Constantine, inspecting a frieze being created in his honor, criticizes the artist: In another scene, Waugh even lampoons the pretensions of modern art. Everyone who really counts is for homousion-or is it the other way round?Ĭlearly, it’s when Christianity becomes merely fashionable that it’s in danger of losing its core. It was purely a question of practical convenience… I mean, we must have progress. In one scene a character chatters on about the recent goings-on at the Council of Nicea:Īll that invoking of the Holy Ghost put things on the wrong footing. The faith often becomes a mere “game of words” and the things of God are frequently made into political footballs. Waugh’s Constantine is a conceited airhead whose adoption of Christianity is done mainly for political convenience and show. To make the story more vivid and contemporary he gives his characters the lingo of British aristocrats of his own day, like Jeeves and Bertie Wooster transplanted to the fourth century.īy means of this arch speech, Waugh draws an anatomy of snobbery with characters that run the gamut from vacuous to fatuous. In Helena, Waugh finds parallels between Helena’s era and his own and satirizes both. He was also a writer who reveled in the pure use of language. Waugh was a wicked satirist, a man who loved to rail against the modern world and its inanities. The pervasive comic tone of the novel took me by surprise. And he paints a fresco of life in the late Roman Empire, depicting a world filled with corruption, decadence, and the social pretensions of the soi-disant sophisticated. For one thing, he makes Helena British-born (“Britain is as likely a place as any other,” Waugh explains in his preface). There are many question marks in Helena’s life, so Waugh felt free to fill out and embellish his tale. The earlier parts recount Helena’s girlhood, marriage to the Roman civil official Constantius Chlorus (who later became emperor), mothering of Constantine (who would, in turn, become the first Christian emperor of Rome), and conversion to Christianity. The excavation and subsequent finding of the cross forms the climax of the book. Helena, Roman Empress, mother of the Emperor Constantine and finder of the True Cross. So, I decided to try something with a little history in it: Waugh’s 1950 historical novel Helena, which he called his favorite of his own works. Problem is, Waugh specialized in fiction and I don’t. I had never read anything by Waugh and thought it was time I gave him a go, especially since I love English Catholic literary figures. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), Catholic convert and novelist. Evelyn Waugh’s Helena is a saint for modern times-not an otherworldly ascetic or a heroic martyr, but a woman who “discovered what it was God had chosen for her to do and did it”…
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