There is no question that one cannot realistically assess all this without taking into account the unimaginable: the possibility of sudden massive destruction all over this nation. It is real. It is real now. How cope with that? Don’t ask me. All I know is that perspectives are different – my solitude is more significant – after all no matter what collective rituals they may have devised for atomic war, you face death alone anyway: you have to make some decision as to what your life may fully mean. Solidarity – yes. I can see it is going to be a strange kind of underground solidarity perhaps, with people who know they cannot belong to the world of the established, organized insanity. Who perhaps have some other, slightly better, insanity – that may make sense if anyone survives. And of course everyone might …
What I find it hard to stomach is the sense of being massively lied to, conned, pushed around, manipulated, forced into patterns I cannot agree with – in a word, the pestilence! And, as Camus says, one must identify it and resist. How? It is at once the same old pestilence and a brand new one. Note that Bohr was right at the heart of things in World War II even when he came up against Churchill – what good could he do? We are inheritors of the consequences of that failure (for which Bohr himself can certainly not be blamed). (Unless the fact that he was a modest, soft-spoken, reflective person and not an operator is to be held against him!)
June 9, 1967
Apparently the Israel-Arab war is practically over – the Israelis having destroyed most of the Arab planes, taken over Jordan and pushed their way to Suez. The rest will now be shouting and blustering in the UN. Russian and American warships are watching one another in the Mediterranean. I haven’t seen a paper. I got this from the Prior yesterday. In any event the situation appears to be much less critical than it was on Monday. And our habit of crisis has been hardened by another degree.
Tuesday – the O’Callaghans and their children with Gladys Ford and her children and two of Marie Charron’s children and one from the Hennecy’s came out for a picnic. Pleasant, bewildering, all this movement and brightness and multiplicity – fishing, pogo-sticks, softball, a frisbee, other games the names of which I never knew – children filling my hands with rubber crabs and flies they made in school (I put a large black fly on the open dictionary in the library). Questions. Coming and going. “Now I’m going to sit there next to you. Keep my place for me. Don’t let anybody take it while I get my plate. That’s my plate there, you watch it, don’t let anybody take it ….” The kids are so beautiful though. Their eyes and their smiles. And very nice kids too.
I am reading Kafka’s Castle again – this time it hits me harder than before, for some reason. It so exactly describes life in the Catholic Church! The firm and stable unreality of relations between subject and superior – the creation of a small pseudo-supernatural mystery world of curial bureaus from which emanate incomprehensible instructions, warnings, rewards. Perhaps one thing that makes me most laugh: The new archbishop tells Dan Walsh that the Apostolic Delegate (of all people!) thinks very highly of me, wants to come here on retreat etc. (I know he won’t!) Then a few days later – the letter of the Delegate to Dom James, sent me from J. in France, with raised eyebrows over my being an advisor of the NAPR (priest-marriage outfit). Meanwhile the Delegate is one of 27 new cardinals.
There is a certain solemnity and mystery about the messages that come from afar – Washington – Rome. Unfortunately there is no mystery about messages from the Abbot, which are at once pseudo-paternal and puerile. And his mind, at least, one knows well enough, with all its faces and concealments. From Cîteaux he sent fleets of postcards to the community – all with the same idiot message and all written, no doubt, before he left – taken to be mailed from France, all for Jesus, through Mary with a smile.
So Fr. H. tore up his postcard and left the pieces in a neat little pile in the room where he kept his work clothes etc. – and disappeared. He called from somewhere telling the Prior he did not intend to return at least right now. No one knows where he is, exactly. One sometimes has to be drastic to get a message through to the Castle – but even then does the message get through? Dom James will be stirred with righteous emotions, but the chances of his ever understanding why such a thing happened are simply zero. And no one any longer even bothers to try to tell him. Except perhaps Fr. Tarcisius, who is young and still eager.
The question always in the back of the reader’s mind in the Castle “Why does K. stay in that damned village? Why does he imagine he has to penetrate the Castle?” But he has come to stay. For in fact wherever he might go, it would everywhere be the same.
June 10, 1967
The Beatles’ “Taxman” is running through my head. They are good. Good beat. Independence, wit, insight, voice, originality, they take pleasure in being Beatles, and I do not resent the fact that they are multi-millionaires, for that is part of it. They have to contend with that sneaky taxman.
Still have not read Teilhard de Chardin and really have no intention of doing so – though sometimes I pick up the [Henri] De Lubac book on him [The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Desclée, 1967)] and look at it. I have read only The Divine Milieu [New York, 1957] – and my review of it was stopped, though that article is now being published in Brazil I understand.
I have the greatest liking and sympathy for Teilhard as a person and especially because of the treatment he had to undergo from his superiors – consistently silenced, removed from the scene, set aside, deprived of all recognition, all the usual petty machinations of a baroque, political Church to keep him quiet, and to prevent him having a “bad influence.” And when one considers the approved illegible dullness that was encouraged and flourished instead!
On the other hand, are the neologisms of Teilhard much better? Good intentions, heart in the right place, wanting the right thing, but did he really have the necessary gifts? If it comes to science, I will gladly read later and better scientists. If it comes to poets … he does not even begin to be one. As for theology, I must admit that I become more and more suspicious of it in its contemporary form. After Barth. Does one have time for all the superficial journalistic chatter that comes out on all sides? I don’t.
Then there is the ms. of the English translation of Maritain’s Le Paysan de la Garonne. It is painful. I am sorry I told him I liked the French edition – for it does have some good insights no doubt, but it is not a good book. In its own way it, too, is tedious journalism. Why did he have to feel bound to get involved in this utterly stupid controversy? I made the same mistake (less controversially) with Redeeming the Time.15 As if I too had to be “heard.” (Fortunately I let it be published in England, only then changed my mind.)
Joe Cunneen is working over the translation of the Paysan and the translator is upset – and both are firing amended chapters at me and I am trying to finish my booklet on Albert Camus’s The Plague. A plague on both their houses.
M. spoke of perhaps meeting in Louisville in a couple of weeks, but I have grave doubts. A lot of water has gone under the bridge, and I wonder if either of us really wants to see the other that much. Of course I would like to see her – but it could so easily be a letdown, a real disappointment. We are obviously no longer in love, and not even particularly in tune with each other, having much different worlds to live in and such different interests. It is not at all like last year. And now having half committed myself to seeing her, I am thinking of getting out of it. And I am sure she has the same doubts too. It would be wiser to forget the whole thing – and to remember her as she was last July 16, standing on the walk in front of Lourdes Hall as my cab drove away.
Still don’t have any sink for my water. Temporary taps were put in after Easter – waiting for cabinet maker to come through with something. 3 months. It took two and a half months to get the well dug and now it takes longer than that to get a sink. Thank God I have a pump and a hot water heater and can wash my dishes, at least, in a bucket.
June 11, 1967
The Castl
e. A fantastically suggestive book for anyone living precisely the kind of “Castle” life I live. An ironic tract in Ecclesiology. My order and my Abbot believe firmly in maintaining a kind of Village-Castle relationship in their monks. Thus creating and maintaining something like the intensely neurotic anguish and alienation which Kafka describes so subtly. Too subtly. But the subtlety is part of it. The needless yet necessary subtlety. All this digging into motives of motives …
And I face the fact that this is my own sickness.
How does one get well? Am I too old to get well? Is it possible for me simply to leave this village and deny this Castle? Is that what I should do in the name and for the sake of health?
Or is that just another maneuver (or however the hell you spell manoeuver)?
Who says that this is the only place where one lives a Castle existence? What about General Motors, the Pentagon, Madison Avenue, the Kremlin?
It seems to me naive, the great illusion to suppose that getting out of here and into “the world” one gets out of the Castle-village bind. One merely gets into a different aspect of it.
Also The Castle is not a sick book, it is a healthy book about a sick situation, because it admits the sickness. Too much modern optimism seems to consist merely in looking at a bad situation through the small end of the telescope, and saying it isn’t really there.
On the other hand it is imperative to overcome Castle sickness – involvement in Byzantine and futile hierarchical relationships – hoping in the inscrutable machine – here where I am. But it is so firmly built in to the system I belong to, and I am so deeply obsessed with it, that I wonder if I really can be free. It would be an awful thing to be caught in this forever, without issue. I have hope: hope of a new hope: not hope in myself or in the guitars. What is this hope? I don’t know. What are its real risks? What is the real struggle it demands of me?
June 12, 1967
Finished The Castle except for the fragments at the end. This is I think the third time I have read it. Surprising how much I had forgotten. It is as though the first time, because this time I have been really open to it. The extraordinary scene in the upper floor of the Inn, the corridor of the officials, where they wake up in the morning, the files are distributed etc. Fascinating: a very great piece of writing.
Kafka is one of the few writers still capable of making me want to write a story because he is one of the few whose approach I find credible for myself – a dream-like, free association dealing with subliminal events, letting them organize themselves, and not bothering to find an “end.” True, it is sometimes a bit boring. (Need to study the fragments he deleted, and see why perhaps.)
After reading Kafka all life becomes much more curious because one sees it in that strange perspective, hears people talking and sees them acting as automata, and it is very revealing. Because to a great extent that is what they – we – are.
Visit of two brothers of Taizé yesterday. Young. From the mission in Chicago, nice guys with a lot of questions, one a Dutchman the other a Swede. “What is the function of the contemplative life in this modern world?” “How do you explain the aim of the monastic life to young people?” “What questions do novices ask?” “How do you explain your own (Cistercian) way of life in the modern world?” All these questions have become for me somewhat embarrassing and unreal. I still have to try to answer them, I imagine, but when I do the answer turns out to be forced, and the voice that speaks is no longer mine. Just the talking machine. I am not at all interested either in “being a Cistercian” or in giving any account whatever of what that might possibly mean.
When they met with the group chapter it was disquieting and revealing. Long, serious, rambling, rather desperate speeches by Bro. Casper, the cook, who seemed scared. All about those on the battle line and those behind the line. A frenzied and mechanical justification of the old “dynamo of prayer” line, which is Dom James’s only and official explanation of our value in the world. One wonders if everyone here believes that – but most are plenty scared if it seems to be questioned. It was not a line in which the Taizé boys seemed especially interested.
The most curious thing about Taizé is the fact that they have got themselves fully implicated in the hierarchical Catholic castle life. In order to preserve their place of singular importance in the “ecumenical movement” they have to be very careful of their relationship with Rome and with the various chanceries. As a result they are completely caught up in the routine of clearing everything with Catholic officials and indeed are more involved in this than many Catholics are. They say they “have to” do this and it is obvious that they depend more and more on official Catholic support and are indeed perhaps being used by Catholic officialdom. This to me is absurd, and I told them so. What is the good of being Protestants if they abdicate their freedom and get into this ludicrous tangle of telephone wire and red tape? Their only reply was that it was “absolutely necessary for the ecumenical movement.”
June 15, 1967
News from the General Chapter is discouraging. The aim of the newly approved experiment seems merely to soften the life, make it comfortable and relaxed, so that people won’t get frustrated and leave. But this will not help: they leave not because the life is difficult but because it has come to seem pointless – and these relaxations will not give it meaning. Quite the contrary: the whole special character, the physiognomy of the Cistercian life is apparently being sacrificed – except for the one thing: “we do not do any parish work – we do not go outside to teach ….” Nothing whatever is being done to make this life more seriously contemplative, or to orient it in that sort of direction. Diet relaxed (really that is comprehensible). Private rooms can be allowed – (comprehensible too) – less work, less prayer, less of everything – and apparently more of nothing. No sense of any aim, just “make things more bearable.” Relaxation of the Rule really does not matter so much in itself if it is for some clear and legitimate purpose: the only purpose I can see to all this is – to keep people comfortable so they won’t run away altogether. Well, just watch! More than ever will leave and there will be very few vocations. I think this time they have really scuttled the boat.
On the other hand, I understand that the mail will be opened and censored again: on a point like that they’ll be strict! The aim is evidently to keep everyone under subjection and surveillance, putting in bribes and concessions, partly by the old authoritarian methods.
In other words: keep them in the monastery, keep them on the books of the order, fill as many choirstalls as you still can, even if you have to let them live an easy and pointless sort of life, just so they’ll stay inside the walls, and won’t leave, or start “experimental foundations”…
Glad I hurried to finish the booklet on Camus’s Plague before the hot weather got here. Finished it yesterday. Afternoon between 90 and 100 – better stay out of the house – read and meditate under the trees where there is a little air: I have been too anxious about work and have neglected my time for meditation in the afternoon. Now I am back at it, using Huprior, who is excellent. The new Mumford book came today from HB&W and I began it. It seems to be excellent – and defies all the currently accepted dogmas of the culture-history people.
Actually it is quiet and fine at the hermitage. Masses of red day-lilies. Joe Carroll was up with the tractor to cut grass – everything trim, tall pines, young trees growing.
Draghi, whom I haven’t seen for a long time, wrote. As usual he is interested in some bizarre thing, this time ESP – and predicts a big political assassination soon. Mao or Johnson. Not hard to guess Mao might get knocked off or Johnson either. Both are cordially hated.
And then there are the people who desire to be in contact by “thought waves” with “humans” from other Planets in flying saucers in Miami “after June 22.” The people of the other planets “like Miami because it used to be landing place for Atlantis”! Well. Maybe Johnson will be shot by or in a flying saucer, then everybody will be satisfied.
> I’m going to bed.
June 17, 1967
How little anyone understands here the real issues in the Israel-Arab conflict: and first of all the question whether the Western powers had any right to encourage and support the foundation of a Zionist nation. Certainly the Jews have a right to live peacefully in Palestine – with the Arabs who also have that right. What is needed is a Palestinian nation of Jews and Arabs – and I even suppose this was once possible. Maybe now it is no longer so. After [Joachim] Moubarac compares the (completely) Jewish occupation of Jerusalem (the former Arab part – mosque of Islam etc.) to the Nazi occupation of Paris. Well, anyway, that is how the Arabs look at it. Pope Paul’s idea of keeping Jerusalem an open city and giving access to all religions – was right. No one seems to have seen that – regarded it perhaps as a sentimental gesture to “please everybody.”
On the other hand, ambiguities arise from assuming that all these groups take their religion fully seriously – as they did in the Middle Ages. That is quite another matter! And Jerusalem may well be a sign of contradiction because of religious corruption – on the part of all the religions which call that city theirs and holy.
The tragedy is not understood. The need of reconciliation between Arabs and Jews was well put by I. F. Stone. But is it possible? Never less so.
One thing good may have come out of the war – maybe it slowed down escalation in the Far East: though perhaps not decisively. The place where I still most fear the beginning of the Third World War is definitely the Near East. On the other hand, it may be quiet for a brief space now – the Arabs being so badly beaten. But a bloody reckoning is unavoidable. 400 million Moslems …
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