All of us are glad to see that you are immersed in ‘The Benedictine Monk’. Such a book, written by a monk, could render great service, if it were to be well launched and could reach the public…
The Benedictine Monk will be timely, against the diabolical hatred that is coming to the surface at the moment. It could be a defiance of the magnificent monastic life, make it understood at last, at a time when Freemasonry is seeking to give the Church a blow on the head by persecuting the religious orders. There are going to be some hard times to get through, for certain. I personally know something about it since ‘En Route’, which marked me out as an enemy in the office. Still, we must hope that the storm will pass, and will not succeed in uprooting any order. But what an age we live in all the same!
I am still immersed in my work, which at least permits me to live in another period, and to abstract myself a little from the chaos that surrounds me. Unfortunately, the citadels of the spirit are fragile, and the enemy destroys them without great difficulty; and the whole of modern life floods in through the breach. That is when one really envies monastic life, the possibility of being recollected, taking on a long-term work in peace. In Paris it is impossible, there are distractions even in the churches. How far removed it all is from the closed and cloistered chapels!
Letter from J.K.Huysmans January 1896 to Dom Besse from the book: ‘The Road From Decadence From Brothel to Cloister Selected Letters of J.K. Huysmans’.
YOUR SONG
Poem by Joseph Mary Plunkett
If I have you then I have everything
In One, and that One nothing of them all
Nor all compounded, and within the wall
Beneath the tower I wait to hear you sing:
Love breathing low above the breast of Spring,
Pressing her heart with baby heart and small
From baby lips love-syllables lets fall
And strokes with gentle hand her quivering wing.
You come rejoicing all the wilderness,
Filling with praise the land to joy unknown,
Fresh from that garden whose perfumes have blown
Down through the valley of the cypresses—
O heart, you know not your own loveliness,
Nor these your songs, for they are yours alone.
