Oregon daily emerald., April 30, 1963, Page Seven, Image 7

At Honors College
Brother Antoninus
On Artist s Struggle
By GEORGE HIGH AM
Emerald I’hoto Editor
Great art is created by a con
flict in the artist between passion
and reason; the work of art cre
ated is the artist’s statement of
that conflict and its solution. This
was the theme of Brother An
KItOTIIKK ANTONINUS
toninus’ talk at the Honors Col
lege Monday evening.
He outlined a fundamental
struggle in art: the tension In*
tween the tradition in art of rare
ful measured craftsmanship and
the tradition of spontaneous lyric
outpouring of soul These he
Conflict
■ a ■
(Continued from (age 1)
time is centered in the crisis of
personality," Antoninus said.
"The conilict between the flesh
and the spirit This conflict can
drive a man to the point of des
peration."
Brother Antoninus came to
Christianity by a devious path "I
was an atheist in my adoles
cence." he said From atheism he
turned to agnosticism "My ag
nosticism was painful." he said.
"It was not adequate for my spiri
tual needs "
“PANTHEISM,” he continued,
"came to me with the shock of a
religious conversion. It resulted
from my discovery of the divine
in nature I had different spiritual
needs then than I had in my
youth I gained an increased un
derstanding of the importance of
the person Before that I had
been too concerned with the ab
stract."
Concerning his poetry, he said,
“I try not to scant the whole of
reality.”
"But pantheism didn't have
what I was looking for," he aid
"I would have soon started a re
verse process like acidity I would
have lost the ability to respond
to life. If I had not found Catholi
cism, I would have been in a
terrible way. I would have splin
tered I had exhausted my incen
tives."
Brother Antoninus was exposed
to Catholicism through his second
wife, who had been a fallen away
Catholic. In her struggle back to
the church, Brother Antoninus
saw what he was looking for.
In order to become a Catholic,
Antoninus hail to separate lroin
his second wife because his first
marriage, although not made in
the church, was considered a val
id marriage by the church. Both
of his former wives are living. "I
was very happy in my second
marriage," he said.
Brother Antoninus was recent
ly released from the usual duties
of a lay brother so that he could
devote the majority of his time
to his poetry. "That has been my
career for thirty years,” he said.
Asked whether he would be a
conscientious objector again if
the situation presented itself
again, Brother Antoninus said, "I
am not a pacifist in the sense that
I was. Whether it would be the
right thing for me again, I have
no idea. It is not possible for me
to recapture the spirit of the late
’30’s.”
termed the Appolonian and Di
onysian dialects: “The greatest
art is always a tremendous wrest
ling between passion and mor
ality. No—maybe it’s having
fought them both to that supreme
moment in which cognition can
emerge,” he said.
He said that when someone
comes to their intellectual waken
ing they say, “'I have accepted
all these things on the authority
of my culture, but how do I
know they're true?’ Then, de
pending on his temperament he
goes out and attempts a system
atic breakdown of these values.
For an artist this appraisal takes
place in his art ”
Returning to the struggle of
dialectics he explained. “Colleges
today are not sympathetic to the
Dionysian dialectic because of the
broad cultural swing to the Apol
Ionian.” He went on to say that
perhaps the greatest problem for
universities today is to adapt
themselves, by new teaching
methods and mental attitudes, to
accommodate the Dionysian dia
lectic.
All art, he said, is formed in
a process of sensation acted on
by intellection, with the result
transformed by cognition's im
posing coherence on it.
He spoke of a “schizophrenic”
element in all artists, saying that
the lack of convergence in the
two dialectics caused his art to
be, and to 1m- a bridge between
him and his society, although his
facing the conflict, and trying to
resolve it, may make him not
popular to his contemporaries.
Dull To Give
'Last Lecture'
Paul S. Dull, professor of his
tory, will speak at 4 p.m. Thurs
day in the SU, as part of the
“Last Lecture” series.
Dull will discuss man’s use of
rationality in learning to live
with all men on “the other side
of the river.”
DULL TOOK bis Ph D. at Uni
versity of Washington in 1940 and
has been at Oregon since 1946.
He spent a year of post-doctoral
work at Harvard in Far-Eastern
studies. During World War 11, he
served in the U.S. Marine Corps
as a Japanese language officer
He has received research grants
from the Rockefeller Foundation,
American Council of Learned So
cieties, the Social Science Re
search Council and the Ford
Foundation.
The room number for the lec
ture will be posted.
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