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That one must speak lightly… A Study of Stevie Smith
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2024
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It is likely enough that if some Catholic controversialist of the early seventeenth century had been discussing the merits of various contemporary poets, he would have extolled Crashaw and Southwell, deplored Donne, and vacillated in his opinion of Alabaster according to whether the gentleman was imprisoned in England for the Faith or had returned to the Anglican Church and a wife after differences with the Inquisition. Blame or approval would have been a matter of ‘party’ loyalty; not of poetry. The position was honourable enough in time of adversity but one we should attempt to outgrow. Such a simplistic attitude to religious belief is almost certainly an important factor in accounting for the intellectual and emotional poverty of religious art. One has heard the remark that dismisses Sutherland because he has lapsed, as if integrity as an artist depended on Easter Communion. It is tempting to inquire how many of the great figures of the Renaissance were certifiably in a state of grace.
Thus it comes about that in March 1971 we lost one of the very few religious poets of our time and it is doubtful whether anyone noticed. She herself would not have been surprised:
- I cannot imagine anything nicer
- Than to be struck by lightning and killed suddenly
- crossing a field As if somebody cared.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © 1972 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
Footnotes
page 318 note 1
The title: ‘That one must speak lightly…’ comes from A Soldier Dear to Us.
References
page 318 note 2 A priest's conversation overheard at Northampton, July 1962.
page 318 note 3 All poems and quotations are from Selected Poems, Longmans; or Scorpion, Longmans; unless otherwise indicated.
page 319 note 1 ‘Poet on Thin Ice’: Guardian article—Stevie Smith talks to John Horder.
page 319 note 2 ‘Death is a Poem to Stevie Smith’: Observer article by John Gale.
page 319 note 3 As a matter of fact, as all pedants know, it was really round the corner from us, in the Broad. (Ed.)
page 320 note 1 ‘Belief is Being’ from The Future of Catholic Christianity. Constable.
page 320 note 2 One of our Priests is Missing. Penguin.
page 320 note 3 I have deliberately omitted the cross.
page 321 note 1 Two Under the Indian Sun by Jon and Rumer Godden. Macmillan.
page 321 note 2 The Loves of Krishna by W. G. Archer. Allen and Unwin.
page 321 note 3 Last verse omitted.
page 322 note 1 See note 2 on page 319.
page 322 note 2 Called, ‘How Do you See?’ in Scorpion.
page 323 note 1 Waiting on God by Simone Weil. Routledge & Kegan Paul and Fontana.
page 324 note 1 Autobiography by Eric Gill. Jonathan Cape.
page 324 note 2 Epicurus and His Gods by A. J. Festugiéhre, O.P. Basil Blackwell.
page 324 note 3 The Farmer's Bride by Mew, Charlotte. Poetry Bookshop 1921Google Scholar.
page 324 note 4 Major Barbara by Bernard Shaw. Constable and Penguin.
page 324 note 5 See note 1 on page 323.
page 325 note 1 Letter to a Priest by Simone Weil. Routledge & Kegan Paul (one example of this type of fusion occurs in the Aylesford Newsletter, No. 42, for April 1959).
page 325 note 2 Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot. Penguin in association with Faber and Faber.
page 326 note 1 See note 2 on page 319.
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