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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 apocalypti
w 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,
The Dial
New
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
of Synesius
of Plotinus
and Extracts from
a Treatise
on Providence, London, Black, 1817.
Whitaker, Thomas, The Neo-Platonists, 2nd edition, Cambridge, University Press, 1918.
Wilson, Mona,
The
Life of William Blake, London,
Nonesuch
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1927.
Winckelmann,
J.
J.,
Reflections on the Painting
Greeks, translated by Yeats,
W.
and
B.,
and
Ellis,
Henry E.
J.,
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and Sculpture Millar, 1765.
Worlds of William Blake with a
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Workj, 2
vol-
ff.
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
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«338 19852
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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