Italian Catholic Literature

...monwealth...

...September 22, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 463 beside the Wabash...

...A portentous success indeed, lished last year, was also a disappointment...

...The world it paints believed a neo-Catholic literature was on the point of is a narrow one, and although the soul of an authenbeing born...

...Papini set himManni, a religious poet at times over-nostalgic and self, as though in some frenzy, to study the figure of 464 THE COMMONWEAL September 22, 1926 Christ...

...Another, yet to appear, will give us present moment...

...At the preswhich seem to have taken for their inspiration the ent moment, it is noticeable that the most worldly of Sunday sermon or the rhetoric of a hundred years publishing houses stands ready to publish religious ago, the bleating of sheep, and the sentimentalities of works of whose sale it feels secure...

...Suffering and felt the need of a return to a literature which, no fear of death, disgust for a life immersed in the pleas- longer holding up the banner of art for art's sake, ures of the senses, disillusionment over the bankruptcy should seek its source in pure beauty...

...Soon -it will be too late...

...At Milan, the University eye may happen to fall, only so much human detritus of the Sacred Heart was founded, largely through the ripe for the torch...

...that lay at the bottom of the Laudi of Jacopone da Todi...

...Paolieri, a Florentine journalist can find pleasure nowhere save in the vision of an exand writer, declared himself a Catholic-Emilio terminating Deity and an exterminated world...

...One is forced to conclude Silvio D'Amico, the theatrical critic of the Idea that he knows little or nothing of life as it exists, and Nazionale of Rome, made no secret of his own Catho- through sheer lack of sympathy, finds himself conlic convictions...

...This last, it may be remarked, does not prePascoli, and D'Annunzio applied to religion...

...The inward flame which is to enkindle faith Knees of the murderer crouching through the dark, is still to be sought...

...ings, and burials...

...The in a magnificent fourteenth-century text...

...On the eve of Giuliotti ; and Papini's Life of Christ...

...There are many very charming things in the by...

...All three writers the great war, it so happened that the influences domi- set themselves squarely against the current...

...A return of conscience set in, not on any seemed to be in the air, and literature felt its reper- very great scale perhaps, but very poignant, and cercussion...

...Our Catholic erudition is defective...

...the apocalyptic view is again rarely reaches S,ooo...

...First values of life, To many, it appeared as though a new flame had friendship for instance, are roughly denied...

...We catch...

...lations of the best Franciscan texts, which have reThe tone is narrow and typically bourgeois, or, worst mained practically unknown to the present day...

...They must formed and organized, a solid and profound culture see it from the inside-they must live it in its subis necessary...

...must have played in the dramas of those years...

...There remains but to inNo historian has followed them in the parts they terest the historian...

...They successful, and hence have attracted the least attention...

...Pascoli, a mind subtly Christian, but without ity...

...things...

...He published a volume of verse, of fundamental value enriched literature...

...his sky is of lead, his was abroad, an admission that a Catholic literature atmosphere heavy and lowering...

...stance-they must conceive it in its full grandeur...

...Is it in this quarter that may be that it would perish through sheer lack of we are to look for our true Catholic renaissance...

...This need strengthen their own mental lungs...

...Every now and then, some bestiale," and calls upon Christ and the Virgin to aid brief poem or essay of Domenico Giuliotti appears in him and purify him...

...L'Ora di Barabba, by been profoundly interior or religious...

...I do not conceal stone strong and cemented, and our workers filled with it, because I am convinced that to do so would ag- zeal, no edifice we shall rear need fear attack, from gravate the evil...

...Little or nothing...

...It was dedicated to Catholic laboration in L'Omo Salvatico (a dictionary planned ends, and was to be a centre of Italian Catholicism- for eight volumes, which stopped at the first letters, a focus of light and heat throughout the peninsula...

...overstressed, the verbiage is too violent, and sympaSmall wonder that at such a moment many of us thy conspicuous by its absence...

...the Catholic note was evident in the demned to act the inflexible judge, seeing, wherever his work of Marino Moretti...

...A new religious consciousness the world...

...Still more neglected was Giuseppe sented itself as an apocalyptic vision...

...No new Pane e Vino, to which was appended a Soliloquy upon Catholic authors of the first order appeared...

...In the period, 1920 to 1921, appeared, I Due Imperi Italian literature, with certain exceptions, has never Mancati, by Palazzeschi...

...How many were with Wayne ? No social historian or family genealogist has folHow many died at Raisin River...

...His invocations are full repetitions, more or less, of the author's two or three of manly sorrow, but full of a sort of bizarrerie as conceptions of life-rebellion against the society of well...

...much is certain...

...ITALIAN CATHOLIC LITERATURE By ARRIGO LEVASTI OGICALLY, one would expect that Italy, being over-elegiac, but certainly superior to the poetasters the centre of Catholicism, would furnish the best and weavers of rhymes whom the reviewers rivaled and most numerous Catholic writers of all one another in praising to the skies, and whose poems Europe...

...verse that is either the busied with an anthology of the "best pages" of the dregs of Arcadia, or a strange mixture of Carducci, saints...

...There found...

...A collection of the convent girl...

...efforts of Padre Gemelli, a doctor of medicine and Since his Life of Christ, and his unfortunate colconvert from socialism...

...Indeed, were it not well known that Papini is In 1923, he became, with Papini, joint author of a a convert, who goes to Mass and receives the SacraSeptember 22, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 465 ments, one might doubt that these were the poems of have Angela da Foligno, Saint Antonino, Jacopone da a religious man at all...

...case...

...Our writers, old and today we may possess tomorrow...

...If our foundations are secure, the This is a disheartening conclusion...

...The religious pages of Palazzeschi contain The religious poems it contains are, indeed, the least the record of this moment of disillusionment...

...Has Secolo, of Milan, emphasized the value of Papini's he ever even descended into the depths of his own book and upheld the consistency of the Vatican in its soul, seeking to understand the demon and angel who regard...

...Fathers of the Church...

...Giuliotti's Chriscome accorded by the public to the Life of Christ...

...and a culture upon it...

...pathies and the influence of those first pastors leave A few years ago, it was still possible to talk to the them cold to this representative of the French Revo- grandchildren of those who had come out of Maryland lution...

...We have no re- La Leggenda Aurea, by Jacopo da Voragine, forgotview to be compared with those which the German, ten for more than a century, and now restored to us French, English, and American Catholics possess...

...outward appearance, offer little that is at all distin- Knees of beseechers prostrated to idols, guished...

...ReadCecchi, an artist of the finest discrimination and one ing him, we ask ourselves : Has this man ever peneof our best writers for the press, wrote articles that trated into the recesses of any human soul...

...hospitable and charming...

...The churches seemed to be more urgent than ever in the period folagain were packed, religious values were once more lowing the war, when the vilest human passions appredominant, the importance of dogma was treated peared to have set themselves the task of conquering almost as a rediscovery...

...Here and there, in journals and literary tic poet exists in Giuliotti, he seems unable either to reviews, one caught a hint of sympathy...

...Gallerati Scotti wrote a life of Fogazzaro...

...Bloyism is carried to excess...

...Did the indictment of Burr at Frankfort at the end of the eighteenth century...

...some of them of immense importance for Italy...

...remain as the condemnation of war uttered by a deli- Papini declares himself the natural man-the "uomo cate and poetic spirit...

...It was not so much writers who prepared the tain writers showed its reaction upon their work...

...Clear horizons to which positivist and ultra-idealist philosophies had were the demand...

...From -all nant in our literature were the veteran Carducci, with three came positive cries of anguish, invocations to his pagan velleities ; D'Annunzio, more frankly pagan purity, assaults upon the bestiality of fallen humanstill...

...Possibly we have not enough Catholic dently interested in religious matters and reads religwriters, and the reason such a review does not exist ious books with enthusiasm...

...Where were their sympathies in the Buried in old letters, in dusty legal documents, on Spanish conspiracy and the demand for an open river time-weathered gravestones, and in the files of the to the mouth of the Mississippi...

...But in them we find little save the Life of Christ closed...

...The moral lies for all to read...

...It newal of our literature was taking place under our is a book, in short, of pure demolition...

...Only The New Englander should not be criticized if i Webb has touched upon these things, and in a gossipy, nation has accepted his tradition and built a history reminiscent vein which is tantalizing but unsatisfying...

...This year he decided their hearts never took final form...

...One of the volumes is an anthology of Italian popular What else does our Catholic literature offer at the religious poetry...

...Its reception eyes...

...His style is strong, of approval vague...

...Turning over the pages our finest scholars, who is devoting himself to transof these journals, it is hard not to feel a sensible chill...

...lowed the offshoots of the parent settlements to Ohio, What was their part in the founding of the com- to Indiana, to Missouri, to far-off Louisiana...

...The discovery of the worth of religion seemed was a poet, Giulio Salvadori, truly Christian, and to reach Palazzeschi through the function and liturgy whose muse was the fruit of an intimately religious of the Church...

...How many of them, in 1812, The field, geographically, is small, the country as marched north to Canada, or stood with Jackson at beautiful as any within the states, and the people most New Orleans...

...He fell in love with what he found, grew book, L'Omo Salvatico, which threatened to comprolyrical, called upon Him as his own Saviour and the mise both men...

...In this book, what might be called Saviour of the world...

...In other words, we series of Catholic theatrical texts, Italian and foreign need a live Catholic review, written by men and In the world of Catholic study and research, then, women who are, at the same time, authentic artists we find very marked activity, and it is extremely and authentic Christians...

...Were they swept Advocate and the Catholic Telegraph must remain the away with the enthusiasm with which Kentucky at first source material of many an interesting side-light on greeted Citizen Genet...

...Nothing justified this hope so much as the wel- from the public was very bad indeed...

...Knees of the saint, and of the thief impenitent, Among the various collections of sacred texts, how- Knees of the soldier stung with sudden lead, ever, we have the Libri della Fede, edited by Gio- All shall, at the last, on these vanni Papini, which have met with much popular Tender soft maternal knees favor...

...What is lacking above all, is a studies upon saintly lives is being produced at Turin virile review-a review for men who believe in the by a fine writer for young people-Giuseppe Fanciulli inseparability of art and religion, and in the manifes- -while the Internazionale announce publication of a tation of religion through art...

...spirit that presides over the work of the two men...

...little, fervor seemed to die down and energy to book, but it cannot be called intrinsically religious...

...a and b) nothing came from Papini save a few sympaObserving all these things, Catholics hoped and be- thetic prefaces to the Fioretti of Saint Francis, and lieved._ But the movement...

...In every subject handled, poverty of another is announced by the Casa Editrice Interimagination is only too evident...

...counsels whose life should in religion an atmosphere which should purify and be, not for fleeting time, but for eternity...

...few that exist are either organs of religious communi- Another series is being edited by Battelli, one of ties, or influenced by them...

...Still of all, lifeless...

...So collaborators...

...movement, as the masses which acted upon the writers...

...a voice into which something of anarrived, were driving the youth of our country to seek gelic strain should enter...

...essays tend to any but a purely commercial aim...

...Today, at least, this is far from being the were upon the lips of children in our public schools...

...tianity and the authenticity of Papini's conversion In a very brief time, its sales rose from 40,000 to were questioned...

...But the thing had already been the reviews, or written as a preface to some reprint done more forcefully in the famous prayer with which of a religious author...

...But few read him, and scarcely a critic took seri- scathing contempt of a Leon Bloy, Catholicism preous notice of him...

...We KATHRYN WHITE RYAN...

...Year by year afford them conversation at marriages, and christen- the number grows less...

...Twenty-six volumes have already appeared, Lie dead...

...It is possible that what we lack whatever quarter proceeding...

...Before we can be young, must learn what Catholicism is...

...There are stories for nazionale, while at Milan another publishing house is young girls or seminarists...

...and Verga, not af- good was propounded-in God alone was peace to be fected by the Christian spirit in any way at all...

...Or did their religious sym- this neglected field...

...weaken...

...Who, today, reads the great Catholic literature...

...The All shall, at the last, on these Catholic University, up to now, has given only scanty Cradling broad maternal knees results...

...The works of the flesh were condemned, a loftier any well-defined religious sense...

...Perhaps this is an impos- heartening to note that a public exists which is arsible ideal...

...The inbeen enkindled in Italy, and as though a positive re- vective lacks charity, protest is destructive merely...

...To Giuliotti, voicing more covertly the life...

...It is impossible not to com- Todi, the Blessed Colombini, Santa Francesca pare the verse of Claudel, to mention only one con- Romana, Saint Augustine, Giovanni da Rivalto, etc., temporary poet, and to recognize the very different with de Maistre, Donoso Cortes, and Father Benson...

...The books published by it, striking as is their Lie broken...

...Sincerity compels us to admit that our contem- During the war, which only too thoroughly deterporary Catholic literature is terribly poor...

...mined the popular vogue of the novelist, almost invariA few years ago, it is true, on the morrow of the ably pornographic, Guido da Verona seems to have great war, there was a gleam of hope...

...Has he were all but Catholic-Mario Missiroli, then editor ever had a tragic perception of certain cases of conof the Resto del Carlino, of Bologna, and later of The science, of certain psychological conformations...

...Even today, writers, philosophers, and artists abound Then indeed, closely united to the soul of the Church, among us who have little or no acquaintance with shall we be in a position to become the architects of a Christianity or Catholicism...

...exist in him, as in all men...

...The support turn his own face toward the infinite, or to lose himwas timid, expressed in brief phrases-the consensus self in the abyss of divine love...

...the grinding of teeth, rather than the the day, apocalyptic imprecations already familiar sighs of one who prays to be delivered from earthly from the Ora di Barabba...

...For this function, the Catholic University of Milan Knees of the knighted lord bending to the sword-tap,, Strong knees of pressers trampling out the wine, seems the body clearly indicated, not to mention the Knees of the creeping babe, child-knees in arm-chairs, various collections of religious texts which have been Slow knees of dancers after love has spoken, initiated and which promise great developments...

...But a new interest in Catholicism but too often clouded by rhetoric...

...Little Poetry...

...He gives the impreswas possible, a growing attention to Catholic books in sion of one who waits upon a dies irae, and meantime foreign countries...

...The prime necessity is the religious instruc- Pieta tion of our people...

...It is when it is remembered that in Italy the average sale true that in it there are many fine pages, many of a good book is two or three thousand copies, and winged phrases...

...6o,ooo copies, and in our own time have attained a A later book by Giuliotti, Tizzi e Fiamme, pubtotal of ioo,ooo copies...

...No new books to break his silence...

...Who reads the sacred authors...