The Golden Swan

inspired by Charles Demuth's painting of the Golden Swan -- Dorothy and O'Neill (the central figures) often spent time together there in 1917 -- the artist is Brother Mickey McGrath in Camden, New Jersey

 

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12 May 2011 / Catholic Star Herald

 

Old friends drink again, in theater that was once a bar

 

by Dale Mezzacappa

 

Bishop Joseph Galante speaks on the set of “A Moon for the

Misbegotten” during a gala at the Waterfront South Theatre in Camden

on May 5 before the unveiling of a painting by Brother Mickey McGrath.

The image (see attached doc.) depicts Dorothy Day and the playwright

Eugene O’Neill sitting in a bar in Greenwich Village.

 

Bishop Joseph Galante, declaring that art and beauty lead to God,

joined more than 100 people at a gala at the Waterfront South Theatre

in Camden on May 5 to unveil a painting by Brother Mickey McGrath that

is now hanging in the theater’s lobby.

 

The painting, in Brother McGrath’s trademark bright hues, depicts

Dorothy Day and the playwright Eugene O’Neill sitting in a bar in

Greenwich Village, where they hung out together as close friends for

several months in the winter of 1917-18. It was long before she

converted to Catholicism and just before he hit fame through his

writing. They are surrounded by other habitués of the bar, nicknamed

the Hellhole, and by allusions to O’Neill’s life and work.

 

Bishop Galante, a great admirer of Dorothy Day, blessed the painting

before helping Brother Mickey pull off the cloth that covered it,

which fittingly sat on a stage set for O’Neill’s great tragedy A Moon

for the Misbegotten.

 

“I’m here because I believe that the beauty expressed in the arts is

what I call pre-evangelization,” the bishop said. “Souls that are

touched and moved through the beauty of painting or drama or poetry or

music, those souls are nurtured to be ready to take the beauty of

Jesus. So for me it’s a privilege to be here.”

 

McGrath, whose work has been shown all over the world, said that he

set up his studio on Jasper Street a few doors up from the theater at

the invitation of Msgr. Michael Doyle, pastor of Sacred Heart.

 

“This moment is why I came to Camden in the first place,” Brother

Mickey said. He said Msgr. Doyle told him, “’I want to invite you

because I believe that beauty will save the world.’ I said, ‘I’m all

about Dorothy Day these days.’ And he said, as only he can in the

ultimate understatement, ‘She was a good lady.’”

 

Brother McGrath said that he “set to work right away” doing the

painting to hang in the theater to depict her relationship to O’Neill.

It shows the two of them, both holding cigarettes and nursing drinks,

“and she’s pondering this future. She said all her life she was

haunted by God and what touched her [are] the words of Eugene

O’Neill.”

 

O’Neill would get drunk and recite The Hound of Heaven by the poet

Francis Thompson, a long lament about “the heart’s restless searching

for God,” Brother McGrath said.

 

Msgr. Doyle read an excerpt from the poem, which begins:

 

I fled him down the nights and down the days

 

I fled him down the arches of the years

 

I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind

 

And in the midst of tears I hid from him

 

And under running laughter.

 

Also at the event was Robert Ellsberg, who has edited several books of

Dorothy Day’s diaries, letters and other writings. Now the editor and

publisher of Orbis Books, as a young man he spent time as editor of

The Catholic Worker.

 

He credited Day with changing his life and called her “one of the most

remarkable Christian witnesses of the 20th century. A Catholic

convert, founder of the Catholic Worker in 1933, she spent her life

among the poor, promoting the cause of peace and justice and showing

what it might look like if the gospel were truly lived.”

 

Ellsberg spoke of how Day began her long journey toward Catholicism

during this period of her life. It was after long nights at the bar or

walking the streets of New York talking with O’Neill that she first

attended early morning Mass at St. Joseph’s church on Sixth Avenue, he

said.

 

O’Neill was a Catholic who fell away from his faith, but whose work

was infused with the themes of forgiveness, incarnation and

redemption. Day was just 20 and 10 years younger than the playwright

when they met. Ellsberg said that later in life she credited O’Neill

with encouraging “an intensification of the religious life within her

and helping her to gain a greater consciousness of God. This is ironic

given that O’Neill is not usually regarded as a religious writer.”

 

In 1958, Ellsberg said, she wrote notes for an unpublished story about

that period in her life.

 

“‘Gene’s relation with God was a warfare,’” she wrote. ‘“He fought

with God to the end of his days. He rebelled against man’s fate. What

I got personally from Eugene O’Neill was an intensification of the

religious sense that was in me. I had never heard of the Hound of

Heaven before and Eugene knew it by heart and could recite it in his

grating, monotonous voice, his mouth grim, his eyes sad.’”

 

She wrote that “many years later she returns to O’Neill as she’s

saying her rosary…since he brought to me such as consciousness of God,

since he recited to me the Hound of Heaven, I owe him my prayers.”

 

The Waterfront South Theatre sits on the site of what was Walt’s Café,

the bar owned by the grandfather of South Camden Theatre Company

founder and executive director Joseph Papryzicki. In Moon for the

Misbegotten, one of O’Neill’s last plays, an earth-mother figure named

Josie Hogan that some scholars think is in part is based on Day,

comforts and tries to lead to redemption a bereft character names

James Tyrone that is based on O’Neill’s alcoholic brother.

 

Copies of McGrath’s painting are available through Bee Still Studios

(www.beestill.org). A Moon for the Misbegotten runs through May 15.

 

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