Reading the Old Books: Great Literature & the Life of Faith: February 2013

Thursday, February 28, 2013

In the Middle (GH Day 26)

"Great art asks great questions about our lives."

Ralph Winter, producer of several big Hollywood films, such as some of the X-Men movies, spoke at my university today. The power of storytelling, he said, is contained in the structure of the story. He referenced such films as Titanic: we all know how that story ends, so we don't watch that movie to find out whether the boat makes it through the iceberg encounter or not. We already know it won't. So why do we want to watch a movie like Titanic? Answer: it's the process, the journey, the middle part, the story.

Auckland, New Zealand

As one faculty respondent stated today, Protestant Christians often make the worst art because we are afraid of the journey--of that ugly, unseemly middle. We want to skip to--and just talk about--the end. Yet those seemingly ugly parts, when the protagonist is in the midst of the struggle, are what make the story matter.

I suppose Christians would call this something like the journey of sanctification. It can be messy, and the end of the struggle is not often apparent. But those often "unseemly" struggles are a significant part of the story.

I've hinted at this in past postings, but this presentation of the narrator in the midst of the struggles of the Christian life is one of the reasons I love George Herbert's poetry so much. As many scholars have pointed out, he is like the Psalmist, who gives us the emotion in the midst of trials. In good stories, trials often come from without, from an opponent or an obstacle. But in good stories, trials often come from within as well: guilt, heartache, insecurities, resentment, temptation, etc.

Witness Herbert's "Affliction" poems. Not suprisingly, given the title, "Affliction (1)" presents a narrator who has not received an answer. Instead, "though thou troublest me, I must be meek; / In weakness must be stout" (61-62). The trials come from both without (sickness, friends' deaths, career struggles) and within in "Affliction (1)." The speaker of "Affliction (4)" complains that he is "Broken in pieces all asunder" (1), and his trials seem mainly to come from within: "My thoughts are all a case of knives, / Wounding my heart" (7-8).

Like the Psalmist, Herbert generally concludes his poems with at least a hint toward resolution, a hope that the present state will change, as a result of God's work, but some poems, such as "Perseverance," leave us in this "middle," with no hope yet on the horizon, just clinging to trust in God to make it through the struggle.

"Great art asks great questions about our lives": "Where is my God?" ("The Search" 29). "Is the year only lost to me?" ("The Collar" 13). "What hath not Man sought out and found, / But his dear God?" ("Vanity (1)"). "Is there in truth no beauty?" ("Jordan (1)"). Yes, Herbert's poems ask the great questions that we finite humans ask as we're in the middle of our story.

Why Old Books?

C. S. Lewis wrote that old books, so often shunned by readers even of his era, might be able to teach us much wisdom and truth that our contemporary age has forgotten (at best) or ridicules (at worst). See, for instance, Lewis's essay "On the Reading of Old Books" (from which I've taken my blog title), where he states, "It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. . . . Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books."

How often does the average American (or insert English-speaking-person here) read something written by an old dead guy and consider that, as a result of what we've read, we should "possibly modify [our] thoughts or [our] behaviour" (Lewis, The Screwtape Letters)? I'm not striving for anything ambitious with this blog, but perhaps by sharing the tidbits from my reading of old books (typically works of early English literature) and highlighting a story element, a concept, a passage, a word, I can take part in the tradition of passing along to you the lessons of beauty, truth, and goodness conveyed by these works.

There's one more element to this exploration: the old books, at least those written in the English language, were written mostly by people of faith in a culture of faith--namely, the Christian faith. As a Christian myself, I find the old books present all kinds of lessons for a life of faith.

For those of you in the literary know, you'll find that my approach to literature has been influenced heavily by Sir Philip Sidney's Defense of Poesy, as well as by neo-formalist criticism and, as already demonstrated, the great Medieval & Renaissance scholar and man of faith, C. S. Lewis.