There were giants in those days (3)

Given the significance of these artists and the support they received from the churches, why this implication of failure? Why was their impact not greater? There are, of course, many cultural, organisational and sociological factors that would need to be part of a comprehensive answer to those questions. Many of which are broader and more significant that the artists under discussion here, but in the remainder of this series of blogs I wish to explore three factors that are closely connected with these artists in particular.

First, the looseness of their groupings. The Anglican and Roman Catholic groupings essentially progressed down different tracks. The Roman Catholic grouping, for example, forming out of the Arts and Crafts movement, holding more left-wing political views and being underpinned by art theories and theologies from France, particularly those of Maurice Denis, Jacques Maritain and Maurice de la Taille. Within the Anglican groupings, Lewis and Eliot were poles apart in terms of their literary criticism and approaches while within the Roman Catholic grouping the common splits endemic to communities ensued, leading to Gill’s departure for Wales. As a result, these giants never achieved the level of group cohesion envisioned by Eliot in ‘The Idea of a Christian Society’.

Second, the extent to which they opposed the zeitgeist. Although, radicals for their time in the forms of their art they were nevertheless traditionalists in terms of content. Norbert Frye’s summary of Eliot’s social criticism is applicable to most, if not all, of the artists we are considering here and brings out the extent to which they were opposed to the most significant developments of their age. Frye says of Eliot that:

“He is uniformly opposed to theories of progress that invoke the authority of evolution, and contemptuous of writers who attempt to popularise a progressive view, like H. G. Wells. The “disintegration” of Europe began soon after Dante’s time; a “diminution” of all aspects of culture has afflicted Europe since Queen Anne; the nineteenth century was an age of progressive “degradation”; in the last fifty years [of Eliot’s life] evidence of “decline” are visible in every department of human activity”.

This decline includes the development of nation states and religious sects, the specialisation of knowledge and the mechanisation of work. It can be summed up as “the disintegration of Christendom, the decay of a common belief and a common culture”. The impact of these artists, however cohesive they could have been as a group, was always likely to be limited if their opposition to the zeitgeist was so fundamental and their positions ones that could easily be dismissed by their opponents as ‘conservative’, ‘traditional’ or ‘backward-looking’.

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Olivier Messaien - Louange a l'eternite de Jesus.