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"I am beginning to think that by dint of staring into that darkness I am becoming like a child that fixes its eyes on the blackness of night; I end by creating phantoms and inventing terrors. That is certainly the case as regards this excursion to Solesmes, for there is nothing, absolutely nothing to justify my alarms.
The village had been badly mauled by the German guns during the recent fighting. The German does not behave nicely when his nerves are shaken, and we heard stories of ill-treatment of women in Solesmes. Next day we went towards Romeries to reconnoitre the roads, and on November 5 we had a long march in the rain.
The chalice, which according to the texts adduced by the Spicilegium of Solesmes, is to be taken now as a symbol of glory, and now as a sign of opprobrium, may be regarded, by the most generally received theory, as the figure of the sacred Tomb; then the paten appears as the stone which served to close it, while the corporal is the shroud itself.
The 42nd Division relieved the N.Z. Division on October 12 on a front extending south of Solesmes and covering Briastre. On October 12 I went with Pte. Firth to a ridge south of Viesly to look for an O.P., and selected a spot in the open, but near a sunk road. However, the G.O.C. required a post to be held on the high ground north of the village.
Indeed, he scarcely makes any pretence at being in sympathy with the Catholicism of to-day, which he regards as almost entirely philistine and degenerate, if we except La Trappe and Solesmes and a few other corners where the old observances linger on.
Is this Chartres where I am vegetating a waiting-place, a halting-place between two monasteries, a bridge leading from Notre Dame de l'Atre to Solesmes or some other Abbey? Or is it, on the contrary, the final stage where it is Thy will that I should remain fixed? But then my life has no further meaning! It is purposeless, built and overthrown with the shifting of sands.
But what was most strange was that this idea, so imperative and overpowering that it excluded all possible reflection, bereft him of all his powers of self-protection, left him disarmed at the mercy of he knew not what this idea, which nothing justified, was not centred, not fixed on Solesmes; whither he should retreat was for the moment of small importance; that was not the question; the only point to settle was whether he meant to yield at all to a vague impulse, to obey unformulated orders which were nevertheless positive, and give an earnest to God, Who seemed to be harassing him without any sufficient explanation.
Here again it was severe, especially at Neuvilly, Solesmes, and Haspres, but the whole of the Selle positions on both banks were secured, while north-east of its junction with the Scheldt the First Army had occupied Denain. On the 23rd a combined attack was made by the Fourth and Third armies, though progress was limited to the front north of the bend of the Sambre at Ors.
The admirable publications of the Benedictines of Solesmes awoke at the Schola and in the world outside it a taste for the study of religious music. Michel Brenet attacked all epochs of musical history, and produced, by his solid learning, some fine work. Julien Tiersot began the history of French folk-song, and rescued the music of the Revolution from oblivion.
This work was finally brought to a happy conclusion by Dom Schmitt, and Dom Mocqucreau, the prior of Solesmes, who in 1889 began his monumental work, the Paléo-graphie Musicals, of which nine volumes had appeared in 1906. This great Benedictine school is an honour to France by the scientific work it has lately done in music.
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