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The following video is about the British artist Paul Hogarth. Among his large body of work were the striking book cover illustrations for Graham Greene’s Penguin paperbacks. The Graham Greene segment starts at 11:55.

https://youtu.be/Upjrd37avGU?feature=shared

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It occurred to me that both Graham Greene who called himself a Catholic agnostic and George Eliot, a self avowed nonbeliever were both profoundly interested in matters of morality.

Two seminal influences on George Eliot’s views on morality and religion were Ludwig Feuerbach and Baruch Spinoza. I share their views below, because they may help to shed some insight on Greene’s own works that demonstrate examples of morality outside the framework of Catholic dogma.

From the introduction of Scenes of Clerical Life, Oxford World Classics: “Feuerbach argued that the virtuous qualities of love, charity, mercy, pity which humans have projected onto a supernatural, divine being were really qualities and needs which belong to humans themselves. Religion, he said arose as a result of an urgent, imaginative need in human kind to objectify, in the form of a perfect transcendental being, the very best qualities, the highest yearnings and feelings of humanity itself. What was needful now, as Feuerbach saw it, was for humans to recognize that the qualities and strengths they found in God, were really their own. In that way, the human content of Christianity could be retained even while its form was rejected.”

From the New Yorker essay Holy Matrimony, George Eliot’s Secular Sacraments by James Wood: “For Spinoza, the summit of the moral law is charity, loving-kindness, and this moral law is inscribed on our hearts. We prove ourselves moral, then, not by what we profess but by how we live, and therefore by how we love; we will be known by the quality of the marriage that we make with the world, by the moral marriage we make with our neighbors. That is what Spinoza, who was himself unmarried, calls ‘true religion.’ Everything else is hypocrisy and superstition.”

A passage from A Burnt Out Case reiterates these points:

“You try to draw everything into the net of your faith, father, but you can’t steal all the virtues. Gentleness isn’t Christian, self-sacrifice isn’t Christian, charity isn’t, remorse isn’t. I expect the caveman wept to see another man’s tears. Haven’t you even seen a dog weep? In the last cooling of the world, when the emptiness of your belief is finally exposed, there will always be some bemused fool who’ll cover another’s body with his own to give it warmth for an hour or more of life.”

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Good fiction but bad theology of Tje Heart of the Matter

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The author is a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. He takes issue with the verisimilitude of Scobie’s faith and by inference Greene’s own: “Helen has hit the nail on the head. Scobie is a ‘twister’ – he squirms and ducks and dives when it comes to his faith. He is a hypocrite, in the pure sense. And yet at the end of the novel we are asked to believe in sentiments like this as Scobie commits suicide – here is the twister untwisted: ‘Oh God, I am the only guilty one because I have known the answers all the time. I’ve preferred to give you pain rather than give pain to Helen or my wife because I can’t observe your suffering. I can only imagine it… They are ill with me and I can cure them. And you too God are ill with me. I can’t go on… insulting you. I can’t face coming to the altar at Christmas, your birthday feast, and taking your body and blood for the sake of a lie. You’ll be better off if you lose me once and for all… I’m going to damn myself… You’ll be able to forget me God, for eternity.’ What is the rational sober reader meant to do confronted with this burbling apologia, this monstrous egotism?”

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This book contains 2 short novels, No Man’s Land and The Stranger’s Hand, described as espionage/mystery works written for film. The former was never filmed, but the latter was. They were written between The Heart of the Matter and The End of the Affair. I haven’t heard of these before.

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A passage from The Summing Up by W. Somerset Maugham that is redolent of Graham Greene:

“I think what has chiefly struck me in human beings is their lack of consistency. I have never seen people all of a piece. It has amazed me that the most incongruous traits should exist in the same person and for all that yield a plausible harmony. I have often asked myself how characteristics, seemingly irreconcilable, can exist in the same person. I have known crooks who are capable of self sacrifice, sneak thieves who were sweet natured and harlots for whom it was a point of honor to give good value for money... It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me, and even when they do I have learnt at last generally to excuse them. It is meet not to expect too much of others. You should be grateful when they treat you well, but unperturbed when they treat you ill. ‘For every one of us,’ as the Athenian stranger said, ‘is made pretty much what he is by the bent of his desires and the nature of his soul.’ It is want of imagination that prevents people from seeing things from any point of view but their own, and it is unreasonable to be angry with them because they lack this faculty… There is nothing more beautiful than goodness, and it has pleased me very often to show how much of it there is in person who by common standards would be relentlessly condemned. I have shown it because I’ve seen it. It has seemed to me sometimes to shine more brightly in them because it was surrounded by the darkness of sin. I take the goodness of the good for granted, and I am amused when I discover their defects or their vices; I am touched when I see the goodness of the wicked, and I’m willing enough to shrug a tolerant shoulder at their wickedness. I am not my brother’s keeper. I cannot bring myself to judge my fellows; I am content to observe them. My observation has led me to believe that, all in all, there’s not so much difference between the good and the bad as the moralists would have us believe.”

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My Graham Greene books 11/21/2023

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A revealing interview especially about religion.I sensed his non-belief in his work. I don’t think he could have described such sophisticated views on morality had he been a devout Catholic.

Also this comment: “I don't like conventional religious piety. I'm more at ease with the Catholicism of Catholic countries. I've always found it difficult to believe in God. I suppose I'd now call myself a Catholic atheist." Graham Greene, interviewed by VS Pritchett, Saturday Review: Graham Greene into the light', The Times, March 18, 1978; p. 6; Issue 60260; col A.

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“Graham Greene said that one of my plays was the worst he’d ever seen in his life.” Of course, I retaliated by saying in that case he can never have seen one of his own.“. And I may tell you he was glad enough to make 50 pounds when I was editing that book of stories* and asked him to make the English collection for me.”

*Tellers of Tales: 100 Short Stories from the United States, England, France, Russia, and Germany, Selected and with an introduction by W. Somerset Maugham

- W. Somerset Maugham from Conversations with Willie by Robin Maugham 😁

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The great English writer Graham Greene was an atheist who converted to Catholicism in order to marry and ultimately called himself a “Catholic atheist“. Some of his best novels deal with Catholic themes, often dealing with religious failure and doubt. He also wrote about so called men of god who do evil and nonbelievers and sinners who do good, act saint like, and other paradoxes. A few examples from his works that illustrate his religious skepticism:

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Article about Boston College’s acquisition of GG materials.

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Letters at the University of Tulsa. They also hold a collection of foreign editions of his works. The link is for the former.

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The Balliol collection