by G.K. Chesterton
Notable Quote:
“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of a tree. That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud. Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? If we could only get round in front–”
What is the true essence of poetry? Is it order or chaos; law or revolution?
If the answer is chaos and revolution, does the poet’s dedication to anarchism enhance or detract from his ability to appreciate beauty? Can anyone really be dedicated to the revolt without being revolting?
Then again, it’s difficult to see poetry in law and order. After all, who has ever been inspired to transcendence by a plane being on time? Is there anything more mundane than a bus schedule?
This dichotomy forms the subject of a debate that opens Chesterton’s novel, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare. Lucian Gregory, the self-styled anarchist-poet, beseeches, “An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything.”
He sees disorder as the poet’s only delight because it is the unexpected that awakens the soul. His foil, Gabriel Syme, antagonizes Gregory by countering, “The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it.” For Syme, real magic happens when we hear, ‘Next stop, Victoria Station,’ and the next stop is indeed Victoria Station! He finds unpredictability boring, reveling instead in making happen what we will.
What really eats at Gregory, however, is not the heated disagreement over the nature of poetry, but Syme’s suggestion that Gregory, while sincere, is not serious about anarchism, because no one’s fanciful talk can be as serious as what he holds dear in his private heart.
Being accused of unseriousness, it turns out, is an insult that Gregory cannot suffer. To demonstrate the depth of his solemnity, and only after Syme promises to never tell another soul, Gregory brings Syme along with him to a meeting of an underground anarchist society.
This prompts Syme to wonder why Gregory would be so publicly vocal about espousing anarchy when such care is taken to keep the anarchist operations secret. Gregory responds that since no one takes an anarchist seriously, acting like an anarchist is the best disguise (“If you didn’t seem to be hiding, nobody hunted you out.”).
What Gregory soon discovers is that Syme has also been in disguise, working undercover for the police to infiltrate the secret anarchist society.
Chesterton uses the juxtaposition of Gregory and Syme to introduce the story’s central tension: whether the world is better saved by thwarting the efforts to destroy it or by hastening its destruction. But in the frantic efforts of Syme and his allies to defeat the destructive anarchist hoards, they discover that real anarchists are hardly to be found.
Each time they corner a suspected anarchist, they find instead another disguised ally. The whole world seems against them, and yet they cannot capture the culprit, or any culprit for that matter. What started with Syme following Gregory down the rabbit hole, in Lewis Carrol fashion, ends up becoming a Kafkaesque nightmare in which Syme and his friends are flailing, struggling, and suffering in vain effort to defeat an evil that feels so close, even intimate, and yet eludes.
In the end, Syme and his friends are given an opportunity to reflect on the meaning of their trials and tribulations, as well as to complain, much like Job did in the Bible. Only at this point does Gregory reveal himself as the real anarchist and would-be destroyer, demanding to know whether anyone’s suffering has been greater than his own.
Without giving away any more of the story than I already have, he is answered with the same question that Jesus asked of James and John,[1] “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?” Our suffering cannot compare to what God suffered for our salvation.
When it comes to embracing paradox, the lesson of The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare involves recognizing that destructive evil emanates from within as well as from without, and suffering can result just as much from battling evil as from the evil itself.
The courage we need is not only the courage to face evil, but the courage to endure the associated suffering, which is a courage we can only gain by letting go of self-centeredness.
To accomplish that we must embrace child-like innocence as prescribed by Christ[2] while also discarding the childish impudence admonished by St. Paul.[3] The way to thread this needle is through wisdom, and “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”[4]
Properly ordering ourselves to God and His instruction puts an end to our childish ways while preserving within us child-like hearts. This is called the sanity of sanctity, and it is a disposition that we must strive to achieve if we are to have a chance of embracing paradox.
What’s so important about embracing paradox? Simply this: that you understand more by stumbling around in the dark for a while than if you immediately turned on the light.
[1] See Matthew 20:22
[2] “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3 NRSV-CI
[3] “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.” 1 Corinthians 13:11 NRSV-CI
[4] Psalms 111:10 NRSV-CI, see also Proverbs 1:7