APOLOGIA[1]
Jean Charlot
I understand that this memoir is to take its place in a
symposium. Personalities with widely different interests must
have been picked[2]
to bring variety to the volume; I suppose that my apport should stand for the position[3]
of the plastic artist startled into articulateness as he suddenly realizes,
thanks to the letter from the Editor,[4]
that he still is part and parcel of the Catholic Church. So as not to mar the preconceived plan,
I will obediently, if not enthusiastically, try and define the obvious.
St. Thomas Aquinas makes it a rule of convincing reasoning that
besides[5]
stating the reasons in pro of a thesis one knows to be right,[6]
the objections[7] should also
be stated in full so as to silence in advance a possible opposition. This first part will be dedicated to
list the frictions[8] that I have
experienced as a Roman Catholic which, though not painful or essential enough
to impel me out of its orbit, are enough of a rash to keep me awake in church.[9]
Being a traveler of a kind, I have experienced physically this
universality of the Church. To use
François Coppée’s quaint addition to the English language, my trot‑globing
has made me intimate with the national slants of at least the French,[10]
the Mexican, and the American churchmen, so that when I speak of the Catholic
Church, besides the homogeneous if somewhat abstract spectacle that it evokes
in faith, I am confronted with a polyglot Babel of tongues and a[11]
miscellany set of pictures, hard to bunch together as being the facets of a
single architecture.
The French, I should say the Parisian, I experienced as a youth,
and the priests that taught my catechism managed, besides the French lucidity
of their introduction to dogma, to live on a most democratic footing with even
the bookish and proud brat that I was then.[12] They were my friends in spite of the
difference in age, and when in the glory of their liturgical vestments, they
would lift the Host and proceed with the Transubstantiation, this power seemed
to me as natural, though more sublime, than the power I had of scribbling match
men in the margins of my school books.
This first training opened to my reasoning powers and analytical mind
the field of religion as other teachers had introduced them to mathematics and
geometry, and my Parisian[13]
prayers were tinctured with a cold and clear investigation not unlike that attendant
on scientific research.[14] The brain seemed the best instrument of
prayer. My personal contact with
the Parisian clergy removed me forever from considering priests either as
black-robed hypocrites or living Buddhas.
If my contact with the Church had been all French,[15]
my vision of the militant Church would be clear-cut.[16] But my life from twenty to thirty[17]
was lived in Mexico, and though it be the same church in name and faith, the
racial applications are vastly different.
Where I had known French churches to be harbors, their cool, somewhat
austere setting helpful to concentration, the Mexican church offers a bedlam of
shapes and colors, addresses itself to the bowels rather than to the head. The stress is on bloody martyrdom and
flights of ecstasies, taking the place of Gallic ratiocination. Whereas the Frenchman believes in a
sanctity to be attained through a kind of everyday gentlemanly patience, a
sanctity which Huysmans compares in the case of St. Francis of Sales to a lace
handkerchief fraught with a whiff of patchouli, the Mexican usually proceeds to
it[18]
by a hound’s leap from the pit of mortal sin, his safest way being, instead of
the too wobbly[19] path of moral righteousness, the much safer imposition of
martyrdom. The priest in his
pulpit denouncing both himself and his herd as sinners arouses a passion for
God that warms the same veins and accelerates[20]
the same heartbeats as does physical covetousness. The[21]
door that leads to the fold is Love, and though its object be God, the
manifestation of it is as hot-blooded and as high-pitched in its pageantry as
the more sordid pomp of Satan. The
words of the Spanish mystics to describe their passions match what the discreet[22]
Frenchman calls the poetical license[23]
of the biblical turn of phrase.[24] The castles of the soul, the dark
night, need the Spanish redundancy of rhythm, a soul keyed to a hot blood of
Hispanic, or Moresque, or Indian origin; the unrolling of the Apocalypse is
neither too rich nor too strong to suit the Mexican faith.
Contrasted as this national brand of church was to the French, I
did not feel an incompatibility between them. Rather did this operation of the affective will complete the
operations of reason. Part of the
magic was due to plastic facts.
How could a painter’s eye resist the sight of a varicolored clergy whose
pigmentation ran from the pink of the Spanish hidalgo to the green of the
Tarahumara, passing by all shades of reds, coppers, and bronzes. A high mass with those metallic faces
and hands emerging from the gold and silver of surplices could silence in its
statuesque plastic whatever scruples against faith would arise in the
artist. A sermon delivered by
Indian lips as sharp and as defined as Egyptian sculpture edified through the
eye as much as through the ear.
To the young[25]
soldier just come back from the wars,[26]
the Mexican church was also an answer to questions raised by violent death and
physical sufferings. Here perhaps
a French outlook, in its serene insistency on the metaphysical, would have
proved insufficient. A French
faith was hard put to reconcile, otherwise than in a syllogism,[27]
spiritual goods and the sight of those men, bloated, retching, dying, after a
gas attack, this experience of maneuverings and of calculations to send a shell
to explode where it could wreck more living flesh.[28] The good Mexican martyrs pictured in
churches, beheaded, disemboweled, or crushed, were a comforting parallel to this
still vivid experience. The
physical descriptions of flames and worms in Purgatory and in Hell made by
comparison seem casual the intermittent hardships[29]
one had just passed through.
As a painter, to whom all things in both the inner and outer
world come to be figured in physical, paintable terms, the Mexican devotions,
with their kind of animal insistency on tactile things,[30]
dovetailed to perfection with my craft.
The Indian that comes home from a pilgrimage wears around his neck the medidas or measurements of the saint he went to visit. Those are ribbons of many colors with
which the pilgrim, as a tailor with his tape, has taken the measure of hips,
shoulders, neck, and height of the miraculous statue; in such a textual way
have artists through the ages searched through mathematical proportions what is
spiritual and permanent at the core of human beauty.
In the Church of Guadalupe, the[31]
pilgrims squat on the floor, covering their bare legs, arms, and heads with the
dust kindly overlooked by the sloth of sextons. Here again their devotion and my horse sense agreed; I have
always had a horror of well scrubbed people, a respect for this kindly film of
mother earth that identifies us with other fellow creatures and symbolizes our
end.[32] It is pleasant to think that God uses
today the same unhygienic accessories for performing miracles that he used in biblical
times, be they dust, saliva, or
mud.
Rome wisely decrees that local customs, however peculiar, should
be respected if their end be devotional.
Thus in the pilgrimage of Chalma after the mass confessions and
communions, the priest retires, leaving the nave in possession of the “Arab”
dancers, who could be described by the tourist, if there were any there, as
huge and ugly devils, masked and horned.
They perform a noisy and sweaty dance in front of the miraculous
crucifix that seals and entombs in his own cave Tezozomoc, Lord of the Caves, a
mighty daemon himself that was addicted, before he was put in leash, to child
sacrifices.[33] Such physical prayer, well able to
infuriate or petrify a cool head,[34]
gibes well with the artist, who receives and gives through his senses, whose[35]
working at his art would remain futile if it was less than a manual prayer; his
hands performing as it were the work of the Lord, as do here[36]
the Indian legs and feet.[37]
Amer. Church[38]
However, where salesmen have outdone themselves is in the
ecclesiastical art business.
Parishes that can afford it look like Madame Tussaud’s wax museum.[39]
While a bad architecture is bound to collapse, there is no such penalty
for sculpture and painting. It
seems hard to intend the meaning of the word as a segregation from God[40]
when one speaks of mortal sins against aesthetics. And yet when we think of the innocent wonderment which
characterizes the vision of our Lord as it does that of the greatest artists,[41]
it is hard to forgive the cleric for his obtuseness in the matter, for his
blindness to the fact that[42]
the flowers of the field are clothed in more splendor that Solomon in all his
glory; for shunning[43]
their grace and simplicity.[44] If Catholic art would only respect the
nature of the material, stop disguising its infamous plaster into marbles and
gold. A wooden statue that would
exhibit the facets made by the axe in the carving process would have a virtue
of humbleness, of truthfulness, that would make it a virtuous act. A stone saint that would remain boulder
shaped or block shaped would have a
kind of physical righteousness that would make its obeisance to God’s designs
on its matter.[45] Thus the style could blend with the
story to edify us.[46]
The photographic art that churchmen accept today as good art is a
negation of style, which is to the subject matter as the soul to a body. It is why this forest of statues one finds in churches is
like a great reunion of corpses, their souls unredeemed. They are also petty, as distracting as
the china dogs that an aunt of mine used to pile high on her whatnot, the altar
cloth[47]
completing the illusion with its doilies of antimacassar lace. Those
saints, who were the salt of the earth, have in this artistic rendition
suffered more than a loss of taste, they have become sugar.[48]
Though I cannot speak with authority on musical matters, the same
despicable love of gaudiness at the expense of beauty seems to be the
fashion. The wealthier the parish
the bigger the scale on which it dispenses its harmonic torrents. New York’s St. Patrick should be
singled out for its lavishness. At
the Elevation, when all heads are bowed, the organist distracts the whole
congregation with a mixture of belly dance and military march. Its rhythm evokes thousands of houris
on thousands of camels whose cloven hoofs clatter on the bent skulls of the
parishioners as on a pebbled road; our Lord in His Transubstantiation tries in
vain to divide our attention, the organist wins each time.[49]
It is said of yogis that they can dissociate their souls from
their bodies and choose a new carnal abode. Hermit crabs are also liable to lease a foreign shell. I feel sometimes, as must the yogis and
the crustacean, that this body of the U.S.
church militant is not wholly my own.[50]
This slight uneasiness[51]
is, however, not much more than the awkwardness with which I associate with my
own body. It often surprises me as
a comical stunt to watch my feet burgeoning into[52]
toes. My flame-like soul, long and
lean as an el Greco, feels small familiarity with the barrel-shaped carcass[53]
that my mirror reflects, Don Quixote living inside Sancho Panza. Yet soul and body push along in a kind
of amicable compromise, which I hope will be strengthened into positive
affection, come eternity, if bodily
resurrection is to prove a success.
The questionable aspects of the Church military or militant are after
all no more than a shifting appearance conditioned by a rare and geographical
accident in time and space.[54] What is worthy in it gathers into
permanency in[55] the Church
suffering and the Church triumphant, both of which have in me a most
enthusiastic rooter.
As this story should contain a plot, this plot will be[56]
my conversion. When I was a very
young boy, perhaps some ten years of age, I experienced a temptation that could
have taken me out of the Church.
The priest, before preaching, went to the side of the altar to remove
his chasuble, and my eye, already that of a painter, gathered forcefully the
contrast between the vermillion[57]
of his flesh and the white of his surplice. He became a ridiculous figure of an old man with a nose
enlivened by alcohol, his surplice a nightshirt of the old-fashioned French
style. A great desire of laughing
shook my small frame at the idea that this absurd fellow was receiving the
homage of[58] those
kneeling parishioners. It seemed
impossible that the doctrines that he embodied could hold an ounce of
truth. I had also the feeling that
if I left the[59] church
then, there would be no incentive[60]
to come back. I somehow weathered
this mental storm and followed the mass to the end; I have never experienced
any trouble[61] of faith
since, I am in fact within the limits set by the church a fundamentalist, the
whale of Jonah, the apple of Eve, the sun of Joshua do not make me bat an
eyelash of doubt.
It is[62]
the physical that edifies[63]
me most within the religious. The
visual and the tactile that He humored in St. Thomas are also my channels
towards adoration. It pleases me
that our Lord would mix mud and spittle to cure the sick[64]
instead of a more elegant imposition of hands. His choice[65]
of a horde[66] of swine to
house the devils that he exorcized clothes those devils with a shape, weight,
and odor, without which my belief in Satan would be lax.[67] Relics are my truest link to saints,
and the old repartition of their bounties, each to a peculiar sickness or a
given trade, adds the particular to their universal. The introduction of water and wax––the Holy
Saturday services, my meat––of fire, of bread and wine in the
ritual are a solid anchor for my faith.
I am grateful that I was not born into those sophisticated
denominations,[68] where
sacraments have withered, where images are taboo. Rather than become a metaphysician,[69]
I would embrace idolatry.[70]
This pleasure in the concrete carries me without jolt from the
visible to the invisible[71]
as with an artist’s absentmindedness, I never could put my finger on the
borderline. There is a story told
by Bloy of a man who confessed[72]
that he believed in the Holy Spirit, but only in a spiritual way. There are men for whom the spiritual,
lacking the definite attributes of what is physical, remains a vague terrain to
whom belief can attach as to a mystery, but that lacks the sharpness
characteristic of an individual portrait.
If we try to put ourselves into the other fellow’s skin (I should
perhaps say feathers), the[73]
physical realm, close as it is to us,[74]
must be to the angels of a similar aloofness and vagueness. Their taste of a man must be first of
the soul, its vastness, illness, or idiosyncrasies becoming[75]
a clue as to the man’s height, weight, the color of his eyes and hair. Poe has a story of the devil, in the
guise of a chef, discoursing on the taste and nutritious qualities of souls, as
a dog licks its chops at the expectation bones.[76] Though no Satan, I bring to the spiritual[77]
such a realistic point of view. My
spirits are no[78] floating
ghosts or evanescent lights but just as characterized as matter.[79] It has been my privilege to know two
saints, to use the word in its broader[80]
meaning, one of which at least, the founder of an order, stands a good chance
of being canonized. In both of
them, holiness had performed tricks with the material laws which proved it a
superior force to the bounds of space and the law of gravity. Having known the spiritual to outweigh
the material makes me treat it, even in this world, as a matter-of-fact
reality. Coming from the generic
to the particular, it is good to know of a few unpublished and humorous
miracles, as of the angel who gave a holy nun a message to be relayed to her
bishop, all the while mimicking His Grace’s[81]
voice and delivery, which was from the nose and loud. That unitive vision does not destroy[82]
such tomboy characteristics, makes somehow paradise more appetizing a place
than if it was, as some dream it to be, a place full of milquetoasts and whitewashed[83]
pharisees.
Some may reason their salvation from good books. A doctor may be edified by admiring the
inner structure of the bodies that his scalpel opens; others may laud God for
finding an orderly creation replete with his gifts.[84] Others[85]
are hounded by pain and illness into this last refuge of Isaac’s bosom. My own way of remembering God is not[86]
reason, science, plenitude, or sorrow, but[87]
optics. The man who could copy the
world as is, would testify to the oecumenic truth. One may[88]
believe the fact that each action of man, casual as it may be, takes its place
in a pattern, agglutinates fruitfulness to a larger gesture planned by God.[89]
But objective vision[90]
gives us the absolute proof that the accidental plays its role into a permanent
fabric, that unrelated objects collaborate, unperceived from each other. Cast shadows cement together the object
and its habitat. The branch of a
pine tree will complete a pattern started by a range of mountains miles away, a
rose and a star furnish an accord.[91] The same shape under shifting lights
assumes new meanings. A[92]
logic more subtle than our own offers up spectacles in accord with aesthetic
laws, bracing like dough all visible things, expounds[93]
in its “tableaux-vivants.” All that the artist has to do is to
read this book of Nature.[94] This reliance in the exercise of one’s
art on God as expressed through natural vision results in a good dose of
humility, for He is in the most direct sense a teacher. It seems that without this capstone of
Faith, this ordered vision, physical as it is, indispensable to the painter, would
disintegrate into a successive and meaningless grasp of separate objects. It seems that without faith, man can
attempt only the worst kind of academic art. I have a special devotion to St. Veronica who, brushing the kerchief to[95]
our Lord’s features, branded it with[96]
an excellent likeness. Both she
and I use canvas as the screen on which to project the image. Both she and I are impelled to paint by
looking at the Divine Face, she directly, I through this thin veil of His
orderly creation. Her creative
action was made possible because of the emotional intensity that acted through
her body to the fingertips.[97] All the planning, all the craft,[98]
all the knowledge to be found in a work of art would also be null if they were
not qualified by passion.
Truly religious art expresses passion and is bound to show also
departures in style. It is
paradoxical that church architecture should be as a rule Gothic, church
painting photographic.[99] Even the modern typesetter, setting the
religious section of the newspaper, picks in a discarded box the black type
Gothic font. This pious disguise
of things religious into an obsolete masquerade refuses to take in account the
religious emotions of today, begging for an original mold in which to pour
themselves as did in their time the emotions of those others, dead now. Passion goes hand in hand with
originality. The church of the
Middle Ages and of the Renaissance sponsored infallibly the great original
artists that were at the same time breaking with and fulfilling tradition:
Giotto, Raphael, Michelangelo. The
great artists of today, even those like Rouault that are essentially religious
artists, are sniffed at with suspicion.
Why such a degradation of culture in men that preserve and preach this
body of truths which is the very source of culture! The Catholic dogmas are so precious that it is preferable to
have faith and to be an ignoramus or even an iconoclast concerning art; it is
still better though to have the faith and the frills too.[100]
[1] Edited by John Charlot. Jean Charlot wrote on the first page of this typescript: “Earlier Text of ‘Apologia.’” This was the first version of his autobiographical chapter, “Jean Charlot,” in Frank J. Sheed (ed.), Born Catholics, Sheed and Ward, New York, 1954, pp. 96–113. Charlot remembered that he had written this draft in the summer of 1951. The typescript records an early stage in the composition of the essay and is covered with variants. I have retained the major ones in the footnotes, but not minor variants or simple corrections. In general, I have preferred the latest version, noting previous ones in a footnote. If the first version has not been crossed out or the later variant has not been fully developed, I have noted the later variant in a footnote. Finally, the typescript is incomplete and unfinished; the general structure can, however, be reconstructed through Charlot’s marginalia.
In the margin, Charlot has written: “Part I.”
I have edited a reading version of this essay.
[2] Replaces: I suppose that the editor has picked.
[3] Replaces: positive.
[4] Replaces: confronted by this fact.
[5] Replaces: before.
[6] Replaces: one wishes to prove right.
[7] Replaces: reasons against it.
[8] Variant:
Besides my love for the the blessings, the latter also bunch
here.
[9] Variant: on my toes.
Charlot intended to move this paragraph to the end of the section on Mexico and the beginning of his section on the American Church. He noted in the margin: “put at beginning part II.” Charlot ended his Mexican section with the words “Indian legs and feet.” He then noted: “End of Mexico” and “Part II begin w. p 1: St Thomas…”
[10] Omit: corner.
[11] Omit: rather.
[12] Replaces: at this age.
[13] Replaces: French. my prayers of the “French period.”
[14] Replaces: experiment.
[15] Replaces: limited to that one. Gallic.
[16] Replaces:
as clear as that I fancy as are my fancies concerning of the suffering
and of the glorious Churches.
[17] Replaces: the twenties to the thirties.
[18] Omit: only.
[19] Replaces: brittle.
[20] Replaces: exhilarates.
[21] Omit: only.
[22] Replaces: good.
[23] Replaces: oriental exaggerations.
[24] Omit: The biblical images, the dust to dust, the thirsty fawn, have meanings that do not need a gloss to reach a Mexican.
[25] Omit: warring.
[26] Replaces: to civilian life.
[27] Replaces: mental vacuum.
[28] Replaces: humans.
[29] Replaces: seem even refreshing the intermittent and casual hardships.
[30] Replaces: things that can be grasped and measured. weighed.
[31] Omit: Indian.
[32] Replaces: and with our end.
[33] Replaces: a mighty ugly devil that was addicted, when at his zenith, to human sacrifices.
[34] Replaces: metaphysician. bourgeois.
[35] Omit: manual.
[36] Replaces: also.
[37] Charlot noted in the margin: “+ persecution” and “END OF MEXICO.”
[38] The
subtitle is written in the margin.
Charlot noted: “Part II begin w. p 1: St. Thomas.” That is the second paragraph of the
typescript. A handwritten fragment
of the beginning of the American section survives: “…wish Church of old, gives
it a lore and a lingo to which I was not prepared adequate, being one of
the ‘Gentiles’!”
[39] Omit: a nightmare in Technicolor.
[40] Replaces: It seems hard to intend the full meaning of the word in its Catholic sense and penalties attached.
[41] Replaces: And
yet when we think that our Lord had an aesthetic sense of the highest order,
full an image of the innocent wonderment which characterizes the vision
of the greatest artists.
[42] Replaces: Our Lord spoke of.
[43] Omit: in.
[44] Replaces: thus expressing an ideal of grace and of simplicity.
[45] Replaces: physical sanctity, that is in obeisance to God’s desire on its matter.
[46] At this point, Charlot planned to insert a later section: “Truly religious art…with originality.” However, he did not complete the revision that would have made this possible.
[47] Replaces: lace.
[48] Charlot writes: “add Legion of Decency.”
[49] Replaces: wins it all. wins all of it.
[50] Replaces: quite mine.
Omit: I was not born to its brogue, it is afflicted with homitosis (bad taste in furniture) and is liveried in what a Brooklyn parish paper proudly calls the Franco victory colors. [Illegible handwriting].
[51] Replaces: This
slight uneasiness that I suffer ed as a result in inhabiting this body
of the Church militant.
[52] Omit: ten.
[53] Replaces: human.
[54] Variant: starting with history and geography.
[55] Replaces: When our time stops, it gives way to. emerges. overflows.
[56] Replaces: can only be.
[57] Replaces: red.
[58] Omit: all.
[59] Replaces: this.
[60] Replaces: desire.
[61] Replaces: doubts.
[62] Omit: in fact.
[63] Replaces: attracts.
[64] Replaces: blind.
[65] Replaces: research.
[66] Original: hord.
[67] Replaces: give to those devils the shape and weight and odor without which my faith in devils would be lax.
[68] Replaces: refined denominations more philosophical than religious.
[69] Replaces: to be one of those metaphysicians.
[70] Replaces: pagan rites. Charlot has written upside down in the margin: “[i]n my profession. vision of the world ordered.” On the verso, he has written:
Gothic today
church and the artist Renaissance
today
story-telling and permanency
religious subject––relation to style
[71] Replaces: into the spirit.
[72] Replaces: admitted.
[73] Replaces: this.
[74] Replaces: so real to us.
[75] Replaces: From…they may have a clue.
[76] Replaces: as one does lick his chops at a reminiscence of foods.
[77] Omit: world.
[78] Replaces: It is not made of.
[79] Replaces: but is just as solid in its way as matter.
[80] Replaces: general.
[81] Replaces: imitating the man’s.
[82] Omit: even in spirits.
[83] Replaces: whitened. In the margin, Charlot has written: “Optical objects, unlike the factuals.”
[84] Replaces: finding an order in all things and a moral image taking shape through human deeds.
[85] Omit: because of a great disorder that mars their life.
[86] Omit: through.
[87] Omit: sensuously through.
[88] Omit: hear and.
[89] Replaces: is a symbol only to spiritual equivalents and that those woven together in accordance with man-made history, becomes a moment in a larger gesture from God.
[90] Replaces: But through vision we have .
[91] Replaces: the blush of an apple echoing the tone of a faded tapestry will create beauty.
[92] Replaces: Everywhere.
[93] Replaces: extracts.
[94] Omit: It is as if a musician would experiment nature’s noises as being a complex following all rules of composition.
[95] Replaces: pressing the kerchief on.
[96] Replaces: committed.
[97] Replaces: I would even add that the few seconds that it took her to brand the holy kerchief illustrates the creative power of an emotional intensity that seems to take one out of time, at least as computed by the clock.
[98] Replaces: patience.
[99] Replaces: bound to Gothic, church painting to photographic styles.
[100] On the verso of the last sheet, Charlot has written:
St Hildegard net and fish
church [= sign slashed, equals not] morals
bandit saying [?] Our Lord
sinner part of church
even Hell, at least considered