Art and Poetry by Jacques Maritain

Author:Jacques Maritain
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Philosophical Library
Published: 2012-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Mauriac cites a page where I have written: “There is a secret of the heart that is closed to the angels, open only to the sacerdotal knowledge of Christ. A Freud today, by the tricks of the psychologist, undertakes to violate it. Christ looked into the eyes of the adulterous woman, and saw all, to the depths; He alone could do this unsullied. Every novelist reads without shame in those poor eyes and brings his readers to the show.”27

I seek in vain in these lines the slightest wish for “an oratorical combative literature in which the characters, representatives of a race, samples of a class or a generation, would be mobilized in favor of a particular ideology.”28 I hold such a literature—ideological drama or novel—as the least defensible literature.

“We dare to read in the poorest eyes, because nothing of what is human makes us indignant or disgusted.”29

Indignation? disgust? No, verily, it is respect that I am asking for those poor eyes. In the sin itself of the creature abides a mystery that is sacred to us; this wound at least belongs to him, it is his miserable good for which he engages his eternal life, and in the folds of which are hidden God’s justice and compassion. To heal this wound Christ willed to die. To see as far as He into the sinful soul, it would be necessary to love it with as much tenderness and purity.

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