Yet it is a wonder Dom James lets me go on disrupting things as I do. It obviously bothers him and upsets his own peace of mind at times. I guess he is content to keep me in the trap and not let me out to spread the bad news. That reassures him, gives him a sense that he is in control: and then he continues with indirect hints which try to silence me: but he does not insist. He does not want to be in the role of a “reactionary” and repressive Superior – and also he is always influenced by the fact that people like what I do and say. He is not so much afraid of silencing and suppressing me, as of displeasing all these people. Only let them be displeased (with me) – and my story would be a different one.
July 26, 1967. St. Anne
There have been worse riots this summer than ever before – and everywhere. Cincinnati (even Louisville – where whites were causing the disorder), Newark, Cleveland, Erie, and especially Detroit were the worst so far. In other words all the illusions about a peaceful and orderly settlement of things has really broken down and the violence is becoming revolutionary – though still in a haphazard, nihilistic sort of way. Things are as I said they would be when I wrote about it all three or four years ago. The rest is coming: perhaps the next election (1968) will be a big step towards Fascism. The majority of whites will find no other answer. There were five thousand paratroopers called in to Detroit.
Dom James has given Fr. Hilarion permission to live as a hermit and today, I understand, a 30 foot trailer has arrived for him to live in. But I also understand there was some protest about this in a Council Meeting. Fr. H. is here at most ten years and has not served the community in any exacting job – and everyone knows he is getting permission not so much because he has a hermit vocation as because he can’t stand living in the same house with Dom James – and it’s mutual. But the hermit life is not the answer to that kind of problem, and I thought Dom James would have been fairer simply to let the man go somewhere else and do what he wants. But he will go to such lengths just to keep his name on our books! I wonder what will come of it. I imagine H. is perfectly capable of enjoying life alone in a trailer – but what about all the others in the community who think they want the same thing?
Dom Ignace Gillet is coming for his first visitation here in a day or two. About which nobody especially cares, knowing it is a pure formality. Br. Eric put up some curtain rods for me (I can’t handle machines to drill holes in concrete) and now I can close off the front windows at night and when saying Mass. Also I hope to say Mass up here more often. Am making a tape at Sr. Luke’s request for the Lorettines’ General Chapter. Wrote a letter to a Contemplative Nuns’ Superior in Canada whose bishop wants them to make themselves “useful,” take care of old people or etc.
Getting late. For once there is a hot-night racket of insects and frogs (it has been very cool this summer). I wasted time re-reading bits of this journal – looking again for the M. stuff – so hopeless. She has been in Cape Cod, I know, and got back Saturday (that was her plan). I have not had a chance to contact her and – what’s the use? – don’t especially want to. And yet … it has been so foolish. I know that what I have to do is work on my meditation, and on the kind of life that people forget exists. And she is no help in that. Yet I felt so much more real when we were in love. And yet too I know how much illusion was in it. (Or at least I can make a good guess!)
July 27, 1967
Today a copy of Victor Hammer’s last book reached me, from Carolyn. A beautiful thing – in its physical production, and in his thoughts. An admirable testament, and I spent the afternoon reading it, sad and moved. So many of the pages were things he had brought over in proof to discuss last year! I certainly miss him. This evening I reflected how his visits were always something reassuring, stabilizing – because of his intelligence and European culture. All the things we could talk about – from cave art to Pavese, from Austrian rococo to Berenson. I never felt distracted and restless after one of his visits with Carolyn here: we belonged together. Other visits disturb and distract me, as if I had somehow been untrue to myself – involved in small talk, or trivialities. With Victor and Carolyn – we were not necessarily serious at every moment and we could drink a good bottle of wine and some Spanish brandy on top of it: and I really enjoyed it, without an afterthought. Others are much more like strangers, even though I like them too.
Guy Davenport and Gene Meatyard (and Maddie) are also good to talk to, and with Gene and his ideas for photographs I always find we are doing something exciting and good.
August 1, 1967
Nightfall. Crickets and thunder. Last night there were three storms here, the worst just about the time I got up (3:15). Violent rain threshing down, continual lightning and as I was putting on my shoes a terrific thwack of lightning striking in the woods near my cottage. I jumped! After Lauds (which I recited with more devotion than usual!) the storms cleared a bit, or rather moved up toward the east. Our storms go over to Loretto. I went out on the porch and my morning meditation consisted largely in attention to the marvelous play of three storms over our valley: one far south, one east (having passed over here), one passing by in the NW. Some lovely shapes and signatures of lightning in the South.
When the sun came up we had a clear morning. I said Mass at the hermitage and read late. When I was saying the little hours about 10, the bell rang for a death in the monastery. It was Fr. Nicholas [Caron], the translator at visitations, who had a heart attack while translating for Dom Ignace Gillet in the scrutiny and died ½ hour afterwards. A good simple priest (Canadian). I met Dom Ignace, who also seems to be a simple type and less of a big wheel than Dom Gabriel. Two others are translating in the Scrutiny and I was drafted to translate in the evening chapter. Which I did. I have just come back. A quiet, comforting talk on love, death, eternal life. Felt the peace and security it generated in the community and wondered – how much of this is psychological? How deep is it? Is it too easily reassuring? I don’t know. I know my own faith is less comfortable, and I am not proud of that necessarily. Yes it is all right to say we will get to heaven and hundreds of “souls” will come running up to thank us for helping them get there. And yet – is that what it will be like? “Eye hath not seen.” I have no idea what it will be like. Yes, I believe it. But not in the way he seemed to imagine it. He talked about how easily we forget those we love on earth, and as I walked up through the field I was thinking of M., as if that were the kind of love he meant. I haven’t been in contact with her for over a month – and have no plans for getting in contact in the near future. Yet I wondered how she is.
Heavy doses of rain began to fall on the roof of the hermitage. Beyond the woods, the insistent lowing of Andy Boone’s cow. I am up late. It is time to go to bed. Tomorrow they take the body of Fr. Nicholas to Georgia to his own monastery.
August 2, 1967
Reading [Joost] Meerloo’s remarkable manuscript Homo Militans [Militant Man] (not yet published in English – he wants me to collaborate with him on it). It is very interesting for the idea that I am working on – ambiguity and “communication” through the language – doubletalk and doublethink – surrounding peace and war. He makes so clear the fact that on another level than that of explicit statements, we convey fears, hostilities etc. which are the “real” communication.
This is the explanation of what was healthy in Dom Ignace’s talk in chapter last night. The thoughts were completely familiar and ordinary – and underlying them was really no hostility that one could sense, only an authentic peacefulness, well-wishing, acceptance of the hearers etc. The problem is that this benevolence seems to imply that the past ignores unpleasant realities in modern life and assumes an archaic stability which no longer exists to support this “peacefulness” in younger monks.
And I am not peaceful. I realize (through Meerloo) how much my own life is an unsuccessful attempt to control my own hostilities – perhaps not entirely unsuccessful: but hardly “whole.”
Evening. I sit up late again listening to crickets and frogs b
ecause I can’t go to bed yet. I had to translate in chapter again tonight – which is not my business at all, and realize I may be stuck with this for the rest of the visitation. Came back feeling stupid, as if I had done wrong. And in fact these sessions in chapter are, in their own way, stupid. Dom Ignace was very nice and simple and gave a talk on his impressions of Japan and I did a good job of translating and made everyone happy – and it was childish. I am ashamed of myself. I did the best I could and it was silly. And so I pretend I belong here … as if I belonged somewhere. The woods, OK. But I came back feeling sad. And I realize it is this way almost everywhere and with everyone except very few people. Going to chapter – just as reprehensible as going to Thompson Willett’s and playing with little Alice in the pool. Got back – read a happy underground paper from Cleveland and felt the same about that. It is silly. It is stupid shit. Then I read a little poetry magazine. The same. Do I now have to think there is something the matter? This does not follow. I will no doubt have to go to chapter for a few days and do my silly bit. But I don’t have to read happy newspapers and poetry magazines that still take themselves seriously. Or anything else of the kind. The Suramgamma Sutra – maybe. That’s different. And there’s a lot of classic shit in that too. Fortunately I had some bourbon in the hermitage.
August 4, 1967
Fortunately I have got over that particular bout of nonsense and feel much better. I guess, however, it is understandable. Light is thrown on the situation by an article Sister Luke sent (review of [Irving] Goffman’s Asylum [Chicago, 1961] by Sister Aloysius – a student of Marcel’s) – the question of the total institution. I am undoubtedly feeling the effects of twenty-five-twenty-six years of “total isolation” – in which I have been freer than most but in which, because of my masochism and insecurity, I tend to bog down in self-pity and self-defeat. And Dom James is a case any way. – The thing that was really irritating me was the fact that Cardinal Koenig is coming to this country, and had invited me to meet with him, Norman Cousins and some others in the East to discuss the business of his commissions and the Archbishop urged me to go – and Dom James refuses. The refusal is not absolutely definitive yet but might as well be. I know he has a bad conscience about it because he was rattled and almost incoherent, besides telling a few lies, or rather getting across a few deceptive insinuations. The problem is partly that I cannot believe him or really respect him. But so what? For my own part I know I do not need to be present at a meeting with Cardinal K. and it is just as well I don’t get involved in something that might lead to a “career” of sorts – and this is what Dom J. wants to prevent above all: my having any kind of importance in the Church. Honestly – I am not sorry about that!
Anyway, last night Dom Ignace gave a talk with lantern slides about Hong Kong. Curious! The idea of the Abbot General who goes around making everybody happy some way or other! I appreciate his well-meant kindness. One feels he is at least trying. I enjoyed some of the pictures of Hong Kong at night – and some of the sampans, beautifully built boats, even though half-ruined. Came up home thinking of the difference between the way a sampan is built and the way an American car is built. The sampan is beautiful because it is built to be what it is according to traditional design that embodies experience and is practical. The car may or may not be beautiful, depending on the year but the design is self-conscious and the purpose is to “sell” beauty. Hence the project is essentially meretricious. There are indeed lovely whores – both here and in China. But the whore’s society should not become a standard of truth, a measure of the human. When it does … With us it has. And I can see where in certain areas and periods of Chinese culture it did too.
Yesterday I had to see Dr. Mitchell about a bad knee now. Arthritis, or more especially some long word I can’t remember – so I can’t kneel. “Old soccer injuries” he keeps saying. (What I played was rugby.) Around the U. of L. – struck above all by the overcompensating efforts at friendliness on the part of some Negroes. One of them in a very loud rather comic conversation with a girl student about an exam. The Negro girl in the cafeteria calling a white cracker type girl “honey.” Well, it was good. I don’t think most Negroes are too happy about the summer’s violence and they don’t want to get themselves feeling separate and excluded.
The U. of L. library is a great mess because they are in the midst of changing their cataloguing system and moving all the books around. I couldn’t find anything I was looking for. But I did manage to find a few things I was not looking for – [Bertolt] Brecht’s [Die] Hauspostille, something of Giordano Bruno – [James] Mooney – on The Ghost Dance [Religion (Seattle, 1965)] and two volumes of Man with good articles. Particularly now I see I have to read Claude Lévi-Strauss.
August 5, 1967. F[east] of Our Lady of Lourdes
Said Mass at hermitage and fasted. A beautiful day. At noon, instead of sitting around feeling hungry, I went for a walk over to see Fr. Hilarion’s new hermitage, the trailer which has been installed over on Linton’s. The door was not locked (it would not shut properly) so I got in and looked around. It is fairly roomy for a trailer but still looked as if a good sneeze would blow it over and as far as I am concerned I don’t think I would like it. But my three-room cinder block cottage is luxurious in comparison, and very nice now, full of books and supplies, venetian blinds, curtains etc.
Fasting was not too hard, even on a 24-hour stretch. And it slows you down, which perhaps in my case is a good thing. Took some pictures – roots again, this time with a Roleflex which I like very much. I need to get something that might serve as a cover for “Edifying Cables.” Typed a couple of new poems from the big longhand book and can’t say I am sure about them. Yet they sound good on tape, at least to me.
Yesterday I went to Dom Ignace for my official turnout at the scrutiny – he took careful notes, and when I happened in passing to refer to René Char (who after all has family near Aiguebelle) Dom Ig. had never heard of him. He carefully wrote down in my report “René Char.” Also he had not heard of the Detroit riots. I told him of them but he did not write them down!
August 9, 1967
Hot night. Woods alive with insects and tree frogs. Steamy. My glasses got steamed up when I put them on. There was a heavy four-or five-hour storm this morning during which lightning hit the utility pole next to the hermitage and blew out some bulbs. A great whack! I thought all the lights were gone. Read with a kerosene lamp when it appeared that all my front room lights were useless. Glad I had finished Mass (though I would say Mass with candles only and do, after the Sanctus).
The regular visitation closed. I had to interpret for Dom Ignace in chapter every evening and tonight read the Vis[itation] card. Nothing very special on it. But I think the visitation was a good one, all things considered. It was peaceful and he is a nice, reassuring, well-meaning person, obviously not looking for opportunities to prove himself the boss etc., but content to keep people tranquil and things in order. So nothing much is done, but perhaps in this situation it is best simply to stay quiet and find our situation tolerable – I won’t say hopeful.
Reading Carl Amery’s excellent book on the German Church. Capitulation [New York, 1967]. Instructive for everybody. A lot of what is said applies here too. Very much so!
The Church of the monastery is nearly finished, finally – after nearly 16 months of work. I find it looks pretty good inside, and is still recognizable as the Church of Gethsemani, though the apse windows are gone (which I don’t necessarily regret). The stalls are in a different place and so is the altar, but it is improved all around. Since I am glad it is basically the same, after all those years of sweat and patience and exultation in the old one. I don’t expect to be in this one much except occasionally for concelebration. There are fewer stalls than there were before and a great void between the stalls and the sanctuary.
So many memories of the old Church – the energy and agony I had to put into just getting through some of the ceremonies – and yet I remember all with a kind of j
oy, because of the graces, especially of the first days here. And being Hebdomadary, singing the Mass, was a joy, too, though I was often so painfully nervous about it.
I’ll always remember the temporary third-floor chapel too – standing in the sacristy there on Sundays looking out over the starlit fields and St. Joseph’s hills and the distant hills behind Athertonville, and praying for M. (especially last year!). What a crazy life this has been!
This afternoon wrote out some answers to an interview from a Marxist magazine in Chile (Punto Final).
August 11, 1967
Finished Carl Amery’s Capitulation. One of the best things I had read on modern Catholicism as it is – in its identification with bourgeois material establishment, its inclination to favor the bomb and war (against Communism), to frown on pacifists and radicals, but at the same time to triumphally present “progressive” images of itself – Mercedes-Benz churches – streamlined liturgy conducted by boy Sergeants etc. And (as in Germany) its serene capacity to eat its cake and have it: to celebrate in the same breath [Franz] von Papen, who lined the Church up with Nazism, and the [indecipherable] resistance fighters – all five or six of them, who were destroyed by the Nazis while abandoned and excluded by their fellow Catholics ([Fr. Alfred] Delp, [Fr. Max Josef] Metzger, [Franz] Jägerstätter etc. Even unknown to fellow Catholics).
The book reinforces my conclusion that there is nothing to be looked for from Church officialdom. Any good that I will ever do for the people of my time will be done, if at all, in spite of my Superiors rather than with their help. This is certainly true of my writing: Dom Frederic actively encouraged it (but probably would not have done so if he had known where it would lead). Dom James has tolerated what he could no longer prevent – because it was too successful and he would look like a reactionary. He confines himself to hints about writing “only spiritual things.” His prohibition on any going out, and contacts at semi-official conferences etc. (like the Koenig affair) is really all to the good. It keeps me from getting involved in the ambiguities of official dialogue and image making for the Post Conciliar Church. Good!
Learning To Love Page 35