VERSE
Novak, Michael Paul
What, on the other hand, I find unforgivable, is the policy of the Christian Democrats for twenty years to feed this ambiant (surrounding) materialism and Adenauer's role in:this. Was Adenauer...
...lOMay 1974:238...
...You know there are two definitions of the Church: on the one hand, the institution (which I detest because of its tie-up with the bourgeoisie) and, on the other hand, the Mystical Body...
...That's the background from which I come: one that had practically not changed since Bismarck's kulturkampJ...
...Perhaps, quite simply, because Catholicism was the major influence of my childhood...
...Because I was Catholic, I suffered, even with my very first novel, terrible tensions and difficulties with the hierarchy (I never let myself be scared by those idiots) and also with my family, which often thought my attitude incomprehensible...
...In Germany, where Catholics and Protestants are about equal in numbers, everyone resents his religion as a fate...
...But that has only a purely sociological interest...
...I challenge you to define such a creature...
...It's a negative definition...
...If I appear to be a moralist, it is completely unconsciously...
...A.~Fiscally, yes...
...To discover its conscience, one would need a computer as big as Cologne...
...That is why Adenauer was able to contribute to spreading materialism like a contagious sickness...
...Match my stillness up here, Move with ease to these rhythms Of the year away As we all drop like feathers Through the sunny afternoon To the good night...
...Why then have I not left the bosom of the Church...
...You must realize that my grandmother, and even my mother, would have made three signs of the cross over themselves at the very idea of having a novel of Zola's in their library...
...I don't even think he was...
...That's a problem my wife and I often discuss...
...No wonder that, to begin, with, I envied the freedom of expression of your P6guy or Bernanos...
...I do not consider myself the least bit as a moralist, but as a player...
...You have even been called "the conscience oJ the nation...
...His action stemmed from a whole spiritual national tradition...
...The militant consequences of the Reformation are, anyway, now beginning to fade...
...This is an advantage of which we make use every time we consider it necessary...
...Perhaps it is because the Nazi terror has traumatized me so I instinctively avoid any description of violent scenes...
...I have a horror of didactic literature...
...I refuse to play the game of eternally justifying the first by invoking the second...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 MICHAEL PAUL NOVAK MORNING IN SITGES I sit on the balcony to watch The stir of a maid's broom, This hiss of a gardener's hose, And I want to shout so quietly-Slow down, for the moment fit Our stereotype of the Spanish, Become a little lazy, Make your broom glide without dust, Your hose arch in the air Like a slender rainbow...
...But my beliefs (let's say I still believe in many things) are no one's business but my own...
...I cannot, in fact, tell you how much longer I will remain a Catholic...
...Today, I have liberated myself...
...That is to say: if it is already not easy for a German to be an intellectual, it is twice as uncomfortable for him also to be a Catholic...
...But, even there, I'm afraid our Catholic renascence is limited to literature...
...The Vicar-General of the Diocese of Cologne has just reminded me of this by sending me a bill for my "Church tax...
...Essentially it is the game with forms, with personages, with situations, that pleases me in writing...
...Was Adenauer particularly materialistic...
...Q.~What surprising words in the mouth oJ a Catholic author...
...But perhaps one must be a German to understand the resistance of the intellectuals in the Federal Republic to the Christian Democrats in general and to Adenauer in particular...
...Materially speaking, I am made of Catholic stuff, like the potatoes that grow around Cologne...
...Germany has 62,000,000 inhabitants...
...Your de Gaulle is no comparison...
...In fact, my problem is not religious, but political...
...If we have no specifically Catholic literature (except by converts like Gertrud yon Le Fort) it is doubtless because, until 1945, the Catholic milieu was a major obstacle to any literary vocation...
...A.--What a horrible definition, so characteristic of German idealism...
...We have something to say, and the chance to be heard...
...But when, for example, I hear that the Cardinal of Santiago participated in a Te Deum for the Chile putsch, I find that unbearable...
...Believe me, what characterizes our postwar literary generation is the very simple fact that we intellectuals refuse to see ourselves as marked men...
...Here again France, a lay, perhaps even an atheist, country, but with a Catholic background, has an advantage over us...
...But besides his fundamental dislike for human beings, he had also a bourgeois (in the bad sense of the word) mistrust of everything even faintly spiritual, critical, or merely intellectual...
...Q.--ln any case, you are a moralist...
...A.~A Catholic writer...
...So that's how I have become baptized for a second time...
...We are citizens of the German Federal Republic like everyone else...
...But from this to call me the conscience of a nation...
...Q.---Do you still regard yourseIJ as a Catholic...
...We have nothing of the sort...
Vol. 100 • May 1974 • No. 10
