By Subhasis Chattopadhyay –
Having a good library of one’s own is integral to the process of becoming human. This is why Benedictines and other contemplative communities continue to have great libraries to this day. For nothing else shapes the soul as reading. Here are some authors who should be read:
a) Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry is for those who are trying to find meaning in a world which seems bereft of justice; for those who are overwhelmed by the loss of their loved ones. Fr. Hopkins’ poetry is written in sprung rhythm and inaugurated the Modernist turn within British poetry much before Modernism within the arts began there. Here are a few lines from his works:
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
(From Hopkins’ eponymous sonnet)Márgarét, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving…
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
(Spring and Fall)
b.) Now we turn to another writer whose works negotiate the problem of loneliness which defines us as human beings. Graham Greene in his bleak novels charts the problematics of being holy in a world which is morally grey. Yet in all Greene’s works, the final truth springs from Greene’s conversion to Catholicism and then not being able to live up to the demands of being Catholic. His works continue to inspire generations of overworked priests struggling to come to terms with their failings after being burnt by the fire of God. The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter are good books to begin one’s journey in Greeneland.
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c.) Rumer Godden has written two books which are powerful portraits of being a Catholic nun before Vatican II. Godden’s works bring to us rare insights into the psyche of being in communities of women struggling to find meaning or, ‘the courage to be’ (vide Paul Tillich). In This House of Brede details the life within a British cloistered abbey for nuns and is one of the best books to date about the contemplative life and its struggles. Godden’s Black Narcissus is a book about missionaries trying to negotiate life in the Himalayas. These two works of fiction will change the way one perceives being within a religious community where one is often cut off from the outer world, and what is trivial seems important due to the closed nature of Religious communities.
Both Greene’s and Godden’s books have been made into movies which have not lost their appeal to this day. Add to these two novelists one other novel: A.J. Cronin’s The Keys of the Kingdom which lays bare the exhilaration and frustrations of a missionary serving in China and is a masterpiece in soul study within literature and Catholicism. There are many other writers to read, but their works will be discussed another day..
Happy reading.
Subhasis Chattopadhyay teaches English at the PG & UG Departments of English at Nara Sinha Dutt College (affiliated to the University of Calcutta), Howrah. He is a book reviewer with the Ramakrishna Mission’s Prabuddha Bharata, and though a Hindu, he studies Catholicism in all its myriad majesty and failings.