Readings: Flannery's Hard Sayings

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As I was finishing my reading of Ralph C. Wood’s very interesting study of the theological basis of Flannery O’Connor’s fiction, Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South, three passages caught my attention as being worthy of preserving and passing on. Each of these shed some light, in my opinion, on why the church is in decline and on why soi-disant Christians tend to be so lacking in that which is required for true discipleship. Here is the first:

“Baptism is for Christians what circumcision is for Jews: a public sign that the universal God of Israel and Christ and the church has claimed believers for life in a particular community that lives by its outward and visible practices. Baptism is thus a political act through and through: it is a radical transfer of allegiance and citizenship from one regime to another, from a polity that is corrupt and perishing to the only one that is being redeemed and shall stand forever. Not even the gates of hell will be able to prevail against its onrushing power. Baptism is a sacramental and regenerative rite precisely because it is not a merely human choice; it is God’s own adoption of his people into his community.” [emphasis added]

Tell that to the average neoconservative, nativist, money-hungry Tea Party evangelical and see how far it gets you.

Here is the second:

“Mason Tarwater is too orthodox a Christian to grant evil any sort of dualistic equality with good. He has not schooled the younger Tarwater in the full ancestry of the world’s evildoers but rather in the strong roll call of biblical figures who have been radically summoned by God: “Abel and Enoch and Noah and Job, Abraham and Moses, King David and Solomon, and all the prophets, from Elijah who escaped death, to John whose severed head struck terror from a dish.” That this list does not consist of the morally pure, but of a drunk and a doubter and a deceiver, a whiner and an adulterer and a schemer, reveals Mason Tarwater’s profoundly biblical understanding of vocation. To be called a Christian is not to become an ethically untainted person, much less the well-adjusted anthropoid that Rayber regards as a true human being. It is to become a person who lives coram Deo, constantly before God, in repentance and conversion.” [emphasis added]

Mason Tarwater is the “crazy” self-proclaimed Christian prophet who is one of the three central characters in O’Connor’s novel, The Violent Bear It Away. Rayber is his secularized nephew—an intellectual—and Tarwater’s life-long antagonist. According to Wood, Mason Tarwater, for all the extremism of his character, embodies what O’Connor believed. Rayber may be taken as the epitome of the contemporary atheistic sophisticate who is the typical middle-class American, whether secular or nominally Christian.

And the last:

“For all his ranting, the old prophet goes to the heart of Christian vocation as Dietrich Bonhoeffer described it in his most celebrated single statement: “Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.” Rarely does the Christian life constitute a call to physical death by way of the world’s obloquy and persecution; but it is always a summons to die to one’s own arrogant presumptions.”

No extra emphasis needed there. It is the failure to recognize this fundamental truth of the Christian religion that has made the institution of the church the sham that it mostly is today. Any person claiming for himself the moral high ground, based on his Christian vocation, should consider the truths central to Flannery O’Connor’s body of work prior to plotting out how he plans to greet St. Peter when showing up at those Pearly Gates to claim his halo and wings.
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Readings: On Breaking the Vicious Cycle

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As quoted in Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South, novelist Alice Walker on O’Connor’s oeuvre:

[E]ssential O’Connor is not about race at all, which is why it is so refreshing, coming, as it does, out of such a racial culture. If it can be said to be “about” anything, then it is “about” prophets and prophecy, “about” revelation, and “about” the impact of supernatural grace on human beings who don’t have a chance of spiritual growth without it.

Ralph C. Wood, author of Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South, in his discussion of the meaning of the short-story “The Artificial Nigger,” writes of one of the two central characters,

“Mr. Head’s discovery is scandalous because he fathoms the mystery of the gospel in ways that are offensive even to many alleged Christians. He is shown the mercy that is beyond adequate naming because – in ways unknown to Nietzsche – it is beyond good and evil, utterly transcending morality. …The pattern of forgiveness as preceding and enabling repentance is the pattern everywhere present in Scripture, from Hosea’s refusal to divorce his prostitute wife to Christ’s words from the Cross. Jesus asks God to forgive those who are crucifying him, not because they have begged his pardon, but because he wants to break the chain of anger and vengeance that has entrapped them [emphasis added]. To have given the crowds their due, cursing them in judgment, would have been to seal them in the vicious and unbreakable circle of sin. "

Wood continues:

“Far from achieving anything akin to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called ‘cheap grace’ – a false reliance on God’s forgiveness as an excuse for living a self-indulgent and untransformed life – Mr. Head sees that, precisely to the extent that he has been forgiven, he is also judged and found horribly wanting.
[…]
“The staggering paradox is that God imprisons us, said Karl Barth, by flinging wide our cell door: the gospel ‘accuses [mankind] by showing that all the charges against him have been dropped.”

This is a lesson that might be learned by those misguided “patriots” and idiot Tea-Baggers who are opposing the construction of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.” And it might even be well learned by those flag-waving Americans who feel it is absolutely necessary to seek vengeance against the Muslim world for the 9/11 attacks by invading their lands and killing tens of thousands of people -- most of whom are totally innocent of any crime against America.

Choose peace: break the cycle of hatred and vengeance.

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Religion: Hard Sayings

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I went to the local public library yesterday—kind of a busman’s holiday, considering that I work in the university library—basically just to get my ass out of the house. The library is near the bike path that runs along the Hocking River. So I parked at the library, took a walk along the Hocking, and then went into the library prior to heading for home.

Because it was sitting alone on a “featured books” shelf, Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South by Ralph C. Wood caught my eye. As I have always considered Flannery O’Connor to be among the most interesting and important of 20th century American writers of fiction, I went home with the book in my hand.

I’m now going to share a few lines from Wood’s Introduction, because they demonstrate, I think, just why O’Connor is such a kick-ass writer and one whom every student of literature—and every avowed Christian—needs to read. Here is Wood:

No one understood both the promise and the failure of the modern church better than Flannery O’Connor. In a letter written in July 1955…O’Connor specified both qualities: “I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.”

In another letter, written in the same year, O’Connor wrote: “[I]f you live today you breathe in nihilism. In or out of the Church it’s the gas you breathe. If I hadn’t had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.”

A few lines further down in his introduction, Wood sets the above in a larger context:

It was a religious, a cultural abyss, a moral nothingness that O’Connor sniffed as surely as Nietzsche did when, a century earlier, he declared that he could detect the odor of God’s rotting body in his nostrils. Like Nietzsche, O’Connor located the evil not in some remote ethereal realm, not in her circumambient culture alone, but also in the “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” She confessed that the church’s feeble and often noxious witness causes Christians as much grief as does the world’s mad plunge over the cliffs of self-destruction. …Unlike Nietzsche, O’Connor agreed with [Romano] Guardini that the church contains the one Solution even as it constitutes a terrible part of the problem. …Hence the frequent likening of the church to Noah’s ark: only the storm without exceeds the stench within. Yet insofar as Christ remains its animating center, the church provides everlasting life amidst the all-encompassing death.

That’s what I like about Flannery O’Connor—she will have absolutely no truck with cheap grace. She doesn’t bullshit. She lasers in on the needle in the haystack. And a glimpse into this moral integrity—and this rare ability—is the gift with which she has blessed the world in her magnificent body of work.

If you haven’t already read her, go do it.

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Reflections: O'Connor on Weil - Part V: Conclusion

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In wrapping up this exercise to introduce Simone Weil to a new readership by way of Flannery O’Connor, I will note that the last mention of Weil in a letter to “A.” was dated 20 July 63. Since O’Connor died on August 4, 1964, it is fair to say that having once been introduced to Weil, O’Connor maintained her interest to the end. O’Connor’s penultimate reference to Weil in the letters was this:

Never read Beauvoir. Never aim to. I think myself that Simone Weil is a trifle monstrous, but the kind of monstrosity that interests me. Indeed.

This has not been my first attempt to introduce Weil to new readers by way of a third party author. Not so long ago I completed another five-part series of posts quoting the whole a short biography of Weil by the novelist, Paul West. It is evident from his treatment of Weil that West, like O’Connor before him, found Weil to be “a trifle monstrous.” Be that as it may. I consider Weil’s biography to be every bit as important to an understanding of my devotion to her as are her writings. I therefore encourage persons who have taken an interest in this series of posts to begin here with a reading of the West bio and scroll up through the other four posts. I will post links to a couple of full-length biographies at the conclusion of this piece.

I find that since I launched Rodak Riffs, almost two years ago, I have written nearly forty posts tagged with the name Simone Weil. Several of these have contained quotes about her by other prominent writers. For instance: Elizabeth Hardwick and T. S. Eliot and Iris Murdoch. I add their recommendations to that of Flannery O’Connor.

I also recommend this previous post, which contains a link to a selection of Weil quotes.

A not-so-random sampling of previous posts featuring my application of Weil’s writings to whatever I was thinking about at the time, can be reviewed here and here and here and here and here and here. A bit of scrolling around in the Rodak Riffs archives for 2007 and 2008 will uncover a couple dozen more.

Of biographies, the one by her friend, Simone Pétrement, is probably considered the standard work. It is also the most hagiographic. My personal library also holds biographies by Robert Coles, Gabriella Fiori, David McClellan, and Francine du Plessix Gray. I can recommend them all, noting that some (e.g., Coles, du Plessix Gray) are less sympathetic to Weil’s “monstrosity” than others.

There: I’ve done what I can.
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Reflections: O'Connor on Weil - Part IV

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Covering the period 1952-1963, there are sixteen separate references to Simone Weil noted in the index of The Habit of Being, the selected letters of Flannery O’Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald. In my effort here to convince admirers of O’Connor that they should look into the writings of Simone Weil on O’Connor’s recommendation, I will not quote all sixteen. But I do have a few more to cite.

O’Connor’s interest in Weil was primarily as a Catholic:

30 October 55 to “A.”:

I think Mlle. Weil was a far piece from the Church too but considering where she started from, the distance she came toward it seems remarkable.

In a letter sent by O’Connor to “A.” fourteen months after the one quoted above, we see that O’Connor has not only maintained her interest in Weil, but, having been gifted with a set of Weil’s incredible Notebooks, her admiration has continued to grow:

28 December 56 to “A.”:

The Lord knows I never expected to own the Notebooks of Simone Weil. This is almost something to live up to; anyway, reading them is one way to try to understand the age. I intend to find that Time with her picture (some weeks ago) and cut out the picture and stick it in the front. That face gives a kind of reality to the notes. I am more than obliged to you. These are books that I can’t begin to exhaust, and Simone Weil is a mystery that should keep us all humble, and I need it more than most. Also she’s the example of the religious consciousness without a religion which maybe sooner or later I will be able to write about. [emphasis added]

On a personal note, I too was gifted by a life-long friend with a set of the Notebooks, and my reaction both to the extraordinary generosity of the gift and to the extraordinary gifts enjoyed in the reading of them matches O’Connor’s, word for word.

Simone Weil had a brother who was a world-class mathematician. She, too, placed great importance in math—and especially in geometry—in her understanding of the nature of Existence as passed down from the Greeks. I, like O’Connor, in my profound impotence before things mathematical, had to skim over some of these parts, fearing as I did so that I was missing out on the revelation of profound mysteries, but realizing at the same time that an inexhaustible fund of wisdom with which I am somewhat equipped to grapple was opening itself to me:

12 January 57 to “A.”:

Don’t worry about my spending any time computing the little figures in the Simone notebooks. I just go on to the next page. There are remarkable things there and if I really own the complete Simone Weil I feel very rich.

Very rich. Absolutely.
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Reflections: O'Connor on Weil - Part III

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Back to business, then. We left off with Flannery O'Connor having been exposed to her first Simone Weil through the reading of books mailed to her by her penpal, "A." She has written to "A." on September 24, that she (O'Connor) finds Weil to be "tragic" and "comic."

Though we have only O'Connor's side of the correspondence, it is evident from the next selection (below) that "A." has written back to ask, "What the hell do you mean by dissing my Simone in this ignominious fashion!?!"

O'Connor immediately whips off this self-effacing clarification of what was meant by those two apparently negatively-weighted terms:

30 September 55 to “A.”:

By saying Simone Weil’s life was both comic and terrible, I am not trying to reduce it, but mean to be paying her the highest tribute I can, short of calling her a saint, which I don’t believe she was. Possibly I have a higher opinion of the comic and terrible than you do. To my way of thinking it includes her great courage and to call her anything less would be to see her as merely ordinary. She was certainly not ordinary. Of course, I can only say, as you point out, this is what I see, not this is what she is—which only God knows. But I didn’t mean that my heroine would be a hypothetical Miss Weil. My heroine already is, and is Hulga. Miss Weil’s existence only parallels what I have in mind, and it strikes me especially hard because I had it in mind before I knew as much as I do now about Simone Weil. …You have to be able to dominate the existence that you characterize. That is why I write about people who are more or less primitive. I couldn’t dominate a Miss Weil because she is more intelligent and better than I am but I can project a Hulga.

There you have it, dear readers--"the highest tribute": "She was certainly not ordinary" and "...she is more intelligent and better than I am...."

True dat. And this is why she should be read. And reread. And read again.
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Reflections: O'Connor on Weil - Part II

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Less than a month later, Flannery O’Connor has received some of the writings of Simone Weil from “A.” and has begun to read them:

24 September 55 to “A.”:

I am reading the Weil books now, having finished the Letters to a Priest and I am very much obliged to you and will keep these books until you want them. I am struck by the coincidence (?) of title of Waiting for God, and Waiting for Godot—have you read that play, by an Irishman named Beckett? The life of this remarkable woman still intrigues me while much of what she writes, naturally, is ridiculous to me. Her life is almost a perfect blending of the Comic and the Terrible, which two things may be opposite sides of the same coin. In my own experience, everything funny I have written is more terrible than it is funny, or only funny because it is terrible, or only terrible because it is funny. Well Simone Weil’s life is the most comical life I have ever read about and the most truly tragic and terrible. If I were to live long enough and develop as an artist to the proper extent, I would like to write a comic novel about a woman—and what is more comic and terrible than the angular intellectual proud woman approaching God inch by inch with ground teeth?

It seems to me that her reaction to Weil’s writings is both strong and paradoxical (Comic/Terrible). The phrase “approaching God inch by inch with ground teeth” puts me in mind of a title by another powerful woman writer whom I admire—the poet, Anne Sexton—The Awful Rowing Toward God.

That said, the observations above hardly seems to amount to a ringing endorsement.
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Reflections: O'Connor on Weil - Part I

[The conceptual impetus for this series may be found here.]

Our source of insight into Flannery O’Connor’s interest in Simone Weil will be The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald. We will note, as we read what O’Connor had to say about Weil over the years, that Weil interested her. It was never that Flannery O’Connor felt compelled to define Simone Weil as right or wrong, as Christian or non-Christian, as sinner or saint, as spiritual exemplar or Gnostic heretic; rather it was that Simone Weil fascinated O’Connor, holding her attention for at least a decade, as her letters reveal.

The first reference we have is in a letter to Sally Fitzgerald and her husband, Robert, written (as noted by Fitzgerald) in the summer of 1952:

I’ve never read Simone Weil but a good bit about her & you sound right to me on the subject.

In The Habit of Being we have only O’Connor’s letters, not those of her correspondents. This first reference is clearly made in answer to a query as to whether she is familiar with Simone Weil. Her answer tells us that she has read about Weil, but has not yet read any of Weil’s published writings.

From this point on, all of O’Connor’s references to Simone Weil will be in letters written to “A.” a pen-pal described by Sally Fitzgerald in her notes as “a young woman, unknown to [O’Connor], whose comments so interested her that she asked her to write again. It was the beginning of a nine-year friendship and correspondence.”

Approximately three years after the reference to Weil in the letter to Sally Fitzgerald, we see in this excerpt from a letter to “A.” that Flannery O’Connor has still not read any of Simone Weil’s writings, but that her curiosity remains unabated:

2 August 55 to “A.”:

I am wondering if you have read Simone Weil. I never have and doubt if I would understand her if I did; but from what I have read about her, I think she must have been a very great person. She and Edith Stein are the two 20th-century women who interest me most.

A week later, O’Connor pursues the topic:

9 August 55 to “A.”:

I have thought of Simone Weil in connection with you almost from the first and I got out this piece I enclose and reread it and the impression was not lessened. In the face of anyone’s experience, someone like me who has had almost no experience, must be humble.

Finally, as the month is about to end, O’Connor asks “A.” for a loan of some of Simone Weil’s books:

28 August 55 to “A.”:

The magazine that had the piece on Simone Weil is called “The Third Hour” and is put out spasmodically… …I would very much like you to lend me the books of Simone Weil’s when you get through with them…

It can be seen, both from references to various articles about Simone Weil made by O’Connor in what will follow, as well as in several incidental mentions of Weil in the letters that I do not plan to use for this series of posts, that Simone Weil was a person of interest to many intellectuals writing in the mid-20th-century; O’Connor was by no means unique in her interest. O’Connor was, however, a writer of fiction whose unusual characters and themes render her opinion of an exceptional person like Simone Weil uniquely insightful. She was also a devout Catholic whose religious sensibility qualifies her to comment intelligently on Weil’s radical approach to Christianity.

We will pause here and give O’Connor a chance to read some Weil.

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Reflections: Howling On

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The blogospheric tremors of which I wrote in my May 9th post have continued to mount to an ominous rumble as two more bloggers with whom I had maintained long-term relationships have ceased operations in the interim. In addition, I have voluntarily exiled myself from a third blog for reason of irreconcilable differences; and this blog had the most seniority on my Favorites menu. A fourth hasn’t put up a new in nearly a month. C’est la guerre. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...

As one of my local good ol' boy neighbors might opine while watching the tractor pull event, “We got mere anarchy loosed on the world rye cheer.”

Fug it, then: I can’t go on, I’ll go on:

Honestly, I consider this, my blog, to be a stupendous failure. It was my intent, when I launched it going on two years ago, to write a blog primarily about good books and about some of the fundamental ideas that made those good books (in my opinion) good. It was my hope that in so doing, I would both introduce unknown others to books and authors with whom they might not have been familiar, and by so doing to stimulate discussion of those books and ideas.
You can just about guess how that went. Yeah...

The one writer/thinker whom I have most wanted to promote is Simone Weil. I feel that I have really tried. An interested party could review my many efforts in the Rodak Riffs archives. Well, maybe it’s me. Maybe if I were to throw up a few posts demonstrating an interest in Simone Weil of long-standing with a person widely respected across the spectrum, from religious Catholics, to the literary intelligentsia, my enthusiasm over Weil would thereby be vindicated?

How about Flannery O'Connor? Would she fit the ticket?

Stayed tuned—(Ha-ha! LoL!)—and we’ll all find out together...
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