More than a century ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote a book that people do not read, even more than they do not read his book, The Man Who was Thursday (1908). Interestingly, both the books were published in the same year. A man who could rival Anthony Trollope’s indefatigably productive literary career by the sheer dint of a wink, Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy about the “gigantic secret” of joy that only a “Christian” knew.
As a book, Orthodoxy was openly against orthodoxy, needless to mention the garrulous Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek’s recent spate of interpretations on Chesterton’s famous declarations on the atheism of Christ on the Crucifix. Perhaps we shall hear more on that some other day. Meanwhile, on a similar note, suffice it to say that Orthodoxy was far more against pretenders to the throne of anti-orthodoxy. Pretension was what Chesterton disdained, above anything else. And what was pretension? Anything that bred insecurity or, worse still, helped conceal it, and cultivated an “aristocratic” distaste for the human of ordinary merit! Or so he wrote of in Heretics (1905).
Chesterton may have used other words, from time to time, in defining his repulsions. For instance, one of the manners of pretension, outlined by him, in Orthodoxy was the lack of joy modernity had brought about in human existence.
Chesterton was somewhat Orwellian in his recommendation, except not in the business of language and grammar, as George Orwell would write, for instance, in “Politics and the English Language” (1946). Chesterton was rather too nuanced and far too blunt, because he was full of joy. He saw life without blinkers. He saw it without the embellishments of socially constructed embarrassments and without the embarrassments of socially embellished scandals. For him, it was scandalous enough that humankind has ceased to feel two fundamental qualities that made a “Christian,” according to him. And these were: humility and joy.
Modern society, in Chesterton’s view, censored humility, like a taboo. It stigmatized humility as if it was a dreadfully risqué secret. It is no surprise, therefore, that since his passing on, it is generally the more humble who are wildly accused of the most unbelievably risqué matters, thanks to the grotesque imagination of those who despise humility. As a consequence, one no longer feels the joy of looking at stars, thinking about planets, staring at leaf fronds, observing insects crawl up the barks, marveling at ripples of water, or the life that accumulates in the interstices of everyday objects. Perhaps it is best to put it as it is without theorizing too much. For Chesterton, it best to be human in the most spontaneous manner accessible to the spirit. Such was the human of a mythical, but not inexistent past, according to Chesterton.
His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth, and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.
Like Orwell’s drunkard became increasingly more slovenly and bankrupt as he drank more and the more he drank more the more bankrupt and slovenly he became, so did Chesterton’s unhumble un-Christian protagonist, for whom to express or observe humility was nothing short of acknowledging a his cowardice while taking the aisle. And such a make-believe modern Christian, with all the appurtenances and none of the substance thereof, was joyless even as he was caught hourly drowning in the worst surfeits of pleasure. Because a man of joy never exhibited it. But a man of pleasure cannot ever seem to possess what he possesses the most unless he make a vulgar show of it to inspire the resentment and wrath of his fellow-joyless-countryfolks.
In humility, we see the sun as the sun. In the lack of it, we see it as a background. In the lack of joy, we seek an identity. In the presence of it, it becomes all the identity we need, as we realize that it so easily might not have been there, in the very first place. And the modern world hates it because it cannot be manufactured. It can only be experienced out of an experience of our smallness before the universe.
Arup K. Chatterjee 