it

has been perfectly spontaneous

do with any form of organized endeavor:

it

has

simply been a matter of admiration arid friendship for Pasternak. In a

word,

it

is

not a

"movement"

at

all.

There were none of the

connections" the Soviet Police are always hopefullv looking

was no planned attempt 56

to

make

a systematic fuss

for.

"secret

There

about anything.

The

Western writers

protests of

and

so

Camus, T.

like

And

on were perfectly spontaneous.

generally

known

Moscow

that in

Bert rand

Eliot,

S.

same

the

at

several of the leading

Russell,

time,

is

it

members

not

of the

Writers' Union conspicuously refused to take part in the moral lynching

The most important

of Pasternak.

The

of these

peculiar strength of Pasternak

genius and

in his

He

is

artist, a

because he

is

portraying in that

and

life

ism" that

is

it

is

a

two reasons:

for

world that has become an ethical chaos,

a

chaos ethics have been perverted into a non-

much

so

pulse as to have lost his ethical orientation. Hut this is

He

religious spheres.

system of arbitrary prohibitions and commands.

puritanical

it

man, the

(Uiicwdcr of everything that can be called a spiri-

a

There are moments when Dr. Zhivago seems shall see that

literary

contemplative. If at times he seems to underestimate

and secondly because sensically

own

and genuine-

the depth

in

the organized ethical aspect of man's spiritual first

in his

a witness to the spirituality of

is

tual value, but especially in the aesthetic

thinker, an

was Uya Ehrcnburg.

then not only

superb moral courage, but

ness of his spirituality. lie

image of God.

lies

is

a creature of im-

and we

deliberate:

part of a protest against the synthetically false "moral-

inseparable from the totalitarian mentality today.

is

In order to understand the events of 1958, briefly Pasternak's

own

and the

career

it

is

necessary to review

part played by

history of twentieth-century Russia. In

particular

him

in the literary

we must examine

his

toward the Russian revolution which has been by no means

real attitude

simple. For Pasternak

was one of those poets who,

in 1917, received the

revolution with hopeful, though perhaps not unmixed, enthusiasm and

who, though he never succeeded attempted

in

stages. In a

intellectuals

who, though they began by

their fidelity to

it.

a

were forced sooner or

perversion of man's

— when

ideal?;

The

special

in fact

is

was born

America, but familiar by

in 1890, in

in

many early

its

artists,

and

fervent acceptance it

as a criminal life

lies

in

itself

for

the sym-

one who, having survived the worst of

emerged

what he thought of Stalinism and in

less

they did not pay with

the purges conducted under Stalin,

England, or

more or

later to reject

importance of Pasternak

bolic greatness of the protest of

Everyone

There are

which favor the revolution

itself

the

formulary, at times

word, Pasternak was one of that legion of writers,

of the revolution,

He

literary

to write in praise of the revolution.

passages in Dr. Zhivago

exactly

confining his genius within

Communist

paralyzing limitations of the

after Stalin's death

to say

it

to say

not in France, or in

in the heart of Soviet Russia.

now

with the salient facts of Pasternak's

Moscow,

life.

the son of a painter, Leonid Pasternak,

57

who was

the friend

and

two friends of

for

and

young Pasternak conceived

music more than anything

first

become

to

and

else,

world of music.

else in the

a concert

a great admiration

father— the poet Rilke and the musician Scriabin,

his

boy planned

at first the

His mother was

illustrator of Tolstoy.

pianist. In his early years,

began

I

acquaintance with him.

.

.

."

I

a musician.

loved Scriabin

He

wrote: "I love

more than anyone

music not long before

to lisp in

my

In other words, he had already begun

compose, and he soon played some of his compositions for Scriabin,

to

who "immediately began to assure me that it was clumsy to speak of music when something incomparably bigger was on hand and

talent for it

was open

to

me

to say

my word

in

music" {Safe Conduct).

Cohen

In 1912 Pasternak studied Kantian philosophy under University of

volved

Marburg

the

in

Futurist

He

Tsentrifuga.

Germany, and returning

in

movement, publishing poems

had already long

since been

at

the

to Russia became in-

the

review

spell

of the

in

under the

Symbolist Alexander Blok, and Blok plays an important, though hardly

The

noticeable part, in the symbolic structure of Dr. Zhivago.

symbol of the candle in the window, which kind of knot Zhivago

to

Logos

flashes out to illuminate a

in the crossing paths of the book's

The window is

thinking about Blok.

because the candle in the (call it if

you

like

and

main

characters, sets

connection of ideas

is

important,

kind of eye of God, or of the

a

Tao), but since

the sophianic figure, Lara,

crucial

it is

the light in the

window

of

Blok in those days (1905) was

since

absorbed in the cult of Sophia he had inherited from Soloviev, the candle in the

window

suggests,

among

other things, the Personal and

Feminine Wisdom Principle whose vision has inspired the most original Oriental Christian theologians of our day.

Among

the Futurists, the one

impression on Pasternak

who

seems to have

Mayakovsky. In the

is

sketch, Safe Conduct, Pasternak speaks of all

the burning fervor

which he had devoted

made

the greatest

early autobiographical

admiring Mayakovsky with to Scriabin. Later,

however,

Remember, he has corrected the impressions was never any intimacy between us. His opinion of me has been exaggerated." The two had "quarreled" and Pasternak says that he found Mayakovsky 's propagandist activities for the Communists "incomprehensible." Mayakovsky devoted a turbulent in his

more

recent memoir, I

created by his earlier sketch. "There

and powerful agit\as

talent to the Bolshevist cause

(political

playlets)

and

a long

and turned out innumerable

propaganda poem in honor of

Lenin. But Pasternak himself wrote a fine

poem about

the revolution, in which he traces a vigorous of Lenin.

58

the bleak days of

and sympathetic

portrait

remember

I

The nape Like the

his voice

my

of

which pierced

neck with flames

rustle of ^lobe-lightning.

Everyone stood. Everyone was vainly

Ransacking

And

that distant table with his eyes:

then he emerged on the tribune,

Emerged even before he entered the room, And came sliding, leaving no wake Through the barriers of helping hands and Like

obstacles,

storm

the leaping ball of a

Flying into a room without smoke.

(From The High Malady, This, however,

no propaganda poem. Nowhere

is

His

vision

direct

is

and

what he thinks he

describes not

in

does Pasternak

it

some preconceived

betray the truth in order to conform to revolution.

by Robert Payne)

trans,

"ought

feels or

idea about the

he says what he

sincere:

to

feel,"

sees.

He

but what he

actually feels.

These the

facts are

important since Pasternak,

who

has been accused, by

Communists, of having always been an inveterate reactionary, ob-

viously

sympathy and admiration

felt

revolution.

As

for instance,

and saying

for

Lenin and for the October

for the 1905 revolution, his position

walks

down

the street listening to the guns in the distance

"How

to herself,

mind." Her exultation

is

down trodden. You and I are of one

splendid. Blessed are the

God

Blessed are the deceived.

unequivocal. Lara,

is

speed you, bullets,

symbolic.

The

means

revolution

that she

is

temporarily delivered from her captivity to Komarovsky, the smart lawyer,

and man of business who,

the opportunist

sinister figure in the class.

It

is

whole book and

who

all

in

all,

significant of course that after the revolution

remains a powerful, influential figure: he

is

is

the most

wealthy ruling

typifies the

Komarovsky

the type that revolutions do

not get rid of but only strengthen. All that Pasternak revolution

— and

spoken by Sima,

there

has to say both for and against the Bolshevik is

very

in Yuriatin

much

of

(a very

—

summed up in minor character who it

is

a

paragraph

nevertheless

expresses the clear ideological substance of the whole book). She says:

With

respect to the care of the workers, the protection of the mother, the

struggle against the

power of money, our revolutionary

era

is

a

wonderful,

unforgettable era of new, permanent achievements. But as regards the interpretation of

gated,

it

is

life

and the philosophy of happiness that

simply impossible to believe that

it

is

meant

is

being propa-

to be taken seri-

59

ously,

such a comic survival of the past.

it's

and peoples had the power

If all this rhetoric

to reverse history

it

would

about leaders

us back thou-

set

sands of years to the Biblical times of shepherd tribes and patriarchs. But fortunately this

impossible.

is

Pasternak's writing in the twenties of contemporary reality.

printed in 1925 there

It is

That

is

him

only one, "Aerial Ways," which has anything to

is

do with the revolution and order.

by no means purely an evasion

is

true that in the collection of stones by

this

by no means a glorification of the

is

in fact the thing that

new

Pasternak has never really been able

He has not been able to believe in Communism as any kind of an "order." He has not been able to accept the myth of its dialectical advance

to do.

toward an ever saner and

Even

better world.

ments he always viewed the revolution evolve. Dr.

as a chaotic

new and

he hoped, something

forces out of which,

most sanguine mo-

in his

Zhivago by and large represents

his

surging of blind

real

judgment

thing was a mountain that gave birth to a mouse.

might perhaps that the

No new

whole

truth has been

more sinister falsity. It is this that the Communists cannot forgive him. They do not seem to realize that this very fact confirms his judgment. If Communism had really achieved what it claims born, only a greater and

have achieved, surely by

to

now

could tolerate the expression of such

it

opinions as are to be found in Dr. Zhivago.

poem on

In 1926 Pasternak published a

the 1905 revolution

and

in

1927 he followed with another revolutionary poem, "Lieutenant Schmidt."

The former

of these received a lengthy

Prince Dimitry Mirsky,

who had

at that

temporarily in favor as a Marxist

one of the

camps

far north

critic

and favorable exegesis from

time returned to Russia and was

—prior

and death

to his exile

in

of Siberia.

Pasternak's writings about the revolution never quite succeeded with the Party because he

enough

in policies

was always

and the party

interested too

line. It

much

seriously attempted to write about the revolution

viewpoint and

it is

in

man and

not

cannot really be said that he ever

from

Communist

a

certainly false to think that he ever sacrificed any of

his integrity in order to "be a success."

The

fact

remains that he has been

consistently criticized for "individualism," "departure

from

reality"

and

"formalist refinement." In other words he remained an artist and refused to prostitute his writing to politics.

No 1943,

original

when "Aboard

Zhdanov

Pasternak's pen was to appear from 1930 until

the Early Trains" appeared and was

as "alien to socialism."

at translations.

6o

work from

During the

condemned by he worked

rest of these years

That Pasternak

fell

silent

was not

a matter of isolated significance.

Blok had died in 1921, disillusioned by the revolution. The Party's

were discussing whether or not "The Twelve" was

authorities

literary

really a

Communist poem. Gumilyov had been executed in 1922. Esenin had written his last poem in his own blood and killed himself in 1925. Mayakovsky,

at the

committed suicide torian, last

height of fame and success as a "proletarian poet,"

at the precise

moment when,

he was considered "the embodiment of

his-

The

optimism."

remaining representatives of the poetic ferment of the war years and

and remained

the early twenties disappeared into the background, if

words of a

in the

socialist

silent,

they were not liquidated in the thirties. Pasternak was one of the few

to survive.

He

was able

to find support

and expression

for his genius

by publishing remarkable translations of Shakespeare, Rilke, Verlaine, Goethe, and other poets of the West.

One vival

of the

most mysterious aspects of the Pasternak

story

during the great purges of the 1930s. The current guesses

he escaped death are barely satisfactory.

was supposed

to

fact of

meant

how

allege that since Pasternak

Stalin allowed Pasternak to live.

of Stalin

and the purges knows

being the "best friend" of someone

well have

his sur-

as to

have been Mayakovsky's "best friend," and Mayakovsky

was now canonized,

knows anything

Some

is

a

one-way

that because Pasternak

But anyone who

perfectly well that the

who had

ticket to the far north

died might just as

camps. Others believe

had translated the Georgian poets

Stalin could not kill him.

But

Georgian poets themselves

—like

Stalin

found

it

so brilliantly,

no hardship

Pasternak's friend Tabidze.

to kill the

Why

then

should he spare a translator?

By

all

the laws of political logic, or lack of logic, Pasternak should have

died in the thirties and in fact he nearly did

so, for

the strain of living

through those times undermined his health. Not only was he obviously suspect as a nonpolitical, antipolitical,

and therefore automatically

tionary poet, but also he distinguished himself by openly defying literary

dogmas

in

meetings and conferences.

fused to sign several

official

his friends barely saved

opinion

is

Not

reac-

official

only that, but he

"petitions" for the death of "traitors,"

him by covering up

his defection.

The

re-

and

general

that Pasternak could not possibly have survived the purges

unless Stalin himself

had given

explicit orders that

he was

to

be spared.

Why? There has been much

speculation,

Koryakov, published in Russian quoted by

in the

Edmund Wilson (The

and an

article

Novy Zhurnal

Nation,

loc.

cit.)

by Mr. Mikhail (in

America) and

seriously lines

up 6i

some of the quasi-legendary

possibilities.

What

they add

made by Pasternak

because of some cryptic statement

up

to

that

is

in reference to the

mysterious death of Stalin's wife, Alliluyeva, Stalin conceived a superstitious fear of the poet.

The Georgian

dictator

was endowed with prophetic

that Pasternak

and had some kind of unearthly insight

was

make

does not

a

kind of dervish,

into the cause of Alliluyeva's

death. Since Stalin himself has been credited with the this

have imagined

said to

is

gifts,

murder of

his wife,

the mystery of Pasternak's survival any less myste-

rious.

The

intolerably dreary history of art

have seemed hopeful

make Russia own image and

to those

who

and

literature

under Stalin might

firmly believed that the Leader could

really

over and create a new, mass-produced Soviet

his

likeness.

followed showed on

that the need for originality, creative free-

Even men

died.

Simonov, successful Communist writers

what the Party

As

if

history of the

and even

like

began

any

had been

that

the

field

on the

to real life!

"thaw"

is

well

known.

A

few months proved

that

and self-determina-

whatever, would bring about the collapse of everything

built

of 1956

fall

to suggest the

a certain frankness

the slightest relaxation in favor of individual liberty tion, in

Ehrenburg and

could be relied upon to do

realism might soon be replaced with

socialist

something remotely related

The

who

leaders wanted, discreetly

possibility of a rebirth of initiative

part of the writer.

in

But the death of Stalin and the "thaw" that

all sides

dom, and spontaneity had not exactly

man

up by

make

this

Stalin.

The

abundantly

events in Poland and clear. In

Hungary

in

both these countries, out-

spoken writers had led the resistance against Moscow. There was no choice but a hasty

by

their

way

editor,

and devout return

While notable ex-members

Stalin.

places like

to

wend

of the Praesidium began to

Outer Mongolia, the millionaire novelist and

Simonov, became overnight

Yet no show of

used so effectively

to the principles

official

a leading literary figure of Uzbekistan.

severity has yet

been able

to discourage the

determined resistance of a younger generation of writers. This resistance in

is

no sense overtly

political;

it

takes the

passive protest against the dreariness a

silent, indirect refusal to

mulas and poet

of

in

form

falsity of

seek any further

of a dogged, largely

Communist

meaning

norms handed down from above by

today,

Khrushchev

and

life. It is

copybook

politicians.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, has been

in person.

in

publicly

A

freedom.

62

He

young

scolded

Yevtushenko, as a kind of prophet of the

Generation, defies the limitations imposed on his spiritual and describes a friend returning

from

a

forced labor

for-

by

New

artistic

camp

bursting with

seeking out

interest

everything new, listening to the radio, and

in

kinds of information: "everything in him breathes char-

all

Ycvtushenko himself

acter."

out in

cries

protest at not being able to

New

and speak with the people of Buenos Aires,

fraternize

don, or Paris.

He

wants

but not

art,

He

socialist realism.

resents the attempts of the Party to regiment his talent,

not like

Blaming me

And

cast

And But

things

thunder and lightning

feel their glares

I

at

me.

on

my

me

that they cannot handle

Can do nothing about me.

this

young poet

that these fires can, at

fires of

—

MVD

shows that the boots of the

It

succeeded in stamping out the

independent thought

revolutionists of a century ago.

sense. It

is

a fact

in Russia:

It is

ever.

But there

one significant difference: the resistance of Russian youth been largely nonpolitical.

it is

have never

any time, blaze out more brightly than

reminded of the

are

me,

1

cannot help but admire the courage of

of deep significance.

back.

like all this

I

am proud

I

We

actively

replies to

me

many

for

Sullen and tense they pour scorn on

and

and

defy

to

with startling lines:

Many do

One

He

and "speak new words."

the directives of a dying generation

official criticism

York, Lon-

wants

so

not revolutionary in the nineteenth-century

moral and personal. Even when there

is

protest against the

pharisaism and obscurantism of Soviet propaganda and censorship,

not the protest of

men who want

from attempts

free

to

overthrow the regime.

to exercise political pressure. It

is

It is

who have become

savors of politics. This it

is

is

is

this special innois

a re-

up with everything

that

the most significant thing about the protest,

and

utterly fed

the key to the Pasternak affair.

To

try to place in a well-defined political category the

of Russian youth against rebellion:

it is

the very

try to frustrate

gories,

and

it

it.

Communism

way by which

Communism

See

"The Young Generation

Institute for

is

is

the

moral rebellion

not only to misunderstand that

Communists themselves would

not at

home

with nonpolitical cate-

cannot deal with a phenomenon which

political. It is characteristic of the 1

it

singularly

cence from political bias that strikes us most forcibly, for this sistance of people

is

far has

is

not in some

way

singular logic of Stalinist-Marxism that

of Soviet Writers," by A. Gaev, in Bulletin of the

Study of the U.S.S.R., Munich, September 1958, pp. 38

ff.

63

when

some phenomenon

incorrectly diagnoses

it

become

the error by forcing the thing to

and attack on

cries of treachery

When

Street.

masterpiece outside the

poses, the

If a late frost

USSR; and when its

has to appear to be the

is

what

the Soviet publishers

was publicly and

and what

is

is

obviously not a

who

true literature

and

To

pro-

has been rejected by

it

which Pasternak

dirties the place

one thinks of admitting that

was

it

where he

a sign of

and impotency on the part of the Soviet publishers not

print this great

act of

propaganda pur-

for

all

therefore an act of treachery, for

"a pig

hailed as a

not a masterpiece.

hailed as a masterpiece after

officially called

No

eats."

is

of

is

is

becomes an

success

home

an

ruins the

political reasons

this novel

though the novel

system,

is

is

fomented by Wall

event,

political

on the part of the author. Reasons:

USSR

duce a book that

and

a

USSR —even

the only sound judge of

ness

is

tract against the Soviet

political betrayal

sleeps

this

the incessant

in with Soviet plans,

fit

Pasternak writes a great novel, which for

cannot be printed in the

political

does not

on the Soviet Union.

Ukraine,

fruit trees of the

Hence

political.

corrects

it

Everything that happens that

all sides.

somehow

unforeseen by Russia, or

act of capitalist aggression

as "political,"

weak-

to be able to

work themselves!

Dr. Zhivago was written in the early

fifties

and finished

shortly after

death in 1953. In 1954, the Second Congress of Soviet writers,

Stalin's

condemned

with

its

and dead, seemed

to

offer

hope for the future. Dr. Zhivago was offered for publication

to

Novy

writers living

Mir. In 1954 some of the poems from Dr. Zhivago appeared in a

literary

really

rehabilitation of

magazine and the prospects

seemed

to

for the publication of the entire

be good. Ilya Ehrenburg had read

many

enthusiasm, as had

other writers.

been given personally by Pasternak

tion

it.

which we

shall discuss in a

the manuscript

From

that time on,

Meanwhile the manuscript had

Novy Mir with

moment. But

and manifested

Feltrinelli refused to give

his intention to

go ahead and publish

He

was reminded

that

of a

in

though he might

have talent he "had strayed from the true path" and one

him

Milan.

a long explana-

guarded attacks on Pasternak were frequent

the Soviet literary magazines.

accused

book

apparently with

to the publisher Feltrinelli, of

In 1956, Dr. Zhivago was rejected by

up

it,

happy acceptance of "chaos" and of being

critic,

Pertsov,

in his

element

June 1958, a svmpathetic discussion of Dr.

in confusion. Nevertheless in

Zhivago was held over Radio Warsaw. Meanwhile of course the book

had appeared storm.

in Italy, France,

The English

edition

Nobel Prize was awarded 64

and Germany and had taken Europe by

came out

to

in late

summer

Pasternak on October

23.

of 1958

and the

This was hailed by an immediate uproar in the Russian

was regarded

decision

as

an act of open

Cold War. The award was "steeped

hostility, a

in

new maneuver

He

in the

and hypocrisy" and Dr.

lies

Zhivago was a "squalid" work in which Pasternak manifested hatred of the Russian people.

The

press.

does not have one kind

his

"open

word

to say

about our workers." Pravda discussed the whole thing under the deReactionary

Hue and Cry

about a

Weed."

Literary

On

"A

confusing headline:

lightfully

October 27 Pasternak was solemnly expelled from the Soviet

Writers' Union. This automatically

make any kind

published or to

made

it

impossible for

of a living by his pen.

On

him

be

to

October 30

Pasternak, seeing the political storm that had been raised about the

award, communicated

Kremlin.

to

Stockholm

Nothing had been

the prize.

Of

all

one way or another by the

the attacks on Pasternak, the most concentrated

were those which came from

bitter

his regretful decision not to accept

said officially

his colleagues in the

Union

and

of Soviet

The day after his refusal of the prize, eight hundred members Union which had already expelled him now passed a resolution demanding that he be deprived of Soviet citizenship. At the same time, the issue continued to be discussed with a certain amount of frankness in Moscow. Pasternak was visited by newspapermen and friends. Poems and parts of Zhivago continued to circulate from hand to hand in typewritten or mimeographed editions.

Writers. of the

The

reports in the

Western

press tended,

by and

large, to

miss the

nuances and gradations of the Pasternak AfTair in Russia. Everything

was presented

as either black or white.

The Kremlin was have done away with him if

Pasternak.

strong. In the West,

The

Russians were

all

against

completely opposed to him, and would the protest of the

West had not been

so

on the contrary, everything was white, everyone was

for Pasternak. It

is

true that the protest of

decisive in arresting the all-out

and

in helping to

keep him

Western thinkers and

intellectuals

campaign against Pasternak

free.

was

in Russia,

Nevertheless, his friends inside Russia

movement

in his

behalf were not very successful. But several of the most influential

mem-

were by no means

bers of the Writers'

idle. Efforts to

Union

organize a positive

refused to participate in the meetings where

Pasternak was condemned. Ilya Ehrenburg sent word that he was "absent from Moscow" when everyone knew he was in his Gorky Street apart-

ment. Leonid Leonov remained conspicuously aloof. Another writer tried actively to bring about Pasternak's rehabilitation

with Khrushchev for

this

end.

A

and used

his influence

well-informed Western observer in

65

Moscow

reported that the Kremlin in general was disturbed by the fact

that the

Moscow

remained

intelligentsia

at least passively pro-Pasternak,

and that the campaign was met with deep anxiety and even mute protest on the part of the young writers who admired him. Mute protest is not much, of course. But in Russia, any protest at

number

said that Pasternak received a fair

It is

USSR who

in the

from people

many

of the Soviet

Union prisame time

participated in the voting at the Writers'

vately expressed their regrets to him. All this it

significant.

of letters

deplored the attacks on him. Later,

who had

writers

all is

must not be forgotten

that a real

wave

true.

is

But

at the

and

of indignation

hostility

toward Pasternak swept the Soviet Union, incited by the speeches and articles against

him, and one night a resentful crowd put on a demon-

dacha and even threatened

stration outside his

The and

political noise that

in the

to

burn

it

down.

has surrounded Dr. Zhivago both in the East

West does nothing whatever to make the book or As far as politics are concerned, Pasternak

of

position

"nonparticipant,"

a

or

"Pasternak's detachment sounds a

can, but also a

contrary,

dichotomies is

the

monk,

I

would seem

it

like the

Dark Age monastery,

in a beleaguered

may

a

my own

cannot easily sympathize." For

and

obyvatel,

little

as

author

its

better or worse.

takes the

comments,

Life

faraway voice of a

monk

mood with which Americans

part,

being not only an Ameri-

do not find sympathy

so terribly hard.

On

the

that Pasternak's ability to rise above political

very well be his greatest strength. This transcendence

power and the essence of Dr. Zhivago. One of the more important

judgments made by lessness politics

man's

of

all

this

book

is

a

twentieth-century

condemnation of the chaotic meaningpolitical

life,

and the

that

assertion

has practically ceased to be a really vital and significant force in

society.

This judgment

is

pronounced upon the

of the nineteen-twenties in Soviet Russia, but

and with proper modifications, on the West

it

as well as

confusion

political

also falls

by implication,

on the

East.

What

Pasternak says about Russia goes, in a different way, for the Western

Europe of Hitler and Mussolini, and

war

for the

—not to mention the America of the

The

protest of Dr.

not pragmatic.

It

is

Zhivago

is

not political, not sociological,

and

mystical.

understand the author's view of the modern world preting

him by standards which have nothing

his thought.

the

66

whole

We

cannot

political

fit

to

if

We

we

do with

into simple political categories

chaos of our world

last

'50s.

spiritual,

religious, aesthetic,

whole world of the

is

a kind of

cannot fully

insist

his

on

inter-

work and

one for

enormous

whom

spiritual

cancer,

running wild with

own and

a strange, admirable,

Dr. Zhivago

precisely

is

is

voured by precocity.

freedom

his

politics

Hope

and against the virulence of

The mere

itself,

it

and transmuted

it

is

de-

huge growth of uncontrollable

into a

means has

delusion.

great success of Dr. Zhivago fact that

its

this enor-

freedom which

precisely this

is

of attaining true freedom by purely political

become an insane

of

life

interest of

be more accurate, since man's spiritual

disease. For, to

political

substance

disastrous

The deep

diagnosis of man's spiritual situation as a

its

struggle for freedom in spite of

mous

and

feeding on the spiritual substance of man.

happens

is

by no means attributable

which

to contain sentences

to the

level devastating

blows against the Communist mentality. Anyone with any perception can see that these blows terialistic

society.

They

with equal power, on every form of ma-

fall,

upon most

fall

cepted structures of thought and

world.

The book

know what spiritual

we

He

He

seems

seems

to

to realize

talk about freedom, peace, happiness,

nothing more. for despair.

The

He knows

But

author

to

at the

all

know what has happened why it is that most of the

hope

for the future

too well that such talk

same time he has

who most reminds me

is

and

a true

to

just talk

is

same road

restricted area, travel the

explicitly political orientation. Silone's

mirable smallness of genuinely

Zhivago of course

and

his life

is

he has not been able

solid

hope

to ofTer.

and

failure

men, with

the pathetic yet ad-

all

heroes, are true to

—that

lives

it

it.

He

such conditions his tragic

life

make is

He

is

to his

out of

is,

not possible to

it

is

weak-willed,

himself

But the point

is

the only honest thing

with humility, and

man, true

to "be Christ."

a success of

which he

is

more

Dr. Zhivago, but with a more

as

and unsatisfactory mess.

make

to

in the circumstances in

and

only a palliative

of Pasternak in this respect

not a saint or a perfect hero.

is

a confused

success out of life

human

man's vocation

our

world's

Ignazio Silone. His heroes too, perhaps on a smaller scale and in a

real history, true to

ac-

make up our changing

gradually begin to realize that Pasternak seems to

wrong.

is

freedom.

and

of the gross, pervasive

which go

successful not because these blows are dealt, but be-

is

cause, as they land,

life

to face

knows he

sees that

make

a real

meaninglessness

the best one can.

lived "successfully"

that

Under

under the sign of

wisdom. It

seems that the main difference between Pasternak and Western

authors

who have sensed Nowhere in

as they are.

heroes are

up

the

same

futility is that

he

is

not defeated by

it

Pasternak does one get the impression that his

a blind alley, beating their heads against a wall. In the

67

— West one though

"No

very

sees,

Huts Clos

Exit"

For

little else.

in varying degrees,

man

—that

a great majority of

to say, in hell.

is

Western

writers,

finds himself as he does in Sartre, with

The Communists would own society is up

explain this as a feature of capitalist decay. Yet their the

same blind

alley,

pretending that the wall at the end

head against

that the business of beating your

not there, and

is

proof of optimism and

it is

and sees the wall, but knows that way out is not through the wall, and not back out by the way we came in. The exit is into an entirely new dimension finding ourselves progress. Pasternak sees the blind alley

the

—

in others, discovering the

inward sources of freedom and love which God

has put in our nature, discovering Christ in the midst of us, as "one

know

we

not."

This

exit

escape. It

not a mere theoretical possibility.

is

a real

is

and

meaning out

that can bring

of confusion

something that has been sought greatest Russian

minds of the

solution

is

is

it

even a mere

and good out of

evil.

It

is

with hope and conviction by the

after

past century: Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Soloviev,

and by Russians of our own time

The

Nor

man's problems: a solution

creative solution to

Nicholas Berdyaev.

like

love as the highest expression of man's spirituality and

freedom. Love and Life (reduced to one and the same thing) form the great

theme of Dr. Zhivago. In proportion

capacity

and

makes

love

a greater obligation to love.

its

appearance in the book

all

aspects of parental

one

alive

is

falsity in the

self-assured

wife Tonia, for example). Lara though seduced by

ness,

Her

love

is

perfectly

know how

to

is

really loves his

Komarovsky

be untrue to

aware of the difference between

sin

itself

or to

and good-

but her repentance (the Magdalen theme) has a creative power to

embodiment

immanent

of the goodness

man and

in

Far from being a

original.

Meaning

new world. Lara is God immanent in His

One of

and love of

in Russia, trite

and

and there

left at

the

prissy concept, this

is

thus the creation,

mercy of every both deep and

can see in Pasternak a strong influence from Soloviev's

Love and

his theory of

world by the spiritualization of

man's vocation

human

to regenerate the

love raised to the sophianic level

of perfect conscious participation in the mysterv of the divine

which the earthly sacrament 68

in her

simple, unadulterated

transcend limitations and to emerge into a

evil.

false

bestial

to the different shades of

girlhood remains the embodiment of a love that

life.

and

various revolutionaries. There

and conjugal love (Zhivago

spontaneity, a love that does not

he has a greater

Every degree of true and

—from the

Komarovsky, the businessman,

selfishness of

compulsive and authoritarian are

as

is

love.

wisdom

of

:

At

same time we must remember

the

Lara vanishes "without a

—the

tragic.

is

camp.

trace," to die, probably, in a concentration

Nothing has been "transformed." apparent defeat

that Zhivago's victory

It

the victory that shines forth in

is

and

victory of death

We

resurrection.

notice too,

that resurrection remains curiously implicit in the strange, impoverished

who falls to the pavement with Moscow streetcar. There is a strange

death of the unsuccessful doctor

a heart

attack while getting out of a

parallel

between the double death

which Mayakovsky's

There

the suicide.

child of Zhivago

moment

in her

is

gleam of hope

have not ruined her.

Zhivago and the

body of

Epilogue where Tania, the

in the

and Lara, the "child of the

own

for

lamentation at the end of Safe Conduct in

raves with Oriental passion over the

sister

a

Marina and Lara

of

rite

terribly impressive scene of

simplicity.

And we

The

terrible years,"

things she has

had

seen for a

is

go through

to

realize that the strange mystical figure of

Evgraf, the "guardian angel," "will take care of her." She

is

the Russia

is

its

of the future.

One

Zhivago

of the singularly striking things about Dr.

of tragedy without frustration.

ambivalence. Love

is

love

when he

he means, and

is

Here everything

and hate

is

spiritual cleanliness, this direct vision

which Pasternak opposes politicians

who

turn

to

all life

and

not dishonest about

is

and

fidelity to life

from

it.

It is this

now

here and

and systematic ravings of

the grandiose

into casuistry

quality

free

Zhivago says and does what

hate.

uncertain he

clean

is

and bind man hand and

foot

in the meticulous service of unrealities.

time to quote. These are the thoughts of Zhivago, half starved and

It is

faint

from hardships and exposure,

as

he reads a

political

proclamation

pasted on a wall

Had his

(these words) been

life

had

this

composed

siasm

all his life

shrill,

more

sively

What

it

ulators

possible that he

by never hearing year

impractical,

when

must pay

after year,

from the

filled

for that rash enthu-

anything but these un-

.

to be able to talk of

face of the earth!

Of

bread

when

it

plans and measures,

which long

since turned

go on raving with

this

.

.

has long

propertied classes and spec-

they have long since been abolished by earlier decrees!

of people are they, to in,

in

demands which became progresmeaningless and unfulfillable as time went by?

peasants and villages that no longer exist! Don't they

year

Only once

crazy exclamations and

an enviable blindness,

since vanished

the year before?

uncompromising language and single-mindedness

him with enthusiasm. Was changing,

last year,

life

remember

upside

their

Of

own

down? What kind

never cooling feverish ardor,

year out, on non-existent, long-vanished subjects, and to

know

nothing, to see nothing around them.

69

Pasternak was morally compelled to refuse the Nobel Prize in order to

remain in Russia. Writers protested against Russia's

England, France, and the United States

in

flat

rejection of her only great writer since the

Revolution. Pravda devoted eighteen columns to an unprecedented publication of the "original letter"

magazine Novy Mir refusing

which had been sent

had himself

it,

notable for

its

a poet, A. T.

under an

fallen

and

passages in which

Marxism

The

chief objection

This view of

as

life,

we have

more important than the

him above

No man

become

this

against the

for these are relafault of the book,

.

The

the spirit of the novel,

.

life."

His

is

spirit, his

state exists for

that the individual

freedom, his

is

ability to

man, not man

for the

Himself.

Man has no right to alienate his own liberty to Man is of no use to man if he ceases to be a

cog in a machine.

a

person and tivity that

ing both

made

has the right to hand himself over to any superior force

God

other than

.

indicated above,

collectivity.

the state.

is

something "which neither the editors

is

general tenor, the author's view of

state.

not

is

condemned,

explicitly

is

nor the author can alter by cuts or revision

love, raise

The document

relatively sympathetic

few and could have been expunged. The whole

from the Soviet point of view,

its

ban. its

with the author. Pasternak was evidently respected in

effort to reason

case by a devoted colleague.

tively

letter

Tvardovsky, who, since

official

surprising lack of abusiveness

by the

The

to serialize the novel in Russian.

was signed, curiously enough, by writing

to Pasternak

lets

himself be reduced to the status of a "thing."

reduces the

itself

and

its

members members

to the level of alienated objects

and

to a sterile

A is

futile existence to

collec-

doomwhich

no amount of speeches and parades can ever give a meaning. The great

men own judgment

tragedy of the revolution, for Pasternak, was the fact that the best

Russia submitted to mass insanity and yielded up their

in

to the authority of Juggernaut.

It

was then that untruth came down on our land of Russia. The main mis-

fortune, the root of evil to come, one's

own

own moral

sense, that they

must

all

notions, notions that were being

The

was the

opinion. People imagined that

social evil

loss of it

confidence in the value of

was out of date

to follow their

sing in chorus, and live by other people's

crammed down

became an epidemic.

It

everybody's throat.

was catching, and

it

.

.

.

afTected every-

Our home too became infected. Instead of being natural and spontaneous as we had always been, we began to be idiotically pompous with each other. Something showy, artificial, thing, nothing

was

left

untouched by

forced, crept into our conversation

way about 70

it.

—you

.

felt

certain world-important themes.

.

you had .

.

.

.

to be clever in a certain

Like Dostoevsky, Pasternak holds that man's future depends on his

thoritarian rulers

way out from under a continuous succession of auwho promise him happiness at the cost of his freedom.

Like Dostoevsky,

also,

ability to

tion,

work

his

Pasternak

Death and Resurrection,

possible: but that

is

insists that the fruit of Christ's

freedom has

that true

man, ignoring the

real

meaning

of the

Ironically enough,

came from

tion

not a

new

complaint:

one of the most

the pen of Marx.

Marx's theory on

service to

Yet

is

brilliant analyses of

Modern

this point,

Testament,

goes back to

it

become

at least

New

and continues

prefers to evade the responsibility of his vocation

"under the law." This

Incarna-

to live

St.

man's

Paul.

aliena-

Russia, while paying lip

has forgotten his full meaning.

have brought out the inner contradiction of

in so doing, the Soviets

man which Marx

Marx's thought: for the complete spiritual alienation of

ascribed in part to religion has been brought about by militant atheism, as well as

by the economic system which claims

dox Marxian foundation.

It is

to

be built on an ortho-

of course not fair to

blame

Stalin's police

on Marx, though Marx cannot be absolved from indirect

state directly

responsibility.

At any

event, Pasternak's "view of life"

from Novy Mir reproves Pasternak

the letter

critics after

in

what has brought upon him

and unanimous condemnation of Soviet

the outraged

and

is

the

Nobel Prize award did not

as

While

officialdom.

immoral, the Soviet

hesitate to find in

Dr. Zhivago

author every possible kind of moral depravity. Pasternak, the

its

lowest of the low, could not even be compared to a pig.

He

could no

longer claim a right to breathe the pure air of Soviet Russia. It

would be

a great mistake to think that for the

mere words without

accusations are taken as

The

with cynical opportunism. has forged

its

own

rigid

called "an ethic" only

specific reference, to

curious fact

is

that

to the

which nevertheless claims with puritanical

meaning

knows do

at all

at the

claims to

today

self-assurance to

a combination of a beaver

is

of words, but

show men

and a wolf.

unites machinelike industry with utter insensitiveness to deep

values whenever they

be used

Communism

and authoritarian code of morals, which can be

by doing violence

how to "live." The ideal Communist

Communists such

come

into conflict with political duty.

He

human

He

either

times the course of history and "the one correct thing" to

know

or, if

know

In either case, he "acts" with

it.

he does not

it,

else

who

the complacent

self-

he obeys someone

moment,

all

assurance of a well-adjusted machine, and grinds to pieces anything that

comes

in his

way, whether

it

be his

own

idea of truth, his

most cherished

V

hopes for

world or the

this

next, or the person of a wife, friend, or parent.

we

All through Dr. Zhivago

find an extraordinary

such characters portrayed: some of them pure

much more Zhivago,

is

complicated and hard to

label.

degradation.

what

is

To

have

New

Man.

constitutes, in Soviet eyes, the

human

moved by love and what is human in man

depth of moral

all this is

nothing but bour-

way

almost seems that Pasternak has gone out of his

on impulse

act

in

way

a

would seem

that

Communists.

It

always remains clear that

presented (as

it

sometimes

No, freedom

be swayed

and shameless individualism.

geois depravity

Zhivago

spontaneous

pity, to let oneself

—

Yurii

Soviet

feelings, to follow the lead of

inner inspiration, to be

by appreciation of

subtle range of

others

in all respects the exact opposite to the

This, of course,

It

and

Communist types, The hero himself,

is

is

something higher and more

Pasternak makes the point that

and do something completely

if

one does

pointless,

impulse

this yielding to

Western novels)

in

make

to

utterly foolish to

not

is

freedom.

as the ideal of

that.

But

at times follow a crazy

urge

spiritual

than

not an act to be ashamed

it is

of.

Must one always be reasonable? Must one always have a ponderous ethical justification for every action he performs? Must one fear spontaneity and never do anything that is not decreed by some program, some form or other of duty? On the contrary, it is compulsiveness that warps life and makes it pointless. The apparent pointlessness of man's impulses may perhaps show the way to what he is really seeking. This, for a Marxist, is deadly heresy: everyone knows that for a Marxist everything has to

fit

in

with his fantasies of omniscience. Everything has

have a point, everything has

to

pose.

To

You

Zhivago

this,

to

be guided toward some specific pur-

replies:

find in practice that

what they mean by

ideas

trap in praise of the revolution and the regime. in intuition.

And

yet see

how

ridiculous.

They

ous diagnostician, and as a matter of fact

it's

mistakes in diagnosing a disease. Well, what situation as a

whole supposed

.

is .

all

nothing but words

One of my

.

shout that

true that is

this

I

I

—

clap-

a belief

sins

is

am

a marvel-

don't often

make

immediate grasp of the

to be if not this intuition they find so detest-

able? It is

therefore understandable that

Novy Mir

should have singled out

with horror the passage where Yurii Zhivago finds himself accidentally in

the middle of a battle between

volunteers.

make any good Communist squirm 72

Red

There can be no question

Partisans that

and White Russian

such

in his chair

a

passage

would

with acute moral

dis-

comfort,

would

li

repel

>




him

horrify

I

chaptei ol Sartre oi Moravia might horrify

he would take

il>
?

TayiuTa.

I

thank you immensely for

such inexhaustible marvelous reading for the next future. myself from

this

long and continuing period of

I

letter writing,

boring trouble, endless thrusting rhyme translations, time robbing and useless, 2 In

and of the perpetual selfreproof because of the impossibility

1973, the University of

spondence between Letters,

to ad-

Kentucky King Library Press published the correBoris Pasternak, Pastcrna\j Merton: Six

Thomas Merton and

with an introduction by Lydia Pasternak

Slater, Boris Pasternak's sister.

8.

vance the longed sible I

thank you

still

many

begun,

for, half

new manuscript

more

for

times interrupted, almost inacces-

drama

[his historical

of the 1860s in Russia].

your having pardoned

my

long silence, the faint-

heartedness and remissness that are underlying in this sad state of mind,

where being mortally overbusy and suffering constantly from lack of and time privation. worse than pure

But

am

I

leisure

perishing of the forced unproductiveness that

is

idleness.

I shall rise,

you

will see

T

it.

finally will snatch

myself and suddenly

deserve and recover again your wonderful confidence and condescension.

Yours B.

Don't write me, don't abash to

me

renew the correspondence

Although much has been

some

Although

his health

as early as

gravely

ill

his family

said

and written about Pasternak's death, facts

about his

November

Here

is

to

and from

He

all

even those

closest to

him.

And

yet

1959 Pasternak himself was aware that he was

and was expecting

able to finish the

to die.

those near

However, he kept

him

from

this secret

"in order to avoid the slavery of

struggled on, supported by the hope that he might be

work

in

which he was engaged.

This information, which was kept hidden from vealed by Pasternak to one of his

many

his family,

correspondents: and here

was

we

re-

gain

insight into the extraordinary character of these epistolary friend-

ships the poet

was a

German letters,

had contracted with people

woman who, city.

all

over the world. In this case,

with her husband, runs a gas station in

a small

Deeply impressed by the warmth and intelligence of her

Pasternak responded with characteristic generosity, not only

plying to her for

illness.

was not good, and had obviously suffered

as a surprise to everyone,

compassion."

it

next turn

extent as a result of his tribulations, Pasternak's "sudden" death in

May came

new

The

be mine.

will

many unpublished

there remain perhaps one.

with your boundless bounty.

affectionately,

PASTERNAK

some

letters

with frank and open friendship but even arranging

friends to get her a golden bracelet,

Everywhere

re-

on

in the world, even the readers of

his behalf, as a present.

Zhivago who had never

actually written to Pasternak, felt that with his death they close personal friend.

The

pictures

and reports of

his funeral

had

lost a

evoked

in

a startling, almost awe-inspiring fashion, the funeral of Zhivago himself,

even

down

to the grief of

one of the

women

mourners.

It is

the lament

of Lara, not in fiction but in reality.

But when the unknown doctor was buried, there were now the thousands of

82

silent,

deeply grieving mourners

who

filed in quiet procession

through the

trees of the valley at

walk

This was a witness

alone.

people for their greatest

The

parish priest

Pasternak were the Orthodox in the dacha.

who

is

and

poet.

Church had been performed

The

respect of the Russian

was not present when the mortal remains

laid to rest in the churchyard.

But the religious

quietly, the

of Boris rites

of

evening before,

simple prayers ended with these words, repeated three

times, by the priest vitch,

modern

Peredelkino where Pasternak loved to to the love

and the people: "May the memory

worthy of

praise,

of Boris Leonido-

remain with us forever."

83

4

PASTERNAK'S LETTERS TO GEORGIAN FRIENDS The

private letters of another are always difficult, even

pen

to

heard of the obscure Georgian poets friends. True, Pasternak

—during

the

became well

Nobel Prize

in

afTair

Also the introduction and

1958.

names ending

in -shvili

become familiar with the people who bore them. Yet we must

to

not expect the Pasternak of these letters to for

hap-

Few in the ever who were Pasternak's warmest known— perhaps too well known

biographical notes help us to identify the strange

and

when they West have

be written to well-known people.

him by

a quiet

the mass

media of the West.

and independent

as an artist

and

battle for his

a Russian.

It is

own

the stereotype fashioned

fit

certainly true that he fought beliefs

But he continued

and

his

own

integrity

Russian

to believe in the

revolution in spite of the Stalinist terror, and for his exemplars of free-

dom

he did not look West,

Soviet

Union

—to

to

Europe and America, but within the

Georgia.

itself

Perhaps no one can fully appreciate these

letters

who

has not lived

under some kind of censorship. Only some analogous experience can

fill

immense gaps and help us read between the lines. Those who have had some taste of life under absolute authority can perhaps underin the

stand the conflict and suffered but above

the things that

its

all

comes

resolution.

They can be aware

of

what Pasternak

of the fact that he could also be happy. clear at least in

some

of these letters

phant and almost scandalous happiness: scandalous, that are completely convinced that any life

under

is,

For one of a trium-

is

to those

Communism must

who

be one

long uniform and excruciating misery, worse even than death.

On that

the other hand,

we must

in a life spirit.

it is

to these letters

and other documents

like

them

look for an explanation of Pasternak's capacity to be happy

which doubtless would have destroyed or dehumanized

a

weaker

Georgia and the Georgian poets were for Pasternak an unfailing

source of light and strength, a providential refuge and reassurance whose full

significance

we can

perhaps begin

to

from these

guess

letters.

Pasternak's visits to Georgia and his friendships with Georgian poets,

among

Merton's

was written

in early

This essay on "Pasternak's Letters to Georgian Friends" was found unpublished manuscripts and papers following his death. 1968, but only published in the first issue of

84

The

New

It

Lazarus Review

in 1978.

his

exposure to the Georgian language and culture, were of decisive

own

importance in his

and work. Indeed, they bore

life

in

them the

secret of his survival.

Much more

than Italy for Goethe or the Algerian beaches for Camus,

Georgia for Pasternak was the living and indestructible witness of a reality that

duced

to

was beyond the reach of

banality

humanity of

—a

abstractness, that could not be re-

of the victory of

not be extinguished by the in-

light that could

Georgia was the living expression

political or literary cliche.

over death and of freedom over bureaucratic regi-

life

mentation upon which Pasternak himself consistently gambled. Georgia

was the triumph of cal

and

poetry, nature, humanity,

The mountains,

literary entropy.

the people in

especially

it,

its

and

poets

artists,

a unique victory of wholeness, "a country

never experienced a break in

down

even

to earth

abstraction, a country of

ever great

its

its

now and

all,

were

may

him

first

peculiar quality

had never

fully

visit to

Georgia, and

many

years of struggle.

And

know-

to the quasi-

testified

life"

He

which had

felt

that this

been expressed even by the Georgian poets

themselves, and hoped perhaps he might live to do so himself.

nothing but a

how-

pages of the selection.

Pasternak once again

survive through so

reality,

be."

returning from his final die,

a rarity,

which has remained

existence, a country

miraculous "indigenous and elusive quality in Georgian helped

and

a miracle

has not been carried off into a sphere of

These words are taken almost from the in the last letter of

politi-

which has most astonishingly

amaranthine colour and of everyday

present hardships

ing he was about to

and the future over

the sun, the city of Tiflis and

left

us

and mysterious com-

of this beautiful

last faint intuition

He

plexity.

Georgia was (Pasternak thought) so constructed that leveled by any kind of cultural bulldozer. Tiflis

where wandering lanes end up against the the rugged vigor of nature

is

and primitive culture

torious" yet tempted to frivolity.

and

side of a is

could not be

it

remain a

will

at

once "festively

However, the apparent surface

hides a fathomless and tragic silence

which

is

city

mountain and where

not inert but

filled

vic-

frivolity

with un-

speakable power.

The

dialectic of joy

and tragedy was not something Pasternak merely

imagined. In 1936 one of his best friends, the poet Tabidze, was arrested

and disappeared from view. Another,

Yashvili,

committed

suicide.

For

almost twenty years thereafter Pasternak sustained by his love and loyalty Tabidze's wife, Nina, sensing in his heart that Tabidze was already dead.

Yet he could not bring himself

to

admit that Tabidze would not

finally

85

had done, from some

return, as others

of his faith in Georgia that

friend

would survive the

somehow

considerable courage on his

suspect.

It

was

own

part

integrity of his

Nina Tabidze and other

Mean-

friends de-

around him other

part. All

and he himself was

writers were being arrested or driven to suicide,

ways

and

cruel injustice of the Stalinist police state.

while, Pasternak's open support of

manded

camp.

distant Siberian

the innocence

His original work was banned and he was

silenced,

al-

mak-

ing his living only by translations.

news

Official

When

1955.

of Tabidze's death in 1937 did not reach his

news

this

came, Pasternak only affirmed

finally

widow

until

the

more

all

strongly the innocence and loyalty of the Georgian poet.

Meanwhile, one can

see

of strength in Pasternak's

from these

own

sufferings of others. In supporting

own

life

and

his

own

of the situation

ties

might not be

We

was

his

one of the great sources

power

Nina Tabidze he

One who

courage.

affection of these letters.

letters that

sufferings

respond to the

to

also sustained his

not attuned to the

is

full reali-

able to respond rightly to the vibrant

are trained to look for anger, bitterness, re-

bellion against tyranny: instead

we

discover a resistance that finds expres-

sion not in politics but in creativity, in

life-affirming love for a

few

friends, in faith that the future will turn out right in spite of everything.

This

is

the last

and strongest kind

been pushed to the wall, for are

no longer

life itself

whom

rational options,

political

and who have nothing

and share the good things

have access: a party, a poem, a destroyed,

left

rebellion

but to celebrate

let it

be for

letter,

which one may

to

still

a bottle of wine. If they are to be

this last loyalty to a

human

measure!

thing must be kept clear about Pasternak and his friends: the

accusation that he was disloyal to the Russian revolution false

who have

activism and open

not in ideology but in poetry, work, and friendship. So they

stick together loyally

One

of resistance left for those

—except

was

certainly

of course in the sense that disagreement with the arbitrary

convolutions of the party line could be called a betrayal of the revolution.

But

it

must be admitted

kind of thing that

is

that Pasternak's aesthetic

acceptable to

compatible with the kind of siderations

—and

in fact

and doctrinaire routines artist

to

formed by

equate

official

Marxism.

—which

for the personal inspiration

The

fidelity to the party line

point

with

is

Marxist orthodoxy,

86

is

completely in-

by

political con-

substitutes abstract

and

that Pasternak

integrity of the

was never

fidelity to life itself.

revolution being rooted not in doctrine but in

was

certainly not the

It is

"socialist realism" dictated

by higher authority

fidelity to life.

trine to concrete life

is

life,

able

Hence, the

to prefer abstract doc-

to betray the revolution. This, in the eyes of

arrant bourgeois subjectivism.

maintained Tabidze was loyal to the original revo-

Just as Pasternak

and

lutionary ideal, so he himself believed that he

with his translations of the Georgian poets for that matter

—and of Shakespeare or Faust

He

Russian revolution.

spirit of the

the Stalinist literary establishment

felt that

lution.

—represented the true

his poetry, together

had

in fact betrayed the revo-

spoke out against the pretense that revolution could be found

in "that ridiculous Literary Gazette' or in the writers'

and

tentious stupidity of official competitions

prizes.

union or the pre-

For Pasternak, the

to be heard in the arrogant and doc-

was not

true voice of revolution

pronouncements of the police

trinaire

He

but in the "chemistry of

state

thought" that produced the living ferment of poetry like Tabidze's. But the false revolution sought to destroy the true one.

To

Which would win?

the end, Pasternak believed in the victory of the Georgian miracle

of his "sister

And

he intuitively placed his trust in the young poets

after

him.

life."

who would come

and

He

was

The most

right.

effective voices of

protest against authoritarian rigidity in Russia are those of poets inspired

and

some sense formed by Pasternak

in

(like

Yevtushenko and Voznesen-

sky). (It is curious,

by the way, that Stalin himself was Georgian: and some

have said that Pasternak's survival under Stalin

have followed his friends

tainly

was somehow due

to

—when

he should

cer-

death in prison or to the labor camps,

to his enthusiastic love for Georgia.

Perhaps

this is

myth.) In any event, the strange and fully authentic happiness of Pasternak in the years after the

no sense due

war

—the years when he was writing Dr. Z hit/ago—

were

in

tions

were highly appreciated, but he was never an establishment man.

to his

being a "success."

As he wryly remarked, "no one made big always on the margin of the firmest

components

was not a phony

Moscow

in his happiness

success.

we

was

The

circle of

its

"wingless and

demanded him what communion with

him

in his

moral

fervor of his friendship in his letters to felt

lived

turn called forth from

exist in total isolation: his

measure of the frustration he

He

and one of the

precisely this realization that he

his distant friends in the south sustained

Soviet society.

contracts" with him.

sense his great loneliness

strength and patience. His solitude in

demanded. But he did not

true that his transla-

literary establishment

His alienation from the

unimaginative" bores in which

it

It is

when he found no one

exile

them

from is

the

to talk to in

Moscow. Pasternak did not altogether escape open conflict with the establish-

ment:

it

was impossible. But the

and Dr. Zhivago. Then the

full

crisis

came

weight of

late,

with the Nobel Prize

official

and inhuman censure 87

descended on him

—but only in words and demonstrations. Twenty years

he would have been put through the mill and perhaps have

earlier

canted" in the

The

set fantastic

very banality of the establishment, from which he was to a great

him back upon inner

extent excluded, forced

happy.

And

when we After

this

is

not a

new

formula.

It is

a

resources

good one

who

all,

the police state

power

itself

Nor is Communism and Nazism. Any

confined to overt

structure thriving

may one day silence says

—or

on militarism and

Trained

a vocal protest that

we

as

bound to silence disAmerica writers which

at.

He

we

which he loved

went on

we have

to

in

and offering

keep shouting

when he could have been

He

the West.

stayed in Russia,

with everything

as his country, while refusing to agree

there,

use-

are not used to the kind of solution

refused exile

Nobel Prize winner

their

might prove ambiguous,

are to think that

are either jailed or exiled,

lionized as a

than

crisis is

find themselves in a position like Pasternak's: in

Pasternak himself arrived

that

to police states.

quite conceivable that even in

It is

more than

fatal.

we

remember

for us to

can guarantee to escape such things in our time? Total-

sent sooner or later.

until

which made him

find ourselves in a similar position.

ism and massive conformism are not restricted

less

"re-

formulas of the time, before being shot.

a silent resistance that

was moral rather

political.

It is

therefore instructive to study the scattered allusions in these letters

which, added together, provide us with a strikingly coherent formula, a

kind of

ascesis for survival

under totalism. In

this,

Pasternak

long traditional line of sapiential thought which goes to the court literature of ancient

Old Testament

as

Egypt,

is

all

falls

the

reflected in such

into a

way back

books of the

Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and echoes other wisdoms in

India and China. It is

task,

an

and

to the

ascesis of honesty, of

to oneself. It

human

of openness

and

is

above

work, of loyalty all

an

and

measure. Therefore an ascesis not of rigor and restraint but

and response: not of solipsism but of is

an

ascesis of generosity.

nant with the doctrine

we

find

bration,

to one's friends, to one's

ascesis of fidelity to life itself

love. It

on one hand

self-forgetfulness, cele-

As such

it is

fully conso-

in Prison Letters of Dietrich

BonhoefTer and on the other in the essays of Albert Camus. (Camus' ideas of revolution

and

revolt in L'

those which underlie Dr. Zhivago.)

Rahner suggesting

Homme It is

much like we find Karl

revoke are very

the kind of ascesis

for a "diaspora Christianity"

and which

is

not only

preached but practiced behind the iron curtain by people like Dr. Kro-

madka. 88

It is

above

all

an

ascesis of resistance

and

refusal that rejects the

—

:

and vulgar inhumanity of

gross

sees to be a sign of

An

triumphalism.

political or cultural

and measure

ascesis that affirms quality

orgy of quantity which

in the

death rather than an affirmation of

life.

"Women

it

give

birth to people, not to cyclopses," says Pasternak in an allusion to the

"Only the inorganic

crass stupidities of Soviet art.

gigantic, the cosmic

is

spaces of nonexistence, the emptiness of death, the deadening principles

minded

He

and humiliation."

of ugliness

of Lewis

we

speaking of Russia, but

is

Mumford's pertinent remarks on the

are re-

architecture of the

Pentagon. Pasternak kept his sanity under Stalin by virtue of his quiet and dedicated work. Intuitively he found something that outlet for his creative energies

and

and

was

at

once a perfect

a contribution to the intellectual life

aesthetic life of his society: translations of poetry

from English, Ger-

man, Georgian, and other languages. In the arid desert of back on the joy of

aesthetic ultimatums, Pasternak fell

worthwhile translations.

"when gift

a

man

eats

from God"

man

And

like the writer of Ecclesiastes,

and drinks and

(Ecclesiastes 3:13)

and

political

silently

he

making

knew

that

finds happiness in his work, this

and

"I see there

but to be happy in his work, for this

is

is

is

no happiness

a

for

him"

the lot assigned to

(idem 22). Pasternak echoes this in one of his It

seems to

me

successful, bold

Happiness

that

man's

a

all

letters:

efforts

must be concentrated on

and productive, and that

life

his activity

should be allowed to do the

creative

woman, but work and so

there

nothing to worry about because one could do nothing about

love of a

is

rest.

in all sorts of higher spheres of existence, such as love (not only

ever hard one tried.

love of one's country or love of one's contemporaries)

on,

is

either given or not given at

To me unfaked

failure

is still

more

all,

in

which case it

how-

acceptable than faked

success.

This

is

a

conflicts of

remarkable piece of wisdom, for most of the delusions and

modern

trol.

We

are generated by the

life

with power over what

is

essentially a gift

pure

gift

when we

are happy, as Pasternak says,

of our true possibilities, do

what we

myth

can,

that happiness

comes

and therefore beyond our conlive

within the measure

and allow the

rest to

be added as

and "grace."

Therefore he can say

"One must

write wonderful things,

wonderful things happen

to you.

make

That

discoveries,

is life.

The

and

see to

it

that

rest is rubbish."

Certainly, this reflects a greater enthusiasm than the disillusioned old

89

Preacher ever managed to

But

from

springs

not

not a matter of art for

is

it

won

summon up

in the

and wholeness, an

a depth

integrity

without long experience and painful

kind of lucidity that Camus called

dour

lines of Ecclesiastes.

sake or a mere cult of kicks.

art's

and

for,

and maturity

from the

springs

sacrifice. It

this lucidity is itself the fruit

of unambiguous choice. Dedication to absolute sincerity in his

work

dedication which he was able to maintain as translator

when

avenues were closed to him) gave Pasternak's whole

a clarity

made

everything else

—as

he said

—"easy."

As long

the task

which had been carved out

to his

knew he

could be ready for anything

else.

Here

is

the core of

what we have been

expression, his ascesis. Sacrifice

is

It

that are

life

as

which

he was faithful

own measure by calling, for

life itself,

want of

(a

other

all

to

he

a better

central to art, not just because art re-

quires discipline, but because sacrifice

the price of living growth. For

is

work is the way into the future, and sacrifice is what opens way for the artist, because by devoting himself honestly and entirely his work he grows insensibly into the future. By his work, man is inte-

Pasternak, that to

grated into a growing and evolving present, a world that

engaged

in organic development.

world into what himself.

What

is

it is

to

going

By

be sacrificed

is

is

fully

work man grows with

that

no other way

real

for

man

to find

then the idiosyncracy or the banal and

dead conformity that bind him instead left

his

to be: there

and

is

to

what

is

dying, to what

is

being

behind.

This

ascesis is

veloped in

remarkably

The Divine

like that

Milieu.

Without

which Teilhard de Chardin desacrifice, says

Pasternak, art

may

—one may add

be "covered outside with a sprinkling of superficial talent"

"pseudomodernity"

—while being inwardly rooted in

ago outgrown. This of course totalist

is

true of

all

what man has long

establishment

art, especially

in

regimes.

This program of

sacrifice

is

not one of masochistic niggling, but of posi-

abandonment to the dynamism of life. To give oneself up to serious work is for Pasternak identical with giving oneself up "into the hands of

tive

life itself."

self

up

In the end, one must also take the further step and give one-

"into the hands of death."

Surely one of the most arresting and beautiful pages in

all

Pasternak

is

where he describes how after a heart attack he is taken to Moscow hospital and bedded down in the hall. He lies in bed down the long corridor at the distant window, the dim lamp

in the letter

a crowded

and gazes

of the night nurse. all as

90

He

realizes the obscure presence of death

"such an unfathomable, such a

and

sees

it

superhuman poem." In pure joy and

gratitude he thanks

God

for

having made him an

than ever to talk to God, to glorify everything it

my memory.

on

'Lord,'

the paints so thickly' realize

.

whispered,

I ."

.

The

'I

I

artist! "I

wanted more

saw, to catch and imprint

thank you for having

expression surprises us,

laid

on

and then we

once again the peculiar meaning of the Georgian miracle in Paster-

This

nak's

life.

seem

to us like so

worn

so thin

intensity, this joy, this fervor, this

—are

much

impasto at times

—our

innocence which might

own

enthusiasms have

part of the richness of his Georgian friendships.

all

There was one expression of Tabidze, gadavarda, which Pasternak treasured

and incorporated

throw oneself headlong," thought and without

into his

own

life-view.

full

oneself headlong into

away deed

meaning

but

it is

of

it

in the

"to

after-

end Pasternak himself

To throw

but lived that meaning.

does not, unfortunately,

life

in rivers of ecstasy. it is:

without

care.

That may have romantic overtones, but not only saw the

Gadavarda means

to dive right into the life-stream

Gadavarda sounds

like

mean being

carried

an enrichment and

the terrible enrichment of poverty

and nakedness,

in-

soli-

tude and abandon. In Pasternak's austere but inspiring words:

"Everywhere

own It

that

in the

world one has

to

pay for the right

to live

on one's

naf^ed spiritual reserves."

was Pasternak's Georgian friendships grim

right;

integrated into Pasternak's

"naked

that enabled

him

and the Georgian miracle of celebration and

own

life,

became the

to

pay for

silence, fully

living core of his

own

spiritual reserve."

9*

"BAPTISM IN THE FOREST": WISDOM AND INITIATION IN WILLIAM FAULKNER Perhaps the best way literature

and

approach the rather troublesome question of

to

religion today

is

to

begin with a typical case, an example

not of "religious literature" but rather of the confusions surrounding

When Camus French

undertook

stage, there

was

has been converted!"

a certain

Why?

amount

Nun

"Camus

of gossip in the press:

in the title has to in

be

"reli-

Roman

Le Monde 1 Camus

go through the usual tiresome business of explaining the

obvious.

He

was fascinated by Faulkner, "the

To Camus, Faulkner was one

of the

greatest

American

fairly

novelist."

few modern writers who possessed

and who was able

the "keys of ancient tragedy"

it.

for the

Because the work of Faulkner was

you know.) In an interview published

Catholic, to

adapt Faulkner's Requiem for a

(Anything with the word "nun"

gious."

had

to

to discover in the

back

pages of the newspapers myths embodying the essential tragedy of our time. Faulkner could place tiny

and could

made

it

a basically religious

classic

tragedy had done.

credible

on the

stage.

treated in a tragic, therefore

2

In Faulkner the

(Camus thought)

manner. Faulkner combined and concentrated

in

in

him-

the "universe of Dostoevski and, besides that, Protestant rigorism."

This was not

at all

a question of conventional

(Camus admitted) bored him a

way

hope that the "tragique de notre

possible to

would one day be made

theme of suffering was

self

characters in conflict with their des-

resolve that conflict in the

In a word, Faulkner histoire"

modern

to death,

moral sermons, which

but of the mystery of suffering as

dark abyss into which Faulkner saw a

possibility of a little light

Camus was

times filtering. Without being "converted,"

some-

certainly fasci-

nated by the "etrange religion de Faulkner," readily suggesting that

it

contained the secret of Faulkner's tragic power.

This essay was written as an introduction

George A. Panichas 1

(New York: Hawthorn,

to

Mansions of the

edited by

Spirit,

1967).

See the texts assembled bv Roger Quilliot in Camus' Theatre,

recits,

nouvelles

(Paris: 1963), pp. 1855ff. 2 In his

hope for

a return of true tragedy

Camus was

Antonin Artaud's manifestoes on "Le Theatre de

Tome IV (Paris: 1964), what Camus saw in Faulkner.

completes, ate

92

pp.

lOlff".

A

la

influenced by the ideas of

cruaute." See Artaud, Oeuvres

reading of these helps us

to appreci-

In a preface to the regular French edition of Requiem, translated by

Maurice-Edgar Coindreau, Camus roundly asserted that the paradoxical religious outlook of Faulkner,

which made

and "invested brothels and prisons with the dignity of the

cloister,"

not be dispensed with in an adaptation. "Ce paradoxe essentiel

Camus admitted God and faith.

conserver." Nonetheless,

on

tative passages

Camus added

sardonically, "If

me

no one would ask

if I

said,

"but

I

am not

The purpose

for all that

time, in the

repudiated a superficial "godlessness"

do not believe

"I

in

God,"

an atheist."

of these quotations

Camus' evaluation of Faulkner or adduced

had shortened the medi-

At the same

which he considered "vulgar and threadbare." he

could

fallait le

il

and staged a Greek tragedy,

believed in Zeus."

Camus

aforementioned interview,

that he

translated

I

Nancy

a saint of the prostitute

is

not to approve or to disapprove of

The

of "Faulkner's religion."

case

is

evidence of two facts: namely, that there does exist a con-

as

sensus which admits the existence even today of "religious literature" and that there

even annoying, popular tendency to look

also a disquieting,

is

for "conversions" in connection with this literature.

popular beliefs substantiate

and

religion.

I

am

all

that critics

do not say that these

me

merely showing what seems to

which the present book attempts

the problem with

I

sometimes say about

to deal.

Far from tak-

ing these popular opinions as proof of "Faulkner's religion," use in

them

as a starting point for a

more

literature

be the source of

to

I

merely

will

pedestrian investigation of themes

Faulkner which might conceivably be called "religious" but which,

I

think, can better be classified by another term.

Meanwhile,

which make

us firmly repudiate those vices

let

this

whole

question of "religious literature" so distasteful and so confusing. First, there

is

morbid

the often

curiosity about conversions

and

apostasies asso-

ciated with the writing or the reading of this or that literary work. This curiosity irreligion

is

every bit as vulgar and tiresome as the aggressive religion and

which often go with

with the prevalence of another (see, in this

In large part the blame

critical vice, that of

or any other

—and

Cruickshank would in finding

it

symptoms

of belief

of forthwith enrolling call this "intellectual

repugnant, especially

ters.

The

made

this

well

lie

"claiming for the faith" is

the habit

—whether Christian, Marxist,

them

imperialism,"

when

it

own sect. John and we can join

in one's

claims to be "Christian."

Unfortunately, the embattled inferiority complex of century thought

may

Waggoner). This

connection, the essay by Hyatt

of searching authors for

him

it.

much

nineteenth-

tendency almost second nature in some quar-

dead, whose hash was definitely settled and

who

could not be

93

discovered to have been deathbed converts, were nevertheless

have been

rumored

secret believers in

be about to

to

bow

their

be on the verge of becoming a

Nor

than Puritans!

less

the fury of conversions

and

apostasies

which

moving

procession of intellectuals

less

to

Birnbaum shows) he once

Catholic, perhaps because (as Milton

he disliked Catholics

to

heads over the font. Aldous Huxlev,

was repeatedly rumored

for instance,

shown

one way or another. The living were always

is

said that

there any need to recall

thirty years

ago kept a cease-

and out of the Communist

in

Party.

Further refinements in these matters can be treatment of the essayists in the thing as religious literature at

Does a

What

all?

left to

the very competent

part of this volume. Is there such a

meant here by

is

"religious"

:

"religious literature" imply the author's orthodoxy, his belonging to

Church, or his commitment

volume do not agree

in this

come

much

to pretty

to a recognizable set of beliefs

?

The

same conclusions. "Literarv" and

the

no guarantee that a work

is

writers

do in

in their terminology, although they

must not be confused. Obviouslv,

values is

first

fact

"religious"

religious orthodoxv or sincerity

artistically valid. If,

on the other hand, an

understanding of the work implies some awareness of religious values, then one must be able

to identify oneself to

some extent with

in holding these values to be "real." Otherwise,

work

enjoy the

in question.

But, again,

Father Blehl, for instance, says that

what

Graham

plays religious values, whereas in Faulkner's

have almost no

it

the author

becomes impossible

are "religious

Greene's whisky priest

"The Bear"

intrinsic religious significance at all."

is

tion of

God

"sacerdotal

(at least in

in a

spiritually sin." I

Here, by "religious"

The

L.

like to suggest later that

a "spiritually

Hanna would

also like the

severely restricted.

For Hanna, a work

The

fact that

range of "religion" in is

religious only

we

should

that he call his

is

if

this

God

is

regard in the

an author happens to have a coherent

view of the world and of man's struggle with destiny

mean

Faulkner

redemptive" view of the

not necessarily the orthodox Christian view.

it is

cast of characters.

not

"reli-

redemptive" and "shows the opera-

would

"The Bear") does have

world, though

Thomas

and

world of

dis-

"the experiences

Father Blehl evidently means "Christian" and "theological." gious"

to

values"?

in the

giving "religious" answers. Perhaps,

world does

Hanna

suggests,

outlook a "metaphvsic" rather than "religion." In such

Camus' statement about the "etrange religion de Faulkner" should emended to read "l'etrange metaphvsique de Faulkner." I submit that

a case

be

the idea

is

subtly transformed as soon as

it

gets into French.

Hanna

is

undoubtedlv right in protesting against the naivete of disoriented Christians

Q4

who, having no metaphvsic and needing one badly, assume

that

when

they find a few ingredients for

and

tianity." Still, this deficiency

in

America than

Europe.

in

orfe,

they have rediscovered "Chris-

this naivete are

When

perhaps more apparent

in the very next essay

Edwin M.

Moseley can speak calmly of "the essentially religious content of serious

drama

in every age,"

Moseley's statement starts

he seems

be contradicting Hanna; yet he

to

much more

is

plausible in his

still

Camus come

Greek tragedy could imply

to their service,

a very definite

and devotion

As

a matter of fact,

ambiguity toward the gods.

to

Homer

brings out). Aeschylus was not

convinced that Zeus' rule was beneficial or even fully

Prometheus

the Zeus of

Nevertheless, there

facts that

deals religiously with the great basic problems of

one can accept

The

this

lie

ground from

in different

They

truths of Christianity are found. itself, or, if

Pro-

human

Greek tragedy

destiny

and

that

that expression

is

Greek tragedy are of the same nature

Camus found

paradox" which

embedded

whom

without committing oneself to a particular dogmatic

"religious" elements in

as the "essential

And

case.

no getting around the

is

justified.

regarded as a usurper against

is

metheus has a very plausible

commitment

one of them might bring the devotee into

strained relations with another (as

They

M.

handy. Everyone

in

Faith in the Olympians did not necessarily imply a personal

faith.

not.

respond to the great religious and mythical motifs of Greek

tragedy without being converted to a belief in Zeus.

at all

is

context, since he

out from Greek tragedy and talks the language of people like F.

Cornford. Here again our allusions to

can

own

are

in Faulkner's

that in

embedded

no longer acceptable

in

human

some

to

man's psyche, whether his

in the very constitution of

Requiem.

which the revealed nature

readers, then

collective

uncon-

scious or his individual character structure.

In this connection

we

can readily understand

of Alain Robbe-Grillet rejects it

all

why

the neopositivism

tragedy as sentimental and false because

inevitably implies certain basic religious postulates about the value of

life.

But he assumes that these

to reality, not inherent in

something of

it.

reality itself.

says, like insects.

Such

is

son.

human

something added

In his suppression of values he suppresses

Hence

his people are, as

the fruit of a

"made tragedy impossible" and vant the idea of

religious postulates are

Father Jarrett-Kerr

method which has triumphantly same time, rejected as irrele-

has, at the

nature and, even more, that of the

But Father Jarrett-Kerr

also raises the question

human

per-

whether there can be

"Christian tragedy" in any context where the resurrection of the dead

taken for granted. "Theology," in

I.

A. Richards' words,

"is

fatal

is

to

tragedy."

But redemption

is

not automatic. "Salvation" can never be taken for

95

man

granted. All the good potentialities in

and destroyed through tion,

own

his

whether one believes

in

it

The

fault.

or not,

is

can be irretrievably wasted

damna-

Christian concept of

supremely

When Camus

tragic.

(out of the bitterness of his experience under the Nazis and during the

Algerian war) spoke of our time as "tragic," he was aware of the aspect of

its

destruction of

Greek tragedy

man.

is

Greek gods.

in" the

And Camus

excels in portraying the

comprehensible irrespective of whether It is so

because

it is

way

It is

"believe

concerned with them in

that we, too, find ourselves in-

volved in them without passing through the planation. This

we

not in fact concerned with truth

about the gods but with truths about man. such a "classical," such a universal

damned.

immediacy of Attic tragedy

medium of a doctrinal exmay be more obvious to us

West because our whole culture is built on the basis of Greek and Hebrew literature and thought. But I think that with a very little initia3 tion the No drama of Japan, for instance, or the religious drama of Bali in the

can have the same awe-inspiring and cathartic impact on a Western audi-

and symbolic language of gesture

ence. In other words, once the ritual

grasped, one can participate in Oriental

is

Greek tragedy. In

either case,

what

drama almost

happening

is

as well as in

not just that

is

we

are

spelling out for ourselves a religious or a metaphysical message. Rather,

the

drama

is

having a direct impact on the deepest center of our

nature, at a level beyond language,

human

where our most fundamental human

themselves not explained, not analyzed, but enacted in the

conflicts find artistic

way which

of pity

and

Aristotle tried to account for in his theory of catharsis,

terror in tragedy.

way tragedy does not merely convince us that we ought to be resigned. Above all, it does not merely propose suitable reasons for resignation. Through its therapeutic effect it enables us to rise above evil, to liberate ourselves from it by a return to a more real evaluation of ourselves, a change of heart analogous to Christian "repentance." As we know, the mechanism of Greek tragedy is centered on hubris, that fundaIn this

mentally false and arrogant estimate of one's

The

catharsis of pity

restores

him

to

and

an awareness of

his place in the

limitations as well as of his true nobilitv.

"Puny Man,"

as

self

and of

terror delivers the participant

Father Jarrett-Kerr

It

its

capacities.

from hubris and

scheme of things

enables

says, "is still

him

—of his

to realize that

valuable for his free-

dom."

Now 3

96

it

is

quite obvious that both

See Artaud, "Sur

le

Greek tragedy and Oriental

theatre balinais," op.

cit.,

64ff.

ritual

dance-drama were not merely presentations which an audience watched. They were religious celebrations, ence participated. Thus, although the impact of these archaic tion,

what would be the

which the audi-

liturgies, in

still

be immediately stirred by

dramas even when we read them

much

does not take

it

we can

and

sat

in transla-

imagination for us to represent to ourselves

effect of

our being present then, in those days, for

instance in the theater at Delphi during the festival of Apollo. (Note

what Father Jarrett-Kerr

says about a recent performance of

We—our

fore an African audience in Johannesburg.) selves

—might

Medea

twentieth-century

found the experience too powerful

possibly have

be-

to bear.

Or perhaps we would have undergone the sort of thing that happens now to the people who take LSD, which is presumably why they take it and why the taking of it has been invested with a quasi-religious ritual atmosphere.

The

point

is, I

writers

who

accessible to us today in reading not only ancient

works of our own time. Faulkner

tragedies but

possess this

and of direction or "religious" in the

same excitement

think, to realize that something of the

and discovery remains

power

we have

Unfortunately, as

it is

as

is

one of those

certainly

evo\e in us an experience of meaning

a catharsis of pity

same sense

biguous, insofar as

to

and

terror

Greek tragedy was

term "religious"

seen, the

associated with

which can be

many

called

religious.

am-

also very

is

other things that have noth-

ing to do with this basic experience. For example, the idea of religion

today

mixed up with confessionalism, with belonging

is

religious institution,

religious

to this or that

with making and advertising a particular kind of

commitment, with

a special style in devotion or piety, or even

with a certain exclusiveness in the quest for an experience which has to be sacred and not secular. In spite of ing

down

all

the limits between the sacred

the talk of believers about break-

and the

a very obsessive insistence that one's

secular,

one

still

feels that

whole experience of

there

is

to be

dominated from without by a system of acquired

beliefs

life

and

has atti-

tudes and that every other experience (for instance, that of reading a

novel) has

first to

be tested by this system of

beliefs.

Thus one has

read Faulkner with suspicion and enjoy only what conforms to one's

to

own

moral and religious code. In order to

make

this

simple and easy, one just proceeds to codify the

novelists themselves.

What

tem of each? What

in fact

you in

sit

down

did they believe?

What was

the preferred sys-

were "their messages"? But

to codify the "strange religion of

terms of some other no doubt

less

I

submit that

Faulkner" and

if

you do

if

so

strange religion of your own, you are

97

likely to miss the real "religious"

produces an effect that

He

the words alone. it,

is

somehow

not explicable by an investigation of

has a power of "enactment" which,

universal

human

his reader in the

myths which

on

values

Faulkner

a level

which words can point

typical of the creative genius

is

means

really

to convey.

not a system of truths which explain

which

direction.

life itself is

The

nification in

which

lived

more

life

which things point

his

power

to experience

he means to convey

is

but a certain depth of awareness

is

and with

a

more meaningful

not a matter of contrived

arbitrarily to

something

else.

sig-

Symbols are

power of imaginative communion.

of symbols

is,

I

think, fully explicable only

more than mere

the theory that symbols are something

human

And what

intensely

"symbolic" in this sense

release the

The power

but cannot

can associate

with efficacious sign-situations, symbols, and

is filled

release in the reader the imaginative

what the author

to

who

same experience of creation which brought forth

book. Such a book

signs

you are open

if

brings you into living participation with an experience of basic and

fully attain.

in

all

Greek tragedy because, although he works in words, he

the directness of

to

impact of Faulkner. His impact has

if

you accept

artifacts of a

few

minds. They are basic archetypal forms anterior to any operation

of the mind, forms which have risen spontaneously with awareness in

all

myths

in

and which have everywhere provided patterns

religions

which man has

striven to express his search for ultimate

union with God. Needless

to say, these

myths

for the

meaning and

retain their

power and

for

their

seminal creativity in the unconscious even after conscious minds have

agreed that

"God

consequent upon

The

dead."

it

springs

the

same time

it is

is

of the void

as other

any void and

decision

another matter.

in

man

clear that this imaginative

which

is

most appropriate

in activating the deepest centers of

faith calls into play.

would submit

that the term "religious"

not religious to be religious."

"metaphysical"

is

other possibilities. Sapientia

no longer conveys the idea of

is

And

I

would

asserted,

also say that the

word

not quite adequate to convey these values. There are

One

the Latin

them is the term sapiential. word for "wisdom." And wisdom

of

as well as the Biblical, tradition

98

and

must not be confused with theological

an imaginative awareness of basic meaning. As D. H. Lawrence "It's

myths. to sup-

But, because faith implies communication and language, the lan-

guage of symbols

I

God and

from the same archaic source

must be quite

it

symbol-making capacity faith.

of the death of

conscious determination to deny that there

press all anxiety about

At

The myth

is

is

something quite

in the classic,

definite. It

is

the high-

est level of cognition. It

edge, beyond intellectus,

goes beyond scientia, which

which

and wider range than

penetration

scope of man's

and

life

which science and intuition only mate

happening reveals

why

to us.

signs

it.

grasps the ultimate truths to

Wisdom

not only speculative, but also prac-

is

And

unless one "lives"

not only speculative but creative.

It is

and symbols.

It is

proceeds, then, not merely

It

seeks the "ulti-

it

which make things happen, but

they happen and the ultimate values which their

tical: that is to say, it is "lived."

"have"

It

point. In ancient terms,

causes," not simply efficient causes

the ultimate reasons

systematic knowl-

embraces the entire

either of these. It

meaning.

all its

is

intuitive understanding. It has deeper

is

it,

one cannot

expressed in living

from knowledge about

ultimate values, but from an actual possession and awareness of these values as incorporated in one's

But sapientia

must be

is

own

not inborn. True, the seeds of

discipline of traditional training, it

it is

tested

might say

I

is

qualified to teach

but in a hard

who

For wisdom

it.

acquired only in a living formation;

It is

by the master himself in certain

at

are there, but they itself

under the expert guidance of one

and who therefore

cannot be learned from a book.

and

it

Hence wisdom develops not by

cultivated.

himself possesses

existence.

critical situations.

once that creative writing and imaginative criticism pro-

wisdom in the modern world. At times one more than current philosophy and theology. The current of thought that has been enriched and stimu-

vide a privileged area for

they do so even

feels

literary

and

creative

lated by depth psychology, comparative religion, social anthropology, existentialism,

and the renewal of

classical, patristic,

studies has brought in a sapiential harvest

Let

me

critic

which

is

not to be despised.

mention some of the more obvious examples: T.

and

as poet, Boris Pasternak, St.-John Perse,

and mystical

Biblical,

S. Eliot

William Butler Yeats. Jacques Maritain's Creative Intuition Poetry illustrates what

I

mean,

in

ville

what

I

lege

have

and Shakespeare

left

classics

like

I

was fortunate

to study in col-

Mark Van Doren and

Jane Harrison,

Werner

Jaeger,

Joseph

Wood

and F. M. Cornford

us "sapiential" material.

The "wisdom" approach 4

great

some of the

in general, as well as in

criticism.

under "sapiential" teachers

Krutch. In the

A

thinking has come out in studies of Mel-

call "sapiential"

and of the American novel

recent Milton

Art and

do D. T. Suzuki's Zen and Japanese

as

Culture and William Carlos Williams's In the American Grain. deal of

both as

D. H. Lawrence, 4 and

to

man

seeks to apprehend man's value

Vivian de Sola Pinto's essay in Mansions of the Spirit brings

this

and

out well.

99

— and even ultimate

destiny in their global tion

and

do not

objectivity

suffice for this

will not serve, either, sapiential

Symbols are

information.

They

man

much

are not directed so

own

world of things and lives.

But we

from enslavement

for scientific

understanding and

mind

We

Obviously,

level.

and

to

need an overall perspective

to

institutions.

also

need

to eat

immediate without taking us

to the

to

social

by the

in trivial objects,

needs and of material interests on a limited

live in a

liberate us

at the

to

hidden sources of

which are inhibited by dead

routine, by the ordinary involvement of the

manage our everyday

myth and

to poetic

understanding of himself. They seek

liberate in himself life forces

conflicts of

we do

since quantitative analysis

not, here, ciphers pointing to

control of things as at man's

help

and

thought resorts

These must not be mistaken

religious or archetypal symbol.

propositions.

significance. Since fragmenta-

alto-

gether outside the "real world." Sapiential awareness deepens our com-

munion with tions

and

and it

the concrete:

ideals.

The

It is

poetic

not an initiation into a world of abstrac-

and contemplative awareness

used to be, normally, religious. In

there

fact,

is

is

sapiential

between

a relation

"wisdoms." Greek wisdom was not out of harmony with that of the

all

Bible. "Pythagoras

vision of theirs

and

his disciples,

which was aimed

and

also Plato, followed that

at the truth,

and

this they

inward

did not with-

out the help of God; and so in certain things they were in agreement

with the words of the prophets." 5 So said Clement of Alexandria, hinting

wisdom opened out upon true religion. Wisdom, in any case, has two aspects. One is metaphysical and

that all

lative,

an apprehension of the radical structure of

tual appreciation of

The

other

is

man

in his

human

undertaken

at great risk, in

creative transcendence are both possible.

human disaster.

dom

is

wisdom

existence, I

is

a peculiar

and

it

life,

an

intellec-

in their fruition.

tragic failure

Another aspect of

this

and

life

and

moral and

conflict, of the

especially of the typical causes

drama

of

signs of moral

characteristic qualities of this wis-

goes beyond the conscious and systematic moral principles

which may be embodied scious activity.

which

understanding of

might add that one of the

that

and

moral, practical, and religious, an awareness of man's

as a task to be

religious

human

potentialities

specu-

Wisdom

in an ethical doctrine

and which guide our con-

also supposes a certain intuitive grasp of uncon-

scious motivations, at least insofar as these are

embodied

in archetypes

and symbolic configurations of the psyche. Sapiential thinking has, as another of

5

Stromata V.

100

14. 116. 1.

its

characteristics, the capacity to

minds and

bridge the cognitive gap between our

the realm of the tran-

scendent and the unknown, so that without "understanding" what

beyond the

limit of

with

affinity

religious

rational

it,

human

we

vision,

some such

or seem to experience

wisdoms often claim not only knowledge but

affinity.

At any

to teach us truths that are

rate,

beyond

also to initiate us into higher states of awareness.

Such forms of wisdom are

called mystical.

I

wisdom do

do not pause here

wisdom.

the validity of various claims to mystical that certain types of

lies

nevertheless enter into an intuitive

to discuss

say

It is sufficient to

in fact lay claim to

an awareness that

goes beyond the aesthetic, moral, and liturgical levels and penetrates so

though perhaps incommunicable,

far as to give the initiate a direct,

tuition of the ultimate values of

life,

of the Absolute

even of the invisible Godhead. Christian wisdom

and

Christological,

the point

where

mystical.

faith

and values of man's

It

is

Ground

of

or

essentially theological,

implies a deepening of Christian faith to

becomes an experiential awareness of the

life in

in-

life,

Christ and "in the Spirit"

when he

realities

has been

raised to divine sonship.

In this collection of essays only the last two raise the question of Christian

wisdom

in

modern

O'Connor introduces us is

"from above" and

is

life.

Robert Detweiler's study of Flannery

to the radically

based on a

new

character of a

Word which

is

wisdom

that

an offense, breaking

through the hierarchical orders of cosmic sapience and overturning every other form of knowledge in order to bring a

whole new kind of

destiny, a destiny to

O'Connor well knew how tion!)

The

essay by

man

into confrontation with

freedom

in Christ. (Flannery

shocking

to exploit the ironies of this

situa-

George A. Panichas, on the other hand, brings us

into

contact with the ancient contemplative tradition of the Eastern Church,

which represents

a

much more

peaceful approach to a Christian

from which Hellenic elements have not been driven

out.

The

wisdom

story of the

Russian Pilgrim that so impressed Salinger's Franny informs us of a sapiential technique first devised

from there

to

Mount Athos and

by the monks of Sinai and transmitted then to

Rumania and

Russia.

The

pur-

pose of this elementary technique was to dispose the contemplative to a possibility of direct illumination

by

God

in the theoria described

Greek Fathers and further developed by Athonite hesychasm

by the

in the four-

teenth century.

For tian

my

part, I

wisdom.

I

am

want

not concerned in this essay with specifically Christo discuss

two examples of what

I

would

call the

natural sapiential outlook in Faulkner: in other words, two examples of

101

a conscious

and

awakening

of initiatory

myth in order deeper meaning of life

deliberate construction of

dition of natural

into the

wisdom. In the two works

Moses and The Wild Palms,

seems

it

to

convey a sense

to

in terms of a tra-

take as examples,

I

me

Go Down,

that this sapiential use of

myth and of symbolic narrative, culminating in a new awareness of the meaning of life in a historical situation, has to be appreciated and accepted if one is to understand what the author is trying to say. Let me be clear about what I mean by "myth." A myth is a tale with an archetypal pattern capable of suggesting and of implying that man's

meaning which can be sought and found

the cosmos has a hidden

life in

by one

who somehow

hero in the

many

trials

and

by symbolic

perils typified

home and

return to one's

epic journey of the

tall

one's place in the

convict

The

it.

flood

is

ment and

a

is

own

definite,

identity

and more

Bear."

part of

a spiritual one,

is

and

own

his

would add

6

and

of its

For example, R.

human goal

is

destiny.

a deeper

What he finds is a own measure and of his

is

absurd and void.

that interests

me most

is,

of course,

"The

a great deal of exciting criticism written about this

theme" and the "Lost Wilderness," 6 but

that the story of Ike McCaslin's novitiate life

It is

name we never

"vocation."

ironic, certitude of his

exploitation of the "Paradise

the wilderness

and

B. Lewis,

"The Hero

in the

New

I

initiation in

has to be seen in the context of the whole book,

W.

is

also a parable of judg-

meaning or un-meaning

Go Down, Moses

There has been

ironic

The Wild Palms

river in

convict (whose

tall

place in the world which, in this story,

The

journey of

The

important mythical elements

kind of archetypal man), but

a revelation of the

sense of his

things.

indeed seen as an eschatological deluge.

But the journey of the convict

more

a journey with

test situations, a

on the flooded

not only a mystical journey for the

know and who

with that of the

life

life as

scheme of

a mystical navigation of this kind, but other

enter into

own

religiously identifies his

For example, the Odyssey shows

story.

Go

World: William Faulk-

'The Bear,'" The Kenyon Review, XIII, 1951, pp. 458-74. This essay was reprinted in Interpretations of American Literature, ed. Charles Feidelson, Jr., and ner's

Paul Brodtkorb, "Faulkner's

first

Jr.

(New York:

the Incarnation," a canticle celebrating the

miraculous events."

He

scious Christ-likeness,"

power

332-48.

1959), pp.

sustained venture towards the

into charity."

sees in Ike

new

life

true that there it

liberated

world

is

after

"not lacking in dimly seen

McCaslin's renunciation an intimation of "con-

and the wisdom of "The Bear"

It is

likeness in Ike McCaslin; but

seems

is

to

a definite

me

is

"the transmutation of

and perhaps intended Christ-

that the forces of "redemption"

"renewal" in "The Bear" are more on the order of tion with cosmic spirits than explicit Christianity.

102

For Lewis, "The Bear"

more hopeful

a wilderness cult

and

and

identifica-

.

Down, Moses, since in fact Part IV of 'The Bear" does not reveal its full meaning when "The Bear" is printed and read apart from the rest of the McCaslin story. The violation of the wilderness, symbolic of a certain predatory and ferocious attitude toward the natural world,

an

Southern phenomenon here, because

especially

is

it

is

for

Faulkner

connected with

"baptism in the forest," 7 culminat-

slavery. Ike McCaslin's initiation, his

ing in a "revelatory vision" followed by the death of the Bear and of Ike's

and "Guru," Sam Fathers,

spiritual "Father"

a monastic act of renunciation, by

become

of the guilt that he believes to have

"miasma," with the Southern earth. which, as he sees

it,

He

associated, like a classic

cannot be "owned" by anyone.

But he finds that monastic poverty alone remains on his land but works

to cleanse himself

renounces his ownership of land

God and

belongs to

leads to a religious decision,

which Ike attempts

not enough (note that he

is

as a carpenter, "like the

Nazarene")

Poverty without chastity remains in some sense ambiguous and ineffecwife intuitively senses in the scene where she

tive, as Ike's

him

again, by erotic ecstasy

has tried to renounce.

power of

and the generation of almost as

It is

a countermysticism, another

bind

a child, to the earth

he

she has instinctively sensed the

if

more elemental "wisdom,"

out the spiritual vision in the wilderness. after this Ike

tries to

And

to cancel

perhaps she succeeds, for

McCaslin remains an ambiguous personage. At the end of

Go Down, Moses

(in "Delta

Autumn") he

of any prophetic charisma that

must not then forget

reveals the almost total loss

might once have been supposed

that in spite of his initiation

and

vision Ike

his.

We

McCas-

remains a failed saint and only half a monk. (Speaking after twenty-

lin

monastery,

five years in a difficult for

I

would

to be more than

anyone

like to that,

add

that

it

is

extraordinarily

and most of us are not even

that

far along.)

However, to

it is

the account of the spiritual initiation that seems to

me

be a particularly good, because evidently deliberate, use of the sapien-

tial

in Faulkner. It

formed Father

is

clearly the story of a disciple

in a traditional

who

is

and archaic wisdom by a charismatic

especially qualified for the task

a set of skills or a

being taught and

body of knowledge, but

spiritual

and who hands on not only

a mastery of

life,

a certain

way

of being aware, of being in touch not just with natural objects, with liv-

7

The words

are those of an interviewer

went the baptism

in the forest, because

that rejecting one's affirmative

instead

inheritance of

just

who admired

Ike "because he under-

he rejected his inheritance." Faulkner replied

was not enough:

"He should have been more in Michael Millgate, The

shunning people." Quoted

Achievement of William Faulkner (London: 1966),

p. 208.

103

ing things, but with the cosmic

spirit,

with the wilderness

itself

regarded

almost as a supernatural being, a "person." Indeed, the Bear, Old Ben, treated as a quasi-transcendent being, like

hound

fabulous brute of a

that finally

or less consented) brings the Bear

Sam

is

Fathers and like Lion, the

(when Old Ben has himself more

down

into death. It

as if the wilder-

is

somehow incarnated in Old Ben — as if he were a wilderThe annual autumn hunting party of Major de Spain becomes

ness spirit were ness god.

more

a

or less ritual performance in

hunted; is

it is

"the yearly pageant of

which Old Ben

Old Ben's

ceremoniously

is

furious immortality."

He

never seen and never expected to be caught, until the end comes for

the

whole wilderness and Old Ben, we are led

to believe,

is

ready to sur-

render himself and the woods to the portentous ritual of desecration that awaits them. This desecration signals the beginning of a

new

age, not of

gold or silver but of iron.

Thus the initiation of Ike McCaslin takes place precisely at a crucial moment of religious history, a turning point when all that he has learned and seen

is

to

become

obsolete.

He

will learn to be not only a

hunter but a contemplative and prophet, a wise real

ground of mystery and value which

ness

and which others can only guess

main

useless aristocratic luxuries.

world, and he

is

when,

helpless

wonderful

has beheld the

concealed in the Edenic wilder-

at.

They

as

is

man who

But

his skill

and

his vision re-

are anachronisms in the

an old man, he

young

sees a

modern relative

getting involved in the ancient tragedy of miscegenation and injustice.

He

has seen the inner meaning of the wilderness as an epiphany of the

cosmic mystery.

He

has encountered the Bear and had his "illumination."

In the light of this he has seen into the religious and historic mystery of the South which

lies

under judgment and under a

nothing he can do about

it

curse.

Yet there

is

apart from his monastic gesture, which re-

mains ambiguous and abortive.

Worst of

all,

Ike McCaslin seems to have become oblivious of the one

vital,

indestructible force that remains in the

love.

"Old man,"

lived so long

you knew or monastic. Ike

says the

and forgotten felt is

Negro so

world

—the force of human

mistress of Ike's

much

that

nephew, "have you

you don't remember anything

or even heard about love?"

The

concerned exclusively with the

failure

ritual

ment

son.

Thus, there

is

after all a fruitful

lantry of the Sartoris family has.

104

to the illegiti-

ambiguity in Faulkner's

treat-

wisdom which no longer has any our time, any more than the romantic

of this wilderness-paradise

application in the world of

typically

handing on of

General Compson's hunting horn, which belongs by right

mate

is

real

gal-

Sam

Nevertheless, the story of the boy's" formation by

growing awareness of the Bear experience of the

make

being, his decision to

and

as "presence," his

of the Bear as quasi-transcendent

the sacrifice

which

is

necessary to see the Bear,

consequent entering into a quasi-mystical relationship with the

his

Bear:

and

as spiritual reality

numinous mystery

Fathers, his

all this is

told with an inspired mastery that betrays Faulkner's

enthusiasm, another evidence of "his strange religion."

Testament resonances

characteristic

The

story has

own Old

and the

of Faulkner everywhere,

gradual ascent of the disciple to vision suggests the mystery cults of Greece; but what Faulkner actually celebrates of the

the primitive

is

wisdom

American Indian, the man who was par excellence the wilderness

hunter and the free wanderer in the unspoiled garden of Paradise.

"The Bear." Everythe Holy Grail. There

Countless mythical themes have been discovered in

thing is

said to be there,

is

no need

to

go into

introduction to the spiritual mystery.

a matter of

This

is

from the Great Mother

all that. I

wisdom

am

of the wilderness

knowledge or even of maturity.

not, of course, salvation

justifying his existence

captivity

his initiation into

It is

and redemption

and

It is

live in

as

it

not just

a question of salvation.

in

any Christian or theo-

analogue of supernatural salvation: a liberating his soul

from blindness and

by acquiring a deep and definitive understanding of his

purpose and deciding to is

and

This has the deepest possible resonances.

logical sense, but rather a natural

man

to

primarily interested in Ike McCaslin's

life's

accordance with this understanding. This

communion mythical and symbolic terms. Though

not mere solipsism, but an illuminating and mysterious

with cosmic

reality explicated in

Ike becomes in the end ambiguous as a charismatic figure (and this

which would be the very

perhaps necessary because the wilderness

itself,

ground and source of

but vanished), there

tion, at least in

my

his charism, has all

is

mind, that Faulkner intended him

is

no ques-

be one of "the

to

saved."

This limited concept of salvation

most of us who have forgotten the

is

not new, though

it

may seem

classic tradition. It is a

so to

humanistic as

well as basically a religious concept with an essentially ethical component, the

same "old

verities"

which Faulkner

the heart, the universal truths lacking

doomed fice."

—love

and honor and

These Ike learns from

pity

Sam

Nobel Prize acceptance "The old verities and truths of

said in his

speech he had always been writing about:

which any

story

is

ephemeral and

and pride and compassion and

sacri-

Fathers in the wilderness, along with

humility and courage ("Be scared but don't be afraid. ... deer has got to be scared of a coward the same as a brave

A

bear or a

man

has to

105

— be"). His wilderness

"The wilderness was

tion:

bear himself

mere

.

.

cliche. It

for Ike

to

be taken seriously enough here (with

Sam

"heir" of the wilderness spirit to

him. (Note that there

in the wilderness spirit.

to

To

have played a part

He

Fathers.

which was

in

new

is

all its life

not a

irony),

because of

becomes the "child" and

them and which is passed way of participating

another, less profound

is

hunters, whisky

immortal

tion of the wild

and the old male

his college,

regenerated, twice born; he enters into a

is

forma-

spiritual

alma mater." The term "alma mater"

the death of the Bear and of

on

was

the old bear ran his

.

is

an education and a

essentially

life is

spirit."

—not women—

This magic

in Faulkner's "etrange religion.")

makes up not only an education but

a spiritual

is

elixir is also

and

a "condensa-

well

known

This experience

religious formation

Ike's "novitiate to the true wilderness."

To

understand fully

another section of

him

introducing

we need

this novitiate,

Go Down,

"The Old

to read

Moses, in which

Sam

Fathers

People,"

is

shown

into a kind of timeless contemporaneousness with a

boy those old times would cease

largely vanished race. "Gradually to the to

be old times and would become a part of the boy's present, not only as

if

they had happened yesterday but as

more

—as and

still

happening and

into existence yet." This ex-

makes Ike McCaslin aware

whole new dimension of being which

tions

they were

some of them had not come

if

traordinary shift in consciousness a

if

that there

is

obscured by civilized assump-

is

that in order to find himself truly he has to

make an

existential

leap into this mysterious other order, into the dimension of a primitive

wilderness experience. ation in

The

which

his

He

own

will

do so by "seeing" the Bear, an act of

identity will be fully established.

successive experiences of closer

and

closer awareness of the

are described almost like degrees of mystical elevation in

is

first

he resolves

to

Bear that he leaves his

1

06

barking of the hysteri-

in the silence created when a drumming and then starts again. "There had ." The Bear has passed invisibly. solitude.

stops

Ike realizes that he

The

Bear, he

.

is

feels,

.

seen by the Bear without seeing anything

now knows and

recognizes him. In the end

go out into the woods without a gun and "prove" is

own)

almost a personal presence.

in relation to the curious

been nothing except the

himself.

finally

hounds and then again

woodpecker suddenly

Then

and

experienced as an insurmountable void and absence,

apprehended negatively cally frightened

real

Bear

which the Bear

(acting not without a certain suggestion of spiritual initiative of his

becomes more and more a

The Bear

initi-

not an ordinary hunter.

watch and compass hanging on

When a

this

is

branch and

to the

not enough, he lets

himself get

lost in

the virgin forest.

then that he finally sees the Bear in an

It is

stant of peaceful and Edenic revelation also brings

ing.

him back

where

to the place

which the Bear,

his

watch and compass are wait-

demanded

for

any passage

But what makes of Christ

is

it

to a higher level of

men, the Bear

awareness or of existence.

critics to see

becoming

the fact that in

festing himself to

some

possible for

incidentally,

which Kierkegaard

a description of the kind of "existential leap"

It is

in-

in

the Bear as a symbol

then personal, in mani-

visible,

kind of weakness in his

yields to a

"supernatural" being, a kind of divine and \enotic flaw which will even-

make him

tually

vulnerable, destructible, mortal,

mately bring about his destruction. Hence

want is

to read

"The Bear"

good reason

to see

change in

critical

how

and

revolution that has apparently

death of God. Certainly there

myth does

Faulkner's

intellectual

will ulti-

have no doubt that some will

I

as a fable of the

and which

tell

us something of the

mental

spiritual climate, the irreversible

made

an impossibility for

religious faith

many people. This could have been part of Faulkner's intention. The wilderness-paradise in which Ike McCaslin receives his "baptism in the forest" is the archaic world of religious myth and traditional wisdom. Wisdom is perfectly at home in such a world. Initiation leads to a so

definite

enlightenment which

munion

of the initiate with the "gods"

which he now knows found

the seal of authenticity

sets

upon

"spirits" of the

and conscious

as a privileged

his place in the hierarchy of

and

being as a hunter

He

participant.

who

is

com-

the

cosmic order has

who

worthy,

has earned his position by proving his respect and love for the other living beings in the forest, even those he must to

which Ike McCaslin

a structure accept,

laws.

is

which man can

and which

is

kill.

In other words, the

wisdom

initiated presupposes a traditional metaphysic,

intuitively understand,

basically reasonable

and

which he can lovingly

right,

with

its

own

inner

man" knows these laws, knows the penalties for violatknows how to avoid violating them. He lives in harmony world around him because he is in harmony with its spirits and Providence of God Who rules over it all. That Ike could pay

The

"wise

ing them, and

with the

with the

homage

to this

underlying "will" by renouncing his property

a perfectly logical consequence of his enlightenment ligious act of worship, is

not fully explained.

though

precisely

Nor need

it

the natural order, akin to the religious to classic stoicism. is

There may be

is

wisdom

wisdom

is,

to

religious character less in

of primitive peoples

in

and

there,

an archaic and

supplanted as soon as Ike

him,

a basically re-

be more or

Biblical allusions here

essentially a pre-Christian type of

scheme of things which

how it has this know it to

We

be.

and

is

and

but

it

classic

initiated.

107

The Wild Palms we

In

Pascal with

its

the words of Nietzsche's

world in which, in

terrifying void, the

its

madman, someone

wiped away the horizon. This,

that has

world of

are in a totally different world: the

vast emptiness,

has provided us with a sponge

in fact,

image we

precisely the

is

on the

get in Faulkner's masterly description of the convicts arriving levee

and seeing

sippi

on which one of

for the first time the vast expanse of the flooded Missis-

number is about to be carried away on a odyssey. As J. Hillis Miller points out in the present

helpless

and

fantastic

volume,

it is

the world

murdered not

The

ness.

so

their

where God

much by

The wisdom

by a

willful malice as

new

new

code of conscious-

which

consciousness,

we have

initiation

of the Indian in the wilderness

is

discovered in

is

not

if

nonetheless a scientific consciousness,

is

wisdom and

excludes the kind of

Bear."

not merely dead but murdered, and

specific characteristic of this

the scientific consciousness it

is

that

"The

kind of knowl-

a

edge by identification, an intersubjective knowledge, a communion in cosmic awareness and in nature. Faulkner has described based on love: love for the wilderness and for

it

as a

wisdom

secret laws; love for the

its

paradise mystery apprehended almost unconsciously in the forest; love for the "spirits" of the wilderness

and of the cosmic parent (both Mother and

Father) conceived as symbolically incarnate in the great Old Bear. But

new world. "This Anno Domini 1938," "The Wild Palms," "has no place in it for love." "If Jesus returned today we would have to crucify him quick in our own defense to justify and preserve the civilization we have worked and there

says

nothing of the kind in the

is

Wilbourne

suffered

in

and died shrieking and cursing

in rage

two thousand years to create and perfect Venus returned she would be a soiled man in palm full of French post-cards." for

The new it is

because nature,

in itself it

but only as

severs the

in a

own

man's

terror

image:

it

is

in his

in his

mind) makes wisdom impossible

communion between

subject

and

object,

man and

upon which wisdom depends. In the new consciousness man

radically cut off

ground of

all

if

subway lavatory with a

own knowing mind world around him (which he does not know

consciousness which isolates

and separates him from the as

man

and impotence and

from the ground of

his

own

being, as the struggling convict

is

which

being, cut off

from

is

is

as

also the

a foothold

on

the solid earth of cottonfields bv ten or fifteen feet of raging flood water.

Space does not premit us here to go fully into the problem of the person and society which radical in

dilemma

Go Down,

108

in

is

central in

modern

Moses, Cass

life.

The Wild Palms. Faulkner

Speaking of

Edmonds

says:

Sam

Fathers and his

"His blood

.

.

.

faces a

wisdom

knew

things

that

ago that we have not only

sb long

had been tamed out of our blood

we have to live together in herds to protect ourselves (my italics). But this does not imply that in order to return to vital contact with our own sources we need merely leave society. If people who have had the wisdom "tamed out of their blood"

forgotten them,

own

from our

sources"

civilization simply relinquish civilized society

by

work

the difficult

of recovering another

and

as the convict in the flood like Charlotte

But

wisdom, they

will be as helpless

will be destroyed, in spite of themselves,

lover.

The Wild Palms

the characters in

find themselves blind, help-

wants us

them

and without wisdom, Faulkner,

their creator,

from the point of view of

tragedy and of an implicit wisdom.

less, still

if

and her

without being trained in

The Wild Palms

is

classic

which the char-

a mysterious pattern of fateful ironies

do not

acters themselves never see, or

see until

and

characters remain starkly lonely

too late.

it is

to see

Hence

these

forlorn, struggling pitiably, full of

determination and even of outrage, in a world they see to be absurd and against forces they cannot

how

no matter the

tall

convict,

nation. But can

hard they

comprehend or manage

The two

try.

"heroes," the lover

do end with a kind of dim and

we

any way whatever,

in

Wilbourne and

adequate illumi-

partially

say that they have been initiated into wisdom, or that

they have been reborn, or that they understand and fully accept their

They do

destinies?

the best they can in their circumstances. Their best

not much. In one case the convict never

more

it is

wanted

in a resignation that

is

prison

The one solution

to a

beginning which

an absurd bonus of ten

and without comment

itself

means

meaning

little

is

ironically "monastic."

tinue to exist

and

nothingness.

To

in

to the

same

prison,

a place in

common

The

tall

grieve, be

it

which

to

with "The Bear"

"do time." is

that the

convict likes the peace and order

and Wilbourne

to grieve, rather

is

an otherwise meaningless world.

more than

thing this book has in

of his secluded existence,

is

determined

than simply to

remembered,

is

let

at least to con-

go and

fall

into total

the traditional function of

monk.

It is

by

— with

not without nobility. In either case, the prison

the last refuge of provisional

the

anyway

years of prison for "attempting to escape." In the other story the

lover goes without resistance

And

comic return

a kind of

to leave

is

true that the saga of the

itself as

novel,

"Old Man,"

is

"The Wild Palms." But

one against the other

tall

convict, the story

able to stand apart

sometimes printed

from the other half of the

in actual fact the author's intention to play

in counterpoint

is

not to be lightly dismissed.

the contrary, each section gains immensely in

power when

On

this counter-

109

point

is

perceived and appreciated.

two

of the

And

sections that the sapiential structure of the

mysterious inner meaning.

speaking through

meaning

man

himself

is

still

One

cannot simply

be appropriate and neglect everything

two

man

with no message that

air

own

capable of giving his

life a

he can grasp "the old verities" and be faithful to them. These

if

"verities" are not arbitrary.

verities,

revealed.

is

does not reveal a

remains a terrifying and inscrutable void

It

elements of water and

its

Yet

can interpret.

book

The Wild Palms

true that the cosmos itself in

It is

precisely in the counterpoint

it is

and the true

secret

is

Life

else.

man

woman, and

in the paradisal

is

and

integrity.

is

complete in

and Wilbourne have

itself.

and

The

The

man and

union of

integral

each half of the book one aspect of that union

in

out. Charlotte

and

other in a diptych which

whole picture of man. Neither half

wholeness of

a balance of values

is

in achieving wholeness

The Wild Palms complete each

parts of

gives us the

value one feels to

select a

is

sketched

erotic fulfillment, a passionately re-

woman

ciprocated love.

The

convict and the

ship at

fact,

they behave completely impersonally toward each

in

all;

They

other.

are pure archetypes.

relationship

which

almost as

ment

of

woman

and the

what was morally lacking

in the

two

lovers, acting itself out is

a positive conclusion:

does not necessarily have to be overwhelmed by the tragic forces

which are

loose within him.

let

There

is

an authentic and saving balance,

an order and an integrity which he can discover and

woman; and

relation with It is

centered on

this integrity

not on death.

life,

affirmation of a peculiar kind:

The is

the complete

is

basic truth of their

were the mystical embodi-

on a mysterious transcendent plane. But there

Man

relation-

almost entirely lacking in Charlotte and Wilbourne.

is

the convict

if

But what they do have

toward each other and toward a

moral responsibility

It is

have no emotional

"He

It is

that

typal, larger

his life

but an lose it."

woman on

the flooded river

and symbolic counterpart of the moral and psychological

disaster of the lovers in

ternal to the

life,

must

an affirmation of

would save

saga of the convict with the nameless

a mythical

live by, in his right

sapiential, in a sense salvific.

is

"The Wild Palms." All

woman

man and

the

than

eschatological

life,

in the boat.

myth

the peril and evil are ex-

Here we have an

—the Deluge

in fact

—as

arche-

com-

mentary on the Judgment under which the lovers stand without knowing it

at all

because

spondence

is

it

is

taking place within themselves.

suggested between the

immanent

An

explicit corre-

will of Charlotte to seek

an "absolute" love and the blind exterior force of the river that sweeps

woman. As Wilbourne meets Charlotte on the them away together, he is struck by her poise and

away

the convict and the

train,

which

no

carries

by "that instinctive proficiency in and rapport for the mechanics of cohabitation even of innocent

and unpractised women

—that

serene confi-

dence in their amorous destinies like that of birds in their wings tranquil ruthless belief in an fledges

—that

imminent deserved personal happiness which

them instantaneous and full-winged from the haven of respectauntried and supportive space where no shore is visible" (my

bility into

Here, of course, the "supportive" element

italics).

air,

is

Maurice-Edgar Coindreau, the French translator and

not water.

Faulkner,

critic of

has pointed out the evident balancing of mythical functions between "air"

and "wind"

"The Wild Palms" and "water"

in

sea as the mythical

Wild Palms"

too.

in

"Old Man." 8 But the

element of death plays an important part in "The

The

lovers

end

like

driftwood cast up on an

smelling, low-tide beach, helpless, exhausted, one of

They have been

in Mississippi history,

"normal

life"

in their rowboat,

who bounce

without oars on the worst flood

danger unharmed and return

off every

with a healthy new-born baby.

In each story a

from the

man and

rest of the

a

woman

are

more

world in situations that

or less completely isolated

still

somehow

the paradise myth, though only in tragic or comic irony. it

is

a

evil-

to die.

destroyed, in contrast with the completely unsinkable

and indestructible pair

to

them about

daydream

come

situation

from taking advantage of

it.

true,

First of

explicitly recall

For the

convict,

and yet everything prevents him

all,

the

woman

is

pregnant. Besides,

she repels him. Second, he has an obsessive sense of responsibility for her

and

for the boat

can rescue a

man

which has been entrusted

to

him, and he

thinks he

still

stranded on the roof of a cotton house and get back to

the group of convicts with

whom

woman

he belongs. As far as the

is

concerned, he wants only to get rid of her and the baby as soon as he

humanly can. For the two lovers, Charlotte Rittenmeyer and Harry Wilbourne, there also a daydream situation which has been made to come true by her

decently and

is

determination (that determination which ultimately destroys her). Their love

comes before everything

own

else.

Wilbourne cannot be persuaded

to

They live in order to make love together, alone, away from everyone else. They work only as much as is necessary to keep themselves alive and capable of making love. They inleave her even to save his

life.

tend explicitly to be lovers and not married people; hence they

any situation in which they find themselves

8

settling

down and

flee

from

living like

Maurice-Edgar Coindreau, ''Preface aux Palmiers sauvages," Les Temps mod-

ernes, VII, January 1952, pp. 1187-96.

Ill

They

secure

and comfortable

be

alone to their ritual erotic dream. Their

left

spouses.

and patterned according

to

a certain understanding of

fulfillment

is

what one might

man and

nothing very esoteric about

more or

else

much

out of

whom

with

destiny, in

which sexual

An

erotic rela-

really get

"wisdom."

this

would probably be

It

life to live;

to

on nicely in bed.

do

you might this

is

much

time as humanly

Wilbourne and Charlotte were able

And many would

to

possible in

do

this

someone accept, in

in practice:

bed together.

because of her unwaver-

ing determination to sacrifice respectability, security, comfort, and is

socially acceptable in order that they

plete single-mindedness to their love.

became

them

their

life.

ac-

as well get

to find

which these two carried out together

theory, the conclusion

you then spend as

can and should be sacrificed. There

you can. The best way

as

it

you

wisdom,

axiomatic by a rather large proportion of Americans

less

and Europeans today. You have one as

human

of

consciously planned

two passionately devoted partners then becomes an abso-

an end for which everything

cepted as

life is

call a certain level of

seen as the only real value worth living for.

is

tionship between lute,

accept absurd hardships in order to

that

all

might give themselves with com-

What

remains a daydream for others

Yet the blind force of cosmic tragedy bore down on

as the flood bore

down on

the convict

and the woman

in the drift-

ing rowboat. Only here the force of tragedy was the destructive power

own myth,

of their

their personal

for

or rather the inscrutable polarization set

myth and

the trivial

dreams which

wisdom. Though they withdraw

struct for themselves a

What

is

society has substituted

marginal

life

and

try to con-

world of values which cannot be found in

they do not succeed because society.

to a

up between

it is

destructive

is

not possible for

man

to get

society,

along without

not their eros, but their determination to

ignore an insoluble dilemma.

The judgment

of Faulkner goes a

daydream. "The Wild Palms" a lesson in ethics. It

and

is

sapiential pattern.

and

live

with him.

their love, in

tween

its

neither homily nor casuistry.

It is

The

tragic death of Charlotte, as the result of

own

lover to perform on her,

same passionate

The

forces

which drove her

is

to

not

artistic

an

seen to be

run away

seed of tragedy was present in the very nature of

psychology, in the strange disordered relationship be-

this willful,

into a destructive

deeper than the general erotic

tragedy and myth, in a highlv sophisticated

abortion which she forced her a consequence of the

is

little

deeply erotic

woman and

the passive male she

and symbiotic relationship with

drew

herself.

Faulkner everywhere plays the deep, archaic, archetypal sapiential

myths against the shallow and 112

trifling

mythology of modern

society.

This

is

"Old Man," where the convict

explicit in

because he

let

Wilbourne,

at

is

in jail

himself be seduced and deceived by cheap crime

stories.

one point in

True Confession bad

myth

stories.

doing

faith in

so.

He

his liaison

feeds

problems. Everything

daydreams

satisfy

taken care

is

and

is

aware of

his

each other sexually, they have no

number

the most basic of

is

it

to others

This, as any analyst knows,

of.

gross oversimplification. But, for a vast civilized world,

with Charlotte, works by writing

Yet he and Charlotte are dominated by the popular

when man and woman

that

he

realizes that

a

is

of people in the so-called

all articles

of faith. It

easy to

is

confuse this superficial notion with the more profound mystique of sexuality

which Vivian de Sola Pinto analyzes

freedom,

"into

alone ... a

herself

her sexual

all

and through the modern con-

"fallen" through willfulness

is

sciousness

on D. H.

in his essay

Lawrence. But even in Lawrence's terms Charlotte, for

upon

turning

creature

god-lost

herself."

"The Wild Palms"

In

the love of Charlotte

and Wilbourne

perfectly

is

gratifying

and

destructive

and death-oriented. From the beginning we are disturbed by

in

a

sense happy. Yet their relationship

which plays such an important

the "bad smell," the classic miasma,

symbolic part in their story and which

which

guilt. It is the willfulness

which has

ness

is

much more

modern man from as an atom in the

isolated

from other human beings isolation of the

modern

alienation, estrangement

pure

will.

character

— leaves

—Tillich

it

what

is

there left but to try to "get

How

do you

down which you

knows? Maybe you.

When

artificial

in Charlotte

it is

as

it

by

own

ones imposed by

could

take

still

what you want"? But what simply follow the

are already rolling. In other days one called resist.

all

it

But now who

your very identity which speaks, not just a tendency in

practical purposes, the

becomes

its

radical

whole bad

as capricious, as arbitrary,

self, life will

faith.

and

and the

woman

by pitting

is

necessarily

The power

at

work

finally as devastating

order as the cosmic power of the flooding river.

convict saves himself this

stress

to assert itself

fiction

know what you want? You

be lived destructively because of

its

moral

a person arbitrarily decides that a part of himself or herself

henceforth, for

in

him and

utter

and others would

"dominant passion," which you could accept or

the

conscious-

In the void where there are no standards left (once one has

do you want? incline

The

great void.

and which the characters of Victorian

seriously)

new

the world around

no other way than

broken away from the purely external and society

than unconscious

the direct result of that

is

essentially

is

all his

The

tall

strength against

power and by having miraculously good luck from beginning

to end.

"3

Wilbourne has no strength

and

respect for love

her will.

to resist

He

destroys

he completes the work of destruction which she has already made

rather,

irreversible.

own

his

and his instinctive would have saved Charlotte is too weak her and in so doing destroys himself. Or

to pit against anything,

for life that

Only

end does he manage

in the

ruins by his refusal to escape or to

to salvage

commit

something from

determination to "grieve." Indeed, there finally emerges in limited greatness, a tragic quietism, as at last

if,

sinking into his

him

own

his

a kind of nullity,

he

becomes united with the blind Tao of wind and finds in himself

the acceptance of unborn ness and unbeing tion"

and by

suicide

and

his entry into apophatic

"initiate" in a

devotee, as a

genuine traditional sense

Greek fragment

made worthy by

suffering."

9

which

for

is

him

his "salva-

wisdom. Thus even Wilbourne

says, is

if

we

is

an

accept the idea that the

"not to learn but to suffer and to be

The power

"The Wild

of the last section of

Palms," the eerie sound of wind in hospital and

makes

jail,

it

one of the

most impressive things Faulkner ever wrote.

The wisdom

The Wild Palms is barely what one would call "reliThe "gods" dealt with, if one could call them that, are malignant spirits, bent on destroying or at least frustrating man. The convict who wants nothing but to surrender to the police and get back to of

gious" wisdom.

the prison farm

is

"his place"

and incomprehension,

brutality flood.

which

He

feels

manipulator of

repeatedly thrust back, with

into the wild

and

all

hostile chaos of the

himself to be up against "the old, primal, faithless

all

the lust and folly

consists in the cry of "final force.

is

Here the "strange

and

and

injustice,"

and

his highest virtue

irrevocable repudiation" of any such evil

religion of

Faulkner" becomes identical with the

philosophy of Camus, his ethic of the absurd and of rebellion. But there is

more

to Faulkner's religion

the voyage of the convict

than

this. It

and the woman

the medieval Navigatio Brendani with

izing spiritual states.

might be

possible to interpret

as a mythical "journey," like

its visits

to strange islands

symbol-

The Indian mound where the baby is born is Ark out of Genesis"; and its "cypress choked

described as an "earthen

life-teeming constricted desolation,"

and the

woman and where

eschatological paradise in reverse.

Faulkner's symbols a long

where the snakes

nothing harms anything

way

But one would

respect the convict else, is

a kind of

have

to stretch

still

to find in this "deluge"

an unquestionably

Christian meaning.

9

Quoted

in

1963), p. 22.

114

Hugo

Rahner, Gree\ Myths and Christian Mystery

(New York:

However, the wisdom of The Wild, Palms and of Go Down, Moses not

is

all

of Faulkner,

and

concern us here.

What

Faulkner's works

is

can be played in counterpoint to more

it

themes in

explicitly Christian

his other works.

matters

is

show

to

That

exercise does not

that a sapiential reading of

both possible and rewarding. Such a reading protects

the Christian against the temptation to claim Faulkner for the faith the basis of a mythical development like that in

time

it

shows Faulkner's concern with the "old

"The

Bear."

meaning and

man

that

sense that

What

is

value.

He

embodies

this

same

the

and truths of the

verities

endowed with

heart" which flow from his classic view of the world as basic

At

on

view in symbols of a kind

has always spontaneously recognized to be "religious" in a is

not confessional but sapiential.

and

the position of a believing Christian before the sick

wildering gnosticism of modern literature? First of

own

the truth and accuracy of his that today he lives in a

all,

be-

while respecting

religious belief, the Christian realizes

world where most people find Christian doctrine

incomprehensible or irrelevant. Most modern literature speaks a language that

is

neither Christian nor unchristian.

It

seeks to explore reality in

terms that are often symbolic, mythical, sapiential, vaguely religious.

modern reader

is

of dogmatism,

intolerant

Marxist, behaviorist or any other; and he dramatist,

and the poet

present book

that they seek their

a sympathetic

is

whether

demands

be

Christian,

of the novelist, the

own kind

and reasonable survey

it

of revelation.

in

The

which scholars of

varying beliefs and viewpoints have joined to explore this area in

Their studies show us that what we find in modern

ture.

The

litera-

when

literature,

we

find any religious

life

but a creative effort to penetrate the meaning of man's suffering and

aspirations in

wisdom

at all, is

symbols that are imaginatively authentic.

appear in such symbols,

we

we

No

positive

If

God

does

expressed negatively

and rewarding effulgence

find in the poetry of other ages.

sense can be

accept the fact that this

Him

can expect to find

and obscurely rather than with the that

not a coherent intellectual view of

made of modern we live in an age

we

are not willing to

literature

if

of doubt.

But even

in the

midst of

doubt we can find authentic assurances of hope and understanding,

provided that

we

are willing to tolerate theological discomfort.

Stanford's quotation

from Dylan Thomas sums up the casual but unim-

peachable sincerity of

"These poems, with for the love of

Derek

modern all

Man and

sapiential literature:

their crudities, doubts,

in praise of

God, and

and confusions, are written I'd

be a damn' fool

if

they

weren't."

"5

And many

of our writers can be called, as

Stanford's essay, writers "of religious culture of doubt"; affirm

116

and

to

they

deny the

Dylan Thomas

temperament nourished

make no commitments and

spirit at the

same time.

is

called in

in a literary

they contrive to

FAULKNER AND

when Faulkner was at their best to write him

Thirty years ago,

were doing

critics

who,

HIS CRITICS the height of his powers, the off as a failure.

Conrad Aiken, numbered themselves among

like

admirers" had serious reservations about Faulkner's

style.

Even

the few

his "passionate

In 1936, Clifton

Fadiman reviewed Absalom! Absalom! in the New Yor\er and decided that it represented "the final blowup of what was once a remarkable, if minor talent." However, Faulkner went on to publish The Unvanquished in 1938, The Wild Palms in 1939, The Hamlet in 1940, and Go Down, Moses

in 1942.

And

at least

two

of these are admitted to be

most important books. Nevertheless, by 1945 books were out of

print.

A

all

among

his

seventeen of his early

period of silence, followed by Intruder in the

Dust (1948) and the award of the 1950 Nobel Prize, reminded everyone that Faulkner was still around, but even then the critics tended to boycott

He

him. ist,

was dismissed

mere "Southern

a

He

times.

did not

as

an irrelevant oddity,

writer."

Above

come up with

all,

a pessimist, a sensational-

he was out of touch with the

the acceptable slogans.

South, but what he wrote was trifling because sociology.

only

this

Those who grudgingly recognized

made

eccentricities.

He

wrote of the

was myth rather than

that he

had

talent felt that

matters worse: his talent was being wasted in lamentable

When

Times scolded him

he was awarded the Nobel Prize, The in

New

that perhaps

Yor\

terms which, though far milder, remind one a

of the Soviet objections to Pasternak receiving the award.

little

felt

it

It

was

Faulkner was too well liked in Europe because he

presented a disgusting image of the United States.

Of course this picture must not be oversimplified. Malcolm Cowley, who had at first treated him rather roughly, edited The Portable Faulkner in 1946 that

and

to this

Faulkner himself contributed some original material

"Compson Appendix"). Robert Penn Warren shows, marked the "great water-

was not without importance (the

This Portable,

as

so-called 1

shed for Faulkner's reputation in the United States."

This review for

two

article

was published

Gethsemani about the same time 1

in

The Critic, April-May 1967. See Appendix III Thomas Merton given to the Community of

transcriptions of conferences of

as this essay

and the preceding one were written.

Faulkner, a Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Robert Penn Warren (Engle-

wood

Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc.).

117

Faulkner's "pessimism" and the dark mythology which depressed the social-minded

critics in

a validation of

it

many

New

Deal nevertheless seemed

to

others were describing as absurd. Again, in Robert

terms, Faulkner

was proving

way

Camus

Penn Warren's

be "one of the few contemporary fiction

to

writers— perhaps the only American— of our time in the

to

men returning from World War II. They found their own experience of a world that Camus and so

have something to say in

the days of the

.

.

.

who

really picks at the scabs

that Dostoevsky, Kafka, Conrad, Proust

and

.

.

.

also do."

Faulkner has been read with understanding and appreciation for this it has been mostly in Europe. America still does not like scab-

If

reason,

when

happen to be on our own hide. True, much more widely accepted among us, and John L. Longley's study The Tragic Mas\ has taught us that we had a Sophocles in Mississippi and did not realize it. The mythical treatment picking, especially

the scabs

the Faulkner mythology has been

of the wilderness-paradise full positive

theme

"The Bear" has

in

the South as a desecrated sanctuary. in the

also

brought out the

scope of Faulkner's imaginative and quasi-religious vision of

minds of many American

But myth

itself is

considered

trivial

critics.

Faulkner was an outrageously and deliberately demanding writer. His tortuously involved time sequences, his interminable sentences, his multi-

same name

plication of characters with the

purpose above

book or style

else

all: to

dropped

was often

if

same book had one

ensure that the reader either became involved in the it

altogether. Yet

self-defeating. If

him go back over

in the

it

it is

obvious, too, that Faulkner's

involved the reader enough to

a thirty-line sentence to puzzle out

found the

after that the reader

its

make

meaning, and

thirty-line sentence did not

matter any-

way, he would be likely to regret his involvement and throw the book aside. Faulkner's to enlighten.

But

long sentences are perhaps meant more to obsess than in

any event involvement

in

Faulkner means some-

thing more than paying close attention to a story: the

power

of his

it

means entering

mythical obsessions. In the words of the French

Claude Edmonde Magny,

it

means allowing Faulkner

into

critic

to cast his spells

over you: for in her opinion Faulkner works like a prehistoric shaman

who enmeshes sacred horror.

the reader in

To

tured by the incredible which

Unfortunately, there this

is

is

the very essence of dreams."

a certain tvpe of

kind of witchery. The thing

spells are too awful.

118

numinous svmbols and entrances him with

quote Conrad, the reader gets the feeling of "being cap-

And

is

mind which fears and avoids Too much is let loose. The

dangerous.

there are various

ways of defending oneself

The

against them.

obvious refusal of assent

is

typified

by the easy ridicule

which Fadiman poured on Sutpen in Absalom. "He's the fellow you're supposed

shudder

to

and

at,

you understand Mr. Faulkner

if

you'll

shudder."

The myth

only really serious Faulkner criticism

enough

firmly

from within:

mere

is

it

to

authentic, or

American objection

to

which

that

assents to the it

phony? In between these two

poles, of

what one might

standard

and serious involvement,

ridicule

is

be captured by the incredible and then judges

is

call the

Faulkner: the repudiation of an apocalyptic mys-

tique of the absurd, which

way

Faulkner's

is

of celebrating the

American

destiny.

A

example of

typical

A

criticism of

Fable

repudiation

this

found in

is

—one of Faulkner's major

Norman

failures. It

Podhoretz's

would be well

to detail the criticisms here.

To easily

begin with, there

much wrong

so

is

with

A

Fable

that

itself

can

it

be demolished. Writing not of the familiar South but of unfamiliar

War

Europe and World

I,

Faulkner

tried to create a religious

myth and

succeeded only in concocting a pious allegory which has intentional Chris-

which

tian elements but

without any of the usual tragic and meta-

is

physical Faulknerian power.

V.

cards of just

It

does not really convince on any

it

a

another one of those proofs that an

view of the universe

religious

One might want there

argue a

to

Light in August, though catechisms.

As

it is

must

artist

either accept the

as literal truth or leave its

little

a definitely "religious

is

level.

game of "rhetorical poker with the marked myth and symbol." Of this equivocation Podhoretz says: it "is

S. Pritchett called

about the word

myths alone."

"literal" here

view of the universe" behind not something that

Sartre said very rightly, writing

—because book

a

spelled out in

is

like

penny

on The Sound and the

Fury, "a fictional technique always relates back to the novelist's meta-

The

physics.

mer." But

task

critic's

critics like

is

to define the latter before evaluating the for-

Podhoretz are not interested

Faulkner's or anybody

else's.

And

in metaphysics,

the emptiness of

A

whether

Fable gave Pod-

horetz an excuse for dismissing Faulkner's metaphysic instead of trying to define

it.

critics often

From

the failure of

A

Fable Podhoretz goes on, as such

do, to generalize about Faulkner's

faults of this

book are extended

to

all

"Faulkner has always taken refuge from sense of

This

work

the others, historical

as a whole.

and we change

The

learn in

a

that

vague

doom."

is

getting close to the heart of the matter, because in fact the great

question in Faulkner

—or

one of the great questions

—centers

around

his

119

sense of time to say that

and of

We cannot go

history.

Faulknerian time

by the past event which present and paralyzes

all

is

into that here, but

seam" (says Sartre of Faulkner)

Man

evil.

on the back of

rides

ing backward, and the swirl of objects going past

becomes

"real," only as

"sound and

The

and

and

work

lets in

the

a train look-

him comes

into focus,

even then the whole thing

not-yet of the future

an implacable

is

is

already

past.

thus becomes a closed universe

tragic involvements in fate rather than a universe of

an eschatological redemption.

torical

The

brutalities of

universe of Faulkner's early

of cyclic in

idiocies

And

behind.

it falls

fury, signifying nothing."

overshadowed by the

"The unspeak-

action toward a definite future.

able present, leaking at every

enough

kind of implacable shadow over the

casts a

monstrous obsessions of past

it is

monstrous nonprogression dominated

a

hope

does he place any hope in his-

Still less

development, evolutionary progress. Yet

is

it

perhaps too easy to

accuse Faulkner (as Sartre did, also on historical and political grounds) of being

enmeshed

mysticism."

The

in pure despair

nation or the Redemption, but

and where the Fall tology

The

if

from which he attempts

is

it is

certainly

to escape

"by

may

not be the Incar-

something

close to the Fall:

great religious reality in Faulkner

fully realized the doors are silently

open

to escha-

not to history.

great question in Faulkner

sense of

doom and

he does.

And

A

and

Fable, with

But that

is

judgment? In

all its faults,

Nun

are meditations

whom

ing whatever. For Podhoretz, Faulkner

is

bad manners. The middle apocalyptic style of life"

—a

class

on Judgment

eschatology has no mean-

simply apocalyptic and this

is

has brought into the world an "anti-

style of life

with sociological changes which are

and

opinion

another very good reason for Faulkner to be un-

popular with writers like Podhoretz, for

scientific ideas

my

represents a posi-

positive affirmation instead of his early despair.

Both "The Bear" and Requiem for a in history.

does he even get beyond the

this:

arrive at the awareness of

furthermore

tion of conscious

is

which, presumably, occupies

all

itself

sweetness and light, guided by

led gently to a golden future

by the peaceful hand of

history.

The

trouble with Faulkner, says Podhoretz,

has passed

him

by.

lightenment might comical remarks in statement, but

it

"As

far as

just as well all

criticism.

is

Not only

serenely ignores the fact that

patawpha but Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the

Enlightenment

that the

concerned, the En-

have never been." This

Faulkner

of the "enlightened" middle class world that

120

is

Yoknapatawpha

it is

is

is

one of the most

it

a prize under-

precisely in the midst

we have

not only Yokna-

Vietnam War, Watts, South

whole

some of the

Africa,

and

a

history.

On

the basis of this diagnosis, Podhoretz goes

fact that

Faulkner

litany of

"difficult

to deplore the

times" Faulkner's attempt at

giving them a tragic and quasi-religious interpretation

Remember

ary symbol of a failure of nerve."

Review was studying

Partisan

on

"out of touch with contemporary experience" and

is

though these are admittedly

that

shows "an unwillingness or an of the twentieth century

that

"a typical

is

at

it all

by saying that Faulkner

world

inability either to love or hate the

enough

understand

to

liter-

time the

that

nerve" in religiously in-

this "failure of

clined intellectuals. Finally, Podhoretz caps

Proof? Well, for one

it."

Faulkner did not appreciate "the moral sublimity

thing,

human

choicest atrocities in

of the

(sic)

Korean War." This curious,

one-dimensional view of

artificially lucid,

no place

there

is

hend

a Faulkner.

for It

madness or tragedy,

any tragic

clysm from

is

also such a thing as the refusal to

possibilities in history, the exclusion of

life

compre-

will obviously fail to

Faulkner of renouncing history and em-

will accuse

bracing tragedy instead. But there see

which

in

life,

madness and

cata-

Do

in favor of a pure rationale of historic development.

not such suppressions

make

able? Faulkner's point

was

tragedy

more

the

all

The

that they do.

and unavoid-

terrible

tiny ripples

on the reason-

able surface of history are perhaps indications of sea monsters below.

As

Michel Foucault has pointed out, the refusal of madness, the clear delimi-

and madness,

tation of reason

getting on as

made saw

if

the Enlightenment

thing.

little city called,

—and was necessary to

Faulkner

in reality

When we

find that he evaluates his

language of the Enlightenment.

two

aspects

rapes, murders, lynchings occur in the

so ironically, "JefTerson"?

we

it.

and humanity of the Enlightenment and the

How many

the "demonic" Sutpen,

madness. Far from

for

and inhumanity of the South were

lunacy, injustice,

same

demand

had never been, Yoknapatawpha was

necessary by the Enlightenment

that the reason, justice,

of the

creates a

He

is

look a

own

little

closer at

motives in the

convinced that "the ingredients of

morality are like the ingredients of a pie or cake and once you measure

them and balance them and mix them and put them all

finished

and nothing but

which Faulkner view of

seem

to

life is

you

—like

that

to

pie or cake can

Freud

human

—finds

reality

is

in

oven

it

is

The

tragic irony

"enlightened"

rationalistic

come

this

into the

out."

not quite so simple: you put in what

be reasonable and good ingredients and the result

from what you expected. Translated into the context not of

is

pies

far

and

ovens but of computers and nuclear weapons, the supposedly "rational"

aims of contemporary Sutpens, of which there are always plenty, begin 121

i

to

seem a

bit frightening. In other

passed these people by

words, the Enlightenment has not

—they are fully aware of

formulas to justify their

own

their unreason, the reasons of

"scientific."

imposing

Sutpen, says Hyatt Waggoner,

power knowledge

is

it

nothing that cannot be

known by

by calculated expediency." Sutpen

ment

as

any other

to

on

much

sound

"the post-Machiavellian

alone, refusing to

man

acknowledge

and granting

reality

He

abstract rational clarity.

as

is

and

positivist,

made

can be

the validity of principles he cannot or will not live by to

restraint

its

Enlightenment provide them with unique

excuses for doing whatever they like, as long as

consciously living by

and they appropriate

it

obsessions. Instead of

lives

a creature of the Enlighten-

his tragedy

is

not that he does not

reason but that he does not love.

The

points that Podhoretz

The

limited context.

where

else.

We

trouble

that

are not unreasonable in their

Faulkner

is

not there, he

find such arguments repeated over

criticism: the reasoning

ings of a

makes is

mind cannot understand

William Blake. Socrates cannot abide

the

and over

mad

is

own

some-

in literary

mythical shout-

to see tragedies

and goes

when a play of Euripides is on, but only because Euripides is friend. The Apollonian mind recoils from Dionysian dread and from

only

awful

possibility of

mantic seizure. But the Faulkners of

this

his

the

world are

not to be judged in Apollonian terms, although, incidentally, Faulkner has a plainly classic side to him, and cult of the "old verities

receiving the

on the

falls

Nobel

Prize.

fact,

comes out

But Podhoretz

sound dangerously

ears with a

Because the metaphysical basis point of

it

in his stoic

ethic— the

and truths of the heart" which he proclaimed on

is

will not accept this either. "It like irrelevant cant."

But why?

ignored and dismissed as irrelevant. In

the verities of the heart which Faulkner praises turn out to

be the same toilsome and inconclusive forms of patience which Podhoretz

seems to laud in the soldiers of Korea. But in Faulkner these virtues are not alien to those of Camus's rebel

who

refuses to submit to the absurd.

Podhoretz on the other hand seems more submissive. In Horace Benbow, the well-intentioned, scholarly lawyer, Faulkner has

shown

ened

liberal

that

it

who

of our time and

is

is

precisely the fully informed, cultured,

and

often most helpless to cope with the tragic

who

enlight-

dilemmas

remains most completely "out of touch with con-

temporary experience" even when he pontifically defines for everyone

what

that experience

The

recent collection of Faulkner criticism edited with a long

portant introductory essay by Robert

and im-

Penn Warren contains most

best positive and negative studies of his achievement.

122

else

is.

It is

of the

interesting to

— M. O'Donnell's essay from one of the early numbers of The Kenyon Review, one of the first appreciations in depth of Faulkner's

reread George

mythology and of the

fact that

Faulkner

"a traditional moralist in the

is

But the essay prematurely divides Faulkner's

best sense of the word."

world into Sartorises and Snopeses, so that Faulkner becomes a Sartoris artist in a

some

Sartoris;

he

McCaslin,

he

is

Snopes world.

It

would not be

of Faulkner's less responsible is

more

and

a failed saint

We

and friendly

monk in much with the

critics are

Howe, John

son, Irving

W.

Cleanth Brooks, R.

most

his

spite of a mystical

a fallen

have delayed too

serious

—in

difficult to find

Snopesism

but Faulkner himself

and even

a McCaslin,

not idealized

is

critics,

of the best French criticism

is

and

is

forest,

the end.

adverse

critics

of Faulkner: his

here too. Conrad Aiken, Lawrence

B. Lewis,

in

not a

positive hero, Ike

baptism in the

L. Longley, Olga Vickery, Hyatt

Sanctuary" by Carvell Collins

is

so on.

An

Thomp-

Waggoner,

informative "Note on

Some Time in

a valuable addition to the dossier.

here, including Sartre's study of

The French, incidentally, take Faulkner seriously as a religious writer. The classic preface of Malraux to the French edition of Sanctuary is reprinted, along with three and a half lines of Camus quoted from the Harvard Advocate. But a much more relevant statement of Camus on Faulkner will soon be published in a new translation of Camus's essays his preface to Requiem for a Nun. Unfortunately too there is nothing here by M. E. Coindreau, Faulkner's French translator and one of his best critics, whose preface to The Wild Palms brings out the true greatFaulkner.

ness of a neglected

What

one

is

printed essays,

when

and misunderstood book. conclude? This

to all

them

of

in

is

a very important collection of re-

one way or another deeply interesting even

they are annoyingly prejudiced or unfair. Faulkner had his weak-

nesses,

but

now we

up very well perspective,

American

can evaluate his strong points and find that he stands

novelists

who began

Time

is

giving us a better

to see the relative

importance of the

against the strongest criticism.

and we are beginning

publishing in the twenties. There was a

day when Faulkner seemed dwarfed by people Steinbeck and Caldwell.

Now

really

A

coming

book

into his

like this

Hemingway

we can understand

greater stature: a genius comparable to Melville,

Dostoevsky.

like

is

that he

or even

was of

far

Hawthorne, Dickens, or

essential at a time

when Faulkner

is

own.

123

4

"TO EACH HIS DARKNESS": NOTES ON A NOVEL OF JULIEN GREEN Chaque homme dans sa

nuit

—

Green creates a world of closely enmeshed contradictions: the young man who is regarded as devout, and is impure. The death of the impure old man "covered with Latin prayers." The horrid puritan who

Julien

determined

inflicts his

A constant uncertainty:

that

who

upright conscience on everyone,

will, his

gifted with a frightful insight.

He

which

hateful, yet can

is

is

he

after all

is

be right?

absolutely

worst must soon happen ?

That which

is

most dreadful must

after all turn out

to be true ?

The

worst

is

another becomes certain

evil possibility after

final uncertainty life

—the

tion,

—the

question

last

may

one that cannot be resolved in a book or in :

whether the

The awful

ease with

which seduction takes

from which there can be no

damna-

it

is

place, not because

it

is

part of an inexorable pattern

escape.

inexorable consistency of this world of fear!

A dream, a nightmare has We can say: "But after all he that explains anything.

tantalizing question

What is

is

made

Maybe

which

is

his

.

.

What is really What is to

?

His

talent

to

was

Directions in 1966.

later included in

until

we

up!" Yet is

we wake

up.

ask, in the end, if

to leave

us with the

torment.

be taken seriously?

be doubted?

This essay was written in 1964 and It

.

own

this

the question? Salvation, damnation? or

serious?

Charlatan.

same consistency

that

ing of seriousness?

124

possibility, that of

will.

desired but rather, perhaps, because

What

awful

final

this

turn out also to have been certain from the beginning, inflicted

by an inexorable

The

we move along one and we are left with the

never absolutely certain, and yet as

first

What

appeared

in

is

the

is

it

the question:

What to

is

the

mean-

be dismissed as

spring

1964 issue of

Raids on the Unspeakable, published by

New

.

not serious? is

there anything serious? Is there anything not serious? It

Is

perhaps the question of reality

Hence he

may

awful consistent universe

be serious, very serious, vitally serious. Every

ment

whole destiny depended on

have been so serious

it.

—a deeply religious

shame

the only one with any kind of creativity the very structure of reality. Is "reality"

His

him

gift enables

damn

to

because

it is

question

it

them.

to conjure

itself

up people

way, as

God

if

him

not lead

should be

to question

only the false floor over an

is

what

world of

He

God

himself.

But

It

might do with His

own

and drives

if

this

creative power.

the

dilemma

creative gift, his temptation to

moment

mistrust the danger of his art because he can never forget for one it is

Is this

There

rooted in Eros. the world of religion, or of magic ? is,

there should be, in religion, the

formed, transfigured, exorcised, clean,

We

the

is

suggests terrible

we have

only in order to destroy? Here

is it

of the artist in Green: his fear of his

sin

through with destruction,

also full of death?

implies a profound distrust of

creates,

in a

creativity itself shot

Is

from Eros, and Eros

analogies. It seems to imitate

He

in a

—does

void?

infinite

that

move-

ask myself whether Green's sense of guilt, his shame at

I

his creative gift

If

to

thing, every

destiny serious? This he seems not to question.

Sometimes

him

which everything

in

little

wind may turn out

of a blade of grass in the

that your Is

creates this

itself.

know we To treat

session.

one sweep,

to

are never free religion as

rob

of

it

from magic, never

trans-

entirely free

from ob-

could be entirely clear of obsession

if it

all its

power of magic, but

free.

seriousness (until the spirit of

God

is,

in

delivers

us Himself from our obsessions)

Yet when everything ness

is

is

serious,

perhaps nothing

is

serious: since serious-

relative, to destroy the relationship is to destroy seriousness.

Green makes relationship inexorable. In this world

that

terrible

it is

The enmeshing

pleasure, the

is

how

things "hang together."

of passions, flame within flame, nets

world nested

in a

moving mesh

and ropes of of

unending

fire fire,

passion, passion!

The

consistency of the massa

into hell

and no one

is

damnata

in

which

all

are dragged

surely saved: neither the Calvinist with his

down grim

determination that others should be damned, nor the priest with his impatient will that

operato

all

—since that

is

should have been rescued by a sacrament, ex opere the business of a priest.

125

— But where are they ?

enough

Is it

And

have the will

to

few

to a

that they have the will to be saved

be saved, must one limit oneself very carefully

to

select things that are

ta\en seriously?

be ignored? In other words, to be saved the possibility that one

To

to exclude

how do

How not take

anything else?

damnation

So, unless

reality

then, to be rescued

and

into the ludicrous

fall

Saint Sulpice!

if

is

—or the euphoria

you can

itself as

is,

then, to be lost?

seriously?

seriously

any more!

from seriousness!

satanic flippancy of false piety, \itsch,

of busy

and optimistic groups!)

and dominate

falsify

it

reality

you can impose your own obsession on impose

from consideration

popular religion which consists

triviality of

in not taking the possibility of

be saved,

everything else

might be damned?

(Think of the unspeakable

and

is

And must

take that possibility of damnation seriously

But

To To

?

with

will,

you are

lost

having

reality (instead of

an obsession on you) then are you perhaps doubly

lost?

The

question of this book, the deeper question,

is

the very nature of

reality itself.

Inexorable consistency.

The

"reality" of the

reality of the real

The world

Is reality

the

same

world he creates

world

is

as consistency?

made

of consistency, but the

not consistent.

is

of consistency

is

the world of justice, but justice

is

not the

word.

final

There

above the consistent and the logical world of

is,

sistent illogical

longer

justice,

world where nothing "hangs together," where

damns each man

to his

own

an inconjustice

darkness. This inconsistent world

no is

the realm of mercy.

The world

can only be "consistent" without God.

His freedom pected

will always threaten

A

god who

is

fitted into

and

consistent

is

not God.

Such

a

world

seriously. If

To

it

with inconsistency

— with

unex-

gifts.

take

is

not to be taken seriously, such a god

such a god

him

our world scheme in order

is

seriously

to

is

make

to

submit

serious

not to be taken

"absent" then doubtless the absence

is

it

is

to obsession, to doubt, to

a blessing.

magic, and

then to escape these, or try to escape them, by willfulness, by the determination to stake

all

on an arbitrary

selection of "things to be taken seri-

ously" because they "save," because they are "his affairs."

(Note that even atheism takes seriously 126

this

god of

consistency.)

But mercy breaks into the world of magic and apparent consistency. Mercy ates us

from the

"made up"

inconsistent. It

is

by yielding

together like a mass of

dough and

Mercy cannot be contained

in the

You cannot become This

with compulsion.

structures

which magic

It

liberates

strives to

child of magic, tries to impose)

Mercy

is

to

be consistent

—from

together into the oven.

all

of obsessions. to think

about

—that

one resolves

it.

obsessed with mercy!

the inner secret of mercy.

is

world which we have

becoming obsessed with

to "take seriously," in the sense of

sion,

web

its

It liber-

and hatreds which mix us up

thrust us

something one determines

it

and overturns

our obsessions. Only mercy can

to

from the madness of our determination

liberate us

is

justice

therefore comic.

tragic seriousness of the obsessive

for ourselves

the awful pattern of lusts, greeds, angers

Nor

is

It is totally

from

impose on

incompatible with obses-

and deterministic

the rigid

all

reality (or

which

science, the

!

not to be purchased by a

set

way

of acting, by a formal de-

termination to be consistent.

Law

is

The

Cross

consistent.

Law, of

the

Grace

is

"inconsistent."

the sign of contradiction— destroying the seriousness of

is

the Empire, of the armies, of blood sacrifice,

But the magicians keep turning the Cross it

is

for

religious is

them

to their

magician

who

maizes the Cross contradict mercy! This of course

To

say that Christ has locked

the doors, has given one answer, settled everything

all

all

life

which there

and departed,

leav-

enclosed in the frightful consistency of a system outside of is

seriousness

and damnation,

intolerable flippancy of the saved for the mystery of the serious,

obsession.

purposes. Yes,

too a sign of contradiction: the awful blasphemy of the

the ultimate temptation of Christianity!

ing

and of

own

—while

inside of

nowhere

is

which there

freedom of divine mercy which alone

and worthy of being taken

is

the

there any place left is

truly

seriously.

127

4

LOUIS ZUKOFSKY— THE PARADISE EAR All really valid poetry (poetry that its

power

Not

to generate

that the poet

found

imaginative

own way back new

his

into

tive association, the

grounded

in a

life)

comes up with

and

fully alive

is

a

is

by

asserts its reality

kind of recovery of paradise.

a report that he,

an unusual man, has

Eden: but the living

and the genera-

line

sound, the music, the structure, are

somehow

who

reads and

renewal of vision and hearing so that he

understands recognizes that here

is

a

new

new

start, a

creation.

Here

the

world gets another chance. Here man, here the reader discovers himself getting another start in

life,

in hope, in imagination,

but probably because the language

say,

itself is

through the innocence, the teaching, the good

workman

the is

Zukofsky

poet. Louis

one of the best poets writing

best for

many

more than

in

is

America today

which

this is the second,

1

—has

known,

thirty-five years of poetic practice,

Two

is

his

little

would

I

say he

perhaps been the

for only

now,

after

work being published

volumes of short poems, of

bring together in collection

that have hitherto appeared in

to

honest senses of

faith, the

such a poet, and

years. Certainly not the best

by one of the big commercial houses.

and why? Hard

getting another chance,

the short

all

poems

magazines and out-of-the-way presses

Hawthorn Press at Edinburgh, The long poems will come later. They can now be read in magalike Cid Corman's Origin (published in Japan) or, more accessibly,

(Jargon Books, Trobar Books, the Wild etc.).

zines

in Poetry.

At sixty-three, it is perhaps time for Louis Zukofsky to be recognized by more than a few poets: but poets have admired him since Ezra Pound wrote about him in the thirties. Zukofsky has probably done more for the language of poetry than any other American writer.

I

say "probably"

claim in a brief review. Future studies

and cannot

will,

I

substantiate that

show

believe,

that this

intuition

was not wrong. The

Not only

does he have an inexhaustible, childlike curiosity about words,

This review Critic, 25, 1

article

was written

in

originality of his

November

February-March 1967, under the

1966,

title

music

and was

first

128

extraordinary.

published in

The

"Paradise Bugged."

Louis Zukofsky, All: The Collected Short Poems, 1956-1964

Norton, 1966).

is

(New York: W. W.

.

way

their resonances, their suggestions, their implications, the

the

way

them

they look,

they behave: not only does he with marvelous tenderness place

which they quietly explode

in situations in

music that

also deeply attuned to the other

music of the

ideas, of the possibilities of

new

new

into

he

colors:

is

beyond the words, the

is

ideas, of the experience that

has not yet been discovered behind the word, of the expectations that the

word begins of words

is

open up for the

to

chaste

own

not do this kind of

work

ear

this very reason his use

and imagination

to

He

in.

fill

leaves a great

Those who can-

They

for themselves will not understand him.

The

will not contact him.

perfect

music

must be attuned

in themselves

gaps and silences in which his poetry really works. Because of

this exceptional sense of

ing, but if It

For

and sparing: he does not waste any.

deal for the reader's

to the

time.

first

you pay attention you

has classic resonances. Like

punning

realize that the

new

what can

He

not clever.

is

captious harmonies tried out quietly

He

and casually by Mozart or by Thelonius Monk. chords and walks away.

plays a couple of

does not add what need not be added

new

possibly excite attention to

possibilities

course nothing need be added or even said in the

—

—only

unsaid. (Of

left

The

first place.

poetry

of Zukofsky has that nonnecessary necessity of classic art. Because

had

you can say

it

driven to

He

it.

to be,

but there

is

remains both modest and free in the

man who

does not exhaust the possibilities of one man.)

does not have to be a prophet.

is

modest enough

to play

viewers). His music possibilities of

it is

talk."

But because

no longer ordinary

(i.e.,

makes

often

it

music

his

empty)

everyday becomes charged with expectations

He

all

the musical

ordinary talk about ordinary things. "Talk," he says,

form of love/Let us trovato),

(rather than re-

not different from talk: he explores

is

one

realizes that

with the language he loves,

the language he uses in talking to people

is

is,

classic liberality of

And who

the

Zukofsky, then,

it

never any sense of the poet being

life

which

all

words, Zukofsky seems to be punning and play-

talk,

—the

is

"is a

well found {ben

and the language of

language of paradise.

be in fact the language of children.

Many

of his

poems

are the essence of conversation with a child. Therefore they are highly sophisticated to a child

the

first

is

and often

difficult poetry,

not baby

talk,

not cliche.

to participate in the discovery of language, to say

time, thus recognizing their immensity.

Baby

talk

is

To

words

talk

for

for adults

only.

Hello,

little

Said not

But

my

St.

leaves

Francis

son in the spring.

.

129

—

:

The

speech of the child

things, not yet

them but

ciscan since he (is

.

it

familiarly addresses

And

Zukofsky

is

my

favorite Fran-

one without any of the trappings, only the

is

all

and anticipating nothing from

as alien

Franciscan.

it is

— ———

paradise speech for

is

knowing them

joy: hence,

:

essentials

in fact a Jew).

"Because he was crying I

like

him most

of all" says

"Because he was crying"

With

my

son

—the red fox

three porcupine quills in his

Who brings tears to the eyes

.

paw

.

Or somewhere else See:

My nose feels better in the air No man with children of his own needs to child. He knows they can be a nuisance. But Zukofsky 's best poems

is

"March

Remarkably on

The mothers

doesn't matter.

One

of

first

Would-be, small leaves are making Littlest children fight

it

First"

March

this

sentimentally idealize the

a hell of a noise

with their fathers,

are distracted or stark

mad

Rehearsing with them Tiniest green and teemingest teen

Reciting

"We are There

is

so

the generations of leaves."

much compassion

in

Zukofsky that he can send repeated

Valentines without irony, never the sadistic kind, Valentines to everybody, even though the world It

may

be at war

never pours,

it

when he

sends them:

draws

On St. Valentine's An ocean Secret with mines.

Magnetic hearts

Moving

shoeshines

In the lines of force

Of

St.

Valentine's.

The mined silences of water may have been partly suggested by World War II, but here, of course, they are the silences of

seas of

130

the life

.

and

itself,

life's

mined with

silences are

with unexpected encounters.

love,

In these, the heart must secretly blow up with the joy of being

and

of being for others in

word:

senses of the

all

in favor of

them, available to them, devoted to them. Yet there

to

ism about

it.

He

and children

loves his wife

friends, then those

first,

he meets (like the sweet

two-headed kids). The true ordo

is

a

cosmology of

who

whereas those

evil

poems

sky's

are

about

knows

it,

it,

never find

spring from a

and love which extends beyond them

This one must hear with a paradise

in fact cannot be heard except against the vast

silence

and warmth

is

when

whole can be paradise. Zukof-

poems

that

in

fit

last place in

wholeness, therefore they

this

silence

nitely in all directions.

make

that only

and never get beyond

the whole, consequently never see that the

ground of immense

Zukofsky's cosmology,

reduced to the

will evil be

with the

start

to

Franciscan, he

all.

it

you accept the whole thing

activ-

park with two

exile in the

and Valentines from the drugstore

love,

naturally since he accepts

no fussy

is

then his relatives and

caritatis.

This Valentine quotation gives us the key

which

human

them, open

ear.

infi-

His

background of

ground and the whole. His poems do not

the

sense except as part of the whole creation that exists precisely for

In the whole that

love, for free, for nothing, unnecessary.

when

every small thing becomes necessary, for small thing

is

the All

is

gratuitous every

seen to be wanted, to be important, to have

part in the big gift of

unnecessary,

is

own unique

its

things to each other.

all

I'm a mosquito

May

bite

I

your big toe?

Here's ten dollars

Use as

Though

everything

But Zukofsky of

is

love

is

sign of any death wish.

I

will not say that there

That would be absurd,

one of those for

(when life burns down up again later)

life

flare

it

you know.

so

whom low

death

that

it

is

Zukofsky no

in

for death too is

is

part of

it.

only the weakest form

appears to go out, only- to

My father praying at my mother's grave Heard So he

is

his father's song.

not divided. In a nation that

own

violence, fearing

time,

Zukofsky needs

its

own

to bare

is

deeply troubled, torn with

destructiveness

nobody

else's

and drawn

wound and

to

it

at the

its

same

does not fight the

131

.

4

up part of the time

other poets (for the poets are cutting each other

Nor not

he afraid

is

mind

it

to

look at the psychopathology of everyday

because he sees more in

the petty half-conscious smellings.

life.

also)

He

does

than the miserable frustrations and

it

He knows

that these too have some-

thing to do with love in their way. So he loves

life

and

loves

it

to live

we let it. To all this, death is merely subordinate. Here is one short poem that comes up out of the silence and the ground of love and stands for a moment like a world and returns again to the silence. It says what I mean about Zukofsky being a "paraitself in us,

which

it

will

if

dise hearer."

The poem

begins so to speak in mid-air:

And Spring Is

without

why

spring

it is

death here grass somewhere

it

As dead as lonely walks As living has less thought The Spring.

that

is

death grass somewhere As dead walks As living has less thought that

is

Spring

it is

why

spring

Is it

A spring. And without. This but

is

if

typical of the

we

listen to

of sacrificing

it

mature and sometimes

we

meaning

see that

it

is

broken down

the

is

it

not a question

to music, but of structuring the ideas musically

and communicates more

instead of logically so that the music contains

meaning than

mere words could

easily into concepts

alone, only to be read over

and

—so

much more

and the poem has

over.

Then

life

that

to

saying-it-is spring all

become

life

the midst of a living-dying-life in

and death and spring and

when all

it

one's

poem

is

tion.

132

and

not-

spring.

Or

is

in

weakness and strength experi-

will be.

at

The

hand

to signify

it,

real subject of the

then not just spring; a special season, a well-designated time, but

the unlimited curious sense of confused anticipation which stuff of

it,

might be spring and one

enced together without contrast, and with no word it is

left

aspects of one unity. This gets very close to

the Zen-likenesses of ordinary

least of all "spring," yet

cannot be

it

be respected,

and walking and not-spring and not-thinking-about

grass

Zukofsky

difficult verse of

really simple:

ordinary

life:

an anticipation that

Zukofsky has understood

as

no one

is

also

aware of

is

the very

itself as a

ques-

else has the reality of that ques-

tion

and has been able

in

which

it.

So

we

it

to ask

it

in a

way

that preserves

never go on to the next question. Each

same question, but brand new. Because here tience

and the good sense

loves.

And

stone

its

purity: a

way

cannot provoke any answer that would appear to dispose of

to listen.

write a perfect

And

poem about

is

poem a poet

is

very

who

much

the

has the pa-

look around at the Brooklyn he a

dog looking out of a brown-

window.

133

THE ANSWER OF MINERVA:

AND RESISTANCE

PACIFISM

IN SIMONE WEIL

Like Bernanos and Camus, Simone Weil

who were

independent French thinkers cerns of Europe in the

is

one of those

More

controversial, per-

haps more of a genius than the others, certainly harder has been called

all

and

able to articulate the deepest con-

half of this century.

first

brilliant

to situate, she

kinds of names, both good and bad and often contra-

Gnostic and Catholic, Jew and Albigensian, medievalist and

dictory:

modernist, platonist and anarchist, rebel and saint, rationalist and mystic.

De

Gaulle said he thought she was out of her mind.

The

sanatorium at Ashford, Kent, where she died on August

doctor in the 24, 1943, said,

"she had a curious religious outlook and (probably) no religion at

Whatever

is

all."

said about her, she will perhaps always be treated as "an

enigma," which

simply to say that she

is

is

somewhat more

difficult to

categorize than most people, since in her passion for integrity she abso-

up any

lutely refused to take light of

what she believed

tual honesty."

When

easily detected its

None

position she

to

had not

first

thought out in the

be a personal vocation to "absolute

intellec-

she began to examine any accepted position, she

weaknesses and inconsistencies.

of the books of

Simone Weil (seventeen

in French, eight in

They are all collections of notes, essays, articles, journals, and letters. Though she has conquered a certain number of fans by the force of her personality, most readers remember her as the author of some fragment or other that they have found in some way both

English) were written as books.

impressive and disconcerting.

and

yet

one can very

characteristic ideas.

easily

But

this

One

cannot help admiring her lucid genius,

disagree with her most fundamental is

and

usually because one does not see her

thought as a whole.

The new biography by and tormented

life,

Jacques Cabaud

Indiana: University of Notre

under the 1

title

!34

first

Dame

tells

of her active

it

was included

in

brought out by Farrar Straus and Giroux

Alternative.

a Fellowship in

Dame, Thomas

published in Faith and Violence (Notre Press, 1968). Later

in the revised edition

The Nonviolent

Simone Weil,

not only

but studies in detail a large number of writings (of

This essay, written in 1968, was

Merton on Peace and

1

Love (New York: Channel

Press, 1964).

which

a complete bibliography

those

who knew

Weil

either as a

problem or

was. Such a book sive

can treat

Simone

fortunately avoided treating

as a saint.

He

accepts her as she evidently

obviously indispensable, for without a comprehen-

and detached study

it

would be impossible

no one who reads

spective. In fact,

as

is

given), together with the testimony of

is

Cabaud has

her.

this

book

for us to see her in per-

carefully

and dispassionately

Simone Weil merely as an enigma or a phenomenon,

still

less

deluded or irrelevant: few writers have more significant thought

than she on the history of our time and a better understanding of our calamities.

On

Cabaud would claim that this book says the last word on Simone Weil or that it fully explains, for instance, the "Christian mysticism" that prompted her to remain deliberately outside the Church and refuse baptism even on the point of death because she felt that her natural element was with "the immense the other hand, probably not even Mr.

and unfortunate multitude of unbelievers." This "unbeliever," we

note,

was one who had been "seized" by Christ in a mystical experience the

marks of which are

to

appearances quite

all

them

Catholic theologian has trouble keeping

though the

and

one of her charisms was that of living and

traditional focus. (Obviously,

dying

authentic,

clearly in a familiar

as a sign of contradiction

for Catholics,

and one

feels that the

climate of Catholic thought in France at the time of Vatican II has been to

some extent

at

Solesmes and Marseilles.)

Though

her

affected by at least a

spirit

was

at

vague awareness of her experiences

times explicitly intended to be that of the

medieval Cathars and though her description of her mystical strongly Gnostic

and

intellectual, she

life

is

has had things to say of her experi-

ence of sufferings of Christ which are not only deeply Christian but also

speak directly to the anguish and perplexity of modern man. This intu-

and meaning

ition of the nature

of suffering provides, in

Simone Weil,

the core of a metaphysic, not to say a theology, of nonviolence.

metaphysic of nonviolence

Looking back the thirties, in her

at

Cabaud speaks

the thirties

was

that time pacifism

participation in the peace

movement

of

rather sweepingly of a collapse of pacifism

political action. It

as naive as

a

something that the peace movement needs.

is

Simone Weil's

thought and

And

it

amounted

quite true that the pacifism of

is

was popular, and to

that for

many

people at

nothing more than the disposition

to

ignore unpleasant realities and to compromise with the threat of force, as did

Chamberlain

at

Munich.

It is also

underestimated the ruthlessness of Hitler

true that

at the

Simone Weil

time of the

herself

Munich

crisis,

!35

though her principles did not allow her

Cabaud quotes

to agree

with the Munich pact.

statement of Simone Weil accusing herself of a

a

"criminal error committed before 1939 with regard to pacifist groups and

She had come

their actions."

and

wards treason"

to regard her earlier tolerance of a passive

kind of co-operation with "their disposition

inert pacifism as a

to-

—a treason she said she had not seen because she had been

disabled by illness.

This

her disgust with Vichy and with former pacifists

reflects

submitted to Hitler without protest. But

ment

mean

to

that after

Weil abandoned tially

new

Munich and then

we cannot

who now

interpret this state-

after the fall of France,

Simone

her former principles in order to take up an essen-

all

war and

position in regard to

peace. This

would mean equat-

ing her "pacifism" with the quietism of the uncomprehending and in-

would

active. It

committed

also

mean

failure to

understand that she became deeply

to nonviolent resistance. Before

however, on nonviolence; after the

Munich her emphasis

of France

fall

was on

it

was,

resistance,

including resistance by force where nonviolence was ineffective.

unfortunate that Cabaud's book does not sufficiently avoid the

It is

and nonresistance.

cliched identification of pacifism with quietist passivity

Simone Weil's love

of peace

was never sentimental and never

and though her judgment sometimes erred tions,

was seldom

it

remains one of the

unrealistic.

in his

it

dividing line in her first

was "Let us not

start the

is

it is

of

War

all

Words."

book (pp. 155-60), concluding that it marks a belongs in fact to the same crucial period as

nothing mystical about

examined

essay.

closely,

it is

terrible

thing about war

is

discovered to have no rationally defin-

all

the

of content. Let us briefly resume this article, since stance of

develops a theme

It

The supposed

which are

votion to

this

objectives of war are actually myths and more capable of enlisting the full force of deduty and hatred of the enemy when thev are completely empty

able objective.

topical

Trojan

Power

life. It

Montaigne and Charron: the most

familiar to

fictions

wrote in 1937

mystical experiences.

But there

that, if

article she

appears in her Selected Essays as "The

It

Cabaud analyzes her

in assessing concrete situa-

important

treatments of the problem of war and peace

classic

in our time. Its original title

over again."

An

quietistic;

Simone Weil's

ideas

on peace and

examples) just as relevant to our

is

own

it

(apart

time as

contains the sub-

from some of her it

was

to the late

thirties.

The

article

but which

136

is

begins with a statement which

important for

us.

is

passed over by

Simone Weil remarks

Cabaud

that while our tech-

nology has given us weapons of immense destructive power, the weapons

do not go

by themselves (we hope). Hence,

off

and

to think

who

rather than the people still

the danger

:

lies

what Simone Weil and

analysis

as

less

and

as a

problem

an unavoidable obsessive

to

She says

This

of the article

which we must submit with anything but pas-

is

clearly that the acceptance of

power

fatality is the root of the

commitment

precisely

but in the

be solved by rational

immediately that she

see

sively resigned to the evil of war.

war

The theme

understand.

action, not as a fatality to

We

class,

participate (not excluding pacifists).

all

set herself to

bravery or desperation.

But more

group or

in this or that

war must be regarded

then, that

is,

a primordial mistake

are disposed to fire them.

much

not so

climate of thought in which is

it is

weapons were what constituted our danger,

act as if the

politician's ruth-

to violence.

This, she believed, was the "key to our history." in fact, conflicting statesmen face

If,

one another only with

would be

fined objectives that were fully rational, there

and

limit

measure

which would permit of discussion and negotiation. But where

the objectives are actually nothing

out intelligible content, there bility of

clearly de-

a certain

is

no

more than

common

communication, therefore, again, no

capital letter slogans with-

measure, therefore no possipossibility of

avoiding war

except by ambiguous compromises or by agreements that are not in-

And

tended to be kept. Such agreements do not really avoid war.

of

course they solve no problems.

The

typology of the Trojan War,

illustrates this.

Helen was

The

No

Paris.

for the "real issue"

no is

"known

one,

all

Greek or Trojan, was fighting

of gods

which

for Helen, but

in this war,

which

Homeric heroes took the that this was relatively

and myths. Simone Weil considered

myths were thus kept within

defined area. For us, on the other at

Both armies,

in the case of the

fortunate for them, since their

no myths

interest in

wars, were fighting in a moral void, motivated by sym-

bols without content,

form

educated man,"

who had any

which Helen symbolized. Unfortunately, there was

real issue at all for her to symbolize.

the type of

to every

only one, Greek or Trojan,

all),

myth

actually

hand is

(since

we imagine

that

a well-

we have

without limitation and can easily

penetrate the whole realm of political, social, and ethical thought.

Instead of going to war because the gods have been arguing themselves,

we go

among

because of "secret plots" and sinister combinations, be-

cause of political slogans elevated to the dignity of metaphysical absolutes:

"our

political universe

is

peopled with myths and monsters

nothing there but absolutes."

We

— we

know

shed blood for high-sounding words

!37

4

We

spelled out in capital letters.

men who

stroying other

But how can men

The

void?

tively

be brought to

from

is

class,

or racial

objec-

myth must

intelligible content

(We may

is

re-

but from the

observe here that the sub-

the willingness to give reality to metaphysical nothing-

ness by sacrificing to

and

each other for what

kill

nothingness of national,

and be destroyed.

stance of idolatry

de-

believe in enemy-words, also in capital letters.

really

ceive an apparent substance, not will to destroy

them by

seek to impart content to

The more

it.

totally

one destroys present

realities

an object which is really void, the more total is commitment to the falsehood that the nonentity is Note here that in this conext the God of the mystics

alienates oneself to

the idolatry,

the

i.e.,

an objective absolute.

among that God

not "an object" and cannot be described properly as "an entity"

is

other entities. Hence, one of the marks of authentic mysticism as experienced

by the mystic can

in

is

no way be the object of an idolatrous

cult.)

The

and be

will to kill

tion already performed.

there to

demand

killed

grows out of

As soon

further sacrifice

from

and

sacrifices

war has begun,

as the

their

acts of destruc-

the

first

companions, since they have

demonstrated by their example that the objective of the war

no

price

is

too high to pay for

its

dead are

attainment. This

is

is

the "sledge

such that

hammer

argument," the argument of Minerva in Homer: "You must fight on, for if

you now make peace with the enemy, you

These are cogent

yond

their

effect,

own

everyone

sarcastic

and

do not add anything, be-

vivacity, to the ideas that prevailed in the thirties. In

who remembered

meditating on the

racy."

will offend the dead."

intuitions, but so far they

futility of

war

the First

in 1938.

World War was

Everyone was

still

capable of

able to take

advantage of slogans about "making the world safe for democ-

But merely

totally

to say that war, in its very nature,

was

totally

absurd

meaningless was to run the risk of missing the real point.

Mere words without content do not suffice, of themselves, to start a war. Behind the empty symbols and the objectiveless motivation of force, there is

a real force, the

tive

grimmest of

all

the social realities of our time: collec-

power, which Simone Weil, in her more Catharist mood, regarded

as the "great beast."

phy students

"How

will the soul

be saved," she asked her philoso-

an opinion

in the Lycee, "after the great beast has acquired

about everything?"

The

void underlying the symbols and the myths of nationalism, of

capitalism,

communism,

fascism, racism, totalism

by the presence of the beast

—the urge

to collective

is

in fact filled entirely

power.

We

might

developing her image, that the void thus becomes an insatiable for

i

38

power:

it

sucks

all life

and

all

being into

itself.

Power

is

say,

demand

then gener-

ated by the plunge of real

and human values

into nothingness, allowing

themselves to be destroyed in order that the collectivity

and hopeless

theoretical

"What

of perfect

ideal

called national security

is

one would

to

do

attain to a

which

a chimerical state of things in

is

so.

make war while War is therefore made

power

keep for oneself alone the

would be unable

countries

may

and unassailable supremacy:

.

.

.

to

other

all

in order

making war. All international politics revolve in this vicious circle." But she adds, "why must one be able to make war? This no one knows any more than the Trojans knew why keep or

to

to increase the

means

of

they had to keep Helen."

when Germany

Nevertheless,

overran France she herself found a reason

human liberty against the human beings serving as

for joining the resistance: the affirmation of

abuse of power. "All over the world there are

means

to the

power of others without having consented

a basic evil that

had

be

to

on pacifism and nonviolence self,

Cabaud seems

as

Munich

with a practical repudiation of both.

to indicate,

led her to clarify the distinction

tive nonviolence.

and

the weak,

The former

is

and

is

positive resistance, in order to

success,

a state of affairs in

then

evil

that

If

this

is

conflict

understood,

some

we can

another also

it

was passive and

moment

if

it

with

nonviolence had

could be resolved nonviolently

also

would be

resistance fifty-six

on the

was

now)

subject.

understand Simone Weil's revul-

and popular pacifism of Munich, without clear objective, was only

in the objectiveless dialectic of brute

power.

understand the passion with which she sought

resistance.

evil

with good.

this

exciting things

also

sion at the collapse of that superficial

which, since

that

she had survived (she

she might possibly have written

Once

which opposes

However, her notion of nonviolent

never fully developed.

effec-

could be resisted by force. But she hoped for

which human

rather than by force.

and

called the nonviolence of

overcome

Simone Weil would apparently have added no hope of

ineffective

without resistance. Effective non-

evil

violence ("the nonviolence of the strong") serious

between

what Gandhi

merely submits to

it

This was

to it."

The revision of Simone Weil's opinion after Munich does not therefore resolve it-

resisted.

But she did not change her

principles.

And we

to join the

can

French

She did not commit

herself to violent action, but she did seek to expose herself to the greatest

danger and line

sacrifice,

nonviolently.

Though

her desire to form a "front

nursing corps" (regarded by de Gaulle as lunacy) was never

filled,

she nevertheless

worked

—indeed

overworked

— until

her death, trying to clarify the principles on which a

be

ful-

the time of

new France

could

She never gave up the hope that one might "substitute more

built.

and more

in the

world

effective nonviolence for violence."

!39

4

ROLAND BARTHES— WRITING AS TEMPERATURE The

In Camus' novel

Grand) who

which he

sentence,

Plague, there

tirelessly revises,

He

infinite variety of combinations. ture, style, language,

And

writes.

this puts

form,

life,

him on

funny

a

is

trying to write a novel.

is

He

little

character (called

never gets beyond the

first

always with the same words, in an obsessed by proper myths: litera-

is

He

structure.

is,

in fact, a fool.

Yet he

the side of the angels, not because he writes

well but simply because he writes as a matter of choice, indeed of fervent

More than

conviction.

Camus

(and

that

this

was something

could yet realize) like Moliere's

that he spoke in prose,

Grand was unaware

qualify as "writing degree zero."

Roland Barthes does not

He

that neither he nor

M. Jourdain who was unaware

just

that his labors could even

thought he had

style.

refer to this character in his little

book Writ-

1 ing Degree Zero, although the "pale writing" (ecriture blanche) of The

Stranger

a standard

is

But the writer

book

is

We

need

understand what Barthes'

will help us to

to situate Barthes himself.

"structuralists"

turalism"

phy"

The Plague

close to zero.

about.

also

French

in

example of writing that cools down

anyway?

exists at all.

and indeed

is

We

no help:

it is

shall later see

To

say he

is

only misleading.

one of the new

What

"struc-

whether such a "school of philoso-

Meanwhile, Barthes can be localized

as a

one of the most articulate and important

as

is

French

critic

literary critics

writing today in any language, although Writing Degree Zero might not

be enough, by

This

is

itself, to

convince anyone of the

an extremely condensed

little

highly charged with intuitions which

need some time

to decide

fact.

book, thick with esoteric language,

may

whether or not

or

may

You

not be profound.

this is really a brilliant

book

or just another bag of critical tricks.

Barthes

is

at

odds with Sartre on the question of

litterature engagee.

In other words he does not think the writer has a duty to arouse in the

reader a revolutionary consciousness of some

The manuscript Sewanee Review

of this essay in the

is

summer

sort,

dated September 1968.

It

though he does seem

was

first

published in

The

issue of 1969.

1 Roland Barthes, Writing Degree Zero, translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith, Preface by Susan Sontag (New York: Hill & Wang, 1968).

to think that "writing"

carries out

a subversive activity.

is

On

the other hand, he

an exemplary campaign of criticism against

all

forms of writ-

ing with a message, and particularly of writing with a political message.

be more precise, he separates the writing from the message and

To

dissects the very

mode

of revolutionary writing (whether of the

or of the Marxist revolutions).

And

Brecht precisely as writer. Robbe-Grillet. So that

Before anxieties

seems tic."

to

We

we go any which

He

much

however, very

is,

French

in favor of

model of "writing degree zero"

his

where we begin.

is

further,

we must

are likely to

fradulent, only antiliterature

is

who

us in the presence of someone

afflict

be saying "literature

purify ourselves of the conventional

is

authen-

are confronted with distinctions which, by knee-jerk reflex,

may assume

to

is

we

be distinctions between good and bad, right and wrong:

had suddenly become

as if style, for instance,

sinful

and writing virtuous

(with "writing degree zero" at the summit of moral perfection). Barthes is

the kind of writer

He

is

who

remains entirely closed

not saying that the "only good novelist"

the "only valid theater"

is

(who

the reader) or in Michel Butor

dence). Barthes

not confuse

is

He

that of Brecht.

just

(who

writing works, whether in Robbe-Grillet

to is

such a reading. Robbe-Grillet, or that

wants

to

takes the reader into his confi-

not dealing with "good-bad" divisions at

him with

who

moralist

a

Sartre,

how

examine

refuses all complicity with

bristles

all.

We

must

with pastoral

"shoulds" even while he prescribes to us the most austere and melancholy of freedoms,

beyond

against

all

comfort of good-and-evil.

all

new

Barthes invents his

tween language, which

revolution). as

much

He

shows that

...

it is

which

It

is

"chosen" and "free"

lucidity, subversion, nobility,

this division will

"given" as language.

body and past of

biological, or biographical, not his-

the writer's solitude" (out of which he tends to fabricate

communion with

the solitude of the reader).

a self-sufficient language

author's personal

and

is

secret

"Under

involved which has

mythology."

It

its

author outside history

—though

assumes too readily that

which might

fit

and Rene Char, who

style is

this

the

name

roots only

of style in

the

therefore stands outside the

"pact which binds the writer to society." In a certain

tion

and

not work. Style (he thinks)

springs "from the is

up

it

confronts Sartre's distinction bestyle,

commitment,

the writer." "Its frame of reference torical

He

"given," and

is

(therefore the region of

is

mystical category, "writing," and sets

the "shoulds" of style.

way

cannot be pushed too

places the

it

far,

and

it

merely personal, idiosyncratic: a descrip-

the romantics

and

is

of course adequate for

are "saturated with style."

Rimbaud

(Gide on the other hand

141

has art rather than "style"

—but

away

us not get carried

let

into

still

further distinctions!)

words,

Style, in other ality. If it

is

an expression of the writer's

be too consciously chosen,

And

a fabricated self-image.

becomes simply

"style." It

a

what often happens

own

opus, like the

dog

Not

makes

honest, he

doing

is

much

so

to

to his vomit.

carry out his job, according to Barthes, the writer

language and accept his ing.

mask, a persona,

a fake, a is

bad habit by which an author reverts me-

chanically to the parody of his

To

becomes

it

of course that

literary person-

style as

given

what he has

:

to

must accept

choose

is

his

his writ-

the \ind of writing as the act of writing. If he

is

what he

is

this choice in the full consciousness

merely writing, not something

that

else ("expressing himself," "arous-

ing a revolutionary consciousness," "exploring the metaphysical abyss of

When

being," etc.).

the choice

completely lucid,

is

chooses simply to write and renounces

all

when

writer

the

the rest ("message," "expres-

sion," "soul," "revolution"), then the writing itself stands out clearly as

writing.

A

distance

is

which reminds the reader not

established

plicities

with the message or the emotion, not

sions of an inner

When

logical vision.

about

this

is

meaning, a

slice of life, a

the writing

to get

not to immerse himself in false com-

lost in the writer or in the writing,

to get

just writing,

is

swept away by

illu-

cosmic celebration, an eschato-

and when no mistake

possible because the very writing itself

removes

all possibility

of error, then you have "writing degree zero."

How does Though

writing cool

down

to this icy state

?

book Barthes cannot

in this early

yet be accused of "struc-

turalism," he does appeal to the linguistic theories of de Saussure (these

have in

pond

spilled over into other disciplines to create a big fashionable

which

all

the singing

is

said to be "structuralist").

The mania

for

arranging authors together in "schools" of thought or writing has become

dumped

so obsessive that critics or novelists find themselves arbitrarily

together and, even worse, credited with

all sorts

the world. So, for instance, though the

men who

grouped

as "structuralist" philosophers

no such school

exists, the press

and

of

momentous

effects in

have been summarily

critics are still

protesting that

continues to assure us not only that they

are a school, that they are influential, but even that they exercised a decisive influence

on the Paris student

himself has

shown

how

who

writers

together as

in

an essay

members

142

make one

('7/ n'y

a pas d'ecole

Robbe -Grillet")

are diametrically opposed have been solemnly

of one "school"

only thing they have in

tend to

revolt in the spring of 1968. Barthes

common

— the school of the

is

"new

that they write novels that

a conservative rather than a revolutionary.

welded

novel."

Or

The

would at least

would make one

it

less likely to

be sanguine about the inevitability of a

glorious future, to be born of the right political formula.

De

Saussure was concerned with the interrelationship of "semantic

and Barthes takes an analogous standpoint

fields,"

area in man's "representation of the world"

in his study of "writ-

words which cover a given

ing." Semantic fields are constituted by the

— in the way man

One must

world credible and livable for himself.

development of understanding with a horizontal

(diachronic)

words and that words contribute

that ideas generate

view which

ideas gives us a diachronic

much

synchronic. This latter shows us not so

and

effect as a

perhaps

is

that

(syn-

Our assumption

chronic) transfer of words from one field to another.

of cause

makes

not confuse historical

to the evolution of

less

accurate than the

process of generation or

a

haphazard migration of words into new

fields,

disappearing from one system and surfacing in another, in ways that

words

affect all the

of his world. This

The

and consequently

in both systems,

may even

approach

so-called structuralist

and does not concern

itself directly

alter

"new

create the illusion of a

man's view

consciousness."

however, austerely quantitative

is,

with the changing quality of experi-

ence: only with different fields, areas (like style, writing, etc.).

The

"writer"

(style, etc.)

and

conscious of words in synchronous interrelated systems

is

if

he knows what he

to subvert the systems

by

is

doing he can deliberately choose

his use of words. It

here,

is

and not

in his

doctrine, his "revolutionary message" or in a supposed "revolutionary

changes the world

style" that the writer really

free of

A

any obvious purpose

clear

mention. is

example of

The

this

is

— (though

he should be

change anything).

to

in the writing. Also in Ulysses

which Barthes does not

Ulysses,

Joyce's

peculiar excellence of

all

of Joyce, but especially of Ulysses,

we can

easily see the distinction

between

writing and style: Joyce synchronizes "styles" in service of his writing,

with a clear sense of personal distance from at all close to

having a "style" in his

all

work,

later

of them. If Joyce comes it is

in

Finnegans Wake,

where by dint of pure writing he ends with a highly personal idiom.

Such

a

book can only be biography.

zero." It has style, at

however

And

inscrutable. It

thus is

once abstract and hermetically personal,

saxophonists,

The

whose playing

is

point that Barthes wants to

genuine matter of choice.

The

matters, not his decision to

human

not as "cool" as

it

it

not "writing degree

of the

"writing"

mere decision

communicate

the "soul music,"

new

jazz

claims to be.

make about

writer's

is

more like of some

a political

is

that

to write

it

is

is

a

what

message or share a

experience (say of passion, conviction, discovery, exaltation).

Here we come

to the precise point

where

it is

difficult to

keep up with

143

4

Barthes.

write

What

—and

the world? His

be a writer

Where

is

decides to

does he stand in relation to the rest of

not of course a childish and narcissistic choice: "I will

— watch me write!" toward the

ble attitude

when he

precisely does the "writer" choose

write cool?

It

has to imply a committed and responsi-

Where

the world.

rest of

Sartre says that the

writer becomes responsible to the world for a message or a style that

awakens

new

a

the writer

consciousness in man, Barthes sees

more

is

responsible to his writing than he

be more exact: the "writer"

something

he

(if

is

to the rest of the world,

For him

differently.

it

is

to his public.

cool) does not try to

To

communicate

but only to define correctly the

rela-

between writing and the world. This means that he knows

tion

business

to write first of

is

not to teach, to amuse, to inspire, to elevate,

all,

transform society.

to shock, or to

pushing against

structures

its

changing the tune of

He

does something to society not by

— which

are

none of

What

the

communicate with the reader

And what

his writing.

This, at

The

least, is

his business

—but

by

language and shifting the perspectives which

its

depend on the ways words are arranged. ogizes literature.

his

He

systematically de-mythol-

writer owes society the urge to

if

the reader will look for

what he

is,

then, to

communicate

refuse to

interferes with

precisely this refusal.

is

will look for in "writing degree zero."

only thing that remains to be explained

how

is:

does the reader

keep awake when reading such writing? Barthes does not enlighten

He

assumes that one will follow Robbe-Grillet with

alert attention,

without boredom. Maybe somewhere in "structuralism" there miracle about which

we have

us.

and

magic or

is

not yet heard. Fortunately, Robbe-Grillet

is

not the only writer. Others are not quite so bleak. Barthes' subtlety can easily reduce us to blind exasperation

not take into account his analysis of other kinds of "writing." read

all

he has

to say

about "political writing," "revolutionary writing,"

classicism, romanticism, the nineteenth century novel,

Hamlet

of writing,"

purity's sake

thing both

and

a

we do When we if

we

find that he

Manichean

is

rejection of art.

new and important

and Mallarme "the

not just advocating solipsism for

He

is

really saying

about the nature of writing: that

some-

it is

in

fact gestus.

"Gestus"

is

more than

"gesture,"

chosen, living, and responsible

more than

mode

idiosyncrasy. It

world. But this gestus has been overlaid and corrupted with

elements which have turned

it

analysis of the rhetoric of the

inhuman 144

implications

— than

into posturing.

Nowhere

French Revolution

in this

is

the

of presence of the writer in his

little

a

—and

all sorts

more its

book of Barthes.

of

brilliant

human or Nowhere a

more devastating commentary on Racine and classicism than in his essays

of Zola, Maupassant,

pure

and

socialist realism

new

an expression of the decay of a bourgeois consciousness which

is

to regret since 1914).

than that which

Nature."

It

are

consciousness of reality. Their

we have had

touch with reality a hundred years ago (with results

ficial

ruthless un-

because they claim to be entirely

just

induce, by "style," a

to

ample cause

It

and Daudet. Naturalism and

and pure posture

artifice

"realism" lost

more

a

of the phoniness of Marxist "literature" or of the "subwriting"

masking

"real"

the whole culture of French

on Racine. Nowhere

"No mode

of

writing was more

arti-

out to give the most accurate description of

set

was "loaded with the most spectacular signs of

fabrication."

"flaunted the signs of literary convention with an ostentation hitherto

unknown." Working zealously was

—and

apparently

have continued

to

still

turn

is

to

—a

supply that literature for which there

voracious public demand, these "artists"

out "good writing" and even to reap quite

tangible rewards for so doing. But in claiming to write about

with others

share

abandoned the that he

is

deeply meaningful experience of

a

life

and

to

thev have

which alone the writer gives evidence

living gestus bv

alive:

life,

they have adopted instead a mechanical kind of flag-

waving, a conventional gymnastic, a signaling of assumptions which torpid society wishes to see verified in "art." recent

I

a

can think of no better

example of such "good writing" than Stvron's book on Nat

Turner. Barthes sums

it

intentional signs of art."

all

up: as "mechanizing without restraint the

For what.: To

the

sell

stum

To make

of course.

money by creating an illusion of significance. The authentic gestus of writing begins only when all meaningful postures have been abandoned, when all the obvious "signs" of art have been

set aside.

At

the present juncture, such writing can hardly be any-

The

thing but antiwriting.

writer

no longer

writing, since he can

driven back to the source of his

is

trust the honesty of his

customary

dia-

logue with the rest of society. But, Barthes argues, in doing so he recovers

something of the numinous power of that gestus which only because

To do

it

this,

is

the

"writer" must forget

aspiration to power,

all

numen,

ascendency over the reader.

He

all

must

Here language no longer

from us across an

icy

surface.

romantic heart of things

is

all

charismatic

charismatic exaltation,

would seem

that

without thickness and without depth writing."

is

completely modest.

practice .

.

.

to give

writing "without

alibi,

the exact contrary of poetic

"violates the abyss" but slides

"The

all

him some

away

silence of Robbe-Grillet about the

not an allusive or sacral silence:

it is

a silence

M5

which irremediably

establishes the limits of the object, not

its

'beyond/

"

(Essais Critiques).

What

Barthes says about writing corresponds more or

Ad

what

Reinhardt said about painting

kind of quietism,

—as

you

if

like;

—and

said in painting. It

but a deadly, Zenlike

you find out by reading Barthes himself

less exactly to

stillness

—there

is

a

out of which

does nevertheless

spring a certain inscrutable excitement.

The

ideas of gestus

and of distance come of course from the theater of

Brecht. Instead of creating an illusion, luring the audience into the ex-

perience and the passion of the players, Brecht insisted on reminding us

we were merely watching something that was being put when we read writing we need to realize that what we are

at all times that

on. So, too,

doing

not experiencing the deep things of

is

meaning

we

human

of

life,

penetrating the esoteric

existence, or being swept out of ourselves

by rapture:

are just reading writing. Barthes says:

The formalism

of Brecht

is

a protest against poisoning by the fake nature of

the bourgeois and petit bourgeois culture; in an alienated society art

must cut

critical, it

be partly arbitrary. Failing

this,

you

must be

even that of "Nature," the sign must

off every illusion,

fall

back into an art of "expression" and

into essentialist illusions. (Essais Critiques)

Perhaps the best place to get acquainted with Barthes essay

on the staging and acting of Racine

theater.

Here we

see clearly that

The demand

he

is

in

is

in his fine

French

the traditional

not preaching art for

art's

sake but

Comedie Francaise

just the opposite.

theatrical conventions of the

have come

that in acting Racine the actors cease to address

to

one another and simply sing pure and perfect words which soar

some imagined god of pure "meaning."

cally" to

If

think "writing degree zero" means something of the

we have

over again,

not understood

we sort,

"verti-

are tempted to

we must

begin

it.

2 Space does not permit an adequate treatment of Barthes' Racine. is

a masterpiece of literary criticism, the

not be fully

Lycee.

The

felt

by one

who

criticism goes far

It

power and impact of which may

has not had to study Racine in a French

beyond Racine himself.

It

gets at the roots

not only of French civilization but of the entire culture of the Western

world. Let

grasp the Barthes'

it

suffice, in

meaning

On

Racine

the present context, to say that one can hardly

of Writing

—or

better

Degree Zero still

if

one does not also read

his Essais Critiques,

which are

not,

unfortunately, translated into English. 2

Roland Barthes, On Racine, translated by Richard Howard

Wang, 146

1964).

(New York:

Hill

&

F. POWERS— MORTE D'URBAN: TWO CELEBRATIONS J.

Sooner or

someone

later

will

have

write a Ph.D.

to

dissertation

examine the connection between Morte d'Urban 1 and Morte

A

relationship

evident in the "Castle" scene, on Belleisle

is

elaborately contrived incident readers.

(I

Malory,

to

It

account for the bishop

Urban's head, or for Msgr. Renton, a

who

not easy, in terms of

is

who man

who

rather clerical

Thomas

bounces the golfball off Fr. of

pungent verbal expressions,

hears the bounce but insists on interpreting

champagne cork popping out account for characters

—a

which may disconcert Mr. Powers'

presume he has some.)

to

d' Arthur.

as the

it

sound of a

But ones does not need

of a bottle.

to

give such a very good account of themselves,

with or without help from Arthurian legend.

The

epic of Fr.

Urban begins

The

withering irony.

in the usual

half of the

first

will perhaps discourage those

who

so incisive.

book

the

But

mirable person.

really cruel? Is

is it

it

change of attitude

will find a

discover that Fr.

satire:

Urban has become

The

fact

it

and

style: sustained

intensity about

are disposed to mistrust

seemingly cold, perhaps even clinical

and

Powers

book has an

and

that

it

fear this

has never been so sharp

who

negative? Those

in the last chapters,

stay

with

and they

will

some. ways ad-

a sympathetic, in

Urban is the death of more noble, and more than a ribald satire on the

that the "death" of Fr.

is

a superficial self leading to the resurrection of a deeper,

more

spiritual personality.

clergy. It

what

is

and the

must

a valid

essentially a spiritual conflict.

element in the story

spiritual

book. Those

who

hostile to the clergy

This review

is

the

article first

lished in a volume,

/.

is

of the psychology of a priest in

The is it

treatment

is

have not

is

present but that

it

is

purely negative

is

patently Arthurian

two Urbans rather

Urban

of the last third

appeared in Worship, November 1962, and was

F. Powers,

we

essential

really read the story.

that there are perhaps

more

of course subtle,

deliberately understated: but

conclude that Morte d'Urban

may worry

Perfectionists

than one. There

Co,

This novel

and penetrating study

clearly recognize not only that

to the

and

is

compiled bv Fallon Evans

(St.

later

pub-

Louis: Herder

&

1968).

1 J.

F. Powers:

Morte d'Urban (New York: Doubleday, 1962).

M7

and there

of the book:

the

first

two

"Twenty-Four Hours

after

He

signs their visitors'

into legend in a

The

borrowed

about giving the laity is

to

he will certainly appeal more Visitor: but

he

fact, that

is

it is

know

are

let

not by

is

is

an embittered

critic

a Catholic

faith. It is true that

New

paradox

Yorker than that, since

to those

"Catholic"

It is

true that

Mr. Powers may

("How

does

about priests anyway?") to their apparent disadvan-

itself

an act of anticlericalism.

To

think otherwise would

damaging admission!

Let us grant, then, that the simple frankness of Mr. Powers' balanced by a certain modesty and charity which can

most

but as

us reflect that the mere fact of portraying clerics as they

surely imply a pretty

desire,

there to

reaches only Catholics proves, by that very

not yet Catholic enough.

much

so

But

tage.

is

concerned with the true mystery of

perhaps use his indisputable inside knowledge of the clergy

he

Powers

F.

not altogether passive and mute.

to readers of the

who

J.

Mr. Powers

and of the Catholic

the Church, of the priesthood,

universal, a writer

in ofiF

American Catholicism. Much has

laity a voice.

perfectly obvious that he speaks not as

Our Sunday

human

very pleasant and

sports car.

a very serious Catholic, profoundly

means

volatile

a choice col-

book "Pope John XXIII" and takes

major importance

said, recently,

prove that the American

of

among

presence, in our midst, of such a superb satirist as

certainly a fact of

It is

Urban becomes suddenly

earthly

in a Strange Diocese,"

who make him seem

lection of lay freaks contrast.

been

the unmitigated operator, the crass narcissist of

is

The more

thirds.

salutary.

One seldom

finds

him

make

it,

satire is

we

if

so

either really untrue or totally

unkind.

Meanwhile lic life

and the Catholic

is

in session, discussing

apostolate. It

Morte d'Urban has

says in

newal

a Council

as

Every

it is

now

satirist is

ways of renewing Catho-

would seem

that

a very distinct bearing

what Mr. Powers

on the need

for re-

experienced in American Catholicism.

by implication a moralist, but

his art, the morality

is

as

long as he keeps to

Nor

never more than an implication.

can

it

be

otherwise. If

we

terms.

A

are to learn

How

from Morte d'Urban, we must take S. Pritchett credits

for recording natural speech." is

own

our author with a special "gift

But there

is

more

to

it

than that. Mr.

remarkable for the sustained mastery with which he keeps up

his sardonic

parody of a

glib,

inexhaustible, semirational jargon.

not natural speech that he records, but

148

in its

does Mr. Powers go to work?

statement by V.

Powers

it

all

It

is

the slogans, the fatuities, and

which our minds are

the half-truths of

word

always, of course, the

is

word

In such rhetoric, the right

full.

that just

happens

to

—the

be wrong

expression that glances off the truth, that just misses having real meaning.

To

and more than they are intended

at the

same time

words

are not quite accurate in saying

less

same time they speak

infinitely

characters then tive effect of a

J.

and

at the

implication, thus

fool's

always shot through with absurdity, and the cumula-

is

few pages of

it is

fatuity of their attitudes

F.

"A

to

to say,

mouth is his ruin, and his himself" (Proverbs 18:7). The dialogue of Powers'

snare to

lips are a

what they want

damaging volumes by

confirming the words of Scripture:

and

mean mean. The

be more precise, the statements of a Powers character always

Powers handles

this

to leave us

convinced of the irrationality

and folkways.

instrument with incomparable dexterity, and

he has never been so eloquent as in

new

this

book. Evelyn

Waugh

praised

the famous early story, "Prince of Darkness," as a masterly study of

In some of the early chapters of Morte d'Urban the author com-

sloth.

municates a sense of acedia which,

on

He

portrays

all

the horror,

who

of the extrovert

so funny,

all

the tedium,

all

the frenzied inner protest

monotony, and

The importance of Morte d'Urban, for is a work of literary genius, but that

sacrifice.

a Catholic, it

makes

statement: or at least a statement about religion. a

would border

reduced, in spite of himself, to living a plain

is

religious life of poverty,

it

were not

if it

despair.

moral judgment.

And

this

statement

character and the career of Fr. Urban. If

we

is

is

then not only that

a specifically religious I

say a statement, not

contained principally in the

What

kind of

priest

is

he?

can extricate ourselves from the ironies of his creator and con-

sider only the

"hard facts" (as Fr. Urban himself would surely like us to)

we will find him a very energetic and successful priest: one of the few members of the Order of St. Clement (founded by Mr. Powers) who actually

When

amounts

to anything.

he preaches a mission, he has the people

their pews.

When

all

happy, with the feeling that the Church really

right into our pluralistic society because he gets

When Powers

he comes in to priest

who,

St.

and

Is it his fault if

on

so well with them.

Monica's parish to help out Fr. Phil (another

like "Prince of Darkness," spends

driving around in his car to get parish census

on the edge of

he speaks to a mixed group of Catholics and separated

brethren he leaves them fits

sitting

away from claustrophobia), he

gets everything set

the bishop

is

most of

up

for

not interested?

him

And

to build a

so on. Fr.

his

time

takes the

new

church.

Urban, in a

149

word,

the kind people like to call a "good priest" without reservation

is

and without resentment because

He

taught to admire.

He

happen

to

is

a familiar

He

is

just a great

But

now

is

guy with people,

and not unacceptable

we

if

not trying to enpacifists,

particularly

if

they

picture.

tune out the other sounds and

we

not friendship. Verbalism, but not

His

talent or intelligence.

He

Church.

terests of the

else

is

his

owes

own it

word, he

is

him empty

much

to

say.

gregarious-

Cleverness, not

based on an

is

enlightened self-interest and the in-

Church

to the

Church going

the

affluent society? In a

thoughts as

listen to his

find in

though energetic,

clerical zeal,

assumed equation between

How

He

kind they have been

not mixed up with radicals,

they are relayed to us by Mr. Powers, ness,

just the

have money.

It is

he?

is

not trying to be holy.

is

courage crackpot movements. or integrationists.

his zeal

to

be a "winner," doesn't

be respected in a competitive and

to

a public relations

man, an

operator, a

ham. It

St.

will

"draw the

Fr.

Urban

Church it

factory.

then, a great priest,

to

add

put

to

a golf course that

if

by that you mean he

is

a clever

can get everybody to buy his image of himself and of the

would seem

As we watch is

is

good, wholesome, worthwhile American package.

as a

when he

map

kind of retreatant."

better

is,

who

salesman

Yet

way

not surprising, then, that he decides that the best

is

Clement's Hill Retreat House on the

that

Mr. Powers does not find

this altogether satis-

Urban at work "with people" (he is not so good not working with people) we become aware of profound Fr.

religious ambiguities. Just as St. Clement's Hill consists of

shackle retreat house and a fancy consists of a rather well-worn,

new

an old ram-

golf course, so Fr. Urban's religion

though

effective,

which he has added an up-to-date public

road company

relations routine.

act,

There

to

are,

with Fr. Urban, two celebrations always in progress: on one level. his version of the ritual

and the devotions of the Catholic Church, and on

another, the profane ritual of marketing and advertisement.

Mr. Powers appears sion for the secular.

change seems

think that Fr. Urban makes the sacred an occa-

to

The

more profane, monetary excommunion between Fr. Urban and

celebration of the

to be the real basis for

his clients.

Happily, the story does not end there.

comes heroic enslavement

in the chivalric exploits to his

own

And

Fr.

Urban

certainly be-

by which he delivers himself from

commercially successful image. In the end, as a

laconic provincial struggling with a brain tumor, he wins our

and admiration. 150

sympathy

This book

is

not a tract for or against anything: yet

perhaps as a witness and as a warning.

America

is

not purely and simply to get

affluent expression

ourselves.

We

et

it

man and

manifests his society

itself

in

business.

than publicizing an

are here to celebrate the

mystery of salvation and of our unity in Christ. But

concern for

can be taken

accepted by wearing an

itself

God means something more

and popular image of

meaningless unless

it

mission of the Church in

and adopting the idiosyncracies of American

Preaching the word of acceptable

The

this celebration is

an uncompromising Christian

—the kind of concern expressed in Mater

Magistra and in the reiterated papal appeals for world peace. It

would appear

kind of

that such concern

is

practically incompatible

superficiality in thought, in life,

satirized in the

works of

J.

F. Powers.

and

in

with the

worship so trenchantly

WILLIAM STYRON— IS NAT TURNER?

WHO

wonder

small

It is

that in a year

marked by

the worst race riots in Ameri-

can history, William Styron's novel about the Negro prophet and revo-

Nat Turner 1 should be

lutionary

There

a best seller.

significance in the fact that Styron, a native of the

is

no doubt a

real

Tidewater region of

Virginia where Turner's slave broke out a hundred and forty odd years ago, should have been obsessed with the subject for years.

has finally resulted justified,

is

and the book

a tour de force. Its popular success is

a better piece of writing than

Yet there are serious objections against Is this

book completely honest ? Has

himself, so confidently, with a black

empathy

this exercise of

temporary

crisis?

historical fact.

as

is

most

doubtless

best sellers.

it.

a white author the right to identify

man

an answer

Few

and propose

of the last century, to serious questions

about con-

of his readers will have a chance to check his

document on which

was already the work of another white

man

it

is

based

—and

work

that too

with a characteristic bias of

own.

Styron has gone far beyond legitimate bounds in his

mation" of to

novel that

Obviously, in so doing, Styron has taken liberties with

carefully with the original

its

The

historic fact. Certainly the

artistic "transfor-

contemporary reader

may wonder

what extent the character study of the prophet-revolutionary has been

gratuitously overweighted with sex frustration

and sadomasochism. Since

in fact Styron engages in a full-scale character study of

he emphasizes the sexual aspects of that study,

since

to see that

a celibate

Nat, in historical reality a married man,

who

never had any experience with

whole resolution of the dramatic

his

ings for a

book

is

young white woman, and

also

determined

must admit from the

conflict

we

1

by Nat's sexual inhibitions,

are not reading about the real

first

we Nat

time in Katalla-

Spring 1968.

William Styron, The Confessions of Nat

1967).

152

as a shock

women. Since Styron bases upon Nat's frustrated feel-

This essay was written in January 1968 and published for the gete,

comes

here portrayed as

since the "religious" content of the

to a great extent

start that

it

is

Nat Turner, and

T timer (New

York:

Random House,

Turner. This character

is

purely and simply a creation of Styron's

own

imagination. Is the creation then an improvement on the original? The historical Nat Turner was not only married, but married to a slave woman who was sold to another master and from whom he was therefore separated. The frustration and powerlessness of the real Nat Turner were something much deeper and more serious than the mere mental deprivation

we

The

read of in Styron's novel.

reader cannot help regretting that the

much more challenging situknown to him. What we have in

novelist side-stepped the difficulties of this ation. this

Or perhaps

novel

the facts were not

not an authentic portrayal of a black rebel but simply a

is

meditation of a sophisticated white Southerner, projecting upon a Negro character slavery.

some

This

of his

is all

own

ambivalences about the culture based on

very well. But apparently people are reading the book

with a misplaced conviction that they are learning some of the deep reasons behind Black

Power and ghetto

rebellion today.

They

are merely

tuning in on another closed-circuit all-white program.

The book opens with Nat Turner leader of a slave rebellion in

in prison, ready for execution as

which numerous white planters and

wives and children have been brutally murdered. sult of apocalyptic religious experiences,

The

their

was the

revolt

re-

from which the prophet believed

himself mandated by heaven to begin the extermination of a corrupt and unjust people. Praying and fasting in the woods,

Nat had

visions of a

black angel overpowering a white angel in the storm clouds over the

Tidewater pines. but the revolt ble

He

methodically planned a massacre and carried

failed, largely

it

out,

because the slaves were drunk and irresponsi-

and because other Negroes joined the whites and fought against

them. Nat Turner

horrified white society.

He

he

had only obeyed God.

still

upon him by

stoically accepted the penalty visited

believed that he

faced death with indifference

He

—since

a

after all

refused to express any

regret for his actions.

One

very special question

is

raised during the course of his

trial.

Why

who was in many ways privileged, take up arms in revolt against those who had gone out of their way to treat him with unusual fairness? Why did he direct his hatred against those who had been did this Negro,

especially

kind

with his

to

him and with whom he had apparently

Why

did

it

happen

own hands was

a

young white

best of terms?

that the girl

one person with

lived

whom

whom, we

on the

he killed

learn

from

the novel, he lived on terms of intimate understanding very close to deep

153

friendship? For this girl not only loves and understands

Negro"

—with

a deeply Christian compassion, but treats

Why,

openness and confidence one shows only to an equal.

when

the revolt occur just at a time rich

on applejack and the

The whole book (explicit is

and

around

him

force. If

is

so

it

essentially

is

you beat him down he

to give

it.

There

an animal, and

all

you

will behave. If

and out of hand. Those who take

well he will get uppity

getting

question and the various answers

this

Negro

all

good?

which the characters are prepared

the crude racist answer: the

understands

had

does

finally,

the Tidewater farmers are

slaves never

built

is

implicit)

—

him and "the him with the

he

treat

this view,

who really cause the revolt. But the more humane answer also proves ambiguous. Nat's first master, Turner, educates him for freedom, promises him freedom, then goes ofT and leaves him in the hands of the worst racists. Nat's own answer is quite plain God told him to wipe out everybody that stood in his way. He had no special in the book, are the ones

:

preference in the matter of victims.

happened

It just

some of

that

his

white friends were in the way along with the others. That was too bad.

He

could not change a divinely ordained plan on their account! For

Styron, the

main problem

have arrived

at

of the

book

such a curious position.

only enough to explain Styron's question

away.

it

is first

of

all

It is

is

to "explain"

He

how Nat might

accepts Nat's prophetic urge

here the book

fails.

a reformulation, in simple terms, of

what

popularly appears to be the central paradox of the race conflict in the

United States today. officially

in

equal,

American

how

How

is

that

is it

society, there

it

that,

when

though Negro and white are

the

Negro seems

much

should be so

Certainly one of the qualities of the book

such a situation.

real ambiguities of

better off. It brings out

surface friendliness sions provide

all

turbing narrative.

and

the brutal

violence

and rebellion?

in the fact that

it

but a present actuality

power

These

a

ten-

for a violent, deeply disreader's emotions:

no ques-

so since the tensions themselves are

no mere

plays hard

more

grasps the

and suppressed tensions between

a deep, pent-up, inarticulate hatred.

The book

now

be getting ahead

admits that Negroes are not really

It

the necessary motive

tion about that! All the fiction,

all

is

to

felt

on the

by everyone in the country

—indeed

all

over the world. Underlying the tensions themselves are the unresolved

problems of guilt and retribution which, though they

may

be thrust out

of consciousness or evaded by rationalization, remain objectively real.

Styron recognizes treatment

is all

all this

the

more

and handles

it

with

effective because

cool, objective

power. His

he "approves" the hatred and

shows us some of the more unlovely white characters through the

154

re-

— Negro contempt. Then, when he has aroused

morseless and bitter eyes of

—through those "good"— Styron dashes

our instinctive hope for understanding and reconciliation

whom Nat

whites

which ordinary book

the

The

is

an

human and

himself admits as

those hopes by the inexorable sincerity

working out

of a tragic nemesis against

and love remain completely powerless. So

far,

artistic success.

ultimate failure of the book

much

terizing," too

is

psychology, too

due,

I

much

much

think, to too

analysis. Styron

is

"charac-

still

trying

do something with the novel that can no longer be done with

to

Curious that on the very day

effect.

nouncement comes versity, isn't.

In

on the

this

review

Columbia Uni-

in the mail that Styron will lecture, at

he will say

subject: "Is the novel obsolete?" Doubtless

Nat Turner he

trying to say

is

He

it isn't.

But everywhere the

Fearing that his central character

strain for effect

may become

it

trying to perpetuate

is

the tradition of the psychological novel popular in the nineteenth early twentieth centuries.

full

being written, an an-

is

is

and

evident.

dull or unreal, the author

has to inject a bit of sex once in a while (mostly masturbation fantasies

and attempts

homosexual seduction). In

at

posed purpose: evading the more

doing he defeats

so

difficult task of

his sup-

creating the character

of a prophet, he substitutes a frustrated masochist.

Now

the formula: frustrated masochist equals prophet

Flannery O'Connor used

very deftly.

it

But one suspects that the

historic

It is

a

is

not new.

good old Southern theme.

Nat Turner

merits a different treat-

ment. There are barely a dozen pages in the book where Styron's version of

Nat Turner emerges

a prophet. rest

as a credible religious figure of

Those twelve pages

are probably based

any kind,

more

let

alone

closely than the

on the original source.

Styron's "character study" of

and

as

such

it

is

Nat Turner

creditable enough.

How

is

a project in alienation

this arrived at? In

is

order to

make Nat stand out as "real," Styron begins by carefully and studiously isolating him from all the other Negroes. Because of his special talents and

privileges

right. all.

What

sism in

He

—a

—he

even

becomes aware of himself

feels secret

contempt for the

then takes shape in young

frigid, self-centered

which

to

comprehend

Nat

is

as not like the others. All

others.

Whites and Negroes

a kind of existentialist solip-

block of individuality struggling for a place

itself.

That place

is

assigned to

it

entirely,

and

almost arbitrarily, by white society. But to have an identity and a role conferred upon one entirely by others to

make

one's

own

identity in one's

is

own

something

else

than choosing

world. Hence, in spite of

all

*55

Nat experiences himself

the best breaks,

as a misplaced, cheated, alienated

being. In order to choose himself he has to reject the identity proffered to

him by whites

—and in

as his master's

any event

this identity itself

promise of freedom

is

down

breaks

soon

as

seen to be a delusion. In order to

choose himself authentically, he has to choose himself as black. But because he

way

alienated, his only

is

of doing so

to

is

choose himself as a

black rebel against the whites and finally to see himself as God's special

instrument of judgment and vengeance, appointed to destroy white

have spelled

I

this

out in explicitly existentialist terms.

these terms were consciously in the

mind

rather dictated by the cool, intense,

and formal idiom

Turner speaks and ironic formality

thinks.

It is

ment, and to the

It is

springs, precisely,

it

the same kind of

which we find

promoters of Black Power.

of the author.

lives.

do not claim

I

I feel

they were his

Nat

icy, supercultivated,

and

which

in

more academic

in the writings of the

the language of cold, implacable resent-

from an acute sense of alienation

urban tensions of the nineteen-sixties. Pushed a

—proper

further, the

little

treatment could have become an exercise in technical Marxism. But as stands,

does nothing whatever to explain

it

we know suitably.

that suddenly he has a Bible

is

And

sages) he

and

quoting

is

it

as a prophet. All it

more

or less

then (in one of the few entirely credible "prophetic" pas-

struck by a

is

Nat Turner

whip and soon

after hears the heavenly voice say-

ing "I abide." In the main, however, Nat's character in

which he speaks

own

interiorly.

He

inner and personal reflection.

is

dictated by the choice of idiom

creates himself in the

The idiom

is

language of his

cerebral, sardonic, aloof,

proud, objective. But the tone of this interior monologue excludes the

hearing of voices and the sense of religious terror in the presence of the "totally Other."

as

one

who

has

solipsism of

but

to

be consistent, Styron has to present Nat in

lost his faith

Nat Turner,

and

illusioned

Hence, all

skeptical

:

as

one for

in Styron's version of him,

who

receives direct

and mission of which he has been cheated by is

dead."

from God the

identity

society.

mansion abandoned by

is

entirely

his first master.

another where he sees the angels fighting in the sky over the

during one of his a prophet

fasts.

—especially

jail

The

that of a dis-

one great scene of Faulknerian gothic when Nat

alone, in a thunderstorm, in the

And

is

"is

urban man, not the flaming and earth-shaking

dread of a primitive Ezekiel

There

whom God

But

for the

most part Nat

where, for some

unknown

is

just

forest,

not credible as

reason, Styron tries to

account for his religious impulses in terms of sexual frustration.

One i

56

thing that kept recurring to

me

while reading the book was the

.

shadow of

feeling that the obsessive

August) has

in

come

so

to

Joe Christmas (in Faulkner's Light

dominate the typology of Negro revolt

in

white fiction that Styron just could not drag Nat Turner out from under not resemble a prophet, but he does in some ways resemble

Nat does

it.

We

Joe Christmas.

him

find in

and above

hatred, insensibility,

same intense

the

loved white

woman who had

been so kind. Yet Nat

cruel in the

same way

Christmas (in

Nor

compassion).

as

Christmas.

Nor

as Joe

whom

is

not fundamentally

there

is

no such thing

does he have the demonic unity and strength of

his alienation

is

alienation, isolation,

same typological murder of the

the

all

fraught with the deeper, more meta-

physical ironies of Christmas' (the "blackness" of Christmas

is

purely a

matter of imagination and arbitrary decree on the part of those whites

who need him to be a Nigger) What has happened to Nat Turner dominant influence of

the

a costume. This

world

at

Turners

unreal, arbitrary,

is

his prophecy.

His like

is

a great

and abjured

shame. Because

present time there

the

— perhaps

not

all

so

are

murderous

as a

matter of

scores

if

—but

all

the white world

sage

may

at

and the beginning of

a

new

over the

fact, all

hundreds of Nat

not

discovering themselves

be messengers of the apocalypse, appointed to announce the

to

to

and of Black Power

imposed from the outside, worn

leaders in the news, he has lost his faith religious drive

Due

in these latest confessions?

a Joe Christmas in art

Though

creation.

doom

their

of

mes-

times be naive and, in our sophisticated terms, quite absurd,

they are to be taken seriously as manifestations of a "religious" drive that

not without deep significance.

is

to see the

And some

anthropologists are beginning

importance of understanding them

understand these prophets of

Nat Turner

Doom,

in these terms.

no such understanding.

offers us

On

book, Styron suddenly seems to realize that he has business: the to

whole

glimmer. Nat will go really

going

to

meet

in

will be a last

glimmer of

some unfinished

What

faith,

is

he going

or indeed a

heaven the lovely innocent white victim

would have spared

have spared her

to

first

with an obscure awareness that he

to execution

gave him as he bashed her head in above. "Yet I

need

the last page of the left

crucial question of Nat's religion.

do about that? There

We

these preachers of apocalypse.

— who

one.

indeed

is

for-

waiting for him up

(he repents in

who showed me Him whose

who

is

italics)

/

would

presence I had not fathomed

maybe never even \nown!' What's this? With amazement we look back at the pages of innocent and harmless piety in which this tender young lady whispered to Nat her loving concern for the dear Negro in general and for dear Nat in or

157

particular. fine!

During which time he had

But now, on the

fantasies of raping her. All very

page, this mixture of milk and water

last

is

pre-

Nat Turner ever had! Here is more than a lapse into sheer humbug. It is a Nat Turner whom the author has gone to such

sented as the one real religious insight

more than Hollywood

corn,

gratuitous betrayal of the

trouble to befriend. Styron has attempted to steal

Nat clung

to: as final

and

absolute, his coal-black angel!

message of reconciliation that undeveloped that

it

is

away

is,

the one reality

He

in the artistic context,

substitutes a

so completely

merely a formal and perfunctory gesture. Such

gestures, such theoretic afterthoughts only help to discredit Christianity.

.58

FLANNERY O'CONNOR— A PROSE ELEGY Now

Flannery

dead and

is

I

name with

will write her

honor, with love

for the great slashing innocence of that dry-eyed irony that could keep

looking the South in the face without bleeding or even sobbing.

Her

South was deeper than mine, crazier than Kentucky, but wild with no other madness than the crafty paranoia that the North! legends,

Only madder,

more inventive

seriously the need

of

is all

hung up

craftier,

more outrageous

to be respectable

over the place, including

in wilder

And

lies!

when one

is

and more absurd solemn! Taking

an obsolescent and very

agile fury.

The key word

to

gave up examining

Flannery \s

life

—

probably

ambiguities and

its

its

become endemic

of half-truths that have

very

stories

its conflicts, its falsities, its

is

we are we know too

continually advertised, and

"everything good"

— when

decay. In this bitter dialectic

to

our system, she probed our

obsessions,

come an enormous complex organization

She never

"respect."

is

its

vanities.

Have we

be-

of spurious reverences? Respect still

convinced that

well that

we have

we

respect

lost the

most

elementary respect even for ourselves. Flannery saw this and saw, better than others, what

it

implied.

She wrote in and out of the anatomy of a word that became genteel, then self-conscious, then obsessive, finally dying of contempt, but kept calling itself "respect."

woman,

for the

Contempt

for the child, for the stranger, for the

Negro, for the animal, for the white man, for the farmer,

for the country, for the preacher, for the city, for the world, for reality itself.

Contempt, contempt,

so that in the

end the gestures of respect they

kept making to themselves and to each other and to

God became

desper-

ately obscene.

But respect had

and

relentlessly

to

be maintained. Flannery maintained

with a kind of innocent passion long after

it

it

ironically

had died of

—as if she were the only one left who took this thing seriously. One would think (if one put a Catholic chip on his shoulder and decided to make a problem of her) that she could not look so steadily, so drily,

contempt

This prose elegy in it

was

first

memory

of Flannery

published in Jubilee,

Unspeakable

(New York: New

O'Connor was written in September 1964; 1964, and was included in Raids on the

November

Directions, 1966).

159

and

so

much

long at so

without herself dying of despair.

false respect

She never made any funny

She never

faces.

said:

"Here

thing!" She just looked and said what they said and It

was not she

it.

way

they announced the gospel of

was

to respect the all

they had got themselves into. Their

junk

a big, fantastic, crawling, exploding

will write her it

they said

and perhaps her only way out

contempt. She patiently recorded

straight at

how

that invented their despair,

of despair herself

world was

a terrible

is

name with honor

for seeing

it

pile of despair.

I

and looking

so clearly

without remorse. Perhaps her way of irony was the only

possible catharsis for a

madness

so cruel

and

so endemic.

Perhaps a dry

honesty like hers can save the South more simply than the North can ever be saved.

Flannery's people were two kinds of very advanced primitives: the city kind, exhausted, disillusioned, tired of imagining, perhaps

grim willfulness

a ill

in the service of doubt,

will, or scientifically expert in nastiness;

slow, cunning, inexhaustible, living sweetly

more

able,

still

given to

still

driving on in fury and

and the rural kind:

furious,

on the verge of the unbeliev-

inclined to prefer the abyss to solid ground, but keeping con-

with the world of contempt by raw insensate poetry and religious

tact

mirth: the mirth of a god

who

and most powerful deceiver

who

tives

of

himself, they suspected, all.

was the

craftiest

Flannery saw the contempt of primi-

admitted that they would hate

to

be saved, and the greater

contempt of those other primitives whose salvation was an elaborately

Take the "A Good Man Is Hard to

contrived possibility, always being brought back into question.

sweet idiot deceit of the fury grandmother in

Find" whose respectable and catastrophic fantasy urban son with

all

easily

destroyed her

his plans, his last shred of trust in reason,

and

his

insolent children.

The way Flannery O'Connor made and

these elements of unreason

another.

Then sometimes

weakly prey

to

let

a story: she

them

fly

would put together

slowly and inexorably at one

the urban madness, less powerful,

the rural madness

would

fall

and be inexorably devoured by

superior

and more primitive absurdity. Or the rural madness would

and

short of the required malice

fall

all

and urban

deceit

a

fail

would compass its and

destruction, with all possible contempt, cursing, superior violence fully left

implemented

disbelief.

in despair,

knowing

that in the

able, the least desirable,

Flannery wanted

1

60

For

it

would usually be wholesome

the rural primitive unarmed. So you

it

so,

would watch,

end the verv worst thing, the

was what would have but because

it

to

faith that

fascinated, almost least reason-

happen. Not because

turned out to

^

so in a

realm

where the advertised so

much contempt

satisfaction

compounded

is

for the customer.

She had seen too

our commercial paradise, and

sinister in

of so

many

and of

lies

clearly all that

Flannery's people were two kinds of trash, able to

mix

inanity with

poetry, with exuberant nonsense, and with the most profound and

tematic contempt for reality.

Her

people

knew how

to

won

out over

every other feeling and turned into a parody of freedom in the

What

spirit?

A

spirit

and parody

stateliness

sys-

be trash to the limit,

unabashed, on purpose, out of self-contempt that has finally

of ungodly

is

in its rural roots.

—the

spirit.

pomp and

glee of arbitrary sports, freaks not of nature but of blighted

and

social

and three-eyed monsters.

willfulness, rich in the creation of respectable

Her beings are always raising the question of worth. Who is a good man? Where is he? He is "hard to find." Meanwhile you will have to make out with a bad one who is so respectable that he is horrible, so horrible that he that to

is

funny, so funny that he

would be gruesome

it

is

pathetic, but so pathetic

him. So funny that you do not dare

to pity

laugh too loud for fear of demons.

And

that

is

how

Flannery

finally solved the

problem of respect: hav-

ing peeled the whole onion of respect layer by layer, having taken

it

all

apart with admirable patience, showing clearly that each layer was only

another kind of contempt, she ended up by seeing clearly that funny, but not merely funny in a

way

that

you could laugh

ous, yes, but also uncanny, inexplicable, demonic, so

laugh

at

it

you understood. Because

as if

would

you, too,

She respected

all

find yourself

among

if

it

Humor-

at.

you could never

you pretended

understand,

to

her demons practicing contempt.

her people by searching for some sense in them, search-

ing for truth, searching to the end and then suspending judgment.

have condemned them on moral grounds would have been with their

own

was

crafty arts

and

their

own demonic

imagination.

To

connive

to

It

would

have meant getting tangled up with them in the same machinery of unreality it,

and of contempt. The only way

to

be saved was to stay out of

not to think, not to speak, just to record the slow, sweet, ridiculous

verbalizing of Southern furies, working their

ing lazy

way through

their

charm-

hell.

why when I read Flannery I don't think of Hemingway, or Katherine Anne Porter, or Sartre, but rather of someone like Sophocles. What more can be said of a writer? I write her name with honor, for all That

is

the truth

and

all

the craft with which she shows man's

fall

and

his dis-

honor.

161

4

THE TRIAL OF POPE PIUS XII: ROLF HOCHHUTH'S THE DEPUTY Although The Deputy 1

is

bad

a

play,

is

it

phenomenon,

a significant

coinciding mysteriously with the great eruptions of race hatred in the

United

Cuban

States, the

struggle

waged by

bitter

the Curial forces in the Second Vatican Council to

unique position of power.

retain their

The

and the

the death of John XXIII,

crisis,

play

is

an attack, a passionate aggression on the character and

reputation of one

who

has been considered by

many

The when

a great Pope.

playwright, Rolf Hochhuth, in his early thirties (he was fourteen

Hitler died), has earnestly dedicated himself to the mission of devil's

advocate in the case

who

not the "cause") of the Pope

(if

allowed

it

to

be said that he had visions of the Lord in his Vatican apartments and

who

defined the

to assure

The

dogma

Assumption

of the

in order,

Hochhuth

suggests,

himself an "important chapter in every history of the Popes."

tone of the playwright throughout

is

one of moral outrage, not

only at the infamy and inhumanity of genocide, or at Hitler and the SS,

who were

directly responsible, but

above

all

at the white-clad universal

who was "ice-cold," who remained "indifferent," The Pope is accused of personally and deliber-

Father in the Vatican,

who

"dared not protest."

ately

choosing to

sacrifice the entire

a policy of coexistence with Hitler

Jewish people in order to carry on

—a

policy which,

it

is

alleged,

would

help to salvage the Church's power and "save Western Civilization"

from the Communist hordes.

The unquestionable give unofficial aid inescapable.

But

fact that the

and refuge

in

to

admitting

pitiable evasion, a political

Even before the curtain

Holy See

did, quietly

and

thousands of individual Jews

it,

Hochhuth

twists

and

the play

is

is

distorts

comedy, without serious moral

rises,

effectively,

of course it

into a

significance.

already white-hot with partisan-

ship. Stage directions turn into three-page essays

on

political as well as

religious morality, not excluding autobiographical confidences in which,

This critique of The Deputy was written

in

1965 but has not been published pre-

viously. 1

Merton translated Der

Deputy."

162

Stellvertreter as

"The Representative"

instead of

"The

Hochhuth

for example,

Pius XII scene citly

is

what

a tantalizing problem

first

on the same plane

(though in Act

as Hitler

ambiguously denied) and

is

total efTect of this is

his fat Cardinal

is

to

3,

expli-

At

something more than a personal antipathy

seems to be a systematic attack on the Papacy aimed

It

crediting the

Church

least that

herself for accepting

the impression

is

and venerating such an

get

I

from Hochhuth's

the snide stereotypes that have been employed in this

Nothing

We

was

it

stage.

compared with Goering.

Pius XII.

all

from the

the parallel

2,

The

tion.

explains

Auschwitz on the

recreate

is

The

lacking.

Cardinal

fat,

is

learn that "with advancing age he has

nine."

The Pope

at dis-

institu-

free use of

game

for years.

sensual, cynical, opportunistic.

become markedly more femi-

most consummate

portrayed as the

is

to

cious, ambitious, a lover of flattery, obsessed

hypocrite, avari-

with his "vast holdings" to

the point of breaking of? to inquire about his shares in the

Hungarian

railways in the middle of dictating an appeal for peace and clemency

which

so general that

is

"Where would for

the

Church

is

know

is

meaningless.

The

Inquisition

is

gentlemen,

if it

had not

up

be,

in

one sentence: "The number of whores increases

others have argued that the play

dismissed as that.

It

means be taken

level of that issue,

must not be regarded I

would

say

it

as con-

should not be

does have an importance that transcends the level

of vulgar polemic against the Church. all

the stakes

with the number of Churches."

ventional anti-Catholic propaganda. Well,

must by

lit

alluded to:

Middle Ages?" Hochhuth's sociology of the

the

in

summed up

in the provinces I

Church

the

canaille

it

seriously.

and remains on the

and pseudo-tragedy. As drama

it

The

issue

But the play

is

level of

which the play itself

never

raises

rises to the

cheap verbal aggression

every bit as absurd as the worst

pomposities of Drury Lane in the eighteenth century.

This

satire in efTect,

not the

is

first

time that authority has been treated with savage

contemporary

by Sartre

Catholic power

in is

The

theater. It has Flies.

that of

And

been done, and done with

terrible

of course the classic reproach against

Dostoevsky

in

Ivan Karamazov's digression on

To mention Hochhuth in the same breath as these others is laughable. To compare him with Bert Brecht, as apparently some have done, is merely fantastic. The only thing Hochhuth would seem to have in common with Brecht is that his play would doubtless the

Grand

Inquisitor.

be just as accepable in East Berlin as

it

was where

it

was produced:

in

the western half of the city. Ponderousness, obviousness, crude caricature,

163

heavy

labored melodrama, and stage directions that turn into in-

satire,

terminable sermons on the author's Weltanschauung: these are the char-

Hochhuth, and they make him the exact contrary of Brecht

acteristics of

way. Hochhuth cannot even

in every ters

make

this or that gesture.

movements with that he

is,

his hands.

He

make up

his

("The Pope makes is

silent either

This

his charac-

a couple of fidgety

because he

so agitated

is

he considers

as before, bereft of speech, or because

his dignity to answer."

mind why

high point of the play, Act

at the

beneath

it

3, "II

Gran

Rifiuto.")

Although the crudity of Hochhuth's attack

(as virulent as

naive)

it is

we must nevertheless admit that the issue he has raised is a momentous one. The play may not be important, but the issue it raises definitely is. The play asks a question that many honest, earnest, and unprejudiced people have asked on the Papacy does not allow us

themselves in the

him

also

for racial justice.

was Pius XII)

with the

in connection

question arises in the American South, where

some Bishops have been extraordinarily

Negro

too seriously,

and not only

last fifty years,

The same burning

Jews.

to take

reticent about the struggle of the

Even though John XXIII was very

explicit (as

in declaring the Church's opposition to total war,

whether nuclear or conventional, one gians and clergy can

manage

still

wonders how

which

to take positions

so

many

theolo-

distort the obvious

sense of the encyclical.

Crudely stated (and Hochhuth

when of

the

all its

tical,

Church

is

states

moral laws, the law of love for

immediate options of power

choosing the

it

crudely) the question

this:

is

faced with a critical choice between the most basic

latter that she is

no

God and

politics,

is

she

for

man, and the

now

so

prac-

accustomed

to

longer able to see the former? In other

words, has the Church finally come to the point where she

is

so con-

cerned with preserving power and influence that she identifies her duty to

God and man If this

were

and indeed

with the duty

true,

the faithful

all

to preserve

her power at any cost?

then the chief responsibilitv of the Pope, the Bishops,

would be

to help the

a temporal institution, built into the pragmatic

other

human

institutions in the world.

Church keep going framework

of

all

as

the

Obedience would then be seen

exclusively in the context of the Church's interests in the struggle for

power.

The

bishop, the priest, the layman

to protest against injustice or if

his statement

Policy

164

who

felt

obliged in conscience

inhumanity would be bound

to

keep silence

Rome. course would

were judged inexpedient by the "policy makers"

would then usurp the

place of conscience. This of

in

tend to reduce the Church, in practice, to a human, sociological, and

on

basically political entity

Church would,

"spiritual" character of the

The

with any other such organization.

a level

be invoked, and

in that case,

frequently invoked, but only to justify and guarantee the supernatural Tightness of blind obedience within a

framework of

do not personally believe that Hochhuth

I

was the choice Pope's failure

political expediency.

right in saying that this

is

made by Pius XII. I do not believe his play explains the to make the clear, precise statement which all the world

expected from the Holy See. There are a multitude of possible reasons

why

Pius XII did not

bly, that

make

to

it

make

such a statement, the chief of which

would have been

much worse

conditions

is,

proba-

and would have served only

entirely useless

for thousands of Catholics.

Everyone knows, including Hochhuth, that when the Dutch Bishops protested against the arrest raids

and deportation of Dutch Jews by the Nazis,

were immediately made on

religious of Jewish origin

Hochhuth

of these.)

were sent

and

the convents and monasteries,

all

to the

camps. (Edith Stein was one

He

ignores this argument.

Hitler was so afraid of Pius XII that a mere

repeatedly insists that

word from

Pope would

the

to convince us of this, HochEichmann himself appear in a

have blocked the "final solution." In order

huth has no

less a historical

figure than

beerhall scene, where, cursing

the final solution declares that

and waving a if

renounce the burning of Jews! Surely

must bow our heads be believed

to

is

in an act of

gets

rough he

will

Eichmann himself

if

devout

engineer of

stein, the chief

Church

the

faith.

The

only one

have

to

speaks,

we

who

not

is

("Deputy") of Christ and the

the "Representative"

successor of St. Peter!

Hochhuth's Pope

is

not a person, he

than the institution of the Papacy. crisis into

which the young

Jesuit

is

an

is

He

is

institution,

all

plunged

is

thinks of murdering the Pope, blaming the

The

is

first,

quite seriously,

murder on the SS and thus

saving the honor and untarnished purity of Mother Church. But

he

sees that this

would not work, and when the Pope,

evading the issue with unctuous double

to speechlessness

kind of moral "death." Ricardo goes the "father

murder"

in the

icy

talk, refuses to

for the Jews, then Riccardo pins the Star of

This reduces the Pope

David on

and

of? to

more

"tragic"

a crisis of obedience to

Riccardo

this paternal authority. It is curious that

and he

Fatherhood.

when

and unbending,

make an his

own

appeal

soutane.

inarticulate horror. It

Auschwitz,

finally

is

a

completing

most grandiose and acceptable fashion:

it

is

pure heroism, an act of disobedience to corrupt, disloyal paternal authority. It is

a

martyrdom and

at the

same time

a

murder

(in the person of

i6 5

4

Once Riccardo dons

the son) of the father's authority and prestige.

yellow

star,

kind of It

Pope

the

respect.

He becomes

a despicable ghost.

would be temptingly easy and kept

Hochhuth was

to say that

had got away with what every neurotic his conflict,

the

worthy of any

definitely ceases to exist as a being

secretly desires:

a neurotic

who

he has acted out

while at the same time cutting a figure as a

it,

and

heroic witness for justice

He

truth.

has killed the "father"

who was

indispensable for his neurosis, and yet he has kept his neurosis. But

us be both serious and

is

and knowingly

ingly

There

having

cially reprehensible in

our day, and there

fair.

this

some reason

when

some people

which was that of

women

world today.

And

will-

this

is

true, to

and

the inner con-

that they are

none

image of Pius XII,

a super-Pope in every respect, did

and

still

does con-

numbers of men and

psychological stumbling block for vast

in the

Church

are inevitably tempted

of our business), the fact remains that the official

stitute a

the

Whatever may be

young playwright (and we must admit

of this

let

or even espe-

kind of problem about authority in to think that

torn in the presence of such an image. flicts

uncommon

image of grandiose, magical, and un-

projects an

earthly paternal authority, then

nothing

is

some

extent, of the official

image of the Papacy, and of the Episcopacy, and of the Clergy. Indeed,

we must lament

the fact that this has

Church's image of as obviously

herself,

genuine

More than

that:

it

as

who

Church. at

is

Who

it

would seem

is

come

to be, to

invites projections

Pope John XXIII cannot

spontaneously recommends in the

and

extent, the

entirely escape.

image quite naturally and

that this

many who

itself to

some

which even someone

hold positions of authority

not familiar with the type of Bishop or Pastor

once unctuous, evasive, and aloof with his subjects, and ex-

tremely shrewd and pragmatic in the business affairs? a grandiose display in miter

and

crozier

Who

can put on

and can give authoritative and

consoling messages on everything from space travel to midwifery, while refusing to

huth

image

is

commit himself on moral

virulent,

obsessive,

precisely because

it

and

in

fanatical

attacking

this

constitutes such a huge, useless,

unwarranted provocation. Here tions about the

issues of crucial importance!

is

what he

says in

one of

Pope: "The Representative of Christ

Hoch-

authority

and

totally

his stage direc-

collects himself.

The

coldness and hardness of his face, lovingly described by the propagandists of the

Church

as 'unearthly spiritualization,'

simultaneously

upward as he As regards 166

—he

looks out, past

all

have reached freezing point

those around him, outward and

liked to be photographed."

the person of Pius XII, this

is

probably as unfair as

it

is

cruel.

But can we honestly say that

attack

on the image that was created of

allowed to be created of himself? to the use of the

this is a totally

Is it a

"Papal image" to

incomprehensible

Pope, the image that he

this

completely unwarranted reaction

obedience to

enlist blind

all

kinds of

temporal and expedient causes that are by no means divine, but which are put forward as

if

they were God's will, without alternative, because

they have been presented in close association with the magic image? Is

who can speak officially in the name of the Church, and even of some who cannot, to evoke this image in support of interests and projects which are not, to put it mildly, those of God and it

not the habit both of some

of the

Church ?

Whatever may be the prehensible reasons

why

defects of it

appeared precisely as the

was

Hochhuth's

written.

There

devil's advocate,

play, there

is

may

be com-

no question that he has

not in any

official

cause of

canonization but in that rather regrettable "cause" which had already begun in Pius' cisely

own

lifetime

and which was promoted with such eagerness

pre-

by the type of Curial Churchman that so often, doubtless uncon-

sciously, provides material for those

who

satirize the

Church

for "love of

power."

167

WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY-

THE LEGEND OF TUCKER CALIBAN The deep hearts of

elemental stirrings that lead to social change begin within the

men whose

who

thoughts have hitherto not been articulate or

have never gained a hearing, and whose needs are therefore ignored, suppressed,

and

if

they did not

exist.

There

The passion of the oppressed must among themselves, in spite of the

out a voice.

heard

treated as

more

is

ignored, the

with a mysterious power that

is

to

is

of

more

make

itself

The

or urgent.

strengthens

it

itself

be gained from myth, symbol, and

no revolution without poets who are

is

all

insistence of the privi-

real, or just,

the cry of the oppressed

prophecy. There

no revolution with-

first

at least

leged oppressor that such needs cannot be

is

also seers.

There

no revolution without prophetic songs.

The

voice of the

American Negro began

the days of his enslavement.

He

Testament, the magnolia Dei which are liturgy. In a perfect, unconscious,

prophecy, the

Negro

comes into being: not library,

suffer oppression,

demand

Such love

liturgical

is

the heart of the Christian

still less

remain

hvmnodv ought

as classic ex-

to be,

them

identitv.

desire of

to give

it

and how

worker or

in the halls of Curial offices, but

and where the

praver and

spirit of

in the study of the research

of truth forces

religion

at

and spontaneous

where they are deprived of

are robbed of meaning, tive

heard long ago, even in

spirituals of the last century

amples of what a living

monastery

to be

sang of the great mvsteries of the Old

it

the

where men

where

their lives

freedom and the impera-

meaning:

meaning.

a religious

not the "opium of the people," but a prophetic

and courage, fanned by the breathing

in

of the Spirit of

fire

of

God who

speaks to the heart of His children in order to lead them out of bondage.

Hence Negro,

the

numinous

a force

force of the great

which makes

and primitive

itself felt precisely

habit of looking for "art," for instance in that potent

which has kept

This review

article

on William Melvin Kellev's

168

1962),

first

appeared

published in Seeds of Destruction

1964).

American lost the

and mvsterious jazz

alive the inspiration of the traditional "blues," the con-

(New York: Doubledav, later

art of the

where men have

first

novel,

in Jubilee,

(New

A

Different

Drummer

September 1963, and was

York, Farrar Straus and Giroux,

And

temporary voice of the American Negro.

Songs" which he

now

"Freedom South where

the

also in

Churches of the

sings, in the Baptist

march out and face the police of states, already frankly Fascist and racist, which arm themselves against him with clubs, fire hoses, police dogs, and electric cattle prods, throwing their jails wide

he prepares to

open

to receive

him. His song continues to resound in prison, like the

songs of Paul and his companions in the Acts of the Apostles.

The Negro

novelist

and

an important part in

essayist has

expression of the present sense of \airos which for

"Freedom Now."

warm

voice

is

now

We

silent,

remember

is

this creative

behind the great drive

of course Richard Wright,

whose

who speaks still in his followers. We think who ranks with Martin Luther King as one Negro spokesmen today. Go Tell it on the

but

especially of James Baldwin,

of the

most

Mountain

is

influential of

once Baldwin's

at

which has the most

first

novel and his best, as well as the one

about the motives and the

to say

Revolution in America. His hard-hitting

which borrows

tract,

from one of the Negro

its title

an eschatological reference,

is

into recognizing the seriousness

which they have been more or

The title Drummer,

of the is

first

and which has Negro freedom moveshock white readers

else to

less

taken, significantly,

champion

of

Negro freedom

who seems

to

misfired or

had never

really

civil

disobedience in pro-

drummer. Let him

sense the

It is

as well as a notorious

it

is

nonconformist

Negro

imperative for

title

does

for the

most mythical and

in

him

hears a

drummer with

man

not yet capable of understand-

to

is

pay attention.

The

a totally differ-

trite

and nasal

which the white American mind continues

vanced country in the world" runs the matters, precisely the is

man

because he hears a

is

it

mistic jig has long ago ceased to have a meaning,

tion

was an

most prophetic of the Negro novels: one which makes

hillbilly fiddling to

nation which

He

music he hears, however mea-

step to the

an admirable

quite clear the fact that the

Yet

War.

taken place. Thoreau said: "If a

ent beat, and one which the white ing.

Different

have believed that the American Revolution had either

sured or far away."

some

A

from Henry Thoreau. Thoreau, the

not keep pace with his companions, perhaps different

situation

taking for granted.

novel of William Melvin Kelley,

against unjust laws a century ago, before the Civil

early

the Black

Next Time,

and the unfamiliarity of the

hermit and a prophet of nonviolence, preached test

Fire

spirituals

a manifesto of the

ment which has done more than anything

spirit of

The

still

opti-

and the "most ad-

risk of being, in certain crucial

most retarded. Certainly there playing cowboys and Indians in

—but with H-bombs and Polaris

its

submarines

is

great risk for a

its

own

imagina-

at its disposal!

169

A

Drummer

Different

Negro

writer. It

and

Negro

for a completely

Negro

we

are

all

human

by a young

out some of the deep spiritual

spells

United States

world today. This is more than myth endowed with extraordinary crea-

status in the

it is

a

to light the providential significance of a

we know

which, whether

which

a brilliant first novel

battle for full civic rights in the

protest;

power bringing

tive

more than

a parable

is

implications of the

a story of

is

or not, understand

it

playing a part. Since

we

are

it

or not, like

The works

it

or not,

we might

in the struggle,

all

tragedy in

Negro

as

well try to find out

what

are there to

Such books cannot be ignored. They must be read

tell us.

with deep attention. They

means.

really

it

spell

of

writers

out a message of vital importance which

not to be found anywhere else at the present moment, and on the

is

acceptance of which the survival of American freedom

The book opens small

town of

on

way

its

same

as the loafers

the deep South,

to the

on the porch of

watch

farm of a Negro

loafers, after

watching

all

a truckload of

called

The

is

the

most striking and mysterious It is this

salt

pass through

It

ends as the

Negro

available to them,

a black racist

movement.

the sense of \airos, the realization that the

No

Negro's hour of destiny has struck.

movement.

depend.

the Negroes, mysteriously and without

from the North and founder of

heart of the story

rock

Tucker Caliban.

explanation, clear out of the state, lynch the last a potentate

may

a general store, in a

sense which,

one can deny that

characteristics of the

this is

one of

Negro freedom

awakening everywhere

in the

Negro

masses of the South, especially in the youth, has brought them by the

hundreds and thousands out of the ghettoes for a century of frustrated

moved them

to action,

race,

and

all

which they have vegetated

and despairing expectation.

not so

much

It is this that

has

because a few inspired leaders like

Martin Luther King have called them

Negro

in

to action,

but because the entire

the vast majority of "colored races"

all

over the

world, have suddenly and spontaneously become conscious of their real

power and,

it

seems, of a destiny that

from the sense of \airos

is all

their

own. Hence, inseparable

a conviction of vocation, of a providential role

world of our time. With the awakening of independence

to play in the

in Africa the

is

American Negro has become acutely conscious

of his

own

underprivileged status and of his yearning not only to become a "part of

White Society" but to play his

where the

in

own

is

now

evidently a doubtful benefit in his eyes)

creative role in

American Negro

society a

human

more or

history.

One

finds every-

less explicit anticipation

of

end of the white domination of the world and the decline of Euro-

pean-American 170

(for this

civilization.

The Negro

therefore cannot be content merely

to be integrated into

And

this

what the myth

is

Tucker Caliban

The

is

in Kelley's novel

about.

is all

He

the central figure in the myth.

new Negro:

completely

not the

something he regards as already over and done with.

Negro who has been

the North,

but a kind of preternatural figure,

bought— and

be

New Negro.

Negro organizer from

not the to college,

who came

the lineal descendant of a giant African chief tribe in a slave ship to

the

is

killed

—by

the

over with his

first

Governor of

The

the mythical Southern state in which the story takes place.

"African"

man

the white

has tried

Tucker Caliban

destroy.

Negro

the symbol of the

is

first

race

tame

to

not a giant.

is

and of

own

for his

He

innate

its

spirit,

is

that he sees completely

of causes.

He

a small, intense, taciturn

is

them completely

objectively

sions about them,

and he

lence of the white

movement must ancestor

The

and without

places

man. His

develop. In

impli-

through even the best of movements and

He

understands the problems of white people.

also

which

purposes, then to

Negro, aligned with no group, no movement, and no cause. cation

giant

is

him

the spirit in the

He

bitterness.

no hope whatever

views

harbors no delu-

in the official benevo-

which the Negro freedom

wisdom and

strength of the African

must one day awaken.

Meanwhile, the Calibans have served the family of the Governor for over a century, both as slaves and as freedmen. Tucker's father

is

typical

Negro servant, loyal and entirely devoted to his master; in other words, he is what the Negroes now regard with deepest scorn: he is an "Uncle Tom," or one who has fully accepted an inferior position

of the venerable

in white society.

Tucker, without hatred and without rebellion, driven by an inner force

which he does not quite understand himself and which

who comes

in contact with him, first buys a piece of land

Then he

his family has served so long.

newly acquired land for about interior messages, his

cow,

wife.

At to

He

he

a

house, and

Finally,

with rock

everybody

from the family

leaves their service

year.

sterilizes his field

sets fire to his

and farms

his

following inscrutable

salt,

shoots his

leaves in the night

mule and

with his pregnant

simply vanishes.

this, all

the Negroes in the state begin to leave.

know where

they go.

In a few days they are not bothered to

sell,

Their departure

is

They all

and

just go.

Out

It is

not necessary

of the state, out of the South.

gone, leaving empty houses which they have

with the doors wide open, furniture inside. a symbolic statement:

paternalism, tutelage, and logical

baffles

all

social servitude

it is

the final refusal to accept

different forms of moral, economic, psycho-

wished on them by the whites. In the

last

171

analysis,

culture. It

the final rejection of the view of

is

it

is

The book

a definitive is

"NO"

to

life

White America.

about the bewilderment with which

dimly understood by

all

implied by white

the people

who

see

this

them go:

observed and

is

the poor whites, the

child of a white sharecropper, the descendants of the

Governor,

first

Southerners educated in the north, and finally the Reverend Bennett

Bradshaw, founder of the Black just

Jesuits, a

Northern Negro leader who

is

mystified as everyone else by the things that are happening.

as

Though

he,

more than anyone, would have wanted

to set all these things

he has never been consulted or even dreamed

in motion,

wanted any more than the benevolent white

liberal

is

of.

their picture of life

to

is

not

wanted, because he

move anyone.

has no real power to do anything, to start anything, to

Yet for the Southern whites there has

He

be some explanation that

fits

and reassures them that things are what the South

has always believed them to be. In a final tragic irony, the loafers at the store follow the irresponsible inspiration of

one of

their

number and

blame the Black Jesuit for engineering the hegira. After beating him up they drive his

him

in his

own

Cadillac to

Tucker Caliban's gutted farm, and

screams in the Southern night ring

down

the curtain on this strange

morality play about the evil of our time. Evil

is

the word!

Those who have

in the eyes of the racist, those

seen, at first

who have

hand, the eerie glow

heard their peculiar silences

to reach

some mysterious point where inner confusion and

into violent fury

—those

to see apparently

and treat

Yet

seen this are aware of

as if

it

it,

it

means

evil so total

or refer to

it,

this evil is not

something purely and simply confined

What

is

open and expressed

in the

with violence and with the myth of power that interest in

anything

There

no need

convey some

else

—with

is

per-

so fascinated lost

the possible exception of sex.

power with which

bitterness

"white

may

seems to have

to intone a litany of cliches in a useless

idea of the

power without the

it

to

South

haps be hidden and implicit everywhere in the nation that

and

this

storv

is

attempt to

told. It is a

frustration that give such bite to the

works of James Baldwin. Kellev, a Northern Negro like Baldwin, much more tranquil and reflective. The force of the myth itself seems have absorbed and tamed the a story.

172

or

existed.

trash" in the South.

is

self-hate turn

what

good and harmless men possessed with an

complete that they prefer not to understand

so it

who have

as

them

they stand together in the shadows waiting for the forces within

There

is

no

rage.

bitter rage that

Resentment

is

is

to

might have gone into such

sublimated into irony. This ac-

The myth of Tucker Caliban us in our moments of personal

counts for the book's unforgettable impact. tells

the

same kind of truth

as

dreams

crisis, spelling out to us in symbols,

and

tell

ranging from

idyll to hallucination

nightmare, the truths that are struggling for acceptance and for

to

expression in our hearts.

That

the particular value of such a book.

is

which, like all prophetic messages, hear and not hear, if

we

really

want

is

It

gives us a message

mostly in code, so that

we can

both

we can accept just as much of it as we are able. But we can understand completely. What, then, is the

to,

message ?

The message

of this

book

is

in

James Baldwin's The Fire

A

Different

Drummer).

much the same as that which we Next Time (written and published

read

very

It is

the

same message which the

best

after

Ameri-

can Negro writers are now, with a rather astonishing unanimity and confidence, announcing to the white world as their diagnosis of that

world's sickness, with their suggestions for escaping the death which

is

otherwise inevitable. First of It

all,

would be

we must

seriously face the

a total loss (as indeed the Black

them

forever.

also in

its

This solution

But

is

Muslims

to get the

to recover his belief in his

writers see quite clearly.

their force, the gross

white

and be done with its

simplicity, but

society,

own autonomous

and

many

is

the

not really possible, as the best

They have

certainly rejected, with

subtle forms of alienation

even where

the thing that so

it

claims to do most to

is

all

imposed on them by

make them

"free."

readers have failed to see in these books

rather convincing assurance that there

is

But the

one \airos for everybody. The

time that has providentially come for the black for the white

reality,

white man, spiritually and psychologically, ofT his back.

in point of fact, such a solution

Negro

are doing)

appealing not only in

correspondence with the deepest psychological need of the

Negro, the need

need

magnanimity of the statement.

too easy for the Negroes simply to write the whites off as

all

man

is

also providential

man.

This implies a profoundly Christian understanding of man's freedom in history

—a point that must be underscored.

The Negro revolution is a real revolution, and it is definitely not Marxian. It may have some very violent and destructive potentialities in it, but they have nothing to do with Soviet Communism. To identify the Negro freedom movement as a red-inspired revolt against Western democracy

is

a totally ludicrous evasion

and incurable ignorance of what

is

and one which involves complete

actually happening. This

is

of course

173

why

precisely

Alabama,

accepted with total satisfaction by the entire South. In

an

is

it

article of faith that

trouble with the Nigras" has been fomented by

this

"all

it is

Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana,

Communist

agents.

Though

Baldwin and doubtless Kelley

writers like

Christians, their

view

is still

dynamism with which man

Christian faith in the spiritual his

own

an autonomous and

history, not as

no claim

lay

to

be

deeply Christian and implies a substantially freely creates

titanic self-affirmation

but in

obedience to the mystery of love and freedom at work under the surface

human

of

events.

hour of freedom

seen also as an hour

In the light of

this,

then, the

But

it is

not an hour of salvation for the

of salvation.

white man,

if

is

Negro

only.

he can possibly open the ears of his heart and hear what the Negro

now

The

listen in-

tently

enough

he

himself called to freedom and to salvation in the same \airos of

is

to

events which he

These books

is

tell

the true voice of

now,

in so

us that

God

many the

it is

hearing, can recognize that

different ways, opposing or resisting.

Negro who

and

in history

is

interprets

hears, or believes he hears, rightly.

it

The white man own

has lost his power to hear any inner voice other than that of his

demon, who urges him desperate,

however

ness to destroy the

quo

to preserve the status

iniquitous,

and however

cruel.

world rather than change

at

any

it is

The

tragedy of the present is

crisis

however readi-

dictated by this inner

demon, which he cannot recognize, but which the Negro writers)

price,

The white man's

clearly identifies.

(say the

in race relations

therefore essentially the white man's tragedy,

Negro

and he

will

destroy himself unless he can understand and undergo the metanoia that

him into harmony with to him in the struggle of

will bring

revealed

have

much

to suffer,

the

awakened

forces that are being

yet prove

but essentially, for him, the days of tragedy are over.

and taken

his destiny into his

own

was not

night,

a "tragic" hero.

On

affixed to the comfortable

his

house

We

are

down and

life

no longer

man

and punished by the gods. is

free to

!74

We

which

Tragedy

in the

Sophocles, in which the aspiration to freedom guilt

terrible:

has awakened

took off into the

the contrary, the implication of tragedy

and secure

loyal servant of the white Governor's family.

but in moral servitude.

He

most

hands.

Tucker Caliban, when he burned

is all

The Negro may

his black brother.

and the times ahead may

is

his father led as a is

not in freedom

world of Aeschylus and linked with unbearable

are in a Christian world in

which

redeemed, liberated from guilt by the inner truth that makes him obey the Lord of History.

It is

the

Lord of History who demands

Negro a complete break with his past servitudes. And the break must be made by the Negro himself, without any need of the white man's

of the

paternalistic approval. It

is

bonds that hold him,

all

absolutely necessary for the

like a navel cord, in passive

good pleasure of the white man's

The

real tragedy

to dissolve

society.

that of the white

is

Negro

dependence on the

man, who does not he

realize that

though he seems same servitudes which he has imposed on the Negro: passive subjection to the lotus-eating commercial society that he has tried to create for himbe

to himself to

self

and which

bottom.

one

ask

if

members

such freedom really

of

and unfreedom from top

to

a great deal of fuss about "individual freedom," but

freedom for the person or only the vidual

actually the victim of the

is

shot through with falsity

is

He makes

may

free,

mass

Is

exists.

there really a genuine

irresponsibility of the

atomized

indi-

society ?

The presence of the Negro in a state of humiliation and dependence may serve perhaps to perpetuate the illusion of power and autonomy which the white

loafers

enjoy. Actually, their

on the porch of the

own

lives are

empty,

imagine they

village store

pointless, absurd, totally lack-

The departure of the Negroes suddenly makes that truth Hence the frustrated whites confront the meaninglessness of They know no other way of "facing" such facts than violence.

ing in freedom. inescapable. their world.

This, then, according to our

Negro

writers,

is

the plight of the white

American and indeed of the whole Western world. Europe cannot save face by sitting

back complacently and viewing with pity the

confusions of white America. too are in danger.

When

the house next door

America does not stand judgment

and

conflicts

on

is

you

fire

alone. It

is

the

whole white world, including Russia, that stands accused of centuries of injustice, prejudice,

and racism. All white men same

fantasies of innocence, are prisoners of the

own

together, in spite of their illusion,

slogans, obsessed by the voice of an inner

better alternatives than the passivities

and

seduced by their

demon. They have no

oral fantasies of the consumer's

dream-world and the violent barbarities with which they briefly

awakened,

In such a situation,

it is

is

dream.

absurd for the Negro to place any hope either

in the white liberal or in the affluent be, in

when

react,

to all that threatens to contradict their infantile

Negro

leader.

Though

there

may

each of these cases, some awareness of the problem, the awareness

not deep enough to

mean

matters worse by bringing a those concerned.

The

liberal

anything.

On

new element

the contrary,

it

only makes

of delusion into the

and the Negro leader

are,

minds of

each in his

own

way, completely committed to the comforts and securities and therefore

l

75

to the falsities of the status

And

establishment.

quo. Each in his

his defection

is all

he only encourages the Negro

will,

to

more

the

seeming awareness of the problems and

own way

has sold out to the

vicious because, with his

his demonstrations of great

good

continue in hapless submission, to

"wait" and to hope for that same magic solution which continues, as

always before, to recede further into the future.

To

neither of these, says Kelley, can the

Negro

profitably or even safely

The most pitiful character in the book is perhaps the Southern white liberal who was once a promising young radical writer and crusader in the halcyon days of the thirties, but who allowed himself to be

listen.

intimidated and silenced in order to protect his family. His

doomed

is

to sterility,

he

secure, but

and

is

a total failure.

This comes close

to

that

and

has lamentably failed. Christianity

it

Without delaying here

to

prominently

itself is

make certain distincwe must admit that The practical conduct

defend the basic truth of Christianity,

to

judgment

many

new Negro literaand hands down the

being a standard formula in the

associated in the failure.

the

has betrayed his truth and his vocation,

white society before the bar of history

ture. It calls

judgment

of

He

thereafter

life

be prosperous and

therefore miserable.

is

tions

He may

impotence, uselessness.

is

not altogether without foundation.

Christians, of

whole groups and

entire "Churches," lends

it

a

great deal of support. Christians have perhaps too often been content to

delude themselves with vague slogans and abstract formulas about broth-

They have

erly love.

will

from

become addicted

God

As

a result they have

in the events of the time,

obeying

it.

What

is

The white man

the conclusion?

are not in any sense

On

Negroes.

Negro has

to free himself.

realization that he cannot

thing, since the white

by his

own

Such

is

men who,

to listen to the voice

resisted that voice instead of

so far

is

gone that he cannot

free himself.

the whites

Hence

now

these books

finally

first

man: and he can begin step to

is

free the

is

to

that the

do

freedom must be the

depend on the white

man

man

or trust

hopelesslv impotent, deluded

him

this

clear

for any-

and stupefied

alienation.

the "message" of the to

my

Negro

to

white America, delivered by

mind, are the most impressive and inspired writers

our country today.

176

His

problems

in the crucial

the contrary, the magnificent paradox they utter

a mission to free the white

he learns

token gestures of good as a total dispensation

become unable

and have

Negro because he cannot even demanding that

free the

if

to

meaningful action and genuine concern

all

of our time.

of

too easily

and "charity" which they have then taken

Is

the message "true"?

in

I

must

say that messages like this cannot be clearly declared to be either

"true" or "false" until time that

is

itself lays

precisely our difficulty.

We

out

the evidence before us. But

all

cannot wait.

We

have

to decide

before the truth or falsity of the message becomes evident.

make

be willing to

The is

question

And

credible.

Comparing

it

to this I

and

whether the message

who

inanities of those

to say. I for

to be free, for

The

which

it

but whether

it

one

am

it

we

all

the fumbling evaI can come up Negro and what that we need him

disbelieve the message,

listen

very seriously to the

absolutely ready to believe

Birmingham would have convinced me,

had not been already convinced. us unless

true,

our sa\e even more than for his own.

school children of

Doubtless,

is

the spiritual earnestness of the message, the creative vitality

with no better choice than to

he has

to

can only give the answer of one man's opinion.

of the messengers, the fruits of the message, with sions

have

evident.

then, not

is,

We

now,

may

I

if

I

find the message entirely credible.

not be infallibly true, but

I

think there

is

no hope for

are able to take seriously the obvious elements of truth

contains.

I

177

II

SEVEN ESSAYS ON ALBERT CAMUS (1966-68)

4

THE PLAGUE OF ALBERT CAMUS: A COMMENTARY AND INTRODUCTION Preface

The Plague

a

is

artist rather

modern myth about

Camus comes

than as a professional philosopher,

with the problems of

man. Speaking

the destiny of

and unhappiness, not only on the

evil

an

as

to grips

level of the

individual person and of society but also in their metaphysical dimension.

He

directly confronts the ancient

terms of original

sin,

dom; but where gift of divine

and redemption. Like

actual sin, suffering

Camus

tional Christianity,

problem which Christianity discusses in

problem

solves the

tradi-

human

in terms of

freedom which

grace impossible to accept.

called grace,

is

Camus

finds the concept of

perhaps because he has been deceived

Is that

by the distorted notion of grace which some Christians find amply cient?

The

present

commentary

will

myth

a psychological study, but as a

dance in

pay particular attention to

must be read not simply

lem. But meanwhile, the novel

historical

of

destroy

as a

drama

or as

of freedom

evil,

and

determinism, of love against what Hopkins called "the death

this

"death dance,"

hidden propensity

this

something more than mere mortality. built into life

is

good and

suffi-

this prob-

lour blood."

For Camus,

that

free-

Christianity introduces a higher dimension of liberty, the

—to

seek one's

own

others, to build one's security

It is

human

the

itself:

to pestilence,

the willful negation of

instinct

to

is

life

dominate and

to

happiness by destroying the happiness of

on power and, by extension,

use of that power in terms of "history," or of "the

to justify evil

common

good," or of

"the revolution," or even of "the justice of God."

Man's drive

simply to dominate and to oppress

to destroy, to kill, or

comes from the metaphysical void he experiences when he finds himself a stranger in his

own

himself by using

ambivalent.

it

universe.

for his

They may be

He

own

seeks to

make

ends, but his

life-affirming, they

prehension and of love, or they

may

This study of The Plague was written

pamphlet by The Seabury Press

in

that universe familiar to

own ends are capricious and may be expressions of com-

be life-denying, armored in legalism

in

1968.

June 1967 and was Significantly,

it

first

published as

was dedicated

to

a

Dan

Berrigan.

181

— and

theology, or perhaps even speaking the naked language of

false

brute power. In any case, the message of

Camus

that

is

man

cannot

successfully seek the explanation of his existence in abstractions: instead

of trying to justify his

meaning

life in

in his existence

terms of abstract formulas,

man must

create

by living in a meaningful way. In the words of

Maurice Cranston, for Camus "the world has no ultimate meaning but something in

it

has meaning

.

.

man, the only creature

.

.

to insist

.

.

on

having one." 1

The Plague

affirms this clearly.

met with men's

The

frightful visitation of pestilence

on retaining

insistence

their

meaning. The book

protest against all forms of passive submission to unhappiness

meaning. protest

is

It is

is

a

and un-

a protest against the passive acceptance of alienation. This

Camus even called The Plague "the most Yet Camus was at once too honest and too

explicitly nonreligious.

anti-Christian" of his books.

modest

is

to be rigidly doctrinaire in his attitude

not an "atheist,"

"militant atheist."

less a

still

toward

He

religion.

He

was

simply confessed that

entirely foreign to his life

and

that he therefore could not really identify himself with Christians.

His

was something

the Christian experience

treatment of Christianity

sympathy.

criticism of Christianity ideal

and

a

somewhat

and

ironic

is

severe, but not totally

of the "post-Christian" mentality

It is typical

on the

less

historic

gap between

its

a glorious Christian

edifying reality. There are elements in

himself which suggest that Christian grace and liberty contributed unconsciously to the formation of his

without

which bases

own

may

Camus

perhaps have

austere

and com-

passionate ethic.

Camus

is

sometimes represented

absurd" in order to plague" which of evil

resist

we must

it.

as

He

Nothing could be more mistaken.

having preached "the absurd."

wants his reader

"The absurd"

is

to recognize "the

simply one face of "the

The Plague is the tyranny may take: the Nazi occupa-

resist in all its aspects.

and of death, no matter what form

it

tion of France, the death camps, the bourgeois hypocrisy of the

system (which

Camus had

Stalinism, or the unprincipled opportunism of certain

All such types uneasily sensed that

and we might add

that the

French

observed in action in the colony of Algeria),

The Plague was

same Plague

is

French Marxists.

talking about

them

not absent from the United

States today.

One

thing must be

facile historicism

exploits

1

182

and

made

quite clear.

which, in the

sacrifices living

Maurice Cranston,

name

man

in Encounter,

Camus

is

resolutely

of "progress"

opposed to a

and of the "future,"

here and now. In an interview in

February 1967.

New

York

Camus

in 1946,

historical task,

problem of mankind

said: "If the

whatever that task

may

man

be,

is

down

boils

to a

no longer anything but

the raw material of history, and one can do with him what one wishes." The presence in our world of a cynical, unprincipled appetite for power which seeks to "do with man what one wishes" is what Camus has symbolized, in this myth-novel, by the hideous figure of the Plague. If is

severe with Christians,

it is

Camus

because he thinks they have abdicated their

mission of opposing the Plague and have instead devoted their talents to

excusing and justifying his story of

"The Renegade") by compromise with

Life of Albert

Though he

with Algeria, where he was born in

the other hand, he could not be called a

exile. Actually,

in Africa, familiar

felt

European

Camus

is

spokesman

up arms

man

the

armed

to free itself

World War

lost his father in

born

I

from

a

(at the

because he was

forces

tubercular, he nevertheless took an active part in the

thirties,

France or for

a cosmopolitan twentieth-century

of the Marne). Rejected by

Nazism

for

On

with Europe, South America, and the U.S.A. Citizen

European mother country, he

tics

extraction,

himself to be to some extent a stranger and

of a colony which, during his lifetime, took

battle

of

could not really be considered a voice of the "Third World."

Europe, where he always

an

political absolutism.

Camus

fully identified himself

grew up among working-class people

1913 and

Camus

an ambiguous theology or (as in

in terms of

it

French

resistance to

World War II. Though he was, like many others in the drawn to Communism, he later repudiated Stalinist power poliin

and remained aloof from Marxism, which he thought

antihumanist.

On

to

be basically

many

the other hand, he did not, like so

other ex-

Marxists, go over to the right wing, but maintained a precariously conscientious

and personal

positions

and earned him

Camus grew up

in a

attitude

He

a great deal of

critical

of

obloquy from

all

doctrinaire

all sides.

poor working-class section of Algiers, in the care

of his mother, a Spaniard faith.

which was

who had

given up

all

practice of her Catholic

adopted her attitude of quiet contempt for the

people in the neighborhood, especially his

own

religiosity of old

devout grandmother,

considering that their religion was simply an evasion from

life

and an

attempt to find justification for an existence that drifted helplessly

ward

death.

His

first

book of

essays

and

sketches,

(1937), ironically observed the religion of the old skeptical,

life-loving

L'Envers

et

to-

Vendroit

and preferred the frank,

paganism of the Algerian youth on the sunny

Mediterranean beaches. The sun, the

sea,

the shore, the Algerian country-

183

i

Roman

side dotted with half-hidden

ruins

—

all

Camus

spoke to

what

of

he most valued: the life-affirming heritage of Mediterranean culture, particularly Greek.

But he was

view of

tradition, sensitive to the tragic

theater

At

and

also alert to the ambiguities of the life

to the dualistic spirituality of

was born of the Athenian

Neoplatonism.

Camus wrote

the University of Algiers

Christianity, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, to explain the

that

Greek

and

Augustinian attitude toward

St.

a thesis

evil,

on

(1936)

Augustine.

He

early

attempted

which he found deeply

repugnant, by the influence of Manichaeism and Neoplatonism. This

theme

still

concerned him in The Plague, where the Augustinian pre-

occupation with physical

punishment of

evil as the

sin obsesses the Jesuit

Pere Paneloux.

During

Camus

his university studies

contracted an unsuccessful

civil

Communist Moslems. His most productive work after

marriage, which broke up in 1935. Meanwhile, he joined the

and worked among the

party

leaving the University was in the theater, where he wrote and produced plays,

with strong

political implications, for a cast of

working-class actors.

Communists in 1937, he joined the Algerian movement of National Liberation and, working for a left-wing paper, did a highly competent series of articles on the famine in Kabylia. When his paper was suppressed by the government in 1940, Camus went to France, which was by this time at war. Unable to enlist because of his health, Camus continued his newspaper work in Paris and finished his first novel, The After leaving the

Stranger, published two years later (1942).

breakdowns

and

of convalescence

The Myth

cal essay

French

rest in central

of Sisyphus,

Camus during

came The Plague, which

rebellion

Camus

lived

The

first

During

systems. But they are

Doubly 2

.

war

on one

years,

and out

level at least,

the sense of frustration

and

.

Oran, the scene of the Plague, for a

was an epidemic of typhoid

The Plague were

written in April 1941.

to different systems.

The

plague: abolishes

the same.

?

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

p. 193.

184

useless

all

in

that time there

notes for

The liberating plague Happy town. People live according all

the

certainly,

which dominated France under the Nazis.

and taught school

brief period in 1941. in the city.

series of

his first plays, activism in the

reflects the tension, the fatigue, the struggle,

dogged

second marriage, a

France, publication of the philosophi-

work on

resistance: all this occupied

of this activity

A

back and forth from North Africa, periods

in health, trips

(New York:

Alfred A. Knopf,

1963),

— Elsewhere he

reflects

Florence or Athens

who would

write of a place like

Oran? "No

one would have the idea of writing about a town where there

where the past

He

reduced

is

was already tempted

to nothing." to write

human

When

role

and

3

about Oran, for

and boring, there was nevertheless something is:

nothing

is

mind, where ugliness has played an overwhelming

to attract the

on

that people are always ready to write books

—but

if

town was ugly

the

to write about.

"My

reply

beings."

appeared in 1947, The Plague was an instant success, and

it

everyone recognized the experience of the war years as well as a deeper,

more

universal question about the

porary world.

meaning

of

life itself in

The war had shown Camus— and everyone

the contem-

else

—that

the

and prosperous middle-class existence opened

placid surface of routine

out into a metaphysical and moral abyss that was both incomprehensible

and frightening. Though Camus was no philosopher and no

two

his

laconic,

novels displayed

first

and

all

existentialist,

the irony, the austerity, the bizarre,

ruthlessly critical analysis of

man and

society

which readers

expected from Sartre.

Thus

far,

Sartre

and Camus were

though there were always

friends,

obvious and significant differences between them. In 1952, however, after

Camus'

on

essay

revolution,

L'Homme

revoke, the two authors broke

with one another and became embroiled in one of those interminable, acid controversies

which seem

so

necessary in

the

intellectual

world,

particularly in Paris.

May

Camus

last novel, The Fall. work in the theater, writing and producing plays based on Faulkner {Requiem for a Nun, 1956) and Dostoevsky {The Possessed, 1959). Meanwhile he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, when he was still in his forties. Camus never reached the age of fifty. On January 4, 1960, when driving

In

1956

published his third and

Thereafter he devoted his time and energy to

from southern France

to Paris

with his publisher, he was killed in an

accident.

The work

of a brilliant

was thus cut

off at the

Notebooks (which have

French writer

peak of

his

—one

with the problem of "the absurd" in his

The 3

to

though

it

may

that he

We know

first

develop the ethic of revolt

Fall, brilliant

We know

development.

since been published)

perhaps more important work in progress.

had gone on

of the best of his time

from

his

had other and

that having started

novel and in Sisyphus, he

—above

be, represents a

all

in

The

Plague.

dead end, a ne plus

Ibid., p. 197.

185

Clamence, the penitent-judge,

ultra in futile self-examination.

duction to the absurd of society that

whose

built (as

is

chief

is

the re-

Camus has to say about the sterility of a Tarrou in The Plague observes) on institutions all

aim seems

that

be to justify

to

evil

and

injustice

and death.

Perhaps The Fall belonged

to

Nemesis" which would

have included a book on the Nazi death

also

Camus was planning

camps. Finally, however, attracted

him:

life-affirming

what the Notebooks

a "certain

kind of love"

—a

with what most

to deal

fuller

"the cycle of

call

development of those

themes which we find in some of his early essays and

in the conversations

also

between Rieux and Tarrou in The Plague. Camus

never had a chance to develop further the austere, almost stoical idealism of the "healer"

who

and death because living man

fights against disease

remains for him an ultimate, inexplicable value.

He

never more fully

explored the mysterious and controversial heroism of "the saint without

God"

Tarrou wanted

that

quite accept. But

to

Tarrou, just as he had been In the end,

be

—and

Camus was always

Camus

that

himself could never

attracted to the cryptic idealism of

to the quasi-mystical spirituality of Plotinus.

Camus' deepest

affirmation

that of an almost traditional

is

humanism with a few significant modern doubts, austerities, and reservations. Camus is definitely not an existentialist. He rests his work on basic assumptions about the nature of man, even though he never spells out these assumptions in clearly essentialist terms. The work of Camus is a humanism rooted in man as authentic value, in life which and

classic

to

is

be affirmed in defiance of suffering and death, in love, compassion,

and understanding, the

solidarity of

men whose comradeship renunciation of

all

men

in revolt against the absurd,

has a certain purity because

illusions,

all

misleading

ideals,

it

all

is

based on the

deceptive

and

hypocritical social forms.

What Camus

really

wanted

to explore

humanism based not on which the individual may all too

authentic

was the

religious or easily

be

possibility of a

on

new and

political ideologies, to

sacrificed,

but on a deeply

human persons. In the words Camus wanted to show men how

authentic relationship between living

of

Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

to

his

"fashion an art of living in times of catastrophe, to be reborn by fighting

work in our society." Nowhere in all aim more convincingly than in The Plague.

openly against the death instinct

work did he achieve

his

The

Story of the Plague

A

typical

in

its

186

this

at

French colonial

routine pleasures, a

city,

banal, placid, engrossed in

little city

without

ideas, a

its

business

and

community without

character,

where nothing

special

supposed

is

to

happen,

is

suddenly struck

by a disease which has vanished from the civilized world: bubonic plague. Oran, Algeria (described elsewhere by Camus as a labyrinth

where the wanderer is destroyed by the minotaur of boredom), is presented as typically "modern." Not of course that it is frantically progressive, or that it moves particularly fast or that it sees far ahead. Yet it is

modern

in the sense that

"has no past." Modern, too, in the sense that

it

populated entirely by enlightened humanists

it is

who do

not believe in

bubonic plague.

The measure

of

Oran

is

modern man

the measure of

in his banality,

his love of system, his routine practicality, his indifference to life in depth,

whether in sorrow or

in joy.

viction that the action

is

The Oranais

taking place somewhere

the action takes place at Oran. In entirely cut ofT

hectic

tion

is

little

and incredibly

a bizarre

fact,

from the outside world

and beleaguered killed ofT.

That

shares a universal

world

in

difficult afTair.

their

the

else.

city, visited

for ten

Well, for once,

by

is

is

large proportion of the popula-

is,

for the

rude and

for the Oranais, a

salutary shock. It inspires reflection, at least for a while.

And

then

life

so exacting that one can hardly think: but all, in one way come to realize that the fight against the Plague is everybody's Some dedicate themselves completely to the work of keeping the

becomes

or other,

concern.

Plague in check, saving lay

for existence

town should have "been chosen out

scene of such grotesque happenings"

itself

pestilence,

months. Oran becomes a

which the struggle

A

modern con-

down

their

own

lives,

lives

caring for the sick, burying the dead.

not as "heroes" but simply because

it is

Many what

they have to do.

The citizens are supposed to be the most ordinary kind of people: modern middle- and working-class Frenchmen living in Algeria. But Oran is not a typical Algerian city. Nowhere in the book does an Arab appear. The characters are all Europeans or of European descent. This is perhaps significant. The Plague described by Camus is a plague for Europeans who happen also in this case to be "colonialists." That is why he chose Oran instead of Algiers or Constantine as the scene of his story. Oran is a new city, a completely French city with no Kasbah. The fact that the people in the book are for It

was

said above that

Oran

is

"typical."

—

the

most part French (there are one or two Spaniards) reminds us that

the book,

on one of

its

levels, is also a story

of the

Nazi occupation

in

The Plague is not only the physical epidemic but also the moral sickness of men under oppression by a hateful regime—a typological

France.

reign of

We

evil.

observe the plague-stricken city through the eyes of a detached,

187

who

coolly objective witness

speaks in matter-of-fact tones, avoiding

all

drama and all overstatement, and yet with an authentic personal involvement in the struggle to save lives. Sometimes he draws on the notebook

man

of another witness, Tarrou, a

who

and compassionate humor

of ironic

turns out to be a kind of "saint without

God"

—or

who may

at least

quoted by the narrator,

aspires to that condition. Tarrou's notes, as also be

found in the Notebooks of Camus himself, but we cannot say that

Camus

identifies himself

Dr. Rieux,

is

few who,

who

The

with Tarrou.

one of the

is

central character of the

identify the Plague

first to

book

and one of the comes

in spite of his constant daily contact with the victims,

through unharmed.

The

narrative begins

when Dr. Rieux

finds a dead rat

on the landing

Within a few days, scores and then hundreds of show up everywhere. Soon humans begin to fall ill and die.

outside his apartment.

dead

rats

Dr. Rieux diagnoses bubonic plague but has a city officials to

the city

not

is

admit the

closed

difficult.

and

off,

since

is

it

supply ordered from Paris

The

effective.

time getting the

surrounded by

fortifications, this

is

All contact with the outside world except by telephone, tele-

graph, and radio comes to an end. There

The

difficult

and take the necessary measures. Finally

facts

is

is

no plague serum on hand.

a long time

coming and proves

in-

sickness takes hold of the population. All available public

buildings are turned into hospitals. Quarantine camps are set

up

in vari-

ous places (for instance in the municipal stadium); food grows scarce; a black

market

flourishes.

However, the

quented and so do the movie houses, pictures have to be

shown over and over

Meanwhile, religion lence. Pere Paneloux, a

prominent

same

again.

an answer

offers

cafes continue to be well fre-

in spite of the fact that the

problem of

to the tragic

local Jesuit

pesti-

with a reputation for solid

scholarship as well as for militant Christianity, preaches a sermon on the

Plague.

The sermon

Plague because the

this is

modern world

mercy

God

is

what the people

in general

home truths." Oran has the deserve. God is disappointed with

"vigorous

and with them

giving the city another chance.

awaken from

to

contains

in particular.

The Plague

religious indifference. Perhaps this

is

is

But a

in his

summons

a seedtime for a

future harvest. Perhaps the Plague lights the path to future salvation.

With

St.

Augustine

(whom

Paneloux acknowledges

believes the Plague "reveals the will of

forming sin

evil into

as his master)

he

in action unfailingly trans-

The theme of the Plague as punishment for many French Catholic priests and

here echoes the preaching of

bishops after the

Meanwhile 188

good."

God

fall

of France during "the great penitence of Vichy."

a journalist,

Rambert,

is

working on an elaborate plan

to

escape from the city and rejoin his

young wife

On

in France.

the other

hand, Tarrou organizes volunteer sanitation squads, whose members risk

under the immediate direction of

their lives in order to fight the Plague,

Rieux.

A great deal of suspense

is

when Rambert's

created by the fact that

plan for escape has, after repeated difficulties, finally reached the point of probable success, he renounces

and

it

joins Tarrou.

The Plague drags on, the men who fight it are growing more and more exhausted. One of the doctors develops a serum taken from the victims themselves, and this is tested on a child, who dies in horrible suffering. But the unusual suffering of the child gave him power

due

is

Eventually the serum does prove

to fight the disease.

Meanwhile the suffering and death

effective.

serum

to the fact that the

of the child, in the pres-

ence of priest and doctor, Paneloux and Rieux, once again bring up the

problem of

evil.

Challenged by Rieux

death of the innocent

to justify the

He

in religious terms, the Jesuit revises his previous declarations.

that his first

and

admits

sermon was "uncharitable," and instead of promulgating easy

definitive

answers confesses that he does not claim to "understand"

what he

the mystery of evil but that he nevertheless continues to "love

cannot understand." His conclusion

judgment and punishment but in fact, Paneloux also lays

member

Plague, as a

is

no longer expressed

of self-abandonment

down

his life in the

of a sanitary squad.

squads" are meant to suggest the French

who

of heart of Paneloux,

and

terms of

in

sacrifice.

And,

struggle against the

It is clear

that the "sanitary

resistance units,

and the change

ends up fighting on the side of Rieux and

Tarrou, represents the part played by some of the French Catholic clergy in the resistence against

Finally the

condemned suddenly as victory

The

begins to work. Patients

recover.

obviously beaten, but just dies.

first train,

the reunion of

who

Rambert with

his wife, the death

suggests the French collaborationists.

the general celebration, Rieux walks the streets alone, reflecting

the struggle

and on

its

admire in

man

crowds

perhaps not

is

meaning, deciding "that there are more things

the day

on to

than to despise," but also thinking that the joy of the as

secure as they imagine: "the plague bacillus

never dies or disappears for good ...

it

is

hopelessly

pages of the book describe the opening of the city gates, the

of the

of a black marketeer, Cottard,

Amid

The Plague

who seem

becomes certain Tarrou catches the plague and

last

coming

Nazism.

new serum

would come when,

would rouse up

its rats

for the

it

can

lie

dormant

.

.

.

perhaps

bane and the enlightening of men,

again and send them forth to die in a happy

city."

In spite of these final words,

The Plague remains

the most positive

and 189

conclusive of

all

Camus'

The

novels.

the contrapuntal treatment of the

and the Plague

as physical evil

summons up

lenge which in

The Face

drama

of evil

is

found

levels: the

in

Plague

human spirit, a chalhuman conscience

as a deficiency in the

love.

of the Plague

"They fancied themselves

free," said

Rieux of the Oranais, "and no one

And

will ever be free as long as there are pestilences."

many

as

book

of the

on two

the deepest resources of the

and

capacity for courage

its

real

theme

"there have been

plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take

people equally by surprise."

In one of Camus' plays,

The

State of Siege, the Plague appears in per-

son as a totalitarian dictator. In this novel, the

though

"central character" acts as

it

Plague

is

remains faceless and impersonal.

though with an arbitrary mind and will of

its

own. Breaking

through the placid surface of everyday routine existence,

upon the

poses

made

not

it is

are certain things

of

ties

A

to their

human

to believe in the

pass away. But is

it

is

a

made

to

impossible.

views.

men who

was

pass away,

possible for them,

They went on doing

How

rules out

tions

and

a bad

and the humanists

all,

of

all,

to

because

not more to blame

that pestilences

business, arranged for journeys,

were

and formed

should they have given thought to anything like plague, which

curtail the

all

the forms of evil

freedom of

upon which he builds

silences the

man

exchange of views? 4

which break

Albert Camus,

is

in

upon human

by destroying the basic assump-

his plans for future action.

that presupposes such unreal thinking

190

our-

that will

and thought that every-

which presupposed

does not adequately account for evil cannot be called

4

reali-

tell

dream

first

Our townsfolk were

any future, cancels journeys,

Plague here represents existence

fundamental

from one bad dream

doesn't always pass away, and,

than others; they forgot to be modest, that was still

as

man's measure; therefore we

mere bogey of the mind,

they haven't taken their precautions.

thing

Plague be-

existence.

pestilence isn't a thing

it

and

The Plague teaches them that there made to man's measure, and not exactly

which are not

selves that pestilence

another,

rudely im-

measure.

which he must nevertheless confront

to his liking,

it

citizens the dreadful facts of suffering, isolation,

sudden death. The Oranais are not prepared cause

way the The Plague

in a

not

free.

Thinking which

realistic.

Freedom

Camus summons

The Plague (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

1948), p. 35.

the

— no systematic thinking can be fully realistic if it excludes the radical absurdity of an existence into which evil or irrationality can always break without warning. Yet we seem to assume

Plague to bear witness

human

that

to the fact that

can be laid out neatly in reasonable patterns, as

affairs

everything were always in order and as

odds the most objective and

all

the most authentic humanist

ing" the Plague. this

He

He

is

—

is

scientific

mind

effects.

to

apparently the only one

aware that the clanging

to the cemeteries

trolley cars

disasters.

which proceed

loaded with bodies belong in long procession with the

London and

death carts of

Oran

bells of the

"know-

to situate

epidemic in a historical context of bizarre and unpredictable is

Dr.

book

in the

who comes closest who is able

one

also the

if

order were completely

any mind that carefully studied causes and their

accessible to

Rieux, by

this

if

and draw our gaze back

Marseilles,

to the

beaches of Attica where the Athenians kindled huge pyres and fought

with torches in order

fiercely

than into the

throw

their

dead into the flames rather

sea.

"They forgot book.

to

to be

modest, that was

all."

Modesty

is

a key

an understatement, chosen half in irony.

It is

sanity of that

The

realistic

which

self-assessment

delivers

word

in this

What is it? The men from fatal

Oran were unaware of the "miasma" of evil which a keener moral sense would have quickly detected. The self-assurance of those who know all the answers in advance and who are convinced of

hybris.

their

own

citizens of

absolute

lence, famine,

and

war, pesti-

infallible correctness sets the stage for

and other personages we prefer

to leave

unnoticed in the

pages of an apocalypse. Modesty, in the vocabulary of Tarrou's notebook

and of Camus himself, implies

a capacity to

doubt one's

own wisdom,

and systems that explain every-

a hesitancy in the presence of doctrines

thing too conveniently and justify evil as a kind of good. In Camus, this

modesty

is

a lesson taught in the school of the absurd. It therefore has

metaphysical

and Rieux

—or

is

antimetaphysical

—resonances.

big words a mystery of being which is

The modesty

antimetaphysical in the sense that it

admits

it

it

refuses to

of

Tarrou

adorn with

cannot penetrate. But

it

also metaphysical, at least in a sense acceptable to Gabriel Marcel, be-

cause

it

respects the

of the limitations

power.

It is fully

more

or less impenetrable truth, the baffling presence

imposed on man's existence aware of the

reality

as

experiences at once the nobility and the poverty of

inexorable limits.

It

man's freedom.

refuses to substitute grandiose

reality

We

It

—the modest reality —of what man find Rieux

though by an arbitrary

both of man's being and of his

musing about the

is

and heroic

ideals for the

actually capable of doing.

seriousness of the Plague

which has 191

been discovered. Will the Plague die out just because

just

identified

needed? to spell

and

"He it

Are

resisted?

lucidity

has been

it

and care and patience

that are

all

pulled himself together" (at the point where he was tempted

out in a message of hope), he hears the sound of a

work with

a

All the rest

machine saw. "There

man

at

lay certitude; there in the daily round.

hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't it. The thing was to do your job as it should be

waste your time on done."

5

The Modest

What also

is

do

Certitudes

the difference between Rieux

their job each

They imagine

day more or

and the other people of Oran who

less as it

should be done? His lucidity.

that their everyday existence proves something. Indeed,

they are satisfied with the thought that they themselves prove something,

They

not everything.

if

not actually significant (because, after

trated, secretly

all,

confused or disillusioned), at

are convinced of the fact that there is

which they imagine

are engrossed in lives

if

which

quite conclusive,

somehow embodied

in

is

is

a clear

may

they

be bored, frus-

least potentially

that answer, or

if

bility to specialists.

They

it.

There

it is

They may not

Never mind, they

they

it,

may

will delegate that responsi-

are the officials of the city.

They know

the law.

represent the order which reflects a basic immutable truth. Or,

you happen

which

and that

they think they have dimly grasped

not be able to formulate

They

which they themselves bear witness

to

insofar as they are happy, prosperous, comfortable, secure.

know

so.

and simple meaning which

the answer, the right answer,

an order

to be,

to

be a believer (a few of them have their

rarely last)

there are doctors.

higher governing doctors,

who

The Plague

there are theologians like Pere Paneloux.

And beyond officials,

will send a

fortunately the

moments

serum

all

these there are

still

if

of belief,

And

then

higher powers:

higher church dignitaries, and in Paris super-

serum

to save

arrives late

breaks in upon

all

everyone from the Plague. Un-

and proves

ineffective.

these people as a visitation of cosmic

irony and tragedy. Suddenly their existence, their reasonable answers, their established order, their official cliches, are seen to be absurd.

Rieux and

his friend

Tarrou are among the few who are able

to

Dr.

defend

themselves in such a position, preciselv because they have no desire to

prove anything. They are willing 5 Ibid., p. 38.

192

to

do

their job,

do

it

well,

and even

down

lay

their lives,

without insisting that anything

action.

did.

theological

some Absolute Power. Such is the modesty of Camus, refusing faith. It is the

cause

modesty which simply

A

value beyond question.

life is a

time refuses to watch

itself

imply "these are the

acts

both by works and

justification

also at the

It

refuses to preach about

everyone should perform." For example, Rieux

He

Rambert ought not

persuade Rambert to

stay and fight the Plague with him.

he admits that

own

—

is

also

human

love

—for

to escape.

does not try to

On

which Rambert wants

something of an absolute or

the con-

to save his

any rate a primary value.

at

Rieux has standards which he has chosen for himself, but he to

impose them on anyone

squads" and risk his

and he

finds

life

else.

When

Tarrou

offers to

fighting the Plague, his motives are "modest"

them almost laughable. They seem

dismiss

This

it

in

to

imply that he has a

is

going

to turn out to

obliquity

which glances

the head.

Another form of modesty! Only people

off the nail instead of

more modest vocabulary from the Plague. this Camusian modesty and its

mal virtuousness

is

that

Camus

success as the implicit

reward

myths of bourgeois

placent

a great success

it,

is

suspicious of success.

but he

is

and won the French

is

it

on

And

they, too,

distrust of for-

Not

that he enter-

repelled by an ethic of material

for virtuousness

society. It

kind of

Judge Othon and

like

Perhaps one reason for

tains a superstitious fear of

for a

pretending to hit

Pere Paneloux claim to hit nails squarely on the head. a

Finally he

be another key word.

Camus' key words are usually unexpected, chosen perhaps

must learn

is.

one admittedly inadequate word: "comprehension."

one can guess,

too,

hesitates

form "sanitary

code of morals. But he cannot quite define what that code tries to

same

as if to

its acts,

refuses to argue that

life

death be-

elects to fight against

modesty which

performing "praiseworthy acts" or "doing

good" or even "being heroic."

trary,

doing

justified in

The word "justified" is here used in a strong, quasisense. As if their action proved them to be in harmony with

what they

by

proved by their

is

In other words without declaring that they were

—one

ironic that

Critics' Prize

of the more comThe Plague itself was for 1947. Camus then

reacted in his Notebooks:

Melancholy of success. Opposition

me,

The

6

as

it

fact

was

before,

I

remains that

should have I

can help

is

essential. If

everything were harder for

much more right to say what I am many people in the meantime. 6

saying.

—

Notebooks 1942-1951 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1965),

p. 158.

193

Camus was and of

its

obviously aware of the fact that his critique of French society

criteria for success

gave him the highest praise

became ambiguous when it

that

same

society

could give a moralist precisely because he

distrusted virtue.

In the same notes, and in a rather subtle analysis, to grips

with

ambiguity. "Distrust of formal virtue

this

The

explanation of this world." to call everything

and

that

Camus

becomes

says,

He

more than formal

Stranger)." But even

virtue,

Marxist cause: is

pure" has,

is

I

have

the subject of

he distrusts the

as

be "moral" or not. "There are

it

one takes up a religious

alluding to the Marxists and to the Sartrian ethic.)

to solve this

the this

virtue in order to dedicate itself to revolutionary

all

some who take up falsehood problem in

historical action

is

from

admits that "everything

related to that distrust (it

is

action in history, regardless of whether

is

—there

But the conviction that "nothing

"poisoned our century."

nihilism that negates

to the

come

tries to

Marxists, he reasons, proceed

impure except what contributes "virtue."

ever thought or written

The

Camus

L'Homme

(Here he

life."

Camus would

try

revoke: could one engage validly in

without on the one hand indulging in the narcissism of

"the virtuous conscience" and without on the other being a nihilist and

ignoring

and

all

in the

good and

evil?

The would condemn Camus as

His solution

end the followers of Sartre

sketched out in

is

Plague, a "pure

soul."

At any rate the modest narrator in The Plague refuses to praise the members of the sanitary squads as if they were heroes. He will not give ." The narrator is inclined them "more importance than is their due. .

to

.

think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy actions one

may

by implication be paying indirect but potent homage

side of

human

The modesty

." .

.

of Rieux

and Tarrou

mentally optimistic view of

human

What

is

"good" about the

many

courage, which

based therefore on a funda-

else.

corrigible vice

"fancies

it

activity of

Tarrou

is

man and

it

to

rejects

human

not precisely the

others share, but the comprehension

loved the goodness of his fellow

everything

which saw and

subordinated that value to

Ignorance, the lack of comprehension, becomes an in-

and

a great source of evil

knows everything and

when

it

turns to dogmatism,

therefore claims for itself the right to

kill."

The modesty and comprehension

on a

realistic sense of

194

is

nature, while the idealism

perhaps often conceal an actual pessimism in regard

reality.

worse

nature. "For this attitude implies that such actions shine

out as rare exceptions

may

to the

of

Camus

are then based not only

the absurd, but also on a deeply compassionate

respect for

life

and

human

for the concrete

The

person.

ignorance which

and fancying itself to be wisdom, preIndeed it fers its own Tightness to the values that are worth defending. sacrifices those values by its willingness to kill men in honor of its dog-

Camus

rejects ignores the absurd,

matic self-idolatry. are therefore antiheroic.

Camusian modesty and comprehension

They remain

speak in sober understatements, in quiet irony. is

not Promethean. His revolt

heaven to

steal fire

surd (that

They

Camus

who stormed

not that of the Titan

from the gods, but of Sisyphus, the hero of the ab-

to say the

is

is

cool.

again to the top of a

nonhero)

hill,

and

who

simply pushes a rock again and over again each time the rock

starts all

The work of Rieux and Tarrou against the Plague is just as dogged, in many ways just as absurd, as that of Sisyphus. There are moments when their exhausting and dangerous struggle seems rolls

back

to the

bottom.

utterly hopeless: but they continue

to

prove them-

than the Plague, but simply because they are alive and they

selves better

want

anyway, not in order

to help others to stay alive also.

Those who enrolled

in the "sanitary squads"

knew

merit in doing as they did, since they

it

.

.

.

had indeed no such great

was the only thing

to do,

and

the unthinkable thing would then have been not to have brought themit. These groups enabled our townsfolk to come to grips with and convinced them that now that the plague was among us, it them to do whatever could be done to fight it. Since plague be-

do

selves to

the disease

was up to came in this way some men's duty, that

The

is

the concern of

all.

it

revealed

itself as

what

it

really

was:

7

narrator goes on to say that one does not praise a schoolmaster for

teaching children that two and two

and two makes four

is

make

"when

that there are times in history

the

four.

However, he does admit

man who

dares to say that

punished with death." Here

we

two

are once again

reminded that the power and conviction of Camus' statements about the Plague derive from his

modesty

is

own

enhanced by the

participation in the

fact that

which he could have been tortured and

made

four,

knowing

that this

French

resistance.

he almost daily wrote shot.

He

was not acceptable

said that to the

His

editorials for

two and two

enemy

that oc-

cupied his country.

The is

acted 7

Camus men who have

true touchstone of merit in the kind of action described by

not that less

it

justifies the

agent in comparison with other

worthily, but that

The Plague,

it

communicates the same lucid consciousness

p. 121.

!95

men and

to other

enables them to act in the

same way.

awakens the

It

same "modesty and comprehension" and the same dogged courage might say the same "Sisyphean

spirit"

on the grounds not of moral good or ment, but simply

that sentence

that

is

it

logic

its

consistency

Here Camus seems

"it

By

not deny

siders to be virtue, that is

all

not love

all, is

the

itself

other virtues their reality and

But we must place

thought in

this

generally refers to

what

all

and practiced by few.

condemnations, for moral and righteousness, to get

and

away with

disease,

merely

self-

is

for

Camus

kind of

a

social

hypocrisy and doublethink which he called

state of

moraline ("moralitis").

tone for forensic

sets the

witch hunts, for censorious

In other words, virtue

it.

an endemic

of cliche thinking

It

political

is

evaded by everyone rich or powerful enough

easily

is

its

society con-

normative system of conduct that

to say, the

is

irony of

preached with a certain amount of fallacious rhetoric. Such virtue

admired by

la

it.

Camus

"virtue,"

The

logical."

not reason but love.

to contradict himself. After

He would

right context.

reward and punish-

"There was nothing ad-

truth.

was merely

highest good, the one virtue that gives

meaning?

of

—we

satisfied to act

is

rooted not in coherence but in absurdity,

is is

which

spirit

evil, still less

human

as a witness to

mirable about this," says Camus,

and what gives

—a

It is a

matter of

talk, of

and has nothing whatever

to

conventional attitudes,

do with the

classic idea

of virtus.

The whole to

satiric

theme of The Stranger, where the hero

condemned

is

death as a murderer chiefly on the grounds that he did not weep at

his mother's funeral (thereby

proving himself a "criminal type")

the standards of right

and wrong, law and

by the court are in

pure absurdities.

order, virtue

and

vice

is

that

upheld ,

The same

fact

The

irony appears in

the "normal"

life

Plague, but in a

much

which break down under the

epidemic. But then they are replaced by other standards, less

easy to preach

the standards of

and order by

of the city retains a certain tranquility

virtue of certain assumptions

and

men

to praise,

like Rieux,

themselves to save the

city.

evident way:

less

stress of the

less

grandiose,

but certainly more basic and more

Tarrou, and

What

all

the others

who

actually happens, of course,

real:

sacrifice

that

is

instead of the convenient automatic functioning of a social system in

which

at the

same time everybody and nobody

are implicated but

of freedom their

own

few are

and of love

in

deliberate choice

revolt against the absurdity

196

really participates

actually committed), there arises a

which

all

who

new

(all

order

take an active part do so by

and out of the two motives Camus approves: and

arbitrariness of an evil destiny,

and de-

termination to give their lives in the affirmation of man, of love.

and

Those who do not manage

and of

to arrive at this solution are either passive

helpless victims of the Plague or, worse

Absurdity

life,

its

still,

accomplices.

—Revolt and Love

This whole

summed up

which

attitude,

in

of course a highly ethical attitude,

is

Camus' Notebook of

is

1946:

"THUS STARTING FROM THE ABSURD,

IT

IS

NOT

POSSIBLE

TO LIVE REVOLT WITHOUT REACHING AT SOME POINT OR OTHER AN EXPERIENCE OF LOVE THAT IS STILL UNDEFINED." 8 This progression

the world of the absurd. his often

of Sisyphus)

Camus

his early

exploring

is

Those who have never read any other books of

They have an

life.

philosophy, especially

"ethic of quantity"

and which he

The

The Myth

remain under the impression that Camus was preaching the

absurd as a way of real

whole work of Camus. In

basic in the

is

successes {The Stranger and

which he propounded

later, quietly, retracted

and

lucid realization of the absurd

function of this lucidity

is

view of Camus'

entirely defective

much importance

they attach too

if

is,

in

some chapters

of Sisyphus

altered.

for

Camus, only

The

a first step.

not simply to negate and to deride the illusory

standards of bourgeois society.

Still

less is it

an ethic of austere and ironic despair.

It is

merely a groundwork for

the

first

step

toward a kind

modest hope. The Myth of Sisyphus is explicitly directed against cide. Where one might be tempted to think "because life is absurd,

of

get

it

over with,"

more reason

Camus

for living,

replies,

and

"because

life is

absurd that

for refusing to surrender to

its

is,

freedom

man

going even though a certain logic might seem

Camus

let's

the

absurdity."

and

inevi-

under these conditions of lucidity and courage, a valid

affirmation of freedom: the only

useless.

sui-

all

is

Life then becomes a revolt against negation, unhappiness, table death. It

the

to

detects this logic subtly at

the apparent "order"

and "truth" by which

has, the to

work

freedom

to

keep

prove that resistance in society itself

and

is

in

society lives.

Indeed, what society preaches in justification of man's existence usually turns out

upon examination

of that existence.

What

systematically organized 8

Notebooks 1942-1951,

to

be a derisory, almost satanic repudiation

society preaches as "the

way

good

life" is in fact a

of death, not only because

it

is

saturated

p. 138.

197

4

with what psychologists

on death.

actually rests

odd

alien, the

an unconscious death wish, but because

call

on the death of the nonconformist, the

built

It is

enemy, the criminal.

ball, the

it

based on war, on im-

It is

prisonment, on punitive methods which include not only mental and physical torture but, above

The

ambiguities of social thinking spring from the fact that while

and peace are

joy, love,

machine running is

the death penalty.

all,

common

is

theoretically extolled,

both to affluent conservative establishments and to revolutionof conduct that

extolled as

is

—for

and

upon which

injustice

when he

discovered by Tarrou, his

mode

in fact a covert justification for cruelty, lying, killing

is

the evil

life,

actually keeps the

murder, greed, violence, hatred, war. This ambiguity

ary dictatorships. In either case, the "right"

what

society itself actually rests. All this

all is

realizes that his father, a prosecutor, sets

alarm clock and gets up very early on certain days: the days when he

goes dutifully to watch his victims perish under the guillotine.

As long

one

as

is

content to justify one's existence by reference to these

automatically accepted norms, one a

murderous

When

society,

is

with the absurd, with

in complicity

with death, with "the Plague."

one comes face

with absurdity

to face

when one confronts arises. He who gives

itself,

the death wish in oneself, the question of suicide

in to the temptation consciously ratifies the absurdity

He

ways unconsciously accepted.

and alienated psychology. His acceptance of the reasons

anything

life

on an

which are supposed

at all,

this affirmation of

own

life,

new

his

first

freedom,

own

able to experience

own

life in

them

an absurd

basis: the affirmation that

do

as a

though

not, in fact, justify

matter of stubborn

step, this basic revolt against the absurd,

sets

man on

existence, as

here that, in Christian terms,

al-

toward freedom must be the

to justify existence

existentially realizes the value of life

his

step

he will go on living anyway

"Sisyphean" choice. This

his

dies as a passive victim of

first

entirely

which he has

man

a

the right path. After affirming

fundamental value

and existence

in

itself,

is

He

is

begins to love others as himself.

as other selves insofar as

opposition to absurdity and death.

he

for others as well. It

he has actually chosen

Thus he

also chooses

their lives in defiance of an absurd philosophy or social system which, at

any moment, exiled, or in

may

decree that they are to be killed in war, executed,

some way

ostracized, disgraced,

the generally accepted myths.

inexorable "logic" which logic based

198

on

choice.

is,

Once

The

steps

and repudiated

for defying

follow one another with an

however, not the logic of syllogism but a

this "logic of preference"

has experienced the

and the

free choice of life as the basic value

then

it

follows: 1) that one

must

starting point of all action,

constant revolt against an absurd

live in

social philosophy which, in one form or other,

One must

murder. 2) is

and based on

nihilistic

is

whom

and love with those

live in solidarity

one

absurd"— against the death existence. One must in other words

ready to defend against the attacks of "the

drive built into the structure of social

make

order which, for grace,

new

every effort to build a

is

all its

ideology of humanitarian love or of supernatural

murder and

in fact a justification for

how

real difficulty begins:

Camus shows murder. Can

in L'

order of love to supersede the false

one

is

Homme

to build this

revoke,

But here the

for hate. 3)

new

order? Revolution, as

mass

also a facile justification of

is

there be any historic action that does not eventually end in

mass murder? the honesty not to answer.

He

admitted that he did not know. But because he did not know, he

re-

Camus had

This was a question which

mained to some extent uncommitted, undecided, and hence to some extent an accomplice of the established disorder. Therefore, what he said about love was ambiguous. Therefore, he had to be very "modest" about it

indeed. Therefore,

what he

said about

tone, almost as an aside, though

Once again we turn The end

to the

it

was

it

was

Notebooks: movement, the end of the contem-

of the absurd, rebellious etc.

porary world consequently,

is

compassion in the original sense; in other

words ultimately love and poetry. But that longer have. All tive to the

This

is

I

can do

is

recognize the

time of the innocents.

To

see

a significant passage, because

inner struggle with which after finishing

The

The Plague out

Camus

Plague.

He

And

it,

it

way

calls

for

an innocence

leading to

it

and

at least, before dying.

somewhere

which

I tell

I

no

to be recep-

9

something of the deep

reflects

confronted the

said

of his system, "after

about happiness."

said almost in an under-

in fact central to his thought.

work he wanted that he

wanted

myself that

he added, elsewhere, that

this

I

to

do

to get

shall write

meant writing

about "a certain kind of love."

The unusual Camus so often

hesitations, silent

the

profound moral scruples which kept

and which prevented him from ever

intention, are rooted in his sense of lost innocence.

he best speaks of the love of

life,

The

fulfilling this

pages in which

and of an almost Franciscan happiness,

are concentrated in his early essays.

At

the

end of

his life

he was turning

9 Ibid., p. 157.

199

back toward

these, to recapture the

luminous and abandoned innocence

Amsterdam and

of his Mediterranean existence, after the foggy hell of

The

He

Fall.

really

expected

Camus up

innocent.

The

to.

Yet he confidently looked for others who were

to the end.

Did he

feel that

the "innocence" of a II

he ever

if

sense of lost innocence, of complicity in a world

he had lived

Those of us who have learned

War

one wonders

which exceeded the power of imagining, remained dominant

of horror in

And

never had time to go back.

new

and seeks only

to

to see "the

time of the innocents"?

moved by

be deeply

the sincerity and

World World War III may be inclined to words as in so many others, gave evidence

generation that remembers nothing of

to prevent

think that Camus, in these of prophetic insight.

Why

Camus

did

come

Camus

distorted

connection with the sermons

shall discuss this in

For the moment, we can content ourselves with saying

of Pere Paneloux. that for

not turn to Christianity as to a source of hope, an

We

affirmation of life?

the Christian idea of grace had, like that of virtue, be-

beyond recognition. "Grace" was,

nothing more than the

state of

smug

Camus,

in the eyes of

by which the

self-assurance

elect

convinced themselves of their election. Grace was nothing but the secure self-satisfaction

basically ideas.

members

of respectable

murderous and destructive

Camus was

"Grace" for

of a society that "justified"

activity

by means of abstract

its

ethical

then the capacity to adjust without

resis-

demands of an establishment and to believe oneself thereby chosen by God and destined for eternal salvation. Obviously, this is a tance to the

who

can

which has been accurately

de-

complete reversal of the Christian doctrine of

deny that the caricature

has, in fact, a basis

scribed by writers like Mauriac, Julien Green,

O'Connor,

J.

F. Powers,

Camus ironically observe: "Happy Christians, they This was written shortly

justification.

Graham

and others? In any

Greene, Flannery

event, the

kept grace for themselves and

after the publication of

Yet

Notebooks of

left

us charity."

The Plague, and

it

could

well refer to the kind of charity practiced by Rieux and Tarrou as "saints

without of grace

God"

— therefore without grace. Once again,

must be noted. Like

social justification,

What

is

done out of "grace" in such a case

proves that one

is

itself. It is

a Christian, or

that the establishment

is

it

St.

is

justified

by the

fact that

not only an act good in proves that

forever right, or

Immaculate Conception of 200

kind of

a logic of acceptability, an affirmation of Tightness.

proves something beyond it

the distorted notion

virtue, "grace" here supposes a

it

God

exists,

proves curial

or

itself, it

proves

infallibility,

Joseph, or a million other things.

it

but

the

Camus and Kaf\a At

this point

essential to discuss, at least briefly, the obvious resem-

it is

Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. in common in that something have

is

himself devoted a chapter to

that

Kafka" tion

made easy for us by the fact "Hope and the Absurd in The Plague and Kafka's The Castle

Camus and Kafka. This

blances between

man and

between

they deal symbolically with the rela-

the inscrutable powers that influence his destiny

The mythical dimension of in The Castle than in The

without his being able to understand them. relationship

this

We

Plague.

much more

is

need only

elaborate

village outside the Castle, insisting that

work

but never able to

as a surveyor

K.

recall the fact that

summoned

he has been

make any

He

elusive officials inside the Castle.

lives as a stranger in the

there to

decisive contact with the

and wastes

never enters the Castle

time in an exhausting, fantastic struggle with the Byzantine protocol

his

that governs

viously

Kafka

village.

Ob-

speaking, in terms at once satirical and tragic, of

reli-

communication between the Castle and the

all is

gious alienation: man's struggle to bridge the gap between himself and a realm of utterly inaccessible transcendence. It

must be

imagine and

to

that

is

solution.

for

to

to say, in

Testament

it is

But

what Kafka

clear, of course, that

describes

man's attempt

is

understand grace in terms of hierarchic organization,

terms of "law." For anyone

who

understands the

clear that this involves a contradiction that

for

anyone

who knows Church

most people the contradiction

is

history

in fact inevitable.

New

beyond any

is

also clear that

it is

They cannot under-

stand grace in any other terms.

One

of the villagers

is

the girl Amalia,

and disgraced because she has refused one of the Castle

officials.

She

is

a

whose whole family

cursed

most insulting proposition from

in the right, but in the eyes of the

moral axiom: the

village she has violated a basic

is

officials

of the Castle

are always to be obeyed. Faced with a decision between truth to her integrity

prefers to

and

loyalty to a corrupt but accepted

do what

is

kind of choice which Camus describes in

own

command. Her

act

is

precisely the

as "revolt" against the arbitrary

affirmation of one's

and existential Camus' commentary on

authenticity

"moral" standard, she

regarded as "wrong." She refuses unquestioning

obedience to an arbitrary and revolting

and the absurd,

own

own

personal

life,

one's

own

truth. this

is

very revealing.

It

expresses exactly his

on conventional notions about "grace," "virtue," and "reIn his eyes, this is the kind of choice that is forced on one who

critique

ligion."

seeks a transcendent solution to the mysteries of

life:

he

is

bidden

to

201

human

renounce his

dignity, his honor, his assertion of his personal truth

and worth, and submit blindly an

insult to his

humanity. His act of submission makes him "worthy of

He who

grace."

has thus surrendered his dignity in a blind act of

unknown

prostration before the

the "leap" into the dark,

and

rooted in this submission

is

What?

"proves something."

has passed the

test

made

of faith, has

thereafter "justified." All further activity

is

"right" and "good."

proves that he

It

self-

is

"virtuous" and

It is

one of the

it

elect, that his

with the Castle are perfectly correct, and that he has a place

relations

in the village (that

On

"answers" and "commands" which are

to

is

to say, in

the other hand, he

a blind act of obeisance to in the village.

The

The ambiguity sees that

it

is

human

who

what

morality of

of

society).

human

refuses to surrender his essentially

is

inhuman becomes

Camus demands

Camus' answer

dignity in a pariah

precisely this refusal.

however, evident to anyone

is,

based on a caricature of faith and grace. But

who

us be

let

quite clear: the caricature cannot be

blamed on Camus. Christians them-

selves are the ones responsible for

He

a twisted

for

it.

is

simply expressing repugnance

and degraded form of "Christian morality" which has

evolved historically in the framework of a civilization whose social

instead of allowing

Without stopping

them

to

renew

their

own

to clarify this entirely

need only admit once again that

it is

in fact

intrinsic

life.

wrong concept of grace, we all too common. But it is, of

course, a contradiction of the theological concept of grace.

from grace

springs

own

is

its

tion,

any need for an explanation other than

gratuitousness, that

by an appeal

to

is

to say, its

act

freedom from any

itself.

something other than

of love becomes by that fact a legalistic action.

outside

An

which

purely gratuitous and seeks no justification other

than

justified

insti-

embalming them

tutions have tended to preserve "Christian values" by

its

An

act that has to be

own

It is

limita-

intrinsic content

justified

by a norm

itself.

Camus, without knowing

it,

was

in the thick of the old

grace versus the law and, without being aware of the side of grace.

He

found himself disputing

fact,

argument of

was on the

in grace's favor against those

who had turned grace into a purely arbitrary law. This is not to say that Camus was a secret Christian, but only that a Christian is free, if he likes, to understand Camus in a Christian sense which Camus himself did not realize.

Rieux and Tarrou

The main 202

characters in

The Plague

are

all,

in their various ways, solitary

— people.

their lives are built into a dialectic of solitude

But

of isolation

and

after all a

other.

This

relief,

because the mystery of death

fitting,

is

mystery of inexorable solitude, and yet

by everyone. The Plague

and

action to affirm

it is

intensifies this

something shared

common

compassion,

revolt,

two main

against death. Naturally, the

protect life

is

mystery and brings out, in sharp

Camusian problems of the absurd,

the

solidarity,

on the one hand, commitment, compassion,

integrity

and love on the

and

characters of the book, the "heroes" of the Plague (in the qualified sense

word hero) are Dr. Rieux and Tarrou. The Plague brings them together in a common

we have

given to the

though Rieux

vigorously repudiates the allegation

God."

"saints without

what

ask:

terization.

are

He

it

and both

a certain sense

would be

better to

gives us

is

not so

much

detailed history or formal charac-

portrays his characters two-dimensionally in their attitude

and toward the

life

men

Or perhaps

are they?

battle

—are in

kind of people are they?

What Camus toward

Who

the ironic, lonely

of flesh

which they are involved. Yet they

crisis in

and blood, not mere

Of

abstractions.

the two, Rieux

is

more massive, more serious being: a man who has known work and and who, as the book opens, has just had to send his wife away to a T.B. sanitarium, knowing he will probably never see her again. We are introduced to Rieux as a man who is somewhat weary and disillusioned but firmly committed to the service of other men and to an the

suffering

uncompromising he

tive,

who

is

refusal of

what he considers

dishonest. Serious, reflec-

not an abstract thinker. In his conflict with the city

are unwilling to accept the fact that the epidemic

Plague, he shows himself to be one definitions.

them

Having determined

accurately. Pie has

little

way round,

and then does the

official

mind

that starts with a definition of all it

can to

two have long

make

Rieux

is

concerned with

in the needs of living persons.

and

facts

The

how

company.

Rieux

is,

down

interested above all

others are concerned with definitions

legal principles because they are interested

institutions

is

things

the facts keep fitting

since parted

because he

fit

that goes

Ultimately, the difference between the two types of thinking boils to this:

the

with facts rather than with

the facts, he then finds a definition to

are supposed to be

when

starts

patience with the

at things the other

the definition, even

who

officials,

really

is

by which they themselves

above

all

in the established

live.

however, so objective, so

reticent, so little inclined to pass

judgment, that he

is thought by Rambert to be without feeling. Only Rambert discover the truth of Rieux's human suffering in his separation from his wife. Above all, Rieux is the one who sees deepest into the real nature of the

later does

203

who

Plague and

town

the

to

what

fully understands

means

it

whole

for the

life

of

become "a dreary struggle between each man's happiness

He

and the abstractions of the Plague."

who

the theology of Paneloux,

way

cannot in any

justifies the

Plague and

agree with

make

to

tries

people love their sufferings. His criticism of Paneloux has two aspects.

he does not take him too seriously: "Christians sometimes tal\ li\e

First,

that without really thinking

A

and therefore judges

scholar

he

it,"

says.

"They're better than they seem."

Secondly, he reasons that Paneloux

devastating compliment!

evil

and suffering

read in his theology books: "That's

why

in terms of

man

human

suffering before trying to point out

Rieux has the same quarrel with Paneloux officials.

Paneloux, he thinks,

God

man

to

Paneloux

is

—

that he

does not quite

mean.

He

men

of

Not

admits

is

.

excellence." city

ways of

words what

he learns better from

so

much

is

own

his

is

God

in the dark,

is

not

man

simply a modern

talk about

him fumbling

leaves

try to

he does with the

struggle against the Plague. Rieux

know what

it all

its

has heard

He'd

do.

prove that his religious establishment

to

men

as

who

.

I

himself. In other

a militant atheist; he

is

what he has

interested in justifying the

man

—until

interested in

really

right rather than to help a believer.

more

is

than in the plight of

experience of the Plague

who

.

gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as

relieve

a

he can talk with such assurance

of the truth with a capital T. Every country priest a

is

can possibly

and arguments

Paneloux are no help whatever.

like

God is that of innocent sufferGod explain suffering by saying it is directly willed by God, then they make God a monster of injustice. Suffering is a punishment for sin? But why should God punish an innocent child who has never sinned? The forensic idea of an original guilt Rieux's chief problem with the idea of

ing. If those

who

seek to justify

which makes evreyone a

priori subject to

punishment and damnation

whether he himself does any wrong or not does not manages, with the help of the Plague, difficulty all too clearly.

intuition, shared this

is

its

its

204

—a

real

He

himself see the

Actually, Rieux has a deeper

man,

in order to justify the authoritarian a social structure that

is

What

not simply the Father Image

social establishment

own

life.

space, a punishing angel sent

depends

the doctrine

and

its

cruel laws.

power from the death wish and man's

Rieux.

sense that this pessimism about

man

inquisitional fires

tiveness that are built into

from outer

make Paneloux

death sentences, and war.

God, but the authoritarian

The Plague draws

to

this all?

bound up with

in reality

force, cruelty, prison,

seeks to justify with of

is

with Tarrou

degrading repudiation of

image of God,

on

But

satisfy

It is

the destruc-

not merely a visitation

from heaven.

It

comes

to full

view on emerging from

which

to

indifference

people's

life

and

its

inhabitants.

and

The

indifference

values—din

authentic

to

their ideology

and enhanced by

justified

is

hiding place, the city and

its

mores-

their social

allows the Plague to take undisputed possession o£ them. This indifference itself is already an indication of the Plague's dormant presence.

Germaine Bree has summed up Camus' idea— which and Tarrou

expressed by Rieux

is

—very succinctly.

Unopposed, [the Plague] organizes

that

all

is

bad in

human

into a

life

coherent and independent system: pain, death, separation, fear and solitude. And it disorganizes and destroys all that is good: freedom, hope, and most particularly love evil; it

.

The Plague

.

.

not the symbol of an outer abstract

is

merely applies and carries to their logical limits the values implicit

10 in the unconscious attitudes of the citizens of Oran.

This makes the Plague an excellent typological device for discussion of

Nazism and other absolutisms, which operate in exactly the same way. The power of a dictator and of an authoritarian and violent party is made possible by the attitudes and dispositions already present in the people

want

who submit

to

That

to submit.

them, because in the depths of their hearts they

why,

is

Camus'

in

urging people to submit to the Plague

sermons of French

clerics

man, an

fury of pestilence and of death. But

does not

also, in

Tarrou

is

more

of sorts, a

some form or This Camus

somewhat

a bit of a poet

and human

on

Tarrou

is

telescope.

He

heroism of a Malraux,

He

he ever in said.

10

something remarkably

ironic, a "singular

—

is

it

he

reality

He

He

who

He

still

less

He

is

a poet

man" who

is

has a sharp eye

observes the old

man who

enshrined in Camus' Notebooks). looks at things through the

does not believe in heroism

wonders

God." Can he be? he

detail

he

if

explain.

more

cats (a real individual,

given to understatement.

of sainthood.

can Rieux believe this

than his friend Dr. Rieux.

articulate thinker,

is

act of obedience to the innate

how

and who frequents "Spanish dancers."

likes to spit

—like the — simply a form

punishment

other, believe in

fails to

less stolid

for curious

end of the

as a just

sermon of Paneloux

urging acceptance of Nazi rule

of collaboration with the evil in

like original sin?

eyes, the

—certainly

wrong

not the

of a de Gaulle. Yet he aspires to a kind

if it is

possible for

him

to

be a "saint without

once thought of himself as "innocent." But was

innocent? "I had the plague already before coming,"

His whole history

Germaine Bree, Camus,

is,

rev.

he recognizes, a history of Plague.

ed.

(New

Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University

Press, 1961), p. 118.

205

His father was a prosecutor, and one day in court Tarrou,

as a boy,

suddenly realized what his father was doing: dressed in legal robes,

demanding the death penalty for a criminal, he to become the incarnation of socially approved blood lust. He was acting as the willing and righteous instrument of a society that delighted in murder, provided the murder could be carried out in socially acceptable ways. Tarrou ran away from home and became

haranguing the

jury,

was permitting himself

a rebel against society.

"The

social order

around

me was

based on the

death sentence and by fighting the established order I'd be fighting against murder." But then, Tarrou asks, can one really society

and

by one's

own

This

?

"We

be faced.

to

is

can't stir a finger in the

man

unlivable?

Once

fails to see

the difference between the doctrine of

again,

pessimism on original

First:

any

at

social action,

servative,

every act of

if

Innocence

sin.

which

all

can at

and

great

world without

make

all life

involved in murder, one

Camus and

Augustine's

equally impossible whichever practical conclusions.

conscious and deliberate co-operation in

any doctrine, any justifies

murder

words, though one cannot avoid

(Camus did not

is

is

But Tarrou reaches certain

it.

possible to refuse

it is

hands of

The

not a foregone conclusion.

the risk of bringing death to somebody." But does that not

way you look

his

backed up by some symbolic gesture (burning

declaration,

a draft card for example)

problem remains

wash

by a mere good intention? Can one become innocent

its evil

policy,

whether revolutionary or con-

in order to exploit

all

implication in

freely. In other

it

some form

believe consistent nonviolent action

was

of violence

possible),

one

least refuse to co-operate

with the social machinery of systematic

One

can reject specious ideologies which per-

self-justifying violence.

mit massive killing in war, in pogroms,

grounds of

in

nihilistic

and

race, religion, class, nationalism,

violence on the

so forth.

"On this earth," Tarrou declares in words which Camus explicitly made his own elsewhere, "there are pestilences (an early draft has "executioners")

and

victims,

and

it's

up

to us, so far as possible, not to join

forces with the pestilences."

Starting from it is

more than an

stant attention

Tarrou builds

this,

ethic,

it is

his ethic of

"comprehension." Indeed

almost a monastic ascesis:

it

demands con-

(compare the old monastic idea of "vigilance" and "cus-

tody of the heart").

It is

a monastic spirituality of exile, because he

refuses to co-operate with the "pestilence"

which

is

part

and

who

parcel of

every social establishment cannot really be accepted by that establishment.

He

remains a stranger in his

retains his

206

sympathy

for

own

citv.

But

in that city he nevertheless

and concern with those

whom

he

sees to be

— potential or actual victims of hidden plagues. Finally, one can perhaps

God"

be a "saint without

insofar as one does

a reward and without calling on

The it

expression "saint without

really

In

is.

these without expecting

all

God to justify and approve one's acts. God" sounds more anti-Christian than

the Christian idea of disinterested sanctity

fact,

not too

is

John of the Cross somewhere remarked: "You should do your good actions in such a way that, if it were possible, God

remote from

St.

this.

himself would not

As

that for his

him

interests

own is

know you were doing

them."

he does not condemn Tarrou's idea but merely remarks

for Rieux,

want

part he does not

to

And

simply "being a man."

be a saint or a hero: what

to tell the truth that

already

is

heroic enough.

Grand, Cottar d and Rambert Since

Grand and Cottard

together.

But one

In other words,

Cottard

is

on the

are neighbors,

on the

is

Grand

on the

is

side of death

side of

all official

police forget about him. bility,

and even

He

attention

The Plague

is

is

is

He

his element.

wants

it

Why? As

the

wanted by the

for Cottard

visits

book opens,

police.

means freedom,

respecta-

He makes money the cafes, enjoys

he goes out of his head and

finally ends,

criminately at everything that moves.

He

is

When

and the

When

starts

on the

The

life.

the statistics

begin to promise an improvement, he refuses to believe them.

Plague

them

devils.

crisis,

go on forever.

to

with the

is

diverted to the

a certain material well-being.

black market and goes about in public,

Plague

as well consider

with Rieux and Tarrou.

life,

and the Plague.

Cottard has just tried to hang himself. the Plague comes,

we might

side of the angels, the other

When

the

shooting indis-

captured by the police and

brutally killed.

Cottard

is

the one character in the

Nazi occupation.

the

He

is

book who most obviously points

a typical "collaborator."

Grand, on the other hand, appears than a dull, self-important sole himself

he

is

to

at first sight to

civil servant, a failure in life

be nothing more

who

tries to

con-

by his absurd obsession with writing a novel. But because

a perfectionist

—and not endowed with much creative imagination

he never gets beyond the

first

sentence,

which he rewrites over and

over,

way and that, on page after page. He knows he is getting nowhere but he keeps working in his spare time, Plague and all, because he dreams of the day when his manuscript this

will be discovered

by a great publishing house and the editor-in-chief

207

4

"Gentlemen,

will cry out to all the assembled staff

Grand's opinion, masterpiece

And

what happens

is

yet, for all his failure, for all his

undoubtedly should make him

murderous system, Grand after

is,

stacle to this:

when

in publishing houses

new

a

discovered.

is

Because he

hat's off!" This, in

it fits

is

His mild megalomania

In can be approved.

in.

right) a collaborator with a

is

Why?

nevertheless something of a "hero."

like Sisyphus.

all,

devotion to a civic service job that

Tarrou

(if

to revolt against the absurdity of his

helps him, in his

It

no ob-

is

own

way,

meaningless existence, because

keeps him valiantly pushing away at his

own

Sisyphean boulder

—the

it

first

sentence of an impossible masterpiece.

We

can better appreciate the sympathetic character of the journalist

Rambert

if

we

contrast

position in the

first

character, Stephan, vives the Plague,

is

him with another

draft of the

abandoned by

commits

suicide.

which

filled the

same

later eliminated.

This

character

book and was his wife

Rambert

and then, though he is

sur-

both in

totally different

and in his attitude. He is a completely positive, life-loving charHe is a stranger in Oran and seeks to escape in order to rejoin his whom he loves passionately. He makes repeated efforts to get out

his story acter.

wife,

of the city. But finally,

mind and

when he seems

he changes his

likely to succeed,

decides to remain and help Tarrou and the sanitary squads.

In the end, however, he survives the Plague and

reunited with his

is

wife in an almost ecstatic scene at the railway station. This serves as a

who

striking contrast to the loneliness of Rieux,

and

also lost his friend

Tarrou. But in

has lost his

reality the

altogether consistent with the story, since there

is

has been trying to do

all

along. Nevertheless,

part in the artistic structure of the book.

As

Rambert

and of

life

his

woman. He

wife not

to

demand

is

what he

plays an important

a character

"right": he contrasts with the reflectiveness of Rieux straight type with healthy

is

no reason why Rambert's

come to the Algerian town. Logic would seem Rambert go to meet her at their home in France, which

wife should that

own

reunion scene

he

is

aesthetically

and Tarrou.

and deep impulses, grounded

He

is

a

in the love of

wastes no time in discussion, though he does

times become engaged in the issues raised bv the two protagonists.

at

But

in the

main he moves

in a

sober

and simple world

Spanish soccer player Gonzalez and of the sentries

who

—that

of the

are supposed to

help engineer his escape.

One more minor are

few

character must be mentioned. In a

women — the

solitude of

men

of the emphatic themes of the novel

208

book where there

separated from their beloved

—the

is

one

whole weight of femininity

is

carried by Rieux's mother.

but she

a "presence."

is

She

She does there

is

little.

She says

when Tarrou

practically nothing:

dies.

She

is

a very con-

siderable support for her son in his loneliness and his exhaustion. She

remains shadowy, and

is

very real: a kind of silent incarnation of the

"comprehension" about which Tarrou talks so much. This

woman

role of

Camus' world: she

in

love because she easily escapes the

is

capable of a dimension of understanding that too

logic-machine which

The Bossuet of Oran: Pere Paneloux we come to a character whom

who

those

little

the active

is

mind

man.

of

the Christian reader cannot help

Finally

but find a

there to

is

the true

is

embody wisdom and

perplexing. Paneloux tends to polarize the thought of

fight the

Plague

at

Oran. But Paneloux himself remains quite

What does he finally add up and Camus intended to leave it

The answer

never quite

ambiguous.

to?

certain,

a mystery. This contributes to

is

the unusual interest of a priest figure that was intended to bear the bur-

den of traditional Christianity and of

which blames both that:

times

historical

for contributing to the

we shall see that in we hear him echo

fact

Christendom

modern

Paneloux bears other burdens

the justification of evil

university thesis, attributed to the Gnostic Basilides.

But

the doctrines of Augustine.

up with

a curiously

pestilence.

in later

modifying

He

Nietzschean position.

as well.

which Camus,

He

explicitly

these,

book

in a

More than At

in his

defends

Paneloux ends

takes refuge in a pure

voluntarism which makes him a kind of Nietzschean with God, just as

make him a saint Camus in L'Homme

Tarrou's doctrine of charity without grace tends to

without God. Discussing Nietzsche's

last

period

him the same "active fatalism" which he attributes to Paneloux. It would be interesting to examine the implications of all this, but space does not permit. At any rate, Paneloux is presented as a "compleat" Jesuit. His voluntarism masks a hidden will to power under

revoke attributes

to

a doctrine of total submission to seemingly arbitrary decrees of

We first

ful,

that

have already

sermon

is

briefly outlined the

typical of

French

authoritarian delivery of

all

Judge Othon must declare

two sermons

classic pulpit oratory.

God.

of Paneloux.

A

The

vibrant, force-

the right answers: just the kind of thing to be "absolutely irrefutable."

Paneloux

obviously models himself on the great Bossuet and echoes Bossuet's conservative idea of history. In the beginning

between right and wrong. tory

is

Man

God showed man

the difference

consistently refused obedience,

simply the record of man's

infidelities

and

his-

and of the repeated punish209

endure in consequence. The lessons of history are per-

ments he has

to

fectly simple.

But when

an admirable opportunity

name

we

will

ever learn?

accuse, to judge,

to

He does not associate He tells them that they

God.

of

them "you."

The Plague and

gives Paneloux

the

chastise in

to

himself with his hearers: he

calls

have sinned, and that the Plague

has been sent to them in order to bring them to their senses: the means

by which they can

do

effectively

this

heed

to

is

his

message and

on

fall

their knees.

A

better understanding of the

power complex behind the

of Paneloux can be gained by a reading of

Here

sermon

first

"The Renegade."

story

the megalomanical missionary seeks nothing but a chance to affirm

own power by

his

Camus'

wicked savages.

using the word of the Gospel to subdue the most

Ironically,

turns out that the wicked savages are a lot

it

more powerful and persuasive than he, even though they never say anything at all. They just do: and what they do is naked evil in its most brutal and uncompromising form. In either case, in "The Renegade" and The Plague we find the message of evangelical judgment pitted against straight evil,

ment

and

evil goes its

way

in

complete indifference.

judgment and punishment merely

of

weak humans

mission of

The announce-

serves to reinforce the sub-

to the evil that afflicts

them, though that

is

obviously not the preacher's intention.

Though

in the second

sermon there

is

an even stronger emphasis on

He

obedience to the will of God, Paneloux has obviously changed.

new

learned a

toward the Plague and toward

attitude

new

he has almost learned a

humbler tion.

—more

He

The

He

says we.

and above

all

among

who do

1

a simple view of

life

manding and man is

and of

"not to rebel."

On

the sinners, the sufferers,

and

irrefutable Bossuet of

the answers.

He

is

He

and death

made him

Not

merely a record of

to

hesitant.

Can

God

of the innocent boy, Othon's child,

to

He

have

has faced

be loved or hated? Paneloux no longer

He

is

the answer really be found without any resort

double talk and subterfuge?

210

that

God com-

dares to solve the problem with a sweeping apologetic argument.

much more

is

does not conclude that the only solu-

that he has doubted God's existence.

the question of revolt. Is

2

does not propound

the contrary, he almost, but not quite, admits

that the suffering hesitate.

all

history that

rebelling.

much

is

congrega-

and the much more chastened preacher of Sermon

the second does not claim to have

tion

among

he

to his

not understand.

great difference between the vibrant

Sermon

Now

he does not say "you"

includes himself

those

toward God.

attitude

Now

"modest."

has

—indeed

life itself

He

no longer

trusts formulas,

but he has

mind but

another answer: not of the choice. Either/or. Either entirely,

of the will. It

God

one must deny

ing the death of the innocent child. Including one's

At

we

stand or to justify

a course of action that

—

his ambiguous death

Church

canonization. His loyalty to the

Some wonder

clerics.

One

is

if

his faith has

definitely consecrated

element in the choice

his faith in

own

Paneloux anticipates

realize that

upon himself

Paneloux

him

death. Including

without meaning.

this point

takes

reject

in everything, includ-

and death which are apparently without

(he hints at this) a sacrifice justification,

and

entirely

or one must accept everything. Love him

a question of

is

God

to

is

by an

is

is

in fact not easy to under-

one that will never merit

is

doubted by some of his fellow

been shaken. But the death of act of stubborn, personal choice.

clearly bizarre.

is

own demise and

his

Paneloux decides that

if

be perfectly "pure," he must refuse the aid of a

human

doctor, for to have recourse to

science

would be

to resist the will

of God.

Camus

heroic Christian fashion, has doubtless

punishment of

the unrelieved suffering of the worst kind of death

all, all

by pestilence, and to do

and stubborn kind of death: he

may have

also

manages

been.

And,

at the

way

such a

this in

no praise or credit from men. So, in

it

we divine that Paneloux, in asked God to lay upon him the

does not say so quite clearly, but

fact,

that Paneloux will receive

he dies a mysterious, ambiguous,

gets precisely

what he asks

same time

to

In the tortuous scheme of his

impose

own

his

own

secret

Paneloux emerges an absolute winner, but

Camus

is

that this

is

God he

on God.

will

will

spiritual

in a victory

possibly find either the time or the casuistic subtlety to implicit conclusion of

whatever

for,

paradoxically, in blindly submitting to

power,

to

no one

else

can

comprehend. The

the limit of

good

will

which

can be expected from a present-day Catholic: an individual drama buried

solemn and absurd secrecy of a Byzantine,

in the

casuistical theory of

evil.

Conclusion

Camus, "the conscience that has followed,

tended that he cidity

to

be one.

is

a

He

of his generation"

stumbling block is

and indeed of

to Christians.

He

a generation

deliberately in-

a typical "post-Christian" thinker in the sense

—the — with an accusa-

combines an obscure sense of certain Christian values

and

solidarity of

men

in their struggle against evil

tory, satirical analysis of the Christian establishment

and of the

lu-

faithful.

211

His

portrait of

Paneloux

One might

caricature.

or of "spirituality"

is

prehaps bizarre, but

easily find Christian

— which treat the question of

by Paneloux. Admittedly, Paneloux's idea that

God

be to

resist

Even

then,

is

not pure and simple

—whether

of theology

evil exactly as

treated

it is

would

to consult a doctor

and erroneous by Catholic standards.

plainly eccentric

some of the

it is

books

have had bizarre ideas and gotten away

saints

with them.

But Paneloux Christianity

plainly

is

defective.

is

mind.

He

saint,

seems

to

and we must even admit

no realization of the love of learned, he

is

Christian compassion in this stern,

God

for sinful

and suffering man, no aware-

man

for his brother.

is austere, self-sacrificing, disciplined,

in a certain sense, heroic. is

evi-

have no authentic Christian sense of mercy,

ness of divine forgiveness overflowing in the love of

Paneloux

that his

Because one looks in vain for any

human and

dence of a really deep logical

no

Why?

But

his heart

is

and indeed,

He

from other men.

sealed off

isolated in himself.

Paneloux exemplary

lives

fidelity,

and by the

tation

seeking in

things to justify

all

whom him by

stern devotion of an implacable will.

immured

Paneloux,

makes

alone with an abstract God,

in the stone cell of his

the existential reality of

human

own

logic

he serves with

argumen-

logical

The

and

his

solitude of

own

will,

problems incomprehensible

to

him. Certainly, he knows that they are problems and he understands his duty to participate in solving them, but

human

God is whom men

duty

His

itself is abstract.

therefore not the infinite source of love

beings.

giveness in

this

God come between him and

idea of God, his abstractions about

other

and

are reconciled to one another in charity: he

for-

is

for

Paneloux a cause of opprobrium and of division.

The

crisis

of the Plague, in

which Rieux and Tarrou become spon-

taneously united with others by their unobtrusive service, becomes for

Paneloux an occasion for tortuous

good

of his

crowns

will, eventually cut

his desperation

intellectual

him

off

(which he believes

exploit of dying according to

some

problems which, in

from everyone to

else.

He

spite

finally

be "hope") in a bizarre

casuistical pattern sanctioned

by his

own will and offered, for approval, to his inscrutable and abstract Judge. One of the most shocking sentences uttered by Paneloux is his selfrighteous exclamation,

when Rieux

protests against the "injustice" of the

innocent child's death. "Ah," Paneloux sighs,

"now

I

understand what

"Now I know what it is that distinguishes me from this unbeliever here. He cannot see that God is to be loved even when he arbitrarily destroys the innocent. He does not have the grace

grace

is."

In other words,

to believe;

212

consequently he sees only cruelty, and thinks

God

is

wrong.

But is

to see that

have the grace

I

always right." Grace, then,

mit

God who acts to a will we do

submit

appears horrible. This right. It

is

is

which

that

is

is

Camus

an idea that

which Camus

and

arbitrary

is

God

cruel,

gives one the ability to subIt

not understand and even

an idea

also

and he

tianity,

when he

an arbitrary tyrant.

like

to a

even

gives us the

to adore

power

to

and love what

And

finds revolting.

he

is

believes to be essential to Chris-

wrong: the idea that God

is

essentially unjust,

and

to

be loved as such! Christian faith

not simply the credo quia absurdum of Tertullian.

is

Pascal could speak of faith as a wager, in the context of his faith

itself

and

strous

it is

not the

quite valid

is

word on

last

all

believer. In other words, faith does

always and everywhere into a

image of

lovingly and dutifully accept an

results

this expression

thought and work: but

and on every problem of the

not reduce

and

demand

God which

that the believer is

mon-

in fact a

arbitrary theological idol. This perversion of the idea of faith

from an overemphasis on the aspect of authority

in faith

and

from the impasse reached by theological controversy on grace and free will, predestination, and evil since the Reformation. The God of Paneloux

may

be adorned by Christian terminology, but he

Christian revelation.

He

prophets, of the

New

He

Testament, and of the

awful thing about Paneloux is

stone dead,

is

that he

and the stubborn

nothing whatever to bring

God

anything but the living

is

saints.

of

of the

Indeed, the most

fanatically loyal to a

is

God

from cen-

the perverse abstraction distilled

is

argument.

turies of futile

not the

is

God

that

intensity of his well-meant faith does

back

this idol

to life.

People like Paneloux,

with their combination of stern rationalism and a dogged will to believe,

have brought about the death of God. sion;

he simply finds the

God

Camus

does not use this expres-

of Paneloux absurd, not because of the

exactitude of the theological language about him, but precisely because it

is

only language about him. Paneloux has knowledge, discipline, will

power, determination, is

is

sacrifice,

and even

without love. In portraying him

a bizarre

as a Christian

kind of grace. But he without

love,

Camus

portraying Paneloux as an unchristian Christian. In showing

as a Christian

who knows

about

God

but obviously did not

he displays him as a witness to the death of God.

can have with

this

is

to differ

must inevitably be someone

Here

Camus on one

The

only

point: that a Christian

li\e Paneloux.

a Christian will be likely to suffer a salutary access of

modesty.

Camus

with

is

What one

him

\now God, quarrel we

Camusian

of us can be sure of demonstrating in his life that

not right about Christians?

ways, to be a Paneloux than

it

is

to

It is

a great deal easier, in

many

be the kind of Christian that will

213

measure up

to

Camus' exacting standard. But perhaps

to the fact that

Christians,

we

we have become more and more world that

science in a

that

are too self-conscious about ourselves

is

and

with our double talk but also with our best

that, as

habituated to a bad con-

—not

only

efforts at sincerity, not

only

up with everything about us

fed

due

partly

is

with our bad faith but also with our flashes of authenticity.

The

current apologetic reply to

something ready for

Camus' dismissal of Catholicism goes

Camus was exposed to Augustine when he was not him. He paid too much attention to Pascal and to "sick" like this:

Christianity like that of Kierkegaard.

And

was not favorably

of course he

impressed by the French Catholic collaborationists and their jeremiads over sin and punishment at the time of the Nazi occupation. But

have been a different story

Camus had been

if

it

would

able to read Teilhard de

Chardin. Is it

that easy?

To

begin with,

would be impossible

to say

let

whether or not Camus, under

of "favorable circumstances,"

would ever have become "a

simply could not find Christians with

French

The

level.

priests in the resistance,

What would Camus Obviously,

first

of

exactly. It

this or that set

whom

closest

Such

believer."

The problem with Camus was

surmises are usually nonsense.

identify himself on every

more

us state the question

that he

he was able completely

to

he got was with some of the

and evidently

that

was not

close

enough.

have liked about Teilhard? he would have been happy with Teilhard's com-

all,

plete acceptance of nature

and of material

close to developing a Christian

creation. Teilhard

mystique of matter

as

came

as

anyone has ever

done; and Camus, in some of his essays, extols the material, the phe-

nomenal, the

sensible, the experience of the fleeting

moment,

in quasi-

mystical language.

A

study of Teilhard's writings and especially of his

velopment shows us

to

what extent he

own

spiritual de-

we

rebelled against the mentality

have seen in Paneloux: the self-righteous, censorious repudiation of beautiful world created by God's love. Writing

World War the midst of

lem of

my

I,

Teilhard confessed, in a

war he was meditating and keeping interior life"

legitimate love of

the

Kingdom

all

—"the

that

of Heaven."

is

"real prob-

a passionate

and

and the unique quest of

explicitlv rejects

any concept of the world

an opportunitv

creation,

coming from the hand

214

on the

in

even in

earth,

as "only

embellished."

notes

problem of reconciling

greatest

He

from the trenches

letter to a friend, that

a

on

to acquire merit."

of

God and

Rather he

sees

it

as a

good

given us "to be built up and

It

is

of course typical of the spirituality of Paneloux to regard the

created world merely as something to be manipulated in order to amass

an abstract

Paneloux

capital of merit.

of Christianity

Of such

exists in a symbiotic unity.

one it

man and

than a

less

what Camus does

precisely

cism

to love

and turn

abstract

and

spiritual,

it

it

is

Those who observe

religion for

That

it."

the purely

to

reality

deadens and distorts man. "The capacity

takenly, to cut off our affectivity

object:

is

criti-

man's capacity

that in trying to divert

its

it

makes

in his portrait of Paneloux. Teilhard's

cannot with impunity be dissociated from

you

if

to love

mis-

try,

from love of the universe, are you not

danger of destroying it?" This

in

race.

my

from concrete human

aside

it

human

and "blame

supernaturalism

of this false

Christianity, Teilhard says

a traitor to the

from the outside are repelled

kind

his

with which

a reflection of the social establishment,

is

and

a spiritual profiteer,

is

is

what has happened

Paneloux: a

to

good, sincere, strong-willed man, with a strong tendency to intellectualize,

he has fallen a victim

to

an abstract and inhuman

His power

spirituality.

of love has atrophied. His affectivity has been channeled into will-to-

power and

rigid authoritarianism.

When

he

tries to

which

of love, he ends in a self-immolation algebra, an irrefutable conclusion to an

is

warmth

recover the

part heroism

and part

argument which no one

able

is

to understand.

Teilhard, on the contrary, wants to transform and divinize the

human

passions themselves. "I shall put the intoxication of pagan pantheism to

Christian use, by recognizing the creative and formative action of

and every blow ...

in every caress

passionately

.

.

I

would

communion with God through

"Is there

like a great

Camus'

Host

basic

in

He

sympathy

for the element of

The

nation.

is

to

he asks:

becoming

us?"

Greek theoria

in Mediter-

this "Christian gnosis"

and

if

up

to

not with the

totally accepts

man;

not simply a remote judge and creator, but a

seeks to complete his epiphany in the world of

humanity

all

for

could identify with the "passionate love,"

and the God of Teilhard ing

And

the Earth, the Earth

theological elaboration. Teilhard also completely

God who

be able to love Christ

which God would be contained

ranean culture would incline him to accept a point.

like to

in the very act of loving the universe."

.

God

man

by bring-

convergence and unity in himself, in the Incar-

Incarnation for Teilhard

is,

then, not just an expedient to

take care of sin and bring the kind of "grace" that Paneloux was happy about. in

The

man

Incarnation

is

ultimately the full revelation of God, not just

but in the "hominization" of the entire material world.

Camus would have

heartily agreed with Teilhard's love of

man and 215

human

with his aspiration toward

he would have been able

But

unity.

rather doubtful whether

it is

to accept the evolutionary

of Teilhardian soteriology.

To

be precise,

and

historical

likely that

is

it

scheme

Camus would

have had a certain amount of trouble with the systematic progress of the

world toward "hominization" and

manent

The

in matter

it

in history.

revolte),

thought out

at the

same time

is

The

as

The Plague and which he

after

Plague. This study of revolt, which

between Camus and the Marxists

man

which seek the salvation and progress of

Camus was

way

suspicious of the

and the right

in the "laws of history."

which

in

both the

totalitarians of

hope

consistently appealed to evolution to justify their

new

of inevitable progress toward a

era of the superman. In particular,

he protested vigorously against their tendency

now,

(especially with

and post-Hegelian doctrines

severe critique of Hegelian

a

who wants

Camus' book on Revolt

read

better

which he wrote

precipitated the break Sartre),

had

further

(L Homme

left

by virtue of laws im-

point cannot be adequately discussed here, but anyone

investigate

to

and

"christification"

in the present, for

man

doctrine of race or party, at

as

some

he

is

to sacrifice

supposed

to be,

man

as

he

according to the

indefinite time in the future. In

Camus'

who

sadism and opportunism of people

eyes, this too easily justified the

on the

are always prepared to align themselves

is

side of the executioners

against the victims. In other words, a certain superficial type of eschato-

on evolution, made

logical hopefulness, based

it

easy to ignore the ex-

termination camps, the pogroms, the genocide, the napalm, the that so conveniently favored the survival of the

who no

longer had a right to

exist,

fittest,

H-bombs

got rid of those

and prepared the way

for

the

epiphany of superman.

At

this point,

it

must be admitted

that one of the

most serious

criti-

cisms of Teilhard bears precisely on this point: an optimism which tends

and suffering through the small end of the

to look at existential evil

telescope. It tians,

equanimity ress.

is

unfortunately true that Teilhard, like

regarded the dead and

He

wounded

of

many

other Chris-

Hiroshima with

as inevitable by-products of scientific

a

certain

and evolutionary prog-

was much more impressed with the magnificent

scientific

achievement of the atomic physicists than he was with the consequences of dropping the

bomb.

themselves did not

Bohr and

his

all

It

must be added immediately

see things exactly as

dogged struggle

to

he did.

that the physicists

The concern

of a Niels

prevent the atomic arms race put Bohr

with Rieux and Tarrou in the category of "Sisyphean" heroes that are entirely congenial to

that the

216

Camus. After the Bikini test, Teilhard exclaimed a humanity which is at peace both internally

new bombs "show

and

externally."

And

he added

the spirit on earth." (L'Avenir

No this

coming

"they announce the

beatifically,

of

del'homme)

how much we may respect the integrity and dedicated Jesuit, we have to admit here that at least matter

the nobility of

one respect

in

he resembles his confrere Paneloux. True, they are at opposite extremes of optimism

and pessimism; but they do concur

portance to an

and

existential

fallible reality

here and now. This

one goes over doing one

There the

is

is

homo

in this

man

was too inclined

much

to

"new man,"

now

being taken

is

sapiens. Science certainly gives us a basis for

Camus needed

to

have more hope

than he actually seems to have had. Perhaps

doubt and

is

it

hesitate.

Camus

Perhaps his "modesty" tended

Perhaps there was

to desperation.

from Teilhard. But

a mystique,

believes in the

evolutionary leap that

development, and perhaps

in the future of

too

homo

new

what Camus

precisely

life.

no question whatever that Teilhard

progressivus, the

is

in his

while arguing that in so

to the side of the executioners,

promoting the cause of

(he thinks) beyond

hope

man

Lured by an ideology or

considers to be the great temptation.

more im-

in attaching

abstract idea, a mystique, a system, than to

much he

could have learned

not likely that he would purely and simply

have agreed with Teilhard's statement in Peking, in 1945, that the torious armies of

Mao

and "the generating

forces

and the elements of

planetization," while the

European world represented nothing but the garbage

bourgeois

dechet) of history.

No

doubt there

may

will arise out of the

hope that

But Camus would not be so naive

it

will.

"new humanity" with

a particular

on a party which announced

its

emerging Third World. Let us

glorious future as a

Both Camus and Teilhard firmly took sidered to be the side of

love,"

life.

as to identify this

brand of Marxism, or

own

their stand

to pin his

dogma

of faith.

on what they con-

"spirit of force"

and the

between "division" and "convergence." Man's destiny

hands, and everything depends on whether he chooses or death

hopes

Both saw humanity confronted with a

"grand option," between the

and destruction. Teilhard's

(le

be good reason to think that a

"new humanity"

choice, a

vic-

Tse-tung represented "the humanity of tomorrow"

scientific

life

"spirit of

in his

is

and

final

own

creativity

mystique and long-range

view, extending over millennia, naturally did not delay overlong to worry

about the death of a few thousands here and there.

Camus

pause and have scruples over the murder of an innocent child. to justify that

by an appeal

death in the

name

of

God.

He

He

still

refused

also refused to justify

to history, to evolution, to science,

glorious future of the

could

to

politics,

it

or to the

new man. 217

4

CAMUS: JOURNALS OF THE PLAGUE YEARS Camus

said of himself that he

but rather an

The

artist

who

was "not myths

creates

has ceased to be as acceptable as

fit

his passion

whom

people are

A

homilies of

new

feel to

and

.

his anguish."

anguish

existentialist

after

.

World War

II.

Camus had

able to be not only convinced but even vehemently

still

revolt.

post-Christian,

said everything that

be wrong. Yet he remains a writer by

generation, dubious of the safely liberal and pragmatic

elders, goes to

its

an ethic of

some

and

was immediately

think that in this sentence

our contemporaries would

inspired.

it

it,

.

not "cool." Myths are out of fashion; art tends to be anti-art.

is

One would

in

to

statement has a Gallic vibrancy about

Passion

is

a novelist in the usual sense

Camus

for

an ethic

But strangely enough the

also a return to traditional

is

it

can believe

revolt,

and

in,

which

though expressly

classic values,

indeed

sense to implicitly Christian values.

Camus

honest,

is

his ability to

and

his style, his sense of

become involved

in

an

program, have earned him a hearing: so "the conscience of a generation."

He

is

myth,

his authentic passion,

without being dominated by a

issue

much

so that he has been called

indeed a "moralist" in a great

La Rochefoucauld, Montaigne, Pascal. What is more, when he was alive he managed to use this gift of insight and of style to

tradition, that of

very good effect not only in his novels but in the newspapers.

(whom Camus

Faulkner "artist

who

creates

the world around

myths

to

greatly admired)

him much a way

myths of Faulkner had

his passion

fit

as

Camus saw

own myth, and we

attend

myth he has made. In The quite absurdly) to ask

Clamence

is

so

if

could also be called an his anguish,"

Fall,

more

and he saw

occupied France. But the

of getting outside of

creator so that they stood by themselves.

in his

and

Camus

and away from

their

tends to remain present

directly to the

maker than

some people have been tempted

Jean Baptiste Clamence

is

Camus

genuine an emanation (in Blake's sense) of

(I

to the

think

himself.

But

Camus

that

one keeps wondering what Camus thinks about him, or what he means by him. In Light in August one does not ask what Faulkner thinks of Joe Christmas until

This review

article

April 1967 and was

2l8

it

is

all

over and one has to write an essay on

on the Camus "Journals of the Plague Years" was completed first published in The Sewanee Review, autumn 1967.

it.

in

Even

then,

author

what matters

that Christmas lives

is

may have thought when he wrote about

be helpful). Doubtless one could say that in

and it

not what the

dies,

may

(though that too

Christmas and

in

Clamence

with something in themselves, some aspect of man's native desperation and falsity that they feared. In Christmas this desperation becomes incarnate in terms that are at once tragic, ironic,

two authors came

the

and

theological.

less tragic,

Clamence

irony;

thor's idea, his

to grips

is

more

the product of an even

and he never becomes

He

incarnate.

The

"emanation" or his obsession.

sustained, but

remains the au-

obsessive quality

is

heightened by the dry, exasperating monotone in which Clamence talks and talks (his hearer never being allowed to reply) until everything is analyzed out of existence.

So Camus, the moralist of the absurd,

finally

moralizing about the absurd, not because he cisely

because he sees that

we

consumed by

are being slowly

and

subtle

is

are the victims of our

own

a plague of cerebration.

Camusian anguish: Cartesian man,

of

shows the absurdity of

cause he thinks (and thinks because he

clever but precleverness.

This

is

the detached subject, is

We

the source

who

is

be-

Cartesian man), having started

out with the assumption that everything thinkable

suddenly finds out that everything thinkable

is

is

absurd.

comprehensible,

Why? Not

be-

cause of a metaphysical flaw in objective existents but because there

something the matter with the relation of the thinking subject

to

And what is wrong seems to which Cartesian man has condemned himself

of

all his certitudes,

object of thought.

this illness, this absurdity,

secution

by making

own

it

the ground

existence.

falsification of

man

helplessness or, worse set

Camus was one which some

still

still,

human

remains helpless and passive,

equipped with a few gimmicks and slogans which do with the forces

From

moral and

historic truth, the poisoning of existence itself for millions of

beings. In the presence of these evils

own

itself,

follow inexorable evils and injustices: the per-

and the murder of innocent people, the

excuse his

to the

be the relationship

including the certitude of his

is

little

more than

rationalize his collaboration

on destroying him. of those

who saw most

clearly this "banality of evil"

consider to be rather characteristic of our time.

The

Nazi occupation of France was merely one virulent outbreak of the plague which is everywhere endemic and dormant. In his Notebooks 1 Camus wrote: "I want to express by means of the plague the stifling air 1

Notebooks 1935-1942 (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1963)

;

Notebooks 1942-1951

(Alfred A. Knopf, 1965).

219

from which we

all

which we

I

lived.

and the atmosphere of

suffered

want

same time

at the

who

those

war were limited

in this

exile in

extend that interpretation

to

The

the notion of existence in general.

and

threat

to

plague will give the image of

to reflection, to silence

—and to moral

anguish."

The

and honesty of Camus comes

peculiar intensity

must give

tension in himself: his sense that he

make

striving to

At

this point

must be made

Camus

clear that

image of him shows Camus

as

who

more

it

it

more

interesting,

as the basis for

absurd, do

more

traditional.

not a "philosopher

is

He

first

was

this

Mere

it

does

of

which the

takes is

be rational in ac-

to

and

meaning-

largely

calls for a revolt that will

(The

Don

of Sisyphus, approved

Camus' thought

Camus

arbitrary.

who

once more exacting and

is

ethic of

Juanism.

essentially qualita-

meaning

and

to anything,

This quest for

basically nihilistic.)

is

prefers the absurd,

significant acts.

quantitative repetition does not give

"human measure" in the

meaninglessness

The Myth

by no means

is

at

in fact irrational

later radically revised.

the assumption that

cance

this

popular

law: since everything

all is

shows that what seems is

The

than rationality, and

empty forms with authentically

quantity, proposed in

tive.

who somehow

real,

In actual fact he

like.

But the discovery of

replace

But

one

complete freedom from

what you

cepted ethical and social systems less.

this

meaning by

sense out of an absurd situation.

it

of the absurd" in the sense of an advocate of the absurd.

finds

from

precisely

his life

signifi-

opposes to nihilism a certain

best examples are to be found, he thinks,

Greek and Mediterranean

Camus

tradition.

anything, a classic

is, if

moralist on the stoic pattern rather than an existentialist thinker.

The

situation of twentieth-century

because

it

idiocy to

consistently forces

make

and of

perfect sense.

hoax, and decides that

if

absurd (Camus believes)

is

into radical self-contradiction.

which complacent modern man

his resources of logic

dictions

him

man is

tempted

The

final

consists in using all

science to demonstrate that his self-contra-

Camus

there

is

a

refuses to consent to this gigantic

meaning

to be

found

in life

it

must

be sought in revolt, in resistance against the plague, the kind of heroic

and seemingly hopeless

resistance

which he and

put up against overwhelming odds during It

was

in this resistance that

Camus,

his fellow-countrymen

World War

newspaper, Combat, learned the seriousness of words. that

you may be shot

for

your

editorial,

You make sure you mean it. Though one must avoid any 220

II.

as editor of a clandestine resistance

he

said,

temptation to

When

you

realize

you weigh what you

call

Camus

say.

a Christian,

he

much

himself saw that his revolt had

in

common

with the primitive and

common with Kierkegaard). Camus

authentic type of Christian witness (which has nothing in the conformist parody of Christianity derided by

wrote in his Notebooks: "There

is

no objection

to the totalitarian attitude

other than the religious or moral objection. If this world has no

then they are right.

aphorism

do not accept that they are

right.

is

difficult

book

in

Hence.

.

."

.

L'Homme

eventually developed into the thesis of

and

the long

I

meaning This

revoke,

which he analyzes the difference between

"revolt" and "revolution." Revolt has to be perpetually renewed to pre-

vent revolution from hardening into a tyranny which inexorably con-

own first principles. Camus can be called a

tradicts all of

Basically,

its

"religious"

No

appeals to an obscure and ultimate faith.

man,

logical faith, but a faith in

man

"No"

This aphorism

is

not

existentialist statement.

ethic

based on classic

is

God which

and

To

Camus

we have assumptions about human is

not

say that man's destiny

entirely in the future, with

creation

it

no

is

we

this

accept

as a

not," then his destruction

of pure

you

becoming

will.

A

of

is

justifies

being

entirely in his

is

man already we will never

is

something

definite.

respect him. If he "is

a matter of small consequence.

mass murder,

Camus name of

for

must be authentically

A

philosophy

torture, the police state,

Camus says, "our job is to live and to make live in order what we are." If to "create what we are" is to "become God" not,"

position

is

not self-

own hands

"Instead of killing and dying to produce the being that

Camusian

is

arbitrary

basic natural pattern to be realized,

truly creative ethic

presupposes that

man

Man

nature.

capable

another form of absurdity. In the

is

justifies destruction.

human, and Unless

It

"We

Camus'

seen above,

but only with a historic finality to be created out of nothing, the basis of nihilism.

says:

become him."

the contrary, as

"pure becoming," and his freedom determination.

to

is

In this

be interpreted as a purely dynamic and

to

On

not a theo-

is

to the absurd.

himself as a kind of ultimate value,

have but one way of creating

it

a faith in revolt itself, a faith in the

value of an existential witness which says assertion of

thinker insofar as he

doubt

we

is

a potential

are

to create

then the

not far removed from a traditional and even

gious metaphysic, in which created being

what

reli-

epiphany of the

uncreated.

The

ethic of

Camus

aimed, as he said in his Nobel Prize acceptance-

speech, "to fashion an art of living in times of catastrophe, to be reborn

by fighting openly against the death instinct in

poverty, brought

at work in our society." Born up among people even poorer than himself— the

221

i

Algerian Moslems struggled evil.

all

his

His very

—early

by the tuberculosis against which he

afflicted

Camus was

life,

and

particularly sensitive to injustice

to

gave him a quality of probity and detachment

sensitivity

which was misunderstood and

criticized

who more

by those

easily identi-

with mass movements and abstract ideologies. Precisely

fied themselves

because he would not identify himself with the Marxists,

Camus was

attacked by and isolated from the postwar intellectuals in Paris.

He would

not admit that the "art of living in times of catastrophe" was to be found

and

in political slogans

in the

opportunism of

cause he was a lonely figure, one

parties.

who maintained

against this kind of pressure, he earned a respect

He

his adversaries.

was

even though

revolt,

Camus was

faithful to his

this

own

But

his

which

precisely be-

own

principles

will be denied to

and of

principle of refusal

earned him condemnation as a "pure soul."

killed in a tragic accident at the height of his career.

was working on

a

book about the war and the death camps. In

plans for his future the rare authors

work were already

who saw

Germaine Bree sums up

quite definite.

his entire production

as

He

fact his

Camus was one

of

a consistent unity.

two of "The Absurd," with The

this unity as a succession of four "cycles,"

which had been completed.

First the cycle of

and The Stranger. Then the "Promethean cycle of The Plague and L'Homme revoke. This was to be followed by the work on which he was engaged, in the "cycle of Nemesis." Perhaps The Fall, 2 with its gloomy futility, belonged in this cycle, which

Myth

of Sisyphus

Revolt" in

would concern

itself

above

The Notebooks sketch The final cycle was evidently what Camus to get the

all

with the violence and nihilism of the Nazis.

out some incidents in the death camps. to deal

really

with "a certain kind of love." This was

wanted

plague out of his system

shall write

were

his

two

first

all

unity, the unity of his

pression of

it is

them

main

222

we

myself that

I

can already see

books, the Mediterranean

hard

to

make

final

work was

to

evidently

a clear distinction in all

his

work

there

is

ideas: absurdity, revolt, nemesis, love.

varies in poetic essays, in plays,

as well as in his notebooks.

Fall

I tell

four cycles as "one vast novel" even though half the books

essays. In actual fact

The

he said that he wanted

Man" (he Premier homme), and Camus

between the essay and the roman mythe. In

2

to:

"After which

which he resembles D. H. Lawrence. This

be called "The First regarded

come

about happiness." But as a matter of fact

something of what he meant in essays, in

to

first.

The Notebooks

and

in

mythlike

Camus moral

a

His

ex-

stories,

themselves are of absorbing

and Exile and the Kingdom (New York, Modern Library, 1966).

precisely because his

and importance

interest

they provide the explicit key to

Of

the relatively

numerous

written while

Camus was

studies of

Camus,

and

still alive,

and

political theorist is

and attempting

presumed

to

be

may

be mentioned

as the title suggests

Camus above

all

as

to justify his ideas before

critical.

opening pages, that the cool pragmatic

Camus with

which occur most frequently

it

3

was

stresses

an ethical

an English

Cruickshank assumes, in the

Anglo-Saxon

will not be

anguished myth and of outspoken

thetic to a literature of

prepares his reader for

three

the Literature of Revolt

the essays of the mildle period, treating

audience which

and

a unity

is

it.

Camus and

here. Cruickshank's Albert

whole work

"Among

lines like these:

sympa-

protest.

He

the themes

in his writings are the isolation of

man

in

an alien universe, the insufficiency of certain traditional moral values, the estrangement of the individual from himself, the humanist failure of

Marxism, the problem of the advocacy of a

atheism, the pressing finality of death and

evil,

form of neo-paganism. Such

subjects, particularly

when

treated by a gifted writer, are usually regarded as unfortunate aberrations

by the practical English mind. They become objects of suspicion and are thought

to

tion, or

mental and moral unhealth."

be the undesirable products of humorlessness, excessive abstrac-

Throughout the book, Cruickshank keeps these possible objections in mind, and he analyzes the ideas of Camus with great care. Unfortunately he

is

get

so careful

and

—and

so logical

away from Camus

himself,

so British

whose

logic

is

—that he

tends at times to

that of the imagination as

well as of reason.

In his Notebooks

Camus

distinguishes between "a philosophy of evi-

dence and a philosophy of preference."

It is

obvious that he himself

is

When he seeks a meaning meaning on the basis of philochoices and decisions which, be-

interested in preferences rather than in proofs. in life he does not seek to prove life has a

make

sophical evidence, but to

certain

cause they are in accord with the hidden value of

out into

full

view.

The

philosophy of preference

an obscure moral intuition and ends by making in other words, the basic

begins

is

life,

bring that value

one which

man

starts

with

himself evident.

Or

moral intuition from which the Camusian ethic

the assumption of

valid in every

is

man." But

if

human values. "Start by looking for what is man is essentially absurd, how can human

experience be a basis for an intuition of any validity whatever? In the 3 John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (New York, Oxford University Press, 1959).

223

— presence of the absurd

our actions can be "equally instructive" on one

all

condition: that they are lucid; or, "that faced with the humblest or the

most heart-rending experience he should endure

man

this experience

should always be 'present' and that

without flinching with complete

lu-

Camus starts from an intuitive preference for lucidity as a fundamental human value, through which man discovers his own meaning and chooses to mean what he in fact is. The philosophy which starts out with abstract evidence may easily miss The

cidity."

existential

and

and never

the whole point

poetic logic of

arrive at

man

say about his actual condition, never really help

he

self as

never have anything to

at all,

him

to

understand him-

is.

Cruickshank, while sympathizing with Camus, tends to judge Camus'

arguments

in the light of a logic

which Camus has already

approach forces Cruickshank into point logical inconsistencies in these inconsistencies

Myth fore

murder

This

to pin-

account for them. Really,

to

do not matter. For instance, the theme of The

of Sisyphus seems to

And L'Homme

Camus and

set aside.

view where he has

a point of

Cruickshank

revoke seems

to

Cruickshank says

is illogical.

be that suicide

to

illogical.

is

proceed from there to declare that therethis

does not follow.

"confusing moral choice with logical necessity."

true that

It is

Camus Camus

we should refuse suicide and murder, but he is not we must refuse murder because we must refuse suicide. He

is

is

saying that

saying

that

is

posing one basic "preference" life

cheap

to

is

— for

life

—and

the sign of our surrender to the absurd.

end

and despair. Suicide

in absurdity

the presence of the absurd.

even capital punishment

We

is

Murder a

To

malignancy.

its

prefer abstractions to

It is

life is to

the collapse of the individual in

—mass

murder, war, genocide, and

moral collapse of

society

under pressure of

refuse both if we are to find any possible meaning human existence. To declare that a political ideology meaning to life when it manifestly results in the deaths of mil-

the absurd.

or honesty at

can give

—

is

human

saying that to hold

connive with the absurd and yield to

pro-

all

must in

lions of innocent people

is

to

become an agent of the

evil

and the absurd

the death instinct which actively and urgently threatens the very survival of

man. The

logic with

the mathematical

which Camus urges

and Cartesian

spirit

his convictions

not that of

is

but of the esprit de

finesse.

An

abstract line of reasoning can "prove" that the extermination of millions

of people

is

reasonable and necessary. But in the face of such "absurd"

reasoning, one can only respond by a concrete preference for

life

and

a

refusal to kill.

What Camus tion of

224

its

proposes

is

not an explanation of

central problems but an attitude

life

toward

nor a logical solu-

life

which does not

on

rest

mere

a

logical hypothesis.

He

him

of values" (as Cruickshank accuses

certain sense

change] the absurd into a

[to

kind of salvation."

a

life,

and he does not pro-

of doing),

the argument

ceed by "a sudden twist in solution, a rule of

does not "use the absurd as a source

may

It

be true that in a

takes as his key to existence the very fact of not

"Camus

having a key." But he does not take the absurd

as the

key

to a philosophi-

springboard

cal system, or as the heart of a religious mystery, or as the

Camus

for a leap into faith.

simply saying that

is

with the presupposition that there

answer hidden in

is

somewhere, and that

it

and

a definite this

you

if

out in

start

logically

life

demonstrable

answer can be discovered

by a patient application of reason, you will end up telling yourself a lie and immolating other people to prove that your answer is the right one.

The

authentic answer

not something that you teach others, but that

is

you work out with them; not something that you look for, but something that you bring to light in your own life by the choices that you make. Cruickshank does not ignore

this,

on the absurd serve usefully

to

and he

remind

says well:

us, in

"Camus' observations

common

with

all

forms of

existential thinking, that existence cannot be grasped conceptually

down

that abstractness of thought will always fail to pin

and concreteness of

He

scious of the absurd

at least satisfied

itself."

term "truth of the absurd" to

That is

is

on one point in that

in the refusal to

ments that pretend novel,

first

The

to

is

The whole

This

mean is

if

we

on

judgment

a

man who

punishable by death.

One who

reflected

more than

will kill the

that society

has seen life

therefore

I

it

and one

too,

state-

point of his

demands

of us that

their full implications.

that society tends to be absurd: society it.

Lucidity

is

does not merely point to the absurd and snicker.

takes note of the absurd

Camus,

thought

which we could not

refuses to be absurd along with

One

his

that innocence begins with the refusal to say

repeat a whole series of prescribed declarations

possibly

The

not content

adorn the absurd with meaningless

what one does not and cannot mean, but

we

Camus is absurd. Where

ambiguous.

be answers or "solutions."

Stranger,

attains the

it

neatly turned, but insufficient.

after all

formulate analytical propositions about the is

which made him con-

frustrated search for truth

is

truth of the absurd

really begins

the particularity

things."

"The

goes on:

and

and looks around desperately joins

him

for another

in fighting for survival.

For

does not begin to acquire value in a logical axiom: "I think,

am"; but

absurd, therefore

we

in a

are."

moral commitment:

The

revolt

is

itself

"We

rebel against the

the beginning of authentic

existence.

Though Cruickshank

has given us a most valuable, richly documented,

225

sympathetic, and careful study which cannot be neglected by any serious

student of Camus, he tends to do what the hostile

Camus himself always Camus in New York in

done, and what

protested against.

interviewed

1948,

Camus was being accused Camus (said the

violence.

words carried

him

Chiaromonte

logical conclusion

much having

and thrown back

dilemma." Obviously, one might say that

a

more

care to prevent

But within the context of Camus' own thought we can

down

To

appreciate

was being unfaithful

it

momentary

Camus one

new Camus is

about

changing situations and

to

that she does this better than

Camus was

Bree's

about his work as a whole.

also written

way

the

in

which Camus'

which he wanted first

was planning is

Camus

to

first

is

those essays

to follow

him

make

at the

a

4

comprehensive statement

makes

it

writer.

To

Summa

critic.

during his lifetime but was

of

Camus

as

an

artist,

Camusian appreciation

a

begin with, Bree studies

overambitious and

be a kind of

to

three books

still

all

unpublished novel,

life,

contained in

its

and foreshadowed other works which Camus

time of his death.

perfectly attuned to

tend toward

and

any other

the best treatment of

and thought of the Algerian

matrix his

She

It is

peculiarly empathetic quality

its

of the art

to

has to be willing to do as he does, to mortify

completely revised after his death to

and

own

situations.

fit

Germaine

its

mind imagines new symbolic complexes of moral The peculiar quality of Germaine Bree's book

along as his

truth to

was the

all

context.

one's appetite for system (if one has such a thing) freely

happen-

its

endless corridors of abstraction, without taking the trou-

ble to notice that

the truth of the

at

Camus

if

which followed

rationalist absolutism in philosophy or in politics

his

see his protest

has some justification, because what he objected to above

reasoning

when

Plague,

and of Gandhian non-

of absolute pacifism

objected to this he ought to have taken ing.

The

after

interviewer) "dislikes very

some ultimate

to

form of

in the

Camus have

critics of

Camus'

style of poetic meditation.

"So basic

the essay or personal meditation that even his short editorials it

in

.

may distinguish two different uses of which Camus elucidates certain intellectual .

.

one

the form: attitudes,

giving the basic orientation of his thought, and those in which he pursues the type of lyrical meditation so successfully initiated by Noces."* 4 5

Germaine Bree, Camus, Only very few of these

volume

is

226

essavs

(New York: Harbinger have hitherto appeared

Books, 1964). in English translation.

A

being prepared for publication bv Knopf and will contain some of Camus'

best writing. [See Lyrical

Ed.]

rev. ed.

and

Critical Essays

(New York:

Alfred A. Knopf, 1967)

—

appreciation of this meditative insight in

Her

Camus

Germaine

saves

Bree from going through the trouble of working out his ideas in logical analyses and then wondering why they do not always make perfect sense.

Camus himself: "The unification of an experience through the conscious medium of style is an aesthetic solution, not a logical or especially systematic one. To misunderstand this in the case of Camus is to open the door to quite futile controversy. The fusion of Her approach

that of

is

image and thought ...

is

image often seems

successful but the

be

to

Camus was whereby rhythm and image carried the meaning beyond the control of thought." Here the criticism of Camus' vagaries in philosophizing is rigorously exact: and one who keeps this in mind need never not impervious to the pleasures

stronger than the thought, for

of a rhetoric

worry too much about

his slight inconsistencies. "It

is

fallacious to seek a

Camus

system of abstract reasoning in Camus' works.

logical

himself

speaks of certainties, convictions. All his meditations are lyrical and elo-

quent in nature, though some tend toward demonstration. logic does err,

Thus

Camus

errs gravely, as

it

in the heat of political

If a passionate

himself recognized."

argument Camus was sometimes led

to

adopt an attitude which he himself later deplored. Momentarily, after

World War

he approved the savage

II,

reprisals taken against those

who

had collaborated with the Nazis. But he was able to catch himself in time

and

change

to

his attitude completely. Usually, instead of letting political

away with

passion run

his reason,

he

passion charge his images with

let

their peculiarly convincing violence, "thus polarizing intellectual

Camus

average reader."

possessed this gift to a greater degree perhaps

"Camus

than anyone in our time: easily recognizable entities

ness

more

.

.

.

some of the major

assumptions which feed the often nebulous thought of the

and play

accessible

is

coins his

personal idiom: simple,

become charged with an intense

a fixed role in his inner universe. this

idiom

to the

.

.

.

suggestive-

How much

average reader than the abstract vo-

cabulary thrown into circulation by the followers of Sartre!"

Germaine Bree

to

some extent shares

this

Camusian

lucidity, so that she

sums up Camus' thought

own

"Camus had an almost

diate

authentic ring.

need

to

impose

development of our

a tolerable pattern

civilization.

To him

is

to

abandon our

ethical

ourselves thereby with a world

This

is

a perfect bull's-eye.

human

and

aphorisms that have his

desperate sense of our

upon the

violently

imme-

haphazard

our greatest temptation, obsessed

by the powerful mechanical forces which control,

in

articulateness

we manipulate and do

not

standards and needs, identifying

which denies us our

Not only does

it

rightful place."

sum up Camus'

approach,

227

but

impressively conveys his lucid awareness of

it

Such an awareness words

work

to

is

what we

not content with words and images.

man

the political arena where, though

in

reaches his most absurd and repellent extreme of cruelty

be forged.

his destiny has to

Camus was an

artiste

are doing.

It

sometimes

and dishonesty,

engage not in the

program (which

sense that he put his art at the service of a definite party

he certainly never did) but in the sense that he realized that his

much

never be worth

cannot be an

artist if

authentic without

problems.

critical

man must

one

is

not

first

refuses to say

it

of

all

human

would

art

One

responsibility.

human, and humanity

not

is

human concern and real involvement in common and The lucidity of the artist and the lucidity of the free

be one and the same.

absurd, and

Camus

without deep roots in

must put

It is

what

a lucidity in the presence of the

does not mean.

it

Hence

the

artist,

"walks a tightrope in an uneasy equilibrium between

says,

and

significance

silence." Insignificance, I take

it,

is

in-

here not only the

evasion of responsibility but the routine social consciousness and the loquacity of the party hack.

In the

kept

during the Algerian war, Camus' scruples of conscience

fifties,

him on

this peculiar tightrope,

and

his refusal to identify himself

with either extreme caused him to be condemned as a "pure soul" with-

drawn

an ivory tower.

in

political

on Camus' part

and important not only

II.

but above

shows us Camus political action

had written

program of help

it

gives right

because of the unpublished

Camus had worked

as a

or in anything

man who

else.

Camus

a series of important articles

of a

Emmett

to the starving

minor

on

civil

to discredit

Moslems. This book

not only wrote about a certain kind of

He

was

could never be a mere "activist" in politics a philosopher, not

lucidity, his refusal to say or

him

for the

but practiced what he preached.

the other hand,

left

par-

Combat

Hodent, by which the rich colons were attempting

the socialist relief

in

an agitator. His peculiar

do anything that he did not

an equivocal position where a

Parker, Albert

Wisconsin Press, 1965).

228

all

It is

for the information

his editorship of

and had investigated the frame-up

the famine in Kabylia,

6

and

Before going to Paris in 1940

left-wing press in Algiers,

often

studies the

an "Artist in the Arena."

brings to light about his political activity in Algiers before

it

World War

On

as

in the resistance,

after the liberation of Paris,

material

servant,

book by Emmett Parker 6

recent

impact of Camus' writing

ticularly interesting

us

A

Camus: The

Artist in the

really

mean,

definite political choice

Arena (Madison, University of

was hardly

He

possible.

was keenly aware of the impasse

many Western

reached by so

The

intellectuals.

Camus more

has

The

onstration."

pitilessly

The

The

Fall,

Fall portrays the curious mixture of solipsism, self-hate,

man

of self-analysis

mass

in

rational

is

man whose

conscience has died

and whose frustrated reasoning has become left to

His confession cures nothing and

on the contagion of that

of analysis to another.

name was

physical,

is

The

—a

is

member

a

newspapers and fornicates" and then

"Plague," which in the novel

with

live

classifies its

He

life

which "reads the

meaningless and routine

cannot help admiring the

smog-dark desert of Europe, with nothing irremediable,

He

character one has to apply a method."

and no

For him, doubt

cease to be an object of

to

— Clamence)

in the futility

light to offer, in the darkness, but the pale

woven into the very fabric of doubt would be to cease to exist is

someone who has accidentally

for

a false

is

announce except that

John the Baptist, the voice of one crying (clamantis

of gin.

and accept

and patience with which Hitler "cleaned up" Amsterdam,

"when one has no

is

itself

of a civilization

experiences in terms of good or bad news. diligence

can only prey

finds relief only in passing

plague of self-examination which turns narcissism

Clamence

into self-hate.

to his

here revealed as a moral sickness unto death,

an utter despair which can do anything but without analysis

kind of

a

communicate

disciples except a scrupulously ironic self-awareness that itself.

and

alienated

afflicts

Clamence, the Judge and Penitent of

society.

Western bourgeois

moral eczema. This guilty guru has nothing

upon

sterility

Fall.

exposed the helplessness of "dem-

moral impotence, pseudolucidity, and despair which individualistic

and

helplessness

of a certain kind of intellectualism are etched with acid in

Nowhere

had been

that

existence at all."

fallen out of a space-capsule

glow

and

He

is

"to like

and cannot be

recovered: he just has the good fortune to find someone else in the same

predicament, someone he can talk to without ever permitting

him

to

God

is

reply.

There

is

a curious post-Christian eschatology in

The

Fall. If

dead, the Fall and the Last thing: they are perfectly

between.

Man

sideration of itself

is

Judgment turn out to be one and the same continuous. There is no longer a Redemption in

no longer judged

some promised

judgment, and judges

in reference to

grace. Life itself

is

reduced

to extinction.

any law or in conto

pure

Clamence

justice: is

it

is

perhaps a

kind of "saint without God." He is activated not by life-giving grace but by the self-scrutiny of an ironic and hatefully lucid mind that is incapable of love.

To

be so activated

is

to

be purified and

a kind of extreme Augustinianism in

which

damned

to

at the

be judged

is

same time, not a final

229

4

end but only an endless

The

ultimate landing.

fall

tionship of subject to object, of judge to penitent that

have sinned and

all

we

other; proving that

mitted and ready

—as

all

all

are

are in despair, that

all in

the void, that

if

The

or Plague,

He

had

no

is

the rela-

to the other

God

dead

is

we

all is

per-

always

are

Love does not

exist.

Fall represented a dead end beyond possible in

Camus'

artistic

The Notebooks show

develop-

that he

was

to the earlier praise of life that filled his first

two

to take

go back

to

is

must condemn each

also for fornication." In such a universe,

Whether Nemesis

planning

—proving

all

meaningless. "For judgment, today,

is

which there was no further progress ment.

which there

in the void, a fall for

only possible relationship with another

another course.

books: the celebration of the Mediterranean

Greek measure, the

light, the

luminous joy of the Florentine primitives. Camus believed, with Lawrence, that the only vital answers life.

on

His

Italy,

were

on the Roman ruins

essays

to

be found not in systems but in

in Algeria,

remind us of Lawrence's response

on the Balearic

Islands,

to Sicily, to the Etruscans,

Mexican-Indian culture.

to

Though he remained determinedly responded, as

were

real.

Camus

non-Christian,

nevertheless

poets have responded, to the mysticism of the early

all

Franciscans: in

them

Somehow

too he found

what he was looking

for,

because they

was not an "explanation" or

their faith

a "justifica-

tion" but simply part of their response to the beautiful world in

they lived; hence

no trouble

it

was something they could honestly mean. Camus had

was

and

existential

affinities

man and

free

from dogmatic preconceptions.

and explanations did not get

pages, in the early essays, that border

delicate savor

which

delivers

up the

find in the depths of the universe.

emotion that delivers be true.

.

.

.

was hoping.

in the

way. Hence there are

on mysticism.

from the

I

I

secret of the world, I

myself: that

setting [decor].

more

true than

is .

when

to taste that

it is I

myself that

to say this .

.

I

extreme

What counts is am the world? I

have even wanted anything. Eternity

is

there,

and

I

.

which Clamence has condemned himself

is

the hell of

from the world, from other people, and from himself, by the

vicious habit of seeing evervthing (himself included) as

230

to

." .

hell to

separation

me

And when am

sated before

The

was open

understand myself [he wrote in L'Ete], and

"If I seek to

to

It

with anything that was alive (Franciscanism included), provided

that doctrines

am

nature in Mediterranean

For Camus, the wedding was not purely and simply "pagan."

civilization. It

which

both Franciscan poverty and Franciscan joy into the

fitting

theme of the marriage (Noces) of

I

and

though from the

outside. It

an

is

this vice that

object. It has

you put in.

it

there.

You make

makes everything absurd. "The Absurd" is not its own. It is not there until

no metaphysical existence of

You put

life

it

there by standing outside reality

absurd by holding

it

arm's length.

at

and looking

Once you

step

over the boundary line between subject and object, void and the absurd are no more.

when we

There

is

at but with; the light that

we

is

Camus needed

still

to discover

and not the reward

the light

—the

itself

light

not only have but in some

"true light that enlightens every

gift

we begin

only that fullness which

realize that "lucidity"

man

was

that

to experience

we

look not

way

are; the

comes into the world." is

pure mercy and pure

and

self-conscious ethical

that this light

for a subtle, ironic,

What

concern.

231

TERROR AND THE ABSURD: VIOLENCE AND NONVIOLENCE IN ALBERT CAMUS Author's Note

The purpose

of these notes

an ethic which

examination

is

is

basically

not apologetic in intent and confines

pository rather than critical.

more

examine sympathetically some features of atheistic and characteristically modern. The

is to

With

this

it is

hoped

being ex-

that

we

Camus' thought which, though

clearly see those elements in

cally in

approach,

itself to

can

radi-

accord with the Gospel, suggest possibilities too often neglected

or overlooked by Christians.

The weakness

of

Camus

is

by no means in

the integrity of his moral feeling but in the obstinate refusal to integrate that feeling into the solidity of a consistent rational structure. This price he pays in

absurd, the importance of which he doubtless overestimates.

can hardly be a firm basis for logical argumentation. sion of an existential wager. If in

Camus we

is

the

order to preserve the purity of his intuition of the

we

It is

The absurd

rather the occa-

can provisionally respect the gambler

can also profit by his practical conclusions.

Albert Camus, the French-Algerian novelist, playwright and essayist, was

perhaps one of the most serious and articulate ethical thinkers of the midtwentieth century. Active in the French resistance, associated with the existentialist

movement

existentialist

philosopher,

in literature,

Camus

though he repudiated the

declared himself an

atheist

spoke as the moral conscience of an embattled generation. In typical of that secular

and nonreligious thought

of

title

and

reality

yet

he

is

of the so-called "post-

Christian era" which seeks to defend values that are essentially those of

Western and Christian

tradition against the nihilism

and violence that

have arisen out of the breakdown of Western civilization. sidered a revolutionary,

Camus

the sense that he preaches the recovery of a basic ism, the seeds of

which

Though

con-

turns out in the end to be conservative in

are implanted in

was favored, he thought, by the ancient

man's

and primordial human-

own

nature and which

cultural climate of pre-Christian

Mediterranean culture.

This essay on violence and nonviolence first

form. This version

232

in

Camus was

written in August 1966 and

published in the Februarv 1969 issue of Motive in a somewhat abbreviated is

from the original manuscript.

One

of the tragedies of

Western

Camus,

civilization, for

infidelity

is its

Greek sense of measure, beauty, harmony, and natural limits. Modern Europe, in totalist frenzy, is the child of unreason and of exthe

to

"We

tremes.

up

light

in a

drunken sky any suns

Those who

the limits remain.

pursued and found out by Nemesis. the god

livered over to

of

power

What

that

is

we

that

—our

are de-

punishment

have what we want. "God being dead there remain only history

And power

power."

is

incarnate in the secular

"Only the modern

strongly with Hegel's declaration: spirit

ground

a

which

in

Camus, the alienated

life

Camus

city.

of the dark and northern

city

itself."

a life in

is

as evident in his

modern

rejects the

and

history

of eternal

and

provide a

norm

really

we

is!

for rational conduct,

we

see

how

like

away from our world

will not turn

learn to live in!

And we

to the

of

Greek idea

which are ontological and natural and

essential values

Yet he

and returns instead

city,

dynamism

idea that values are to be created by the

realized in the future

For

which

When Camus

summer).

in

to

and

city offers to the

consciousness gets lost (he has a different idea of the Mediterranean

luminous essay on Algiers

is

disagrees very

can achieve consciousness of

it

yet

will be

We

our Nemesis?

we adore

And

please."

and measure

sin against reason

cannot

live in

an

—

existentialist is

it

he

the only one

by hating one another.

it

Friendship, loyalty to man, lucidity, courage in accepting the absurd but

new

only as the starting point of a

which the

creative

and

outlook in

all

it

is

may have seemed morbid and and alienated character

No

this

with

of Greece

Camus'

so

called

"neo-paganism"

accounts for a certain life-affirming and optimistic

his writing. It

own. Because of

wisdom

and the new Inquisition. 1

are not concerned here with

except to say that

—these are the elements

"rebel" spirit can reaffirm the

in the face of police states

We

creation

—or

true that his

bizarre in

its

rather an absurd

book Camus was labeled

novel,

first

The

Stranger,

description of an "absurd"

and alienated culture: our a pessimist

one can question the sense of the tragic and

his

from the

keen eye for

all

start.

that

tempts us to despair. Yet actually, though he was not patient with the illusory

optimism of the naive or of organization men,

more hopeful

voices of his generation.

rightly, that "his

need

It

his

to establish a passionately loved life

foundations that seemed valid to

was one of the

has been said of him, and quite

him [was]

on

intellectual

the strongest driving force

behind his work and made a writer of him." 2 1

Quotations so far from the essay "L'Exil d'Helene" in L'Etc (Pleiade edition),

vol. II, pp. 2

853-57.

Germaine

Bree,

Camus

rev. ed.

(New York: Harbinger

Books, 1964),

p. 27.

233

As

termined

more

known, Camus was deeply concerned with

well

is

remain a nonpartisan and

to

and complex struggle

bitter

some sense

in

who had

of those

politics

but de-

keep out of the

to

completely committed

themselves to this or that revolutionary cause. This led to his open break

who committed

with Sartre,

collaboration with the

himself to a broadly Marxist position and to

Communists. Camus chose the more

difficult

and

consoling course: that of continuing to hope for a third position be-

less

tween the

bourgeois establishment of the

capitalist

He

establishment of the Communists.

totalist

saw

West and

the rigid

that the world

had

reached a deadlock between these two forces and that there was nothing

No

be hoped for in merely supporting one of these against the other.

to

matter which side one chose, both were wrong, both were corrupt, both

were

In the end the struggle between

sterile.

intensification of nihilism

The "two

When

replied that cancer

cure

it.

He

is

and Western

— were

for

was

that this confrontation

also a reality, but that

rejected the

an

Camus

a

together and cannot get along without each

was objected

it

in

terror.

—Eastern

"who grow up

pair of twins other!'*

and

imperialisms"

them could only end

no reason

is

two systems along with

which "born with the steam engine and naive

a reality

he

for not trying to

their rival ideologies,

optimism a cen-

scientific

tury ago, are today obsolete and incapable in their present form of solving the problems posed in the age of the

The

only hope he saw was in a

gle to pass

beyond

success of such

a

atom and

and genuinely

difficult

either of these positions,

struggle

of relativity."

and

depended on the

dialectical strug-

in the last analysis the

and

lucidity

individuals, "Rebels" in the special sense in which, as

uses the word. Rebels both against a stagnant

culture

and against

Camus

1952,

said:

a fanatical

"We

and

can

and

we

integrity of shall see,

he

ineffectual bourgeois

arbitrary totalism. In an interview in

no longer

Bourgeois morality repels us by

4

without positive values.

live

hypocrisies

its

and

its

cruelties.

We

find

equally repugnant the political cynicism that reigns in the revolutionary

movement. As nated by

ashamed."

At

for the

independent

left

(Sartre, etc.)

Communist power and entangled

in a

it

in fact fasci-

is

Marxism

of

which

it

is

5

this point

we may remark

that

though Camus remained resolutely

un-Christian and indeed never concealed his scorn for the religious facade

3

An

interview,

December

1948,

in

Camus,

Essais

(Pleiade

edition),

pp. 1587-88. 4

Quoted

5

"Reponse a E. d'Astier," Actuelles,

234

in Bree, op.

cit. p.

57. I,

(Pleiade edition), vol.

II, p.

358.

vol.

II,

and sham of pseudo-Christianity, he retained

Though

Catholicism.

own

his

August

unbelief" he wrote in a letter of

and

a deep respect for authentic

demanded

philosophy

1943, "I

of

him

a "passionate

have Catholic friends

among them who are truly Catholic I have more have the feeling we are fighting for the same things. In

for those

sympathy:

I

they are interested in the same things

mine

evident, in

is

it

I

am. In

than fact,

their eyes, the solution

is

." 6

not

.

.

Elsewhere he spoke of having deep respect for the person of Christ and of not believing in the Resurrection— a standard "good pagan" posture. total loyalty to the ideals

However, though he clung with

Greece, and though he tended to blame of those ideals, he

respected true Christian values.

still

Hellenic elements in Christianity? At any

specifically

he wrote a philosophical

and

St.

and values of

Christianity in part for the loss

Were they the we remember

rate

thesis at the University of Algiers

on "Plotinus

Augustine."

In his most

The Rebel (L'Homme revoke), Camus exproblem and scandal of modern revolutions which,

difficult

amines the great

book,

have speedily con-

starting out with the affirmation of absolute liberty,

summated

their efforts in absolute tyranny,

and having pleaded

for a

more

Though himCamus views with self an concern the fact that revolutions which began with the "death of God" and put man in the place of God were unable to work out a morality worthy of man. Having rejected the Kingdom of God and the realm of abundant

life,

have ended

atheist (perhaps

grace,

hecatombs of

in

more

political victims.

accurately, an agnostic)

having put the realm of

justice in its place, the revolution pro-

ceeded from justice to the reign of terror, demanding the complete suspension of

all

the future.

Having

liberty in

favor of

crete, in

view of

rejected

man

God

a perfect it

consummation postponed

proceeded to reject

in the abstract.

In the

name

man

to

in the con-

of this abstraction

every violence, every cruelty, every inhumanity became permissible and

even logically necessary. Rebel, he

Rebel

is,

is

Though

in this

book Camus

speaking against "the revolution" in

its

is

in fact, in rebellion not only against a static

establishment but also against a rigid and crystallized into a police state

totalist

and maintains

itself

speaking for the

historic forms.

The

and conservative

revolution that has in existence

by vio-

lence.

The key resorts

to

G Essais

>P

.

The Rebel is that revolution massive killing. The need for the idea of

nullifies itself

revolution

to

when

it

kill

in

1596.

235

(

order to maintain

power means

itself in

When

be in power.

the love of

into a need for the death of

life

that

that

it

and

and

is

on the

to build a society

and

a denial of itself,

To

revolution turns into absurdity and nihilism. of grace

reject the

Kingdom

men

thousands of one's fellow

—including

in the

name

the duty to exterminate

not of a happy and

life-

The

affirming present but of a hypothetical happiness in the future.

God" means in the end an world hegemony and total control at

imperialism of the

"death of

Note

same

that this

a Hitler, the labor

camps of the

weapons.

the

It is

same

what happens

to

the price of unlimited

is

murder and camps of

Chinese, but also where

concentrated in nuclear and other

power and

logic of

man when

Red

Soviets or

which leaves man

radical godlessness

spirit that seeks

logic operates not only in the death

power of unlimited destruction

the

of

abstract concept of "justice,"

inexorably to the concentration camp. "Absolute liberty

this leads

becomes a prison of absolute duties"

terror.

to

hundreds and thousands of other men, then

the "love of life" becomes a contradiction

God and

no longer has the right

at the root of revolution turns

is

terror that

grows out of a

world alone. This

to build his

is

"refusing God, he chooses history" and seeks

human Once God

(with Hegel, Nietzsche, and Marx) the eschatological unity of the race "deified" by

dead, the

is

its

own

exercise of absolute political power.

vacuum caused by His "death"

drive toward total

some sense means

human

political

sucks into

To

power.

itself

accept the death of

awful force of

to accept passively the

this

this

huge

God

in

drag and

suction into the emptiness created by His absence.

Camus

Why?

In

tialists,

grants

who more

resorts to

God

life is

Camus makes

Pascal's

wager

For Camus

live

modern

God

starts

with

has been said that the re-

all its

consequences

as for Sartre, theological faith is

faith

—violence, ruthis

a temptation.

anyway? Camus

with the assumption that the world

is

as a

absurd and

then becomes necessary for some minds to explain the absurdity.

regarded

somehow

as a

need of man's mind and heart: and indeed

a certain kind of apologetic in the past has been

236

It

it.

and accepts the

"bad faith" by definition. But what

is

an otherwise senseless

his impossibility

sulting absurdity of the universe with

God

and

as the explanation

—but in reverse. Instead of gambling on

God, he gambles on

lessness, terror.

that

of existen-

a kind of "cheating."

to give sense to

absurd" and deciding to

possibility of

typical

God

name

according to Camus, evading the austere and stoical duty of facing

to "the

It is

truly merit the

to accept the idea of

an otherwise absurd

The man who up

without ceasing to hold his atheist position.

this

with those

he considers that

justification of

life is,

all

common

all

too ready to advance

— this distorted

and inadequate view of God. Here God

seen simply as

is

The

the projection of man's need for clarity, for rationality.

act of faith

then becomes a determination to convince oneself that no matter absurd things may loo\, they are in fact quite reasonable because

must make them reasonable. One believes because one of an absolute and infallible reason. But

this

assumes that

God

is

merely called in

our

to

how God

refuses to despair

lives as a

kind of

more than a convenient

Deus ex machina and that he is little what is really meant by God in Christianity? Camus, with Ivan Karamazov, examines the classic problem of evil in the world and rejects a hypothesis of a God whose rule may have to be justified at the price of the suffering of one innocent child. Camus, like logical

hypothesis. Is this

Ivan Karamazov, says that heaven. But then,

if

this

is

the case he will turn in his ticket to

resolutely facing a

world that has become frankly

absurd, he has to watch dry-eyed the suffering not of one innocent child

but of millions of innocents: a suffering that

God. Camus may

of a world without in this position:

he shrugs

He

it off.

is

demanded by

realize the contradiction implied

all this,

He

merely

God back

to life.

does not bother to argue.

assumes that one cannot save the millions by bringing In spite of

one of the root problems of The Rebel (hence one

of the root problems of our world in revolutionary crisis)

God. This problem

of

simply bypasses

it,

the logic

as stated

the problem

is

by Camus remains insoluble, and Camus

not on the basis of any reasoning in metaphysics or

theodicy, but simply because the historical forms of Christianity

other religions

— seem

to

him

to

resignation that solves nothing

blind social forces that push

him

demand

of

and merely this

way and

man

him

leaves

—and

and degrading

a futile

mercy of

at the

that.

Yet Camus recognizes that the problem of

God

another

arises in

in-

exorable form as the problem of murder. If the most critical problem of

our time

is

the problem of (mass)

reduced to an entity without value, admits

it,

bringing of

man

much

is

him back

if

because

human

"God

is

life

has been

dead."

Camus

God may no longer mean a recovery of the sense Those who claim to represent God have often done

without feeling any need for

as a value.

to

murder and this

to be other than dead

to life

cheapen man.

lishments have taught

If

conventional and institutional religious estab-

man

to

hold

human

life

cheap,

trivialized death, exalted nationalist or political abstractions,

blanket permission to

kill

without practical limit in the

if

they have

and given

name

a

of patrio-

tism or of revolution, then they have contributed their share to the "death of

God"

in the experience of twentieth-century

man.

When

the problem

237

God

of

problem of the sacredness of

necessarily reappears as the

prohibition of limitless killing, then

Camus must

most

is

tragic thing, the root of crime,

grapple with

life

and

it.

The

the silence and complicity which

accept the supposed Tightness and necessity for man-killing, whether in

war or

in prison camps.

"We live in terror because persuasion is no longer possible; because man has been wholly submerged in history, because he can no longer tap that part of his nature, as real as the historical part,

contemplating the beauty of nature and of

in

which he recaptures

human

faces;

and crude messianism.

We

among

suffocate

people

who

think they are

absolutely right, whether in their machines or in their ideas.

can

only in an atmosphere of

live

The

face of

name

in the

Camus' "Rebel" now begins

man who

a

is

human

And

for all

dialogue and sociability,

end of the world." 7

this silence is the

He

we

world of abstractions, of bureaus and machines, of absolute ideas

live in a

who

because

protests,

of a theoretical program.

individual and concrete

to

appear in

its

true character.

but protests not against abstract injustice, nor

man

He

name

protests in the

man,

of

and blood, against the war-making

of flesh

arrogance of total power, against the abstractions on which power bases claim to an absolute right to

its

silent

and

insists

to affirm

The Rebel moreover

refuses to be

on an open dialogue which

will help others like himself

and common decision

oppose absurdity and death

to arrive at a lucid

and

kill.

man

against

all

to

abstractions.

In a certain sense, the starting point of Camus' ethic of revolt protest against passive resignation. In 1937, visiting the

is

a

famous Campo

Santo of Pisa, he was revolted by the pious and conventional sentiments

around him. For him they

of the epitaphs

and mortuary

were in

mockery of the awful seriousness and mystery of man's

fact a

art

he saw

all

contingency, an evasion of the inscrutable reality of death. So too, the

"black"

first

heartlessness rituals

chapter of is

tricks

The Campo Santo were

Algiers.

Of

after this

in all

a protest against the utter

surrounding death. All

and play obscene ziata

The Stranger

all

social

its

apparent indifference and

inadequacy of formal

forms tend, in Camus'

with the mysterv of death.

of Pisa

and the tombs

in the cloister of the

idols dies alone after living in a

mob.

I

know no more

is

here

made

and without hideous place

"Neither Victims nor Executioners," in The Pacifist Conscience, ed. Peter Mayer

(New York: 238

Annun-

noble compared to those in the city cemetery of

he wrote: "Everything that touches on death

ridiculous or hateful. This people living without religion

7

social

eyes, to cheat

Holt, 1966), p. 424.

— than the cemetery of Bru Boulevard, facing one of the finest landscapes

world

in the

He

."

.

.

goes on to speak of the revolting vulgarity of

tombs on which angels

words

like

"Our memory

abandon you"

will never

—or clusters of stucco

flowers accompanied by the declaration: "Your tomb

out flowers." Here

and godless

less

facade.

What

behind a collapsing religious

And Camus,

pure "Rebel," declines to be resigned. Even in

some

Italy,

convinces me. All of them

this

now

as a

where there was

still

.

.

.

With

my

all

reason to say:

silence

had

'It

Camus

of

and

resigned to letting his

thing

else,

or religion.

whether

He

is,

is

therefore

on

of

is

the

all

it

The Rebel

is

is

poverty was an enrichment of

8

falsifi-

who is not name of some-

one

is

interest-

Camus

speaks

describes their religious pov-

Camus'

clear that in

life

must

step."

refuses to

refuses alienation. It

He

re-

no

or money, or revolution

politics,

with approval of the early Franciscans.

is

it

by

man who

ing to notice that a few pages later in the same notebook

erty as a liberating force. It

and

step

resignation, a diminution or

man who

in a word, the

There

right,

be destroyed or mutilated in the

be business, or

grow

shall not

I

earth, follow

living possibilities.

life

it

which

revolt

first

and unreasoning

accept, with passive

cation of authentic

my

is

like a pilgrim

is

honor the dead,

shall protest to the very end.

to be.' It

follow this joy which

The Rebel

I

to

had become resigned,

doubtless because they accepted their other duties. signed.

speaking

monuments

religious substance in the renaissance

he said: "None of

will never be with-

not religion that he derides but the awful religion-

it is

secularity that has crept in

the facade? Resignation.

is

with

in stucco airplanes, of hearts inscribed

fly

and not

eyes,

a mutilation.

Franciscan

Meditating in

a cloister in Fiesole he recognizes in himself a deep affinity with the early

Franciscans, for they too are Rebels in his sense of the word:

on the ground

Sitting

they are right then

world (he alludes

men. of

put

I

my

all

my

rejoins the luxury

flowers

it

8

think of the Franciscans whose

is

in the

I

can

same way

now

that

I

cells

pride in a belief that that there

is

it

an extreme point .

.

.

to justify these

me and

all

from human

harmony between

were not already

my

things.

Ah,

I

the

men

which poverty always Being naked always has at

the

hand and the

touches, of loving understanding between the earth freed

have just

am. This splendor of the

also justifies

and richness of the world.

I

see. I feel clearly that if

view from the monastery) seems

of physical liberty, of

who have been if it

it

to the

who know

race

associations

to this

I

and whose sources of inspiration

visited

and men

should become a convert

religion. 9

Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

(New York:

Alfred

A

Knopf, 1963),

p. 64.

9 Ibid., p. 57.

239

we

If

consider

to think that

the implications of this passage

all

Camus

Camus' own neopagan and naive atheism thing that

the world as he sees

on

head.

its

a refusal to trust any-

He knows

it

also confronts

and loves

it is for him a unique him with an absurd and

For there remains death, and Camus

silence.

tempted

will be

directly in front of his nose:

it,

and inexhaustible value, though enigmatic

rests

not directly accessible to the senses.

is

we

has ended by standing Franciscanism on

not play

will

around with any "explanation" that evades or minimizes the seemingly utter finality of death. aesthetic. Life

His

and death are

refusal

is

not metaphysical or logical but

realities directly accessible to experience.

immediacy with which they sometimes confront us may be be absurd.

No

matter.

The absurd

and metaphysical arguments are not accessible.

They

grasp.

On

They

But

life,

for

Camus

the religious

for Providence,

and

so

on

are not a matter of experience or of immediate

are therefore, he thinks, arbitrary fabrications.

based on the fact that he thinks they see things his way. They

is

have gambled facts: the

as

burnt

he has: not on reasonings and ideas but on immediate

hills

of Tuscany, the vineyards, the poverty of the people,

the poverty of Franciscan

They

All these are immediately experienced.

life.

are directly present in the Franciscan consciousness, they are not objects of rationalization.

There

is

something

to this intuition.

the vision of an abstract nity,

is real.

the other hand, his approval of the Franciscans in the passage

quoted

mere

too

for another

The

so stark as to

The

vision of a St. Francis

and purely transcendent God dwelling

is

not

in eter-

but the immediate, overwhelming, direct, tangible confrontation of

"God who

is"

simply in the "is-ness" of every day

The

reality.

belief of

how he lives—it flows Camus had been able to follow this through he would have realized that the abstract God he could not believe in was not, and never had been, the living God of a

Franciscan in eternal

from

his life

and

is

part

life

does not determine

and parcel of

that

life. If

authentic Christianity.

Camus

contrasts the peace

and joy of

life-affirming love with the frenzy

born of abstractions which followed the French Revolution. Reason,

dis-

incarnated by godless revolution, "floated off like a balloon

the

empty sky of force:

of the great principles,"

"To adore theorems

one also needs a

The

root of

police."

Camus'

for

and therefore

any length of time,

240

Camus,

into

needed the support faith

is

not enough:

10

ethic

is

then not a fanatically reasoned nihilism

but on the contrary an affirmation of 10 Albert

it

L'Homme

life

which,

we have

seen,

revoke (Pleiade edition), pp. 154, 155.

he spon-

taneously correlates with Franciscan poverty. In is

love. In his

we

notebooks

the root of his ethic

fact,

find this:

someone here told me to write a book on morality, it would have a hundred pages and ninety-nine would be blank. On the last page I should write "I recognize only one duty, and that is to love." And as far as everything else If

concerned

is

We

I

11 say no.

Camus' Rebel

refuses the resignation of a

life

submissive to cynical travesty in a decadent postreligious culture, or a

life

have so

far seen that

obedient to the dictates of

and

that the

totalist police in a

paradigm of the Rebel

is

godless revolutionary state,

enough the poverty-

strangely

loving, therefore liberated, Franciscan. Will he pursue his idea further?

the godless revolution denies

If

human victims, name of God and

Camus

will

of

itself

out in the blood

turn to a nonviolent revolution in the

No,

of love?

and cancels

itself

for since to

him God

is

only an in-

admissible logical hypothesis, he has to engage in an intricate dialectic

between godless violence and religious nonviolence

in order to reach a

different synthesis. It is

how

interesting to see

he arrives

at this synthesis.

His thought

in

this matter has certain positive implications even for the Christianity that

he

rejects.

But while we admit that ideally

time a more

and rigorous

traditional

Camus

strict

may

while admitting that violence

world revolution. whether on the

God

is

He

dead in order

genocide, the police

indefinite future

starts

be necessary, speaks and writes

on

from the

war but

also in the face of

that of

is

essentially

(if

not in theory) torture,

the death camps, and the obliteration of nations

this in the

when

communism,

implicit or explicit proposition that

to justify in practice

state,

by nuclear war. All

we find in the we can say that

contends that the power struggle of our time,

side of capitalism or

and therefore

different

rejection of force than

Christian "just war" theory. In practice,

as a pacifist not only in the face of global

nihilistic

somewhat

his conclusions are

Christian nonviolence, they are at the same

from those of an

name

full justice

of a

will

humanism postponed

an

to

have been carried out on the

adversary.

At

this point,

we can

let

Camus

explain himself succinctly in state-

ments or notes from the Carnets during the period

when he finally broke with humanism and terror.

11

Notebooks 1935-1942,

Sartre

after

World War

and Merleau Ponty on

II

this issue of

p. 54.

241

— Camus

In 1946

said:

"There

is

only one problem today, which

One

of murder. All our disputes are vain.

This problem faces everybody, and not

that

is

thing alone matters: peace." just politicians, business

12

men,

military strategists, manufacturers of armaments, or revolutionists. All

men

confront the problem of co-operation in murder, perhaps even in

genocide.

"We

are in a

world

a victim or an executioner."

To

face such a

we know

Either

in

which one must choose between being

13

world and such

a choice

we do

we

it

or

not. If

means

to confront the absurd.

accept the absurd choice as per-

reasonable or at least as an inevitable necessity,

fectly

human

dignity

name

in the

and freedom, we surrender

of abstractions

exorably lead to our

own

we

resign our

unreason and unfreedom

to

which ignore our human measure and

There

destruction.

in-

only one answer: to be-

is

come a Rebel un homme revoke. The Rebel is distinguished on the one hand from the conformist who accepts a conservative establishment and its injustices and on the other from the revolutionary who in the name of an ideology and an abstract humanism consents to the alienation and destruction of his fellow

man, and indeed

of his

own human honor and

membered. The Rebel a choice that

may

fact nullified

and

that grinds nihilist

and

if

takes

one

who

squarely faces the absurdity and risk of

in fact be meaningless

set aside

re-

and

inefficacious because

it is

in

by the ruthless dynamism of the power struggle

on inexorably toward global suicide or the establishment of a

and

The Rebel

totalist police state.

he has

up

is

integrity,

must be

for the sake of a future Utopia. This precise sense of the Rebel

to

be a victim he will

this position of refusal,

at least

refuses to be

an executioner,

know why. But

as

soon as he

autonomy, and self-determination in the

presence of the absurd, as soon as he resolves to confront the absurd and

work within

the limits that

darity with other Rebels

it

necessarily imposes, he finds himself in soli-

who have made

the

same commitment. Camus

an identity and a viewpoint analogous

says that revolt gives the Rebel

the Cartesian self-awareness, "I think therefore

ing point of modern epistemology.

Revolt which places

him

side

lucidity: "I revolt, therefore

disgruntled individual

The Rebel

—certainly

are."

The

12 Essais, p. 1569. 13 Ibid., p. 1567.

242

is

the start-

finds his identity in the

by side with other Rebels

we

The Rebel

is

in their

common

then not simply the

not the alienated and seemingly apa-

The Stranger, that classic Camus are Rieux and Tarrou

thetic individualist like Mersault, the hero of

of the absurd.

am," which

I

to

true Rebels portrayed by

in

The

Plague,

decide in the face of the tragic absurdity of the

men who

plague to affirm

and human

life

solidarity as best they can, for the best

motives they can muster. Solidarity in revolt

From

absurd.

and

the only thing that balances

is

and from the compassion

this solidarity

the

nullifies

implies emerge

it

the reasons by which one can decide for or against violence.

The aim

of revolt

and reverberates

men, whoever they

all

The

the pacification of men.

is

in the assertion of are,

human

Any

revolt reaches the ultimate

limits

—and

community

of a

nature of revolt, as opposed to the rigid authoritarianism of a

revolution directed from above by "the Party,"

warmth and

authenticity of

human

that

is

it

and

It

its

reality

springs from the

love.

Revolution

resort to force in the itself

anew by

abstract,

is

and

it

a

renewal of fervor, intelligence,

name

can give to revolution the renewal and lucidity

Camus was

demanded

Communism

revolt against

effort: to

And

show

is

is

.

by

this

cancels

the only thing that

needs.

it

it

Hence one can

persona non grata with the Communists since he well as against capitalism.

itself as

Revolt strikes at every form of power that

My

it

of justice directed from above that

out and makes renewal impossible. Revolt

see that

therefore

is

seeks to guarantee itself indefi-

by the exercise of power, therefore by murder, and

nitely

is

defined by risk, limitation, uncertainty, vulnerability.

is

has to be constantly created

and

totalist

and compassion. Revolt

solidarity

based on love, revolution on a political abstraction. Revolt real,

of

14 within those limits. Humility and genius.

relies

on blood.

that the logic of revolt rejects blood

and

selfish motives.

that a dialogue carried to the absurd gives a chance of purity.

Through

compassion? (suffer together) 15

The

logic of revolt

demands

dialogue, openness, speech. Therefore re-

volt protests against the conspiracy of silence

under totalism and under capitalism,

What balances we choose to to the

one

14

is

the absurd serve that

which, everywhere, both

men's

murder but approve

protest against organized

if

seals

lips so that

it.

is the community of men fighting against it. And community we choose to serve the dialogue carried

absurd against any policy of falsehood or of free with others.

they do not

silence.

That's the

way

1G .

.

.

Notebooks 1942-1951 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965),

p. 144.

15 Ibid., p. 125. 16 Ibid., p. 126.

2 43

i

The

from above,

universal order cannot be built

from below,

idea; but rather

which

17

The

is

phrase

we

unfinished, but

Camus' idea from other passages

when men

in the notebooks:

When

basis

rest

of

resolve to

they find them-

absurd and recognize the need for revolt

selves in the presence of the it,

common

can easily reconstruct the

speak out, they define for one another the absurd.

against

words through an

in other

words through the

in other

undertake a struggle

in affirmation of life against death, they

against absurdity, in solidarity with one another. In this struggle their

own

lives

Thus

meaning and

acquire the

the absurd. This starting

is

which alone overcome

the direction

Love.

from the absurd

it is

not possible to live revolt without reach-

ing at some point or other an experience of love that

The Myth

In

man who

of Sisyphus,

has

come

does not yield to the temptation of suicide demission.

On

not agreeing to

agreed

But

to." this

man makes

the contrary, it.

—a

is still

terms with the absurd

to

form of "resignation" or

something out of the absurd by

"The absurd has meaning only

insofar as

"not agreeing"

One must spend

in fact a constant

is

one thing,

the absurd, or dismiss

or explain

it,

Once he has reached

and very exacting

rigorously excluded.

is

the rest of his

life

One must

away, or give

it

rubbing his nose in

is

world where dispersion

is

it.

He must

he does.

The

it is

clearing of the

17 Ibid., p. 147. 18 Ibid., p. 138. 19 The Myth

of Sisyphus

20

244

only a beginning.

(or

itself

ground

Notebooks 1942-1951,

man

always

if

for

if

It

it,

is

not

final. It

must under no conditions is

not suggested as an

you prefer an absolute nonvalue).

something

(New York: p. 10.

Camus went no

confrontation with the absurd, and

dead end. The experience of the absurd

absolute value in

good reason.

it.

live his lucidity in a

the ability to be undistractedly, unflinchingly aware of

purely provisional,

a

disci-

not forget

the rule. 20

This would be an intolerable exercise of solipsism

a

not

the hardest thing in the world to maintain.

Circumstances are almost always against

further. Fortunately

it

the absurd and tries to live accordingly, a

perceives that consciousness

is

is

it

19

pline. Faith, for

become

undefined. 18

else.

This something

Vintage Books, 1959),

p. 24.

else

It is is

a

not

a

mere individual

revolt— ultimately

The difficult

and

absurd and

world" opens up a

choice which

revolutionary

active

Camus

new

between

dialectical choice

and

(the yogi)

The

solidarity in love.

it is

refusal to agree to the

silence of the

heart, but solidarity in creative

and purity of

lucidity

also describes as

unreasonable

to accept "the

possibility: the possibility of a

and

a passive

religious resignation

(the commissar)

commitment

being "between

God and

—

history."

and transcendent God who "exof the absurd, nor a historical dynamic

Rebel chooses neither the absolute

and

plains everything"

which promises present

gets rid

wipe out

to

wipes out the people

it

absurdity in the future, while in the

all

who

are responsible for

the possibility of a vocation to revolt.

which

one's experiences

we

Camus

can perhaps understand

it

Oriental idea of concentrating on the act

on the merit accruing from

More

exactly, the

and

To

not verify, to

upon

call

puts

it,

and not on

act, for

intuition, the will

which

a quality

lucidity

impossible justifications for

itself.

murder

more important than if

hard-

with the

its

results or

Camus, depends not

behind the

lucidity cannot

The

as

act,

—reasons

These

life.

vouch

so

on the

for, is to

enemies

will to destroy one's

automatically involves sins against lucidity since

be maintained

bit

it

appeal to some other standard which lucidity does

abandon and muddle

is

sounds a

by correlating

itself

revolt acts

it.

moral value of an

the object

lucidity of the act.

death

maintains

the basis of a lucid indifference

and give them an appearance of quality)

without concern for quality. This, as

much on

man

without appeal" (to systematic explanations which justify

"lives

boiled, but

On

the absurdity.

all

In his refusal of either of these consolations, the absurd

seeks abstract

it

why,

and

for the time being,

illusory reasons can,

it is

thought,

one's acts are carried out with a certain quality of

ruthlessness, or heroism, or patriotism, or self-sacrifice

and

so on.

Camus

has no patience with any of this language, though the facts of heroism

and

self-sacrifice

from

are not absent

preached, because for

him preaching

is

his ethic.

They

irrelevant.

At the same time the

are

simply not

purely "quantitative ethic" suggested as a consequence of the absurd in

The Myth

of Sisyphus

repudiated by is

Camus

must not be taken too

himself

when he

seriously. It obviously

was

joined the French resistance, and

repudiated in his ideas on murder and in the stoic generosity of the

heroes in

The Plague.

Relation of the absurd to revolt. co

maintain the confrontation,

If

the final decision

this

amounts

is

to reject suicide in order

implicitly to admitting life as the

245

4

only factual value, the one that allows the confrontation, "the value without

which nothing." Whence

suicide.

to

which

is

man who

murder. The the

of others.

life

.

.

kills

we

is

men

values of suicide to their extreme consequence,

murder or the

accept

himself alone

But the

.

murder. Ours

justification of

extreme conclusions has accepted

its

This can be verified in the ease with which

justification of

value,

murder, or the

which having carried nihilism

the era

obey that absolute value, whoever

clear that to

it is

rejects suicide likewise rejects

maintains one

still

of Terror have carried the

which

is

legitimate murder, in

other words collective suicide. Illustration: the Nazi apocalypse in 1945. 21

In other words,

is

it

the

a "quantitative ethic." In

by not agreeing

to give

solidarity.

stroys in the

confronting

meaning and

in lucidity

it

affirms the value

Revolt affirms the

name

life

which

of an abstraction. Revolt

and without

which enables

and

collectively

and

the refusal to agree with an absurd

is

implemented

fully

of Sisyphus, the hero of the absurd

meaning. Revolt repeats the process

it

Revolt

social system.

The Myth it

who have

of terror

to the absurd, yet

any spurious hopes, gives

him

men

in

self-destroying

that system negates

and de-

a fortiori, the negation

is also,

of this idolized abstraction.

The

great danger to lucidity

absurdity: the

of

men

homage

ofTer to the idol.

Mankind's dialogue has one cannot reason

is

a

and

to revolt

just

come

to

an end.

to be feared.

who

about

The

The

obligation level

it

is

us, a

And

naturally a

result it

is

that

useless

—

not so

to

it is

purpose of speech in the presence of the absurd is

whom

a vast conspiracy of

who

to

are

them from themdo

so

22 .

.

.

formulate a direct accusation of injustice

against this or that economic system or

point to the fact that power

with

conspiracy accepted by those

by those whose interest

much

man

—besides those who

rationalize their fears in order to hide

selves, a conspiracy fostered

and

which the majority

the obligation to speak.

have not spoken out because they thought frightened and

the silent acquiescence in

of unquestioning acceptance

Hence

man

silence has spread all

is

power

structure.

political situation

in fact a denial of life

The is

to

and an affirmation

depends on the killing of so many thousands or human beings and implements policies which sooner or later demand and exact these deaths. Note that there are innumerable

of death insofar as

it

millions of will

ways of

inflicting

death on man.

A

rich nation can in effect "kill" thou-

sands of people in a poorer nation without even firing a shot or dropping a

bomb, simply by keeping the poorer nation 21 Ibid., p. 149. 22 "Neither Victims nor Executioners," in

246

The

in a state of

dependence

Pacifist Conscience, p. 424.

in

which the reasonable development of

of the exploitation

which

resources

its

blocked (in favor

is

and conse-

profitable to the rich nation)

is

quently people starve.

[We is

confront a world] where murder

considered

This

trifling.

is

legitimate,

and where human

is

before dealing with other issues one must take a position on

"Do you

thing can be done, two questions must be put: directly or indirectly,

want

to be killed or assaulted?

directly or indirectly,

want

to kill or assault?" All

it.

Do you

who

say

Before any-

or do you not,

or do you not,

No

to

both these

which

questions are automatically committed to a series of consequences

must modify

their

way

life

the great political question of our times, and

of posing the problem.

23

obvious that neither side in the power struggle really claims to

It is

want death or essentially a

dilemma

their professed

But Camus believes that the power struggle

killing.

in

which both

sides

must

in the end, in spite of all

humanistic and peaceful aims, be committed to unlimited

mass murder,

killing because of their implicit or explicit justification of

a justification

which

is

with approval Simone Weil's remark that

official

history

cites

a matter of

is

Simone Weil was

an example of "authentic Christianity" (she refused fact, of

Camus

of the very essence of their absurdity.

believing the self-justifications of murderers.

and, in

is

him

for

the Church)

to join

a genuine Rebel in her integrity, her solitude,

and her

capacity for renunciation.

But can one escape implication

What about Camus did at

it

I

there

so close

Camus

times speak like a pacifist and

to refute nonviolence.

To one

of these critics (a Marxist)

replied in 1948:

have never argued for non-violence ...

answer blows with

blessings.

I

I

do not believe that we ought

believe that violence

years of the [Nazi] occupation have convinced that

Is

came

was enough

Camus

murderous power struggle?

nonviolent position, his adversaries thought that to refute

Since in fact to the

in a

the choice of religious nonviolence?

another choice?

one must suppress

Utopian.

I

only say that

this legitimation

violence

violence,

we must

is

at the

me

of

which would be

refuse

all

it

...

I

to

and the

do not say

desirable but, in fact,

legitimation of violence, whether

comes from an absolute raison

philosophy. Violence

Hence

all

inevitable,

is

d'etat or

same time unavoidable and

must always be confined

from

a totalitarian

unjustifiable.

2*

to the strictest possible limits.

23 Ibid., p. 425. 24 "Reponse a E. d'Astier," p. 355.

247

In an age of nuclear war, to canonize violence and force

and criminal absurdity, and hence Camus

in

is,

an intolerable

is

practice,

a

"nuclear

In the face of the disastrous consequences of atomic war, he has

pacifist."

no other choice but "the fight against war and the very long establish a true international democracy." If a "scientific" historicism starts

efTort to

25

from the denial of God and proceeds

to build a world unity without God, the consequence will be nihilism,

totalism, the deification of force

and

justice

and the

Camus lumps

Communism

and

capitalism

since in fact the religious motives

by the

capitalist

police state. It

world of

history instead of the

which

God and

is

together under this heading,

are so conveniently advertised

West do not convince him

as

being very serious.

Camus

other hand, what of an authentic Christian nonviolence? that such a philosophy

is

possible

and reasonable. In

world a philosophy of eternity alone can agrees here with Gandhi, for

whom

the world of

grace. In effect,

On

"In today's

fact:

nonviolence."

justify

ahimsa was not

the

admits 26

He

really possible with-

out faith in God. Unfortunately, to solve the problem of killing by a

God

resort to

is,

for

Camus, no

solution. It merely raises once again the

whole question of the metaphysic of

Karamazov.

of Ivan

evil,

If the suffering of

and Camus stands by the

one child

lucid Rebel cannot choose a nonviolence based

he cannot choose God.

To

choose

God

is,

.

.

on

for

.

For

this

faith in

Camus,

side

reason the

God

because

choose an

to

explanation and hence to evade the bitter honesty of a full confrontation

with the absurd without hope and "without appeal"

human

than that of

to

any force other

honesty and courage within the confines of

human

limitation.

Camus

does not argue against God.

The absurd

is

not a denial of God.

who often appeal God as irrelevant mind and experience of so many modern as to make a basic act of faith that God

Like the radical Protestant "death of God" theologians to

Camus

him,

because e.

inaccessible to the

it is

He

simply discards the whole notion of

does not go so far

cannot be accessible to any modern believer as some of the radical theologians

seem

to.

He

simply says: "If today one could neither

outside of God, a great

demned

to sterility."

L'Homme

27 Essais, p. 1426.

248

nor act

number of Westerners would perhaps be con-

27

In Camus' eyes religious nonviolence

25 Ibid., p. 359. 26 revoke,

live

p.

354

is

doomed

to failure

because

it

:

is

man.

in fact unfaithful to the actual condition of (unbelieving)

men

based on presuppositions which most

Thus

able or even conceivable.

It is

simply no longer find accept-

in fact, in his eyes, the choice of religious

nonviolence based on an appeal to

God and

to eternity

would end only

in political quietism, in silence, in resignation, in acceptance of injustice,

one or other side in the worldly power struggle.

in final submission to

At

time, religious nonviolence

same

the

is

him

to

suspect because

it

savors of the futile desire of the bourgeois to convince himself of his perfect innocence. Christianity itself

moderns in

Marx, for

since

is

this reason.

suspect to

A

Camus,

as

many

to

it is

religious nonviolence produces

devotee a pure and virtuous conscience and therefore a sense of

its

subjective righteousness

which may blind him

deeply involved in collective guilt and violence.

he

to the fact that

We

must be very

is

not to impute this desire of moral unassailability to Camus' Rebel.

Rebel

rejects a purely religious

nonviolence

it is

because he

insists

If

revolt

absurd

not clothed in virtuous justification:

is

proud of but

—and

its

its

is

cult of integrity

and

sincerity

another complaint against religious nonviolence.

else.

has nothing to be

own naked lucidity and anguish in the presence love of man who is caught in absurdity. Revolt

mere

reducible to a

it

the

on not

regarding himself as any more innocent and "pure" than anyone

True

still

careful

without It is,

of the is

efficacy.

Camus

not

This

suggests,

inclined to accept defeat virtuously rather than to engage in efficacious

combat. For him, nonviolence in the pure or simply illusion.

The

state

is

true Rebel, according to

demission, resignation

Camus,

is

allowed to

choose neither terror and murder on one hand nor resignation, nonviolence

and

silence

easily identifies

on the

other.

authentic nonviolent resistance since, if

lucidity

it is

question arises

is

active

and courage than the use of force

take

why Camus so when

and should be highly

understood in the Gandhian sense,

In any case,

may

The

nonviolence with silence, submission, and passivity

Camus

it

articulate,

demands much more

does.

refuses to accept absolute nonviolence.

up arms, and may indeed be compelled by duty

to

His Rebel do

so,

but

with one most important reservation Authentic action in revolt will consent to arm

which

This tice

28

limit violence, not for those that give

is all

very fine

—but

it

what war-making

itself

only for institutions

the force of law. 28 institution does not in prac-

claim to be limiting violence and fighting for peace?

L'Homme

revoke,

The

escalation

p. 360.

249

of the

Vietnam war by

the Pentagon

all,

is

allegedly, in order to limit

violence!

Camus position.

come

does, however,

While admitting

in practice very close to the nonviolent

posed to close the door so only life

down one

Camus

this,

Camus

is

and edifying

which

who

kills

sup-

is

must do

29

suggesting a paradigm that

is

in certain cir-

willing to pay for the adversaries'

but has no real application in

thetically satisfying

as a symbolic

may

points with approval to the revolu-

tionaries of the 1905 uprising in Russia.

In this example

killing

ideal condition

unnecessary violence: he

to all

on the understanding that he

with his own. In

and

that violence

cumstances be necessary he lays

instance,

and

it

may

perhaps aes-

is

politics. It

may remain more

help us to take a

reserved view of the efficacy and legitimacy of force.

The

rebels of 1905

are there, he says, to restore an authentic perspective to the twentieth-

century revolution. elsewhere.

30

He was

The

not a

meaning

real

man

of precise

aware of the possibly

in practice

violence.

He

political

and

that

where

historical action,

where there

intolerable oppression.

more

necessarily

position

and doctrinaire

is

solutions. It

fatal

consequences of escalating

situations

way open might be no other way the

left

He

and circumstances are

for the use of force, in a

of liberating oneself

from

did not declare a priori that nonviolence was

efficacious in the

its

long run than force,

highest religious sense.

nonviolence and deliver not understand

To

when he doubted

preach an abstract and ideal

this doctrine into the

leaving

it,

would simply play

into the

them

to

hands of people who do

improvise and experiment with

hands of the

thinking of the problem that arises

when

violent. Perhaps, too,

for others

whose

situation

is

far

from

privileged.

of seeming inconclusive, does not prescribe a

Camus

method

make

or a tactic.

or in other words the moral climate of insight, loyalty, tactic

L'Homme

choices

He

is

revolt,

and courage

can be humanly fruitful or creative.

In conclusion, then, the Camusian Rebel

revoke, p. 207fT.

30 "Defense de

he was

then, at the risk

concerned only with one thing: the integrity and the lucidity of without which no

it,

the illuminated moralist, speak-

ing from the Olympian heights of privilege, presumes to

250

was

most people would be capable of understanding and practicing non-

violence in

29

sought

to be

did not want to dictate absolute formulas in the realm of

always new. Therefore he situation

Camus'

mystique of nonviolence although he

for this reason that he rejected a

was

of

l'homme revoke,"

Essais, p. 1707.

"is

not only [in rebellion] as

slave against master, but

slave"*

1

The

he

man

is

logic of Revolt

not that of destruction but of creation.

is

"a protest against death."

It is basically

33

The Rebel cannot

is

take refuge

toward murder and despair. "The value that keeps him on

him once

never given

tence

34

He

for

all,

cannot take refuge,

he must constantly maintain either, in the self-assurance

his feet

in exis-

it

provided by

a religious or political system that guarantees infallible knowledge.

must admit actually

a

knows.

and never

"calculated ignorance"

He

must be

faithful to

"human

32

same universal tenden-

in self-righteousness: he recognizes in himself the cies

and

against the world of master

He

more than he and the "human

affirm

limits"

measure," and he must be ready to risk even inevitable violence, because

exemption from

to pretend

this

would seem

to

be a denial of the

human

condition and an attempted evasion from practical reality.

Yet the basic choice remains accomplice of murderers, and

any system which

to accept

tion of killing, especially

this:

this

the refusal to be a murderer or the

demands above

rests directly

mass

killing,

and

the resolute refusal

all

essentially

on the

justifica-

whether by war or by more subtle

forms of destructive domination.

Over the expanse of struggle

is

going

throughout the coming years an endless

five continents

to be

pursued between violence and friendly persuasion, a

struggle in which, granted, the former has a thousand times the chances of success than that of the latter. his

hopes on

stances

is

a

human coward.

nature

And

is

But

have always held

I

a fool,

he

who

gives

up

that, if

he

who

bases

in the face of circum-

henceforth the only honorable course will be to

take everything on a formidable gamble:

that

words are more powerful

than munitions. 35

S1 lbid., p. 351. 32 Ibid., p. 352. 33 Ibid., p. 352. 34 Ibid.,

p. 353. 35 "Neither Victims

nor Executioners,"

p. 438.

25 i

—

PROPHETIC AMBIGUITIES: MILTON AND CAMUS Poets and poetic thinkers

body

their

own

—men

who

em-

construct myths in which they

struggle to cope with the fundamental questions of

life

are generally "prophetic" in the sense that they anticipate in their solitude

the struggles

and the general consciousness of

ing Milton in the 1960s one cannot help realizing at once is

and how remote from

to us

stamina

—his

periods.

He

us.

He

is

remote,

if

you

remote from us in

his

how

close

he

like, in his classic

capacity to develop his ideas in the longest is

Reread-

later generations.

and most noble

moral assumptions and

world

his

view. Yet the ideas and experiences he develops are often (not always)

For instance

strikingly contemporary.

speech in Areopagitica

borne

—an anti-Catholic tract

through the

fruit,

logians, in the

effort of

if

ever there

with free

was one

American Catholic bishops and

Second Vatican Council's declaration on religious

His concern with the dignity and

become everybody's

As

his passionate concern

liberty of the

human

to

admit that there are times when

or even like a comic tion.

strip.

There are scenes

in

it is

liberty.

now

liberty).

for Paradise Lost, without slandering the nobility of this great

we have

theo-

person has

(though not everybody's dignity or

cliche

—has

structured like a

poem,

movie

Milton sometimes has a very modern imagina-

which Satan

is

Batman. More

are unquestionable affinities between Milton's Satan

seriously, there

and the Superman

not of the comics but of Nietzsche.

Without critics of

falling into

Milton

who

the romantic exaggerations of those "satanist"

see Satan as the true hero of Paradise Lost,

forced to admit that Milton was,

The Satan

of Paradise Lost

stinately futile resistance, a

down by

superior odds.

of Satan,

still less

is

if

the

not

at least partly

embodiment

"freedom

To

all,

say this

are

side.

of heroic energy, of ob-

fighter," a loser is

we

on Satan's

who

cannot be kept

not to say that Milton approves

consciously sympathizes with him. But the element in

Milton which was "modern," that which brought him close

to us,

was

at

work in the creation of this dynamic rebel, while that in Milton which was more remote, the classicist, the Biblical thinker, disclaimed the Rebel

This essay, written in October 1966,

Review, April

15,

1967,

under the

retained the original version

252

and

first title,

appeared heavily edited in the Saturday

"Can

the original

title

We

Survive Nihilism?"

here.

We

have

:

We

he had created.

:

are less disposed to see this because

habitually inattentive to the kind of cosmology

The

took for granted.

He

cosmic whole. us so

Satan of Paradise Lost

we have become

and theology

that Milton

not for us part of a

is

stands out against a background that does not concern

much— a modern

hero against the scenery of a baroque opera.

modern man,

Milton's Satan can easily be seen as

the activist, the

tire-

mover and shaker who acts, moves, and shakes because these are his only resources: they make him seem able to tolerate Hell. They constitute less

for

him

For

a kind of freedom, a pretense of dignity.

attached to

them

—in

fact

he

this reason

is

he makes idols of them. They are his sub-

stitute for religion.

Paradise Lost opens with the fallen angels lying stunned in Hell, where

made

they have just

There

is

They go from

a very hot part of Hell to

make

there, in order to

up a plan of life.

authority.

lence.

is

life is

not good)

The

is

for long.

New York New York of today Rose

Of

is

slightly cooler,

and

and draw

program, an energetically satanic way of

that

is

good (and nothing

to be methodically fouled-up

city is a secular city,

Anon

one that

an organized and systematic resistance

Whatever God has done

perhaps the the

way

stay that

the best of things, build a devilish city

action, a diabolical

This way of

done

They do not

a crash landing.

something curiously American about them. They get up and go.

and

many ways

in

of the twenties

to divine

that he has

by cunning or by viorather like

New

York

and the Roxy Theater rather than

out of the earth a febrick huge

like

an exhalation, with the sound

dulcet symphonies

Built like a temple,

and

where

voices sweet pilasters

round

Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid With golden architrave; nor did there want Cornice or frieze with bossy sculptures grav'n,

The Whatever built

it fast,

roof

was

fretted gold.

this metropolis

may

be, the point

is

that they built

by a brand-new method. Their work was

against inertia

and

kind of victory

defeat.

at that,

ingenuity and their

own

Hence because

it

was

it

resources.

books of Paradise Lost enables us

a

kind of

was gained

victory.

entirely

The unequaled to

itself

it,

and

a rebellion

And

a special

by their

verve of the

own first

surmise that Milton wrote these

pages with special satisfaction, even though he was both emotionally and intellectually "against" this fantastic rebellion. But, in spite of himself,

253

4

own

his

character, indeed his

own

heroic struggle against the inertia im-

posed by blindness, disposed him to sympathize with

this

"sublimation"

of beaten energies.

Yet

at the

same time and

the splendor, pointless.

One might

with the

rebels,

And

despair. lion

these heroic energies are important. All the power,

versatility of satanic

technology remain illusory and

almost say that, beneath his unconscious sympathy

Milton realized even more deeply

judgment on

this sense of futility is his final

their rebel-

—a fact which his superficial readers seem unable to realize. Dazzled

by the poetic brilliance they do not see the

and

We

real

meaning

of the

poem

ultimate disillusionment with power.

its

There

is

ambivalence in Milton's Satan and also in Milton's Paradise.

cannot question the importance of the archetypal Paradise myth in

Paradise Lost.

The

title itself states

and the highest

delight,

the problem

Not

found not

man

is

created for peace,

he

a loss of self in mystical absorption

but self-transcendence in the dynamic said, is

:

spiritual happiness. In traditional language,

created for contemplation.

is

this finality of their

which, as the Zen Masters

stillness

in rest but in truly spontaneous

movement. But man's

weakness and

superficiality, his inordinate love of a self metaphysically

wounded with

contingency, makes the Paradise

between

in Milton a tension

He

unattainable.

is

it

impossible.

life

his desire of this ideal

and

There

is

his feeling that

never resolved the apparent contradiction.

He

could not find the secret of contemplation in action and so saw, in practice,

no

has become, in

When Milton there is

kind of despair.

modern

he comes

is

is

just

in

And

no solution but action without contemplation.

solution, only a

much

for

yet here too

Milton was a blind

was alley

consciousness, an obsession with illusory vitalism.

to describe the ideal life of

weak and unconvincing:

too

What

W.

life is

Adam

and Eve

in Paradise,

too contemplative for him,

apparently no

leisure, there is

nothing to do. E. M.

the

room

for initiative, there

Tillyard once compared

Adam

and Eve

Milton to "Old age pensioners enjoying a perpetual youth" because

they have to live and

more than they kind of

and

work

in a

will ever need. Strangely

society that

seems

versatile progress of

to

is

not that he

own

enough,

this

accord produces is

precisely the

be resulting from the fantastically energetic

our technology.

creative energy create Hell, then

man

its

garden which of

may succumb

it

If inertia

and lack of

outlet for

appears that the greatest threat to

to hostile

nature or to a stronger species,

but to the explosive violence generated from the utter boredom of his

own

conquests. Milton

was

certainly not thinking of this, but the arche-

typal patterns of the Paradise story already spelled

254

it

out for him.

The

Fathers of the Church had long since explored some of those implications

ways

in

If

might be highly suggestive

that

Milton

and even

an ambivalent

is

own

rebellion for their

which he

plation

these ambiguities,

sakes,

and here too he

God

is

from

it.

his instinctive disposition to seek in

make

Word

is

"God

not a

dead" theo-

is

his Pelagian taste for action

man

himself the solution to

in Paradise Lost

But somehow,

all

and

man's

a theological

it

intended to be even more

is

poem

—indeed he cannot be other-

he must be more powerful, his power

just because

poetically less convincing:

Hence

He

But

heroically powerful than Satan in the

is

contem-

his Christ a rather incredible and superfluous Savior.

True, the Divine

wise.

to tolerate the

modern. True, there can be no ques-

for Milton.

logian before the time. Far

problems

and unable

believed to be best, his theology tends to reflect

still

tion of the reality of

Jungian psychologists.

to

prone to sympathize with action

activist,

can never be seriously challenged or tested.

ambivalence which has struck deep into the modern

Christian consciousness and led eventually to the poetic protest of nine-

Rimbaud, making

teenth-century minds like Baudelaire and contradictions

which were

explicit the

Thus, though

as yet only implicit in Milton.

Milton himself was consciously and devoutly Christian, there was in him a basic ambiguity tain type of to read

One

modern reader

and interpret him

to

which

modernity

his

sions of Milton's

order

it

to interpret

is

law of

and

It

him

as anti-Christ

world of

to pervert truth

and

it

and

conflict

is

justice to their

that

dynamic struggle

to

formed

and then

tional structure of beliefs to

tic,

is

the only

profoundly

one in which power enables a few

own

ends and persecute the innocent.

power and the

in Milton a radical tension

a republican England,

was

is

satanic

superman; he

them mankind

will

ultimate chances of happiness and salvation.

his heart, his character as

structure

—the

instinctively disposed

deplores them, and he fears that precisely because of

There was

he bothers

ignores the fruitful ambiguities and ten-

Milton does not glorify the will

its

if

"satanist" reading of Milton

But Milton's view of the struggling world

pessimistic: the

throw away

—

concludes, against Milton, that present dis-

the only possible reality

existence.

perhaps inevitable, for a cer-

modern reader would be

a

that

is

mind.

possible,

at all.

trouble with a superficial

kind of reading

by

which made

in his

between

own

his battle

his

own

psychology,

revolutionary struggle for

with blindness, and the tradi-

which he consciously

held.

The

traditional

and contemplative, while Milton was romanMilton was a romantic hero who wrote as a

classic, static,

dynamic, and

active.

great classic poet. These tensions doubtless help to account for his great-

255

ness.

But they have led astray

who

of the picture,

answer as

all

who

those

are able to see only one side

on taking one horn of the dilemma

insist

to all the questions

power and truth what Milton saw

be impotence and

to

One modern mythology— which doubtless no longer to Milton but still deals with much the same archetypal with Milton's themes of power, rebellion,

But these themes have

all

freedom of the person not

The freedom and

illusion.

patterns

—

is filled

to excel.

not radical modification.

if

and

to interpret the dignity

is

Milton did but

as

hail

refers consciously

and the drive

will,

undergone serious

For one thing, the modern tendency way.

as the

and dismissing the dilemma. Hence they

in a

more frankly

"satanic"

dignity of the person, for most people,

mean

in

up

fact the ability of the individual to assert himself forcefully, to get

and overcome

obstacles,

if

knock

necessary to

generally get everybody to recognize that he nal satanic virtues

mind

is

the absolute refusal to

few bystanders down and

a is

around.

One

of the cardi-

anyone

else

change your

let

by any means, reasonable or otherwise. This means that

for you,

you can never be prevented from being the boss

And

small patch of hell.

this is

at least in

your

own

freedom. "Better to reign in hell than

serve in heaven."

To assume

He knew

monstrous misapprehension.

was and how

liberty

realities of life.

He

better than

doomed

impudence the completely

rejected as

When

is first

But

a blind exercise of will.

frustration.

to

of

all

purely subjective

a blind exercise of will

only one

is

But violence

for anyone,

talk of is

own is

boss at

all costs,

that one should never

a concept that leads

and ultimately

nowhere but

to willful self-destruction.

"freedom" today has no more validity than

a potential source of catastrophic

ness take?

is

and hence absurd. The concept of freedom which demands

that one be one's

to violence

is

whims encounter the way to overcome them:

since intelligence will not serve, violence alone remains.

mind

irrational mis-

purely subjective

opposition of objective reality, there

self-destroying

what freedom

that

implied intelligence and adaptation to the objective

conception of freedom. This misconception

and secondly

would be the most

that Milton endorsed such doctrine

Anything

is

possible,

madness.

from

What

change

his

to blind addiction

Much this,

of the current

and therefore

forms will

this

it

mad-

street fighting to a nuclear Gotter-

dammerung. In his

The Myth

of Sisyphus Albert

Camus recreated something like who resorts to a purely "quan-

Milton's Satan in the "hero of the absurd" titative ethic."

There are

all

kinds of

other heroes of the absurd, like

256

Don

affinities

between Sisyphus (or the

Juan) and Milton's

Demon

Rebel.

be

a basically hopeless situation of stupefied inertia to

Again, there

is

redeemed by

action.

What

is

fundamentally absurd (and Hell

surely

is

make sense in itself. But one can seek to do something that makes sense. The will to make sense out of free action can counteract the absurd. Here many readers of Camus seem to have parted company with Camus and, as with Milton, have turned his own myth against him. Though Camus more and more articulately disclaimed the title of the realm of the absurd) cannot be made to

"philosopher of the absurd" he

stubbornly thought to have been

still

is

preaching "the absurd" as a fundamental value ing antivalue.

As

turned upside

down and

stood on

Camus' doctrine

in a classic

which, he thinks,

to that nihilism

of revolt

head. In point of

its

anatomy of revolution ends

of the whole

opposed

a result of this,

—or as a heroically despairfact,

is

sometimes

Camus' study

humanism,

directly

the automatic result of

is

all

absolute use of power, whether in the spiritual or in the temporal orders.

Thus, though a

superficial reading of his early

the impression that

humanist and

Camus

advocated nihilism, he

who

a moderate, a liberal

position of rejecting

mass movements and finding learned by experience,

is

his

is

to give

on the contrary

"No"

to

a

in the very uncomfortable

is left

own way

a very fine

way

Camus

in solitude. This, as

to

become persona non grata

with practically everybody, because sooner or later you have polite

some

and doctrinaire generalizations of the

the facile

all

work seems

to

say a

each one's favorite cause. Since you have to keep deciding

over again in changing circumstances, you forfeit the luxury of that unfailing rectitude

which

is

conferred simply by following a large or small

flock of sheep.

Yet Camus was no individualist.

knew

He knew

and community, but he

also

the hopeful claims of

movements and

seem

to

him

to

resistance

and

the difficulty of finding them. Certainly parties

be automatic guarantees of

But he did find true

— and

Churches

communion

—did

fifties,

not

in fruitful effort.

solidarity in the clandestine journalism of the

later in the theater to

energies in the late

the value of true solidarity

which he devoted the

French

best of his

before his death.

Though Camus may have similar to Milton's Satan,

started with Sisyphus, a figure

somewhat

he soon distinguished between liberty and

anarchy, authentic rebellion and totalist nihilism, and in the end rejoined the kind of classic view of liberty

which was the one Milton himself

really held.

Camus

is

wrongly called a neopagan. The term pagan

vague, and at best

it

accounts only for the

vitalist strain in

is

much

Camus'

too

writ-

257

ings

essays like Noces).

(in early

Camus

—which

also

is

an

Christian values in a classic guise of

The word

life.

—

"tragic" here

best expressed in a tragic concept

is

used not in the sense of "sad" or

is

"threatened with an unhappy ending,"

There are

certain

basic

notions underlying Greek

When

concepts are hybris and nemesis.

the gods

and

(we would

through some chain of

Then

it.

own power

assert his

say: of reality),

in the

end the

he

is

tragedy

The most

life.

man,

— notions

basic of these

through

either

his

power

against the claims of a higher

momentum it his own

generated by his rash and illusory destruction.

But

this

mean

does not

always and simply a victory of the gods over men.

is

own

fatal circumstances, begins to defy

permitted for a while to get away with

self-confidence brings with that tragedy

merely pessimistic.

less

still

about the meaning and moral structure of

fault or simply

humanism of humanism adopting

Actually the classic

essentially post-Christian

On

the

contrary, the greatest tragedies are conflicts between the claims of various

orders

—various gods perhaps—having almost equal rights. In

a character of true nobility can in fact

example does

emerge

victorious, as

this conflict,

Oedipus

Antigone

in the final play of the Sophoclean trilogy.

is

for

both

ennobled and destroyed by a tragic dilemma: her love for her brother or her obedience to the power of the his love for

man,

state.

Prometheus

caught between

is

his devotion to the older order of telluric gods,

and the

power of the new Olympians. Neither Prometheus nor Antigone can be said to be afflicted with hybris.

But

if

even the

guiltless or unconsciously

guilty hero incurs destruction by defying certain forces, will the natural tendency of ordinary

man

how much more what we have

to hybris, or

described as satanic self-assertion, inevitably bring nemesis

bution in which man's power becomes his

own

—a fatal

retri-

destruction.

nor Satan in Milton's poem can be

Strictly speaking, neither Christ

called a perfectly tragic figure, because Satan's hybris has reached a kind

dynamic

of

there

is

stasis in

no defeat

for more.

impotent and rebellious deadlock, while in Christ

at all.

Hence he

Satan

is

always ruined yet always coming back

a figure not of tragedy but of

is

melodrama

incidentally, since tragedy requires a single unified action,

have tragedy in a

The Greek his

in the

may be. which Camus ultimately

however appalling

sense of measure, to

humanistic

A healthy

serial,

ethic,

is

fear of hybris

modern

built is

on the

fatality

it

and

We

is

entirely lacking

have swallowed without question the

melodramatic values and dynamisms of

a

and we have no

The

258

appealed in

distinctiveness of hybris.

something which apparently

consciousness.

—and

one can never

tragic dread of nemesis.

misunderstood Miltonic Satan, Greeks,

who were

probably

we

far wiser than

nemesis they

mad— with

make

who

were well aware that he

in fact very close to

is

first

realize,

whom

Those

it.

has no sense of

the gods

would destroy

confidence and unquestioning

self-righteous

self-esteem.

dynamic energies and heroism of the Teilhardian Christ. Perhaps Teilhard was able to

whose cosmic optimism Milton's Satan to

do

Chardin,

to refer in passing to Teilhard de

might be interesting

It

restores

the

all

because his complete acceptance of evolutionism destroyed the

this

and contradiction that were set up in Milton between his modern temper and his ancient world view. In Teilhard, the coincidence of the modern temper and a modern cosmology resulted in a convergence of tension

energies that remained, for Milton, in unresolved conflict.

not this convergence was

too optimistic

and

of controversy in regard to Teilhard,

But one thing

is

on the World"

Hymn

to light at the

many ways

Teilhard

is

precisely

on the

in

Whether

or

remains a point

need not be discussed here.

fact that

of the Universe) strikingly resembles the

opening of the third book of Paradise Lost.

a Miltonic epic "poet"

whose power depends

he has,

own

at least in his

creative experience, resolved the conflict

a dubious figure

it

facile

obvious: Teilhard's splendid poetic vision of his "Mass

(in his

hymn

splendid

and too

and which made

it

imaginative and

which kept Milton's Christ such

impossible for

Camus

become

to

a

Christian. It is

one thing to admire the

literary

power and ambiguity

Satan, but another to seek, unconsciously or otherwise, to

and

activist nihilism one's

revolt,

how

of all the to

way

of

life.

Camus

of Milton's

make

a satanic

has shown, in his study of

kind of nihilism has in fact entered into the very essence

this

modern power

some frightening and

portant of these

is

structures that are

now in The

conflict.

This leads

first

and most im-

that the satanic nihilism of the great

modern power

salutary conclusions.

structures represents a fatal infestation of hybris. This leads infallibly to

nemesis and to destruction

No

free

man

if

we

one of these power structures associating himself in nity

and participating

now being Most

it.

its

in

an unqualified way.

hybris, abdicating his

in the

To do

so

means

moral and personal dig-

cosmic witches' sabbath to which

we

are

all

have accepted the invitation without stopping

to

invited.

of us

seem

to

reflect that there is a choice.

the choice

cannot learn to do something about

can allow himself passively to accept and identify with any

was

man

himself.

Camus

insisted that there

was

a choice:

and

Man's true dignity must lead him, Camus

thought, to a free rejection of any system which

makes the power

of state,

259

— money, or weapons absolute values in themselves. While we seem asked to choose between

power bloc or all their

Camus, we find

man

ing ideologies above party above truth,

Thus is

means,

man

him

him, and so on. But in

and

to stockpile the

power

his life to

is

himself, politics above humanity, nation or

structure

live

fact

the cart

life

alienated

The

supposed to serve him.

theoretically to help

a

we examine

that they eventually concur in plac-

and power above everything.

department of

in every

be

to

this party or that, this

that, in reality the choice is quite different. If

claims, says

sacrificed to

this or that ideology,

state

more

man now

weapons

is

before the horse, ends are

and destroyed is

in order to serve

theoretically for

easily,

lives

as

an end in

itself

an

is

to protect

in order to

that will destroy him, in

which he worships

man, money

arms are supposed

and works

what

assemble

effort to serve

and which makes

more and more meaningless and absurd. Instead of using money life reasonable, man makes life unbearable by living for money.

make

Everywhere we look we find the same contradictions and the same order. All these contradictions are

ingly well-ordered

monium, Is this

make tries

built

and well-functioning

society

Nothing

and he

is

is

absolutely inevitable.

of a totally

new

state of

new mystique:

are going to live through

new

may

still

free to

all

fatal

on

may

and the grace of

he

and the development at ourselves,

new formula of new man. With a little God, the hard years we

a

teach us to open our eyes.

certainly help.

if

this: the recogni-

ideology, not a

accurate understanding of Milton and

reading of Teilhard,

is

but as Tillich said

humility, patience, native luck,

more

is

mind, a whole new way of looking

our world, and our problems. Not a words, not a

Man

even capable of making intelligent choices

hard enough. But our future depends above

tion that our present nihilistic consciousness

260

a nihilist city of pande-

is

on hybris and destined for cataclysm.

inevitable?

choices,

dis-

symptomatic of one truth: our seem-

Meanwhile

Camus, perhaps

a

a less naive

CAMUS AND THE CHURCH "Why

do you

don't you call

"You

call

me

are not

me

"why

'Sir'?" said the prison chaplain,

Father?"

my

condemned

Father," said the

prisoner,

"you are with the others."

1.

At the end between

of Albert

Camus' novel The Stranger,

and condemned

priest

prisoner.

cere, zealous, and not overbright priest

unbelief of a

man whom

criminal.

He

plodes at

last into a

is

The

there

is

a long dialogue

chaplain, an average, sin-

trying to grapple with the stolid

he considers the worst possible type of hardened

finally drives the

man

complete desperation which ex-

to

curious blend of Zen-Satori and existentialist revolt:

The prisoner is a single-minded moment of thoughtlessness shot a

the unexpected result of priestly zeal!

Algerian clerk, Meursault,

He

man.

felt

who

in a

himself to have been partly irresponsible but failed to realize

was willing

the importance of defending himself in terms that his society to

understand and accept. As a result he got the death penalty when,

fact,

in

much

there were enough extenuating circumstances to warrant a

lighter sentence.

One justice

of the themes of the novel

tissue of fictions

which there

demned,

when

the ambiguity

which, though logical and right

an elaborate in

is

is

no

real

—a

in

its

own

and "absurdity" of terms,

seen to be

is

game

complicated and dishonest social

concern for persons or values. Meursault

in fact, for not playing that

game,

as

is

a

con-

is

made abundantly

clear

the prosecution proves to the jury's outraged satisfaction that the

accused did not weep at his mother's funeral. In the

trial

the sentimental

exploitation of this fact curiously assumes a greater importance than the

murder

itself.

The whole

deed irrelevant

to

prosecution

is

though not particularly smart, gradually

This essay published

first

in

appeared

A Penny

sensational, pharisaical,

the actual case. All through

in

the

Thomas

1966,

and

in-

the accused,

realizes that society

The Catholic Worker, December

a Copy, ed.

trial

is

interested

and

Cornell and fames Forest

later

was

(New York:

Macmillan, 1968).

261

not in what he really did, but only in completely reconstructing his

and

personality

ments

—

make him

his actions to

fit

its

own

capricious require-

need for the complete evildoer.

its

And now

the prison chaplain, having taken for granted

that has

all

been decided in the courtroom, proceeds to work the prisoner over in the interests of other requirements: the

one must

to repent

Meursault that in

know

need for a complete penitent. Since

believe, the chaplain simply tries to convince

first

his heart of hearts

he "really believes" but does not

sure

what

and

this includes the

whole question of

feel

offended by the

priest's

him, he

interests

is

quite certain of

upon

All through the imprisonment

been treated

as

if

was not

that he

am

himself. "I perfect

if

trial,

with you," says the chaplain with

end the prisoner

Church, and society

was with the

relation with his "son"

—and a chair that

Another

men was

a distinction

that

by

reacts

society speaks,

no more than

own

you have

included), judges,

him

as a person.

a Father

whose

with a chair or a

shows up what Camus thought of the Church, this priest:

justice of

"According

God

him

to

everything.

I

the justice of

remarked

that

it

make

to

man and

the justice of God, but in

assumed that the

justice of

man

speaks. This

more

is is

taken so

Camus

which he described man's condition French

society.

We

much

When

bourgeois

for granted

by him

it.

Camus,

is

the Jesuit Paneloux

modern myth in earth. It refers more

created a great

in this life

know

God

the justice of

is

the truth of God.

subtly portrayed by

Plague. In this novel

especially to

is

justice of

God

priest,

what

his relation

he does not even think of questioning

Another

that

on

The Plague

is

also about the

occupation of France, and Paneloux represents in some sense the

French clergy under the Nazis. But he confronts

262

assurance based

with violent indignation

at large to accept

others." After all

that the truth of the verdict

German

smug

realize this since

had condemned me." The chaplain appears

between the

actual fact he has

The

a nonentity

about to be thrown out with the rubbish?

nothing and the

was the former

in

is

is

ironic sentence

as exemplified at least

that

the

considerable bite in the sentence: "I answered that he was not

is

Father, he

and

to

the prisoner has in fact

he were so complete

moral superiority, "but you cannot

jury, the press, the

table

him;

right to

able to think or even experience anything validly for

a blinded heart." In the

my

is

which simply adds

against this cumulative refusal of lawyers (his

There

interest

Meursault

his dignity as a person.

and the

he were not there, as

what does not

religion.

self-assurance,

affront that the court has visited

on

though he cannot be quite

that he believes. Meursault replies that

man

in his

also represents the

Church

moral and metaphysical estrangement

—his

as she "lost-

ness" in an absurd world.

What

him? Can

will she offer

anything more than a predigested answer and a consoling ask of

him anything more

of

God and

for

ment. But for what, precisely? Sin! Later he

the out-

learns,

Justice

penance and for a

In other words the plague

lives.

At

sermon on the

hell-fire

the punishment of iniquity, the need

return to decent church-going

Does she

rite?

than conformity and resignation?

break of the plague Paneloux delivers a

him

she give

a punish-

is

by working with the

doctors in the "resistance," that things are not quite so simple as

that

all

that such a black-and-white interpretation of social or moral crises

and no longer convinces anyone.

He

proceeds to a

new

which

position

is,

however, still unconvincing because no one can make out quite what it is. He now, in fact, demands a wager of blind faith that sounds like fatalism. In the

end he

lays

down

because, for obscure motives of his

There

is

in

The Plague

and Paneloux the

his

life,

but his

sacrifice is

ambiguous

own, he has refused medical

help.

a decisive dialogue between Rieux the doctor

have witnessed the sufferings and

priest after they

death of a child. Paneloux no longer has any glib explanation, but only suggests that "I

end is

we must

love

what we cannot understand. Rieux

have a different conception of to love this

scheme of things

love.

in

a caricature of the theology of evil.

And

which children are tortured." This

Does

Christianity

ence demands that people be tortured?

mean? To some

present

standing.

or culpable scandal

Camus' evaluation of the Church it

its

coher-

And

it is

who

they

absurdity against which he must revolt. This

ill-will

unsympathetic, but

for

that one

what the Gospel and the

Christians, unfortunately, yes.

Camus with an

not a question of

Is that

demand

which

"love a system, an explanation, a scheme of things"

Cross

replies,

shall refuse to the bitter

I

is

especially

is

—only

a tragic

is

misunder-

not unusual and not totally

worth attending

to,

since

Camus

has

retained a kind of moral eminence (which he himself often repudiated) as the conscience of a

new

his genius, his eloquence,

Camus

still

generation.

and

his

By reason

own

of his personal integrity,

record in protest and resistance,

speaks to our world with resounding authority. His judg-

ments carry much more conviction than those of Sartre, for example, who has thrown in his lot with Marxist power politics, or those of Marcel

and Mounier, who, though respected outside the Church, have exercised their influence mostly inside

it.

2.

If

we

of us

as Catholics

wish

and expects of

us,

to get

some idea

we can

still

of

what the

secular

with profit turn to

world thinks

Camus and

ques-

263

tion

him on

war

the avant-garde

vited talk

As

the subject.

a matter of fact, shortly after the

end of the

Dominicans at the publishing house of Le Cerf income and answer this important question. Notes on the were preserved. They were very instructive and have lost none of

Camus

to

their vitality today.

Camus opened

remarks

his

to the Paris

We

ing observations on dialogue.

on both

that

all

other as he

This

is.

now

are by

sides there

is

a

On

else.

this

it

is

(Camus

essential to avoid a

name

of secular pharisaism (pharisaisme laique) which in the

demands more

first

be oneself and not

the part of the nonbeliever

courteously begins with the nonbeliever),

tianity

supposes

complete willingness to accept the

also presupposes a willingness to

pretend to be someone

interest-

enough with the

familiar

openness and honesty, and

fact that dialogue requires

of

Dominicans with some

of the Christian than the secularist

kind

of Chris-

demands

of

himself. "I certainly believe that the Christian has plenty of obligations,"

Camus

admits, "but the

right to point

them out

man who himself rejects these obligations has no one who has recognized their existence." This

to

works two ways: on one hand

charitable of him, indeed. Pharisaism

is

the

man who

thinks that

is

it

enough

an obligation by a

to recognize

purely formal and punctilious fulfillment

is

a pharisee.

man who

it,

without

detects the failure

lent obligation himself,

to

also a pharisee.

is

kind of a thing,

for this

and points

as his novels

The

pharisaism of Clamence in

Fall.)

On

the other the

fulfilling

Camus had an

an equiva-

exquisite eye

show. (See especially the perfect

According

him, pharisaism

to

is

one of the worst plagues of our time. In The Stranger the whole

trial is

an exhibition of the pure pharisaism of French bourgeois culture.

Camus

no

is

less

aware of the pharisaism of Marxists,

section devoted to If it is

is

The

as

we

see in the

long

Rebel.

not the business of the nonbeliever to judge the Christian's is

nevertheless essential that the Christian be a Christian

going

to

engage, as Christian, in dialogue with somebody

ready in those days to

in

it

behavior,

he

them

Camus had run

into Catholics

who,

else.

if

Al-

in their eagerness

be "open," were willing to throw their Catholicism out the window.

True, the example he

cites is

with Marxists

Sorbonne, a Catholic priest had stood up and ex-

claimed, "I too

at the

am

not convincingly scandalous. In a discussion

anticlerical."

There are

a lot of us

what he meant and would, by now, be willing

to join

who know him

exactly

in his declara-

meant weariness and exasperation with

the

seminary veneer of self-assurance, intolerance, expert knowledge of

in-

tion, if

by "anticlericalism"

scrutable sciences,

264

and

is

total

moral superiority

to the laity. Nevertheless,

:

one

if

is

a priest,

one cannot allow oneself the rather indecent luxury of

own

repudiating one's fellow priests en bloc in order to indulge one's

wounded

vanity or

feelings. It

One

nor easy. or honest,

and renewal

let

at the

is

that

it,

neither simple

has to live with things that do not seem to be authentic alone agreeable.

One

is

likely to be impatient for reforms

coming but may never come

that are not only long in

may

quite true,

is

a priest in these times of questioning

life as

and we must admit

same time be the

target of criticism which,

has enough ground in fact to be irritating.

A

cleric

to free himself of these distressing conditions

And

at all.

one

though ambiguous,

might well be tempted

by joining some radical

minority and taking up a position from which he can righteously attack his fellow clergy. If

what he seeks by

and recognition by an in-group of that he

is

this

is

own

own ego Camus warns him

comfort for his

choice,

deluding himself.

Nevertheless, too absolutely.

we must

He

not take Camus' dislike of "anticlerical priests"

did not

mean

questioning within the Church. criticism

his

opinion and

self-

the contrary, he called for such

self-

to silence all public

On

and self-examination and he approved of

when he met

it

example, in his friend the Dominican Pere Bruckberger

Camus' notebooks abound

it,

for

("Bruck").

in spiritual nosegays like these, culled

from the

garden of Bruck's conversation "G. has the look of a hardly bear

it

priest, a sort of episcopal unction.

"Those Christian Democrats give

Camus

naively said to Bruck:

me

"As

a

their sensitivity. It to life."

as

becomes merely a

And Camus

but magnificent in

two

its

can

I

thought

all priests

makes them limit negative vocation. They don't face their faith

added: "His dream, a great conquering clergy,

poverty and audacity." Poverty and audacity were

qualities that appealed

we

I

a pain in the. neck."

young man

were happy." Bruck replied: "Fear of losing

up

And

in Bishops."

more and more to Camus. He looked for them, Church but did not always find them.

shall see, in the Catholic

3. It

would unduly complicate

this article to

the Augustinian theology of sin

and

go into Camus'

grace,

difficulties

and the reasons why he took

scandal at a certain pessimistic religious approach to the problem of

But we lent of

recall that at the University of Algiers,

an M.A.

to say, as

thesis

on "Plotinus and

one recent writer has

St.

said, that if

with

Camus wrote

Augustine."

Camus had

It is

evil.

the equiva-

not enough

read Teilhard de

265

i

Chardin instead of Augustine he would have been more

Maybe

a Christian.

so,

on the same dilemma

and

in the world,

maybe

the evil

must mean

exist in

order

He

that

somehow

is

responsible for

this

is

one which cannot

tion of structure that

unity

—

accept

is

it

in the third act.

and

to say

it

And

it.

if

permits

the evil has to

Camus

he doesn't want

go there

to

means

if it

it,

the problem becomes an

be solved by logic or metaphysics, a ques-

unsatisfactory because

is

aesthetically

is

He

cannot

like a play that falls apart

one simply accept

that

harmony and

and morally absurd.

repels his imagination. It

To demand

lacks

it

this

with resignation

"right" (in the sense of satisfactory to man's deepest sense

it is

and order)

of fittingness

really

him

in fact to

because

it

He

"right."

Stated in the terms in which he states aesthetic

and suffering

omnipotence, then

to justify the divine

will return his ticket to paradise,

admitting that

there are evil

if

impaled

less

omnipotent, then the fact that

is

become

likely to

But he remained more or

Ivan Karamazov:

as

God

if

not.

is

simply an affront to man, thinks Camus.

We

a lot of other people go along with him.

And

need not argue the theo-

point here.

retical

What

crucially important in

is

our world

scenario but evil as an existential fact. clearly to the

world

in

It is

is

not evil as an abstract

here that

Camus

speaks most

Church. The unbeliever and the Christian both

live in a

They have

different

which they confront evil and the absurd.

ways of understanding these

facts,

but this does not

and

difference provided they offer authentic protest

make

too

resistance.

much Camus

then raises the question that recently has been hotly debated as a result of Hochhuth's

and

The Deputy.

Why

and

forcefully against the crimes

Why

shall

I

I

knew

that spirit

would be

tion in the presence of force.

up

lost if

It

speak out more clearly

barbarities of

not say this here? For a long time

years, for a strong voice to be lifted

For

Rome

did not

it

in

I

Nazism?

waited during those terrible

Rome.

I

an unbeliever? Exactly.

did not raise the cry of condemna-

appears that this voice was raised. But

swear to you that millions of men, myself included, never heard there

was

cease to later

in the hearts of believers

grow

as the days

explained to

me

the real

within

it

it

lies?

and that

is

not clear.

It

was

Who

in

The condemnation had been

Who

cannot see in

this

where

does not see that this example contains

one of the elements of the answer, perhaps the whole answer

question you have asked

266

it;

which did not

condemnation had indeed been uttered, but

had not been understood.

condemnation

a solitude

went by and the executioners multiplied.

that the

the language of encyclicals, which

pronounced but

and unbelievers

I

me? What

the world expects of Christians

to the is

that

way

Christians speak out and utter their condemnation in such a

doubt can

a doubt, never a single

arise in the heart of

that never

even the simplest

man. That Christians get out of their abstractions and stand jace to face with the bloody mess that is our history today. The gathering we need today clearly and is the gathering together of men who are resolved to spea\ out pay with their

When

person.

a Spanish bishop blesses political execu-

no longer a bishop or a Christian or even a man. expect that all those will gather together who do not want

tions he

and

own

I

is

It

strong meat, and

is

it

has lost nothing of

can be repeated today and perhaps with greater

its

what the world has

Camus' challenge selves,

ways

to say to

effect

and we do when we are

them. This

We

nothing new.

withdrawal into obscurity, and

just said.

We

other.

We

give

it

someone

In a word

are uncertain, dubious, obscure.

is

to

Catholics to

all

fuss, the hesi-

finally the negation of

we have

And

dogs

yet there remains al-

out with one hand and take

else.

man

than before, since

muddle, the

promise everything and then cancel

opposite to

to be

if

is it!

And

mood.

in the

expect

can say the same thing to our-

that fatal ambiguity, that confusion, the

tation, the

we

is

We

strength since 1948.

the Vatican Council has so obviously and explicitly told listen to

.

price that has to be paid

and who are determined to pay the be something more than a dog. This

.

.

finally

it

all

out by promising the

to please

we

what

back with the

it all

everybody. So

we

up and keep

just give

our mouths shut. Fully to understand the implications of Camus' stark to see

against the

it

background of

his

ground of what has been standard turies.

We

thought and not against the back-

practice in Christian society for cen-

can accept with great good will Camus' declaration of the

necessity to protest against injustice closer at society the picture intricate,

demand we have

is

and

But when we look

evil.

not so simple.

and threads work within threads

It is

in a

on the contrary very

complex

social tapestry

and of our

in which, everywhere, are the faces of bishops, of priests,

fellow Catholics.

go

to

easy.

.

.

.

We

are involved everywhere in everything,

Perhaps that

Communism. There

are

is

we

its

is

so simple to blast

oflf

against

Communism

has

made

it

easy for us;

single-minded hostility to the Church

can always

haps

it

and we have

no bishops of ours in Russia, and we have noth-

ing invested there except hopes.

by

why

a little

we

nobody

start

it has become the one force condemn without compromise at any moment until permaking deals with Communism too. Then there will be

—

left!

Where we

see unavoidable, distressing,

and

yet

"normal" complications,

267

Camus

What we

sees the "absurd."

denounces and

The "absurd"

resists.

and come

accept

Camus

of

absurd and neant of Sartre, and his "revolt"

The absurd

of

Camus

truth.

telligent

is

is

is

to

terms with, he

not the metaphysical

not the Sartrian nausea.

the gap between the actual shape of

Absurdity

compounded by

is

the

and

life

ambiguous and

in-

false

explanations, interpretations, conventions, justifications, legalizations, eva-

which

sions

our struggling civilization with the "plague" and

infect

which often bring us most dangerously

when

close to perfect nihilism

they offer a security based on a seemingly rational use of absolute power.

we

here

It is

are forced to confront the presence of "the absurd" in

the painful, humiliating contradictions and ambiguities which are constantly

and everywhere evident

To mention

only one: the scandal of

of love, mercy,

religion

our behavior as Christians

in

men who

in the

world.

claim to believe in a

and peace, dedicating themselves

forgiveness

wholeheartedly and single-mindedly to secular ideologies of hate, crueltv, revenge, and tian

moral

war and lending

casuistry.

science before the still

find

to those ideologies the

And when

the

Church

world and repudiates

officially

support of a Chris-

examines her con-

this contradiction,

many

Catholics

ways of ignoring and evading the consequences of what the

Church has

said.

"The arms

race

is

an utterly treacherous trap for hu-

manity and one which injures the poor

an intolerable degree.

to

.

.

.

Divine Providence urgently demands of us that we free ourselves from the age-old slavery of war. But

can Council

A

effort?

II,

Gaudium

few of us

if

we

refuse to

et Spes, 81.)

Who

are perhaps thinking

has spoken without ambiguity though

it

still

." Vatimake this effort. is making a really serious .

.

Church

over! Certainly the

in official language: but

if

Christians themselves do not pay attention, or simply shrug the whole

thing

than

off, it

the ambiguity persists,

was

before.

the chaplain

The

and

prisoner in

would be any

less

it

perhaps more disconcerting

is

The Stranger

did not even hope that

absurd than the lawyers and the judges.

He knew in advance he was "with all the others"! To really understand what Camus asked of Christians the

Dominican house

stand his tory in

of Latour-Maubourg,

difficult analysis of

The

we would have

two centuries of

Rebel. This book

is,

that evening at

cultural

and

admittedly, a failure. But

remain nevertheless extremelv precious, and thev enable us through the specious claims of the power

politician

mass murder. At 268

this point

its

insights

still

to see

(so often accepted

without question by Christians both of the right and of the detect beneath the superficial

under-

to

political his-

left)

and

to

arguments the absurd void of nihilism and

we might quote

a Catholic thinker,

Claude

who

Tresmontant,

a "Rebel" against the "absurd."

means by being But the child

Camus

terms exactly what

restates in purely Catholic

is

going

from

and

to inherit also,

environment, a

especially

set

by the education he

is

of ready-made ideas, a system of

going judgments, a scale of values which, as often as not, he will not be able nations, to question or criticize. This system of values, in the aggregate of to receive

in large part

man

is

his

criminal.

the reflection of a criminal world in

It is

oppresses, massacres, tortures, humiliates

mythological, psychological and other planes.

penetrated and informed by

is

sin.

The

child

have

to

its caste,

of

its

refusal, of choice. It will

values of class,

its tribe,

of

have

will

To

in order to attain justice.

faithful did,

who

Ur

left

act of

to

nation or of

its

a certain extent

tribe, its nation, its caste, its class, its race, as

It is

access to justice, to sanctity,

make a personal make a personal act

grows up,

it

the structure of this world

not born in Paradise.

is

The

economic, mental,

political,

And

born in a criminal humanity. In order to have the child, as

exploits his brother.

and

on the

child enters into an organized world,

which

it

judgment, of

of opposition to the

and of

race,

its

social

have to leave

will

Abraham, the

its

father of the

of the Chaldees to go into a country that he did

not know. Holiness begins with a breach. Nothing can dispense this child

from breaking with "the world." In order

to enter into Christianity,

the

child will have to choose between the values of the world, the values of the tribe, its its

nation or

its

must, as

scale of values. It

of view:

it

social class,

must become

a

and the values of the Gospel.

were, be born

it

new

anew from

creature. Tertullian said

It

must renew

the spiritual point

one

is

not born a

One becomes a Christian. The access to Christianity represents a new birth. One can then legitimately distinguish between the state which precedes this new birth and the state which follows it. The state which precedes this new birth is the state which the Church calls "original sin." 1 Christian.

But does the Catholic Church

clearly

and always define the

Does

the Christian to secular society in these terms? the chaplain in

For Camus

it

certain type of

most edifying cal interests

The is

Stranger, identify

itself at

attitude,

cliches, betrays a

even though

firm

which are incompatible

manifests

It

1

Claude

is

itself

the in

Tresmontant,

commitment

it

commitment in the long

the Gospel, the true teaching of the Church, in the world. It

not, in fact, like

it

times with this society?

clear that a certain type of thinking

mental

may to

and

economic and

politi-

and the Christian mission

that speaks louder than

Metaphysics

talking, a

be vested in the

run with the message of

the peculiar absurdity of

Christian

relation of

official

(Westminister,

any words.

doubletalk, the

Md.:

Christian

Classics, 1965), p. 99.

269

language of bureaucratic evasion, which, while nodding politely

comes out

tian principles, effectively

and brute power. For Camus

axiomatic that any ideology, any pro-

it is

gram, whether of the right or the

which leads

left,

concentration camps as a direct consequence

how

matter

"reasonable" and "right"

Speaking

in

an interview

"Only the friends of

ciety,

and

It

is

it

and the

to carry out this essential task.

slavery.

That

is

said:

our job."

modern

so-

looks above

all

the role of the prophet in

fulfills

to the writer

Camus

up concentration

set

the duty of writers to sound the

is

form of

to fight against every

The Camusian "Rebel"

to appear.

who

dictatorships, the people

camps, can be in favor of war.

alarm and

mass murder and

be revolted against, no

to

is

made

it is

to

Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1949,

in

to Chris-

in full support of wealth, injustice,

artists that

Nowhere

in his

Camus

work do we

find

him

expressing any real hope of this prophetic voice being in the pulpit or in the documents of the Church, though as

He

the Church's job to speak out also.

ance

can

—but he does at

hope

least

for a

we have

seen,

no longer looks

little

he

says

still

it

is

to her for guid-

support. If she cannot lead, she

at least follow!

In the same interview, speaking of the poet Rene Char, "the biggest event in French poetry since Rimbaud," he says he expects far more from poets than

from moralists: "When you

that great force

with that pitiable thing they

primary schools there

is

call

the children

memorize the most appalling

much

It

was

is vile,

nor

class in

"La Morale'

in

One wonders

platitudes.

which if

our

better.)

The Rebel

said above that

revolt. In spite of is

close to love,

'La Morale.' " (Note that in French

—or was—a weekly

catechism

is

you are

say 'poetry'

which one cannot replace with money, which

some acute and

not a fully successful thesis on

is

detailed analysis

and diagnosis nothing

very positively prescribed. But there remains a basic ambiguity in the

book. In his study of modern revolutionary violence and his analysis of its

inevitable trend

toward tyrannv and mass murder, Camus

modern

this to the godlessness of

admits that without tice of

God

revolutionaries.

still

cannot

make

the Pascalian

(by which he seems at times to be tempted). faith

and the absurd,

the choice of the absurd.

And

the "absurd if

he

is

human 270

validity unless

men it

and

prac-

wager of

faith

is

If there is to

be a choice

of his

own

man"

of

Camus remains

consistently faithful to his steady

view of the absurd, he should proceed with other

same time he

his stoic conscience will, in the end, dictate

strangely isolated, even though,

solidarity

the

there can be no rational philosophy

nonviolence. Yet he

between

At

attributes

to

a

kind.

revolt

But

in the service of life

that joins

this

him

solidarity

in

lacks

and humanity. In other

words, revolt

legitimate only

if

it

whether of the right or of

left.

"There

"and that

one problem only today," said Camus in a statement of 1946, One thing the problem of murder. All our disputes are vain.

is is

alone matters, and that

is

peace."

However, Camus was never an out-and-out mitted the possibility of a reasons for in

mass

refuses all complicity with

totalitarianism of whatever kind,

murder and the

is

this,

God, which

strictly

pacifist.

limited use of force.

He always adHe had various

besides the rather complex one of his rejection of faith the same time implied the impossibility, for him, of

at

and pacifism. Since many can attain only an "approximation of justice" then it is futile for him to hope to avoid all heroic use of force, but he must restrain himself and exercise full, indeed responsibility in keeping the use of force down to the minimum, where

consistent nonviolence

it

is

always provisional and limited and never in favor of a cause that

consecrates

The

and

codifies violence as a

Camus'

peculiar isolation of

God and

cope with the idea of

permanent position

of faith to

which

his instinctive nonviolence nevertheless enticed

was

led

up

to the "silence of

God" by

phenomenology of language written by tentialist

who became

Camus. In

tions with the

Church without It

fact

its

policies.

his inability to

him. In the same way, he

his interest in

the studies on

his friend Brice Parain,

we cannot do

and

his sense of justice

an

when he was

a Catholic in the late forties,

associated with

the ideas of Parain.

factor in

comes from

full justice to

exis-

closely

Camus'

rela-

taking into consideration his interest in

here that Camus' dialogue with Catholicism

is

developed on the most intimate and profound

level.

Camus appreciated who sees the problem of language as ultimately a The questioning of meaning raises the whole ques-

In an age of highly academic linguistic analysis, the courage of Parain,

metaphysical problem. tion of reality itself

can language

make

and

in the

sense

if

end Parain

there

is

if

reduced to putting together a

noises in the solitude of a

asking one thing above

no God? In other words, what

point of talking about truth and falsity in that case,

is

there

is

series of

mute world? Are

no God?

more

Is

is

all:

the

not man,

or less arbitrary

these noises anything

more

than the signals of animals and birds? True, our noises exist in a very

complex on-going context of development and are

richly associated with

one another and with other cultural phenomena: but can they be true?

And

does this matter?

Or

are they merely incidents in a developing ad-

venture that will one day end in some kind of meaning but which, for the time being, has none?

Parain rejects this post-Hegelian position and returns to the classical

27

1

— ideas of language as able to provide

tude.

grounds for

it

community, once

and

of being true or false

wrong

is

to

add

not to serve the

communication becomes

that the decision

is

largely

it

is

possible,

"The

clearly.

"To name

to us.

We

are thus called

great task of

—by

says in a review-article of Parain's books: "It

we need

are not

man

These words of Parain might have been uttered

lie."

certain that our epoch has lacked gods:

Camus. And

so

not altogether

is

seems on the contrary that what

it

a dictionary."

certainly true that the twentieth century has been distinguished

It is

for

up

to the miseries of the world."

and have been uttered equivalently, many times

Camus

certi-

admitted that our words are capable

is

it

our language, and use

to take care. of

we

at least, to reassure us that

floating in a pure void. In other words,

and with

is

elementary

language has no meaning then nothing has any meaning.

If

Language has enough meaning,

a thing

at least

single-minded adoration of political and cultural idols rather than

its

for the clarity

and honesty of

speech.

official

its

The

sheer quantity of

printed and broadcasted doubletalk overwhelms the lucid utterances of a

few men But

like

Camus.

once again,

Camus remains

sober

and

Our

unidealistic.

task

is

not

suddenly to burst out into the dazzle of utter unadulterated truth but

and honest language that

laboriously to reshape an accurate

communication between men on

all social

of multiplying a Babel of esoteric

men

and

will permit

intellectual levels, instead

and technical tongues which

isolate

in their specialities.

What

characterizes our century

world as that we have give

it

back

of no use to us

.

.

themes of grammar. arate us It is

to rethink

language.

its

from the

.

.

.

We

it.

The

and there

.

not so

is

is

much

that

This amounts

we have

to rebuild

to saying that

men.

to

vocabularies that are proposed to us are

no point

in a

Byzantine exercise upon

need a profound questioning which

sufferings of

our

we have

.

.

will not sep-

.

unfortunately true that the "Byzantine exercises" not only of logi-

cal positivism

(which nevertheless has

a certain limited value) but of all

kinds of technical and specialized thinking tend to remove us from the

world in which

others,

and we

ourselves, are

the sufferings of an increasingly absurd

plunged in the dangers and

and unmanageable

As Camus and Parain have seen, we have to rethin\ situation, and we no longer possess the language with which

tion.

Such

what 272

is

social situa-

that to

do

whole it.

a language will necessarily confine itself at first to formulating accessible to all

men. But

it

will not talk

down

to

them or

cajole

them.

them

will enable

It

peasant, the scientist,

to

themselves up. Yet

lift

and the workman are

order to be clear to them

means

going

the

artist,

communicate

to

have a certain simplicity and aus-

together, their language will have to terity in

all

the

if

all

without degrading thought. This

Camus admits

not the attainment of a pure classic prose (though

he thinks of a "new Classicism") but rather of a kind of "superior banality" which will consist in "returning to the words of everybody, but bringing to them the honesty that lies

is

required for them to be purified of

and hatred."

we

point that

It is at this

can see what

Camus

asking not only of

is

but also of the Church: this purification and restitution of

intellectuals

may become once again unambiguous and men, especially when they need to \now what to do.

language so that the truth fully accessible to all I

think that everybody will readily admit that the language of the

Church that

distinguished by a "superior banality," but this

is

Camus was

talking about.

We

speaks without hatred and that she does not

we

saw,

evasive,

it

not the kind

is

Church

can certainly say that the lie.

On

the other hand, as

quite possible for her to speak in such complex, unclear,

is

and bureaucratic language that her message

is

simply inaccessible

even to a reader of some education and average patience.

With

few

a

out-

standing exceptions, the clergy, Catholic thinkers, teachers, writers, too often speak so confusedly, so timidly, so obscurely, that even are telling the truth they

sometimes wonders

if

trained themselves to

After

will all,

nations."

tell

to

keep

it

way

documents have not that

it

And

was not Camus who

said to the

the teaching of the nations

is

it!

Church: "Go, teach

all

not to be accomplished by

the triumphant utterance of totally obscure generalities. for us to be at

have no

will

say indeed that one has "told the truth" but

have gotten excited or done anything about it

they

out of circulation. In fact one

writers of official

the truth in such a

Then one can

visible eflFect.

nobody

manage

some of the

when

not enough

It is

once meticulously correct and absolutely uninteresting and

when we have clarified our speech and livened it up a bit, we have merely declared the truth, made it public, announced it to the world. Are we concerned merely to get others to hear us? We have a hearing. But how many of those that hear us, and understand what we are saying, are convinced? Perhaps we are satisfied with proving to them (and thereby to ourselves) that we are convinced. unclear. Nor,

can

we

be content that

But the kind of rethinking that

Camus—and

the world

—

calls

mands not only

the publication of official statements but the

effort to arrive at

new

aspects of the truth, in other

for de-

common

words dialogue, com-

273

munity, not only

among

believers but

between believers and unbelievers

as well.

The whole truth of Albert Camus is centered upon the idea of telling The relation of words to the inscrutable presence of what he power called the of words to identify the absurd as such. The function of words in establishing community among men engaged in resisting and overcoming the absurd. The power of words to lead revolt in a creative and life-affirming direction. The power of words against murder, violence, tyranny, injustice, death. The novels, stories, and essays of Camus explore this question from many angles, and everywhere they reach the conclusion: we live in a world of lies, which is therefore a world of violence the truth.

and murder. unless

The

we

need

tragedy that

Church on truth

We

to rebuild a

We

world of peace.

cannot do

this

can recover the language and think of peace. is

latent

behind the

peace, justice, renewal,

and

fair all

and true declarations of the

the rest

that these

is

and hope are being devoured and swallowed up

confusion and indifference of a world that does not

words of

in the massive

know how

to

thin\

and justice because in practice the word peace means nothing but war and the word justice means nothing but trickery, bribery,

in terms of peace

and

oppression.

Anything the Church may say lated into

its

opposite

—

if

to

such a world

is

immediately trans-

indeed the Churchmen themselves are not

ready beguiled by the same doubletalk as the world in which they

To

all

of us,

Camus

is

saying:

ing one's acts and intentions. out in truth."

2 74

"Not lying // is

is

more than

al-

live.

just not dissimulat-

carrying them out and speaking them

IN CAMUS:

THREE SAVIORS

AND THE ABSURD

LUCIDITY

"Lucidity" in the presence of the "(tenseness and strangeness" of the world, solidarity in revolt against the absurd: these terms roughly define

Camus' published work, though they do not exhaust the full scope of his humanistic vision. The work he was planning when he was overtaken by an untimely death opened further horithe familiar themes of

case, the central idea of

zons of love and compassion. But in any

musian humanism

is

Ca-

the clarification of man's consciousness of his lot in

the world.

own

In proportion as he becomes authentically aware of his

man

absurd— and

confronts the

finds

it

plight,

not in himself or in the objec-

Whereas he

tive world, but "in their presence together."

seeks to under-

stand himself and his world by reason, he finds that the "only bond"

between himself and the world clarity that

is

He

the absurd.

caught by a desire for

frustrated by the irrational abuse of reason

is

consents to his situation, resigns himself to

it,

human

"order." This

itself.

If

he

and convinces himself by

should be, he abdicates his

his reasoning that things are just as they

dignity as a

is

person in order to enjoy the tranquillity of a delusive

delusion

must be

Anguish must not be evaded,

for

refused. it is

The absurd must be

faced.

"the perpetual climate of the lucid

man." Language must then be used not merely to rationalize and justify

what

basically absurd, but to

is

which alone he

is

awaken

in

man

truly conscious of his condition

the lucid anguish in

and therefore

able to

Then he will affirm, over against its "unreasonhuman love and solidarity and devotion to life which his own existence. "The doctrines that explain every-

revolt against the absurd.

able silence," the

give

meaning

to

me also debilitate me at the same time. They relieve me of the of my own life and yet I must carry it alone." (The Myth of

thing to

weight

Sisyphus)

The work

He

of

constructs

Camus

is

essentially meditative, imaginative,

myths and images

The awakening and

in

which he elaborates

his

and symbolic.

main themes.

clarification of the "lucid consciousness"

Written in September 1966,

this essay

was

first

is

of course

published in Thought, spring 1968.

2 75

a matter of personal meditation

most of

on the encounter

all

much more and communion of but

:

than

it is

persons.

quently admits an attraction to solitude and silence of Ranee,

with approval Chateaubriand's

life

monastic reformer of La Trappe

—but

was

mere temptation

a

among men, develop a

to

world torn by this struggle

of

men might

language in order that

was "a humble and limited one:

he

said,

appease the infinite anguish of free souls."

than the phrase says by

—of truth

ism, chaos.

then

would

He

itself.

—to

Language used

consciousness

be present

with them,

style of life in the absurdity of a

to

language

that this attraction

was the mission of

communication within a sincerity of

fre-

immense magnitude. In the midst of a few men to preserve the purity of human measure and safeguard the clarity and

power struggle

a

it

Camus

seventeenth-century

felt

sake as well as for theirs.

new and more human

depends

had even read

He needed to He needed,

be firmly resisted.

to

own

for his

—he

the

he always

that. It

protect

clearly

protect

man

The "human

love.

few words by which

to find those

Of

task,"

course he meant

more

was concerned with the power

man

of

against ferocity, murder, nihil-

and honestly

in the service of a lucid

against his tendencies to nihilism

and

self-destruction.

So Camus, deeply concerned

ment

of

man,

is

as

also preoccupied

he

is

with the loneliness and estrange-

even more deeply

still

with the problem

of communication.

In his notebooks he writes, "Peace would be loving in silence. But there is

conscience and the person; you have to speak.

He

To

love becomes hell."

has no naive illusion that communication has become an easy matter

in the age of

TV. He

is

fully

because of the prevalence of

aware of

its

extreme

difficulty, precisely

sham communication and sham community.

who is a in bed listening to Mass on the radio. "No need to his conscience." The great difficulty facing the man

Curiously, in the next notebook entry he remarks on an actor believer

get up.

who

and who

He

really

lies

has salved

wants

communicate with

to

words or of media, but the

monly and

The

very

fact that

so systematically

his brother

not the lack of

is

words and media

are

used in order to cheat and to

man, each one struggling with the

one coping with

it

in

com-

lie.

terror of isolation

women and

an

and death, each

one way or another, not without defeat and despera-

tion in spite of pitiful

ferent into giving

and

them

futile efforts to cheat

attention.

of the question of estrangement

276

so

essay or, rather, triptych of character sketches in his

first

youthful book, L'Envers et Vendroit, deals with two old old

now

and

This was Camus'

to cajole the indiffirst clear

treatment

and communication. The theme reappears

:

everywhere in

his

work.

The

long, obsessed,

Clamence

confession of his "penitent-judge"

down

mariner-like effort to break

tween the speaker and the

and

which

the wall

Fall,

guilt has erected be-

reasoning as a

breakdown

describes this

It

human communication, Camus

use of mythical false-prophet figures (Clamence

way

twentieth-century John the Baptist preparing the

ing no news except the analysis of his

and announcing, with In particular

have an

an ancient-

Camus

finality,

the present essay

is

own

is

a sort of feeble

is

for nobody, bring-

and those of

sins

his world,

who

who

are "sent,"

mission to bring a message from a distant

The purpose of They are the "Rene-

ultimately one of salvation.

to briefly consider three of these.

gade" Catholic missionary whose mission has collapsed and

who

captive by fierce idolaters in a desert city carved entirely out of Jan, the son of the innkeeper in

held

is

salt.

Then

he Malentendu who, returning home

a distant country with his fortune, hides his identity in order to

from

surprise his

mother and

Finally there

is

sister

and

is

murdered by them

the French engineer, D'Arrast, in

goes to build a

dam

for his

money.

"The Growing

Stone,"

near a small Brazilian town and becomes in-

him

volved in a strange religious adventure which binds

cook in the fulfillment of an "absurd" and

ship's

In

naturally

nothing but general and irreversible guilt).

creates symbolic personages

explicit or implicit

country, a message which

who

of the

individualistic self-awareness of the bourgeois ethos.

In treating this theme of

made

is

men. The theme of the book could be

of authentic communication.

means

The

in

monologue, the

ironic

as the total failure of garrulous analytical

summed up futile

rest of

and

all

between

these three stories

men

we

difficult

to a half-caste

vow.

confront the problem of communication

of different countries, races, or religions

—what has become

one of the best-publicized questions of our day: we have learned to it

"dialogue." In the case of the

Renegade we have

the missionary

who comes

idolaters. Jan in

he Malentendu comes

to

a traditional situation

announce the word of God to

she has so long hoped for: to take her

call

to

pagan

bring his mother the liberation

away from

the

dank and misty

country where she

lives and bring her to a land of happiness in the south. "Growing Stone" we might say that D'Arrast comes in the name science and modern European civilization. He is a humanist. The dam

In the of

he builds will protect the favelas of the poor against he

who

Brazilian

Europe

floods.

Yet

it is

really

hears a message of "salvation" in the primitive faith of the

is

reward of

natives.

The "Renegade" with

his

unfortunately preaching himself his hybris

is

message from Christian

more than

Christ,

and the

conversion to the atrocious cult of the idol he

277

4

came

Jan comes with a message of

to overturn.

cause he

is

too complex

and too mysterious

he pays for his fantasies with his

he Malentendu

life

and hope, but

be-

communication of

in his

it,

In both the "Renegade" and

life.

the messenger runs into a wall of hostility, opposition,

refusal and, in the case of the "Renegade," total silence. Violence, torture

and murder are the reply defeat

inadequate language, and they effectually

to

it.

The Renegade The Renegade missionary has no name. Indeed, he has no longer a mission. He has no more message. His tongue has been cut out, yet his story is a monologue. The gargled interior monologue of a perverted apostle whose tongue has been removed ion!

The

of hate

in the

most savage and revolting

very style of the story has implications! This monologue

and resentment, and

obviously gives

it

Camus an

fash-

is

one

opportunity to

express himself, ironically, about the Catholic Church. But the story

not merely a satire on the Church.

than

that. It deals

It

goes deeper and

is

with the confrontation between Christianity and

munism. In

a sense

it

with which

Camus

felt

displays the ironies

and absurdities of

common

that he, in

with so

is

more complex

many

a

Com-

dilemma

others,

was

faced: the question of grace versus justice, revelation versus history, the

Church versus Communism: should one be Should one resign oneself executioners

—as

to

Sartre for instance

one, in other words, choose not so

lous politics as between that of the Catholic

a

yogi or a commissar?

be a victim or should one join with the

was not unwilling

much between

two kinds of power, two

Church with the

"Grand

Inquisitor," or that of the

police?

Camus once remarked

subtle

virtue

to

do? Should

and unscrupu-

cults of the absolute:

methods of Dostoevskv's

Communists and

of the Stalinist secret

jokingly that his "Renegade" was really

the picture of a "Progressive Christian," in other words, of a Christian

who

has been

won

over to

Marxism

in

the course of an

attempted

"dialogue" with the Communists. It

would not be

fair to say that

"The Renegade" was intended

sent Christianity, even in caricature. Yet certain

it

is,

to repre-

nevertheless, a satire

kind of Catholic triumphalism. In particular,

it

on

a

contains an ironic

estimate of the distortions and perversions of the Christian message due to a secret resentment

Renegade

is

shown

and love of power on the part of the messenger. The to be a highly questionable Christian.

And

yet, to-

gether with an intense and obstinate zeal, he combines a spirit of oppor-

278

tunism and superstition which makes

it

and obvious

easy

perverted in a most shameful fashion. This shows, Christianity

itself is

and

false

perverse. In

by being a practical atheism: what simply brute power.

Camus

way

existence of such Christians prepares the

show

However

progressiste.

enjoys a

little

the story

Renegade

and

in his

grimly entertaining for anyone

is

more Manichaean than

with the pride of those

afflicted

is

He

inferiority.

is

right-wing integralist than to

a

is

a

who

horror.

In reality the Renegade very start he

is

God

the very

that

for totalist atheism

explains the existence of mass-man. Unfortunately the to

ends up

it

adores under the guise of

it

be

to

like, that his

fanatical theism

its

evidently intends to

rudimentary "character" closer

you

if

him

for

know

does not

love, only hate

Christian.

who

—but

his hate

in the language of the Gospel. Because he has been subject

and contempt of

the indifference

the exercise of power.

He

wants

to

he wants

others,

From the own

resent their is

all

masked

his life to

to assert himself

by

be a misisonary in order to "conquer"

But he wants them

people

who

also to

be morally inferior: they must be not only idolaters but the most

are inferior even to himself: primitives.

wicked and perverse of

man

the

And

idolaters.

he, the missionary, the

with the power of his word and of his virtue.

less

of the wicked." But he discovers that the

violence

is

will

power

and

to

"I

have taught

know now what

me

the lesson,

to

and

respond I

know

one must square accounts with

tongue

I

is

overcome.

sacristan of the

we meet him he is planning to shoot another Christian who is on his way, this time backed by the French military,

bring the message of mercy to the Salt

side,

He

dumb

as

missionary

Renegade,

of their silent ruth-

greater than that of his virtuous speech.

Far from being a Christian martyr, he becomes the idol,

have the delightful

by the power of the word only over an

satisfaction of "reigning at last

army

He

pure one,

inhumanity

of holy faith, will confront their wickedness, their

love.

city.

"But

know,"

I

my new

to the message,

that they have reason .

.

."

"The day they

learned to adore the immortal soul of hate ...

myself (to the idol) and approved his order of evildoing,

I

I

says the

masters

on

their

cut out

my

abandoned

adored in him

the evil principle of the world."

In his notebooks for 1947,

when planning his play on the Russian Camus mentions a Russian ascetic

revolutionaries of 1905 (Les Justes),

who was

"mystical and scrupulous" and who, like the gnostic Marcion,

lost his faith

when confronted with

evil.

A

few pages

later

he refers to

Berdyaev's remark that a certain Procurator of the Russian Holy Synod (a religious autocrat

and ideologue) was,

like

Lenin, a

nihilist.

Inci-

279

dentally, Charles de

Foucauld

books, but there

no sign of any connection between him and the

Renegade

mind

in the

cauld thought

time in the note-

this

notes ironically that Pere de Fou-

French military occasional

to furnish the

mind"

state of

He

Camus.

of

normal

it

mation on "the

is

mentioned about

is

of the Tuaregs. But

we

infor-

also note that at

for whom one can feel any and the missionary whose coming brings some semblance of human hope to the city of despair. So Camus

the

end of "The Renegade" the only people

sympathy are the French

some

also, to

culture to

colonists

was able and willing

extent,

Camus

In "The Renegade,"

satirizing Russian

is

than Christianity, and yet the language

what he believed

against

to identify

himself with the

which he belonged!

was

Christianity

to

Marxism even more

that of his ordinary complaints

is

be a Christian theology of

evil.

a servile submission to an unjust order

For Camus,

which "had

to

be accepted" in blind faith in order to give "glory" to an inscrutable

Camus, Christian

authoritarian God. For

the declaration that evil

glory to

God and were

His power over the This, certainly,

What

God

faith in

necessarily implied

and suffering were "right" because they gave

in

some sense necessary

to establish

and confirm

earth. caricature,

is

and we need not pause

to discuss

it

here.

Camus the affirmation of the absolute power and justice of God, even when completed by a reverent bow to His mercy, amounted to a denial and rejection of man. To affirm God was to justify the suffering of the innocent, to set up abstract values is

important, however,

against the flesh

This

is

a

and blood

is

that for

of living

well-known stereotype

man, and

is

said to involve a radi-

calumny, a devaluation and rejection of man. Ultimately

cal

idea, derived

making over living as

if

from Feuerbach, that man all

his

own powers and

is

treatise

L'Homme

on revolution,

the place of

God and

into a future that he

sides of the

same

abstract religious

values

point

Camus

an imaginary

essentially his

is

by

God and

own. But Camus

man's

human

revolution.

and Marxism

is

value and reality

For Camus, then, the

only a choice between two

two kinds of absolutism and alienation

in

political systems are preferred to existential

— to man, his personal

The

Marx's

Marxism itself (as he did in his Marxism has put history in

all

must achieve by

coin,

and

is

revoke), for

has projected

choice between Christianity

this

religiously alienates himself

capacities to

he were deprived of what

turns this concept of alienation against

is

to prefer ideas to persons.

— Christianity

and his human freedom. "The Renegade" is, then,

which

human

dignity

making

in

that there

nothing surprising about the conversion of a progressiste chretien

280

a

to

cult of history

way for The Renegade was a

and of absolute

justice.

from the beginning adored power, and face to face with brute violence he

came

what he

really

adored. Here

at last

really sought: "implacable truth."

fanatic

was only

his adoration

who

thinly

meekness and mercy: when he

a Christian exterior of

disguised under

the Marxist

in fact prepared the

Marxism. Christianity has

to prostrate himself before

had

he had found what he had always

The Renegade

alleged that the dog-

matic and authoritarian formation of his seminary days

had deceived

him: "They had fooled me: only the reign of wickedness had no fissures in it!" He who seeks an absolute perfection "with no fissures in it" will, according to Camus, eventually yield to the attractions of a totalitarian

system built on murder. ness, fallibility,

We can was

see

He who

loves

man

will respect

man

in his

weak-

and contingency.

by

instinctively

this that

though Camus was ostensibly anti-Christian, he

groping toward an authentically Christian interpretation

of man's condition

—an

interpretation

longer find in institutional

which he thought he would no

Christianity

and

in

its

pronounce-

official

He laid the blame not only on the Church as institution but on what he thought was the Christian concept of God as an absolute authority and implacable judge, demanding impossible perfection and ments.

creating evil in order to punish

it.

Jan

The

title

of the play

what the problem communication

Le Malentendu ("The Misunderstanding") tells But it does not warn us that the question

will be.

home

village

They

European country, returns

with a loving young wife he has recently married are intensely

happy

in their love,

way, believing Christians. Jan has come

to

in

to his

North

and they are both, by the

announce

he has made his fortune and wants

sister that

of

will be openly discussed, ironically or symbolically, for

entire scenes. Jan, a citizen of a Central

Africa.

us

to his

to take

mother and

them away

to a

land where they can be happy. But he also wants the pleasure of surprising them, and in order to play a rather elaborate practical joke on them,

he separates from his wife and presents himself

The mother and sister Charles Addams cartoon

at the

inn as a solitary

stranger.

are closed, hostile, lugubrious beings

pair of

characters. Martha, the sister,

parody of

existentialist

murdering

is

—

almost a

gloom, hatred, and despair. These two have been

their rare guests in order to save

up money and go

country "where the sun shines" and where they can at

to a far

last smile.

The 281

"misunderstanding" becomes very complex and begins

to

misunderstanding being

several different levels: the root

operate on

in fact that of

Jan himself. Maria, the only really lucid person in the whole plav, senses

and warns him

the danger he faces is

incapable of doing

say

who

he

And

this.

to

because he cannot speak out simply and

he becomes involved in one tragic complication after

is,

another and finally pays with his simplest of

The

human

all

play

speak simply and directly, but he

messages

for his inability

life

—the

to

own

revelation of his

definitely symbolic. In his notebooks, jotting

is

the

deliver

identity.

down

ideas

Le Malentendu, Camus suggested that the inn world. And the world, as Martha suggests, is only

before he actually wrote

might symbolize the

"a place to die in." Martha's philosophy gives is

it

is

the pseudo-lucidity of willful distortion.

It is

pure despair.

Its bitterness

a certain clarity but she does not really see things as they are: hers

the trouble of

coming

The world

into

it,

when

Martha even speaks

inhabitants.

nobody's home.

reward would be death. Yet

his only

he must come into the world and receive death

at the

is

to

hands of

its

absurd

which has overtones

of Jan in a phrase

"He who

of Biblical messianism:

is

and estrangement. Jan could have saved himself

a place of absurdity

come!" But we cannot simply say

that Jan represents Christ.

Martha's entirely closed and loveless view of the world and of

Camus. She proposes

certainly not that of

questions: her arguments true

communication

which "no one

is

and

and

of peace.

and mutual

terms,

He

trust based

Love

is

vain and pointless.

can never find

problem

War

in

rest

Man

has no

and reassurance

in

this view.

that Jan refuses to speak out in

know

II,

that

Camus,

faith. all

in a talk to the Paris

For him,

meant

to the troubled

world.

to represent,

among

It is

too, the great

simplicity.

Dominicans

reproached the Church for not announcing a

clear,

after

World

unambiguous

quite possible that the Christian Jan

other things, the Church. However, he

certainly does not carry this symbolic

282

that

one

clearly, declare himself,

is

message is

is

on genuine understanding.

even though he does not share her Christian

We

world

She believes that if Jan would only show his love in plain and obvious this nihilistic philosophy of Martha would be refuted. Maria comes to representing Camus' own ideas on love and communication,

Maria does not share speak out

closest

on the postulate

real order of the

indeed a sort of metaphysical ground

facts,

futile existence.

home and no hope solidarity

The

life is

which he himself

ever recognized." Absurdity, estrangement, loneliness,

misunderstanding are basic for a baseless

thesis

actions are all based

not possible.

is

a

burden alone. Maria

is

more

Chris-

tian than he

and she has none

is,

which— after

of the plav. in

the

mother and sister— Maria's faith that

Le Malentendu

murder is

sage in the world. But

concerned with the Christian mes-

and complicated ambiguities not

Christianity. Jan speaks with his curious

because he

a Christian only but because he

is

pean. His absurdly contrived surprise

terms:

it

exist

"There are

.

let

It's

to

be recognized, one

to

tells his

own

favorite char-

Why make

of love.

where one simply has

cases

one wants

on appearing .

wisdom

She urges Jan to walk in and

:

the confidence

It is

that speaks. Maria, one of Camus'

speaks rather with the

where none

.

modern

rationalized in familiar

is

supposedly the voice of "reason."

is

mind

of a scientific

When

twentieth-century Euro-

a

him to "study his family objectively." He will thus make them happy." And he will "invent ways of being

recognized." This

is.

is

will enable

be "better able to

acters,

the suicide of the

not to be taken merely as an attack on

is

it

and

of Jan

scene

last

brutally rebuffed, certainly indicates

at least partly

is

The famous

of his ambiguity.

tell

them

difficulties

who

exactly

everybody

act like

name. ...

you

If

he

else.

insist

be what vou are not, vou will get everything mixed up.

to

not healthy.

.

.

.

There

is

only one way: to say 'Here

I

am' and

vour heart talk."

Maria goes on tells

to spell out this simple theory of

am

Jan exactly what he should say: "I

have lived with her by the

happy enough and

sea,

.

and "unjust."

tion of things as inaccurate

your son. This

under the sun

have need of you.

I

.

communication. She

."

.

.

.

but

is

my

wife.

was not

I

I

yet

Jan objects to this presenta-

He

wants

to

defend an image

who is needed bv his mother and sister but This may perhaps, on examination, seem a bit arbi-

of himself as Savior, as one

does not need them. trary: but

Jan

is

it

fails in

important for Camus' line of thought.

communication because of

whom

ing happiness to those Savior it,

who

is

his identity' to

he

his one-sided idea that

he himself does not need.

He

on

insists

is

a

is

it.

bring-

generous

has looked into their need, studied the problem, understood

and responded

Everything

He

is

to

it.

logical.

"J'ai

And

."

compris qu'elles avaient besoin de moi.

.

.

even the apparently plavful business of hiding

part of a logical

—and

complicated

make Mother and Martha a little more happy! Jan is a Savior who observes those he wishes

—plan.

It

will all help

to save, analyzes

them,

understands them, studies them as their superior, and without consulting

them arranges everything

to suit his abstract plan for their salvation.

decides he will manipulate their lives (whether thev like surprise perfect.

them with It is

the gift of happiness.

But

something of an improvisation.

his plan

He

is

it

or not)

He and

not completely

does not quite

know

the

283

And

"right words."

"while he was looking for his words they killed

him!" Maria told him from the

first

that he did not need to look for his

words: he already had them. But he had

to

and distinguish them from the words

his

many

fact too

words of

why

to excuse

Maria

and

and worldviews, words of

things are

what they

are,

rationalize his mistakes

were not

justice

love. If Jan really loved,

he meant because his love would by

Men

itself

had

in

to others:

words

politics,

and duty, words

too late to rectify them.

it is

sees that the real source of all this confusion

gence but lack of

and

projects

words of

when

He

his.

many belonging

words, some of them his own,

theories

to explain

recognize the words that were that

not lack of

is

he would be able

make

intelli-

to say

what

that clear to him.

know how one ought to love. They are never content with anyknow how to do is dream, imagine new duties, seek new and new homes. But as for us we know that we have to make haste

never

thing. All they

lands

and love share our bed, give our hand, don't

dream of anything.

.

.

fear absence.

But the love of

.

men

When

you love you

in a tearing apart.

They

cannot prevent themselves from abandoning what they prefer.

The

root of this error

is

abstract reason. In order to "see clear" he

and from her he

dies.

love,

There

is

and

his veneration for

to get

away from Maria

Jan's distrust of love

wants

which "confuses" him. But when he

deep unconscious irony in Jan's

last

is

away from her

words

to

Maria:

"I

am doing what I have made up my mind to do and my heart is at peace. You are turning me over for one night to my mother and my sister. What is so terrible about that?" The irony consists in two things: first in the self-righteousness of the "man who has made up his mind," who is doing what he himself

But the

wills,

cost of that peace

cliche with

its

is

and whose "heart

is

the rejection of love.

implicit syllogism: "All mothers

and

at

peace" with

And

itself.

then the ethical

sisters are

loving and

You turn me over to my mother and sister. Thereme over to loving and life-affirming beings"—who drug him and dump him in the river. The real "misunderstanding" is to life-affirming beings.

fore

you turn

"understand" according to

this

kind of naive and unrealistic reasoning.

D'Arrast

So Jan too

fails to deliver his

message of salvation.

What

"happy" ending.

284

Is it

convincing?

about D'Arrast?

and communication, and

"The Growing Stone" is a myth the story has what the author obviously intended of solidarity

as

a

positive

and

In 1949

Camus some

incorporates

and used

rite

visited Brazil,

of his

own

and the

He

experiences there.

this material to create the

"The Growing Stone"

tale of

Macumba

Macumba

attended a

described in the story.

and many of the characters are based on those he met there. The driver who, in the story, is called Socrates is based on the chauffeur who brought Camus to Iguape and whom Camus in his note-

He

visited Iguape,

books nicknamed "Auguste Comte." Most significant of

vow

—to carry a huge procession — was actually

of the ship's cook

in a penitential

There

a "black-bearded

man"

carried

it all

under the

the

way

to the

and the

stone,

the strange

his

Church. In the

foreigner, the

Camus

witnessed by

on

Church Iguape.

at

head a rock ten kilograms

heavier than the one in the story and, in spite of to get

all,

stone on his head to the

some

difficulty,

story, the ship's

managed

cook collapses

French engineer D'Arrast,

himself obligated to take up the stone and

the

fulfill

vow

feels

for him.

The story is a recit-mythe which reflects the profound impressions of Camus himself in his most intimate contact with South America. It tells us of Camus' own inner feelings about his relationship, as a European, with the primitive and abandoned people of responsibility

toward them and

Growing Stone"

is

his

remote continent:

this

his

need for solidarity with them. "The

in fact a meditation, in the

form

of a parable or myth,

on the relationship between the old established European-American civilization

and the colored and mulatto cultures of the emerging "Third

World."

Whereas

in

both "The Renegade" and he Malentendu the problem of

communication and

difficult

is

and indeed impossible because of the closed

whom

hostile attitude of the ones to

message, here the situation

warm, and open. friendliness. Even in the

When

is

the "messenger" comes with his

The

quite different.

people are simple,

they speak, they speak with an almost comical

their silence

is

The

expectant.

story reaches

long silence of the Negroes in the favela and ends

these breaks the silence, asking D'Arrast: "to

whole everyone

friendly,

is

Socrates pities the

European

and there

he does not go

cannot conceive of a

life

sit

to

climax of

here with us." But on the

a typical conversation in

for his "impoverished" civilized

country," says Socrates, "you have fesses that

is

its

when one

life.

which

"In your

Mass but no dancing." D'Arrast con-

Mass.

"What do you do then?"

Socrates

with neither Mass nor dancing. Bad enough to

be without dancing: but not even Mass?

"You

Church, without anything! Stay with us!

love you!" D'Arrast's answer

is

that he does not

know how

I

are a

Lord without

a

to dance.

285

Here Camus

obviously confessing his

is

own

characteristic attraction to

the pre-Christian primitive world, the world of dancing and nature

rites,

the world which he idealized in the Greek-Mediterranean culture which

had been

his

glimpse of

dream from the time of his earliest work. Now he gets alive and actual in another form, in South America.

it still

him

fascinates

as primitive art

and culture have fascinated

many

so

a It

of

us in the Western world since the Romantic revival. This implies a

and expressed preference

definite

The

ship's cook,

for the primitive over

ment

of

own

culture.

conversing with D'Arrast about Europe, sums up what

he regards as an impossible situation: "You buy and

And where

our

command!"

the police run things, dogs are in

What

filth!

It is a

judg-

sell!

Europe with which D'Arrast expresses no disagreement. But

this

only accentuates his sense of homelessness and estrangement. "In Europe

was shame and anger. Here

it

sick

exile

and solitude

and agitated madmen dancing themselves

The vow

in the midst of these

to death.

of the ship's cook (and of the black-bearded

." .

.

man

in the real

Iguape) obviously suggests Camus' favorite mythical figure, Sisyphus.

For Camus, Sisyphus, the "hero of the absurd," by his impossible

embracing

its

task.

Having

absurdity, he has

ine that Sisyphus

"The Growing

is

is

not beaten or frustrated

finally elected to give

it

meaning by

freely

overcome absurdity, and we must "imag-

happy." But in the curious religious procession of

Stone," so like the

way

of the Cross, the mythical figure of

Sisyphus merges strangely with the historic and religious figure of Christ

on

any

his via dolorosa (a figure so alive in Brazilian folk art in

D'Arrast has been compared to Simon of Cyrene. There

is

case!).

a definite

resonance here which echoes the Gospel account of the Passion. Impulsively and for no apparent reason, the ship's cook has roped

D'Arrast into his vow: "You will help

me

keep

my

promise.

.

.

you ever make any promises yourself?" (D'Arrast lamely admits once "nearly" did.) "You are going to help will be as

The behind that

it

it

when

surrounded by a few penitents, the cook finally collapses

go down into the

to the end.

promise and

it

and

is

is

an exciting one.

unable to

We

rise again,

foresee

D'Arrast

honor on the balconv among the "notables,"

street,

take the stone on his

own

head, and carry

But what end?

a substantial

into the javela

286

my

description of the procession, with the ship's cook struggling far

Instead of carrying the heavy stone into the

was

keep

Did

though you had made the promise yourself!"

will hastily leave his place of will

me

.

that he

Church (and

this after all

element in the cook's vow) D'Arrast carries

and

sets it

on the

floor in the

it

down

middle of the cook's poor

cabin.

There the Negroes slowly and

nothing

came out

way. Finally one of them

this

a curious ending, and

It is

"Sit with

says,

us.

raises certain questions

it

how

understand

fully able to

and evidently not

at all,

gather around him, saying

silently

things

." .

.

which we

shall

consider before ending this essay. First of

cept the

ingless.

The

at so

much

and laying

cost,

alternative—laying

ingful in his eyes: but It is

it

it

and

sary to reject

He

cannot

ac-

before the altar

mean-

is

cabin— is evidently mean-

in the

remains quite ambiguous.

rejection of

God and

down

it

down

What

he saying?

is

acknowledgment of God means

a repetition of his thesis that

preciation

obvious enough.

is

as institution. In his eyes, the gesture of taking the

Church

heavy stone,

Camus

the intention of

all,

man. And

by that very

that to set things right

it is

a de-

neces-

acknowledge man.

fact to

The Augustinian concept that the love of God was the ground of true communion among men because the caritas for God and man was one love, not two, apparently never struck Camus, though he knew his Augustine up is

One

to a point.

God

that the love of

is

most

of Augustine's

worthless

if it

characteristic doctrines

does not imply

communion with

our brother: and the living unity of those united in charity forms one body, the Mystical Christ, "the City of God." Here, one would imagine,

was

really

his

kind of communication and solidarity

a basis for the

looking

for.

But we

repugnance for the pseudo-Christianity that has so deformed the

Veritas caritatis

Instead,

and the

caritas veritatis of

Camus comes

feels that the

ending

is

his intention.

have thought about the Church, the

was

meaning a

of his difficult

promise

to

God.

maxim

and

of liberal

Yet in reading the story

what the story itself has told Whatever Camus himself may

inconsistent with

us about the people he claims to love.

the

Augustine!

out with a rather feeble

humanist morality. One respects one

Camus was

cannot question the sincerity or the reality of

And

ship's

cook evidently believed that gesture was precisely that

and

sacrificial

this

could not be

made

clear except

obvious means of taking the stone to the Church. Absurd, perhaps, but fits

in

with a certain primitive logic which

primitivism

Camus

feels

is

that of the people by

feel that the

gesture of laying

down the Camus

anything whatever to the poor Negroes.

somehow

does, but

we

not perfectly convinced.

it

whose

himself attracted. If then he loves the cook,

why

The

reader

stone in the cabin

means

does D'Arrast not respect this deep and sincere intention?

does not

it

by the

insinuate that

it

are left with the uneasy feeling that he himself

is

He

been communication. There

tries to

ends his story on a note of victory: there has is

solidarity.

Oh

yes, there really is\

All

we 287

we

can say

is

that

ending

is

dubious and a

hear the author's

shrill declaration,

The

bit sentimental.

The

nothing more.

an

story turns out to be

edifying liberal daydream rather than an effective and poetically con-

vincing myth.

At

this point

interesting to notice that

it is

Camus

first

considered an-

other ending (in his notebooks). Curiously enough, in this alternative,

D'Arrast takes the rock and disappears with

into the virgin forest!

it

A

return to the primitive origins! This was perhaps a bit too arbitrary and too stark: but

quasi-religious feeling of

what Mircea Eliade

or

Camus had a The Here we

science). .

.

awe and calls

name

in the

is

are the

up

impulse was

but in the

itself

name

of a

attraction to primitive unspoiled nature

myth

"the

Then

of the eternal return."

but "the most miserable of the huts.

laid in the hut, last,

we

take the

last

this

place

among

was perhaps what had come

he must have reflected that Communist this

first

God

the last."

Camus

attracted by the Franciscan interpretation of Gospel poverty

and humility, and gave

of

second thought (perhaps accompanied by a twinge of constone

.

was always

Camus'

significant to note that

it is

an implicit denial of man, not

to his

mind

would hoot

critics

at

here: but it,

he

so

too.

Germaine Bree, who has written what is perhaps the best book on Camus to date, says in connection with "The Growing Stone" that Camus remained "fundamentally hostile to that humiliating image of ." Here we find him turn to it man which Christianity presents. .

and

rather spontaneously:

.

then, of course, regretting the fact.

But

it

is

hardly a "fundamental hostility."

His third attempt was, he thought, the lucky one. But when we cover his hesitations

we

he cannot go to Mass

either.

the favela say "sit with us."

with

ending

this

might ask

They did not can do

is

Europe,

to the

by the It

is

is

to

is

himself?

will settle

all

He

if

they perhaps

cannot dance and

the poor Negroes in

very nice! But the

main

trouble

ask the kind of question a child they do then?"

dance, they did not go to Mass, and the best the reader

surmise that D'Arrast built the

buying and

in the favela.

to the virgin forest

The

dam and went home

selling, to "all that filth,"

and

to a society

to

run

"by dogs."

just not conceivable that

gnant and perhaps

288

But he

That

when we "And what did

police, that is to say,

Negroes

Camus

revealed

at this point:

Do

are given grounds for doubt.

reveal to us a deep uncertainty in

dis-

he remained "sitting" with the

symbolic gesture of D'Arrast

is,

silent

then, a poi-

futile confession of nostalgia, the desire to return

not

but to the primitive hearth, the sacred center of the

neolithic hut, the silent family, the

place of dances.

Mingled with

home

this

ruled by the Great Mother, the

the Judeo-Christian concept of the

is

"poor" as the "sacred remnant," the true Israel, the logical

Anawim,

the eschato-

people of the future. This concept of the poor in the "Third

World"— the

among whom Camus

poor

himself grew up in Algiers— is

very important in his early essays, and in his later notebooks he thought of returning to this concept

and developing

But

it.

in

"The Growing

Hence we have an attempt at "communion" with primitives, but a communion without transcendence and without real immanence a communion on the level of Stone" the idea

as yet only obscurely grasped.

is

—

edifying fraternal sentiments, a love without metaphysical roots.

"The Growing Stone" is, of the three works we have considered, the one which gives the supposedly positive answer to the problem of communication. Where there is openness, humility, love, and the willingness to accept the obvious limitations of a certain human measure, communication,

though never absolutely

lead to solidarity. D'Arrast

Brazilian people.

He

is

perfect,

open

may become

to the

and may

possible

kindness and simplicity of the

has enough sense to see that he needs them even

more than they need him. This

is

one point in

certainly

his favor.

He

does not repeat this particular mistake of Jan. Yet at the same time, at the

end of the

his

own

story,

one cannot help thinking that D'Arrast has imposed

one-sided European solution on everyone else after

worked out

a message that

Fortunately the people are that this

could

is,

all

like Jan's, rather contrived

friendly to him.

sudden reversal of meanings,

mean

instant death

among

this

But one can

unexpected

real primitives,

He

all.

and

easily

ritual

has

arbitrary.

imagine

ambiguity

more open

tran-

to

scendence and more truly concerned with the validity of their relations it is, we Camus and

with superhuman powers. As the real one attended by

(Camus-D'Arrast)

is

reflect that at the

if,

arms

as did D'Arrast,

the next day,

Camus

strongly that this involved a radical

right!

able to carry the

most humble of the huts."

this will

very promptly uncrossed

and of course they were both

Camus would have been

of Sisyphus into "the

(both

the visitor

asked not to stand with his arms crossed as

prevent "the descent of the Holy Spirit." his

Macumba

the one in the story)

He would

One

doubts

vowed

have

and dangerous confusion,

stone

felt

very

a failure

of communication.

A joke there

who

is

told about

two men who

lived in the

same apartment

was only one key. One evening they were out returned

first

together,

agreed to leave the key under the doormat.

other returned he could find the key nowhere.

He

rang the

to

which

and the one

When

bell,

the

and the 289

— one appeared

first

at the door. "I

thought you were going

under the doormat," said the other. "Oh the

way home

of Jan.

seems

He

to

thought of a better hiding place.

I

wanted

some extent which

the terms in

he sought

In the end, then, is

.

This

is

on

the tragedy

And

ways of being recognized.

it

understood without explanation,

his gesture could be

way"

of being recognized as a brother.

we must admit that the much the same as

played by Jan: and there

is

no

and contrived

the arbitrary

why

reason

artistic

"while he was

lost his life

communication

"successful"

in reality

should not have

.

."

be the failure of D'Arrast. Instead of accepting

to

to "invent a better

of D'Arrast

game

to invent better

key

to hide the

yes," replied the first, "but

still

D'Arrast too

looking for his words"

except of course that everyone was very friendly.

is

To

solve the

no

solution. It just does

However,

way

if

problem merely by making everyone friendly

away with

the symbolism of

"The Growing Stone"

artistically successful, the idea

Camus

is

Man The

world of confusion and

conflict

ened by

man hoped

at times

violence.

to

His peace

lievers." In other

to

man, by

his

sacrificing

man

at the stake.

and power absurd task

Cross. In the context of contemporary

like all

290

men

To

:

they

would

some

be a "believer"

persecuting "unbefidelity to

God

God, not by loving one's

And

this led inevitably to

Marxism and Fascism. For

discredited.

—his

life,

to

stone, or,

Man if

himself, like

you

prefer, his

the white European, the South

American mulatto, and the black African must together even though their labor seems futile. It that they will arrive at

and

Camus

into an ideology of

expense of the weak.

and Messiahs are

must take up

past,

to control the course of history for the ad-

at the

secular mystiques of history

then, Saviors

is

and would understand and love one another.

neighbor but by burning him

Sisyphus,

Man

as his other self

words, one must be willing to prove his

God

solidarity in a

constantly threat-

is

to seek reassurance for oneself in

effect,

by preferring

man

in the

message would come from heaven, a Savior

power and authority seeking meant, in

human

and

faced with the

appear hopeless.

Camus, the message was perverted

vantage of the powerful,

not in every

level

is

be received and understood by

accept his Gospel of peace Instead, thinks

is

communication with him. In the

that a

would enter the world

Camus,

may

his incapacity to "recognize" his fellow

to enter into frank, simple reflects,

struggle to achieve

and

fatally attracted to nihilism

own

its

on earth (says Camus)

absurd task of Sisyphus.

advance

trying to express remains

worthy of respect and sympathetic attention on context of his thought.

in

the problem.

sort of simple,

roll is

the stone of Sisyphus

in their

common

effort

rudimentary, but valid un-

demanding. But learn to his

abandon

in order to achieve this the his position of

eminence, and admit his

Here, although

Camus

is

imagined

own need

European or American must

superiority,

come down from

of his underprivileged brother.

expressly non-Christian,

we must admit

in practice his ethic seems to tend in the direction pointed out

Though Camus

thentic Christian charity.

failed to

import of the Christian message, the failure standable,

and once again

it

still

man

seeks to communicate,

for

understand the

many

full

reasons under-

suggests that even for the Christian the

moral aspirations of a Camus retain witness to the plight of

is

that

by au-

in that

a definite importance.

They

bear

world with which the Christian

and they suggest conditions under which the

communication may conceivably be more

valid.

291

THE STRANGER: POVERTY OF AN ANTIHERO "And it was enquir'd Why, in a Great Solemn Assembly The Innocent should be condemn'd for the Guilty." Blake, Milton

L'homme

"Recit: se fait

de

sa verite.

qui ne veut pas

lui est preferee. II

Vanite de

se

justifier.

L'idee qu'on

meurt, seul a garder conscience de

cette consolation."

Camus, Carnets, Avril 1937

This entry in Camus' Notebooks sums up the whole idea of The Stranger

— the alienated man it

and

same

is

condemned by

Camus

notes,

condemned all his

who, discovering

fear"

cell

his alienation, prefers not to justify

A

society for this refusal.

and the

is

a curious entry, a quotation

cation by faith: "It

is

a

constitutes true satisfaction."

Christian writer,

it

it

is

it.

Camus

or reject

from Luther on

justifi-

it

This

faith

does not :

us

tell

Usually,

to believe firmly

makes you worthy and what he thinks

when Camus

of

quotes a

because he disagrees. Certainly the notion of ab-

solution, in the Christian sense,

he did incline a

"chew

thousand times more important

than to be worthy of

Does he accept

who wants

it.

In between there

this.

later in the

to

resistance of the prisoner

and not evade

in absolution

few pages

sketches out the final scene with the priest in the

little

was foreign

to his

thought. Yet perhaps

toward Luther's idea of the

utterly

unworthy

sinner, in his total poverty, being justified in spite of his unworthiness.

Clearly all,

Camus and Luther remain

man who

The Stranger

has no interioritv.

real purpose,

really "his"

—

it

The manuscript fall

202

But Camus had,

after

written his dissertation on Augustine at the University of Algiers.

In any event,

no

poles apart.

is

cannot be

is

an ironic study in extreme poverty, the

who

does nothing, makes no choice, has

justified,

has no

God; even

so automatic, so mechanical.

of this essay

1968 issue of Unicorn.

is

dated March 1968, but

his

crime

is

not

Because he cannot choose

it

was not published

until the

a role in society, the Stranger

saddled with one by society, so that he

is

has no identity except one which society has arbitrarily contrived for

and which does not

"The

ferred to him.

him

fit

An

at all.

idea that they

make

him

of

for themselves

him

is

pre-

is

pre-

(Incidentally Philip Thody's translation of this in the

ferred to him."

English version of the Notebooks their idea of

abstraction, a construction,

him."

It is

inadequate: "Other people prefer

is

more

not just that the court and the public are

pleased with their notion of the Stranger as a "born criminal" but that this

notion

given

is

Thus Meursault

preference, so that

official

own

substitutes for his

which no one

something he has

to arrive at

and the

tance of his absolute poverty because

but

false definition

trial:

the final conscious accep-

own

absurdity rather than submit

which claims

is

turns out to be the

last.

But

The

it is

him

in the

what they

say he

to explain

eyes of society. Meursault's refusal to agree that he

is

he has ever made, and

real choice

first

is

his poverty: the act of choice

is

it

freely elects to affirm his

to a convenient

consciousness of his

This sense of identity

else accepts.

with considerable labor throughout the

the fruit of the crime

by which he

displaces his identity,

own

his

in

isolated

finally

is

identity, his truth,

trial. It is

it

reality.)

it

is

his

a "vain consolation."

question

does this choice justify

is:

poverty a spiritual enrichment?

his

Is

him?

acceptance of

Is his free

admission of absurdity a final

somersault into sense?

The Stranger

in

tantalizing

its

complex, ambiguous book. But surd."

It

is

it

and condensed is

also

simplicity remains a

famous, a

"classic of the ab-

regarded, like Sartre's Nausea, as a typical "existentialist

novel" (in spite of

Camus'

all

protests that he

was neither an

existentialist

nor a "philosopher of the absurd"). In this context

it

has become usual to interpret Meursault as a "hero

who

of the absurd," as one

And

justify himself.

tion"

is

The point

division of

of

the is

is

some sense is

to

justified

some extent

by his refusal to

true

if

by

of a final personal integrity of

The Stranger

murder,

into

highly

two

parts,

significant.

breaking

Up

until

"justifica-

some

sort.

at the precise

murder,

the

a passive, mechanical sort of being with a fairly rich vege-

sensuous

life,

existing in total indifference to abstract or formal

questions of any kind.

He

ever, integrated only in a

the world. If he

couldn't care

in

of course this

meant the attainment

Meursault tative,

is

is

less.

is

without ambition, without any drive what-

kind of symbiotic existence with the

alienated, he doesn't

know

He

quite happy.

is

in

many ways

it,

it

rest of

does not hurt him, he

He

"loves

life,"

but

293

—

He responds when

ment and without comment.

but without enthusiasm or even it,

saying he

all

is

marriage, he says, "O.K., says,

The murder

And

if

right

you

where he She

like."

pushed, or

when

When

is.

asks,

North

woman

me?" He

love

same circum-

in the

so on.

it

an

almost entirely an accident.

ComNorth

shooting

is

Africa in a trance of acedia worthy of a Desert Father.

which

The Stranger

—and

occurs under the blazing noonday sun of

The

it.

pletely unmotivated,

of that inner sloth

solicited:

Marie proposes

"Do you

the fruit of this passive, automatic existence

is

awakening from

study of

in the

life

Offered a good job in Paris,

interest.

"No." "Would you marry any other

stances?" "Yes."

accepts his

acquaintances, his girl friend, his job, without involve-

city, his

he declines

He

kind of way.

in a plainly superficial

African

is

at the heart of

paradigm of

as a

It is

a pure climax

Meursault's "character."

acedia, of surrender to the "noon-

day demon" of Evagrius and Cassian, might prove revealing. Acedia the

demon

of psychic exhaustion, listlessness, void, thirst,

impotence which attacks the

ascetic

out by the desert sun and seeks

Acedia

clear water. to escape his

in his

which has become

(his desert cell

when he

at all costs

is

and the moral

has been entirely burned to find a little

shade and

which drives the frustrated monk

the desperation

is

imprisonment

A

own

destroyed and meaningless being

a hell

and

a

Babylonian furnace) and

return to simple contact with the refreshment and interest of worldly life.

Meursault

kills

Arab

the

more

sion to take one

near which the Arab

as a result of

an involuntary,

resting.

is

whole chapter on the murder,

There

is

a chapter

a

profound significance in

which

is

drives the

Nor

is

a question of racist animosity.

Arab and Meursault together

which accounted the

it

for all the

is

not

The

kill

out of per-

which

violence

same svmbiotic violence

the

hundreds of crimes

this

not onlv consummate

myth but rises to the level of prophecy. The Arab is not seen as a person. Meursault does sonal hate.

impul-

reflex

step in the direction of the cool water of the spring

in Algeria at that time

murder of Arabs not by the French but by one another.

It is

not the

hatred of the colon for the Arab or vice versa, but the more elemental collision of lower-class

atoms

lessness of Meursault, a poor

that

of the

in the svmbiosis of alienation.

French Algerian,

is

The mind-

radically the

same

as

poor Arab. Meursault's indifference, his "fatalism," have

something of the same quality which colonial cliche assumed was purelv Islamic or African. If

tion

294

Meursault does not involved:

treat the

Arab

as a person, there

he does not regard himself

as

a

is

no discrimina-

person

either.

Two

One

nonpersons meet in the blinding sun of an African beach.

by the limpid spring in the shade. The other is coolness. It happens that fate has decreed, through

must be

trary involvement, that they

impulsion that draws Meursault to the spring

One .

to the

and

a strange

each other.

other happens by chance to have a revolver

The

knife.

hostile to

lying

is

drawn mindlessly

.

.

arbi-

pulls a

But the

not essentially violent

is

could just as well have been a drift toward reconciliation and acceptance. In its deepest ground, it was simply a blind, instinctive urge at all. It

to

be by the same spring where the Arab happened to be: an inarticulate,

and never But

blind groping for a purely natural unity between the races, a

this

some supposed primitive Eden of

return to

munion

be articulated, gravitation toward unity in nature.

to

in nature,

is

doomed by

sinless

history to frustration.

and unselfish com-

Whether

may

it

or

not ever have been theoretically possible, history has placed insuper-

may

way

able obstacles in the

of this reunion.

There

is

a

pathological residue of crime, exploitation, hatred,

which

\arma,

a historic

and

and incomprehension

can only be sweated out in pain, turmoil, conflict.

After the murder, Meursault awakens to the inevitability of conscious suffering

and

in history.

He

brought up face

is

determined by certain absolved

He

him from

own

His

truth." it

the

fatal

to face

historical

endemic and

awakens not

painfully

as jar as

comes from being, whether you

conflict that

like

it

or not,

with a society which has been choices:

historical

ills

his

passivity

has

not

of the Algerian colony.

to a full social awareness,

but

fidelity to that truth, as far as it goes,

at least to "his is

heroic. I say

goes. It does not go all the way.

Let us return to the main question: does Meursault's outburst of frustrated anger against the importunate priest in the death cell constitute a justification?

The

does. Meursault

is

who

authenticity,

cliche interpretation of

The Stranger assumes

that

it

presented as the lone individual in his absurdity and justifies

his

existence by exposing the

lies

and the

massive organized hypocrisy of the social establishment and resisting

them unto

death.

According article,

to

Camus'

original idea, quoted at the beginning of the

Meursault does not wish

to justify himself.

He

to

be

preferred to him. But he does not allow himself.

That

is

justified,

does not even attempt

permits the idea that people have of

to say,

them

to

him

to

be

impose that idea upon

he neither considers himself justified nor does

he accept as a substitute the proffered absolution by which the lack of justification

he

is

is

rectified.

not really wrong.

He knows he is not right, but he also knows that He knows that consent to the fictitious and absurd 295

scenario of his wrong, concocted by a troubled society in order to allay its

own

would be

anxieties,

turns out that there

It

his acedia to

underwrite

enough

violently against

He

it.

sullenness,

enough

revolt,

He

turns

and everything, and

in so

to the force that

rebels against everyone

pushes him.

doing shatters the grip that acedia has upon him. In the through, he makes what entire life

and

is

his,

he

if

to die,

is

he will accept death in

experience of himself and not in a formula dictated to else in

bad

terms of a

faith,

on

nition

his part that the guilt rests as

does upon his

it

own

and wrong

separates out right

and

avarice, self-interest,

spite

will allow the vindictive

law

this implies a recog-

much on

and that

for him, in

the corrupt social

which neatly

a legality

favor of an "order" which masks

in

should not have the final say in deter-

mining the meaning and value of

own

self,

genuine

him by somebody

which has been devised

fictitious identity

by a misguided court of law. Ultimately

organization as

own

terms which correspond to his

in

final break-

fundamentally a personal commitment of his

his entire being:

terms which are

underlying

with some energy. Pushed to the

this refusal

he no longer submits blindly

wall,

wrong.

a greater

is

one's

to destroy

own

personal existence. So he

him but

not to meddle with his

self-definition.

This

is

Camus

"heroism" certainly. But

also intended

it

as a "vain

consolation" rather than as a "justification," because this too was only

another aspect of absurdity, and absurdity does not

To make who stands

too

much

out of Meursault, to justify

inhuman

alone against the

his last breath,

to

is

social

justify.

him

as a splendid rebel

monolith and

defies

introduce stereotypes which falsify Camus'

it

to

own

ideas. It is

quite true that

Camus

belongs in a tradition of protest and

tance which, through Romanticism, goes back to the archetype of tic

Rebellion, Milton's Satan. But

Milton, a

classicist.

Camus

equally true that

it is

Neither for Milton nor for

Camus

the

is

clear

that

the

poverty

utter

Meursault, and above self-justification,

student and

set

critics

all

him

and

his total

some ways the

in

refusal of rhetoric

mere

fact of it

helplessness

is

of

and declamatory

apart from the Satan of Paradise Lost.)

But

have habitually fallen into the temptation of thinking

that the Satan figure

is

justified

Those who have made

too

tten not only his poverty

by

his

own

much and

his

rhetoric

and by

his

own

revolt.

of a hero out of Meursault have

somewhat

scheme of Camus' work, but they have 296

was, like

(Of course

rebellion sufficient to justify either Satan or Meursault.

resis-

Roman-

also

provisional place in the

misread the meaning of the

— Camusian absurd. Meursault's

him and

his

existence

which

crime

a revolt against a total systematic explanation of

is

falls

revolt against society's interpretation of

down

explanation but because

not because

and deceptive. For Camus, that included cluding existentialism insofar as

was

doctrines (note that he

experience

be an inadequate

philosophical systems (in-

all

claimed to be "total") and

Now

religious

all

unformulated religious

better able to accept

Franciscanism).

primitive

in

it

to

All total explanations are inadequate

total.

is

it

happens

it

insofar

justification

as

implies integration into a system or a total explanation, to be justified

means

to enter into the general

Even

itself.

want

to

thinking that there

and specious deceptiveness of the system

to justify oneself

or can

is,

be verified and which can really solve

The

real

to yield to the

is

be, a "total explanation"

import of the "absurd" in

the basic questions.

all

Camus

with the gap between thought and actuality

and made absolute by attempts or the Hegelian Verstand it

inexorable.

subject

from

It

to "explain"

is

its

—a

it.

direct confrontation

gap which

created

is

Rational demonstration

—claims to exorcize the absurd but only makes

divides consciousness

object,

temptation of

whose claims can

in

a

from

reality,

thought from

actuality,

canonization of estrangement, a systematic

schizophrenia blessed by a purely abstract Reason. In other words, is

in revolt against

French Cartesian rationalism, which pretends

answers for everything. cogito the

in

Camus

is

with another

itself.

when

Later,

totally different

revolt, therefore

Now

we

Camus was

one based on

to replace Descartes'

solidarity in love

and when,

tem," one can be justified or

make

meaning;

it is

sense out of

Camus' terms, does not

is

action:

on the appearance of

life

by becoming a "hero

and bad

faith.

Accep-

justify life, does not give

live in

completely opposed to nihilism. But

"without justification," one to that solidarity in revolt

is,

own

to

when one can

Camus was

face a life that

is

according to Camus, prepared to go beyond

and ultimately

intended to explore in his later works.

nouncing the desire

is

meaninglessness and ab-

not an end. That would be simple nihilism, and

sense of one's

and

the lucid acceptance of unmeaning. Furthermore, this

not the end, only the beginning: for to surdity

doubts

formula

in terms of that explanation or "sys-

of the absurd," then this too collapses into falsity

tance of the absurd, in

have

are."

a "philosophy of the absurd" takes

a rational explanation,

it

to

his reply to the Cartesian

—a systematic doubt that goes deeper than "cogitation" and

power of reason

"we

The absurd

Camus

to that unity in love

One

starts, in

which he

other words, by re-

—one renounces hope of a consoling and Tightness — in order to go on to that lucid

be justified

clarity

297

— and

solidarity in action

tions

and

This be

resistance that are conscious of their

respectful above

all

what, in Camus,

is

justified.

And

any

in

of

is

by being

justified

less basic,

is

less

The

but more easily reduced to rational formulas.

fitted into

authenticity

and love

justification

some sense beyond the apprehension

beyond any tremoussement prophetique.

of an interior spiritual insight,

Camus always

to

authentic, less real,

toward which Camus tended were, then, beyond formulas of also in

need

justification." It does not

cannot be

it

the context of something else that

and explanation. They were

limita-

life.

"beyond

case,

own

strove for a lucid interior austerity in this regard.

He

recognized the temptation to substitute inner exaltation and spurious luminosity

—emotional

found only

lucidity, action,

spirit, is

what

—for

genuine

in the ordinary stuff of everyday

by means of poetry and

battle

and mystique

affectation

costs the least. It

its is

solidarity, life.

"This

obscurities, this apparent revolt of the

ineffective

and tyrants know

that well."

(Carnets, 1942)

On

who make

too

much

sault tend to read his outburst at the

end

as if

the other hand, those

of a hero out of it

were

Meur-

a final flash of

mystic exaltation, a luminous deliverance from the tyranny of an alienating world, a breakthrough into transcendence, a kind of existentialist satori,

an ecstasy of the absurd. Unfortunately the very ground of the

Camusian absurdity fact that for

Camus

of natural beauty early essays

cf.,

is

that

it

negates ecstasy. (This does not alter the

a certain neo-Platonic ecstasy in the

was

possible

and was

immediate grasp

finely expressed in

some

of his

"Le Desert.")

that Camus himself, in the preface of the American The Stranger (written in 1955), spoke in less moderate language of his Meursault. The Stranger "is a man poor and naked" who by saying more than he "refuses every mask" who "refuses to lie It

must be admitted

student edition of

.

feels"

but

who

animated "by

is

a

.

.

"in love with the sun that casts no shadows"

and

is

profound passion ... for the absolute and for truth."

Camus goes on to give encouragement to those immoderate spirits who make Meursault a Christ-figure, bv admitting that, well, he is "the only kind of christ we deserve." It must be remarked that this language is much more vibrant than that which Camus himself was using twenty years before. tion"

and of

must

see

And

its

vibrancy does strike a definite note of "justifica-

"inferiority"

them

which are

in the context of

alien to the earlier

work. But we

Camus' own development. The Plague

and The Rebel have taken Camus

far

bevond the limitations of the

"absurd" and committed him fully to an ethical vitalism in which he

298

The

recognizes the shortcomings of nihilism.

"ethic of quantity"

The Myth Nazism had shown how

he had approved in

experience of

the time: but

which

of Sisyphus seemed innocent enough at easily

could

it

become the ethic of Auschwitz. Nevertheless, Meursault's "love of had not progressed

absurd

life is

but by making. One gives

alone.

utterlv

rightlv

life

a

Camus,

rejected

He

living

it

in openness

impoverished because he

absurdity because, having

the hvpocrisv of systematic

answers and explanations

does not love anvone

else.

He

or his neighbors, or his friends.

make him

lovelessness does not

This might seem it

out in a time

when

a

lot

fact

frankly admits his

that he

a hero. is

it

important

life

this

were

own

that

it

existence

enough

is is

over evervone

Camus

else.

But

this

onlv leads to the kind of

himself refused to tolerate.

in the right

kind of cool

cliches,

A

can be

sterilitv

proclaim

— as

if

a chapter in

new

light

and defeat

disillusioned nihilism, dressed

made

to

seem heroic: but

only another feeble and ineffective attempt to justify one's

a decisive

to

meaningless

guarantee of instant luciditv and even of moral superiority

a

is

to spell

of people, misled perhaps bv a distorted

Camus, think

absurd and confess that one's

There

else.

does not love Marie, or his mother,

The

be painfully obvious, yet

to

appreciation of writers like

that

and

own

caught in his

is

proposed bv others, he has not entered into solidarity with anyone

He

its

not found by speculation

is

utterly

is

To

answer the question of

meaning by

with others. But Meursault

solidaritv

human com-

by no means enough.

is

certainly not to

is

that answer, according to

meaning:

profound

yet the

have onlv the luciditv of Meursault

recognize that

is

was not

and Tarrou.

passion of Rieux

To

that far. It

life"

own

it

is

defeat.

Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth which throws

on the mentality of Meursault and on

War and

extremely important essay on "Colonial studies case histories of Algerians

his acedia.

This

Mental Disorders"

who were brainwashed and

tortured

by the French in the Algerian war, and does so against the background of an official racist psychosociologv

the

University of Algiers

which was being

when Camus

studied

planned his novel. Fanon's essay integrates sistent picture of the colonial structure of

up and

in

able above

which the all

is

story of

all

officiallv

there

taught

at

and when he

these elements in one con-

Camus grew What is remark-

Algeria in which

The Stranger

takes place.

that the case histories of the victims of the colonialist

so many of the features we find in Meursault. Moreover, Meursault's character and his crime correspond in almost every detail with the kind of formula worked out by the official colonialist

repression in

war show

299

psychiatry of the thirties in Algiers. applies to Algerian

any

in

before

in her

many French

colons

from Fanon about

he had tortured

many

Arabs.

a

who

were,

an Algerian

is

from an Arab Algerian.

rather than a white as distinct

a passage

is

killed after

important to note that what

It is

also to

formed by the same system. Thus Meursault

case,

all else,

Here

Arabs applies

French

The

whose

girl

and

crisis

father

was

produced

conflict

by her revolt against the colonialism incarnated in him produced

something of Meursault's apparent

The death

of her father

heartedness that

with her father.

.

.

.

over the death of

my

whose 'high moral

father

knew

population' disgusted me. Everyone

about

to tell their lies

love for his country

meaning

for

and

me. ...

allowance but

I

light-

we quickly directed our investigations towards her relations The account which she gave us was clear, completely lucid, .

.

.

funeral sickened me," she said, "all those

came there

acedia.

was mentioned by the patient with such

with a lucidity which touched on insensibility

"The

and

lassitude, disgust,

so on. I

refused

it.

that

was

it

now

to say that

the authorities.

all

who came

to

weep

conquered the native

qualities

false.

.

.

They

.

all

father's devotion, his self-sacrifice, his

ought

avoided

I

my

officials

such words have no

They

me

offered

an

." .

.

This of course reminds us of the funeral in The Stranger. Obviously, there are important differences, but the alienation

the

same

who tion,

So too

roots.

as patriot

and

is

same and

story of

The Stranger

is

—

becomes conscious of

and

Now in summing up

has

this

time

the story of a

man

Fanon

lists

his

the

official

characteristics

and becomes able

actual condition,

resistance against

what has caused

psychiatric doctrine of

robbers,

French

colonial-

which were accepted without question

"proved

and murderers. This,

was thought

as

cretins,

to

be

by physiological study. The Algerian — and the —"lacked a cortex" and was dominated like an animal

scientifically"

African in general

"by his diencephalon." His stinctive.

incidentally,

to

it.

being those of the Algerians: they are born lazy, they are slackers, liars,

it

has been living in apparent happiness in spite of unconscious aliena-

articulate his protest

ism,

the

the refusal of a proferred social role

The

victim.

is

He

had no

superior European!).

life

interiority,

He

was therefore purely vegetative and no morality, no

spirituality (unlike the

was therefore impulsive, he murdered without

motive, he was in fact driven to homicide bv a kind of melancholia other words, as interpreted

we have

in-

a perfect description of Meursault

by the court which condemned him.

and

Though

—in

his acedia,

not using the

jargon of this psychiatric literature, the court started from the same

300

perfectly with the official trol

conclusion that there

And

it

agreed

was only one way

to con-

assumptions and ended, naturally, with the same

results.

such people: force. Guns, or the guillotine. Camus' Stranger as de-

fined by the court

is

identical with the

"North African"

as

analyzed and

dismissed by a colonialist pseudo-science based on the kind of shallow

condemned human beings

rationalism which inevitably

and absurd

The

an alienated

existence.

official

the African

to

teaching of colonialist psychiatry was, in two words, that

was a lobotomized European. Meursault

is

precisely that: a

lobotomized European. But Camus, like Fanon, saw that the explanation

was not

physiological,

it

lay in history: "the history of

men damned

by

other men."

The

poverty of Meursault

people to be as he

condemns them

is

is

the product of a social system

and therefore manufactures them

for being

what they

are.

Camus

which needs

in quantity

—and

portrayed in Meursault

not the physical misery of starvation, deprivation, and disease, but the psychic misery of alienation. sault to

identity

through

a

He

also portrayed the

awakening of Meur-

quasi-accidental crime.

But Meursault

He

mained

in his poverty, his absurd, solipsistic loneliness.

to find

and integrate himself completely by compassion and

re-

was not able solidarity

with others who, like himself, were poor.

30i

Ill

INTRODUCING POETS

IN

(1963-66)

TRANSLATION

RUBEN DARK) Nineteen

sixty-six

marks

of the greatest Latin of Nicaragua.

countries

and

The

the hundredth anniversary of the birth of one

American

event

is

poets,

Ruben Dario,

in

an obscure town

of course being celebrated in Spanish-speaking

will be dutifully noted,

no doubt, where Spanish

is

taught

on North American campuses. The poetry of Dario is not likely to be widely read in the United States today. Even more modern SpanishAmerican poets like Cesar Vallejo and Pablo Neruda remain largely un-

known. Yet Dario has something to say to us. The following lines, written for a volume of official tribute to be published in Nicaragua, may be of interest to North American readers. All true poetic genius tends to generate prophetic insight.

cannot help but rest of

listen to

awakening

The

poet

voices that are not yet audible to the

men. The greatness of Ruben Dario

lay not only in the orphic

power of the song by which he transformed the Spanish poetry of his own time but also in the prophetic apprehension in which he foresaw something of our

own

age.

While we

salute the eloquence, the creative

freedom, the luminosity, the passionate fervor of this great also pay attention less likely to

what he

tells

expect of him, since

dated, like the art poetic style

to

and harmony, and

modernismo

nouveau which was

Ruben Dario had (if

one

at his

may

spirit,

we must we are

us about ourselves: and this

its

is

no longer modern but

contemporary. Yet even in his

command

a rich diversity of tone

express a personal preference) his admir-

able "Sonnet to Cervantes," at once limpid, casual,

and profound,

antici-

pates the less rhetorical poetic tastes of a later generation.

Dario was concerned not only with poetic renewal but with self,

and

especially

sality of his

man him-

with the future of the two Americas. In the univer-

genius and in the strength of his poetic aspiration to unity,

Ruben Dario longed for a world that would be culturally and spiritually one in civilized harmony and fraternal co-operation. But he foresaw the danger to this dream of unity the danger of power used blindly by men

—

of personal sincerity

and limited understanding (not

abuse of power by others

less sincere

and perhaps more

foresaw the perils of an age that would

Written in 1966,

this essay

was published

in

to

mention the

intelligent).

set too great a price

Continuum autumn ,

He

upon ma-

1966.

305

i

and too

chines and muscles

He

values.

foresaw above

vitally necessary

upon authentic

little

would

Ruben Dario was

north and the Ibero-Indian south.

tional complexes.

He

in a violent, inarticulate frenzy. to

racial

One

and na-

them could

and might perhaps one day be

silenced

has only to recall his devastating

(Theodore) Roosevelt, the bronco buster,

fessor of energy." In the

Dano

aware of the

fully

foresaw, too, that the dialogue between

too possibly remain superficial

poem

ethical

beset the

dialogue between the two Americas: the Anglo-Saxon

importance of mutual understanding between these great

all

and

civilized

the terrible difficulties that

all

tiger killer,

"language of the Bible and

and "pro-

Whitman" Ruben

appealed not only to the president but to the whole North Ameri-

can people for a better understanding of the complexities and needs of their brothers in the South. In spite of

and

sincere efforts at understanding,

many earnest gestures of good will we are permitted to wonder if the

desired results have ever been attained, except in the case of a few excep-

men.

tional

It is to

Ruben Dario

be regretted that North America never appreciated

as did

Europe, and his voice has been only imperfectly

heard here.

Yet Ruben Dario, being magnanimous, remained an optimist. His admiration for Walt

Whitman

taught

human honesty and fraternal love in own blood and in his own spirit he American

him

to

see the vast resources of

the people of

North America. In

which gave him even greater and more

civilization,

haustible hopes for the future.

It is

his

experienced the riches of the South inex-

Ruben Dario

highly significant that

blended in his veins the blood of the Spaniard, of the Indian, and the

Negro.

power

He

tiny in the

Not

now

is

closer to fulfilling

providential des-

its

world of man.

Ruben Dario

portrays for us

and challenges facing the Ibero-Indian America

the period of

will usher in the

may

which

only in his writing but in his person

the chances

upon

experienced in himself both the anguish and the creative

of the fusion

significant action in

its

new

era?

We

world

can hardly guess

at present

as

it

What

history.

enters

events

—and guesses

not always comfort us with easy answers to almost impossible ques-

tions.

Yet, facing the

than

imminence

Ruben Dario was

of even greater

able to imagine,

and more

we can

learn

critical

vance into the future with trust not only in the goodness of the infinite goodness of the Creator

changes

from him

and Redeemer of man.

to ad-

man but in And we can

repeat after Dario these great words which were so often echoed, in substance,

by Pope John XXIII: "Abominad

funestos!"

306

("Abhor the eyes

los ojos

que ven

that see only fatal zodiacs!").

solo zodiaces

RAISSA MARITAIN when

Jacques and Raissa Maritain were married in 1904

they were both

the Sorbonne, seeking not degrees but truth, in the midst of

students at

nihilism and despair. Their story

is

enough known: how

well

came upon Bergson and then discovered metaphysics.

Leon Bloy

living like a desolate

and compassionate

How

first

they

they then met

tiger in

Montmartre,

in utter destitution and prophetic holiness, cursed by respectable bigots as a follower of Satan. It

was Bloy who

bringing them to the font of

in

their godfather) helped kindle the purest light in

baptism (where he was

the Catholic intellectual renewal of the twentieth century.

Will

we

know how much of Raissa? One is aware

ever

realization to

owed

the best of Jacques' writing

its

of her influence in the last chapters

Knowledge on contemplative wisdom. Raissa left her remarkable Art and Scholasticism and collaborated with

of his Degrees of

imprint on the

Jacques in works on poetry and prayer which remain as

classics.

Raissa Maritain was perhaps one of the great contemplatives of our time, great in her humility, her simplicity, her angelic purity o f heart, her utter devotion to truth.

Her whole

centered in the supernatural, that

all

life,

her thought and love were

to say in the

is

Three Divine Persons

considered as a source and finality more intimate and her than her

own

more ultimate

natural and contingent individuality. Their transcen-

dent and immanent presence in turn gave everything around her a ligious

and

scribably

to

spiritual transparency

re-

which sometimes shone with an inde-

pure and transfiguring

the "Light of

light,

Thabor"

of the

Russian mystics, and yet a light which appeared only in pure and apophatic darkness. This

is

the real root of her poetic experience, even

her poetry seems to say nothing explicit about God.

ornament and mannerism,

of artifice, so pure of

of a Japanese drawing.

One

it

verse

so devoid

is

has the immediacy

thinks instinctively of visual analogies for

her poetic experience precisely because It

Her

that

it

is

so

has the direct impact of painting, and in

immediate and

many

of the

first

Emblems were

later

appeared

in

of a Season of

included in

Jubilee,

April

1963,

Fury (New York:

The

Collected

from the

and was subsequently published

New

Poems

so pure.

poems one

This essay introducing Merton's translations of Raissa Maritain's poetry

French

when

of

The Thonus Merton (New Directions, 1963).

in

translations

Directions,

1977).

307

irresistibly sees the subject

Maritains' friends.

by

name

to

labored and

through the eyes of the painters

"The Prisoner"

Quentin Matsys,

this

muted compassion

by Dufy or Matisse.

And

is

for instance: a

who were

rugged painting with

of Rouault.

"The Lake"

then, of course, there

the

even though she refers

is

is

all

the dark

like a picture

their friend Chagall.

Raissa not only herself sees things as does her compatriot, but writes with childlike

wonder

of

what he beholds. Beyond "The Prisoner," however,

and beyond the profoundly moving poem on the Mosaic of the Blessed Virgin in the Church of St Praxed, there

is

the prodigious

and simple

"dream" of angels ("The Restoration of the Pictures") recorded when Jacques was ambassador of France to the Vatican and

with him in Rome.

dream. In any case

One

it is

a

feels that

comfort

to

such a

know

when

Raissa was

poem was more than that even in a

a

mere

world of atomic

bombs and extermination camps such "dreams" are possible. This alone would be sufficient reason for the publication of a few characteristic poems by a saintly Christian who, in her simplicity, was one of the glories of our kind in a century of torment, duplicity,

3 o8

and confusion.

FERNANDO PESSOA Fernando Pessoa century, in

onyms

a curious

is

some

and

original figure of the early twentieth

who wrote under

sense an antipoet,

in Portuguese besides publishing

guese over his

poems

several

in English

own name. The Keeper of the Floc\s

is

and Portu-

a collection attrib-

uted by Pessoa to a fictitious personage called Alberto Caeiro first line

of the

book

is

"I

am

not a keeper of the flocks."

—and

The

of the poetic (or antipoetic) experience of Alberto Caeiro lies in like

immediacy, though

of self-conscious

may

is

among

to the

insistence.

its

Zen-

However, Pessoa-Caeiro

those Western writers

Zen way

the

interest

sometimes complicated by a certain note

and programmatic

be numbered

something akin

this

pseud-

of seeing

who have

—the "knack of

full

expressed

awareness."

This short introduction

to Merton's translations from the Portuguese of poems by Fernando Pessoa, from The Keeper of the Flocl{s, was written in 1965 and was found among Merton's unpublished manuscripts following his death. The transla-

tions are included in

The

Collected

Poems

of

Thomas Merton (New York: New

Directions, 1977).

309

CESAR VALLEJO Certainly one of the greatest Latin

American

poets of the present century,

Cesar Vallejo hardly needs a long introduction. Born in a small town in the

High Andes

was

of Peru, in 1893, Vallejo

half Indian,

full of

which he invented words whenever he

He

fled

from the mountains

tan" poet

as a

and

many

so

early

to Paris. All his life

others living in poverty

thirties.

rugged, sad, and serious

empty

Lima, then

to

felt like

on the Left Bank,

man, sardonic and compassionate, not given

There

insoluble ambiguities.

one of Rimbaud and Baudelaire, but he austere,

once more

at

independence and of

much more went

to

virile

He

are

man and

moments when he reminds

great.

consistent excellence than his friend Pablo

and almost without hope,

to die in

War

He

is

his

a poet of

Neruda. Vallejo

and then returned, broken

1938, torn apart

were plunging the world into

to

always more reserved and more

which were

the Spanish Civil

a

was too

and more humble, always jealous of

his originality,

Madrid during

forces that

is

in

drawing of Vallejo shows

Picasso's

political rhetoric or to the trifling of literary fashion.

own

so.

he thought

conscious of the suffering and the tragedy of twentieth-century of his

doing

Peruvian of the Andes, and yet he became a "cosmopoli-

among

the twenties

all his life

colloquialisms and turns of phrase peculiar to Peru:

he wrote verse in addition to

and spoke

and

disaster.

by the inexorable

Yet no one with such

deep compassion and such inextinguishable humanity could ever be completely negative.

The work

of Cesar Vallejo can be classed with the

most

authentic and creative achievements of our time.

Written

about

1963,

this

introductory

Spanish of Cesar Vallejo's poetrv was

Fury (New York:

New

cluded in The Collected

310

cssav

first

of

Merton's

translations

Emblems

from the

of a Season of

The translations were subsequently Thomas Mcrton (New Directions, 1977).

Directions, 1963).

Poems

to

published in

in-

ALFONSO CORTES The

and figure of

story

unknown Nicaraguan

this

He

poet are fantastic.

has never before been published in any language but Spanish, and he has barely been published in that language, even in his native country.

Yet there he

kind of symbol and portent, discovered years ago by

a

is

Coronel Urtecho, and looked upon with awe by the young poets of the Nicaraguan avant-grade today; for Cortes went mad one February night,

more than

thirty-five years ago, in the

who

enjoyed

has

world-wide

a

house of the one Nicaraguan poet

Ruben Dario. Ernesto

reputation:

Cardenal, as a child, going to the school of the Christian Brothers in

Leon, used to look in the door of Dario's house and see Cortes inside, chained to a beam. Since that time Cortes has been transferred to a

and

hospital,

by the young

there, visited

defects of his "rival"

he declaims about the

poets,

Dario (who died in 1916).

Yet Cortes has written some of the most profound "metaphysical"

He

poetry that exists.

is

obsessed with the nature of reality, flashing with

obscure intuitions of the inexpressible. His poetic experience

unique. There

no explanation

is

for

its

is

quite

sudden appearance in an obscure

Central American township, at such a time, under such circumstances. It

cannot be said without qualification that Cortes' verse

madman. His written

now

best

poetry,

in "lucid"

which

is

that of a

is

completely individual, has been

moments and now

in

moments which would be

considered "insane." But then, too, he has written some very bad verse,

both

when

"sane" and

metaphysical and acter of

its

written forty or

his poetry, fifty

sion (considerably

a

man

not so sane.

The good

with a deep, oneiric, and

own. The bad verse

no evolution in

is

when

surrealistic,

verse

is

at

once

existentialist char-

simply conventional. There has been

is

but he sometimes rewrites poems that he had

years ago. "Truth"

improved) of an

is

one such poem, a recent ver-

earlier piece. It

can be said that Cortes

of a few basic poetic experiences which have continued to stay

explosively alive in his subconscious

and which enable him completely

to

This essay introducing Merton's translations from the Spanish of poems by Alfonso Cortes was written in the early sixties and was

(New York: New Directions, Poems of Thomas Merton (New

first

published in

Season of Fury

1963).

The

Directions: 1977).

Collected

The

Emblems

translations

of a

appear

in

3 II

transcend his condition by breaking through to the world which he

calls

"theological."

His idea of "man" (that

which space and time but man's business

and time the

full,

(or, as

is

is,

of himself)

are fruits

not so

we might

produced by the

much say, to

to

it

seems

to

is

life so

on

within him:

fruits of space to live in

shattering in

its

be madness. Hence Alfonso Cortes has no history,

which

permanent." This gives his poetry (and

312

that

have a history) but rather

for he lives in "the origin of things

is

life

"comprehend" these

bewildering, and timeless dimension of a

reality that

that he

that of a "mystical tree"

is

it

not anterior to them, but

is is

perhaps only in his poetry

fully present as himself) the strange,

unerring certitude of Zen.

RAFAEL ALBERTI the Angels

1

first

appeared in Spain.

The

poems Concerning

series of

almost forty years since Rafael Alberti's

It is

publication of an English ver-

sion of the complete series will probably not be regarded as an important event. Yet

it is.

And

perhaps

it is

More somber, more austere New Yor\. The intensity and

also timely.

and arresting than Lorca's The Poet in concentration of this series makes it capable of effect

which our poetry could use

War. Rafael

and generative

at the present time.

The Spanish poets of the "Generation of not well known outside Spanish-speaking is Garcia Lorca, who died a dramatic and of the Spanish Civil

a valid

1927" are, with one exception, countries.

The one

exception

violent death in the

Andalusian

Alberti, an

vived the war and has since lived in exile in various places

Rome.

He

is

sixty-four years old

privately printed

book of poems presented

in the latter's eighty-fifth year.

Alberti himself,

and

continues to write.

who began

homage

in

The poems

days

His

—now

to his friend Picasso

to poetry in the early

twenties, winning the Spanish National Prize for Literature with his

book of

The

verse,

Mariner o en Tierra, in

Guillen, Salinas, of the

1924.

poets,

among them Garcia

and Gerardo Diego, decided

Lorca, Alberti, Aleixandre, to celebrate the tercentenary

baroque poet Gongora. Since Gongora was considered an impossi-

and unreadable poet by the

ble

first

tag "Generation of 1927" refers to the fact that in that year a group

young Spanish

of

in

latest is a

for Picasso are illustrated by

and turned

as a painter

first

like Lorca, sur-

literary establishment at the time, this

celebration constituted an act of defiance verse. Critics are divided

"surrealism."

The

point

and

a

new beginning

on the point whether the is

in Spanish

result can be called

academic. In any case one can say that the

peculiar chaotic intensity of this verse results

from

a rich profusion of

unconscious images jarring against one another in creative dissonances

and dreamlike shock

effects

with a result quite different from the dry,

dead-pan parade of objects (and "objective correlatives") with which

This

essay, written in 1966, first

appeared

in

Continuum, spring

1967,

under the

we title

"Rafael Alberti and His Angels." 1

Rafael Alberti, Concerning the Angels in

(New York: New

New

Directions in Prose

and Poetry 19

Directions, 1966).

313

have become familiar (and perhaps so exhausted) in English and American verse since the First

World War. same Wasteland

Alberti experienced in Spain the

that Eliot

fronted in England and America, but Alberti's response to

would be wrong

ent. It

"interiority," but the

to accuse Eliot of

had con-

was

"spirit"

differ-

and no

mysticism of Four Quartets remains distinctly sober,

objective, barely hinted at in spare

and

and dark explosions and

flame, ashes

having no

it

traditional austerities of roses

fashionable as the "death of of his subjective struggle

God") created

and came

and

silences, frost

stone, a bell in

what has

the sea. Alberti (struggling as did Gerontion with

and

since

become

or rather discovered the depths

terms with himself in a

to spiritual

world of disconcerting forces which he called angels. His poems Concerning the Angels are most powerful in their controlled anarchy and their sustained ironies

which plunge much further than Eliot

into the

own

predica-

hidden dynamism of our extraordinary world and of our

ment

We

in

it.

may remark

dead and where

God

here that in the world where

thetic foods of sociology, pseudo-politics,

and

and angels do not get very

revival of interest in Blake.

seemed

to

The

all.

Be reminded

restoration of Milton in

have demolished him for good. Think,

(a year or

and of the

early silent

And

like Chagall.

two before the Angels) movies

his

for,

after

Chagall in

monochrome, and he has nothing

painting. Alberti's angels tend to be

Guernica than

of the

honor

too, of

of Chagall's colors. Visually, the angel world of Alberti Picasso's

have

no agreement on

is

far these days in pale English.

But remember Rilke and the Duino Elegies above

Eliot

with the syn-

liturgical cliche, artists

been unexpectedly concerned with angels. True, there that subject,

claimed to be

is

religion, in despair, seeks to content itself

one of

yet in

poems remind us he

as

said,

is

more

his early

like

books

once of Chagall

at

he owed

to the films a

kaleidoscopic development of sensibility: I

was born with the movies, heaven help me!

Under

a net of planes

and

cables,

When the stately coaches And the Pope climbed into In the same

of kings were done

an auto.

poem he watches an outdoor movie

where Anne Boleyn

is all

mixed up with the nearby

"dissolves her with the flower of his flashlight." series

forest

is

a

"for

charming celebration his

in a Spanish village, sea

and a policeman

Another poem of

this

of Buster Keaton's search through the

sweetheart a full-blooded cow."

The

picture

is

pure

Chagall.

So the poetry of Alberti begins not with 314

a refusal of the

world of those

new media

which, both "hot" and "cool," have

McLuhan, but with an acceptance way

brated by Marshall

Some

who

of Alberti's early

poems remind me

bravely jumbles together

mad

the

all

to be cele-

of their devastating

effect on the old patterns of imagination, the old

ing.

come

lately

and

of seeing

sing-

Bob Dylan,

of the songs of

collection of cultural ikons

that have been stuffed into the heads of our kids in high school ("Shakespeare, he's in the alley

/ with

ing with a French

/ who

Shakespeare is

is

girl

and

his pointed shoes

says she

knows him

everybody

in the alley because

else

his bells

well.

.

.

who was

/ He's talkObviously

."

ever heard of

there too).

The Angels

of Alberti belong to a period of personal crisis in the late

and

political con-

poems

are by far less

twenties, followed by a time of objectivity, recovery,

War. The

sciousness during the Spanish Civil interesting: Alberti

having become

a success

joyed the usual free trips to Russia was

now

of a particular poetic establishment in

fact,

latter

on the Left and having enwell-to-do

—a

member,

in

which there was no more

place or need for angels.

La Arboleda

Quotations from Alberti's autobiographical notes,

Angels and provide an

are given in the introduction to the Englished essential basis for

of

an understanding of them. The angels are in part forces

struggling for freedom against a capricious and arbitrary sense of

life

quiet and in part forces of alienation

They poet

create a

kind of

spiritual

trying to recover

is

some

Sometimes the angels are

self.

Perdido,

more

inscrutable

struggle

snake

and the ruins

pit,

helpful,

is

tered.

And

no doubt Spanish

is

And

yet observe that

angels are revealed.

not there.

head, with

then were revealed to

This

And

It is

"hound

me

him-

solution

is

not

to

escape

the

my

entrails torn

the angels.

.

.

in

and

my own my bones

ruins, splin-

.

violence, incompatible with our nice optimism.

when

the "ruins" are frankly seen

not good news that

in the ruins too

destroys by his presence ence, a

my

which the

to liberate

impossible, but:

Submerging myself, burying myself deeper and deeper pulling the rubble over

that guilt.

sometimes they bring only new and

Alberti's

—for escape

a "pit of disasters" in

elementary strength

sort of

accusations.

and death reinforcing

all

is

met

tells

and accepted the

us that the ruins are

Christ, but a strange Christ

who

holy-card images of himself— a burning pres-

of heaven":

Endless, intense, white hot

The His

glow

steady shade of the hound. still

shadow.

315

:

4

The

part to the into

way

marble or

in

which matter

tell

membranes, garments,

from the bad)

left

and

out

spirit

due

man

in

congeals

— without even

a

whom

in

fight with objects, walls,

simply draughts of

fabrics, or

is

air.

Yet the

not always completely negated. Sometimes the zombie rouses

is

himself and drives the angel out. (Or real

element

the "uninhabited" condition of alien

is

angels (the good hard to

human

dissolves into spirit

human

with the

plaster,

Such

spectator.

glass,

poems

extraordinary baroque effect of Alberti's Angel

one?) In any

is it

a

zombie angel driving out the

be without the angel

case, to

is

not the ultimate in

good fortune

My body's empty Stood by the It

black sack

window

alone.

went.

Down streets, round corners My body walked ofif deserted. So the angel

is

it

started.

desperately needed.

Dead angel, awaken Where are you? Send your lightning to light my homeward road. But nothing

is

uninhabited suit which

used to deception, but

Yet the

spirit.

tions

—or

let

All this

man

is

The

sometimes peopled with revived expec-

still

capable of being pushed by some exasperated

himself hesitates, and does not reveal his

spirit

us

is

battles, reconciliations.

hopes, too pale to step forward by themselves, too

anonymous

tations,

There are alarms,

definitive.

know

if

own

inten-

he has intentions.

given not in analysis, not in argument, but in hard and

is

resistant imagery.

There once was a for

.

.

its

.

The

on

had

almond.

his dusty earth

A King

angels

storms of

3 i6

light that

bitter

only two unwavering matches from an electric nightmare

fixed

...

bone a

fire,

is

are

a

and judging

hedgehog of

sometimes

sometimes

ice

it.

eyelashes.

furies,

sometimes driving and teaching

and snow, sometimes empty frames. Always

— they invade our empty

homes and ask why

Perhaps because there are too breathe.

And lost

it.

there

can no

is

no inhabitant.

bodies and there

longer leave each other

so Alberti laments the

enough room

Why?

is

no room

to

be lucky.

to

man who had a city inside him, and then a tunnel. You shout into the tunnel, and

After which he became

is

dreams

We

many

there

no echo. Then the angels reduce him to rubble. Methodically, furiously.

to ashes.

And

They char

suddenly

we

all his

hear echoes

of the Bible:

—You, in downfall you, overthrown, the finest city of

The

angelic

of Isaiah

poems

all.

of Alberti are prophetic "burdens" like the burdens

and the laments of Ezekiel over Babylon and Tyre, and

as such

they can be attended to with a certain pity and fear appropriate to the

awareness of tragedy and of accursedness

own

poets have seldom been attuned

Faulkner above these

poems

all

—certainly

that this

have.

awareness to which our

though a few of our prose writers

One

can agree with the translator of

book can be considered one

works of the twentieth century. lent translation, in the latest

Prose and Poetry

—an

It

New

of the greatest poetic

has been published entire, in an excelDirections annual

{New

Directions in

19, 1966).

3i7

JORGE CARRERA ANDRADE Humanity, tenderness, and wit

in the sense of esprit characterize the inno-

He

cence and seriousness of Jorge Carrera Andrade.

is

one of the most

appealing of the fine Latin American poets of our century.

tempted

him an

to call

One

humble and

incarnation of the genius of his

is

de-

Ecuador: a land of green volcanoes, of hot jungles and

lightful country,

cold sierras, of colonial cities set like jewels in lost valleys; a land of

Indians and poverty. a soft,

humble

The

voice of

in his verse)

is

voice: a voice, oppressed but without rancor, without un-

happiness, like the voice of a child in the sun.

Ecuador (which sings

Ecuador

child in the Biblical proverbs

the face of the Creator.

An

who was

much

to eat but lives

an ancient

child, like the

does not get

hungry wise

a

is

who

child,

always playing in the world before

eternal child, a secret Christ,

to smile at the folly of the great

and

who knows how

have no hope in any of the

to

strong countries of the world. Ecuador has always been, and will always

by the strong.

It

can despair of them without sorrow, be-

cause to despair of shadows

is

no despair

be, betrayed

at all. It

is,

in fact, a pure

and

sacred hope. This kind of truth, this kind of confidence, strong nations,

preparing ruin, cannot understand.

.

.

.

Some sixty years ago Carrera Andrade was born in Quito, and in the dawn of his life the cobbled streets of the sleepy capital echoed for him with the rhythms of Verlaine and Gongora.

under the eucalyptus

trees

He

and meditated baroque

read the Symbolists conceits in the green-

and-white presence of the volcano Pichincha. Yet his poetic sensitivity

remained simple and happy, for he walked among the cornfields and Indians of the country, sharing their blood and their silence, thinking

and making

their

poems

in his heart.

He

has remained pre-eminently a

South American poet.

He

had taken an

active part in the politics

This essay, which served

as

an introduction

Spanish of Jorge Carrera Andrade,

first

to

and journalism

Merton's

appeared in

New

translations

of his

from the

Directions in Prose

and

(New York: New Directions, 1961), and was also included in Emblems of a Season of Fury (New Directions, 1963). It was later published in A Thomas Merton Reader, ed. Thomas P. McDonnell (New York: Harcourt Brace & World, Poetry 17

1962). Merton's translations of Jorge Carrera Andrade's poetry are included in

Collected

3 i8

Poems

of

Thomas Merton (New

Directions, 1977).

The

:

had already published more than one book of poems when, he boarded a Dutch steamer in Guyaquil and headed for Europe.

He

country. in 1928,

In a ship of twenty bugles I

To His bags and

his

my

took

trunk of parrots

the other end of the world.

money were

Holland, Germany,

He

day, he stood with the poor.

burden of poetry and of Indian

defenseless to increase

first

of the

sided with the Left, hoping for a better

own power

its

movements

strikes, the riots, the

He

world. But the ambiguities of power politics

and

he wrote poems,

in the ancient cities,

one book then another. In the

wandered through

lived as poor people live, traveling

third class, carrying everywhere his light

blood. More and more alone

He

Panama.

stolen in

France, Spain.

making

use of the

did not satisfy him.

humble

He

broke

away from Communism. He found himself more alone. He set up a small publishing house in Paris. He married. He came home to South America. Later he went to Japan, China, and England, in the consular service of his country. In 1941 he States as

Ecuadorian Consul

and he responded gladly of

North America.

to

him

a

He

in

San Francisco.

to the friendship

wrote a "Song

He

and

to the

a city

city exciting,

mystery

Oakland Bridge" which was

earthly or political power.

which has

to

He

built his hopes definitely

has learned a

be discovered sooner or

later

new

it is

on any

geography, the world

by those

in power, violence, coercion, tyranny, war. "I

country, the country that

returnest,

and a handful of orchards.

do not think Carrera Andrade has

because

found the

United

symbol of strength and peace

Dragging I

to the

to the hard-boiled

Thy spans are of peace, Thy sea-chains set men free. From thy unceasing journey thou

Yet

came

who do

embarked

not believe

for the secret

everywhere, the country that has no

is

map

within ourselves."

It is in this secret

country that

we have become good

friends.

I

have met Carrera Andrade, and here

Here without

noise of words

we

talk to-

gether of the mountains of Ecuador, and of the silent people there

do not always

eat every day.

and of a kind of hunger, of hopes: where

men

The

secret

country

is

who

a country of loneliness

silence, of perplexity, of waiting, of strange

expect the impossible to be born but do not always

dare to speak of their hopes. For

all

hopes that can be put into words

319

are

now

living

used by

men

of

war

in favor of death:

even the most sacred and

words are sometimes used in favor of death.

During

the last

his parachute

war the poet was

jumper.

He

silent,

except for the quiet irony of

looked about him

the prison without a key in

at the desolation of

man,

which man had enclosed himself, or

so

at it

seemed, forever. Carrera Andrade has not reproached anyone, has not joined the harsh chorus of the prisoners in despair. silently, to

a

has listened,

Can prophecy be new world be so quiet?

other voices and other harmonies.

unassuming? Can the voice of

so

He

so

humble,

Is this

the

voice of the gray-green Andes, of the long-hidden America, of the

dim

and cool twilight of the Sierra dawn out of which peace, perhaps,

will

one day be born ?

Who

can answer such absurd questions?

It

is

foolish perhaps to ask

them outside of the secret country in which, unasked, they retain their meaning and prepare the hearer, quietly, for the answer they already contain.

320

PABLO ANTONIO CUADRA Unquestionably one of the leading intellectual figures of Nicaragua, Pablo

Antonio Quadra has earned, by tion in the

tormented

his sincerity

political life

him

as arbiter in their disputes.

Editor of one of the most outspoken newspapers

La Prensa

Managua, he

of

is

a central posi-

of Central America, in which dictators

left-wing revolutionists alike turn to

and

and maturity,

Central America,

in

also a fine poet, not in

the "modernist"

tradition of Ruben Dario but in that powerful "indigenist" movement which has tapped the deepest and most authentic sources of Latin Ameri-

can poetic inspiration, in Mexico, Peru, Ecuador, and other predominantly Indian countries.

Like Cesar Vallejo, Pablo Antonio Cuadra has dedicated himself with passion to the frank expression, in Spanish, of the Indian within him. He has therefore joined the ranks of those

who have

created

what

is

un-

doubtedly the finest and most authentically "American" poetry of Latin

America.

We

have long been familiar with the corresponding tradition

in the plastic arts,

Rufino enjoyed

and

a similar

is

years since Orozco, in

Diego Rivera, and

North America. The

later

poets have not

good fortune.

Cuadra's verse owes tation

it

Tamayo became famous its vitality

not to a sentimental and romantic medi-

on the "Indian past" of Central America, but Indian present, in which the past

grim

to its roots in a

with an unconquer-

and

vital

able

and flourishing energy through the unmatched prestige of the ancient

plastic arts, architecture, folklore,

ancient Indian

still

and music,

as well as in the texts of

poems and dramas. Cuadra himself

by the pre-Colombian Chorotega pottery of his these

lives

poems were

is

own

so directly inspired

native country that

written, so to speak, to be "inscribed

This introductory essay

to

on ceramics." 1

Merton's translations from the Spanish of Pablo Antonio

Cuadra's poetry was written about 1963 and

first

appcard in Emblems of a Season

Fury (New York: New Directions, 1963). It was later brought out in a handsome edition by Unicorn Press. The translations were subsequently included in

of

The Collected Poems 1

of

Thomas Mcrton (New Directions, 1977). The Pottery of Costa Rica and Nicaragua (New York:

See Samuel K. Lothrop,

Museum

of the American Indian, 1926). Cuadra tells us that the Chorotega culture was probably prc-Mayan, later being mingled with that of the Nahoas, or Nicaraos, in

Nicaragua.

In

addition to their polychrome ceramics, the Chorotegas

sculpture which often expressed the mythic conception of the alter ego

covering

a

human

figure as a guardian angel

—

a

left

— an

stone

animal

theme which has inspired some of

Cuadra's poetry.

321

.

Actually, the original Spanish versions were accompanied by drawings

by the author, taken from stylized Nahoa ceramic themes. The combi-

poem and

nation of

Jaguar y

was singularly

picture

Ruben Dario

la luna, received the

effective,

and the book, El

American

prize for Central

verse in 1959.

Cuadra, then, absolutely refuses to regard the Indian heritage of Central

America

matter of archaeology or of lavish color pictures in Life

as a

magazine.

It is to

him something

own

for expression in his

aspects of his verse are social

attempt, as so

many

living,

and

soul,

and

something that

He

political.

necessary combination,

and there

Cuadra himself has spoken of

we

this road,

a singularly fruitful

no longer any question of

is

one, because the Indian legacy

is

is

the last step,

shrouded in mystery.

.

.

which was most

the culture of the Nahoas, or Nahuas,

pictorial expressions (in ceramics)

to gain possession of their spirit

saw the world and

directly

my

and

poems

first

artistic

I

made

the

saturated

my-

I

I

studied their

outlook with which they

them.

I

called

upon the

me in the verbal forms of expression me in this matter of expression, above I

waited in study and in love for

.

The answer came

in these

poems, The Jaguar and The Moon, in which

the social, cultural, and political struggles of Central

America

are invested

with the passion and eloquence of a primitive tradition.

2

322

task

to help

the popular street theater. For the rest, .

a difficult

their sculpture (in stone) in order

and of the

they employed. Folklore also helped

.

My

own.

and Chorotegas.

their lives, in order to express

ancient texts of Indian

the answer.

and

.

acquaintance of the arts of the ancient peoples of Nicaragua.

all

and we

continue to exploit in

reduce the great inheritance of the Toltecs, Olmecs, Mayas,

to

Aztecs, and Incas to that

self in

validity.

its

refuse to treat the Indian legacy as archaeology

we can

and

words: 2

his attitude in the following

order to express ourselves as Americans. This

was

cannot do otherwise than

It is

believe that this legacy contains a life that

therefore

fights

others have attempted, to clarify contemporary as-

pirations in the language of ancient myth.

On

and

boils

in the soul of his people. Certain

From an unpublished

letter to the translator of these

poems

[T. Merton]

ERNESTO CARDENAL Born

in 1925 in

Granada, Nicaragua, Ernesto Cardenal

ber of significant

who

in that country,

by Jose Coronel Urtecho and Pablo

young

movement begun,

one of a num-

is

have reached maturity in the poetic

poets

University, Cardenal

Mexico and Columbia

at the University of

Antonio Cuadra. Educated

was involved

movement

in a political resistance

under the dictatorship of the elder Somoza, and this experience is reflected in a volume of Epigrams written before he entered Gethsemani, and published in Mexico, as well as in a long political poem, La Hora O. Cardenal applied for admission to Gethsemani, and into the novitiate in 1957.

He had

Union

ceramics at the Pan American

novitiate he continued modeling in

we have had

here

who

certainly

contemplative with those of an deliberate design,

somewhat

just exhibited

clay.

He

and manifestly combined the

artist.

The

poetic sketches with all the purity

However,

result

and

him

interesting his

was one of the rare vocations

was a

gifts of a

work was, by

his poetic

restricted in the novitiate.

into conscious "poems."

received

Washington, and during

in

simplest and most prosaic notes of his experiences,

them

we

some very

He

set

down

the

and did not develop simple

series of utterly

sophistication that

we

find in the

Chinese masters of the T'ang Dynasty. Never has the experience of novitiate life in a Cistercian

monastery been rendered with such

and

He

yet with such reserve.

most personal aspects of itself

more

he notes

clearly in the

down

is

silent, as is

fidelity,

right, about the inner and

his contemplative experience,

and

yet

it

shows

complete simplicity and objectivity with which

the exterior

and ordinary

features of this

life.

No amount

of mystical rhetoric could ever achieve so just an appreciation of the

unpretentious spirituality of this very plain monastic existence. Yet the left

and thinks

how

the purify-

poet remains conscious of his relation to the world he has a great deal about

it,

with the result that one recognizes

ing isolation of the monastery encourages a profound renewal and change

This introduction

to

Merton's translations from the Spanish of Ernesto Cardenal's

first published in Emblems of a (New York: New Directions, 1963). The translations appear in Poems of Thomas Merton (New Directions, 1977).

poetry was written in the early sixties and was

Season of Fury

The

Collected

323

of perspective in

and I

less

do not

(Mexico

which "the world"

is

not forgotten but seen in a clearer

delusive light.

know how much

City, 1960) will

silence of the

mean

the selections to

from "Gethsemani, Ky."

someone who has never

Kentucky night around the walls

listened to the

of this monastery.

But

Cardenal has, with perfect truthfulness, evoked the sounds of rare cars

and

trains that accentuate

through

He health

the silence

was not destined was not

elsewhere.

He

to

where he

is

remain for

sufficiently strong, is still

loneliness by

their

life

passage

in this particular solitude.

and indications were

He

is

much

rightly recognized as

His

that he should

pursuing in Central America his vocation

contemplative, and poet.

go

as priest,

published in Mexico and Colombia,

one of the most significant of the newly

mature generation of Latin American

324

and

it.

poets.

IV

RELATED LITERARY QUESTIONS (1953-68)

AND TYPOLOGY

POETRY, SYMBOLISM The Psalms

and poems have

are poems,

a

meaning

—although

the poet

make his meaning immediately clear to anyone who make an effort to discover it. But to say that poems have

has no obligation to

does not want to

meaning

not to say that they must necessarily convey practical infor-

is

mation or an

words are charged with mean-

explicit message. In poetry,

way than are the words in a piece of scientific prose. poem are not merely the signs of concepts: they are also and spiritual associations. The poet uses words not merely

ing in a far different

The words

of a

rich in affective to

make

declarations, statements of fact.

He

concerns him.

seeks above

that they exercise a mysterious

all to

and

That

is

usually the last thing that

put words together in such a

way

among

and

vital reactivity

themselves,

so release their secret content of associations to produce in the reader an

experience that enriches the depths of his spirit in a

A

good poem induces an experience

other combination of words.

It is

Like

all

great works of

own. What we must seek

their

reference to something outside individuality actually

and of

in a

itself:

which

life

is

it

experience

is

it is

off

its

itself,

from every other work of by a

to live

poem is therefore we must seek this in the

life

entirely

not an accidental

inner principle of

What

"form."

soul, or

"means" can only be summed up

experience which

produced by any

that could not be

poems seem

true

art,

quite unique.

therefore an entity that stands by

graced with an individuality that marks art.

manner

the

poem

whole content of poetic

capable of producing in the reader. This total poetic

what the poet

is

trying to

communicate

to the rest of the

world. It is

them

supremely important for those

in the public prayer of the

content of these great songs.

bestowed on

all

men

The

who

read them. This does not

This essay formed

a chapter in

Psalms of the Old Testament later

included in

Harcourt, Brace

read the Psalms and chant

to grasp,

poetic gift

is

if

A Thomas & World,

poems but

mean

they can, the poetic

not one that has been

with equal lavishness, and that

necessary not only for the writers of those

who

Church

gift

also, to

is

unfortunately

some

extent, for

that the recitation of the Divine

Merton's Bread in the Wilderness, a study of the

as poetry

(New York: New Directions, 1953). It was ed. Thomas P. McDonnell (New York:

Merton Reader,

1962).

327

Office

by

an aesthetic recreation whose

is

initiates

endowed with But

artistic cultivation.

it

—beyond Church Latin —

Psalms

in their spirits really are

and embellished by

refined taste

rather hard to get anything out of the Psalms.

it

why

so

many

them

to

awakened

that the Psalms

poems.

Since, then, they are poems, the function of the

share in the poetic experience of the

how

home even with

that latent poetic faculties have never been

by someone capable of pointing out

I

understand the

to

fail

the fact that they are never quite at is

a certain

mean that the type of reader whose poetic by the Burma Shave rhymes along American

however, that the reason

believe,

can only be realized

does

appetites are fully satisfied

highways may find

full possibilities

carefully

and how

scientifically

Psalms

is

make

to

men who wrote them. No we may interpret the words

Psalms, and study their historical background,

matter of the

these investigations

if

us

do

not help us to enter into the poetic experience which the Pslams convey, they are of limited value in showing us what

Psalms, for the revealed content of the Psalter

be

clear, that since the inspired writer is

who, according

what is

is

to the Catholic Faith,

revealed in the Psalter

is

has revealed in the

the true

imply that

their original

therefore Spirit,

revealed in the poetry of the Psalter and

and the content conveyed by it is

it

Author of the Psalms,

only fully apprehended in a poetic experience that

of the Psalter

Let

poetic.

is

an instrument of the Holy

is

experience of the inspired writer. However,

to

God

its

when

I

analogous

is

to the

speak of the poetry

poetic form,

I

do not mean

necessary for everyone to read or recite the Psalms in

Hebrew,

integral artistic form.

I

in

which alone they possess

and

their authentic

imagine that every contemplative would,

some

at

time or other, wish that he could chant the Psalms in the same language in

which they were chanted by

quoted them when

He

on

this earth,

and

was dying on the Cross! This

very few of us will ever be able to Actually, the simplicity

them

Jesus

accessible to every

satisfy.

But

it is

is

in

which

He

a longing that

accidental.

and universality of the Psalms

as poetry

makes

mind, in every age and in any tongue, and

believe that one's poetic sense

must be unusually deadened

if

I

one has

never at any time understood the Psalms without being in some

way

moved by their deep and universal religious quality. The Psalms are more than poems: they are religious poems. This means that the experience share,

is

distinct

328

which they convey, and which the reader must

try to

not only a poetic but a religious experience. Religious poetry

from merely devotional verse

—

is

—as

poetry that springs from a true

religious experience.

Devotional poetry does

is

do not necessarily mean

I

which manipulates

verse

mystical experience.

a

religious

themes and which

perhaps, even on a truly poetic level. But the experiential content

so,

of the

poem

what

passes for "religious" verse

at best poetic only.

is

Sometimes is

Much

not even that.

it is

of

simply the rearrangement of well-

known

devotional formulas, without any personal poetic assimilation at

all. It is

a

game, in which

number

draughts with a certain

prompted by

ity is

rarely "save"

any

God

of familiar devotional cliches. This activ-

who

poem be

the

if

or for the salvation of souls. But such

They

souls.

ones

irritate the

sincere in their piety, play poetic

a fundamentally religious intention,

written for the glory of

but

no doubt

souls,

flatter

really

those

who

need salvation.

poems

are comfortably "saved"

A

truly religious

poem

is

not born merely of a religious purpose. Neither poetry nor contemplation is

good

built out of

spiritual

intentions. Indeed, a

poem

is

simply "willed"

tends to have the same disquieting effect

as

religious strain in those

if

who

God.

It

seems

me

to

is

upon the reader

not

art,

at the

and

it

as forced piety

are trying hard to be contemplatives,

infused contemplation were the result of

a gift of It

from no deeper

need than a devout intention will necessarily appear to be

same time forced and tame. Art that and

that springs

human

that such poetry

effort rather

than

were better not written.

tends to confirm unbelievers in their suspicion that religion deadens

instead of nurtures

all

that

the other hand, are at the religious

No

is

vital in the spirit of

man. The Psalms, on

same time the simplest and the

greatest of

all

poems.

one will question the truly religious content of the Psalms. They

man — and David was

are the songs of

God was more sitting in his

out him.

the greatest of

them

—for

whom

than an abstract idea, more than a frozen watchmaker

tower while his universe goes ticking away into space with-

Nor

is

the

God

pageantry of phenomena.

immanent

of the Psalms simply an absolute,

Being spinning forth from some deep metaphysical

The Psalms

womb

an endless

are not incantations to lull us to

sleep in such a one.

The human symbolism

of the Psalter, primitive

and simple

as

it

is,

should not deceive us into thinking that David had an "anthropomorphic"

God. Such

a mistake could only be

sense of poetic

made by

tence of the great Jewish prophets on spirituality of

materialists

who had

form and who, moreover, had forgotten the

Jaweh,

who was

so far

did not even have an utterable name.

the transcendence,

above

all

The God

lost all

violent insis-

the infinite

things imaginable that of the Psalter

is

"above

He all

329

above anything that could possibly be represented

gods," that

is

to say,

and adored

in

an image.

the Psalter,

it is

"above

is

upon Him." He who

is

all

above

all

God was

the heavens,"

things

Himself through them

of manifesting

can penetrate the poetic content of

clear that David's concept of

God, who

yet this

To one who

is

utterly pure.

who

"near to those

also in all things,

is

He

And

is

call

capable

1

all.

The men who wrote the Psalms were carried away in an ecstasy of joy when they saw God in the cosmic symbolism of His created universe. The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands. Day unto day heralds the message, and night unto night makes it known. There

is

no speech nor words, whose voice

Their sound goes forth unto farthest

all

not heard:

is

and

the earth,

unto the

their strains

bounds of the world.

There he has

set his

tabernacle for the sun, which like to the bridegroom

coming out from the

bridal chamber, he exults like a giant to run

his course.

His going forth

Praise ye the

is

from one end of the heavens, and

ends

his circuit

at

2

the other

.

.

.

Lord from the heavens,

Praise ye him,

all

Praise ye him,

O

praise ye

his angels, praise ye

him,

sun and moon, praise him,

Praise him, ye heavens of heavens,

him

in the

high

places.

his hosts.

all

all

ye shining

stars.

and ye waters that are above the

heavens:

Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he

commanded and

they were

created,

And

he established them for ever and ever: he gave a decree, which

shall

not pass away. Praise the

Lord from the

earth, ye sea-monsters

and

all

ye depths of the

sea.

Fire and hail,

snow and

Mountains and Beasts

and

all hills,

all cattle,

mist, stormy wind, that fulfill his word, fruitful trees

serpents

Kings of the earth and

all

and

all

cedars,

and feathered fowls,

people, princes

and

all

judges of the earth,

Young men and even maidens, old men together with children: 3 Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted. The Roman

1

Cf.,

2

Psalm

18: 2-7.

3

Psalm

148: 1-13.

330

Missal: Collect for the Mass of the Dedication of a Church.

Although we tend

patriarchs

far

from

and prophets seem

have walked with Eden. This

in

as a chronicle of

God, we forget how many of the

their

to

Adam

the intimate simplicity of first

upon the Old Testament

to look

which men were

fear in

God

with some of

especially evident in the

is

days of the Patriarchs, of which the Welsh metaphysical poet

Vaughan speaks when he

My

God, when

And

An Angell Under

Or

I

walke in those groves,

leaves thy spirit doth

see in each

I

Henry

says:

fan,

still

shade that there growes

man

talking with a

a juniper

some house,

the coole mirtles canopie,

Others beneath an oa\es greene boughs,

Or

at

some fountaines bubling Eye:

Here Jacob dreames, and Raven

Elias by a

Another time by

He brings him

is

wrestles

:

there

fed,

Angell, where

th'

water with his bread;

Abrhams Tent the winged guests (O how familiar then was heaven!)

In

Eate, drinke, discourse,

Untill the Coole,

As age succeeded age

the

that

is

drunk with the

man

is

downe, and

rest

and shady even.

memory

seems to have withered away, but

David

sit

love of

of this primitive revelation of its

leaf

God and

is

still

filled

with the primitive sense

the Leitourgos or the high priest of

all

creation,

born with

the function of uttering in "Liturgy" the whole testimony of praise

mute

creation cannot of

The

God

to

of any one religion. It

foundation for in nature

is

through nature

preamble

and supernatural

who may

4

to

At

the

I:

an important one.

The

human

race

same time the

Hence even

and forms the vision of

God

which depends those

modern

be repelled by the "historical" Psalms will nevertheless

and by the vision of God Romans

is

not the exclusive property

supernatural faith,

revelation.

be attracted by those in which the keynote

4 Cf.,

is

shared by the whole

is

natural religions.

all

a natural

distinct

readers

man

which

God.

function of cosmic symbols in the Psalter

revelation of

upon

itself offer to its

God

green in the Psalter.

18

is

struck by cosmic symbolism

in nature.

and Acts

14:15.

33 1

i

However, the cosmic symbolism

much more

The Old Testament

with the cults of the Gentiles. larly the

Old Testament

the

in

is

something

than an element which Judaeo-Christian revelation shares writers,

and

particu-

author of the creation narrative that opens the Book of Genesis,

were not only dealing with symbolic themes which had made

their ap-

pearance in other religions of the Near East: they were consciously

tempting

common they

purify

to

heritage of

and all

mankind and

them

restore to

had been robbed by being degraded from the

is

so

important that

upon

digression in order to touch

which

symbols

I

hope

I

may

it.

of the late

rationalists

nineteenth century berated the Judaeo-Christian

borrowed

be permitted a brief

5

Everyone knows with what enthusiasm the

fabricated out of

a dignity of

level of theistic

myths.

to that of polytheistic

This question

at-

symbols which were the

the cosmic

elevate

revelation

symbols of the Old Testament were similar ern religions, and because the

New

many

to those of

being

for

themes and

materials, because the religious

other East-

Testament made use of language and

concepts which bore a great resemblance to the formulas of Platonic philosophy, the ritual language of the mystery cults, and the mythological

Even today

structure of other Oriental beliefs.

persons

who

suppose that

the world

is

full of

honest

somehow weakens the Christian The writers of the Old and New

this parallelism

claim to an exclusive divine revelation.

Testaments were simple men, but

St.

John the Evangelist was certainly

may

not so simple as to imagine that the Greek word logos, which he well have borrowed

own. The

from the

them from the common ideas in

Platonists,

fact that the Biblical

necessity

was

a personal discovery of his

writers were inspired did not deliver

which compels writers

words taken from the current vocabulary of

of their time.

When God

to clothe their

their culture

and

inspired the author of Genesis with the true

account of the creation of the world, the writer might, by some miracle,

have

set

the whole thing

down

in the vocabulary of a twentieth-century

textbook of palaeontology. But that would have inaccessible to

anyone except

free

quite

a twentieth-century student of palaeontology. a

poem

use of the cosmic symbolism which was common

to all

So instead, the creation narrative was

which made

made Genesis

set

down

in the

form of

primitive mankind. 5 I

am

especially indebted to the article

bv Pere Jean Danielou,

of Symbolism," in Thought, September 1950. See also his (Paris: 1950).

332

S.J.,

"The Problem

book Sacramentum Futuri

Light and darkness, sun and moon, whales, fishes, and birds of the

and

us

impressed themselves upon the

is

mean

spirit of

why, for example, they enter one we

live in, in

buttons, advertising

no material

in the

way

in such a

they

have

mean

that they

in themselves.

so mysteriously into the substance

why an

age,

which cosmic symbolism has been almost

for-

and propaganda

an age of mass psychosis.

man

around

their place

and of our dreams. That too

gotten and submerged under a tidal

is

planets, trees, beasts,

these things in the world

air, all

him much more than

to

of our poetry, of our visions, like the

and

whole natural economy in which they have

the

naturally tend to

That

stars

A

common

wave

is

of trademarks, political party

and

—

the rest

is

necessarily

world in which the poet can find

practically

slogans,

all

substance of everyday

life,

and

which he

in

driven crazy in his search for the vital symbols that have been buried

alive

under a mountain of cultural garbage, can only end up,

in self-destruction.

are running wild

And

that

among

the

is

why some

like ours,

of the best poets of our time

tombs in the moonlit cemeteries of

surreal-

ism. Faithful to the instincts of the true poet, they are unable to seek their

symbols anywhere save in the depths of the

spirit

where these sym-

These depths have become a ruin and a slum. But poetry

bols are found.

must, and does,

make good

use of whatever

it

finds there: starvation,

madness, frustration, and death.

Now

the writers of the Bible were aware that they shared with other

religions the cosmic symbols in

men. But they were

also

which God has revealed Himself

aware that pagan and idolatrous

corrupted this symbolism and perverted

had "detained the truth

God

into a lie."

of

God

7

0

The

had

Gentiles

and "changed the truth of

8

Creation had been given to the light of

original purity.

its

in injustice"

to all

religions

God

man

as a clean

window through which

could shine into men's souls. Sun and moon, night and

day, rain, the sea, the crops, the flowering tree, all these things were transparent.

They spoke

to

man

not of themselves only but of

Him who made

them. Nature was symbolic. But the progressive degradation of the fall led the Gentiles further

and further from

became opaque. The nations were no longer

this

man

truth.

able to penetrate the

Nature

meaning

of the world they lived in. Instead of seeing the sun a witness to the G

the 7

8

The

classical

passage in this connection

is

the

first

chapter of

St.

after

power

Paul's Epistle to

Romans.

Romans Romans

I: 18. I:

25.

3?3

of

God, they thought the sun was god. The whole universe became an

enclosed system of myths. vested

them with an

Men

still

illusory divinity.

that reality was.

of the creature

and growing

They became

Men became

could no longer understand. the sea. These things to

trolled

had

They became

to

now

power

a

afraid of trees, of the sun, of

be approached with superstitious

that

had

their to

men

rites.

It

meaning, which had become

be placated and,

if

possible, con-

by magic incantations.

Thus

which were

the beautiful living things

and which were the windows of heaven

The world

with original

sin.

regeneration.

The

of

no longer knew

Beings had a meaning which

afraid.

seem that the mystery of

hidden, was

things, but they

incapable of seeing that the goodness

only a vestige of God. Darkness settled upon the trans-

is

lucent universe.

began

the worth of creatures in-

sensed that there was something to be venerated in the reality,

in the peculiarity of living

what

The meaning and

all

to every

rites,

this earth

man, became infected

with man, and longs, with man, for

fell

symbolic universe, which had

myths and magic

about us on

now become

a labyrinth

the dwelling place of a million hostile

spirits,

men of God and told them only The symbols which would have raised man above himself

ceased altogether to speak to most

of

themselves.

to

God now became myths, and as own biological drives. His

man's

became

The

such they were simply projections of deepest appetites,

now

full of

shame,

his darkest fears.

corruption of cosmic symbolism can be understood by a simple

to a window when a room ceases As long as it is daylight, we see through our windowpane. When night comes, we can still see through it, if there is no light inside our room. When our lights go on, then we see only ourselves and our own room reflected in the pane. Adam in Eden could see through creation as through a window. God shone through the windowpane as bright as the light of the sun. Abraham and the patriarchs and

comparison.

was

It

to receive light

David and

like

from the

what happens outside.

men of Israel— the chosen God—could still see through

the holy

the testimony of

out by night from a darkened

room and

race that preserved intact

window as one looks moon and stars. But the

the

sees the

Gentiles had begun to forget the sky, and to light lamps of their own,

and presently the

it

window was

seemed

to

them

that the reflection of their

the "world beyond."

themselves were doing.

And what

They began

to

own room

in

worship what they

they were doing was too often an

abomination. Nevertheless, something of the original purity of natural

334

:

revelation remained in the great religions of the East. It

is

found

in the

Upanishads in the Baghavad Gita. But the pessimism of Buddha was a reaction against the degeneration of nature by polytheism. Henceforth for

would no longer be symbol but

the mysticisms of the East, nature

Buddha knew jections of

was

this

own

So much, then,

and our own

existence

window and

a

window were only but did not know

too well that the reflections in the

our

illusion.

prothat

desires,

that there could be sunlight outside the glass.

for cosmic symbols. In the

Psalms we find them clean

and bright again, where David sings

O

how

Lord, our Lord,

glorious

is

thy

name

hast exalted thy majesty above the heavens

When

I

gaze

at the heavens, the

work

who

in all the earth, thou .

.

.

moon and

of thy fingers, the

stars,

which thou hast made:

What

man,

is

that thou art

mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou

him ? made him a little lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour; Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; hast care of

And

thou hast

thou hast put

Sheep and oxen,

The

all

of them,

birds of the heaven

and whatever

O

things under his feet:

all

it is

how wonderful

There

another. This

is

referred to as typology.

The

is

name

thy

is

is

makes

9

the most important symbolism

the symbolism

is

we have

already

which

the vehicle of the special message, the "Gospel"

the Psalms a

body of

religious

not

is

peculiar to the Judaeo-Christian

the very essence of Christian revelation.

that

in all the earth!

typological symbolism of the Bible

to other religions: its content

revelation. It is

is

not the cosmic symbolism that

in the Bible.

common

beasts of the field, too,

fishes of the sea:

traverses the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord,

But

and the

and the

And

it

is

typology above

all

by their

own

antipolytheistic repercussions.

Man,

poems which

are,

right altogether unique. 9

Psalm

who him

8: 2,

can see free.

4-10. Every line of this

God through His

(John

8:

32)

Thus he

Psalm has

creation,

is

in possession of the truth

leads a spiritualized existence "a

which makes

little less

than the

angels" and stands in his rightful place in the order of creation, above the irrational animals.

The

Gentiles,

on the other hand, have descended lower than the animals,

since they have lost the creation.

For by

ship of beasts.

knowledge of God though God remains evident

their ignorance of

(Romans

I:

23)

ter II, n. 4; Patrologia Latina,

God, they have doomed themselves

in

in the

His wor-

Compare also: St. Bernard, De Diligcndo Deo, ChapVolume 182, column 970.

335

4

I I

have already brought up the subject of the typical sense of the

Psalter.

have discussed the significance of type and antitype, and suggested important antitypes in Scripture

briefly that the

Word

with the Incarnation of the

by the Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, for Christian faith.

now

It is

have something

all

do

to

God, and with man's Redemption

of

this

is

the central Mystery of the

time to add a few remarks on the importance

of typology in the Psalms.

Pope Pius XII

Word

heaven for

all

Christ in this that

is

sung

in

context of this important declaration sug-

and the Liturgy can become sung

is

to lead us to

is

hymn which

nature,

for us

means

simply because they are capable of uniting us with

it is

"hymn which

the Psalter

if

The

the Psalter

if

contemplation,

"By assuming human

that

introduced into this exile a

eternity."

gested to us that to

we remember,

said,

the Divine

much as to say we must know how to find

in heaven."

contemplation

That

is

as

Christ in the Psalms. Apart from a few clear messianic prophecies

it

is

typology that reveals Christ to us, even in some of the most unexpected lines of the Psalms.

Scriptural typology

a special

is

kind of symbolism.

purer and more efficacious than allegory.

Psalms allegory Psalter that to

make up

a

poem

personification of

It is

something

would even add

There

altogether negligible.

is

reminds us of the

I

almost nothing in the

is

tissue of allegorical complexities

like Spenser's Faerie

moral abstractions

is

Queene.

far

that in the

It

seems

which goes

me

to

that the

foreign to the spirit of true con-

templation.

The tion of

relation of types

God:

vention in

it

in Scripture

history.

repeat themselves over

like the light of the

light,

and over with the

seasons, historical

typical

God

of history with a sudden, searing

appearing and vanishing with a liberty that knows no law of man.

of lightning

is

like clouds

wounding

Consider for a

and

rain: but typology

The Deluge which God destroyed

is

storm

simply a type of

sin: Christ's

and death. But the symbolism of the Deluge goes further:

God

like a

from heaven.

the typology of the Deluge. In the Deluge,

purifies the world, destroying sin.

to us the activity of

is

the earth unpredictably with fire

moment

the one great redemptive act in

336

and

reflect the action of

sun on the vast sea of creation. Typological symbols

which divide the dark sky

Cosmic symbolism

God

a special manifesta-

Unlike the universal cosmic symbols, which

symbols are altogether singular. Cosmic symbols

are meteors

is

the testimony of His continuous providential inter-

is

human

and antitypes

it

Passion

also manifests

destroying sin in the souls of individuals by the

sacraments, for instance Baptism and Penance, in which the merits of

our

Christ's Passion are applied to

Old Testament Finally,

all

souls.

type: the crossing of the

Red Sea by

Kingdom, His

work, the establishment of His

final

crowning of

Christ's

and manifest triumph

His Mystical Body: the Last Judgment. There again the same creative

which God manifested Himself

action by strike the

world of

sin.

But

this

time

"accounting" in the sense that then all

mony

to their personal response to

who have

have believed, and offered to

Red the

it

Deluge

in the

will

men

come

will

God's action

final

forth to give testi-

in the world.

freely accepted the light

them from heaven,

once more

will

have the nature of a

Those who

and the

will pass, like the Israelites,

salvation

through the

Sea; they will be rescued in Christ as Noah's sons were saved in

Ark; they

will

have lived out the meaning of their Baptism because

they will have died and risen with Christ. Those

—and

Christ

all

who

drown

in the

Him

are not with

what they too have chosen.

It

are against

will be their

own

who were

not with

Him — will

manifest

choice that they will

Deluge and perish with the chariots of Egypt

waters of that

in the closing

last sea.

Not only do many glory of Christ, but is

the people of Israel.

these symbols are tied together in one, final, climax of signifi-

cance. All Scriptural types point to the last end, the

in

to another

This also corresponds

"typical" of the

of the Psalms literally foretell the suffering

David

New

is

The

a "type" of Christ.

Testament

as a whole,

Psalter as a

and often the

and

whole

particular

sentiments of the Psalmist are, at least in a broad sense, "typical" of the sentiments in the Heart of the Divine Redeemer.

belong of us

to Christ, in the sense that

all."

"God hath

laid

Even

the sins of

upon

Him

David

the iniquity

10

10 Isaias 53:6.

337

4

POETRY AND CONTEMPLATION: A REAPPRAISAL Author's Note

Ten

which was published

first in

an Apocalypse.

of verse, Figures for

In

and the Contemplative Life" Commonweal and then appeared in a volume

years ago I wrote an article called "Poetry

original form, this article stated a "problem"

its

by people interested in religious verse and, at

Many

religious experience.

that

of

rejected

it

tried to apply a

by implication, in

least

them were inclined

was proposed. Others wisely

and

was rather widely discussed

rather crude "solution" which, at the time,

to accept the "solution"

because of

its

somewhat

puri-

tanical implications.

As time

my

in

writer

passed I have found that the confident pronouncements

early writing lay

and

as a priest,

more and more

and while

it is

heavily on

my

made

conscience as a

and

evidently impossible to correct

amend all my wrong-headed propositions, at least I would li\e to revise the essay of 1948. The revision is unfortunately not fully satisfactory precisely because

new

approaching the subject from an entirely different angle.

article,

believe

the

no more than a revision. But I do not want to write a whole

it is

it is

same

One

necessary to revise the earlier article

and

I

to restate the case in

context, arriving at a different conclusion.

of the unavoidable defects of this \ind of revision

is

that

it

retains

an altogether misleading insistence on the terms "contemplation" and "contemplative

life" as

something apart from the

rest of

mans

existence.

This involves a rather naive presupposition that "contemplation" l{ind of objectivized entity

aesthetic reflection. conflict,

There

but to state

it

is

which gets "interfered with" by such things

is

a certain

thus crudely

amount

is

a as

of truth behind this supposed

to invite all sorts of

misunderstand-

ing. In actual fact, neither religious nor artistic contemplation should be

regarded as "things" which happen or "objects" which one can "have."

They belong

to the

much more

—or

mysterious realm of what one "is"

This reappraisal of "Poctrv and Contemplation" October

24, 1958,

Merton

(it

as

included in the

first

first

World, 1962).

Reader, cd.

Thomas

P.

appeared in Commonweal,

edition of Selected

does not appear in subsequent editions).

Thomas Merton

338

and w

McDonnell,

It

was

Poems

of

Thomas

also published in

(New York:

Harcourt, Brace

A &

rather

"who" one

Aesthetic intuition

is.

also a heightening

it is

and

is

not merely the act of a faculty,

intensification of our personal identity

and

being by the perception of our connatural affinity with "Being" in the beauty contemplated.

But

also,

and

and

tion" as rest

wrong

all

you

will,

to

same time, the implied

at the

poetic creation as activity

imagine that

it is

pen!' In actual fact,

dynamism

fulness,

is

between "contempla-

even more misleading.

stillness

— which

all love.

includes wor\, creation, production, fruit-

not to be thought of as a

Contemplation

is

cut off from

all

man's other

separate department of

life,

superseding them.

the very fullness of a fully integrated

the crown of

life

and enter

where one waits for "something to haptrue contemplation is inseparable from life and from

of life

and above

It is

"contemplate" divine things, or what

necessary to abstain from every \ind of action

into a \ind of spiritual

the

in order to

conflict

It is

and

and

interests

life. It is

of all life's activities.

Therefore the earlier problem was, largely, an illusion, created by this division

of life into

formally separate compartments of "action" and

"contemplation." But because this crude division was stated so forcefully

and

now two

so frequently in to try to

my

earlier writings, I feel that

do something

most necessary

wound and draw

together the

sides of this unfortunate fissure.

In this present article, the so. I

to heal this

it is

am

attempting to patch

wound it

up,

is still

evident,

do not care so much, as long as

this is true, I

and drawing the wound

and

it is

meant

it is

and probably do not

to be

fully succeed. If

am

clear that I

together, pouring in the disinfectant,

stitching

and putting

on a bandage.

1

In an age of science and technology, in which

man

finds himself be-

wildered and disoriented by the fabulous versatility of the machines he has created, teriorly

we

live precipitated outside ourselves at

empty, spiritually

emptiness and ready

seeking at

to alienate ourselves

"cause" that comes along. of contemplation:

lost,

At such

and indeed

geois "cause"

itself

costs

every to

it

in-

own

name

of any

seems absurd

to talk

completely in the

a time as this,

moment,

forget our

a great deal of the talk that has been

bandied about timidly enough on

Contemplation

all

this subject

is

ludicrous and inadequate.

takes on the appearance of a safe

and rather bour-

—the refuge of a few well-meaning Christians who

are will-

339

ing to acquaint themselves with

and as

to disport

Thomas and

St.

themselves thereafter

in

John of the Cross,

St.

such Edens of passivity and fervor

cannot be disapproved by the so-called "Masters of the Spiritual Life."

For

others, safer

leisure

contemplation means nothing more than a

still,

and of study:

many

in

more

cases

a fond

of

life

hope than an accom-

plished fact.

The after

relative timidity of these adventures,

more

laugh

at

every

symptom

of the most important lent, anarchic,

to recover

not only to

and truth of

their

but to the

of the

their

own

life.

For one

in the turbu-

men

inner depths, to recapture

and

subjectivity,

spirit of

we

own

to

go on from there

other men. In the face of our

own

are trying to get back to ourselves before

most outstanding examples of

this struggle

is

it

seen

whose more recent

the almost symbolic career of Boris Pasternak,

in

is

but fully determined efforts of a small minority of

God

One

late.

us too prone to

of man's acute need for an interior

almost hopeless alienation, too

make

and most hopeful signs of the times

some kind of contact with

the freshness

is

and the hare-brained chase

exotic forms of spirituality, should not

poetry and prose can most certainly qualify in a broad and basic sense as

contemplative.

The

contemplative

crossed, or

is

one who

spiritual problems.

He

not just a

edifies is

one

man who

sits

under

a tree

himself with the answer to ultimate and

who

seeks to

know

meaning

the

only with his head but with his whole being, by living in purity,

which

is

and thus uniting himself infinitely actual

torily inside

with his legs

to the very

and therefore too

in

it

Source of Life

real to

of

man

:

not

depth and

—a

be contained

any word or concept or name assigned by

life

Source satisfac-

for the

words

man tend to limit the realities which they express, in order to express And anything that can be limited cannot be the infinite actuality known to the contemplative without words and without the mediation

of

them.

of precise analytical thought.

We

can say, then, that contemplation

Who

is

the

Himself as the unnameable "I Am" and then again made Himself known to us as Man in Christ. Contemplation is experience of God in Man, God in the world, God in Christ: it is an obscure intuition of God Himself, and this intuition is a gift of God Who reveals Himself in His very hiddenness as One unknown. intuitive perception of life in

Contemplation

is

its

Source: that Source

revealed

related to art, to worship, to charity: all these reach

out by intuition and self-dedication into the realms that transcend the material conduct of everyday

34°

life.

Or

rather, in the

midst of ordinary

life

—

—

they seek and find a

itself

meaning they

new and

transfigure the

whole of

life.

Art, worship,

trate into the spring of living waters that flows

man's

spirit is

new world and

a

draw from

united to God, and a

new

—the

all

three,

ecstatic prayer.

contemplation

is

religious intuition of the artist, the

lover, or the worshiper. In these intuitions, art, love, or

worship remain

modify the experience of ultimate

in the foreground: they

to create

soul into the supernal waters,

baptism of wordless understanding and

broad and improper sense

this

and love pene-

power

those depths

There can be various levels of contemplation. There in a

by

from the depths where

Contemplation goes deeper than

life.

and unites them, and plunges man's whole in the

And

transcendent meaning.

reality,

and

present that reality to us as the "object" of aesthetic vision, or adoration,

or love. In an even

proper sense, "contemplation" loses sight of

less

ulti-

mates and becomes preoccupied with a beautiful thing, or a meaningful liturgy, or a loved person.

But

in

"things," passes

proper meaning, contemplation transcends

its

and goes beyond

beyond

all

all

speculation,

all

"rests" in the inexpressible. It lets

ing

On I

—the todo y nada of

and

John of the Cross.

St.

secure,

and

go of everything and finds All in Noth-

a dark night, kindled in love with yearnings

darkness

"objects," all

creative fervor, all charitable action,

went forth without being observed,

In

all

"ideas" of beauty or goodness or truth,

by

the

my

—oh happy chance

house being

secret

now

at rest.

disguised,—

ladder,

O

happy

chance In darkness and concealment,

In the happy night, in secret

Nor

I

the place

me more surely than the light of noonday He (well I knew who!) was awaiting me

where

where none appeared.

Now

when we speak it is

improper is

of a possible conflict between poetry

clearly only contemplation in the last,

intended. For

love. It

at rest.

when none saw me

place

plation, is

now

heart

This light guided

A

house being

beheld aught, without light or guide save that which burned in

my

To

my

sense,

and contem-

most perfect sense that

when we speak of contemplation in the more broad and we find it uniting itself with art, with worship, and with

not only compatible with poetic creation, but

is

stimulated by

34 1

and

it,

in

And

turn inspires poetry.

its

plation in this broad sense liturgy,

and

arises

mental

life

of the Church,

is

realm of worship, contem-

in the

stimulated by meditation, by prayer, by

out of these religious

we

activities.

Above

in the sacra-

all,

find contemplation in this broad sense

should normally be the fruit of fervent reception of the sacraments, least

sometimes. That

to say that the reception of the

is

at

sacraments should

produce, once in a while, not only interior and unfelt grace but also a

dim awareness

certain

though

they feel

it,

may

awareness

this

sible to assess.

portant,

of the presence

Nor

in the soul,

be very fleeting, tenuous, and almost impos-

should people trouble their heads about whether or not

because some are not supposed to

and what they

the fervor of love

will experience

and the

feel it: feelings are

without realizing

call in a

not im-

too clearly

it

more

desire to dedicate themselves

God. Such things we can

to

and the action of God

is

perfectly

broad and improper sense "contem-

plative" experiences.

This all

is

the supernatural value

and ordination of our

of the initiative belongs to our grace.

which grace indeed

active contemplation, in

own

Contemplation

is

life

but in which

much

powers, prompted and sustained by

This form of the contemplative

properly so called: the

acts,

the principle of

is

life

prepares us for contemplation

of infused or passive or mystical contemplation.

the fullness of the Christian vocation

—the

full flower-

ing of baptismal grace and of the Christ-life in our souls. Christian contemplation

simply the experience of

and

faith. It

"This

is

is

not something esoteric and dangerous.

is

God

that

is

God in the darkness of infused love. know Thee, the One True God, Thou hast sent" (John 17:3) or "But we all,

the "knowledge" of

eternal

life,

and Jesus Christ

that they should

Whom

beholding the glory of the Lord with open the

same image from glory

Corinthians 3:18).

who

clung to the

St.

to glory, as

face, are

transformed into

by the Spirit of the Lord." (2

Paul, in his Epistle to the Hebrews, rebuked those

"first

elements of the words of

have been "Masters," and he urged them

God" when

to relinquish the

they should

"milk" of be-

ginners and to desire the "strong meat" of the perfect, which

contemplation of Christ in the great Mystery in which

He

is

But strong meat

unskillful in the is

word

for the perfect: for

senses exercised to the discerning of

Omnis qui ad Dominttm 342

of justice: for he

is

a

is

little

them who by custom have

good and

evil"

is

the

renews on

earth the redemptive sacrifice of the Cross. "For every one that taker of milk

It is

given to a soul purified by humility

a parchild.

their

(Hebrews 5:13-14).

convertitur contemplativam

vitam desiderat,

said St.

Gregory the Great, and he was using contemplation in our sense:

to live

on the

earthly things

And

Christ.

desire of

and

God

united,

alone; to have one's

more

perfectly, in heaven. St.

of the other Doctors of the

Thomas echoed him with (contemplation

in loving contemplation.

wisdom

against our generation,

which

Solomon

of

And

Infused contemplation

is

Matthew

By infused and

love,

and transcendent altogether to the

By

we

rest in the

actions

work

the light of infused

Christ

Who

is

the glory that

manity.

Our

is

which the

infinite

within our inmost

wisdom we

opened

the

life

and

depths of the

selves,

to

yielding ourselves

enter deeply into the Mystery of

men.

light of

We

participate, as

it

were, in

and transfigured Hu-

understand the Scriptures and the mystery

man's

history.

the lot of those

spirit of the

own

Spirit.

We

become aware of the way

mercy and wisdom of God are revealed

life is

wisdom,

immediate grasp of God's

angels in the Mystery of the Church, which

contemplative

land and

judgment

in

obscure and profound sense of His presence

radiated mystically by His risen

of God's intervention in

own

up

vital contact in the

are given an

Himself the

eyes are

her

wisdom and philosophy.

His transforming

of

left

will rise

quasi-experimental knowledge of God's

a

goodness "tasted" and "possessed" by a

substance,

a

in his second

refuses the treasure of divine

preferring the far lesser riches of worldly

soul.

who

he says that the Queen of the South

12:42,

his

is

in his insistence that all Christians

conference on the Hexaemeron, applying Christ's words in

traveled far to hear the

with

permits,

Bonaventure goes further than any

St.

Church

God

should desire union with

all

begins on earth in order

life

famous phrase: quaedam inchoatio beatitudinis beginning of eternal blessedness).

divested of

human weakness

insofar as

he adds that the contemplative

to continue,

mind

the

is

who have

Body

of

in

men and Christ. The

to

entered most fully into

Church, so that the contemplatives are

at the

very heart of the Mystery which they have begun really to understand

and

to "see"

and

its gifts is

ful

with the eyes of their soul. therefore to desire to

and strong member of

desire

with

and accept a share

Him

Now thing

is

ject that

Christ. in

To

desire the contemplative life

become

But

it

in the highest sense a fruit-

means

in the participation of

His

is

truly

it

by that very

fact, to

rise

glory.

whether we speak of contemplation evident:

also,

His sufferings and death, that we may

as

active or

passive,

one

brings us into the closest contact with the one sub-

worthy of a Christian poet: the great Mystery of God,

revealing His mercy

to

us

in

Christ.

The

Christian

poet should be

343

who

one

Christ.

Deeply rooted in the

of the whole Church, steeped in the Liturgy possessed by the the

"mind

God and

poet

Spirit,

what was announced

David and

a live coal

man

a

were a voice of

it

The

impure

of

from the

lips,

until

the Prophets, he contemplates

He

be,

should be one who, like

God and has lamented the fact God Himself sent Seraph, with

heavenly temple,

altar of the

Christian

Old Testament: he should

by the poets of the

the prophet Isaias, has seen the living

was

as

Scriptures, fully

sings again the magnalia Dei,

as they were, a mystic, full of divine fire.

that he

and the

pointing out the wonder of His ways.

therefore the successor to

is

and

spiritual consciousness

becomes

of the Church," he

Church and of the Holy

praising

God

has been granted a deep understanding of the ways of

and of the Mystery of

burn

to

his lips

with

prophetic inspiration.

In the true Christian poet

—in Dante,

St.

Jacopone da Todi, Hopkins, Paul Claudel

John of the Cross,

—we find

hard

it

St. Francis,

to distinguish

between the inspiration of the prophet and mystic and the purely poetic enthusiasm of great

artistic genius.

Consider also what a tremendous mine of the Liturgical

life.

The Liturgy

inspiration

literary

in

is

contains the greatest literature,

itself

not only from Scripture but from the genius of the Patristic and Middle

The

Ages.

Liturgy stands at the crossroads of the natural and super-

natural lives, and exploits

all

the possibilities of both in order to bring

out every possible meaning and implication that to

our salvation and the praise of God.

supernatural integrity

vitality,

and

It

is

them with

in

surrounds those founts of

the Sacraments, with a music that

and with ceremonies

dignity,

is

and

plastic art

still

unknown

all

perfect in

its

most meaningful

that are

by reason of their tremendous, dramatic simplicity, not the resources of pictorial

respect

to

mention

in this land

all

which

has never yet possessed a Chartres or an Assisi.

The Liturgy marvelous built

is,

then, not only a school of literary taste

subjects, but

it

is

infinitely

more:

it

is

and

is

mine

of

a sacramental system

around the greatest Sacrament, the Blessed Eucharist,

Christ Himself

a

in

which

enthroned, in mystery, in the very heart of His wonder-

ful creation.

Christ on the Cross

fount of

is

the fount of

He

grace and wisdom.

all

all art is

because

He

made

is

this

anointed

344

subsists in

King

Him

and

of Creation

reflects

Who

is

the

Word,

the

the center of everything, of the

whole economy of the natural and the supernatural that

is

orders. Everything

His beauty. Everything points

to

the splendor of the eternal light

and the mirror of the Godhead without invisible

God, the

created, by

... in

consist

dwell

all

The it

in

Whom

Him

it

.

.

before

is

all

Him

were

all

things

and by

Him

all

things

hath pleased the Father that

things should

all

Him dwelleth all the fullness of the things He may hold the primacy. (Colossians,

Godhead

world ought, by

Christian's vision of the

something of poetic inspiration. Our

1

and

2)

very nature, to have

its

ought

faith

corporeally,"

be capable of

to

our hearts with a wonder and a wisdom which see beyond the

filling

and

surface of things

"sacred"

meaning

No

and grasp something of the inner and

events,

of the cosmos which, in

aspects, sings the praises of

its

all its

name

all

all its

has been written by anyone

not in some degree a contemplative.

because obviously not

movements and

Creator and Redeemer.

Christian poetry worthy of the

who was is

.

He

the "image of the

is

firstborn of every creature ... in

and

... for in

that in

in

Him

He

stain.

I

say "in

some degree"

Christian poets are mystics. But the true poet

always akin to the mystic because of the "prophetic" intuition by which

he sees the spiritual

reality, the

which makes

plates,

admiration in

itself,

in

ments

all

makes

worthy of

a sign of

it

God. All

His creation and

whole world and

His mysteries, and behold the

in

and symbols

all

of

God. To the true Chris-

the incidents of

life

tend to be sacra-

—signs of God, signs of His love working in the world.

However, the mere in the

having

this

contemplative vision of

is

matter

how great a we will not command of

plation,

man

be not a "seer" but also and especially a "creator"

an

Poetry

proper

fact of

world around us does not necessarily make a

One must

man

of the object he contem-

are then contemplatives in the sense that they see

created world as filled with signs tian poet, the

meaning

but also and above

good Christian poets

God everywhere

inner

that concrete reality not only a thing

art, a

natural

skill,

subject

we may have it

into

our medium. This

already has this natural

—a

"maker."

a virtue of the practical intellect,

be able to put

gift. If

is

in the experience of

words true.

if

But

the inspiration

correspondingly effective technique, technique

is

we do let is

God

a great poet.

and no contem-

not have the

us assume that a

helpless without a

barren without inspi-

ration.

2 Christ

is

the inspiration of Christian poetry,

of the contemplative

life.

Therefore,

it

and Christ

would seem

is

fairly

at the center

evident that

the one thing that will most contribute to the perfection of Catholic litera-

345

4

ture in general to live

more

This means life

and poetry

be for our writers and poets

in particular will

as "contemplatives" than as citizens of a materialistic world. first

of

all

leading the

full

Christian sacramental and liturgical

insofar as they can in their state. Obviously, the poet does not have

to enter a

monastery

On

be a better poet.

to

patterns of religious cation,

and even

life

—contemplatives in

politics.

This means a

thought, religion, and family unity with Christ at

its

life

center.

The

where the

liturgical life

is

immense

against the is

the world of

rigidly fixed

art, letters,

in

one

liturgical life

harmonious

vital

hard enough

it is

vitality

edu-

work,

the most obvious

is

to find a parish

The

anything more than a bare skeleton.

and obsessions of occasional

revival. It

what we need

solid integration of one's

and recreations

example of "active contemplation," but

tricities

the contrary,

and outside the

are "contemplatives" outside the cloister

faddists should not

eccen-

prejudice us

and permanent value of the true

liturgical

quite certain that one of the most valid achievements in the

realm of Christian

art in

our time

monks

the credit of the

to

is

of

Solesmes, with their revival of Gregorian chant.

A

sincere

and

more deeply

efficacious desire to enter

into the beauty of

the Christian mystery implies a willingness to sacrifice the things which are called "beautiful" by the decadent standards of a materialistic world.

Yet the Christian contemplative need not confine himself still less

ture

and above

all

He

models.

to professionally "pious"

to religious,

will, of course,

read Scrip-

the contemplative saints: John of the Cross, Theresa of

Avila, John Ruysbroek, Bonaventure, Bernard.

own

without reading the good poets of his

But no one can be

time

—T.

S.

Spender, Rilke, Pasternak, Dylan Thomas, Garcia Lorca.

and of

that a fully integrated vision of our time

Eliot,

One might add

spirit

its

presupposes

some contact with the genius of Baudelaire and Rimbaud, who tians

a poet

Auden,

are Chris-

turned inside out.

Contemplation has

something

much

to offer poetry.

to offer contemplation.

How

is

And

poetry, in

its

turn, has

understanding the

this so? In

relation of poetry to contemplation the first thing that needs to be stressed is

the essential dignity of aesthetic experience.

gift,

though only

in the natural order. It

is

It is,

a gift

in

itself,

a very high

which very many people

have never received, and which others, having received, have allowed spoil or

To many

people, the enjoyment of art

and emotional

thrill.

They look

is

nothing more than a sensible

at a picture,

and

another of their sense-appetites they are pleased. to look at a picture of

346

to

become atrophied within them through neglect and misuse.

mountains or the

if

On

sea because

it

stimulates one or

day they

like

makes them

feel

a hot it

cool.

They

they soon

like paintings of

go down the

A

This

genuine aesthetic experience

of reason

not what one can legitimately

is

is

something which transcends not only has

it

its

beginning) but also that

a suprarational intuition of the latent perfection of

itself. It is

things. Its

immediacy outruns the speed of reasoning and

an analogue of the mystical experience which

tates

from

afar. Its

mode

of apprehension

leaves

is

a kind of affective identification of itself with

of the soul in

its

immediate

A

mystical prayer. it is

it

resembles and imi-

two experiences

it.

its

it

by

in the perfection

It rests

God

with

in the obscurity of

true artist can contemplate a picture for hours,

one another

as

if

and

the resemblance between these

is

that a poet like Blake could almost confuse the into

—

object,

which sometimes resembles the quiescence

affective contact

a real contemplation, too. So close

make them merge

analy-

that of "connaturality"

reaches out to grasp the inner reality, the vital substance of

of things by a kind of union

all

Maritain has often insisted,

far behind. In the natural order, as Jacques

sis

to pat to give

"enjoyment of Art."

the sensible order (in which, however,

it is

But naturally

an air-conditioned movie,

street to

their senses another series of jolts. call the

pat.

under those circumstances. They turn aside

tire of art,

a real dog, or they

dogs that you could almost

they belonged to the

two and

same order

of things.

This resemblance between the experiences of the

artist

and

has been extensively discussed in the long and important

and

Spirituality,"

by Fr.

M. Leonard,

S.J.,

of the mystic

article

in the Dictionnaire

on "Art

de Spiritual-

ite.

This theologian pushes the dignity of the aesthetic intuition practically to its limit.

He

He

gives

insists that the

beyond the

everything that

it

is

ontologically able to stand.

highest experience of the artist penetrates not only

sensible surface of things into their

beyond that experience

it

to

is

artist sets in

God

Himself.

More than

deeper and closer

still

that, the

not. It

and the

fits

in

latter's

own

but even

analogy with mystical

motion the very same psychological processes which accomwith the psychology of

St.

to be too

much: but

Augustine and

St.

no,

it

Bonaventure

notion of contemplation per speculum, passing through

the mirror of created things to

be our

reality,

because, he says, the intuition of the

pany infused contemplation. This would seem is

inmost

soul. It also fits in

God, even

if

that mirror

may happen

to

with the ideas of the Greek Fathers about

theoria physica, or "natural contemplation"

which

arrives at

God through

the inner spiritual reality (the logos) of the created thing.

347

K

The Augustinian

psychology, which forms the traditional substratum

Western Church, distinguishes be-

of Christian mystical theology in the

tween an inferior and superior speaking. There

and

indivisible.

making things,

is

And

is

Of

course, this

yet the soul insofar as

and

decisions

soul.

is

only a

manner

of

only one soul, a simple spiritual substance, undivided

practical

The

called "inferior."

acts

it

through

faculties,

its

judgments concerning temporal external "superior" soul

is

same

the

soul,

but

now

considered as the principle or actus primus of these other diverse and multiple acts of the faculties which, as ciple.

Only the superior

we

contemplate

if

are to

soul

we must

by grace, and then

substance of the soul

itself.

the

is strictly

God

were, flow from this inner prin-

it

image of God within

at all, this internal

enter into this inner sanctuary

This passage from the exterior

has nothing to do with concentration or introspection. objectivization to

knowledge by

of people never enter into this

intuition

inward

self,

And

us.

image must be re-formed

It is

which

is

the

to the interior

a transit

from

and connaturality. The majority which

is

an abode of silence and

peace and where the diversified activities of the intellect and will are collected, so to speak, into

which

far exceeds in

on external

reality

with

one intense and smooth and spiritualized fruitfulness the plodding efforts of reason

its

its

analyses

and

syllogisms.

here that mystical contemplation begins.

It is

"center" of the soul,

when

and images and concepts,

it

activity

working

has transcended

its

It is

into this substance or

dependence on sensations

that the obscure light of infused contemplation

poured by God, giving us experimental contact with Himself with-

will be

medium of sense species. And in this contact, we are no God as an "object" of experience or as a concept which we

out the facing

We

longer appre-

Him in the mystery of love and its transcendent subjectivity, and see Him in ourselves by losing ourselves in Him.

hend.

are united to

Yet even

in the natural order,

without attaining to

God

in us,

and with-

out perceiving this "inner spiritual light," the aesthetic experience introduces us into the interior sanctuary of the soul and to simplicity.

For the

by identifying

aesthetic intuition

itself spiritually

Obviously, then,

when

the

with what

it

beyond

inexpressible

—

it

"sees"

contemplates.

man

a taste of the peaceful intoxication

is

already well prepared for infused contemplation. If

grant that grace, the person so favored will be recognize

34 8

its

objectivity

experienced in the suprarational intuitions of this interior

is

way

also

the natural contemplation of the artist or the

metaphysician has already given a

which

is

it,

and

to co-operate

much

God

self,

should

better prepared to

with God's action within him. This, as a

matter of

fact, is a

physician

is,

to

He

if

and disposed

and imaginable

He

will be

thrills.

He

more ready

to

to reach out for

more

will be

"spiritual,"

keep himself detached

crude feeling and emotionalism which so easily corrupt

level of

and of the man of

the integrity both of the artist of the artist's or poet's

good

him

help

art, will

man

tempted than the ordinary

will be less

not more "religious."

of his

the poet, the meta-

of the principal obstacles to the light of infused contem-

vulgar satisfactions

from the

artist,

sense already naturally prepared

some

then, in

remove some

plation.

tremendous advantage. The

avoid some of the

to

religious experience before

prayer.

which should belong

taste,

to

evils that

The mere fact him by virtue

tend to corrupt

grow

has a chance to take root and

it

in the

soul.

3 Mystical contemplation

There

activity.

beyond the reach of man's natural

absolutely

is

nothing he can do

is

God. God gives

to obtain

whom He

by himself.

it

It is

a pure

in the way and degree work of ordinary grace we can and, if we really mean to love God, we must seek Him and even find Him obscurely by a love that gropes humbly for truth in the darkness of this life. But no amount of generosity on our part, no amount of effort, no amount of sacrifice will make us into mystics. That is a work that must be done by God acting as the "principal agent" (the term is

gift of

in

which

He

wills.

to

it

wills,

By co-operating with

and

the

—

—

that of St. John of the Cross)

.

agent: ourselves. But our part

without knowing where

amounts

to the

ing our

own

Bonaventure persuade the

way

and

St.

we

nesses of

us in

many

action.

active

and attachments

listen,

is

and

another

to follow

we

can do

and keep-

all

all its selfish

own

how

and ardent

St.

desire can

on our part can open

that indnstria

industria stands for active purification,

that, precisely the

same thing

that St. John

through the "Ascent of Mount Carmel," soul, clearing

it

of all images, all like-

to created things, so that

obscure light of God's

noble, or

things for their

and

The term

emptying of the

to receive the

how

the principal agent, there

places that prayer

to give us this gift,

His

be stripped of

is

are going. All the rest that

Bonaventure means, by

namely the

high,

simply to consent, to

or less negative task of avoiding obstacles

of the Cross talks about

pure

He

is

prejudiced judgments and self-will out of His way. tells

God for

more

If

own

it

may be The

presence.

desires for natural satisfactions,

excellent in themselves.

sake, seen

and

clean and soul

must

no matter how

As long

as

it

rests in

possessed as "objects" to gratify our

349

own

God and

cannot possess

self-love, it

love of the soul for objectivized beings

common

the

It is

is

knowledge of God by

Thomas and

infused contemplation (the terms are those of St. is

human

attachment to objectivized

from sense images, and by

ing, to conclusions. In other words, a

man

he

if

cannot

on walking along the ground

insists

him much longer and

at the

He must

an airplane and walk along the ground.

his fol-

reasoning and analysis and

discourse that proceeds by abstraction

And

for the

doctrine of Christian mystical theologians that a great

obstacle to "unitive" or "connatural" or "affective"

lowers)

Him,

be possessed by

darkness in the sight of God.

—

syllogiz-

same time

fly

in

do one or the other.

no

all right, it is

sin.

But

him much more effort to get to his destination, and he will have a much more limited view of things along his way. What the Holy Spirit demands of the mystic is peaceful it

will take

consent and a blind trust in not act of it

is

cost

Him:

for

this time, since the soul does

all

remains blind and in darkness, having no idea where

itself, it

going or what

is

being done, and tasting satisfaction that

The

extremely tenuous and ineffable and obscure. that the soul

appreciate

what

going on within

is

it.

it

—a

is

one makes a move

if

it is

from being

a precious gift,

him

becomes a

in order to reflect

upon

The

artist enters into

soul

is

a forge

And

yet

if

one stops

and he

will lose

it

when

soul

and

if

calls

his art will be

it

colors and,

it

for a

is

to clothe

it

with a special

to those outside.

And

to

here

be seen.

a fire of

white heat, a crucible

images into new, created forms. But the

work but

lose himself in the

transcendent reality of

prayer

altogether.

its

and the mystic begins

mystic enters into himself, not in order to

Consequently,

analyze

the poet enters into himself,

and

to display

where inspiration kindles

own

to

by a natural

himself in order to wor\. For him, the "superior"

for the transformation of natural

center of his

and

real danger. If the intuition of the

the radical difference between the artist

35°

truly present

to increase its intensity

his inspiration

and splendid form and then return

when

and

into the inner sanctuary of his soul,

purpose in the natural order:

infinite,

really

precisely here that the aesthetic instinct changes

poet naturally leads special

is

fraught with a greater certitude than

the whole thing will evade his grasp

Now

it is

which

sense

has ever experienced before.

the experience, or act,

of course,

is,

remains with nothing but the

It

God

vaguest and most general sense that

anything

at first,

not yet sufficiently spiritualized to be able to grasp and

is

working there

reason

is,

God

living

tempted

to start

through the

mystery and secrecy and

and working within him.

the mystic happens to be, at the

him within himself

to pass

same time, an

to the secrecy of

artist,

God's presence,

working and producing and studying the

"creative" possibilities of this experience.

whole thing runs the

risk of

run the risk of losing a

will

work

order to perform a spiritual grace

And

being frustrated and destroyed. gift of

He

of far less value.

own

within his

The

artist

tremendous supernatural worth,

which has been granted him,

flection of that grace

therefore immediately the

in

go of the deep,

will let

in order to return to the re-

He

soul.

withdraw from the

will

mystery of identification with Reality beyond forms and objectivized concepts,

and

ize his

own

He

sake.

realm of subject and object.

will return to the

experience and seek to exploit and employ

will leave

God and

creative

work done

the soul of

man

itself

is

be

will, in fact,

directly in the soul

Himself, the infinite Creator Spiritus,

work which

it

will objectiv-

for

own

its

return to himself, and in so doing, though

he follows his natural instinct to "create," he

For the

He

less creative.

and on the soul by God

beyond

all

comparison with the

accomplishes in imitation of the divine

Creator.

Unable

fully to lose himself in

God, doomed by the

restlessness of talent

God

has given him, the

to seek himself in the highest natural gift that artist falls

from contemplation and returns

own

passing through his

God

to

himself as

artist.

soul into the abyss of the infinite actuality of

Himself, he will remain there a moment, only to emerge again into

the exterior world of multiple created things

whose

dissipates his energies until they are lost in perplexity

There

is,

therefore, a likelihood that

artistic intuition

and most

one

who

and creation may be unable

spiritual

variety once

and

has the natural gift of

to pass

on

to the superior

kind of contemplation, in which the soul

be like the hare in the fable,

who

life,

behind. In a word, natural gifts and talents

in the beginning, but contemplation can never

may, indeed, prove

to

first

life,

And

especially

many

souls,

ation," the artist

but who, in the end,

may

to exploit every

may remain

may

be of great value

there all his

we

are

well receive the

John of the Cross

and often quite soon

where conditions are favorable:

promethean tendency

artist

without

depend on them. They

so the artist

taste of infused prayer, for, as St.

granted to relatively

The

be obstacles, unless by some special grace

completely detached from them.

God

rests in

far outstrips the tortoise

talent in the beginnings of the contemplative is left

more

dissatisfaction.

without images, without concepts, without any intermediary.

may

Instead of

says,

that

is

in their spiritual

but, because of this tragic

experience as material for "crelife

on the threshold, never enter-

ing into the banquet, but always running back into the street to passers-by of the wonderful music he has heard

coming from

tell

the

inside the

palace of the King!

35 1

4

What,

then,

That poetry

the conclusion?

is

can, indeed, help to bring

us rapidly through that early part of the journey to contemplation that called active: but

when we

where eternal happiness our

is

God "beyond

rest in

tasted in anticipation, poetic intuition

all

must consent clusion

between the

to

gifts of

first

to take, if

to the ruthless

would seem

may

be tempted to say that there

he wants

and complete

be dictated by

to

sacrifice of his art.

logic. If there is

an

Such

man and God,

then should not one always reject

seems to be so simple

when one has experience when one has

a con-

infinite distance

the natural for the supernatural, the temporal for the eternal, the

is

only

is

be a mystic or a saint: he

nature and those of grace, between the natural and

the supernatural order,

for the divine? It

ruin

images."

In such an event, one might at

one course for the poet

is

are entering the realm of true contemplation,

as to defy contradiction.

in the strange vicissitudes of the inner

human

And

yet,

life,

and

seen something of the ways of God, one remembers that there

a vast difference between the logic of

indeed no

human

Our God

is

logic in the

ways of

Our

not a Platonist.

men and

the logic of God. There

lectualism of Plotinus or the asceticism of the Stoics.

be very careful of oversimplifications.

Divine paradox.

interior prayer, only

Christian spirituality

The

Christian

is

is

is

We

not the

must

intel-

therefore

sanctified not merely

by always making the choice of "the most perfect thing." Indeed, experience teaches us that the most perfect choice perfect in

itself.

The most

willed for us, even though

perfect choice it

may

is

not always that which

most

God

has

and indeed

less

the choice of what

is

be, in itself, less perfect,

is

"spiritual." It is

quite true that aesthetic experience

like all other

man

enriches

and loads ities to

it

down

But poet

is

it

is

passes away.

a hundredfold in time

and

only a temporal thing, and

It is

true that mystical prayer

in eternity. It purifies the soul

with supernatural merits, enlarging man's powers and capac-

absorb the infinite rivers of divine light which will one day be his

The

beatitude. lay

temporal things

let

sacrifice of art

would seem

be a small enough price

to

to

for this "pearl of great price."

us consider for a

moment whether

the Christian contemplative

necessarily confronted with an absolute clean-cut "either/or" choice

between "art" and "mystical prayer." It

can of course happen that a contemplative and

a situation in

which he

sacrifice of his art, in

templative

352

life.

is

may

enter

In such a case, the sacrifice

God demands

himself in

him the more deeply into the conmust be made, not because

morally certain that

order that he

artist finds

of

— this is a general

law binding

all

artist-contemplatives, but because

God in this particular, concrete case. But it may equally well happen that an

it is

the

will of

to

artist

who

be called to the higher reaches of mystical prayer

at all. It

for

becomes evident,

him

is

be an

to

a deep mystical

life

and

that he should sacrifice his aspirations for

and be content with the

been endowed by God. For such a one, to

insist

be a contemplative would be

efforts to

find that by being an artist

—and

on spending long hours fact,

lead to illusion.

Indeed, he would

fruitless.

same time

at the

with which he has

lesser gifts

would, in

in prayer frustrating his creative instinct

His

not called to them

is

him, that the simplest and most obvious thing

to

artist,

imagines himself

living fully

the

all

implications of art for a Christian and for a contemplative in the broad

word

sense of the

much

with a

life,

—he

called to be an

a far deeper

and more

richer appreciation of the mysteries of

bury his

just tried to

would enjoy

artistic talent

and be

God, than

a professional "saint." If

him

artist, then his art will lead

vital interior

to sanctity, if

he uses

he

if

he

is

it

as

a Christian should.

To it

take yet another case:

certainly

St.

was

it

might conceivably be the

in the case of the

John of the Cross

—that

a

will of

Old Testament Prophets and

man

God—as

in that of

should remain at the same time a

mystic and a poet and ascend to the greatest heights of poetic creation

and of mystical prayer without any evident contradiction between them.

Here

again, the problem

is

solved not by the application of

some

abstract,

a priori principle, but purely by a practically practical appeal to the will

God in this particular case. We are dealing with gifts of God, which God can give as He pleases, when He pleases, to whom He pleases. It is futile for us to lay down laws which say when or how God's gifts must of

whom

be given, to

remains true that create

He

God Himself

be born and

live

they must be refused.

It

into conflict with the call to mystical union

can resolve the

the

life

Nor

wisdom

Who

Wisdom

wise with the

within us in His all

does.

so.

of Christ in the soul. Christian

only-begotten Son,

same way, because we

And He

conflict.

need any advice from us in order to do

The Christian life is the wisdom of God's sapientia genita. To be the

whom

at a certain point in the interior life, the instinct to

and communicate enters

with God. But does

they can be given, to

wisdom

own

way.

is

begotten

of Christ,

He

does

is

we must let Christ not come to all in

have different functions in His Mystical

Body. "There are diversities of graces, but the same

Spirit, and there are same Lord: and there are diversities of but the same God Who worketh all in all. And the manifes-

diversities of ministries but the

operations,

353

tation of the Spirit

man

given to every

is

unto

(I

Corinthians

our present

case. If the

profit."

12:4-7)

We

may

apply the

Christian poet to other

do so

men

is

last

words of

this text to

truly a Christian poet,

if

he has a vocation to

make known

the unsearchable mystery of the love of Christ, then he

in the Spirit of Christ.

And

must

his "manifestation of the Spirit" not

only springs from a kind of contemplative intuition of the mystery of Christ, but

is

"given to

him

for his profit"

perfect his union with Christ.

grows not only by the

mercy of God.

his

the

same

St.

Paul:

make an

he

time, he should always

is

deepen and is

one

called to give this witness to

to

me

if I

who

remember than his

that the

art,

God,

preach not the Gospel."

and

exclusive choice of one or the other, he

sacrifice his art.

354

Christian poet and artist

"Woe

spiritual gifts are infinitely greater to

will therefore

contemplation but also by his open declaration of

If it is clear that

then he can say with

At

The

and

if

hidden and more he

is

called

upon

must know how

to

THEOLOGY OF CREATIVITY The most

obvious characteristic of our age

hardly be doubted.

We

destructiveness. This can

is its

have developed an enormous capacity

to build

more enormous are our capacities for destruction. It is significant that the age of atomic war is the one in which man has become preoccupied with what he calls "creativity," and preand

change our world, but

to

occupied with

it

far

almost to the point of obsession.

The problem

of cre-

when approached from the semantic viewpoint, reveals itself almost problem of guilt. The function of this paper is by no means the in-

ativity,

as a

vestigation of this admittedly fascinating possibility has to

which

supposed, in the end, to be theological, will not

is

We

make

must begin by facing the ambivalence which makes

our talk about creativity absurd because

Why

and timely question. But the

be taken into account, otherwise a discussion of creativity,

insincere? Because

word

of the

creativity

pure evasion. cation.

It is

When

everything

it

is

everything

is

"creative,"

called creative:

is

one

feels

a trick to avoid thought,

and

nothing

we have

is

creative

The

which

is

of

popular use

immediately that

it

is

a

communicreative. But nowadays salesmanship, meaning

to

avoid real

probably obnoxiously aggressive and vulgar salesmanship. ative advertising,

all.

much

fundamentally insincere.

is

so glib, so all-embracing.

so facile that

is

it

sense at so

We

have

cre-

merely outrageously whimsical or arbitrary.

We

have creative ways of doing everything under the sun, and in every case

what

is

called "creative"

posed to supersede:

emphasis on what seems

mean

to

is

not even

more

what it more ponderously

original than

implies nothing but a

it

is

sup-

stupid

is

already too familiar. In a word, being "creative"

little

more than rushing forward with breakneck im-

petuosity into the conventional, the vulgar, or the absurd.

But there ativity.

concept

is

The is

This essay

a

more

serious complaint against our obsession with cre-

inanity of the popular, commercialized degradation of this

merely an innocent "cover" for

first

its

self-contradictions

it is

appeared in the September-December 1960 number of The American

Benedictine Review as the

first

section of a three-part article, along with

Davidson, M.D., and Brother Antoninus, O.P. (William Everson). published in

when

A Thomas

Harcourt, Brace

Merton Reader,

& World,

ed.

by Thomas

P.

An

William

excerpt was

McDonnell (New York:

1962).

355

used on a deeper

And

level.

here

we come

face to face with the impli-

cation of guilt.

The term

some

used, to be in ness.

It

name:

"creation."

ties in is

we

if

observe carefully

There

are, admittedly,

human

The

beings.

empty and

Nevertheless,

it

almost infinitely interesting pos-

revelation of these

grim but arresting quali-

and

destruction.

all

the

more

positive by

The

artist

is

not far removed from taking delight in actual

may have

and

protest as effectively

the moral, cultural,

a perfect right, perhaps even a duty, to

as vocally as

and economic

can be creative, and there

he can against man's present

no doubt that

is

articulate,

it

may

What we

so taken possession of the artist that

and can only express

have

is

by gestures equivalent

it

destruction. It

may

be a matter of urgent importance, but creativity

word

of

can bring forth great and

dashing his brains out against the wall, then there

of creativity.

state

meaning because

This protest certainly

crises of society.

But when the protest has

no longer

implied

formalistic attempts at conventional "beauty."

of alienation in a world that seems to be without

living art.

its

should be clear that to take delight in a symbolic, or

represented, destruction

is

is

horrifying objects, contemplated from a certain detached viewpoint,

contrast with

to

it

cases nothing less than a justification of destructive-

in fact a positive aesthetic value,

he

how

broken pieces of machinery, ruined houses, even the smashed

sibilities in

bodies of

be seen,

negation, an un-making, justified by a positive-sounding

a

is

may

"creativity"

for tongue-tied frustration, helplessness,

and

and despair

that not every expression of frustration

is

no longer question

be terribly pitiable, is

self-hate. is

it

just not the honest

This means

creative, only

such

as are really articulate.

Our misuse

of the

word and concept

of creativity has robbed us of a

We can no longer tell when an artist is expressing human or merely screaming: we do not even try to interpret the noise, we just react to it one way or another, believing that the mere fact of having a reaction is somehow "creative." One reason for this seems to be that we have begun, out of resentment, to dissociate the creative from the human. We now tend to assume that a humanistic outlook frusstandard of judgment.

something

trates the real creative urge,

antihuman. But tive

makes our

At

is

in

some way subhuman, or even

"creativity" nothing

and negative reaction against

which true

is

this

which

more than

that very element of life

and

a destruc-

spirit

creativity depends.

this point,

necessary to

though

make

a partisan declaration

is

really not called for,

a personal statement in regard to

modern

it

move-

art

ments, including those that are most experimental and extreme.

35 6

upon

I

want

and emphatically

to say quite clearly

ment

modern

in

that

admiration for Picasso, Matisse, Rouault,

my

time and

do not intend

society. I

of such great

artists,

am

I

for the people

have in other places and contexts made

art. I

though

that the traditional, classic art

and Oriental sacred

of the past, especially primitive Italian, Byzantine, art,

seem

to

me

share the taste of

I

to call into question the "creativity"

must admit

I

In this

etc.

be vastly more important and significant.

to

ested in abstract art, surrealism, fauvism, action painting, It

seems to

me

who experiknown my

that the

men who

am

I

and

all

inter-

the

rest.

experiment in action painting have

every right to do what they are doing, and that they have a claim upon

our respectful attention, though

I

do not believe the publicity and money

And

they receive are in proportion to their so far slight achievements.

though doing,

I

am find

I

painting

to

is

more worthy

persuaded that they have every right to do what they are it

hard

me

favorable

to

more than

comment

I

that

if it

suppose that is

actually

It

what

is

why

is

Most

action

no

made

is

it

the

is.

Comment on

it

enormous amount of

couched in peculiarly earnest

were worth interpreting, would probably turn out

mean nothing whatever. Or perhaps

own

results.

a pleasantly intriguing accident,

of insult than of praise.

would be absurd, and doubletalk which,

about the

to get very excited

little

it is

simply a justification of

its

meaninglessness.

When among

reflect that the

I

other things, the

clear to

me

artistic

"first

history of the past decade recorded,

one-ape show" held in London,

that the term "creativity"

a pure cliche.

There may well be

Rorschach inkblot. But

in

this applies to

grain in wood, stains on a

damp

becomes

too likely to be used today as

a fortuitous design in the ape's "paint-

and one could probably find

ings,"

is all

it

them

many forms

as

in

as

a

everything else under the sun: the

wall, the fence of a vacant lot covered

with tattered posters and, for that matter, even the paintings of the most absurd and conventional academicians.

If

we

include the ape, there

reason for excluding the professional bootlickers

who

Hitler and Stalin, though doubtless in their case

it is

creative but the "action painting" of the tongue

We ative.

The

not the "art" that

on the

find ourselves confronted with a situation

man

is

leader's boot.

where everything

sweaty palms of the frustrated business

no

is

painted portraits of

is

cre-

are "creating" for

him

a

due

precisely to the incapacity for positive, constructive, creative activity.

symbol of

his frustration.

Creation in this sense press itself freely fails to

is

But what does

this

mean?

Frustration

is

then nothing else but frustration failing to ex-

and normally,

be heard or understood.

way that symptom is

calling desperately for help in a It is

quite true that a neurotic

357

a positive sign, but

When

nothing

is

a sign of a negation, of a lack of creativity, or of

it is

a frustrated creativity.

When

everything

to invite destruction.

Our

creativity

pression of our destructiveness,

left in

least

measure simply the

ex-

the guarded, despairing admission

destructiveness that cries for help without admitting

thing

creative.

is

be destructive, or at

in great

is

nothing

creative,

is

creative, everything tends to

our destructiveness

is

it.

The

only positive

bitter anguish. This, at least,

its

of

can

claim to be. This has creative possibilities.

These

initial reflections

may seem

are not proposed as anything

know how

not

true they

serious thought.

them

aside,

it

may

more than but

be,

will not insist

I

be unnecessarily pessimistic.

to

can be said quite

it

suggestions, or questions.

seems

me

to

on the paradoxes fairly

They

and

I

do

they offer material for

have proposed. Putting

I

objectively that there are four

misleading senses of creativity in current use.

No

doubt there are more

than four, but these seem to be characteristic of our confusions on the subject.

In order to understand what first

begin with what

is

is

wrong with these conceptions we must They all seem to be a more or less

right in them.

vital reaction against lifeless

formality and aesthetic cliche. Three of

them

and spontaneity of the

artist

are explicitly concerned with the sincerity

and with the spiritual

reality of his art.

freedom he needs

if

he

is

They encourage him to

be a genuine

thing new, something that lives with a Creativity in this sense

academic

We

I.

is

life

of

its

a healthy reaction against conventionalism

word

popular wherever

free

men

it

simply in his

is

a fruit of personalism.

original to say,

and he

is

in paint, in poetry, in music, in his house, in his work, or

way

of confronting

life.

Conversely,

be allowed to develop without restraint a better chance of

growing

when he

so.

if

is

his "creativity" can

young, he will stand

into a well-rounded person.

have used these cliches seriously and with

taneity, for spiritual

nothing more

This meaning of the

are concerned with the self-realization of

and spontaneous person has something

able to say

I

and

"creativity" quite often used to signify original

self-expression, particularly in art.

the individual, with personalist values. Creativity

The

for the

inertia.

find the

and spontaneous term

is

to fight

who makes someown, a new "creation."

artist

respect.

freedom, for personal growth,

But when

"creativity"

The need is

for spon-

certainly urgent:

and "personalism"

slide into the

context of popular mythology, they are not going to help us achieve this end.

hard

358

On

the contrary, they

to see that this

may

all

too easily frustrate

it.

It

should not be

thoroughly understandable and commendable idea

mass media. Once

of personalist creativity has been corrupted by the

corrupted,

no longer

it is

mere wishful thinking.

creativity but

of an optimistic myth, the

myth

that

we can somehow

in order to carry out a difficult vocation. In the

But

and invalid

superficial

life is

use of fine long words

narcissism,

enliven

it,

Hence

and

or

self-display,

make

it

the danger

of relaxing

no

is

long as

as

is

it

help. If "creativity"

a is

responsi-

mere

evasion.

mere

laziness, it,

"original."

apparent of a "creativity" that

is

is

illusion

know what we

easy for us to

it is

of "life," creativity

then no amount of spontaneity can justify

and "doing what you want." This

false idea that

name

and becomes an evasion of

substitutes itself for responsibility

The

part

of laboring, suffering, disciplining ourselves, sacrificing ourselves

bilities

bility.

It is

escape the responsi-

supported by the

is

really

merely a matter

want, and that as

we stop doing what someone else, what society demands of us, we can become "creative." One is tempted to say that this concept of creativity, when applied to primary education, has been notable above all for soon as

its

effectiveness in

But

at

any rate

light the artist II.

to

producing juvenile delinquents. That might be unfair. concept

this

is

and by

too tolerant, too vague, too dim,

its

cannot see his way to anything except doodling.

the characteristic error of the capitalist world, in this matter,

If

is

equate creativity with individualistic self-expression, Communists go to

the other extreme. Creativity

is

not in the individual but in the party, or

rather in history: but the party

enigma

The

of history.

party

is

is

the only infallible interpreter of the

creative because

it

is

the midwife of his-

tory. Creative work is done only when the artist expresses the hidden dynamism of historical events and situations, and this means nothing more nor less than acting as the servant of a political program which is

conceived to be based on a correct understanding of

mism. The history

—

artist

this

this

does not contemplate the inner creative

would be

a noble

make

merely paints pictures that

new world which

and indeed the

hidden dyna-

spirit at

work

a Christian conception.

in

He

worker happy about "creating" the

will be the inevitable result of overfulfilled production

quotas. This concept of creativity really does not take art seriously. Art is

only a superstructure whose creativity,

base upon which correct, for then

There

is

it

stands.

to

everybody knows the that this delusion

which

is

the

is

if

any, depends

worst art can be creative

on the economic if its

politics are

presumably built on a creative foundation.

it is

no need

The

deplore what this sophistry has produced in art: story.

However,

it

would be

a mistake to suppose

confined to Russia. Besides the personalist approach

more popular one

here, there

is

a very

widespread belief in

359

American business and work.

It is

not the individual

who

is

more

and personal

A

III.

would be

third delusion

might well

Once you

in the artist.

to

Man.

equate creativity with productiveness:

view which tempts everyone in

session with fecundity

differences in the

creative that project will turn out to be. This

has been fully discussed in books like Organization

a quantitative

and the more

creative but the team,

the individual submerges his originality collective project, the

matter of team-

scientific circles that creativity is a

frustrate

get started,

is

it

consumer

a

An

society.

genuine creative

ob-

potentialities

always easy to do too much, to

on reproducing over and over again the one or two works the public

come

has

that

it

to expect

from you. Of course

this

many.

ruins very

We

ought

to

remember

only one or two pictures in his lifetime

who paints one or two a week. The fourth delusion brings

one

IV.

We

makes money.

vulgar error. But the mass media give

larity, a

may

it

that an artist

more

well be

some

us back, in

who

on

it

a deeper level.

We

myth, the myth of the genius

paints

creative than

respects, to the first.

we

return to the idea of original self-expression, but this time

sider

con-

find ourselves face to face with another

as

hero and as high priest in a cult of art

that tends to substitute itself for religion. This delusion

serious,

is

and

here that "creativity" sometimes takes on a demonic quality which

it is

makes of

means popu-

It

such encouragement

it

one of the

aspects

its

is

to

blame

moves the

For here what matters

Here

art stands out as the

is

to

artist

much

irresponsibility intended to justify not so

such.

One

most

of the

for this apostasy of the artist. It

ulateness of the preacher that

himself.

era.

tragic

the fact that the weaknesses of conventional religiosity

some sense

are in

our

tragic temptations of

no longer

monument

is

assume

his

art

art or the

the inartic-

prophetic

a

his

as

work

cult of

of art as

of genius, not as the symbol

of a transcendent spiritual reality but as the ikon of the artist himself.

The

artist

quality.

becomes fascinated by

He

his

renounces everything

own

else,

gifts

and by

their

including morality and sanity, in

order to devote himself exclusively to their magic. His deliberate cultivation of experience intended to his genius.

Indeed

acquaintance with for

sometimes seems

it

evil

him because only

to

him

way can he

life

becomes

open up new depths that a

and with despair has become

in this

superhuman

full,

in

connatural

a sacred obligation

fully assert his protest against

the conventions and hypocrisies of a society he despises. His vocation to

a

is

devote his magic gifts as fully as possible to negation and to defiance,

and

if

in saying

the better for

360

"no" he can also explode with

him and

for his art.

He

is

self-satisfaction, then, all

a professional mystic-in-reverse.

how sombre

does not matter

It

what matters

not their beauty, their significance, or even their

is

subhuman,

makes no

this

even more significant.

difference.

The

Indeed

it

makes

genius with his

him

ordinary men. This assures

of his

reality,

experiences

his

magic soul has descended

which frightens

into hell for a season of satanically detached lucidity

own

be:

degraded,

the fact that they are his experiences. If they are sinful,

but

may

or perverse his experiences

and confirms him

superiority

in "prophetic" vocation.

Unfortunately ing impure.

complacency that

this is a

It offers

less

complacent for be-

no escape from bourgeois smugness,

for

the

it is

same

turned inside out. This accounts for the dullness, the sameness,

smugness

the conventionality,

and the absurdity of

few rare ones whose

the

no

is

all

the second-rate followers of

speaking out of the shadows with

voices,

Baudelaire and Rimbaud, impose upon the hearer the silence and the

awe that are fitting in the presence of tragedy. Here again, we cannot help being impressed by structiveness of this kind of creativity, even when it

the inherent is

de-

also genuinely

creative.

As Jacques Maritain has pointed tragic role also

meaning

of art

we

it,

is

art,

in

which the

an ikon or a

forgotten, all

monument

supersoul, the

artist is

hero and high

fetish of the creative genius

own

This

must vanish

to the options

into the void, the

made by

to find

so,

transcended

priest,

and the

which produced

Though work

must

all

die

of art remains

the unusually gifted one, the

magic genius who dared

who, in doing his

this

forming the con-

and guiding those who have not been able

find a pitifully deluded hope of immortality.

and be as a

of

who assumes

or orientation in traditional philosophies.

In this cult of

work

the artist

upon himself the burden

takes

sciences of the lost,

out,

to

everything

experience everything and

—

life,

society,

ethics,

even

art. is

the religion of

some modern

intellectuals

who

are incapable

of committing themselves to a religious, philosophical, or political ideal.

They devote themselves

own

its

Hence

sake.

it is

And

to a cult of experience, a cult of "creativity" for

creativity here

not hard to see

why

becomes synonymous with despair.

word has

a careful investigation of the

been necessary. In caricaturing the postures of those

intended in any

Of

way

to

I

believe to be deluded

minimize the residue of truth

I

have not

in their delusions.

the various philosophical approaches to the problem four are chosen

which have very much

in

common. They

are

all religious,

and

three of

361

them

These

are also existentialist.

and

express a sympathy his gifts.

They

perience,

its

and

existentialist

religious views

all

respect for the real responsibility of the artist to

take into account the importance of the aesthetic ex-

know

need for sincerity and depth. They well

art's

exi-

gencies for honesty at any price, even at the price of clarity, beauty,

and

so-called perfection of form.

which seems

and they recognize

into account the originality

at the present

moment.

and genius of the But

artist,

at the

same time,

his responsibility

toward the

his broadly "prophetic" role.

one way or another, they remind him of

in

respect to the subjectivism

full

be the only guarantee of honesty

to

word they take

In a

They pay

work done, and they introduce an element

of salutary objectivity into

the discussion.

They

plete obsession

with himself and with his experience. They bring him

which

strike a note

back from the world of devils into the world of of angels. Such things are

still

from com-

distracts the artist

men and

perhaps even

possible.

Paul Tillich has clearly seen the dialectic of creativity and destruc-

I.

which underlies the

tivity

man's alienation from

depth in his encounter with scendence, ...

our time, a dialectic which expresses

art of

reality.

Man

is

reality,

no longer able which has

transparency for the eternal."

its

to

"lost

1

its

preserve any

inner tran-

Struggling to adjust

himself in a world which becomes opaque and replaces God, to

endow

he has

himself with God's

to forget his

in contradiction

against this

own

own

creative powers.

limitations, his

with himself.

The

own

But

man

in order to

He

essential reality.

reaction of religious thought

demonic trend has been abortive:

new style. way out for

tries

do

so

lives

and

art

on con-

a feeble insistence

ventional symbols, expressed in a

For

Tillich, the only valid

nological culture

most

the artist

and meaninglessness inherent

the very anxiety

and

in

"live creatively, expressing the

sensitive people of

is

to face squarely

contemporary techpredicament of the

our time in cultural production." 2

A

valid re-

ligious art in

our time will then be a "creative expression of destructive

trends." This

is

a

sound

pression of humility

pride that prevents

most seeks II.

1

modern

art

when

it

is

the ex-

and anguish, not of pride and revolt. It is precisely modern man from achieving depth, even when he

it.

The Buddhist

existentialist

Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture

p. 43.

2 Ibid., p. 46.

362

justification of

thinker Daisetz Suzuki, well

(New

known

York: Oxford University Press, 1959),

modern spokesman of Zen, has profoundly significant pages on Japanese art, and these have the advantage of being lavishly 3 illustrated. Writing only of Japanese and Chinese art, Suzuki is interested in the work of art as an expression of Zen experience. The experience and its expression must not be separated, for, as he says, "In the major

as

Zen, experience and expression are one." It is

What

is

Zen experience?

this

often explained by the term "self-realization," but this can easily be

interpreted in a sense exactly contrary to that

4

Zen

"realized" in

is

discussed above.

On

is

its

intended meaning.

The

"self"

by no means the "personality of the genius"

demonic experience

the contrary, whereas the

pseudo-creativity involves the affirmation of man's false, exterior

the

Zen experience

is

a deliverance

from

Rather

this false self.

it

of

self, is

an

emptiness, an "original suchness" in which no such false and illusory self

can be present

Zen

at all.

tolerates

no phenomenal ego that can be

affirmed and placed over against other selves, other objects. Suzuki claims

Zen experience

that the

tions into

is

a leap out of relative, subject-object confronta-

pure "isness," in which there

no

is

is,"

upon

self,

no

own knowledge. There is fact, undimmed and

awareness of oneself as knower, or of one's simply "what

reflection

an immediate grasp of existential

undisturbed by mediate reflection or conceptual analysis.

Is

the "suchness"

more spiritual self? At times this is certain moments, talks like a Western per-

discovered by Zen a higher and explicitly stated.

Suzuki, at

But always behind

sonalist.

physic of Buddhism.

negative in

"ego"

is

its

It

attitude to

is

his personalism

my own

we

face the protean meta-

opinion that Buddhism

man's personality

as

not the "person" in the highest and most

word. In abolishing the ego to discover the higher explicitly claims

sonalism of

The Zen is

its

is

in

self

Zen, which Suzuki

does not "study Zen in order to paint."

Indeed the Zen

all,

The

spiritual sense of the

own.

artist

sometimes thought, practice meditation

tion at

not as

"not pantheistic," asserts a peculiar, indefinable per-

ence and expression. Zen meditation creation.

is

generally thought.

is

man

is

does not

any sense familiar

as a

means

He

does not, as

to artistic experi-

not a preliminary step to strictly

to us in the

artistic

speaking practice medita-

West. Rather he enters into

a purifying struggle against conceptual knowledge, in which he "sweats

out" his attachment to images, ideas, symbols, metaphors, analytic judg8 Cf.,

Zen and Japanese Culture (Princeton,

N.J.:

Princeton University Press,

1959). 4 Ibid., p. 6.

363

:

ments,

means

as

etc.,

reality.

Instead of

not so

much an

and

grasping,

for

and understanding

appreciating,

he seeks to recover an immediate, direct intuition:

this,

which

intuition "of" being as an intuition

identified with his very existence: an intuition in

knows existence, or "knowing subject."

artist,

there

is

rather

paper.

to

the subject

it is

has, so to speak,

It

itself,

"drawn

then no

and

of art springs "out of emptiness"

brush strokes,

which the

while completely losing sight of

"isness,"

In the case of a Zen

rooted in

is

existent

itself as a

The work

artistic reflection.

few

transferred in a flash, by a

is

not a "representation of" anything, but

is

drawing which

existing as light, as art, in a

The work

itself."

then

is

a concretized intuition:

not however presented as a unique experience of a specially endowed

who

soul,

can then claim

it

as his

On

own.

make any

the contrary, to

such claim would instantly destroy the character of "emptiness" and

work might be imagined

suchness which the to

of absurdity.

Whose

For the Zen man

home and

do you think you corded

The

among

ence,

anyway?"

I

Zen

in

its

might

"Who

know

it

if

question

this

is

is

precisely that the

"genius as hero," completely vanishes from the scene. There

empty,

invisible,

which functions

in

and incapable of being displayed.

Zen

experi-

A

disciple

once complained to a Zen master that he was unsettled in his mind. master said: "All right, give

The

else

me

your mind and

helplessness to pick

disciple's

somebody

re-

deserves to be.

relation to art

self-display, because the "true self," is

artist

do not

the traditional hoans, but

chief thing about

"artist," the

no

are,

whom? The

consider the question:

experience? Shared with

well be brusquely invited to go

is

to have.

pretend to share with another "his" experience would be the height

gave him some

cannot begin to be an

up

I

will settle

mind and hand

his

it

for you."

it

over to

idea of the nature of his "problems."

artist,

in Suzuki's sense,

until

The

One

he has become

"empty," until he has disappeared.

These might seem nately Suzuki's

like gratuitously

numerous

ability to explain

confusing paradoxes. But fortu-

contacts with the

himself in Christian terms.

West have given him

He

translates his basic

the

Zen

idea of art into terms familiar to us

When

an

art presents [the intuitively

profound and creative manner, then becomes a divine work.

ing, music, sculpture or poetry,

proaching the work of God. is

364

at its height,

is

it

The

grasped mysteries of

moves us

to the

The

artist, at

the

most

depths of our being; art

greatest productions of art,

have invariably

life] in a

this quality

whether paint-

—something ap-

moment when

his creativeness

transformed into an agent of the creator. This supreme

:

moment

an

in the life of

To

perience of satori.

artist,

means

tained by the ordinary

lectual analysis.

.

is

The

it.

Where

.

the ex-

Art has always

speaking.

and learning.

of teaching

Un-

satori experience cannot be at-

to the presence in us of a .

is

to become conscious of the

psychologically

something of the Unconscious about nique in pointing

expressed in Zen terms,

experience satori

[mushin, no-mind]

conscious

when

It

has

mystery that

satori flashes, there

is

is

own

its

beyond

techintel-

the tapping of creative

energy. 5

This same Oriental concept of the

way by

These

in the files of art magazines.

was developed

artist

Ananda Coomaraswamy,

the late

in a masterly

in various articles

articles

ought

to

now

buried

be gathered together

and published. Speaking of Balinese dancers, Coomaraswamy alludes to their essentially passive

and "limp"

attitude,

which enables them

to

respond to the will of an invisible master who, so to speak, moves them in the sacred dance. says, "I

Coomaraswamy

quotes the Gospel, in which Christ

do nothing of myself," and adds a beautifully

Boehme: "Thou thou

6

T

callest

grow weak, into that

do nothing but forsake thy

shalt

or

By which means

'thyself.'

and ready

faint

from which thou

to die;

all

significant line of

own

which

will, that

thy evil properties will

and then thou

wilt sink

down

again

art originally sprung."

Coomaraswamy comments The dancer

in fact not expressing "herself" but altogether an artist, in-

is

spired: her condition

is

The whole procedure resignation. Religion,

quite properly described as one of trance or ecstasy.

is

and

a carrying over into art of the vital principle of

Coomaraswamy joined with modern heresy of

III.

protest against the

the genius this

myth

is

hero and high

priest.

is

is

Both

Gill

a very "special kind of

which

and Coomaraswamy derided

which the

artist,

man" whose

the practitioner

"highly developed

put on display. They protested against the dishonest use

of the "fine arts" to justify the alienation of society

vehement

his friend Eric Gill in a

a pseudo-personalist art cult in

of our marketing society in

of the "fine arts," sensibility"

and profane, are [here] undivided. 7

culture, sacred

by providing him with a second-hand

we might

sake.

According

in a

kind of modern mystery

to this view,

5 Ibid., pp. 219-20. G Cf., Ananda

Coomaraswamy,

cult.

in

modern

industrial

spirituality in art for art's

describe the artist as the

He

"Spiritual

man

Orpheus

immolates himself on the

altar

Paternity," Psychiatry, Journal of the

Biology and Pathology of Interpersonal Relations,

III,

August

1945, pp. 17-36.

7 Ibid., p. 28.

365

of

and the devout public

art,

saved from the Hades of industrialism

is

in a vicariously salvific bath of "culture."

clared that the artist

kind of

special

"make

Both Coomaraswamy and Gill

on the

artist's

a

is

with the

insisted

work.

responsibility to his

Gill de-

man

not a special kind of man, but every

is

artist.

greatest emphasis

Coomaraswamy and

He

had

to

things right" irrespective of the quality of his artistic experience.

In no circumstances was his experience to be exploited or displayed for

own

its

This strong and salutary reaction against the

sake.

of genius, with

its

false "creativity,"

IV. Jacques Maritain, while clinging to has insisted

Gill,

He

proposes

Whereas "self,"

it

a

more on is

utterly

between

also tends to grasp

and

disclose the

movements have

art

artist's

He

consciously taken

phetic function precisely in the denial

sake of the

own

While Western

artist's

artist's tragic

dismissal of beauty."

his

conscious

artist's

subjectivity,

art it

hidden mystery of things. However,

Maritain takes account of the modern

knowledge and

8

and Western views.

Eastern

few centuries concentrated on the

last

as fervently as Eric

unconcerned with the

nevertheless reveals his creative subjectivity.

has in the

modern

Thomas

St.

the creative intuition of the artist and poet.

reconciliation

the Orient

narcissistic cult

can only be commended.

self-assertion

and

"craving for magical

points out that certain

upon themselves

a pro-

rejection of beauty for the

or for the manifestation of his 9

gifts.

In a

more

artist's responsibility to his

own

gifts, to his subjectivity, to his creativity,

magic and prophetic

which demands shows that

as a

his complete,

member

recent book,

Maritain stresses the

dedicated loyalty as

artist.

gations which cannot be "sacrificed" on the altar of his

Of

the four views discussed, those of Maritain

sympathetic to the modern

own

his

terms.

True

But he

also

and

obli-

of society the artist has other loyalties

to the

artist

and the most ready

Western and

art.

and

Tillich are to accept

most

him on

personalist climate in

which

they write, these distinguished Christian thinkers are willing to excuse

and accept very much

that is negative, even much that is sick and dename of the inherent dialectic between creativity and destruction in the modern world. Chiefly concerned with modern and Western art, Maritain and Tillich obviously have much to say about,

cadent, in the

and

in favor of, the

ativities.

More

intent

hidden

on modern nonreligious

erally less explicitly spiritual

8 Cf.,

spiritual possibilities in overtly secular creart, their

viewpoint

than that of the Orientals quoted.

Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry

(New

theon, 1953). 9

3 66

The

Responsibility of the Artist

(New York:

Scribner's, 1960).

is

gen-

Our own

York: Pan-

Christian tradition

just as rich

is

the Oriental in examples of the

as

higher "selflessness" of the truly creative

The ego

of the

man of

Maritain says of Dante:

has disappeared in the creative Self of the poet. Theo-

most sacred

logical faith itself, the

instrumentality

art.

belief,

has entered the

emotion and

creative

work through

the

knowledge and passed

poetic

through the lake of disinterestedness and of creative innocence. 10

Having taken account

of four religious philosophies of creativity

and

having carefully dismissed the main secular delusions on the subject, our conclusion can

now

be drawn. This conclusion will not be a fully

developed theological statement, only a few hints and suggestions as to

how some

How

such statement might eventually be formulated.

we prepare ourselves to consider the theology of creativity ? The secular caricature is a futile and demonic attempt man. Since there

divine powers out of

from God, the

man who

independent of him

wizard

not so

is

is

much

no genuine

is

forced to

fall

that he usurps

back on magic.

and

squeeze

to

apart

creativity

attempts to be a "creator" outside of

The

shall

God and

sin

of the

exercises a real preternatural

power, but that his postures travesty the divine by degrading man's

free-

dom

man

in absurd

and

manipulations of

servile

God on

reality.

The

dignity of

his

own

feet, alive,

that has been placed in him,

and

perfectly obedient to that light.

is

to stand before

ardry and idolatry obscure the light,

dim man's

to a state of infatuated self-absorption in

and displaying powers that were meant that they

must be concealed from

ought not

to

attention of others to them. disinterested

manner

instead of exploiting

ment

"to

He

for the

them

which he can

objectify

By

this

attention

draw

Adam.

upon them or

designed

first

make gods

as

man means

calling the

for the glory of

God

The commandof all to protect man his own image, gods

in

seeks to enjoy in himself those to find fulfillment

above himself. This bending back upon

of

unveiling

attention to himself.

is

exterior self was, for St. Augustine,

Man's true

at

not in the sense

and venerate the divinely given powers he magic

powers that were given him

fall

secret,

good of others and

to

make no graven image"

finds in himself.

which he plays remain

Wiz-

and reduce him

should be using them in an "empty" and

against his inveterate temptation to in

to

vision,

others, but in the sense that the artist

own

be wasting his

conscious, alert to the light

self,

this

beyond and

fixation

upon the

one of the principle elements

in the

11

creativity

is

lost,

10 Creative Intuition, p. 379. 11 De Trinitate, xii, ii {PL, XLII,

then, with his loss of innocence, selfless-

1007).

367

ness,

and

man was

simplicity. Oblivious of his external

union that the creator could created instrument. is

God

originally one with

Having

his creator.

and

live

self,

So intimate was their

with perfect freedom in his

and been redeemed

fallen,

once again able to recover

act

and empty of

self

in

man

Christ,

innocence and union, in and

this state of

through Christ. The Spirit of God, the Creator Spiritus

who brooded man and

over the waters before the world came into being, dwells in

human

broods over the abyss of his a

new

world, a

redeemed

new

The

Christ.

in

spirit,

seeking to

call forth

union with the

spiritual creation, in

from

liberty of

is

image and likeness of God

The

Nyssa. is

in

man. The

restoration of our creativity

in

man

is

likeness of

his freedom, say St.

God

man

in

is

acts in all things as

God

God,

at

satisfy

man

else's

Gregory of

when man's freedom

and when, consequently,

Or rather when God and man "God is love" then for man to be

all his acts

must be pure and

insecure subject of inordinate needs

somebody

St.

The

act re-

disinterested

proprium which makes him aware of him-

love, lacking all taint of that self as a separate,

in Christ.

acts.

purely and simply as one. Since stored to the likeness of

God

Bernard and

fully restored

perfectly united with the divine freedom,

man

as

creativity will also be a theology of

simply one aspect of our recovery of our likeness to

image of God

rais-

with the very same power which raised Christ

life

from the dead. 12 The theology of the

man

theology of creativity will necessarily be the

theology of the Holy Spirit re-forming us in the likeness of Christ,

ing us from death to

it

which he seeks

to

expense. Creativity becomes possible insofar

can forget his limitations and his selfhood and lose himself in

abandonment

immense

to the

power of

creative

a love too great to be

seen or comprehended.

A first

theology of creativity might, then, meditate at some length on the

few chapters

of Genesis, the narrative of the creation

Especially important

is

Genesis

2:

15-24,

in

God's collaborator in governing paradise and

power

to

name

the animals as he sees

any living creature, the same this passage

would be sought

creation of Eve.

The mystery

is

its

fit:

which in

and the

Adam

which he

"for whatsoever

fall.

appears as is

given the

Adam

called

name." The most significant part of

in the typical sense of verses 21-24,

and

of Christ

his

on the

Church would be the

very heart of any fully developed theology of creativity. Patristic works like St.

Gregory of Nyssa's

variety of intuitions

from which

12 Ephesians, 1: 17-21.

3 68

De Hominis to start

Opificio

might furnish

a rich

We

would,

building a synthesis.

of course, have to ransack the

we ought

the scholastic sources,

Hexaemeron

in

works of Origen and not to neglect the

St.

Among

Augustine.

magnificent Collationes

of St. Bonaventure. Valuable materials for study can only

be briefly indicated here.

would above

It

be necessary to disentangle the various threads of

all

thought about man's creativity as individual person and man's creativity that a theology of creativity

would

perspective to the distorted view produced by

undue

There can be no doubt

in society.

give an entirely

new

emphasis on the exceptional personality of the "genius" and his complete

independence from personality.

all

ethical

and

aesthetic

norms by

virtue of his talented

But the theological view would do nothing

to

diminish the

value of the person: on the contrary, situating the person in his right

men and to God, our theology would liberate him the deepest potentialities of his nature and the highest, most secret endowments of divine grace. The creativity of the Christian person must be seen in relation to the creative vocation of the new Adam, mystical person of the "whole Christ." The creative will of God has been at work in the cosmos since place in relation to other

in

he said: "Let there be the

dawn

light."

of time. All time

This creative

and

fiat

man

love of

and turn

God was

it

over to

met, at

which God has

signified

The will make The creative

with himself in his work of creation.

and power of the Almighty Father were not the world

at

history are a continued, uninterrupted

all

creative act, a stupendous, ineffable mystery in his will to associate

was not uttered merely

first,

man

to

run

it

satisfied

as best

simply to

he could.

by the destructive and self-centered refusal

man: an act of such incalculable consequences that it would have amounted to a destruction of God's plan, if that were possible. But the creative work of God could not be frustrated by man's sin. On the conof

man was first called to share in now became involved in the "new creation," the redemption of his own kind and the restoration of the cosmos, purified and transfigured, into the hands of the Father. God himself became man in order that in this way man could be most per-

trary, sin itself entered into that plan. If

the creative

work

of his heavenly Father, he

with him in this wisdom and mercy.

great work, the fullest manifestation

fectly associated

of his eternal

The

Christian dimensions of creativity are then to be meditated in the

light of such texts as Ephesians

1

:

8-10 (the re-establishment of

in Christ); Colossians 1: 9-29 (the saints united in

him

reconciling

work

of

God

things

building the Church of

Christ, the "firstborn of every creature," all

all

and through

things to himself). In this text, particularly,

we

see

3%

the creative role of suffering. This secular

very important.

is

the reply to the

It is

and demonic overemphasis on the individual,

his self-fulfillment

own sake. Here, on the contrary, we see that the cross is new creation: the tree of life, instead of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He who has approached the tree of the knowledge of good and evil has tasted the intoxicating fruit of his own in art for

its

the center of the

special excellence but

prisoner of his flypaper.

own

There

is

and communion

he dies the death of frustration.

and he

gifts

no joy

own

sticks to his

him because he

for

by

in creativity

his

is

He

becomes the

excellence as

if it

were

from

life,

love,

alienated

own demonic

which

self-assertion,

automatically involves a rejection of suffering, of dependence, of charity,

and of obedience.

On

the contrary,

it

the renunciation of our false

is

self,

the emptying

of self in the likeness of Christ, that brings us to the threshold of that true

which God himself, the

creativity in

The

renounces his

fact that the Christian

factions in order to achieve

works

creator,

own

in

and through

stand means the sacrifice of immediate visible results. But that the efficacy of his action

it

becomes lasting

with a

creativity does not stop

reaches out to the ends of time

This

may sound

spiritual plies

little

and

like hyperbole:

dimension, which

not only to the

artist,

is

more aware

would have able trends

its full

this

is

new and

creativity in a

And

Christian dimension.

but to every Christian.

To

own

this ap-

adapt Coomaranot a special

is

work to do, we were

creative

Would

that

Our awareness would produce a climate that for the artist. The way for sacred art to is not just for the artist to study new and fashion-

meaning

"creative"

and

try to

apply them to sacred or symbolic themes.

It is for

the artist to enter deeply into his Christian vocation, his part in the of restoring all things in Christ.

This

is

the responsibility of the

have an obligation

all

to

But

this

is

open our eyes

to the eschatalogical

for the final manifestation of this finished

an eternal importance: the things in Christ.

370

work

not his responsibility alone.

whole Church and everybody

of Christian creativity, for, as St. Paul says, "all creation

all

Such

of this.

a special

become more

means

also

as well as universal.

part in the mystery of the 'new creation.' "

all

it

to the limits of the universe.

but

kind of Christian, but every Christian has his

own

satis-

see or under-

ephemeral success here and there:

swamy's phrase, one might say "the creative Christian

his

and

limited ends

something greater than he can

us.

is

in

it.

We

dimensions

groaning"

work, the only work that has

full revelation of

God by

the restoration of

MESSAGE TO POETS Author's Note

—

meeting of the "new" Latin-American poets and a jew young North Americans Mexico City, February 1964. This This message was read

at a

—

was not a highly organized and well-financed international congress, but a spontaneous and inspired meeting of

hemisphere, most of

whom

ma\e

stance, sold her piano to

We

who

are poets

poem

until the

the act

why

itself.

know

young poets from

The

This meeting

is

reason for a living act

now

expression of the belief that there are

who

structures

a flame of

communist

in

vision of reality

or capitalist

realized only in

That

is

and financed by no group, but a living

official

our world

new

people,

new

and of the

—but

future.

who

dare to hope in

This meeting

is

united in

hope whose temperature has not yet been taken and whose

have not yet been estimated, because

effects

is

are not in tutelage to established political systems or cultural

— whether

own

their

not discovered

is

a spontaneous explosion of hopes.

foundation, organized and publicized by no

poets

poem

a venture in prophetic poverty, supported

it is

over the

the trip from Peru.

that the reason for a

itself exists.

all

could barely afford to be there. One, for in-

the fire cannot be apparent to one

who

being here will not be found until

all

is

a new fire. The warmed by it. The

it is

not

reason for reason for

have walked together, without

after-

thought, into contradictions and possibilities.

We

believe that our future will be

violence or calculation.

The

made by

love

Spirit of Life that has

and hope, not by

brought us together,

whether in space or only in agreement, will make our encounter an epiphany of certainties

The

we

solidarity of poets

could not

is

know

in isolation.

not planned and welded together with tactical

convictions or matters of policy, since these are affairs of prejudice, cunning,

His

and design. Whatever

art

is

not a cunning man.

depends on an ingrained innocence which he would

Written in 1964, excerpts of

this essay first

and was subsequently published

New

his failures, the poet

in toto in

appeared in Americas,

16,

Raids on the Unspeakable

lose

April

in

1964,

(New York:

Directions, 1966).

37 1

business, in politics, or in too organized a

hope that

rests

on calculation has

lost

its

form of academic

We

innocence.

The

life.

banding

are

together to defend our innocence. All innocence

a matter of belief.

is

do not speak

I

now

agreement, but of interior personal convictions "in the convictions are as strong and undeniable as fidelity to life rather

an elemental

than to

make and

systems.

artificial

The

a gift to

is

it

the sun rise or the rain

fall.

The

abstract programs. Solidarity

sea

is still

wet

with their doubt

along with

True

life is

The

life

life

Divided and

is

on the

in

to infect

set

basis of cunning, doubt,

art of estimating all

men

they

full of sterile agitation.

work

To

set

man

against

and

to ex-

everybody with the deepest metaphysical doubt.

up against one another

and

at a price.

terms of cost or of economic privilege and

for the purpose of evaluation,

immediately acquire the mentality of objects for

life

one

against another,

market. They despair of themselves because they unfaithful to

men

and

man

build a world of arbitrary values

against another, one

measurement

moral honor

men

measurements

and meaning,

another, one press the

If

destroyed by the political art of pitting one

is

and the commercial

these illusory

without

organizers of

our hope.

our innocence and our solidarity

shall lose

often organized

solidarity

against another

On

formal

it.

Collective guilt.

we

can plan to

in spite of all

not collectivity.

is

is

some-

is

can only be "re-

It

No man

collective life will deride the seriousness or the reality of

infect us

are rooted in

solidarity of poets

can only happen.

which we must remain open.

These

spirit."

They

fact like sunlight, like the seasons, like the rain. It

thing that cannot be organized, ceived." It

life itself.

of organized

know

sale

in

and they no longer find anyone

to being,

a slave

they have been to forgive

the infidelity.

Yet their despair condemns them

own

their

spiritual roots, they contrive to break, to humiliate,

destroy the spirit of others. In such a situation there

Each man belief,

and

betrayal,

We

feels the deepest root of his

hate.

and

from

to further infidelity: alienated

is

no

joy,

and

to

only rage.

being poisoned by suspicion, un-

Each man experiences

his very existence as guilt

and

death nothing more.

as a possibility of

:

stand together to denounce the shame and the imposture of

all

such calculations. If

we

are to remain united against these falsehoods, against

that poisons

man and

subjects

commerce, and the police

power

him to the mystifications of bureaucracy, we must refuse the price tag. We must

state,

refuse academic classification.

372

all

We

must

reject the seductions of publicity.

We

must not allow ourselves

—

comparisons

made

be

own

We

must not

insatiable doubt.

something

literary,

political,

be pitted one against another in mystical

even

else,

We if

must not merely be

we

which assumes they are

monks:

for

must not

ourselves to them,

to assuage their

something and against

Who

and against "them."

them support by becoming an

"opposition,"

definitively real.

we remain

It

is

we

sense that

in this

innocent and invisible to publicists and

They cannot imagine what we

bureaucrats.

for

are for "ourselves"

Let us remain outside "their" categories. all

them

ourselves be eaten by

let

are "they"? Let us not give

are

We

or cultural orthodoxies.

devour and dismember one another for the amusement of

to

their press.

to

and even then they

we

are doing unless

betray

will never be able.

They understand nothing except what they themselves have decreed. They are crafty ones who weave words about life and then make life conform

what they themselves have

to

one when they make

declared.

life itself tell lies? It is

gandist, the politician, not the poet,

who

How

can they trust any-

the businessman, the propa-

devoutly believes in "the magic

of words."

For the poet there

and

unpredictability

all

manipulation, a vicious

Word-magic

is

precisely

is

no magic. There

freedom. All magic

its

circle, a self-fulfilling

only

is

life

in all its

a ruthless venture in

is

prophecy.

an impurity of language and of

spirit in

which words,

deliberately reduced to unintelligibility, appeal mindlessly to the vulner-

able will. Let us deride unintelligible,

To

prophesy

and parody

we want

if

But

to.

this

it is

magic with other variants of the

better to prophesy than to deride.

not to predict, but to seize upon reality in

is

its

moment

highest expectation and tension toward the new. This tension

of

dis-

is

covered not in hypnotic elation but in the light of everyday existence. Poetry the

is

innocent of prediction because

momentous

Poetry

is

choice.

This

is its

Let us not be like those

and the flower afterward Such

we

itself

if

the flower

all

life.

It is

the fruit of ordinary

innocence and dignity.

who wish

—a

the fulfillment of

to

make

the tree bear

its

fruit first

conjuring trick and an advertisement.

comes

first

and the

fruit afterward, in

We

due time.

in the poetic spirit.

Let us obey

of

is

the flowering of ordinary possibilities.

and natural

are content

it

predictions hidden in everyday

life,

shall harvest

and the

many new

Spirit of Life that calls us to be poets, fruits for

which the world hungers

hope that have never been seen before. With these

the resentments

fruits

we

and

— fruits

shall

calm

and the rage of man.

373

Let us be proud that Let us be proud that

we we

are not witch doctors, only ordinary

men.

are not experts in anything.

Let us be proud of the words that are given to us for nothing, not to teach anyone, not to confute anyone, not to prove anyone absurd, but to

point beyond

We

all

objects into the silence

are not persuaders.

We

the ministers of silence that

where nothing can be

are the children of the

needed

is

said.

Unknown.

We

are

to cure all victims of absurdity

who lie dying of a contrived joy. Let us then recognize ourselves for who we are: dervishes mad with secret therapeutic love which cannot be bought or sold, and which the politician fears more than violent revolution, for violence changes nothing.

But love changes everything.

We are stronger than the bomb. Let us then say "yes" to our

and abjection

own

nobility by

embracing the insecurity

that a dervish existence entails.

In the Republic of Plato there was already no place for poets and musicians,

who

still

less for

think they

dervishes

now

and monks. As

run the world we

for the technological Platos

live in, they

imagine they can

tempt us with banalities and abstractions. But we can elude them merely by stepping into the Heraklitean river which

When is

is

never crossed twice.

the poet puts his foot in that ever-moving river, poetry

born out of the flashing water. In that unique

manifest to

No

all

who

are able to receive

itself

instant, the truth

is

it.

one can come near the river unless he walks on

his

own

feet.

He

cannot come there carried in a vehicle.

No

one can enter the river wearing the garments of public and

tive ideas.

He must

mediacy

for

Come,

374

is

feel the

naked minds

dervishes: here

is

water on his skin.

only,

and

He must know

for the innocent.

the water of

life.

Dance

in

it.

collec-

that im-

ANSWERS ON ART AND FREEDOM Author's Note

These

were written

lines

in reply to nine questions

as\ed by readers of

and were reprinted

the magazine Eco Contemporaneo, Buenos Aires,

in

Lugano Review. / no longer have the questions, but they may be guessed. They were simple enough, and were all concerned with the familiar topic of the artist's autonomy in his own sphere. The artist is responsible first of all for the excellence of his work and his art should

the

not be used for an ulterior purpose that conflicts with this primary aim.

All this not

is

Not being

obvious enough in theory.

know how

by society.

far, in practice,

the artist

is

perfectly informed, I

assume that the questions were formulated

I

mind

to protest against all

ship.

Taking

—especially

forms of

official

for granted that political oppression

is

chiefly with a

—censor-

political

obnoxious, these

answers see\ deeper motives and principles of freedom within the himself,

and they concern themselves

do

perversely "used" or controlled

chiefly with the

artist in

artist

Western

society.

I

am

asked whether or not the

institutions, or

artist, writer, poet, is a

whether he can and should work

Stated in these terms the proposition

One would

mechanically answer that the

and autonomous. one

would seem

He

answer.

sees the

can be nobody's It is

to allow the artist his

to

artist is

slave.

in

be deceptively simple.

by his very nature free

There

is

no problem. Every-

even to the interest of those

autonomy. The

relative

docile servant of

complete freedom.

who

freedom that

control is

him

suddenly

granted to a Soviet poet becomes a matter of great importance to the

whole world.

It

tends to

fully of Soviet Russia.

make

people think

Whereas

the poet

more kindly and more hope-

who

rebels completely against

conventional Western society (Rimbaud, Baudelaire, the Beats) lishes

This

that society

article

on

published in

English in the in

art

more

firmly in

its

estab-

complacent philistinism, he

and freedom was originally written

for

also

Miguel Grinberg and was

Contemporaneo and then appeared in of Lugano Review in 1965. It was subsequently included

Spanish translation in Eco first issue

Raids on the Unspeakable

(New York: New

Directions, 1966).

375

.

4

strengthens

and feeds

What

its

its

conviction that

all

magnanimity

sense of

by necessity opium fiends

artists are

in tolerating such people.

mean to say by this is that the enemies of the artist's freedom who must profit by his seeming to be free, whether or not he

I

are those is so.

And

the artist himself, to the extent that he

philistine

condemnations of

resisting

these

tyrannical

dominated by introjected

is

energy and integrity in

his art, pours out his

pressures

which come

him from within

to

himself. His art then wastes itself in reaction against the antiart of the society in

which he

lives (or

art cult of the society in

The is

who expends

artist

he cultivates antiart as a protest against the

which he all

lives)

his efforts in convincing himself that

not a nonartist or the antiartist

artist"

who

cannot justify his vexations by appealing

dom. What he needs of practical

and

is

an ideal of

to

not an ideal of freedom, but at least a

autonomy

subjective

—freedom

of conscience. This

is

a spiritual value

Hence my first principle is that already more or less concerned with a

free-

minimum

from the internalized

emotional pressures by which society holds him down.

dom

he

become "an

struggles not to

and

mean

I

free-

roots are ultimately

its

religious.

since in our society everybody

is

theoretical

and doctrinaire ap-

proach to the question of art and freedom, maybe the

something better

many myths about kind of

life

do

to

it

is

his

own

the business of "being an artist"

artist"

and living the the artist

if

he will never get around

to his advantage, first of

all,

to

himself has

artist

There have grown up

job.

that artists are reputed to live, that

cerned with "being an

Hence

—namely

is

so

special

too con-

doing any work.

to

be free from myths about

"Art" and even from myths about the threat which society offers to his "freedom." This applies, at fact

nobody

under

least, to artists living in

Communism

the poets

and painters seem

prophets of a genuine liberation for thought,

more boredom and protest

Yet the

"the West," where in

seriously interfering with his freedom.

is

On

the other hand,

to be the

most serious

and experience. They

life,

than anyone against the general

articulately

servility

to

official stupidity.

artist

who

is

held by dope or drink

of a corrupt commercial or political

power

is

just as

much

a prisoner

who own way

structure as the artist

held by the coercion of the Writer's Union.

Each

in his

is

is

turning out propaganda by producing something according to the dictates of the society in

which he

this particular servitude

who, being subject

to all

lives.

is

perhaps

artist less

who

is

really free

and chooses

worthy of admiration than one

kinds of harassment,

which Sartre praised the men 376

The

of the French

still

makes the choice for under Nazism.

resistance

What

1.

The

the use of art?

is

serenely defend his right to

produce absolutely no work of

It is better to

be completely useless.

must

artist

than to do what can be cynically "used." Yet anything can be

at all

even the most truculently abstract paintings. They decorate the

who have

corporation presidents

and power

And tomorrow

used-

offices of

quickly caught on to the fact that to pay

ten thousand dollars for something explicitly "useless" of one's wealth

art

is

a demonstration

—as well as of sophistication.

the abstract paintings will be on

walls of the

the

Commissars.

Wor\s of art can be and

are used in

many

ways, but such uses are beyond

immanent

the range of this question. "Art" considered as an

of the

artist's

own

intelligence

not improved by nonartistic use. Let us

question of a supposed cult of pure

set aside the

an actual problem?

Is this

is

I

doubt

it.

Who

is

and doing? The world

painters, sculptors: they

blossom on

all

art, art for art's sake, etc.

what poets and

to say

as a species are thinking

something that can't be found merely by

Who

tend to

all

artists

full of poets, novelists,

is

the bushes.

about them, except perhaps to say that they for

perfection

can generalize

start

out looking

selling insurance or auto-

mobiles.

The problem way

instead a

when

arises

to

art ceases to

painter uses his art merely to

Western

2.

to

artist

what everybody

right.

God knows,

is

is

likes.

The

article of faith, in

everybody wants

inter-

in the worst

who

artist

"reflect," or to cele-

subscribes to the commercial

always right will soon be deserted by every-

is

The customer has now been trained to think that the artist is always Thus we have a new situation in which the artist feels himself

obligated to function as a prophet or a magician.

Who

be disconcerting, even offensive.

precisely

task of

what the customer wants.

nonconforming on

"ordinary decent people."

his behalf

Where

He

sees that

will ever read

unless he occasionally insults the customer is

an

the writer or

by nature "more

cannot afford passively to accept, to

slogan that the customer

body.

himself. (It

— when

be interesting!)

The

brate

success

society at least, that a poet or painter

esting" than other people and,

way

sell

be honest work and becomes

and

self-advertisement

He

— the

does the

and

all

him

or

he has

to

buy him

he believes in? That

has delegated to the

artist the

task of not conforming with artist

go from there? In des-

peration he paints a meticulously accurate portrait of a beer can. 3.

The

writer

who

submits to becoming "an engineer of the soul"

complicity with the secret police is

worse than the policeman,

his prisoner

and extracting

—or

who

with the advertising business.

does an honest job of

a confession.

The

is

in

He

work beating up

"engineer of the soul"

377

simply dictates routine and

testimonials to the Tightness of an

trivial

make

absurd society without any cost to himself and without need to

any form whatever. For

use of art in

which he

content.

is

The

4.

he receives certain rewards with

this

when

uniform. Precisely

artist in

does

be seen marching with the political police?

to

countries where, rightly or wrongly, one

he

is

is

It

a nice question in

is

considered to be alive only

Art and

any more than

political or

economic ones. The

not a catechist. Usually moral directives are

medium

convey them in a

that

is

:

sclerosis?

has no obligation to promulgate

ethics. Certainly the artist

ethical lessons

lost

when one

The

own

his

artist

truth.

attempts to

artist

art if

own

truth,

and

in so

doing

it

harmony

will be in

—moral, metaphysical, and mystical.

has no moral obligation to prove himself one of the elect by

on

its

head.

the artist necessarily committed to this or that political ideology?

No. But he does political

live in a

power can destroy

committed

to seek

some

freedom of man. This of

life.

own autonomy. His

even his

systematically standing a traditional moral code 6. Is

free-

he does not have a conscience that

—not

its

own

his life are separable only in theory.

acting like a slave in his everyday

is

with every other kind of truth

The

and

should preach nothing

artist

should speak

art

art

cannot be free in his

warns him when he

The

His

artist is

not intended to communicate conceptual

formulas. But the artist has a moral obligation to maintain his

dom and

if

form how

agitating for revolution. Putting the question in another

do you know when your revolution has developed 5.

cease to be respectable

it

government or

is

social

world where

his art as well as his

political solution to

life.

Hence he

artist in

and freedom against

in the

United

indirectly

is

not a single form

system today that does not in the end seek to

one way or another. In every case

the artist should be in complete solidarity with those

Negroes

is

problems that endanger the

the great temptation: there

manipulate or to coerce the

for rights

and where

politics are decisive

inertia,

who

are fighting

hypocrisy and coercion:

e.g.,

the

States.

The American Negroes are at once the ones who fight for their freedom and who exemplify a genuine and living creativity, for example in jazz. 7.

"Formalism"

gendarmes.

It is

—a

meaningless cliche devised by literary and

artistic

a term totally devoid of value or significance, as are all

the other cultural slogans invented in the police station. 8. I

which

378

do not consider myself integrated I

live,

but the problem

is

in the

war-making

society in

that this society does consider

me

in-

tegrated in it

who

that

read

my

books

—have decided

upon an

I

prescribe for

was twenty years ago, and

I

rumor

late the

that

me and insist me which they found

that

have

I

left

my

and somewhat narrow-minded young

way without consulting

same time they continually

at the

monastery.

have been simply living where

I

—or those in

my first successful book. Yet the same people simultaneously me a contrary identity. They demand that I remain forever

the superficially pious, rather rigid,

monk

society

identity for

continue to correspond perfectly to the idea of

upon reading

is

my

notice that for nearly twenty years

it. I

the public about

What

am and

I

since

it,

circu-

has actually happened

my own

developing in

it is

none of the

public's

business. 9.

when

Society benefits

or seductive pressures.

from

the artist liberates himself

Only when he

coercive

its

man

obligated to his fellow

is

in

the concrete, rather than to society in the abstract, can the artist have any-

thing to say that will be of value to others. His art then becomes accidentally a

to

work

justice. The artist would do well, however, not much with "society" in the abstract or with ideal

and

of love

concern himself too

"commitments." This has not always been

when

time

"society"

is

some confusion.

in

might once again be completely integrated Middle Ages. Today he nonconformist and a is

what

is

rebel.

it

more

To

say this

is

its artists.

or not, inherited the

in society as

he was in the

man

role that society has is

a It

whether

artist has,

combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, can he really "find himself"

predetermined for him?

The freedom

if

How

he plays a

of the artist

be sought precisely in the choice of his wor\ and not in the choice

to

of the role as "artist" will

How

be free?

is

neither dangerous nor new.

For today the

prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist, and bonze.

could such a

our

to

conceivable that the artist

hardly likely to find himself unless he

society really expects of

he likes

true. It applies

It is

which

society asks

him

to play, for reasons that

always remain very mysterious.

To

conclude: the

artist

must not delude himself

capacity to choose for himself

and

a

that he has

moral responsibility

when it becomes absurd. him take my word for it, he

an

infinite

to exercise this

unlimited choice, especially If

he does

this,

then

let

will find himself

with the same problem and in the same quandary as those monks

who

have vegetated for three centuries in a moral morass of abstract voluntarism.

which

There

is

a great deal of ambiguity in the facile rationalization

says that even in the worst

and most confined of

situations

can become perfectly free simply by choosing the situation you are

Freedom

consists in

something more than merely choosing what

is

you in.

forced

379

upon you

—and

doing so with a certain exultation

the humiliation that are involved.

make one

to

At

time,

in

wonder

I

points to freedom at

unfreedom

On

all.

and "authentic,"

anxieties of artist

who

at the

more than

this

absurdity and

kind of choice

my

this

if

need

to be

an incontestable author

maybe it is one of the roots of modern artist. As long as I am get myself or my work recognized as "inconI am still under servitude to the myths and the contrary,

the psychology of the

obsessed with the need to testable"

takes

"the incontestable author of an event or of an object" (Sartre).

same

the

It

society

chooses his

and unable

work

complete freedom of the

to attain the

of art in

its

own

terms and in

his,

those of the market, or of politics, or of philosophy, or of the

pure experience, absolute spontaneity, and

The

who

impiety of the Sartrian

obscene as an act of which he

is

who

piety of the monastic novice

all

the

not in

myth

of

rest.

chooses the ugly, the absurd, and the

the "incontestable author" rejoins the

chooses the most arbitrary and most

pointless acts of self-mortification in order to see himself as pleasing to

God. In

either case there

voluntaristic choice for

tarism

is

True

not purity at artistic

a naive

is

its

own

all: it is

and

sake.

is

own

own freedom and done

380

when

"freely."

freedom

forms his the

work

a matter of sheer willfulness or

is

own is

possibilities,

under-

terms, not the refusal of the concrete in

favor of the purely "interior." In the to the artist's creative

purity of this volun-

outcome of authentic

the

stood and accepted in their

hands. Only

The supposed

merely abstract willfulness.

freedom can never be

arbitrary posturing. It

emphasis on the pure

narcissistic

last analysis,

his

work

artistic

itself.

the only valid witness

The

artist

conscience by the

finished can he

tell

builds his

work

whether or not

of his it

was

WHY

ALIENATION

we want

If

Alienation

—and we have to realize that

my

In

is

urban

some people

it is

society. It

role

me

when with

satisfied

when

a role

I

my

role,

seem

fact.

(Or

else

is

it

I

may

West End. than the West

not just for the

be even more alienated

me

culture divides

or

may

mask

against myself, puts a

not want to play. Alienation

identified with

and convince myself

is

my

mask,

is

totally

that any other identity or

wearing, just because the other one does not

be sweating or itching.

to

life

The man who sweats under his mask, whose role who hates the division in himself, is be free. But God help him if all he wants is the

man

the other

to itch.

and from

with discomfort,

itch

already beginning to

mask

always be there.

1

become completely

inconceivable.

is

makes him

this root will

deepest

its

not just a dubious privilege reserved for

End may

not aware of the

me, gives

complete

is

in society. In Louisville,

Alienation begins

on

where

not just a feature of "bad" cultures, "corrupt" civiliza-

opinion the East

because

to find

inseparable from culture, from civilization,

is

in society. It tions, or

we have

understand alienation

to

taproot goes

FOR EVERYBODY

IS

Maybe he

is

no longer human enough

he pays a psychiatrist to scratch him.)

Modern literature is by and large a literature of alienation, not only we are painfully living through the collapse of a culture but because today we have more culture and more civilization than we know

because

what

to

do with. There are not only the simple, beautiful, wild, honest

ceremonial masks once afTected by the Kwakiutl Indians (and which

were well understood because they had

went with some

pretty

their "right" place in

people.

We all have to try We all can refuse some of the more absurd and

ceptable roles, but not

many

and no one can refuse them

can refuse as

much

as they

would

a

like to,

"Prospectus of Writings" in Louisville's

some unknown reason has remained unpublished. covered among the Merton manuscripts following his death. 1 Louisville's West End is poor and mostly black, while the East End of the more affluent. for

to be

unac-

all.

This essay was written in early 1968 for

West End, but

and

:

production of masks and myths and personae. fifty different

life

good dancing) but today we smother under an over-

It

is

was

dis-

made up

381

The

result

is

the painful, sometimes paranoid sense of being always

under observation, under judgment, for not

fulfilling

we have forgotten we were supposed to fulfill. The peculiar pain of "alienation" in its ordinary

some

role or other

—alienation as a kind of perpetual mental Charley horse of self-conscious frustration — sense

is

that

nobody

Whether

judge us or despise us or hate

really has to look at us or

or not they do us this service,

we

us.

are already there ahead of

We are doing for them. WE TRAIN OURSELVES OBEDIENTLY TO HATE OURSELVES SO MUCH THAT OUR ENEMIES NO LONGER HAVE TO. To live in constant awareness of this them.

bind

it

a

is

at all

is

kind of living death. But

death pure and simple

around and smelling

There has

to

to live

—even

without any awareness of

though one may

it

be walking

still

perfect.

The

be a culture, obviously.

best cultures

have always been

which achieved the most workable balance between custom and

those

and impulse, conscious and unconscious. Primitive

nature,

discipline

cultures

on the whole did

tures

managed

dom

of Asoka,

a disastrously

What

it

this well.

The

well (Mayan, Zapotecan, the Buddhist-inspired King-

some medieval Christian

bad job of

can the

great traditional religious cul-

Our

culture

doing

is

it.

do about

artist

cultures).

it?

not enough to complain about alienation, one must exorcise

It is

One must

most

refuse the

that of causing to nonentity

annihilation

due

it.

The

sociology, politics,

may

jerk" response,

which puts

it.

imposes on us:

at first

and

it

a conventional judg-

literature, style, art, religion, science,

THE PLACE OF OUR OWN

what have you, IN

IMMEDIATE RESPONSE it

it

constant, repeated, compulsive self-

to the short circuit

ment, dictated by culture, fashion,

acceptable,

role

and judging our own pain and condemning ourselves

on account of is

and harmful

useless

however unconscious,

irrational, foolish,

appear to be. (Immediate response

is

un-

not "knee-

does imply some cultural formation and expe-

rience.)

Yes,

poems

we have

to learn to write disciplined prose.

that are "Poems."

But that

is

knack of

expand rather than

making an

intellectual point

need rather it

first

to

is

hidden

is

have

in

our

a

form

to express

it,

we

sweating under the mask and

sweat out in the open for a change, even though nobody

a prize for special beauty or significance.

382

We

condense prematurely. Rather than

and then devising

to release the face that

what

to write

and secon-

writing nonsense.

free association, to let loose

depths, to

have

a relatively unprofitable

dary concern compared with the duty of to learn the

We

else gives

let it

What

different city,

Long

in

may

follows

and

2 be mystifying. Partly because

comes from a

it

a completely faceless part of that city

Island City, a stadium, an Italian ghetto,

etc.

(freightyards

—

images

in the thirties). It consists mostly of free-flowing unconscious

mixed

language to

with the "real" places and events

in

is

spelled out. It

be only half penetrable (important for the alienation-pro.)

the "funnel house"

which smokes and has eyes

death, in terms of the crematory that reduced

No, not Auschwitz,

The

very nebulous).

(left

deliberately compressed, nothing

is

back

this

all

meant

is

One

clue:

in fact the presence of

is

my

most of

family to ashes.

an ordinary American burning ghat for the

just

respectable.

In that way we accumulate new and which may, by itself, lot of ally,

a lot of material

suggest

new

rewriting and discard most of what was

out of

this,

comes work

that

digested formulas of everybody

We

first

may have

put down. But gradu-

fine pieces in

and the

it,

I

pre-

else's "art."

This present "Prospectus of Writings" by Louisville writers

something of the struggle

do a

to

from the obsessions and

free

is

which may be fresh and

forms.

reflects

have been talking about. There are some

best are precisely ones in

which experience has

got loose from obsessions about form and imposed something of

own

form.

One

feels

though that many of the writers were overawed by

the topic and could not quite get out to write editorials

its

and sermonettes.

poem "Christianity" and find: "God unknown, wrapped in a

from under

On

—hence

it

the other hand,

a tendency

when

meet

I

the

cellophane bag, oversees

immediately impressed. This poet dares to express the alienation

"The things."

—an alienation which

I

I

nuzzles the lamb while an un-eyed

That

is

a fine line of real poetry that needs is

no

Moslem

many

sees

label.

another kind of freedom, verging on

concrete poetry, but also promising in the future something of the thing.

am

myself know.

bull

In "18 yr olds die young" there

all,"

reality of religious

same

Coltrane and Pharaoh Sanders did and are doing with their

instruments the visual gesture of squawk that builds ironic and suffering personages out of sound,

spirit figures posturing, hurting, living,

dying,

enigmatic.

From piece

2

A

the

title

on,

on the funeral

"To Die is

a

Is

Human,

section of Merton's long booklength prose

published posthumously

to

Rot Something Else" the

powerful insight into the heart of alienation.

(New York: New

poem, The Geography of Lograire,

Directions, 1969).

383

The

culture built on death: the convergence of affluence

and death wish,

the root of our tragedy. I

have been invited

than happy to do

The

own

piece

where swept pages.

I

and

to confess

my own

alienation in

New

York, alienation in the

thirties.

A

I

am more

good company. It is

about

to live. It

your

feet

is

largely

by a message.

dream writing

And

so

my

peculiarly drab

Queens between the Long Island Railway tunnel and the

used

of?

so,

something myself, and

part of a long section of a booklength poem.

youth in

section of

384

is

to contribute

do not expect

place to

be

thanks for the hospitality of these

APPENDIX I NATURE AND ART IN WILLIAM BLAKE: AN ESSAY IN INTERPRETATION (1939)

Submitted

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of Master of

Arts in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University. February, 1939.

(Thomas Merton)

2

December 1953

Constance M. Winchell (Reference Librarian)

Columbia University Library

New York, New York

Dear Constance Winchell: If

you wish

Blake,

to

perfectly

it is

my

reproduce

sion to reproduce

it

you

do

all

right for

in

any way convenient

requests of other libraries.

and Art

Master's Essay, Nature to

You may have my

so.

permis-

meet the

to you, in order to

therefore perfectly agreeable to

It is

William

in

me

if

you

have the essay microfilmed.

However,

would

I

standable, essay, or

when

had

a

I

say that

copy of

thesis contains quite a I

you the favor of including

like to ask

microfilming of the essay.

letter in the

have no chance

to

it

is

it

in

My

I

have looked

far as

I

can remember, the

would

like to

fifteen years since

my

hands.

this present

reason for this will be under-

As

few statements which

I

at the

have changed.

go over the essay now, and the changes

would

I

make would probably involve the re-working of several important it. Anyone who reads the essay should therefore take into account its many mistakes, especially in the field of of scholastic philosolike to

passages in

phy and theology, and not hold

me

too strictly responsible for

them

at the

present time.

If this essay

can in any

way be

useful to students,

than amply rewarded for having written

among them With

will pray for

its

it.

I

I

more minded

will feel myself

hope the

religious

author.

best wishes,

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Fr.

M. Louis Merton, O.C.S.O. (Thomas Merton)

387

4

Table of Contents

Letter to Reference Librarian at

Columbia (December

2,

Preface

1953)

387

391

Chapter

I

Chapter

II

Background and Development Blake's Ideas

Bibliography

on the Place of Nature

393

in

Art

424

452

389

PREFACE a pity that Blake, a

It is

good

artist

and, though scarcely orthodox, a good

Christian, should be so often treated as

some strange pagan

freak,

whom

draw upon for stray remarks to support whatever prejudices of the

we moment we happen later

to

want

to defend.

Such

criticism will be discussed

in connection with Mr. Middleton Murry.

But

a greater pity

it is

and spread him

in the

still

so lost that

and take Blake apart piece by piece

we examine

the shreds of

Gnostic or that Manichaean, finally getting

his poetry for traces of this

we

to try

sun to dry out while

talk entirely about his

knowledge

of the occult,

and never

about his greatness as a poet.

This essay will influences

upon Blake. And the discussion

ship to India

juggle

examine any

not, therefore, attempt to

is

no indication that

with influences.

think

I

am

I

in detail of Blake's relation-

yielding to the temptation to

the

that

precise historical

affinities

between Christian

thinkers and Oriental mystics are interesting in themselves.

them up

break

into influences in one direction or another always encourages

and pigheaded statements, without adding anything

arbitrary, false, all to

To

at

our understanding of the way these thinkers and mystics looked at

life.

This essay aims toward a clearer understanding of Blake's ideas about

no more.

art; I

To

this end, I

ideas of St.

have compared him with the aestheticians

More than

think he most resembles.

Thomas Aquinas

that,

(as presented

I

have used the aesthetic

by one of the greatest of

living philosophers, Jacques Maritain) as a touchstone by

which

meaning

St.

Blake's thought, without

to insinuate that

are exactly like each other, or, worse St.

Thomas. As

still,

Blake and

to test

Thomas

that Blake ever read a line of

mystic, Blake belongs to the Christian tradition of the

Au-

gustinians and the Franciscans; in this tradition the influence of the

Neo-Platonists

is

strong.

Thomism,

especially

in

its

views about the

nature of matter, and the created world, differs widely from the more mystical tradition, as in

comparison

to the

is

known. But

Thomists, because the

well balanced, that they

may more

well

fill

I

have chosen

to study

Blake

latter are so clear, so acute, so

the whole subject with a light by

clearly see into the depths of Blake's

which we

own more recondite St. Thomas on

thought. In any case, the similarities between Blake and

391

4

the subject of art are

more numerous than

their differences, as will be

shown.

The

function of the

first

part of this essay

is, I

think, self-evident.

attempted to sketch in lightly Blake's intellectual background,

some idea what he was struggling

for,

and

I

have

to give

to dispel the illusion that

he

lived exclusively in the tabernacles of ecstatic puritan cranks.

Finally, a

word about

the confusion Blake often throws one into be-

cause of his lack of a set of comfortable second-class philosophical abstractions.

As Henry Adams

says (in

Mont

St.

Michel and Chartres)

dren and Saints can believe two contrary things

392

at the

same time."

:

"Chil-

CHAPTER

I

BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT Blake was the son of a Swedenborgian hosier and was born in London in 1757.

He

was

a boy of "a strangely romantic habit of

would wander through the the

and woods outside of London, across

fields

Thames. Returning from Peckham Rye near Dulwich Hill one day

he told

how

he had seen a tree

bough

gling every

have interceded for him;

time and

2

his father, in spite of

Swedenborg,

any

at

to

"The

hands and

rate, his father

changed

his

mind

in

the boy go wandering where he pleased, not only in the

let

even began

Pars'

:

and

country, but in the art galleries

casts of

angels "bright angelic wings bespan-

full of

like stars,"

beat such nonsense out of him right away. His mother seems

decided to to

mind," 1 and he

and print shops around London.

encourage the boy's

taste for art

3

to

draw from.

Drawing School

He

plaster

Venus Medicis, and various heads, Blake was ten, he was sent to

gladiator, the Hercules,

feet"

and bought him

When

in the Strand.

money on engravings of Raphael, Hemskeerk, and Diirer, and he was well known in the Auction Rooms, especially at Langford's where "Langford called him his little connoisseur and often knocked down to him a cheap lot with friendly 4 precipitation." Of course, Blake did not have much pocket money; At

the print shops, Blake spent his pocket

but according

And

then,

stipple

it

was

to Gilchrist

5

bidding in those days began

was easy enough

at the

to pick

up

a

Marc Antonio

at threepence.

at a

time

when

height of fashion and the old style of clear and vigorous

engraving was neglected:

am

I

happy

cannot say Raffaele ever was from

I

hidden from me. Raffaele

1

I

saw and

I

knew immediately

my

earliest

childhood

the difference between

and Rubens. 6

Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Bla\c, London, John Lane Ltd., 1907,

page

6.

2 Ibid.,

page

7.

3

Benjamin Heath Malkin, apud Arthur Symons, William Bla\e, Dutton & Co., 1907, page 312. 4

Malkin, op.

5

Gilchrist, op.

cit.,

6

"Annotations

to

cit.,

New

York,

page 313.

page

10.

Reynolds,"

The Writings

Keynes, London, Nonesuch Press, 1925, Vol.

of William Bla\e, edited by Geoffrey

Ill,

page

8.

393

:

By

:

the time Blake

was ten

his father

him become an and sending him to Pars'

thing to help of

fashionable of

kind,

its

artist,

School. This school

Artists"

casts

to

was one

to found. Pars himself

and brought back with him

a portfolio of sketches

draw from

which were life class;

casts.

Sweet

I

Roamed"

sculpture,

had become an eager

discipline of art school, Blake

but perhaps haphazard reader and was even writing poetry.

"How

of

had studied

While he was copying Michelangelo, Raphael, and Greek and undergoing the

most

of the

probably familiar to his students. In this school there was no the boys learned to

do any-

Malkin spoke

and was run by the "Incorporated Society

which Hogarth had helped

in Greece

was apparently willing

buying him the

antedates his fourteenth year.

7

The song

The

con-

first

temporary criticism of Blake, Benjamin Malkin's remarks in his preface

A Father's Memoirs of His

to

ing.

The

Child,

tells

us something of this early read-

information probably came from Blake himself. There were, of

course, Milton

and the

Bible.

Then

Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, Tarquin and Lucrece and his Sonnets.

These poems, now days. So to

little

read,

were the favorite studies of Mr. Blake's

were Jonson's Underwoods,

have caught

his

manner

and he seems

his Miscellanies,

rather than that of Shakespeare in his

.

.

.

early

to

trifles.

me

8

Blake himself adds

Milton lov'd

me

in childhood

and showed

me

his face

Ezra came with Isaiah the prophet, but Shakespeare in riper years gave

Paracelsus It is

The

and Boehme appeared

apparent enough that

this

to

me

me his hand,

...

9 .

reading was altogether free and casual.

Bible and Milton were probably on his father's shelves, and he

have been led friends.

The

to Paracelsus

and Boehme by

influence of "Ossian"

his father's

would

Swedenborgian

and the Graveyard school

is

fairly

evident in the Poetical Sketches; for instance, in the ballad "Fair Eleanor"

and

in

prose pieces.

the

and the

Lyricae,"

first

Blake probably

knew

Isaac

Watts' "Horae

review of his poems compared him unfavorably

with Watts. 10 7

Malkin,

8

Malkin, op.

9 "Letter 10

183.

394

Mona

loc. at.

X,

cit.,

page 323.

To John Flaxman," The

Writings of William Blake, Vol. II, page 150. Wilson, The Life of William Bla\e, London, Nonesuch Press, 1927, page

But

still

the strongest influence on the Poetical Sketches,

"Lines in Imitation of Spenser," the attempt at a tragedy,

which include

that of the Elizabethans.

is

King Edward HI,

is

The

Poetical Sketches

show Blake

at the

only period of his

definitely transferred to

drawing, and,

intellectual studies, for

which the atmosphere

peculiarity of opinion, he soon

correct his peculiar

came

first artistic

life

zeal

when he

was being

own devices in his home set the seal on

of his

to read only to confirm,

and dogmatic preferences.

.

.

and never

to

After his boyhood was

.

how

best to reach

by communicating his ideas in an apprehensible form.

his readers

a seemingly reasonable but really misleading

is

11

left entirely to his

over he read to justify visionary intuition, never to learn

This

course,

the result of his reading

Shakespeare. Osbert Burdett, in his Life of William Bla\e says:

read books as works of art simply. Already his

Of

remark.

based

It is

on too simple an idea of Blake's character and development. Twenty

had

years after he

ceased, according to Burdett, to read except for the

support of his mysticism, he began to learn Greek.

elmann and praised Cowper's admiration and wrote some praised as "most spirited." to

Hayley

Tatham liked

critical

A

us he enjoyed Ovid's Fasti,

Wordsworth, although he

Indeed,

had read Winck-

precis in a Sale Catalogue of a lost letter

quotes Blake as saying Richardson has

tells

"atheism."

mind

14

13

He

Then he read Chaucer with great 12 notes on him that Charles Lamb

Letters.

called

15

"won

heart."

his

and Crabb Robinson

he

that

Wordsworth's love of nature

16 it

there

is

absurd to say Blake read to "justify" his visions.

was probably no book but the Bible

To

his

that could justify them.

Milton and Dante, his two favorite poets, were both defective. Dante, for his political interests,

was too much

Blake had to write a whole

11

poem

in the "world,"

to correct his errors.

and

as for Milton,

17

Osbert Burdett, William Bla\e, London, Macmillan and Co., 1926, page

10.

12 "Descriptive Catalogue," 13

The Wor\s

The Writings of William Bla\e, Vol. II, p. 95 ff. Charles and Mary Lamb, Editor, E. V. Lucas, New Haven, Yale

of

University Press, 1935. 14

The Writings

15

Frederick Tatham, Letters of William Blaise together with a Life by Frederick

of William Bla\e, Vol.

Tatham, edited by Archibald 1G Ibid., 17

page

Russell,

The

page 379.

London, Methuen and Co.,

Ltd., 1906,

page

32.

15.

Milton's Emenation, Ololon,

ligion.

II,

is

die one

who

creates the detested Natural Re-

accusation this implies against puritanism

realized. ("Milton",

The Writings

of William Blake,

is

only just beginning

Volume

to

be

III)

395

4

True, he drew on occultists and mystics of

all

kinds for ideas, sym-

bolism, and cosmography. But to say he read only mystics

even to suggest he used them to

Meanwhile he

left

justify himself

Pars' in 1771

under James Basire, engraver the master had highly praised.

false,

his apprenticeship

to the Society of Antiquaries. Basire

18

and

misleading.

and entered upon

Rome and had done some

studied in

is

is

had

engravings after Hogarth which

Basire himself

was

to

have a great

fluence over Blake's technique as an engraver. This influence

in-

added noth-

ing to Blake's popularity, because Basire was of the old school, and

Hogarth's

was giving way

style

in popular favor to the softer, trickier

technique of Bartholozzi and Strange, while Basire confirmed the young

Blake in his love of vigorous and clean outlines.

He

make drawings from churches and old buildings named Gough. 19 This was very important to Blake's

sent Blake out to

for an antiquary

development. For several years he was busy sketching Gothic architecture

and sculpture

Westminster Abbey and other churches. "There," says

in

Malkin, 20 "he found a treasure which he

knew how

to value.

simple and plain road to the style which he aimed."

He saw

He was

above

the all

monuments of the Edward the Confessor.

impressed by the Gothic sculpture on the tombs and kings and queens around about the Chapel of

These studies occupied him

entirely

in his treatment of drapery.

upon

his

aesthetic

between the ages of fourteen and

own work

twenty-one, and the influence on his

But the influence of

is

obvious; for example,

this

Gothic atmosphere

thought was even more important. In

fact,

Blake

understood and loved the Gothic so well that he came to understand the Christian ideals underlying Gothic art far better than the amateurs and virtuosi of his century could ever

When and went

hope

to.

he was twenty-one he ended his apprenticeship with Basire to study at the

favorite with

of his day,

Royal Academy under Moser, a Swiss, and a

Reynolds and with royalty. Moser admired the fashions

and Blake argued with him

fiercely

21

over the relative merits

and Rubens. It was here that Blake had his first chance to draw from life. His reaction was one of violent disgust; he could hardly draw at all, he had no inspiration. This seems to us strange only because we know little more than the Renaissance and Romantic traditions, which

of Raphael

18 Gilchrist, op. 19

Gilchrist, op.

20 Malkin, op. 21

396

cit.,

page

14.

cit.,

page

17.

cit.,

The Writings

page 314.

of William Bla^c, Vol.

III,

page

11.

are highly naturalistic; in these traditions the artist's to

him

as his palette.

Angelico; nor was out a

model—he

it

We

forget that this

so with Blake.

He

model

was not the

as necessary

is

case with a Fra

draw with-

not only preferred to

could not draw with one. "Natural objects," he

said,

"always did, and do weaken deaden and obliterate imagination in me."

(Notes on Wordsworth)

22

He

was willing

to

copy

copying nature seemed to him

tional forms, but

futile.

Art was

purely intellectual thing, and the love of sensuous beauty for

was unthinkable. In other words, ers of the

Middle Ages put

was

that

This

it.

is

from

tirelessly

to

tradi-

him

own

its

a

sake

idolatry, as the Christian think-

why

Blake

calls

Wordsworth an

atheist.

But

at the

see exactly in

same time, Blake does not ignore natural beauty.

what

its

place

him had developed

his belief that art

is

in art for him.

appealed

of

first

he uses "imagination" to include "intellect" at the

same

Meanwhile,

in his earliest years all to

all

this

shall

antinaturalism

and went hand

in

the "imagination."

that

We

we understand by

hand with

We

shall see

"spirit"

and

time.

Meanwhile he was working

such booksellers as Harrison and

for

work engraving and illustrating, he Stodhard, who introduced him to John Flaxman.

Johnson, and in the course of his

a young artist, Flaxman had already exhibited and won several prizes at the Free Society of Artists and, later, at the Royal Academy. He was at this time doing classical designs for the Wedgwood pottery, and at the same time he worked on the plans for a monument to Chatterton to be erected in Bristol. Works of this kind eventually made him very famous. He was already well known. Romney was his good friend, and so was William Hayley, who was later to be a patron of Blake's. But the man who really discovered Flaxman was the Reverend Henry Mathew, whose bluestocking wife invited Blake to her salon. It was Mathew who had the Poet-

met

ical

Sketches printed for Blake in 1783.

Flaxman was

the

Mathews'

first

of gratitude for their kindnesses to in the

"Gothic

style."

in niches "in the

That

is,

and most important

him he had

he placed

little

This

all

and out

models of clay and putty

Gothic manner," 23 and the bookcases were also Gothic.

Another protege, Oram, painted the windowpanes glass.

"find,"

redecorated their house

in imitation of stained

contributed to the success of the salon, which was fre-

quented by such important "Blues"

as

Mrs. Montague, Mrs. Vessey,

Mrs. Chapone, and Mrs. Barbauld. 22 lbid. page 377. f 23 Gilchrist, op. cit.,

page

46.

397

:

Here Blake was, society, as

had

we

see

But the atmosphere of

for a time, a success.

from Island

in the

Moon, soon

polite

got on his nerves.

He

married Catherine Boucher, and although she has become almost

just

legendary as the perfect wife (in spite of Saurat's entirely unfounded

comparison of Blake's married

life

with Milton's) 24 she could neither

read nor write at that time, and certainly could not have fitted into the conversations with Mrs.

Montague Blake

his wife probably helped

to

or Mrs. Vessey. Their attitude toward

become estranged from the Mathews.

It is

not clear what the real reason for that estrangement was. But at any

rate

it

came

about.

}.

T. (Nollekens) Smith

highly imperfect

says, in his

style

In consequence of his unbending department, or what his adherents were pleased to call a

manly firmness

of opinion,

times considered pleasing by everyone, his

Although the Island

the

in

which

visits

Moon was

certainly

was not

at all

were not so frequent. 20

written sometime

after

break with the Mathews (Keynes gives the date as circa 1787), yet

the

much

of the satire seems to be directed at the frequenters of the salon. Blake

must have thought the conversation about trivial;

and although these people were not

they were incapable of really appreciating

The

Island in the

Mathews.

Foster

S.

Moon

is

Damon, 26

and ideas there was

literature

necessarily ignorant of art,

it.

not directed entirely at the friends of the logically

enough, takes "Inflammable Gass,

the wind-finder" to be a caricature of Priestley, the radical chemist, in

whom

Blake mocks both science and Deism. Blake probably met Priestley

through the bookseller Johnson. Then there are a lawyer, the "Dean of Morocco," "Etruscan Column the Antiquarian" (he ians through Basire),

There

and

knew

so on.

always a tendency on the part of those

is

his antiquar-

who have

studied

Blake's occult sources to leave their readers with the impression that he lived either out of the world altogether, or else onlv in the

quacks, astrologers, and religious maniacs. in a circle of fairly

knew

also

Paine, 24

As

well-known and successful

publishers, booksellers, antiquarians,

Godwin,

Priestley,

Home

a matter of artists

and

Tooke, Holcroft.

company

fact,

of

he lived

and engravers.

He

for a while, radicals;

He

was one of the

Denis Saurat, Bla\e and Milton, London, Stanley, Nott and Company, Ltd.,

1935.

25 J.

T. Smith, Boo\ for a Rainy Day, quoted in Gilchrist, op.

26 S. Foster stable

398

and Co.

Damon, William Ltd., 1924,

page

Blake, His Philosophy

32.

cit.,

page

51.

and Symbols, London, Con-

who formed

intellectuals

responding Society was

around which the London Cor-

the nucleus

27 formed, in 1792.

later

However, Blake probably did know the

who

the Platonist, to the

in the

revived polytheism and

Damon

gods in his lodgings.

Moon

is

Taylor,

supposed to have sacrificed

assumes that Taylor figures in Island

Pythagorean."

as "Sipsop the

Thomas

eccentric

28

One might add

that the

experiments carried out by "Inflammable Gass" and the explosion that follows might have

some remote connection with Taylor's invention of

lamp" which blew up while he was demonstrating

a "perpetual

it

at

the Freemason's Tavern.

Following that explosion, George Cumberland, an friend, helped

Taylor

of six lectures

on Plato

Taylor already

this,

to get

work, which soon led

to his giving a series

Flaxman's house, in the early

in

knew Flaxman's

was long before he was supposed

to

and was

originally a mathematician

led

'80s.

29

Romney. This, by

friend

have

and Blake's

artist

Besides

the way,

He was

sacrificed goats to Zeus.

toward Plato and Plotinus in

searching for a metaphysics of mathematics. It is

nists

practically certain that Blake's ideas

grew

Taylor. This idealism Plato,

on Plato and the Neo-Plato-

directly out of a personal acquaintanceship

is

especially plausible since

is

he

justly or not

I

may

Thomas

this

stresses the fact that Plato's

"mathematical" and, by implication,

whether

with

lifeless.

not decide here,

is

This

also

is

why

continually attacked

by Blake for abstraction and mathematical idealism.

Another of Thomas Taylor's

interests

was

in the

1790 a

work on Bacchic and Eleusinian

Damon

has carefully pointed out the

Thel and the Persephone legend, with

Enneads

I,

translations of Proclus,

Porphyry, and

vi,

Plato,

Maximus

all its

between The Boo\ of

surrounding

ritual.

30

H. N.

Brailsford, Shelley,

Co., 1913. 28 Damon, op. 29 Wilson, op. 30

Damon,

op.

cit.,

page

33.

cit.,

page

23.

cit.,

page

74.

his

"Concerning the Beautiful," followed by Aristotle,

Tyrius.

We

Godwin and

Sallust,

shall

between Blake and Plotinus in reference

27

in

this side of Taylor's studies,

affinities

Meanwhile, Taylor was translating Plotinus. In 1787 he published translation of

reli-

Hymns and

Mysteries.

Blake seems also to have been influenced by for

Greek mystery

Orphic

gions. In 1787 he published a translation of the

later

Apuleius, Iamblichus,

examine the

to the place of

their Circle,

New

Nature

affinities

in Art.

York, Henry Holt and

399

:

4

Although Blake, then, was

Greek philosophy, there

He

toward the "Platonist." tion

In

anywhere there

fact,

certainly influenced

no reason

is

never mentions him, and there

had any

that he

by Taylor's studies of

suppose that he was very friendly

to

is

We

no absolute proof that he ever knew Taylor.

is

no

indica-

feelings of respect or admiration for him.

can only

must have met him through Flaxman or Cumberland since so much in his work implies familiarity with Taylor and what he was doing. The tradition of Blake's connection with the radicals of his time is better known and better established. Their influence on his work has infer that he

very

little

as well to

importance in

remark upon

this discussion of aesthetic ideas,

in passing.

it

who

through Johnson, the bookseller Sketches and

tive

Women

Mary

He came

lished Blake's

He

tried to start a love affair

was well known

The

that

in literary circles

radical intellectuals.

Mary even who was also a

frequently there;

with Blake's friend Fuseli,

frequent guest. Blake cannot have had

much

patience with Godwin's

and the Calvinism behind them. At any

Godwin

"is said to

story that Blake saved

have been antipathetic

Thomas

though he hated Deism, he seems

to

he pub-

satirized). In 1791

which were the meeting place of

Mary Wollstonecraft and Godwin were

Wilson records

just

group

Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of

French Revolution.

ideas of perfectibility

is

it

published Wordsworth's Descrip-

(which her friend Thomas Taylor

for his dinners,

but

in contact with this

Paine's

life

well

is

Mona

rate,

to Blake."

31

known. Al-

have been a good friend of Paine's,

and he sided with him against the Anglican Bishop, Watson, who wrote

An Apology Blake

calls

tions to I

Thomas

for the Bible in a series of letters addressed to

Paine.

Paine "a better Christian than the bishop" and ends his annota-

Watson's Apology with

have read

this

book with attention and find that the bishop has only hurt

this

Paine's heel, while Paine has broken his head.

The Bishop

has not answered

one of Paine's grand objections. 32

The

influence of these eighteenth-century radicals

and important. But have a tendency seau

has no effect on his ideas of

it

to talk

The Marriage

art.

of

to formulate his hatred

talks of the

growth of

Heaven and Hell). Here, of commercial imperialism

33

Wilson, op.

32

The Writings

33

"Four Zoas VII" from The Writings of William Bla\e, Vol.

400

page

clear

does, indeed,

religious institu-

too,

31

cit.,

He

is

about "society" in terms that remind us of Rous-

where he

(as, for instance,

tions in

upon Blake

he seeks a way

and

his

interna-

40.

of William Bla\e, Vol.

II,

page

170. II,

page 90

ff.

tionalism. Blake believe he

34 is,

would have us

of course, not the nationalist Saurat

is,

an idea which

go deeply enough into

entirely misleading, because

is

argument

his symbolism. Saurat's

shallow interpretation of such symbols as

does not

it

based on

is

"The Giant Albion" and "Dru-

ids."

The is

only connection this early radicalism has with Blake's ideas on art

commercial

in his ideas about the place of the artist in a

only secondary;

this is

Henry

it is

Fuseli, the artist,

who

also frequented Johnson's dinners,

probably Blake's warmest and best friend.

been more congenial

him than

to

He

certainly appears to

and

the cold

precise

had a sense of humor and a racy tongue, was almost as

Blake himself, and was just

When

poet.

ing

him

one of

and shoot

fields

enough

When

at

it,

there's a

good boy."

was have

enthusiasm

and sham

as the

Royal Academy kept pester-

drawing he answered:

of an idealist to feel that pictures

And

Flaxman. Fuseli

as full of

as impatient of stupidity

his duller students at the

for praise of a

society.

an aesthetic problem.

a sociological, not

35

bad.

"It's

And

were not

Take

like

it

into the

Blake, he

was

just "copies of nature."

a critic of the other school protested that the boat in his painting

of the miracle of the loaves

and

fishes

was too

small, he merely

answered

36

was "part of the miracle." Once he turned on his students with "God, you

that

:

wild beasts and

I

am

In every line that

your keeper."

we

are a pack of

damned

37

read about Blake's friendship with Fuseli

we

find

that this

was the friend who most nearly shared Blake's point of view.

Fuseli

characterized by the same passionate indignation against petti-

is

and fakes that we find

ness

on a

common ground

of thoroughly

admiration for his friend that Blake

in Blake.

is

And

also,

humorous

the

two seemed

frankness.

And

to

meet

Fuseli's

transparent behind the jokes he kept making,

was "damned good

to steal

from." 38

Fuseli expressed this admiration without reserve in his introduction to

the edition of Blair's Grave which Blake illustrated.

34

Denis Saurat, Blake and

Modem

Thought,

New

York, Lincoln MacVeagh, The

Dial Press, 1929. 35

Harold Bruce, William Blake

in

This World, London, Jonathan Cape, Ltd.,

1925, page 63. 36 Ibid., page 64. 37 Ibid.,

page

64.

™lbid.

401

4

Every

hints of

Now

from

class of artists in every stage of their progress or attainments,

the student to the finished master

.

.

.

will find here materials of art

and

improvement.

unknown

Blake was almost

own

to the public in his

which had

these illustrations to Blair,

a

time,

and

wider circulation than any of his

Hunt

other work, were violently criticized in the press. Robert

in the

Examiner considered that "all the allegory is not only far-fetched but absurd, inasmuch as a human body can never be mistaken, in a picture, for its soul," and that "an appearance of libidinousness intrudes itself upon the holiness of our thoughts and counteracts their impression."

39

This pruriency about the "naked form" led another subscriber tion to get rid of his copy as "unfit to lie

"regretted his haste

when

work became

the

on the parlor

to the edi-

table,"

but he

and more valuable." 40

rare

In that time only a few, like Flaxman, had a genuine appreciation of Blake's genius. But Fuseli

one

who

had anything

believed the age

Fuseli, a Swiss

and

went further than them

where he studied

art for nine years.

They knew each

return in 1779.

engraved a portrait of Lavater the

Aphorisms

was the only

from Blake.

had come

He met

to

Blake sometime after his

other at least before 1788,

after a design

by Fuseli,

which Johnson published

of Lavater

He

London and Joshua Reynolds, who helped send him to

a friend of Lavater's,

attracted the attention of Sir Italy,

to learn

all.

when Blake

as frontispiece to

in that year.

Now, although Fuseli had been brought up on the early Romanticism of Bodmer and Breitinger at Zurich and loved Shakespeare, Richardson, Milton, Dante,

and

and Rousseau, yet

in 1758 he translated

in his painting he

was

entirely Neoclassical

Winckelmann's Reflections on the Painting

Academy from

Greeks. After that he held a professorship at the Royal 1799 to his death in 1825.

He

was a good

well.

He

linguist,

He

was

also deeply interested in

of the

Greek

literature.

and Greek was one of the languages he knew

even helped Cowper with

his translation of the Iliad.

41

James Barry, R.A., another Neoclassical painter, of greater importance than either Fuseli or Flaxman because he was very popular with his contemporaries, was also a friend of Blake.

He

had been discovered

by Burke, found favor with Reynolds, and went, Italy.

There

his taste in art

39 Wilson, op.

cit.,

page

40 Ibid., page 193. 41 Lionel Cust, "Henry

became

like Fuseli, to study in

exclusively' classical;

he admired only

193.

Fuseli," Dictionary of National Biography, edited

Sidney Lee, London, Smith Elder and Co., 1889, Vol. XX, page 334

402

in Ireland

ff.

by

Sir

among

the antique and,

the Italians, the Florentines, especially Raphael.

Van Dyke condemn them,

Rubens, Rembrandt and

and although

I

will not

.

.

yet

my

beyond the pale of

are

.

church;

must hold no intercourse with

I

them. 42

During

Academy, disgusted with

the 1770s he ceased to exhibit at the

Death of General Wolfe, in which the figures were nude, while West's painting of the same subject with the figures dressed

the reception of his

was very popular. In

up, even to the latest wigs in the current fashion, spite of quarrels ticular,

with the Academy as a whole and with Reynolds in par-

Barry later obtained a professorship there.

Like Blake, he was always poor, but he shared Blake's

belief in the

duty

of the artist to devote himself entirely to his art; painting could exact

from

him

the greatest personal sacrifices.

offered to decorate the

he only had sixteen walls with murals.

and

Art was

his

whole

rooms of the Society of Arts

shillings in his pocket,

During

nothing although

and he proceeded

Blake

this time,

for

tells us,

44

In 1777 he

life.

to cover four

he lived on "bread

apples." In the evenings he sketched for printsellers to keep alive.

have taken great pains, he

I

43

To

this

end

into a very

He

I

says, to

form myself

have contracted and simplified

all

for this

my

kind of quixotism.

wants and brought them

narrow compass. 45

issued an account of these paintings in a pamphlet

with the public exhibition of these murals, Pictures in the Great place in 1777,

Room

We must therefore

Account of a

Series of

of the Society of Artists. This exhibition took

and Blake owned

sketched a portrait of Barry

An

which coincided

a

copy of

this

Account, in which he

46

add Barry

to the

number

of friends

who

consciously

or otherwise were drawing Blake toward Neoclassicism. In Barry, as well as Fuseli, Blake

found much that appealed

passionately devoted to art as 42 Ill,

W. Cosmo Monkhouse,

we have

to

him.

only was Barry

seen, but like Blake,

remember,

"James Barry," Dictionary of National Biography, Vol.

pages 321-24.

43 Consider the contrast

between him and Reynolds, of

Life of William Bla\e, page 13, "Sir Joshua Reynolds

but he was too fond of the comforts of

life to

experiments but those which would enable 44 "Descriptive Catalogue," 45

W. Cosmo Monkhouse,

46 G. L. Keynes,

of

Not

New

A

"James Barry,"

says, in his

a clever painter,

give even an hour a day for any other

him

The Writings

whom Tatham

was indeed

to paint

with greater

of William Bla\e, Vol.

celerity.

Ill,

page

86.

loc. cit.

Bibliography of William Bla\e,

New

York, The Grolier Club

York, 1921.

403

"

;

,

he had quarreled with Reynolds and the "stufTed shirt" element of the

Royal Academy. Also,

like Blake,

he was in frequent

conflict

with cheat-

we

ing printsellers. Barry was a religious man, a devout Catholic, and recall that

Blake was

only the Catholic church, of

later to say that

churches, taught the forgiveness of sins.

Although he detested Reynold's

criticism

loyalty to Barry? tirely

opposed

precision,

Rather

it

means

to Neoclassicism, to

possibly his readings in

when he made

and

art,

but

on him up

a clean break with

the Sublime, for once puts

out of

some time Blake was not

now

may

en-

virtues of clarity,

never have accepted

because of his friends and

Greek philosophy, he was under

influence that exerted pressure

A letter of

that for

On

this entirely

which he allowed the

definiteness of outline. Indeed, he

and

style,

camp with Dr. Johnson. Was

the metaphysics of the Sublime in

tion"

and Burke's

grand

yet Blake praises Barry's paintings in the

himself in the same

all

47

until his return

a Neoclassical

from Felpham,

in 1803.

it

1799 shows a curious compromise in Blake between "Inspira-

and "Greek"

as the

symbol of Classicism: 48

more and more that my style of Designing is a Species by itself, and which I send you have been compelled by my Genius or Angel to follow where it led; if I were to act otherwise it would not fulfil the purpose for which alone I live, which is in conjunction with my friend Cumberland to renew the lost art of the Greeks. I

find

in this

The Cumberland to whom he refers is, of course, George Cumberland, Thomas Taylor's friend, whom we mentioned above as having arranged for

Taylor

to lecture

on Plato

some time before 1795 dramatist.

He was

49

at

Flaxman's house. Blake met Cumberland

he was the cousin of Richard Cumberland, the

one of Blake's lifelong friends, and the

any kind Blake did was

to

last

work

of

engrave a visiting card for Cumberland in

1827, shortly before his death.

In 1796

Cumberland published

his

Thoughts on Outline,

which Blake acknowledges receiving from him 23, 1796.

50

About

47 Blake's friend,

Mona

the

in a letter of

same time Cumberland was busy with

Samuel Palmer, wrote

Wilson's Life of William Blahc,

p.

in a letter to

287)

:

"He

Anne

a

a

copy of

December scheme for

Gilchrist (quoted in

quite held forth one day to

me

on the Roman Catholic Church being the onlv one which taught the forgiveness of sins; and he repeatedly expressed the belief that there was more civil liberty under the Papal government than any other sovereignty. 48 "Letter IV, To Dr. John Trusler," Writings of William 49 Wilson, op. 50

404

cit.,

The Writings

page

23.

of William Bla\e, Vol.

I.

page 345.

Blake Vol.

II,

page

173.

founding a National Gallery; Blake was enthusiastic about

way he speaks

any other time in his

pletely than at

have

I

life.

due time be

into execution. All your wishes shall in

flood of Grecian light

obvious from this

ways of looking here

and glory which

is

last

at Greece, for the

years that his search for clarity satisfied

immense more than

the

will

quotation that Blake had two entirely different

"Grecian light and glory" he anticipates

He must

scarcely "mathematical form."

is

fulfilled;

coming on Europe,

our warmest wishes. 51

realize It is

for a National Gallery being put

you on your plan

to congratulate

and the

it,

shows him accepting "Greece" more com-

of the project

and

have thought for some

might be

intelligibility in all things

by the study of Greece. Classicism was not entirely alien

because of

its

demanded

in all art.

simplicity

and vigor and

Yet he was never able

something

time

that

is

call

else;

it,

became

it

you

if

fully to accept the Classicism

On

either of Greece or of his contemporaries. his life at this

him,

to

cleanliness of line: a quality Blake

the contrary, one aspect of

between Classicism and

a struggle

Romanticism, although there

will,

in

is

Blake a quickness of imagination and intellectual acuteness and a mysticism that no other Romantic possesses.

50 it.

this

period in Blake's

This drama

is

has something of a dramatic quality about

life

one of the things he has written in the Prophetic Books.

Urizen, in the Prophetic Books, represents empiricism, rationalism, "the

philosophy of the Five Senses": that in Blake's

own

to capture

him and

private

against

in

tive

body) are

also

systems of

to the

Creation, the Fall,

thrown all

and the Birth of

it

gent world. the

Now

result

evil

tell

is

common

us the

same kind

from the peace and har-

and blindness of

into generation, flesh,

and

fall

which

is

is

same terms the

a changing, contin-

for eating the fruit of the forbidden tree

knowledge of good and

unknown, demned to

51

The punishment

When

replaced by

A struggle of this type

represents in the

Christ. All these

of pure being into the turmoil

But tried

and Tharmas (the vegeta-

of thing, for they imply the descent of Intellect

mony

is

knowledge by doubt. The

into turmoil.

and

which

to struggle.

wisdom

Zoas,

(passion, emotion)

mystics,

at large.

the Classical spirit

The Four

rationalism, imagination by blindness,

Luvah

is

which he continually had

Urizen dethrones Urthona,

that the other Zoas,

Urizen in the world

is,

drama Urizen

from

paradise,

half blind to

where

was

evil

is

good and con-

die.

as far as this study

The Writings

is

concerned, what interests us in

of William Blake, Vol.

II,

page

The Four

180.

405

Zoas

is

Los,

art.

that Urthona, dethroned,

Los

is

is

no longer pure wisdom, but becomes

who works

the only one

kind of harmony and order and

The Lambeth Books were

all

(at his anvils) to preserve

intelligibility in the created

some

world.

written during the period of this struggle

with Greek influences and they are concerned entirely with the struggles

Los and Urizen. Urizen

of

only binds rules.

time.

man

is

These shorter books represent Blake's It

was important

out letting

did not matter; he was ready to ignore

never really accepted the Classical

not

artificial

intellectual struggles at the

own. To

its

all

his poetry

rules of prosody,

he

completely free; one

is

But insofar

in his longer works, too free.

"Greece"

and he had

poetry beyond a few short

spirit in

lyrics in the Poetical Sketches. In his poetry

might say

who

of rules,

that he find the proper place for Classicism with-

usurp anything that was not

it

maker

the lawgiver, the

with moral codes, but tyrannizes over art with

as

he

is

concerned

with Classicism in the Prophetic Books they are a commentary on his

development This

is

as a graphic artist.

quite natural, in any case, since in literature he

no strong private

and had never had any

influences

any kind imposed upon him.

He

was

subject to

literary discipline of

read and wrote as he chose and never

consulted any criterion on this earth. But in his art he had had a training in schools

and

Neoclassical

Add

artists.

as

an apprentice, and most of his friends were

to this, of course, that

his living and, consequently,

had

to try to

he depended on art for

compromise with the popular

time as they were exemplified; for instance, in Dr. John

tastes of his

Trusler, the author of

The

strict

Hogarth Moralized.

struggle reached

its

height

when Flaxman

introduced Blake to

William Hayley, "Hermit of Eartham," author of Triumphs of Temper, 52 Hayley gave Blake some engraving "forever feeble and forever tame." do on

to

illustrations for his

In order to do this Blake

At

first

Essay on Sculpture and his Life of Cowper.

moved down

to a cottage at

he was happy and really grateful

to

Flaxman

Felpham in Sussex. what he believed

for

to do the creative work he wanted to do in peace. But actuFlaxman and Hayley were busying themselves deciding what kind of work Blake ought to be doing for his own good as an artist. Mona Wilson 53 quotes a letter of Flaxman to Hayley:

was a chance ally

52 Byron, "English Bards

Poems, edited by Louis Co.

Inc., 1935,

53

406

page

Wilson, op.

cit.,

I.

and Scotch Reviewers,"

Bredvold, Garden City,

15.

page

126.

in

New

Don

Juan and Other Satirical

York, Doubleday Doran and

I

no reason why he [Blake] should not make

see

London

as at

if

good a livelihood there

as

he engraves and teaches drawing, by which he

considerably, also by

making neat drawings

which he

dependance on painting large pictures

fied either

by habit or study, he will be miserably deceived. fact,

keep him so busy

to

work

no chance

the

life

Hayley

on the walls of

of poets

of

Cowper and

In the

began

first

to learn

months

at

he

if

not quali-

put him to

also

money-making

at steady

poems

were the engravings

his library; then there

the designs for

or

Of course, it was all meant work in tempera doing busts

Comus. Besides

spare time Blake acted as Hayley's amanuensis. that Blake

is

to write his unprofitable

do his incomprehensible mystical drawings. in perfect kindness.

for

soon put Blake to work doing miniatures.

Their whole purpose was that he should have

gain

of various kinds; but

places any

Hayley, as a matter of

may

in his

this,

all

for

was with Hayley

It

also

Greek.

Felpham Blake, because

the change

made him

happy, gladly accepted anything Hayley said as wise and good. Conse-

own

quently, he even began to submit his

wildly independent genius to

Hayley's milder ideas and opinions. In Blake this is

what he I

says in a letter to

labor incessantly

Thomas

Butts:

and accomplish not one half of what

abstract jolly hurries

me

often

away while

mountains and valleys which are not spectres of the

might chain

These are influence

dead wander. This

my

jeet to the

certainly

among

/

view

real, in a

endeavour

world of duty and the strangest

must have been very

subtle

to a

his

I

intend because

work, carrying

Land

me

my

over

of Abstraction where

my

whole

reality.

words Blake ever wrote. Hayley's

and very strong

this also

in oil

to fall in

brought him unhappiness.

and tempera. As

to

make him

compromise

mis-

fitted to

The Writings

less trickery.

in

have meant

do were probably paintings

who were

so

had begun

much

in studies of these great colorists

handling of light and chiaroscuro, in

had

taste of his time,

What Flaxman may

studying the Flemish and Venetian painters

more or

made

with the

that

another com-

early as his twenty-first year Blake

and he began experimenting

all

A

material gain. But at the same time he

by the "large pictures" Blake was not

54

at

to prevent and with

compromise with Neoclassicism.

own

promise for that same reason, hoping

was

am

I

imagination even for a minute. This was the nearest Blake ever

trust

came

and

unbelievable: yet here

is

54

spite of the fact that

in vogue,

and

their

he believed

it

In 1799 he writes to Trusler:

of William Bla\e, Vol.

II,

page

196.

407

If

you approve of

Paint Pictures in

my manner

oil

means you will have a number unworthy of a scholar

the same terms; by this

which,

I

Teniers, It

flatter

whom

and it is agreeable to you, I would rather same dimensions than make drawings, and on

of the

of cabinet pictures

myself, will not be

of

have studied no

than Michelangelo. 55

I

less

Rembrandt and

not surprising to read that Blake had studied

is

Teniers; but

it

is

Rembrandt and

amazing, in the light of the Annotations

to Reynolds,

that he should want to be thought their imitator.

The

Descriptive Catalogue (1809)

lists

several "experimental" pictures

done over a ten-year period when Blake was interested over them time and again, trying out different

in oils.

effects, as

He worked

he explains 50 in

his notes.

Now

no matter what he may have

common

paintings have nothing in

much

is

said to Dr. Trusler, Blake's

and the Byzantines before him,

closer to Giotto

tempera

with Rembrandt or Teniers. Blake

Roger Fry has

as

pointed out, 57 than to any Renaissance influence. But although these

home with

paintings are fine, he was not at in

it

was

a struggle to him.

only with the

The

medium, and painting

Descriptive Catalogue

he found in

difficulties

this

oils,

but, even

the havoc Titian and the Venetians threw

him

concerned not

is

more important, with

into

when he

tried to

imitate their effects.

They cause

that every thing in art shall

execution shall be artist in fear

was

all

become

a machine.

They

cause that

blocked up with brown shadows. They put the original

and doubt of

his

own

original conceptions.

The

spirit of

Titian

particularly active in raising doubts concerning the possibility of exe-

cuting without a model, and easy for

him

to snatch

away

when once he had

raised the doubt

the vision time after time for,

when

it

became

the artist

took his pencil to execute his ideas his power of imagination weakened so

much and darkened

that

memory

of nature

and of Pictures of the various

schools possessed his mind. 58

This

is

much misunderstood condemnation of Emotional art critics who are as much partisans

the explanation of his

Rembrandt and

Titian.

as they are averse to serious study regard Blake's ideas

bigoted and incomprehensible.

55

The Writings

56 Ibid., Vol.

Ill,

of

William

page

It is

Blaise, Vol.

as

not necessary to agree with Blake's

II,

page 174.

117.

57

Roger Fry, Vision and Design, London, Chatto & Windus,

58

The Writings

408

on Rembrandt

of William Bla\e , Vol.

Ill,

page

118.

Ltd., 1920,

page

140.

judgment, here, but incomprehensible In the all

What

was never able

say he

or the Venetians, because, after

essential

is

what he means by

it; it is

not

at all.

first place, it is false to

Rembrandt

in

them.

certainly very clear

it is

that Blake's art has

is

anything

at

he tried to imitate

all,

no place

to see

in

it

for naturalism,

nor was Blake capable of approaching art through an enjoyment of physical

beauty in

nothing

to

Of

itself.

Color, line, light, beautiful bodies, in themselves

him, and he was incapable of drawing directly from a living course

it is

hard for us to understand

other masters are

still

the popular

model.

we

believe art should be.

Blake

is

to

and

this since, after all, these

their tradition dictates to another tradition,

what

and

is

European Middle Ages and of the Orient.

and

a religious artist,

and appealing

artists

But Blake belongs

related to the artist of the

ful

meant

him, but

as such

he wants the world

intelligible. In other

to

be not beauti-

words, he does not love

nature for and in herself, but looks at natural objects sub sped aeternitatis, as they are in

can love

God.

It is

God through

God

nature

he loves and not nature (and is still

think you

to

and be an

to love only nature

atheist,

Blake would say).

His technique, then,

is

to

"copy" a "vision"; not natural objects but

"mental images," a practice which does not of the fundamentals of art.

Hindu

art,

Blake hated naturalism, and

59

at all isolate

him, for

besides being implicit in

all

it is

one

Medieval

this precipitated his struggle to

under-

stand the rich, broad effects of light and color of the Venetians, their tendencies toward pure sensuousness,

and

their tricks of light to heighten

sensuous appeal. All this was not what he meant by

this

And

art,

for to a

all the more muddled up his own clear ideas about art and imagination. So he naturally swung to the other extreme and condemned them bitterly he had the right to, for they had given him much misery in making him lose the direction he had first

part of the worship of

religious artist, art

is

convinced of

when

this

God.

he was

the imitation of the Venetians

:

chosen. This, then,

minor

is

aspect, as all the

irrelevant.

But

—a

very

most

part,

one aspect of the drama of the Prophetic Books autobiography in the Books

here, in the struggles of

is,

flected Blake's doubts, self-examinations, experiments,

promise with the

taste

everyone

else

for the

Los and Urizen, we do

and

see re-

failures to

com-

shared for the Neoclassicists, the

Flemish painters, and the Venetians. 59

A. K. Coomaraswamy, Transformation of Nature in Art, Harvard University

Press,

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1934.

409

None can know

my

the spiritual acts of

of the

Ocean [Felpham was near the

spirit,

or unless he should read

The dramatic

my

long

poem

content of the Prophetic Books, once again,

into a violent, tragic conflict of ideas,

fall

and

ation into spiritual

He

expressed in

is

always deals with

the

is

human

mystics understand to underly the whole of

in the

and the subsequent regener-

harmony. This

intellectual

them

descriptive of those acts. 60

Blake's mystical symbols, as this quotation shows.

the

bank

three years of slumber on the

coast] unless he has seen

drama which the pattern

life. It is

of the contingent universe.

In Jerusalem, for the last time Blake gave this

generation

From

complete exposition.

its

years later, he hardly wrote anything

defending his ideas on

art

and some

Felpham, the struggle ended. By

Hayley (and, seemed

incidentally, he

throw

to

struggle,

more except

when he

finally

making

a

was

over, long

not that

artist:

a sacrifice

was

it

it

useless to try

was impossible

and too much

Whatever natural glory wish

I

ever,

This

is

I

to

do nothing

am

of

Now,

it

too,

a popular or successful

for him, but because

it

involved too great

suffering.

man

a

has

for profit,

I

is

so

wish

no bohemian pose of some

much

taken from his spiritual glory.

to live for art.

I

want nothing what-

fln-de-siecle banker's son seeking

some

in Paris on a comfortable allowance: these are the words

man who

Giving up

refused the position of art teacher to the royal family.

all

attempt

he returned

raries,

61

quite happy. 62

excuse to live of a

he

were perni-

poems growing out

and become

left

after this)

were unnecessary, and he deliberately gave up writing them. he realized that

re-

clean break with

was estranged with Flaxman

the struggle

and

notes and pamphlets

shorter poems. Surely

ofT all ideas of following the influences that

Once

cious to him.

fall,

then until his death, twenty

to

at

compromise with the

London

in 1803

taste of his

contempo-

and threw himself wholeheartedly

back into the tradition he loved and understood: the great tradition of Christian

He

the Middle Ages, and the Florentine painters.

art,

found new inspiration

in a collection of pictures that

went on

exhi-

bition in that year, the "Truchsessian Gallery." This collection, belonging to a Polish

ings.

63

nobleman, Count Truchsess, included over a thousand paint-

Truchsess had been ruined bv the French Revolution and was

60

The Writings

61

H. Crabb Robinson, Diary, edited bv T.

1869, Vol.

I,

63

410

of William Sialic Vol. IK page 243.

page 303.

62 Ibid., Vol.

II,

Wilson, op.

try-

page

cit.,

26.

page 174.

Sadler, Boston, Fields

Osgood

Co.,

ing to

start a

company

permanent

of a

art gallery.

Mona Wilson

quotes Sir

Thomas Lawrence's

recorded in Farington's diary.

is

whole

matter of

as a

and represented eighteenth-century

like

thought the

fact,

collection ... by

his contemporaries

taste at its best.

German, Dutch,

Italian,

and French masters. The masters included Albrecht

Flemish, Spanish

Diirer,

Hans Holbein

Brueghel, Vandyke, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci,

senior,

Watteau.

Of

it

course, referred to the

Lawrence was an admirable judge of what

was a varied

It

He,

opinion of this show as

value of the collection, the price Truchsess was asking for his

paintings.

would

64

was worthless. This opinion, of

collection

money

and the foundation

for the purchase of his pictures

Bourdon,

65

would have been most

these Blake

interested in his favorites, Diirer

and Michelangelo. But there are other good reasons why the show might have

filled

the time,

artists of

chance

he

him with such enthusiasm

as

did. Blake, unlike

it

had never been abroad and

so

had hardly ever had

to see original canvases of the great masters: as a

knew Raphael

most of the

matter of

mostly from the engravings of Marc Antonio. But

among

a

fact, it is

number were the work of Italian primitives, Duccios, or Fra Angelicos, which would help to explain not only Blake's enthusiasm but Lawrence's disgust. In any case, it would be safe enough to say that a collection of that size contained a great number of pictures in the tradition of Christian Medieval art. At any rate,

also possible that

a thousand pictures, a

Blake writes to Hayley: Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of pictures,

was again enlightened with the

light

twenty years has been closed from

Twenty art.

years, that

is,

enjoyed in

I

me

since the days

as

my

I

youth, and which for

by a door and window shutters. 66

when he had been

studying Gothic

In 1783, exactly twenty years before, was the date of the publication

of the Poetical Sketches circle.

Twenty

and was the time of

years before he

had ended

and the long hours of delightful study

came

to

an end.

closer contact

From

his contact

his apprenticeship

in the

then on he had been, as

with Neoclassicism and

with the Mathews'

all

with Basire,

Gothic churches of the

we have

city

seen, in closer

and

the fashionable tastes in

art,

64 Ibid. 65 Charles

1919, 66

page

Gardner, William Bla\e the Man, London,

J.

M. Dent and

Sons, Ltd.,

42.

The Writings

of William Bla\e, Vol.

II,

page 282.

411

literature,

and

A

artistic leader.

which believed

which was

society

And,

A

largely skeptical or Deistic.

good humored, and

in "nature" with a vague, a

ill-founded optimism.

Common

which Reynolds was the

ideas involved in a society of

of course,

Nature was

society

entirely

more akin

a goddess

to

Sense than to Wordsworth's Goddess: the landscape through

which shines

gleam."

a "visionary

looking at nature

is

One

ways of

of the eighteenth-century

well reflected by the term they gave Deism, that

mean

"natural religion." This does not

Deism

that

is

is,

the worship of

nature in a vague anthropomorphic sort of way, as one might suppose,

but

above

it is,

"natural" religion as opposed to "supernatural."

all,

comes

religion, in other words, that

God

at

all. It is

and

be; as distant

more than

a religion as

as close as

which makes God

unthinking

as possible.

To

can

to

vague

is

whittled

a

doing without any

he can possibly

as

God was

the Deists,

good feeling pervading the universe. God

a

supernatural attributes, and religion

all his

it

as

It is

is

little

thus relieved of

down

to

walking

out on the terrace of a Sunday morning, taking a few deep breaths, and slapping your chest contentedly as you wait for your breakfast.

when he

Blake was perfectly right religion. It

how

pointed out there was no natural

an impossibility and a contradiction in terms. Incidentally,

is

can Mr. Middleton Murry so glibly say Blake did not believe in the

supernatural in the face of this?

Blake got no closer allowed him. But

to the Deists

than his brief acquaintance with Paine

this vagueness, this

relation of the Creator

and the Created, or the natural and the super-

whole of fashionable thought. That

natural, pervaded the

necessarily accusing

misty confusion in considering the

Hume

or Berkeley of vagueness:

philosophers, but saying that this vagueness in literature

and

polite conversation. It

I

am

is,

I

not talking of

was nowhere

better represented

than in William Hayley. Blake had been in conflict with this

he was

finally

saccharine tameness

thrown

all

in

not

was fashionable and prevailed

with Hayley and steeped in

day long, every day,

it is

along,

all

with his insistence on "distinctness" and "single and particular

When

am

detail."

this

awful

no wonder he

finally re-

men

with very

volted altogether. Incidentally, Blake's best friends clear

and

definite ideas as to

what they believed

expressing their beliefs forcibly: speaking.

man. As

Then its

412

Flaxman was

for Barry,

there

a

whom

we have

in,

and no

hesitation in

seen this in Fuseli, generally

Swedenborgian, a pious and, above

all,

a strict

Blake so admired, he was a devout Catholic.

was the rather

pretences at culture,

were mostly religious

its

silly artificiality

superficiality

of the

Mathews'

which Blake

salon,

with

satirized in Island

:

Moon;

in the

surface, there

same

yet at the

was

time, in contrast to this gentility

a rich substratum of

still

a contradiction characteristic of the

marked on

As an

this contradiction.

filth,

violence,

and

artist,

Rowlandson

in

not interested in paintless

was he

robust satire which exploited the

his

eighteenth-century substratum of

re-

he was not interested in going

He was

ing portraits or conversation pieces of the genteel, but even to follow

vulgarity,

whole century. Blake sometimes

for material to either one side or the other.

going

on the

filth.

Blake, as a matter of fact, com-

plains against the popularity of caricature in one of his letters to Trusler.

was the return

It

to the tradition of Christian art that

early days, then, that

experiments

at

his

brought Blake out of the "dark night," the despair

which he had been plunged by

into his

had inspired

67

compromise had

his misgivings about his

own

art, after

failed.

But now:

am really drunk in my hand, even I

with intellectual vision whenever as

I

used to be in

my

twenty dark, but very profitable years.

I

take a pencil or graver

youth, and as

I

have not been for

68

The only poem of importance written between 1808 and his death is The Everlasting Gospel {circa 1818). Almost all of his writing at this time has to do with his

includes critical notes, catalogues, prospectuses,

art. It

Lacoon Plate (1820), the Annotations to Reynolds, and such things Descriptive Catalogue and the Public Address. the

the

The now, all

all

Prophetic Books had dealt with the period of his struggle. But

to

judge by his remarks

to

Crabb Robinson, he

ambitious projects in poetry. Or, as he put

him

as

to write,

that he

but he refused." 69 Perhaps he

wanted

to say, for

it,

felt

"angels had

up

commanded

Jerusalem had finally said

we have remarked

Books use the same material and the same

deliberately gave

that all the Prophetic

story over

and over again,

sometimes with greater complexity, sometimes from the point of view of another "state." Perhaps,

also,

poetry, while his pictures

he

felt that since

no one was reading

were better understood and appreciated, that

he should concentrate entirely on painting and engraving. rate, certain that at this

power

as

graphic

What was

artist

his

It is, at

any

time Blake began to achieve greater and fuller

than ever before.

this early tradition to

which he now returned with such

fortunate results ? Saurat says 67

The Writings

of William Blake, Vol.

II,

page

174.

G

*Ibid., Vol. II, page £83. 69 Robinson, Diary, Vol. II,

page

33.

4J3

Mingling therefore, with the great modern movements of liberalism, na-

we

tionalism, idealism,

shall at every turn find in

Blake a reversion to the

old lore, cabalistic, Gnostic or occultist of every kind, also a

among

rummaging

and crude knowledge

pseudo-scientific theories of the origin of races

of Indian religion. 70

This broad and sketchy statement does not quite cover the whole ground it

Whether Blake is a liberal, a nationalist, M. Saurat's gymnastics with illhowever, true that he was "rummaging among

so agilely seems to traverse.

or an idealist has

still

interpreted symbols.

not been proved by

It is,

pseudo-scientific theories of the origin of races."

these were the theories proposed

71

to

him

We

know

in the Descriptive

of

man who knew no knew Bryant from a reference

technique of a

highly imaginative etymological Oriental languages.

The most important

by Jacob Bryant and based on the

that Blake

Catalogue 12 and can trace Bryant's influence

through his work, principally in his ideas on the Greeks not being the fountainhead of Western civilization. Bryant, starting with the proposition that

works

"There was once but one language among the sons of men" 73

his

way backward, beyond

mology through ancient

religions,

the Greeks, tracing his

Rather than owing her our civilization

we

are,

in

lacks only a dash of

Bryant insisted that Greece was not the fountainhead of

their

ety-

which he finds have everything

common. His method is pleasantly slipshod and psychoanalysis to make it completely modern.

had any

way by

all

our culture.

he thinks, lucky

civilization at all after the original heritage

to

have

had passed through

hands:

We

must be cautious

in

forming ideas of the ancient theology of nations

from the current notions of the Greeks and Romans, and more from the descriptions of ten times

their poets. Polytheism originally vile

more base by coming through

Bryant's etymologies, as

we have

their hands.

said, failed

especially

was rendered

74

because he

knew no

Oriental

languages, and the great Sanskritists, Richardson and Sir William Jones, effectively

demolished him in his

own

time.

But

that Blake, because of Bryant's influence, looks

70 Saurat, Bla\e 71

Jacob Bryant,

and Modern Thought, Introduction, page

A New

72 Writings of William Bla\e, Vol.

74 Ibid., Vol.

414

cit., I,

Vol.

page

I,

141.

interesting to

know

xiv.

System, or an analysis of ancient mythology, London,

T. Payne, 1774. 73 Bryant, op.

it is

beyond Greece toward the

page

54.

II,

page

3.

Orient for the origins of our heritage, especially as there is

is

so

much

that

Oriental in Blake's mysticism. Besides, such an idea was not cherished

The beginnings William Jones to muse upon

by Bryant alone. Sir

poetic traditions of Greece

Blake seems

and

had led scholars

the similarity between the religious and

because

this idea, partly

it fit

anti-Hellenic reaction, of course, but partly, also, because he

known enough

about India to

shown

Saurat has

like

India.

have welcomed

to

of Sanskrit studies

in

with his

must have

drawn toward her culture. know some elementary facts about

feel

that Blake did

Indian religion, mythology, and iconography.

We know

that Blake

knew

the Bhagavad-Gita, because he did a picture of Sir Charles Wilkins translating

75 it,

and Wilkins' translation appeared

Warren Hastings. Saurat assumes

note by

books about India, and

this

books being published literature

at this time,

and had drawn on

mentions a subject

that Blake

a safe assumption.

is

it

76

and

for symbols

in the Descriptive

with a prefatory

in 1785,

knew

various travel

There were many

travel

that Blake read this kind of

and

ideas

is

also

known.

He

Catalogue taken from one of these

books called The Missionary Voyage. 11 Another book he might have

known was

the

famous

collection of pictures of Indian art, architecture,

and landscape, Daniell's Oriental Scenery, published

in 1808. Blake does

speak of

Hindoo and Egyptian antiquity preserved on rude monuments, being copies from some stupendous originals now lost or perhaps buried until some happier age. 78 those apotheoses of Persian,

Blake was a voracious reader, just

what he

we know,

read. In general, however,

but

it is

we can

not so easy to find out

say that

no matter what

he did read, the books on the Orient in that day merely scratched the sur-

more than outward descriptions of religious rites and repetitales and legends were given, without any true understanding of

face. Little

tions of

the philosophy behind them.

The

great scholars, Jones, Wilkins, Halhed,

were interested only in the language and the laws, of the East India

Company.

Sir

Oriental literature in terms of

75 "Descriptive Catalogue,"

76 G.

Boucher de

la

as befitted

members

William Jones does speak frequently of

art,

but

The Writings

when he

does

so,

of William Blake, Vol.

Richardiere, Bibliographie Universelle des

he stands and

Ill,

page 117.

Voyages, Paris,

Treutel et Wurtz, 1808. 77

The Writings

78 Ibid., Vol. Ill,

of William Blake, Vol.

page

Ill,

page

115.

94.

415

views

He

it

from

good Neoclassicist should. away Oriental excesses of imagination

a distance, a bit suspiciously, as a

goes to great lengths to explain

and symbolism 79 and makes every

"enthusiasm" in

effort to palliate the

these works. Finally, he explains their mystical content in terms as close to Plato as

he can get: "Sweet musick, gentle breezes, fragrant flowers

perpetually

renew the primary

us with tender affections."

Whether

of the Sufis.) is

would have

seen.

is

memory and

our fading

idea, refresh

(In this case he

or not this

certainly far

point, Jones

there

80

is

a distortion of the Oriental view-

is

from seeing the same things

Whether Blake read

in

it

that Blake

works we cannot

Jones'

known

Blake might have

a faint possibility that

melt

talking about the poetry

tell;

yet

Jones himself.

He certainly knew of him, for Jones had been a famous radical and a member of the Price, Godwin, Holcroft circle which later became the London Corresponding Society. Jones had even given up the idea of running radical

for Parliament because of his radicalism; not, of course, that a

had scruples about

sitting in the

Commons, but

possible chance of being elected to that

that Blake did

meet Jones.

It

depends on

House.

how

bookseller, for Jones sailed for India in 1783 in 1794. In

any

case, Jones

studies in Sanskrit

knew

Johnson, the

lived there until his death

in

all his

England. However, Jones was ad-

in the radical group.

A

poem

of his

was read aloud

meeting of the Corresponding Society that celebrated the Terror in

at the

Whether Blake was

1794.

barely possible

could not have told Blake much, since

had been made

mired and respected

early he

and

because he had no

It is just

liberty

cap in disgust

is

still

there to hear

irrelevant: in

any

it

case,

had thrown away

or it

interesting to specu-

is

whether he heard anything interesting about India, Indian

late

Indian religion through radical friends

his

who were

in

art,

touch with Sir

William Jones in India.

There likely to

was

is

another important early Sanskritist

have known, and that

a school friend of

Jones.

He

had gone

to India

He

much more

Oxford with William

at

with the East India

Company

movement, began

Lymington, Hampshire.

79 Sir William Jones, Wor\s, 80 Ibid., Vol. IV, page 220.

and, as one

the translation of the

He

London, John Stockdale,

held his seat until 1794.

1807, Vol. IV,

page 212.

Alexander Gordon, "N. B. Halhed," Dictionary of National Biography, Vol.

XXIV, pages 416

is

returned to England and ran for Parliament, being

elected to the seat for

81

Blake

Nathaniel Brassey Halhed. 81 Halhed

Sheridan and had been

of the pioneers of the philological

Gentoo Code.

is

whom

41-42.

His study of Sanskrit must have prepossessed him in favor of mysticism without teaching him to understand

way

tinguished for the

it,

for his Parliamentary career

is

dis-

he became converted to the ideas of one maniac,

Richard Brothers, and championed his claims to the throne of England (as

being the "nephew of the Almighty") single-handed against the whole

House. In 1794, Brothers had revealed himself to be a direct descendant of

David and published

his claims to the

English throne.

He

King

proposed to do

several things once he became King, one of which was to "rebuild Jeru-

salem." There

man

is

no need

assume that Blake got any ideas from

to

this

Brothers, but the familiarity of "rebuilding Jerusalem" to the Blake

Now, although among fortunetellers as has been pointed out, yet both he and Flaxman knew a great many people belonging to out-ofway sects and cults. We remember that Thomas Taylor was a friend of Flaxman. Flaxman also knew an engraver called William Sharp, who student

makes

Blake did not

thing of at least passing interest.

this a

live entirely

was apparently quite

a gullible fellow

and took

after

more than one

prophet in his time. At the moment, he was a loyal follower of Richard Brothers.

was

He

had done two

portraits of

him, made plates of them, 82 and

as enthusiastic a supporter of his claims to the

throne as Halhed

himself.

Blake had probably met Sharp through Flaxman some time before but in any case he

Robinson

tells

knew Sharp

before 1815, for in that year Crabb

us of Sharp ("the dupe of any fanatic") trying to convert

Blake to the ideas of Joanna Southcote and not being Blake must surely have

it.

known Sharp

as far

estranged, so then he

would have known most

First,

because

whom

later

became

is

he

of Flaxman's friends.

Sharp was an engraver, which makes the meeting

knew Sharp it Brothers, he may

at all successful at

back as 1794.

he was then very intimate with Flaxman, with

he

this,

all

the

more

highly probable that he met Brothers, and

just as well

sides, it is interesting to

Then

likely. If if

he met

have also met Halhed, the Sanskritist. Be-

wonder whether

Brothers' idea of "rebuilding

Jerusalem" was not something he picked up from a conversation with

Blake and turned to his It is

own

uses.

possible then that Blake

knew Nathanial Halhed, and he may have

heard directly from him ideas on Indian philosophy and Indian

though the 82

latter is

not too

likely.

He

art, al-

could have got something from him

Alexander Gordon, "Richard Brothers," Dictionary of National Biography, Vol.

VI, pages 442-45.

417

Indian art

to serve as basis for the general insight into

we

discover in

some

of his chance remarks in the Descriptive Catalogue.

But

only for the sake of exploring every possible contact of Blake

it is

we have investigated his possible meeting with Halhed. him to have known Halhed to have known about

with India that It is

not necessary for

Indian thought and

We

art.

have seen he read the Bhagavad-Gita.

We

have surmised he knew some travel books about India, although we can

Not only this, we definitely do know he had one who had been in India, and that was Ozias Humphrey. Ozias Humphrey was a miniaturist who apparently enjoyed some success. He was, at any rate, successful enough to know the Countess of only guess which ones. close friend

Egremont, and

it

was through

his intercession that this lady ordered

Blake a drawing of The Last Judgment. India, not only as a

law codes

interested in

He had

it

and Halhed had been, but

his painting in Indian courts

This

there.

from

had been

in

not as a business man, not as an imperialist

as Jones

on with

carried

with

cessful

visitor,

Now Humphrey

what

is

Gilchrist says of

an

as

artist.

and had been

suc-

him:

Ozias Humphrey, a miniature painter of rare excellence, whose works have a peculiar sweetness of painting

fashioned

had expressly colored many of three years of his

Oude by these

.

Museum

British

life,

refined simplicity in a

a

as well as a friend, for

his illustrated books.

.

Humphrey had

.

.

old-

Blake passed

What

has become of

His sketches and notebooks during the period are

.

.

now

whom

1785-88, in India and had reaped a golden harvest in

painting miniatures of the native princes.

wonder

I

and

was himself a patron

style,

His eyes

failed

him

altogether in 1799 after

in the

which he

lived at Knightsbridge. 83

What

in his notebooks? Unfortunately, I

is

do not know. But

Humphrey could tell Blake much about He may not have fully understood it,

tain that

superficially.

Jones surely never fully understood or Persian poetry, but

it

all

Indian

cer-

at least

art,

just as Sir

is

it

William

the deeper implications of Indian

would be unwise

to say

he did not appreciate

it

at all. It is especially

without

its

mote, yet the flying

interesting to notice that Blake's Last

resemblances to

way

the picture

up and down,

bas-relief,

Hindu

all in

is

art.

Of

Judgment

is

course, the resemblance

crowded with

clear,

is

not re-

well-rounded figures,

a quite formal pattern, reminds us of a

equally crowded and equally formalized,

in

a

Hindu

way which

Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel could not possibly do. In his correspondence with

Blake

says, after describing this picture:

83 Gilchrist, op.

418

Humphrey

cit.,

page 236.

concerning

this

Last Judgment

:

Such

which you,

the design

is

my

dear

sir,

have been the cause of

producing, and which, but for you, might have slept

till

my

the Last Judg-

ment. 84

means Humphrey has not simply procured him

possible that he

It is just

the order for this design, but also inspired in him, this particular treat-

ment

of

by descriptions of Indian art? That

it,

perhaps suggested by

is

the last half of the sentence (and, incidentally, the idea of art lying dor-

mant

in the artist

no proof

On on

we

one

is

shall

to support this guess

come upon

later).

But there

any further.

the other hand, Blake did not always agree with

Humphrey, who

art.

like

absolutely

is

most eighteenth-century

Humphrey's artists

ideas

had been

to

attacked Blake's ideas on the Florentines and Venetians. Blake, in

Italy,

sending him a copy of the Descriptive Catalogue, writes

You will see in this little work the difference between you and me. You demand of me to mix two things that Reynolds has confessed cannot be mixed .

Florentine and Venetian art cannot exist together. 85

.

.

So Blake disagreed with Humphrey, else

on

this question. But, as

between them

mon

lies.

There

So, Blake

anyone

else

account

all

no reason

he did with practically everyone

says,

it is

in this that the difference

doubt that they shared a com-

to

art.

had more points of

direct contact

with India than Saurat or

has pointed out. But in addition to

Thomas

this,

we must

take into

which he got from the Neo-

the vaguely Oriental elements

Platonists he read in

Taylor's translations.

not generally realized that the great intellectual ferment in Egypt,

It is

Greece, and Asia

no

is

enthusiasm for Indian

as

he himself

of

little

its

Minor

in the earlier centuries of the Christian era

character to influences

from the

East.

possible to trace Oriental influences in Pythagoras; his ideas

it is

owed

And, long before on

this,

trans-

migration and vegetarianism are followed by Herodotus as far as Egypt.

But

this

is

think

of,

Egypt.

86

Hindu

because Egypt

and

The

it

is

is

the most ancient authority the historian could

doubtful whether such beliefs were held in early

ideas of metempsychosis

and \arma reappear

in Plato.

The

"Mundane

Shell")

appears in

Orphism. Eusebius even records that Indian sages

visited

Socrates at

idea of the world egg

(Blake's

Athens. 87 84

The Writings

85 Ibid., Vol. II,

of William Blake, Vol.

page

86 G. T. Garratt, editor,

page

II,

page

4.

123.

Legacy of India, Oxford, Oxford University

Press, 1937,

5.

87 Ibid.,

page

8.

419

Empire extended from the Aegean to the Indus, and Persian army contained both Greek and Indian mercenaries, Persia

Since the Persian the

was the intermediary through which these influences passed. In 327 Alexander took with him

to India at least ninteen learned

notebooks and diaries with material on India that

their

Near East and Egypt were

Buddhist missionaries were sent

filled

later historians

between Indian kings and

used. After Alexander, diplomatic relations

princes of the

men who

b.c.

still

kept up.

to the courts of

Antiochus of Syria,

Ptolemy, Antigonus Gonatas, Magas of Cyrene, and Alexander of Epirus.

That trade between the Mediterranean and India was

active

then

proved by the number of Greek coins of the period found in India.

is

88

when Alexandrian merchants discovered the regularity of the monsoons, the trip to India was cut down to sixteen weeks and India In

fact,

was brought into

with the Occident than

closer contact

it

was ever

to

be

again until the eighteenth century. But the intellectual contact was closer

even than meet.

it is

today. In spite of

Then Palmyra,

men

merchants and

Rudyard Kipling, East and West did once

Antioch, and Alexandria were thronged with Indian of letters.

Dio Chrysostom mentions

bers of Indian students there were in Alexandria.

Meanwhile,

Apollonius of Tyana went

as early as 50 a.d.

and studied under the Hindu monks

Roman

world, convinced that the

at Taxila.

Hindus were

went about preaching Hinduism from Ephesus with the Emperor Vespasian

tions.

num-

90

He

off"

to India

returned to the

the only wise men, and to Spain.

He

continued

"Indian discipline" he had learned, even cutting short a

to practice the

talk

the great

89

when

the hour

came

for his medita-

91

From

our point of view, Apollonius

is

cause he too observed and studied Indian

known

world, but Philostratus devotes

on Indian

art

than to those he

most art.

more

made on

interesting,

He had

once again, be-

traveled

all

over the

space to Apollonius' remarks

the art of any other country.

Apollonius not only stands quite opposed to the Platonic idea that copies the illusions of nature, but rejects naturalism altogether

about art in more or

He

less

mediately of Blake, 88 Ibid.,

page

12.

89 Ibid.,

page

17.

and he even

90 Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of

Clarendon

Press, 1912.

91 Ibid., Vol.

II,

92 Ibid., Vol.

I,

420

page

art

talks

Indian terms.

opposes imagination to "mimicry" in a 92

and

75.

pages 75-77.

identifies the

way

that

reminds us im-

whole Hindu way of

Tyana, translated by

J.

S.

life

Phillimore, Oxford,

:

with

walking down

one day and, coming

a lane

stick, points to a similar

sky with his gests

Damon, 93 commenting on

Foster

art. S.

Blake's

to the

remark that he was

end of

touched the

it,

sentence in Philostratus and sug-

on these grounds that Blake read the Life of Apollonius.

possible that

There

an element of anti-Hellenism

is

It is

quite

he did. in

Apollonius that sounds curi-

ously like that of Blake and Jacob Bryant. Iarchas, the Brahmin, says to

Apollonius:

Troy was ruined by the Achaean armada, but the legends about it have been your ruin. You have no ideas beyond the heroes who went against

Troy and no regard

for all the rest, the

many more and

diviner

men whom

your country and Egypt and India has produced. 94

This

is

surely echoed by Blake

when he

says

Sacred truth has pronounced that Greece and Rome, as Babylon and Egypt,

from being parents of Arts and Sciences

so far

were de-

as they pretend,

Homer and Virgil and Ovid confirm this opinion and make us reverence the Word of God, the only light of antiquity that remains unperverted by War. Rome and Greece swept Art into their maw and stroyers of all Art.

.

destroyed

it;

.

a warlike state can never

and accumulate into one place and criticize,

produce Art.

translate

It

ideals: this

is

ened by Bryant's

Here

its

and

warlike mythol-

one of the main reasons for his pronounced

Hellenism. This hatred of Greece and

"ancient

sell

but not Make. 95

Blake, like Iarchas, the Brahmin, disliked Greece for

ogy and

and plunder

will rob

and copy and buy and

theories,

Rome

prompted Blake

anti-

as "conquerors," strength-

to say

Greece

stole

her art from

Hindu monuments."

are

two other remarks Philostratus

attributes to his traveler; their

comment: "Imagination more cunning craftsman than mimicry." And "Imitation can portray art what it has seen, Imagination even what it has not seen." 96 Owing similarity to Blake

is

too obvious to require

the influence of Apollonius

and the numerous

travelers

from India

is

in to

to the

Mediterranean, the attraction of India had become so great by the time of Plotinus that this philosopher in 242

Gordian

93

in the

a.d.

joined the

army

of the

hope of reaching India. The expedition came

Damon, op. cit., 94 Philostratus, op. 95 "On Homer's

Emperor

to grief in

page 422. cit.,

Vol.

II,

page

112.

Poetry and on Virgil,"

The Writings

of William Bla^c, Vol.

Ill,

page 362. 96 Philostratus, Ibid., Vol.

II,

page

123.

421

Mesopotamia, and Plotinus was disappointed.

knew enough

however, that he probably out most of II

n'est

has been pointed out,

It

about Indian philosophy to work

deeper implications for himself. Emile Brehier says:

its

done pas necessaire de

faire

de Plotin un Indianiste;

sumt

it

eu connaissance des quelques breves formules ou aimait a

9

'

qu'il ait

se consenser la

philosophic indienne pour avoir matiere a un travail de pensee qui en penetrat

As

for the Gnostics, Bardesanes the

who drew many

Babylonian

knew

the Indian diplo-

were sent to Elagabalus from 218 to 222 b.c, and Basilides

mats

all

sens profond.

le

from

of his ideas

from the Buddhists.

India, especially

Finally,

the Neo-Platonists are continually referring to Hindu, Buddhist,

Jain ideas

and

Now we

influences that operated

came

tent to look at

to

it

are in Blake phers,

came

if

from

this

this

crude

way: came light.

To

influenced Blake

period that spring the occult

to

that

him, that

was Oriental

we

is, if

say that Blake

are con-

would have had

he had never read any books would be absurd.

and have

to

It is also

Blake in

assume that

fair to

who most

upon him. Consequently, much

in a very

none of these ideas is it

and

ascetic practices.

have seen that the philosophers

were the Neo-Platonists.

originally

98

all

these Oriental elements, that

is,

and philoso-

their counterparts in Indian artists

him through Gnostics

Nor

elements which

or other heretic sects or pagan phi-

losophers.

Much

especially

Augustinianism, and Blake's Christianity

on into

of Alexandrian philosophy passed

is

Christianity,

predominantly

Augustinian. Incidentally, the Neo-Platonists, through Augustine, strongly influenced Blake's beloved Dante.

Our

task

is

not,

however, to explain Blake's ideas on Nature in art in

terms of Oriental or Gnostic or Neo-Platonic or any other "influences." Blake's point of view

is

entirely that of a religious and, specifically, a

Christian thinker. But

it

happens that in these other

essentially religious

approaches to art the same hatred of naturalism and the identifying of

with idolatry

men and

is

everywhere apparent. The attitude of Christian school-

Hindu Coomaraswamy has of

thinkers toward this problem

pointed out.

Medieval Christian ideas of

99

art, as

shall see, for

page 275.

98

Another Gnostic.

99

A. K. Coomaraswamy, op.

422

And

we

cit.,

page

the same, as Dr.

3.

shall use the ideas

because Blake

Emile Brehier, "La Philosophie de Plotin," Revue des

Paris, 1922, 2e serie,

is

Blake's ideas about art are similar to

we

of the schoolmen to elucidate Blake's. 97

it

Cows

et

is

closer to

Conferences,

Medieval Christians than

to his

own

the religious thinkers of the East.

contemporaries, he

Coomaraswamy

is

also closer to

says:

There was a time when Europe and Asia could and did

actually understand

each other very well. Asia has remained herself, but subsequent to the extroversion of the European consciousness and it

has become

more and more

difficult for

its

preoccupation with surfaces

European minds

to think in

terms

of unity. 100

This, then,

is

the background for Blake's ideas on naturalism.

this starting point that

to

we

It is

can investigate these ideas and better

from

set

out

understand his quarrel with Sir Joshua Reynolds.

100 Ibid.

423

:

4

CHAPTER

II

ON THE PLACE OF NATURE

BLAKE'S IDEAS

We

know

that Blake

was

ART

IN

in reaction against the eighteenth century be-

We know how the eighteenth century used the "natural religion." We know that mysticism despises

cause he was a mystic.

words "nature" and the world

and

believes that

man

by God's good grace, and Free Will, can

transcend the material world, with a visionary supernatural

confusions and deceits, and rise into

its

world of True Being and unity. Nature

itself is

not intelligible, and intelligibility only exists on this transcendental plane.

Blake used the word nature in two ways:

way as

of his contemporaries

it is

when he was

used in "natural religion."

We

first,

in the current

vague

actually attacking them; that

is,

have already seen that he could not

abide this nebulous idealization of scenery, plus the infusion of some unidentified benevolent spirit that this conception implies. is

That

is,

nature

the created world of matter as opposed to the supernatural world of

Intellect,

Love, and Pure Being. Tharmas, in the Prophetic Books, repre-

sents "Nature," that

the "vegetable universe" or the world of perishing,

is,

blind, created things. J.

Middleton Murry 101 points out the way he uses the word

other sense to

—where he speaks of "true nature" in one of his

Swedenborg. Nature

as seen

by the

five senses

in yet an-

Annotations

and nature transfigured

by the imagination are two entirely different things

to Blake.

We

recall

these familiar lines

Now I And

a fourfold vision see

a fourfold vision

is

given to

me

'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight And threefold in Soft Beulah's night And Twofold always May God us keep :

From But from

this

Mr. Murry goes on

believed nature 101

1935, 102

424

single vision

and Newton's

sleep.

102

to the startling conclusion that

Blake

was everything. There would be opposition between na-

John Middleton Murrv, William Bla^e, London, Jonathan Cape and Co., Ltd.,

page 327.

The Writings

of William Blake, Vol.

II,

page 207.

V

ture with a small

and Nature

capitalized.

figured by Christ, the former whatever

The

nature trans-

latter,

the scientists look

it is

at.

But, says

103 therefore, there was Mr. Murry, since for Blake Nature was everything, 104 Consequently Blake must have been an atheist. By this no supernatural.

when Blake called Wordsworth an demning him for being such a fool as to

atheist,

token,

performed the amazing

To

it

already

else

to

is

com-

as

who

transfigures

not himself supernatural. Such

full of insoluble mysteries which

is

one sentence in

he ever wrote twice

suppose that the Christ

Nature so conveniently for Mr. Murry an idea

God. Mr. Murry has

is.

we have

begin with,

believe in

feat of trying to oversimplify

Blake and thereby making everything plicated as

he was presumably con-

we can

hardly attempt to

elucidate here.

Mr. Murry supports

with Blake's statement that "God only

his theory

acts or is in existing beings, or

men." But he forgets that

"action" belongs to the contingent world, to time

and not

for a mystic,

eternity. Actions

begin at a given point in time, and they are ordered to the fulfillment of a desire.

But desire

know

that the

desire

is

itself

Hindu

annihilated.

an "action" of God.

mystic seeks his

way

into eternity because there

For the mystic, even the creation of the world It

Hindus

necessarily hold to this). Blake

shows Los forging the chains

Time and Space around Urizen after the eternals have fallen Wheel of Existence. 105 And Plotinus believed that "The world necessarily

produced because

its

production did not become possible It

seems

much more

likely that

production was possible." 106 at a

into the

Blake meant that

God

and imperfect love and imperfect beauty "act"

God's material creation,

Finally,

if

is

there imagination

103

Murry, op.

104 Ibid., 105

106

cit.,

when

im-

in the

only, in

intellect.

they would not

come

to

why

him?

page 327.

page 322.

William Blake, The Boo{ of Urizen. Thomas Whitaker, The Neo-Platonists, 2nd

Press, 1918,

and

men

Blake's visions were not visions of a supernatural world,

did he pray for them to be restored

this

eternity

fills all

static; activity

contingent world. But they only act there for men, for in all

in space

And

given minute of a given day.

with His love and beauty, but that in eternity they are plies corruption,

all

not

(but, of course, the Catholic mystics

of

was

is

all

did not take place in time, according to Blake, or

the Neo-Platonists or the

would not

We

belongs to a created and material world.

page

edition,

Cambridge, University

60.

425

Or how could he

say such a thing as

and with us according

"The Lord our Father

His divine

to

and

will,

for our

do for

will

us,

good"? 107

By far the silliest conclusion Mr. Murry's theory leads him into is that when Blake attacked naturalism in art he was confused and did not quite know what he was about. Mr. Murry explains this as follows: Because the symbolical and mystical character of his should

sacrifice natural

art

demanded

that he

appearances for symbolic significance, he began to

insist that naturalistic art

was

false art, a "pretense of art to destroy art."

This was quite definitely a delusion on Blade's part. 108

Mr. Murry

driven to this extremity because he has

is

art, as

we

shall later see

that literal truth

to

is

believe

without any shadow of doubt, he not only believes

be sacrificed to symbolism or iconography, but that

the reproduction of natural beauty for leading.

To

for Blake,

understand just what

as well as for the Gnostics

up with the idea of the

tricably tied

common among

the creation of

he

fell

is

idolatrous

and the

man

the "eternals," Urizen, others with him.

fall,

the expulsion

in

time and space. In

we know

from

it

and death. The

from the

resulted

eternity into matter,

fall

of one of

and he dragged

bound up together and

110

Matter and

are opposed to spirit

evil,

soul

that matter

intelligibility;

and

is

roughly speaking,

the principle of change,

The Writings

108

Murry, op.

109

William Blake, The Boo\ op.

idea in

only

is

and change denies

that, therefore, things are intelligible insofar as they

107

of William Bla\e, Vol.

cit.,

would

and the good. By way of

are immaterial.

426

he

equivalent

we might compare this with the somewhat similar Thomas Aquinas, that matter is the limit of form, that form

no Whitaker,

the

as far as is

For them, "The death of the

clarification,

intelligible;

all

almost, but not quite, complete nonexistence or death. So

be to be wholly plunged in matter."

St.

It is

109

also believed the Neo-Platonists.

are

inex-

from Eden.

cosmography has no Purgatory and no Hell: but

is

is

man with the fall; that Eden, man was eternal. But

concerned, Ulro, the state of almost complete materialism,

to Hell. It

and mis-

Cabalists, matter

eternity into time, into matter, illusion, chaos,

creation of the universe as

Blake's

sake

mystics to identify the creation of

is,

from

own

its

the implications of "Nature" were

all

necessary to examine, briefly, his ideas on matter.

it is

For Blake,

is

made Blake

nothing but "Nature." But since Blake's ideas are the ideas of religious

in

II,

page

187.

page 339.

cit.,

page

of

67.

Urizen and The Four Zoas.

:

It is self-will

from

that causes the fall

matter: then the spirit

locked up in the

is

blindness of

intelligibility into the

The

flesh.

five senses are thus

only "chinks in a cavern," and whereas before the intellect contemplated

Truth and

nity,

"Five windows light the cavern'd

man

as

it is:

infinite."

nevertheless brings with

it

upon matter. This form

is

112

it

not,

Now, when

there are individual

.

would

men and

the spirit falls

from

eter-

however, the reflection of some vague

things,

and

many

formal differences as

all pre-exist in

These forms are imposed on matter and

so exclude

the ideal world.

one another: hence

temporal and spatial differences in the material world. Plotinus'

arise all

theory of matter

When St.

he

is

113

essentially Aristotelian,

and Blake's ideas follow the

argument.

line of

what

" ni .

form from the ideal world and imposes

general pattern. Plotinus believes there are as

same

man

the doors of perception were cleared away, everything

"if

appear to

it

now

face to face,

"Man

says,

Thomas

has no body distinct from his soul," he

him:

said, that all Catholics say after

saying

is

that the soul

is

the

"form" of the body.

But

as to the reason for there

Matter

is

being matter

necessary because the principle of

ductive power, that power must manifest there

and

This

must therefore be a

this

is

is

last

all

matter, having nothing of

its

own. This

when he

outward bound and circumference of energy."

which can produce nothing beyond

Of

in every possible degree;

term which can produce nothing beyond

analogous to what Blake means

nal delight."

things having infinite pro-

itself

itself."

course, Blake's "reason"

115

is

the necessity of

itself,

evil.

114

says that

"Reason

Reason

"the last term,

is

"Energy (imagination)

and matter go

is

is

the

eter-

together. Skepti-

cism, empirical reasoning are the kind of mental activity that seeks noth-

ing beyond matter.

and

also

It is

Urizen

dogmatism, because he

who is

represents empiricism

and doubt,

blind to imagination, passion,

Consequently, he cannot really understand

life

or experience at

spirit.

all.

111 "Europe,"

112

page

The Writings of William Blake, Vol. I, page 294. "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," The Writings of William Bla\e, Vol.

113 Whitaker, op. 114 Ibid. 115

page

II,

189. cit.,

"The Marriage

of

page

68.

Heaven and

Hell,"

The Writings

of William Bla\e, Vol.

I,

182.

427

He in darkness clos'd viewed all his And his soul sicken'd and he curs'd

race

Both sons and daughters, for he saw

That no

nor

flesh

spirit

could keep

His iron law one moment. 116

And

Urizen himself

my

Read

my

books, explore

Enquire of

The

says:

my

constellations,

sons and they shall teach thee

how

to

war.

117

tyranny of Urizen consists in trying to govern by abstract codes based

on mathematical reasoning and materialism, and

it

brings about a vicious

oppressions and wars. This tyranny of abstraction, for example,

circle of

law

leads to "one

and the ox" and, consequently, oppression

for the lion

for either lion or ox.

The

Prophetic Books, 118

great myth.

The

it

has been pointed out,

all

dramatize the same

same things continually recur with only a slight shift

of emphasis or viewpoint:

The Boo\

"Night IV" of The Four Zoas

of Urizen,

repeat the

all

The Song

same incident

of Los, in the

and

same

story.

This story of the it.

is

The Four Zoas

whole world, and

The

fall

of the spirit

the individual

A

that of

at the

from

who

is

the temporal

fact, is

art,

Luvah,

fall

of life),

drama

the

same time the drama of any individual

played in the struggle of the Zoas by Los,

And

(spirit, intellect).

Los, in

while the others, Urizen, Tharmas, and

into the revolving "circle of destiny" (a typical mystical

Los stands somehow apart with

to the others

and

re-creating

in

into experience.

is

form of the Zoa Urthona,

imagination.

it is, it is

eternity corresponds to the inevitable fall of

from innocence

unique and central part

and, complex as

them

to

his anvils eternally giving

wheel forms

keep them from sinking into un-

divided and undistinguishable matter, or nonexistence.

Beating

still

on

his rivets of iron

Pouring Sodor of iron dividing :

The

horrible night into watches.

116

119

"The Book of Urizen," The Writings of William Blake, Vol. I, page 319. Four Zoas," The Writings of William Bla\e, Vol. II, page. 77. 118 W. B. Yeats and E. J. Ellis, Wor\s of William Bla\e with a Memoir and Interpretation, London, Bernard Quaritch, Ltd., 1893, Vol. II, page 370. 119 "Urizen," The Writings of William Bla\e, Vol. I, page 310. 117 '"The

428

... the Thund'ring

Hammer of The

Urthona forming under

heavy hand the hours

his

around the limbs of Urizen

days the years in chains of iron

120 Link'd hour to hour and day to day and year to year.

Los

imagination as a whole, but here he

is art,

specifically poetry,

is

hence the divisions he creates are appropriately those of time. But implied, of course, that

help to give

it

the forms poetry imposes

it is

from unity

now

fall.

The

into division." Los,

Urthona (Urthona

is

loses part of himself,

eternity into matter

who was and

own

his

specter,

is

thy sweet song." she brings still

121

"I

am

dead

But although she waits

him back

to life

until

now has to me with

thou revivest

till

he

is

nearly exhausted,

with her song, telling him that

all

matter

transfigured by form and the radiance of spiritual beauty

even

God

and

is

that

himself will descend into the flesh as Christ.

Arise you

little

glancing wings and sing your infant joy!

Arise and drink your

For everything Descends

to

bliss!

that lives

is

holy, for the source of life

be a weeping babe. 122

Later the specter of Urthona, that created body the spectre

mon

is

fallen, too, into division

once more. Whereas Art and inspiration used to be one, Los

Enitharmon and pursue her:

a

meta-

emanation Enitharmon

his

Art

is

himself only a part of

and

art,

inspiration: so

is

from

fall

divided into Los,

created from him. She

court

that

significance and keep us from falling into despair, because

Art, too, participates in the

physics)

is

otherwise see nothing but chaos around us.

we would "fall

upon matter

and it

is

is

metaphysics,

eternal death."

123

tells

Los, "Without a

Los, the specter, and Enithar-

together build the City of Art, 124 creating forms which the specters

behold: and they become the things they behold and love, 125 so they are

redeemed from the Hell of error a

form

that

it

may

from medieval psychology,

mine 120

his

utter materialism.

be cast out," and

is

This

is

also called "giving

not unrelated to the idea,

that the beauty or ugliness inside a

man

deter-

outward form.

«xhe Four

121 Ibid.,

Zoas,"

page

32.

122 Ibid.,

page

34.

123 Ibid., 124 Ibid.,

page

86.

page

86.

125 Ibid.,

page

89.

The Writings

of William Blake, Vol.

II,

page

50.

429

.

So

also

Enitharmon weaves "bodies" on the looms of Catherdron and

them

sings to

to

keep them from despair. 126

Finally, however,

how

Zoas

nating

they

with them.

the example of Christ's sacrifice shows the

be reconciled that Urizen gives up his idea of domi-

the others

all

when

it is

may

and

retires to his

Then Los and Enitharmon and

is

This

a brief

summary

portance of art and

no

its

of the drama: and

religious function, but

and above

naturalist,

One

Heaven

accepted back into eternity, or

is

all,

we

of the things that

values.

exist,

shows Blake

to

be no pagan,

is

that art

does not serve any social end.

no exclusive concern with moral do not

will.

shows not only the im-

it

gather from the story of Los it

evil

you

if

and the

place,

essentially Christian.

appeals purely to the intellect. So

good and

the specter are reconstituted

Judgment" has taken

as one, the perfect intellect, the "Last

world

proper place, on an equal footing

Los remembers

while his enemy Urizen

is

It

where

eternity

the one

who

has

sets

up

codes and laws: codes which are tyrannical insofar as they are abstract

and do not consult

real individual needs.

delight of the senses

and nothing

Nor

we have

else:

art

is

concerned with the

seen that Blake believed

was

living according to the evidence of the senses alone

living in darkness

from God and "reality." As an artist, Blake found in way of knowing and loving the principle of all Being. But truth, as Thomas points out, is what the intellect seeks. In art, truth is brilliant

and

illusion, cut of?

art a St.

form imposed upon matter. Art, lect.

"What kind

of intellects

for Blake, appeals entirely to the intel-

must he have who

things and not the forms of things,"

127

he

says,

sees

Allegory addressed to the intellectual powers while the corporeal understanding

Of

we must

course,

my

is

only the colours of

and: it is

definition of the

not confuse Blake's use of the

from

altogether hid

most sublime poetry. 128

word

with

"intellect"

the eighteenth-century conception of reason. This should be sufficiently clear

from the foregoing remarks on Urizen,

again, Blake is

is

closer to

a divine gift; intellect

imperfect tance;

But

by

state, still it

since

is

one of the attributes of God;

remains

to

man

128

430

intellect, in

an

sees face to face.

are considering Blake not only as aesthetician but as Chris-

126 Ibid., page 101. 127

Once him

intellect to

as part of his supernatural inheri-

he seeks the truth he no longer

we

in the previous section.

medieval Christian thought, for

The Writings The Writings

of William Blake, Vol.

Ill,

of William Bla^e, Vol.

II,

page

123.

page 246.

tian, it

useful to approach

is

aesthetics; that

to say,

is

him from

Thomist

the point of view of a Christian 129

ideas about art.

By

we

this

are not

Thomas we are no

trying to prove that Blake was influenced by the thought of St. directly or otherwise.

He may

longer concerned. Blake's

well have been, but with this

Christianity

is

Thomist, and we are only using the ideas of

more

us unlock some of the

we may

art: and,

say, these

difficult

more Augustinian than

far St.

Thomas

key

as a

to help

problems in Blake's thought about

problems are

remain unsolved

likely to

as people refuse to interpret Blake as a Christian

explanations for everything he said

among

Gnostics,

long

as

and continue

to seek

and

astrologers,

alchemists.

At

the

same time, Indian ideas

also can help us in this task, because they

are essentially similar to Christian ideas about art, as has been pointed out.

130

That

art appeals first of all to the intellect

Thomist thought on the

subject. It

is

is

not simply intellectual in a vague

way, but in the technical language of the schools, practical

intellect."

As

that of action,

"making." This

is

tion to the use to

sider

a "virtue of the

of

activity

two spheres:

Art

is

the sphere of productive action, considered not in rela-

which we put our freedom but

The ends

are here extrahuman.

The

in relation to the thing

artist

does not have to con-

a "virtue" of the practical intellect. Perhaps

word

"virtue" not only to divest

come synonymous with technical meaning. is

the subect

a

chastity,

The

it

of

it

its

idea of a virtue

is

itself.

would be well to modern colloquial

editorials virtue has be-

but also in order to understand

its

precise

the ancient's idea of habitus.

"permanent condition perfecting

which

it

and

connotations, for in the language of movies

Habitus

in

Secondly, in the sphere of

basis.

our needs or desires but only the perfection of the work of art

explain the

the

first,

where human ends are concerned, and where the means

ends are selected on a moral

produced.

is

it

distinguished from intellectual

speculative order, the practical intellect operates in

to these

the starting point of

in the line of its

own

nature

informs." 131 There are "entitative habits" like Grace,

which tend

to perfect

which have

for subject the faculties of the Soul,

being in

its

very nature, and "operative habits,"

and these habits are

ac-

quired by exercise and customary use. 129

Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, translated by

J.

F.

Scanlan,

New

York, Scribners, 1930. 130

Coomaraswamy,

131 Maritain, op.

cit.,

op.

cit.

page

9.

43 1

.

Such

a habit

a virtue, that

is

is

to say a quality, which,

triumphing over the

original indetermination of the intellective faculty, at once sharpening and

hardening the point of

maximum

to a

The

its

activity, raises

and

of perfection

As a man is, Then as we examine

and consider

its

132 of operative efficiency.

workman

presence of virtue in the

the work.

so,

in respect of a definite object

it

so are his works.

necessary to the goodness of

is

The

tree

is

known by

its fruits.

this virtue of the practical intellect a little further,

relation to the things

it

knows, we find the Schoolmen

consider that the conception of knowledge and being as independent has

The knower and

only a logical but not an immediate validity.

known gence

actually also

is

"Every eye says,

become

made by

This identification of being and

identified.

Hindu, 133 and

the

sees differently.

"The thing known

is

As

it is

the eye, such the object."

knower according

in the

Aristotelian

and

is

but as one with

to the

rei et intellectus

which

is

bound up with

virtue of the practical intellect, does he have

this

Thomas mode of the St.

and

artist

itself."

Blake in his aphorisms shows that he understands adaequatio

134

found in Plotinus. "Mind knows

also

like perception, as external to itself

intelli-

implicit in Blake's remark,

knower." 130 This concept of the "connaturality" of the is

the thing

objects not,

its

136

his object

But even

if

concept of the

the idea of art as a

any idea of

art

which would

correspond to that of virtue or habitus}

We return to the basis of the Prophetic Books. What is real, true, beautiful,

good,

is

transcendental. This

on the other hand,

if it

without the

trace

least

were of

is

real existence.

possible,

form or

would be an intellect.

Platonists,

"We may

ugliness

the principle contrary to existence."

As

the

enables is

is

it

even say that Beauty

Thomist idea to strive

of virtue

toward

page

Coomaraswamy,

134

William Blake, Annotations

op.

cit.,

page

editions of Blake.

135 St. 136

and

which

perfects the soul,

of intellect

life,

and

so evil

and the im-

11.

to

Reynolds, 34. (References to the Annotations refer to the pages of the original edition of

his marginalia.

The Annotations

will be

The remarks are so numbered in in The Writings of William

found

III.)

Thomas Aquinas, Stan ma

whitaker, op.

137 Plotinus,

cit.,

Enneads

page VI.,

Theologica,

I,

q. 59, a. 2.

60.

translated by

S.

McKenna, Library

Transactions, London, Medici Societv, 1916, page 85.

432

Neo-

137

and purpose, lack

The numbers

Reynolds in which Blake wrote

Blake, Vol.

the

1 1

133

will be given as above.

all

to

the authentic existence

is

a quality

utter chaos of matter

According

ends with a stronger and purer

its

deficiency, lack of strength

132 Ibid.,

is

Complete nonexistence,

of Philosophical

possibility of participating in

of

God, or according

Hell

is

God's Grace and, in the

shows us Urizen,

Blake's Ulro. Blake

sometimes imprisoned in rock, or frozen up on

we remember,

blind, ice.

that Dante's

from

after the fall

man,

into sin (to use the Christian term) an old

But Los, imagination,

end he leads them back

(heaven). This parallel

nity, truth, real existence

though Blake does

not, of course, speak of virtue or habitus at

in the precise clear sense in

it

when Blake

sarily in conflict

this

with

Thomist idea of

Thomas, nor does

St.

On

is

is

infuriated him.

to be

judged

identical.

138

strictly

its

we

Besides,

St.

all,

Thomas is

al-

and

uses

it.

not neces-

that have anything to

the contrary, Blake in attacking

and sweeping

But the Thomist

on

to eter-

do with

good and

attacking shortsighted and fanatical moralists

of the Puritan variety. Rigid

wrong

which

speaks of belief in good and evil he

virtue.

misleading ideas

evil as

from

apparent enough,

is

does not even see course,

eternity

sometimes chained,

created forms, builds the City of Art to keep eternals

falling into his nonentity (or sin). In the

Of

hatred

last analysis,

Remember

to mystics, nonexistence.

own

repeat,

between right and

distinctions

believes that in ethics every case

merits,

and no two moral

our investigation here

cerned with morals, for in neither Blake nor in

St.

cases are ever

not at

is

Thomas

con-

all

does ethics

enter into the discussion of art.

Since art

is

a virtue of the practical intellect,

and

virtue tends only to

good, art tends always to the good of the intellect which is

to say,

it

when in we should excuse

involves infallible correctness. So,

Reynolds' Discourses Blake read that

genius" he replied, "Genius has no errors.

It is

is

truth.

the preface to the "errors of

ignorance that

is

error."

is

The

infallible. But, of course, the infallibility of art

only

concerns the regulation of the

kind of truth the speculative speculative intellect

knows

work

itself.

intellect seeks

The work may be

never constitute 138

Mari tain, op.

139 Blake,

what

is.

art,

The

The

infallibility

art in itself.

proceeding from faulty

trembling hand, do not affect the virtue of the

imperfect, but the art in the artist

Therefore manual dexterity extrinsic to art itself.

of the

not involved here.

is

toward the perfection of

Consequently, defects in the actual work of tools, lack of materials, a

knowledge

Infallible

in conformity with

of art concerns only direction,

artist.

139

art.

Genius, in other words, implies a highly developed habitus of virtue of genius

That

That

is is

is

unimpaired.

necessary to produce works of art but to say, that virtuosity

140

and

facility

is

alone

art.

cit.,

page

Annotations

140 Virtuosity has

to

nothing

17.

Reynolds, introduction, page to

do with virtue

in the

iii.

Thomist, or any other

sense.

433

The

labour by which the virtuoso

who

"plays the harp" acquires agile

produce any special form;

fingers does not increase his art itself or

removes a physical impediment to the practise of the

And

art.

it

merely

141

so Blake could say also:

my

In

brain are studies and chambers

which

old

with the books and pictures of

filled

wrote and painted in eternity before

I

my

mortal

Why

works are the delight and study of archangels.

and those

life;

then should

I

be

anxious about the riches and fame of mortality? 142

The

quotation from Blake, while

shows

virtuosity, at least

secondary.

many not

pictures

art, it is

you have virtue of But

if

is

important

you only possess

you paint you are not

the result of

and the moment

spirits

directions. It

all

is

a

of

no further

use.

this

it is,

no matter how

facility,

artist.

The

created

toward the end of the

life,

have written

I

I

write

I

see the

But

if

his

—

manual

can read.

in another

looked

life,

"all

at the

way: "Whatever

is

no

and

intrinsic part of art, the

for the

merely a means, not an end. 145

The

And

artist's

his

mind,

141 Maritain, op.

cit.,

page

142

The Writings

143 Robinson, op. 144 "Milton,"

cit.,

"Omne

of

istud

demands

mind

page

same holds good

no more important

.

.

.

materially considered

that the

art

page

it

is

slavishly but

II,

imposes upon

prepared to see in

page

137.

36.

of William Blake, Vol.

58.

al-

before he begins to study any natural

his intellect,

II,

than manual

work should be

58.

The Writings

145 Maritain, op.

434

Vol.

is

no more constitutes

It

of William Blake, Vol. cit.,

Thomas,

reason.

even then he does not copy

form which

the

same

artistic process

ready half done in the

model.

too, St.

immense and unfinished work

the Scholastic point of view, "Imitation

dexterity."

Manuscript

straw!"

dexterity

to art than virtuosity,

is

My

Theologica, and turned away with,

for the exact copying of natural objects. Naturalism

From

is

when commanded by the words fly about the room in

spirits

same thing

us the

tells

Summa

videtur ut palea"

work

art.

144 can be created can be annihilated: forms cannot." So,

his

importance

143

from Milton

line

good

then published and the

is

as

the virtue of the

is

you may never paint a picture and

art,

write [he said to Crabb Robinson],

I

A

If

retain that virtue.

still

what

Execution comes afterward and, important

artist. is

has nothing directly to say about

it

clearly that

II,

page 356.

it.

This

it

in-

approach goes quite naturally with the Aristotelian theory of

tellectual

matter which the Schools adopted for their own. Just as the soul

form of the body, According

so the art in the artist

146

First, the arising of the

and

the intellect;

So a itself,

kind of

special

by

itself, is

the aesthetic process

image

and

last,

the form of the

Orient as they are

to the rules of art in the

Dr. Coomaraswamy,

is

is

understood to be threefold.

mind; second, study of the image by

in the

least of all,

giving

it

outward expression. 147 which the eye

artistic vision is necessary: vision to

unimportant. For the eye, by

of a substantial kinship to

them

the

is

work of art. summarized by

itself,

sees things

and

(as like to like)

is

by virtue

merely a mirror:

the formal relations of objects to one another are perceived not by the eye

"My

but by the intellect through the eye. this relief is

not necessarily a

have validity for world."

148

At

the

eye alone

would

out what

is

us; as

The

we

me

even supposing the

same time

We

them.

see

it is

significant for us;

look at nature,

we

eye sees

flat,

but

I

see in relief;

but an idea of relation which would

fact,

total unreality of the external

never possible to see things purely as the

always

we

know

things rationally;

we

pick

perceive the relationships that interest

interpret

it.

only perfect likeness to a natural object would be a pure reflection,

a sensation not interpreted or understood, hensible.

and

it

would remain incompre-

Yet even then, the material image would be only commensurable

with a natural species in substance and fundamentally irreconcilable in terms of material or

would have

to

life.

In

a perfect reproduction of a creature

fact,

be self-moving. Art would have ceased, and

we would

be

involved in necromancy.

The

logic of the

observe that portrait of a

pure naturalist in art finally breaks

making a recognizable image of your subject, say painting a man, does not mean making an image that one would mis-

take for the person himself. will

The

perfect portrait

go up and say "good morning"

hands with Tussaud's

it.

to in all

good

is

not one that people

faith

and

try to

Otherwise, to judge by the familiar jokes about

Wax

Works, there

National Gallery.

A

is

more good

man's portrait

"is in God"; that is, it expresses makes him who and what he is.

he

Dr.

down when we

Coomaraswamy

146 Maritain, op. cit., 147 Ibid., page 77.

is

his

art there

than there

his "essential image," his

own

character, whatever

points out the similarity between Blake

page

shake

Madame is

in the

image it is

as

that

and the

76.

148 Ibid., page 79.

435

:

4

great Christian mystic Meister Eckhart.

about the

have only

artist's

to

add

He

finds ideas

Hindu philosophy own

Blake and Eckhart upon naturalism, in

We now

149

to

also.

remarks Blake's

to these

common

familiar ideas

vision

For

a double vision

And

my eyes

a double vision

is

do

see

me

always with

With my inward eye 'tis an old man gray With my outward a thistle across my way. 150 And, "All forms to

are perfect in the poet's mind, but they are not abstracted

compounded from

or

nature, they are imagination

Some

of Imagination,

The man

some

Nature

is

scarce see nature at

Imagination

of imagination, the

more than

artist,

him.

his eyes present to

on the evidence of

is

By

will to

murmur

I

shall not regulate

to the eye of the

because of the "virtue" of his

He

.

art, sees

does not rely like Urizen entirely

nothing

else

at

all.

Urizen

all flexible

senses

in the flowers small as the

and

step

honey bee

from

star to star.

153

virtue of artistic vision, they enjoy nature sub specie aeternitatis it is

is

walk'd forth on the dewy earth

will to stretch across the heavens

not merely as

man

trying continually to impose that blind-

Contracting and expanding their

At At

But

all.

and Enitharmon on the other hand:

ness on the whole world. Los .

letter

itself.

his senses, accepting

always blind and in chains, and

.

In a

:

and deformity and by these

see nature all ridicule

proportions: and

151

152

Dr. Trusler, Blake explained

my

itself."

and

in itself.

To see the world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower Hold

And The

artist,

150

153

154

436

hour

of your

hand

154 .

.

.

its

own

sake.

Yet from the above quotation, Blake

Coomaraswamy, op. cit., page 57, note. The Writings of William Blake, Vol. II, page

151 Blake,

152

eternity in an

palm

then, does not attempt imitation of natural objects, nor does

he love nature for

149

infinity in the

Annotations

to

207.

Reynolds, page 158.

The Writings of William Blake, "The Four Zoas," The Writings The Writings of William Blake,

Vol.

II,

page

175.

of William Blake, Vol.

Vol.

II,

page 207.

II.

cer-

which we say any poet

tainly loves nature in the sense in

even talks about it.

But when nature has become "imagination

is

no

naturalist.

The Thomist

itself,"

point of view

simply because

artist essentially

loves nature

no matter what the beauties are he

beauties,

its

it is

155

sees her so

"Nature concerns the

is,

from the divine

a derivation

things, ratio artis divinae indita rebus."

who

he

who

sees in

art in

Pure naturalism, on the other

hand, aims to yield "sensations as nearly as possible identical with those aroused by the model is

itself."

156

This, however,

idolatrous, for idolatry

is

and not

the love of creatures as they are in themselves

as they are in

God. "Everything," Blake says,

Atheism which assumes the

"is

reality of the

natural and Unspiritual world."

157

tionem

voluptatem," and Blake adds:

artis intellegunt, indocti

look to see the sweet outlines

And

beauteous forms that love does wear:

Some

look to find out patches, paint,

Blake's ideas

and

on

and

stays

and powdered

art display this severity

hair.

toward

who

feels that the artist

forgets these essentials

not a moral judgment.

Nor

all

it

amount

which follows

strict rules built

sensuous.

cess, is richly

Good

up out

made

is

once again

Hindu

iconography,

of this theory of the aesthetic pro-

art delights the senses as well as the intellect,

commits

it

art

to a categorical statement that

but the delight of the senses must never become the art seeks to please

because Blake

becomes meretricious, or

sensuousness has no place in art: on the contrary,

Blake

adventitious aspects

condemnation of idolatry in does

ra-

158

stress the essential, intellectual character of art,

a trickster, or a clown. This

"Docti

to Quintillian,

Some

Bracelets

of art

According

a betrayal

and

tells

artist's

a lie."

159

only end. "If

This

is

why

such frequent attacks on the Venetian and Flemish painters:

Salvator Rosa

was

precisely

high laboured pretensions

to

what he pretended not

to be.

Expeditious workmanship.

His pictures are

He was

the

quack

doctor of painting. His roughness and smoothness are the production of

Labour and

trick.

Maritain, op.

As

Robinson, op.

page

cit.,

Coomaraswamy,

to

op.

cit.,

Imagination he was

without any. 160

64.

cit.,

Vol.

totally

page

II,

80.

page

27.

Blake, Annotations to Reynolds, introduction, page xiv.

Maritain, op.

cit.,

page

65.

Blake, Annotations to Reynolds, page 132.

437

His condemnation of Rembrandt, which chiaroscuro

is

is

generally taken to be the result

and bad temper combined,

of eccentricity

melodramatic

a

based on his belief that

is

trick; and, incidentally,

not necessarily prove insanity in a

such a belief does

critic.

"Any fool," he says, "can concentrate a light on the middle." 101 The reason why he said the Flemish and Venetian painters "could not draw" was because

seemed

in his eyes they

by technical dodges, and not by the

who

the artist

between a bad a

good

and

artist

a

good one

good one

really does

sufficient to catch the play of color

to

make

a

alone but in the

work first

world?

he mean?

of art:

of

if

and loving humility

bad

"The

artist

light, or the

seems to copy

is

if it is

not

beauty of a landscape

to the senses

what does the good

Blake says "Nature

of

difference

Imagination

and emotions

artist see to itself,"

paint

what does

does he "see" imagination in created things? his

head over Blake's conversation,

provoking exaggerations and teasing references

planned especially

to

wondered confusedly catalogue

this: the

by trickery,

copy a good deal." 102 So,

must appeal not

art

Crabb Robinson puzzled deliberately

is

and

the intellect,

all to

When

How

infinite patient

only for the perfection of his work.

lives

deal, the

to achieve their effects

number

to

full

shock an unimaginative and literal-minded man. at Blake's

of

angels,

He

mysticism and fumbled about for some

or index card that

would

fit

Blake's philosophy. So, in

his Diary: It

would be hard

to fix Blake's station

between Christianity, Platonism and

Spinozism. Yet he professes to be very hostile to Plato, and reproaches

Wordsworth with being not

a Christian but a Platonist.

103

bound to beset any lover of card indexes that begins to read Blake. There are two reasons why card indexers get into a muddle by trying to file all mysticism on their card marked "Plato." To begin with, they probably cherish natural sympathy This confusion,

it

seems,

with Plato himself,

own; and

who

is

one which

filled

is

heaven with a

lot

of ideal card indexes of his

then, in the second place, the advanced scholarship of our day,

which prefers

to disbelieve in real mysticism,

such as that of a

St.

Theresa,

or a St. John of the Cross, finds the idealism of Plato a comfortable rule

by which to judge

all

mysticism. Seriously, however, Crabb Robinson's

confusion was natural, for Blake had willy-nilly accepted

161 Ibid.,

page 251.

162 Ibid.,

page 32. 163 Robinson, op. cit., Vol.

438

II,

page

25.

much from Neo-

Platonism, where Plato

and

modified by Aristotle, and India, and Persia,

is

and Hebraism. But Plato himself Blake could never

Christianity,

stand.

From what we know imitation, naturalism,

would take

with the ideas on

art,

we

his insistence that

can soon see where Blake

book of the Republic.

art in the tenth

not that he would have disagreed that slavish copying had nothing

It is

to

issue

and

of his hatred of naturalism,

have no place in

do with truth and beauty, for Plato believed

the

artist,

no

Plato,

in fact, his only end, less

all

that he

but Blake de-

that, too:

tested Plato for thinking that imitation of natural objects

was the end of

was capable of attempting. Now,

than Blake, believed that nature was illusory: and

so, if

we get a double illusion, a copy of a copy. From make the most extravagant conclusions about art:

artist copies nature,

Plato runs on to

For example, the painter

will paint us a carpenter

thing about his {the carpenter's) trade.

on

his part let

him be but

a

And

.

.

.

Or, speaking of

Homer,

is really

a poet

he himself loved,

Plato argues that since, in the Iliad, a city jects

and the conduct of on

we

he won, what

and

silly

people

find Plato falling into as

complete absurdity.

speaks of the government of

\nowledge of

these sub-

he knows these things so well, what wars has

has he governed?" So, he goes on to his moral con-

cities

demnation of poetry. calculation

Homer

a war, this presupposes

his part, but, "If

ignorance

a carpenter}^

which could not have helped striking Blake

this,

this

he paints a carpenter and

if

displays his picture at a distance he will deceive children

by making them thin\ he

this,

without \nowing any-

notwithstanding

good painter and

the

First,

must be the

"That part which

best part of the soul

relies ." 165

.

on measurement and

Now,

.

poetry does not

appeal to this part of the soul: "Poetry, portraying emotions, excites the

meaner instead

of the better part of the soul

how

are frequently told

no one has troubled along with so

self,

Urizen's the

game

therefore bad."

is

Blake's Urizen represents Plato's

to find

many

out

if

100

We

Demiurge, but

Urizen does not represent Plato him-

other things.

At any

rate,

Plato

is

playing

here of setting up clear-cut, arbitrary distinctions between

good and bad

parts of the soul,

and

misunderstanding of the nature of the

1(54

and

Plato, Republic X, translated

by

J.

piling this

on top

artistic process,

of a complete

he condemns art

Llewellyn Davies and D.

J.

Vaughan, Lon-

don, Macmillan, 1923, page 340. 165 Ibid.,

page 346.

166 Ibid.

439

4

And

on moral grounds. This

what he

is

was what Blake hated

this

eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and

He knew

Plato.

nothing in

most of

in Plato

nothing but the virtues and

all that,

everything

is

good

God's

in

This was the

evil.

good and

vices,

eyes.

evil.

mistake of looking

know

means of

at art entirely as a

beauty, and beauty

was

Why

truth.

is

made

cognition.

the

pretended

It

could philosophers not go to

Because art copied the world's deceptive beauty

art for their

information

and existed

in order to give information

throws him completely

fault of

There

167

Obsessed as he was with his search for ultimate truth, Plato

to

all:

called

?

oflf

about

This second error

that.

on the wrong path. Maritain

Plato, with his theory of various degrees of imitation

says:

and poetry

as

an

illu-

sion, misconceives like all extravagant intellectualists, the peculiar nature of art

.

.

.

it is

were

clear that if art

a

means of knowledge

it

would be wildly

inferior to geometry. 168

However, even

we

if

agree that Plato, as far as Blake was concerned, mis-

conceived the nature and function of

we

art,

transcendentalism and tempted to associate

though Plato hardly had a word agreed with

it

faced with Blake's

still

somehow with

Plato.

Even

about art that Blake could have

—even though he grudgingly admits the possibility of inspira— may be thought that Blake's ideas about the

tion in the Ion

"Imagination"

still

it

may have something

We have heard we

to say

are

to

do with Platonic archetypes.

Blake speak of "seeing a world in a grain of sand," and

are familiar with the Platonic idea of ideal beauty

which are somewhat poorly

reflected in this world.

Do

and

ideal types

not Blake and

Plato meet here?

When torted

he attacked Reynolds, Blake was attacking an admittedly

down through all

the Renaissance together with Aristotle

recognition) to help

make up what we

call

(mangled beyond

Neo-Classicism. Where, in

a footnote, in the introduction to Reynolds' Discourses,

disposition to abstractions, to generalizing,

glory of the

human mind."

to particularize

is

167 Robinson, op.

168 Maritain, op.

Blake

replies,

and

"To

cit., cit.,

Vol.

II,

page

56.

page

we

classification

generalize

the alone distinction of merit."

169

page

is

to

read, "This is

the great

be an

idiot,

Later, he adds, "Dis-

26.

169 Blake, Annotations to Reynolds, introduction,

44 0

dis-

and misunderstood and diluted Platonic idealism which came

xcviii.

forms cannot

tinct general

Indeed,

no exaggeration

is

it

exist: distinctness is particular,

say that every time he

to

he was attacking Plato,

Classicists as generalizers

understood in the eighteenth century. cept of "particular beauty,"

If

we

at

any

170

attacked the

he was

rate as

are puzzled by Blake's con-

will be clarified, perhaps,

it

not general."

if

we

look at the

term in contrast with Plato's ideal forms. being external to the world, entirely

Plato's archetypes are types of

separate this

from

and above

it,

were nothing more is

it,

they are faintly reflected in the things of

contingent world. Blake found these archetypes so vague that they to

him than "mathematical diagrams" (Greek form

171 broad, general types, abstract mathematical form);

into

which

if it

took a

was

art,

living individual created things

because

This

to be.

mutilation.

little

is

it

One

to

be

did not happen to be something

what Plato meant

Now, we have

had

of the things cut

fitted oflf

it

classifications,

somehow, even

and thrown away

was never intended

to Blake.

seen that there

is

some

difference between Plato

and

Plotinus precisely on this problem. Plotinus' Aristotelian theory of matter is

same

the

Schoolmen; he believes that there are

as that of the

formal differences as there are individuals and gible world.

172

As

more remote from

to Oriental types (like

Plato.

all

.

.

they are

still

They phenomena but

senting to our mentality the operative principles by which .

many

pre-exist in the intelli-

Yang and Yin),

are not thought of as mechanically reflected in

nomena

as

Thus Indian

we

as

repre-

explain phe-

types representing sentences or powers are analo-

gous to those of Scholastic theology and the energies of science but not

comparable with Plato's types. 173

What

Blake called generalizing, for one thing, was giving to a particular

subject a kind of ideal or typical beauty, a standard beauty by

might presumably judge

all

men. To Blake

sider beauty in terms of standards

make

it

This

it

—to draw an

which we

was unthinkable

to con-

individual figure so as to

resemble a broad, ideal model. is

Romantic

one of the familiar distinctions made between Classic and artists.

The

latter are

assumed

to

have sought out subjects with

an individual, or weirdly strange, or even exotic character. This brings 170 Ibid., 74. 171

The Writings

of William Blake, Vol.

172

Whitaker, op.

cit.,

173

Coomaraswamy,

page

op.

Ill,

page 362.

61.

cit.,

page

17.

441

us to Romantic naturalism as well as to Romantic assertions of the validity of an tion

artist's

was not

individual tastes and viewpoints. But, of course, Blake's reac-

His mysticism

at all in the direction of naturalism.

and purer than

Classical generalizing

is

them steeped themselves Plato's idealism

How

in a deeper,

can

we

On

the contrary,

some of

purer Platonism than the Classicists

from

further distinguish his mysticism

?

we may once more approach

In this case

stronger

not that of the other Romantics. Hardly any of

the others were in reaction against Platonism.

had ever known.

is

any other Romantic poet, and his reaction against

that of

the subject through Scholastic

and Hindu thought. Meister Eckhart, a great medieval Christian thinker, believes that there are as

many ideas

(forms) in the Divine Intellect as there ever can be things

"There are

in the created world.

nature to be typified." species

is

confused,"

174

17 "

"To and

as

many

call a tree

(reflecting

types as there are grades of

a tree

is

not to

name

for all the

it,

once again Aristotle's theory of

matter) "every creature makes innate denial; the one denies other."

is

it

So, since

soon as

we

no two try to

creatures are ever the same,

we

get into confusion as

reduce them to general types in order to identify them

properly and not vaguely; in order to recognize their quidditas, their individual character, that else.

the

176

Reducing things

makes them what they

to general

and unchanging

are

own

and not something

rigid types

is

misleading

because in essence there can be no such thing as likeness or image; there

can be only sameness. "Every nature emanates from form,"

177

and "Ideas

and deposited of acts."

178

for safe keeping

This

lies

Gods

of Greece

is

179

—Ideas not merely of

static

is

exactly

shapes but ideas

what he means by

and Egypt were mathematical diagrams

How

appropriate

behind Blake's attacks on Plato, on Greece, of

Classicism as a whole. This

of Plato."

its

are living, not merely existing like standards fixed

saying,

—see

the

"The

Works

does this apply to beauty? Beauty, in Thomist words,

"a certain excellence or perfection in the proportion of things to the

mind," and portion,

174

and

this excellence

depends upon three conditions:

integrity, pro-

clarity.

Coomaraswamy,

op.

cit.,

page

70.

175 Ibid.

17Q Ibid. 177 Ibid.

178 Ibid., 179

44 2

page

"Lacoon

71.

Plate,"

The Writings

of William Bla\e, Vol.

Ill,

page

77.

Now

beauty

this

not perceived by the intellect alone; only the angels

is

perceive beauty by a direct intuition without the intermediary of the

and

senses,

for us beauty

is

id

discussion of beauty by saying

though that

a metaphysician

"connatural" to

is

through the

senses. It

order and likes unity,

and

The most important is

intelligible beauty, yet the

intelligible after

181

Al-

beauty

reaching the

and proportion

integrity, clarity,

mind

Integrity because the

likes light

him becomes

itself chiefly to sight."

mind

in a beautiful

mind.

object that delight the

mind

"addresses

it

can enjoy purely

is

1 placet. *® Plotinus begins his

quod visum

likes being; proportion

and above

lastly

intelligibility.

idea

is

mind

because the

likes

brightness or clarity because the

all

182

and the brightness of

that of claritas:

claritas

the splendor formae; the glory of

form shining through matter.

Form,

determining the peculiar perfection of

that

is

to say the principle

everything which ties, all

is,

and completing things

in their essence

and

their quali-

the ontological secret, so to speak, of their innermost being ...

the peculiar principle of intelligibility, the peculiar clarity

is

above

of every-

thing. 183

Now we

how much

see

we

closer

are to Blake than to Plato.

revelation of essence; to see a thing as

with God's glory with which

all

it is

essentially,

184

and

so beauty does not

conform with

ing types. Seeing the world in a grain of sand

To

form

see the splendor of

eternity,

to

it is

in matter

abandon "single

it is

things alike are charged, this

Blake means by "particularizing." "Distinctness eral,"

Form

and how

vision

is

is

a

what

Particular, not gen-

certain ideal is

is

is

filled

and unchang-

the perception of claritas.

to look

and Newton's

through matter into sleep"

and

to realize

that:

Every generated body in Is

Here

inward form

a garden of delight and a building of magnificence.

from the poem Milton, we take

then,

Blake looks

180 St.

its

at nature, or rather

Thomas Aquinas, Summa

181 Plotinus,

Enneads VI, page

182 Maritain, op.

cit.,

page

a

185

good example of the way

through nature.

Thcologica,

I

Q39, A8.

77.

24.

183 Ibid. 184 Blake,

Annotations to Reynolds, page

185 "Milton,"

The Writings

74.

of William Bla\c, Vol.

II,

page 345.

443

These are the Sons of Los, and these the laborers

in the vintage.

Thou sees't the gorgeous clothed flies that dance and sport Upon the sunny brooks and meadows, each one the dance Knows in its intricate mazes of delight artful to weave: Each one

To

to

sound

his instruments of

music

in the

in

summer

dance

touch each other and recede, to cross and change and return

These are the children of Los. Thou

The wind blows

sees't

the trees on mountains

heavy, loud they thunder through the darksom sky

Uttering prophecies and speaking instructive words to the sons

Of men: these are the sons of Los: these the visions of eternity But we see only as it were the hem of their garments When with vegetable eyes we view these wondrous visions. 186 Wordsworth and

In

presents

itself to

the other Romantics,

the "something far

more deeply

it

is

comes

the senses of the poet that

always the nature that first: after

that

we

find

makes nature, so Wordsworth is often closer

interfused" that

speak, God's mouthpiece. Consequently,

to

to

and to Thomson than he is to Blake. And for Blake the nature we see merely with our eyes is nothing, it is dross, nothing but the "hem of the garment" of the sons of imagination. "The material thing," the Deists that

says Plotinus,

flows

"becomes beautiful by communicating

from the Divine

.

.

.

," 187

and

emphasis

this

in the is

from Wordsworth's. Wordsworth finds nature beautiful per Since claritas implies essential beauty this

is

what Blake always

scientific reason,

insists

it

thought that

entirely different se.

implies also intelligibility,

and

on when he defends imagination against

"the philosophy of the five senses." Empirical skepticism

only explores phenomena, the created world. Mathematics strips things

down and

to quantitative abstractions,

space.

symbols of physical properties in time

But poetry and metaphysics (remember, the specter of Urthona

helps Los build the city of Art) seek a telligibility.

However, Blake

and

of reason

standing of

logic

first

is

with pure but

it is

which gives us

in the

intelligibility.

444

own

mysticism and

Blake believes the poet

all

so,

Enneads VI, page

80.

his religious

may

see

God

face to face,

of course. This seizure of in-

without using concepts as a formal means

page 344.

187 Plotinus,

end only an approximate under-

possibility of direct intuitive contacts

not the poet as poet that does

180 Ibid.,

The work

causes does not interest Blake: he, rather, inextricably

through poetry, the

telligible realities

higher kind of truth and in-

not concerned with metaphysics.

linking up the poetic instinct with his feeling, finds,

still

is

something

:

analogous in both the poet and the mystic, but they both operate ently

and on

seemed artist,

to

and the mystic

that the artist

have the same kind of intuitions, for he himself, as mystic and

certainly did: therefore he never troubled to distinguish

aesthetic

make

saw

different planes. Blake

between

emotion and the mystic graces. And, although the Thomists

Hindu

the distinction quite clear, the

tifying art

and mysticism

just as

of ideal beauty

is

innate,

thinkers

come

closer to iden-

Blake does:

Pure aesthetic experience

whom

theirs in

is

and

is

known

knowledge

intuitively,

accompaniment

in intellectual ecstasy, without the

of ideation, at the highest level of conscious being.

To

differ-

188

return from this brief digression, then, the brilliance of form the

artist sees is intelligible,

but does not possess the kind of

scientist seeks. It is ontological

splendor that

certainly not conceptual clarity. It flower, not the perfection of a

is

is

revealed to us here, but

the perfection of an antelope or a

theorem or of

a syllogism.

into the very essence of things, but that essence

mediately clear to

us,

nor can

it

intelligibility the

is

The

artist sees

not necessarily im-

be communicated to us in logical con-

cepts without losing the purity in

which the

artist first

perceived

it.

But

the Thomists, as well as Blake, think that in the presence of claritas the intellect is

spared any effort of abstraction and analysis and can enjoy

beauty, directly and intuitively.

The

beauty

it

thus enjoys

is

that

which

is

connatural to man.

Blake has an exceptionally keen feeling for

this idea of connaturality,

witness the following lines

Each grain of sand Each rock and each Each fountain and

Each herb and each Mountain,

hill

hill

rill

earth

tree

and

Cloud meteor and

star

Are men seen

189

afar.

star

God created man in his own of "the human form divine." These lines show us how filled he was with two im-

Blake, of course, also firmly believed that

image and speaks continually are typical of Blake,

188 189

and they

Coomaraswamy, op. cit., page 49. The Writings of William Blake, Vol.

II,

page

190.

445

portant Scholastic concepts, the concept of claritas and that of connatu-

two are completely worked together here. However, the Thomists make yet another distinction

rality: the

the

Hindus do not

that

is,

beauty

is

a beautiful object

edge, there

is

trouble to make. Beauty

related to truth but is,

in a sense, to

delight.

But

is

know

is

kind of truth.

and added

delight, that

is

ecstasy.

simply not interested in truth

why

is

God

as a

as

and

who

is

surely

it

ap-

appetite.

matter of analysis and con-

knows God, and

God

to love

but

all intel-

categories, in the ecstasy of the mystic

dazzled by the glory of

all

His

attributes

So Blake makes no distinctions between truth and beauty, know-

ing and loving, but puts them

word

together in "Imagination," a

all

also covers the experience of "fourfold vision," the mystic ecstasy. is

see

an object of thought, vaguely

on the other hand, has forgotten

satisfy that love. Blake,

lectual distinctions, all labels

at once.

To

knowl-

But truth alone can illuminate.

foreshadowed in analogies: can create in us the desire cannot

to this

and becomes an object of the

Metaphysics can only show us

cept.

distinguished from truth:

itself a

truth,

and

that Blake

thus a "good," and the apprehension of beauty implies at once

knowledge and Blake

not

in beauty there

if

peals to our desires, causes love,

Beauty

is

is

here that Blake becomes an extremist.

St.

Thomas was

that

But

it

a mystic, too,

but on the other hand, his mysticism seems to have given him an even

more keen and

clear sense of balance in his metaphysics and logical reamore than any other philosopher he comes to conclusions which astonish us with their brilliance and yet delight us with their perfect soundness and consonance with our experience and our intellectual needs. So St. Thomas balances the love of beauty with judgment in the

soning, so that

judicando, while Blake rushed fearlessly

artist: perfectio artis consistit in

ahead, forgetting about judgment and putting complete trust in the cal discretion of the angels

who guided

would be an unrewarding

It

him.

task to seek a direct literary cause for

Blake's enthusiasm outside Blake himself; mystics are born, poets

and

artists.

Blake himself

planted and sown. This world

criti-

says, is

"Man

is

born

like a

and

so are

garden ready

too poor to produce a single seed."

190

However, Blake was thoroughly familiar with the eighteenth-century pre-Romantic writers, and from them, as well as from Swedenborg and Boehme, and the Catholic literary is

mystics,

not Blake's ideas

on genius and enthusiasm,

190 Blake, Annotations to Reynolds,

446

and the Methodists, he could draw

warrant for enthusiasm and inspiration.

page

157.

The so

subject of

it is

not for

my essay me to ex-

:

amine

in detail the relation of Blake to a Byron, a Parnell, or

Watts. But

there are

still

Edward Young's

interesting

Conjectures on

and besides

that,

Young's conjectures did not have

and

as

were

to "cause" Blake's claims of inspiration

to

never be

which makes such

set

without the works of the learned as conscience out the laws of the land."

191

and more remote your path from is

own

us right in composition

sets

us right in

deviation are necessary to find the highway, the

more

with-

life

Again, "All eminence and distinction

of the beaten road, excursion

here

cate-

thing that his

critical of the least

genius told him. "Genius," says Young, "can

And

the English middle

always absurd. But the conjectures probably gave him

is

much encouragement

the

all

Blake

(1759).

he illustrated the Night Thoughts.

feelings of enthusiasm. Literary criticism

gorical claims

between Blake and

similarities

Original Composition

Young,

was, of course, a great reader of class at that time,

an Isaac

lie it;

out

and

reputable."

which may be compared with Blake's "Proverb of

a passage

Hell": "Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth." "Rules, like crutches, are a needful aid to the lame though an to the strong."

194

when

condemned; that

is

quite out of sight.

195

its

when

to be praised

excellence

is

it

impediment

most sure

is

mounting high

This could have been taken from any one of Blake's

to

weak

own mind

to the richest

import from abroad." 196 All

have influenced Blake beyond encouraging him

he had already chosen yet that encouragement :

Blake must have returned

became

to this

to

growth of

191

Edward Young,

192 Ibid.,

page 194

never

may have been

important.

from

his

pen that The Four

as

he

tells

Butts in

"Conjectures on Original Composition," in 1854, Vol.

II,

Works

of

Edward

page 558.

page 555.

"The Marriage

of

Heaven and

Hell,"

The Writings

of William Blake, Vol.

I,

184.

Young, Works, Vol.

195 Ibid. 19Q Ibid., 197

may

197

Young, London, Tegg, 193

this

kind of thing again and again, until he

so uncritical of everything that flowed

his letters.

is

go on in the direction

Zoas and Milton were written almost automatically, one of

to be

eyes

from Felpham,

letters

so could this: "Thyself so reverence as to prefer the native

thine

193

Then

Genius often, then, deserves most

and

192

II,

page 557.

page 564.

The Writings

of William Blake, Vol.

II,

page 244.

447

This was certainly not the case with the Poetical Sketches, or Innocence

and Experience, refinement of

or the lovely

artistic

Boo\

There indeed he shows more

of Thel.

judgment, more

than any other Ro-

critical poise

mantic except Coleridge.

Now,

without inspiration. More than

art is impossible

that, inspiration

not something that has to be halfheartedly admitted into the discussion

is

of art in the grudging

of learning: genius

way

Plato assented to

was not taught

believed: "Reynolds' opinion

hand,

is

it

in the Ion. It

in schools, as

was

that

pretence to inspiration was a

all

it

not a matter

Reynolds seemed

have

to

Genius could be taught and that

and

lie

is

a deceit."

198

But, on the other

not necessary to go as far as Blake did in contradicting

Reynolds' "mere enthusiasm will not carry you very far" with "mere en-

thusiasm

is

the

all

in all."

199

grown

sometimes

it

kills art in

the bud, especially

But

technical tricks to catch a buyer's eye. interior light given the artist

come

strengthen and

thing of

ment.

"A good

his particular

is

come

good of the

is

make an

self-sacrifice, sacrifice

spirit, for

accompanies the

in

he comes

view in an

all this

meant, here

ate Blake,

who

is

if

all,

Then he

page

And

one of the most

work

of art.

The Hindu

It

all

artist

and

personal desires, it is

described this ideal

it,

becomes identified with

draws

201 it.

it,

holds

it

Blake spoke of

like to see a systematic exposition of

might seem the ultimate

limit of folly to associ-

popularly regarded as anti-intellectual and anti-ascetic,

when he made such

a

page

35.

200 Maritain, op. cit., page 148. 201 Coomaraswamy, op. cit., page 145.

44 8

200

visualizes his subject as

anyone would

198 Blake, Annotations to Reynolds, 199 Ibid.,

is."

(mantram); he contemplates

with such rigid discipine, both moral and cess, especially

The most important

infallible critical judg-

he must purge himself of

to "reflect"

it is.

The may

necessary, for everyone judges

act of nondifTerentiation, then

"copying a vision";

it

process with a strict routine of asceticism

artistic

distracting influences.

until

important.

of immediate physical goods for

the success of the

in a given canonical prescription

model

is

is

that of contemplation. This implies a kind of

is

contemplation. First of

an

to possess

it

teaches nothing but

be cherished, that

brilliantly in the end.

disposition of the appetite

asceticism, that

all

to

ends by what he himself actually

important disciplines

the

burn

to

in training,

all,

if it

training

strict

God must

by

mind,

in the artist's

has to be cultivated by definite means. Education alone cannot artist;

The

Perfectio artis consistit in judicando.

virtue or habitus of art does not spring full

intellectual, in the artistic pro-

remark

2.

as:

He who

has nothing to dissipate cannot dissipate; the

virtuous

enough but

dissipated

will never be

artist.

general rules from every

a generalization out of this

and get

They

lost.

haps, some recommendation of drunkenness

same who are confused by

are the

weak man may be

Painters are noted for being

and wild. 202

who must draw

Readers

an

as

little

an aid

make

sentence will

will take

it

mean,

to

to art.

per-

Such people

a simple Catholic idea that the capacity

for great sin can also be the capacity for great saintliness.

Those who

are

absorbed in Calvinist ideas about predestination will doubtless puzzle at this,

thinking

Blake ethics, is

it

to

mean

that

we

should

all

go out and be great

and not

talking about the "energy" of imagination

is

sinners.

saying that

artists.

But

about

at all

even though the words "weak" and "virtuous" might imply

it.

He

have been drunkards without necessarily being bad

artists

since Blake loved

Fra Angelico, 203 we

may

be sure he would

have agreed with the only recorded words of the Dominican painter, a

remark

reflecting a faith that shines in all his

work. "Art," said the Blessed

Angelico, "demands great tranquillity, and to paint the things of Christ the artist

must

with Christ." 204 Blake was too great a

live

man

not to

recognize instinctively the necessary balance between the uncontrolled

energy of genius and the devotion of the

artist to his

work, which must

involve a willing sacrifice of everything in the world.

We are all

too ready in this day to talk about the antiasceticism of

of Blake's remarks

and forget

posed on him by poverty a

more comfortable

Franciscan brother.

—chose

living.

We

Prayer Praise

it

in preference to sacrificing his art to

Blake chose poverty as deliberately

must remember is is

all relate to

Art is

What

antichrist.

coming

and

so

to

205

preach a thoroughly

he condemns as "outward" ceremony"

course not technical ability but technical trickj.

the Venetians

Blake said:

that, after all,

find this "anti-intellectual" Blake

fection of technique,

any

the study of Art

The outward ceremony

rigid discipline in art.

as

the practice of Art

Fasting etc

And we

some

that he willingly bore the asceticism im-

and we have seen

He

is

of

always stands for per-

that he believed the technique of

on was imperfect and shoddy. So he

says,

202 Blake, Annotations to Reynolds, page 14. 203 Gilchrist, op. cit., page 230. 204 205

Quoted in Maritain, op. cit., page 71. "Lacoon Plate," The Writings of William Blake, Vol.

Ill,

page 357.

449

Mechanical excellence

the only vehicle of genius. Execution

is

is

the chariot

of genius. 206

A

facility

of composing

is

power of

the greatest

art.

207

Without minute neatness of execution the sublime cannot ideas

is

founded on precision of

exist.

Grandeur

of

ideas. 208

All these statements were directed against Reynolds' ideas of technique,

and they are apt

to

be surprising in view of the popular belief that Blake

stood for a typical Romantic reaction, an attempt at liberation from Classical

emphasis on form and

strict

technical perfection.

For Blake,

Reynolds' technique was not perfect enough, but the liberation he did strive for

was

liberation

from

arbitrary rules for their

fighting against Aristotle as he

the Renaissance, and, did he but

know

it,

was

not, in Blake's eyes, a

To mangle

way

drawing and painting and have

art to

fit

to achieve techni-

(However, these remarks apply mostly

cal perfection.

He was

sake.

he was on the side of Aristotle

medieval thinkers understood him.

as the Christian

a Procrustes' bed of rules

own

had been corrupted and misinterpreted by

to

his ideas

on

do with the verse of the Prophetic

little to

Books.)

may

It

with the

art of

principle of

among

all

painting?"

209

human work

the liberal arts. But

that a

"What

possibly be objected that Blake said,

work

per ordinem

and

say the

it

means

conformitatem ad regulas

artis

.

.

—the innate geometry of nature

this

that .

.

its .

truth

is

.

its

minutely appropriate execution."

211

This

is

208 Ibid., page 56. 209 Blake, Annotations to Reynolds, page 56. 210 Maritain, op. cit., page 52. of William Bla\e, Vol.

Ill,

page 129.

made

with-

where Blake stood in

His reaction was

206 Blake, Annotations to Reynolds, page 14. 207 Ibid., page 3.

450

reason-

210

perhaps because he was the most deeply religious

The Writings

(i.e.

with the following words of Blake, "Ideas cannot be

relation to the eighteenth century.

211

taken to be

the logic of the structure of

given but in their minutely appropriate words nor a design be

out

place

not in the pseudologic

knowledge and demonstration

ing) but in the working logic of every day

And compare

first

only has to be pointed out:

of clear ideas, not in the logic of

the living thing

insist that the first

should be reason, while logic takes

of art should be logical et

Schoolmen

has reasoning to do

entirely individual,

artist of his

time in

England. Because of

groundwork There

is

perhaps

from

reaction

this, his

more than any other poet

was, yet

is

as Coleridge's

on the

and medieval.

essentially Christian

none of the medieval surface

in Blake: but,

on the other hand,

that other English nineteenth-century poets ever recaptured

all

the

of a philosophy that

was not medievalistic

of his time Blake seems to build

Middle Ages was

their

own vague

idea of

what

it

looked like on

the surface.

One

of the most important ideas in Blake

eye sees to

it, is

utterly unimportant

Wordsworth and Coleridge and draw directly from

impossible to

and despair he assimilated

fell

when he

into

and transformed by

and most important

But

for Blake, nature

diametrically opposed

and Keats.

We

tried to

do

so.

and

creation,

hem

He

found

century used

—by

and, worst of

all,

Yet once nature had been

for

it

blazed before

him

saw God

in nature.

of God's garment.

He must

by them.

understanding.

light.

beside the Scholastic philosophers,

And

this is true artist,

living a semiretired art,

live in the

same kind of

late

and almost

perhaps not un-

familiar with the traditions of religious art in the Orient,

than the

many

simply because Blake as a de-

brought up on the beauties of Gothic

art

judge

be approached with a broader, deeper, more

Hold Blake up

vout Christian, as a mystic, as an

medieval

to

his apparent contradictions resolve themselves out,

dark places become

life,

own

judging him by preconceived and arbitrary standards,

his art

and many of

in

Wordsworth, was God's

so he, too,

by seeking out his moral ideas and attempting

flexible

to

literally

it

have seen what confusion

impossible to understand Blake with the analytical tools his

It is

saintly

is

Shelley

his imagination,

only the

is

that nature, simply as the

he

nature.

God. Nature,

a vision fired with the glory of greatest

is

to art. In this

which

is

closer

Renaissance ever was, could not help but

intellectual climate as a Saint

Thomas,

or a Saint

Augustine, or a Saint Francis. His thought cannot but become clearer by

comparison with

theirs.

we approach him as materialists and skeptics— as his enemies, mock us as he mocked many of his unenlightened friends, teasing us with more and more extravagant visions until we are forced to walk away shaking our heads and murmuring like Dr. Trusler: But

if

Blake will

"Blake, dim'd with superstition."

45 1

BIBLIOGRAPHY Berger, Pierre, William Bla\e, Mysticisme et Poesie, Paris, Societe Fran-

d'Imprimerie

chise

et

de Librairie, 1907.

Bhagavadgita, The, translated with notes by John Davis, London, Trubner, 1882.

The Writings of William Bla\e, Geoffrey Keynes, London, Nonesuch Press, 1925.

Blake, William,

Boucher, de

la

Richardiere,

G,

4 volumes, Paris, Treutel et

H. N.,

Brailsford,

Shelley,

3 volumes,

Edward

Bibliotheque Universelle des Voyages,

Wurtz,

1808.

Godwin and

their Circle,

New

York, Henry

Holt, 1925.

Bruce, Harold, William Bla\e in This World, London, Jonathan Cape, 1925.

Bryant, Jacob,

A new

System, or an Analysis of Ancient Mythology, 2

volumes, London, T. Payne, 1774. Burdett, Osbert, William Bla\e, London, Macmillan, 1926.

Samuel

Coleridge,

by E. H. Coleridge, Boston, Hough-

T., Letters, edited

ton Mifflin, 1895.

Coomaraswamy, Ananda

Damon,

S. Foster,

The Transformation of Nature in Art, CamThe Harvard University Press, 1934.

K.,

bridge, Massachusetts,

William Bla\e, His Philosophy and Symbols, London,

Constable, 1924.

de Selincourt, Eliot, Ellis,

T. E.

S., J.,

Basil,

William Bla\e, London, Duckworth, 1909.

The Sacred Wood, London, Methuen, 1920. The Real Blake, London, Chatto and Windus,

Fry, Roger, Vision

1907.

and Design, London, Chatto and Windus,

Gardner, Charles, William Bla\e the Man, London, Garratt, G. T., editor,

The Legacy

J.

1920.

M. Dent,

1919.

of India, Oxford, Clarendon Press,

1937. Gilchrist, Alexander,

The

Robertson, London, Jones, Sir

Life of William Bla\e, edited by

New York,

John Lane,

W. Graham

1907.

Wiliam, Worlds, 13 volumes, London, John Stockdale,

Keynes, Geoffrey, editor, Grolier Club of

A

Bibliography of William Bla\e,

New York,

1807.

New

York,

1921.

Maritain, Jacques, Art and Scholasticism translated by ,

J.

F. Scanlan,

New

York, Scribners, 1930. M'Crindle,

J.

W., The Invasion

of India by

minster, Archibald Constable, 1896.

452

Alexander the Great, West-

Middleton Murry,

William Blake, London, Jonathan Cape, 1933.

J.,

More, Paul Elmer, Shelburne Essays, 4th

New

series,

York, Putnam's,

1907.

Ogden, C.

K., Richards,

thetics,

Wood,

A.,

James,

Columbia University Philostratus, In

The Foundations

Honor

of Aes-

1922.

New

William Blade's Circle of Destiny,

Milton O.,

Percival,

I.

London, Allen and Unwin,

York,

Press, 1938.

of Apollonius of Tyana, translated by

S. Philli-

J.

more, 2 volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912.

by John Llewellyn Davies and David James

Plato, Republic, translated

Vaughan, London, Macmillan,

On

Plotinus,

1923.

Beauty, Enneads I-VI, translated by Stephen

McKenna,

Library of Philosophical Transactions, London, Medici Society, 1916.

Porphyry, Select Worlds, translated by

Rodd,

Thomas

Taylor, London,

Thomas

1823.

Robinson, Henry Crabb, Diary, edited by T. Sadler, 2 volumes, Boston, Fields Osgood, 1869. Saurat, Denis, Bla\e

and Milton, London, Stanley Nott,

Blake and Modern Thought,

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1935.

York, Lincoln MacVeagh,

Press, 1929.

Spurgeon, Caroline, Mysticism in English Poetry, Cambridge, University Press, 1913. St.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa

Theologica, translated by the Fathers of the

English Dominican Province, London, Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1922.

Symons, Arthur, William Blake,

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1907.

Tatham, Frederick, Letters of William Bla\e together with a Life by F. Tatham, edited by Archibald Russell, London, Methuen, 1906. Taylor,

Thomas, Selected Wor^s

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and Extracts from

a Treatise

on Providence, London, Black, 1817.

Whitaker, Thomas, The Neo-Platonists, 2nd edition, Cambridge, University Press, 1918.

Wilson, Mona,

The

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Winckelmann,

J.

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W.

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B.,

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Workj, 2

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453

APPENDIX II EARLY BOOK REVIEWS (1938-40)

HUXLEY AND THE ETHICS OF PEACE go

my

concentrate on the subject

"Before

I

wish

be inspired about. Let us say

to

off into

humble heroisms; I

trance

I

I

am

for ten minutes before

go into the

I

think of nothing but orphans supporting their

and

sisters,

work

of dull

patiently done,

on such great philosophical truths formation of leaden

Two

evil into

or three hours later

done

I

trance,

brothers

my mind

focus

as the purification

and up-

I

golden good.

Then

wake up again and

I

pop

off.

find that inspir-

work. Thousands of words, comforting and

its

uplifting words,

and

little

through suffering, and the alchemical trans-

lifting of the soul

ation has

I

writing about the

lie

before me.

machine and they are ready

type

I

them out

neatly

on

my

for the printer."

Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow, 1922

The

Gaza

publication of Eyeless in

filled

with perplexity over what they chose to

gave that adjective, "new," in

all

American and English readers

call

the

"New

Huxley"; and they

the quaint, sinister implications

it

possesses

"new thought" and "new Jerusalem." This is more than ever true since Ends and Means, in which he makes a

the publication of his latest book,

statement that

is

heresy in our day: that

impossible to live without a

it is

metaphysics. Since this

is

an

article

about Huxley, not about philosophy,

pedient to take this statement for granted.

show here

is

that

it is

not a

new

What

it

is

more

statement on Huxley's

quently offers no good reason for so

many dropped

is

it

ex-

relevant to

lips,

and conse-

jaws and such patroniz-

ing astonishment. It is

new,

important to show that the Huxley in Ends and Means

after

his part.

all,

He

is

is

not so

because the accusation implies no small inconsistency on

supposed

retreated towards magic.

to

have abandoned

He

is

supposed

to

safe, scientific

ground and

be at one, now, with the

Barbecue Smith he satirized in the quoted passage from Crome Yellow.

A

review of Ends and Means, by Aldous Huxley

This

article

(New York:

Harper, 1937).

appeared in the March 1938 issue of The Columbia Review.

457

Why

must

be imagined that, in sketching this charlatan, he was

it

ing a mystic?

On

the contrary,

And

ing vulgarity, stupidity, sham.

prepared to laugh

it

meant

to

suppose that Huxley would not be

when he laughed

absurd as saying that

as

away on

the critics

who were

so astounded

is

it

apparent that

by the demise of a materialist

Crome Yellow,

Ends

in

Those Barren Leaves,

either never read, or else forgotten,

published only a few years after

at the

end of Antic Hay,

his stationary bicycle at the

that he didn't "believe in biology." Besides,

and Means had

flay-

evident that he was, as usual, satiriz-

Oxford-groupish falseness of Barbecue

at the sticky,

Smith today would be biologist sweating

it is

which Huxley

in

leaves

an interesting, not unsympathetic character, Calamy, meditating quite mystically in his that

Huxley was

cism, then as he

is

own

Thebaid. Indeed,

we have

every reason to believe

as interested in mysticism, particularly

Buddhist mysti-

now.

Whatever change there has been can only be expressed development, of expansion.

To

talk of

it

as if

it

in terms of

were the minor, personal

revolution of a lecher suddenly running to the cloister (which

have done)

critics It is

true

to preach,

to confess unfamiliarity

is

enough

that the

Huxley

but preferred to remain

of Point Counter Point

less universe, accepts

things as they are, finds

and diversions

to

up

tends to break

down under

life. It is

had nothing

is

content with a point-

enough

satisfaction in

work

good enough philosophy, but one

a

strain

what the

whole, with what has

satisfied, as a

been called "mechanomorphism." This philosophy

fill

is

with most of Huxley's books.

and uncertainty.

It is

that

a philosophy that

goes better with prosperity than depressions, and Huxley himself has

probably always realized that ate to the twenties, ticular those

and

was

a rationalization especially appropri-

surrounding sexual intercourse.

Since 1929, there are all sensible

it

to the reaction against Victorian customs, in par-

many who have abandoned

kind of skepticism and run

this pleasant

and

after

to the cover of various religious

dogmas that have far less philosophic or scientific soundBiology and economics in their most elementary forms have been

or nationalistic ness.

hashed up into various theories of the sovereign need for some kind of philosophy.

And Huxley

state to is

"If a

our uncritical

one of the few

who

has

to

one of the popular

way people

believe in the holy

avoided the inconsistency of transferring his belief fetishes.

fill

Ortega y Gasset remarked:

man

believes in rationalism in the

Virgin of the

Pilar,

it

means

that he has fundamentally ceased to believe

in rationalism."

Society has changed remarkably in the last ten years. Millions have re-

45 8

gressed. in their beliefs,

And

national symbols.

from monotheism

Point,

and consistent

logical

was

local fetishes,

the unintelligent, flooded with the propaganda of

about race or

hate, are taught that certain superstitions tific." It is

worship of

to the

by

able, principally

that the

mind which,

taste, intuition,

class are "scien-

Point Counter

in

and good

sense, to detect

sham and pastiche, should have continued to develop along those lines toward Ends and Means.

The most shocking newness about Ends and Means may, run

perhaps, be

between the two virtues that Huxley places above

to earth

thev are Intelligence

all

others:

and Love.

There can be no possible doubt that Intelligence was always the highest

Husky's

of virtues in in

Ends and Means,

eves.

And

his treatment of Intelligence as a virtue,

follows the same pattern as his treatment of

in

it

other books. His ideas about propaganda, for instance, were quite fully

expressed in the Olive Tree and

shadowed

in practicallv even'

Bay develops

practically the

and Means, but

this

is

so clear in his earliest

After

all,

one

the fact that

anvthing

same

ideas

on peace and nationalism

we

side of Intelligence at the

are shocked

is

as

much

head of

word Love has

sion has always prevailed that Love, in a

the fact that

all

the virtues.

language

so often

it is less

as

manifested

itself, sociallv, as

Ends and Means, Love

is

a

been used convincing

the impres-

this,

book bv Huxlev, stood

mixture of Darwin. Metchnikov. and Crebillon seduction, a

fils. It

game

was

all

for a

glands, but

rather like chess.

shorthand term for a number of things

that are hard to understand because thev rest to the

Ends

else.

than the better advertised patent medicines. But. besides

In

is

a question of

by charlatans, evangelists, and movie producers that

also

as

work.

In any context of social control, the

it

fore-

on which Huxlev was not quite

topic, perhaps,

what shocks us more perhaps than anvthing

Huxley puts Love by the

And

Beyond the Mexique Bay, but were

book he ever wrote. Beyond the Mexique

on assumptions

utterlv alien

philosophv of rugged individualism. Love, in Huxlev, stands for

something that

is

just

about diametricallv opposed to fascism.

LT nderstand-

ing this svmbol implies Familiarity with lines of reasoning and sets of values that are mostly Oriental. intellectual,

It

implies a discipline, both phvsical and

which seems impossible

in a societv that bases

its

conduct on

movies, novels, radios, editorials, and magazines: in other words, savage incantation that merely lacks the aesthetic qualities inherent in

some

kinds of voodoo.

The word

implies negation of

all

those values

which go

to

make up

a

459

military hero, a successful advertising

man,

movie

a

star. It

means

denial

of ambition, self-assertion, or even that seemingly harmless exhibitionism

from

inseparable

where men are judged by

a society

their material posses-

sions.

the Buddhist doctrine that separateness

It is related to

is

synonymous

with pain, and that such manifestations of "separateness" as anger, greed,

even boasting are the lowest degradation.

self assertion, or

But over against the values emphasized by Gautama, Confucius, TszeSze,

and Lao-Tsu, which combined

we have

trous wars for centuries at a time,

most of China from

to shelter all

the varied

disas-

Western systems

of organized paranoia, where Napoleons and Caesars are gods,

Hitlers,

and Caligulas, Mussolinis and Tiberii get themselves worshiped

in their

own

lifetime.

Here

all political

philosophies are based on gangsterdom or

tyranny, and consequently, there seem to be no methods of achieving social

change that do not

Thus we

are

still

in the position

one more war"

will save

from fascism: we are

told that

where

communism

everything, either from

we have

on violence.

rely

or

"just

to resort to violence in order to

choose between two kinds of

violent dictatorship.

So long

as

men

and Napoleons

continue to worship Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars

will duly rise

tude toward the hero

and make them miserable. The proper

atti-

"He doth like the ape," "He doth like the ape, that, the more he shows his ars. The heroe's qualities are

is

not Carlyle's but Bacon's.

wrote Bacon of the ambitious tyrant, higher he climbes the brilliant,

There its

but so are

is

corollary, that

ble reason

is

the mandril's

many

critics

you cannot abolish violence with violence. Huxley's

is

much

that

he

may

to train for if

he

is

plausi-

more violence. An still young enough,

be disposed toward peace, he will

warlike in his ways of doing things, in his habits

still

retain

his beliefs, the rationalizations

is

is

the best material,

And however much

and

The

chosen to quarrel with the above and

that to practice violence

unscathed war veteran for war.

rump."

who have

he will pass on

to his children.

only two virtues that can never have anvthing to do with war are

these two,

Love and

Intelligence.

This

is

axiomatic. These virtues

must

therefore dominate any system of ethics framed to exclude war.

Huxley's plan of action

is

clear

and uncompromising. But

on cultivation of a discipline and training that seem of asceticism in this overstimulated age.

He

it

depends

difficult to the

point

postulates the necessity of

education in this discipline before anything effective can be done to build a stable, civilized society once again.

460

The purpose

of this training

would

be to promote intelligence and "awareness," the

latter

being possibly best

described as a combination of complete self-possession along with complete lack of self-consciousness, a superior variety of conscious self-control.

He

is

which

very is

much

indebted, in

known

not as well

siderable influence

the

this, to

as

work

of F. Matthias Alexander,

deserves to be, although

it

it

has had con-

on the thought of John Dewey among others.

This awareness constitutes a sound weapon against propaganda because it

depends on freedom from addiction

from the funny sheet It also

to speeches

to all the current

mental narcotics,

about the constitution.

depends on a certain detachment, the love of

intellectual curiosity

its own sake. All that Huxley postulates is that we should love wisdom enough to behave like wise men, a point that Henry Hazlitt saw fit

for

to

obscure completely in the Sunday

New

Yor\ Times review

of

Ends

and Means.

Under

these conditions, non-violence

boycott and folded arms strike,

Ends and Means

is,

and non-cooperation, including

would even gain

much more

in fact,

in effectiveness.

than the book that was being

prepared by Anthony Beavis, the hero of Eyeless in Gaza. In a sense, is

a clear, persuasive

summary

of the

main

ideas

it

and much of the learning

that has delighted Huxley's readers since the publication of his first book.

As long

as these ideas

were mere casual fragments,

versations of his characters,

or defended. defense.

It is

strange that they should

More than

strange,

truths have to be justified,

it

it

is

a

means

little

now

to

be justified

require explanation or

frightening; for

if

such simple

that readers are so accustomed to the

raving of fanatics that the voice of a civilized

unconvincing and

in essays, or the con-

no one thought that they had

man

has

come

to

sound

thin.

461

JOHN CROWE RANSOMSTANDARDS FOR CRITICS Mr. Ransom has written

a distinguished

He

now

the theory of criticism as well as with

has chosen examples for discussion from Milton, Shake-

poetry

itself.

speare,

and Donne,

from

as well as

represented by T. S. Eliot and

Turning

occasion to disagree with

different levels of

Edna

St.

Vincent Millay.

two

significant

moderns,

George Santayana. But he has not attempted theory of literary criticism.

may

contemporary poetry

he examines Plato and Aristotle and finds

to aesthetic theory,

of ideas that

The book

serve as a basis for

is

I.

A. Richards and

to give us

not political sense.

Where

poetry

—the word implies

taste for homiletics in poetry.

of vague

moods

ends on a moral

One

is

some such system. concerned

stress

—and

that

in a technical

that con-

is all

on form and technique and

Mr. Ransom

a dis-

dislikes, for instance, the poetry

that associates romantic landscapes with

man's

fate

and

text.

of his best arguments against the romantics develops out of his

examination of Milton's "Lycidas," which

The

any systematic

simply intended as a collection

His ideas are characterized by the word "reactionary,"

cerns us here

—a volume of

from various standpoints, dealing now

essays that consider the subject

with the aesthetics of poetry,

book about poetry

pastoral type, with

its

is,

of course, a pastoral

poem.

rigid conventions, forced the poet to step out

own personality and to put on a mask for poetic purposes. Mr. Ransom points out what a valuable technical resource this "anonymity" of his

was: and

panding

this

was one of the

first

things the romantics threw away. Ex-

this idea into that of "aesthetic distance," the

as a process in

which the poet

order to approach

The advantages

it

in a

ment, objectivity, control of the material, and

review of The World's Body, by John Crowe

in

The

YorJ{ Herald Tribune,

Merton Reader, 1962).

462

ed.

must be obvious detach-

so on.

into the subject, he attempts a definition of poetry in

A

New

it

roundabout way through convention and form.

of this "technique of restraint"

Going deeper

author describes

inhibits direct response to the object in

Thomas

P.

May

Ransom

8, 1938. It

was

(Scribners), later

first

included in

published

A Thomas

McDonnell (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World,

terms of cognition.

It is a

kind of knowledge, and a knowledge that can-

not be gained by any other means, for the poet

concerned with the

is

aspects of experience that can never be well described but only reproduced

or imitated.

However,

for long periods at a time

men have

attempted

poetry, the conclusions of science or philosophy, with

number

great

poems

of

This Mr. Ransom

are badly disguised sermons

calls the

Besides

one

at the

He

it

hold the traditional enemies, Pope and

is

which Imagism

pure, or "physical," poetry, of

works he finds most

type, but the

metaphysical.

to

same time.

there

this,

and not much more.

"poetry of ideas" or "Platonic poetry," and

forms a category large enough

Wordsworth,

to repeat, in

the result that a

he

significant are those

is

classifies as

has stretched this term considerably in order to include

Milton and some of Shakespeare. This

and

architecturally the finest

is

soundest poetry.

This brings the reviewer to the essay "Shakespeare will certainly

make many

most stimulating essays but because

one

it is

in

which

at Sonnets,"

Mr. Ransom's readers angry.

of

in the book, not only because

it

which Mr. Ransom examines

It is

one of the

a bit startling,

is

specific

poems

in-

stead of poetry in the abstract. Recognizing that Shakespeare's greatness

can withstand any attack, he

sets

upon the sonnets with

true enough.

And

may

then, they are diffuse, self-indulgent pieces of

tionalism: not only that, but he blames Shakespeare for

He

his force.

all

begins bluntly by showing that they are badly constructed, which

be

emo-

most of the bad

romantic poetry that has been written since his time. Naturally Shakespeare cannot too seriously be held responsible for his bad imitators. But there

he

is

sets

more:

him up

as a metaphysical in order to

for not being as

sary

soon as he has finished Shakespeare ofT as a romantic,

as

good

as

Donne. This attack

and disproportionate

demolish him is

all

unfortunate in

violence, but that does not

mean

over again its

unneces-

that

it is

un-

is simply unnecessary; Mr. Ransom is Donne is a better lyric poet than Shakespeare, many who will agree with him on that. It is not

interesting or, especially, false. It

only saying, after

and he

all,

that

will easily find

necessary to try to demolish the sonnets in order to prove

he has pitted Shakespeare against

Donne

in the latter's

it:

own

and

besides,

well-fortified

territory. It is clear

he

is

that the further

of himself.

The

closer

Mr. Ransom gets from poetry, the he

is

to actual

works of

art the

less

more

sure

are his

statements clear, succinct, and provocative.

463

4

VLADIMIR NABOKOVREALISM AND ADVENTURE Laughter

in the

Dar\, written by

some acclaim

already enjoyed

Obscura, and, indeed, not lack

it is

a strange, exciting,

movement

into a kind of crazy hectic

burning on the face of

a

abandoned

his

his life

across a plane surface

both tragic and familiar.

is

name, who was

ended in

theme more and more

Camera does

It

simply resolves

itself

—like

oil

disaster."

happy: one day he :

he loved, was not

author, however, treats this

comic manner

in the

of course, a harder task,

The

the story of a

It is

"rich, respectable,

his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress

and

loved,

is

Paris, has

of

and unusual book.

vitality

its

title

pond.

Stated baldly, the plot

man, Albinus

Europe under the

the story closes,

vitality, but, as

emigre living in

a Russian

in

as his story goes on.

and one which he does not

finish

This

is,

with complete

success.

The book mit himself

begins well and holds us as long as the author does not com-

the pathetic, rich orbit

by the

comic tone of

to either a tragic or a

girl,

little

puritan Albinus being

We

Margot.

when

tent with his comfortable life

follow the rapid streets,

we

movements

are never sure

them. Far from being a alive,

and once the author

reality.

acters

if

At

is

this is

of these

we

fault,

drawn out

can understand

aware of her fascination and are not unable

voice.

how

it

Here we watch of his respectable

happens.

We

to appreciate Albinus' discon-

pointed out to

us.

And

love or hate the lovers, or admire or despise it is

this

resolves

it,

ambiguity which keeps the book

he robs his book of most of

in

A

its

the climax of the story the least convincing of the major char-

introduced: one wordly cynical fellow by the

whole book with him. From

of a fool to be pitied

A

we

as

two about the windy, rainy Berlin

name

of Rex.

Here

the author comes out openly for comedy. Albinus goes into a decline takes the

are

and

that

Margot

now on we is

are sure he

far too sluttish to

is

too

and

much

remain even a

in the Dar1{, by Vladimir Nabokov (Bobbs-Merrill), published The New Yor^ Herald Tribune, May 15, 1938. It was subsequently included in Thomas Merton Reader, ed. Thomas P. McDonnell (New York: Harcourt, Brace

review of Laughter

& World, 464

1962).

Uncompromising comedy has thrown become too obvious.

fascinating.

little bit

light

on them, and

However,

it is

amusing enough

character, use Horner's trick

Wife

to replace

to

watch Rex,

who

Albinus in Margot's affections while Albinus continues to

moment. Before much

her, for the

else

him out

of shooting

can happen he gets a broken head

an automobile accident and goes blind. So she bundles him off

is

a very unpleasant

is

from Wycherley's comedy The Country

support him. But Albinus finds out: Margot talks

in

too strong a

their transparencies

going

live

to

to the

Swiss Alps. Rex,

America, follows them

who

to Switzerland,

has announced he

where he contrives

man

with Margot in the same chalet with Albinus, without the blind

finding out. And, as

the dexterity required for this

if

keep Rex amused, he has

were not enough

to invent a lot of practical jokes to play

to

to

on the

poor fellow. It is

here that the author has outdone himself, for Rex's jokes are at the

same time stupid and because they carry actions

and ideas

frightful.

little

to

tellectual cad.

Rex

conviction.

have

Mr. Nabokov lacks the

much

is

style.

The author

horrified,

too artificial a character for his

Gide or

more than

However, a word about the

line.

Rex

force: they are uninteresting,

finesse of a

is little

frequently witty book.

But we are neither amused nor

a

Huxley

and

so

in describing

is

he.

an

in-

a story-book cynic.

This

is

a rapid, colorful, lively,

and

movement and

out-

has a keen eye for

In two words he can create the image of a girl getting out of a wet

coat or a goalkeeper in a hockey game.

The economy and

justness of his

observation of externals are as striking as the speed and facility with

which he

tells

his story.

465

4

JOHN COWPER POWYS— BOOKS

IN PRAISE OF

When

book The Enjoyment of Literature he really Not only does he take us through all the rich fields drama, and fiction from Aeschylus to Hardy and from Job to

Mr. Powys

means what he of poetry,

calls his

says.

Proust, but his introduction thusiastic essays in praise of

Yet he has

set

one of the most delightful and en-

itself,

is,

books that

possible to find anywhere.

it is

himself not only the task of celebrating the wonders of

great literature but also that of finding out the philosophies of the great writers he praises.

These two threads of investigation and appreciation

run through the whole book.

where he speaks

random

He

ties

briefly of literature

them together

and

life.

in the conclusion,

So, rather than a collection

work is a well-knit unity. This, of course, gives him another opportunity to enlarge upon the philosophy, or rather religion, for which he is well known: that is, a vague

of

essays, the

paganism that ism,

detests all doctrine, all metaphysics, all scientific rational-

and only seeks

can be found.

wants

to,

but

Now

to enjoy sensuous

Mr. Powys

is

we must remember

and emotional richness wherever

entitled to talk about his beliefs

that the

judgments he makes, in

its

if

it

he

light,

are not strictly speaking literary criticism. So,

when he tempers

his praise of the

Divine Comedy by calling

it

"wicked" and "diabolical" he means that the undefeatable logic which

dooms pagans

to

Hell

is

distasteful to

rather see the pagans in Paradise.

At

him the

because, as a pagan, he

would

same time he does not speak

Goethe's Faust as diabolical, but on the contrary, he looks to tance in our mental and emotional quandaries."

He

it

of

for "assis-

prefers

the

way

Goethe's vague pantheism understands the world to the kind of under-

standing offered, for example, by Dante's Catholicism

hand, by any tion.

Then

positivistic or rationalistic

the orgies of Walpurgisnacht

verse peopled with

demons and

or,

on the other

system you would care

men-

and the whole dark mystical uni-

satyrs are

more congenial

to his

unsystematized mythology than Christian orthodoxy or cold,

A

to

own

scientific

review of The Enjoyment of Literature, by John Covvper Powys (Simon and

Schuster), published in

466

The

New

Yor\ Herald Tribune, November

20, 1938.

work

skepticism. But, of course, he does not decide the greatness of a art

by the

beliefs

Homer, Shakespeare, and

writers are

the man's boundless appetite for

Rabelais. In Rabelais

The

its

own

it

determine what Shakespeare believed,

we may,

personality

is

is,

and

he

says, that

superstition

common man

losophy of the his characters

an unreward-

with the excuse that

we can why his

if

possibly, find out

Shakespeare's philosophy was a mixture

and was therefore

so completely the phi-

that he not only easily projected himself into lost in them. By this token Shakespeare Hamlet and through Polonius, too, and

but became entirely

uttered his philosophy through

contradicted himself so often that

thing or nothing at the

at best,

is,

completely submerged in his plays.

the reason

of agnosticism

of

truly

is.

ing one, but Mr. Powys embarks on

From

him

sake that makes

task of discovering Shakespeare's message

And

not only

it is

that appeals to him, but also his

life

bookishness, the delight in learning for

what he

of

expresses. In fact, for him, the three greatest of all

it

first

Mr. Powys'

And

all.

this is

we may wonder

if

he believed every-

not very helpful.

pages of the introduction the reader notices the similarity

Herman

style to

Melville's, and, indeed, in his essay

on

Melville the author claims to be a "congenital disciple of the particular

kind of imagination, both mystic and tesque, that

was

He

interesting indeed.

both monstrous and gro-

realistic,

so natural to Melville."

So

his analysis of Melville

dwells particularly on Meville's "humor," a

that never aims at being

funny but

is

is

very

humor

rather a great naive buffoonery,

expressed in rich, fantastic language, with undertones of inarticulate pessi-

mism.

He

mentions the obvious comparison between Melville and Sir

Thomas Browne: This

is

it is

addressed to those it.

It is

a pity he did not contrast

by no means a book that pretends

who

already love books,

him with

to teach us

and they

Rabelais.

how

to read. It is

will certainly enjoy

not necessary to agree with everything he says: Mr.

chosen a subject in which an author

may

only he loves his subject and talks about

it

say

what he

Powys has

pleases,

provided

well.

467

CHRISTINE HERTER— IN DEFENSE OF

Miss Herter

calls

ART

her book a "defense" of

the best kind of defense rary

art,

but she emphatically believes

an attack. So she condemns not only contempo-

is

Roger Fry, John Dewey, Thomas Craven, Herbert Read,

critics, like

and Sheldon Cheyney, but

modern

also all the

"abstract"

and "expres-

sionist" painters.

Modern

she says, have done altogether too

critics,

about art without really understanding

words; they appear to be

function of

art,

and they

they use too

deep wisdom, but they are

full of

They exaggerate

obscure.

it:

much theorizing many long, vague really only

half-truths about art, they misunderstand the

attribute to

dead

artists

aims and ideas they can

never possibly have had.

Now

the artist

often as not he

is

is

not primarily a theorist, as Miss Herter points out.

As

When

he

entirely

paints a picture his task

form but

good

to paint a

unconcerned with abstract

is,

delightful.

to his

own

But the

lights

and

mind predetermine

Now

fact

his

remains that he

own

the final

theory of color or

one in which the relation of parts

to the whole, of the subject to its treatment,

and

new

not to develop some

is

picture, that

principles.

is

harmonious,

significant,

treats his material

according

Forms and ideas in the artist's work will take on. Cezanne was a good artist solely be-

abilities.

form

his

Miss Herter contends that

cause of the intensity of his absorption in his subjects, but that his distinctive

treatment of nature was not deliberate or studied; rather,

inveterate clumsiness in him. This stupid ineptness of his

it

was an

hampered

his

attempts to represent natural forms, and his paintings were only "broken

fragments of what he hoped acteristic distortion

attributes If

it

a

to achieve." In the

to defective eyesight.

have gone

to

extremes

25, 1938, issue of

The

New

ashamed

in elaborating

review of Defense of Art, bv Christine Herter (W.

December

468

same way El Greco's char-

weakness he could not conquer. Miss Herter

the artists themselves were, or should have been,

failings, the critics

A

was

W.

of these

on them and

so

Norton), published in the

YorJ{ Herald Tribune.

creating theories which allow a Picasso or a Matisse to

rage he pleases. Miss Herter hates these two and

all

commit any

out-

their disciples; she

plainly thinks they are fakes.

We

are very clear, then,

harder to find out what

it

what Defense

defends.

of Art attacks, but

Random

only vague and unsatisfactory clues.

We

it

is

much

references to "Tradition" are

gather that Tradition embraces

Paolo Uccello, Leonardo da Vinci, and Manet. But these painters are not defended, except

we know

praise rather than abuse.

that for Miss Herter "traditional" implies

While she has uncovered many

nesses of contemporary criticism

and

sincerity, yet she

remains no

of the weak-

and

scolds the critics with great fervor

less

confusing than she accuses them of

being.

469

4

AGNES ADDISONLOVE OF CHANGE FOR

ITS

OWN

SAKE

Miss Addison has written an interesting study of the connection between Post-Reformation Gothic architecture and the growth of Romanticism in

She begins by discussing some of the 11,396 different definitions

literature.

of Romanticism, selects half a dozen of sideration,

she

is

and

concerned, Romanticism

Then

them

upon one which

finally decides

is

for very

summary conAs far as

her topic.

fits

the "love of change for

its

she briefly describes the development of various

own

sake."

Romantic (or

pre-Romantic) tendencies in eighteenth-century England, paying particular attention

growing

to the

interest in the

"Gothic," she remainds us, was

first

Gothic and the medieval.

used as a term of abuse synonymous

with "barbaric"; but soon Young's Night Thoughts or Gray's "Elegy"

were

to express a

eerie

and mysterious

change

in the taste of the age

an appropriate natural

and a new delight

in the

produced by Gothic buildings or old ruins in

effect

Then

setting.

the poet Shenstone embellished his

gardens in Warwickshire with a "ruinated Priory" and the aristocrat

Horace Walpole made the Middle Ages acceptable

in polite society

remodeling Strawberry Hill in what he conceived

be the Gothic man-

to

ner. Finally the

Romantic poets and the Anglicans

ment helped

produce the great Gothic revival with which

to

of the

by

Oxford Move-

we

are fa-

miliar.

Now

this

ground has already been well covered by scholars and

critics

of English literature, so Miss Addison's eighteenth-century material, while interesting,

the

main

is

nothing new.

It

simply serves as a valuable introduction to

where she contemplates the dubious,

part of her book,

glory of Victorian Gothic at

its

graceless

zenith.

Miss Addison has done the student of nineteenth-century art and ideas

no mean

service in

emphasizing the importance of the younger Pugin

the architecture of his time.

His emphasis on sound construction and

ganic ornament anticipates the

Adams, he was one

A

work

of the rare souls

of Viollet-le-Duc and, like

who

to

or-

Henry

understood Gothic art from

its

review of Romanticism and the Gothic Revival, by Agnes Addison (Richard B.

Smith), published in The

47°

New

Yor\ Times, January

29, 1939.

very roots. If architect

we have

forgotten him,

and was responsible

it

is

because Ruskin,

for the plague of "streaky

who was no

bacon" Gothic in

England, sneered him almost out of existence. Miss Addison points out

how much Ruskin

really

owed

to

Pugin and does much

to correct the

popular error that Ruskin engineered the whole Gothic revival by himself. If the

chapters on the Gothic in France,

Germany, and America

are

sketchy, nevertheless her treatment of this one issue, the relative impor-

tance of Pugin and Ruskin, cialists as flat,

makes Miss Addison's book valuable

well as interesting to the general reader. Occasionally she

dogmatic statements of cause and

influences can be discerned. a cause

and

rally the

Addison speaks of

lead to confusion

is

and

exist so plain

between Romantic nationalism and Gothic

two tendencies are often

the Gothic revival

makes

where only the vaguest of

There does not by any means

effect relationship

architecture as Miss

effect

to spe-

in her concluding chapter.

related,

but to

Natu-

state, categorically,

that

the expression of nationalistic sentiments can only error.

47 1

R. H.

CROSSMAN-

S.

RESTAGING THE REPUBLIC The

title

book might lead us

of this

to suspect

it

contained a discussion

of Plato's followers in philosophy today or, perhaps, of the part played by

own

Plato in our

and

intellectual

But

political chaos.

Mr. Crossman has chosen

nical:

a rather

more

nothing so tech-

it is

fanciful task, calling

up

Hades and confronting him with various figures to "restage the Republic in modern dress." It would take a man with much more active imagination than Mr. Crossman's and a more brilliant wit, and much more assurance and expertness

the historical Plato out of of our

own day

in the

handling of dialogue,

not

he attempts to do.

all

He

in

an attempt

had the wisdom

to

of Plato

He

tion,

to

this job well.

But unfortunately,

more than

to confine himself for

the history of philosophy, in

of an expert.

do

half the

many ways

civiliza-

analogous

quotation from Thucydides on the use of power politics

against Melos reveals a situation very similar to that in slovakia perished last autumn.

Now

critique of his dying civilization,

freedom without anarchy; trying

and

ism, greed,

to

devotes his earlier chapters to a keen and succinct study

that the decadence of Athens was in

A

our own.

book

which he himself has received the training

and Socrates against the background of decadent Greek

showing

this is

Plato devoted his

when Athens was to stifle class

which Czecho-

life to

an unsparing

struggling to preserve

war, fighting against athe-

political corruption. Excellent as his diagnosis

times, have been, yet

when he had

may,

at

a chance to administer his cures in the

city-state of Syracuse, they all failed.

The Republic suggesting

it

ofTers too simple a solution to the

freedom from the

Now,

"civilians"

and taking away

lies,

yet

losopher-king

A

we know is

assumed

The

New

war,

property from the rulers.

will be kept so

want no

by force and

they will always be treated justly, since the phito be as impartial as

an adding machine. In one

S. Crossman (Oxford University Yor\ Herald Tribune, March 19, 1939.

review of Plato Today, by R. H.

lished in

472

all

class

all political

since the rulers are "philosopher-kings," they will naturally

reward anyway. And, although the ignorant noble

problem of

can be forestalled by two things: taking away

Press), pub-

— anathema

respect the Republic should be

but Mr. Crossman

to liberals;

does not point out that Plato and the liberals agree on at least one thing, that

human

reason

is

capable of being infallibly correct and impartially

just.

As soon

Republic

as the author finishes this preliminary analysis of the

he embarks upon the second part of the book, and the whole thing changes completely. Plato himself appears and strikes up a conversation

member

with a little

of Parliament. His Majesty's

more than mild

irony,

and

finally Plato,

Government comes

with the gestures of a bad

amateur magician whisks the "democratic" mask

more harshly

we

Deal. But

on education and

in a dialogue

America

a letter

reveals is

treated

on the

New

are left with a feeling that the notorious lightheadedness of

our nation could have been better satirized than

and obvious

string of stale

This second ations

and

ofT Britain

the scarcely less kindly face of "Benevolent Oligarchy." rather

in for

part,

it

is

same old

in this

jokes.

however,

is

not uniformly bad. There are great fluctu-

from the poorest attempts

There

excellent critical analysis.

at Socratic

irony to

some of

a splendid digression

is

on

the

most

slavery in

Athens, and the discussion of the relations between Plato's Republic and the dictatorship of the proletatiat

The

irony

is

perhaps

least

bad

is

both dispassionate and illuminating.

in the chapter

on Nazism.

Mr. Crossman has many ideas which would have gained from a

and

prosaic

critical presentation,

Plato, says

strictly

"Why Plato Failed." common man was And he took it for

such as a chapter on

our author, too glibly supposed that the

unreasonable and incapable of self-government.

granted too readily that there existed a constant supply of supremely wise potential rulers in the landed gentry. Finally he believed

was

so godike as to be capable of infallibility. Because of these

flaws in Plato, less sincere, less scrupulous,

can take up the Republic and turn politics,

it

to

admit

and other

philosophical persons

into a complete apologia for

in his epilogue that

position of devil's advocate in order to

ness as a metaphysician,

Republic

is

and

power

show

duped by

he was forced into the

that, in spite of Plato's great-

in spite of the fact (he believes)

one of the greatest books on

ourselves be to

less

it.

Mr. Crossman has

him

and

reason

although Plato himself hated military dictatorship and continually

denounced

let

human

political science, yet

that the

we must

not

the mistakes Plato's exaggerated idealism led

commit.

473

WILLIAM NELSONJOHN SKELTON, SCHOLAR, POET AND SATIRIST John Skelton

was

a

is

famous

More. Besides

one of the great English

that,

apocryphal

tice,

for

—"

own

time he

Sir

Thomas

Erasmus and

of almost legendary wit. So great

was

with a mass of

to deal

probably the product of that familiar trick of tagging

stories,

names

how many

Parker said

as

humorist that his biographer has

his reputation as a

jokes with the

man

he was a

but in his

satirists;

renowned

scholar, almost as

of

famous

of our

We

wits.

modern

stories

have not abandoned the prac-

begin with the words "Dorothy :

?

However, Skelton's great reputation

and

for wit, for poetry,

for scholar-

ship perished within a century. In his language, in his Catholicism

"new men,"

in his hatred for the

Middle Ages than

the parvenus, he belonged

to the Renaissance.

Yet the poets of our

more

own

and

to the

time have

Hughes have imitated his him and shows his influence.

rediscovered him: Robert Graves and Richard verse.

W. H. Auden

has written about

Skelton has been enjoying a kind of vogue. This vogue has been accom-

panied by good criticism, but only a very slight amount of discusses Skelton in Early

Tudor

on him, and that has been

all

Poetry,

there

it. J.

M. Berdan

Hughes and Auden have

was

to read, of

essays

any value, about

Skelton up until now. Mr. Nelson, only indirectly influenced by the fact that Skelton

happens

to

be in fashion, has written the

first

full-length bio-

graphical study of the poet against his background. His book of painstaking research

and frequently

valuable contribution to the study of

Tudor

Skelton's reputation for scholarship

Tutor

in the court of

rhetoric,

Henry

and government

to the

A

Henry

won him

The

VII, for

New

a

the position of Royal

Duke

of York. But the pupil his lessons,

and turned

aimed

chapter, then,

is

it is

not generally

known

Yor\ Times, May

28, 1939.

grew up

his ear to

at the Realpolitif{ of

a study of

first

review of John Skelton, Laureate, by William Nelson

Press), published in

the fruit

literary history.

bitter satires are all

Cardinal Wolsey. Mr. Nelson's at the court of

is

and makes

VII, where he taught the arts of grammar,

and was crowned Henry VIII, forgot wicked counsel. Skelton's

brilliant scholarship

humanism

that humanistic

(Columbia University

under

studies flourished

this

king a generation before Erasmus and More.

Ciceronian Latin had become a diplomatic necessity, and

it

was cultivated

by a rather tedious group of continental grammarians.

There

in

England

is,

indeed, no injustice in rating that age a literary backwater; and,

al-

though Skelton was among these Ciceronians, and was a better grammarian than many who came after him, what is really important is that he developed into the best poet England had seen since Chaucer.

It

seems,

however, that the sixteenth century scarcely distinguished between accomplishment in rhetoric and in poetry. Skelton's real greatness style

he invented.

lines

rhyming

is

in the clangor of the rough, rocking verse

The drone and and

five

beat of a prolonged sequence of short

together produces effects that are to be found

six

in medieval Latin poetry; in fact,

J.

M. Berdan

has an attractive theory

linking Skelton to accentual Latin verse. Mr. Nelson rejects this theory

only to better

by tracing "Skeltonics" not

it

mean ignoring many This

is

a brilliant

to

any verse (for

prosodic irregularities) but to

and

this

rhymed Latin

would prose.

original theory, and, thanks to the recent discovery

Mr. Nelson succeeds

of a short treatise by Skelton in Latin prose,

in prov-

ing his point conclusively.

The book

attacks

limited scope.

The

and

solves

as a parish priest, his life as

Wolsey

many

other problems having a

much more

date of the poet's birth, and dates of his poems, his

Henry

VIII's court poet,

and

his conflict

life

with

and laborious research takes our

are studied in detail. Careful

author through everything from account books and parish registers to

minor problems not the is

critic

in astronomy; to say that the

problems solved concern

but the historian of literature, not poets but bibliographers,

not to disparage the work but merely to indicate

book does

suffer

from the

not the biography of a

less.

man

its

nature. Yet the it is

but the biography of some documents.

The

book are given

materials of the

which

belongs, for

faults of the type to

to us raw.

The

style

Skelton's passionate, humorous, indignant,

it

is

completely color-

and tender personality

only gets into the background of the book by force, and in spite of facts,

dates,

and

figures appropriate to the

arguments of

all

scholars,

the

Mr.

Nelson, although he admires Skelton's poetry, refrains from talking about

But

it,

only discussing

is

aware of the limitations of such a study, and he

definitive

its

history.

after

the author himself explains he is

offering

it

not as a

biography but as the material for one. His research has been ex-

haustive, his analyses illuminating, so

all,

perhaps after

all

we

and

his conclusions

are not entitled to ask

more

eminently sound,

of him.

475

TILLYARD AND C. S. LEWISA SPIRITED DEBATE ON POETRY M. W.

E.

E.

M. W.

Tillyard has gained a considerable reputation for critical

by the publication of two

in recent years

and

studies of Milton

acumen a

more

work called Poetry, Direct and Oblique; while C. S. Lewis' Allegory of Love puts him in the front rank of scholars of English litera-

general

ture. It

is

therefore a not unimportant event to

when two such men hold

to critics,

poetic theory.

Such

little

The is

and

is

now made

an

accessible in

interest-

volume.

discussion began with an article by

taken the

title

who dominates and

readers, but especially

a controversy recently occupied space in several issues

of an English scholarly journal

ing

all

a debate about the fundamentals of

of the book;

Mr. Lewis, and from

and throughout the debate

that article

Mr. Lewis

it is

the whole subject, maintaining an intensity of conviction

a forcefulness of dialectic that his

opponent cannot overcome. This

is

frequently so obvious, indeed, that Mr. Tillyard seems only to be pre-

mere

senting a

strengthen

What ing,

is

it is

them

foil

for

Mr. Lewis'

ideas,

which

serves to clarify

and

as the debate proceeds.

the question they are attempting to decide? Generally speak-

the relation of the poet to his work.

It

would be misleading

what poetry

is

about, since

say they are trying to decide just

argument centers on one thing about: and

it is

that

to

most of the

Mr. Lewis maintains poetry

in this connection that he finds a use for his

not

is

term The

Personal Heresy.

What

does this

mean?

It

means the

illusion

we would

read poetry mainly in order to find out what kind of

who

wrote

it.

be under

man

we

if

the poet

was

Reconstructing verses into personalities and using the im-

ages of poetry for the experiments of psychoanalysis constitute heresy. course,

it is

Of

quite legitimate to psychoanalyze anybody you please, pro-

vided you are aware that

this is

not the same thing as "reading poetry."

A poem may be read as a

poem,

as a philological

history

A

all at

one time; yet

its

review of The Personal Heresy, by E. M.

University Press), was published in

476

document, and

as a case

value as poetry cannot be judged in terms

The

New

W.

Tillyard

Yor\ Times,

and C.

S.

Lewis (Oxford

July 9, 1939.

Freud or the history of the language. In the same way, grammarians and psychologists are not really concerned whether a poem is good or bad

of

when

they are using

condemns

mind

of

is

to

it

prove one of their theses.

Now

what Mr. Lewis

the notion that poets are so concerned with their

as they write that

really this their

it is

poems

describe

the things that are apparently being talked about. So, in the the book, he rates Mr. Tillyard a heretic for attaching too

own

first

state

and not pages of

much importance

to the theory that Milton, in describing Satan, was really describing himself.

This theory

may have some

we

Mr. Lewis

see that

is

and Catholic

technical

truth in

it,

but any disproportionate em-

into a source of stupid errors.

So

using the term "heresy" not ironically but in

its

and turn

phasis will falsify that truth

it

sense.

Some poems, however, cannot fail to communicate a vague idea of their The verse of Donne proves him to be a different kind of a man from Milton. The imagery, the grammar, and the rhythms Blake loved proclaim him another kind of person than, say, Swinburne, who nevertheless admired him passionately. A poet like Marvell, even, has a author's personality.

very individual and personal kind of charm.

man who

wrote

"A

hard not

It is

imagine the

to

Portrait of Little T. C. in a Prospect of Flowers" as

having a character made up of a singularly happy combination of tive qualities.

But such fancies must keep within a certain

just proportion,

for they are not part of the direct apprehension of poetry.

hension

is

the recapture of

Besides, the poet in love

the

same person,

demand

of a poet's everyday

that personality

is

is

or of his character.

and the lover he puts

as

making

life,

in

in his sonnet are never

woman

to a beautiful

love to her.

And

these arguments,

Mr. Lewis

itself.

the catchwords of psychology in an

The

critics

not

normal tenor a

duke

insists

merely a starting point for his poetry and

really only to study the limitations

is

then, both these

which he may be anything from

Beyond

poetry was written, not the poetry

plete materialism

poem

a heightening of intensity above the

inspector of schools. poet's personality

mind

just as writing a

same kind of experience

experiences

That appre-

what the poet once apprehended, but not the

reconstruction of his state of

quite the

attrac-

to

an

that a

to study

within which his

have

fallen

back on

unhappy compromise between com-

and the views of any

religious person.

Both these phi-

losophies tend to discard the importance of the poet's personality, the one in favor of

human

uncompromising determinism, the other by considering the

intellect

open

to divine illumination.

Mr. Tillyard's argument

in favor of "personality" changes considerably

under pressure of Mr. Lewis' arguments, but he does arrive

at

an

inter-

477

K

For him, contact with the

esting definition of his position.

everyday personality simple as

it

an important part of any poem. This

is

sounds, for he

and

literary gossip

details

kind of rooms they lived

rhythm: Marvell

is

What

in.

so that constitutes, for

up

to

is

main

items of

talking about

is

described as a

style, his

And when

imagery,

Keats compares

the fact that he

was prepared

Mr. Tillyard,

his personality.

What

pay attention

at the

not as

is

all

it is

is

do

to

important,

accumulated predispositions" that led

to "all the

such a metaphor. These

to just

looking

is

his examples.

oaks to senators in "Hyperion,"

then,

he

can recognize in the poet's

one of

is

driven to exclude from this

about the kind of shoes the poets wore and the

we

"mental pattern" which his

poet's normal,

are, briefly, the

two ways presented of

question, but in the later articles this yields

portance to another topic, one that

is

inseparable

its

im-

from the Personal

Heresy.

One

of the unfortunate results of that heresy

H. Lawrence

biographies of Keats and D.

hagiography.

The tendency

Romantic

since the

grown up

to

make

is

poet-worship. There are

that are simply exercises in

saints out of poets has

been strong

and the debunking biographies

revival,

in the last century are

that have

merely the reverse of the medal. Mr.

Lewis points out the confusion between the response of love or hatred,

which

is

appropriate to personality, and that of imaginative enjoyment

more proper

to poetry itself.

that although poetolatry result of inspiring

is

Mr. Tillyard's reply

is

admittedly foolish, yet

the unconvincing one it

may have

the

good

victim by the example of his poet surmounting the

its

That may be

difficulties of this life.

to be St. Francis of Assisi,

all

very well

but there

we

if

the poet's

name happens

are out of the range of poet-

worship.

In the

last

pages of the book each of the debaters finds something to

say about the nature of poetry

and valuable on both

itself,

sides, yet the

and while the remarks are

main

interest of the

in the discussion of this less usual topic of "personality."

such a discussion at

any

consult.

47 8

may

rate, this is a

be greater than Mr. Tillyard at

book which

all critics

interesting

whole book

lies

The urgency

first

of

believed and,

of poetry should find time to

HOXIE NEAL FAIRCHILD— BACKGROUND OF ROMANTICISM The that

title its

book may prove misleading

of this

author

is

to readers

who

are not

a noted authority on the Romantic revival in

aware

literature.

Professor Fairchild has written several volumes on the so-called "pre-

Romantics"

—the writers who laid the foundations for Romanticism even

in the Classical

of the

golden age of the eighteenth century. This

same kind, and

it is

is

another book

a detailed inductive study of every line of early

eighteenth-century poetry that has the remotest claim to the "religious." tity

The

author's purpose

is

to find out

name

of

whether an immense quan-

of semireligious verse bore any relationship to the

Romanticism of

Coleridge and his contemporaries. Professor Fairchild does not confine himself to "divine" poets. Indeed, his first chapter

is

devoted to atheists and libertines

periphery of his subject.

The

"divine" poets themselves he treats only in

passing, as he does political pamphleteers.

man

as the Calvinist

gious writer like

and the

—men on the extreme

His true quarry

is

not such a

hymnologist Isaac Watts but a more vaguely

Thomas

praise of genius

Parnell, in

whom

combine with

reli-

sentimentality, love of nature,

a vaguely religious mysticism to

give us an admirable type of the pre-Romantic poet.

Where, we After the

ask, did such poets find their origin?

Low Church won

1688, the zeal of dissent

turned their hand to making they had created. Presently

Whigs. The grim

in materialism,

money

in the

while Puritans and dissenters

new and

favorable situation

ardor became confused with

quickly as they

filled their pockets,

turned

tenets of Calvinism yielded before a milder faith

commerce, and Isaac Newton.

This was an age

High Church and century figure. At

in

which

religion reached a very

the

Low;

the bibulous parson

is

low ebb

in both the

a familiar eighteenth-

this time, sentimentality, the cult of "feeling,"

love of nature began to

A

to abate

Low Church

political zeal; the Puritans, as

into

her final and most complete victory in

was allowed

assume an important place

and the

in poetry, because these

review of Religious Trends in English Poetry, by Hoxie Neale Fairchild (Colum-

bia University Press), published in

The

New

Yot\ Herald Tribune,

July 23, 1939.

479

4

little

Whig

emotional luxuries provided your solid

plement

to his

lukewarm Deism,

anemic enough for

with a necessary sup-

or to the kind of Christianity that

his "reason" to accept.

At

was

the same time, the Puritan

concept of original sin was undergoing a subtle metamorphosis into the

Romantic notion of

original genius;

in defense of Christianity,

and Newtonian

was now turned against

Romantic sentimentalist

He

admires

Newton

religious attitude

is

a

Whig,

by the Deists. that the typical pre-

a Deist, perhaps a

and, most important of

which the author

it

show

Professor Fairchild's careful investigations

physics, formulated

all,

vague pantheist.

he has a kind of pseudo-

attributes to the degeneration of Prot-

estantism into Whigery. In proportion as the dissenter lost faith in dogma,

he allowed himself the luxuries of sentimental optimism or literary melancholy.

The

conclusions reached in

among other things, that Whig and Calvinist tradition.

suggest, this

this,

Whether Professor one can predict; nor

the

the

first

volume of

Communists today

important to do

so.

But here

is

draw upon.

and voluminous work the author has attempted

most courageous, for he has had to world's very worst poetry; but that all

are the heirs of

Fairchild's investigations will take this course is it

valuable material for the historian of ideas to detailed

a lengthier study,

a

book

It is

so far,

no

rich in

the most

and the

wade through many volumes of the is a historian's misfortune. Out of it

he has made a great contribution, perhaps his greatest contribution so

far, to

480

the history of the background of Romanticism.

WILSON KNIGHTTHAT OLD DILEMMA OF GOOD AND EVIL G.

The

poet William Blake despised Plato for seeing nothing in the world

but "good and

Whether

evil."

Plato does not matter: Blake's

aphorism expresses a true criticism of

that

meaning

the sentence implies that philosophy

the charitable

man

cause, for him, evil

is

and here

the important thing,

is

imperfect without charity, and that

cannot see a clear division between good and

much

not a positive thing. In

is

the

evil be-

same way G. Wil-

son Knight seems to imply in his judgment of Spenser and Milton as

men who saw

too

much

of

"good and

crowned with

losophers need to be

evil" that poets as well as phi-

This does not

charity.

mean

that Pro-

fessor Knight, in his scholastic reasoning, in any way resembles Blake.

Nor

does

mean

it

that he judges the Faerie

Queene and Paradise Lost

"Magnificent Failures" on ethical grounds: he

is

good a

too

critic

as

for

that.

The

principal contribution of Dr.

Knight

modern

to

literary criticism

has been his studies of what he calls "impressionism" in Shakespeare. Im-

means

pressionism, by

awakens automatic recognition, wants

to tell

Professor poetry,

The

him: and

Knight

"impressionism"

ery, the

Hamlet

results

sound of the

it

from the

we only feel the effect how that effect was

of the play,

symbols

all

like allegory,

them

all.

The

What

symbolism,

organic com-

and emotions developed is

and

perfectly integrated. it

to

one an-

The

result

takes a lot of study to find

is

always before our eyes. Not only that, but

too frequently lack imaginative

whole poem

be told directly.

achieved. In Spenser, on the other hand, the

machinery of the symbolism his

to

perfect appropriateness of the imag-

verse, the ideas

out

so on,

are the parables of Christ.

it

includes

other and to the theme; everything here is

have

means more than words

metaphor, imagery, and so on: and pactness of

and

really the raison d'etre of all

is

and the most familiar examples of

term, however,

tone,

in the hearer, of the truth the author

so that truth does not

calls

mood,

of symbolism, imagery,

seems

common

sense.

The

result

on a weak foundation,

is

that the

A

review of The Burning Oracle, by G. Wilson Knight (Oxford University Press)

published in

The

New

is

diffuse,

to stand

Yor\ Times, September

is

;

24, 1939.

481

often fluid to a fault. This

is

the fault of the poet, not of his

Dante used allegory not only without

making we know.

but even

One

the Divine

Comedy

that he

is

a

too concerned

little

"good and

(still

evil."

for

any organic integration,

sacrificing

the most perfectly constructed epic

of the reasons that Spenser's imagination

rigid separation of

medium,

often peculiarly dull

is

is

using the words of Blake) with the

Every

man and

every poet

is

at

one

time or another forced to face dilemmas arising out of such dichotomies as that of flesh

and

those problems in lacks

is

ever he to

spirit,

and Shakespeare

Hamlet

as

Milton

is

is

what Milton

writing about (example: the hare in Venus and Adonis) and

to find out first

speare are

if

know

tive forces of evil

that.

that nothing

is,

or can be, completely evil:

Paradise Lost mechanically contrasts two posi-

and of good and

leaves us with the strange confusion

that the one real character in the great struggle tion of evil.

kinds of things without

all

they are good or bad. St. Augustine and Shake-

two who know

Milton does not

in

concerned with

Shakespeare's ability to become identified, inwardly, with whatis

be in complete imaginative sympathy with

having

much

just as

in Paradise Lost; but

The "good and

evil"

is

Satan, the personifica-

dilemma concerns Spenser

too, especially

terms of sacred and profane love.

Space does not permit more than the briefest indication of what the

book it

is

faces,

about.

but

The "good and

it is

the

evil"

dilemma

is

only one of the problems

most important of the problems because

it is

the one

that serves to tie seven otherwise disparate essays together. Besides the

authors mentioned, Pope and Swift and Byron are also treated, and the essay

on Byron

is

one of the most interesting of them

all.

Many

topics are

discussed in these pages packed with brilliant analysis: for instance, the

nature of irony and of symbolism, Milton's theology, and Shakespeare's ideas of kingship.

But everything

is

subordinated to problems of literary

technique and of aesthetics, for Dr. Knight, unlike in this day, sets himself

logian.

482

up only

as a critic

and not

many

literary critics

as a moralist or a theo-

THE ART OF RICHARD HUGHES Richard Hughes is

is

fascinated by a story for

Ten

not hard to find.

its

or a dozen times,

own

sake, the proof of this

not more, in each of his

if

and

novels, characters surprise each other with strange

brilliant tales, strik-

ing sometimes for their humor, sometimes for their strangeness, and often for their barefaced overstatement.

take

more than

a

These are never digressions; they never

few sentences; they never hold up the

action, but

on the

contrary, the swift stimulus they give us in passing adds greatly to the

speed of the whole enterprise. But

it is

important

tends to create characters which reflect his

own

For example, the Bas-Thornton children first

home. Not the

least

story of the sinking

children in

them "disproportionate"

impressive part about In

Archimedes,

we

High Wind have

stories

Hazard

The most

when, in the

stories

among

The

out of China.

a sense for the kind of story they

and "disproportionate"

attractive

own

about their is

themselves. Other characters in Hughes' novels display

in the telling of tall

the

a different

find the Chinese seamen huddled

and humorous ghost

together telling weird

Hughes

High Wind overcame

embarrassment upon meeting some other children from

part of Jamaica by telling

tell

in

to notice that

passion for stories.

want

to

some genius

stories to others.

these appears in In

Hazard:

I

mean

the

sixteen-year-old daughter of an old Virginia family, a girl called Sukie.

Her

character

desperateness,

is

of the kind that combines innocence with complete

and she drinks, on one

paralyze several

grown men. The

of a series of five or six of the to hear.

Sukie

is

a

occasion,

result

is

most inspired

kind of an

artist.

enough corn whiskey

to

that she starts solemnly telling tall stories

Under

you may ever hope

the stress of furious illumi-

nation vouchsafed her by corn liquor she rises above herself and becomes a

minor genius. The character Lochinvarovic, hero of the short

which bears

his

story

name, achieves a genius for banditry in the same way: in

a bout of drunkenness.

But Hughes

is

careful to explain that he

is

not

talking about the effects of a casual glass, or even about the effect of a great

many upon

a

commonplace

drinker.

As he

sees

it,

there are certain

This essay on Richard Hughes was published in the November 1939 issue of The

Columbia Review.

483

men who to a

get

drunk and

kind of inspired

clarity

Hughes who reach

ters in

get there through drink

And

strain.

which

:

The

like.

other charac-

height of illumination do not necessarily

this

but

comes out under any other kind of

it

Hughes

the greatest artists in

rounded by

it is

and most immediate storm, he

a

complex situation

alternative disasters, of

which he

which death

But

at the time.

in

at

any

stress

are brought out by the

presence of death. Perhaps in the captain of the Archimedes

more than death:

may

probably the closest a nonascetic

is

what the mystic graces may be

get to imagining

and

reach, through a stage of furious concentration,

it

is

much

completely sur-

is

merely the greatest

is

rate, in the

height of the

suddenly carried out of himself and achieves a perfect genius

is

for seamanship.

Yes, he had been worried, but that was only at

For soon the storm

first.

reached such a height that plainly this was no longer an issue between himself

and

That

owners but between himself and

his

suited

him

better.

From

his

Maker. That altered things.

then on he was like an

artist in a

bout of

inspiration.

... as the storm increased to his

immense height

its

so the flame brightened:

No

whole mind and body were possessed by an intense excitement.

room

gigantic exhilaration, abilities

and

in

him

anything but a

for

a consciousness that, for the

time being,

all

his

were heightened.

But Hughes genius. This find him,

No room

thought of his owners.

for

is

is

not only interested in the

too rare a creature in the

first

artist

place:

who

an inspired

is

and even when we

we find him half the time uninspired anyway. Hughes is intermuch in men who possess skills and use them well. Too many

ested just as

inspired geniuses on board a sinking ship

might become unwieldy. In

fact,

everybody on board besides the captain has become an automaton: yet

know how

they go on automatically doing jobs they

ing

new and rough

in a great gale. is

techniques, makeshifts appropriate to a helpless ship

Now

the completely

one of these makeshift

humble and

dirty

keep the ship from being swamped. it

over the heavily listing lee

latrines,

of the it

until

side,

he

indeed he

is is

The boy

officers learns this

in a delirium

since

it

has to go out, bit by sea water

is

on the water

bit,

from time

technique briefly and

and

oil

would waste

sets

oil to

to

pour

through the to time.

One

about practicing

conscious of nothing else but his job:

only half conscious of that. stuck to his post pouring

hours on end,

till

oil

without food or

midnight Saturday: and though

was dog-tired and dreaming on

484

it

has to be learned

skills that

one of pouring

And

which are themselves admitting

young

even learn-

to do, or

his feet,

he never

at the felt

rest for

twenty

end of that time he

bored.

Nor was

it

long before dreams and technique had woven themselves

to-

gether.

Most frequently he imagined himself in a lecture room where a dreary lecturer droned out a discourse on pouring oil. Sometimes he was himself

Whole Art

the lecturer, explaining in balanced periods the

of Oil Pouring,

every thrust and parry, and riposte: while an entranced audience of

its

down

students scribbled

his sections

and subsections a and b

in their note-

books.

This

not by any means a poor example to take.

is

morbid psychology; and even though)

it

if it is

It is

not a piece of

humorous, (very

slightly

Hughes' own quite serious and passionate

reflects

skills

and techniques

skills

do not escape

own

for their

sake.

The

He

his appreciative eye.

slightest

slightly,

interest in

and most varied

even devotes a few sentences

High Wind to describing how a Negro taught John Bas-Thornton make tree-springes for catching birds. He is interested in people who know a good story when they see it,

in

to

in

men who, in occasional bouts of inspiration, really transcend their powers, and in men who possess a skill and use it well and sternly. He is interested in artists.

Now

he himself knows quite a

little,

about the surface of vari-

at least

ous techniques: such as that of navigation. But the one technique he does possess in perfection

first is

part of In

is

that of his

Hazard he appears

really all the

own

perhaps the most

skillful storyteller,

time using his

to

own

craft.

skillful

In a word,

we

have. In

Hughes is a very fact, when in the

be solely interested in navigation, he technique to build up a

terrific sus-

pense.

High Wind and

is

also very exciting,

in degree. Its material

is

but the excitement

is

different in

kind

but the

as tragic as that of the later novel,

story has less stark tragedy in the telling.

The for

interest in

mechanical

Richard Hughes

skills is pretty

as the interest in

much

the

same kind of thing

manners and conventions,

for con-

ventions are to behavior what tools are to a craft, and also require no little skill.

A

High Wind

Three kinds of

social

in

Jamaica happens

groups

will be permitted here) are

(if

to

be a study of manners.

a slight but illuminating distortion

brought into play against one another

book. That of the average middle-class

in this

grownup (whose conventions

are

kept well in the background of this story, and only serve as a standard of

comparison), a far from average group of children, and a shipload of nondescript malefactors labeled as pirates.

These

pirates are not kidnappers.

and ends

of cargo. It

is

They

are only after

money and odds

only by an unlucky accident that they become

485

saddled with these children.

what had happened

The

fact

weeks

until

is

the children did not realize exactly

Indeed, at the time of the raid,

later.

Emily had misinterpreted the whole thing,

word

the actual is

Pilot

it

Comes Aboard")

was

the matter

at

had heard

and

as "pilots";

"come aboard" (witness

of the nature of pilots to

"The

for although she

"pirates" she only understood

since

it

famous chromo:

a

once accepted as the most

proper and logical thing in the world.

What This

problems will immediately

is

out of this situation? Problems of manners.

arise

clear, since the

author

first

and the children eating dinner together, finding

of it

shows the

all

hard

pirates

keep a

to

polite

conversation going, and finally falling back into silence and mutual em-

From

barrassment.

we

then on

follow the interactions of two mutually

exclusive sets of social conventions.

Now

provision

is

This

ditions.

in a

may be expected to have a certain way of life in which no made for taking care of young children, at any rate on expe-

pirates

pure

is

complicated by the fact that these pirates are no longer

convention that had once been essential

state: a

liberal practice of

weapon

to use.

murder) has become

For

pletely interfered

more

men

to piracy (the

too dangerous a

this reason, the purity of their piratical state is

com-

who must

at all

long time.

Time

with by the presence of these children,

costs be returned safe to civilization.

for this

for these

vital little society to

And

this will take a

completely put to rout the weakened

conventions of piracy. But the children have no immediate

They

on

flourish as vigorously

this

them, Margaret, finds the situation

mal innocence run with social disaster.

other side, she sides that

is

boat as anywhere

else.

at all confusing; she

the rest of her pack,

and the

difficulties.

Only one of

cannot in

result

is

all

ani-

physical

and

In attempting to compromise with the standards of the is

destroyed,

and therefore

suffers

contempt from both

directly proportionate to the childhood she has belied.

Otherwise the children have admirable poise and impeccable decorum.

When

they finally find out that these are pirates, they wisely pretend to

know nothing

about

it:

but they immediately incorporate into their games

of make-believe a fiercer

and

truer kind of piracy than these

men

ever

knew.

And

so the story climbs

leads us

up

from one surprise

to the final surprise of all:

then

to another until

we

it

finally

realize that not only are

the pirates harmless, but that the children are actively

and unconsciously

dangerous: and that the pirates as a group, with their group customs and

manners and

skills,

are being swallowed

up and destroyed by

a rival set

of conventions, a set of dreadful, fierce, innocent conventions of believe.

486

make-

What

has been said about Hughes' interest in mechanical techniques

on one hand and

book

that his pity is

conventions on the other does not, of course,

social

offers

any message

that has

become firmly embodied

novels themselves. Certainly, whatever

and economic conditions must

man who

himself what

lie

Hughes

somewhere

is

really

Lawrence of Arabia,

in a

Hughes

Hughes

is

art.

and conventions and techniques,

and above

what

and then determine

all to

judge Hughes by

to say this sort of thing over

whole

whom

lot that is

tives to

ences

good

it

it

rather than by his

it,

it

discovered that

and not

to the

and enjoying the

all it

and over again. Hughes

you have

to take

philosophically foul.

what

is

Hughes

observations that attract our eye beyond the art itself.

much

that withstands

"fascist!"

perhaps a secondary question, but after

Lawrence, in

might, for

will

believes a sailor's allegiance to be to his ship

books without crying

We

possible

who have

strongly suspect that even radicals

is

but

either to believe in

Second International are simply keeping quiet about This

all this,

kind of stoicism that respects nothing so

to ferret out all this

or hate the belief, I

back of

probably philosophically close to

the impact of any misfortune or dishonor. But

book?

this

form of the

thinks about our social

at the

important about Hughes: his

as a devotion to duties

man

in the

a

goes digging them out will completely miss and destroy for

example, hazard a guess that

do a

mean it is

should be so necessary to sound this warning in our days. All

it

mere raw material

the

and

to politicians or sociologists,

is

seems necessary not some D.

artistically

H.

good with

a

scrupulously avoids moral

framework of the work of

Morals are only involved, in these books, in the relations of mo-

moral patterns the personages themselves

Hughes shows

to a

good

that

we must

him.

It is

story,

and

are for motives it

is

and

possess.

The

only prefer-

situations that lend themselves

because of this formal strictness and integrity

confine ourselves to the essentials of art in talking about

impossible to admire

him

for the

wrong

reasons.

487

WILLIAM YORK TINDALL— LAWRENCE: WHO SAW HIMSELF AS A MESSIAH

D. H.

D. H. Lawrence

and

tain notoriety of tively

sincerely

condemned James

he himself wrote Lady Chatterley

yet

its

own. Whether

judgment of Joyce was the judgment of were

is

to the religions

upon

literary

and

a moralizing

work

Joyce's

Thomas Aquinas, and although symbol

liturgical

rela-

is

man whose

A

religious

comparison be-

one, for they both remained intellectually true

which they abandoned.

St.

obscene

is

paradox that Lawrence's

something that Dr. Tindall's book only suggests;

would be an illuminating

firmly

to the

were misdirected.

as intense as they

tween the two authors it

books

either of these

unimportant here: but we must assent

aspirations

Joyce's Ulysses as "obscene,"

hover, which achieved a cer-

s

is

and even

free

built squarely

is

his

and

use of Christian

facetious, yet

he never

denies the truths which those symbols have always striven to express.

That he

not boast

of,

but rather lament.

Lawrence's background

dom

in

thing which Ulysses and Finnegans

lost sight of those truths is a

Wa\e do

making

is

Protestantism, which allows a relative free-

religion just

what you want

to be,

it

and Lawrence's

private religion demonstrates the abuse of this privilege; but, while Joyce

remains a kind of Christian, Lawrence becomes a complete pagan and preaches a return to gods that were forgotten even before Jupiter and

Venus and Dionysius. Yet all that condemns the Catholic in

the while

it is

Joyce:

and the perfection of formal, imaginative unity after artistic,

and not moral,

aims of a work of distinct.

and those of

art

a

moral

Lawrence conceives the function

mons about dark and the

and

to

cows

same time Lawrence

intellect to attack intellectuals

with the blood." munists and,

He

the intellectual subtlety

in Ulysses,

and

St.

which

Thomas

strives

believe the

act to be, in a certain sense,

of the writer to be to write ser-

is

and

like "Susan."

continually using his to

bitterly detested

own

defend the process he all

finally, all "international

Catholics,

bankers."

very acute

calls

"thinking

all scientists, all

He

went

ofif

Com-

on a

appointed hunt for the "noble savage": the closest he got was the

A

man

primitive love, about the moral relationship of

to the earth, to the sun,

At

success. Joyce

Lawrence

the Protestant in

condemning

dis-

New

review of D. H. Lawrence and Susan His Cow, by William York Tindall (Colum-

bia University Press), published in

488

The

New

Yor\ Times, January

14, 1940.

Mexican Indian, and that was not

He

found

close

enough, by any means,

to nobility.

his ideal, finally, only in the pages of Frobenius, of Jung,

and

of Sir James Frazer. Lawrence's gospel culminated in the proclamation

who had come to save the world from men the joyful "mindlessness" of the

of himself as a messiah, as one

intellectualism and give back to

Hopi snake dance.

Now

ence of the is

and

the fact of Lawrence's restlessness sterile

dissatisfaction in the pres-

materialism of our age and of

a very easy thing to understand

its

deadly, barbarous wars

and sympathize with. But unfortunately

Lawrence was

the conclusions he reached are too often laughable.

who

teach the workers the

would be

better to

the Nazis,

who

this type

could not

fail to attract

go of him altogether, and

is still

secretly

left.

and does

so

plished ironist. His irony

it is

as

is

diverting to the reader, yet

gated by the fact that

as

mat-

if it

unimportant

as

undoubtedly unfair appears extreme

to a focus

its

to

Lawrence

violence

may

as

in the study of

is

at cer-

through him. Lawrence the

Lawrence the writer

it

be miti-

Lawrence the man than

directed less at

which are brought

more than the keen eye of bitter mockery of an accom-

his subject

Lawrence with the

the historian; he flays

tain ideas

treats of all these

with the thoroughness of impeccable scholarship. At the

same time the author turns upon

is

reluctant to

adored in certain cenacles

Dr. Tindall's interesting and important volume ters

still

extreme right seems to

thus, although the

have captured him completely, he of the

the interest of

long ago claimed Lawrence as their very own. In spite of

nonsense of another sort makes some Communists

that,

to

Hopi snake dance, or perhaps, to English workers, teach the more appropriate nine-men's morris.

Extreme nonsense of

let

man

was

afraid to state, for example, that the best cure for labor unrest

it

a

never resisted the temptation to write nonsense, and so he was not

man

Lawrence the

philosopher.

Now

poor philosopher

this

is

almost too easy to put in the pillory, but

Dr. Tindall seems to think that

is

necessary because there does exist a

very flourishing cult of Lawrence the Messiah. This

new

shows that no scorn for

Apostles could be ex-

cessive,

than

but

this.

it is

him

a writer of exceptional

power and

Dr. Tindall, except perhaps in The Plumed Serpent, seems

all

but unreadable, and he refuses to discuss his poetry. His

contention that Lawrence's of his private religion

books

piece of research

unfortunate that Dr. Tindall cannot see more in Lawrence

Lawrence was undoubtedly

brilliance, yet

to find

this false Christ or for his

is,

bow down under

work

suffers

of course, true.

tremendously from the burden

But

that burden; they

it is

only true that Lawrence's

do not

fall to earth.

489

HUXLEY'S PANTHEON

A

few years ago Aldous Huxley wrote Eyeless

disappointed his followers for two reasons. First

and second

novel,

it

His new opinions,

crank, but

it

was not

good

a very

and

which he had been,

Huxley

until then, apparently

instead, appeared to be those of a theosophic

was not altogether

as startling in

it

indicated his disillusionment in the comfortable

materialistic skepticism with satisfied.

which

in Gaza, a novel

true that these opinions

were

new

as

or

seemed. They had their roots in earlier

as they

work, like Those Barren Leaves, in which Huxley exhibits the sneaking

which

curiosity

who

toward mystics,

intellectuals often feel

say they con-

template the truth face to face. In

He

Huxley he was always more than

all justice to

is

also

an intelligent man.

He

end

for

of his contemporaries the

mere

a

intellectual.

now sees more clearly than most which man was created, but he shows even

himself both perplexed and confused in his discussion of the means of

He

attaining that end.

is still

a capable writer.

He

still

makes

criticisms

of literature that are as full of erudition as they are of perspicacity. His

personal

charm

is

equal to his wit and his good intentions; but unfortu-

nately as a philosopher he

is

not distinguished.

His Ends and Means seemed he avoided, in

it,

some

1

a little better than Eyeless in

of the limitations that are

physical concepts by the language of imagination

Gaza because

imposed upon meta-

and the accents of

tured dialogue. But the contradictions which were so perplexing in

and Means have become even more obvious Dies the Swan, his

There sophic:

is

a

it is

1

Merton

article

later

lar Journal of

49 0

He

Summer

a

last,

Matter does not

first

his

own kind

of

not without having stopped by at the doors

and Bergson.

was

sound theo-

has gone from one mystic to

and Oriental, and he has reached

pantheistic idealism, at

This review

his opinions frequently

that they often really are so.

another, Christian

pletely illusory.

Many

latest novel.

good enough reason why

of Spinoza, Kant,

in After

cul-

Ends

He now exist,

published in

and

The

believes that the it is

evil

Of

Catholic World,

world

course

it is

November

Farrar Straus

&

com-

evil

by

1940.

repudiated this critique of Huxley "as a philosopher" in

Thomas Merton (New York:

is

The

Giroux, 1959),

Secu-

p. 266.

privation of reality, truth,

and goodness, which

God. This substance

the single substance that exists,

although

all

earth, then,

not good, and

is

meant

are

down

also life itself; but

from

any manner. Huxley follows Buddhism

it

by

by purifica-

it

One. Material

selfless

cannot help us to reach

to evil: they

in

karma. Existence on

to escape

detachment from matter, and union with the

attachments only bind us in

we

is

they are separated from

it,

in the realm of death or

and imprisoned

matter,

tion,

living things participate in

found

are only to be

this far,

but abandons

God it

on

the question of metempsychosis, adding a further complicated twist of his

own

that

makes

but also below

The

it

it

He

impossible in his system.

on the "human

possible

on the

reason for this

is

level,"

and

says that

good

not only above

exists

level of animals!

probably a reminiscence of the old Point Counter

own

Point days, in which animal instincts were good for their thinks they

but they must be

are,

still

only im-

is

in eternity,

it,

evil in

men

sake: he

because they are

self-

conscious.

Matter, in any case, can be symbolized as death. That

enough convention In the very

latest

novel

is

that explains

the death

all

built.

we come upon

pages of the book

first

and

in mystical literature,

symbols upon which Huxley's

a familiar

is

a rather oppressive

description of a cemetery called, not without reason, a pantheon, outskirts of

Los Angeles.

It is

one of the great commercial enterprises of

one of the characters, Stoyte, and every possible

it

is

adorned with

a flamboyant place

kind of vulgarity and pagan

features include a Fountain of tiny Taj

on the

display. Its

Rainbow Music,

more ambitious

a Vestibule of Ashes, a

Mahal, an Old World Mortuary, some catacombs, and a per-

petual Wurlitzer. But the most offensive thing about the place

some of the graves

are decorated with erotic statuary: for

it

is

that

Stoyte's

is

pride that he has "put sex appeal into death."

This heavy-handed joke would appear not it is

all

too possibly,

a device

if

Huxley But

things alone, this

as

if

only

not actually, true. But the importance of

beauty and truth

since beauty, goodness,

is

be too extreme,

For the

uses to satirize materialism.

to look for all goodness, all

sirable things.

to

and

(if

so

it

it

is

were that

materialist has

any) in materially de-

on are not

in material

absurd and as bad as trying to "put sex appeal into

death." Nevertheless, the pagan hopes to get for himself as

many

things and pleasures as possible before he dies:

ceases to be a

case of every

share class."

if

man

he unites

An

for himself, at least to fight for

it

and

if it

material

one has a chance of getting

his fair

with other members of his "oppressed

extremely happy consummation, for him, would be to live on

491

and health:

earth forever, enjoying everlasting youth istically

that

a character-

pagan paradise. Therefore, the central theme of After Many a

Summer is not death in general, but physical immortality. The title of the book is taken from Tennyson's poem

whom

is

the gods gave everlasting life in return for

man

about a

fortunately they did not give Tithonus everlasting youth,

to

favor.

But un-

and he

just got

some

older and older and older, until he finally begged to be allowed to die like all other creatures.

Huxley has created

whom

favor but

Tithonus of

a

his

own; one who did

fishes' intestines

and

that he could be

immortal on

two hundred years

lived for

He

"Hauberk Papers."

cause of the only readable parts of the novel, the

who found

no

should thank for being the material

at least the reader

an English nobleman

the gods

in a

is

a diet of

hidden cave in

Surrey. Unlike Tennyson's Tithonus, Huxley's does not lose his youthful

That degradation

vigor. Instead he suffers a different degradation.

revealed in the surprise ending of the book, so perhaps just to reveal

most

But in any

it.

case,

is

it

somewhat

would not be

came from Huxley's

same idea was used, more crudely,

the

only

very effective and constitutes the

forceful indictment of materialism that ever

pen, even though

it

is

in a

Laurel and Hardy comedy in 1933.

The

theme

central

treated in

all its

neous material.

all

bad one, but

a

simplicity. Instead of that,

The

it is

should have been

it

buried in a

lot of extra-

interminable philosophizings of one Mr. Propter, the

whole history of the English novel, are allowed

dullest character in the to

not at

is

impede the movement of the

story

and

whole

to spoil the effect of the

plan.

In the course of these soliloquies Huxley at the same time condemns

most one:

own. His principal contention,

that too

it is

after they

many men have

have done

justify their

own

have called

so,

form of

ment

of

all

a

man

but

is

a

is

in this,

is

a perfectly

good

God in their own image, and upon the God they have created to

created

violent depredations

form of anthropomorphic god the

world and struggles with the contra-

of the religious systems in the

dictions of his

upon

their neighbors.

the dictator,

man and who

sets

who

The

lowest

not only a god in

is

himself up as the embodi-

the desires and strivings of his followers.

Above

this

come

polytheism and primitive monotheism, and so on up the scale: and the

way

retain, in

up, even where

492

is

the purest

spirit,

He

does not cease to

Huxley's eyes, some taint of anthropomorphism.

So he goes dhists, to

God

all

as far as

whom God

he can and reaches the same extreme is

pure nothingness. But

He

is

as the

Bud-

not nothingness in

the metaphorical sense that no concept of ours can represent is

He

the Christian view),

is

really absolute nothingness.

seems to realize that to say that

Huxley

atheism, and so he

God

Him

But

at this point

nothingness

is

(which

simply

is

God

back hurriedly upon the Christian notion of

falls

as pure actuality, or "pure working" as he says in the words of the Ger-

man

mystic John Tauler.

Nevertheless Huxley cannot assent to the Divinity of Christ (although

he doesn't say

how he

shiped in the East),

feels

that Christianity, although

merit of being simple and dramatic,"

He

thinks that

men

like St.

transcended these "errors" and

condemns

actual truth, but he tive sensuality"

But

for

our

managed

it

and thus

He

and he wants

may

attain

is

to

their self-will

will at all

the

more

strongly

"self-will."

is

would be absurd

when

mind by main

God through

He

believes

to designate special acts

convinced that "the level of

lift

union with

it

glimpse of pure and

to get a

it.

Huxley any expression of

acts are evil,

categorically "wrong."

in the Spanish mystics a "strain of nega-

which only reaffirmed

as sources of sin. evil,"

is

wor-

has "the

it

John of the Cross, by a lucky accident,

they believed they were annihilating

all

God

toward the many incarnations of

and he thinks

man

is

the level of

force out of that level, so that

not love, but knowledge.

Ends and Means, love was an important virtue, but now Huxley only mentions the word to say how much it embarrasses him. His mystiIn

cism operates exclusively in the order of speculation. Love, by which the will

directed to

is

its

naturally, since that

Even there

is

the only order

Huxley

accepts, love

must

go.

the best-intentioned activity only leads to evil consequences,

no longer any reason

is

others.

proper end, the good, has no place in that order. So

Gone, therefore, are the

for

Huxley

little

to

want

to

and

do anything for

groups of eight or ten proselytizers,

familiar to readers of Eyeless in Gaza, schooled in self-control by the

methods of F. M. Alexander, traveling about making speeches and opposing violence with nonresistance. In his

new

book, Huxley admits he

does not want to save anyone, except perhaps three or four well-disposed individuals.

Yet in Propter

much

is

spite of all these opinions

a very active person.

He

is

which are put as

busy as he

is

mouth Mr.

into his talkative.

He

spends

time in a workshop, and he cares not only for his orange trees

but for the bodies and souls of itinerant fruit-pickers. small agrarian

community

in

some

He

fertile valley, a sort of

dreams of a beaverboard

Shangri-la in which a few chatty contemplatives might wait out the in seclusion

and

war

safety.

493

All Mr. Propter's attempts to help others seem false because of their inconsistency. Neither Propter nor

thing for anybody

else,

and

if

Huxley

really believes

they have any vocation at

he can do anyall, it is

to the

more worries about self-contradiction because they will no longer have to argue. There Huxley would be able to sit and think in peace, in between visits from cultured and amusing friends, and it would be very good for him. He should do that. He should stop writing about Mr. Propter and, retiring to a suitable retreat, work in the medium in which he is really good the essay. hermitage. There they will have no

:

494

TWO

APPENDIX III TRANSCRIPTIONS OF MERTON'S TALKS ON WILLIAM FAULKNER (1967)

TIME AND UNBURDENING AND THE RECOLLECTION OF THE LAMB: THE EASTER SERVICE IN FAULKNER'S THE SOUND AND THE FURY Editor's

Note

Thomas Merton of

life,

resigned his post as Master of Novices at the monastery

mid- August of 1965 and entered upon a more solitary living in a small, cinderblock hermitage in a wooded area overlooking

Gethsemani

in

the old abbey in Nelson County, Kentucky. Each ever,

he could be seen hiking

down through

the

the creek in blue jeans with an empty water jug

He

was returning

Sunday afternoon, how-

woods and jumping over

hung from

to continue his conferences, or

informal

and young mon\s. Eater he opened them up

novices

his shoulder. talks, to the

com-

to the entire

munity, where the attendance grew as he began to explore more literary

German

themes, such as the poetry of Rilke and the

War

II in the winter of 1965

and on

year he spo\e on the poetry of visited

poets after

World

into the spring of 1966. Later that

Edmund

Muir, Thich Nhat

Hanh {who

Gethsemani), and the antipoets.

commenced

In January of 1967 , Father Merton Classical

Values in

his lectures

on "The

William Faulkner," which continued for several

—a pat-

months. These included an excellent commentary on "The Bear" tern of

development

"Baptism

in

hunting and

in the spiritual life.

Wisdom and

in the Forest:

Initiation in

An

article entitled,

William Faulkner,"

which grew out of these studies, was written by Merton ductory essay to George Panichas' Mansions of the Spirit

as

an intro-

(New

York'-

Hawthorne, 1967). Then came readings from The Wild Palms, with its buried baptismal imagery the theme of the Deluge. And finally in March

—

of 1967 he concluded this series of tal\s with ,

To

each,

Merton brought a wealth

ated with a dash of humor.

afternoon talks, the

fire of

As

Merton

of

the Fury.

insight, often punctu-

any subject treated in these Sunday

in s

The Sound and

wisdom and

enthusiasm

made Faulkner come

alive

to his audience.

Merton wrote

a long review article for the

April-May 1967 issue of The

This transcription of Merton's conferences on Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury

was edited by James Y. Hollo way

for the

Summer

1973 issue of Katallagete.

497

Critic

on Faulkner:

He

Penn Warren.

A

Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Robert

concluded his essay with these eulogistic lines which

bear quoting: "There was a day

people li\e

Hemingway

when Faulkner seemed dwarfed by and Caldwell. Now we can

or even Steinbec\

understand that he was of far greater stature: a genius comparable to Melville,

Hawthorne, Dickens or Dostoevs^y

." .

.

Father Merton had been in close contact with the editor at Katallagete

during

and had agreed

this time,

a project he

an article on Faulkner for

to contribute

and they had been wording on

some

for

time. Unfortunately,

What we have here, with a minimum of editing, is a transcription of a tape-recording made by the Trappist mon\s of Merton s commentary on the deeply moving Easter service in The Sound and the Fury. The message for us today is so obvious that it requires no further comment. The words of Thomas Merton {and William Faulkner) his plan

never materialized.

speaJ^ eloquently for themselves in "the

unburdening and the

recollection

of the Lamb."—Brother Patrick Hart

1

The Sound and

the Fury

one of William Faulkner's greatest

is

has one of his greatest

It

wrong

absolutely

saints.

to say that

Faulkner had many

saints.

stories.

And

it

is

he had a "negative view of women." Faulk-

women: two of his most "saintly" saints saint in The Sound and the Fury, a mystic,

ner had a very positive view of

women. The

are

you might

and what

I

say,

Christian

is,

want

of course, Dilsey. She's a fantastic, wonderful person,

to lead

up

and the Fury: the Easter

to in these talks

the climax of

is

tended that particular Sunday morning. This service beautiful things Faulkner ever wrote.

occurs in the midst of is

much more

all

impressive

that

just

Now

how

when you

1

see

it

There

is

will

want

middle of

in the

Faulkner develops the theme

We

at-

one of the most

Easter experience of Dilsey

in the household

to get all this clearly in focus, let

background.

is

"the sound and the fury" of the story.

and fury" which takes place is

The

The Sound

which Dilsey

service at the black church,

me

all

The

that

"sound

where Dilsey works in this story.

fill

to look especially at

a passing reference to the Easter service in

you

some

in

event

—and

1

on some of the

of the great

ways

Merton's Opening the Bible,

written about the same time as these talks were given (Collegeville, Minnesota:

The

1970, pp. 42-49). Merton saw in this episode a contemporary example of Biblical time and a powerful community experience of "hearing the

Liturgical

Word."

498

Press,

Faulkner handles

book

to read; so

Any segment

his theme.

it is

of

it

a

book

(By the way:

an extremely

this is

could utterly "disedify," but

it is

difficult

around monasteries.

that could easily be read

so obscure

you prob-

ably won't be aware that you're being "disedified!") In any case: one of

the things Faulkner does in

indeed

—

is

of handling time. By that

end of a

sequence of events in a

mean

I

One

He

not just the

book

into five parts,

and

way

way he might begin

at the

he plays with the

tricks

the Fury, he

and each part represents the experience household of the family Compson.

marks the

of the things that

effectively,

has a really amazing

The Sound and

Rather: in

story.

of time by a particular person in the

the character

—and does so very

and work backward, or with the

story

divides the

of his books

all

with the question of time.

to deal

differences

between and

their totally different experience of time.

The

establishes

Compson household

is

great thing about Dilsey

is

identity of each person in the

her completely Christian experience of time. Basically,

it

seems

me

to

that

own treatment of time is itself Biblical. Of course, in his stories, many experiences of modern, abstract time— the time of the the bad ones, who follow linear, clocked, calendar time. But that

Faulkner's there are villains,

and other kinds of time are seen and understood against the of time,

and the more sympathetic, deeper characters have

view

Biblical

just this under-

standing of time.

Now we know today, this

hard

is

ence of time today, have abstract.

that the Biblical sense of time to

comprehend, since we

wholly

is

no

linear,

that, right

now,

it is

I

on a

and therefore wholly

real experience of time, for

For example:

live

is

not linear. For

time-line.

Our

artificial.

In

our experience of

experi-

fact,

we,

wholly

it is

don't even have to look at the clock to

us,

tell

you

4:12 (well, 4:15, I'm three minutes off!). In fifteen

minutes, our gathering here must stop; Vespers will be exactly at 4:34 (or

whenever

And we know

it is!).

Then, we know that supper

this is 1967.

that there are stations

sure

we

is

not

which things

this

line into

4:30 p.m., 5:15 p.m.,

fit,

etc.

of ripening, fullness. It

ence: she different

is

this linear time-line.

way

at

all.

a line into

had consulted

The

and

But the

and we know that

is

more

that

which

to

like that little

put in

dog

will,

Biblical con-

slots of 1965, 1966, is

a

matter

of our recent experi-

inside her belly,

and

it

was quite

inside the head of Brother,

who

and thought he knew when, on

that

was going on

his time-line calendar

we

Bible measures time not by a

Rather, the Biblical conception of time

knew what was going on

from the time

like the railway line,

are going to pass, eventually,

enough pass them along

ception of time

line,

Our time

will be exactly at 5:15.

had her puppies when she had her to have her puppies, she had her

the puppies were due to come. She

her puppies.

When

the time

came

for

499

puppies. But her time had to do with fullness, ripening, not time-lines.

And

so the Bible

about time on a

was going on

is

not concerned with what's going on in anybody's head

any more than the

line,

The

in Brother's head.

dog gave

little

Bible

is

what

a hoot about

concerned with time's

full-

time for an event to happen, the time for an emotion to be

ness, the

felt,

the time for a harvest or for the celebration of a harvest.

who have

In Faulkner one finds a type of people

which goes with the

of time, time people, pity

and Faulkner

just this Biblical sense

fullness of things. Dilsey

one of these

is

having a special capacity for

sees these characters as

which those with other conceptions of time simply don't have. These

more compassionate, more loving, more understanding of others because they are more in touch with the natural rhythm, the movement and growth of life. So, the more these characters in The Sound and the Fury get away from this Biblical notion of time, the more their evil becomes apparent. The villain in the story is Jason Compson, a miser, who folks are

by clock time, by telegrams, telephones, timetables

lives entirely

He

like that.

everyone,

is

makes

Faulkner

tainly

a

man who

crafty

life

miserable for everyone.

is

not saying, either) that

if

I

am

not saying (and cer-

you look

are an evil person (You! fellow! right there!

your watch you

at

Looking

at

your watch!

You'll just have to wait for that drink of water or Coke!) But

and become

that one can live by clock time for people. It cant, full of

is to

— things

has no sympathy for anyone, hates

sly,

a slave to

meaning: clock time cannot permit us

it

and

what

say that clock time cannot measure

to say

it is

so not care

is real,

signifi-

to live in expectation,

anticipation, fullness.

Time, and each of the characters' sense of time,

is

a

key factor in The

Sound and the Fury. So,

let's

them.

identify the characters in the story by the time

Benjy Compson, a thirty-three-year-old

First, there is

story begins, in fact,

on

completely whacky.

He

present to

him

at once.

"to begin before the

sound of

itself

meaning

mediate

to

is

has no sense of any kind of time: everything

is

Even

sound

for Dilsey

him. That

his

itself

is

—were

is

why

wailing Faulkner describes as seeming

had

so,

do you

seemed

started,

his vocal

timeless.

sounds

The

Benjy's section

coming and going, and only

hundred pages or

past is

them happened

500

to cease before the

—not is

words, though

after

you get through,

realize that all of the events

thirty years ago!

full

present, always im-

so difficult to read. Every-

experiencing are not happening on the same day! of

The

idiot.

his thirty-third birthday. Benjy's sense of time

had stopped." Even

thing in time

which dominates

On

say, a

which Benjy

the contrary,

is

some

— There

Caddy Compson

this beautiful girl,

is

favorite girl character)

never quite gets

in,

.

She

and you

and of the time they

Faulkner's

is

through the eyes of the others

see her only

live by,

(possibly she

always in the background of the book, but

is

and on, and

But

in.

she's there,

throughout

from when she's five years old to when she's fourteen, maybe older. Then, later on, she's married and out of the picture, and when we get Benjy in focus, she's gone. Another thing about Benjy is that he cannot talk. He has no way of the Benjy section,

communicating anything, with anyone,

directly.

a factory siren or something like that.

What

He

that Caddy's gone away. There are a few things Benjy light.

Caddy (but

she's

brother, Quentin, could

The

gone).

be a pasture, but they sold

it

go

likes:

a golf course out of

Harvard. Benjy

is

it

It

used to

so Benjy's

watch the fellows

likes to

play golf, but he disturbs the players by bellowing at

on

like

ofif,

Flowers. Fire-

pasture next to the house:

and made

to

sounds

just

bothers Benjy the most

them

as they play

his pasture.

Now, It is a

for

me,

this

Benjy section

wonderful vision of

the thing that

He

thing.

is

life

is

a beautiful part of Faulkner's story.

through the eyes of Benjy, the

most beautiful

is

idiot.

In

fact,

Benjy's immediate reaction to every-

doesn't think about anything or anybody, he just reacts to

simple things, like color and people and golf players, as a child might

not a child. Benjy has no personal identity. He's just a

react. But, he's

sort of nature.

that "it

is

Some

ridiculous critics have said, as

you might well guess,

not possible to 'identify' with Benjy." But the fact

you do

the sort of person

Benjy's got

is

mechanism

is

no "personality"

of Benjy's

light, love, etc., etc.

when

for example,

—

which

in the

his reactions as

way.

he

something beautiful

is

just

is

if

all

they were

It is just this

natural

warmth,

reacts to simple things, to

And when

is,

do! Because,

or, at least, I

you simply absorb

a nature, so,

your own. There

identify with

taken from

color,

him

he's looking at the fire in the stove, as if in a trance,

they shut the door of the stove, and he starts bellowing because the fire

went away

.

.

.

In sum, Benjy has no sense of time, whatsoever.

Then

there

about time.

now,

for

it's

is

It's

Quentin,

who

is all

fouled

we

can't

go into

a very difficult section to discuss, but

a very tricky,

modern

book and picked up Quentin's

section. Sartre, for

section

and

about timeT Quentin breaks his watch his section of the story:

it's

—

said,

this

is

"A-hah! Look the

first

to bed.

Of

at all this

thing he does, in

time to get up, out of bed and go to

and goes back

it

example, read the

instead of that, he gets out of bed, breaks his watch, puts

shuts the drawer,

up

goes to Harvard. Quentin

it

class.

But

in the drawer,

course, that sort of thing could

501

happen

at

any college— you don't have

go

to

to

Harvard

But the

for that!

point of Quentin's section

is

time. He's haunted by

even though that day, in his section,

it,

that he has

no capacity

to get

away from

birthday (a different day than Benjy's, of course). Quentin cuts

He

and rumbles around Cambridge, Massachusetts.

classes

striking of the clock, so he's constantly

aware of time,

in a

way

that

because he's so dominated by

And

there

the

is

aware of time. In

his

his

hears each

hyper-

fact, he's

doomed because

very, very bad. He's

is

is

all

of

it,

it.

mother of the Compson family. She's always

upstairs,

She has a notion of time, measured by her headaches,

a hypochondriac.

her need for her hotwater bottle,

the things she's always asking for

all

worrying about. Faulkner's portrayal of her

is

an admirable one

and

—with

her funny, yet depressing, pathetic personality. She, too, has a destructive idea of time, turned forever in

on

Compson who's on

Jason

It is

herself.

business time, a miser. Actually, his idea

of time seems the most normal, the most real to us, destructive time of

The Sound and life,

Jason, actually,

all. It's

Caddy Compson, and Caddy

the Fury.

gives birth to a child, a girl,

never makes

and yet

who seems

it's

the most

to set the action for

his sister, after a wild, teenage

— somehow or other, Faulkner

—

goes away, ending up in Europe. But Caddy (named Quentin!) in the care of Jason. But Jason money that Caddy sends for the support of her daughter, and, quite clear

it

leaves her daughter

takes the

of course, in the process treats the daughter very badly, tormenting her,

The

abusing her.

aware what

girl is

is

going on. Finally, on Holy Satur-

day night (before the climactic Easter service), Caddy's daughter the

money which

Jason had kept hidden in a box on the floor of a closet

down

in his

room,

Easter

Sunday morning, there

slips

he discovers that the ing from her. frets;

And

a rain pipe (or pear tree),

girl

this,

has

is

made

catches

her.

And

the

gets away.

So on

wrath by Jason when

with the money he had been

steal-

whole household: the mother he never does.

to find the girl, but

He

in his car, trying to get the sheriff, to

use the telephone

off, to

up with

off

of course, upsets the

madly over the countryside

get a telegram

and

a great explosion of

knows where

Jason thinks he

rushes

steals

—

all sorts

of things

Compson household

is

in

—but he never

an uproar on that

Easter morning. In the middle of

make

their

way

all this

to their

Dilsey (along with Benjy) and the other blacks

church for

this beautiful Easter service.

Here,

Dilsey has a great illumination about Christian truth; the beginning, the end, and everything.

Now, 502

we're ready,

It's

I

a

wonderful thing. Really beautiful.

think, to look at a

few passages

in

The Sound and

—

more closely. First, let's about time. There has been a lot

the Fury

(her son,

who

get introduced to an obvious passage

and Luster

of byplay between Dilsey

takes care of Benjy).

And,

of course, there

motion going on, everywhere, in the household,

that

is all

each of the

as

com-

Compsons

wake up: the hypochrondriac mother is yelling for her hotwater bottle; Jason knows that Caddy's daughter has escaped with the money, etc., etc., and Dilsey

is

trying to

make bread by

some more wood

Dilsey put

getting the stove ready

and returned

in the stove

to the

.

.

.

bread board.

Presently she began to sing again.

The room grew warmer. Soon compared with

quality as

both

it

Dilsey 's skin had taken on a rich, lustrous

wood

that as of a faint dusting of

and Luster's had worn,

as she

moved about

about her the raw materials of food, coordinating the meal.

above a cupboard, invisible save

On

the wall

by lamp light and even then

at night,

evincing an enigmatic profundity because

ashes which

the kitchen, gathering

had but one hand, a cabinet

it

clock ticked, then with a preliminary sound as

had cleared

if it

throat,

its

struck five times.

"Eight oclock," Dilsey

This

a typical

is

said.

She ceased and

example of Faulkner's

beset by time: the clock strikes

She knows ner

it's

sets this

five,

three hours slow.

able to understand

characters,

direction.

and Dilsey

The

and she

all

is

they treat Benjy.

is

this

household

is

that, as

." .

.

Faulk-

on Benjy's time, and

is

—completely on everyone

else's

time. She

these different times, in each of these different

correlates

them

the most important key

Another key

Here

thing about Dilsey

all.

That

is

experi-

one of the keys

—of Faulkner's story.

that an estimate can be

Each one

and Christian

into one, natural,

ence of time, time which transcends them

maybe

fire.

says, "eight o'clock!

question about time in the story, she

Quentin's time, and Jason's time is

her head upward, listen-

tilted

was no sound save the clock and the

ing: But there

treats

him

made

of the characters by

how

consistent with the time they are

on: the great characters understand and love Benjy; the others don't. Dilsey loves Benjy;

Caddy

some don't love him

away from

loves Benjy;

at all;

some think

do

to

calm him down.

It

seems

to

me

these,

that

to

it

is,

love

an

him more, some

idiot

and

try to get

less;

him

the house, for good, because he's always bellowing. But Dilsey

understands. She understands

what

some he's

that

becomes a

when

why he

a story

is

a meditation!

—

built

bellowing, and she

knows

on leads and thrusts such

totally different experience

from reading what we might

what Faulkner

starts

when you

read

call a "straight" story.

is

doing with us: the story releases

it

releases in us a certain capacity for

in us

—

it

You

it's

as

—different, can see

really like

deep feeling and

503

we do

emotion. Emotions and feelings surface story

—

which

stories

do what Faulkner

stories

What one

among many. But when

doing here, they are deep meditations on

is

invariably receives in reading Faulkner

There

tative.

not get from reading a straight,

any novel,

are just

deep quality

a

is

to

is

life.

something quali-

be found in just one, tiny, beautiful

passage. Just to read

course, the

one gives you some indication of

theme

comes necessary an

is

to give

So

idiot.

For the Compsons

identity:

is

new name,

Benjy a

named

he's

"Benjy"

is

His name's Benjy now, Caddy Dilsey said.

is,

(or, the

because

it

Here, of

is:

mother)

it

be-

becomes obvious he

when he was

Maury (from

his

three or four years

name:

a "Biblical"

How come it

Dilsey

"Benjy," changed from

mother's family) early in his childhood, old.

who

said.

He

wore out the name he was born with

aint

yet, is he.

Benjamin came out of the

Maury was. How come it is,

Caddy

Bible,

name

said. It's a better

him

for

than

Mother

Huh,

says

Dilsey said.

it is,

Caddy

said.

Name

aint

Dilsey said.

going

remember and

How It'll

be Dilsey

it

\now

will they

it's

when

him. Hurt him, neither^ Fol\s

to help

My name

dont have no luc\, changing names.

been Dilsey since fore

Dilsey,

when

it's

could

I

me.

they's long forgot

long forgot, Dilsey, Caddy said.

be in the Boo\, honey, Dilsey said. Writ out.

Can you read

Wont have

Caddy

it,

said.

Dilsey said. They'll read

to,

it

for me. All I got to do

is

say

Ise here.

I

believe that this

for a Christian:

one of the best statements about what identity means

is it

is

identity as response.

given a name: the

name

In this passage, there careful about it

a perfect statement of

But a response

is

to

to a

which you

identity.

what

name you

identity

will respond,

And

when we

vocation! (So,

changing our names: when we get up

to us out of a

in Christ:

is

already have! it is

all

You

are

called out!

ought

there, they

to

may

be

read

book!)

2

Now,

I

believe

service, for this

we

are ready for the

preaching of the

move

Word

to the church, for the Easter

about Easter. Here

holy Faulkner character, Dilsey, going to the church. rection.

504

we have

The theme

is

this

resur-

Resurrection

some

also

is

one of the themes in Faulkner's early

of them, he treats the resurrection

generation, the

World War

from

men whose

that war,

war and really

lives

this

theme: in

In

member of his own men coming back

as a

about

It is

have been completely dislocated by the

are unable to readjust to

moves with

theme

generation.

I

stories.

normal

In his novel, Sartoris, he

life.

Faulkner depicts the various

this story,

attempts and various means of that generation trying to get back into

normal all

life.

But nothing works. The character gets a

over the country, but cannot

this

holds

father

him

a while, but not completely.

killed in the automobile accident,

is

dislocated by

and takes

it

but

and speeds

and

falls in love,

Then something happens:

and the character

off into the hills

lives there, in a sort of daze,

fast car,

down. Then, he

settle

is

his

completely

with some countryfolk and

him,

this doesn't settle

follows a sort of Christmas scene, where he

in a cabin

is

Then

either.

with some

Negroes, finding himself caught up on Christmas day, experiencing

Christmas with them. But, he himself has no place

somewhere! These moves are

to go.

But he has

treated as ritual situations, situations

to

go

which

could have brought about his resurrection from the state of collapse the

war had

left

him

Sartoris story

in.

But they

man

which the

beauty and sense of time the character

there are

critical:

is

beautifully) in

move

Again, the question of time in

ordinary

He

He commits

disappears from

it!

As soon

as

cracks up.

he gets the plane

That

is

But then

a beautiful

suicide. But, in fact,

home and ends up

off the

ground, the wings

thing. Really beautiful! It

is

is

in

people in

man, the

—

to get the

The Sound and liar,

Jason

the resurrection theme. Let's

the Fury. Jason

the cheat, is

money

fall off!

And

he

an absolutely beautiful

the different tempo, the different levels of the time

of,

life. is

the

all

Sartoris.

But, this Easter service, with Dilsey: that

out

where

Some crook there has a new kind of airplane and needs a test The character is drunk, and says, "Sure, I'll test it for you!"

Chicago. pilot for

himself

life,

in a slow, organic quality of

book. "Does he ever get settled?" No.

he doesn't commit suicide.

this

moments (which Faulkner handles

lives a natural,

dashing about, madly. Sartoris

off again,

is

all fail.

rushing

Compson,

remember now

and action of the

the godless, avaricious

who cons everybody, who's interested down the road in his car after his niece,

only in seeking

she had taken from his room, but which he conned her

but he never finds her.

Faulkner's thrust here in the Easter scene

up Negro church, with

all

is

beautiful: this small, beat-

these black people together.

A

beautiful picture

5°5

— 4

them being

of

from

called

their poor, beat-up cabins

—the ecclesia:

together, to this church, their church, for Easter service. All of

must go

black, except Benjy, the idiot: he

stand what Faulkner

called

them

to their black church.

Under-

who

saying: these are the elect, these are the ones

is

are

are chosen in this mad, crazy world of nutty people. These are God's own:

Benjy; and Dilsey,

and

who

loves

him and calms him and

takes care of him;

the other black people, going to that Easter service.

all

Let's start out

now

ing over

is

where Benjy

wailing over something.

is

that his niece (Caddy's daughter)

thing like that happens, he just moans, and wails

.

gone.

is .

.

What

he's wail-

When

some-

Here's a bit of that

moaning and wailing: Then Ben wailed

again, hopeless

might have been

It

and prolonged.

It

was nothing.

Just sound.

time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an

all

instant by a conjunction of planets.

"Listen at him," Luster said, sont us outen de house.

I

don't

"Bring him here," Dilsey

"Come

said.

Ben's arm.

He came

before the sound

"Run and

to

begin before the sound

is

itself

has started, seems to cease

We already

late."

when we

ef

you dont stop him." Luster

get off de place," Dilsey said.

"He

said.

smellin

hit.

Dat's

hit is."

"Smell whut,

This

the steps and took

"Dont make no noise Miss Cahline kin

git his cap," Dilsey said.

stop

down

has stopped.

"She gwine hear him anyhow,

"He

back

obediently, wailing, that slow hoarse sound that ships

itself

Hurry, now.

whut

He went

on, Benjy," Luster said.

make, that seems

hear.

"He been gwine on dat way ev'y since you know whut got in to him dis mawnin."

mammy?"

Luster said.

a kind of cosmic woe,

Fathers of the Church

call the

coming out

creatures, the lamentation of the fallen world. see, this is

is what moaning of

This

in Benjy.

planctus creaturatum, the

But Benjy

is

the the

not fallen you :

the lamentation of innocent creation, innocent dislocation

creation just wailing

"You go cellar door,

its

^-understood sadness:

git dat cap," Dilsey said.

Ben one

step

below

her.

Luster went on.

The

sky was broken

They

now

stood in the into scudding

up out of the shabby garden, over Dilsey stroked Ben's head, slowly and

patches that dragged their swift shadows the broken fence, steadily,

"Hush," Dilsey

He

across the yard.

said,

his

"Hush, now.

brow.

We

He

wailed quietly, unhurriedly.

be gone in a minute. Hush, now."

wailed quietly and steadily.

Dilsey

506

and

smoothing the bang upon

knows

that just as soon as they get Benjy

away from

that

Compson

household, Benjy will stop his howling:

makes him wail the way he So

now

they

and

cession,

them. This

start off,

as they

And

to the church.

go down, the other black

Church:

the gate. Dilsey opened

They reached

a

there

and

his

one by one, join

families,

Luster was coming

A woman

down

the

was with him. "Here

"Now,

dey come," Dilsey said. They passed out the gate. ceased. Luster

this lovely pro-

is

ceremonial procession:

it.

drive behind them, carrying the umbrella.

Ben

over the house that

does.

down

a real procession to

is

doom

the

it is

den," she said.

mother overtook them. Frony wore a dress of

bright blue silk and a flowered hat. She

was

a thin

woman, with

a

flat,

pleasant face.

"You

got six weeks'

gwine do

work

on yo back," Dilsey

right dar

said.

ef hit rain?"

reckon," Frony said. "I aint never stopped no rain yit."

"Git wet,

I

"Mammy

always talkin bout hit gwine rain," Luster said.

"Ef

we

I

"Whut you

dont worry bout

y'all, I

don't

know who

is,"

Dilsey said.

"Come

on,

already late."

"Rev'un Shegog gwine preach today," Frony "Is?" Dilsey said.

"He fum

said.

"Who him?"

Saint Looey," Frony said. "Dat big preacher."

"Huh," Dilsey

said,

"What dey

needs

is

a

man

young niggers." "Rev'un Shegog gwine preach today," Frony

kin put de fear of

God

into dese here triflin

See! this

is

a

kind of incantation.

said.

"So dey

We are being led into

tells."

a different world!

These people who are getting themselves ready, getting themselves into certain

mood,

to

hear the

Word

of

God. There

is

a

a

kind of incantation

about the visiting preacher, Reverend Shegog.

They went on along the street. Along its quiet length white people in bright clumps moved churchward, under the windy bells, walking now and then in the random and tentative sun. The wind was gusty, out of the southeast, chill and raw after the warm days. "I wish you wouldn't keep on bringin him to church, mammy," Frony said.

"Folks talkin."

"Whut "I hears

folks?" Dilsey said.

em," Frony

said.

"And I knows whut kind of folks," Dilsey said, "Trash white folks. Dat's who it is. Thinks he aint good enough fer white church, but nigger church good enough fer him." "Dey talks, jes de same," Frony said. "Den you send um to me," Dilsey

aint

said. "Tell

um

de good

Lawd

dont

keer whether he smart er not. Dont nobody but white trash keer dat."

507

A On

turned off

street

descending, and became a dirt road.

at right angles,

hand the land dropped more sharply;

either

broad

a

dotted with

flat

small cabins whose weathered roofs were on a level with the crown of the road.

They were

small grassless plots littered with broken things,

set in

bricks, planks, crockery, things of a

once utilitarian value.

was consisted of rank weeds and the sycamores

—

trees that

the houses; trees

whose very burgeoning seemed

upon the

What growth

were mulberries and

there

locusts

and

partook also of the foul desiccation which surrounded

remnant of September, to feed

trees

to be the sad

and unmistakable smell of negroes

rich

and stubborn

even spring had passed them by, leaving them

as if

in

which they

grew.

From "Sis'

the doors negroes spoke to

Gibson!

"I'm well.

Is

thank you."

I

They emerged from

—men

and then

as they passed, to Dilsey usually:

you well?"

"I'm right well,

road

them

How you dis mawnin?"

in staid,

a stick;

the cabins and struggled

young men

hats;

women

hand

of white people,

a little

up

the shading levee to the

hard brown or black, with gold watch chains and in

cheap violent blues or

stiffly sibilant,

who

looked

and children at

in

stripes

now

and swaggering

garments bought second

Ben with the covertness of nocturnal

animals: "I bet

you wont go up en tech him."

"How come I wont?" "I bet

you wont.

"He wont

"How come

you skeered

bet

a loony

"Dat un wont. "I bet

I

He

hurt folks.

I

to."

des a loony."

wont hurt folks?"

teched him."

you wont now."

"Case Miss Dilsey lookin."

"You wont no ways."

"He And

dont hurt

folks.

He

des a loony."

steadily the older people

speaking to Dilsey, though, unless they were

quite old, Dilsey permitted Frony to respond.

See! This it,

all

is

again a ceremonial. Wherever Dilsey

dressed up!

And Frony

is,

she's the

queen of

(her daughter) goes along, answering ques-

tions about her, addressed to her, or speaking for her:

"How

are

you?"

Or whatever:

"Mammy

aint feelin well dis

mawnin."

"Dat's too bad. But Rev'un Shegog'll cure dat. He'll give her de comfort

en de unburdenin."

Now,

all this

Faulkner

508

is

may sound

very quaint to us, but

telling here, part of

it

is

part of the story

what The Sound and the Fury

is all

about.

:

Here

are these black people,

who

are going to church with their sadness

going

to

And

are burdened, really burdened.

and burden and

unburden them: they are going

church

to the

grief.

to

they

The Lord

is

be unburdened of

a real burden, not an imaginary one:

The

road rose again, to a scene like a painted back drop. Notched into a

crowned with oaks the road appeared

cut of red clay

a cut ribbon. Beside

weathered church

a

it

painted church, and the whole scene was as painted cardboard

windy sunlight of

lifted

flat

to stop short off, like

its

crazy steeple like a

and without perspective

as a

upon the ultimate edge of the flat earth, against the space and April and a midmorning filled with bells. Toset

ward the church they thronged with slow sabbath deliberation. The women and children went on in, the men stopped outside and talked in quiet groups until the bell ceased ringing.

They come in

See!

The coat

man was

second

tie.

heads were

huge, of a light

come

people

in.

when he had

passed,

and

The

preachers

imposing in a frock

cofifee colour,

But he was unfamiliar

folds.

reverted

still

The

His head was magisterial and profound,

above his collar in rich

to

neck rolled

his

them, and so the

was not

it

until the

singing that they realised that the visiting clergyman

choir ceased

already entered, and

when

ter enter the pulpit still

The

they too entered.

are inside: gathered there.

and white

sigh, a

Then

they saw the

man who had

had

preceded their minis-

ahead of him an indescribable sound went up, a

sound of astonishment and disappointment. visitor

was undersized,

in a

shabby alpaca

black face like a small, aged monkey.

And

all

coat.

He

had a wizened

the while that the choir sang

again and while the six children rose and sang in thin, frightened, tuneless whispers, they watched the insignificant looking

man

sitting

dwarfed and

countrified by the minister's imposing bulk, with something like consternation.

They were

still

the minister rose

looking at him with consternation and unbelief

and introduced him

unction served to increase the

in rich, rolling tones

when

whose very

visitor's insignificance.

"En dey brung dat all de way fum Saint Looey," Frony whispered. "I've knowed de Lawd to use cuiser tools dan dat," Dilsey said. "Hush, now," she said to Ben, "Dey fixin to sing again in a minute."

When was

level

the visitor rose to speak he sounded like a white

and

cold. It

sounded too big

listened at first

through

They began

watch him

to

to

curiosity, as they as they

would

would have a

man. His voice

have come from him and they

man on

to a

monkey talking. They even

a tight rope.

which he ran and upon the cold inflectionless wire of his voice, so that at sort of swooping glide he came to rest again beside the

forgot his insignificant appearance in the virtuosity with

poised and swooped last,

when with

a

reading desk with one

arm

resting

upon

it

at

shoulder height and his

509

4

monkey body in

it

mummy

as a

waked from

"Hush, now. Dey

fixin to sing in a

get this thunderclap!

Who

or an emptied vessel, the

dream and moved

a collective

Behind the pulpit the choir fanned

its seats.

They

motion

as reft of all

congregation sighed as

steadily. Dilsey

a little

whispered,

minute."

can ever forget

when he

it

reads it? All

of a sudden, this preacher changes. Completely:

Then a voice said, "Brethren." The preacher had not moved. His arm

lay yet across the desk,

and he

still

held that pose while the voice died in sonorous echoes between the walls.

was

day and dark from

as different as

his

and speaking there again

quality like an alto horn, sinking into their hearts

when

it

had ceased

and cumulate echoes.

in fading

"Brethren and sisteren,"

It

former tone, with a sad, timbrous

said again.

it

The

preacher removed his

arm and

he began to walk back and forth before the desk, his hands clasped behind him, a meagre figure, hunched over upon

mured

in striving

blood of the

Lamb!" He tramped

twisted paper and the Christmas

him.

He was

his voice.

own

worn

like a

With

had fleshed

his

bell,

body he seemed

eyes while the voice

steadily

small rock

teeth in him.

its

itself like

that of one long im-

with the implacable earth, "I got the recollection and the

And

back and forth beneath the

hunched,

his

whelmed by

hands clasped behind

the successive waves of

succubus

to feed the voice that,

like,

the congregation seemed to watch with

consumed him,

until

its

he was nothing and they

were nothing and there was not even a voice but instead their hearts were speaking to one another in chanting measures beyond the need for words, so that lifted

when he came

and

scended

its

to rest against the reading desk, his

whole attitude that of

his

shabbiness and insignificance and

moaning expulsion

of breath rose

monkey

face

a serene, tortured crucifix that tran-

made

from them, and

a

it

of

no moment,

woman's

a long

single soprano:

"Yes, Jesus!"

As

in the sand, died

Two

windows glowed and

the scudding day passed overhead the dingy

faded in ghostly retrograde.

tions of

car passed along the road outside, labouring

away. Dilsey

down

tears slid

A

sat bolt upright,

her hand on Ben's knee.

her fallen cheeks, in and out of the myriad corusca-

immolation and abnegation and time.

"Brethren," the minister said in a harsh whisper, without moving. "Yes, Jesus!"

The woman's

voice said, hushed yet.

"Breddren en sistuhn!" His voice rang again, with the horns. his

arm and

blood of de nunciation,

Lamb!" They did not mark became negroid, they

the voice took

510

He removed

stood erect and raised his hands. "I got de ricklickshun en de

them

into

itself.

just sat

just

when

swaying

his intonation, his pro-

a

little

in their seats as

— Now best

I

what follows

"When I

de long, cold

de light en

sees

poem.

a sacred

is

I

can't read

—Oh,

O

ef

you

do the

I'll

you, breddren,

tells

I

Was

breddren?

when de

long, cold

de word, po sinner! Dey passed away in Egypt, de

sees

I

swingin chariots; de generations passed away.

now,

but

right,

it

A fantastic, sacred poem!

can.

Wus

O

po man: whar he now,

a

man: whar he

a rich

Oh

sistuhn?

I tells

you,

milk en de dew of de old salvation when de long, cold

aint got de

years rolls away!"

"Yes, Jesus!"

en

"I tells you, breddren,

saying Let

me

gwine

Jesus

Blood of de

He

A

lay

O

say,

sistuhn?

and took out

in his coat

you got de ricklickshun en de

Is

a

handkerchief and mopped his

dem

at

Roman

de do' en see de

de

lap,

little

dem

sleep;

tramped back and

Mary jump

mammy

We

up, sees de sojer face:

to kill

yo

Jesus!

little

settin in

chillen dar, de

de angels singin de peaceful songs en de glory;

gwine

like dat once.

helt him maybe she look out

de day. Ma'y

sees

I

Like

Jesus.

wus

Sometime maybe she

He

passin."

po-lice

breddren!

his face. "Listen,

on her

Jesus

face.

"Mmmmmmmmmm!"

chillen settin dar. Jesus

little

suffered de glory en de pangs.

de nightfall, whilst de angels singin him to

mopping

Den whut

load.

voice said, "Yes, Jesus! Jesus!"

"Breddren! Look

He mammy

Po sinner

a time.

gwine load down heaven!"

aint

I

come

down my

lay

low concerted sound rose from the congregation:

The woman's

at

O

breddren?

Lamb? Case

fumbled

you, sistuhn, dey '11

I tells

down wid de Lawd, lemme

gwine

forth,

de do' wid

Jesus.

little

hears

I

sees de closin eyes; sees

I

to kill!

We

gwine

We

to kill!

hears de weepin en de lamentation of de po

I

widout de salvation en de word of God!"

"Mmmmmmmmmmmmm! "I sees,

O

Jesus!

Oh

Jesus! Little Jesus!"

and

sees!"

I

still

and another

voice, rising:

another, without words, like bubbles

rising in water. "I sees hit, breddren!

sees

I

Sees de blastin, blindin sight!

hit!

I

sees

Calvary, wid de sacred trees, sees de thief en de murderer en de least of dese;

hears de boasting en de braggin: Ef you be Jesus,

I

walk!

I

hears de wailin of

women

lif

en de evenin lamentations;

weepin en de cryin en de turnt-away face of God: dey done

done

kilt

my

I

Jesus!

blind sinner! Breddren,

en

hears de

kilt Jesus;

I

I

tells

sees,

O

dey

Jesus!"

you; sistuhn,

I

when de

says to you,

did turn His mighty face, say, Aint gwine overload heaven!

de widowed

tree

Son!"

"Mmmmmmmmmmmmm. "O Lawd

up yo

God

His

shet

do';

I

sees

de whelmin flood

roll

Whut

de light; sees de

meek

I

see?

Whut

Jesus sayin

I

see,

Dey

O

kilt

sinner?

Me

I

sees

can see

between;

de darkness en de death everlastin upon de generations. Den, Yes, breddren!

I

lo!

I

sees

Breddren!

de resurrection en

dat ye shall live again;

I

died

4

dat

de

dem whut sees en believes shall never die. Breddren, O breddren! doom crack en hears de golden horns shoutin down de glory, en de

I

sees

arisen

dead whut got de blood en de ricklickshun of de Lamb!"

Now, what

this?

is

This

history of salvation in the

a

is

man announcing

most simple

The sacred They are

the Story.

possible, straight terms.

not just the terms of the preacher, but they are the terms of the people in

They

his hearing.

are ready for

ning of his sermon, he was not

it!

The way he

telling

presented

white man. But

as a

at the begin-

them anything: he was preaching

now he is simply saying know, but what is present among them! Now: he is their realization of the great truth: Jesus lives! And this. They hjiow that they know this. them

it

to

not only what they

them

re-creating in

these people realize

So what happens ? In the midst of the voices and the hands Ben

sat,

gaze. Dilsey sat bolt upright beside, crying rigidly

ment and the blood of the remembered Lamb. As they walked through the bright noon, up

rapt in his sweet blue

and quietly

in the anneal-

the sandy road with the dis-

persing congregation talking easily again group to group, she continued to

weep, unmindful of the

"He "He

talk.

sho a preacher, mon! seed de

"Yes, suh.

He

seed

hit.

Face

made no sound,

Dilsey

He

much

didn't look like

at first,

but hush!"

power en de glory." to face

he seed

hit."

her face did not quiver as the tears took their

sunken and devious courses, walking with her head up, making no

effort to

dry them away even.

"Whyn't you quit lookin.

We be

mammy?"

dat,

Frony

said.

"Wid

all

dese

people

passin white folks soon."

"I've seed de first en de last," Dilsey said.

"First en last

whut?" Frony

"Never you mind," Dilsey

"Never you mind me."

said. said. "I seed

now

sees

de

story builds

up

de beginnin, en

I

endin."

This

is

an impressive statement because

to. It is really

this

is

what the

the climax of the whole book. This Christian statement

.

.

.

The Word of God breaks into time, into the community of the into those who belong to God. It reveals the beginning and the end-

about time! chosen,

ing: at once! It reveals the meaninglessness of time

of time. Dilsey sees

functions in the those

who

because she

is

a person filled

family, their household,

is

full

with to

meaning

love. All her

hold together

are separated by conflict, by time. Dilsey has a love that reaches

out and embraces

512

all this

Compson

and the

all

of them. So, she's the one

who

is

burdened.

And

— And

she sees at this Easter service the beginning and the ending.

what worship

just

Lets put

this

it

is.

This

what contemplation

is

in

to hear the

is

Word

of

one thing.

and the ending? As Frony

the beginning

beginning and the ending of what?" That

is

an order!

says, "the

think this scene

I

Faulkner

a prelude to the terrible theology of another

is

is

is.

way: worship and contemplation

God and to see it all, Now, just what is

this

one that

story,

follows this one, Light in August: a terrifying book, but also a great

about the crucifixion.

a very strange story (and

It is

the chance to go into

it

bootlegger and murderer

here).

who

But the center of

is

.

.

.

lynched,

and how he

theless, a sort of Christ-figure,

I

know we

I

gets that

Joe Christmas, a

is

it

guess

.

book

don't have

.

.

way

but he

is,

never-

a very strange

is

tale.

But are

in this picture

we have

of Dilsey, the answer

no complications, no funny theology. There

God. Remember that what goes through is

the refrain

is

what

Word

coming up from the chorus: "Yes,

important. That

is

of

—well,

very simple. There

Not

That

Jesus! Yes, Jesus!"

Hearing the

a "Yes!" as individuals.

what

it

of

preaching, this sermon,

Not

with a complete: "Yes, Jesus!"

self to it

try to think to yourself

Word

simply the

the secret of the whole thing.

is

God, opening one's

a "Yes!" off the top of the head.

of a

all this

is

is

But

a

kind

means: This kind of "Yes,

Jesus!"

What tell us.

this response, this "Yes,

is

He

altogether clear whether

whether he had some as a I

white

don't

The is

know. But point

going

a funny is

man and

going

to

is

up

trick

then

all

his sleeve.

said,

Why

That

did he start out preaching

not the point.

is

from the

man, the Lord has used

speak to her! This

expect

start that

Easter morning: she

is

"cuiser" things than that!

the whole story.

is

what you get

is

it

is

pretty

much what

isn't

trouble with time,

what kind of

the answer

what

is

in

they're look-

looking for anything, so he doesn't get anything;

Jason expects trouble, and gets trouble; Quentin

the recollection

It isn't

is

The Lord

a matter of your expectation.

the Fury. Each of the characters gets

ing for: Benjy

what she

not

of a sudden shift to preaching as a black?

doesn't matter.

what Dilsey

The Sound and

is

is, it is

Reverend Shegog did what he did on purpose

person you are, or what you do. But

What you

Faulkner doesn't

course,

Reverend Shegog. That

church for the unburdening, and while Reverend Shegog

little

to

it

Of

Jesus?"

leaves us in the dark about

and

that

is

what happens

and the blood of the

to

Lamb and

is

all

tied

him; Dilsey

is

up

in

his

looking for

the unburdening,

and

that

gets.

513

3

And

that

is

things that

why so

is

seems

this

me

to

marvelous about

of the Gospel in a wholly

to

it is

be a very great book.

that the Easter service

American idiom:

Shegog's sermon, Dilsey's unburdening. tic

way

to

There in

Word

preach the

is,

after

God,

of

America. There

all

of the

a statement

Reverend

example of an authen-

here.

Word

of

God

something very fundamental about the "theology"

is

sermon of Reverend Shegog. There are some very

in the

are not at

One

Dilsey's expectation,

It is a fine

something very fundamental about the

all,

is

special slants that

our "conventional" Christian theology of expiation and

re-

demption. Rather, there are some different twists in what the Reverend

Shegog

says: for

example, what happens

when

Christ dies, in the Rever-

God the Father is spoken of as "de widowed God," who "shet His do' ": the One most disconsolate and sad at the crucifixion is God in Heaven. He's all broken up about it: "Loo\ at what they did!" But that's not the way the Gospels are usually presented: conventional theology has God in Heaven, waiting for Christ to die! "You've got to pay the price," God is represented as saying: "I'm waiting to get this bill paid

end Shegog's sermon ?

off!"

But

not what Reverend Shegog says.

that's

something familiar, of course,

to mystics

and

He

says

something

who

to others

sense of other aspects of the redemption given by Christ. find in the Gospel

and the

parables.

find anything about

God

debt to be paid

This idea of

theology

—a

lot

off.

of

it

is

sitting

What

is critical, is

after

in

God

a

else:

deep

what you

in the four Gospels

do you

this

waiting to get "paid off"

must be "paid

all, is

It is

heaven and waiting for

German, bringing

responsibility incurred that

where Dilsey

up

Nowhere

have

is

blood later

in their tribal, feudal idea of

off."

the theology of this church service

on

Easter,

unburdened by the message of Reverend Shegog and

its

contrast with the gathering at the white, Presbyterian church in Light in

August, where a truly gruesome Sunday service takes place, attended by those

So to

who all

the very next day are determined "to get" Joe Christmas.

in

all,

be an authentic example of

preached: the point

is

the fulfillment of one's

one's identity in response to the

That

5M

is

The Sound and the way in which

the Easter service in

the unburdening

Word

and the

of

life

the the

Word

and the

God preached

recollection of the

to me God is

Fury seems of

fulfillment of

in a

Lamb.

community.

FAULKNER MEDITATIONS: THE WILD PALMS Editor's

Note

These "meditations" belong

to the conferences

between Thomas Merton

Abbey of Gethsemani, in Kentucky, recorded on tape by the brothers, as was their custom. The informal quality of the conferences on Faulkner needs emphasis: Merton used few notes and moved his own concerns by directing questions to and eliciting comments from those participating in the conferences. For publication, he might well have rearranged the order and gone into more detail and depth on matters touched here only in passing. For a number of years, Merton had been studying Faulkner and spoke of bringing the wor\ together in a boo\. Had he lived to do so, he would probably have related other Faulkner novels and themes to his consideration of The Wild Palms. The opening section hints of this in the reference to "The Bear" and other stories and the community

in

of the

Go Down, Moses. This printed version of the informal tal\s

Merton

the continuity of phrasings.

One

or

s

To

retain the direction

and language

judgments was an obvious

tations" hold the

a studied effort to maintain

two awkward sentences may

Merton 's speaking about Faulkner was of editorial

is

informal presentations and preserve his

power

of

ing necessary to prepare

Merton

it

failure to be able to include

of

but not many.

as clear as his thinking about him.

of these talks decision.

The

Merton

amples of his robust humor and humanity.

and avoid an overlay

That

s insights despite

for print. all

slip in,

own

is

the

why these "mediminimum of edit-

chief regret editorially s "asides"

—those

is

the

splendid ex-

—fames Y. Holloway

1

The Wild Palms! it's

is

best to read

it

A rough but an

excellent book. Actually, as

as a meditation. Yes: a meditation!

we

shall see,

For The Wild Palms

another of Faulkner's symbolic presentations of deep, classic truths

man and human values. Strangely enough, the novel has never been widely appreciated. Many critics have failed to realize just how marvelous

about

This second transcription of Merton's conferences on Faulkner's The Wild Palms appeared in the

Summer

1975, issue of Katallagetc, edited by

James Y. Holloway.

5*5

K

rough book

—and not refectory

it is.

O.K. So

it's

tery!

But

nevertheless a profoundly

it is

a

"The

Faulkner's

moving work.

remember, was concerned with the

Bear," you'll

archaic world of nature, a world no longer with us

man

hunter,

—the world of man the

in direct contact with the wilderness,

understand nature, to

this real, natural

wisdom

The

it

man

and

brought up

to

so be deeply united

was

boy, Ike McCaslin,

initiated into

of the values of creation by the episodes Faulk-

And what was

ner relates in "The Bear."

What was

with

live in direct contact

with God's plan for the world.

have?

reading for a monas-

the result?

What

the value of this in his life? Well, Ike

effect

made

a

did this

kind of

monastic renunciation when he gave up his property. That renunciation

was to

own

land in the South was to be part and parcel of a system built on

slavery,

The

South was under a curse, that

his response to the conviction that the

making money and destroying

fourth part of

wanted no part of

Go Down, Moses (where "The

tains a long discussion

the traditional

nature. Ike

this.

Bear" appears) con-

between Ike and a cousin which one

critic says is

argument between the contemplative and the

active

life.

The

cousin argues against Ike's decision to give up his property, insisting

that

it's

a useless gesture;

South and should work

"The Bear"

no matter what he does he

cycle of stories

ation "successful"?

everybody

his land like is

where Ike

Does he become,

as

else.

comes

finally

is still

part of the

So a big question of out. Is his renunci-

were, a kind of saint?

it

Or

is

he

a kind of failure?

Keeping

this in

mind we want

to pass to

world of The Wild Palms. Actually,

this

two apparently unrelated

novels-in-one,

stories

themes for Faulkner while continuing others monastic vocations (at

least, in

honor, duty, and love. First of related stories," for

good

is

— the

a "double-novel,"

two

which open up some new

we have

already considered:

Faulkner's "world"), time, nature, man,

we need

all,

critics

another kind of world

book

to

underscore "apparently un-

have argued that these two

stories

("The

Wild Palms" and "Old Man" are the titles given to the two stories published as one novel, The Wild Palms) are in fact unrelated and each novel must be dealt with as a unit. (Malcolm Cowley's famous The Portable Faulkner, for example, carries only "Old Man," and it comes off pretty good, but in the final analysis "Old

When

is

Now

5 i6

insufficient

grasped, the double-novel takes us to a

meaning than

levels.

is

if it

stands alone.)

the connection between the two stories that Faulkner was trying to

bring about of

Man"

what

if

we

are these

much

tried to deal

with each one by

itself.

two

They

on

Faulkner gives us a

stories little

?

of

one

are pitched story,

then a

deeper level

entirely different

little

of the other,

piece by piece, one

on top of the

and

I'll

try to

do something

like

Suddenly, you realize that there's a real

for our considerations.

this

other,

work (and "counterpoint" is the word Faulkner used to describe what he was trying to do in The Wild Palms). While they are pitched on two different levels, they have one fundamental thing in common: each is the story of a man and a woman thrown into situations "counterpoint" at

where they are completely alone and

from the

isolated

rest of the

world,

engulfed in a flood, a "tidal wave" that threatens to destroy them.

With

a

theme

like that,

thing very basic!

man's

It's

man. Not

solitude of sense; that

we

can be sure Faulkner

to

do some-

solitude, the story of the cosmic, existential

man in the complete human being. For "man"

just man-as-an-individual,

man-and- woman, the complete

is,

going

is

but

The complete human being is man-and-woman: the message of Genesis. God made man in his own image, man-and-woman-hecreated-them. What we have in this double-novel is a meditation on the is

never alone.

chapter of Genesis: the mystery of

first

dise theme, but disaster

Faulkner paints

from two

despair; the other

hand

are

trast

but

One

goes deeper and deeper into

becomes more and more

a story of hope.

two

woman from city

sense,

people and those

less

touched by modern

two

people, the other

the old Faulkner con-

one

not simply that.

The two

utterly

are Mississippi

it is

woods

people.

One

natural level, becoming

more and more myth. The thing

Faulkner moves the two

woods people

who

presenting a sort of

the other

is

level

on an almost

stories is that these

is

the

preter-

that begins to

mythologically cast

and human than the modern ones. human! In them Faulkner seems to be quintessential humanity: they are man-and-woman

are even

They're the ones

civilization,

wrecked are modern bourgeois

social novel;

as

the one

totally indestructible people, the "tall convict"

Mississippi. In

modern, psychological,

emerge

On

two modern, extremely vulnerable, and ultimately wrecked

between

it is

even a Genesis-type para-

with deeply ironic hues, a paradise-in-

it

levels of disaster.

people; on the other,

and the

evil, sin,

more

real

are totally

and the other two, the moderns, are simply

a couple of poor, beat-up,

ruined people.

So what Faulkner has going here that

is

destiny;

a very interesting story.

is

man-and-woman

the solitude of

and beyond

that the

many

But beyond

—man completely human —against

contrasts

between two

stories of

two

people facing destiny. Let's get into this fantastic Faulkner meditation by treating the

two

Behind the

The

"tall

levels as

story in

convict"

is

he does, in a

"Old Man"

is

sort of counterpoint.

a monastery,

namely a penitentiary.

out of his monastery because of the great 1927

Mississippi river flood.

The

convicts in the monastery-penitentiary are

turned out to help in the disaster of the flood.

The one

idea, the

one pas517

sion of the "tall convict"

from the

was

tentiary everything

The

great events.

back into that penitentiary and away

to get

is

woman who had

been

quiet, peaceful,

and

them, the

man

a

where she

row boat

around

here"!

Then

to rescue a

rescues the

woman

"You took

On

several times they are almost killed.

top of

pregnant and has her baby with the help of the

mound

newborn with

Cajun

end up

in

from an old

registered as dead,

been to get back

They

and

By

so "free."

But

up and down

woman and

child

So

his

woman

is

tie

They bathe

the umbilical

his

A

officially

one determination has always

after

many months, with

all

woman. But

to a sheriff,

I

these

That

is

saying,

never did find that

strange, fantastic story that

tremendous description of the

destructable people in the boat.

had been

the floodwaters, he returns with the

"Yonder's your boat, and here's the

up with

the

washed up and down the

and gives himself up

bastard on the cottonhouse"! builds

river,

convict" on the top

this time, the tall convict

to the penitentiary.

fantastic adventures

are then

tree

the flood, and

this,

all

"tall

can and

tin

at

Louisiana where they live for a time with some

alligator hunters.

boat and

down one

in

covered with cottonmouth moccasins.

flood water

cord with one of his shoestrings. Mississippi,

bashed up

a long time getting

running backward

since the rivers are

of an Indian

stranded

by accident, coming up under the

they are swept off together in the rowboat,

up another,

the

woman

in circles, getting

perched, and she says simply,

is

no

surprises,

caught up alone in the rowboat and carried

"tall convict," gets

He

and well ordered, no

stranded on the roof of a cottonhouse. But one of

off in the currents of the flood,

every turn.

flood. In the peni-

convict and another one ("short, plump, hairless,

tall

quite white") are ordered out in a in a tree

by the

cast into his life

river

the level of "Old

Faulkner

and the two

in-

Man."

"The Wild Palms" story is quite different. It is not as the other a Mark Twain tall story, or a heroic story, rather just a sordid tale of modern, urban people. Faulkner pitches intern in

New

this

one on the psychological

Orleans meets a married

woman;

decide that they are going to have the perfect love, not marriage. Just love.

going

to live in 'sin' for

one

life to live

you

see as

it

life

they

fall

of love.

The well-known modern

It's

going

etc., etc., etc.

That

is

to

"We

does not matter what anybody says,

come what may,"

and

in love

pitch:

An

level.

what they

be are

we have do,

and

Faulkner builds the story up that they are wrecking themselves.

This story begins with a charactertistic Faulkner twist of time sequences: the beginning of the story of in the

5 i8

book)

is

actually the

"The Wild Palms"

end of the

(in fact, the first scene

story of these

two wrecked people.

It

begins on a beach on

Charlotte) are in a

Two

Gulf Coast.

the

run-down beach

Faulkner

cabin.

(Harry and

people

them

us see

lets

as

driftwood washed up on the beach, through the eyes of their neighbor,

who by

a doctor

who

trash, obviously

exactly too

the cabin.

"in

The

doctor wonders

money, appear

them pants

the

be

to

was

that

At

for her in just exactly the right places."

little

neighbor, without

Charlotte is

woman

not married, the

little

just

end of

"The Wild Palms" the man Harry comes to the knowing he's a doctor, seeking help, because the woman

section of

this first

she

them

his agent rented

these people are, for they obviously have

is

The

bleeding.

doctor goes to see about her and discovers that

And

bleeding because of a failed abortion. this story

cuts

oflF

vict

and the

and begins the

woman

that

But the beginning

in the flood.

where Faulkner

is

"Old Man" about the

story in

is

tall

con-

that Charlotte

is

bleeding to death because she insisted that the intern she had been living

with during the months recorded in other sections of "The Wild Palms"

He

perform an abortion on her. a complete mess of

and they rent

it,

out the consequences. In the sent to the

woman

two

stories in counterpoint,

Now:

a shanty

last section

same prison the

adventures with the

reluctant but finally attempts

is

ending, so to speak,

power of the

wait

to

is

Faulkner moves the

same

at the

way Faulkner moves

that the convict story

river

station.

is

these

two

the account

("Old Man"), which becomes

kind of mythical, symbolic expression of the tragedy of

loose in the lives of these other,

Where

tween the material on a cosmic

and

woman

in

modern, bourgeois people

the novel gets interesting scale in

is

in

let

"The Wild

in the correspondence be-

"Old Man" and the modern

"The Wild Palms" who

a

life itself. It is

Faulkner's expression in symbolic terms of the forces that have been

Palms."

is

convict" finally gets back to after his

"tall

counterpoint

stories together in a

on the Gulf Coast

"The Wild Palms" Harry

in the Mississippi flood.

the important thing about the

of the tremendous

of

makes

it,

man

are also engulfed in a flood, a

own making, but they don't realize it. They are typical, modern people who don't believe in anything, are convinced that death is the end of it, we live our lives since that's all there is. This is the deluge, a tragedy of their

basic faith of

modern man! This

get something out of

life

two-level novel finally

titanic flood, a

way

what people today think!

too late! This faith

to live!

tremendous

they are doing, without even

Reading these two

is

it's

torpedoes as he describes

stupidity: That's not the lives a

before

People

force,

knowing they

stories together,

who

is

its

try

it

I

want

to

what Faulkner's shallowness and let

loose in their

without even knowing what are also in a "flood."

you get from Faulkner a

far

more 5*9

how

effective description of faith,

without realizing

On

willfulness.

no "cosmic"

these

two modern people, with

their

modern

are gradually destroying their lives by their

it

own

modern story, there we witness the meaning of the willfulness of we see it in counterpoint to Faulkner's cosmic

this level of the psychological,

are

events, yet

man and woman

as

scriptions of the tall convict

and the

woman

this

de-

"Old Man." There

in

are

many, many correspondences. One example, the themes of life and death. On the one hand the fantastic birth story of the child in the flood on top

mound and

of an old Indian

events

the

of

And on

Louisiana and back again. abortion of child's)

the baby living

and thriving amidst

the

all

sweeping them from Vicksburg, Mississippi,

flood

the other level, the denial of

"The Wild Palms" which

and brings the man

takes the

to the penitentiary.

loaded with correspondences of

this sort.

That

is

woman's

to

the

life in

(and the

life

The novel as a unity is why the two stories must

be read together.

To

read a book like

forth in counterpoint sense,

it's

bol,

full of

and Faulkner

in the deluge.

The

Once you

it

see

way

a fantastic

on the

like a meditation

Faulkner was

how Faulkner

this, to see

is

saying that our

is

novel

of understanding

is

life is like

dominated by

in the tall convict

significance.

On

is

and the

woman; on who try to defy

ner it

woman from is

is

saying that this too

the flood of

know

We

are

Mississippi, the

deeply, with

the near-mythological, Faulkner presents one level

everything to live together for

it

We

deluge theme.

more

seen

the other level, in the behavior of the

and don't know

In a certain

being in the flood.

of dealing with the deluge in the episodes faced by the

the

back and

an eschatological sym-

this eschatological

deluge which overwhelms Charlotte and Harry

more

life.

Bible, or parts of the Bible.

Old Testament. Flood

the

refers things

is

life

tall

convict

and

two modern people

and love

alone. Faulk-

the deluge! Charlotte and Harry are living in

—the counterpoint to

the

tall

convict and

woman

in

"Old Man." Charlotte and Harry have been judged by God;

they are, so to speak, living under divine judgment and in disaster.

This

is

make. In

fact

Faulkner continually excels in saying things

His novels and

stories are far

more prophetic

life

O.K. But

and nature

in

just like this.

least,

any that

I

know!).

in terms that can be easily used in the

The Wild Palms, as in other Faulkner meditations on "The Bear"), I am convinced that we have before

(as in

us a better idea about

520

writer to

in the Biblical sense than

the writings of any theologian writing today (at

Faulkner doesn't express himself pulpit.

modern

a great, as well as unique, statement for a

man and

nature and values and

God

than can be

:

found

whole

in the

Theology Shelf

cal

Spiritual Directory,

That

as well.

The Wild Palms

read

is

and everything

why

seems

it

so important to

"Old Man" and read Faulk-

wonderful description of the convicts being removed from the peni-

— which

actually

more

only guards with shotguns

—and

tentiary

River flood.

is

He

describes

of the flooding river.

on

me

to

on the Mysti-

as a meditation.

Let's begin with the archetypical deluge in ner's

else

buildings floating by, apart until

some

disappears.

it

truck and by train to find themselves

convicts

Much

jump

all

directions, houses

and

and

barn

into the water

tear a

of this section reminds you of a picture by

—a

Hieronymus Bosch: strange things happening

plantation unaccount-

ably burning in the middle of the flooding water, this flame going

no human being there;

just the flame in the

victs get

signs.

work. Here, the

tall

lot

tall

of water.

Now,

all

of a sudden, in a

convict realizes something

mense power

The

con-

convict becomes aware of the

tremendous force of the flow of the water. Before that time, the

The

deeper into the situation created by the flood and finally arrive

a levee for rescue

been a

up and

middle of the water.

Faulkner creates an atmosphere with these apocalyptic

on

fences,

into the deluge of the 1927 Mississippi

water for miles in

see

no walls or

they get further and further into this void

They go by

Here they

a levee.

how

like a prison farm,

is

at

more than

manner

it

had simply

typical of Faulkner,

just a lot of water.

An

im-

work!

convicts arrive by train

Sometime they were.

after

dark the train stopped. The convicts did not

They did not

ask.

know where

They would no more have thought

where they were than they would have asked why and what

of asking

They windows fogged on

couldn't even see, since the car was unlighted and the

for.

the outside by rain and on the inside by the engendered heat of the packed bodies. All they could see flashlights.

was a milky and

sourceless flick

They could hear shouts and commands, then

the car began to shout; they were herded to their feet

and glare of

the guards inside

and toward the

exit,

the ankle chains clashing and clanking.

When khaki

they reached the top of the levee they could see the long line of

tents, interspersed

children, negro

with

and white

fires

about which people

—crouched

or stood

—men,

among

women and

shapeless bales of

clothing, their heads turning, their eyeballs glinting in the firelight as they

looked quietly levee,

at

the striped garments and the chains; further

huddled together too though untethered, was

two or three cows. Then the

taller

convict

a

down

the

drove of mules and

became conscious of another

521

:

He

sound.

did not begin to hear

had been hearing

that he

it

at once,

it all

he suddenly became aware

the time, a sound so

all

much beyond

all

his

experience and his powers of assimilation that up to this point he had been as oblivious of it as an ant or a flea might be of the sound of the avalanche

on which and

it

rides;

for seven years

he had been travelling upon water since early afternoon now he had run his plow and harrow and planter within

shadow of the levee on which he now stood, but this profound deep whisper which came from the further side of it he did not at once recognise. the very

He

stopped.

The

line of convicts

cars stopping, with

"What's that?" the convict fire

behind jolted into him like a line of freight

an iron clashing said.

A

like cars.

negro

"Get on!"

man

guard shouted.

a

squatting before the nearest

answered him:

"Dat's him. Dat's de Ole Man."

"The

old

man?"

the convict said.

"Get on! Get on up there!" the guard shouted. They went on; they passed another huddle of mules, the eyeballs rolling too; the long morose faces turning into and out of the of

empty

firelight; they

pup

tents, the light

passed

tents of a military

them and reached

a section

campaign, made to hold two

men. The guards herded the convicts into them, three brace of shackled

men

to

each

tent.

They crawled

on

in

tent

quiet and then

of

all

fours, like

all

down. Presently the

dogs into cramped kennels, and

became warm from

them could hear

it,

whisper deep, strong and powerful. "The old

their bodies.

Then

settled

they became

they lay listening to the bass

man?"

the train-robber convict

said.

"Yah," another

Then

the

tall

At dawn feet.

said.

at least,

don't have to brag."

convict sees the river by daylight

waked them by kicking

the guards

Opposite the

kitchen was

"He

muddy

the soles of the projecting

landing and the huddle of

skiffs

an army

up, already they could smell the cofTee. But the taller convict

set

even though he had had but one meal yesterday and that

the rain, did not

move

at

at

life

noon

once toward the food. Instead and for the

time he looked at the River within whose shadow he had spent the years of his

field

last

in

first

seven

but had never seen before; he stood in quiet and amazed

surmise and looked at the rigid steel-colored surface not broken into waves but

merely slightly undulant. ther than he could see

broken only by a thin hair,

which

forward:

522

stretched

line a mile

moment what we loo\

after a

quietly. That's looJ{s li\e

It

from

"Go

there.

on!

Go

from the levee on which he

stood, fur-

—a slowly and heavily roiling chocolate-frothy expanse

He was

away

as fragile in

he recognised. li\e

from

It's

there. That's

prodded from the

appearance as a single

another levee, he thought

what

I

am

standing on

rear; a guard's voice carried

on! You'll have plenty of time to look at that!"

This

last is a

very ironic sentence, because the

and what

plenty of experience with that river

convict

tall

is

going

to

have

about before the story

it's

ends!

Now

look back into these passages and consider the contrasts of

let's

Faulkner employs. All these people are

the different kinds of tonality

moving around almost mechanically, people turned out around

the flood, hovering

The

penitentiary.

Faulkner paints for

becoming"

—and

The

of life"!

tall

became aware beyond

all

us, the tall convict

The

that he

had been hearing and

point he had been as oblivious of

and enlightenment!

realization,

as

it

all

of a sudden

you are

up

to find this

immense

Now,

line;

—which

after a

That's like

line a

.

.

.

recognised. like

swoosh!

And remember ward

.

from

and

And way

.

.

.

is

where

you wake

a

is

little

thin

looks like from

it

broken only

and

I

am

real

standing on looks

and dependable and .

.

"as fragile in

also: this

.

is

a tremendous statement of something that

just to individuals but to the

definite as they

.

." .

human

for example.

man found

had been

not the archaic world of

before.

"The

infinite spaces, of a void,

it's

what

you find yourself suspended

seven miles up. Moreover, what Faulkner

world of

old,

over there

what

so solid

is

Bear."

When?

race.

As

if all

Well,

to-

of a sudden, the

that things weren't nearly

The

of the cosmos, with all those concentric circles

sages

It

to people in real life:

another levee, he thought quietly.

there. That's

whole picture changed and Western as solid

Faulkner excels in recording!

well! that's

.

It's

end of the Middle Ages,

the

an awakening, a

is

mile away as fragile in appearance as a single hair, which

appearance as a single hair

happens not

much to this

might be of the

flea

This

."!

.

roiling chocolate-frothy expanse

jrom there." Everything seemed .

an ant or a .

ground

he suddenly

at once,

the time, a sound so

what happens

moving!

is

and heavily

moment he what we loo\

suddenly

it all

roar that has been going on under your feet all

and where you're standing

by a thin

"being and

as "the metaphysical

however many) years

fifty-two (or

everything

there! "a slowly

—and

it all

rides

it

a kind of existential description of

the time!

movement

powers of assimilation that up

his

sound of the avalanche on which

is

like animals,

being-itself

is

you can think of

the jazz

homes by from the

suddenly becomes aware that there

river here

convict "did not begin to hear

his experience

all

in

in the midst of this picture of mechanical

another level of being.

is

moving mechanically,

convicts are also

And

into the tents.

of their

watching the convicts come

fires,

earth

around

was not the center it

and God

exactly

talking about in these pasIt is

the world of Pascal, the

and neither you nor anyone

else

knows

going.

523

— Then

there

the account of the convicts

is

when suddenly

ing chains,

the

his question immediately:

"What's that?" and the Negro Again, different

moving along

one stops and they

nobody knows why they

cars in a freight train but

knows why and answers

tall

to stop like

But the Negro

stop.

The

in their clank-

have

convict asks,

tall

"Dat's him. Dat's de Ole

says,

The

levels of being.

all

primitives are the ones

Man."

who

are

aware of the nature of things, while the more civilized people, the guards and white convicts move along mechanically on their line, not aware of

But

it.

down

later on, settled

One

of

them

then

all

of

them could hear

strong and powerful.

The

they lay listening to the bass whisper deep,

it,

man?'

old

the other said. 'He dont have to brag.'

The

"tall

man on

ately,

the train-robber convict said. 'Yah,' "

convict" and another ("short, plump, hairless, quite white")

are ordered into a rowboat to pick a

become aware of it. "Then they became quiet and

in their tents, they all

resents the river's bragging:

a cottonhouse

and

they are separated, the

up two people stranded

woman

a

tall

in a cypress snag.

convict swept along in the rushing flood-

who

reports

up the

story

waters but hidden in the rowboat from the other,

drowned the

around

to the

warden of the

convict

tall

is

penitentiary. Let's pick

where

in the current:

first

a id his

fast for

He

him.

violently

upward

know

still

away and

like

in

a

translation out of

held each time he fought back to the

surface and grasped at the spinning skiff

which

at

one instant was ten

feet

the next poised above his head as though about to brain him, until

he grasped the the

felt

he himself was in the water, struggling against the drag of

the paddle which he did not

at last

had not been warned, he had

snatching tug of the current, he had seen the skiff begin to spin

companion vanish

Isaiah, then

skiff,

him

clinging to the rowboat and oar as they are tossed

Things had moved too the

in the flood

Almost immedi-

stern, the

drag of

his

body becoming

rudder

a

to the

two of them, man and boat and with the paddle perpendicular

above them like

a jackstaff,

(who had vanished from

vanishing from the view of the short convict

that of the

tall

one with the same

vertical direction) like a tableau snatched offstage intact

celerity in a

with violent and

incredible speed.

He was now

in the channel of a slough, a bayou, in

which

until today

no

current had run probably since the old subterranean outrage which had created the country.

Typical! But bad geology. Faulkner geology has nothing to do with the

geology of Mississippi, which

5M

is

not the result of igneous rock being

pushed up and down but of there

bottom being eroded. Geologically,

a flat sea

was no "subterranean outrage"! But you can

picture Faulkner

is

how

see

into the

it fits

painting for us. Just try to grasp the implications he

would have us consider when he regards the

origin of

a "sub-

all this as

terranean outrage"!

There was plenty of current

in

it

now

though; from his trough behind

the stern he seemed to see the trees

and sky rushing past with vertiginous

down

the gouts of cold yellow in lugubrious

speed, looking

him between

at

and mournful amazement. But they were thought of

that,

fixed

and secure

something; he

in

he remembered in an instant of despairing rage the firm

earth fixed and founded strong and cemented fast and stable forever by the

generations of laborious sweat, somewhere beneath him, beyond the reach of his feet, when, and again without warning, the stern of the skiff struck

him

blow

a stunning

caused

him

across the bridge of his nose.

to cling to

it

now

gunwale with both hands

in order to grasp the

spun away again. With both hands

and

stern

lay

prone on

The

instinct

which had

caused him to fling the paddle into the boat

free

just as the skifT pivoted

now dragged

he

and

himself over the

streaming with blood and water and pant-

his face,

ing, not with exhaustion but with that furious rage

which

terror's after-

is

math. I

dare say that this

up by

his

own

is

boat in a flood! But

implications Faulkner

man

simply of a this is life!

monastic

This

life!)

an admirable description of a

is

more than

up and

tossed

way life goes! And when we know life gets the

being beaten

we must consider the The picture is not one

that,

trying to get before us!

getting beat

is

man

around in a

flood. Rather,

there are times (including the to

be exactly like the deluge

Faulkner gives us here.

My

notion

is

that this particular deluge journey

a mystical navigatio. tion of St.

Brendan

It's

like the

— during

is

close to

what

called

is

—the naviga-

Navigatio Sancti Brendani

which he goes

to those fabulous mythical

islands.

2

Now the

that we're into

two

The Wild Palms,

layers of being

let's try to

some impression of

get

Faulkner superimposes one on top of the other,

by the way he moves these two

stories.

each of the stories

an element of nature

is

his use of

kind of atmosphere. Maybe we should

Wild Palms,"

air; in

One

call

it

thing that comes through in to create a special

a "double element." In

"Old Man," water. Water, we

all

know,

is

"The

a very

525

— ambiguous element: death and here,

For

it is

life

And

life.

and death,

as the liturgy has

"Old Man"

clear that the deluge in

in the midst of this deluge

by water, the

is

swept madly back and forth, wholly unable about to have the baby

he can't

—the

the water,

—and

both

swim

on

is

pregnant, the two are

is

to help themselves. Just as she

living together in the deluge.

as

sticking

one of superabundant

deer, water moccasins, rabbits,

it,

woman

knows

ready to "ditch" her, but he

he's

which Faulkner pictures

thing that can

is

and death.

life

convict meets the

dumps them on an Indian mound

flood

Baptism

symbolic of

tall

perched in a tree trying to escape the flood. She

is

it.

while Faulkner was not being explicitly Christian

up above

life:

every-

chipmunks,

description of the eschatological

It is Isaiah's

kingdom, the "end of the world," dangerous and menacing animals living

man-made zoo but on an old Indian mound and, in the midst of this deluge comes new life, a human being. It is almost a kind of virgin birth, for no one knows about the father, he's totally together in peace, not in a

irrelevant to the point that the lously, in a flood

Without giving

on

this

woman

gives birth to the child, miracu-

a strange, eschatological

any

mound.

explicit Christian message,

us with an eschatological event, a renewal of

And

deluge.

the convict realizes that he

This must be put in counterpoint,

windy

where everything

hospital

with the element of wind and

The is

title itself

suggests the

air

palm

as

is

palm

wind

where Charlotte

is

creates

—

Faulkner does present

life

in the midst of the

Faulkner does,

and span

their

to the totally sterile,

—the

symbol of death

sounds in "The Wild Palms."

tree outside Harry's jail cell

imprisoned following the death of Charlotte. in the

shattering thing!

involved in this great renewal.

is

spic

and

A

The

where he

rattling of the dry

with the use of the sounds in the hospital

dying because of the abortion aimed

at life

—a fantastic

atmosphere of guilt! By merely suggesting the sounds in the hospital, Faulkner is able to convey the picture of Harry, who exhibits no expression of sadness, dejection, or despair. Faulkner gives us merely the sounds

which are going on around Harry

—sounds of wind, of

and somehow or other the sounds are

Now,

place, in Harry's place.

it's

air in movement we are put in the other's because we have identified so

so real that

our guilt

completely with the sound enveloping Harry in the hospital.

We

have

in

ourselves this awful feeling of desolation created by Faulkner's description of the

the

wind blowing up

jail.

There 526

This are

is

the seashore

and

into the hospital,

and

later into

one of the best things ever written by Faulkner!

many

other counterpoints in

The Wild Palms which symbol-

:

On

and death.

ize life

one

environment of the flood on the Indian mound, surrounded by

possible

kinds of animals and

all

but a tin can and the the symbol of sterile,

the birth of the child in the utterly im-

level,

windy

fire

On

life.

reptiles,

and hot water and the

convict's shoestring: here,

the other level, the absence of

hospital, the

an operation which

with nothing of use to aid in the birth

woman

in the totally

life

dying because she insisted willfully on

strikes directly at life: here, the

symbol of death. You

can work out here other fantastic correspondences between two levels of life

and death.

And from

The Wild Palms man-and-woman destined

another angle,

or two levels, of

presents contrasting notions,

be part of each other as

to

"one body." For Harry and Charlotte, sexual fulfillment was obviously not enough to

make them "one body"

that

fully

is,

nowhere, and in the end Charlotte continues only

memory. There (^'between grief is

is

no renewal

and nothing

is

It gets

.

On

the other level, there

convict and the

tall

woman,

the birth of the child presented as a renewal amidst

yet beall

scenes of destruction caused by the deluge. Perhaps because of his

acceptance of responsibility for the is

renewed

Now

woman and

the child, the

tall

the

own

convict

also.

let's

contrasts.

them

for Harry, just a prolonged "enduring

I will ta\e grief")

no sexual relationship between the

tween them

human.

as a "neutral reality" or

look a bit closer at a few more of the texts to bring out these

The

tall

convict

again beaten

is

flat

on

He

lay flat

his face in the

rowboat

by the flood waters This time he did not get up

at once.

on

face, slightly

his

spread-eagled and in an attitude almost peaceful, a kind of abject meditation.

He would

up sometime, he knew that, just as all life consists later and then having to lie down again sooner or later after a while. And he was not exactly exhausted and he was not particularly without hope and he did not especially dread getting up. It merely seemed to him that he had accidentally been caught in a situation in which time and environment, not himself, was mesmerised; he was behave

of having to get

to get

up sooner or

ing toyed with by a current of water going nowhere, beneath a day which

would wane toward no evening; when

him back

out of and in the meantime

it

not do. So he lay on his face,

did not

now

it

was done with him

it

would spew

world he had been snatched violently

into the comparatively safe

much

matter just what he did or did

not only feeling but hearing the strong

quiet rustling of the current on the underside of the planks, for a while longer.

Then he

raised his

head and

this

time touched his palm gingerly to

527

and looked

his face

blood again, then he

at the

sat

up onto

and expelled his thigh

and was

a gout of blood

when

wiping

in the act of

and

his heels

thumb and

leaning over the gunwale he pinched his nostrils between

finger

on

his fingers

a voice slightly above his line of sight said quietly, "It's

who up

taken you a while," and he

moment had had

to this

neither reason

nor time to raise his eyes higher than the bows looked up and saw, sitting

and looking

in a tree

A

him, a woman.

at

No

beautiful section!

one wrote

zooming

(As

in

man spitting blood, the woman in the tree "Old Man" was on TV not long ago. I didn't see

on the

a matter of fact,

of course! But I've heard

convict gets the partner, get the

it

was

But the book

pretty good.

is

determined

better!)

.

it,

The

up

to pick

.

his

authorities so he can return

But immediately they are swept madly away into the

which

River,

.

woman into the boat, still woman and boat back to the

to the penitentiary.

Yazoo

You can

with orders from the director about camera

see this thing being filmed,

angles,

like this before the movies!

in the flood

is

running backward,

not, as

he thinks,

toward, but away from Vicksburg. Then, the tidal wave:

And

he was not alarmed

though the

visibility

now

ahead, for

either because there

all its clarity,

was

the next instant to the hearing he

was not time,

did not extend very

also seeing

something such

for al-

far, yet in

as he

had

never seen before. This was that the sharp line where the phosphorescent

water met the darkness was instant before

dough being

and that

mane

pudding.

And

flickered like fire.

face

amazement, continued had time

to order his

paddle though the

hanging

higher than

it

had been an

itself like

a sheet of

reared, stooping; the crest of

It

gaped to

woman

while the

know

it

huddled in the bows, aware

which, he (the convict), his swollen

an expression of aghast and incredulous

in

paddle directly into

it.

Again he simply had not

rhythm-hypnotised muscles to cease.

skiff

had ceased

in space while the paddle

now

feet

of a galloping horse and, phosphorescent too, fretted

or not aware the convict did not

and bloodstreaked

about ten

was curled forward upon

rolled out for a

swirled like the

and

it

now

to still

move forward

at all

He

continued to

but seemed to be

reached thrust recovered and reached

became abruptly surrounded by a welter of fleeing debris planks, small buildings, the bodies of drowned yet antic animals, entire trees leaping and diving like porpoises above which the

again;

instead of space the skiff

—

skiff

seemed

to

hover in weightless and

fleeing countryside,

undecided where

while the convict squatted in

it still

skiff

bling

528

to stand erect on

up the curling wall

its

light or

whether

above a

to light

at

all,

going through the motions of paddling,

waiting for an opportunity to scream.

seemed

airly indecision like a bird

to

stern

He

never found

it.

For an instant the

and then shoot scrabbling and scram-

of water like a cat,

and soared on above the licking

:

and hung cradled into the high actual air in the limbs of from which bower of new-leafed boughs and branches the convict,

crest itself

bird in

nest

its

and

still

waiting his chance to scream and

a tree, like a

going through

still

the motions of paddling though he no longer even had the paddle now,

down upon

looked

world turned

a

to furious

motion and

in incredible retro-

grade.

From picks

this point on,

he hasn't even a paddle.

up a board, which he

and then

loses,

the shape of an oar. But this gives you

on a

On

mound, he

the Indian

tries to

burn a

limb into

tree

some idea of what

like to

it's

be

Mississippi River flood.

Then

mound;

they reach the

he's carrying the

woman

up, and she's

ready to have the baby "Let

me down!"

she cried. "Let

sobbing, and rushed again at the flat

crest

with

his

now

violently

me down!"

muddy

But he held

her, panting,

he had almost reached the

slope;

unmanageable burden when a

stick

was a sna\e, he

his foot gathered itself

with thick convulsive speed.

thought as his

beneath him and with the indubitable

feet fled

It

under

last

of his

woman up the bank as he shot medium upon which he had lived

strength he half pushed and half flung the

and face down back into that more days and nights than he could remember and from which he himself had never completely emerged, as if his own failed and spent flesh were feet first

for

attempting to carry out his furious unflagging will for severance

at

any

price,

even that of drowning, from the burden with which, unwitting and without choice, he had been doomed. Later

it

seemed

to

him

had carried

that he

back beneath the surface with him the sound of the infant's

first

mewling

cry.

Now

there's a child

leave the

woman and

born into the world. The

he cannot, regardless of section of

It

how

badly he wants

"Old Man," which

Wild Palms" becomes

tall

convict

still

return to the penitentiary, but he doesn't.

is

to.

(This

is

wants to

He knows

the

end of a

followed by a terrible section of "The

—a mine in Utah, scenes in San Antonio and New Orleans.

clear that

Charlotte, so "I will be

Then, back

Harry has bungled the abortion demanded by all

right

and

to the tall convict, the

it

will be us again forever

woman and

and

ever.")

the child. He's trying to

light a fire:

When

he returned with the wood and the dead rabbit, the baby, wrapped

wedged between two cypress-knees and the woman was not in the mud, blowing and nursing meagre flame, she came slowly and weakly from the direction of the

in the tunic, lay in sight, his

though while the convict knelt

water. Then, the water heated at last and there produced

from some where

529

know until the need woman will even wonder,

he was never to know, she herself perhaps never to

woman

comes, no

that square of his

perhaps ever to know, only no

something somewhere between sackcloth and

own wet garments steaming

and

child with a savage curiosity that at last he stood above

them

interest that

became amazed

both, looking

down

colored creature resembling nothing, and thought,

what severed me

and

cast

violently

me upon

a

from

medium

I

all I

was born

What

is

the

convict saying?

tall

And

to fear, to fetch

clay!"

A

up

and

these wild experiences in floods

born with only a

God—or

tin

providence

I

am. half of

when,

little bit

so to speak,

of

.

.

.

human

reality,

what

all this

at the tiny terra-cotta colored creature

And

trouble that a child

this is all.

not even

This to

This

is

up

one

life is

in

to

will

The

go

con-

him about

God's sight:

violently

me upon

at last in a place I never

God

bit of life!

the it is

"looking

safe:

resembling nothing, and

what severed me

not wish to leave and cast

to fear, to fetch

what? That somehow

might be born and be

worth

\new and did

for

flesh,

down

thought,

woman, through

waves, beaten continually by

tidal

an enlightenment comes

whole experience, the meaning of

all this, I've

the cottonmouth mocassins, a baby

can and shoestrings

one

it is

fantastic statement about provi-

—wanted this child to be born and safe!

to all this trouble for vict sees this

mound and

is

thing that looks like a piece of

this little

tremendous religious message, a

the rowboat, to the Indian

This

at last in a place

With Faulkner, you know,

dence. Faulkner has brought us, with the convict and the all

all.

not wish to leave

music. But the convict suddenly realizes, "I've gone through

been brought here because of

unbelief, so

this is

\now where

never saw before and where I do not even

1

— squatting,

at the tiny terra-cotta

\new and did

ever

silk

watched her bathe the

in the fire's heat, he

a

from

medium

I

all I

ever

was born

saw before and where

1

do

\now where I am.

level of

Faulkner's meditation on

death in "The

Wild Palms." Here,

life

we must

hold in counterpoint

the young, modern, urbanized,

and talented woman wants neither the trouble of more importantly, the implications of children in her relawith her lover. To perform an abortion is easy Harry had been

sophisticated, educated,

childbirth nor,

tionship

—

an intern, he had successfully performed the operation on another during their stay

Harry the life in

mining camp

resistance to life

the birth scene in

remember!)

is

in Utah.

society

woman

Here with Charlotte and

seen in counterpoint to the affirmation of

"Old Man." Faulkner makes here (and

a precise statement about the

ment on modern 530

at the

world we

and modern man. Say

in 1938,

live in. It is a

judg-

only, the birth control

:

issue

—and we may as well face up to few years about the

in the next

it,

there

going

is

to

be a

lot

of fuss

At the moment,

issue of birth control.

let's

not pass judgment, but simply record the tremendous swing in progress

toward a wholly different point of view about is

making

in

The Wild Palms. What

is

than the one Faulkner

life

being argued

tween the "person" and "nature," and the judgment

and more on the

side of "person" against "nature."

the difference be-

is

down more

going

is

There

is

certainly an

this in Charlotte's argument. Moreover, I know Catholic women who argue solemnly about a time when the differences between the sexes may be eliminated by some kind of biological stroke. In other words, it's not simply that women become "equal" to men, it's that women refuse to be held down by what they call a "binary life-style." Faulkner

element of

takes the other view: here

Thou

doesn't inflict death:

O.K.

is

is

and wind

air

who

talks to

him, goes in

they keep on waiting.

like to

and out

wait, nothing

And

listening.

This

tion of the noises, the sounds. it is

we have

dying, for here

those elements

"Old Man."

waiting in one of the corridors of the hospital; in the operating

They wait and

thing.

for a

Harry

life.

smoke

.

.

.

is

that sort of

first

section

is

a description of

what

be in a hospital

seemed

to

him

that he could smell,

stubborn lingering of

Now

with an

much really "happens," except that And we listen to Faulkner's descrip-

"Yes," Wilbourne said. There was no wind in here, no sound of it

Man

"The Wild Palms,"

in counterpoint to the water of

the doctors are trying to save Charlotte's

officer,

death.

is

shall not hjlll

where Charlotte

(and sounds) of

room

given by God. Here

life,

Let's get further into these contrasts seen in

the hospital

Harry

is

it

it,

though

not the sea, at least the dry and

in the oyster shells in the drive:

low

this idea of the smell of

miasma, the smell of

if

evil,

which

tide is

is

very important here: the tragic

the source of the tragic disaster and

the punishment of the gods, symbolized by the low-tide smell, this awful sense of a completely rotten existence that ashore.

The

and then suddenly the corridor became voices of lised

comes when the wind blows

passage continues:

human

fear

and

travail

full of

sound, the myriad minor

which he knew, remembered

vacuums of linoleum and rubber

soles like

wombs

into

—the carbo-

which human

beings fled before something of suffering but mostly of terror, to surrender in little monastic cells all the

burden of

of functional independence, to

become

lust

as

and desire and

embryos for

pride, even that

a time yet retaining

53 1

a

still

of the old incorrigible earthy corruption

little

—the

light sleeping at

hours, the boredom, the wakeful and fretful ringing of

all

bells be-

little

tween the hours of midnight and the dead slowing of dawn (finding per-

good use

cheap money with which the world was

haps

at least this

now

glutted and cluttered); this for a while, then to be born again, to

emerge renewed, courage

Very

for the

to bear the world's

weight for another while

as

long as

lasted.

ironic: the hospital

room

what kind of

reborn. But

is

a kind of

Rather, a kind of mechanical thing hospital rooms.

The

womb

where people go

to

be

Certainly not a spiritual rebirth!

rebirth?

—in

and

passage which follows

is

out, mechanically, of the

where Faulkner

so

is

good

with the particular sounds of the hospital:

He

could hear them up and

down

the corridor

the immediate sibilance of rubber heels

murmur

He knew

of voices about nothing.

down

nurse came

—the

and starched it

well:

tinkle of the bells,

the querulous

skirts,

and now

still

another

the hall, already looking full at him, slowing as she passed,

looking at him, her head turning as she went on like an owl's head, her eyes quite wide and filled with something beyond just curiosity and not at

all

shrinking or horror, going on.

Quite a picture! With sees the nurse she's

looking

thing!

it,

Faulkner puts you in the man's position. Harry

him and

looking at

at!

The nurse

is

then,

you suddenly

looking right

at

me!

I've

me

realize: that's

done

this horrible

Harry watches the door of the operating room:

Again the door went inward on with that iron

silently to

which was

finality

so false since even

it

tires

and returned, clapped

that illusion of iron impregnability

from here he could

frame by one side only, so that a the officer said. "Just take

rubber

its

and

see

how

child, a breath, could

easy. They'll fix her up.

swung

it

move

in

its

"Listen,"

it.

That was Doc Richard-

son himself."

Trying

to console

him, the

officer tells

Harry some long

tale

about the

doctor they had just glimpsed in the operating room. Then:

Wilbourne discovered

that he really could smell the sea, the black shallow

slumbering Sound without surf which the black wind blew over. corridor,

nurses not two patients, two females but not necessarily two

then beyond the same elbow one of the tory, the

two

voices

murmuring

laughing not two women, the

little bells

women

tinkled, fretful,

on, then they both laughed,

little

querulous

frenzied, the laughter continuing for half a

532

Up

the

beyond an elbow, he could hear the voices of two nurses, two

bell

becoming

even,

peremp-

two nurses

irascible

minute longer above the

and bell,

:

then the rubber soles on the linoleum, hissing faint and It

was the

blew over

sea he smelled; there in

it,

in his lungs,

was the

up near the top of

that again but then he had expected to have

ing shallower and shallower as

a dumping-place, for the black sand

it

beach the wind

his lungs,

had

going through

fast

strong breath grow-

at last

found a receptacle,

each

to,

his heart

if

the bell ceased.

fast;

taste of the black

dredged and pumped

and now

at:

he got up too, not going anywhere; he just got up without intending

to,

the officer at the entrance turning at once, snapping the cigarette backward.

Faulkner

identifies

Harry with the harbor.

can't breathe. Charlotte

have been living in tried to

become a

dying, and he

is

this sort of

sort of

low

It's

tide for

Harry

too.

He

dying with her because they

is

symbiotic relationship.

"one-body" by losing each

The two

self in

of

them

the other,

and

ended by destroying each of them.

The

officer

comes back

But Wilbourne made no further move and the

officer

slowed; he even paused

door and flattened his hat-brim against it, against the moment. Then he came on. He came on, because Wilbourne saw him; he saw the officer as you see a lamp post which happens to be between you and the street because the rubber-tired door had opened again, outward this time {The Kliegs are off, he thought. They are off. They are at the light-slashed

crack for a

now.) and the two doctors emerged, the door clashing soundlessly

off

behind them and oscillating sharply once but opening again before

it

to

could

have resumed, re-entered immobility, to produce two nurses though he saw

them only with

that part of vision

which

saw the

still

officer

because he was

watching the faces of the two doctors coming up the corridor and talking one another in clipped voices through their mouth-pads, their smocks

to

flickering neatly like the skirts of

and he was right.

Take

sitting it

down

easy,"

two women, passing him without

again because the

and he found that he was

on, pinch-waisted like

two

him

a glance

said,

"That's

two doctors going

smocks snicking behind

too, in a face-pad also, not

looking

he (Wilbourne) sitting on

either, her starched skirts rustling on,

the hard bench, listening: so that for a

elbow

sitting, the

ladies, the skirts of the

them, and then one of the nurses passed at

officer at his

moment

his heart evacuated

him,

him globed in remembered wind murmured,

beating strong and slow and steady but remote, leaving silence, in a

round vacuum where only the

to listen in, for the rubber soles to sibilate in, the nurse stopping at last

beside the bench and

now

he looked up after a space.

"You can go now," she said. This

is

a terrific scene!

Think about

the noises!

These are

noises

you don't

—the noises of feet and skirts flicking,

hear in the hospital rooms

coats of doctors, starched skirts of nurses

.

.

.

You

starched

hear these ominious

533

:

sounds when you're on the operating table getting ready to be anesthetized!

Another indication by Faulkner of the symbiotic relationship be-

tween Harry in the corridor and Charlotte in the operating room. room, there

floor of the operating

like that to

is

only empty space

On

the

—no beds and things

deaden the sound. Rather, wide corridors and people moving

around; rubber-tired things going by, rubber-soled shoes, you, that's where you hear that kind of sound

before they begin to chop you up! That's

Faulkner

particular series of sounds

what

tell

flat just

associated with this

is

on the operating

describing. You're

is

can

etc. I

—when you're out

table, you're helpless, full of

dope, not yet out, but lying there unable to

move even

You're drugged. All you can do

you wanted

if

and hear these sounds

they're

floating in.

You

and hear these sounds and

there

lie

to.

going

don't

is lie

there

up and look around. You

sit

see these faces

and wonder when

knock you out completely! That's the kind of atmosphere

to

by sounds Faulkner gets into the situation.

Then, there

is

a bit

where Harry goes and looks

body

at Charlotte's

as

they take her out

There was no

if

it

had no weight

motion again, wheeling

sibilantly,

hear

it

to the wall, a button clicked

cut short off as

if it

had run

dous silence which roared nothing for him

to

roaring on, leaving lids.

hold

picking

said.

and

at all

it

came onto

stretcher whispered into

when Then it was gone. He could not. The nurse reached her

hand.

he could

and the

full-tilt

him blinking

"Come," the nurse

his

hum

of the blower stopped. It

into a wall, blotted out by a tremen-

down upon him

to,

The

either.

sucking through the door again

now stood with his hat in for a moment longer. Then

the officer

hand

now

especial shape beneath the sheet

the stretcher as

him

steadily

like a

wave, a

and there was

sea,

up, tossing and spinning

and painfully

at his

him and

dry granulated

"Doctor Richardson says you can have a

drink."

What roared

stands out in that passage? Yes, "the tremendous silence which

down upon him wave

like a

wave, a sea

.

.

."

Faulkner brings in the

again, but completely a mental tidal

image

of the tidal

Harry

like the physical tidal

wave which

carried

away

the

wave

tall

hitting

convict and

the

woman

his

world has collapsed. They have taken out the body of Charlotte, and

he's left

"Old Man." Harry

The importance

of

are listening to a writer

to do with words!

534

is

completely shattered by this wave,

with nothing.

Listen!

we

in

It's

good

marking well

these Faulkner passages

who \nows how to

to write,

is

that

who knows what

have that once in a while!

We

get this sort

of thing with

we

time

The

Harry

close out.

jail

was somewhat

now

is

places,

power and

are not in the presence of such

To

Well.

words in the Bible and a few other

in a

jail.

but most of the

with words.

creativity

Again, the element of wind:

like the hospital save that

it

was of two

storeys,

no oleanders. But the palm was

there. It was just more shabby; when he and the officer passed beneath it to enter, with no wind to cause it it had set up a sudden frenzied clashing as though they had startled it, and twice more during the night while he stood, shifting his hands from time to time as that portion of the bars which they clasped grew warm and began to sweat on his palms, it

square, and there were

window,

outside his

bigger,

clashed again in that brief sudden inexplicable flurry. to fall in the river

and he could smell

where

and the heads of shrimp

oyster shells

Then dawn

that too

Then

—the sour

rotted,

the tide began

smell of

salt flats

and hemp and old

piling.

began '(he had been hearing the shrimp boats putting out for

some time) and he could

see the

draw bridge on which

the railroad to

New

Orleans crossed standing suddenly against the paling sky and he heard the

New

Orleans and watched the approaching smoke then the train

train

from

itself

crawling across the bridge, high and toylike and pink like something

bizarre to decorate a cake with, in the

the train to

was gone, the pink smoke. The palm beyond the window began

murmur, dry and

sea, steady

and

of creosote

and

away and now

it,

feet

man

entered with a tin

jailer

coffee cake.

There

is

the monastic

life

He

bars.

stood

The

comes back

that

standing life

a chance to

I

tide

and you sense

he comes back to

As

and the

stairs

mug

"You want anything

of

else?"

"Any meat?"

sense of this

trial,

on the

hanging onto the

in a way.

morning breeze from the

and old vomit; the sour smell of the flats went would be a glitter on the tide-chopped water, the gars up and then down again among the floating garbage.

down. But then the with

the cool

tobacco-spit

has Harry been doing?

jail cell,

felt

clean and iodinic in the cell above the smell

and a piece of factory-made

said.

What

salt,

there

Then he heard he

and he

steady,

with

filled

roiling sluggishly

coffee

sun that was already hot. Then

flat

life is

night at the

tide has

coming back

window

of his

gone down, he has gone

in again, the fresh

night at the

all

all

morning breeze

You

into Harry.

window

of his

cell,

get the

dead.

Then

with the return of morning. Death and resurrection,

an interlude where some bizarre things happen

commit

suicide

which he

rejects

—his

and instead embraces

of a penitentiary.

said at the beginning,

monastic vocations.

Or

one theme of The Wild Palms

rather,

two

of them.

The one Harry

is,

in a

way,

decides for

is

535

certainly not the highest kind, but he does decide for

he determine? I will

To

take grief"!

grieve.

He

will

His

last

spend the

freedom, which perhaps he had

submerged

so completely

This

is

— which

is

it is

of the convict

much

for

what

When

his

it is

in

to be

other.

mind: the man-and- woman

human

—can never be a com-

two people become wholly submerged

destruction, not love

and the

own autonomy,

end up only destroying each

to say,

pletely symbiotic thing.

another death

with Charlotte because they were

something Faulkner obviously has

each other,

So

to recover his

lost

does

and nothing

in each other, so completely trying to be lost

in the other, that they could

relationship

And what

grief

rest of his life grieving:

and rescurrection motif. Harry seems

own

it.

words are "between

— which

is

in

the counterpoint to the story

woman in "Old Man."

The Wild Palms

as Faulkner's meditation

on two men and

two women,

tidal

waves, deaths and resurrections, ending, in whatever

one wants

make

of

tentiary.

536

to

it,

a sort of monastic vocation in a Mississippi peni-

INDEX "Aboard the Early Trains" (Pasternak), 60 Abraham, 269, 331,334 Absalom! Absalom! (Faulkner), 117, 119 "Absurd, The" (Camus), 222 Achievement

of

The

Faulkner,

William

(Millgate), 103n

Acts of the Apostles, 169, 33 In Adam and Eve, 29, 47-48, 254, 331, 334,

367-69 Adams, Henry, 392, 470 Addison, Agnes, 470-71 "Aerial

Ways"

Dies the

Swan (Hux-

492

Camus:

the

Artist

Arena

the

in

(Parker), 228n Alberti, Rafael

(1902-

),

xv,

Alexander, F. Matthias, 461, 493

Alexander of Epirus, 420

The

(Stalin's wife),

62

Collected Short Poems, 1956-1964

Thomas

J. J.,

4

American Benedictine Review, The, American Pax, ix, 23n Americas, 37 In Andrade, Jorge

ix,

355n

(St.

John of the

Cross), 349

Atherton, James S., 14 Auden, W. H., xv, 346, 474 St., 5, 184, 188, 206, 209, 214, 235, 265, 287, 292, 347, 367, 369, 422,

Augustine,

451, 482 Autobiography (Muir), 32-33

Barbauld, Mrs., 397 Bardesanes, the Babylonian, 422

Bartholozzi, Francesco, 396 Basilides (gnostic), 209,

422

Basire, James, 396, 398, 411

Carrera

(1903-

),

xv,

318n, 318-20 Angelico, Fra,

(Ross Labrie),

Barry, James (R.A.), 402, 403, 404, 412 Barthes, Roland, (1915), xv, 140-46

(Zukofsky), 128n Altizer,

Thomas Merton, The

116, 497

Allegory of Love (Lewis), 476

Nadezhda

(Merton),

483-87

Bacon, 8, 460 Baldwin, James, 169, 172, 173, 174 " 'Baptism in the Forest' Wisdom and Initiation in William Faulkner" (Merton), 92-

Aleixandre, Vicente, 313

All:

Artaud, Antonin, 92n, 96n "Art of Richard Hughes, The"

313-17

Albrecht-Carrie, Else, x

Alliluyeva,

462 Art and Scholasticism (Maritain), 307, 43 In, 452 "Art and Spirituality" (Leonard), 347

xiv

Aiken, Conrad, 117, 118, 123 Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (Cruickshank), 223n, 223-25 Albert

(Watson), 400

"Ascent of Mount Carmel"

Many a Summer

ley), 490,

An

Aristotle, 96, 399, 439, 440, 442, 450,

Art of

(Pasternak), 60

Bible,

Areopagitica (Milton), 252

xii,

Aeschylus, 174, 466 After

Apology for the Apuleius, 399

xiii,

497, 515n, 516, 523

397, 411, 449

Angelo of Foligno, xv "Annotations to Reynolds"

Baudelaire, Charles, 255, 310, 346, 361, 375 "Bear, The" (Faulkner), 94, 102-16, 118, Beavis,

(Blake),

393n,

408, 413, 432n, 433n, 436n, 437n, 440n,

443n, 446n, 448n, 449n, 450n

Anthony, 461

Bennett, Arnold, 12 J. M., 474, 475 Berdyaev, Nicholas, 4, 49-50, 68, 279

Berdan,

"Annotations to Swedenborg" (Murry), 424 "Answer of Minerva: Pacifism and Resistance in Simone Weil, The" (Merton),

Berger, Pierre, 452

xiii, 134-39 "Answers on Art and Freedom" (Merton), xvi, 375-80 Antic Hay (Huxley), 458 Antigonus Gonatus, 420 Antiochus of Syria, 420 Aphorisms (Blake), 402 Apocalypse, The, 44 Apollonius of Tyana, 420, 420n

Bernanos, Georges, 134

Bergson, Henri, 49, 307, 490 Berkeley, George, 412

Bernard of Clairvaux, St., 335n, 346, 368 Berrigan, Daniel, 181n

Berryman, John,

xii

Beyond the Mexique Bay (Huxley), 459 Bhagavad-Gita, 355, 415, 418, 452 Bibliographic Universale des Voyages, 415n Bibliography of William Blaise, A (Keynes), 403n, 452

537

Bibliotheque Universelle des Voyages (Richardiere),

Butor, Michel, 141

Thomas, 407, 447 Byron, 406n, 447, 482

415n

Butts,

Birnbaum, Milton, 94 Blair, Robert, 401, 402 Blake and Milton (Saurat), 398n, 453 Blake and Modern Thought (Saurat), 414n, 453 "Blake and the New Theology" (Merton), 3-11

(1757-1827), ix, xi-xv, 330-31, 122, 218, 292, 314, 347, 385453, 477, 481, 482

Blake, William 11,

94 Blissett, William, 14, 22 Blok, Alexander, 45, 58, 61 Bloy, Leon, xiii, 307 Bodmer, Johann Jakob, 402 Blehl, Father,

Boehme, Jakob,

4,

Book for a Rainy Day (Smith), 398n Book of Los, The (Blake), 428 Book of Thel (Blake), 399, 448 "Book of Urizen, The" (Blake), 425n, 426, 428, 428n

Brecht, Bertolt, 141, 146, 163, 164

406n

Bree, Germaine, 205, 205n, 222, 226, 226n,

227, 233n, 234n, 288

422n

402

Marquita, x Brendan, St., 525 Brodtkorb, Paul, Jr., 102n Brooks, Cleanth, 123 Breit,

123,

Nihilism?"

Survive

(Merton), 323n,

xv,

Carrere, Brother Daniel, x

ix,

26 In 490n

ix, xii,

Cezanne, Paul, 468 Chagall, Marc, 308, 314 Chamberlain, Neville, 135 Chamber Music (Joyce), 19-21 Chao-Chu, xv Chapone, Mrs., 397 Charlatan, ix, 124n Char, Rene, xv, 141, 270 Charron Pierre, 136 Chateaubriand, Francois Rene, Vicomte de,

Thomas, 397

19-20, 23-25, 39, 43-

Christ, Jesus, 4-11,

54-55, 67-68, 71, 77, 79, 80, 107, 135, 151, 165, 166, 215, 235, 258, 259, 277, 282, 286, 287, 315, 336, 337, 343-46, 368-70, 405, 425, 50,

Bryant, Jacob, 414, 41 4n, 415, 421, 452

Budgen, Frank, 12 of the Institute for Study

The (Kafka), 201

Chomsky, Noam, 27

Bruce, Harold, 40 In, 452 Bruckberger, Father Raymond, 265 Brueghel, Pieter, xiii, 411

of

US.S.R., 63n

the

101,

255, 318, 429,

430, 449, 481, 489, 504, 510-13 Christian Metaphysics (Tresmontant), 269n

Chrysostom, Dio, 420

Burdett, Osbert, 395, 395n, 452

Burgess, Anthony, 13, 13n

402, 404

Burning Oracle, The (Knight), 481-82

53»

57, 78,

122,

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 395 Cheyney, Sheldon, 468 Chiaromonte, Nicola, 226

Karamazov (Dostoevsky), 44 417n Browne, Thomas, 467

Edmund,

118,

276

Brothers, Richard, 417,

Burke,

114,

(1925), 323-24 Carlyle, Thomas, 460 Carnets (Camus), 241, 292, 299

Chatterton,

Brothers

Bulletin

92-96,

Catholic World, The,

415n, 452

Bourdon, Sebastien, 411 H. N., 399n, 452 Bread in the Wilderness (Merton), 327n

J. J.,

90,

Catholic Worker, The,

Brailsford,

Breitinger,

88,

Cardenal, Ernesto

Castle,

210

Boucher, Catherine (wife of Blake), 398

Brehier, Emile, 422,

Camera Obscura (Nabokov), 464 Camus, Albert, (1913-1960), xiv-xv,

Cassian, John, 294

Bosch, Hieronymus, 33, 521

I.,

Caldwell, Erskine, 123, 498n Caligula, 360

"Can We 252n

St., 343, 346, 347, 349 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 88

Bredvold, Louis

Caesar, 5, 80, 460 Caiaphas, 8

219-301 "Camus and the Church" (Merton), 261-74 Camus (Germaine Bree), 205n, 226, 226n, 227, 233n "Camus: Journals of the Plague Years" (Merton), 219-31

365, 394, 446

la Richardiere, G.,

for F. Pessoa),

134, 140,

Bonaventure,

Boucher, de

(pseudonymn

309

85,

Bohr, Niels, 216 Boleyn, Anne, 314

Bossuet, Jacques B., 209,

Cabaud, Jacques, 134, 135, 136, 139 Caeiro, Alberto

Chuang Tzu, xv City of God, The

(St.

"City without a Soul, Civilization

and

Its

Augustine), 5

The" (Merton),

xi

Discontents (Freud), 18

"Classical Values in

(Merton

lectures),

William Faulkner, The" 497

Clement of Alexandria, 100 Cohen, Hermann, 58 Coindreau, Maurice-Edgar,

93,

111,

11 In,

123 Coleridge, E. H., 452 Coleridge, Samuel T., 29-30, 448, 451, 452,

479 in

ture), 343,

The,

117n, 128n, 498n

ix,

Hexaemeron

(St.

Bonaven-

457, 458 Crossman, R. H. S., 472-73 Cruickshank, John, 93, 223n, 223-225 Cuadra, Pablo Antonio, (1912321n, 321-22, 323 Cuban Journal, The (Merton), xii Cumberland, George, 399, 400, 404 Cumberland, Richard, 404 Cust, Lionel,

),

xv,

402n

369

Poems (Muir), 31-34, 3 In Poems of Thomas Merton, The, 307n, 309n, 310n, 311n, 318n, 321n

Collected

Collected

xv,

Collins, Carvell, 123

"Colonial

Critic,

Crome Yellow (Huxley),

Claudel, Paul, 344

Collationes

Crebillon, Claude Prosper Jolyot de, 459

War

and

Mental

Disorders"

(Fanon), 299

Dante, Alighieri,

Colossians, Letter to the, 345, 369

Columbia Review, The, ix, xi, 457n, 483n Columbia Spectator, The, xi Columbia Yearbook., The, xi Combat, 220, 228 Commonweal, ix, 338n "Compson Appendix" (Faulkner), 117 Comus (Hayley), 407 Concerning the Angels (Alberti), 313n, 31317

"Concerning the Beautiful" (Plotinus), 399

The

(Styron),

152n Confucius, 460

on Original Composition Young), 447, 447n, 453 Conmee, S. J., Father, 15 Conjectures

xiii,

20, 49, 344, 367, 395,

402, 433, 466, 482

Coltrane, John, 383

Confessions of Nat Turner,

Daggy, Robert E., x Daily Mail (London), 76 Damon, Samuel Foster, 3, 398, 398n, 399, 399n, 421, 421n, 452 Daniell's Oriental Scenery, 415 Danielou, Jean Cardinal, 332n

(E.

Dario, Ruben, (1867-1916), xv, 305-6, 322

Darwin, Charles, 459 Daudet, Alphonse, 145 David King, 329, 330, 331, 334, 335, 337, 417 Davidson, William, M.D., 355n Davies, J. Llewellyn, 453 Leonardo da Vinci, 411, 469 Davis, John, 452 "Day of a Stranger" (Merton), xv Death of General Wolfe (Blake), 403 De Deligendo Deo (St. Bernard), 33 5n Defense of Art (Herter), 468-69 Degrees of Knowledge (Maritain), 307 De Hominis Opificio (St. Gregory of Nyssa), 368

Conrad, Joseph, 118 Conscience of fames Joyce, The (O'Brien), 16-18

"Delta Autumn" (Faulkner), 103 Deputy, The (Rolf Hochhuth), x, 162, 162n,

Constantine, 5

Descartes, Rene,

Contemplation in a World of Action (Merton), xiii Continuum ix, 305n, 313n Coomaraswamy, Ananda K., 365n, 365-70, 409n, 422, 422n, 423, 431n, 432n, 435, 437n, 441n, 442n, 445n, 448n, 452 Corinthians, Letter to the, 342, 354 Corman, Cid, 128 Cornell, Thomas, 26 In Cornford, F. M., 99 Cortes, Alfonso (1893-1969), xv, 311-12,

"Descriptive

,

311n Country Wife, The (Wycherley), 465 Cowley, Malcolm, 117 Cowper, William, 395, 402 Cranston, Maurice, 182, 182n Craven, Thomas, 468 Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (Maritain), 99, 366n, 367

266 297

Catalogue"

(Blake),

395n,

403n, 408, 413, 414, 415, 415n, 418, 419 Descriptive Sketches (Wordsworth), 400 De Trinitate (St. Augustine), 367n Detweiler, Robert, 101

Deutscher, Isaac, 41, 56

Dewey, John, 461, 468 D. H. Lawrence and Susan His dall), 488-89

Cow

(Tin-

Diary (Robinson), 410n, 413n, 453 Dickens, Charles, 123, 498n of National Biography,

Dictionary

402 n,

416n, 417n Dictionnaire de Spiritualite, 347 Diego, Gerardo, 313 Different

Drummer,

A

(William

Melvin

168n, 169, 170, 173 Dinter, Paul E., x Kelley),

xiii,

Disputed Questions (Merton),

xii,

37n, 39n

539

Divine Comedy, The (Dante), 466, 482

Evagrius, 294

Divine Milieu, The (Teilhard de Chardin),

Evans, Fallon, 147n Everlasting Gospel (Blake), 413

90 Dr. Zhivago (Pasternak), 37-91 Doherty, Baroness Catherine de Hueck, Don Juan and Other Satirical Poems

Everson, William (Brother Antoninus), 355n xii

Donne, John, 462, 463, 477 Dostoevsky, Fedor M., 43-45, 68, 71, 92, 118, 123, 163, 185, 498n Dubliners, The (Joyce), 20

Fable,

Dudintsev, Vladimir, 42 Dufy, Raoul, 308 Elegies (Rilke), 314

Fall,

90 Early Tudor Poetry (Berdan), 474 Eckhart, Meister, 5, 436, 442 Eco Contemporaraneo 375n Ecclesiastes, 88, 89,

,

64-65

Eichmann, Adolf, 165

222n, 229-30, 264, 277 Fanon, Frantz, 299-301 Farington (diarist), 411 Fasti (Ovid), 395 Father's

Memoirs

of his Child,

"Elegy" (Gray), 470 El Greco, 468

EHade, Mircea, 288 331 Eliot, T. S., 31-33, 31n, 57, 99, 314, 346, 452, 462 Elliot, George, xiii Ellis, E. J., 428n, 452, 453 Ellmann, Richard, 21, 21n Emblems of a Season of Fury (Merton), 307n, 310n, 311n, 318n, 321n Encounter, 182n Ends and Means (Huxley), 457, 457n, 458, 459, 461, 490 "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" (Byron), 406n Elias,

The (Powys), 466-

67

Enneads (Plotinus), 399, 432n Ephesians, Letter to the, 368n, 369 Epigrams (Cardenal), 323

Erasmus, 474, 475

Faulkner,

a

Collection

of

Critical

Essays

William, (1897-1962), xiv-xv, 92-123, 156, 157, 185, 218, 317, 497-536 Faust (Goethe), 87, 466 Fedin, Konstantin Aleksandrovich, 76 Faulkner,

102n 64 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 5, 280 Figures for an Apocalypse (Merton), 338n Finnegans Wa\e (Joyce), 12-14, 53, 143, 488 Fire Next Time, The (Baldwin), 169, 173 "First Man, The" (Camus), 222 "Flannery O'Connor: A Prose Elegy" (Merton), 159-61 Flaubert, Gustave, 20 Flaxman, John, 394n, 397, 399, 400, 401, 402, 404, 406, 407, 412 Feidelson, Charles,

Jr.,

Feltrinelli, (publisher),

Flies,

The

"Footnote

A"

(Sartre), 163

From

Ulysses: Peace and Revolu(Merton), 23-28

Forest, James,

"Essais Critiques" (Barthes), 146

Forster, E. M.,

Essay on Sculpture (Hayley), 406 Essays (Bacon), 8

Foucault, Michel, 121

and

(Blake),

by Robert Penn Warren), 117n, 498n "Faulkner and His Critics" (Merton), 11723 "Faulkner Meditations: The Wild Palms" (Merton), 515-36

Erigena, Scotus, 5 Esenin, Sergei Aleksandrovich, 61

Essays on Literature

A

(ed.

Einstein, Albert, 49

of Literature,

(Faulkner), 119, 120

394

Edward, the Confessor, 396

Enjoyment

A

and Violence (Merton), xiii, 134n The (Camus), 185, 186, 200, 218,

Faith

Durer, Albrecht, 393, 411 Dylan, Bob, 35, 315

Ilya, 43, 57, 62,

493 Ezekiel, 156, 317

Fadiman, Clifton, 117, 119 Faerie Queene (Spenser), 336, 481 Fairchild, Hoxie Neale, 479-80 "Fair Eleanor" (Blake), 394

Duccio di Buoninsegua, 411

Ehrenburg,

and the Kingdom (Camus), 222n Gaza (Huxley), 457, 461, 490,

Exile

Eyeless in

(Byron), 406n

Duino

Examiner, 402

Society (Muir), 34,

34n

The (Muir), 34-35, 34n

tion,

26 In 22

Foucauld, Charles de, 280

Foundations

of Richards, and

Aesthetics,

The

(Ogden,

Wood), 453

"Europe" (Blake), 427n

Four Quartets (Eliot), 314 Four Zoas, The (Blake), 400n, 405, 406, 426n, 428, 428n, 429n, 436n, 447

Eusebius, 419

Fox, Peggy, x

Estate of Poetry,

Euripides, 122

540

St., 129, 240, 344, 451, 478 Franny and Zooey (Salinger), 101 Frazer, James, 489 Freedgood, Seymour, xii "Freedom Songs," 169 French Revolution (Blake), 400 Freud, Sigmund, 5, 18, 121, 477 Frobenius, Leo, 489 Fry, Roger, 408, 408n, 452, 468 Fuseli, Henry, 400, 401, 402, 403, 412, 453

Francis of Assisi,

Gaev, A., 63n Galsworthy, John, 12

Gandhi, Mohandas K., 42, 46, 139, 248 Gardner, Charles, 41 In, 452 Garratt, G. T., 419n, 452 Gaudium et Spes (Vatican II), 268 Gaulle, Charles de, 134, 139, 205 Gautama, Buddha, 460 Genesis, 44, 114, 332, 368, 517 Gentoo Code, 416 Geography of Lograire, The (Merton), 383n, 384 Gerdy, Robert, xii "Gethsemani, Ky." (Cardenal), 324 Giacomo Joyce (Joyce), 21-22, 2 In Gibney, Robert, xii Gide, Andre, 141, 465 Gilchrist, Alexander, 393, 393n, 396n, 397n, 418, 418n, 449n, 452 Gilchrist, Anne, 404n Gill, Eric, 365, 366 Giotto, 408 Giroux, Robert,

xii

Glassgold, Peter, x

Go Down, Moses

(Faulkner),

102-8,

117,

515n, 516

Godwin, William, 398, 400, 416 Goering, Hermann, 163 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 61, 85, 466 Goldberg (critic), 13 Gongora, Luis de, 313, 318

"Good Man

Is

Hard

to Find,

A"

(O'Connor), 160 Gordian, Emperor, 421 Gordon, Alexander, 416n, 417n Go Tell it on the Mountain (Baldwin), 169 Grave (Blair), 401 Graves, Robert, 474 Gray, Thomas, 470 Greek Myths and Christian Mystery (Rahner), 114n Greene, Graham, xiii, 94, 200 Green, Julien (1900), xv, 124-127, 200 Gregory of Nyssa, St., 47, 49, 368

Gregory the Great,

St.,

343

Grinberg, Miguel, 375n

"Growing Stone" (Camus), 277, 285-90

Guernica (Picasso), 314 Guillen, Jorge, 313

Gumilyov, Nikolai Stepanovich, 61 Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey, 415, 416, 417, 418 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 467, 481, 482 Hamlet, The (Faulkner), 117

Hanna, Thomas L., 94, 95 Hardy, Thomas, 466 Harrison and Johnson (booksellers), 397 Harrison, Jane, 99 Hart, Clive, 12-14 Hart, Brother Patrick, x-xvi, 497-98n

Harvard Advocate, The, 123 Hastings, Warren, 415

Hauberk Papers, The (Huxley), 492 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 123, 498n Hayley, William, 395, 397, 406, 407, 411,

412

Henry, 461 Hebrews, Letter to the, 342 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 4, 6, 11, 233, 236 Hemingway, Ernest, 123, 161, 498n Hemskeerk (engraver), 393 Henry VII, King, 474 Henry VIII, King, 474, 475 "Henry Fuseli" (Lionel Cust), 402n Here Comes Everybody (Burgess), 13 Herod, 8 Herodotus, 419 "Hero in the New World: William Faulkner's 'The Bear,' The" (Lewis), 102n Herter, Christine, 468-69 Higgins, Michael, x High Malady, The (Pasternak), 59 High Wind In Jamaica (Hughes), 483, 485 Hitler, Adolph, xi, 66, 135, 136, 162, 163, 165, 229, 236, 357, 460 Hochhuth, Rolf (1931), x, 162-67, 266 Hodent (civil servant), 228 Hogarth, William, 394, 396 Hogarth Moralized (Trusler), 406 Holbein, Hans, Sr., 411 Holcroft, Thomas, 398, 416 Holloway, James Y., ix, xiii, 497n, 515n "Holy Week" (Pasternak), 44-45 Homer, 24, 33, 138, 421, 439, 467 "Hope and the Absurd in Kafka" (Camus), 201 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, xiv, 181, 344 "Horae Lyricae" (Watts), 394 Hazlitt,

Howard, Richard, 146 Howe, Irving, 123 Hudson Review, The, xv Hughes, Richard, xii, 474, 483-87 Huis Clos— "No Exit" (Sartre), 68

541

4

Hume, David, 412

Jones, William, 414, 415, 416, 418, 452

Humphrey,

Joseph,

Ozias, 418, 419

Hunt, Robert, 402 Huxley, Aldous (1894-1963), xiii, 94, 45761, 465, 490-94 "Huxley and the Ethics of Peace" (Merton), xii, 457-61 "Huxley's Pantheon" (Merton), xii, 490-94 Hymn of the Universe (Teilhard), 259 "Hyperion" (Keats), 478

St.,

200

Journal of My Escape from the Nazis (Merton), xii "Journals

of

(Camus),

Plague Years"

the

218-31, 218n Joyce,

James (1882-1941), 488

xiii,

xv,

12-28,

44, 53, 143,

Joyce

and the Bible (Moseley), 18, 18n 307n

Jubilee, x, 37n, 159n, 168n,

Judas, 20

Juliana of Norwich, xv

Iamblichus, 399

Jung, Carl, 489

Brahmin, 421 (Homer), 402, 439

Iarchas, the Iliad "II

n'y a pas d'ecole Robbe-Grillet"

Kafka, Franz, 118, 201

(Barthes), 142

Kain, Richard M., 14

"In Hazard" (Hughes), 483, 485 In

Honor stratus),

of Apollonius of

Tyana

Kant, Immanuel, 490 (Philo-

453

Katallagete, x, xiv, 152n, 497n, 498n,

515n

Keaton, Buster, 314

Innocence and Experience (Blake), 448

Keats, John, 451, 478

American Literature (ed. by Charles Fiedelson, Jr., and Paul Brodtkorb, Jr.), 102n In the American Grain (Williams), 99 Intruder in the Dust (Faulkner), 117 Invasion of India by Alexander the Great,

"Keeper of the Flocks, The" (Pessoa-Caeiro), 309, 309n Kelley, William Melvin (1937), xiii, 169-77 Kelly, Abbot Timothy, ix Kenner, Hugh, 13 Kenyon Review, The, 102n

Interpretations of

/

The (M'Crindle), 452 Remember (Pasternak), 58

Keynes, Edward Geoffrey, 393n, 398, 403n,

452 Khrushchev, Nikita, 62, 65, 76, 77

317, 337, 344, 394, 524, 526 Island in the Moon (Blake), 398, 399, 41213

Kierkegaard, Soren,

"Is the novel obsolete?" (Styron), 155

Kilcourse, Father George, x

Isaias, xv,

King Edward Jacob, 331

Jacopone da Todi, 344 Jaguar and the Moon, The (Cuadra), 322 "James Barry" (Monkhouse), 403n

Werner, 99 James, Henry, 53 James Joyce Today (ed. Thomas F. Staley), 12-15 Jaeger,

111

xiii, 4, 6,

107, 214, 221

(Blake), 395

King, Martin Luther, 169, 170 King Tzu, xv Kipling, Rudyard, 420

Knight, G. Wilson, 481-82 Koryakov, Mikhail, 61

Kramer, Victor, x

Kromadka,

Dr., 88

Krutch, Joseph

Wood,

xii,

99

Jarrett-Kerr, Father, 96, 97

Jeremiah, xv Jester of

Columbia, The,

La Arboleda Perdido xi

Jerusalem (Blake), 410, 413 /.

Powers (compiled by Fallon Evans), 147n F.

Joachim of Flora, 5 466 John of Salisbury, xv John of the Cross, St., 207, 340, 341, 344, 346, 349, 351, 353, 438, 493 John S\elton, Laureate (Nelson), 474-75 Johnson, Harrison and (booksellers), 397, 398, 400, 402, 404, 416 John the Baptist, St., 229, 277 John the Evangelist, St., 19, 332, 342 John XXIII, Pope, 162, 164, 306 Job, 30,

54 2

(Alberti),

315

Labrie, Ross, xiv

Labyrinth,

The (Merton),

xii

"Lacoon Plate" (Blake), 413, 442n, 449n Lady Chatterley's Lover (Lawrence), 488 La Hora 0. (Cardenal), 323 "Lake, The" (R. Maritain), 308 Lamb, Charles, 395 Lambeth BooJ(s (Blake), 406 "La Morale," 270 La Nausee (Sartre), 29 Langford (print seller), 393 Lao Tzu, xv, 460 "La Philosophic de Plotin" (Brehier), 422n

La

Prensa, 321

La Rochefoucauld, 218

Luther, Martin, 292

Last Judgment (Blake), 418 Last Judgment (Michelangelo), 418

Laughlin, James,

"Lycidas" (Milton), 462 Lyrical and Critical Essays (Camus), 226n

x, xiv

Laughter in the Dark (Vladimir Nabokov), xii, 464-65 Laurel and Hardy (comedians), 492 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 402 L'avenir de I'Homme (Teilhard), 217 Lavers, Annette, 140n Lawrence, D. H., 98, 99, 113, 222, 230, 478, 487, 488-89

Lawrence, Thomas, 411 "Le Desert" (Camus), 298 Lax, Robert, x-xii Lee, Sidney, 402n Legacy of India (Garratt), 419n, 452 "Legend of Tucker Caliban, The" (Merton), xiii, 169-77 Le Malentendu (Camus), 277, 278, 281-85

Le Monde, 92 Lenin, Nikolai, 58-59, 279

Letters

William

of

Life by F.

(F.

366n, 367, 391, 431n, 434n, 435n, 437n, 440, 440n, 448n, 449n, 450n,

a

Tatham), 395n,

(Samuel T. Coleridge), 452 Letters (Cowper), 395 Lewis, C. S. (1898-1963), 476-78 Lewis, R. W. B„ 102n, 123 "L'Exil d'Helene" (Camus), 233n revoke (Camus), 88,

199, 209, 216, 221, 222, 224,

185,

194,

240n 248-

280 322

Life of Apollonius of

452 Maritain, Raissa (1883-1960), xv, 307, 308

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The (Blake), 400, 427n, 447n Martha, Mary and Lazarus, 20 Marvell, Andrew, 477, 478 Marx, Karl, 5, 71, 236, 280 Mater et Magistra (Pope John XXIII), 151 Mathew, Rev. Henry, 397, 411, 412 Matisse, Henri, 308, 357,

469

Matsys, Quentin, 308

"Lieutenant Schmidt" (Pasternak), 60 Life, 66,

First" (Zukofsky), 130

361, 366,

453

51,

Tse-tung, 217 Marc Antonio, 393, 411

Maritain, Jacques, xiv, 9, 99, 307, 308, 347,

Letters

L'Homme

Mao

Marinero en Tierra (Alberti), 313

Blake together with

Tatham

xii

Manet, Edouard, 469 Mansions of the Spirit (ed. by George A. Panichas), 92n, 99n, 497

Marcion, 279 Marcuse, Herbert, 7

Leonov, Leonid, 65 Les Justes (Camus), 279 Les Temps modernes, 11 In

233n

Malkin, Benjamin Heath, 393n, 394, 396 Mallarme, Stephane, 14, 144 Malory, Thomas, 147 Malraux, Andre, 123, 205 Man in the Sycamore Tree, The (Merton),

"March

(Camus), 183, 276 Leonard, Fr. M., S.J., 347 et I'endroit

L'Ete, 231,

Mad, 35 Magas of Cyrene, 420 Magny, Claude Edmonde, 118

Marcel, Gabriel, 191, 263

Lentfoehr, Sister Therese, xiv

L'Envers

MacLeish, Archibald, 34n Macmillan, Prime Minister, 76

Matthew,

St., 19,

Guy

Maupassant,

Tyana

(Philostratus),

420n, 421, 421n Life of Cowper (Hayley), 406 Life of William Blake (Burdett), 395, 395n, 452 Life of William Blake (Gilchrist), 393n, 452 Life of William Blake, The (Wilson), 394n, 404n, 453 Light in August (Faulkner), 119, 157, 218, 513, 514

343 de, 145

Mauriac, Francois, 78, 200 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 45, 58, 61, 69 Mayer, Peter, 238n

McCormick, Anne, x McDonnell, Thomas P., 338n, 355n, 462n, 464n

xii,

318n,

327n,

McKenna, Stephen, 432n, 453 McLuhan, Marshall, 315 M'Crindle,

Meaning

of

"Lines in Imitation of Spenser" (Blake), 395

Medea, 97

Literary Gazette, 87

Melville,

Longley, John L., 118, 123 Lorca, Federico-Garcia, xiii, 313, 346 Lothrop, Samuel K., 32 In

Meng Tzu,

W., 452 Love (Soloviev), 68

J.

Herman,

53, 99, 123, 467,

498n

xv

Lucas, E. V., 195n

Merleau Ponty, Maurice, 241 Merton, Owen, (Merton's Father), xi Merton, Ruth Jenkins (Merton's Mother),

Lugano Review, 375n

"Message

to Poets"

xi

(Merton), xvi, 371-74

543

n

Metchnikov,

Elie,

459

"N.

Michelangelo, 394, 408, 410, 411

Middleton, Murry,

J.,

391, 412, 424, 424n,

Edna

Miller,

J.

St.

Hillis,

Vincent, 462

Nelson, William, 474-75 Neo-Platonists, The (Whitaker), 425n, 453 Neruda, Pablo, 305, 310

103n

John, 32,

99,

252-260, 296, 314,

394, 395, 395n, 398, 402, 462, 463, 476, 477, 481, 482 Milton (Blake), 292, 395n, 434, 434n, 443, 443n, 447 Mirsky, Prince Dimitry, 60

The

Missionary Voyage,

Monkhouse, W. Cosmo, 403n

Monk, Thelonius, 129 Montague, Mrs., 397, 398 Montaigne, 136, 218 Montale, Eugenio, xv Mont St. Michel and Chartres (Adams), 392 More, Paul Elmer, 453 More, St. Thomas, 474, 475 Morte d' Arthur, he (Malory), 147 Morte d'Urban (Powers), 147-51 "Morte d'Urban: Two Celebrations" (Merton), 147-51

x,

ix,

84n

of the Joyce Industry" (Merton), 12-

22 System,

332 Newton,

New New

A

(Bryant), 414n, 452

Testament, The, Isaac,

5,

19, 71, 201, 213,

479-80

Yorker, The, 53, 117, 148

York Herald Tribune Book Review,

The,

ix, xii,

462n, 464n, 466n, 468n, 472n,

479n Yorf( Times, The, 76, 117

York Times Book Review, The,

ix, xii,

Nietzsche, Friedrich, 4, 22, 108, 209, 236,

252 Night Before the Battle, The (Merton), "Night IV" (Blake), 428 Night Thoughts (Young), 447, 470 Noah, 337 Noces (Camus), 226, 230, 258

396

232

Mounier, Emmanuel, 263 Mozart, 129 Muir, Edwin (1887-1959), xv, 29-36, 497 Mumford, Lewis, 89 "Mundane Shell" (Blake), 419 Mussolini, Benito, 66, 357, 460 My Argument with the Gestapo (Merton),

xii

No

Exit (Sartre), 68 Nonviolent Alternative, The (Merton), 23n, 134n Noon, Father William, 14 Not by Bread Alone (Dudintsev), 42

Notebooks (Camus), 184n, 185, 186, 188, 193,

193n,

197,

197n,

199,

200,

205,

219ff, 219n, 230, 239n, 241n, 243, 244,

xii

Sister Life (Pasternak),

40

Mysticism in English Poetry (C. Spurgeon),

453 Mystics

Myth

Lazarus Review,

"News

Nhat-Nanh, Thich, 497

Mott, Michael, x

My

(Altizer), 3

Nicholas of Cusa, 5

Edwin M., 95

(artist),

The

Directions in Prose eV Poetry, 313, 317,

461, 470n, 474n, 476n, 488n

Moseley, Virginia, 18-21

Moser

Apocalypse,

318n

New

New New

Moravia, Alberto, 73

Motive,

New New

New New

(Blake), 415

Moliere, Jean Baptiste, 140

Moseley,

(Camus), 238n, 246n

108

Millgate, Michael,

Milton,

Halhed" (Gordon), 416n

Nelson, Father Thomas, x

425, 425n, 426, 426n, 453 Millay,

B.

"Neither Victims nor Executioners"

and Zen Masters (Merton), xiii (Camus), 184, 185,

of Sisyphus

197,

201, 220, 222, 224, 244, 244n, 245, 256,

292, 293 "Note on Sanctuary'" (Collins), 123 "Notes on Wordsworth" (Blake), 397

Novy Mir, 48, 64, Novy Zhurnal, 61

70, 71, 72, 73

Nui Neng, xv

275, 286, 299

Nabokov, Vladimir (1899-1977),

xii,

464-

65 Napoleon, 460 Nation, The, 53, 61

Kerygma,

A

(Merton), 81 William Blake," (Merton's Masters thesis), x, xii, 3n, 385-453 Nausea (Sartre), 293 Navigatio Brendani, 114, 525 Nativity

"Nature and Art

544

in

Oakhamian, The, Oblomov, 41

xi

O'Brien, Darcy, 16-18, 21

"Observation Roofs" (Merton),

xii

O'Callaghan, Tommie, x

O'Connor, Flannery (1925-1964), xv, 101, 155, 159-61, 200 O'Donnell, George M., 123 Odyssey (Homer), 102 Oeuvres completes (Artaud), 92n

Ogden, C. K., 453 "Old Man" (Faulkner), 109, 111, 113, 51636 "Old People, The" (Faulkner), 106 Old Testament, 30, 48-50, 88, 105, 168, 327n, 331-37, 353, 520 Olive Tree (Huxley), 459 On Beauty, Enneads I-VI (Plotinus), 453 "One Foot in Eden" (Muir), 32 "On Homer's Poetry and on Virgil" (Blake), 421n On Racine (Barthes), 146, 146n On the Sublime (Burke), 404 Opening the Bible (Merton), 498n Oram (artist), 397 Organization Man, The (Whyte), 360 Origen, (teacher and scholar), 47, 369 Origin, 128

Perse, St. -John,

99

The

Personal Heresy,

&

(Tillyard

Lewis),

476-78 Pertsov (critic), 64 Pessoa,

Fernando (1888-1935),

x, xv,

309

Peter, St., 19, 165

Phillimore,

J. S.,

420n, 453

Philostratus, 420, 420n, 421, 421n,

453

Philoxenus, xv Picasso, Pablo, 310, 313, 314, 357,

469

Pilate, 8

Pinto, Vivian de Sola, 99n, 113

Pius X,

13

St.,

Pius, XII, Pope, 162-67,

The (Camus),

Plague,

336 140,

181-217, 218,

262 Plato,

100, 374, 399, 404, 416,

419,

438,

439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 448, 453, 462,

Orozco, Jose, 321 Ortega y Gasset, Jose, 458

Plato

Our Sunday

Plotinus, 186, 235, 265, 352, 399, 421, 422,

Visitor,

472, 473, 481

148

Ovid, 395, 421

Today (Crossman), 472-73

425, 427, 432, 432n, 443, 444, 444n, 453 Serpent, The (Lawrence), 489

Plumed Pacifist

Conscience,

The

(ed.

by Mayer),

Podhoretz, Norman, 119-22

Poet in

Panichas, George A., 92n, 101, 497

Poetry, 128

New

395,

397,

Yor^, The (Lorca), 313

"Poetry and Contemplation:

394

"Paradise Bugged" (Merton), 128n

(Merton),

"Paradise Ear,

The" (Merton), 128-33

Paradise Lost

(Milton), 252-60, 296, 481,

xvi,

A

Reappraisal"

338-54

"Poetry and the Contemplative Life"

(Merton), 338n

and Oblique (Milton), 476 Symbolism and Typology" (Merton), xvi, 327-37

482

Poetry, Direct

271-72 Parker, Dorothy, 474 Parker, Emmett, 228, 228n Parnell, Thomas, 13, 447, 479

Parain, Brice,

"Poetry,

Point Counter Point (Huxley), 458, 459, 491

Pomes Penyeach

Pars, 393, 394,

396

Partisan Review, The, 121 Pascal, Blaise, 108, 213, 214, 218, 236,

"Pasternak Affair,

(Joyce), 21

Ponge, Francis, 29 Pope, Alexander, 463, 482

Parra, Nicanor, xv

523

Porphyry, 399, 453 Portable Faulkner,

37-

Cowley), 117, 516 Porter, Katherine Anne, 161

The" (Merton), 37-83

Pasternak, Boris (1890-1960),

xiii,

xiv,

The

(ed.

91,99, 117, 340, 346 Pasternak, Leonid, 57

Portrait of the Artist as a

Pasternak, Mrs. Zinaida, 75

Possessed,

Pasterna\/ Merton: Six Letters, 8 In "Pasternak's Letters to Georgian Friends" (Merton), xiii, 84-91

Pottery of Costa Rica

Patnaik,

Deba

P.,

Patrologia Latina, Paul,

394,

406, 411, 448

Thomas, 398, 400, 412 Palmer, Samuel, 404n Paine,

Paracelsus, 5,

(Blake),

Sketches

Poetical

238n, 246n

St.,

335n 370

Payne, Robert, 59

Penny a Copy,

A

(ed.

by Forest and

Cornell), 26 In

"People with Watch Chains, The" (Merton), 37n, 40-52, 81 Percival, Milton O., 3,

453

Young Man, A

(Joyce), 13, 18, 21

x

71, 169, 333n, 342, 354,

by Malcolm

The (Dostoevsky), 185 and Nicaragua, The

(Lothrop), 32 In Pound, Ezra, 33, 128 "Power of Words, The" (Weil), 136 Powers, J. F., (1917), 147-51, 200 Powys, John Cowper, 466-67 Pravda, 65, 70, 73-76 Praxed, St., 308 "Preface aux Palmiers sauvages" (Coindreau), 11 In Price, Richard, 416 Priestley, Joseph, 398

545

"Prince of Darkness" (Powers), 149

The"

"Prisoner,

"Restoration of the Pictures,

(R. Maritain), 308

308 Revue des Cours

Prison Letters of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 88 Pritchett,

V.

S.,

The"

(R. Mari-

tain),

119, 148

"Problem of Symbolism, The" (Danielou), 332n Prometheus (Aeschylus), 95 Proclus, 399 "Prophetic Ambiguities: Milton and Camus" (Merton), 252-260 Prophetic Books (Blake), 405, 406, 409, 410, 413, 424, 428, 432 "Prospectus of Writings" (Louisville authors), 381n, 383

et

Conferences (Paris), 422n

Reynolds' Discourses (Blake), 433 Reynolds, Joshua, 396, 402, 403, 403n, 404, 412, 413, 423, 432n, 433, 433n, 440,

440n, 448, 449n, 450, 450n Rice,

Edward,

xii

"Richard Brothers" (Gordon), 417n Richardiere, G. Boucher de la, 415n, 452 Richards, I. A., 453, 462 Richardson (Sanskritist), 414 Richardson, Samuel, 395, 402 Rilke, Rainer Maria,

xiii,

xv, 30-33, 58, 61,

314, 346, 497

Proust, Marcel, 44, 118, 466

Rimbaud, Arthur, 141, 255, 270, 310, 346, 361, 375

"Proverb of Hell" (Blake), 447 Proverbs, 88, 149 Psalter (150 psalms), 19, 30,

327-37

Rivera, Diego, 321

365n Ptolemy, 420

Psychiatry,

Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 141, 142, 144, 145

Public Address (Blake), 413

Robinson, Crabb, 395, 410n, 413, 417, 434, 434n, 437n, 438, 438n, 440n, 453 Rockefeller Center Weekly, xii

Robertson,

Pugin (the younger), 470, 471 Pythagoras, 100, 419

W. Graham, 452

Roman

Quasimodo, Salvatore, xv Quilliot, Roger, 92n Quintillian, 437 Rabelais, Francois, 32,

467

Racine, Jean Baptiste, 145, 146

"Rafael Alberti and His Angels" (Merton),

313n Rahner, Hugo, 114n xv,

Ransom, John Crowe,

xii,

xvi,

462-63

Raphael, 393, 394, 396, 403, 411 Read, Herbert, 468

452 Rebel, The (Camus), 235fT, 298 Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (Winckelmann), 402, 453 Reinhardt, Ad, xii, 146 Re Joyce (Burgess), 13n Religious Trends in English Poetry (Fairchild), 479-80 Rembrandt van Rijn, 408, 409, 438 Renegade, The (Camus), 183, 210, 277, 278-81, 285 "Reponse a E d'Astier" (Camus), 234n, J.

Ellis),

247n

123, 185

Responsibility of the Artist,

54 6

Rubens, Peter Paul, 393, 396, 403 Ruskin, John, 471 Russell, Archibald, 395n, 453 Russell, Bertrand, 57 Ruysbroek, John, 346

Sacramentum Futuri (Danielou), 332n Sacred Wood, The (T. S. Eliot), 452 Sadler, T., 410n, 453

Safe Conduct (Pasternak), 58, 69 Salinas, Pedro,

313

Salinger, Jerome D., 101 Sallust,

399

Sanctuary (Faulkner), 123 Sanders, Pharaoh, 383

Santayana, George, 462 Sartoris (Faulkner), Sartre,

120,

505

Jean-Paul, xv, 24, 29, 68, 73,

119,

163,

185,

123,

140,

141,

144,

161,

194, 216, 227, 234, 236, 241, 263, 268,

Republic (Plato), 374, 439, 453, 472, 473 Requiem for a Nun (Faulkner), 92, 93, 120,

366n

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 400, 402

Rowlandson, Thomas, 413

Rahner, Karl, 88 Raids on the Unspeakable (Merton), 124n, 159n, 371n Ranee, Abbe Armand-Jean de, 276

Real Blake, The (E.

Missal, 330n Romans, Letter to the, 19, 33 In, 333n, 335n Romanticism and the Gothic Revival (Addison), 470-71 Romney, George, 397, 399 Roosevelt, Theodore, 306 Rosa, Salvator, 437 Roualt, Georges, 308, 357

The

(Maritain),

293, 380, 501 Satan, 4-11, 252-60, 296, 307, 477, 482 Saturday Review, 252n Saurat, Denis, 398, 398n, 401, 401n, 413,

414, 415, 419, 453

Scanlon,

J.

Spurgeon, Caroline, 453 Staley, Thomas F., 14, 14n

R, 431n, 452

Schorer, Mark, 3

Seasons of Celebration (Merton), xiii Secular Journal of Thomas Merton, The, xiiSeeds of Destruction (Merton),

xiii,

Stodhard Stone,

Thomas Merton, 338n

Poems of Wor\s of

Plotinus and Extracts from a Treatise of Synesius on Providence (T. Taylor), 453

Sengai, xv ix,

3n, 13n, 23n, 29n,

at

Dover, The (Merton),

xii

Strange, Robert, 396

The (Camus),

Stranger,

140, 184, 194, 196,

268, 269, 292-301 The: Poverty

"Stranger,

of

an

Antihero"

Circle

Theologica

(St.

Thomas Aquinas),

432n, 434, 453

Shelley, Percy B., 451 their

Stromata (Clement of Alexandria), lOOn 152Styron, William (1925), xv, 145,

Summa

Sharp, William, 417 Shelburne Essays (P. E. More), 453

Godwin and

Straits of

397

Burton, x

58

394, 395, 402, 462, 463, 467, 481, 482 Shannon, Monsignor William, x

Shelley,

(artist),

Naomi

(Merton), 292-301

Sonnets" (Ransom), 463 Shakespeare, William, 35, 61, 87, 99, 315,

"Shakespeare

498n

197, 222, 225, 233, 238, 242, 261, 264,

Works (Porphyry), 453

Sewanee Review, The, 140n, 218n

The (Camus), 190

Stein, Edith, 165

Selected Essays (Weil), 136

Select

Stanford, Derek, 115, 116 Steinbeck, John, 123,

168n

Selincourt, Basil de, 452

Selected

87, 89 State of Siege,

490n

Selected

61-64, 71, 75-77,

Stalin, Joseph, 41, 52, 57,

Scriabin, Alexandre, 58

xiii,

(Coomaraswamy), 365n

"Spiritual Paternity"

Saussurc, Horace Benedict de, 144, 145

(Brails-

Surkov (Soviet writer), 76 "Sur le theatre balinais" (Artaud), 96n Suzuki, Daisetz, xv, 99, 362-64 Italo, 22 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 446 Swift, Jonathan, 482 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 477 Symons, Arthur, 393n, 453

Svevo,

ford), 399n, 452

Shenstone, William, 470 Sheridan, Richard, 416

Sholokhov, Mikhail, 43 Silone, Ignazio, 67 Simone Weil: a Fellowship in Love

(Cabaud), 134n of Cyrene, 286 Simonov, Konstantin Mikhailovitch, 62 Skelton, John, 474, 475

Simon

Tabidze (Georgian poet), 61, 85-87, 91 Tabidze, Mrs. Nina, 76, 85-87 Tamayo, Rufino, 321 Tatham, Frederick, 395, 395n, 403n, 453 Tauler, John, 493

Slate, John, xii Slater,

Lydia Pasternak, 8 In

Thomas, 399, 400, 404, 417, 419,

Smith, Colin, 140n Smith, J. T. (Nollekens), 398, 398n

Taylor,

473 Solomon, 343 Soloviev, Vladimir Sergeyevich, 4, 50, 58, 68 Somoza, Anastasio, 323 "Song of Los, The" (Blake), 428 "Song to the Oakland Bridge" (Carrera Andrade), 319 "Sonnet to Cervantes" (Dario), 305 Sontag, Susan, 140n

Teilhard

Sophocles, 161, 174

Spender, Stephen, 346

"Theology of Creativity" (Merton), 355-70 Theology of Culture (Tillich), 362n Theresa of Avila, St., xv, 346, 438 Thody, Philip, 293

Spengler, Oswald, 34

Thomas Aquinas,

453

Socrates, 122, 285, 419, 472,

Sound and the Fury, The (Faulkner), 497-514 Southcote, Joanna, 417

Spenser, Herbert, 336, 481, 482 Spinoza, Baruch, 490 Spiritual Directory, 521

119,

de Chardin,

Pierre,

90,

214-17,

259, 260, 265-66 Teniers, David, 408

Tennyson, Alfred, 492 "Terror and the Absurd: Violence and Nonviolence in Albert Camus" (Merton), 23251 Tcrtullian, xv, 213,

269

Theatre, recits, nouvelles (Camus), 92

St.,

xvi,

340, 343, 350, 366,

391, 426, 427, 420, 431, 432, 433, 434,

443n, 446, 451, 453, 488

Thomas, Dylan,

115, 116, 346

547

Thomas Merton: Monk and Poet (Woodcock), xiv

Thomas Merton on Peace (Merton), 23n, 134n

Thomas Merton P.

Reader,

McDonnell),

xii,

A

(ed.

318n,

by Thomas 338n,

"Three Saviors in Camus: Lucidity and the Absurd" (Merton), 275-91 Thucydides, 472 Tiberius, 460 Tillich, Paul, 113, 260, 362, 362n, 366 Tillyard, E. M. W., 254, 476-78 "Time and Unburdening and the Recollec-

Lamb: The Easter Service in The Sound and the Fury"

408

"To Each His Darkness: Notes on

a

xi

Tolstoy, Leo, 43-44, 52, 58, 68 Tooke, Home, 398 Tragic Mask, The (Longley), 118 Transformation of Nature in Art (Coomaraswamy), 409n, 452 Tresmontant, Claude, 268-69, 269n "Trial of Pope Pius XII, The" (Merton), 162-67

Temper (Hayley), 406

Truchsess, Count, 410, 411

True Confession, 113 "True Legendary Sound, The" 29-36

Vilallonga, Jose, 75, 76

Vindication of the Rights of stonecraft),

Women

(Woll-

400

Eugene Emmanuel, 470

421

Novel

of Julien Green" (Merton), 124-27

of

Vickery, Olga, 123

Vision and Design (Fry), 408n, 452 Voznesensky, Andrei, 87

"Tintern Abbey" (Blake), 30

Triumphs

Vaughan, D. J., 453 Vaughan, Henry, 331 Venus and Adonis (Shakespeare), 482 Verlaine, Paul, 61, 318 Vespasian, 420 Vessey, Mrs., 397, 398

Virgil,

Tindall, William York, 13, 488-89

Toledano, Ralph,

310n, 321

Van Doren, Mark, xii, 99 Van Dyck, Sir Anthony, 403, 411

Viollet-le-Duc,

(Merton), 497-514

Titian,

St., 130 Cesar (1892-1938), xv, 305, 310,

Valentine, Vallejo,

Thoreau, Henry, 169 Those Barren Leaves (Huxley), 458, 490 Thought, ix, 275n, 332n Thoughts on Outline (Cumberland), 404

tion of the

Unicorn Journal, x, 292n Unvanquished, The (Faulkner), 117 Upanishads, 335 Urtecho, Jose Coronel, 311, 323

327n,

355n, 462n, 464n Thompson, Lawrence, 123 Thomson, James, 444

Faulkner's

Ungaretti, Giuseppi, xv

Waggoner, Hyatt, 93, 122, 123 Wagner, Richard, 14, 22 Walpole, Horace, 470 Walsh, Daniel C, xii War and Peace (Tolstoy), 44 Warren, Robert Penn, 117, 117n, 118, 122,

498n Watson, Bishop (Anglican), 400 Watteau, Jean Antoine, 411 Watts, Isaac, 394, 447, 479

Waugh, Evelyn, 149 Weber, Br. Columban

(Richard), x

Weil, Simone (1909-43), xv, 134-39, 247

(Merton),

Trusler, Dr. John, 404n, 406, 407, 408, 413,

West, Benjamin, 403 Whitaker, Thomas, 425n, 426n, 427, 432n, 441n, 453

436 "Truth" (Cortes), 311

Whitman, Walt, 306 "Who is Nat Turner?" (Merton), 152-58

Tsentrifuga, 58

"Why

Tsze-Sze, 460

Alienation

ton), x, xvi,

Tu

Is

for

Everybody" (Mer-

381-84

Fu, xv Turner, Nat, 145, 152-58 Tussaud, Madame Marie, 435 Tvardovsky, A. T., 70

"Why

Twain, Mark, 518

William Blake (Murry), 424n, 453 William Blake (Selincourt), 452 William Blake (Symons), 453 William Blake, His Philosophy and Symbols (Damon), 398n, 452 William Blake in This World (Bruce), 40 In,

Twomey, Tyrius,

Gerald, x

Maximus, 399

Uccello, Paolo,

469

Ulysses (Joyce), 13-28, 53, 143, 488 Underhill, Evelyn, 4

54 8

Plato Failed" (Crossman), 473 Wild Palms, The (Faulkner), 102-16, 117, 123, 497, 515-36

Wilkins, Charles, 415

452

William

ix, 147n Wretched of the Earth, The (Fanon), 299

Worship,

Mysticisme et Poesie

Blahje,

(Berger), 452

William Blade's Circle of Destiny (Percival), 3, 453 William Blake the Man (Gardner), 41 In,

Wright, Richard, 169 "Writing as Temperature" (Merton), 140-46 Writing Degree Zero (Barthes), 140, 140n,

146

452

of William Blake, The (ed. by Geoffrey Keynes), 393n, 395n, 396n, 400n,

Williams, William Carlos, 99

Wilson,

Edmund,

Writings

53, 61

Wilson, Mona, 394n, 399n, 400, 400n, 404n, 406, 406n, 410n, 411, 453 Winchell, Constance M., 387

Winckelmann,

J. J.,

395, 402, 453

404n, 405n, 407, 408, 410n, 41 In, 413n, 414n, 415n, 419n, 424n, 426n, 427n, 429n, 430n, 452 Wycherley, William, 465

Wollstonecraft, Mary, 400

Wolsey, Cardinal, 474, 475

Yashvili (friend of Pasternak), 85

Woodcock, George, xiv

Yeats, William Butler, 99, 428n, 453 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 62-63, 87

Wood, James, 453 Words and Silence: On

the Poetry of

Thomas

Merton (Sister Therese Lentfoehr), xiv Wordsworth, William, 29, 33, 395, 397, 400, 412, 425, 438, 444, 451, 463 Works (Jones), 416n, 452 Worlds of Charles and Mary by E. V. Lucas), 395n

Worlds of

Works

Lamb, The

(ed.

Edward Young (Young), 447n Memoir and and

"Young Generation (Gaev), 63n

of Soviet Writers,

The"

Zahn, Gordon, 23n

Zen and Japanese Culture (Suzuki),

99,

363n

Zhdanov, Andrei A., 60

of William Blake with a

Interpretation (Yeats

Young, Edward, 447, 447n, 453, 470

Ellis),

Zola, Emile, 145

Zukofsky, Louis (1904-1978), xv, 128-33

428n, 453

World's Body, The (John Crowe Ransom), xii,

462n

549

*

u

0

Boston Public Library i

COPLEY S( GENERAL L

:J

7 1

«338 19852

88822599-01

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in the pocket in-

on or before which

book should be returned to the

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ncisM

The Literary Essays of

THOMAS MERTON Edited by Brother Patrick Hart As wide a

Thomas Merton had

while he death in Bangkok in 1968, there has been a steady upsurge of interest in both his life and writings. A priest and Trappist monk by vocation, his theological works have been instrumental in reforming Western monasticism and in carrying on the religious dialog between East and West; an enormously productive poet, his poems display an astonishing technical versatility and deeply felt humanity. Merton's stature as a critic, however, was not fully following as the late

lived, ever since his tragic accidental

appreciated until the publication in 1981 of the first full collection of his distinctly literary essays, now available as a paperbook. The fifty-six pieces included in The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton present every known article by the author, though written for the most part during the last years of his life. The mature Merton ranges across the modern literary landscape with impressive ease. Joyce, Pasternak, and Zukofsky are only a few of the authors discussed in "Literary Essays (1959-68)." These are followed, in turn, by "Seven Essays on Albert Camus"; nine essays "Introducing Poets in Translation"; and "Related Literary Questions," linking Merton's literary thought with his aesthetic, religious, and social concerns. His earlier work, such as his 1939 Master's thesis on Blake as well as newspaper and periodical reviews written prior to 1941, are included in appendices; to these are added transcripts of two talks he gave on Faulkner in 1967. The Literary Essays were collected and edited by Brother Patrick Hart, Father Merton's secretary at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.

Thomas Merton: Asian

Journal, NDP394; Collected Non-Violence, NDP197; My ArguPoems, NDP504; Gandhi on ment with the Gestapo, NDP403; New Seeds of Contemplation, NDP337; Raids on the Unspeakable, NDP213; Selected Poems, NDP85; The Way of Chuang Tzu, NDP276; The Wisdom of the Desert, NDP295; Zen & The Birds of Appetite, NDP261.] [Also by

Cover photograph courtesy of the Abbey of Gethsemani Archives; design by Denise Breslin

A NEW DIRECTIONS PAPERBOOK fpt

isbn D-fiiis-trai-ji

NDP587

»$m.^s