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The Hidden God: Studies in Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats, Eliot, and Warren.
Explores the literary world of five contemporary writers for aesthetic expressions, and overt and subtle expositions of Christian ideals
147 pages, Hardcover
First published March 11, 1963
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 13, 2022
The Hidden God is a unique book. Cleanth Brooks takes five non-Christian writers (Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot*, and Robert Penn Warren) and shows why their writings are particularly significant and meaningful, despite the flaw in their theology and philosophy. [*Brooks includes T.S. Eliot primarily for his early writings, prior to his conversion.] “Their insights into the nature of that world [the twentieth century, English speaking world] are bound to be of moment to every reader, whether he be Christian or non-Christian or simply a seeker after truth." For "these writers . . . make an affirmation of the manhood of man and dramatize his resistance to the tendencies of our culture that would turn him into a mere thing."
The book opens with a "Preliminary Note" on the state of modern (twentieth century) literature, and it concludes with a "Concluding Note." These two chapters could stand on their own, and are worth reading by themselves if necessary. In them, Brooks argues that good literature is vital to the health of society as a whole. And, even though he saw everywhere the "machine-made popular arts of our time," he still had great hope in the high quality of literature that was then being written, as evidenced by the five men considered in this book and many more besides.
The meat of the book, though, is the middle five chapters, one chapter for each writer, where Brooks analyzes the literary excellence and the major themes found in each writer's work. He demonstrates how their novels and poetry are uniquely attuned to the world, to history, and to the human condition. He shows how Hemingway "at his best depicts brilliantly the struggle of man to be a human being in a world which increasingly seeks to reduce him into a mechanism, a mere thing." He shows how Faulkner artfully acknowledges original sin, how his novels rightly depict evil as "the violation of the natural and the denial of the human." He argues that Yeats "imagination [was] gripped by the great Christian symbols, that he found his mind constantly engaged by the historical and doctrinal problems of Christianity, and that through a lifetime he struggled against the thin and vapid oversimplifications of pseudoscience and popular scientism." He points out that Eliot was primarily concerned with one main question: "how is revered truth to be mediated to the gentiles? How is that which is by definition ineffable to be translated into words, no direct transmission of the vision being possible." And he shows how Warren approaches so closely to the central truth of human existence, which Warren describes as self-knowledge, "man's obligation to find the truth by which he lives," or elsewhere, "man's relation to the ideal."
"The value of any poet or novelist is in direct proposition to this honesty of reporting and totality of perception, for these are the fundamental values of all literary art and give the writer his primary role in the human economy. That role is to give us an awareness of our world, not as an object viewed in clinical detachment, not as a mere mechanism, but of our world as it involves ourselves--in part a projection of ourselves, in part an impingement upon ourselves. In making us see the world for what it is, the artist also makes us see the ourselves for what we are."
The book opens with a "Preliminary Note" on the state of modern (twentieth century) literature, and it concludes with a "Concluding Note." These two chapters could stand on their own, and are worth reading by themselves if necessary. In them, Brooks argues that good literature is vital to the health of society as a whole. And, even though he saw everywhere the "machine-made popular arts of our time," he still had great hope in the high quality of literature that was then being written, as evidenced by the five men considered in this book and many more besides.
The meat of the book, though, is the middle five chapters, one chapter for each writer, where Brooks analyzes the literary excellence and the major themes found in each writer's work. He demonstrates how their novels and poetry are uniquely attuned to the world, to history, and to the human condition. He shows how Hemingway "at his best depicts brilliantly the struggle of man to be a human being in a world which increasingly seeks to reduce him into a mechanism, a mere thing." He shows how Faulkner artfully acknowledges original sin, how his novels rightly depict evil as "the violation of the natural and the denial of the human." He argues that Yeats "imagination [was] gripped by the great Christian symbols, that he found his mind constantly engaged by the historical and doctrinal problems of Christianity, and that through a lifetime he struggled against the thin and vapid oversimplifications of pseudoscience and popular scientism." He points out that Eliot was primarily concerned with one main question: "how is revered truth to be mediated to the gentiles? How is that which is by definition ineffable to be translated into words, no direct transmission of the vision being possible." And he shows how Warren approaches so closely to the central truth of human existence, which Warren describes as self-knowledge, "man's obligation to find the truth by which he lives," or elsewhere, "man's relation to the ideal."
"The value of any poet or novelist is in direct proposition to this honesty of reporting and totality of perception, for these are the fundamental values of all literary art and give the writer his primary role in the human economy. That role is to give us an awareness of our world, not as an object viewed in clinical detachment, not as a mere mechanism, but of our world as it involves ourselves--in part a projection of ourselves, in part an impingement upon ourselves. In making us see the world for what it is, the artist also makes us see the ourselves for what we are."
November 11, 2015
If you want To open your mind and think more about your existence read this book :)
June 30, 2019
Parochial, christian thematic reading of 5 great modernists that's devoutly & mindlessly anti-liberal & anti-marxist, but it does offer some interesting insights, esp. into Yeats & Warren (ironically it offers the least insight into Eliot, the only churchman among the 5). Despite Brooks's reputation, it's only a thematic & not a formalist work, but, despite Brooks's thematic, christian intentions, I took two things away from it as a secular socialist: 1) the existentialist connections made from Hemingway to Tillich & Nietzsche to Yeats & 2) Brooks teasing out that modernist, secular drift toward splitting nature from history, despite these 5's attempts to rejoin them, which has an interesting resonance in the late 2010s as we see a revival of social Darwinism & evolutionary determinism & a corresponding neglect of history in the neuroreaction of Steven Pinker, Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, & al.
March 1, 2014
Written in 1963 it takes on the subject of writers and their worldviews. While some of these writers covered where not Christians they touched on many Christian traits. The author an expert on Faulkner and Poetry has some very interesting perspective to relate to the reader. I don't always enjoy reading about this stuff, but the lessons are invaluable for increasing your insight into the mind of these authors and others you'll read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews