Ursuline Academy - Yearbook (Cumberland, MD)

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Why Literature Shall Not Go VALENTINE LONG, O. F. M. What sounds like 'an exaggeration need not be one. It may only prove the hastiness of those who, hearing, have judged it so. A man born blind might easily doubt the glory of a sunset as told to him, on the grounds of too good to be true. Yet could he but open his eyes for a moment to the splendor of the fact, he not unlikely would change his mind. He might then consider the description all of a sudden not good enough to be true. And so with the following statement. It runs the risk of sounding like big talk and, knowing this, falls shyly back upon an apology. But apology notwithstanding, this is the truth, that any school taking the Catholic religion seriously cannot afford for that very reason to make of English Literature a side issue. For that literature is nothing less than the authentic voice of human nature, speaking its purest English, and yearning its way through the hundred and one mysteries of life- whither?-to whom? Simply, it is language at its bestgone on a search for the Answer, and either--with the aid of divine revelation-finding that Answer fGodj or without that aid meeting with disappointment. It enjoys, to be sure, the free will to accept for not to acceptj the guidance of Christianity and have the light of heaven let down upon its path, but in either choice it indicates from its wild and beautiful insatiable dreams, which grow out of the very realities of experience, that man does want something better than this earth for a home. lt is a reaching for the stars, a cry in exile from the broken heart of humanity. And although it is true the masterpieces of our language, in an overwhelming majority, have about them the clean fresh air of Christianity, nevertheless a Catholic might very conceivably accuse that atmosphere of the taint of heresy. He might feel so inclined, but hardly if he had made a study of the classics in question. For the scholar would know how the religion of England, once separated from the Papacy, soon cracked up into all sorts of divisions, and that as a result the literary spokesmen of the nation avoided the differences of the multiplying sects to concentrate on those grand central doctrines from the Mother Church, still kept intact, and still held in common. Only the Catholic writers as a Chris- tian group, by way of exception, chose to venture doctrinally into detail, and their number, negligible for three centuries, has grown steadily out of the daybreak of the Oxford move- ment to the brilliance of an unquenchable sunrise. For the most part, Catholic or Protestant, they were men and women of Christlike ideals who wrought the emotions and dreams of the race into an immortal English beauty of mere words. And they cannot receive too much credit. But strangely enough it is the pagan minority, when not downright hostile, that has been known to carry more telling weight towards the confirmation of Catholic truth, in the minds of youth. And for this reason: it bears witness from without and in spite of itself. By contrast, its sadness without hope betrays it. Its rejection of divine revelation cannot stand the test. It cries out from the unfathomable depths of experience for it-knows-not-what. But a Catholic teacher knows, and it is his business to point out to the class any such unconscious act of faith. From the list of examples available, the Ode to the Nightingale will have to suffice. It is typical of the rest, poetry and prose alike. Here the poet Keats following the promptings of his better self reaches unaware a magnificent agreement with St. Augustine and St. Paul. Under the spell of beauty, when the silence of moonlight has taken voice and mingles music with radiance of the night, really in a blending as perfect as that of the fragrance and color of a flower, or the color and innocence in a child's eye, or the red warmth of a human kiss, under the spell of such

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Ev? 'isis Basketball Achievement Senior Class Officers lielcgincs to Mission Convention at limmitslnurg Ieancttc Raphcl-CJraioriczal Contestant lclzi Santoru- Delegate to National Mission Convention, Rochester, New York. Class ol '41

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beauty does the listening pagan feel himself carried beyond the limits of time, beyond the mere singing of the bird, into the heart of an eternal mystery. The concrete tortures him f My heart aches, . . . J with the intoxicating glory of its insufficiency, and his poem would burst the fetters of the flesh-straining for the Absolute-and be satisfied to the full. How can the author be addressing the nightingale for its own worth futhou wast not born for death, immortal birdlnj when he must know too well the fate in store for it? How else does the ode give sense than by an interpretation beyond its literal mean- ing? Indeed, and with the skill of genius, that light-winged dryad of the trees but sym- bolizes the deathless spirit of Beauty and in itself is not enough, is only the faintest sug- gestion, a physical reminder of what no eye hath seen nor ear heard this side the grave. And with nothing less will the poet be appeased. 44 Darkling, I listen, and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath, Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou are pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Strange, that a young man in the twenties without the gift of faith, entirely from the demands of instinct, should have come so near to guessing the Beatific Vision and to achiev- ing the supreme heights of St. Paul's I desire to be dissolved and to be with Christ. Strange, that Keats too would dissolve, and quite forget . . . The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan, Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and diesg Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And 'leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrowf, Strange, and yet not strange, as inevitable as human nature, than an infidel should find himself aching for that uncreated fullness of Beauty, for that one Object able to in- spire love without end, without a moment's weakening of intensity, without a single touch of pain in it. Strange, magnif-iciently strange, that the whole spontaneous Ode to a Nightin- gale on nothing more than the authority of a poetys heart should have striven so nobly to say what an earlier pagan, newly enlightened, actually did accomplish: O Beauty ever ancient, ever new! . . . Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee. And this Ode to the Nightingale, let it be repeated, serves fairly well to exemplify the bulk of our pagan literature, in its impatience to reach beyond its own philosophy for the answers to the spirit of man. It is only one of many, and on no account a far-fetched case in point. Although in fairness to Iohn Keats let it be further mentioned, that he saves himself from that complete pessimism of such as Thomas Hardy because of his genius for coming close to the truth, even in the dark. All in all, to sum up, English Literature is nothing to be apologized for. Generally it has taken Christ to its heart. Seldom it has not, and when it has not it indeed mostly wanted to do exactly that, but understood not its own desire. It belongs in the Catholic classroom.