The commonplace that Dante is a religious poet prompts one to ask what this compound term means; but for my purpose it suffices to define religion as an interior state of submissive attention to God, and poetry as an interior state of creative attention to things—that is, an attention which tends essentially to express experience as completely as possible in words. Religion, in this sense, is not necessarily Christianity, though Christianity presupposes it; still less is it the doctrine or the external observances of any given religion. Similarly poetry, in this sense, is not any particular poem or poems, though these all presuppose it. Both terms refer to interior states which may be found in any human soul. And as defined, these two states are clearly distinct. And the distinction is supported a posteriori by the fact that most religious people are not, except in remote potency, poets and that many poets are not, except in remote potency, religious. The two states, however, though distinct, are not incompatible and have in fact often been found together; but when this happens there is a certain overlapping of interests, causing tensions and problems varying with the circumstances and characters of the religious poets concerned. In Gerard Hopkins, for instance, the tension was between poetry and his priestly vocation; and there is no more tragic case known to us, because in no one else have the two gifts and capacities appeared at a greater intensity simultaneously. Dante’s case is very different: if he felt this tension at all, he must have felt it less intensely; because for him there was no question of sacrificing poetry to religion, but (if anything) of sacrificing one sort of poetry (of secular inspiration) to another sort (of religious inspiration).

‘We have on the one side auoided the scrupulositie of the Puritanes . . .; as also on the other side we haue shunned the obscuritie of the Papists, in their Azimes, Tutiike, Rational, Holocausts, Praepuce, Pasche, and a number of such like.’

. . . [Catholic] correspondence of a singular freshness, authentic eighteenth-century, and authentic English, mere English, indeed, and utterly free from the stereotyped halfforeign jargon that later generations were to experience.’

‘The fruits of the bloody sacrifice are superabundantly applied by the unbloody sacrifice.’

‘I saw Pfuff’s “Interrelated Harmony” described in the catalogue as a neo-amorphist experiment in intra-abstractionism. It is also an embodiment of universal mode-concepts, and the absence of stress emphasizes the integral tranquillity. Whirlpools of space would be a more accurate description of these non-emotional facets of dynamic passivity.’

The first of these quotations is from the address to the reader of the translators of the Authorized Version of the Bible; the second is from a review in The Times Literary Supplement; the third is a contemporary theologian quoting from cap. 2 of session xxii of the Council of Trent; the fourth is from a satirical jape of ‘Beachcomber’. They are part of the harvest of a little desultory reading, and serve well enough as an indication of what I want to talk— or rather, muse—about: words.

Everything, however small, that can be a hindrance to faith is of importance; and as an experienced missioner has said, ‘language can in fact be a pretty effective hindrance’.

It is curious how the leadership of the musical world has passed from one country to another. This is not always merely the result of fashion or of social causes: it really does appear that the muses are migratory. The commanding influence exerted by any country at one time has tended to swamp or, to change the metaphor, at least obscure the native art of others. One has only to think of the tremendous impact of Italian, and later of German, music in this country to realize this. So complete and far-reaching has the predominance been on occasion that an appearance of a truly international musical style has been given. This was never more clearly true than in the eighteenth century, when the process was aided by a social and aristocratic internationalism. Nevertheless, every nation has a characteristic musical tradition of its own, even though the tradition may sometimes only be traced with difficulty, being continued by a host of minor, forgotten composers. Thus, even in eighteenth-century England, which is popularly regarded as a locus classicus of a trough in a musical tradition, there were composers such as Boyce who spoke in unmistakably English accents.

What it is that causes and perpetuates national characteristics is a matter for conjecture. Rousseau attributed it to the influence, via song, of language; but, though there may be some truth in this, it is certainly an inadequate explanation. It is more important to give some account of what is meant by a national tradition, lest the cynic should suspect mere jingoism or an attempt to excuse second-rate music.

Having heard that some persons involved in ‘muddled marriages’ thought they could find a justification for their condition in an article written by my English confrere, Father Gerald Vann, O.P., and had so quoted it to their parish priests, I am reminded of the old story of the prisoner at the bar who at the question of the Court: ‘Guilty or not guilty?’ promptly replied: ‘Your Honour, I always thought myself to be guilty; but after listening to my lawyer’s plea I am beginning to wonder if I did any wrong’. The accused was misled by his counsel’s speech, and those Catholics have been misled by Fr Vann’s article.

In each case, the source of the error lies in a misinterpretation, a misunderstanding over who is being addressed. The plea of the counsel for the defence was addressed to the court, and Father Vann’s paper was addressed to the clergy. The defendant thought his lawyer was speaking to him; and the Catholics in ‘bad marriages’ thought that Fr Vann was writing to them.

St Thomas, in drawing a comparison between a judge and a lawgiver, shows that the latter is in much the better position in that he deals with human actions as future, while the former must deal with them as present; towards that which is present one is easily moved by love or hate, whereby one’s judgment becomes vitiated.

Last September Spode House sponsored yet another of the Catholic gatherings for which it is rapidly gaining a reputation. This time it was the philosophers who met. As Fr Columba Ryan remarked, in introducing the conference, the philosophers had an advantage over the artists, writers and musicians who had held weekends already: they could not only discuss their calling, but practise it at the same time. And practise it they did. During the weekend there were two lectures, two symposia and three open discussions; and in addition the debate could be heard continuing in every available moment, at the tea-tables and floating across the park during the afternoons.

The conference was called as a first move towards meeting what is a grave danger at the moment for the Church: the growing gap between the language of the traditional philosophy in the Church and that of contemporary thinkers. It was intended to provide an opportunity for discussion between philosophers of both kinds, so that they might learn a little of each other’s languages; and in this it was extraordinarily successful. The weekend started, one might say, in the shadow of the controversy that had for weeks been filling the correspondence columns of The Tablet. The opposite sides in that monumental discussion might be expected to be at each other’s throats from the beginning. And indeed at the beginning it seemed that this would continue. But it is a measure of the success of the conference that the philosophers quickly shed their official ‘isms’ as they got down to the business of arguing particular questions.