Loyola College - Review Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW ee that is closely allied to symbolism. He puts awe and mystery into common things, but treats the roof of the stars as familiarly as the roof of his house. He is fond of the phrase ‘‘the end of the world’’, and it usually occurs as un- expectedly as in this description: ‘‘The castle blocked the end of the valley and looked like the end of the world. It would seem that he envies the men of earlier times who could be afraid of falling off the end of the world. Their sense of the mysteriousness of things, even though due to an error, seems to him preferable to a shallow cocksure- ness that denies there is any mystery at all. They had the power of wonder- ing and that is the root of thought; we have a rather insignificant certainty that puts an end to thought. As the medieval painters held a pH incomplete unless a vision of eaven and a glimpse of hell were in- cluded, so Chesterton when not finding humourous illustrations for a serious topic is setting a solemn background for his frolics. We take the first as a matter of course; it is the recognised way for authors to recompense those who buy and read their books. But if humour is not out of place in a weighty discussion, it is very rare that an ulterior purpose obtrudes on our frivolities. Our sweet- est songs may be those that tell of saddest thought, but who would say that our maddest pranks are to be marked by a concern for the four last things? We like our fun unadulterated; when Chesterton refuses this seemingly reasonable request, there is food for thought. '' The Song of Quoodle' is of a piece with the бану and satire of The Flying Inn.” It begins with a cavalier scorn of grammar that touches a chord in the boisterous spirits of all. They haven't got no noses The fallen sons of Eve; Even the smell of roses, Is not what they supposes; But more than mind discloses, And more than men believe, The initial double negative disarms suspicion, wins sympathy and соп- fidence, promises а low-brow revel. For a bit, one is carried along by the rhyme and rhythm, then feels one is losing contact and begins again. Why “The fallen sons of Eve’’? Chesterton surely could have said ‘mankind’ in six syllables without bringing in that unhappy woman and the Fall Again ‘mind’ cannot be a clumsy synonym for ‘human nose’; it is, one is forced to admit, a gratuitous reminder that our minds are as weak as our sense of smell is poor. Now there is a novelty and audacity about this form of preaching that makes us forget our dislike of ny Under cover of casually aiting those who disagree with him, he is also raising the thoughts of those who do agree. Basically he is revealing the grand confusion of great and small, of important and trifling, that comes of seeing in the light of eternity. Similarly in his detective stories, the grotesque emerges in Father Brown, the queer little priest, with his huge friend, Flambeau, a reformed criminal. It is apparent in the disconcerting habit of stimulating interest in the crime and then introducing a sturdy little lesson in logic, a disquisition on St. Thomas Aquinas, or a cryptic allusion to the mystery of the Holy Trinity. To Chesterton a digression never seems out of place. His essays begin anywhere, find a central image and then build up a closely reasoned and plainly intelligible attack on some aberration of the day. His style jolts the indolent reader to attention or leaves him lost in a maze of words. He exults in playing with words, but his play is seldom child's play; more often does it recall the re- sourceful hero of Western fiction play- ing with a revolver. Delightful or annoying, it certainly is exceedingly incisive and effective. It would be hard to find a view presented and refuted as briefly and convincingly as this. “То me this old English world (early days У»

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW ee honesty and loathes sham. He attacks Fancies and Fads” because he knows the elemental claims of human nature. He has raised these principles to the domain of politics ani in their light he has studied religion. Hugo argued from Christianity to the “‘grotesque’’; Ches- terton found in Christianity the supreme complement to the “‘grotesque’’ he had already recognised in life. More than critical acumen, it was a grasp of the conditions of healthy living that brought him to the Church. His ideal would seem the old ideal of the uni- versal man—the man who lives and thinks, who finds nothing so small that it fails to give him pleasure, who finds nothing so great that he may not think about it either to question or to adore. It may be because he did not attend a university, that Chesterton has not spent his life merely reading and in- vestigating. Modern education with its pompous curricula has over-empha- sized the measurable part of cultural development to the neglect of purely intellectual training. The methods of physical inquiry have invaded letters in the name of scholarship to make letters not a preparation for life but a lifelong pastime. Of these tendencies, Chesterton is free. He runs against the modern worship of science and scholar- ship to be the champion of plain think- ing. He vindicates the plain man’s right to think, not that he may think with the poetical scientists but that he may think for himself. He has ex- tensive learning but his learning is subordinate to, is marshalled and even snubbed by an intellect that knows its rights. When he speaks it is not with a mandate from science, such as so many popularizers arrogate; it is with an appeal to the lore of human experience and to the first principles latent in daily life. Great mental clarity and a remark- able aptitude for pertinent illustration are demanded of a man who would attack high-sounding theory with elu- sive common sense. It is so easy to argue from a system with all its pre- sumptions and implications, so hard to settle a question with scarcely any premises but the perennial truisms. The modern itch for originality makes the work at once imperative and difficult. Private judgment has come to mean the intellectual's right to say what ће pleases and the average man’s choice of what may chance to please him best. With a happy combination of circum- stances, a generous allotment of luck and an imposing tome of pseudo- science to his credit, any clever person may command the enthusiastic support of vast numbers of men. Karl Marx had German materialism, the industrial re- volution, reasonable publicity, a wild theory of value and an outrageous con- ception of history. That originator of a great experiment on civilisation is not an unique example of noble senti- ment and addled thought uniting to bring forth a monstrosity. Democracy is faced with the alternative of teach- ing thought or meeting its decline and fall. Chesterton would undertake this task. To gratify the insistence upon novelty, he has evolved a style of be- wildering brilliance and prestidigital word-play. ; His imagination is bent on charging things with significance. In his own phrase, he turns ''patterns into pic- tures, sees in the squares of a chess- board the romance of chivalry, in the decorative scheme of a wall-paper the man who designed and even perhaps liked it. Swift once meditated on a broom-stick; Chesterton seems always at it. And when the broom-stick fails to suggest in some striking way the evil of capitalism, a weak point in evolution or an absurdity of the agnos- tics, then he will turn to fable and legend, see witches riding besoms across a dad November sky and reflect on the wisdom of old wives' tales and nursery rhymes. There is a perplexing side to the vigour and vividness of his imagery is.

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LOYOLA COLLEGE REVIEW ји of Dickens) seems infinitely less hard and cruel than the world described in Gissing’s own novels. Coarse external customs are merely relative and easily assimilated. A man soon learned to harden his hands and to harden his head. Faced with the world of Gissing, he can do little but harden his heart. This power of succinct argument makes Chesterton a masterful essayist, but it also makes his books seem col- lected essays. In his hands a long dis- cussion becomes a series of discussions, each with a vitality of its own and con- tributing as a unit to the general effect. Again the bulk of his work is inextric- ably bound up with the present. He has written of Charles Dickens with penetration and appreciation, noticing what passes unobserved and illuminat- ing what time has obscured. His study is relative to present needs; it does not attempt objective biography but aims at setting right mistaken con- temporary opinion. This means that much of his work will not survive. But the point I would make is that the greater part is the more important. Literature is only a section of valuable writing; its two excellent functions, education and refined relaxation, are far from exhausting all the worthy pur- poses a writer can entertain. Within the province of journalism, falls not only the external activity of the day, but as well the fermenting mass of crude С ideas that constantly emanate from am- bitious original thinkers. There is a singular detachment and nobility in making issue with ephemeral aberra- tions, in hoping to benefit posterity not by exquisite composition but by an endeavour to improve the present. To this work for some thirty years in verse and poetry, in stories, articles and books, he has devoted the intel- lectual vigour and alertness that brought him to the Catholic Church. His reputation would stand higher, did he not write so much, foradistinctiveand exceptional style palls in the long run. To many it would seem that he has become content to be characteristically himself, to go through the familiar gymnastics and then hurry off the stage. Any single performance is by itself striking, but by now we have learned what to expect. This takes the edge off paradox and makes the fantastic commonplace. He is still the master of his conversational method, direct, entertaining and when not convincing at least stimulating. But the blossoms of his prime with their bright tints and exotic scent have given way to the solidity and uniformity of grown fruit. He was not to be only a flower. A more robust purposiveness stamps his work, makes it not so much an ornament as an instrument of civilisation. BERNARD J. Е. Loneraan, S.J. {10}