Devil-Worship

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 15, 11 April 1907, Page 9

Devil-Worship

W is one thing to achieve 'mere notoriety.- It *is quite, another thing- to win' the honest fame that leaves one's name ' fast anchored in the deep abyss of time.' Many people are given to confounding mere notoriety - with fame— the burnished gold of a bright renown with the pinchbeck and Brummage vague that may be worn by the magsmari that steals'" a Gainsborough portrait or makes a big ' sccop f in Kimberley ■diamonds. Last -week (according to the cables) ' there passed away in Italy a man who achieved the sort of notoriety that with the unthinking passes for renown. His name, Giosue Carducci. His achievement, the writing, in nervous Italian,- of a ' Hymn to Satan ' (' Inno a Satana '). The iervid thing is before us— a tempest ot frantic ,t>las<pheany against the Creator of heaven and earth. It may interest some of our non-Catholic- friends to' know that Carducci sounds the loud timbrel over Wicliffe, Huss, and Martin Luther as (so to speak) aides-de-camp of ' Satan the Great ' in his war with Uod. The ' hymn ' was taken, up by the Italian socialists, anarchist-socialists, and other anticlerical organisations and sung at their reunions — men who refused to acknowledge the infinitelygood Uod cracking their clieeks with Me lervor of their worship of the Evil One. Such was the achievement which put the name of Carducci in the public mouth. Fame ? 'As much like fame ' (to quote Beaconsficld's '" Venetia ') 'as a toadstool is like a truffle '.