Religious Valves in German Literature of To-Day

Extract

To speak at all of religious values in literature may be regarded by some as rather questionable, on the ground that religion and the art of letters have little in common and that conscious attempts to make literature serve the cause of religion are generally failures or, at the best, half-successes, serving neither the one nor the other with completeness. But it is not quite from that point of view that the theme for this essay has been stated. Even the ‘art for art’s sake’ critics and artists—an ever-diminishing company, in the usual acceptation of the phrase—would agree that literature was expression, individual and social. Most people would further agree that religion was still a vital, if often unrecognised, element in the life of the human being or of the community. Given literature, then, as ‘expression,’ and religious aspiration as the same thing, it is justifiable to isolate them for a while and discuss, without any question of propaganda or of making ‘literature the handmaid of religion,’ the way in which the first is being linked to the second—the particular instance under notice being that of Germany to-day where, as will be seen shortly, the enquiry promises to be especially fruitful and thought-provoking.

Writers to whom the label ‘Catholic’ may be specifically applied are by no means a negligible quantity in Germany to-day, even regarded from the point of view of general literary criticism.