Constitutions of the Society of Jesus: A Critical Edition with the Complementary Norms, edited by Barton T. Geger, S.J.
Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: And then the question, which Hopkins asked many times over during his life.Who would want to destroy this?Who would want to "fell" it, cut it away?Forget for a moment the economics of it all, the money, the money.Where would we be without all this "sweet wet" and "wilderness"?And then, as he insisted on doing when he composed his musical piece, though his audience failed to understand, he offers us a triple repetition with variations: "Of wet and of wilderness," then "wildness and wet," and finally: "Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."And you feel the sadness here, the longing for what is as vulnerable as a babe in its mother's arms.If Hopkins remained an amateur when it came to his drawings-two of his brothers, remember, went on to become successful illustrators-and merely a promising student (but that only) when it came to his musical pieces, and if it took decades before his poetry-rejected even by his fellow Jesuits-at last surfaced, consider where this extraordinary rule-breaking innovator stands now.And hats off to the editors and to Oxford University Press for the gift of these volumes, precious years in the making.
Source: Journal of Jesuit Studies
Author: Sam Zeno Conedera
Institution: Saint Louis University
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4410826524