over the activity of the artist. It concerns this activity in an intrinsic way also-in the order of material causality. Morality, in fact, is rooted in total reality, of which it displays a certain system of laws; to disown it is to diminish the real, and, therefore, to impoverish the materials of art. A complete realism is only possible for an art which is alive to the whole truth of the universe of good and evil-for an art which penetrates the consciousness of grace and of sin and of the importance of the momentum.1 Thus what is most real in the world escapes the darkened soul, 'As we can say nothing of the beauties of sense if we have not eyes to see them, thus with the things of the spirit, if we do not perceive how beautiful is the face of justice and temperance, and that not the morning star nor the evening star is as beautiful as they. We see them when we have a soul capable of contemplating them, and, seeing them, we feel a joy, an astonishment and an awe greater than in the former case, because we are now touching true realities.'2 There is only one means of freeing oneself from the law: by becoming one of those perfect beings who are continually moved by the Spirit of God, and who are no longer under the law, as they do of their own inclination what the law ordains. So long as a man has not reached that goal-and when does he reach it?-so long as he does not make one, by grace, with the rule itself, he has need of the constraining regulations of morality to keep himself straight. He implores the rod. And because the artist expresses himself, and must express himself, as he is, in his work, if he is morally mishapen, his art itself, the intellectual virtue, then, which is perhaps the purest thing in him, runs the risk of justly receiving the blows of morality. The conflict is inevitable. Man gets out of the difficulty as he can, usually but ill. 1 Cf. Henri Massis, Un débat sur l'art et le catholicisme, (Jugements, Vol. I). 2 Plotinus, Enneads, I, 4. What makes the position of modern art tragic is that it must be converted to rediscover God. And from the first conversion to the last, from baptism to the habitual practice of virtue, is a long distance. How could there not be waverings, troubles, dangerous zones? It is natural that those who have the cure of souls are sometimes afraid, and use severity. It is right also, however, that they should nourish the hope of future benefits. If you are speaking to artists, tell them to hasten while yet there is light, to fear Jesus who passes and returns not. If you are speaking to the prudent, tell them to be patient with poets and to honour in the heart of man the long suffering of God. But let them hate with vigilance the impure beast that prowls about poetry, this literature, which, though some true artists have escaped from its hell, in many weak ones makes grace itself swerve from the path, and converts divine things into a simulacrum fit only to make fatuity wax fat. XIV A consideration of human conditions and the present state of men's hearts makes the success of the revival we hope for seem strangely problematic. A rose asks to bloom not even on a dead branch-on sawdust. I am I make no claim to say what will happen. I am not seeking to know what poets will do to-morrow. merely trying to indicate how certain deep desires of the art of our time are produced in the direction of a Christian renaissance; I am looking for a possible future which could be, which would be, if man did not always betray the trust imposed on him. It seems to me then that modern poetry, at least when it has not elected for despair, is aiming in the order of art at that which the Virgin is for ever in the order of holiness, the perfect exemplar: to make common things in a divine fashion. That is precisely 2 why one must be a great poet to be a modern poet'.1 On emerging from an age in which Nietzsche could speak of the general evolution of art in the direction of mummery', poetry, awkwardly still, is applying itself to the respect for authentic subordinations, to obedience, to sacrifice. Wagner led it astray, a Satie is bringing it back again to chaste probity, a Stravinsky to greatness. After so long a search for false purities, it is on the path of true purity. It is beginning to discover the hidden significance of goodness, and of suffering, and that if the world was built with sorrow it was built by the hands of love', 'it is this which is hidden in all things'. After so much literature and a confidence originally so proud in the liberated reason, in the freeing of personality, have ended in the disintegration shown by Dada, or by the words in liberty of futurism (that last sigh of the past), it feels that it must gather together again, reconcile the powers of imagination and sensibility with religious cognition rediscover man altogether in the integral and indissoluble unity of his double nature',5 spiritual and fleshly, as in the entanglement of his nature and the supernatural, of his earthly life and the mystery of the operations of heaven. It announces le temps de la grâce ardente; it desires, like contemplation, to forestall heaven: Et que tout ait un nom nouveau. It will not free itself from language, nor from the work to be done, but it must make these intermediaries of the soul transparent, and, by diligent attention and abnegation, make of matter a means of transmission which will not 1 Max Jacob, Art poétique. 2 The Case of Wagner. 3 'Saint Theresa of Lisieux said: "I prefer sacrifice to all the ecstasies," A poet should have these words tattooed on his heart.' 4 Oscar Wilde, De Profundis. (Jean Cocteau). 5 Paul Claudel, Lettre à Alexandre Cingria sur la décadence de l'art sacré (Revue des Jeunes, 25th August, 1919). 6 Guillaume Apollinaire, Les Collines (Calligrammes). alter or mutilate its message. Submitting in this, one would say, to the attraction of the poetry of the angels, by which they communicate to each other their intelligible chant without external speech. And it is simplicity, as you have well said, Julien Lanoë, which will give it exactness and access to the depths. Forgetting in order to adhere to its pure object, the deceptive search for an originality which is always trifling and closed-in, it will discover in righteousness, in a sort of childish instinct, the mystery of universality. Then the things of the spirit, the things which the language of man cannot say, would find the means of expression; art will no longer try in vain to violate the secrets of the heart; there will be such a respect for the heart that it will of itself yield up its secret. Love will do what Rimbaud could not do. Where despair comes to a halt, humility will pass on. Where violence must be silent, charity will speak. Art will strew with branches the path of the Lord to whom once a crown of boyish voices sang the pious Hosanna. They when you were to suffer Give you our poetry, pangimus ecce melos. Half released from this world, poetry is preparing to start to meet You who come upon the clouds of heaven. 1 Julien Lanoë, Trois Siècles de Littérature, La Ligne de Coeur, 25th June, 1926. By HAROLD MONRO S LIVING LOW bleak awakening from the morning dream I let my fingers move along my body. Here's a new day. O Pendulum move slowly! And in a moment Habit, like a crane, Will bow its neck and dip its pulleyed cable, I think of all the others who awaken, Nor asking of this Day they will be living: |