ALL I SURVEY A BOOK OF ESSAYS by G. K. CHESTERTON
Contents
I ON THE CHILD II ON THE STANDARDIZATION OF STEVENSON III ON TURNPIKES AND MEDIÆVALISM IV ON MAMMOTH PORTRAITURE V ON WAR MEMORIALS VI ON OLD MEN WHO MAKE WARS VII ON VACHEL LINDSAY VIII ON THE STALENESS OF REVOLT IX ON DEPENDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE X ON THE TEUTONIC THEORY XI ON PHASES OF ECCENTRICITY XII ON BAD POETRY XIII ON NEGATIVE MORALITY XIV ON JONATHAN SWIFT XV ON THE CREATIVE AND THE CRITICAL XVI ON A NEW TAX XVII ON SENSE AND SOUND XVIII ON LITERARY CLIQUES XIX ON THE SIMPLICITY OF ASIA XX ON FATE AND A COMMUNIST XXI ON ST. GEORGE REVIVIFIED XXII ON JOURNALISTIC PHILOSOPHY XXIII ON INDUSTRIALISM XXIV ON MR. THOMAS GRAY XXV ON EVOLUTIONARY EDUCATORS XXVI ON THE CONTIGUOUS PAST XXVII ON THE MERRY MONARCH XXVIII ON SUICIDE: NORTH AND SOUTH XXIX ON MODERN “PAGANISM” XXX ON BREVITY AND WIT XXXI ON EDUCATION XXXII ON ROMANTICISM AND YOUTH XXXIII ON MR. GEOFFREY CHAUCER XXXIV ON MONSTERS XXXV ON LOVE XXXVI ON FICTIONAL CONVENTIONS XXXVII ON SWEEPSTAKES AND GAMBLING XXXVIII ON MAKING GOOD—I XXXIX ON MAKING GOOD—II XL ON EYEBROWS XLI ON EATING AND SLEEPING XLII ON SIR WALTER SCOTT XLIII ON THE SOLAR SYSTEM XLIV ON THOUGHTLESS REMARKS
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I
On the Child
THERE was recently reported in the papers the meeting of certain eminent ladies, of a political and philanthropic sort, who discussed the great modern problem of what is to be done with The Child. I need not say that The Child is always discussed as if he were a monster, of immense size, vast complexity, and strange and startling novelty. Nor need I remind the reader that The Child is not a child: any child we comfortable people have ever seen. The Child is not Jack or Joan or Peter; he is not Cousin Ethel’s child or one of Uncle William’s children. He is a creature entirely solitary and sui generis; and he lives in the slums.
A great many remarks were made, most of them sincere, some of them sensible, and several of them highly comic. I think the passage I like best is one in which a particular female philanthropist said that any poor child would feel happy at the sight of a policeman, so long as he was dressed like a policeman; but that the child might be filled with maniacal terror if he were dressed like an ordinary man. It would seem, that is, that not only are all policemen always kind to all poor people, but that they are the only men who are ever kind to any poor people. I am not The Child, and therefore I was not brought up in the slums. But I know a little more about the slums than that. All these other sayings, however, sink into a second place, in my opinion, compared with one simple remark, which will seem to most people as innocent as it is simple. Nevertheless, in that one artless observation— I might almost say, in that one unconscious confession—was contained the whole complex of contradictions and falsehoods which have in our time ruined the relation of social classes and destroyed the common morals of the community. A very famous political lady, who certainly believes that what she says represents the most lofty luminous idealism, uttered on this occasion the following words: “We must care for other people’s children as if they were our own.”
And when I read those words, I smote the table with my hand, like one who has suddenly located and smashed a wasp. I said to myself: “That’s it! She’s got it! She’s got the exactly correct formula for the worst and most poisonous of all the political wrongs that rot out the entrails of the world. That is what has wrecked democracy; wrecked domesticity through the breadth and depth of democracy; wrecked dignity as the only prop and pillar of domesticity and democracy. That is what has taken away from the poor man the pride and honour of the father of a household, so that he can no longer really feel any pride or honour in being a citizen; still less in being merely a voter. The Englishman’s house is no longer his castle, nor is he king of the castle; the charbonnier is no longer maître chez lui; his hut is not his hut; his children are not his children; and democracy is dead. She means no harm. She knows not what she does. She does not even understand what she says. She does not comprehend a word of the terrible sentence that she has spoken. But it is spoken.” And the sentence that is spoken is this: “We, the rich, can take care of poor people’s children as if they were our own. As we have abolished their parents, they are all orphans.”
The ideal is sufficiently familiar in fact, of course; and there is nothing very much against it, except that it is utterly and grossly immoral. A man saying that he will treat other people’s children as his own is exactly like a man saying that he will treat other people’s wives as his own. He may get a certain amount of poetic or sentimental pleasure out of the children, but so he may out of the wives. The question is whether any human rights whatever remain to the other man, who is made legally responsible for his children and his wife. If he ill-treats them, it is perfectly right to put the exceptional legal machinery, which exists for such exceptional evils, in motion against him. But it is not right, by any code of common morals yet recognized among men, to start from the very first with the assumption that his children belong to you as much as they belong to him. If there is an adequate case against him, it must be proved against him; but we are not dealing here with any such case. We are dealing with a profound plutocratic assumption, accidentally revealed by a chance phrase. The poor children are born under the power and protection of a governing class, as wards in Chancery are born under the power and protection of the Lord Chancellor; they inherit that status, whether our own conscience inclines us to call it a status of slavery or of safety. Note that the lady does not say— though she doubtless would say—“When I hear of a child being beaten with a red-hot poker, the common human bond makes me feel as angry as if it were my own child.” She does not deal with hard cases, or even individual cases; she generalizes from the start. She assumes that she will, in fact, manage, she assumes that she will be allowed to manage, any other children as if they were her own. And in practice she is probably right; it is the supreme and final proof that in theory she is entirely wrong. Our society has unconsciously and unresistingly admitted this great heresy against humanity. The notion of making the head of a humble family really independent and responsible, like a citizen, has really vanished from the mind of most of the realists of our real world. It is the less wonder that it has never even entered the head of an idealist.
The trouble is that in our society the ideal is more wrong than the real. Old Tories used to insist on teaching to the poor the principles of respect for private property, lest they should revolt and despoil the rich. As a fact, it is the rich who have to be taught about the existence of private property, and especially about the existence of private life. No ragged mob is likely to storm the nurseries of Mayfair, or steal the perambulators from the French nurses, or the pupils from the German governesses, parading in Kensington Gardens. But philanthropists, under various excuses, do really raid the playgrounds of the poor. They regard such a raid as a reform; and, in truth, it is a revolution. Modern writers are very ready to cover great historic events with sweeping denunciations of crime; to say the Great War was murder on a large scale or that the Russian Revolution was theft on a large scale. They hardly realize how much of educational and philanthropic reform has been kidnapping on a large scale. That is, it has shown an increasing disregard for the privacy of the private citizen, considered as a parent. I have called it a revolution; and at bottom it is really a Bolshevist revolution. For what could be more purely and perfectly Communist than to say that you regard other people’s children as if they were your own?
True, as yet the man who treats other people’s dogs as if they were his own is called a dog-stealer. The man who is caught, caring for somebody else’s horse as if it were his own, is called a horse-thief. But even that is only true if the thieves are poor and too ignorant to plead excuses of humanitarianism. The wealthy Communist who so treats a child is not called a kidnapper. Which only shows that Communism, anyhow our Communism, would not be the rule of the poor, nor even the unruliness of the poor; but only the extension of the existing unruliness of the rich.
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II
On the Standardization of Stevenson
THIS generation, which is charged with being frivolous, often strikes me as being much too serious. And its culture, which seems in one aspect to verge on anarchy, retains in another aspect a queer weakness for authority. I call it a weakness, because it is not so much an appeal to authority as to authorities. In every scientific or sociological discussion the fact has long been flagrant and farcical. If I mention a piece of elementary common sense, as that, when I find a tooth in Tooting, I am not justified in calling it The Tooting Man, or saying I have “reconstructed” him, I shall certainly get no answer except the stern retort that The Tooting Man was reconstructed by no less a person than Dr. Pidge. If I say (exercising my poor human reason) that to explain Mind as a form of Matter is simply meaningless, like explaining eyes in terms of spectacles, I shall be duly informed that I must give up my poor human reason and accept such mysteries on the authority of Professor Snorter, an authority whose authority is perhaps of greater authority than even all the other authorities. But, while we had grown used to this old joke in the fields of science and philosophy, I cannot but grieve to see it appearing here and there in the milder but more flowery fields of literature and artistic criticism. Doubtless there was a period, in the more remote past, when there was too much weight given in literary criticism to authority and authorities. But one or two recent critics seem to have revived this fault, with a change that makes it even more faulty. If the old critic appealed to writers who were old and forgotten, the new critic thinks it enough to appeal to writers who are new and neglected. But I would just as soon be referred to an antiquity known only to the learned as to a novelty known only to the “cultured.” I would rather accept the authority of Aristotle, even at a time when he is known to be unpopular with muddle-headed people, than accept the authority of Mr. Nibbsky, who would be equally unpopular, but is not even known.
I have even found a savour of this spirit in the case of critics better known than Mr. Nibbsky, and better worth knowing. There was a comparatively slight and innocent instance of it in a criticism by Mr. James Agate on a book by Mr. Sidney Dark, writers who have both added to my enjoyment in various ways at various times. The book in question was about Stevenson, who has added to my enjoyment even more. But, as I have only read Mr. Agate’s criticism and not Mr. Dark’s book, I will not claim to judge in a general way between them. Only it seems funny to me that the critic should so solemnly make it a condemnation, in itself, of Mr. Dark’s book on Stevenson, that it was not piously and reverently founded on Mr. Swinnerton’s book on Stevenson. For the critic, apparently, Mr. Swinnerton is the one and only authority on Stevenson, and his sacred name must be invoked, like that of a Muse or a god of inspiration, at the beginning of any literary exercise on the subject. This strikes me as carrying the idolatry of Authority extravagantly far. Mr. Swinnerton is an excellent writer, and doubtless the book in question was an excellent book. But I would still meekly suggest that a man writing on Stevenson should be judged by his appreciation of Stevenson, and not by his appreciation of Swinnerton. But the critic talks with horrible solemnity about “The Pre-Swinnerton” period of Stevensonian criticism. Which really seems to be making too much even of Stevenson, let alone Swinnerton. Men may well be a little mystical in speaking of what is Pre-Adamite, or even Pre-Raphaelite; but I hardly think any of our little text-books of taste and letters will rank with the Renaissance, let alone the Creation.
Of the making of books on Stevenson there is no end; as poor Cranmer observed, “This hath offended; this unworthy hand.” But I really doubt whether it was Mr. Dark’s moral duty to read all of them before daring to write one of his own. I should as soon think it impertinent of a painter to paint a pine-tree before he had studied all the pine-trees in all the pictures in the world. After all, what we want is direct and individual impressions of primary objects, whether poets or pine-trees, and not an endless succession of critics learning from critics how to criticize. With some parts of Mr. Agate’s criticism, whether it be of the book or of the subject of the book, I entirely agree. I should never, for instance, think of resting my real admiration for Stevenson on the slight, and indeed rather thin, essays on the relation of the sexes called Virginibus Puerisque. I take them to have been examples of those early exercises in elegant prose, with a preference of manner to matter, to which Stevenson himself humorously confessed in later life. They belong to what is called the “sedulous ape” period, which the yet more sedulous apes of the Press have quoted and re-quoted sedulously ever since. But Stevenson was not a sedulous ape, any more than Dickens was Boz or Byron was the author of the remarkable poem called “A Tear.”
After all, Stevenson died at about the time of life when Dickens had only just written David Copperfield, and had not yet attempted so new a departure as Hard Times or Great Expectations; at an age when any number of great men had still their fullest and most mature work to do. And when he died he was already writing what is quite obviously a much fuller and more mature work, and in many ways quite a new departure. The fragments of Weir of Hermiston are like the fragments of a colossal god lying broken in the desert, compared with many of the slender ivory statuettes that he had carved before. But it is an error even to associate him, in his previous work, with things like ivory statuettes. Mr. Huish with his little vitriol-bottle, in The Ebb-Tide, would make a very unsuitable ivory statuette. The critic mentioned above falls into this fallacy, I think, when he says that Stevenson “turned all to favour and to prettiness.” It is not altogether a fortunate quotation, for it is taken from a scene of grisly tragedy; where the Queen utters it, her voice breaking upon the phrase, when Ophelia wanders half-witted between her lover’s murder of her father and her own murder of herself. Many of Stevenson’s trifles are quite equally tragic. Many of his pretty phrases accentuate ugly situations. Many of them are not pretty at all. I cannot imagine that any critic rushes to the dreary and bedraggled leavings of The Ebb-Tide with a mere childish desire to see the pretty pictures; or that even Mr. Agate would read the account, in Weir of Hermiston, of how the oaf, with his neck swathed in flannel, was “hunted gallows-wards with jeers,” and have merely the sentiments of the infant who kicks his legs and cries: “Oh, pretty, pretty!” These passages strike me as revealing rather too brutal a streak in the writer, due, I think, to the Calvinist pessimism of his original background.
What Stevenson had, and what Stevenson’s critics often have not and mistake for mere finesse, was a certain sharpness of focus. He did not deal merely with pretty figures, whether they were figures of speech or figures of fiction. On the contrary, he dealt oftener with ugly figures, and certainly enjoyed the ugly figures most. But all the figures are figures, and not merely presences or influences. Mr. Huish is a deformity, but he is a definite form. This may not be the highest artistic quality, but it is not turning everything to prettiness. It is turning everything to beauty, even to the terrible beauty that is made out of a harmony of ugly things. And that is surely not very far off from the primary purpose of art.
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III
On Turnpikes and Mediævalism
OPENING my newspaper the other day, I saw a short but emphatic leaderette entitled “A Relic of Mediævalism.” It expressed a profound indignation upon the fact that somewhere or other, in some fairly remote corner of this country, there is a turnpike-gate, with a toll. It insisted that this antiquated tyranny is insupportable, because it is supremely important that our road traffic should go very fast; presumably a little faster than it does. So it described the momentary delay in this place as a relic of mediævalism. I fear the future will look at that sentence, somewhat sadly and a little contemptuously, as a very typical relic of modernism. I mean it will be a melancholy relic of the only period in all human history when people were proud of being modern. For though today is always today and the moment is always modern, we are the only men in all history who fell back upon bragging about the mere fact that today is not yesterday. I fear that some in the future will explain it by saying that we had precious little else to brag about. For, whatever the mediæval faults, they went with one merit. Mediæval people never worried about being mediæval; and modern people do worry horribly about being modern.
To begin with, note the queer, automatic assumption that it must always mean throwing mud at a thing to call it a relic of mediævalism. The modern world contains a good many relics of mediævalism, and most of us would be surprised if the argument were logically enforced even against the things that are commonly called mediæval. We should express some regret if somebody blew up Westminster Abbey, because it is a relic of mediævalism. Doubts would trouble us if the Government burned all existing copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, because they are quite certainly relics of mediævalism. We could not throw ourselves into unreserved and enthusiastic rejoicing even if the Tower of Giotto were destroyed as a relic of mediævalism. And only just lately, in Oxford and Paris (themselves, alas! relics of mediævalism), there has been a perverse and pedantic revival of the Thomist Philosophy and the logical method of the mediæval Schoolmen. Similarly, curious and restless minds, among the very youngest artists and art critics, have unaccountably gone back even further into the barbaric period than the limit of the Tower of Giotto, and are even now telling us to look back to the austerity of Cimabue and the Byzantine diagrams of the Dark Ages. These relics must be more mediæval even than mediævalism.
But, in fact, this queer phase would not cover only what is commonly called mediævalism. If a relic of mediævalism only means something that has come down to us from mediæval times, such writers would probably be surprised at the size and solidity of the relics. If I told these honest pressmen that the Press is a relic of mediævalism, they would probably prove their love of a cliché by accusing me of a paradox. But it is at least certain that the Printing Press is a relic of mediævalism. It was discovered and established by entirely mediæval men, steeped in mediæval ideas, stuffed with the religion and social spirit of the Middle Ages. There are no more typically mediæval words than those noble words of the eulogy that was pronounced by the great English printer on the great English poet; the words of Caxton upon Chaucer. If I were to say that Parliament is a relic of mediævalism, I should be on even stronger ground; for, while the Press did at least come at the end of the Middle Ages, the Parliaments came much more nearly at the beginning of the Middle Ages. They began, I think, in Spain and the provinces of the Pyrenees; but our own traditional date, connecting them with the revolt of Simon de Montfort, if not strictly accurate, does roughly represent the time. I need not say that half the great educational foundations, not only Oxford and Cambridge, but Glasgow and Paris, are relics of mediævalism. It would seem rather hard on the poor journalistic reformer if he is not allowed to pull down a little turnpike-gate till he has proved his right to pull down all these relics of mediævalism.
Next we have, of course, the very considerable historic doubt about whether the turnpike-gate is a relic of mediævalism. I do not know what was the date of this particular turnpike; but turnpikes and tolls of that description were perhaps most widely present, most practically enforced, or, at least, most generally noted, in the eighteenth century. When Pitt and Dundas, both of them roaring drunk, jumped over a turnpike-gate and were fired at with a blunderbuss, I hope nobody will suggest that those two great politicians were relics of mediævalism. Nobody surely could be more modern than Pitt and Dundas, for one of them was a great financial statesman, depending entirely on the bankers, and the other was a swindler. It is possible, of course, that some such local toll was really mediæval, but I rather doubt whether the journalist even inquired whether it was mediæval. He probably regards everything that happened before the time of Jazz and the Yellow Press as mediæval. For him mediæval only means old, and old only means bad; so that we come to the last question, which ought to have been the first question, of whether a turnpike really is necessarily bad.
If we were really relics of mediævalism—that is, if we had really been taught to think—we should have put that question first, and discussed whether a thing is bad or good before discussing whether it is modern or mediæval. There is no space to discuss it here at length, but a very simple test in the matter may be made. The aim and effect of tolls is simply this: that those who use the roads shall pay for the roads. As it is, the poor people of a district, including those who never stir from their villages, and hardly from their firesides, pay to maintain roads which are ploughed up and torn to pieces by the cars and lorries of rich men and big businesses, coming from London and the distant cities. It is not self-evident that this is a more just arrangement than that by which wayfarers pay to keep up the way, even if that arrangement were a relic of mediævalism.
Lastly, we might well ask, is it indeed so certain that our roads suffer from the slowness of petrol traffic; and that, if we can only make every sort of motor go faster and faster, we shall all be saved at last? That motors are more important than men is doubtless an admitted principle of a truly modern philosophy; nevertheless, it might be well to keep some sort of reasonable ratio between them, and decide exactly how many human beings should be killed by each car in the course of each year. And I fear that a mere policy of the acceleration of traffic may take us beyond the normal modern recognition of murder into something resembling a recognition of massacre. And about this, I for one still have a scruple; which is probably a relic of mediævalism.
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IV
On Mammoth Portraiture
WHEN I first heard of the scheme for carving colossal heads of American heroes out of the everlasting hills, the scheme (I think) of the American sculptor, Mr. Borglum, I felt again the thrill first given to me in childhood in reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fantasy of The Great Stone Face. It is not unnatural that two great American artists, in different departments, should have dreamed similar dreams; for the whole conception not only rises out of but really requires the vast American background of prairies and mountain-chains. Anyone will feel, I think, that it would be rather too big for England. It would be rather alarming for the Englishman returning by boat to Dover, to see that Shakspere’s Cliff had suddenly turned into Shakspere. We had a distinguished portrait-painter named Beechey, but none of his portraits is quite on the scale of Beachy Head. And the most intrepid mountaineer might well be staggered if, when scaling the steep face of Snowdon, he saw the cold and stony face of Lord Snowden, that far from extinct volcano. Though the heads in the American experiment are those of statesmen, they are mostly those of statesmen who have passed to where politicians cease from troubling and, at any rate, cease from taxing. But this does not altogether get rid of a further difficulty, even in the more appropriate and spacious American atmosphere.
It is unlucky that at the moment when America can carve permanent historical monuments there has been some loss of permanence in historical theories. America is stronger than any other State just now in certain kinds of architecture and architectural sculpture, suggestive of the stark and starry altitudes of Egypt and Assyria. But the ideas in those ancient designs are either dead or indestructible. In modern history, however, one man has been trying to “debunk” Washington in a book, while another man has been moulding him out of a mountain. What does the “debunker” do in this contest? Does he buy another mountain; and carve another and less pleasing portrait of Washington? Will he prove that the great man was small, by exhibiting his smallness on a large scale? There remains a very fine head of Rameses III, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. But we have not got a colossal caricature of him—by Moses.
That is the mischief with the modern world. We might make more permanent records of our opinions. But we have not got more permanent opinions to record. In every sense we are strong in the concrete; but very wobbly in the abstract. But that is a larger matter than the largest statue, and we cannot conclude upon it here. For my part, I sometimes think public monuments ought to be too large to be seen. I suggest that there should be a new art, plotting out large spaces of the earth in coloured pictures of turf or clay, only to be seen from a skyscraper or a flying-ship. Instead of disfiguring the sky with aviators writing advertisements that everybody can see, let us plan out the earth in gigantic figures that only aviators can see. Then anybody who wants to be an æsthete, and talk about Art, can pay a stiff sum to go up to a dizzy and uncomfortable height, and see his own very exclusive portrait gallery spread out before him, over hill and dale, or even over county and province. For things can be kept secret by being large as well as by being small. Hitherto it has been assumed that size and scale in the arts belonged only to things vertical and solid; to architecture or at least to sculpture; and that pictures painted in the flat belong to a world of smaller things, in some cases even concentrating in illuminated missals or in miniatures. By the trifling reform or experiment which I suggest, it would be possible to make pictures more colossal than the most colossal buildings. I will even confess to a weakness for the fancy; there is something faintly stirring to the imagination in the notion of the whole earth traced out in the shapes of Titans, the earth’s huge but forgotten children; or in using the raw colours of geology and the vaster forms of vegetation to fit together into the unity of a sprawling figure or a staring face. It would hardly be safe, of course, to assume that geological areas are plainly coloured like a map; I do not know whether Yellowstone Park is really yellow or the Black Forest really black; in spite of my simple and romantic mind, I am aware that the Red Sea is not red. But, the reds and browns and purples of the desert beside the Red Sea would make excellent material for a certain style of portrait-painting; an admirable if not an enviable complexion. Only, as I say, the æsthete would have to be an aviator, and this alone would probably diminish the number of æsthetes. So that, in a sort of way, I should be a reformer after all. As these vast portraits would be invisible, in a general sense, I suppose it would not matter very much whose portraits they were. But, as a general principle of propriety, I suppose they should only represent men whose names have really gone to the ends of the earth: figures of great national and international power. Meanwhile, the rest of us would never see them and never trouble about them. We should go on living happily and innocently in the woodlands of Abraham Lincoln’s whiskers, or in the pleasant shady district not far from the eyebrow of Charles James Fox, without being pestered about Art at all.
It is a fine, large scheme, and more sensible than most large schemes I know. For that would appear to be the logical end of all that pursuit of pure largeness, as such, which has been so much the mark of our time; and has even intoxicated some of the finest intellects of our time, like that of Mr. H. G. Wells. The end of the process of expansion would seem to be disappearance; the vanishing of these vast things from the restricted senses and calculations of man. It is the ultimate upshot of the skyscraper; and upshot seems to be an oddly appropriate term. It is the end that the edifice should tower so high that we cannot see its towers; that the sky-sign should sprawl so wide that we cannot read its lettering; that we should be left, exactly like the people in my parable of the painted earth, living too close to things that are too large. I do not say it is very probable that things will ever go as far as that; chiefly because I think it much more probable that, long before that happens, people will have developed a taste for something totally different; perhaps for things that are microscopically small. But the builders of the big buildings, and the painters of the huge hoardings, do not propose to themselves any logical process except that of making things larger and larger, and therefore have no logical end except to make them too large to bother about.
There is another way in which the parable is really a plain truth; and, indeed, a practical problem. Our relation to modern schemes and systems, to the institutions under which we live and the international influences by which they are extended, is very like the relation of a man living like a pigmy in a city of giants. We have lost the power to control things, largely because we have lost the power to oversee them; that is, to see them as a whole. The economic disasters we suffer are largely due to the operations having grown too large even for the operators. We are all dotted about like little pins stuck in a vast map of financial statesmanship, or rather, financial strategy; it is a plan or chart far too voluminous and bewildering to be at present mastered by any public opinion, and the pins cannot use their pin’s-heads. If there are any persons who do understand it, they are much fewer than the aviators who would mount aloft to see the picture of the whole earth.
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V
On War Memorials
I HAPPENED recently to renew my acquaintance with Edinburgh Rock; I refer to the remarkable fortress and not the more remarkable foodstuff of that name. The latter, indeed, I am far from despising. There seems even to be something terrible in giving that stark and rugged title to a sweetmeat; as if a child were invited to nibble at Gibraltar or take a big bite out of St. Michael’s Mount. Anyhow, that citadel, which is like a city within a city, contains a new and unique building, which is like a castle within a castle. It is the War Memorial of Scotland, and, to my mind, one of the few great War Memorials that are worthy of the greatness of the War. And the train of rambling reflections which it started left me with a profound renewal of all my own original belief in what would now, by comparison, be called little and local things. I have lived through the times when many intelligent and idealistic men hoped that the World War would be an introduction to the World State. But I myself am more convinced than ever that the World War occurred because nations were too big, and not because they were too small. It occurred especially because big nations wished to be bigger, or, in other words, because each State wanted to be the World State. But it occurred, above all, because about things so vast there comes to be something cold and hollow and impersonal. It was not merely a war of nations; it was a war of warring Internationalists.
Now, the Scottish War Memorial has a personality. It is the personality of a people, not merely the impersonality of people. I would not raise here, least of all in any unsympathetic spirit, the purely æsthetic debates about, the Cenotaph. But, after all, a Cenotaph is by definition an empty tomb, and it affects me individually as a very empty tomb. I would not call it cold and hollow and impersonal in any abusive sense. But it is by its very nature hollow; it is by a deliberate artistic policy impersonal; and the effect of this, on some people at least, is that it is rather cold. The point is that this effect was produced intentionally, and almost inevitably, by the avoidance of anything that could be distinctive of any creed, any province, any profession or branch of the service. It is in that sense cosmopolitan, and therefore colourless; in being the meeting-place of so many races and religions, it can hardly help having something of the hollowness of the heart of the whirlpool, or reminding us of a temple of the winds, offering an intermediate and cold hospitality to all the winds of the world. I know all that there is to be said for such severities of classic architecture; but as least those who most admire the Cenotaph must admire it as architecture, and not as sculpture. Now, the Edinburgh War Memorial is full of sculpture, as a mediæval church is full of such carving and craftsmanship; and the word “full” does really correspond to a sense of fullness. And one effect of that sort of Gothic fullness is that a thing can be great when it is small.
Now, a thing like the Cenotaph can hardly be great when it is small. Even as it is, to my instinct, it is too small. What I fancy I really feel about it is that it might be very fine, in its own way, if it were as big as the Great Pyramid and stood against a background as bare as the great desert. It might then be entirely artistic and appropriate, for the artist’s own purpose, that it should be as bare as the sky or as inhuman as the wilderness. But if we are talking about the human and historical quality of these things, then there will be surely more value in a piece of varied and yet concentrated craftsmanship, such as that which has been achieved by this group of Scottish craftsmen. A carving must be a carving of something, if not of somebody. And the peculiar liveliness of local life and work lies in the fact that it is always dealing with something, describing something, struggling with the particular difficulties of something or somebody. There is a spirit that can only be called Gossip about a Gothic cathedral and its carvings. It may deal in caricatures, but it does not deal much in those abstract diagrams that can be much more misleading than caricatures. And, without at all narrowing my artistic tastes to this one type or school of work, I will confess to an undiminished partiality for it, because of its extraordinary vitality and vivacity. It is the liveliness of localism, even the liveliness of littleness. It arises when craftsmen have particular positive traditions of the work-shop or the shrine, or when there is, for instance, as there still is in Scotland, a living memory of the lineage of particular families, and not only the families of the rich. For no family that is really respected consistently, as a family, can ever be entirely snobbish. The vast voting majority of the very richest family consists of poor relations.
These rambling reflections first began to ramble at the sight of a stone Unicorn, the ancient bearer of the Scottish arms, which stands outside the entrance to the memorial chapel. I thought it was a strong piece of work, simplified, but far from conventional, even in the artistic sense. But what took the eye, as typical of the spirit of which I speak, was the bold but harmonious way in which the artist had dealt with the difficulty of the conventional spike sticking out of the forehead of the sacred monster. The artist had bent the horn back by sheer strength, so to speak—at least by sheer strength of imagination— so that it followed with a wilder curve of its own the strong curve of the horse’s neck. And I thought to myself that this was typical of the true spirit of craftsmanship, especially of craftsmanship dealing with definite and traditional symbols. The sculptor had really wrestled with the Unicorn, like a legendary hero wrestling with a fabulous animal. That is, she had really wrestled with a problem of presenting something positive that had to be presented, and yet in a new and more perfect form of presentation. She had made something new out of the old Unicorn; but she had not made any thing else except a Unicorn. There was something symbolic in the fact that she had taken that wild, unearthly horse by the horn and forced it back into the contours of her own design. This is only one example out of many, and there are hundreds of such examples, wherever good workmen are doing real work with real images and ideas. Because they are real images and ideas, they can be treated; but they must be treated with. They must be taken on certain terms, and partly on their own terms. Because they are wild things, they can be tamed, but only by the true Unicorn-tamer, who is even more daring than the Lion-tamer.
That is why the traditional art is the truly creative art. That is why it is truly more creative than the negative abstractions which tend, of their nature, not merely to anarchy, but to nothingness. And that is why a glimpse of these things encouraged me in my own lifelong belief in particularism, and the tales and traditions of a people. Where there are traditions there are tests; where there are traditions there are tasks and practical problems; but they are always stimulants to the spirit and cunning and imagination of man. They are always more fruitful, in the long run, than the work of those who strike outwards to draw a design of nothing on the dark canvas of night. The Unicorn brings forth Unicorns, and all sorts of new and varied Unicorns, and one of them will be different because it is a stone Unicorn and another because it is a bronze Unicorn. But there are no foals born to the Nightmare.
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VI
On Old Men Who Make Wars
A STALE and stupid but still poisonous phrase has been buzzing about for the last ten years, as difficult to catch as a wasp in the warm weather. It is already very old, but is always said as if it were something new; everybody has heard it said, and hardly anybody has stopped to ask what it meant. It has many forms, but the commonest form of it is something like this: “Of course the young were embittered when they realized how their elders had brought the world into a horrible catastrophe and a hideous mess.” I, for one, am tired of hearing it, and therefore I propose to be the first person who ever thought about it.
First, I happen to remember that exactly the same argument, if you can call it an argument, was used more than twenty years ago, when the fashion was not so much the Appeal to Youth as the Appeal to Woman. Then, also, we were always told that Woman (who had apparently only been born yesterday) looked around her and saw a world of sin and sorrow. This, she promptly declared, was a Man-Made World. Her supporters were not content to say that she was unjustly treated, as in many ways she was; they were not content to say that she had as much claim as man to this or that legal or social privilege: which was very arguable, and about which, in any case, I am not now going to argue. They did definitely declare that the wickedness and misery of the world were clearly due to the fact that it had been managed by males. If the wasp came in at the window and stung somebody, this was due to the fact that it was a Man-Made window, if not actually a Man-Made wasp. If Woman had been in control of the world, there would have been no wasps; or all the wasps would have been trained in such tact and social discipline that they never stung anybody. If the poor were underpaid or overworked, it was solely because men and not women had the paying of them, though some of us had known women who were hard on their subordinates, almost in the manner of men. If nations went to war, it was because women had not votes to stop them, though some of us knew women who waved flags and shouted war-songs and were far more passionately patriotic than the males whom they sent to war. Whatever evil there was on the earth, it was due to the fact that humanity, for reasons best known to itself, had given all power to the sex that always supported evil, and no power at all to the sex which invariably, and in every situation, supported the highest possible good. I remember all that sort of talk, that started nearly thirty years ago, and attributed all misfortunes to Men. I still hear the other sort of talk, that started nearly twenty years ago, and attributes all misfortunes to Old Men.
Since then, the first batch of Young Men have themselves almost become Old Men; but they are still saying it. They are still saying it without seriously thinking about it. Anyone who will examine the statement will see that it really rests on three assumptions which, as is usual in these cases, are not only accepted, but accepted unconsciously. The speakers not only assume them without proving them, but assume them without knowing they are assuming them. The first is this: That terrible and desolating tragedy is so abnormal in human life, and so utterly out of the nature of things, that it can only be attributed to the staggering and scandalous stupidity of some special individual or individuals. Without going off into an argument about human life, we may note that there is at least an element which is here ignored for the first time in history; for that tragic character of living was a commonplace to all the sages and the poets. To put it shortly, if it is terrible that two million men should die together in a campaign, it is also terrible that all men without exception must die separately somewhere. It is not self-evident that the tragic phase of life only follows on exceptional folly, and the fallacy was noted some time ago by the Tower of Siloam and the Ash-heap of Job.
The second assumption is this: That a tragedy like the Great War must have been not only a blunder, but a blunder made by everybody at the same moment. It must have been a blind collision in the dark, and therefore can only have been due to mere negligence in all those in control. Now you may or may not agree that there was an aggressor in the quarrel, but it is nonsense to assume it as self-evident that there was not, or talk as if there could not be. If there was, the affair would not be a result of negligence, but emphatically a result of vigilance. We may say it was a wicked vigilance on the part of the aggressor; but, by the same stroke, we are forced to admit that it was therefore a just and honourable vigilance on the part of the defenders. Anyhow, the whole nightmare of mere negligence has disappeared as a necessity of logic; it has disappeared because it was not a necessity but a mere assumption.
Thirdly (though this point is less easy to limit and define properly): It is an assumption to suppose that statesmen or national leaders are necessarily wrong even when they do risk great catastrophes, for the sake of creating or preserving some cultural system associated with all that makes life worth living. A man might admit that his efforts to avert catastrophe might fail, that the catastrophe might follow, and still maintain his course, being resolved at least to avoid the worst catastrophe of the loss of the main hope of humanity. Certainly every reform or reconstruction in human history has been followed by calamities, if wars are the chief calamities. The democratic ideal of Athens involved it in a welter of wars; the universal civilization of Rome was spread by a long routine of wars; every national culture owes something to the national wars. If you accept the French Revolution, it covered Europe with the Napoleonic Wars. If you accept the Protestant Reformation, it devastated the Germanies with the longest and weariest of all wars. If you accept the Russian Revolution, it has already produced endless internal wars, one external war, and the end is not yet. I am not expressing admiration for war, nor, for that matter, for the Russian Revolution or the Reformation. I am only saying that nobody has a right to assume at the start that no statesman has any right to risk war, for the sake of ideals that change or preserve civilization. In short, there was nothing grotesquely doddering and decadent about the Old Men who, twenty years ago, tried to rule the troubled and troublesome race of men. Some were right and some were wrong; but most were vigilant, and all were bound in any case to take a risk.
I think this worth mentioning now, for a simple reason. We are already drifting horribly near to a New War, which will probably start on the Polish Border. The Young Men have had nineteen years in which to learn how to avoid it. I wonder whether they do know much more about how to avoid it than the despised and drivelling Old Men of 1914. How many of the Young Men, for instance, have made the smallest attempt to understand Poland? How many would have anything to say to Hitler, to dissuade him from setting all Christendom aflame by a raid on Poland? Or have the Young Men been thinking of nothing since 1914 except the senile depravity of the Old Men of that date?
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VII
On Vachel Lindsay
M. PAUL CLAUDEL’S play, The Satin Slipper, translated with admirable subtlety and flexibility by the Rev. John O’Connor, is a work of rich and almost bewildering fantasy, and has any number of aspects that could not adequately be treated here. But it has one particular aspect, in which it is related to recent events in other fields, and rather specially calls for a particular comment just now. Though nobody could be more French than M. Claudel, and nothing could be more French than the particular kind of wit and fighting logic that pursues this theme or thesis to its end, yet the whole background of the drama is the background of the Spanish civilization. Even at this moment the Spanish civilization is something very much larger than the civilization of Spain. It was infinitely more so in the days of the external glory of Spain, the days of the alliance with Austria and the conquest of America. About all that culture there was a character which runs through this drama like a decorative pattern, and will be found more and more, I think, to be a pattern for the art of today.
Thus, no two poets could possibly be more different in every tradition or test of historical type than Paul Claudel and Vachel Lindsay, the spirited American singer. In external and formal attachment, they would seem utterly foreign to each other. Vachel Lindsay was a Puritan in the personal sense; one might almost say in the political sense. He was even a Prohibitionist, and it is only fair to say that his orgiastic verse does demonstrate how very drunk a man can be without wine when he drinks the American air. Occasionally, even, a critic might be tempted to call it the American hot-air. For though Vachel Lindsay was a natural artist, and went right by the clue of the imagination, there are passages of his finest writing which would have been finer still if he had not lived in the land of the megaphone rather than the ivory horn; or if his traditions had not given him the choice of two trumpets— the brazen trumpet of publicity as well as the golden trumpet of poetry. He was himself a wholly simple, sincere, and therefore humble man; but the people around him did not believe in humility; no, not even when they practised it. But they did believe in go and gusto and the big noise; and to a certain extent Vachel Lindsay even at his best did practise that. I have myself a huge sympathy with his special gift for describing men banging their gongs to the glory of their gods; but it were vain to deny that in some ways their gods were not our gods. Most certainly, anyhow, they were not M. Claudel’s gods. M. Claudel is not only a Catholic, but a French Catholic; with the particular French dislike of orgiastic religion and the fads that invade domesticity. I should imagine that there are no two things that M. Claudel would be more completely puzzled to comprehend than (1) a free man being a Prohibitionist, and (2) a fine poet selecting from all human history the subject of “General Booth Enters Heaven.”
And yet both poets, the Frenchman and the American, illustrate this third element that is neither American nor French. For truly Vachel Lindsay was something more than an American; he was (wildly as the term would be misunderstood) a Spanish-American. He was, spiritually speaking, a Californian. He did not get drunk only on the American air; he drank the air of a strange paradise, which is in some way set apart and unlike anything in the New World or the Old; a fairy sea, calmed as by a spell, that stretches far away into fantastical China and of which even the nearer coast is ruled by ghosts rather than by its modern rulers. For there is spread all along that Pacific Coast, in some fashion too vivid for definition, the presence and the pressure and the splendour of Spain. It was something in this rich sunset air that got into the verse of a Puritan like Vachel Lindsay, and made it so much more instinctively ornate and gorgeous than that of a mere Pagan like Walt Whitman. Whitman was a great man; but he was a man of the Eastern States and of the Northern sun, and therefore his passion was colourless even when it was not cold. The Puritanism of Lindsay was more glowing than the Paganism of Whitman. And the reason was, I think, this unconscious influence which possesses all the West of America, as the old Celtic romance possesses all the West of England. The poetry of Vachel Lindsay proves, in every sort of broken and unconscious fashion, how much he was haunted by this presence; how much he felt under his feet this Spanish subsoil of American States. It was, to quote the words of his own vision, the Wrecks of the Galleons of Spain that towered and swelled above him in a sort of glowing monstrosity, and gave their real symbolic outline to the Golden Whales of California.
In other words, it is worth while to realize that there is spread over great spaces of the earth a sort of Spanish magic. The Spanish settlements are not what is called dead-alive places, in the sense of places in which the living are dead; they are places in which the dead are alive. But the dead are alive, even where nobody else is alive. Even the deserted parts of that coast are not a desert; and even the dead parts of that empire cannot die. And it is the vast vitality of that dead empire that attracts a French northerner like M. Claudel, just as it unconsciously attracted an American like Mr. Lindsay. The dramatic narrative of M. Claudel, as I have said, covers a vast field of universal ideas and individual problems. It is full of what is found in the very name of The Golden Whales of California, and it is a whale of a book. But it is also golden, in the sense of being full of things that are truly as good as gold. It even rather excels in the description of things shapeless or of incalculable shape, like such gigantic monsters; indeed, as it happens, there is a typically grotesque description of the actual animals called whales. “Their head, which is like a whole mountain full of liquid sperm, shows in the corner of the jaw a little eye no bigger than a waistcoat-button.” There is the same sort of imaginative sense of the shape of something shapeless in this fine phrase about the amorphous Germanies of Central Europe. “To know it you must look at its heart, for it has got no face.”
All that dark and yet exuberant imagery belongs to a tradition that can be seen in the art and ornament of Spain. It can be seen in the special Spanish love of black; the black which is not the negation of colour, but rather the accumulation of colour. It can be seen in the rich darkness of Spanish churches, fretted with the golden fire of countless candles. But it can be seen fully and completely only in the world-wide spreading of the Spanish culture in the sixteenth century, when it met on its borders monsters stranger than whales; red men and golden mountains and a new world. It had many crimes, which are not hidden in Claudel’s poem, but it had this very enviable greatness: that strange stars and new sciences were then opened to a Christian world that was still full of chivalry. Then wicked men colonized for greed, but good men did not colonize only for commerce; when the white man was as romantic a figure as the red man, and trade had not destroyed the Red Indian to replace him by the Regular Guy.
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VIII
On the Staleness of Revolt
IT is an eternal truth that the fathers stone the prophets and the sons build their sepulchres; often out of the same stones. For the reasons originally given for execution are often the same as the reasons given later for canonization. But it might be added that there is often a third phase, in which the grandsons wreck and reduce to ruins the sepulchres that the sons have made. The process of the acceptation or rejection of prophets, true and false, is not quite so simple a progress as it appeared to the progressive philosophy of the nineteenth century. It is full of ups and downs; even for a dead prophet, who is not generally allowed to remain dead in peace. And nothing is more curious than to note the way in which this change does affect great reputations, and especially revolutionary reputations.
The curious thing is that, when the rebellion comes, it is generally a rebellion against rebels. It is generally not a rebellion against reactionaries. Men in the past who particularly praised the past may in some cases have faded into the past which they praised. But they have not often been singled out for special attack by the future which they despised. Those who were, in fact, doomed to dethronement in the future were generally the futurists of the past. It was those who were promising men a future of greater glory, who had really before themselves a future of greater discredit and neglect. The old dusty and musty laudator temporis acti may sometimes be neglected, but he is seldom discredited. He is never dethroned, possibly because he has never been enthroned. But he seems to outlast any number of the enthroned prophets of progress.
I am noting this as a singular historical fact, quite apart from my own sympathies, which are sometimes with the revolutionary and sometimes with the reactionary. For instance: suppose a man were asked which were the two greatest Englishmen, or rather the two greatest British subjects, alive at the end of the eighteenth century. Opinions might differ; but a man would not be very far wrong if he said Byron and Burke. At that time Burke stood, as he stands in all his most important work, as the champion of Conservative ideas; the man who urged us to preserve even irrational traditions; the man who lamented over the loss of even older traditions. He was then emphatically the Burke who lamented aloud that the age of chivalry was past, or wept over the vanished beauty of the French Queen. On the other hand, Byron was at that time emphatically the voice of the Revolution. He openly regretted that it had been defeated at Waterloo; he lashed all the Tories with a scourge of satire, which he flourished like a flag of Liberty. Well, they were both great men, and, if I have a purely personal preference, it is for Byron. It is certainly, in most respects, for the political party of Byron. And yet it cannot be denied that the subsequent relations of the two reputations, to fame or at least to fashion, have illustrated this curious advantage of the reactionary over the revolutionary. Byron has been, I think rather underrated ever since. Burke has been, I think, rather overrated ever since. That is a matter of opinion; but it is a matter of fact that Burke has not been very specially denounced or derided, whereas Byron has been incessantly denounced and derided. It came to be almost the mark of a modern and advanced intellectual to be always sniffing and sneering at the mere rhetoric and melodramatic romance of Byron. Nobody specially insisted that Burke’s rhapsodies about Marie Antoinette were mere rhetoric, as they undoubtedly were. Certainly there is something, which it were mild to call melodrama, in saying about that hearty German lady: “And surely never lighted upon this orb, which she scarcely seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.” That florid phraseology is not allowed to return to the mind when Mr. Buckle or Mr. Garvin are describing the debt of our Constitution to the subtle and statesmanlike philosophy of Burke. Burke never became a sort of cockshy for the critics, and Byron did. And it does seen rather to suggest that, if you are a prophet of resurrection and revolution, of the future and of the dawn, your sepulchre is likely to be pelted and defaced even after it has been built. But if you were only a builder of sepulchres, your sepulchre will be left in peace.
Then consider the next and still more singular stage in the story. The whole story was repeated over again, towards the end of the Victorian era, when Swinburne arose to dispute the mild constitutional monarchy of Tennyson and in some sense to fill once more the revolutionary throne of Byron. The first thing to notice is that there is no sympathy, certainly no continuity, between the old rebel and the new rebel. Swinburne was just as ready to dismiss or despise Byron as all the other people of his æsthetic time and school, or rather readier than the rest. There was no sympathy between revolution and revolution, simply because there was no sympathy between fashion and fashion. “Farewell, ye gay something, ye gardens of roses” (I regret to say that I forget what the gay something was) sounded at once florid and frigid to a generation which did not feel that “If love were what the rose is, and I were like the leaf,” might be not only unnatural, but very nearly nonsensical. Every novelty has its own nonsense, and never sees that it is nonsense, and always sees that the older novelty was nonsense. But Swinburne himself is already becoming an older novelty, and there are any number of people who are beginning to say that his poetry is nonsense. It seems highly probable that he, in his turn, is in for a period of reaction and ridicule; in which his work will be underrated exactly as Byron’s was underrated. But he will be underrated for the same reason—simply because he was overrated; but, above all, because he was especially overrated as a rebel and a reformer and a new force making for the future. The man who sits down to compose Songs Before Sunrise is apt to find the sun, when it rises, rather too hot for him.
But the point is that what seems to attract this strange revolt is not being an ancient king, but being an ancient rebel. The world swung back on Byron in proportion to the strength with which he had swayed it as a fashionable demagogue; and the same thing that happened to Byron is now obviously happening to Swinburne. It is not so obviously happening to those of Swinburne’s contemporaries, who, though they shared the artistic methods of the time, were really interested in the artistic models of an earlier time. I have mentioned the only too recurrent subject of roses. I have noted how remote were the full-blown rose-gardens of Byron from the “mystical rose of the mire” so much celebrated by Swinburne. I fear it is only too likely that, in the anti-Swinburnian reaction, a great many people will make fun of shamelessly alliterative lines like “The raptures and roses of vice,” which certainly does not mean very much. But I doubt if they will trouble to make game of William Morris’s line, “Two red roses across the moon,” though it means absolutely nothing at all. But then Morris, in spite of his revolutionary side, was saved by his reactionary side. He was really more interested in the past than in the future, so the future may leave him alone.
I could give a great many other instances of how the Pagans of yesterday are being mocked by the Pagans of today. A man speaking of fine English prose in my boyhood would probably have mentioned both Pater and Newman. I have lately heard an amazing number of people sneering at Pater; I have not heard many people, or indeed any people, sneering at Newman. Yet it would certainly have been said that the Pagan looked to the future and the Papist to the past. I draw no moral from this curious habit of humanity. I am content to be, for once, an utterly unmoral critic of the Swinburne period, or a cold, rationalist scientist of the Victorian Age.
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IX
On Dependence and Independence
I CAME across a lady quite lately who leapt up in a flame of noble indignation at the suggestion that her husband should pay for her dresses, though she did not apparently object to his paying for her dinners. I admit that there was something fine and generous about such perversity, and that she was an improvement on other ladies who leap up in a flame of indignation because their husbands will not pay for a hundred dresses a month. It is sometimes the husband who leaps up in a flame of indignation, and in neither case is the indignation so noble. All the same, it seems to me an instance of the queer welter of inconsequent and inconclusive notions that make it so difficult for the modern world to establish a normal social rule.
Some of us (who cannot be called conservative in the sense of content with social conditions, and who have even been called revolutionary for our attempts to improve those conditions) have nevertheless come to have a profound suspicion of what is called Progress. And the reason is this: that there does not seem to be a principle, but only principles, and these conflicting principles, of Progress. There is not a stream, but a sort of eddy or whirlpool. There could not be a stronger case than this particular ideal of Independence. It is not made the principle of social reform. Even the social reformers would be the first to say that they depend on dependence; on the mutual dependence of comrades and fellow-citizens, as distinct from the individualistic independence they would denounce as mere isolation. It is not made the ideal of the proletarian or wage-earner, either by the Communist or the Capitalist system. Both the Communist and the Capitalist are alike in not thinking of the individual worker as independent. They will discuss whether he is well paid, whether he is well treated, whether he works under good or bad conditions, whether he is dependent on a good or bad business or a good or bad government; but not whether he is independent. Independence is not made the ideal of the normal man. It is only suddenly and abruptly introduced, in one particular relation, in the case of the exceptional woman. She is only independent of her husband; not independent in any other real relation of life. She is only independent of the home—and not of the workshop or the world. And it is supremely characteristic of this confusion that one well-meaning individual should make a yet finer distinction, and resolve to be independent in the dressing-room, but not in the dining-room.
Now, the modern trouble is that moral scraps and fragments of this sort are floating about like icebergs, and nobody knows when he will bump into one of them. In one case somebody will make an excuse of the ideal of Service, even if it means servility. In another case somebody will make an excuse of the ideal of Individuality, even if it means insanity. People will make attempts at despotism, or demands for freedom, successively or even simultaneously, according to a quite arbitrary program of opportunism. And we feel that they are not submitting a variety of actions to one test; they are applying a variety of tests to one action, which is for them already a fixed and settled action. They do what they want, and make up reasons for it afterwards; but even the reasons are rather too cunning to be reasonable. In a word, it is this chaos, in the creed and code of conduct, that prevents a man from finding in it any sort of guide, even a guide to progress. Thus, in the present case, we could at least settle down to discussing seriously the Independence of Woman, if it were regarded by anybody as part of a real philosophy of the Independence of Man. What we find, as in the case mentioned, is that one woman has made one claim to one curious and rather capricious form of independence. She is independent of the breadwinner, but not of the bank or the employer—not to mention the moneylender.
Thus, to begin with, it would be well to note what economic independence means: as distinct, that is, from what it ought to mean. It might mean that the lady went out into a primeval forest to slay lions and leopards and clothe herself with their skins, like Diana. It might mean that she sewed together the leaves of the forest and made herself a green garment, like Eve. It might mean that she held herself independent in owning her own spinning-wheel and her own store of thread, and weaving strips of simple drapery, like Mr. Gandhi. In a word, she might be really independent of the dress allowance, in the sense of being independent of the dressmaker. It is not very likely that it does mean this; but it is not the dependence on the dressmaker that is the serious inconsistency in the idea. It is the fact that modern woman, in the condition of modern society, will herself have to work, if not for a dressmaker, then probably for somebody else who is primarily the money-maker. And the question is, why is it any better to be a proletarian in the shop than to be a Communist in the home? For the only truly and legitimately Communist institution is the home. “With all my worldly goods I thee endow” is the only satisfactory Bolshevist proclamation that has ever been made about property. It is, therefore, of course, the one proclamation which Bolshevists would be the first to attack. The twisted and unnatural posture of the modern controversy, like that of a serpent with its tail in its mouth, biting and tearing at itself, is excellently illustrated in this queer revolt of Communism in the wrong place against Communism in the right place. We no longer make the normal attempt to break up society into homes. We only make an attempt to break up homes, and even that by a principle of division which we dare not apply to anything else in society. The crack or fissure is to run across the hearth or the roof-tree, but to be concealed as far as possible from the forum or the street.
We hear a great deal of the evil passions of Class War and the suggestion that the master and man must of necessity be natural enemies. But surely there is a far more perverse implication pervading the modern world; that the wife and the husband are natural enemies. They are, apparently, such mortal enemies that it is enough for one of them to be freed from the other, even in one trumpery particular, though she is not freed from anything or anybody else. The whole of the rest of the world in which she lives, whether for good or evil, is one network of necessitarian dependence. People have left off even talking the language of independence; the old language about the thrift that leads to independence or the self-respect that comes from independence. Anybody may find himself almost abjectly dependent upon anybody; any woman may do the same. And apparently it does not matter, so long as it is not her own husband and not concerned with her own hats. I should very much like to see some of these good-natured groping people draw up something like a plan or table of their real conception of a social structure, and of the necessary commandments of society. The newspapers talk about the danger of Bolshevism, and the Red Peril. But I am afraid of the Patchwork Peril, which is all colours and none; I am afraid of bits of Bolshevism and bits of insane individualism and bits of independence in the wrong place, floating hither and thither and colliding with they know not what; the icebergs whose very shapelessness, or incalculable shape, has always been the cause of shipwreck.
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X
On the Teutonic Theory
EVERYBODY knows, or ought to know, that making a universal theory about human society is the easiest thing in the world. The reason is not always so apparent, but I think there is a reason which can be stated rationally. The logical weakness in this sort of superficial social theory is this: that the social values are not fixed like mathematical values, and can themselves be moulded to fit the theory. If I say that red-haired men are always the tallest men in the world, I can probably be very rapidly refuted; because measuring men with a six-foot rule is a matter of mathematical fact. But if I say that red-haired men are always the men who sway the destinies of the world, I can always make out a case, by taking all the red-haired men who were important and making them out more important than they were. I can invent an ingenious theory that it was William Rufus rather than William the Conqueror who really confirmed the Norman monarchy which became the English nation. I shall have an easier task in showing that Henry the Second, the first Plantagenet, really was a great man who in some sense ruled a great empire. I can argue that General James Wolfe, who (I believe) had red hair, was the greatest of England’s heroes, by arguing that Canada is really the greatest of England’s possessions. I can say that the only man who really influenced the intellectual life of our time was Bernard Shaw. I might make out quite a good case; but my motive is merely in the fact that Mr. Shaw had a red beard not so very long ago; though presumably he has grown less wise as he has grown more white. But the point is that I must maintain the general proposition of his wisdom; and I may find myself committed to defending a large number of rather extraordinary propositions, normally remote from my own mental habits; not through a disinterested conviction that Mr. Shaw is wise as well as witty, but because I am committed to a general dogma that the red-haired man is always right.
It will be well illustrated in the case of Queen Elizabeth, a topic almost as controversial as Bernard Shaw. For the sake of my theory, I must cling desperately to the old-fashioned view that I was taught at school; the theory that the red-haired Queen Bess was a sort of tawny lioness of royal magnanimity and heroic religious convictions, shaking the earth with her roarings on behalf of the Reformation. I must not listen to the later and more realistic historians, who tell us that Elizabeth was personally an invalid and politically very much of a tool; that her real religious attachments are very doubtful, and her external political actions mostly forced on her by Cecil and his gang. In the ordinary way, I might be quite indifferent, and therefore quite impartial. But I must fight to the death for the old theory of the Froude and Freeman period; not so much for the cause of the lady as for the colour of her hair. I need her for my general plan of painting the map red; or, rather, of tying it up in red hair instead of red tape. This is how it happens that perverse and pedantic fancies so often harden into fanaticism among professors and professional historians. They will maintain any paradox rather than lose any point that supports their pet generalization, even if they do not personally care very much about the point itself. There was a mediæval tradition that Judas had red hair; and this sort of don would not shrink from saying that Judas and not Jesus was the real founder of Christianity.
I may seem to dwell on an arbitrary and absurd example. But it is not so. I myself grew up under the gigantic shadow of the Teutonic Theory. It was essentially a theory that everything valuable had been done by fair-haired men, which is quite as ludicrous as the same assertion about red-haired men. But I am not now interested in attacking that theory, or any other theory. I only remark that such theories, whether true or false, do affect the truthfulness of historians, and more often in the direction of falsehood than of truth. When we find professors quibbling and quarrelling about the number of men living on a farm mentioned in Doomsday Book, or the terms of a dispatch sent to a French marshal before the Battle of Arcola, we may be pretty certain that, though these are the things about which they are quibbling, they are not the things about which they are quarrelling. There lies behind some much larger quarrel about some much larger theory; probably some theory about the religion of the Middle Ages or the motives of the French Revolution. History and sociology can never be “scientific” in the sense of subject to exact measurement, because there is always the mystery and doubt inherent in moral evidence affecting one half of the equation, and generally both. In the thesis that red-haired men are great men, there are shades of difference even in red hair, and infinite shades of difference in greatness or the pretence of greatness. And not a few modern theorists seem to me to be strangely lacking in the instinct of what is really great.
It is amusing to notice how these theories pursue each other, and how the last almost always devours and destroys the last but one. Generally, in fact, the last is the flat contradiction of the last but one. Generally they are equally extreme, equally exaggerated, and, so far, equally untrue. For instance, the general theory implied in a book like The Outline of History is that the outline is a continuous and ascending line, a single upward curve with very few breaks in it. I do not mean that the author denies decay and reaction, but that the main moral he would like to draw is that the host of humanity has advanced, with a few halts, along the high road of history. Above all, he implies a human unity, and the idea that the host that has halted is the same as the host that has advanced. I think myself that he greatly exaggerates this continuity; leans too heavily on the alleged links, and especially misses the missing links. He makes the amoeba and the anthropoid much nearer to us than they really are. At the same time, he makes the ancient Greek or the mediæval Christian much more inferior to us than they really are. He makes the progress too recent, too rapid, and too clear. For instance, he assumes that the mediæval idea of education was inferior to ours, simply because it involved the teaching of a positive philosophy. But there is something to be said for the idea of teaching everything to somebody, as compared with the modern notion of teaching nothing, and the same sort of nothing, to everybody. For what we force on all families, by the power of the police, is not a philosophy but the art of reading and writing un-philosophically. I am not, however, contesting the world-theory of Mr. Wells at this moment. I am only contrasting the world-theory of Mr. Wells with the world-theory which instantly followed it across the world.
For the next thing we heard was that all Europe and America were full of a new fuss made about the general theory of a German writer, whose whole point was that human history was not continuous, and not progressive, and not a thing presenting points of comparison between one stage and another. According to this new theory, there is only a series of closed cycles of different cultures, so separate that they can hardly be compared. We may say that there is no progress, but only progresses. We might almost say that there is no history, but only histories. When the Greek and Roman culture commonly called Antiquity had ended, it broke off without any bridge connecting it with the mediæval or the modern. It is the fossil of a lost world, and no more of a lesson to us than a pterodactyl to a bird-fancier or Eohippus to a horse-breeder. Now, this also is certainly a gross exaggeration. There is a great deal more continuity, and in that sense a great deal more progress, than is allowed for in that historical theory. For instance, nobody understands the Middle Ages without realizing that the mind of Aristotle was still labouring in its midst like a mighty mill; and it is absurd to say that Augustine and Aquinas were not parts of the same continuous communion. But what interests me is not the truth or falsehood of the first or second theory. It is that they so flatly contradict each other, and that they so rapidly followed each other. And I fall back on my first reflection: that theories of that sort must be rather easy to make up— if you leave out more than half the facts.
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XI
On Phases of Eccentricity
THERE is still a fashion of making fun of the Victorians as very solemn people, but on that point I rather fancy they are still making fun of us. I am very far from being a mere apologist for Victorianism. But it seems to me that in many ways it is they who were frivolous and their descendants who are serious; quite unduly serious. For instance, what is hailed as a new style or a new school in literature often consists of doing as a novelty what a Victorian did long ago as a joke. Thus we have, in Mr. James Joyce or Miss Gertrude Stein, the coining of new words by the confusion of old words; the running of words together so as to suggest some muddle in the sub-consciousness. I do not recall the particular examples, but they would think nothing of saying that somebody was “drurgling,” meaning “gurgling when drunk,” or that somebody else was “widaslepe,” meaning that he had fallen asleep at the moment of saying he was wide awake. I do not doubt that they really do this much more cleverly than I can imitate it. In expressing confused ideas, the moderns have great subtlety and sympathy. It is in expressing clear ideas that they generally find their limitations. All that concerns me here is that this literary style is offered to us, with unimpeachable solemnity; as a rebirth of language or a new power in the mind of man.
Now, Lewis Carroll was a very Victorian Victorian. But he did identically the same thing; only he happened to know that it was funny, and therefore he did it for fun. He invented what he called “portmanteau words,” with the sense of two words telescoped into one. Thus he explained that “brillig” is a combination of “brilliant” and “grilling”; or that “slithy” is a portmanteau of “lithe” and “slimy.” This particular instance happens to illustrate what I mean when I say that I am not a mere partisan. The author of Alice in Wonderland is not an ideal being whom I revere, or hold up to be revered. In some respects he was much too Victorian a Victorian. On some matters he really was much too solemn. But he was not solemn about portmanteau words; and the admirers of Miss Stein are quite solemn about them. On an all-round view of cultural traditions and spiritual potentialities, I think it probable that I should very much prefer Mr. Joyce to Mr. Dodgson. But there is no getting over the historical fact that the Victorians could, in fact, invent these fancies, and could enjoy them for the fun of the thing. Whereas, in the general view of life suggested by the later schools, there is no fun and precious little enjoyment.
Over and above the light nonsense of the nineteenth century, which anticipated so much of the heavy nonsense of the twentieth, it is curious to note that the whole record is hardly encouraging to the more solemn sort of experiments. For the Victorian Age also had its experiments. The Victorian Age also contained men of letters, and even men of genius, who wrote in new styles regarded as uncommon, ugly, obscure, outré, or over-subtle. And the extraordinary thing is that it is exactly those writers who have faded out of fashion and favour. There is much less intellectual excitement than there used to be about Browning. There is a quite startling silence and indifference about Meredith. Here again I am in no sense dealing with my own preferences, or discussing whether I regret or rejoice in these changes. It so happens that I always have been, and still am, very fond of Browning’s work. It so happens that I never did become a pure and perfect Meredithian in the appreciation of Meredith’s work. But I am talking about the facts of fashion and appreciation. And I confess I think it much more likely that there will be a rapid revival of Tennyson than a rapid revival of Browning. I know, as everybody knows, that there is a sort of worship (I am tempted to say a sort of idolatry) of the comparatively straightforward novels of Hardy, and something rather like a negative iconoclasm following the select idolatry once dedicated to Meredith. I do not know why this is so; I do not especially rejoice that it is so; I rather prefer the pantheism of Meredith to the pessimism of Hardy. But it does suggest that there is a mistake somewhere in the current theory that the eccentric of one age is the centre of the next. Browning has not left a dynasty of Browning’s writing in Browningese. Meredith has not left a new literature, full of the typical fancies and freedoms, twists and turns, of the true Meredithian dialect. There is a moral to the Victorian Age, and it is a lesson of something to avoid. But it is rather a warning against being unconventional than merely against being conventional. We have many odd writers, writing in odd styles, in our own time; and they may or may not retain influence in later times. But I cannot remember a single Victorian with an odd style whose odd style is now of any advantage to him: not Carlyle; not Browning; not Meredith; not Doughty. The one solitary exception I remember, whose name has somewhat floated to the surface again of late, is that of Gerard Hopkins.
Thus I have a purely intellectual doubt of the future of fads, and even of fancies, unless they are treated frankly in a fanciful manner. I do not think any such experiment succeeds in twisting the tradition of language out of its common tendency. I can easily believe that a book like Ulysses is a striking and original book in its place and time; like Sartor Resartus in its place and time. But I do not believe that Mr. Joyce has added a new range or direction to literary expression, any more than Carlyle succeeded in turning the English language into a bastard barbaric version of the German language. I can easily suppose that Miss Stein likes having her little joke, especially at the expense of the reader; just as George Meredith certainly liked having his little joke at the expense of the reader. But the fact remains that, at the present moment, the trouble is not that the reader does not understand him, but that the reader does not read him. I grieve to say, from what I know of human nature and history, that I doubt whether posterity will even try to understand Miss Stein. So that she will share her little joke with her Creator until the end; which may be quite a good joke too. But the theory that has been so common of late, the theory that the evolution of literature branches out into new experiments, and always follows the line of those experiments, seems to me to be flatly contradicted by all the facts of literary history. It seems to me an objective fact quite apart from my own preferences; indeed, it sometimes goes against my own preferences. Crashaw and the Cavalier mystics were, in the best sense of the word, fantastics. They were fantastics of whose fantasy I am very fond. But they did not lead away English literature indefinitely to be more and more fantastic; to indulge more and more in topsy-turvy tropes and far-fetched conceits. In a generation or so, English literature was back in the channel that was normal; indeed, rather too normal. It was that poetry of good sense which began in the maturity of Dryden and died on the birthday of Burns.
Nobody knows what will be the fashion a hundred years hence, except that it will almost certainly not be anything that is considered the newest fashion today. If I know that a river has wandered in winding curves from its original fountain, I may be quite unable to guess where it eventually wanders after it has passed where I stand. The one thing I can be fairly sure of is that it will not suddenly begin to go quite straight like a canal. As a mere matter of guess-work, given the tendencies of our time, I should think it would be extremely probable that literature will give up all this notion of experiment, and not only return to type, but even to the classical type. I think it much more likely that there will then be a worship of Landor, for instance, or some rather neglected classical classic, than that the whole world will be looking back to Miss Stein as the mother of modern English prose. We see the tendency in the Thomists of France, in the Humanists of America, and I think it is likely to become rather more classical than I like. For I am a romantic person myself; and I also like my little joke, just like Miss Stein.
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XII
On Bad Poetry
I WAS recently enjoying a book published some little time ago, under the name of The Stuffed Owl; an Anthology of Bad Verse. The specimens were selected, I think, by Mr. D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Mr. Lee; but I am not reviewing the work, which must have been reviewed everywhere long ago, and has, I trust, received the admiration it certainly deserves. For the moment it has merely sent my wits wandering in the wide and rich and many-coloured fields of inferior literature. Much have the editors of the anthology travelled in these realms of gold; and I do not dream of competing with their deep scholarship touching the monumental classics of bad writing, or their exquisite and delicate artistic instinct for the finest and freshest shades of imbecility. If I may reverently adapt Matthew Arnold’s definition of culture, they do indeed know the worst that has been said and thought in the history of humanity. Of course, any critic can complain of any anthology that some of his own favourites have been left out. He may sometimes even claim that some that are not on the high level of the anthology have been put in. As the critic skims an ordinary anthology to find an item which he can condemn as a blemish, so here the critic may pounce upon something that is not sufficiently half-witted to satisfy his high standard, and sternly point to several passages that are not so bad as they should be. Glimmerings of almost human intelligence, gleams of more than merely bestial reason, spasms of something almost resembling speech, relieve the monotony of the Imperial poems of Alfred Austin or the pagan passions of the more fearless, not to say shameless, imitators of Swinburne. Every now and then, after wading through a hubbub of hundreds of words, we find a word that seems to have gone right by accident. We must not complain; nothing in this mortal life is perfect; not even bad poetry.
Of course, there is one real difficulty in the classification of such classics. They necessarily divide themselves into at least two distinct types, which have really a rather different status and value. They raise two questions, which are hardly of equal intellectual importance. The first is: “Why do people who are not poets try to write poetry?” The second is: “Why do people who are poets fail to write poetry?” It is the second question which is the more difficult to answer and therefore the more worth answering. The first class consists of any number of accidents of ignorance and inexperience and vanity and egotistical self-deception; but beyond that there is nothing very extraordinary about it. A mysterious proverb declares that little birds who can sing and won’t sing must be made to sing; though I never could imagine how. But evidently nobody ever had the courage to suggest what should be done with little birds who can’t sing and do sing. There seems no suggestion possible, except that they should be shot; against which, in the name of St. Francis, the patron of all birds, poets, and other minor nuisances, I warmly protest. Of this sort of merely provincial limitation, the poetry of the Village Bard who looks dreadfully like the Village Idiot, the sort of thing that Oliver Wendell Holmes playfully satirized in the character of Gifted Hopkins, there is, of course, a great deal in such an anthology as this. There is a lot of it in the book; but there is also such a lot of it in the world that the examples must almost necessarily be accidents. Each one of us has probably found his own favourite piece of folly, in an advertisement or an epitaph or a corner of a newspaper; and the thing has remained almost as private as a family joke. To keep a record of all these individual discoveries would need not an anthology but a library of lunacy; a Bodleian of Bad Verse.
I cannot resist the temptation of telling Mr. D. B. Wyndham Lewis, and all other true lovers of bad poetry, of one poet to whom I know they would not refuse the laurel. He was so famous a person as the Rev. Patrick Brontë, the father of the great Brontë sisters; and his verses are actually printed along with theirs at the end of one edition of their works. He has often been called harsh and inhuman; but he deserves a place in literature since he invented a metre that is an instrument of torture. It consists of a rhyming verse finally ending on a word which ought to rhyme and does not. He is describing, if I remember right, the ideal virtues of the Village Maiden, and one verse runs—
To novels and plays not inclined Nor aught that can sully her mind; Temptations may shower, Unmoved as a tower She quenches the fiery arrows.
It is long since I have sat at the feet of this minstrel; and I quote from memory; but I think another verse of the same poem thus illustrated the same paraprosdokian, or concluding jerk of disappointment—
Religion makes beauty enchanting; And even where beauty is wanting, The temper and mind Religion-refined Will shine through the veil with sweet lustre.
If you read much of it, you will reach a state of mind in which, even though you know the jolt is coming, you can hardly forbear to scream. We have read much of the gloomy life of the Brontë sisters in their dark and narrow house, on their sombre and savage moor-lands. We have heard a great deal of how their souls were attuned to the storm, whether of wild winds or of stern words. But I can imagine no storm so paralysing as the noise of a reverend gentleman reading that poem; no torture so savage as the ruthless repetition of that metre; no inhuman cry so awful or so freezing to the blood, even out of the very heart of the hell of Wuthering Heights. In spite of all the educationists, it is a kindness to children to teach them nursery rhymes. But a man ought to be imprisoned for Cruelty to Children, if he recited to them rhymes that do not rhyme.
But the problem is much more interesting if we leave the bad poetry written by bad poets, and come to the bad poetry written by good poets. It is an old story; it was Horace, I think, who said that Homer sometimes nods; and Horace, though a wide-awake sort of person, sometimes indulged in a wink. The Swan of Avon, the Nightingale of Burford, the Skylark for whom we can name no habitation but the sky, all these famous birds occasionally threatened to stiffen into the Stuffed Owl. Even Milton, who lived for the grand style, had lapses of good taste; at least, I, for one, never liked Satan inventing gunpowder or spreading an extra special champagne supper, in the style of the Ritz-Carlton, to stay the hunger of the human Christ for bread. It is, therefore, no disrespect to great poets to make them figure in this book of bad poetry; for there is hardly a single good poet who has not at some time been a bad poet. I am not sure of the meaning of this, but I am fairly sure, for practical purposes, of the moral of it. First of all, it is wholesome to note that the poet generally came a cropper when he was moving most smoothly on the butter-slide of praise and progress and the prevailing fashion. It is when the classical poet is most classical that he strikes us as pompous and vapid. It is when the romantic poet is most romantic that he strikes us as sloppy and sentimental. And it will be when the modern poet is most modern, when he is most arrestingly in the modern style, that he will strike posterity as merely dowdy and dull. The only two really bad lines in Swinburne are the most Swinburnian; that couplet about lilies and languors and raptures and roses. By being in a sense perfect Swinburnian, it shows up Swinburne as imperfect. And the other moral is that poets are men; and that men can no longer be worshipped as gods. Carlyle did his worst work when he resurrected the pagan term of Hero-Worship. The Pagans, indeed, put up a statue to Achilles; but they did not whitewash the statue. They had an objective way with them, which needed no moral self-deception. But Carlyle could not be a Pagan; he could only be a bad Christian; or, as some say, a Puritan. And he did whitewash Cromwell and Frederick, as nobody whitewashed Achilles. Shakspere and Shelley were better than Cromwell and Frederick; but they also were men and not statues. Even their bad poetry may be productive of good philosophy.
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XIII
On Negative Morality
IT was said of Miss Arabella Allen, that pioneer of Feminism, that she didn’t know what she did like, but did know what she didn’t like. Many very recent pioneers resemble her, which is odd. A little while ago, all liberal and cultured persons were expected to agree that negative morality was nothing as compared with positive morality. Enlightened clergymen took a pride in removing the Ten Commandments from their altars and their sermons, and substituting those two great mystical commands concerning the positive duties of the love of God and Man. Famous and fashionable writers, like Stevenson, spoke for their generation in saying: “Christ would not hear of negative morality; ‘Thou shalt’ was ever his word.” Some enthusiasts carried the distinction to rather fantastic lengths, elaborately framing sentences from which negatives were excluded. When Tommy twisted the cat’s tail, they twisted the English tongue to invent a dissuasion that should not be in the form of a negative. Instead of saying, “Do not twist the cat’s tail,” they said, “Do, do show a positive benevolence to animals,” or words to that effect. Rushing into the nursery, just in time to prevent the new toy chisel from the little tool-card being driven into the little sister’s eye, they yet had time hastily to rearrange their words and sentences, to avoid saying, “Don’t do that,” and say instead, “Occupy yourself in some other fashion,” or “Employ your tools in the delightful craft of carpentry.”
But, though the theory had its extremists, like other theories, it was no doubt a healthy reaction at the time it occurred. It was a reaction from Puritanism, and especially from dead Puritanism, which had dried up into a few negative commands and nothing else. Even when it was at its best, I confess I had some doubts about it. Indeed, I sometimes feared that it might mask the return of a positive Puritanism more terrible than negative Puritanism. At least if the authority only said, “Do not burn down the house,” we may lawfully infer that we are allowed to do anything else with it; as, for instance, to paint it sky-blue with yellow stripes; or turn it into a public house or a castle defended by cannon. If no other veto is laid upon us except “Do not wake the baby,” it follows that any silent and stealthy occupation, such as directing a smooth and soundless flow of treacle into the works of the piano, or cutting off all the hair of all the little girls next door and turning it into artificial beards for private theatricals— it follows, I say, that all these mute but active forms of energy were tacitly permitted.
I am not sure that the very fact that negative morality has a narrower scope does not sometimes mean that it leaves a wider liberty. If there are only Ten Commandments, it means that there are only ten things forbidden; and that means that there are ten million things that are not forbidden. Let us do justice to our ancestors, if they found it easier and shorter to describe what they forbade than what they permitted. Nevertheless, with all these correctives and criticisms, the idea was fundamentally sound; it was, as I have said, the very right instinct that a religion is dead when it has ceased to dwell on the positive and happy side of its visions, and thinks only of the stern or punitive side. Anyhow, right or wrong, it was prevalent through the whole of what may be called the progressive period. It was almost the mark of an emancipated and hopeful person that he insisted that we must think first of positive good, rather than of negative evil.
And that is what makes the present position so very queer. In the very latest phase of literature, especially in the literature of satire or social criticism, we find exactly the contrary. We find the most modern writers have lost exactly what progress promised to give them, and have kept exactly what progress threatened to destroy. What I mean, for instance, is something roughly like this. Charles Dickens was not a philosopher; he most certainly was not a theologian, not even a moral theologian; only, it may be said, in a casual and popular sense a moralist. But suppose we took in detail all the destructive fun and farce of Dickens, all his devastating portraits of oily philanthropists and bumptious social bullies; all the prigs and privileged bigwigs and blustering obstructive officials whom he pilloried in a hundred places. Suppose in any such time and place we had stopped him and said, “But what do you want? What is your ideal? What would you substitute for all this? Under whom would you put Oliver Twist, if not under Bumble? Where would you send Smike except to Squeers? What ought Mrs. Jellyby to consider, if not Africa? To whom ought Mrs. Welter to listen, if not to Mr. Stiggins? What politics are right, if Dedlock’s are wrong? What morals are right, if Gradgrind’s are wrong?” I think it practically certain that Dickens would answer, and even answer promptly. Some of his remarks would strike some of his hearers as having the limits or illusions of his time; as, for instance, he might believe more in the Radical reforms and education which were then beginning than some of us do who have seen them in their ending. Other remarks might shock other hearers, by their still more shocking and disgusting devotion to barbarous idolatries and superstitions; as, for instance, to the idea of the Family or even the institution of Marriage. For I fear it is only too probable that Dickens would advance the grotesque plea that Mrs. Jellyby ought to think about Mr. Jellyby, and that even Mrs. Weller might occasionally listen to Mr. Weller. But whether his replies were revoltingly reactionary in this way, or merely a little too contented with the jog-trot reforms of his own day, I say that Dickens would reply, and would find no difficulty in replying.
Now, if we take a satirist of the modern moment, even a man of genius or genuine intellectual activity, like Mr. Aldous Huxley or Mr. Percy Wyndham Lewis, I am not so certain that they could reply. Some of them see with extraordinary vividness the humbug or imprudence or intellectual cruelty of this or that social type, in this or that social situation. But suppose we answered them by saying, “This moralist is a humbug, but what morality should a man preach, in order not to be a humbug? This positive claim is impudent, but can you be positive without being impudent? Many situations are cruel to many people; state briefly how you would be kind to these people.” I have a very strong suspicion that our modern moral satirists would be entirely stumped. Things are very complex, and everybody is doing the wrong thing; but I suspect they really think that things are too complex for anybody to do the right thing. Therefore there is a hollow in the heart of their whirlwind of destructive criticism, as there is a hollow in the heart of the whirlpool. I do not mean it metaphorically, as suggesting that they are hollow in the sense of false. I mean it almost actually; that they are hollow and know they are hollow, and even admit they are hollow, as a hungry man would admit he was hollow. They have not enough solid sustenance; not enough food for the mind, as distinct from acrobatic exercise for the mind. I do not, as some do, denounce all these modern moralists as immoral. I only say that the most modern moralists are now at one with the most antiquated moralists. Like their Puritan great-grandfathers, they have nothing but negative morality.
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XIV
On Jonathan Swift
THE greatness of the great Jonathan Swift grows upon me as I go on through life, like a man travelling nearer and nearer to a mountain. I did not understand him when I was very young; which is not to be wondered at, seeing that most people understood him so little as to give me his Gulliver’s Travels as a book written for children. Also he was hidden from me by the rather hypocritical haze of literary sentiment which pervaded the Victorian time. It was, in this case, very largely a stale political prejudice, due to the fact that Swift had been a Tory and that the whole Victorian legend was a sort of triumph of the Whigs. I began to learn better the more I learned about his period, and to learn better still, the more I learned about my own. For Swift stood at the beginning of something of which (it may be) we stand at the end; the whole of that cycle of commercial Imperialism and commercial Parliamentarianism which he already distrusted at its very beginning, or before it had really begun. Anyhow, I learned to like Swift for all the things for which Macaulay and Thackeray disliked him. I liked him for liking Bolingbroke; for despising Marlborough; for showing up the Glorious Hanoverian Succession in Ireland as a very low and dirty job; for treating the wit of the Freethinkers with contempt; for giving the first place to the virtue of Honour, which practically disappeared from politics and financial affairs about this time. It is doubtless true that he was too bitter and exclusive, but that is no reason why we should be. And the final phase of true philanthropy is not complete until it can love the misanthrope.
But I have often noticed a rather curious fact or fancy. Whenever there is a sort of proverb or anecdote or allusion, always connected with a literary man in literary gossip, that proverb always misses the point. So many people could hardly mention Dr. Johnson without the highly irrelevant remark that he wrote a Dictionary. So the favourite or fashionable phrase about Dean Swift seemed to be that he “wrote an essay on a Broomstick.” Indeed, the literary gossip managed to miss the point even here. The real point of the essay on a Broomstick is not merely that it is on a Broomstick, but that it is an essay in parody or satire upon the essays of Boyle, the most fashionable writer of the day. As for broomsticks, I imagine that Swift could have written a hundred essays on a hundred broomsticks. Nor do I see any particular reason why it should be difficult; many people could do it; I could do it myself. For, to begin with, almost any subject, considered as a subject, contains stuff and substance enough for an essay, when we consider that its origin and object, and material and design, and relation to other things, are all subjects in themselves. And secondly, a broomstick does not strike me as being intrinsically a dull subject, but rather a romantic one. The picturesque aspects of it, that leap into sight at once, so to speak, would suffice for an essay much longer than Swift’s. A broom, and consequently, a broomstick, are connected with religious ideas of purification, and with other ideas which are rather the reverse. George Herbert dedicated the broom especially to the service of God. The witches dedicated the broomstick especially to the service of Satan. And if the essayist is so fastidious as to find the subject of devil-worship merely mild and tame, we might well ask what subjects he finds sensational or exciting. There are a hundred other things to be said, of course, even without plagiarizing from Swift. The image applied to politics, in some places, might even be alarmingly significant. The broomstick is a bundle of twigs decidedly suggestive of the Fasces, and quite a number of things might be written about that.
But this rather misleading though traditional trifle has another interest for the imagination. Swift, as I have said, was a man who could write what nobody else could have written, and often at a time when nobody else would have dared to write it. He could write the truth about a time in which perhaps more lies were told, and about which perhaps more lies have since been taught, than any other episode in English history. He could say the right thing, and say it exactly rightly; with a deadly detachment or a stunning understatement unmatched in the satires of mankind. But Swift was not a man gifted with the particular grace with which this literary legend would distinguish him. He was not a man who specially saw a spiritual significance in common things, or learned great lessons from small objects, or had anything about him of the poet who finds poetry in prose. He was a religious man in an irreligious age; but only because he was really too intellectual a man to be merely an irreligious man. He had nothing about him of the mystic, who sees divine symbols everywhere, who turns a stone and starts a wing. There were only too many stones, and not half enough wings, in poor Jonathan Swift’s existence, and I fear he was largely saved from scepticism by a contempt for the sceptics. He did not see the glory of God in a broomstick; but he did see something very like a broomstick in the stuck-up wooden-headed young atheist who denied the glory of God. He did see that the ideas in the head of that philosophical broomstick were all tied together as loosely as a bundle of sticks, and that these borrowed notions bore the same relation to real sincerity and originality as the twigs tied on to a broomstick bear to the branches growing on a tree. In short, his approach to such central truths was noble indeed, but somewhat narrow and negative; he was wise by the follies of others; or at any rate, not merely out of the wisdom that is at one with charity. And because he was partly deficient in charity he was really deficient in poetry, though certainly not deficient in fancy. He was the last person in the world to write a poem about a broomstick; yet a hundred minor poets, so long as they were poets, could easily imagine a poem about a broomstick. Why, even the Nursery Rhymes have already set us a most spirited example, in that imaginative flight that swept the starry spiders’ webs out of the very corners of the sky.
It is perhaps worth while to note this incongruity about the literary legend, because it will soon be necessary to insist that each of these talents exists and each is valuable to truth. In the somewhat acid mood that is coming upon men of letters just now, it is likely enough that they will return to the realism of the great satirist, and accept his limitations along with his liberties. They will begin to be just to Swift, and immediately begin to be unjust to Blake or Wordsworth or Walt Whitman. For they seem unable to believe that different literary virtues are needed to balance each other; and a great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying: “Of course I do not like green cheese; I am very fond of brown sherry.”
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XV
On the Creative and the Critical
I HAVE already remarked on the American cult called Humanism. It is the creation of certain critics who, broadly speaking, would substitute a certain classicism, such as is found in the ancients, for both the romanticism and realism of the moderns. There are those, of course, who call classicism cold, especially those who like their own realism or romanticism hot and strong. As a matter of fact, classicism is by no means the vital thing in Humanism. It is especially not the human thing in Humanism. I am by no means sure that I should myself agree with the Humanist leaders in everything. But I do most heartily agree with them in one thing, and it seems to me very much the most important thing. It is substantially this. The Humanist says to the Humanitarian, “You are always telling me to forget divine things and think of human things. And then you talk to me eagerly and earnestly about the pathetic helplessness of human beings, their faulty environment, their fatal heredity, their obvious animal origins, their uncontrollable animal instincts, ending with the old fatalist cry that we must forgive everything because there is nothing to forgive. But these things are not the human things. These are specially and specifically the sub-human things; the things we share with nature and the animals. The specially and outstandingly human things are exactly the things that you dismiss as merely divine things. The human things are free will and responsibility and authority and self-denial, because they exist only in humanity.”
Upon this pivotal point I am entirely at one with Humanism, but I do not propose to discuss that particular point here. I only wish to record an impression about some of the more violent opponents of Humanism, and especially upon one phrase which abounds in their phraseology and presumably means something in their philosophy. Many who can look back on long and happy lives passed in the character of Young Rebels are very much annoyed at the appearance of this antiquated classicism, especially when it appears (as it generally does) in people rather younger than themselves. And I notice that the slogan to be used against the Humanist is to consist in saying that they are merely Critical, whereas all the people who happen to dislike them are Creative. And, though I have no intention of getting into a quarrel about the word Humanism, I do feel somewhat attracted to an attempt to consider what we mean, and especially what they mean, by the words Creative and Critical.
I take it that the disparagement of the Critical, as compared with the Creative, does not mean that nobody must be allowed to write unless he writes novels; that it is a sufficient condemnation to say that Professor Paul Elmer More has not yet written a murder story, or Professor Babbitt knocked the town endways with a roaring farce. The Humanists are human beings; that, at least, may be tentatively conceded to them; and human beings are allowed to think, even while they do not carve, paint, build, or play the fiddle. But when we consider Creation with a significance a little deeper, we find it a little more difficult. It is much too difficult to dogmatize about; nor am I dogmatizing: I am only asking questions, like Socrates, of people whom I suspect of not knowing what their own dogmas are. What exactly do these exquisitely modern moderns mean when they say that their modern literature is Creative? I strongly suspect that, even when it is clever, it is emphatically not Creative. It is exactly what it accuses its enemies of being: it is Critical. For instance, I have a hearty admiration for the amazing vitality and veracity of much of the work of Mr. Aldous Huxley. I think he is the most brilliant of the moderns; and he is admittedly one of the most modern of the moderns. But his work, considered as an intellectual process, seems to me almost entirely Critical.
Of course, it is not easy to point to anything that is entirely Creative. In ultimate philosophy, as in ultimate theology, men are not capable of creation, but only of combination. But there is a workable meaning of the word, which I take to be this: some image evoked by the individual imagination which might never have been evoked by any other imagination, and adds something to the imagery of the world. I call it Creative to write “the multitudinous seas incarnadine.” I call it Creative by three real and even practical tests: first, that nobody need ever have thought of such a thing if Mr. William Shakspere had not happened to think of it; second, that while it is an apocalyptic, or titanic, it is not really an anarchic idea; it is gigantic, but it does not merely sprawl; it fits into the frame of thought exactly as the sea fits into all the fretted bays and creeks of the world. Also, in passing, with all its tragic occasion, it is a jolly image: it gives the mere imagination a positive and passionate joy of colour, like the joy of drinking a purple sea of wine. But, thirdly and most essentially, it does reveal the moral mystery that is the whole meaning of such a tragedy; expressed by the knocking without which startles the assassins within; the notion of the thin partition between the crime that is hidden in the house and the sin that fills the universe; what was meant by saying that things said in the inner chamber should be proclaimed from the housetops; the true idea of the Day of Judgment, in which the world is, really and truly, turned inside out. It may also be added that that astonishing phrase is not only a speech, but a gesture. It is dramatic, in the vital sense, to suppose that dipping a finger could suddenly turn all the seas of the world to scarlet. But this very drama is a morality, and it would mean nothing that the seas were scarlet unless the sins were scarlet. … But what is all this? This is not Modern. This is not Scientific. This is not in the purely experimental and realistic manner in which the Young Rebels have been writing for the last thirty or forty years. They all say they are Creative, and they ought to know. And, according to their theory of purely Creative art, there ought to be an entirely detached and unmoral attitude on the part of everybody involved. It ought not to matter whether the spot on Lady Macbeth’s finger was blood or red ink; or whether she turned the multitudinous seas the colour of carnage or tomato soup. It is evidently a very soothing and insulated condition of intellect, and avoids all the disturbing currents of ethical and theological criticism. There is nothing to be said against it; except that, if everybody were in that scientific state of mind, nobody could write Macbeth.
And there, as it seems to me, the whole theory of uncritical and uncriticized creative art breaks down. As a mere matter of fact, you cannot make any sense of Macbeth unless you not only recognize but share a decided horror of murder. And how you can be shocked by Murder and not moved by Morality I do not know. And if being Critical means the tracing of these electric wires or burglar-alarms, these live wires of the laws of life which do, in fact, give shocks when they are touched or transgressed, then it is not merely the classical critics who are critical. It is Shakspere who is critical; nay, it is Lady Macbeth who is critical; she is extremely critical of Lady Macbeth. If the recognition of the real Ten Commandments of life and death is only being critical, then all the great creative artists are critical; and they would not be creative if they were not critical. Lady Macbeth would never see that blasting vision of a bloodshot world, except in the last agony of self-criticism.
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XVI
On a New Tax
IN these times when everybody is talking about taxation, many must have indulged in the dream that there might be a tax on talking. I hasten (nay, rush in a rage of self-immolation) to add that the same may be said of a tax on writing. We have endeavoured to preserve the old liberal ideal of free speech and free printing, at least in its legal form, if sometimes as a legal fiction. I fear that the truth is not so much that repression is entirely removed, as that repression is not responsible repression. Like so many other things, it has begun to act outside the limits of law, and tyranny as well as liberty has broken loose. Repression is irresponsible, and therefore repression itself is irrepressible. Private powers acting as public powers, monopolies, boycotts, big shops, publishing syndicates, and similar things do, in fact, inflict restriction which we should not allow the State or the Church to inflict. But even the most earnest eleutheromaniac may allow himself a day-dream of abstract possibilities. And, if we agree that the State must not attack expression with the old weapon of punishment, we might toy with the fancy of attacking it with the new method of monetary rating. Nobody now wishes men to be tortured for talking nonsense, but they might be taxed for talking nonsense. Indeed, in these days, when so many schools give Lessons in Citizenship, most people seem to be so vague about such things that they would hardly know the difference. A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.
Of course, there is a sort of paradox in taxation, anyhow. In such a tax, there is often the notion of checking something, and yet the hope that it will not be checked. A lover of birds might wish to have a tax on cats, with the idea that there would be fewer cats. But the statesman imposing the tax would presumably hope that the streets would be thronged with thousands and thousands of cats, each bringing its little subscription to the embarrassed Exchequer. Now, it seems illogical to wish to moderate the influx of cats and not to wish to moderate the influence of tigers. Yet it is very unlikely that the State will ever put a tax on tigers; because, alas! these beautiful creatures are rare in our English lanes and still rarer by our English firesides. Any lover of nature who has seen the first tiger appearing somewhat prematurely in early spring will almost certainly (if he survives) write a letter to the newspapers about it, as an event even more exceptional than the cuckoo. There is not enough money in tigers to make it worth while to tax them; so that in cases of that sort we cannot act upon the principle of the check or public protection alone.
But, for the sake of argument, we will leave out in this light speculation all the purely economic considerations arising from the width of the taxable area. It would obviously be impossible, as well as iniquitous, to tax the sort of remarks that are made as a part of the ordinary round of social life. To impose even a light tax on every repetition of the expression “It’s a fine day,” or “It’s a strange world,” or “Nothing doing in the City,” or “Pint of bitter, Miss,” or any of those great pivotal utterances on which all human life revolves, would be outside the sphere of practical politics. The sort of talk to be taxed must be something sufficiently wide-spread to be worth taxing, but something sufficiently superfluous to suffer even a prohibitive tax without the world being much the worse.
In fact, the tax on talk may well follow the rough distinction already recognized about necessities and luxuries. The pint of bitter, the word about the weather, are necessities. For the poor, beer is a necessity, as tobacco is very nearly a necessity; it is only for people sufficiently rich and fashionable to be faddists that either is really a luxury. In the same way, a certain sort of primeval and eternal gossip is a necessity. But there are all sorts of things that are not necessities. The mention of mere names seen in the newspapers; the oppressive presence of science, combined with the absence of knowledge; the habit we all have of talking about what we do not understand; all these might be smartly interrupted by the tax-collector coming round as the tram conductor comes round for fares.
For instance, suppose everybody was instantly fined a small sum for mentioning the name of Einstein. The money would be refunded if he could afterwards demonstrate, to a committee of mathematicians and astronomers, that he knew anything about Einstein. What a salutary check it would be on the public speaker, criticizing the Budget or the latest economic panacea, who would be just in the very act of saying: “Makes the brain reel. Reminds one of—” and would sharply catch himself up, with a holy fear of losing half a crown, and hastily substitute Alice in Wonderland. On the other hand, it would be equally valuable in arresting the headlong pen of the journalist announcing Brighter Brotherhood or reverently praising The Revolt of Youth: “The new year opens before us new faiths, new ideals, and the young will no longer be content with the dead shibboleths of creed and dogma. New light has been thrown on all the daily problems of life by the great scientific genius of our time; the name of—”: and then he will stop suddenly and be most horribly stumped, for Einstein is the only man of science he has heard of, and Einstein costs two-and-six.
It is a luxury, in the strict sense of a superfluity, to mention Einstein. He is not a part of any ordinary human argument, because any ordinary human being does not know where his argument leads or what it can really be used to prove. It may be, for all I know, a perfectly good argument for those who really follow it; but those who drag in the name without the argument cannot know what an argument means. We should not be interfering with the freedom of debate by eliminating it, for the men who only deal in such unknown quantities are not debating. They are simply showing off. The distinguished name is stuck into the sentence as the diamond tie-pin is stuck into the tie, for the sake of swagger or snobbishness. And diamond tie-pins are quite legitimate objects for a tax on luxuries. Of course, the argument does not only apply to science; there are any number of cases of the same sort of pedantry in literature. There are certain quotations from poetry which are always dragged in as if they were texts of Scripture, professedly to prove something that obviously proves itself, but really to prove that the writer is well acquainted with the Hundred Best Authors.
The tax would have a refreshing and reviving effect upon literature, because it would drive writers to think of a few new examples. The man who writes to show that Science was always persecuted in the past will be driven to the dreadful necessity of writing about somebody else besides Galileo. And who knows what a new life of brighter and brisker research into the elements of history the change may not mean for him! The man who is writing to show that poets always die young, or are killed by the critics, if he is absolutely forbidden (at the rate of five shillings) to say that the Quarterly was tartarly and ask, “What are Keats?” might discover all sorts of neglected poets; or, better still, discover that there were some poets who were not neglected. Those who can never separate Spain from the Spanish Inquisition, or America from the similar institution of Prohibition, or Russia from the German Jew called Karl Marx, might, at the price of a temporary tax on these topics, find out a good many other truths about these nations. They might find, for example, what Spain did in America; what America is doing in Russia; and whether all Russian peasants have really turned into German Jews.
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XVII
On Sense and Sound
ON re-reading something I wrote about the most modern poetry, especially touching the ancient riddle of Sense and Sound, I am not sure that I made myself clear. And, as I am not now writing the most modern poetry, I may be allowed to be clear. Clarity will be permissible, or at least pardonable. By the way (if I may mention it in parenthesis) does anybody know why it is now the fashion to be very extravagant in poetry and very sober in prose? There are individuals, of course, like Mr. James Joyce or Miss Gertrude Stein, whose prose may be said to be of doubtful sobriety. But some of the ablest of the rising, or recently risen, authors seem to have something like a dual personality in prose and verse. The prose-writing of Mr. Osbert Sitwell is not especially Sitwellian, as the term is applied to his poetry. It is well written, but rather on the old principle that a book well written should be as unobtrusive as a man well dressed. It is in the Sitwellian poesy that the average reader is apt to be startled by strange sights; by woolly roses or hairy clouds. Mr. T. S. Eliot’s wildest verses do, indeed, have rhythm, too much rhythm; really (as the phrase goes) making the head go round, and suggesting a cosy life in the hollow heart of a cyclone or a whirlpool. But there is nothing of this in his essays; which are rather contained and reticent than otherwise. Indeed, when he does make an epigram (and a very good one) he is so ashamed of it that he hides it at the end of a minute footnote, for fear some critic or other should accuse him of brilliancy.
The same is largely true even of Mr. Aldous Huxley, so far as essay-writing is concerned. His diaries of real travel are quite sensible and unpretentious; while some of his poems are like imaginary travels in the Tropics, almost negro in their barbaric dance of death. The Victorians, who are accused of primness, had much more all-round extravagance. George Meredith was as perverse and fanciful in prose as in verse; indeed, more so. Diana of the Crossways seemed to sit not so much at the cross-roads as in the heart of the labyrinth; and the Egoist juggled much more deceptively than Juggling Jerry. Some of Browning’s friends complained that he was cryptic, not only in prose but in private correspondence. I am not complaining of this new method of making extremes meet. There may be a great deal to be said for it; but perhaps it means some decay of the Victorian naturalness, which was much more typical than the Victorian decorum. There is something to be said for Browning and Meredith, if only that they could not help writing like Meredith and Browning.
But this (as I say) is all in brackets. The matter I meant to raise concerns sense and sound in poetry. And their relation is much more subtle than even the most insanely subtle of the critics seem to understand. I took the familiar example of a famous line in Milton, which has always had that inexplicable fascination so often found in the purely classical style. Oddly enough, it is in the rational lines of Virgil or Milton, much more than in the extra-rational lines either of the Merediths or the Sitwells, that we feel the final mystery of song; the something that instantly gives delight and escapes from definition; the thing of which we say: “I cannot tell, for the life of me, why that is so good as it is.” I cannot tell, for the life of me, why the line “Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved” is as good as it is. Yet it is perfectly straightforward; it merely mentions a cape and a mountain, and adds the somewhat superfluous information that they are not removed. The only thing I am quite sure about is that the sense depends on the sound and the sound depends on the sense. It actually would not sound the same, if another meaning were expressed by the same sound. It actually would not mean as much, if other words expressed the same meaning. It would be easy enough to try the experiment in a rough and ready way. It is obvious that, if we wrote “Like Beachy Head or Snowdon unremoved,” it would not be within a thousand miles of the thing; though Beachy Head is a cape and Snowdon is a mountain. What is not quite so obvious is that the converse is also true. It might be too lightly inferred that the mere noise of the names is alone majestic. It might be even suggested that the down-rushing dactyl of “Teneriffe” has some faint echo of words like “terrible” or “towering,” and that the sound is the secret. But it is not so, though the alternative experiment might be a little more elaborate to construct. Let us have a stab at it, as Mr. P. G. Wodehouse’s young man said when asked if he would be a reasonable being.
Thackeray mentions somewhere, in one of his essays, that in some old cookery-book or book of etiquette he had come on the fact that men in the eighteenth century drank a wine called Teneriffe, apparently an alternative to port or Madeira. Thackeray says, I think, that it sounds like having to swallow the Matterhorn. But if it were something quite familiar, like port wine, it would sound like any other detail of the dinner-table. As for the word “Atlas,” we have only to knock out the capital letter, and it means a commonplace work of reference, an ordinary book of maps. Now, suppose somebody were writing a very mild and jog-trot domestic poem in decasyllabics, rather like those poems in which Cowper celebrated the tea-urn or the cat. And suppose the particular passage explained how somebody’s after-dinner table was left in a litter by negligent servants; books and wine and everything in a hugger-mugger—
His pipe and napkin, like his spectacles, Like snuff and toast and pen and ink or books, Like teneriffe or atlas, unremoved.
It would not make the same noise. It actually would not sound in the ear, as a matter of mere acoustics, the same. The fact of talking only about two trivial objects would, in fact, alter the actual impact of the sound upon the ear and the nerves. Nobody would be looking for a great sonorous effect, and nobody would find it. The fact that the two objects are mountains, mysterious and remote and legendary mountains, does enter irrevocably into the merely physical process; and it is the largeness of those mountains that fills the lungs and the ear.
This being so, I think there are much deeper difficulties than are now generally understood about breaking with the traditions of rhythm. I do not say it should not be done, but I do say that it is doubtful whether those who do it know what they are doing. If my own original use of this quotation was obscure, I am well aware that the whole problem is one of the deepest obscurity. But this is more or less what I meant; that I do not think we have got to anything like the bottom of the psychology— we might even say the physiology—of poetical effects; and that the old conventions of verse rested upon instincts which are perhaps indestructible, but which at least cannot be casually destroyed. It would seem that one growth can grow into another, even if they did originally have separate roots, in such a fashion as to form a single life and a new creation; and that new creation is none the less unique because it is now old. It is really beside the mark to talk about experiments which are only explosions; for, though explosions ought to be expansions, it is certain at least that they are disruptions. I do not object to experiments as such. I willingly agree that Mr. Sitwell has as much right to talk about a hairy cloud as an old poet to talk about a fleecy cloud; as much right to do what he can with the hair of a cloud as the other with the hair of a comet. But something much deeper and more mysterious is involved. The old poets had a power of mixing with their fleecy clouds and hairy comets some ancestral magic of the nature of music; by which even the quaintest of Cavalier conceits, or the most newly coined of Renaissance Latinisms, came weighted with harmonies and a historic richness that prevented them from being crude, even when they were new. It seems to me that the new poets do not try to recover that ancient wedding of sound and sense. Some of them seem to have only passed from the old Swinburnian phase of sound without sense to the later phase of nonsense without sound. But even the best of them seem to be seeking a divorce rather than a wedding.
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XVIII
On Literary Cliques
MANY are complaining of the cliques in the literary world; and they are right for a particular reason, though I am not sure that they know it. The discontent, like so many of the present discontents, has a certain disadvantage; that it does not distinguish between the normal nuisances of human life and the special nuisances of modern life. Under no conditions should we all be equally in touch with each other, or distributing dispassionate justice to every human being like a Day of Judgment. It is natural for men to belong to a club, as it is natural for other men who do not belong to a club to call it a clique; and a great deal of what is called log-rolling is as easy as falling off a log. I have generally found that it was precisely because a man was generously and enthusiastically rolling the log of a friend that he complained so bitterly of the log-rolling among his enemies. But I am not forbidden to find that a writer is intelligent, even if he is my friend. I am permitted, perhaps, the vanity of supposing that he is my friend because he is intelligent; or at least that he became my friend partly because I thought he was intelligent. The relation is obviously open to abuse; and the method which I myself have always chosen is to praise the merit of a friend’s public work as warmly as I felt inclined, but always to mention the private friendship as well as the public merit. Then anybody is free to discount it, if he thinks it ought to be discounted. But there is another and more neglected evil in the clique; in the club that cultivates some special variety in culture. The artists of such a group have a tendency not only to talk shop, but to talk workshop. They talk more about methods of production than about products of perfection. Like talkative art-students, they show each other their work before it is finished; and, like lazy art-students, they often find this an excellent excuse for not finishing it at all.
Perfect work is for the world; yes, for the stupid world. Imperfect work is for the class, for the club, for the clique; in a word, for the sympathizers. We show our worst efforts to the intelligent; we reserve our best efforts for the dull— that is, for the supreme and sacred duty of all creative expression; that of being sufficiently pointed to pierce at last even the mind of the dull. For, whatever be the nature of creation, it is certainly of the nature of translation; it is translating something from the dumb alphabet and dim infantile secret language in our own souls into the totally different public language that we talk with our tongues. If that translation were perfect if the ideas and idioms did really correspond correctly, it would all be as plain to the man in the street as to the man in the club. It certainly would not be necessary to show it in fragmentary hints to the man in the clique. But because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections. A man of our own type or tastes will understand our meaning before it is expressed; certainly a long time before it is perfectly expressed. Thus we rather tend to lose the old idea that it is the business of the author to explain himself. We tend to adopt the idea that it is the business of the clique to understand the author; and even to explain the author, when he refuses to explain himself.
A famous æsthete of the ‘nineties said that the poet who was admired by poets must be the greatest of poets. I will take the liberty to doubt it. I fancy that in such a case the poets are in fact collaborating with the poet. The beauty they behold in his work is partly their work as well as his. Just as the poets may see more than others see in every bush or cloud, so they may see more than others see in every epithet or metaphor. Above all, if they are poets of his own particular school of poetry, they will guess something of what he means by the queerest epithet or the maddest metaphor. But it does not follow that those words are the full and perfect expression of what he means; if they were, they probably would not seem mad or even queer. In short, the poet has not really travelled the whole of his pilgrimage from Paradise to Putney (with apologies to the ghost of Swinburne); an embassy of select and fastidious souls of Putney has gone out and met him halfway. He has not performed the full literary function of translating living thoughts into literature. He still needs an interpreter; and a crowd of interpreters has officiously rushed between the poet and the public. The crowd is the clique; and it does do a certain amount of harm, I think, by thus intercepting the true process of the perfecting of human expression. It is not wrong because it encourages the great man to talk. It is wrong because it actually discourages the great man from talking plainly. The priests and priestesses of the temple take a pride in the oracle remaining oracular. That vast but vague revolution that we call the modern world largely began about the time when men demanded that the Scriptures should be translated into English. It has ended in a time when nobody dares to demand that English poets should be translated into English. It has ended in a new race of pedants who are only too proud of reading the poet in the original, and merely murmur as they read, in a tantalizing fashion, that the original is so very original.
This is the paradox of the clique; that it consists of those who understand something and do not wish it to be understood; do not really wish it to be understandable. But such a group must in its nature be small, and its tendency is to make the range or realm of culture smaller. It consists of those who happen to be near enough to some unique or perverse mentality to guess that a man means something that as yet he cannot really say; just as a detective might be legitimately proud of having extracted some sort of valuable evidence from a lunatic who was deaf and dumb. But this does not make for the enlargement of the poet’s power of expression or of the public’s power of appreciation. The ideal condition is that the poet should put his meaning more and more into the language of the people, and that the people should enjoy more and more of the meaning of the poet. That is true popular education; and, if we really possessed that sort, we should hardly need any other. One party in the quarrel will insist that the public ought to take more trouble to understand the poet; and so it ought. But the other party can answer that the poet should take more trouble to finish his poems; and so he should. It is not a question of petty or conventional or finicking finish. It is a question of not leaving three-quarters of the poem inside the poet, with the rest of it hanging out, generally tail-foremost.
At present, even good poets often do not write good poems, but rather notes for poems. They think it enough to record, as in a sort of disjointed diary, that they did feel a sense of poignant futility on seeing an old hat on a deserted hat-peg; or an indescribable surge of rebellion on observing a broken vase in a suburban dust-bin. And then comes the sympathetic critic, saying (no doubt quite truly) that he can imagine a man shuddering at the hat-peg or shedding tears into the dust-bin. But that is only saying that one individual can imagine the imagination. It is not completely communicating the imagination by means of the image. I am far from denying that a great poet might achieve a great turn of style, which would make something sublime out of a hat-peg or a dust-bin, as Shakspere did out of a bodkin or a bung-hole. But if such passages be examined, it will be found that nowhere did the great poet study the grand style more subtly than when dealing with such mean objects. Anyhow, he did not merely mention the mean objects, and then mention that they had filled him with feelings indescribable. He set out seriously to describe the indescribable. That is the whole business of literature, and it is a hard row to hoe.
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XIX
On the Simplicity of Asia
I WAS recently asked to write a prologue to a composite detective story, which demanded a detailed and vivid description of the streets of Hong Kong. I have never seen Hong Kong, and I have not the least notion of what it looks like. But he would be a very faint-hearted journalist who should allow himself to be restrained from realism and photographic exactitude by a trifle like that. But, in the course of considering the matter, I fell into a more general train of thought, to which Hong Kong serves as a gate of entry, as it serves as a gate of entry to China. Though I have never seen the mixed cosmopolitan ports of the Far East, I have seen some of the yet more mixed and cosmopolitan ports of the Near East. I have been in Port Said and Suez; and between these and Hong Kong lies the whole vast and still partly unknown thing that we call Asia. But my meditations have overflowed upon this page, because they are obviously too vague and general to be developed before the innocent and happy spirits full of a beautiful eagerness to get on with the murder.
Whatever else the scribes have written about Asia, they have all agreed in the statement that it is mysterious. It may seem perverse to say that this statement is a mis-statement, or even that it is an over-statement. Yet I think there is an aspect in which it can be contradicted. We may even say that the whole point of Asia is that it is not mysterious; not half so mysterious as Europe; to say nothing of America, which is the most mysterious of all. By which I mean that there are in Europe and America compromises and complexities, a blend or balance of one thing with another, which is really rather less apparent in the stark passions, the strict rituals, and the ancient appetites of Asia. For instance, a Christian is perpetually balanced between a Christian ideal of loving his enemies, a Pagan ideal of punishing his enemies, and a chivalric ideal of only fighting his enemies fairly. In Asia, I imagine, both love and hate have been much more unmixed and undisguised. Both in poetry and in policy, a man would be much more simple in his purpose to pursue his love or to persecute his foe. And, while there is truth in the tradition that the Asiatic has thus sometimes become an artist in sensuality and an artist in cruelty, he might well make out a case for the view that he was an artist with less artifice and more sincerity. Somebody said, with considerable truth, that Russia lacks the cement of hypocrisy. This might well be quoted to support the not uncommon view that Russia is a part of Asia.
It might be said that Asia is too old to be mysterious. It might at least be said that Asia is too old to be hypocritical. There are a thousand veils and disguises; but the disguises have worn very thin in thousands of years, and the veils are rather like the veils worn by loose women in Cairo and Port Said: ritual, but transparent. Those who would give a juvenile thrill by combining the occult and the obscene do still talk about the Mysteries of the Harem; the secrets behind the veils and curtains of the seraglio. But I imagine there is very little mystery about the harem, at any rate the Moslem harem; and no secret except the open secret. I imagine that the sentiments of the seraglio, whether domestic or servile or sensual, are often dull to that extreme point of dullness which the revolutionary West describes as respectable. I suspect that there is far more mystery, in the sense of mysticism, in the feelings of two common lovers in an English lane. It is only fair to add that, with all the ceremonial of reticence or invisibility, there is probably much less cant than there is in many an English novel or newspaper. But, whether it be subtlety or sophistry, whether it be hypocrisy or only human complexity, it is really in the West and not in the East that there is the mystery. The Occidental is always saying that he cannot understand the Oriental; but the truth is that he cannot understand himself. It is the Christian culture that is woven of many strands, of many fabrics and colours, and twisted into the single knot, the knot that holds the world together, but the knot that is of all knots the most difficult to trace out or untie. Compared with that, there is something simple and smooth and all of a piece about the ancient silks of China or the peasant weaving of India. It is on the head of the Christian that the ends of the earth are come, even from the beginning, the arrows of the Persians or the stone clubs of the Celts. And if the eyelids are, after all, less weary than those of a Buddha or a Brahmin god, it may be that there is a slight fallacy in the familiar quotation, and that being hit on the head incessantly by the corners of the world does not merely send one to sleep. Anyhow, it is the Christian who is the real cosmic mystery; the cross made by the cross-lights of the shafts of the sunrise and the sunset; the true crux of the world. But it is only just to say that this complexity, which produces the highest philosophy, does also produce humbug. It produces the worst kind; in which the humbug hardly knows he is a humbug. I suspect that there is far less humbug in the East, and that, compared with such rooted and humanized humbug, all its cunning is a sort of simplicity.
In Asia things have worn too thin to be padded with such self-deception; it is old and its bones stick out. There the harlot is a harlot, and not a society actress whom the divorce court hands from one rich man to another. There the slave is a slave, and not a scheduled employee having less than the income nominated in the Act. There the king is a king, and the tyrant is a tyrant, and not a banker threatening to make nations bankrupt, or a private person holding all the shares in a public company. We have doubtless by our example introduced these blessings into Asia, but they are not Asiatic. There the usurer was a usurer, and the thief a thief; and this, which was the best thing about Asia, will probably be the one thing really altered by the influence of Europe. But it is worth while to say a word for the simplicity of Asia, and against the mystery of Asia. For on that supposed mystery of the East there has been erected every sort of quackery in the West. Every sham religion, every shabby perversion, every blackguard secret society, has claimed to feed on the strange fruits of that garden of Asia. And we may well hint that the garden itself is a little more decent, even if it is a desert.
There are any number of examples, both good and evil, of the sort of rigid simplicity that I mean, and the sense in which the Orient has more simplicity than secrecy. The Caste System of India, for instance, seems to me to be a tyranny; and the worst sort of tyranny, which is not conducted by a tyrant, but by an aristocracy: but it is not a hypocrisy. It is not even that more confused and unconscious sort of hypocrisy that we call humbug. It is not confused at all; its very cruelty is in its clarity. You cannot play about with the idea of a Brahmin as you can with the idea of a Gentleman. You cannot pretend that Pariahs were made Pariahs entirely as a compliment to them, and in the interests of True Democracy. At least, if the Indians are talking like that now, it is only too true that they have been infected with the worst vices of the West. I wish I were sure they were also being influenced by the real merits of the West; and, above all, by this great merit of the West, the name of which is Mystery. But it is they, the simple, who do not understand us, the mystical. A brilliant and distinguished Hindu told me that the problem of the world is to unite all things; that the things in which they differ are indifferent, and only that things in which they are the same are solid. I could not explain to him that the problem of the Christian is not merely to unite all things, but to unite union with disunion. The differences are not indifferent; and the problem is to let things differ while they agree. In short, the Western man seeks after Liberty, which is a real mystery. Compared with that Unity is a platitude. It is the White Man who is the Dark Horse; and ourselves who are riddles to ourselves.
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XX
On Fate and a Communist
IT often happens that by-products are bigger than big production, and that side-issues are larger than the main issue. Much of the political muddle and squabble comes from people trying to reach what they call a practical agreement. It is a very unpractical thing to trust to practical agreement. Two people may agree to keep a cat; but if they only agree because one is a lover of animals, and the other has a fiendish pleasure in watching cruelty to birds, it is probable that the practical agreement will not last very long. Other occasions will arise, in which it will be found to suffer from the absence of a theoretical agreement. There is at this moment many a parley between two politicians, seeking to find a practical agreement about a Tax on Tobacco or the dumping of Danish bacon, who are, in fact, forbidden for ever to come to any kind of real agreement, for the simple reason that they live in two different worlds; as, for instance, one in the globe that is picked out in red patches of the British Empire, and the other in the great grey orbis terrarum in which all lands are alike. These men would really have to settle the big question before they settled the small question. But, in what we call practical politics, it is the small question that is called the big question. And the big question would only be permitted as a small parenthesis in the middle of the small question.
I happened lately to have a small debate with a very distinguished modern writer, Mr. Middleton Murry, on a book that he has written about Communism. I only mention it here because I soon discovered that I was not arguing against Communism but against Fatalism. I will not discuss the social and economic thesis, because, in truth, Mr. Middleton Murry’s sort of Communism is rather a curious sort of Communism, which he alone would have the spirit and originality to explain. I do not agree with Communism; but I do not disagree with it because it would break up the existing system of commercialism. That, I think, is breaking itself up without any assistance from anybody. I disagree with Communism because I think it involves the sacrifice of Liberty. And the curious thing is that Mr. Middleton Murry does distinctly admit, in so many words, that it would involve the sacrifice of Liberty. So that he and I are so far in a state of blissful agreement; not practical agreement, but real or theoretical agreement. It is true that he adds to this a mystical paradox about losing freedom in order to be free, but he would have to explain that for himself. Where I found myself in much more fundamental disagreement with him was in this very ancient business about Fate; or, as he prefers to call it, Necessity. God forbid that we should go once more into the trampled labyrinth of Fate and Freewill. It is enough for me that the second is at least as fundamental an idea as the first; and really a more fundamental idea than the first. It is quite certain that I feel as if I could leave off writing this essay whenever I like. Nobody can prove that feeling to be an illusion, except by a universal scepticism which might equally hold fate to be an illusion, or even law to be an illusion. The Determinists of my youth used to boast that Science supported them, because some scientists talked about the Determinism of Matter. I do not know what they are saying now, when several scientists are actually talking about the Indeterminism of Matter. But, anyhow, the idea of choice is an absolute, and nobody can get behind it.
What interests me here especially is this. It seems that many, who do probably feel they have freedom of action in the present or in the future, are ready to talk in a fatalistic way about the past. Mr. Middleton Murry, though fatalistic in a general way, is especially fatalistic about the past. He repeats again and again that whatever did happen was “necessary.” He seems to think it proved its necessity merely by happening. Now, I do not feel this about the past, any more than about the future. I admit necessity, in the sense of logical necessity. I admit that if I am heavier than Mr. Middleton Murry, it is necessary that Mr. Middleton Murry is lighter than I am. I admit that if three feet make a yard, it is necessary that six feet make two yards. In that sense I must concede that if (physically) six Murrys make one Chesterton and even (spiritually) six Chestertons make one Murry, any further calculations about the multiplication of these persons must be founded on the principles of the multiplication table. But I do not feel in the least as if it had been inevitable that I should have turned from an art student to a journalist; or inevitable that Mr. Murry should have turned to Bolshevism; or inevitable that Bolshevism should have ever turned up at all. In every historical event I feel the thrill of uncertainty and the suspense of the human choice, and I cannot understand why my feeling is not as reasonable as his feeling; which seems also to be a feeling and no more.
For what I really complain of in this brilliant and ingenious writer is that, whenever he does try to give ultimate reasons for his fixed fatalism and materialism, and consequent denial of miracle, he lets me down. I well remember how I came down with a crash, in the middle of the most exalted speculations, when he actually said he could not believe in something as a man “of the twentieth century.” I know there are people who talk like that, but I had not classed him among them. I thought I was high up in the air arguing with Aristotle and Abelard, with Buddha and Spinoza, with Pythagoras or Confucius; and I came to earth with a bump, opposite a man who wanted to be known by a number. Can anybody imagine Spinoza presenting his cosmos as specially fitted to the eighteenth century? Would Abelard base his argument on the twelfth century, as the other on the twentieth century? Would even Confucius say that truth and wisdom must be reconciled with the requirements of his own particular date previous to the Han Dynasty? So far from saying this in disparagement of the writer’s work as a whole, I remark on it as an incongruous interruption in his work as a whole. It seems to me that a number of these twentieth-century writers rebel not too much, but not half enough, against the nineteenth-century conventions. One of the Victorian conventions was that all was for the best, or at any rate that all was as it had to be. The Victorians were all convinced that William the Conqueror was bound to conquer; that Wellington was bound to beat Napoleon; that Canada was bound to cleave to England; that America was bound to cut herself off from England. And it seems to me that the mechanical optimism of Marx, and the necessitarian notion of history in moderns like Mr. Murry, is but a continuation in that optimistic groove. To me all the past is alive with alternatives, and nobody can show, nobody has really attempted to show, that they were not real alternatives. I think it quite possible that if Harold’s northern campaign had been a week earlier, William the Norman’s southern campaign might have been launched too late; that if Napoleon had decided, after his hesitation, to throw in the Old Guard at Borodino, there would have been no Moscow and no Waterloo; that there was a time when a few wise words might have saved the American Colonies or a few foolish words lost Canada; and so on. In short, I believe that, again and again, man was at the cross-roads and might have taken another road. Nobody can prove or disprove it metaphysically; but I am the more content with a philosophy which permits of occasional miracles, because the alternative philosophy does not even permit of alternatives. It forbids a man even to dream of anything so natural as the Ifs of History.
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XXI
On St. George Revivified
THE disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living. Without some such contrast or comparison, without some such shifting of the point of view, we should see nothing whatever of our own social surroundings. We should take them for granted, as the only possible social surroundings. We should be as unconscious of them as we are, for the most part, of the hair growing on our heads or the air passing through our lungs. It is the variety of the human story that brings out sharply the last turn that the road has taken, and it is the view under the arch of the gateway which tells us that we are entering a town.
Yet this sense of the past is curiously patchy among the most intelligent and instructed people, especially in modern England. Among a hundred such scraps and snippets, I saw this morning a literary competition in an exceedingly highbrow weekly, a prize being awarded for a conversation between a modern interviewer and St. George. And I was struck by the fact that clever, and even brilliant, contributors missed much of the point, even about the modern interviewer, by missing the point about the ancient saint. I am not setting up as an authority on either. I am not pretending to be learned; nor is there here any question of learning. It is a question of quite superficial information, but of information that is fairly well spread over the whole surface. I have not been right slap-bang through The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire lately, any more than had Mr. Silas Wegg; I have not read every word of the Acta Sanctorum within the last week or so; I have not even read very closely the relatively modern romance of The Seven Champions of Christendom. I have nothing but general information; but it is fairly general. What surprises me in people younger, brighter, and more progressively educated than myself is that their general information is very patchy.
Now, it is unfair to say that they know nothing about St. George, because it may fairly be answered that there is nothing to be known about St. George. In one sense, nobody knows who St. George was; we only know who he was not. The only clear and solid fact about him is that he certainly was not what Gibbon said he was; the contractor of Cappadocia. He was merely recorded as a common soldier of the legions martyred with multitudes under Diocletian; nor is there any particular reason to doubt that he was. All the rest is legend, though legend is often very valuable to history. And I mean by general information the sense of the life in legends; how they grow; where they come from; why they remain. I know what saints were supposed to be; what patron saints were supposed to do; how they often did it for the most diverse groups ages after their death; how other saints besides George dealt with dragons; how other nations besides England invoked St. George; how the saints were before the knights; how the knights were before the nations; and so on. In short, I have picked up quite crudely what Mr. Wells calls an Outline of History; but a more scientifically educated generation still seems to have only snippets of history: the lie out of Gibbon; the legend about the dragon; the phrase “St. George for Merry England,” and such isolated items. The result is a curious sort of narrowness, even about the problem of the present or the immediate past. For instance, one quite intelligent contributor apparently identified “St. George” as somebody supposed to have lived in “Merry England,” and explained that his period (whatever it was supposed to be) was not really merry, because there was a great deal of mud in the streets, or people lived in mud hovels. Apart from everything else, I call it narrow for a man to suppose that Mud is the opposite of Merriment. Did he never make any mud-pies? Was he not much merrier making them than contributing to intellectual weeklies?
But the essential point is this. Everybody thought the joke must be found in showing how unlike St. George’s time was to ours. I think it would be a much better joke to show how extremely like St. George’s time was to ours. But the writers are hampered in this by being extremely vague about what was St. George’s time. Now, a man in the later Roman Empire, like George the Martyr, would have seen all round him an ancient world that was astonishingly like the modern world. Whether or no Merry England was a suitable phrase for mediævalism, whether or no mediævalism was all mud, it is quite certain that the Empire of Diocletian was not all mud. Imperial Rome was not all mud, but all marble, all mortar and massive building, all pipes and tanks and engineering, all sorts of elaborate equipments of luxury or hygiene. And among all those palatial baths and towering aqueducts, George would probably be thinking pretty much what many an intelligent man is thinking now—that man does not live by soap alone; and that hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it—or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
Suppose, for instance, that the soldier George had read some of the satires on fashionable society that were produced in that old Pagan world. He would find fact after fact and fashion after fashion exactly parallel to our own. He would find Juvenal making fun of fashionable ladies who join in masculine sports or adventures in a spirit of self-advertisement. The Roman satirist describes how grand Roman ladies would appear as gladiators in the arena, sacrificing not only modesty, but the manners of their rank, in order to be in the limelight. That exact fashionable blend of Feminism and Publicity did really exist in the real epoch of the real St. George: almost exactly as it exists today. Or suppose the Roman soldier read the religious and philosophical literature circulating through the Roman Empire. He would find all that we call New Religions now already called New Religions then. He would find idealists who were Vegetarians, like Apollonius of Tyana; theosophists who had learned all about Reincarnation from Brahmins and Hindu seers; prophets of the Simple Life in the drawing-rooms of duchesses, talking about the secrets of health, wealth, and wisdom; promises of a new Universal Religion, which should include all beliefs without any particular belief in any of them. If the real original St. George did find himself interviewed by a modern newspaper man, he would think that hardly anything in the newspaper was new. He would not think primarily that he had come into a strange world, far away from dragons and princesses and mediæval armour. He would think he had got back into the old bewildered and decaying world of the last phase of Paganism, loud with denials of religion and louder with the howlings of superstition. He would find everything in Juvenal—except Juvenal. He would find quite as many absurd lady gladiators— only not so many people calling them absurd. He would be quite at home, thinking himself back in the old Diocletian Empire— and he would prepare for death.
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XXII
On Journalistic Philosophy
THERE appears at regular intervals in the Sunday Press, like the article on the Cuckoo or Christmas Shopping, an article on the supposed superstition of the Good Old Times, laboriously alleging that they were really Bad Old Times. This article appeared in due course, in a popular weekly, under the title of “What is Right with the World”; but, except for the title, the article was the same. The same examples, the same hackneyed historical details, the same comfortable moral in almost exactly the same words. There are several things that are rather curious about this well-known journalistic feature. One is that the article professes to be an answer to another article which does not exist. I have never in my life seen the first original offending statement, that the Good Old Times really were Good Old Times. I have never heard any rational human being talking about the Good Old Times. I have heard a great many rational and highly intellectual and instructed people talking about the advantages of certain particular institutions that existed at certain particular periods. Thus I have heard political economists of the first rank saying that the Apprenticeship System was the best training for trades and the world would be wise to return to it. Or I have heard historians of high authority say that it was easier to create international understanding and peace in the days when all the nations knew Latin … and pronounced it in the same way. I have heard very modern experts wish there were more people back on the land, and regret that for a hundred years they had poured into the overcrowded towns. I have even listened to daring thinkers who thought our position was more financially regular before we went off the Gold Standard; who positively regretted the process of lowering wages in order to start businesses; who would have it that our big industries were better off when they lived on a profit and not on an overdraft, and who stuck to their old paradox that banking was safer when there were not so many banks going bust. In short, I have known many perverse persons who held that, in this or that particular respect, we were better off in this or that particular period. But this visionary man who walks about the streets in funereal garb, wailing aloud, and at large over the disappearance of some undefined and undated Good Old Days—I have never met him, I rather doubt whether anybody has ever met him; and I doubt still more whether it is necessary to reprint the same article so many hundreds of times in order to check his pestilential influence.
The second curious thing about the article is this: that, though it is always introduced in the very vaguest terms, it always does gravitate eventually in the direction of one particular period, and it is always practically the same period. It is always, I may add, the very worst period that could possibly be chosen, for any purpose of practical comparison. It is (as in the present example) the period of about a hundred and fifty years ago. It is a very bad selection, because that date does not mark any other or older system; it only marks the most crude and clumsy beginnings of our present or modern system. It is not like saying that there was another world, for better or worse, before Rousseau or before Luther or before Christ, in the ancient Pagan world. At the date chosen we already had machinery, but much cruder machinery; we already had big towns, but much more unfinished and disorderly big towns; we already had a complete dependence on commerce, but as yet on a much more cut-throat competitive commerce. It is naturally not difficult to show that we are better than our great-grandfathers, when we are doing in a finished way what they were also doing, but in an unfinished way. The only question is whether, in another sense, we are not something that they most certainly were not: and that is, finished.
Everyone knows the list of examples. Our fathers hanged men for petty thefts, whereas we only exalt and ennoble men or put them in the House of Lords for really large and impressive thefts. But I am not troubled here by such questions, but only by the sameness and the lack of any lively curiosity about questions on the other side. Thus it begins with drunkenness; how typical of that type of moralist to begin with drunkenness … as if nothing else could be quite so immoral! “In those days there was undoubtedly more drunkenness.” I wonder. There was certainly more drunkenness among those who could stand it best; strong men who rode hard in country air and drank before they slept. Was there more drunkenness among schoolgirls than there is in America, or more drunkenness among Society girls than there now is in Mayfair? I wonder. But I wonder, most of all, why this sort of questioner is always content with his one fixed question. Suppose I were to ask him a question. Does he think there was a bigger trade in cocaine and drugs before the Battle of Waterloo than there is now?
After mentioning the one really dreadful thing, which is drunkenness, the writer goes on more vaguely about brutality and ignorance and injustice and the rest. It is difficult to test these things, because there are different moral standards in different people and different periods. For instance, I think it is just that every man should be a free owner of primary property, like land and tools. I therefore think a just commonwealth will have a multitude of peasant proprietors and small shopkeepers. The writer must know, if he knows anything, that these small men were steadily disappearing—or rather, being destroyed— all through what he considers the great period of progress. I do not say there were not other things in which our forefathers were unjust. I only wonder, by this time somewhat wearily, why the story of the Yeoman never even occurs to the writers of the perennial article.
Then the writer gives an astonishing example. “The press-gang was still a favourite method of recruiting members for His Majesty’s Army or Navy.” The press-gang was a black blot on Britain; a thoroughly mean piece of brutality; but why? Because until then it was universally held that English fighters were all volunteers and enlisted freely. The press-gang was a piece of illegal and treacherous Conscription, used by men who were ashamed to use legal and universal Conscription. But the men of the modern world are not ashamed to use legal and universal Conscription. All the enlightened modern States used it in the last war, and they will use it more in the next war. It is a specially and particularly modern thing. In short, a gigantic Press-Gang, crimping and crushing not somebody but everybody, is one of the most towering and typical creations of the last hundred and fifty years.
That is what I complain of in this sort of regular journalistic philosophy. Not that it criticizes conditions a hundred years ago, when there were, heaven knows, plenty of things to criticize. But that it is intellectually incapable of criticizing conditions now, when there are new and different things to criticize. Nobody can take in the scale of the modern changes, let alone feel free enough of them to note what is sinister or dubious about them. For instance, nobody has yet measured the meaning of State education, with its practical elimination of the parent; at least of the poor parent. In a real study of modern and relatively recent things it would be necessary to go into these questions. But if somebody merely says that my grandfather used candles and I use electric light, I am content to answer that when I was in the most modern American hotels, it was the very latest fashion to lower all the electric lights till they gave rather less light than a candle.
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XXIII
On Industrialism
IT grows plainer, every day, that those of us who cling to crumbling creeds and dogmas, and defend the dying traditions of the Dark Ages, will soon be left alone defending the most obviously decaying of all those ancient dogmas: the idea called Democracy. It has taken not quite a lifetime, roughly my own lifetime, to bring it from the top of its success, or alleged success, to the bottom of its failure, or reputed failure. By the end of the nineteenth century, millions of men were accepting democracy without knowing why. By the end of the twentieth century, it looks as if millions of people will be rejecting democracy, also without knowing why. In such a straight, strictly logical and unwavering line does the Mind of Man advance along the great Path of Progress.
Anyhow, at the moment, democracy is not only being abused, but being very unfairly abused. Men are blaming universal suffrage, merely because they are not enlightened enough to blame original sin. There is one simple test for deciding whether popular political evils are due to original sin. And that is to do what none or very few of these modern malcontents are doing; to state any sort of moral claim for any other sort of political system. The essence of democracy is very simple and, as Jefferson said, self-evident. If ten men are wrecked together on a desert island, the community consists of those ten men, their welfare is the social object, and normally their will is the social law. If they have not a natural claim to rule themselves, which of them has a natural claim to rule the rest? To say that the cleverest or boldest will rule is to beg the moral question. If his talents are used for the community, in planning voyages or distilling water, then he is the servant of the community; which is, in that sense, his sovereign. If his talents are used against the community, by stealing rum or poisoning water, why should the community submit to him? and is it in the least likely that it will? In such a simple case as that, everybody can see the popular basis of the thing, and the advantage of government by consent. The trouble with democracy is that it has never, in modern times, had to do with such a simple case as that. In other words, the trouble with democracy is not democracy. It is certain artificial anti-democratic things that have, in fact, thrust themselves into the modern world to thwart and destroy democracy.
Modernity is not democracy; machinery is not democracy; the surrender of everything to trade and commerce is not democracy. Capitalism is not democracy; and is admittedly, by trend and savour, rather against democracy. Plutocracy by definition is not democracy. But all these modern things forced themselves into the world at about the time, or shortly after the time, when great idealists like Rousseau and Jefferson happened to have been thinking about the democratic ideal of democracy. It is tenable that the ideal was too idealistic to succeed. It is not tenable that the ideal that failed was the same as the realities that did succeed. It is one thing to say that a fool went into a jungle and was devoured by wild beasts; it is quite another to say that he himself survives as the one and only wild beast. Democracy has had everything against it in practice, and that very fact may be something against it in theory. It may be argued that it has human life against it. But, at any rate, it is quite certain that it has modern life against it. The industrial and scientific world of the last hundred years has been much more unsuitable a setting for the experiment of self-government than would have been found in old conditions of agrarian or even nomadic life. Feudal manorial life was not a democracy; but it could have been much more easily turned into a democracy. Later peasant life, as in France or Switzerland, actually has been quite easily turned into a democracy. But it is horribly hard to turn what is called modern industrial democracy into a democracy.
That is why many men are now beginning to say that the democratic ideal is no longer in touch with the modern spirit. I strongly agree; and I naturally prefer the democratic ideal, which is at least an ideal, and therefore, an idea, to the modern spirit, which is simply modern and, therefore, already becoming ancient. I notice that the cranks, whom it would be more polite to call the idealists, are already hastening to shed this ideal. A well-known Pacifist, with whom I argued in Radical papers in my Radical days, and who then passed as a pattern Republican of the New Republic, went out of his way the other day to say, “The voice of the people is commonly the voice of Satan.” The truth is that these Liberals never did really believe in popular government, any more than in anything else that was popular, such as public-houses or the Dublin Sweepstake. They did not believe in the democracy they invoked against kings and priests. But I did believe in it; and I do believe in it, though I much preferred to invoke it against prigs and faddists. I still believe it would be the most human sort of government, if it could be once more attempted in a more human time.
Unfortunately, humanitarianism has been the mark of an inhuman time. And by inhumanity, I do not mean merely cruelty; I mean the condition in which even cruelty ceases to be human. I mean the condition in which the rich man, instead of hanging six or seven of his enemies because he hates them, merely beggars and starves to death six or seven thousand people whom he does not hate, and has never seen, because they live at the other side of the world. I mean the condition in which the courtier or pander of the rich man, instead of excitedly mixing a rare, original poison for the Borgias, or carving an exquisite ornamental poignard for the political purposes of the Medici, works monotonously in a factory turning out a small type of screw, which will fit into a plate he will never see; to form part of a gun he will never see; to be used in a battle he will never see, and about the merits of which he knows far less than the Renaissance rascal knew about the purposes of the poison and the dagger. In short, what is the matter with industrialism is indirection; the fact that nothing is straightforward; that all its ways are crooked even when they are meant to be straight. Into this most indirect of all systems we tried to fit the most direct of all ideas. Democracy, an ideal which is simple to excess, was vainly applied to a society which was complex to the point of craziness. It is not so very surprising that such a vision has faded in such an environment. Personally, I like the vision; but it takes all sorts to make a world, and there actually are human beings, walking about quite calmly in the daylight, who appear to like the environment.
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XXIV
On Mr. Thomas Gray
A NEWSPAPER appeared with the news, which it seemed to regard as exciting and even alarming news, that Gray did not write the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” in the churchyard of Stoke Poges, but in some other country churchyard of the same sort in the same country. What effect the news will have on the particular type of American tourist who has chipped pieces off trees and tombstones, when he finds that the chips come from the wrong trees, or the wrong tombstones, I do not feel impelled to inquire. Nor, indeed, do I know whether the new theory is proved or not. Nor do I care whether the new theory is proved or not. What is most certainly proved, if it needed any proving, is the complete lack of imagination, in many journalists and archæologists, about how any poet writes any poem.
In such a controversy it is implied, generally on both sides, that what happens is something like this. The poet comes and sits on a tombstone, or wherever he was supposed to sit, in the one and only churchyard of Stoke Poges, or whatever place be the rival of Stoke Poges. He hears the Curfew; and there is a dreadful doubt and dispute about whether anybody sitting among the tombs of Stoke Poges can hear the Curfew, which does really ring from Windsor, though I imagine it sounds pretty much like any other bell at evening. Then the poet produces a portable pen and ink, preferably a large quill and a scroll (the poet in question lived before the time of fountain-pens), and writes down the first line: “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” Then he looks round to make quite sure that there are some lowing herds winding over that particular lea, that the ploughman is present and doing his duty in plodding homeward his weary way, and that all the other fittings are in the offing. Later, he will have to insist peremptorily on an ivy-mantled tower being in the immediate neighbourhood, inhabited by an (if possible) moping owl. It will not be the only owl involved in the business. If there are not all these correct conditions provided on the spot, he will not be able to write the Elegy. If, on the other hand, they are all there and everything has been properly provided, he will then write the whole of the Elegy, steadily, right through, and not roll up his scroll or rise from his tombstone until he has left the unfortunate young man in the poem finally safe in the bosom of his Father and his God. Then he will go home to tea; and I should imagine he would need it, after so prolonged and sustained a literary effort achieved in such damp and clammy conditions. That, with very little exaggeration, is what is really suggested by those who talk about Gray writing the poem in this place or that place, and under this or that condition of local colour.
Now, I should have thought that anybody would know that poetry is not written like that. But perhaps, in this case, even a bad poet is better than a good critic. Anybody who has ever written any verse, good, bad, or indifferent, will know that calculations of this sort are calculations about the incalculable. Gray might have written the poem, or any part of the poem, in any place on the map; he might have visited the New Stoke Poges or the Old Stoke Poges, or quite probably both, or possibly neither. But, if I may be allowed to pick out one thread of speculation from a thousand threads of possibility, I would suggest that the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” even if it did refer to one particular churchyard, is very likely to have been begun, continued, and ended rather like this:
Mr. Thomas Gray was sitting one evening in a coffee-house; let us hope a coffee-house that did not confine itself to coffee. Something or other, a fiddle or a few glasses of wine, or a good dinner, had thrown him into a mood of musing, of pleasant musing, though touched with a manly and generous melancholy. His thoughts turned round and round, as they do at such times, the tantalizing old riddle of what we really feel about life and death; about the toy God gave us which is beautiful and brittle, yet certainly not trivial. He said to himself: “After all, who doesn’t really feel that it really matters, with all its botherations? … A queer business … pleasing … anxious. …” Then something stirred quicker within him, and he said to himself, in warm poetic emotion—
For who tytumpty tumpty tumpty turn, This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned.
Then his impulse gathered speed and power; and he struck the table and said the next line straight off—
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day.
He said that line several times. He liked it very much. Then it was almost a matter of form, certainly a matter of facility, to put the tail on the verse—
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind.
Then he got up and put on his hat. He left the warm precincts of the cheerful coffee-house, and went home and forgot all about it.
Some time afterwards, perhaps quite a long time afterwards, he was walking in the countryside at dusk. It is quite possible that he was walking in Stoke Poges, or through Stoke Poges, or through any number of other places in the neighbourhood. Perhaps he did hear the Curfew, or what he thought was the Curfew, or what he pretended was the Curfew. He made up another verse or two about the twilight landscape, full of the same spirit of stoical thankfulness and genial resignation. Then he noticed, with great joy, that they would work into the same metre as the lines he had made up in the coffee-house. They were very much in the same mood. But he did not write many of the verses in the churchyard. Possibly he did not write any of the verses in the churchyard. It is more likely that the third act has for its scene Mr. Gray’s private study, lined with the classics in old leather bindings, and adorned with the celebrated cat and the bowl of goldfish. There he jotted down disjointed verses, and began to put them together; until it looked as if they might some day make a poem. But, subject to any information that may exist on the subject, it would not in the ordinary way surprise me to learn that it was a devil of a long time before they did make a poem. It is most likely, in the abstract, that he got sick of it half-way through, and chucked it away, and found it again years afterwards. It is extremely likely that there was another very long interval, when he was just finishing it, but could not finish finishing it. Many a man writing such a poem has held it up for a year for want of one verse. Nor would the newspaper assist him, in such a difficulty, by pointing out that there was another churchyard much more suitable than that of Stoke Poges.
Now, it is possible—nay, it is probable—that there is not one word of truth in this particular description of the proceedings of Mr. Gray. I have not read any of the literary and biographical records of Mr. Gray, at least for a long time; and there are plenty of records to read. It is quite likely that there are details of his daily life that destroy altogether the details I have here suggested. It is even possible that, by some amazing eccentricity, he did write the whole thing in a churchyard; or, by some unscrupulous exaggeration, pretended that he had done so. But my story is a great deal nearer to the normal story of the production of a poem than any story that supposes particular places and conditions to be necessary to the poem. Even if Gray did write with all the stage properties stuck up around him, the lowing cow, the plodding ploughman, the moping owl, they were not the materials of the poem; and he would probably have written pretty much the same sort of poem without them. All this business of clues and tests is not criticism. It is a very good thing that people are applying literature to detective stories and detectives. But it is not a good thing to apply detectives to literature. Gray’s unmistakable foot-mark or favourite tobacco-ash may be found in Stoke Poges or anywhere else. But it is not in those ashes that there lived his wonted fires.
The real relation of Gray’s great poem to the present stage of our history will probably not be understood until a later stage. Yet the poem is a monument, a trophy, and, at the same time, a beacon or signal, standing up as solid and significant as the monument stands up in the Stoke Poges fields. Many poems have been written since, and grown more fashionable, if not more famous, which have not the particular meaning for the modern world stored up in this very storied urn. For Gray wrote at the very beginning of a certain literary epoch of which we, perhaps, stand at the very end. He represented that softening of the Classic which slowly turned it into the Romantic. We represent that ultimate hardening of the Romantic which has turned it into the Realistic. Both changes have, of course, been criticized in their time by the more conservative critics. Dr. Johnson said, probably with a partly humorous impatience, that Gray had only proved that he “could be dull in a new way.” And most of us will agree that the modern realistic writers, who have in their turn replaced the romantic writers, have indubitably discovered a marvellous and amazing number of new ways of being dull.
But the change, as it hung uncompleted in Gray, strangely resembled the twilight changes of that landscape which the poem describes. Indeed, the whole episode has a curious, almost uncanny, harmony that even includes coincidence. Concerned as he was with a fine shade of twilight, it is even odd that his name was Gray. The whole legend is like that of something colourless and classical fading into mere shadow. For something was, indeed, fading before the eyes of Thomas Gray, the poet, and it was something that he did not wish to see fade. It may be noted that the first impression, especially in the first verses, is one of things moving away from the poet and leaving him alone. We see only the back of the ploughman, so to speak, as he plods away into the darkness; the herds of cattle have the perspective of vanishing things; for a whole world was indeed passing out of the sight and reach of that learned and sensitive and secluded gentleman, who represented the culture of eighteenth-century England, and could only watch a twilight transformation which he could not understand. For when the ploughman comes back out of that twilight, he will come back different. He will be either a scientific works-manager or an entirely new kind of agrarian citizen great as in the first days of Rome; a free peasant or a servant of alien machinery; but never the same again.
I am not very fond of committees and societies of specialists or amateurs who sit upon this or that sort of problem; but in the particular problem of the preservation of the rural and cultural traditions of our own countryside, I cannot see at the moment that any other machinery is possible. And it seems to me that the Penn-Gray Society is a good example of a machine suited to its work and doing work that is wanted. The trouble is that the typical cultured Englishman, like Gray or the traditional admirer of Gray, was generally a certain kind of gentleman, of the sort that had some kind of country seat. Since then, to continue the figure, the gentleman with the country seat has rather fallen between two stools. He is no longer so rich and powerful as a landlord. He generally has not become rich and powerful as a local politician. There were any number of men, of course, who appreciated the country without owning a country seat. But if they were not the sort of men to own a country seat, still less were they the sort of men to stand for a county council. And, as the old organization of England went, the organization that has been gradually dying since the days of Gray, men of this artistic sort were mostly attached in some more or less indirect way to the gentry. That is the point; that, for good or ill, it was the system peculiar to a gentry. It was never, for instance, the system peculiar to a peasantry. When there is anything like a peasantry, even as there is in Scotland, it was possible to produce a peasant poet like Burns. And the memory of a peasant like Burns would be preserved by other peasants, even if there were nobody else to preserve it. But nobody could expect the agricultural labourers to preserve the memory of a scholar like Gray. It is amusing to remember that Burns put a verse from the Elegy as a motto to his own homely and pungent picture of peasant life; as some have thought, consciously stressing the contrast between his own realism and the scholar’s classicism:
Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their humble joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.
Indeed, I rather fancy that, in citing those rather patronizing lines, it was the poor poet who had the disdainful smile.
But we must take the rough with the smooth in that noble aristocratic story that has made South England like a garden among the nations. And with it weakened the only organization for protecting the art and antiquities of rural life. Gray could not be a popular poet like Burns; at least, not in that sort of rural life. Perhaps there is a hint of it in his own phrase; that the Village Milton would have remained mute and inglorious. Perhaps he deliberately did not finish the tale of the Village Hampden, who was possibly a poacher, but could not possibly be a peasant. Anyhow, the old organization of culture has weakened; and the new organization of local politics is not an organization of culture. There can be a culture of peasants, but not a culture of petty politicians. In this dilemma there is nothing to be done except to work through groups of sympathetic individuals, students or artists or lovers of landscape, who take the trouble to support each other in defending the tradition of the national history and poetry. Otherwise the whole country will be swept bare for the sort of motorist to whom every object is an obstacle to rushing from nowhere to nowhere. Roads will not be roads, for there will be no places for them to go to; there will be only those ominously called arterial, and resembling, indeed, those open and spouting arteries that are an inevitable sign of death. I should say the ultimate moral is that we ought to have made up our minds between real aristocracy and real democracy, and should have either preserved a gentry or created a peasantry. But the immediate moral is that we must preserve what we can of all that reminds us that rural life was a civilization and not a savagery, and especially support such groups as the society here in question, which is defending the great tradition of Gray.
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XXV
On Evolutionary Educators
WITH the high priests of Mumbo-Jumbo I am on friendly terms; with the worshippers of the Green Monkey and the Seven-headed Snake I can chat cheerfully if we meet by chance in society; with the Blood-drinkers of Baphomet I have tactfully agreed to differ; with the Howling Dervishes of the Red Desert I see the road open to reunion; from those who offer their babies to the Most Ancient Crocodile I differ only in opinion; of those who consider it a sign of divine favour that their mother’s head is bitten off by a Bengal tiger, I am willing to believe that they are better than their creed; to those who believe the sea to be the green blood of a great giant whose anæmic visage is exhibited in the moon, I am ready to concede that we may be looking at two different aspects of truth; in those who sincerely hope to gratify the god of their fathers by eating nothing but live scorpions, I respectfully salute a counsel of perfection which I am not myself called upon to follow; in those who paint themselves scarlet all over and dance before the Nine-headed Elephant, I recognize a ritualistic practice which franker and fuller discussion might well commend even to less advanced schools of thought in the Universal Church; of Thugs I think hopefully; of Bashi-Bazouks I hear the most reassuring news; and to Christian Scientists I extend Christian charity. But there is one way of writing about such things and such people which seems to me to suggest something utterly subhuman and much less than half-witted; something so stunted that we can hardly recognize it as the stature of manhood; something so stupid that we can hardly call it the mind of man; something so flat and unlifting that it might possibly be the mind of one of those flat, pale fishes that lie on the floor of the deep dark sea and live only in two dimensions. And this mentality is the mentality of a large number of people who write educational works on evolutionary history, and are so grossly benighted that they really believe themselves to be enlightened.
For the depths of a superstition, even the depths of a degradation, are at least depths. They do not shout with shallow conceit at finding nothing but shallows. There is something in the grossest idolatry or the craziest mythology that has a quality of groping and adumbration. There is more in life than we understand; some have told us that if we ate a scorpion or worshipped a green monkey we might understand it better. But the evolutionary educator, having never since his birth been in anything but the dark, naturally believes that he is in the daylight. His very notion of daylight is something which is so blank as to be merely blind. There are no depths in it, either of light or darkness. There a no dimensions in it; not only no fourth, but no third no second, and hardly a first; certainly no dimension in which the mind can move. Therefore the mind remains fixed, in a posture that is called progressive. It never looks back, even for remembrance; it never looks the other way, even for experiment; it never looks at the other side, even for a paradox; it never winks the other eye. It simply knows all there is; and there does not seem to be much to know. I have recently been looking through a specimen of this sort of scientific summary of the story of man; and I am relieving my feelings.
Those writers sometimes say they are agnostic about God. Would to God they would consent to be agnostic about Man! Would they would leave the love of beauty or mystery as mysterious as they really are. Every child is born facing some open questions. He finds them open just as he finds his ears or his lungs or his nostrils open; and he knows by instinct that through these open questions he draws in the air and life of the universe. Why dreams are different from daylight, why dead things are different from live things, why he himself is different from others, why beauty makes us restless and even love is a spring of quarrels, why we cannot so fit into our environment as to forget it and ourselves; all these things are felt vaguely by children on long, empty afternoons; or by primitive poets writing the epics and legends of the morning of the world. And all legends, however barbaric, are filled with the wind of all this wider questioning. They all refer back to these ancient unfathomable wells which go down deeper than the reason into the very roots of the world, but contain the springs that refresh the reason and keep it active for ever. The object of the rationalist historian is to choke up those wells. He puts in a sort of plug, like a stupid plumber, to stop the flowing of the fountain of youth. The plug is generally a word; a stupid word used as a stopper upon thought. It does not solve the mystery; it only stupefies or paralyses the power to realize that it is a mystery. When a boy wants to walk about, he knows it is mixed up with feelings he has not fathomed and a song called “Over the Hills and Far Away.” When a poet walks about, he realizes something strange in the fact that he can walk about, and that a tree or a mountain cannot walk about. But the object of the pseudo-scientist is to utter a sort of formula of enchantment which will chill and freeze these wanderers for ever. If their bodies still move about, at least their minds will never move again. He utters the magic words “Man has evolved powers of locomotion”; and man loses them on the spot. Those who were previously walking about remain stuck like statues in the garden of the wizard.
To take one case: the book I read repeated for the millionth time that modesty must be meaningless because the amount of clothing varies among various races. As if any theologian or moralist of standing ever said that the divine plan of the universe dictated a particular length of skirt! All they dictated was decent acquiescence in whatever was regarded as a reasonably unobtrusive length of skirt. But the writer did not think much of modesty as a reason for clothing; it was mentioned in Genesis and therefore could not be true. Now it is quite true that ornament is a very early element in this mysterious human behaviour; though the ornament often refers to taboos about sex. But this writer could not be content to say that dress began with ornament. He must insist on saying that dress began with ostentation. That is to say, he was bound to begin with a word that belittles and depreciates; even when it is inapplicable. A whole tribe could not wear the same clothes out of ostentation; and in our modern tribe it is commoner to wear no clothes with that object. Besides, ornament began with all sorts of things other than clothes; pottery and walls and weapons and so on. And if the writer supposes that one superior baboon could say to another slightly inferior baboon, “Paint or weave me an ornament that coils like the whirlpool or dances like the waves, that catches the stars in a net or branches into suns like a rose-tree into roses; because I am feeling ostentatious this morning,” and that the common workman would then carry out the task—why then the writer considerably underrates the subtlety even of the most primitive and prehistoric art. But he must have a word that shrivels and cheapens something; so he calls the whole mystery of the human thirst for beauty “ostentation.” But anybody, who has read many books of this swaggering scientific sort, knows that there can be a good deal of ostentation with no beauty at all.
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XXVI
On the Contiguous Past
ALMOST immediately after the end of the Great War a German wrote a highly successful or widely boomed book called The Decline of the West. The most human inference (in the opinion of many) was that the German, having assisted at the spectacle of the Decline and Fall of the German Empire, naturally wanted all the rest of us to decline and fall with him. He felt it would be obviously a breach of taste and tact for any nation to flourish if Germany had declined; if, indeed, he was even aware of the existence of such fringes of his Empire as France or Flanders or England. Anyhow, he applied his doctrine to all that is most active in our civilization, whether we are so constituted as to call it the Indo-Germanic race or prefer to call it Christendom. But there was more in this theory of his about a general collapse; which was also a theory of a recurrent collapse. In this, indeed, and in his general idea of a modern phase of decline, his view was quite reasonable and very persuasively stated. But there was bound up with it another set of ideas which are not necessarily any part of the theory, either that civilizations periodically weaken or that our civilization has weakened in our period. Those two theses may quite well be true; but the thesis of the book was false.
For me, at least, it was false because it was fatalist; false because it was unhistoric; and false because it involved a particular falsity about the very spirit of the great culture which the critic criticized. It is the whole point of that culture that it has been continuous; it was the whole point of the critic that it had been discontinuous and disconnected. He was not content to say that civilizations revolve in separate cycles, in the sense in which we might be said to belong to a different civilization from the Druids. He cut up ordinary European history into chunks, that were supposed to have no more to do with each other than Chinese history and Aztec history. He chopped ordinary Christian history in two in the middle, in order to deny that either part of it was Christian. So far as I remember, he attributed the first half of it entirely to the Moslem Arabs, because they were not Christians; and the second half of it to people of the type of Faust, because they were rather fishy sort of Christians, and German as well. And he talked about these divisions as if they were like the abysses that might separate a stratum full of primordial crystals from a stratum, æons afterwards, containing the first fantastic traces of marsupial life.
Now, I am quite certain, as a matter of mere common sense, that the history of Christendom, or even the history of Europe, was never so fragmentary as that. We are much more connected with the ancient Greeks than the German writer would allow us to be with the later mediævals, or even the earlier moderns. The sort of distinction he suggested only happens when a cycle of civilization really dies, and then fossilizes and remains as inscrutable as an ammonite. We have no idea what was the religion of the Cro-Magnans, though we infer from certain pictures of ritual dances (as well as from our own common sense) that they had one. We do not know the significance of the Cup and Ring Stones, though the fortunate and civilized of us still use rings, as in the case of wedding-rings, or cups even in the sense of wine-cups. We do not even know if we interpret the signs rightly, or whether they are signs at all. Now, the Greek gods have never died in that fashion; and the Roman Empire has never died at all. Of the most modern industrial cities in England, many have in their very names the title of the Roman Camp; and wherever there stood the Roman Camp, there stood afterwards the Christian Cathedral. There was never one moment, in the long history from Herodotus to Herr Spengler, when all the men who counted in any age did not talk of The Fall of Troy; there was never a generation when young poets did not make that old tale a topic for new poems. I wonder whether a poem by Heredia about Antony, or a poem by Morris about Arthur, belongs to the dead Greek period or the dead Arabic period? There was never a generation when poets did not invoke Virgil, if only to imitate him. There was never a generation in which philosophers did not refer to Aristotle, if only to contradict him. The thread of our cultural continuity has never been broken.
I think the fact worth recording at the moment for two reasons. The first is that the same energetic German author has launched yet another book, of much less dignity and of much more dogmatism, reaffirming his theory, and especially the most gloomy and barbaric parts of it. The other is that there is a horrible possibility that what he says falsely about our past may be said truly about our present and our future. I mean that, hitherto, the men of our ancient tradition have done everything except forget. Whatever might be fanatical or ill-balanced about their religions or their revolutions, they have each, in turn, taken particular care to remember the deeds of their fathers. Even when they poisoned the purer Paganism of Homer and Pindar, they did not destroy it; they left it standing for ever against them as a reproach. Even when they dethroned the Greek gods they did not dismiss them; in the first just fury they denounced them as devils, but in the long run they let them remain as elves. They let them remain as fanciful and fabulous figures, for literary metaphor or plastic decoration, so that Christendom has left the nymph in poetry or the cupid in sculpture. It is true that now, for the first time, the race that has always remembered is invited on every side to forget.
Yes; it is true that today, for the first time, our newspapers and our new politicians have asked us to forget, not what happened a thousand years ago or a hundred years ago, but what happened twenty years ago. When it is a question of shifting a policy or rehabilitating a politician, they will ask us to forget what happened two years ago or two months ago. Here, indeed, we have the great Spengler System, of total separation of one historical episode from another. Here is the true trick of regarding ourselves as divided by æons and abysses, not only from our fathers, but from ourselves. Thus, by reading the daily paper every day, and forgetting everything that it said on the previous day, we can divide human history into self-contained cycles; each consisting, not of five hundred years, but of twenty-four hours. By this means we can regard the politician we trusted last week as we regard the cave-man whose carvings we could not decipher in a hundred years. By this means we can consider the slogans and swaggering policies which we ourselves cheered only recently, as if they were hieroglyphics as unintelligible as the Cup and Ring Stones. This new quality of forgetfulness, in our current culture, does give some justification to the pessimism of the German professor; and if we accept such oblivion, then doubtless our “cycle” will really curl up like a worm on the floor and lie still for ever.
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XXVII
On the Merry Monarch
MR. ARTHUR BRYANT recently published, through Messrs. Longmans, a very thoughtful and interesting study of King Charles II. It was certainly a favourable portrait; but it was a portrait, and not an effigy or an idol or a whitewashed statue, any more than a caricature. There is room for difference of opinion about the proportions of the picture, but it was a picture of a real object. It has been the curse of our waxwork history that to each historical figure was attached some more or less legendary saying like a label, and even when the saying was partly true it always missed the point of the truth. The point, the peculiar truth, about Charles II always seems to me to be this—that he was an amazing coincidence. He was a prince born to inherit a crown; and he was an extremely able man and, on a lower level, a sort of genius. The label, or literary allusion, officially attached to Charles II is almost always that epigram by one of his intimates to the effect that he “never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one.” But indeed it was the epigrammatist who said the foolish thing. It was, in reality, nearly the reverse of the truth. Charles II, being a man who had maintained fashionable light conversation down to his very deathbed, being, moreover, a man who must have made love to about forty women, must surely have gone to his grave having said a very large number of foolish things. But he had also done a very large number of wise things; and some things which a critic might well criticize as too wise, as having rather the wisdom of the serpent than the harmlessness of the dove. Indeed, I cannot recall at the moment that he ever did a thing that was unwise, though on some occasions he may have done a thing that was unworthy. Mr. Belloc, in his book on James II, has in some sense emphasized this aspect. He has in some sense set James II against Charles II; the former as the thoroughly sincere man who always has the appearance of being stupid and stubborn, the latter as the complex, compromising, and less heroic man who always seems to be tactful and reasonable. Mr. Arthur Bryant’s version might almost be called a defence of Charles II against this implied comparison. He has no difficulty in showing that Charles was in a desperately difficult position, that the main fault lay with the fools, frauds, and bigots who pressed upon him; but I am not sure whether he entirely disposes of the appeal to the heroic made by Mr. Belloc, who wrote: “If he had resisted, he would have lost his Crown? He should have resisted and lost his Crown. For there are other things that a man may lose.”
But, whatever we may think of the man’s moral quality, I am still surprised that nobody has taken anything like adequate notice of his mental quality. None of the Stuarts was stupid, in the sense that the term might be applied to the first German Georges. Mary Queen of Scots was brilliant and accomplished; James I was a learned man; Charles I was a cultivated man; James II was a capable man, especially as an administrator of the Navy; and whatever be the truth about the rather dim and dismal figure of the First Pretender, it is obvious that Charles Edward of the ‘45 was a fighter and no fool. But it seems to me that Charles II stands out from the Stuarts in really having the sort of brain that might have brought him into prominence if he had not been a prince. Much of the mistake arises from the blind and blundering trick of talking as if that sort of man were merely a “wit,” and talking as if “wit” were only a sort of silly spangle or tinsel ornament that any fool could flaunt. In fact, there is much more wisdom in the old use of the word “wit” than in the new. In the old phrases about a man setting his wits to work, or having wit enough to do this or that, the word was really used as a synonym for mind. It does almost always stand for mind, but especially for presence of mind. Many, who quote the cheeky courtier’s carefully prepared couplet about never saying a foolish thing and never doing a wise one do not mention Charles’s much more piercing and quite impromptu reply to it, in that passage in which he is reported as answering: “I am an English King; and my words are my own, but my actions are my Ministers’.” The man who talked like that did not merely have wit, or what these people mean by wit; he had brains.
Now, if we read the detailed, dramatic, and thrilling account, in Mr. Bryant’s book, of Charles II’s long game of political Poker against the politicians of the Opposition, really brilliant men like Shaftesbury and Halifax, we shall be watching a pure battle of brains, in which his brains were certainly the best. He, began with no cards at all; at least, he never had anything but bad cards in the worst time of the battle; he had all the ablest men of the age holding all the cards of the game against him; and he beat them all. He weathered a Revolution; which is only not classed with the Glorious Revolution or the American Revolution because he weathered it. And James II and George III did not. And he achieved a Restoration; not as a young prince coming back by the chance of birth or the choice of Parliament, but as an old, weary, and entirely lonely politician, in spite of Parliament, and by sheer unflagging intelligence. For the Restoration did not happen at the beginning of Charles’s reign, but at the end.
It would be difficult to decide here on the merits of his cause, on which men will differ according to their religious and political partialities. It is well to note, however, that here again most people who discuss the politics miss the point. Thus they often read into the factions and fanaticisms of the period a modern democratic ideal that did not then exist either in the Whigs or in the King, but, if anything, rather more in the King than in the Whigs. When, for instance, Charles said that he thought his people would rather have one King than five hundred Kings, it is often taken, even by those who agree with it, as the usual Tory taunt at the formless tyranny of a mob. Certainly Charles, or any Tory of the period, might quite probably have uttered a taunt against the tyranny of the mob. But, in fact, in this case he meant much more exactly what he said, and what he said was perfectly correct. The Parliament was not the people, not even in the rather mechanical and clumsy way in which it is now supposed to be the people. It was based on a narrow suffrage, was honey-combed with nepotism, and mostly nominated by nobles and squires. But the case was much stronger than that. It was, in its whole attitude and action, a privileged class; a ruling class; a thing like a house of Peers and Princes. It really was, as Charles said, a House of Five Hundred Kings. It had a special Parliamentary privilege, just as he had a special Royal prerogative; and it is true to say that the King strove with the Kings. All this comes out very clearly in Mr. Bryant’s narrative of the nightmare controversy of the Popish Plot. I am not going to deal here with the Popish Plot in its other aspects, least of all in its Popish aspect. My interest for the moment is not even moral, let alone religious. It is entirely intellectual, and concerned only with an intellectual admiration, in the real sense of astonishment, for that one melancholy humorist who lived through the whole of that Bedlam and remained at least the sanest of English Kings.
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XXVIII
On Suicide: North and South
IN a recent discussion on Suicide, an interesting comparison was made between what is loosely called the Latin culture and what is still more loosely, and less consistently, called the Nordic or Teutonic or Germanic, according to the foreign policy at the moment. A learned writer pointed out, very truly, that for some reason or other Nordic men are more liable to kill themselves than are the men of the Mediterranean. The men of the Mediterranean are more likely to relieve their feelings by killing somebody else. And in this, I grieve to say, they have a certain half-involuntary support in my sympathies. I admit that murder must be classed among acts distinctly improper and, indeed, morally wrong. But suicide seems to me the supreme blasphemy against God and man and beast and vegetables; the attack not upon a life, but upon life itself; the murder of the universe. But that is another question, which I do not debate here. What interests me about the criticism of the two cultures is this. The critic who was sufficiently acute to notice that Latins are less prone than Teutons to this particular sort of depression and despair, naturally cast about for a cause or an explanation. And, being a modern critic, he was at once tempted to be a materialist. There is something strange in the modern mind, by which a material cause always seems more like a real cause. In the science of the nineteenth century, the material cause was generally found in physical heredity; that is to say, in Race. But Race has been rather blown upon lately; like most of the science of the nineteenth century. The critic whom I criticize took the other alternative materialistic cause; the same that has generally been favoured by Mr. Bernard Shaw. He said that most or much of the difference was due to Climate.
Now, I believe material causes count for much less in history than is now supposed. I believe that moral causes count for much more than is now supposed. I believe that the supreme factor is not even the bodily framework, or the framework of environment, but the frame of mind. I could ask for no better case, for my own argument, than this case of the suicides of all nations. It was raised on this occasion in connexion with the sad end of two famous financiers or capitalists; but that aspect need not concern us now; except, perhaps, upon one particular point. I should have thought that if there was one person to whom the argument about Climate does not apply, it is a modern millionaire. The most Nordic millionaire has no need to live in the North. An American plutocrat could live as easily in Florida as in Maine, or pay a permanent visit to Naples instead of to Niagara. The very fact that no amount of sunshine could make him sunny, is sufficient evidence that the dark cloud was within. This, however, is a personal and even painful matter, which is no part of my argument, and with which I had not intended to deal. The point is that the critic attributes the suicide statistics to a difference of climate; and I attribute them to a difference of culture.
And it strikes me that there is a very simple test. Compare the number of suicides when the Latin world was Pagan with the number of suicides after it became Christian. The same sun shone on Brutus falling on his sword; the same blue sea smiled on Cato stabbing himself to avoid capture; the same glittering landscape of the olive and the vine was the background to the ten thousand tragedies of self-inflicted death that end the stories of the heroes of Pagan antiquity. There is no doubt that the life of those flowery lands always led to a more florid external gaiety and grace. Cleopatra blazed with blossoms and gems, and smiles, but that did not prevent her from finding an asp among the flowers. But the same fact is obvious about people considerably more respectable than Cleopatra. Those who have seen any adequate reproduction of Julius Cæsar will have been reminded of that sublime but alien atmosphere of the Stoic and the Republican which the imagination of Shakspere, though captive in the courtly world of the Tudors, could manage to reconstruct from the ruins of Plutarch. These Pagans of the old Latin world committed suicide not because they were prone to it as a vice, but because they were proud of it as a virtue. To explain their view of it, it would be necessary to analyse the whole tendency of their heathen mythology and philosophy. They killed themselves partly because they had too much, as the modern world has too little, of the notion of personal dignity. They killed themselves partly because they had a vaguer or more negative notion about the future life. They killed themselves because of a sort of hard despair that lies in the heart even of the heroism of the Stoic. But, anyhow, they did not kill themselves because the sun was shining or the grapes growing in clusters on the vine. Whatever is the cause of the change, it is not to be found in the climate which has not changed.
No; the test of the contrast between modern Latins and modern Teutons is exactly like the test of the contrast between modern Latins and ancient Latins. It is to be found in a frame of mind. Ever since Christianity came into the world, the Latins have been in a fighting frame of mind. Indeed, they have been, and still are, engaged in a fight; a fight about whether Christianity shall continue or no; a fight that has its ups and downs, as in the Vatican City or the secularization of Spain. But there is something in the atmosphere of the affirmation itself, even for those who prefer the denial, which has made everybody too keen on killing the enemy to retire to their tents and kill themselves. In the whole Mediterranean civilization there is a positive spirit. Men are either confident that they can be content with this world, or else confident that they can be convinced about the other world. Both these certainties result in relative cheerfulness and a resolve to hang on for the duration of the war. Now, in the Germanies, and generally in the northern Continental countries, the whole mental atmosphere is different. It is an atmosphere of introspective melancholy and a sort of spiritual sulks. It is exactly described in a phrase used by Mr. Augustine Birrell about Hazlitt: in the midst of the mind a black pool of metaphysics. It is a world in which men are not so much fighting religion as wandering away from it, into wildernesses of subjective speculation. It is full of scepticism, but it is not without sentimentalism; and the combination produces pessimism. It is not surprising that the pessimism sometimes produces suicide. It is the world of isolated sages, not of anti-clerical mobs or clerical congregations. From the North come the Nietzsches and the Schopenhauers, and all who, in defiance of the old name of natural philosophy, insist on inventing an unnatural philosophy. That unnatural philosophy is a third thing, quite different from natural Paganism or supernatural Christianity. It is a mood, a somewhat morbid mood, but it is the result of certain ideas in the mind; and an Eskimo does not become a suicidal maniac because he lives in the north, nor a negro a Provençal troubadour because he has a place in the sun.
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XXIX
On Modern “Paganism”
THERE is a section, perhaps a small section, of Modern Youth which certainly strikes its elders as hard and sceptical and selfish. And of these it is customary to say that they are Pagans. It suddenly flashed across me yesterday (as one of those obvious truths that evade us even when they are obvious) that of course what is really the matter with them is that they have lost their Paganism.
I do not say, as so many journalists say, that they have lost their Christianity. For it is the quite simple and sober truth that most of them never had any. It is not their fault, though every day that passes convinces me more and more that it is their misfortune. But the notion, so common in novels and newspapers, that this new generation has rebelled against old-fashioned orthodoxy is sheer stark historical ignorance. It is the worst of all kinds of historical ignorance; ignorance of the historical events we have seen ourselves. It is absurd to say that a young man of nineteen who mixes cocktails and Communism in a studio rag in Chelsea is rebelling against Victorian Virtue or the Family Bible. You might as well say that a young buck of the Regency who wrenched off door-knockers and fought with watchmen was rebelling against the Puritans of 1649 or the tyranny of Oliver Cromwell. You might as well say that the Cavaliers who revelled at The Cock in the reign of Charles II were rising in just revolt against the usurpation of Richard III. No very laborious historical learning will be needed to perceive that there is something wrong in the calculation somewhere, if only because it skips about four or five generations that come in between. So does the cant explanation about Youth breaking away from grim old religious dogmas skip several generations in between. The boys and girls who are painting the town piebald today are not the children of the old Puritan bankers with their Family Prayers or the old Protestant parsons with their Family Bibles. They are the children of fathers and mothers who themselves grew up on Bernard Shaw and felt like infants in the presence of Thomas Hardy. The Young today are themselves the children of a whole generation of sceptics and agnostics; fathers and mothers themselves still relatively young, and themselves brought up to all such talk. All the talk about free thought and free love; all about Tess and Truth; all about Candida and Candour. Even the grandfathers and grandmothers of the children now just beginning to play the goat were mostly of a generation that conceived itself as liberal and progressive; like the old Radical who argues with Tanner in Man and Superman. Even his generation thought itself advanced; Tanner and the next generation thought itself more advanced. And we are dealing now with the children of Tanner; perhaps with the grandchildren of Tanner.
Of course, these young people do not know anything about historical Christianity; they are rather limited sort of people in a good many ways. They have heard only the latest jargon of their own generation; the last heresy that has rebelled against the last heresy but one. They are so innocent that some of them, especially the more intelligent, are actually beginning to get into touch with orthodoxy without even knowing it is orthodox. It can be seen in many casual journalistic allusions to the study of Thomism in Oxford or Paris. But it remains true that there is the other section; by no means the most intelligent, but certainly the most impudent. And of these it is true to say, as I have already said, that the whole story has moved a stage forward; or perhaps a stage back. There is no question at all of their losing Christianity. There is no question at present of their finding Christianity. But the reason why they all look as miserable as monkeys (and they do) is in this tragic and deplorable disaster: that they have all lost their Paganism.
Paganism may be compared to that diffused light that glows in a landscape when the sun is behind a cloud. So when the true centre of worship is for some reason invisible or vague, there has always remained for healthy humanity a sort of glow of gratitude or wonder or mystical fear, if it were only reflected from ordinary objects or natural forces or fundamental human traditions. It was the glory of the great Pagans, in the great days of Paganism, that natural things had a sort of projected halo of the supernatural. And he who poured wine upon the altar, or scattered dust upon the grave, never doubted that he dealt in some way with something divine; however vague or fanciful or even sceptical he might be about the names and natures of the divinities. Wine was more than wine; it was a god. Corn was more than corn; it was a goddess. There is much doubt and dispute about how literally they understood these statements; but they certainly understood the first half of the sentence as meaning exactly what it said. They were not satisfied with realism, because they never quite lost the sense of something more real than realism. They were not content to call a spade a spade, because it was almost always a sacred spade; not only when it dug the graves of the dead, but even when it dug the garden to grow fruit for the living. They were not content with the dead certainty that eggs are eggs, because they were full of divine uncertainty about the birds, which were their signals and auguries. And this natural magic in things, mixed and modified with things greater and things less, has descended through the civilized centuries to men of every sort; not only to the mass of men who are traditionalists, but generally also to the few men who are revolutionists. Men like Shelley or Heine might get rid of religion, but they would not get rid of this great glamour of natural things, which seemed to make them preternatural. That legend still lingers from Shelley to Swinburne, from Heine to Wilde, and after that something begins to go wrong with it. It is what has gone wrong with a whole section of the rising generation.
They are not the first generation of rebels to be Pagans. They are the first generation of rebels not to be Pagans. The young fool, the flower of all our cultural evolution, the heir of all the ages, and the precious trust we have to pass on to posterity—the young fool can no longer be trusted to be a Pantheist, let alone a good hearty Pagan. He does not realize in the least that Bacchus has mixed his cocktail, and Pomona dropped the cherry into it. He is under the strange delusion that eggs are eggs and that spades are only spades. He entertains a perfectly extraordinary idea that wine is wine and that women are just women. He is cut off from all the secret secondary meanings and messages of things; the truths that come to the sensitive in silence; the atmosphere around every object, that is almost visible like a halo. He has lost the traditions of humanity, and rather especially the traditions of heathenry. I suppose it would not do to send out missionaries to convert him to Paganism. But he is a much more stupid and stunted and limited person since he left off being a Pagan.
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XXX
On Brevity and Wit
SOMEBODY once said that brevity is the soul of wit, when he obviously meant to say that wit is the soul of brevity. It is obvious that the brevity is only the body, and the wit the spirit. And mere brevity, as in the statement “Cats eat rats,” when left to itself, seems still to await some awakening visit of the divine fire. The proverb, however, like many other widely quoted maxims, is really as true as is consistent with meaning nearly the opposite of what it says. Economy of every kind has a great deal to do with effect of every kind. And it has often been more to the advantage of a man to say one good thing in one sentence than to say twenty good things in two thousand sentences. For the rest, the general statement of the principles of brevity would itself be brief. There would certainly be no need to discuss at length the rather obvious disadvantages of being lengthy. Most people would agree that even good writers can write too much, and that bad writers cannot write too little. Nevertheless, a particular problem has arisen in our own epoch, apart from the obvious practical complications that may arise in any epoch. Those who earn their living by writing, as I do, always write too much; on the other hand, there are writers at once more leisured and more laborious who write the same poem a hundred times, or even bring out three or four entirely different editions of the same book. Mr. George Moore has been an example of this paradox, and such writers may not unfairly be said to write at once too little and too much. But the practical problem I mean is more recent than the realism of Mr. George Moore. It is the question whether we more unduly increase the mass of literature by making it difficult to stop, or by making it easy to stop—and to begin again.
The mere forms of the older literature committed a man to carry on for a considerable time, like a man enlisting for the duration of the war. The modest youth who proposed to write an epic in twelve books may have felt epical, but hardly epigrammatical. The simple poet who produced a tragedy in five acts could not at the last moment turn the five-act tragedy into a three-act farce. But now that poetry, and literature in general, is free to appear in any form, it may naturally run to any length or stop at any point. This may lead to brevity in the poem, but it does not necessarily lead to brevity in the poet. Two hundred years ago, let us say, an English poet would sit down with the laudable intention of writing a long didactic poem on the correct cultivation of onions, or the most advisable construction of pig-sties; all set forth in beautiful rhymed decasyllabics, brightened by entirely original selections from the Georgics and decorated by many fine flights of mythological fancy, about Ceres spreading her maternal mantle over the first onion, or Circe standing amid her pig-sties of ivory and gold. Everybody knows that the very latest poetical style has gone to the other extreme, and is not only brief, but abrupt. It is sometimes almost tactless in its introduction of the onion into the drawing-room, or the pig into the parlour. The modern poet goes straight to the point, in some short and simple lyric that runs—
The hair of a hundred women chokes me With a gluttonous smell of garlic …
and there you are; a simple human emotion described in two spontaneous lines. Or he will write of the pig question—
The world wobbles sickeningly, Like the old grey sow in the greasy morning light.
And if brevity is really the soul of wit, this must be much wittier than the long eighteenth-century poem with its classical analogies. But, considering the problem in a practical way, I should hesitate about whether the new method will be really more brief than the old. Supposing that it is our simple, manly, and public-spirited purpose to stop both the poets from producing such a vast amount of poetry, I have a notion that, in the long run, the new poet will outstrip even the old poet in giving the world whole libraries of poetry to burn. After all, when the eighteenth-century poet was producing his interminable Georgic about pigs or onions, it kept him busy; but it also kept him quiet. Quite a long and restful period would elapse before it would even be finished, let alone printed; there would be plenty of time for his friends to rest and recuperate and get up their strength to read it, or their moral strength to pretend to have read it. He did not rush about in the interval hurling isolated onions in the faces of individual strangers. He did not bring the great grey sow with him into society, like a lap-dog, or let loose wild herds of Gadarene swine in the public streets. But the modern poet’s assaults on his inoffensive fellow-creatures, being more brief and disjointed, can also be more numerous and continuous. If he is so much intoxicated by an onion, he may be similarly maddened by a turnip; and if pigs for him so easily take to themselves wings and fly, the sky they populate may soon be raining cats and dogs. I mean that this modern habit of taking a detached image, with or without the elucidation of its indwelling idea, is to supersede the old reasoned arrangement of themes and thoughts. There is nothing to be said against it, except that there seems to be no end to it. And the epic of the mythological origin of onions did at least, somehow and somewhere, come at last to an end.
Granted that the old formal folios of epic and tragedy were too formal, it sometimes looks nowadays as if there would be no books except note-books or sketch-books. The notes may be short, but the note-book may be fairly long. The sketches may be smaller, but the sketch-book may be larger. Above all, the very smallness of the sketches establishes a standard which makes them more facile and therefore more frequent. I was looking the other day through a large anthology, or collection, of the most modern and advanced American poems. Most of them consisted of short impressions, with one or two arbitrary details in irregular verse; and that was all. I do not mean that they were worthless; a thousand things of the sort are worth seeing and may be worth saying. A brown trickle from a gutter makes a pool in the street, reflecting half a window and a scrap of sky; a black cluster of lamp-posts and top-hats is relieved against a strip of cold green sunset; the passing lights of a tram paint one side of a grey horse in a field a golden colour; a splash of green slime on a wall looks like sprawling fingers; and so on. Now, whether it sound egotistical or no, it is a fact that if I began to write little paragraphs in free verse on such things, I should never stop writing them. I should write thousands and thousands of them. I do not deny the truth of such sights; I am always seeing them. I do not deny the suggestiveness of such sights; I am often moved by them. I only say that if the mere recording of them constitutes poetry, there ought to be a vast amount more poetry and a great many more poets. But whether that prospect be a glorious or an alarming one, I will not venture, on my own isolated example, to decide.
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XXXI
On Education
WE all know that Mr. Smiles dedicated the modern world to Self-Help. Since then it has dedicated itself to Self-Hindrance, of the strangest sort, amounting often to self-strangling or self-hanging; the individualistic theory of liberty having truly given it rope enough to hang itself. It is amazing to note in how many matters the modern world started out to do one thing and has done exactly the opposite. The ethics of the economist, in the early nineteenth century, enormously exaggerated the sanctity and pride of private property. This led to a race for wealth which has not only led recently to a relapse into poverty, but to a change by which, even for the few who had more property, the property was much less private. In the nineteenth century the Northern Farmer was described as hearing the comfortable sound of “property, property, property” in the very canter of his horse’s legs. Nowadays the Northern Farmer probably travels in a motor and ploughs by machinery; I know not whether strange noises from the bowels of his iron monster seem to resemble the words “mortgage” or “bankruptcy,” but I am pretty certain that they do not now soothe him with the dulcet dactyls of the cantering hooves. In plain fact the Northern Farmer has much less property than he had when he started out to look for it in the presence of Mr. Alfred Tennyson. And even the property he has is much less private property, being sunk in vast semi-public undertakings or international combines, over which he certainly has no control, as he had control over his horses. The same industrial individualism which set out with no thought except private property has produced a new world in which private property is hardly ever thought of, or at least not primarily as private.
I was looking at a recent collection which contains the opinions of many famous free-thinkers about Jesus Christ. It is amusing to note how all of them differ among themselves; how one of them contradicts another and the last is always repudiated by the next. And I was specially amused to note that the earlier sceptics, like Strauss, blamed Jesus of Nazareth for his contempt for commerce and capital (then the gods of the hour), while the later sceptics, like Shaw and Wells, praised the same Jesus of Nazareth for the same contempt for the same commerce, because in the interval the sceptic had turned from an earnest Individualist to an earnest Socialist. Anyhow, it was not Christ or the Christian idea that had changed; it was only all the criticisms of all their critics. And the later sceptic actually became more orthodox than the earlier sceptic, simply by going Bolshevist. This is merely an example, for the moment, of how the whole tone of the world has changed about property in relation to privacy. The modern capitalist is more of a communist than was the old revolutionist. The real Radicals had a horror of centralization, and one of the most popular and prominent of the demagogues described a Communist as a man who “always was willing to give you his penny and pocket your shilling.” The moral of this vast overturn and disappointment is obvious enough: that when private property only means private enterprise, and private enterprise only means profiteering, it will soon cease even to produce profits, and become in every sense unprofitable.
The way the world has changed about private property is proved by the fact that it is regarded as a private fad. Mr. Belloc and I, when we said first that we really did believe that private property should be private, were mildly chaffed, as if we were seeking solitude like hermits, or hoarding halfpence like misers. But I am not concerned with our particular thesis here, or with any such personal matters; I only mention this one as the most obvious of many examples of the modern world rushing one way and rebounding the other. Another example is the tangle of education. In one sense, this is supremely the educational age. In another sense, it is supremely and specially the anti-educational age. It is the age in which the Government’s right to teach everybody’s children is for the first time established. It is also the age in which the father’s right to teach his own children is for the first time denied. It is the time in which experimentalists earnestly desire to teach a jolly little guttersnipe everything; even Criminology and Cosmic Poise and the Maya system of decorative rhythm. But it is also the time in which earnest philosophers are really doubting whether it is right to teach anybody anything; even how to avoid taking poison or falling off precipices.
But the practical difficulty of our present education is even worse. It is attempting to conduct a process, and yet it has produced a world which incessantly interrupts and reverses that process. Education is initiation; it is in its nature a progression from one thing to another; the arrangement of ideas in a certain order. A child learns to walk before he learns to skip; he learns his own alphabet before he learns the Greek alphabet. Or, if any educationist now reverses this process, he must at least have a reason for reversing it, and must therefore refuse to reverse the reversal. But the real life of our time reverses everything and has no reason for anything. The real world, that roars round the poor little gutter-boy as he goes to school, is an utterly anti-educational world. If the school is really giving any education, the world is certainly engaged day and night in ruining his education. For the world gives him things anyhow, in any order, with any result; the world gives him things without knowing that he gets them; the world gives him things meant for somebody else; the world throws things at him from morning till night, quite blindly, madly, and without meaning or aim; and this process, whatever else it is, is the exact opposite of the process of education. The gutter-boy spends about three-quarters of his time in getting uneducated. He is educated by the modern State School. He is uneducated by the modern State.
Because, as I have already ventured very delicately to hint, the modern State is in a devil of a state. It is itself the chaos and contradiction produced by that very unbalanced race after private profit that has produced its own opposite in a sort of communal confusion. Educationists have the task of putting the school in order before anybody has put the State in order. It is arguable that we ought to put the State in order before there can really be such a thing as a State School. But I will not discuss my own remedies here, which would involve indecent allusions to a third thing called the Family; now never mentioned in respectable circles. Only I think there is something wrong with a system that thus throttles itself and cuts its own throat; a world in which we cannot even paint the town red without turning it green, or set the Thames on fire without freezing it.
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XXXII
On Romanticism and Youth
ROMANTICISM is usually criticized as if it were a very ancient thing; whereas it is really a very recent thing, and especially a very revolutionary thing. It was the very latest Revolt of the Young, previous to the Revolt of the Young which now attacks it. Of course, there is a difference between Romanticism and Romance. Romance, in its healthiest sense, is as old as the world; and even in a more special sense it is inspired by that particular intensity of colouring and pointed energy of outline which belonged to the shields, the windows, and the pennons of mediævalism. Mediæval romance, which was a sort of pattern for modern romance, came from the vividness of visionary or spiritual experience leaving a sort of glamour or glory around all experience. But it did throw that coloured light especially on the experience of love, and, in some sense, modelled romance on religion; as Chaucer called the legendary lovers The Saints of Cupid. In that sense we may say that romance belonged to the Middle Ages; and in a deeper sense that it belonged to any ages. Romanticism, however, was a particular modern movement, and it was in most ways particularly modern.
It was akin to Feminism, in what is now called “putting Woman upon a pedestal.” It was also akin to ideal democracy; which might well be called “putting Man upon a pedestal.” Indeed, there is a curious and illuminating historical parallel between these two ideas, that seemed both new and true in the nineteenth century. I am far from saying they are not true merely because they are no longer new. I have a great deal of sympathy with both of them. I am merely noting the historical fact that, if they are not new, they were very recently regarded as new. The Republican who wore the Red Cap talked, if not as if there had never been any Republicans in the past, at least as if there were going to be nothing else except Republicans in the future. The Romantic who wore the Red Waistcoat talked as if the old world had been imprisoned in Classicism and the new world would be thrown open only to Romanticism. Each believed himself to be an extremist; but each was, in fact, a moderate who had only reached the middle of his own road, and had no real idea to what extreme it would lead. Each was a bridge hung between two ages. Each was bringing with him a living thing out of the old world, which could only perish in the new.
For one very simple thing was true both of Love and Liberty: the gods of the Romantics and the Republicans. They were both simply fragments of Christian mysticism, and even of Christian theology, torn out of their proper place, flung loosely about and finally hurled forward into an age of hard materialism which instantly destroyed them. They were not really rational ideas, still less rationalistic ideas. At least, they were never rational ideas after they had left off being religious ideas. One of them was a hazy human exaggeration of the sacramental idea of marriage. The other was a hazy human exaggeration of the brotherhood of men in God. When the Romantic laid his hand on his Red Waistcoat, and swore to George Sand or some other lady that their souls were two affinities wedded before the world was made, he was drawing on the Christian capital of the old ideas of immortality and sanctity. When he explained to his mistress in his garret the delicacy and dignity of cutting her throat and his own, and called it “the world well lost for love,” he was really appealing to the old tradition of the martyr and the ascetic, who lost the world to save his soul. He was not, in any very exact sense of the word, talking sense. He was not uttering purely rational remarks; certainly not remarks that our more rationalistic generation would call rational. Often, when he had done himself particularly well with champagne and old brandy, he would let the cat out of the bag rather badly by calling the blanchisseuse or the artist’s model “his bride in the sight of God.”
Anyhow, he could not make the sort of appeals to deific faith or demoniac jealousy, which constituted the vigorous love poetry of the age of Hugo and Alfred de Musset, without implying an immortal significance in passion, which the modern realists refuse to see in mere appetite. He could not so praise love without also praising loyalty. He might not admit that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Arthur; but he could not write at all without assuming that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Lancelot. The later sex writers would refuse to admit that there is any sacred bond between anybody and anybody else. The truth is that this mystical feeling about the love of man and woman was treated so clumsily that it fell between two stools. When it was really mediæval, it could be preserved for ever in a story like that of Dante and Beatrice. When it was really modern, it simply fell to pieces, into little decaying scraps rather like wriggling worms, the hundred little loves and lusts of the modern sex novel. But the Romantics of the nineteenth century held it up in a sort of indeterminate pre-eminence; a dizzy and toppling idolatry; trying to make it at once as sacred as they thought good and as free as they found convenient. They wanted to eat their wedding-cake and have it. They wanted to make their wild wedding sacred without making it secure. They did put woman upon a pedestal; but they did not look to see if it was a solid pedestal.
Now, oddly enough, it was the same with Liberty as with Love. It was the same with the democratic ideal of political freedom for all. And Democracy is being criticized just now for exactly the same reason that Romance is being criticized just now. It is that all the sense there ever was in either of them rested on a religious idea. The nineteenth century took away the religious idea and left a sense that rapidly turned into nonsense. All men are equal because God loves all equally; and nothing can compare with that equality. But in what other way are men equal? The vague Liberals of the nineteenth century cut away the divine ground from under Democracy, and Democracy was left to stand by itself. In other words, it is left to fall by itself. Jefferson said that men were given equal rights by their Creator. Ingersoll said they had no Creator, but had received equal rights from nowhere. Even in the democratic atmosphere of America, it began to dawn on a great many people that it is very difficult to prove that men ever received the equal rights at all. In short, the Republican theory will turn out to be another form of Romance; and will be classed with the illusion of the too idealistic lover, unless it can be reconnected with the positive beliefs from which it was originally borrowed. The Red Cap will follow the Red Waistcoat into the old clothes’ shop, unless it can be made something more than a fashion, or dipped in that enduring dye that coloured the red roses of St. Dorothy or the red cross of St. George.
Mr. Philip Carr recently published a picturesque and interesting sketch of the French Romantics in the great period of Romanticism. It appeared at an appropriate time—at about the time when we could fairly say that artistic Paris, in that sense, had at last ceased to be gossip and had begun to be history. The admirable “Beachcomber,” in the Daily Express, has often made fun of the fussy and confused “reminiscences” of men who claim to have lived the Bohemian life of the French capital; exulting in an orgy of anarchy and anachronism; and describing how he drank absinthe with Zola and Chateaubriand or shared a garret with Gauguin and Montalembert. But time sets a limit even to anachronism; it would hardly do for the most venerable journalist, writing “Ninety-eight Years in Fleet Street” to claim to have met Milton as well as Keats; and even Mr. Frank Harris did not profess to have been the intimate friend of Swift as well as Carlyle. We are now far enough away from the French Romantics of the nineteenth century to judge them as we should the Pléiade in the sixteenth century. In both cases, of course, a good many English people will entirely misjudge them and absurdly underrate them; many through a cultural, educational or acquired characteristic: a complete ignorance of French; many others by a profound, primitive, natural gift: a complete ignorance of poetry. It would be very easy to make English jokes about the French Romantics; the sort of jokes that might be made about them in Punch. There is even some excuse for a superficial reader, accustomed to such superficial satire, if he gains such a general impression. I mean the impression that the great geniuses of nineteenth-century Paris were all marked by three characteristics: that they all went about in crowds, frequently riotous crowds; that they each of them complained in verse that they were dwelling in a desert of unbearable loneliness; and that each of them had to be (or professed to be), for however short a period, in love with George Sand. But the weakness of all such superior Victorian patronage is that the Romantic often lived a life that was more real, not to say realistic, in its tests and risks and even privations, than the life of the patronizing Victorian. The Victorian humorist would not have liked to starve in a garret because he was a Republican or a Royalist; he would not have liked to face a Paris mob even, when it was out to kill, for a fine point of literary criticism; he certainly would not have liked to be challenged to a duel by all the dreamy, ineffective æsthetes in Paris; and even having a love affair with George Sand, though to some not much more alluring than having a heart-to-heart talk with the rhinoceros at the Zoo, was certainly almost as dangerous. In truth it was the jolly humorous Victorian, of the type of Thackeray or Trollope, who was the Romantic. It was he who lived in a world of his own; in a happy land that was a happy dreamland; in that prosperous and peaceful England that was a day-dream and had its day. The French Romantics made fools of themselves in all sorts of ways, as very clever men always do. But they were much nearer to the taste of certain terrible things: death and desperate faith and the fury of the poor and abstract certitudes and even despair. They were dramatic, and even melodramatic, in their gestures; but, after all, they were not on a stage. They lived through real revolutions, and not unreal reforms; they lived within striking distance of the duellist’s pistol and the rioter’s pike. They followed women or visions perhaps not worth dying for; but some of them might really have died. Because their cries were sometimes childish, people forget that the burnt child dreads the fire only when it is a real fire; and the Victorian nursery always had an efficient fireguard.
The true intellectual interest of Romanticism, now that it has been so completely replaced by Realism, is that everybody has completely forgotten how a very recent rebellion of the young produced the first quite as much as the second. It is amusing to find the young writers of today looking back disdainfully on what they consider old-fashioned “sentiment” or “sentimentalism” or “sensibility” or “putting woman on a pedestal” or “romantic illusions about love”—all apparently under the impression that these are very venerable moral traditions of mankind that no man has ever dared to disturb till now. The truth is that all this sentiment is still a new thing; and only yesterday was the new thing. The romance of drooping love-locks or flowing ringlets, the fainting and the feminine sensibility, the pressed flowers and the pink albums, the Books of Beauty and the Gems of Loveliness—only yesterday, all these things were not only Youth but the Revolt of Youth. Only yesterday all these things were not only the fashion; they were even the rebellion against fashion; in the sense of the rebellion against convention. Only yesterday all these were the freaks of that Freedom by which the rising generation shocked its elders. Only yesterday all these things were Tomorrow.
Anyone who will consider the facts will see that this is no exaggeration. The albums and the keepsakes were inscribed with endless quotations from Byron; because Byron had been a revolutionist. We cannot now realize the wild novelty, nay, crudity, of the young lady who insisted on copying out Byron, instead of copying out Cowper. We cannot feel the fact that she was gate-crashing; that she was going the pace; that she was running around with a pretty hot crowd; but it was the fact. And the moral of it is that nothing grows old so quickly as what is new. The real comment upon the simpering smile of the lady with the ringlets, as revealed reclining with mandolin and bulbul, in the Book of Beauty, is to send her portrait to the most modern of all modern girls, engaged in detaching her mouth from her face by the latest optical illusion of lip-stick, with the old inscription: “Get you to my lady’s chamber; and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.”
More ironic than the grinning skull, more dissolvent than dust and ashes, slower and more certain in its vengeance than mere death, this destiny has decreed that The Young of every generation shall not die, but shall live on as specimens of The Old; and especially as types of the old-fashioned. Each generation of rebels in turn is remembered by the next, not as the pioneers who began the march, or started to break away from the old conventions; but as the old convention from which only the very latest rebels have dared to break away. The moral seems to be that there may be a reward for rebels in heaven, if the Bright Young Things are looking in that direction; but there is precious little reward on earth.
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XXXIII
On Mr. Geoffrey Chaucer
THE challenge of Chaucer is that he is our one mediæval poet, for most moderns; and he flatly contradicts all that they mean by mediæval. Aged and crabbed historians tell them that mediævalism was only filth, fear, gloom, self-torture and torture of others. Even mediævalist æsthetes tell them it was chiefly mystery, solemnity and care for the supernatural to the exclusion of the natural. Now Chaucer is obviously less like this than the poets after the Renaissance and the Reformation. He is obviously more sane even than Shakspere, more liberal than Milton; more tolerant than Pope; more humorous than Wordsworth; more social and at ease with men than Byron or even Shelley. Nay, some have doubted whether he is not still more humane than the very latest humanists; whether his geniality does not exceed the rosy optimism of Aldous Huxley or the ever-bubbling high spirits of T. S. Eliot.
Chaucer was, above all, an artist; and he was one of that fairly large and very happy band of artists who are not troubled with the artistic temperament. Perhaps there was never a less typical poet, as a poet was understood in the Byronic tradition of dark passions and tempestuous raiment. But, indeed, that Byronic generalization was largely founded upon Byron, or rather, on a blunder about Byron. It would be much truer to say that practically every type of human being has been also a poet, and that Byron was a Regency Buck plus poetry. Similarly, Goethe was a German professor plus poetry, and Browning was a rather commercial-looking bourgeois plus poetry, and Heine was a cynical Jew plus poetry, and Scott was a rather acquisitive gentleman farmer plus poetry, and Villon was a pickpocket plus poetry, and Wordsworth was a noodle plus poetry, and Walt Whitman was an American loafer plus poetry—for, in the art of loafing, Weary Willie could never have stood up against Unweary Walt. I have not yet heard of an American dentist or a shop-walker in a large draper’s who is a poet, and I have no doubt that both of these deficiencies will soon be supplied. Anyhow, the general rule is that almost any trade or type of man can be an artist— yes, even an æsthete.
But once or twice there appears in history the artist who is the extreme antithesis of the æsthete. An artist of this kind was Geoffrey Chaucer. He was a man who always made himself useful, and not only ornamental. People trusted him, not only in the moral, but in the more purely practical sense. He was not the sort of poet who would forget to post a letter, or post an unstamped ode to the cuckoo instead, had the penny postage existed in his day. He was not only given many responsible posts, but responsible posts of many kinds. At one time he was sent to negotiate the delicate finances of ransom and peace with a great prince. At another time he was sent to oversee the builders and workmen in the construction of a great public building. It has been conjectured that he had some technical knowledge of architecture, and I think the descriptions of various pagan temples and royal palaces in his poems support the conjecture. It is certain that he knew a good deal about the official precedence and etiquette of the Chamberlain’s Office; he was a witness upon a point of heraldry in an important trial. Though his relations to the Court, during and after the débâcle of Richard II, are covered with some obscurity, it is certain that, for the greater part of his life at least, he performed job after job, of the most quaintly different kinds, to the increasing satisfaction of his employers. He was emphatically, as the vulgar phrase goes, a man of the world.
But through all these tasks the lyric element flowed out of him quite naturally, as a man will whistle or sing while he is potting a shrub or adding up a column of figures. He never seemed to have felt any particular strain or dislocation between the world in which he was a man of the world and that other world of which he was one of the immortals. He had that sort of temper in which there is no antithesis of Sense and Sensibility. He does not seem to have quarrelled with many people, even in that very quarrelsome transition time; and he does not seem to have quarrelled with himself. Being a Christian, he was ready to accuse himself when he was seriously considering the question; but that is something quite different from the sort of constant unconscious friction between different parts of the mind which has marred the happiness of so many artists and poets.
I do not mean merely that the poetry of Chaucer, like the poetry of Dante, was in the higher sense a harmony. I mean that it was in the ordinary human sense a melody. It remained not only unspoilt, but unmixed; uncomplicated by the complexities of living, whether they were actually there or no. It is unfortunate that the word “mood” is almost always used of a sombre or secretive mood; and that we do not convey the idea that a man was in merry mood when we say merely that he was moody. For there was truly a special thing that may be called the Chaucerian mood, and it was essentially merry. There are any number of passages of pathos, and one or two passages of tragedy, but they never make us feel that the mood has really altered, and it seems as if the man speaking is always smiling as he speaks. In other words, the thing which is supremely Chaucerian is the Chaucerian atmosphere, an atmosphere which penetrates through all particular persons and problems; a sort of diffused light which lies on everything, whether tragic or comic, and prevents the tragedy from being hopeless or the comedy from being cruel. No art critic, however artistic, has ever succeeded in describing an atmosphere. The only way to approach it is to compare it with another atmosphere. And this Chaucerian mood is very like the mood in which (before it became merely vulgarized by cant or commercialism) some of the greatest of modern English writers have praised Christmas.
Chaucer was wide enough to be narrow; that is, he could bring a broad experience of life to the enjoyment of local or even accidental things. Now, it is the chief defect of the literature of today that it always talks as if local things could only be limiting, not to say strangling; and that anything like an accident could only be a jar. A Christmas dinner, as described by a modern minor poet, would almost certainly be a study in acute agony: the unendurable dullness of Uncle George, the cacophonous voice of Aunt Adelaide. But Chaucer, who sat down at the table with the Miller and the Pardoner, could have sat down to a Christmas dinner with the heaviest uncle or the shrillest aunt. He might have been amused at them, but he would never have been angered by them, and certainly he would never have insulted them in irritable little poems. And the reason was partly spiritual and partly practical; spiritual because he had, whatever his faults, a scheme of spiritual values in their right order, and knew that Christmas was more important than Uncle George’s anecdotes; and practical because he had seen the great world of human beings, and knew that wherever a man wanders among men, in Flanders or France or Italy, he will find that the world largely consists of Uncle Georges. This imaginative patience is the thing that men want most in the modern Christmas, and if they wish to learn it I recommend them to read Chaucer.
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XXXIV
On Monsters
I SAW in an illustrated paper—which sparkles with scientific news— that a green-blooded fish had been found in the sea; indeed, a creature that was completely green, down to this uncanny ichor in its veins, and very big and venomous at that. Somehow I could not get it out of my head, because the caption suggested a perfect refrain for a Ballade: A green-blooded fish has been found in the sea. It has so wide a critical and philosophical application. I have known so many green-blooded fish on the land, walking about the streets and sitting in the clubs, and especially the committees. So many green-blooded fish have written books and criticisms of books, have taught in academies of learning and founded schools of philosophy, that they have almost made themselves the typical biological product of the present stage of evolution. There is never a debate in the House of Commons, especially about Eugenics or The Compulsory Amputation of Poor People, without several green-blooded fishes standing up on their tails to talk. There is never a petition, or a letter to the Press, urging the transformation of taverns into teashops or local museums, without a whole string of green-blooded fish hanging on to the tail of it, and pretty stinking fish too. But for some reason the burden of this non-existent Ballade ran continually in my head, and somehow turned my thoughts in the direction of poisonous monsters in general; of all those dragons and demi-dragons and devouring creatures which appear in primitive stories as the chief enemies of man. It has been suggested that these legends really refer to some period when prehistoric man had to contend with huge animals that have since died out. And then the thought occurred to me: Suppose the primitive heroes killed them just when they were dying out. I mean, suppose they would have died out, even if the Cave Man had sat comfortably in his Cave and not troubled to kill them.
Suppose Perseus turned the sea-monster into a rock at the very moment when it was well on its way to becoming a fossil. Suppose St. George arrived, not only just before the death of the Princess, but just before the death of the Dragon. Suppose he burst in, rather tactlessly, so to speak, on the deathbed of the dragon, and only finished him off with a lance when the dragon-doctor had done the real work with a lancet. In short, is it possible that the heroes might have saved themselves the trouble of fighting, if they had only felt the pulse or taken the temperature of the expiring foe of mankind? The dragon is always represented with wide-open jaws, darting out a forked and flaming tongue. But perhaps he is only putting his tongue out to be examined by his private physician. Perhaps all the monsters, when they appear in song and story, were in a bad way, physically as well as morally. Now I come to think of it, that might explain the green-blooded fish that was found in the sea. Perhaps he is not a species, but a disease. Perhaps the green-blooded fish was suffering, if not exactly from anæmia, at least from some subtle form of chloræmia pisciana, or whatever this obscure malady will be called when it is discovered. I suppose a fish in the sea could hardly be green with seasickness. And anyhow, there are biological theorists even on land, who have lately begun to look rather fishy.
The fancy might make many variants in the fairy-tales. They always narrate how the cavern of the monster or giant is surrounded by the bones of thousands of victims. We can imagine the hero carefully counting them and making calculations about the stage of indigestion at which any monster must have arrived after such a meal. In the special department of Giants there is a story about Jack the Giant-Killer and a hasty-pudding, which the Giant at least devoured. I do not know what a hasty-pudding is, but I gather that in this case the meal was somewhat hasty. All this could not be good for the health of Giants as a class. And Dickens, who had known several Giants, as they appear in travelling-shows, testifies to their delicate constitutions. But I admit that, while my rambling subconsciousness ran on this ancient theme, I was beginning to think of its modern application. I sometimes wonder whether it is worth while to attack every monster of modern anarchy and absurdity as it appears in the realm of thought, or whether they would kill themselves even if they were not killed. Sometimes they seem to kill themselves almost too fast to be killed. Some I can remember making war on for months who have now been dead for years. I can remember giants of blasphemy or barbaric philosophy; giants so gigantic that they seemed not only to darken the earth, but block out the heavens. They defied the world like Goliath, and all were warned against accepting the challenge, in sight of all the bones about their caverns. But now it is their own bones that are scattered, and even a rag-and-bone man will hardly stoop to pick them up.
For instance, there was Haeckel and the hard concrete Materialism of his day. For years on end I filled my life with fighting Mr. Blatchford and others about it, and pointing out the fallacies, not to say falsehoods, of Haeckel. And where is he now? Mr. Blatchford has forgotten all about Haeckel, and so has everybody else. The new men of science have completely repudiated him. But I remember when every new man of science, and especially of the new science of sociology or eugenics (a green-blooded fish has been found in the sea), accepted him as the founder of a new religion. And when Mr. Belloc wrote the envoi of another Ballade—
Prince, if you meet upon a bus A man who makes a great display Of Dr. Haeckel, argue thus, The wind has blown them all away—
it really sounded like an audacity or a daring prophecy. Whereas now it sounds like a truism, because it has come true.
Then there was Lombroso, and all the quackery that was called Criminology. I can remember when the name of Lombroso was like the name of Newton or of Faraday; but I do not often see it mentioned now, least of all among men of science. It is to the enduring glory of Mr. H. G. Wells that even in those days, though on the materialist side in many matters, he protested against the premature dogmatism of the prigs who talked about “the criminal skull” or “the criminal ear,” and who called the young and earnest to stamp out hereditary criminal tendencies by selection or segregation (a green-blooded fish has been found in the sea). Was it worth while to argue against the great Science of Criminology in the later nineteenth century? The dragon would have died a natural death, if anything about him could be natural.
I could give any number of other cases; of other controversies with things I thought dominant which were in fact dying; which are in fact dead. There was the proposal that people too poor to bring actions for libel should be put on a Black List as blackguards who were too fond of beer (a green-blooded fish has been found in the sea); there was the absurd theory that being too fond of beer is hereditary, and the proposal (moved by the fish) that the beer-drinker should be forbidden children. There was the whole assumption that anything done by a State Department would be perfect and that Supervisors are Supermen. That was once our nightmare; but flogging it was flogging a dead horse, or at least a dying horse, and I rather repent of my inhumanity.
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XXXV
On Love
THERE used to be, and possibly is, a mysterious institution for young ladies known as a finishing-school. The chief case against it was that, in certain instances, it meant finishing an education without ever beginning it. In any case, this is what is the matter with a great many modern institutions, and with none more than those delivering judgment on the history of feminine education and generally of feminine affairs. The curse of nearly all such judgments is the journalistic curse of having heard the latest news; that is, of having heard the end of the story without having even heard of the beginning. We talk of people not knowing the A B C of a subject, but the trouble with these people is that they do know the X Y Z of a subject without knowing the A B C.
This morning I read an article in a very serious magazine in which the writer quoted the remark of Byron that a certain sort of romantic love “is woman’s whole existence.” The writer then said that the first people who ever challenged this view were the revolutionary Suffragettes at the end of the nineteenth century. The truth is that the first people who ever maintained this view were the revolutionary Romantics at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The habit of giving to romantic love this extravagant and exclusive importance in human life was itself an entirely modern and revolutionary thing, and dates from the romantic movement commonly traced to Rousseau, but I think much more truly to be traced to the influence of the German sentimentalists. Most people who curse Rousseau have never read Rousseau, or have only read the Confessions and not the Contrat Social. The critics read the Confessions, if only to condemn them; because the critics themselves are modern romantics and sentimentalists; men who like Confessions and dislike Contracts. The critics hate or avoid the Contrat Social, not because it is sloppy and sentimental (for it is not), but because it is hard and clear and lucid and logical. Rousseau had his emotional weaknesses as an individual, like other individuals, but he was not an eighteenth-century philosopher for nothing. What the moderns dislike about him is not the silliness of his confessions, but the solidity of his convictions, and the fact that, like the old theologians, he could hold general ideas in a hard-and-fast fashion. When it comes to defining his fundamentals, Rousseau is as definite as Calvin. They were both ruthless theorists from Geneva, though one preached the theory of pessimism and the other the theory of optimism. I am not maintaining that I agree with either, but Rousseau would be as useful as Calvin, in teaching some of his critics how to criticize.
But Rousseau is a parenthesis. Wherever the real Romantic Movement came from, whether from the German forests or the Genevan lake, it was a recent and revolutionary business as compared with history as a whole. But it is obvious that the ordinary modern critic is entirely ignorant of history as a whole. He knows that his mother read Tennyson and his grandmother read Byron. Beyond that, he can imagine nothing whatever; he supposes that his great-great-grandmothers and their great-great-great-grandmothers had gone on reading Byron from the beginning of the world. He imagines that Byron, who was a disinherited and disreputable rebel to the last, has been an established and conventional authority from the first. He therefore supposes that all women, in all ages, would have accepted the prehistoric Byronic commandment: that the Byronic sort of romantic passion was the sole concern of their lives. Yet it is certain that women have had a great many other concerns, and have been attached to a great many other convictions. They have been priestesses, prophetesses, empresses, queens, abbesses, mothers, great housewives, great letter-writers, lunatics founding sects, blue-stockings keeping salons, and all sorts of things. If you had said to Deborah the mother in Israel, or Hypatia the Platonist of Alexandria, or Catherine of Siena, or Joan of Arc, or Isabella of Spain, or Maria Theresa of Austria, or even to Hannah More or Joanna Southcott, that Byronic love was “woman’s whole existence,” they would all have been very indignant and most of them flown into a towering passion. They would have asked in various ways whether there was no such thing as honour, no such thing as duty, no such thing as glory, no such thing as great studies or great enterprises, no such thing as normal functions and necessary labours; incidentally, we may add, no such thing as babies. They differed a great deal in their type of vocation and even in their theory of virtue, but they all had some theory of virtue that went a little further than that. Up to a particular moment in the eighteenth century, practically every thinking person would have accepted the colossal common sense expressed by a French poet of the seventeenth century: “L’amour est un plaisir; l’honneur est un devoir.”
Then came the extreme emphasis on romance among the Victorians; for the Victorians were not notable for their emphasis on virtue, but for their emphasis on romance. But Queen Victoria lived so long, and the Victorian Age was such an unconscionably long time dying, that by the time Mr. Bernard Shaw and others began what they called a realistic revolt against romance, the sentimental German movement seemed to be not only as old as Victoria, but as old as Boadicea. It is highly typical, for instance, that Mr. Bernard Shaw, in one of his earliest criticisms, complained of the convention according to which anybody was supposed to have “penetrated into the Holy of Holies” so long as he was content to say that “Love is Enough.” But, as a matter of fact, the very phrase “Love is Enough” did not come to him from any conventional or classical authority; not even from any conventional or conservative Victorian. It came from a book by a Socialist and Revolutionist like himself; from a book recently published by William Morris, who held then the exact position that Mr. Shaw himself holds now: the position of the Grand Old Man of Socialism.
Of course, the anti-romantic movement led by Shaw, like the romantic movement led by Byron, had gone forward blindly and blundered in every sort of way. The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything; whether it be Rousseau breaking up kingdoms in the name of reason, or Byron breaking up families in the name of romance, or Shaw breaking up romances in the name of frankness and the formula of Ibsen. I myself value very highly the great nineteenth-century illumination of romantic love, just as I value the great eighteenth-century ideal of right reason and human dignity, or the seventeenth-century intensity, or the sixteenth-century expansion, or the divine logic and dedicated valour of the Middle Ages. I do not see why any of these cultural conquests should be lost or despised, or why it is necessary for every fashion to wash away all that is best in every other. It may be possible that one good custom would corrupt the world, but I never could see why the second good custom should deny that the first good custom was good. As it is, those who have no notion except that of breaking away from romance are being visibly punished by breaking away from reason. Every new realistic novel serves to show that realism, when entirely emptied of romance, becomes utterly unreal. For romance was only the name given to a love of life which was something much larger than a life of love, in the Byronic sense. And anything from which it has passed is instantly corrupt and crawling with worms of death.
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XXXVI
On Fictional Conventions
IT is now much discussed among the learned whether art should abolish morality by calling it convention. It might well be discussed among the wise whether art should even abolish convention. But what seems very queer to me is this: that modern art has so often abolished morality without abolishing convention. I mean that very tame and timid conventions, the remains of rather fragile and artificial styles of writing, do still manage to run side by side with complete licence or laxity about much more important things. It seems as if people could get rid of the commandments, but not of the conventions. I will give only one small example, which has struck me again and again in reading the most modern novels.
In those modern novels there are types of women, and descriptions of women, which might have brought a blush to the cheek of Petronius or been considered a little too coarse for the refinement of Rabelais. But in those descriptions there are still certain conventions, really unreal conventions, exactly as they were in the Victorian works of Miss Porter or Miss Procter. Again and again, the modern reader may read a sentence like this: “Peter had already noticed a smiling, blue-eyed girl, with a bright, shingled head, slip in among the new-comers, suspected of being gate-crashers, who thronged the door.” Or the sentence may run: “Slim, lithe, and brown-eyed, with a delicate and fiery tan, Joan stood poised on the distant rock, about to dive.” There are a hundred other examples; but all habitually assume that the first thing that anybody notices about a woman is the colour of her eyes. Now, it is perfectly possible to be on tolerably intimate terms with a person for a long time and yet to be quite unable to recall suddenly the colour of his or her eyes. And certainly nobody ever saw the colour of a stranger’s eyes all the way across a ball-room in Mayfair, a big studio in Chelsea, or the wide sands of the Lido. One would suppose that a girl’s blue eyes were enormously big blue lanterns, and shone afar off like the green and red lanterns of a railway signal. That one little sentimental trick or tradition makes hundreds of literary descriptions of human beings ring quite false, and the most lavish and generous supply of general moral barbarism and baseness cannot wholly make up the loss.
What a man sees first about a woman, or anybody else, is the type; whether it is, for instance, the type that flows in long lines, with long features, the type that an artist would draw in profile; or whether it has the face that is most itself when seen fully in front, flat against a background; especially the sort of square and open face, the face that is generally that of a fighter, and, however beautiful it may be, has always a touch of the monkey. A man can distinguish those two types from each other across the largest hall or the widest sands, almost as easily as he could distinguish a horse from a cow or a stag. He might distinguish a hundred things about the rank or the culture or even the character; he could make inferences from the poise and the walk and the gesture. He could do it all at a distance, at which it would be as impossible to see blue eyes in the girl’s head as to see blue stones in the girl’s engagement ring. Yet I have seen that little artificiality of description a hundred times in a day’s reading, in turning over the tales even of able and ambitious modern novelists. It is a small matter; indeed, it is the point that it is a small matter; it is too small to be seen, and yet it is always reported. But it happens to illustrate a curious sort of concealed convention that runs underneath much modern writing that considers itself most unconventional. In more showy things the realists remember to be shameless; but in these little things they do not remember to be realistic.
I knew a lady, with a very hearty sense of humour, whose business it happened to be to write frankly conventional romances for the old frankly conventional Press, the Press that provided healthy but somewhat sentimental serials and novelettes. She got great fun out of her functions; and she told me once that she had written a long serial romance, with a stately and tragic heroine, only to be told at the end that the public, or at least the publishers, insisted on a petite and sparkling heroine. With a noble calm, disdaining to alter a single incident in the narrative, she merely went through the whole manuscript, altering black eyes to blue eyes. When she came to the line, “He gazed into Amanda’s dark, unfathomable eyes,” she merely crossed out the adjectives and wrote “blue and sparkling” on the top. Of course, it was not all a matter of eyes; she had to make some modification about dress and demeanour. Where she had written “Amanda swept across the lawn, the alteration of one word made it “Amanda tripped across the lawn.” That, by the way, is another of the old conventions that linger even in the new unconventionality. Girls still sometimes trip in the grimmest realistic studies. Novelists still sometimes trip over that antiquated booby trap. I never saw anybody trip, except somebody who tripped over a hassock and fell on his nose, to the satiric enlivenment of the human race. Anyhow, Amanda’s large and shady hat grew less large and shady, and was turned up with a rose or something; her raiment grew less sweeping and severe; but nothing else needed any alteration. And it sometimes seems to me that many who write in the most revolutionary fashion write quite as much according to a revolutionary formula. They merely go through their own story and put in the terms which are supposed to make the heroine chic or distinguished, according to the momentary modern conventions of unconventionality. The heroine has no more real individuality, amid all the fuss of individualism, than the adaptable Amanda whose eyes turned so easily from black to blue.
Perhaps what we call realistic descriptions are bound to be conventional because they are bound to be fashionable. They are bound to emphasize exactly the points which one particular period thinks important; which will be exactly the points which the next period will think unimportant. Hence we have the paradox that the noblest compliments to women have not been direct descriptions, but indirect descriptions. The direct compliment would deal with all the details that pass; the indirect compliment with the impression which does not pass. Archæologists have worked out a complete theory of the costume of Helen of Troy, which seems to have consisted of a straw sun-bonnet, a Zouave jacket, and high-heeled shoes. If Homer had written a realistic description, it would have seemed to us a rather vulgar description. The dress of the fourteenth century was more dignified, but not more natural; and if Dante had described Beatrice in the exact garb she wore it might have seemed to us at once extravagant and stiff. But ages shall pass and civilizations shall perish, and time shall never turn the keen edge of that great indirect compliment, that older and wiser fashion of describing the effect and not the external instruments. As when Dante, seeing his lady upon the height, felt only like the legendary monster whom the taste of a strange food had turned into a god. Or Homer was content to let us listen to the grumbling of the Trojans against the cause of the Trojan War, and then to that great sudden silence that fell upon them, full of light and understanding, when Helen came forth upon the wall.
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XXXVII
On Sweepstakes and Gambling
The debate about legalizing Sweepstakes dies slowly away, like the galloping echoes of the Derby; and even where it continues, it is rather typical of the time and country that it is more concerned with law than with logic. It is clear that in practice the nation has largely abandoned the Puritan sentiment that was behind some of its older laws; but it has been rather a change of sentiment than a change of statement. Few people really remember what was the actual ethical theory that gave to all betting the bad name of gambling. But fewer still, I fancy, could state their own new ethical theory in favour of betting, or distinguish it from the gambling that is really bad. Even when we were Puritans we were not really precisians. In other words, England, even when it was strict in discipline, was not really strict in doctrine. Certainly, at least, it was not really strict in definition. Consequently, I do not really know what the moral theory of the anti-betting men was; and I do not believe they knew themselves. My own morality, which is not my own, but that of the ancient moral culture of Christendom, is of course simple enough. I have a right to bet what I have a right to lose. If I choose to sit on the wild seashore and occupy my whole holiday in throwing stones into the sea, I am also entitled, if I choose, to vary the monotony by throwing into the sea the large moon-stone tie-pin which is the ornament of my neckties and the admiration of my neighbours, or to hurl into the same sea-waves the heavy cairn-gorm brooch bequeathed by my Aunt Jemima; always supposing I can do the latter without unjustly lacerating Aunt Jemima’s feelings, here or in heaven. I have as much right to throw the more expensive stones into the sea as to throw the cheaper ones; so long as it is only at my own expense and not something beyond my lawful expenditure; which would probably turn out to be at somebody else’s expense. So far as that goes, I am perfectly justified in throwing away my celebrated tie-pin or my aunt’s brooch for the mere momentary pleasure of one sublime gesture; for the satisfaction of feeling like Polycrates or the great Doge of Venice wedding the sea. It is a mere luxury to chuck them, as it is a mere luxury to cherish them; I only keep them for a lark, and I only lose them for a lark. If a man is justified in throwing a pearl like a pebble into the sea at Margate, knowing it will not return, he is justified in throwing it on the table at Monte Carlo or putting it on a horse at Ascot: with a chance that it may return. But he is not justified, for instance, in throwing the baby into the sea, though many at Margate have felt tempted to do so. Nor is he justified in risking the baby’s milk or the money for the baby’s clothes at Ascot or Monte Carlo; and nobody will deny that many have done this, and that much evil has come of it. But the principle is at least clear, and presents no problem to those who hold it.
I have sometimes thought that the philosophy of betting bears some resemblance to something else, which may be called the philosophy of guessing. There is in the literary or intellectual world an operation which is somewhat similar to that of honest betting in the sporting world. It occurs especially in the case of English literature; because in England it so often happens that the author is the amateur. It often happens, also, that the amateur can give valuable hints to the professional. But those hints ought always to be given in a certain light and sporting spirit, not unlike the guesses of the better sort of gambler. The outsider ought not to give the whole weight of his word or reputation to suggestions he could not substantiate in all their details. If he does, he tends to become the crank or even the quack, the awful and appalling sort of amateur who sits down to prove to you that Mary Queen of Scots wrote Shakspere or that the name of Lord Kitchener is inscribed in the measurements of the Great Pyramid. But I have often thought there might be a place for intelligent guesswork which admits that it is guesswork. There might even be a place for a fanciful theory, if it was avowedly fanciful. I confess I have suffered many things from the sort of man who has a theory that Bacon wrote Shakspere, when he does really believe it. But I had great fun in working out a theory that Shakspere wrote Bacon, because I did not in the least believe it. In the course of turning it into a sketch, which was no more than a skit, I found myself discovering much more than I had known before of the real truth about the Elizabethan and Jacobean epoch. In the same way, many a man has really put hard cash in his pocket at Newmarket, or the Grand National from a bet that he made merely as a joke; and my contention is that he deserved his luck, so long as he really made it as a joke. In the case of history and similar sciences, it might be possible to draw up a rich and flattering analogy to the Turf. The dons of Oxford and Cambridge, the professors and professional historians, who are often, indeed, bookmakers, may be compared to bookies. The dream or fancy thrown out by the mere literary amateur may be compared to the dark horse in the very loose box of his light and irresponsible brain. But the dark horse always gives him a good run for his money. And it is justified, so long as it does not run away with the whole of his money; that is, with the whole of his serious reputation and peace of mind. I think there ought to be a special class of spirited and fanciful guesses; potshots at the possibilities of history; suggestions that should only suggest, but might be really suggestive. They would form a third type of literature, between the solemn stolidity of the academies and the solemn lunacy of cranks.
For instance, I once had a notion of writing an essay, making a suggestion about King Arthur. Now I am not in the least qualified to maintain an entirely serious and solid thesis about King Arthur. A man would really have to be an exceptional scholar and specialist, in about five different departments, before he could deal in that fashion with King Arthur. He would have to know all about Celtic legend and literature, Welsh and Cornish and all the rest; he would have to have a thorough grasp of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, its military maps and methods; he would have to be steeped in French chivalry and romance to separate the mediæval from the older elements; he would have to understand the real Christian and Catholic origins, and date and distinguish between the Glaston Thorn and the Grail; he would have to be a nailer at strategy and a whale at place-names. I am none of these things, and yet I had quite a nice little notion about King Arthur. It would afford a pleasant evening’s amusement for a party of dons, pulling it to pieces. And, for all I know, something might come out of it; even out of its refutation. I will not describe the theory here beyond saying that it began with the curious fact, that the first three or four chroniclers who mention King Arthur do not even call him King Arthur. But I will reserve it for some dull and rainy afternoon, in some quiet isolated country house, where there are dons who want something to play with.
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XXXVIII
On Making Good—I
THE other day I was stricken by a great grief; I will not go so far as to say that I burst into tears at the breakfast table, but I believe I must have uttered a deep and hollow groan, to the surprise and alarm of my family. For I found that no less a person than the Dean of St. Paul’s had used the now common phrase about people “making good.” He said, in support of his recognized preference for the produce of the super-villas over that of the slums, that there is “nothing snobbish” in recognizing the superiority of “those who have made good” over the wastrels and misfits, whom he seems to conceive as constituting the whole population of the poorer quarters of the modern city. Talking about “making good” seems to me much worse than snobbish, for it is not even English. And if, as satirists have said, the English have some tendency to be snobs, they might at least be content to be English snobs. Now, this is very sad and strange; hence my outburst of emotion at the breakfast table. For, in the ordinary way, Dean Inge writes most beautiful English; sometimes really splendid English. He writes the sort of strong English that is founded on strong Latin, not the more modern sort that is in theory Nordic and in practice Yankee—or sometimes even Cockney. This again is curious, for in a way his practice is better than his precept; and it does not so much matter if he is Nordic in his theory of history, since he is entirely Mediterranean in his practice of scholarship. He is always cursing the Latin culture, and no man’s culture is more entirely Latin.
But I am not dealing here with the many matters on which I differ from the Dean, or even those on which the Dean differs from himself. I will not pause here to attempt to dispel that extraordinary nightmare that appears to brood upon his brain; the general notion that all the inhabitants of West Ham or Hoxton are hunch-backs, homicidal maniacs, or hereditary cripples, every man born with one leg and one eye. I will not stop to explain that the Old Kent Road is not exclusively inhabited by wealthy men who have wasted their fortunes and become “wastrels,” and that if poor men, as well as rich men, may sometimes be “misfits,” it is the business of a philosopher to criticize not only them, but the framework in which they were expected to fit. But all this is an old argument, and my present concern with the Dean is not to express a difference from his opinions, but rather a tender solicitude for his style. I write not in a spirit of antagonism, but of admiration; of admiration tinged with alarm. By all means let him defend, in his own brilliant and lucid fashion, what he calls the upper middle class. Let him indulge in the most spirited, sparkling, and daring paradoxes about these ladies and gentlemen. Let him say that they do good, that they are good; but not, 0 not, in the name of our noble tongue and heritage, that they make good!
I know not where that man hides and cowers, probably among the millions who had fled to the criminal dens and lairs of the United States, who actually originated the phrase about “making good.” If I knew who he was, I would write a life of him; having first killed him, of course, to make the biography complete. He must have been rather a great man in his own perverted and repulsive fashion, for he managed to sum up the supreme essential falsehood of a whole century and a whole civilization in one exactly appropriate phrase, a phrase that is all the more appropriate because it is idiotic. He must be rather like one of the great poisoners, for indeed he has poisoned the whole modern mind. He must be much more than one of the great conspirators, for, as Mr. Wells would say, it is an entirely open conspiracy. He has managed to put all the current contemporary philosophies into one phrase that means nothing. Everybody whose instincts are on the side of such sophistry instantly seizes on it, because of its ambiguity. With one single twist of bad grammar or bad logic, it tangles up together the two things that have been in sharp contrast and contradiction in every decent religion or moral system in history— the idea of moral greatness and the idea of mere material success. And yet making good is not even making sense. It will not really serve to make a sentence, let alone a good sentence or a true sentence.
Thus we can say of one of these abject beings who happen to live in Hoxton or the Harrow Road that he makes good beer-barrels; that he makes good drain-pipes; that he makes good penny-whistles or good pork-pies; but not that he makes good. It does not make sense; it does not make a sentence. And this ambiguous phrase about making good was invented because it was ambiguous; it was invented by the man who did not make pies or pipes or barrels or anything in the East End, but only scooped the profit on other men’s work and went off with it to live in the West End. That is all that is meant by making good. It did not matter so much so long as people refrained from describing it as making good; so long as they were content to describe it as making money. Considered merely as one of the mild forms of rascality very common among human beings, it might really be described as mild or even as human. But by the fatal and blasting hypocrisy of this one American catchword, it was transformed from a matter of unmoral adventure to a matter of thoroughly immoral morality. The phrase “making good,” merely because it contains the word “good,” always carries some shadowy suggestion that the man who has merely done well for himself must also have really done well; done well as in the old creeds and codes of morals; done well in the sight of God and humanity. And that is not merely immorality, it is blasphemy; for it is practically saying that the selfish man is the saint, and that Judas with the bag is greater than Jesus with the cross.
Meanwhile, nothing but this fog of a phrase, like a real London fog choking the streets round St. Paul’s Cathedral, could have so completely hidden the facts of the modern social situation from the Dean of St. Paul’s. If making good meant making good things, pipes or barrels or what not, it would be obvious that people go on doing it, generation after generation, as much in the lower class as in his favourite upper middle class. I wonder how often these sages of the upper middle class stop to think what London would be like, if all the lower classes were really such fools as they suppose. What would London in a fog be like, for instance, if enormous numbers of cabmen and carmen, and men controlling traffic, were most of them drunken or incompetent? The fact is that the wastrels and the misfits, or in other words the working classes, are making good all the time. They are making good day and night; they are making good from minute to minute; or none of us would get to the end of an hour’s journey. The Dean is quite entitled to praise the sort of clerical or academic family that he himself comes of; to note the virtues they really possess; and doubtless there are virtues which are easier for such a clergyman than for such a cabman. But it is very far from being self-evident that every clergyman is more successful with his sermon than any cabman with his service. Both the clergyman and the cabman may be good men; but the more they are really good men, the less they will be attracted by the ideal of making good.
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XXXIX
On Making Good—II
A VERY eminent and distinguished critic has done me the honour to criticize, in a private letter, the remarks I made recently in disparagement of the phrase “making good.” He agrees with me, or at least he disagrees with Dean Inge, in so far as to admit that the Dean’s controversial use of the term was a sophistry. We should not differ very much about the social views involved. But about the verbal and grammatical matter my correspondent does not agree, and he is prepared to maintain that the phrase “making good” can be defended as a form of English idiom. He says, very truly, that it is possible to use it in a much more natural and ordinary way than it is used in the particular argument of the Dean of St. Paul’s. He says that the ordinary honest plumber, of whom I spoke, might be said to have made good in carrying out a small job or contract, and that there would be nothing odd about the phrase. It is possible, of course, that the Dean would decline to accept the arbitration of the plumber, as much as I should decline to accept the arbitration of the Dean. But the point seems to me worth a word or two of further elucidation and explanation.
First, upon the primary point, I am disposed to stand firm; I mean the point of the logic of grammar. For I am, I confess, so degenerate a Latin type of mind that I think there ought to be some logic in grammar. And it seems to me a simple fact that “to make” is a transitive verb, and must have an object or accusative. We can make a plumber good, or make a Dean good, or even make a poor bewildered and overwrought journalist, writing in a weekly illustrated paper, good; but we cannot make good. If it is an allowable idiom, it must be an exception and not a rule; and it must be an exception by some exceptional process, such as that of depending upon words that are “understood.” I know that this practice does exist; nor can the most logical Latin wholly condemn it, for it exists even in the logical Latin language. There is a form, which I remember learning laboriously in the Latin grammar as a boy, by which some such word as officium, for instance, could be understood. It is allowable to say in Latin: “It is of a good man to worship the gods,” or “It is of a good father to feed his children.” Here certainly there is some word, such as “part” or “duty,” left to be understood.
But the worst of these words that are understood is that they are not understood. Even in face of the few Latin precedents I rather doubt whether it is wise to follow such precedents, and certainly whether it is wise to create new precedents. But it is particularly undesirable at the present day, at a period in which things are emphatically not understood; a period in which they are, beyond all previous precedent, misunderstood. For men do not now agree, even as much as the Romans did, about the relations of a good man to the gods or the relation of a father to the children. At the best, there is some ambiguity in saying: “It is of a good man to go to church.” For one man will read it in the form “It is the duty of a good man to go to church.” Another may read it, in a cynical spirit, in the form “It is the interest of a good man to go to church.” A third will read it in the form “It is the infernal bore inflicted on a good man to go to church.” Now, that ambiguity did not so often happen in older and simpler social systems. There is less of that ambiguity in the Latin phrase. But there is nothing but ambiguity in the modern English phrase. There is only blank, unadulterated ambiguity in that English phrase— if you can call it an English phrase. And that is the root of my unrepentant revolt against it.
I mean that we may forgive the plumber (a form of Christian charity which many seem to find difficult) when he says that, in some small job, he has made good. But we only forgive him because we think that he, being poor and honest, really means “I have made good my word” or “I have made good my compact.” But it is still true that a less honest plumber, and possibly a richer plumber, might mean by the phrase: “I have made good my intention to swindle this old fool,” or “I have made good money out of this business, and much more than I had any right to receive.”
Now, that is the moral ambiguity that I complain of, to start with, in the very nature of the phrase. But, in its actual modern use in any ordinary newspapers or novels, it goes far beyond ambiguity and becomes anarchy. It is bad policy, at the best, to allow a word to be understood; because it is first of all misunderstood, and afterwards mistaken or betrayed or supplanted by some baser word in the minds of baser people. Even if the man did originally mean: “I have made good my word,” he will be unwise to leave out the word. It will be better, in every sense, if he keeps his word. A man’s word is only too easy to forget. And, after a time, some meaner notion, such as making good his plan or plot or conspiracy, will have crept into the vacuum of that silence. But in the vulgar use of the phrase, in the modern world at this moment, there is not the remotest notion of anything so honest. Those who say that Hiram Q. Hogswash made good in Wall Street never did mean, and never were even supposed to mean, that he had made good any word or any contract or any honest purpose of any sort. Saying that Hiram made good simply means that Hiram made money, and never means anything else. Now, Hiram is not necessarily to be blamed for making money; but neither certainly is he to be praised for it. And this twisted and stunted form of words was invented so that he might be praised for it. By dragging in the word “good” where it is neither good grammar nor good ethics, a falsification of moral standards is created, tending to suggest that there is some connexion between making money and being good. So that, while we may invoke the ancient Roman to excuse the primary habit of leaving out logically necessary words, and while we may invoke the modern plumber to excuse the simpler sort of language about making good a job or a contract, we shall still lament over the larger and more desolating calamities that the Roman and the plumber, between them, have let loose upon the modern world. We shall recognize that this piece of phraseology is now, in fact, identified with a philosophy which teaches snobbish self-interest as a sort of ideal. If it is permissible to use a phrase like having made good, it is permissible to say that this particular phrase has most unmistakably made bad.
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XL
On Eyebrows
I DO not follow the fashions; I know little of that new wild world, where women can be wholly natural by constructing masks of grease-paint, or prove their freedom by strictly following the mode. I become conscious, or half-conscious, of some change in dress or deportment when it has already become general. In this manner, for instance, it was lately borne in upon me that another change has taken place in the human countenance.
It is already a commonplace, I suppose, that the ideal and immortal Lover, as conceived by Shakspere, “sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow,” must now go away and sigh about something else. His mistress has no eyebrows; and it might be inferred that he would produce no ballads. Anyhow, it suggests a sort of metaphysical duel between the Lover and the Poet, rather attractive to the metaphysical poets of that period. Would the balladist still cling to his ballad, pursuing the abstract and archetypal image of an Eyebrow, even when it was entirely detached from a face? Would he prefer the lady’s eyebrow to the lady, leaving the rest of the lady behind like so much lumber, and pursuing only that peculiar vision of vanished hair? Or would he make the supreme sacrifice of tearing up the ballad and taking up with the lady, however strangely disfigured, resolving henceforward to write ballads only about her nose, her ears, or some portion of her which it seemed improbable that she would be in any immediate hurry to cut off? Even about those, of course, he could never be quite safe, if amputation were really the fashion.
In fact, touching that famous phrase, I have often wondered why modern poets do not more often amuse themselves by reproducing the imaginary Ballad to an Eyebrow. Shakspere is full of hints that could be used as the basis of all sorts of games and experiments; Browning accepted such a challenge in expanding the suggestive line of “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came”; and my own father, who was a man of many crafts and hobbies he had no ambition to exploit, made a table ornament modelled in every detail on the Three Caskets of Portia. Surely some of us might have a shot at a really Elizabethan address to the supercilious feature. Surely any modern writer, after sighing like a furnace for a few minutes, might be able to attempt something appropriate in the sixteenth-century manner:
As seven-dyed Iris doth o’erarch the spheres, Love made that bridge that doth o’erarch thine eyne Bright as that bonded bow enskied; a sign Against the crystal Deluge of thy tears As line on line, so brow to brow appears …
At this point the poet looks up at the lady’s eyebrow and finds that it disappears. The pen drops from his fingers, and this immortal fragment (if I may so modestly describe it) remains for ever fragmentary. Shakspere, especially the Shakspere of the Sonnets, knew more than most people about the law of change and dissolution spread over all earthly things, even those that seem the most natural:
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How with this rage shall Beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower.
I quote from memory. Anyhow, even this argument does not force us to a premature plucking of the flower or plucking out of the eyebrow. But, in spite of Shakspere’s somewhat excessive preoccupation, at one period, with the images of mutability and mortality, I very gravely doubt whether he ever did expect that sonnets or ballads to eyes, eyebrows, ears, noses, and the rest would ever become impossible by a general obliteration of these features. But what is stranger still, and what would have struck Shakspere as very strange indeed, is the fact that this negative and destructive operation should take place in a society devoted to pleasure, and in an age commonly supposed to be even more pagan than his own.
For the real moral is rather interesting. I challenge anybody to deny that this custom, if it had not been adopted as hedonism, would have been denounced as hideous asceticism. Suppose people had been told twenty years ago, say in the great Suffrage period, that in some ancient societies women were made to shave off their eyebrows after marriage. Would it not have been instantly classed with the cruel disfigurements imposed by masculine jealousy, as in the Oriental wives who are made to black their teeth after marriage? Suppose that some Puritan fanatic had indignantly declared that nuns were made to shave their eyebrows. Should we ever have heard the last of the unnatural defacement of the human face at the command of superstition? Would not everybody have quite instinctively connected it with Fasts and Flagellants? Would it ever have occurred to anybody to connect it with fashion and pleasure? If anybody had told the Suffragette that the women in the harem liked having their hair pulled out an inch above their eyeballs, how the Suffragette would have yelled with derision of the cowardly masculine excuse! If anybody had told the late Mr. Kensit that a fashion of going bald above the eyes was started merely for fun among the nuns and novices themselves, how he would have snorted with incredulity! Yet the fashion has, to all appearance, been started merely for fun among the ladies themselves; and it may be presumed that they like it. I do not particularly care whether they have no eyebrows or three eyebrows, or green or triangular eyebrows, in those select circles where such things presumably start. But there is a certain intellectual interest in the way in which they seem nowadays, in so many cases, to start in the opposite direction from what one would normally call the pursuit of pleasure and beauty.
In short, the only real interest of such a trifle is that which connects it with some of the serious arts and decorative schools of our day. It is, I suppose, an unconscious expression, parallel to many other such expressions, of an artistic movement towards something that is more or less severe and harsh and even dehumanized. It is part of a tendency to turn people into patterns rather than into pictures. As a reaction against the deliquescent sentimentalism that was the end of the old humanitarian sentiment, it is comprehensible enough: but it is comprehensible rather than commendable.
Anyhow, one thing is certain; that, though many periods in the past have a certain grim and grandiose solemnity, through the hardness of externals or the mathematical severity of lines, these periods always appear to us to be oppressive and inhuman. So that the age of the Bright Young Things may yet have to look forward to its own appearance in history, as a type of tyranny and slavery and stiff as the mummies of the dead.
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XLI
On Eating and Sleeping
SOME time or other, I think, I will write a really thoughtful and educational article about Bed or Breakfast or Baths or Breathing, or some of those simple things, or things that seem simple to simple people. And it shall be written in the exact and peculiar style of a modern article on Marriage or the Family or Patriotism or Religion. I have read such multitudes of these modern articles, especially leading articles and articles in the lighter style of popular science; there are so many of them, and they are all so exactly alike, that I believe I could reproduce the manner pretty correctly and the type of argument, in so far as there is one. We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that I have selected the subject of “Food: Human Habit of Consuming.” In which case I should be entirely safe, and even successful, if I wrote something like this:
“The progress of enlightenment, it must be admitted, tends to rob us of some of the emotional consolations which were possible to our ancestors in simpler times. Thinking men can no longer accept the ancient creeds and ecclesiastical dogmas which taught them that the virtues of an enemy whom they had eaten passed into their own bodies; the belief lingers in various forms in the common practice of eating beef and mutton, in the hope of thus absorbing the energy of the bull and the innocence of the sheep. And the modern Englishman, eating eggs and bacon at breakfast, hardly guesses that his real motive for doing so is a desire to partake mystically of the higher virtues of the pig or the bolder qualities of the chicken. It is not to be expected that these habits, resting as they do on such quaint survivals of savage superstition, should long survive the myths out of which they came; and the frequent appearance of Fasting Men at the World’s Fair, in Barnum’s Show, and other arenas of scientific experiment, is enough to show that science is again sending forth her pioneers to show humanity the better way. So long as the mediæval Church could impose her Feasts upon a faithful and obedient populace, the half-barbaric habit of having meals seemed almost to be a natural part of social life. There are many traces of the once-powerful tradition that bringing men together in love-feasts, or banquets of reconciliation, had a more or less magical effect of making them more friendly and more at peace with each other. And it may be that in ruder times even food itself was often useful for this psychological purpose, and was perhaps the only instrument that ignorant and primitive peoples could employ. Since the foundation of the League of Nations, men have learned the lesson that Peace Conferences can be successfully held without any of the old ceremonial gestures of eating or drinking, and any social use that such motions may once have served is now superseded by more direct and rational methods. The habit of eating may linger, here and there, among remote peasantries or rigid and reactionary individuals; but it is so clearly bound up with a whole world of ancient mystery and mummery, with the saying of grace, with the giving of thanks, with the proposing of patriotic sentiments over glasses of wine, that there can be little or no future for it now that man has reached his intellectual manhood. Gruncke, by the way, has pointed out that the cannibal notion of devouring and digesting the bodily vigour of an enemy is actually attested in the surviving popular phrase of ‘drinking his health.’”
Now that is exactly like any number of newspaper and magazine articles I have read on the evolution of Marriage or Religion, only a little more sensible. The suggestion of Professor Gruncke about the anthropophagous meaning of drinking a health (though I have only just this moment made it up) is immeasurably more sensible than the suggestion of many professors on the subject of Marriage by Capture; proving that a bridegroom must be a brigand by the institution of the Best Man. They say solemnly that a chief always went out to the proposed abduction with some leading and distinguished man of his tribe. It never seems to dawn on them that he would have gone out in any case to any wedding, whether it were an abduction or not (or, indeed, to any occasion of any importance), with the leading men of his tribe. He would not be likely to select the most unpresentable and disreputable object in his tribe, when he went to visit his father-in-law. This ghastly and gaping lack of common sense, in all the attempted reconstructions of primitive humanity, is the commonest mark of all this sort of popular science and fashionable rationalism. But it would be just as easy to use it to discredit Food as to discredit Family Life, or any of the basic human things that it is used to discredit. All that is necessary is to give a string of suggestions (such as I have just reeled off without stopping for breath) in the case of the Savage Custom of Supper. Mention a number of myths that have some connexion with meals; mix them all up like a soup; leave out all the joints and bones of argument; and you can easily leave the reader with a general impression that a meal is a myth. Above all, you must keep on praising the reader, as a progressive fellow superior to his father; and you can easily make him feel superior to meals— until next meal-time.
There is no space here for my powerful and cogent exposure of the Superstition of Sleep. It is set forth (or it might be some day) with all the exact process of thought and careful citation of facts and scientific authorities essential to this sort of work; the footnotes fill up most of the pages and the appendices are in five volumes. The recognized scientific method in such cases consists of two parts. First the writer points out that Sleep has a perfectly simple, single, and obvious origin in mythology, and then (second) he proceeds to trace it to about ten totally contradictory mythological origins. In the epoch of the Sun Myth, he will say that sleep was a sort of negative worship of the Sun God. In order to emphasize the idea that men only lived by the life and inspiration of Apollo, the priests of Apollo (acting as mesmerists or medicine-men) succeeded in making their dupes literally lose consciousness after the sun’s disappearance; induced them to die daily and lie like corpses until the dawn. That is quite a good one; but there will be plenty more. When poor old Herbert Spencer still had influence, it was often suggested that Dreams were the origin of Religion. To such thinkers, it would be a mere trifle to amend it by saying that Religion was the origin of Dreams. Sleep was only the hypnosis (how fortunate and illuminating that the word hypnosis only means sleep!) imposed by the priests on the credulous savages; in which state all sorts of mythical suggestions could be made to them, thus producing what we call the phenomena of dreams. Therefore, as the world casts off priestly vestments and pontifical mitres it will also throw away bed-clothes, night-gowns and nightcaps, and everything that reminds it of the mystical trance once called sleep. Or it would be easy to show that sleep was produced among primitive men by means of a vegetable drug (still used in the Solomon Islands) that they might not spy on the secret practices of the priests before they themselves had passed the Seventh Initiation. Or there is the obvious explanation that the sacrifices demanded at the harvest … but we need not go on with the theories of the professors for ever, even if they do. Perhaps you do not find this convincing. Perhaps you do not propose instantly to abandon the habit of eating or of sleeping at night. You say, defensively, that food and sleep are necessary to normal men. I fear it will be only too easy to apply the same argument to a belief in Free Will, to a concept of Right and Wrong, and to the perilous habit of humanity of marrying and having children.
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XLII
On Sir Walter Scott
DURING a brief but enforced leisure which has lately befallen me I have read a great part of what was written and spoken on the subject of Sir Walter Scott, during the various celebrations of his Centenary. As a matter of course, much of it was highly eulogistic, perhaps rather too much as a matter of course. On the other hand, a great part of it had a very unnecessary air of apology, or a still more absurd air of patronage. Some of it was flatly crude and uncomprehending. One journalist not only announced jauntily that he could see nothing in the literary legend or authority of Walter Scott, but actually appealed against him to the authority of Mark Twain. This affects me very much in the same way as being told suddenly that Charlie Chaplin has never got much pleasure out of Homer. I have no idea, of course, of whether this is the case; Mr. Chaplin, for all I know, may be a Homeric scholar and a deep student of Scott; he may have better taste than Mark Twain. Mark Twain was certainly something of a man of genius in his own way; and so, for that matter, is Charlie Chaplin. But there is such a thing as artistic tradition and cultural grasp, and I should never have dreamed of expecting Mark Twain to understand the greatness of the Waverley Novels, any more than he understood the greatness of the Arthurian Romances. What he called The Yankee at the Court of King Arthur was, of course, a very clumsy version of King Arthur being tried in the court of the Yankee, and the findings of the court were about as conclusive as those of the court of Dayton, Tennessee.
Again, it may be true of Scott at the moment that he is neglected, upon a merely numerical estimate of readers; and the same, by this time, may very probably be true of Mark Twain. But that sort of calculation makes no difference to literary genius in the long run. There were also, of course, spirited defences; perhaps a little too much on the defensive. Mr. John Buchan stood resolutely with dirk and claymore before the shrine; but even in his excellent address one or two phrases suggested that he was not only defending a sanctity, but defending a secret. There was just a touch of that spirit with which the Scotsman sometimes seems to be almost forbidding the Englishman to understand Burns or to enjoy haggis. There is doubtless a truth in this tradition, for every writer who is really universal is also national; but Scott was not merely national, but very universal. Continental poets, like Goethe and Victor Hugo, would hardly have been themselves without Scott. Byron, perhaps the most Continental of all poets, would not have been himself without Scott. Scott made Scottish Romances, but he made European Romance.
I think the two points about Scott that are the most vivid and vital are now the most invisible. They are points naturally neglected in our time, but the defect is in our time and not in Scott. One concerns the fact that he wrote historical novels, in the sense of stories full of historical characters. The other concerns the fact that he was himself a historical character. He really tells us much more about his own age than about the previous ages. It is too often forgotten that his best books, like The Antiquary, are actually about his own age. Some among the best are those very close to his own age, like Rob Roy, or the admirable ending of Guy Mannering. But there was something which Scott specially shared with his own epoch which he was always reading backwards into other epochs. It was not merely a vague thing that is called romance; it was also a very clear and classical thing that is called rhetoric. He was not an eighteenth-century man for nothing. He was, almost as much as he was anything, a great orator. It is one of the limitations of our own very limited time to sneer at oratory. But it is chiefly because our politicians cannot rise to it that our critics will not condescend to it. At the end of the eighteenth century there was a sort of glowing atmosphere of great speech, and in none more than in the men of action. Nelson and Napoleon were really as rhetorical as Danton and Fox.
Now, Scott possessed this sort of eloquence in the very highest degree. It would be well worth while to make an anthology of the mere speeches out of Scott’s novels and metrical romances. From the retort of the Saxon Franklin upon De Bracy to the curse of Meg Merrilees upon the Laird of Ellangowan, from the speech with which the crabbed Louis XI rises into dignity in the face of death to the rude refusal of Douglas in Tantallon to give his hand to Marmion, all the speeches are spirited and telling, considered as speeches, whatever they may be considered as writings. This is much of the error about the rhymed romances. They are not always poetry, but they are always literature. They are literature of that particular kind that expresses itself in direct and militant oratory; in the speech that lies nearest to action. The reply of the Lady of Branksome, to the foes who hold her son as a hostage is almost doggerel considered as poetry; but it is direct and even deadly considered as oratory. Everything is apt and telling, from the sneer at Lord Dacre’s courage to the abrupt turn of defiant invocation:
For the young heir of Branksome’s line God be his aid and God be mine.
That is the sort of way that men like Danton and Fox did debate, through riots and revolutions that filled Scott’s own epoch. And he was more of a man of his own epoch than he knew.
One thing he did find in the past, not yet quite destroyed in the present, and it was his chief inspiration. He knew nothing of the religion of the past, and his notion of Gothic was more barbarous than that of any Goth. But he had extracted from his feudal traditions something on which his spirit truly fed; something without which the modern world is starving. He found the idea of Honour, which is the true energy in all militant eloquence. That a man should defend the dignity of his family, of his farm, of his lawful rank under the King, even of his mere name, of something at least that was larger than himself—this was the fire that Scott found still burning out of fourteenth-century feudalism and expressed in eighteenth-century oratory. Of all moral ideals it is the most neglected and misunderstood today. It is not strange that the eloquence which sprang from it is misunderstood and neglected also. We see that hollow gaping around us everywhere; in the fact that marriage is discussed as everything except what it is, a vow; or that property is discussed as everything except what it ought to be, an independence. But the modern world is not so happy in its oblivion of honour, or the eloquence that springs from honour, as to force us to believe in the permanent oblivion of Scott.
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XLIII
On the Solar System
THE Sun has made a fitful and what may fairly be called a meteoric appearance in my garden this afternoon. And since, by a curious coincidence, this portent has occurred at a time not very distant from Midsummer Day (which, as you truly remark, is the Feast of St. John the Baptist and the date of the Battle of Bannockburn), the symbolical character of the sun flamed all the more mysteriously in the imagination. This luminary, which has been seldom observed of late in our country, can nevertheless be to a large extent calculated by astronomers, touching its actual though invisible relations to the earth. It would be an exaggeration to say that the sun visits England in the manner of a rare and very remote comet. It occurs in our literature; some say more often in our literature than our life, and I have even read a literary theory according to which The Merry Month of May was a purely classical convention, taken wholesale by the English poets from the Provençal poets. So that Chaucer and Dunbar, huddled up in mackintoshes and cowering over stoves, wrote the praises of spring and summer with freezing fingers, and made purely ritual salutations to invisible flowers and impassable fields. I do not believe in this bitter interpretation, but then, I happen to be one of the few and rather unpopular persons who like the cool and troubled temper of the English climate. It was said that Germany wanted a place in the sun; I cannot sufficiently congratulate myself that England succeeded in finding a place in the shade. Not many people in England have agreed with me, this summer; though it is possible that I might find a few sympathizers in America, where there is a heat-wave. I remember once there was a heat-wave in England, and I found myself walking about on the Sussex Downs under that tropical oppression. And I remember that the rather hackneyed quotation from Browning came back to me; and I said with a groan: “Oh to be in April, now that England’s here.”
Anyhow, the sun has been made a symbol of all sorts of things, good, bad, and indifferent; and it would be easy to fill a page with all the significant parts it has played in human history; of what it meant to the Heretic Pharaoh and what to the Parsees; of why the rays of its rising are displayed on the blazon of Japan; of how it has been arrested by Joshua, worshipped by Julian, theorized about by Copernicus, quarrelled about by Galileo, pointed at by Napoleon, put in its proper place by Newton, and seriously disturbed and doubted about by Einstein—all this would give fascinating opportunity for that habit of wandering from the point which is the essence of an essay of this kind. For the moment, however, I prefer to regard the sun merely in the light of a strange star that has startled me by visiting my garden in the middle of summer, and rather to dwell upon the catastrophic and unearthly character of the event than to seek for any strictly scientific or merely rationalistic explanation of it.
One reason for reconciling oneself cheerfully to regarding the sun as a strange star is that it seems likely, in the light of the latest science, that we shall find it illuminating a very strange world. I am a child in these things; and so long as the child is allowed to play in the garden, he does not bother very much about the rules regulating the visits of that shining stranger, who has of late been very much of a stranger. But he does know enough about recent revolutions, in the ideas about space and light, and atomic structure, to know that not only the sun, but also the garden, grows more mysterious every day. We may come to regarding the sun almost as a secret; like the sun that wore the mask of the moon in Mr. Max Beerbohm’s fairy-tale; a deceptive luminary; almost, if the contradiction be allowed, a dark luminary; with crooked rays; with invisible violet rays; with something resembling black rays, beyond the dreams of the blind. It seems to be anything but the simple golden globe with which the simple Victorian naturalists dealt so easily, when they taught us the use of the globes. Some of the things that are now said about it astonish me very much. For instance, Mr. René Fülop-Miller, the highly intelligent and impartial historian of the Bolshevist Revolution, has recently written a book about the Jesuits. The writer is equally detached about the Jesuits; he is entirely detached from the religion of the Jesuits. He is an ordinary modern rationalist; very emphatic upon the need to keep abreast of modern science. He narrates, as any rationalist would, as any reasonable man would, the victory of Galileo and the Copernican astronomy, with its earth going round the sun, over the old Ptolemaic astronomy, with its sun going round the earth. I should, of course, entirely accept that Copernican victory; it never would occur to me to do anything else. But I was considerably startled when Mr. Fülop-Miller, after stating the ordinary view of the Solar System, which everybody accepts, and I have naturally accepted, goes on calmly to write as follows:
“It is true that the most recent mathematical and physical theories necessitate a revision of this commonly held opinion, for no longer does the teaching of Ptolemy appear ‘wholly false,’ nor that of Copernicus ‘alone true,’ as Galileo thought. Rather does it appear that both the systems have fundamentally an equal claim to recognition, and that the superiority of the Copernican system rests solely on the greater simplicity of the astronomical calculations effected with its help. Cardinal Bellarmine had, however, already recognized this when he warned Galileo’s pupils to regard the Copernican doctrine only as hypothetical and not as the sole truth.”
In other words, the scientific rationalist, invoking the very latest scientific views, says something that I for one should never have dreamed of saying: that Galileo was as wrong as he was right; or at least that he was no more right than he was wrong, and no more right than his opponents were right. This seems to me a very amazing remark to appear in a book by an ordinary modern sceptic. Anyhow, it is a remark that will not be found in any book by me, or any of those who are regarded as religious reactionaries.
Let nobody go away and say that I made the remark. Let nobody wail aloud that I say the Solar System is a Solar Myth. I never interfered with the Solar System. I never disorganized the sun and moon; I never in my life gave the planets or the fixed stars the least cause for uneasiness. Copernicus and Newton are good enough for me. I only say the sun must be a very strange star, and must stand in a very strange relation to a very strange planet or satellite, if any sane sceptic can really say that it is just as true that the sun goes round the earth as that the earth goes round the sun. The real truth, which he has in mind, is probably some very subtle mathematical relation, to which both of those contrary images are merely relative. The only effect on me, at the moment, is a merely imaginative, or even a merely artistic effect. It makes the sun much more extraordinary; and it was extraordinary enough before. I have not the faintest intention of meddling with these problems in the higher world of mathematics. I only say that the immediate effect of them on the fancy is almost to bring back the sun into the world of mythology. In that sense, the sun is much more of a Sun Myth; it is at least a Sun Mystery. Phoebus Apollo, worshipped with such superb prayer and sacrifice, is still at least like that other pagan god whom St. Paul saluted as the Unknown God. And because I love everything that adds at least to the wonder of the world, and because I hate familiarity as I hate contempt, I am glad that the strange god in the garden grows stranger every day. For we need mystery to console and encourage us. And, like Voltaire, and other pious and devout characters, I quite agree that we must cultivate the garden.
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XLIV
On Thoughtless Remarks
IT is doubtless disrespectful to the reader, nor indeed does it tend greatly to the aggrandizement or dignity of the writer, to say that my occupation in life is catching flies. And when I recently referred to a certain type of Feminist as a wasp, I received remonstrances from one who doubtless considered her to have all the highest and most royal attributes of a queen bee. Nevertheless, this unfortunate metaphor frequently returns to my mind, and I am conscious of a truth that I could not easily express without it. What I mean is this: that one of the chief nuisances of our time is a swarm of little things, in the form of little thoughts, or little sayings largely divorced from thoughts, which pervade the whole atmosphere in a manner only comparable to that of the most minute insects: insignificant and almost invisible but innumerable and almost omnipresent. I am not thinking of real thought; even of false or destructive thought. I am not referring to the real bodies of moral and philosophical opinion, based on principles I think wrong, or producing results I think mischievous. The views of this kind, with which I have sometimes dealt, differ very much in their power or promise or capacity for doing harm. I disagree with Communism as I disagree with Calvinism; but nobody would say this is the hour of Calvinism, and I admit, in a sense, it is the hour of Communism. There is a very strong intellectual temptation to the Bolshevist simplification because of the unquestionable collapse of the old commercial complexity. On the other hand, other theories I have quarrelled with in my time are less and less prominent in the modern quarrel. Many men of science have abandoned Darwinism. All men of science have abandoned Materialism. But Materialism and Darwinism were none the less thorough systems supported by thinking men, with arguments to be answered as well as assumptions to be questioned. The kind of thing of which I am speaking now is something at once atmospheric and microscopic, like a cloud of midges, and not like the serious scientific theories and philosophies of the nineteenth century, which may rather be compared, according to taste, to lions, elephants, tigers, vultures, vipers, or scorpions.
The matter in question is the prevalence of a sort of casual and even conversational scepticism, making even the idle thoughts of an idle fellow busy in the interests of doubt and despair. I mean that a man, without thinking at all, will throw off some flippant phrase which is always (by a strange fatality) a sort of feeble revolt against all traditional truth. It may be anything, an aside on the stage or a joke on the political platform; it may be a mere flourish at the start of a magazine story or a mere word dropped into an inconvenient silence; something said for the sake of saying something. The whole point of it is that it is, in this sense, pointless. The philosophy is not expressed when people are talking about philosophy, but when they are talking about anything else. I have just this moment started reading an ordinary modern story, quite well written considered as a story; and it begins by saying that there is not much difference between stupidity and courage, and, in fact, that courage is really only a form of stupidity.
That is exactly typical of the thing I mean. It is merely a casual remark; it is only very casually meant to be a clever remark; it is actually rather a silly remark; but the point is that a fatality of fashion causes a myriad such remarks to be made, always on the side of cowardice and never on the side of courage. In point of fact, of course, it would be easy to demonstrate its falsehood. History is full of examples of intellectual men who have been courageous, even of highly subtle and penetrating intellectuals who have accepted death courageously. It even contains any number of cases of thoughtful men who have thought a great deal about the act of accepting death; who have thought about it for a long time, and with complete composure, and then deliberately accepted it. Socrates is an obvious example. Sir Thomas More is a still more obvious example. Boëthius and many other philosophers; St. Paul and many other saints; all kinds of mystics, missionaries, religious founders and social reformers have proved the point over and over again. But I am interested here, not so much in the point, as in the pointless remark. What is that itch of intellectual irritation which makes a modern man, even in a moment of indolence, say the cynical thing even when it is obviously false; or kick against the heroic thing, even when it is self-evidently true? Why do we find today this vast and vague mass of trivialities, which have nothing in common except that they are all in reaction against the very best of human traditions? Why has this cheap and really worthless sort of scepticism got into such universal circulation? In other words, I am not now thinking of the Gold Standard of the highest truth, or the Bimetallism of the higher scepticism, which discusses whether there can be a rivalry in truth; or any of the more or less precious metals which may bear the image and superscription of this or that moral authority. I am puzzled by the circulation of all these millions of brass farthings, hardly more valuable than bad pennies; I am wondering where they all come from, and why they can be produced in such handfuls; and whether there is not something wrong with the mint of the mind. I am wondering what has debased the currency of current thought and speech, and why every normal ideal of man is now pelted with handfuls of such valueless pebbles, and assailed everywhere, not by free thought, but by frank thoughtlessness.
There seems to be no normal motive for a human being feeling a hostility to the human virtue of courage. He may disapprove of this or that excuse or occasion for calling it forth, but surely not of the thing itself. If the writer had said that the bravery of brave men is used by the stupidity of stupid men, he would have said something perfectly tenable, and, indeed, frequently true. When he says that a brave man must be a stupid man, he wantonly says something that can instantly be disproved and dismissed as impudent and idiotic. Why does he say it, except to relieve his feelings; and in that case what are his feelings? We only know that they have never yet been the normal feelings of men, yet they seem just now to be the almost involuntary feelings of a vast number of men. That is the problem that I find practically pestering us on every side today; and that is what I mean by comparing that buzz of dull flippancy to the swarming of gnats or flies. It is all concerned with the same paradox, with what may be called the omnipresence of the insignificant. A fly is a small thing, but flies can be a very big thing. In some tropical countries, I am told, they can appear like great clouds on the remote horizon or vast thunder-storms filling the whole sky. The plague of locusts which afflicts many lands is something much more destructive than the passage of a pack of wolves or the ruin wrought by a stampede of wild bulls or wild elephants. So the seemingly insignificant individual irritation produced by these insignificant individual perversities may be, in its cumulative effect, more corrupting to a whole culture than the great heresies that have been hardened and hammered into a certain intellectual solidity. The spirit of anarchy does not work only by monsters. Even the sages and visionaries of the East have seen a spiritual significance in the fact that even almost invisible insects can be a plague or carry a pestilence; and the ancient name of Beelzebub has the meaning of the Lord of Flies.
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I
On the Child
THERE was recently reported in the papers the meeting of certain eminent ladies, of a political and philanthropic sort, who discussed the great modern problem of what is to be done with The Child. I need not say that The Child is always discussed as if he were a monster, of immense size, vast complexity, and strange and startling novelty. Nor need I remind the reader that The Child is not a child: any child we comfortable people have ever seen. The Child is not Jack or Joan or Peter; he is not Cousin Ethel’s child or one of Uncle William’s children. He is a creature entirely solitary and sui generis; and he lives in the slums.
A great many remarks were made, most of them sincere, some of them sensible, and several of them highly comic. I think the passage I like best is one in which a particular female philanthropist said that any poor child would feel happy at the sight of a policeman, so long as he was dressed like a policeman; but that the child might be filled with maniacal terror if he were dressed like an ordinary man. It would seem, that is, that not only are all policemen always kind to all poor people, but that they are the only men who are ever kind to any poor people. I am not The Child, and therefore I was not brought up in the slums. But I know a little more about the slums than that. All these other sayings, however, sink into a second place, in my opinion, compared with one simple remark, which will seem to most people as innocent as it is simple. Nevertheless, in that one artless observation— I might almost say, in that one unconscious confession—was contained the whole complex of contradictions and falsehoods which have in our time ruined the relation of social classes and destroyed the common morals of the community. A very famous political lady, who certainly believes that what she says represents the most lofty luminous idealism, uttered on this occasion the following words: “We must care for other people’s children as if they were our own.”
And when I read those words, I smote the table with my hand, like one who has suddenly located and smashed a wasp. I said to myself: “That’s it! She’s got it! She’s got the exactly correct formula for the worst and most poisonous of all the political wrongs that rot out the entrails of the world. That is what has wrecked democracy; wrecked domesticity through the breadth and depth of democracy; wrecked dignity as the only prop and pillar of domesticity and democracy. That is what has taken away from the poor man the pride and honour of the father of a household, so that he can no longer really feel any pride or honour in being a citizen; still less in being merely a voter. The Englishman’s house is no longer his castle, nor is he king of the castle; the charbonnier is no longer maître chez lui; his hut is not his hut; his children are not his children; and democracy is dead. She means no harm. She knows not what she does. She does not even understand what she says. She does not comprehend a word of the terrible sentence that she has spoken. But it is spoken.” And the sentence that is spoken is this: “We, the rich, can take care of poor people’s children as if they were our own. As we have abolished their parents, they are all orphans.”
The ideal is sufficiently familiar in fact, of course; and there is nothing very much against it, except that it is utterly and grossly immoral. A man saying that he will treat other people’s children as his own is exactly like a man saying that he will treat other people’s wives as his own. He may get a certain amount of poetic or sentimental pleasure out of the children, but so he may out of the wives. The question is whether any human rights whatever remain to the other man, who is made legally responsible for his children and his wife. If he ill-treats them, it is perfectly right to put the exceptional legal machinery, which exists for such exceptional evils, in motion against him. But it is not right, by any code of common morals yet recognized among men, to start from the very first with the assumption that his children belong to you as much as they belong to him. If there is an adequate case against him, it must be proved against him; but we are not dealing here with any such case. We are dealing with a profound plutocratic assumption, accidentally revealed by a chance phrase. The poor children are born under the power and protection of a governing class, as wards in Chancery are born under the power and protection of the Lord Chancellor; they inherit that status, whether our own conscience inclines us to call it a status of slavery or of safety. Note that the lady does not say— though she doubtless would say—“When I hear of a child being beaten with a red-hot poker, the common human bond makes me feel as angry as if it were my own child.” She does not deal with hard cases, or even individual cases; she generalizes from the start. She assumes that she will, in fact, manage, she assumes that she will be allowed to manage, any other children as if they were her own. And in practice she is probably right; it is the supreme and final proof that in theory she is entirely wrong. Our society has unconsciously and unresistingly admitted this great heresy against humanity. The notion of making the head of a humble family really independent and responsible, like a citizen, has really vanished from the mind of most of the realists of our real world. It is the less wonder that it has never even entered the head of an idealist.
The trouble is that in our society the ideal is more wrong than the real. Old Tories used to insist on teaching to the poor the principles of respect for private property, lest they should revolt and despoil the rich. As a fact, it is the rich who have to be taught about the existence of private property, and especially about the existence of private life. No ragged mob is likely to storm the nurseries of Mayfair, or steal the perambulators from the French nurses, or the pupils from the German governesses, parading in Kensington Gardens. But philanthropists, under various excuses, do really raid the playgrounds of the poor. They regard such a raid as a reform; and, in truth, it is a revolution. Modern writers are very ready to cover great historic events with sweeping denunciations of crime; to say the Great War was murder on a large scale or that the Russian Revolution was theft on a large scale. They hardly realize how much of educational and philanthropic reform has been kidnapping on a large scale. That is, it has shown an increasing disregard for the privacy of the private citizen, considered as a parent. I have called it a revolution; and at bottom it is really a Bolshevist revolution. For what could be more purely and perfectly Communist than to say that you regard other people’s children as if they were your own?
True, as yet the man who treats other people’s dogs as if they were his own is called a dog-stealer. The man who is caught, caring for somebody else’s horse as if it were his own, is called a horse-thief. But even that is only true if the thieves are poor and too ignorant to plead excuses of humanitarianism. The wealthy Communist who so treats a child is not called a kidnapper. Which only shows that Communism, anyhow our Communism, would not be the rule of the poor, nor even the unruliness of the poor; but only the extension of the existing unruliness of the rich.
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I
Sul bambino
FU riferito di recente dai giornali il convegno di certe eminenti signore, di indole politica e filantropica, le quali discutevano il grande problema moderno di che cosa si debba fare con Il Bambino. Non occorre ch’io dica che Il Bambino viene sempre discusso come se fosse un mostro, di dimensioni immani, di vasta complessità, e di strana e sconcertante novità. Né occorre ricordare al lettore che Il Bambino non è un bambino: nessuno di quei bambini che noi, gente agiata, abbiamo mai veduto. Il Bambino non è Gianni o Giovanna o Pietro; non è il bambino della cugina Ethel né uno dei figli dello zio William. È una creatura del tutto solitaria e sui generis; e vive nei bassifondi.
Furono fatte moltissime osservazioni, la maggior parte sincere, alcune assennate, e parecchie altamente comiche. Credo che il passo che più mi piace sia quello in cui una certa filantropa dichiarò che qualunque povero bambino si sentirebbe felice alla vista di un poliziotto, purché fosse vestito da poliziotto; ma che il bambino potrebbe venir preso da terrore maniacale se costui fosse vestito da uomo comune. Parrebbe, cioè, che non solo tutti i poliziotti siano sempre gentili con tutti i poveri, ma che siano gli unici uomini a essere mai gentili con qualsivoglia povero. Io non sono Il Bambino, e perciò non fui allevato nei bassifondi. Ma dei bassifondi so qualcosa di più di questo. Tutte queste altre sentenze, tuttavia, passano in second’ordine, a mio parere, se paragonate a una semplice osservazione, che ai più apparirà tanto innocente quanto è semplice. Nondimeno, in quell’unica ingenua osservazione — direi quasi, in quell’unica inconsapevole confessione — era racchiuso l’intero groviglio di contraddizioni e di menzogne che ai nostri tempi hanno rovinato il rapporto fra le classi sociali e distrutto la morale comune della collettività. Una signora politica assai famosa, la quale crede certamente che ciò ch’ella dice rappresenti il più alto e luminoso idealismo, pronunciò in quell’occasione le seguenti parole: «Dobbiamo prenderci cura dei figli altrui come se fossero i nostri».
E quando lessi quelle parole, battei la mano sul tavolo, come chi abbia d’un tratto individuato e schiacciato una vespa. Dissi fra me: «Ecco! Ci è arrivata! Ha trovato la formula esattamente giusta del peggiore e più velenoso di tutti i torti politici che corrodono le viscere del mondo. È questo che ha mandato in rovina la democrazia; ha mandato in rovina la vita domestica per tutta l’ampiezza e la profondità della democrazia; ha mandato in rovina la dignità come unico sostegno e pilastro della vita domestica e della democrazia. È questo che ha tolto al povero l’orgoglio e l’onore di padre di famiglia, sicché egli non può più provare davvero alcun orgoglio né onore nell’essere cittadino; e ancor meno nell’essere un semplice elettore. La casa dell’inglese non è più il suo castello, né egli è il re del castello; il charbonnier non è più maître chez lui; la sua capanna non è la sua capanna; i suoi figli non sono i suoi figli; e la democrazia è morta. Ella non intende far male. Non sa quello che fa. Non comprende neppure ciò che dice. Non intende una parola della terribile sentenza che ha pronunciato. Ma la sentenza è pronunciata». E la sentenza pronunciata è questa: «Noi, i ricchi, possiamo prenderci cura dei figli dei poveri come se fossero i nostri. Poiché abbiamo abolito i loro genitori, sono tutti orfani».
L’ideale è, di fatto, abbastanza familiare, s’intende; e non v’è granché da obiettargli, se non ch’esso è totalmente e grossolanamente immorale. Un uomo che dica di voler trattare i figli altrui come i propri è esattamente come un uomo che dica di voler trattare le mogli altrui come la propria. Potrà ricavare una certa dose di piacere poetico o sentimentale dai figli, ma altrettanto potrà ricavarne dalle mogli. La questione è se all’altro uomo, che è reso legalmente responsabile dei propri figli e della propria moglie, rimanga ancora un qualsivoglia diritto umano. Se egli li maltratta, è perfettamente giusto mettere in moto contro di lui quel meccanismo legale eccezionale che esiste per simili mali eccezionali. Ma non è giusto, secondo alcun codice di morale comune finora riconosciuto fra gli uomini, partire fin dal principio dal presupposto che i suoi figli appartengano a te quanto appartengono a lui. Se v’è contro di lui un caso fondato, lo si deve provare contro di lui; ma qui non abbiamo a che fare con alcun caso simile. Abbiamo a che fare con un profondo presupposto plutocratico, rivelato per caso da una frase casuale. I figli dei poveri nascono sotto il potere e la protezione di una classe dirigente, come i pupilli della Cancelleria nascono sotto il potere e la protezione del Lord Cancelliere; ereditano quella condizione, sia che la nostra coscienza ci inclini a chiamarla condizione di schiavitù o di sicurezza. Si noti che la signora non dice — benché senza dubbio lo direbbe — «Quando sento di un bambino percosso con un attizzatoio rovente, il comune vincolo umano mi fa provare tanta collera come se fosse il mio proprio bambino». Ella non tratta di casi estremi, e nemmeno di casi individuali; generalizza fin dal principio. Ella dà per scontato che, di fatto, gestirà, dà per scontato che le sarà consentito gestire, i figli di chiunque altro come se fossero i suoi. E in pratica ha probabilmente ragione; il che è la prova suprema e definitiva che in teoria ha interamente torto. La nostra società ha inconsapevolmente e senza resistenza ammesso questa grande eresia contro l’umanità. L’idea di rendere il capo di un’umile famiglia davvero indipendente e responsabile, al pari di un cittadino, è davvero svanita dalla mente della maggior parte dei realisti del nostro mondo reale. Tanto minor meraviglia è che non sia mai neppure entrata nella testa di un idealista.
Il guaio è che nella nostra società l’ideale è più sbagliato del reale. I vecchi Tory usavano insistere per insegnare ai poveri i princìpi del rispetto della proprietà privata, per timore che si ribellassero e spogliassero i ricchi. In realtà, sono i ricchi a dover essere istruiti circa l’esistenza della proprietà privata, e soprattutto circa l’esistenza della vita privata. Nessuna folla cenciosa è probabile che assalga con la violenza le nurseries di Mayfair, o rubi le carrozzine alle bambinaie francesi, o gli allievi alle governanti tedesche, in parata ai Kensington Gardens. Ma i filantropi, sotto varie scuse, fanno davvero incursione nei terreni di gioco dei poveri. Considerano una simile incursione una riforma; e, in verità, è una rivoluzione. Gli scrittori moderni sono prontissimi a coprire i grandi eventi storici con sommarie denunce di delitto; a dire che la Grande Guerra fu un assassinio su vasta scala, o che la Rivoluzione russa fu un furto su vasta scala. A stento si rendono conto di quanta parte della riforma educativa e filantropica sia stata un sequestro di persona su vasta scala. Vale a dire che essa ha mostrato un crescente disprezzo per la sfera privata del privato cittadino, considerato come genitore. L’ho chiamata rivoluzione; e in fondo è davvero una rivoluzione bolscevica. Poiché che cosa potrebbe esservi di più puramente e perfettamente comunista che dire di considerare i figli altrui come se fossero i tuoi?
Vero è che, per ora, l’uomo che tratta i cani altrui come se fossero suoi è chiamato ladro di cani. L’uomo che viene colto ad accudire il cavallo di qualcun altro come se fosse suo è chiamato ladro di cavalli. Ma anche questo è vero soltanto se i ladri sono poveri e troppo ignoranti per addurre a pretesto l’umanitarismo. Il ricco comunista che così tratta un bambino non è chiamato rapitore. Il che dimostra soltanto che il comunismo, per lo meno il nostro comunismo, non sarebbe il governo dei poveri, e nemmeno l’indisciplina dei poveri; ma soltanto l’estensione dell’esistente indisciplina dei ricchi.
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II
On the Standardization of Stevenson
THIS generation, which is charged with being frivolous, often strikes me as being much too serious. And its culture, which seems in one aspect to verge on anarchy, retains in another aspect a queer weakness for authority. I call it a weakness, because it is not so much an appeal to authority as to authorities. In every scientific or sociological discussion the fact has long been flagrant and farcical. If I mention a piece of elementary common sense, as that, when I find a tooth in Tooting, I am not justified in calling it The Tooting Man, or saying I have “reconstructed” him, I shall certainly get no answer except the stern retort that The Tooting Man was reconstructed by no less a person than Dr. Pidge. If I say (exercising my poor human reason) that to explain Mind as a form of Matter is simply meaningless, like explaining eyes in terms of spectacles, I shall be duly informed that I must give up my poor human reason and accept such mysteries on the authority of Professor Snorter, an authority whose authority is perhaps of greater authority than even all the other authorities. But, while we had grown used to this old joke in the fields of science and philosophy, I cannot but grieve to see it appearing here and there in the milder but more flowery fields of literature and artistic criticism. Doubtless there was a period, in the more remote past, when there was too much weight given in literary criticism to authority and authorities. But one or two recent critics seem to have revived this fault, with a change that makes it even more faulty. If the old critic appealed to writers who were old and forgotten, the new critic thinks it enough to appeal to writers who are new and neglected. But I would just as soon be referred to an antiquity known only to the learned as to a novelty known only to the “cultured.” I would rather accept the authority of Aristotle, even at a time when he is known to be unpopular with muddle-headed people, than accept the authority of Mr. Nibbsky, who would be equally unpopular, but is not even known.
I have even found a savour of this spirit in the case of critics better known than Mr. Nibbsky, and better worth knowing. There was a comparatively slight and innocent instance of it in a criticism by Mr. James Agate on a book by Mr. Sidney Dark, writers who have both added to my enjoyment in various ways at various times. The book in question was about Stevenson, who has added to my enjoyment even more. But, as I have only read Mr. Agate’s criticism and not Mr. Dark’s book, I will not claim to judge in a general way between them. Only it seems funny to me that the critic should so solemnly make it a condemnation, in itself, of Mr. Dark’s book on Stevenson, that it was not piously and reverently founded on Mr. Swinnerton’s book on Stevenson. For the critic, apparently, Mr. Swinnerton is the one and only authority on Stevenson, and his sacred name must be invoked, like that of a Muse or a god of inspiration, at the beginning of any literary exercise on the subject. This strikes me as carrying the idolatry of Authority extravagantly far. Mr. Swinnerton is an excellent writer, and doubtless the book in question was an excellent book. But I would still meekly suggest that a man writing on Stevenson should be judged by his appreciation of Stevenson, and not by his appreciation of Swinnerton. But the critic talks with horrible solemnity about “The Pre-Swinnerton” period of Stevensonian criticism. Which really seems to be making too much even of Stevenson, let alone Swinnerton. Men may well be a little mystical in speaking of what is Pre-Adamite, or even Pre-Raphaelite; but I hardly think any of our little text-books of taste and letters will rank with the Renaissance, let alone the Creation.
Of the making of books on Stevenson there is no end; as poor Cranmer observed, “This hath offended; this unworthy hand.” But I really doubt whether it was Mr. Dark’s moral duty to read all of them before daring to write one of his own. I should as soon think it impertinent of a painter to paint a pine-tree before he had studied all the pine-trees in all the pictures in the world. After all, what we want is direct and individual impressions of primary objects, whether poets or pine-trees, and not an endless succession of critics learning from critics how to criticize. With some parts of Mr. Agate’s criticism, whether it be of the book or of the subject of the book, I entirely agree. I should never, for instance, think of resting my real admiration for Stevenson on the slight, and indeed rather thin, essays on the relation of the sexes called Virginibus Puerisque. I take them to have been examples of those early exercises in elegant prose, with a preference of manner to matter, to which Stevenson himself humorously confessed in later life. They belong to what is called the “sedulous ape” period, which the yet more sedulous apes of the Press have quoted and re-quoted sedulously ever since. But Stevenson was not a sedulous ape, any more than Dickens was Boz or Byron was the author of the remarkable poem called “A Tear.”
After all, Stevenson died at about the time of life when Dickens had only just written David Copperfield, and had not yet attempted so new a departure as Hard Times or Great Expectations; at an age when any number of great men had still their fullest and most mature work to do. And when he died he was already writing what is quite obviously a much fuller and more mature work, and in many ways quite a new departure. The fragments of Weir of Hermiston are like the fragments of a colossal god lying broken in the desert, compared with many of the slender ivory statuettes that he had carved before. But it is an error even to associate him, in his previous work, with things like ivory statuettes. Mr. Huish with his little vitriol-bottle, in The Ebb-Tide, would make a very unsuitable ivory statuette. The critic mentioned above falls into this fallacy, I think, when he says that Stevenson “turned all to favour and to prettiness.” It is not altogether a fortunate quotation, for it is taken from a scene of grisly tragedy; where the Queen utters it, her voice breaking upon the phrase, when Ophelia wanders half-witted between her lover’s murder of her father and her own murder of herself. Many of Stevenson’s trifles are quite equally tragic. Many of his pretty phrases accentuate ugly situations. Many of them are not pretty at all. I cannot imagine that any critic rushes to the dreary and bedraggled leavings of The Ebb-Tide with a mere childish desire to see the pretty pictures; or that even Mr. Agate would read the account, in Weir of Hermiston, of how the oaf, with his neck swathed in flannel, was “hunted gallows-wards with jeers,” and have merely the sentiments of the infant who kicks his legs and cries: “Oh, pretty, pretty!” These passages strike me as revealing rather too brutal a streak in the writer, due, I think, to the Calvinist pessimism of his original background.
What Stevenson had, and what Stevenson’s critics often have not and mistake for mere finesse, was a certain sharpness of focus. He did not deal merely with pretty figures, whether they were figures of speech or figures of fiction. On the contrary, he dealt oftener with ugly figures, and certainly enjoyed the ugly figures most. But all the figures are figures, and not merely presences or influences. Mr. Huish is a deformity, but he is a definite form. This may not be the highest artistic quality, but it is not turning everything to prettiness. It is turning everything to beauty, even to the terrible beauty that is made out of a harmony of ugly things. And that is surely not very far off from the primary purpose of art.
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II
Sulla standardizzazione di Stevenson
QUESTA generazione, che viene accusata di frivolezza, mi appare spesso fin troppo seria. E la sua cultura, che per un verso sembra rasentare l’anarchia, conserva per un altro verso una curiosa debolezza per l’autorità. La chiamo debolezza, perché non è tanto un appello all’autorità quanto alle autorità. In ogni discussione scientifica o sociologica il fatto è ormai da tempo flagrante e farsesco. Se accenno a un elementare buon senso, come che, trovando un dente a Tooting, non sono per ciò autorizzato a chiamarlo l’Uomo di Tooting, o a dire di averlo «ricostruito», di sicuro non otterrò altra risposta che la severa ribattuta che l’Uomo di Tooting fu ricostruito nientemeno che dal dottor Pidge. Se dico (esercitando la mia povera ragione umana) che spiegare la Mente come una forma della Materia è semplicemente privo di senso, come spiegare gli occhi in termini di occhiali, sarò debitamente informato che devo rinunciare alla mia povera ragione umana e accettare tali misteri sull’autorità del professor Snorter, autorità la cui autorità è forse di maggiore autorità perfino di tutte le altre autorità. Ma, mentre ci eravamo abituati a questa vecchia burla nei campi della scienza e della filosofia, non posso non addolorarmi nel vederla spuntare qua e là nei campi più miti ma più fioriti della letteratura e della critica artistica. Senza dubbio vi fu un tempo, in un passato più remoto, in cui si dava troppo peso, nella critica letteraria, all’autorità e alle autorità. Ma uno o due critici recenti sembrano aver rispolverato questo difetto, con un cambiamento che lo rende ancora più difettoso. Se il vecchio critico si appellava a scrittori vecchi e dimenticati, il nuovo critico ritiene sufficiente appellarsi a scrittori nuovi e trascurati. Ma tanto varrebbe rimandarmi a un’antichità nota soltanto ai dotti quanto a una novità nota soltanto ai «colti». Preferirei accettare l’autorità di Aristotele, anche in un tempo in cui lo si sa impopolare presso le teste confuse, piuttosto che accettare l’autorità del signor Nibbsky, che sarebbe altrettanto impopolare, ma non è neppure conosciuto.
Ho perfino colto un sentore di questo spirito nel caso di critici più noti del signor Nibbsky, e più degni di essere conosciuti. Ve n’era un esempio relativamente lieve e innocente in una recensione del signor James Agate a un libro del signor Sidney Dark, scrittori che entrambi hanno accresciuto il mio piacere in vari modi in varie occasioni. Il libro in questione riguardava Stevenson, che ha accresciuto il mio piacere ancora di più. Ma, poiché ho letto soltanto la recensione del signor Agate e non il libro del signor Dark, non pretenderò di giudicare in linea generale tra i due. Solo, mi pare buffo che il critico faccia così solennemente una condanna, di per sé, del libro del signor Dark su Stevenson, dal fatto che esso non fosse piamente e reverentemente fondato sul libro del signor Swinnerton su Stevenson. Per il critico, a quanto pare, il signor Swinnerton è l’unica e sola autorità su Stevenson, e il suo sacro nome dev’essere invocato, come quello di una Musa o di un dio dell’ispirazione, all’inizio di qualunque esercizio letterario sull’argomento. Ciò mi sembra spingere l’idolatria dell’Autorità stravagantemente lontano. Il signor Swinnerton è un ottimo scrittore, e senza dubbio il libro in questione era un ottimo libro. Ma oserei ancora suggerire umilmente che un uomo che scrive su Stevenson andrebbe giudicato per il suo apprezzamento di Stevenson, e non per il suo apprezzamento di Swinnerton. Eppure il critico parla con orribile solennità del periodo «pre-Swinnerton» della critica stevensoniana. Il che pare davvero far troppo caso perfino a Stevenson, per non dire di figurarsi Swinnerton. Gli uomini possono ben essere un po’ mistici nel parlare di ciò che è pre-adamitico, o perfino pre-raffaellita; ma dubito assai che alcuno dei nostri modesti manualetti di gusto e di lettere possa mettersi alla pari con il Rinascimento, per non dire di figurarsi la Creazione.
Del comporre libri su Stevenson non v’è mai fine; come osservò il povero Cranmer, «Questa ha offeso; questa indegna mano». Ma dubito davvero che fosse dovere morale del signor Dark leggerli tutti prima di osare scriverne uno di suo. Riterrei altrettanto impertinente da parte di un pittore dipingere un pino prima di aver studiato tutti i pini in tutti i quadri del mondo. Dopotutto, ciò che vogliamo sono impressioni dirette e individuali di oggetti primari, siano poeti o pini, e non un’interminabile successione di critici che imparano dai critici come criticare. Con alcune parti della recensione del signor Agate, sia essa del libro o del soggetto del libro, sono del tutto d’accordo. Non mi verrebbe mai in mente, per esempio, di fondare la mia vera ammirazione per Stevenson su quei tenui, e in verità piuttosto smilzi, saggi sul rapporto tra i sessi intitolati Virginibus Puerisque. Li ritengo esempi di quei precoci esercizi di prosa elegante, con una preferenza della maniera sulla materia, ai quali lo stesso Stevenson confessò con ironia in età più tarda. Appartengono a quel periodo detto della «scimmia diligente», che le scimmie ancora più diligenti della stampa hanno da allora citato e ricitato diligentemente. Ma Stevenson non era una scimmia diligente, non più di quanto Dickens fosse Boz o Byron fosse l’autore del notevole componimento intitolato «A Tear».
Dopotutto, Stevenson morì all’incirca in quel momento della vita in cui Dickens aveva appena scritto David Copperfield, e non aveva ancora tentato una svolta così nuova come Hard Times o Great Expectations; a un’età in cui un gran numero di grandi uomini aveva ancora davanti a sé la propria opera più piena e più matura. E quando morì stava già scrivendo ciò che è del tutto palesemente un’opera assai più piena e più matura, e per molti versi una svolta affatto nuova. I frammenti di Weir of Hermiston sono come i frammenti di un dio colossale che giace infranto nel deserto, a paragone di molte delle esili statuette d’avorio che aveva scolpito in precedenza. Ma è un errore perfino associarlo, nella sua opera precedente, a cose come le statuette d’avorio. Il signor Huish con la sua boccettina di vetriolo, in The Ebb-Tide, farebbe una statuetta d’avorio assai poco adatta. Il critico sopra menzionato cade in questa fallacia, credo, quando dice che Stevenson «volgeva tutto in grazia e leggiadria». Non è una citazione del tutto felice, giacché è tratta da una scena di truce tragedia; dove la Regina la pronuncia, con la voce che si spezza sulla frase, mentre Ofelia vaga fuori di senno tra l’assassinio del padre per mano dell’amato e l’assassinio di sé per mano propria. Molti dei fronzoli di Stevenson sono altrettanto tragici. Molte delle sue graziose frasi accentuano situazioni ripugnanti. Molte non sono affatto graziose. Non riesco a immaginare che qualche critico si precipiti verso gli squallidi e inzaccherati avanzi di The Ebb-Tide con un mero infantile desiderio di vedere le belle immagini; o che perfino il signor Agate leggerebbe il racconto, in Weir of Hermiston, di come lo zoticone, col collo fasciato di flanella, fosse «cacciato verso la forca tra gli scherni», e provasse soltanto i sentimenti del pupo che scalcia e grida: «Oh, che bello, che bello!». Questi passi mi paiono rivelare una vena un po’ troppo brutale nello scrittore, dovuta, credo, al pessimismo calvinista del suo retroterra d’origine.
Ciò che Stevenson possedeva, e ciò che i critici di Stevenson spesso non possiedono e scambiano per mera finezza, era una certa nitidezza di messa a fuoco. Non trattava soltanto figure graziose, fossero figure retoriche o figure di finzione. Al contrario, trattava più spesso figure sgraziate, e certamente delle figure sgraziate si compiaceva di più. Ma tutte le figure sono figure, e non meri sentori o influssi. Il signor Huish è una deformità, ma è una forma definita. Questa può non essere la più alta qualità artistica, ma non è volgere ogni cosa in leggiadria. È volgere ogni cosa in bellezza, perfino in quella terribile bellezza che si ricava da un’armonia di cose sgraziate. E ciò non è di certo molto lontano dallo scopo primario dell’arte.
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III
On Turnpikes and Mediævalism
OPENING my newspaper the other day, I saw a short but emphatic leaderette entitled “A Relic of Mediævalism.” It expressed a profound indignation upon the fact that somewhere or other, in some fairly remote corner of this country, there is a turnpike-gate, with a toll. It insisted that this antiquated tyranny is insupportable, because it is supremely important that our road traffic should go very fast; presumably a little faster than it does. So it described the momentary delay in this place as a relic of mediævalism. I fear the future will look at that sentence, somewhat sadly and a little contemptuously, as a very typical relic of modernism. I mean it will be a melancholy relic of the only period in all human history when people were proud of being modern. For though today is always today and the moment is always modern, we are the only men in all history who fell back upon bragging about the mere fact that today is not yesterday. I fear that some in the future will explain it by saying that we had precious little else to brag about. For, whatever the mediæval faults, they went with one merit. Mediæval people never worried about being mediæval; and modern people do worry horribly about being modern.
To begin with, note the queer, automatic assumption that it must always mean throwing mud at a thing to call it a relic of mediævalism. The modern world contains a good many relics of mediævalism, and most of us would be surprised if the argument were logically enforced even against the things that are commonly called mediæval. We should express some regret if somebody blew up Westminster Abbey, because it is a relic of mediævalism. Doubts would trouble us if the Government burned all existing copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, because they are quite certainly relics of mediævalism. We could not throw ourselves into unreserved and enthusiastic rejoicing even if the Tower of Giotto were destroyed as a relic of mediævalism. And only just lately, in Oxford and Paris (themselves, alas! relics of mediævalism), there has been a perverse and pedantic revival of the Thomist Philosophy and the logical method of the mediæval Schoolmen. Similarly, curious and restless minds, among the very youngest artists and art critics, have unaccountably gone back even further into the barbaric period than the limit of the Tower of Giotto, and are even now telling us to look back to the austerity of Cimabue and the Byzantine diagrams of the Dark Ages. These relics must be more mediæval even than mediævalism.
But, in fact, this queer phase would not cover only what is commonly called mediævalism. If a relic of mediævalism only means something that has come down to us from mediæval times, such writers would probably be surprised at the size and solidity of the relics. If I told these honest pressmen that the Press is a relic of mediævalism, they would probably prove their love of a cliché by accusing me of a paradox. But it is at least certain that the Printing Press is a relic of mediævalism. It was discovered and established by entirely mediæval men, steeped in mediæval ideas, stuffed with the religion and social spirit of the Middle Ages. There are no more typically mediæval words than those noble words of the eulogy that was pronounced by the great English printer on the great English poet; the words of Caxton upon Chaucer. If I were to say that Parliament is a relic of mediævalism, I should be on even stronger ground; for, while the Press did at least come at the end of the Middle Ages, the Parliaments came much more nearly at the beginning of the Middle Ages. They began, I think, in Spain and the provinces of the Pyrenees; but our own traditional date, connecting them with the revolt of Simon de Montfort, if not strictly accurate, does roughly represent the time. I need not say that half the great educational foundations, not only Oxford and Cambridge, but Glasgow and Paris, are relics of mediævalism. It would seem rather hard on the poor journalistic reformer if he is not allowed to pull down a little turnpike-gate till he has proved his right to pull down all these relics of mediævalism.
Next we have, of course, the very considerable historic doubt about whether the turnpike-gate is a relic of mediævalism. I do not know what was the date of this particular turnpike; but turnpikes and tolls of that description were perhaps most widely present, most practically enforced, or, at least, most generally noted, in the eighteenth century. When Pitt and Dundas, both of them roaring drunk, jumped over a turnpike-gate and were fired at with a blunderbuss, I hope nobody will suggest that those two great politicians were relics of mediævalism. Nobody surely could be more modern than Pitt and Dundas, for one of them was a great financial statesman, depending entirely on the bankers, and the other was a swindler. It is possible, of course, that some such local toll was really mediæval, but I rather doubt whether the journalist even inquired whether it was mediæval. He probably regards everything that happened before the time of Jazz and the Yellow Press as mediæval. For him mediæval only means old, and old only means bad; so that we come to the last question, which ought to have been the first question, of whether a turnpike really is necessarily bad.
If we were really relics of mediævalism—that is, if we had really been taught to think—we should have put that question first, and discussed whether a thing is bad or good before discussing whether it is modern or mediæval. There is no space to discuss it here at length, but a very simple test in the matter may be made. The aim and effect of tolls is simply this: that those who use the roads shall pay for the roads. As it is, the poor people of a district, including those who never stir from their villages, and hardly from their firesides, pay to maintain roads which are ploughed up and torn to pieces by the cars and lorries of rich men and big businesses, coming from London and the distant cities. It is not self-evident that this is a more just arrangement than that by which wayfarers pay to keep up the way, even if that arrangement were a relic of mediævalism.
Lastly, we might well ask, is it indeed so certain that our roads suffer from the slowness of petrol traffic; and that, if we can only make every sort of motor go faster and faster, we shall all be saved at last? That motors are more important than men is doubtless an admitted principle of a truly modern philosophy; nevertheless, it might be well to keep some sort of reasonable ratio between them, and decide exactly how many human beings should be killed by each car in the course of each year. And I fear that a mere policy of the acceleration of traffic may take us beyond the normal modern recognition of murder into something resembling a recognition of massacre. And about this, I for one still have a scruple; which is probably a relic of mediævalism.
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III
Sui caselli daziari e sul medievalismo
APRENDO il giornale l’altro giorno, mi cadde sotto gli occhi un breve ma enfatico trafiletto intitolato «Un relitto del medievalismo». Vi si esprimeva una profonda indignazione per il fatto che in qualche luogo, in un angolo piuttosto remoto di questo paese, esiste ancora un casello daziario, con tanto di pedaggio. Vi si sosteneva che questa antiquata tirannide è insopportabile, perché è di somma importanza che il traffico sulle nostre strade proceda molto veloce; presumibilmente un po’ più veloce di quanto già faccia. Così si descriveva il momentaneo indugio in quel luogo come un relitto del medievalismo. Temo che il futuro guarderà a quella frase, con una certa mestizia e un po’ di disprezzo, come a un relitto assai tipico del modernismo. Voglio dire che sarà un malinconico relitto dell’unica epoca in tutta la storia umana in cui gli uomini si vantarono di essere moderni. Poiché, sebbene l’oggi sia sempre oggi e il momento sia sempre moderno, noi siamo gli unici uomini di tutta la storia a esserci ridotti a vantarci del mero fatto che l’oggi non è l’ieri. Temo che qualcuno, nel futuro, lo spiegherà dicendo che avevamo ben poco altro di cui vantarci. Poiché, quali che fossero le colpe medievali, esse andavano accompagnate da un merito. La gente medievale non si preoccupava mai di essere medievale; e la gente moderna si preoccupa orribilmente di essere moderna.
Per cominciare, si noti la bizzarra, automatica presunzione che chiamare una cosa un relitto del medievalismo debba sempre significare gettarle addosso del fango. Il mondo moderno contiene un buon numero di relitti del medievalismo, e la maggior parte di noi resterebbe sorpresa se l’argomento fosse applicato con logica rigorosa perfino contro le cose che comunemente si dicono medievali. Esprimeremmo un certo rammarico se qualcuno facesse saltare in aria l’Abbazia di Westminster, perché è un relitto del medievalismo. Ci assalirebbero dei dubbi se il Governo bruciasse tutte le copie esistenti della Divina Commedia di Dante e dei Racconti di Canterbury di Chaucer, perché sono, con assoluta certezza, relitti del medievalismo. Non potremmo abbandonarci a un giubilo sfrenato ed entusiastico neppure se il Campanile di Giotto venisse distrutto come relitto del medievalismo. E proprio da ultimo, a Oxford e a Parigi (esse stesse, ahimè, relitti del medievalismo), si è avuta una perversa e pedantesca rinascita della Filosofia tomistica e del metodo logico degli Scolastici medievali. Similmente, menti curiose e inquiete, tra gli artisti e i critici d’arte più giovani, si sono inspiegabilmente spinte ancora più indietro nel periodo barbarico, oltre il limite del Campanile di Giotto, e proprio ora ci esortano a volgere lo sguardo all’austerità di Cimabue e ai diagrammi bizantini dei Secoli Bui. Questi relitti devono essere ancor più medievali del medievalismo stesso.
Ma, in verità, questa bizzarra frase non coprirebbe soltanto ciò che comunemente si chiama medievalismo. Se un relitto del medievalismo significa soltanto qualcosa che ci è pervenuto dai tempi medievali, tali scrittori resterebbero probabilmente sorpresi dalla mole e dalla solidità dei relitti. Se dicessi a questi onesti giornalisti che la Stampa è un relitto del medievalismo, essi darebbero probabilmente prova del loro amore per i luoghi comuni accusandomi di un paradosso. Eppure è quantomeno certo che la Stampa a caratteri mobili è un relitto del medievalismo. Fu scoperta e stabilita da uomini interamente medievali, imbevuti di idee medievali, impregnati della religione e dello spirito sociale del Medioevo. Non vi sono parole più tipicamente medievali di quelle nobili parole dell’elogio che il grande stampatore inglese pronunciò sul grande poeta inglese; le parole di Caxton su Chaucer. Se dovessi dire che il Parlamento è un relitto del medievalismo, mi troverei su un terreno ancor più saldo; poiché, mentre la Stampa venne almeno alla fine del Medioevo, i Parlamenti vennero molto più vicino all’inizio del Medioevo. Ebbero inizio, credo, in Spagna e nelle province dei Pirenei; ma la nostra data tradizionale, che li collega alla rivolta di Simone di Montfort, se non rigorosamente esatta, rappresenta all’incirca l’epoca. Non ho bisogno di dire che metà delle grandi fondazioni educative, non solo Oxford e Cambridge, ma Glasgow e Parigi, sono relitti del medievalismo. Sembrerebbe piuttosto duro, per il povero riformatore giornalistico, non essergli concesso di abbattere un piccolo casello daziario finché non abbia dimostrato il proprio diritto ad abbattere tutti questi relitti del medievalismo.
Vi è poi, naturalmente, il ben considerevole dubbio storico sul fatto che il casello daziario sia davvero un relitto del medievalismo. Io non so quale fosse la data di questo particolare casello; ma i caselli daziari e i pedaggi di quella specie furono forse più largamente presenti, più praticamente imposti, o, almeno, più generalmente notati, nel diciottesimo secolo. Quando Pitt e Dundas, entrambi ubriachi fradici, saltarono un casello daziario e furono presi a fucilate con un archibugio, spero che nessuno vorrà suggerire che quei due grandi uomini politici fossero relitti del medievalismo. Nessuno, di certo, potrebbe essere più moderno di Pitt e Dundas, poiché uno di loro fu un grande statista delle finanze, interamente dipendente dai banchieri, e l’altro fu un truffatore. È possibile, s’intende, che un tale pedaggio locale fosse davvero medievale, ma piuttosto dubito che il giornalista si sia perfino chiesto se fosse medievale. Egli con ogni probabilità considera medievale tutto ciò che accadde prima dell’epoca del Jazz e della Stampa Scandalistica. Per lui medievale significa soltanto vecchio, e vecchio significa soltanto cattivo; sicché giungiamo all’ultima domanda, che avrebbe dovuto essere la prima, ossia se un casello daziario sia davvero necessariamente cattivo.
Se fossimo davvero relitti del medievalismo—vale a dire, se davvero ci avessero insegnato a pensare—avremmo posto quella domanda per prima, e avremmo discusso se una cosa sia cattiva o buona prima di discutere se sia moderna o medievale. Non c’è spazio qui per discuterne diffusamente, ma in questa materia si può fare una prova assai semplice. Lo scopo e l’effetto dei pedaggi sono semplicemente questi: che coloro i quali usano le strade paghino per le strade. Così com’è, la povera gente di un distretto, compresi coloro che non si muovono mai dai loro villaggi, e a stento dal loro focolare, paga per mantenere strade che vengono arate e fatte a pezzi dalle automobili e dagli autocarri degli uomini ricchi e dei grandi affari, provenienti da Londra e dalle città lontane. Non è di per sé evidente che questo sia un ordinamento più giusto di quello per cui i viandanti pagano per mantenere la via, anche se quell’ordinamento fosse un relitto del medievalismo.
Da ultimo, potremmo ben chiederci: è davvero così certo che le nostre strade soffrano per la lentezza del traffico a benzina; e che, se solo riuscissimo a far andare ogni sorta di motore sempre più veloce, saremmo tutti alla fine salvati? Che i motori siano più importanti degli uomini è indubbiamente un principio ammesso di una filosofia autenticamente moderna; ciò nondimeno, potrebbe essere bene mantenere una qualche ragionevole proporzione tra loro, e decidere esattamente quanti esseri umani ciascuna automobile debba uccidere nel corso di ciascun anno. E temo che una mera politica di accelerazione del traffico possa condurci al di là del normale riconoscimento moderno dell’omicidio, verso qualcosa che somiglia al riconoscimento del massacro. E su questo, io per primo ho ancora uno scrupolo; il quale è probabilmente un relitto del medievalismo.
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IV
On Mammoth Portraiture
WHEN I first heard of the scheme for carving colossal heads of American heroes out of the everlasting hills, the scheme (I think) of the American sculptor, Mr. Borglum, I felt again the thrill first given to me in childhood in reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s fantasy of The Great Stone Face. It is not unnatural that two great American artists, in different departments, should have dreamed similar dreams; for the whole conception not only rises out of but really requires the vast American background of prairies and mountain-chains. Anyone will feel, I think, that it would be rather too big for England. It would be rather alarming for the Englishman returning by boat to Dover, to see that Shakspere’s Cliff had suddenly turned into Shakspere. We had a distinguished portrait-painter named Beechey, but none of his portraits is quite on the scale of Beachy Head. And the most intrepid mountaineer might well be staggered if, when scaling the steep face of Snowdon, he saw the cold and stony face of Lord Snowden, that far from extinct volcano. Though the heads in the American experiment are those of statesmen, they are mostly those of statesmen who have passed to where politicians cease from troubling and, at any rate, cease from taxing. But this does not altogether get rid of a further difficulty, even in the more appropriate and spacious American atmosphere.
It is unlucky that at the moment when America can carve permanent historical monuments there has been some loss of permanence in historical theories. America is stronger than any other State just now in certain kinds of architecture and architectural sculpture, suggestive of the stark and starry altitudes of Egypt and Assyria. But the ideas in those ancient designs are either dead or indestructible. In modern history, however, one man has been trying to “debunk” Washington in a book, while another man has been moulding him out of a mountain. What does the “debunker” do in this contest? Does he buy another mountain; and carve another and less pleasing portrait of Washington? Will he prove that the great man was small, by exhibiting his smallness on a large scale? There remains a very fine head of Rameses III, the Pharaoh of the Exodus. But we have not got a colossal caricature of him—by Moses.
That is the mischief with the modern world. We might make more permanent records of our opinions. But we have not got more permanent opinions to record. In every sense we are strong in the concrete; but very wobbly in the abstract. But that is a larger matter than the largest statue, and we cannot conclude upon it here. For my part, I sometimes think public monuments ought to be too large to be seen. I suggest that there should be a new art, plotting out large spaces of the earth in coloured pictures of turf or clay, only to be seen from a skyscraper or a flying-ship. Instead of disfiguring the sky with aviators writing advertisements that everybody can see, let us plan out the earth in gigantic figures that only aviators can see. Then anybody who wants to be an æsthete, and talk about Art, can pay a stiff sum to go up to a dizzy and uncomfortable height, and see his own very exclusive portrait gallery spread out before him, over hill and dale, or even over county and province. For things can be kept secret by being large as well as by being small. Hitherto it has been assumed that size and scale in the arts belonged only to things vertical and solid; to architecture or at least to sculpture; and that pictures painted in the flat belong to a world of smaller things, in some cases even concentrating in illuminated missals or in miniatures. By the trifling reform or experiment which I suggest, it would be possible to make pictures more colossal than the most colossal buildings. I will even confess to a weakness for the fancy; there is something faintly stirring to the imagination in the notion of the whole earth traced out in the shapes of Titans, the earth’s huge but forgotten children; or in using the raw colours of geology and the vaster forms of vegetation to fit together into the unity of a sprawling figure or a staring face. It would hardly be safe, of course, to assume that geological areas are plainly coloured like a map; I do not know whether Yellowstone Park is really yellow or the Black Forest really black; in spite of my simple and romantic mind, I am aware that the Red Sea is not red. But, the reds and browns and purples of the desert beside the Red Sea would make excellent material for a certain style of portrait-painting; an admirable if not an enviable complexion. Only, as I say, the æsthete would have to be an aviator, and this alone would probably diminish the number of æsthetes. So that, in a sort of way, I should be a reformer after all. As these vast portraits would be invisible, in a general sense, I suppose it would not matter very much whose portraits they were. But, as a general principle of propriety, I suppose they should only represent men whose names have really gone to the ends of the earth: figures of great national and international power. Meanwhile, the rest of us would never see them and never trouble about them. We should go on living happily and innocently in the woodlands of Abraham Lincoln’s whiskers, or in the pleasant shady district not far from the eyebrow of Charles James Fox, without being pestered about Art at all.
It is a fine, large scheme, and more sensible than most large schemes I know. For that would appear to be the logical end of all that pursuit of pure largeness, as such, which has been so much the mark of our time; and has even intoxicated some of the finest intellects of our time, like that of Mr. H. G. Wells. The end of the process of expansion would seem to be disappearance; the vanishing of these vast things from the restricted senses and calculations of man. It is the ultimate upshot of the skyscraper; and upshot seems to be an oddly appropriate term. It is the end that the edifice should tower so high that we cannot see its towers; that the sky-sign should sprawl so wide that we cannot read its lettering; that we should be left, exactly like the people in my parable of the painted earth, living too close to things that are too large. I do not say it is very probable that things will ever go as far as that; chiefly because I think it much more probable that, long before that happens, people will have developed a taste for something totally different; perhaps for things that are microscopically small. But the builders of the big buildings, and the painters of the huge hoardings, do not propose to themselves any logical process except that of making things larger and larger, and therefore have no logical end except to make them too large to bother about.
There is another way in which the parable is really a plain truth; and, indeed, a practical problem. Our relation to modern schemes and systems, to the institutions under which we live and the international influences by which they are extended, is very like the relation of a man living like a pigmy in a city of giants. We have lost the power to control things, largely because we have lost the power to oversee them; that is, to see them as a whole. The economic disasters we suffer are largely due to the operations having grown too large even for the operators. We are all dotted about like little pins stuck in a vast map of financial statesmanship, or rather, financial strategy; it is a plan or chart far too voluminous and bewildering to be at present mastered by any public opinion, and the pins cannot use their pin’s-heads. If there are any persons who do understand it, they are much fewer than the aviators who would mount aloft to see the picture of the whole earth.
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IV
Del ritratto mastodontico
QUANDO sentii parlare per la prima volta del progetto di scolpire teste colossali di eroi americani nelle colline eterne — progetto, mi pare, dello scultore americano Mr. Borglum — provai di nuovo quel brivido che per la prima volta mi era stato dato nell’infanzia, leggendo la fantasia di Nathaniel Hawthorne intitolata The Great Stone Face. Non è innaturale che due grandi artisti americani, in campi diversi, abbiano sognato sogni simili; giacché l’intera concezione non solo scaturisce da quel vasto sfondo americano di praterie e catene montuose, ma addirittura lo esige. Chiunque, credo, sentirà che per l’Inghilterra la cosa sarebbe piuttosto troppo grande. Sarebbe alquanto allarmante, per l’inglese che torna in nave a Dover, vedere che la Rupe di Shakspere si è d’un tratto mutata in Shakspere. Avemmo un illustre ritrattista di nome Beechey, ma nessuno dei suoi ritratti è proprio alla scala di Beachy Head. E il più intrepido degli alpinisti potrebbe ben restare sconcertato se, scalando la ripida parete dello Snowdon, vedesse la faccia fredda e pietrosa di Lord Snowden, quel vulcano tutt’altro che spento. Sebbene le teste dell’esperimento americano siano quelle di uomini di Stato, sono per lo più quelle di uomini di Stato ormai passati là dove i politici cessano di dar noia e, in ogni caso, cessano di tassare. Ma ciò non elimina del tutto un’ulteriore difficoltà, persino nella più appropriata e spaziosa atmosfera americana.
È una sventura che, nel momento in cui l’America può scolpire monumenti storici permanenti, si sia verificata una certa perdita di permanenza nelle teorie storiche. L’America è più forte, in questo momento, di qualsiasi altro Stato in certi generi di architettura e di scultura architettonica, che suggeriscono le altitudini nude e stellari dell’Egitto e dell’Assiria. Ma le idee di quegli antichi disegni sono o morte o indistruttibili. Nella storia moderna, invece, un uomo ha cercato di «sputtanare» Washington in un libro, mentre un altro lo andava plasmando fuori da una montagna. Che cosa fa lo «sputtanatore» in questa gara? Compra un’altra montagna e vi scolpisce un altro ritratto, meno gradevole, di Washington? Dimostrerà che il grand’uomo era piccolo, esibendone la piccolezza su larga scala? Rimane una assai bella testa di Ramesse III, il Faraone dell’Esodo. Ma non ne possediamo una caricatura colossale — opera di Mosè.
Ecco il guaio del mondo moderno. Potremmo dare alle nostre opinioni testimonianze più durevoli. Ma non abbiamo opinioni più durevoli da testimoniare. In ogni senso siamo forti nel concreto; ma assai malfermi nell’astratto. Ma questa è faccenda più grande della più grande statua, e qui non possiamo concluderla. Da parte mia, penso talvolta che i monumenti pubblici dovrebbero essere troppo grandi per essere visti. Propongo che nasca un’arte nuova, che tracci vaste distese della terra in quadri colorati di zolle o d’argilla, visibili soltanto da un grattacielo o da una nave volante. Invece di sfregiare il cielo con aviatori che scrivono pubblicità che tutti possono leggere, tracciamo la terra in figure gigantesche che solo gli aviatori possano vedere. Allora chiunque voglia farsi esteta, e discorrere d’Arte, potrà pagare una bella somma per salire a un’altezza vertiginosa e scomoda, e vedere spiegata dinanzi a sé la propria esclusivissima galleria di ritratti, sopra colle e valle, e persino sopra contea e provincia. Poiché le cose possono essere tenute segrete sia per la loro grandezza sia del pari per la loro piccolezza. Finora si è supposto che grandezza e scala, nelle arti, appartenessero solo alle cose verticali e solide; all’architettura o almeno alla scultura; e che le pitture dipinte in piano appartenessero a un mondo di cose più minute, concentrandosi in certi casi persino nei messali miniati o nelle miniature. Con quella insignificante riforma o esperimento che propongo, sarebbe possibile fare pitture più colossali del più colossale edificio. Confesserò anzi una debolezza per questa fantasia; c’è qualcosa di lievemente eccitante per l’immaginazione nell’idea dell’intera terra tracciata nelle forme di Titani, gli enormi ma dimenticati figli della terra; o nell’usare i colori grezzi della geologia e le forme più vaste della vegetazione per comporre insieme l’unità di una figura sdraiata o di una faccia che fissa. Non sarebbe prudente, s’intende, dare per scontato che le aree geologiche siano tinte con nettezza come una carta geografica; non so se il Parco di Yellowstone sia davvero giallo o la Foresta Nera davvero nera; a dispetto della mia mente semplice e romantica, so bene che il Mar Rosso non è rosso. Ma i rossi, i bruni e i porpora del deserto presso il Mar Rosso fornirebbero materiale eccellente per un certo stile di ritrattistica; una carnagione mirabile, se non invidiabile. Solo che, come dico, l’esteta dovrebbe farsi aviatore, e questo soltanto ridurrebbe probabilmente il numero degli esteti. Sicché, in un certo qual modo, sarei un riformatore dopo tutto. Poiché questi vasti ritratti sarebbero invisibili, in senso generale, suppongo che importerebbe assai poco di chi fossero i ritratti. Ma, come generale principio di decoro, suppongo che dovrebbero raffigurare soltanto uomini i cui nomi siano davvero giunti fino ai confini della terra: figure di grande potenza nazionale e internazionale. Nel frattempo, tutti noialtri non li vedremmo mai né ce ne daremmo mai pensiero. Continueremmo a vivere felici e innocenti nelle boscaglie dei favoriti di Abraham Lincoln, o nell’ameno distretto ombroso non lontano dal sopracciglio di Charles James Fox, senza essere affatto tormentati intorno all’Arte.
È un bel progetto, ampio, e più sensato della maggior parte dei grandi progetti che conosco. Poiché quello parrebbe essere l’approdo logico di tutta quella caccia alla pura grandezza in quanto tale, che è stata a tal punto il segno del nostro tempo; e che ha persino inebriato alcuni dei più fini intelletti del nostro tempo, come quello di Mr. H. G. Wells. La fine del processo d’espansione parrebbe essere la scomparsa; lo svanire di queste vaste cose dai sensi e dai calcoli ristretti dell’uomo. È l’ultimo esito del grattacielo; ed «esito» pare un termine stranamente appropriato. È destino che l’edificio torreggi tanto alto da non poterne più scorgere le torri; che l’insegna celeste si distenda tanto larga da non poterne più leggere le lettere; che siamo lasciati, esattamente come la gente nella mia parabola della terra dipinta, a vivere troppo vicini a cose troppo grandi. Non dico che sia molto probabile che le cose arrivino mai fino a quel punto; soprattutto perché ritengo assai più probabile che, molto prima che ciò accada, la gente avrà maturato il gusto per qualcosa di totalmente diverso; forse per cose microscopicamente piccole. Ma i costruttori dei grandi edifici, e i pittori delle enormi affissioni, non si propongono alcun processo logico se non quello di fare le cose sempre più grandi, e perciò non hanno altro fine logico che quello di farle troppo grandi perché ci si possa curare di esse.
C’è un altro modo in cui la parabola è davvero una schietta verità; e, in realtà, un problema pratico. Il nostro rapporto con i moderni schemi e sistemi, con le istituzioni sotto cui viviamo e con gli influssi internazionali per mezzo dei quali esse si estendono, somiglia molto al rapporto di un uomo che vivesse come un pigmeo in una città di giganti. Abbiamo perduto il potere di controllare le cose, in gran parte perché abbiamo perduto il potere di sorvegliarle; ossia di vederle come un tutto. I disastri economici che patiamo sono in gran parte dovuti al fatto che le operazioni sono cresciute troppo grandi persino per gli operatori. Siamo tutti disseminati come piccoli spilli infissi in una vasta carta della statistica finanziaria, o piuttosto della strategia finanziaria; è un piano o una carta troppo voluminosa e sconcertante per essere al presente padroneggiata da una qualsiasi opinione pubblica, e gli spilli non possono servirsi delle loro capocchie. Se vi sono persone che davvero la comprendono, esse sono assai meno numerose degli aviatori che salirebbero in alto a vedere l’immagine dell’intera terra.
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V
On War Memorials
I HAPPENED recently to renew my acquaintance with Edinburgh Rock; I refer to the remarkable fortress and not the more remarkable foodstuff of that name. The latter, indeed, I am far from despising. There seems even to be something terrible in giving that stark and rugged title to a sweetmeat; as if a child were invited to nibble at Gibraltar or take a big bite out of St. Michael’s Mount. Anyhow, that citadel, which is like a city within a city, contains a new and unique building, which is like a castle within a castle. It is the War Memorial of Scotland, and, to my mind, one of the few great War Memorials that are worthy of the greatness of the War. And the train of rambling reflections which it started left me with a profound renewal of all my own original belief in what would now, by comparison, be called little and local things. I have lived through the times when many intelligent and idealistic men hoped that the World War would be an introduction to the World State. But I myself am more convinced than ever that the World War occurred because nations were too big, and not because they were too small. It occurred especially because big nations wished to be bigger, or, in other words, because each State wanted to be the World State. But it occurred, above all, because about things so vast there comes to be something cold and hollow and impersonal. It was not merely a war of nations; it was a war of warring Internationalists.
Now, the Scottish War Memorial has a personality. It is the personality of a people, not merely the impersonality of people. I would not raise here, least of all in any unsympathetic spirit, the purely æsthetic debates about, the Cenotaph. But, after all, a Cenotaph is by definition an empty tomb, and it affects me individually as a very empty tomb. I would not call it cold and hollow and impersonal in any abusive sense. But it is by its very nature hollow; it is by a deliberate artistic policy impersonal; and the effect of this, on some people at least, is that it is rather cold. The point is that this effect was produced intentionally, and almost inevitably, by the avoidance of anything that could be distinctive of any creed, any province, any profession or branch of the service. It is in that sense cosmopolitan, and therefore colourless; in being the meeting-place of so many races and religions, it can hardly help having something of the hollowness of the heart of the whirlpool, or reminding us of a temple of the winds, offering an intermediate and cold hospitality to all the winds of the world. I know all that there is to be said for such severities of classic architecture; but as least those who most admire the Cenotaph must admire it as architecture, and not as sculpture. Now, the Edinburgh War Memorial is full of sculpture, as a mediæval church is full of such carving and craftsmanship; and the word “full” does really correspond to a sense of fullness. And one effect of that sort of Gothic fullness is that a thing can be great when it is small.
Now, a thing like the Cenotaph can hardly be great when it is small. Even as it is, to my instinct, it is too small. What I fancy I really feel about it is that it might be very fine, in its own way, if it were as big as the Great Pyramid and stood against a background as bare as the great desert. It might then be entirely artistic and appropriate, for the artist’s own purpose, that it should be as bare as the sky or as inhuman as the wilderness. But if we are talking about the human and historical quality of these things, then there will be surely more value in a piece of varied and yet concentrated craftsmanship, such as that which has been achieved by this group of Scottish craftsmen. A carving must be a carving of something, if not of somebody. And the peculiar liveliness of local life and work lies in the fact that it is always dealing with something, describing something, struggling with the particular difficulties of something or somebody. There is a spirit that can only be called Gossip about a Gothic cathedral and its carvings. It may deal in caricatures, but it does not deal much in those abstract diagrams that can be much more misleading than caricatures. And, without at all narrowing my artistic tastes to this one type or school of work, I will confess to an undiminished partiality for it, because of its extraordinary vitality and vivacity. It is the liveliness of localism, even the liveliness of littleness. It arises when craftsmen have particular positive traditions of the work-shop or the shrine, or when there is, for instance, as there still is in Scotland, a living memory of the lineage of particular families, and not only the families of the rich. For no family that is really respected consistently, as a family, can ever be entirely snobbish. The vast voting majority of the very richest family consists of poor relations.
These rambling reflections first began to ramble at the sight of a stone Unicorn, the ancient bearer of the Scottish arms, which stands outside the entrance to the memorial chapel. I thought it was a strong piece of work, simplified, but far from conventional, even in the artistic sense. But what took the eye, as typical of the spirit of which I speak, was the bold but harmonious way in which the artist had dealt with the difficulty of the conventional spike sticking out of the forehead of the sacred monster. The artist had bent the horn back by sheer strength, so to speak—at least by sheer strength of imagination— so that it followed with a wilder curve of its own the strong curve of the horse’s neck. And I thought to myself that this was typical of the true spirit of craftsmanship, especially of craftsmanship dealing with definite and traditional symbols. The sculptor had really wrestled with the Unicorn, like a legendary hero wrestling with a fabulous animal. That is, she had really wrestled with a problem of presenting something positive that had to be presented, and yet in a new and more perfect form of presentation. She had made something new out of the old Unicorn; but she had not made any thing else except a Unicorn. There was something symbolic in the fact that she had taken that wild, unearthly horse by the horn and forced it back into the contours of her own design. This is only one example out of many, and there are hundreds of such examples, wherever good workmen are doing real work with real images and ideas. Because they are real images and ideas, they can be treated; but they must be treated with. They must be taken on certain terms, and partly on their own terms. Because they are wild things, they can be tamed, but only by the true Unicorn-tamer, who is even more daring than the Lion-tamer.
That is why the traditional art is the truly creative art. That is why it is truly more creative than the negative abstractions which tend, of their nature, not merely to anarchy, but to nothingness. And that is why a glimpse of these things encouraged me in my own lifelong belief in particularism, and the tales and traditions of a people. Where there are traditions there are tests; where there are traditions there are tasks and practical problems; but they are always stimulants to the spirit and cunning and imagination of man. They are always more fruitful, in the long run, than the work of those who strike outwards to draw a design of nothing on the dark canvas of night. The Unicorn brings forth Unicorns, and all sorts of new and varied Unicorns, and one of them will be different because it is a stone Unicorn and another because it is a bronze Unicorn. But there are no foals born to the Nightmare.
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V
Sui monumenti ai caduti
MI È CAPITATO di recente di rinnovare la mia conoscenza con l’Edinburgh Rock; alludo alla notevole fortezza e non al più notevole dolciume che ne porta il nome. Quest’ultimo, invero, sono ben lungi dal disprezzarlo. Pare anzi che vi sia qualcosa di terribile nel conferire quel titolo aspro e roccioso a un confetto; come se un bambino fosse invitato a sgranocchiare Gibilterra o a dare un bel morso al Monte di San Michael. Comunque sia, quella cittadella, che è come una città dentro una città, racchiude un edificio nuovo e singolare, che è come un castello dentro un castello. È il Monumento ai Caduti della Scozia e, a mio giudizio, uno dei pochi grandi Monumenti ai Caduti che siano degni della grandezza della Guerra. E il seguito di divaganti riflessioni ch’esso mise in moto mi lasciò con un profondo rinnovamento di tutta la mia originaria fede in quelle che ora, per contrasto, si direbbero cose piccole e locali. Ho vissuto i tempi in cui molti uomini intelligenti e idealisti speravano che la Guerra Mondiale fosse la premessa dello Stato Mondiale. Ma io, per parte mia, sono più che mai convinto che la Guerra Mondiale sia scoppiata perché le nazioni erano troppo grandi, e non perché fossero troppo piccole. Scoppiò specialmente perché le grandi nazioni volevano essere più grandi, ovvero, in altre parole, perché ciascuno Stato voleva essere lo Stato Mondiale. Ma scoppiò, sopra ogni cosa, perché intorno a realtà tanto vaste finisce per aleggiare qualcosa di freddo, di vuoto e di impersonale. Non fu semplicemente una guerra di nazioni; fu una guerra di Internazionalisti in guerra fra loro.
Ora, il Monumento ai Caduti scozzese ha una personalità. È la personalità di un popolo, non semplicemente l’impersonalità della gente. Non solleverei qui, tanto meno in spirito ostile, le dispute puramente estetiche intorno al Cenotafio. Ma, in fondo, un Cenotafio è per definizione una tomba vuota, e su di me, personalmente, produce l’effetto di una tomba assai vuota. Non lo direi freddo, vuoto e impersonale in senso ingiurioso. Ma è per sua stessa natura vuoto; è per deliberato disegno artistico impersonale; e l’effetto di ciò, almeno su alcuni, è ch’esso riesce piuttosto freddo. Il punto è che tale effetto fu prodotto intenzionalmente, e quasi inevitabilmente, evitando tutto ciò che potesse contraddistinguere una fede qualsiasi, una qualsiasi provincia, una qualsiasi professione o arma del servizio. È in tal senso cosmopolita, e perciò incolore; essendo il luogo d’incontro di tante razze e religioni, non può fare a meno di avere qualcosa della vacuità che è nel cuore del vortice, o di ricordarci un tempio dei venti, che offre a tutti i venti del mondo un’ospitalità intermedia e fredda. So bene tutto ciò che si può dire in favore di simili austerità dell’architettura classica; ma quanto meno coloro che più ammirano il Cenotafio devono ammirarlo come architettura, e non come scultura. Ora, il Monumento ai Caduti di Edimburgo è pieno di scultura, come una chiesa medievale è piena di simili intagli e maestrìa artigiana; e la parola «pieno» corrisponde davvero a un senso di pienezza. E uno degli effetti di quella pienezza gotica è che una cosa può essere grande pur essendo piccola.
Ora, una cosa come il Cenotafio difficilmente può essere grande quando è piccola. Così com’è, per il mio istinto, è già troppo piccolo. Ciò che credo di provare veramente al suo riguardo è che potrebbe risultare bellissimo, a modo suo, se fosse grande come la Grande Piramide e si stagliasse su uno sfondo spoglio come il grande deserto. Sarebbe allora del tutto artistico e opportuno, ai fini stessi dell’artista, ch’esso fosse nudo come il cielo o inumano come la landa selvaggia. Ma se parliamo della qualità umana e storica di queste opere, allora vi sarà certamente maggior valore in un pezzo d’artigianato vario eppure concentrato, quale quello realizzato da questo gruppo di artigiani scozzesi. Un intaglio dev’essere l’intaglio di qualcosa, se non di qualcuno. E la peculiare vivacità della vita e del lavoro locali sta nel fatto che essi hanno sempre a che fare con qualcosa, descrivono qualcosa, lottano con le difficoltà particolari di qualcosa o di qualcuno. C’è uno spirito che non si può chiamare se non Pettegolezzo intorno a una cattedrale gotica e ai suoi intagli. Potrà indulgere alle caricature, ma non indulge granché a quegli schemi astratti che possono ingannare assai più delle caricature. E, senza affatto restringere i miei gusti artistici a questo unico tipo o scuola di lavoro, confesserò per esso una immutata predilezione, per la sua straordinaria vitalità e vivacità. È la vivacità del localismo, anzi la vivacità della piccolezza. Sorge quando gli artigiani posseggono tradizioni positive e particolari della bottega o del santuario, o quando esiste, per esempio, com’esiste ancora in Scozia, una viva memoria della stirpe di determinate famiglie, e non soltanto delle famiglie dei ricchi. Poiché nessuna famiglia che sia davvero rispettata con costanza, in quanto famiglia, potrà mai essere interamente snob. La grande maggioranza, quella che fa numero, anche della più ricca delle famiglie è composta di parenti poveri.
Queste divaganti riflessioni presero a divagare la prima volta alla vista di un Unicorno di pietra, l’antico portatore dello stemma scozzese, che si erge all’ingresso della cappella commemorativa. Mi parve un’opera vigorosa, semplificata, ma tutt’altro che convenzionale, anche in senso artistico. Ma ciò che colpiva l’occhio, come tipico dello spirito di cui parlo, era il modo audace e insieme armonioso in cui l’artista aveva affrontato la difficoltà del convenzionale aculeo che sporge dalla fronte del sacro Mostro. L’artista aveva ripiegato all’indietro il corno a pura forza, per così dire—o quanto meno a pura forza d’immaginazione—sicché esso seguiva, con una curva propria più selvaggia, la forte curva del collo del cavallo. E pensai fra me che questo era tipico del vero spirito dell’artigianato, specialmente dell’artigianato che ha a che fare con simboli definiti e tradizionali. Lo scultore aveva davvero lottato con l’Unicorno, come un eroe leggendario che lotta con un animale favoloso. Voglio dire, ella aveva davvero lottato col problema di presentare qualcosa di positivo che doveva essere presentato, e tuttavia in una forma di presentazione nuova e più perfetta. Aveva tratto qualcosa di nuovo dal vecchio Unicorno; ma non aveva fatto null’altro se non un Unicorno. C’era qualcosa di simbolico nel fatto ch’ella avesse preso per il corno quel cavallo selvaggio e ultraterreno e l’avesse costretto a rientrare nei contorni del proprio disegno. Questo è soltanto uno fra molti esempi, e ve ne sono a centinaia, dovunque buoni artefici compiano un lavoro reale con immagini e idee reali. Poiché sono immagini e idee reali, si possono trattare; ma occorre trattare con esse. Vanno accettate a certe condizioni, e in parte alle loro proprie condizioni. Poiché sono creature selvagge, si possono domare, ma solo dal vero domatore di Unicorni, che è ancor più ardito del domatore di Leoni.
Ecco perché l’arte tradizionale è l’arte veramente creativa. Ecco perché essa è davvero più creativa delle astrazioni negative che tendono, per loro natura, non semplicemente all’anarchia, ma al nulla. Ed ecco perché uno scorcio di queste cose mi ha rinfrancato nella mia fede di sempre nel particolarismo, e nei racconti e nelle tradizioni di un popolo. Dove ci sono tradizioni ci sono prove; dove ci sono tradizioni ci sono compiti e problemi pratici; ma essi sono sempre stimoli allo spirito, all’ingegno e all’immaginazione dell’uomo. Sono sempre più fecondi, alla lunga, dell’opera di coloro che si slanciano nel vuoto per tracciare un disegno di nulla sulla tela oscura della Notte. L’Unicorno genera Unicorni, e Unicorni d’ogni sorta, nuovi e diversi, e l’uno sarà diverso perché è un Unicorno di pietra e un altro perché è un Unicorno di bronzo. Ma nessun puledro nasce dall’Incubo.
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VI
On Old Men Who Make Wars
A STALE and stupid but still poisonous phrase has been buzzing about for the last ten years, as difficult to catch as a wasp in the warm weather. It is already very old, but is always said as if it were something new; everybody has heard it said, and hardly anybody has stopped to ask what it meant. It has many forms, but the commonest form of it is something like this: “Of course the young were embittered when they realized how their elders had brought the world into a horrible catastrophe and a hideous mess.” I, for one, am tired of hearing it, and therefore I propose to be the first person who ever thought about it.
First, I happen to remember that exactly the same argument, if you can call it an argument, was used more than twenty years ago, when the fashion was not so much the Appeal to Youth as the Appeal to Woman. Then, also, we were always told that Woman (who had apparently only been born yesterday) looked around her and saw a world of sin and sorrow. This, she promptly declared, was a Man-Made World. Her supporters were not content to say that she was unjustly treated, as in many ways she was; they were not content to say that she had as much claim as man to this or that legal or social privilege: which was very arguable, and about which, in any case, I am not now going to argue. They did definitely declare that the wickedness and misery of the world were clearly due to the fact that it had been managed by males. If the wasp came in at the window and stung somebody, this was due to the fact that it was a Man-Made window, if not actually a Man-Made wasp. If Woman had been in control of the world, there would have been no wasps; or all the wasps would have been trained in such tact and social discipline that they never stung anybody. If the poor were underpaid or overworked, it was solely because men and not women had the paying of them, though some of us had known women who were hard on their subordinates, almost in the manner of men. If nations went to war, it was because women had not votes to stop them, though some of us knew women who waved flags and shouted war-songs and were far more passionately patriotic than the males whom they sent to war. Whatever evil there was on the earth, it was due to the fact that humanity, for reasons best known to itself, had given all power to the sex that always supported evil, and no power at all to the sex which invariably, and in every situation, supported the highest possible good. I remember all that sort of talk, that started nearly thirty years ago, and attributed all misfortunes to Men. I still hear the other sort of talk, that started nearly twenty years ago, and attributes all misfortunes to Old Men.
Since then, the first batch of Young Men have themselves almost become Old Men; but they are still saying it. They are still saying it without seriously thinking about it. Anyone who will examine the statement will see that it really rests on three assumptions which, as is usual in these cases, are not only accepted, but accepted unconsciously. The speakers not only assume them without proving them, but assume them without knowing they are assuming them. The first is this: That terrible and desolating tragedy is so abnormal in human life, and so utterly out of the nature of things, that it can only be attributed to the staggering and scandalous stupidity of some special individual or individuals. Without going off into an argument about human life, we may note that there is at least an element which is here ignored for the first time in history; for that tragic character of living was a commonplace to all the sages and the poets. To put it shortly, if it is terrible that two million men should die together in a campaign, it is also terrible that all men without exception must die separately somewhere. It is not self-evident that the tragic phase of life only follows on exceptional folly, and the fallacy was noted some time ago by the Tower of Siloam and the Ash-heap of Job.
The second assumption is this: That a tragedy like the Great War must have been not only a blunder, but a blunder made by everybody at the same moment. It must have been a blind collision in the dark, and therefore can only have been due to mere negligence in all those in control. Now you may or may not agree that there was an aggressor in the quarrel, but it is nonsense to assume it as self-evident that there was not, or talk as if there could not be. If there was, the affair would not be a result of negligence, but emphatically a result of vigilance. We may say it was a wicked vigilance on the part of the aggressor; but, by the same stroke, we are forced to admit that it was therefore a just and honourable vigilance on the part of the defenders. Anyhow, the whole nightmare of mere negligence has disappeared as a necessity of logic; it has disappeared because it was not a necessity but a mere assumption.
Thirdly (though this point is less easy to limit and define properly): It is an assumption to suppose that statesmen or national leaders are necessarily wrong even when they do risk great catastrophes, for the sake of creating or preserving some cultural system associated with all that makes life worth living. A man might admit that his efforts to avert catastrophe might fail, that the catastrophe might follow, and still maintain his course, being resolved at least to avoid the worst catastrophe of the loss of the main hope of humanity. Certainly every reform or reconstruction in human history has been followed by calamities, if wars are the chief calamities. The democratic ideal of Athens involved it in a welter of wars; the universal civilization of Rome was spread by a long routine of wars; every national culture owes something to the national wars. If you accept the French Revolution, it covered Europe with the Napoleonic Wars. If you accept the Protestant Reformation, it devastated the Germanies with the longest and weariest of all wars. If you accept the Russian Revolution, it has already produced endless internal wars, one external war, and the end is not yet. I am not expressing admiration for war, nor, for that matter, for the Russian Revolution or the Reformation. I am only saying that nobody has a right to assume at the start that no statesman has any right to risk war, for the sake of ideals that change or preserve civilization. In short, there was nothing grotesquely doddering and decadent about the Old Men who, twenty years ago, tried to rule the troubled and troublesome race of men. Some were right and some were wrong; but most were vigilant, and all were bound in any case to take a risk.
I think this worth mentioning now, for a simple reason. We are already drifting horribly near to a New War, which will probably start on the Polish Border. The Young Men have had nineteen years in which to learn how to avoid it. I wonder whether they do know much more about how to avoid it than the despised and drivelling Old Men of 1914. How many of the Young Men, for instance, have made the smallest attempt to understand Poland? How many would have anything to say to Hitler, to dissuade him from setting all Christendom aflame by a raid on Poland? Or have the Young Men been thinking of nothing since 1914 except the senile depravity of the Old Men of that date?
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VI
Sui vecchi che fanno le guerre
Da una decina d’anni ronza qua e là una frase trita e sciocca, eppure ancora velenosa, difficile da acchiappare come una vespa nella stagione calda. È ormai vecchissima, ma la si pronuncia sempre come fosse qualcosa di nuovo; tutti l’hanno sentita dire, e quasi nessuno si è fermato a domandarsi che cosa volesse dire. Assume molte forme, ma la più comune suona pressappoco così: «Naturalmente i giovani si sono inaspriti quando si sono resi conto di come i loro maggiori avessero precipitato il mondo in una catastrofe orribile e in un pasticcio abominevole». Io, per parte mia, sono stanco di sentirla, e perciò mi propongo di essere la prima persona che vi abbia mai riflettuto sopra.
Anzitutto, mi càpita di ricordare che esattamente lo stesso argomento, se argomento lo si può chiamare, veniva impiegato più di vent’anni fa, quando la moda non era tanto l’Appello alla Gioventù quanto l’Appello alla Donna. Anche allora ci si diceva di continuo che la Donna (la quale a quanto pare era nata soltanto ieri) si guardava attorno e vedeva un mondo di peccato e di dolore. Questo, dichiarava lei senza indugio, era un Mondo Fatto dall’Uomo. I suoi sostenitori non si accontentavano di dire che essa era trattata ingiustamente, come per molti versi in effetti era; non si accontentavano di dire che aveva tanto diritto quanto l’uomo a questo o quel privilegio legale o sociale: il che era assai discutibile, e su cui, in ogni caso, non intendo ora discutere. Dichiaravano invece, e senza mezzi termini, che la malvagità e la miseria del mondo dipendevano chiaramente dal fatto che esso era stato governato dai maschi. Se la vespa entrava dalla finestra e pungeva qualcuno, ciò dipendeva dal fatto che era una finestra Fatta dall’Uomo, se non addirittura una vespa Fatta dall’Uomo. Se la Donna avesse avuto in mano il controllo del mondo, non ci sarebbero state vespe; oppure tutte le vespe sarebbero state educate a tale tatto e a tale disciplina sociale da non pungere mai nessuno. Se i poveri erano sottopagati o sfruttati, ciò avveniva unicamente perché a pagarli erano gli uomini e non le donne, benché taluni di noi avessero conosciuto donne dure con i loro sottoposti, quasi alla maniera degli uomini. Se le nazioni andavano in guerra, era perché le donne non avevano il voto per fermarle, benché taluni di noi conoscessero donne che sventolavano bandiere e gridavano canti di guerra ed erano assai più appassionatamente patriottiche dei maschi che esse mandavano a combattere. Qualunque male vi fosse sulla terra, dipendeva dal fatto che l’umanità, per ragioni note soltanto a se stessa, aveva dato ogni potere al sesso che sosteneva sempre il male, e nessun potere al sesso che invariabilmente, e in ogni situazione, sosteneva il bene più alto possibile. Ricordo tutti quei discorsi, cominciati quasi trent’anni fa, che attribuivano tutte le sventure agli Uomini. Odo ancora quegli altri discorsi, cominciati quasi vent’anni fa, che attribuiscono tutte le sventure ai Vecchi.
Da allora, la prima infornata di Giovani è divenuta essa stessa quasi una schiera di Vecchi; eppure continuano a ripeterlo. Continuano a ripeterlo senza pensarci seriamente. Chiunque voglia esaminare l’affermazione vedrà che essa in realtà poggia su tre presupposti i quali, come suole accadere in questi casi, non solo sono accettati, ma accettati inconsciamente. Chi parla non soltanto li dà per scontati senza provarli, ma li dà per scontati senza sapere di darli per scontati. Il primo è questo: che la tragedia terribile e desolante sia così anormale nella vita umana, e così del tutto fuori dalla natura delle cose, da non potersi attribuire che alla sbalorditiva e scandalosa stupidità di qualche individuo o di alcuni individui particolari. Senza addentrarci in un ragionamento sulla vita umana, possiamo osservare che qui viene ignorato, per la prima volta nella storia, almeno un elemento; giacché quel carattere tragico del vivere era un luogo comune per tutti i saggi e i poeti. Per dirla in breve, se è terribile che due milioni di uomini muoiano insieme in una campagna, è pure terribile che tutti gli uomini senza eccezione debbano morire separatamente in qualche luogo. Non è di per sé evidente che la fase tragica della vita segua soltanto a una follia eccezionale, e la fallacia fu segnalata qualche tempo fa dalla Torre di Sìloe e dal Letamaio di Giobbe.
Il secondo presupposto è questo: che una tragedia come la Grande Guerra debba essere stata non soltanto un errore, ma un errore commesso da tutti nel medesimo istante. Deve essere stata una collisione cieca nel buio, e perciò può derivare soltanto da mera negligenza di tutti coloro che avevano il comando. Ora, si può convenire o no che nella contesa vi fosse un aggressore, ma è un’assurdità darne per di per sé evidente la negazione, o parlare come se un aggressore non potesse esservi. Se c’era, la faccenda non sarebbe il risultato di una negligenza, ma, enfaticamente, il risultato di una vigilanza. Possiamo dire che fu una vigilanza malvagia da parte dell’aggressore; ma, con il medesimo tratto di penna, siamo costretti ad ammettere che fu perciò una vigilanza giusta e onorevole da parte dei difensori. In ogni caso, l’intero incubo della mera negligenza è svanito come necessità di logica; è svanito perché non era una necessità, ma una semplice supposizione.
In terzo luogo (per quanto questo punto sia meno facile da circoscrivere e definire a dovere): è una supposizione ritenere che gli uomini di Stato o i capi delle nazioni abbiano necessariamente torto anche quando rischiano grandi catastrofi, allo scopo di creare o preservare un qualche sistema culturale legato a tutto ciò che rende la vita degna di essere vissuta. Un uomo potrebbe ammettere che i suoi sforzi per scongiurare la catastrofe potrebbero fallire, che la catastrofe potrebbe sopraggiungere, e tuttavia mantenere la propria rotta, essendo risoluto almeno a evitare la peggiore catastrofe di tutte: la perdita della principale speranza dell’umanità. Certamente ogni riforma o ricostruzione nella storia umana è stata seguita da calamità, se le guerre sono le calamità per eccellenza. L’ideale democratico di Atene la trascinò in un turbine di guerre; la civiltà universale di Roma fu diffusa da una lunga sequela di guerre; ogni cultura nazionale deve qualcosa alle guerre nazionali. Se accettate la Rivoluzione francese, essa coprì l’Europa con le Guerre napoleoniche. Se accettate la Riforma protestante, essa devastò le Germanie con la più lunga e sfibrante di tutte le guerre. Se accettate la Rivoluzione russa, essa ha già prodotto infinite guerre interne, una guerra esterna, e la fine non è ancora venuta. Non sto esprimendo ammirazione per la guerra, né, se è per questo, per la Rivoluzione russa o per la Riforma. Sto soltanto dicendo che nessuno ha il diritto di presumere in partenza che nessun uomo di Stato abbia il diritto di rischiare la guerra, per amore di ideali che mutano o preservano la civiltà. Insomma, non c’era nulla di grottescamente rimbambito e decadente nei Vecchi che, vent’anni fa, cercavano di governare la travagliata e molesta razza degli uomini. Alcuni avevano ragione e alcuni torto; ma i più erano vigili, e tutti erano comunque tenuti a correre un rischio.
Ritengo che valga la pena di rilevarlo ora, per una ragione semplice. Stiamo già andando alla deriva, spaventosamente vicini a una Nuova Guerra, che probabilmente scoppierà sul Confine polacco. I Giovani hanno avuto diciannove anni per imparare come evitarla. Mi domando se davvero sappiano su come evitarla molto più di quanto ne sapessero i disprezzati e farfuglianti Vecchi del 1914. Quanti dei Giovani, per esempio, hanno fatto il minimo tentativo di comprendere la Polonia? Quanti avrebbero qualcosa da dire a Hitler, per dissuaderlo dall’appiccare il fuoco a tutta la Cristianità con un’incursione in Polonia? O forse i Giovani non hanno pensato ad altro, dal 1914, se non alla senile depravazione dei Vecchi di quell’epoca?
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VII
On Vachel Lindsay
M. PAUL CLAUDEL’S play, The Satin Slipper, translated with admirable subtlety and flexibility by the Rev. John O’Connor, is a work of rich and almost bewildering fantasy, and has any number of aspects that could not adequately be treated here. But it has one particular aspect, in which it is related to recent events in other fields, and rather specially calls for a particular comment just now. Though nobody could be more French than M. Claudel, and nothing could be more French than the particular kind of wit and fighting logic that pursues this theme or thesis to its end, yet the whole background of the drama is the background of the Spanish civilization. Even at this moment the Spanish civilization is something very much larger than the civilization of Spain. It was infinitely more so in the days of the external glory of Spain, the days of the alliance with Austria and the conquest of America. About all that culture there was a character which runs through this drama like a decorative pattern, and will be found more and more, I think, to be a pattern for the art of today.
Thus, no two poets could possibly be more different in every tradition or test of historical type than Paul Claudel and Vachel Lindsay, the spirited American singer. In external and formal attachment, they would seem utterly foreign to each other. Vachel Lindsay was a Puritan in the personal sense; one might almost say in the political sense. He was even a Prohibitionist, and it is only fair to say that his orgiastic verse does demonstrate how very drunk a man can be without wine when he drinks the American air. Occasionally, even, a critic might be tempted to call it the American hot-air. For though Vachel Lindsay was a natural artist, and went right by the clue of the imagination, there are passages of his finest writing which would have been finer still if he had not lived in the land of the megaphone rather than the ivory horn; or if his traditions had not given him the choice of two trumpets— the brazen trumpet of publicity as well as the golden trumpet of poetry. He was himself a wholly simple, sincere, and therefore humble man; but the people around him did not believe in humility; no, not even when they practised it. But they did believe in go and gusto and the big noise; and to a certain extent Vachel Lindsay even at his best did practise that. I have myself a huge sympathy with his special gift for describing men banging their gongs to the glory of their gods; but it were vain to deny that in some ways their gods were not our gods. Most certainly, anyhow, they were not M. Claudel’s gods. M. Claudel is not only a Catholic, but a French Catholic; with the particular French dislike of orgiastic religion and the fads that invade domesticity. I should imagine that there are no two things that M. Claudel would be more completely puzzled to comprehend than (1) a free man being a Prohibitionist, and (2) a fine poet selecting from all human history the subject of “General Booth Enters Heaven.”
And yet both poets, the Frenchman and the American, illustrate this third element that is neither American nor French. For truly Vachel Lindsay was something more than an American; he was (wildly as the term would be misunderstood) a Spanish-American. He was, spiritually speaking, a Californian. He did not get drunk only on the American air; he drank the air of a strange paradise, which is in some way set apart and unlike anything in the New World or the Old; a fairy sea, calmed as by a spell, that stretches far away into fantastical China and of which even the nearer coast is ruled by ghosts rather than by its modern rulers. For there is spread all along that Pacific Coast, in some fashion too vivid for definition, the presence and the pressure and the splendour of Spain. It was something in this rich sunset air that got into the verse of a Puritan like Vachel Lindsay, and made it so much more instinctively ornate and gorgeous than that of a mere Pagan like Walt Whitman. Whitman was a great man; but he was a man of the Eastern States and of the Northern sun, and therefore his passion was colourless even when it was not cold. The Puritanism of Lindsay was more glowing than the Paganism of Whitman. And the reason was, I think, this unconscious influence which possesses all the West of America, as the old Celtic romance possesses all the West of England. The poetry of Vachel Lindsay proves, in every sort of broken and unconscious fashion, how much he was haunted by this presence; how much he felt under his feet this Spanish subsoil of American States. It was, to quote the words of his own vision, the Wrecks of the Galleons of Spain that towered and swelled above him in a sort of glowing monstrosity, and gave their real symbolic outline to the Golden Whales of California.
In other words, it is worth while to realize that there is spread over great spaces of the earth a sort of Spanish magic. The Spanish settlements are not what is called dead-alive places, in the sense of places in which the living are dead; they are places in which the dead are alive. But the dead are alive, even where nobody else is alive. Even the deserted parts of that coast are not a desert; and even the dead parts of that empire cannot die. And it is the vast vitality of that dead empire that attracts a French northerner like M. Claudel, just as it unconsciously attracted an American like Mr. Lindsay. The dramatic narrative of M. Claudel, as I have said, covers a vast field of universal ideas and individual problems. It is full of what is found in the very name of The Golden Whales of California, and it is a whale of a book. But it is also golden, in the sense of being full of things that are truly as good as gold. It even rather excels in the description of things shapeless or of incalculable shape, like such gigantic monsters; indeed, as it happens, there is a typically grotesque description of the actual animals called whales. “Their head, which is like a whole mountain full of liquid sperm, shows in the corner of the jaw a little eye no bigger than a waistcoat-button.” There is the same sort of imaginative sense of the shape of something shapeless in this fine phrase about the amorphous Germanies of Central Europe. “To know it you must look at its heart, for it has got no face.”
All that dark and yet exuberant imagery belongs to a tradition that can be seen in the art and ornament of Spain. It can be seen in the special Spanish love of black; the black which is not the negation of colour, but rather the accumulation of colour. It can be seen in the rich darkness of Spanish churches, fretted with the golden fire of countless candles. But it can be seen fully and completely only in the world-wide spreading of the Spanish culture in the sixteenth century, when it met on its borders monsters stranger than whales; red men and golden mountains and a new world. It had many crimes, which are not hidden in Claudel’s poem, but it had this very enviable greatness: that strange stars and new sciences were then opened to a Christian world that was still full of chivalry. Then wicked men colonized for greed, but good men did not colonize only for commerce; when the white man was as romantic a figure as the red man, and trade had not destroyed the Red Indian to replace him by the Regular Guy.
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VII
Su Vachel Lindsay
IL dramma di M. Paul Claudel, La scarpina di raso, tradotto con mirabile sottigliezza e duttilità dal Rev. John O’Connor, è un’opera di fantasia ricca e quasi sconcertante, e presenta un numero infinito di aspetti che non potrebbero essere trattati qui in modo adeguato. Ma ne ha uno in particolare, per cui si collega a fatti recenti avvenuti in altri campi, e reclama in modo assai speciale un commento proprio in questo momento. Per quanto nessuno potrebbe essere più francese di M. Claudel, e nulla potrebbe essere più francese di quella particolare specie di arguzia e di logica combattiva che insegue questo tema o questa tesi fino in fondo, tuttavia l’intero sfondo del dramma è lo sfondo della civiltà spagnola. Perfino in questo momento la civiltà spagnola è qualcosa di molto più vasto della civiltà della Spagna. Lo era infinitamente di più ai giorni della gloria esterna della Spagna, i giorni dell’alleanza con l’Austria e della conquista dell’America. Attorno a tutta quella cultura vi era un carattere che percorre questo dramma come un motivo decorativo, e che si rivelerà sempre più, io credo, come il motivo dell’arte di oggi.
Così, non potrebbero esservi due poeti più diversi in ogni tradizione o criterio di tipo storico di Paul Claudel e Vachel Lindsay, il fervido cantore americano. Per l’adesione esteriore e formale, essi parrebbero del tutto estranei l’uno all’altro. Vachel Lindsay era un puritano in senso personale; si potrebbe quasi dire in senso politico. Era perfino un proibizionista, ed è giusto riconoscere che i suoi versi orgiastici dimostrano quanto un uomo possa ubriacarsi senza vino quando beve l’aria americana. A volte, anzi, un critico potrebbe essere tentato di chiamarla l’aria calda americana. Perché, benché Vachel Lindsay fosse un artista nato, e procedesse seguendo il filo dell’immaginazione, vi sono passi della sua scrittura più bella che sarebbero stati più belli ancora se egli non fosse vissuto nella terra del megafono anziché in quella del corno d’avorio; o se le sue tradizioni non gli avessero offerto la scelta fra due trombe: tanto la tromba di bronzo della pubblicità quanto la tromba d’oro della poesia. Egli stesso era un uomo del tutto semplice, sincero, e perciò umile; ma la gente intorno a lui non credeva nell’umiltà; no, nemmeno quando la praticava. Credevano però nello slancio, nell’entusiasmo e nel gran fracasso; e in una certa misura Vachel Lindsay, perfino nelle sue cose migliori, praticava anch’egli tutto ciò. Provo io stesso un’enorme simpatia per il suo particolare dono di descrivere uomini che battono i loro gong a gloria dei loro dèi; ma sarebbe vano negare che per certi versi i loro dèi non erano i nostri dèi. Di sicuro, in ogni caso, non erano gli dèi di M. Claudel. M. Claudel non è soltanto cattolico, ma cattolico francese; con la particolare avversione francese per la religione orgiastica e per le manìe che invadono la vita domestica. Immagino che non vi siano due cose che M. Claudel si troverebbe più completamente perplesso a comprendere di (1) un uomo libero che sia proibizionista, e (2) un poeta valente che scelga fra tutta la storia umana il soggetto di “Il generale Booth entra in Cielo”.
Eppure entrambi i poeti, il francese e l’americano, illustrano questo terzo elemento che non è né americano né francese. Perché in verità Vachel Lindsay era qualcosa di più di un americano; egli era (per quanto il termine sarebbe malamente frainteso) uno spagnolo-americano. Era, spiritualmente parlando, un californiano. Non si ubriacava soltanto dell’aria americana; egli beveva l’aria di uno strano paradiso, che in qualche modo sta a parte e non somiglia a nulla nel Nuovo Mondo né nel Vecchio; un mare fatato, calmato come da un incantesimo, che si stende lontano fin dentro la fantastica Cina e la cui costa più vicina è governata da fantasmi più che dai suoi governanti moderni. Perché è sparsa lungo tutta quella Costa del Pacifico, in una foggia troppo viva per potersi definire, la presenza e la pressione e lo splendore della Spagna. Fu qualcosa in quell’aria ricca di tramonto che penetrò nei versi di un puritano come Vachel Lindsay, e li rese tanto più istintivamente ornati e sontuosi di quelli di un mero pagano come Walt Whitman. Whitman fu un grande uomo; ma era un uomo degli Stati orientali e del sole del Nord, e perciò la sua passione era incolore anche quando non era fredda. Il puritanesimo di Lindsay era più ardente del paganesimo di Whitman. E la ragione era, io credo, questa influenza inconscia che possiede tutto l’Ovest dell’America, come l’antica leggenda celtica possiede tutto l’Ovest dell’Inghilterra. La poesia di Vachel Lindsay dimostra, in ogni sorta di modo spezzato e inconscio, quanto egli fosse ossessionato da questa presenza; quanto sentisse sotto i propri piedi questo sottosuolo spagnolo degli Stati americani. Erano, per citare le parole della sua stessa visione, i Relitti dei Galeoni di Spagna che torreggiavano e si gonfiavano sopra di lui in una sorta di ardente mostruosità, e davano il loro vero contorno simbolico alle Balene d’Oro della California.
In altre parole, vale la pena di rendersi conto che è sparsa su grandi spazi della terra una sorta di magia spagnola. Gli insediamenti spagnoli non sono ciò che si chiamano luoghi morti-viventi, nel senso di luoghi in cui i vivi sono morti; sono luoghi in cui i morti sono vivi. Ma i morti sono vivi, perfino là dove nessun altro è vivo. Perfino le parti deserte di quella costa non sono un deserto; e perfino le parti morte di quell’impero non possono morire. Ed è la vasta vitalità di quell’impero morto che attrae un uomo del Nord francese come M. Claudel, proprio come inconsciamente attrasse un americano come il signor Lindsay. La narrazione drammatica di M. Claudel, come ho detto, abbraccia un vasto campo di idee universali e di problemi individuali. È piena di ciò che si trova nel nome stesso di Le Balene d’Oro della California, ed è un libro colossale come una balena. Ma è anche d’oro, nel senso di essere pieno di cose che valgono davvero tanto oro. Eccelle anzi piuttosto nella descrizione di cose informi o di forma incalcolabile, come tali giganteschi mostri; anzi, per l’appunto, vi è una descrizione tipicamente grottesca degli animali veri e propri chiamati balene. “La loro testa, che è come un’intera montagna piena di sperma liquido, mostra all’angolo della mascella un occhietto non più grande di un bottone di panciotto.” Vi è la stessa sorta di senso immaginativo della forma di qualcosa d’informe in questa bella frase sulle amorfe Germanie dell’Europa centrale. “Per conoscerla bisogna guardarne il cuore, perché non ha volto.”
Tutta quell’immaginosità oscura e insieme esuberante appartiene a una tradizione che si può vedere nell’arte e nell’ornamento della Spagna. La si può vedere nel particolare amore spagnolo per il nero; il nero che non è la negazione del colore, ma piuttosto l’accumulo del colore. La si può vedere nella ricca oscurità delle chiese spagnole, trapunta del fuoco dorato di innumerevoli candele. Ma la si può vedere pienamente e compiutamente solo nella diffusione mondiale della cultura spagnola nel sedicesimo secolo, quando essa incontrò ai suoi confini mostri più strani delle balene; uomini rossi e montagne d’oro e un nuovo mondo. Ebbe molti delitti, che non sono nascosti nel poema di Claudel, ma ebbe questa assai invidiabile grandezza: che strane stelle e nuove scienze si aprirono allora a un mondo cristiano che era ancora colmo di cavalleria. Allora gli uomini malvagi colonizzavano per avidità, ma gli uomini buoni non colonizzavano solo per il commercio; quando l’uomo bianco era una figura romantica quanto l’uomo rosso, e il commercio non aveva ancora distrutto il Pellerossa per sostituirlo col Bravo Ragazzo qualunque.
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VIII
On the Staleness of Revolt
IT is an eternal truth that the fathers stone the prophets and the sons build their sepulchres; often out of the same stones. For the reasons originally given for execution are often the same as the reasons given later for canonization. But it might be added that there is often a third phase, in which the grandsons wreck and reduce to ruins the sepulchres that the sons have made. The process of the acceptation or rejection of prophets, true and false, is not quite so simple a progress as it appeared to the progressive philosophy of the nineteenth century. It is full of ups and downs; even for a dead prophet, who is not generally allowed to remain dead in peace. And nothing is more curious than to note the way in which this change does affect great reputations, and especially revolutionary reputations.
The curious thing is that, when the rebellion comes, it is generally a rebellion against rebels. It is generally not a rebellion against reactionaries. Men in the past who particularly praised the past may in some cases have faded into the past which they praised. But they have not often been singled out for special attack by the future which they despised. Those who were, in fact, doomed to dethronement in the future were generally the futurists of the past. It was those who were promising men a future of greater glory, who had really before themselves a future of greater discredit and neglect. The old dusty and musty laudator temporis acti may sometimes be neglected, but he is seldom discredited. He is never dethroned, possibly because he has never been enthroned. But he seems to outlast any number of the enthroned prophets of progress.
I am noting this as a singular historical fact, quite apart from my own sympathies, which are sometimes with the revolutionary and sometimes with the reactionary. For instance: suppose a man were asked which were the two greatest Englishmen, or rather the two greatest British subjects, alive at the end of the eighteenth century. Opinions might differ; but a man would not be very far wrong if he said Byron and Burke. At that time Burke stood, as he stands in all his most important work, as the champion of Conservative ideas; the man who urged us to preserve even irrational traditions; the man who lamented over the loss of even older traditions. He was then emphatically the Burke who lamented aloud that the age of chivalry was past, or wept over the vanished beauty of the French Queen. On the other hand, Byron was at that time emphatically the voice of the Revolution. He openly regretted that it had been defeated at Waterloo; he lashed all the Tories with a scourge of satire, which he flourished like a flag of Liberty. Well, they were both great men, and, if I have a purely personal preference, it is for Byron. It is certainly, in most respects, for the political party of Byron. And yet it cannot be denied that the subsequent relations of the two reputations, to fame or at least to fashion, have illustrated this curious advantage of the reactionary over the revolutionary. Byron has been, I think rather underrated ever since. Burke has been, I think, rather overrated ever since. That is a matter of opinion; but it is a matter of fact that Burke has not been very specially denounced or derided, whereas Byron has been incessantly denounced and derided. It came to be almost the mark of a modern and advanced intellectual to be always sniffing and sneering at the mere rhetoric and melodramatic romance of Byron. Nobody specially insisted that Burke’s rhapsodies about Marie Antoinette were mere rhetoric, as they undoubtedly were. Certainly there is something, which it were mild to call melodrama, in saying about that hearty German lady: “And surely never lighted upon this orb, which she scarcely seemed to touch, a more delightful vision.” That florid phraseology is not allowed to return to the mind when Mr. Buckle or Mr. Garvin are describing the debt of our Constitution to the subtle and statesmanlike philosophy of Burke. Burke never became a sort of cockshy for the critics, and Byron did. And it does seen rather to suggest that, if you are a prophet of resurrection and revolution, of the future and of the dawn, your sepulchre is likely to be pelted and defaced even after it has been built. But if you were only a builder of sepulchres, your sepulchre will be left in peace.
Then consider the next and still more singular stage in the story. The whole story was repeated over again, towards the end of the Victorian era, when Swinburne arose to dispute the mild constitutional monarchy of Tennyson and in some sense to fill once more the revolutionary throne of Byron. The first thing to notice is that there is no sympathy, certainly no continuity, between the old rebel and the new rebel. Swinburne was just as ready to dismiss or despise Byron as all the other people of his æsthetic time and school, or rather readier than the rest. There was no sympathy between revolution and revolution, simply because there was no sympathy between fashion and fashion. “Farewell, ye gay something, ye gardens of roses” (I regret to say that I forget what the gay something was) sounded at once florid and frigid to a generation which did not feel that “If love were what the rose is, and I were like the leaf,” might be not only unnatural, but very nearly nonsensical. Every novelty has its own nonsense, and never sees that it is nonsense, and always sees that the older novelty was nonsense. But Swinburne himself is already becoming an older novelty, and there are any number of people who are beginning to say that his poetry is nonsense. It seems highly probable that he, in his turn, is in for a period of reaction and ridicule; in which his work will be underrated exactly as Byron’s was underrated. But he will be underrated for the same reason—simply because he was overrated; but, above all, because he was especially overrated as a rebel and a reformer and a new force making for the future. The man who sits down to compose Songs Before Sunrise is apt to find the sun, when it rises, rather too hot for him.
But the point is that what seems to attract this strange revolt is not being an ancient king, but being an ancient rebel. The world swung back on Byron in proportion to the strength with which he had swayed it as a fashionable demagogue; and the same thing that happened to Byron is now obviously happening to Swinburne. It is not so obviously happening to those of Swinburne’s contemporaries, who, though they shared the artistic methods of the time, were really interested in the artistic models of an earlier time. I have mentioned the only too recurrent subject of roses. I have noted how remote were the full-blown rose-gardens of Byron from the “mystical rose of the mire” so much celebrated by Swinburne. I fear it is only too likely that, in the anti-Swinburnian reaction, a great many people will make fun of shamelessly alliterative lines like “The raptures and roses of vice,” which certainly does not mean very much. But I doubt if they will trouble to make game of William Morris’s line, “Two red roses across the moon,” though it means absolutely nothing at all. But then Morris, in spite of his revolutionary side, was saved by his reactionary side. He was really more interested in the past than in the future, so the future may leave him alone.
I could give a great many other instances of how the Pagans of yesterday are being mocked by the Pagans of today. A man speaking of fine English prose in my boyhood would probably have mentioned both Pater and Newman. I have lately heard an amazing number of people sneering at Pater; I have not heard many people, or indeed any people, sneering at Newman. Yet it would certainly have been said that the Pagan looked to the future and the Papist to the past. I draw no moral from this curious habit of humanity. I am content to be, for once, an utterly unmoral critic of the Swinburne period, or a cold, rationalist scientist of the Victorian Age.
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VIII
Sulla stantìa della rivolta
È verità eterna che i padri lapidano i profeti e i figli ne edificano i sepolcri; spesso con le stesse pietre. Poiché le ragioni addotte in principio per la condanna a morte sono spesso le medesime di quelle addotte più tardi per la canonizzazione. Ma si potrebbe aggiungere che v’è spesso una terza fase, in cui i nipoti demoliscono e riducono in rovina i sepolcri che i figli hanno innalzato. Il processo dell’accoglimento o del rifiuto dei profeti, veri e falsi, non è un cammino così semplice come appariva alla filosofia progressista del secolo decimonono. È pieno di alti e bassi; perfino per un profeta morto, al quale non è generalmente concesso di rimanersene morto in pace. E nulla è più curioso che osservare il modo in cui questo mutamento incide davvero sulle grandi reputazioni, e specialmente sulle reputazioni rivoluzionarie.
La cosa curiosa è che, quando viene la ribellione, essa è generalmente una ribellione contro i ribelli. Non è generalmente una ribellione contro i reazionari. Gli uomini del passato che particolarmente esaltarono il passato possono in taluni casi essersi dileguati nel passato che esaltavano. Ma non di rado sono stati additati per un attacco speciale dal futuro che disprezzavano. Coloro che erano, di fatto, destinati alla detronizzazione nel futuro erano generalmente i futuristi del passato. Erano coloro che promettevano agli uomini un futuro di più grande gloria, che avevano realmente dinanzi a sé un futuro di più grande discredito e negligenza. Il vecchio, polveroso e ammuffito laudator temporis acti può talvolta essere trascurato, ma di rado è screditato. Non è mai detronizzato, forse perché non è mai stato intronizzato. Ma pare sopravvivere a un numero qualsiasi di intronizzati profeti del progresso.
Rilevo questo come singolare fatto storico, del tutto a prescindere dalle mie simpatie, che stanno talvolta con il rivoluzionario e talvolta con il reazionario. Per esempio: si supponga che a un uomo si chiedesse quali fossero i due più grandi inglesi, o piuttosto i due più grandi sudditi britannici, viventi alla fine del secolo decimottavo. Le opinioni potrebbero divergere; ma un uomo non andrebbe molto lontano dal vero se dicesse Byron e Burke. A quel tempo Burke stava, come sta in tutta la sua opera più importante, quale campione delle idee conservatrici; l’uomo che ci esortava a preservare perfino le tradizioni irrazionali; l’uomo che si doleva della perdita di tradizioni ancor più antiche. Egli era allora enfaticamente il Burke che lamentava ad alta voce che l’età della cavalleria fosse tramontata, o piangeva sulla svanita bellezza della Regina di Francia. D’altra parte, Byron era a quel tempo enfaticamente la voce della Rivoluzione. Rimpiangeva apertamente che essa fosse stata sconfitta a Waterloo; sferzava tutti i Tories con un flagello di satira, che brandiva come una bandiera di Libertà. Ebbene, erano entrambi grandi uomini, e, se ho una preferenza puramente personale, essa è per Byron. Essa è certamente, sotto molti aspetti, per il partito politico di Byron. Eppure non si può negare che le successive relazioni delle due reputazioni, con la fama o almeno con la moda, abbiano illustrato questo curioso vantaggio del reazionario sul rivoluzionario. Byron è stato, credo, piuttosto sottovalutato da allora in poi. Burke è stato, credo, piuttosto sopravvalutato da allora in poi. Questa è materia d’opinione; ma è materia di fatto che Burke non è stato molto specialmente denunciato o deriso, mentre Byron è stato incessantemente denunciato e deriso. Divenne quasi il contrassegno dell’intellettuale moderno e avanzato lo storcere sempre il naso e il sogghignare davanti alla mera retorica e al romanticismo melodrammatico di Byron. Nessuno insisté specialmente che le rapsodie di Burke su Maria Antonietta fossero mera retorica, come indubbiamente erano. Certo v’è qualcosa, che sarebbe mite chiamare melodramma, nel dire di quella cordiale signora tedesca: «E davvero mai discese su questo globo, che ella sembrava a stento sfiorare, una più deliziosa visione». A quella florida fraseologia non è concesso di ritornare alla mente quando il signor Buckle o il signor Garvin descrivono il debito della nostra Costituzione verso la sottile e statistica filosofia di Burke. Burke non divenne mai una sorta di bersaglio per i critici, mentre Byron sì. E ciò pare piuttosto suggerire che, se sei un profeta di risurrezione e di rivoluzione, del futuro e dell’aurora, il tuo sepolcro è probabile che venga lapidato e sfregiato perfino dopo che è stato edificato. Ma se eri soltanto un edificatore di sepolcri, il tuo sepolcro sarà lasciato in pace.
Si consideri poi la fase successiva e ancor più singolare della storia. L’intera storia si ripeté da capo, verso la fine dell’era vittoriana, quando Swinburne sorse a contendere la mite monarchia costituzionale di Tennyson e in un certo senso a riempire ancora una volta il trono rivoluzionario di Byron. La prima cosa da notare è che non v’è alcuna simpatia, certamente nessuna continuità, tra il vecchio ribelle e il nuovo ribelle. Swinburne era altrettanto pronto a liquidare o disprezzare Byron quanto tutte le altre persone del suo tempo e della sua scuola estetici, o piuttosto più pronto degli altri. Non v’era simpatia tra rivoluzione e rivoluzione, semplicemente perché non v’era simpatia tra moda e moda. «Addio, o gaio non so che, o giardini di rose» (mi rincresce dire che ho dimenticato quale fosse il gaio non so che) suonava a un tempo florido e frigido a una generazione che non sentiva che «Se l’amore fosse ciò che è la rosa, e io fossi come la foglia» potesse essere non solo innaturale, ma quasi del tutto insensato. Ogni novità ha il suo proprio nonsenso, e non vede mai che esso è nonsenso, e vede sempre che la novità più antica era nonsenso. Ma Swinburne stesso sta già diventando una novità più antica, e vi sono quantità di persone che cominciano a dire che la sua poesia è nonsenso. Sembra altamente probabile che egli, a sua volta, sia avviato a un periodo di reazione e di ridicolo; nel quale la sua opera sarà sottovalutata esattamente come fu sottovalutata quella di Byron. Ma sarà sottovalutata per la stessa ragione: semplicemente perché fu sopravvalutato; ma, soprattutto, perché fu specialmente sopravvalutato come ribelle e come riformatore e come nuova forza tesa verso il futuro. L’uomo che si mette a comporre Songs Before Sunrise è portato a trovare il sole, quando sorge, un po’ troppo caldo per lui.
Ma il punto è che ciò che pare attrarre questa strana rivolta non è l’essere un antico re, bensì l’essere un antico ribelle. Il mondo rinculò su Byron in proporzione alla forza con cui egli lo aveva sospinto quale demagogo alla moda; e la stessa cosa che accadde a Byron sta ora ovviamente accadendo a Swinburne. Non sta accadendo così ovviamente a quei contemporanei di Swinburne che, pur condividendo i metodi artistici del tempo, erano realmente interessati ai modelli artistici di un tempo anteriore. Ho menzionato il fin troppo ricorrente soggetto delle rose. Ho notato quanto fossero remoti i lussureggianti roseti di Byron dalla «mistica rosa del fango» tanto celebrata da Swinburne. Temo sia fin troppo probabile che, nella reazione anti-swinburniana, moltissime persone si faranno beffe di versi svergognatamente allitterativi come «Le estasi e le rose del vizio», il quale certamente non significa gran che. Ma dubito che si daranno la pena di fare gioco del verso di William Morris, «Due rose rosse attraverso la luna», sebbene esso non significhi assolutamente nulla. Ma d’altronde Morris, a dispetto del suo lato rivoluzionario, fu salvato dal suo lato reazionario. Egli era realmente più interessato al passato che al futuro, sicché il futuro potrà lasciarlo in pace.
Potrei addurre moltissimi altri esempi di come i Pagani di ieri vengano scherniti dai Pagani di oggi. Un uomo che parlasse di bella prosa inglese nella mia fanciullezza avrebbe probabilmente menzionato tanto Pater quanto Newman. Ho udito di recente un numero stupefacente di persone sogghignare su Pater; non ho udito molte persone, anzi nessuna persona, sogghignare su Newman. Eppure si sarebbe certamente detto che il Pagano guardava al futuro e il Papista al passato. Non traggo alcuna morale da questa curiosa abitudine dell’umanità. Mi accontento di essere, per una volta, un critico del tutto amorale del periodo di Swinburne, o un freddo, razionalista scienziato dell’Età Vittoriana.
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IX
On Dependence and Independence
I CAME across a lady quite lately who leapt up in a flame of noble indignation at the suggestion that her husband should pay for her dresses, though she did not apparently object to his paying for her dinners. I admit that there was something fine and generous about such perversity, and that she was an improvement on other ladies who leap up in a flame of indignation because their husbands will not pay for a hundred dresses a month. It is sometimes the husband who leaps up in a flame of indignation, and in neither case is the indignation so noble. All the same, it seems to me an instance of the queer welter of inconsequent and inconclusive notions that make it so difficult for the modern world to establish a normal social rule.
Some of us (who cannot be called conservative in the sense of content with social conditions, and who have even been called revolutionary for our attempts to improve those conditions) have nevertheless come to have a profound suspicion of what is called Progress. And the reason is this: that there does not seem to be a principle, but only principles, and these conflicting principles, of Progress. There is not a stream, but a sort of eddy or whirlpool. There could not be a stronger case than this particular ideal of Independence. It is not made the principle of social reform. Even the social reformers would be the first to say that they depend on dependence; on the mutual dependence of comrades and fellow-citizens, as distinct from the individualistic independence they would denounce as mere isolation. It is not made the ideal of the proletarian or wage-earner, either by the Communist or the Capitalist system. Both the Communist and the Capitalist are alike in not thinking of the individual worker as independent. They will discuss whether he is well paid, whether he is well treated, whether he works under good or bad conditions, whether he is dependent on a good or bad business or a good or bad government; but not whether he is independent. Independence is not made the ideal of the normal man. It is only suddenly and abruptly introduced, in one particular relation, in the case of the exceptional woman. She is only independent of her husband; not independent in any other real relation of life. She is only independent of the home—and not of the workshop or the world. And it is supremely characteristic of this confusion that one well-meaning individual should make a yet finer distinction, and resolve to be independent in the dressing-room, but not in the dining-room.
Now, the modern trouble is that moral scraps and fragments of this sort are floating about like icebergs, and nobody knows when he will bump into one of them. In one case somebody will make an excuse of the ideal of Service, even if it means servility. In another case somebody will make an excuse of the ideal of Individuality, even if it means insanity. People will make attempts at despotism, or demands for freedom, successively or even simultaneously, according to a quite arbitrary program of opportunism. And we feel that they are not submitting a variety of actions to one test; they are applying a variety of tests to one action, which is for them already a fixed and settled action. They do what they want, and make up reasons for it afterwards; but even the reasons are rather too cunning to be reasonable. In a word, it is this chaos, in the creed and code of conduct, that prevents a man from finding in it any sort of guide, even a guide to progress. Thus, in the present case, we could at least settle down to discussing seriously the Independence of Woman, if it were regarded by anybody as part of a real philosophy of the Independence of Man. What we find, as in the case mentioned, is that one woman has made one claim to one curious and rather capricious form of independence. She is independent of the breadwinner, but not of the bank or the employer—not to mention the moneylender.
Thus, to begin with, it would be well to note what economic independence means: as distinct, that is, from what it ought to mean. It might mean that the lady went out into a primeval forest to slay lions and leopards and clothe herself with their skins, like Diana. It might mean that she sewed together the leaves of the forest and made herself a green garment, like Eve. It might mean that she held herself independent in owning her own spinning-wheel and her own store of thread, and weaving strips of simple drapery, like Mr. Gandhi. In a word, she might be really independent of the dress allowance, in the sense of being independent of the dressmaker. It is not very likely that it does mean this; but it is not the dependence on the dressmaker that is the serious inconsistency in the idea. It is the fact that modern woman, in the condition of modern society, will herself have to work, if not for a dressmaker, then probably for somebody else who is primarily the money-maker. And the question is, why is it any better to be a proletarian in the shop than to be a Communist in the home? For the only truly and legitimately Communist institution is the home. “With all my worldly goods I thee endow” is the only satisfactory Bolshevist proclamation that has ever been made about property. It is, therefore, of course, the one proclamation which Bolshevists would be the first to attack. The twisted and unnatural posture of the modern controversy, like that of a serpent with its tail in its mouth, biting and tearing at itself, is excellently illustrated in this queer revolt of Communism in the wrong place against Communism in the right place. We no longer make the normal attempt to break up society into homes. We only make an attempt to break up homes, and even that by a principle of division which we dare not apply to anything else in society. The crack or fissure is to run across the hearth or the roof-tree, but to be concealed as far as possible from the forum or the street.
We hear a great deal of the evil passions of Class War and the suggestion that the master and man must of necessity be natural enemies. But surely there is a far more perverse implication pervading the modern world; that the wife and the husband are natural enemies. They are, apparently, such mortal enemies that it is enough for one of them to be freed from the other, even in one trumpery particular, though she is not freed from anything or anybody else. The whole of the rest of the world in which she lives, whether for good or evil, is one network of necessitarian dependence. People have left off even talking the language of independence; the old language about the thrift that leads to independence or the self-respect that comes from independence. Anybody may find himself almost abjectly dependent upon anybody; any woman may do the same. And apparently it does not matter, so long as it is not her own husband and not concerned with her own hats. I should very much like to see some of these good-natured groping people draw up something like a plan or table of their real conception of a social structure, and of the necessary commandments of society. The newspapers talk about the danger of Bolshevism, and the Red Peril. But I am afraid of the Patchwork Peril, which is all colours and none; I am afraid of bits of Bolshevism and bits of insane individualism and bits of independence in the wrong place, floating hither and thither and colliding with they know not what; the icebergs whose very shapelessness, or incalculable shape, has always been the cause of shipwreck.
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IX
Sulla dipendenza e sull’indipendenza
MI È CAPITATO poco tempo fa d’imbattermi in una signora che balzò in piedi accesa da una fiamma di nobile indignazione all’idea che suo marito potesse pagarle i vestiti, benché a quanto pare non avesse nulla da obiettare sul fatto che le pagasse i pranzi. Ammetto che vi era qualcosa di fine e di generoso in una simile perversità, e ch’ella era pur sempre un progresso rispetto ad altre signore che balzano in piedi accese da una fiamma d’indignazione perché i mariti si rifiutano di pagar loro cento vestiti al mese. Talvolta è il marito a balzare in piedi acceso da una fiamma d’indignazione, e in nessuno dei due casi l’indignazione è tanto nobile. Ciò nondimeno, mi pare un esempio del bizzarro guazzabuglio di nozioni sconclusionate e inconcludenti che rendono tanto difficile al mondo moderno lo stabilire una normale regola sociale.
Alcuni di noi (che non possono dirsi conservatori nel senso di appagati delle condizioni sociali, e che anzi sono stati perfino chiamati rivoluzionari per i loro tentativi di migliorare quelle condizioni) hanno nondimeno finito col nutrire un profondo sospetto verso ciò che si chiama Progresso. E la ragione è questa: che non pare esservi un principio, ma soltanto dei principi, e per giunta principi in conflitto tra loro, di Progresso. Non c’è una corrente, ma una sorta di gorgo o di vortice. Non potrebbe esservi caso più eloquente di questo particolare ideale dell’Indipendenza. Non lo si erige a principio della riforma sociale. Gli stessi riformatori sociali sarebbero i primi a dire che essi dipendono dalla dipendenza; dalla mutua dipendenza dei compagni e dei concittadini, in contrapposto a quell’indipendenza individualistica che denuncerebbero come mero isolamento. Non lo si erige a ideale del proletario o del salariato, né dal sistema comunista né da quello capitalista. Tanto il comunista quanto il capitalista si somigliano nel non pensare al singolo lavoratore come a un individuo indipendente. Discuteranno se egli sia ben pagato, se sia ben trattato, se lavori in condizioni buone o cattive, se dipenda da un’azienda buona o cattiva o da un governo buono o cattivo; ma non se sia indipendente. L’indipendenza non è eretta a ideale dell’uomo normale. La si introduce solo d’improvviso e bruscamente, in una particolare relazione, nel caso della donna eccezionale. Ella è indipendente soltanto dal marito; non indipendente in alcun’altra reale relazione della vita. Ella è indipendente soltanto dalla casa—e non dall’officina o dal mondo. Ed è quanto mai caratteristico di questa confusione che un individuo benintenzionato debba tracciare una distinzione ancor più sottile, e risolversi a essere indipendente nel salottino da toeletta, ma non nella sala da pranzo.
Ora, il guaio moderno è che frammenti e brandelli morali di questa specie vanno galleggiando come iceberg, e nessuno sa quando andrà a cozzarne contro uno. In un caso qualcuno si farà scudo dell’ideale del Servizio, anche se ciò significa servilismo. In un altro caso qualcuno si farà scudo dell’ideale dell’Individualità, anche se ciò significa follia. La gente tenterà il dispotismo, o pretenderà la libertà, ora l’uno ora l’altra, o perfino l’uno e l’altra insieme, secondo un programma di opportunismo del tutto arbitrario. E si ha la sensazione che costoro non stiano sottoponendo una varietà d’azioni a un solo criterio; stanno applicando una varietà di criteri a una sola azione, che per loro è già fissata e stabilita. Fanno ciò che vogliono, e inventano poi le ragioni; ma persino le ragioni sono troppo scaltre per essere ragionevoli. In una parola, è questo caos, nel credo e nel codice di condotta, che impedisce all’uomo di trovarvi una guida di sorta, foss’anche una guida al progresso. Così, nel caso presente, potremmo almeno metterci a discutere seriamente dell’Indipendenza della Donna, se qualcuno la considerasse parte di una reale filosofia dell’Indipendenza dell’Uomo. Ciò che troviamo, come nel caso menzionato, è che una donna ha avanzato una rivendicazione a una curiosa e piuttosto capricciosa forma d’indipendenza. Ella è indipendente da chi porta a casa il pane, ma non dalla banca o dal datore di lavoro—per non parlare dell’usuraio.
Così, per cominciare, sarebbe bene osservare che cosa significhi indipendenza economica: distinta, cioè, da ciò che dovrebbe significare. Potrebbe significare che la signora se ne andasse in una foresta primeva a uccidere leoni e leopardi e a vestirsi delle loro pelli, come Diana. Potrebbe significare che cucisse insieme le foglie della foresta e se ne facesse una veste verde, come Eva. Potrebbe significare che ella si mantenesse indipendente possedendo il proprio arcolaio e la propria scorta di filo, tessendo strisce di semplice drappo, come il signor Gandhi. In una parola, ella potrebbe essere davvero indipendente dall’assegno per i vestiti, nel senso di essere indipendente dalla sarta. Non è molto probabile che ciò sia quel che significa; ma non è la dipendenza dalla sarta la seria incoerenza dell’idea. È il fatto che la donna moderna, nelle condizioni della società moderna, dovrà lei stessa lavorare, se non per una sarta, allora probabilmente per qualcun altro che è anzitutto colui che fa il denaro. E la domanda è: perché mai è meglio essere proletaria nella bottega che comunista nella casa? Giacché l’unica istituzione veramente e legittimamente comunista è la casa. «Con tutti i miei beni terreni ti dono» è l’unico proclama bolscevico soddisfacente che sia mai stato fatto in materia di proprietà. Ed è perciò, naturalmente, l’unico proclama che i bolscevichi sarebbero i primi ad assalire. La posizione contorta e innaturale della controversia moderna, simile a quella di un serpente con la coda in bocca, che morde e sbrana sé stesso, è mirabilmente illustrata da questa bizzarra rivolta del Comunismo nel luogo sbagliato contro il Comunismo nel luogo giusto. Non facciamo più il normale tentativo di scomporre la società in case. Facciamo soltanto il tentativo di scomporre le case, e per giunta secondo un principio di divisione che non osiamo applicare a nient’altro nella società. La crepa o la fessura deve correre attraverso il focolare o la trave del tetto, ma essere celata quanto più possibile al foro o alla strada.
Sentiamo parlare a profusione delle malvagie passioni della Guerra di Classe e dell’insinuazione che il padrone e l’operaio debbano per forza essere nemici naturali. Ma vi è di certo un’implicazione ben più perversa che pervade il mondo moderno; quella secondo cui la moglie e il marito sono nemici naturali. Sono, a quanto pare, nemici così mortali che basta che uno dei due sia liberato dall’altro, sia pure in un solo particolare da nulla, benché ella non sia liberata da nient’altro e da nessun altro. Tutto il resto del mondo in cui ella vive, nel bene o nel male, è un’unica rete di dipendenza necessitaristica. La gente ha smesso perfino di parlare il linguaggio dell’indipendenza; l’antico linguaggio della parsimonia che conduce all’indipendenza, o del rispetto di sé che nasce dall’indipendenza. Chiunque può ritrovarsi quasi abiettamente dipendente da chiunque; qualunque donna può fare altrettanto. E a quanto pare non importa, purché non si tratti del proprio marito e non riguardi i propri cappelli. Mi piacerebbe assai vedere alcune di queste persone bonarie e brancolanti stendere qualcosa come un piano o una tavola della loro reale concezione di una struttura sociale, e dei comandamenti necessari della società. I giornali parlano del pericolo del Bolscevismo e del Pericolo Rosso. Ma io ho paura del Pericolo Rappezzato, che è di tutti i colori e di nessuno; ho paura di brandelli di Bolscevismo e di brandelli d’insensato individualismo e di brandelli d’indipendenza nel luogo sbagliato, che galleggiano qua e là e vanno a collidere con non si sa che cosa; gli iceberg la cui stessa informità, o forma incalcolabile, è sempre stata causa di naufragio.
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X
On the Teutonic Theory
EVERYBODY knows, or ought to know, that making a universal theory about human society is the easiest thing in the world. The reason is not always so apparent, but I think there is a reason which can be stated rationally. The logical weakness in this sort of superficial social theory is this: that the social values are not fixed like mathematical values, and can themselves be moulded to fit the theory. If I say that red-haired men are always the tallest men in the world, I can probably be very rapidly refuted; because measuring men with a six-foot rule is a matter of mathematical fact. But if I say that red-haired men are always the men who sway the destinies of the world, I can always make out a case, by taking all the red-haired men who were important and making them out more important than they were. I can invent an ingenious theory that it was William Rufus rather than William the Conqueror who really confirmed the Norman monarchy which became the English nation. I shall have an easier task in showing that Henry the Second, the first Plantagenet, really was a great man who in some sense ruled a great empire. I can argue that General James Wolfe, who (I believe) had red hair, was the greatest of England’s heroes, by arguing that Canada is really the greatest of England’s possessions. I can say that the only man who really influenced the intellectual life of our time was Bernard Shaw. I might make out quite a good case; but my motive is merely in the fact that Mr. Shaw had a red beard not so very long ago; though presumably he has grown less wise as he has grown more white. But the point is that I must maintain the general proposition of his wisdom; and I may find myself committed to defending a large number of rather extraordinary propositions, normally remote from my own mental habits; not through a disinterested conviction that Mr. Shaw is wise as well as witty, but because I am committed to a general dogma that the red-haired man is always right.
It will be well illustrated in the case of Queen Elizabeth, a topic almost as controversial as Bernard Shaw. For the sake of my theory, I must cling desperately to the old-fashioned view that I was taught at school; the theory that the red-haired Queen Bess was a sort of tawny lioness of royal magnanimity and heroic religious convictions, shaking the earth with her roarings on behalf of the Reformation. I must not listen to the later and more realistic historians, who tell us that Elizabeth was personally an invalid and politically very much of a tool; that her real religious attachments are very doubtful, and her external political actions mostly forced on her by Cecil and his gang. In the ordinary way, I might be quite indifferent, and therefore quite impartial. But I must fight to the death for the old theory of the Froude and Freeman period; not so much for the cause of the lady as for the colour of her hair. I need her for my general plan of painting the map red; or, rather, of tying it up in red hair instead of red tape. This is how it happens that perverse and pedantic fancies so often harden into fanaticism among professors and professional historians. They will maintain any paradox rather than lose any point that supports their pet generalization, even if they do not personally care very much about the point itself. There was a mediæval tradition that Judas had red hair; and this sort of don would not shrink from saying that Judas and not Jesus was the real founder of Christianity.
I may seem to dwell on an arbitrary and absurd example. But it is not so. I myself grew up under the gigantic shadow of the Teutonic Theory. It was essentially a theory that everything valuable had been done by fair-haired men, which is quite as ludicrous as the same assertion about red-haired men. But I am not now interested in attacking that theory, or any other theory. I only remark that such theories, whether true or false, do affect the truthfulness of historians, and more often in the direction of falsehood than of truth. When we find professors quibbling and quarrelling about the number of men living on a farm mentioned in Doomsday Book, or the terms of a dispatch sent to a French marshal before the Battle of Arcola, we may be pretty certain that, though these are the things about which they are quibbling, they are not the things about which they are quarrelling. There lies behind some much larger quarrel about some much larger theory; probably some theory about the religion of the Middle Ages or the motives of the French Revolution. History and sociology can never be “scientific” in the sense of subject to exact measurement, because there is always the mystery and doubt inherent in moral evidence affecting one half of the equation, and generally both. In the thesis that red-haired men are great men, there are shades of difference even in red hair, and infinite shades of difference in greatness or the pretence of greatness. And not a few modern theorists seem to me to be strangely lacking in the instinct of what is really great.
It is amusing to notice how these theories pursue each other, and how the last almost always devours and destroys the last but one. Generally, in fact, the last is the flat contradiction of the last but one. Generally they are equally extreme, equally exaggerated, and, so far, equally untrue. For instance, the general theory implied in a book like The Outline of History is that the outline is a continuous and ascending line, a single upward curve with very few breaks in it. I do not mean that the author denies decay and reaction, but that the main moral he would like to draw is that the host of humanity has advanced, with a few halts, along the high road of history. Above all, he implies a human unity, and the idea that the host that has halted is the same as the host that has advanced. I think myself that he greatly exaggerates this continuity; leans too heavily on the alleged links, and especially misses the missing links. He makes the amoeba and the anthropoid much nearer to us than they really are. At the same time, he makes the ancient Greek or the mediæval Christian much more inferior to us than they really are. He makes the progress too recent, too rapid, and too clear. For instance, he assumes that the mediæval idea of education was inferior to ours, simply because it involved the teaching of a positive philosophy. But there is something to be said for the idea of teaching everything to somebody, as compared with the modern notion of teaching nothing, and the same sort of nothing, to everybody. For what we force on all families, by the power of the police, is not a philosophy but the art of reading and writing un-philosophically. I am not, however, contesting the world-theory of Mr. Wells at this moment. I am only contrasting the world-theory of Mr. Wells with the world-theory which instantly followed it across the world.
For the next thing we heard was that all Europe and America were full of a new fuss made about the general theory of a German writer, whose whole point was that human history was not continuous, and not progressive, and not a thing presenting points of comparison between one stage and another. According to this new theory, there is only a series of closed cycles of different cultures, so separate that they can hardly be compared. We may say that there is no progress, but only progresses. We might almost say that there is no history, but only histories. When the Greek and Roman culture commonly called Antiquity had ended, it broke off without any bridge connecting it with the mediæval or the modern. It is the fossil of a lost world, and no more of a lesson to us than a pterodactyl to a bird-fancier or Eohippus to a horse-breeder. Now, this also is certainly a gross exaggeration. There is a great deal more continuity, and in that sense a great deal more progress, than is allowed for in that historical theory. For instance, nobody understands the Middle Ages without realizing that the mind of Aristotle was still labouring in its midst like a mighty mill; and it is absurd to say that Augustine and Aquinas were not parts of the same continuous communion. But what interests me is not the truth or falsehood of the first or second theory. It is that they so flatly contradict each other, and that they so rapidly followed each other. And I fall back on my first reflection: that theories of that sort must be rather easy to make up— if you leave out more than half the facts.
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X
Sulla teoria teutonica
TUTTI sanno, o dovrebbero sapere, che costruire una teoria universale sulla società umana è la cosa più facile del mondo. La ragione non è sempre così evidente, ma credo che una ragione ci sia, e che la si possa enunciare in termini razionali. La debolezza logica di questo genere di superficiali teorie sociali è questa: che i valori sociali non sono fissi come i valori matematici, e possono essi stessi essere plasmati per adattarsi alla teoria. Se affermo che gli uomini dai capelli rossi sono sempre gli uomini più alti del mondo, con ogni probabilità posso essere confutato in un baleno; perché misurare gli uomini con un metro da sei piedi è questione di fatto matematico. Ma se affermo che gli uomini dai capelli rossi sono sempre gli uomini che tengono in pugno i destini del mondo, potrò sempre imbastire una dimostrazione, prendendo tutti gli uomini dai capelli rossi che furono importanti e facendoli apparire più importanti di quanto non fossero. Posso inventare un’ingegnosa teoria secondo cui fu Guglielmo il Rosso, e non Guglielmo il Conquistatore, a consolidare davvero quella monarchia normanna che divenne la nazione inglese. Avrò compito ancor più agevole nel mostrare che Enrico II, il primo dei Plantageneti, fu davvero un grand’uomo che in un certo senso governò un grande impero. Posso sostenere che il generale James Wolfe, il quale (a quanto credo) aveva i capelli rossi, fu il più grande degli eroi d’Inghilterra, argomentando che il Canada è in realtà il più grande dei possedimenti d’Inghilterra. Posso dire che l’unico uomo che davvero influenzò la vita intellettuale del nostro tempo fu Bernard Shaw. Potrei imbastire una dimostrazione assai persuasiva; ma il mio movente sta unicamente nel fatto che il signor Shaw non molto tempo fa aveva la barba rossa; per quanto, c’è da presumere, sia diventato meno saggio via via che è diventato più bianco. Ma il punto è che devo sostenere la proposizione generale della sua saggezza; e potrei ritrovarmi impegnato a difendere un gran numero di proposizioni piuttosto straordinarie, di norma remote dalle mie abitudini mentali; non per una disinteressata convinzione che il signor Shaw sia saggio tanto quanto arguto, ma perché mi sono votato a un dogma generale secondo cui l’uomo dai capelli rossi ha sempre ragione.
Ciò si vedrà bene illustrato nel caso di Elisabetta, argomento quasi altrettanto controverso di Bernard Shaw. Per amore della mia teoria, devo aggrapparmi disperatamente all’antiquata opinione che mi fu insegnata a scuola; la teoria secondo cui la regina Bess dai capelli rossi era una sorta di fulva leonessa di magnanimità regale e di eroiche convinzioni religiose, che scuoteva la terra con i suoi ruggiti in favore della Riforma. Non devo prestare ascolto agli storici più tardi e più realistici, i quali ci raccontano che Elisabetta fu personalmente un’inferma e politicamente in gran parte uno strumento; che i suoi veri legami religiosi sono assai dubbi, e le sue azioni politiche esteriori per lo più imposte da Cecil e dalla sua cricca. In circostanze ordinarie, potrei essere del tutto indifferente, e perciò del tutto imparziale. Ma devo battermi fino alla morte per la vecchia teoria dell’età di Froude e di Freeman; non tanto per la causa della dama quanto per il colore dei suoi capelli. Mi serve per il mio piano generale di dipingere di rosso la carta geografica; o, piuttosto, di legarla stretta con capelli rossi anziché con nastri di burocrazia. È così che accade che ghiribizzi perversi e pedanteschi tanto spesso s’induriscano in fanatismo tra i professori e gli storici di professione. Costoro difenderanno qualunque paradosso pur di non cedere un punto solo a sostegno della loro prediletta generalizzazione, anche se personalmente non tengono affatto a quel punto in sé. C’era una tradizione medievale secondo cui Giuda aveva i capelli rossi; e questa specie di accademico non indietreggerebbe dinanzi all’affermazione che fu Giuda, e non Gesù, il vero fondatore del Cristianesimo.
Potrà sembrare che io mi soffermi su un esempio arbitrario e assurdo. Ma non è così. Io stesso sono cresciuto sotto la ombra gigantesca della teoria teutonica. Era, in sostanza, una teoria secondo cui tutto ciò che era di valore era stato compiuto da uomini dai capelli biondi, il che è tanto ridicolo quanto la medesima asserzione a proposito degli uomini dai capelli rossi. Ma in questo momento non m’interessa attaccare quella teoria, né alcun’altra teoria. Mi limito a osservare che tali teorie, vere o false che siano, influiscono davvero sulla veridicità degli storici, e più spesso nella direzione della menzogna che in quella della verità. Quando troviamo dei professori che cavillano e si accapigliano intorno al numero di uomini che vivevano in una fattoria menzionata nel Doomsday Book, o intorno ai termini di un dispaccio inviato a un maresciallo francese prima della battaglia di Arcole, possiamo essere pressoché certi che, per quanto siano queste le cose intorno a cui cavillano, non sono le cose intorno a cui si accapigliano. Dietro vi giace qualche assai più vasta contesa intorno a qualche assai più vasta teoria; probabilmente qualche teoria sulla religione del Medioevo o sui moventi della Rivoluzione francese. La Storia e la sociologia non potranno mai essere «scientifiche» nel senso di soggette a misurazione esatta, poiché vi è sempre il mistero e il dubbio inerenti alla prova morale che influiscono su una metà dell’equazione, e in genere su entrambe. Nella tesi secondo cui gli uomini dai capelli rossi sono grandi uomini, vi sono sfumature di differenza persino nel rosso dei capelli, e infinite sfumature di differenza nella grandezza, o nella pretesa di grandezza. E non pochi teorici moderni mi paiono stranamente privi dell’istinto di ciò che è veramente grande.
È divertente notare come queste teorie si diano la caccia l’un l’altra, e come l’ultima quasi sempre divori e distrugga la penultima. In generale, anzi, l’ultima è la piatta contraddizione della penultima. In generale sono egualmente estreme, egualmente esagerate e, fin qui, egualmente false. Per esempio, la teoria generale sottintesa in un libro come The Outline of History è che il profilo sia una linea continua e ascendente, un’unica curva in salita con pochissime interruzioni. Non voglio dire che l’autore neghi il declino e la reazione, ma che la morale principale che vorrebbe trarne è che la schiera dell’umanità è avanzata, con qualche sosta, lungo la maestra via della storia. Soprattutto, egli sottintende un’unità umana, e l’idea che la schiera che si è arrestata sia la medesima schiera che è avanzata. Io per parte mia credo che egli esageri grandemente questa continuità; che si appoggi troppo pesantemente sui presunti anelli, e specialmente che si lasci sfuggire gli anelli mancanti. Egli fa l’ameba e l’antropoide molto più vicini a noi di quanto realmente non siano. Al tempo stesso, fa l’antico greco o il cristiano medievale molto più inferiore a noi di quanto realmente non sia. Fa il progresso troppo recente, troppo rapido e troppo limpido. Per esempio, dà per scontato che l’idea medievale dell’educazione fosse inferiore alla nostra, semplicemente perché comportava l’insegnamento di una filosofia positiva. Ma qualcosa si può dire in favore dell’idea di insegnare ogni cosa a qualcuno, in confronto alla nozione moderna di insegnare nulla, e la medesima specie di nulla, a tutti quanti. Poiché ciò che imponiamo con la forza a tutte le famiglie, per mezzo del potere della polizia, non è una filosofia ma l’arte di leggere e scrivere in modo non filosofico. Non sto tuttavia, in questo momento, contestando la teoria del mondo del signor Wells. Sto soltanto ponendo a contrasto la teoria del mondo del signor Wells con la teoria del mondo che immediatamente le tenne dietro per tutto il mondo.
Poiché la cosa successiva che udimmo fu che tutta l’Europa e l’America pullulavano di un nuovo clamore sollevato attorno alla teoria generale di uno scrittore tedesco, il cui intero assunto era che la storia umana non fosse continua, e non fosse progressiva, e non fosse una cosa che presentasse punti di paragone tra uno stadio e l’altro. Secondo questa nuova teoria, non vi è che una serie di cicli chiusi di culture diverse, così separate da non poter quasi essere paragonate. Possiamo dire che non vi è progresso, ma soltanto progressi. Potremmo quasi dire che non vi è storia, ma soltanto storie. Quando la cultura greca e romana comunemente chiamata Antichità ebbe fine, essa si spezzò senza alcun ponte che la congiungesse a quella medievale o a quella moderna. È il fossile di un mondo perduto, e non è per noi lezione più di quanto uno pterodattilo lo sia per un allevatore di uccelli o l’Eohippus per un allevatore di cavalli. Ora, anche questa è certamente una grossolana esagerazione. Vi è assai più continuità, e in tal senso assai più progresso, di quanto quella teoria storica non conceda. Per esempio, nessuno comprende il Medioevo senza rendersi conto che la mente di Aristotele vi faticava tuttora nel bel mezzo come un possente mulino; ed è assurdo affermare che Agostino e Aquino non facessero parte della medesima ininterrotta comunione. Ma ciò che m’interessa non è la verità o la falsità della prima o della seconda teoria. È che esse si contraddicono l’un l’altra così apertamente, e che si sono succedute l’un l’altra così rapidamente. E ricado sulla mia prima riflessione: che teorie di tal fatta debbono essere piuttosto facili da mettere insieme — se si lascia fuori più della metà dei fatti.
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XI
On Phases of Eccentricity
THERE is still a fashion of making fun of the Victorians as very solemn people, but on that point I rather fancy they are still making fun of us. I am very far from being a mere apologist for Victorianism. But it seems to me that in many ways it is they who were frivolous and their descendants who are serious; quite unduly serious. For instance, what is hailed as a new style or a new school in literature often consists of doing as a novelty what a Victorian did long ago as a joke. Thus we have, in Mr. James Joyce or Miss Gertrude Stein, the coining of new words by the confusion of old words; the running of words together so as to suggest some muddle in the sub-consciousness. I do not recall the particular examples, but they would think nothing of saying that somebody was “drurgling,” meaning “gurgling when drunk,” or that somebody else was “widaslepe,” meaning that he had fallen asleep at the moment of saying he was wide awake. I do not doubt that they really do this much more cleverly than I can imitate it. In expressing confused ideas, the moderns have great subtlety and sympathy. It is in expressing clear ideas that they generally find their limitations. All that concerns me here is that this literary style is offered to us, with unimpeachable solemnity; as a rebirth of language or a new power in the mind of man.
Now, Lewis Carroll was a very Victorian Victorian. But he did identically the same thing; only he happened to know that it was funny, and therefore he did it for fun. He invented what he called “portmanteau words,” with the sense of two words telescoped into one. Thus he explained that “brillig” is a combination of “brilliant” and “grilling”; or that “slithy” is a portmanteau of “lithe” and “slimy.” This particular instance happens to illustrate what I mean when I say that I am not a mere partisan. The author of Alice in Wonderland is not an ideal being whom I revere, or hold up to be revered. In some respects he was much too Victorian a Victorian. On some matters he really was much too solemn. But he was not solemn about portmanteau words; and the admirers of Miss Stein are quite solemn about them. On an all-round view of cultural traditions and spiritual potentialities, I think it probable that I should very much prefer Mr. Joyce to Mr. Dodgson. But there is no getting over the historical fact that the Victorians could, in fact, invent these fancies, and could enjoy them for the fun of the thing. Whereas, in the general view of life suggested by the later schools, there is no fun and precious little enjoyment.
Over and above the light nonsense of the nineteenth century, which anticipated so much of the heavy nonsense of the twentieth, it is curious to note that the whole record is hardly encouraging to the more solemn sort of experiments. For the Victorian Age also had its experiments. The Victorian Age also contained men of letters, and even men of genius, who wrote in new styles regarded as uncommon, ugly, obscure, outré, or over-subtle. And the extraordinary thing is that it is exactly those writers who have faded out of fashion and favour. There is much less intellectual excitement than there used to be about Browning. There is a quite startling silence and indifference about Meredith. Here again I am in no sense dealing with my own preferences, or discussing whether I regret or rejoice in these changes. It so happens that I always have been, and still am, very fond of Browning’s work. It so happens that I never did become a pure and perfect Meredithian in the appreciation of Meredith’s work. But I am talking about the facts of fashion and appreciation. And I confess I think it much more likely that there will be a rapid revival of Tennyson than a rapid revival of Browning. I know, as everybody knows, that there is a sort of worship (I am tempted to say a sort of idolatry) of the comparatively straightforward novels of Hardy, and something rather like a negative iconoclasm following the select idolatry once dedicated to Meredith. I do not know why this is so; I do not especially rejoice that it is so; I rather prefer the pantheism of Meredith to the pessimism of Hardy. But it does suggest that there is a mistake somewhere in the current theory that the eccentric of one age is the centre of the next. Browning has not left a dynasty of Browning’s writing in Browningese. Meredith has not left a new literature, full of the typical fancies and freedoms, twists and turns, of the true Meredithian dialect. There is a moral to the Victorian Age, and it is a lesson of something to avoid. But it is rather a warning against being unconventional than merely against being conventional. We have many odd writers, writing in odd styles, in our own time; and they may or may not retain influence in later times. But I cannot remember a single Victorian with an odd style whose odd style is now of any advantage to him: not Carlyle; not Browning; not Meredith; not Doughty. The one solitary exception I remember, whose name has somewhat floated to the surface again of late, is that of Gerard Hopkins.
Thus I have a purely intellectual doubt of the future of fads, and even of fancies, unless they are treated frankly in a fanciful manner. I do not think any such experiment succeeds in twisting the tradition of language out of its common tendency. I can easily believe that a book like Ulysses is a striking and original book in its place and time; like Sartor Resartus in its place and time. But I do not believe that Mr. Joyce has added a new range or direction to literary expression, any more than Carlyle succeeded in turning the English language into a bastard barbaric version of the German language. I can easily suppose that Miss Stein likes having her little joke, especially at the expense of the reader; just as George Meredith certainly liked having his little joke at the expense of the reader. But the fact remains that, at the present moment, the trouble is not that the reader does not understand him, but that the reader does not read him. I grieve to say, from what I know of human nature and history, that I doubt whether posterity will even try to understand Miss Stein. So that she will share her little joke with her Creator until the end; which may be quite a good joke too. But the theory that has been so common of late, the theory that the evolution of literature branches out into new experiments, and always follows the line of those experiments, seems to me to be flatly contradicted by all the facts of literary history. It seems to me an objective fact quite apart from my own preferences; indeed, it sometimes goes against my own preferences. Crashaw and the Cavalier mystics were, in the best sense of the word, fantastics. They were fantastics of whose fantasy I am very fond. But they did not lead away English literature indefinitely to be more and more fantastic; to indulge more and more in topsy-turvy tropes and far-fetched conceits. In a generation or so, English literature was back in the channel that was normal; indeed, rather too normal. It was that poetry of good sense which began in the maturity of Dryden and died on the birthday of Burns.
Nobody knows what will be the fashion a hundred years hence, except that it will almost certainly not be anything that is considered the newest fashion today. If I know that a river has wandered in winding curves from its original fountain, I may be quite unable to guess where it eventually wanders after it has passed where I stand. The one thing I can be fairly sure of is that it will not suddenly begin to go quite straight like a canal. As a mere matter of guess-work, given the tendencies of our time, I should think it would be extremely probable that literature will give up all this notion of experiment, and not only return to type, but even to the classical type. I think it much more likely that there will then be a worship of Landor, for instance, or some rather neglected classical classic, than that the whole world will be looking back to Miss Stein as the mother of modern English prose. We see the tendency in the Thomists of France, in the Humanists of America, and I think it is likely to become rather more classical than I like. For I am a romantic person myself; and I also like my little joke, just like Miss Stein.
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XI
Sulle fasi dell’eccentricità
VA ancora di moda farsi beffe dei Vittoriani come di gente oltremodo solenne, ma su questo punto ho la netta impressione che siano piuttosto loro a farsi beffe di noi. Sono ben lontano dall’essere un semplice apologeta del vittorianesimo. Eppure mi pare che, per molti versi, siano stati loro i frivoli e i loro discendenti i seri; e serî fin troppo, del tutto indebitamente. Per esempio, ciò che viene salutato come un nuovo stile o una nuova scuola in letteratura consiste spesso nel fare come novità ciò che un Vittoriano fece assai tempo addietro per burla. Così abbiamo, nel signor James Joyce o nella signorina Gertrude Stein, il conio di parole nuove mediante la confusione di parole vecchie; l’accostamento di parole l’una all’altra in modo da suggerire un qualche garbuglio nel subcosciente. Non ricordo gli esempî precisi, ma non si farebbero scrupolo di dire che un tale stava «ubriagolando», intendendo «gorgogliando da ubriaco», o che un altro era «svegliassopito», intendendo che si era addormentato nell’atto stesso di dichiararsi bello desto. Non dubito che essi facciano tutto questo con assai maggiore ingegno di quanto io sappia imitare. Nell’esprimere idee confuse, i moderni posseggono grande sottigliezza e comprensione. È nell’esprimere idee chiare che di solito trovano i loro limiti. Quel che qui mi preme è soltanto che tale stile letterario ci viene offerto, con inoppugnabile solennità, come una rinascita del linguaggio o un nuovo potere della mente umana.
Ora, Lewis Carroll fu un Vittoriano quanto mai vittoriano. Eppure fece esattamente la medesima cosa; solo che egli, per l’appunto, sapeva che era buffa, e perciò la fece per divertimento. Inventò quelle che chiamava «parole-baule», con il senso di due parole telescopate in una sola. Spiegò così che «brillig» è una combinazione di «brilliant» e «grilling»; oppure che «slithy» è un baule di «lithe» e «slimy». Questo particolare esempio si dà il caso illustri ciò che intendo quando dico di non essere un mero partigiano. L’autore di Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie non è per me un essere ideale che io riverisca, o additi alla riverenza altrui. Sotto certi aspetti fu un Vittoriano fin troppo vittoriano. Su certe questioni fu davvero troppo solenne. Ma non fu solenne a proposito delle parole-baule; laddove gli ammiratori della signorina Stein lo sono eccome, a proposito loro. In una visione d’insieme delle tradizioni culturali e delle potenzialità spirituali, ritengo probabile che io preferirei di gran lunga il signor Joyce al signor Dodgson. Ma non si può aggirare il fatto storico che i Vittoriani seppero, di fatto, inventare queste fantasie, e seppero goderne per il gusto della cosa. Mentre, nella concezione generale della vita suggerita dalle scuole più recenti, non c’è alcun gusto e ben poco godimento.
Al di sopra e al di là delle lievi bizzarrie del secolo decimonono, che tanto anticiparono delle pesanti bizzarrie del ventesimo, è curioso notare come l’intero rendiconto sia ben poco incoraggiante per la specie più solenne di esperimenti. Poiché anche l’Età Vittoriana ebbe i suoi esperimenti. Anche l’Età Vittoriana annoverò letterati, e persino uomini di genio, che scrissero in stili nuovi reputati insoliti, brutti, oscuri, outré, o troppo sottili. E la cosa straordinaria è che sono precisamente quegli scrittori a essere sbiaditi dalla moda e dal favore. Vi è assai meno fervore intellettuale, oggi, intorno a Browning di quanto ve ne fosse un tempo. Vi è un silenzio e un’indifferenza addirittura sorprendenti intorno a Meredith. Anche qui non sto in alcun modo trattando delle mie preferenze, né discutendo se rimpianga o mi rallegri di questi mutamenti. Si dà il caso che io sia sempre stato, e tuttora sia, molto affezionato all’opera di Browning. Si dà il caso che io non sia mai divenuto un puro e perfetto meredithiano nell’apprezzamento dell’opera di Meredith. Ma sto parlando dei fatti della moda e dell’apprezzamento. E confesso di ritenere assai più probabile una rapida rinascita di Tennyson che una rapida rinascita di Browning. So, come tutti sanno, che esiste una sorta di culto (sarei tentato di dire una sorta di idolatria) per i romanzi comparativamente lineari di Hardy, e qualcosa di assai simile a un iconoclasmo negativo che segue l’idolatria selettiva un tempo dedicata a Meredith. Non so perché sia così; non me ne rallegro in modo particolare; preferisco piuttosto il panteismo di Meredith al pessimismo di Hardy. Ma tutto ciò lascia intendere che vi sia un errore da qualche parte nella teoria corrente secondo cui l’eccentrico di un’epoca è il centro di quella successiva. Browning non ha lasciato una dinastia di scrittura browninghiana in browninghese. Meredith non ha lasciato una nuova letteratura, gremita delle fantasie e delle libertà tipiche, dei ghiribizzi e delle giravolte del genuino dialetto meredithiano. C’è una morale nell’Età Vittoriana, ed è la lezione di qualcosa da evitare. Ma è piuttosto un ammonimento contro l’essere anticonvenzionali che non semplicemente contro l’essere convenzionali. Abbiamo molti scrittori bizzarri, che scrivono in stili bizzarri, nel nostro tempo; e può darsi che conservino, o non conservino, influenza nei tempi a venire. Ma non riesco a ricordare un solo Vittoriano dallo stile bizzarro il cui stile bizzarro gli torni oggi di un qualche vantaggio: non Carlyle; non Browning; non Meredith; non Doughty. La sola solitaria eccezione che rammento, il cui nome è in qualche modo riaffiorato alla superficie di recente, è quella di Gerard Hopkins.
Nutro dunque un dubbio puramente intellettuale sull’avvenire delle mode passeggere, e persino delle fantasie, a meno che non siano trattate schiettamente in maniera fantasiosa. Non credo che un simile esperimento riesca a torcere la tradizione del linguaggio fuori della sua comune inclinazione. Posso ben credere che un libro come l’Ulisse sia un libro notevole e originale nel suo luogo e nel suo tempo; come il Sartor Resartus nel suo luogo e nel suo tempo. Ma non credo che il signor Joyce abbia aggiunto una nuova estensione o direzione all’espressione letteraria, più di quanto Carlyle sia riuscito a tramutare la lingua inglese in una versione bastarda e barbarica della lingua tedesca. Posso ben supporre che alla signorina Stein piaccia coltivare il suo piccolo scherzo, specialmente a spese del lettore; proprio come a George Meredith piaceva di certo coltivare il suo piccolo scherzo a spese del lettore. Ma resta il fatto che, al momento presente, il guaio non è che il lettore non lo comprenda, bensì che il lettore non lo legge. Mi addolora dirlo, per quanto conosco della natura umana e della storia, ma dubito che i posteri tenteranno anche solo di comprendere la signorina Stein. Sicché ella condividerà il suo piccolo scherzo con il proprio Creatore fino alla fine; il che potrebbe essere, anch’esso, un ottimo scherzo. Ma la teoria che tanto è stata in voga di recente, la teoria secondo cui l’evoluzione della letteratura si dirama in nuovi esperimenti, e segue sempre la linea di quegli esperimenti, mi pare recisamente smentita da tutti i fatti della storia letteraria. Mi pare un fatto oggettivo del tutto indipendente dalle mie preferenze; anzi, talvolta va contro le mie stesse preferenze. Crashaw e i mistici cavalieri furono, nel migliore senso della parola, dei fantastici. Erano fantastici della cui fantasia sono molto appassionato. Ma non trascinarono la letteratura inglese indefinitamente verso una fantasticheria sempre maggiore; verso un indulgere sempre più in tropi capovolti e in concetti ricercati. Nel giro di una generazione o poco più, la letteratura inglese era di ritorno nell’alveo che le era normale; anzi, fin troppo normale. Fu quella poesia del buon senso che ebbe inizio nella maturità di Dryden e spirò nel giorno natale di Burns.
Nessuno sa quale sarà la moda fra un centinaio d’anni, salvo che quasi certamente non sarà nulla di ciò che oggi è considerato la moda più nuova. Se so che un fiume ha vagato in curve sinuose dalla sua sorgente originaria, posso essere del tutto incapace di indovinare dove finirà per vagare dopo aver oltrepassato il punto in cui io mi trovo. L’unica cosa di cui posso essere ragionevolmente certo è che non prenderà d’un tratto ad andare del tutto diritto come un canale. Come pura questione congetturale, date le tendenze del nostro tempo, riterrei estremamente probabile che la letteratura abbandonerà tutta questa idea dell’esperimento, e non solo tornerà al proprio tipo, ma addirittura al tipo classico. Ritengo assai più probabile che allora vi sarà un culto di Landor, poniamo, o di qualche classico alquanto trascurato, piuttosto che il mondo intero volgerà lo sguardo alla signorina Stein come alla madre della moderna prosa inglese. Ne vediamo la tendenza nei Tomisti di Francia, negli Umanisti d’America, e credo che sia probabile diventi più classica di quanto io gradisca. Poiché io stesso sono persona romantica; e anch’io amo il mio piccolo scherzo, proprio come la signorina Stein.
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XII
On Bad Poetry
I WAS recently enjoying a book published some little time ago, under the name of The Stuffed Owl; an Anthology of Bad Verse. The specimens were selected, I think, by Mr. D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Mr. Lee; but I am not reviewing the work, which must have been reviewed everywhere long ago, and has, I trust, received the admiration it certainly deserves. For the moment it has merely sent my wits wandering in the wide and rich and many-coloured fields of inferior literature. Much have the editors of the anthology travelled in these realms of gold; and I do not dream of competing with their deep scholarship touching the monumental classics of bad writing, or their exquisite and delicate artistic instinct for the finest and freshest shades of imbecility. If I may reverently adapt Matthew Arnold’s definition of culture, they do indeed know the worst that has been said and thought in the history of humanity. Of course, any critic can complain of any anthology that some of his own favourites have been left out. He may sometimes even claim that some that are not on the high level of the anthology have been put in. As the critic skims an ordinary anthology to find an item which he can condemn as a blemish, so here the critic may pounce upon something that is not sufficiently half-witted to satisfy his high standard, and sternly point to several passages that are not so bad as they should be. Glimmerings of almost human intelligence, gleams of more than merely bestial reason, spasms of something almost resembling speech, relieve the monotony of the Imperial poems of Alfred Austin or the pagan passions of the more fearless, not to say shameless, imitators of Swinburne. Every now and then, after wading through a hubbub of hundreds of words, we find a word that seems to have gone right by accident. We must not complain; nothing in this mortal life is perfect; not even bad poetry.
Of course, there is one real difficulty in the classification of such classics. They necessarily divide themselves into at least two distinct types, which have really a rather different status and value. They raise two questions, which are hardly of equal intellectual importance. The first is: “Why do people who are not poets try to write poetry?” The second is: “Why do people who are poets fail to write poetry?” It is the second question which is the more difficult to answer and therefore the more worth answering. The first class consists of any number of accidents of ignorance and inexperience and vanity and egotistical self-deception; but beyond that there is nothing very extraordinary about it. A mysterious proverb declares that little birds who can sing and won’t sing must be made to sing; though I never could imagine how. But evidently nobody ever had the courage to suggest what should be done with little birds who can’t sing and do sing. There seems no suggestion possible, except that they should be shot; against which, in the name of St. Francis, the patron of all birds, poets, and other minor nuisances, I warmly protest. Of this sort of merely provincial limitation, the poetry of the Village Bard who looks dreadfully like the Village Idiot, the sort of thing that Oliver Wendell Holmes playfully satirized in the character of Gifted Hopkins, there is, of course, a great deal in such an anthology as this. There is a lot of it in the book; but there is also such a lot of it in the world that the examples must almost necessarily be accidents. Each one of us has probably found his own favourite piece of folly, in an advertisement or an epitaph or a corner of a newspaper; and the thing has remained almost as private as a family joke. To keep a record of all these individual discoveries would need not an anthology but a library of lunacy; a Bodleian of Bad Verse.
I cannot resist the temptation of telling Mr. D. B. Wyndham Lewis, and all other true lovers of bad poetry, of one poet to whom I know they would not refuse the laurel. He was so famous a person as the Rev. Patrick Brontë, the father of the great Brontë sisters; and his verses are actually printed along with theirs at the end of one edition of their works. He has often been called harsh and inhuman; but he deserves a place in literature since he invented a metre that is an instrument of torture. It consists of a rhyming verse finally ending on a word which ought to rhyme and does not. He is describing, if I remember right, the ideal virtues of the Village Maiden, and one verse runs—
To novels and plays not inclined Nor aught that can sully her mind; Temptations may shower, Unmoved as a tower She quenches the fiery arrows.
It is long since I have sat at the feet of this minstrel; and I quote from memory; but I think another verse of the same poem thus illustrated the same paraprosdokian, or concluding jerk of disappointment—
Religion makes beauty enchanting; And even where beauty is wanting, The temper and mind Religion-refined Will shine through the veil with sweet lustre.
If you read much of it, you will reach a state of mind in which, even though you know the jolt is coming, you can hardly forbear to scream. We have read much of the gloomy life of the Brontë sisters in their dark and narrow house, on their sombre and savage moor-lands. We have heard a great deal of how their souls were attuned to the storm, whether of wild winds or of stern words. But I can imagine no storm so paralysing as the noise of a reverend gentleman reading that poem; no torture so savage as the ruthless repetition of that metre; no inhuman cry so awful or so freezing to the blood, even out of the very heart of the hell of Wuthering Heights. In spite of all the educationists, it is a kindness to children to teach them nursery rhymes. But a man ought to be imprisoned for Cruelty to Children, if he recited to them rhymes that do not rhyme.
But the problem is much more interesting if we leave the bad poetry written by bad poets, and come to the bad poetry written by good poets. It is an old story; it was Horace, I think, who said that Homer sometimes nods; and Horace, though a wide-awake sort of person, sometimes indulged in a wink. The Swan of Avon, the Nightingale of Burford, the Skylark for whom we can name no habitation but the sky, all these famous birds occasionally threatened to stiffen into the Stuffed Owl. Even Milton, who lived for the grand style, had lapses of good taste; at least, I, for one, never liked Satan inventing gunpowder or spreading an extra special champagne supper, in the style of the Ritz-Carlton, to stay the hunger of the human Christ for bread. It is, therefore, no disrespect to great poets to make them figure in this book of bad poetry; for there is hardly a single good poet who has not at some time been a bad poet. I am not sure of the meaning of this, but I am fairly sure, for practical purposes, of the moral of it. First of all, it is wholesome to note that the poet generally came a cropper when he was moving most smoothly on the butter-slide of praise and progress and the prevailing fashion. It is when the classical poet is most classical that he strikes us as pompous and vapid. It is when the romantic poet is most romantic that he strikes us as sloppy and sentimental. And it will be when the modern poet is most modern, when he is most arrestingly in the modern style, that he will strike posterity as merely dowdy and dull. The only two really bad lines in Swinburne are the most Swinburnian; that couplet about lilies and languors and raptures and roses. By being in a sense perfect Swinburnian, it shows up Swinburne as imperfect. And the other moral is that poets are men; and that men can no longer be worshipped as gods. Carlyle did his worst work when he resurrected the pagan term of Hero-Worship. The Pagans, indeed, put up a statue to Achilles; but they did not whitewash the statue. They had an objective way with them, which needed no moral self-deception. But Carlyle could not be a Pagan; he could only be a bad Christian; or, as some say, a Puritan. And he did whitewash Cromwell and Frederick, as nobody whitewashed Achilles. Shakspere and Shelley were better than Cromwell and Frederick; but they also were men and not statues. Even their bad poetry may be productive of good philosophy.
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XII
Sulla cattiva poesia
MI SONO da poco dilettato con un libro pubblicato qualche tempo fa, sotto il titolo di The Stuffed Owl; an Anthology of Bad Verse. Gli esemplari furono scelti, mi pare, dal signor D. B. Wyndham Lewis e dal signor Lee; ma non intendo recensire l’opera, che dev’essere già stata recensita dappertutto molto tempo fa e ha, confido, ricevuto l’ammirazione che certamente merita. Per il momento non ha fatto altro che spedire il mio ingegno a vagabondare nei vasti, ricchi e cangianti campi della letteratura inferiore. Molto hanno viaggiato i curatori dell’antologia in questi reami d’oro; e non mi sogno di competere con la loro profonda dottrina intorno ai monumentali classici della cattiva scrittura, né col loro squisito e delicato istinto artistico per le più fini e fresche sfumature dell’imbecillità. Se mi è concesso adattare con reverenza la definizione di cultura data da Matthew Arnold, essi conoscono davvero il peggio che sia mai stato detto e pensato nella storia dell’umanità. Certo, ogni critico può lamentarsi di una qualunque antologia perché alcuni dei suoi prediletti sono stati esclusi. Talora può persino sostenere che alcuni, non all’altezza del livello dell’antologia, vi siano stati inclusi. Come il critico scorre un’ordinaria antologia per trovare un elemento che possa condannare come una macchia, così qui il critico può avventarsi su qualcosa che non è abbastanza mezzo scemo da soddisfare il suo alto criterio, e additare severamente svariati passi che non sono cattivi quanto dovrebbero. Barlumi di un’intelligenza quasi umana, lampi di una ragione più che meramente bestiale, spasmi di qualcosa che quasi somiglia alla parola, alleviano la monotonia dei Poemi imperiali di Alfred Austin o delle passioni pagane dei più temerari, per non dire spudorati, imitatori di Swinburne. Ogni tanto, dopo aver guadato un frastuono di centinaia di parole, troviamo una parola che pare essere caduta giusta per caso. Non dobbiamo lamentarci; nulla in questa vita mortale è perfetto; neppure la cattiva poesia.
Naturalmente, vi è una vera difficoltà nel classificare tali classici. Essi si dividono necessariamente in almeno due tipi distinti, che hanno in realtà uno statuto e un valore piuttosto diversi. Sollevano due domande, che difficilmente sono di eguale importanza intellettuale. La prima è: «Perché coloro che non sono poeti tentano di scrivere poesia?» La seconda è: «Perché coloro che sono poeti non riescono a scrivere poesia?» È la seconda domanda quella più difficile a cui rispondere, e perciò quella che più merita risposta. La prima classe consta di un numero qualsiasi di accidenti d’ignoranza e d’inesperienza e di vanità e di egoistico autoinganno; ma al di là di ciò non vi è nulla di molto straordinario. Un misterioso proverbio dichiara che gli uccellini che sanno cantare e non vogliono cantare vanno costretti a cantare; sebbene non abbia mai potuto immaginare come. Ma evidentemente nessuno ha mai avuto il coraggio di suggerire che cosa si debba fare con gli uccellini che non sanno cantare e cantano. Non pare possibile alcun suggerimento, se non che vengano fucilati; contro il che, nel nome di San Francesco, patrono di tutti gli uccelli, dei poeti e di altre minori seccature, protesto calorosamente. Di questa sorta di limitazione meramente provinciale, la poesia del Bardo di Villaggio che assomiglia terribilmente all’Idiota del Villaggio, il genere di cosa che Oliver Wendell Holmes satireggiò scherzosamente nel personaggio di Gifted Hopkins, ve n’è, naturalmente, gran quantità in un’antologia come questa. Ce n’è molta nel libro; ma ce n’è anche tanta nel mondo che gli esempi devono quasi necessariamente essere accidenti. Ciascuno di noi ha probabilmente trovato la propria prediletta perla di follia, in una réclame o in un epitaffio o in un angolo di giornale; e la cosa è rimasta quasi tanto privata quanto una barzelletta di famiglia. Tenere il registro di tutte queste scoperte individuali richiederebbe non un’antologia ma una biblioteca di demenza; una Bodleiana del Cattivo Verso.
Non so resistere alla tentazione di raccontare al signor D. B. Wyndham Lewis, e a tutti gli altri veri amatori della cattiva poesia, di un poeta al quale so che non rifiuterebbero l’alloro. Fu persona tanto celebre quale il rev. Patrick Brontë, il padre delle grandi sorelle Brontë; e i suoi versi sono stati addirittura stampati insieme ai loro alla fine di un’edizione delle loro opere. È stato spesso definito aspro e disumano; ma merita un posto nella letteratura poiché inventò un metro che è uno strumento di tortura. Consiste in una strofa in rima che infine termina con una parola che dovrebbe rimare e non rima. Sta descrivendo, se ben ricordo, le virtù ideali della Fanciulla di Villaggio, e una strofa recita così:
Ai romanzi e ai drammi non incline Né ad alcunché che possa insozzarle la mente; Le tentazioni possono piovere, Immobile come una torre Ella spegne le frecce infuocate.
È da gran tempo che non siedo ai piedi di questo menestrello; e cito a memoria; ma credo che un’altra strofa dello stesso poema illustrasse così lo stesso paraprosdokian, ovvero strattone conclusivo di delusione:
La religione rende la bellezza incantevole; E persino dove la bellezza manca, L’indole e la mente Dalla religione raffinate Splenderanno attraverso il velo con dolce fulgore.
Se ne leggete molto, raggiungerete uno stato d’animo in cui, pur sapendo che lo scossone sta arrivando, a stento riuscirete a trattenervi dall’urlare. Abbiamo letto molto della cupa vita delle sorelle Brontë nella loro casa buia e angusta, sulle loro fosche e selvagge brughiere. Molto abbiamo udito di come le loro anime fossero accordate alla tempesta, sia essa di venti selvaggi o di parole severe. Ma non riesco a immaginare tempesta tanto paralizzante quanto il rumore di un reverendo gentiluomo che legge quel poema; nessuna tortura tanto selvaggia quanto la spietata ripetizione di quel metro; nessun grido disumano tanto atroce o tanto agghiacciante per il sangue, neppure dal cuore stesso dell’inferno di Wuthering Heights. A dispetto di tutti i pedagogisti, è una gentilezza verso i bambini insegnar loro le filastrocche. Ma un uomo dovrebbe essere imprigionato per Crudeltà verso l’Infanzia, se recitasse loro rime che non rimano.
Ma il problema è assai più interessante se lasciamo la cattiva poesia scritta da cattivi poeti, e passiamo alla cattiva poesia scritta da buoni poeti. È una vecchia storia; fu Orazio, credo, a dire che Omero talvolta sonnecchia; e Orazio, benché persona ben desta, talvolta si concedeva un ammiccamento. Il Cigno d’Avon, l’Usignolo di Burford, l’Allodola a cui non sappiamo assegnare dimora se non il cielo, tutti questi famosi uccelli minacciarono di tanto in tanto d’irrigidirsi nel Gufo Impagliato. Persino Milton, che visse per lo stile sublime, ebbe cadute di buon gusto; almeno io, per parte mia, non ho mai amato Satana che inventa la polvere da sparo o che imbandisce un’extra speciale cena di champagne, nello stile del Ritz-Carlton, per placare la fame di pane del Cristo umano. Non è dunque alcuna mancanza di rispetto verso i grandi poeti farli figurare in questo libro di cattiva poesia; poiché non v’è quasi un solo buon poeta che a un certo tempo non sia stato un cattivo poeta. Non sono sicuro del significato di ciò, ma sono abbastanza sicuro, a fini pratici, della sua morale. Prima di tutto, è salutare notare che il poeta di solito faceva un capitombolo quando scivolava più agevolmente sulla lastra imburrata della lode e del progresso e della moda dominante. È quando il poeta classico è più classico che ci colpisce come pomposo e insipido. È quando il poeta romantico è più romantico che ci colpisce come sdolcinato e sentimentale. E sarà quando il poeta moderno è più moderno, quando è più clamorosamente nello stile moderno, che colpirà i posteri come semplicemente sciatto e noioso. I soli due versi davvero pessimi di Swinburne sono i più swinburniani; quel distico su gigli e languori ed estasi e rose. Essendo in un certo senso perfettamente swinburniano, mostra Swinburne come imperfetto. E l’altra morale è che i poeti sono uomini; e che gli uomini non possono più essere adorati come dèi. Carlyle compì la sua opera peggiore quando resuscitò il termine pagano del Culto dell’Eroe. I Pagani, invero, eressero una statua ad Achille; ma non imbiancarono la statua. Avevano un modo oggettivo di fare, che non abbisognava di alcun morale autoinganno. Ma Carlyle non poteva essere un Pagano; poteva solo essere un cattivo Cristiano; o, come alcuni dicono, un Puritano. E imbiancò davvero Cromwell e Federico, come nessuno imbiancò Achille. Shakespeare e Shelley erano migliori di Cromwell e Federico; ma anch’essi erano uomini e non statue. Perfino la loro cattiva poesia può essere feconda di buona filosofia.
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XIII
On Negative Morality
IT was said of Miss Arabella Allen, that pioneer of Feminism, that she didn’t know what she did like, but did know what she didn’t like. Many very recent pioneers resemble her, which is odd. A little while ago, all liberal and cultured persons were expected to agree that negative morality was nothing as compared with positive morality. Enlightened clergymen took a pride in removing the Ten Commandments from their altars and their sermons, and substituting those two great mystical commands concerning the positive duties of the love of God and Man. Famous and fashionable writers, like Stevenson, spoke for their generation in saying: “Christ would not hear of negative morality; ‘Thou shalt’ was ever his word.” Some enthusiasts carried the distinction to rather fantastic lengths, elaborately framing sentences from which negatives were excluded. When Tommy twisted the cat’s tail, they twisted the English tongue to invent a dissuasion that should not be in the form of a negative. Instead of saying, “Do not twist the cat’s tail,” they said, “Do, do show a positive benevolence to animals,” or words to that effect. Rushing into the nursery, just in time to prevent the new toy chisel from the little tool-card being driven into the little sister’s eye, they yet had time hastily to rearrange their words and sentences, to avoid saying, “Don’t do that,” and say instead, “Occupy yourself in some other fashion,” or “Employ your tools in the delightful craft of carpentry.”
But, though the theory had its extremists, like other theories, it was no doubt a healthy reaction at the time it occurred. It was a reaction from Puritanism, and especially from dead Puritanism, which had dried up into a few negative commands and nothing else. Even when it was at its best, I confess I had some doubts about it. Indeed, I sometimes feared that it might mask the return of a positive Puritanism more terrible than negative Puritanism. At least if the authority only said, “Do not burn down the house,” we may lawfully infer that we are allowed to do anything else with it; as, for instance, to paint it sky-blue with yellow stripes; or turn it into a public house or a castle defended by cannon. If no other veto is laid upon us except “Do not wake the baby,” it follows that any silent and stealthy occupation, such as directing a smooth and soundless flow of treacle into the works of the piano, or cutting off all the hair of all the little girls next door and turning it into artificial beards for private theatricals— it follows, I say, that all these mute but active forms of energy were tacitly permitted.
I am not sure that the very fact that negative morality has a narrower scope does not sometimes mean that it leaves a wider liberty. If there are only Ten Commandments, it means that there are only ten things forbidden; and that means that there are ten million things that are not forbidden. Let us do justice to our ancestors, if they found it easier and shorter to describe what they forbade than what they permitted. Nevertheless, with all these correctives and criticisms, the idea was fundamentally sound; it was, as I have said, the very right instinct that a religion is dead when it has ceased to dwell on the positive and happy side of its visions, and thinks only of the stern or punitive side. Anyhow, right or wrong, it was prevalent through the whole of what may be called the progressive period. It was almost the mark of an emancipated and hopeful person that he insisted that we must think first of positive good, rather than of negative evil.
And that is what makes the present position so very queer. In the very latest phase of literature, especially in the literature of satire or social criticism, we find exactly the contrary. We find the most modern writers have lost exactly what progress promised to give them, and have kept exactly what progress threatened to destroy. What I mean, for instance, is something roughly like this. Charles Dickens was not a philosopher; he most certainly was not a theologian, not even a moral theologian; only, it may be said, in a casual and popular sense a moralist. But suppose we took in detail all the destructive fun and farce of Dickens, all his devastating portraits of oily philanthropists and bumptious social bullies; all the prigs and privileged bigwigs and blustering obstructive officials whom he pilloried in a hundred places. Suppose in any such time and place we had stopped him and said, “But what do you want? What is your ideal? What would you substitute for all this? Under whom would you put Oliver Twist, if not under Bumble? Where would you send Smike except to Squeers? What ought Mrs. Jellyby to consider, if not Africa? To whom ought Mrs. Welter to listen, if not to Mr. Stiggins? What politics are right, if Dedlock’s are wrong? What morals are right, if Gradgrind’s are wrong?” I think it practically certain that Dickens would answer, and even answer promptly. Some of his remarks would strike some of his hearers as having the limits or illusions of his time; as, for instance, he might believe more in the Radical reforms and education which were then beginning than some of us do who have seen them in their ending. Other remarks might shock other hearers, by their still more shocking and disgusting devotion to barbarous idolatries and superstitions; as, for instance, to the idea of the Family or even the institution of Marriage. For I fear it is only too probable that Dickens would advance the grotesque plea that Mrs. Jellyby ought to think about Mr. Jellyby, and that even Mrs. Weller might occasionally listen to Mr. Weller. But whether his replies were revoltingly reactionary in this way, or merely a little too contented with the jog-trot reforms of his own day, I say that Dickens would reply, and would find no difficulty in replying.
Now, if we take a satirist of the modern moment, even a man of genius or genuine intellectual activity, like Mr. Aldous Huxley or Mr. Percy Wyndham Lewis, I am not so certain that they could reply. Some of them see with extraordinary vividness the humbug or imprudence or intellectual cruelty of this or that social type, in this or that social situation. But suppose we answered them by saying, “This moralist is a humbug, but what morality should a man preach, in order not to be a humbug? This positive claim is impudent, but can you be positive without being impudent? Many situations are cruel to many people; state briefly how you would be kind to these people.” I have a very strong suspicion that our modern moral satirists would be entirely stumped. Things are very complex, and everybody is doing the wrong thing; but I suspect they really think that things are too complex for anybody to do the right thing. Therefore there is a hollow in the heart of their whirlwind of destructive criticism, as there is a hollow in the heart of the whirlpool. I do not mean it metaphorically, as suggesting that they are hollow in the sense of false. I mean it almost actually; that they are hollow and know they are hollow, and even admit they are hollow, as a hungry man would admit he was hollow. They have not enough solid sustenance; not enough food for the mind, as distinct from acrobatic exercise for the mind. I do not, as some do, denounce all these modern moralists as immoral. I only say that the most modern moralists are now at one with the most antiquated moralists. Like their Puritan great-grandfathers, they have nothing but negative morality.
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XIII
Sulla morale negativa
SI DISSE della signorina Arabella Allen, quella pioniera del Femminismo, che non sapeva ciò che le piaceva, ma sapeva bene ciò che non le piaceva. Molti pionieri assai recenti le somigliano, il che è curioso. Non molto tempo fa, ci si aspettava che tutte le persone liberali e colte convenissero sul fatto che la morale negativa fosse nulla in confronto alla morale positiva. Ecclesiastici illuminati mettevano un orgoglio nel rimuovere i Dieci Comandamenti dai loro altari e dai loro sermoni, sostituendoli con quei due grandi comandi mistici che riguardano i doveri positivi dell’amore di Dio e dell’uomo. Scrittori famosi e alla moda, come Stevenson, parlarono a nome della loro generazione dicendo: «Cristo non voleva sentir parlare di morale negativa; “Tu farai” fu sempre la sua parola». Alcuni entusiasti spinsero la distinzione fino a lunghezze piuttosto fantastiche, foggiando con cura frasi da cui ogni negazione fosse esclusa. Quando Tommy torceva la coda al gatto, essi torcevano la lingua inglese per inventare una dissuasione che non avesse la forma di una negazione. Invece di dire: «Non torcere la coda al gatto», dicevano: «Su, mostra una positiva benevolenza verso gli animali», o parole di tal fatta. Precipitandosi nella stanza dei bambini, giusto in tempo per impedire che lo scalpellino nuovo della cassetta degli attrezzi venisse conficcato nell’occhio della sorellina, trovavano tuttavia il tempo di riordinare in fretta parole e frasi, per evitare di dire: «Non farlo», e dire invece: «Occupati in qualche altra maniera», oppure: «Impiega i tuoi arnesi nel delizioso mestiere della falegnameria».
Ma, per quanto la teoria avesse i suoi estremisti, come altre teorie, fu senza dubbio una salutare reazione al tempo in cui si manifestò. Fu una reazione al Puritanesimo, e specialmente al Puritanesimo morto, che si era disseccato in pochi comandi negativi e null’altro. Persino quando era al suo meglio, confesso che nutrivo qualche dubbio al riguardo. Anzi, talvolta temevo che potesse mascherare il ritorno di un Puritanesimo positivo più terribile del Puritanesimo negativo. Almeno se l’autorità dice soltanto: «Non incendiare la casa», possiamo lecitamente dedurre che ci sia permesso farne qualunque altra cosa; come, per esempio, dipingerla d’azzurro cielo a strisce gialle; o trasformarla in una taverna o in un castello difeso da cannoni. Se nessun altro veto ci viene imposto tranne «Non svegliare il bambino», ne consegue che ogni occupazione silenziosa e furtiva, come dirigere un liscio e silente rivolo di melassa dentro il meccanismo del pianoforte, oppure tagliare tutti i capelli a tutte le bambine della porta accanto e ricavarne barbe posticce per recite private… ne consegue, dico, che tutte queste mute ma attive forme di energia erano tacitamente concesse.
Non sono sicuro che il fatto stesso che la morale negativa abbia un ambito più ristretto non significhi talvolta che essa lasci una più ampia libertà. Se vi sono soltanto Dieci Comandamenti, ciò significa che vi sono soltanto dieci cose proibite; e ciò significa che vi sono dieci milioni di cose che non sono proibite. Rendiamo giustizia ai nostri antenati, se trovarono più facile e più breve descrivere ciò che vietavano piuttosto che ciò che permettevano. Ciononostante, con tutti questi correttivi e queste critiche, l’idea era fondamentalmente sana; era, come ho detto, il giustissimo istinto per cui una religione è morta quando ha cessato di soffermarsi sul lato positivo e felice delle sue visioni, e pensa soltanto al lato severo o punitivo. Comunque sia, giusta o sbagliata, essa fu prevalente per tutto quello che si può chiamare il periodo progressista. Era quasi il segno distintivo di una persona emancipata e piena di speranza l’insistere che si debba pensare prima al bene positivo, piuttosto che al male negativo.
Ed è questo che rende la situazione presente tanto assai bizzarra. Nella più recente fase della letteratura, specialmente nella letteratura della satira o della critica sociale, troviamo esattamente il contrario. Troviamo che gli scrittori più moderni hanno perduto proprio ciò che il progresso prometteva di dar loro, e hanno conservato proprio ciò che il progresso minacciava di distruggere. Ciò che intendo, per esempio, è qualcosa di grosso modo simile a questo. Charles Dickens non era un filosofo; non era certamente un teologo, nemmeno un teologo morale; soltanto, si può dire, in senso casuale e popolare, un moralista. Ma supponiamo di prendere nel dettaglio tutto lo spasso e la farsa distruttiva di Dickens, tutti i suoi devastanti ritratti di untuosi filantropi e di prepotenti tiranni della società; tutti i saccenti e i pezzi grossi privilegiati e i funzionari ostruzionisti e millantatori che egli mise alla berlina in cento luoghi. Supponiamo che in un qualsiasi momento e luogo del genere lo avessimo fermato dicendo: «Ma tu che cosa vuoi? Qual è il tuo ideale? Che cosa metteresti al posto di tutto questo? Sotto chi porresti Oliver Twist, se non sotto Bumble? Dove manderesti Smike se non da Squeers? A che cosa dovrebbe pensare la signora Jellyby, se non all’Africa? A chi dovrebbe dar ascolto la signora Weller, se non al signor Stiggins? Quale politica è giusta, se quella di Dedlock è sbagliata? Quale morale è giusta, se quella di Gradgrind è sbagliata?». Ritengo praticamente certo che Dickens risponderebbe, e risponderebbe persino prontamente. Alcune delle sue osservazioni colpirebbero taluni dei suoi ascoltatori come dotate dei limiti o delle illusioni del suo tempo; come, per esempio, che egli potrebbe credere più nelle riforme radicali e nell’educazione che allora cominciavano di quanto non facciamo alcuni di noi che le hanno viste alla loro fine. Altre osservazioni potrebbero scandalizzare altri ascoltatori, per la loro ancor più scioccante e disgustosa devozione a barbare idolatrie e superstizioni; come, per esempio, all’idea della Famiglia o addirittura all’istituzione del Matrimonio. Poiché temo sia fin troppo probabile che Dickens avanzerebbe la grottesca tesi che la signora Jellyby dovrebbe pensare al signor Jellyby, e che persino la signora Weller potrebbe di tanto in tanto ascoltare il signor Weller. Ma sia che le sue repliche fossero rivoltantemente reazionarie in questo senso, sia che fossero soltanto un po’ troppo appagate delle riforme al piccolo trotto del suo tempo, io dico che Dickens replicherebbe, e non troverebbe alcuna difficoltà nel replicare.
Ora, se prendiamo un satirico del momento moderno, anche un uomo di genio o di genuina attività intellettuale, come il signor Aldous Huxley o il signor Percy Wyndham Lewis, non sono così sicuro che essi saprebbero replicare. Alcuni di loro vedono con straordinaria vividezza l’impostura o l’imprudenza o la crudeltà intellettuale di questo o quel tipo sociale, in questa o quella situazione sociale. Ma supponiamo di rispondere loro dicendo: «Questo moralista è un impostore, ma quale morale dovrebbe predicare un uomo, per non essere un impostore? Questa pretesa positiva è impudente, ma si può essere positivi senza essere impudenti? Molte situazioni sono crudeli verso molte persone; enuncia brevemente come tu saresti buono verso queste persone». Ho il fortissimo sospetto che i nostri moderni satirici della morale rimarrebbero completamente spiazzati. Le cose sono assai complesse, e tutti fanno la cosa sbagliata; ma sospetto che essi in realtà pensino che le cose siano troppo complesse perché chiunque possa fare la cosa giusta. Vi è pertanto un vuoto nel cuore del loro turbine di critica distruttiva, così come vi è un vuoto nel cuore del vortice d’acqua. Non lo intendo metaforicamente, come a suggerire che essi siano vuoti nel senso di falsi. Lo intendo quasi alla lettera; che essi sono vuoti e sanno di essere vuoti, e persino ammettono di essere vuoti, come un uomo affamato ammetterebbe di sentirsi vuoto. Non hanno nutrimento solido a sufficienza; non abbastanza cibo per la mente, distinto dall’esercizio acrobatico per la mente. Io non, come fanno alcuni, denuncio tutti questi moralisti moderni come immorali. Dico soltanto che i moralisti più moderni sono ormai tutt’uno con i moralisti più antiquati. Come i loro bisnonni puritani, non hanno altro che morale negativa.
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XIV
On Jonathan Swift
THE greatness of the great Jonathan Swift grows upon me as I go on through life, like a man travelling nearer and nearer to a mountain. I did not understand him when I was very young; which is not to be wondered at, seeing that most people understood him so little as to give me his Gulliver’s Travels as a book written for children. Also he was hidden from me by the rather hypocritical haze of literary sentiment which pervaded the Victorian time. It was, in this case, very largely a stale political prejudice, due to the fact that Swift had been a Tory and that the whole Victorian legend was a sort of triumph of the Whigs. I began to learn better the more I learned about his period, and to learn better still, the more I learned about my own. For Swift stood at the beginning of something of which (it may be) we stand at the end; the whole of that cycle of commercial Imperialism and commercial Parliamentarianism which he already distrusted at its very beginning, or before it had really begun. Anyhow, I learned to like Swift for all the things for which Macaulay and Thackeray disliked him. I liked him for liking Bolingbroke; for despising Marlborough; for showing up the Glorious Hanoverian Succession in Ireland as a very low and dirty job; for treating the wit of the Freethinkers with contempt; for giving the first place to the virtue of Honour, which practically disappeared from politics and financial affairs about this time. It is doubtless true that he was too bitter and exclusive, but that is no reason why we should be. And the final phase of true philanthropy is not complete until it can love the misanthrope.
But I have often noticed a rather curious fact or fancy. Whenever there is a sort of proverb or anecdote or allusion, always connected with a literary man in literary gossip, that proverb always misses the point. So many people could hardly mention Dr. Johnson without the highly irrelevant remark that he wrote a Dictionary. So the favourite or fashionable phrase about Dean Swift seemed to be that he “wrote an essay on a Broomstick.” Indeed, the literary gossip managed to miss the point even here. The real point of the essay on a Broomstick is not merely that it is on a Broomstick, but that it is an essay in parody or satire upon the essays of Boyle, the most fashionable writer of the day. As for broomsticks, I imagine that Swift could have written a hundred essays on a hundred broomsticks. Nor do I see any particular reason why it should be difficult; many people could do it; I could do it myself. For, to begin with, almost any subject, considered as a subject, contains stuff and substance enough for an essay, when we consider that its origin and object, and material and design, and relation to other things, are all subjects in themselves. And secondly, a broomstick does not strike me as being intrinsically a dull subject, but rather a romantic one. The picturesque aspects of it, that leap into sight at once, so to speak, would suffice for an essay much longer than Swift’s. A broom, and consequently, a broomstick, are connected with religious ideas of purification, and with other ideas which are rather the reverse. George Herbert dedicated the broom especially to the service of God. The witches dedicated the broomstick especially to the service of Satan. And if the essayist is so fastidious as to find the subject of devil-worship merely mild and tame, we might well ask what subjects he finds sensational or exciting. There are a hundred other things to be said, of course, even without plagiarizing from Swift. The image applied to politics, in some places, might even be alarmingly significant. The broomstick is a bundle of twigs decidedly suggestive of the Fasces, and quite a number of things might be written about that.
But this rather misleading though traditional trifle has another interest for the imagination. Swift, as I have said, was a man who could write what nobody else could have written, and often at a time when nobody else would have dared to write it. He could write the truth about a time in which perhaps more lies were told, and about which perhaps more lies have since been taught, than any other episode in English history. He could say the right thing, and say it exactly rightly; with a deadly detachment or a stunning understatement unmatched in the satires of mankind. But Swift was not a man gifted with the particular grace with which this literary legend would distinguish him. He was not a man who specially saw a spiritual significance in common things, or learned great lessons from small objects, or had anything about him of the poet who finds poetry in prose. He was a religious man in an irreligious age; but only because he was really too intellectual a man to be merely an irreligious man. He had nothing about him of the mystic, who sees divine symbols everywhere, who turns a stone and starts a wing. There were only too many stones, and not half enough wings, in poor Jonathan Swift’s existence, and I fear he was largely saved from scepticism by a contempt for the sceptics. He did not see the glory of God in a broomstick; but he did see something very like a broomstick in the stuck-up wooden-headed young atheist who denied the glory of God. He did see that the ideas in the head of that philosophical broomstick were all tied together as loosely as a bundle of sticks, and that these borrowed notions bore the same relation to real sincerity and originality as the twigs tied on to a broomstick bear to the branches growing on a tree. In short, his approach to such central truths was noble indeed, but somewhat narrow and negative; he was wise by the follies of others; or at any rate, not merely out of the wisdom that is at one with charity. And because he was partly deficient in charity he was really deficient in poetry, though certainly not deficient in fancy. He was the last person in the world to write a poem about a broomstick; yet a hundred minor poets, so long as they were poets, could easily imagine a poem about a broomstick. Why, even the Nursery Rhymes have already set us a most spirited example, in that imaginative flight that swept the starry spiders’ webs out of the very corners of the sky.
It is perhaps worth while to note this incongruity about the literary legend, because it will soon be necessary to insist that each of these talents exists and each is valuable to truth. In the somewhat acid mood that is coming upon men of letters just now, it is likely enough that they will return to the realism of the great satirist, and accept his limitations along with his liberties. They will begin to be just to Swift, and immediately begin to be unjust to Blake or Wordsworth or Walt Whitman. For they seem unable to believe that different literary virtues are needed to balance each other; and a great deal of contemporary criticism reads to me like a man saying: “Of course I do not like green cheese; I am very fond of brown sherry.”
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XIV
Su Jonathan Swift
LA grandezza del grande Jonathan Swift cresce dentro di me man mano che procedo lungo la vita, come un uomo che viaggia sempre più vicino a una montagna. Non lo compresi quando ero molto giovane; il che non è da stupirsi, dato che la maggior parte della gente lo comprendeva così poco da darmi i suoi Viaggi di Gulliver come un libro scritto per i bambini. Egli inoltre mi era nascosto dalla foschia piuttosto ipocrita di sentimentalismo letterario che pervadeva il tempo vittoriano. Si trattava, in questo caso, in larghissima parte di uno stantìo pregiudizio politico, dovuto al fatto che Swift era stato un Tory e che l’intera leggenda vittoriana era una sorta di trionfo dei Whig. Cominciai a intendere meglio quanto più imparavo intorno alla sua epoca, e a intendere meglio ancora quanto più imparavo intorno alla mia. Poiché Swift stava all’inizio di qualcosa di cui (può darsi) noi stiamo alla fine; l’intero ciclo di quell’imperialismo commerciale e di quel parlamentarismo commerciale del quale già diffidava al suo principio stesso, o prima ancora che avesse davvero avuto inizio. Comunque sia, imparai ad amare Swift per tutte le cose per cui Macaulay e Thackeray lo detestavano. Mi piaceva perché amava Bolingbroke; perché disprezzava Marlborough; perché svelava la Gloriosa Successione Hannoveriana in Irlanda come un affare assai basso e sporco; perché trattava con disprezzo lo spirito dei Liberi Pensatori; perché assegnava il primo posto alla virtù dell’onore, che praticamente scomparve dalla politica e dagli affari finanziari intorno a quel tempo. È indubbiamente vero che egli fu troppo amaro ed esclusivo, ma non è questa una ragione perché lo si debba essere noi. E la fase estrema della vera filantropia non è compiuta finché non sappia amare il misantropo.
Ma ho spesso notato un fatto, o una fantasia, piuttosto curioso. Ogni qual volta esiste una sorta di proverbio, o aneddoto, o allusione, sempre collegata a un uomo di lettere nelle chiacchiere letterarie, quel proverbio manca sempre il punto. Tanta gente riusciva a stento a menzionare il Dottor Johnson senza l’osservazione altamente irrilevante che egli scrisse un Dizionario. Così la frase prediletta, o alla moda, a proposito del Decano Swift pareva essere che egli «scrisse un saggio su un Manico di Scopa». In verità, le chiacchiere letterarie riuscirono a mancare il punto anche qui. Il vero punto del saggio sul Manico di Scopa non è semplicemente che esso verte su un Manico di Scopa, ma che è un saggio in parodia, o satira, dei saggi di Boyle, lo scrittore più alla moda dell’epoca. Quanto ai manici di scopa, immagino che Swift avrebbe potuto scrivere cento saggi su cento manici di scopa. Né vedo alcuna ragione particolare per cui ciò dovrebbe essere difficile; molti potrebbero farlo; potrei farlo io stesso. Perché, tanto per cominciare, quasi ogni soggetto, considerato come soggetto, contiene materia e sostanza a sufficienza per un saggio, quando si consideri che la sua origine e il suo scopo, la sua materia e il suo disegno, e la sua relazione con le altre cose, sono tutti soggetti in se stessi. E in secondo luogo, un manico di scopa non mi colpisce come un soggetto intrinsecamente scialbo, ma piuttosto romantico. I suoi aspetti pittoreschi, che balzano all’occhio d’un tratto, per così dire, basterebbero a un saggio assai più lungo di quello di Swift. Una scopa, e di conseguenza un manico di scopa, sono legati a idee religiose di purificazione, e ad altre idee che sono piuttosto il loro contrario. George Herbert dedicò la scopa specialmente al servizio di Dio. Le streghe dedicarono il manico di scopa specialmente al servizio di Satana. E se il saggista è tanto schizzinoso da trovare il soggetto dell’adorazione del diavolo semplicemente blando e insipido, potremmo ben chiederci quali soggetti egli trovi sensazionali o eccitanti. Vi sono cento altre cose da dire, naturalmente, anche senza plagiare Swift. L’immagine applicata alla politica, in taluni luoghi, potrebbe persino risultare allarmantemente significativa. Il manico di scopa è un fascio di verghe che ricorda decisamente i Fasces, e non poche cose potrebbero scriversi al riguardo.
Ma questa inezia piuttosto fuorviante, per quanto tradizionale, ha un altro interesse per l’immaginazione. Swift, come ho detto, era un uomo capace di scrivere ciò che nessun altro avrebbe saputo scrivere, e spesso in un tempo in cui nessun altro avrebbe osato scriverlo. Egli sapeva scrivere la verità intorno a un tempo nel quale forse furono dette più menzogne, e intorno al quale forse più menzogne sono state insegnate da allora, che intorno a qualunque altro episodio della storia inglese. Egli sapeva dire la cosa giusta, e dirla in modo esattamente giusto; con un distacco letale, o una sottovalutazione fulminante, senza pari nelle satire del genere umano. Ma Swift non era un uomo dotato di quella particolare grazia con cui questa leggenda letteraria vorrebbe distinguerlo. Non era un uomo che scorgeva in modo speciale un significato spirituale nelle cose comuni, o traeva grandi lezioni da piccoli oggetti, o aveva in sé qualcosa del poeta che trova la poesia nella prosa. Era un uomo religioso in un’epoca irreligiosa; ma soltanto perché era davvero un uomo troppo intellettuale per essere semplicemente un uomo irreligioso. Non aveva in sé nulla del mistico, che vede simboli divini dappertutto, che volge una pietra e ne fa spiccare un’ala. Vi erano fin troppe pietre, e non abbastanza ali, nell’esistenza del povero Jonathan Swift, e temo che egli fosse in gran parte salvato dallo scetticismo da un disprezzo per gli scettici. Egli non vedeva la gloria di Dio in un manico di scopa; ma vedeva bensì qualcosa di molto simile a un manico di scopa nel giovane ateo tronfio e testa di legno che negava la gloria di Dio. Vedeva bensì che le idee nel capo di quel manico di scopa filosofico erano tutte legate insieme lascamente come un fascio di verghe, e che queste nozioni prese in prestito stavano alla sincerità e all’originalità autentiche nella stessa relazione in cui i ramoscelli legati a un manico di scopa stanno ai rami che crescono su un albero. In breve, il suo accostarsi a tali verità centrali fu nobile invero, ma alquanto angusto e negativo; egli era saggio delle follìe altrui; o comunque, non semplicemente in virtù di quella saggezza che è tutt’uno con la carità. E poiché era in parte manchevole di carità, era in realtà manchevole di poesia, benché di certo non manchevole di fantasia. Era la persona meno adatta al mondo a scrivere una poesia su un manico di scopa; eppure cento poeti minori, purché fossero poeti, potrebbero facilmente immaginare una poesia su un manico di scopa. Ma se persino le Filastrocche per bambini ci hanno già offerto un esempio quanto mai vivace, in quel volo dell’immaginazione che spazzò via le stellate ragnatele dagli angoli stessi del cielo.
Vale forse la pena di rilevare questa incongruenza a proposito della leggenda letteraria, perché presto sarà necessario insistere sul fatto che ciascuno di questi talenti esiste e ciascuno è prezioso per la verità. Nell’umore alquanto acido che sta ora sopraggiungendo negli uomini di lettere, è assai probabile che essi tornino al realismo del grande satirico, e ne accettino i limiti insieme alle libertà. Cominceranno a essere giusti verso Swift, e immediatamente cominceranno a essere ingiusti verso Blake, o Wordsworth, o Walt Whitman. Poiché sembrano incapaci di credere che occorrano differenti virtù letterarie a bilanciarsi l’una con l’altra; e gran parte della critica contemporanea mi suona come un uomo che dica: «Naturalmente non mi piace il formaggio verde; sono invece assai ghiotto di sherry bruno».
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XV
On the Creative and the Critical
I HAVE already remarked on the American cult called Humanism. It is the creation of certain critics who, broadly speaking, would substitute a certain classicism, such as is found in the ancients, for both the romanticism and realism of the moderns. There are those, of course, who call classicism cold, especially those who like their own realism or romanticism hot and strong. As a matter of fact, classicism is by no means the vital thing in Humanism. It is especially not the human thing in Humanism. I am by no means sure that I should myself agree with the Humanist leaders in everything. But I do most heartily agree with them in one thing, and it seems to me very much the most important thing. It is substantially this. The Humanist says to the Humanitarian, “You are always telling me to forget divine things and think of human things. And then you talk to me eagerly and earnestly about the pathetic helplessness of human beings, their faulty environment, their fatal heredity, their obvious animal origins, their uncontrollable animal instincts, ending with the old fatalist cry that we must forgive everything because there is nothing to forgive. But these things are not the human things. These are specially and specifically the sub-human things; the things we share with nature and the animals. The specially and outstandingly human things are exactly the things that you dismiss as merely divine things. The human things are free will and responsibility and authority and self-denial, because they exist only in humanity.”
Upon this pivotal point I am entirely at one with Humanism, but I do not propose to discuss that particular point here. I only wish to record an impression about some of the more violent opponents of Humanism, and especially upon one phrase which abounds in their phraseology and presumably means something in their philosophy. Many who can look back on long and happy lives passed in the character of Young Rebels are very much annoyed at the appearance of this antiquated classicism, especially when it appears (as it generally does) in people rather younger than themselves. And I notice that the slogan to be used against the Humanist is to consist in saying that they are merely Critical, whereas all the people who happen to dislike them are Creative. And, though I have no intention of getting into a quarrel about the word Humanism, I do feel somewhat attracted to an attempt to consider what we mean, and especially what they mean, by the words Creative and Critical.
I take it that the disparagement of the Critical, as compared with the Creative, does not mean that nobody must be allowed to write unless he writes novels; that it is a sufficient condemnation to say that Professor Paul Elmer More has not yet written a murder story, or Professor Babbitt knocked the town endways with a roaring farce. The Humanists are human beings; that, at least, may be tentatively conceded to them; and human beings are allowed to think, even while they do not carve, paint, build, or play the fiddle. But when we consider Creation with a significance a little deeper, we find it a little more difficult. It is much too difficult to dogmatize about; nor am I dogmatizing: I am only asking questions, like Socrates, of people whom I suspect of not knowing what their own dogmas are. What exactly do these exquisitely modern moderns mean when they say that their modern literature is Creative? I strongly suspect that, even when it is clever, it is emphatically not Creative. It is exactly what it accuses its enemies of being: it is Critical. For instance, I have a hearty admiration for the amazing vitality and veracity of much of the work of Mr. Aldous Huxley. I think he is the most brilliant of the moderns; and he is admittedly one of the most modern of the moderns. But his work, considered as an intellectual process, seems to me almost entirely Critical.
Of course, it is not easy to point to anything that is entirely Creative. In ultimate philosophy, as in ultimate theology, men are not capable of creation, but only of combination. But there is a workable meaning of the word, which I take to be this: some image evoked by the individual imagination which might never have been evoked by any other imagination, and adds something to the imagery of the world. I call it Creative to write “the multitudinous seas incarnadine.” I call it Creative by three real and even practical tests: first, that nobody need ever have thought of such a thing if Mr. William Shakspere had not happened to think of it; second, that while it is an apocalyptic, or titanic, it is not really an anarchic idea; it is gigantic, but it does not merely sprawl; it fits into the frame of thought exactly as the sea fits into all the fretted bays and creeks of the world. Also, in passing, with all its tragic occasion, it is a jolly image: it gives the mere imagination a positive and passionate joy of colour, like the joy of drinking a purple sea of wine. But, thirdly and most essentially, it does reveal the moral mystery that is the whole meaning of such a tragedy; expressed by the knocking without which startles the assassins within; the notion of the thin partition between the crime that is hidden in the house and the sin that fills the universe; what was meant by saying that things said in the inner chamber should be proclaimed from the housetops; the true idea of the Day of Judgment, in which the world is, really and truly, turned inside out. It may also be added that that astonishing phrase is not only a speech, but a gesture. It is dramatic, in the vital sense, to suppose that dipping a finger could suddenly turn all the seas of the world to scarlet. But this very drama is a morality, and it would mean nothing that the seas were scarlet unless the sins were scarlet. … But what is all this? This is not Modern. This is not Scientific. This is not in the purely experimental and realistic manner in which the Young Rebels have been writing for the last thirty or forty years. They all say they are Creative, and they ought to know. And, according to their theory of purely Creative art, there ought to be an entirely detached and unmoral attitude on the part of everybody involved. It ought not to matter whether the spot on Lady Macbeth’s finger was blood or red ink; or whether she turned the multitudinous seas the colour of carnage or tomato soup. It is evidently a very soothing and insulated condition of intellect, and avoids all the disturbing currents of ethical and theological criticism. There is nothing to be said against it; except that, if everybody were in that scientific state of mind, nobody could write Macbeth.
And there, as it seems to me, the whole theory of uncritical and uncriticized creative art breaks down. As a mere matter of fact, you cannot make any sense of Macbeth unless you not only recognize but share a decided horror of murder. And how you can be shocked by Murder and not moved by Morality I do not know. And if being Critical means the tracing of these electric wires or burglar-alarms, these live wires of the laws of life which do, in fact, give shocks when they are touched or transgressed, then it is not merely the classical critics who are critical. It is Shakspere who is critical; nay, it is Lady Macbeth who is critical; she is extremely critical of Lady Macbeth. If the recognition of the real Ten Commandments of life and death is only being critical, then all the great creative artists are critical; and they would not be creative if they were not critical. Lady Macbeth would never see that blasting vision of a bloodshot world, except in the last agony of self-criticism.
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XV
Del creativo e del critico
HO GIÀ avuto occasione di parlare di quel culto americano che va sotto il nome di Umanesimo. È l’invenzione di certi critici i quali, a grandi linee, vorrebbero sostituire un certo classicismo, quale si ritrova negli antichi, tanto al romanticismo quanto al realismo dei moderni. Vi sono naturalmente coloro che tacciano il classicismo di freddezza, e sono in particolare quelli a cui piace il proprio realismo o romanticismo caldo e corposo. In realtà, il classicismo non è affatto ciò che dà vita all’Umanesimo. Non è, soprattutto, la cosa umana dell’Umanesimo. Non sono affatto certo che io stesso mi troverei d’accordo su tutto con i capofila dell’Umanesimo. Ma mi trovo con loro d’accordo di tutto cuore su una cosa, e mi pare di gran lunga la più importante. In sostanza è questa. L’Umanista dice all’Umanitario: «Tu non fai che dirmi di dimenticare le cose divine e di pensare alle cose umane. E poi mi parli con foga e serietà del patetico stato di impotenza degli esseri umani, del loro ambiente difettoso, della loro eredità fatale, delle loro evidenti origini animali, dei loro incontrollabili istinti animali, per finire con il vecchio grido fatalista secondo cui dobbiamo perdonare ogni cosa perché non v’è nulla da perdonare. Ma queste non sono le cose umane. Queste sono, in modo speciale e specifico, le cose sub-umane; le cose che condividiamo con la natura e gli animali. Le cose specialmente e spiccatamente umane sono esattamente quelle che tu liquidi come cose meramente divine. Le cose umane sono il libero arbitrio e la responsabilità e l’autorità e l’abnegazione di sé, perché esistono soltanto nell’umanità.»
Su questo punto cardine mi trovo interamente d’accordo con l’Umanesimo, ma non è mia intenzione discutere qui proprio quel punto. Voglio soltanto mettere per iscritto un’impressione riguardo ad alcuni fra i più accaniti oppositori dell’Umanesimo, e in particolare riguardo a una frase che abbonda nella loro fraseologia e che presumibilmente significa qualcosa nella loro filosofia. Molti che possono guardare indietro a lunghe e felici esistenze trascorse nella parte dei Giovani Ribelli sono assai infastiditi dalla comparsa di questo classicismo antiquato, specialmente quando esso compare (come di solito accade) in persone piuttosto più giovani di loro. E noto che lo slogan da usare contro l’Umanista consisterà nel dire che essi sono soltanto Critici, mentre tutte le persone a cui per caso essi risultano antipatici sono Creative. E, benché non abbia alcuna intenzione di attaccar briga a proposito della parola Umanesimo, mi sento nondimeno alquanto attratto dal tentativo di considerare che cosa intendiamo, e soprattutto che cosa intendono loro, con le parole Creativo e Critico.
Suppongo che il disprezzo del Critico, in confronto al Creativo, non significhi che a nessuno debba essere concesso di scrivere se non scrive romanzi; che sia sufficiente condanna dire che il professor Paul Elmer More non ha ancora scritto una storia di omicidi, o che il professor Babbitt ha messo la città a soqquadro con una farsa scoppiettante. Gli Umanisti sono esseri umani; questo, almeno, glielo si può concedere in via provvisoria; e agli esseri umani è consentito pensare, anche mentre non scolpiscono, non dipingono, non costruiscono e non suonano il violino. Ma quando consideriamo la Creazione con un significato un poco più profondo, la troviamo un poco più ardua. È fin troppo ardua per dogmatizzarvi sopra; né io sto dogmatizzando: mi limito a porre domande, come Socrate, a persone che sospetto non sappiano quali siano i loro stessi dogmi. Che cosa intendono esattamente questi squisitamente moderni moderni quando affermano che la loro letteratura moderna è Creativa? Sospetto fortemente che, persino quando è brillante, essa non sia affatto Creativa. È esattamente ciò di cui accusa i propri nemici di essere: è Critica. Per esempio, nutro una cordiale ammirazione per la stupefacente vitalità e veridicità di gran parte dell’opera del signor Aldous Huxley. Lo ritengo il più brillante dei moderni; ed egli è, per ammissione generale, uno dei più moderni fra i moderni. Ma la sua opera, considerata come processo intellettuale, mi sembra quasi interamente Critica.
Certo, non è facile additare qualcosa che sia interamente Creativo. Nella filosofia ultima, come nella teologia ultima, gli uomini non sono capaci di creazione, ma soltanto di combinazione. Vi è tuttavia un significato utilizzabile della parola, che ritengo essere questo: una qualche immagine evocata dall’immaginazione individuale che nessun’altra immaginazione avrebbe forse mai potuto evocare, e che aggiunge qualcosa all’immaginario del mondo. Chiamo Creativo lo scrivere «the multitudinous seas incarnadine». Lo chiamo Creativo in base a tre prove reali e persino pratiche: primo, che nessuno avrebbe mai avuto bisogno di pensare a una cosa simile se il signor William Shakspere non avesse per caso pensato a essa; secondo, che, pur essendo un’idea apocalittica, o titanica, non è in realtà un’idea anarchica; è gigantesca, ma non si limita a sparpagliarsi disordinatamente; si incastra nella cornice del pensiero esattamente come il mare si incastra in tutte le baie e le insenature frastagliate del mondo. Inoltre, per inciso, con tutta la sua tragica occasione, è un’immagine gioiosa: dà alla pura immaginazione una positiva e appassionata gioia del colore, come la gioia di bere un mare purpureo di vino. Ma, in terzo luogo e in modo più essenziale, essa rivela davvero il mistero morale che è l’intero significato di una simile tragedia; espresso dal bussare esterno che fa trasalire gli assassini all’interno; l’idea della sottile parete divisoria tra il delitto nascosto nella casa e il peccato che riempie l’universo; ciò che si intendeva dicendo che le cose dette nella camera segreta sarebbero state proclamate dai tetti; la vera immagine del Giorno del Giudizio, in cui il mondo è, davvero e per davvero, rivoltato come un guanto. Si può anche aggiungere che quella frase sbalorditiva non è soltanto un discorso, ma un gesto. È drammatico, nel senso vitale del termine, supporre che intingere un dito possa d’un tratto mutare tutti i mari del mondo in scarlatto. Ma proprio questo dramma è una moralità, e non significherebbe nulla che i mari fossero scarlatti se i peccati non fossero scarlatti. … Ma che cos’è tutto questo? Questo non è Moderno. Questo non è Scientifico. Questo non è nella maniera puramente sperimentale e realistica in cui i Giovani Ribelli hanno scritto negli ultimi trenta o quarant’anni. Tutti dicono di essere Creativi, e dovrebbero saperlo. E, secondo la loro teoria dell’arte puramente Creativa, dovrebbe esservi un atteggiamento del tutto distaccato e amorale da parte di chiunque sia coinvolto. Non dovrebbe avere importanza se la macchia sul dito di Lady Macbeth fosse sangue o inchiostro rosso; o se ella tingesse i mari moltitudinari del colore della carneficina o della zuppa di pomodoro. È evidentemente una condizione dell’intelletto assai rasserenante e isolata, e schiva tutte le turbolente correnti della critica etica e teologica. Non c’è nulla da obiettare contro di essa; se non che, se tutti fossero in quello stato d’animo scientifico, nessuno potrebbe scrivere il Macbeth.
Ed è qui, a quanto mi pare, che l’intera teoria dell’arte creativa incritica e incriticata crolla. Come puro dato di fatto, non si può ricavare alcun senso dal Macbeth se non solo non si riconosce, ma non si condivide un deciso orrore per l’omicidio. E come si possa restare scioccati dall’Omicidio e non essere commossi dalla Moralità, io non lo so. E se essere Critici significa tracciare questi fili elettrici o allarmi antifurto, questi cavi sotto tensione delle leggi della vita che, di fatto, danno la scossa quando li si tocca o li si trasgredisce, allora non sono soltanto i critici classici a essere critici. È Shakspere a essere critico; anzi, è Lady Macbeth a essere critica; ella è estremamente critica nei confronti di Lady Macbeth. Se il riconoscimento dei veri Dieci Comandamenti della vita e della morte è soltanto essere critici, allora tutti i grandi artisti creativi sono critici; e non sarebbero creativi se non fossero critici. Lady Macbeth non vedrebbe mai quella fulminante visione di un mondo iniettato di sangue, se non nell’ultima agonia dell’autocritica di sé.
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XVI
On a New Tax
IN these times when everybody is talking about taxation, many must have indulged in the dream that there might be a tax on talking. I hasten (nay, rush in a rage of self-immolation) to add that the same may be said of a tax on writing. We have endeavoured to preserve the old liberal ideal of free speech and free printing, at least in its legal form, if sometimes as a legal fiction. I fear that the truth is not so much that repression is entirely removed, as that repression is not responsible repression. Like so many other things, it has begun to act outside the limits of law, and tyranny as well as liberty has broken loose. Repression is irresponsible, and therefore repression itself is irrepressible. Private powers acting as public powers, monopolies, boycotts, big shops, publishing syndicates, and similar things do, in fact, inflict restriction which we should not allow the State or the Church to inflict. But even the most earnest eleutheromaniac may allow himself a day-dream of abstract possibilities. And, if we agree that the State must not attack expression with the old weapon of punishment, we might toy with the fancy of attacking it with the new method of monetary rating. Nobody now wishes men to be tortured for talking nonsense, but they might be taxed for talking nonsense. Indeed, in these days, when so many schools give Lessons in Citizenship, most people seem to be so vague about such things that they would hardly know the difference. A citizen can hardly distinguish between a tax and a fine, except that the fine is generally much lighter.
Of course, there is a sort of paradox in taxation, anyhow. In such a tax, there is often the notion of checking something, and yet the hope that it will not be checked. A lover of birds might wish to have a tax on cats, with the idea that there would be fewer cats. But the statesman imposing the tax would presumably hope that the streets would be thronged with thousands and thousands of cats, each bringing its little subscription to the embarrassed Exchequer. Now, it seems illogical to wish to moderate the influx of cats and not to wish to moderate the influence of tigers. Yet it is very unlikely that the State will ever put a tax on tigers; because, alas! these beautiful creatures are rare in our English lanes and still rarer by our English firesides. Any lover of nature who has seen the first tiger appearing somewhat prematurely in early spring will almost certainly (if he survives) write a letter to the newspapers about it, as an event even more exceptional than the cuckoo. There is not enough money in tigers to make it worth while to tax them; so that in cases of that sort we cannot act upon the principle of the check or public protection alone.
But, for the sake of argument, we will leave out in this light speculation all the purely economic considerations arising from the width of the taxable area. It would obviously be impossible, as well as iniquitous, to tax the sort of remarks that are made as a part of the ordinary round of social life. To impose even a light tax on every repetition of the expression “It’s a fine day,” or “It’s a strange world,” or “Nothing doing in the City,” or “Pint of bitter, Miss,” or any of those great pivotal utterances on which all human life revolves, would be outside the sphere of practical politics. The sort of talk to be taxed must be something sufficiently wide-spread to be worth taxing, but something sufficiently superfluous to suffer even a prohibitive tax without the world being much the worse.
In fact, the tax on talk may well follow the rough distinction already recognized about necessities and luxuries. The pint of bitter, the word about the weather, are necessities. For the poor, beer is a necessity, as tobacco is very nearly a necessity; it is only for people sufficiently rich and fashionable to be faddists that either is really a luxury. In the same way, a certain sort of primeval and eternal gossip is a necessity. But there are all sorts of things that are not necessities. The mention of mere names seen in the newspapers; the oppressive presence of science, combined with the absence of knowledge; the habit we all have of talking about what we do not understand; all these might be smartly interrupted by the tax-collector coming round as the tram conductor comes round for fares.
For instance, suppose everybody was instantly fined a small sum for mentioning the name of Einstein. The money would be refunded if he could afterwards demonstrate, to a committee of mathematicians and astronomers, that he knew anything about Einstein. What a salutary check it would be on the public speaker, criticizing the Budget or the latest economic panacea, who would be just in the very act of saying: “Makes the brain reel. Reminds one of—” and would sharply catch himself up, with a holy fear of losing half a crown, and hastily substitute Alice in Wonderland. On the other hand, it would be equally valuable in arresting the headlong pen of the journalist announcing Brighter Brotherhood or reverently praising The Revolt of Youth: “The new year opens before us new faiths, new ideals, and the young will no longer be content with the dead shibboleths of creed and dogma. New light has been thrown on all the daily problems of life by the great scientific genius of our time; the name of—”: and then he will stop suddenly and be most horribly stumped, for Einstein is the only man of science he has heard of, and Einstein costs two-and-six.
It is a luxury, in the strict sense of a superfluity, to mention Einstein. He is not a part of any ordinary human argument, because any ordinary human being does not know where his argument leads or what it can really be used to prove. It may be, for all I know, a perfectly good argument for those who really follow it; but those who drag in the name without the argument cannot know what an argument means. We should not be interfering with the freedom of debate by eliminating it, for the men who only deal in such unknown quantities are not debating. They are simply showing off. The distinguished name is stuck into the sentence as the diamond tie-pin is stuck into the tie, for the sake of swagger or snobbishness. And diamond tie-pins are quite legitimate objects for a tax on luxuries. Of course, the argument does not only apply to science; there are any number of cases of the same sort of pedantry in literature. There are certain quotations from poetry which are always dragged in as if they were texts of Scripture, professedly to prove something that obviously proves itself, but really to prove that the writer is well acquainted with the Hundred Best Authors.
The tax would have a refreshing and reviving effect upon literature, because it would drive writers to think of a few new examples. The man who writes to show that Science was always persecuted in the past will be driven to the dreadful necessity of writing about somebody else besides Galileo. And who knows what a new life of brighter and brisker research into the elements of history the change may not mean for him! The man who is writing to show that poets always die young, or are killed by the critics, if he is absolutely forbidden (at the rate of five shillings) to say that the Quarterly was tartarly and ask, “What are Keats?” might discover all sorts of neglected poets; or, better still, discover that there were some poets who were not neglected. Those who can never separate Spain from the Spanish Inquisition, or America from the similar institution of Prohibition, or Russia from the German Jew called Karl Marx, might, at the price of a temporary tax on these topics, find out a good many other truths about these nations. They might find, for example, what Spain did in America; what America is doing in Russia; and whether all Russian peasants have really turned into German Jews.
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XVI
Sopra una nuova tassa
IN questi tempi in cui tutti parlano di tassazione, molti debbono essersi abbandonati al sogno che potesse esistere una tassa sul parlare. Mi affretto (anzi, mi precipito in un impeto di auto-immolazione) ad aggiungere che altrettanto si potrebbe dire di una tassa sullo scrivere. Ci siamo sforzati di conservare il vecchio ideale liberale della libera parola e della libera stampa, almeno nella sua forma legale, se pure talvolta come una finzione giuridica. Temo che la verità non sia tanto che la repressione sia interamente rimossa, quanto che la repressione non sia una repressione responsabile. Come tante altre cose, essa ha cominciato ad agire fuori dai confini della legge, e la tirannia non meno che la libertà si è scatenata. La repressione è irresponsabile, e perciò la repressione stessa è irreprimibile. Poteri privati che agiscono da poteri pubblici, monopoli, boicottaggi, grandi empori, sindacati editoriali e cose simili infliggono, di fatto, quella restrizione che noi non permetteremmo allo Stato o alla Chiesa di infliggere. Ma perfino il più fervente eleuteromane può concedersi la fantasticheria di qualche astratta possibilità. E, se conveniamo che lo Stato non debba assalire l’espressione con la vecchia arma del castigo, potremmo pure trastullarci con la fantasia di assalirla col nuovo metodo della valutazione monetaria. Nessuno oggi desidera che gli uomini vengano torturati per aver detto sciocchezze, ma potrebbero essere tassati per aver detto sciocchezze. Anzi, di questi tempi, in cui tante scuole impartiscono Lezioni di Cittadinanza, la maggior parte delle persone appare così confusa su tali argomenti che a stento saprebbe cogliere la differenza. Un cittadino distingue a fatica una tassa da una multa, salvo che la multa è generalmente assai più lieve.
Naturalmente, in ogni tassazione si annida una sorta di paradosso. In una tassa siffatta vi è spesso l’idea di frenare qualcosa, e insieme la speranza che non sia frenato. Un amante degli uccelli potrebbe desiderare una tassa sui gatti, con l’idea che i gatti si facciano meno. Ma l’uomo di Stato che imponesse la tassa presumibilmente spererebbe che le vie fossero gremite di migliaia e migliaia di gatti, ciascuno recante il suo piccolo contributo all’imbarazzato Erario. Ora, pare illogico voler moderare l’affluire dei gatti e non voler moderare l’influsso delle tigri. Eppure è assai improbabile che lo Stato ponga mai una tassa sulle tigri; perché, ahimè!, queste belle creature sono rare nei nostri viottoli inglesi e ancor più rare accanto ai nostri focolari inglesi. Qualsiasi amante della natura che abbia veduto la prima tigre comparire alquanto prematuramente al principio della primavera scriverà quasi di certo (se sopravvive) una lettera ai giornali a riguardo, come un evento persino più eccezionale del cuculo. Non c’è abbastanza denaro nelle tigri perché valga la pena tassarle; sicché in casi di tal genere non possiamo agire secondo il principio del freno o della pubblica protezione soltanto.
Ma, per amor di argomento, lasceremo fuori da questa lieve speculazione tutte le considerazioni puramente economiche derivanti dall’ampiezza della base imponibile. Sarebbe evidentemente impossibile, oltre che iniquo, tassare quel genere di frasi che si pronunciano come parte dell’ordinario andirivieni della vita sociale. Imporre anche una lieve tassa su ogni ripetizione dell’espressione «Che bella giornata», o «Che strano mondo», o «Niente da fare in City», o «Una pinta di birra amara, signorina», o su una qualunque di quelle grandi enunciazioni cardinali attorno a cui ruota tutta la vita umana, sarebbe fuori dalla sfera della politica pratica. Il genere di chiacchiere da tassare dev’essere qualcosa di sufficientemente diffuso da valere la pena di tassarlo, ma qualcosa di sufficientemente superfluo da poter subire perfino una tassa proibitiva senza che il mondo ne risulti molto peggiore.
Difatti, la tassa sulle chiacchiere potrebbe bene seguire la rozza distinzione già riconosciuta fra il necessario e il superfluo. La pinta di birra amara, la parola sul tempo, sono necessità. Per il povero la birra è una necessità, come il tabacco è quasi una necessità; è soltanto per gente abbastanza ricca e alla moda da potersi permettere di essere maniaca che l’una o l’altro sono davvero un lusso. Allo stesso modo, un certo genere di primordiale ed eterno pettegolezzo è una necessità. Ma vi sono ogni sorta di cose che non sono necessità. La menzione di meri nomi visti sui giornali; l’opprimente presenza della scienza, unita all’assenza del sapere; l’abitudine che tutti abbiamo di parlare di ciò che non comprendiamo; tutto questo potrebbe essere bruscamente interrotto dall’esattore che passa come passa il bigliettaio del tram a riscuotere le corse.
Per esempio, si supponga che chiunque venisse all’istante multato di una piccola somma per aver menzionato il nome di Einstein. Il denaro gli sarebbe restituito se potesse in seguito dimostrare, a una commissione di matematici e astronomi, di sapere qualcosa intorno a Einstein. Che salutare freno sarebbe per l’oratore pubblico, intento a criticare il Bilancio o l’ultima panacea economica, il quale, proprio nell’atto stesso di dire: «Fa girare il capo. Ricorda quel di—» si arresterebbe di colpo, con un santo timore di perdere mezza corona, e frettolosamente sostituirebbe Alice nel Paese delle Meraviglie. D’altra parte, sarebbe ugualmente prezioso nel trattenere la penna precipitosa del giornalista che annuncia la Più Luminosa Fratellanza o riverente esalta La Rivolta della Gioventù: «Il nuovo anno dischiude dinanzi a noi nuove fedi, nuovi ideali, e i giovani non si contenteranno più degli spenti shibboleth del credo e del dogma. Nuova luce è stata gettata su tutti i problemi quotidiani della vita dal grande genio scientifico del nostro tempo; il nome di—»: e allora si fermerebbe di botto e resterebbe orribilmente in secca, poiché Einstein è l’unico uomo di scienza di cui abbia sentito parlare, ed Einstein costa due scellini e sei.
È un lusso, nel senso stretto di una superfluità, menzionare Einstein. Egli non fa parte di alcun ordinario ragionamento umano, perché nessun essere umano ordinario sa dove conduca il suo ragionamento né che cosa esso possa realmente servire a dimostrare. Può darsi, per quel che ne so io, che sia un argomento perfettamente buono per chi davvero lo segue; ma coloro che trascinano il nome senza l’argomento non possono sapere che cosa significhi un argomento. Non staremmo interferendo con la libertà di discussione eliminandolo, poiché gli uomini che trafficano soltanto in tali quantità ignote non stanno discutendo. Si stanno semplicemente mettendo in mostra. Il nome illustre viene ficcato nella frase come lo spillo da cravatta di diamante viene ficcato nella cravatta, per amore di spavalderia o di snobismo. E gli spilli da cravatta di diamante sono oggetti del tutto legittimi per una tassa sui lussi. Naturalmente, l’argomento non si applica soltanto alla scienza; vi sono innumerevoli casi dello stesso genere di pedanteria nella letteratura. Vi sono certe citazioni poetiche che vengono sempre tirate in ballo come se fossero testi della Scrittura, dichiaratamente per provare qualcosa che ovviamente si prova da sé, ma in realtà per provare che lo scrittore è ben versato nei Cento Migliori Autori.
La tassa avrebbe un effetto rinfrescante e ravvivante sulla letteratura, perché costringerebbe gli scrittori a pensare a qualche nuovo esempio. L’uomo che scrive per mostrare che la Scienza fu sempre perseguitata nel passato sarebbe spinto alla tremenda necessità di scrivere di qualcun altro oltre a Galileo. E chissà quale nuova vita di più luminosa e più svelta ricerca negli elementi della storia il mutamento potrebbe significare per lui! L’uomo che scrive per mostrare che i poeti muoiono sempre giovani, o vengono uccisi dai critici, se gli fosse assolutamente vietato (al prezzo di cinque scellini) di dire che la Quarterly era tartarica e chiedere: «Che sono i Keats?», potrebbe scoprire ogni sorta di poeti trascurati; oppure, meglio ancora, scoprire che vi furono alcuni poeti che non furono affatto trascurati. Coloro che non sanno mai separare la Spagna dall’Inquisizione spagnola, o l’America dalla consimile istituzione del Proibizionismo, o la Russia dal Giudeo tedesco chiamato Karl Marx, potrebbero, al prezzo di una tassa temporanea su questi argomenti, scoprire parecchie altre verità intorno a queste nazioni. Potrebbero scoprire, per esempio, che cosa fece la Spagna in America; che cosa sta facendo l’America in Russia; e se davvero tutti i contadini russi si siano tramutati in Giudei tedeschi.
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XVII
On Sense and Sound
ON re-reading something I wrote about the most modern poetry, especially touching the ancient riddle of Sense and Sound, I am not sure that I made myself clear. And, as I am not now writing the most modern poetry, I may be allowed to be clear. Clarity will be permissible, or at least pardonable. By the way (if I may mention it in parenthesis) does anybody know why it is now the fashion to be very extravagant in poetry and very sober in prose? There are individuals, of course, like Mr. James Joyce or Miss Gertrude Stein, whose prose may be said to be of doubtful sobriety. But some of the ablest of the rising, or recently risen, authors seem to have something like a dual personality in prose and verse. The prose-writing of Mr. Osbert Sitwell is not especially Sitwellian, as the term is applied to his poetry. It is well written, but rather on the old principle that a book well written should be as unobtrusive as a man well dressed. It is in the Sitwellian poesy that the average reader is apt to be startled by strange sights; by woolly roses or hairy clouds. Mr. T. S. Eliot’s wildest verses do, indeed, have rhythm, too much rhythm; really (as the phrase goes) making the head go round, and suggesting a cosy life in the hollow heart of a cyclone or a whirlpool. But there is nothing of this in his essays; which are rather contained and reticent than otherwise. Indeed, when he does make an epigram (and a very good one) he is so ashamed of it that he hides it at the end of a minute footnote, for fear some critic or other should accuse him of brilliancy.
The same is largely true even of Mr. Aldous Huxley, so far as essay-writing is concerned. His diaries of real travel are quite sensible and unpretentious; while some of his poems are like imaginary travels in the Tropics, almost negro in their barbaric dance of death. The Victorians, who are accused of primness, had much more all-round extravagance. George Meredith was as perverse and fanciful in prose as in verse; indeed, more so. Diana of the Crossways seemed to sit not so much at the cross-roads as in the heart of the labyrinth; and the Egoist juggled much more deceptively than Juggling Jerry. Some of Browning’s friends complained that he was cryptic, not only in prose but in private correspondence. I am not complaining of this new method of making extremes meet. There may be a great deal to be said for it; but perhaps it means some decay of the Victorian naturalness, which was much more typical than the Victorian decorum. There is something to be said for Browning and Meredith, if only that they could not help writing like Meredith and Browning.
But this (as I say) is all in brackets. The matter I meant to raise concerns sense and sound in poetry. And their relation is much more subtle than even the most insanely subtle of the critics seem to understand. I took the familiar example of a famous line in Milton, which has always had that inexplicable fascination so often found in the purely classical style. Oddly enough, it is in the rational lines of Virgil or Milton, much more than in the extra-rational lines either of the Merediths or the Sitwells, that we feel the final mystery of song; the something that instantly gives delight and escapes from definition; the thing of which we say: “I cannot tell, for the life of me, why that is so good as it is.” I cannot tell, for the life of me, why the line “Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved” is as good as it is. Yet it is perfectly straightforward; it merely mentions a cape and a mountain, and adds the somewhat superfluous information that they are not removed. The only thing I am quite sure about is that the sense depends on the sound and the sound depends on the sense. It actually would not sound the same, if another meaning were expressed by the same sound. It actually would not mean as much, if other words expressed the same meaning. It would be easy enough to try the experiment in a rough and ready way. It is obvious that, if we wrote “Like Beachy Head or Snowdon unremoved,” it would not be within a thousand miles of the thing; though Beachy Head is a cape and Snowdon is a mountain. What is not quite so obvious is that the converse is also true. It might be too lightly inferred that the mere noise of the names is alone majestic. It might be even suggested that the down-rushing dactyl of “Teneriffe” has some faint echo of words like “terrible” or “towering,” and that the sound is the secret. But it is not so, though the alternative experiment might be a little more elaborate to construct. Let us have a stab at it, as Mr. P. G. Wodehouse’s young man said when asked if he would be a reasonable being.
Thackeray mentions somewhere, in one of his essays, that in some old cookery-book or book of etiquette he had come on the fact that men in the eighteenth century drank a wine called Teneriffe, apparently an alternative to port or Madeira. Thackeray says, I think, that it sounds like having to swallow the Matterhorn. But if it were something quite familiar, like port wine, it would sound like any other detail of the dinner-table. As for the word “Atlas,” we have only to knock out the capital letter, and it means a commonplace work of reference, an ordinary book of maps. Now, suppose somebody were writing a very mild and jog-trot domestic poem in decasyllabics, rather like those poems in which Cowper celebrated the tea-urn or the cat. And suppose the particular passage explained how somebody’s after-dinner table was left in a litter by negligent servants; books and wine and everything in a hugger-mugger—
His pipe and napkin, like his spectacles, Like snuff and toast and pen and ink or books, Like teneriffe or atlas, unremoved.
It would not make the same noise. It actually would not sound in the ear, as a matter of mere acoustics, the same. The fact of talking only about two trivial objects would, in fact, alter the actual impact of the sound upon the ear and the nerves. Nobody would be looking for a great sonorous effect, and nobody would find it. The fact that the two objects are mountains, mysterious and remote and legendary mountains, does enter irrevocably into the merely physical process; and it is the largeness of those mountains that fills the lungs and the ear.
This being so, I think there are much deeper difficulties than are now generally understood about breaking with the traditions of rhythm. I do not say it should not be done, but I do say that it is doubtful whether those who do it know what they are doing. If my own original use of this quotation was obscure, I am well aware that the whole problem is one of the deepest obscurity. But this is more or less what I meant; that I do not think we have got to anything like the bottom of the psychology— we might even say the physiology—of poetical effects; and that the old conventions of verse rested upon instincts which are perhaps indestructible, but which at least cannot be casually destroyed. It would seem that one growth can grow into another, even if they did originally have separate roots, in such a fashion as to form a single life and a new creation; and that new creation is none the less unique because it is now old. It is really beside the mark to talk about experiments which are only explosions; for, though explosions ought to be expansions, it is certain at least that they are disruptions. I do not object to experiments as such. I willingly agree that Mr. Sitwell has as much right to talk about a hairy cloud as an old poet to talk about a fleecy cloud; as much right to do what he can with the hair of a cloud as the other with the hair of a comet. But something much deeper and more mysterious is involved. The old poets had a power of mixing with their fleecy clouds and hairy comets some ancestral magic of the nature of music; by which even the quaintest of Cavalier conceits, or the most newly coined of Renaissance Latinisms, came weighted with harmonies and a historic richness that prevented them from being crude, even when they were new. It seems to me that the new poets do not try to recover that ancient wedding of sound and sense. Some of them seem to have only passed from the old Swinburnian phase of sound without sense to the later phase of nonsense without sound. But even the best of them seem to be seeking a divorce rather than a wedding.
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XVII
Del senso e del suono
RILEGGENDO qualcosa che avevo scritto sulla poesia più moderna, e in particolare a proposito dell’antico enigma del Senso e del Suono, non sono sicuro di essermi spiegato con chiarezza. E, poiché ora non sto scrivendo la poesia più moderna, mi sarà forse concesso d’essere chiaro. La chiarezza sarà lecita, o quanto meno perdonabile. Per inciso (se posso menzionarlo tra parentesi), qualcuno sa dirmi perché sia ormai di moda essere oltremodo stravaganti in poesia e oltremodo sobri in prosa? Vi sono naturalmente individui, come il signor James Joyce o la signorina Gertrude Stein, la cui prosa può ben dirsi di dubbia sobrietà. Ma taluni fra i più valenti degli autori nascenti, o da poco sorti, sembrano possedere qualcosa di simile a una doppia personalità in prosa e in versi. La prosa del signor Osbert Sitwell non è particolarmente sitwelliana, nel senso in cui il termine si applica alla sua poesia. È scritta bene, ma piuttosto secondo l’antico principio per cui un libro scritto bene dovrebbe essere tanto discreto quanto un uomo vestito bene. È nella poesia sitwelliana che il lettore comune corre il rischio di essere sorpreso da strane visioni; da rose lanose o da nuvole villose. I versi più sfrenati del signor T. S. Eliot hanno, in verità, il ritmo, e troppo ritmo; tanto (come suol dirsi) da far girare la testa, e da suggerire una vita accogliente nel cuore cavo di un ciclone o di un vortice. Ma di tutto ciò non v’è nulla nei suoi saggi; che sono anzi piuttosto contenuti e reticenti che altro. Difatti, quando gli capita di comporre un epigramma (e assai buono), se ne vergogna a tal punto da nasconderlo in fondo a una minuscola nota a piè di pagina, per paura che questo o quel critico lo accusi di brillantezza.
Lo stesso vale in larga misura persino per il signor Aldous Huxley, per quanto concerne l’arte del saggio. I suoi diari di viaggi reali sono del tutto assennati e senza pretese; mentre alcune delle sue poesie somigliano a viaggi immaginari ai Tropici, quasi negre nella loro barbarica danza della morte. I Vittoriani, accusati di compostezza affettata, avevano una ben maggiore stravaganza a tutto tondo. George Meredith era perverso e fantasioso in prosa non meno che in versi; anzi, di più. La Diana dei Crossways sembrava sedere non tanto al crocevia quanto nel cuore del labirinto; e l’Egoista giocava di prestigio in modo assai più ingannevole di Juggling Jerry. Alcuni amici di Browning si lagnavano che egli fosse criptico, non soltanto in prosa ma nella corrispondenza privata. Non mi lagno di questo nuovo metodo di far toccare gli estremi. Vi sarà forse molto da dire in suo favore; ma esso significa forse una qualche decadenza di quella naturalezza vittoriana, che era assai più tipica del decoro vittoriano. Qualcosa si può dire in favore di Browning e di Meredith, se non altro che essi non potevano fare a meno di scrivere come Meredith e come Browning.
Ma tutto questo (come dicevo) sta tra parentesi. La questione che intendevo sollevare riguarda il senso e il suono in poesia. E la loro relazione è assai più sottile di quanto persino i più follemente sottili fra i critici sembrino comprendere. Prendevo il celebre esempio di un famoso verso di Milton, che ha sempre posseduto quell’inesplicabile fascino tanto spesso presente nello stile puramente classico. Cosa abbastanza curiosa, è nei versi razionali di Virgilio o di Milton, assai più che nei versi extra-razionali sia dei Meredith sia dei Sitwell, che avvertiamo il mistero ultimo del canto; quel non so che che dà diletto all’istante e sfugge a ogni definizione; la cosa di cui diciamo: «Non riesco a spiegarmi, per la vita mia, perché ciò sia così bello com’è». Non riesco a spiegarmi, per la vita mia, perché il verso «Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved» sia così bello com’è. Eppure è perfettamente lineare; si limita a menzionare un capo e una montagna, e aggiunge l’informazione alquanto superflua che essi non sono rimossi. La sola cosa di cui sono ben sicuro è che il senso dipende dal suono e il suono dipende dal senso. In realtà non suonerebbe allo stesso modo, se un altro significato fosse espresso dal medesimo suono. In realtà non significherebbe altrettanto, se altre parole esprimessero il medesimo significato. Sarebbe abbastanza facile tentare l’esperimento alla buona. È ovvio che, se scrivessimo «Like Beachy Head or Snowdon unremoved», non ci si avvicinerebbe alla cosa nemmeno di mille miglia; e ciò benché Beachy Head sia un capo e Snowdon sia una montagna. Ciò che non è del tutto altrettanto ovvio è che vale anche il contrario. Si potrebbe con troppa leggerezza inferire che sia il puro suono dei nomi a essere di per sé maestoso. Si potrebbe persino suggerire che il dattilo precipitante di «Teneriffe» abbia qualche fioca eco di parole come «terrible» o «towering», e che il segreto stia nel suono. Ma non è così, benché l’esperimento alternativo sia forse un po’ più elaborato da costruire. Facciamoci un tentativo, come diceva il giovanotto del signor P. G. Wodehouse quando gli si chiedeva se sarebbe stato un essere ragionevole.
Thackeray accenna in qualche luogo, in uno dei suoi saggi, di aver trovato in qualche vecchio ricettario o galateo la notizia che nel Settecento gli uomini bevevano un vino chiamato Teneriffe, apparentemente un’alternativa al porto o al madera. Thackeray dice, mi pare, che ciò suona come dover inghiottire il Cervino. Ma se si trattasse di qualcosa del tutto familiare, come il vino di porto, suonerebbe come un qualsiasi altro particolare della tavola. Quanto alla parola «Atlas», basta sopprimere la maiuscola, ed essa designa una comunissima opera di consultazione, un ordinario libro di carte geografiche. Ora, si supponga che qualcuno stia scrivendo una mitissima e trotterellante poesia domestica in decasillabi, un po’ come quelle poesie in cui Cowper celebrava la teiera o il gatto. E si supponga che il passo in questione spiegasse come la tavola di qualcuno, dopo il pranzo, fosse lasciata in disordine da servitori negligenti; libri e vino e ogni cosa alla rinfusa —
His pipe and napkin, like his spectacles, Like snuff and toast and pen and ink or books, Like teneriffe or atlas, unremoved.
Non farebbe lo stesso rumore. In realtà non risuonerebbe all’orecchio, come mero fatto d’acustica, allo stesso modo. Il fatto di parlare soltanto di due oggetti insignificanti muterebbe, di fatto, l’impatto reale del suono sull’orecchio e sui nervi. Nessuno andrebbe cercando un grande effetto sonoro, e nessuno lo troverebbe. Il fatto che i due oggetti siano montagne, misteriose e remote e leggendarie montagne, entra irrevocabilmente nel processo puramente fisico; ed è la grandezza di quelle montagne a colmare i polmoni e l’orecchio.
Stando così le cose, credo che vi siano difficoltà assai più profonde di quanto oggi comunemente si comprenda nel rompere con le tradizioni del ritmo. Non dico che non lo si debba fare, ma dico bensì che è dubbio se coloro che lo fanno sappiano ciò che stanno facendo. Se il mio originario uso di questa citazione fu oscuro, sono ben consapevole che l’intero problema è di una oscurità profondissima. Ma ecco più o meno ciò che intendevo; che non credo affatto che siamo giunti a qualcosa di simile al fondo della psicologia — potremmo persino dire della fisiologia — degli effetti poetici; e che le antiche convenzioni del verso poggiavano su istinti forse indistruttibili, ma che quanto meno non si possono distruggere alla leggera. Parrebbe che un organismo possa crescere dentro un altro, anche se in origine ebbero radici distinte, in modo tale da formare una sola vita e una nuova creazione; e quella nuova creazione non è meno unica per il fatto d’essere ormai vecchia. È davvero fuori luogo parlare di esperimenti che sono soltanto esplosioni; giacché, per quanto le esplosioni dovrebbero essere espansioni, è certo almeno che sono dilaniamenti. Non ho nulla in contrario agli esperimenti in quanto tali. Convengo di buon grado che il signor Sitwell ha lo stesso diritto di parlare di una nuvola villosa che un vecchio poeta di parlare di una nuvola lanosa; lo stesso diritto di fare ciò che può con la chioma di una nuvola che l’altro con la chioma di una cometa. Ma qui è in gioco qualcosa di assai più profondo e più misterioso. I vecchi poeti avevano il potere di mescolare alle loro nuvole lanose e alle loro comete chiomate una qualche magia ancestrale della natura della musica; per cui persino il più bizzarro dei concetti cavalier, o il più fresco di conio dei latinismi del Rinascimento, giungeva carico di armonie e di una ricchezza storica che impedivano loro d’esser crudi, anche quando erano nuovi. A me pare che i nuovi poeti non tentino di ricuperare quell’antico connubio di suono e senso. Alcuni di essi sembrano essere passati soltanto dall’antica fase swinburniana del suono senza senso alla fase successiva del nonsenso senza suono. Ma persino i migliori fra loro sembrano cercare un divorzio piuttosto che un connubio.
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XVIII
On Literary Cliques
MANY are complaining of the cliques in the literary world; and they are right for a particular reason, though I am not sure that they know it. The discontent, like so many of the present discontents, has a certain disadvantage; that it does not distinguish between the normal nuisances of human life and the special nuisances of modern life. Under no conditions should we all be equally in touch with each other, or distributing dispassionate justice to every human being like a Day of Judgment. It is natural for men to belong to a club, as it is natural for other men who do not belong to a club to call it a clique; and a great deal of what is called log-rolling is as easy as falling off a log. I have generally found that it was precisely because a man was generously and enthusiastically rolling the log of a friend that he complained so bitterly of the log-rolling among his enemies. But I am not forbidden to find that a writer is intelligent, even if he is my friend. I am permitted, perhaps, the vanity of supposing that he is my friend because he is intelligent; or at least that he became my friend partly because I thought he was intelligent. The relation is obviously open to abuse; and the method which I myself have always chosen is to praise the merit of a friend’s public work as warmly as I felt inclined, but always to mention the private friendship as well as the public merit. Then anybody is free to discount it, if he thinks it ought to be discounted. But there is another and more neglected evil in the clique; in the club that cultivates some special variety in culture. The artists of such a group have a tendency not only to talk shop, but to talk workshop. They talk more about methods of production than about products of perfection. Like talkative art-students, they show each other their work before it is finished; and, like lazy art-students, they often find this an excellent excuse for not finishing it at all.
Perfect work is for the world; yes, for the stupid world. Imperfect work is for the class, for the club, for the clique; in a word, for the sympathizers. We show our worst efforts to the intelligent; we reserve our best efforts for the dull— that is, for the supreme and sacred duty of all creative expression; that of being sufficiently pointed to pierce at last even the mind of the dull. For, whatever be the nature of creation, it is certainly of the nature of translation; it is translating something from the dumb alphabet and dim infantile secret language in our own souls into the totally different public language that we talk with our tongues. If that translation were perfect if the ideas and idioms did really correspond correctly, it would all be as plain to the man in the street as to the man in the club. It certainly would not be necessary to show it in fragmentary hints to the man in the clique. But because our expression is imperfect we need friendship to fill up the imperfections. A man of our own type or tastes will understand our meaning before it is expressed; certainly a long time before it is perfectly expressed. Thus we rather tend to lose the old idea that it is the business of the author to explain himself. We tend to adopt the idea that it is the business of the clique to understand the author; and even to explain the author, when he refuses to explain himself.
A famous æsthete of the ‘nineties said that the poet who was admired by poets must be the greatest of poets. I will take the liberty to doubt it. I fancy that in such a case the poets are in fact collaborating with the poet. The beauty they behold in his work is partly their work as well as his. Just as the poets may see more than others see in every bush or cloud, so they may see more than others see in every epithet or metaphor. Above all, if they are poets of his own particular school of poetry, they will guess something of what he means by the queerest epithet or the maddest metaphor. But it does not follow that those words are the full and perfect expression of what he means; if they were, they probably would not seem mad or even queer. In short, the poet has not really travelled the whole of his pilgrimage from Paradise to Putney (with apologies to the ghost of Swinburne); an embassy of select and fastidious souls of Putney has gone out and met him halfway. He has not performed the full literary function of translating living thoughts into literature. He still needs an interpreter; and a crowd of interpreters has officiously rushed between the poet and the public. The crowd is the clique; and it does do a certain amount of harm, I think, by thus intercepting the true process of the perfecting of human expression. It is not wrong because it encourages the great man to talk. It is wrong because it actually discourages the great man from talking plainly. The priests and priestesses of the temple take a pride in the oracle remaining oracular. That vast but vague revolution that we call the modern world largely began about the time when men demanded that the Scriptures should be translated into English. It has ended in a time when nobody dares to demand that English poets should be translated into English. It has ended in a new race of pedants who are only too proud of reading the poet in the original, and merely murmur as they read, in a tantalizing fashion, that the original is so very original.
This is the paradox of the clique; that it consists of those who understand something and do not wish it to be understood; do not really wish it to be understandable. But such a group must in its nature be small, and its tendency is to make the range or realm of culture smaller. It consists of those who happen to be near enough to some unique or perverse mentality to guess that a man means something that as yet he cannot really say; just as a detective might be legitimately proud of having extracted some sort of valuable evidence from a lunatic who was deaf and dumb. But this does not make for the enlargement of the poet’s power of expression or of the public’s power of appreciation. The ideal condition is that the poet should put his meaning more and more into the language of the people, and that the people should enjoy more and more of the meaning of the poet. That is true popular education; and, if we really possessed that sort, we should hardly need any other. One party in the quarrel will insist that the public ought to take more trouble to understand the poet; and so it ought. But the other party can answer that the poet should take more trouble to finish his poems; and so he should. It is not a question of petty or conventional or finicking finish. It is a question of not leaving three-quarters of the poem inside the poet, with the rest of it hanging out, generally tail-foremost.
At present, even good poets often do not write good poems, but rather notes for poems. They think it enough to record, as in a sort of disjointed diary, that they did feel a sense of poignant futility on seeing an old hat on a deserted hat-peg; or an indescribable surge of rebellion on observing a broken vase in a suburban dust-bin. And then comes the sympathetic critic, saying (no doubt quite truly) that he can imagine a man shuddering at the hat-peg or shedding tears into the dust-bin. But that is only saying that one individual can imagine the imagination. It is not completely communicating the imagination by means of the image. I am far from denying that a great poet might achieve a great turn of style, which would make something sublime out of a hat-peg or a dust-bin, as Shakspere did out of a bodkin or a bung-hole. But if such passages be examined, it will be found that nowhere did the great poet study the grand style more subtly than when dealing with such mean objects. Anyhow, he did not merely mention the mean objects, and then mention that they had filled him with feelings indescribable. He set out seriously to describe the indescribable. That is the whole business of literature, and it is a hard row to hoe.
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XVIII
Sulle cricche letterarie
MOLTI si lamentano delle cricche nel mondo letterario; e hanno ragione per un motivo particolare, benché non sia certo che ne siano consapevoli. Il malcontento, come tanti dei malcontenti odierni, ha un certo svantaggio: quello di non distinguere tra le seccature normali della vita umana e le seccature speciali della vita moderna. In nessuna condizione dovremmo essere tutti egualmente in contatto gli uni con gli altri, o distribuire una giustizia imparziale a ogni essere umano come in un Giorno del Giudizio. È naturale per gli uomini appartenere a un circolo, così come è naturale per altri uomini che a un circolo non appartengono chiamarlo cricca; e gran parte di ciò che si chiama incensamento reciproco — il rolling del tronco altrui — è facile come cadere da un tronco. Ho generalmente scoperto che era proprio perché un uomo faceva rotolare con generosità ed entusiasmo il tronco di un amico, il rolling di un amico, che si lamentava con tanta amarezza dell’incensamento reciproco, del rolling tra i suoi nemici. Ma non mi è vietato riconoscere che uno scrittore è intelligente, anche se è mio amico. Mi è forse concessa la vanità di supporre che egli sia mio amico perché è intelligente; o almeno che sia diventato mio amico in parte perché lo ritenevo intelligente. La relazione è ovviamente esposta all’abuso; e il metodo che io stesso ho sempre scelto è di lodare il merito dell’opera pubblica di un amico con tutto il calore che sentivo, ma di menzionare sempre l’amicizia privata oltre al merito pubblico. Poi ciascuno è libero di scontarne il valore, se pensa che vada scontato. Ma c’è un altro male, più trascurato, nella cricca; nel circolo che coltiva qualche varietà speciale di cultura. Gli artisti di un simile gruppo hanno la tendenza non solo a parlare di mestiere, ma a parlare di bottega. Parlano più dei metodi di produzione che dei prodotti della perfezione. Come loquaci allievi d’arte, si mostrano l’un l’altro il proprio lavoro prima che sia finito; e, come pigri allievi d’arte, ne fanno spesso un’eccellente scusa per non finirlo affatto.
L’opera perfetta è per il mondo; sì, per il mondo stupido. L’opera imperfetta è per la classe, per il circolo, per la cricca; in una parola, per i simpatizzanti. Mostriamo i nostri sforzi peggiori agli intelligenti; riserviamo i nostri sforzi migliori agli ottusi — vale a dire, per il dovere supremo e sacro di ogni espressione creativa: quello di essere sufficientemente acuti da trafiggere alla fine perfino la mente degli ottusi. Poiché, qualunque sia la natura della creazione, essa è certamente della natura della traduzione; è tradurre qualcosa dall’alfabeto muto e dall’oscura, infantile lingua segreta delle nostre anime nella lingua pubblica, del tutto diversa, che parliamo con la bocca. Se quella traduzione fosse perfetta — se le idee e gli idiomi corrispondessero davvero esattamente — tutto risulterebbe chiaro all’uomo della strada come all’uomo del circolo. Certamente non sarebbe necessario mostrarlo in accenni frammentari all’uomo della cricca. Ma poiché la nostra espressione è imperfetta, abbiamo bisogno dell’amicizia per colmarne le imperfezioni. Un uomo del nostro tipo o dei nostri gusti comprenderà ciò che intendiamo prima ancora che sia espresso; certamente molto tempo prima che sia espresso alla perfezione. Così tendiamo piuttosto a perdere la vecchia idea che sia compito dell’autore spiegarsi. Tendiamo ad adottare l’idea che sia compito della cricca comprendere l’autore; e perfino spiegare l’autore, quando egli rifiuta di spiegarsi da sé.
Un famoso esteta degli anni Novanta disse che il poeta ammirato dai poeti dev’essere il più grande dei poeti. Mi prenderò la libertà di dubitarne. Immagino che in un caso simile i poeti stiano in realtà collaborando con il poeta. La bellezza che scorgono nella sua opera è in parte opera loro oltre che sua. Così come i poeti possono vedere in ogni cespuglio o nuvola più di quanto vedano gli altri, così possono vedere in ogni epiteto o metafora più di quanto vedano gli altri. Soprattutto, se sono poeti della sua stessa particolare scuola poetica, indovineranno qualcosa di ciò che egli intende con l’epiteto più strano o la metafora più folle. Ma da ciò non consegue che quelle parole siano l’espressione piena e perfetta di ciò che egli intende; se lo fossero, probabilmente non sembrerebbero folli né persino strane. In breve, il poeta non ha davvero percorso l’intero suo pellegrinaggio dal Paradiso a Putney (con le mie scuse al fantasma di Swinburne); un’ambasceria di anime elette e schizzinose di Putney gli è andata incontro a metà strada. Egli non ha compiuto la piena funzione letteraria di tradurre i pensieri vivi in letteratura. Ha ancora bisogno di un interprete; e una folla di interpreti si è intromessa premurosamente tra il poeta e il pubblico. La folla è la cricca; e reca un certo danno, credo, intercettando così il vero processo del perfezionamento dell’espressione umana. Non è colpevole perché incoraggia il grand’uomo a parlare. È colpevole perché in realtà scoraggia il grand’uomo dal parlare chiaramente. I sacerdoti e le sacerdotesse del tempio traggono orgoglio dal fatto che l’oracolo resti oracolare. Quella vasta ma vaga rivoluzione che chiamiamo il mondo moderno cominciò in gran parte all’epoca in cui gli uomini chiesero che le Scritture fossero tradotte in inglese. È finita in un’epoca in cui nessuno osa chiedere che i poeti inglesi siano tradotti in inglese. È finita in una nuova stirpe di pedanti che sono fin troppo fieri di leggere il poeta in lingua originale, e non fanno che mormorare mentre leggono, in modo esasperante, che l’originale è davvero tanto originale.
Questo è il paradosso della cricca: che essa consta di coloro che comprendono qualcosa e non desiderano che sia compreso; non desiderano davvero che sia comprensibile. Ma un simile gruppo dev’essere per sua natura ristretto, e la sua tendenza è di rendere più angusto l’àmbito o il regno della cultura. Consta di coloro che per caso si trovano abbastanza vicini a qualche mentalità unica o perversa da indovinare che un uomo intende qualcosa che ancora non sa davvero dire; proprio come un investigatore potrebbe legittimamente inorgoglirsi di aver estratto una qualche prova preziosa da un pazzo sordomuto. Ma ciò non giova all’ampliamento del potere espressivo del poeta o del potere di apprezzamento del pubblico. La condizione ideale è che il poeta immetta sempre più il proprio significato nella lingua del popolo, e che il popolo goda sempre più del significato del poeta. Questa è la vera educazione popolare; e, se davvero possedessimo quella specie di educazione, non ci occorrerebbe quasi nient’altro. Una parte nella contesa insisterà che il pubblico dovrebbe darsi più pena di comprendere il poeta; e così dovrebbe. Ma l’altra parte può rispondere che il poeta dovrebbe darsi più pena di finire le proprie poesie; e così dovrebbe. Non è una questione di finitura meschina o convenzionale o pignola. È una questione di non lasciare tre quarti della poesia dentro il poeta, con il resto che penzola fuori, per lo più con la coda per prima.
Attualmente, perfino i buoni poeti spesso non scrivono buone poesie, ma piuttosto appunti per poesie. Ritengono che basti annotare, come in una sorta di diario sconnesso, che hanno provato un senso di pungente futilità nel vedere un vecchio cappello su un attaccapanni abbandonato; o un’indescrivibile ondata di ribellione nell’osservare un vaso rotto in una pattumiera di periferia. E poi arriva il critico solidale, che dice (senza dubbio, del tutto veridicamente) di potersi immaginare un uomo rabbrividire davanti all’attaccapanni o versare lacrime nella pattumiera. Ma questo è solo dire che un singolo individuo può immaginare l’immaginazione. Non è comunicare compiutamente l’immaginazione per mezzo dell’immagine. Sono ben lontano dal negare che un grande poeta possa realizzare una grande trovata di stile, che faccia qualcosa di sublime di un attaccapanni o di una pattumiera, come Shakespeare fece di un punteruolo o di un cocchiume. Ma se si esaminano tali passi, si scoprirà che in nessun luogo il grande poeta studiò lo stile sublime più sottilmente che nel trattare oggetti tanto meschini. In ogni caso, egli non si limitò a menzionare gli oggetti meschini, e poi a menzionare che lo avevano colmato di sentimenti indescrivibili. Si accinse seriamente a descrivere l’indescrivibile. Questo è l’intero mestiere della letteratura, ed è un solco arduo da zappare.
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XIX
On the Simplicity of Asia
I WAS recently asked to write a prologue to a composite detective story, which demanded a detailed and vivid description of the streets of Hong Kong. I have never seen Hong Kong, and I have not the least notion of what it looks like. But he would be a very faint-hearted journalist who should allow himself to be restrained from realism and photographic exactitude by a trifle like that. But, in the course of considering the matter, I fell into a more general train of thought, to which Hong Kong serves as a gate of entry, as it serves as a gate of entry to China. Though I have never seen the mixed cosmopolitan ports of the Far East, I have seen some of the yet more mixed and cosmopolitan ports of the Near East. I have been in Port Said and Suez; and between these and Hong Kong lies the whole vast and still partly unknown thing that we call Asia. But my meditations have overflowed upon this page, because they are obviously too vague and general to be developed before the innocent and happy spirits full of a beautiful eagerness to get on with the murder.
Whatever else the scribes have written about Asia, they have all agreed in the statement that it is mysterious. It may seem perverse to say that this statement is a mis-statement, or even that it is an over-statement. Yet I think there is an aspect in which it can be contradicted. We may even say that the whole point of Asia is that it is not mysterious; not half so mysterious as Europe; to say nothing of America, which is the most mysterious of all. By which I mean that there are in Europe and America compromises and complexities, a blend or balance of one thing with another, which is really rather less apparent in the stark passions, the strict rituals, and the ancient appetites of Asia. For instance, a Christian is perpetually balanced between a Christian ideal of loving his enemies, a Pagan ideal of punishing his enemies, and a chivalric ideal of only fighting his enemies fairly. In Asia, I imagine, both love and hate have been much more unmixed and undisguised. Both in poetry and in policy, a man would be much more simple in his purpose to pursue his love or to persecute his foe. And, while there is truth in the tradition that the Asiatic has thus sometimes become an artist in sensuality and an artist in cruelty, he might well make out a case for the view that he was an artist with less artifice and more sincerity. Somebody said, with considerable truth, that Russia lacks the cement of hypocrisy. This might well be quoted to support the not uncommon view that Russia is a part of Asia.
It might be said that Asia is too old to be mysterious. It might at least be said that Asia is too old to be hypocritical. There are a thousand veils and disguises; but the disguises have worn very thin in thousands of years, and the veils are rather like the veils worn by loose women in Cairo and Port Said: ritual, but transparent. Those who would give a juvenile thrill by combining the occult and the obscene do still talk about the Mysteries of the Harem; the secrets behind the veils and curtains of the seraglio. But I imagine there is very little mystery about the harem, at any rate the Moslem harem; and no secret except the open secret. I imagine that the sentiments of the seraglio, whether domestic or servile or sensual, are often dull to that extreme point of dullness which the revolutionary West describes as respectable. I suspect that there is far more mystery, in the sense of mysticism, in the feelings of two common lovers in an English lane. It is only fair to add that, with all the ceremonial of reticence or invisibility, there is probably much less cant than there is in many an English novel or newspaper. But, whether it be subtlety or sophistry, whether it be hypocrisy or only human complexity, it is really in the West and not in the East that there is the mystery. The Occidental is always saying that he cannot understand the Oriental; but the truth is that he cannot understand himself. It is the Christian culture that is woven of many strands, of many fabrics and colours, and twisted into the single knot, the knot that holds the world together, but the knot that is of all knots the most difficult to trace out or untie. Compared with that, there is something simple and smooth and all of a piece about the ancient silks of China or the peasant weaving of India. It is on the head of the Christian that the ends of the earth are come, even from the beginning, the arrows of the Persians or the stone clubs of the Celts. And if the eyelids are, after all, less weary than those of a Buddha or a Brahmin god, it may be that there is a slight fallacy in the familiar quotation, and that being hit on the head incessantly by the corners of the world does not merely send one to sleep. Anyhow, it is the Christian who is the real cosmic mystery; the cross made by the cross-lights of the shafts of the sunrise and the sunset; the true crux of the world. But it is only just to say that this complexity, which produces the highest philosophy, does also produce humbug. It produces the worst kind; in which the humbug hardly knows he is a humbug. I suspect that there is far less humbug in the East, and that, compared with such rooted and humanized humbug, all its cunning is a sort of simplicity.
In Asia things have worn too thin to be padded with such self-deception; it is old and its bones stick out. There the harlot is a harlot, and not a society actress whom the divorce court hands from one rich man to another. There the slave is a slave, and not a scheduled employee having less than the income nominated in the Act. There the king is a king, and the tyrant is a tyrant, and not a banker threatening to make nations bankrupt, or a private person holding all the shares in a public company. We have doubtless by our example introduced these blessings into Asia, but they are not Asiatic. There the usurer was a usurer, and the thief a thief; and this, which was the best thing about Asia, will probably be the one thing really altered by the influence of Europe. But it is worth while to say a word for the simplicity of Asia, and against the mystery of Asia. For on that supposed mystery of the East there has been erected every sort of quackery in the West. Every sham religion, every shabby perversion, every blackguard secret society, has claimed to feed on the strange fruits of that garden of Asia. And we may well hint that the garden itself is a little more decent, even if it is a desert.
There are any number of examples, both good and evil, of the sort of rigid simplicity that I mean, and the sense in which the Orient has more simplicity than secrecy. The Caste System of India, for instance, seems to me to be a tyranny; and the worst sort of tyranny, which is not conducted by a tyrant, but by an aristocracy: but it is not a hypocrisy. It is not even that more confused and unconscious sort of hypocrisy that we call humbug. It is not confused at all; its very cruelty is in its clarity. You cannot play about with the idea of a Brahmin as you can with the idea of a Gentleman. You cannot pretend that Pariahs were made Pariahs entirely as a compliment to them, and in the interests of True Democracy. At least, if the Indians are talking like that now, it is only too true that they have been infected with the worst vices of the West. I wish I were sure they were also being influenced by the real merits of the West; and, above all, by this great merit of the West, the name of which is Mystery. But it is they, the simple, who do not understand us, the mystical. A brilliant and distinguished Hindu told me that the problem of the world is to unite all things; that the things in which they differ are indifferent, and only that things in which they are the same are solid. I could not explain to him that the problem of the Christian is not merely to unite all things, but to unite union with disunion. The differences are not indifferent; and the problem is to let things differ while they agree. In short, the Western man seeks after Liberty, which is a real mystery. Compared with that Unity is a platitude. It is the White Man who is the Dark Horse; and ourselves who are riddles to ourselves.
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XIX
Sulla semplicità dell’Asia
MI FU chiesto di recente di scrivere il prologo di un romanzo poliziesco a più mani, il quale esigeva una descrizione minuta e vivida delle strade di Hong Kong. Non ho mai veduto Hong Kong, e non ho la minima idea di che aspetto abbia. Ma sarebbe un giornalista di ben poco fegato colui che si lasciasse distogliere dal realismo e dall’esattezza fotografica da una simile inezia. Nondimeno, mentre andavo rimuginando la faccenda, caddi in un ordine di pensieri più generale, al quale Hong Kong serve da porta d’ingresso, come serve da porta d’ingresso alla Cina. Sebbene io non abbia mai veduto i porti misti e cosmopoliti dell’Estremo Oriente, ho pur veduto alcuni dei porti ancor più misti e cosmopoliti del Vicino Oriente. Sono stato a Port Said e a Suez; e fra questi e Hong Kong si distende l’intera cosa vasta e ancora in parte ignota che chiamiamo Asia. Ma le mie meditazioni hanno tracimato su questa pagina, poiché esse sono manifestamente troppo vaghe e generali per essere sviluppate dinanzi agli spiriti innocenti e felici, colmi d’una bella impazienza di venire finalmente al delitto.
Qualunque altra cosa gli scribi abbiano scritto intorno all’Asia, tutti hanno convenuto nell’affermare che essa è misteriosa. Potrà sembrare perverso dire che tale affermazione è un’affermazione errata, o addirittura che è un’esagerazione. Eppure io credo vi sia un aspetto sotto il quale la si può contraddire. Possiamo perfino dire che tutto il punto dell’Asia sta nel fatto che essa non è misteriosa; non lo è neppure per metà quanto l’Europa; per non dir nulla dell’America, che è la più misteriosa di tutte. Con ciò voglio dire che vi sono in Europa e in America compromessi e complessità, una mescolanza o un equilibrio d’una cosa con l’altra, che è in verità assai meno palese nelle passioni crude, nei riti rigorosi e negli appetiti antichi dell’Asia. Per esempio, un cristiano è perpetuamente in bilico fra un ideale cristiano di amare i propri nemici, un ideale pagano di punire i propri nemici, e un ideale cavalleresco di combattere i propri nemici soltanto lealmente. In Asia, immagino, tanto l’amore quanto l’odio sono stati assai più schietti e senza maschera. Sia in poesia sia in politica, un uomo sarebbe assai più semplice nel suo proposito di perseguire il proprio amore o di perseguitare il proprio avversario. E, per quanto vi sia verità nella tradizione secondo cui l’asiatico è così divenuto talora un artista nella sensualità e un artista nella crudeltà, egli potrebbe ben sostenere la tesi che era un artista con meno artificio e più sincerità. Qualcuno disse, con considerevole verità, che alla Russia manca il cemento dell’ipocrisia. La cosa potrebbe ben citarsi a sostegno dell’opinione non rara che la Russia sia una parte dell’Asia.
Si potrebbe dire che l’Asia è troppo vecchia per essere misteriosa. Si potrebbe almeno dire che l’Asia è troppo vecchia per essere ipocrita. Vi sono mille veli e travestimenti; ma i travestimenti si sono logorati assai in migliaia d’anni, e i veli somigliano piuttosto ai veli portati dalle donne di malaffare al Cairo e a Port Said: rituali, ma trasparenti. Coloro che vorrebbero procurare un brivido puerile combinando l’occulto e l’osceno parlano ancora dei Misteri dell’Harem; dei segreti dietro i veli e le cortine del serraglio. Ma io immagino che vi sia ben poco mistero intorno all’harem, per lo meno all’harem musulmano; e nessun segreto se non il segreto palese. Immagino che i sentimenti del serraglio, siano essi domestici o servili o sensuali, siano spesso ottusi fino a quel punto estremo di ottusità che l’Occidente rivoluzionario definisce rispettabile. Sospetto vi sia assai più mistero, nel senso di misticismo, nei sentimenti di due comuni innamorati in un viottolo inglese. È doveroso aggiungere che, con tutto il cerimoniale di reticenza o d’invisibilità, vi è probabilmente assai meno ipocrita ciarpame di quanto ve ne sia in più d’un romanzo o giornale inglese. Ma, che si tratti di sottigliezza o di sofisma, che si tratti d’ipocrisia o soltanto di umana complessità, è in verità in Occidente e non in Oriente che sta il mistero. L’occidentale va sempre dicendo di non riuscire a comprendere l’orientale; ma la verità è che egli non riesce a comprendere sé stesso. È la cultura cristiana ad essere intessuta di molti fili, di molti tessuti e colori, e attorcigliata nell’unico nodo, il nodo che tiene insieme il mondo, ma il nodo che fra tutti i nodi è il più difficile da dipanare o da sciogliere. In confronto a quello, vi è qualcosa di semplice e di liscio e tutto d’un pezzo nelle antiche sete della Cina o nella tessitura contadina dell’India. È sul capo del cristiano che sono venuti a cadere gli estremi della terra, fin dal principio, le frecce dei persiani o le clave di pietra dei celti. E se le palpebre sono, dopo tutto, meno stanche di quelle d’un Buddha o d’un dio bramino, può darsi che vi sia una lieve fallacia nella nota citazione, e che l’essere colpiti sul capo incessantemente dagli angoli del mondo non ci mandi soltanto a dormire. Comunque sia, è il cristiano ad essere il vero mistero cosmico; la croce formata dalle luci a croce dei raggi dell’alba e del tramonto; il vero crocevia del mondo. Ma è pur giusto dire che questa complessità, la quale produce la più alta filosofia, produce del pari la fandonia. Ne produce la specie peggiore; quella in cui l’imbroglione a stento sa d’essere imbroglione. Sospetto che vi sia assai meno fandonia in Oriente, e che, in confronto a una fandonia così radicata e umanizzata, tutta la sua astuzia sia una sorta di semplicità.
In Asia le cose si sono logorate troppo per essere imbottite di tale inganno di sé; essa è vecchia e le ossa le sporgono. Là la meretrice è una meretrice, e non un’attrice mondana che la Corte del divorzio passa da un uomo ricco a un altro. Là lo schiavo è uno schiavo, e non un dipendente inquadrato con un reddito inferiore a quello stabilito dalla legge. Là il re è un re, e il tiranno è un tiranno, e non un banchiere che minaccia di mandare in bancarotta le nazioni, o un privato che detiene tutte le azioni d’una società per azioni. Abbiamo senza dubbio, col nostro esempio, introdotto queste benedizioni in Asia, ma esse non sono asiatiche. Là l’usuraio era un usuraio, e il ladro un ladro; e questo, che era la cosa migliore dell’Asia, sarà probabilmente l’unica cosa realmente mutata dall’influsso dell’Europa. Ma vale la pena di spendere una parola in favore della semplicità dell’Asia, e contro il mistero dell’Asia. Poiché su quel presunto mistero dell’Oriente si è eretta in Occidente ogni sorta di ciarlataneria. Ogni falsa religione, ogni squallida perversione, ogni ignobile società segreta, ha preteso di nutrirsi degli strani frutti di quel giardino d’Asia. E possiamo ben insinuare che il giardino stesso sia un po’ più decente, anche se è un deserto.
Vi è un numero sterminato di esempi, buoni e cattivi, di quella sorta di rigida semplicità cui alludo, e del senso in cui l’Oriente ha più semplicità che segretezza. Il sistema delle caste dell’India, per esempio, mi sembra essere una tirannia; e la peggior specie di tirannia, quella che non è esercitata da un tiranno, ma da un’aristocrazia: eppure non è un’ipocrisia. Non è neppure quella specie più confusa e inconscia d’ipocrisia che chiamiamo fandonia. Non è affatto confusa; la sua stessa crudeltà sta nella sua chiarezza. Non si può giocherellare con l’idea d’un bramino come si può fare con l’idea d’un Gentiluomo. Non si può fingere che i paria siano stati fatti paria interamente per far loro un complimento, e nell’interesse della Vera Democrazia. O per lo meno, se gli indiani parlano oggi in tal modo, è fin troppo vero che sono stati contagiati dai peggiori vizi dell’Occidente. Vorrei essere certo che vengano del pari influenzati dai meriti autentici dell’Occidente; e, soprattutto, da questo grande merito dell’Occidente, il cui nome è Mistero. Ma sono loro, i semplici, a non comprendere noi, i mistici. Un hindu brillante e illustre mi disse che il problema del mondo è di unire tutte le cose; che le cose in cui esse differiscono sono indifferenti, e che solo le cose in cui esse sono uguali sono salde. Non riuscii a spiegargli che il problema del cristiano non è meramente di unire tutte le cose, ma di unire l’unione con la disunione. Le differenze non sono indifferenti; e il problema è di lasciare che le cose differiscano mentre concordano. In breve, l’uomo occidentale va in cerca della Libertà, che è un mistero autentico. In confronto a quella, l’Unità è una banalità. È l’Uomo Bianco ad essere il Cavallo Nero; e siamo noi stessi ad essere enigmi a noi stessi.
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XX
On Fate and a Communist
IT often happens that by-products are bigger than big production, and that side-issues are larger than the main issue. Much of the political muddle and squabble comes from people trying to reach what they call a practical agreement. It is a very unpractical thing to trust to practical agreement. Two people may agree to keep a cat; but if they only agree because one is a lover of animals, and the other has a fiendish pleasure in watching cruelty to birds, it is probable that the practical agreement will not last very long. Other occasions will arise, in which it will be found to suffer from the absence of a theoretical agreement. There is at this moment many a parley between two politicians, seeking to find a practical agreement about a Tax on Tobacco or the dumping of Danish bacon, who are, in fact, forbidden for ever to come to any kind of real agreement, for the simple reason that they live in two different worlds; as, for instance, one in the globe that is picked out in red patches of the British Empire, and the other in the great grey orbis terrarum in which all lands are alike. These men would really have to settle the big question before they settled the small question. But, in what we call practical politics, it is the small question that is called the big question. And the big question would only be permitted as a small parenthesis in the middle of the small question.
I happened lately to have a small debate with a very distinguished modern writer, Mr. Middleton Murry, on a book that he has written about Communism. I only mention it here because I soon discovered that I was not arguing against Communism but against Fatalism. I will not discuss the social and economic thesis, because, in truth, Mr. Middleton Murry’s sort of Communism is rather a curious sort of Communism, which he alone would have the spirit and originality to explain. I do not agree with Communism; but I do not disagree with it because it would break up the existing system of commercialism. That, I think, is breaking itself up without any assistance from anybody. I disagree with Communism because I think it involves the sacrifice of Liberty. And the curious thing is that Mr. Middleton Murry does distinctly admit, in so many words, that it would involve the sacrifice of Liberty. So that he and I are so far in a state of blissful agreement; not practical agreement, but real or theoretical agreement. It is true that he adds to this a mystical paradox about losing freedom in order to be free, but he would have to explain that for himself. Where I found myself in much more fundamental disagreement with him was in this very ancient business about Fate; or, as he prefers to call it, Necessity. God forbid that we should go once more into the trampled labyrinth of Fate and Freewill. It is enough for me that the second is at least as fundamental an idea as the first; and really a more fundamental idea than the first. It is quite certain that I feel as if I could leave off writing this essay whenever I like. Nobody can prove that feeling to be an illusion, except by a universal scepticism which might equally hold fate to be an illusion, or even law to be an illusion. The Determinists of my youth used to boast that Science supported them, because some scientists talked about the Determinism of Matter. I do not know what they are saying now, when several scientists are actually talking about the Indeterminism of Matter. But, anyhow, the idea of choice is an absolute, and nobody can get behind it.
What interests me here especially is this. It seems that many, who do probably feel they have freedom of action in the present or in the future, are ready to talk in a fatalistic way about the past. Mr. Middleton Murry, though fatalistic in a general way, is especially fatalistic about the past. He repeats again and again that whatever did happen was “necessary.” He seems to think it proved its necessity merely by happening. Now, I do not feel this about the past, any more than about the future. I admit necessity, in the sense of logical necessity. I admit that if I am heavier than Mr. Middleton Murry, it is necessary that Mr. Middleton Murry is lighter than I am. I admit that if three feet make a yard, it is necessary that six feet make two yards. In that sense I must concede that if (physically) six Murrys make one Chesterton and even (spiritually) six Chestertons make one Murry, any further calculations about the multiplication of these persons must be founded on the principles of the multiplication table. But I do not feel in the least as if it had been inevitable that I should have turned from an art student to a journalist; or inevitable that Mr. Murry should have turned to Bolshevism; or inevitable that Bolshevism should have ever turned up at all. In every historical event I feel the thrill of uncertainty and the suspense of the human choice, and I cannot understand why my feeling is not as reasonable as his feeling; which seems also to be a feeling and no more.
For what I really complain of in this brilliant and ingenious writer is that, whenever he does try to give ultimate reasons for his fixed fatalism and materialism, and consequent denial of miracle, he lets me down. I well remember how I came down with a crash, in the middle of the most exalted speculations, when he actually said he could not believe in something as a man “of the twentieth century.” I know there are people who talk like that, but I had not classed him among them. I thought I was high up in the air arguing with Aristotle and Abelard, with Buddha and Spinoza, with Pythagoras or Confucius; and I came to earth with a bump, opposite a man who wanted to be known by a number. Can anybody imagine Spinoza presenting his cosmos as specially fitted to the eighteenth century? Would Abelard base his argument on the twelfth century, as the other on the twentieth century? Would even Confucius say that truth and wisdom must be reconciled with the requirements of his own particular date previous to the Han Dynasty? So far from saying this in disparagement of the writer’s work as a whole, I remark on it as an incongruous interruption in his work as a whole. It seems to me that a number of these twentieth-century writers rebel not too much, but not half enough, against the nineteenth-century conventions. One of the Victorian conventions was that all was for the best, or at any rate that all was as it had to be. The Victorians were all convinced that William the Conqueror was bound to conquer; that Wellington was bound to beat Napoleon; that Canada was bound to cleave to England; that America was bound to cut herself off from England. And it seems to me that the mechanical optimism of Marx, and the necessitarian notion of history in moderns like Mr. Murry, is but a continuation in that optimistic groove. To me all the past is alive with alternatives, and nobody can show, nobody has really attempted to show, that they were not real alternatives. I think it quite possible that if Harold’s northern campaign had been a week earlier, William the Norman’s southern campaign might have been launched too late; that if Napoleon had decided, after his hesitation, to throw in the Old Guard at Borodino, there would have been no Moscow and no Waterloo; that there was a time when a few wise words might have saved the American Colonies or a few foolish words lost Canada; and so on. In short, I believe that, again and again, man was at the cross-roads and might have taken another road. Nobody can prove or disprove it metaphysically; but I am the more content with a philosophy which permits of occasional miracles, because the alternative philosophy does not even permit of alternatives. It forbids a man even to dream of anything so natural as the Ifs of History.
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XX
Sul Fato e su un comunista
ACCADE spesso che i sottoprodotti siano più grandi della produzione principale, e che le questioni secondarie siano più vaste della questione centrale. Molto del pasticcio e del battibecco politico nasce da persone che cercano di raggiungere ciò che chiamano un accordo pratico. È cosa assai poco pratica affidarsi a un accordo pratico. Due persone possono mettersi d’accordo per tenere un gatto; ma se vi si accordano soltanto perché una è un amante degli animali e l’altra prova un piacere diabolico nell’osservare la crudeltà contro gli uccelli, è probabile che l’accordo pratico non duri molto a lungo. Sorgeranno altre occasioni, nelle quali si scoprirà ch’esso soffre dell’assenza di un accordo teorico. Vi è in questo momento più d’un parlamentare colloquio fra due politici, intenti a trovare un accordo pratico su una Tassa sul Tabacco o sullo scarico del bacon danese, ai quali è in realtà vietato per sempre di giungere a un accordo reale di qualsiasi genere, per la semplice ragione che vivono in due mondi diversi; l’uno, per esempio, nel globo che è punteggiato dalle chiazze rosse dell’Impero Britannico, e l’altro nel grande e grigio orbis terrarum in cui tutte le terre sono uguali. Costoro dovrebbero in verità risolvere la questione grande prima di risolvere quella piccola. Ma, in ciò che chiamiamo politica pratica, è la questione piccola a essere chiamata la questione grande. E la questione grande sarebbe ammessa soltanto come una piccola parentesi nel bel mezzo della questione piccola.
Mi è capitato di recente di avere un piccolo dibattito con uno scrittore moderno di gran fama, il signor Middleton Murry, a proposito di un libro che egli ha scritto sul Comunismo. Ne faccio menzione qui soltanto perché ben presto scoprii che non stavo argomentando contro il Comunismo, bensì contro il Fatalismo. Non discuterò la tesi sociale ed economica, perché, in verità, il Comunismo del signor Middleton Murry è piuttosto una curiosa specie di Comunismo, che egli soltanto avrebbe lo spirito e l’originalità di spiegare. Io non concordo con il Comunismo; ma non lo disapprovo perché manderebbe in frantumi l’esistente sistema del mercantilismo. Quello, io credo, si sta frantumando da sé senza l’aiuto di nessuno. Disapprovo il Comunismo perché penso che implichi il sacrificio della Libertà. E la cosa curiosa è che il signor Middleton Murry ammette espressamente, con tutte lettere, che esso implicherebbe il sacrificio della Libertà. Sicché lui e io siamo fin qui in uno stato di beato accordo; non accordo pratico, ma accordo reale, o teorico. È vero ch’egli aggiunge a ciò un mistico paradosso sul perdere la libertà per essere liberi, ma questo dovrebbe spiegarselo da sé. Là dove mi trovai in disaccordo assai più fondamentale con lui fu in quella antichissima faccenda del Fato; o, come egli preferisce chiamarlo, della Necessità. Dio ci scampi dall’addentrarci un’altra volta nel calpestato labirinto del Fato e del Libero Arbitrio. Mi basta che il secondo sia almeno un’idea tanto fondamentale quanto il primo; anzi, in verità, un’idea più fondamentale del primo. È del tutto certo che io sento come se potessi smettere di scrivere questo saggio ogni volta che mi aggrada. Nessuno può dimostrare che tale sensazione sia un’illusione, se non mediante uno scetticismo universale che potrebbe con pari ragione ritenere illusione il fato, o persino illusione la legge. I Deterministi della mia giovinezza solevano vantarsi che la Scienza li sostenesse, perché certi scienziati parlavano del Determinismo della Materia. Non so che cosa vadano dicendo ora, quando parecchi scienziati parlano addirittura dell’Indeterminismo della Materia. Ma, comunque sia, l’idea della scelta è un assoluto, e nessuno può metterlesi alle spalle.
Ciò che qui mi interessa in modo particolare è questo. Sembra che molti, i quali probabilmente sentono di avere libertà d’azione nel presente o nel futuro, siano pronti a parlare in modo fatalistico del passato. Il signor Middleton Murry, per quanto fatalista in senso generale, è fatalista soprattutto riguardo al passato. Ripete più e più volte che tutto ciò che è accaduto era «necessario». Pare che egli pensi che una cosa dimostri la propria necessità per il solo fatto d’essere accaduta. Ora, io non provo questo riguardo al passato, non più di quanto lo provi riguardo al futuro. Ammetto la necessità, nel senso della necessità logica. Ammetto che, se io sono più pesante del signor Middleton Murry, è necessario che il signor Middleton Murry sia più leggero di me. Ammetto che, se tre piedi fanno una iarda, è necessario che sei piedi facciano due iarde. In questo senso devo concedere che, se (fisicamente) sei Murry fanno un Chesterton e persino (spiritualmente) sei Chesterton fanno un Murry, ogni ulteriore calcolo sulla moltiplicazione di queste persone dovrà fondarsi sui princìpi della tavola pitagorica. Ma non provo minimamente la sensazione che fosse inevitabile che io passassi da studente d’arte a giornalista; né che fosse inevitabile che il signor Murry si volgesse al Bolscevismo; né che fosse inevitabile che il Bolscevismo dovesse mai spuntare. In ogni evento storico avverto il brivido dell’incertezza e la sospensione della scelta umana, e non riesco a capire perché la mia sensazione non sia altrettanto ragionevole della sua; la quale sembra anch’essa una sensazione e nulla più.
Poiché ciò di cui davvero mi lagno in questo scrittore brillante e ingegnoso è che, ogni volta che tenta di dare le ragioni ultime del suo fisso fatalismo e materialismo, e della conseguente negazione del miracolo, egli mi delude. Ricordo bene come precipitai con un tonfo, nel mezzo delle più sublimi speculazioni, quando egli affermò addirittura di non poter credere in qualcosa in quanto uomo «del ventesimo secolo». So che vi sono persone che parlano così, ma non lo avevo annoverato fra loro. Credevo di trovarmi alto nell’aria a discutere con Aristotele e Abelardo, con Buddha e Spinoza, con Pitagora o Confucio; e caddi a terra con un tonfo, di fronte a un uomo che desiderava essere conosciuto per mezzo di un numero. Può qualcuno immaginare Spinoza che presenti il suo cosmo come specialmente confezionato per il diciottesimo secolo? Fonderebbe Abelardo il suo argomento sul dodicesimo secolo, come l’altro sul ventesimo? Direbbe persino Confucio che la verità e la saggezza vanno riconciliate con le esigenze della sua particolare epoca anteriore alla Dinastia Han? Ben lungi dal dire questo a discredito dell’opera dello scrittore nel suo complesso, lo rilevo come un’incongrua interruzione nell’opera sua nel suo complesso. Mi pare che un certo numero di questi scrittori del ventesimo secolo si ribellino non troppo, ma nemmeno per metà a sufficienza, contro le convenzioni del diciannovesimo secolo. Una delle convenzioni vittoriane era che tutto fosse per il meglio, o quanto meno che tutto fosse come doveva essere. I Vittoriani erano tutti convinti che Guglielmo il Conquistatore fosse destinato a conquistare; che Wellington fosse destinato a battere Napoleone; che il Canada fosse destinato a restare unito all’Inghilterra; che l’America fosse destinata a staccarsi dall’Inghilterra. E mi pare che il meccanico ottimismo di Marx, e la nozione necessitarista della storia in moderni come il signor Murry, non sia che una continuazione lungo quel medesimo solco ottimistico. Per me tutto il passato è vivo di alternative, e nessuno può mostrare, nessuno ha davvero tentato di mostrare, che non fossero alternative reali. Ritengo del tutto possibile che, se la campagna settentrionale di Aroldo fosse stata anticipata di una settimana, la campagna meridionale di Guglielmo il Normanno avrebbe potuto essere lanciata troppo tardi; che, se Napoleone avesse deciso, dopo la sua esitazione, di gettare nella mischia la Vecchia Guardia a Borodino, non vi sarebbero stati né Mosca né Waterloo; che vi fu un tempo in cui poche parole sagge avrebbero potuto salvare le Colonie americane, o poche parole sciocche far perdere il Canada; e così via. In breve, credo che, più e più volte, l’uomo si sia trovato al crocevia e avrebbe potuto prendere un’altra strada. Nessuno può provarlo o confutarlo metafisicamente; ma mi sento tanto più appagato da una filosofia che ammette occasionali miracoli, in quanto la filosofia alternativa non ammette nemmeno le alternative. Essa proibisce all’uomo persino di sognare qualcosa di così naturale come i «Se» della Storia.
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XXI
On St. George Revivified
THE disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living. Without some such contrast or comparison, without some such shifting of the point of view, we should see nothing whatever of our own social surroundings. We should take them for granted, as the only possible social surroundings. We should be as unconscious of them as we are, for the most part, of the hair growing on our heads or the air passing through our lungs. It is the variety of the human story that brings out sharply the last turn that the road has taken, and it is the view under the arch of the gateway which tells us that we are entering a town.
Yet this sense of the past is curiously patchy among the most intelligent and instructed people, especially in modern England. Among a hundred such scraps and snippets, I saw this morning a literary competition in an exceedingly highbrow weekly, a prize being awarded for a conversation between a modern interviewer and St. George. And I was struck by the fact that clever, and even brilliant, contributors missed much of the point, even about the modern interviewer, by missing the point about the ancient saint. I am not setting up as an authority on either. I am not pretending to be learned; nor is there here any question of learning. It is a question of quite superficial information, but of information that is fairly well spread over the whole surface. I have not been right slap-bang through The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire lately, any more than had Mr. Silas Wegg; I have not read every word of the Acta Sanctorum within the last week or so; I have not even read very closely the relatively modern romance of The Seven Champions of Christendom. I have nothing but general information; but it is fairly general. What surprises me in people younger, brighter, and more progressively educated than myself is that their general information is very patchy.
Now, it is unfair to say that they know nothing about St. George, because it may fairly be answered that there is nothing to be known about St. George. In one sense, nobody knows who St. George was; we only know who he was not. The only clear and solid fact about him is that he certainly was not what Gibbon said he was; the contractor of Cappadocia. He was merely recorded as a common soldier of the legions martyred with multitudes under Diocletian; nor is there any particular reason to doubt that he was. All the rest is legend, though legend is often very valuable to history. And I mean by general information the sense of the life in legends; how they grow; where they come from; why they remain. I know what saints were supposed to be; what patron saints were supposed to do; how they often did it for the most diverse groups ages after their death; how other saints besides George dealt with dragons; how other nations besides England invoked St. George; how the saints were before the knights; how the knights were before the nations; and so on. In short, I have picked up quite crudely what Mr. Wells calls an Outline of History; but a more scientifically educated generation still seems to have only snippets of history: the lie out of Gibbon; the legend about the dragon; the phrase “St. George for Merry England,” and such isolated items. The result is a curious sort of narrowness, even about the problem of the present or the immediate past. For instance, one quite intelligent contributor apparently identified “St. George” as somebody supposed to have lived in “Merry England,” and explained that his period (whatever it was supposed to be) was not really merry, because there was a great deal of mud in the streets, or people lived in mud hovels. Apart from everything else, I call it narrow for a man to suppose that Mud is the opposite of Merriment. Did he never make any mud-pies? Was he not much merrier making them than contributing to intellectual weeklies?
But the essential point is this. Everybody thought the joke must be found in showing how unlike St. George’s time was to ours. I think it would be a much better joke to show how extremely like St. George’s time was to ours. But the writers are hampered in this by being extremely vague about what was St. George’s time. Now, a man in the later Roman Empire, like George the Martyr, would have seen all round him an ancient world that was astonishingly like the modern world. Whether or no Merry England was a suitable phrase for mediævalism, whether or no mediævalism was all mud, it is quite certain that the Empire of Diocletian was not all mud. Imperial Rome was not all mud, but all marble, all mortar and massive building, all pipes and tanks and engineering, all sorts of elaborate equipments of luxury or hygiene. And among all those palatial baths and towering aqueducts, George would probably be thinking pretty much what many an intelligent man is thinking now—that man does not live by soap alone; and that hygiene, or even health, is not much good unless you can take a healthy view of it—or, better still, feel a healthy indifference to it.
Suppose, for instance, that the soldier George had read some of the satires on fashionable society that were produced in that old Pagan world. He would find fact after fact and fashion after fashion exactly parallel to our own. He would find Juvenal making fun of fashionable ladies who join in masculine sports or adventures in a spirit of self-advertisement. The Roman satirist describes how grand Roman ladies would appear as gladiators in the arena, sacrificing not only modesty, but the manners of their rank, in order to be in the limelight. That exact fashionable blend of Feminism and Publicity did really exist in the real epoch of the real St. George: almost exactly as it exists today. Or suppose the Roman soldier read the religious and philosophical literature circulating through the Roman Empire. He would find all that we call New Religions now already called New Religions then. He would find idealists who were Vegetarians, like Apollonius of Tyana; theosophists who had learned all about Reincarnation from Brahmins and Hindu seers; prophets of the Simple Life in the drawing-rooms of duchesses, talking about the secrets of health, wealth, and wisdom; promises of a new Universal Religion, which should include all beliefs without any particular belief in any of them. If the real original St. George did find himself interviewed by a modern newspaper man, he would think that hardly anything in the newspaper was new. He would not think primarily that he had come into a strange world, far away from dragons and princesses and mediæval armour. He would think he had got back into the old bewildered and decaying world of the last phase of Paganism, loud with denials of religion and louder with the howlings of superstition. He would find everything in Juvenal—except Juvenal. He would find quite as many absurd lady gladiators— only not so many people calling them absurd. He would be quite at home, thinking himself back in the old Diocletian Empire— and he would prepare for death.
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XXI
San Giorgio rediviva
LO svantaggio di non conoscere il passato sta nel fatto che così non si conosce il presente. La Storia è una collina o un’altura da cui soltanto gli uomini possono scorgere la città in cui vivono o l’epoca in cui si trovano a vivere. Senza qualche contrasto o confronto di questo genere, senza qualche spostamento del punto di vista, noi non vedremmo assolutamente nulla di ciò che ci circonda socialmente. Lo daremmo per scontato, come l’unico ambiente sociale possibile. Ne saremmo inconsapevoli come lo siamo, per la maggior parte del tempo, dei capelli che crescono sul nostro capo o dell’aria che ci passa per i polmoni. È la varietà della vicenda umana a mettere in netto rilievo l’ultima svolta imboccata dalla strada, ed è la veduta che si apre sotto l’arco della porta a dirci che stiamo entrando in una città.
Eppure questo senso del passato è curiosamente frammentario perfino tra le persone più intelligenti e istruite, specialmente nell’Inghilterra moderna. Fra un centinaio di ritagli e scampoli del genere, ho visto stamattina un concorso letterario in un settimanale di altissima cultura, con un premio assegnato per un dialogo tra un moderno intervistatore e San Giorgio. E sono rimasto colpito dal fatto che concorrenti abili, e persino brillanti, mancassero gran parte del bersaglio, anche a proposito del moderno intervistatore, proprio perché mancavano il bersaglio a proposito dell’antico santo. Non mi ergo ad autorità né sull’uno né sull’altro. Non pretendo di essere dotto; né si tratta qui in alcun modo di dottrina. Si tratta di un’informazione del tutto superficiale, ma di un’informazione abbastanza bene distribuita su tutta la superficie. Non mi sono di recente sciroppato da cima a fondo The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, non più di quanto lo avesse fatto il signor Silas Wegg; non ho letto ogni singola parola degli Acta Sanctorum nell’ultima settimana o giù di lì; non ho neppure letto con troppa attenzione il romanzo relativamente moderno di The Seven Champions of Christendom. Non possiedo altro che un’informazione generale; ma abbastanza generale. Ciò che mi sorprende nelle persone più giovani, più sveglie e più progressivamente istruite di me è che la loro informazione generale è molto frammentaria.
Ora, è ingiusto dire che essi non sanno nulla di San Giorgio, perché si potrebbe con ragione rispondere che non c’è nulla da sapere su San Giorgio. In un certo senso, nessuno sa chi fosse San Giorgio; sappiamo soltanto chi non fu. L’unico fatto chiaro e solido sul suo conto è che egli certamente non era ciò che Gibbon disse che fosse: l’appaltatore di Cappadocia. Fu semplicemente ricordato come un comune soldato delle legioni, martirizzato insieme a moltitudini sotto Diocleziano; né vi è alcuna ragione particolare per dubitare che lo sia stato. Tutto il resto è leggenda, benché la leggenda sia spesso preziosissima per la storia. E per informazione generale io intendo il senso della vita che pulsa nelle leggende; come esse crescano; da dove provengano; perché permangano. So che cosa si supponeva fossero i santi; che cosa si supponeva facessero i santi patroni; come spesso lo facessero per i gruppi più disparati, secoli dopo la loro morte; come altri santi oltre a Giorgio se la vedessero coi draghi; come altre nazioni oltre all’Inghilterra invocassero San Giorgio; come i santi venissero prima dei cavalieri; come i cavalieri venissero prima delle nazioni; e così via. In breve, ho raccogliticciamente afferrato quel che il signor Wells chiama un Compendio di Storia; ma una generazione istruita più scientificamente sembra tuttora possedere solo scampoli di storia: la menzogna presa da Gibbon; la leggenda del drago; la frase «San Giorgio per l’Allegra Inghilterra», e simili brandelli isolati. Il risultato è una curiosa specie di ristrettezza, anche riguardo al problema del presente o del passato immediato. Per esempio, un concorrente piuttosto intelligente identificava a quanto pare «San Giorgio» con un tale che si supponeva fosse vissuto nella «Allegra Inghilterra», e spiegava che la sua epoca (qualunque si supponesse fosse) non era in realtà allegra, perché c’era una gran quantità di fango nelle strade, o perché la gente viveva in tuguri di fango. A parte tutto il resto, io chiamo ristrettezza il fatto che un uomo supponga che il Fango sia l’opposto dell’Allegria. Non ha mai fatto pasticci di fango da bambino? Non era forse molto più allegro nel farli che nel contribuire ai settimanali intellettuali?
Ma il punto essenziale è questo. Tutti hanno pensato che lo scherzo dovesse consistere nel mostrare quanto il tempo di San Giorgio fosse diverso dal nostro. Io penso che sarebbe uno scherzo assai migliore mostrare quanto estremamente simile al nostro fosse il tempo di San Giorgio. Ma gli scrittori sono ostacolati in questo dall’essere estremamente vaghi su quale fosse il tempo di San Giorgio. Ora, un uomo del tardo Impero romano, come Giorgio il Martire, avrebbe visto tutt’attorno a sé un mondo antico sorprendentemente simile al mondo moderno. Che l’Allegra Inghilterra fosse o meno una frase adatta al medioevo, che il medioevo fosse o meno tutto fango, è del tutto certo che l’Impero di Diocleziano non era tutto fango. La Roma imperiale non era tutta fango, bensì tutta marmo, tutta calce e massicce costruzioni, tutta condutture e cisterne e opere d’ingegneria, ogni sorta di elaborati apparati di lusso o d’igiene. E in mezzo a tutte quelle terme sfarzose e a quegli acquedotti torreggianti, Giorgio starebbe probabilmente pensando pressappoco ciò che tanti uomini intelligenti pensano oggi: che l’uomo non vive di solo sapone soltanto; e che l’igiene, o persino la salute, non serve granché se non si è capaci di avere di essa una visione sana — o, meglio ancora, di provarne una sana indifferenza.
Supponiamo, per esempio, che il soldato Giorgio avesse letto qualcuna delle satire sulla società alla moda prodotte in quell’antico mondo pagano. Vi troverebbe fatto dopo fatto e moda dopo moda esattamente paralleli ai nostri. Vi troverebbe Giovenale che si fa beffe delle dame alla moda le quali si buttano in sport o avventure maschili in uno spirito di auto-esibizione. Il satirico romano descrive come nobili dame romane si presentassero come gladiatrici nell’arena, sacrificando non solo il pudore, ma le buone maniere del proprio rango, pur di stare sotto i riflettori. Quell’esatta mescolanza alla moda di Femminismo e Pubblicità esisteva davvero nell’epoca reale del vero San Giorgio: quasi esattamente come esiste oggi. Oppure supponiamo che il soldato romano avesse letto la letteratura religiosa e filosofica che circolava per l’Impero romano. Vi troverebbe tutto ciò che oggi chiamiamo Nuove Religioni già allora chiamato Nuove Religioni. Vi troverebbe idealisti che erano Vegetariani, come Apollonius di Tiana; teosofi che avevano appreso ogni cosa sulla Reincarnazione da Bramini e da veggenti indù; profeti della Vita Semplice nei salotti delle duchesse, che discorrevano dei segreti della salute, della ricchezza e della saggezza; promesse di una nuova Religione Universale, che avrebbe dovuto comprendere tutte le fedi senza alcuna fede particolare in nessuna di esse. Se il vero San Giorgio originale si trovasse davvero intervistato da un moderno giornalista, penserebbe che ben poco, nel giornale, fosse nuovo. Non penserebbe in primo luogo di essere capitato in un mondo strano, lontanissimo da draghi e principesse e armature medievali. Penserebbe di essere tornato nel vecchio mondo sconcertato e in disfacimento dell’ultima fase del Paganesimo, rumoroso di negazioni della religione e più rumoroso ancora degli ululati della superstizione. Vi troverebbe ogni cosa che è in Giovenale — tranne Giovenale. Vi troverebbe altrettante assurde gladiatrici — solo, non altrettanta gente che le chiamasse assurde. Si sentirebbe del tutto a casa propria, credendosi tornato nel vecchio Impero di Diocleziano — e si preparerebbe alla morte.
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XXII
On Journalistic Philosophy
THERE appears at regular intervals in the Sunday Press, like the article on the Cuckoo or Christmas Shopping, an article on the supposed superstition of the Good Old Times, laboriously alleging that they were really Bad Old Times. This article appeared in due course, in a popular weekly, under the title of “What is Right with the World”; but, except for the title, the article was the same. The same examples, the same hackneyed historical details, the same comfortable moral in almost exactly the same words. There are several things that are rather curious about this well-known journalistic feature. One is that the article professes to be an answer to another article which does not exist. I have never in my life seen the first original offending statement, that the Good Old Times really were Good Old Times. I have never heard any rational human being talking about the Good Old Times. I have heard a great many rational and highly intellectual and instructed people talking about the advantages of certain particular institutions that existed at certain particular periods. Thus I have heard political economists of the first rank saying that the Apprenticeship System was the best training for trades and the world would be wise to return to it. Or I have heard historians of high authority say that it was easier to create international understanding and peace in the days when all the nations knew Latin … and pronounced it in the same way. I have heard very modern experts wish there were more people back on the land, and regret that for a hundred years they had poured into the overcrowded towns. I have even listened to daring thinkers who thought our position was more financially regular before we went off the Gold Standard; who positively regretted the process of lowering wages in order to start businesses; who would have it that our big industries were better off when they lived on a profit and not on an overdraft, and who stuck to their old paradox that banking was safer when there were not so many banks going bust. In short, I have known many perverse persons who held that, in this or that particular respect, we were better off in this or that particular period. But this visionary man who walks about the streets in funereal garb, wailing aloud, and at large over the disappearance of some undefined and undated Good Old Days—I have never met him, I rather doubt whether anybody has ever met him; and I doubt still more whether it is necessary to reprint the same article so many hundreds of times in order to check his pestilential influence.
The second curious thing about the article is this: that, though it is always introduced in the very vaguest terms, it always does gravitate eventually in the direction of one particular period, and it is always practically the same period. It is always, I may add, the very worst period that could possibly be chosen, for any purpose of practical comparison. It is (as in the present example) the period of about a hundred and fifty years ago. It is a very bad selection, because that date does not mark any other or older system; it only marks the most crude and clumsy beginnings of our present or modern system. It is not like saying that there was another world, for better or worse, before Rousseau or before Luther or before Christ, in the ancient Pagan world. At the date chosen we already had machinery, but much cruder machinery; we already had big towns, but much more unfinished and disorderly big towns; we already had a complete dependence on commerce, but as yet on a much more cut-throat competitive commerce. It is naturally not difficult to show that we are better than our great-grandfathers, when we are doing in a finished way what they were also doing, but in an unfinished way. The only question is whether, in another sense, we are not something that they most certainly were not: and that is, finished.
Everyone knows the list of examples. Our fathers hanged men for petty thefts, whereas we only exalt and ennoble men or put them in the House of Lords for really large and impressive thefts. But I am not troubled here by such questions, but only by the sameness and the lack of any lively curiosity about questions on the other side. Thus it begins with drunkenness; how typical of that type of moralist to begin with drunkenness … as if nothing else could be quite so immoral! “In those days there was undoubtedly more drunkenness.” I wonder. There was certainly more drunkenness among those who could stand it best; strong men who rode hard in country air and drank before they slept. Was there more drunkenness among schoolgirls than there is in America, or more drunkenness among Society girls than there now is in Mayfair? I wonder. But I wonder, most of all, why this sort of questioner is always content with his one fixed question. Suppose I were to ask him a question. Does he think there was a bigger trade in cocaine and drugs before the Battle of Waterloo than there is now?
After mentioning the one really dreadful thing, which is drunkenness, the writer goes on more vaguely about brutality and ignorance and injustice and the rest. It is difficult to test these things, because there are different moral standards in different people and different periods. For instance, I think it is just that every man should be a free owner of primary property, like land and tools. I therefore think a just commonwealth will have a multitude of peasant proprietors and small shopkeepers. The writer must know, if he knows anything, that these small men were steadily disappearing—or rather, being destroyed— all through what he considers the great period of progress. I do not say there were not other things in which our forefathers were unjust. I only wonder, by this time somewhat wearily, why the story of the Yeoman never even occurs to the writers of the perennial article.
Then the writer gives an astonishing example. “The press-gang was still a favourite method of recruiting members for His Majesty’s Army or Navy.” The press-gang was a black blot on Britain; a thoroughly mean piece of brutality; but why? Because until then it was universally held that English fighters were all volunteers and enlisted freely. The press-gang was a piece of illegal and treacherous Conscription, used by men who were ashamed to use legal and universal Conscription. But the men of the modern world are not ashamed to use legal and universal Conscription. All the enlightened modern States used it in the last war, and they will use it more in the next war. It is a specially and particularly modern thing. In short, a gigantic Press-Gang, crimping and crushing not somebody but everybody, is one of the most towering and typical creations of the last hundred and fifty years.
That is what I complain of in this sort of regular journalistic philosophy. Not that it criticizes conditions a hundred years ago, when there were, heaven knows, plenty of things to criticize. But that it is intellectually incapable of criticizing conditions now, when there are new and different things to criticize. Nobody can take in the scale of the modern changes, let alone feel free enough of them to note what is sinister or dubious about them. For instance, nobody has yet measured the meaning of State education, with its practical elimination of the parent; at least of the poor parent. In a real study of modern and relatively recent things it would be necessary to go into these questions. But if somebody merely says that my grandfather used candles and I use electric light, I am content to answer that when I was in the most modern American hotels, it was the very latest fashion to lower all the electric lights till they gave rather less light than a candle.
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XXII
Sulla filosofia giornalistica
COMPARE a intervalli regolari sulla stampa della domenica, come l’articolo sul Cuculo o sugli Acquisti di Natale, un articolo sulla presunta superstizione dei Bei Tempi Andati, in cui ci si affanna a sostenere che furono in realtà Brutti Tempi Andati. L’articolo è comparso a tempo debito, su un diffuso settimanale, sotto il titolo «Che cosa c’è di giusto nel mondo»; ma, tranne il titolo, l’articolo era il medesimo. Gli stessi esempi, gli stessi triti particolari storici, la stessa comoda morale in parole quasi esattamente identiche. Vi sono parecchie cose piuttosto curiose in questo noto pezzo forte del giornalismo. Una è che l’articolo pretende di essere una risposta a un altro articolo che non esiste. In vita mia non ho mai visto la prima, originaria, incriminata affermazione: che i Bei Tempi Andati furono davvero Bei Tempi Andati. Non ho mai sentito alcun essere umano ragionevole parlare dei Bei Tempi Andati. Ho sentito moltissime persone ragionevoli, altamente intellettuali e istruite parlare dei vantaggi di certe particolari istituzioni esistite in certe particolari epoche. Così, ho sentito economisti politici di primo rango dire che il Sistema dell’Apprendistato era la migliore preparazione ai mestieri, e che il mondo farebbe bene a tornarvi. Oppure ho sentito storici di grande autorità dire che era più facile creare comprensione e pace internazionale nei giorni in cui tutte le nazioni conoscevano il latino… e lo pronunciavano allo stesso modo. Ho sentito espertissimi modernissimi augurarsi che vi fosse più gente tornata alla terra, e rimpiangere che per un secolo essa si fosse riversata nelle città sovraffollate. Ho perfino prestato ascolto ad arditi pensatori i quali ritenevano che la nostra posizione fosse finanziariamente più regolare prima che abbandonassimo il Gold Standard; che rimpiangevano positivamente il processo di abbassamento dei salari per avviare imprese; che sostenevano che le nostre grandi industrie stessero meglio quando vivevano di profitto e non di scoperto; e che si tenevano stretti al loro vecchio paradosso, secondo cui il sistema bancario era più sicuro quando non c’erano tante banche che facevano bancarotta. Insomma, ho conosciuto molte persone perverse che sostenevano che, sotto questo o quel particolare aspetto, stavamo meglio in questo o quel particolare periodo. Ma quest’uomo visionario che se ne va per le strade in abito funebre, gemendo a gran voce, in generale, sulla scomparsa di certi indefiniti e non datati Bei Tempi Andati… io non l’ho mai incontrato, e dubito piuttosto che qualcuno l’abbia mai incontrato; e dubito ancor più che sia necessario ristampare lo stesso articolo tante centinaia di volte per arginare la sua pestilenziale influenza.
La seconda cosa curiosa di quell’articolo è questa: che, per quanto sia sempre introdotto nei termini più vaghi, esso finisce sempre col gravitare in direzione di un particolare periodo, ed è sempre praticamente il medesimo periodo. Ed è sempre, aggiungo, il peggior periodo che si potesse scegliere, per qualsiasi scopo di paragone pratico. È (come nel presente esempio) il periodo di circa centocinquant’anni fa. È una pessima scelta, perché quella data non segna nessun altro sistema, né più antico; segna soltanto gli inizi più rozzi e goffi del nostro sistema attuale, o moderno. Non è come dire che vi fu un altro mondo, nel bene o nel male, prima di Rousseau o prima di Lutero o prima di Cristo, nell’antico mondo pagano. Alla data prescelta avevamo già le macchine, ma macchine assai più rozze; avevamo già le grandi città, ma grandi città assai più incompiute e disordinate; avevamo già una completa dipendenza dal commercio, ma da un commercio ancora assai più spietatamente concorrenziale. Non è naturalmente difficile mostrare che siamo migliori dei nostri bisnonni, quando facciamo in maniera rifinita ciò che anch’essi facevano, ma in maniera incompiuta. L’unica questione è se, in un altro senso, non siamo qualcosa che essi di certo non erano: e cioè, finiti.
Tutti conoscono l’elenco degli esempi. I nostri padri impiccavano gli uomini per piccoli furti, mentre noi ci limitiamo a esaltare e nobilitare gli uomini, o a metterli alla Camera dei Lord, per furti davvero grandi e imponenti. Ma qui non mi turbano tali questioni, bensì soltanto la monotonia e la mancanza di ogni viva curiosità circa le questioni dell’altro versante. Così si comincia con l’ubriachezza; quanto è tipico di quel genere di moralisti cominciare con l’ubriachezza… come se nient’altro potesse mai essere altrettanto immorale! «A quei tempi c’era senza dubbio più ubriachezza.» Mi domando. C’era certamente più ubriachezza fra coloro che meglio la reggevano; uomini robusti che cavalcavano di gran carriera nell’aria di campagna e bevevano prima di coricarsi. C’era più ubriachezza fra le scolarette di quanta ce ne sia in America, o più ubriachezza fra le ragazze del bel mondo di quanta ce ne sia ora a Mayfair? Mi domando. Ma mi domando, soprattutto, perché questo genere di interrogatore si accontenti sempre della sua unica domanda fissa. Supponiamo ch’io gli ponessi una domanda. Crede egli che vi fosse un maggior traffico di cocaina e di droghe prima della Battaglia di Waterloo di quanto ve ne sia oggi?
Dopo aver menzionato l’unica cosa davvero terribile, che è l’ubriachezza, lo scrittore procede più vagamente parlando di brutalità, ignoranza, ingiustizia e tutto il resto. È difficile mettere alla prova queste cose, perché vi sono differenti criteri morali in differenti persone e in differenti epoche. Per esempio, io ritengo giusto che ogni uomo sia libero proprietario di beni primari, come la terra e gli strumenti. Ritengo perciò che una giusta comunità avrà una moltitudine di piccoli proprietari contadini e di piccoli bottegai. Lo scrittore deve sapere, se sa qualcosa, che questi piccoli uomini andavano costantemente scomparendo, o piuttosto venivano distrutti, per tutta la durata di quello che egli considera il grande periodo del progresso. Non dico che non vi fossero altre cose in cui i nostri antenati erano ingiusti. Mi domando soltanto, ormai a questo punto con una certa stanchezza, perché mai la storia del piccolo proprietario terriero non venga neppure in mente agli autori del perenne articolo.
Poi lo scrittore adduce un esempio sbalorditivo. «La leva forzata era ancora un metodo prediletto per reclutare membri dell’Esercito o della Marina di Sua Maestà.» La leva forzata fu una nera macchia sulla Britannia; un atto di brutalità del tutto meschino; ma perché? Perché fino ad allora era universalmente ammesso che i combattenti inglesi fossero tutti volontari e si arruolassero liberamente. La leva forzata era un atto di Coscrizione illegale e sleale, usato da uomini che si vergognavano di ricorrere alla Coscrizione legale e universale. Ma gli uomini del mondo moderno non si vergognano di ricorrere alla Coscrizione legale e universale. Tutti gli illuminati Stati moderni vi hanno fatto ricorso nell’ultima guerra, e vi ricorreranno ancor più nella prossima. È una cosa specialmente e particolarmente moderna. Insomma, una gigantesca Leva Forzata, che arruola e schiaccia con la forza non qualcuno ma tutti, è una delle creazioni più torreggianti e più tipiche degli ultimi centocinquant’anni.
È di questo che mi lagno in questo genere di consueta filosofia giornalistica. Non che essa critichi le condizioni di cent’anni fa, quando c’erano, Dio lo sa, un mucchio di cose da criticare. Ma che essa sia intellettualmente incapace di criticare le condizioni odierne, ora che ci sono cose nuove e diverse da criticare. Nessuno riesce ad abbracciare la scala dei mutamenti moderni, e tanto meno a sentirsene abbastanza libero da rilevare ciò che in essi vi è di sinistro o di dubbio. Per esempio, nessuno ha ancora misurato il significato dell’istruzione di Stato, con la sua pratica eliminazione del genitore; almeno del genitore povero. In un vero studio delle cose moderne e relativamente recenti sarebbe necessario addentrarsi in queste questioni. Ma se qualcuno si limita a dire che mio nonno usava le candele e io uso la luce elettrica, mi accontento di rispondere che, quando mi trovavo nei più moderni alberghi americani, era l’ultimissima moda abbassare tutte le luci elettriche finché non davano una luce piuttosto minore di quella di una candela.
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XXIII
On Industrialism
IT grows plainer, every day, that those of us who cling to crumbling creeds and dogmas, and defend the dying traditions of the Dark Ages, will soon be left alone defending the most obviously decaying of all those ancient dogmas: the idea called Democracy. It has taken not quite a lifetime, roughly my own lifetime, to bring it from the top of its success, or alleged success, to the bottom of its failure, or reputed failure. By the end of the nineteenth century, millions of men were accepting democracy without knowing why. By the end of the twentieth century, it looks as if millions of people will be rejecting democracy, also without knowing why. In such a straight, strictly logical and unwavering line does the Mind of Man advance along the great Path of Progress.
Anyhow, at the moment, democracy is not only being abused, but being very unfairly abused. Men are blaming universal suffrage, merely because they are not enlightened enough to blame original sin. There is one simple test for deciding whether popular political evils are due to original sin. And that is to do what none or very few of these modern malcontents are doing; to state any sort of moral claim for any other sort of political system. The essence of democracy is very simple and, as Jefferson said, self-evident. If ten men are wrecked together on a desert island, the community consists of those ten men, their welfare is the social object, and normally their will is the social law. If they have not a natural claim to rule themselves, which of them has a natural claim to rule the rest? To say that the cleverest or boldest will rule is to beg the moral question. If his talents are used for the community, in planning voyages or distilling water, then he is the servant of the community; which is, in that sense, his sovereign. If his talents are used against the community, by stealing rum or poisoning water, why should the community submit to him? and is it in the least likely that it will? In such a simple case as that, everybody can see the popular basis of the thing, and the advantage of government by consent. The trouble with democracy is that it has never, in modern times, had to do with such a simple case as that. In other words, the trouble with democracy is not democracy. It is certain artificial anti-democratic things that have, in fact, thrust themselves into the modern world to thwart and destroy democracy.
Modernity is not democracy; machinery is not democracy; the surrender of everything to trade and commerce is not democracy. Capitalism is not democracy; and is admittedly, by trend and savour, rather against democracy. Plutocracy by definition is not democracy. But all these modern things forced themselves into the world at about the time, or shortly after the time, when great idealists like Rousseau and Jefferson happened to have been thinking about the democratic ideal of democracy. It is tenable that the ideal was too idealistic to succeed. It is not tenable that the ideal that failed was the same as the realities that did succeed. It is one thing to say that a fool went into a jungle and was devoured by wild beasts; it is quite another to say that he himself survives as the one and only wild beast. Democracy has had everything against it in practice, and that very fact may be something against it in theory. It may be argued that it has human life against it. But, at any rate, it is quite certain that it has modern life against it. The industrial and scientific world of the last hundred years has been much more unsuitable a setting for the experiment of self-government than would have been found in old conditions of agrarian or even nomadic life. Feudal manorial life was not a democracy; but it could have been much more easily turned into a democracy. Later peasant life, as in France or Switzerland, actually has been quite easily turned into a democracy. But it is horribly hard to turn what is called modern industrial democracy into a democracy.
That is why many men are now beginning to say that the democratic ideal is no longer in touch with the modern spirit. I strongly agree; and I naturally prefer the democratic ideal, which is at least an ideal, and therefore, an idea, to the modern spirit, which is simply modern and, therefore, already becoming ancient. I notice that the cranks, whom it would be more polite to call the idealists, are already hastening to shed this ideal. A well-known Pacifist, with whom I argued in Radical papers in my Radical days, and who then passed as a pattern Republican of the New Republic, went out of his way the other day to say, “The voice of the people is commonly the voice of Satan.” The truth is that these Liberals never did really believe in popular government, any more than in anything else that was popular, such as public-houses or the Dublin Sweepstake. They did not believe in the democracy they invoked against kings and priests. But I did believe in it; and I do believe in it, though I much preferred to invoke it against prigs and faddists. I still believe it would be the most human sort of government, if it could be once more attempted in a more human time.
Unfortunately, humanitarianism has been the mark of an inhuman time. And by inhumanity, I do not mean merely cruelty; I mean the condition in which even cruelty ceases to be human. I mean the condition in which the rich man, instead of hanging six or seven of his enemies because he hates them, merely beggars and starves to death six or seven thousand people whom he does not hate, and has never seen, because they live at the other side of the world. I mean the condition in which the courtier or pander of the rich man, instead of excitedly mixing a rare, original poison for the Borgias, or carving an exquisite ornamental poignard for the political purposes of the Medici, works monotonously in a factory turning out a small type of screw, which will fit into a plate he will never see; to form part of a gun he will never see; to be used in a battle he will never see, and about the merits of which he knows far less than the Renaissance rascal knew about the purposes of the poison and the dagger. In short, what is the matter with industrialism is indirection; the fact that nothing is straightforward; that all its ways are crooked even when they are meant to be straight. Into this most indirect of all systems we tried to fit the most direct of all ideas. Democracy, an ideal which is simple to excess, was vainly applied to a society which was complex to the point of craziness. It is not so very surprising that such a vision has faded in such an environment. Personally, I like the vision; but it takes all sorts to make a world, and there actually are human beings, walking about quite calmly in the daylight, who appear to like the environment.
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XXIII
Sull’industrialismo
DIVENTA più chiaro, ogni giorno che passa, che quelli di noi che si aggrappano a credi e dogmi in sfacelo, e difendono le tradizioni morenti dei Secoli Bui, presto si ritroveranno soli a difendere il più manifestamente decrepito di tutti quegli antichi dogmi: l’idea chiamata Democrazia. C’è voluta non del tutto un’intera vita, all’incirca la mia stessa vita, per portarla dall’apice del suo successo, o presunto successo, al fondo del suo fallimento, o reputato fallimento. Alla fine del diciannovesimo secolo, milioni di uomini accettavano la democrazia senza sapere perché. Alla fine del ventesimo secolo, sembra che milioni di persone rigetteranno la democrazia, anch’esse senza sapere perché. È lungo una linea così diritta, così rigorosamente logica e incrollabile, che la Mente dell’Uomo avanza per il grande Sentiero del Progresso.
Comunque sia, in questo momento la democrazia non viene soltanto vituperata, ma vituperata in modo assai ingiusto. Gli uomini incolpano il suffragio universale, semplicemente perché non sono abbastanza illuminati per incolpare il peccato originale. C’è un semplice criterio per decidere se i mali politici popolari siano dovuti al peccato originale. Ed è quello di fare ciò che nessuno, o pochissimi, di questi moderni scontenti stanno facendo: avanzare una qualche pretesa morale in favore di un qualche altro genere di sistema politico. L’essenza della democrazia è molto semplice e, come disse Jefferson, evidente di per sé. Se dieci uomini naufragano insieme su un’isola deserta, la comunità è costituita da quei dieci uomini, il loro benessere è l’oggetto sociale e, di norma, la loro volontà è la legge sociale. Se non hanno un diritto naturale a governare se stessi, quale di loro ha un diritto naturale a governare gli altri? Dire che il più astuto o il più audace governerà significa eludere la questione morale. Se i suoi talenti sono usati a vantaggio della comunità, nel pianificare viaggi o nel distillare acqua, allora egli è il servitore della comunità; la quale è, in tal senso, il suo sovrano. Se i suoi talenti sono usati contro la comunità, rubando rum o avvelenando l’acqua, perché mai la comunità dovrebbe sottomettersi a lui? ed è minimamente probabile che lo faccia? In un caso tanto semplice, chiunque può vedere il fondamento popolare della cosa, e il vantaggio del governo per consenso. Il guaio della democrazia è che essa non ha mai, nei tempi moderni, avuto a che fare con un caso tanto semplice. In altre parole, il guaio della democrazia non è la democrazia. Sono certe cose artificiali e antidemocratiche che, di fatto, si sono spinte dentro il mondo moderno per contrastare e distruggere la democrazia.
La modernità non è democrazia; il macchinario non è democrazia; la resa di ogni cosa al traffico e al commercio non è democrazia. Il capitalismo non è democrazia; ed è, per stessa ammissione, per tendenza e per sapore, piuttosto contrario alla democrazia. La plutocrazia, per definizione, non è democrazia. Ma tutte queste cose moderne si sono imposte nel mondo all’incirca nel tempo, o poco dopo il tempo, in cui grandi idealisti come Rousseau e Jefferson si trovavano a meditare sull’ideale democratico della democrazia. È sostenibile che l’ideale fosse troppo idealistico per riuscire. Non è sostenibile che l’ideale che fallì fosse la stessa cosa delle realtà che riuscirono. Una cosa è dire che uno sciocco si addentrò in una giungla e fu divorato dalle bestie feroci; tutt’altra è dire che egli sopravvive come l’unica e sola bestia feroce. La Democrazia ha avuto tutto contro di sé nella pratica, e proprio questo fatto potrebbe essere qualcosa contro di essa in teoria. Si può sostenere che ha contro di sé la vita umana. Ma, in ogni caso, è del tutto certo che ha contro di sé la vita moderna. Il mondo industriale e scientifico degli ultimi cent’anni è stato una cornice molto più inadatta all’esperimento dell’autogoverno di quanto non si sarebbe trovata nelle antiche condizioni della vita agraria o perfino nomade. La vita feudale del maniero non era una democrazia; ma avrebbe potuto essere convertita in democrazia assai più facilmente. La successiva vita contadina, come in Francia o in Svizzera, è stata di fatto convertita assai facilmente in democrazia. Ma è terribilmente arduo convertire ciò che viene chiamata moderna democrazia industriale in una democrazia.
Ecco perché molti uomini cominciano ora a dire che l’ideale democratico non è più in sintonia con lo spirito moderno. Sono fortemente d’accordo; e naturalmente preferisco l’ideale democratico, che è quantomeno un ideale, e dunque un’idea, allo spirito moderno, che è semplicemente moderno e, dunque, sta già diventando antico. Noto che gli stravaganti, che sarebbe più cortese chiamare idealisti, si affrettano già a spogliarsi di questo ideale. Un ben noto Pacifista, con cui polemizzavo sui fogli radicali ai tempi in cui ero radicale, e che allora passava per il perfetto modello di Repubblicano della Nuova Repubblica, si è dato la pena, l’altro giorno, di dichiarare: «La voce del popolo è comunemente la voce di Satana». La verità è che questi Liberali non hanno mai davvero creduto nel governo popolare, non più di quanto credessero in qualsiasi altra cosa fosse popolare, come le osterie o la Lotteria di Dublino. Non credevano nella democrazia che invocavano contro re e sacerdoti. Ma io vi credevo; e vi credo, per quanto assai preferissi invocarla contro i saccenti e i maniaci delle mode. Continuo a credere che sarebbe il più umano genere di governo, se potesse essere tentato ancora una volta in un tempo più umano.
Sfortunatamente, l’umanitarismo è stato il marchio di un tempo disumano. E per disumanità non intendo semplicemente crudeltà; intendo la condizione in cui perfino la crudeltà cessa di essere umana. Intendo la condizione in cui il ricco, anziché impiccare sei o sette dei suoi nemici perché li odia, riduce alla miseria e fa morire di fame sei o settemila persone che non odia, e che non ha mai visto, perché vivono dall’altra parte del mondo. Intendo la condizione in cui il cortigiano o il ruffiano del ricco, anziché mescolare febbrilmente un raro e originale veleno per i Borgia, o cesellare uno squisito pugnale ornamentale per i disegni politici dei Medici, lavora monotonamente in una fabbrica sfornando un piccolo tipo di vite, che andrà a incastrarsi in una piastra che non vedrà mai; per formare parte di un cannone che non vedrà mai; per essere impiegata in una battaglia che non vedrà mai, e dei meriti della quale sa assai meno di quanto la canaglia del Rinascimento sapesse dei fini del veleno e del pugnale. In breve, ciò che non va nell’industrialismo è l’indirezione; il fatto che nulla è diretto; che tutte le sue vie sono tortuose anche quando dovrebbero essere diritte. In questo più indiretto di tutti i sistemi cercammo di far combaciare la più diretta di tutte le idee. La Democrazia, un ideale che è semplice fino all’eccesso, fu vanamente applicata a una società che era complessa fino alla follia. Non è poi così sorprendente che una simile visione sia svanita in un simile ambiente. Personalmente, la visione mi piace; ma ci vuole di tutto per fare un mondo, ed esistono davvero esseri umani, che passeggiano placidissimi alla luce del giorno, a cui l’ambiente pare piacere.
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XXIV
On Mr. Thomas Gray
A NEWSPAPER appeared with the news, which it seemed to regard as exciting and even alarming news, that Gray did not write the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” in the churchyard of Stoke Poges, but in some other country churchyard of the same sort in the same country. What effect the news will have on the particular type of American tourist who has chipped pieces off trees and tombstones, when he finds that the chips come from the wrong trees, or the wrong tombstones, I do not feel impelled to inquire. Nor, indeed, do I know whether the new theory is proved or not. Nor do I care whether the new theory is proved or not. What is most certainly proved, if it needed any proving, is the complete lack of imagination, in many journalists and archæologists, about how any poet writes any poem.
In such a controversy it is implied, generally on both sides, that what happens is something like this. The poet comes and sits on a tombstone, or wherever he was supposed to sit, in the one and only churchyard of Stoke Poges, or whatever place be the rival of Stoke Poges. He hears the Curfew; and there is a dreadful doubt and dispute about whether anybody sitting among the tombs of Stoke Poges can hear the Curfew, which does really ring from Windsor, though I imagine it sounds pretty much like any other bell at evening. Then the poet produces a portable pen and ink, preferably a large quill and a scroll (the poet in question lived before the time of fountain-pens), and writes down the first line: “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.” Then he looks round to make quite sure that there are some lowing herds winding over that particular lea, that the ploughman is present and doing his duty in plodding homeward his weary way, and that all the other fittings are in the offing. Later, he will have to insist peremptorily on an ivy-mantled tower being in the immediate neighbourhood, inhabited by an (if possible) moping owl. It will not be the only owl involved in the business. If there are not all these correct conditions provided on the spot, he will not be able to write the Elegy. If, on the other hand, they are all there and everything has been properly provided, he will then write the whole of the Elegy, steadily, right through, and not roll up his scroll or rise from his tombstone until he has left the unfortunate young man in the poem finally safe in the bosom of his Father and his God. Then he will go home to tea; and I should imagine he would need it, after so prolonged and sustained a literary effort achieved in such damp and clammy conditions. That, with very little exaggeration, is what is really suggested by those who talk about Gray writing the poem in this place or that place, and under this or that condition of local colour.
Now, I should have thought that anybody would know that poetry is not written like that. But perhaps, in this case, even a bad poet is better than a good critic. Anybody who has ever written any verse, good, bad, or indifferent, will know that calculations of this sort are calculations about the incalculable. Gray might have written the poem, or any part of the poem, in any place on the map; he might have visited the New Stoke Poges or the Old Stoke Poges, or quite probably both, or possibly neither. But, if I may be allowed to pick out one thread of speculation from a thousand threads of possibility, I would suggest that the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard,” even if it did refer to one particular churchyard, is very likely to have been begun, continued, and ended rather like this:
Mr. Thomas Gray was sitting one evening in a coffee-house; let us hope a coffee-house that did not confine itself to coffee. Something or other, a fiddle or a few glasses of wine, or a good dinner, had thrown him into a mood of musing, of pleasant musing, though touched with a manly and generous melancholy. His thoughts turned round and round, as they do at such times, the tantalizing old riddle of what we really feel about life and death; about the toy God gave us which is beautiful and brittle, yet certainly not trivial. He said to himself: “After all, who doesn’t really feel that it really matters, with all its botherations? … A queer business … pleasing … anxious. …” Then something stirred quicker within him, and he said to himself, in warm poetic emotion—
For who tytumpty tumpty tumpty turn, This pleasing anxious being e’er resigned.
Then his impulse gathered speed and power; and he struck the table and said the next line straight off—
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day.
He said that line several times. He liked it very much. Then it was almost a matter of form, certainly a matter of facility, to put the tail on the verse—
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind.
Then he got up and put on his hat. He left the warm precincts of the cheerful coffee-house, and went home and forgot all about it.
Some time afterwards, perhaps quite a long time afterwards, he was walking in the countryside at dusk. It is quite possible that he was walking in Stoke Poges, or through Stoke Poges, or through any number of other places in the neighbourhood. Perhaps he did hear the Curfew, or what he thought was the Curfew, or what he pretended was the Curfew. He made up another verse or two about the twilight landscape, full of the same spirit of stoical thankfulness and genial resignation. Then he noticed, with great joy, that they would work into the same metre as the lines he had made up in the coffee-house. They were very much in the same mood. But he did not write many of the verses in the churchyard. Possibly he did not write any of the verses in the churchyard. It is more likely that the third act has for its scene Mr. Gray’s private study, lined with the classics in old leather bindings, and adorned with the celebrated cat and the bowl of goldfish. There he jotted down disjointed verses, and began to put them together; until it looked as if they might some day make a poem. But, subject to any information that may exist on the subject, it would not in the ordinary way surprise me to learn that it was a devil of a long time before they did make a poem. It is most likely, in the abstract, that he got sick of it half-way through, and chucked it away, and found it again years afterwards. It is extremely likely that there was another very long interval, when he was just finishing it, but could not finish finishing it. Many a man writing such a poem has held it up for a year for want of one verse. Nor would the newspaper assist him, in such a difficulty, by pointing out that there was another churchyard much more suitable than that of Stoke Poges.
XXIV
Su Mr. Thomas Gray
USCÌ un giornale con la notizia, che pareva considerare eccitante e persino allarmante, che Gray non aveva scritto l’«Elegia in un cimitero di campagna» nel cimitero di Stoke Poges, bensì in qualche altro cimitero di campagna dello stesso genere, nella stessa campagna. Quale effetto la notizia produrrà su quel particolare tipo di turista americano che ha staccato schegge da alberi e lapidi, quando scoprirà che le schegge provengono dagli alberi sbagliati, o dalle lapidi sbagliate, non mi sento spinto a indagare. Né, del resto, so se la nuova teoria sia dimostrata o no. Né m’importa se la nuova teoria sia dimostrata o no. Ciò che è dimostratissimo, ammesso che ne occorresse la prova, è la completa mancanza di immaginazione, in molti giornalisti e archeologi, riguardo al modo in cui un poeta scrive una poesia qualsiasi.
In una simile controversia si sottintende, di solito da entrambe le parti, che ciò che accade sia qualcosa del genere. Il poeta viene e si siede su una lapide, o dovunque si supponesse dovesse sedersi, nell’unico e solo cimitero di Stoke Poges, o in qualunque luogo faccia da rivale a Stoke Poges. Egli ode il Coprifuoco; e vi è un tremendo dubbio e una disputa sul fatto se qualcuno seduto tra le tombe di Stoke Poges possa udire il Coprifuoco, che davvero risuona da Windsor, benché immagini suoni pressoché come qualsiasi altra campana della sera. Poi il poeta tira fuori penna e inchiostro portatili, preferibilmente un gran pennino d’oca e una pergamena (il poeta in questione visse prima del tempo delle penne stilografiche), e scrive giù il primo verso: «Il coprifuoco suona a rintocchi il giorno che si accomiata». Poi si guarda intorno per accertarsi bene che vi siano armenti muggenti che si snodano su quel particolare prato, che l’aratore sia presente e faccia il suo dovere arrancando verso casa lungo la sua via faticosa, e che tutti gli altri accessori siano in vista. Più tardi dovrà pretendere perentoriamente che una torre ammantata d’edera si trovi nelle immediate vicinanze, abitata da un (se possibile) gufo malinconico. Non sarà l’unico gufo coinvolto nella faccenda. Se non gli sono fornite sul posto tutte queste corrette condizioni, non sarà in grado di scrivere l’Elegia. Se, d’altro canto, esse sono tutte presenti e ogni cosa è stata debitamente provveduta, egli scriverà allora l’intera Elegia, di seguito, tutta d’un fiato, senza arrotolare la pergamena né alzarsi dalla lapide finché non abbia lasciato lo sventurato giovane della poesia finalmente al sicuro in seno al suo Padre e al suo Dio. Poi tornerà a casa per il tè; e immagino ne avrebbe ben bisogno, dopo uno sforzo letterario tanto prolungato e sostenuto, compiuto in condizioni così umide e vischiose. Questo, con ben poca esagerazione, è ciò che davvero suggeriscono coloro che parlano di Gray il quale scrive la poesia in questo o quel luogo, e sotto questa o quella condizione di colore locale.
Ora, avrei pensato che chiunque sapesse che la poesia non si scrive così. Ma forse, in questo caso, persino un cattivo poeta è meglio di un buon critico. Chiunque abbia mai scritto un verso qualsiasi, buono, cattivo o mediocre, saprà che calcoli di questa sorta sono calcoli sull’incalcolabile. Gray potrebbe aver scritto la poesia, o una qualsiasi parte della poesia, in un qualunque luogo della carta geografica; potrebbe aver visitato la Nuova Stoke Poges o la Vecchia Stoke Poges, o assai probabilmente entrambe, o forse nessuna. Ma, se mi si consente di estrarre un filo di congettura da mille fili di possibilità, oserei suggerire che l’«Elegia in un cimitero di campagna», anche se davvero si riferì a un particolare cimitero, fu con ogni probabilità cominciata, proseguita e conclusa piuttosto così:
Mr. Thomas Gray sedeva una sera in una bottega del caffè; speriamo una bottega del caffè che non si limitasse al caffè. Qualcosa, un violino o qualche bicchiere di vino, o una buona cena, l’aveva gettato in una disposizione di fantasticheria, di piacevole fantasticheria, benché venata d’una virile e generosa malinconia. I suoi pensieri giravano e rigiravano, come fanno in tali momenti, intorno al vecchio enigma tantalizzante di ciò che veramente sentiamo riguardo alla vita e alla morte; riguardo al balocco che Dio ci diede, che è bello e fragile, eppure di certo non frivolo. Disse tra sé: «Dopotutto, chi non sente davvero che davvero importa, con tutte le sue seccature?… Un affare bizzarro… piacevole… ansioso…». Poi qualcosa si mosse più rapido dentro di lui, ed egli disse tra sé, in calda emozione poetica —
Poiché chi tarantà tarantà tarantà tara, Questo essere piacevole e ansioso mai rassegnò.
Poi il suo impulso prese velocità e potenza; e batté sul tavolo e recitò il verso seguente d’un fiato —
Lasciò i tiepidi recinti del giorno gioioso.
Ripeté quel verso più volte. Gli piaceva moltissimo. Poi fu quasi una questione di forma, certo una questione di facilità, apporre la coda al distico —
Né gettò un solo sguardo bramoso, indugiante, indietro.
Poi si alzò e si mise il cappello. Lasciò i tiepidi recinti della gioiosa bottega del caffè, e tornò a casa e se ne dimenticò del tutto.
Qualche tempo più tardi, forse assai lungo tempo più tardi, passeggiava per la campagna al crepuscolo. È del tutto possibile che passeggiasse a Stoke Poges, o attraverso Stoke Poges, o attraverso un numero qualsiasi di altri luoghi nei dintorni. Forse udì davvero il Coprifuoco, o quello che credeva fosse il Coprifuoco, o quello che fingeva fosse il Coprifuoco. Compose una strofa o due sul paesaggio crepuscolare, colme dello stesso spirito di stoica gratitudine e geniale rassegnazione. Poi notò, con gran gioia, che si sarebbero incastrate nello stesso metro dei versi che aveva composto nella bottega del caffè. Erano proprio nel medesimo umore. Ma non scrisse molte delle strofe nel cimitero. Forse non scrisse nessuna delle strofe nel cimitero. È più probabile che il terzo atto abbia per scena lo studio privato di Mr. Gray, foderato di classici in vecchie rilegature di cuoio, e adorno del celebre gatto e della boccia dei pesci rossi. Là buttò giù versi sconnessi, e cominciò a metterli insieme; finché non parve che un giorno potessero fare una poesia. Ma, salvo qualsiasi informazione che possa esistere sull’argomento, non mi sorprenderebbe affatto, di solito, apprendere che ci volle un diavolo di lungo tempo prima che essi facessero davvero una poesia. È assai probabile, in astratto, che se ne stancasse a metà strada, e la buttasse via, e la ritrovasse anni dopo. È estremamente probabile che vi fosse un altro lunghissimo intervallo, quando la stava appena terminando, ma non riusciva a terminare di terminarla. Più d’un uomo, nello scrivere una simile poesia, l’ha tenuta in sospeso per un anno per mancanza di un solo verso. Né il giornale l’avrebbe soccorso, in tale difficoltà, facendogli notare che c’era un altro cimitero assai più adatto di quello di Stoke Poges.
Now, it is possible—nay, it is probable—that there is not one word of truth in this particular description of the proceedings of Mr. Gray. I have not read any of the literary and biographical records of Mr. Gray, at least for a long time; and there are plenty of records to read. It is quite likely that there are details of his daily life that destroy altogether the details I have here suggested. It is even possible that, by some amazing eccentricity, he did write the whole thing in a churchyard; or, by some unscrupulous exaggeration, pretended that he had done so. But my story is a great deal nearer to the normal story of the production of a poem than any story that supposes particular places and conditions to be necessary to the poem. Even if Gray did write with all the stage properties stuck up around him, the lowing cow, the plodding ploughman, the moping owl, they were not the materials of the poem; and he would probably have written pretty much the same sort of poem without them. All this business of clues and tests is not criticism. It is a very good thing that people are applying literature to detective stories and detectives. But it is not a good thing to apply detectives to literature. Gray’s unmistakable foot-mark or favourite tobacco-ash may be found in Stoke Poges or anywhere else. But it is not in those ashes that there lived his wonted fires.
The real relation of Gray’s great poem to the present stage of our history will probably not be understood until a later stage. Yet the poem is a monument, a trophy, and, at the same time, a beacon or signal, standing up as solid and significant as the monument stands up in the Stoke Poges fields. Many poems have been written since, and grown more fashionable, if not more famous, which have not the particular meaning for the modern world stored up in this very storied urn. For Gray wrote at the very beginning of a certain literary epoch of which we, perhaps, stand at the very end. He represented that softening of the Classic which slowly turned it into the Romantic. We represent that ultimate hardening of the Romantic which has turned it into the Realistic. Both changes have, of course, been criticized in their time by the more conservative critics. Dr. Johnson said, probably with a partly humorous impatience, that Gray had only proved that he “could be dull in a new way.” And most of us will agree that the modern realistic writers, who have in their turn replaced the romantic writers, have indubitably discovered a marvellous and amazing number of new ways of being dull.
But the change, as it hung uncompleted in Gray, strangely resembled the twilight changes of that landscape which the poem describes. Indeed, the whole episode has a curious, almost uncanny, harmony that even includes coincidence. Concerned as he was with a fine shade of twilight, it is even odd that his name was Gray. The whole legend is like that of something colourless and classical fading into mere shadow. For something was, indeed, fading before the eyes of Thomas Gray, the poet, and it was something that he did not wish to see fade. It may be noted that the first impression, especially in the first verses, is one of things moving away from the poet and leaving him alone. We see only the back of the ploughman, so to speak, as he plods away into the darkness; the herds of cattle have the perspective of vanishing things; for a whole world was indeed passing out of the sight and reach of that learned and sensitive and secluded gentleman, who represented the culture of eighteenth-century England, and could only watch a twilight transformation which he could not understand. For when the ploughman comes back out of that twilight, he will come back different. He will be either a scientific works-manager or an entirely new kind of agrarian citizen great as in the first days of Rome; a free peasant or a servant of alien machinery; but never the same again.
I am not very fond of committees and societies of specialists or amateurs who sit upon this or that sort of problem; but in the particular problem of the preservation of the rural and cultural traditions of our own countryside, I cannot see at the moment that any other machinery is possible. And it seems to me that the Penn-Gray Society is a good example of a machine suited to its work and doing work that is wanted. The trouble is that the typical cultured Englishman, like Gray or the traditional admirer of Gray, was generally a certain kind of gentleman, of the sort that had some kind of country seat. Since then, to continue the figure, the gentleman with the country seat has rather fallen between two stools. He is no longer so rich and powerful as a landlord. He generally has not become rich and powerful as a local politician. There were any number of men, of course, who appreciated the country without owning a country seat. But if they were not the sort of men to own a country seat, still less were they the sort of men to stand for a county council. And, as the old organization of England went, the organization that has been gradually dying since the days of Gray, men of this artistic sort were mostly attached in some more or less indirect way to the gentry. That is the point; that, for good or ill, it was the system peculiar to a gentry. It was never, for instance, the system peculiar to a peasantry. When there is anything like a peasantry, even as there is in Scotland, it was possible to produce a peasant poet like Burns. And the memory of a peasant like Burns would be preserved by other peasants, even if there were nobody else to preserve it. But nobody could expect the agricultural labourers to preserve the memory of a scholar like Gray. It is amusing to remember that Burns put a verse from the Elegy as a motto to his own homely and pungent picture of peasant life; as some have thought, consciously stressing the contrast between his own realism and the scholar’s classicism:
Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their humble joys, and destiny obscure; Nor grandeur hear, with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor.
Indeed, I rather fancy that, in citing those rather patronizing lines, it was the poor poet who had the disdainful smile.
But we must take the rough with the smooth in that noble aristocratic story that has made South England like a garden among the nations. And with it weakened the only organization for protecting the art and antiquities of rural life. Gray could not be a popular poet like Burns; at least, not in that sort of rural life. Perhaps there is a hint of it in his own phrase; that the Village Milton would have remained mute and inglorious. Perhaps he deliberately did not finish the tale of the Village Hampden, who was possibly a poacher, but could not possibly be a peasant. Anyhow, the old organization of culture has weakened; and the new organization of local politics is not an organization of culture. There can be a culture of peasants, but not a culture of petty politicians. In this dilemma there is nothing to be done except to work through groups of sympathetic individuals, students or artists or lovers of landscape, who take the trouble to support each other in defending the tradition of the national history and poetry. Otherwise the whole country will be swept bare for the sort of motorist to whom every object is an obstacle to rushing from nowhere to nowhere. Roads will not be roads, for there will be no places for them to go to; there will be only those ominously called arterial, and resembling, indeed, those open and spouting arteries that are an inevitable sign of death. I should say the ultimate moral is that we ought to have made up our minds between real aristocracy and real democracy, and should have either preserved a gentry or created a peasantry. But the immediate moral is that we must preserve what we can of all that reminds us that rural life was a civilization and not a savagery, and especially support such groups as the society here in question, which is defending the great tradition of Gray.
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Ora, è possibile — anzi, è probabile — che non vi sia una sola parola di verità in questa particolare descrizione dell’operato di Mr. Gray. Non ho letto alcuno dei documenti letterari e biografici su Mr. Gray, almeno da lungo tempo; e ve n’è in abbondanza da leggere. È assai probabile che vi siano dettagli della sua vita quotidiana che distruggono del tutto i dettagli che qui ho suggerito. È persino possibile che, per qualche stupefacente eccentricità, egli scrivesse davvero l’intera cosa in un cimitero; o che, per qualche esagerazione senza scrupoli, fingesse d’averlo fatto. Ma la mia storia è assai più vicina alla normale storia della produzione di una poesia di qualsiasi storia che supponga particolari luoghi e condizioni necessari alla poesia. Anche se Gray scrisse davvero con tutti gli oggetti di scena piantati intorno a sé, la vacca muggente, l’aratore arrancante, il gufo malinconico, essi non furono i materiali della poesia; ed egli avrebbe probabilmente scritto pressoché lo stesso tipo di poesia senza di loro. Tutta questa faccenda di indizi e verifiche non è critica. È un’ottima cosa che si applichi la letteratura ai racconti polizieschi e ai detective. Ma non è una buona cosa applicare i detective alla letteratura. L’inconfondibile orma di Gray o la sua cenere di tabacco prediletta si possono trovare a Stoke Poges o in qualsiasi altro luogo. Ma non è in quelle ceneri che vissero i suoi consueti fuochi.
La vera relazione fra la grande poesia di Gray e lo stadio presente della nostra storia probabilmente non sarà compresa se non in uno stadio successivo. Eppure la poesia è un monumento, un trofeo e, al tempo stesso, un faro o un segnale, che si erge solido e significativo come si erge il monumento nei campi di Stoke Poges. Molte poesie sono state scritte da allora, e divenute più alla moda, se non più celebri, le quali non hanno il particolare significato per il mondo moderno accumulato in questa stessa urna istoriata. Poiché Gray scrisse proprio all’inizio di una certa epoca letteraria della quale noi, forse, ci troviamo proprio alla fine. Egli rappresentò quell’addolcimento del Classico che lentamente lo mutò nel Romantico. Noi rappresentiamo quell’ultimo indurimento del Romantico che l’ha mutato nel Realistico. Entrambi i mutamenti sono stati, naturalmente, criticati al loro tempo dai critici più conservatori. Il dottor Johnson disse, probabilmente con un’impazienza in parte umoristica, che Gray aveva soltanto provato di «saper essere noioso in un modo nuovo». E i più di noi converranno che i moderni scrittori realisti, i quali a loro volta hanno soppiantato gli scrittori romantici, hanno indubitabilmente scoperto un meraviglioso e stupefacente numero di nuovi modi d’essere noiosi.
Ma il mutamento, così come restò incompiuto in Gray, somigliava stranamente ai mutamenti crepuscolari di quel paesaggio che la poesia descrive. Anzi, l’intero episodio possiede una curiosa, quasi perturbante, armonia che comprende persino la coincidenza. Occupato com’era d’una sottile sfumatura di crepuscolo, è persino strano che il suo nome fosse Gray, il grigio. L’intera leggenda è come quella di qualcosa d’incolore e classico che sfuma in mera ombra. Poiché qualcosa stava, davvero, sfumando dinanzi agli occhi di Thomas Gray, il poeta, ed era qualcosa che egli non desiderava veder sfumare. Si può notare che la prima impressione, specie nelle prime strofe, è quella di cose che si allontanano dal poeta lasciandolo solo. Vediamo soltanto la schiena dell’aratore, per così dire, mentre arranca via nell’oscurità; gli armenti hanno la prospettiva delle cose che svaniscono; poiché un mondo intero stava davvero uscendo dalla vista e dalla portata di quel dotto e sensibile e appartato gentiluomo, che rappresentava la cultura dell’Inghilterra del Settecento, e non poteva far altro che osservare una trasformazione crepuscolare che non riusciva a comprendere. Poiché quando l’aratore tornerà da quel crepuscolo, tornerà diverso. Sarà o un direttore scientifico di stabilimento o un tipo interamente nuovo di cittadino agricolo, grande come nei primi giorni di Roma; un libero contadino o un servo di macchinari estranei; ma mai più lo stesso.
Non vado molto matto per comitati e società di specialisti o dilettanti che siedono a deliberare su questo o quel problema; ma nel particolare problema della conservazione delle tradizioni rurali e culturali della nostra campagna, non riesco al momento a vedere che sia possibile alcun altro meccanismo. E mi sembra che la Penn-Gray Society sia un buon esempio di macchina adatta al proprio lavoro e che compie un lavoro di cui c’è bisogno. Il guaio è che il tipico inglese colto, come Gray o il tradizionale ammiratore di Gray, era generalmente una certa specie di gentiluomo, di quelli che avevano una qualche sorta di residenza di campagna. Da allora, per continuare la figura, il gentiluomo con la residenza di campagna è piuttosto caduto tra due sgabelli. Non è più tanto ricco e potente come proprietario terriero. In genere non è divenuto ricco e potente come politico locale. C’era un numero qualsiasi di uomini, s’intende, che apprezzavano la campagna senza possedere una residenza di campagna. Ma se non erano il genere d’uomini da possedere una residenza di campagna, ancor meno erano il genere d’uomini da candidarsi a un consiglio di contea. E, per come andava la vecchia organizzazione dell’Inghilterra, l’organizzazione che è andata gradualmente morendo fin dai giorni di Gray, gli uomini di questa specie artistica erano per lo più legati in qualche modo più o meno indiretto alla gentry. È questo il punto; che, nel bene o nel male, era il sistema proprio d’una gentry. Non fu mai, per esempio, il sistema proprio d’un contadinato. Quando c’è qualcosa come un contadinato, come ce n’è persino in Scozia, fu possibile produrre un poeta contadino come Burns. E la memoria d’un contadino come Burns sarebbe preservata da altri contadini, anche se non vi fosse nessun altro a preservarla. Ma nessuno potrebbe aspettarsi che i braccianti agricoli preservino la memoria d’un erudito come Gray. È spassoso ricordare che Burns pose una strofa dell’Elegia come motto al suo dimesso e pungente quadro della vita contadina; come alcuni hanno pensato, sottolineando consapevolmente il contrasto tra il proprio realismo e il classicismo dell’erudito:
Non irrida l’ambizione la loro utile fatica, le loro umili gioie, e l’oscuro destino; né oda la grandezza, con sdegnoso sorriso, i brevi e semplici annali del povero.
Anzi, sono piuttosto incline a credere che, nel citare quei versi alquanto paternalistici, fosse il povero poeta ad avere lo sdegnoso sorriso.
Ma bisogna prendere il ruvido con il liscio in quella nobile storia aristocratica che ha reso l’Inghilterra meridionale simile a un giardino tra le nazioni. E con essa s’indebolì l’unica organizzazione capace di proteggere l’arte e le antichità della vita rurale. Gray non poteva essere un poeta popolare come Burns; almeno, non in quel genere di vita rurale. Forse ve n’è un cenno nella sua stessa frase; che il Milton di villaggio sarebbe rimasto muto e senza gloria. Forse deliberatamente non compì il racconto dell’Hampden di villaggio, che era forse un bracconiere, ma non poteva assolutamente essere un contadino. Comunque sia, la vecchia organizzazione della cultura s’è indebolita; e la nuova organizzazione della politica locale non è un’organizzazione di cultura. Può esservi una cultura di contadini, ma non una cultura di meschini politicanti. In questo dilemma non c’è nulla da fare se non lavorare attraverso gruppi d’individui solidali, studiosi o artisti o amanti del paesaggio, che si prendono la briga di sostenersi a vicenda nel difendere la tradizione della storia e della poesia nazionale. Altrimenti l’intera campagna sarà spazzata via a beneficio di quel genere d’automobilista per il quale ogni oggetto è un ostacolo al precipitarsi da nessun luogo a nessun luogo. Le strade non saranno più strade, poiché non vi saranno più luoghi dove esse possano condurre; vi saranno soltanto quelle sinistramente dette arteriali, e somiglianti, invero, a quelle arterie aperte e zampillanti che sono un inevitabile segno di morte. Direi che la morale ultima è che avremmo dovuto deciderci tra una vera aristocrazia e una vera democrazia, e avremmo dovuto o preservare una gentry o creare un contadinato. Ma la morale immediata è che dobbiamo preservare ciò che possiamo di tutto quanto ci ricorda che la vita rurale fu una civiltà e non una barbarie, e sostenere specialmente gruppi come la società qui in questione, che difende la grande tradizione di Gray.
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XXV
On Evolutionary Educators
WITH the high priests of Mumbo-Jumbo I am on friendly terms; with the worshippers of the Green Monkey and the Seven-headed Snake I can chat cheerfully if we meet by chance in society; with the Blood-drinkers of Baphomet I have tactfully agreed to differ; with the Howling Dervishes of the Red Desert I see the road open to reunion; from those who offer their babies to the Most Ancient Crocodile I differ only in opinion; of those who consider it a sign of divine favour that their mother’s head is bitten off by a Bengal tiger, I am willing to believe that they are better than their creed; to those who believe the sea to be the green blood of a great giant whose anæmic visage is exhibited in the moon, I am ready to concede that we may be looking at two different aspects of truth; in those who sincerely hope to gratify the god of their fathers by eating nothing but live scorpions, I respectfully salute a counsel of perfection which I am not myself called upon to follow; in those who paint themselves scarlet all over and dance before the Nine-headed Elephant, I recognize a ritualistic practice which franker and fuller discussion might well commend even to less advanced schools of thought in the Universal Church; of Thugs I think hopefully; of Bashi-Bazouks I hear the most reassuring news; and to Christian Scientists I extend Christian charity. But there is one way of writing about such things and such people which seems to me to suggest something utterly subhuman and much less than half-witted; something so stunted that we can hardly recognize it as the stature of manhood; something so stupid that we can hardly call it the mind of man; something so flat and unlifting that it might possibly be the mind of one of those flat, pale fishes that lie on the floor of the deep dark sea and live only in two dimensions. And this mentality is the mentality of a large number of people who write educational works on evolutionary history, and are so grossly benighted that they really believe themselves to be enlightened.
For the depths of a superstition, even the depths of a degradation, are at least depths. They do not shout with shallow conceit at finding nothing but shallows. There is something in the grossest idolatry or the craziest mythology that has a quality of groping and adumbration. There is more in life than we understand; some have told us that if we ate a scorpion or worshipped a green monkey we might understand it better. But the evolutionary educator, having never since his birth been in anything but the dark, naturally believes that he is in the daylight. His very notion of daylight is something which is so blank as to be merely blind. There are no depths in it, either of light or darkness. There a no dimensions in it; not only no fourth, but no third no second, and hardly a first; certainly no dimension in which the mind can move. Therefore the mind remains fixed, in a posture that is called progressive. It never looks back, even for remembrance; it never looks the other way, even for experiment; it never looks at the other side, even for a paradox; it never winks the other eye. It simply knows all there is; and there does not seem to be much to know. I have recently been looking through a specimen of this sort of scientific summary of the story of man; and I am relieving my feelings.
Those writers sometimes say they are agnostic about God. Would to God they would consent to be agnostic about Man! Would they would leave the love of beauty or mystery as mysterious as they really are. Every child is born facing some open questions. He finds them open just as he finds his ears or his lungs or his nostrils open; and he knows by instinct that through these open questions he draws in the air and life of the universe. Why dreams are different from daylight, why dead things are different from live things, why he himself is different from others, why beauty makes us restless and even love is a spring of quarrels, why we cannot so fit into our environment as to forget it and ourselves; all these things are felt vaguely by children on long, empty afternoons; or by primitive poets writing the epics and legends of the morning of the world. And all legends, however barbaric, are filled with the wind of all this wider questioning. They all refer back to these ancient unfathomable wells which go down deeper than the reason into the very roots of the world, but contain the springs that refresh the reason and keep it active for ever. The object of the rationalist historian is to choke up those wells. He puts in a sort of plug, like a stupid plumber, to stop the flowing of the fountain of youth. The plug is generally a word; a stupid word used as a stopper upon thought. It does not solve the mystery; it only stupefies or paralyses the power to realize that it is a mystery. When a boy wants to walk about, he knows it is mixed up with feelings he has not fathomed and a song called “Over the Hills and Far Away.” When a poet walks about, he realizes something strange in the fact that he can walk about, and that a tree or a mountain cannot walk about. But the object of the pseudo-scientist is to utter a sort of formula of enchantment which will chill and freeze these wanderers for ever. If their bodies still move about, at least their minds will never move again. He utters the magic words “Man has evolved powers of locomotion”; and man loses them on the spot. Those who were previously walking about remain stuck like statues in the garden of the wizard.
To take one case: the book I read repeated for the millionth time that modesty must be meaningless because the amount of clothing varies among various races. As if any theologian or moralist of standing ever said that the divine plan of the universe dictated a particular length of skirt! All they dictated was decent acquiescence in whatever was regarded as a reasonably unobtrusive length of skirt. But the writer did not think much of modesty as a reason for clothing; it was mentioned in Genesis and therefore could not be true. Now it is quite true that ornament is a very early element in this mysterious human behaviour; though the ornament often refers to taboos about sex. But this writer could not be content to say that dress began with ornament. He must insist on saying that dress began with ostentation. That is to say, he was bound to begin with a word that belittles and depreciates; even when it is inapplicable. A whole tribe could not wear the same clothes out of ostentation; and in our modern tribe it is commoner to wear no clothes with that object. Besides, ornament began with all sorts of things other than clothes; pottery and walls and weapons and so on. And if the writer supposes that one superior baboon could say to another slightly inferior baboon, “Paint or weave me an ornament that coils like the whirlpool or dances like the waves, that catches the stars in a net or branches into suns like a rose-tree into roses; because I am feeling ostentatious this morning,” and that the common workman would then carry out the task—why then the writer considerably underrates the subtlety even of the most primitive and prehistoric art. But he must have a word that shrivels and cheapens something; so he calls the whole mystery of the human thirst for beauty “ostentation.” But anybody, who has read many books of this swaggering scientific sort, knows that there can be a good deal of ostentation with no beauty at all.
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XXV
Sugli educatori evoluzionisti
CON i sommi sacerdoti di Mumbo-Jumbo sono in rapporti cordiali; con gli adoratori della Scimmia Verde e del Serpente dalle Sette Teste posso chiacchierare allegramente se ci incontriamo per caso in società; con i bevitori di sangue di Baphomet ho convenuto con tatto di dissentire; con i Dervisci Urlanti del Deserto Rosso vedo aperta la via alla riconciliazione; da coloro che offrono i loro pargoli al Coccodrillo più Antico differisco soltanto d’opinione; di quelli che considerano un segno di favore divino il fatto che la testa della loro madre venga staccata a morsi da una tigre del Bengala, sono disposto a credere che siano migliori del loro credo; a quelli che credono che il mare sia il verde sangue di un grande gigante il cui volto anemico è esposto nella Luna, sono pronto a concedere che potremmo star guardando due diversi aspetti della verità; in quelli che sinceramente sperano di compiacere il dio dei loro padri non mangiando altro che scorpioni vivi, saluto rispettosamente un consiglio di perfezione che non sono io stesso chiamato a seguire; in quelli che si dipingono di scarlatto da capo a piedi e danzano dinanzi all’Elefante dalle Nove Teste, riconosco una pratica ritualistica che una discussione più franca e più piena potrebbe bene raccomandare persino a scuole di pensiero meno avanzate nella Chiesa Universale; dei Thug penso con speranza; dei Bashi-Bazouk ricevo le notizie più rassicuranti; e agli Scienziati Cristiani estendo la carità cristiana. Ma esiste un modo di scrivere di simili cose e di simili persone che mi pare suggerire qualcosa di assolutamente subumano e ben meno che ottuso; qualcosa di così striminzito che a stento possiamo riconoscervi la statura dell’uomo; qualcosa di così stupido che a stento possiamo chiamarlo la mente dell’uomo; qualcosa di così piatto e privo di slancio che potrebbe forse essere la mente di uno di quei pesci piatti e pallidi che giacciono sul fondo del mare profondo e oscuro e vivono soltanto in due dimensioni. E questa mentalità è la mentalità di un gran numero di persone che scrivono opere didattiche sulla storia evoluzionistica, e sono così grossolanamente ottenebrate da credersi davvero illuminate.
Poiché le profondità di una superstizione, persino le profondità di una degradazione, sono almeno profondità. Non gridano con vacua presunzione per aver trovato null’altro che secche. C’è qualcosa nella più grossolana idolatria o nella più folle mitologia che ha una qualità di brancolamento e di adombramento. C’è nella vita più di quanto comprendiamo; qualcuno ci ha detto che se mangiassimo uno scorpione o adorassimo una scimmia verde potremmo comprenderla meglio. Ma l’educatore evoluzionista, non essendo mai stato dalla nascita in nient’altro che nel buio, crede naturalmente di trovarsi in pieno giorno. La sua stessa nozione di luce diurna è qualcosa di così vuoto da essere semplicemente cieco. Non vi sono profondità in essa, né di luce né di tenebra. Non vi sono dimensioni in essa; non solo nessuna quarta, ma nessuna terza, nessuna seconda, e a stento una prima; di certo nessuna dimensione in cui la mente possa muoversi. Perciò la mente resta fissa, in una postura che si dice progressista. Non guarda mai indietro, nemmeno per ricordare; non guarda mai dall’altra parte, nemmeno per esperimento; non guarda mai il rovescio, nemmeno per un paradosso; non ammicca mai con l’altro occhio. Sa semplicemente tutto ciò che c’è; e non pare esservi molto da sapere. Di recente ho scorso un esemplare di questa sorta di sommario scientifico della storia dell’uomo; e sto dando sfogo ai miei sentimenti.
Quegli scrittori talvolta dicono di essere agnostici riguardo a Dio. Volesse il Cielo che acconsentissero a essere agnostici riguardo all’Uomo! Volessero lasciare l’amore della bellezza o del mistero tanto misteriosi quanto realmente sono. Ogni fanciullo nasce di fronte a certe domande aperte. Le trova aperte proprio come trova aperte le orecchie o i polmoni o le narici; e sa per istinto che attraverso queste domande aperte inspira l’aria e la vita dell’universo. Perché i sogni siano diversi dalla luce del giorno, perché le cose morte siano diverse da quelle vive, perché egli stesso sia diverso dagli altri, perché la bellezza ci renda inquieti e persino l’amore sia una sorgente di litigi, perché non riusciamo a inserirci tanto bene nel nostro ambiente da dimenticare esso e noi stessi; tutte queste cose sono vagamente avvertite dai bambini nei lunghi, vuoti pomeriggi; o dai poeti primitivi che scrivono le epopee e le leggende del mattino del mondo. E tutte le leggende, per quanto barbariche, sono colme del vento di tutto questo più ampio interrogarsi. Rimandano tutte a quegli antichi pozzi insondabili che scendono più giù della ragione fino alle radici stesse del mondo, ma contengono le sorgenti che ristorano la ragione e la mantengono attiva per sempre. Lo scopo dello storico razionalista è di otturare quei pozzi. Vi inserisce una sorta di tappo, come uno stupido idraulico, per arrestare lo sgorgare della fonte della giovinezza. Il tappo è generalmente una parola; una parola stupida usata come turacciolo sul pensiero. Non risolve il mistero; non fa che stordire o paralizzare la facoltà di accorgersi che si tratta di un mistero. Quando un ragazzo vuole camminare in giro, sa che ciò si mescola a sentimenti che non ha sondato e a una canzone intitolata «Over the Hills and Far Away». Quando un poeta cammina in giro, si rende conto di qualcosa di strano nel fatto che egli possa camminare in giro, e che un albero o una montagna non possano camminare in giro. Ma lo scopo dello pseudo-scienziato è di pronunciare una sorta di formula d’incantesimo che raggeli e congeli per sempre questi vagabondi. Se i loro corpi continueranno a muoversi in giro, almeno le loro menti non si muoveranno mai più. Egli pronuncia le magiche parole «L’uomo ha evoluto facoltà di locomozione»; e l’uomo le perde all’istante. Quelli che prima camminavano in giro restano impietriti come statue nel giardino del mago.
Per prendere un caso: il libro che ho letto ripeteva per la milionesima volta che il pudore dev’essere privo di senso perché la quantità di indumenti varia tra le varie razze. Come se un teologo o un moralista di qualche rilievo avesse mai detto che il disegno divino dell’universo prescrivesse una particolare lunghezza di gonna! Tutto ciò che essi prescrissero fu una decorosa acquiescenza a qualunque cosa fosse considerata una lunghezza di gonna ragionevolmente discreta. Ma lo scrittore non teneva in gran conto il pudore come ragione per l’abbigliamento; era menzionato nella Genesi e perciò non poteva essere vero. Ora, è verissimo che l’ornamento è un elemento assai precoce in questo misterioso comportamento umano; benché l’ornamento si riferisca spesso a tabù circa il sesso. Ma questo scrittore non poteva accontentarsi di dire che l’abito ebbe inizio con l’ornamento. Doveva insistere nel dire che l’abito ebbe inizio con l’ostentazione. Vale a dire, era costretto a cominciare con una parola che sminuisce e svaluta; anche quando è inapplicabile. Un’intera tribù non poteva indossare gli stessi abiti per ostentazione; e nella nostra tribù moderna è più comune non indossare abiti con quello scopo. Del resto, l’ornamento cominciò con ogni sorta di cose diverse dagli abiti; ceramiche e muri e armi e così via. E se lo scrittore suppone che un babbuino superiore potesse dire a un altro babbuino leggermente inferiore: «Dipingimi o tessimi un ornamento che si attorcigli come il vortice o danzi come le onde, che catturi le stelle in una rete o si ramifichi in soli come un roseto in rose; perché stamattina mi sento ostentativo», e che il comune artigiano avrebbe poi eseguito il compito—ebbene, allora lo scrittore sottovaluta considerevolmente la sottigliezza persino dell’arte più primitiva e preistorica. Ma egli deve avere una parola che raggrinzisca e svilisca qualcosa; e così chiama l’intero mistero della sete umana di bellezza «ostentazione». Ma chiunque abbia letto molti libri di questa spavalda genìa scientifica sa che può esservi una gran quantità di ostentazione senza alcuna bellezza.
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XXVI
On the Contiguous Past
ALMOST immediately after the end of the Great War a German wrote a highly successful or widely boomed book called The Decline of the West. The most human inference (in the opinion of many) was that the German, having assisted at the spectacle of the Decline and Fall of the German Empire, naturally wanted all the rest of us to decline and fall with him. He felt it would be obviously a breach of taste and tact for any nation to flourish if Germany had declined; if, indeed, he was even aware of the existence of such fringes of his Empire as France or Flanders or England. Anyhow, he applied his doctrine to all that is most active in our civilization, whether we are so constituted as to call it the Indo-Germanic race or prefer to call it Christendom. But there was more in this theory of his about a general collapse; which was also a theory of a recurrent collapse. In this, indeed, and in his general idea of a modern phase of decline, his view was quite reasonable and very persuasively stated. But there was bound up with it another set of ideas which are not necessarily any part of the theory, either that civilizations periodically weaken or that our civilization has weakened in our period. Those two theses may quite well be true; but the thesis of the book was false.
For me, at least, it was false because it was fatalist; false because it was unhistoric; and false because it involved a particular falsity about the very spirit of the great culture which the critic criticized. It is the whole point of that culture that it has been continuous; it was the whole point of the critic that it had been discontinuous and disconnected. He was not content to say that civilizations revolve in separate cycles, in the sense in which we might be said to belong to a different civilization from the Druids. He cut up ordinary European history into chunks, that were supposed to have no more to do with each other than Chinese history and Aztec history. He chopped ordinary Christian history in two in the middle, in order to deny that either part of it was Christian. So far as I remember, he attributed the first half of it entirely to the Moslem Arabs, because they were not Christians; and the second half of it to people of the type of Faust, because they were rather fishy sort of Christians, and German as well. And he talked about these divisions as if they were like the abysses that might separate a stratum full of primordial crystals from a stratum, æons afterwards, containing the first fantastic traces of marsupial life.
Now, I am quite certain, as a matter of mere common sense, that the history of Christendom, or even the history of Europe, was never so fragmentary as that. We are much more connected with the ancient Greeks than the German writer would allow us to be with the later mediævals, or even the earlier moderns. The sort of distinction he suggested only happens when a cycle of civilization really dies, and then fossilizes and remains as inscrutable as an ammonite. We have no idea what was the religion of the Cro-Magnans, though we infer from certain pictures of ritual dances (as well as from our own common sense) that they had one. We do not know the significance of the Cup and Ring Stones, though the fortunate and civilized of us still use rings, as in the case of wedding-rings, or cups even in the sense of wine-cups. We do not even know if we interpret the signs rightly, or whether they are signs at all. Now, the Greek gods have never died in that fashion; and the Roman Empire has never died at all. Of the most modern industrial cities in England, many have in their very names the title of the Roman Camp; and wherever there stood the Roman Camp, there stood afterwards the Christian Cathedral. There was never one moment, in the long history from Herodotus to Herr Spengler, when all the men who counted in any age did not talk of The Fall of Troy; there was never a generation when young poets did not make that old tale a topic for new poems. I wonder whether a poem by Heredia about Antony, or a poem by Morris about Arthur, belongs to the dead Greek period or the dead Arabic period? There was never a generation when poets did not invoke Virgil, if only to imitate him. There was never a generation in which philosophers did not refer to Aristotle, if only to contradict him. The thread of our cultural continuity has never been broken.
I think the fact worth recording at the moment for two reasons. The first is that the same energetic German author has launched yet another book, of much less dignity and of much more dogmatism, reaffirming his theory, and especially the most gloomy and barbaric parts of it. The other is that there is a horrible possibility that what he says falsely about our past may be said truly about our present and our future. I mean that, hitherto, the men of our ancient tradition have done everything except forget. Whatever might be fanatical or ill-balanced about their religions or their revolutions, they have each, in turn, taken particular care to remember the deeds of their fathers. Even when they poisoned the purer Paganism of Homer and Pindar, they did not destroy it; they left it standing for ever against them as a reproach. Even when they dethroned the Greek gods they did not dismiss them; in the first just fury they denounced them as devils, but in the long run they let them remain as elves. They let them remain as fanciful and fabulous figures, for literary metaphor or plastic decoration, so that Christendom has left the nymph in poetry or the cupid in sculpture. It is true that now, for the first time, the race that has always remembered is invited on every side to forget.
Yes; it is true that today, for the first time, our newspapers and our new politicians have asked us to forget, not what happened a thousand years ago or a hundred years ago, but what happened twenty years ago. When it is a question of shifting a policy or rehabilitating a politician, they will ask us to forget what happened two years ago or two months ago. Here, indeed, we have the great Spengler System, of total separation of one historical episode from another. Here is the true trick of regarding ourselves as divided by æons and abysses, not only from our fathers, but from ourselves. Thus, by reading the daily paper every day, and forgetting everything that it said on the previous day, we can divide human history into self-contained cycles; each consisting, not of five hundred years, but of twenty-four hours. By this means we can regard the politician we trusted last week as we regard the cave-man whose carvings we could not decipher in a hundred years. By this means we can consider the slogans and swaggering policies which we ourselves cheered only recently, as if they were hieroglyphics as unintelligible as the Cup and Ring Stones. This new quality of forgetfulness, in our current culture, does give some justification to the pessimism of the German professor; and if we accept such oblivion, then doubtless our “cycle” will really curl up like a worm on the floor and lie still for ever.
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XXVI
Sul passato contiguo
QUASI subito dopo la fine della Grande Guerra un tedesco scrisse un libro di gran successo, o assai clamorosamente lanciato, intitolato Il tramonto dell’Occidente. L’inferenza più umana (a parere di molti) era che il tedesco, avendo assistito allo spettacolo del tramonto e della caduta dell’Impero germanico, desiderasse naturalmente che tutti gli altri tramontassero e cadessero con lui. Sentiva che sarebbe stata evidentemente una mancanza di gusto e di tatto che una nazione qualsiasi prosperasse, se la Germania era tramontata; ammesso, del resto, che egli fosse anche solo consapevole dell’esistenza di lembi del suo Impero quali la Francia o le Fiandre o l’Inghilterra. Comunque sia, egli applicò la sua dottrina a tutto ciò che vi è di più vivo nella nostra civiltà, sia che siamo così fatti da chiamarla razza indo-germanica, sia che preferiamo chiamarla Cristianità. Ma in questa sua teoria di un crollo generale c’era qualcosa di più; e cioè anche una teoria di un crollo ricorrente. In questo, davvero, e nella sua idea generale di una fase moderna di declino, la sua tesi era assai ragionevole ed esposta in modo molto persuasivo. Ma ad essa era legato un altro ordine di idee che non sono necessariamente parte alcuna della teoria, né che le civiltà si indeboliscano periodicamente né che la nostra civiltà si sia indebolita nella nostra epoca. Quelle due tesi possono ben essere vere; ma la tesi del libro era falsa.
Per me, almeno, era falsa perché fatalista; falsa perché antistorica; e falsa perché implicava una particolare falsità intorno allo spirito stesso della grande cultura che il critico criticava. È il punto essenziale di quella cultura l’essere stata continua; ed era il punto essenziale del critico che essa fosse stata discontinua e sconnessa. Non si accontentava di dire che le civiltà ruotano in cicli separati, nel senso in cui si potrebbe dire che noi apparteniamo a una civiltà diversa da quella dei Druidi. Egli fece a pezzi la comune storia europea in blocchi che si supponeva non avessero più da spartire fra loro di quanto ne abbiano la storia cinese e la storia azteca. Egli tagliò in due, nel bel mezzo, la comune storia cristiana, per negare che l’una o l’altra parte fosse cristiana. Per quanto ricordo, egli attribuì la prima metà interamente agli Arabi musulmani, perché non erano cristiani; e la seconda metà a gente del tipo di Faust, perché erano cristiani piuttosto sospetti, e per giunta tedeschi anche. E parlava di queste divisioni come se fossero simili agli abissi che potrebbero separare uno strato pieno di cristalli primordiali da uno strato, eoni più tardi, contenente le prime fantastiche tracce di vita marsupiale.
Ora, sono del tutto certo, per puro buon senso, che la storia della Cristianità, o anche solo la storia d’Europa, non fu mai così frammentaria. Noi siamo assai più legati agli antichi Greci di quanto lo scrittore tedesco ci concederebbe di esserlo ai medievali più tardi, o persino ai moderni più antichi. Il genere di distinzione da lui suggerito si verifica soltanto quando un ciclo di civiltà muore davvero, e allora si fossilizza e resta imperscrutabile come un’ammonite. Non abbiamo idea di quale fosse la religione dei Cro-Magnon, benché deduciamo da certe raffigurazioni di danze rituali (così come dal nostro stesso buon senso) che ne avessero una. Non conosciamo il significato delle Pietre a Coppella e Anello, benché i fortunati e civili tra noi usino ancora anelli, come nel caso delle fedi nuziali, o coppe persino nel senso di coppe di vino. Non sappiamo nemmeno se interpretiamo rettamente quei segni, né se siano affatto segni. Ora, gli dèi greci non sono mai morti a quel modo; e l’Impero romano non è mai morto del tutto. Fra le più moderne città industriali d’Inghilterra, molte recano nel loro stesso nome il titolo del Campo Romano; e ovunque sorgesse il Campo Romano, là sorse in seguito la Cattedrale cristiana. Non vi fu mai un solo istante, nella lunga storia da Erodoto al Signor Spengler, in cui tutti gli uomini che contavano in un’epoca non parlassero della Caduta di Troia; non vi fu mai una generazione in cui i giovani poeti non facessero di quell’antica vicenda un tema per nuove poesie. Mi domando se una poesia di Heredia su Antonio, o una poesia di Morris su Artù, appartenga al morto periodo greco o al morto periodo arabo. Non vi fu mai una generazione in cui i poeti non invocassero Virgilio, non fosse che per imitarlo. Non vi fu mai una generazione in cui i filosofi non si riferissero ad Aristotele, non fosse che per contraddirlo. Il filo della nostra continuità culturale non si è mai spezzato.
Penso valga la pena di registrare il fatto, in questo momento, per due ragioni. La prima è che il medesimo energico autore tedesco ha lanciato ancora un altro libro, di molto minore dignità e di molto maggiore dogmatismo, riaffermando la sua teoria, e specialmente le parti più tetre e barbariche di essa. L’altra è che vi è una orribile possibilità che ciò che egli dice falsamente sul nostro passato possa dirsi veramente sul nostro presente e sul nostro futuro. Voglio dire che, fino ad oggi, gli uomini della nostra antica tradizione hanno fatto di tutto tranne che dimenticare. Per quanto fanatico o squilibrato potesse esservi nelle loro religioni o nelle loro rivoluzioni, essi ebbero ciascuno, a turno, particolare cura di ricordare le gesta dei loro padri. Perfino quando avvelenarono il più puro Paganesimo di Omero e di Pindaro, non lo distrussero; lo lasciarono ritto per sempre contro di sé come un rimprovero. Perfino quando detronizzarono gli dèi greci, non li congedarono; nel primo giusto furore li denunciarono come demoni, ma alla lunga li lasciarono rimanere come elfi. Li lasciarono rimanere come figure fantasiose e favolose, per la metafora letteraria o la decorazione plastica, sicché la Cristianità ha lasciato la ninfa nella poesia o il cupido nella scultura. È vero che ora, per la prima volta, la stirpe che ha sempre ricordato è invitata da ogni parte a dimenticare.
Sì; è vero che oggi, per la prima volta, i nostri giornali e i nostri nuovi politici ci hanno chiesto di dimenticare, non ciò che accadde mille anni fa o cent’anni fa, ma ciò che accadde vent’anni fa. Quando si tratta di cambiare una politica o di riabilitare un politico, ci chiederanno di dimenticare ciò che accadde due anni fa o due mesi fa. Qui, davvero, abbiamo il grande Sistema Spengleriano, della totale separazione di un episodio storico da un altro. Ecco il vero trucco di considerarci divisi da eoni e da abissi, non solo dai nostri padri, ma da noi stessi. Così, leggendo il quotidiano ogni giorno, e dimenticando tutto ciò che diceva il giorno prima, possiamo dividere l’umana storia in cicli autoconclusi; ciascuno costituito, non di cinque secoli, ma di ventiquattr’ore. Con questo mezzo possiamo considerare il politico in cui riponemmo fiducia la settimana scorsa come consideriamo l’uomo delle caverne le cui incisioni non riuscimmo a decifrare in cent’anni. Con questo mezzo possiamo considerare gli slogan e le politiche spavalde che noi stessi acclamammo solo di recente, come se fossero geroglifici indecifrabili al pari delle Pietre a Coppella e Anello. Questa nuova qualità della dimenticanza, nella nostra cultura odierna, dà davvero qualche giustificazione al pessimismo del professore tedesco; e se accettiamo tale oblio, allora senza dubbio il nostro «ciclo» si arrotolerà davvero come un verme sul pavimento e giacerà immobile per sempre.
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XXVII
On the Merry Monarch
MR. ARTHUR BRYANT recently published, through Messrs. Longmans, a very thoughtful and interesting study of King Charles II. It was certainly a favourable portrait; but it was a portrait, and not an effigy or an idol or a whitewashed statue, any more than a caricature. There is room for difference of opinion about the proportions of the picture, but it was a picture of a real object. It has been the curse of our waxwork history that to each historical figure was attached some more or less legendary saying like a label, and even when the saying was partly true it always missed the point of the truth. The point, the peculiar truth, about Charles II always seems to me to be this—that he was an amazing coincidence. He was a prince born to inherit a crown; and he was an extremely able man and, on a lower level, a sort of genius. The label, or literary allusion, officially attached to Charles II is almost always that epigram by one of his intimates to the effect that he “never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one.” But indeed it was the epigrammatist who said the foolish thing. It was, in reality, nearly the reverse of the truth. Charles II, being a man who had maintained fashionable light conversation down to his very deathbed, being, moreover, a man who must have made love to about forty women, must surely have gone to his grave having said a very large number of foolish things. But he had also done a very large number of wise things; and some things which a critic might well criticize as too wise, as having rather the wisdom of the serpent than the harmlessness of the dove. Indeed, I cannot recall at the moment that he ever did a thing that was unwise, though on some occasions he may have done a thing that was unworthy. Mr. Belloc, in his book on James II, has in some sense emphasized this aspect. He has in some sense set James II against Charles II; the former as the thoroughly sincere man who always has the appearance of being stupid and stubborn, the latter as the complex, compromising, and less heroic man who always seems to be tactful and reasonable. Mr. Arthur Bryant’s version might almost be called a defence of Charles II against this implied comparison. He has no difficulty in showing that Charles was in a desperately difficult position, that the main fault lay with the fools, frauds, and bigots who pressed upon him; but I am not sure whether he entirely disposes of the appeal to the heroic made by Mr. Belloc, who wrote: “If he had resisted, he would have lost his Crown? He should have resisted and lost his Crown. For there are other things that a man may lose.”
But, whatever we may think of the man’s moral quality, I am still surprised that nobody has taken anything like adequate notice of his mental quality. None of the Stuarts was stupid, in the sense that the term might be applied to the first German Georges. Mary Queen of Scots was brilliant and accomplished; James I was a learned man; Charles I was a cultivated man; James II was a capable man, especially as an administrator of the Navy; and whatever be the truth about the rather dim and dismal figure of the First Pretender, it is obvious that Charles Edward of the ‘45 was a fighter and no fool. But it seems to me that Charles II stands out from the Stuarts in really having the sort of brain that might have brought him into prominence if he had not been a prince. Much of the mistake arises from the blind and blundering trick of talking as if that sort of man were merely a “wit,” and talking as if “wit” were only a sort of silly spangle or tinsel ornament that any fool could flaunt. In fact, there is much more wisdom in the old use of the word “wit” than in the new. In the old phrases about a man setting his wits to work, or having wit enough to do this or that, the word was really used as a synonym for mind. It does almost always stand for mind, but especially for presence of mind. Many, who quote the cheeky courtier’s carefully prepared couplet about never saying a foolish thing and never doing a wise one do not mention Charles’s much more piercing and quite impromptu reply to it, in that passage in which he is reported as answering: “I am an English King; and my words are my own, but my actions are my Ministers’.” The man who talked like that did not merely have wit, or what these people mean by wit; he had brains.
Now, if we read the detailed, dramatic, and thrilling account, in Mr. Bryant’s book, of Charles II’s long game of political Poker against the politicians of the Opposition, really brilliant men like Shaftesbury and Halifax, we shall be watching a pure battle of brains, in which his brains were certainly the best. He, began with no cards at all; at least, he never had anything but bad cards in the worst time of the battle; he had all the ablest men of the age holding all the cards of the game against him; and he beat them all. He weathered a Revolution; which is only not classed with the Glorious Revolution or the American Revolution because he weathered it. And James II and George III did not. And he achieved a Restoration; not as a young prince coming back by the chance of birth or the choice of Parliament, but as an old, weary, and entirely lonely politician, in spite of Parliament, and by sheer unflagging intelligence. For the Restoration did not happen at the beginning of Charles’s reign, but at the end.
It would be difficult to decide here on the merits of his cause, on which men will differ according to their religious and political partialities. It is well to note, however, that here again most people who discuss the politics miss the point. Thus they often read into the factions and fanaticisms of the period a modern democratic ideal that did not then exist either in the Whigs or in the King, but, if anything, rather more in the King than in the Whigs. When, for instance, Charles said that he thought his people would rather have one King than five hundred Kings, it is often taken, even by those who agree with it, as the usual Tory taunt at the formless tyranny of a mob. Certainly Charles, or any Tory of the period, might quite probably have uttered a taunt against the tyranny of the mob. But, in fact, in this case he meant much more exactly what he said, and what he said was perfectly correct. The Parliament was not the people, not even in the rather mechanical and clumsy way in which it is now supposed to be the people. It was based on a narrow suffrage, was honey-combed with nepotism, and mostly nominated by nobles and squires. But the case was much stronger than that. It was, in its whole attitude and action, a privileged class; a ruling class; a thing like a house of Peers and Princes. It really was, as Charles said, a House of Five Hundred Kings. It had a special Parliamentary privilege, just as he had a special Royal prerogative; and it is true to say that the King strove with the Kings. All this comes out very clearly in Mr. Bryant’s narrative of the nightmare controversy of the Popish Plot. I am not going to deal here with the Popish Plot in its other aspects, least of all in its Popish aspect. My interest for the moment is not even moral, let alone religious. It is entirely intellectual, and concerned only with an intellectual admiration, in the real sense of astonishment, for that one melancholy humorist who lived through the whole of that Bedlam and remained at least the sanest of English Kings.
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XXVII
Sul Monarca Gioviale
IL SIGNOR ARTHUR BRYANT ha recentemente pubblicato, per i tipi dei signori Longmans, uno studio assai meditato e interessante su re Carlo II. Era senza dubbio un ritratto favorevole; ma era un ritratto, e non un’effigie, né un idolo, né una statua imbiancata a calce, non più di quanto fosse una caricatura. C’è spazio per divergenze di opinione circa le proporzioni del quadro, ma era il quadro di un oggetto reale. È stata la maledizione della nostra storia da museo delle cere che a ciascuna figura storica venisse appiccicata, come un’etichetta, una qualche frase più o meno leggendaria, e anche quando la frase era in parte vera essa mancava sempre il cuore della verità. Il punto, la peculiare verità, intorno a Carlo II mi è sempre parso essere questo: che egli fu una prodigiosa coincidenza. Era un principe nato per ereditare una corona; ed era un uomo di straordinaria abilità e, a un livello più basso, una sorta di genio. L’etichetta, o allusione letteraria, ufficialmente appiccicata a Carlo II è quasi sempre quell’epigramma di uno dei suoi intimi, secondo cui egli «non disse mai una cosa sciocca e non ne fece mai una saggia». Ma in verità fu l’epigrammista a dire la cosa sciocca. Era, in realtà, quasi il rovescio della verità. Carlo II, essendo un uomo che aveva mantenuto la brillante conversazione mondana fino al proprio letto di morte, essendo, per di più, un uomo che deve aver fatto la corte a una quarantina di donne, deve certamente essere sceso nella sua tomba avendo detto un gran numero di cose sciocche. Ma aveva anche fatto un gran numero di cose sagge; e alcune cose che un critico potrebbe ben criticare come troppo sagge, in quanto dotate piuttosto della saggezza del serpente che dell’innocenza della colomba. Anzi, non riesco al momento a ricordare che egli abbia mai fatto una cosa che fosse imprudente, per quanto in alcune occasioni possa aver fatto una cosa che fosse indegna. Il signor Belloc, nel suo libro su Giacomo II, ha in qualche modo posto l’accento su questo aspetto. Ha in qualche modo contrapposto Giacomo II a Carlo II; il primo come l’uomo del tutto sincero che ha sempre l’apparenza di essere stupido e ostinato, il secondo come l’uomo complesso, incline al compromesso e meno eroico, che sembra sempre pieno di tatto e ragionevole. La versione del signor Arthur Bryant si potrebbe quasi definire una difesa di Carlo II contro questo implicito paragone. Non gli riesce difficile mostrare che Carlo si trovava in una posizione disperatamente difficile, che la colpa principale ricadeva sugli sciocchi, sugli imbroglioni e sui bigotti che lo incalzavano; ma non sono certo che egli liquidi interamente l’appello all’eroico avanzato dal signor Belloc, il quale scrisse: «Se avesse resistito, avrebbe perduto la corona? Avrebbe dovuto resistere e perdere la sua corona. Poiché vi sono altre cose che un uomo può perdere».
Ma, qualunque cosa possiamo pensare della qualità morale dell’uomo, mi sorprende ancora che nessuno abbia mai preso nota, in modo lontanamente adeguato, della sua qualità mentale. Nessuno degli Stuart fu stupido, nel senso in cui il termine si potrebbe applicare ai primi Giorgio tedeschi. Maria regina di Scozia fu brillante e colta; Giacomo I fu un uomo dotto; Carlo I fu un uomo raffinato; Giacomo II fu un uomo capace, specialmente come amministratore della Marina; e qualunque sia la verità intorno alla figura piuttosto scialba e tetra del Primo Pretendente, è evidente che Carlo Edoardo del ‘45 fu un combattente e non uno sciocco. Ma mi pare che Carlo II si distingua fra gli Stuart per aver davvero posseduto quella sorta di ingegno che avrebbe potuto portarlo alla ribalta se non fosse stato un principe. Gran parte dell’equivoco nasce dall’abitudine cieca e maldestra di parlare come se un uomo di quel genere fosse soltanto un «bello spirito», e di parlare come se lo «spirito» fosse solo una specie di sciocco lustrino o di orpello di stagnola che qualsiasi sciocco potrebbe sfoggiare. In realtà, c’è molta più saggezza nell’antico uso della parola «spirito» che nel nuovo. Nelle antiche espressioni su un uomo che mette a frutto il proprio spirito, o che ha spirito a sufficienza per fare questo o quello, la parola era davvero usata come sinonimo di mente. Sta quasi sempre a indicare la mente, ma soprattutto la presenza di spirito. Molti, che citano lo studiatissimo distico dello sfacciato cortigiano sul non dire mai una cosa sciocca e sul non fare mai una cosa saggia, non menzionano la ben più penetrante e del tutto improvvisata risposta di Carlo, in quel passo in cui lo si dà per rispondere: «Sono un re inglese; e le mie parole sono mie, ma le mie azioni sono dei miei Ministri». L’uomo che parlava così non aveva soltanto spirito, o ciò che questa gente intende per spirito; aveva cervello.
Ora, se leggiamo il resoconto particolareggiato, drammatico e avvincente, nel libro del signor Bryant, della lunga partita di Poker politico di Carlo II contro i politici dell’Opposizione, uomini davvero brillanti come Shaftesbury e Halifax, assisteremo a una pura battaglia di cervelli, nella quale il suo cervello fu senz’altro il migliore. Egli cominciò senza carte di alcun genere; o almeno, non ebbe mai altro che pessime carte nel momento peggiore tempo della battaglia; aveva contro di sé tutti gli uomini più abili dell’epoca, che tenevano in mano tutte le carte del gioco; e li batté tutti. Superò indenne una Rivoluzione; che non viene annoverata insieme alla Gloriosa Rivoluzione o alla Rivoluzione americana solo perché egli la superò indenne. E Giacomo II e Giorgio III non fecero altrettanto. E realizzò una Restaurazione; non come un giovane principe che torna per il caso della nascita o per la scelta del Parlamento, ma come un politico anziano, stanco e del tutto solo, a dispetto del Parlamento, e per pura, instancabile intelligenza. Poiché la Restaurazione non avvenne al principio del regno di Carlo, ma alla fine.
Sarebbe difficile decidere qui sui meriti della sua causa, sulla quale gli uomini divergeranno secondo le loro parzialità religiose e politiche. È bene notare, tuttavia, che anche qui la maggior parte di coloro che discutono di politica mancano il punto. Così essi leggono spesso, nelle fazioni e nei fanatismi dell’epoca, un moderno ideale democratico che allora non esisteva né nei Whig né nel re, ma, semmai, piuttosto più nel re che nei Whig. Quando, per esempio, Carlo disse che riteneva il suo popolo avrebbe preferito avere un solo re anziché cinque- cento Re, la cosa viene spesso interpretata, persino da chi vi concorda, come il consueto sarcasmo Tory contro l’informe tirannia della plebaglia. Certo, Carlo, o qualsiasi Tory dell’epoca, avrebbe potuto assai probabilmente scagliare un sarcasmo contro la tirannia della plebaglia. Ma, di fatto, in questo caso intendeva molto più esattamente ciò che disse, e ciò che disse era perfettamente corretto. Il Parlamento non era il popolo, nemmeno nel modo piuttosto meccanico e goffo in cui oggi lo si suppone essere il popolo. Si fondava su un suffragio ristretto, era tutto crivellato di nepotismo, e per lo più nominato da nobili e possidenti. Ma il caso era assai più forte di così. Era, nel suo intero atteggiamento e nella sua azione, una classe privilegiata; una classe dominante; una cosa simile a una camera di Pari e di Principi. Era davvero, come disse Carlo, una Camera di Cinquecento Re. Aveva uno speciale privilegio parlamentare, proprio come egli aveva una speciale prerogativa regia; ed è esatto dire che il re lottava con i Re. Tutto ciò emerge con grande chiarezza nel racconto del signor Bryant della controversia da incubo del Complotto Papista. Non intendo occuparmi qui del Complotto Papista nei suoi altri aspetti, e meno che mai nel suo aspetto papista. Il mio interesse, per il momento, non è nemmeno morale, per non dire tanto meno religioso. È interamente intellettuale, e riguarda soltanto un’ intellettuale ammirazione, nel senso proprio dello stupore, per quell’unico umorista malinconico che attraversò tutto quel manicomio e rimase almeno il più assennato dei Re inglesi.
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XXVIII
On Suicide: North and South
IN a recent discussion on Suicide, an interesting comparison was made between what is loosely called the Latin culture and what is still more loosely, and less consistently, called the Nordic or Teutonic or Germanic, according to the foreign policy at the moment. A learned writer pointed out, very truly, that for some reason or other Nordic men are more liable to kill themselves than are the men of the Mediterranean. The men of the Mediterranean are more likely to relieve their feelings by killing somebody else. And in this, I grieve to say, they have a certain half-involuntary support in my sympathies. I admit that murder must be classed among acts distinctly improper and, indeed, morally wrong. But suicide seems to me the supreme blasphemy against God and man and beast and vegetables; the attack not upon a life, but upon life itself; the murder of the universe. But that is another question, which I do not debate here. What interests me about the criticism of the two cultures is this. The critic who was sufficiently acute to notice that Latins are less prone than Teutons to this particular sort of depression and despair, naturally cast about for a cause or an explanation. And, being a modern critic, he was at once tempted to be a materialist. There is something strange in the modern mind, by which a material cause always seems more like a real cause. In the science of the nineteenth century, the material cause was generally found in physical heredity; that is to say, in Race. But Race has been rather blown upon lately; like most of the science of the nineteenth century. The critic whom I criticize took the other alternative materialistic cause; the same that has generally been favoured by Mr. Bernard Shaw. He said that most or much of the difference was due to Climate.
Now, I believe material causes count for much less in history than is now supposed. I believe that moral causes count for much more than is now supposed. I believe that the supreme factor is not even the bodily framework, or the framework of environment, but the frame of mind. I could ask for no better case, for my own argument, than this case of the suicides of all nations. It was raised on this occasion in connexion with the sad end of two famous financiers or capitalists; but that aspect need not concern us now; except, perhaps, upon one particular point. I should have thought that if there was one person to whom the argument about Climate does not apply, it is a modern millionaire. The most Nordic millionaire has no need to live in the North. An American plutocrat could live as easily in Florida as in Maine, or pay a permanent visit to Naples instead of to Niagara. The very fact that no amount of sunshine could make him sunny, is sufficient evidence that the dark cloud was within. This, however, is a personal and even painful matter, which is no part of my argument, and with which I had not intended to deal. The point is that the critic attributes the suicide statistics to a difference of climate; and I attribute them to a difference of culture.
And it strikes me that there is a very simple test. Compare the number of suicides when the Latin world was Pagan with the number of suicides after it became Christian. The same sun shone on Brutus falling on his sword; the same blue sea smiled on Cato stabbing himself to avoid capture; the same glittering landscape of the olive and the vine was the background to the ten thousand tragedies of self-inflicted death that end the stories of the heroes of Pagan antiquity. There is no doubt that the life of those flowery lands always led to a more florid external gaiety and grace. Cleopatra blazed with blossoms and gems, and smiles, but that did not prevent her from finding an asp among the flowers. But the same fact is obvious about people considerably more respectable than Cleopatra. Those who have seen any adequate reproduction of Julius Cæsar will have been reminded of that sublime but alien atmosphere of the Stoic and the Republican which the imagination of Shakspere, though captive in the courtly world of the Tudors, could manage to reconstruct from the ruins of Plutarch. These Pagans of the old Latin world committed suicide not because they were prone to it as a vice, but because they were proud of it as a virtue. To explain their view of it, it would be necessary to analyse the whole tendency of their heathen mythology and philosophy. They killed themselves partly because they had too much, as the modern world has too little, of the notion of personal dignity. They killed themselves partly because they had a vaguer or more negative notion about the future life. They killed themselves because of a sort of hard despair that lies in the heart even of the heroism of the Stoic. But, anyhow, they did not kill themselves because the sun was shining or the grapes growing in clusters on the vine. Whatever is the cause of the change, it is not to be found in the climate which has not changed.
No; the test of the contrast between modern Latins and modern Teutons is exactly like the test of the contrast between modern Latins and ancient Latins. It is to be found in a frame of mind. Ever since Christianity came into the world, the Latins have been in a fighting frame of mind. Indeed, they have been, and still are, engaged in a fight; a fight about whether Christianity shall continue or no; a fight that has its ups and downs, as in the Vatican City or the secularization of Spain. But there is something in the atmosphere of the affirmation itself, even for those who prefer the denial, which has made everybody too keen on killing the enemy to retire to their tents and kill themselves. In the whole Mediterranean civilization there is a positive spirit. Men are either confident that they can be content with this world, or else confident that they can be convinced about the other world. Both these certainties result in relative cheerfulness and a resolve to hang on for the duration of the war. Now, in the Germanies, and generally in the northern Continental countries, the whole mental atmosphere is different. It is an atmosphere of introspective melancholy and a sort of spiritual sulks. It is exactly described in a phrase used by Mr. Augustine Birrell about Hazlitt: in the midst of the mind a black pool of metaphysics. It is a world in which men are not so much fighting religion as wandering away from it, into wildernesses of subjective speculation. It is full of scepticism, but it is not without sentimentalism; and the combination produces pessimism. It is not surprising that the pessimism sometimes produces suicide. It is the world of isolated sages, not of anti-clerical mobs or clerical congregations. From the North come the Nietzsches and the Schopenhauers, and all who, in defiance of the old name of natural philosophy, insist on inventing an unnatural philosophy. That unnatural philosophy is a third thing, quite different from natural Paganism or supernatural Christianity. It is a mood, a somewhat morbid mood, but it is the result of certain ideas in the mind; and an Eskimo does not become a suicidal maniac because he lives in the north, nor a negro a Provençal troubadour because he has a place in the sun.
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XXVIII
Sul suicidio: Nord e Sud
IN una recente discussione sul suicidio venne istituito un interessante confronto tra ciò che si chiama, alla buona, la cultura latina e ciò che si chiama, ancor più alla buona e con minor coerenza, la cultura nordica o teutonica o germanica, secondo la politica estera del momento. Un dotto scrittore osservava, con molta verità, che per una qualche ragione gli uomini del Nord sono più inclini a togliersi la vita di quanto non lo siano gli uomini del Mediterraneo. Gli uomini del Mediterraneo sono più inclini a dar sfogo ai loro sentimenti uccidendo qualcun altro. E in questo, mi duole dirlo, hanno un certo appoggio, semi-involontario, nelle mie simpatie. Ammetto che l’omicidio vada annoverato tra gli atti nettamente sconvenienti e, in verità, moralmente riprovevoli. Ma il suicidio mi appare la suprema bestemmia contro Dio e l’uomo e la bestia e i vegetali; l’attacco non contro una vita, ma contro la vita stessa; l’assassinio dell’universo. Ma questa è un’altra questione, che qui non intendo dibattere. Ciò che nella critica delle due culture m’interessa è quest’altro. Il critico, abbastanza acuto da notare che i Latini sono meno soggetti dei Teutoni a questa particolare specie di depressione e disperazione, si mise naturalmente alla ricerca di una causa o di una spiegazione. E, da critico moderno, fu subito tentato di farsi materialista. C’è qualcosa di strano nella mente moderna, per cui una causa materiale sembra sempre più simile a una causa reale. Nella scienza del diciannovesimo secolo la causa materiale veniva generalmente rintracciata nell’eredità fisica; vale a dire, nella Razza. Ma la Razza è stata piuttosto screditata di recente, come gran parte della scienza del diciannovesimo secolo. Il critico che io critico scelse l’altra alternativa causa materialistica; la medesima che è stata generalmente prediletta dal signor Bernard Shaw. Egli disse che gran parte, o buona parte, della differenza era dovuta al Clima.
Ora, io credo che le cause materiali contino assai meno, nella storia, di quanto oggi si supponga. Credo che le cause morali contino assai più di quanto oggi si supponga. Credo che il fattore supremo non sia nemmeno l’ossatura corporea, o l’ossatura dell’ambiente, bensì la disposizione dell’animo. Non potrei chiedere caso migliore, per il mio ragionamento, di questo caso dei suicidi di tutte le nazioni. Fu sollevato in quell’occasione a proposito della triste fine di due celebri finanzieri o capitalisti; ma quell’aspetto non deve occuparci ora, salvo forse su un punto particolare. Avrei creduto che, se v’è una persona a cui l’argomento del Clima non si applica, questa è il milionario moderno. Il più nordico dei milionari non ha alcun bisogno di vivere al Nord. Un plutocrate americano potrebbe vivere con la stessa facilità in Florida come nel Maine, o soggiornare stabilmente a Napoli anziché al Niagara. Il fatto stesso che nessuna quantità di sole potesse renderlo solare basta a provare che la nube oscura era dentro di lui. Questa, tuttavia, è faccenda personale e persino penosa, che non fa parte del mio ragionamento e di cui non avevo inteso occuparmi. Il punto è che il critico attribuisce le statistiche del suicidio a una differenza di clima; e io le attribuisco a una differenza di cultura.
E mi pare che vi sia una prova assai semplice. Si confronti il numero dei suicidi quando il mondo latino era pagano con il numero dei suicidi dopo che divenne cristiano. Lo stesso sole splendeva su Bruto che cadeva sulla propria spada; lo stesso mare azzurro sorrideva a Catone che si trafiggeva per sottrarsi alla cattura; lo stesso scintillante paesaggio dell’olivo e della vite faceva da sfondo alle diecimila tragedie di morte auto-inflitta che chiudono le storie degli eroi dell’antichità pagana. Non v’è dubbio che la vita di quelle terre fiorite conducesse sempre a una più florida allegria e grazia esteriore. Cleopatra fiammeggiava di fiori e di gemme, e di sorrisi, ma ciò non le impedì di trovare un aspide tra i fiori. Ma il medesimo fatto è evidente in persone assai più rispettabili di Cleopatra. Chiunque abbia visto una qualche adeguata rappresentazione del Giulio Cesare si sarà sentito richiamare alla mente quell’atmosfera sublime ma aliena dello Stoico e del Repubblicano, che l’immaginazione di Shakespeare, per quanto prigioniera nel mondo cortigiano dei Tudor, seppe ricostruire dalle rovine di Plutarco. Questi Pagani del vecchio mondo latino commettevano il suicidio non perché vi fossero inclini come a un vizio, ma perché ne andavano fieri come di una virtù. Per spiegare l’idea che ne avevano, occorrerebbe analizzare l’intera tendenza della loro mitologia e filosofia pagana. Si uccidevano in parte perché avevano troppo, laddove il mondo moderno ne ha troppo poco, del senso della dignità personale. Si uccidevano in parte perché avevano una nozione più vaga, o più negativa, della vita futura. Si uccidevano per una sorta di dura disperazione che si annida nel cuore perfino dell’eroismo dello Stoico. Ma, in ogni caso, non si uccidevano perché il sole splendeva o l’uva cresceva a grappoli sulla vite. Qualunque sia la causa del mutamento, non è da cercarsi nel clima, che non è mutato.
No; la prova del contrasto tra i Latini moderni e i Teutoni moderni è esattamente come la prova del contrasto tra i Latini moderni e i Latini antichi. Va cercata in una disposizione dell’animo. Da quando il Cristianesimo entrò nel mondo, i Latini sono stati in una disposizione d’animo battagliera. Anzi, sono stati, e sono tuttora, impegnati in una battaglia; una battaglia sul se il Cristianesimo debba continuare o no; una battaglia che ha i suoi alti e bassi, come nella Città del Vaticano o nella secolarizzazione della Spagna. Ma v’è qualcosa nell’atmosfera stessa dell’affermazione, anche per coloro che preferiscono la negazione, che ha reso tutti troppo intenti a uccidere il nemico per ritirarsi nelle proprie tende e uccidere se stessi. In tutta la civiltà mediterranea v’è uno spirito positivo. Gli uomini o sono sicuri di potersi appagare di questo mondo, oppure sono sicuri di potersi persuadere circa l’altro mondo. Entrambe queste certezze si risolvono in una relativa serenità e nella risoluzione di tenere duro per tutta la durata della guerra. Ora, nelle Germanie, e in genere nei paesi settentrionali del Continente, l’intera atmosfera mentale è diversa. È un’atmosfera di malinconia introspettiva e di una sorta di broncio spirituale. È descritta con esattezza in una frase usata dal signor Augustine Birrell a proposito di Hazlitt: in mezzo alla mente una nera pozza di metafisica. È un mondo in cui gli uomini non tanto combattono la religione quanto se ne allontanano errando, verso i deserti della speculazione soggettiva. È pieno di scetticismo, ma non è privo di sentimentalismo; e la combinazione produce il pessimismo. Non stupisce che il pessimismo talvolta produca il suicidio. È il mondo dei saggi isolati, non delle folle anticlericali o delle congregazioni clericali. Dal Nord vengono i Nietzsche e gli Schopenhauer, e tutti coloro che, a dispetto dell’antico nome di filosofia naturale, si ostinano a inventare una filosofia innaturale. Quella filosofia innaturale è una terza cosa, del tutto diversa dal Paganesimo naturale e dal Cristianesimo soprannaturale. È uno stato d’animo, uno stato d’animo alquanto morboso, ma è il risultato di certe idee nella mente; e un eschimese non diventa un maniaco suicida perché vive al Nord, né un negro un trovatore provenzale perché ha un posto al sole.
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XXIX
On Modern “Paganism”
THERE is a section, perhaps a small section, of Modern Youth which certainly strikes its elders as hard and sceptical and selfish. And of these it is customary to say that they are Pagans. It suddenly flashed across me yesterday (as one of those obvious truths that evade us even when they are obvious) that of course what is really the matter with them is that they have lost their Paganism.
I do not say, as so many journalists say, that they have lost their Christianity. For it is the quite simple and sober truth that most of them never had any. It is not their fault, though every day that passes convinces me more and more that it is their misfortune. But the notion, so common in novels and newspapers, that this new generation has rebelled against old-fashioned orthodoxy is sheer stark historical ignorance. It is the worst of all kinds of historical ignorance; ignorance of the historical events we have seen ourselves. It is absurd to say that a young man of nineteen who mixes cocktails and Communism in a studio rag in Chelsea is rebelling against Victorian Virtue or the Family Bible. You might as well say that a young buck of the Regency who wrenched off door-knockers and fought with watchmen was rebelling against the Puritans of 1649 or the tyranny of Oliver Cromwell. You might as well say that the Cavaliers who revelled at The Cock in the reign of Charles II were rising in just revolt against the usurpation of Richard III. No very laborious historical learning will be needed to perceive that there is something wrong in the calculation somewhere, if only because it skips about four or five generations that come in between. So does the cant explanation about Youth breaking away from grim old religious dogmas skip several generations in between. The boys and girls who are painting the town piebald today are not the children of the old Puritan bankers with their Family Prayers or the old Protestant parsons with their Family Bibles. They are the children of fathers and mothers who themselves grew up on Bernard Shaw and felt like infants in the presence of Thomas Hardy. The Young today are themselves the children of a whole generation of sceptics and agnostics; fathers and mothers themselves still relatively young, and themselves brought up to all such talk. All the talk about free thought and free love; all about Tess and Truth; all about Candida and Candour. Even the grandfathers and grandmothers of the children now just beginning to play the goat were mostly of a generation that conceived itself as liberal and progressive; like the old Radical who argues with Tanner in Man and Superman. Even his generation thought itself advanced; Tanner and the next generation thought itself more advanced. And we are dealing now with the children of Tanner; perhaps with the grandchildren of Tanner.
Of course, these young people do not know anything about historical Christianity; they are rather limited sort of people in a good many ways. They have heard only the latest jargon of their own generation; the last heresy that has rebelled against the last heresy but one. They are so innocent that some of them, especially the more intelligent, are actually beginning to get into touch with orthodoxy without even knowing it is orthodox. It can be seen in many casual journalistic allusions to the study of Thomism in Oxford or Paris. But it remains true that there is the other section; by no means the most intelligent, but certainly the most impudent. And of these it is true to say, as I have already said, that the whole story has moved a stage forward; or perhaps a stage back. There is no question at all of their losing Christianity. There is no question at present of their finding Christianity. But the reason why they all look as miserable as monkeys (and they do) is in this tragic and deplorable disaster: that they have all lost their Paganism.
Paganism may be compared to that diffused light that glows in a landscape when the sun is behind a cloud. So when the true centre of worship is for some reason invisible or vague, there has always remained for healthy humanity a sort of glow of gratitude or wonder or mystical fear, if it were only reflected from ordinary objects or natural forces or fundamental human traditions. It was the glory of the great Pagans, in the great days of Paganism, that natural things had a sort of projected halo of the supernatural. And he who poured wine upon the altar, or scattered dust upon the grave, never doubted that he dealt in some way with something divine; however vague or fanciful or even sceptical he might be about the names and natures of the divinities. Wine was more than wine; it was a god. Corn was more than corn; it was a goddess. There is much doubt and dispute about how literally they understood these statements; but they certainly understood the first half of the sentence as meaning exactly what it said. They were not satisfied with realism, because they never quite lost the sense of something more real than realism. They were not content to call a spade a spade, because it was almost always a sacred spade; not only when it dug the graves of the dead, but even when it dug the garden to grow fruit for the living. They were not content with the dead certainty that eggs are eggs, because they were full of divine uncertainty about the birds, which were their signals and auguries. And this natural magic in things, mixed and modified with things greater and things less, has descended through the civilized centuries to men of every sort; not only to the mass of men who are traditionalists, but generally also to the few men who are revolutionists. Men like Shelley or Heine might get rid of religion, but they would not get rid of this great glamour of natural things, which seemed to make them preternatural. That legend still lingers from Shelley to Swinburne, from Heine to Wilde, and after that something begins to go wrong with it. It is what has gone wrong with a whole section of the rising generation.
They are not the first generation of rebels to be Pagans. They are the first generation of rebels not to be Pagans. The young fool, the flower of all our cultural evolution, the heir of all the ages, and the precious trust we have to pass on to posterity—the young fool can no longer be trusted to be a Pantheist, let alone a good hearty Pagan. He does not realize in the least that Bacchus has mixed his cocktail, and Pomona dropped the cherry into it. He is under the strange delusion that eggs are eggs and that spades are only spades. He entertains a perfectly extraordinary idea that wine is wine and that women are just women. He is cut off from all the secret secondary meanings and messages of things; the truths that come to the sensitive in silence; the atmosphere around every object, that is almost visible like a halo. He has lost the traditions of humanity, and rather especially the traditions of heathenry. I suppose it would not do to send out missionaries to convert him to Paganism. But he is a much more stupid and stunted and limited person since he left off being a Pagan.
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XXIX
Sul “paganesimo” moderno
VI è una parte, forse una piccola parte, della Gioventù Moderna che di certo appare ai suoi maggiori dura, scettica ed egoista. E di costoro si usa dire che sono Pagani. Ieri, all’improvviso, mi balenò alla mente (come una di quelle verità ovvie che ci sfuggono proprio perché ovvie) che, naturalmente, ciò che davvero li affligge è di aver perduto il loro Paganesimo.
Non dico, come dicono tanti giornalisti, che abbiano perduto il loro Cristianesimo. Perché è la verità semplice e sobria che la maggior parte di loro non ne ebbe mai alcuno. Non è colpa loro, sebbene ogni giorno che passa mi convinca sempre più che è la loro disgrazia. Ma l’idea, tanto comune nei romanzi e nei giornali, che questa nuova generazione si sia ribellata all’ortodossia d’altri tempi è pura e schietta ignoranza storica. È la peggiore di tutte le specie di ignoranza storica: l’ignoranza degli eventi storici cui noi stessi abbiamo assistito. È assurdo dire che un giovanotto di diciannove anni il quale mescola cocktail e Comunismo in un baccano da atelier a Chelsea si stia ribellando alla Virtù Vittoriana o alla Bibbia di famiglia. Tanto varrebbe dire che un giovane damerino della Reggenza il quale svelleva i battenti delle porte e si azzuffava con le guardie notturne si ribellasse ai Puritani del 1649 o alla tirannia di Oliver Cromwell. Tanto varrebbe dire che i Cavalieri che gozzovigliavano al Cock sotto il regno di Carlo II insorgessero in giusta rivolta contro l’usurpazione di Riccardo III. Non occorrerà un’erudizione storica troppo faticosa per accorgersi che c’è qualcosa di sbagliato nel calcolo, non foss’altro perché esso scavalca all’incirca quattro o cinque generazioni che stanno nel mezzo. Così pure la spiegazione trita sulla Gioventù che si emancipa da tetri e vecchi dogmi religiosi scavalca parecchie generazioni intermedie. I ragazzi e le ragazze che oggi tingono la città di ogni colore non sono i figli dei vecchi banchieri puritani con le loro Preghiere di famiglia, né dei vecchi pastori protestanti con le loro Bibbie di famiglia. Sono i figli di padri e madri che essi stessi crebbero su Bernard Shaw e si sentivano come infanti al cospetto di Thomas Hardy. I Giovani d’oggi sono essi stessi i figli di un’intera generazione di scettici e di agnostici; padri e madri a loro volta ancora relativamente giovani, e a loro volta allevati in tutti questi discorsi. Tutti i discorsi sul libero pensiero e sul libero amore; tutti su Tess e sulla Verità; tutti su Candida e sul Candore. Persino i nonni e le nonne dei bambini che ora appena cominciano a far follie erano per lo più di una generazione che si concepiva liberale e progressista; come il vecchio Radicale che discute con Tanner in Man and Superman. Persino la sua generazione si credeva avanzata; Tanner e la generazione successiva si credevano più avanzati ancora. E noi abbiamo ora a che fare con i figli di Tanner; forse con i nipoti di Tanner.
Naturalmente, questi giovani non sanno nulla del Cristianesimo storico; sono, sotto molti riguardi, gente piuttosto limitata. Hanno udito soltanto l’ultimo gergo della propria generazione; l’ultima eresia che si è ribellata alla penultima eresia. Sono tanto innocenti che alcuni di loro, specialmente i più intelligenti, cominciano in realtà a entrare in contatto con l’ortodossia senza neppure sapere che è ortodossa. Lo si può vedere in molte allusioni giornalistiche di passaggio allo studio del tomismo a Oxford o a Parigi. Ma resta vero che c’è quell’altra parte; niente affatto la più intelligente, ma di certo la più impudente. E di costoro è vero dire, come ho già detto, che l’intera vicenda ha compiuto un passo avanti; o forse un passo indietro. Non si tratta affatto di un loro perdere il Cristianesimo. Non si tratta, al presente, di un loro trovare il Cristianesimo. Ma la ragione per cui hanno tutti l’aria infelice come scimmie (e ce l’hanno davvero) sta in questa tragica e deplorevole sciagura: che hanno tutti perduto il loro Paganesimo.
Il Paganesimo può essere paragonato a quella luce diffusa che riluce in un paesaggio quando il sole è dietro una nube. Così, quando il vero centro dell’adorazione è per qualche ragione invisibile o vago, è sempre rimasto per la sana umanità una sorta di alone di gratitudine, di meraviglia o di mistico timore, foss’anche riflesso soltanto da oggetti comuni, da forze naturali o da fondamentali tradizioni umane. Era la gloria dei grandi Pagani, nei grandi giorni del Paganesimo, che le cose naturali avessero come un alone proiettato del soprannaturale. E colui che versava il vino sull’altare, o spargeva la polvere sulla tomba, non dubitò mai di avere in qualche modo a che fare con qualcosa di divino; per quanto vago, fantasioso o persino scettico potesse essere circa i nomi e le nature delle divinità. Il vino era più che vino; era un dio. Il grano era più che grano; era una dea. Molto dubbio e molta disputa vi sono su quanto letteralmente comprendessero queste affermazioni; ma di certo intendevano la prima metà della frase come significante esattamente ciò che diceva. Non si accontentavano del realismo, perché non perdettero mai del tutto il senso di qualcosa di più reale del realismo. Non si contentavano di chiamare pane il pane e vanga la vanga, perché era quasi sempre una vanga sacra; non solo quando scavava le fosse dei morti, ma anche quando scavava il giardino per far crescere frutti per i vivi. Non si contentavano della morta certezza che le uova sono uova, perché erano colmi di divina incertezza intorno agli uccelli, che erano i loro segnali e i loro auspici. E questa naturale magia insita nelle cose, mescolata e modificata con cose più grandi e cose più piccole, è discesa attraverso i secoli civili fino a uomini d’ogni sorta; non solo alla massa degli uomini che sono tradizionalisti, ma in generale anche ai pochi uomini che sono rivoluzionari. Uomini come Shelley o Heine potevano sbarazzarsi della religione, ma non si sarebbero sbarazzati di questo grande incanto delle cose naturali, che pareva renderle preternaturali. Quella leggenda ancora indugia da Shelley a Swinburne, da Heine a Wilde, e dopo di ciò qualcosa comincia a guastarsi. È ciò che si è guastato in un’intera parte della nuova generazione.
Non sono la prima generazione di ribelli a essere Pagani. Sono la prima generazione di ribelli a non essere Pagani. Il giovane sciocco, il fiore di tutta la nostra evoluzione culturale, l’erede di tutte le età, e il prezioso pegno che dobbiamo trasmettere ai posteri—al giovane sciocco non ci si può più affidare che sia un Panteista, per non dire un buon Pagano di sana pasta. Egli non si rende conto minimamente che Bacco ha mescolato il suo cocktail, e che Pomona vi ha lasciato cadere la ciliegia. È in preda alla strana illusione che le uova siano uova e che le vanghe siano soltanto vanghe. Coltiva un’idea assolutamente straordinaria: che il vino sia vino e che le donne siano soltanto donne. È reciso da tutti i significati e i messaggi secondari e segreti delle cose; le verità che vengono ai sensibili nel silenzio; l’atmosfera intorno a ogni oggetto, quasi visibile come un alone. Ha perduto le tradizioni dell’umanità, e più in particolare le tradizioni del paganesimo. Suppongo che non converrebbe mandare missionari a convertirlo al Paganesimo. Ma è una persona assai più stupida, più striminzita e più limitata da quando ha cessato di essere un Pagano.
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XXX
On Brevity and Wit
SOMEBODY once said that brevity is the soul of wit, when he obviously meant to say that wit is the soul of brevity. It is obvious that the brevity is only the body, and the wit the spirit. And mere brevity, as in the statement “Cats eat rats,” when left to itself, seems still to await some awakening visit of the divine fire. The proverb, however, like many other widely quoted maxims, is really as true as is consistent with meaning nearly the opposite of what it says. Economy of every kind has a great deal to do with effect of every kind. And it has often been more to the advantage of a man to say one good thing in one sentence than to say twenty good things in two thousand sentences. For the rest, the general statement of the principles of brevity would itself be brief. There would certainly be no need to discuss at length the rather obvious disadvantages of being lengthy. Most people would agree that even good writers can write too much, and that bad writers cannot write too little. Nevertheless, a particular problem has arisen in our own epoch, apart from the obvious practical complications that may arise in any epoch. Those who earn their living by writing, as I do, always write too much; on the other hand, there are writers at once more leisured and more laborious who write the same poem a hundred times, or even bring out three or four entirely different editions of the same book. Mr. George Moore has been an example of this paradox, and such writers may not unfairly be said to write at once too little and too much. But the practical problem I mean is more recent than the realism of Mr. George Moore. It is the question whether we more unduly increase the mass of literature by making it difficult to stop, or by making it easy to stop—and to begin again.
The mere forms of the older literature committed a man to carry on for a considerable time, like a man enlisting for the duration of the war. The modest youth who proposed to write an epic in twelve books may have felt epical, but hardly epigrammatical. The simple poet who produced a tragedy in five acts could not at the last moment turn the five-act tragedy into a three-act farce. But now that poetry, and literature in general, is free to appear in any form, it may naturally run to any length or stop at any point. This may lead to brevity in the poem, but it does not necessarily lead to brevity in the poet. Two hundred years ago, let us say, an English poet would sit down with the laudable intention of writing a long didactic poem on the correct cultivation of onions, or the most advisable construction of pig-sties; all set forth in beautiful rhymed decasyllabics, brightened by entirely original selections from the Georgics and decorated by many fine flights of mythological fancy, about Ceres spreading her maternal mantle over the first onion, or Circe standing amid her pig-sties of ivory and gold. Everybody knows that the very latest poetical style has gone to the other extreme, and is not only brief, but abrupt. It is sometimes almost tactless in its introduction of the onion into the drawing-room, or the pig into the parlour. The modern poet goes straight to the point, in some short and simple lyric that runs—
The hair of a hundred women chokes me With a gluttonous smell of garlic …
and there you are; a simple human emotion described in two spontaneous lines. Or he will write of the pig question—
The world wobbles sickeningly, Like the old grey sow in the greasy morning light.
And if brevity is really the soul of wit, this must be much wittier than the long eighteenth-century poem with its classical analogies. But, considering the problem in a practical way, I should hesitate about whether the new method will be really more brief than the old. Supposing that it is our simple, manly, and public-spirited purpose to stop both the poets from producing such a vast amount of poetry, I have a notion that, in the long run, the new poet will outstrip even the old poet in giving the world whole libraries of poetry to burn. After all, when the eighteenth-century poet was producing his interminable Georgic about pigs or onions, it kept him busy; but it also kept him quiet. Quite a long and restful period would elapse before it would even be finished, let alone printed; there would be plenty of time for his friends to rest and recuperate and get up their strength to read it, or their moral strength to pretend to have read it. He did not rush about in the interval hurling isolated onions in the faces of individual strangers. He did not bring the great grey sow with him into society, like a lap-dog, or let loose wild herds of Gadarene swine in the public streets. But the modern poet’s assaults on his inoffensive fellow-creatures, being more brief and disjointed, can also be more numerous and continuous. If he is so much intoxicated by an onion, he may be similarly maddened by a turnip; and if pigs for him so easily take to themselves wings and fly, the sky they populate may soon be raining cats and dogs. I mean that this modern habit of taking a detached image, with or without the elucidation of its indwelling idea, is to supersede the old reasoned arrangement of themes and thoughts. There is nothing to be said against it, except that there seems to be no end to it. And the epic of the mythological origin of onions did at least, somehow and somewhere, come at last to an end.
Granted that the old formal folios of epic and tragedy were too formal, it sometimes looks nowadays as if there would be no books except note-books or sketch-books. The notes may be short, but the note-book may be fairly long. The sketches may be smaller, but the sketch-book may be larger. Above all, the very smallness of the sketches establishes a standard which makes them more facile and therefore more frequent. I was looking the other day through a large anthology, or collection, of the most modern and advanced American poems. Most of them consisted of short impressions, with one or two arbitrary details in irregular verse; and that was all. I do not mean that they were worthless; a thousand things of the sort are worth seeing and may be worth saying. A brown trickle from a gutter makes a pool in the street, reflecting half a window and a scrap of sky; a black cluster of lamp-posts and top-hats is relieved against a strip of cold green sunset; the passing lights of a tram paint one side of a grey horse in a field a golden colour; a splash of green slime on a wall looks like sprawling fingers; and so on. Now, whether it sound egotistical or no, it is a fact that if I began to write little paragraphs in free verse on such things, I should never stop writing them. I should write thousands and thousands of them. I do not deny the truth of such sights; I am always seeing them. I do not deny the suggestiveness of such sights; I am often moved by them. I only say that if the mere recording of them constitutes poetry, there ought to be a vast amount more poetry and a great many more poets. But whether that prospect be a glorious or an alarming one, I will not venture, on my own isolated example, to decide.
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XXX
Sulla brevità e l’arguzia
QUALCUNO disse un tempo che la brevità è l’anima dell’arguzia, quando è evidente che voleva dire che l’arguzia è l’anima della brevità. È chiaro che la brevità non è che il corpo, e l’arguzia lo spirito. E la mera brevità, come nell’affermazione «I gatti mangiano i topi», lasciata a se stessa, sembra attendere ancora qualche visita risvegliatrice del divino fuoco. Il proverbio, tuttavia, come tante altre massime largamente citate, è vero tanto quanto è compatibile con il significare quasi il contrario di ciò che dice. L’economia di ogni sorta ha moltissimo a che fare con l’effetto di ogni sorta. E spesso è tornato più a vantaggio di un uomo dire una sola cosa buona in una sola frase che dirne venti buone in duemila frasi. Del resto, l’enunciazione generale dei princìpi della brevità sarebbe essa stessa breve. Non ci sarebbe certo bisogno di discutere a lungo i piuttosto ovvi svantaggi dell’essere prolissi. La maggior parte delle persone converrebbe che perfino i buoni scrittori possono scrivere troppo, e che i cattivi scrittori non possono scrivere troppo poco. Ciononostante, un problema particolare è sorto nella nostra epoca, a prescindere dalle ovvie complicazioni pratiche che possono sorgere in qualsiasi epoca. Chi si guadagna da vivere scrivendo, come faccio io, scrive sempre troppo; d’altra parte, vi sono scrittori a un tempo più oziosi e più laboriosi che scrivono la stessa poesia cento volte, o addirittura ne traggono tre o quattro edizioni interamente diverse dello stesso libro. Il signor George Moore è stato un esempio di questo paradosso, e di tali scrittori non si direbbe ingiustamente che scrivono a un tempo troppo poco e troppo. Ma il problema pratico cui alludo è più recente del realismo del signor George Moore. È la questione se non accresciamo più indebitamente la massa della letteratura rendendo difficile smettere, oppure rendendo facile smettere — e ricominciare.
Le sole forme della letteratura più antica impegnavano un uomo a proseguire per un tempo considerevole, come chi si arruola per la durata della guerra. Il modesto giovane che si proponeva di scrivere un poema epico in dodici libri poteva sentirsi epico, ma difficilmente epigrammatico. Il semplice poeta che produceva una tragedia in cinque atti non poteva all’ ultimo momento tramutare la tragedia in cinque atti in una farsa in tre atti. Ma ora che la poesia, e la letteratura in generale, è libera di comparire in qualsiasi forma, può naturalmente estendersi a qualsiasi lunghezza o arrestarsi in qualsiasi punto. Ciò può condurre alla brevità nella poesia, ma non conduce necessariamente alla brevità nel poeta. Duecento anni fa, poniamo, un poeta inglese si sarebbe messo a sedere con la lodevole intenzione di scrivere un lungo poema didascalico sulla corretta coltivazione delle cipolle, o sulla più consigliabile costruzione dei porcili; il tutto esposto in bei decasillabi rimati, ravvivati da selezioni interamente originali dalle Georgiche e adornati da molti bei voli di fantasia mitologica, su Cerere che stende il suo manto materno sulla prima cipolla, o Circe ritta in mezzo ai suoi porcili d’avorio e d’oro. Tutti sanno che l’ultimissimo stile poetico è andato all’estremo opposto, ed è non solo breve, ma brusco. Talora è quasi privo di tatto nel suo introdurre la cipolla nel salotto, o il porco nel tinello. Il poeta moderno va dritto al punto, in qualche breve e semplice lirica che recita —
I capelli di cento donne mi soffocano Con un ingordo odore d’aglio …
ed eccovi serviti: una semplice emozione umana descritta in due righe spontanee. Oppure scriverà della questione dei porci —
Il mondo barcolla nauseabondo, Come la vecchia scrofa grigia nella luce untuosa del mattino.
E se la brevità è davvero l’anima dell’arguzia, questo dev’essere assai più arguto del lungo poema settecentesco con le sue analogie classiche. Ma, considerando il problema in modo pratico, esiterei sul fatto che il nuovo metodo sia davvero più breve del vecchio. Ammettendo che sia nostro semplice, virile e civico proposito impedire a entrambi i poeti di produrre una così vasta quantità di poesia, ho l’impressione che, alla lunga, il nuovo poeta supererà perfino il vecchio poeta nel dare al mondo intere biblioteche di poesia da bruciare. Dopotutto, quando il poeta settecentesco produceva la sua interminabile Georgica sui porci o sulle cipolle, ciò lo teneva occupato; ma lo teneva anche tranquillo. Un periodo assai lungo e riposante sarebbe trascorso prima ancora che l’opera fosse finita, per non dire stampata; ci sarebbe stato tutto il tempo perché i suoi amici riposassero e si rimettessero e recuperassero le forze per leggerla, o le forze morali per fingere di averla letta. Egli non correva di qua e di là nel frattempo scagliando cipolle isolate in faccia a estranei individuali. Non conduceva con sé in società la grande scrofa grigia, come un cagnolino da grembo, né scatenava selvagge mandrie di porci di Gadara per le pubbliche vie. Ma gli assalti del poeta moderno contro le sue inoffensive creature simili, essendo più brevi e sconnessi, possono anche essere più numerosi e continui. Se tanto lo inebria una cipolla, egli può essere del pari fatto impazzire da una rapa; e se per lui i porci mettono così facilmente le ali e volano, il cielo che essi popolano potrà presto piovere gatti e cani. Intendo dire che questa moderna abitudine di prendere un’immagine staccata, con o senza la delucidazione dell’idea che vi risiede, mira a soppiantare l’antica disposizione ragionata di temi e pensieri. Nulla vi è da obiettare, se non che sembra non avervi mai fine. E l’epopea dell’origine mitologica delle cipolle almeno, in qualche modo e in qualche luogo, giungeva finalmente a una fine.
Ammesso pure che gli antichi folii formali di epopea e tragedia fossero troppo formali, oggigiorno pare talvolta che non vi saranno libri se non taccuini o album di schizzi. I appunti possono essere brevi, ma il taccuino può essere piuttosto lungo. Gli schizzi possono essere più piccoli, ma l’album può essere più grande. Soprattutto, la piccolezza stessa degli schizzi stabilisce uno standard che li rende più facili e perciò più frequenti. L’altro giorno stavo sfogliando una vasta antologia, o raccolta, delle più moderne e avanzate poesie americane. La maggior parte consisteva in brevi impressioni, con uno o due dettagli arbitrari in versi irregolari; e questo era tutto. Non intendo dire che fossero prive di valore; mille cose del genere valgono la pena di essere viste e possono valere la pena di essere dette. Un rivolo bruno da una grondaia forma una pozza nella strada, riflettendo mezza finestra e un lembo di cielo; un grappolo nero di lampioni e cilindri si staglia contro una striscia di freddo tramonto verde; le luci di passaggio di un tram dipingono d’oro un fianco di un grigio cavallo in un campo; una chiazza di verde melma su un muro pare dita divaricate; e così via. Ora, che suoni egotistico o no, è un fatto che se io cominciassi a scrivere piccoli paragrafi in verso libero su tali cose, non smetterei mai di scriverli. Ne scriverei migliaia e migliaia. Non nego la verità di tali visioni; le vedo di continuo. Non nego la suggestività di tali visioni; ne sono spesso commosso. Dico soltanto che se il mero registrarle costituisce poesia, dovrebbe esservi una quantità assai maggiore di poesia e molti più poeti. Ma se tale prospettiva sia gloriosa o allarmante, non oserò, sul mio solo isolato esempio, decidere.
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XXXI
On Education
WE all know that Mr. Smiles dedicated the modern world to Self-Help. Since then it has dedicated itself to Self-Hindrance, of the strangest sort, amounting often to self-strangling or self-hanging; the individualistic theory of liberty having truly given it rope enough to hang itself. It is amazing to note in how many matters the modern world started out to do one thing and has done exactly the opposite. The ethics of the economist, in the early nineteenth century, enormously exaggerated the sanctity and pride of private property. This led to a race for wealth which has not only led recently to a relapse into poverty, but to a change by which, even for the few who had more property, the property was much less private. In the nineteenth century the Northern Farmer was described as hearing the comfortable sound of “property, property, property” in the very canter of his horse’s legs. Nowadays the Northern Farmer probably travels in a motor and ploughs by machinery; I know not whether strange noises from the bowels of his iron monster seem to resemble the words “mortgage” or “bankruptcy,” but I am pretty certain that they do not now soothe him with the dulcet dactyls of the cantering hooves. In plain fact the Northern Farmer has much less property than he had when he started out to look for it in the presence of Mr. Alfred Tennyson. And even the property he has is much less private property, being sunk in vast semi-public undertakings or international combines, over which he certainly has no control, as he had control over his horses. The same industrial individualism which set out with no thought except private property has produced a new world in which private property is hardly ever thought of, or at least not primarily as private.
I was looking at a recent collection which contains the opinions of many famous free-thinkers about Jesus Christ. It is amusing to note how all of them differ among themselves; how one of them contradicts another and the last is always repudiated by the next. And I was specially amused to note that the earlier sceptics, like Strauss, blamed Jesus of Nazareth for his contempt for commerce and capital (then the gods of the hour), while the later sceptics, like Shaw and Wells, praised the same Jesus of Nazareth for the same contempt for the same commerce, because in the interval the sceptic had turned from an earnest Individualist to an earnest Socialist. Anyhow, it was not Christ or the Christian idea that had changed; it was only all the criticisms of all their critics. And the later sceptic actually became more orthodox than the earlier sceptic, simply by going Bolshevist. This is merely an example, for the moment, of how the whole tone of the world has changed about property in relation to privacy. The modern capitalist is more of a communist than was the old revolutionist. The real Radicals had a horror of centralization, and one of the most popular and prominent of the demagogues described a Communist as a man who “always was willing to give you his penny and pocket your shilling.” The moral of this vast overturn and disappointment is obvious enough: that when private property only means private enterprise, and private enterprise only means profiteering, it will soon cease even to produce profits, and become in every sense unprofitable.
The way the world has changed about private property is proved by the fact that it is regarded as a private fad. Mr. Belloc and I, when we said first that we really did believe that private property should be private, were mildly chaffed, as if we were seeking solitude like hermits, or hoarding halfpence like misers. But I am not concerned with our particular thesis here, or with any such personal matters; I only mention this one as the most obvious of many examples of the modern world rushing one way and rebounding the other. Another example is the tangle of education. In one sense, this is supremely the educational age. In another sense, it is supremely and specially the anti-educational age. It is the age in which the Government’s right to teach everybody’s children is for the first time established. It is also the age in which the father’s right to teach his own children is for the first time denied. It is the time in which experimentalists earnestly desire to teach a jolly little guttersnipe everything; even Criminology and Cosmic Poise and the Maya system of decorative rhythm. But it is also the time in which earnest philosophers are really doubting whether it is right to teach anybody anything; even how to avoid taking poison or falling off precipices.
But the practical difficulty of our present education is even worse. It is attempting to conduct a process, and yet it has produced a world which incessantly interrupts and reverses that process. Education is initiation; it is in its nature a progression from one thing to another; the arrangement of ideas in a certain order. A child learns to walk before he learns to skip; he learns his own alphabet before he learns the Greek alphabet. Or, if any educationist now reverses this process, he must at least have a reason for reversing it, and must therefore refuse to reverse the reversal. But the real life of our time reverses everything and has no reason for anything. The real world, that roars round the poor little gutter-boy as he goes to school, is an utterly anti-educational world. If the school is really giving any education, the world is certainly engaged day and night in ruining his education. For the world gives him things anyhow, in any order, with any result; the world gives him things without knowing that he gets them; the world gives him things meant for somebody else; the world throws things at him from morning till night, quite blindly, madly, and without meaning or aim; and this process, whatever else it is, is the exact opposite of the process of education. The gutter-boy spends about three-quarters of his time in getting uneducated. He is educated by the modern State School. He is uneducated by the modern State.
Because, as I have already ventured very delicately to hint, the modern State is in a devil of a state. It is itself the chaos and contradiction produced by that very unbalanced race after private profit that has produced its own opposite in a sort of communal confusion. Educationists have the task of putting the school in order before anybody has put the State in order. It is arguable that we ought to put the State in order before there can really be such a thing as a State School. But I will not discuss my own remedies here, which would involve indecent allusions to a third thing called the Family; now never mentioned in respectable circles. Only I think there is something wrong with a system that thus throttles itself and cuts its own throat; a world in which we cannot even paint the town red without turning it green, or set the Thames on fire without freezing it.
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XXXI
Sull’educazione
TUTTI sappiamo che il signor Smiles consacrò il mondo moderno all’Auto-aiuto. Da allora esso si è consacrato all’Auto-ostacolo, della specie più bizzarra, che spesso arriva fino all’auto-strangolamento o all’auto-impiccagione; giacché la teoria individualistica della libertà gli ha davvero dato corda a sufficienza per impiccarsi. È stupefacente notare in quante faccende il mondo moderno partì per fare una cosa e ha fatto esattamente l’opposto. L’etica dell’economista, agli inizi del secolo diciannovesimo, esagerò enormemente la sacralità e l’orgoglio della proprietà privata. Ciò portò a una corsa alla ricchezza che non solo ha condotto di recente a una ricaduta nella povertà, ma a un mutamento per cui, anche per i pochi che avevano più proprietà, la proprietà era assai meno privata. Nel secolo diciannovesimo il Fattore del Nord veniva descritto mentre udiva il suono confortante di «proprietà, proprietà, proprietà» nel galoppo stesso delle zampe del suo cavallo. Oggigiorno il Fattore del Nord viaggia probabilmente in automobile e ara a macchina; non so se strani rumori dalle viscere del suo mostro di ferro somiglino alle parole «ipoteca» o «bancarotta», ma sono pressoché certo che ora non lo cullano con i dolci dattili degli zoccoli al galoppo. In semplice verità il Fattore del Nord ha molta meno proprietà di quanta ne avesse quando partì a cercarla al cospetto del signor Alfred Tennyson. E persino la proprietà che ha è assai meno proprietà privata, essendo sprofondata in vaste imprese semipubbliche o in combine internazionali, sulle quali certamente non ha alcun controllo, come invece aveva controllo sui suoi cavalli. Lo stesso individualismo industriale che si mise in cammino senza altro pensiero che la proprietà privata ha prodotto un mondo nuovo in cui alla proprietà privata non si pensa quasi mai, o almeno non anzitutto come privata.
Stavo osservando una recente raccolta che contiene le opinioni di molti celebri liberi pensatori su Gesù Cristo. È divertente notare come tutti differiscano tra loro; come uno contraddica l’altro e l’ultimo sia sempre ripudiato dal successivo. E mi divertì particolarmente notare che gli scettici più antichi, come Strauss, rimproveravano a Gesù di Nazareth il suo disprezzo per il commercio e il capitale (allora gli dèi del momento), mentre gli scettici più recenti, come Shaw e Wells, lodavano lo stesso Gesù di Nazareth per lo stesso disprezzo per lo stesso commercio, perché nell’intervallo lo scettico si era mutato da fervente Individualista in fervente Socialista. Ad ogni modo, non era Cristo o l’idea cristiana ad essere cambiata; erano soltanto tutte le critiche di tutti i loro critici. E lo scettico più recente divenne in realtà più ortodosso dello scettico più antico, semplicemente diventando bolscevico. Questo è soltanto un esempio, per il momento, di come l’intero tono del mondo sia cambiato riguardo alla proprietà in rapporto alla privatezza. Il capitalista moderno è più comunista di quanto fosse il vecchio rivoluzionario. I veri Radicali avevano orrore dell’accentramento, e uno dei demagoghi più popolari e in vista descriveva un Comunista come un uomo che «era sempre pronto a darti il suo soldino e a intascarti lo scellino». La morale di questo vasto rovesciamento e disinganno è abbastanza ovvia: che quando la proprietà privata significa soltanto iniziativa privata, e l’iniziativa privata significa soltanto profitto speculativo, essa cesserà ben presto perfino di produrre profitti, e diventerà in ogni senso improficua.
Il modo in cui il mondo è cambiato riguardo alla proprietà privata è dimostrato dal fatto che essa viene considerata una fissazione privata. Il signor Belloc ed io, quando dicemmo per la prima volta che credevamo davvero che la proprietà privata dovesse essere privata, fummo blandamente canzonati, come se cercassimo la solitudine al modo degli eremiti, o ammassassimo mezzi penny al modo degli avari. Ma qui non mi occupo della nostra tesi particolare, né di simili faccende personali; menziono questo soltanto come il più ovvio tra i molti esempi del mondo moderno che si precipita da una parte e rimbalza dall’altra. Un altro esempio è il groviglio dell’educazione. In un senso, questa è supremamente l’epoca educativa. In un altro senso, essa è supremamente e specialmente l’epoca anti-educativa. È l’epoca in cui il diritto del Governo di istruire i figli di chiunque viene per la prima volta stabilito. È anche l’epoca in cui il diritto del padre di istruire i propri figli viene per la prima volta negato. È l’epoca in cui gli sperimentatori desiderano ardentemente insegnare a un allegro monellino di strada ogni cosa; persino la Criminologia e l’Equilibrio Cosmico e il sistema Maya del ritmo decorativo. Ma è anche l’epoca in cui filosofi zelanti dubitano davvero se sia giusto insegnare a chicchessia alcunché; persino come evitare di prendere veleno o di cadere dai precipizi.
Ma la difficoltà pratica della nostra educazione attuale è persino peggiore. Essa tenta di condurre un processo, eppure ha prodotto un mondo che incessantemente interrompe e capovolge quel processo. L’educazione è iniziazione; è per sua natura una progressione da una cosa a un’altra; la disposizione delle idee in un certo ordine. Un bambino impara a camminare prima di imparare a saltellare; impara il proprio alfabeto prima di imparare l’alfabeto greco. Oppure, se qualche educatore ora capovolge questo processo, deve almeno avere una ragione per capovolgerlo, e deve perciò rifiutarsi di capovolgere il capovolgimento. Ma la vita reale del nostro tempo capovolge ogni cosa e non ha ragione per nulla. Il mondo reale, che romba intorno al povero ragazzino di strada mentre va a scuola, è un mondo del tutto anti-educativo. Se la scuola sta davvero impartendo una qualche educazione, il mondo è certamente impegnato giorno e notte a rovinargli l’educazione. Poiché il mondo gli dà le cose alla rinfusa, in qualunque ordine, con qualunque risultato; il mondo gli dà le cose senza sapere che egli le riceve; il mondo gli dà cose destinate a qualcun altro; il mondo gli scaglia addosso le cose da mattina a sera, del tutto ciecamente, follemente, e senza senso né scopo; e questo processo, qualunque altra cosa sia, è l’esatto opposto del processo dell’educazione. Il ragazzino di strada trascorre circa tre quarti del suo tempo a diseducarsi. Viene educato dalla moderna Scuola di Stato. Viene diseducato dal moderno Stato.
Perché, come ho già osato accennare molto delicatamente, il moderno Stato versa in uno stato indiavolato. Esso è esso stesso il caos e la contraddizione prodotti da quella medesima corsa sbilanciata al profitto privato che ha prodotto il proprio opposto in una sorta di confusione comunale. Gli educatori hanno il compito di mettere in ordine la scuola prima che alcuno abbia messo in ordine lo Stato. È sostenibile che dovremmo mettere in ordine lo Stato prima che possa realmente esistere una cosa quale una Scuola di Stato. Ma non discuterò qui i miei propri rimedi, che comporterebbero indecenti allusioni a una terza cosa chiamata la Famiglia; ormai mai menzionata nei circoli rispettabili. Solo, penso che ci sia qualcosa di sbagliato in un sistema che così si strozza e si taglia la gola da sé; un mondo in cui non possiamo nemmeno dipingere la città di rosso senza tingerla di verde, o dare fuoco al Tamigi senza gelarlo.
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XXXII
On Romanticism and Youth
ROMANTICISM is usually criticized as if it were a very ancient thing; whereas it is really a very recent thing, and especially a very revolutionary thing. It was the very latest Revolt of the Young, previous to the Revolt of the Young which now attacks it. Of course, there is a difference between Romanticism and Romance. Romance, in its healthiest sense, is as old as the world; and even in a more special sense it is inspired by that particular intensity of colouring and pointed energy of outline which belonged to the shields, the windows, and the pennons of mediævalism. Mediæval romance, which was a sort of pattern for modern romance, came from the vividness of visionary or spiritual experience leaving a sort of glamour or glory around all experience. But it did throw that coloured light especially on the experience of love, and, in some sense, modelled romance on religion; as Chaucer called the legendary lovers The Saints of Cupid. In that sense we may say that romance belonged to the Middle Ages; and in a deeper sense that it belonged to any ages. Romanticism, however, was a particular modern movement, and it was in most ways particularly modern.
It was akin to Feminism, in what is now called “putting Woman upon a pedestal.” It was also akin to ideal democracy; which might well be called “putting Man upon a pedestal.” Indeed, there is a curious and illuminating historical parallel between these two ideas, that seemed both new and true in the nineteenth century. I am far from saying they are not true merely because they are no longer new. I have a great deal of sympathy with both of them. I am merely noting the historical fact that, if they are not new, they were very recently regarded as new. The Republican who wore the Red Cap talked, if not as if there had never been any Republicans in the past, at least as if there were going to be nothing else except Republicans in the future. The Romantic who wore the Red Waistcoat talked as if the old world had been imprisoned in Classicism and the new world would be thrown open only to Romanticism. Each believed himself to be an extremist; but each was, in fact, a moderate who had only reached the middle of his own road, and had no real idea to what extreme it would lead. Each was a bridge hung between two ages. Each was bringing with him a living thing out of the old world, which could only perish in the new.
For one very simple thing was true both of Love and Liberty: the gods of the Romantics and the Republicans. They were both simply fragments of Christian mysticism, and even of Christian theology, torn out of their proper place, flung loosely about and finally hurled forward into an age of hard materialism which instantly destroyed them. They were not really rational ideas, still less rationalistic ideas. At least, they were never rational ideas after they had left off being religious ideas. One of them was a hazy human exaggeration of the sacramental idea of marriage. The other was a hazy human exaggeration of the brotherhood of men in God. When the Romantic laid his hand on his Red Waistcoat, and swore to George Sand or some other lady that their souls were two affinities wedded before the world was made, he was drawing on the Christian capital of the old ideas of immortality and sanctity. When he explained to his mistress in his garret the delicacy and dignity of cutting her throat and his own, and called it “the world well lost for love,” he was really appealing to the old tradition of the martyr and the ascetic, who lost the world to save his soul. He was not, in any very exact sense of the word, talking sense. He was not uttering purely rational remarks; certainly not remarks that our more rationalistic generation would call rational. Often, when he had done himself particularly well with champagne and old brandy, he would let the cat out of the bag rather badly by calling the blanchisseuse or the artist’s model “his bride in the sight of God.”
Anyhow, he could not make the sort of appeals to deific faith or demoniac jealousy, which constituted the vigorous love poetry of the age of Hugo and Alfred de Musset, without implying an immortal significance in passion, which the modern realists refuse to see in mere appetite. He could not so praise love without also praising loyalty. He might not admit that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Arthur; but he could not write at all without assuming that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Lancelot. The later sex writers would refuse to admit that there is any sacred bond between anybody and anybody else. The truth is that this mystical feeling about the love of man and woman was treated so clumsily that it fell between two stools. When it was really mediæval, it could be preserved for ever in a story like that of Dante and Beatrice. When it was really modern, it simply fell to pieces, into little decaying scraps rather like wriggling worms, the hundred little loves and lusts of the modern sex novel. But the Romantics of the nineteenth century held it up in a sort of indeterminate pre-eminence; a dizzy and toppling idolatry; trying to make it at once as sacred as they thought good and as free as they found convenient. They wanted to eat their wedding-cake and have it. They wanted to make their wild wedding sacred without making it secure. They did put woman upon a pedestal; but they did not look to see if it was a solid pedestal.
Now, oddly enough, it was the same with Liberty as with Love. It was the same with the democratic ideal of political freedom for all. And Democracy is being criticized just now for exactly the same reason that Romance is being criticized just now. It is that all the sense there ever was in either of them rested on a religious idea. The nineteenth century took away the religious idea and left a sense that rapidly turned into nonsense. All men are equal because God loves all equally; and nothing can compare with that equality. But in what other way are men equal? The vague Liberals of the nineteenth century cut away the divine ground from under Democracy, and Democracy was left to stand by itself. In other words, it is left to fall by itself. Jefferson said that men were given equal rights by their Creator. Ingersoll said they had no Creator, but had received equal rights from nowhere. Even in the democratic atmosphere of America, it began to dawn on a great many people that it is very difficult to prove that men ever received the equal rights at all. In short, the Republican theory will turn out to be another form of Romance; and will be classed with the illusion of the too idealistic lover, unless it can be reconnected with the positive beliefs from which it was originally borrowed. The Red Cap will follow the Red Waistcoat into the old clothes’ shop, unless it can be made something more than a fashion, or dipped in that enduring dye that coloured the red roses of St. Dorothy or the red cross of St. George.
XXXII
Sul Romanticismo e sulla Giovinezza
IL ROMANTICISMO viene solitamente criticato come se fosse una cosa antichissima; mentre in verità è una cosa recentissima, e soprattutto rivoluzionaria. Fu l’ultima, freschissima Rivolta dei Giovani, quella che precedette la Rivolta dei Giovani che ora la assale. Vi è, s’intende, una differenza fra il Romanticismo e il Romanzesco. Il Romanzesco, nel suo senso più sano, è antico quanto il mondo; e persino in un senso più particolare esso si ispira a quella singolare intensità di colore e a quel puntuto vigore di contorni che appartenevano agli scudi, alle vetrate e ai pennoni del medioevo. Il romanzesco medievale, che fu una sorta di modello per il romanzesco moderno, nasceva dalla vividezza di un’esperienza visionaria o spirituale che lasciava una specie di incanto o di gloria intorno a ogni esperienza. Ma quella luce colorata la gettava specialmente sull’esperienza dell’amore e, in un certo senso, modellava il romanzesco sulla religione; come quando Chaucer chiamava i leggendari amanti i Santi di Cupido. In questo senso possiamo dire che il romanzesco appartenne al Medioevo; e in un senso più profondo che appartenne a tutte le età. Il Romanticismo, invece, fu un particolare movimento moderno, e fu per quasi ogni verso particolarmente moderno.
Era imparentato con il Femminismo, in ciò che oggi si chiama «mettere la Donna su un piedistallo». Ed era imparentato anche con la democrazia ideale, che ben potrebbe chiamarsi «mettere l’Uomo su un piedistallo». In verità, esiste un curioso e illuminante parallelo storico fra queste due idee, che nel diciannovesimo secolo parvero entrambe nuove e vere. Sono ben lungi dall’affermare che non siano vere semplicemente perché non sono più nuove. Provo molta simpatia per entrambe. Mi limito a notare il fatto storico che, se non sono nuove, furono assai di recente considerate nuove. Il Repubblicano che portava il Berretto Rosso parlava, se non come se non vi fossero mai stati Repubblicani in passato, almeno come se in futuro non vi dovesse essere altro che Repubblicani. Il Romantico che portava il Panciotto Rosso parlava come se il vecchio mondo fosse stato imprigionato nel Classicismo e il mondo nuovo dovesse spalancarsi soltanto al Romanticismo. Ciascuno si credeva un estremista; ma ciascuno era in realtà un moderato che aveva raggiunto solo il mezzo della propria strada, e non aveva alcuna idea reale di quale estremo essa conducesse. Ciascuno era un ponte sospeso fra due età. Ciascuno recava con sé una cosa viva tratta dal vecchio mondo, che poteva soltanto perire nel nuovo.
Poiché una cosa molto semplice era vera tanto dell’Amore quanto della Libertà: gli dèi dei Romantici e dei Repubblicani. Erano entrambi semplicemente frammenti di misticismo cristiano, e persino di teologia cristiana, strappati dal loro luogo proprio, gettati alla rinfusa e infine scagliati in avanti dentro un’età di duro materialismo che all’istante li distrusse. Non erano davvero idee razionali, e ancor meno idee razionalistiche. O almeno, non furono mai idee razionali dopo che ebbero cessato di essere idee religiose. Una di esse era una nebulosa esagerazione umana dell’idea sacramentale del matrimonio. L’altra era una nebulosa esagerazione umana della fratellanza degli uomini in Dio. Quando il Romantico posava la mano sul suo Panciotto Rosso e giurava a George Sand o a qualche altra dama che le loro anime erano due affinità sposate prima che il mondo fosse creato, egli attingeva al capitale cristiano delle antiche idee di immortalità e di santità. Quando spiegava alla sua amante, nella sua soffitta, la delicatezza e la dignità di tagliare la gola a lei e a se stesso, e lo chiamava «il mondo ben perduto per amore», egli in realtà si appellava all’antica tradizione del martire e dell’asceta, che perdeva il mondo per salvare la propria anima. Non stava, in alcun senso rigoroso della parola, dicendo cose sensate. Non pronunciava osservazioni puramente razionali; e certo non osservazioni che la nostra generazione più razionalistica chiamerebbe razionali. Spesso, quando si era particolarmente ben trattato con champagne e vecchio brandy, lasciava scappare il gatto dal sacco piuttosto malamente, chiamando la blanchisseuse o la modella dell’artista «sua sposa al cospetto di Dio».
Comunque sia, egli non poteva rivolgere quel genere di appelli alla fede deifica o alla gelosia demoniaca, che costituivano la vigorosa poesia d’amore dell’età di Hugo e di Alfred de Musset, senza sottintendere nella passione un significato immortale, che i realisti moderni si rifiutano di vedere nel mero appetito. Non poteva così lodare l’amore senza lodare anche la fedeltà. Poteva non ammettere che vi fosse un vincolo sacro fra Ginevra e Artù; ma non poteva scrivere affatto senza presupporre che vi fosse un vincolo sacro fra Ginevra e Lancillotto. Gli scrittori posteriori del sesso rifiuterebbero di ammettere che vi sia un qualsiasi vincolo sacro fra chiunque e chiunque altro. La verità è che questo sentimento mistico intorno all’amore fra l’uomo e la donna fu maneggiato così goffamente da cadere fra due sgabelli. Quando era davvero medievale, poteva essere conservato per sempre in una storia come quella di Dante e Beatrice. Quando era davvero moderno, cadeva semplicemente a pezzi, in piccoli brandelli imputriditi piuttosto simili a vermi che si contorcono, i cento piccoli amori e le cento piccole libidini del moderno romanzo sessuale. Ma i Romantici del diciannovesimo secolo lo sollevarono in una sorta di preminenza indeterminata; un’idolatria vertiginosa e traballante; cercando di renderlo a un tempo sacro quanto stimavano bene e libero quanto trovavano comodo. Volevano mangiare la torta nuziale e insieme conservarla. Volevano rendere sacre le loro nozze selvagge senza renderle sicure. Misero sì la donna su un piedistallo; ma non si curarono di vedere se il piedistallo fosse solido.
Ora, per quanto strano possa sembrare, lo stesso accadde con la Libertà come con l’Amore. Lo stesso accadde con l’ideale democratico della libertà politica per tutti. E la Democrazia viene criticata proprio ora esattamente per la stessa ragione per cui il Romanzesco viene criticato proprio ora. È che tutto il senso che vi fu mai nell’una o nell’altro poggiava su un’idea religiosa. Il diciannovesimo secolo tolse l’idea religiosa e lasciò un senso che rapidamente si mutò in nonsenso. Tutti gli uomini sono uguali perché Dio li ama tutti egualmente; e nulla può paragonarsi a quell’uguaglianza. Ma in quale altro modo sono uguali gli uomini? I vaghi Liberali del diciannovesimo secolo tagliarono via il fondamento divino da sotto la Democrazia, e la Democrazia fu lasciata a reggersi da sola. In altre parole, è lasciata a cadere da sola. Jefferson disse che agli uomini erano stati dati uguali diritti dal loro Creatore. Ingersoll disse che essi non avevano alcun Creatore, ma avevano ricevuto uguali diritti dal nulla. Persino nell’atmosfera democratica dell’America, cominciò ad albeggiare nella mente di moltissimi che è assai difficile provare che gli uomini abbiano mai ricevuto affatto gli uguali diritti. In breve, la teoria repubblicana si rivelerà un’altra forma di Romanzesco; e verrà classificata insieme all’illusione dell’innamorato troppo idealista, a meno che non possa essere riconnessa con le credenze positive da cui fu originariamente presa in prestito. Il Berretto Rosso seguirà il Panciotto Rosso nella bottega del rigattiere, a meno che non lo si possa rendere qualcosa di più di una moda, o non lo si immerga in quella tintura durevole che colorava le rose rosse di Santa Dorotea o la croce rossa di San Giorgio.
Mr. Philip Carr recently published a picturesque and interesting sketch of the French Romantics in the great period of Romanticism. It appeared at an appropriate time—at about the time when we could fairly say that artistic Paris, in that sense, had at last ceased to be gossip and had begun to be history. The admirable “Beachcomber,” in the Daily Express, has often made fun of the fussy and confused “reminiscences” of men who claim to have lived the Bohemian life of the French capital; exulting in an orgy of anarchy and anachronism; and describing how he drank absinthe with Zola and Chateaubriand or shared a garret with Gauguin and Montalembert. But time sets a limit even to anachronism; it would hardly do for the most venerable journalist, writing “Ninety-eight Years in Fleet Street” to claim to have met Milton as well as Keats; and even Mr. Frank Harris did not profess to have been the intimate friend of Swift as well as Carlyle. We are now far enough away from the French Romantics of the nineteenth century to judge them as we should the Pléiade in the sixteenth century. In both cases, of course, a good many English people will entirely misjudge them and absurdly underrate them; many through a cultural, educational or acquired characteristic: a complete ignorance of French; many others by a profound, primitive, natural gift: a complete ignorance of poetry. It would be very easy to make English jokes about the French Romantics; the sort of jokes that might be made about them in Punch. There is even some excuse for a superficial reader, accustomed to such superficial satire, if he gains such a general impression. I mean the impression that the great geniuses of nineteenth-century Paris were all marked by three characteristics: that they all went about in crowds, frequently riotous crowds; that they each of them complained in verse that they were dwelling in a desert of unbearable loneliness; and that each of them had to be (or professed to be), for however short a period, in love with George Sand. But the weakness of all such superior Victorian patronage is that the Romantic often lived a life that was more real, not to say realistic, in its tests and risks and even privations, than the life of the patronizing Victorian. The Victorian humorist would not have liked to starve in a garret because he was a Republican or a Royalist; he would not have liked to face a Paris mob even, when it was out to kill, for a fine point of literary criticism; he certainly would not have liked to be challenged to a duel by all the dreamy, ineffective æsthetes in Paris; and even having a love affair with George Sand, though to some not much more alluring than having a heart-to-heart talk with the rhinoceros at the Zoo, was certainly almost as dangerous. In truth it was the jolly humorous Victorian, of the type of Thackeray or Trollope, who was the Romantic. It was he who lived in a world of his own; in a happy land that was a happy dreamland; in that prosperous and peaceful England that was a day-dream and had its day. The French Romantics made fools of themselves in all sorts of ways, as very clever men always do. But they were much nearer to the taste of certain terrible things: death and desperate faith and the fury of the poor and abstract certitudes and even despair. They were dramatic, and even melodramatic, in their gestures; but, after all, they were not on a stage. They lived through real revolutions, and not unreal reforms; they lived within striking distance of the duellist’s pistol and the rioter’s pike. They followed women or visions perhaps not worth dying for; but some of them might really have died. Because their cries were sometimes childish, people forget that the burnt child dreads the fire only when it is a real fire; and the Victorian nursery always had an efficient fireguard.
The true intellectual interest of Romanticism, now that it has been so completely replaced by Realism, is that everybody has completely forgotten how a very recent rebellion of the young produced the first quite as much as the second. It is amusing to find the young writers of today looking back disdainfully on what they consider old-fashioned “sentiment” or “sentimentalism” or “sensibility” or “putting woman on a pedestal” or “romantic illusions about love”—all apparently under the impression that these are very venerable moral traditions of mankind that no man has ever dared to disturb till now. The truth is that all this sentiment is still a new thing; and only yesterday was the new thing. The romance of drooping love-locks or flowing ringlets, the fainting and the feminine sensibility, the pressed flowers and the pink albums, the Books of Beauty and the Gems of Loveliness—only yesterday, all these things were not only Youth but the Revolt of Youth. Only yesterday all these things were not only the fashion; they were even the rebellion against fashion; in the sense of the rebellion against convention. Only yesterday all these were the freaks of that Freedom by which the rising generation shocked its elders. Only yesterday all these things were Tomorrow.
Anyone who will consider the facts will see that this is no exaggeration. The albums and the keepsakes were inscribed with endless quotations from Byron; because Byron had been a revolutionist. We cannot now realize the wild novelty, nay, crudity, of the young lady who insisted on copying out Byron, instead of copying out Cowper. We cannot feel the fact that she was gate-crashing; that she was going the pace; that she was running around with a pretty hot crowd; but it was the fact. And the moral of it is that nothing grows old so quickly as what is new. The real comment upon the simpering smile of the lady with the ringlets, as revealed reclining with mandolin and bulbul, in the Book of Beauty, is to send her portrait to the most modern of all modern girls, engaged in detaching her mouth from her face by the latest optical illusion of lip-stick, with the old inscription: “Get you to my lady’s chamber; and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come.”
More ironic than the grinning skull, more dissolvent than dust and ashes, slower and more certain in its vengeance than mere death, this destiny has decreed that The Young of every generation shall not die, but shall live on as specimens of The Old; and especially as types of the old-fashioned. Each generation of rebels in turn is remembered by the next, not as the pioneers who began the march, or started to break away from the old conventions; but as the old convention from which only the very latest rebels have dared to break away. The moral seems to be that there may be a reward for rebels in heaven, if the Bright Young Things are looking in that direction; but there is precious little reward on earth.
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Il signor Philip Carr ha pubblicato di recente un pittoresco e interessante profilo dei Romantici francesi nel grande periodo del Romanticismo. Esso apparve in un momento opportuno: all’incirca nel momento in cui potevamo dire a buon diritto che la Parigi artistica, in quel senso, aveva finalmente cessato di essere pettegolezzo e aveva cominciato a essere storia. L’ammirevole «Beachcomber», sul Daily Express, ha spesso preso in giro le pignole e confuse «reminiscenze» di uomini che pretendono d’aver vissuto la vita bohémien della capitale francese; esultando in un’orgia di anarchia e anacronismo; e descrivendo come bevesse assenzio con Zola e Chateaubriand o dividesse una soffitta con Gauguin e Montalembert. Ma il tempo pone un limite persino all’anacronismo; sarebbe difficile accettare che il più venerando dei giornalisti, scrivendo «Novantotto anni in Fleet Street», pretendesse d’aver conosciuto Milton oltre che Keats; e persino il signor Frank Harris non ebbe la pretesa d’essere stato l’intimo amico di Swift oltre che di Carlyle. Siamo ormai abbastanza lontani dai Romantici francesi del diciannovesimo secolo per giudicarli come dovremmo giudicare la Pléiade del sedicesimo. In entrambi i casi, s’intende, non pochi Inglesi li giudicheranno del tutto a torto e li sottovaluteranno assurdamente; molti per una caratteristica culturale, educativa o acquisita: una completa ignoranza del francese; molti altri per un dono profondo, primitivo, naturale: una completa ignoranza della poesia. Sarebbe facilissimo fare barzellette inglesi sui Romantici francesi; il genere di barzellette che potrebbe farsene su Punch. Vi è persino qualche scusante per un lettore superficiale, avvezzo a una tale satira superficiale, se ne ricava una simile impressione generale. Intendo l’impressione che i grandi geni della Parigi del diciannovesimo secolo fossero tutti contrassegnati da tre caratteristiche: che andassero tutti in giro in folle, spesso in folle tumultuanti; che ciascuno di essi lamentasse in versi di dimorare in un deserto d’insopportabile solitudine; e che ciascuno di essi dovesse essere (o professasse d’essere), per quanto breve tempo, innamorato di George Sand. Ma la debolezza di tutto questo superiore patrocinio vittoriano è che il Romantico spesso viveva una vita più reale, per non dire realistica, nelle sue prove, nei suoi rischi e persino nelle sue privazioni, di quanto lo fosse la vita del vittoriano che lo patrocinava. Il vittoriano umorista non avrebbe gradito morir di fame in una soffitta perché era Repubblicano o Realista; non avrebbe gradito affrontare persino una folla di Parigi, quando essa era uscita per uccidere, per un fine punto di critica letteraria; certo non avrebbe gradito d’essere sfidato a duello da tutti gli sognanti e inconcludenti esteti di Parigi; e persino l’avere una relazione d’amore con George Sand, benché per alcuni non molto più allettante di un colloquio a cuore aperto con il rinoceronte dello Zoo, era certamente quasi altrettanto pericoloso. In verità fu il gioviale, umoristico vittoriano, del tipo di Thackeray o di Trollope, a essere il Romantico. Fu lui a vivere in un mondo tutto suo; in una terra felice che era un felice paese dei sogni; in quell’Inghilterra prospera e pacifica che era una fantasticheria e che ebbe il suo giorno. I Romantici francesi si resero ridicoli in ogni sorta di modi, come fanno sempre gli uomini molto intelligenti. Ma erano assai più vicini al sapore di certe cose terribili: la morte e la fede disperata e la furia dei poveri e le astratte certezze e persino la disperazione. Erano drammatici, e persino melodrammatici, nei loro gesti; ma, dopotutto, non stavano su un palcoscenico. Vissero attraverso rivoluzioni reali, e non riforme irreali; vissero a distanza di tiro dalla pistola del duellante e dalla picca del rivoltoso. Seguirono donne o visioni forse non degne che si morisse per esse; ma alcuni di loro avrebbero potuto davvero morirne. Poiché le loro grida erano talvolta puerili, la gente dimentica che il bambino scottato teme il fuoco soltanto quando è un fuoco vero; e la stanza dei bambini vittoriana aveva sempre un efficiente parafuoco.
Il vero interesse intellettuale del Romanticismo, ora che esso è stato così completamente sostituito dal Realismo, sta nel fatto che tutti hanno completamente dimenticato come una ribellione recentissima dei giovani abbia prodotto il primo tanto quanto il secondo. È divertente scoprire i giovani scrittori d’oggi volgersi indietro con disdegno a quello che considerano un vecchio «sentimento» all’antica o «sentimentalismo» o «sensibilità» o «mettere la donna su un piedistallo» o «illusioni romantiche sull’amore»: tutti apparentemente convinti che queste siano venerabilissime tradizioni morali dell’umanità che nessuno ha mai osato turbare fino ad ora. La verità è che tutto questo sentimento è ancora una cosa nuova; e soltanto ieri era la cosa nuova. Il romanzesco dei riccioli d’amore pendenti o delle chiome fluenti, gli svenimenti e la sensibilità femminile, i fiori pressati e gli album rosa, i Libri della Bellezza e le Gemme della Leggiadria: soltanto ieri tutte queste cose non erano soltanto Giovinezza, ma la Rivolta della Giovinezza. Soltanto ieri tutte queste cose non erano soltanto la moda; erano persino la ribellione contro la moda; nel senso della ribellione contro la convenzione. Soltanto ieri tutte queste erano le stravaganze di quella Libertà con cui la generazione nascente scandalizzava i suoi maggiori. Soltanto ieri tutte queste cose erano il Domani.
Chiunque voglia considerare i fatti vedrà che questa non è un’esagerazione. Gli album e i ricordini erano vergati con infinite citazioni di Byron; perché Byron era stato un rivoluzionario. Non riusciamo più a renderci conto della selvaggia novità, anzi crudezza, della giovane signorina che si ostinava a ricopiare Byron, invece di ricopiare Cowper. Non riusciamo a percepire il fatto che essa stesse forzando un ingresso proibito; che se la spassasse a rotta di collo; che girasse con una compagnia piuttosto scalmanata; eppure era così. E la morale è che nulla invecchia così in fretta come ciò che è nuovo. Il vero commento sul sorriso lezioso della dama dai riccioli, ritratta reclinata con mandolino e usignolo, nel Libro della Bellezza, è di mandare il suo ritratto alla più moderna di tutte le fanciulle moderne, intenta a staccarsi la bocca dal viso con l’ultima illusione ottica del rossetto, con la vecchia iscrizione: «Va’ nella camera della mia signora, e dille che, per quanto si spalmi un dito di belletto, a questa fine dovrà pur ridursi.»
Più ironico del teschio ghignante, più dissolvente della polvere e della cenere, più lento e più certo nella sua vendetta della morte stessa, questo destino ha decretato che i Giovani di ogni generazione non muoiano, ma sopravvivano come esemplari dei Vecchi; e specialmente come modelli di ciò che è all’antica. Ogni generazione di ribelli è a sua volta ricordata dalla successiva non come i pionieri che iniziarono la marcia, o che cominciarono a staccarsi dalle vecchie convenzioni; ma come la vecchia convenzione da cui soltanto i ribelli più recenti hanno osato staccarsi. La morale sembra essere che possa esservi una ricompensa per i ribelli in cielo, se i Brillanti Giovani stanno guardando in quella direzione; ma sulla terra la ricompensa è ben poca.
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XXXIII
On Mr. Geoffrey Chaucer
THE challenge of Chaucer is that he is our one mediæval poet, for most moderns; and he flatly contradicts all that they mean by mediæval. Aged and crabbed historians tell them that mediævalism was only filth, fear, gloom, self-torture and torture of others. Even mediævalist æsthetes tell them it was chiefly mystery, solemnity and care for the supernatural to the exclusion of the natural. Now Chaucer is obviously less like this than the poets after the Renaissance and the Reformation. He is obviously more sane even than Shakspere, more liberal than Milton; more tolerant than Pope; more humorous than Wordsworth; more social and at ease with men than Byron or even Shelley. Nay, some have doubted whether he is not still more humane than the very latest humanists; whether his geniality does not exceed the rosy optimism of Aldous Huxley or the ever-bubbling high spirits of T. S. Eliot.
Chaucer was, above all, an artist; and he was one of that fairly large and very happy band of artists who are not troubled with the artistic temperament. Perhaps there was never a less typical poet, as a poet was understood in the Byronic tradition of dark passions and tempestuous raiment. But, indeed, that Byronic generalization was largely founded upon Byron, or rather, on a blunder about Byron. It would be much truer to say that practically every type of human being has been also a poet, and that Byron was a Regency Buck plus poetry. Similarly, Goethe was a German professor plus poetry, and Browning was a rather commercial-looking bourgeois plus poetry, and Heine was a cynical Jew plus poetry, and Scott was a rather acquisitive gentleman farmer plus poetry, and Villon was a pickpocket plus poetry, and Wordsworth was a noodle plus poetry, and Walt Whitman was an American loafer plus poetry—for, in the art of loafing, Weary Willie could never have stood up against Unweary Walt. I have not yet heard of an American dentist or a shop-walker in a large draper’s who is a poet, and I have no doubt that both of these deficiencies will soon be supplied. Anyhow, the general rule is that almost any trade or type of man can be an artist— yes, even an æsthete.
But once or twice there appears in history the artist who is the extreme antithesis of the æsthete. An artist of this kind was Geoffrey Chaucer. He was a man who always made himself useful, and not only ornamental. People trusted him, not only in the moral, but in the more purely practical sense. He was not the sort of poet who would forget to post a letter, or post an unstamped ode to the cuckoo instead, had the penny postage existed in his day. He was not only given many responsible posts, but responsible posts of many kinds. At one time he was sent to negotiate the delicate finances of ransom and peace with a great prince. At another time he was sent to oversee the builders and workmen in the construction of a great public building. It has been conjectured that he had some technical knowledge of architecture, and I think the descriptions of various pagan temples and royal palaces in his poems support the conjecture. It is certain that he knew a good deal about the official precedence and etiquette of the Chamberlain’s Office; he was a witness upon a point of heraldry in an important trial. Though his relations to the Court, during and after the débâcle of Richard II, are covered with some obscurity, it is certain that, for the greater part of his life at least, he performed job after job, of the most quaintly different kinds, to the increasing satisfaction of his employers. He was emphatically, as the vulgar phrase goes, a man of the world.
But through all these tasks the lyric element flowed out of him quite naturally, as a man will whistle or sing while he is potting a shrub or adding up a column of figures. He never seemed to have felt any particular strain or dislocation between the world in which he was a man of the world and that other world of which he was one of the immortals. He had that sort of temper in which there is no antithesis of Sense and Sensibility. He does not seem to have quarrelled with many people, even in that very quarrelsome transition time; and he does not seem to have quarrelled with himself. Being a Christian, he was ready to accuse himself when he was seriously considering the question; but that is something quite different from the sort of constant unconscious friction between different parts of the mind which has marred the happiness of so many artists and poets.
I do not mean merely that the poetry of Chaucer, like the poetry of Dante, was in the higher sense a harmony. I mean that it was in the ordinary human sense a melody. It remained not only unspoilt, but unmixed; uncomplicated by the complexities of living, whether they were actually there or no. It is unfortunate that the word “mood” is almost always used of a sombre or secretive mood; and that we do not convey the idea that a man was in merry mood when we say merely that he was moody. For there was truly a special thing that may be called the Chaucerian mood, and it was essentially merry. There are any number of passages of pathos, and one or two passages of tragedy, but they never make us feel that the mood has really altered, and it seems as if the man speaking is always smiling as he speaks. In other words, the thing which is supremely Chaucerian is the Chaucerian atmosphere, an atmosphere which penetrates through all particular persons and problems; a sort of diffused light which lies on everything, whether tragic or comic, and prevents the tragedy from being hopeless or the comedy from being cruel. No art critic, however artistic, has ever succeeded in describing an atmosphere. The only way to approach it is to compare it with another atmosphere. And this Chaucerian mood is very like the mood in which (before it became merely vulgarized by cant or commercialism) some of the greatest of modern English writers have praised Christmas.
Chaucer was wide enough to be narrow; that is, he could bring a broad experience of life to the enjoyment of local or even accidental things. Now, it is the chief defect of the literature of today that it always talks as if local things could only be limiting, not to say strangling; and that anything like an accident could only be a jar. A Christmas dinner, as described by a modern minor poet, would almost certainly be a study in acute agony: the unendurable dullness of Uncle George, the cacophonous voice of Aunt Adelaide. But Chaucer, who sat down at the table with the Miller and the Pardoner, could have sat down to a Christmas dinner with the heaviest uncle or the shrillest aunt. He might have been amused at them, but he would never have been angered by them, and certainly he would never have insulted them in irritable little poems. And the reason was partly spiritual and partly practical; spiritual because he had, whatever his faults, a scheme of spiritual values in their right order, and knew that Christmas was more important than Uncle George’s anecdotes; and practical because he had seen the great world of human beings, and knew that wherever a man wanders among men, in Flanders or France or Italy, he will find that the world largely consists of Uncle Georges. This imaginative patience is the thing that men want most in the modern Christmas, and if they wish to learn it I recommend them to read Chaucer.
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XXXIII
Sul signor Geoffrey Chaucer
LA sfida di Chaucer sta nel fatto che egli è, per la maggior parte dei moderni, il nostro unico poeta medievale; e contraddice recisamente tutto ciò che essi intendono per medievale. Storici attempati e bisbetici raccontano loro che il medioevo non fu che sudiciume, paura, tenebra, tormento di sé e tormento altrui. Perfino gli esteti amanti del medioevo dicono loro che esso fu soprattutto mistero, solennità e cura del soprannaturale a esclusione del naturale. Ebbene, Chaucer assomiglia evidentemente meno a tutto questo di quanto vi assomiglino i poeti venuti dopo il Rinascimento e la Riforma. Egli è manifestamente più equilibrato perfino di Shakespeare, più liberale di Milton, più tollerante di Pope, più umoristico di Wordsworth, più socievole e a proprio agio tra gli uomini di Byron o addirittura di Shelley. Anzi, taluni hanno dubitato se non sia più umano ancora degli umanisti più recenti; se la sua giovialità non superi il roseo ottimismo di Aldous Huxley o l’inesauribile brio di T. S. Eliot.
Chaucer fu, soprattutto, un artista; e apparteneva a quella schiera abbastanza numerosa e assai felice di artisti che non sono affatto tormentati dal temperamento artistico. Forse non vi fu mai poeta meno tipico, per come un poeta veniva inteso nella tradizione byroniana delle passioni cupe e delle vesti tempestose. Ma, in verità, quella generalizzazione byroniana era in gran parte fondata su Byron, o piuttosto su un equivoco intorno a Byron. Sarebbe molto più vero dire che pressoché ogni tipo di essere umano è stato anche poeta, e che Byron era un damerino della Reggenza più la poesia. Allo stesso modo, Goethe era un professore tedesco più la poesia, e Browning era un borghese dall’aria piuttosto commerciale più la poesia, e Heine era un ebreo cinico più la poesia, e Scott era un possidente di campagna piuttosto avido più la poesia, e Villon era un borsaiolo più la poesia, e Wordsworth era uno sciocco più la poesia, e Walt Whitman era un fannullone americano più la poesia — poiché, nell’arte del bighellonare, il Guglielmo Stanco non avrebbe mai potuto tener testa all’Instancabile Walt. Non ho ancora sentito parlare di un dentista americano o di un commesso di un grande negozio di stoffe che sia poeta, e non ho dubbio che entrambe queste lacune verranno presto colmate. Comunque sia, la regola generale è che quasi ogni mestiere o tipo d’uomo può essere un artista — sì, perfino un esteta.
Ma una volta o due appare nella storia l’artista che è l’estrema antitesi dell’esteta. Un artista di questa specie fu Geoffrey Chaucer. Era un uomo che si rendeva sempre utile, e non soltanto ornamentale. La gente si fidava di lui, non solo nel senso morale, ma in quello più schiettamente pratico. Non era il genere di poeta che dimenticherebbe d’impostare una lettera, o impostasse invece un’ode al cuculo senza francobollo, se ai suoi giorni fosse esistita l’affrancatura da un penny. Non solo gli furono affidati molti incarichi di responsabilità, ma incarichi di responsabilità di molte specie. Una volta fu inviato a negoziare le delicate questioni finanziarie del riscatto e della pace con un grande principe. Un’altra volta fu incaricato di sorvegliare i costruttori e le maestranze nell’erezione di un grande edificio pubblico. Si è congetturato che possedesse una qualche competenza tecnica di architettura, e credo che le descrizioni di vari templi pagani e palazzi regali nei suoi poemi avvalorino la congettura. È certo che sapeva molte cose sulla precedenza ufficiale e sull’etichetta dell’Ufficio del Ciambellano; fu testimone su un punto di araldica in un processo importante. Sebbene i suoi rapporti con la Corte, durante e dopo la débâcle di Riccardo II, siano avvolti in una certa oscurità, è certo che, almeno per la maggior parte della sua vita, egli sbrigò un incarico dopo l’altro, delle specie più bizzarramente diverse, con crescente soddisfazione dei suoi committenti. Egli era enfaticamente, come recita la frase volgare, un uomo di mondo.
Ma attraverso tutte queste incombenze l’elemento lirico sgorgava da lui con la massima naturalezza, come chi fischietta o canta mentre rinvasa un arbusto o somma una colonna di cifre. Non parve mai aver avvertito alcuna particolare tensione o frattura tra il mondo in cui era un uomo di mondo e quell’altro mondo di cui era uno degli immortali. Aveva quella sorta di indole in cui non v’è antitesi di Ragione e sentimento. Non pare aver litigato con molte persone, nemmeno in quell’epoca di transizione tanto litigiosa; e non pare aver litigato con se stesso. Essendo cristiano, era pronto ad accusare se stesso quando esaminava seriamente la questione; ma ciò è qualcosa di del tutto diverso da quella specie di costante attrito inconscio tra parti diverse della mente che ha guastato la felicità di tanti artisti e poeti.
Non intendo semplicemente che la poesia di Chaucer, al pari della poesia di Dante, fosse in senso alto un’armonia. Intendo che era, nel senso umano ordinario, una melodia. Rimase non solo incorrotta, ma non mescidata; non complicata dalle complessità del vivere, sia che vi fossero realmente sia che non vi fossero. È un peccato che la parola «umore» venga quasi sempre usata per un umore cupo o segreto; e che non trasmettiamo l’idea che un uomo fosse d’umore allegro quando diciamo soltanto che era umorale. Poiché vi era davvero una cosa particolare che si può chiamare l’umore chauceriano, ed esso era essenzialmente allegro. Vi sono innumerevoli passi di pathos, e uno o due passi di tragedia, ma essi non ci fanno mai sentire che l’umore sia realmente mutato, e pare che l’uomo che parla sorrida sempre mentre parla. In altri termini, ciò che è sommamente chauceriano è l’atmosfera chauceriana, un’atmosfera che penetra attraverso tutte le persone e i problemi particolari; una sorta di luce diffusa che si posa su ogni cosa, tragica o comica che sia, e impedisce alla tragedia di farsi disperata o alla commedia di farsi crudele. Nessun critico d’arte, per quanto artista, è mai riuscito a descrivere un’atmosfera. L’unico modo di accostarvisi è paragonarla a un’altra atmosfera. E questo umore chauceriano è molto simile all’umore in cui (prima che divenisse meramente volgarizzato dalla retorica o dal mercantilismo) alcuni dei più grandi scrittori inglesi moderni hanno celebrato il Natale.
Chaucer era abbastanza ampio da poter essere ristretto; vale a dire, sapeva recare una vasta esperienza di vita al godimento di cose locali o perfino accidentali. Ora, è il difetto principale della letteratura d’oggi il parlare sempre come se le cose locali potessero soltanto limitare, per non dire soffocare; e come se qualcosa di simile a un caso fortuito potesse essere soltanto una stonatura. Un pranzo di Natale, quale lo descriverebbe un poeta minore moderno, sarebbe quasi certamente uno studio di acuta agonia: l’insopportabile piattezza dello zio George, la voce cacofonica della zia Adelaide. Ma Chaucer, che sedeva a mensa col Mugnaio e col Perdonatore, avrebbe potuto sedersi a un pranzo di Natale con lo zio più tedioso o la zia più stridula. Se ne sarebbe forse divertito, ma non ne sarebbe mai stato irritato, e di certo non li avrebbe mai insultati in piccoli poemi stizzosi. E la ragione era in parte spirituale e in parte pratica; spirituale perché egli aveva, quali che fossero i suoi difetti, uno schema di valori spirituali nel loro giusto ordine, e sapeva che il Natale era più importante degli aneddoti dello zio George; e pratica perché aveva veduto il gran mondo degli esseri umani, e sapeva che dovunque un uomo vaghi tra gli uomini, nelle Fiandre o in Francia o in Italia, troverà che il mondo consta in gran parte di zii George. Questa immaginativa pazienza è la cosa di cui gli uomini hanno più bisogno nel Natale moderno, e se desiderano apprenderla raccomando loro di leggere Chaucer.
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XXXIV
On Monsters
I SAW in an illustrated paper—which sparkles with scientific news— that a green-blooded fish had been found in the sea; indeed, a creature that was completely green, down to this uncanny ichor in its veins, and very big and venomous at that. Somehow I could not get it out of my head, because the caption suggested a perfect refrain for a Ballade: A green-blooded fish has been found in the sea. It has so wide a critical and philosophical application. I have known so many green-blooded fish on the land, walking about the streets and sitting in the clubs, and especially the committees. So many green-blooded fish have written books and criticisms of books, have taught in academies of learning and founded schools of philosophy, that they have almost made themselves the typical biological product of the present stage of evolution. There is never a debate in the House of Commons, especially about Eugenics or The Compulsory Amputation of Poor People, without several green-blooded fishes standing up on their tails to talk. There is never a petition, or a letter to the Press, urging the transformation of taverns into teashops or local museums, without a whole string of green-blooded fish hanging on to the tail of it, and pretty stinking fish too. But for some reason the burden of this non-existent Ballade ran continually in my head, and somehow turned my thoughts in the direction of poisonous monsters in general; of all those dragons and demi-dragons and devouring creatures which appear in primitive stories as the chief enemies of man. It has been suggested that these legends really refer to some period when prehistoric man had to contend with huge animals that have since died out. And then the thought occurred to me: Suppose the primitive heroes killed them just when they were dying out. I mean, suppose they would have died out, even if the Cave Man had sat comfortably in his Cave and not troubled to kill them.
Suppose Perseus turned the sea-monster into a rock at the very moment when it was well on its way to becoming a fossil. Suppose St. George arrived, not only just before the death of the Princess, but just before the death of the Dragon. Suppose he burst in, rather tactlessly, so to speak, on the deathbed of the dragon, and only finished him off with a lance when the dragon-doctor had done the real work with a lancet. In short, is it possible that the heroes might have saved themselves the trouble of fighting, if they had only felt the pulse or taken the temperature of the expiring foe of mankind? The dragon is always represented with wide-open jaws, darting out a forked and flaming tongue. But perhaps he is only putting his tongue out to be examined by his private physician. Perhaps all the monsters, when they appear in song and story, were in a bad way, physically as well as morally. Now I come to think of it, that might explain the green-blooded fish that was found in the sea. Perhaps he is not a species, but a disease. Perhaps the green-blooded fish was suffering, if not exactly from anæmia, at least from some subtle form of chloræmia pisciana, or whatever this obscure malady will be called when it is discovered. I suppose a fish in the sea could hardly be green with seasickness. And anyhow, there are biological theorists even on land, who have lately begun to look rather fishy.
The fancy might make many variants in the fairy-tales. They always narrate how the cavern of the monster or giant is surrounded by the bones of thousands of victims. We can imagine the hero carefully counting them and making calculations about the stage of indigestion at which any monster must have arrived after such a meal. In the special department of Giants there is a story about Jack the Giant-Killer and a hasty-pudding, which the Giant at least devoured. I do not know what a hasty-pudding is, but I gather that in this case the meal was somewhat hasty. All this could not be good for the health of Giants as a class. And Dickens, who had known several Giants, as they appear in travelling-shows, testifies to their delicate constitutions. But I admit that, while my rambling subconsciousness ran on this ancient theme, I was beginning to think of its modern application. I sometimes wonder whether it is worth while to attack every monster of modern anarchy and absurdity as it appears in the realm of thought, or whether they would kill themselves even if they were not killed. Sometimes they seem to kill themselves almost too fast to be killed. Some I can remember making war on for months who have now been dead for years. I can remember giants of blasphemy or barbaric philosophy; giants so gigantic that they seemed not only to darken the earth, but block out the heavens. They defied the world like Goliath, and all were warned against accepting the challenge, in sight of all the bones about their caverns. But now it is their own bones that are scattered, and even a rag-and-bone man will hardly stoop to pick them up.
For instance, there was Haeckel and the hard concrete Materialism of his day. For years on end I filled my life with fighting Mr. Blatchford and others about it, and pointing out the fallacies, not to say falsehoods, of Haeckel. And where is he now? Mr. Blatchford has forgotten all about Haeckel, and so has everybody else. The new men of science have completely repudiated him. But I remember when every new man of science, and especially of the new science of sociology or eugenics (a green-blooded fish has been found in the sea), accepted him as the founder of a new religion. And when Mr. Belloc wrote the envoi of another Ballade—
Prince, if you meet upon a bus A man who makes a great display Of Dr. Haeckel, argue thus, The wind has blown them all away—
it really sounded like an audacity or a daring prophecy. Whereas now it sounds like a truism, because it has come true.
Then there was Lombroso, and all the quackery that was called Criminology. I can remember when the name of Lombroso was like the name of Newton or of Faraday; but I do not often see it mentioned now, least of all among men of science. It is to the enduring glory of Mr. H. G. Wells that even in those days, though on the materialist side in many matters, he protested against the premature dogmatism of the prigs who talked about “the criminal skull” or “the criminal ear,” and who called the young and earnest to stamp out hereditary criminal tendencies by selection or segregation (a green-blooded fish has been found in the sea). Was it worth while to argue against the great Science of Criminology in the later nineteenth century? The dragon would have died a natural death, if anything about him could be natural.
I could give any number of other cases; of other controversies with things I thought dominant which were in fact dying; which are in fact dead. There was the proposal that people too poor to bring actions for libel should be put on a Black List as blackguards who were too fond of beer (a green-blooded fish has been found in the sea); there was the absurd theory that being too fond of beer is hereditary, and the proposal (moved by the fish) that the beer-drinker should be forbidden children. There was the whole assumption that anything done by a State Department would be perfect and that Supervisors are Supermen. That was once our nightmare; but flogging it was flogging a dead horse, or at least a dying horse, and I rather repent of my inhumanity.
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XXXIV
Sui mostri
LESSI in un giornale illustrato — di quelli che scintillano di notizie scientifiche — che era stato trovato in mare un pesce dal sangue verde; anzi, una creatura interamente verde, fino a questo inquietante icore che le scorreva nelle vene, e per giunta assai grande e velenosa. Chissà perché non riuscivo a togliermela dalla testa, giacché la didascalia mi suggeriva un ritornello perfetto per una Ballata: È stato trovato in mare un pesce dal sangue verde. Ha un’applicazione critica e filosofica così vasta. Ne ho conosciuti tanti, di pesci dal sangue verde, sulla terraferma, che passeggiavano per le strade e sedevano nei circoli, e soprattutto nei comitati. Tanti pesci dal sangue verde hanno scritto libri e critiche di libri, hanno insegnato nelle accademie del sapere e fondato scuole di filosofia, al punto da essersi fatti quasi il tipico prodotto biologico dell’attuale stadio dell’evoluzione. Non c’è mai un dibattito alla Camera dei Comuni, specie a proposito di Eugenetica o dell’Amputazione Coatta dei Poveri, senza che parecchi pesci dal sangue verde si rizzino sulla coda a parlare. Non c’è mai una petizione, o una lettera alla stampa, che perori la trasformazione delle taverne in sale da tè o musei locali, senza un’intera filza di pesci dal sangue verde appesi alla sua coda, e pesci ben puzzolenti per giunta. Ma per qualche ragione il motivo di questa Ballata inesistente mi ronzava di continuo per il capo, e in qualche modo volgeva i miei pensieri verso i mostri velenosi in generale; verso tutti quei draghi e semidraghi e creature divoratrici che compaiono nelle storie primitive come i principali nemici dell’uomo. Si è supposto che queste leggende alludano in realtà a un’epoca in cui l’uomo preistorico dovette lottare contro enormi animali estintisi da allora. E allora mi venne un pensiero: supponiamo che gli eroi primitivi li abbiano uccisi proprio mentre si stavano estinguendo. Voglio dire, supponiamo che si sarebbero estinti comunque, anche se l’Uomo delle Caverne se ne fosse rimasto comodamente seduto nella sua caverna senza darsi la pena di ucciderli.
Supponiamo che Perseo abbia mutato in roccia il mostro marino proprio nell’istante in cui questo era già bene avviato a diventare un fossile. Supponiamo che San Giorgio sia arrivato non solo appena prima della morte della Principessa, ma appena prima della morte del Drago. Supponiamo che abbia fatto irruzione, per così dire con scarso tatto, sul letto di morte del drago, e lo abbia finito con la lancia solo dopo che il medico dei draghi aveva compiuto il lavoro vero con la lancetta. Insomma: è possibile che gli eroi si sarebbero risparmiati la fatica di combattere, se solo avessero tastato il polso o preso la temperatura al morente nemico del genere umano? Il drago è sempre raffigurato con le fauci spalancate, che saettano fuori una lingua biforcuta e fiammeggiante. Ma forse la sta solo tirando fuori per farsela esaminare dal suo medico personale. Forse tutti i mostri, quando compaiono nel canto e nella storia, versavano in cattive acque, fisicamente tanto quanto moralmente. Ora che ci penso, questo potrebbe spiegare il pesce dal sangue verde che fu trovato in mare. Forse non è una specie, ma una malattia. Forse il pesce dal sangue verde soffriva, se non proprio di anemia, almeno di qualche sottile forma di chloraemia pisciana, o come si chiamerà questo oscuro malanno quando sarà scoperto. Suppongo che un pesce in mare potrebbe difficilmente diventar verde per il mal di mare. E in ogni caso, ci sono teorici della biologia anche sulla terraferma che di recente hanno cominciato ad apparire piuttosto sospetti.
La fantasia potrebbe introdurre molte varianti nelle fiabe. Esse raccontano sempre come la caverna del mostro o del gigante sia circondata dalle ossa di migliaia di vittime. Possiamo immaginare l’eroe che le conta con cura e fa calcoli sullo stadio d’indigestione a cui un qualsiasi mostro dev’essere giunto dopo un simile pasto. Nel reparto speciale dei Giganti c’è una storia su Jack l’Ammazzagiganti e un budino frettoloso, che il Gigante quantomeno divorò. Non so che cosa sia un budino frettoloso, ma arguisco che in questo caso il pasto fu alquanto frettoloso. Tutto ciò non poteva far bene alla salute dei Giganti come classe. E Dickens, che aveva conosciuto parecchi Giganti, quali compaiono nei baracconi ambulanti, attesta la loro delicata costituzione. Ma ammetto che, mentre il mio subconscio divagante correva su questo tema antico, cominciavo a pensare alla sua applicazione moderna. Talvolta mi domando se valga la pena di assalire ogni mostro dell’anarchia e dell’assurdità moderne non appena esso compare nel regno del pensiero, o se non finirebbero per uccidersi da soli anche se non venissero uccisi. Talvolta sembrano uccidersi quasi troppo in fretta perché li si possa uccidere. Alcuni che ricordo di aver combattuto per mesi sono ormai morti da anni. Ricordo giganti della blasfemia o della filosofia barbarica; giganti così giganteschi da sembrare capaci non solo di oscurare la terra, ma di sbarrare il cielo. Sfidavano il mondo come Golia, e tutti venivano ammoniti a non raccoglierne la sfida, alla vista di tutte le ossa sparse attorno alle loro caverne. Ma ora sono le loro stesse ossa a essere sparpagliate, e nemmeno uno straccivendolo si chinerà a raccoglierle.
Per esempio, c’era Haeckel e il duro, concreto Materialismo dei suoi giorni. Per anni interi riempii la mia vita combattendo il signor Blatchford e altri a tal proposito, additando le fallacie, per non dire le falsità, di Haeckel. E dov’è ora? Il signor Blatchford ha dimenticato tutto di Haeckel, e così tutti gli altri. I nuovi uomini di scienza lo hanno completamente ripudiato. Ma ricordo quando ogni nuovo uomo di scienza, e specialmente della nuova scienza della sociologia o dell’eugenetica (è stato trovato in mare un pesce dal sangue verde), lo accoglieva come il fondatore di una nuova religione. E quando il signor Belloc scrisse l’invio di un’altra Ballata —
Principe, se incontri su un omnibus Un uomo che fa gran pompa Del Dottor Haeckel, ragiona così: Il vento li ha spazzati tutti via —
suonava davvero come un’audacia o una temeraria profezia. Mentre ora suona come un truismo, perché si è avverato.
Poi c’era Lombroso, e tutta la ciarlataneria che si chiamava Criminologia. Ricordo quando il nome di Lombroso era come il nome di Newton o di Faraday; ma ora non lo vedo citato spesso, meno che mai tra gli uomini di scienza. È a gloria imperitura del signor H. G. Wells che persino a quei tempi, benché schierato dal lato materialista in molte questioni, egli protestò contro il prematuro dogmatismo dei saccenti che parlavano del «cranio del criminale» o dell’«orecchio del criminale», e che chiamavano i giovani e i seri a estirpare le tendenze criminali ereditarie mediante selezione o segregazione (è stato trovato in mare un pesce dal sangue verde). Valeva la pena di argomentare contro la grande Scienza della Criminologia nel tardo Ottocento? Il drago sarebbe morto di morte naturale, ammesso che qualcosa in lui potesse essere naturale.
Potrei addurre un numero qualsiasi di altri casi; di altre controversie con cose che credevo dominanti e che in realtà stavano morendo; che in realtà sono morte. C’era la proposta che le persone troppo povere per intentare cause per diffamazione fossero iscritte in una Lista Nera come mascalzoni troppo amanti della birra (è stato trovato in mare un pesce dal sangue verde); c’era l’assurda teoria secondo cui l’essere troppo amanti della birra è ereditario, e la proposta (avanzata dal pesce) che al bevitore di birra fossero proibiti i figli. C’era l’intero assunto che qualunque cosa fatta da un Dicastero Statale sarebbe stata perfetta e che i Sovrintendenti sono Superuomini. Quello un tempo era il nostro incubo; ma flagellarlo era flagellare un cavallo morto, o almeno un cavallo morente, e quasi mi pento della mia disumanità.
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XXXV
On Love
THERE used to be, and possibly is, a mysterious institution for young ladies known as a finishing-school. The chief case against it was that, in certain instances, it meant finishing an education without ever beginning it. In any case, this is what is the matter with a great many modern institutions, and with none more than those delivering judgment on the history of feminine education and generally of feminine affairs. The curse of nearly all such judgments is the journalistic curse of having heard the latest news; that is, of having heard the end of the story without having even heard of the beginning. We talk of people not knowing the A B C of a subject, but the trouble with these people is that they do know the X Y Z of a subject without knowing the A B C.
This morning I read an article in a very serious magazine in which the writer quoted the remark of Byron that a certain sort of romantic love “is woman’s whole existence.” The writer then said that the first people who ever challenged this view were the revolutionary Suffragettes at the end of the nineteenth century. The truth is that the first people who ever maintained this view were the revolutionary Romantics at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The habit of giving to romantic love this extravagant and exclusive importance in human life was itself an entirely modern and revolutionary thing, and dates from the romantic movement commonly traced to Rousseau, but I think much more truly to be traced to the influence of the German sentimentalists. Most people who curse Rousseau have never read Rousseau, or have only read the Confessions and not the Contrat Social. The critics read the Confessions, if only to condemn them; because the critics themselves are modern romantics and sentimentalists; men who like Confessions and dislike Contracts. The critics hate or avoid the Contrat Social, not because it is sloppy and sentimental (for it is not), but because it is hard and clear and lucid and logical. Rousseau had his emotional weaknesses as an individual, like other individuals, but he was not an eighteenth-century philosopher for nothing. What the moderns dislike about him is not the silliness of his confessions, but the solidity of his convictions, and the fact that, like the old theologians, he could hold general ideas in a hard-and-fast fashion. When it comes to defining his fundamentals, Rousseau is as definite as Calvin. They were both ruthless theorists from Geneva, though one preached the theory of pessimism and the other the theory of optimism. I am not maintaining that I agree with either, but Rousseau would be as useful as Calvin, in teaching some of his critics how to criticize.
But Rousseau is a parenthesis. Wherever the real Romantic Movement came from, whether from the German forests or the Genevan lake, it was a recent and revolutionary business as compared with history as a whole. But it is obvious that the ordinary modern critic is entirely ignorant of history as a whole. He knows that his mother read Tennyson and his grandmother read Byron. Beyond that, he can imagine nothing whatever; he supposes that his great-great-grandmothers and their great-great-great-grandmothers had gone on reading Byron from the beginning of the world. He imagines that Byron, who was a disinherited and disreputable rebel to the last, has been an established and conventional authority from the first. He therefore supposes that all women, in all ages, would have accepted the prehistoric Byronic commandment: that the Byronic sort of romantic passion was the sole concern of their lives. Yet it is certain that women have had a great many other concerns, and have been attached to a great many other convictions. They have been priestesses, prophetesses, empresses, queens, abbesses, mothers, great housewives, great letter-writers, lunatics founding sects, blue-stockings keeping salons, and all sorts of things. If you had said to Deborah the mother in Israel, or Hypatia the Platonist of Alexandria, or Catherine of Siena, or Joan of Arc, or Isabella of Spain, or Maria Theresa of Austria, or even to Hannah More or Joanna Southcott, that Byronic love was “woman’s whole existence,” they would all have been very indignant and most of them flown into a towering passion. They would have asked in various ways whether there was no such thing as honour, no such thing as duty, no such thing as glory, no such thing as great studies or great enterprises, no such thing as normal functions and necessary labours; incidentally, we may add, no such thing as babies. They differed a great deal in their type of vocation and even in their theory of virtue, but they all had some theory of virtue that went a little further than that. Up to a particular moment in the eighteenth century, practically every thinking person would have accepted the colossal common sense expressed by a French poet of the seventeenth century: “L’amour est un plaisir; l’honneur est un devoir.”
Then came the extreme emphasis on romance among the Victorians; for the Victorians were not notable for their emphasis on virtue, but for their emphasis on romance. But Queen Victoria lived so long, and the Victorian Age was such an unconscionably long time dying, that by the time Mr. Bernard Shaw and others began what they called a realistic revolt against romance, the sentimental German movement seemed to be not only as old as Victoria, but as old as Boadicea. It is highly typical, for instance, that Mr. Bernard Shaw, in one of his earliest criticisms, complained of the convention according to which anybody was supposed to have “penetrated into the Holy of Holies” so long as he was content to say that “Love is Enough.” But, as a matter of fact, the very phrase “Love is Enough” did not come to him from any conventional or classical authority; not even from any conventional or conservative Victorian. It came from a book by a Socialist and Revolutionist like himself; from a book recently published by William Morris, who held then the exact position that Mr. Shaw himself holds now: the position of the Grand Old Man of Socialism.
Of course, the anti-romantic movement led by Shaw, like the romantic movement led by Byron, had gone forward blindly and blundered in every sort of way. The modern world seems to have no notion of preserving different things side by side, of allowing its proper and proportionate place to each, of saving the whole varied heritage of culture. It has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything; whether it be Rousseau breaking up kingdoms in the name of reason, or Byron breaking up families in the name of romance, or Shaw breaking up romances in the name of frankness and the formula of Ibsen. I myself value very highly the great nineteenth-century illumination of romantic love, just as I value the great eighteenth-century ideal of right reason and human dignity, or the seventeenth-century intensity, or the sixteenth-century expansion, or the divine logic and dedicated valour of the Middle Ages. I do not see why any of these cultural conquests should be lost or despised, or why it is necessary for every fashion to wash away all that is best in every other. It may be possible that one good custom would corrupt the world, but I never could see why the second good custom should deny that the first good custom was good. As it is, those who have no notion except that of breaking away from romance are being visibly punished by breaking away from reason. Every new realistic novel serves to show that realism, when entirely emptied of romance, becomes utterly unreal. For romance was only the name given to a love of life which was something much larger than a life of love, in the Byronic sense. And anything from which it has passed is instantly corrupt and crawling with worms of death.
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XXXV
Sull’amore
C’ERA un tempo, e forse c’è ancora, una misteriosa istituzione per signorine nota col nome di collegio di perfezionamento. La principale accusa che le si moveva era che, in certi casi, significava perfezionare un’educazione senza mai averla incominciata. In ogni caso, è questo il male di moltissime istituzioni moderne, e di nessuna più di quelle che pronunciano sentenza sulla storia dell’educazione femminile e in genere delle faccende femminili. La maledizione di quasi tutte simili sentenze è la maledizione giornalistica di aver sentito l’ultima notizia; vale a dire, di aver sentito la fine della storia senza averne mai neppure sentito il principio. Diciamo che certa gente non conosce l’A B C di un argomento, ma il guaio con costoro è che essi conoscono l’X Y Z di un argomento senza conoscerne l’A B C.
Stamattina ho letto un articolo in una rivista molto seria nel quale l’autore citava l’osservazione di Byron secondo cui un certo genere di amore romantico «è l’intera esistenza della donna». L’autore proseguiva affermando che i primi a mettere mai in discussione questa concezione furono le rivoluzionarie Suffragette alla fine del diciannovesimo secolo. La verità è che i primi a sostenere mai questa concezione furono i rivoluzionari Romantici agli inizi del diciannovesimo secolo. L’abitudine di attribuire all’amore romantico questa importanza esagerata ed esclusiva nella vita umana fu essa stessa una faccenda del tutto moderna e rivoluzionaria, e risale al movimento romantico comunemente fatto risalire a Rousseau, ma che io credo assai più veracemente da ricondurre all’influenza dei sentimentalisti tedeschi. La maggior parte di coloro che maledicono Rousseau non hanno mai letto Rousseau, o hanno letto soltanto le Confessioni e non il Contrat Social. I critici leggono le Confessioni, non fosse che per condannarle; perché i critici stessi sono romantici moderni e sentimentalisti; uomini a cui piacciono le Confessioni e dispiacciono i Contratti. I critici odiano o schivano il Contrat Social, non perché sia sdolcinato e sentimentale (giacché non lo è), ma perché è duro e chiaro e lucido e logico. Rousseau ebbe le sue debolezze emotive come individuo, al pari di altri individui, ma non fu invano un filosofo del diciottesimo secolo. Ciò che i moderni gli rimproverano non è la sciocchezza delle sue confessioni, bensì la solidità delle sue convinzioni, e il fatto che, come i vecchi teologi, egli sapesse tenere le idee generali in modo fermo e reciso. Quando si tratta di definire i suoi princìpi fondamentali, Rousseau è tanto risoluto quanto Calvino. Furono entrambi spietati teorici di Ginevra, benché l’uno predicasse la teoria del pessimismo e l’altro la teoria dell’ottimismo. Non sostengo di essere d’accordo con nessuno dei due, ma Rousseau sarebbe utile quanto Calvino nell’insegnare ad alcuni dei suoi critici come si critica.
Ma Rousseau è una parentesi. Da qualunque luogo venisse il vero Movimento Romantico, dalle foreste tedesche o dal lago ginevrino, esso fu una faccenda recente e rivoluzionaria a paragone della storia nel suo complesso. Ma è ovvio che l’ordinario critico moderno ignora del tutto la storia nel suo complesso. Egli sa che sua madre leggeva Tennyson e sua nonna leggeva Byron. Oltre a ciò, non riesce a immaginare proprio nulla; suppone che le sue trisavole e le loro trisavole avessero continuato a leggere Byron dal principio del mondo. Immagina che Byron, il quale fu fino all’ultimo un ribelle diseredato e malfamato, sia stato fin dal primo momento un’autorità consacrata e convenzionale. Suppone perciò che tutte le donne, in tutte le epoche, avrebbero accettato il preistorico comandamento byroniano: che il byroniano genere di passione romantica fosse l’unica cura delle loro vite. Eppure è certo che le donne ebbero moltissime altre cure, e furono attaccate a moltissime altre convinzioni. Furono sacerdotesse, profetesse, imperatrici, regine, badesse, madri, grandi massaie, grandi scrittrici di lettere, folli fondatrici di sette, letterate che tenevano salotti, e ogni sorta di cose. Se aveste detto a Debora la madre in Israele, o a Ipazia la platonica di Alessandria, o a Caterina da Siena, o a Giovanna d’Arco, o a Isabella di Spagna, o a Maria Teresa d’Austria, o perfino a Hannah More o a Joanna Southcott, che l’amore byroniano era «l’intera esistenza della donna», si sarebbero tutte mostrate assai indignate e la maggior parte di esse sarebbe montata su tutte le furie. Avrebbero domandato, in vari modi, se non esistesse cosa alcuna come l’onore, cosa alcuna come il dovere, cosa alcuna come la gloria, cosa alcuna come i grandi studi o le grandi imprese, cosa alcuna come le funzioni normali e le fatiche necessarie; e incidentalmente, possiamo aggiungere, cosa alcuna come i bambini. Differivano moltissimo nel loro tipo di vocazione e perfino nella loro teoria della virtù, ma avevano tutte una qualche teoria della virtù che andava un poco più in là di quello. Fino a un determinato momento del diciottesimo secolo, praticamente ogni persona pensante avrebbe accettato il colossale buon senso espresso da un poeta francese del diciassettesimo secolo: «L’amour est un plaisir; l’honneur est un devoir.»
Venne poi l’estremo accento posto sulla Romanticheria presso i Vittoriani; giacché i Vittoriani non si segnalarono per l’accento posto sulla virtù, bensì per l’accento posto sulla Romanticheria. Ma la Regina Vittoria visse così a lungo, e l’Età Vittoriana impiegò un tempo così smisuratamente lungo a morire, che, al tempo in cui il signor Bernard Shaw e altri diedero inizio a quella che chiamarono una rivolta realistica contro la Romanticheria, il sentimentale movimento tedesco pareva non solo vecchio quanto Vittoria, ma vecchio quanto Boadicea. È altamente tipico, per esempio, che il signor Bernard Shaw, in una delle sue primissime critiche, si lagnasse della convenzione secondo la quale chiunque si supponeva avesse «penetrato nel Sancta Sanctorum» purché si accontentasse di dire che «l’Amore Basta». Ma, in verità, la stessa frase «l’Amore Basta» non gli venne da alcuna autorità convenzionale o classica; neppure da alcun vittoriano convenzionale o conservatore. Gli venne da un libro di un Socialista e Rivoluzionario come lui; da un libro pubblicato di recente da William Morris, il quale occupava allora la posizione esatta che il signor Shaw occupa oggi: la posizione del Grande Vecchio del Socialismo.
Naturalmente il movimento antiromantico guidato da Shaw, come il movimento romantico guidato da Byron, era proceduto alla cieca e aveva sbagliato in ogni sorta di modo. Il mondo moderno pare non aver alcuna nozione di come conservare cose diverse le une accanto alle altre, di come concedere il posto proprio e proporzionato a ciascuna, di come salvare l’intera varia eredità della cultura. Non ha altra nozione se non quella di semplificare qualcosa distruggendo quasi ogni cosa; sia esso Rousseau che manda in pezzi i regni nel nome della ragione, o Byron che manda in pezzi le famiglie nel nome della Romanticheria, o Shaw che manda in pezzi le romanticherie nel nome della franchezza e della formula di Ibsen. Io stesso tengo in altissimo pregio la grande illuminazione ottocentesca dell’amore romantico, così come tengo in pregio il grande ideale settecentesco della retta ragione e della dignità umana, o l’intensità del Seicento, o l’espansione del Cinquecento, o la divina logica e il valore consacrato del Medioevo. Non vedo perché mai alcuna di queste conquiste culturali debba andare perduta o venir disprezzata, o perché sia necessario che ogni moda spazzi via tutto ciò che di meglio v’è in ogni altra. Può darsi che una sola buona usanza corrompa il mondo, ma non ho mai potuto capire perché la seconda buona usanza debba negare che la prima buona usanza fosse buona. Stando così le cose, coloro che non hanno altra nozione se non quella di rompere con la Romanticheria vengono visibilmente puniti col rompere con la ragione. Ogni nuovo romanzo realistico serve a mostrare che il realismo, quando è interamente svuotato della Romanticheria, diventa del tutto irreale. Poiché Romanticheria non era che il nome dato a un amore della vita che era qualcosa di assai più vasto di una vita d’amore, nel senso byroniano. E tutto ciò da cui esso si è dileguato è all’istante corrotto e brulicante di vermi di morte.
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XXXVI
On Fictional Conventions
IT is now much discussed among the learned whether art should abolish morality by calling it convention. It might well be discussed among the wise whether art should even abolish convention. But what seems very queer to me is this: that modern art has so often abolished morality without abolishing convention. I mean that very tame and timid conventions, the remains of rather fragile and artificial styles of writing, do still manage to run side by side with complete licence or laxity about much more important things. It seems as if people could get rid of the commandments, but not of the conventions. I will give only one small example, which has struck me again and again in reading the most modern novels.
In those modern novels there are types of women, and descriptions of women, which might have brought a blush to the cheek of Petronius or been considered a little too coarse for the refinement of Rabelais. But in those descriptions there are still certain conventions, really unreal conventions, exactly as they were in the Victorian works of Miss Porter or Miss Procter. Again and again, the modern reader may read a sentence like this: “Peter had already noticed a smiling, blue-eyed girl, with a bright, shingled head, slip in among the new-comers, suspected of being gate-crashers, who thronged the door.” Or the sentence may run: “Slim, lithe, and brown-eyed, with a delicate and fiery tan, Joan stood poised on the distant rock, about to dive.” There are a hundred other examples; but all habitually assume that the first thing that anybody notices about a woman is the colour of her eyes. Now, it is perfectly possible to be on tolerably intimate terms with a person for a long time and yet to be quite unable to recall suddenly the colour of his or her eyes. And certainly nobody ever saw the colour of a stranger’s eyes all the way across a ball-room in Mayfair, a big studio in Chelsea, or the wide sands of the Lido. One would suppose that a girl’s blue eyes were enormously big blue lanterns, and shone afar off like the green and red lanterns of a railway signal. That one little sentimental trick or tradition makes hundreds of literary descriptions of human beings ring quite false, and the most lavish and generous supply of general moral barbarism and baseness cannot wholly make up the loss.
What a man sees first about a woman, or anybody else, is the type; whether it is, for instance, the type that flows in long lines, with long features, the type that an artist would draw in profile; or whether it has the face that is most itself when seen fully in front, flat against a background; especially the sort of square and open face, the face that is generally that of a fighter, and, however beautiful it may be, has always a touch of the monkey. A man can distinguish those two types from each other across the largest hall or the widest sands, almost as easily as he could distinguish a horse from a cow or a stag. He might distinguish a hundred things about the rank or the culture or even the character; he could make inferences from the poise and the walk and the gesture. He could do it all at a distance, at which it would be as impossible to see blue eyes in the girl’s head as to see blue stones in the girl’s engagement ring. Yet I have seen that little artificiality of description a hundred times in a day’s reading, in turning over the tales even of able and ambitious modern novelists. It is a small matter; indeed, it is the point that it is a small matter; it is too small to be seen, and yet it is always reported. But it happens to illustrate a curious sort of concealed convention that runs underneath much modern writing that considers itself most unconventional. In more showy things the realists remember to be shameless; but in these little things they do not remember to be realistic.
I knew a lady, with a very hearty sense of humour, whose business it happened to be to write frankly conventional romances for the old frankly conventional Press, the Press that provided healthy but somewhat sentimental serials and novelettes. She got great fun out of her functions; and she told me once that she had written a long serial romance, with a stately and tragic heroine, only to be told at the end that the public, or at least the publishers, insisted on a petite and sparkling heroine. With a noble calm, disdaining to alter a single incident in the narrative, she merely went through the whole manuscript, altering black eyes to blue eyes. When she came to the line, “He gazed into Amanda’s dark, unfathomable eyes,” she merely crossed out the adjectives and wrote “blue and sparkling” on the top. Of course, it was not all a matter of eyes; she had to make some modification about dress and demeanour. Where she had written “Amanda swept across the lawn, the alteration of one word made it “Amanda tripped across the lawn.” That, by the way, is another of the old conventions that linger even in the new unconventionality. Girls still sometimes trip in the grimmest realistic studies. Novelists still sometimes trip over that antiquated booby trap. I never saw anybody trip, except somebody who tripped over a hassock and fell on his nose, to the satiric enlivenment of the human race. Anyhow, Amanda’s large and shady hat grew less large and shady, and was turned up with a rose or something; her raiment grew less sweeping and severe; but nothing else needed any alteration. And it sometimes seems to me that many who write in the most revolutionary fashion write quite as much according to a revolutionary formula. They merely go through their own story and put in the terms which are supposed to make the heroine chic or distinguished, according to the momentary modern conventions of unconventionality. The heroine has no more real individuality, amid all the fuss of individualism, than the adaptable Amanda whose eyes turned so easily from black to blue.
Perhaps what we call realistic descriptions are bound to be conventional because they are bound to be fashionable. They are bound to emphasize exactly the points which one particular period thinks important; which will be exactly the points which the next period will think unimportant. Hence we have the paradox that the noblest compliments to women have not been direct descriptions, but indirect descriptions. The direct compliment would deal with all the details that pass; the indirect compliment with the impression which does not pass. Archæologists have worked out a complete theory of the costume of Helen of Troy, which seems to have consisted of a straw sun-bonnet, a Zouave jacket, and high-heeled shoes. If Homer had written a realistic description, it would have seemed to us a rather vulgar description. The dress of the fourteenth century was more dignified, but not more natural; and if Dante had described Beatrice in the exact garb she wore it might have seemed to us at once extravagant and stiff. But ages shall pass and civilizations shall perish, and time shall never turn the keen edge of that great indirect compliment, that older and wiser fashion of describing the effect and not the external instruments. As when Dante, seeing his lady upon the height, felt only like the legendary monster whom the taste of a strange food had turned into a god. Or Homer was content to let us listen to the grumbling of the Trojans against the cause of the Trojan War, and then to that great sudden silence that fell upon them, full of light and understanding, when Helen came forth upon the wall.
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XXXVI
Sulle convenzioni della narrativa
SI DISCUTE oggi molto, tra i dotti, se l’arte debba abolire la morale chiamandola convenzione. Si potrebbe bene discutere, tra i saggi, se l’arte debba addirittura abolire la convenzione. Ma ciò che a me pare oltremodo strano è questo: che l’arte moderna abbia così spesso abolito la morale senza abolire la convenzione. Voglio dire che convenzioni assai fiacche e timide, residui di stili di scrittura piuttosto fragili e artificiosi, riescono tuttora a correre fianco a fianco con la più completa licenza o rilassatezza intorno a cose ben più importanti. Sembra quasi che la gente possa liberarsi dei comandamenti, ma non delle convenzioni. Darò un solo, piccolo esempio, che mi ha colpito più e più volte nel leggere i romanzi più moderni.
In quei romanzi moderni vi sono tipi di donne, e descrizioni di donne, che avrebbero potuto far arrossire la gota di Petronio, o essere giudicate un tantino troppo grossolane per la raffinatezza di Rabelais. Ma in quelle descrizioni permangono ancora certe convenzioni, convenzioni davvero irreali, esattamente come lo erano nelle opere vittoriane di Miss Porter o di Miss Procter. Più e più volte il lettore moderno può leggere una frase come questa: «Peter aveva già notato una ragazza sorridente, dagli occhi azzurri, con una lucente testolina a caschetto, sgusciare tra i nuovi venuti, sospettati di essere intrusi non invitati, che si accalcavano sulla porta». Oppure la frase può suonare così: «Snella, agile, dagli occhi bruni, con un’abbronzatura delicata e ardente, Joan stava librata in bilico sullo scoglio lontano, in procinto di tuffarsi». Vi sono cento altri esempi; ma tutti danno abitualmente per scontato che la prima cosa che chiunque nota di una donna sia il colore dei suoi occhi. Ora, è perfettamente possibile essere in rapporti discretamente intimi con una persona per lungo tempo e tuttavia essere del tutto incapaci di rammentare all’improvviso il colore dei suoi occhi. E certamente nessuno ha mai visto il colore degli occhi di uno sconosciuto attraverso tutta la lunghezza di una sala da ballo a Mayfair, di un grande atelier a Chelsea, o delle ampie spiagge del Lido. Si direbbe che gli occhi azzurri di una fanciulla fossero enormi, immense lanterne azzurre, splendenti da lontano come le lanterne verdi e rosse di un segnale ferroviario. Quel piccolo trucco o tradizione sentimentale fa suonare del tutto false centinaia di descrizioni letterarie di esseri umani, e la più prodiga e generosa profusione di barbarie e bassezza morale in generale non può riscattare del tutto la perdita.
Ciò che un uomo scorge per primo in una donna, o in chiunque altro, è il tipo; se sia, per esempio, il tipo che scorre in lunghe linee, con lineamenti allungati, il tipo che un artista disegnerebbe di profilo; o se abbia il volto che è più sé stesso quando lo si vede pienamente di fronte, piatto contro uno sfondo; specialmente quella sorta di volto quadrato e aperto, il volto che è generalmente quello di un lottatore, e che, per bello che possa essere, ha sempre un che di scimmiesco. Un uomo sa distinguere quei due tipi l’uno dall’altro attraverso la più vasta sala o le più larghe spiagge, quasi con la stessa facilità con cui distinguerebbe un cavallo da una mucca o da un cervo. Potrebbe distinguere cento cose intorno al rango, alla cultura, persino al carattere; potrebbe trarre inferenze dal portamento, dall’andatura e dal gesto. Potrebbe fare tutto questo a una distanza tale da cui sarebbe altrettanto impossibile scorgere gli occhi azzurri nel capo della fanciulla quanto scorgere le pietre azzurre nel suo anello di fidanzamento. Eppure ho visto quella piccola artificiosità di descrizione cento volte in una giornata di lettura, sfogliando i racconti anche di romanzieri moderni abili e ambiziosi. È una cosa da poco; anzi, il punto sta proprio in questo, che è una cosa da poco; è troppo piccola per essere vista, eppure viene sempre riferita. Ma accade che essa illustri una curiosa sorta di convenzione nascosta che scorre sotto molta scrittura moderna la quale si reputa quanto mai anticonvenzionale. Nelle cose più vistose i realisti si ricordano di essere spudorati; ma in queste piccole cose non si ricordano di essere realisti.
Conoscevo una signora, dotata di un vivissimo senso dello humour, la cui occupazione era, per l’appunto, scrivere romanzi schiettamente convenzionali per la vecchia stampa schiettamente convenzionale, quella stampa che forniva romanzi d’appendice e novellette sane ma alquanto sentimentali. Ella traeva grande spasso dalle sue mansioni; e mi raccontò una volta di aver scritto un lungo romanzo a puntate, con un’eroina maestosa e tragica, salvo poi sentirsi dire alla fine che il pubblico, o quanto meno gli editori, esigevano un’eroina petite e sfavillante. Con nobile calma, sdegnando di mutare un solo episodio della narrazione, ella si limitò a percorrere l’intero manoscritto, cambiando gli occhi neri in occhi azzurri. Giunta alla riga «Egli scrutava negli occhi scuri e insondabili di Amanda», si limitò a cancellare gli aggettivi e a scrivervi sopra «azzurri e sfavillanti». Naturalmente, non era tutta questione di occhi; dovette apportare qualche modifica riguardo all’abbigliamento e al contegno. Dove aveva scritto «Amanda attraversò con incedere solenne il prato», l’alterazione di una sola parola lo mutò in «Amanda attraversò saltellando il prato». Questa, per inciso, è un’altra delle vecchie convenzioni che indugiano anche nella nuova anticonvenzionalità. Le fanciulle ancora talvolta inciampano perfino nei più tetri studi realistici. I romanzieri ancora talvolta inciampano su quell’antiquato tranello. Non ho mai visto nessuno inciampare, tranne qualcuno che inciampò in un poggiapiedi e cadde sul naso, a satirico sollazzo del genere umano. Comunque, il grande cappello ampio e ombroso di Amanda divenne meno ampio e ombroso, e fu risvoltato con una rosa o qualcosa del genere; le sue vesti divennero meno fluenti e severe; ma nient’altro ebbe bisogno di alcuna modifica. E talvolta mi sembra che molti di coloro che scrivono nella maniera più rivoluzionaria scrivano altrettanto secondo una formula rivoluzionaria. Non fanno che percorrere la propria storia e infilarvi i termini che si suppone rendano l’eroina chic o distinta, secondo le momentanee convenzioni moderne dell’anticonvenzionalità. L’eroina non ha maggiore reale individualità, in mezzo a tutto quel chiasso di individualismo, della malleabile Amanda i cui occhi passarono così agevolmente dal nero all’azzurro.
Forse ciò che chiamiamo descrizioni realistiche è destinato a essere convenzionale perché è destinato a essere alla moda. È destinato a mettere in risalto esattamente quei punti che una particolare epoca reputa importanti; i quali saranno esattamente quei punti che l’epoca successiva reputerà privi d’importanza. Di qui il paradosso che i più nobili omaggi resi alle donne non siano stati descrizioni dirette, bensì descrizioni indirette. L’omaggio diretto tratterebbe di tutti i dettagli che passano; l’omaggio indiretto tratta dell’impressione che non passa. Gli archeologi hanno elaborato una compiuta teoria del costume di Elena di Troia, che pare sia consistito in una cuffia di paglia da sole, una giacca alla zuava e scarpe col tacco alto. Se Omero avesse scritto una descrizione realistica, ci sarebbe parsa una descrizione piuttosto volgare. L’abbigliamento del quattordicesimo secolo era più dignitoso, ma non più naturale; e se Dante avesse descritto Beatrice nella foggia esatta ch’ella indossava, ci sarebbe potuto parere insieme stravagante e rigido. Ma passeranno le età e periranno le civiltà, e il tempo non smusserà mai il filo tagliente di quel grande omaggio indiretto, di quella più antica e più saggia maniera di descrivere l’effetto e non gli strumenti esteriori. Come quando Dante, vedendo la sua donna sull’altura, si sentì soltanto simile al leggendario mostro che il gusto di uno strano cibo aveva mutato in un dio. O come Omero si accontentò di lasciarci ascoltare il mormorio dei Troiani contro la causa della guerra di Troia, e poi quel grande, improvviso silenzio che scese su di loro, colmo di luce e di comprensione, quando Elena si affacciò sulle mura.
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XXXVII
On Sweepstakes and Gambling
The debate about legalizing Sweepstakes dies slowly away, like the galloping echoes of the Derby; and even where it continues, it is rather typical of the time and country that it is more concerned with law than with logic. It is clear that in practice the nation has largely abandoned the Puritan sentiment that was behind some of its older laws; but it has been rather a change of sentiment than a change of statement. Few people really remember what was the actual ethical theory that gave to all betting the bad name of gambling. But fewer still, I fancy, could state their own new ethical theory in favour of betting, or distinguish it from the gambling that is really bad. Even when we were Puritans we were not really precisians. In other words, England, even when it was strict in discipline, was not really strict in doctrine. Certainly, at least, it was not really strict in definition. Consequently, I do not really know what the moral theory of the anti-betting men was; and I do not believe they knew themselves. My own morality, which is not my own, but that of the ancient moral culture of Christendom, is of course simple enough. I have a right to bet what I have a right to lose. If I choose to sit on the wild seashore and occupy my whole holiday in throwing stones into the sea, I am also entitled, if I choose, to vary the monotony by throwing into the sea the large moon-stone tie-pin which is the ornament of my neckties and the admiration of my neighbours, or to hurl into the same sea-waves the heavy cairn-gorm brooch bequeathed by my Aunt Jemima; always supposing I can do the latter without unjustly lacerating Aunt Jemima’s feelings, here or in heaven. I have as much right to throw the more expensive stones into the sea as to throw the cheaper ones; so long as it is only at my own expense and not something beyond my lawful expenditure; which would probably turn out to be at somebody else’s expense. So far as that goes, I am perfectly justified in throwing away my celebrated tie-pin or my aunt’s brooch for the mere momentary pleasure of one sublime gesture; for the satisfaction of feeling like Polycrates or the great Doge of Venice wedding the sea. It is a mere luxury to chuck them, as it is a mere luxury to cherish them; I only keep them for a lark, and I only lose them for a lark. If a man is justified in throwing a pearl like a pebble into the sea at Margate, knowing it will not return, he is justified in throwing it on the table at Monte Carlo or putting it on a horse at Ascot: with a chance that it may return. But he is not justified, for instance, in throwing the baby into the sea, though many at Margate have felt tempted to do so. Nor is he justified in risking the baby’s milk or the money for the baby’s clothes at Ascot or Monte Carlo; and nobody will deny that many have done this, and that much evil has come of it. But the principle is at least clear, and presents no problem to those who hold it.
I have sometimes thought that the philosophy of betting bears some resemblance to something else, which may be called the philosophy of guessing. There is in the literary or intellectual world an operation which is somewhat similar to that of honest betting in the sporting world. It occurs especially in the case of English literature; because in England it so often happens that the author is the amateur. It often happens, also, that the amateur can give valuable hints to the professional. But those hints ought always to be given in a certain light and sporting spirit, not unlike the guesses of the better sort of gambler. The outsider ought not to give the whole weight of his word or reputation to suggestions he could not substantiate in all their details. If he does, he tends to become the crank or even the quack, the awful and appalling sort of amateur who sits down to prove to you that Mary Queen of Scots wrote Shakspere or that the name of Lord Kitchener is inscribed in the measurements of the Great Pyramid. But I have often thought there might be a place for intelligent guesswork which admits that it is guesswork. There might even be a place for a fanciful theory, if it was avowedly fanciful. I confess I have suffered many things from the sort of man who has a theory that Bacon wrote Shakspere, when he does really believe it. But I had great fun in working out a theory that Shakspere wrote Bacon, because I did not in the least believe it. In the course of turning it into a sketch, which was no more than a skit, I found myself discovering much more than I had known before of the real truth about the Elizabethan and Jacobean epoch. In the same way, many a man has really put hard cash in his pocket at Newmarket, or the Grand National from a bet that he made merely as a joke; and my contention is that he deserved his luck, so long as he really made it as a joke. In the case of history and similar sciences, it might be possible to draw up a rich and flattering analogy to the Turf. The dons of Oxford and Cambridge, the professors and professional historians, who are often, indeed, bookmakers, may be compared to bookies. The dream or fancy thrown out by the mere literary amateur may be compared to the dark horse in the very loose box of his light and irresponsible brain. But the dark horse always gives him a good run for his money. And it is justified, so long as it does not run away with the whole of his money; that is, with the whole of his serious reputation and peace of mind. I think there ought to be a special class of spirited and fanciful guesses; potshots at the possibilities of history; suggestions that should only suggest, but might be really suggestive. They would form a third type of literature, between the solemn stolidity of the academies and the solemn lunacy of cranks.
For instance, I once had a notion of writing an essay, making a suggestion about King Arthur. Now I am not in the least qualified to maintain an entirely serious and solid thesis about King Arthur. A man would really have to be an exceptional scholar and specialist, in about five different departments, before he could deal in that fashion with King Arthur. He would have to know all about Celtic legend and literature, Welsh and Cornish and all the rest; he would have to have a thorough grasp of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, its military maps and methods; he would have to be steeped in French chivalry and romance to separate the mediæval from the older elements; he would have to understand the real Christian and Catholic origins, and date and distinguish between the Glaston Thorn and the Grail; he would have to be a nailer at strategy and a whale at place-names. I am none of these things, and yet I had quite a nice little notion about King Arthur. It would afford a pleasant evening’s amusement for a party of dons, pulling it to pieces. And, for all I know, something might come out of it; even out of its refutation. I will not describe the theory here beyond saying that it began with the curious fact, that the first three or four chroniclers who mention King Arthur do not even call him King Arthur. But I will reserve it for some dull and rainy afternoon, in some quiet isolated country house, where there are dons who want something to play with.
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XXXVII
Sulle lotterie e sul gioco d’azzardo
Il dibattito sulla legalizzazione delle lotterie si spegne lentamente, come l’eco galoppante del Derby; e persino là dove prosegue, è piuttosto tipico dell’epoca e del paese che esso si occupi più della legge che della logica. È chiaro che, in pratica, la nazione ha in gran parte abbandonato il sentimento puritano che stava dietro ad alcune delle sue leggi più antiche; ma si è trattato piuttosto di un mutamento di sentimento che di un mutamento di enunciato. Poche persone ricordano davvero quale fosse l’effettiva teoria etica che affibbiava a ogni scommessa il cattivo nome di gioco d’azzardo. Ma ancor meno, immagino, saprebbero enunciare la propria nuova teoria etica a favore della scommessa, o distinguerla dal gioco d’azzardo che è davvero cattivo. Persino quando eravamo puritani non eravamo veri precisianti. In altre parole, l’Inghilterra, pur essendo rigorosa nella disciplina, non era davvero rigorosa nella dottrina. Di certo, almeno, non era davvero rigorosa nella definizione. Di conseguenza, io non so davvero quale fosse la teoria morale degli avversari della scommessa; e non credo che la conoscessero loro stessi. La mia morale, che non è mia, bensì quella dell’antica cultura morale della Cristianità, è naturalmente abbastanza semplice. Ho il diritto di scommettere ciò che ho il diritto di perdere. Se scelgo di sedermi sulla selvaggia riva del mare e di occupare l’intera vacanza a lanciare sassi nell’acqua, ho anche il diritto, se voglio, di variare la monotonia scagliando in mare il grosso spillo da cravatta di pietra di luna che è l’ornamento delle mie cravatte e l’ammirazione dei miei vicini, o di scaraventare tra le medesime onde la pesante spilla di quarzo affumicato lasciatami in eredità da mia zia Jemima; sempre supponendo che io possa fare quest’ultima cosa senza lacerare ingiustamente i sentimenti della zia Jemima, quaggiù o in cielo. Ho tanto diritto di gettare in mare i sassi più costosi quanto quelli più a buon mercato; purché sia solo a mie spese e non qualcosa che ecceda la mia lecita disponibilità; il che probabilmente si rivelerebbe essere a spese di qualcun altro. Fin qui, sono perfettamente giustificato nel buttar via il mio celebre spillo da cravatta o la spilla di mia zia per il mero piacere momentaneo di un sublime gesto; per la soddisfazione di sentirmi come Policrate o come il grande Doge di Venezia che sposa il mare. È un puro lusso disfarsene, come è un puro lusso custodirli; li conservo solo per gioco, e li perdo solo per gioco. Se un uomo è giustificato nel gettare una perla come un ciottolo nel mare di Margate, sapendo che non tornerà, è giustificato nel gettarla sul tavolo di Monte Carlo o nel puntarla su un cavallo ad Ascot: con la possibilità che essa torni. Ma non è giustificato, per esempio, nel gettare il bambino in mare, sebbene a Margate molti abbiano provato la tentazione di farlo. Né è giustificato nel rischiare il latte del bambino o i soldi per i vestiti del bambino ad Ascot o a Monte Carlo; e nessuno negherà che molti abbiano fatto questo, e che ne sia venuto molto male. Ma il principio è quanto meno chiaro, e non presenta alcun problema a coloro che lo professano.
Ho talvolta pensato che la filosofia della scommessa presenti una certa somiglianza con qualcos’altro, che potrebbe chiamarsi la filosofia della congettura. Esiste, nel mondo letterario o intellettuale, un’operazione che è alquanto simile a quella dell’onesta scommessa nel mondo dello sport. Essa avviene specialmente nel caso della letteratura inglese; perché in Inghilterra accade tanto spesso che l’autore sia il dilettante. Accade anche, spesso, che il dilettante possa dare preziosi suggerimenti al professionista. Ma tali suggerimenti dovrebbero sempre essere offerti in un certo spirito leggero e sportivo, non dissimile dalle congetture del giocatore di specie migliore. L’estraneo non dovrebbe conferire l’intero peso della sua parola o della sua reputazione a ipotesi che non saprebbe comprovare in ogni loro dettaglio. Se lo fa, tende a diventare il maniaco o addirittura il ciarlatano, quella terribile e spaventosa specie di dilettante che si mette a dimostrarti che Maria Stuarda di Scozia scrisse Shakespeare o che il nome di Lord Kitchener è inciso nelle misure della Grande Piramide. Ma ho spesso pensato che vi potesse essere un posto per l’intelligente congettura che ammette di essere congettura. Vi potrebbe persino essere un posto per una teoria fantasiosa, se dichiaratamente fantasiosa. Confesso di aver patito molte cose per opera di quel genere d’uomo che nutre la teoria che Bacone scrisse Shakespeare, quando ci crede davvero. Ma mi sono grandemente divertito a elaborare una teoria secondo cui Shakespeare scrisse Bacone, perché non ci credevo minimamente. Nel corso del trasformarla in uno schizzo, che non era altro che una parodia, mi ritrovai a scoprire molto più di quanto sapessi prima sull’effettiva verità intorno all’epoca elisabettiana e giacobiana. Allo stesso modo, più di un uomo si è davvero messo in tasca denaro contante a Newmarket, o al Grand National, grazie a una scommessa fatta semplicemente per burla; e la mia tesi è che egli meritò la sua fortuna, purché l’avesse davvero fatta per burla. Nel caso della storia e delle scienze affini, sarebbe possibile tracciare una ricca e lusinghiera analogia con l’ippodromo. I dotti di Oxford e di Cambridge, i professori e gli storici di professione, che sono spesso, in effetti, degli allibratori, possono essere paragonati ai bookmaker. Il sogno o la fantasia lanciati dal mero dilettante letterario possono essere paragonati al cavallo insospettato nel box assai sconquassato del suo cervello leggero e irresponsabile. Ma il cavallo insospettato gli offre sempre una bella corsa per i suoi soldi. Ed esso è giustificato, purché non fugga via con tutti quanti i suoi soldi; vale a dire, con tutta quanta la sua seria reputazione e la sua pace dell’animo. Penso che dovrebbe esservi una categoria speciale di congetture spiritose e fantasiose; colpi alla cieca sparati alle possibilità della storia; suggerimenti che dovrebbero soltanto suggerire, ma potrebbero essere davvero suggestivi. Essi formerebbero un terzo tipo di letteratura, tra la solenne ottusità delle accademie e la solenne follia dei maniaci.
Per esempio, ebbi una volta l’idea di scrivere un saggio, avanzando una supposizione su re Artù. Ora, io non sono minimamente qualificato per sostenere una tesi interamente seria e solida su re Artù. Un uomo dovrebbe davvero essere uno studioso e uno specialista eccezionale, in circa cinque diversi rami del sapere, prima di poter trattare a quel modo di re Artù. Dovrebbe sapere tutto della leggenda e della letteratura celtica, gallese e cornica e di tutto il resto; dovrebbe avere una padronanza approfondita della decadenza e caduta dell’Impero Romano, delle sue carte e dei suoi metodi militari; dovrebbe essere immerso nella cavalleria francese e nel romanzo cavalleresco per separare gli elementi medievali da quelli più antichi; dovrebbe comprendere le vere origini cristiane e cattoliche, datare e distinguere fra il Biancospino di Glastonbury e il Graal; dovrebbe essere un asso nella strategia e un fuoriclasse nei toponimi. Io non sono nessuna di queste cose, eppure avevo un’ideuzza davvero graziosa su re Artù. Essa offrirebbe un piacevole passatempo serale a una brigata di dotti, intenti a farla a pezzi. E, per quanto ne so, qualcosa potrebbe venirne fuori; persino dalla sua confutazione. Non descriverò qui la teoria, se non dicendo che essa prendeva le mosse dal curioso fatto che i primi tre o quattro cronisti che menzionano re Artù non lo chiamano nemmeno re Artù. Ma la riserberò per qualche pomeriggio uggioso e piovoso, in qualche quieta e isolata casa di campagna, dove vi siano dotti in cerca di qualcosa con cui trastullarsi.
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XXXVIII
On Making Good—I
THE other day I was stricken by a great grief; I will not go so far as to say that I burst into tears at the breakfast table, but I believe I must have uttered a deep and hollow groan, to the surprise and alarm of my family. For I found that no less a person than the Dean of St. Paul’s had used the now common phrase about people “making good.” He said, in support of his recognized preference for the produce of the super-villas over that of the slums, that there is “nothing snobbish” in recognizing the superiority of “those who have made good” over the wastrels and misfits, whom he seems to conceive as constituting the whole population of the poorer quarters of the modern city. Talking about “making good” seems to me much worse than snobbish, for it is not even English. And if, as satirists have said, the English have some tendency to be snobs, they might at least be content to be English snobs. Now, this is very sad and strange; hence my outburst of emotion at the breakfast table. For, in the ordinary way, Dean Inge writes most beautiful English; sometimes really splendid English. He writes the sort of strong English that is founded on strong Latin, not the more modern sort that is in theory Nordic and in practice Yankee—or sometimes even Cockney. This again is curious, for in a way his practice is better than his precept; and it does not so much matter if he is Nordic in his theory of history, since he is entirely Mediterranean in his practice of scholarship. He is always cursing the Latin culture, and no man’s culture is more entirely Latin.
But I am not dealing here with the many matters on which I differ from the Dean, or even those on which the Dean differs from himself. I will not pause here to attempt to dispel that extraordinary nightmare that appears to brood upon his brain; the general notion that all the inhabitants of West Ham or Hoxton are hunch-backs, homicidal maniacs, or hereditary cripples, every man born with one leg and one eye. I will not stop to explain that the Old Kent Road is not exclusively inhabited by wealthy men who have wasted their fortunes and become “wastrels,” and that if poor men, as well as rich men, may sometimes be “misfits,” it is the business of a philosopher to criticize not only them, but the framework in which they were expected to fit. But all this is an old argument, and my present concern with the Dean is not to express a difference from his opinions, but rather a tender solicitude for his style. I write not in a spirit of antagonism, but of admiration; of admiration tinged with alarm. By all means let him defend, in his own brilliant and lucid fashion, what he calls the upper middle class. Let him indulge in the most spirited, sparkling, and daring paradoxes about these ladies and gentlemen. Let him say that they do good, that they are good; but not, 0 not, in the name of our noble tongue and heritage, that they make good!
I know not where that man hides and cowers, probably among the millions who had fled to the criminal dens and lairs of the United States, who actually originated the phrase about “making good.” If I knew who he was, I would write a life of him; having first killed him, of course, to make the biography complete. He must have been rather a great man in his own perverted and repulsive fashion, for he managed to sum up the supreme essential falsehood of a whole century and a whole civilization in one exactly appropriate phrase, a phrase that is all the more appropriate because it is idiotic. He must be rather like one of the great poisoners, for indeed he has poisoned the whole modern mind. He must be much more than one of the great conspirators, for, as Mr. Wells would say, it is an entirely open conspiracy. He has managed to put all the current contemporary philosophies into one phrase that means nothing. Everybody whose instincts are on the side of such sophistry instantly seizes on it, because of its ambiguity. With one single twist of bad grammar or bad logic, it tangles up together the two things that have been in sharp contrast and contradiction in every decent religion or moral system in history— the idea of moral greatness and the idea of mere material success. And yet making good is not even making sense. It will not really serve to make a sentence, let alone a good sentence or a true sentence.
Thus we can say of one of these abject beings who happen to live in Hoxton or the Harrow Road that he makes good beer-barrels; that he makes good drain-pipes; that he makes good penny-whistles or good pork-pies; but not that he makes good. It does not make sense; it does not make a sentence. And this ambiguous phrase about making good was invented because it was ambiguous; it was invented by the man who did not make pies or pipes or barrels or anything in the East End, but only scooped the profit on other men’s work and went off with it to live in the West End. That is all that is meant by making good. It did not matter so much so long as people refrained from describing it as making good; so long as they were content to describe it as making money. Considered merely as one of the mild forms of rascality very common among human beings, it might really be described as mild or even as human. But by the fatal and blasting hypocrisy of this one American catchword, it was transformed from a matter of unmoral adventure to a matter of thoroughly immoral morality. The phrase “making good,” merely because it contains the word “good,” always carries some shadowy suggestion that the man who has merely done well for himself must also have really done well; done well as in the old creeds and codes of morals; done well in the sight of God and humanity. And that is not merely immorality, it is blasphemy; for it is practically saying that the selfish man is the saint, and that Judas with the bag is greater than Jesus with the cross.
Meanwhile, nothing but this fog of a phrase, like a real London fog choking the streets round St. Paul’s Cathedral, could have so completely hidden the facts of the modern social situation from the Dean of St. Paul’s. If making good meant making good things, pipes or barrels or what not, it would be obvious that people go on doing it, generation after generation, as much in the lower class as in his favourite upper middle class. I wonder how often these sages of the upper middle class stop to think what London would be like, if all the lower classes were really such fools as they suppose. What would London in a fog be like, for instance, if enormous numbers of cabmen and carmen, and men controlling traffic, were most of them drunken or incompetent? The fact is that the wastrels and the misfits, or in other words the working classes, are making good all the time. They are making good day and night; they are making good from minute to minute; or none of us would get to the end of an hour’s journey. The Dean is quite entitled to praise the sort of clerical or academic family that he himself comes of; to note the virtues they really possess; and doubtless there are virtues which are easier for such a clergyman than for such a cabman. But it is very far from being self-evident that every clergyman is more successful with his sermon than any cabman with his service. Both the clergyman and the cabman may be good men; but the more they are really good men, the less they will be attracted by the ideal of making good.
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XXXVIII
Sul far bene — I
L’ALTRO giorno fui colpito da un grande dolore; non arriverò a dire che scoppiai in lacrime a tavola per la colazione, ma credo di dovere aver emesso un gemito profondo e cavernoso, con sorpresa e sgomento della mia famiglia. Poiché scoprii che nientemeno che il Decano di San Paolo aveva usato la frase ormai comune sulla gente che «fa bene». Egli disse, a sostegno della sua riconosciuta predilezione per i frutti delle super-ville rispetto a quelli dei bassifondi, che non v’è «nulla di snob» nel riconoscere la superiorità di «coloro che hanno fatto bene» sugli scioperati e i disadattati, i quali gli pare costituiscano l’intera popolazione dei quartieri più poveri della moderna città. Parlare di «far bene» mi sembra assai peggio che snob, giacché non è nemmeno inglese. E se, come hanno detto i satirici, gli inglesi hanno una qualche tendenza a essere snob, potrebbero almeno accontentarsi di essere snob inglesi. Ora, tutto ciò è assai triste e strano; donde il mio impeto di emozione a tavola. Poiché, di solito, il Decano Inge scrive un inglese bellissimo; talvolta un inglese davvero splendido. Egli scrive quella sorta di inglese vigoroso che si fonda su un vigoroso latino, non la varietà più moderna che è nordica in teoria e in pratica yankee — o talora persino cockney. Anche questo è curioso, perché in un certo senso la sua pratica è migliore del suo precetto; e non importa poi molto che sia nordico nella sua teoria della storia, dal momento che è interamente mediterraneo nella sua pratica dell’erudizione. Egli maledice di continuo la cultura latina, e non v’è cultura d’uomo che sia più interamente latina.
Ma non mi occupo qui delle molte questioni sulle quali dissento dal Decano, e nemmeno di quelle sulle quali il Decano dissente da se stesso. Non mi soffermerò qui a tentare di dissipare quello straordinario incubo che pare covare sul suo cervello; l’idea generale che tutti gli abitanti di West Ham o di Hoxton siano gobbi, maniaci omicidi o storpi ereditari, ciascuno nato con una gamba sola e un occhio solo. Non mi fermerò a spiegare che la vecchia Kent Road non è abitata esclusivamente da uomini facoltosi che hanno sperperato le loro fortune e sono divenuti «scioperati», e che se gli uomini poveri, non meno che i ricchi, possono talvolta essere «disadattati», è compito di un filosofo criticare non soltanto loro, ma la cornice entro la quale ci si aspettava che si adattassero. Ma tutto questo è un vecchio argomento, e la mia presente premura verso il Decano non è di esprimere un dissenso dalle sue opinioni, bensì piuttosto una tenera sollecitudine per il suo stile. Scrivo non in spirito di antagonismo, ma di ammirazione; di ammirazione venata d’allarme. Difenda pure, nella sua brillante e lucida maniera, ciò che egli chiama l’alta classe media. Si conceda pure i paradossi più spiritosi, scintillanti e audaci intorno a queste dame e a questi gentiluomini. Dica pure che essi fanno il bene, che essi sono buoni; ma non, oh non, nel nome della nostra nobile lingua e del nostro retaggio, che essi fanno bene!
Non so dove si nasconda e si rannicchi quell’uomo, probabilmente fra i milioni che erano fuggiti nelle tane e nei covi criminali degli Stati Uniti, il quale realmente coniò la frase sul «far bene». Se sapessi chi era, ne scriverei una vita; dopo averlo prima ucciso, s’intende, per rendere completa la biografia. Deve essere stato un uomo piuttosto grande, nella sua maniera perversa e ripugnante, poiché riuscì a compendiare la suprema, essenziale menzogna di un intero secolo e di un’intera civiltà in una frase esattamente appropriata, una frase tanto più appropriata in quanto è idiota. Deve rassomigliare a uno dei grandi avvelenatori, giacché in verità ha avvelenato l’intera mente moderna. Deve essere assai più di uno dei grandi cospiratori, poiché, come direbbe il signor Wells, è una cospirazione del tutto aperta. È riuscito a mettere tutte le filosofie contemporanee correnti in una frase che non significa nulla. Chiunque abbia gli istinti dalla parte di una simile sofisteria vi si avventa all’istante, per via della sua ambiguità. Con un solo torcimento di cattiva grammatica o di cattiva logica, essa aggroviglia insieme le due cose che sono state in netto contrasto e contraddizione in ogni religione o sistema morale decente della storia — l’idea della grandezza morale e l’idea del mero successo materiale. E per giunta far bene non è nemmeno aver senso. Non basterà davvero a formare una frase, e tanto meno una frase buona o una frase vera.
Così possiamo dire di uno di questi esseri abietti che si trovano a vivere a Hoxton o nella Harrow Road che egli fa buoni barili da birra; che fa buoni tubi di scolo; che fa buoni fischietti da un soldo o buoni pasticci di maiale; ma non che fa bene. Non ha senso; non fa una frase. E questa frase ambigua sul far bene fu inventata proprio perché era ambigua; fu inventata dall’uomo che non faceva pasticci né tubi né barili né alcunché nell’East End, ma soltanto raccattava il profitto sul lavoro altrui e se ne andava con esso a vivere nel West End. È tutto ciò che si intende per far bene. Non importava poi molto finché la gente si asteneva dal descriverlo come far bene; finché si accontentava di descriverlo come far quattrini. Considerato semplicemente come una delle miti forme di birbanteria assai comuni fra gli esseri umani, potrebbe davvero dirsi mite o persino umano. Ma per la fatale e fulminante ipocrisia di quest’unico slogan americano, esso fu trasformato da faccenda di avventura amorale in faccenda di moralità del tutto immorale. La frase «far bene», per il solo fatto di contenere la parola «bene», reca sempre con sé qualche ombra di suggestione che l’uomo il quale ha meramente fatto bene a se stesso debba anche aver realmente fatto bene; fatto bene come nelle antiche fedi e nei codici della morale; fatto bene al cospetto di Dio e dell’umanità. E questo non è soltanto immoralità, è bestemmia; poiché equivale in pratica a dire che l’uomo egoista è il santo, e che Giuda con la borsa è più grande di Gesù con la croce.
Frattanto, nulla se non questa nebbia di una frase, come una vera nebbia di Londra che soffoca le strade attorno alla Cattedrale di San Paolo, avrebbe potuto celare così completamente i fatti della moderna situazione sociale al Decano di San Paolo. Se far bene significasse fare cose buone, tubi o barili o quel che si voglia, sarebbe evidente che la gente continua a farlo, generazione dopo generazione, tanto nella classe inferiore quanto nella sua prediletta alta classe media. Mi domando quante volte questi savi dell’alta classe media si fermino a pensare come sarebbe Londra, se tutte le classi inferiori fossero davvero tanto sciocche quanto essi suppongono. Come sarebbe Londra nella nebbia, ad esempio, se un numero enorme di vetturini e di carrettieri, e di uomini che dirigono il traffico, fosse per la maggior parte ubriaco o incapace? Il fatto è che gli scioperati e i disadattati, ovvero le classi lavoratrici, stanno facendo bene tutto il tempo. Stanno facendo bene giorno e notte; stanno facendo bene di minuto in minuto; altrimenti nessuno di noi arriverebbe in fondo a un viaggio di un’ora. Il Decano ha pienamente il diritto di lodare quella sorta di famiglia clericale o accademica da cui egli stesso proviene; di annotarne le virtù che realmente possiede; e senza dubbio vi sono virtù che sono più facili per un tale ecclesiastico che per un tale vetturino. Ma è ben lungi dall’essere di per sé evidente che ogni ecclesiastico riesca meglio col suo sermone di quanto qualsiasi vetturino riesca col suo servizio. Tanto l’ecclesiastico quanto il vetturino possono essere uomini buoni; ma quanto più sono realmente uomini buoni, tanto meno saranno attratti dall’ideale di far bene.
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XXXIX
On Making Good—II
A VERY eminent and distinguished critic has done me the honour to criticize, in a private letter, the remarks I made recently in disparagement of the phrase “making good.” He agrees with me, or at least he disagrees with Dean Inge, in so far as to admit that the Dean’s controversial use of the term was a sophistry. We should not differ very much about the social views involved. But about the verbal and grammatical matter my correspondent does not agree, and he is prepared to maintain that the phrase “making good” can be defended as a form of English idiom. He says, very truly, that it is possible to use it in a much more natural and ordinary way than it is used in the particular argument of the Dean of St. Paul’s. He says that the ordinary honest plumber, of whom I spoke, might be said to have made good in carrying out a small job or contract, and that there would be nothing odd about the phrase. It is possible, of course, that the Dean would decline to accept the arbitration of the plumber, as much as I should decline to accept the arbitration of the Dean. But the point seems to me worth a word or two of further elucidation and explanation.
First, upon the primary point, I am disposed to stand firm; I mean the point of the logic of grammar. For I am, I confess, so degenerate a Latin type of mind that I think there ought to be some logic in grammar. And it seems to me a simple fact that “to make” is a transitive verb, and must have an object or accusative. We can make a plumber good, or make a Dean good, or even make a poor bewildered and overwrought journalist, writing in a weekly illustrated paper, good; but we cannot make good. If it is an allowable idiom, it must be an exception and not a rule; and it must be an exception by some exceptional process, such as that of depending upon words that are “understood.” I know that this practice does exist; nor can the most logical Latin wholly condemn it, for it exists even in the logical Latin language. There is a form, which I remember learning laboriously in the Latin grammar as a boy, by which some such word as officium, for instance, could be understood. It is allowable to say in Latin: “It is of a good man to worship the gods,” or “It is of a good father to feed his children.” Here certainly there is some word, such as “part” or “duty,” left to be understood.
But the worst of these words that are understood is that they are not understood. Even in face of the few Latin precedents I rather doubt whether it is wise to follow such precedents, and certainly whether it is wise to create new precedents. But it is particularly undesirable at the present day, at a period in which things are emphatically not understood; a period in which they are, beyond all previous precedent, misunderstood. For men do not now agree, even as much as the Romans did, about the relations of a good man to the gods or the relation of a father to the children. At the best, there is some ambiguity in saying: “It is of a good man to go to church.” For one man will read it in the form “It is the duty of a good man to go to church.” Another may read it, in a cynical spirit, in the form “It is the interest of a good man to go to church.” A third will read it in the form “It is the infernal bore inflicted on a good man to go to church.” Now, that ambiguity did not so often happen in older and simpler social systems. There is less of that ambiguity in the Latin phrase. But there is nothing but ambiguity in the modern English phrase. There is only blank, unadulterated ambiguity in that English phrase— if you can call it an English phrase. And that is the root of my unrepentant revolt against it.
I mean that we may forgive the plumber (a form of Christian charity which many seem to find difficult) when he says that, in some small job, he has made good. But we only forgive him because we think that he, being poor and honest, really means “I have made good my word” or “I have made good my compact.” But it is still true that a less honest plumber, and possibly a richer plumber, might mean by the phrase: “I have made good my intention to swindle this old fool,” or “I have made good money out of this business, and much more than I had any right to receive.”
Now, that is the moral ambiguity that I complain of, to start with, in the very nature of the phrase. But, in its actual modern use in any ordinary newspapers or novels, it goes far beyond ambiguity and becomes anarchy. It is bad policy, at the best, to allow a word to be understood; because it is first of all misunderstood, and afterwards mistaken or betrayed or supplanted by some baser word in the minds of baser people. Even if the man did originally mean: “I have made good my word,” he will be unwise to leave out the word. It will be better, in every sense, if he keeps his word. A man’s word is only too easy to forget. And, after a time, some meaner notion, such as making good his plan or plot or conspiracy, will have crept into the vacuum of that silence. But in the vulgar use of the phrase, in the modern world at this moment, there is not the remotest notion of anything so honest. Those who say that Hiram Q. Hogswash made good in Wall Street never did mean, and never were even supposed to mean, that he had made good any word or any contract or any honest purpose of any sort. Saying that Hiram made good simply means that Hiram made money, and never means anything else. Now, Hiram is not necessarily to be blamed for making money; but neither certainly is he to be praised for it. And this twisted and stunted form of words was invented so that he might be praised for it. By dragging in the word “good” where it is neither good grammar nor good ethics, a falsification of moral standards is created, tending to suggest that there is some connexion between making money and being good. So that, while we may invoke the ancient Roman to excuse the primary habit of leaving out logically necessary words, and while we may invoke the modern plumber to excuse the simpler sort of language about making good a job or a contract, we shall still lament over the larger and more desolating calamities that the Roman and the plumber, between them, have let loose upon the modern world. We shall recognize that this piece of phraseology is now, in fact, identified with a philosophy which teaches snobbish self-interest as a sort of ideal. If it is permissible to use a phrase like having made good, it is permissible to say that this particular phrase has most unmistakably made bad.
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XXXIX
Sul far bene (making good)—II
UN critico assai eminente e insigne mi ha reso l’onore di criticare, in una lettera privata, le osservazioni che ho fatto di recente a discredito della locuzione «making good», il «far bene» o «far fortuna». Egli concorda con me, o quanto meno dissente dal Decano Inge, almeno fino ad ammettere che l’uso polemico che il Decano faceva del termine fosse un sofisma. Non divergeremmo di molto sulle vedute sociali implicate. Ma sulla questione verbale e grammaticale il mio corrispondente non concorda, ed è pronto a sostenere che la locuzione «making good» possa essere difesa come una forma dell’idioma inglese. Egli dice, con molta verità, che è possibile usarla in modo assai più naturale e comune di quanto non la si usi nel particolare argomento del Decano di San Paolo. Dice che il comune e onesto idraulico, di cui parlavo, si potrebbe dire abbia «fatto bene» nel portare a termine un piccolo lavoro o contratto, e che non vi sarebbe nulla di strano nella frase. È possibile, certo, che il Decano rifiuti di accettare l’arbitrato dell’idraulico, tanto quanto io rifiuterei di accettare l’arbitrato del Decano. Ma il punto mi sembra meritare una parola o due di ulteriore delucidazione e chiarimento.
Anzitutto, sul punto primario, sono incline a tenermi fermo; intendo il punto della logica della grammatica. Poiché io sono, lo confesso, una mente di tipo latino tanto degenere da ritenere che debba esservi una certa logica nella grammatica. E mi pare un fatto semplice che «fare» sia un verbo transitivo, e debba avere un oggetto o accusativo. Possiamo far buono un idraulico, o far buono un Decano, o persino far buono un povero giornalista sconcertato e sopraffatto, che scrive su un settimanale illustrato; ma non possiamo semplicemente «far buono». Se è un idioma lecito, dev’essere un’eccezione e non una regola; e dev’essere un’eccezione per qualche processo eccezionale, come quello di dipendere da parole che sono «sottintese». So che questa pratica esiste; né il più logico dei Latini può condannarla del tutto, giacché essa esiste perfino nella logica lingua latina. C’è una forma, che ricordo d’avere appreso faticosamente nella grammatica latina da ragazzo, per cui qualche parola come officium, per esempio, poteva essere sottintesa. È lecito dire in latino: «È proprio dell’uomo buono venerare gli dèi», oppure «È proprio del buon padre nutrire i propri figli». Qui certamente vi è qualche parola, come «compito» o «dovere», lasciata a sottintendersi.
Ma il peggio di queste parole che sono sottintese è che esse non sono affatto intese. Persino a fronte dei pochi precedenti latini piuttosto dubito che sia saggio seguire simili precedenti, e ancor più che sia saggio creare nuovi precedenti. Ma ciò è particolarmente inopportuno al giorno d’oggi, in un’epoca in cui le cose enfaticamente non sono intese; un’epoca in cui esse sono, al di là di ogni precedente pregresso, fraintese. Poiché gli uomini oggi non concordano, neppure quanto concordavano i Romani, sui rapporti dell’uomo buono con gli dèi o sul rapporto di un padre con i figli. Nel migliore dei casi, vi è una certa ambiguità nel dire: «È proprio dell’uomo buono andare in chiesa». Poiché un uomo lo leggerà nella forma «È dovere dell’uomo buono andare in chiesa». Un altro lo leggerà, in spirito cinico, nella forma «È interesse dell’uomo buono andare in chiesa». Un terzo lo leggerà nella forma «È l’infernale seccatura inflitta all’uomo buono l’andare in chiesa». Ora, quell’ambiguità non si dava così spesso negli ordinamenti sociali più antichi e più semplici. Vi è meno di quell’ambiguità nella frase latina. Ma non vi è altro che ambiguità nella frase inglese moderna. Non vi è che pura, schietta ambiguità in quella frase inglese— se pure la si può chiamare una frase inglese. Ed è questa la radice della mia impenitente rivolta contro di essa.
Voglio dire che possiamo perdonare l’idraulico (una forma di carità cristiana che a molti sembra riuscire difficile) quando dice che, in qualche piccolo lavoro, ha «fatto bene». Ma lo perdoniamo soltanto perché pensiamo che egli, essendo povero e onesto, intenda davvero «ho tenuto fede alla mia parola» o «ho tenuto fede al mio patto». Eppure resta vero che un idraulico meno onesto, e forse un idraulico più ricco, potrebbe intendere con quella frase: «Ho portato a compimento la mia intenzione di truffare questo vecchio sciocco», oppure «Ho fatto buoni denari con questo affare, e assai più di quanto avessi alcun diritto di ricevere».
Ora, è questa l’ambiguità morale di cui mi lagno, tanto per cominciare, nella natura stessa della frase. Ma, nel suo uso effettivo e moderno in un qualsiasi giornale ordinario o romanzo, essa va ben oltre l’ambiguità e si fa anarchia. È cattiva politica, nel migliore dei casi, lasciare che una parola sia sottintesa; poiché essa dapprima è fraintesa, e in seguito travisata o tradita o soppiantata da qualche parola più vile nelle menti di gente più vile. Anche se l’uomo in origine intendeva: «Ho tenuto fede alla mia parola», sarà malaccorto a tralasciare la parola. Sarà meglio, in ogni senso, che egli mantenga la parola. La parola d’un uomo è fin troppo facile a dimenticarsi. E, dopo un certo tempo, qualche nozione più meschina, come il portare a compimento il proprio piano o intrigo o cospirazione, si sarà insinuata nel vuoto di quel silenzio. Ma nell’uso volgare della frase, nel mondo moderno in questo momento, non vi è la più remota nozione di alcunché di così onesto. Coloro che dicono che Hiram Q. Hogswash ha «fatto bene» a Wall Street non intesero mai, e non si suppose mai che intendessero, che egli avesse tenuto fede ad alcuna parola o ad alcun contratto o ad alcun onesto proposito di sorta. Dire che Hiram ha «fatto bene» significa semplicemente che Hiram ha fatto denaro, e non significa mai nient’altro. Ora, Hiram non è necessariamente da biasimare per aver fatto denaro; ma certo neppure è da lodare per questo. E questa forma di parole contorta e stentata fu inventata affinché egli potesse esserne lodato. Trascinando dentro la parola «buono» là dove non è né buona grammatica né buona etica, si crea una falsificazione degli standard morali, tendente a suggerire che vi sia una qualche connessione tra il fare denaro e l’essere buoni. Cosicché, mentre possiamo invocare l’antico Romano per scusare l’abitudine primaria di tralasciare parole logicamente necessarie, e mentre possiamo invocare il moderno idraulico per scusare il più semplice tipo di linguaggio sul «far bene» un lavoro o un contratto, dovremo pur sempre lamentarci sulle più vaste e desolanti calamità che il Romano e l’idraulico, tra loro, hanno scatenato sul mondo moderno. Riconosceremo che questo brano di fraseologia è ormai, di fatto, identificato con una filosofia che insegna lo snobistico interesse per il sé come una sorta di ideale. Se è lecito usare una frase come «aver fatto bene», è lecito dire che questa particolare frase ha nel modo più inequivocabile «fatto male».
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XL
On Eyebrows
I DO not follow the fashions; I know little of that new wild world, where women can be wholly natural by constructing masks of grease-paint, or prove their freedom by strictly following the mode. I become conscious, or half-conscious, of some change in dress or deportment when it has already become general. In this manner, for instance, it was lately borne in upon me that another change has taken place in the human countenance.
It is already a commonplace, I suppose, that the ideal and immortal Lover, as conceived by Shakspere, “sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad made to his mistress’ eyebrow,” must now go away and sigh about something else. His mistress has no eyebrows; and it might be inferred that he would produce no ballads. Anyhow, it suggests a sort of metaphysical duel between the Lover and the Poet, rather attractive to the metaphysical poets of that period. Would the balladist still cling to his ballad, pursuing the abstract and archetypal image of an Eyebrow, even when it was entirely detached from a face? Would he prefer the lady’s eyebrow to the lady, leaving the rest of the lady behind like so much lumber, and pursuing only that peculiar vision of vanished hair? Or would he make the supreme sacrifice of tearing up the ballad and taking up with the lady, however strangely disfigured, resolving henceforward to write ballads only about her nose, her ears, or some portion of her which it seemed improbable that she would be in any immediate hurry to cut off? Even about those, of course, he could never be quite safe, if amputation were really the fashion.
In fact, touching that famous phrase, I have often wondered why modern poets do not more often amuse themselves by reproducing the imaginary Ballad to an Eyebrow. Shakspere is full of hints that could be used as the basis of all sorts of games and experiments; Browning accepted such a challenge in expanding the suggestive line of “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came”; and my own father, who was a man of many crafts and hobbies he had no ambition to exploit, made a table ornament modelled in every detail on the Three Caskets of Portia. Surely some of us might have a shot at a really Elizabethan address to the supercilious feature. Surely any modern writer, after sighing like a furnace for a few minutes, might be able to attempt something appropriate in the sixteenth-century manner:
As seven-dyed Iris doth o’erarch the spheres, Love made that bridge that doth o’erarch thine eyne Bright as that bonded bow enskied; a sign Against the crystal Deluge of thy tears As line on line, so brow to brow appears …
At this point the poet looks up at the lady’s eyebrow and finds that it disappears. The pen drops from his fingers, and this immortal fragment (if I may so modestly describe it) remains for ever fragmentary. Shakspere, especially the Shakspere of the Sonnets, knew more than most people about the law of change and dissolution spread over all earthly things, even those that seem the most natural:
Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o’ersways their power, How with this rage shall Beauty hold a plea, Whose action is no stronger than a flower.
I quote from memory. Anyhow, even this argument does not force us to a premature plucking of the flower or plucking out of the eyebrow. But, in spite of Shakspere’s somewhat excessive preoccupation, at one period, with the images of mutability and mortality, I very gravely doubt whether he ever did expect that sonnets or ballads to eyes, eyebrows, ears, noses, and the rest would ever become impossible by a general obliteration of these features. But what is stranger still, and what would have struck Shakspere as very strange indeed, is the fact that this negative and destructive operation should take place in a society devoted to pleasure, and in an age commonly supposed to be even more pagan than his own.
For the real moral is rather interesting. I challenge anybody to deny that this custom, if it had not been adopted as hedonism, would have been denounced as hideous asceticism. Suppose people had been told twenty years ago, say in the great Suffrage period, that in some ancient societies women were made to shave off their eyebrows after marriage. Would it not have been instantly classed with the cruel disfigurements imposed by masculine jealousy, as in the Oriental wives who are made to black their teeth after marriage? Suppose that some Puritan fanatic had indignantly declared that nuns were made to shave their eyebrows. Should we ever have heard the last of the unnatural defacement of the human face at the command of superstition? Would not everybody have quite instinctively connected it with Fasts and Flagellants? Would it ever have occurred to anybody to connect it with fashion and pleasure? If anybody had told the Suffragette that the women in the harem liked having their hair pulled out an inch above their eyeballs, how the Suffragette would have yelled with derision of the cowardly masculine excuse! If anybody had told the late Mr. Kensit that a fashion of going bald above the eyes was started merely for fun among the nuns and novices themselves, how he would have snorted with incredulity! Yet the fashion has, to all appearance, been started merely for fun among the ladies themselves; and it may be presumed that they like it. I do not particularly care whether they have no eyebrows or three eyebrows, or green or triangular eyebrows, in those select circles where such things presumably start. But there is a certain intellectual interest in the way in which they seem nowadays, in so many cases, to start in the opposite direction from what one would normally call the pursuit of pleasure and beauty.
In short, the only real interest of such a trifle is that which connects it with some of the serious arts and decorative schools of our day. It is, I suppose, an unconscious expression, parallel to many other such expressions, of an artistic movement towards something that is more or less severe and harsh and even dehumanized. It is part of a tendency to turn people into patterns rather than into pictures. As a reaction against the deliquescent sentimentalism that was the end of the old humanitarian sentiment, it is comprehensible enough: but it is comprehensible rather than commendable.
Anyhow, one thing is certain; that, though many periods in the past have a certain grim and grandiose solemnity, through the hardness of externals or the mathematical severity of lines, these periods always appear to us to be oppressive and inhuman. So that the age of the Bright Young Things may yet have to look forward to its own appearance in history, as a type of tyranny and slavery and stiff as the mummies of the dead.
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XL
Sulle sopracciglia
NON seguo le mode; poco so di quel nuovo mondo sfrenato, dove le donne possono essere del tutto naturali costruendosi maschere di cerone, o dimostrare la propria libertà attenendosi rigorosamente all’usanza. Divento consapevole, o semiconsapevole, di qualche mutamento nell’abito o nel contegno soltanto quando è ormai divenuto generale. In questo modo, per esempio, mi è stato di recente rivelato che un altro mutamento si è compiuto nel volto umano.
È già un luogo comune, suppongo, che l’ideale e immortale Innamorato, quale lo concepì Shakespeare, «sospirando come una fornace, con una dolente ballata composta per il sopracciglio della sua signora», debba ora andarsene a sospirare per qualcos’altro. La sua signora non ha più sopracciglia; e se ne potrebbe dedurre che egli non produrrà più ballate. Comunque sia, ciò suggerisce una sorta di duello metafisico tra l’Innamorato e il Poeta, piuttosto attraente per i poeti metafisici di quel periodo. Il balladista si aggrapperebbe ancora alla sua ballata, inseguendo l’immagine astratta e archetipa di un Sopracciglio, anche quando questo fosse del tutto staccato da un volto? Preferirebbe il sopracciglio della dama alla dama stessa, abbandonandosi dietro il resto della dama come tanta ciarpame, e inseguendo soltanto quella peculiare visione di peli svaniti? Oppure compirebbe il sacrificio supremo di stracciare la ballata e mettersi con la dama, per quanto stranamente sfigurata, risolvendo d’ora innanzi di scrivere ballate soltanto sul suo naso, sulle sue orecchie, o su qualche parte di lei che sembrasse improbabile avesse alcuna immediata premura di tagliarsi via? Anche riguardo a quelle, s’intende, non potrebbe mai essere del tutto al sicuro, se l’amputazione fosse davvero di moda.
In verità, a proposito di quella famosa frase, mi sono spesso chiesto perché i poeti moderni non si divertano più spesso a riprodurre l’immaginaria Ballata a un Sopracciglio. Shakespeare è pieno di spunti che potrebbero servire da base a ogni sorta di giochi ed esperimenti; Browning accettò una simile sfida ampliando il suggestivo verso «Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came»; e il mio stesso padre, uomo di molte arti e passatempi che non aveva alcuna ambizione di sfruttare, fabbricò un ornamento da tavola modellato in ogni dettaglio sui Tre Scrigni di Porzia. Certo qualcuno di noi potrebbe pur tentare un indirizzo davvero elisabettiano a quel superbo lineamento. Certo qualsiasi scrittore moderno, dopo aver sospirato come una fornace per qualche minuto, sarebbe in grado di attentare qualcosa di appropriato alla maniera del Cinquecento:
Come Iride dai sette colori inarca le sfere, Amore fece quel ponte che inarca i tuoi occhi Splendente come quell’arco pattuito nei cieli; un segno Contro il cristallino Diluvio delle tue lacrime Come linea su linea, così fronte a fronte appare …
A questo punto il poeta alza lo sguardo verso il sopracciglio della dama e scopre che è scomparso. La penna gli cade dalle dita, e questo immortale frammento (se posso così modestamente definirlo) rimane per sempre frammentario. Shakespeare, specialmente lo Shakespeare dei Sonetti, sapeva più della maggior parte delle persone intorno alla legge del mutamento e della dissoluzione che si stende su tutte le cose terrene, anche su quelle che paiono le più naturali:
Poiché né bronzo, né pietra, né terra, né sconfinato mare, Ma la triste mortalità soverchia la loro potenza, Come contro tale furia potrà la Beauty muovere una difesa, Il cui operare non è più forte di un fiore.
Cito a memoria. Comunque sia, neppure questo argomento ci costringe a un prematuro cogliere del fiore o a uno strappare via del sopracciglio. Ma, malgrado l’alquanto eccessiva preoccupazione di Shakespeare, in un certo periodo, per le immagini della mutevolezza e della mortalità, seriamente dubito che egli si aspettasse mai che sonetti o ballate a occhi, sopracciglia, orecchie, nasi e via dicendo dovessero mai divenire impossibili per una generale cancellazione di tali lineamenti. Ma ciò che è ancor più strano, e che a Shakespeare sarebbe parso strano davvero, è il fatto che questa negativa e distruttiva operazione abbia luogo in una società votata al piacere, e in un’epoca comunemente ritenuta ancor più pagana della sua.
Poiché la vera morale è piuttosto interessante. Sfido chiunque a negare che questa usanza, se non fosse stata adottata in nome dell’edonismo, sarebbe stata denunciata come orrenda ascesi. Si supponga che vent’anni fa, poniamo nel grande periodo del Suffragio, si fosse detto alla gente che in certe antiche società le donne erano costrette a radersi le sopracciglia dopo il matrimonio. Non sarebbe stata subito annoverata tra le crudeli deturpazioni imposte dalla gelosia maschile, come nelle mogli orientali costrette ad annerirsi i denti dopo il matrimonio? Si supponga che qualche fanatico puritano avesse indignato dichiarato che le monache erano costrette a radersi le sopracciglia. L’avremmo mai smessa di sentir parlare dell’innaturale deturpazione del volto umano al comando della superstizione? Non l’avrebbero tutti quasi istintivamente collegata a Digiuni e Flagellanti? Sarebbe mai venuto in mente ad alcuno di collegarla alla moda e al piacere? Se qualcuno avesse detto alla Suffragetta che le donne dell’harem godevano nel farsi strappare i peli un pollice sopra i bulbi oculari, come avrebbe strillato, la Suffragetta, di scherno per la vile scusa maschile! Se qualcuno avesse detto al defunto signor Kensit che una moda di andare calvi sopra gli occhi fu iniziata per puro divertimento tra le monache e le novizie stesse, come avrebbe sbuffato d’incredulità! Eppure la moda è stata, a quanto pare, iniziata per puro divertimento tra le dame stesse; e si può presumere che essa piaccia loro. Non m’importa granché che abbiano niente sopracciglia o tre sopracciglia, o sopracciglia verdi o triangolari, in quei circoli scelti dove simili cose presumibilmente hanno origine. Ma vi è un certo interesse intellettuale nel modo in cui esse paiono oggigiorno, in tanti casi, muovere nella direzione opposta a quella che normalmente si chiamerebbe la ricerca del piacere e della bellezza.
In breve, l’unico vero interesse di una simile inezia è quello che la connette con alcune delle arti serie e delle scuole decorative dei nostri giorni. È, suppongo, un’inconsapevole espressione, parallela a molte altre espressioni siffatte, di un movimento artistico verso qualcosa che è più o meno severo e aspro e persino disumanizzato. È parte di una tendenza a mutare le persone in motivi anziché in ritratti. Come reazione contro il deliquescente sentimentalismo che fu la fine dell’antico sentimento umanitario, è abbastanza comprensibile: ma è comprensibile più che lodevole.
Comunque sia, una cosa è certa: che, per quanto molti periodi del passato posseggano una certa cupa e grandiosa solennità, attraverso la durezza degli aspetti esteriori o la matematica severità delle linee, tali periodi ci appaiono sempre opprimenti e disumani. Cosicché l’età dei Bright Young Things potrebbe ancora dover attendere la propria comparsa nella storia, come un tipo di tirannia e di schiavitù, e rigida come le mummie dei morti.
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XLI
On Eating and Sleeping
SOME time or other, I think, I will write a really thoughtful and educational article about Bed or Breakfast or Baths or Breathing, or some of those simple things, or things that seem simple to simple people. And it shall be written in the exact and peculiar style of a modern article on Marriage or the Family or Patriotism or Religion. I have read such multitudes of these modern articles, especially leading articles and articles in the lighter style of popular science; there are so many of them, and they are all so exactly alike, that I believe I could reproduce the manner pretty correctly and the type of argument, in so far as there is one. We will suppose, for the sake of argument, that I have selected the subject of “Food: Human Habit of Consuming.” In which case I should be entirely safe, and even successful, if I wrote something like this:
“The progress of enlightenment, it must be admitted, tends to rob us of some of the emotional consolations which were possible to our ancestors in simpler times. Thinking men can no longer accept the ancient creeds and ecclesiastical dogmas which taught them that the virtues of an enemy whom they had eaten passed into their own bodies; the belief lingers in various forms in the common practice of eating beef and mutton, in the hope of thus absorbing the energy of the bull and the innocence of the sheep. And the modern Englishman, eating eggs and bacon at breakfast, hardly guesses that his real motive for doing so is a desire to partake mystically of the higher virtues of the pig or the bolder qualities of the chicken. It is not to be expected that these habits, resting as they do on such quaint survivals of savage superstition, should long survive the myths out of which they came; and the frequent appearance of Fasting Men at the World’s Fair, in Barnum’s Show, and other arenas of scientific experiment, is enough to show that science is again sending forth her pioneers to show humanity the better way. So long as the mediæval Church could impose her Feasts upon a faithful and obedient populace, the half-barbaric habit of having meals seemed almost to be a natural part of social life. There are many traces of the once-powerful tradition that bringing men together in love-feasts, or banquets of reconciliation, had a more or less magical effect of making them more friendly and more at peace with each other. And it may be that in ruder times even food itself was often useful for this psychological purpose, and was perhaps the only instrument that ignorant and primitive peoples could employ. Since the foundation of the League of Nations, men have learned the lesson that Peace Conferences can be successfully held without any of the old ceremonial gestures of eating or drinking, and any social use that such motions may once have served is now superseded by more direct and rational methods. The habit of eating may linger, here and there, among remote peasantries or rigid and reactionary individuals; but it is so clearly bound up with a whole world of ancient mystery and mummery, with the saying of grace, with the giving of thanks, with the proposing of patriotic sentiments over glasses of wine, that there can be little or no future for it now that man has reached his intellectual manhood. Gruncke, by the way, has pointed out that the cannibal notion of devouring and digesting the bodily vigour of an enemy is actually attested in the surviving popular phrase of ‘drinking his health.’”
Now that is exactly like any number of newspaper and magazine articles I have read on the evolution of Marriage or Religion, only a little more sensible. The suggestion of Professor Gruncke about the anthropophagous meaning of drinking a health (though I have only just this moment made it up) is immeasurably more sensible than the suggestion of many professors on the subject of Marriage by Capture; proving that a bridegroom must be a brigand by the institution of the Best Man. They say solemnly that a chief always went out to the proposed abduction with some leading and distinguished man of his tribe. It never seems to dawn on them that he would have gone out in any case to any wedding, whether it were an abduction or not (or, indeed, to any occasion of any importance), with the leading men of his tribe. He would not be likely to select the most unpresentable and disreputable object in his tribe, when he went to visit his father-in-law. This ghastly and gaping lack of common sense, in all the attempted reconstructions of primitive humanity, is the commonest mark of all this sort of popular science and fashionable rationalism. But it would be just as easy to use it to discredit Food as to discredit Family Life, or any of the basic human things that it is used to discredit. All that is necessary is to give a string of suggestions (such as I have just reeled off without stopping for breath) in the case of the Savage Custom of Supper. Mention a number of myths that have some connexion with meals; mix them all up like a soup; leave out all the joints and bones of argument; and you can easily leave the reader with a general impression that a meal is a myth. Above all, you must keep on praising the reader, as a progressive fellow superior to his father; and you can easily make him feel superior to meals— until next meal-time.
There is no space here for my powerful and cogent exposure of the Superstition of Sleep. It is set forth (or it might be some day) with all the exact process of thought and careful citation of facts and scientific authorities essential to this sort of work; the footnotes fill up most of the pages and the appendices are in five volumes. The recognized scientific method in such cases consists of two parts. First the writer points out that Sleep has a perfectly simple, single, and obvious origin in mythology, and then (second) he proceeds to trace it to about ten totally contradictory mythological origins. In the epoch of the Sun Myth, he will say that sleep was a sort of negative worship of the Sun God. In order to emphasize the idea that men only lived by the life and inspiration of Apollo, the priests of Apollo (acting as mesmerists or medicine-men) succeeded in making their dupes literally lose consciousness after the sun’s disappearance; induced them to die daily and lie like corpses until the dawn. That is quite a good one; but there will be plenty more. When poor old Herbert Spencer still had influence, it was often suggested that Dreams were the origin of Religion. To such thinkers, it would be a mere trifle to amend it by saying that Religion was the origin of Dreams. Sleep was only the hypnosis (how fortunate and illuminating that the word hypnosis only means sleep!) imposed by the priests on the credulous savages; in which state all sorts of mythical suggestions could be made to them, thus producing what we call the phenomena of dreams. Therefore, as the world casts off priestly vestments and pontifical mitres it will also throw away bed-clothes, night-gowns and nightcaps, and everything that reminds it of the mystical trance once called sleep. Or it would be easy to show that sleep was produced among primitive men by means of a vegetable drug (still used in the Solomon Islands) that they might not spy on the secret practices of the priests before they themselves had passed the Seventh Initiation. Or there is the obvious explanation that the sacrifices demanded at the harvest … but we need not go on with the theories of the professors for ever, even if they do. Perhaps you do not find this convincing. Perhaps you do not propose instantly to abandon the habit of eating or of sleeping at night. You say, defensively, that food and sleep are necessary to normal men. I fear it will be only too easy to apply the same argument to a belief in Free Will, to a concept of Right and Wrong, and to the perilous habit of humanity of marrying and having children.
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XLI
Del Mangiare e del Dormire
QUALCHE volta o l’altra, credo, scriverò un articolo davvero meditato ed educativo sul Letto o sulla Colazione o sui Bagni o sul Respiro, o su qualcuna di quelle cose semplici, o cose che sembrano semplici alle persone semplici. E sarà scritto nello stile esatto e peculiare di un moderno articolo sul Matrimonio o sulla Famiglia o sul Patriottismo o sulla Religione. Ho letto tali moltitudini di questi articoli moderni, specialmente gli articoli di fondo e gli articoli nello stile più leggero della scienza divulgativa; ce ne sono così tanti, e sono tutti così esattamente uguali, che credo di poterne riprodurre la maniera abbastanza correttamente e il tipo di argomentazione, nella misura in cui ve n’è una. Supporremo, per amor di discussione, che io abbia scelto il soggetto del «Cibo: l’Abitudine Umana di Consumarlo». Nel qual caso sarei del tutto al sicuro, e persino coronato dal successo, se scrivessi qualcosa del genere:
«Il progresso dei lumi, bisogna ammetterlo, tende a privarci di alcune delle consolazioni emotive che erano possibili ai nostri antenati in tempi più semplici. Gli uomini di pensiero non possono più accettare gli antichi credi e i dogmi ecclesiastici che insegnavano loro che le virtù di un nemico che avevano divorato passavano nei loro stessi corpi; la credenza permane in varie forme nella pratica comune di mangiare manzo e montone, nella speranza di assorbire così l’energia del toro e l’innocenza della pecora. E il moderno inglese, mangiando uova e pancetta a colazione, a stento immagina che il suo vero movente nel farlo sia un desiderio di partecipare misticamente delle virtù superiori del maiale o delle qualità più audaci del pollo. Non c’è da aspettarsi che queste abitudini, poggiando come poggiano su tali bizzarre sopravvivenze della superstizione selvaggia, sopravvivano a lungo ai miti da cui provennero; e la frequente comparsa di Uomini Digiunatori alla Fiera Mondiale, nello Spettacolo di Barnum, e in altre arene di sperimentazione scientifica, basta a mostrare che la scienza sta di nuovo mandando avanti i suoi pionieri a indicare all’umanità la via migliore. Finché la Chiesa medievale poté imporre le sue Feste a una popolazione fedele e obbediente, l’abitudine semibarbara di fare i pasti sembrava quasi essere una parte naturale della vita sociale. Vi sono molte tracce della tradizione un tempo potente secondo cui radunare gli uomini in agapi d’amore, o banchetti di riconciliazione, aveva un effetto più o meno magico di renderli più amichevoli e più in pace gli uni con gli altri. E può darsi che in tempi più rozzi persino il cibo stesso fosse spesso utile a questo scopo psicologico, e fosse forse l’unico strumento che i popoli ignoranti e primitivi potessero impiegare. Dalla fondazione della Società delle Nazioni, gli uomini hanno appreso la lezione che le Conferenze di Pace possono tenersi con successo senza alcuno degli antichi gesti cerimoniali del mangiare o del bere, e qualunque uso sociale tali movenze possano un tempo aver servito è ora soppiantato da metodi più diretti e razionali. L’abitudine di mangiare può permanere, qua e là, tra remote contadinerie o individui rigidi e reazionari; ma è così chiaramente legata a tutto un mondo di antico mistero e di buffonate, con il dire la benedizione, con il rendere grazie, con il proporre sentimenti patriottici sopra bicchieri di vino, che vi può essere poco o nessun futuro per essa ora che l’uomo ha raggiunto la sua virilità intellettuale. Gruncke, per inciso, ha fatto notare che la nozione cannibalesca di divorare e digerire il vigore corporeo di un nemico è in realtà attestata nella superstite frase popolare del “bere alla sua salute”.»
Ora, questo è esattamente come un numero incalcolabile di articoli di giornali e riviste che ho letto sull’evoluzione del Matrimonio o della Religione, solo un po’ più sensato. Il suggerimento del Professor Gruncke sul significato antropofago del bere a una salute (sebbene lo abbia inventato solo in questo preciso istante) è incommensurabilmente più sensato del suggerimento di molti professori sul tema del Matrimonio per Ratto; che pretende di provare che uno sposo debba essere un brigante in virtù dell’istituzione del Testimone. Dicono solennemente che un capo usciva sempre per il progettato rapimento con qualche uomo eminente e distinto della sua tribù. Non sembra mai balenar loro in mente che egli sarebbe uscito in ogni caso per qualsiasi nozze, che fosse un rapimento o no (o, invero, per qualsiasi occasione di una qualche importanza), con gli uomini eminenti della sua tribù. Non sarebbe probabile che scegliesse l’oggetto più impresentabile e disdicevole della sua tribù, quando andava a far visita a suo suocero. Questa spettrale e spalancata mancanza di buon senso, in tutte le tentate ricostruzioni dell’umanità primitiva, è il segno più comune di tutta questa sorta di scienza divulgativa e di razionalismo alla moda. Ma sarebbe altrettanto facile usarlo per screditare il Cibo quanto per screditare la Vita di Famiglia, o qualunque delle cose umane basilari che esso viene usato a screditare. Tutto ciò che occorre è dare una filza di suggestioni (come quella che ho appena snocciolato senza fermarmi a prender fiato) nel caso del Costume Selvaggio della Cena. Menzionate un certo numero di miti che abbiano qualche connessione con i pasti; mescolateli tutti come una zuppa; lasciate fuori tutte le giunture e le ossa dell’argomentazione; e potrete facilmente lasciare il lettore con l’impressione generale che un pasto sia un mito. Soprattutto, dovete continuare a lodare il lettore, come un tipo progressista superiore a suo padre; e potrete facilmente fargli sentire di essere superiore ai pasti… fino al prossimo ora-di-mangiare.
Non c’è spazio qui per la mia potente e stringente confutazione della Superstizione del Sonno. Essa è esposta (o potrebbe esserlo un giorno) con tutto l’esatto processo di pensiero e l’accurata citazione di fatti e di autorità scientifiche essenziali a questo genere di lavoro; le note a piè di pagina riempiono la maggior parte delle pagine e le appendici sono in cinque volumi. Il metodo scientifico riconosciuto in tali casi consta di due parti. Dapprima lo scrittore fa notare che il Sonno ha un’origine perfettamente semplice, singola e ovvia nella mitologia, e poi (in secondo luogo) egli procede a ricondurlo a circa dieci origini mitologiche del tutto contraddittorie. Nell’epoca del Mito Solare, dirà che il sonno era una sorta di culto negativo del Dio Sole. Al fine di rimarcare l’idea che gli uomini vivevano soltanto grazie alla vita e all’ispirazione di Apollo, i sacerdoti di Apollo (agendo da mesmeristi o da uomini-medicina) riuscirono a far sì che i loro gonzi perdessero letteralmente coscienza dopo la scomparsa del sole; li indussero a morire quotidianamente e a giacere come cadaveri fino all’alba. Questa è proprio buona; ma ce ne saranno molte altre. Quando il povero vecchio Herbert Spencer aveva ancora influenza, si suggeriva spesso che i Sogni fossero l’origine della Religione. A tali pensatori, sarebbe una mera bagatella emendarla dicendo che la Religione era l’origine dei Sogni. Il Sonno era soltanto l’ipnosi (quanto fortunato e illuminante che la parola ipnosi significhi soltanto sonno!) imposta dai sacerdoti sui creduli selvaggi; nel qual stato ogni sorta di suggestione mitica poteva essere fatta loro, producendo così ciò che noi chiamiamo i fenomeni dei sogni. Perciò, man mano che il mondo si spoglia dei paramenti sacerdotali e delle mitre pontificali, esso getterà via anche le coperte, le camicie da notte e i berretti da notte, e tutto ciò che gli rammenta la trance mistica un tempo chiamata sonno. Oppure sarebbe facile mostrare che il sonno veniva prodotto tra gli uomini primitivi per mezzo di una droga vegetale (ancora usata nelle Isole Salomone) affinché non spiassero le pratiche segrete dei sacerdoti prima di aver essi stessi superato la Settima Iniziazione. Oppure c’è l’ovvia spiegazione che i sacrifici richiesti al raccolto… ma non abbiamo bisogno di proseguire in eterno con le teorie dei professori, anche se loro lo fanno. Forse non trovate ciò convincente. Forse non vi proponete di abbandonare all’istante l’abitudine di mangiare o di dormire di notte. Dite, sulla difensiva, che il cibo e il sonno sono necessari agli uomini normali. Temo che sarà anche troppo facile applicare il medesimo argomento a una credenza nel Libero Arbitrio, a un concetto di Giusto e Sbagliato, e alla pericolosa abitudine dell’umanità di sposarsi e di aver figli.
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XLII
On Sir Walter Scott
DURING a brief but enforced leisure which has lately befallen me I have read a great part of what was written and spoken on the subject of Sir Walter Scott, during the various celebrations of his Centenary. As a matter of course, much of it was highly eulogistic, perhaps rather too much as a matter of course. On the other hand, a great part of it had a very unnecessary air of apology, or a still more absurd air of patronage. Some of it was flatly crude and uncomprehending. One journalist not only announced jauntily that he could see nothing in the literary legend or authority of Walter Scott, but actually appealed against him to the authority of Mark Twain. This affects me very much in the same way as being told suddenly that Charlie Chaplin has never got much pleasure out of Homer. I have no idea, of course, of whether this is the case; Mr. Chaplin, for all I know, may be a Homeric scholar and a deep student of Scott; he may have better taste than Mark Twain. Mark Twain was certainly something of a man of genius in his own way; and so, for that matter, is Charlie Chaplin. But there is such a thing as artistic tradition and cultural grasp, and I should never have dreamed of expecting Mark Twain to understand the greatness of the Waverley Novels, any more than he understood the greatness of the Arthurian Romances. What he called The Yankee at the Court of King Arthur was, of course, a very clumsy version of King Arthur being tried in the court of the Yankee, and the findings of the court were about as conclusive as those of the court of Dayton, Tennessee.
Again, it may be true of Scott at the moment that he is neglected, upon a merely numerical estimate of readers; and the same, by this time, may very probably be true of Mark Twain. But that sort of calculation makes no difference to literary genius in the long run. There were also, of course, spirited defences; perhaps a little too much on the defensive. Mr. John Buchan stood resolutely with dirk and claymore before the shrine; but even in his excellent address one or two phrases suggested that he was not only defending a sanctity, but defending a secret. There was just a touch of that spirit with which the Scotsman sometimes seems to be almost forbidding the Englishman to understand Burns or to enjoy haggis. There is doubtless a truth in this tradition, for every writer who is really universal is also national; but Scott was not merely national, but very universal. Continental poets, like Goethe and Victor Hugo, would hardly have been themselves without Scott. Byron, perhaps the most Continental of all poets, would not have been himself without Scott. Scott made Scottish Romances, but he made European Romance.
I think the two points about Scott that are the most vivid and vital are now the most invisible. They are points naturally neglected in our time, but the defect is in our time and not in Scott. One concerns the fact that he wrote historical novels, in the sense of stories full of historical characters. The other concerns the fact that he was himself a historical character. He really tells us much more about his own age than about the previous ages. It is too often forgotten that his best books, like The Antiquary, are actually about his own age. Some among the best are those very close to his own age, like Rob Roy, or the admirable ending of Guy Mannering. But there was something which Scott specially shared with his own epoch which he was always reading backwards into other epochs. It was not merely a vague thing that is called romance; it was also a very clear and classical thing that is called rhetoric. He was not an eighteenth-century man for nothing. He was, almost as much as he was anything, a great orator. It is one of the limitations of our own very limited time to sneer at oratory. But it is chiefly because our politicians cannot rise to it that our critics will not condescend to it. At the end of the eighteenth century there was a sort of glowing atmosphere of great speech, and in none more than in the men of action. Nelson and Napoleon were really as rhetorical as Danton and Fox.
Now, Scott possessed this sort of eloquence in the very highest degree. It would be well worth while to make an anthology of the mere speeches out of Scott’s novels and metrical romances. From the retort of the Saxon Franklin upon De Bracy to the curse of Meg Merrilees upon the Laird of Ellangowan, from the speech with which the crabbed Louis XI rises into dignity in the face of death to the rude refusal of Douglas in Tantallon to give his hand to Marmion, all the speeches are spirited and telling, considered as speeches, whatever they may be considered as writings. This is much of the error about the rhymed romances. They are not always poetry, but they are always literature. They are literature of that particular kind that expresses itself in direct and militant oratory; in the speech that lies nearest to action. The reply of the Lady of Branksome, to the foes who hold her son as a hostage is almost doggerel considered as poetry; but it is direct and even deadly considered as oratory. Everything is apt and telling, from the sneer at Lord Dacre’s courage to the abrupt turn of defiant invocation:
For the young heir of Branksome’s line God be his aid and God be mine.
That is the sort of way that men like Danton and Fox did debate, through riots and revolutions that filled Scott’s own epoch. And he was more of a man of his own epoch than he knew.
One thing he did find in the past, not yet quite destroyed in the present, and it was his chief inspiration. He knew nothing of the religion of the past, and his notion of Gothic was more barbarous than that of any Goth. But he had extracted from his feudal traditions something on which his spirit truly fed; something without which the modern world is starving. He found the idea of Honour, which is the true energy in all militant eloquence. That a man should defend the dignity of his family, of his farm, of his lawful rank under the King, even of his mere name, of something at least that was larger than himself—this was the fire that Scott found still burning out of fourteenth-century feudalism and expressed in eighteenth-century oratory. Of all moral ideals it is the most neglected and misunderstood today. It is not strange that the eloquence which sprang from it is misunderstood and neglected also. We see that hollow gaping around us everywhere; in the fact that marriage is discussed as everything except what it is, a vow; or that property is discussed as everything except what it ought to be, an independence. But the modern world is not so happy in its oblivion of honour, or the eloquence that springs from honour, as to force us to believe in the permanent oblivion of Scott.
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XLII
Su Sir Walter Scott
DURANTE un breve ma forzato ozio che mi è toccato di recente, ho letto gran parte di ciò che si è scritto e detto sul conto di Sir Walter Scott, in occasione delle varie celebrazioni del suo centenario. Come è ovvio, molto era altamente elogiativo, forse fin troppo ovviamente. D’altro canto, gran parte aveva un’aria del tutto superflua di scusa, o un’aria ancora più assurda di degnazione protettrice. Qualcosa era addirittura crudo e privo di comprensione. Un giornalista non solo annunciava con disinvoltura che nella leggenda o nell’autorità letteraria di Walter Scott non vedeva nulla, ma si appellava contro di lui, addirittura, all’autorità di Mark Twain. La cosa mi tocca press’a poco come se mi si dicesse d’improvviso che Charlie Chaplin non ha mai tratto gran piacere da Omero. Non ho la minima idea, s’intende, se sia così; per quanto ne so, il signor Chaplin potrebbe essere un dotto omerista e un profondo studioso di Scott; potrebbe avere gusto migliore di Mark Twain. Mark Twain fu certamente, a modo suo, qualcosa come un uomo di genio; e così, del resto, lo è Charlie Chaplin. Ma esistono la tradizione artistica e la presa culturale, e non mi sarei mai sognato di attendermi che Mark Twain comprendesse la grandezza dei romanzi di Waverley, così come non comprese la grandezza dei romanzi arturiani. Ciò che egli chiamò lo Yankee alla corte di Re Artù era, naturalmente, una versione assai goffa di Re Artù processato nel tribunale dello Yankee, e i verdetti di quel tribunale furono conclusivi press’a poco quanto quelli del tribunale di Dayton, nel Tennessee.
E ancora: può darsi che di Scott sia vero, in questo momento, che è trascurato, secondo una stima meramente numerica dei lettori; e lo stesso, a quest’epoca, potrebbe con ogni probabilità esser vero di Mark Twain. Ma quel genere di calcolo, alla lunga, non fa alcuna differenza per il genio letterario. Vi furono anche, s’intende, difese animose; forse un po’ troppo sulla difensiva. Il signor John Buchan si ergeva risoluto, con pugnale e spadone, dinanzi al sacrario; ma persino nel suo eccellente discorso una o due frasi lasciavano intendere che egli difendeva non soltanto una santità, bensì un segreto. C’era giusto un tocco di quello spirito con cui lo Scozzese sembra talvolta quasi vietare all’Inglese di comprendere Burns o di godere dell’haggis. Vi è senza dubbio una verità in questa tradizione, giacché ogni scrittore che sia davvero universale è anche nazionale; ma Scott non era soltanto nazionale, bensì assai universale. Poeti continentali, come Goethe e Victor Hugo, difficilmente sarebbero stati se stessi senza Scott. Byron, forse il più continentale di tutti i poeti, non sarebbe stato se stesso senza Scott. Scott fece romanzi scozzeschi, ma fece il romanzesco europeo.
Penso che i due tratti di Scott più vividi e vitali siano oggi i più invisibili. Sono tratti naturalmente trascurati nella nostra epoca, ma il difetto sta nella nostra epoca e non in Scott. Uno riguarda il fatto che egli scrisse romanzi storici, nel senso di storie gremite di personaggi storici. L’altro riguarda il fatto che egli stesso fu un personaggio storico. In verità ci dice molto di più sulla propria età che sulle età precedenti. Troppo spesso si dimentica che i suoi libri migliori, come L’antiquario, riguardano in realtà la sua stessa età. Alcuni fra i migliori sono quelli assai prossimi alla sua età, come Rob Roy, o il mirabile finale di Guy Mannering. Ma vi era qualcosa che Scott condivideva in modo particolare con la propria epoca e che rileggeva sempre a ritroso dentro le altre epoche. Non era soltanto quella cosa vaga che si chiama romanzesco; era anche una cosa assai chiara e classica che si chiama retorica. Non era un uomo del Settecento per nulla. Egli era, quasi quanto era ogni altra cosa, un grande oratore. È uno dei limiti della nostra così limitata epoca farsi beffe dell’oratoria. Ma è soprattutto perché i nostri politici non sanno innalzarvisi che i nostri critici non si degnano di scendervi. Sul finire del Settecento vi era una sorta di atmosfera ardente di grande eloquenza, e in nessuno più che negli uomini d’azione. Nelson e Napoleone erano davvero retorici quanto Danton e Fox.
Ora, Scott possedeva questa specie di eloquenza nel grado più alto. Ne varrebbe ben la pena di comporre un’antologia dei soli discorsi tratti dai romanzi e dai poemetti romanzeschi di Scott. Dalla risposta del Franklin sassone a De Bracy alla maledizione di Meg Merrilees contro il Laird di Ellangowan, dal discorso con cui il bilioso Luigi XI si leva a dignità di fronte alla morte al rude rifiuto di Douglas, a Tantallon, di porgere la mano a Marmion, tutti i discorsi sono animosi ed efficaci, considerati come discorsi, qualunque cosa possano valere come scritti. In ciò sta gran parte dell’errore intorno ai romanzi in versi. Non sono sempre poesia, ma sono sempre letteratura. Sono letteratura di quel genere particolare che si esprime in un’oratoria diretta e battagliera; nel discorso che sta più vicino all’azione. La replica della Dama di Branksome ai nemici che tengono in ostaggio suo figlio è quasi filastrocca, considerata come poesia; ma è diretta e persino mortale, considerata come oratoria. Tutto è appropriato ed efficace, dallo scherno per il coraggio di Lord Dacre al brusco volgersi dell’invocazione di sfida:
Per il giovane erede della stirpe di Branksome Dio gli sia d’aiuto, e Dio sia d’aiuto a me.
È questo il modo in cui uomini come Danton e Fox conducevano il dibattito, tra le sommosse e le rivoluzioni che riempirono l’epoca stessa di Scott. Ed egli fu uomo della propria epoca più di quanto sapesse.
Una cosa la trovò davvero nel passato, non ancora del tutto distrutta nel presente, e fu la sua ispirazione principale. Egli non sapeva nulla della religione del passato, e la sua nozione del gotico era più barbara di quella di qualunque Goto. Ma aveva estratto dalle sue tradizioni feudali qualcosa di cui il suo spirito si nutriva veramente; qualcosa senza cui il mondo moderno muore di fame. Trovò l’idea dell’Onore, che è la vera energia in ogni eloquenza battagliera. Che un uomo debba difendere la dignità della propria famiglia, del proprio podere, del proprio grado legittimo sotto il Re, perfino del proprio semplice nome, di qualcosa almeno che fosse più grande di lui stesso: questo era il fuoco che Scott trovò ancora ardente dal feudalesimo del Trecento ed espresse nell’oratoria del Settecento. Di tutti gli ideali morali è oggi il più trascurato e frainteso. Non c’è da stupirsi che l’eloquenza da esso scaturita sia anch’essa fraintesa e trascurata. Vediamo quel vuoto spalancarsi ovunque intorno a noi; nel fatto che il matrimonio viene discusso come tutto tranne che per ciò che è, un voto; o che la proprietà viene discussa come tutto tranne che per ciò che dovrebbe essere, un’indipendenza. Ma il mondo moderno non è così felice nel suo oblio dell’onore, o dell’eloquenza che scaturisce dall’onore, da costringerci a credere nell’oblio permanente di Scott.
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XLIII
On the Solar System
THE Sun has made a fitful and what may fairly be called a meteoric appearance in my garden this afternoon. And since, by a curious coincidence, this portent has occurred at a time not very distant from Midsummer Day (which, as you truly remark, is the Feast of St. John the Baptist and the date of the Battle of Bannockburn), the symbolical character of the sun flamed all the more mysteriously in the imagination. This luminary, which has been seldom observed of late in our country, can nevertheless be to a large extent calculated by astronomers, touching its actual though invisible relations to the earth. It would be an exaggeration to say that the sun visits England in the manner of a rare and very remote comet. It occurs in our literature; some say more often in our literature than our life, and I have even read a literary theory according to which The Merry Month of May was a purely classical convention, taken wholesale by the English poets from the Provençal poets. So that Chaucer and Dunbar, huddled up in mackintoshes and cowering over stoves, wrote the praises of spring and summer with freezing fingers, and made purely ritual salutations to invisible flowers and impassable fields. I do not believe in this bitter interpretation, but then, I happen to be one of the few and rather unpopular persons who like the cool and troubled temper of the English climate. It was said that Germany wanted a place in the sun; I cannot sufficiently congratulate myself that England succeeded in finding a place in the shade. Not many people in England have agreed with me, this summer; though it is possible that I might find a few sympathizers in America, where there is a heat-wave. I remember once there was a heat-wave in England, and I found myself walking about on the Sussex Downs under that tropical oppression. And I remember that the rather hackneyed quotation from Browning came back to me; and I said with a groan: “Oh to be in April, now that England’s here.”
Anyhow, the sun has been made a symbol of all sorts of things, good, bad, and indifferent; and it would be easy to fill a page with all the significant parts it has played in human history; of what it meant to the Heretic Pharaoh and what to the Parsees; of why the rays of its rising are displayed on the blazon of Japan; of how it has been arrested by Joshua, worshipped by Julian, theorized about by Copernicus, quarrelled about by Galileo, pointed at by Napoleon, put in its proper place by Newton, and seriously disturbed and doubted about by Einstein—all this would give fascinating opportunity for that habit of wandering from the point which is the essence of an essay of this kind. For the moment, however, I prefer to regard the sun merely in the light of a strange star that has startled me by visiting my garden in the middle of summer, and rather to dwell upon the catastrophic and unearthly character of the event than to seek for any strictly scientific or merely rationalistic explanation of it.
One reason for reconciling oneself cheerfully to regarding the sun as a strange star is that it seems likely, in the light of the latest science, that we shall find it illuminating a very strange world. I am a child in these things; and so long as the child is allowed to play in the garden, he does not bother very much about the rules regulating the visits of that shining stranger, who has of late been very much of a stranger. But he does know enough about recent revolutions, in the ideas about space and light, and atomic structure, to know that not only the sun, but also the garden, grows more mysterious every day. We may come to regarding the sun almost as a secret; like the sun that wore the mask of the moon in Mr. Max Beerbohm’s fairy-tale; a deceptive luminary; almost, if the contradiction be allowed, a dark luminary; with crooked rays; with invisible violet rays; with something resembling black rays, beyond the dreams of the blind. It seems to be anything but the simple golden globe with which the simple Victorian naturalists dealt so easily, when they taught us the use of the globes. Some of the things that are now said about it astonish me very much. For instance, Mr. René Fülop-Miller, the highly intelligent and impartial historian of the Bolshevist Revolution, has recently written a book about the Jesuits. The writer is equally detached about the Jesuits; he is entirely detached from the religion of the Jesuits. He is an ordinary modern rationalist; very emphatic upon the need to keep abreast of modern science. He narrates, as any rationalist would, as any reasonable man would, the victory of Galileo and the Copernican astronomy, with its earth going round the sun, over the old Ptolemaic astronomy, with its sun going round the earth. I should, of course, entirely accept that Copernican victory; it never would occur to me to do anything else. But I was considerably startled when Mr. Fülop-Miller, after stating the ordinary view of the Solar System, which everybody accepts, and I have naturally accepted, goes on calmly to write as follows:
“It is true that the most recent mathematical and physical theories necessitate a revision of this commonly held opinion, for no longer does the teaching of Ptolemy appear ‘wholly false,’ nor that of Copernicus ‘alone true,’ as Galileo thought. Rather does it appear that both the systems have fundamentally an equal claim to recognition, and that the superiority of the Copernican system rests solely on the greater simplicity of the astronomical calculations effected with its help. Cardinal Bellarmine had, however, already recognized this when he warned Galileo’s pupils to regard the Copernican doctrine only as hypothetical and not as the sole truth.”
In other words, the scientific rationalist, invoking the very latest scientific views, says something that I for one should never have dreamed of saying: that Galileo was as wrong as he was right; or at least that he was no more right than he was wrong, and no more right than his opponents were right. This seems to me a very amazing remark to appear in a book by an ordinary modern sceptic. Anyhow, it is a remark that will not be found in any book by me, or any of those who are regarded as religious reactionaries.
Let nobody go away and say that I made the remark. Let nobody wail aloud that I say the Solar System is a Solar Myth. I never interfered with the Solar System. I never disorganized the sun and moon; I never in my life gave the planets or the fixed stars the least cause for uneasiness. Copernicus and Newton are good enough for me. I only say the sun must be a very strange star, and must stand in a very strange relation to a very strange planet or satellite, if any sane sceptic can really say that it is just as true that the sun goes round the earth as that the earth goes round the sun. The real truth, which he has in mind, is probably some very subtle mathematical relation, to which both of those contrary images are merely relative. The only effect on me, at the moment, is a merely imaginative, or even a merely artistic effect. It makes the sun much more extraordinary; and it was extraordinary enough before. I have not the faintest intention of meddling with these problems in the higher world of mathematics. I only say that the immediate effect of them on the fancy is almost to bring back the sun into the world of mythology. In that sense, the sun is much more of a Sun Myth; it is at least a Sun Mystery. Phoebus Apollo, worshipped with such superb prayer and sacrifice, is still at least like that other pagan god whom St. Paul saluted as the Unknown God. And because I love everything that adds at least to the wonder of the world, and because I hate familiarity as I hate contempt, I am glad that the strange god in the garden grows stranger every day. For we need mystery to console and encourage us. And, like Voltaire, and other pious and devout characters, I quite agree that we must cultivate the garden.
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XLIII
Sul sistema solare
IL Sole ha fatto una comparsa saltuaria, e che si potrebbe a ragione definire meteorica, nel mio giardino questo pomeriggio. E poiché, per una curiosa coincidenza, questo portento si è verificato in un momento non troppo lontano dal giorno di mezza estate (il quale, come voi giustamente osservate, è la Festa di San Giovanni Battista e la data della Battaglia di Bannockburn), il carattere simbolico del sole avvampò tanto più misteriosamente nell’immaginazione. Questo astro, che di rado è stato osservato negli ultimi tempi nel nostro paese, può nondimeno essere in larga misura calcolato dagli astronomi, quanto alle sue reali benché invisibili relazioni con la terra. Sarebbe un’esagerazione dire che il sole visita l’Inghilterra alla maniera di una cometa rara e assai remota. Esso ricorre nella nostra letteratura; alcuni dicono più spesso nella nostra letteratura che nella nostra vita, e ho persino letto una teoria letteraria secondo la quale l’Allegro Mese di Maggio era una convenzione puramente classica, presa di peso dai poeti inglesi dai poeti provenzali. Sicché Chaucer e Dunbar, rannicchiati nei loro impermeabili e accovacciati sopra le stufe, scrivevano le lodi della primavera e dell’estate con le dita intirizzite, e rivolgevano saluti puramente rituali a fiori invisibili e a campi impraticabili. Non credo a questa amara interpretazione, ma d’altra parte mi trovo ad essere una delle poche e piuttosto impopolari persone a cui piace il temperamento fresco e turbolento del clima inglese. Si diceva che la Germania volesse un posto al sole; non posso congratularmi abbastanza con me stesso perché l’Inghilterra è riuscita a trovare un posto all’ombra. Non molti in Inghilterra si sono trovati d’accordo con me, quest’estate; benché sia possibile che io trovi qualche simpatizzante in America, dove c’è un’ondata di caldo. Ricordo che una volta ci fu un’ondata di caldo in Inghilterra, e mi ritrovai a camminare per le colline del Sussex sotto quell’oppressione tropicale. E ricordo che mi tornò in mente la citazione alquanto abusata di Browning; e dissi con un gemito: «Oh, essere in aprile, ora che l’Inghilterra è qui.»
Comunque sia, del sole si è fatto un simbolo di ogni sorta di cose, buone, cattive e indifferenti; e sarebbe facile riempire una pagina con tutte le parti significative che esso ha recitato nella storia umana; di ciò che significò per il Faraone Eretico e di ciò che significò per i Parsi; del perché i raggi del suo sorgere siano esposti sullo stemma del Giappone; di come sia stato arrestato da Giosuè, adorato da Giuliano, teorizzato da Copernico, oggetto di dispute per Galileo, additato da Napoleone, messo al suo giusto posto da Newton, e seriamente turbato e posto in dubbio da Einstein — tutto ciò offrirebbe un’affascinante occasione per quell’abitudine di divagare dal tema che è l’essenza di un saggio di questo genere. Per il momento, tuttavia, preferisco considerare il sole semplicemente alla luce di una strana stella che mi ha colto di sorpresa visitando il mio giardino nel mezzo dell’estate, e indugiare piuttosto sul carattere catastrofico e ultraterreno dell’evento anziché cercarne una spiegazione rigorosamente scientifica o meramente razionalistica.
Una ragione per rassegnarsi di buon grado a considerare il sole come una strana stella è che sembra probabile, alla luce della scienza più recente, che lo scopriremo intento a illuminare un mondo assai strano. In queste cose sono un bambino; e finché al bambino è concesso di giocare nel giardino, egli non si preoccupa gran che delle regole che disciplinano le visite di quello sfolgorante forestiero, che negli ultimi tempi è stato ben poco presente. Ma sa abbastanza delle recenti rivoluzioni, nelle idee intorno allo spazio e alla luce, e alla struttura atomica, da sapere che non soltanto il sole, ma anche il giardino, si fa più misterioso ogni giorno. Potremmo arrivare a considerare il sole quasi come un segreto; come il sole che indossava la maschera della luna nella fiaba del signor Max Beerbohm; un astro ingannevole; quasi, se la contraddizione è concessa, un astro oscuro; dai raggi obliqui; dagli invisibili raggi violetti; con qualcosa che assomiglia a raggi neri, al di là dei sogni del cieco. Sembra essere tutto tranne che il semplice globo dorato con cui i semplici naturalisti vittoriani trattavano con tanta disinvoltura, quando ci insegnavano l’uso dei globi. Alcune delle cose che ora si dicono di esso mi stupiscono moltissimo. Per esempio, il signor René Fülop-Miller, l’intelligentissimo e imparziale storico della Rivoluzione bolscevica, ha scritto di recente un libro sui Gesuiti. Lo scrittore è ugualmente distaccato riguardo ai Gesuiti; è del tutto distaccato dalla religione dei Gesuiti. È un ordinario razionalista moderno; assai insistente sulla necessità di tenersi al passo con la scienza moderna. Egli narra, come farebbe qualunque razionalista, come farebbe qualunque uomo ragionevole, la vittoria di Galileo e dell’astronomia copernicana, con la sua terra che gira intorno al sole, sulla vecchia astronomia tolemaica, con il suo sole che gira intorno alla terra. Io, naturalmente, accetterei senz’altro quella vittoria copernicana; non mi verrebbe mai in mente di fare altrimenti. Ma rimasi considerevolmente sorpreso quando il signor Fülop-Miller, dopo aver esposto la comune concezione del Sistema Solare, che tutti accettano, e che io ho naturalmente accettato, prosegue tranquillamente scrivendo quanto segue:
«È vero che le teorie matematiche e fisiche più recenti rendono necessaria una revisione di questa opinione comunemente accolta, poiché l’insegnamento di Tolomeo non appare più “del tutto falso”, né quello di Copernico “solo vero”, come credeva Galileo. Sembra piuttosto che entrambi i sistemi abbiano fondamentalmente un pari diritto al riconoscimento, e che la superiorità del sistema copernicano poggi unicamente sulla maggiore semplicità dei calcoli astronomici effettuati col suo aiuto. Il Cardinale Bellarmino, del resto, l’aveva già riconosciuto quando ammonì i discepoli di Galileo a considerare la dottrina copernicana solo come ipotetica e non come l’unica verità.»
In altre parole, il razionalista scientifico, invocando le più recenti vedute scientifiche, dice qualcosa che io, per parte mia, non mi sarei mai sognato di dire: che Galileo aveva torto quanto aveva ragione; o almeno che non aveva più ragione di quanta ne avesse torto, e non più ragione di quanta ne avessero i suoi avversari. Questa mi sembra un’osservazione oltremodo sbalorditiva a comparire in un libro di un ordinario scettico moderno. In ogni caso, è un’osservazione che non si troverà in alcun libro scritto da me, né da alcuno di coloro che sono considerati reazionari religiosi.
Che nessuno se ne vada in giro a dire che l’ho fatta io, quell’osservazione. Che nessuno strilli a gran voce che io affermo essere il Sistema Solare un Mito Solare. Io non ho mai interferito col Sistema Solare. Non ho mai disorganizzato il sole e la luna; non ho mai in vita mia dato ai pianeti o alle stelle fisse il minimo motivo d’inquietudine. Copernico e Newton mi bastano. Dico soltanto che il sole dev’essere una stella assai strana, e deve trovarsi in una relazione assai strana con un pianeta o satellite assai strano, se un qualche scettico assennato può davvero affermare che è altrettanto vero che il sole giri intorno alla terra quanto che la terra giri intorno al sole. La verità reale, che egli ha in mente, è probabilmente qualche sottilissima relazione matematica, rispetto alla quale entrambe quelle immagini contrarie sono meramente relative. L’unico effetto su di me, per il momento, è un effetto meramente immaginativo, o addirittura meramente artistico. Rende il sole molto più straordinario; ed era già abbastanza straordinario prima. Non ho la minima intenzione d’immischiarmi in questi problemi nel mondo superiore della matematica. Dico soltanto che il loro effetto immediato sulla fantasia è quasi quello di ricondurre il sole nel mondo della mitologia. In quel senso, il sole è molto più un Mito Solare; è per lo meno un Mistero Solare. Febo Apollo, adorato con preghiera e sacrificio tanto superbi, è ancora almeno simile a quell’altro dio pagano che San Paolo salutò come il Dio Ignoto. E poiché io amo tutto ciò che aggiunge almeno alla meraviglia del mondo, e poiché odio la familiarità come odio il disprezzo, sono lieto che lo strano dio nel giardino si faccia più strano ogni giorno. Poiché abbiamo bisogno del mistero che ci consoli e ci incoraggi. E, come Voltaire, e altri personaggi pii e devoti, convengo pienamente che dobbiamo coltivare il giardino.
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XLIV
On Thoughtless Remarks
IT is doubtless disrespectful to the reader, nor indeed does it tend greatly to the aggrandizement or dignity of the writer, to say that my occupation in life is catching flies. And when I recently referred to a certain type of Feminist as a wasp, I received remonstrances from one who doubtless considered her to have all the highest and most royal attributes of a queen bee. Nevertheless, this unfortunate metaphor frequently returns to my mind, and I am conscious of a truth that I could not easily express without it. What I mean is this: that one of the chief nuisances of our time is a swarm of little things, in the form of little thoughts, or little sayings largely divorced from thoughts, which pervade the whole atmosphere in a manner only comparable to that of the most minute insects: insignificant and almost invisible but innumerable and almost omnipresent. I am not thinking of real thought; even of false or destructive thought. I am not referring to the real bodies of moral and philosophical opinion, based on principles I think wrong, or producing results I think mischievous. The views of this kind, with which I have sometimes dealt, differ very much in their power or promise or capacity for doing harm. I disagree with Communism as I disagree with Calvinism; but nobody would say this is the hour of Calvinism, and I admit, in a sense, it is the hour of Communism. There is a very strong intellectual temptation to the Bolshevist simplification because of the unquestionable collapse of the old commercial complexity. On the other hand, other theories I have quarrelled with in my time are less and less prominent in the modern quarrel. Many men of science have abandoned Darwinism. All men of science have abandoned Materialism. But Materialism and Darwinism were none the less thorough systems supported by thinking men, with arguments to be answered as well as assumptions to be questioned. The kind of thing of which I am speaking now is something at once atmospheric and microscopic, like a cloud of midges, and not like the serious scientific theories and philosophies of the nineteenth century, which may rather be compared, according to taste, to lions, elephants, tigers, vultures, vipers, or scorpions.
The matter in question is the prevalence of a sort of casual and even conversational scepticism, making even the idle thoughts of an idle fellow busy in the interests of doubt and despair. I mean that a man, without thinking at all, will throw off some flippant phrase which is always (by a strange fatality) a sort of feeble revolt against all traditional truth. It may be anything, an aside on the stage or a joke on the political platform; it may be a mere flourish at the start of a magazine story or a mere word dropped into an inconvenient silence; something said for the sake of saying something. The whole point of it is that it is, in this sense, pointless. The philosophy is not expressed when people are talking about philosophy, but when they are talking about anything else. I have just this moment started reading an ordinary modern story, quite well written considered as a story; and it begins by saying that there is not much difference between stupidity and courage, and, in fact, that courage is really only a form of stupidity.
That is exactly typical of the thing I mean. It is merely a casual remark; it is only very casually meant to be a clever remark; it is actually rather a silly remark; but the point is that a fatality of fashion causes a myriad such remarks to be made, always on the side of cowardice and never on the side of courage. In point of fact, of course, it would be easy to demonstrate its falsehood. History is full of examples of intellectual men who have been courageous, even of highly subtle and penetrating intellectuals who have accepted death courageously. It even contains any number of cases of thoughtful men who have thought a great deal about the act of accepting death; who have thought about it for a long time, and with complete composure, and then deliberately accepted it. Socrates is an obvious example. Sir Thomas More is a still more obvious example. Boëthius and many other philosophers; St. Paul and many other saints; all kinds of mystics, missionaries, religious founders and social reformers have proved the point over and over again. But I am interested here, not so much in the point, as in the pointless remark. What is that itch of intellectual irritation which makes a modern man, even in a moment of indolence, say the cynical thing even when it is obviously false; or kick against the heroic thing, even when it is self-evidently true? Why do we find today this vast and vague mass of trivialities, which have nothing in common except that they are all in reaction against the very best of human traditions? Why has this cheap and really worthless sort of scepticism got into such universal circulation? In other words, I am not now thinking of the Gold Standard of the highest truth, or the Bimetallism of the higher scepticism, which discusses whether there can be a rivalry in truth; or any of the more or less precious metals which may bear the image and superscription of this or that moral authority. I am puzzled by the circulation of all these millions of brass farthings, hardly more valuable than bad pennies; I am wondering where they all come from, and why they can be produced in such handfuls; and whether there is not something wrong with the mint of the mind. I am wondering what has debased the currency of current thought and speech, and why every normal ideal of man is now pelted with handfuls of such valueless pebbles, and assailed everywhere, not by free thought, but by frank thoughtlessness.
There seems to be no normal motive for a human being feeling a hostility to the human virtue of courage. He may disapprove of this or that excuse or occasion for calling it forth, but surely not of the thing itself. If the writer had said that the bravery of brave men is used by the stupidity of stupid men, he would have said something perfectly tenable, and, indeed, frequently true. When he says that a brave man must be a stupid man, he wantonly says something that can instantly be disproved and dismissed as impudent and idiotic. Why does he say it, except to relieve his feelings; and in that case what are his feelings? We only know that they have never yet been the normal feelings of men, yet they seem just now to be the almost involuntary feelings of a vast number of men. That is the problem that I find practically pestering us on every side today; and that is what I mean by comparing that buzz of dull flippancy to the swarming of gnats or flies. It is all concerned with the same paradox, with what may be called the omnipresence of the insignificant. A fly is a small thing, but flies can be a very big thing. In some tropical countries, I am told, they can appear like great clouds on the remote horizon or vast thunder-storms filling the whole sky. The plague of locusts which afflicts many lands is something much more destructive than the passage of a pack of wolves or the ruin wrought by a stampede of wild bulls or wild elephants. So the seemingly insignificant individual irritation produced by these insignificant individual perversities may be, in its cumulative effect, more corrupting to a whole culture than the great heresies that have been hardened and hammered into a certain intellectual solidity. The spirit of anarchy does not work only by monsters. Even the sages and visionaries of the East have seen a spiritual significance in the fact that even almost invisible insects can be a plague or carry a pestilence; and the ancient name of Beelzebub has the meaning of the Lord of Flies.
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XLIV
Sulle osservazioni sconsiderate
È indubbiamente irrispettoso verso il lettore, né certo giova granché all’esaltazione o alla dignità dello scrittore, dichiarare che la mia occupazione nella vita è dare la caccia alle mosche. E quando, di recente, ho paragonato a una vespa un certo tipo di femminista, ho ricevuto rimostranze da chi la reputava senza dubbio dotata di tutti gli attributi più alti e più regali di un’ape regina. Nondimeno questa infelice metafora torna di frequente alla mia mente, e ho coscienza di una verità che non saprei esprimere agevolmente senza di essa. Ciò che intendo è questo: che una delle principali seccature del nostro tempo è uno sciame di piccole cose, sotto forma di piccoli pensieri, o di piccoli detti in gran parte divorziati dai pensieri, i quali pervadono l’intera atmosfera in un modo paragonabile soltanto a quello degli insetti più minuti: insignificanti e quasi invisibili, ma innumerevoli e quasi onnipresenti. Non sto pensando al pensiero vero; nemmeno al pensiero falso o distruttivo. Non mi riferisco ai veri corpi dell’opinione morale e filosofica, fondati su princìpi che ritengo errati, o che producono risultati che ritengo dannosi. Le vedute di questa specie, con le quali mi sono talvolta misurato, differiscono molto per potenza o promessa o capacità di far male. Dissento dal Comunismo come dissento dal Calvinismo; ma nessuno direbbe che questa è l’ora del Calvinismo, mentre ammetto, in un certo senso, che è l’ora del Comunismo. C’è una fortissima tentazione intellettuale verso la semplificazione bolscevica, a causa dell’incontestabile crollo della vecchia complessità commerciale. D’altra parte, altre teorie con cui ho litigato ai miei tempi sono sempre meno in vista nella disputa moderna. Molti uomini di scienza hanno abbandonato il Darwinismo. Tutti gli uomini di scienza hanno abbandonato il Materialismo. Ma il Materialismo e il Darwinismo erano nondimeno sistemi compiuti, sostenuti da uomini pensanti, con argomenti cui rispondere non meno che con presupposti da mettere in questione. Il genere di cosa di cui parlo ora è qualcosa a un tempo atmosferico e microscopico, come una nube di moscerini, e non come le serie teorie e filosofie scientifiche del diciannovesimo secolo, che si possono piuttosto paragonare, secondo i gusti, a leoni, elefanti, tigri, avvoltoi, vipere o scorpioni.
La faccenda in questione è il prevalere di una sorta di scetticismo casuale e persino conversazionale, che rende perfino i pensieri oziosi di un tipo ozioso indaffarati negli interessi del dubbio e della disperazione. Intendo dire che un uomo, senza pensare affatto, se ne uscirà con qualche frase frivola che è sempre (per una strana fatalità) una specie di fiacca rivolta contro ogni verità tradizionale. Può essere qualsiasi cosa: un a parte sul palcoscenico o una battuta sulla tribuna politica; può essere un semplice svolazzo all’inizio di un racconto da rivista o una mera parola lasciata cadere in un silenzio importuno; qualcosa detto per il gusto di dire qualcosa. Tutto il suo senso sta nel fatto che è, in questo senso, privo di senso. La filosofia non viene espressa quando la gente parla di filosofia, ma quando parla di qualunque altra cosa. Ho appena in questo istante cominciato a leggere un comune racconto moderno, scritto anche piuttosto bene come racconto; ed esordisce affermando che non c’è gran differenza tra la stupidità e il coraggio, e che, anzi, il coraggio è in realtà soltanto una forma di stupidità.
Ecco esattamente il tipico esempio della cosa che intendo. È soltanto un’osservazione casuale; è solo assai casualmente intesa come un’osservazione arguta; è in effetti piuttosto un’osservazione sciocca; ma il punto è che una fatalità della moda fa sì che una miriade di simili osservazioni vengano fatte, sempre dalla parte della codardia e mai dalla parte del coraggio. In verità, naturalmente, sarebbe facile dimostrarne la falsità. La Storia è piena di esempi di uomini d’intelletto che sono stati coraggiosi, persino di intellettuali altamente sottili e penetranti che hanno accettato la morte con coraggio. Contiene perfino un gran numero di casi di uomini riflessivi che hanno pensato a lungo all’atto di accettare la morte; che vi hanno pensato per molto tempo, e con completa compostezza, e poi l’hanno deliberatamente accettata. Socrate ne è un esempio ovvio. Sir Thomas More ne è un esempio ancora più ovvio. Boezio e molti altri filosofi; san Paolo e molti altri santi; ogni sorta di mistici, missionari, fondatori di religioni e riformatori sociali hanno provato il punto più e più volte. Ma qui m’interessa non tanto il punto, quanto l’osservazione priva di senso. Cos’è quel prurito d’irritazione intellettuale che spinge un uomo moderno, perfino in un momento d’indolenza, a dire la cosa cinica anche quando è palesemente falsa; o a scalciare contro la cosa eroica, anche quando è di per sé evidentemente vera? Perché troviamo oggi questa vasta e vaga massa di banalità, che non hanno nulla in comune se non l’essere tutte in reazione contro il meglio delle tradizioni umane? Perché questa specie di scetticismo dozzinale e davvero senza valore è entrata in una circolazione tanto universale? In altre parole, non sto ora pensando al Gold Standard della più alta verità, né al Bimetallismo dello scetticismo più elevato, che discute se possa esserci una rivalità nella verità; né ad alcuno dei metalli più o meno preziosi che possono recare l’immagine e l’iscrizione di questa o quell’autorità morale. Mi lascia perplesso la circolazione di tutti questi milioni di quattrini di ottone, poco più preziosi di monetacce false; mi domando da dove vengano tutti, e perché possano essere prodotti a manciate; e se non ci sia qualcosa che non va nella zecca della mente. Mi domando cosa abbia svilito la moneta del pensiero e della parola correnti, e perché ogni ideale normale dell’uomo venga ora bersagliato con manciate di simili ciottoli senza valore, e assalito da ogni parte non dal libero pensiero, ma dalla franca sconsideratezza.
Non sembra esserci alcun motivo normale perché un essere umano provi ostilità verso la virtù umana del coraggio. Egli potrà disapprovare questa o quella scusa od occasione per chiamarlo in causa, ma di certo non la cosa in sé. Se lo scrittore avesse detto che il valore degli uomini coraggiosi viene sfruttato dalla stupidità degli uomini stupidi, avrebbe detto qualcosa di perfettamente sostenibile e, in effetti, spesso vero. Quando invece dice che un uomo coraggioso dev’essere un uomo stupido, dice sconsideratamente qualcosa che può essere all’istante smentito e liquidato come sfrontato e idiota. Perché lo dice, se non per sfogare i suoi sentimenti; e in tal caso, quali sono i suoi sentimenti? Sappiamo soltanto che non sono mai stati finora i sentimenti normali degli uomini, eppure sembrano proprio ora essere i sentimenti quasi involontari di un immenso numero di uomini. Ecco il problema che trovo praticamente ad assillarci da ogni lato quest’oggi; ed ecco cosa intendo paragonando quel ronzio di sciocca frivolezza al brulicare dei moscerini o delle mosche. Tutto ha a che fare con lo stesso paradosso, con quella che si può chiamare l’onnipresenza dell’insignificante. Una mosca è cosa piccola, ma le mosche possono essere una cosa assai grande. In certi paesi tropicali, mi si dice, esse possono apparire come grandi nubi all’orizzonte remoto, o come vasti temporali che riempiono l’intero cielo. La piaga delle locuste che affligge molte terre è qualcosa di ben più distruttivo del passaggio di un branco di lupi o della rovina operata dalla fuga precipitosa di tori selvaggi o di elefanti selvatici. Così la irritazione individuale apparentemente insignificante prodotta da queste insignificanti perversità individuali può essere, nel suo effetto cumulativo, più corruttrice per un’intera cultura delle grandi eresie che sono state indurite e martellate fino a una certa solidità intellettuale. Lo spirito dell’anarchia non opera soltanto per mezzo di mostri. Persino i saggi e i visionari dell’Oriente hanno scorto un significato spirituale nel fatto che anche insetti quasi invisibili possano essere una piaga o portare una pestilenza; e l’antico nome di Belzebù ha il significato di Signore delle Mosche.
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