It seems that this site has been grappling with some pretty prickly issues over the past week or so. Sophia Mason and Kevin O’Brien have been going at it, hammer and tongs, over the subject of lying, and Dena Hunt has been asking some awkward but necessary questions about the nature of nationhood and the ethno-masochistic foundation of European experiments in multi-culturalism. This is all good grist to the mill of controversy that we like to keep grinding on the Ink Desk. I’d like to take up the cudgels that Dena has wielded by continuing the discussion on the nature of nationhood.
I have just finished reading A. N. Wilson’s mostly delightful anthology of poetry, England: A Collection of the Poetry of Place (London: Eland Publishing, 2008). Visitors to this site may recall my rejoicing at ANW’s return to Christian faith after a decade or two in the atheistic doldrums. As a longtime admirer of his work, I had prayed for such a return (though I am not claiming that my prayers were the cause of the miracle!). Nonetheless, his return to what appears to be an Anglican form of Christianity is indicative of his inability to grasp the nettle. To return to the Church of England after floundering in the desperate waters of unbelief is akin to being rescued from drowning by clambering onto a sinking ship. It is neither a satisfactory nor permanent solution to the problem.
Much of the conflicting and contradictory conundrum that lies at the heart of ANW’s inability to embrace orthodoxy is to be found in his anthology of poems about England. There is, however, much that is truly excellent and inspiring in Wilson’s selection and I’d like to acknowledge that which is praiseworthy before proceeding to that which is problematic.
The inclusion of Belloc’s “Ha’nacker Mill” and Chesterton’s “Secret People” was heartwarming, though not altogether surprising. Wilson, as the author of a mostly commendable biography of Belloc, is well-versed in the work and collective persona of the Chesterbelloc and I would have been frankly shocked had both halves of Shaw’s fantastic chimaera not been represented. If only one poem from each was to be permitted, I think there are no better representations of the gist of England in Belloc’s and Chesterton’s poetic corpus than the solitary selection from each that Wilson has included. I was also pleased with Wilson’s selection from Shakespeare. John of Gaunt’s speech from Richard II and Henry V’s speech before the battle of Harfleur are obvious choices, perhaps, but entirely justified. I would have liked to have seen Henry’s other famous speech, before the battle of Agincourt, which my father used to recite to me, but this sin of omission is certainly ameliorated by the inclusion of the other two Shakespearean elegies to England.
Although many excellent poems and poets are represented, the biggest and most pleasant surprise was the sheer brilliance of the extract from Swinburne’s “Winter in Northumberland”. This poem is astonishingly good and reminds me of the poetry of Hopkins in its awe-struck reverence for beauty and, particularly, of Francis Thompson’s “To a Snowflake” in the way it connects nature’s beauty to the beauty of its Creator.
Having acknowledged that which is good in Wilson’s selection, its chief weakness is Wilson’s reduction of Platonism to relativism; his apparent belief that “Platonic England” is merely an England of the mind, i.e. a figment of the individual’s imagination. If this is all that England is, why lament its passing with such intensity? The real tragedy of England’s passing, so much a running theme through ANW’s selection and commentary, is not that the England we love is a figment of the imagination but that it is real, in the sense that Platonic forms are real. This real England is present in Old English and Middle English; in Chaucer and Chesterton; in Shakespeare, Austen, and Dickens. The England to be found in these places is more real than present-day Birmingham or Leicester, which are only English in a superficial and fading sense. Nor does the England to be found in these places depend on our ability to see it. If England continues to sink into the primeval soup of “post-Christian” barbarism, it is possible that nobody will read Shakespeare a century from now. They will not want to read it, and will probably be unable to read it even if they wanted to. Yet the goodness, truth and beauty to be found in Shakespeare, Chaucer et al will not be in the least diminished by the inability of future generations to see it. A tree does not cease to exist because a blind man cannot see it. England will not cease to exist because the “post-English” barbarians residing in England fail to understand that which is beyond their ken.
If A. N. Wilson could acquire the philosophical realism that would unite him with Plato and Aristotle, and with the fides et ratio of Augustine and Aquinas, he would understand the immutability of that which is truly England. Indeed, if he acquired such wisdom, he would not have ended his anthology with a comment that eulogizes the so-called “Glorious” Revolution that exiled England’s last true King and which condemned England to the sordid secularism that followed in the Revolution’s wake. If he possessed such wisdom, he would have ended the anthology with Chesterton’s “Secret People” instead of Hawker’s “Song of the Western Men”, the latter being a triumphalist anti-Catholic hymn, which, as the anthem of Cornish separatism, is about as English as “Flower of Scotland”.
Perhaps we should end with a simple prayer for A. N. Wilson’s conversion: St. Thomas More, St. John Fisher, and all ye English Martyrs, the crowning pinnacle of True England, who laid down your lives to keep England in communion with the Faith of her fathers, please pray for the wandering soul of A. N. Wilson that he may be led to the One True Church founded by Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear Joseph,
I offer an excerpt from Chapter Five of Treason. The date is 1581.
“In front of the altar and to its left, sunlight filtered down through the leaves of the overhanging oaks, still young, growing now in the place that must have been the small choir, making it seem even more light-filled than it would have been had there been no trees there now in place of singing nuns. It was beautiful beyond bearing. Had it been more beautiful when it was alive? When it was inhabited by nuns singing praise to God nine times every day? How could it be, though it surely was so, that this silence now was more beautiful? Whatever had been the young King Edward’s thought, whatever had been his puritanical advisors’ aim, they had not wiped out the small convent’s beauty when they smashed its windows, broke its altar, burned pictures, books, and then the sanctuary itself. They had only made it more beautiful than its builders could ever have dreamed….
The emptiness of it all was so strangely full—like its silence, so deep that it was full of sound. Everything, every place in the ruin, was full of its own contradiction, like two worlds existing together, in the same space, at the same time. How could that be? It was as though there had been a sketch over which a contradictory overlay had been placed in an attempt to eradicate it, to replace it. But that hadn’t happened. Instead, the two realities existed together, and instead of the intended contradiction, the overlay had made something else altogether. Destruction had been transformed into creation—its intention notwithstanding—and it was a creation infinitely greater, more beautiful, than the reality it meant to destroy. Destruction had only made it eternal.”
As you say, “A tree does not cease to exist because a blind man cannot see it. England will not cease to exist because the “post-English” barbarians residing in England fail to understand that which is beyond their ken.”