Previous
Posts:
2008:
#51-60
(7/13)
#41-50
(5/27)
#31-40 (2/15)
2007:
#21-30 (10/3)
#11-20 (6/28)
#1-10 (3/31)
On St. Augustine (2/3)
On St. John Climacus (1/26)
2006:
12/25
9/24
9/5
8/23
6/1
An Introduction (5/10)
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6.1.06
Just the
other day I finished the first volume of
Merton's
Journals; sometime next week I'll have
typed out all the excerpts from that. There'll be so many more than
the first posting [these have been moved to the
Christianity section in the Holy Notes],
& all of them so much better, as he gets more & more restless teaching
English Lit to Catholic high-schoolers, as he rants about the War,
about ideas of real charity, & totally lashes out at Catholics who
once upheld the greatest culture in the world & now are fans of the
worst art, worst music, etc. (something I can agree with, & probably
something that makes me think negatively on a lot of Protestant stuff,
Evangelical stuff, how cheesy & simple they seem to make everything,
or how I can't stand to deliver something to a "church" that looks
closer to the most character-less hall that could be sponsoring a
business seminar, it's so bland--but a reaction that, I'm coming to
realize, doesn't matter much either, as they would probably look at
the religious stuff that I grew up with, & that I still respond to
most deeply--a dimly lit Catholic church, the strictness of the
ritual, the dead seriousness of it even if I was bored, or how I like
to imagine a Latin mass was like, etc--& be just as baffled).
But a
strange thing happened as I finished the book--I was looking forward
to a break from the Journals, but by the time I got to the
last page I just wanted to jump into volume two. Around the middle of
volume 1 he first visits the Abbey he would later live in for the rest
of his life; & immediately all the literary musings etc., are
forgotten & dropped in favor of quotes from the saints & from
Kempis'
Imitation of Christ; when he leaves the
monastery (he can only stay for Holy Week) there's an obvious break, a
pain, to be back in the world, & the stuff that follows reflects that,
& for a lot of it he's very bitter, he goes back to the lit crit
stuff, to wondering about his novels or short stories, or selling
stuff.
(I should
say here that, due to having fathered a child out of wedlock years
before, his application to the
Franciscans
had been rejected around 1938; & it was because of this rejection that
he waited until 1941, & until then never thought he'd could be
accepted into any order, to see if he could be a
Trappist;
& it's interesting to wonder how he would have developed if he'd
become a Franciscan immediately, if he'd even have been
ready--instead, as I think he actually says, the combination of being
pulled toward a conversion to Catholicism, & simultaneously being
forced to live in the outside world for three years, when he'd rather
be a priest, really made him ready for the order when the time came.)
So it's a
great relief when you finally get to his breaking point, where he
realizes he can't stay being a teacher, can't stay simply in the
outside world, & that he must join the monastery. There's a great
energy, a great release, a great happiness for him that he's found
this, & believes in it so totally that he's even willing to give up
writing for the time being. One moment he's wondering if he'll be
drafted into the War, if he should devote himself by living in Harlem
& working with the Catholic charities there, or go to the Trappists.
Of course he goes to the Trappists, & the entire last quarter of the
book is so full of praying to & thanking Christ, thanking Mary,
thanking the Saints, really relying on them in such a way that I could
have never read any of it even two years ago, probably, but
now seems to make perfect sense--not, to be clear, because I feel the
need to do the same, only that, in my own way, I understand that kind
of devotion now. I know what it means to turn away from all the things
all the commercials & soundbites say are important, & to face & swim
full in something that is really lasting.
So, to go
along with this was a remark from a friend, made about the reviews
I've posted on the page so far, that they are mostly being
"descriptive" & not really opinionated at all. & I suppose that's
right! & I got to thinking more, & wondering if "reviews" isn't really
the wrong word to use at all. Because how, in a few weeks, can I
"review" the Egyptian
Pyramid Texts?
How, a few weeks after that, can I "review"
Augustine's
Confessions, or
St. Ignatius'
Spiritual Exercises? Being neither an
expert in Egyptology or a learned Catholic theologian (or expert in
any of the things this blog is about, in neither history or religion
or mythology, & only fairly competent in the poetry)--how can I
"review" these things? I guess I can't, so that what I'll really be
writing are reactions. These guys will get me talking, & thinking. I
imagine something like a few paragraphs of Augustine & some comments.
In my long essay on the
Gita
that I'll post sometime soon I'll certainly give evidence as to why I
think one translation is better than another, but the importance of
writing about it is to discuss what it says--which I think is much
better than an opinion piece--or, actually, is rather what I'm really
capable of doing.
But it's
also, too, something more about disappearing, that I mentioned in the
first post.
Thinking about my
House, the
reasons for all the borrowing of previous material have gone through
three stages: first, it was to somehow nod to
Homer
& other storytellers that have come down to us first through an oral
tradition, of somehow trying to be as dependent on my predecessors as
he was on his, but also to show what an individual can do with that
inherited tradition. The second was to mirror other things: how
languages (English especially) are entirely dependent upon borrowing &
stealing from other languages, how the essential texts of our
religious traditions (whether Genesis or the Gospels), & many
other mythological stories, are in some way the product of redaction,
editing, & the combining of various sources.
But now a
third has come, with Merton's help & of the Saints he quotes so often:
& that is of disappearing entirely, of depending so much on previous
poets & stories to the point that I disappear behind a maze of notes &
hopefully a compelling story, & moving poetry. This probably sounds
contrary to all of my love for the biographies of authors, & of drafts
of poems, etc. But I think it's something different than this. I hate
to keep bringing up saints, since it seems I'm comparing myself to
them, which I can't conceive of doing; but in the smallest way I do
hope to be doing something along the lines of their Autobiographies,
or Confessions, which are entirely about them, but entirely not. They
aren't being written, in other words, to show the holiness of the
author--they're being written to show the holiness of God.
Previously
something like that has only been an idea for me, a metaphor: that the
reality of Inspiration, of being possessed by a poem or story, almost
makes it seem as if I'm only transcribing words come from elsewhere.
Now it doesn't seem a metaphor at all, only the truth. I was told
recently that I couldn't have a blog like this if I weren't confident
in myself. But it's strange, I don't think it's confidence in myself
so much as it is in the writing. The writing is this much a part of
me, but at the same time so much not a part of me at all, even to the
point that the writing is perhaps all there is--you can point
to me as having written these words, but not to lift me up, only the
work, & the source behind it.
I really
think this is what the Gita means when it reassures us that
it isn't action we should renounce, but selfish action.
So that the facts of my biography can certainly be known, & I'll tell
them to anyone, but the point of them being known--the point of any of
this or anything being read--isn't to prop me up, but to hopefully
hint at something greater, deeper, truer.
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