The Mystery of Form

It didn't seem that important at the time, but I recall sitting in a graduate seminar taught by the father of a certain Democratic presidential candidate, and hearing through that thick, cosmopolitan, but unmistakably Maltese accent, the word "form."  Meant to stand as an independent sentence, it silenced every statement that would reduce literature to a pet ideology by insisting to the contrary the way even a Marxist must believe in the Incarnation when it comes to a work of art.

I would find more consistent and profound advocates of "form" not long after, but it testifies to how central is the mystery of form, not only to art but to reality as such, that it is the one thought that continuously beguiles and which can even lead me to write two essays on a common theme in the same week.

Click the Catholic Thing logo to read, "Rebuilding Notre Dame: Form Is Not Fashion," and the Catholic World Report logo to read, "The True Form of Education."  Between them both you might find some interesting ideas that, for those of you who like a mystery, might help in interpreting the poems in section IV of The Hanging God, which you can buy in a jiff, if you just click the book cover.