Meridian Magazine :: Poetry : Recovering Lost Literature

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Recovering Lost Literature
By Doug Talley

Before the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century A.D. books were written by hand. Copies were also made by hand. The process was slow, tedious and expensive and made books quite valuable. Anciently a personal library of even just twenty books was a treasure trove. Manuscripts of great literature were simply not produced in great quantity, certainly not with the abundance of mass printing these days. Today, even a first edition book of poetry, for example, numbers usually about 5,000 copies.

Given the relative rarity of ancient books and the ravages of time, a vast store of great poetry has disappeared into oblivion. That any great poetry has survived at all is a blessing, if not a miracle. The story is told that while the Latin poet Virgil lay dying of a fever, he asked attendants for his manuscript of The Aeneid, intending to cast it to the fire. The request was sensibly ignored, and remarkably the book has never since been lost. Critics have tried to bury it from time to time as artificial, for some reason ignoring the originality of its profound human feeling and the luscious cadence of its hexameters. The barrier of an ancient language might also increasingly threaten its survival as a classic. Nevertheless, Latin is still taught in schools and thousands upon thousands of copies of the epic exist in the original tongue and in translation. The continuance of The Aeneid as a classic seems secure, but how slender was the thread by which that first manuscript was saved.

Other Near Losses

Another great Latin poet, Catullus, who wrote during the first century B.C., enjoyed immense popularity while he lived and for some decades after, but by the time of the Middle Ages was forgotten almost entirely. He may have been forgotten forever, except that a scholar of Verona at the beginning of the fourteenth century A.D. discovered an ancient manuscript under a bushel measure. This single manuscript disappeared again, but not before copies were made, two of which now reside in the Vatican and at Oxford. Catullus wrote of the vicissitudes of love with passionate simplicity and directness. With reason to doubt the good faith of a lady friend, a rather brazen coquette actually, he wrote:

          Nulli se dicit mulier mea nubere malle
              Quam mihi, non si se Iuppiter ipse petat.
          Dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti
              In vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.

          My lady says she prefers to marry no one, no one
              More than me, even if Jove himself pursued.
         She says so. But what a lady says to her suitor in passion
              Should be written on wind and the waves of the sea.

This is timeless poetry worth carving in stone. And yet this poem, as well as more than a hundred others by Catullus, was almost fated to the same wind and rushing water as the words of his fickle mistress. Only by a chance discovery, a quirk of fate perhaps, do we have them still.

More recently, the American poetess Emily Dickinson published only eight poems during her entire lifetime. But upon her death in 1886, her sister found hidden in a bureau a massive manuscript of nearly 2,000 poems. Like stockings and blouses, these were the garments with which she clothed her soul, tucked away in a dresser for no one’s eyes but hers alone. How modest was her public appearance and yet how rich and abundant her private store. And how careless and indifferent was her genius, to leave such remarkable work to chance discovery. She left no instructions, no hints or clues about the existence of the poems, only a perfect anonymity. And how much poorer we would be if lines like these had slipped away:

449

I died for Beauty – but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room –

He questioned softly, “Why I failed?”
“For Beauty”, I replied –
“And I – for Truth – Themself are One –
We Brethren, are”, He said –

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night –
We talked between the Rooms –
Until the Moss had reached our lips –
And covered up – our names –

1078

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth –

The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity.

Another Chance Discovery

Approximately a year ago for business reasons I visited a Roman Catholic monastery in Pascoag, Rhode Island. I was given a tour of the building and then the freedom to wander and explore at my leisure. While rummaging through storage boxes in a cellar of the monastery I chanced upon a master’s thesis written by Brother Eugene Salois in 1952 on the poetry of Sister Mary Madeleva. I had never heard of the Sister and so I thumbed through the thesis with mild interest. I noted in the bibliography that she had impressive credentials, having published in The New Republic, The New York Times, and Poetry Review of London. She also published ten volumes of poetry, including volumes of both Selected Poems (1939) and Collected Poems (1947) with Macmillan Publishing. I noted also she had received an endorsement from the renowned writer G. K. Chesteron, who reportedly said Sister Madeleva’s poetry was the only poetry of a modern woman that had the power to stir him within, that had the fire and spirit of a real poetic nature and inspiration.

Even more impressive than her credentials and this endorsement were her poems, or rather the tantalizing snippets quoted in the thesis. Because like the work of the ancient Greek poetess Sappho, what the thesis passed on were fragments merely, and one or two whole poems. And yet even in the fragments a rich and startling poetic voice was evident. I became increasingly excited as I read. Her verse, addressed exclusively to God, was alive with passionate religious energy.

I read this fragment from a poem entitled “Tribute”:

You are the majesty of all my days,
Set in an aureole of morning light,
Set in my life’s high noon; against its night
You will be yet the beauty of my ways.
Ah, let me be the moon, crescent and white
Shining before you, mute with love and praise!

In another striking fragment from a poem entitled “Meditation on Atlas”, she associated herself with Christ on the cross:

I have hung for years together
On a stark, two-branching tree.
It holds the earth and sky apart;
It binds them endlessly.

In another fragment from the poem “Red Tulips”, Sister Madeleva associated the miracle of Pentecost, in which the early disciples spoke in tongues, with tulips blossoming in spring:

A dozen dull tulips were gathered together
In fear, every one;
When sudden arose a great stirring of weather,
Of wind and sun,
And there sat on each tulip a parted tongue whether
Of petal or flame! – lo, their gospel of life has begun!

The only whole poem I chanced upon was a magnificent Petrarchan sonnet entitled “October Birthday”:

Were I immortal only I would proffer
Tokens tremendous as a god can give:
Planets in leash, an earth whereon to live
With all October’s fugitive gold in coffer,
Its moon a sorceress, its wind a scoffer,
Ocean it carries in a sandy sieve,
And stars aloof and undemonstrative.
Gifts casually infinite I could offer.

But as a woman and your love I bring you
The simple, homely things a woman must:
A little, human-hearted song to sing you,
My arms to comfort and my lips to trust,
The tangled moods that, autumn-wise, I fling you,
The frail and faulty tenderness of dust.

After this brief and fascinating encounter with Sister Madeleva’s work, I returned home determined to find out more. I learned she was born Mary Evaline Wolff in Cumberland, Wisconsin in 1887. She studied at numerous universities, including the University of Notre Dame and Oxford. She pursued an education career and served as teacher and principal of Sacred Heart Academy in Odgen, Utah and as President of St. Mary-of-the-Wasatch College in Salt Lake City. She later became the head of the English department at St. Mary’s College at Notre Dame and was named the college’s third president in 1934, serving in that capacity until 1961.

However, when I tried to locate her poetry I met with failure. She had published books of poetry with well-known houses, including Macmillan and Appleton, but none of the books appear now to still be in print. A book of her essays, Chaucer’s Nun and Other Essays, is reportedly available through Amazon.com, but with the warning that it is a special order book and could be out of print. Perhaps there are scattered volumes of her poetry gathering dust in libraries across the country or in a grandparent’s attic. Unless some of these books are found and resurrected, her work, like that of other worthy poets, may be lost to all future generations. It is already lost to this one, which is a great misfortune.

How Many More Lost Works?

It may be the best poetry being written today will never be known. How many more lost works of merit are there? Fortunately, as Christians we can trust the promise that not even a hair of the head will be lost forever, but will eventually be restored. It just seems a shame, however, that such a rich and enticing religious poetry as that of Sister Madaleva’s has slipped away before earning the generations of readership it deserves. The lines quoted here may keep her faintly breathing, but for how long? What has been recovered here for Meridian’s readers we hope you enjoy. And if any reader just happens to know where to purchase a book of Madeleva poetry, please write!

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About the Editor:

Doug Talley graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University in 1976. Upon graduation he spent the summer in the Grand Tetons looking for God, which led him on a hitch-hiking spree to Salt Lake City. He joined the Church and thereafter served in the Italy, Rome Mission from 1978 to 1980. After his mission he enrolled in the University of Akron School of Law. He graduated in 1984 and has "fiddled at the law" ever since, currently as the CEO of Millennial Assurance Services, Inc. He has published one book of poetry, The Angel Voice of Irony, a sonnet sequence about his conversion. A second book of poetry, April in October, is planned for publication in 2003. His poems have appeared in The American Scholar, Midwest Poetry Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Hellas, and other journals. He and his wife and seven children live in Akron, Ohio, where he has served in every ward calling from scoutmaster to bishop.

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