Lepanto

 

                             Lepanto

                 BY G. K. CHESTERTON

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,

And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;

There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,

It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,

It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,

For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.

They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,

They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,

And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross,

The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;

The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass;

From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun,

And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard,

Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred,

Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall,

The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall,

The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung,

That once went singing southward when all the world was young,

In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid,

Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade.

Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far,

Don John of Austria is going to the war,

Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold

In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold,

Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums,

Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes.

Don John laughing in the brave beard curled,

Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world,

Holding his head up for a flag of all the free.

Love-light of Spain—hurrah!

Death-light of Africa!

Don John of Austria

Is riding to the sea.

Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri’s knees,

His turban that is woven of the sunset and the seas.

He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease,

And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees,

And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring

Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing.

Giants and the Genii,

Multiplex of wing and eye,

Whose strong obedience broke the sky

When Solomon was king.

They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn,

From temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn;

They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea

Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be;

On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl,

Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl;

They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,—

They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound.

And he saith, “Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide,

And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide,

And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest,

For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west.

We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun,

Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done,

But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know

The voice that shook our palaces—four hundred years ago:

It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate ;

It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey in the gate!

It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth,

Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth.”

For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar,

(Don John of Austria is going to the war.)

Sudden and still—hurrah!

Bolt from Iberia!

Don John of Austria

Is gone by Alcalar.

St. Michael’s on his mountain in the sea-roads of the north

(Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.)

Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift

And the sea folk labour and the red sails lift.

He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone;

The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone;

The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes

And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise,

And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room,

And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom,

And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,

But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea.

Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse

Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips,

Trumpet that sayeth ha!

      Domino gloria!

Don John of Austria

Is shouting to the ships.

King Philip’s in his closet with the Fleece about his neck

(Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.)

The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin,

And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in.

He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon,

He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon,

And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey

Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day,

And death is in the phial, and the end of noble work,

But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk.

Don John’s hunting, and his hounds have bayed—

Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid

Gun upon gun, ha! ha!

Gun upon gun, hurrah!

Don John of Austria

Has loosed the cannonade.

The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke,

(Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.)

The hidden room in man’s house where God sits all the year,

The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear.

He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea

The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery;

They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark,

They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark;

And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs,

And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs,

Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines

Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines.

They are lost like slaves that swat, and in the skies of morning hung

The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young.

They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on

Before the high Kings’ horses in the granite of Babylon.

And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell

Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell,

And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign—

(But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!)

Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop,

Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate’s sloop,

Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds,

Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds,

Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea

White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.

Vivat Hispania!

Domino Gloria!

Don John of Austria

Has set his people free!

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,

Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....

(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)

The Ten Points of Tolkien’s Politics

 

As a person who has read and written about J.R.R. Tolkien for decades, I am often asked about his political views. In a sense, this is a funny question, as Tolkien really despised most politics. In fact, he really thought of himself as very anti-political. His few statements on the matter reveal just how unpolitical and apolitical and anti-political he could be.

It is also, however, a natural question for someone to ask about the great man, as we live in a highly politicized age.

So, what do we know? ...

So begins Bradley Birzer's article, reprinted in Intellectual Takeout (it was originally printed in The Imaginative Conservative).

To find out what Birzer says we know, go here!

T. S. Eliot and G. K. Chesterton

T. S. Eliot

was not appreciated by the proletariat.
"Those new-fangled poems kinda bore us.
He writes like he's sittin' with an open thesaurus."

I openly admit that I've had a love/hate relationship with the poetry of T.S. Eliot over the years. As an English major, I was indoctrinated with the idea of his importance as a modern poet. Intellectually, I understood, but I still never liked the poems that I was required to read - and later even teach. I found them too clever, and too dark. Heck, there's something wrong if, except in the case of verses composed centuries ago, a poem required footnotes to begin to understand it. 

My clerihew above summarized how I felt.

It wasn't until many years later that I encountered his "Four Quartets," Murder in the Cathedral, or his "cats." 

Recently, I wondered how G. K. Chesterton and Eliot viewed each other, given that their careers overlapped. I suspected there would some differences over poetics  given Chesterton's love of traditional forms and Eliot's rejection of them. But they both did share religious concerns, albeit one Catholic and the other Anglican.

So I did a quick search. 

As I suspected, they did have some differences. 

In 1917, referencing "The Ballad of the White Horse," Eliot observed, “I have seen the forces of death with Mr Chesterton at their head upon a white horse. Mr Pound, Mr Joyce, and Mr Lewis write living English; one does not realize the awfulness of death until one meets with the living language.”

In 1918, Eliot wrote: “Chesterton’s brain swarms with ideas [with] no evidence that it thinks.”

And in 1927, Eliot opined in The Criterion: "Mr. Chesterton and Mr. Belloc sing the same tune together. I cannot admit that either of these writers ‘writes well’. The former's Outline of Sanity is the work of the brilliant but sporadic essay writer, scoring point at the cost of lucidity and cumulative effect. Mr. Chesterton is an inheritor of the older generation of Victorian prophets, with a touch, in fact too many touches, of Arnold's irony. In essays such as Orthodoxy, Heretics, or The Defendant, his style is admirable for his purpose; he often has unique perceptions; but his mind is not equipped for sustained argument."

Yikes.

So far, I have not seem much Chesterton wrote much about Eliot. But he did offer a parody of the "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" 

To a Modern Poet 

Now you mention it,

            Of course, the sky

                        is like a large mouth

                                    shown to a dentist,

and I never noticed

            a little thing

                        like that.

But I can’t help wishing

            You got more fun out of it;

            you seem to have taken

                        quite a dislike

                                    to things

They seem to make you jump

And double up unexpectedly—

And when you write

            like other poets,

                        on subjects

not entirely

novel,

      such as, for instance,

            the Sea,

it is mostly about

            Sea-sickness.

As you say—

It is the New Movement,

            The Emetic Ecstasy.

I note a few other comments over the years. But then they seem to find some common ground, and even appreciation, spurred in part by faith. In 1929 Eliot wrote to Chesterton: “I should like extremely to come to see you one day…May I mention that I have much sympathy with your political and social views, as well as (with obvious reservations) your religious views?” (I find no record that they actually did visit, however.) And Eliot later praised the Father Brown stories and The Man Who Was Thursday. 

In 1935, Eliot even wrote  in The New English Weekly, “With Mr. Chesterton I naturally have sympathies which I did not have twenty-five years ago.”

Meanwhile, Chesterton actually contributed a piece (“Is Humanism a Religion?”) to The Criterion, which Eliot edited, and expressed a desire to see a production of Murder in the Cathedral.

In an obituary of Chesterton in The Criterion in October 1936, Eliot wrote, "It is not for his attainments in pure letters that he should be celebrated here: though it may be said that if he did nothing to develop the sensibility of the language, he did nothing to obstruct it. Nor are his religious convictions precisely our affair. What matters here is his lonely moral battle against his age, his courage, and his bold combination of genuine conservatism, genuine liberalism, and genuine radicalism."

I'm there was more interaction between them, at least in writing. I don't find any record of them actually meeting in any formal way. But there are Chesterton scholars who have more knowledge than I.

As for me, I, following Eliot's 1935 lead above, appreciate Eliot more than I did earlier in life. But when it comes to their differences over literature and faith, I, a proletariat sort, clearly fall into the Chesterton camp. 

In my beginning is my end. 

T. S. Eliot

was not appreciated by the proletariat.
"Those new-fangled poems kinda bore us.
He writes like he's sittin' with an open thesaurus."

Walking With C.S. Lewis

 

Joseph Pearce has surfaced again! The indefatigable promoter of literature, Chesterton, Lewis, and their friends has turned up in The Imaginative Conservative with an article titled "Walking With C.S. Lewis".

The article - which is actually a reprint of an 2015 one - begins...

I have always been a keen walker, or “hiker” in the American idiom. I have ambled, rambled, scrambled or otherwise perambulated across large swathes of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland; I have roamed around Europe; and I have even ventured, since my arrival on this side of the Pond fourteen years ago, to traipse through parts of the New World. I am happy to walk alone or with friends, and I am always happy to walk with ghosts. ...

Belloc puts in an appearance. But then we get to Lewis ... 

One of my favourite walks of this sort is to follow C.S. Lewis in The Pilgrim’s Regress, in which the pseudo-autobiographical protagonist traverses the Mappa Mundi of Lewis’s philosophical imagination, arguing with heretics and battling with dragons. I was, therefore, delighted to learn that a new annotated edition of this under-read and underrated classic has just been published (The Pilgrim’s Regress: Wade Annotated Edition, 2014), edited and introduced by David C. Downing, a Lewis scholar of deservedly solid repute, whose work I have known for years. Few works of Lewis are in more need of annotation than this allegorical journey through intellectual error and I was excited to see how Downing’s notes would illustrate Lewis’s path to conversion. ...

You can read the rest of the article here.

An Inkling Novel - And a Book Tally

I just finished Looking for the King by David C. Downing. 

The book is labeled "An Inkling Novel." It does indeed merit that label with C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams all playing prominent roles in the plot and with their own words appearing (slightly reshaped for literary purposes), and with an appearance by Hugo Dyson. Their appearances in this book reminded me of an novel I read a couple of years ago that had some of the same gang appearing, Toward the Gleam by T. M. Doran. Lewis and Tolkien figure in that book, along with Chesterton, Owen Barfield, and others.

Is there a whole genre of fiction featuring Chesterton and the Inklings? 

Downing's book was amusing. It wasn't great, but it was certainly better than a lot of other contemporary books I've read. And it was fun picking up on all the allusions to works of the Inklings circa 1940. So, well worth reading.

I have had Downing's book stuck on a shelf for several years now. I rediscovered it as I was in the process of reorganizing my books.

Part of my goal in reorganizing is to identify books I can give away. Now that I'm retired, I've decided to donate to the library, the parish rummage sale, or my old school books that I will no longer need or use, as well as books that I will not likely ever read or reread. Through this on going process I've culled hundreds of books from my collection in the last couple of years.

A secondary and more recent goal is to collect related books scattered across multiple book cases in the house or in boxes stored in closets or the crawl space. I now have one bookcase dedicated to Chesterton, Lewis, and their friends. That bookcase features works by them, biographies and autobiographies, and studies of them and their works.

Right now, the tally by author:

Chesterton - 72 

Lewis - 40 

Tolkien - 10 

Williams - 11

Hilarie Belloc - 5

The case also contains some 17 books by Joseph Pearce and multiple titles by Dale Ahlquist.

I know these are other books by or related to Chesterton and the Inklings, but I have not not located them yet. There are more boxes in the crawl space ....

I will continue to collect and cull.

And, of course, to read.

{UPDATE: I did indeed find more books, particularly of Lewis, so I've updated the totals above.}

The Prophets of Technology (Including Lewis and Tolkien)

"...These writers foresaw, with a startling clarity, the emergence of the technocratic order in which we live; attending to their warnings, we can get a better understanding of our current predicament — and, just possibly, a sense of how we might respond to it. Such will be the purpose of this essay...."  

Hearth & Field contains a fascinating essay by Dr. Ben Reinhard on  "The Prophets of Technology",He features Lewis, Tolkien, and more. It begins:  

I dreamt that all the planning of peremptory humanity

Had crushed Nature finally beneath the foot of Man;

Birth-control and merriment, Earth completely sterilized,

Bungalow and fun-fair, had fulfilled our Plan;

But the lion and the unicorn were sighing at the funeral,

Crying at the funeral

Sobbing at the funeral of the god Pan.

—C. S. Lewis, “Pan’s Purge”

Technology, it is clear, has left mankind behind. For the moment, the forces we have created are profitably restrained — to the ease and comfort of the multitude, and to the staggering enrichment and empowerment of the elite who control them. Yet even our rulers are only riding the tiger, and it is only a matter of time before their grip slackens, and the machines man made to be his servant become, finally, his master. But whoever happens to rule at the moment, it is clear that the tyranny of the machine is unlike anything else hitherto encountered by the human family. Where the old tyrannies claimed merely the bodies of their subjects, the Machine claims all: body and soul, mind and strength, and all the inner recesses of the human heart. The old world has faded; the new one, being born, promises to be an inhuman, harrowing age.

And, most terrifying of all, it is all happening so fast.

Reflections of this sort are likely not new to readers of Hearth & Field. They can be found on the pages of any of a dozen respectable publications; they echo the concerns of contemporary writers as diverse as Paul Kingsnorth, Bill Watterson, Rod Dreher, and Pope Francis. But though readers will recognize that such warnings are not exactly new, I wonder how many recognize precisely how old they are. For all that it reads like a pastiche of contemporary criticisms of the technocratic paradigm, the opening paragraph is in fact comprised entirely of lightly paraphrased quotations from Christian humanists from the early-to-mid twentieth century: Romano Guardini, Christopher Dawson, C. S. Lewis, Conrad Pepler, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

These writers foresaw, with a startling clarity, the emergence of the technocratic order in which we live; attending to their warnings, we can get a better understanding of our current predicament — and, just possibly, a sense of how we might respond to it. Such will be the purpose of this essay. ...

Read the Essay here. 

The Path to Rome

 

In his book Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know, Joseph Pearce provides a quick overview of what he considers great work of literature. He includes at the end a list of 100 works "every Catholic should aspire to read."

For the most part, I agree with him. And I've used his list to help guide my effort to fill the gaps in my own reading history. Mind you, as a Literature major, and as a Chestertonian, I had read many of the works he cites.

Chesterton. Dickens. Dostoyevsky. Tolkien. Lewis. Shakespeare. Sophocles. 

Ah. 

But there have been some works he mentions that I did not like. I tried Don Quixote, and got a hundred pages in before I gave up. I did read a few of Jane Austen's books that I had not previously read, but did not really enjoy them. Manners and romance are not my cup of tea. And I did read both of Flannery O'Connor's novels; too grotesque for my taste.

I decided to tackle Hilaire Belloc. I had only previously read Cautionary Tales for Children (which I had enjoyed) and Pearce's Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. I enjoyed the biography, but came away not really liking Belloc as a person!

Nevertheless, I thought it was time to tackle one of the Belloc books on Pearce's list: The Path to Rome. I started it, but it did not hold my interest, so I drifted away to other works. Still, given his ties to Chesterton, and Pearce's championing of the book, I felt obligated to finish it. So I returned to it.

I did finish it yesterday. But I have to admit I did so just to say I did. 

It could be that I'm not a fan of travel books or of long rambling works. But even more, his personality got in the way. I did not care about his struggles, and got tired of his commentary and judging. Oh, there were some descriptive passages that were quite fine, and I could appreciate them. But that's about all I did enjoy.

I have his The Four Men on my bookshelf, but I hesitate to  even attempt it. I also have a collection of his essays; those I might read as I do enjoy essays. Not yet, however.

Instead, I'll just end this with a clerihew I wrote about Belloc a number of years ago:

Hilaire Belloc
walked off the end of a dock,
but being in the midst of a debate
he was unaware of his fate.

The Clerihew Contest

 

At every national Chesterton Conference they have a clerihew contest. As I was not goign to attend this summer, I sent Dale Ahlquist some clerihews and asked him to submit them for me. (Actually, I asked him to inflict them on the judges.)

Apparently he did. Thanks Dale. Not sure how the judges feel about it.

I've heard from two different people that I got an honorable mention in one of the categories, but they did not know which poem made the cut.

I'll have to wait for the next issue of Gilbert.

But for now, here are the ones I submitted: 

Before Chesterton

We can probably assume Saint Blaise
is in Heaven these days.
Martyrdom likely led him to eternal glory
and not just some fish story.


Elizabeth Barrett Browning
sat in her parlor frowning.
Robert had bought her something labeled "Serra da Estrela cheese,"
that clearly wasn't Portuguese.


St. Robert Southwell
sat musing for a spell,
then sadly said, “It does seem a shame
Americans don’t properly pronounce my name.”


During Chesterton

Lord Peter Wimsey
was never deterred by evidence flimsy,
but his confidence suffered years of strain
when faced with the mystery of Harriet Vane.


Hilaire Belloc
walked off the end of a dock,
but being in the middle of a debate,
he failed to recognize his fate.



H. G. Wells
crafted some literary hells.
When it comes to romance, too,
he created more than a few.


After Chesterton


Alfred Hitchcock
developed a bad case of writer's block
despite his use of a bran muffin
as the MacGuffin.


In the kitchen, Julia Child
was amusing but never wild.
To fill that void
we had to rely on Dan Aykroyd.


Megan Rapinoe
picked up a banjo.
As she played a tune on it,
she sang, "That #$@&*! is full of %@!#*"


Matthew Perry,
boarded Charon’s ferry.
As Charon pushed off, Perry was heard to crack.
“That parachute really WAS a knapsack.”

For the Feast of the Assumption

 

On this Feast of the Assumption, here's an essay by Chesterton, "Mary and the Convert." 

I was brought up in a part of the Protestant world which can best be described by saying that it referred to the Blessed Virgin as the Madonna.

Sometimes it referred to her as a Madonna; from a general memory of Italian pictures. It was not a bigoted or uneducated world; it did not regard all Madonnas as idols or all Italians as Dagoes. But it had selected this expression, by the English instinct for compromise, so as to avoid both reverence and irreverence. It was, when we came to think about it, a very curious expression. It amounted to saying that a Protestant must not call Mary “Our Lady,” but he may call her “My Lady.” This would seem, in the abstract, to indicate an even more intimate and mystical familiarity than the Catholic devotion. But I need not say that it was not so. It was not untouched by that queer Victorian evasion; of translating dangerous or improper words into foreign languages.

But it was also not untouched by a certain sincere though vague respect for the part that Madonnas had played, in the actual cultural and artistic history of our civilisation. Certainly the ordinary reasonably reverent Englishman would never have intended to be disrespectful to that tradition in that aspect; even when he was much less liberal, travelled and well-read than were my own parents. Certainly, on the other hand, he was entirely unaware that he was saying “My Lady”; and if you had pointed out to him that, in fact, he was generally saying “a My Lady,” or “the My Lady,” he would have agreed that it was rather odd.

I do not forget, and indeed it would be a very thankless thing in me to forget, that I was lucky in this relative reasonablenesss and moderation of my own family and friends; and that there is a whole Protestant world that would consider such moderation a very poor-spirited sort of Protestantism. That strange mania against Mariolatry; that mad vigilance that watches for the first faint signs of the cult of Mary as for the spots of a plague; that apparently presumes her to be perpetually and secretly encroaching upon the prerogatives of Christ; that logically infers from a mere glimpse of the blue robe the presence of the Scarlet Woman–all that I have never felt or known or understood, even as a child; nor did those who had the care of my childhood. They knew nothing to speak of about the Catholic Church; they certainly did not know that anybody connected with them was ever likely to belong to it; but they did know that noble and beautiful ideas had been presented to the world under the form of this sacred figure, as under that of the Greek gods or heroes. But, while putting aside all pretence that this Protestant atmosphere was actively an anti-Catholic atmosphere, I may still say that my personal case was a little curious.

I have here rashly undertaken to write on a subject at once intimate and daring; a subject which ought indeed, by its own majesty, to make it impossible to be egotistical; but which does also make it impossible to be anything but personal.

“Mary and the Convert” is the most personal of topics, because conversion is something more personal and less corporate than communion; and involves isolated feelings as an introduction to collective feelings. But also because the cult of Mary is in a rather peculiar sense a personal cult; over and above that greater sense that must always attach to the worship of a personal God. God is God, Maker of all things visible and invisible; the Mother of God is in a rather special sense connected with things visible; since she is of this earth, and through her bodily being God was revealed to the senses. In the presence of God, we must remember what is invisible, even in the sense of what is merely intellectual; the abstractions and the absolute laws of thought; the love of truth, and the respect for right reason and honourable logic in things, which God himself has respected. For, as St. Thomas Aquinas insists, God himself does not contradict the law of contradiction.

But Our Lady, reminding us especially of God Incarnate, does in some degree gather up and embody all those elements of the heart and the higher instincts, which are the legitimate short cuts to the love of God. Dealing with those personal feelings, even in this rude and curt outline, is therefore very far from easy. I hope I shall not be misunderstood if the example I take is merely personal; since it is this particular part of religion that really cannot be impersonal. It may be an accident, or a highly unmerited favour of heaven, but anyhow it is a fact, that I always had a curious longing for the remains of this particular tradition, even in a world where it was regarded as a legend. I was not only haunted by the idea while still stuck in the ordinary stage of schoolboy scepticism; I was affected by it before that, before I had shed the ordinary nursery religion in which the Mother of God had no fit or adequate place. I found not long ago, scrawled in very bad handwriting, screeds of an exceedingly bad imitation of Swinburne, which was, nevertheless, apparently addressed to what I should have called a picture of the Madonna. And I can distinctly remember reciting the lines of the “Hymn To Proserpine,” out of pleasure in their roll and resonance; but deliberately directing them away from Swinburne’s intention, and supposing them addressed to the new Christian Queen of life, rather than to the fallen Pagan queen of death.

“But I turn to her still; having seen she shall surely abide in the end; Goddess and maiden and queen, be near me now and befriend.”

And I had obscurely, from that time onwards, the very vague but slowly clarifying idea of defending all that Constantine had set up, just as Swinburne’s Pagan had defended all he had thrown down.

It may still be noted that the unconverted world, Puritan or Pagan, but perhaps especially when it is Puritan, has a very strange notion of the collective unity of Catholic things or thoughts. Its exponents, even when not in any rabid sense enemies, give the most curious lists of things which they think make up the Catholic life; an odd assortment of objects, such as candles, rosaries, incense (they are always intensely impressed with the enormous importance and necessity of incense), vestments, pointed windows, and then all sorts of essentials or unessentials thrown in in any sort of order; fasts, relics, penances or the Pope.

But even in their bewilderment, they do bear witness to a need which is not so nonsensical as their attempts to fulfill it; the need of somehow summing up “all that sort of thing,” which does really describe Catholicism and nothing else except Catholicism. It should of course be described from within, by the definition and development of its theological first principles; but that is not the sort of need I am talking about. I mean that men need an image, single, coloured and clear in outline, an image to be called up instantly in the imagination, when what is Catholic is to be distinguished from what claims to be Christian or even what in one sense is Christian.

Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our Lady did not stand up in my mind quite definitely, at the mention or the thought of all these things. I was quite distant from these things, and then doubtful about these things; and then disputing with the world for them, and with myself against them; for that is the condition before conversion. But whether the figure was distant, or was dark and mysterious, or was a scandal to my contemporaries, or was a challenge to myself–I never doubted that this figure was the figure of the Faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity.

The instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her; when I finally saw what was nobler than my fate, the freest and the hardest of all my acts of freedom, it was in front of a gilded and very gaudy little image of her in the port of Brindisi, that I promised the thing that I would do, if I returned to my own land.

Memorizing Lepanto

The July/August issue of StAR (Saint Austin Review) arrived the other day. The focus of this issue is on "Ageless Children's Literature."

My attention was drawn to an article by G. K. Martin, "Chesterton's 'Lepanto' and Why Boys Should Love Poetry."

Martin begins by talking about his love of poetry from a young age. He talks about the value of poetry for boys. "The restlessness of the pre-pubescent boy, that untethered creature who walks like a naughty child with the body of an old man, could find a harbor to dock his heart at within the wiser musings of those old, dead men we call poets."

He goes on to note, "Poetry is loved because it reveals love. Poetry is treasured because poetry treasures the world. Poetry is not about itself; the best poetry is always about something else. It heals a poisoned imagination, it tenderly approaches a broken heart, and it forces one to return to a slower pace of being, the pace of peace."

He admits that reading an memorizing poetry has brought him "much fulfillment."

When he was in high school he memorized "Lepanto." I won't disclose the rest of his article, other than to day he found a way to use the achievement, and to offer more praise for poetry and memorizing.

The article is well worth a read.

As is StAR in general. This particular issue has other articles of interest to Chestertonians, including  looks at Narnia, C.S. Lewis, and fairy tales. 

Joseph Pearce is co-editer of the magazine, by the way.

If you don't subscribe, consider doing so!

Tim Walz Clerihew

 

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been nominated for Vice President - he hasn't been officially approved as of the time I'm posting this. 

Since he was nominated, he's been under attack for a variety of actions and alleged actions. One of actions was allegedly requiring tampon machines in boys' bathrooms - leading opponent to label him "Tampn Tim."

Whatever the truth of this story, it inspired me to scribble a political clerihew! 

Governor Tim Walz

was enjoying some spaghetti and meatballs,

but then got a sick feeling in his belly

when an ad for tampons came on the telly.

Reading With Urgency

 

In the July/August issue of  Gilbert, an article by Mark Johnson caught my attention. In "Urgent Conversations with the Dead" he discusses reading good and old books - a subject near and dear to my heart.

He notes that we used to read books with a sense of urgency, books that elicited a personal response, books that revealed truth about the world and human nature.

Johnson laments the fact that too many people no longer read books "with urgency" due to television and the internet. And he points out that even when we do read current bestsellers too many new books are tainted by "characters engaged in fruitless searches for an ever-elusive 'inner self'' and trapped in personal development purgatories." He goes on to say "If The Brothers Karamazov were written today, all the brothers would be sent off to therapy by page 80 or so and live pleasantly medicated lives ever after."

He even quotes Screwtape, and, of course, Chesterton.

As a retired middle school and high school English teacher I did indeed see such tendencies in the "young adult" and even adult novels were were supposed to teach. They were shallow, and tended to water down moral and ethical values. Thank God I ended my teaching career at a classical education  school with ties to the Chesterton Network!

One of my joys since retiring is that I have had time to read more of those books with values and depth. Oh, some are for fun - I'm currently reading a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery - but many are books and works I've wanted to read or reread. Some are old classics, some are more contemporary books with substance. Just this year I've read such books as:

Heretics by G. K. Chesterton

The Flying Inn by G.K. Chesterton

Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales

By the Rivers of Babylon by Michael D. O’Brien

The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens

Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift  

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor 

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Mixed in are some mysteries, theological works, papal encyclicals, and poetry collections.

All told, I've read some 35 works so far this year. I would have read even more had I not wasted so much time on social media!

Johnson points out the importance of novels in challenging the current trends: "The path back to reading for truth may also be though the novel ...."

I completely agree.  

I read novels - and other works - to find truth, beauty, and goodness.

And I read them with urgency.

But maybe I need to be more urgent about my reading, and to read more good novels. 

Two Days Late - and a Reid Clerihew

 

So after making a point of saying I would be posting, and resurrecting the notion that I am "Thursday," I failed to post on Thursday. 

Fortunately, "E" filled that gap. It was good to see someone else posting here.

I plead busyness and forgetfulness.

I've been writing and editing the newsletter for a local pro-life pregnancy center, which I have to get to the President of the center by next week for approval, and then off to the printer the following week.

But still, I should have posted something. That's where the forgetfulness comes in.

Anyway, here's a topical clerihew I did scribble this week:

Joy Reid

was fined for driving at excessive speed.

She was dismayed when the Black traffic court judge didn't agree

that speed limits are a tool of white supremacy.

The Importance of Being is the Flipside of the Importance of Doing Nothing

 "It's because artists do not practise, patrons do not patronize, crowds do not assemble to worship reverently the great work of Doing Nothing, that the world has lost its philosophy and even failed to invent a new religion." G.K. Chesterton

Here's a great piece that appeared at Forbes recently: The Importance of Doing Nothing. It points out a truth that many of the best thinkers over the past 100 years have pointed out, often in exasperation at our busy-obsessed culture: Doing nothing is itself productive, for the simple reason that it's not productive.

It's a paradox, yes, but a paradox recognized by (just off the top of my head) Chesterton, Nock, and Pieper.

Excerpts from the article:

But working harder is not necessarily working smarter. In fact slacking off and setting aside regular periods of 'doing nothing' may be the best thing we can do to induce states of mind that nurture our imagination and improve our mental health . . .

doing nothing has never really been acceptable. We associate it with irresponsibility, wasting our life. Most of us feel guilty if we don't have something to do. On the other hand we get a buzz when we feel really busy. Distraction-inducing behaviours like constantly checking email stimulate the brain to shoot dopamine into the bloodstream giving us a rush that can make stopping so much harder. . . .

Our frenetic activities in cyberspace ”“ a world of multitasking and hyperactivity ”“ help us to delude ourselves that we are productive. The reality is that social media is very reactive but not very original. It contracts creativity and can impact mental health. If we don't know how to calibrate the balance between action and reflection we may become a casualty of psychological burnout. . . .

Here's a column I wrote for The Register about the importance of doing nothing: Take It Easy. Also: A book review for Gilbert Magazine about Joseph Pieper's classic, Leisure, the Basis of Culture.

The Flying Inn and Walt Whitman

Every yer I set various reading goals. One of my goals this year was to read a G.K. Chesterton novel I had not read before.

I met that goal yesterday by finishing The Flying Inn.

The book is typical Chesterton fiction, a mixture of fancy and fantasy with a social subtext. In the case of this book, he is celebrating the victory of the common man and common pleasures over government control and elitist hypocrisy.

Oh, and he is also celebrating rum and cheese.

As I read the book and its praise of the common man, I thought of some recent comments I'd seen about Chesterton and Walt Whitman. Indeed, I had seen some suggestions that Chesterton praised Whitman.

On the surface Chesterton would seem to have little in common with Whitman. Indeed, Whitman's religious and lifestyle would appear to be in conflict with Chesterton's. But they shared a common love of the common man and common things, and a celebration of life.

This particularly hit home in the section on Crooke's shop where a plasterer, a clock mender, a clerk, and assorted others came in seeking a drink. Common men seeking a common thing. And I thought of Whitman's "I Hear America Singing" with its mechanics, carpenter, mason, and more all singing their strong melodious songs. And, of course, Chesterton's book is full of songs.

This Chesterton/Whitman connection - and their differences - are explored in an interesting 2017 article by Scott Hubbard in Transpositions, "The Orthodoxy Of Leaves Of Grass: The Imaginative Visions Of G.K. Chesterton And Walt Whitman In Dialogue."

The article begins: 

"Walt Whitman is not likely to appear on anyone’s list of great Christian poets. And with reason. From the first publication of Leaves of Grass in 1855, to his death in 1892, the good gray poet had cosied with Emersonian Neoplatonism, drafted plans for ‘The Great Construction of the New Bible’ and even accorded the figure of Satan a place within the Holy Quaternity of God. He is large and contains multitudes, but Chalcedonian orthodoxy is not one of them. The problem is that Whitman’s personal heterodoxies may keep his name from appearing on any list of great poets written by a Christian. However, one Christian who in his own lifetime offered hearty dissent to this rule was none other than renowned essayist G.K. Chesterton.

When Chesterton compiled his 1905 essay series Heretics to expose the philosophical inadequacies of the literati of the past half-century, not only did he spare Whitman from his critical scythe, but the American poet received accolade as a type of noble pagan. Indeed, for a pre-conversion Chesterton, Whitman was ’one of the greatest men of the nineteenth century’. And while this is certainly a tendentious claim from England’s Catholic Colossus, it is not one that his later work shows any trace of recanting. In fact, the English apologist and the American bard had imaginative visions that greatly overlap in scope and focus. ..."

The essay is well worth a read - as was The Flying Inn.

  

The Man Who IS Thursday

 

There used to be a team of writers contributing to this blog. I was not one of the original team members, but I was invited in 2006 to join them. Each of us was supposed tor try to contribute something on an assigned day. My day was Thursday. I liked that: I was The Man Who Was Thursday.

I have to admit that I was not always consistent about posting on Thursdays, but I did contribute regularly.

Over the years as blogs became less popular various team members gradually stopped contributing. I continued to post, but not as regularly as I had been. Indeed, since 2014 I have been the only person contributing to this blog. And for a while I only posted a couple of times a year

In 2021 I considered quitting too. But then I decided to continue the blog, and to contribute more. I did so, though I have not been as regular as I should have been. Last year I only posted 28 times. This is just the 10th post for this year.

Me culpa.

Two weeks ago my pastor approached me after daily Mass (I am a daily Mass attendee). He explained that the woman who lectored every Thursday was facing health issues, and asked me to become the Thursday lector in her place. I agreed.

So I'm back to being Thursday!

I will continue to post here, and I will try to be more regular. I might even try to post on some Thursdays.

But, of course, I am posting this on a Tuesday.

Typical.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy IS Catholic!

On social media some folks have been engaging in a debate over whether The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is Christian/Catholic. Some argue that is is just a fantasy and set in a pagan world. 

But Tolkien himself  said it is Catholic. In a letter to Father Robert Murray, SJ, he wrote: The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism."

Yes, the world is "pagan" one, but it is seen through a theological lens. Tolkien included such theological elements as: The battle between good and evil, the victory of humility over pride, and the activity of grace (such as seen in Frodo's pity toward Gollum. It includes such themes as death and immortality, mercy and pity, resurrection, salvation, repentance, self-sacrifice, free will, justice, fellowship, authority and healing.

Frodo's struggle with the ring and it's malevolent influence reminds one of the line from The Lord's Prayer: "And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Tolkien also noted, "Of course God is in The Lord of the Rings. The period was pre-Christian, but it was a monotheistic world." And the God of Middle Earth, he said, is our God. "The book is about the world that God created – the actual world of this planet."  

(I recently added a copy Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography by Holly Ordway to my "to-be-read" shelf!)

Joseph Pearce's Poetry List

 

Joseph Pearce shows up in the strangest places.

I used to teach at a classical education school. Although I'm now retired, I still get catalogs from companies from which I ordered classical materials. One of those companies is Memoria Press, which puts out a publication called The Classical Teacher.

Amid the lists of catechetical materials in the most recent edition of that publication there are several articles, including one by Joseph Pearce: "Poems Everyone Should Know."

He lists the poems in three categories: Epics, Verse Drama, and Lyric Poetry.

Epics:

The Iliad - Homer
The Odyssey - Homer

The Aeneid - Virgil 
Beowulf

The Divine Comedy - Dante

He gives an honorable mention to The Lord of the Rings, which he describes an a prose epic, not a novel, but since is is not a poem, it does not make the official list.

Verse Drama:

Antigone
Oedipus Rex
Oedipus at Colonus
Hamlet
King Lear

Lyric poetry

"Upon the Image of Death" - Saint Robert Southwell
"Hymn Before Sunrise" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"The Wreck of The Deutschland" - Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Wasteland - T. S. Eliot
"Tarantella" - Hilaire Belloc

Interesting list. I take pride in that I've read all but one them, having somehow missed encountering "Hymn Before Sunrise." 

Guess I have to find that lyric just to say I've read them all next time I run into Pearce.

The Books Have Arrived!

Okay, as if it didn't already have too many books (Too many books? Is there such a thing?) two more waiting at my front door this morning.

In the latest Saint Austen Review (StAR) I read a review of of Holly Ordway's Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography. The review sparked my interest, so noticing it was put out by Bishop Barron's Word on Fire I went to the WoF website to order it. While searching for the title in the online catalog I spotted The Golden Key And Other Fairy Tales by George MacDonald. So naturally I had to order that one too!

Add them to my "To Read" pile.

  

The latest Saint Austin Review: Chesterton!

 

The always delightful Saint Austen Review (StAR) has come out with an issue dedicated to G. K. Chesterton and Fulton Sheen: Defenders of the Faith. 

In addition to the Joseph Pearce editorial focusing on that subject, the May/June 2024 edition features such articles as:

"On Considering a Present-Day Chesterton" by Lindsay Schlegal
"Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown: From Logic to Metaphysics" by Robert Lazu Kmita
"A Beautiful Failure Called G. K.'s Weekly" by Luca Fumagalli
"Friends in the Faith: Chesterton and Sheen" by James M. Patterson
"Literary Influences on Fulton J. Sheen" by Joseph Tuttle (one of them being Chesterton)

And more on Sheen, plus articles about Mozart, Steve McQueen, modern technology, art, and of course, some poetry and book reviews.

If you don't already subscribe, consider doing so! 

  

St. Robert Southwell Clerihew

 

Saint Robert Southwell
sat musing for a spell,
then softly said, "It does seem a shame,
Americans don't properly pronounce my name."

(While we colonials tend to pronounce his name "South-well," according to Joseph Pearce, the traditional pronunciation for the name of this great priest./martyr/poet is "Suh-thell.")

H.G. Wells Clerihew

We've been reading Heretics in our Chesterton group.

I got inspired:

H. G. Wells
crafted some literary hells.
When it comes to romance, too,
he created more than a few.

Six Clerihews in Gilbert

 

Six of my clerihews are in the March/April 2024 issue of Gilbert:

As an actor, Tom Baker
was more of a character than a heart-breaker.
But I think his Doctor is worthy of a clerihew,
even though at the mention of his name some folks just say, “Who?"

The replacement Apostle Matthias
was chosen by lot, not by bias.
Alas, except for his selection.
he's eluded all other historical detection.

Fyodor Dostoevsky
was plagued by vices that proved pesky .
To pay his bills he took a successful gamble
creating characters who were prone to verbally ramble.

When reading Robert Frost
I often find myself getting lost
in thoughts of walls and trees and snow and roads,
but never once of toads.

Inspector Javert

felt an insatiable desire for a chocolate eclair.

But since the bakeries would not open until well after dawn

he obsessed instead about Jean Valjean.

The Brits now have their third Chuck,
and so I wish them lots of luck.
He finally achieved one of his two main goals,
the other, of course, being Mrs. Parker Bowles.

Ten Books with C. S. Lewis

 

Thomas Salerno has posted a reading list inspired by C. S. Lewis. 

While scrolling through Twitter (I refuse to call it “X”) a few days ago, I came across a very interesting thread posted by the account Coffee with the Classics. Apparently in 1962, C. S. Lewis was asked which books most influenced him as a writer and shaped his philosophy of life. Lewis responded with a list of ten remarkable titles:

Phantastes by George MacDonald
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Temple by George Herbert
The Prelude by William Wordsworth
The Idea of the Holy by Rudolf Otto
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius
The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell
Theism and Humanism by Arthur James Balfour
Descent into Hell by Charles Williams
The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton

He then goes on to explain his reading plan.

I found his list interesting. I've read a few of the titles - Phantastes, The Aeneid, The Consolation of Philosophy, and, of course, The Everlasting Man. Meanwhile, Descent into Hell is in my pile of books to read. Two of the titles are new to me -  The Idea of the Holy and Theism and Humanism. Not sure I will ever read them. But Herbert, Wordsworth, and Boswell I just might read at some point, once I clear the 20 or so books already in my to-read pile!

   

Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth

 

Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth,  by Bradley J. Birzer in The Imaginative Conservative. 

Myth, J.R.R. Tolkien thought, can convey the sort of profound truth that is intransigent to description or analysis in terms of facts and figures. But, Tolkien admitted, myth can be dangerous if it remains pagan. Therefore, one must sanctify it.

To enter faerie—that is, a sacramental and liturgical understanding of creation—is to open oneself to the gradual discovery of beauty, truth, and excellence.[1] One arrives in faerie only by invitation and, even then, only at one’s peril. The truths to be found within faerie are greater than those that can be obtained through mere human understanding; and one finds within faerie that even the greatest works of man are as nothing compared with the majesty of creation. To enter faerie is, paradoxically, both a humbling and exhilarating experience. This is what the Oxford don and scholar J.R.R. Tolkien firmly believed.

The last story Tolkien published prior to his death, “Smith of Wootton Major,” follows a normal but charitably inclined man who has been graced with the ability to make extraordinarily beautiful things while metal smithing. Smith, as he is known, discovered the gift of grace on his tenth birthday, when the dawn engulfed him and “passed on like a wave of music into the West, as the sun rose above the rim of the world.”[2] Like the earth at the end of Eliot’s “Wasteland,” Tolkien’s Smith had been baptized, and through this gift he receives an invitation to faerie. While visiting that world, he discovers that in it he is the least of beings. Its beauty, however, entices him, and he spends entire days “looking only at one tree or one flower.”[3] The depth of each thing astounds him. “Wonders and mysteries,” many of them terrifying in their overwhelming beauty and truth, abound in faerie, Smith discovers, and he dwells on such wonders even when he is no longer in faerie.[4] Nevertheless, some encounters terrify him: ... 

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