The splendor falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.O, hark, O, hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O, sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying,
Blow, bugles; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Splendour Falls” (from The Princess)
APRIL 3 is the birthday of our first great American novelist, Washington Irving. Immortalised as the author of “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” he was the first American writer to attract a following overseas — and as a result played a key role in the revival of Christmas in the Anglosphere on both sides of the water. Irving was also a key figure in the coming of Romanticism to America. Romanticism, which I have written in these pages about before, has religious and political implications. In Britain, a major early exponent was Sir Walter Scott, as were Chateaubriand in France and Novalis in Germany. From its origins in the late 18th century, it has undergone periodic declines and revivals. Moreover, its emphasis on individual experience, the irrational, exotic, and historic — especially Medieval — has led some of its practitioners into bizarre and occasionally malevolent positions. That should not, however, blind us to some of the very important positive elements of the movement.
Romanticism affected many areas — literature, art, music, even politics — for the better, and it spawned a great many movements in these areas from which the world continues to benefit. But beyond all of that, what gives this disparate phenomenon a certain unity as well as its utility for us in the here and now, it may be said to encompass a change in point of view. For the Romantic life was seen as being rather like an iceberg — the largest and most important part of it lies out of view. The everyday world we see around us at once conceals and symbolises greater realities — in which our own lives and struggles nevertheless play their part. The Romantic vision pierces the ordinary, and sees the True, the Good, and the Beautiful wherever they may be, no matter how cleverly disguised by the world, the flesh, and the devil. For the Romantic, the past and the future illumine the present. As Arthur Machen puts it in his novel about the Holy Grail, The Great Return: “And I thought, if there be paradise in meat and in drink, so much the more is there paradise in the scent of the green leaves at evening and in the appearance of the sea and in the redness of the sky; and there came to me a certain vision of a real world about us all the while, of a language that was only secret because we would not take the trouble to listen to it and discern it.”
Later on in the novel, Machen expands upon this theme: “They experienced what the doctors call a sense of bien être but a bien être raised, to the highest power. Old men felt young again, eyes that had been growing dim now saw clearly, and saw a world that was like Paradise, the same world, it is true, but a world rectified and glowing, as if an inner flame shone in all things, and behind all things.
“And the difficulty in recording this state is this, that it is so rare an experience that no set language to express it is in existence. A shadow of its raptures and ecstasies is found in the highest poetry; there are phrases in ancient books telling of the Celtic saints that dimly hint at it; some of the old Italian masters of painting had known it, for the light of it shines in their skies and about the battlements of their cities that are founded on magic hills. But these are but broken hints.”
What is important to bear in mind is that this Romantic vision is not a question of pursuing pleasant delusions, but in seeing reality as it actually is. The devil delights in immersing humanity in the three things which encompass his own misery: hatred, despair, and boredom. In his efforts to thrust us forever into his hellish company, pushing us to focus only on the miserable side of things is a powerful weapon. The Catholic Faith counteracts this by exposing us to Truth; Machen, once more: “Literature is the expression, through the artistic medium of words, of the dogmas of the Catholic Church, and that which is in anyway out of harmony with these dogmas is not literature,” for “Catholic dogma is merely the witness, under a special symbolism of the enduring facts of human nature and the universe.” The Catholic Faith shows us what to look at, the Romantic’s mood gives us a method of doing so.
Indeed, the Holy Grail, so often depicted, written of, and sung about by both the Medievals and the Romantics, is a powerful metaphor for the Blessed Sacrament, itself no metaphor but a truly awe-filled reality. J.R.R. Tolkien, a late blooming Romantic if ever there was one, wrote of the Holy Eucharist: “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. . . . There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death.” While one need not have miraculous confirmation of any dogma of the Catholic Faith, there are so many amazing miracles regarding the Blessed Sacrament — especially in recent decades — that one is amazed at the relative silence on the matter in the media that generally crave sensation. Expand that into the miracles of the Saints, those at various shrines, the approved Marian apparitions, and all the rest of it, and it is hard to understand why those media that specialise in the supposed wonders of cryptozoology and alien abduction pay it all little heed.
But never mind. When the horrors of Church, State, and Culture seem overwhelming, let us refocus on these ignored realities — and on that which occurs every day in Transubstantiation. Let the Communion of Saints and the Angelic Hosts, the Blessed Sacrament, the Precious Blood, the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts, the Kingship of Christ and the Queenship of Mary be the foundational realities of our vision of the World.
Nor should this vision be restricted to the walls of the church or the boundaries of the churchyard. There is and can be no separation of Church and State within the individual soul, regardless of whatever constitution one might live under. If we look at most governments to-day — local, county, state/provincial, or national — they don’t look very good. But the Romantic looks at two very different things. The one is the place being governed, the other the structure that does the governing. These he separates.
Regardless of its rulers, we must apply our Romantic vision to the place we live — again, hierarchically: local, county, province/state, nation. There are many beautiful things in each, some natural, others man-made, in whose very existence we should rejoice as gifts from God — and our best to help preserve and pass them on to future generations. There is a specific history, culture, art, folklore, architecture, cuisine, and the like, proper to our locale, county, state or province, and nation which we also should love and protect — and in protecting and cultivating ours, we should appreciate those of others. Indeed, the interplay between them is often responsible for things we consider integral to our own identity.
But what of the governments themselves, to-day so often operated by creatures far inferior to those who began them? Here, too, we must search out the beauty under the dirt. Very often the city halls, county court houses, statehouses, legislative buildings, and palaces are themselves works of great beauty, far superior to those who currently inhabit them. Often enough they have a wealth of symbolism, encompassing lessons in good governance for those who have the wit to understand — and to serve as future goals.
Of course, appreciating all of these things requires a certain amount of education on our part in many different disciplines, and no one can know everything. But we can still learn as long as we live — and should see such learning as an essential pursuit. Because, as Catholics, we are called upon to evangelise; but we cannot evangelise what we do not love, and we cannot love what we do not know. Ultimately, we are all called to reach with as many as we can bring that Heaven where we shall see things in all their glorious reality. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.” Until then, let us use the Romantic’s vision to pierce the illusions to our best ability.
