Tillich, Maritain, Berdayev, Christopher
Dawson, Eliot, or even Karl Barth. An
odd list, I admit-yet, whatever their
presuppositions, more considerable than
many of the second-rate political phil–
osophers and publicists who do obtain
notice.
Now you doubtless have to consider
your audience: and it is clear that these
matters are not of interest to them-else
they would have asked for them as I am
doing. But the significance of this is
worth pondering.
It
is understandable
that, with your haphazard and largely ac–
cidental religious background in the U.S.,
theological issues should seem irrelevant
-should not
connect
with anything in
your intellectual experience. (Though it
is interesting to find the
Southern Review
more aware of these concerns: presum–
ably the difference in tradition between
1
ew York and Louisiana has something
to do with this.) For you- at least for
you of the North-most churches are
bound to seem either eccentric sects
(whether it be the Episcopal Church as
the plutocrat's hobby, or the Foursquare
Gospel as the store-keeper's fad) or else
a piece of undiscarded furniture brought
over in the travelling rug by refugees
(the Roman Catholic Church). With that
scale of relativity it must be difficult to
take seriously anything in the nature of
fundamental theological discussion.
Well, I suppose we have had that feel–
ing too. And yet we--I mean a certain
minority, though a growing one, among
intellectuals- have now begun to find in
such writers as Eliot, or in the rediscov–
ery of such past minds as Kierkegaard , a
deliverance from the parochialism of th e
secular apologists. We find the natural–
ism of such as Dewey curiously full of a
timid superstition; and the study of an–
thropology, with all its insight into the
theologico-cultural traditions of nations,
makes the works of many self-confidently
agnostic thinkers appear now surprisingly
narrow and insular. And thus the way
seems to be opening to re-admit the psy–
chological perceptiveness of Pascal or
Augustine, as well as the living traditions
and liturgies of historic religions. {It was
the virtue of D.
H.
Lawrence to have
realised that the superficiality of any so·
ciety is revealed by its contempt for
liturgy.)
Nobody would pretend that we are clear
yet how this will connect with the prac–
tical problems - political, international,
scientific, educational, sociological-which
face ourselves as well as you. And our
problems, since we are more directly
heirs of a European Catholic Christian
tradition, now barely recognisable to out–
siders but not obliterated, will be differ–
ent from yours. But in so far as all these
problems concern the same subject-the
human being-we are prepared at least
to expect a relevance which may have
yet to be fully discovered. So at any rate
we do not side-track any of them. I am
writing to ask whether you are prepared
to be equally inclusive?
MoNAcHus ANGLICANus
YORK, ENGLAND
We are delighted to print this reason–
able and persuasive statement of a mod–
ern religious position. The /act is We are
planning to publish, in an early issue, a
series of articles that will consider con–
temporary religious and metaphysical
tendencies, from a point of
view
very dif–
ferent from that of "Monachus Angli–
can.us."
- EDITORS
A CORRECTION
Sirs:
I wish to correct a typographical error
in my reply to Max Eastman. The correct
title of Dr. Paul Schilder's book is
The
Image and Appearance of the Human Body.
:\fay I also add that, as submitted to
me for reply. Mr. Eastman's letter was
headed,
"An Open Letter to James T.
Farrell,"
and that for this reason I ad–
dressed my reply not to Mr. Eastman but
to the editors of PARTISAN REVIEW.
]AMES
T. FARRELL
NEw YoRK CITY
A CORRECTION
Several lines were omitted from the
translation of Kafka's
Jos ephine, the
Songstress,
which appeared in the last
number of PARTISAN REVIEW. Beginning
with "and" in the twelfth line on page
214, the text should read thus, with the
tense in the last two lines of the para–
graph changed to the subjunctive:
"and perhaps, as it seems to me at
least, hardly even exceeds the ordinary
limits of squeaking- nay, perhaps her
powers do not even suffice for the ordi–
nary squeaking which any common
laborer can produce without effort all
day long at his work-if all this is true,
then Josephine's so-called artistry would
be disproved, but there would still re–
main to be explained the enigma of
her great success, and it would be all
the more an enigma."
C.
G.
