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GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY RTE
ONE: Way back in 1956, when George Stevens was writer, said the reviewer, “doesn’t wear his learning
shooing Giant with James Dean, Rock Hudson and lightly”, running through a wearisome and predictable
Carroll Baker, the English writer and academic, C.S.Lewis, list of cultural references and names, a nomenclatura
published a book called Surprised By Joy, dealing with scatered throughout the text like garnish. Knowing the
his journey from a childhood belief in the Chrisian work and writer in quesion I would have to concur.
God, to atheism, and back to organised Religion in the But of course the point is that learning shouldn’t
Communion of the Roman Catholic Church. be worn anyhow – not as something to shelter in, like
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings had been published two a diving suit, least of all on dry land, with boots, gloves,
years before, and I had been knocked head over heels by helmet and all. Sill less as a quasi-Masonic symbol.
that, as I had by Dean’s two previous ilms, paricularly The whole point of the discovery that is art,
East Of Eden, as I was by life itself. whatever branch of it, is to communicate: to let in the
I was fourteen, ambushed at every turn by the light, to touch, to be human, to feel. To communicate
possibiliies of actuality, and the itle of Lewis’ book stays one of those moments – recognisable to us all, even if we
with me as a leitmoif for the ime. Surprised by joy – can’t deine them – when we are ambushed, surprised,
impaient as the wind, wrote Wordsworth, and I was the summoned by the wonderful unknown, with which we
right impaient age for that, surprised by joy, elaion, hope, or fear, we are one. A special kind of nakedness,
heartbreak, engaged with things 24 hours out of the 24 and vulnerability; humility perhaps.
– or that’s how it seems to me now, as I sit here looking A mantra that has stayed with me all my life is the
back from the non-end of my life to the non-middle, telegram sent by Zorba, in Greece, to his ex-employer a
which is somewhere this side of the non-beginning. thousand miles away: Dear Boss, I have found a beauiful
But: do we ever remember anything right? green stone. Come and look.
I suspect that Napoleon’s famous statement, about Just that: Come and look.
the Day of his First Communion being the happiest of his
life, doesn’t really tell us anything, about religion, or life, THREE: When you look out the window of the
or Napoleon. Belfast/Dublin train, just north of Dundalk, you can be in
Beyond, maybe, that we can all – even Emperors – no doubt that you are travelling through the landscape of
be surprised by joy. some of the darker events of the Tain, of the Morrigan.
As the man whom Wordsworth called Spy-nosey put There is something numinous about that countryside.
it: We feel, and know that we are eternal. So too with the moment when you breast the hill
across the valley from Strokestown, travelling East
from Tulsk, suddenly - laid out before you - the central
TWO: All real poets are by necessity, learned people, grassy plain, as Queen Maeve saw it, stretches all the
in the sense of the Irish word saoi; that not all learned uninterrupted way to Louth and the dark lands of
people are poets, is, of course, a truism. Dundalk, and beyond.
And I’m not speaking of convenional learning, more No mater how many imes I see these, no mater
of the topography of the spirit: purlieus of magicians and how many imes I experience them, with full anicipaion
storytellers. – miles of it – behind me, they sill catch me by surprise.
I was reminded of this when I was reading a book The way a poem does, or a picture, or a snatch of
review the other day, and a phrase caught my eye. This music.
GONZAGA AT SIXTY: A WORK IN PROGRESS
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY RTE
ONE: Way back in 1956, when George Stevens was writer, said the reviewer, “doesn’t wear his learning
shooing Giant with James Dean, Rock Hudson and lightly”, running through a wearisome and predictable
Carroll Baker, the English writer and academic, C.S.Lewis, list of cultural references and names, a nomenclatura
published a book called Surprised By Joy, dealing with scatered throughout the text like garnish. Knowing the
his journey from a childhood belief in the Chrisian work and writer in quesion I would have to concur.
God, to atheism, and back to organised Religion in the But of course the point is that learning shouldn’t
Communion of the Roman Catholic Church. be worn anyhow – not as something to shelter in, like
Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings had been published two a diving suit, least of all on dry land, with boots, gloves,
years before, and I had been knocked head over heels by helmet and all. Sill less as a quasi-Masonic symbol.
that, as I had by Dean’s two previous ilms, paricularly The whole point of the discovery that is art,
East Of Eden, as I was by life itself. whatever branch of it, is to communicate: to let in the
I was fourteen, ambushed at every turn by the light, to touch, to be human, to feel. To communicate
possibiliies of actuality, and the itle of Lewis’ book stays one of those moments – recognisable to us all, even if we
with me as a leitmoif for the ime. Surprised by joy – can’t deine them – when we are ambushed, surprised,
impaient as the wind, wrote Wordsworth, and I was the summoned by the wonderful unknown, with which we
right impaient age for that, surprised by joy, elaion, hope, or fear, we are one. A special kind of nakedness,
heartbreak, engaged with things 24 hours out of the 24 and vulnerability; humility perhaps.
– or that’s how it seems to me now, as I sit here looking A mantra that has stayed with me all my life is the
back from the non-end of my life to the non-middle, telegram sent by Zorba, in Greece, to his ex-employer a
which is somewhere this side of the non-beginning. thousand miles away: Dear Boss, I have found a beauiful
But: do we ever remember anything right? green stone. Come and look.
I suspect that Napoleon’s famous statement, about Just that: Come and look.
the Day of his First Communion being the happiest of his
life, doesn’t really tell us anything, about religion, or life, THREE: When you look out the window of the
or Napoleon. Belfast/Dublin train, just north of Dundalk, you can be in
Beyond, maybe, that we can all – even Emperors – no doubt that you are travelling through the landscape of
be surprised by joy. some of the darker events of the Tain, of the Morrigan.
As the man whom Wordsworth called Spy-nosey put There is something numinous about that countryside.
it: We feel, and know that we are eternal. So too with the moment when you breast the hill
across the valley from Strokestown, travelling East
from Tulsk, suddenly - laid out before you - the central
TWO: All real poets are by necessity, learned people, grassy plain, as Queen Maeve saw it, stretches all the
in the sense of the Irish word saoi; that not all learned uninterrupted way to Louth and the dark lands of
people are poets, is, of course, a truism. Dundalk, and beyond.
And I’m not speaking of convenional learning, more No mater how many imes I see these, no mater
of the topography of the spirit: purlieus of magicians and how many imes I experience them, with full anicipaion
storytellers. – miles of it – behind me, they sill catch me by surprise.
I was reminded of this when I was reading a book The way a poem does, or a picture, or a snatch of
review the other day, and a phrase caught my eye. This music.
