The Catholic Critic
THE CATHOLIC CRITIC *ENIUS has been defined, once for all, as "an infinite capacity for taking pains," and a great proportion of the mediocrity that invests current literature comes from the...
...To do this is the role of the critic...
...He, by reason of his very profession, is forbidden to subscribe to the current dualism of life...
...It will be quite simply an unfortunate and disastrous accident...
...It is the role of Catholic criticism generally...
...Even though he has made himself the mouthpiece of a group, without any mandate to speak for them, it is the entire group that will be taxed with low mentality...
...It reaches our very nerves and affects our psychology...
...Long years are necessary to break the spell of bad habits, to arrive at a point where no phrase is used which does not convey the idea in all its naked force, and to control the personal literary instrument which permits us to express something of what we think and feel...
...He will lose all authority with the intellectuals outside...
...On the other hand, the mere suspicion that dogmatic distaste is blinding him to literary merit will be sufficient to destroy an authority which it is all important he should preserve, if his function is to have any meaning at all outside the circle of those who share his spiritual allegiance...
...The change, which profounder critics abroad have traced to the prevalence of Bergsonian theories of intuition and spontaneity, not only is to the detriment of literature, but is beginning to cast discredit upon criticism itself...
...On the other hand, a warning voiced by the French priest, though applied by him only to criticism from the pulpit, is well worth pondering by any Catholic man or woman of letters who essays what is, in point of fact, nothing less than an actual apostolate, and who is concerned lest the common reproach of partial judgment should be attached to his work: "If the ecclesiastical critic, however, at home in religious knowledge, lacks general culture, historical knowledge and taste, what he has to say will reach only a part of the faithful within the fold...
...The need is not for more "good-tempered" criticism, of which we have more than enough in America, but for something of the point and pungency which can deflate the dunce and deodorize the pornographist...
...If this be true of criticism conducted from the purely technical point of view, it is doubly true of the Catholic critic...
...We do not pretend we can control it...
...Its solution lies in the realm of temper and poise rather than in ex cathedra utterances which the world at large will always assign to a discipline imposed upon his judgment by authority outside...
...The discredit which an illequipped critic can cast upon us will never be known...
...Literature, by its novels, plays, poetry, essays of every sort, puts into circulation the ideas (or the ghosts of ideas) which tomorrow will lead mankind...
...The difficulty is a real one, as any Catholic critic knows who is worth his salt, but it is by no means insoluble...
...deal to challenge its effrontery...
...THE CATHOLIC CRITIC *ENIUS has been defined, once for all, as "an infinite capacity for taking pains," and a great proportion of the mediocrity that invests current literature comes from the discredit that has descended upon form and the stress of approval that has been transferred to content and relish in presentment...
...The art of writing in a live, direct, and inspiring manner," says Abbe Calvet, in a recent number of La Vie Catholique, "is something that is only acquired by degrees and by patient work under good masters...
...It was said of the great Catholic critic, Veuillot, of old, and it might be said with equal reason of Chesterton today, that "he always had God and the grammar on his side...
...He may not in conscience consider any estimate he puts forth an honest piece of work unless it takes note of the purpose, ethical or unethical, which lies behind a facade of plausibility and fine writing...
...With them, his decisions will be regarded as provocations...
...The effects he will realize will be entirely opposite to those which he sought...
...Driven to occupy himself with the second-rate and the recondite through sheer lack of something of prime significance into which he can set his teeth, the critic finds himself faced with a dilemma...
...We are even more capable than we realize of keeping it in certain roads and of imposing upon it certain restraints...
...The path he is forced to tread in consequence is a narrow and perilous one...
...Generally speaking, the world will ponder anything that challenges its assumptions, so long as it is written arrestingly and in its own language...
...He can fall into a sour and surly attitude to modern letters generally, with a corresponding loss of influence, or he can abandon the principles that were once the bones and sinews of his judgment in favor of an indulgence that throws the aegis of individual style round what he knows in his heart is sheer bad and loose writing...
...Blind will we be if we overlook it...
...But we can do a great...
...Through it, drop by drop, percolate into men's souls the impressions and sentiments which are the source of morality, good or bad...
...The words in which Abbe Calvet defines the role of the Catholic critic are so just and trenchant that nothing is to be gained by paraphrasing them: "What is left in our own power, normally, is a certain action upon literature in the making...
Vol. 3 • March 1926 • No. 21
