The great author expressing a similar sentiment as the one which inspires PZ’s new DVD (below), slightly elucidated, and touching on some of Mockingbird’s core concerns. This comes from the final paragraph of the foreward to his book of short plays The Angel That Troubled The Waters:
“The last four plays here were written within a year and a half. Almost all the plays in this book are religious, but religious in that dilute fashion that is a believer’s concession to a contemporary standard of good manners. But these four plant their flag as boldly as they may. It is the kind of work that I would like to do well, in spite of the fact that there has seldom been an age in literature when such a vein was less welcome and less understood. I hope, through many mistakes, to discover the spirit that is not unequal to the elevation of the great religious themes, yet which does not fall into a repellent didacticism. Didacticism is an attempt at the coercion of another’s free mind, even though one knows that in these matters beyond logic, beauty is the only persuasion. Here the schoolmaster enters again. He sees all that is fairest in the Christian tradition made repugnant to the new generations by reason of the diction in which it is expressed. The intermittent sincerity of generations of clergymen and teachers have rendered embarrassing and even ridiculous the terms of the spiritual life. Nothing succeeds in dampening the aspirations of the young to-day–who dares use the word “aspiration” without enclosing it, knowingly, in quotation-marks?–like the names they hear given to them. The revival of religion is almost a matter of rhetoric. The work is difficult, perhaps impossible (perhaps all religions die out with the exhaustion of language), but it at least reminds us that Our Lord asked us in His work to be not only gentle as doves, but as wise as serpents.”
The Davis House
Lawrenceville, N.J.
June, 1928.
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3 responses to “Speaking of Thornton Wilder…”
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Please excuse me if I become too emotional. (I'm having a glass of wine.) But these are some of the most heartbreaking and encouraging words I've read in ages. As a columnist for a secular publication, I so identify with Wilder's description: "religious in that dilute fashion that is a believer's concession to a contemporary standard of good manners." And also ripping my gut: "Didacticism is an attempt at the coercion of another's free mind, even though one knows that in these matters beyond logic, beauty is the only persuasion." Recapturing the beauty… I'm convinced that THIS is the key! And maybe it really IS all about language. I've watched two segments of Paul's talk thus far. Hope to watch the rest tonight. Maybe the answers are there? Thanks, again, Mockingbird, for being such a luminous corner in the blogosphere… and in my life.
Profound words indeed.