Okay, Fr. Shane Cota and I have been wondering together whether anyone has a clue about WHO the little girl was that O.P. Kretzmann "held...for a moment in 1937." If you've ever read the essay, "Rockaby, Baby" you know what I'm talking about. Surely someone out there knows who this child was (or does the child herself know - did her parents ever tell her?). I think a GREAT article could be written about this person, if still alive, and those haunting words:
"For a few more years you will know only tenderness - until one day you, too, will become aware of the world's seething cauldron of hate... And then you, too, will begin to wonder - and you will do one of two things... You will either putter around in life, content with building a wall and web around your little plans and small hopes and creeping ambitions - or you will, if you believe in God (as I think you'd better), make your heart a chalice for a few drops of the world's blood and tears..."
Did her life become encased in web or was it a holy chalice? Who are you, little one? You'd be, what? 69 this year? Are you alive with us or "sleeping with the pilgrim and his readers"?
2 comments:
It's been a long time since I read these words, but do remember them. If I recall correctly, the baby girl was not referenced specifically, and could have been a kind of literary archtype. OTOH, it could have been O.P.'s own daughter; don't know if he even had one. But I don't remember there being any specific reference. I always read the quote in light of it being on the even of WW II, which, I think, was the point.
And one cannot miss the aptness today of the reference to madmen across the oceans that hold much of our future in their dripping hands...
I hate the idea of a literary convention, though. It reads too perfectly for that. I think it was a child he held, but the way the mom is described, I wonder if it was just some woman he and his wife stood beside in a line to a movie or some such?
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