My good friend and StAR columnist, Father Dwight Longenecker, has sent
me a note about the latest issue of StAR. I found his comments of
particular interest and thought that visitors to the Ink Desk might
appreciate reading them. Thus, and with Fr. Longenecker’s permission,
here is his appraisal of the new issue’s merits and his own views on
Crashaw and T. S. Eliot:
The Crashaw issue is excellent. He has long been one of my favorites
and I especially grew to love him during my two years at Cambridge.
I would worship at Little St Mary’s and, being an Anglican curate
myself at the time and even then feeling a pull to Rome, felt a great
kinship.
Then I heard Finzi’s setting of “Lo, the Full Final Sacrifice” sung by
the choir of Kings and was smitten by it.
It remains my all time favorite choral setting.
He was a great soul.
I believe he now dines at the same table with George Herbert…and they
are amused as they tolerate John Donne.
Your article exposing Eliot was very good, but I think he should be
forgiven his execrable criticism. He did not know what he was doing,
and it is my opinion that he was writing such rubbish because he was
not only unaware, but trying to make a name for himself…
Later he knew better.
Father Dwight Longenecker on Crashaw and Eliot
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About the Author: Joseph Pearce
Joseph Pearce is a Catholic author and biographer who has written about subjects as various as GK Chesterton, economics, and Shakespeare.
I love the idea of Herbert and Crashaw “amused as they tolerate John Donne.”
“…they are amused as they tolerate John Donne.”
Has Donne really been elevated to heights above his true deserving? Even if he has (and yes, he has) been sometimes praised for being the great theologian he really wasn’t, don’t we nonetheless overshoot the mark when we start cutting him down as a poet as well? He had strange gifts; only Browning’s, among the English, were stranger. But there isn’t a finer epigramist in the language, and no one before or since has done anything quite like “Go and Catch a Falling Star.”
Regards,
Thomas Banks
Very much agree about Eliot-boils down to an east-coast puritan sophisticate trying to theorise taste.
I’m less forgiving.
Joseph’s piece should be obligatory reading for those interested in literary theory.
Well, of course we know it won’t be taken up by the secular academeia. But it should be.