Lions, Harts, Leaping Does by J. F. Powers
"Lions, Harts, Leaping Does" by J. F. Powers explores the spiritual and emotional struggles of an elderly Franciscan priest named Didymus and his innocent companion, Titus. Set within a monastery, the narrative begins with Titus reading to Didymus, illustrating their close, albeit contrasting, relationship—Didymus is intellectual and self-reflective, while Titus embodies childlike joy and simplicity. The story delves into themes of grace, regret, and the quest for redemption, as Didymus grapples with the implications of his past choices, particularly his strained relationship with his dying brother, Seraphin.
As the plot unfolds, Didymus faces physical incapacitation, which heightens his introspection and leads to a crisis of faith. He contemplates whether his condition is divine punishment for perceived failures in his spiritual duties. The addition of a canary, a symbol of both captivity and hope, serves as a poignant reminder of his longing for freedom and resolution. Ultimately, the narrative culminates in Didymus's vision of liberation as he seeks to reconcile his life’s purpose with his impending death. The story weaves a gentle exploration of life's profound questions, appealing to those interested in themes of spirituality, morality, and the human condition.
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Lions, Harts, Leaping Does by J. F. Powers
First published: 1943
Type of plot: Allegory
Time of work: Probably the mid-twentieth century
Locale: A Franciscan monastery in the northern United States
Principal Characters:
Father Didymus , an aging Franciscan friarBrother Titus , Didymus's devoted companion
The Story
The striking title, "Lions, Harts, Leaping Does," is from a passage in Saint John of the Cross: "Birds of swift wing, lions, harts, leaping does, mountains, valleys, banks, waters, breezes, heats and terrors that keep watch by night, by the pleasant lyres and by the siren's song, I conjure you, cease your wrath and touch not the wall." Titus, who is a devoted but slow-witted Franciscan brother, reads this lovely prose to the companion whom he attends in the monastery, the octogenarian priest Didymus. The lines well suggest the plangent lyrical tone of this narrative of the aged Didymus's struggle to find grace.
When the story opens, Titus is reading to Didymus from Bishop John Bale's Pageant of Popes' Contayninge the Lyves of all the Bishops of Rome, from the Beginninge of them to the Year of Grace 1555 (1574), an idiosyncratic and splenetic chronicle to which Didymus refers as "Bishop Bale's funny book." Titus also quotes from memory fragments from Thomas a Kempis's The Imitation of Christ (fifteenth century), silently challenging Didymus to identify the source in an "unconfessed contest." This introductory scene fixes the characters of the two Franciscans and reveals their warm relationship. Titus is a saintly innocent, full of childlike glee as he spars mildly with Didymus in an attempt to please. Didymus is a geometry teacher who is always alert to impulses of spiritual pride in himself and feels ashamed at impatiently patronizing Titus.
As they walk the monastery grounds together at the close of a frigid day, Didymus ruminates on the life of poverty, chastity, and obedience that he has led. He concludes that "it was the spirit of the vows which opened the way and revealed to the soul, no matter the flux of circumstance, the means of salvation," and this realization saddens him with a sense of having sinned against his older brother, Seraphin. The dying Seraphin, also a priest, had asked Didymus to visit him in St. Louis, but Didymus had refused out of what he now judges to have been a false interpretation of his duty to obey God. Didymus ruefully admits that "he had used his brother for a hair shirt," an admission that sets up the crucial question of Didymus's grace, around which the story revolves.
As the two return to the monastery, they meet the rector, who speaks to Didymus of a telegram for him, and it turns out that Titus has forgotten to give the message to Didymus. The abashed Titus produces the telegram, which announces the death of Seraphin.
In the short second section, Didymus falls asleep in the chapel and dreams of himself and Seraphin walking on a serpentine river. The two brothers talk of their parents and of their own lives until two crayfish surface and grab Didymus, who then awakens to find himself prone on the floor. Didymus is helped to his feet by Titus and starts to walk away, only to collapse from an apparent stroke.
The next day Didymus sits in a wheelchair, bundled in blankets and struggling to focus on the cold, inert landscape visible through his window. He hears Titus enter the room and move around mysteriously, gradually learning that the quietly gleeful Titus has brought him a canary in a cage: "one of the Saint's own birds," as Titus puts it. Didymus spends his long days at the window, the canary his silent companion, with Titus reading to him on occasion. His life is dreary. "They were captives, he and the canary, and the only thing they craved was escape."
In his meditations on his condition, Didymus wonders if his incapacitation is God's punishment of him for not having "gloried too much in having it in him to turn down Seraphin's request to come to St. Louis." He cannot decide if he has erred, and his uncertainty puts him in a moral predicament. If he is being punished, then praying for recovery would suggest that he has missed "the divine point." Didymus finally concludes he is not man enough to see "the greatest significance in his affliction," and wants only to walk again and eventually die a normal death. So, he copes with his situation, prays for good health, and watches the canary, identifying in his misery with the forlorn bird trapped in the cage.
One day Didymus sends Titus on an errand, and with an exhausting effort he reaches up and opens the canary's cage, then falls face down on the floor. That night in his room, having received the last sacrament, Didymus waits for death, free from desire but "beset by the grossest distractions." After Titus reads to him from St. John of the Cross, Didymus has a vision of his life as "tied down, caged, stunted in his apostolate, seeking the crumbs." At this moment he asks Titus to open the window, and as Didymus prays to lose himself in God the canary flutters through the open window into the snowy night outside. As Titus stares out the window seeking the lost bird, "the snowflakes whirled at the window, for a moment for all their bright blue beauty as though struck still be lightning, and Didymus closed his eyes, only to find them there also, but darkly falling."
Bibliography
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Hagopian, John V. J. F. Powers. New York: Twayne, 1968.
Long, J. V. "Clerical Character(s)." Commonweal, May 8, 1998, 11-14.
McInerny, Ralph. "The Darkness of J. F. Powers." Crisis, March, 1989, 44-46.
Merton, Thomas. "Morte D'Urban: Two Celebrations." Worship 36 (November, 1962): 645-650.
Meyers, Jeffrey. "J. F. Powers: Uncollected Stories, Essays and Interviews, 1943-1979." Bulletin of Bibliography 44 (March, 1987): 38-39.
Powers, Katherine A. "Reflections of J. F. Powers: Author, Father, Clear-Eyed Observer." The Boston Globe, July 18, 1999, p. K4.
Preston, Thomas R. "Christian Folly in the Fiction of J. F. Powers." Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction 16, no. 2 (1974): 91-107.