A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism by Andrew J. Auge (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism by Andrew J. Auge Kieran Quinlan A Chastened Communion: Modern Irish Poetry and Catholicism, by Andrew J. Auge, pp. 283. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2013. $39.95. Although Andrew J. Auge’s new book was partly composed while he held the O’Connor Chair for Catholic Thought at Loras College in Iowa, it is not an exercise in literary or religious apologetics of any orthodox kind. It is, rather, a defense of the existence of the numinous, a dimension of experience that he would see as irreducible and of which—though he never says so explicitly—Catholicism is but one expression. Auge explores the work of seven modern Irish poets—Austin Clarke, Patrick Kavanagh, John Montague, Seamus Heaney, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan, and Paula Meehan—each of whom found compensatory riches in a tradition that had initially brought them much discomfort, both mental and emotional. He makes a convincing distinction between poets who grew up at a time when Catholicism dominated all aspects of Irish life and culture and those who came after them even when the latter—Dennis O’Driscoll and Seán Dunne are his examples—had serious religious interests. “This process of critical scrutiny,” he writes, “of separating the dross from the usable, the regressive from the revivifying, necessitates an attention to the particularities of the inherited Catholic material that is absent in the work of those who assimilate it in an already congenial form.” Auge conducts his inquiry in a theoretically sophisticated manner, but his use of theory is unobtrusive. Charles Taylor’s critiques of secular modernity are invoked; Richard Kearney’s “anatheism”—a kind of Irish alternative to generic unbelief—is called upon; referencing Michel Foucault helps elucidate the confessional experiences of Clarke; and Nietzsche is deftly used to illuminate Heaney’s trajectory. Likewise, Irish history, recent and ancient, is present to the extent that it needs to be, and he included helpful explanations of the reigning theology and canonical practices of the different periods. Auge’s work is enhanced, too, by the fact that memories of his own early piety remotely prompt his scrutiny of the lives of others who have experienced similar entrancements. [End Page 138] In the introduction, Auge sets out a thesis that runs through all of the book: “Through this dialectical engagement with Irish Catholicism, these poets engender new forms of spiritual vision and praxis that blur the sharp lines of demarcation interposed by institutionalized religion between belief and unbelief, secular and sacred.” That is not to say that the same thing is going on with every poet. Auge is hyperalert to nuance; “redress” being appropriate in one case, less so in another. Thus, Clarke found relief for the mental anguish that his early encounters with an overly interrogative confessional practice had caused him—a pain that led to his being institutionalized for an extended period and a failed marriage—in a “radical revision of the Catholic sacrament of confession.” Kavanagh, suffering from some of the same strictures, was more concerned with the Church’s co-opting and regularizing of ancient sacred space. Heaney worked his way from excessive concern with sacrifice—even in his art—to an acceptance of givenness and gratuity that received its authority “not just from the poet’s individual imagination but from the residue of traditional beliefs that still clings to them.” Montague, Ní Chuilleanáin, and Durcan became celebrants of unrecognized aspects of nuns and priests while reshaping the received perception of them and later, coping with the unexpected revelations of abuse and cover-up. Meehan rediscovered an ancient Irish goddess in modern Mariology while also becoming aware of its inherent dangers. Auge approaches each writer in a different way, selecting a particular aspect of his or her engagement with Catholicism—and thus, sometimes neglecting others—to explore the aspect of the theme relevant to his larger inquiry. When he is in what might appear to be familiar territory, Auge is careful to point out how his interpretation differs from what has gone before—for instance, in his comment that previous scholars failed to appreciate the “specific strategic function” that Clarke...