Adam's Curse: Reflections on Religion and Literature (Erasmus Institute Books)

W. B. Yeats's poem "Adam's Curse" provides Donoghue with motif and incentive. In Genesis God says to Adam: "Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life." Yeats put it this way: "It is certain there is no fine thing / Since Adam's curse but needs much labouring." Based on a conversation he had with his beloved Maud Gonne and her sister Kathleen, Yeats's poem thinks about how difficult it is to be beautiful, to write great poetry, to love. In his Erasmus Lectures, Donoghue thinks about the lasting difficulties involved in understanding, and living with, cultural, literary, and religious values that are in restless relation to one another. On these and related matters, Donoghue enters into conversation with a variety of writers, some of them-John Crowe Ransom, Hans Urs von Balthasar, William Lynch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Emmanuel Levinas, Andrew Delbanco, and Robert Bellah-signaled by the titles of the seven lectures. Into the thematic space suggested by each of these titles Donoghue invites other writers and sages to join the conversation-Henry Adams, William Empson, John Milbank, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Gabriel Josipovici, and many more. The "talk," as you might expect, keeps coming around to the reading of specific literary texts: passages from Paradise Lost, Stevens's "Esthétique du mal," fiction by Gide and J. F. Powers and J. M. Coetzee, to name only a few. In Adan's Curse , Donoghue brings his special intelligence to bear on some of the intersections where religion and literature provocatively meet. Taking its title from a poem of William Butler Yeats, this collection of essays focuses on'Adam's Curse'—the burdens and harsh conditions that, as Denis Donoghue underscores throughout, make any human achievement difficult. As he says, those'conditions include at various levels of reference the Fall of Man, categorical failure, loss, the limitations inscribed so insistently in human life that they seem to be in the nature of things, like death and weather.'But hope is never ruled out, as Donoghue reminds us of'the possibility of putting up with the conditions and turning them to some account.'It is the'putting up with the conditions and turning them to some account'—a post-lapsarian struggle fraught with religious questions—that most interests Donoghue. These essays, which are explorations of both faith and literary works that engage faith, address a dazzling range of texts and writers: Yeats, Milton, Larkin, Heaney, Emmanuel Levinas, Alasdair MacIntyre, John Crowe Ransom, Henry Adams, William Lynch's Christ and Apollo, and Robert Bellah's Beyond Belief, among others. Common to all is an alertness to the social bearing of literature and the role it plays in relation to politics, religion, and especially ethics. What emerges, for Donoghue, is the need to restore the primacy of theology and church doctrine without evading the'dark parts'of the Old and New Testaments.Through his probing, reflective encounters with philosophical and religious issues, we witness a magisterial intelligence at work. In The Spring Of 1999 Distinguished Literary Critic Denis Donoghue Inaugurated The Erasmus Lectures At The University Of Notre Dame Under The Title Adam's Curse. This Book Is The Text Of Those Lectures, Revised And Extended.--jacket. Adam's Curse -- God Without Thunder -- Church And World -- Otherwise Than Being -- Christ And Apollo -- Beyond Belief -- After Virtue -- The Death Of Satan. Denis Donoghue. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Taking its title from a poem by Yeats, this collection of essays focuses on the burdens and harsh conditions that, as Denis Donoghue underscores throughout, make any human achievement difficult. The essays explore both faith and literary works that engage faith, from Milton to Larkin. "In the spring of 1999 distinguished literary critic Denis Donoghue inaugurated the Erasmus Lectures at the University of Notre Dame under the title Adam's Curse. This book is the text of those lectures, revised and extended."--BOOK JACKET.