Morning in the West
THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The...
...There we sat, like the old into suburbs...
...rebirth of humanity from the ruins of antique paganThese Eucharistic festivals of the world did not at ism, but in a myriad quiet, unfathomable ways there first interest Americans, apart from a limited few...
...But two things will have been is the necessity for effort unceasing-that comprises accomplished...
...and once again the humanists gained symbol of the nation) it had of necessity to admit that faith in their hobbies, so that a wistful company gath- both the criticism and the doctrine of modern prophets ered along the fringe of Lake Michigan and began were far from encouraging...
...It and sardonic with Sinclair Lewis, but it was difficult absorbed muddy, hog-raising farms and turned them to be happy with him...
...little clods so speculative and cynical, but the night Regardless of the manner in which the world that went by and they proved to be only clods-as all men gropes and suffers through the agony of the American are until they long to grow and do grow...
...and the throng which has seen sowing...
...And to the One who a Eucharistic achievement...
...But the wonderful joy of men who have looked in all places for a des- thing-res mirabilis-will have been lifted before perately needed friend, and then have turned to dis- their eyes...
...It could laughingly shake off its accumulated perity...
...Not all of ity, the true source of what is called by people who those who gather at the fringes of the vast pilgrimage write novels, the `strain' of American life...
...Western civilization is the oppression of ourselves...
...There is even in the entourage When a man does not know what to do, he is most of a demonstration like this a display of human envigorous in advocating doing...
...There- other things have drawn, or may draw, men to fore, during the nineteenth century which was so con- Chicago, there can be no comparison with the magstantly informing Europe that, as the years rolled on, nificence of this pilgrimage under the banner of the it would get richer, wiser and better, the grace of King...
...Alexander Harvey, writing enthusiasms of Vachel Lindsay, but it was tempered as a correspondent to the New York Herald-Tribune170 THE COMMONWEAL June 23, 1926 they have never really grasped the meaning of pros- things...
...William Franklin Sands, Agnes RepThe English Conservative Program plier, H. L. S., Grenville Vernon, George F. N. Blundell 183 N. Shuster 19o Transmutation (verse...
...The agony a beautiful transfiguration, into temples of worship of American life," says Mr...
...They may not recognize the truth which the ably humble, in a monstrance ; and before it, led by a ancient poem says so marvelously well : "What a won"beggar," were gathered throngs in penitent jubilation, derful thing is this, that the poor, humble servant from the ragged ends of everywhere...
...Somehad at first been a vestal consciousness of civilities times their pathetic eroticism was the most gorgeous turned into an outcry for civilization-a shout that quality of these shouting spokesmen...
...Harvey, using the word while it had faith in the tremendous Food which guarin its Attic sense, "emerges from an American spir- anteed it against famine...
...came, bringing its visionary exposition city marvelous But when Chicago was honest, not merely interested with domes and towers builded with a strange, beau- (and here it must be remembered that Chicago is a tiful carefulness...
...THE COMMONWEAL A Weekly Review of Literature, The Arts, and Public Affairs...
...be and the fruit of the morrow, whispering the melodies The second thing that will have been accomplished of benediction and expectancy l They were wise, the is far more important, though less easy to understand...
...Its effect may not recall the miraculous cover Him in the street...
...It is a return to the centre to be a better man than he is ever likely to be...
...No matter what prosperity before and been in bed as the result...
...And so it is not diffi- more than they have ever been impressed in their cult to conclude that Sinclair Lewis and his company lives, by the power of religious conviction to summon -the "redemptive intelligentsia" of the country-are rich and poor, the splendid and the humble, toward not conquerors but victims of the sense of frustration...
...Some of the spectators may even possibility of ultimate frustration in these efforts-it smile in their hearts...
...And so the coming of the Eucharistic Congress to The average American-one encounters him every- Chicago is, if such a thing be possible, more than an where except in the pages of the `best-sellers'-longs act of religious worship...
...Theirs was the should feast upon his Lord...
...And gradu- mind may respond to the festival, Reality will have ally it was seen what a morning stood over the earth...
...People may It was a Morning that came, regal and yet indescrib- not see...
...And what those who seemed accredited to make it rich...
...But-and the tentative paganism of Lew Sarrett to the camp-fire point is well made by Mr...
...It had led to the conclusion that al- the bending harvest will not be withheld...
...ness even the stench of its stock-yards...
...Already the splendor of the ecclesiastical pageGod, not finding a great harvest, was busy with the ant has had its effect...
...The mystical sowing time has been The epic of prosperity had really absorbed us in a dis- in progress here, as well as in distant lands, so that tinct manner...
...First, men will be impressed, possibly the `agony' of the American...
...Eleanor Downing 185 The Quiet Corner I g5 MORNING IN THE WEST C HICAGO, they tell us-these poets and crea- by the ironically saddened news from Spoon River...
...It is the illustration given to a city which American woman strives unceasingly for triumph on remains symbolic of material prosperity of how earthithe spiritual plane...
...Henry Longan Stuart 177 Kathryn White Ryan, Marie Antoinette de The Church and the World, I Roulet, Joseph Frant-Walsh 187 Gonzague de Reynold 18o Communications 188 Brother and Sister (verse) The Play R. Dana Skinner 189 Charles Wharton Stork 182 Books...
...If the seers to grain could be transformed into the bread of immor- whom prominence is given for their disillusioned anger tality...
...will be an effect...
...one transcendent goal...
...One could be brilliant to serve culture...
...and so long as it recog- alone, in all history, has been able to effect that renized its mystical origins, Europe was never in danger demption, we shall gather, during a long June holiday, of being wholly overwhelmed by the flood of material to reverence, to adore, and to cherish with our hearts...
...The of gravity...
...Volume IV New York, Wednesday, June 23, 1926 Number 7 CONTENTS Morning in the West 169 Life in Lithuania Joseph Koncevicius 185 Week by Week 171 Alchemists Old and New 186 The Friars' Schoolhouse 175 Poems Violet Alleyn Storey, Sesquicentennial Music 176 Raymond Kresensky, S. Foster Damon, Abbess of the Snows...
...It has even seen centre round which it moves is firm...
...it swallowed long files of laborers hard woman of fable who finally received the painted fingerput to make both ends meet in their dingy hovels...
...it bowls for which she had longed all her days, wealthy, was unfair, proud of the money its leading citizens progressive and unable to use humanly the things we were making, and content to accept as a sign of great- had gathered together...
...The year 1894 ists demanded a new culture and a new spiritual goal...
...The shout was often tuneful, ranging from the desire not to be stifled by prosperity...
...What a vision it is of the Master-going on the glory of churchly raiment has been led to coninvisibly while the fields of humanity were buried in sider also the underlying consciousness of glory as a indifferent darkness, scattering the bloom that was to transient thing...
...For generosity, its eagerness for illumination, will doubt reasons sufficiently well known, comparatively few who that the present congress is a moment for which it walked through the fields of wheat remembered that has waited long and mysteriously...
...itual ambition that exceeds American spiritual capacity...
...But tlfr city grew and grew...
...And yet that had once been the central glory are right, we need to be redeemed again, socially, from of mankind's social career...
...moved into the presence of that world...
...They mistake for an ocean what is only a trappings like drops of rain, it could change them, by flood rushing through a disrupted dam...
...and one forgave in the midst of rotten composure there must be an them much simply because one understood their fierce ideal...
...and earnest-the pioneer life of a developing, indusEmerson and his brethren used to pass there vainly, trious country-became, in the end, a mere argument the shrill echoes of their idealisms were wasted on upon the basis of which the most savage of our novelthe slushy sand, and the city grew...
...Hence the tension, the irritabil- ness may be sublimated into spirituality...
...Indeed, no though the mastery of material things was best at- one who surveys the career of America, its battle tained through organization, the illumination of the against isolation for collective nobility, its sacrificial soul was an affair of individual candle-power...
...It is the will have faith...
...The poverty of the American soul is best seen in Inevitably the humanists were saddened...
...tive artists sickened by the mastodonic cruelty Even what had at first been recognized as genuine of materials-- is a symbol of the burial of man's soul...
...ergy well-ordered and full of meaning because the But the world is an old place...
Vol. 4 • June 1926 • No. 7
