Fall Conference 2019: What Literature Teaches Us About Friendship

my name is Jennifer Newsome Martin I teach here in the program of Liberal Studies in the Department of theology and I'm delighted to be able to introduce our three panelists this morning the first speaker is el vino Mario Fantini who studied English literature philosophy and religion as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College he has graduate degrees in International development's public policy and financial journalism and has worked as an editor and speech writer for various international and multilateral organizations currently he's editor in chief of the European conservative and a member of the board of the Center for European renewal his interests include Alchemist nominalism counter enlightenment thought Auguste and poetry and literature and conservative political theory he's currently working on a doctoral dissertation at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and he will be speaking on the March main effect charles writers transformative friendship with the flight family in evylyn walls right head revisited our next speaker is Professor Raymond Haines who is associate professor of philosophy and the associate director of the humanities program at Providence College in Providence Rhode Island his research interests include ethics applied ethics philosophy and literature and the work of Alexis de Tocqueville he is the editor most recently of beyond the self essays in honor of W David Solomon our final speaker today is Michael P Murphy who directs the Catholic Studies program in the Hank Center for the Catholic intellectual heritage at Loyola University Chicago his research interests are in theology and literature critical theory and Christian spirituality but he also writes and engages public media on issues in eco theology ethics and the literary and political cultures of Catholicism Mike is a National Endowment for the Humanities fellow his first book a theology of criticism from Oxford University Press was named a distinguished publication in 2008 by the American Academy of religion his most recently scholarly work is an edited volume freshly out I think last month called this need to dance this need to Neil Denis lever tov and the poetics fate he's currently at work on a monograph entitled the dirty realists Catholic fiction poetry in film 1965 to 2015 and he'll be speaking to us a paper called yours truly epistolary friendships and the habit of being and as is the custom will spend about 18 to 20 minutes on the papers and then open it up for a 15-minute question-and-answer session after that so we'll welcome our first speaker good morning Brideshead Revisited evenin was 1945 masterpiece has basically all the elements need for a great story exotic locales beautiful art romance love tragedy and war but it's a friendship that is one of its most important elements and perhaps I should start by asking how many people here have read the the novel nice good good good to see but for those few of you that handful what I saw the hasn't read the novel let me just briefly summarize the story subtitled the sacred and profane memories of Captain Charles Ryder most of the book takes place in the past but it begins and ends in the present in Charles Ryder's present which is England some time during the Second World War captain Ryder Charles and his army unit have set up camp temporarily on what turns out to be the estate of Brideshead Castle and I'll show it to you there's Captain Charles Ryder and here's the castle as its portrayed in the 1981 series that you've probably seen rights of castle is owned by the House of Marchmain the Catholic aristocratic flight family seeing the castle by the light of morning a bewildered Charles has a rather pristine moment and is overwhelmed by quote a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds and quote he recalls being a student at Oxford University where he had a rather decadent lifestyle courtesy of Lord Sebastian Flyte the family's youngest son Charles then recounts various romances adventures and misadventures many involving members of the flight family particularly Sebastian whom he loved Charles eventually becomes a painter marries while Sebastian sinks into dissolute living and alcoholism years later Charles reconnects with Sebastian's married older sister lady Julia flight with whom he begins an adulterous relationship his memories end just before the epilogue with various tragic events and revelations and so when we returned to the present in the epilogue we are back at the temporary camp set up at bride's at castle and we see Charles an agnostic throughout the whole of his memories visiting the castles private chapel and praying before the Blessed Sacrament so scholars looking at the novel have usually focused on one of several things three years ago in a building that apparently is no longer here I spoke about the idea of beauty in the novel other more intrepid scholars have insisted that its primary theme is class or perhaps even homosexuality but neither though interesting neither is essential to the drama at the heart of the story in fact in a 1947 memo to MGM studios which was then considering a film version of the novel even wasps stated pithily the theme is theological he then went on said the story deals with the operation of grace in other words it's the story of conversion that moment according to gregory wolfe quote of personal illumination when an individual is suddenly vouchsafe a sense of the meaning of things unquote while himself for those of you who don't know converted to Rome in 1930 15 years before bride said so Catholicism is essential to the novel so is the theme of friendship for it is precisely through Charles's various friendships with the different members of the flight family that he learns about the faith and what it means to live the faith and is able to reach in the words of Robert Hugh Benson the quote one supreme friendship to which all human friendships point the one ideal friend in whom we find perfect and complete that for which we look in type and shadow in the faces of our human lovers end quote so we'll start with Sebastian there he is on the right played by Anthony Andrews and Charles on his left and Aloysius the teddy bear as an Oxford undergraduate Charles had been befriended by the beautiful Lord Sebastian Flyte and the two had rapidly and easily developed the kind of friendship that CS Lewis describes as one of the four loves through Sebastian's Charles is not only introduced to an enchanted aristocratic world but also almost accidentally to the Catholic faith which starts him on the path to Rome though it takes years decades Sebastian's friendship serves thus as a conduit for the faith and it does so in several ways I'll go through this very quickly first Sebastian speaks openly of his own dependence on God he exclaims one day oh dear it's very difficult being a Catholic Charles replies doesn't make much difference to you of course all the time well I can't say I've noticed it are you struggling against temptation you don't seem much more virtuous than me he says I'm very very much wicked er he says that indignantly by the way so Sebastian knows he needs the faith very much recalling John 15:5 without me you can do nothing second Sebastian's approach to the faith is it's quite simple rather childlike Charles speaking of the church one day asks him I suppose they try to make you believe an awful lot of nonsense Sebastian replies is it nonsense I wish it were it sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me but my dear Sebastian you can't seriously believe it all can't I I mean about Christmas and and the star and the three kings and the ox in the ass oh yes I believe that it's a lovely idea but you can't believe things because they're a lovely idea but I do that's how I believe so Sebastian believes precisely in the way that our Lord wants us to believe recalling Matthew 18:3 change had become under like little children years later when Charles visits Sebastian in Morocco to deliver news of Sebastian's mother's death he finds him in a Franciscan hospital with the grip dealers the Sebastian has been hosting and caring for a syphilitic German soldier a deserter from the Foreign Legion and Sebastian confides quote you know it's rather a pleasant change when all your life you've had people looking after you to have someone to look after yourself and bowden this interaction like others he's had with Sebastian over the many years brings Charles very slowly ineluctable closer to God look at Cordelia there on the right Sebastian's younger sister she's also quite important to Charles she is what one writer has called a truth teller in the novel she calls things as they are so what when she first visits the adulteress Charles and Julia after many years abroad she pulls no punches saying quote it's funny forted is exactly the word I thought of for you and Julia forted passion calling it what it is she then gives Charles news about Sebastian who hasn't been seen in years she's found him in French Tunisia by then where he's tried to become a lay brother at a monastery but usually drunk he's been turned away time and again found sick and starving one day Cordelia reveals that he's been at the infirmary ever since she tells Charles that the monasteries a superior praise for Sebastian regularly quote he was a very holy old man and he recognized it in others it holiness Charles says oh yes Charles that's what you've got to understand about Sebastian he then asks I suppose he doesn't suffer oh yes I think he does she replies one can have no idea what the suffering may be to be maimed as he is no dignity no power of will and then she makes what I think is the most truthful and perhaps the most important statement in the entire book no one is ever wholly without suffering as James Hitchcock has argued the unsuspected truth is that Sebastian is a kind of Saint so Cordelia through her friendship with Charles really opens his eyes up to deeper more mysterious aspects of the faith there's one of my favorite characters Bridey bride said Sebastian's older brother he doesn't have the same intimate friendship with Charles but he too plays an important role in Charles's conversion primarily by serving as a voice of Catholic orthodoxy as a source of moral teachings at one point during the early stages of Sebastian's growing alcoholism while still in England Charles worries that Sebastian will soon be a physical wreck and Bridey replies quote there's nothing wrong in being a physical wreck you know there's no moral obligation to be Postmaster General or master of foxhounds or to live to walk ten miles at 80 and quote Charles of course bristles at this moral obligation now you're back on religion again variety I never left did he replies there is also bride ease bombshell as it's called in the book when he explains to his adulterous sister Julia and to Charles why he cannot ask his wife to visit them at Brideshead castle where they've shacked up Bridey says quote you must understand that my wife is a woman of strict Catholic principle fortified by the prejudices of the middle class I couldn't possibly bring her here it is a matter of indifference whether you choose to live in sin with your husband or Charles or both I have always avoided inquiry into the details of your main Oz but in no case would my wife consent to be your guest end quote these brief lines directed and perhaps a bit ruthless subsequently trigger Julia's fit of hysteria outside and her teary reflections on God and her love for Charles so we'll talk about Julia on the left there with Charles Oh Julia is Charles's most important loving friendship in the book hers builds on his earlier love for sebastian during the stormy transatlantic ocean crossing at the start of their affair she asks him quote you loved Sebastian didn't you he replies oh yes he was the forerunner this is repeated later in the maturity of their affair years later when Julia remarks it's frightening to think how completely you've forgotten Sebastian he replies he was the forerunner yes that's what you said in the storm she then adds I thought since perhaps I am only a forerunner to to which Charles says to himself perhaps but then he continues with the following astonishing reflection I quote perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols vagabond language scrawled on gate posts and paving stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us perhaps this sadness which sometimes falls between us referring to Julia Springs from disappointment in our search each straining through and beyond the other snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us end quote I think Charles here is just beginning to understand something about the ultimate end of that quest of the spiritual quest of the search for love another important moment occurs right after bridey's bombshell precisely as Julia's weeping by the fountain outside the castle for the death of her God Charles tries to pacify her saying you do know at heart that it's all Bosh don't you how I wish it was she says right there we see an important change in Julia Charles at that moment though remains all at sea until until we get to the death of Sebastian's father Lord Marchmain a bitter apostate so here's the scene the families gathered around the old Pater familias the priest is is asking an unconscious older man basically if he is sorry before he dies Lord Marchmain can't reply everyone's praying around him and Charles says to himself or thinks rather quote I suddenly felt the longing for a sign if only of courtesy if only for the sake of the woman I loved who knelt in front of me praying I knew for a sign it's it seems so small a thing that was asked the bare acknowledgment of a present a nod in the crowd I prayed God forgive him his sins and please God make him accept your forgiveness so small a thing to ask unquote Lord Marchmain as those of you who've read the novel or seen the movie know then makes the sign of the Cross and Charles then realizes that quote the sign I had asked for was not a little thing not a passing nod of recognition and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom end quote this is the precise moment when Charles's edifice of disbelief begins to crumble and this conversion begins more importantly though it's also it also marks the moment when Julian knows she cannot marry him or be with him ever again she tries to explain herself to Charles quote I've always been bad but the worse I am the more I need God I can't shut myself out from his mercy that is what it would mean starting a life with you Charles it may be a private bargain between me and God that if I give up this one thing I want so much however bad I am he won't quite despair of me in the end and quote her announcement of her love for Charles is the final blow leading to Charles's conversion as one scholar has put it Charles and Julia are essentially the catalyst for the others spiritual Redemption the late Salvatore canals used to teach that Jesus is not the same in everyone but according to a person's capacity to receive him he shows himself as a child or as an adolescent in full development or as a mature man end quote I find this lovely and quite helpful apply to our material it suggests that behind the various friendships that I've just summarized there were real encounters with Christ paraphrasing another scholar quote this succession of profane loves in Charles's life has brought him to his true destination the love of God and vote now we're not privy to Charles's conversion at all but it takes place somewhere between the end of his reminiscences and the epilogue he goes from being an agnostic and mocking Catholicism as mumbo-jumbo to a believer but we only know this from a few hints during his memories and from the epilogue for example at one point fed up with the flight's catholic drama he says he is leaving behind illusion he basically declares himself a realist thing says i now live in a world of three dimensions with the aid of my five senses he then adds i have since learned that there is no such world elsewhere reflecting on one particularly idyllic 1920s summer charles recognizes quote i have come to accept claims which then in 1923 i never troubled to examine and to accept the supernatural as the real end quote it is only in the epilogue back in the present that we know for sure for we see Charles walking around Brideshead castle saying quote there was one part of the house Castle I had not yet visited and I went there now and I said a prayer an ancient newly learned form of words and quote it seems Charles has finally submitted after pursuing various disordered loves throughout his life to the one true love written on his heart all along this is of course not the only conversion in the book let's look at the flights very briefly after years of dodging their duties and obligations quote chasing an illusion negative freedom from the responsibilities of faith and quote the three wayward flights all have accepted God's grace Sebastian has embraced the cross through physical suffering Julia's given up Charles for God and Lord Marchmain has received the sacrament of extreme unction like st. Augustine all of them had sought in vain for something but in the end they were all powerless to resist God's grace in conclusion this is a great work of Catholic literary fiction it's not just the story of a man emerging from the chaos of the carnal into the light of truth it's also a re integrative work reminding us of the need to put God back in the world have God in our fallen world it's a work as Joseph Pierce has written of quote hope among the ruins of a vanishing civilization in which the light of Christianity shines on amid the chaos end quote we see just such a light on the last page as Charles looks upon the small red flame and I forgot this here's the chapel the small red flame of a beaten copper lamp in front of the tabernacle that flame burns in testament testimony one scholar has written to what wahhhh believed to be central to European and I would say Western culture that is the sacramental guarantee that God's real presence continues to work in history and continues to transform the lives of men and women everywhere thank you [Applause] [Applause] when Walker Percy was close to sixty years old he wrote a short poem entitled community here's the first stanza I'll return to the rest of the poem at the end of my remarks now comes the artist to his life's surprise a fond abstract middle-aged public man is he come to a place in his time when he thought he knew something what namely that on the short lovely Louisiana afternoons the winters sunlight making spaces pale gold above and in the live oaks a shafted gloom like rooms of moss and leaf and tenant squirrels and jeweled Birds he trafficked in loneliness little brother cellmate and friend to himself and even turned it to good use a commodity a good business man selling solitariness like GM selling Chevrolet's or Burns furniture a strange success this selling to other selves the very sealed off nests of self from selves although I mean to say some things about Walker Percy and friendship I need to begin with estrangement Percy's parents settled in Birmingham Alabama after their wedding where his father practiced law the summer of 1929 when 13 year old Percy and his younger brother Leroy or away at summer camp Percy's forty year old father like his grandfather twelve years before committed suicide with gun his mother distraught and lonely moved with her three boys to Greenville Mississippi to join the household of will Percy her cousin by marriage a single man and the son of the late Senator Leroy Percy shortly before Percy's seventeenth birthday his mother drove her car off a bridge outside of Greenville and drowned the circumstances remain unclear but Percy would always believe that his mother too had committed suicide uncle uncle will lawyer poet plantation owner adopted his nephews and offered them rope Percy later a complete articulated view of the world as tragic as it was noble it was to be introduced to Shakespeare Keats Brahms Beethoven as one seldom if ever meets them in school but a close friend also called Uncle Will the loneliest man he ever knew Percy attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and medical school at Columbia while in New York City he underwent a year of psychoanalysis four days a week with a therapist influenced by the psychoanalyst Harry stack Sullivan who emphasized loneliness as a major developmental issue not long after he contracted tuberculosis and spent several years at a sit at a sanatorium in Saranac Lake New York TB he later said is the best thing that ever happened to me here's Percy I was in bed so much alone so much that I had nothing to do but read or think was an academics dream I think I began to question everything I had once believed I began to ask why Europe why the world had come to such a sorry state I never turned my back on science but I began to realize that as a scientist a doctor the pathologist's I knew so very much about man but had little idea what man is Percy read Kierkegaard who he said saw the problem most clearly Heidegger Marcel Sartre and Camus raised something of an agnostic though he attended various Protestant churches now and then his illness and the reading and reflection it made possible shook him to his core and when he was discharged at the age of thirty he decided to convert to Catholicism and Wed marry Bernice Townsend I need you to be my wife he telegrammed I'm neurotic as hell I need you to get me out of my state I love you it's got to be the best proposal anybody's ever made they settled in New Orleans where Percy gave up medicine in order to write six novels scores of essays and the difficult to cataract categorized tour-de-force lost in the cosmos I have not lingered over Percy's biography from mere casual interest his life of the Kazakh Catholic husband father of two girls novelists and philosopher found its wellspring in the bitter loss of his grandfather and his parents his long sickness and the intense reflection his sickness made possible suicide in particular haunts Percy's writing as it did his life Kate in the movie goer has suicidal tendencies will Barrett in the last gentlemen is preoccupied with the suicide of his father and barely escaped suicide himself in the second coming Thomas More spends some time in a sanatorium after a failed suicide attempt in love and the ruins Percy though never himself tempted by suicide struggled with depression and saw that the possibility of suicide forces each of us to ask what makes life worth living the answer Percy found while resting reading in upstate New York was that his own personal struggles with loneliness depression and a familial disposition to suicide were emblematic of human life instead of a disease to be cured the loneliness of one's self it's a strange mminton from one's own heart this alienation was the fate of all those living in the 20th century even more he said judeo-christianity and here's a long ish quote from Percy gave an account of alienation not as a peculiar evil of the 20th century but as the enduring symptom of man's estrangement from God human existence was by no means to be understood as the transaction of a higher organism satisfying this or that need from its environment by being creative or enjoying meaningful relationships anyone ever says they want a meaningful relationship with you you should run but as the journey of a Wayfarer a long life's way the experience of alienation was thus not a symptom I'm still quoting Percy of maladaptation psychology nor evidence of the absurdity of life existentialism nor an inevitable consequence of capitalism Marx though the exacerbating influence of these forces was not denied it was not to be forgotten that human alienation was first and last the homelessness of a man who is not in fact at home how remarkably comforting this must have been for Percy loneliness and depression were not symptoms of illness whether psychological or existential nor reflections of the peculiar troubles of modern life but instead precious reminders that we are Wayfarers pilgrims journeying home all of Percy's writing fits in one way or another into a three fold pattern we find ourselves more or less in the situation of Thomas Moore in love and the ruins the first thing a man remembers says Moore is longing and the last thing he's conscious of before death is exactly the same longer if we're fortunate we recognize our condition and see that it is part of human nature rather than mere private weakness or sickness or the external maladies of the times and if we're truly fortunate we come to see this condition as a good one the reminder that we are journeying home to our maker I'd like to retell Percy's first novel the movie Gore in order to show some of the things I've been saying and to see how human love and friendship might connect to them Binx bowling the week before Ash Wednesday his 30th birthday is a model tenant and a model citizen and takes pleasure in doing all that is expected of him he manages a small branch office of his uncle's brokerage firm and does comfortably well enjoying he says the consolation of making money in the evenings he watches television or goes to the movies once I thought he says of going into law or medicine or even pure science I even dreamed of doing something great but there's much to be said for giving up such grand ambitions and living the most ordinary life imaginable a life without the old longings for years now he says I've had no friends I spend my entire time working making money going to movies and seeking the company of women but this morning for the first time in a long time there occurs to him the possibility of a search the search he says is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life to become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something not to be onto something is to be in despair his Aunt Emily 65 and an old southern stoic and as Percy admitted something like his uncle will likes to say she is an Episcopalian by emotion a Greek by nature and the Buddhists by choice she reads the great books and says I don't know quite what we were doing on this insignificant cinder spinning away in a dark corner of the universe yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fiber of my being a man must live by his lights and do what little he can and do it as best he can in this world goodness is destined to be defeated but a man must go down fighter today she's invited Binks over for one of her serious talks she asks him to help her stepdaughter Kate who is approaching the point where it becomes more and more difficult for her to meet people his Binks remembers in grade school Kate had no friends instead of playing at recess she would do her lessons and sit quietly at her desk until class began and I have five children that doesn't sound so bad to me actually I wouldn't I wouldn't mind a little more that fight with her joke with her and Emily says do whatever it is you used to do to put her at her ease kate is going through something I don't understand Cayden Binks grew up together after the death of Binks his father and when Binks goes to see her kate says you're like me but worse and there's much truth in that they're both alone and lonely they're both awake to the search though Binks more so than Kate Binks first discovered the search when he was shot in the Korean War and as he lay on the ground the world in his predicament seemed visible for the first time Kate's happiest moment she says came after she escaped with minor injuries from a car crash that killed her fiance though not not because it killed her fiance somehow for both of them confronting an escaping death makes the mystery of life present immediate to them and so makes the search possible they also can't help but speak the truth I tell Kate the truth says Binx because I have not the wit to tell her anything else and Kate knows it Mercy's main characters are always truth tellers a sign of their longing for communion here's Thomas Moore and love among the ruins in a wonderful passage when I left the hospital I resolved not to lie line cuts one off lying to someone is like blindfolding him you cannot see the others eyes to see how he sees you and so you do not know how it stands with yourself and where is aunt emily is stoic Kate and Binx both desire beauty though [ __ ] sees a deep sadness in the old courage as well as the charms of beauty joy and sadness come by turns I know now he says beauty and bravery make you sad Sharon's beauty Sharon is his secretary and my aunt's bravery and victory breaks your heart finally and most importantly Kate and Binx each rescue each other various misadventures befall them the week before Ash Wednesday being spends a day out with Sharon and visits his Catholic mother and his step sisters and brothers Kate flirts with suicide breaks off her engagement to another man Biggs and Kate together escape New Orleans for Chicago where Binx attends a financial conference only to be called back by aunt Emily who have braids Binx for taking the fragile Kate away without telling anyone finally on Ash Wednesday Binks thinks Kate has left him he proposed to her and she seemed to accept but that was before or aunt Emily called them back he gives into despair and so to desire my search has been abandoned he says it's no match for my aunt her rightness and her despair it's certain now that my aunt is right and the Kate knows it and that nothing is left but Sharon but he spots Kaede in her car waiting for him is it possible pink says to himself that perhaps it is not too late a little later Kate says I'm frightened when I'm alone and I'm frightened when I'm with people the only time I'm not frightened is when I'm with you you'll have to be with me a great deal but while they rescue each other they don't satisfy each other it's only one thing I can do says Binks listen to people see how they stick themselves into the world hand them along aways in their journey and be handed along Percy structured much of this novel like his others around Kierkegaard's three stages of existence the aesthetic the ethical and the religious Caden Binks are drawn to the aesthetic and an Emily to the ethical but Kierkegaard and Percy saw both the aesthetic and the ethical is unsatisfying and if you pass both you are left with a predicament either existence is observed where we are a pilgrim people searching longing to return to God this second choice the religious stage is the quiet but triumphant undercurrent of the moviegoer the short epilogue said a year and a half after the main action around Ash Wednesday shows Caden Binks married and returning from the funeral of Binks is half brother Lonnie who died just shy of his 15th birthday Percy doesn't allow us an easy conclusion regarding Binks is search Percy said once that you have to be wary of using words like religion God sin salvation baptism because the words are almost worn out the themes have to be implicit rather than explicit as for my search says Binks I have not the inclination to say much on the subject for one thing I have not the authority as the great Danish philosopher declared to speak of such matters in any way other than the edifying for another thing it's not open to me even to be edifying since the time is later than his much too late to edify or do much of anything except plant a foot in the right place as the opportunity presents itself if indeed ass-kicking is properly distinguished from edification but the final scene recreates the end of Dostoyevsky's brothers car mats off when Alyosha comforts a group of boys of the grave of a friend who has just died is it really true they say what religion says that we shall all rise up from the dead and come to life and see one another again without question we shall rise without question we shall see one another and joyfully tell one another everything that has happened says le osha and Binks his little sister asks him when our Lord raises us up on the last day well Ani still be in a wheelchair where will he be like us he'll be like you Binks replies all Christian literature is hopeful and so Walker Percy's novels are all of them hopeful but human life is bittersweet and Christian novelists tend to lean more towards the bitter or more towards the sweet talking Lewis Chesterton savored the sweet the beauty of the sensuous if I could hazard a name for this kind of writing I would call it incarnation 'el crit expresses a special love of the created world the things that are not God though there are of him Walker Percy does appreciate the created created world well you wouldn't know it I'm afraid from what I've been saying his books are all in the deepest sense common and very funny but he liked Flannery O'Connor and sigrid undset is weary of lingering over the world at the expense of its creator he prefers to show the inadequacy of creation its impoverishment in contrast with the divine now I've come to the end and haven't said much yet about friendship but everything is in place to say what needs to be said we moderns sometimes imagine that friendship and love will complete us but Persie rejects this our friends and our lovers like everything God gives us will never satisfy us instead Persis image of friendship is the road to emmaus we two or three are journeying together and the Lord is with us on the hard path though we might not recognize him and he is glad for us to listen to people see how they stick themselves into the world hand them along aways in their journey and be handed along our friends see with us that we are searching that we cannot fill each other's longing in our hearts and because of this we have leave to be gentle with one another to care for and be patient with our brokenness friends if I may go so far celebrate together the sadness that is no indication of failure or inadequacy or the times we live in but is instead the long slender thread leading us home let me conclude with the second and final stanza of the poem I began with now comes the surprise what that in the very things he had denied and done so well denying friendship laughter good red wine well anyhow early times Marisol merriness Lynde loveliness all the good things we Catholics used to stand for until something went wrong did I help them go wrong I hope not I only named the wrongness which in a way is to make it right and turn it but what a surprise 20 years of solitariness and success at solitariness solitaire with his family like the swiss family on their island then all at once community community what friends out there in the world yes thank you [Applause] in my right hand I have the latest in a 33-year epistolary friendship for my friend Matt luskey his game has come down a bit because it used to be a stationary with his monogrammed this is just some kind of a proletariat stock stuff from the University of Minnesota but I cherish it over in my hand over here I have a cellphone and I have probably during this talk there'll be a text from my eight high school buddies we've kept going for a lot of years they range from the pure Isle to the profound and they you know there's also of photos and memes so it strikes me as somehow pre-reformation in that register but here we go you know I also say more about friendship and digital digital spaces during this talk but there's too much there so you might get something along the way so I'll focus on kind of conventional epistolary friendships and so whether figured as crown of life CS Lewis or the elixir of life from the book of Sirach or by considering the countless other a beautiful metaphors that exists friendship remains today not only a central value in human life but also serves as the primary relationship that motivates and fires so many of our human discourses literature poetry and the arts philosophy politics civic life but there's something unique to learn about friendship when we look at it through look at it unfold in epistolary spaces so many good novels are epistolary novels perhaps because access to a character's inner life and thought stimulates the thickening of plots but it's likely something more still think of the sorrows of young werder Frankenstein by Shelly the Screwtape Letters silenced by endo and more recently Gilly add by a Marilyn Robinson Francis and Bernhard McCarley and Bauer and for you academics out there you must read dear committee members by Julie Schumacher so many important dimensions are encountered and revealed in the genre and the deft crafting of letters by authors vastly enhances the literary quality of texts so to the long tradition of letter writing in non-literary settings is indispensable consider the many epistolary friendships that have enlightened anna rich are learning too many late modern examples to adduce here but these few will kick us into gear and think of these jean-paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell Chesterton and Hilary Belloc CS Lewis of course and Tolkien and all the Inklings and again it's on that part of the paper I wanted to do I teach a course in Oxford every other summer and I was going to call it religion literature in the British imagination and though the suits at Loyola said that's not sexy enough and I said what you mean it's not sexy enough so I did what anybody would do who's like me and I turned to my wife and Margie and she said ah no problem just put from hobbits to Hogwarts on the front of that and you're in and it fills up every time you know there is that also with the Lewis and Tolkien there's that you know what you to the shared love of you know the the romantic Christianity that they both espoused but you know that friendship was stressed to the the what you to exists alongside the more mundane disturbances of people in our lives you know there's the fullness that Raymond which is speaking about there's a there's there's a holistic scope and our friendships that need not be idealized and this reminds me to one more thing I March his idea was to defer to hand out cards with stamps on him during this talk so you could write a letter to your friend and I forgot the basket on the table on the way home on the way out of Chicago and so my best friend Margie will forgive me I'm sure but she'll also make fun of me so these these great friendships like evil and wah of course and Thomas Merton they had a nice long epistolary relationship Denise lever Tov and Robert Duncan that one broke over poetry and politics but really it was theology that broke that one - how about this one - Jack merit an and Saul Alinsky was that really if you know they were a lot were they really friends that's something to look at and then of course Justin Timberlake and a Ryan Gosling but we'll leave that we Knight had mentioned the longer tradition here st. Paul of course Agustin Abelard and Heloise Luther Abel I'm fond I work at Loyola so we can't leave out Cindy and Asus who wrote eight thousand letters mostly to Jesuits but also to non Jesuits and letters that set the stage for a practice that remains central in Ignatian spirituality today that of spiritual conversations anchored in in HS is revolutionary and ever durable Spiritual Exercises and that's the dearest message I think I can convey that the paleri relationships when done well are nothing if not fecund aiding spiritual conversations oh I have slides here yeah so that's Flannery from her journal Flannery O'Connor my epistolary powers enthrall me [Music] she was 19 when she wrote that so let's have it and I wanted to put that on there for longer but need to go to max I leave it there what I plan to do here is to explore the power of epistolary friendships as a sign of both advanced friendships and an instrument of spiritual conversation ensure by considering just a few points at epistolary moments of friendship and the correspondences of two well-known Catholic writers Gerard Manley Hopkins and Flannery O'Connor both of whom I hasten to note died young we begin to see in epistolary life something stark and beautiful letter-writing as a sacrament of human friendship the very act of writing itself adds essential dimensions to our friendships and shovels our intimacy to more profound levels there's an irony here though of course because proximity is so vital in friendships but so too how often it is that we speak our hearts and minds with candor and Trust precisely when we are physically apart from one another precisely than we are in moments of privacy and contemplation so much in Christian life proceeds from inversions such as this and letter writing in particular brings this into fuller view in this sense letter writing and regular correspondents serve friendships in ways both pointed and textured as an organ of personal intimacy as a vehicle to convey intellectual and emotional Claritas and as a venue for spiritual and religious growth when we meet again in between the writing of our letters our relationship is transformed a little bit and we are moved further down the pilgrim path of our shared expedition what is more when we consider exemplary letters with care especially when written by people who know how to write things we too are uniquely drawn into the correspondence and are much improved by the experience but let me offer you know an observation and maybe even a caveat here while letters engender deeper intimacy between friends they also serve as signposts in the spiritual biographies and unfolding drama of our lives in God and this almost always is messy this is to say that not every epistolary of friendship in the Christian milieu or any milieu for that matter has a so-called happy ending life is complicated no matter one spiritual state and we all dwell in the mystery of human freedom even while we pray for grace it is no accident that Flannery O'Connor even if she respects the philosophical ideals associated with friendship is a Christian realist in the Thomas vane FAL ability and sinfulness are key facts of being and her stories almost always take place in purgatorial spaces trains buses doctors offices o'connor knows that we are ever in the crucible and that existence often works us like galley slaves but it is her response to this drama her most astute theological understanding that blends a high regard for moral clarity with a mercy that runs even deeper that become for her the habit of being that permeates her a literary imagination her spirituality and her epistolary friendships in 1950 in a 1956 letter to William sessions who became Flannery's literary executor by the way Flannery deftly discloses the unique power of epistolary spaces to engender understand and cultivate friendship do you know the Hopkins bridges correspondence she writes bridges wrote to Hopkins at one point and asked him how he could possibly learn to believe expecting I suppose a metaphysical answer Hopkins only said give alms in the letter except exerted above O'Connor is counseling her unlikely young friend and regular correspondent about drawing deeper relationships with God is himself and the Harb grabble demands of living a Christian life precisely by invoking this this dialogue Hopkins and bridges were an unconventional pair they met at Oxford and they shared poems with one another but then they wrote over many years lifelong correspondence characterized by off colliding opinions on politics and culture and art and their many conversations about belief and practice are as much in harmony as dissonance yet they remain true friends to the last both were ardent theists even if there are theological styles were markedly different Hopkins was a Catholic convert in the st. John Henry Newman vein and then became a Jesuit priest Bridges was a physician poet was a cross between a Christian classicist and a new century man a kind of middle church theosophist O'Connor's invocation of the pair honors the depth of their love just as it serves the particular message of the letter and sessions needed to hear that sessions figures into the talk at the end here but let's look at Hopkins and bridges you know along with Newman and Charlotte Peggy and Leo and blah Hopkins is a key figure for understanding and articulating the intellectual social and aesthetic stakes of late nineteenth into the early 20th century kind of religion and culture and intellectual life these four conveyed the depth and without them we'd really be at a loss I think but would we would have known about Hopkins at all had it not been for bridges his beloved friend who published Hopkins his poems in 1918 about you know this is 30 years after Hopkins dies the original edition of these poems gathered a small enthusiastic audience but would not reach widespread popularity until 1930 in an edition edited by Charles Williams and since then you know Hopkins and every anthology republished poems everywhere critical editions so many translations and yet the bridges is faded from view which is interesting so you know Hopkins was well ahead of his time anticipating a literary movement maybe modernism to a point and of course theological depth a theological aesthetics of a high register but no one knew this well he lived and it's no surprise because we know well that a no prophet is accepted in his native place while its most valuable to have these poems you know we only get one side of the dialogue Hopkins letters were carefully kept by bridges and they were published but the letters that bridges had written were sent back to him after his friend's death so bridges letters came back and he destroyed them the consequence of this asymmetry is that it's most difficult to assess bridges as personal reactions to the views expressed so frankly by Hopkins on those rich topics we will encounter this phenomenon momentarily we turn to a Conner and her nine-year correspondence with Betty Hester different through-line a different result but it's it's similar we don't always have Hester's point of view either/or bridges the bridges point of view and discerning readers are tasked with constructing credible scenarios against absent texts in an 1879 letter written from Oxford Hopkins writes to his friend about his cat this his a belief and so Hopkins rights I should also like to say one thing you understand of course that I desire to see you a Catholic if not that a Christian or if not that at least a believer in the true God for you told me something of your views about the deity which were not as they should be it also might and ought to turn on something further in fact on prayer and that suggestion I believe I did once make to you but I have another council open to no objection and yet I think it will be unexpected I lay great stress on it it is to give alms I dare say indeed you do give alms still I should say give more I should be so able to say give up to the point of sensible inconvenience I am now talking pure Christianity as you may remember but I also am talking pure sense as you must see now you may have done much good but yet it may not be enough I will say it is not enough believe me your affection or friend Gerard Hopkins Australian bridge is of course cherished cherished as this dialogue and was even if it's mystified by his friends inexplicable all radical and absolute Catholic commitments we don't know what Britches says though but he does write to AE AE Housman and he writes I am editing the poems of an old college friend my contemporary at Oxford Gerard Hopkins a Bally ol man on fine scholar became a Jesuit very foolishly pervert before he took his degree and died 30 years ago in Dublin rotten with melancholy because being a patriot he could not stomach the treason of his spiritual associates and directors perishing of typhoid fever for all of our candor and time together our friends are often mysteries to us and so often - we are mysteries to ourselves but let us let Hopkins make an answer to the harrowing mistake of which bridges accuses him in this late poem from 1885 soul/self come poor jack self I do advise you jaded let be call off thoughts awhile elsewhere leave comfort root room let joy sighs at God knows when - god knows what who smiles not rung see you unforeseen times rather as skies between pie mountains lights a lovely mile just as bridges brought Hopkins into the world so too did Sally Fitzgerald bring Flannery into the world her letters I'm gonna kind of run over this because to the interest of time but there's a long record of Flannery writing everybody's letters are wonderful she writes Robert Lowell Elizabeth Bishop John Hawkes Walker Percy Allen Tate Caroline Gordon Katherine Anne Porter these are great that the backbone of the book but these other letters - like Betty Hester are in another category extraordinary glimpses of Flannery as kind of part spiritual director and part theologian maybe even part Saint we see that pester and o'connor were true friends and how things evolved and their drama together is really quite striking Hester wrote O'Connor in 1955 two years after being dishonorably discharged from the Army for having an illicit sexual affair with a woman O'Connor then 30 years old was already the author of a novel and has to really struggle Connor because she was a good reader theologically astute and kind of literary chops Hester had a library of 4,000 volumes she was always reading and writing these earlier here disclosed to the depth of their friendship as Hester struggles to believe the central mystery of Christianity which of course is the Incarnation and we can detect that Hester has written something and taking kind of an area nest or an adoption attract as O'Connor replies and this is in 1955 I can never agree with you that the Incarnation or any truth has to satisfy emotionally to be right and it would not agree that for the natural man the Incarnation it does not satisfy emotionally it does not satisfy motional II for the person brought up under many forms of false intellectual discipline such as 19th century mechanism for instance the truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally a higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us and the saints when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous emotionally disturbing downright repulsive witness the dark night of the soul in individual Saints right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul that was 1955 and you know I guess there's nothing new Under the Sun O'Connor began after this to begin a low-key campaign to coax Hester into the Catholic Church and this worked but you know that they began to share things very personally and has to begin to reveal a great deal more about her that she battled mood swings drank a bit too much and most significantly witnessed her mother's suicide when she was 14 years old in the quiet sturdiness of the epistolary spaces o'connor assures her friend quote where you were wrong is in saying that you are a history of horror the meaning of redemption is precisely that we do not have to be our history and nothing is plainer to me than that you are not your history she added understand from my point of view that you are always wanted more this is Halloween 1956 this was a recently released one it was it was kind of a embargoed for 20 years after Hester's death she O'Conner craft a response to Hester revealing her sexuality in the stunning and its tenderness Flannery writes I can't write you fast enough and tell you that it doesn't make it the slightest bit of difference in my opinion of you you were right to tell me but I'm glad you didn't tell me until I knew you well but you wonder whether it makes any difference to me if you drop out of my life yes it does make a difference it would be impossible for me to let you the fact is I have a spiritual relationship with you I am your sponsor self-appointed from the time you first wrote me and appointed by me afterwards which means I have the right to stay where I have been put now examining the complexities of human sexuality is a necessary thing but this will beyond the scope here it's enough to observe here that O Connor proceeds as Jesus mind tries to see Hester as Jesus does neither with judgment nor endorsement but with love friendship and mercy still as I moved to the conclusion Hester felt the church an ill fit according to bill sessions who remain very close with Hester until her death in 1998 has to call the five years that she was a Catholic the worst of her life she left the Catholic Church and turned agnosticism and O'Conner believed that she knew whom to blame this conversion was achieved by miss iris Murdoch she wrote to a friend Hester doesn't believe any longer that Christ is God and so she has found that he is beautiful beautiful everything is the iki Eureka stage so it has fur had a 30-year relationship starting in 1961 right after with Iris Murdoch it's very another long one with her in any case that's also a topic for a good paper but as we close here and that's a Hester on the right that's Jenny sessions bill sessions and that's sally fitzgerald habit of being editor in 1998 betty hester committed suicide at the age of 75 with a hollow nose bullet aimed at her skull after spending the afternoon eating a day late Christmas dinner and playfully mocking bill sessions for taking the church seriously according to sessions the next week they've learned this and they went to her home or apartment and next to her body on the side table was a copy of Cheers which is the Flannery O'Connor newsletter and spattered with blood it's a rough one but so too is the fatigue of bipolarity and mental illness and the soul sickness of alcoholism those are rough things but maybe the love between the two women from the 1950s touches us in this very moment there is a theology for that after all God's love of friends transcends not only time but even our brokenness and even broken friendships retain something of their very love that engendered their life in bloom perhaps it is simply this that is enough and so we leave it and the last word for Flannery and her loving kindness to her friend Betty I can see now how very much grace you have really been given and that it that is all that is necessary for me to know in this matter what is necessary for you to know is my very real love for you and my very real admiration for you yours truly Flannery you [Applause] thank you very much to our speakers and for being so conscientious about time we actually don't have 20 minutes for Q&A so I didn't bite you all to approach the microphones if you'd like to make a comment or ask a question or if the panelists themselves would like to ask one another anything so I'm pleased you're welcome to join the conversation hi my name is tamas I'm a student here question for you first of all thank you very much so my question how necessary is it in these relationships to be together to spend time together can you truly know someone through simply writing letters or what is the extent to which you have to be actually physically together I would hate to just to retreat into the both and answer the year so often in Catholic stuff but my gosh CHS sustains some friendships with his brothers from thousands of miles away it was very intimate but I also know if proximity means everything in our lives Bryan Stevenson book just mercy you know we won't really inhabit an intimacy with other people unless we kind of smell them you know so that's and that's incarnation 'el we have to be centrally located so I'm happy we have the option to go out of places but I don't think it's an either/or even though I know that my friendships have been enriched by ohm by letter writing and distance but it's both for me thanks for the question hi my name is Shannon thank you so much so much I wanted to ask you professor Fantini about if you could just talk a little bit about the role of Lady Marchman on charles of lady Marchmain in I think one of my favorite lines that Cordelia says is that when people want to hate God they just hate mommy instead because the resentment is that they think she's a monster but she's that I mean really she's a saint and that if your mother were saying drew it you know it would breathe a little resentment so I think she's often misread but I don't hear a lot about her her place in his conversion on that ladder of love and I just wondered if you could just go for a couple minutes on that right sure no I like her too I like variety and lady Marchmain I know lady Marchmain received a lot of criticism because she's oppressive because she's pushy but I think she provides exactly what Charles and the other members of her family need she's always gently lovingly trying to get them back pointing the way she never wavers from her own faith one of my favorite lines is about the the camels I didn't catch the one you quoted but where she says that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle etc that's one of my favorite moments in the in the story but I think she's a central I think she and Bridey are great characters in the novel and I resist those critics of lady Marchmain who pointer as some kind of nasty ghoulish woman maybe you have something I thank you I loved all of that that was beautiful and I named a baby Sebastian after Sebastian Flyte I just want to add that I did research on Brideshead Revisited in college I came across this quotation I just want to add to the lady Marchmain question wha was asked are you on her side and he said I'm not but god is she suffers fools gladly that's nice thank you I have a question professor Haines Michael kromm st. Vincent College I never thought about this before but you made me think about it and actually connects with the other two papers the way that a friend helps us to imagine seeing the world in a different way that we might not be inclined or attracted to so Lonnie Smith with pinks bowling he clearly enjoys playing the game of Catholic theology with him and trying to coach him through should you fast but it may be that hit Lonnie's death forces him to realize that it's not good enough for your friend to take these things seriously so I'm wondering at the end of the book you know is it possibly Lonnie's death that brings being Surround to you know to reconsidering or to actually embracing the books ambiguous I guess the faith in a way that in the past he's just kind of pushing an office I don't have to answer that so can friend Symons be a crutch in that sense of that oh my friend is adopting that taking it up I myself might not might not have to so just thinking through that thank you thank you for the question is anyone considering naming their child Binks it might be time for that Percy is reluctant to be clear about what precisely moves his characters towards the transcendent towards grace I myself reading the moviegoer think that Lonnie the little quote I mentioned about truth-telling from Thomas Moore the relationship between Lonnie and Binks is one of truth-telling and there's a bit of comedy behind that relationship they laugh at each other it also allows them to laugh at themselves which is very important to the two of them I think you're sort of asking whether or not Binks might have converted if we agree that he did had Binks not died and I suppose I think think still would have ended up in the end in the place of Alyosha in some fashion responding to grace successfully even if Lonni had not died that being said I do think that in all of Percy's work death is crucial as a moment of an opportunity for recognition for seriousness about life reminds me a little bit of Bob Stein's talk previously the question about death and life always being present together I think the novel works the way it does partly because Lonni dies so in a sense I want to say yes Lonnie needs to die at the end although in a sense - he didn't have to I think Binks would have ended up in some fashion on the religious Way of life at the end even without that my question is for professor Haim also I just actually moved here from Covington Louisiana where I spent the last 20 years of my life my youngest child was supposed to be William Percy bag low but my wife stole the middle name and gave it to Edmund Campion so that's how that rolls but anyway I was wondering as you were talking about this I thought about a novel that of Percy's that also exemplifies friendship though in very strange ways and that was Lancelot and I'm just wondering if you would give any commentary on friendships through knocking on walls and also through just listening [Music] I think Lancelot is Percy's most troubling novel in lots of different ways it's unusual it's different from the other five in certain ways I mean one of the things Percy's doing in that novel I think is taking well his main character Lancelot is looking for the existence of evil if he can find once in he says he will somehow prove that God exists so it's a kind of a backdoor to grace in some fashion communication is a permanent preoccupation of Percy's I said nothing about his debts to purse and I could have if I'd had more time I think we would need to talk about that first gave Percy the philosopher charles sanders peirce gave percy a way of thinking about human life as intrinsically limited with respect to our communication with one another our language both draws us closer and separates us as something that comes between us so Percy's always looking for things that allow us a more intimate form of communication than what we usually have so the knocking that Lancelot engages in with his fellow inmate in the sanatorium the silences with his with Percival his his conversation partner in Lancelot I do think and maybe this connects to the epistolary questions as well we make a mistake if we think that talking is the way we communicate with one another always and everywhere there are many very profound ways of communication that are not verbal and Percy sees those as potentially very powerful ways of shaking us out of a certain kind of stupor so the talking's crucial for him the the silence is crucial I mean he you kid you get to know about Percival through the novel by Lancelot reacting to things Percival does he goes to the window or he says something and and Lancelot sort of repeats it for you or something at the very end Percival comes in and speaks so one thing to say in response to your question is that the knocking and the silences are very important but the other thing to say is that at the end of the novel we get the sense that the second half is coming when Percival speaks you returned and we don't get to see that so there's still conversation coming off stage so to speak I'm sorry to report we're actually out of time we're just end at noon instead of 12:15 so thank you very much to our panelists and to our questioners that was a wonderful session [Applause]

Channel: de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture ndethics

Views: 473

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: waugh, brideshead, marchmain, ryder, evelyn, walker percy, percy, walker, friendship, friends, epistolary, novel

Id: _G-gZGUK3xU

Length: 80min 17sec (4817 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 26 2019