"...the ordinary man in the street when he says that there is no poetry in a pig or a post-office is, in fact, merely intoxicated with literary style."

Some time ago Mr C. F. G. Masterman led a vigorous attack upon my timid and humble optimism, and declared in effect that when I maintained a poetry in all things it was I who supplied it. I wish I could claim that I had ever supplied poetry to anything; it seems to me that I am at the very best a humdrum scientific student noting it down. The sentimentalists, the sons of a passionate delusion, are those who do not think everything poetical. For they are wholly under the influence of words, of the vague current phraseology, which thinks `castle' a poetical word and 'Post-office' an unpoetical word, which thinks `knight' a poetical word and `policeman' an unpoetical word, which thinks `eagle' a poetical ward and `pig' an unpoetical word. I do not say that there is not truth in this as a matter of literature; I do not say that in pure technical style there is not a difference between eagles and pigs. All I wish to point out is that the ordinary man in the street when he says that there is no poetry in a pig or a post-office is, in fact, merely intoxicated with literary style. He is not looking at the thing itself; if he did that he would see that it was not only poetical, but obviously and glaringly poetical. He thinks a railway-signal, let us say, must be prosaic, because the word sounds funny, and there is no rhyme in it. But if he looked straight and square at what a railway-signal is, he would realise that it was, to take a casual case, a red fire or light kindled to keep people from death, as poetical a thing as the spear of Britomart or the lamp of Aladdin. It is, in short, the man who thinks ordinary things common who is really the man living in an unreal world.

But of all the examples of this general fact that have recently been called to my notice, there is none more peculiar and interesting than that of the family name of Smith, in which we have a splendid example of the fact that the poetry of common things is a mere fact, while the commonplace character of common things is a mere delusion. For, if we look at the name Smith in a casual and impressionable way, remembering how we commonly hear it, what is commonly said about it, we think of it as something funny and trivial; we think of pictures in Punch, of jokes in comic songs, of all the cheapness and modernity which seem to centre round a Mr Smith. But, if we look at the plain word itself, we suddenly behold a poem. It is the name of a great rugged and primeval craft, a trade that is in the bones of every great epic of antiquity, a trade on which the `arma virumque' have everlastingly depended, and which they have repeatedly acclaimed. It is a craft so poetical that even the babies of village yokels stand and stare into the cavern of its creative violence, with a dim sense that the dancing sparks and the deafening blows are in some way wonderful, as the shops of the village cobbler and the village baker are not wonderful. The mystery of flame, the mystery of metals, the fight between the hardest of earthly things and the weirdest of earthly elements, the defeat of the unconquerable iron by its only conqueror, the brute calm of Nature, the passionate cunning of man, the origin of a thousand sciences and arts, the ploughing of fields, the hewing of wood, the arraying of armies, and the whole beginning of arms, these things are written with brevity indeed, but with perfect clearness, on the visiting card of Mr Smith. The Smiths are a house of arrogant antiquity, of prehistoric simplicity. It would not be at all remarkable if a certain contemptuous carriage of the head, a certain curl of the lip, marked people whose name was Smith. Yet novelists, when they wish to describe a hero as strong and romantic, persistently call him Vernon Aylmer, which means nothing, or Bertrand Vallance, which means nothing; while all the time it is in their power to give him the sacred name of Smith, this name made of iron and fire. From the very beginnings of history and fable this clan has gone forth to battle; their trophies are in every hand, their name is everywhere; they are older than the nations, and their sign is the Hammer of Thor.

-The Apostle and the Wild Ducks (collection of essays published posthumously in 1975)

F. Scott Fitzgerald and GKC, part 2

Since the movie The Great Gatsby was recently released, I just decided to do another post on the connections between GKC and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
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"Did you ever notice that remarkable coincidence. Bernard Shaw is 61 years old, H.G. Wells is 51, G.K. Chesterton 41, you're 31 and I'm 21---All the great authors of the world in arithmetical progression"

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a letter to Shane Leslie in February 1918 published in A Life in Letters

(Not accurate as to all the ages, but an interesting quote nevertheless)

BTW, while I admittedly don't quote from GKC's fiction as much as his non-fiction on this blog, Fitzgerald was an admirer of Chesterton's novels. 

To quote from my page of Chesterton's influence (where you can also find the references for the following as well):

[Fitzgerald] wrote that he put "Barry [sic] and Chesterton" above "anyone except Wells" as well as confided in 1917 that

I want to be one of the new school of American novelists — the Wells- Shaw- Chesterton-Mackenzie combination

He also confessed elsehwehre

I want to be able to do anything with words: handle slashing, flaming descriptions like Wells, and use the paradox with the clarity of Samuel Butler, the breadth of Bernard Shaw and the wit of Oscar Wilde, I want to do the wide sultry heavens of Conrad, the rolled-gold sundowns and crazy-quilt skies of Hitchens and Kipling as well as the pastelle dawns and twilights of Chesterton. All that is by way of example. As a matter of fact I am a professed literary thief, hot after the best methods of every writer in my generation.[emphasis mine]

In fact, in the first chapter of Fitzgerald's very first novel, This Side of Paradise, the protoganist is said to have read Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday

...which he liked without understanding

"If a man...burns down the town, he cannot defend himself by denying that he invented fire."

If anybody seriously alleges a social decay, it is not sufficient to answer that the elements there alleged to be exaggerated can everywhere be discovered. Societies have decayed, and social causes can be reasonably adduced for the decay. Yet in no case could the new corruption be called a new cause, in the sense of never having appeared at all in more normal times. Suppose we think, as some do, that Athens fell through faction, through party passions in internal politics indifferent to dignity and defence. A man denying the decline could always have said with truth that in every age there had been parties, and always would be parties wherever there were people.  Suppose, on the other hand, we think, as others do, that Athens fell through the impatient imperialism of the Syracusan expedition; as the great Thucydides himself said, through "Empire pursued for covetousness and ambition." A man denying the danger could always have said that there had been covetousness in every age and ambition in every age, and would be so long as men were men....In short, the question is one of proportion; or, in other words, of common sense. If  a man...burns down the town, he cannot defend himself by denying that he invented fire. It is a question of the proportion and not the presence of certain forces; of the exaggeration and not the existence of certain follies.

-July 9, 1921, Illustrated London News

They have tried to set up the preposterous pretense that those who are rich in a state are rich in their own merit, and that those who are poor in a state are poor by their own fault. Mr. Kipling, in his swan song of suicide in the Morning Post, speaks of the unemployed laborer as the man "whose unthrift has destroyed him." He speaks of the modern landlord as the man who has toiled, who has striven and gathered possession...

It becomes quite a secondary fact that this new Tory theory is opposed to the Christian theory at every point, at every instant of history, from the boils of Job to the leprosy of Father Damien. It does not matter for the moment that the thing is un-Christian. The thing is a lie; everyone knows it to be a lie; the men who speak and write it know it to be a lie. They know as well as I do that the men who climb to the top of the modern ladder are not the best men, nor the cleverest, nor even the most industrious. Nobody who has ever talked to poor men on seats in Battersea Park can conceivably believe that they are the worst men of the community. Nobody who has ever talked to rich men at city dinners can conceivably believe that they are the best men of the community. On this one thesis I will admit no arguments about unconsciousness, self-deception or mere ritual phraseology. I admit all that and more most heartily to the man who says that the aristocracy as a whole is good for England or that poverty as a whole cannot be cured.

But if a man says that in his experience the thrifty thrive and only the unthrifty perish, then (as St. John the Evangelist says) he is a liar. This is the ultimate lie, and all who utter it are liars.

—The London News. quoted in La Follette's Weekly Magazine, Volume 2 (1910)

"Aspects of truth"

There is, indeed, one class of modern writers and thinkers who cannot altogether be overlooked in this question, though there is no space here for a lengthy account of them, which, indeed, to confess the truth, would consist chiefly of abuse. I mean those who get over all these abysses and reconcile all these wars by talking about "aspects of truth," by saying that the art of Kipling represents one aspect of the truth, and the art of William Watson another; the art of Mr. Bernard Shaw one aspect of the truth, and the art of Mr. Cunningham Grahame another; the art of Mr. H. G. Wells one aspect, and the art of Mr. Coventry Patmore (say) another. I will only say here that this seems to me an evasion which has not even had the sense to disguise itself ingeniously in words. If we talk of a certain thing being an aspect of truth, it is evident that we claim to know what is truth; just as, if we talk of the hind leg of a dog, we claim to know what is a dog. Unfortunately, the philosopher who talks about aspects of truth generally also asks, "What is truth?" Frequently even he denies the existence of truth, or says it is inconceivable by the human intelligence. How, then, can he recognize its aspects? I should not like to be an artist who brought an architectural sketch to a builder, saying, "This is the south aspect of Sea-View Cottage. Sea-View Cottage, of course, does not exist." I should not even like very much to have to explain, under such circumstances, that Sea-View Cottage might exist, but was unthinkable by the human mind. Nor should I like any better to be the bungling and absurd metaphysician who professed to be able to see everywhere the aspects of a truth that is not there. Of course, it is perfectly obvious that there are truths in Kipling, that there are truths in Shaw or Wells. But the degree to which we can perceive them depends strictly upon how far we have a definite conception inside us of what is truth. It is ludicrous to suppose that the more sceptical we are the more we see good in everything. It is clear that the more we are certain what good is, the more we shall see good in everything

-Heretics (1905)

Pentecost

Those who maintain that Christianity was not a Church but a moral movement of idealists have been forced to push the period of its perversion or disappearance further and further back. A bishop of Rome writes claiming authority in the very lifetime of St. John the Evangelist; and it is described as the first papal aggression. A friend of the Apostles writes of them as men he knew and says they taught him the doctrine of the Sacrament, and Mr. Wells can only murmur that the reaction towards barbaric blood-rites may have happened rather earlier than might be expected. The date of the Fourth Gospel, which at one time was steadily growing later and later, is now steadily growing earlier and earlier; until critics are staggered at the dawning and dreadful possibility that it might be something like what it professes to be. The last limit of an early date for the extinction of true Christianity has probably been found by the latest German professor whose authority is invoked by Dean Inge. This learned scholar says that Pentecost was the occasion for the first founding of an ecclesiastical, dogmatic, and despotic Church utterly alien to the simple ideals of Jesus of Nazareth. This may be called, in a popular as well as a learned sense, the limit. What do professors of this kind imagine that men are made of? Suppose it were a matter of any merely human movement, let us say that of the conscientious objectors. Some say the early Christians were Pacifists; I do not believe it for a moment; but I am quite ready to accept the parallel for the sake of the argument. Tolstoy or some great preacher of peace among peasants has been shot as a mutineer for defying conscription; and a little while afterwards his few followers meet together in an upper room in remembrance of him. They never had any reason for coming together except that common memory; they are men of many kinds with nothing to bind them, except that the greatest event in all their lives was this tragedy of the teacher of universal peace. They are always repeating his words, revolving his problems, trying to imitate his character. The Pacifists meet at their Pentecost and are possessed of a sudden ecstasy of enthusiasm and wild rush of the whirlwind of inspiration, in the course of which they proceed to establish universal Conscription, to increase the Navy Estimates, to insist on everybody going about armed to the teeth and on all the frontiers bristling with artillery; the proceedings concluded with the singing of 'Boys of the Bulldog Breed' and 'Don't let them scrap the British Navy.' That is something like a fair parallel to the theory of these critics; that the transition from their idea of Jesus to their idea of Catholicism could have been made in the little upper room at Pentecost. Surely anybody's commonsense would tell him that enthusiasts who only met through their common enthusiasm for a leader whom they loved, would not instantly rush away to establish everything that he hated. No, if the 'ecclesiastical and dogmatic system' is as old as Pentecost it is as old as Christmas. If we trace it back to such very early Christians we must trace it back to Christ.

-The Everlasting Man (1925)

People who lose all their charity generally lose all their logic.

-The Scandal of Father Brown (1935)

Dickens then had this English feeling of a grotesque democracy. By that is more properly meant a vastly varying democracy. The intoxicating variety of men -- that was his vision and conception of human brotherhood. And certainly it is a great part of human brotherhood. In one sense things can only be equal if they are entirely different...similarity always means inequality. If everything is trying to be green, some things will be greener than others; but there is an immortal and indestructible equality between green and red. Something of the same kind of irrefutable equality exists between the violent and varying creations of such a writer as Dickens. They are all equally ecstatic fulfilments of a separate line of development. It would be hard to say that there could be any comparison or inequality, let us say between Mr. Sapsea and Mr. Elijah Pogram. They are both in the same difficulty; they can neither of them contrive to exist in this world; they are both too big for the gate of birth.

-Charles Dickens (1906)

New Art

It is one thing to swallow the new art and another thing merely to swallow the new art criticism. And as a rule, I fancy, it is rather easier to find new art criticism than new art. What I mean by the new art criticism is a sort of metaphysics which involves not only mysticism but prophecy. It is an anticipation of the artistic forms that could be produced; an indignant challenge as to why they should not be produced; a solemn warning of the fate of the blind and belated who shall be found among their persecutors when they are produced. The only thing it does not do is to produce them...Suppose a man says: “Why am I not free to produce a sublime architectural effect with thirty-seven butter-tubs, three gas pipes, and a packing case? Why should I not make beauty out of these?” There seems to be no answer except to say, “Why not, indeed?” If he will produce sublime architecture out of them, I shall not complain of the sublimity. If he will make beauty from them, I shall not condemn them for contriving to be beautiful…. My attitude toward the experiment may be described as one of patient expectancy—of hope not unmingled with doubt. I am waiting for the moment when the pagoda of tubs shall strike my soul like a thunderbolt out of the sky; when I shall stagger with admiration at some perfect poise and balance of pipes and packing-cases which I had never foreseen even in my dreams. I say nothing of that inspiring moment of my life, except that it has not yet come. And in the same way, the conundrum of the workshops, as propounded concerning poetry or paining, seems to be simply a riddle which is not, in fact, accompanied with an answer.

-February 11, 1922, Illustrated London News 

(h/t G.K. Chesterton Facebook page) 

"How to Write a Novel"

A series is issued entitled the "How To" series. It teaches in one volume "How to Choose Your Banker,'' in another "How to Dine in Paris," and in a third, which now lies before us, "How to Write a Novel." It never seems to strike the writers of this school that there is some difference between the psychological profundity and delicacy of choosing your banker and that of choosing your idea. An idea is a nameless thing; it melts into all other ideas, whereas a banker is detachable and does not melt into any one. The same is true, though in a lesser degree, of the comparison which the author makes in his first chapter. He says, with some apparent reason, that as painting and sculpture require training on fixed lines there is no reason why such training should not be given in fiction. Surely the answer is distinct. Fiction is more dark and chaotic than painting because, though both arts symbolise spiritual conditions, painting employs as its symbol the bodily form, which has been measured, while fiction employs as its symbol the thoughts and actions which have never been measured. Painting deals with what a man looks like, which we can all know; fiction deals with what he means, which he generally does not know himself. It is not possible to know how many thoughts a man has; it is possible to know, with reasonable industry, how many legs he has.

-March 23, 1901, The Speaker

"One pleasure can kill another pleasure as much as one colour can kill another colour."

I think the truth is this: that the modern world has had far too little understanding of the art of keeping young. Its notion of progress has been to pile one thing on top of another, without caring if each thing was crushed in turn. People forget that the human soul can enjoy a thing most when there is time to think about it and be thankful for it. And by crowding things together they lost the sense of surprise; and surprise is the secret of joy. They forgot that there is a kind of familiarity that really does breed contempt, and that contempt by its nature breeds boredom...

Now this problem is not solved by one side saying that there is far too much pleasure-seeking, and the other side answering that it is natural for the young to seek pleasure. The point is that this may be pleasure-seeking, but it is not pleasure-finding. The cynicism bordering on pessimism, which is the real matter in dispute, would itself be evidence that the pleasure had not been found. And the moral is in a law of the mind which mere anarchy always attempts to forget. One pleasure can kill another pleasure as much as one colour can kill another colour. Every coloured figure requires a background, and is often all the brighter for a grey background or even a black background. The proportions between pleasure and sobriety are a delicate problem, like the proportions between blue and black, or gold and grey. But it is a problem of finding the proportions, and not merely of piling up the pleasures.  Life should be so mixed that there is in all our pleasures a slight element of surprise. Every child understands that; but the question at issue is whether precocious children do not become too clever to understand it.

-December 9, 1922, Illustrated London News

"Books exist to produce emotions: if we are not moved by them we practically have not read them. If a real book has not touched us we might as well not have touched the book."

It is no disrespect to such able and interesting works as Professor Dillon's to say that they are only stages in an essentially endless process, the proper appreciation of one of the inexhaustible religious classics. None of them says the last word on Job, for the last word could only be said on the Last Day. For a great poem like Job is in this respect like life itself. The explanations are popular for a month or popular for a century. But they all fall. The unexplained thing is popular for ever. There are weaknesses in the Higher Criticism, as a general phenomenon, which are only gradually unfolding themselves. There are more defects or difficulties than would at first appear in the scientific treatment of Scripture. But after all the greatest defect in the scientific treatment of Scripture is simply that it is scientific. The professor of the Higher Criticism is never tired of declaring that he is detached, that he is disinterested, that he is concerned only with the facts, that he is applying to religious books the unbending methods which are employed by men of science towards the physical order. If what he says of himself is true, he must be totally unfitted to criticize any books whatever.

Books exist to produce emotions: if we are not moved by them we practically have not read them. If a real book has not touched us we might as well not have touched the book. In literature to be dispassionate is simply to be illiterate. To be disinterested is simply to be uninterested. The object of a book on comets, of course, is not to make us all feel like comets; but the object of a poem about warriors is to make us all feel like warriors. It is not merely true that the right method for one may be the wrong method for the other; it must be the wrong method for the other. A critic who takes a scientific view of the Book of Job is exactly like a surgeon who should take a poetical view of appendicitis: he is simply an old muddler.

It is said, of course, that this scientific quality is only applied to the actual facts, which are the department of science. But what are the actual facts? There are very few facts in connection with a work of literature which are really wholly apart from literary tact and grasp. That certain words are on a piece of parchment in a certain order science can say. Whether in that order they make sense or nonsense only literature can say. That in another place (say on a brick) the same words are in another order science can say. Whether it is a more likely order only literature can say. That on two bricks there is the same sentence science can say. Whether it is the sort of sentence one man would write on two bricks, or two men happen to write on their own respective bricks, only literature can say.

-September 9, 1905, The Speaker