by George Moore
You are on the track of something important, I said. Do tell me about it. Have you discovered another Marban — another Liadain and Curithir?
Meyer smiled at my enthusiasm through his long moustache, and told me that he had spent the morning in Trinity College library and had come upon —
Another Nature Poem?
No, but a very curious religious poem. My face clouded. I think it will interest you. It throws a light on the life of those times, for the author, a monk, tells us that he left his monastery, which had become noisy, as he required perfect quiet for the composition of his poem, God’s Grandfather.
Whose grandfather?
God’s Grandfather; that is the title of the poem.
I never knew God had a grandfather.
Mary had a mother; the Biblical narrative is silent regarding her parentage, but the early Greek writers were known to our author, and he read in Epiphanius that Mary’s mother, Anne, had had three husbands — Joachim, Cleophas, and Salomas, and that she had been brought to bed of a daughter by each husband. Each daughter was called Mary, but only one Conception was Immaculate. By an Immaculate Conception he understood a conception outside of common sensuality, brought about by some spiritual longing into which obedience to the will of God entered largely.
How very curious! I wonder if the Meynells would have included the poem in their collection?
Meyer became interested at once, but his interest slackened when he heard that their poems were modern, and a kindly smile began in his gold-brown moustache, and he said:
A long family separating in the afternoon for the composition of pious poems.
Like your hermits, I said; but the Catholicism of the desert is more interesting than the Catholicism of the suburbs. Let’s get back to the thirteenth century.
His monastery was too noisy for the composition of God’s Grandfather, and he retired into the wilderness to think out the circumstances of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. And this is how he imagined it: Joachim, as he was driving his cattle home one evening, met some travellers who wished to purchase a bullock from him. He begged of them to choose an animal; they did so, asking Joachim to name a price. But instead of putting the money agreed upon into his hand the travellers poured several blessings on Joachim and told him to return home as quickly as he could. He was at first loath to go without his money, but the travellers told him he must accept the blessings they had poured over him in lieu of money, and on his asking innocently what he was to do with the blessings, he was told that the use of the blessings would be revealed to him when he reached home. And being a man of faith, he ran with the blessings he had received clasped to his bosom, not stopping till he saw Anne, his wife, who happened to be gathering some brushwood to light the fire for their evening meal, and sure enough, as the travellers had told him, unexpected words were put into his mouth; Anne, put down the sticks thou art gathering, and follow me into the inner room. She did his bidding, as a wife should do, and, as they lay face to face, Joachim showered upon her the blessings that the travellers had given him, and it was these blessings that caused the conception recognised as miraculous by Joachim, and afterwards by the Church.
And you have translated that poem? I asked. He answered that he had made a rough translation of some stanzas, and while he read them to me I marvelled at the realism of early Christianity, and when he had finished reading, I cried: How different from our sloppy modern piety! In the poem you have just read to me, there isn’t a single abstract term. Meyer, you are making wonderful literary discoveries, unearthing a buried civilisation. And on these words the conversation dropped. The moment had come for me to tell Meyer that I, too, was making discoveries. His cigar was only half-way through, and it was plain that the suave and lucid mind of Meyer was at my disposal. My argument had been repeated so often that it had become a little trite, and a suspicion intruded upon my mind as I hurried from St Augustine, through Dante, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, that my narrative had grown weary. Or was it that Meyer, being a professor, could not grasp at once that we must choose between literature and dogma? A perplexed look came into his face as I sketched in broad lines the sixteenth-and seventeenth-century literature in France, and as I was about to proceed northward through Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, he asked questions which revealed the professor latent in him; and whilst I sought to persuade him out of his professorial humours, it began to dawn upon me that he would show to better advantage in a debate on the Shakespearean drama, or on the debt that the dramatists of the Restoration owed to Molière. A better subject still for discussion, I continued on a rising temper, would be Mademoiselle de Scudéry, whose festoons and astragals are of course plainly to be descried in the works of Pope and Prior. But I still hoped that Meyer’s intelligence would awaken, and so I restrained snarl and sneer, exhibiting myself for at least five minutes as a miracle of patience.
You find that Catholicism draws men’s thoughts away from this world, and that Catholic literature lacks healthy realism; but surely literature has nothing to do with theology?
Of course it hasn’t, Meyer. But I haven’t succeeded in explaining myself, and I must begin it all over again. St Augustine — but perhaps it is not necessary to go over it all again. In the Middle Ages there was no literature, only some legends, and a good deal of theology. Why was this? Because if you plant an acorn in a vase the oak must burst the vase or become dwarfed. I can’t put it plainer. Do you understand?
You spoke just now of the intense realism of the Irish poets.
The poem you read me was pre-Reformation.
It seems to me that if one outlet be closed to man’s thoughts he will find another, and perhaps in a more concentrated and violent form. Even in Spain, he said, where thought was stifled by such potent organisations as Church and State, we find man expressing himself daringly. Velasquez.
You mean the Venus in the National Gallery — that stupid thing for which the nation paid forty-five thousand pounds; the thighs and the back are very likely by Velasquez, but not the head nor the curtain nor the Cupid. But, Meyer, bums have never been actually condemned by the Church, and for the moment I am not interested in the fact that realistic painting throve in Spain when the Inquisition was most powerful.
Goethe speaks of free spirits, and from that moment Meyer began to rouse himself.
Of course the spirit must be free. And Germany, being divided equally between Catholics and Protestants —
A troubled look came into Meyer’s face. I fail to see how your theory can be settled one way or the other by German literature, but if you want me to tell you the names of the great German writers, he answered in his most professorial manner, those that occur to me at the moment are Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Heine, the Schlegels, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Wagner, Jean Paul Richter, Herder, Lenau, and Nietzsche.
And all these were North German writers? None came from the South. Are there no Catholics among them, not one?
No, he said, none. One of the Schlegels turned Catholic in his old age.
And did he write after he turned Catholic?
No; as well as I remember he wrote nothing afterwards.
Austria is a great country. Has it produced no Catholic writers?
None of any note, Meyer answered. There was — and he mentioned the names of two writers, and as they were unknown to me I asked him to tell me about them. Writers of fairy-tales, he said, of feeble novels — writers of the fifth and sixth and seventh rank. No one outside Austria knows their names.
Then, I said, I’m done for. Meyer raised his eyes.
Done for?
I was led into this country in the hopes of reviving the language. It seemed to me that a new language was required to enwomb a new literature. I am done for. Ireland will not forgo her superstitions for the sake of literature — accursed superstitions that have lowered her in intelligence and made her a slut among nations. All the same it is strange that you fail to see that dogma and literature are incompatible. I suppose the
idea is new to you.
We talked for a little while longer, and then Meyer asked me if he might go to the writing-table and continue the translation of his poem. And while listening to his pen moving over the paper it seemed to me that a chance still remained, a small one, for the evidence that Germany offered could hardly be refuted. Justice demanded that a Catholic should be heard, and the Colonel would be able to put up as good a defence as another; and a letter to him began in my head, half a dozen lines, reminding him that he had been away a long time in the country, and asking him to come up to Dublin and spend a few days with me.
XV
WHEN I RUSHED up to tell him of my discovery he was in breeches and riding-boots, presenting in my drawing-room an incongruous spectacle of sport on a background of impressionist pictures.
You don’t mean to tell me that you brought me all the way from Mayo to argue with you about Catholicism and Protestantism, leaving important work?
What work?
Clearing the stone park.
A darker cloud than that I had anticipated appeared in his long, narrow face, and as he seemed very angry I thought it better to listen to his plan for allowing the villagers to cut wood in the stone park. But the temptation to hear him argue that literature and dogma were compatible compelled me to break in.
Do let me tell you; it won’t take more than ten minutes for me to state my case. And this is a matter that interests me much more than the stone park. The question must be threshed out.
He protested much, beseeching me to believe that he had neither the learning nor the ability to argue with me.
Father Finlay —
That’s what Gill said. But the matter is one that can be decided by anybody of ordinary education; even education isn’t necessary, for it must be clear to anybody who will face the question without prejudice that the mind petrifies if a circle be drawn round it, and it can hardly be denied that dogma draws a circle round the mind.
The Colonel was very wroth, and his words were that I lived among Protestants, who were inclined to use me as a stalking-horse.
I came to Ireland, as you know, to help literature, and if I see that dogma and literature are incompatible, I must say so.
At that moment the parlourmaid opened the door and announced dinner.
You’ll be late for dinner, Maurice.
If I am, you’re to blame, and he rushed upstairs; and as we sat down to dinner he begged me, in French, to drop the subject, Teresa being a Catholic.
I suppose you are afraid she might hear something to cause her to lose her faith, I said as she went out with the soup-tureen.
I think we should respect her principles.
The word inflamed me. Superstitions that were rammed into her.
She returned with the roast chicken, and the question had to be dropped until she returned to the kitchen to fetch an apple dumpling; and we did not really settle down to literature or dogma until coffee was brought in and my cigar was alight.
It’s a great pity that you always set yourself in opposition to all received ideas. I was full of hope when you wrote saying you were coming to Ireland. I suppose there’s no use asking you not to publish. You will always go your own way.
But if I limit myself to an essay entitled Literature or Dogma — you don’t object to that?
No, I don’t say I object to it; but I’d rather not have the question raised just now.
I see you don’t wish to discuss it.
No, I don’t mind discussing it. But I must understand you. Two propositions are involved in your statement — which is the one you wish to put forward? Do you mean that all books, which in your opinion may be classed as literature, contain things that are contrary to Catholic dogma? Or do you mean that no man professing the Catholic faith has written a book which, in your opinion, may be classed as literature since the Reformation?
I put forward both propositions. But my main contention is that the Catholic may not speculate; and the greatest literature has come out of speculation on the value of life. Shakespeare —
There is nothing in Shakespeare contrary to Catholic dogma.
You are very prompt.
Moreover, I deny that England had, at that time, gone over entirely to Protestantism. Italian culture had found its way into England; England had discovered her voice, I might say her language. A Renaissance has nothing in common with Puritanism and there is reason for thinking this. The Brownists? And the Colonel, who is a well-read man, gave me an interesting account of these earliest Puritans.
The larger part of the English people may have been Protestant, he continued, in 1590; but England hadn’t entirely gone over to Protestantism. Besides, England’s faith has nothing to do with Shakespeare. Nor does anybody know who wrote the plays.
My dear friend, you won’t allow me to develop my argument. It matters nothing to me whether you prefer the lord or the mummer. The plays were written, I suppose, by an Englishman; that, at least, will not be denied; and my contention is — No, there is no reason why I should contend, for it is sufficiently obvious that only an Agnostic mind could have woven the fabric of the stories and set the characters one against the other. A sectarian soul would not have been satisfied to exhibit merely the passions.
Will you charge me again with interrupting your argument if I say that I know nothing in Shakespeare that a Catholic might not have written?
Well, I think if I were to take down a volume and read it, I could find a hundred verses. I see your answer trembling on your lips, that you don’t require a hundred, but two or three. Very well. A Catholic couldn’t have written There is nothing serious in mortality, for he believes the very contrary; nor could a Catholic have written A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
What reason have you to suppose that Shakespeare was speaking in his own person? It seems to me that by assuming he was doing so, you impugn his art as a dramatist, which is to give appropriate speeches to each of his characters; the writer must never transpire in a drama.
I’m afraid your religious zeal spurs you into dangerous statements, and you are in an entanglement from which you will find it difficult to extricate yourself. Shakespeare weaves a plot and sets will against will, desire against desire, but his plays are suffused by his spirit, and it is always the same spirit breathing, whether he be writing about carls or kings, virgins or lights-o’-love. The passage quoted from Macbeth is an excellent example of the all-pervading personality of the poet, who knew when to forget the temporal character of Macbeth, and to put into the mouth of the cattle-spoiler phrases that seem to us more suited to Hamlet. The poet-philosopher, at once gracious and cynical, wise with the wisdom of the ages, and yet akin to the daily necessity of men’s foibles and fashions, is as present in the play of Macbeth as in King Lear; and the same fine Agnostic mind we trace throughout the comedies, and the poems, and the sonnets, smiling at all systems of thought, knowing well that there is none that outlasts a generation.
I cannot see why a Catholic might not have written the phrases you quote. One can only judge these things by one’s own conscience, and if I had thought of these verses —
You would have written them? I’ve always suspected you of being an Agnostic Catholic.
The difference between the Agnostic and the Catholic mind seems to me to be this — we all doubt (to doubt is human), only in the ultimate analysis the Catholic accepts and the Agnostic rejects.
We know that the saints suffered from doubt, but the Agnostic doesn’t doubt, though he is often without hope of a survival of his personality. A good case might be made out, metaphysically, if it weren’t that most of us are without any earthly personality. Why then a heavenly one? You were once a great admirer of Fitzgerald’s Omar Khayyám, and I doubt if you will dare to say to my face that a Catholic could have written the Rubáiyát.
The Colonel was at first inclined to agree with me that there was a great deal that a Catholic could not have written in Fitzgerald’s poem; b
ut he soon recovered himself, and began to argue that all that Fitzgerald had done was to contrast ideas, maintaining that the argument was conducted very fairly, and that if the poem were examined it would be difficult to adduce proof from it of the author’s Agnosticism.
But we know Fitzgerald was an Agnostic?
You’re shifting ground. You started by saying that the poems of Shakespeare and Fitzgerald revealed the Agnosticism of the writers, you now fall back upon contemporary evidence.
I don’t think I’ve shifted my ground at all. If we knew nothing about Fitzgerald’s beliefs, there is abundant proof in his writings that he was an Agnostic. You’ll have to admit that his opinions on the nothingness of life and the futility of all human effort, whether it strives after pleasure or pain, would read as oddly if introduced into the writings of Augustine and Thomas Aquinas as sympathetic remarks about the Immaculate Conception would read in the world of Mr Swinburne or Professor Huxley. The nothingness of our lives and the length of the sleep out of which we come, and the still greater length of the sleep which will very soon fall upon us, is the spring whence all great poetry flows, and this spring is perforce closed to Catholic writers for ever. Do you know the beautiful stanza in Moschus’s Lament for Bion?
Ah me! when the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley and the curled tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again and spring in another year; but we, men, we, the great and mighty, or wise, when once we have died, in the hollow earth we sleep, gone down into silence, a right long and endless and unawakening sleep.
Could these lines have been written by a Catholic?
The Colonel could not see why not.
Because ... but, my dear friend, I won’t waste time explaining the obvious. This you’ll admit — that no such verses occur in Catholic poems?
As poignant expressions regarding the nothingness of life as any in Moschus, Shakespeare, or Fitzgerald are to be found in the Psalms and Ecclesiastes. Man walketh in a vain shadow and troubleth himself in vain.
