For Four Guilds: The Bridge-Builders

Chesterton's For Four Guilds continues apace. We come now to those venerable mediators, the bridge-builders.

II. The Bridge-Builders

In the world's whitest morning
As hoary with hope,
The Builder of Bridges
Was priest and was pope:
And the mitre of mystery
And the canopy his,
Who darkened the chasms
And domed the abyss.

To eastward and westward
Spread wings at his word
The arch with the key-stone
That stoops like a bird;
That rides the wild air
And the daylight cast under;
The highway of danger,
The gateway of wonder.

Of his throne were the thunders
That rivet and fix
Wild weddings of strangers
That meet and not mix;
The town and the cornland;
The bride and the groom:
In the breaking of bridges
Is treason and doom.

But he bade us, who fashion
The road that can fly,
That we build not too heavy
And build not too high:
Seeing always that under
The dark arch's bend
Shine death and white daylight
Unchanged to the end.

Who walk on his mercy
Walk light, as he saith,
Seeing that our life
Is a bridge above death;
And the world and its gardens
And hills, as ye heard,
Are born above space
On the wings of a bird.

Not high and not heavy
Is building of his:
When ye seal up the flood
And forget the abyss,
When your towers are uplifted,
Your banners unfurled,
In the breaking of bridges
Is the end of the world.

===

Part three (Stone-Masons) will come tomorrow, of course.

GKC and Confession

The Anchoress invokes GKC:

As Voltaire said: ‘Repentance for our faults can alone take the place of innocence, and that, to show ourselves repentant, we must begin by declaring them.’ Few Catholic customs have been subjected to greater criticism than that of going to Confession. One can do no better than to initiate this discussion with the sneering comment of George Bernard Shaw to G.K Chesterton after his conversion: ‘Your portly kneeling figure’ in the confessional would be ‘incredible, monstrous, comic.’ More enlightened was Chesterton’s answer: ‘When a Catholic comes from Confession, he does truly, by definition, step out into that dawn of his own beginning… in that brief ritual God has really remade him in His own image. He may be grey and gouty; but he is only five minutes old.’

For Four Guilds: The Glass-Stainers

In my continuing efforts to expand the breadth of Chesterton's online presence (which would, perhaps, be like trying to make the world rounder), I plan to put up all four parts of Chesterton's wonderful and forgotten poem, "For Four Guilds," which can be found in the out-of-print Ballad of St. Barbara and Other Verses. The poem is a tribute to four faculties of human expression, and it simply wonderful to read. Dale Ahlquist, in his lecture on Ballad, had this to say:

The most stunning verse in this collection are the poems, "For Four Guilds." Chesterton is at his lyrical best, with intricate phrasing, and image returning upon brilliant image, like the reflections within a prism, with an even brighter image beyond: the Glass-Stainers who weave with light; the Bridge-Builders who make roads fly; the Bell-Ringers who "draw the cords that draw the people," and the Stonemasons who carve saints and gargoyles high on the cathedrals.

It is depressing, then, that this selection is not available online. Let's fix that.

For Four Guilds

I. The Glass-Stainers

To every Man his Mystery,
A trade and only one:
The masons make the hives of men,
The domes of grey or dun,
But we have wrought in rose and gold
The houses of the sun.

The shipwrights build the houses high,
Whose green foundations sway
Alive with fish like little flames,
When the wind goes out to slay.
But we abide with painted sails
The cyclone of the day.

The weavers make the clothes of men
And coats for everyone;
They walk the streets like sunset clouds;
But we have woven and spun
In scarlet or in golden-green
The gay coats of the sun.

You whom the usurers and the lords
With insolent liveries trod,
Deep in dark church behold, above
Their lance-lengths by a rod,
Where we have blazed the tabard
Of the trumpeter of God.

==

Part Two (bridge-builders) will follow tomorrow. I have also been able to acquire a first edition (possibly the only edition, though I couldn't speak with authority) of The Coloured Lands, a book of poetry, prose, and artwork collected by Maisie Ward after Chesterton's death. It should arrive soon, and the transcription of that may begin. I will, of course, be sure to scan any sketches or watercolours contained therein.

Chesterton on Deus Caritas Est

[T]here is no saying which the humanitarians of a broad religion more commonly offer as a model of simplicity than that most mystical affirmation "God is Love." And there is no theological quarrel of the Councils of the Church which they, especially Mr. Wells, more commonly deride as bitter and barren than that at the Council of Nicea about the Co-eternity of the Divine Son. Yet the subtle statement is simply a metaphysical explanation of the simple statement; and it would be quite possible even to make it a popular explanation, by saying that God could not love when there was nothing to be loved.
-- G.K. Chesterton, The New Jerusalem (1920)

If there is one question which the enlightened and liberal have the habit of deriding and holding up as a dreadful example of barren dogma and senseless sectarian strife, it is this Athanasian question of the Co-Eternity of the Divine Son. On the other hand, if there is one thing that the same liberals always offer us as a piece of pure and simple Christianity, untroubled by doctrinal disputes, it is the single sentence, 'God is Love.' Yet the two statements are almost identical; at least one is very nearly nonsense without the other.
-- G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (1925)

The faith in a future life, the hope of a future happiness, the belief that God is Love and that loyalty is eternal life, these things do not produce lunacy and anarchy, IF they are taken along with the other Catholic doctrines about duty and vigilance and watchfulness against the powers of hell. They might produce lunacy and anarchy, if they were taken alone.
-- G.K. Chesterton, The Thing (1929)

The Voice of Tolkien

Denny Hartford, blogger (The Book Den) and Chestertonian, pointed out that Harper Collins has made some interesting audio clips available online (see Denny's post "Do You Hear What I Hear?", Jan 20). Especially exciting is J.R.R. Tolkien reading from The Lord of the Rings: about Treebeard, cooking conies on the way to Mount Doom, and more.

The clips from HarperAudio! are available here.

Colloquium

If you're going to be in Upland, IN from June 1st through 4th this year, you might consider attending the Frances White Ewbank Colloquium on C.S. Lewis & Friends. The event, held at Taylor University, will feature addresses, panels, dramatic presentations, and presumably a great deal of sitting. The line-up looks excellent, though the George MacDonald reenactment and the panel on the mystery literature of G.K. Chesterton and Dorothy L. Sayers seem to be particularly promising.

There is also a student essay competition, wherein papers on topics relating to the Colloquium's focus will be judged by Joseph Pearce. The winner, it is said, will receive $100, as well as free registration to the Colloquium, and free room and board. I'd enter myself if I weren't already planning to go to the Chesterton Conference later that month, but there's nothing to say that some other lucky punk could do it. Try!

So, if you have an interest in C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, etc., this could be a nice way to kick off the summer. You can read all about the event here.

Splitcat Chintzibobs

Dr. Thursday recently wrote about the "difficult question" of character names in fiction. Several snippets from Chesterton are included. It is gut splitting funny; as Dr. T. advises at the top of his post: "Put the drink down now! You have been warned."

link to Dr. Thursday's On names - a difficult question

Another Chesterton Fan in Blogdom

I'm constantly amazed at how many Chesterton references I see in blogdom. At least two or three a day. The latest:

A blogger responds to a blog meme, and lists the four books he could read over and over:

Four books I could read over and over (series count as one, and excluding the Bible):
A Pattern Language – Christopher Alexander
Against Christianity – Peter Leithart
Tell We Have Faces – C.S. Lewis
Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton

John Derbyshire on Chesterton

Yesterday on National Review Online John Derbyshire took a weak stab against GKC:

"It was merry in England before this new learning came up," said the Third Duke of Norfolk. (He was referring to the rise of general literacy, a new thing in his time.) "I would have all things as they were in times past." That could not be. With the invention of printing, the wood had been made into a boat. The same can be said of G. K. Chesterton's fantasy of Britain returning to a feudal condition, jolly squires gazing on benignly as their plump tenants swilled mugs of ale, tonsured monks in the back ground to answer life's hard questions when required. Attitudes like this go beyond conservative. Standing athwart History crying "Stop!" is conservative; hopeless longing for what is irreversibly gone (if it ever actually existed in the imagined form) is reactionary.

A new Chesterton poem

The title of this post is not accurate.

The poem was first published in 1922, in The Ballad of St. Barbara, and Other Verses. This book is out of print, and only selections from it have been reprinted in The Complete Works series. It was with considerable glee that I discovered not only an edition of St. Barbara while out rummaging yesterday, but a first edition at that. There are a number of pieces therein that I shall be transcribing for the benefit of the world. These, once added to the running file I have been keeping of "fresh" Chestertonia, will eventually be forwarded to Martin Ward for addition to his marvelous site.

It is not a new poem, but it is new to the Internet.

Anyhow, here is "Nightmare," a poem that has no relation to the Chesterton essay of the same name.

Nightmare

The silver and violet leopard of the night
Spotted with stars and smooth with silence sprang;
And though three doors stood open, the end of light
Closed like a trap; and stillness was a clang.

Under the leopard sky of lurid stars
I strove with evil sleep the hot night long,
Dreams dumb and swollen of triumphs without wars,
Of tongueless trumpet and unanswering gong.

I saw a pale imperial pomp go by,
Helmet and hornèd mitre and heavy wreath;
Their high strange ensigns hung upon the sky
And their great shields were like the doors of death.

Their mitres were as moving pyramids
And all their crowns as marching towers were tall;
Their eyes were cold under their carven lids
And the same carven smile was on them all.

Over a paven plain that seemed unending
They passed unfaltering till it found an end
In one long shallow step; and these descending
Fared forth anew as long away to wend.

I thought they travelled for a thousand years;
And at the end was nothing for them all,
For all that splendour of sceptres and of spears,
But a new step, another easy fall.

The smile of stone seemed but a little less,
The load of silver but a little more:
And ever was that terraced wilderness
And falling plain paved like a palace floor.

Rust red as gore crawled on their arms of might
And on their faces wrinkles and not scars:
Till the dream suddenly ended; noise and light
Loosened the tyranny of the tropic stars.

But over them like a subterranean sun
I saw the sign of all the fiends that fell;
And a wild voice cried "Hasten and be done,
Is there no steepness in the stairs of hell?"

He that returns, He that remains the same,
Turned the round real world, His iron vice;
Down the grey garden paths a bird called twice,
And through three doors mysterious daylight came.

==

There will be a few more of these in the future, most likely.

The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult

The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult was retold in French by Joseph Bédier (1900); and our Hilaire Belloc provided an English translation of Bédier's work (1945). (link to Belloc's translation of Bédier's The Romance Of Tristan And Iseult at gutenberg.org). You can learn about the Tristan and Iseult legends at the web site TRISTAN and ISOLDE . net; the web site is not associated with the new movie and treats the subject generally. As for the new movie, here is an excerpt from one review:

It’s almost pointless to debate the film’s inaccuracies when it comes to plot and character relationships because there are so many different versions of the original story. But “Tristan and Isolde” does leave out some vital elements of the love affair, including its connection to the Arthurian legend, a potion binding the lovers in enduring love through life and death, Tristan’s marriage to another woman, the public accusation of lechery, the subsequent trial and Isolde’s sentence to life as a prostitute in a leper colony.

There’s so much more to the story than is depicted — years of suffering and betrayal, longing and desperation. The film wraps it all into a nice, two-hour-long MTV rendering where all of the honorable characters have the svelte bodies and glowing skin of runway models, and the bad guys look more like Grima Wormtongue. It’s entertaining, sure — but the reshaping of the story makes it tragically insubstantial.

The tale’s real power is in the epic quality of the love story. The film has been stripped of its historical significance, mystery and all the qualities that have made the legend so enduring in our culture. By catering to adolescent girls’ infatuation with stories of forbidden love, “Tristan and Isolde” loses its potential to become anything more than a sexier version of “A Knight’s Tale,” and settles for an easy spot in the middle of the bell curve.

(link to review of Tristan and Isolde in The Michigan Daily)

The New York Times noted the PG-13 rating was due "to some fairly bloodless fighting and some very chaste lovemaking."

Japan with a Beard

"Momus" at Wired News begins his article about population decline in Japan by quoting Chesterton:

G.K. Chesterton opens his breezy 1910 jeremiad What's Wrong With the World with a humorous warning regarding "the gaping absurdity of perpetually talking about 'young nations' and 'dying nations,' as if a nation had a fixed and physical span of life.

"Thus people will say that Spain has entered a final senility; they might as well say that Spain is losing all her teeth," he wrote. "Or people will say that Canada should soon produce a literature; which is like saying that Canada must soon grow a new moustache. Nations consist of people; the first generation may be decrepit, or the 10,000th may be vigorous."

Despite Chesterton's sensible warning, people continue to map nations metaphorically to the lifespan of individuals; Mark Steyn, in a somewhat hysterical essay about Muslim population growth in Europe published in January's New Criterion, says, "As fertility shrivels, societies get older -- and Japan and much of Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever been. And we know what comes after old age."

Then the author goes on to say that Japan is in a mid-life crisis ... or "growing a lovely long white beard."

And jeremiad, in my opinion, is too somber a word to describe anything written by Chesterton.

Rich and Dumb

This reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s observation that in order to be smart enough to earn a lot of money, you must be dumb enough to want a lot of money (rough quote, at best):

A developing list of stupid ways rich people spend their money, including $38 bottles of water and a $47,000 princess bed for a little girl.

Kirk was a GKC Friend

The anonymous blogger at Burke to Kirk quotes Chesterton to make a larger point about capital punishment. I don't necessarily agree with it, but it's thought-provoking:

"G.K. Chesterton once said that when you vote, you are putting on the uniform of every official, soldier, or executioner who will perform grim actions on behalf of the public. Thus, in a democracy, when you pull the lever, you are taking responsibility for every life that might be taken by and for the state."

Remembering the Big Guy

Alexander Woollcott first met Chesterton in May of 1914, when they lunched together in Soho. Woolcott recalled what GKC had said on the difference between power and authority: "If a rhinoceros were to enter this restaurant now, there is no denying he would have great power here. But I should be the first to rise and assure him that he had no authority whatever." The luncheon broke off at four o'clock at which point Chesterton was loaded into a cab, "probably," according to Woollcott's blurred recollection, "with the use of a derrick and shoehorn." [Foreward, Charles Dickens, by G.K. Chesterton, New York: Reader's, 1942, pp. xii-xii.]

Chesterton on Shaw & Spelling

This excerpt from Chesterton's George Bernard Shaw may be interesting to you after reading the essay Nick found, Hilaire Belloc's On Spelling.

... Mr. Shaw has found himself, led by the same mad imp of modernity, on the side of the people who want to have phonetic spelling. The people who want phonetic spelling generally depress the world with tireless and tasteless explanations of how much easier it would be for children or foreign bagmen if "height" were spelt "hite." Now children would curse spelling whatever it was, and we are not going to permit foreign bagmen to improve Shakespeare. Bernard Shaw charged along quite a different line; he urged that Shakespeare himself believed in phonetic spelling, since he spelt his own name in six different ways. According to Shaw, phonetic spelling is merely a return to the freedom and flexibility of Elizabethan literature. That, again, is exactly the kind of blow the old speller does not expect. As a matter of fact there is an answer to both the ingenuities I have quoted. When women have fought in revolutions they have generally shown that it was not natural to them, by their hysterical cruelty and insolence; it was the men who fought in the Revolution; it was the women who tortured the prisoners and mutilated the dead. And because Shakespeare could sing better than he could spell, it does not follow that his spelling and ours ought to be abruptly altered by a race that has lost all instinct for singing. But I do not wish to discuss these points; I only quote them as examples of the startling ability which really brought Shaw to the front; the ability to brighten even our modern movements with original and suggestive thoughts.

Belloc in Expression

Though he is overshadowed (sometimes, perhaps unfairly) by his enormous friend G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc was nonetheless capable of speaking with force, candour and good humour when the situation called for it. We have seen a good example of this in the essay to which I linked yesterday. I offer today two more examples, though smaller in scope.

Belloc, as most of you will hopefully be aware, was one of few politically-minded authors of his time to actually hold office. Contemporaries like H.G. Wells and Jack London ran - and lost.

Belloc ran for the House of Commons in 1906, and, though he eventually won, he had to overcome his share of intolerance, both with regard to his actual politics and to his religion.

On the occasion of his forst campaign speech, Belloc took to the stage with a rosary in his hands and an angry stare, the piercing gimlet eyes we have so often seen in his pictures sweeping across the audience like machine gun fire. Saith he, "gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible I go to mass every day... As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me the indignity of being your representative."

Though this pronouncement is demonstrative of the righteous thunder that Belloc could bring down upon the unwary, he was also archly aware of the foibles of his particular lifestyle. He once famously advised that a young writer should "concentrate on one subject. Let him, when he is twenty, write about the earthworm. Let him continue for forty years to write of nothing but the earthworm. When he is sixty, pilgrims will make a hollow path with their feet to the door of the world's great authority on the earthworm. They will knock at his door and humbly beg to be allowed to see the Master of the Earthworm."

Finally, we can turn to his ingenuity with light verse. Chesterton has remarked in his Autobiography upon Belloc's production of the only real battle song for social movements. It was "real," Chesterton opined, because it actually had some elements of battle and strategy to it. While Belloc's counterparts relied on bland appeals to the sun rising, or the approach of dawn, or other various inevitabilities, Belloc... well, let's let Chesterton tell it:

And then Belloc wrote a poem called "The Rebel," and nobody noticed the interesting point about it. It is a very violent and bitter poem; it would be much too revolutionary for most of the revolutionists; even those with red ties would blush, and those with pale green ties would turn pale and green with sickness, at such threats against the rich as break out here--"and hack their horses at the knees and hew to death their timber trees," and the very fine ending, "and all these things I mean to do; for fear perhaps my little son should break his hands as I have done."

That is not a Song Before Sunrise. That is an attack before sunrise. But the peculiar point I wish to note here, appears in the previous verse about the actual nature of the attack. It is the only revolutionary poem I ever read, that suggested that there was any plan for making any attack. The first two lines of the verse run: "When we shall find them where they stand, a mile of men on either hand?" The Comrades of the Dawn always seemed to be marching in column, and singing. They never seemed to have heard of deploying; into the long line that faces the foe for battle. The next two lines are: "I mean to charge from right away, and force the flanks of their array." Whoever heard of the Comrades of the Dawn having so complicated an idea as that of turning the enemy's flank? Then comes the encirclement:

And press them inward from the plains
And drive them clamouring down the lanes,
And gallop and harry and have them down,
And carry the gates and hold the town.

The Pursuit; and then the Holding of the Bridgehead.

Now that is the only Song of the Class War I ever read that has the haziest notion of what a war would be like. In this wild lyric, full of vindictive violence and destruction, there is also in quite swift lyrical form a perfectly clear tactical plan and military map; a definite description of how men may storm a fortress, if it has to be stormed. The violence of this democratic, though doubtless dramatic, utterance goes far beyond anything that any Communist will reach in a hundred years. But it involves also the real character of battle; and a battle, like every human work, is at once designed in its beginning and doubtful in its end. Now the Comrades of the Dawn already annoyed me; because their revolution was wildly undesigned in its beginning, but had no doubt about its end. Just like Imperialism; and the South African War.

So turn a thought to Hilaire Belloc in your idle moments, if you've the mind. He is worth a look.

Belloc in the New Statesman

The upcoming issue of the New Statesman (Jan. 16, 2006) will feature a reprint of Hilaire Belloc's 1930 essay, "On Spelling," as a part of their "Backward Glance" series. An excerpt follows:

Spelling is a great breeder of hatred among the nations and of divisions, misapprehensions, wars - or as our fathers more splendidly put it (to a roll of drums) "Warres"; as also of Dissencyons and Broils. Here myself I confess to the weakness; to see "labour" spelt "labor" makes me see red; and the more openly we admit it the better for international and domestic prose.

Now that this word "labor" should be so abhorrent to the intimate taste of the English mind is a very good reply to the pedants who will defend spelling as a reminder of the origin of words. "Labor" is right. "Labour" is a twisted thing, coming round by way of a dead French usage. You may say, of course, if you like, that even so, it teaches you a little history and that at least such spelling reminds you that the gentry were French before they were English. But if you say this you lie; for it teaches people nothing of the sort, and such few people as hear this truth about the English gentry only fall into a passion and disbelieve it.

Again, who when he comes across a little word "ink" considers that imperial liquid which only the Basileus on his Constantinopolitan throne could use for his most awful signature? If there is one word the spelling of which ought to teach every child the whole story of Europe and of the great Byzantine centre thereof it is the little word "ink" - and it teaches nothing at all. Neither, for that matter, does Constantinopolitan, hard as it is to spell.

No, all that talk of spelling teaching one the past of words and things is nonsense. If there was any sense in it we should spell the Canon of a Cathedral after the same way in which we spell a gun. They are the same word; and yet I suppose there is not one man in 20,000 who would not ridicule the spelling of the Piece with one "n" and of the Ecclesiastic with two. For my part, if I had to give the extra "n" to either I should give it to the cleric, as one of God’s creatures and a hierarch and therefore infinitely nobler than a piece of brute metal.

You can read the rest of the essay here, although only once per day owing to the New Statesman's non-subscriber access policy. My advice to you would be to save the article to Notepad, or some such thing, that you might enjoy it in future times. It does not appear anywhere else on the Internet, as far as I can find.

Chesterton in Rolling Stone

G.K. Chesterton is quoted (sort of) in a new article about Neil Young in Rolling Stone magazine:

"[Neil Young] receives songs as much as he writes them. The exchange is a mystical one, and mysticism, as G.K. Chesterton somewhere remarks, keeps people and cultures sane. Logic, too emphatically embraced, is what undoes the mind."

link to article

Pearce: Chesterton Was Wrong

Carl Olson recently interviewed Joseph Pearce about his new book Flowers of Heaven: One Thousand Years of Christian Verse (IgnatiusInsight.com, Jan 13, 2006):

IgnatiusInsight.com: One of your favorite authors, G.K. Chesterton, was frank about his dislike for modern poetry, including the work of T.S. Eliot. What do you think of Chesterton's assessment of Eliot's poetry?

Joseph Pearce: He was wrong! Frankly, I don’t believe Chesterton understood Eliot’s poetry, though he admired Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral. Like many others of his generation, Chesterton disliked the novelty of Eliot’s avant garde approach to meter and rhyme. I like to think that Chesterton would have grown to admire Eliot if he had lived longer. Eliot’s Four Quartets, a deeply mystical and religious work and arguably his masterpiece, was not published until several years after Chesterton’s death.

Click here for the entire IgnatiusInsight.com interview with Joseph Pearce.