BOOKS
Posthumous Miscellany
BY EVELYN WAUGH RONALD KNOX lacked only longevity to be a national figure. Had he lived to be eighty he Would, most unwillingly, have found himself assumed into that rum circle of ancient savants and charlatans whom the Sovereign delights to honour and the popular press treats with some semblance of reverence. He died at sixty-nine still essentially a private person; not with his promise unfulfilled—for he had established mastership With (I think) unique versatility in half a dozen diverse literary forms—but with his work un- finished. Two important books which he had Planned died with him. It remains to collect a considerable body of unpublished papers. Shortly before his death he handed his pub- lisher a drawerful of typescripts. Among these Were the seventeen compositions here published.* Almost all were written to be read aloud. Those familiar with his precise and exquisitely em- phasised enunciation will catch his tone of voice in every turn of phrase. They belong to the last thirty years of his life. The choice of contents Was his; as was.the title. 'Distraction' was a key- Word. Distraction in prayer is the constantly re- curring theme of his spiritual teaching. In his intellectual functions the balance of his thought tas so delicate, so easily set oscillating, that he ad to play patience when concentrating on a !Veal or linguistic problem. There is a sense to Which it can he said that all his intellectual Lie, Was a distraction from the spiritual. He was teeth priest, scholar and artist, and where the claims.of his vocations were in conflict his Priesthood came first, But many of the duties of apriest's life are themselves distractions from the Spiritual. He often wished to disencumber him- self. of these extraneous duties and devote the Moreeve part of his life t s and than once in hiso cacreerholars hehi seemed toliterature. have attained this seclusion; each time he was frus- trair.ited. His death was the final frustration. ns use of 'Distractions' in this title probably Iltrieans that he was distracted by these works from scope Programme of writing. They vary greatly in with and character. At one extreme is French typed Tears. He was not (I think) forty when he 1?Ped it out in an afternoon at Oxford for de- iltvi_erY to the French Club that evening. He kept s him and used it again, year after year, to all seminarists of audiences, from schoolgirls and aeltinarists to the French Ambassadress. He made few emendations to bring it up to date (the version here printed gives the impression that it written when he was sixty-two), but it re- mains aln! a brilliant exercise in the humour of a happier age, Will it amuse the young? Perhaps rt ,,(s)t. But there will be a multitude of the more mature who will be happy to recapture the exhil- arall°11 of first hearing his examination of the Problem , Why is it that when I leave the train at Paris 4find myself, like most of my fellow-countrymen, unable to get further than the useful phrase, OR est le Cook's homier Why is it that, whereas 4:ti12‘erTERARy kr(1, 15s.) DISTRACTIONS. By R. A. Knox. (Sheed
I could make some shift to talk Greek to Plato or Latin to Cicero in the unlikely event of my meeting either of them, I found myself com- pletely tongue-tied when I was introduced to M. Maritain? I have sat through a whole luncheon party at Balliol some years ago, in which the conversation was conducted entirely in French; and not a word could I get out till the scout—he had been my own scout years ago, and was as familiar to me as the Martyrs' Memorial—tried to make me eat some fruit salad, and 1 said 'Mere by mistake.
At the opposite extreme is On English Transla- tion, his Romanes Lecture given at the Sheldonian on June 11 of last year. This was composed and delivered while his last illness had him in its grip. The effort of will was prodigious, but there is no hint even of fatigue in this almost cheeky assertion of defiance. Knox's genius as a translator was original and daring. In matters of faith and morals he spoke with scrupulous caution and responded humbly to criticism. In matters of language he was entirely confident of right. From the days when he was teaching Vb Latin at Shrewsbury to the days when he was prodding his way through the crocodile swamp of exegetes, his consistent protest was against 'a mere transcript of foreign phrases and foreign idioms, set out under .the dastardly apology, "Well, that's what it says." ' His appeal is' to the great translafors of the English late Renaissance, North, Urquhart, Motteux, L'Estrange, Florio, Holland, Shelton, who, whatever their faults of scholarship, had the spirit to make contemporary English literature out of their foreign text. Knox himself was, as near as an artist can be, immune from faults of scholarship. His work disconcerts many by its unfamiliarity. It greatly offends those who have a fair knowledge of the original language and can recognise obvious paraphrases. His Romanes Lecture (in conjunction with his pre- viously published On Englishing the Bible) was a challenge, almost from the grave, to his detractors.
Between these extremes, both of date and of weight, lie fifteen miscellaneous essays : The Greeks at Sea, which was written for a Hellenic Cruise; a penetrating introduction to Pascal's Pensees; formal commemorations of Stevenson and Chesterton; an authoritative but rather antiquated discourse on detective stories, and so on. 'Formal commemoration' is not an adequate description of the essay on Crashaw, which goes deep below the surface of panegyric.
Mystics do not write while they are praying —except Madame Guyon, who, I am afraid, was bogus. The reason is obvious; you can only write with images in your mind, and of such images your mystic, if he would pray, is the iconoclast. I would not, then, suggest that it made any difference to Crashaw's writing, what kind of prayer he used. But 1 think, if he was in the mystical tradition, it would explain one thing about his writing, his great want of self-criticism. To reflect, to turn back upon yourself, is the enemy of contemplation; it is to cloud the view of God with your own shadow. I see Crashaw, then, coming back from his prayer to his poetry with a great wealth of images running through his brain—all the more tumultuously, perhaps, for their recent cold-shouldering.
Knox did not live to write an introduction. The words he wrote in 1928 at the beginning of Essays in Satire are completely applicable : 'Only one common thread runs through the book. It is a practical answer to the question frequently asked, "Where can I get hold of that thing you wrote some years ago about Such and Such?" Well, here it is; but if you want to buy it you must buy all the others as well. You cannot go into a stationer's and order an Ace of Spades; they will tell you to buy the whole pack. So here.'
It may be that there were young persons who had not heard of Knox until last year when his obituaries were prominent in the newspapers. It may be they will pick up. Literary Distractions and say : `So this is what all the fuss was about.' They will be wrong. This is not what the fuss was about. It comprises only some minor by- products of his noble, incomplete truvre. But if they cannot recognise the voice of a great man, they had better go back to their 'comics' and inquire no further. Knox is not for them, poor beasts.
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