Why Read Literature: Pope Francis and Vondel

Yesterday Pope Francis met with participants from a conference on the arts jointly organized by La Civiltà Cattolica and Georgetown University, offering remarks on the importance of the arts and literature:

I have loved many poets and writers in my life, among whom I think especially of Dante, Dostoevsky and others still.  I must also thank my students of the Colegio de la Inmaculada Concepción of Santa Fe (Argentina), with whom I shared my reading when I was a young teacher of literature.  The words of those authors helped me to understand myself, the world and my people, but also to understand more profoundly the human heart, my personal life of faith, and my pastoral work, even now in my present ministry.  Literature is like a thorn in the heart; it moves us to contemplation and sets us on a journey.  Poetry is open, it takes you somewhere else….

Let me say something else: You are also the voice of the “restlessness” of the human spirit.  Indeed, how often we are restless deep within our hearts.  You know quite well that artistic inspiration is not only consoling but also disquieting, since it presents both the beautiful and the tragic realities of life.  Art is the fertile terrain where the “polar oppositions” of reality can be expressed with a language that must be creative, flexible and capable of serving as a vehicle for powerful messages and visions.

This reminded me of Vondel’s remarks in the foreword to his famous play, Lucifer:

Holy and honorable examples serve as a mirror, reflecting for our edification all virtue and piety, and teaching us, at the same time, to shun wickedness and its consequent misery.

The purpose and design of true tragedy is through terror and sympathy to stir the spectators to tenderness. Through the drama, students and growing youth are cultivated in the languages, eloquence, wisdom, modesty, good morals and manners; and these sink into their tender hearts and are impressed upon their senses, conducing towards habits of propriety and discretion, which remain with them, and to which they adhere even until old age; yea, it occurs, at times, that erratic geniuses, not to be bent or diverted by ordinary methods, are touched by this subtle art and by an exalted dramatic style, thus influenced beyond their own suspicion; even as a delicate lyre-string gives forth an answering sound when its companion string, of the same kind and nature, of a similar tone, and strung on another lyre, is caressed by a skilled hand, which, while playing, can drive the turbulent spirit out of a possessed and hardened Saul….

He, then, who appreciates this distinction will, while condemning the abuses of the dramatic art, not be ungracious towards the proper use of the same; nor will he begrudge the youth and the art-loving burghers this glorious, yea, this divine, invention, to them an honorable recreation and a refreshing amelioration of the trials of life; so that we, hereby encouraged, may with greater zeal bring Lucifer upon the stage, where he, finally smitten by God’s thunderbolt, plunges down into hell—the mirror clear of all ungrateful ambitious ones who audaciously dare to exalt themselves, setting themselves against the consecrated Powers and Majesties and their lawful superiors.

Joost van den Vondel (1587-1679) was a Catholic convert and is considered to be the Shakespeare of Holland, suffering for his conversion but remaining a cultural force in his homeland.

If you haven’t read much literature, I will offer ten ideas for introductory novels in my next post.