Biography
Gilbert Keith Chesterton was a British
writer who was born in London, in 1874, and died -in a non-determinate place- in
1936. He became well-known because of his articles of art and literary
criticism, and in 1900 he published two verse books.
Although, at first, his philosophy was
liberal, he ended up being a Conservative and even he founded a journal (called
‘G.K.‘s Weekly’, which has recently celebrated its tenth anniversary) in order
to expose all his opinions with his friend and writer Hilaire Belloc, also a
member of the Tory –Conservative- Party; this particular relationship started
precisely in the year 1900.
Picture commemorating G.K.’Weekly’s 10th Anniversary.
After a study about "Robert Browning" (1903), he
composed his first novel, "The Napoleon of Notting Hill"
(1904), which came up to be a politic fantasy that reflects his displeasure
about the mechanised modern world and emphasises the previous pre-industrial
world. This novel was followed by some other important critic books, such as
"Dickens" –against Charles Dickens, 1906- and "G.B.
Shaw" (1909). Meanwhile, he was configuring his own outlooks, which he
set out with a certainly polemic and, at the same time, humorous touch, as well
as he fought versus all what he considered to be modern errors: that is, for
example, he opposed common sense and faith to rationalism and scientism;
towards the cruelty of the industrial civilisation, he posed the social ideal
of the Middle Ages (what he very often called ‘Medievalism’).
But, anyway, this author out-stood
specially for being an essayist rather than a novelist, and indeed he resorted
to the already mentioned moody narration, deliberately nonsensical or, nay, a
bit crazy in some cases. His chief subject is the orthodoxy, what drove him to
write his book "Orthodoxy" (1908), which is the story of his
spiritual evolution, which should lead him, in 1922, to join the Catholic
Church. Despite the fact that he didn’t convert into Christendom till this
date, nearly every book he wrote advocated for it, as long as it claimed for
the Orthodoxy in general too. This man regarded orthodoxy as a Christian
catholic, but which begins as conservative sensibleness firstly and, therefore,
it is altogether roundness of a universal order, steady and consecrated:
something, thus, perhaps not very evangelic. I would be supposed to be,
according to him, his personal "discovery of the Mediterranean":
having taken up himself to invent an individual religion that satisfied his
propensities, it turned out at end that he had come across
"orthodoxy". Rubicund and jovial, friend of wisdom, good sense and
‘good table’, Chesterton worships normality as a unity of creed: in his essay
"On lying in bed", he thinks to be utterly absurd the fact of
respecting hygiene and urbanity as sacred when one doesn’t believe in anything
at all; to prove that, he said the following words: "I have met
Ibsenite pessimists who thought it wrong to take beer but right to take prussic
acid".
On the other side, he defined his
attitude before the social problems in "Where the world limps by"
(1910). The next year, he initiated the series of police reports, whose
protagonist is the detective-priest Father Brown: "Father Brown’s
candour" (1911). Here we can enjoy some tales that carry the
arbitrariness of its genre to the extremes and where we are narrated the
detective adventures of the kind and Catholic Father Brown; from the same date
is another poetic piece: "The Ballad of the White Horse"
(1911). In the rest of his lifetime working, there are some memorable novels –
in which fantasy reaches extravagancy sometimes- like "The Man who was
Thursday" (1908), which is an ingenuous allegory about a famous group
of conspirators who chance to be policemen at last, "The Sphere and the
Cross" (1910), "Survival" (1912); we can find also
the polemic essay "Heretics" (1905), the literary critic -
"Chaucer" (1932), which goes on in the same line that the
satires devoted to other intellectuals of his time, as Shaw and Browning,
Dickens or William Blake. Another instance of critics in literature is "The
Victorian Epoch in literature" (1913) -, the historic essay "Short
History of England" (1917), some books with a religious inspiration,
such as "Saint Francis of Asis" (1923), "The
Everlasting Man" (1925) or "Saint Thomas of Aquino"
(1933), etcetera. His own "Autobiography" was published in
1936, when he died.
Bernard Shaw talked of ‘Chesterbelloc’, a
two-headed catholic monster who wandered around in the middle of the English
letters, rowing above all with the same Shaw. Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953),
nevertheless, is quite different from Chesterton: rather an historian, a
moderate essayist, without the funny Chestertonian tomfoolery, skilful
craftsman on journalistic articles.
---The information has been selected from "Gran Enciclopedia
Larousse", by Editorial Planeta, "Historia de la Literatura
Universal", by Martín de Riquer and José María Valverde, and
"Enciclopedia Microsoft® Encarta® 99.
Apart from all
this, I have chosen a writing by Dale Ahlquist, President of ‘American
Chesterton Society’, describing a little bit of the author and his relationship
with his contemporary environment.
"Who is this guy and
why haven’t I heard of him?"
by Dale Ahlquist
President
American Chesterton
Society
I’ve heard the
question more than once. It is asked by people who have just started to
discover G.K. Chesterton. They have begun reading a Chesterton book, or perhaps
have seen an issue of Gilbert! Magazine, or maybe they’ve only
encountered a series of pithy quotations that marvelously articulate some
forgotten bit of common sense. They ask the question with a mixture of wonder,
gratitude and . . . resentment. They are amazed by what they have discovered.
They are thankful to have discovered it. And they are almost angry that it has
taken so long for them to make the discovery.
"Who is this guy. .
.?"
Gilbert Keith
Chesterton (1874-1936) cannot be summed up in one sentence. Nor in one
paragraph. In fact, in spite of the fine biographies that have been written of
him, he has never been captured between the covers of one book. But rather than
waiting to separate the goats from the sheep, let’s just come right out and say
it: G.K. Chesterton was the best writer of the 20th century. He said something
about everything and he said it better than anybody else. But he was no mere
wordsmith. He was very good at expressing himself, but more importantly, he had
something very good to express. The reason he was the greatest writer of the
20th century was because he was also the greatest thinker of the 20th century.
Born in London,
Chesterton was educated at St. Paul’s, but never went to college. He went to
art school. In 1900, he was asked to contribute a few magazine articles on art
criticism, and went on to become one of the most prolific writers of all time.
He wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems,
including the epic Ballad of the White Horse, five plays, five novels,
and some two hundred short stories, including a popular series featuring the
priest-detective, Father Brown. In spite of his literary accomplishments, he
considered himself primarily a journalist. He wrote over 4000 newspaper essays,
including 30 years worth of weekly columns for the Illustrated London News, and
13 years of weekly columns for the Daily News. He also edited his own
newspaper, G.K.’s Weekly (To put it into perspective, four thousand
essays is the equivalent of writing an essay a day, every day, for 11 years. If
you’re not impressed, try it some time. But they have to be good essays - all
of them – as funny as they are serious, and as readable and rewarding a century
after you’ve written them).
Chesterton was
equally at ease with literary and social criticism, history, politics,
economics, philosophy, and theology. His style is unmistakable, always marked
by humility, consistency, paradox, wit, and wonder. His writing remains as
timely and as timeless today as when it first appeared, even though much of it
was published in throw away papers.
This man who composed
such profound and perfect lines as "The Christian ideal has not been
tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried",
stood 6’4" and weighed about 300 pounds, usually had a cigar in his mouth,
and walked around wearing a cape and a crumpled hat, tiny glasses pinched to
the end of his nose, swordstick in hand, laughter blowing through his
moustache. And usually had no idea where or when his next appointment was. He
did much of his writing in train stations, since he usually missed the train he
was supposed to catch. In one famous anecdote, he wired his wife, saying, "Am
at Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?" His faithful wife,
Frances, attended to all the details of his life, since he continually proved
he had no way of doing it himself. She was later assisted by a secretary,
Dorothy Collins, who became the couple’s surrogate daughter, and went on to
become the writer’s literary executrix, continuing to make his work available
after his death.
This absent-minded,
overgrown elf of a man, who laughed at his own jokes and amused children at
birthday parties by catching buns in his mouth, this was the man who wrote a
book called The Everlasting Man, which led a young atheist named C.S.
Lewis to become a Christian. This was the man who wrote a novel called The
Napoleon of Notting Hill, which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement
for Irish Independence. This was the man who wrote an essay in the Illustrated
London News that inspired Mohandas Gandhi to lead a movement to end British
colonial rule in India. This was a man who, when commissioned to write a book
on St. Thomas Aquinas, had his secretary check out a stack of books on St.
Thomas from the library, opened the top book on the stack, thumbed through it,
closed it, and proceeded to dictate a book on St. Thomas. Not just any book.
The renowned Thomistic scholar, Ettienne Gilson, had this to say about it:
"I
consider it as being without possible comparison the best book ever written on
St. Thomas. Nothing short of genius can account for such an achievement.
Everybody will no doubt admit that it is a 'clever' book, but the few readers
who have spent twenty or thirty years in studying St. Thomas. . . cannot fail
to perceive that the so-called 'wit' of Chesterton has put their scholarship to
shame. He has guessed all that which we had tried to demonstrate, and he has
said all that which they were more or less clumsily attempting to express in
academic formulas. Chesterton was one of the deepest thinkers who ever existed;
he was deep because he was right; and he could not help being right; but he
could not either help being modest and charitable, so he left it to those who
could understand him to know that he was right, and deep; to the others, he
apologized for being right, and he made up for being deep by being witty. That
is all they can see of him."
Chesterton debated many of the celebrated intellectuals of his time: George
Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, Clarence Darrow. According to
contemporary accounts, Chesterton usually emerged as the winner of these
contests, however, the world has immortalized his opponents and forgotten
Chesterton, and now we hear only one side of the argument, and we are enduring
the legacies of socialism, relativism, materialism, and skepticism. Ironically,
all of his opponents regarded Chesterton with the greatest affection. And
George Bernard Shaw said: "The world is not thankful enough for Chesterton."
His writing has been
praised by Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Jorge Luis Borges,
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Karel Capek, Marshall McLuhan, Paul Claudel, Dorothy L.
Sayers, Agatha Christie, Sigrid Undset, Ronald Knox, Kingsley Amis, W.H. Auden,
Anthony Burgess, E.F. Schumacher, Neil Gaiman, and Orson Welles. To name a few.
T.S. Eliot said that
Chesterton "deserves a permanent claim on our loyalty."
". . . and why haven’t I
heard of him?
Why haven’t you heard
of him?
There are three
answers to this question:
1)
I don’t know.
2) You’ve
been cheated.
3)
Chesterton is the most unjustly neglected writer of our time. Perhaps it is proof
that education is too important to be left to educators and that publishing is
too important to be left to publishers, but there is no excuse why Chesterton
is no longer taught in our schools and why his writing is not more widely
reprinted and especially included in college anthologies. Well, there is an
excuse. It seems that Chesterton is tough to pigeonhole, and if a writer cannot
be quickly consigned to a category, or to one-word description, he risks
falling through the cracks. Even if he weighs three hundred pounds.
But there is another problem. Modern thinkers and commentators and
critics have found it much more convenient to ignore Chesterton rather than to
engage him in an argument, because to argue with Chesterton is to lose.
Chesterton
argued eloquently against all the trends that eventually took over the 20th
century: materialism, scientific determinism, moral relativism, and spineless
agnosticism. He also argued against both socialism and capitalism and showed
why they have both been the enemies of freedom and justice in modern society.
And what
did he argue for? What was it he defended? He defended "the common
man" and common sense. He defended the poor. He defended the family. He
defended beauty. And he defended Christianity and the Catholic Faith. These
don’t play well in the classroom, in the media, or in the public arena. And
that is probably why he is neglected. The modern world prefers writers who are
snobs, who have exotic and bizarre ideas, who glorify decadence, who scoff at
Christianity, who deny the dignity of the poor, and who think freedom means no
responsibility.
But even though Chesterton is no longer taught in schools, you cannot consider
yourself educated until you have thoroughly read Chesterton. And furthermore,
thoroughly reading Chesterton is almost a complete education in itself.
Chesterton is indeed a teacher, and the best kind. He doesn’t merely astonish
you. He doesn’t just perform the wonder of making you think. He goes beyond
that. He makes you laugh.