Literature for the Recovery of Reality: Joshua Hren and Benjamin Myers’ Christian Vision for Literature

Joshua Hren. Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto. San Francisco: Benedict XVI Institute, 2022. Benjamin Myers. A Poetics of Orthodoxy: Christian Truth as Aesthetic Foundation. Eugene: OR, Cascade Books, 2020.

Christians should be energized by a new spirit of literary criticism amid the barren desert they otherwise find themselves in. Two slim, beautiful, volumes have come out in recent years approaching a shared goal from different angles. Joshua Hren’s Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto and Benjamin Myers’s A Poetics of Orthodoxy: Christian Truth as Aesthetic Foundation express dismay at the nihilistic turn in literary studies but offer something substantive and inspiring, indeed, insightful, in its place. In contrast to a meaningless world governed by power dynamics and identity politics, these authors propose that a Christian vision of reality understands the world as meaningful and the task of literature as expressing that meaning in a beautiful way. Where one might expect to find substantive differences between a Catholic and Protestant approach to literary aesthetics, these authors complement each other and show the recognition across Christian scholarship that engagement with the arts aligns with a biblical “metaphysical dream.” While Myers does not reference Hren’s scholarship, Hren includes Myers’ poem “The Reverend on Natural Theology” as an example of the kind of challenge the contemplative realist must meet. These authors share a common project, and merit consideration together to help the reader perceive how literature can ground our apprehension of the real.

In 62 pages, Hren develops a vision for the kind of author late modernity needs: the contemplative realist. He describes late modernity as suffering from a lack of attention to the fullness of reality: we “were born under the halogen star of secularism,” and as such are much more attuned to consumerist trends than non-material reality. In a world where secularism reigns, the task of the aspiring literati involves re-enchanting the mind to apprehend the real. Hren terms such a person a “contemplative realist.” This kind of author “invites us to be bothered by our hapless treatment of nature as mere spectacle,” and seeks to “correct the pantheistic compassion and the algebraic abstraction of Modernity.” The contemplative realist causes the reader to encounter the real, and in so doing live in alignment with it. Rather than the abstractions of modernity, located in endless statistical study and the claims of scientism, the contemplative realist writes his insights into particular characters, stories, devices, and words. Myers’ picks up on this concept of concrete literature in opposition to the abstractions of modernity (more on this below).

Hren’s imagined ideal is difficult to define, but he develops “the contemplative realist” by contrasting such a figure with other realisms. In opposition to “magical realism,” contemplative realism “registers the supernatural as harmonious with the natural, a poetic extension of the Thomistic understanding that though it may feel as if grace grates against nature, in truth God’s movements build upon it.” Rather than “depressive realism,” contemplative realism “concedes Nietzsche’s central insight that narratives bless us by granting Apollonian beauty, clarity, and form to human hardships that are anarchic, dark, Dionysian.” In contrast to Flaubert’s “materialist realism,” Hren urges an “habitual disposition [that] would, if fully incarnate, combine the small child’s awe with the seasoned seeing of a blind old monk who has been through it all.” The contemplative realist author accepts an instructive task: he teaches the reader to better perceive realty. “The contemplative realist, considering the actual existence of things, at once sees them as we were meant to see them and also shows the rest of us how to see them. … inculcating in us a way of weighing what is passing sub specie aeternitas.” Contemplative realism invites the reader to consider the weightiness of higher truths within the real; rather than a flight of fancy, such writing situates the most important concepts within the mundane interactions of the real world. Within such consideration, the reader gains an increased understanding of reality as meaningful. Hren develops this further by considering the elements of Catholic sacramental theology: bread, wine, water, and words become the channels for spiritual reality to overtake the material, transforming the nature of the elements through divine grace. This attention to the mundane as significant becomes a cornerstone of Hren’s aesthetic. It cannot be an accident that Hren penned this Manifesto while working with James Matthew Wilson to begin a new MFA program in the Catholic literary tradition; this essay provides a beginning point for learning literature from a Catholic and sacramental perspective.

Myers’ Poetics of Orthodoxy has a different goal; rather than establishing a foundation for a new MFA program, he seeks to build criteria for evaluating poetry as good or bad. In his framework, he shares Hren’s concern for real standards of judgment. Myers states: “it is the contention of the book not only that we can discern those qualities that make a poem good … but also that the criteria for making such aesthetic judgements are implicit in basic Christian orthodoxy.” Myers does not argue that all excellent poets are Christians, but that excellent poetry coheres with Christian truth. Myers explains, “I assert that what is good in poetry of any sort…is what resonates on the aesthetic plane with truth on the propositional plane of Christian orthodoxy.” This connection to orthodoxy functions as Myers’ tie to reality; like Hren, he measures the success of a poem by how well it points the reader to the real.

Myers argues that two sins plague the contemporary poet: Gnosticism and sentimentality both prevent poems from being good. While nodding to the historical roots of Gnosticism as an early church heresy, Myers uses the term to name poetry which evades concrete imagery. Instead of a gnostic impulse to deny the unity of body and soul, Myers contends that “…a good poem is anchored in concrete reality by means of definite imagery.” Such writing “incarnates the feeling the poet wishes to convey.” This incarnational poetry, like Hren’s sacramental realism, urges the reader to find substantive meaning in the real world; the concrete image, Myers suggests, points beyond itself towards a higher truth. But the world is such that without the concrete image the reader cannot access the higher idea. The image, then, resembles the incarnate Christ; without Christ’s becoming human fallen man cannot be redeemed and ultimately resurrected.

Myers extends his argument about particularity from image to sound: “Good diction is incarnational diction. …Real poets…love real words, the simple and powerful words of everyday speech.” Incarnational poetry considers that “words are more than transparent vessels for meaning; they are things themselves and interact with the world in almost physical ways.” An excellent poem is marked by particular language and strong diction. Myers’ prefers the short, sharp sounds of Anglo-Saxon derived words to elongated French-derivative terms; he affirms the realism created by the use of profanity in poetry. The strong sound is more honest, drawing the reader to the meaning invoked by the poetry. The poet pushes back against the temptations of a gnostic denial of real bodies and real words, and in so doing echoes the incarnation of the redemptive God.

While some bad poets lean towards Gnosticism, Myers labels sentimentality the opposite sin. Sentimentality is an “imbalance of emotion, an over-investment of emotion relative to that in which it is invested. Sentimentality is a misdirection of emotion, emotion for its own sake without a reference in the tangible world.” Christians, Myers argues, are prone to mistaking sentimentality for art. The temptation lies in skipping the necessary heartache which sets up a dramatic resolution; the sentimental denies the reality of the tragic. In skipping to the happy ending, the reality of human existence is exchanged for kitsch. Myers argues “Kinkade’s error is not in depicting the homecoming; it is in ignoring the seeking…Art must be truthful in what it says about the world and our sojourn in it.” Great poetry engages the sentiments, but it does so with attention to how sorrow accompanies joy. When poetry ignores sorrow, the quality of the poem declines. “The Christian sentimentalist wants the bliss of Easter morning without the pain of Good Friday or the sorrow of Holy Saturday, reducing the great joy of Easter to the pleasantness of a watercolor sunrise on a greeting card.” If gnostic poetry rejects the concreteness of image and sound, sentimental poetry rejects the truth that without suffering there is no lasting joy.

Through the remaining chapters of Poetics of Orthodoxy, Myers builds a positive image of excellent poetry. He dedicates a chapter to the importance of metaphor for poetry; by metaphor Myers means all devices which compare two separate things; in showing the comparison, the reader experiences the interconnected nature of reality, pushing back against the isolation of secularism. “The true purpose of allegory, simile, and other metaphoric type figures of speech is not to obscure meaning but to magnify it, clarify it, and embody it.” The poet sees the connection, and through his poetry helps the reader to see more meaning in the world. Drawing on the work of Paul Ricoeur, Myers argues that “metaphor re-enchants, not by casting a veil over our eyes like an evil wizard in a fairy tale but by removing from our sight the veil reductive modernity has placed there.” Poetic connections push against the impulses of materialistic modernity, urging us to see the world as a “cosmos of signification” rich with meaning. “All good poetry, thus, stands athwart secularization, yelling stop, to adapt William F. Buckley’s famous definition of conservatism.” Several scholars in recent years have written works explaining the problems and consequences of secularization (Charles Taylor and Carl F. Trueman both approach this task), but few have suggested ways to press against secularity. Myers proposes that poetry has the power to help us recover a true enchantment, a recognition that the world is meaningful and it belongs to us as humans to discover that meaning and rejoice in it.

Joshua Hren and Benjamin Myers are both engaged in passing their love of literature on to the next generation of authors and poets, and in Contemplative Realism and A Poetics of Orthodoxy they equip Christians to perceive reality more fully in the world God has made. Chesterton was right: “The sky is growing darker yet.” But we are not a people left without hope. And as the culture becomes darker, the Light of the World shines ever brighter in contrast. In a world which increasingly resembles the pluralistic chaos of ancient Israel, where “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25), Christians have recourse to an unexpected unifier: in excellent literature we find truths which point both to our present reality in all its pains and glories, and also to ultimate reality, when all is made new.

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