Even those who are more fond of G. K. Chesterton than Elliot Milco is may enjoy Max Beerbohm’s parody of the prince of paradox. Here’s an excerpt:
It is always in reference to those things which arouse in us the most human of all our emotions—I mean the emotion of love—that we conceive the deepest of our errors. Suppose we met Euclid on Westminster Bridge, and he took us aside and confessed to us that whilst he regarded parallelograms and rhomboids with an indifference bordering on contempt, for isosceles triangles he cherished a wild romantic devotion. Suppose he asked us to accompany him to the nearest music-shop, and there purchased a guitar in order that he might worthily sing to us the radiant beauty and the radiant goodness of isosceles triangles. As men we should, I hope, respect his enthusiasm, and encourage his enthusiasm, and catch his enthusiasm. But as seekers after truth we should be compelled to regard with a dark suspicion, and to check with the most anxious care, every fact that he told us about isosceles triangles.
For adoration involves a glorious obliquity of vision. It involves more than that. We do not say of Love that he is short-sighted. We do not say of Love that he is myopic. We do not say of Love that he is astigmatic. We say quite simply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. That would be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still and say, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. For love is always an extraordinarily fluent talker. Love is a wind-bag, filled with a gusty wind from Heaven.
Beerbohm’s Chesterton continues:
It is always about the thing that we love most that we talk most. About this thing, therefore, our errors are something more than our deepest errors: they are our most frequent errors. That is why for nearly two thousand years mankind has been more glaringly wrong on the subject of Christmas than on any other subject. If mankind had hated Christmas, he would have understood it from the first. What would have happened then, it is impossible to say. For that which is hated, and therefore is persecuted, and therefore grows brave, lives on for ever, whilst that which is understood dies in the moment of our understanding of it—dies, as it were, in our awful grasp. Between the horns of this eternal dilemma shivers all the mystery of the jolly visible world, and of that still jollier world which is invisible.
Read the rest here. A Christmas Garland, the 1912 collection in which the parody appeared, also features Beerbohm’s Christmas-themed imitations of Hilaire Belloc, Henry James, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and others.
Thanks to William Brafford, who recently defended symbolic logic on this blog, for bringing the piece to our attention.
December 12th, 2012 | 7:34 pm
Young Anna, those who find Chesterton obtuse because they are opposed to things religious, I put in one class. You find here people like the late Christopher Hitchens, who observed something praiseworthy in Chesterton, but was forced to misconstrue or misunderstand his words at the risk of finding them to make sense. I don’t agree with such people, but I understand them.
Those who dislike Chesterton but embrace what he embraced, namely orthodox Christianity, I do not understand. There is certainly no accounting for taste. I’ve never really seen the appeal of C.S. Lewis, although most Christians are gaga for him. Honestly, until recently I never saw what all the fuss was concerning St. Augustine, but I’m slowly coming around.
Try talking to an Aristotalean about Plato, or a Thomist about Bonaventure. The annoyance, or the simple misunderstanding, is palpable. Didn’t St. Thomas think that St. Anselm’s proof of God’s existence was circular logic? It’s hard not to think that Aquinas was simply missing something he was not temperamentally inclined to seeing.
But it does seem that there is a certain element at First Things that enjoys prodding the Chestertonians to produce a reaction. I don’t know if it’s frustration, or condescension, or just mischief. But I would submit that Milco’s piece was not very charitable, and the quotes above seem to be subtly scolding to adoring Chestertonians.
Concerning Beerbohm’s piece – he gets the tone but is nowhere near the substance. But then again, if you’re not one of those who “gets” Chesterton (by all accounts, a minority among the readership of First Things) you wouldn’t really notice.
December 12th, 2012 | 8:31 pm
AF,
You’ve never seen the appeal of C.S. Lewis?!? I jest, though I’m a fan of his. Thanks for your comment. I actually do quite like Chesterton—I’ve read and benefited from Orthodoxy, The Everlasting Man, Manalive, the St. Francis biography, The Man Who Was Thursday, dozens of his essays, etc.—and we’re likely to post a more, um, balanced view of him on the blog or perhaps On the Square soon.
Elliot Milco’s view is not that of all First Things staff. (David Mills, for instance, is on or at least used to be on the board of the Chesterton Review.) I believe it was mischief more than any general FT hostility to GKC that lay behind the post.
As for the Beerbohm parody, I agree with you that he doesn’t capture the substance; as a fan of Chesterton, I simply found it entertaining (actually, more like hilarious). Given this week’s other post on GKC, I can see how people would think I meant to ridicule him. That was not my intention.
December 12th, 2012 | 8:44 pm
Well said, Zamarro.
I’ve met people who simply do not like GKC’s writing, and he can indeed be difficult to comprehend. But some of his critics seem to think that GKC fans are merely entranced by his style.
Hitchens seized upon the ‘paradox’ idea and sought to extinguish it, which missed the point. The whole ‘paradox’ theme is a result of Chesterton’s recognition that the truth was so often inverse to popular wisdom.
To my mind, GKC did not simply seek out paradoxes; he wanted to see the world with fresh eyes, and the best way to do that was to turn conventional thinking on its head. That’s why parodies and critiques don’t work when they focus on his style. The style was driven by the substance.
The overriding impression for this Chesterton fan is that the man could get to the essence of an idea and free it from the tired, lazy cliches and attitudes that prevent us from fully appreciating the truth; and he would do so in a typically joyous and witty fashion.
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