The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, Vol. 36 (Collected Works of Gk Chesterton) by Chesterton G.K

Author:Chesterton, G.K. [Chesterton, G.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898708394
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2011-05-27T04:00:00+00:00

AUGUST 19, 1933

To Praise, Exalt, Establish, and Defend

There is a big blank in the cleverest contemporary literature; and it is always difficult to draw a picture of a blank. Nobody finds it easy to define a negative; or to analyse the exact texture of a hole. But I can best begin by quoting certain lines of a friend of mine, not because he is a friend of mine, but because he does give a vivid description of what is not there. Mr. Belloc, belonging to older traditions, wrote a Poem in Praise of Wine;1 of which the first two lines are these—

To praise, exalt, establish and defend,

To welcome home mankind’s mysterious friend.

That is the note which, for some reason, has disappeared from most modern writing. There is any amount of sensibility to things, of subtle response to things, of delicate description of how the particular poet is affected by things; but he is never affected in this way. He will tell us that a pool with green scum on it partly depressed and partly delighted him; but he will not decide; he will not pronounce upon whether there ought to be any pond; or whether any pond ought to have any scum; or whether any scum ought to be green rather than peacock-blue; or whether, in short, he thanks God for a good green pond, or merely feels inclined to drown himself in it. And as is his esthetic attitude towards the scum of the pond, so is his moral attitude towards the scum of the population.

He will tell us, to vary the figure, that the glimpse of a girl’s mocking face in a crowd left him disturbed and doubtful; but he will not say, as did the great poets of old, that it left him either despairing or resolved. Dante had very little more than a glimpse of Beatrice on this earth; but he instantly perpetuated it in a perspective as solid as architecture, stretching away into the corridors and halls of heaven. Some great poets in the past, when the girl’s mocking face was a little too mocking, hardened and fixed and fossilised the memory in exactly the opposite fashion. Catullus came to a very harsh and savage and ungentlemanly conclusion about Lesbia; but he came to a conclusion. There was something in the whole tremendous tradition of the great tragic and comic poets of the past, which tended of its nature to be monumental. Dante set up a stone over Beatrice and Catullus threw a stone at Lesbia; but they were both big stones, and they have remained upon the graves. Both felt sure that their gesture was final; and that it really represented what they felt. The very sound of song, the very nature of the opening phrase, was something like that; “To praise, exalt, establish and defend.” Or else it was, “To curse, confound, destroy and leave for dead.” But that full-throated and final utterance is somehow lacking amid the many and varied voices of

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