Some readers of my first blog! post (I must interrupt here - it was actually only one person, the very same one who walked with me on the candlelit slopes of my first blog! He had not realised my rapture of the sentimental kind, ‘but then’, he said, ‘it was too dark to look in your eyes’), that reader thus commented – in private, I give you that – that he was also reminded of 'The Guardian' - you know, pieces written for the in-crowd that make you feel as if you are the most ignorant person on earth with all these references to deep novels and obscure films that one has not read or seen and of which they know every line by heart. It made him cancel his subscription to ‘The Guardian’ in the end and go for ‘The Financial Times’ instead which made him feel infinitely better. That his simple brain, as he put it, could cope with. There he was among his peers. Still, he liked the evocative tone of my introductory blog; the sound of the words, the flow, the feel of it, he remarked – it is just beautiful even if you don't understand it and don’t know where it is heading to. This is a compliment, mind you, coming from an economist. Too bad now for him that I am starting my second post on this blog with a very quotation from ‘The Guardian’, but I know he will forgive me magnanimously. ‘Such is the power of a great novel to make us feel that we own it almost as private property, as it were, and must resent any intrusion on our intimacy with it’, writes Christopher Hitchens in the book section of Saturday 27 September on account of the release of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ the film.
Such is the power indeed. I went to see Brideshead Revisited-the film last night (henceforth referred to as BR-the film as opposed to BR-the novel and BR-the-magnificent-series) in the company of 4 females – not of the female persuasion, although it must be said in this respect that the cinema theatre, quite ahead of London having opened BR-the film already two weeks ago – this for a small provincial town that nevertheless can boast on some euregional unpretentious international flavour and plumage, and I am interrupting again (I am very much aware that I am building monstrous Germanic constructions), although, as said, it must be said that the cinema theatre thus was packed, crammed to the nook with women of all ages (and a handful of men that I guess must be considered as being of the female persuasion, i.e. strong supporters of women’s rights), who must have unanimously proclaimed Monday evening the Holy Female Film Group Evening. I swear to God that I was utterly unconscious of this univocal declaration of independence, the women’s Fourth of July so to speak. Yet there I was among them, with my own retinue. I gather a similar instinctive force must have been at work by analogy of the biological phenomenon, as observed with chimpanzees and in cloisters and prisoner camps, that females living in groups tend to synchronise their menstrual cycle. The country I live in being the country it is and film tickets being available at reduced prices on Monday evening may also have had a strong instinctive, formative influence on this extraordinary occurrence.
Back to Brideshead and the power of a great novel made into a classic by Granada Television in the 1980s. I cannot but agree with Hitchens that BR-the film is a travesty. Oh, how one longs for Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews. There is so much not in the film, so much over the top, so much of that delightful subtlety and ambiguity lacking. But one should not mind, remarks Hitchens, as it brings the spectator back to the real Brideshead. In that sense, and that sense only, Brideshead is Revisited indeed. I wrote Mr B earlier today that my head was swimming with BR. With the concept of guilt, of sin, of English Catholicism, of Roman-Catholicism – the continental version. But are Sebastian and Julia Flyte really victims of their Faith, I wondered.
As a lapsed Catholic, which reminds me of someone retorting ‘isn’t that an oxymoron?’, I am still very susceptible to Gregorian chant, to the ethereal mysticism of Hildegard von Bingen’s songs, to the splendour of incense. As a lapsed Catholic of the continental stock I am, in short, a sensualist in religious affairs. Hitchens may say that the whore/Madonna concept could have been invented for Julia Flyte, I would add it could have been invented for me too, and with me for many others. Isn’t it Frank Zappa who has said ‘there’s nothing like a Catholic girl’. Incidentally, it is Woody Allen who has stated that ‘There is nothing sexier than a lapsed Catholic.’
My Catholicism had the innocence of Youth, and I am using Evelyn Waugh’s capital. It was almost an Emile experience – Jean-Jacques Rousseau-like. None of that parental pressure that would leave such a harsh imprint like in Sebastian and Julia Flyte’s case. My parents did not go to church but for the occasional weddings, baptism and funerals. They were catholic in the way so many Belgians are – non-practising, pragmatic, their Catholicism nothing more than a superficial social coating given at baptism. L’Union fait la force. In comparison I was a convinced Catholic as a child. I was enchanted. Enchanted with the whole pomp and circumstance. And even though I have spent one year at a catholic boarding school, I never experienced any of the gruesome repressive cruelties that some other lapsed Catholics recount. I must have been lucky. Or I never took it too seriously. Lapsing in my case was a natural, painless process, one of mind taking gradually precedence over matter, and commenced at the age of thirteen or thereabouts.
But some things cling tenaciously, as Hitchens writes. One of them is the attractiveness of sin, guilt and Redemption. It goes much deeper than one would think. Roman-Catholics, even lapsed ones, are immensely attracted to sin, guilt and sacrifice, and it has a reason. Has it occurred to you how they seem to have a predilection for getting themselves entangled in difficult dilemmas and situations from which they have to refrain or abstain? Remember Graham Greene’s ‘The End of the Affair’.
The key-word is sacrifice. Sins are there to be committed, to indulge in. We are speaking here of the grave or mortal sin. "Mortal sin requires full knowledge and complete consent. It presupposes knowledge of the sinful character of the act, of its opposition to God's laws. It also implies a consent sufficiently deliberate to be a personal choice. Feigned ignorance and hardness of heart do not diminish, but rather increase, the voluntary character of a sin." (C.C.C. # 1859). Conscious complicity is an absolute requirement. Sebastian and Julia Flyte meet that requirement perfectly. Sarah Miles in ‘The End of the Affair’ does as well. They need to commit their sins in order for them to sacrifice, deny themselves and be redeemed. Here we are at the crux of the affair: Divine Grace, and self-importance. Roman-Catholicism is a religion of grand deeds and dramatic gestures that are intrinsically egotistic in nature. It is the great Shakespearean masterpiece among existing religions, definitely in the Judeo-Christian atmosphere. It is the Greek tragedy reinvented. It centers on Racine’s emotional crisis. It is the religion of Titans, of heroes. No way is man regarded as a worm in Roman-Catholic eyes. On the contrary, man acquires mythical proportions, a God-like posture, in overcoming all these astounding perversions and unspeakable sins ("naughtiness high on the catalogue of grave sins" - BR) through suffering and sacrifice. Guilt, though not necessarily a prerequisite, definitely not for lapsed Catholics, helps so very well to build character, necessary for the Great Action, that the hero or heroine, i.e. oneself, simply feels he or she has deserved redemption, as a medal of honour, after such Herculean feats of relinquishment.
But one has to commit sin first. As Julian of Norwhich said: 'Sin is behovely, but all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.'
One does not have to be a practicing Catholic to know the feeling. A lapsed one will do equally well.
One does not have to be a practicing Catholic to know the feeling. A lapsed one will do equally well.
