FROM THE ARCHIVES:A poetry anthology for the Leaving Cert and NUI matriculation, edited by a Jesuit priest Stephen J Brown, was reviewed by poet Austin Clarke who found it more concerned with religious orthodoxy than poetry. – JOE JOYCE
FATHER BROWN’S anxiety over questions of faith and morals seems to me to be unnecessary. He forgets that the examination is not a test in religious knowledge, and that the National University, by its constitution, is non-denominational.
The average schoolboy is not of an inquiring mind, and all the warnings in this book against the heretical notions of poets, the subtle hints and implications, will scarcely lead him to a true appreciation of poetry for its own sake. In recent years the various religious authorities have shown a tendency in educational matters towards taking over control of poetry and literature. This book shows what is liable to happen if we insist on appointing a chaplain to the Muse.
When the National University was founded, the late Archbishop Walsh acted in a very sensible way. He intervened when it was proposed to elect a clergyman as Professor of English Literature. He said the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Byron and Shelley, could be discussed more satisfactorily by a layman than by a Minister of the Gospel. Father Brown's book, on practically every page, shows how wise was His Grace. There's a continual tendency to bring in irrelevant religious propaganda. After a paragraph about Shakespeare's life, the schoolboy is referred at once to the problem as to whether the poet was a Catholic or not. Even the well-known sonnet line, "Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang," leads us to the question as to whether Shakespeare was alluding to the dissolution of the monasteries. Claudio's meditation on death, taken from Measure for Measure, brings us this comment: "Claudio's notions of death are scarcely those of a Christian. There is no mention of God." Then Father Brown quotes from Hamlet's famous soliloquy, "To be or not to be," and adds: "But Hamlet, too, makes no mention of God. For a more Christian view of death and after, in poetry, I refer you to Mr. F.J. Sheed's anthology, Poetry and Lifepp. 163 seq., and to Cardinal Newman's great poem, The Dream of Gerontius."
When Father Brown turns to Irish poetry the dangers to faith and morals obviously increase. Thomas David wrote a pleasant and rather sentimental poem called My Grave, but it does not content Father Brown. "These verses," he says, "are strange in containing no slightest allusion to the afterlife, though Davis was a believing Christian." Needless to say, the "pseudo-mysticism" of Years is pointed out, and the remarks on that great poet are rather begrudging. Father Brown cannot allow the young to enjoy even Allingham's simple and delightful little lyrics, Up the Airy Mountainand Four Ducks on a Pond. He has to inform these children that Allingham was "of the political and religious faith of the minority in Ireland."
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