Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Stud
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EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUDIES Vol. 37, No. 1 Spring 2006 Something So Different by Kathryn S. Easter The literary gamut usually runs from the sublime to the ridiculous, but Evelyn Waugh developed in quite the reverse direction: from the ridiculous to the sublime. Between his first novel and his last, Waugh clearly went through a profound paradigm shift easily detected in his themes. The startling change recalls Monty Python’s stock transitional phrase, “and now for something completely different.” Waugh’s view of the world was completely different by the time he wrote his masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited, for a singular reason: he had become a Roman Catholic. Waugh wrote in Decline and Fall, his first novel, that it “is meant to be funny” (Stannard 81), and it certainly is. The absurdity of characters and the outrageousness of situations make for a terrific laugh-out-loud read. The main character, Paul Pennyfeather, finds himself in a world of materialism, hypocrisy, treachery, and degeneracy, all given as dominant features of contemporary life. Waugh presents this world with macabre and even grotesque hilarity. At the same time, he anticipates Northrop Frye’s description of comedy: “Comedy is designed not to condemn evil, but to ridicule a lack of self-knowledge” (Frye 81). This is what Waugh does so well in his first novel. His characters are mean, selfish, and corrupt, but they are not evil—only ignorant. They do not see themselves for who they truly are, and their blindness makes them tragic but at the same time hilarious. Comedy and tragedy are not mutually exclusive; in fact, they are tightly linked. Frye says that “tragedy is really implicit or uncompleted comedy” and “comedy contains a potential tragedy within itself” (84). Despite all the laughs, Decline and Fall is not a happy story. All along there lurks the potential tragedy that Paul may never recover from the misfortune that befalls him. He does recover, in accord with Frye’s concept of comedy: “The essential comic resolution […] is an individual release which is also a social reconciliation” (81). Paul, the singular straight-man in the bunch, achieves this release at the story’s end as he returns to theology studies at Oxford. The final chapter of Decline and Fall is significantly titled “Resurrection.” Such a title reveals Waugh’s own religious leanings and indicates how his art is illuminated by Frye’s theory of comedy and tragedy. From a Christian viewpoint, tragedy is but “an episode in that larger scheme of redemption and resurrection to which Dante gave the name of commedia” (Frye 84). Paul must die to himself, as he does in the second-to-last chapter, “The Passing of Paul Pennyfeather,” in order to be resurrected as a new man (“a very distant cousin”) who will soon become a clergyman. Fast-forward sixteen years past publication of Decline and Fall. Waugh has converted, having become a devout Roman Catholic. His magnum opus is written, and it radiates with Waugh’s religious convictions. Whereas he had prefaced Decline and Fall with the warning that it was “meant to be funny,” this time he stated boldly, “Brideshead Revisited is not meant to be funny.” He added that there are passages of buffoonery, but “the general theme is at once romantic and eschatological” (Stannard 236). Waugh’s salient intention was to depict a pagan world similar to the one in Decline and Fall, but this time to explicitly trace the workings of the Divine Purpose, which ideally lead a wayward soul to Roman Catholicism. Such a profound change in Waugh was incomprehensible even to his own family. Alec, his brother, wrote after the conversion, “I cannot enter imaginatively into the mind of a person for whom religion is the dominant force in his life, for whom religion is a crusade, as it is with Evelyn” (Doyle 13). Many of Waugh’s most enthusiastic fans were not prepared for such blatant Christianity. They saw Waugh as Charles saw Sebastian: “Sebastian’s faith was an enigma to me […], but not one which I felt particularly concerned to solve. I had no religion. […] The view implicit in file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_37.1.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:44] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth” (BR 85). Edmund Wilson, who had enthusiastically praised Waugh’s earlier novels and maintained that Waugh was the greatest comic genius in the English language since George Bernard Shaw, turned viciously to attack Brideshead—primarily because he could not accept a novel that regarded religion as important in modern life (Doyle 26). Other readers who were willing to accept Waugh’s Christianity—even some who called themselves Catholic—charged that the lonely, depressed, even tragic fates of the Flytes mar the view of Christianity. After publication of Brideshead Revisited in America, a Mr. McClose wrote to Waugh: “Your Brideshead Revisited is a strange way to show that Catholicism is an answer to anything. Seems more like the kiss of Death to me” (Stannard 260). By the novel’s end, the lovers are forced apart by a sense of sin; the house is deserted; the family is scattered; the only child that is born is dead. Mr. McClose is right, Catholicism is a kiss of Death—one absolutely necessary for salvation; it is death to worldliness, selfishness, carnal baseness. Death in this case is not tragic as the world understands tragedy, but comedic as Christianity understands comedy. This commedia of Dante “enters drama with the miracle-play cycles, where such tragedies as the Fall and the Crucifixion are episodes of a dramatic scheme in which the divine comedy has the last word,” Frye explains, and that last word is of course Resurrection: “The sense of tragedy as a prelude to comedy is hardly separable from anything explicitly Christian” (84). Brideshead is not only Christian; it is also explicitly Catholic. The distinction between Christianity and Roman Catholicism is important, mostly because many Protestant sects lack a developed theology regarding “death of self”—especially as it involves pain and suffering. Catholics know that their religion is extremely difficult (impossible, in fact, without the help of God’s grace), and this difficulty becomes the theme of Brideshead Revisited. Sebastian bemoans the difficulty of his religion; Charles asks, “Does it make much difference to you?” "Of course. All the time." “Well, I can’t say I’ve noticed it. Are you struggling against temptation? You don’t seem much more virtuous than me.” “I’m very, very much wickeder,” said Sebastian indignantly. “Well then?” “Who was it who used to pray, ‘Oh God, make me good, but not yet’?” “I don’t know. You, I should think.” “Why, yes, I do, every day. […]” “I suppose they try and make you believe an awful lot of nonsense?” “Is it nonsense? I wish it were. It sometimes sounds terribly sensible to me.” (BR 86) Anthony Blanche recounts that Sebastian “used to spend such a time in the confessional, I used to wonder what he had to say, because he never did anything wrong; never quite; at least, he never got punished” (BR 51). Sebastian’s struggle is incomprehensible to Anthony because it is spiritual; his faith is mysterious because the Faith is mysterious; his internal battle causes wonder in a worldly figure like Anthony because the Catholic Church is at war with secular culture. In another exchange, Sebastian says, “I wish I liked Catholics more.” Charles replies, “They seem just like other people,” but Sebastian insists that “that’s exactly what they’re not […]; everything they think important is different from other people” (BR 89). The difference that Catholicism makes in one’s life contributes to the difficulty of it; it also contributes to the humor. Catholic devotions and traditions appear strange and even absurd when juxtaposed with secularity. Sebastian writes to Charles: “It is the feast of S. Nichodemus of Thyatira, who was martyred by having goatskin nailed to his pate, and is accordingly the patron of bald heads” (BR 43-4). Cordelia explains her charitable donation to missionary work involving orphaned babies in Africa: “I’ve got six black Cordelias already. Isn’t it lovely?” (BR 94). Rex Mottram makes a vain attempt at being catechized. The priest speaks to Rex about file:////uol.le.ac.uk/...c144/My%20Documents/Evelyn%20Waugh/Evelyn%20Waugh%20Studies/Newsletters/Newsletters/Newsletter_37.1.htm[04/12/2013 14:44:44] EVELYN WAUGH NEWSLETTER AND STUD papal infallibility and asks, “‘Supposing the Pope looked up and saw a cloud and said “It’s going to rain,” would that be bound to happen?’ ‘Oh yes, Father.’ ‘But supposing it didn’t?’ He thought a moment and said, ‘I suppose it would be sort of raining spiritually, only we were too sinful to see it’” (BR 192). Rex is the primary source of the “buffoonery” that Waugh mentions in his apologia. Frederick L. Beaty wrote, “As the only significant character totally impervious to religion, Rex exists as a relic of Waugh’s earlier ironic world and as such is vulnerable to a satiric reduction” (163). But by the end of the book, Charles is the buffoon who tries to understand the Last Rites; he is the odd man out. The comedy of Rex and Charles sprouts from their misapprehension of Catholicism. They do not accept that the supernatural is real—that it is even more real than the natural world, as Waugh believed.