-400.--.00-4114Ne.--41141.-414-41 -
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PRICE THREEPENCE.
PERTH, SATURDAY, JULY 27, 1935.
NO. 2,885.
CATHO Ac LITERATURE 7A]LIOAY ITS NOTABLE REVIVAL SINCE NEWMAN AND PATMORE
CARDINAL NEWMAN. 1 41.
••41.-4,4*--4141
No survey of contemporary literature to-day can call. itself complete which ignores Catholic literature, writes "J.NI.C., ' in the Standafd," Dublin, in a review of Father Calvert Alexander's book, "The Catholic Literary Revival." This claim, he continues, is abundantly vindicated in the present volume which is an attempt to trace the development of Catholic literature through three successive and rather well-dened stages in its gro4 from the middle of the 19th. century to the present day. These three phases. which will be found to correspond rather accuratelv with three generations of Catholic authors. are First, the trom 1845 to Victorian phase. 1890: Second from the 1890s tip be War :and Thirdly, and W ar until the lastly. from the present day. 1 These stages are found to be fflinecte(l intimately with the number of t.nral history ofstages in the culEurope. inasilluch as the decisive downward i novement of that culture reflected in the non-Catholic cut,ti.re of Emzlish-speakintr cot-,-.1t_tles. These ‘each critical three periods a"e moments in the des.cending action of modern his. . t°,ry; and they play no less sig,iticant tion of a part in -the rising acmodern Catholic revival. These changes brought about i" the nonCatholic wortd have d etermined the Catholic characteristics in each of these phases. : 1),r eover. they determine aectir,lel a Y the position it holds in the es of men. Hence the neces" is:t),' of un derstanding the Cathilt1 Revival and With Which the secular hisit is everywhere 111 contact. Primarily relation is one of revolt. CatlinThis
lic literature in the mid-ninenineties" which follows, the Reteenth century is a literature of naissance or middle phase, was protest against the course beikg largely led by Catholics. or prosf ollowed by European society. Its pective Catholics Francis as writers were then few. The pro- Thompson or Henry Harland or tests of Newman and Patmere Aubrey Beardsley. Lionel JohnThose against the Liberalism, the Anti- son or Ernest DOWSOII. intellectual Aesthetic and Scien- not claimed by Catholicism,' as tific Naturalism fell somewhat W. B. Yeats and George Russell, flat and helpless before the tow- became followers of some form ering prosperity and confidence of mysticism. of bourgeois world of the time. A very special feature ot the A change for the better came "nineties" on its renascent side ‘yith the "nineties." Lionel John- was the literary emergence of Yet, though many of son, Francis Thompson. Alice Ireland. Meynell and other Catholics were its founders and adherents were admitted to occupy a definite Catholics and wrote as such. the position. though a limited one, Celtic Revival was not predombut it was not until after the inantly a Catholic manifestation. world war. that Catholic litera- Nevertheless, the contributions ture occupied a position of im- of the Catholics have shown portance, that is in the third of themselves with the passage of years to have been more wisely the three phases or "post war." and better calculated to directed In this latest phase of the Cathe build up a genuine Irish national find tholic Revival we Church firmly established in the literature. For, while the Celtic Twilight modern consciousness as one of the alternatives which the mod- group were freeing Ireland from ern artist recognises he must the stigma of artistic inferiority, choose between; Communism is those who continued in obscurity The period of the the traditions of the "Nation" the other. 11141.
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limute.agai The OM Market Place, Waysilw. The population of Warsaw is predominantly Catholic. Part of the. Polish Fatherland, this historic city, with the third partition of Poland in 1791 ( when Russia. Prussia and Austria grabbed the Eut erritory of the Poles and wiped the nation off the map of Poended War Great the But Russia. rope) passel' over to Caresurrection. national her about brought and servitude land's tholic Action in Poland is developing along splendid lines, and the there is great hope that it will become a strong moral force for Government of the sanction the has It Poland. betterment of to function outside the obligatory law for associations. and is under the direct jurisdiction of the Hierarchy.
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group were accomplishing the slightly less thing of achieving the political freedom of the country. Ireland is still in the throes of shaping its - literary destiny. but in the words of that profound scholar of Celtic culture, Aodh de Blacum. "we have Jiving promise of achievements that will carry our literature to fresh triumphs." A certain lack of cohesion is responsible for a less satisfactory state of affairs in America. Though up to the two last decades of the nineteenth century there were many Catholic writers of importance. both by birth :uul conversion, there is almost no literary history to record as far as Catholicism is concerned. The main reason for this is that 'between the years 1880-1903. the iCatholic Church in that country -was engaged in grappling with an immense influx of immigrants. .-so much so, that she had little time for a cultural revival within ber fold. Thus• though there were many, as Louise Guinev. aurice Franc-is Egan. Kate Chopin and . \gnes Repplier. with those acquired by conversion as - Marion 'Crawford. Henry Harland and . john Bannister Tabb. there was a failure to produce a formidable 'Catholic literary movement. The outlook appears to be still unsatisfactory. Despite the hope expressed by Joyce N ilm er that A merica would learn the same lessons as France after the war, "courage and self-abnegation, and love and faith in the Church which God Himself founded and s till rules." this hope remains unfulfilled and the decadence of the 1 920's still prevails, with the consequent loss to the Church of m any fine writers. 411.
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