’s NEVER CALL RETREAT Essay, Research Paper
It was for her sake that he was occasionally invited to the house, for there was little
love lost between Father and Uncle Peter. The latter, a devout Catholic, had objected to
his sister’s marrying "a freethinker, a Mason, a downright infidel." This
my father never forgave him, especially since he did not like Uncle Peter and called him a
"superstitious relic of the Middle Ages."
At some of our Saturday night parties, Uncle Peter would sit in the corner near me,
listen to the Babel of argument and drop caustic remarks in an undertone. He would puff
hard at his pipe, stroke his walrus mustache and grumble through clouds of smoke:
"Ah, they’ve found salvation at last. . . . It’s all in the magic word new!"
A monarchist and clerical, Uncle Peter was especially irritated becasue he knew that
sometimes, after most of the guests had left and a few intimate friends sat down with
Father around a fresh bottle of wine, there was even talk about a "new society."
The fact is, my father had begun calling himself a socialist. I doubt whether he
belonged to any political party; more likely dramatic criticism had led him from a
consideration of social problems as presented in the theater to a consideration of social
problems as they appeared in real life. His views on the evils of the old order and the
marvels of the new were abstract and for the most part, I suspect, a tribute to a
prevailing literary fashion. But my father was an eloquent man; when he denounced the
evils of "child labor, imperialist exploitation, poverty, inequality and war,"
my young heart trembled with a nameless fear and hatred for the prevailing world. On the
other hand, his glowing pictures of the future classless society filled me with a
wonderful sense of hope and longing, though if anyone had asked me what it was I longed
for, I would have had a hard time explaining.
While my parents loved me, they neglected me a great deal, too. Father had to write an
article a day for his paper, but into that one piece went months of the most complex
social life and all the intricate intrigues of the theater and the literary caf?s. I
didn’t see him all day; at night I saw him sometimes only after the theater. Mother
had little life outside of her husband’s; all her time and attention were devoted to
furthering and sharing Father’s career. Even in the summertime, when we went to the
Semmering mountain in the eastern Alps for our vacation, my parents were busy entertaining
friends and placating enemies. They were a wonderfully devoted couple, as I look back on
them today, I think they are to be envied; but as a child I sometimes secretly resented
their neglect. I will not be angry, doctor, if you tell me that I was somewhat jealous of
my father. [25]
[. . . .]
"If you did not consider it a trifle," I said, "you might be able to
write better poetry. Then, perhaps, you wouldn’t like anyone to censor it."
I’m no Milton, if that’s what you mean."
"If you were, you would fight as hard as he did for the right to utter your
thoughts without that magisterial interference which you find so delightful in
Plato."
I opened the, window and looked out into the deserted street. The skies were dark blue
and clear and there were brilliant stars over the spires of the great, sleeping town. I
began to feel sorry for some of the things I had said. My skepticism, which spared
nothing, spared my own thoughts least of all: How can you belittle a giant like Plato who
tried to find a way to establish justice among unequals? You know damned well that Kurt
submits to the magistrates because he identifies them completely with the best interests
of his community. Isn’t it true that great men of action understand the world of fact
better than the po
noblest of dramas. If Kurt knew English history better he might have said to me: how can
you look at Milton and not see the immense figure of Cromwell behind him? For the world of
fact, Cromwell; for the world of truth, Milton. Yes, Milton never submitted his poems to
the censorship of any magistrate and you are asking Kurt to act like a demigod. How many
men could bear the loneliness that went with Milton’s grandeur? The great English
poet had God to lean on. Kurt does not believe in God, and he needs someone to lean on,
someone to resolve his doubts, palliate his sense of guilt with censure, sustain his
self-regard with praise. He leans on Hans Bayer the way I once leaned on my father, Uncle
Peter, Professor Boucher. Upon whom do you lean now? A shadow called Man–a shadow that
may never exist in a future that may never come. Your arrogance is more shameless than
Kurt’s fear. [194]
[. . . .]
You can understand how it was, doctor. My story of man’s struggle toward democracy
had already briefly sketched the rise of man from the amoeba to Amos, and had indicated
the atrocities and advances of four thousand years of recorded history from the days when
the Assyrians flayed their war prisoners alive and nailed their skins to the walls of
their fortresses and Hammurabi issued his enlightened code, to the days when Pontius
Pilate was procurator of Judaea and the multitudes heard the Sermon on the Mount. And now
the amoeba who had grown into a two-legged hunter, a cannibal, a warrior; a slave in the
galleys, the fields, the mines; a priest, a poet, a philosopher, a Caesar; this creature
which for thousands of years had shed blood copiously in triumph and torrents of tears in
despair was now faced with the most tremendous idea that had yet filled the earth with
light; that all men are equal in the sight of God and love is the absolute condition of
the resurrection and the life. Equality and love and the essential unity of mankind the
world over, announced with such felicity and power by St. Paul: "There is neither Jew
nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are
all one in Christ Jesus," and that great luminous phrase which transcends the deadly
barriers of race: "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all
the face of the earth."
The most sublime things in Western literature have been written about that idea and
people have slit each other’s throats and burned each other at the stake to settle the
real meaning of the gospel of love, and it would be stupid and unpardonable presumption on
my part to do art than indicate its most obvious outlines. But how could I make the
readers of my book see the thing in practice? How could I give living shape to the old
problem which in the folly of my youth I used to call "the square and the
circle"? What single episode could I select which would show the effect of the gospel
of mercy and justice upon the amoeba which became first a cannibal, then a warrior
seething with wrath and vengeance? How could I make vivid the power of contrition and
forgiveness which the new faith set up like a mighty, luminous dam against the furious
seas of blood and tears raging across the world? And how could I make real the most
terrible chastisement which the church had at its disposal–the power to cast the sinner
out of the fold, to exile him into the greatest loneliness known to man, leaving
him utterly abandoned, utterly hopeless in the outer darkness whose borders led to
infinity? And how could I make anyone today believe that this awful power affected the
greatest as well as the humblest? It was at this moment that the second story about St.
Ambrose and the Emperor Theodosius leaped to my mind, and I set it down hastily in my
notebook. [387]