August 19, 2022
Joshua Wren, author of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, editor-in-chief of Weisblood Books, and co-founder of the MA in Creative Writing at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, returns to the podcast to discuss his recent essays. Contemplative Realism: A Theological and Aesthetic Manifesto:
As in the past, and especially in our time of post-truth unreality, we should heed Pope Benedict XVI’s call to “inquire more carefully what ‘reality’ actually is.” So-called “realism,” when limited to material entities, can blind us to things rather than seeing them as they are. “Are we no longer interested in the universe?” asks Benedict. “Are we really hopelessly closed off today in our own little circle? Is it not precisely today that it is important to pray with the whole of creation?” If this contemporary preeminence is not wrong, if “he who sets aside the reality of God is only a pretentious realist,” then we should not flinch, but ask it fiercely and frankly. What is reality? Literature, like the liturgy, asks this question in its various forms and gives very different answers. At times, both art and worship seem to degenerate into a self-referential and trivial play, meaningless gestures, or the manner and atmosphere of bills that “no money can pay” (as Benedict XVI puts it). These closed circles of communication block transcendence. In contrast, in the Liturgy of the Living Cross, “the congregation does not offer its own thoughts or poems, but is privileged to draw from itself and share the cosmic song of praise of the cherubim and seraphim.” The same happens with living contemplative literature: we suffer with and praise the whole of creation. Prose cultivates gratitude and invites us to yearn for a vision of the whole.
However, this manifesto, which represents “contemplative realism,” From nothinga new aesthetic species. Nor do we promote this wild school of literary fish as the preeminent or even the only “advance” of contemporary fiction. Rather, we seek to articulate a literary approach that already exists in scattered volumes and in the potential of living artists; to collect and invigorate their spirit. Above all, we hope to invigorate a speculative realist temperament among as many participants as possible, literary gifted or not, because (to borrow Josef Pieper’s words) “the human ability to see is in decline” in a very bad sense. (Publisher’s description)
link
Read an abridged version of the manifesto https://benedictinstitute.org/manifesto/
Buy the full version Contemplative realism
https://www.amazon.com/Contemplative-Realism-Theological-Aesthetical-Joshua-Hren/dp/1951319567
Wise Blood Books https://www.wisebloodbooks.com/
MFA Program in Creative Writing at UST
https://www.stthom.edu/Academics/School-of-Arts-and-Sciences/Division-of-Liberal-Studies/Graduate/Master-of-Fine-Arts-in-Creative-Writing/Index.aqf? Aquifer_Source_URL=%2FMFA&PNF_Check=1
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