Tea at Trianon: Divining Divinity

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 6, 2011

Divining Divinity

Clouds clustered in pagan grey
Turn a mythic, mystic rose;
Heaven's heralds of the day,
Burning embers, amber glows.
~ from "Solstice Sunrise" by Joseph Pearce

In these prosaic times we need poetry to lift us beyond ourselves and everything around us. Divining Divinity: A Book of Poems by Joseph Pearce contains verse both whimsical and deep, from poems written in the youth of the author to those about the spiritual life. Dr. Pearce, known for his marvelous books about the great literary giants of the last few generations, gives us another format in which to enjoy his way with words. Brimming with a living faith and a love of God's creation, influenced by both Dante and Tolkien, this small collection of poems evokes prayerful thoughts in the reader as well as moments of humor and pure enchantment.

In the words of Dr. Pearce:

[T]he volume’s title suggests that the poetry should be read in the realm of mystery, magic, miracle and metaphor. It cannot be read literally, on which level it is probably literally meaningless. As such, literalists and other materialists need not bother to read any further, not least because they do not really know how to read. There is, however, one poem at least which even the literalists might understand. I refer to “The Hedgehog”, a piece of juvenilia that I wrote long before I learned to think metaphorically. It has no hidden meaning. It works on no level above and beyond the earthy, literal level on which the hedgehog itself resides. Like the hedgehog, and the materialist, it has its nose in the dirt and never looks to the stars. It has no point except the points on the hedgehog’s back.

The rest of the poems all have a point, though I do not see the point of pointing them out. I will leave the reader to discover the point, and to divine the divinity, for himself, mindful nonetheless of Chesterton’s wistful comment that it didn’t matter how much he made the point of a story stick out like a spike the critics still managed to impale themselves very carefully on something else. Wishing to do nothing to impair the impaling, I invite the critic to turn the following pages at his own risk. As for my more discerning reader, I invite him simply to see the point.

(*NOTE: This book was sent to me by the author as a prize won in a contest held by the Catholic Writers Conference Live.) Share