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Fr. Barron has written; "English Catholic writer David Lodge says that what makes his novels uniquely Catholic is the consistent motif of God’s relentless pursuit of the errant sinner. That the Lord of the cosmos should bother to insinuate himself in the everyday comings and goings of ordinary people is a startling indication of God’s humility.
And what is even more indicative of the divine self-effacement is the way that God goes about his work, Though the tradition celebrates examples of what could be called God’s direct involvement in the created realm, it customarily signals God’s indirect interventions, his tendency to use secondary causes.
The divine ground of existence delights, it seems, in using trees, flowers, rivers, animals, automobiles, friends, enemies, church buildings, paintings in order to announce his presence or to work out his purposes God normally channels his grace through the created realm, rejoicing in his own indirection and clandestinely and in the lifting up his creatures to a participation in his work.
And this is precisely what Catholic writers like Waugh and Lodge chronicle the divine director’s use of numerous actors in the accomplishment of his purpose Once again, it is the humility of God that makes the unfolding of the drama through a myriad of players that much more delicious There is something crude in the depiction of God intervening directly in the play, the clumsy *deus ex machina *interrupting the speeches of the other actors and upsetting the stage. How much more tantalizing the God who hints and lurks and cajoles hiddenly through and around the actors, even unbeknownst to them It is the humble God who chooses so to act."
Although I have no idea of his religion, I’ve recently put together a review of the late W.G. Sebald (pictured above), whose loss while truly on the cusp of literary greatness is a tragedy everyone who has read one of his unique and strange amalgams, works that combine genres – autobiography, travel, meditative essay – and blur boundaries between fact and fiction, art and documentary.
Sebald has said that the moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To Sebald’s mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives. But it is something one cannot possibly escape: a person’s psychological make-up is such that they are inclined to look back over their shoulder – Is this part of Father Brown’s “twitch upon a thread” ? ("I caught him’ [the thief] with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”)
Memory, even if repressed, will come back at one and it will shape their life. Without memories there wouldn’t be any writing: the specific weight an image or phrase needs to get across to the reader can only come from things remembered – not from yesterday but from a long time ago. And is it not memory that forms the basis of our Catholic faith, that Jesus himself recognized as the key to the foundation of his Church: “Do this in memory of me?”
A Sebald novel will leave you … “under the spell that Sebald’s books weave; and it is not only the disequilibrium that is constantly evoked by the differences between fact and fiction, art and life – a state in which Sebald’s narrator continually finds himself, and that Sebald seeks to induce in the reader as well. It is a deeper paradox.” The sort of paradox that Chesterton would have enjoyed, the stuff of a Wallace Stevens poem.
*We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is.
Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are.
All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.*
G.K. Chesterton
Read Sebald with that spirit.
An introduction to Sebald here: payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/03/05/w-g-sebald/. And a previous post on Stevens poetry here: payingattentiontothesky.com/the-idea-of-order-at-key-west-by-wallace-stevens/commentary/
dj
Fr. Barron has written; "English Catholic writer David Lodge says that what makes his novels uniquely Catholic is the consistent motif of God’s relentless pursuit of the errant sinner. That the Lord of the cosmos should bother to insinuate himself in the everyday comings and goings of ordinary people is a startling indication of God’s humility.
And what is even more indicative of the divine self-effacement is the way that God goes about his work, Though the tradition celebrates examples of what could be called God’s direct involvement in the created realm, it customarily signals God’s indirect interventions, his tendency to use secondary causes.
The divine ground of existence delights, it seems, in using trees, flowers, rivers, animals, automobiles, friends, enemies, church buildings, paintings in order to announce his presence or to work out his purposes God normally channels his grace through the created realm, rejoicing in his own indirection and clandestinely and in the lifting up his creatures to a participation in his work.
And this is precisely what Catholic writers like Waugh and Lodge chronicle the divine director’s use of numerous actors in the accomplishment of his purpose Once again, it is the humility of God that makes the unfolding of the drama through a myriad of players that much more delicious There is something crude in the depiction of God intervening directly in the play, the clumsy *deus ex machina *interrupting the speeches of the other actors and upsetting the stage. How much more tantalizing the God who hints and lurks and cajoles hiddenly through and around the actors, even unbeknownst to them It is the humble God who chooses so to act."
Although I have no idea of his religion, I’ve recently put together a review of the late W.G. Sebald (pictured above), whose loss while truly on the cusp of literary greatness is a tragedy everyone who has read one of his unique and strange amalgams, works that combine genres – autobiography, travel, meditative essay – and blur boundaries between fact and fiction, art and documentary.
Sebald has said that the moral backbone of literature is about that whole question of memory. To Sebald’s mind it seems clear that those who have no memory have the much greater chance to lead happy lives. But it is something one cannot possibly escape: a person’s psychological make-up is such that they are inclined to look back over their shoulder – Is this part of Father Brown’s “twitch upon a thread” ? ("I caught him’ [the thief] with an unseen hook and an invisible line which is long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world and still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread.”)
Memory, even if repressed, will come back at one and it will shape their life. Without memories there wouldn’t be any writing: the specific weight an image or phrase needs to get across to the reader can only come from things remembered – not from yesterday but from a long time ago. And is it not memory that forms the basis of our Catholic faith, that Jesus himself recognized as the key to the foundation of his Church: “Do this in memory of me?”
A Sebald novel will leave you … “under the spell that Sebald’s books weave; and it is not only the disequilibrium that is constantly evoked by the differences between fact and fiction, art and life – a state in which Sebald’s narrator continually finds himself, and that Sebald seeks to induce in the reader as well. It is a deeper paradox.” The sort of paradox that Chesterton would have enjoyed, the stuff of a Wallace Stevens poem.
*We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is.
Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are.
All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.*
G.K. Chesterton
Read Sebald with that spirit.
An introduction to Sebald here: payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/03/05/w-g-sebald/. And a previous post on Stevens poetry here: payingattentiontothesky.com/the-idea-of-order-at-key-west-by-wallace-stevens/commentary/
dj