Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in America on June 13, 1942.
[A paper read at the Tenth Anniversary Celebration of the Gallery of Living Catholic Authors, New York, May 24.—Literary Editor.]
On the face of things, it would seem that for a writer of fiction at least it might be impractical to follow the maxim that an old Norwegian farmer’s wife once handed out to me, as the principle on which she had been brought up and in her turn had brought up a large family of fine men and women: “Never tell a lie. And don’t tell a truth, unless it is necessary.”
It is a principle that has worked out very well in our peasant communities. It makes for honesty and courtesy, it makes people develop an agreeable art of conversation about the weather and the crops and the facts of your neighbors’ life that are known to everybody already. It prevents people from talking too much. I have found it developed to perfection among Englishmen. And recently, here in America, I have had the privilege of meeting some quite charming New Englanders, who also practise the same principle. They were so kind, but so very reticent, I felt almost as if I were among my own people again.
Sigrid Undset: “Never tell a lie. And don’t tell a truth, unless it is necessary.”
After all, I think the maxim of old Gurø Dalsbøe is a very good principle to live after, even for the writer of fiction. That is, if the writer of fiction wants to be a creator of living art. Of course the very word “fiction” is rather equivocal, like so many words in our present-day vocabulary, which has suffered from generations of loose thinking and the abuse of catch-words. So you often meet the word used as if fiction were the opposite of facts. Some kinds of fiction are, of course. But even that kind of fiction need not necessarily be the opposite of truth. Facts must be true, but they are not truths, just as wooden boxes or fencepoles or doors or tables are not woods, the society of living, growing trees from which come the wooden implements.
Practical people may handle facts without knowing the truths they stem from, as a baby may sit in his high chair and enjoy his meal of porridge, without knowing a thing about the tree from which his chair was fashioned, or the wheatfield and the cow that were the sources of his meal. Of course, we hope that Baby may live to experience the delightful meeting with woods and wheatfields and cows. And we may hope that the practical people who handle facts may some day make acquaintance, at least with some of the truths that facts stem from. And true fiction, if you see what I mean by that, must necessarily handle facts, but its chief concern must be with the truths behind the facts— the wild mountains from where the tame stones of the pavement and the cultured stone of statuary were quarried, the living woods which yielded the material for lumber mills and carpenter shops and pulp for the million tons of paper we use or abuse. The facts then become things of secondary importance to the writer, even if they are things of primary importance in practical life. Nevertheless, they are not origins; they originate from something.
To the Catholic writer the whole world of facts and truths behind the facts will appear in relation to the Ultimate Origin from which everything emanates.
To the Catholic writer the whole world of facts and truths behind the facts will appear in relation to the Ultimate Origin from which everything emanates—the mountains from which stones are quarried and ores are mined, the woods that give us timber and blueberries, the jungle of civilized or uncivilized life, where human beings roam or flutter and sometimes remember, and sometimes forget, and as often as not do violence to themselves and others in a futile attempt to deny that man was created in the Image of God, and to shake off the dreadful responsibility which is implied in the idea, that whatever you do may have consequences in all eternity.
We know that everything in this world, things animate and inanimate, are ultimately dependent on God. I do not mean that we always think of it— nobody ever could manage to think always of more than a fraction of the things he knows. But I hope, to all Catholics, it is always the submerged knowledge that prevents us from certain aberrations of thinking, as the submerged knowledge that the sea is deep and cold and very wet prevents us from turning to the right or to the left, when we have to board a ship by way of a narrow gangplank. We do not consciously think how very unpleasant it would be to tumble over, but we walk straight all the same.
After all, I think the advice of my old countrywoman is very good advice for writers of fiction, too. Never tell a lie. And just tell the truths you have to. In fact, a writer—one who has a genuine urge to express himself in writing—may perhaps be described as a person who has got to tell truths more often, and to tell more truths than the bulk of the people, who may get along very well when they stick to the facts of everyday life, cultivate kindness and reticence, never tell lies, and tackle the truths behind the facts only on the rare occasions when they have to do it.
But remember—never tell a lie. Not even the lies of kindness, the lies to blackout hideous or painful or discouraging truths. They are the kind of lies that represent the greatest temptation to people of good will, and they are certainly not so morally revolting, maybe they are less sinful too, than lies told for coarsely selfish reasons, reasons of greed and concupiscence. At least, I hope they are less sinful, for I shudder when I think of how often I have told that kind of lie, and still oftener have I thought them and tried to kid myself into believing them, even if I don’t think I have committed them to writing very often.
Sigrid Undset: "It should really be our rule, never to tell lies, and to tell the truths that must be told—the truths we need not tell should always be implicit behind our work."
But they grow upon you; you get into the habit of resorting to them, oftener and oftener. To perpetuate them in writing—I should say, try to perpetuate them—is usually very damaging to a work of fiction, for most readers find out, as soon as the interest of novelty has passed, if a story is untrue, untruthful. Don’t you know all these stories about a spectacular conversion of a hardened sinner, by Catholic authors as well as, or even more frequently than, by authors of the other Christian denominations? The conversion of a hardened sinner is such a tremendous miracle, what with God being Almighty, and the sinner yet having his free will, that I think very few writers of fiction are able to deal adequately with such a wonderful topic. I would say, let us leave it to the theologians—and don’t expect all of them either to write weü or clearly about it. Another thing: religious vocations are not too common anywhere, except among the characters of some Catholic writers of fiction, and their stories are not always quite convincing.
And tell the truths you have to. Even if they are grim, preposterous, shocking. After all, we Catholics ought to acknowledge what a shocking business human life is. Our race has been revolting against its Creator since the beginning of time. Revolt, betrayal, denial, or indifference, sloth, laziness—which of us has not been guilty in one or more or all of these sins some time or other? But remember, you have to tell other and more cheering truths, too: of the Grace of God and the endeavor of strong and loyal, or weak but trusting souls, and also of the natural virtues of man created in the Image of God, an image it is very hard to efface entirely. Even in the times of genuine paganism, in the times before the Incarnation of Our Saviour, when mankind in perfectly good faith wove their creeds and myths about the Divinity they were aware of, and the Powers they sensed behind the pageantry of spring and summer and autumn and winter, behind the procession of living things from the womb of the mother to the grave, through health and illness, passions noble and evil, through joys and griefs—even in those times the hands that fumbled honestly for the truths of the Beyond succeeded in touching them, as was afterwards revealed in the daylight of Our Lord.
It is true, that the old heathen had also discovered the presence of the Devil, pure and personal Evil, and that many of them worshipped him, through witches and wizards and magicians, in the hope that one might strike a bargain with the lower powers, while the higher, the good ones, would be less easy for man to understand or come to terms with. The worship of devils had already had a long history, when a group of Germans decided to dedicate themselves to the Power who encourages men to murder, treason, cruelty and wallowing in all kinds of moral filth, offering them in return Overlordship on Earth, and the accumulated riches of generations of other people’s honest labor.
But it is equally true, that even in Pagan times, wherever men believed in Supernatural powers who were on the side of honesty, uprightness, justice, who sometimes even encouraged mercy and forbearance, and more often than not were considered the wardens of family loyalty and filial piety, those who lived these beliefs forged treasures of beauty and moral grandeur that have come down to us through the ages. And it is an interesting thing to notice how these heathen people, after their conversion to Christianity, when they tried to live up to their new faith and love their neighbors as themselves (they did it very imperfectly, of course, just as we do) how they then always tried to foster and partake with their fellowmen the things they had considered the best in life, since old heathen times. The expansion of freedom and personal liberty among ever widening layers of the population among the British and Scandinavian people, the creation of new and gorgeous Church festivals and times of merrymaking in the Latin nations, the conversion of tribal mysticism into the mysticism of the Saints among the Germans of the Middle Ages, are such fruits of the Faith among people, who had loved freedom, or festivals, or mysticism, from the beginning of their histories.
We Catholics have the wellspring of Truth to draw from, and we are the heirs to the accumulated truths of pre-Christian ages. To us, it should not be fiction versus facts, but fiction should relate facts to truths, through knowledge, imagination, intuition and conscientious work. It should really be our rule, never to tell lies, and to tell the truths that must be told—the truths we need not tell should always be implicit behind our work.
