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COLD GRACE: CHRISTIAN FAITH AND STOICISM IN THE POETRY OF J. V. CUNNINGHAM
Renascence, Spring 2007 by Fike, Francis
As Renaissance scholar, textual critic, and poet J. V. Cunningham1 settles deservedly into place in our literary history, his poems in the plain style continue to win attention and praise. One aspect of his poetry which deserves attention is his relationship to Christian faith. Although he has been described as a "heterodox Catholic" in his youth (Howe 189), and in later life a maker of "agnostic rephrasings" of theological ideas (Fields 28), the evidence suggests that he was neither unorthodox in his early faith nor agnostic later. Nurtured in Roman Catholicism in his youth, Cunningham later left the faith, describing himself in a lecture as "a renegade Irish Catholic" (CE 353). In that phrase, he implicitly summarizes the three facets of his religious heritage: its early strength, his withdrawal from it, and its continuing influence, which survived his choice of human self-sufficiency over dependence on religious faith. But although that choice rendered grace cold, moving him to a Stoic perspective, his Christian heritage nevertheless remained a part of his outlook, adding a distinctive thematic thread in his poetry.
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He wrote about his early religious experience in the third person thus: "the tradition that surrounded him and formed much of the texture of his early years was the tradition of Irish Catholics along the railroads of the west. . . . He was a Catholic by tradition, training, and deep feeling. . ." (CE 421). That tradition was conveyed to him significantly from his earlier education in parochial schools and when, in Denver, he attended the Jesuit-run Regis High School, where he got "the traditional and even . . . at that time somewhat old-fashioned education," which included "four years of Christian doctrine" (Steele 4). Consequently, Cunningham asserted, "Religion was an integral part of my boyhood. I was an altar boy for years. I was neither reluctant nor pushy about it; it was just part of life. And this obviously lives with one" (Steele 17). His practice of the faith continued apparently into his twenties; in 1931, he notes attendance at midnight Christmas Mass with his brother (Steele 10).
Even as he approached (and passed?) the point of turning from his traditional faith, as Timothy Steele notes, Cunningham expressed "deep feeling for the Catholic tradition even as he was distancing himself from it" (CP, 197) in two poems -"With a Copy of Stevens' Harmonium" (1933; CP, 199) and "A Letter" (1935; CP, 200-01). The first poem terms Stevens' "art of imprecise exactitude" as "ageless as that Passion the mass resumes / Though candles waste and rustle in the draft," and asks "Cecilia" to "pardon" Stevens' "Sunday Morning hymn of our unfaith." The second poem, which Steele thinks may be related to Cunningham's mother's death, mentions the speaker's use of the rosary beads to "come to her," "fingering the hard beads that shape the whole,
Not otherwise than to the type, the way,
Earthen image of the one God and true, :
From where my hand and sentiment may stray ....
In "A Moral Poem" (1934; CP 11-12), Cunningham makes explicit his decision to "stray" from Christian belief:
Then leave old regret,
Ancestral remorse,
Which, though you forget,
Unseen keep their course;
Shaping what each says,
Weathered in his style,
They in his fond ways
Live on for a while.
But leave them at last
To find their own home.
Inured to the past,
Be what you become:
Nor ungrudgingly
The young hours dispense,
Nor live curiously,
Cheating providence.
His own paraphrase of the poem in The Quest of the Opal summarizes it neatly: "The tradition that surrounded him and formed much of the texture of his early years was the tradition of Irish Catholics .... To this he finally bade such farewell as one can to his past.... So far as a man's traditions are himself they cannot be altered but they need not be exploited. He who is inured to the past is at liberty to be what he becomes" (CE 421). There is, of course, more in the poem than his comment covers, including his histories of Irish ancestors and immediate family, but he indicates by his statement how important it was for him to leave the Catholicism of his earlier days. In that sense, "old regret" and "ancestral remorse" may refer to the Christian doctrines of Original Sin and the Sacrament of Confession. He admits in the poem, however, that the doctrine and practice are deeply embedded in his life - respected but muted remnants of past faith. He will allow them thus to linger until they find lodging in a place of their own, adjusting to his dismissal of them as he seeks his own center of meaning and activity. The last stanza affirms, however, that there will be a consequence of his abandonment of-past faith: he will remember doctrine and practice not with disdain or cynicism, but fondly, recognizing the contribution that those "young hours" have contributed to his being and identity. To ignore that contribution would be to "cheat providence" - fail to acknowledge a gift received. In the last stanza, he echoes the doctrinal term "dispensation" when, as it were, he becomes a priest unto himself with regard to the religion of his youth, setting it aside while reminding himself not to nullify by outlandish behavior the value in the tradition thus providentially given. He recognizes that despite his serious and decisive break with his Catholicism, those "traditions ... are himself and "remain." The important thing is that he will not "exploit" them (lean on them in weakness, or become dependent upon them) even though they remain an ineradicable part of his identity.
