Sunday, September 20, 2020
The Language of the West
Dai Greatcoat: A Self-Portrait of David Jones in his Letters. Edited by René Hague (London: Faber and Faber, 1980), p. 209 (letter to Harman Grisewood, July 6, 1964):
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I think our boys are making the same mistake as those classical dons who used to say that the teaching of the Greek and Latin languages was maintained because it taught men to think clearly, to write clear English, to become competent civil servants or what not. Apart from being largely balls, the reasons are utile and so-called 'practical'. What the dons ought to have said was that the classics were an integral part of our Western heritage and should be fought for on that ground alone. Our Church leaders have even more reason to guard that heritage—for it is saturated with the sacral. It's not a matter of knowledge but of love. It's a terrible thought that the language of the West, of the Western liturgy, and inevitably the Roman chant, might become virtually extinct.
