28 / CHRONICLESndairy dishes, the prohibition of thenwearing of cotton mixed with hnen inngarments, and the study of sacrificialnofferings and of the preparation ofnincense for Temple worship. Onenmight note that Rabbinic Judaism anchorsndietary and other laws in thenMasoretic text of the Five Books ofnMoses, even those laws not explicitlynstated there. The repetition of prescriptionsnand apparent orthographicnredundancies in the authoritative textnare used to lend biblical support forna wide variety of Jewish ritual and othernpractices. All Talmudic laws arenviewed, from the standpoint of RabbinicnJudaism, as part of the unchangingnMosaic revelation. Although suchna belief can be easily appreciated whennseen in context of an evolving nationalncommunity bound by custom and ritual,nthe Rabbinic opponents of thenprimitive Church were not formulatingnuniversal rules of conduct on thenbasis of natural reason. Like the Christians,nthe Rabbis appeal to the faith ofnDavid Jonesn(continued from page 21)naligned public figures as Vladimir Ashkenazy, AgathanChristie, Cyril Connolly, Colin Davis, Robert Craves,nGraham Greene, Iris Murdoch, Sean O’Faolain, PhilipnToynbee, E.I. Watkins, and R.C. Zaehner, among manynothers. Something other than politics was considered herento have been of inestimable value.nNowhere is David Jones’s state of mind on this wholenquestion more clearly revealed than in William Blissett’snThe Long Conversation (Oxford University Press, 1981), anmemoir of the author’s talks with Jones in the poet’s lastnyears. Jones sensed disarray in the Church and scored itsnprelates for the “overnight abandonment of doctrines andnpractices they should have understood and loved—andnsuffered some discomfort to maintain.” Blissett says thatnDavid spoke bitterly and even profanely about this, “like anman who has been robbed and beaten and left for dead.”nHe wanted to know why they had replaced the Mass thatnwas already known and loved and then set up instead “annunbridgeable discontinuity,” as he called it, and worse,n”Why must every one of the new experiments be so thinnand truncated and incapable of making any lasting impression?”nIt is certainly in this sense, if in no other, that DavidnJones must be seen as the last liturgical poet. There isnprobably no other instance in modern literary history whichnso clearly represents the untoward abandonment by specialnreligious interests of a major religious poet. No liturgicalncontext now remains that can possibly inspire or inform thenlevel of poetry achieved in our lifetime by David Jones.na believing community.nIn a recently published book, L’eclipsendu sacre, the Catholic thinkernThomas Molnar speaks of the essentialnbut not exclusive relationship betweennthe Judeo-Christian universe andnhuman rationality. Since the universenand history are both presented by thisnreligious tradition as the “intelligiblenwork of the Supreme Being who guaranteesnits transparence to human intelligence,”nthose within this traditionnhave been more apt than those outsidenof it to look for rational explanations.nThis tendency, however, has proceedednin Western society to the point thatnanother aspect of its religious heritagenand of all other religious traditions, thensense of the sacral, has gone by thenboards,nMolnar blames the rationalist perspectivenfor creating a void rather thannattempting a balance between faithnand reason. Significantly, the samenkind of objection is raised by Alain denBenoist, the neopagan vitalist withnwhom Molnar coauthored his volume,nas a debat dialogue. Both writers,nthough each from a different theologicalnperspective, lament the passingnof the sense of transcendence from ourndesacralized civilization. Althoughncritical differences, aired in the discussionnparts of their book, continue tonseparate the two thinkers, neither onenwould accept the Enlightenment’s notionnof “natural religion.” Both affirmnthe metarational and mystical characternof religious consciousness and,neven more importantly, the dependencenof society upon a shared sense ofnthe sacral. It is in discovering thenphilosophic overlap between Molnar,nan ultramontane Catholic, and Benoist,nan exponent of Indo-Europeannanimism, that one can appreciate thenmagnitude and implications of at leastnone current religious debate; betweennreligionists ar”id secular rationalists. Innthis particular struggle, Jerry Falwellnmay find himself with strange andnunexpected allies.nStill, like Einstein’s theory of relativity returning a point innspace back upon itself, a sense of history vaster than the onenwe know will eventually redeem the vision of David Jones.nAs he says in his notes for the Argo (London) recording of anselection of his marvelous readings, “That is why ThenAnathemata is cyclic in character and however wide thencircles the action of the Mass is central to it and insofar as ancircle can be said to have a ‘beginning’ or an ‘end,’ it beginsnand ends with the Mass.” For Jones, then, all nature was innitself the gift of incarnation, “capable of being loved andnknown,” and which the poet most fully realizes in thenmaking of sacred objects,nWor^s by David Jones;nnnIn Parenthesis, New York; Chilmark Press, 1961. Originallynpublished in England, 1937.nThe Anathemata, New York; Chilmark Press, 1963. Originallynpublished in England, 1952.nEpoch and Artist: Selected Writings, New York; ChilmarknPress, 1959.nDai Great-Coat: A Self-Portrait of David ]ones in HisnLetters, edited by Rene Hague, London; Faber and Faber,n1980.nThe Sleeping Lord and Other Fragments, New York; ChilmarknPress, 1974.nThe Dying Gaul and Other Writings, London; Faber andnFaber, 1978.nThe Roman Quarry and Other Sequences, edited by HarmannGriesewood and Rene Hague, New York; SheepnMeadow Press, 1981. Distributed by Persea Books, 225nLafayette St., New York, NY 10012.nChilmark Press books are distributed by Random House.n