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Post by hibernicus on Oct 15, 2017 19:22:39 GMT
Fr Brendan Hoban reviews Fr William King's novel about an old priest revisiting his former seminary and thinking over the changing role of the priest in Irish society. I keep on meaning to read Fr King's novels to see what they are like but have never got round to doing so. Fr hoban dismisses earlier writers from Canon Sheehan to Bernanos as idealising the priesthood to an unreal extent. This is true of Sheehan to some degree (a bigger problem IMHO is that Ireland has changed so much many of Sheehan;s assumptions are not only not shared by present-day readers but unintelligible to them). It is certainly not true of Bernanos, and one of the commentators in the combox rightly calls out Fr Hoban on this. www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2017/10/brendan-hoban-reviews-willie-kings-new-novel/
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 21, 2017 20:22:57 GMT
I have recently been looking at a couple of Patrick Pearse biographies and one thing that suddenly struck me is that he was very fond of his father (the relationship between a son and an older father may be very affectionate). He knew James Pearse had been an atheist in his earlier life, and there is a good deal of evidence that Pearse Senior's conversion to Catholicism was insincere. Patrick says his father became more religious in his last decade, and this eyewitness evidence should not be dismissed out of hand - but it can't be entirely taken at face value either. This raises the question of whether the recurring theme in Pearse's work of a sceptical or unbelieving older man redeemed by an innocent child may refer to his feelings about his father. I confess I have generally found IOSAGAN thoroughly sickly, but I find the thought of Sean-Mhatias and Iosagan as father and son oddly moving.
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 21, 2017 21:46:48 GMT
I visited the Pearse museum recently; there is a page from a manuscript of Pearse's unfinished memoirs there. It happened to mention that his father had an excellent knowledge of the Bible.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Nov 22, 2017 11:45:15 GMT
I can't read Íosagáin without thinking of The Selfish Giant or Eoghainín na n-éan without thinking of The Happy Prince. Any views
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Post by maolsheachlann on Nov 22, 2017 12:08:35 GMT
I've never read The Happy Prince or the Selfish Giant, but I read some of Pearse's short stories a few months ago, and I have to admit I really disliked the one about the bird boy, found it tiresome and overwritten for all its brevity. Iosagán, however, I found to be lyrical and touching and wonderfully compressed. My favourite story was the one about the Virgin Mary visiting the childless woman.
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Post by hibernicus on Nov 27, 2017 21:20:13 GMT
I agree, there is a very strong Wilde influence now that you mention it. I wonder how widely read Wilde's children's stories were at that period (Edwardian) given his downfall? (They were much more widely read later - indeed they were one of the first things I read and I was really startled when I found out about his full story.) Wilde wrote them for his own children and the theme of redemption through childhood innocence has obvious application to his own situation (Wilde was often described as a "giant" himself - apparently he took after his mother in this respect) and of course also to the social contrasts of Victorian London - the locked garden in THE SELFISH GIANT is one of the private squares found in the classier parts of London where only the householders living on the square had access to the garden in the centre (Merrion Square has a similar arrangement in the early C20) and the statue of the Happy Prince is based on the gilded Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Memorial#/media/File:Close-up_of_Albert_Memorial.jpg[ADDENDUM - Just a clarification; Wilde "took after his mother" in physical size (it was often remarked that Lady Wilde was much bigger than Sir William) and hence the giant]
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 17, 2018 15:00:07 GMT
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Post by assisi on Apr 8, 2019 19:33:00 GMT
Muriel Spark's 'The Driver's Seat' is a small novel (100 pages or so) that is well worth a read.
Most of Spark's work is a little left of centre content wise, but this little novel is weirder than usual, but in an entertaining way. Spark herself describes it as 'a whydunnit in q-sharp major' and any reviews I've read are generally stumped as to why the female protagonist acts the way she does. Is she sick, is she mad, is she suicidal?
There is no overt Catholic references just a kind of picaresque feel in a 1970 setting. For me it is a critique of the madness of the 1960s where everything is slightly surreal, faddish and predatory. A bit like a quirky female version of Camus' nihilistic novel 'Outsider' where nothing ultimately makes much sense.
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Post by hibernicus on Apr 9, 2019 19:27:29 GMT
Rod Dreher has an interesting discussion on his blog about whether Thomas Merton was a self-publicising egotist. I have never read THE SEVEN STORY MOUNTAIN or any of Merton's other works, so I can't really judge. I did, however, read the biography THE SEVEN MOUNTAINS OF THOMAS MERTON some years ago, and what startled me was that in relation to his affair in the 60s with a much younger woman, he seems to have taken the view that he never intended to go off with her permanently, but that he regarded it as a spiritually deepening experience. Breaking monastic vows because you have fallen in love with a woman is at least in some sense other-directed, using a woman to obtain a "spiritually deepening experience" is quite chilling and reminds me of Donald Trump. (Perhaps I do Merton an injustice, given the amount of instability he - and the monastery - experienced in the 1960s). The extent to which Merton was allowed to vary his practice of the Rule because he was such a prominent spokesman for the monastery and source of income also reminds me of Margaret Cusack, the Nun of Kenmare, who was allowed all sorts of exemptions because of her health problems and literary work, leading to massive problems in the long term. (In her case, I think she was not suited to being a nun and should not have been admitted in the first place.) I repeat that Dreher hosts a debate and he has a link to a 2011 article by a former Gethsemane monk (now an Antiochian Orthodox priest) who was a novice under Merton and speaks very highly of him. It might also be worth noting that Hubert Butler published a critical review of THE SEVEN STORY MOUNTAIN and although this reflects his fundamental anti-Catholicism, the accusations of self-absorption and neuroticism are echoed by some other critics. Has anyone any thoughts? www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/thomas-merton-pious-fraud-garry-wills/
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Post by maolsheachlann on Apr 9, 2019 21:33:00 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on May 5, 2019 16:41:46 GMT
Actually, the article is quite cautious in that it argues that while Merton's attempt to reconcile buddhism and Christianity was trying the impossible, Merton was probably not aware of this. (I have heard of people who regard Merton's accidental death as an act of divine mercy to keep him from going completely off the rails, and that seems quite close to the view taken in the article.) BTW,did anyone else notice the slip? The article refers to Belloc as a convert like Merton, whereas he was a cradle Catholic though he renewed his faith in young adulthood under his wife's influence.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 30, 2019 22:24:48 GMT
BTW I recently saw the well-known film adaptation of George Bernanos' DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST directed by Robert Bresson, and there is a scene in which the dying priest is taken into the lodgings of a former seminary contemporary who has left the priesthood and now lives with a woman. The contemporary says "I assure you I didn't leave the priesthood because of her but because of my intellectual difficulties, which I'm still trying to resolve". The priest replies "If -God forbid - I were to break my vows I'd rather it was for love of a woman than for intellectual reasons". It seems to me that applies to Merton.
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Post by hibernicus on Oct 30, 2019 22:26:07 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 2, 2020 20:35:30 GMT
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 18, 2020 18:50:25 GMT
I've read a fair bit about the late Victorian/Edwardian Catholic poet and essayist Alice Meynell recently. She seems an interesting person though what little of her actual work I have read strikes me as a bit precious. I'm surprised the feminist rediscoverers of lost women writers don't seem to have had much to say about her. Not only was she a suffragette, but she believed she had black ancestry (her ancestors were West Indian slaveholders a few generations back, and she believed she was descended from a black enslaved woman whom one of them used as a concubine). catholicherald.co.uk/magazine/virginia-woolf-disdained-her-but-alice-meynell-shaped-the-age/
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