Poetry, Beauty, and Contemplation: The Complete Aesthetics of Jacques Maritain

Preface

ix Preface In the fall of 1965, a young trumpet player walked excitedly into his philosophy of art course at Boston College. This was not his first philosophy class. However, since Boston College did not then offer a major in music, he saw his time there as little more than a son’s obedient fulfillment of his father’s demand that he obtain a liberal arts baccalaureate degree. Afterward, he would be free to do as he wished, and he thought at the time that his future would be in music. Moreover, since this paternal requirement was nonnegotiable, he reasoned that he might as well put his time to good use; he enjoyed philosophy because it stimulated many kinds of questions, and because, intuitively, he believed that it held the promise of providing true answers to those questions. He was an accomplished musician, and his music experiences were many and varied, including an extended opportunity to study with jazz alto saxophone legend Phil Woods. Perhaps the greatest alto saxophone player since Charlie Parker, Woods was an inspiring educator; daily interactions with him over several summers provided firsthand exposure to an artist of true genius. This was artistic inspiration of the highest order, the kind that changes lives. For this young man, it was a portrait of an artist’s life that even James Joyce would appreciate. Overlapping these summer years, his time at Boston College supplied additional sources of musical and artistic inspiration. The aspiring musician would spend his sophomore, junior, and senior years performing with the Harvard-Radcliffe Symphony Orchestra, a group of superlative musicians performing great classical masterpieces. These experiences reinforced the enchanted notion of the poet’s charmed life. Boston College’s campus, too, was teeming with intellectual and artistic activity. Composer-in-residence Alexander Peloquin, perhaps x [ Preface the foremost Catholic liturgical composer of his day, was a professor of music history and conductor of the Boston College Chorale. A passionate , inspirational campus icon, Peloquin taught courses that were always filled to capacity. By joining the Boston College Chorale and taking every course that Peloquin offered, this young student made every effort to be absorbed into an exhilarating world of art and culture , and he befriended those who were similarly enamored. While others of their 1960s-era peers went to coffee houses, “mixers,” and local pubs, these pubescent poets savored their evenings listening to Miles Davis and John Coltrane. When not otherwise engaged, these aspiring aesthetes immersed themselves in the best of Boston’s art and culture. This artistic and cultural context defined these young friends and it shaped the anticipation of that young trumpet player who was about to take philosophy professor Idella Gallagher’s life-changing aesthetics course. Unbeknownst to this impressionable, truth-seeking sophomore, Idella and her philosopher husband, Donald, were close personal friends of the famous twentieth-century philosopher Jacques Maritain and his wife, Raïssa. Although the course itself, with its rather standard aesthetics textbook anthology, was not particularly noteworthy , its bibliography did require Maritain’s brilliant book, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry. Even though he could not have known it at the outset of the course, Maritain’s book would alter the course of this young artist’s life profoundly. At the time, however, this philosophy student knew nothing about Maritain’s life or philosophy: he knew nothing of Maritain’s conversion to Catholicism, his philosophical insights, his lifelong friendships with leading philosophers and creative artists, or his abiding commitment to the thought and life model of St.Thomas Aquinas. Never having heard of Jacques Maritain, he could not have known of Maritain’s own unique poetic gifts. And yet the youth’s experiences and associations from these college years opened his mind and heart to the great insights that Maritain’s book would soon reveal. His prior aesthetic experiences, many of true depth and inspiration, had already communicated wordlessly the realities now explained by Maritain’s Preface \ xi text. Although he was a philosophical novice, Maritain spoke to him on a deeply personal level and, having been “bitten by Poetry,” the seeds of his intellectual transformation were firmly planted. That was forty-five years ago. Even though age and experience now cause him to smile at the self-absorption of his youthful idealism , the experiences themselves were nonetheless real and enduring. Fortunately, like God, the Muses too (we trust) have a sense of humor. And even...