4 - In Praise of Folly
Summary
TO GOD'S GLORY & THE HONOR OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 1782
The above inscription, on boards suspended from the roof of a parish church in Somerton, Somerset, ‘served … as an inspiration towards’ Betjeman's writing of English Parish Churches (BB 172). His introduction to the book begins: ‘To atheists, inadequately developed building sites …’ (BB 172) – a sentiment developed in his own way by Philip Larkin in parts of ‘Church Going’. Yet arguments on behalf of atheism, agnosticism, or, indeed, monotheism miss Betjeman's key religious perception: that Anglican Christianity is less about either philosophy or theology than about a sacred caritas revealed in hallowed places and buildings, consecrated customs and rituals, dedicated music making, flower arranging, days of special observance or celebration, and reverence for time-honoured ‘petits récits’ – most particularly from the Bible and Prayer Book. Betjeman's religious genius is to convey this yet, in extremis, to question its adequacy:
I, kneeling, thought the Lord was there.
Now, lying in the gathering mist
I know that Lord did not exist;
Now, lest this “I ‘’ should cease to be,
Come, real Lord, come quick to me.
(‘Before the Anaesthetic …’, (CP 107))Here the poet expresses the essence of any honest religious feeling – the gulf between socialized forms of belief and faith-initself, and the unworthiness of the believer. There is surely no reason to endorse Betjeman's sense of personal inadequacy – it is those who lack such who are preposterous (and often dangerous). The poet's profound sense of limitations precisely inspires his genuine virtues – tolerance, humour, and generosity of spirit.
In this, Betjeman's represented Christianity is less an idiosyncratic throwback than a prophetic intimation of a Double Millennium devotio postmoderna. His religious poetry, I suggest, has less in common with ecclesiastical ‘radical orthodoxy’ than with Erasmus's ecumenically forward-looking In Praise of Folly. A recent commentary on Erasmus's text, in Patrick Grant's Literature and Personal Values, has considerable relevance to the poet's work:
Erasmus does not consistently succeed in masking his own moralising intent when Folly speaks, so that wit and irony spill over into straightforward social commentary… Erasmus … is free to take such lighthearted, elegant pleasure in Folly, precisely because he believes something clear and certain.
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- Information
- John Betjeman , pp. 51 - 64Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1999