GUARDED BY MYSTERY -- Part 14

Meaning in a Postmodern Age

by David Walsh

Chapter 7 Cultural Transparence (conclusion)

and Bibliographic Note

[Editors' note: Professor Walsh and his publisher have given us permission to reproduce the entire meditation. We have kept available the two most recent preceding parts in addition to the current part.  Part 14 is the final part. The book may be obtained directly from the Publisher.]

Rediscovery of Tradition

In many respects this is the untold side of the twentieth-century story. We are inclined to regard ourselves as an era pre­cariously set adrift from all steadfast principles and traditions. But the wasteland is not all. While we may lack the spontaneous access to powerfully unreflective truths, that does not mean that we lack the reflective capacity to undertake a deliberate sifting of the remnants of tradition we can recover. This is the hidden side of our time which is full of significance for the future. Although it is little known or appreciated, we live in a period of momen­tous traditional rediscovery. The fact that it is the work of expli­citly historical research, that it seems to be motivated by an admi­ration for a vanished past, does not mitigate the undoubted appeal and eventually authority that such work of recovery exer­cises on us. We have a deeper understanding of the ancient and medieval worlds, together with the other great spiritual tradi­tions of mankind, than at any other time in human history.

 

Besides experiencing the scientific explosion, we are also living in the midst of an explosion of historical knowledge. The agnostic Stravinsky has expressed best the deep intuition that guides and sustains the work of historical recovery: "The more one distances oneself from the canons of the Christian Church, the further one distances oneself from the truth. These canons are as true for musical composition as they are for the life of an individual."

 

What remains is to find the means of making the profound in­timations that come to us from the past as well as from our own inner longing transparent for contemporary civilization. That is the challenge that defines the moment in which we live. Within the fragmentation of the modern world we have failed to con­struct our own meaning, and we are inclined to reexamine more respectfully the fragments of meaning we are left. Can the dried bones be made to live again? The question cannot be answered because it is not yet resolved. All we can do is point to the signs that indicate the direction of the struggle. The most significant such indication is the growing awareness that we cannot dispense even with the fragmentary and opaque elements of the traditions that come down to us. Even great artists are not great enough to construct everything anew and in every generation. They may enlarge and enrich a language, but they must begin with what is given to them, not seek to wholly invent their own. Looking back over the modern period we begin to recognize that even its vaunted assertion of independence from all traditional sources of meaning was an illusion. How could it define itself except in rela­tion to the tradition from which it sought to sever itself? The more we reflect on it, the clearer it becomes that we are not sim­ply unencumbered choosers of traditions, for who we are has al­ready been shaped by the traditions that have more or less chosen us.