24. Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
The purpose of this book is to throw light both on the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity and on the process whereby a work of art (specially of literature) is produced, by drawing an analogy between the two. It has often been a cause of wonder to me that the image of author and book for the relation between God and the world, though popular among the Stoics, has been so little used by the Christians; and, since this image is one that I have often found helpful myself, I have followed Miss Sayers’ use of it with intense interest. I know from experience that if one ventures to use analogy a number of very tedious reviewers will rise up and point out that there are differences, as well as similarities, between the things compared – to which the only reply seems to be ‘Quite!’
I hope it will not be thought that I am suffering from this confusion when I mention the one serious dissatisfaction I feel with Miss Sayers’ book. It is dissatisfaction on the practical, or pastoral, side rather than on the theoretical. I think that in an age when idolatry of human genius is one of our most insidious dangers Miss Sayers would have been prudent to stress more continuously than she does the fact that the analogy is merely an analogy. I am afraid that some vainglorious writers may be encouraged to forget that they are called ‘creative’ only by a metaphor – that an unbridgeable gulf yawns between the human activity of recombining elements from a pre-existing world and the Divine activity of first inventing, and then endowing with substantial existence, the elements themselves. All the ‘creative’ artists of the human race cannot so much as summon up the phantasm of a single new primary colour or a single new dimension. It is one thing, having known many men, to ‘think of’ one more man, Mr Pickwick; to ‘think of’ man himself, of time and matter themselves, de novo, is an activity simply heterogeneous to any that we can conceive. Nor do artists give their so-called creatures substantial existence. Miss Sayers quotes from N. Berdyaev that ‘the image of an artist and poet is imprinted more clearly on his works than on his children’. More clearly, perhaps, but less substantially. For his son, like himself, has biological life, thought, freedom, and the hope of everlasting glory, while his work has only a mimesis of all these and is, in that deeper sense, wholly unlike a man.
I must therefore disagree with Miss Sayers very profoundly when she says that ‘between the mind of the maker and the Mind of the Maker’ there is ‘a difference, not of category, but only of quality and degree’ (p. 147). On my view there is a greater, far greater, difference between the two than between playing with a doll and suckling a child. But with this, serious disagreement ends.
In general I find Miss Sayers’ development of her analogy full of illumination both on the theological and on the literary side. I recommend specially to anyone's attention the following passages. (1) The chapter on Free Will and Miracles. Miss Sayers distinguishes ‘a tale about marvels’ from ‘a tale abruptly modified by marvels’. If our Lord had descended from the cross when challenged to do so, this would have been an ‘irrelevant miracle’, not ‘an integral part of the story’; the Resurrection, on the other hand, is part of the plot – it is one of the things the story is about. This is very well done; and it will be noticed that it comes directly out of the analogy Miss Sayers is using and could hardly have come in any other way. (2) Chapter VI, on the Incarnation. A writer can put himself as a character into his own book (I think Miss Sayers spoils the parallel by making the book an autobiography – the Divine Comedy is a much better example) and say – ‘This is what my eternal idea looks like in terms of my own creation . . . this is my characterhood in a volume of created characters’. (3) The very badly needed Note A (pp. 116, 117), which states something well known to anyone who has written the humblest story himself but maddeningly misunderstood by nearly all modern criticism. (4) The chapter on Scalene Trinities. This cannot be explained to those who have not read the book, but I believe it to be a really illuminating contribution to literary classification. It may be that the ‘ghost’ in Miss Sayers’ human trinity is the least easily classified of the three persons, but the same is true of his Divine Archetype in the real Trinity.
This is the first ‘little book on religion’ I have read for a long time in which every sentence is intelligible and every page advances the argument. I recommend it heartily to theologians and critics. To novelists and poets, if they are already inclined in any degree to idolatry of their own vocation, I recommend it with much more caution. They had better read it fasting.