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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
St. Thomas knew that the voices of human truth must be quiet before the tremendous and wonderful sound of THE WORD. For by THE WORD men can save their own words from vacancy and death, from becoming an affliction to their fellows, a bewilderment and an embarrassment, if not a ruin, to all who heed them or expect to be guided by them. Here I shall devote myself to the necessity of the wisdom of religious knowledge for modern writers and thinkers—to be considered specifically—and to its power especially among those who have clearly submitted their talent and intelligence to the service of The Word, the service of Christ the King.
1 Maritain, Jacques, Wust, Peter, and Dawson, Christopher, Essays in Order, (Macmillan, New York, 1931), p. 189Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., p. 190.
3 Ibid.
4 Berdyaev, Apud N., Dostoievski (Sheed and Ward, New York, 1934), pp. 173–174Google Scholar.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 175.
7 Gregory, T. S., The Unfinished Universe (Sheed and Ward, New York, 1936), p. 15Google Scholar.
8 See Dostoievski, The Brothers Karamazov, Book V, Chap. V, ‘The Grand Inquisitor’ and Solovyev, War and Christianity, The Third Conversation, ‘Short Narrative about Anti-Christ.’
9 Berdyaev, , op. cit., p. 176Google Scholar.
10 Ibid.
11 Dawson, Christopher, ‘Religion in the Age of Revolution, Part III,’ The London Tablet (09, 12, 1936), v. 168, p. 336Google Scholar.
12 Keynes, Geoffrey, ed., Poetry and Prose of William Blafye (The Nonesuch Press, London; Random House, New York, 1939), pp. 497, 498Google Scholar.
13 London Tablet (09, 12, 1936), v. 168, p. 337Google Scholar.
14 Ibid., pp. 337, 338.
15 Ibid.
16 Maritain, , Wust, , and Dawson, , op. cit., p. 190Google Scholar.
17 Ibid.
18 See D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious. The most imDortant poetry of ‘the unconscious’ has probably been written in this century by Rainer Maria Rilke in his Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus.
19 Maritain, Apud, Wust, , and Dawson, , op. cit., p. 191Google Scholar.
20 ibid.
21 Phoenix, The Posthumous Papers of D. H. Lawrence (The Viking Press, New York, 1936), p. 724Google Scholar.
22 Between Two Worlds, The Autobiography of John Middleton Murry (Julian Messner, Inc., New York, 1936), p. 362Google Scholar.
23 Maritain, , Wust, and Dawson, , op. cit., p. 196.Google Scholar I am very much indebted to Christopher Dawson's excellent evaluation for my interest in J. M. Murry, and to Dawson's work generally for its marvelous illumination, at every level of history and culture, of the relationship between religion and life.
24 Ibid.
25 Howitt, Hugh, ‘A Misguided Visionary,’ London Tablet, 08 8, 1942Google Scholar.
26 Eliot, T. S., Collected Poems (Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1936), pp. 69, 70Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., p. 74.
28 Ibid., p. 78.
29 Ibid., p. 86.
30 Ibid., p. 87.
31 Ibid., p. 88.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid., p. 90.
35 Ibid., p. 179.
36 Hopkins, G. M., Poems (Oxford University Press, London, 1937), p. 30Google Scholar.
37 Ibid., p. 29.
38 Ibid., p. 55.
39 Ibid., p. 53.
40 The Notebooks and Papers of C. M. Hopkins (Oxford University Press, London and New York, 1937), p. 304Google Scholar.
41 Poems, p. 26.
42 See Guardini, Romano, The Church and the Catholic and The Spirit of the Liturgy (Sheed and Ward, New York, 1935) for an extraordinary explanation of the nature and power of man's life in the liturgyGoogle Scholar.
43 Claudel, Paul, The Tidings Brought to Mary (Yale University Press, 1916), p. 8Google Scholar.
44 Ibid., p. 142.
45 Ibid., p. 8.
46 Claudel, Paul, Letters to a Doubter (Boni, New York, 1927), p. 241Google Scholar.
47 Ibid., p. 238.
48 Ibid., pp. 173, 174.
49 Undset, Sigrid, Kristin Lavansdatter (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1935), pp. 275–378Google Scholar.
50 Ibid., p.374.
51 Hopkins, , Poems, p. 54Google Scholar.
52 Ibid., p. 13.
53 Maritain, , Wust, and Dawson, . op. cit., p. 197Google Scholar.
54 Ibid.
55 The Americans of previous generations, Dos Passos writes, ‘were not very different from ourselves, their thoughts were the grandfathers of our thoughts, they managed to meet situations as different as those we face … we need to know how they did it.’ And he continues: ‘In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present.’ (The Ground We Stand On, Harcourt, Brace, New York, 1941, p. 3). The values of Dos Passos do not, of course, go beyond the ‘sentimentalizing’ of historyGoogle Scholar.
56 Cargill, Oscar, in Intellectual America (MacMillan, New York, 1941Google Scholar ) makes a prudential study of contemporary American culture and literature, especially concerning himself with the problem of iconoclasm in our ‘strange, new writing.’ But he is fearful that ‘there may be even a disposition to make permanent a point of view that was once a useful iconoclasm: the ideology has swallowed the carrier atom. Weak spirits in challenging times turn their faces to the wall and for comfort's sake ask others to line up with them. Against this tendency I am as willing to inveigh as Mr. MacLeish.’ (pp. IX and X.) Before he finishes, Cargill has boundaried the artist very tightly in much the same way as Van Wyck Brooks in his comments on the ‘irresponsibiles’ in The Opinions of Oliver Albion (E. P. Dutton, New York, 1941).Google Scholar Critics like Cargill and Brooks finally strangle writers, whereas Huxley never theoretically sins against art in his anxiety to save himself and society. Cargill's book, however, is possibly the most thorough and the most valuable gathering-together of the forces at work in the modern American mind that I have seen. It is worthy to stand with the now classic study of V. L. Parrington, Main Currents in American Thought.
57 Harpers, New York, 1941.
58 Muller, H. J., Modern Fiction (Funk and Wagnalls, New York and London, 1937), p. 381Google Scholar. I have found Muller's essay on Mann to be one of the most helpful of commentaries.
59 Gilson, Etienne, Christianity and Philosophy (Sheed and Ward, New York, 1939), pp. 120–121Google Scholar.
60 Maritain, Jacques, True Humanism (Scribners, New York, 1938), p. 2Google Scholar.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid., pp. 2 and 3.
63 Guardini, Romano, op. cit., p. 36Google Scholar.
64 Paul, St., l. Cor., XII, 13Google Scholar.
65 Fort, Gertrude von Le, Hymns to the Church, (Sheed and Ward, New York, 1937), p. 21Google Scholar.
66 Maritain, Jacques, The Angelic Doctor (Sheed and Ward, London, 1938), p. 90Google Scholar.
67 Hopkins, , Poems, p. 152Google Scholar.