{"id":3732,"date":"2005-04-04T00:56:30","date_gmt":"2005-04-04T04:56:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/formerlyknownas\/2005\/04\/04\/the-solitude-of-a-papal-poet\/"},"modified":"2011-08-05T14:57:50","modified_gmt":"2011-08-05T18:57:50","slug":"the-solitude-of-a-papal-poet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/2005\/04\/04\/the-solitude-of-a-papal-poet\/","title":{"rendered":"the solitude of a papal poet"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

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In his book, The Pontiff in Winter <\/A>: Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of <\/EM><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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John Paul II  <\/EM>(2004), <\/FONT> John Cornwell writes that the papal role takes over the <\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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personality of the individual who is elected to the “strangest, most impossible <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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and isolating and job on earth.”  [p.8]  He quotes Pope Paul VI:  “I was solitary <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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before, but now my solitariness becomes complete.  Hence the dizziness, <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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the vertigo.”<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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<\/FONT> <\/DIV>
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\"JP2poetry\"  Karol Wojtila, who became John Paul II, was also a poet of note, <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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especially in the years before his papacy. See <\/FONT>The Place Within<\/FONT><\/EM><\/A> (1982).  In <\/EM><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/DIV>
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The Pontiff<\/FONT><\/EM> in Winter<\/EM><\/FONT><\/FONT><\/FONT>, Cornwell tells of an incident that may help us understand <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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the papal solitude of John Paul.  [p. 9]  It revolves around a theologian who sat <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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next to the Pope at a Vatican dinner:<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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“Holy Father, I love poetry and I’ve read all of your verse.  Have <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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you written much poetry since you became Pope? ” To which the <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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Pope said: “I’ve written no poetry since I became Pope.”   So the <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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theologian said: “Well, why is that, Holy Father?”  The Pope cut <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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him dead, turning to the person on the other side.  <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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<\/FONT> <\/DIV>
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Twenty minutes later, John Paul turned to the theologian and said <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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curtly: “No context!”  That was all.  . . . .<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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<\/FONT> <\/DIV>
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But [John Paul] had imparted a tragic truth perhaps.  The papal office <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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takes over the whole person.  That is what the job demands.  When he <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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said there was no “context” for poetry, he seemed to be acknowledging <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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that, in the depths of his soul, deep down where the poetry is written, <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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there lies a terrible, vertiginous solitude.<\/FONT><\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
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I’d like to think that Karol Wojtila made himself a promise after that awkward   \"JohnPaul2\"<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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dinner encounter — to reconnect to the part of him that was the poet. The<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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small volume of published in 2003, <\/FONT>The Poetry of Pope John Paul II<\/FONT><\/EM><\/A>,  may <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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have been the result of that pledge.<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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<\/FONT> <\/DIV>
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When I read The Pontiff in Winter<\/EM> last month, I was saddened at the thought  <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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of a poet too consumed with the obligations of office to have the time and the <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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“context” to write poetry.  John Paul II and I may have disagreed on many<\/FONT><\/DIV>
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issues, but I bet he would agree with me that the dignity he asserted for every <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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human being includes the right to maintain a connection between daily life and <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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the inner soul — so that each of us has the opportunity to nurture a relationship <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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with our personal Muse.  No job, not even one as important as the papacy, <\/FONT><\/DIV>
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should take away the poetry of life.<\/FONT>  <\/DIV><\/BLOCKQUOTE><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his book, The Pontiff in Winter : Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II  (2004),  John Cornwell writes that the papal role takes over the personality of the individual who is elected to the “strangest, most impossible and isolating and job on earth.”  [p.8]  He quotes Pope Paul VI:  “I was solitary before, but now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":94,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2926],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pre-06-2006"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kP1R-Yc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/94"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13284,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3732\/revisions\/13284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/ethicalesq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}