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A Believing People: Literature of the Latter-day Saints
Section Introduction: History
"Mormon History as Mormon Literature"
Richard Cracroft and Neal Lambert
What drama could any merely mortal storyteller
construct that would not be an idle nursery play for children,
compared to the one that is written in our own annals, whose first
chapter opens on the Hill Cumorah with a new Bible engraved on
sheets of gold? --Bernard DeVoto
[1] To talk
about history as literary art may be to some a contradiction in terms.
But if we assume that literature is an expression of the significance
of human experience, then certainly history becomes appropriate for
this volume. And the concern that the Latter-day Saint people have had
with their cosmic destiny has made the record of the events in which
they were involved a matter of vital concern. They have been a people
much concerned with their own history.
[2] The
histories produced and read by the Mormons have of course varied
widely in scope and treatment, depending on the background and intent
of the author; but all have put the past into some sort of design that
derives ultimately from the assurance that the Mormon Church is God
led, and the events of history that touch that Church, though
instigated by man, are finally limited by the powers of heaven. Though
often only implicit in the work, this meta-history guides the writer’s
pen in selecting, forming, and polishing accounts of that indefinable:
“what happened.”
[3] Thus in
Lucy Mack Smith we see the vivid recollections not of a professional
historian but of a concerned mother recalling a terrible ordeal out of
her own life which in itself added further evidence to her conviction
that the boy who had been operated on had, in later years, also been
visited by God, that on this occasion, as throughout her life, events
demanded that she “acknowledge the hand of the Lord.”
[4] In
Joseph Smith’s own account we see personal history in the shape of the
familiar spiritual autobiography. Skimming quickly through series of
events, leaping whole decades in a sentence, this record disregards
almost entirely the developing personality of the author and focuses
instead on a series of dramatic confrontations with heavenly
messengers. If the nineteenth-century formality of the language seems
to restrain both the writer and the reader, it becomes in the end a
remarkable vehicle for rendering the events themselves. For what but
controlled understatement can deal with the confrontation that these
pages depict?
[5] In B. H.
Roberts we have a Mormon historian who was also a significant man of
letters in the Church. One of Mormondom’s great orators, he knew the
power of the word and the well-chosen phrase. In the example from his
Comprehensive History presented here, we can see not only the
remarkable readability which characterizes this history but a striking
sense of moral indignation and outrage over the treatment of the
Saints in Missouri. This is a history in which the best rhetorical
thrusts and flourishes become master tools in presenting for the
Saints of God the case against the United States of America in general
and the state of Missouri in particular.
[6] Thomas
L. Kane’s is perhaps the most “literary” of all the accounts in this
section. Friend of the Saint that he was, Kane utilizes many of the
devices of fiction to convey his own sympathetic feelings about the
situation of the exiled Saints. With a propensity for the pictorial,
he paints an interesting literary diptych with a “deserted village” on
one side and a scene of suffering on the other. The details are chosen
with care, and the scenes are rendered with such precise detail and
sure strokes that our sympathies are deeply touched.
[7] But as
the Church moved into the twentieth century, it also moved closer to
mainstream America. Less strident in their tone, less militant in
their attitude, writers of history became less concerned with biblical
parallels and more interested in the place of the Church in the
history of the United States. A landmark of this new interest is
Leonard Arrington’s Great Basin Kingdom. If in these pages the
people are less like plaster saints and more like human beings, they
are intriguing to us for that reason. Capable of errors in judgment,
plagued by apostasy as well as crickets, they nevertheless endured--a
point which becomes more and more impressive as the historical
background is clarified in the clean and precise presentation of an
excellent modern historian.
[8] The last
piece in this section is obviously not one with the others. But just
as obviously, James E. Talmage deserves a place in this anthology, for
this history of the Christ has become a Mormon classic. Based not only
on a meticulous study of the biblical account but on a striking love
of the subject, Jesus the Christ gives a truly remarkable
portrayal of the life of the Messiah. Without tearing him from his
historical context and without violating the divinity of his life,
Talmage has made Christ believable not only as a human being but as
the Son of God.
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The History and State of Mormon
Literature
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