But of Her Lips (verse)
Davies, Mary Carolyn
October 28, 1925 T H E C O M M O N W E A L 619 bold and often poignant drawings of Mr. Jones, so exquisitely and faithfully reproduced in this new book. They breathe the spirit of pilgrimage....
...The fusion of mood which Mr...
...But most of the drawings fill one with a sense of sadness and irreparable loss in the knowledge that no theatre has yet conveyed to its audience the full richness and mastery of Mr...
...but the attainment of a great ideal presupposes labor--even unto death...
...Of course the theatrical compromise has not always been fatal...
...His poetry has been turned into halting prose, his mobile fancy into rigid forms, his flaming lights and moving contrasts, fraught with the mystery of dreams, into the sharp definitions of electricity and floor space...
...of Her Lips But of her lips he made a song...
...MAltY CAROLYN" DAVIES...
...Is there any one of them which would declare that it has reached a state of perfection as a college...
...And the theatres can only respond with a bowed head and an unyielding purpose to struggle higher the next time...
...When everybody has spoken up, and all our emotions are relieved, we may begin to realize the value of Thomistic delicacy and finesse in argument...
...It is also claimed that the British empire is based on the same policy, and that the colossal failure of England and Ireland was due to her violation of that policy...
...Taken by themselves, they unfold a poem of attainment...
...But of her cruelty he wrought A song, and of her scornful head...
...The revolt against photographic realism has been well started and we have the measureless satisfaction of knowing that it is not a negative revolt...
...We now have the permanent record of the drawings themselves...
...They are the cloth out of which is to be cut the garment of future Catholic education...
...The whole question arose, I think, out of The Commonweal's discussion of Catholic lethargy, and everybody ought to be glad to witness such signs of vitality, not to say pugnacity...
...In its intentional abandonment of the unessential, irt its striving toward a visual fulfilment of the dramatist's own dreams, and in its bold quest for "those rich, far places" where, as Mr...
...To talk of "restriction" is not the way, so its seems to me, to achieve the high ideal which Mr...
...Can we not aim at such a Catholic university in New Yorkuhere, where the men and the money are plentiful...
...October 28, 1925 T H E C O M M O N W E A L 619 bold and often poignant drawings of Mr...
...but I, for one, am delighted to see a good hot fight...
...The Catholic college movement is one of the strongest tendencies of the time...
...Could not all the small Catholic colleges in the vicinity of New York maintain their separate existences, with all the advantages inhering in the...
...Surely all the religious conducting Catholic colleges would look forward to a day when we, in the twentieth cen- tury, might have great Catholic universities like Bologna, Paris, Padua, where Dominicans and Franciscans taught side by side...
...The sight of her, the light of her Were all she ever gave...
...So, to Mr...
...This is what I have given you," says Mr...
...Jones in his pictures...
...Why not rather look ahead and try to perceive what great thing for the future can be fashioned out of this vast amount of material...
...Jones's creative designs...
...Often it has been able to retain the essential mood of the artist...
...Cut your garment according to your cloth !" The Roman empire, it is said, succeeded because of the Roman's ability to acknowledge facts, and to give people a free rein...
...He has shed a new glow upon the ceaseless movement of the theatre toward its unattainable goal --the interpretation of man and the mystery encircling him...
...COMMUNICATIONS T CAN THE COLLEGES CO()PERATE...
...The proportions had to be altered, but the mood remained...
...But of her eyes he made a stave...
...What constructive sug- gestion ? I take my point from the letter of the Catholic Graduate of the College of New Rochelle---the glory of the mediaeval university...
...Is any one of them resting on its laurels...
...Jones is doing for the plastic and pictorial art of the drama what Wagner did for its musical expression...
...But in doing this, they also lay bare the tragedy of many sad failures...
...And so they merit no destructive criticism...
...The Catholic colleges are here...
...First of all, may I say, in order to forestall any unfriendly attitude, that I am not only a Barnard alumna, but that I number among my most intimate and cherished friends nuns and priests in many orders and in many lands...
...Mol-anphy so evidently desires...
...Molanphy, I would say--"Measure your cloth !" The Catholic colleges exist...
...It gave something of the immeasurable space indicated in the fireside drawing in the present book...
...A notable example of this was the production of Hasenclever's Beyond in the small confines of the Province-town Playhouse...
...His song will live on living lips When she is dead...
...But I am sure they welcome constructive suggestion...
...Yet perhaps the loss is not quite irreparable...
...The question if vital to me, as I have eventually to make the choice for my children between my own alma mater and, among others, Saint Elizabeth's or Manhattanville, or New Rochelle...
...Why restrict it...
...Jones has created in his drawings has often been lost in translating the artist's vision to the stage itself...
...In America, was not the Catholic University a high-hearted attempt at something of the kind...
...Or again in the irony of the mirrored room for Congreve's Love for Love, achievement was almost equal to the original con-ception...
...And so I want to propose---"All honor to Mr...
...Jones himself tells us, one finds "a glowing air, a region of fire wherein the soul of the artist must move forever and have its being"--in these high purposes the revolt has risen to a splendid creative impulse...
...They clarify by their richness, their courageous symbolism, their stark economy of detail, the ideal which the experimental theatre has set in its firmament...
...Somewhere in the maze of car-pentry, painting, lighting and the challenge of a third dimension viewed from many seating angles, the primitive beauty and truth of the sketches have either disappeared or been sorrow- fully compromised...
...Of course, scholastic people would llke to observe a controversy conducted in a more restrained and academic way...
...In New York we see Columbia University, made up of many colleges, academic and professional...
...Molanphy, and to Sister Mary Vincent, and to the graduate of the College of New Rochellel" It is refreshing to see such energy in the expression of opinion...
...It has a hard struggle...
...And we have, beside, the evidence that even their imperfect translation to the stage has brought a new completeness and a fresh ideal of poetic unity to the theatre of today...
...I should say that they all seem rather to be working feverishly to raise their standards and to train their faculties...
...New York, N. Y. O the Editor:--As a Barnard graduate whose own daughters are now in a Catholic convent school, I beg to offer a few thoughts on the subject of Catholic colleges...
Vol. 2 • October 1925 • No. 25
